Fresh Content, Fewer Posts: Kendall Cherry's Calmer KPI

I had better ideas. I had way more spaciousness because of that KPI freeing up all this time on my calendar.

I'm Susan Boles, and this is Beyond Margins, the show where we deconstruct how to engineer a calmer business. The goal in a lot of the businesses I work with is to engineer a calmer business. That's my goal too. And in order to do that, you have to make calm a core value for your company. You have to prioritize it, build for it, and measure KPIs, key performance indicators, that help you make progress towards it.

You have to make calm your new KPI. But what does that mean? What does that look like? Well, it's different for every business because what feels calm to you might not feel calm to me. We're all different people running different businesses with different services, goals, values, priorities, and that means we need to measure different metrics to help us track our progress.

If you wanna build a calm business, you have to solve for something besides the default. That default is growth at all costs, profit over people. And the default metrics, things like growth rate, efficiency rates, ROI, they measure the progress towards the default. They basically measure how well you're doing at growth at all costs. And that's not what we're here for.

So if we want to build a Calm business and we want to make Calm our new KPI, we need Calm metrics to help us measure our progress. We need calmer KPIs, and they might not look like the KPIs you're used to. That's what we're exploring in this series. I wanna take you behind the scenes of businesses measuring Callmark APIs because this is one of those things where we actually need to see examples of how it can be done differently in order to adapt our own metrics to be calmer. In the last episode, I took you behind the scenes in my own business and how I set goals around Calm along with my own calmer KPI.

So if you haven't had a chance to check out that last episode, I highly recommend it. Today, I'm talking to Kendall Cherry about her calmer KPI, Fresh Content Inked. Kendall runs a 1 woman content ghostwriting agency called the Candid Collective. And this interview actually changed my own approach to my business. No joke.

After I recorded this conversation with Kendall, I literally went and rebuilt a whole bunch of the systems in my own business based on some of the ideas that she shared with me. Kendall's KPI, Fresh Content Inked, is an outgrowth of her wanting to create more time for herself so she could write a book. Fresh Content Inked is her way of tracking how many new pieces of content she's writing each month with the goal being to write 6 or less new pieces of content. We'll get into how she makes that happen, what systems she's using, how she set them up, and, nope, she is not using AI to do it. We were chatting about this on LinkedIn, and you mentioned that one of the KPIs that you regularly measure is this idea of fresh content inked.

Yeah. So this is something that I kind of fell into this year. So I'm a copywriter. I'm a storyteller. I write copy for clients all day, every day, usually recurring styles of content.

So things like email newsletters, LinkedIn content are kind of my bread and butter. And I was noticing, you know, when I would feel tired or if I just didn't have the creative spark, especially earlier in the year. I did this little experiment. I wonder what would happen if I went back and used my, like, greatest hits content, threw it in a Google Doc. All of my content is strategically selling.

It's subliminally selling. It's not super bro y, in your face, cold pitch y, but it's also not kind of what you see on LinkedIn. So I got really curious after a season of like, okay, I really wanna expand. And I decided I wanted to not only render client services, but actually move toward becoming a self published nonfiction author. And so I was like, I gotta get my time back.

It was truly like just an experiment. Like, I wonder what would happen if I just sat for like 6 hours, combed through 3 years of content, picked my best stuff. And then what ended up happening was I had this 83 page document that I now have my VA schedule for me on LinkedIn that owns, again, the greatest hits of the sales content. It converts into sales. It's market validated, all of the things.

Ran it for a 6 month trial just to see what would happen, and ended up closing, like, some of the biggest deals I ever have in not only less time, but I'm now no longer actively writing the content. I did that for LinkedIn. That was like test one check. And so now then I was like, I wonder if I did my Monday sales emails. Like, if I just spilled a little content make of that, like, what would happen?

And so then another test check of, you know, the only content now that I'm really writing is my Friday newsletter, Flower Fridays, which is fresh original content. It's about storytelling and sales. But everything else you see from me on the Internet, spoiler alert, it's in a library. It's in a big Google Doc that I don't write fresh anymore. It's probably some of those pieces have hit the Internet, like, 6, 7 times.

And every time they go out, my my audience is only growing, and it gets more engagement, more conversions. It's I feel like I hacked the the content system, and I'm like, thank the lord. Because I can now I'm I'm working on a second career on in the background as an author.

