Anna Burgess Yang is a workflow genius

TL;DR

Anna Burgess Yang went from product manager at a tech company to full-time freelance content marketer.

She shares:

• how she automates parts of her workflow
• the tools she uses
• how she analyzes data to improve her marketing strategies
• the challenges of balancing freelancing with family life
• the transition from corporate to freelance work
• AI

Tune in to hear our favorite strategies for freelancers and solopreneurs, who want to leverage automations and AI for content repurposing, optimizing your workflow, and Anna’s essential tools for managing freelance work.

Bonus: we also touch on pricing strategies and finding a niche.

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Transcript

Anna Burgess Yang (00:08.18) My name is Anna Burgess Yang. I am a freelance content marketer and journalist, and I also create resources for other solo entrepreneurs. And what I focus on is kind of the backend operations type stuff, which I don't think is talked about enough. And the reason I do that is because I spent 15 years at a tech company and I was the product manager there. So I did a lot of like building systems and automating things and making them work. And so now that has.

Rachel Meltzer (00:24.937) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (00:35.434) Mm-hmm.

Anna Burgess Yang (00:37.278) lends itself really well to building my own freelance business and then what I try to help other solo entrepreneurs do.

Rachel Meltzer (00:43.475) Yeah. Yeah. I'd love that you focus so much on like workflow and systems because it's not like that's all stuff that I figured out by experimentation and that I still know could improve. And I'm like constantly iterating on it, but there wasn't a lot of resources out there for it. Like all I could find when I first started was like, you could use dub Sado or honey book. I'm like, these don't solve any of my problems. Okay. And they're more expensive than what I wanted.

be spending. like, what else could we be creative, maybe? And then that's kind of how I found like, notion and how I started using an ESP flow desk to like automate my emails and things like that. And all of these experiments are really helpful, but it's nice to hear from somebody who has done it in so many different formats and has, I don't know if I'd say better answers, but like,

some kind of roadmap and you think of things to automate that like I would never have thought of to automate. And I love hearing you like I listened to one of your other podcast episodes a couple months ago and I was like, wow, I'd never thought to automate that. So I love the way you like creatively use Zapier. Do you wanna talk a little bit more about what you automate in your business and how you've gone about figuring that out?

Anna Burgess Yang (01:57.674) Yeah. So I automate everything until I have to do it more than once. I'm going to automate it. going to, I'm, I've been using Zapier long enough that I can kind of visualize quickly what that should look like, but that takes a lot of practice. And I did use Zapier even back when I was a product manager. So before I was a freelancer. So that makes the process really quick because I think, like you said, you can't always visualize what's possible.

Rachel Meltzer (02:18.431) Thank

Anna Burgess Yang (02:26.996) because you don't know what's possible. And so you're, you know, you hear something, you're like, yeah, sure. I could do that. But I think that thinking of like, what's possible. Those are the types of things I talk about. So like a basic example is when I get a new client and automation runs in the background that automatically adds folders to my Google drive. So a main folder with the client name and then five sub folders that I use for every client. Sure. I could do that manually. It would take just a couple of minutes, but

Rachel Meltzer (02:27.103) Mm-hmm.

Anna Burgess Yang (02:56.118) I might forget. I might forget for like a couple of days. I might do it wrong, you know, like make a mistake each time. So it's just like a little, a quick thing that just happens. And then every time I write something for a client, give me work to do. Zapier automatically creates a draft version with information from the brief in the client's folder based on a template that I have. So sure, I could take my template and manually fill it all out.

Rachel Meltzer (03:21.086) Nice.

Anna Burgess Yang (03:24.458) But instead I've got a process that runs it through, puts it in the right directory, gives it a specific name, stuff like that. Everything is saving me just a little bit of time and making sure that it's consistent every time I do a piece. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (03:30.89) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (03:37.267) Yeah. Are you using like a CRM so that like, how does Appian know you've gotten a new client or a new assignment?

Anna Burgess Yang (03:45.654) So I have a homegrown system. use Airtable. And the reason for that is I couldn't find one that I liked. Yeah, and you probably could do something super similar with Notion. But basically, Airtable has a list of all my clients. So when I get a new one, I just have a form that I created. I fill out the client information. And then that first adds it to Airtable. It adds it to QuickBooks. So the client's already added there.

Rachel Meltzer (03:53.105) Yeah, that's why I use Notion.

Anna Burgess Yang (04:14.42) and then it's setting off all of these other things that I need for the rest of the work.

Rachel Meltzer (04:20.095) Damn, yeah, that's really smart to add it to QuickBooks, because I always forget. And then I'm doing my bookkeeping and income, and I'm like, I have no idea who this income came from. I just know it's income, whatever. But to be able to see how much money you're making from each client feels so much better, and it makes it easier to predict your income and how many clients you need to get when you do need to get new clients.

Any data that you can actually be specific about and glean, like I just went through all of my LinkedIn posts from last year, like 365 LinkedIn posts and analyzed like all their performance, the topic, like all these different little aspects of it. And it helped me see so much better, like what's working and what's not. But if I hadn't done that, I would have no idea. I would just still be blindly going like, I don't even think I'm getting new followers. And I gained like 5,000 followers last year, but my brain.

your brain is really good at tricking you and making you feel like that. Like it's always going to have a negativity bias because we're like fear-based creatures. And so that's really cool to see. Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (05:20.146) I did something similar just a few days ago. I took an extract of my LinkedIn data. It had impressions, had engagements, it had a couple other things. I actually threw it into ChatGPT and said, analyze this file for me and tell me what topics are performing the best, what time of day is the best that's doing well, what type of post is it text-based, does it have an image with it, does it have hashtags? And I got some things that were a little surprising.

