Broke Entrepreneur Launches Business With Books, Not Loans

Unsure how to fund your business dreams without debt? Annie Yang built a personal finance platform, Annie Yang Financial, and 18,000+ subscribers on her YouTube channel from scratch. Discover her tactics to self-publish and market books for credibility. Learn why she pursued cheap communications degrees over costly accounting credentials.

Hear how Annie leveraged books like “1001 Ways to Save Money” to impress employers and land enviable job offers. Find out why she advises entrepreneurs use AI tools to create professional headshots on a budget. Let her “go big or go home” attitude inspire your own content marketing and book launch strategies.

If you feel stuck kickstarting your business without savings or loans, don’t miss Annie’s encouraging story. Her commitment to help people master their finances makes this a must-listen episode for any budding entrepreneur.

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Transcript

Jim James (00:01.91)
And hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, Jim James. Today we're going to listen to an inspirational female entrepreneur. She's someone who managed to get herself a degree by going around the school system and going online. She got a degree, but then when she went for a job, she told the employers that actually she'd written a book and they were more impressed by her book writing skills. And we're going to talk to this entrepreneur about how she managed to go

from being a graduate with a marketing degree to actually working in financial support for entrepreneurs, writing her own book and having Annie Yang financial. We're going to Boston to talk to Annie Margarita Yang. Annie, welcome to the show.

Annie Margarita Yang (00:43.797)
Jim, thanks for having me on today.

Jim James (00:50.422)
Well, you know, this is called the Unnoticed entrepreneur as a show. And I love the fact that you've come on the show to share with us how you've gone from being sort of an Unnoticed, but also one of the young people that is fighting with the costs of education, you found a unique solution to that, and then you've parlayed that into, into business. You've also managed to survive the, uh, recent Silicon Valley bank collapse. We're going to talk about how you managed to do that.

I'm going to talk about your, you know, you've built over 18,000 followers on YouTube in the last year and a half or so. So very, very quick growth, but also how you've found yourself now bumping up against some limits. So Annie, we've got a lot to learn from you because although you're still fresh faced as an entrepreneur, you've accomplished a great deal. Tell us a little bit about your story and the founding of the Annie Yang Financial Business.

Annie Margarita Yang (01:22.621)
Annie Margarita Yang (01:51.255)
finances. This is something that's been, I think, eight years in the making. I decided when I was 20 that I wanted to help people with their finances, but I just didn't know how because a lot of like jobs are not about helping people with their finances when you're a financial advisor. You're more about selling stocks, selling mutual funds. So I was just like, how does one do it? How does one become the next Suzy Orman or the next Dave Ramsey? Right? That's not actually

a job that's more like something more entrepreneurial, something about building your own personal brand. So when I was 20, right, I didn't go straight to college because I couldn't afford it. Worked a whole string of minimum wage jobs. So when I was 20, I went to college and I got a degree in communications, but then coming out, of course, I was working at Domino's Pizza, like you were saying just now. And so I already knew back then that

I had to do something to get noticed, right? And so already back when I was going to community college, people were telling me that I have to network to succeed in my career. So I was like looking for all kinds of meetup.com events and Eventbrite free events that I found that were related to business and career. And one of them that I found was the Small Business Expo. And at the Small Business Expo, I had

come across this really high pressure sales pitch from this guy who was selling this workshop on how to publish a book and grow rich. And he said, if you buy it today, you know, normally it's $997, but buy it today, it's only $97. And people weren't buying it. So then he's like, okay, guys, if you buy it for 97 today, you can bring a friend for free. So I turned to the person next to me, and I asked if she was interested. And then she said, yeah, so I paid 97. And I asked it to pay me back for half of it. So I didn't even pay $50 for this

workshop. I went to the workshop and I learned that most people don't, most authors, they don't even sell 2,000 copies of their book. The goal is not to sell the book because 99% of authors, even traditionally published authors, don't even sell 2,000. If you can hit 2,000, that's success. The goal is to write a book so that you position yourself as an authority and open up opportunity for yourself. So write a book on something you know extremely well and can write quickly,

Annie Margarita Yang (04:09.801)
so that you could just get it out into the world. Don't spend a year writing it. And so I decided, you know, because I'm so good at saving money on a minimum wage, I will write this kind of book. So I literally, it was a list, you know, 1,000 one ways to save money, right? Like literally I just sat down and started writing down the list and then that became the book. I got the book out like written, edited, published out there into the world, even the paperback version, not just the ebook in only three months.