I love that. And I love the I wonder what would happen question because that's one that I use very frequently as well is I wonder what would happen if I didn't do this, or I wonder what would happen if I did this in a different way. And I think it is such a critical question to be asking when we're thinking about, like, how do I make things calmer? Because so many of the ideas we have about business and what we're supposed to do, and particularly around, like, content and marketing, is it's all telling us we have to do more. And you had mentioned that one of the metrics around Fresh Content Inc is actually in how few pieces you can publish.

Tell me

a little bit more about why that became the goal. I'm not only writing whatever comes out from my byline. I don't have a team of people. So I'm a quote unquote agency and then I write for clients, but I have basically my ops support. So things like a VA, a marketing coordinator.

The only person ghostwriting on behalf of clients is me. So I'm not only writing my content, but my client content. And so I really took a look at, okay, if I want my best creative energy to go toward the stuff that I really care about, my Wallflower Fridays newsletter and my client work, and then the book that I'm writing, it really stemmed from this place of, like, I'm definitely more of an evergreen sales style. I hate the the launching nervous system freak out. Like, I've heard people who swear by it or they say, you know, I really like the high risk, high reward.

And I'm like, I don't see any reward. And if you don't hit your numbers, like, that to me is the biggest risk you could put on your business, on your nervous system. You have to recover emotionally from that. Like, I'm just not here for it. And so running this evergreen business model, I decided Fresh Content inked was I'm still wanting to be connected to this business and what I'm creating on behalf of it.

Again, I'm a writer. But wouldn't it be cool if I didn't have to feel like every single piece of me, every single week needed me to be not just at a creative output for my clients, not just at a creative output to write a book, but also having to then write the content that's, you know, selling my services. And so that's really and truly kind of where Fresh Content Inc. Stems from. So the KPI is 6 pieces of content quote unquote or less a month.

If I have 5 weeks in a month, that's 5 email newsletters right there. If something crazy happens or I have a really great client story and I feel like writing something about it, then I might pen something for that. But otherwise, it kind of forces me to stay in this, almost this energetic ceiling of, like, what I have is enough. This is all valuable. It's already been market validated.

Like, I don't actually need to keep fueling this, like, not enoughness that tends to run really rampant, especially on LinkedIn. I don't know. I just stopped believing in that narrative. And what's interesting is not not only am I winning my time back, but the deals that I'm closing from the content, because I don't do sales calls, my business runs primarily from the content converting. People know they're they wanna work with me.

There is no, you know, greasy sales call. It's hot inquiry. Person's a perfect fit. Let me get you into my schedule. I just kind of really took a look at what do I need to feel creatively fulfilled when it comes to my work and the work I do on behalf of clients and letting that be the magic and cutting out anything that just did not fuel that style of energy.

Again, it not only freed up my schedule, I think I doubled my income this year. Like, you know, we've got a very, very profitable business. I'm writing a book on the side for God's sake. I'm feeling pretty dang good with where I'm sitting. So

I have 2 questions. One, how do you feel it's impacted you creatively?

Oh my gosh. The the thing that's interesting, I was really afraid to do it at first. It's a big swing because you have to trust, like, did what I created in the past work, but it had to have worked because clients came from it. Again, I've never really had to do any cold pitching. I've never really had to do any, like, reaching out virtual coffees, any of that stuff.

It's very much come through inbound leads from the content itself. And so it was this moment of sitting with like, okay, do I trust myself enough? I know I have the proof points in the past, but, like, can I sit with this when it's a slower sales cycle? Or maybe I've been a little bit lower energy because I have personal stuff going on. Like, can I still hold that that this is true for me?

And then the other thing as far as the creativity, it only made me more creative. I had better ideas. I had way more spaciousness because of that KPI freeing up all this time on my calendar. Not only am I writing a book, but, you know, to fuel yourself as a writer, good inputs create great outputs. So I'm reading 2 hours or more a day of very random content.

I don't read a lot of newsletters. I don't read a lot of LinkedIn content, pretty much reading fiction, and I'll say the outside content to fuel the things that I'm writing. But the writing has gotten stronger. The sales process has tightened up. I feel more creatively connected to the work because I'm more present while I'm doing it.

And so I see no negatives to the the kind of calm KPI in my business. And I just wish more people would just stop believing this lie that everyone else is portraying on the Internet because it's actual bullshit.

We're gonna take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, but when we come back, Kendall is gonna give us the nitty gritty details behind how she actually implemented this system for herself. When you came up with the idea of creating this library, talk me through the logistics of how you actually went through and decided what to include, what you didn't include, how you actually went about building this library.