Rachel Meltzer (05:33.034) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (05:38.933) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (05:48.073) Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (05:48.382) So like that my weekend posts perform well for, I don't know, freelancers hang out on LinkedIn on the weekends, I guess. So that was really cool.

Rachel Meltzer (05:52.105) Yah!

Rachel Meltzer (05:57.011) Yeah, I was surprised to see my Friday Post did best too. And LinkedIn says, like, don't post, it's not even worth posting on Friday. And I'm like, wrong. Depends on your audience.

Anna Burgess Yang (06:05.878) Yeah. And I think maybe, you because the common suggestion is not to post on Friday, there are fewer people. So if you are there, maybe you're standing out from the noise. I don't know. That's just a theory.

Rachel Meltzer (06:14.613) Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I wonder if there's a way now that we're talking about automation for me to automate my posts being added to this spreadsheet so I don't have to do it myself going forward.

Anna Burgess Yang (06:27.926) What are you using to schedule posts on LinkedIn?

Rachel Meltzer (06:32.397) I just use the native scheduler.

Anna Burgess Yang (06:34.806) So I use Buffer, and if you use Buffer, yes, you could, because you could base it on the sent post from Buffer and send the sent post over to your spreadsheet every time you post it.

Rachel Meltzer (06:46.869) That's so smart. Wow. My gears are turning. I'm really thinking about it. I do worry though that like using third party schedulers for some reason will like diminish my content performance. I don't know if that's actually true.

Anna Burgess Yang (06:52.117) Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (07:00.576) I don't know. mean, there's plenty of them out there and they have to, LinkedIn has to know that like companies in particular, like they're going.

Rachel Meltzer (07:05.789) I mean, they're giving them an API license. there's, they wouldn't, you know, I don't know. I think about it though. Cause you schedule your threads posts as well, right? With Buffer? Nice. Yeah. Cause I schedule all my LinkedIn posts and if I could schedule my threads posts, I would be popping off much more on threads. think I'm so, I just love scheduling. It's so much better for me personally.

Anna Burgess Yang (07:17.162) Yep.

Anna Burgess Yang (07:32.266) Yeah. Well, like I've, you know, I've got, I've got kids and they go to school in the morning. And so when I tried to just post native, like just post on LinkedIn, there'd be times like, it's chaos. And like, I just don't. And at least then I can have a post go off, even if I can't get on myself until a little bit later to engage with people, but the post still happens and I don't have to worry about forgetting or anything like that.

Rachel Meltzer (07:36.095) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (07:41.536) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (07:46.826) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (07:58.503) Yeah, yeah, totally. like my brain. It's funny. It's always when I'm like in the first two weeks of my hormonal cycle, I can tell I get super creative. And then every time I think of an idea, I'll just let myself go into LinkedIn and like write the post and schedule it. Because if before I was like writing ideas in a note and I literally have a note full of over a thousand ideas in my just like iPhone notes app.

That's the graveyard. Those will never be posted because then I open it and I feel overwhelmed or I forget what I was talking about or I'm not excited about it anymore. So personally for me, that interruption is worthwhile because I will schedule like a month and a half of posts in like a week or two. And then the entire rest of that next month and a half, I don't have to do anything. All I have to do is engage. that...

soothes my marketing soul because it's just for me. It's not for my clients. I mean, it is to get coaching clients, but it's just for my personal brand and my marketing and stuff like that. So it's great for my clients. I'm like so organized and it's so beautiful. But if I had to do that for myself, like it's just not gonna happen. I don't know why it's so funny how different it feels.

Anna Burgess Yang (09:11.67) Yeah, I'm the same way. I schedule, like I sit down and batch out a bunch of content because it's way less stressful than opening a blank screen and trying to write something on the fly. I'd rather just not have to think about it. It takes the pressure off big time.

Rachel Meltzer (09:26.803) Yeah, totally. I really also enjoy just repurposing things. Like if I wrote a comment, like if someone asked a really good question, which happens like every other post that I post, I'll just turn my comment response into a post. Like today, somebody, I posted like six creative ways to boost your client's SEO. And someone commented like, what is UGC? Cause I had mentioned you could make posts out of user generated content. So I explained what UGC is. And then she replied,

Okay, but how would that actually work? So I made a list of examples and I was like, this is perfect post. And then I just turned it into a post and it's so nice how you can just kind of flow with it rather than it being this like structured perfectionist thing, which is how I used to do it, you know?

Anna Burgess Yang (10:11.094) I do the same thing with my comments and I use an app called Readwise, which allows you to highlight text on any website, anything. So I'll just go into my LinkedIn like once a week and just highlight the text from any comments that I thought were worthwhile. And then it will add them to an external app. So it could add them to Notion. It could add them to, I use an app called Reflect. It could add them to a Google Doc or something. So then you're not like manually copying and pasting that comment over somewhere else to save it.

Rachel Meltzer (10:20.625) Mm-hmm.

Anna Burgess Yang (10:40.406) All you have to do is highlight it.

Rachel Meltzer (10:40.61) Yeah. That's so smart. I just wrote that down. my gosh. You have so many little like tips and tricks. I love it so much. I was looking at your website actually, and I saw that you do like workflow consultations. And I was like, this is right up her alley. Like of course she does. Thank God she does. These must be so helpful.

Anna Burgess Yang (11:02.388) Yeah, I just, yeah, I do. I, so I talk to people, you know, and it's usually people who have like either systems that aren't working well for them or they're trying to like build systems. And then we just dive into like, what do you need and, how could your system talk to each other better or what kind of tool is right for you? Because, you know, I get, I get asked a lot, like what tool would you recommend? And my answer is I don't really recommend anything.

because I use what works for me and I think everybody's brains are different. Everybody's sense of organization is different. you know, like some people like Asana, they like having tons of tasks and things like that. Some people like ClickUp, I use Trello, you use Notion. Like it just really depends. And so it's more about diving into like, well, how do you want to see this information? How do you want to interact with it?

