Most freelancers have a content problem.

Or at least we think we do.

We assume we need another LinkedIn post, another newsletter, another lead magnet, and another afternoon spent staring at a blinking cursor while wondering whether our thoughts on client strategy can somehow be connected to a photo of our dog’s paws in the snow.

Kendall Cherry offers a better option.

Kendall is a storytelling and sales strategist who helps founders, teams, and service providers turn their ideas, experiences, and expertise into stories that sell.

She also doubled her freelance income while creating less content from scratch and taking fewer sales calls.

No cold-pitching marathon required.

Kendall built an 83-page content bank containing her best LinkedIn posts, Instagram content, emails, stories, and sales ideas. She then handed that library to her team and started publishing the greatest hits again.

Some posts have now appeared six, seven, or eight times.

They still perform.

They still attract subscribers.

They still generate clients.

The important distinction is not old content versus new content. It is disposable content versus quality content.

Quality content contains your best sales energy. It communicates what you believe, names problems buyers are motivated to solve, and shows people how you think.

That kind of content has a surprisingly long shelf life.

In our conversation, Kendall maps out how to turn that content into a simple funnel:

• Top-of-funnel stories establish familiarity, values, and resonance.
• Middle-of-funnel content helps prospects recognize their problems, understand your differentiators, and develop demand for your solution.
• Bottom-of-funnel case studies provide proof and make it easier to buy.

Kendall recommends formats such as lead-qualifying listicles and “day in the life” stories for the middle of the funnel.

At the bottom, she is adamant about case studies.

She recommends publishing a case study on social media every two weeks and sending one by email at least once a month.

And no, you do not need a neat little chart showing that your website redesign made the client precisely $437,219.13.

Qualitative results matter too.

You can talk about clearer decisions, stronger positioning, greater confidence, a smoother process, time saved, stress removed, or the ability to finally move a stalled project forward.

A good case study does more than prove you have clients. It shows prospective clients how your brain solves problems and helps them decide whether they like your approach.

Kendall’s sales system continues from there.

Her primary lead magnet is not a generic checklist destined to die in someone’s downloads folder. It is a services guide.

The guide explains:

• What she offers
• What the offers cost
• Who they are for
• How her process works
• Frequently asked questions
• Her working boundaries and non-negotiables

In other words, it attracts people who may actually want to hire her.

The services guide leads to a detailed inquiry form. The form collects the information Kendall would otherwise spend the first 20 minutes of a sales call asking for.

She can assess fit, recommend the right offer, and often send a proposal without scheduling a call.

The proposal itself goes directly into an email:

• Scope
• Timeline
• Compensation
• Payment options
• Next step

No 27-page Canva document. No interpretive dance. No unpaid proposal-design hobby.

When more explanation is useful, Kendall records a short video walking through her recommendation.

The result is a sales process that respects her time and the buyer’s time.

More importantly, her ecosystem creates margin.

Kendall originally wanted that margin so she could write a book. Someone else may want more time with their children, space to develop a new offer, room for another creative project, or the ability to take a difficult week off without turning off every light in the business.

You still have to sell.

But you do not have to personally recreate your best sales performance every Monday morning.

You can bottle up what already works.

Key Points

• Quality beats freshness: New content is not automatically better content. Strong stories and sales ideas can keep performing long after their original publication date.
• Build a greatest-hits library: Kendall reviewed her past posts and emails, identified the strongest pieces, and collected them in an 83-page content bank.
• Use real signals: Engagement data, email replies, inquiries, client language, and remembered sales conversations can help you decide which content deserves another life.
• Treat content like a funnel: Top-of-funnel stories create resonance, middle-of-funnel content develops demand, and bottom-of-funnel case studies reduce buying uncertainty.
• Write content that qualifies leads: Listicles and “day in the life” stories help prospects recognize their own problems and signal which messages matter most to them.
• Publish more case studies: Kendall recommends a case study every two weeks on social media and at least once a month by email.
• Qualitative proof still counts: A case study does not need a dramatic revenue number. Confidence, clarity, speed, relief, and a better process are legitimate transformations.
• Separate relationship-building and direct selling: Kendall sends a direct sales email on Mondays and a more personal Wallflower Fridays newsletter at the end of the week.
• Use your services guide as a lead magnet: A clear guide can attract buyers, communicate pricing, answer objections, and establish working boundaries before an inquiry arrives.
• Let inquiry forms do the early discovery: Better questions can qualify prospects and reduce hour-long sales calls to short conversations—or eliminate the call altogether.
• Keep proposals simple: Scope, timeline, price, payment options, and a next step can often live in the body of an email.
• Build the system for a reason: Content leverage creates time for client delivery, family, rest, writing, new offers, and the bigger work that matters to you.

Notable Quotes

"I wanted to think more specifically about: How can I use content to actually carbon-copy myself?… While the algorithm is doing its thing, it looks like I’m front and center. In reality, I’m doing my 30 minutes of engagement a day, and then I’m off writing my book, rendering client services, taking time off, reading a book—whatever… “I became almost obsessed with: How can I win my time back by copying what I know works when I have a real conversation with a client or I’m on a sales call? How can I bottle up my best sales energy, put that into content, and let that be what I’m putting out into the world—not just something to check the box, but something that actually does something to close business?”

“I cannot tell you the number of people who have said, ‘Thank you for not making me get on another random call in the middle of the day.’”

“Your zone of genius—the thing you’re so good at that you can do it in five seconds—feels like breathing… There will come a time when you will be forced to sell that version and that natural sparkle. It’s going to feel weird. It’s going to feel very vulnerable… When I think about sales, it’s really about self-worth. Do you find what lights you up valuable, and are you comfortable and confident enough to express that value to other people? It’s really about a value exchange… Your stories are the unlock of it all. That’s the magic. The magic is you. Your stories are the thing that are going to make that possible.”

Resources Mentioned

• Kendall Cherry’s website: https://kendallcherry.com
• Kendall’s Sales Ecosystem Playbook: https://kendallcherry.com/playbook
• Check out The Greenhouse program guide: https://findthegreenhouse.com/
• Connect with Kendall on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendall-cherry/
• Check out the Freelance Cake Community: https://www.freelancecake.com/community

Transcript

00:01

Hey there, welcome to the Freelance Cake Podcast. I'm your host, Austin L. Church, founder of the Freelance Cake community. The goal of this show is to help full-time committed freelancers get better leverage. As the sworn enemy of busyness and burnout, I have no desire whatsoever to see you work harder. So I reveal the specific beliefs, principles, and practices  you can use right away to make the freelance game more profitable and satisfying. So chill out, listen in, because the best is yet to come.

