Welcome to The Marketing Freelancer: Unicorns Unite—the podcast for ambitious marketing freelancers ready to master the art of marketing services, get booked out with premium clients, and build a thriving, well-paid freelance business. You'll learn how to own your unique Unicorn talents and confidently charge for the results you deliver! I’m Emily Reagan, your host, freelance marketing coach, and founder of the Unicorn Digital Marketing Assistant School and Digital Marketer's Workgroup. On this show, I’m sharing the skills, strategies, and mindset shifts you need to elevate your game as a marketing service provider. Each episode is packed with actionable insights: >Master marketing services like funnels, email campaigns, and launches to stand out in a crowded market. >Learn how to market yourself, pitch with confidence, and secure premium rates for your expertise. >Hear real stories from freelancers who have scaled their businesses, showing you what’s possible when you own your worth and aim higher. >Get tips on managing clients, positioning yourself as an indispensable expert, and navigating the freelance world like a pro. This isn’t about starting out—it’s about leveling up. If you’re ready to move past basic admin tasks, own your unique brilliance, and command the rates you deserve, you’re in the right place. Let’s build a business that lights you up, pays you well, and makes an impact. 🎧 Subscribe now and start transforming your freelance marketing career!
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November 3, 202647 min
#291 Claude Skills Aren’t Enough: Training AI Like You’d Train a Team with Ange Quinn
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. 17-20,2026 Unchained , Ange’s AI program* Ange’s AI Business Audit Digital Marketer’s Workgroup Connect with Ange Quinn: @theopsbuilder Connect with Emily: Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily Reagan Grow 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 .
October 20, 202640 min
#290 Service Provider Finances: Business Debt, Billable Hours, and Knowing Your Numbers with Megan Hale
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/summit Dream Money: dreammoney.co Digital Marketer’s Workgroup Connect with Megan: Website: dreammoney.co Instagram: @ meganhaleco Connect with Emily: Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily Reagan Get Emily's 1:1 PR help Grow 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 Reagan Grow 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 .
October 6, 202638 min
#289 What Actually Gets a Big Podcast Host to Say Yes with Brenna McGowan
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 Program Behind the Launch podcast Brenna' episode on the Amy Porterfield Show : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9S4KAMnK84 Digital Marketer’s Workgroup Get Emily's 1:1 PR help : https://emilyreaganpr.com/cmo-services/ Connect with Brenna McGowan: @ brennamcgowanco brennamcgowan.co Connect with Emily: Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily Reagan Grow 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 .
September 22, 202637 min
#288 Turning Free Marketing Strategy Work Into a 1k+ Paid Offer with Natalie Gingrich
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, 2026 Digital Marketer’s Workgroup Connect with Natalie Gingrich: @ theopsauthority theopsauthority.com Connect with Emily: Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily Reagan Grow 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 .
September 11, 202633 min
#287 Meet the Ads Manager Behind a $19 Million Launch with Kara Charron (Part 2)
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.com Connect with Emily: Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily Reagan Grow 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 .
September 9, 202639 min
#286 Meet the Ads Manager Behind a $19 Million Launch with Kara Charron (Part 1)
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 GUEST: @karacharron_ kreativedigitalmediainc.com Connect with Emily: Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily Reagan Grow 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 .
September 1, 202638 min
#285 The Real Talk on AI, Copywriting, and Training Claude with Prerna Malik
What happens when AI meets two decades of copywriting expertise? Why is "fire your team and replace them with AI" the worst advice going around right now? What's the real difference between AI slop and copy that actually converts? Prerna Malik is a conversion copywriter and AI strategist who still writes every word of her own copy and refuses to hand her thinking over to a machine. Prerna's sharing even more on training Claude the right wOK, can you update all of them, please? ay, the setup most people skip, and building skills that actually do the job, live in our Digital Marketer's Workgroup. Apply here. Links Mentioned in Show: ClaudeMadeEasy.com Claude Business Accelerator * my affiliate link Connect with Prerna Malik: @ profitably_yours profitablyyours.com/ Connect with Emily: Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily Reagan Grow 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 .
August 25, 202638 min
#284 What Nobody Tells You About Being an Ads Manager Right Now with Megan Shields
Why the ads management space has become commoditized, what's actually required to run ads well in 2026 (hint: it's not just button-pushing anymore), and how to know when a client isn't ready for the work you're offering. Ads Manager & Revenue Growth Strategist Megan Shields (@chimehousemedia) has spent six years in the online business space running multi-six-figure ad campaigns, including work supporting Amy Porterfield's team through DCA. With a background in sales and business development at a Fortune 50 financial firm, she's now bridging the gap between ads management and full marketing strategy. Megan’s sharing even more on performance marketing, ads management and stepping into a CMO role live in our Digital Marketer's Workgroup Apply here. Connect with Megan: @chimehousemedia chimehousemedia.com Connect with Emily: Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily Reagan Grow 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 . > Hire a Digital Marketing Assistant : Submit your marketing or ops position opening and I’ll share it with the skilled & vetted professionals in our Workgroup.
