How Niche Freelance Writing Can Elevate Your Career with Birder Bryony Angell

How do you find and fill a freelance writing content vacuum in your industry?

Join us as we sit down with Bryony Angell, a narrative non-fiction writer who has carved out a unique niche in the world of birding. 

Bryony shares her journey from observing a lack of content for young women birders to becoming a leading voice in bird conservation through her freelance writing. 

During our chat we explore how Bryony balances her rich freelance career with being a mom and working a full-time job. 

If you've ever wondered how to turn a passion into a profitable side hustle or how to spot opportunities in niche markets, this episode is filled with insights on leveraging your personal interests into a fulfilling freelance career.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to identify a unique niche and turn it into a successful side hustle.
• Strategies for balancing freelance writing with full-time employment and parenting.
• The importance of building and nurturing community connections within your niche.
• Tips for spotting opportunities and filling content vacuums in niche markets.

About Bryony Angell

Bryony Angell is a narrative non-fiction writer and speaker, deeply rooted in the Pacific Coast's beautiful Skagit Valley, Washington. With a focus on the economy and culture of the world birding scene, she enhances wild bird conservation through her engaging storytelling. Bryony contributes to both regional and national publications, tackling diverse topics such as birding by boat in Western Washington, field sketching, and profiling international women birding guides. Her content, which occasionally graces her website, ranges from practical advice to reflective pieces on birding as mindful meditation.

Visit Bryony's website.

Full show notes here.

Transcript

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Bryony Angell: 0:00

And I knew a lot of these younger women out in the world of birding. because But there wasn't any content out there about us and I kept seeing the same old stories and so I thought, "How can I relate to people like me, my age and younger, that birding's really cool?"

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 0:15

Welcome to Talk Freelance To Me, the podcast for women freelance writers, 1099 independent contractors, and solopreneurs. I'm your host, Ashley Cisneros Mejia. For more than 20 years, I've worked as a journalist and freelance writer. Today, as a mom of three kids, I'm passionate about helping other women leverage the freedom that freelance offers. On Talk Freelance To Me, we're all about the business of freelancing. If you want to learn how to monetize your talents, make money on your own terms, and design a flexible work life that actually works for you, this show is for you. Before we get started, don't forget to follow us on your favorite social media platforms. Review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. And don't forget to share this episode with a friend. Visit our website at talkfreelancetome. com for free resources. Join our email list to be the first to know about our latest offers. Thanks for tuning in and let's get into the episode. Today we have a very special guest who's an expert in all things birding, Bryony Angell. I'll read a little bit from her bio. Born and raised along the beautiful Pacific coast in the Skagit Valley of Washington State, Bryony is a narrative nonfiction writer and journalist with a unique niche-- exploring the economy and culture pivotal role in wild bird conservation. Raised by conservationist parents, Bryony is a second generation birder, now nurturing the third generation within her own family. Her work not only graces regional and national publications, but also includes a rich collection of original content shared on her website. Beyond her contributions to bird conservation. Bryony is a leader in the birding media, offering insights, advice, and opening doors for others in the birding community. Bryony, welcome to Talk Freelance to Me. Thank you. That's a very generous introduction. I am so excited and so intrigued about your work. I love how you're taking this world and sharing it with people like me, who may have never know anything about birding. How did you get into this niche?

