What I Learned Making $200,000 on Insight Timer
Celebrating a milestone with you! I recently passed $200k in total revenue from the meditation app Insight Timer as a meditation teacher and life coach. This podcast breaks down the lessons I learned to help you grow your meditation business, increase your audience, and do your work with greater wisdom, alignment, and ease.
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Podcast Transcript
My name is Lou Redmond and it has been over eight years since I published my first meditation on insight timer in October 2016. And as of January 2025 I have officially hit $200,000 of total revenue. It has been an amazing, life altering journey and I'm excited to share with you today some lessons that I hope can help you on your journey with Insight Timer and also beyond. Because at the core of what I share is to help you do work that comes from your heart, that you put your care, your love into in order to share your art, to serve other people, to make a difference in others lives. And so I trust that that is your intention. That is why you are resonating with listening to this and I hope you find some of these helpful. The first lesson that I've learned from my journey on Insight Timer is to give without attachment. The bedrock of Insight Timer was and still is generosity. I'm going to take us back in time for a moment. Okay, Taking us back in time to 2016. There's a great thing on the Internet called the Wayback Machine where you can see what sites look like at different periods of time. This is when I published my first meditation on the app. This is how at least the website looked like. You could see. There were only 1.2 million meditators on Insight Timer. There were only 3,096 free guided meditations, which is insane compared to where they at now. Only 825 for teachers at the time. And the core of who they were was free. There was no payment, there was no product. Insight Timer was a free meditation app. So this is the bedrock of what they were founded on, which is why it's a bedrock of how I want to invite you to approach the app and to share the teachers that were featured on the app at this time. Obviously you have some of the more popular teachers like Atara or Davidji or Ajahna Chalu. And you have here, look at this, Sarah Blondin, who became the most popular teacher on the app. And Sarah's story is a great example of what I'm going to share with you in lesson two. So if you want to be like Sarah Blondin, stick around for lesson two. Sarah's story is an example of what happens when you follow the call of spirit. She's talked about this on a podcast episode before where she had done a podcast of her own called Live Awake. These writings of her poetry mixed with these kind of meditative moments in music. She shared it on Insight Timer. It exploded. People love it. I'VE cried myself to Sarah's tracks. I'm sure maybe you have as well. And she found her place and it has helped her build the foundation that she's now incredibly successful and she's doing amazing work. So she's a beautiful example of she wasn't trying to build an audience. No one at this time was really trying to build an audience on Insight Timer. It was a place that if you had meditations to give without attachment. This is the bedrock of Insight Timer and if you could connect with the foundation of whatever the app that you are creating for, I think it helps you build a foundation to then grow from give without attachment number two, if you're really giving without attachment from your heart, the lesson that I've learned, that I'm sure you've already learned this already, it's probably why you are here, is that Spirit God, the universe will guide you to where you're meant to be at the right moment. That might be Insight Timer, but it might also be another platform. It might be substack, it might be YouTube, a podcast, it might be some in person event that Spirit is constantly guiding us to how we can be of service to what is wanting to unfold in our life and it doesn't happen overnight and our practice is always can we find the alignment so we can listen to the guidance and trust the guidance. I've been lucky that Inside Timer was something that Spirit was leading me to and I was in the right place at the right time. I want to share a quick story that in 2017 I was living back at my parents house and I was still figuring out teaching some yoga classes, doing in person meditation workshops but still wasn't really making a living doing this work. And I get an email from Insight timer fall of 2017 explaining that they are going to try out courses with 20 teachers in 2018 and they are going to pay the teachers based on how many people sign up for the courses and this is something that they'll be trying out in the next year. I wasn't one of the people asked, but in my whole body I knew something good was here, that this was meaningful to me in a way that I can't quite grasp yet. And courses became the main vehicle for how I've built my business and my revenue on Insight Timer. So we'll come back to that. But that was for me where Spirit led me. For you, Spirit might be leading you to Insight Timer as well. I know many people who have similar stories as I do and also trust in letting yourself be Led to wherever that might be. To not limit yourself to Insight Timer, to discern internally and trust wherever spirit's leading you and trust your timing. Okay, number three, you're