Remotely One - A remote work podcast

Remote Work Before It Was Trendy: Anna Burgess Yang on Adapting, and Excelling - ep. 103

• ANNA BURGESS YANG, RICK HANEY, KALEEM CLARKSON • Season 1 • Episode 103

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Get ready for a delightful blend of laughter and insights in this Not Safe for Remote Work (NSFRW) episode! We’re joined by Anna Burgess Yang, a freelance fintech writer, content marketing expert, and remote work pioneer (ABY Creative) who’s been thriving in the remote world since 2006.

Anna takes us on an incredible journey, from being one of the only remote employees at her company to becoming a seasoned veteran long before working from home became the norm. Along the way, she shares some unforgettable stories—like her grueling eight-hour road trips to maintain her marriage as a newlywed and when a coworker got locked out of the house by a mischievous child. And who could forget the epic company meeting interrupted by potty training chaos?

But it’s not all laughs. Anna also reflects on the evolving culture of remote work, the challenges of proving herself in a pre-remote era, and the strategies she used to build a successful career entirely from home. Whether you're a remote work pro or just curious about how the landscape has changed, this episode delivers the perfect mix of humor, wisdom, and inspiration. Don’t miss it!

Learn more about Anna:

More about us:

Got to hear a story That made you red in the face Had you drop right to your knees Only without a trace Dog screwin in the background Little baby man throwin cake Come on, y'all, don't go berserk It's all good here, hold it Word! Not safe for remote, word What you've got to say, not safe for remote work, eh, eh. Zoom in day to day, not safe for remote.

Rick:

Welcome to Remotely One's NSFRW Not Safe for Remote Work, where we invite employees at all levels to share their most outrageous moments while working remotely. Do you have a story to tell? We want to hear it. You can submit your story at remotelyone. com forward slash podcast. Today's guest is originally from Wisconsin and now lives in the greater Chicago area. She is a freelance content marketer and a journalist. She also loves taking naps. Anna Burgess Yang, come on down!

Anna:

You caught me during my non nap time. So that's a good thing.

Kaleem:

Oh studio on and settle down studios they get too crazy they get too crazy

Rick:

yes, yes, thank you for joining us.

Kaleem:

Yes, So wait, you're not napping

Anna:

I'm not napping right now, but that is one of the

Rick:

Write this down, how fortunate we are to catch her during non nap hours.

Anna:

Absolutely.

Kaleem:

that's awesome. Well, Anna, thank you. It's nice to see you again. Thank you so much for joining us. Can you, you know, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, and then tell us the story that you have for us. oh

Anna:

Yeah. So, just a very brief about me. I have been a remote employee since 2006. if you want to, if you want to map that out, that has been a while. Um,

Kaleem:

Oh,

Anna:

All the way from my first full-time job outside of college. I was a full-time. I was a working remotely. And now after working at a. Tech companies for a long time. And then working at content marketing agencies. Now I'm a freelancer and a freelance full time and provide resources for other freelancers. So have not seen an office since August of 2006. So, have been rocking the remote life for a very long time.

Kaleem:

Congrats. Congratulations. Good for you.

Anna:

Yeah. So I'd love to share to start with like a little bit of how that came about. Cause everybody kind of thinks like 2006, like was remote work even a thing? You had it. It kind of wasn't. So first job out of college, I started working remotely for a financial technology company. I was living in Wisconsin and the company was in Kansas. So I relocated myself down to Kansas. And, but I was also recently married. I was a newlywed at the time. My husband was still finishing college and he couldn't relocate. Cause like at that point in college, like you cannot, like you would lose too many credits. You need to finish out where you're at. And this was such a great opportunity for me. I was like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to go to Kansas. And I drove back and forth from Topeka, Kansas. To Wisconsin every other weekend to see my husband.

Rick:

how long of a drive was that?

Anna:

Eight hours each direction.

