Corporate 9-5 to Food Creator: LateNightAnna’s Journey | Ep 65

If you were to ask a year ago, I would've said by day, Anna works 9-5 as a finance manager, and by night, she's LateNightAnna. But since then, she is all in on LateNightAnna, cooking, creating and building a food content brand that started with a viral Basque cheesecake during Covid.

In this episode, I sit down with Anna to talk about her journey from competing in MasterChef as a teenager, to starting a home baking business from scratch, to documenting her life in her 30s through food, travel and content creation. We chat about how she balanced a corporate career with creative passion, growing up Chinese-Australian in Sydney, performing on stages from singing competitions to national finals, and what it really takes to stay consistent when you’re building something on the side.

If you've ever thought about starting a side hustle, chasing a creative dream, or just love food content, this one's for you.

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Anna's Links

Youtube Channel

https://www.instagram.com/latenightannaa

https://www.tiktok.com/@late.night.anna

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Items mentioned

Noodle bowl: https://www.amazon.com.au/Sets-Containers-Microwavable-Restaurants-Self-Adhesive/dp/B0DPJVT1NW/

What we made: https://bylatenightanna.com/fire-carbonara-instant-noodles/

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Music: aKu - Love Shine | aKu - The Final Blow

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Chapters

0:00 Intro

2:07 Background, corporate life

6:42 Anna's singing journey, different languages

10:57 The basque cheesecake, covid business

17:26 How do you make a living?

21:54 Masterchef appearance

24:18 Why food content?

26:52 Mukbang, our relationship with food

31:37 Bao bae, starting a fast food brand

35:18 Growing up with food, inspiration

39:10 How did you learn to cook?

41:24 When was enough income to replace the corporate gig?

45:12 More followers =/= More income

49:27 Pivoting to long form content

51:43 Culinary Class Wars dishes

56:29 Travel content?

59:42 What is 'latenightanna'?

1:02:04 Son of a Booth ad

1:03:34 Cooking starts

1:06:53 Light vs dark soy sauce

1:12:58 Ingredient you can't live without

1:20:56 Are instant noodles your guilty pleasure food/personality?

1:23:47 Go to dish to impress someone

1:26:47 Drawing on cups

1:29:33 Advice for other content creators

1:37:14 Outro