Latest / The Founder's Journey with Fexingo: First-Time Entrepreneurs, Failures, and Lessons Learned / How Rejected Social Media Posts Built a 60M Business
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this founder, Jenna Park. Back in 2020 she was a freelance ghostwriter for tech executives. Every week she'd send over drafts and every week they'd say, 'This isn't my voice,' or 'This is too edgy,' or just 'Rewrite it.' Luna: That sounds brutal. How many clients did she have at that point? Lucas: About eight. And she was burning out rewriting the same ideas over and over. But instead of quitting, she started a separate anonymous account on LinkedIn and Twitter where she posted the rejected drafts exactly as she'd written them, just with the client's name removed. Luna: Wait — so she took the stuff her clients said no to and put it out under her own name? That's kind of bold. Lucas: It was. And within three months, one of those rejected posts hit 2 million impressions. It was a hot take about why most corporate LinkedIn content is sterile. People shared it like crazy. She started getting inbound requests from other executives who wanted 'that voice' — the one her original clients had rejected. Luna: So the rejects became her portfolio. That's almost poetic. Lucas: Exactly. She realized she wasn't a bad writer — she was just writing for the wrong audience. So she flipped the model. She told new clients upfront: 'I'm going to write in my voice, not yours. You can either approve it or reject it, but if you reject it, I keep the rights and I'll publish it on my own feed.' About 70 percent of clients said yes to that. Luna: That's a smart negotiating tactic. Because if they say no, she still gets content out of it, and they look like the ones who passed on something that could go viral. Lucas: Right. She turned a liability — rejected work — into an asset. By 2023 she had 30 clients paying between $5,000 and $15,000 a month. She hired three other ghostwriters, all using the same 'reject portfolio' playbook. Last year the agency did 60 million in revenue. Luna: Sixty million? From ghostwriting? That's not just a side hustle anymore. Lucas: No. And the interesting thing is, the reject portfolio isn't just about recycling content. It's a feedback mechanism. Jenna tracks which rejected posts perform best and uses that data to refine her pitch to new clients. She can say, 'Look, my audience loves this angle. Let's try it for your brand.' Luna: So the rejection is actually a signal about what the market wants, not a signal about the quality of the work. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the bigger lesson for entrepreneurs. When you get a no, ask yourself: is this a no about the idea itself, or is it a no about the timing, the audience, the packaging? Jenna's clients weren't rejecting her writing ability. They were rejecting the mismatch between their personal brand and a style that didn't fit their existing feed. Luna: I think there's something else here too. She built a brand on being the person who says what others won't. That's hard to replicate if you're just trying to be safe. Lucas: That's the core of it. And it's a reminder that if these conversations have moved your work forward in some small way, there's a simple way to keep them going. Luna: Yeah. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these episodes ad-free. It's at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: We don't run sponsor spots or sell ads, so listener support really does make the difference. And it adds up fast when enough people chip in. Luna: Alright. Back to Jenna Park. What's the unit economics like for her agency? Lucas: So each ghostwriter handles about 8 to 10 clients. They produce two to three posts per week per client. The average client pays $8,000 a month. The ghostwriters get a base salary plus a bonus tied to engagement on the posts they write. Jenna takes the rest after overhead — roughly a 40 percent margin. Luna: Forty percent margin on services is pretty good. Most agencies are lucky to hit 25. Lucas: The efficiency comes from the reject portfolio system. Because the writers aren't starting from scratch every time. They have a library of angles that have already been tested on a public feed. They can pull from that and customize for the client. It's like having a content vault that's constantly refilled. Luna: So the rejection wasn't just a one-time pivot — it's built into their operating model. Lucas: Exactly. And they've expanded beyond LinkedIn and Twitter. They now do short-form video scripts for TikTok and Instagram Reels, using the same approach. Jenna told me that the viral reject posts on video are actually more valuable because they generate speaking invitations and book deals for her clients. Luna: It's almost like she's running a media company disguised as a ghostwriting agency. Lucas: That's a good way to put it. And the media asset is the reject portfolio itself. It's not a secret vault — it's public, it's growing, and it attracts the kind of clients who want that voice. The more rejected content she publishes, the stronger her brand gets. Luna: I wonder if this works in other industries. Like, could a product designer do the same thing with rejected mockups? Lucas: Absolutely. I've seen a graphic designer do something similar — she posts rejected logo concepts on Instagram and now gets freelance requests from people who love those specific styles. The principle is universal: if you create something and the client says no, you still own the rights and you still have an audience that might say yes. Luna: It also forces you to be prolific. Because you need a steady stream of rejects to keep the portfolio fresh. Lucas: Right. Jenna's writers produce about 20 pieces of content per week per client. Not all of it gets used. The rejects go into the pool. Over time, the volume of rejects creates a dataset that tells you exactly what resonates. It's like having a free A/B test running constantly. Luna: And the clients who do approve the edgy stuff — they're the ones who see the highest engagement, right? Lucas: That's the pattern. Jenna showed me data: posts that were initially rejected by one client but later published under a different client's name outperformed the average approved post by about 2.5 times in engagement. So the reject posts aren't actually worse — they're just a poor fit for the original client's existing audience. Luna: That's a really important distinction. It's not that the content is bad. It's that the context is wrong. Lucas: And that's why she doesn't take rejection personally. She tells her writers, 'If a client says no, don't get defensive. Ask them why. If it's a voice mismatch, that post goes into the vault for a different client. If it's a factual error, fix it. But most of the time, it's just a mismatch.' Luna: That mindset alone is probably worth the price of admission. How many founders get crushed by the first few rejections? Lucas: Too many. And Jenna's story is a good reminder that rejection can be reframed as a sorting mechanism rather than a verdict. It sorts the right clients from the wrong ones, the right angles from the wrong ones, the right timing from the wrong timing. If you can build a system that captures and repurposes those no's, you turn a cost into a revenue stream. Luna: I think that's a great place to leave it. Next time someone says no to your idea, maybe you should just post it. Lucas: And if it goes viral, send them a thank-you note.