like, lou, okay, you're giving us kind of like broad earth, you know, philosophical things. I hear you. Give me some brass tactics, Lou. How could I actually bring this and use what you have for me here? I'm getting there. And number three, this is when, in 2018, I started to really take off on Insight Timer. And it was because of what I'm about to share in the next three lessons learned. The first one is share personal stories, and share it in a way that's not just about your personal story, but just enough that you can glean the lesson that you learned from the story and that you share that lesson with another person and you try to make it relevant to their life. So it's not just about your personal storytelling. You have to flip it back onto the person. And then the meditation portion is where you can actually do the work or that the theme is related to. And this is really how I was able to build, and still am able to build a deeper connection with the people, because they hear from me and they know that I'm human. And I like to think of how I share in some ways as an everyday vulnerability. When we hear vulnerability, we always think we need to share the most, deepest, darkest secrets. And sometimes that can be the case. But when I think about the everyday vulnerability, it's just telling stories that are happening throughout my day to day that are very relevant to what other people might be experiencing. A simple example in that time period that I remember is I was laying in a hammock. It was a summer afternoon, and I was laying in a hammock. It was a Wednesday at, like, noon. And I was just relaxing, and I noticed this resistance to relaxing. I felt like I needed to be doing something, and I really worked to breathe and allow myself to fully enjoy that experience. Super simple. But that became the basis for a meditation story. And. And so someone listening might be like, well, I have that experience too, where I don't really let myself rest during the week because I feel like I need to be productive. And then the meditation is almost a prescription to it. So this was something that I was doing just based on how I was sharing. But I actually learned this from a man named Jonathan Goodman around delivering content. You tell a story just enough so that you share the lesson that you learned from the story, then you make it relevant to the other person's life. And Then you share how to work with it in their life. That is really the formula of all of my meditations and how I was able to build connection number four. This was another thing in 2018 that allowed me to create a lot of momentum. And the lesson that I learned was having some audience accountability. In 2018, Inside Timer asked me, or I think I asked them, looks cooler if they asked me, but I think I asked them if I could upload a meditation a week and if we can make sure it went out on Thursdays, just so I can be aware and I can create some sort of momentum where people are expecting my new meditation on Thursday. Luckily they agreed. At the same time, I had started teaching meditation at a studio in northern New Jersey called Quell Beautiful Mindfulness Meditation Studio. And I had a Saturday class and every week I had to prepare a new meditation. And that accountability, knowing that people were going to show up on a Saturday and I had to deliver something, allowed me to put a lot more energy into my classes, into my meditations. And then what I would do is later in the week I would record the meditation that I did live and then that would be what I uploaded to Insight Timer. And with that consistent accountability, I was able to build a body of work and an expectation. People were looking forward to hearing the class the following week online, as they were looking forward to hearing it in person. And so it was monumental for me to build that body of work. A modern day example of this is Darius Bashar, who started publishing on Inside Timer in 2020. He also runs a community called Artist Morning, where every Friday he has about 100 people show up live on Zoom. And the way that he talks about it is it's positive, people pleasing, meaning that he wants to do really well for those people that are showing up on Friday. And that gives him the accountability and the energy to create a really awesome meditation that he then also uploads to Insight Timer. And he's probably one of the faster growing teachers on the app in the last four years. And so think about for you. Where can you create audience accountability if you can't do it in person or in a studio? Inside Timer lives are a great place to have that. Now people are doing everything under the sun. On Inside Timer Lives, a lot of people don't put a lot of energy and attention. They just show up. And that's okay, that's fun. I love doing that too. But maybe if you really got serious with every Friday I have a 10am class and I'm going to prepare as if 100 people are showing up to an auditorium because a hundred people often are showing up potentially to your live. So can you bring that intention and then can you take that meditation and record it and have it uploaded as a track on Insight Timer and elsewhere, disperse it, whether it's to YouTube, whether it's to another app that is out there. But to have that accountability to create something really meaningful. You could also record the live version. I've done that for a while too. But there is also something about