Rachel Meltzer (11:31.934) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (11:53.205) Yeah, I love that take. think that that's something we all, I don't know if we all, but many people tend to think that there is a right way to do things and it's just not true. my favorite myth is like, there's a right way to do things and other people know what it is. It just keeps you stuck and feeling like you're somehow missing some information that you should have when in reality, like there are a million ways to run a business, especially as a solopreneur and.

Everybody kind of does it differently and you have to do what works for you. That's why there are so many different apps and so many different ways to do these things.

Anna Burgess Yang (12:28.82) Yeah. And my other take is that I am not a big fan of all in one tools. I think a lot of times they fall short on, they'll fall short on something. Like they're really good at one thing and then maybe they expand it into something else. I'd rather use the best tool for the job and then figure out how to, you know, sometimes they have built in integrations with other tools or sometimes, or I'll make Zapier do it in the background. That does require some.

Rachel Meltzer (12:35.474) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (12:42.069) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (12:48.213) Mm.

Anna Burgess Yang (12:57.33) knowledge of how those tools work, but I would rather like pick the best thing and then figure out how to make it work with the other best things that I've picked rather than settling for one kind of middling thing.

Rachel Meltzer (13:05.429) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (13:09.73) I do agree with that in a lot of ways. I think it can be hard for people to mentally manage and remember all the apps they're using. I always recommend, like whenever I do a workflow workshops, I'm always like, make sure you have one source of truth. Like no matter what, just start with a place where you're going to keep at least a list of the apps you're using or like a guide or some instructions, a document what you're doing.

in one place because if you don't, something will fall off and you will find out the hard way.

Anna Burgess Yang (13:43.828) The other thing that I just started doing a couple of months ago was I used Loom and Loom has a Loom AI. And I'll just record a quick video of me talking about my thing. And then Loom, you can just click a button and it creates a standard operating procedure based on what you said. I love that. It is like, it literally went from me being a free version of Loom to a paid version, just so I can have access to that.

Rachel Meltzer (13:50.261) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (14:01.609) Yeah, I love that feature. Yes.

Anna Burgess Yang (14:12.714) because now I do run into that. Like I have so many things that I've automated when I need to change it. I was like, what is it actually doing? How did I set this up? And it's sometimes been a while and I just truly don't remember what I was thinking at the time. So I've started going through a process of like, just first of all, when I do anything new, for sure record a thing as soon as I'm done. And then very slowly working back through existing.

Rachel Meltzer (14:23.401) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (14:29.365) you

Rachel Meltzer (14:40.565) Thank

Anna Burgess Yang (14:42.762) tools, processes, things, and just recording quick looms and trying to store them least in my Google Drive.

Rachel Meltzer (14:48.625) Yeah, I think that touches on that. You're never going to be perfect. You're never going to arrive at this perfect place where you figured everything out and you've done everything. Things are constantly evolving and changing. You're always going to be iterating. There's no perfect robot person who is keeping up with everything. We are very slowly working through fixing things all the time. There's always going to be a backlog in life.

I have a backlog of chores. I have a backlog of tasks I need to do in my business. And it just, I used to sort of feel like it was piling up and I needed to like somehow get to the end of the to-do list. And once I've accepted that like the end of the to-do list doesn't necessarily exist, you just chip away. It feels a lot better, but it's also hard if you have ADHD, because my brain is very much like now, not now.

And everything is just as important as everything else. I had to create systems for prioritization and scheduling, because I just could not figure out how to do that.

Anna Burgess Yang (15:48.182) Yeah, I have a different problem is because I have three kids. Sometimes I have this beautiful list of the things that I'm going to get done and then something just like hits the fan and my day is shot. And now I kind of feel like I'm playing catch up. Like you said, you can't ever fully catch up on things, but it's hard when you have a list and you're like, this is what I plan to do today. And now I didn't get to most of it because something happened, like a kid was sick or whatever. And now I have to figure out how to

Rachel Meltzer (16:04.148) Yeah.

Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (16:17.312) fit it into the rest of my week or whatever. It's hard.

Rachel Meltzer (16:19.605) That's so tough. Yeah, yeah, that is so frustrating. That's the one thing I've been like, me and my partner are talking about potentially having kids. And I just keep thinking of like, like, there are exactly as many pros as there are cons. And it's such a challenging decision to make. And sometimes it's not even a decision. Sometimes it just happens, you know? But every time I interview people who do have kids and are working as solopreneurs successfully, it's like,

Are you good? Because you are incredible for making this far. Like it seems so challenging to me. I know you just like get used to it and things change every year and kids are able to like do more and more every year and take care of themselves more and more. But it's just like so overwhelming to think about before you've gotten into it.

Anna Burgess Yang (17:06.678) Yeah. And my kids are older. I mean, at the time that I started freelancing full time, I think my youngest was five. So already, you know, in kindergarten, gone during the day, you know, they start to be able to feed themselves. They can go to the bathroom on their own and stuff like that. So that does change the calculus, right? It's not diapers and crying and naps and things like that.

Rachel Meltzer (17:14.365) Mm-hmm. That's helpful.

Rachel Meltzer (17:20.885) you

Rachel Meltzer (17:31.539) Yeah, yeah, that is really helpful. Okay, so you used to be a former FinTech product manager and now you're a full-time freelancer. How did that change your life? Like how does your life look different now that you've gone full-time freelance?

Anna Burgess Yang (17:39.039) Yes.

Anna Burgess Yang (17:47.904) So it's really interesting. The tech company that I worked for was very flexible. And that happened back in 2010. The company was fully remote, very flexible in terms of work hours. And so you weren't expected to work 40 hours per week. For example, you just needed to get your job done. So sometimes that might mean a shorter week. Sometimes that might mean a longer week, which is very much like freelancing.

