Charli Prangley is the Creative Director at ConvertKit. Charli has a bachelor’s degree in design, with an emphasis on visual communication, from Massey University. Before working at ConvertKit, Charli worked as a designer for companies such as Mitsubishi Electric, Xero, and her own Liner Note Kids.
Born in New Zealand, Charli now lives in Valencia, Spain. She is passionate about helping creatives improve their craft and process, as well as working on her own side projects.
When she’s not working at ConvertKit, Charli creates weekly content on her YouTube channel and podcast, Design Life, where she shares insights about working as a professional designer, and gives tutorials and advice on design tools and concepts.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How to balance your side hustle with a full-time job
- How Charli turns curiosities into money-makers
- Why newsletter creators need a YouTube presence
- Charli’s tips for getting more YouTube subscribers
Links & Resources
Charli’s Links
- Follow Charli on Twitter: @charliprangley
- Watch Charli on YouTube
- Design Life Podcast on Twitter: @DesignLifeFM
- Design Life Podcast website
- Charli’s website
Episode Transcript
Charli: [00:00:00]
I want to show people the real life of a professional designer; the projects that I work on, how I work on them, how I make decisions, the challenges that I run into along the way. That’s the kind of thing that I’m looking to share. And then that sort of lens frames all my content. Not just on YouTube; it’s also the newsletter, the book, anything I tweet, as well.
It sort of all comes from this.
Nathan: [00:00:31]
In this episode I talk to Charli Prangley. Charli is the Creative Director at ConvertKit. She and I have actually worked together for four-and-a-half years, and during that time, well, actually before she joined ConvertKit, she’d built a popular YouTube channel about design—specifically marketing design.
She’s at over 200 or right about 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, which incredible.
She’s got all kinds of projects.
In this episode, we dive into things about design. She and I are both designers, so we love those topics.
We talk about side hustles, and how you balance that with a full-time job. Her career, moving up the ladder, becoming Creative Director at ConvertKit, and all the other things she wants to create.
What gives her energy; what doesn’t.
We talk about sharing things about money online, and how that can be a tough topic.
She shares her income, she does videos about salary and making income from side hustles, so we talk about those details, and then we talk about as a newsletter creator, is YouTube something that you want to pursue?
And tips and tricks and ideas for that.
Anyway, I’ll get out of the way, and we’ll dive into the episode.
Charli, thanks for joining me:
Charli: [00:01:42]
Yeah. Thanks having me. I’m excited—honored to be on the Nathan Berry show.
Nathan: [00:01:47]
That’s right. I’m glad it gets that kind of enthusiasm.
Is only because we’ve worked together for so long?
Charli: [00:01:59]
Maybe, I don’t know, honestly, actually I’d probably more excited to be on if we hadn’t worked together for so long.
Nathan: [00:02:04]
That’s right. You’re actually like, “Fine, fine. I’ll come on your podcast. But to be clear, I’m doing it during works hours, and you’re paying for this.”
Charli: [00:02:12]
Yeah. This is a favor to you.
Nathan: [00:02:14]
Yeah. Whereas separately, because maybe if we hadn’t spent the last four years working together, then, then you’d actually really want to do it.
All right. Well, maybe let’s start there because we have spent the last four years working together, four-and-a-half.
Charli: [00:02:33]
Yeah.
Nathan: [00:02:33]
And yeah. So coming, approaching five this fall. The first thing that I want to ask you about is how you think about all the different things that you’re doing as a creator.
As I mentioned in the intro you’ve got, you know, the YouTube channel, you have a podcast, you have a newsletter and everything else.
And I, I just love to hear how you think about the intersection of those things. And then we can get into the intersection of a full-time role, and all the full-time creator things.
So what’s the, like Charli’s creative landscape?
Charli: [00:03:06]
Ooh, I like that. I would say that I’m aiming to make the kind of content that would have helped out, you know, like the me from two years ago.
And that’s kind of been my approach the whole time through. So when I started, maybe I was making stuff more for beginners, and every now and then I will still, but I’m trying to like level up my audience as well as I level up in my career.
And I love the term creator. I feel like it’s definitely the best way to describe me because I’m not just a YouTuber. I’m not just a podcaster, or just a blogger, or a writer, or whatever.
I do all the things like wherever I feel drawn to create in whichever method I feel like will best express the thing that I’m trying to teach or share is what I lean into.
Nathan: [00:03:49]
Yeah. that makes sense. Uh that’s how I feel, like, you can’t put me in a box.
Charli: [00:03:54]
Yeah, no. How dare you.
Nathan: [00:03:55]
The only box that I’m willing to accept is a giant all-encompassing freeform box of creator.
Charli: [00:04:01]
That molds, and like, changes shape as you do. Yeah.
Nathan: [00:04:04]
Yeah, exactly.
Okay. So you have all of these things. Maybe your most recent thing that I want to talk about is Inside Marketing or Inside Marketing Design is that marketing would be an entirely thing.