doing it live and recording it as if you know someone's listening to it on their own. There's a different energy that I encourage newer teachers to try out and to do and just to also practice your recording skills. Next lesson number five. That kind of goes aligned with all the things that were happening for me in 2018. I shared it implicitly, but I wanna share it very explicitly here. And that is consistency to somewhere. For me, it was meditation a week 2018 to Insight Timer. Nowadays it's podcast a week to podcasting platforms. Starting to find some consistent routine somewhere that people know that you are showing up and you put some of that pressure in a good way on yourself to show up for other people, to show up for just your work. You might not even be showing up for other people, which makes it the hard. Which makes it really hard in the beginning. And Noah Kagan talks about the rule of 100. Can you do something a hundred times until you quit? Can you commit to a process? Don't look at the numbers, don't look at the statistics, just do the thing a hundred times. Because if you do it a hundred times, chances are you are going to improve at your craft and what you're doing and creating meditations. So consistency to somewhere. It might be inside Timer, but again, maybe you're really, you know that somewhere else is calling you. You know that your substack is like, man, I just really want to write and I see some energy here. Go do that. Create a consistent routine. And this is not to say that you have to be consistent forever. I'm not someone who's. I've been doing the same thing for five years. I need to change it up. It's finding those pockets, creating pockets of consistencies. Just don't feel like you need to do this forever. Next lesson I've learned is to treat courses with a different energy and intention that I treat regular meditations. And this is because in 2019, when I was asked to do my first course, I was asked by Insight Timer. And so just that invitation that someone wants me to do something for this app that has millions of subscribers. There's a different level of gravitas is to use that word again. There's a different energy of wow, I really got to put something here. I really have to deliver. In a way, this isn't just me doing this for my friends. This is someone asking me to show up. And at the time, courses were not getting uploaded 10 every day, there was one course every three days or so. So there was just a different energy. And the first course I did, it took two months to create and edit and get that prepared. And it's still one of my most successful courses to this day. And that is how a lot of us around that time were trained on courses, that this was a different sort of content. This is what people are actually paying for. Since they started the self upload part of Insight Time where you can upload your own courses, obviously the courses have exploded and the quality has gone down because you can pump out courses quickly. And so just to take you back in time where it was looked at differently and it should be looked at differently, and I think that's what can still make you stand out on Insight Timer is putting the amount of care into courses almost it's like you're creating a book. And when people are taking your courses, if you have a few of them out there and you're they're really robust, the benefit is that they want to keep doing more courses with you. So they're going to see what else do you have and then they're going to go to your next course and it becomes kind of a reciprocal cycle if you're able to put that intention. I know it's a different world nowadays, but I just want to take you back in time because that is how we would look at courses. And I think the people from that time period are still doing really well is because they've put that type of energy into courses. And of course, when things get popular early, they tend to get more popular and it's harder to break through. But just wanting to really share, at least that's the lesson that I learned and have still been doing with all of my courses. Next lesson that I've learned is to invest in your business that mentorship courses, other people that have done what you want to do, learn from them. To see the energy of money as something that is circulating, that is flowing, that we're channeling outwards, giving it to people who are sharing their gifts so we can learn, learn something and then receive and there's just this flow that can happen and I have always been investing in different coaches and practices and trainings and so I'm sure you are too. For me, when things really shifted was 2019. One of my mentors in this world who is a bit farther than I am and always has been. So he's been someone that I've kind of just been learning from is David Gandelman who's also a teacher on Insight Timer. And I took his course Energetics of entrepreneurship in 2019. I started working with him one on one and he was a catalyst for me in starting my one on one practice which then eventually became a big robust part of my business. He was a catalyst in so many things that he talked about in business that I've taken to heart. Whether it's been really make your intention to get three solid sources of income or the 1:10 investment rule, which I'm sure is not something that he created, but he helped instill that in me. Meaning that every dollar you invest in your business in yourself is going to