00:39

Welcome to another episode of the Freelance Cake Podcast. If you've ever felt like you're constantly creating content, showing up online and marketing your business, and yet you're still wondering where your next client is coming from, this episode is for you. My guest, is Kendall Cherry, a strategist, copywriter, and sales messaging expert who helps service providers build sales ecosystems powered by storytelling, content, and customer psychology. What makes Kendall's approach especially interesting is that she doubled her freelance income while spending less time creating new content and while taking fewer sales calls. In this conversation, we explore how to identify the content you've already created that still has selling power, how to build a simple content funnel that moves prospects toward a buying decision, and why case studies may be the most underused sales asset in most freelance businesses. We talk about creating lead magnets that attract actual buyers instead of freebie seekers. We talk about using email to generate sales without feeling pushy. We talk about replacing lengthy discovery calls with better systems that qualify leads before you ever even get on a call. One of my favorite parts of this conversation with Kendall is her perspective on content leverage. How to bottle up your best sales energy, turn it into reusable assets and stop reinventing your marketing  every single week. So if you're looking for a smarter way to market your services, create more consistency in your pipeline and free up time for bigger goals, you're going to get a lot out of this episode. All right, sit back and enjoy my conversation with Kendall Cherry.

02:53

I have been trying to have this conversation, this very conversation with you since I heard you on a podcast with Susan Bowles and she was interviewing you and I got to that interview and I thought, what have I been doing with my life? And we will get into why that was my reaction in a second. But first,  why don't you give maybe 30 seconds on the type of work you're doing right now. And then you told me there's a story that you want to tell.

03:28

Totally. Yeah. So I'm Kendall Cherry. I am kind of a one woman strategist slash copywriter. And I have a few things that I do right now, but everything really is centered around storytelling and sales. So I consult with clients and service providers and other freelancers on their sales ecosystem, which we're going to go deep, deep, deep dive in later. But I also teach a storytelling and sales writing accelerator called The Greenhouse, which is actually how to write and learn how to sell in a way that feels like you, but at the premium price point. So if you're the kind of person who's ever struggled with communicating your value, understanding your differentiators, either for your own business or if you happen to be a writing esque client, it really teaches you those skills as well. So I'm doing kind of like a hand in consulting, a hand in teaching. I do some copywriting work still, kind of in all of the different services that we see online. But everything that I do is really wrapped around storytelling and sales, specifically in content.

04:32

Great. Well done. All right. We met up once in person. Yes. There's a story there.

04:41

This is the story.  I... I have no idea where this conversation is going to go, but as I was so lovingly reminded right before this, we're going to be what Tennesseans called jawing or just like, you know, gabbing, yapping. When Austin and I get together, it is like endless conversation. So I'm very excited for that. The funny thing to me about our meeting was I think we sat at that bookstore for like two hours and we didn't know it, but we were actually ended up going to the same event after. So Austin caught a ride with me, but even though I might look organized in my internet life, I am not so organized in my home life. And so I had to graciously give him the heads up that when he was about to sit in the front seat of my car, he was about to sit in cat litter. And he, he, I mean, took it like a champ. We also, were rerouted about two or three times trying to get through the UT campus here in Austin, Texas. Luckily we did make it to our event, but I'll never forget having like life chats with you and being like, Ooh, he is sitting on cat litter currently.

05:52

I have sat in worse, but it was an honor, right? It's like, we're all accustomed to people who like give us their best show like they put their best foot forward and I think it speaks to your confidence and your authenticity that you were prepared to give me a ride even if your car may have not been in the state that you might have preferred and hey it was still less frightening than taking a driverless Waymo ride so but okay… I have a lot of questions for you because I think the phrase, the words sales or selling and story and storytelling don't often go into the same conversation. You have found really interesting ways to combine them and build a business that fits who you are. But let me back up. Like you said, you do strategy, you have a program, you still do a little bit of copywriting, but you don't do hardly any sales calls. You don't cold pitch, yet you doubled your income. And I want to know how I think other people who will listen to this conversation later are going to be like, wait a second, how do you get away with it? That sounds like the dream. So tell me, just to kind of till the soil, what does a typical week look like for you in terms of content and selling?

07:20

Yeah. So for me, it kind of depends on the season that I'm in. So I did make a pretty big transition in my business in Q1, kind of turning the lights off on full copywriting and really transitioning over even changed business names from the Candid Collective now over to Kendall Cherry Strategy. So we had a pretty big just like positioning shift. So I'm in slightly a different space, but I still hold the same philosophy and we still run it, which is I have built up a repository of really great content that sells and talks to my ideal client, still feels relatable, but is very psychological and very middle of the funnel, either educating people about my services while also establishing myself as what's called a category of one. So there's really no comparison to people of what I do. It's just my unique way of doing it. And so it's an interesting point in time actually, because when I kind of recently just went through the same process, but with a totally different lens than I did on Susan's podcast. But the very first thing that I did was I actually went back to my, I'll say ye old 83-page LinkedIn content bank and a Google doc and looked at my old content. What was still relevant? What did I just need to change? You know, the copywriting angle to more strategy work. And now my team schedules that content on my behalf in a scheduling tool. So I'm not having to think about what am I going to post on LinkedIn every week or frankly any month. We've got everything kind of down to a science at this point. So really the only content I'm writing fresh every week currently is my sales email that goes out on Mondays and then my Wallflower Fridays newsletter on Fridays. But as far as like actual content, when you invest in quality content, this is like my big there will be many a hot take in this but when you invest in quality content not just like you know something to get out the door from AI and it's like quote-unquote good enough or you you know, you put something out there, but when you invest in really quality content, it's the kind of thing that you can repost once twice three times and even some of the posts that I'm posting right now on LinkedIn, that stuff has been in seeing the light of the internet like six or seven or eight times. And what it's interesting is it still performs just as well, if not better, because my audience has grown. We can't always predict what's going to pop off and what's not. The algorithm also lives forever. But this is stuff that has lived for a really long time and also still converts clients. So there's… we'll kind of get into like the innards and the mechanisms that are in place and what kinds of stories those are in that kind of system. But it's the kind of thing that's allowed me to do many different things in my business. When I first designed the system and really was just kind of guinea pigging, pigging it, I knew that I wanted to write a book, which at the time I was like deep into draft mod… cut to a year and a half later since that podcast came out, I am now finalizing my manuscript for this book and have been able to take, I know, slow clap, getting there. She's in the final stretch. I had a little mini breakdown yesterday, but we're back, we're back.

10:55

That's part of being an author. Those breakdowns are how you know you're progressing.

11:01

Yesterday I was like, everything sucks. I suck. This makes no sense. Like, why am I doing this? And then I woke up and looked at it again this morning. I was like, okay, we're closer than I thought. All is well, all is well, but yeah, it really allowed me to explore some other parts of my career that I knew I wanted to cultivate, which for me is always going to be an author first. So I kind of had that epiphany back in the tail end of 2024. And so it really changed the way I thought about sales and marketing in my business as a service provider, knowing that I was kind of building this bigger, almost like funnel for myself. And something I think about a lot and kind of the, the origin of it is at the time I knew I needed to draft a book, but there's people who want more time with their kids or they want to establish a second business or launch a group program or do some other product category that requires our time, it just takes  research and development. This book has been a three year process. And so  what I have always kind of sat with is you have to sell in your business. There's absolutely nothing that is like that passive. You still have to be active to some degree in the selling department. But I just really started thinking about leverage. And I wanted to think more specifically about how can I use content to actually carbon copy myself. So while the algorithm is doing its thing, it looks like I'm front and center. In reality, I'm doing my 30 minutes of engagement a day. And then I'm off writing my book or off rendering client services or like, you know, taking time off, reading a book, whatever. So I was really kind of almost like obsessed with like, how can I win my time back by copying what I know works when I have a real conversation with a client or I'm in a sales call, how can I bottle up basically my best sales energy, put that in content and let that be what I'm putting out into the world and not just like something to, you know, check the box is done, but it doesn't actually do anything to close business.