We’re talking Inside Marketing and Design. I’d love to hear first, why you wanted to start that, and maybe the seed, the direction a little bit.
I’ve heard you talk about like design being so focused. People either talk like graphic design, or they talk product design, you know. So, we’re like into user experience, user interface.
I’m curious how marketing design fits into that and your, your desires there?
Charli: [00:04:42]
Yeah. So, honestly Inside Marketing Design started as much with my content does, which is, I wish this existed. It doesn’t exist. Maybe I’ll be the one to make it.
I found myself just like really wanting to hear about how other companies set up their marketing design teams, how their marketing designers get work done.
And when you searched around for like, I dunno, medium articles and things like that, it’s all about product design. It’s all about product design teams, UX design teams, and how they work with engineers.
And I’m like, what about the marketing design side of things? It’s super important, especially in tech where most marketing design happens, most marketing, sorry, happens online and you need the digital design to make that happen.
A brand is super important. Building up a company to, you know, a high level. And I just think it’s completely underappreciated marketing design in the industry.
And so it’s like my personal mission to raise up the profile of marketing design eyes wider in the design industry and tech industry. And yeah, Inside Marketing Design interview show, that was completely self-indulgent where I got on calls with designers who work at other tech companies and learned about how they did that.
Nathan: [00:05:51]
I feel like the best podcasts and newsletters and things like that are completely self-indulgent they come from this natural curiosity, like that’s where this show comes from. It’s just like, these are the people that I want to talk to. And there’ll be more likely to say yes to talk to me if it’s for a podcast, you know, because otherwise like you end up in the, can I pick your brain thing?
And that’s like, Nope, no, no, no, no. Like bat goes in a very special bucket of, of emails. But if you’re like, can I have you on your podcast? You’re asking 90% of the same thing, you know, and the best questions are the ones where I’m like, I genuinely want to know this.
Charli: [00:06:28]
Totally. Yeah, exactly. That’s definitely the approach I take to it. and since then, I’ve been, I’ve been surprised by the response that the number of people who are also interested in this very specific niche thing I was interested in as well, you know, it definitely has a way smaller audience than if it was perhaps a product design podcast or a UX design podcast, but that’s kind of the point, right?
Is I want to make content for this niche, this very underserved, I believe niche in particular.
Nathan: [00:06:55]
What’s interesting is that I feel like, the market exists. Like, I’ll be, obviously there’s lots of marketing designers, right? Cause all going to the like every time Stripe comes out with a feature most beautiful page ever, you know, and all of this, right. we look at, even just within the Nisha software, like all of the design is so beautiful today compared to what it was even five years ago.
And so obviously there’s marketing designers everywhere. It’s just that the content hasn’t caught up with that, for whatever I feel like the UX designers and, and the freelancers have been so much more prolific in like content of this is how I run my business and this is how we structure our teams.
And so it feels to me like the market. It’s not that the market is small. It’s that? it’s just not established yet. There’s not big of a community,
Charli: [00:07:49]
Yep. Totally. And there’s not even one specific term, like even marketing design, some companies would call it brand design. Some would call it just web design, the creative team. I don’t know. There’s lots of different terms for it. So yeah, I guess I’m also trying to like unify us all under this marketing design umbrella as well, because it is it’s design that helps market product or service.
Nathan: [00:08:10]
Yeah, totally. I, it takes someone to like, Hey. this is the term that we’re all using. Just gives you’re wondering, that, you know what you mean is marketing design. who are some people that you’ve had on the podcast that are particular companies that you’ve interviewed where you’re like, we’re really excited to dive in and learn what they were doing.
Charli: [00:08:31]
Yeah. So I was really excited to have it start out from base camp on the first season, back when he was still at base camp. and I don’t know, it was just really interesting to learn about how they, how they do things. same with Webflow had Johnny Gomez from workflow on I’ve been a big fan of workflow for a very long time.
So, yeah, digging in and hearing more about the day-to-day because it’s one thing to just look at a company’s marketing site or their marketing materials. And it’s another to hear about the process that went into producing it. And like, where does this designer sit within the org structure of the company?
How do they do things? So yeah, we go into lots of nerdy details like that, and it’s been fun. I feel like I’ve learned from, you know, doing the episodes myself. Like, one thing that Johnny actually brought up is that when he’s designing sites for web. He would write the copy for them as well. Like he doesn’t use lorem ipsum or fill a copy.
He’ll like write real copy. And I would usually write like, sort of like a placeholder copy that indicated what I wanted to say. Like, it would be like headline about this. but since then, since that interview with Johnny, I’ve leaned in more to like, okay, let me just try it. Let me just try, write a headline.
And you know, the writer can come in and fix it up later if they want to. But yeah, there’s been lots of cool little, little learnings that have helped me in my process and yeah, I hope has helped the audience too.
Nathan: [00:09:47]
That’s interesting. I feel like people do this with every skill that they’re not, that they don’t feel confident in. I was going to say competent, but often they’re competent in skills that they don’t actually like competent and confident. you know, don’t always co-exist. And so I think that with design there’s a lot of people who are like, oh, that’s design.