August 17, 202632 min
#283 Affiliate Management: The Insider Intel Nobody's Sharing with Laura Sprinkle
What actually happens behind the curtain of a 7-fig launch? How is the launch space shifting? What scams should we watch out for? Welcome back to The Marketing Freelancer, new format, zero patience for how-to. First guest back: Laura Sprinkle, the woman behind $65M+ in tracked affiliate revenue, and she's here for the tea, not the tutorial. Laura Sprinkle is the founder and CEO of Rootabl, an affiliate management platform built for course creators and their teams. Before building software, she ran affiliate programs behind the scenes for Amy Porterfield, Todd Herman, and Selena Soo, generating over $50 million in partner-driven revenue before Rootabl ever existed. Rootabl itself has now tracked over $15 million more. Laura's sharing even more on pricing, positioning, and affiliate marketing client work live in our Digital Marketer's Workgroup Apply here. Links Mentioned in Show: rootabl.com/unicorn (10% off with code UNICORN) Connect with Laura Sprinkle Instagram: @rootabl / @imlaurasprinkle Website: laurasprinkle.com / rootabl.com Connect with Emily Reagan: Instagram: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily Reagan Apply for our Digital Marketer's Workgroup
April 21, 20261 hr 11 min
#282 How Freelancers Build Long-Term Client Relationships as Strategic Marketing Partners with Liz Cruz
If you’ve been giving your clients strategy, stop saying you’re "just a virtual assistant." That title is costing you money. My guest moved WAY beyond the basic VA title into a Social Media Marketing Strategist role and her packages start at $1500/month! Liz built a booked-out marketing agency by doing something most freelancers skip: owning the strategy, not just the deliverables. She's a Workgroup member and I love watching how much she’s grown her freelancer business. I finally got her on the podcast to spill exactly how she did it. Liz Cruz is the founder of Cruz Social Co., a boutique marketing agency that provides done-for-you marketing support for service-based businesses. She specializes in social media strategy, content creation, and marketing systems and she's spent over a decade supporting brands across multiple industries. She's now focusing her work in the wellness space, a niche she found through her own health journey. Liz is known for blending strategy with execution, which is exactly what makes her the kind of marketing partner clients don't want to lose. Listen to learn more about: How to structure your discovery calls to weed out bad-fit clients before they become a problem Why customizing your packages isn't a weakness, and how building client-specific offers helps you command higher rates What a strategic monthly report actually looks like (hint: it’s not 40 pages) Building a portfolio that does the selling for you and why you should include your prices & booking link The mindset shift that helped Liz stop undercharging and start owning her expertise This is real honest insight from a freelance marketer who's still in the trenches doing the work. Tune in for how Liz turned her Workgroup connections into consistent, long-term client partnerships. Sponsored by Wispr Flow * Write and prompt faster with this voice-to-text AI tool that turns speech into clear, polished writing in every app. I’m using Wispr Flow to talk out emails, client replies, and AI prompts instead of typing everything. It’s one of my top tech tool recommendations and a real time-saver in my “4 hours of prime work time” mom life. Try Wispr Flow here (*my affiliate link) Links Mentioned in Show: Grab Liz’s FREE Content Planning Calendar Template : Make content easy and not overwhelming with this simple spreadsheet. Listen to the “7 Ways to Land Clients” series here (Liz is in part 3!) Third-party social media schedulers: Rella , Metricool , Loomly Join us in our Digital Marketer’s Workgroup : You've done the work. Built the skills. Earned the clients. Now it’s time for the right people to start knowing your name. Our Workgroup is the professional community for established freelance marketing specialists who are serious about their work and ready to be recognized, referred, and surrounded by people who match that level. Marketing nerds welcome. >>Apply Now Connect with Liz: @cruzsocialco Cruz Social Co. https://cruzsocial.co/ Connect with Emily: Instagram: @emilyreaganpr Facebook: @emilyreaganpr YouTube: Emily Reagan Ask Emily Anything here > Grow your freelance business inside the Digital Marketer’s Workgroup : Apply to join our tight-knit community for advanced training, ongoing support, troubleshooting, and exclusive job leads. > Hire a Digital Marketing Assistant : Submit your job posting and I’ll share it with the skilled & vetted freelancers in our Workgroup. > Enroll in the Unicorn Digital Marketing Assistant School : Learn in-demand, tactical digital marketing skills on your own time so you can move beyond admin work and offer high-value marketing services. > Download my free Top Ten Most Requested Digital Marketing Tasks & Services to see what clients are hiring for right now.
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