Bryony Angell: 2:32

It actually came about when I was a new mom and I met an editor of a parenting imprint in Seattle. We were both in the same co op preschool and I was talking about birding and that I, recreational birder was a big part of my life. And she was so intrigued by that. She was the Out and About editor for this publication. She said, "Would you write a story for us?" And the rest is history. I got my start writing mostly parenting content, definitely with the birding angle. Eventually, I branched out into other topics under that parenting umbrella. But I kept coming back to birding. So I started looking at birding media, which I've always been a consumer of. I've grown up with Audubon Magazine, and there's a lot of membership magazines out there, different birding organizations, as well as formerly newsstand magazines, like Birdwatcher's Digest and Birdwatching. Some of them have since folded. But at the time, 12 years ago, everybody was still in publication. And I just started looking around and seeing that there wasn't a lot of content about the people in birding. There wasn't content for mothers of kids. And there just wasn't a lot of content about younger women like me. And I knew a lot of these younger women out in the world of birding because I'm second generation birding. So I've been a member of my local Audubon my entire life and I've done bird census as a volunteer and I knew other birders, including other birders my age, but there wasn't any content out there about us. And we're the future of bird conservation. And I kept seeing the same old stories and this was the same era as the explosion of Mommy blog. So, I thought, "Okay, women are talking to each other as mothers or as young people in the world." And so I thought, "How can I relate to people like me, my age and younger, that birding's really cool?" The culture of birding was built by wealthy, mostly White men. So there's this tradition of competition and scientific vigor. There's this barrier to entry that has historically justified. I was fully embedded in the world of birding and felt that same barrier as a woman and as a younger woman. I thought I could only imagine what people who were new to it would feel. And I thought, I want to be part of the change to make birding cooler, funner... just less tight and just something that anybody can do on their terms. So this was 12 years ago that I was thinking all of this and birding has changed tremendously. Birding is a completely different scene than it was 12 years ago when I started writing., I saw vacuums for information and I wanted to fill them. That

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 5:14

is amazing. I love how you were part of this observation and this movement it sounds like of people like you who saw the potential to be this bridge between these old maybe ways of thinking about birding or just to diversify. To share how it's not, like you were mentioning, that it's not hard, that you don't need to be in shape, that anybody can do it anywhere around the world. And I've never thought about it in that way, but it makes total sense. And for you to see that 12 years ago and then be part of this whole culture, and other folks, and to be part of that change now, when you're saying that it looks way different than it did before, that's really inspiring. That's something that sounds very meaningful and fulfilling.

Bryony Angell: 6:03

Thank you for observing that. I haven't articulated it in that way before so nice to be able to share that here. Yeah.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 6:13

I think that's fantastic. So you've had incredible experience for over a decade. You also mentioned you have kids and I know that this is not your full time thing. You also have a nine to five. How have you been able to manage this? What strategies have you used to basically make sure that every part of your life has the attention it deserves?

Bryony Angell: 6:34

I think I got started writing when I was already a mom. It was not something that I was doing prior to becoming a parent. And then have to figure out how I was going to manage that once I became a parent. And it was a lot easier with one kid. When I had kid number two it became much tougher, but I'm really lucky. So when I lived in Seattle at the time with my first child, I got a lot of support from my family, mom and my stepfather, and I was married at the time. And with the second child as well. And I just made the time I would get up early.. Or play date, childcare swaps. It was occupying the kids because I felt like I had everything else covered. I got my day job done. I'm been able to do the household stuff. But it's psychically very important to me to have this creative outlet. And being a mother is one of the hats I wear. And getting validation that my writing was helpful to people and then editors wanted to commission it -- nobody throws this away. There's a trajectory here. I got to keep this up. I didn't know at the time, I was observing this change that I was apart of, and that was all I knew. So I didn't know the experience of just being in a business and making money from it. To me, it was this upswell of deep community that I was developing internationally and with other women, specifically with other women. And some of them were becoming mothers. I tended to be the older of this younger group of women, and I tended to be the only mother when I started out. And now, a lot of us are mothers, and a lot of these younger women are now in their 40s. We're not as young as we once were, but I'm still considered a younger birder by the old guard., And I recognized very early on at the time that I had a unique place of Generation X because I straddled these two generations of birding. I had the old guard, mostly Baby Boomers, and then Millennials. And younger Millennials trusted me when they didn't trust the older folks. And the older folks knew that I understood the old way. But I had nothing to lose by pushing the new agenda where the generation, they weren't as familiar with how the old thing operated, so they couldn't read between the lines the way I could. I knew that I had a role that was unique because of my age. And I didn't want to squander that, so I kept going. I'm very grateful to you for pointing that out, because I don't think I've really thought about it until this moment how lucky I am that was my experience. Because I think if there's not a rich community as part of a business initiative, it's easy to just give it up.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 9:18

