The Marketing Freelancer: Unicorns Unite

Buying someone else’s AI skill pack means buying their SOPs, and your business doesn’t run like theirs. AI works when it’s layered on top of real expertise and a system that already exists, and most of what’s being sold right now skips both.Ange Quinn spent 15 years in corporate operations before she started building AI systems for service businesses. She was turned down by an AI summit for being too contrarian and too advanced, so she built her own. In this episode she explains why skills and templates aren’t enough, why most AI implementation hires disappoint, and how to train Claude the way you’d train a new team member.Ange already audited my podcast production system live inside our Digital Marketer’s Workgroup, showing where AI and automation actually fit and which system to build first. The replay is waiting for you there. To join us, apply here.Links Mentioned in Show:Beyond Cowork Scheduled Tasks, a free virtual summit, Nov. 17-20,2026Unchained, Ange’s AI program*Ange’s AI Business AuditDigital Marketer’s Workgroup Connect with Ange Quinn:@theopsbuilderConnect with Emily:Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily ReaganGrow your freelance business inside the Digital Marketer's Workgroup: Apply to join a vetted room of marketing specialists doing smarter, better paid work. Networking groups pass names around. This is a peer community that vouches for you with their reputation on the line.Hire a Marketer: Submit your marketing or ops position opening and I’ll share it with the skilled & vetted professionals in our Workgroup via hireaunicorn.com.

Megan Hale thinks the online space has business debt backwards. Women get shamed for putting it on a credit card when that’s often the only capital anyone will give them. She paid off $30K in 10 months once she dropped the shame, and now she builds financial leadership software for solo CEOs at Dream Money.We also get into why she went to 10 events in one year (and how it made filling her own summit easier the next), plus the billable-hours math most service providers get wrong when they set their rates.Megan already taught financial forecasting inside our Digital Marketer’s Workgroup, including a full Dream Money demo, and the replay is waiting for members. Apply here.Links Mentioned in Show:Dream Bigger Summit, Omaha, November 11–12: dreammoney.co/summitDream Money: dreammoney.coDigital Marketer’s Workgroup Connect with Megan:Website: dreammoney.coInstagram: @meganhalecoConnect with Emily:Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily ReaganGet Emily's 1:1 PR helpGrow your freelance business inside the Digital Marketer's Workgroup: Apply to join a vetted room of marketing specialists doing smarter, better-paid work. Networking groups pass names around. This is a peer community that vouches for you with their reputation on the line.Hire a Marketer: Submit your marketing or ops position opening and I’ll share it with the skilled & vetted professionals in our Workgroup via hireaunicorn.com.Connect with Emily:Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily ReaganGrow your freelance business inside the Digital Marketer's Workgroup: Apply to join a vetted room of marketing specialists doing smarter, better-paid work. Networking groups pass names around. This is a peer community that vouches for you with their reputation on the line.Hire a Marketer: Submit your marketing or ops position opening and I’ll share it with the skilled & vetted professionals in our Workgroup via hireaunicorn.com.

Everyone wants to get on bigger shows. Fewer people talk about what it takes. Brenna McGowan spent five years building toward her spot on Amy Porterfield's show, and when the timing finally lined up, we rewrote her pitch together. We get into what made it land and what almost didn't.She’s a pre-launch strategist and creator of Anticipation Marketing®, put Amy Porterfield's show on her vision board in 2020. She finally pitched in December 2025, right after the news broke that Digital Course Academy was ending. In this episode, Brenna and I pull apart the pitch we rewrote together. We get into the journalism news values that made it timely, writing as a peer instead of a fan, and why the who-to-pitch question is the one we keep dodging.Conversations like this one happen all the time inside the Digital Marketer's Workgroup, where specialists talk through the real strategy behind getting results for their clients. Apply here.Links Mentioned in Show:The Pre-Launch Plan ProgramBehind the Launch podcastBrenna' episode on the Amy Porterfield Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9S4KAMnK84Digital Marketer’s WorkgroupGet Emily's 1:1 PR help: https://emilyreaganpr.com/cmo-services/Connect with Brenna McGowan:@brennamcgowancobrennamcgowan.coConnect with Emily:Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily ReaganGrow your freelance business inside the Digital Marketer's Workgroup: Apply to join a vetted room of marketing specialists doing smarter, better-paid work. Networking groups pass names around. This is a peer community that vouches for you with their reputation on the line.Hire a Marketer: Submit your marketing or ops position opening and I’ll share it with the skilled & vetted professionals in our Workgroup via hireaunicorn.com.

Ewwww! Raise your hand if you’re done giving away our best strategic thinking for free. There's a gap between being seen as the expert and getting paid like one, and it closes the moment you start charging for the strategy, not just the execution.That's exactly what Natalie Gingrich teaches. She runs The Ops Authority and helps service providers turn that thinking into its own paid offer with her strategic mapping model. She gets into how to price it, what to do with the follow-on work, and when to walk from a client.If you're doing strategic work and implementation freelance work, you need to be in our Workgroup – a community for upper-tier freelance marketers and marketing ops specialists who get online business and support each other. Apply here.Links Mentioned in Show:Your Strategic Shift Sept 28-30, 2026Digital Marketer’s Workgroup Connect with Natalie Gingrich:@theopsauthoritytheopsauthority.comConnect with Emily:Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily ReaganGrow your freelance business inside the Digital Marketer's Workgroup: Apply to join a vetted room of marketing specialists doing smarter, better-paid work. Networking groups pass names around. This is a peer community that vouches for you with their reputation on the line.Hire a Marketer: Submit your marketing or ops position opening and I’ll share it with the skilled & vetted professionals in our Workgroup via hireaunicorn.com.

Here is part 2 of our episode with Kara Charron!What does it take to be trusted with $1.1 million in ad spend on a $19 million launch? How do you go from a $30/hour client to negotiating a base fee, a cut of ad spend, and profit share on every contract since? And why does she still say no to good clients … even when the money's great?Kara Charron is a CMO and ads manager who's generated more than $60 million in client revenue, including a recent $19 million launch with $1.1 million in ad spend. She built her own profit-share model from scratch, and she's telling the real story of how she got there and why she’s so damn good at running ads.Kara's joining Darrell Vesterbelt, former growth strategist behind Kit and Mighty Networks, in Digital Marketer’s Workgroup to go deeper on profit-sharing structures, negotiating a percentage of ad spend, and what it actually takes to move from hourly and retainer work into getting a piece of the pie — live on September 15. You should be in our community of marketing and ops specialists: apply here.Links Mentioned in Show:Digital Marketer’s Workgroup Connect with Kara Charron:@karacharron_kreativedigitalmediainc.comConnect with Emily:Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily ReaganGrow your freelance business inside the Digital Marketer's Workgroup: Apply to join a vetted room of marketing specialists doing smarter, better paid work. Networking groups pass names around. This is a peer community that vouches for you with their reputation on the line.Hire a Marketer: Submit your marketing or ops position opening and I’ll share it with the skilled & vetted professionals in our Workgroup via hireaunicorn.com.