13:05

Yeah, there are so many good threads there that I want to pull on, but I'll bring some of them together because you said several things that are really important. Number one, you had a pretty compelling reason to get leverage, which was I want to write a book and I think it's easy to get stuck  on a content hamster wheel and just check that LinkedIn or Instagram box if you don't have a compelling reason to ask, how can I become more efficient with this? There's something else you talked about bottling up your sales energy. And I love that because I think our assumption is that fresh content is better content. And I hear you breaking that association and saying, no, no, no. Quality content is content that sells, any random piece that you write on any given day may not actually be your best content if we're defining content as containing your best sales energy, and we'll get to this, the right stories for selling. So you had a really clear reason to change how you were selling. You started gathering up content that you thought could be good at selling for you. Can you just, you did it when you were talking to Susan, I think it's important for our conversation here… Explain briefly how you ended up with that Google doc that you mentioned.

14:49

Yeah. I mean, everything for me and my business, I, the question I always ask is, wouldn't it be cool if… it's the best question if you want to just like play around without believing in barriers or whatever. It's kind of like this concept of like, well, I'm not going to do it, but if I did, it would be like, it takes the pressure off, right? Like the pressure off. It's actually something that Bob Iger, who was the CEO of Disney for a really long time, but especially his business memoir is really, really good. He talks specifically about like, you know, a lot of the Lucasfilm and Marvel acquisitions. It's a really great book, but in it, he talks about how at Disney when they're stuck in like the throws of, you know, a story, you know, isn't working, when they start throwing ideas at the wall, they start saying, okay, well, wouldn't it be cool if this thing happened? And so it kind of leaves things open-ended and it takes the pressure off. And so I really like, I had this download where I was like, okay, I know I want to write a book and I already knew, because at that point I'd had two book concepts already and spoiler alert, I have like seven and I'm starting my next one this summer after this manuscript is done. So long-term, kind of knew like, yeah, I hadn't written a book yet, but like I had a pretty good feeling.

16:05

This my career is going. This is where my work is headed.

16:08

Everything else that you see is pretty much a really smart business plan so that I can be an author. Like that's all that really is. And so I just one day I was like, OK, I know this content works. Sometimes when I was feeling really lazy or I just like couldn't write something fresh, I would kind of… I would feel like I was cheating and I would just go back and be like, okay, well this one performed well last quarter. Let's just like throw it in cause I don't have my brain can't write another one. And so I'd already kind of done these micro experiments. And then I listened to Susan's podcast, part of it before this. And quite literally it was like a Wednesday night. I'd have some weird, I had some weird surge of energy where I was like, okay, well if we're going to do it, like you just, you know, I'm a person that's like, you go big or you go home. Like you've got to put all your, energy into to the thing to really test and see if it works. So I'm a, you know, to my detriment, sometimes it works out. Sometimes it makes the failures a little bit more jarring, but it was a Wednesday night, 8 p.m. I think I'd had like a glass of wine and I was like, let's just see what happens. Like what's here? And so for the next five hours, I think I ended at one or two a.m. I just went back through every piece of Instagram content I'd made, every email, every LinkedIn post. And I just started putting things in this doc to have my VA just like literally start from the top, go down, you know, three times, four times, five times a week until we get to the bottom of the doc. And I was like, I think I can do this for six months. Like, let's just see if I really need to bow out. Like I know 90 days is a good marker, but let's just see what happens. And so did that exercise. And what I found was we were getting more engagement. We were getting more people on our email list and also sales. And so what I found interesting, it ended up being again, 83 pages of just like, I don't even know how many words are in that thing, but just kind of our best content that I'd been writing. And then from there, that really informed kind of what went through the next cycle. So that was a process I ended up doing. I went six months through the first version. And then I got to the end and I was like, I kind of know this works. So can we just run it back? Like, can we do it for another six months?

18:33

Just play the greatest hits again for six months

18:37

Exactly. So again, it was just, it was kind of from a like mental bandwidth perspective where I was like, okay, not that I don't love writing content, but at the time for some perspective, I was only copywriting for clients. So I mean, I was cranking out probably like half a book or more of content for clients every month. And I wasn't using any AI. So I had a shitload of content for myself and also for my clients. And I was like, something creatively has got to give if I'm going to also write a blog.

19:11

Because the well can run dry. And it's really easy to give clients are best writing energy and not like save it for ourselves one… Yeah, say what you're gonna say. Sorry

19:25

I was gonna say like it's the thing I think for all creatives like we don't want to believe that and I as a creative maybe this is ego I was like, well, I'm a creative person. So like I should have this abundant well of…

19:39

Unlimited

13:40

Yeah I can tap into yeah, it's unlimited and for me as well. I was not… I am recently diagnosed ADHD, which I didn't know at the time, but I just would always get this inspiration randomly. And so I'd be like, I don't know when it's going to happen, but when it does, I'm… telling me you have ADHD without telling me you have ADHD, like sitting from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m., you know…

20:05

But you know you've got to ride that wave

20:07

That you've got to ride it. And that's that's always been how I've worked in these like extreme sprints. And so I'm trying to capitalize on it. But what I realized is like, I'm still a human life freaking happens, right? It's something we can't predict. And so what ended up happening a lot of the time too, was having that system in place. Like I had some like more depressive episodes that that actually really helped me not have to worry about. I'd had like a death in the family that was, you know, we had to travel for and everything. And so…

20:43

But the sales system still running in the background.

20:45

It's still running. even like I did have to take a week off, like it's it's the thing that creates like mental margin as well. So it's all the benefits of like the sales perspective. But it's also it looks like you're you know, if this were a brick and mortar, it looks like the lights are still on even if you're technically, you know, out of the state at a funeral or whatever else. Like it's that kind of thing that again, leverage in like many different forms that is possible with really quality storytelling and as long as it's selling.

21:18

So I have a couple of follow up questions, right? Because I know that there will be people who listen to our conversation and wonder, okay, as Kendall was going back through this archive and maybe you had a silo in Kit or whichever email service provider, email marketing platform you use. LinkedIn, Instagram… How were you deciding, oh yes, that  post deserves to be in the Google doc. But the other three that I just looked at, no, those are not quality enough. Can you think of any criteria that you used? Now I know you said, oh, some of them produced leads. Were you just relying on your memory? Were you tracking? Like how did you decide which pieces belonged in this repository?

