Episode Transcript
Adam O'Leary (00:01.418)
If you're business owner struggling to make a genuine connection with your audience that leads to sales without failing salesy, then our guest, Kendall Cherry is about to give you a simple win you can implement today. Kendall Cherry is the founder and executive ghostwriter at the Candid Collective, a content ghostwriting studio that delivers world-class storytelling that sells your products and services. Her stories have supported a hundred million dollar startups.
Email Empires with 750,000 subscribers and Thought Leaders with 7 million followers. Kendall, a big welcome to the show. So excited to have you here.
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (00:38.95)
Hi, I am literally so excited for this conversation.
Adam O'Leary (00:44.302)
You're amazing. I'm so looking forward to this too. So I know one thing is that you talk a lot about the difference between a simple testimonial and what you call a money-making testimonial, otherwise known as a client case study. What's the key distinction and why is this kind of story so much more powerful for a business?
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (01:05.776)
Yes, so I think most people when we, you as business owners, we think we need to share about our clients and create social proof when it comes to content. The biggest giveaway, most people are basically sending or sharing a testimonial, which is a photo of their client, a, you know, five gold stars in the graphic and a copy paste, you know, testimonial from a forum or something like that. And while this might seem like it's
supporting sales and serving as social proof, the way we sell on social media or in email newsletters is not the same as if it were a website. And so there's a couple of things that go wrong if you're typically using testimonials in this way, which is kind of, again, five gold stars, kind of dead giveaway. First is you're basically training your audience to not read your content. So I don't know if this is true for you. It's definitely true for me. When I see them on social media, I'm like,
Okay, cool, good job, Haley, and keep scrolling. Like, move on. You don't actually read the content, you don't read the caption, you don't read the testimonial. So inadvertently, you're training your audience not to read anything that you're writing. Second is there's too much kind of guesswork going on of what the actual value is of the transformation. There's a lot of assuming going on. So instead of telling your client exactly what happened,
or your prospect exactly what happened, why this is important, maybe different elements of your process, you're leaving it up to the prospect to decide what is or is not important to them. And it may or may not actually align with who you are, what you do, and what you're here to sell. So these are fine. It's like a check in the box, but it's actually doing, I would almost prefer, this is what I tell my clients, I would almost prefer you just don't post it at all.
versus posting something like this, which is pretty controversial. Instead, we wanna have something called a money-making testimonial, which is where we take the client testimonial as qualitative data, and we write a case study in story form that explains the before, during, and after of their transformation. And this is really, really important for anyone who is doing, especially some form of service where...
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (03:27.194)
you probably have your own process, you have your own way of doing things. And it's all that like messy middle, you know, just that magic that you have, but we don't have words to really describe what happens behind the curtain. It's fine to understand, you know, what's this before, what the client was struggling with, you know, pain points, the end result or the, you know, quantitative wins, you know, that is even easy to capture, but most service providers
of any form, most founders really skip that messy middle and where the real work happens. And this is so important for, especially for anyone doing like coaching, consulting, done for you services where you have your own process, because clients want to know how you approach solving a problem. And the only way you're really gonna get that clarity is through that middle of the process. It's also...
part of if you've ever worked with someone who didn't enjoy your process or they ended up being a bad fit client. Usually it's because they didn't get enough clarification of what your process is and weren't given the right, you know, stories and explanation to understand if that's even a process that they want to be a part of. And so this is not just about, you know, creating sales, converting. It's also about ethically disqualifying clients that for no other reason,
they just want a different process or they have a different vision for how they'd like to solve their problem. For example, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of ghost writers out there that can write. My process is not for everyone. My writing style is not for everyone. The way that I work with my clients is not for everyone. And so it would be a disservice to have a client not understand what kind of experience they're gonna have, how we're gonna solve their problem if it's not aligned.
if they don't have the right team structure to make it happen, if they're not quite at that stage of business. There's all of these kind of subtle disqualifiers that could create a bad experience for me as the service provider, but then also for the client as well. So I think that really that middle part of the transformation, which is all of that, it's the juicy magic that a lot of us don't always have words for to explain, but that is the thing that smooths out the sales process and
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (05:48.603)
like more strongly qualifies and disqualifies clients, which is a win win in my book.