Yeah, I relate to that so much, even with writing, with motherhood, with everything. That community, I think we as human beings, we're social creatures and we need each other. And I think that's true for certainly for any movement and anything that's important. You need buy in, you need other people to be there with you. I definitely see that theme of a bridge again when you were talking about, because you were bridging this love for birding and introducing it to other people, but then also the bridge between these generations within the community, the folks that are older, the Boomers, and then the Millennials, and now maybe even Gen Z , and those after. That's a very cool position to be in. And that ability for you to be able to understand those communities and what they're looking for in birding is very interesting. When you mentioned, , before about topic vacuums and spotting the opportunity and seeing that there was something there and that you could tease at that and explore more, how did you spot this opportunity? Do you have advice for other writers who are looking for a gap to fill and maybe don't know where to start?

Bryony Angell: 10:28

Yeah, totally. So, I knew that I needed to niche down and I thought, okay, where can I get some inroad? I want to sell stories. I want to say something that people haven't read before. Where is that? I know I'm going to have to get really specific. Early on, I decided to limit my content to only female identifying subjects. So I was going to write about women in birding. So that's what I write about, but I'm also a White woman and I'm North American. So I absolutely do not speak for every woman. My goal was to not write about my own experience, but to write about the experience of others and specifically the other birders who I wasn't seeing any coverage for and who have traditionally been marginalized or just overlooked and not as a priority. People tend to congregate with people who look like them. There wasn't representation that I was observing and I'm happy to report that has changed quite a bit since those early days. But yes, limiting my topic ideas to women, young women, country national women. So I didn't want to read, write about North American researchers embedded in some exotic location. No, I wanted to write about the women who were from those countries who were doing the research. So I would say those two things from the beginning really have informed everything else that I've done. So my advice for other writers in their topic area of passion is to figure out a niche. Whose voice do they want to represent? Who do they want to elevate? Whose information does the rest of the world need to know about? Chances are there are a lot of those and you can angle it so many different ways. I keep thinking of this other interview that I heard on the "Deliberate Freelancer", Melanie Padgett Powers with an equine journalist. And I thought, that's my girl!

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 12:26

We've got to talk!

Bryony Angell: 12:28

What if there's some mother who is watching her daughter at the gymnastics practice? There's a trade world of gymnastic you could write for. You don't know where the niches are in front of your nose and that you're already obsessing about it. And you could pivot that into a writing topic or writing career. For me, I don't rely on writing about birding as my sole income. It's an addition to my day job. I have the privilege of niching and pitching topics that I want to write about. They don't always hit, they don't always get a commission, but I keep trying.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 13:06

One of the things that I'm taking away is just your willingness to commit to this niche. Because I feel like a lot of freelancers struggle with thinking, Oh, if I niche down too much, is it going to limit me in some way? I feel like you said, I want to serve women. That's who I'm talking to. And you mentioned a commitment to talking about the folks in their own countries who are in that community and birding. And it's not like you felt like, Oh, is that too narrow? Right. You said, this is what I'm doing and you stuck with it. And look, you've been able to sustain that for 12 years. That's amazing.

Bryony Angell: 13:43

Yeah. I have deviated a little bit. I decided I wanted to cover some economic initiatives that, again, are accessible to everyday people. They're not buried in conservation industry. There's something that you and I can just go and do online or when we're out visiting some scenic area. So I have been writing about Bird Friendly Cocoa and this initiative Be Bird Wise here where I live, which addresses more behavioral modification for folks who are coming to a place to view wildlife. And how to especially if it's a working landscape , like it is here in Skagit, which is an agricultural community. And again, I often will look for the female sources because to me, those are the voices that have been there the whole time, but they're not the first people that a lot of us are used to looking for for a voice of authority. Finding female sources has always been my MO, no matter what topic I'm writing about. That has stayed with me, even as I've diversified the topics that I address, I still always look for female sources.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 14:51

That's fantastic. And you've had some really cool opportunities that have come about. I know that you went to South America. You got some invitations to participate in some things happening there as a result of your work. Can you share more about that?