Kaleem:

Oh my God

Anna:

So I would leave on Friday afternoon at 5 PM. I would drive to Des Moines, Iowa and stay in like a super eight motel. Cause that's all I could afford. I would sleep. I would sleep until like 6 AM. And then I would drive the additional four hours to Wisconsin to spend about 24 hours with my husband and then head back to Topeka, which was

Kaleem:

That's love and dedication.

Anna:

It was incredibly hard. and so after about six months, I'm like, this is nonsense. I can't do this is no job is worth this. So I started applying other jobs and I got a job, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which would have cut my driving time in half. 4 hours instead of 8 hours was like, perfect. This is much better. So I turned in my notice to my company. My manager was like, fine, we'll see you later. Bye. And then I was sitting in an airport because I traveled a ton for work on top of all of this. I traveled and so I was sitting in an airport headed to Montana to work with a client and I got an email from the chief operating officer of the company. And she said, we want you to stay. We're going to give you a raise. We're going to give you a company cell phone and we will let you work from anywhere. She said, I know that this job that you were offered is getting you closer to home, but I am going to give you the chance to be home. And so I took, I was like, yes, please. I called my husband in the airport and I said, I'm coming home.

Kaleem:

Wow. What motivated her to even give you that opportunity?

Anna:

I guess I was good at my job, so

Rick:

Yeah, that helps.

Anna:

I was really good. You know, it was a tech company and so I, I implemented this complex software for banks and credit unions. And I had a background in banking, so, she saw in me that I was an employee worth keeping. So I wasn't something I asked for. It was something that was given to an offer to me. And so that started my. Remote work journey. And for four years, I was one of only two remote employees at the company and everybody else was centered in the office in Topeka, but then in 2010, the company decided we're going to open up remote work to everybody. And so, that's one kind of things really shifted because before that, it was just me, I had to figure things out on my own, but then the company eventually kind of caught up and said, this is great for everyone. And then things really changed.

Kaleem:

Wow. And were people reaching out to you asking for your advice and stuff like that? And how did you experience the company culture change?

Anna:

It was, it was really big. Because when I worked remotely, I very rigidly like sat at my desk from eight to five every day. Like I felt like I had, I felt like I had to, right? Like I had to, I had something to prove. Like I was given this privilege to work remotely and nobody else was. And so I felt like I really had to do my job. And when everybody else was, it was a big shift. Like, how do we manage like our kids at home or not, you know, not as a home, the kids around and how do we manage? Like, we don't work these traditional hours. Maybe we kind of work when it makes sense for us,

Kaleem:

and this is 2010. So you're talking Skype. You're talking probably Skype, maybe Webex, maybe,

Anna:

Webex was a big one. Um, but you know, back then people didn't expect video calls and the way they do now. And so it was all audio. We finally got a voiceover IP phone system when I started. They couldn't figure that part out. So I had like a separate phone line. That was a local phone line. And so if customers wanted to talk to me, they had to like, call me, call this different number to get in touch with me. But you know, when the whole company went wrong, they're like, okay, we're going to figure out how to make this work for everybody. And then it became really different.

Kaleem:

Pretty cool.

Rick:

I would imagine.

Kaleem:

Awesome. Awesome. So.

Rick:

what are the stories do you have for us as remove worker? I mean. You know, it is interesting 2006

Kaleem:

So you're an OG. So you experienced all those different types of technologies, really forward thinking by your company. Pretty neat. So now you're a professional. So you've experienced all sorts of things.

Anna:

yeah, so back then a little bit more than now Maybe the company really like didn't did not want to know if you had kids around in particular or anything You know and part of it was like professionalism. We were working with banks and credit unions We were really kind of on the hush hush that we worked remotely. We didn't want them to know that like yeah but not like you You, did not know, you go, customers did not necessarily know that we were all working from our homes. And so it was kind of a spoken slash unspoken mandate that like you. You did not have any noise around, you did not have any distractions around. And two things in particular, and I remember both with involved kids. Eventually I became, the director of the customer success department. And one of my employees had like this critical meeting with her customer trying to part of their process. And I don't exactly know how this happened, but somehow her kid locked her out of the house. She, she was outside and her kid was inside, like pointing, laughing. Like,

Kaleem:

ha! Ha! Got you, mommy! you!

