How an Instagram influencer turned her vegan meal-prep posts into a paid subscription service and grew her followers to more than 200,000 in 9 months

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• Carleigh Bodrug grew a social media following of nearly 50,000 followers on Instagram by offering recipe and lifestyle tips for a plant-based diet.
• In January, she launched a website and membership program where subscribers receive weekly vegan meal-prep plans directly in their inboxes.
• Budrug was able to leave her full-time job in June and now has over 200,000 Instagram followers and more than 1,000 paid subscribers.
• She spoke with Business Insider to share the keys to her first-year growth and tips she could have used on day one.
• Visit BI Prime for more stories.

When the World Health Organization designated red meat as a Class 2 carcinogen, Carleigh Bodrug and her family were shocked.

Bodrug’s father had already survived stage 2 colon cancer. The news motivated her to go vegan “almost overnight,” she says, and embark on a campaign to share the benefits of a plant-based diet.

She began sharing lifestyle tips and recipes on Instagram and Facebook, and found a receptive audience that reached more than 50,000 followers.

Working full-time as communications officer at a hospital, Bodrug often needed to spend a weekend afternoon making vegan meals for the week ahead, and her meal-prep posts were a hit with her audience. 

Last year, she sensed an opportunity and used $1,000 of her savings to set up a website and begin offering memberships to paid subscribers to receive weekly meal-prep plans and recipes via email. Every Thursday, subscribers get a PDF with half a dozen plant-based recipes to get through the workweek, plus access to the recipe archive. It runs $7.99 a month. 

Bodrug spoke with Business Insider to share what she has learned about how to turn a passion project into a growing business.

Starting from zero

In January this year, Bodrug launched Plant Ahead with about 50 paid subscribers and stepped up her marketing efforts.

“I saw that there was growth month after month, and it got to the point where what I was making from the business was actually outweighing what I was making at my job,” she said.

She left the hospital job in June and by September she had more than 1,000 active subscribers and expects to double that before the end of her first year.

Having benefitted from the mentorship of a local real estate businesswoman, Bodrug is using Plant Ahead to offer opportunities to women by hiring four female freelancers to help her with web development and content production.

Bodrug didn’t start with any formal business training or web skills, but she says she was able to teach herself WordPress and navigate financial matters like incorporation and taxes on her own.

At launch, she ran a handful of ads on Facebook, but she says that she’s had entirely organic growth since then, and she says she never paid for any of her 200,000-plus followers on Instagram.

Although her social media exposure doesn’t cost much money, it is very expensive in terms of her time. Bodrug acknowledges the irony of the fact that she has very little work-life balance running a wellness and lifestyle brand.

Growing the brand has meant lots of 14-hour days, with Bodrug working on her laptop on the couch while her boyfriend watches a movie.

“If I’m on here talking about health and lifestyle, I should probably practice it myself,” she said. “But when you’re this caught up in it and you love it this much, It’s really hard to have work-life balance.”

Get help before you need help

For other entrepreneurs considering an internet-based business, she recommends seeking expert advice or assistance from a website developer sooner rather than later. Her website has been the victim of malicious attacks and outages that she had to figure out on her own.

“Trying to navigate that myself has been a nightmare,” she said.

She also recommends committing fully to the business sooner. As a 27-year-old with a steady job with a pension and benefits, she was nervous about leaving the corporate world to work for herself.

“I felt sick to my stomach,” she said about submitting her resignation, “but the other side of it was like freedom.”

As her business grows, she says hiring the support to manage the various demands is critical. In addition to web development and production assistance, a part-time virtual assistant helps her take control of her time by doing many of the routine tasks that don’t need her personal attention.

Bodrug attributes her success to her passion for healthy living. Her vision for making the plant-based diet accessible to more people includes new offerings like apps, cookbooks, and a stronger Plant Ahead brand identity.

“Technology is leveling the business playing field for women,” she said. “The women I know are all amazing and connecting communities, and armed with technology, we are unstoppable.”

SEE ALSO: How much money you can make from a sponsored Instagram post with 24,000 followers

SEE ALSO: The Instagram metrics you should pay attention to if you want to make money from brand deals as an influencer

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