Anna Burgess Yang on Business Resilience and Smart Automation

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nigel Rawlins (01:09):
What happens to your business when you can't
work?
It's the question most of usavoid thinking about, but for
solo professionals, it's notjust a worry, it's a genuine
risk that could unraveleverything we've built, whether
it's an unexpected illness,caring for aging parents, or
simply the unpredictability oflife, we need businesses that

(01:29):
can weather storms without us atthe helm every single day.
Today's guest, Anna BurgessYang, learned this lesson in the
most dramatic way possible.
After building her successfulfreelance writing business, Anna
discovered she had a braintumor.
What could have been adevastating blow to her
livelihood became instead, apowerful demonstration of what

(01:52):
strategic systems and smartautomation can achieve.
Anna joins me today to share howshe prepared her business to run
for two months without her,maintained every client
relationship and returned towork with her incoming intact.
If you've ever worried about theprecariousness of working for
yourself, this conversationoffers practical answers that

(02:13):
you can implement today.
Anna, welcome back to theWisepreneurs podcast.
We last spoke on episode 65,that was back in November.
How are you?

Anna Burgess Yang (02:26):
Yeah, I am, I'm doing well, but quite a bit
different from the last time wespoke because I learned in May
of this year that I had a braintumor.
Thankfully, it was benign, and Ilive in a suburb of Chicago, so
I had.
Access to excellent medicalcare.
but that really kind of threw mysummer, for a loop as I had,

(02:47):
brain surgery to remove it inJuly.
So I'm now two months beyondthat and just started working
again a few weeks ago.

One of the issues for anybody working for
themselves is this issue oftheir health and the
precariousness of their health,but not just health there and
many, many other issues that canaffect them.
So how do you look at workingfor yourself now with what you
now know?

That, you know, when I first started
working for myself, which wasalmost about three years ago
now, that was always a fear andnot necessarily a like, brain
tumor.
But what happens if, I can'twork?
Maybe I just get a really badflu and you know, I'm, I'm out
for a week or something likethat.
Early in my career, I worked inbanking and so I've always kind

(03:32):
of been financially minded.
So I immediately, when I startedworking for myself, I started
squirreling away money.
Like anytime I had a really goodmonth with my client work, I
would just shove money in asavings account.
And turns out I needed that,because I ended up not working
for a full two months.
I was very lucky and had minimalside effects from my surgery.

(03:54):
The neurosurgeon was upfrontthat he wasn't exactly sure what
the outcome could be and itcould have been longer, that I
couldn't work.
So I'm lucky in that regard,that I was at least financially
prepared.
There were a lot of otherlogistical things I had to
figure out, but at least thatpart I didn't have to stress
about.

So that is a good suggestion.
So you're suggesting that youknow if you are going to work
for yourself, don't just spendall the money.

Yes, put some of it aside for a rainy

did you find that your family was supportive?

Yes.
and also a lot of friends that Ihave in the area, my parents,
I'm in the United States, bigcountry.
My parents came, from anotherstate and they stayed with us
for, five or six weeks, fromsurgery and helped take care of
my kids.
I had people drop off meals.
I had a friend mowed my lawn.
So a lot of people, asked howthey could help and I had to

(04:46):
say, yes, we need help andhere's something tangible that
you could do that would make ourlives a little easier, because I
was in the hospital for twoweeks, and then when I got home
I could not do very much.
So that was great.

Isn't that wonderful?
And what about with your work?
Did you have people helping youjust cope with some of that?
Because it would be hard to stopfor a couple of months.

It was, so client work I pretty much had to
stop because I do all of thatmyself.
And that's what clients arepaying me for is, I'm a writer
in FinTech, which is a veryniche field.
And so I I basically had to tellmy clients, I can't work.
I would love to keep workingwith you if you're willing to
wait for me.
If you can't and you need tohire somebody else.

