Women Helping other Women Selflessly | Best Friends Building an Instagram Business
Hello I'm so excited to see you back here at Spark of Wisdom, a talk show for self transformation seekers where every week I bring life coaches, healers, authors, visionaries, thought leaders to share their knowledge, passion and wisdom. Today's interview is a very special one for me for a few different reasons; one of them is that for the first time I'm going to be interviewing two guests instead of one and those two guests are actually two amazing women that I consider my friends. We connected through instagram, we are virtual friends, we never met in real life even though we plan to. We started supporting each other, learning and growing together. I am so excited to get
them here in front of you so you can get to know them better, you can see how amazing they are you can see all the hard work that they are putting on every single day to build a community, to build their business, to motivate and to empower women. I don't think I could have found better guests to discuss today's topic, women helping women selflessly. Yani and Vika are two best friends that came together and build an instagram business and in this interview they will reveal all of the struggles, challenges, their dreams, their mission, their passion and most importantly they'll be sharing with us their tips and tricks, the most common mistakes, everything that you need to know if you are looking now to start an instagram business, to grow an instagram page or any type of business. If you're as curious as I am and heard about those two girls having an instagram business you probably wonder how can you actually monetize instagram and is it profitable ? Don't worry, I will be asking all of those questions. Let's bring Yani and Vika ... Hello and welcome to Spark of Wisdom! Hi girls. Hi hi thank you so much for accepting
my invitation. I'm so happy to have both of you here. Thank you. Thank you for having us. How are you girls? Great, excited for the interview. Exactly. I'm so happy to have both of you here but let's let's hear a little bit more about you, just to introduce yourself to everyone that doesn't know you as well as I do so who wants to start? Just say a few words about yourself. I would love to start so my name is Yaniza but of course I can make it shorter and easier for you everyone calls me Yani I am 26 years old and I am all about art design and creativity so I love any kind of design from fashion to interior to content design I just love being creative and just play around with you know different ideas different colors different designs and creations this is totally my passion and my purpose and also I love motivation I love motivating people inspiring people to really believe in themselves. I love to talk and give advices to people so so this is kind of really my thing. Nice, what about you Vika? My name
is Victoria but you can call me Vika because most of my friends are calling me like that, short there. I'm 31 years old right now I'm living in Belgium but before I was living in Bulgaria where I also met Yani and where we became friends and eventually started our business. My hobbies or my passions are traveling, music one of my biggest passions music and also meeting new people. I love people generally I love meeting new people because I love talking to people advising motivating them I love to have deep conversations becauseIi want to understand why people think like that um and yeah exactly I'm just uh I'm super positive person and I love to bring positivity in people's life. That's cool! So let's just start. I want to ask you
first of all how you guys met? You're best friend, we know, that but how did you met and how did you even come up with the idea to start a business together? We met um back then at our nine-to-five job we worked at the same company in Bulgaria and yes in Bulgaria back then Vika was living in Bulgaria and we worked together and actually I think she had some day days off when I started working at this company and when she came back to work and I got to know her immediately, from the first day I met her somehow we vibed let's see the energies that we had so when they came together it was like truly an explosion of uh just positivity and fun and all the good things that you can imagine between friends so um we really came close very quickly and um I remember that we went to a vacation together one weekend we didn't even know that each other so well but we just decided you know we're going to vacation together to the seaside and um i think from this weekend on we really said oh my god best friends like the same um mindset same vision about life same values same energy and at the same times we are we have very um common uh things between each other but also we are very different and in those differences we create perfect balance so they can we so that we can actually work together and that's how we notice that we can actually create something together because with the same mindset that we need to be bosses and not employees we knew that we have to do something and we decided to do it together and the funny story about how this happened is exactly at work when we had break and we sat so on the couch to just relax and talk a little bit and um we just we were silent for a minute like nobody was talking no none of us two was saying something and then actually i don't know who said it i think we can but i also said it with my eyes like what are we doing here why are we doing this 9 to 5 thing what are we doing with our lives how long will we do this and then all these questions somehow provoked um our action to just start to brainstorm what we really want to do and then how to start it so yeah brainstorming was exactly on this couch what so one of