So by the time I was applying for accounting jobs with no accounting degree, I had put right under the education line where I had the communications degree, I put author of 1000 One Ways to Save Money. And that is how I got my start because people were calling me left and right to give me an interview.

Jim James (04:57.655)
Yeah, it's a brilliant story. Well, just quickly, why did you want to always help people with finances when you studied marketing and communications?

Annie Margarita Yang (04:59.117)
Yeah, I got the degree just to check the box because people weren't interested in talking to me or giving me an opportunity. They would write me off and brush me off just because I didn't have a college degree. I always think, you know, I was a straight A student all throughout K-12 and I just don't think

college is the right way to filter people out, but I understand people have a certain judgment or perception and that they will filter me out just because I don't have the degree. So I wanted something quick that I could just check the box. And it's much easier to check the box for a communications degree than an accounting degree. It would take a lot more studying, I'll be very honest, to pass those classes and exams.

Jim James (05:49.018)
Annie, that sounds, well efficient, I think, would be the way to put that. Annie, so I've got in front of me, and for those people that are listening, just to explain, there's a book on Annie's website. It's called Anni She's called The Five Day Job Search. Now you talked about the 1,000 and 1 Ways to Save Money as being a great way to

really gain some traction and get in front of potential employers. Where does the five day job search book come in? Because it looks as though you've moved on a little bit from that original proposition. Love to hear how you've parlayed from one into another.

Annie Margarita Yang (06:35.557)
Yeah, because I wrote 1001 ways to save money and then I also started a YouTube channel around the same time where one of the videos went viral so I started getting a lot of followers very quickly. I also put that on my resume. I was able to land on three separate job searches, an accounting job without an accounting degree, an offer in just under a week. So the first search took seven days, the second search took six days, and then my third search took only

five days. So then I was like, okay, clearly there's something here that I'm very good at. I thought everyone was landing jobs in just a week. I'll be very honest. I thought everyone was doing that. I thought that was the norm. Okay. Until I read the statistic that people actually take six months to land a job. And I was also growing my accounting, my own accounting firm on the site. In addition to my full-time job, I was taking accounting clients and I was hiring people for this position.

Jim James (07:14.674)
Yeah, I think not. I think that's not, that's not. Yeah.

Annie Margarita Yang (07:33.697)
to help me. And I like to ask questions that you can't find on Google. So one of the questions I asked was, tell me about the hardest problem you ever experienced and how did you solve the problem? Because you can't find this answer on Google. It's your own personal experience. You have to write it out. And I used this to figure out what is your level of critical thinking. And 80% of the answers came back as the hardest problem I ever had was I was fired or laid off

and I couldn't get a job quickly. And I was like, wow, so many people struggle with this problem and I know the solution to this problem. So I started writing this book last year. Yeah.

Jim James (08:14.626)
Yeah, and your work rate, Annie, is amazing. And so you've got this book now. And tell us, how have you gone about marketing that? Because your YouTube channel, you've got 18,500 subscribers, and we'll talk a bit later on about how you are suffering from what you've termed shadow banning, which I hadn't heard of before. So we'll talk about that in a little while for anyone that's interesting to know,

maybe some of the darker side of YouTube. The proven strategies to answering tough interview questions in job interviews. Tell us about how you got this book noticed because you've plainly been able to create the book. How have you gone around getting publicity for yourself? I'm assuming again, you've been a bit of a dynamo and a self-starter with this project too.

Annie Margarita Yang (08:59.041)
Yeah, that's interesting. So I actually wrote this book before Chat GPT was released to the public.

So right around the time I actually finished writing the book, finished editing and everything, I was just in the process of making the cover and the Amazon sales page and I needed the sales product description, right? And so when ChatDBT came out, I used ChatDBT a lot to help me with the marketing. So I asked ChatDBT to help me write up the Amazon product description. It came out nearly perfect. Now the input is what is important. It asked me for like 10 pieces of information, and I just gave

gave it 10 back, and then it gave me this very amazing product description that I hardly needed to edit. Another thing is I asked ChatGPT, I said, I'm an author, I just published a book, the book's not going to sell itself. So give me like 50 sales and marketing funnels that could bring people in to even just know about the book. So like, if you think about it as an entrepreneur, there's two sides to the same transaction.

There's the person selling something and then there's the person buying something. Now I don't control whether someone buys the book, but I can sell the book, right? That doesn't mean someone's gonna buy the book, but I can sell the book. So I took the 50 sales and marketing funnel ideas from ChatTPT and I was just like, why don't I just implement all 50 of these ideas? I'm just gonna start hacking away at each of these. And then by the time I'm done with all 50, this should be technically like an empire, right?