(05:33):
I understand.
but a lot of other things I do,I was able to ask for help.
I have a newsletter, and sopeople made guest contributions
so that I didn't have to try tokeep writing or, and so I
pre-scheduled a lot of that.
People contribute guest posts myblog and scheduled those to go
out my substack.
And that was incredibly helpfuland it was great for those

(05:55):
people as well, because then Igave them a shout out and link
back to their website.
I did a ton of pre-writing andpre-planning knowing that it
could be, you know, eight to 12weeks before I could work again.
And so I was really grateful foreveryone who stepped forward and
said, yep, I'm willing to helpyou.

You know what's amazing about that is if people
listen to our previous episode,how super organized you are, you
get up early in the morning andyou have three children.

Yep.

So for you to add that into it, to be an
incredible drain on your energy.

Yeah, from the time I was diagnosed until
surgery, I had about six weeks.
I think that was my way of notfocusing too much on a surgery
that had a very unpredictableoutcome, was to kind of bury
myself in preparing.
I used Trello for projectmanagement, so everybody that
said, yes, I'll help you.
I, created lists and things so Icould follow up with people,

(06:48):
make sure what they said theywould get over to me, drafts and
things like that.
Then I stopped doing client workabout three weeks before surgery
so that I wasn't running rightup to the end.
I mean, by that point I was kindof a mess and very stressed.
Didn't feel I could do my bestwork anyway.
So at that point I was workingon getting all this stuff
scheduled, getting social mediaposts scheduled to go out so

(07:12):
that my, LinkedIn profile andsuch would remain active even
when I was not active.
But yes, that it required a lotof kind of organization to make
sure that all those things couldcome together by my July surgery
date.

I don't think people realize how organized you
are, but I think they can hear.
One of the things I like to talkabout is the extended mind.
Which, you know, building othertools and things that we can use
to help our cognitive ability.
So, during your recovery, it waspretty obvious to you that your
cognitive ability was reduced.

(07:47):
What automated systems provemost valuable to you?

I use, Zapier, for automation.
I've used it for many years.
During recovery, I wanted tostill communicate with people
about how I was doing, that wasreally important to me.
Connected to a lot of peopleI've never met in real life like
you, a lot of people said, howare we gonna get updates from
you?
How are we gonna know how thesurgery went?
So I wanted to keep publishingin my blog.
So I actually used a dictationtool, that uses ai.

(08:16):
And so I would just dictate andit would get a transcript, and
then automation picked that upand sent it to an editor who
graciously agreed to help me.
Check to make sure it soundedokay that I didn't sound like I
was on too many pain meds oranything like that.
Another automation piece wouldkick off and get that over to my
virtual assistant, who thenloaded it onto my website and

(08:37):
got it published so it would goout that way.
So all I had to do was dictateinto my phone and then this with
help of two people and a bunchof automation, got my words out
into the world.

It just sounds like waving a magic wand.
I mean, who would've thought,you know, 20 years ago that you
could do that?
Connect with so many people and,but this is one of the most
amazing things that we, we needto realize nobody works on their
own anymore, when you're doingintelligent work like that, you

(09:08):
have a team around you, butyou've also got tools like
Zapier.
One of the problems we have inAustralia is the Australian
dollar compared to the USdollar, so Zapier is incredibly
expensive here.
It's like about three or$400 ayear I think, or more.
I forget, or it might, might bemore than that.
So I think the American dollaris much easier to use Zapier.

(09:31):
So do you find it easy to set upZapier?
We call'em Zaps to do thesethings.

yeah, I do at this point.
but at this point I've beenusing it, I think.
I'm gonna guess maybe 10 years.
I even used it back when Iworked at a corporate job.
But I'm a lot better at it nowthan I was.
A lot of the things were justtrial and error and I'm like, I
want it to do this thing, so I'mjust gonna try to poke at it and
figure out until I could get itto do that thing.
I've learned a lot of tricks tomake it better or, you know, if

(09:59):
it doesn't quite do what I want,I can kind of finagle it a
little bit and figure that out.
But it is intimidating.
I think there is a learningcurve to it, especially if
you've never used it before andyou kind of don't even know
where to start.
It is an expensive tool.
I think it's the most expensivetool I pay for even in US
dollars, but it saves me so muchtime that it's worth it.