Yeah. So the first thing that I did, I moved on to LinkedIn. I quit Instagram pretty much without notice, which is where I built my business in April. But I had this repository of some content that I'd created over the years. And then we'd started writing some for LinkedIn as well that I'd been posting there.

And so I truly was like, okay, we're gonna just see what happens. And I'm a sprint style girly. Like, I do not I just can't do it. No. It's it doesn't work for me.

My creative style is is not like that. I sync my business to my menstrual cycle. Like, it's just, it's a very well oiled machine. And so I just got this energy surge. Started at 8 PM, 1 night.

It was like a random Wednesday. And I was like, okay. I guess we're doing this. And so I stayed up until like 1 or 2 AM, just like listening to my music, vibing, and I just started combing through the content from over the years and looking at the the one metric I I gave myself because I knew I didn't wanna do the, like, post a selfie of myself with, again, the lame b to b story about sell selling or whatever else. So I I knew that the content, the one thing I looked for was, is this selling my services?

Yes or no. I did some quick edits to make sure some of it was maybe 80% of the way there, so I did a quick cleanup. But I I knew the services that I wanted to be selling. I knew the offers that I wanted to have. I knew what I didn't wanna be attracting in and what messaging I I wanted to kind of comb out.

And so I just did this really big, like, okay. This is the future vision for the business for the next 5 years. Like, we're good. We're at a premium rate. Set the the foundation there.

I was, like, sitting on my couch. We're gonna just do this, I guess. And I ended up just combing through old Instagram captions, old emails. Sometimes I'd have stuff in my notes app on my computer that I'd like half finished. And so I just took the time to just see what I already had created that I also again, I knew it was selling.

It wasn't just a story, quote, unquote, but it was a very strategic story that always led back to, you know, here's what I'm here to sell. And that is is kinda what came through in the document. So I I will caution if anyone's thinking like, oh, I'm gonna do the same thing with the content library. Like, if your content is not strategically selling, it's not going to work and you could really like, this is, like, the big red sign beforehand. Like, don't proceed forward unless you know it's selling.

Why the library works so well? Everyone's creating this content very much in the moment. Oh, I need a post today, so let me write it today. And the thing about the calm KPI and and emotional regulation, if you're writing from a place of scarcity, lack, you're thinking, you know, you need to make a sell, so it's coming in. It's getting picked up in what you're creating.

All of that's gonna just get contained in the content that you're selling, which is another reason a content library works so well. If you're in a slow season or, you know, you just had a really weird client interaction or whatever else, you're not writing from that place. You're writing from your most magnetic, your most authentic, and that becomes the thing that gets kind of bottled up and, you know, put forward to sell. It's not, well, I couldn't think of anything, so let me just slap something together just to get something out. It's I I just picture it as like this assembly line or a machine, and it's slow and steady, baby, but that's that's what creates the consistency when it comes to sales, not the one post that you bought in a course that's supposedly gonna make you a $1,000,000.

Like,

sorry. It doesn't work

like that. I work in content. No piece of content is that high converting. Hot take.

I think that's underrated, though. I think the idea of slow, consistent, regulated effort is undervalued because we do get the message that, you know, you just gotta hit 1 viral post, and you're gonna do it. And at least from personal experience, every post I've had that's gone even a little bit viral is completely like, it is one where

it's just unrelated. Unrelated to what you're selling. There's a there's an avatar that I talk about a lot in my body of work called the DIYer never buyer. All of the viral posts that you see on the Internet. Yeah.

It's great. You get all this engagement. Guarantee you are attracting people who quote unquote, love your content, but they are never gonna pay you a dime. Like they're just not going to. They're the people who download the freebies that live in their downloads folder.

These are the people that leave courses unfinished. Like, these are not people that are paying for high ticket or premium services. And so virality is great, but show me a viral post that led to actual dollars won or dollars earned. Most of the time, it's very low value, low bid audience members. But if you're here to build a business that's sustainable and lasts for years, you know, the viral posts, like, it kind of loses its luster a little bit.

For sure. I love the idea that this content library is a consistent process that you build one time, you can improve over time. But it is a really good example of what I call maintenance mode, which is this idea that you just set something up and it just exists on maintenance mode, and you can spend the rest of your time, your energy, your effort experimenting or doing fun side projects or fixing something else in your business, focusing on something else. And eventually, you can come back and improve and iterate, but it can be kind of running in the background. I am very interested to hear about how that impacts your sales cycle.