Rachel Meltzer (18:07.701) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (18:11.603) Mm-hmm.

Anna Burgess Yang (18:16.726) You just kind of need to get, you had to kind of own your work and get stuff done. In 2021, I joined the great resignation and quit my job and went to work at a content marketing agency and then left there about eight months later and worked for a different agency. And each time I felt like I gave up a little bit of my freedom because the agency just was kind of controlling the work more. One of them worked very synchronously.

Rachel Meltzer (18:17.034) Yeah

Rachel Meltzer (18:27.637) Mm.

Anna Burgess Yang (18:46.006) you know, people like kind of sat down to work at 8 a.m. and left work at 4 p.m. and I had not worked that way in a very long time. I was very much used to like, you know, kids get off the bus at 3.30 or, you know, I run to school to do something during the day or even go grocery shopping on a Friday morning, something like that. So that was really hard. Even though I had changed careers for a reason, I felt like working for employers that

Rachel Meltzer (18:54.773) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (19:03.548) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (19:14.102) I wasn't sure I was going to be able to find the flexibility that I had at one point in an employer. And so it was kind of in the back of my mind, like, could I freelance full time? Could I actually do that? And so just about two years ago, I started freelancing full time. And that is kind of the freedom that I was looking for.

Rachel Meltzer (19:20.724) Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (19:39.283) Yeah, yeah, that's incredible that your first employer was that flexible though, because I feel like that's so rare.

Anna Burgess Yang (19:46.27) especially that long ago, back in 2010.

Rachel Meltzer (19:48.341) Yeah, seriously 2010. Yeah. Cause I was writing. So I started freelancing in 2017 and then like 2018, 2019, I was, my whole roster was coding boot camps and they're all, all the marketing is like the great resignation and like flexibility and all this stuff. it was interesting to look at, like we're just watching so much change right now in the world in general.

especially in the workplace and especially in tech. So that's really, that's wild. But it sounds like freelancing makes more sense for you for sure.

Anna Burgess Yang (20:24.352) Yeah. I think, you know, one part of the reason that I left that particular tech job was just lack of control over the ultimate direction of the product, the people around me, you know, somewhat toxic environment. And I couldn't control those things, you know, to some extent, you're just, it is what it is. And that's why I left. And so that, I think that was kind of the piece that was different about that job.

even though was super flexible and being a freelancer is okay. I don't have to deal with any of that. You know, I, I am very much removed from the internal politics that may or may not be happening with any of my clients. just kind of take the thing, do the thing, give it back to them and, you know, have some more control over my, and still have control over my schedule.

Rachel Meltzer (20:55.253) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (21:10.122) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (21:15.477) Yeah, yeah, no, that sounds a lot more relaxing. Even though freelancing has its own stresses. I don't know, I always, I could not imagine, I've never had a full-time corporate job and I don't think I could. I've done short-term contracts that are corporaty, but no more than six months and I just don't think I could handle it. I can't do the politics of it all, mostly.

Anna Burgess Yang (21:19.222) Yes.

Anna Burgess Yang (21:42.144) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (21:44.21) You talked about using AI a little bit in your workflows and processes. Can you talk more about like what your favorite things to do with AI are?

Anna Burgess Yang (21:54.55) Yeah, and you know, when ChatGBT burst onto the scene, what, like almost two years ago now, I was very skeptical. And I played with it a bunch and I just was very deeply unimpressed with the output. And I think a couple, yeah, I mean, it was impressive in like the generation, like how it generated, you know, like, wow, if you'd never, like the first time you saw it, you're like, wow, and then you actually read it you're like, ew. So.

Rachel Meltzer (22:08.913) Yeah, in the beginning it was really bad.

Rachel Meltzer (22:21.469) Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (22:23.498) But I think that a couple of things have happened. One is the model's gotten better. All of the models have gotten better. And two, I figured out what works for me is not generating things from scratch, but generating things based on my things. So for example, you mentioned threads, you mentioned LinkedIn. So one thing I have set up is when a post goes out through buffer to LinkedIn.

Rachel Meltzer (22:40.841) Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (22:51.434) Mm.

Anna Burgess Yang (22:51.914) Zapier takes that post, runs it through Chats.gbt, reformats it with some instructions, and then now it's ready for threads. So it's shorter, the style's different. I still edit it. I do not direct post it, but that is just a time-saving step for me because I would do that manually anyway. I like to kind of reformat for the platform. So that's one thing I do. Another is like whenever I publish to my blog,

Rachel Meltzer (23:00.245) Mm.

Anna Burgess Yang (23:21.346) it runs automatically, through chat GPT and comes up with potential social posts for LinkedIn, comes up with a potential video script, you know, like a hundred words or so that I could just read off and turn into a video. it comes up with, you know, some ideas, like it turned into like an image post. So it's doing all these things in the background based on my content, or I'll even take, a podcast transcript, for example, run it through.

Rachel Meltzer (23:27.617) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (23:45.354) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (23:48.915) Yeah. Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (23:50.866) tell it to only look at my half of the conversation and say generate an outline of a blog post based on what I talked about in this and then I can flush it out later. So I'm even it's never like what I said exactly but I'm reusing my ideas and my content and creating something new.