us finds interesting what the other finds interesting what we love doing what we are good at and so we of course then decided to do something motivational because we are bought um very positive people and um people often come to us when they need inspiration and motivation so we decided that's our thing and we made the instagram page. That's amazing and I don't think this happens very often to just have a discussion like you two had in a break right you were both at work having a break having a discussion we should do something but you actually did it lots of people will just you know mention something yeah okay it's a very different thing to talk about something and then actually go and do it. Yes true but that's also what actually uh Yani also said, it's because of the mindset right because both our mindsets were doers yeah how challenging was for you to start a business well um honestly the first thoughts that we had when we decided to start a business it was not challenging at all like the thought of it was not challenging because clearly we knew what we wanted to do what we wanted to achieve um so nothing was challenging because we knew we won our goal was visible so when we decided to create our instagram account and we started to post the first times this is where the challenges started and one of the biggest challenges that we had in the beginning actually uh was being blocked every week we just would have notifications of um of instagram saying sorry we have to block your account because some reasons... but we didn't know what type of reason so we did most probably something that was not allowed by instagram but we didn't know what would be wrong because we were using so many strategies that we were reading on the internet or um teaching ourselves by um let's say buying some courses so we were actually applying all these strategies but we didn't know if they were correct or wrong but most probably as we understood these strategies that we used in the beginning they were wrong strategies but that's how you learn. Right, by trial and error, that's the best way to learn. How long after that discussion that
you two had on the couch, how long till you actually created the page and posed? I think it was during the week that we had the conversation and I remember that I did it in the weekend I just created the account um in the weekend and I posted a few quotes and then on Monday I just show her the page and she said I love it and we started just in a few days very quick yeah very quickly yes wow oh i remember that part i really remember that monday and again because you know we will talk a lot about this couch because everything happened on that couch i mean this couch is green couch remember it was green there where everything happened honestly there were our ideas born this is where we really did everything and this is also where yeah Yani came on Monday morning on that couch and I was sitting there waiting for her to go uh to work and then she's like hey dave i'm like hey he's like look what i have and she's showing me that phone and there it is that instagram account that she had created in that weekend and she had already posted some posts and oh i remember that feeling it was amazing I'm like oh my god yes we are starting i mean this was really amazing yeah it is the same page that you're having today. Right, yes by the way I had two or three accounts but not only blocked but deleted by instagram. So probably because you started earlier it was still the time when instagram will block you for like i don't know what was it 24 hours or seven days depending on what you did and i was saying like you guys clueless not knowing what to do i was what i was doing i was just following too many people and liking too many posts and i will always get blocked so i had to start three times or four times having a an instagram account if not not good well that's that's the thing i mean that's the things i think that um as we and you and a lot of people are going through because there are so many restrictions by instagram um that you just don't know what you have done wrong and why you got restricted or why you got exactly your counter deleted yeah but um so i guess a lot of people are going and will go through this because um either they're not well educated about what is uh allowed and what is not allowed by instagram right as you said um liking too many posts could block you which we didn't know back in the days because we were thinking hey we will like a lot of posts so we can get a lot of likes back but we will talk about this later so i can mention also this is i mean this is something that is very often happening um because you know the thing is also that um back in the days our first goal once we created that account was having followers oh we need to have followers we need to have followers as much as possible but followers sorry casing followers exactly json followers but at the end and i mean later on we really understood it's not about just having a bunch of followers this is not the whole point of having an instagram account or having your business set up of course i mean the long-term goal is to have a lot of true fans and not a lot of just followers yeah quality followers exactly exactly so uh yes using uh wrong strategies using different strategies eventually um what we realize is that we really want to invest in training and coaching in reading to really invest in ourselves to become better and to deliver a better service and better business to the world so yes definitely by investing in ourselves by investing in uh learning training coaching this is what got us actually day by day better and better and we're not getting locked anymore. By the way, I have a question why an instagram business? why not something else?