You mentioned that you don't do sales calls. What is the impact of this content system on the actual sales process in your business?

Yeah. So the really great thing about this is I'm not a scarcity marketing person. I'm not an urgency person like that. Those are just 2 practices I'm very much not. I just don't think it's a great way to sell.

It doesn't feel aligned for me. And so it really cuts out this need to have this again, cold DM. You need my offer right now. Most of the time, in reality, customers are waiting on, is it the right time for me? Do I have the budget?

And or do I have the right resources or team to actually execute the thing that I'm doing? Like, it's one of those three things. So it's not my job. I can put all the pressure, all the scarcity, all the urgency in the world. If it's not the right time for the customer, it's not the right approach to try and sell.

So I take a very kind of laissez faire backseat approach to the sales process, which is why the maintenance mode style of this content ecosystem works really well because it's basically the customer decides, am I ready to reach out or inquire? They're kind of on their own buyer's journey. You know, I just picture, like, all of my customers on treadmills that are all next to each other. Like, one person's 10 miles an hour, just, like, flying ready to go. You got someone on point 1.

They just started their business. I love the idea of everyone's kind of on their buyer's journey. It's not about me. It's not about my business. I'm just here to serve.

At anytime I've tried to pressure or, you know, even if someone gets ahead of themselves and maybe over invests too soon, it never is a good match and it's never a good mix. And so I think it's so much more about really setting someone up so that they have a successful experience with you. You enjoy the process so much work because they're ready for the magic that you create. And that's me at from a sales cycle perspective too. There can be a little bit of, you know, feast and famine.

There's some things I do in my business where I have a certain set retainer amount that I have for clients and I run a wait list model. My, quote, unquote, maintenance mode from a revenue perspective is I try to have, you know, a certain just recurring revenue. That's just smart business to having that in place. So I'm not if the sky falls or we didn't have a client come through or whatever else. And then also on the the other side, there are very, very fast seasons in my business or bigger seasons.

So if I hit several months where I'm 2 and 3 times over the quote, unquote need for the month, stocking some of that away because I I know there will be slower seasons. So having some of a cash buffer, but I don't really do the whole, like, revenue spreadsheet. Let me work and reverse engineer backwards. How am I gonna create my, you know, 20 k months or whatever else? I don't personally do that because I've had clients you know, I've had offers.

People this the market's not right. So I try to sell those things and they don't work. And then here here comes my dark horse who's like, ready to drop 30 k in 5 seconds. Outside of the actual content marketing, having some just business model revenue structures in place, a certain number of recurring revenue. And I think premium messaging, at least with the content where the clients that are coming to me, they're they know the value of what they're getting when they work with me versus maybe some of the other options that are out there.

Tell me about the actual process that you did go through to set up both the social media content library and the actual evergreen newsletter version, essentially. Take me step by step through the whole process.

Yeah. So I actually have this mentality around things where your content kind of works like a funnel. So you have some client content that's maybe top of the funnel. It's for people that are newer. Then you have stuff that's bottom of the funnel.

It's directly communicating who you are, what you do. It's all storytelling, but some posts are salesier quote unquote than others. The one thing, if I I I wish I could scream this from the rooftops because I don't see anyone doing it. You need to be posting a client case study, period. Doesn't matter if it's email, doesn't matter if it's LinkedIn, every 2 weeks like literal clockwork.

This is, you know, how Morgan closed $50,000 in sales in 24 hours, which is one that's in my bank that just kinda cycles through. Maybe one's about how a client saved time. You need to be telling the story of the before and after transformation of your client and directly communicating the value that that whatever process or transformation you created, what you were able to create with that client

every 2 weeks. That is the bones. Thanks so much for calling me out. Sorry.

I'm down late. I know. I know. It's because everyone thinks and approaches content about transformations and testimonials as if it's a website. Everyone thinks, oh, well, I gathered my testimonials.

I'm gonna post the photo of the person and the 5 gold stars, and I'm gonna copy and paste the, you know, what they said about me, and they're gonna just understand how valuable I am. The problem here is you're basically leading the witness. You are expecting somebody to understand what you mean and what value you create and what the offer is. There's a lot of assuming going on and all of those assumptions are leaving tens of 1,000 of dollars on the table in revenue every year, if not more. I would argue at least 10% or more of your annual revenue if you're not including those client case studies.