Rachel Meltzer (24:06.922) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (24:12.841) Yeah, that's such a good way to save energy. There's so many ways you can, like, I basically take whatever the easiest thing to do is, and then I repurpose that. So for me, the easiest thing to do is write LinkedIn posts. For some reason, it just feels good to me. So I'll take the LinkedIn posts and then repurpose it into like 15 different threads. And sometimes I use AI for help, sometimes I just know what I wanna say. And then I'll also take the LinkedIn posts and make them the juicy part of my...

email newsletter, like the how-to or whatever. it's, doing that has been so much better than having to come up with like a newsletter, threads post, LinkedIn, like you can repurpose your content because there's so many different people. You don't know how much people are consuming, where they're consuming it. And also like I've noticed, I like seeing things multiple times so that I can really absorb it and understand it and hearing it multiple different ways. So it's such a genius way, especially if you can automate it and have it just like.

spit out to a spreadsheet or some kind of like content management system that you're using to make it easier to just repurpose.

Anna Burgess Yang (25:18.026) Yeah, it's just less copying and pasting, right? Like it's just saving you a couple of clicks along the way to send it through or whatever. also, every time a post goes out from Buffer, I send it to just a Google Doc. So it's just kind of a running list, but then I can use that to train AI. So I can upload the doc and just say, Hey, I want you to create some new posts. And here's what I sound like.

Rachel Meltzer (25:23.913) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (25:45.66) Yeah, yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (25:48.06) examples of like a hundred past posts use this to help you. It's still, it's still not perfect, but it's better than it's never going to be. But it's a lot better when you actually say this is what I sound like. And this is my style. Mimic this with these new posts.

Rachel Meltzer (25:54.269) Of course, it's never going to be. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (26:07.497) Yeah, the more detail you can give it, the better it does. I actually, made a brand voice guide for my online presence. And it really helped because I can just copy and paste that brand voice guide into ChatGPT whenever I use it. I actually use Claude. And then it can just read, like it has examples in there. It has phrases I like to use, words I like to use, what I call my audience, my personality, like so many.

Anna Burgess Yang (26:10.091) Yes.

Rachel Meltzer (26:35.721) things that help it stay consistent and do a better job. And that's like my life hack. If anyone wants my template, let me know. I have a good template for it.

Anna Burgess Yang (26:43.424) Yeah, that's awesome. I saw somebody on threads when I wrote about this, I think recently, commented back that she is trying to kind of establish herself online and doesn't have those yet. So what she's doing currently is just providing somebody else's posts and just this mimic this style. This is kind of what I'm going for. And I think that's okay too, especially when you're first getting started. You see other people you like, you're like, that sounds like what I want to sound like.

Rachel Meltzer (27:11.388) Mm-hmm.

Anna Burgess Yang (27:11.818) and I don't have my own examples yet. So until I build my own examples, here's a style to kind of mimic. And I think that's totally fine.

Rachel Meltzer (27:20.309) Yeah, that's what I did with email marketing. Like my email marketing has been a real process and I follow so many people and most of the time they're not even in my niche or industry. Like I'm not even following other freelance writing coaches. I'm following like life coaches and wedding photographers and like just other types of solopreneurs because when you can get ideas outside of your industry, you stop living in this bubble where you're just like everybody else. Like the whole reason I do pricing guide, like PDF pricing guides that are

pretty or like proposals and notion is because I saw a wedding photographer do it and I was like, wow, that's beautiful. I love that. I want to do that. And then I made one for one of my like first clients and he was like my third or fourth client. And he was like, this is so professional. No other freelancers have ever done this for me. I love this so much. Actually like it's so well explained because I explained all my packages and like what they include and how much they cost and why I'm doing them with an example for my portfolio to click. And

I have a template for this too if anybody wants it. But these are the things that I never would have done if I hadn't been looking at people in other industries. And same with email marketing. It was really easy for me to piece together my first launch from inspiration from other people's launches of what I would have bought. then using that as inspiration. It's really great to look at the things that are compelling to you and think.

why was this compelling to me? How could I use that in my marketing rather than just being like, well, this email seems to work for this person, so I'll just copy and paste the whole thing and change the things that matter to me. I like to think about how someone made something feel super simple and that simplicity was relieving for me and that's why I bought their product. How can I do that for my product for somebody else?

Anna Burgess Yang (29:05.662) Yeah. And I like that. I do a lot of the same with, look at a lot of emails and they're not necessarily related to my niche or industry at all, but it's like, I like the way they laid this out, like how they talk. like, you know, the way they're really casual when they talk to their, in their email. I'm kind of the same way. And so, yeah, I think that swipe file idea of like, I'm going to just kind of file, file away in my own brain, these things that I like and do what makes sense for me.

Rachel Meltzer (29:26.163) Yeah

Rachel Meltzer (29:34.803) Yeah, and it just wraps right back around to doing marketing your own way, doesn't it? I love it. Okay, so you make a lot of resources for freelancers. What types of resources do you have? well, solo printers, not just freelancers. And like, what's compelling you to make those resources?

Anna Burgess Yang (29:39.498) Yes, does.

Anna Burgess Yang (29:57.174) So my most popular one, I have all my resources on Gumroad and my most popular one is 17 smart tools that solopreneurs need to start, grow and scale. it's, think I made it because I think that solopreneurs don't know what they need kind of at each stage, right? Like when you're first starting out, you need to collect money. Like that's kind of goal number one.

Rachel Meltzer (30:18.408) Mm-hmm.

Anna Burgess Yang (30:23.904) So you need a system, you need to be able to like accept credit cards, for example, or take each stage payments. so, and then for each, I give several examples of different tools because like we said, one tool doesn't work for everybody. So I'll say like, I don't have, I don't, I do list what I use at the end of the guide, but I basically say here are four popular tools on the market that you could look at without really.

commenting on any of them at all about which is better or features or anything like that. But so the whole point of it is like when you're first starting out, you at a minimum, you need this when you're starting to grow. And now you're thinking maybe about automation and you're thinking about how to make things easier. You're thinking maybe more about project management. These are the things that are going to help you at that phase and scale, you know, as a solopreneur scale is not necessarily, it's not hiring or anything like that, but scaling might be.