Bryony Angell: 15:05

Yes, this is definitely a result of niching. And so I would encourage anybody if they think niching is too narrow, chances are you're going to get to be known for something. And then you start to get some incredible invitations. I was invited on an all women birding trip in 2019, right before the pandemic to Colombia, and it was one of the first dedemographic-specific birding trip offered in the birding ecotourism industry. Most tours are what they call mixed men and women. Some of them have different themes. Some of them are photography heavy. They occur all over the world. But this was the first time it was just all women group. The bird guide was a woman, a Colombian woman. The organizing ground crew were Colombian women. And I was invited because of what I had been sharing on Facebook in these birding groups. And I was dumbfounded when I got the invitation, I thought, is this for real?, It was the Colombian tourism board that paid for it. So I was a guest. It was a media trip and it was total gift. And that trip changed my life. It gave me more legitimacy as a voice in the community because I was invited. There was some other very high profile female birders who were invited. And so I met them. They're like sisters to me now, and all our careers have all gone in different directions as a result of that trip. That was a result of putting out content that was very specific, and proving myself as someone who was An advocate of country national women and this reputation for treating my sources really well and emphasizing their voice. I was also very conscious. I don't want to paraphrase people. I wanted to stick to their own voices and to be more of like the facilitator of the information. I think people appreciate that. This latest opportunity -- I'm going to Brazil. It's the Avistar Birding Fair, and this is a result of Tati Pongiluppi she's a Brazilian birding guide. And I interviewed her three years ago, and she and I have stayed in touch. I befriend all these sources, I stay in touch with most of them, and , I believe it was her that she gave my name to the organizers, and that was how this opportunity came about. When you niche like this the relationships that come about ... Just dreams come true.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 17:40

What's coming up for me as you were sharing is trust. Because it seems by making this very conscious decision to center women's voices and their experiences and their perspectives and their words specifically, I think that commitment and that intention in how you present your work. That says a lot to me, because I think a lot of people, when they think of the press or anybody who's writing something that's going to appear in a media publication, sometimes I feel like there is this fear of, oh, am I going to get to read it? Or, oh, they're going to take something that I said and twist it in some way. And I think what you're sharing about your commitment to them using their words and sharing them like the word you used was "facilitated", that really sticks out to me. That by doing that, you're earning that trust from your sources, from other people in the community, from people even in other countries, so much so that they are saying, "She's your gal! Bryony is who we need to call!" That's really powerful because you've had this consistency too, in that commitment to tell your stories in that way and your commitment to the topic itself for over this decade. And it makes sense that all of these opportunities ... It's like you're bearing fruit now from all of those seeds that you planted from the beginning.

Bryony Angell: 19:06

Yeah. Wow. Thank you for saying that. That's really how I feel. When these opportunities come my way, I want my friends to have these opportunities. And I'll say, "Hey, have you checked out so and so over there? She's doing this cool stuff and what about her over here?" And I make sure it's okay with them that I'm recommending them because people's lives are dynamic. Opportunities don't always come at the right time. But something that I really also want to facilitate are opportunities for other people if I'm not a good fit. Yeah.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 19:35

That's fantastic. And then you still have this full time job, and that's interesting, too. And I know you mentioned it's in healthcare administration. Can you talk about making that decision to do both? And what advice would you give to those who maybe feel that they want to follow suit? How do you manage both?