I can’t like, I’m not a designer. I can’t touch it. And you know, I’m always trying to use tools. Like pick-me-up like gradually drop people in and be like, oh, but what if you tried? And you know, and like, yeah, maybe it looks terrible, but here’s this process. And I feel like copywriting is one of those things where people are like, I don’t know how to do that.
I’m not a copywriter. I’m, I’m a designer. I’m whatever else. And it’s like, okay, but if you had to, what would this headline say? Oh, would probably say something like. Okay. Like, that’s probably 70% there, you know? And then like if you had to write a better one, what would it say, oh, maybe it’d be this, you know?
And, and that being able to jump in, like, you’ll find often that you’re competent, even before you’re confident in those skills.
So, you’ve got the podcast. Well, actually really quick. You said something about the podcast that you said, you mentioned seasons. how do you think about, doing in seasons and how does that fit into like your workflow,
Charli: [00:11:06]
Yeah, I wanted to do it in seasons because this is actually my second podcast. I have one called design life that I’ve been running with a co-host for years. And that is not one will seasons. It’s sort of like an every week thing. Although we are on a break at the moment, and I
Nathan: [00:11:19]
Like a Ross and Rachel style break or what kind of break.
Charli: [00:11:22]
Uh we’re on like a summer break.
Nathan: [00:11:24]
Okay. Okay. So everyone knows you’re on break. It’s not you think you’re on a break and your cohost doesn’t you are
Charli: [00:11:31]
Yeah, exactly.
Nathan: [00:11:33]
I’ve been watching friends lately. Can’t help it .
Charli: [00:11:36]
So, I knew that I wanted to do Inside Marketing Design and seasons because of just how much work it is to do podcasts constantly. I thought I could package, like have my goal was 10 to 12 interviews. To correlate them into a season and also do a wrap up episode at the end of the season, just covering some of the things that I learned.
Some highlights, things like that to tie a little bow on it. And, yeah, I’m starting the prep work for season two right now. my goal is to do one season a year of yeah. 10 to 12 episodes each
Nathan: [00:12:07]
Nice. What I like about that is you’re able to be deliberate about what you’re committing to. You can start it when you actually have like energy and momentum towards Um and then it’s also a fixed commitment.
Charli: [00:12:22]
Yes
Nathan: [00:12:22]
Saying, I don’t know what the analogy is. Like you’re not even hopping on the treadmill or if you are here, like this is a five mile brightener, this is a three mile run or whatever.
Right. And then you’re like, and then I’m going to hop off instead of being like, Hey, I’m gonna get on this treadmill and I’m going to do it until I get burnt out and regret doing it. And then I’ll quit about three months after that.
Charli: [00:12:42]
Yup. Yup, exactly that. And I would compare it more to a marathon than a five mile run, but, you know, just get technical
Nathan: [00:12:49]
Some of us are more ambitious than So what’s the, like, going back to the creator landscape, in your world, you’ve got the podcast. It seems like that is the main driver, the main source of new content, for, Inside Marketing Design. But you’ve also got a newsletter, a job board and then a book coming.
So how do you think about the other other aspects?
Charli: [00:13:13]
Yeah. So, the newsletter I started, honestly, I feel like it was from something that I’d seen you write, talking like building up your authority on, it was probably in authority actually. Now that I think about it, building up your authority on a topic before you’re going to release, you know, paid product about it.
And so I thought, well, this would be a really great way for me to generate like a warm audience of people who interested in marketing design. If I start a marketing design newsletter, so it’s called the marketing design dispatch and it goes out on Mondays and. It’s sometimes it’s like a little essay.
Maybe it’s like even a piece of writing that I’ve been doing for the book that I’m writing about marketing design, or maybe it’s a deep dive into analyzing a new marketing website that I’ve seen a rebrand, something like that, as well as sharing content that has been useful for me or that I’ve seen around the internet.
And yeah, I’ve had a good response to it so far. Cause I, I started just sending it out to my existing list and yeah, I gave people the option to opt out of getting it if they didn’t want to. And maybe like a couple hundred people did that, but the most, the majority of my list is stayed around for it, which has been cool.
Nathan: [00:14:19]
Yeah. So how, how big is that list? And then where did that existing list come from?
Charli: [00:14:24]
Hmm. So the current list is 18,000 subscribers. I just did a big cold subscriber call the other day. up to like 24,000. And so you’re my engagement graph and ConvertKit’s looking nice and green at the moment. yeah, and the majority of my lists previously had come from one, I have this really popular YouTube video about DIY screen printing.
And so people sign up to my list to get a free opt-in that has like a PDF written with the instructions. So those are the ones that, you know, probably went cult. Let’s be honest, but I also have a couple of other opt-ins about creating a design system for marketing website. How to advocate for yourself as a designer, self promotion as a designer, just a few sort of like things of credit along the way, as well as just a general sign up on my website.
So yeah, most people are there because they’re interested in my content, I guess. yeah.