You know, a one to many, like creating a course, one to many creating a newsletter. Now what do you need? What kind of tools are out there for that? And so that's one. My other really popular one is a guide of my pricing because I think freelancing is incredibly opaque and it's really hard to know what to charge, especially if you're new. And so I created a guide and it's just, what I charged at different stages.

Rachel Meltzer (31:40.191) Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (31:44.852) of my freelance journey. Like what did I charge when I first started out? What do I charge now and why? Because I just want to share that information. It's, you know, I don't think there's enough freelancers kind of talking about it. You know, we talk about it. There are not. You know, I think we kind of have an idea what a bad rate is, but we don't necessarily know what good rates look like and like what gets you there. So it's just like,

Rachel Meltzer (31:59.583) There are not.

Rachel Meltzer (32:07.605) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (32:13.033) Yeah, and I think also like people forget, if you've never done this before, the easiest way to think about doing it is to see what other people are charging or did charge. But in reality, like if that's not gonna pay your bills, don't do that. Like you might need to to get your first three clients, but I always say there's a rule of threes. If you've gotten three clients, you don't need to charge what everyone else is charging anymore. You need to charge what you need to charge.

And you need to know what that is based on your expenses and your taxes and your debt payments and like looking at the whole picture. So that's why like in, my coaching programs, I have a rates calculator, but we also have a folder of like anyone in the program. If they're comfortable sharing, we'll put their pricing guides into this Google drive folder so everyone can see it and share the wealth and understand. that

Anna Burgess Yang (33:00.342) Nice.

Rachel Meltzer (33:05.083) A is like so heartwarming that everybody wants to do this in pop club, but also like it's helpful to see because you'll set your rates with the rates calculator and then you'll be like, well, is this too much? Is this too little? Are people gonna wanna pay this? So they kind of go hand in hand. Like it's reassuring to see what other people are charging too.

Anna Burgess Yang (33:23.574) Yeah. And I would not have any, when I started freelancing full-time anyway, I would not have had any idea what to charge if it weren't for people who had shared with me. I would have guessed because my first time I ever freelance did any freelance writing, I was writing for a marketing agency that paid $27 per thousand words. So 2.7 cents a word. I didn't know.

Rachel Meltzer (33:33.971) Yeah, totally.

Rachel Meltzer (33:48.553) That's bad. Yeah. Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (33:49.012) Like I literally didn't know. was like, my God, I'd have to crank up like thousands of words per day to even like do anything. And that was before AI. I have a feeling that AI is probably doing a lot of that work now at that rate. But I had no idea, none. And so I was coming from a completely different industry. So that's why I put that kind of resource out there. And then, you know, I've got some other ones that are more about like

Rachel Meltzer (34:03.33) Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (34:18.272) how to set up different systems and tools, but those are the two that seem to get the most attention.

Rachel Meltzer (34:24.533) Yeah, yeah, they really resonate. I shared your pricing one with my community when you put it out and I was like, look at this. Like it's so helpful to see the stages you were at too because you might see like, I make $8,000 month and I charge X, Y, and Z for these packages, but I'm also, I've been freelancing since 2017. I'm like further into learning digital marketing. If you just started freelancing and you have like two years of digital marketing experience, you're.

what you're gonna charge is going to look different, no matter what.

Anna Burgess Yang (34:55.414) Yeah. I, so, you know, I came from $27 for a thousand words. And then when I started at a marketing agency, so I had a salary. but then I also started writing for a industry publication at the same time. They offered me a monthly column, because I had financial technology expertise and the editor said, we're going to pay you 50 cents a word. I about fell out of my chair because I was like, I just came, I just went from 2.7 cents a word to.

50 cents, like I didn't even, I truly had no idea what type of range was out there. And like, I thought I struck gold. yeah, that type of information is just so helpful. It gives you so much context for what you can charge for different types of services, for different types of clients. There's a big difference. And, you know, I write for B2B tech companies.

Rachel Meltzer (35:29.375) Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (35:52.394) they have different budgets than other types of companies and other types of industries. So that matters also.

Rachel Meltzer (36:03.253) Yeah, totally. I sort of felt like my like struck gold time was when I started sharing an office with this girl who was also an ex tech marketer from a B2B startup. And then she also went to work for an agency after that who was also doing B2B tech. And I had been working for coding boot camps and like really maxed out at $350 per blog. And I started in that industry at $99 a blog, which is...

really hard to live off. I was very burnt out after that first client and I had no idea that I was under chart. Like I didn't know that's just what they offered, right? And so when I got to that like 350 cap and I kept having people say no, I had like five people say no. So I took them on a lower rate just cause I needed clients. And then I was like, okay, I got to get out of this industry. So I started thinking why I could switch to tech because I'm doing coding bootcamps. It's tech adjacent. I know so much about.

Anna Burgess Yang (36:33.043) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (36:57.557) coding and software and what these teams are using, what people are using at startups. And she was like, just look for like series B or series C funding. You'll probably get some gold there. And I was like, what the fuck does that even mean? Like this was mind, I didn't even know that there were different types of rounds of funding. I didn't know about Crunchbase or like there are so many different startup databases. I just used the free trial of Crunchbase because it was a free trial. And once I started pitching those companies, I was getting like,

50, 55 cents a word, which could be anywhere from like 600 to a thousand dollars a blog. And I was like, what? I could just charge seven or $900 a blog post and like get away. I felt like I was like getting away with something, even though I am like a great content writer and I'm doing exactly what they want. And like, I know that I'm good at my job and it's worth that. And I deserve that, but it's so crazy to make that leap from, I, I did like,

350, 500, 600, you know, and I slowly worked my way up, but it is mind boggling when someone reveals a secret like that you. And that's kind of what I hope to be for freelancers. Like, this is why I'm always like, I am here to un-gay keep freelancing. Let's get on the internet and talk about what these series are, what they mean, why you should be pitching them, who you should be pitching, you know? And not even necessarily pitching, just reaching out to them being like, hey, I'm here, this is what I do.