Anna:

she's running around trying to figure out how to get back at her house. She's got this meeting with a client or customer that doesn't know that she works from home. And how do you explain something like that? And

Kaleem:

in the house! Let me in the house!

Anna:

I think now, like kind of collectively, we've, we've, we've kind of like, okay, people work from home, stuff happens. But it was so hilarious because of my mind as I'm hearing this story kind of unfolding in real time about how she can't get on this call because she's locked out of her house. I'm like picturing her like running around her house, trying to figure out, like desperately, like emailing the customer from her phone to be like, I'm sick or I'm something, any explanation other than what had actually happened was that her kid locked her

Kaleem:

What, had, had, had, had, happened, what had, had, had, had, happened, is, um, you

Anna:

her house by her kid.

Kaleem:

can't tell the truth.

Anna:

And then the number one that I cannot, I will laugh about to this day is we were on a all hands company meeting and the CEO was talking through the company financials and how we're doing and all that. So we're all remote. We all were very used to it at this point. Well, somebody forgot to put themselves on mute as,

Rick:

Love it.

Anna:

as, like, I don't know how long we all have to be working remotely before we like figure this out. Okay.

Kaleem:

I mean, all the time.

Anna:

And he was potty training his toddler,

Kaleem:

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Anna:

like during the company meeting. And so we're all cheering on this call. Like, come over here, sit on the potty. Good job. And my boss is texting me like, who is that? We could not figure out who it was. Like we kind of did the math, we knew it was male voice. We knew which males in the company had like that age child,

Kaleem:

so you're frantic because like, he's trying to give the whole company update and you have

Anna:

somebody,

Kaleem:

Stevie on the phone line good job little Johnny. You see the poopoo?

Anna:

yes,

Kaleem:

You see the poopoo in there? Is that a poopoo

Anna:

that is exactly what we've

Kaleem:

that a poopoo in your diety? daddy. You like it? You see the poop in there?

Anna:

and without like a system where, you know, like zoom where you can mute all attendees, we weren't on anything like that. It was just a Webex. Yeah. We had nothing, or the CEO, like we're just plowing through and we had no way of muting this person. We were like, who is this? Yeah. Who is this? Oh my God. And so, you know, life happens when you're working remotely. And sometimes you are potty training your toddler while you're on a company conference call. But at that point, like forgetting to hit the mute button as experienced as we were, it was a couple of years into it. We're like, Please make it stop. Please make it stop.

Kaleem:

I mean, Rick, I can just totally see this skit reenactment that we're going to do. And I'll be the baby, I'll be the baby. I wear the diaper guy, I wear the diaper, but like, it's just, we haven't had the potty train on the conference call yet story.

Rick:

it was bound to happen.

Anna:

I'm sure it's happened and nobody else has like heard about it. Like heard it at all.

Kaleem:

Rick, you remember potty training all sorts of, they say kids say the darndest things. That's why it's hilarious. You

Anna:

yeah. And every parent is like, Oh yes, I have been there. Like I've been there where I'm trying to multitask on the conference call.

Kaleem:

Unbelievable.

Rick:

Yeah. Now you've opened the floodgates and invited everybody to tell that exact story because you know it's happened to more than one person.

Anna:

Oh, I'm sure.

Kaleem:

No doubt. No doubt. Anna, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your stories. Where can people find you in the, on the interwebs?

Anna:

I am best found on LinkedIn because that's where I'm most active. And then from there you can go to my website, go to, you know, reach out, connect with me, but that's kind of like a central hub for like finding me on the internet.

Rick:

Awesome.

Kaleem:

Thank you so much. We Appreciate you.

Anna:

Yeah. Thank you.

Kaleem:

Awesome. Come back anytime. We'll talk to you soon.

Anna:

Yeah. Thanks.

Kaleem:

Peace.

People on this episode

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Kaleem Clarkson

Co-host
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Rick Haney

Co-host