22:14

Yeah. So I did a couple of things like more tactical. And then there was like when I was in the doc, once I'd kind of seen what was working, that was a little bit more like based on a feeling. So the very first thing that I did was I had  recently gotten onto LinkedIn probably, you know, a year and a half before, but a lot of my content had actually come from Instagram where it was recycled Instagram content that I put on LinkedIn, and then I did that. So what I did is for both Instagram and LinkedIn, I would just look and run the metrics of what is LinkedIn saying has the most engagement. Like literally going back and saying, okay, for the last 90 days, what were my highest performing posts? Those, as long as it was still like selling the thing that I wanted to be doing or had a quick change of like with the service I was offering, that was an automatic ad. So like let the tools that have these metrics, these very powerful ways of telling you what's working, like use those first. Then I would go and in my email provider, what I do is if someone replies to an email of mine, even if they didn't buy anything, but like if there's any kind of reply, they bought something or they just like genuinely like the content. If I get a reply, that gets moved to, I have like a love notes folder. But I can see what the original email content was. That concept also…

23:40

That's another signal, hey, this is working because it's starting conversation.

23:46

Exactly.

22:47

And or generating real leads.

22:49

Yes, exactly. And so I would do that and then I would also, basically then when I had that going on, then I would, mean, literally at five hours of just like, load more, load more, load more on LinkedIn, just like really going back. But what I made sure to do first, I just needed the qualitative data kind of in my psyche and the background running so I could kind of see what I was going for. So I think I read through the last four or five inquiry forms that I got with really great fit clients. So I'd kind of have that just floating around. Like, would Carrie have thought this post… like would this have contributed to what Carrie put in her in her inquiry form or whoever it was. So I used like real people and even if they didn't have an inquiry form and I couldn't read it, I would have like my top again, handful of clients across my business. Like if you had multiple offers, you would just pick like your top couple of clients. So they are at least top of mind. And then that would really be the litmus test that I would use going backwards for me. And especially this last time I went through it because I had… All of my content was selling copywriting and now I was doing strategy. The thing here is most of the content was still usable. I just needed to change the little CTA at the bottom about what it was I was offering.

25:17

I was thinking about that earlier because like one of the things that one of the criteria that you gave that makes quality content good is longevity. And I was thinking, you know, like stories don't expire. And if you are basing a lot of your content on your stories, well, the story is normally like, I don't know, 80% of a post. And so you can reuse a story if you told it well the first time, you just swap out the hook maybe. And then you swap out the CTA to kind of update that story to be more relevant to whatever you want to sell now. But I have one other more tactical question and then believe it or not, we're going to get into the meat of the interview. We're going to start the interview people. You mentioned that you have a Monday sales email and then you have your Wallflower newsletter on Friday. How do you differentiate between a sales email and a newsletter?

26:27

So for me, a Monday sales email, fun fact, if you've got your content working, if you've got a story for LinkedIn, that can be a sales email. It's a one to one,  truly. um But so a sales email to me is less, I'm less likely to get into the high level ether, talk about my personal life or whatever else. It's a lot more like  traditional sales content. Like I know you're struggling with XYZ pain point. Here's why a lot of my clients hire me, bullet one, bullet two, bullet three. So it's a lot more traditional in nature. What's interesting, when I first started adding that email, I at first thought I was being too salesy or too in my face, or in people's faces. What I found is people actually really appreciated the example of this is what selling can look like. And for me, I'll say for anyone who's listening who is I'll say like of the design type or especially writers, your writing is your product. So the best way for you to show people what you can do is to treat the writing in your own business as like you had a shopfront and these are the mannequins and you're showing people what…

27:42

These are goods.

27:43

These are the goods. So this is what I tell all the people in my Greenhouse Writing Accelerator is like, it's really important that we get your quote unquote portfolio up and running, but your portfolio is really your own marketing content, your own storage and assets. And so that's kind of how I treated the sales email. But then also it's not just displaying the product. It's also doing a lot of that more psychological work on whatever it is. And then the Wallflower Friday's email is like subliminal selling on like ninja mode where I might talk about… trying to think of an example of one, like I might talk about, I'm trying to think.  I did one once, a lot of times I like go watch a movie or something. And so like one time I went to go see, that it was called like fly me to the moon with Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson. It was where they like tricked the space. It's like an Apple TV movie and I went to go see it and they're talking about sales in it. And so I was technically just like giving people my review of this movie, but I would also subtly add in these things where I'm like, and this is, you know, this is similar to the work that I do with my clients. And I would link to my services guide.

29:01

Like a soft mention. It’s not buy now!

29:06

No and that's the thing is people, people actually appreciate that level of visibility on your offers, even if they're not ready for it. The other thing is when we're doing that, like you could have a really cool off the wall newsletter topic. So I've written some like crazy stuff on mine. What's interesting is when you start doing that, if you have like a one-liner or even like a half sentence that you link to, maybe a services guide or something else, you get the data on who clicked on that thing. It's a whole segment. So what I'm doing on my Wallflower Friday is like, yes, I love having fun. I love having like, you know, Wallflower Fridays that make people cry. That's my favorite thing ever. You better believe that evening, I am sitting in Kit and I'm looking and saying, oh, Joanne, hello. I saw you clicked on this.

29:59

I see you now, Joanne. You cannot escape.

30:03

And what's interesting is on LinkedIn and places like this, you don't have that kind of visibility. But on email, I have literally been able to track and been like, oh, there's Kelly… saw her last week, Kelly, where are you? And then boom, Kelly, new inquiry in my inbox. Like you can pretty much track over the weeks. And so that for me, if it ever, it's more of like a mindset thing, but it's really hard sometimes on social media. You feel like you're screaming into the wind and you're like, is this even working? This is why I prefer email for many reasons. I'm also a long form writer. So email for me, I love not having a cap on characters, but email is also one of the places you can get earlier insights into  who's clicking. Are people even clicking that you just can't get on social media.

30:54

Yeah, they're signaling a certain interest and maybe even readiness. And last question down that line. Are you sending the newsletter and the Monday sales email to your entire list or are you sending the sales email just to the segment that have clicked on a link to your services guide?

31:19

This year will be the first year where I start doing a little bit more segmentation because we have our like more consulting side of the house and education side of the house. But for the last five years, I just sent it to everybody.

31:33

Simple. That's refreshing.

31:34

Here's my thing, hot take again. The whole like trying to gamify the newsletters and like how do we micro growth hack this thing. It's so laced in scarcity that it ends up… like there is no perfect way to do it. And all you're doing is you're like condensing down like what feels authentic to people and people can feel that. Like whether you're… like you realize it or not, people can feel if you're like white knuckling. So the more open that we are and the more we're just kind of like putting good things out there, I truly believe like that allows good things to come back to you. And again, people can kind of feel that like tenseness under the radar. And so yeah, I, and even now, like I will probably not start segmenting until maybe Q4 and I may still decide not to do that. Cause I have, my offers have a lot of nuance. It kind of depends on where someone is. So I'd much rather have someone just fill out an inquiry forum, tell me kind of what's going on. And then I can just recommend them, you know, one, one of the many offers in my bag of tricks, but that's kind of my preferred way to sell and having people buy in at the high level of what I do.