Nathan: [00:15:15]
And so probably a lot of that is coming from either Twitter. but the bulk of it being from YouTube. Is that right?
Charli: [00:15:23]
A lot from YouTube, also a lot from my own website and from Twitter, I would say. Yeah,
Nathan: [00:15:28]
Okay. So you’ve got the newsletter there and then this is actually something that I was really curious about, like why launch a job board that feels like another, you’re already juggling a bunch of Like
Charli: [00:15:39]
Great point.
Nathan: [00:15:40]
how does that fit in.
Charli: [00:15:41]
Yes. So the job board came about, honestly, because of the platform that I have it on at school palette, and it’s a way that communities can create a job board to advertise roles to their community. So it’s quite like create a focus and it’s meant to be heavily curated. So it’s not like you come to my board and you find any type of design role.
It’s like a job board specifically for marketing design and brand design roles. Yeah, it’s my goal to have it be the place that if you’re looking for that type of role, you can search on here. And if you’re hiring for it, you come post on my job board because you know that I’m going to send it out to my audience of people who are interested in this topic.
And like, it just feels like a good fit.
Nathan: [00:16:22]
Right.
Charli: [00:16:23]
Pretty low lift so far, honestly. So that’s another reason why I took it on because it wasn’t like I had to make the site myself or anything. Pallet has the system and, they manage the payments for the job postings and things like that. I just go in when one gets submitted and see if I want to approve it and it gets posted.
Nathan: [00:16:40]
Nice. Yeah, no Southern people. There’s a creator who I hope to have on the podcast soon named Sahil bloom, who has. Couple of hundred thousand followers on Twitter, a popular newsletter and all of that. And he just locked, launched a board called bloom boards, think is a great, I chuckled, you know?
And so it’s just interesting as a business model, because right, when you have this audience of tens of thousands or, or even more, that’s really what you’re, you’re selling access to. And it’s interesting, you know, like I’m used to selling products to individual creators where $50 or a hundred dollars or $200 is enough money that people are thinking hard about it.
But what’s interesting about it. A job board is that especially when the tech world, where someone is like, Hey, can you help me find this person that I’m somewhere between a hundred and $200,000 a year? And so, like, I assume you’re, I don’t know what your experience is, but the willingness to pay for that product is fairly high and they’re really paying for access to your 18,000 subscriber newsletter.
Charli: [00:17:44]
Yeah. exactly. And the, I also have a tier on the job board where you can choose to pay, like a much higher fee. And I mentioned it in a YouTube video as well, that goes out to my audience of like 200,000 on there. And so it like, yeah. Smart idea. No, one’s taken me up on that option yet, but I hope in time they will.
Nathan: [00:18:02]
Well, if nothing else, it’s there for like package it, like positioning in there of like, well, maybe we would dive in what are the price points right now at the time of
Charli: [00:18:10]
Oh, shoot. I can’t remember off the top of my head. let me look it up
Nathan: [00:18:15]
Google it either. That’s too
Charli: [00:18:17]
I’m just going to go to my own job board. How about that? So I think it’s, I think it’s 300 for an initial, like just a plain posting, 500 for featured, which then has like a, you know, a special section of my newsletter as well.
And then I believe I priced it at like 1200 for the one that includes the YouTube shout out, which is like in line with what I charge YouTube sponsors is actually a lot cheaper than what I showed you, shoot responses, but, you know, I figure it’s a good fit and it’s doing service to my community to be promoting it well.
So,
Nathan: [00:18:46]
Yeah. that makes sense. Okay. So what was the research that you did going into, like, I imagine it was more than like, oh, palette looks interesting. Great. Let’s add this monetization method.
What went in as you, as you were seeing of like, okay, I have this community and a job board is the way that I want to monetize it because I saw these people do it, or I you know
Charli: [00:19:09]
That was the reason why. Yeah. it was mostly my friend , who was my co-host on the design life podcast. She had started one with palette and I saw her doing, and I was like, oh, this looks interesting. Like, tell me more about this. and she said that pellet had approached her and explained the system.
So yeah, I reached out to them, got on a call with them. They’re super like new as a startup basically. And so, you know, we’re in, on, on the ground floor and helping them along the way with building features and, you know, suggesting what to build that sort of thing in their slack group. yeah. And I just decided this makes more sense than trying to build a, maintain a website of my own because they are doing that work.
And, you know, as someone who creates on the side of a full-time job, leading a team at ConvertKit, I, you know, want to have this be minimal effort on my part get it out there. So it just made sense.
Nathan: [00:19:58]
So you’re not very far into this, right? Or
Charli: [00:20:00]
No, it was brand new. I’ve only had like one person pay to post so far. It’s very
Nathan: [00:20:04]
Yeah, we’re just getting started. And so maybe this is a better question for like some point in the future, but like, if someone was coming to you and saying like, okay, I have a newsletter of 10 or 20,000 subscribers is like, should I consider a job board as well? Like as a monetization method, what, what would your, perspective be at this.