Adam O'Leary (05:55.054)
That is genius. mean, this is the reason I've got you on. You're amazing. So funny. So let's imagine this. Let's say if you're a business owner, you have client results. Okay. How do we go ahead and turn it into a conversion focused piece of content? What would be like the essential elements here that could guide somebody through?
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (05:58.226)
Hello, dropping mics, dropping mics.
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (06:21.894)
Mm-hmm.
Adam O'Leary (06:24.961)
this curiosity interested in working to actually taking action, whether that be scheduling a call or whatever it might be.
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (06:31.824)
Totally. So the good news is, if you're listening, these are very formulaic. I write them for clients all the time. I have clients who write their own or they, you know, I have lots of people in my orbit who are like, my gosh, that was genius. I'm going to do it too. They are very formulaic. So this is good. I'm usually not a huge fan of formulas or frameworks, but they pretty much follow the same structure, which is good and will make the process of writing them so much easier. So first and foremost, we want to have a nice hook.
you know, a nice sexy hook. Quantitative data is great. And something that I hear a lot from clients is they're like, well, you know, I built a website, but I actually can't track, you know, how many sales came from it. So I can't share about that client because, you know, I don't have the numbers. I'm like, hold on, wins take all forms. Quantitative is great. Yeah, we want to hear about how much revenue you made, know, ROI percentages, you know, that's incredible.
You can also create qualitative wins, experiences that people have. I spent more time with my family. I took time off, you know, to take a real vacation. One of my favorite kind of qualitative ones is running, it's kind of quantitative, qualitative. It's a little in the middle, but like how much time did you save that person by doing it for them? That's a huge one that a lot of service providers are providing for people.
that isn't necessarily just like conversion based metrics. But when it comes to that, like you wanna have a, like a hook of some form. So it's usually like how, like one that I have is like how Morgan created a 47.5K in 24 hours. That's a highly quantitative one. There's others that are like how Haley saved eight plus hours a month from hiring me to write for her. Like that's a little bit more soft, but.
You can have them in all forms, all different flavors. One that I wrote for a client recently, which kind of meta, they were like helping me, but I wrote my own money making testimonial. It's very meta, was like how Kendall created a brand new revenue stream that matched her brand. Like that's very soft and more qualitative. But once we get into the actual, you know, copy of it inside,
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (08:53.873)
That's where we get into a lot of the juicy stuff. So that's the title. We always want to have a title and these types of stories, they're great because you can use them on social media as text only posts. You can create a graphic so it's a carousel. You can use the title as the email newsletter subject line. You can record them as solo podcast episodes. You can use them in your sales calls. Like this is the most highly repurposable type of content. So once you have that title, like,
abundance galore when it comes to where you can post it. Then we want to get into before we started working together, client name, and then kind of explain their problem. What were the gaps they were having? What were their pain points? But you want to make sure that anything that you're calling out is what is what you want all of your clients to be struggling with or the kind of people you're attracting. So usually, I just use that as a caveat because sometimes people are like, I could just say anything like
this is still sales content, we still want to make sure we're selling the thing that you're trying to sell. like keep that in mind. But you would just explain like, here's what they were struggling with, of orient people into what was the problem. Then in the next section, you're going to talk about what it was that you saw was the problem. So what to you was their biggest, the way I typically explain this for clients is like, what was the thing that was so obvious to you that the client just couldn't see?
So like, what was like, we obviously have to start with this thing. Like what were they missing? What was the biggest priority? And explain why that was so important. I find that, especially with this kind of middle, we'll call it this like juicy middle for like sake of name. Most people are really struggle to share their genius and what it is that they're able to call out. And that's what we really want to make sure we...
not just call out, but kind of explain, because that's what people, that's the easiest way for people to understand how your brain is going to approach solving a problem. So then once we have kind of this like, you know, this is kind of what I noticed. Here's the approach I took. You can use a set of bullet points and you want to have, I usually recommend four to six bullet points. And you can either do it in the middle where you're explaining like actions that you took.