There's 10% for next year. You can instantly add that back in because people wanna not only see the results that you created, they wanna understand your approach. It's the easiest way to communicate. Here's how your mind works. Here's what's important to you.

Here's what the process is gonna look like. Are they gonna make me do some crazy shit? Is this gonna feel aligned for me? There can be such a challenge, especially in service provider world, where you don't really know how a service provider is gonna approach your problem until you're in the contract. It.

Yeah. And you're locked in, and there's so much guessing, or it's not what I thought it was gonna be or whatever else. And that's the easiest way to kinda call that out and detract people that maybe aren't the right fit for you, but it's also the best way to communicate what it is that you're here to do. There's a million and one ways to communicate quantitative and qualitative results in a story format. But I think everyone, mostly because there there's this, like, secret little shadow where it's like, I wanna be humble.

I don't wanna be too braggy. You know, all of these things, but people really doubt the gifts and contributions that you bring to the table, which, you know, most of the times my clients are like, please tell this story. That was freaking crazy. I want you to have more people like me. I've never had one client be like, I don't want you to tell, you know, this story of how I

things of how

how we made all this money together. Yeah. Like there, that's just not the case, but it's it's this interesting little shadow that I think happens. And the thing is with the content bank, right? If it's 6 months, every 2 weeks, we're talking about 12 case studies that you just have.

They can sit on your website. I also use them in my sales process. So if someone asks me a question during the process, maybe they wanna know a little bit more information. I just send them a link to the LinkedIn post or to the case study saying, here's how Morgan used this experience. So I don't have to get on a call.

I don't have to repeat myself. Someone doesn't have to feel like I'm badgering them on a call. They can make the assumptions for themselves. To me, it's a more humane, a much calmer way to communicate what it is that you you do likely like breathing, but a lot of the times you're either too close to it or it's it's hard to communicate the value at least in a story format. But that's really and truly like there's other, you know, hacks and gimmicks.

But like to me, if you don't have that, you're leaving so much money on

the table. Adding to my own content library.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Trust me. That that was one that I liked.

I just like zoomed out and I was like, what what are people doing? Because I just started noticing. I'd be on LinkedIn and I'm like, I'm posting the gold star stuff. Like, what's happening? And I noticed my user behavior on social media when I would see those.

And so I'm I was like, oh, when I see those I just keep scrolling. So it actually is the opposite effect of what you want. Like you you think it's like a website. I'm letting people know. No.

You're literally training your audience to stop reading your content. If you get nothing else from this podcast, stop the gold stars. Like there that is you're training your audience to stop reading what should be selling your services. And then the flip side of that is you end up having to go super manual sales process, cold DMs, sales calls, when it could be much much simpler. But, yeah.

If you get one thing out of this podcast, no no gold star graphics, please. Please.

So there's multiple metrics here. You've got fresh content inked, but as part of that, you also have one client testimonial every 2 weeks. What else is in the systems?

There's more of just an ecosystem and a process that I like to follow. So I I am pro email list, and I know email newsletters are a really hot topic right now. Everyone's trying to monetize a newsletter. Hot take. I think it's kinda trendy thing.

I prefer using an email newsletter as a sales pipeline builder. So I have my Wallflower Fridays newsletter that I post every Friday. That's one of the entry points into my business. My best lead magnet is my services guide. That's where I give you the pricing.

I hide my pricing from my website. If you want the pricing, here's the document that you have to, you know, give me your email, you get on the list. And I find that using that as the entry point into the email newsletter, not everyone needs my services, but it's the best way to nurture people over time. It's a very calm system. It's very automated.

You can have this email welcome series that's letting people know who you are and what you do. It's a really great way to nurture a pipeline over time without feeling the scarcity or thinking, I've gotta connect with 20 people. The email ecosystem works extremely well. I see everyone and their mom talking about how to grow an email newsletter. A lot of times the quality of the content's really low.

It's not converting into actual sales or there's some low bid course on the back end. My email list for many, many years was like under 500 subscribers and closing a 100 to a 150 k, sometimes 250 k now in revenue directly from the email list. It wasn't a referral based business. These people were coming from email for the most part. And I I think you don't have to have this huge audience that everyone thinks you have to have.