Charli: [00:20:26]
Right. Yeah. I think that is a good question, but I can definitely answer now. I would say if you could, if your niche for your newsletter is super cool. And there’s like a certain type of people who read it or that you’re speaking to when you write it, it could make sense to have a job board. there was some initial effort for me in finding some jobs to populate the board with sort of it wasn’t launching with nothing, you know, but from then on, it feels like very low commitment because it’s mostly inbound, right?
It’s people coming to you to post. So it’s not going to be worth it for you if you don’t have perhaps the profile in the community yet to get those inbound leads or, you know, get people visiting your board so that you have the good stats to tell people about that. Yeah. If you do have those things, consider it as an extra income stream.
I think it’s smart ad like diversify where your income is coming from. that was a big thing that led to me. we haven’t gotten to this yet, but last year I doubled the income that I made from my side hustles and having like multiple small streams is how I did it rather than having like. Giant successful stream, if that makes sense.
So yeah, I’m considering the job board as part of that.
Nathan: [00:21:36]
Yeah. I want to get into the side hustles as well. maybe before we do that, let’s just go right there. Now the, I guess the first thing that I’m curious about is you share all of your numbers transparently publicly, that I do as well. and you also dive in, like you have popular videos on, like salaries for designers, your own salary history.
Like one of my favorite videos that you’ve put together as like here’s the salary that I’ve had at every role, know, across my
Charli: [00:22:05]
Every raise that had throughout my career. Yep.
Nathan: [00:22:08]
Yeah. And so, why, why that level of transfer.
Charli: [00:22:12]
Nathan. I feel like you’re fishing for compliments, even though you don’t realize you are, but It’s honestly it’s. Cause I, I, I got a lot of value from reading your income reports, seeing people like pat Flynn’s income reports as well. And it just, I think it, it changed my mindset on money. It just it’s something that we are taught that it has a taboo around it.
Right. And we all keep it secret for some reason cause everyone else does. And so we think we have to as well. And I don’t know, I guess just seeing other people share and seeing the value that I got from it and seeing how it didn’t change my perception of them, if anything, it made me respect them more.
I was like, well, you know, I feel like I am confident in what I’m earning and I’m confident that I’m being paid, what I’m worth. So why don’t I just share this history with other people and tell them about it? And yeah, since then I feel like I’ve slowly gotten more and more transparent and the latest income report on my blog is the most transparent I’ve ever been.
And yeah, I, no regrets.
Nathan: [00:23:09]
It’s something that comes up. Like the reason I ask the question other than fishing for compliments, which absolutely doing, like, know, on a payment. the reason that I ask is because I think so many people are so timid about it. And so I like to have more of a conversation, not about like, just the like bold, brave people who are out there doing it, but like just to try to normalize it so much more.
And so I’m curious what have been some of the downsides, you there’s always, there’s gotta be at least some YouTube comments or some emails something. And so maybe we can, can share a little bit about what the, I guess the, the outside edge of like, Hey, this is the downside, rather than just telling everyone like, oh, it was fine,
Charli: [00:23:53]
Yeah, totally. And I would love to hear this from you as well. I’ve had YouTube comments on both ends of the spectrum to the salary video in particular, some saying, this is irresponsible to tell people this is their rate. They’re going to set them way too low. If they go and asking for what your salary is, you’re being underpaid, that sort of thing. probably the people who live in San Francisco and work at like a Google or a Facebook or something like that.
Nathan: [00:24:16]
Yeah. It turns out you make like 500 grand a year. Like something crazy. You, you have to sell your soul. That’s the only, like, I think, but other that,
Charli: [00:24:24]
So I’ve had people. I’ve also had the people saying like, oh my gosh, that’s like so much money. design is like way over valued. There’s people who are like, you know, saving lives in hospitals.
And I’m like, yeah, this is a fair freaking point. I won’t swear on your podcast. Great point that maybe the answer isn’t, we should pay designers less, but maybe we should pay doctors and nurses more, you know, let’s take that approach to it. but honestly less of that than I expected is is what I’ve seen.
Maybe, maybe those sort of comments are happening in a less public forum. Like maybe people are talking about me behind my back. I don’t But
Nathan: [00:25:03]
Probably not,
Charli: [00:25:04]
Yeah, well, Who knows, but either way the, the people who I care about, I haven’t heard that from, will say one interesting thing I noticed is that since sharing my salary history and things, whenever I like offer to buy my family dinner or like, I know it will be, I’ll be like, oh, pay they protest less.
Now we’ll just say that.
Nathan: [00:25:27]
That was going to be my next question is how it interacts with family.
Charli: [00:25:31]
Yeah,
Nathan: [00:25:32]
And so now it sounds like they’re just like,
Charli: [00:25:36]
It.
Nathan: [00:25:38]
We can split it or something, but they only say it once instead of
Charli: [00:25:41]
Yeah, yeah, They don’t protest too hard. What about you? What have been some of the, like the positives and negatives you’ve had.