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (11:19.265)
Or you could do it if you have like a really huge, you know, list of wins. You could also use this as like the after and the transformation. But if you're gonna do it in the middle, you would explain actions you took, changes you made, what did you start doing? What did you stop doing? What were some, you know, quick wins, monetary wins, but you're gonna just list out six of those wins, four to six.
of what to you were the big kind of takeaways or the biggest, I'll say needle movers. And again, they can be monetary, they could be time saved, they can be peace of mind, they can be clarity over like your differentiators, your value prop, it could be new client acquisitions, it could be firing clients that aren't aligned. Like you can choose whatever to you is, you know, makes the most sense. And then the after,
kind of section is, again, you can either use those bullet points again or just over there. And then the after is really what was kind of the one takeaway that set them up for like, what's next? So I always kind of like to show people like, since we did this work together, here's what's next for XYZ client. So all in all, if we were to zoom out, this is the length of a social media post. This is not,
a huge long blog article that's 2,000 words. When I write these for clients, we're talking 450 to 500 words. And we're talking a very, very simple repurposable format that follows the same framework. So what I typically tell my clients, if you've got six of these in your content library, you can run those, I would say every two to three weeks and just keep repurposing them.
keep the engine going, keep making sure you're, cause this is really and truly bottom of the funnel content. This is kind of that last piece of social proof, but that's actually moving the needle. But this is where people really feel certain that you're the right fit for them. And they trust that your process is the process that they want to be a part of.
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (13:43.783)
So that's how you do it.
Adam O'Leary (13:44.149)
I love this. This is this is it. I just took I have a whole page of notes after you talked. So
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (13:49.895)
Yay, thank you, thank you. Been writing them for years and it's just one of these things that happen organically where I'm like, why is nobody doing this? This is the secret y'all. That's why we're here.
Adam O'Leary (14:01.357)
Correct. For sure. This is amazing. And one thing that you just talked about there was the concept of repurposing. So I wanted to go into this a little bit because I think this is fascinating. So these are 450 to 500 word types of social media posts. How else can you go ahead and repurpose these? Like is it just that 450 to 500 or is there other ways that you could maybe take it and put it into other places as well?
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (14:08.837)
Yes.
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (14:27.259)
Yeah, for things like this, I prefer to have them stay in their full story structure. But what I have done many, many, many times is I will use, again, text only version on LinkedIn. I also have a template because once you make it one time, you can create it for the others. It's highly scalable. I also have it in a template for a carousel version.
There's two LinkedIn posts right there. Then you've got your email newsletter. Have six of those. You got six a quarter that can go out. We love that. I also have clients who will take... This takes a little bit of finesse, but I trust that we can do this. I have some clients who will take the money-making testimonial.
and they will read it, but they'll throw their voice. So it doesn't sound like they're reading from a script and they will record it as a solo podcast episode to close clients. They might add a little bit of fodder or something else, like that's, know, if you're running out of content ideas for your podcast, there you go. I have clients who will put them, they'll like kind of print them out. And if they're on sales calls with people while they're still kind of learning the story, they'll use them live in sales calls.
Once they've memorized it, they'll use it in person and networking events. And one thing that I love to do, because my business, the thing about content in general is when it's selling and when you're telling stories that sell, you can eliminate manual selling in your business. So for example, my business, I hardly ever have sales calls. I would probably have two a quarter, maybe, because...
all of my sales assets are selling for me and especially my content. So if for some reason I get someone who's like, you I have some questions, blah, blah. Most of the time I have a client case study that addresses their exact question that I use as an asset. And so I'll send over a proposal and I'll say, also, here's a case study about my client, Haley, that you can read through. So you actually use the asset as a sales enablement tool to help.