That's great. Which one of those has been your most successful book? I have to say I just published a book four months ago so I haven't seen many results just yet because I think it's just because I just started and I found out that before anyone buys anything these days online they need exposure to it ten times from different sources.

Jim James (10:50.18)
That's great. Tell us which one of those has been most successful for you in promoting the book.

Annie Margarita Yang (11:14.377)
Whether it's from a podcast, then they see you again on LinkedIn, and then they see you again on your Facebook. So they see you from all these different channels, and now the one is they check out your website, or then they get on your email list. It takes 10 to 11 touches before they decide to buy. And because of that, I just started marketing four months ago since I released the book. It's not a quick game, and I don't expect it to be, but I have...

And the thing is I don't do all 50 at once, right? I like to focus on just a handful until I get really good at it. And then I move on to the next one until like it's part of a system. So the first one I targeted was podcasts because I was like, you know, people who listen to podcasts, they like educational content. So let me get on podcasts. And my goal was to get on 500, which I realize now that's too big. It's too many. I'm actually getting...

Jim James (12:07.347)
That's a lot of podcasts.

Annie Margarita Yang (12:08.813)
I'm actually getting burned out. I was like, if I get on 500 and assuming each of them had a 2000 person audience, then that's a million people that I would expose this book to, right? I was like, I think 500 is a good number and I'm actually starting to get burned out. I'm booked on 125 and this is my 92nd one. So.

Jim James (12:31.102)
You know how to make a man feel special. You know how to make a... So that's huge. That's absolutely a huge amount of volume you're doing there, Annie, but you're right. People definitely think that podcasting is one of the best ways because you're getting an unfiltered audience to communicate with, and you can build your own energy and your own charisma with the host

in a way that if you have an article, of course, the journalist may be editing that for you be a filter. So podcasting, great, great idea. And I can see that at the bottom of your website, you have all the channels. So, you know, you have LinkedIn, you have Insta, you have X. Now more and more people are talking about the need to choose one channel.

Annie Margarita Yang (13:21.101)
What more people do about the need to choose one channel when you seem to be going on a full channel? So do you have any interest in playing that strategy? Yeah, actually, because I was researching existing best-selling authors in my niche, and I was looking at their website, seeing where they were online. And a lot of the big names, like Tony Robbins and Marie Forleo, those big names.

Jim James (13:24.906)
but you seem to be going on all channels. Do you wanna just explain that strategy to me a little bit?

Annie Margarita Yang (13:46.801)
They are on all channels. Now they might have like one channel where they're extremely popular and they're more consistent in their posting, but because they have a team of people to help them with their social media marketing, they're actually on every channel, right? That's why everyone knows about them. So I decided just for now, I have taken up all of the username handles. So if you look in my media kit or on the bottom of my site, you click on them, you know, my Facebook has only 21 followers. So it's not what you think it is, right?

But I decided I want to at least take the username handle right now before anyone else can take it. So that's what it is.

Jim James (14:23.654)
That's great. So sort of a digital land grab, Annie, which makes a lot of sense, right? Because if you don't do it now with the reputation you're going to be building, someone else will come and squat on it. Speaking of squatting, you've mentioned on your YouTube that you've been struggling to get above 18,300 and then it comes back down again. Do you just want to explain...

Annie Margarita Yang (14:27.466)
Yeah.

Jim James (14:50.65)
What's been happening there because plainly you've got amazing content, thumbnails look great, you've got some, you've taken a position as well I think about student loans as well. So tell us what's happening with YouTube for you and what we can learn from that.

Annie Margarita Yang (15:01.578)
So tell us a little bit about YouTube. Yeah, YouTube has been cracking down on anyone who poses even just a slightly controversial opinion that deviates from the mainstream media narrative. And recently, because of Biden's student loan forgiveness plan, which got struck down by the Supreme Court. But if you take a look at YouTube

and you go on youtube.com and you go to the search bar and you just type in student loans. It used to be like all of the search results were shown from like independent small creators, people who were people who had student loans who were complaining about them or people who found a solution to student loans that other people might not know about or like information from like just everyday normal people. But now if you search student loans over and over again, 90% of the search results are actually from mainstream media -

ABC, NBC, BBC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. So it's been very clear that YouTube's algorithm, especially in a search, has been prioritizing the mainstream narrative in these kinds of issues. So I was like, you know, one of the things I want to talk about for the book is I want to relate it to people's existing problems, and not just they need a job, right? They need a job that can pay off their student loans, or they need a job that doesn't require them to take on student loan debt.