come back times 10. And so when you have money that's hanging around, if you're blessed enough to have that to see it as well, if it can be used right, I can be be using this in a 10 times return on investment if I'm putting it towards the right things. And I get there's that's a whole separate conversation around what's the right thing. That's for you to discern. But just really giving yourself permission to invest in your business to know that whatever you invest, even if you're not seeing it in the beginning, is going to come back times 10. Feeling that energy, feeling that gratitude to be able to support other people doing their work. And this is kind of how we are all able to support each other. So invest in your business. Number eight, similar energy to investing in your business. More about doing your own healing work. It said that if you want to be a good writer to do interesting things and you're going to have things to write about. Well, if you want to be a good wellness spiritual meditation practitioner, do the things that are going to give you the more wisdom, the more wisdom. Do the things that'll give you the more wisdom. Do the things that will give you the embodied wisdom. Because that's your transmission, that's your gift, that's what you're giving. And I really believe that the level of your own healing and deepening into who you really are, who you always were, that is going to be your guide, that is going to unfold the people that you're meant to serve that is going to unfold the opportunities that are meant to come your way. It comes from that source. And it's so easy to veer off. I had a breakout year in 2021. I went from making $50,000 the year before to $106,000. And I kind of let that get to my solar plexus. Not even to my head. It got to my solar plexus. I felt this power that came from it. And I kind of got more into the coaching world. And in the coaching world, you hear a lot of conversations about selling your high offer and continuing to raise your prices. And it just. It was something that I took in and I found myself doing. And all of a sudden I noticed this shift that I was focused more around the validation of how much money I was making versus how I was impacting people versus the actual service. And I would not have seen this. I wouldn't. It was so subtle if it wasn't for my first psilocybin experience where I was able to identify this energy of greed that had come in very subtly. And it was a huge lesson that we need to be constantly looking at our shadows. We need to do our work to get out of our own way, because we're always going to get back in our way. This is the human experience. And so the healing work, whether it's going on retreats, whether it's therapies, coaching, psychedelics, any sort of healing modalities that resonate with you, breath work can be a piece of this, but something that can help us get out of our own way, to access more of our own wisdom and truth and so that we can also see where we slip up and where the shadow side can get in, because we're not immune. And just, if anything, we're almost. There's. There's so many stories. I've talked about this before that there's so many stories, right? What happens to these famous gurus is, you know, sex, fame, power. Like something takes them down. So trying to be aware of that in our own experience, to look at our blind spots is crucial, crucial, crucial, crucial. I can't overstate this lesson enough. I'm sure I'll continue to be learning it as we always are. All right, Number nine, Insight Timer can change in an instant. So build your audience accordingly. Build your business accordingly. Now, I was fortunate, again, that Insight Timer was free for a while and I was already building stuff outside of it, and that was a big focus. It wasn't Insight Timer, it was building the stuff outside of it. It was doing mindfulness and meditation work in schools, it was teaching yoga, teaching meditation in person, trying to find some energy of growth in that world and then eventually doing one on one coaching. And Inside Timer can be a real good support to all of these things, but it can change, just as it changed in 2019 with their pay model and how much generosity that they were giving to teachers where it was this big wow, amazing. It can also go the other way, which it has, where it's like, oh no. If something can have that sort of wow. And then it's because it's the sides. It's two sides of the same coin. And so we need to continue to build structures outside of it. Because I know people in 2021 who they were really focused. Inside Timer had the mentorship and workshop feature so you could sell your one on one packages or coaching through the app. You can also do workshops that you could promote through the app. And I know people that were doing so well that were making five plus figures a on Insight Timer and then that shut down in 2022 and they no longer had that reach that they did on Insight Timer to fill the workshops that they had. And of course what happened earlier in 2024 is that insight Timer made the decision to shift their whole Pay model from 50, 50 teachers inside timer to 60% inside timer, 40% teachers. And they cut out a big portion of getting paid on comments, which impacted me by 35 to 40% at least in the last month. And it's impacted a lot of teachers. And so those changes are always going to happen. And who knows, I'm hopeful that there's another change and