Well why in instagram business um well obviously because at that time this was the number one social media platform so going back to that green color story um we were always i mean whenever we were having grades lunches and the weather was bad we were not going outside so we were staying inside being out buying coffee buying lunch sitting there talking and meanwhile we would always catch our catchers swiping on instagram this was before by the way that we uh uh had the idea to start a business so we were swiping on instagram and then you would see yanny swiping um checking uh pages on instagram um for let's say interior design fashion you would catch me it's going for some things people music because i love music so you would and would share um this passion with each other right i'll look at this all look at that so once we decided to create our business and start our business we knew that this will be the platform that we will use because if we can get our passion throughout the pages that people deliver on instagram and this is how they are making us happy this is what we want to do for people too so this was the thought instagram word it will be because the biggest platform yeah yeah and also another reason is that um back then we didn't we were kind of afraid as most probably many people to invest we wanted to start a business um that could be online so we don't have to invest that much in it and that was back then the best option for us because it was also something that we use on daily basis so it was again type of a comfort zone you know when people are they when they're of course motivated to start something but then also fear is there and they say okay i need to take it slow i will do it but still i want to take it slow and uh of course be on the safe side rather than risk so how can someone start a business on instagram what should be the first steps definitely for any type of business not only for instagram also physical business not only virtual business this person needs to define their strengths passion and purpose this is really the main thing what you love doing what you're good at that will also be your business and um it will become your main income at some point because when you do something with passion when you are happy doing something and making it to your business and your main income then it it will really get successful there is no other option success is the only option when you know that this is your thing and when you love doing it so this is the first thing really think about what you enjoy doing and most of the time people don't even recognize that it's something so simple and that it's something that you're used to doing but you never thought it can be a business right it can be a hobby it can be anything that you do in the weekend in your free time this can be your business just you just need um to be clear on that what is that thing and then the next step to do a plan and to know how to take the first steps of course um i'll just add that um you need to educate yourself you may think that because this is a hobby and you already know everything about it because you practice it but once you start you will see that you need to educate yourself and invest in yourself invest also in knowledge so you can um continue building because you may have the basics but if you want to grow if you want to succeed and make money out of this then you need to educate yourself right yeah i agree okay girls you know that everyone that's watching right now has a question in mind what does it take to be successful on instagram well honestly i think if you would uh google this question right now you would have ten thousands of tips how to be successful on instagram and i think um for everyone it could be different but from our experience first of all the most important thing is to be genuine i mean this is also when we started our business we said to each other let's be ourselves let's do not um let's say show what maybe people love to see or want to see but just be ourselves be genuine so also for the other people whenever let's say you engage on on other accounts and other posts just be genuine be yourself give your honest true opinion people will love you for that honestly people will appreciate because you're genuine so don't pretend to be someone else because you think that people will love you or like you because you're pretending to be someone else pretending to be whoever they want to see let's see but honestly believe me on long term people will appreciate you for who you are and will love just you because you're genuine well being genuine is one of our um uh advices uh another advice that i would give is being consistent i think consistency is actually i don't know if i can say that yani you can maybe just add it to it most important you can say it this is what brought us to where we are right now the consistency actually consistency um together with patients because going back to what we said being blocked every week um having in mind that um you know i remember that moment we were six months later after we started our business and we only had three thousand dollars around three thousand dollars it was six months later and i remember us having a conversation that why why are we doing this actually i mean it doesn't bring up anything right i mean you're not growing i mean most probably people just don't like what we do right so maybe we should just um start thinking about some other topic or some other type of business it's not working right but whenever yani had this thought or whenever i had this thoughts it was very funny but it was whenever she had this thought i would always say to her no we're not stopping or whenever i would have these thoughts she would be like are you crazy no we are not stopping so you see being consistent um with with the let's say with posting every day um just be consistent in whatever you do in your business and have patience honestly on long term this will make you successful just don't give up too early because we could have given up after six months but look Actually after the seventh month it just like really it really it just exactly it just blew up and it just went and you see i mean we could have given uup but we didn't because we were just patient and and consistent in whatever we did did You guys post every day? So are you posting now every day still? Yes. So from the moment you started this page you was posting every single day? Every single day and actually in the beginning um we were posting six times a day, it was six times yeah but now we just stopped and we're posting once a day um but i mean this is important because i mean