Bryony Angell: 19:53

Yeah. To me, security is very important. I run my own household now. I co parent with my kids' dad., but separate households. To me, it's responsibility, it's security. Also writing is deep work and I can't do that 40 hours a week. I do count thinking about writing as writing. Research -- that all counts! I'm very fortunate my job is not high stress. I focus, a lot of attention to detail. I work in quality in healthcare, not directly patient facing and I can do it entirely remotely. I'm very lucky. Very cool. And I can also leave it at work. But I like having that to go to. I like having that as my structure of the day and then everything around that as a treat. And really the second job writing and being part of this community and that's okay. I'm entirely comfortable with that and I have the capacity. I have a lot of energy., and I'm an extrovert. And to me, this is a very, , energizing way to live. Having the security of a job allows me to approach my side gig with generosity versus desperation. I would much rather approach it from that space.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 21:07

I'm wondering if that has been a factor in your staying power for 12 years. You've been writing for a long time and to be able to sustain that over a long period of time. I'm wondering how those things connect me. I don't know if they do or not, but you mentioned the word "treat", like being able to view it as a treat and keep it enjoyable. I think there's something there. Because when you have to put in assignments to pay rent or to pay mortgage, that is a different feeling than being able to sit down and create something from a place of joy. So that's interesting.

Bryony Angell: 21:43

Yeah. Totally. You said it.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 21:46

Bryony, you've had such a cool story, but what's next for you? What do you see with your writing and your birding advocacy? Are there new projects that we should look forward to from you in the future?

Bryony Angell: 21:57

I love presenting. I presented on a couple topics to a class at NYU just last week.. An adjunct professor there is teaching an Environmental 101 course and invited me to talk about these two, basically the consumer facing initiative that have to do with bird conservation and working environments. And that was so fun. It was so fun. I want to do more of that. Speaking in Brazil is going to give me a couple different formats. I've got a lecture that I have to prepare that I'm giving and that I'm going to be part of a round table of birding professionals who are mothers. That's going to be really fun. And these are two girlfriends of mine. One of them is Tati, who I mentioned earlier. And the other is this woman, Judith Mirembe who's a prominent birder in Uganda. Your listeners should look her up. She's done some amazing work with women in Uganda, women birding guides. She co founded an organization called Uganda Women Birders and it's been in existence for almost 20 years and she's a young woman. Meeting with more women like Judith and Tati and in the international arenas and or national arenas and networking more in person, pitching myself as a speaker at birding fairs and just being around people more. I think our world is reentering that way of interacting. And sharing the information I have because the writing has given me a knowledge base and intellectual property that now I can share in different ways. I've been writing and now I want to talk about it!

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 23:29

Bryony, I'm so excited for you. I see so many applications of what you're sharing. There's a lot of us that don't know anything about conservation and we don't know anything about your world, but we need it. We probably need it.

Bryony Angell: 23:42

I agree. There is a lot to birding that is within reach of so many different interest areas, demographics. Birds are everywhere. They're not political. You can hear them. You do not have to have incredible sight to experience birds. I totally agree with you.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 24:00

Bryony, thank you so much for being here, for sharing a little bit about your journey with our audience. Where can people find you, especially if they want to talk to you about speaking at their event?

Bryony Angell: 24:10

I'm everywhere as my name, Bryony Angell. Usually it's all one word, so that includes my website, my Instagram, my LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook, not as often, but those are the places to find me.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 24:23

Thank you so much. I can't wait to see where you go next. Thank you for coming on the show. And with that, we've come to the end of another episode. Please make sure you hit subscribe and give me a 5 star review on Apple. Check out the show notes and grab my free Niches Get Riches Freelance Writing Worksheet to brainstorm the best niches for your writing business. Until next time, this is Ashley Cisneros Mejia. Don't forget, we all get this one precious life. Don't constrain yourself to a box that you were never meant to fit in. It is your right to profit from your own creative gifts. Our music was composed by Donna Raphael of World Instrumentals. Talk Freelance to Me is a product of Fenix Creative Studio.