How she makes $20k/month from 572 email subscribers
Most founders who have built a services business will tell you referrals are the lifeblood of their business. But Kendall Cherry believes referrals are actually holding entrepreneurs back.
It's a bold stance, especially considering she's built The Candid Collective into a $20,000/month ghostwriting business. Even more surprising? She did it with just 572 email subscribers.
Kendall didn't figure this out right away though. It took four different versions of The Candid Collective before she found what actually worked.
Let's dive into how Kendall turned her writing talent into a thriving business, and why she believes the traditional "referrals-first" approach is broken.
The Story of The Candid Collective
Before The Candid Collective, she started her career as a ghostwriter for a senior executive at a Fortune 100 company. She wrote everything from internal memos to external presentations for this senior executive.
The job went well. She got promoted every 18 months or so and seemed to be growing professionally.
But after 5 years, she realized she didn't want to be a lifer at the company. She wanted more variety in the content she would write.
She ended up leaving this Fortune 100 company to start the first version of The Candid Collective: a writing coaching business to help others write better content.
Version 1: The Writing Coach (2020)
Kendall starts this writing coaching business and it starts off pretty well. She gets some good clients and everything seems great, right?
Well, when you're on Zoom calls everyday coaching everyone up, Zoom fatigue is real - especially as an introvert. It was a business that could work, but it wasn't built around Kendall's personality and strengths.
After about a year, she decides to shut down this first version of The Candid Collective.
Version 2: The Agency (2021-2023)
Instead of coaching others, Kendall pivots to writing the content herself. It taps into her superpower of being a great writer and she doesn't have to be on as many Zoom calls.
This works right out of the gate.
Within the first month, Kendall makes $10k in revenue. This $10k+ in revenue continues month after month.
But here's where things get interesting. With consistent revenue and new clients coming in, people start asking Kendall to do more than just copywriting. They want content strategy, branding, and even full digital marketing services.
Kendall says yes to a lot of these projects. The Candid Collective goes from being a copywriting business to a digital marketing agency. She hires team members and suddenly they're doing all sorts of marketing work.
One key issue here: The Candid Collective becomes too broad.
Kendall finds herself trying to solve every marketing problem for these businesses. She starts asking herself, "Where do I actually provide value?"
By May 2023, feeling lost about her own value proposition, she makes the difficult decision to shut this version down.
Version 3: The Fractional CMO (June 2023-December 2023)
In June 2023, Kendall tries to simplify things. Her idea? Become a fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for small businesses.
The theory made sense. She could use her entire skill set and get that holy grail of business: recurring revenue. Sounds perfect, right?
Well, there was one problem she didn't see coming.
For small businesses, a fractional CMO is what Kendall calls a "stretch investment" - nice to have, but not essential. This became painfully clear when Black Friday 2023 didn't go well for many businesses. She lost 90% of her "recurring" revenue overnight.
Turns out, recurring revenue isn't actually recurring if your clients can't consistently afford you.
By December 2023, she shuts down the fractional CMO service.
Version 4: The Ghost Writer (January 2024-Present)
In January 2024, Kendall finally figures it out. Her solution? Go back to basics and focus on her superpower: ghost writing.
This time, there's no content strategy. No copy editing. No design work. Just ghost writing.
The impact of this singular focus? The Candid Collective now brings in at least $20k in revenue every month.
Here's why it works:
First, she's known for one specific thing. When someone needs a ghost writer, they think of Kendall. No confusion about what she offers or who she helps.
Second, she's playing to her strength. Ghost writing isn't just something she does - it's her superpower. When you're doing what you're best at, selling feels natural and delivering great work becomes consistent.
But the biggest change? Her target client. Instead of working with small businesses where her services are a "stretch investment," she now works with businesses and creators who see ghost writing as essential. It's not a nice-to-have anymore - it's a need-to-have.
Growth Strategies of The Candid Collective
Remember how Kendall doesn't believe in referrals? That's pretty unusual for a service business. Most founders will tell you referrals are their main source of clients.
The Problem with Referrals
Kendall is straight-up "anti-referral" - and for good reason. When you rely on referrals as your main source of clients, you give up control of your business growth.
Here's the problem with referrals:
First, you have to hope you're top of mind when someone in your network is talking to a potential client. That's a big "if."
Second, you have to hope your network is actually meeting your target audience. Just because someone knows you doesn't mean they know the right people for your business.
But there's an even bigger issue. As Kendall puts it, you can't tell potential clients when you have capacity. There's no way to say "hey, I actually have an opening next month if you need a ghost writer."
With referrals driving your business, you're basically letting other people control your pipeline. Kendall wanted more control than that.
The main strategy The Candid Collective has used to grow
Instead of being reliant on referrals, Kendall has made The Candid Collective reliant on a teeny, tiny email newsletter.
Seriously, if you just looked at these numbers by themselves, you would not have predicted that there's a $250k/year business in there.
Here are the basic newsletter stats for The Candid Collective:
- Number of Subscribers: 572
- Open rate: 49%
- Click rate: 3%
I'm pretty confident everyone could build a newsletter with those stats, but not necessarily create a $250k/year business around that type of newsletter.
So, here's the magic of this newsletter:
The #1 lead magnet (or reason why people sign up) for The Candid Collective is The Candid Collective services guide.
This services guide details what Kendall and The Candid Collective offer, what it looks like to work with Kendall, and some of the rates.
If you're a service based business, you already most likely have something similar.
By having The Candid Collective services guide as the lead magnet, it does two main things:
First, it aligns the newsletter with how The Candid Collective makes money. Instead of making potential clients fill out a long form or get on a sales call, Kendall lets them just put in their email to get all the information about her services. And it works - 40% of her newsletter subscribers come from people wanting the services guide.
Second, it gives Kendall a way to stay in front of potential clients. She sends a weekly newsletter to this small audience, basically saying "hey, I'm still here if you need a ghost writer." But instead of being salesy, she's actually showing off her writing skills each week.
She even creates some natural urgency by including her capacity limits at the end of each newsletter.
How People Find Her Newsletter
Just like her newsletter strategy, how people find The Candid Collective is pretty simple. There are two main ways: LinkedIn and being a podcast guest.
Kendall has (you guessed it) a tiny audience on LinkedIn too - just 2,316 followers as of November 2024.
But by posting regularly, people find her services guide all the time through her posts and comments. There's no special formula here.
Except, I do find Kendall's content calendar clever.
Instead of creating new content all the time, she's built an evergreen content library. It's just a set of timeless posts she can use anytime. She might update them slightly, but she's not creating new content every week.
This lets her reuse posts that work well. And here's the thing - no one remembers you posted the same content three months ago, and you probably have new followers who never saw it anyway.
Podcast Guest
If tiny audiences work on LinkedIn, they work even better on podcasts.
Kendall shows up as a guest on small podcasts all the time. Even though these audiences are tiny, they're powerful. Think about it - someone just spent 30 minutes listening to Kendall in their earbuds. That builds trust.
And when you're selling high-ticket services like ghost writing, even one new subscriber could mean $10,000 in revenue down the line 🙂
Having thousands of newsletter subscribers might sound impressive. But Kendall shows that you don't need a massive audience to build a thriving business. You just need the right audience and a clear offer.
If you're building a service business and don't want to rely on referrals or chase a huge following, take notes from Kendall. Sometimes the smallest audiences can drive the biggest results.