uptick and there's a new influx of revenue. We don't know. The lesson is to prepare for it, to not put all your eggs in Inside Timer because there's too much pressure that you're putting on it. If we come back to that foundation of how it was built, giving without attachment, if you can stay connected to that. And yes, I've had attachment, I've had this stuff come up. I'm not saying I'm immune to any of this. These are lessons that I've digested. When I come back to really this pure generosity with Insight Timer, it feels good and good things tend to happen. And honestly, I try to take that energy now with the videos, the podcast, what I share here for you all for free and hopefully that it'll be helpful because I deeply care about doing this work with care and love and integrity. And I hope you do too. Okay, last lesson. And again, this is an emotional one. You guys know I'm more of like an emotional philosophical lesson type of guy, not necessarily a hard, practical type of guy, and I hope you appreciate that. But the last one is to not take this opportunity for granted. I believe in the concept if you can do one, you can do a million. If you can impact one person, you can impact a million. If you can make $1, you can make a million. And too often people start focusing on the million before they focused on the 1 and the 2 and the 3 and the 4 and so on and so forth. And so really encouraging you to appreciate every comment, to not take it for granted. Appreciate every 99 cent or $1.99 donation from someone. Appreciate every moment that offers a sense of connection. And I believe what we appreciate appreciates and it will not only make you happier to show up on the app, it'll make you happier and more connected. Where again, the insights of what's my next step? Where does the universe actually want me? How can I serve? Continuing to follow that. I hope Insight Timer is a part of that and I also hope that you find other places because your journey is going to be unique. It is by definition not going to look like mine or anyone else's. If you find yourself following someone else's script or path, as Joseph Campbell would say, it's probably not your path. So remember that no amount of money or success is going to give you what you already have. There are moments eight years ago, 10 years ago that are so meaningful to me, that were so beautiful where I wasn't making anything, I wasn't succeeding at all. But I was in the flow of the vibrancy of life. And that's why we do this. It's cliche, but I'm going to say it. The journey is the reward. Trust your timing. Keep speaking your truth and God know that I am rooting for you on your journey. I hope you found these lessons helpful. Let me see if I can do a quick recap. Number one, Giving without attachment. Generosity is the bedrock of this platform. Focus on that spirit will guide you exactly where you need to be. You know this, I know this. Trust it. Number three. Share personal stories. This is how you're going to make a connection, but only so much as to glean the lesson you learned and then make it relevant to who's listening. Number four, Create audience accountability if you can. This will give a, as Darius Bashar says, positive people pleasing energy where you're going to show up and you're maybe going to make better content, better meditations that you would if no one was waiting for it. Number five Consistency to somewhere get consistent whether it's on Insight Timer, whether it's on another platform. The rule of 100 can you do something for a hundred times and then decide whether it's still for you? Number 6 Treat your courses with more intention then you would treat a meditation. Give it more of your energy, your care, your love. It's what it was designed for. Number seven Invest in your business. Allow money to work for you. Do your healing work. Look at your blind spots. Look at the places where you might not be realizing that you are getting in your own way. Every therapist needs a therapist. Every coach needs a coach. We need others to help us along this journey. Number nine Build your platforms that are outside of Inside Timer. Inside Timer can change in a moment. Remember that for the good and for the maybe not so good. Number 10 don't take any moment for granted. Don't be entitled. Enjoy it. Appreciate it. What you appreciate, appreciates and continue to come back to number three to trust. To trust that the next step will unfold in the right timing. Again, I am rooting for you. Thank you so much for listening. If this resonated with you, please give it a like give it a comment. Let me know which lesson resonated for you. I'd love to hear from you and subscribe for more videos on creating work. Doing this work with care, intention, love and integrity. Before you go, if you're wanting some support in creating meditations that are of your use unique imprint and wisdom that other people really resonate with that help you tell personal stories and weave it into a meditation that is in alignment. I created a free robust hour long video course called Meditation Script Mastery. I'd love to invite you to sign up. It's completely free. You can find the link in the description below and I hope it helps you come up with new ideas and give you a new vitality and energy to create meditations from that place of love and integrity. So thanks so much. You can sign up in the description below and I will see you on the next one. Take care.