Yeah, I, and I think that's the way to look at
it, is if you had to pay forsomebody to do all these things
or to spend the time to do allthose things, you know, it can
actually work out a lot cheaper.
I've been trying make.com, whichis an alternative.

Yeah

it is a lot cheaper for Australians and I
set one up the other day andbelieve it or not, Gemini sort
of helped.
We couldn't quite get it righteven though we were using Gemini
as the AI engine to processnewsletters.
'cause I've I've got a very badhabit of subscribing to a
million newsletters and thenthey come in and they clog up my

(10:55):
email system.
So I set up a summary system.
But I, I ended up having to useChat GPT to do the summary
instead of Gemini.
And you'll laugh because Geminicouldn't get it to work through
Gemini.
So I asked the support peopleand they said, we've got a
module that just links to allthe AIs.
Why didn't you just use that?

(11:16):
And I'm going, oh.
And eventually got it working.
So that now gives me a summaryof all the newsletters, and I'll
just click through them and, andif one looks interesting, then
I'll go and read it.
But it gives me the gist ofwhat's going on.
And, you know, if you are madlike I am and, and subscribe to
too many things, that that's agood little thing.
You are focused on the systemsthat work, so I think your

(11:39):
systems are probably a lot moreintelligent than my ones.

Well, and I think with using AI you kind of
have to keep tweaking them too.
'cause the systems get better,the models get better, they have
maybe fewer errors or they dothings that they just flat out
couldn't do before.
You know, when ChatGPT was firstreleased, it was kind of a
snapshot in time and it didn'thave any real time information
and now it can search the web.

(12:04):
So that opens up a lot morepossibilities with what you can
have these systems do.

So in terms of talking about AI, obviously
we're beginning to see is a lotof generic rubbish out there.
So how do you see a relationshipbetween your professional wisdom
and AI tools evolving.
Where do you sort of draw theline between augmentation and
replacement?
A lot of us are using AI toaugment our work, but is there a

(12:32):
point where it's gonna replacesome things and, the system you
just mentioned, using Zapier wasan interesting one.

I use AI mostly to augment or speed up my
work.
So for example, you know, I Iwrite a lot, I write on my blog
um, I have an automation set upthrough Zapier that takes a
newly published blog post andcreates three or four LinkedIn
posts for it, and then sendthrough ChatGPT so it's using AI

(12:59):
to generate the posts and thenit sends those posts directly to
Buffer, which is where Ischedule my content.
They do not go out as ChatGPTwrote them.
They're not good, even with allthe training in the world, it's
not exactly how I would writeit, but the draft is there,
right?
So then I can just edit andpublish, which is faster than,

(13:21):
you know, revisiting a blog postI wrote three weeks ago and
trying to remember what I wroteand trying to pull out the main
points.
I I basically trust ChatGPTenough to pull out the main
ideas and structure a basicposts that I can then tweak and
so that's faster.
So it's, it's basicallyaugmenting work that I did
anyway.

(13:41):
There are cases where itreplaced work.
I have a whole system set up anAirtable that keeps track of
everything I've ever written andcategorizes them in categories
that are meaningful to me.
And before that was a manualprocess.
You know, a new blog post wouldcome in and I'd have to go into
Airtable and select a categoryor have my virtual assistant do

(14:02):
it.
Um, now ChatGPT just runsthrough the blog post through
Zapier and picks a category.
Is it right a hundred percent ofthe time?
Probably not.
Is it right?
90% of the time?
Probably.
And that's good enough for whatI'm doing and for the time saved
and not having to think aboutit.
That works.

(14:22):
And so yeah, that was somethingthat previously was manual and
now I just don't even have tothink about it anymore.