Let me know if you ever want to talk, you know? It doesn't have to be like an aggressive email cold pitch either.

Anna Burgess Yang (38:23.722) Yeah. And I think, you know, I think we're kind of in an interesting time right now as freelancers because, you know, I, charge a very healthy rate to clients. I'm still cheaper than some agencies, you know, cause they're, they're offering strategy and they're offering lots of other things that I just don't do. I just do the writing. And so I'm kind of in this sweet spot where if, if a client like doesn't need that, maybe they have internal strategy or things like that, or maybe they're just watching their budget.

Rachel Meltzer (38:37.491) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (38:53.141) Mm.

Anna Burgess Yang (38:53.258) I'm a good option, you know, like they can, they can farm workout to me and I will do that and do that for them. And so I see agencies struggling and I'm like, I fill that need for them. so yeah, I think that, that pitching piece, that's kind of where it comes in, especially kind of right now where it's, you know, companies might be looking for an alternative.

Rachel Meltzer (39:06.707) Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (39:20.896) to working with an agency and they may be looking for an alternative to having a full-time person. They just may not have need like a full-time person, especially if they are a younger company, they may have a full-time marketing strategist or something like that, but they don't necessarily need a full-time writer. And so I can fill that gap also.

Rachel Meltzer (39:38.003) Yeah.

Yeah, I think there's a part of, there's a misconception in my opinion that niche is the topic you write about. I think of niche, yes it includes the topic you write about, but more as like a target. So you know who your ideal client is, so you can make a list of ideal clients and efficiently pitch them. But then there's that other aspect once you start getting into getting clients where you start to realize like, my ideal client isn't just this type of company where I write about this topic, it's also like,

Maybe it's startups in a certain series of funding. Maybe it's people who are looking for an agency alternative. Maybe it's people who do want strategy. like, as I also offer like SEO strategy on top of blog posts, or I can do like community engagement with a blog post in a private community, like what I do for Lenovo, or, you know, there are all these little.

sort of like sub niche things within your services and the companies that you're going for, but you will never know about them until you get started and you start getting clients and you start working with people and talking to people in the industry too.

Anna Burgess Yang (40:42.602) Yeah. And I niche that, you know, I only do long form content. I don't want to do email. I don't do landing page copy. I think those are just different skillsets and some people do both great. that's not me. And so it's easier for me to kind of plan my schedule and the way that I slot clients into my week. If I'm doing kind of basically variations of the same type of long form content, whether it's blog posts or eBooks or longer things, thought leadership type of stuff.

Rachel Meltzer (41:06.164) Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (41:12.34) So that's another form of niche is just narrowing your offer and just being like super good at the one thing.

Rachel Meltzer (41:20.595) Yeah, yeah, you can definitely do that. I think too, like the efficiency, like we've talked about workflow so much today, and it just comes right back to that, where it's like if you're offering like one to three services in one specific niche to one specific type of client, then your business can be super efficient. You're not wasting time on a lot of research, you're not wasting time on tasks switching, context switching in your brain, you're not, like for me,

I got too bored with only writing blogs and that's the only reason I offer other services. And also I was learning them from my own coaching side of my business. So was like, I might as well do them for clients if people ask for it. But it does make your business so much more efficient when you're really focused.

Anna Burgess Yang (42:04.714) Yeah. And I can build automations and workflows around this thing. don't have to, I mean, I could build automations and workflows for like four different things, but it keeps that part more streamlined also, because it's like, know what the deliverable is going to be. And I know that these are the steps that have to go into that deliverable.

Rachel Meltzer (42:23.401) Yeah, exactly, exactly. That makes a lot more sense. So when you first started switching to freelancing full time, did you, I feel like there are a lot of like a roller coaster of emotions that go with that and pretty rarely do people actually talk about them. How would you say, like what was the most challenging part of that and how were you able to get past that first stage of like struggle?

Anna Burgess Yang (42:51.124) So mine was a little different. So I'd been thinking about freelancing full time for probably a couple of months. And it was kind of a matter of when. When am I really willing to take that risk? When am I going to make that leap? I was at an agency. I maintained a couple, like two freelance clients on the side. So it's like, do I ramp up? What do I do? Then I lost my agency job.

It is a trial by fire. Like, OK, so one day I have a job and the next day I am a full time freelancer. Got it. And I have kids and a mortgage and all that kind of fun stuff. So what I will say is it was not as bumpy for me as it could have been for a couple of reasons. I had been active on LinkedIn for 18 months prior, at least pretty active. So when I made when I'm like, guess what? I'm taking on more freelance clients. I got some immediate.

Rachel Meltzer (43:37.78) helpful.

Anna Burgess Yang (43:46.002) inbound interest, because I've been networking with people in the industry for a while. And so I don't want to say like everybody's journey is going to be like this, but it actually wasn't too bad. within, I was prepared. I had systems already set up and I tell people the worst time to set up systems is when you need to set them up. The best time to set up systems is when you have only one or two clients.

Rachel Meltzer (44:02.121) you were pretty prepared.

Rachel Meltzer (44:12.253) Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (44:15.574) because you're not underwater. So scaling was not an issue. Like going from two clients to five clients was not a big deal. Like I was already built for that. So I'm not trying to figure things out as I go. So yeah, it didn't feel like a struggle, but I had been for bearing, like you said.

