How to make good money from from your little audience
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Welcome to Issue 9 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about a good brand move that helped grow a small business. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.) Hello Reader, I think I might suck at selling. The idea of actively promoting my services makes me feel deeply uncomfortable. I've been able to be lazy about self-promotion because all my client work has come in through referrals. It’s been two years since I launched my content strategy consulting business, and I’m just now working with a designer to spruce up my site. I’m finally putting together a professional-looking portfolio and collecting testimonials. But as I’m taking to social media to sell new offers, I’m finding it’s harder than I thought. If you feel this way, too, this one’s for you. This story is about my new friend, Kendall Cherry, founder of The Candid Collective. Over the past three years, Kendall has built a steady and successful business that allows her plenty of free time and the ability to focus on what she loves doing. Working only four hours a day, Kendall brings in over $250,000 annually. Her business delivers B2B ghostwriting services for people who want to tell stories that subliminally sell your products and services. She’s ghostwritten for notable people like Codie Sanchez and brands like ConvertKit, and built a sales pipeline that delivers a steady, sustainable stream of monthly clients—all with less than 1,000 followers and a little over 500 newsletter subscribers. Her story is a classic one of corporate burnout turned solo founder in search of freedom and flexibility. Except she didn’t make the mistake of building a business for herself that was just as soul crushing as the corporate job she left. In my view, she managed to do it right. Her secret? Selling. Kendall’s story is a lesson on how one audience, one offer, and one stupidly simple sales funnel are all you need to live that baller small business life. A Good Story Kendall has always loved writing. As a kid, she wanted to be a songwriter. But, she chose the more practical route and got a liberal arts degree as a communications major instead. That skillset landed her in the C-Suite of a Fortune 100 tech company making six figures right out of college. Her knack for translating complex engineering topics into layman’s terms led her to become the company’s executive ghostwriter. At that point, it seemed like she had it made. Along with her six-figure salary, she had healthcare, benefits, and status. But yet, something was off. The hours were long, the politics exhausting and the work soul sucking. This definition of success wasn’t hers. Ultimately, she realized the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. So, she started building her corporate escape route by posting on Instagram, where her boss wouldn’t find her. It was the start of the pandemic, and her goal was to attract solo service providers who (like her) were leaving or getting laid off from corporate jobs to start their own thing. She spoke to graphic designers, web developers, and fractional leaders—all people interested in content strategies to build their lead pipelines. She positioned herself to appeal to others interested in ethical marketing. (As in, the opposite of what she was doing in corporate.) As part of that, she railed against copywriting tactics that prey on people’s pain points and insecurities—the 1980’s kind of selling adopted by our modern-day bro hustler types—and argued that you don’t need to be sleazy to sell. You can use authentic storytelling instead. After Kendall hit her first $10K month of revenue, she quit her day job. Applying the same storytelling-driven sales content to her own strategy, her teeny-weeny audience of less than 50 newsletter subscribers bought in. A Good Approach In her three years in business, the majority of Kendall’s clients have come from her tiny email list. It’s proven so effective, that everything she does is optimized to get people on that list. Her approach is simple and straightforward. It starts with content that entices people to want to work with her to click on her lead magnet. This gets them onto her email list and into her sales pipeline. After that, an automated welcome series introduces new leads to her philosophy, backstory, and offers. But this isn’t the only way she gets highly qualified leads onto her list. She does something brilliant I’ve never seen before. She gates her pricing and services package. So, to learn how to work with her (and how much it costs), you have to give up your email. In April, 28% of her new subscribers came from that download alone. That means anyone who enters her list this way will be easier to convert. If you like her stories and style, you stay on the list. (She claims most leads take about 90 days to convert.) How does she manage such a high conversion rate? What Kendall does differently than most is that she’s always “actively selling”—but it doesn’t feel that way to