Actually that's really, really important what
you've just said.
'cause I write a number ofarticles per week um, I mean,
they're generally around the onetheme, so I might write a fairly
detailed blog article about thework I'm doing, then I might
write a, a short little bit fora newsletter and I might put
something on LinkedIn, which isa longer version of the

(14:49):
newsletter, but cutting it upinto social media posts like
you've just said.
I can do that, but it might besitting on a document somewhere
that I've then gotta go andfind.
So your systems are much, muchsmarter.

Yeah.
It's all, it's all justpreloaded in Buffer.
I've got, like right now inBuffer, I think there's 160
LinkedIn posts waiting for me toedit.
Now, that's too much.
Like I don't need that many.
But when you get to somethinglike brain surgery and you can't
work for a couple of weeks.
It's handy to have 160 draftposts waiting, so you can just
kind of quickly go through andedit and schedule them out, and

(15:22):
then not have to write anythingfor a while.

Well, I hope the listeners are understanding what
you've just done there.
You've just explained how youdon't lose all this stuff,'cause
we were talking earlier aboutthe fact that I've written quite
a lot of documents, but theywere scattered everywhere, so I
had to spend some time findingthem all.
Putting them into a spreadsheetand figuring out what category
they were, where they were, andactually to locate the document.

(15:47):
And then think about all thesocial media posts I could write
for each of those.
And then I'm ending up withanother 20 or 30 pages of
documents.
That's where our mind sort ofgets bogged down.
And, and it worries me because,you know, it gets to a point
where you say, oh, I just can'thandle this anymore, I'm just
gonna go for a walk.
I was also gonna say that one ofthe things about AI is I saw

(16:09):
this fabulous quote, and Istupidly didn't write down who
said it, but you know, forpeople like me now, I'm gonna
turn 70 next year, and I amprobably writing more than I've
ever written in my life.
The quote I saw that seniors useAI to accelerate what they
already know how to do.
I thought that's a ripper.

(16:30):
My gut feeling is olderprofessionals have got an
advantage because they haven'talways been digital.
They've actually read books andcan still read documents,'cause
I think a lot of people are morein tune to YouTube videos and
lack attention.
Provided the older professionalis still reading and looking at

(16:51):
notes and thinking, I think AIactually gives them an edge.

You know, it's interesting because, i've
been like a kind of a note takerperson my whole life.

(17:29):
Like, if I read an articleonline, I want to have notes so
I can go back and kind ofconnect ideas later.
But like you said, how do youfind all that stuff?
Again, and that's kind of whereAI can kinda help you sift
through like colossal documentsand colossal notes and say, hey,
here's these two things that youread five years apart and

(17:52):
they're connected in some way.
And so, um, that's where I thinkthere is an advantage to people
who do collect data, collectinformation, and maybe have all
that information hoardedsomewhere, even if it's in a
notebook.
I mean, you could take a photoand scan it and upload it to
ChatGPT and still be able tokind of process through all of
that.

That's one thing I've been doing lately.
For example, if I'm looking at awebsite, I might take a a
screenshot of that page now andsay, okay, I need to refocus
this page on that.
What are your suggestions?
I'm finding it amazing.
So, where where would you sayyour expertise has become more
valuable since AI?

It's gonna sound probably pretty corny, but
in, um, being, being authenticbecause people can generate
LinkedIn posts or blog postswith speed and it's always gonna
be generic because AI is alwaysjust kind of a regurgitation of
everything else on the internet,right?
It's not original thought.

(18:55):
And so I think for writers orcreatives or anything, it's,
it's having an opinion or avoice or something that makes
you different.
And so that's what makes youstand out among people who don't
know how to edit.
They have AI generate an emailthat ends up being paragraphs
long or LinkedIn post that endsup being huge blocks of text or
something like that.

(19:15):
And even if it was based ontheir ideas, if they can't edit
it, it just, it doesn't captureanybody's attention.

You know, I get very jealous when I look at
somebody who can just writenaturally by themselves.
I dunno if that's a skill that'sdisappearing or what

Yeah.

