How Gayathri Reached 1 Million Followers & ₹3.2 Crore Revenue In ILH?

Today, I am perceived as somebody who's very confident or successful in life. But this was a distant dream for a girl who grew up in a low-middle-class dysfunctional family, constantly seeking for love and appreciation and a place to belong. That is the day I decided to make a decision to quit my job, which was a very good paying and mostly a dream job because I was working with Success Gyan for 9 years. Back then, when I stumbled upon this ad, the only motivation for me to go there was because it was free for me then, because I just had ₹2,500 in my account. I started my Instagram journey on 18th November 2023, and on 9th June 2024, we hit 1 million followers on Instagram. Just with Instagram, I have made until today a total revenue of ₹3.2 crores. And I'm going to talk to you about the top 3 mistakes that I recommend you all avoid in the process. And later I'm going to be talking to you about the 6 things you get started with so that you can start building your community even organically.

This remarkable person is in the healing and manifestation area. Okay, that's the kind of coach she is. She has achieved. दिल थाम के बैठिए. She has achieved an astounding three crores plus in just nine months. Yeah, give it up nice and loud. She has a passion for quantum physics, and she loves spending her time diving into research papers instead of the typical, you know, sitting in front of the idiot box and consuming nonsense. She literally dives in. And her love for this amazing movie called Interstellar is so great that she's watched it 117 times. Yeah. And all her content creation, amazing bulb-on ideas come from watching films like Interstellar, film— other film, uh, trailers. She is just phenomenal at how much she takes in, she receives, and then she kind of gives back with that kind of power. Ladies and gentlemen, get ready. To be captivated by the incredible, the go-giver, Gayatri Shivaram.

Let's go, let's go!

I can't hear you at all.