Rachel Meltzer (44:38.249) Yeah, yeah, that's helpful. think that's, I do in coaching, I have like a roadmap for people and I always tell them like, go through the whole roadmap before you start getting clients or while you're networking to build up a base to follow up with to get clients so that you're not like, you're getting clients and you're like, do I have a contract? do I have a dashboard to like manage my clients? Do I have a task management system? Like we set up.

Like, yes, we talk about finding your niche. Yes, we start creating case studies for your portfolio, but we're also setting up like your freelance writer dashboard, your business bank account, your EIN, your contracts, like all of these things that are really actually quite important. I have a free business setup checklist on my website if anybody wants it, but it's much more than that. There are like seven different categories that you should be prepared in so that when you do get clients, you're good to go. And you can always go back and change any of those things. You can

always change your niche. You can always change your portfolio. You can always decide your ideal client should be different. But if you start with every piece of the roadmap filled out, you're going to feel so much better than what I did, which was none of that. And I just freaked out and figured it out as I went. And it was excessively stressful for absolutely no reason because I'd already been freelancing part time for almost a year before I full time. And I got laid off as well.

And like, if I had just done these things instead of being like, I don't have time for anything, it would have been a lot more fun for me, I think. I wouldn't have had the freak out every three months.

Anna Burgess Yang (46:15.626) Yeah, like I remember really early when I started thinking like, my gosh, I gotta build systems was the first time I had to send an invoice. And I was like, I guess I'll create something in Google Sheets. I don't know. How are they gonna pay me? Because I'd been freelancing for an agency and they had like a prop, know, like they paid through PayPal. So like, it was not a thing. The first time I had to do it like my own for my own client, I was like, how are they gonna get me money? Like, which is pretty important. So that's why I think.

Rachel Meltzer (46:29.352) Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (46:44.586) like your checklist or like my guidance of tools you need, like those are things you kind of need to get set up so that you're not like in that freak out moment. Like now what? I'm at a complete roadblock. I'm at a complete roadblock here.

Rachel Meltzer (46:54.676) Yah.

Totally, totally. The nice thing is nowadays, there are a lot of online business banks that have invoicing and bookkeeping built in, which is beautiful. I just started using found and I'm obsessed with it. There's like, there is bookkeeping, there's invoicing, there's payment collection. It coordinates with Stripe, which I already use. I'm like, this is great. But back when I started, none of that existed. Like I was just making it up as I go and trying to figure it out. But.

Yeah, it's really helpful to be prepared like that. So that's incredible. And honestly, like, I'm not surprised with you because you have, you are the workflow queen that you did have systems set up. makes a lot of sense. man. Well, it was really great talking to you today, Anna. Is there anything that you want to plug before we talk about where to find you on the internet?

Anna Burgess Yang (47:35.326) Yeah.

Anna Burgess Yang (47:50.076) yeah. So the workflow guy that I just mentioned by the time this podcast airs, I am working on, a compliment to it of specifically AI tools that I'm really excited about. And it's not just like use JetJet VT or use mid journey or anything like that. It's like super unique tools that I have found that some of them I don't even use because they're not specifically relevant to my business, but I'm just like, that is so cool. That is such an interesting use case. And, you know, some

Rachel Meltzer (48:00.436) Nice.

Anna Burgess Yang (48:18.592) some things with video and some things with kind of like a knowledge repository of stuff. so I wanted to kind of focus on like AI first tools. Like they were built to do this need rather than a lot of tools, which are just, they already existed and now they have AI features, which is not to say those aren't useful, but that's just a different type of use case. And so I kind of been gathering these up.

Rachel Meltzer (48:39.465) Mm-hmm.

Anna Burgess Yang (48:47.654) And I'm actually going to put it up on Gumroad today. So like I said, by the time this podcast airs, it'll be out there. So for people that end up looking at my free guide of the 17 tools, this one will be available as well.

Rachel Meltzer (49:02.921) Cool, that's amazing. I highly recommend you guys. I've downloaded like basically all of your stuff from Gunroad. I love everything that you've made, Anna. I'm so glad you got to come on the show and talk today, because I've been following you for so long. It just like makes sense. And I want all of our freelancers to able to hear this knowledge, because it's so useful. Where can people find you on the internet? I follow you on LinkedIn and threads, but is there anywhere else they should look for you?

Anna Burgess Yang (49:27.508) Yeah. Yeah. So LinkedIn Anna Burgess Yang. I am pretty easy to find. There is only one of me with that name. And then start.annabyang.com has links to my social profiles, has a link to that guide that I mentioned and just kind of like, you you want to check out my blog. I write on Substack, my newsletter, all the things are there. So take your pick. I am all over the place.

Rachel Meltzer (49:34.709) you

Rachel Meltzer (49:54.021) I love how simple your website is. It was very easy to navigate. So kudos to you.

Anna Burgess Yang (49:57.62) Yeah. You know, some, someday I will maybe like pay a website designer to do all of those things. but until then, like it, it's just like what I can do. so it's gotta cut it's data kind of be simple. So the, have like kind of a one pager for clients, and then I have this kind of one pager landing page and that's a little bit of it right now.

Rachel Meltzer (50:11.057) Night.

Rachel Meltzer (50:19.997) I think it's great. Honestly, like we over engineer websites so much. simple is fine. As long as it's functional and accessible, that's what we need.

Anna Burgess Yang (50:26.944) Super fine.

Anna Burgess Yang (50:31.926) I'm just not at the point where I need a big fancy website, so I try to keep it super streamlined.

Rachel Meltzer (50:38.037) Yeah, totally. All right. Go check out Anna's Gumroad for sure. And follow her on LinkedIn or subscribe to her newsletter. So you don't miss out on any of the next things that you're going to make, which I know are going to be amazing. thanks for coming on the show, Anna.

Anna Burgess Yang (50:50.166) Yes, thank you so much for having me.