Now, one of the things we were speaking a bit
earlier about you have thefinancial writing that you do,
you also now write quite a lotabout automation and using AI,
which I find fabulous, which iswhy I wanted to talk to you.
Um, and, and the fact that youyou have two streams in your
business, but you had to make adecision about, um, which stream

(19:55):
to follow, didn't you?

Yes.
So this year was going to uh,the year that I focused, um, a
lot more on resources forsolopreneurs, which is kind of
who I target.
And, um, I talk, like you said,automation, AI, but I really
think of it like operations,like the stuff that's happening
behind the scenes, um, that Idon't think a lot of people are
talking about.
Like what tools to use.

(20:18):
How do you decide which tool,how do you decide how much to
spend?
Basically all of your techstack, you know, and I wanted to
launch, uh, several things thisyear related to that.
I wanted um, host a cohort ofpeople who are interested in
talking about tools andautomation.
Um, I actually had the webpageready to go.
I had a wait list sign up, I wasready to launch it, and like

(20:40):
literally two days later, Ifound out I had a tumor.
And so I had to pause that.
You know, email the people andsay, I can't host this right
now.
And as I've come back, I'm luckythat my cognitive ability was
not really impacted, but work isharder because I get fatigued
very easily and I can't I can'tsit upright as long, and so I

(21:02):
had to decide I have to focus onthe client work that I do, the
writing because, um, I'm good atit.
I've been doing it a long timefor lack of better words.
It's easier for me.
I can plan it better, whereas,um, the other I had to just say
I can't do that right now.
I'd love to.
Um, you know, but I wasn't ableto kind of nurture that audience

(21:23):
because I was relying so much onguest posts and things like
that.
So I'll come back maybe nextyear.
Uh, but I had to say goodbye youknow, that part of my business,
at least temporarily.

Now you made an interesting point there about
operations, the sexy part isyes, doing the client work, but
you're still running a businessin the background and you gotta
get stuff done.
So, yeah, that's one of thethings I love about your
newsletters because I, I lovethe fact that you write from an
operational point of view aboutusing tools and my biggest
danger is subscribing to toomany tools in American dollars.

Yeah, and I think it's a, it's something
that a lot of solopreneurs don'ttalk about, um, you know, they
may talk about how to pitchclients, um, how to promote your
work, maybe staying organized orproductivity type of things.
But I don't think people talkenough about like, well, what is
actually like running yourbusiness?
Behind the scenes, like what areyou relying on for project
management?

(22:20):
What are you relying on foraccounting?
How do you decide how much tospend?
Especially, like me, I had to dokind of an audit of my tools.
Say, okay, I'm not working.
Can I cancel any of these for afew months?
Or do they need to keep runningin the background?
And some of them did.
And I just think that's aconversation that's interesting,
you know, like, what tools doyou use?
What do you like?
Or have you tried this onebefore?

(22:41):
And a lot of people like to geekout on that type of thing.
so I think it's needed and Istill wanna do it.
It's just, you know, it'll haveto be later.

Yep.
looking forward to it.
When you, you get into thatbecause I, I think you are, you
presented at a practical leveland because you're an organized
person who's running their ownbusiness, you are a great model
for other people and and you'vejust said the right things in
terms of budget.
Again, it's just shocking thatthe Australian dollar, a$200 a

(23:12):
year app in Australia is$300Australian.
So for us to pay the$300, youknow, that could be some client
work.
So, um, it, it can mount up.
So yeah, you gotta be sensible.
So what core apps would you sayyou can't live without?

Well, I work with an outside accounting firm
that does my bookkeeping.
I did it myself for a long time,but now now I decided that was
something I didn't need to domyself.
But I actually have themcategorize my apps into critical
and non-critical, so that I lookat that in my budget.
Like what are the critical appsI pay for and what are the
things that are, they're nice tohave.
They saved me time.
Push came to shove, I couldcancel them.

(23:51):
So um, Zapier is connectingeverything.
Airtable, um, is a pretty bigone.
I keep track of all my clientwork there and it hosts my, what
I call my content library.
Everything I've ever written onthe internet links to the URL
when it was published.
Word count topics, like a wholebunch of different things.
Just keeps keeps track of that.