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (16:49.423)
eliminate the need for like manual selling, sales calls, demos, et cetera. So you can get people on that page. It's also really helpful if you have some, some of my clients do a lot more like they work for smaller businesses, but like I've had to do this before and I've had clients where if you're selling to like highly complex business infrastructure, so let's say you've got multiple decision makers, you've got to talk to finance.
and HR and the product managers and the sales team. Like if you're getting passed around a business, if it's a little bit like bigger of a sales ecosystem, the best thing you can do is to have a couple of these that you're sending around. So their internal ambassadors are selling for you. So you don't have to go in there and wait for, know, follow up conversation one with finance and follow up conversation two with sales. Like that, that is a month's long sales cycle. And
Adam O'Leary (17:43.137)
Hmm.
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (17:43.715)
I like to sell without me having to actually be there and in a significantly shorter time cycle. So these are also used, again, their greatest content. We're all trying to like figure out the content game, but also this is essentially, it's the best way to replicate yourself as a salesperson without actually having to take away more of your time.
Adam O'Leary (18:05.803)
I love this. I could talk to you all day. Seriously, this is is outstanding.
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (18:09.123)
Ask me anything. Ask me anything. I told you, I told Adam before we got here, I was like, I literally love to talk about all this stuff. I am working on a book. If it seems like, my gosh, I'm literally working on a book about all of this. I'm happy to help. for me, I had a corporate background before I started and I also did not go to business school and I grew up in a really blue collar household. So like,
I did not learn anything about sales. Like at my dinner tables as a kid, we did not talk about business. We were talking about like, how are gonna pay for the next, you know, bill that's coming through? And so many people asked me like, how did you learn all this about sales? And I'm like, I'm a single income household and I don't have a roommate and I don't have a partner or a boyfriend. So if I wanna make my rent, I gotta learn how to sell. So there was my country accent, sale. We were talking about that too. When I say.
When I say sell, sometimes I live in Texas and so the accent comes out. But if I wanted to learn how to sell, I had to first off, all my content had to do it for me. And I knew that I had to get really smart about basically I wanted to figure out how can I like, you know, control copy myself so that I can do my work as a writer and then all the promotional stuff.
but I don't have to be manually selling. how could I get smart about how we do this to basically replicate myself without having to go in and constantly have to be on sales calls or whatever else? And so thus we have all of this that we're talking about right now.
Adam O'Leary (19:49.665)
Where do people go to learn more about you? Because they should. If you're listening to this, go talk to Kendall.
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (19:54.407)
So funny. Yeah, so you can find me a couple places. I'm very active on LinkedIn. like, feel free. I get people a lot who will just send me connection requests. So you can, I'm sure Adam will link to this. Like, please send me a connection request. Leave me a note. I would love to stay connected over there. You can also, I get a lot of people that are like, I want to see how Kendall's doing her content. So I'll see people who just sit and read my posts or I'll get people who are like, I make
popcorn or I make a cocktail and I like sit and read like your your posts. So if you want examples, my LinkedIn is definitely like the place to be. I also write a newsletter called Wallflower Fridays where I talk a lot about storytelling and sales, but a lot about sales skills and content, especially in this kind of new brave new world of online business and content. So that newsletter you can find over at wallflowerfridays.com.
And then I also write money-making testimonials for clients. And we'll have a link in the show notes for you as well with how to get started with that. But if you're kind of sitting there and you're like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. And also you don't want to be the one to write it. Like, let me work my magic for you. But I write sales content like this all day, every day. It doesn't matter if it's LinkedIn content, email newsletters, sales pages. Like to me, a great day at work is getting to help
business owners, kind like I talked about, how can we create a sales ecosystem that takes you out of the salesperson position without actually hurting your revenue? And in most cases with my clients, we end up making more money with less time, which is that's my idea of a good day.
Adam O'Leary (21:37.591)
I love this. is awesome. So Kendall, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for coming on. You are a pleasure to have on.
Kendall Cherry 🌻 (21:44.487)
Thank you so much, so glad to be here.
Adam O'Leary (21:47.061)
Absolutely. Well, signing off for now. Have a wonderful rest of your day and looking forward to seeing you on the next episode of Simple Wins.