You can have a really lucrative smaller audience that is full of leads and customers for whatever it is that you're offering. But I would say don't sleep on email lists as a nurture tool for a sales pipeline. Again, hot take, it's not this, like, let's have a self liquidating offer or whatever else on the back end. Like, there are a 101,000,000 ways to to build a business, but I prefer email. People get the emails, they can be automated.

You know, we send up sales emails specifically selling my ghostwriting services on Mondays. Fridays, we have Wallflower Fridays, which is my newsletter. I'll talk about all kinds of stuff. You know, I just send a a Monday email from the content library, my Friday newsletter that I write fresh every week, 2 emails a week as well. That's another KPI for you.

Love it. So how do these processes and these metrics integrate with the rest of your business approach? Are there other processes or systems that either relate to these things or that you have built in order to make these work?

The thing that I I love about this so much is most of it can be executed by my team. So for example, like LinkedIn, all of the scheduling of the content, the content set, my VA schedules it. I I mean, I love her, but I, like, never talk to her because she knows what to do. But so, like, that totally off my plate. Like, that's not even something I worry about.

The emails I schedule myself just because I like to make sure it's really updated. And then at the bottom, I post my capacity and when my next openings are for projects or for retainer. I like to schedule my emails myself just because I, I know the latest and greatest only capacity and it's too hard to try and communicate my creative capacity to someone else. So I do it based on a gut feeling. But for the most part, like the administrative side of the business, very, very, very lean.

There's not a bunch of bells and whistles. Like, it's pretty streamlined. For some projects, we'll do a kickoff call, but even for retainer clients at this point, we don't do project kickoff calls anymore either. My brand questionnaire, very similar to my inquiry form as far as, like, the depth of what level I go to, but the questionnaire really takes the place of a kickoff call or a sales call so that I'm getting the qualitative data preserved. That's the first part.

But then I'm also as a ghostwriter, I'm seeing someone's sense of humor. They're telling me stories. I'm seeing what's their writing style like? What's their flow like? I'd say I graduated out of needing to be on kickoff calls all the time or even sales calls all the time because after a while, I started having the same conversations.

Lot of frequently asked questions. So my services guide, like, there's I think it's like 4 or 5 pages at the back where just like FAQs FAQs. I I try to bottle up or preserve anything that I can in the business to leverage as much as I can. Sounds like the ideal. Exactly.

And so I just I just started looking at it and I was like, again, kinda wouldn't it be cool if my favorite question, like, wouldn't it be cool if I didn't have to be on all these calls all the time? Like, I'm a writer. What could I do to make my life easier? And so refinement and kind of retesting and iterating to where now it just it works like a charm. And I I get my time back.

My clients get better output and product from me that I'm cranking out. Can't lose, really.

I'm actually interested in this because this is a discussion I've been having with folks. Because like you, I would love to eliminate the majority of all kinds of calls. Because if I have a call or I have to do multiple calls, that is the end of my day. I'm not doing any actual work that day. I have to have, like, protected days where I don't have calls in order for my brain to think.

But the flip side of that is the idea that some people get psychological value out of face to face calls, which is one where I'm like, when I'm working with consultants, if I can get the results and I never have to talk to you, the designer I work with literally, I can send her one sentence in my ClickUp and voila, things magically appear. And that's my favorite thing. But there is this idea that some people get a lot of psychological value. Like, the value that they perceive comes from the live interaction versus the actual results.

Yeah. I think it depends on on your customer. But, like, for me, for example, people care that the output that they're getting from me, the written word, feels like them and is selling. Like, that's the value of the product I create. So to create some more, like, psychological ties with my clients, for my contact clients, I have a a system where they can send me voice memos.

2 to 3 minutes, we transcribe it, and then it magically gets baked into their content. But I don't know. I I find that they don't necessarily need the face to face interaction because the written content is so pure. Like, the number of times I've heard people be like, oh my god. I'm hearing this in your voice and then you sent me a voice mail and it's exactly how I pictured you sounding.

Like, that is ghostwriting. Writing. And so I think that's the point or at least the value of what it is that I do, where you don't have to be on video or on you know, to choose your medium if you don't wanna be. Love that. That is my hypothesis as well, but

I keep getting pushback from other people where they're like, no, you're missing. They don't feel the value because they don't have the touching. And I'm like, no, it's so much more valuable to not to not have the interaction.

Yeah. Who what kind of people are telling you this?

Is it

people trying to sell you something?

No. Extroverts. Yeah. That's how I guess it is purely it has purely been extrovert because to me, value equates to how much value can you provide me with the least interaction from me? Because like you, like, I very much value my time.