Nathan: [00:25:47]
Yeah
I mean, lots of positives, because I feel like the more transparent you are, the more, I mean, the more people read your content and the more they enjoy it, more they understand you. and so the more they want to connect, like soon, the number of people who I really respect and I’m a fan of who have reached out and been like, oh, let’s chat.
And I’m like, you know, I like playing it. Cool. I’m like, Hey. Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great. I, you know, I’ve, I’ve like seen your stuff on Twitter and really it’s like, no, no, I’ve listened to every episode of the podcast or like some version of that. Right. And it’s like, be cool, Nathan, you know? so there there’s been a lot of that on the downsides.
Let’s see. I would say this is more early on, right? Because they’ve been transparent with numbers for the last eight, eight years or so. but especially I got started in online business when I was really young. And so. in the communities that like, like friends from high school or church or, you know, or my wife, Hillary is friends like in those circles, a lot of people were much earlier in their careers.
So there was a time that, you know, people were making 25, 30, maybe $40,000 a year in those circles. And then over here, I’m like, if you, if they ask me what I do, I’m like, oh, I’m a writer or I’m a blogger or something like that. But on my blog, I’m talking about how, like I made $250,000 last
Charli: [00:27:14]
Yeah.
Nathan: [00:27:14]
Right. And so there were a few awkward times when those worlds like crossed
Charli: [00:27:20]
Yeah.
Nathan: [00:27:21]
And it was, yeah. But there was a long time ago.
Charli: [00:27:24]
Handle it when, when they did cross though? Like how did you handle the situation? Awkward conversations.
Nathan: [00:27:31]
Yeah. well I remember one person in particular is one of. We’re not, we don’t, we aren’t very good friends with them anymore, not because of this, but just different apart, but it was, one of my wife’s friend’s husband, you know, it’s one of things where like you go to a party and for whatever reason, everyone segregates by gender.
And you’re what, why did we do this? You know? But
Charli: [00:27:56]
This a middle school dance? Yeah.
Nathan: [00:27:58]
It was one of those things where someone who was genuinely interested in learning online business and, you know, and that sort of thing in the group and like follow my blog and understood. It was like asking questions about like, oh, how did this latest launch go?
And, and I was like answering the questions, but I was just getting this feeling of like awkwardness from this other person. And so it, like, I always try to be transparent, but like, I couldn’t, I was struggling to reconcile like in-person Nathan with online Nathan at that time I was glad that that resonates.
Charli: [00:28:34]
Yeah totally. Yeah.
Nathan: [00:28:35]
It was totally normal to be able to talk about like a book launch or something, online, but to talk about it in person of like, oh, this made like $40,000 in the course of a couple of days was a really weird thing to say. So I like dance around it and kind of set it. And from this other person got like just a straight up like, oh, wouldn’t that be nice to just like, send, you know, send an email and make all this money and not have to work for it.
And
Charli: [00:29:05]
Well, I just, I did the work in advance though, so
Nathan: [00:29:07]
Yeah, No, that’s not the moment where you’re like, be like, well, let’s take a step back and let me get out the let’s explain leverage and how you build a life. You know, it’s like wrong, wrong vibe. just kind of shut down. I didn’t know how to navigate that situation.
So I did it poorly, you know, like kind of laughed it off. Someone else like felt the tension in the group and like made a joke and took the conversation some other way, you know?
That was probably the most like awkward scenario
I’ve ever had. I, I think I have the same thing that you do have, like family is now like, okay.
Yeah, no, you can, that’s fine. We’ll let you pay for that. which is honestly one of my, like, I, I like paying for things
Charli: [00:29:51]
Same. I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want to.
Nathan: [00:29:53]
Yeah, exactly. So, and my family has been, been fantastic about all that.
Charli: [00:30:00]
I think, another thing that, I’ve noticed is I dunno, like, I think if you’re going to start talking about money online, you have to, you can decide how much you want to share. Right. Just because you’re being transparent about something doesn’t mean you owe anyone anything more than what you decide you want to share.
So for me, I share my income and I shared my business expenses, like the content production expenses this year, but I don’t talk about like, oh, here’s all everything I paid in taxes, everything that I paid to like live my life, or I don’t know. Like there’s some things that I’m not interested in talking about online.
And I don’t know. I, I started out giving people excuses when they would like push for more and more and more. But now I kind of feel like I’ve given you a lot. You take that and run with it. it, it doesn’t, it shouldn’t matter to you. my answer when people ask me, well, how much did you pay in Texas?
And I just say, I paid the correct amount. I mean, what, benefit does it have to you to know this? You’re not living in my exact situation, so I don’t understand like how it would help. So, know, I decided that’s not a thing that I want to talk about and, I am fine with that. And maybe people aren’t, but yeah.
Nathan: [00:31:14]
Yeah, I think that’s a great boundary and that’s something probably that I haven’t talked about this on this podcast that I’m curious for your answer on is what boundaries have you set in your like personal versus like creative life. Right? Because there are definitely people who would look at you and I, and be like, oh God, I could never like put myself out there in those ways.