32:55

Sometimes you will use the word funnel and you already talked about the middle of funnel earlier. Do you, and I think maybe in a past conversation, you also use the word ecosystem. We could use both, but can you map out for me what a post might look like at the top of funnel stage versus or piece of content, top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel? Like how do you, how are those different?

33:28

Yeah. So when I think about top of the funnel content, and if someone's listening and they're like, I don't know what a funnel is, basically it's a sales concept that you have an audience of people and they're at different levels of their buyer's journey. So top of the funnel means they're like very, very new. They're kind of still getting an idea of your kind of who you are, what you're about. Middle of the funnel is where most of the sales psychology happens. So this is where if you've ever heard that you need to manage objections or you need to communicate your value or your different cheaters, this is very much middle of the con of the funnel content. If you're trying to establish yourself as a category of one and, you know, maybe be seen as like kind of a, like very specialized, whatever it is that you do or whatever your flavor is, this transformation and kind of audience buy-in really happens at middle of the funnel. And then bottom of the funnel is like the most quote unquote salesy that you can get and is very much, where we need a lot more clarity as far as like what your services look like in practice. What do they actually look like? What's the transformation? So that's just like a, if you're super new or you're not quite sure you don't use a lot of like funnel speak, that's like at a high level top versus middle versus bottom. So top of the funnel, this is somebody that's like probably new to your audience or they're like not really sure. A lot of times I think of this as someone who like doesn't really know that they have a problem yet, or sometimes it's, I think this is the problem, but there's actually a different thing going on. So top of the funnel is really about establishing yourself as an expert and getting someone to see if they're… almost like if their vibe matches yours for like lack of better word. So when I think about top of the funnel content that works really well, this is where you want to have your origin story. And this could be in any form. This could be, why you started your business, really great origin stories that are like a lot of people don't think about. Why did you start the specific offer that you did? Did you have a client that had something happen? Like talk about the things that are important to you and the origin of like why they started, why you do your podcasts. Like Austin, for you, it could be like, why, why did you decide to start the summit, for example, that's like a really great origin story. So that's considered top of the funnel. And then the other one that I usually will mention is your values. So a lot of people, when I hear people are like, I read a lot of really bad content on the internet. So a lot of people are like, Oh, I need to talk about my values. And so they create this post with like my five values, and it's super boring and no one cares.  So what I prefer and what I don't think most people realize is when we're communicating our values, we're basically sending out a signal to people of like, this is what's most important to me. And your future clients and customers likely have the same values. So when we talk about them, we're kind of saying like, oh, we're on the same page. Someone who values speed is a lot different than someone who values quality. So when we use one of those,  and some people need the speed and some people need the quality. So when we use values, a lot of people are like, I really value integrity. I'm like, okay, tell me a story about what that means. Like did something happen in your business? Did something happen in your personal life?

37:04

Did you made a mistake and you had to make it right, even though it hurt? Show me, don't tell me.

37:10

Exactly. And so this is very much, when I think about top of the funnel, that's what that piece is there to do. Now, when we get to middle of the funnel, this is really where we're talking about a lot of just the other pieces and that sales psychology of what's going on. This is where we're gonna have stories that are about our unique value proposition or UVP, about our differentiators, and this is also gonna be where we talk about pain points and solutions for our clients or customers. And there's a lot of different ways that this can work. One of the ways, and I'll be sending out once you are listening to this, it will be available for you, but I'll actually pull together a visual so you can really see this if you're a visual person and I'll show examples of what I'm about to walk through. So I'm going to verbally do it. But again, if you're a visual person or you would like some examples, you will also have access to that in a little playbook I'm making for the summit. But there's two types of content that work really well from middle of the funnel. The first is something that I call a lead qualifying listicle. Basically, it's like an example would be like “14 ways your copy is doing more with less.” So it's just a numbered list, but it's 14 reasons of either like what makes you different or what's valuable about your services. Or it can be a list of different pain points that your clients experience or it can be the lessons learned of like something you've learned in business. And these are really great. It's very simple to write. It's if you're an AI type of person, it's like great to have a first draft from AI and then you go in and like really spruce it up. Personalize it. Use your client's words more so, but it's like, it's one of those, I'm not a huge fan of AI, but if you need it for volume, like this is a really great post to do it with.

39:08

But what a lead qualifying listicle is doing, it is literally lead qualifying anyone that is reading it. And what it actually does when you put it on LinkedIn, you'll notice that people will actually comment because you know, we're all looking for something to engage with and some very low barrier entry point for someone to engage with. So a lot of times when you post a list like this, people will say, Oh my God, I'm such a number seven. And that does two things for you. First off, a lot of people don't like to comment because I don't…

39:41

I am a lead. That's what they said.

39:43

Exactly. Exactly. Oh shit. And now I've entered a sales process. So people are very conservative. What it does is they're technically raising their hand. I am not a cold DM person. So I just, I like to get the notes that are like, okay, this post is working. What it also does is it tells you, and it allows you to and rapidly micro test your messaging to see what's resonating the most. So it's not uncommon if you send a lead qualifying listicle, there will usually be like one or two bullets that are like very, very popular. And that signals to you like, man, I should probably write more content to that angle or an email or whatever else. So that's the lead qualifying listicle. It works really well with like pain points, successful outcomes, lessons learned. And then there is another type of content where we're doing a lot more of our storytelling in a way that allows us to, I'm trying to think of what, the second one was and I'm losing my train of thought. my gosh.

40:51

It's a specific type of story. And is it a story that

41:00

I think it's just one. I'm thinking of a different word.

41:04

We can come back to that.

41:06

Yeah, we can. It's fine. The other story when it comes to like your UVP or, oh, I know what it is. There are two. There are two. The second one. I was like, oh my God, I had it. The second one is a day in the life. So when we're writing a day in the life, it's literally you putting yourself in your client or customer's shoes. And you're either choosing the lens of the pain point version or the future successful version. What you're doing is you're walking someone through just like either the worst day in their life of like what's actually going wrong or in a really good day, what are the things that they want? And so it allows someone, it's a couple of things, especially with the pain points angle. A lot of times I think with pattern recognition or really understanding what's not working. A lot of times people don't actually even understand the root cause. So they either don't have language for it. I see this a lot in coaches and consulting especially. Your clients don't understand what's even wrong. They don't have the words to even explain the problem. So they don't see it because they just have no way to understand it. So when we do day in the life, especially with pain points, but it also works with solutions or successful outcomes, that actually gives someone the pattern recognition of like, Oh my God, I'm actually exactly what Kendall was talking about. So you give someone, first off validating their experience. They're not crazy. They're not alone. And also it does this really magical thing where you actually give someone, especially with pain points, of a moment of hope. Like they can see that there is a different reality that's possible for them and also it's at least repeatable of a problem enough to where you're talking about it at scale, which does a lot for helping someone feel safe and like they're like again not really alone. What I also love about this kind of day in the life content is it allows someone if they're deeply like in it, it allows them to see what's possible and then they take that story that you shared and when they're not online or they're doing their other thing where they're not right in front of your content, they will then recognize when that thing happens that you just told them about. So it's the best way to create kind of like, this moment of like, oh my God, Kendall was right and it just happened. And so you're validating what you're saying again. And so they kind of keep returning to that loop. so it's another way, again, when I think about leverage, you're selling psychologically when you're not even there. And it's because you've done a great job of telling a story to someone so they understand what they're missing or what they could have. And then that becomes the thing that kind of repeats over and over again.