So I was talking about these in the videos themselves. And of course, with YouTube's AI now, it can actually transcribe your audio for the video. So they know exactly what you're talking about. It's not just about the title, the description, and the tags. They actually know what the video is about, right? So I think I've been getting shadow banned because every time I hit 18,300, I would lose 20 subscribers, 30 subscribers. And then I would gain it back up again. And then I would lose it again. This happened like five times in a row. So I realized...

Jim James (16:39.682)
Yep.

Annie Margarita Yang (16:54.269)
While the content is good and people want it, it doesn't necessarily get shown to people and it doesn't necessarily show up in the search results.

Jim James (17:01.498)
Annie, I had no idea that was happening. So that's very, very interesting indeed. Thank you for sharing that. Now, I do want to just talk about one aspect of your book because on Annie Yang Financial, you do share chapters. And there's one chapter that particularly caught my eye, which is AI Headshot Generators. And just talk us through that on the YouTube, my YouTube channel on the Unnoticed Entrepreneur.

You can see Annie and see the screen share, but for those of you listening, Annie has detailed here a comparison of top AI LinkedIn headshot generators, pricing and quality of results. Annie, just take us through what you did there and what you found, because for fellow entrepreneurs who can't afford, you know, a professional shoot, or maybe they're too remote location-wise from a professional photographer.

Tell us what you found about the AI headshot generators.

Annie Margarita Yang (18:20.267)
Let us hear you think about the AI-generated

Annie Margarita Yang (18:30.017)
the best service on the market to people who are reading my book and need a solution to their problem that they can afford. And then I go on Google and there's like 20 of them, right? 20 to 25 of these listicles, top 10, top 25 best AI headshot generators. But I realized they didn't put any results, like actual pictures. How do I know it's the best if you don't actually show the actual pictures you got?

And I realized that these writers, they are like these, I don't know, click farm kind of stuff. They probably get paid 25 bucks to write up this listicle article that they didn't even try themselves so that they can get affiliate income from, from anyone who clicks on those links. And so I was like, well, there's no way to know. No one's actually tried them themselves. Even on YouTube, no one's actually tried these. So I was like, let me just spend my own money. I spent like $1,000, $1,086.

Jim James (19:04.338)
Yes.

Annie Margarita Yang (19:29.093)
testing all 20 of these out just to see what the results would be if I put in the same picture. If I upload like the same 10 to 15 pictures on each one, what would the output be? And like the outputs are all different across the board, right? And then finally I came across this site, it's called dreamwave.ai, and I was amazed. I showed my friends, I showed my family, and they were like, I would fall for this. I would fall for this.

Jim James (19:53.502)
Okay, so dreamwave.ai. And I loved your commitment there. And actually, as you say, putting in the time and investing the effort, which is why you've got the followers you've got. You've been sort of a complete dynamo really. And, but we've all on the whole made one or two mistakes along the way. Although you haven't had that long to make that many mistakes, could you share with us maybe one

part of your marketing strategy that hasn't worked out quite as planned.

Annie Margarita Yang (20:27.301)
The biggest mistake is in my four years of making YouTube videos, I have never bothered to get people on to my email list. Never bothered setting up the forms. Occasionally for some of the videos I did say like "hey head over to my website go to the download section or the resources section to download this." Worksheet that I made just for this video. And people did they actually go on the sites download But I never put it behind an email wall Like they can literally go to the section and click the

the download button. Even just now you were showing people the resources section for my book and you can download it for free without giving me your email address. And I need to fix that because like people clearly they find value in these downloads that I'm giving. I just never bothered to, I just never saw the need for it even though existing marketers in the industry were always pushing for it. I was just like, nah.

Jim James (21:05.091)
Hehehehe

Annie Margarita Yang (21:22.621)
What am I going to do with people's email addresses? And now that I've gotten shadow banned, I was just like, yeah, that would have been nice if I had people on my email list.

Jim James (21:31.142)
Yes. Well, I think that's right, Annie, that mailing lists, they say, really are your treasure. I've been guilty of that myself. I have about a thousand people now on my mailing list, but I've also not done nearly enough of that. I think many of us are so busy giving, we don't think about the need to retain the contact details, but that's a common problem. Thanks for sharing also one I'm sure that you will solve very quickly. Annie.

