We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kirsten Hubbard a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kirsten, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Like all great stories, Ghost Writer was born of heartbreak.

Having poured heart and soul into nonprofits with missions I earnestly believed in, over and over I saw those missions, regardless of size or focus, facing the same roadblocks to success. These roadblocks prevented great solutions by passionate people from taking root, thus bringing growth to a halt. Eventually it dawned on me: These failures were not about one particular organization or staff person or board member. These were industry-wide failures.

Nonprofit are set up to fail.They are handed the most desperate social ills of our times—problems with outcomes that cannot be quantified on any one P&L, but whose impact effects every P&L. Nonprofits are deprived of resources to solve those problems and are oppressed by an archaic mindset of “charity.”

Heartbroken and disillusioned, I disconnected from the nonprofit world I once loved. Then, in a seminar I didn’t want to be at, I heard what I most needed to hear: Your life’s purpose is at the intersection of your talents, your skills, and your heartbreak. Stepping into your talents and skills is easy. Following your heartbreak is much more difficult. The question is: Do you have the courage to walk into the heartbreak?

I decided I did. I went to work creating a model that uplifted those missions I so believed in, creating entry points to services desperately needed to support and scale great solutions.

Ghost Writer wasn’t born of a desire to own a business or be an entrepreneur. It’s not about me, or our co-creators, or even the individual nonprofits we serve. Ghost Writer is about changing the way we resource and think about social issues. It’s about pivoting the new freelance economy to serve communities better and more efficiently.

The truest thing I have ever heard is if you stand alone, the right people will stand with you. Our team is now a dozen strong— – absolute superstars! Together, we have created a portfolio of data,outcomes,ROIs that prove investments in development, marketing, and strategies result in real-world change, and those services can be made accessible to all nonprofits.

Many organizations we work with have moved from “small” to “mid-sized,” an enormous change in revenue, and more importantly, capacity to scale solutions. When nonprofits have more equitable access to growth-centered services, that will translate into more equitable communities.

And in Ghost Writer’s mission of “writing a better human story,” I found the salve to my heartbreak!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Ghost Writer’s mission is “writing a better human story.” Ghost Writer is a consortium of co-creators working with purpose and passion to change the world, and expresses the mission through several divisions.

Ghost Writer’s Marketing and Development division amplifies organization’s’ missions by packaging services most nonprofits lack internally. For less thant the price of hiring one person, with one skill set, organizations resource-share an entire team of writers, researchers, editors, graphic designers, database experts, and social media personnel that otherwise would be out of their reach. Ghost Writer’s unique model allows nonprofits to pull down highly specialized skill sets as they need them without the commitment of hiring a team.

The Executive Services division provides strategic planning, board development, training sessions, speaking engagements, and other ad hoc services.

The new Creative Writing division allows writers to focus on curated projects such as novels, screenplays, and other writing projects.

Each of these divisions support the mission of “’writing a better human story.”

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

There is so much focus on personal branding for entrepreneurs. The mentality is “’you are the product.”’ I really thought about that philosophy and how it did, or did not, fit into my vision for Ghost Writer.

I decided to follow a different path, building Ghost Writer as an idea bigger than any one person.

The result of that decision has continued to pay dividends. We built a company whose successes challenge industry thinking. Because the company was built from the ground up to live as a separate entity, it has been easier to share responsibilities and invite new co-creators to play meaningful roles. I am increasingly comfortable that the ideals of Ghost Writer will outlive me. This sharing also allows me to follow other interests, including the release of an upcoming novel.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

Passive income has been an area of growth for us we have begun to explore. 

— Marketing and Development is the base of Ghost Writer. It is an innovative, sustainable business model based on retainer clients and with almost unlimited potential for growth.
— Executive Services produces less regular income, but is an investment in reaching our core audiences.
—Creative Writing is a new division that we’ve opened. My fiction novels are under this division, and my first novel hits major retailers this spring. This stream allows us to build passive income in several ways:

– curated additional creative projects such as additional novels and screenplays
– ability to publish books, manuals, training manuals, etc
– Ghost Writer conferences centered on and selling published books and training manuals
– YouTube content, blogs, press releases, and other supportive cross-marketing efforts
In addition, Ghost Writer has opened a merch line with a second merch line from the book coming soon.
These are accessory revenue streams, which we expect to re-use and cross-promote across all channels.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ghostwriterquill.com
• Instagram: ghost.writer.quill
• Facebook: Ghost Writer
• LinkedIn: Ghost Writer LLC
• YouTube: Ghost Writer LLC

Image Credits
Mr. Phab Photo