44:07

They can then self-diagnose because you gave them a story and language to better understand their own situation. You sort of alluded to something that I just want to like point out explicitly and that is our clients have a lot of problems and some of those problems are painful and expensive enough that they will pay money to make them go away, and other problems they have are not painful and expensive enough and so what you were talking about with like testing and putting out some day in the life of posts is actually trying to identify which problems you ought to write about more often because those are the problems that clients are motivated to solve. I've seen freelancers write, like we're told, hey, you ought to write about the problems that your clients have. And we take that to heart and we go do it. Unfortunately, if the client has 11 problems, we may end up writing most often about the seven that are least important. So I like your way of thinking. I want to shift gears just a little bit. You're adamant about sharing a case study every two weeks. Where are the case studies fit into this whole ecosystem that we're talking about?

45:40

This is bottom of the funnel content. Case studies are bottom of the funnel and they are, in my opinion, they need to be going out on social media every two weeks, on email at least once a month. Client case studies, I call them money making testimonials. When we are telling a story about a client that we have, it's doing several things. First off, it's again, that pattern recognition of like, oh, well, Stacey had this problem and Kendall solved it in this way. And I like the way that Kendall solved that problem. So a lot of what we do, especially the like, you know, how the sausage is made or what's actually happened behind the scenes and coaching services, consulting services, how you,  any kind of creative work, a lot of that work actually takes place offline, but people have a lot of reservations, especially now, in this trust recession that we're in. People have lot of reservations about investing and they want to do their research more before they're willing to shell out money to solve a problem. So a money making testimonial or a case study is one of the best ways to paint a picture of how your brain solves that problem. Because I think people think, again, if we're trying to establish ourselves as a category of one, your brain is the thing that makes it like individualize and kind of you're the only person that does it the way that you do. And so when we write case studies like this, you're basically giving someone all of the information they need to see if they even like your process. Like there's nothing worse than closing a client and they're not down with your process and your process doesn't really work for them. Like it's just like a mismatch. But when we don't communicate what that is, we get a lot of people are like, oh, they're a red flag client. I'm like, no, you have mismatched approaches of what, like how you want to solve the problem. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's enough work out here for everyone, but not everyone is going to be a good fit for how you work. And same for like what your clients need to be able to work. So this case study, first off really allows you to share that middle of the process that, you know, a lot of times we don't actually see, which people really, especially now, they really wanna understand what that is. And the other thing is it shows people what's most important to you when you're working with your clients. Especially, and you'll see several examples of this in the playbook that I'm sending over, you'll notice there's a section at the bottom that's bullet points of after working together, Charlie and Leah, created dot dot dot and it's bullet points of the different wins. Something I hear over and over and over again. Tell me if you've ever heard someone say… I can't write a client case study because I don't know what transformation my client had or for example if it's a website client. I can't write a case study about this client because I don't know how much money they made from their website project. Or I can't track it so I can't write about it and the truth is you may not know the dollar amount, but just because you don't have the quantitative data doesn't mean you can't talk about the qualitative data. And there's a lot of qualitative transformation that's also equally important. And there's a lot of different ways you can show people different wins that aren't just, we made this amount of money or like we cut costs by X amount. Like there's a lot of other things that you can draw attention to that people really care about that also highlights the way that you approach your work. And so these case studies, the reason they need to be there every two weeks, at least on social media or once a month in email, this is the kind of, bottom of the funnel content that we're cycling through every day or every bit of the cycle in the system so that people really feel confident about who you are. And it also, you know, it proves you have business. It proves your philosophy. When I think about putting it all together, you know, the every two weeks thing, spoiler alert, there will be a visual about this in the playbook. For social media for example, if you only want to post three times a week, Monday is your top of the funnel story. Tuesday is your middle of the funnel story. Thursday is your bottom of the funnel story. Run it back the following Monday. And so you just switch between, you know, maybe it's origin story pain point case study. And then maybe it's, you know, values, solutions, case study, and you just run that back because your content is just a funnel. It's not, it should not feel random because what tends to happen, everyone loves to post the photo of themselves or like, I'm not making this up. I have seen someone's puppy dogs paws in the snow telling me about what their dog's feet in the snow taught them about B2B sales. That's not what we're here to do. That's not the vibe. That's not what we're wanting. So a lot of people find top of the funnel content, the easiest, and then wonder why their content isn't converting because it's not getting into any of the meat and potatoes, middle of the funnel or bottom of the funnel of what it is that you actually do and what you have to sell. And so that's the thing for me is like top of the funnel is easy. Top of the funnel is like, you know, you could have an origin story about God knows what. And like, if you don't connect it back to your offer, what are we doing here? Like what, what objective is this solving? So that for me is the way that I've always kind of thought about content is like, how can we make this a funnel? How can we make this repeatable and easier to content plan too, to be honest.

51:47

Yeah. I mean, so much easier to content plan and you actually went ahead without knowing it and addressed an objection I hear a lot. People think they don't have time to write case studies when the fact is a lot of people are writing a lot of net new content instead of repurposing content. And if you reuse a lot of your old content, then anytime you sit down to write something new, it could be like middle and bottom of funnel stuff. And if you have a pretty clear content roadmap because you're like recycling even the same categories or the same sequence, you're just like making a decision once and then it's like made however many times in the future as well, and you free up all that bandwidth to be more strategic and like every aspect of business. I do want to talk about how you connect up this content ecosystem and sales. Like normally we think about content as being strictly in the marketing circus tent. And then at some point we're like, okay, time to transition. And now I need to book a discovery call. I don't think you do that all the time. In fact, I think that's maybe less usual for you than just maybe saying, okay, are you ready to start? Like, how do you, when do you get people's money? I don't mean to be crass, but like, when does someone give you money? What happens?

53:31

Yeah. So what I have in my ecosystem, I have a services guide as a lead magnet. So as a freelancer, this is something I've had in my business when I had 200 email subscribers and was still making like 150K a year. And a services guide, I think a lot of services people really struggle with. Okay. I understand email marketing. I know it's valuable. I get it. What kind of lead magnet do I have? And so you kind of recreate the same shitty lead magnets that we've all seen that no one wants and die and…

54:07

It's not working for them. Maybe I ought to do it too.