Come on! The only thing that's stopping you from achieving what you want is there inside of you. It's your inability to do the thing that you know you should be doing even when no one else is watching. And the pain of taking action is never as bad as the pain of avoiding it. These 2 lines came as a slap on my face on July 10th, 2023, when I was constantly seeking motivation through podcasts and courses. But deep inside, I started to realize that it was not my addiction to learning. It was my addiction to running away from doing the actual work. That is the day I decided to make a decision, right or wrong, I don't know. But what I knew for sure was it was an irrational decision. The decision to quit my job, which was a very good paying and mostly a dream job because I was working with Success Gyan for 9 years. So when I quit my job, I started to ask myself, so is this the first time you're making an irrational decision in life? The answer was no. And I also knew this would never be the last time. I'll tell you why. Today, I am perceived as somebody who's very confident or successful in life. But this was a distant dream for a girl who grew up in a low-middle-class dysfunctional family, constantly seeking for love and appreciation and a place to belong. So my father was a gambler, and my mother struggled really hard to deal with her emotions. And in all of this chaos, what I started to feel was a sense of void and inadequacy. And in order to fill that, what I ended up doing was I ended up becoming a high performer and high achiever. But still I remained unfulfilled on the inside. How many of you can relate to this? I felt completely unfulfilled on the inside. And then when I finished college, I topped the college and I also had this amazing opportunity of skipping all the preliminary rounds and going directly to the main interview round so that I can get placed and I did get placed. And for my parents, it was a moment of joy because two decades of financial instability was coming to an end. Though that was a golden opportunity for me, I decided not to take up the job back then. The reason still unknown because somewhere at the back of my head, something told me, "Kaitri, your passion is." teaching and training. Had zero experience with that. After 1.5 years of training college students, I came to the sobering realization that I was actually adding no value to people because deep inside I was still unhealed. And in the process of healing myself, I was looking out for courses or coaches who could help me, and that is when I stumbled upon an ad, a Facebook ad, that truly changed my life. The Facebook ad said, change your money blueprint in 3 days. Yes, I stumbled upon this ad of Millionaire Mind Intensive, and back then— I'm talking about 10 years ago— back then when I stumbled upon this ad, the only motivation for me to go there was because it was free for me then. Because I just had ₹2,500 in my account. I had to think about the logistics and the food and everything I had to manage there. So I decided to go ahead and register for it. And 2 days before MMI, I had Madras High and I couldn't go. So later I discovered that the same event was happening in Bangalore the next weekend. Immediately called the then customer support of Success Gyan and said, hey, can you please accommodate me? Finally, they were kind enough, they said yes. I still remember that girl sitting in the first row of the general seating. Every morning, she would come 45 minutes early, stand right there because she wanted to sit in the front row. I was sitting there with a lot of desperation and hope that something in my life needs to change. I didn't know where I was. Everything about me was a mess back then. And that is when the trainer on second day, day 2— now MMI format is slightly different. Back then on day 2, the trainer comes on stage and says, the potential of being a trainer is that you can make $20,000 in one weekend. I was not able to wrap this entire concept around my head because it was way out of my league. I did not have $2,000 in my account. What is this $20,000 altogether? But something in that energy of the room, very similar to something like this, that there's something inside of me that changed and something inside of me ignited. And today, after 10 years, I look back with such amazement because In the last weekend, we made $45,000. Thank you. Let me tell you something. This slide was created on Saturday. It was $45,000. So yesterday, we made another $20,000. So this weekend, it was a total of $65,000. And this can be a huge testament of dreaming big. But I'll also tell you what this is a huge testament for— the power and impact of social media and personal brand. Some of you who know me, I started my Instagram journey on 18th November 2023. And that is when I started my journey. And on 9th June 2024, we hit 1 million followers on Instagram. In a span of 204 days, we hit 1 million followers on Instagram. And as of today, I have 202+ videos, out of which 107 videos have hit a minimum of 1 million. And just with Instagram, just with all of this, I have made until today a total revenue of 3.2 crores with zero ad spend. All of— thank you. So, all of the leads, and I'll tell you something, I do a masterclass once a month. I do a masterclass once a month. My group coaching happens only 5 weeks. 5 weeks is what my level 2 is. But that is the leverage what social media and Instagram and other platforms can actually give you. While I'm really tempted to share with you all the strategies which I am going to, what worked for me, what I'm equally tempted to do at this point of time is to tell you what you should not be doing, because this was not my first time. Most people think I got lucky. Yes, I got lucky this time, but it took me 3 failures to get lucky the 4th time. So I started my Instagram journey in 2020. And I'm going to talk to you about the top 3 mistakes that I recommend you all avoid in the process. And later, I'm going to be talking to you about the 6 things you get started with so that you can start building your community even organically. So the first one, stop viewing your audience just like followers and engagement tools. I'm going to be extremely honest with you. In 2020, when COVID hit, everybody started going online. It was very glamorous and the fame was amazing. I did the same thing and followed every single trend that was out there. A trending music, you've got to dance. I'm teaching personal development, I'm still willing to dance. I boosted my followers, I boosted my posts, I bought followers, I did every single thing just to satisfy my ego. I wanted the numbers to be big. But deep inside, I started to understand these numbers meant absolutely nothing because I was moving away from who I actually was. Remember, when you treat all of the Instagram followers or any platform's followers as just engagement tools, that is the same way they're going to treat you also in the process. And the second thing is, stop sounding like Sashi Tharoor. So when I started Instagram, I used to tell myself, okay, Gayathri, you're here to add so much value. But to be honest, that was not my primary goal. My primary goal was to sound very sophisticated and smart on social media. so that people can think I'm a very intelligent person. This was quite ego-driven for me. And what came as a whack for my ego-driven sophistication was to understand people don't like all of these big words and jargons. People truly like authentic connection. I did not get followers because of all the concepts I put out. You know what I would tell myself if my videos did not perform well? Oh, these audience don't understand what I say, so which means they're not my audience. It was crap. It was my mindset. And the third one is simplicity is not a sign of weakness. If you take a look at all the big creators in the industry, including Nas Daily, including Raj Shamani, including Beer Biceps, all of them, you will see one pattern that their content is extremely simple. When— who— do we all know French fries is bad for health? Why do you think Raj Shamani is asking that as a question in his podcast and the videos are going 10 million, 20 million views? Because that is what people want to listen to. If people need to consider us to be an expert, we need to be out there and reach out to more people. So when you simplify, when you strip away all of these difficult jargons that you put in, all of these difficult words and difficult concepts, people tend to understand. I'll give you a scientific reason for this also. So the brain does not like to exert energy. Because a part of our brain still believes that when I exert energy, when I don't get food, I'm going to die in the process. So when you put a technical term, or when you do something that is difficult on Instagram, the brain checks out immediately. Because to process that information, it's going to take more energy. And remember, Nobody comes on Instagram to learn something. People come on Instagram because they just want to unwind and spend time. You cannot be doing your PhD scholar stuff there. People will zone out, right? So these are the 3 major mistakes that I did. But what truly worked for me that changed the entire course of my game was the first one, pick your niche and research about the pain points of your audience. If you truly want to impact your audience, the first step is treat Instagram or any platform as a mini business. What is the pain point of your audience? What is not letting them sleep at night and they're thinking about this? You've got to give them that solution. And always remember, if you're posting any content, reel, or you're posting a carousel or anything, ask yourself if I saw this video, would I follow myself? Is this video solving a problem that I think I have? If the answer is no, don't do that. There is no point in posting content just for the sake of posting content. Right? So always ask yourself, sit down and research every single thing because you need to understand people are swiping left, right, and center. For you to grab the attention of your specific audience, you've got to understand the pain points much more deeply. And the next one is, please write your own scripts. AI is amazing with restructuring things, but nobody knows your business as well as you do, and nobody knows your audience as much as you do. So when you sit down and write the scripts, I understand Some of you are like me, which is very bad at script writing. So when I started writing scripts, I was pathetic with that. You know what got me better in the process? Doing that on an every single day basis. Write your scripts word to word every single day. The reason why I emphasize on writing your scripts, because on Instagram, it's just 60 seconds. So in 60 seconds, If you're going to do ah, mm, uh, all of that, people are going to check out. Word by word, you will start writing and carving your script so that when you go in front of the camera and when you say that, when you speak that, it lands specifically on people. So when I started doing research on this, writing scripts, you need to start understanding facts are there everywhere. You go onto ChatGPT, you go onto Google, there are facts everywhere. People like facts, but do you know what people like even more? Emotions.