posting every day is just for your posting for your uh for the people that love you right for for the audience that you have for the followers that you have because they're following you because they love the content that you share right yeah so they are waiting every day to see something else something more so give it to them you have to show up exactly okay but you girls have a is a theme page right um is there a difference between growing a same page and a personal account yes definitely a theme page is um easier to grow let's say because the content on a team page is more shareable and is more relatable on a personal page let's say if you are some blogger or whatever you just post your pictures you can also post quotes but this type of page is somehow more difficult to grow because when you post yourself people get the feeling that they have to get to know you first and they then they start actually getting interested in um also your personal life and uh getting to um just follow your content and be interested and with the pin with the team page you can just um start posting quotes let's say or content with some tips and people immediately start relating to it or just start following uh for the tips or for whatever you're doing it's very easy to attract the audience on the team page so i would say that's the main difference and it's in my opinion team page which is easier to grow definitely okay so it's easier to grow and i understand the reasons why are the same strategies that apply I wouldn't say that so for a personal account the best strategy is um to really let people into your personal life so if you want people to trust you and to like you you have to be open to let them into your daily life into your um you know habits into your interests into your family even you need to be very open and to share all these uh things with your audience because this is why they are following you they like you because they saw let's say a fashion blogger they love the way you dress so every day you have to post yourself with a outfit something like it's just an example or a makeup artist you have to show on your makeup so you show yourself your your life every day where you went shopping what you did today that's what gets people excited and what they like and the team page is really being consistent as we said and patient because it's easier to grow but still you need patient and knowledge on this so what you girls think that are the most common mistakes that people do when they want to grow an instagram account regardless that is steam or personal account um people are not patient enough so they want to do um right grow very quick have a lot of followers very quick have a lot of engagement so what they do for engagement studying follow or unfollow right what they're doing they're following a lot of accounts they're having some accounts following them back and then after that they will unfollow because this accounts are not following you because they want to follow you i mean yes you will have uh for maybe a week or two maybe less um this amount of followers but then you will see that will drop because they're not following you because they like your page or they won't really generally follow your page another thing even worse even worse buying followers buying comments buying likes this is really happening a lot and actually i guess maybe also you aura but i guess we had this and we're still having these uh messages on instagram we are daily receiving this um advertisements in our dms uh saying um buy a likes and by comments sorry my comments so you're paying an amount of money let's say i don't know maybe you're paying 20 and then you receive 100 comments on a few posts but it really doesn't make any sense i mean yes you will have engagement but these are really not they're not even genuine i think now profiles like robots so it doesn't make any sense to do that Another thing also and this is actually something that is really in your control is not being consistent again if you are consistent things will really change in a long term and actually very on a short term like being consistent um in posting in creating your content in engaging with your uh um audience this consistency um is actually something that will bring you up so actually the mistake would be not being consistent because we have a lot of clients where we are working with and there's and whenever we are checking their accounts we just see they post it uh on monday and then they will post on sunday but what happened in this other six days right like where were you you know so if you really i mean being consistent is really really important yeah but maybe consistency doesn't mean maybe as a page that works but i don't think every personal account should post every day or five times a day but please be consistent if you post to monday wednesday and friday make sure that every week you keep that consistency right exactly exactly exactly so it's not about uh honestly like um about every day or twice a day as you said if it's monday wednesday friday keep the whole time doing that so this is actually but i would say definitely um for the people that want to start a page in the beginning really try to post every day because this will give you a head start it will be definitely more effective are you saying this has to do with instagram algorithm or is more for people over you know your potential audience also the algorithm it also has to do with that because once it sees that you are consistent and by consistent I mean you post every day it's more likely that your posts can reach the explore page very soon because it's getting um exposed to more people as you post every day and that's how it works does it have to be at the same hour as well or that count it's good that you notice when your audience is most active even if you don't have um a lot of followers yet i think with hundreds or 200 followers you can already see when they are most active when they post yeah do you want to to add something else about mistakes other mistakes or that's it there are a lot but uh those are the most in common i mean uh that are really happening very often we also come across pages where you open that page and then you see um you don't actually know what this page is about because today it's business tomorrow it's fashion and then it's makeup and then it's um a quote and then so you just don't know what this page is about right so what we would also advise is that you actually choose your niche and post and and create content exactly for that niche don't mingle with these things because otherwise it will be really not clear to the audience to the to the