(24:12):
Trello is for projectmanagement.
So, content that I plan towrite, you know, I like, maybe
it's just a half baked idea.
It's not a blog post yet, butit's like, oh, I think I could
turn this into a blog post inthe future.
So that'll go, um, in Trellountil I'm ready to work on it.
I use Buffer for social mediascheduling.
Um, I don't think I could livewithout.
I can't just post on the fly.

(24:33):
I have to have it kind ofscheduled out.
ChatGPT Pro, I mean, think, youknow, I could live without AI If
AI disappeared tomorrow, I wouldfigure out how to go back and
and do this stuff manually.
But it is a huge time saver theway I've got it embedded into my
systems.
Um, so I would consider that.
critical because it is saving mea lot of time.

(24:54):
I use things like Canva forgraphics.
I use Loom for videos.
And so those are kind of thecore tools that I'm touching, if
not every day, prettyfrequently.

Isn't that amazing?
When you think about, you'vejust mentioned a half dozen
tools and, and if somebody'sjust finishing work and they've
decided they're going tocontinue working, they've
suddenly find all these tools,but they've gotta learn them.
I'm using obsidian for my notes.

Oh yeah, I use a I use a Reflect, which is
an Obsidian competitor.
They're very similar in how theyfunction.

Yeah, that's a subscription.
another subscription.
I tried Reflect and Craft and afew others, but I'm finding,
Obsidian is a free, though I payfor it to be saved in the cloud
so I can access it.
So that's the biggest problem ifyou've got it on your own
computer.
What about backing up and stufflike that, because that's the

(25:49):
other big issue.
Um.
I've just got into thatrecently.
I had five little hard drives,everything backing up to it.
Now I use Google Workspace formy emails and everything, and
Google Workspace gives youGemini and Notebook AI and a
whole range of other things,which are really quite good.
Actually, I'm I'm finding thatpart getting really good and I

(26:11):
said to it, okay, what does anormal person who's organized
use for backup.
And, it just explained how Ishould, so I don't understand
this.
Is Google talking to me?

I heard my name.
I have to contribute.

I was gonna say, Gemini, uh, explained to me this
is a good system for organizingyour backups.
So instead of five little thingsit said, set one as the major
one and then set two separateones up as a weekly backup and
then set up another app toorganize that.
And I'm thinking, gee, I wouldnever have thought that myself.

(26:50):
So these things are quitehelpful.

Yeah, they are.

One of my favorite authors about business
is Charles Handy, and he wroteabout the second curve.
So the first curve is you go toschool, you go to work, and then
towards the end of your work,you know, you start to decline
and then maybe retire and that'sit.
Whereas other people, beforethey get to the decline, start
thinking about doing somethingdifferent.

(27:16):
The idea is that you start yournext curve before the end of
this one.
Now, your health's changed,obviously caused an unexpected
pause.
How has that affected yourthinking about the
sustainability of your businesslong term?

It certainly made me kind of pause and think
about my own basically face inthe business, you know, because
I think, especially growing apart of a business that, you
know, where I'm an authority ortrying to establish myself as
authority on tools andautomation, that's very
dependent on me, that I am thatperson in the business and that

(27:54):
is that sustainable long term,certainly all my client work is
dependent on me.
I know I don't outsource any ofthat'cause that's what they're
hiring and paying me for.
But it also made me think aboutlike, what do I, what's, what
would bring me joy?
And I love talking about toolsand automation, but the reality
is I just don't have the energyfor those things right now.
But you know other things thatI've wanted to do in my career

(28:16):
is write a book.
And so I'm like is that thething that I should work on?
Is that something that I cankind of do, that's maybe less
taxing,'cause I'm not I'm not oncamera.
I'm not leading a group.
I'm not pushing social media.
And so I have stepped back andsaid, you know, is this the
season that I'm supposed to dosomething different.
I don't know the answer to thatyet.
I'm okay with that.