54:11

It's just the kind of thing that does two things. It's like, it probably went to die in someone's downloads folder. And if they did grab it, it's somebody that is what I call a DIY or never buyer who's never going to hire you anyway, which is not what we want. We want people who are going to pay us for like our gifts and talents that we're here to offer the world. And so I started creating a services guide. And if you're curious, you can see mine. It's at https://kendallcherry.com/services-guide and like use it. I tell people I've, you know, even people on my email list are like, I don't.. Like I know it works, but I don't want to use it. I'm like, steal my process, steal the slides, use the same design. Please. I know it works. But what it is, is it's instead of having to, you know, have everything on my website, it's just how I gate keep my pricing as a service provider. That's the first people thing people want to know how much is like, give me a ballpark here. Are we talking? This is $500. This is $20,000. Like what, what ballpark are we in? And so, on my homepage and on my website, that services guide is the CTA button. So  it's not, you know, fill out an inquiry form. It's get the services guide and it does a couple of things. I get an email that tells me that Patricia just downloaded my services guide. I know that yeah. I'm like, okay, that's working. And, oh look, and I've had this happen 10 days after someone got on my services guide and they downloaded it. They closed out like 81K, from an email welcome sequence and a thing like, this was someone brand new to my audience. I think we'd been on LinkedIn together, like maybe two weeks, probably less. It's like it freaking works. I have many stories like this. And so the services guide is really, it's a couple of things. It's here's my offers. Here's what they cost. It's FAQs, which spoiler alert, those are just selling you and managing objections. And it's also,  it's also for me, especially when I was copywriting, there's a couple of things about my process that I am like kind of a stickler about. It like, one of the things I would call out is like my writing non-negotiables. And it was like, you know, I run a lean revisions process, AKA don't slack me. You're only going to get me over email. And I don't do the back and forth thing. Like it's just, this is a boundary that I have and  you actually get a chance to talk about that upfront and people kind of know what they're getting into beforehand. But so the services guide is really like my lead magnet. It's what allows me to grow my list of actual like leads, not just like randos and also not DIY or never buyers who want my free stuff and are never going to hire me to actually like help them fix their problem. So that's  what people look at and then spoiler alert when they are now on my email list and they click on my services guide again on a Monday or a Friday, I can see like, oh, hey, Patricia, fancy seeing you here again. And so then in the services guide, the buttons are all to my inquiry form. And that's where people will click, they'll fill it out. And my inquiry form, again, please. Go to https://kendallcherry.com/contact, steal the questions. The questions are written in a way where it is, I can assess in about 10 seconds. If that person is a good fit or not? And this is possible for like any kind of business. It also allows me to make a recommendation to someone based on what their answers are. So I don't need to get on a sales call with someone because my questions are answering what I would ask about in the first 20 minutes of a sales call anyway. So I don't need to do that. One of the big ahas that my writers in the Greenhouse had this year and they experienced it in real time. They're like, Kendall, I was on a sales call for an hour because I didn't give them an inquiry form. And then my next one, like it was like 15 minutes because I got all of the information I needed beforehand. So part of it is just like efficiency there. Again, steal the questions. It works. It's there and it's open for a reason. So then when I get that inquiry form, I can already tell if it's a yes/no. And I can also make an assumption once I kind of look at their sales ecosystem, what's missing. I can send a proposal immediately. I do not have to get on a phone call with someone. So if I get an inquiry form, I'm hitting reply within like an hour or two. An hour or two. Body of an email, if you are somebody that is making a proposal and a pretty Canva deck, what are you doing? That is unpaid work.

59:16

Do you even like it? I always hated it. I did it and I hated it

59:21

The other thing is it's a behavior. It's, oh fuck, now I've got to open the attachment. It's one more thing versus put it in the body of an email. I say this literally, scope, bullet, bullet, bullet, bullet point, scope. This is the project timeline. This is the compensation includes your payment options. Let me know what you think and which payment option you'd like to do. I get an email back two, three hours later, boom, send the contract, invoice. We're done. We're booked.

59:53

Hmm. I mean, that sounds like a dream because, then it also, like if they do have questions or whatever, my hunch is you're not going to be like, no, you can never talk to me, but it's going to be a 15 minute call. But what were you going to say?

01:00:11

Well, what I was going to say is something I started doing is I just include a video walkthrough. So I record a loom video of the proposal and I make an assessment of like, hey, here's what's actually going on. Especially if someone like I've had people be like, oh, I really need a new email welcome sequence. And I'm like, yo, your messaging is not it. So like, that's not going to work. We're going to need to do this other thing. So if you need to sell someone on something else, just record a video walkthrough of the specific proposal that you've prepared, what you've noticed, recall things that they've talked about in their inquiry form and walk them through the proposal and why is that way. I cannot tell you the number of people who have said, thank you for not making me get on another random call in the middle of the day.

01:00:56

They don't necessarily love it either.

01:01:00

They're like, I don't want to have to wait for that. want it. I want to be able to look at this async. I don't want to feel pressured to make a decision on the call. I want to feel really informed. And what it does is… and I've had people who are like, Whoa, you're going to give me all this for free. I'm like, this is, you know, it's in my book, but it's the golden rule of selling. I'm not going to sell you something that you don't need. And I don't like when people do that to me. So what I'm going to do, even if you don't hire me, I cannot in good conscience just like send you on your way or upsell you because I want to make a bunch of money off of you. And I have had unfortunately a lot of my minority business owner clients who is a huge part of my roster, I'd say like 95% over the years. They, unfortunately, this has happened with women, especially they've gotten targeted by the sales bros on LinkedIn and been kind of bamboozled for overselling and stuff. I'm of the belief, I'm an expert and even if someone doesn't have the funds to hire me right now or they need to come back or maybe they want someone at a different price point, I'm still gonna tell someone what the root cause is because a lot of times I'm an expert, it doesn't take me that much bandwidth to…

01:02:18

You still have the positioning in their minds. You can still get referrals from people who don't hire you after you've won their trust. I have one last question for you before we close. This has been amazing, but I know, I know that people are going to be thinking this. My content isn't good enough to recycle. That's what a lot of folks are going to think. Do you think that's actually true or is it fear and what advice would you give them?