explorer page to the people that don't know your page whenever they will open your pic and we just don't know what this page is about is it now about makeup is it about fashion is it quotes is it what is it so this would also be another advice that um to really stay in your niche so be consistent with your topic too with your niche excellent i get it and i like what you said about i like that you started the the common mistakes with the follow for follow because you try to look now in google and search for how to grow your instagram page most of the searches of the first pages on the first pages you'll find this big powerful follow because it's the only way how as we start you know you can have get some eyeballs on your page you girls don't agree with that that's not uh that's not a good strategy no focus on the audience that you have exactly that's what you need to do even if it's 50 followers it doesn't matter they followed you because they're interested and if you post content that they will follow and be really um interested in they will definitely recommend they will show your page to their friends and this is how you will genuinely and organically grow is it possible that even though you're consistent and you have a small audience is it possible that you want to grow to have tens hundreds of thousands followers honestly i think with the right mindset and with the right strategies you can grow any type of account i mean really combining these right strategies and being patients don't forget let's let's add always patience right i think mindsets the knowledge so the right strategies um and patience will honestly my honest genuine i mean opinion i think yes every page can grow to 10 000, 20 000 and even higher yeah i'm asking because I know and I work with clients that you know being new coaches they're trying to to increase their following on instagram and they're doing the right thing they're just not getting any traction so yeah probably patience will be there number one be patient and being genuine with your audience and with other pages you need to engage with other pages this is also a thing that helps a lot just be genuine when you see a post that you like a content that you like uh tips that are useful just leave a comment that you read everything you also read the caption you love it and you are grateful for the tips they helped you they helped your friends this is how you will also make the owner of this page happy and the followers of this it may be a big page that you're commenting on they will see your comment they will check out your page and this is how it goes but this takes time it's not that you can do um 10 comments today and tomorrow you have 100 followers from it you need to be genuine and really do it from heart and it will just flow at some point what are the ways you can monetize an instagram business wow instagram is full of opportunities there is no count of this how you can monetize your instagram business of course it depends on your niche on what you enjoy doing um but some of the things you could do and that are really profitable uh definitely we would say uh selling services like coaching and also doing promotions or the so-called shout outs also selling products it doesn't matter if they're virtual product products like ebooks or classes or non-virtual like some i don't know makeup cosmetics it doesn't matter you can sell it on instagram and have a lot of sales even without having any other social media also you can do affiliate marketing it if you're not into starting your own business you can do affiliate marketing it's also very successful and also i think that we love is that you can create content for other pages this is also a great way because in that way you are practicing your own skills into designing and creativity and at the same time you're doing it for a client and you're getting paid for it but what are the services that you guys offer for your audience well we actually offer few services um also what Yani actually said we also were thinking how can we monetize what how can we offer and give services to other people how can we make things better and help um our audience so what we do first of all we do account reviews right because um a lot of people um they're contacting us and they're asking can you help us also to grow our account can you check our account what are we doing wrong how can we improve our accounts what we do we do account reviews it's um we're booking a call a zoom call with them uh it's one hour call we are checking the account we're giving all the advices um to our client so they can improve their account this is one of our services obviously we also do promotions uh so we do shout outs on stories we do promotions on uh on our feeds or with the clothes um it's very important actually to mention because uh we know that a lot of pages what they do wants a promotion they're paying for the promotion uh to put their post uh on their feed but it's only also for 24 hours or for a limited time so for us uh they can choose if they want it can be a lifetime it can just stay on our team so it's up to them uh they can choose it if they want us to keep the promotion forever this promotion will always stay there on our feet so this is uh what we do also our uh specialist and professional um jani the content creator no um so we are also creating content um for the people also uh designing um the content for them and also we have packages either it's for a week for a month so we have different packages either it's only one so they can just see how it works how it looks and if they want more then we have other effects packages for content creations and last but not least also we had a few months ago our first free ebook this was actually free everyone could download it easily and read the ebook that we wrote ourselves and the second ebook that we launched was actually last week on 8th march on international women's day this is when we launched our second ebook and this ebook the name of the ebook is test bundle so there actually we just combined everything that you need to be successful in your business so this is the services that we provide for now but there are coming much more so we're also working on it that's great so probably lots of people wonder if this type of business is profitable can you tell us yes definitely we could say that it's profitable it's 100 percent possible that you make money out of instagram but you need to be patient again here it is very good patiency and consistency this is so really what you need because even if you have a great content if you have following you need to know that your audience has to trust you