Like, I would never show up on camera. I like, I wouldn’t talk about my life. I wouldn’t put things on the internet under my real everyone has these different boundaries. And so I’m curious, like, what are some of yours? And have you set those over time?
Charli: [00:31:45]
Yeah, I think over time, I’ve settled more into my content that I put out online, being very focused on my work and obviously who I am showing up to do my work, who I am as a designer, but I don’t share a lot of my personal life online. I’ll share like the odd Instagram story here and there, pictures of my cats, that sort of thing.
But you’re not going to find me for example, vlogging on the weekend being like, oh no, I’m just hanging out with my boyfriend watching formula one. You know, that’s, that’s not the kind of content I’m trying to make. I’m just trying to make design focused. This is my work. This is my process is how I get it done.
Sort of content. I did used to, vog more of the personal side of things and it was fun. And it’s fun to have those videos to look back on, but it’s also a lot like it, as much as you try to live in the moment while also capturing it, your attention is always going to be split some way. And so, you know, that’s just a decision I made was to take more time offline when I’m not working and just document the work as what I share has been a good, good split for me, that works for me and my life and my family.
Nathan: [00:32:52]
Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like it’s something that people probably do, both what you and I have done of like, not really having those clear boundaries and then you just gradually figured them out and
Charli: [00:33:02]
Figure out what works
Nathan: [00:33:03]
Think there are people who, you know, have things like, oh, we’ll never put, like my kid’s face on online or something like that.
Right. I think like has that, has where like the like certain clips there’ll be blurred they’re like, oh, they’re walking through New York. Yeah, exactly. It’s the back of the head. Or you’re like, oh, there’s a kid in a stroller that you can’t really see, you and it’s just interesting to try to try to navigate that.
So I appreciate people who are intentional. And I think I just, haven’t, there’s a lot of things that I haven’t figured out exactly. And you’ll see how it changes over time.
Um, cause I think we, you know, what you’re comfortable with comfortable. You know what the YouTube channel of a thousand or 10,000 subscribers is different than what you’re comfortable with it 200,000.
Charli: [00:33:53]
Yeah, And, that changes over time, too. Something I recently started doing this year is streaming my work, streaming Twitch and. I dunno, I’d, I’d been very resistant to doing live streams in the past because I was just nervous about what having people watch me design. Maybe it was imposter syndrome I was feeling, or I don’t know, just worried about people judging me when they’re seeing messy middle of the process, rather than me presenting like this final thing that I’ve finished and it looks great.
And there’s been, that was a fun challenge to overcome. Honestly, it’s been a really fun way to build community over on Twitch. like diversifying my audience in a way from not just being focused on YouTube or Twitter, but, building small audiences elsewhere. It’s been cool.
Nathan: [00:34:36]
Okay. So you said diversify, which is interesting. And I like that. do you worry about diluting your efforts in diluting your audience? Picking up another none other channel or platform.
Charli: [00:34:49]
Kind of, but also no. so I have this person in my mind who is like my creator idol. you’ve probably heard of her Jessica Hische. She is a designer, a letterer illustrator, and I’m just such a big fan of her work and in how she shows up online in that, she’s just doing cool stuff all the time. Well, that’s what it feels like anyway, like doing cool things, putting it out there, you wouldn’t call her a blogger or a, I don’t know, like just a speaker or just someone on Twitter.
Like she’s all of those things. and she just like shows up in different ways to share different pieces of her work. That’s what I’m trying to do. I don’t want to be known as just a YouTuber and lock myself into that. And I feel like I did for a while. And it’s only really been probably in the last year that I feel like I’ve pulled out of that.
And that’s not how I mostly hear people describe me anymore. yeah, I’m just trying to finish show up online and share things and, yeah, maybe I could be more successful in terms of building a bigger audience if it was just focused on YouTube, for example, but that’s not my end goal. Right. So it, it doesn’t serve me.
And I’m more interested in just being, being a well-rounded person. Like I call it a digital citizen. This is what I did my, honors degree project about some bit nerdy about it. But yeah, I like being a digital citizen and giving stuff to the
Nathan: [00:36:13]
Yeah.
I like it. Well, so maybe if we dive in a little bit on YouTube since that is where the bulk of your audience, know, has come from and, and all of that, what were the things like as you look back over the last, you know, 200,000 subscribers. What were the things that made the biggest impact any step functions and growth or, you know, particular videos or really just habits that paid off over time?
Charli: [00:36:41]
I think it’s mostly been habits. Honestly. There’s only one sort of, step point in my growth that I can point to is when I was featured on a list of the design channels to follow on YouTube. And that gave me like a big boost, but
Nathan: [00:36:55]
how of
Charli: [00:36:55]
YouTube. Hmm. I can’t remember now several thousand, like more than what get.
It was significant, like a difference in
Nathan: [00:37:03]
when you were at like 10,000, 50,000.
Charli: [00:37:07]
I can’t even remember now. I feel like probably around like 20,000 ish maybe.
Nathan: [00:37:14]
So we’re talking a significant boost at this point. It’s
Charli: [00:37:16]
Yes,
Nathan: [00:37:17]
10%, 20%.