(28:36):
Um, but it's something that I'mexploring is maybe I just take
much longer pause or, orcontinue to provide free
resources, but don't necessarilygrow that part of my business
and instead focus on anotherthing that I've always really
wanted to do.
And there's certainly nothinglike, um, brain surgery to make
you think, oh, maybe I don'thave as much time as I thought
and maybe I really want, if Iwanna do this, I need to focus

(28:58):
on it.

Yeah, that's the same thing that faces somebody
like me who's about to turn 70.
You think, oh my God, how muchtime have I got left?
I mean, it's more scary for mein that regard.
But then again, in terms of yourhealth, you have no idea what's
going to affect you.
So yeah, time becomes veryprecious and, and you've got a
young family, so I mean, youknow, spending more time say

(29:22):
writing a book than spendingtime with your 8-year-old, um,
you know, that's a realchallenge, isn't it?

Yeah, and when.
I first found out I had a tumor,there was a brief period of time
where I didn't know if it wasbenign or cancerous, which
obviously would've been a verydifferent course of treatment
and potential outcome.
And I remember just sittingthere thinking as I was waiting
for the doctor to come in afteran MRI, you know, what if they

(29:48):
tell me, I've only got a couplemonths to live, you know, um,
all I knew was that I had atumor.
And so that type of scarecertainly makes you think, what
can I do with the time that Ihave left and what if this is,
what if it's gonna be reallyshort, and then it'd be like,
well, I'm gonna stop working andwrite this book, or I'm gonna

(30:09):
stop working altogether andspend the time with my kids.
And so that type of priorityshifts, um.
I don't say I wish it onanybody.
It was certainly like some ofthe scariest hours of my life.
But, um, it it has since made methink in a much different way
about who I am, what I wanna do,how I spend time with my family,

(30:32):
and certainly the business thatI've been building for the past
few years.

Yeah, and that makes me think about, you know,
us being in business that wedon't want it to be draining.
We don't want it to dominate ourtime, that we don't have time
for the special people in ourlives.
And, you know, I wanna say tosome of the younger people, you
know, um, if you've got older,elderly parents, do spend time

(30:57):
with them and do spend time withyour friends and your family.
It would be wrong to, you know,spend 20 hours a day working on
a business because you think,you know that's gonna make your
life better.
You're gonna end up neglectingpeople who are special,
especially when your kids growup and they move, to different

(31:18):
countries and you can't see themso easily, but at least we can
talk to them on the phonenowadays.
I I traveled overseas in 1980,and in those days you didn't
have the internet and to findout news from home was very very
hard.
And you'd, you'd end up waitingfor a letter at a post office,
though you'd do Post Restante.

(31:39):
So you'd you'd end up in a acity, in a foreign country and
go to the post office andhopefully there'd be a letter
waiting from home.
That's a very different way totoday.
Like you just message your kidand say, oh, dad, dad's not
picking you up.
Get on the bus or something likethat.
Or, you know, I get on Messengerand talk to my son in Whistler
in Canada, who I will visit nextyear.

(32:01):
I hate planes, so geez, I'm, Ihope he realizes I'm making a
big effort, sit on a plane for13 hours to come and see him,
but I will spend the whole timestaying with him.
I'm not gonna go and visitanywhere else in Canada.
Get off the plane, get on thebus, go and stay with him.
And now he'll have to work andhis wife works, but I'll see him
in between, which I, I, I'mlooking forward to.

(32:23):
Okay.
Now, if you were to design abusiness from scratch today,
knowing what you know abouthealth vulnerability and AI
capabilities and the actual workinvolved in being a solo
business.
What would you do differentlyfrom the start?

You know, I was on a podcast earlier this
year, and the the name, thepodcast itself is Freelance
Mistakes.
And, you know, it's supposed tobe advice for other freelancers
to say like, what would you dodifferently if you were starting
over?
And so the the host asked mesomething very similar, um, and
I said, very honestly, Iwouldn't do anything
differently.
Um, I, I had financiallyplanned, that, you know, I was

(33:08):
able to take a few months offand not worry about income, um,
I did have to shut my businessdown, but I had built
relationships with my clientsand they were willing to keep
working with me even after apause.
Um, I'm organized enough that Ihad everything was prepped and
ready to go by the time I, um,had surgery.
And, you know, I was able torely on other people.