Emotions.

What emotion are you truly trying to drive in your audience? Through multiple experimentation, I started to understand the emotions of inspiration, the emotions of hope, and the emotions of authenticity was what connected me with my audience more. So if you take a look at any of my content pieces, you'll start to realize that finally the audience kind of feels an emotion. Where is this coming from? I take a lot of inspiration from trailers of movies. Think about it. A 2.5-hour movie, a trailer is cut in less than 90 seconds or 2 minutes maximum, and they help you engage with the trailer emotionally so much that you want to go watch the movie. I am the movie. My content on Instagram is a trailer. I drive people through the emotions. So this is something I recommend you start understanding what your emotion is for your audience, right? And the next one is invest in high-quality video production. There used to be days back then, right, when you can take your— I mean, you can take your phone, switch on your front camera, speak something, and the engagement was amazing. It does not happen anymore. I'll tell you why. Who do you think we're competing with? We're not competing with our contemporaries or other content creators. We're actually competing with the giants in the industry like Netflix, Hotstar, YouTube, and Amazon Prime. You might ask, Gayathri, they're not even social media platforms. But what have they done to us? They've changed our entire experience of viewing something digitally. The quality of content that you see and the quality of audio that you hear. We all have been so accustomed to hearing all of these amazing videos. Now, if you're going to put out a video which is not of great quality, people will just swipe. They will just skip it. I'll ask you one more thing. Just imagine if this entire FBR event happened in a 2-star hotel where the AC was leaking, the room was stinking, the food was not served on time. Do you think you'll have the same experience that you have right now?

No.