readers. Both her weekly sales emails and Friday newsletter include stories from clients, musings on things she’s overheard in the business world, and personal experiences wrapped up with a lesson or two. Within all that value-first content there’s a natural pitch. (Usually several.) Essentially, she teaches you something, makes you feel eager to implement it, and reminds you that she can do it for you. In the past couple of weeks, one newsletter landed her a $2,000 writing gig while another got her a $1,500 upsell from an existing client. Kendall averages between 4 and 10 clients a month, driving $15,000 in average monthly recurring revenue. She’s built hundreds of lead magnets over the past three years to grow from 50 to 500 qualified leads. Her most popular lead magnet? “WTF to Send Your Tiny Ass Email List.” (Hint: It’s stories that sell.) Kendall believes there are a couple of other things that differentiate her from the competition, too. The first is her brand. She argues that by billing herself as a company—The Candid Collective—and not as a freelancer, she’s able to attract a higher caliber of clients with deeper pockets. The second is her robust, easy-to-navigate portfolio and website that clearly articulates her approach, the services she sells, and how you can buy them. As for the sweet work-life balance piece of her success, Kendall says it comes down to staying in her zone of genius (writing) and automating or outsourcing the rest. To guard her time:
These systems have freed up so much time that she’s even working on two books (yes two) that are on track to publish next year. A Good Lesson Kendall made a mistake many of us are guilty of in her early social media marketing days—she focused on engagement. While it felt good to create content that got hundreds of comments, impressions, and likes, those things did nothing to drive sales. As Kendall puts it, she built an audience of DIYers, but never buyers. So instead of focusing on the “soft” stuff that gave her a dopamine hit, she started creating content that led to direct conversions. It’s things that showcase her knowledge and ability as a writer and end with a clear call to action. Most seasoned online creators or service providers using social to drive leads will tell you the same thing—personal success stories, hot takes, and strong opinions drive tons of engagement. But talking about your offer on repeat is what drives sales. But because that sales content doesn’t trigger the same engagement, people hesitate to post it. The trick, Kendall says, is letting go of your ego. While you need to have a mix, your efforts should be less on feel-good engagement and more on content that builds your bank account. Kendall now spends less time on social media than ever before. Because she batches her writing and has three years' worth of data and stories from client work, she now has 6 months' worth of content ready to be scheduled. Without wasting her precious four hours of working time doing the social thing, she can spend it ghostwriting for clients, creating her newsletter, booking new leads, and upselling old ones. A Good Takeaway If you’re getting lots of likes but no sales, Kendall suggests starting or re-prioritizing an email list with a welcome series that introduces you and your offers, gives you visibility, and “lightly” nurtures leads for as long as they need to be nurtured. She’s had leads on her list for two years that finally converted. To some extent, timing and luck played a role in Kendall’s early success with building her email list. She started her solo business at the start of the pandemic when a lot of corporate folks were out of work and taking to the internet to find leads through content. But luck is only a part of it. Kendall also had the advantage of knowing her audience inside-out (because she was her audience) and didn’t waste too much time on audience building. Instead, she optimized leads to her newsletter, where she can nurture them until they’re ready to buy. What strikes me about Kendall is how much she’s constantly selling. It’s her whole thing. She ditched soft content that only leads with value, and instead focused on using her client’s stories, her own stories, and unique insights to sell. It’s clearly working for her. And if you look at her email formats and social posts, you can see why. Here's what it comes down to:
Some other rules Kendall follows:
As for what to send your tiny list once you’ve welcomed them, Kendall suggests selling your offers at least once a week, writing stuff that feels like a letter to a friend and a roundup of new content you've published on other channels. So there you have it. Personally, I’m still unsure if this style of selling is the approach I want to take. Part of why I like creating "softer" content on social and through email is because I like making genuine connections with people I don't intend to sell anything to. But, it has made me think more about how I can sell myself as the solution my audience is looking for more often than I do. A Few Good Resources
Hope you have a good one, |