(33:31):
And so I I don't know that Iwould do anything differently,
um, other than just say maybe,screw it, everything can just
pause.
And I'm gonna enjoy these coupleweeks before surgery and just
spend time with my family.
But I think that by itself wasstressful.
I needed the distraction.
That's just the type of person Iam.
So that worked and I I don'tknow that I would've done any,

(33:52):
anything differently.

I think that's pretty good, but people need to
have a listen to that earlierepisode with you because they'll
see how organized you were.
I mean, you you taught me a lot.
Um, in many ways listening toyou on that one is I'm thinking
I'm, I can be very disorganized,but I've had to learn to be more
organized because I'm doing somuch writing now that I, I'll

(34:16):
get lost in it all.

You know one thing I want to create, and I
don't know when, but I want tocreate like a checklist for
people who are maybesolopreneurs who have a health
scare or, or, um, need to takecare of a loved one and they
kind of need to step back,because I think being as
organized as I am, I knewexactly what to do and I could
see other people just freezingand saying, like, and, and on

(34:40):
top of the stress of dealingwith a health scare, just
freezing saying, I don't knowwhat to do next.
And, I wanna create like achecklist or a resource or an
ebook or something that says,this is what you should do.
Like, if you just need somebodyto tell you what to do, I will
tell you what to do and takethat burden, that mental burden
off of you, and you can spendthe time actually doing these
things if that's what you wannaput in place.

That would be fantastic.
Look, I, I think that that wouldbe very helpful.
Um, that's the big issue, isn'tit?
That when you come acrosssomething you dunno what to do
with, where do you start?
Now people probably heard metalk about the fact that I
started learning Krav Maga 18months ago.
And the whole point about thefirst thing you learn in Krav

(35:22):
Maga which is the Israeliself-defense, is not to freeze
in a, um, in a situation thatyou know, somebody is angry with
you or they're coming at you.
You don't freeze that you have asystem to deal with it, and
that's what you're offeringthere.
And I think that would be veryhandy.
Don't freeze because you canfall apart in many ways, and

(35:46):
you're vulnerable.
I think you, you are a wonderfulexample of running a resilient
business with a very supportivenetwork too, from the sounds of
it.
Anna, I've run outta things tosay, Anna, what else should we
talk about?
Is there something we haven'tcovered?

I don't think so.
Nobody ever really expects to,to to get that kind of health
news that I got.
And I think, you know, for solobusiness owners out there, it
is, it's terrifying.
And you know, for everybodylistening today that is healthy,
I would say, think about what ifall of a sudden you couldn't

(36:29):
attend to your business for acouple of months?
What would you do?
What could you put in placetoday?
Just to make it a little easierbecause the thing about doing
all that work, that prep work isthen I could kind of not think
about it.
I didn't have to worry about mybusiness running while I was
lying in a hospital bed.
It was just kind of running inthe background with the help of

(36:49):
people and systems.
And so I didn't have to stressat at a time that was otherwise
incredibly stressful in my lifefor, for other reasons.
So, nobody likes to think aboutit, but you kind of have to.

Very good advice, Anna.
Where can people find you?

The best place would be I've got a
website, start dot anna byang.com.
I've got some free resourcesthere, and that's kind of like a
landing with, they call all mysocials and my, my website and
things like that.
So that's kind of the placewhere to go other places.

Great, and you're on LinkedIn,

I am on LinkedIn.
I've run out of prescheduledcontent at this point.
So I need to start writing.
I need to start writing thingsagain.

I, I'll put all these links in the show notes.
So Anna, thank you very much forbeing my guest and I'm so glad
that you are recovering well andgood luck with the recovery.

Thank you.
I appreciate it.

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