Do you think you will trust FBR or Sid's after this? That's the same thing that happens with Instagram also. When you invest, when you invest money, time and energy in high-quality videos, what you're unconsciously conveying to your audience is, I am taking you seriously. I am putting in the work. So that person, when they see your video, subconsciously— all of this is very subconscious that happens— they're going to be like, okay, this person is serious. So I recommend— so most— I mean, when I was talking to Shruti, she was asking me, So let me tell you, it's not very expensive. It takes less than ₹10,000 for you to rent out a professional studio for one day where you can shoot all the 15 to 20 reels for one month. ₹10,000. It takes a professional editor who's a freelancer or anybody, maximum ₹30,000 to edit your videos. A month, ₹40,000. A year, How much? 3.6 lakhs? No, it's 4.8 lakhs. That is the only amount that you're investing. Imagine the kind of money that you're investing in your ads. 5 lakhs, 10 lakhs, 20 lakhs, 30 lakhs, or even more. Just with under 5 lakhs a year, you can change your entire Instagram game altogether. And the next formula is, please be consistent. I always say this, you can take a break, your content cannot. Understand how the Instagram algorithm or any platform algorithm works. Why does Instagram have to even push your content to other people? Because for Instagram, when more people stay on a specific content, it can start running ads of other people in the same platform. So you need to start building your own style. And in the process of building your own style, build a structure. Now today while I'm standing here, my content is scheduled for the next 15 days. I don't have to shoot anything for the next 15 days. It's already sorted, edited, and kept there. I just have to post it. That is all. Build a structure, write every day, and track metrics. Because sometimes it's very normal for us to think, okay, this will work, this will not work. But your audience will always know what will work. So when you go back to look at your metrics, I'm going to give you a hack here. Instagram doesn't care how many likes you have, how many comments you have. It only cares about how many saves you have and how many shares you have. Build content that you will share with a friend, which means somebody else is also going to share that. Build content that that you are willing to save in the process. That is when Instagram starts pushing you to all your non-followers. And the next one, package your content. So now let me give you an example, right? In the entire content creation process, you are the chef. You will serve people what they want and not what you want. And in order for you to become a Michelin star chef, One, the taste of your food should be amazing, which means the quality of your content should be amazing. What is equally important is how it is plated. How are you packaging your content? I'm going to give you an example of one content piece that got me 85,000 followers. Just one content piece. So when I was writing content, my intention was I want to drive a concept that says, everything in life happens for your highest good. Now, if I'm going to just go stand in front of the camera and say, everything in your life happens for your highest good, people are just going to swipe it away. Why? It falls flat. But rather, just listen to me for a minute. Let's say you're standing on the ground floor of your apartment, and you see a small boy cycling across the road. And all of a sudden, there is another man who comes on the bike, And hits the small boy, and the small boy falls down, and he scratches his hands and legs. Everybody is running towards the small boy to give him water and to console him, and everybody is blaming this bike guy for hitting the small boy. At the same time, your friend is standing on the 17th floor of the apartment and seeing— he's able to see a part of the city, so he's, he's looking at it. He sees a lorry that is coming in full Full speed towards the small boy, and he comes around— he comes down running to save the small boy, to only see the boy had already fallen down and hurt himself. Now you're running towards your friend, and you're telling your friend, what an idiot this bike guy was. And your friend runs towards you and says, what a savior this bike guy was. Now this is what is happening with you. Every rejection, every betrayal, every denial was the universe's way of protecting you and not punishing you. Everything is happening for your highest good. Now, this particular reel gave me 85,000 followers. And let me tell you something, I also have creative fatigue at some point of time. So last month, because we were changing our office space, I could not sit down and write my content pieces. You know what I did? I reshot the same content, posted it like 10 days ago. It's given me 35,000 more followers. It's a hack. Nobody cares. Nobody knows because this content, the older version was posted 7 months back and the last one was 10-15 days back. And the last one, remember, you are an educator and not a content creator or an influencer. Remember that always. One of the major reasons why my social media, I believe, took off was day one, I made a decision to myself, I will never promote anything. I will do zero brand deals. Till date, I've gotten more than 175 brand deals. And I've said no to everything. Brand deals, great money, yes. But what is even better? Serving your community and building funnels beyond that. I would have never been able to make the ₹3.2 crores organically without spending ₹1 on any ads if I had started running— if I had started promoting other people's products. The only thing you will do is build credibility and only promote yourself. Because remember, people will never buy your product. People always buy you. And despite all the numbers and despite all the abundance that has come as a result of this, what I truly consider to be my win in the journey is the person who I have become in the process. Last FBR, I I was sitting right there where Arjuman is sitting right now. I was sitting right there with Imran next to me. That time I think I was making 3 lakhs per month or like 5 lakhs per month, I don't remember exactly. And I was looking up and I was like, okay, something inside of me is going to shift. And it did shift. Every month consistently we're making close to 40 to 50 lakhs organically without spending 1 rupee. I know if I choose to work on myself and become better, the journey is even going to become better. And I want to sign off by just saying this one thing. There's one thing to work hard, and there's one thing to work hard when you become successful. So always, I'm going to consider myself as starting from day one, with zero followers, with the same intent and with the same conviction that I'm here to create a difference in the world. And thank you so much for listening. It was— you have been a wonderful audience. Thank you so much.

Let's give it up for Gayathri Shivram. Thank you. Thank you, Siddharth.

How's our amazing IELTS family? Are you inspired? So you are sitting there, is it?

I was sitting where Arjun was sitting, yes.

Gayathri, I've seen— in fact, I'll tell you something about her before you went on. So it was Train the Trainer.

Oh yes.

It was your moment.

Yes, it truly was.

And something shifted in her. Her energy shifted because we've known each other for many years. And after I— after that Train the Trainer, I think you had a massive breakthrough and all that. And after you connect with Blair, I think the way you came out after that was you were not the same person.

I'm not the same anymore.

You're not the same.

I'm not the same anymore, yes.

So I just want to tell you that thank you for sharing with us the specific things that we need. Like all of us here coaches, we are depending on performance marketing and everything else, but we need this other power of organic and you've cracked that code and you've shared some strategies over here. I think it's time and like you rightly said, it's easier for coaches to build their influence than the influencers to become coaches.

Absolutely.

Because you're riding them on funnels and you actually have— you're building trust. I love what you said, you're not going with the brand deals and all of that stuff. So thank you for what you do. What you shared today is truly invaluable.

Thank you.

And onwards to 10 million and beyond, whatever number that's going to be, going to inspire so many people.

Thank you so much. Means a lot. Thank you, Gayathri. Thank you.