I value having a lot of white space both in my day, in the type of work that I do, and anything that I can do to be creating that spaciousness is inherently valuable to me.

Sounds to me like your idle client's not an extrovert. No. For sure. Not. Yeah.

And which is fine, which means that your process doesn't need to appeal to extroverts. I will say, like, right before Thanksgiving, I had an inquiry come through from someone. And if you send an inquiry to me, they'll do a proposal. I will walk you through it in a Loom video, but we don't have to schedule a call. We don't have to do the whole rigmarole.

It's a oh, a new inquiry. Kendall builds a proposal. It's very, very easy to follow. I'll even give you a walk through and a diagnosis of why I think this is what you need. It's very modular as well, so I don't, you know, I don't just try and throw together a huge proposal to try and close a big deal.

It's like, at minimum, this is what you have to have. Here's what I think would be great. Very respectful of the budget. I had this inquiry come through, build the proposal, send the Loom. She goes, oh my gosh.

This is amazing. She sends me a Loom back with a couple questions, but we manage the entire sales process through Loom videos, closed the client, like, never had to get on a call. I think she converted in, like, 4 days. We hadn't even been connected on LinkedIn, but she was like, this is exactly what I need. And she actually said, she was like, this sales process felt so good because I got to stay in my flow.

I could look at it when I was ready. And so it's it's this, like, you know, extroverts can say what they wanna do. Extroverted or introverted, I don't care. I care about efficiency. Why book a 30 minute call or a 45 minute call?

You know, maybe for, like, coaches, you probably wanna do a a little vibe check, make sure y'all are a good fit. But, like, for what I do, if you pass all my very rigorous inquiry form with a lot of prequalifying questions, like if you're a yes for me, like, I'm gonna take you on. So why would I book a 30 minute call? Like, why why would I spend 30 minutes doing that when I can do 1, maybe 2 emails, a 10 minute video walkthrough, call it a day? That is the thing is you don't have to do everything in real time to have earned it.

And I think that's the thing as a level of maturity in a business that I think to be a little bit more established or or having something that's more sustainable for in in timescales of years, not in quarters or in months like what a lot of earlier businesses are. It's that mindset shift of like, I don't have to sit here and be at my computer running the sales process all the time, or I don't have to sit here being on calls with people or whatever else. Like, it really is up to you to decide the energetics of how your business is gonna run, and then deciding and then holding that. So I decided, I don't wanna do sales calls and be on a bunch of calls. I decided that, you know, my content writing and and style is selling whether it's, you know, more direct or not.

And I just decided that's how this business works because if it doesn't, that's a lot of time that I'm not dedicating to things that are important to me, which are client services, which is how I pay my bills, and writing books. Like, that's the the two arms of the business. That's what we're doing for the next 10 years. That's the vibe.

I am with you. I do actually think part of it comes down to the fact that asynchronous communication and asynchronous team management is just a skill that a lot of people haven't built because it's a different kind of communication style. It's a little bit more direct, less touchy feely, but I also think it's the most efficient and most effective way. But I am curious, how do you respond if somebody sends you a LinkedIn DM and says, hey. Can we hop on a call?

Like, what is your response to that?

So I I'm definitely open to calls with people. Like, for example, I just had someone who they wanted me to potentially ghostwrite their book. So there's a lot of the an education process around self publishing that needs to happen slash a book is a major project. So I wanna make sure that I even wanna take the book content on. So that that is like, meh, we probably wanna get on the call just because that's a long term thing.

But the first thing that I do, I wanna make sure that this person has budget and they're not just looking for, like, you know, cheap copywriter. So the first thing I say is like, oh my gosh, you know, I would love to hop on a call. Let me send you my services guide first, and then we can see if we're aligned and go from there. Usually, because the services guide is very strategically mapped out, so it kind of eliminates the need for a sales call. People know exactly what package they want.

They know exactly how much it's gonna cost. They know how it works. They know they're in the right place. Usually, people don't have a lot of questions for me at this point because I because I know that the process works. I just say like, hey, let me send you my services guide because the thing that happens, they're either gonna inquire or reach back out and ask for a proposal or whatever else, or we'll just DM back and forth on LinkedIn, figuring out the scope that works for them.

But what I find is, like, let's say, for example, I would have gotten on a sales call with that person. I would have not only wasted my time. If they didn't know the pricing beforehand, you know, maybe they're looking for somebody who's gonna do graphics. I don't. Like, there's all these, you know, what ifs.

