How Sophie Walker nurtured her birth stories podcast to 7.5 million downloads and a brand deal with Bonds

On any given Monday, you will find Sophie Walker sitting in the family SUV, parked in the carport of her suburban Melbourne home, navigating a laptop and microphone.

It’s a convenient place for quiet, away from the slipstream of sound that comes from having three boys under 10, and, as it turns out, has the perfect acoustics for recording.

While a Nissan X-trail isn’t exactly the set-up you would expect a million-dollar business empire to be operating out of, if earning projections are on par, it’s exactly where Walker’s six-year-old offspring, Australian Birth Stories, will be placed by the end of this year.

Each time Walker releases a new episode of her podcast, 25,000 people listen in that week.

Downloads are nearing 7.5 million (lunging from 4.7 million this time last year), and its content carries the kind of authority that has not only earned Walker the backing of peer organisations and universities but also the attention of discerning influencers and global brands.

Almost 300 interviews later, the podcast is the kingpin in her Australian Birth Stories machine, its popularity extending to her growing Instagram community, which has exploded to 134,000 followers, and an email subscriber base that sits at around 27,000.

Walker’s also in the process of preparing to release her first book, an authoritative guide to pregnancy and childbirth in Australia.

Walker chatted with SmartCompany Plus to explain how the podcast grew so rapidly — and how it scored a $130,000 sponsorship deal with Bonds amid its wider stratosphere of influencers and global brands.

A pinch me moment

The rapid growth of Walker’s business (‘crazy jumping’ from an estimated $360,000 last year to the anticipated crossing the $1 million mark in 2022), isn’t lost on its founder, nor the people helping her to cater for such fluid expansion.

“Oh, you could be like the Goop [Gwenyth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand] of pregnancy and birth in Australia,” Walker says repeating the sentiment recently passed to her by the team building her new website.

“’You’re just innocently doing it in your car and you’re sitting on a goldmine.”

While the IT crowd may be correct in their estimations about Australian Birth Stories’ earning potential, Walker’s mindful approach to growing her business has been one of proverbial baby steps to that of over-indulging an out-of-control toddler.

“When I started the podcast in 2017, I didn’t think I was creating a business. I just wanted to help other women. There were no Australian stories out there at the time so I thought I’ll just share them so other people could listen in and learn,” Walker reflects.

“Everything just snowballed from there.”

Her most recent snowball is a $130,000 sponsorship with Bonds, a ‘pinch me’ moment that will see the iconic Australian company take on so much advertising space Walker is going to double the number of episodes each week to fit them in.

But it was a different world when Walker first began exploring ways to monetise her podcast. She had to turn to the US to learn the process of creating one (because there was nothing in Australia) and rally family and friends to get the first 10 episodes going (Walker’s own story is the very first episode).

For her first foray into income building, Walker turned to the same companies she turned to during her pregnancies.

“I was the ideal customer. Doing it and living it myself. So I just blindly emailed the companies of products I was using. I think 1000 people had listened in at the time but I was honest … ‘hey, loved your products and I’ve started this new podcast. It’s early days but if you are interested, for a one-off payment of $80 you can book an ad and use a discount code’ … at that price there wasn’t much to lose for big companies, so they said ‘sure’.”

Fast forward six years and some of those original clients are still taking those advertising spots — although they’re now paying more than $2000 per episode.

“I have different packages and still do one-offs for a few small businesses but it’s gone from $80 to most bookings being about $10,000 per company package. For these advertisers it’s a valuable component getting to Australia’s pregnant women and in front of the audience I’ve built.”

One of the methods Walker used to grow her community early on was to reach out to influencers for interviews, and doing so paid off in spades.

“I approached women who had audiences of people I thought would be interested in the podcast. I interviewed Sophie Cachia (266,000 followers) who shared that podcast episode with her community on Instagram and my download numbers tripled overnight.”

Walker says the majority of her guests are ‘everyday mums’ but she does seek out celebrity guests and sports stars to continue growing her reach.

“I try and have a celebrity guest every six episodes, but no more than that. I get a lot of requests ‘please interview XYZ’ and often find they are keen to come on because they listened to the series during their pregnancy.”

Influencers like Stephanie Miller, who has a prenatal fitness app and 1.5 million followers, reached out to Walker prior to her baby being born to organise an interview to get in front of Walker’s army of new mums.

Walker has also interviewed Zoe Foster Blake, who happens to be a previous ambassador for Bonds. Getting the $130,000 contract with such a major brand was as simple as that — a connection.

“[Bonds] probably thought if Zoe thinks this girl is good enough to share her story with, [then] we should take a look too,” Walker says.

“It was a good endorsement.”

Walker says the pandemic also increased the number of people tuning into her podcast and her paid digital classes when real life pre-natal courses were cancelled across the country.

Despite the responsibility and work required to oversee a burgeoning birthing empire, Walker still bears a lot of the load herself.

She employs a friend who writes up her show notes and looks after some of the Instagram posts and only recently employed someone to take over the podcast editing after six years of doing it herself.

“One skill I haven’t really developed is outsourcing. I still liaise with all the brands myself because I want to make sure they’re a good fit but I’m dealing more with marketing agencies representing their clients rather than direct to small businesses now.”

This level of altruism has stead Walker well when it comes to developing trust with her community.

Her duty to maintain Australian Birth Stories’ reputation and the respect of her loyal community remains at the forefront of the business model — so much so that Walker turned down a global company’s offer to buy $50,000 worth of advertising because “it didn’t feel right”.

“I did my research and said no thank you at a time when I had no money. Afterwards I thought I can’t believe I turned that much down but I believed good karma would come, and it did in Bonds.”

Walker says with her background in public health (she has a master’s degree in the field), there has always been a duty of care in the back of her mind throughout the whole process.

“I feel like it’s my responsibility to provide a non-judgmental, safe space to get a variety of birthing stories out there.”

And Walker is confident Australian Birthing Stories will continue to thrive as the demand for this type of content is only going to get stronger.

“It might sound cheesy but I genuinely still love what I do, and this business model isn’t going anywhere. People are always having babies and everybody’s always telling their friends what to do.

“With that kind of word of mouth out there, how can you go wrong?”