01:02:56

Oh, OK. Well, it's kind of two things. It would depend like what are what's the starting point? Are we talking about a slop that's like not super clear? Like, yeah, that's not probably going to be super repurposable. I would say again, kind of go back through if you've had comments is a really great way like if you've had any kind of qualitative data come up from it. That's a good marker. But if you're not sure, I think one of the best things again is kind of put someone through a test would XYZ client of mine, would they have responded to this piece of content? And then I think if you do need to make any kinds of adjustments, like this is kind of what happened to me when I did my really big excavation process. There were some that were clearly like, isn't the same thing. It's more of like an intuitive feeling, but they're the content that's really good or that's fixable. will almost like sparkle. And then the other stuff is just kind of, it feels dead. It doesn't like when you're in your best, when you're in your best sales energy, you can feel it and you can feel it. Other people can feel it. And  it's honestly why I would recommend if you're going to do the exercise, do the exercise in like one big jump because it becomes when you do it in one big sitting, it actually becomes really easy to say, okay, well, this one I know I like. So this is the, like the litmus. This is the beacon that we're kind of trying to work to. If it doesn't feel like it matches that the next question is, okay, is it totally shot? Is it, are there parts that kind of feel like this again, bottled up great sales energy or do I need like a full rewrite or do you know, kill my darling, but  would I be better off, you know, letting this one go? And I think the thing here, like when I did it, I'm a content writer by trade. So naturally I'm going to have a little bit more content in my background. So I don't want hearing me say, yeah, I had six months of content. Like let's level set. Like you can do 90 days. If you do 90 days, three posts a week, that's 36 posts. If you're going to post three times a week for 12 weeks. Of those, six of them can be client case studies. One other thing I'm including in the playbook is the exact questionnaire that I ask my own clients when I write money making testimonials. I'm going to give you the questionnaire so you can actually sit down, go to a coffee shop, you know, get a nice little drink, take yourself out, sit down and like write about each client that you want to write a case study about. And then you can easily, oh there'll be kind of a walkthrough video of how to write a money-making testimonial, but you can actually take that training and write it for yourself or at least see the bones of it and get that situated. So you have, you know, there's six right there. qualifying listicles. You can write those, I mean, at least once a week, I would say, like you could probably do those. That's 12. So that's 18. We're halfway there. And then you probably have some other stuff laying around too. So not that, you know, it would be great to have six months, but like start with 90 days. It's only 36 posts and you probably have among that at least something that you can repurpose or I'm going to give you exactly how to write lead qualifying list goals. Super easy. And then the money making testimonials as well in a case study format. They're very, very, very, very stupidly formulaic. When I walk you through how to do it, you're going to be like, what have I been doing? It is, it is so simple, but that's the thing is I think there's going to be a lot of  potential to like kind of freeze or feel like, you know, Oh my God, it's, it's so much work to do. Start with the ones that are going to be the easiest to write, probably lead qualifying listicles. People who do that… I've heard people say like, Oh my gosh, I tried to do the money making testimonial, but then when I saw you teach it, I do it in like chunks. And so you can literally work alongside me, watch the video, write the first section, click pause, do your thing, then do the next section. Like if you, if you need a little bit more like existential support, like use the video as a resource, but it's really, it's the kind of thing where you have, there is like a little bit of a practice to it, but a lot of what you're looking for it for your content is it's living in the qualitative data of your comments section, your email replies, your past inquiry forms, even like go back through client messages. Spoiler alert, if you're using Otter on client calls, you have, or like AI for transcriptions, you have access to the qualitative data. So that's my thing is like there is no shortage of places to look. It's more about allowing yourself to just experiment and see. Like even if it doesn't totally pop off, it's gonna probably be better than what you're doing currently. It's still experimental, but it's gotta be better than the current approach.

01:08:26

As soon as you use that word sparkle. I'm like, I think we know. And for me, it's when I let more of my personality come in.

01:08:37

Yeah, you're funny. You need to be doing that more. You're very funny.

01:08:40

I appreciate that. When we sit down to write what we think of as a good post, we will end up coming out kind of stiff, stilted. And I think sometimes there are certain days where I let my hair down, you know, put on my mullet wig and make it happen and it sparkles.

01:09:03

What's so interesting. It's funny to me that yours is humor. I find that mine is like if I'm like deep in my emo feels and I'm like, I mean, I'll literally when I'm writing something, I'm like, I'm gonna make them cry today. That is the stuff for me where people are like, I was reading the thing and like all of a sudden just something you said hit me and I'm like, sometimes I do it on purpose and then sometimes I'm like, huh. Nice.

01:09:27

But we're writing for emotion and I think so much of the content is lifeless. It has no emotion in it. We didn't have an emotional connection to it while we were writing it. So later, just think sparkles is such a good rule of thumb.

01:09:44

Sales sparkle.

01:09:45

Sales sparkle. Last question. Okay. If a freelancer or consultant or fractional or agency founder walks away from this conversation and they only change one thing about how they think about content or about selling, doesn't even have to be something they need to do yet, just how they think about it… what do you think that one shift should be?

01:10:14

I think the thing here is there there is a subconscious connection to storytelling and sales that is actually about self-worth, especially if you're an individual freelancer or service provider. So a lot of times what I see in my body of work  is people will at a certain point, they're like, yeah, I can sell anything, whatever. And there becomes a moment, and we all do this, where your zone of genius, the thing you're like, you're so good at, like, you can do it in five seconds, it feels like breathing. You don't think about it. It's probably also linked to stuff that you were into as a child. And like just, it's just the way that you are. It's like the most natural expression of who you are. There will come a time when you will be forced to have to sell that version and that natural, just like again, sparkle, you will have to sell it and it's going to feel weird. It's going to feel very vulnerable. And to me, the other like deeper part of what this is, the question really becomes, do I believe that my gifts and talents are worthy of making money? Am I worthy and deserving that these gifts and talents that I've naturally possessed and honed or like I'm just interested in them at all times, the things that naturally light you up, are you worthy and deserving to accept money, wealth, abundance on that behalf? That's the work here. When I think about sales, it's really about self-worth. It's quite literally, do you find what lights you up valuable and are you comfortable and confident enough to express that value to other people? And it's really just about a value exchange. So that's what I would say is like the deeper part of the work that… the book that I'm writing, it's called Here to Sell, that book  is all of the things we've talked about here, it's busting myths. It's all of these frameworks we've talked about. It's talking about sales cycles, but the layer underneath it is this kind of self-worth demons or those questions we ask. What it, can I possibly bank money doing the thing that I love? Like for me, this was a huge part, like writing a book… I grew up in a society that, you know, is we have the starving artists narrative in there. It's like, if you're going to be a writer, you're penniless. You're suffering for your art. There's no way, but I believe that in the time we live in, there is a more empowered answer for artists, for individual service providers that you can make money doing what you love and it can help a lot of people in the process. So that to me is kind of the deeper side of kind of what's going on here. It's not just about like, let me make my money, but it's like, let me make money doing what I love and let me sell in a way that actually feels good while I'm doing it. And your stories, those are kind of the unlock of it all. That's the magic. The magic is you. So your stories are the thing that are gonna make that possible.

01:13:22

Beautiful. Thank you so much for this conversation and I cannot wait for people to go through the playbook. I'll make sure.

01:13:31

You're gonna love it.

01:13:33

I'll make sure those links are easy to access and thank you again, Kendall. I really appreciate you.

01:13:43

Of course. I’ll see y'all soon.

01:13:46

Hey, before you go, let me invite you to join our community for more established advanced freelancers. It's called the freelance cake community. One member named Michelle had this to say, I'm just so impressed by the quality of the conversation that's happening in the group. The in-depth questions, experiments and thoughts being shared are just so refreshing. And the other communities I'm a part of, it's all beginner questions, which is fine, but it's awesome to find a more advanced space where it's okay to ask more advanced questions. Thank you, Michelle. Here's a little more about the community. Each week we do live group coaching and live coworking. You get access to a massive resource library and obviously the community itself, which we host using Circle. Of course, the people are the best part of all this. It really helps to surround yourself. with smart, accomplished, and optimistic people who are out there taking risks and building the businesses they really want. If that interests you, visit freelancecake.com forward slash community to learn more and apply. You can find that link in the show notes. I hope to see you there.