Let's just talk about something that you have done that you feel really has kind of helped you to get any Yang Financial noticed. Is there one thing that you'd say to other people who are following in your footsteps, what they could do to get noticed?

Annie Margarita Yang (22:12.141)
Is there one thing that you would say to other people who are following in your footsteps? What they could do to get out? Yeah, the one thing that has made a difference in my life is the philosophy of go big or go home. That has been the model of 2023. And, um...

That has led to my success because I don't care how many nos I get. I only care about the yes. And I understand everything is just a numbers game. I mean, that's why I'm doing accounting. It's all just numbers to me. Right. And, um, like I, let me give you an example, just to really drive it home. Um, when I was launching the book, I read that one of the ways to have a successful book launch is to form a book launch team, which is a group of friends and family who will quote unquote, buy your book

on launch week when you drop the price to free on Amazon. You can do that for five days. So you can drop it to free on the first five days. Have your friends and family buy the free book and then leave a review, right? So you have to compile that team. They recommend about 200 to 300 people for the team. And then I was like, wow, okay. I don't know if I can do this, especially in such a short time period. I didn't think I could, but I messaged 2000 people one by one.

Anyone who ever connected to me on LinkedIn, anyone who's in my Facebook friends list, anyone who's in my phone book for the last 10 years, even if I haven't spoken to them in 10 years, I messaged everyone one by one asking if they want to help me with the launch and in exchange I'll give them the actual signed book for free. I'll mail them the book. 300 people said yes. I mailed out 150 of them.

And then out of the 150 who got the book, 80 of them actually wrote a review. So that's the go big or go home. I had to message 2000 people for only 80 of them to actually follow through and write a review. But I had a very good launch week because the book was, it got the number one top new release in the career category on Amazon and also in the entire Kindle free store. So just the free version of the Kindle store.

Annie Margarita Yang (24:25.201)
It was number 88 out of the whole store across every category. The only books that did better than mine was erotica.

Jim James (24:37.635)
Annie, I love that story and I love the ambition as well. I could take a lesson or two from you because I've launched a couple of books and not been anywhere near as diligent as you have and didn't get the same kind of results with my book. I wrote one called Gap Me a Cash recently for young people with a...

detailing seven different business models that they can deploy to make money without needing any capital or without having to be fixed to one place. And I need to take a leaf out of your book in terms of a relaunch for that one. Annie, finally, a podcast or a book that you would recommend an Unnoticed entrepreneur and me to listen to or read.

Annie Margarita Yang (25:19.661)
Yeah, my favorite podcast in the world is the Life Coach School podcast by Brooke Castillo. I like listening to it because she really puts things into perspective for me. Anytime I struggle with something emotionally or mentally, she has a different way of viewing things, viewing your problem in such a way that you come from a position of power and strength and confidence. And that has actually helped me a lot for 2023 in terms of the go big or go home.

Because dealing with rejection isn't easy. Dealing with people who ignore your messages isn't easy. But she puts things in perspective in a way that makes me feel like I can do this.

Jim James (25:57.742)
You certainly can. And if you want to find out more about you and someone who definitely can do this, Annie Margarita Yang where can they go?

Annie Margarita Yang (26:07.177)
The best way is to go on annieyangfinancial.com. That's annieyangfinancial.com. And also the five day job search audio book is free. If you go on the website, at the top, there's a link called audio book. Put in your name, your email address, and get on the mailing list and get your free book.

Jim James (26:26.356)
Thank you so much for joining me on The Unnoticed Entrepreneur today.

Annie Margarita Yang (26:29.322)
Thank you for having me, Jim.

Jim James (26:31.646)
Well, I know that I'm a podcast, I think something like 91 or 92, but Annie still sounds as fresh as the first one that she's done. So thanks to Annie, Margaret, to Yang for joining us today and sharing. Well, a huge amount of energy for a start, a huge amount of creativity and great ideas too. And really wonderfully how someone in her generation, I don't mean to be patronizing here, but in their twenties

finding a path that is entrepreneurial that doesn't rely on the traditional academic institutions. So they're coming out of life without the debt and they're free to innovate and create and to share their wisdom with those around us. So thank you so much for joining me and Annie today on this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Do please visit her website, there's Annie Yang Financial.

Jim James (27:26.558)
along with over 750 other episodes. And you can also sign up to my newsletter on my website at theunnoticed.cc. Thank you once again for listening to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, your host Jim James. And until we meet again, I keep encouraging you to keep on communicating.

Annie Margarita Yang (27:47.765)
Okay.