The thing though when that happens is they may not be ready for what I do yet, but if you have the sales call, you kinda burn the lead. I prefer to get them on my email list because I'm slowly nurturing the pipeline. So they can see the services guide. They can see the pricing. If it changes, they kind of get all of the sales psychology and this sales angles around what I do specifically.

And it's again on their timeline, their budget, which if they weren't ready in that moment to swipe their card, kind of a high risk thing for me. So I always prefer to just, you know, capture the lead in that way, but not making it feel like, you know, okay. Let's hit him with 15,000 automated DMs or, like, we have a sales rep coming in or whatever else. Like, it can be this very smooth, slow process that really honors where the person's at without also like, it it's awkward to say, like, oh, this is gonna cost you 4 k and their budget's a 1,000 or whatever else. I just don't wanna make anyone else feel uncomfortable when they they couldn't be the right fit.

I find more times than not, there are a lot of people that I work with who have what I call copywriter PTSD. PTSD. They've hired a copywriter, open the doc, doesn't sound like you. You know, you end up editing 50% of what the other person wrote. It's not selling anyways.

It's not effective. So, you know, and everyone can tell you didn't write it. So it's just like shitty all the way around. So I get a lot of people who are like, you know, I've never really invested in what you do before. I'm a little apprehensive.

And so I prefer my customers to be a lot more educated on what I do. A lot of times, they're just used to hiring just a copywriter and at a lower rate. And I'm like, well, yeah. I'm a little more expensive, but it's because I'm closing sales over here. Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot of value working with somebody who is more experienced, and sometimes that value is hard to convey because it's way more efficient and more effective. But those are hard things to, like, capture versus somebody who's just gonna churn out content. So as we are wrapping things up here, tell me what your personal favorite way is to make your own work feel calmer.

Oh, what a great question. Okay. I I say, like, not to I'll say, like, pun pretty much intended. Like, I do try to bookend my day as a writer, but but I try to read in the morning, read at night. So again, good inputs, yield, great outputs.

So I'm always reading something. I do it in the morning before work. I do it at the end of the day to kinda wrap things up. But even in between clients, I use that to kind of like break off times of my day. It's almost like I'm emptying out my energy from one client and moving to the next.

But the other thing I would say is like having more of a practice around meditation, going deep, and just cutting out stimulation. So whether that is like formal quote unquote meditation, maybe it's going for a walk, maybe it's just turning off your screens. Really cutting off stimuli is, I think, the best way to recenter yourself. Like, every everyone's got the big scroll race going on. Like, there's always content to be consumed.

Like, you're you have the option to do that, but I've actually found getting away from the online ether as an online business owner has been, like, one of the best ways for me to fuel back into my work, whether that's for clients, whether that's for my own writing, or my book, or whatever else.

There are so many ways that you can take Kendall's calmer approach here and apply it to your own business. Really, her Fresh Content inked metric is about exploring how you can do less. What would the impact be if you did? That question, I wonder what would happen if, it can be used in all different areas of your business to experiment with doing less or doing things in a different, maybe calmer way. So I wonder what would happen if you posted less on a particular social channel or maybe even left it altogether.

I wonder what would happen if you tried transitioning to a more asynchronous sales cycle. I wonder what would happen if you created that content library for just one of your channels. Even if you didn't use the library all the time, you could use it when you needed a break, or a vacation, or just to take some of the load off temporarily so you can focus on another project. The content library is such a great example of a system that you can build in your business to create margin, to build space for other projects. Whether you use it all the time or not, it's there and you can always tap into it when you need it.

Same with the asynchronous sales process that Kendall described. It's a system that's out there running on maintenance mode to help create more time or more revenue or to take the load off. And when you take the load off of different areas, when a bunch of the areas of your business are running on maintenance mode, that's what helps your business feel calmer. Next time, I'm talking to Karen Sargent about her client report card, which is her calm KPI around making sure that she's working with the most ideal clients and delivering the best service. So make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss it.

Big thanks to everyone who supports Beyond Margins. If you are a listener, a sponsor, or a partner of any kind, I couldn't do this show without you. The best way to support the show is by leaving a rating and a review. It really does help new listeners hit play with more confidence, and you can support our sponsors by using the link in your show notes. All of that helps me keep this podcast going and growing.

So thank you for that, and thank you for listening. Until next time, stay calm.