first in order to become your clients so whenever you start whenever you have an idea of having a product or a service really make sure that you're providing value to that audience it's not just about selling something to get money out of it it's really about providing value about being useful and about helping people grow let's say if you do something with instagram or helping them with whenever whatever they need to help with with whatever they struggle you need to solve their problems this is what really can make you successful and make your account profitable so don't forget to really post high quality content if you're going to do it make some effort um spend more time on it really make sure that what you post each of your posts is high quality is providing value and is going to be interesting for the audience and useful this is really key and i know you girls are both so passionate in building this page and their main option is to help other women to empower them to motivate them okay i'm talking about this what are the new problems with your business loving to talk about the future things okay uh well um as you know because i mean we focus right now to really empower women and um to work on their mindset this is actually what our new future goal is actually to uh invest more in ourselves and our um way of um learning things reading more things because we really want to change women's mindsets empower them shift especially the mindset because you know we you can talk to people and you can uh change the mindset maybe just for a while but shifting a mindset is a total other picture right so this is what um one of our uh near future goals is is really to educate ourselves much more and much deeper to not only empower uh the women what they're doing right now with the folks that we are posting daily but we want to go a step further so and we are working on that um right now so it will be there very soon and uh another thing is is that we really want to reveal on what i said right now build a big female community a huge female community really where everything is possible for every woman and no opportunity is less like honestly for everyone because Yani, you, me we are all women and it doesn't matter where we come from how old we are what our interests are we are all the same and we have been through a lot of things yeah i have been through a lot of things you have been for a lot of things me and every woman out there but still we just because we are all the same we want to make sure that all the women out there are really um motivated by us and empowered by us even though they're going through a hard time that they still can reach their goals and dreams that's awesome i love this all right now what is the wildest dream that you have towards your business i can start here because um when you ask the question i immediately imagined my wildest dream um being invited into the Oprah show really sitting next to oprah and you know like you're asking me questions now i dream of her asking me questions and being in front of this huge audience of hers where we can really motivate a lot of women and show them that nothing is impossible every woman has huge potential in in herself she just needs to unlock it and then she can take over the world nice if you want, i can put the picture with Oprah on my camera. Yes, visualization you know Cool I'm so excited with what you two are doing is so amazing the fact that you are best friends, you're not even living in the same country right now but you're still working towards this business you manage to start something you work hard towards it you stayed consistent you didn't give up it doesn't matter how hard it was and right now you ... i can say that you are a role model for other women that are trying, are starting a new business especially now with the pandemic and everything that's happening in the world more people are turning more towards the virtual world and yeah they are looking at people like you two to give them some inspiration and it's amazing that you are actually they're doing this showing up every day for your audience. Is amazing , I am following you so i know what you're doing there is amazing it's great! Yani, very nice design! Thank you! I'm looking at your stories and your posts and i know you're doing it so i'm sorry Vika, I can't give you credit for that. No it's
fine, whenever you give credit to Yani i'm also taking it for me so no worries at all. I really love the relation like people have because I think you don't only inspire women on taking action in business and believing in themselves but also in look having finding a friendship and starting something together women helping other women that's amazing i also would love to thank Vika because she is the person behind the messages the replies from the clients and she really puts so much effort into making each client special the communication that we have with the clients it's already fully on her and i love how our connection is going with our audience and it's because of her so thank you thank you department is the customer service and yours is creation and design yes balance balance yes everyone now everyone in your audience now found out this secret because i don't know if you shared it before on your page yes Okay girls so now I will have to ask you to leave us with a last spark of wisdom ... Who wants to share or maybe both of you want to share a last spark of wisdom with everyone watching? Our motto let's say it yes...We rise by lifting others! We rise by lifting! So beautiful! Yes. Nice, thank you
so much girls, it was so much fun having both of you here, I'm so happy that I actually had an interview with someone that first language is not the English, we're all three Europeans and we're struggling a little bit with English but we're doing a great job, pat on the back for us.. so hopefully lots of people will know now what to do when they want to start an instagram business or page whatever it is and they will find all of your information in the description in the comment section below our instagram handle is femme_infopreneurs Femme is a french word for women, but you will also write it down right below so they can click on it and find us there. Yes it's right now on the screen everyone can see but I just wanted you to say it again. Great and also of course via email for some requests or questions regarding our services on feminfopre@gmail.com Thank you so much and maybe
i will see you again in another interview. Thank you for having us Aura, thanks for having us it was really fun. Thank you and thank you guys, I will see you in the next video, bye bye... bye
2021-04-14 03:39