Charli: [00:37:19]
Yes, In like within a week sort of thing. Major that I started to see those numbers increase. but most of my growth on YouTube has been like slow and steady. Just like climbing up over time for the first five years of being on YouTube.
You mentioned habits. I didn’t miss a single week about bloating for five freaking years. I don’t know how I did it now. I Ms. Weeks all the time now, but that really helped me get in the habit of making videos. Get in the habit of having an idea, figuring out how to express it, learning how to edit, putting it out there, getting a response, making a better next time.
I think if I had stressed a lot about my first however many videos I made in those five years, I would have taken a lot longer to grow if I’d been trying to perfect each one. But instead I was just like, no, what matters is getting something out there? So I’m going to get something out there. and that, that was a huge part in building my consistent.
Then the other thing I think I’d say helped is deciding who I’m talking to on YouTube. I started out making content about a bunch of different stuff and eventually it settled. No, the reason I wanted to make videos is to talk about design. I should stop talking about makeup and cooking recipes and stuff like that.
And like, let’s just talk about design. That’s what I’m most passionate about. so yeah, going all in on that has enabled me to get posted on lists like top designers to follow on YouTube, that sort of thing, and become, quite a well-known design channel. Yeah.
Nathan: [00:38:47]
One thing that’s interesting to me is that even in choosing that knee seat to go for design, you haven’t gone. What I think most people would find the most, likely path, which is like a whole bunch of design tutorials. definitely have designed tutorials, but like, if I’m looking specifically for how to, I don’t know, combined shapes and Figma, your channel is not the, like, you don’t have video of, you know, exactly how to do that.
You might introduction to Figma.
That’s
Charli: [00:39:17]
I do.
Nathan: [00:39:18]
Yeah. And you might, I have watched that video. I was part of me switching from Photoshop Figma was watching your to video
It’s not hypothetical. but, but what’s the reason for not habit, like not going tips or tutorial base.
Charli: [00:39:35]
Honestly, it’s, it’s what I said before about, how a lot of my content comes out is making the kinds of things I want to see. And what I wanted to see is the behind the scenes of people’s processes and talking through like the decisions they made about a project, like why did they do something this way?
That’s what I care about more than the, how I feel like there’s a million tutorials out there to tell you how to combine shapes and Figma or whatever. there’s people who are passionate about that and who are really great at explaining things succinctly. And they do it a lot better than I could. And that’s just not like the space I’m looking to fill.
I want to show people. The real life of a professional designer, the projects that I work on, how I work on them, how I make decisions, the challenges I run into along the way, that’s the kind of thing, but I’m looking to share and, and that sort of lens frames, all of my content, like not just on YouTube, that is also the newsletter, the book, the anything I tweet as well.
It sort of all comes from this.
Nathan: [00:40:32]
Yeah, I think that’s the Mo the best way to be long-term authentic and say interested in when you, what you’re creating there, like practical side of me is like, but you could do that and have the tips and that would drive, you know, search results. And, and I feel like that’s a tension that so many creators have, like, this is what I want to make.
And this is what I know will also get me short-term results. Like, should I do both? Should I split my focus? Is that something you ever thought about or struggled with?
Charli: [00:40:59]
Yeah.
That’s why I have a Figma one-on-one video is because I know that that does do well in search. And I think that, I think I’m pretty good at explaining at an introductory level, a new piece of software to someone I wouldn’t really consider myself a power user of any software. So you’re not going to find like a advanced Figma tips video on my channel.
Cause I’m not, I don’t, I’m not really an advanced user. I’d do what I need to, but I think I’m really good at making, something that seems scary or new, like a new piece of software that you have to use feel easy to understand. And so that’s, that’s the gap I try to fill in that sense to appease the algorithm.
Like right now I’m planning a web flow one-on-one video to sort of go along with this one-on-one series that I’m doing. and my hope is that people see that and then stick around for the rest of the more process driven.
Nathan: [00:41:48]
One way that I think helps bridge that gap for people sticking around for, for your content is that you put your personality and yourself in it. Right. We don’t dive just into a screencast. you know, and it’s like, you’ve heard of watch a video. Like I know I’m watching one of Charli’s right?
It’s not like any other video that I just found through through search.
Charli: [00:42:08]
And I’ve comments about that. Nathan people have said like, oh, why is your face so big on the screen? It’s always funny how the negative ones talk about you. Not to you say, why is her face on the screen so big? And I’m like, well, you’re probably not going, gonna like the rest of my videos that are pretty much only my face.
So it’s okay that you don’t like this one
Nathan: [00:42:26]
I don’t know if you know this, but you’re on my channel.
Charli: [00:42:31]
And I’m the one reading these comments. Yeah.
Nathan: [00:42:34]
Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s good. If anyone was starting a YouTube channel today, either in the design space or something else, like what would you tell them? What would you, would you say as far as like that advice to kick it off?
Charli: [00:42:46]
I think ask yourself what is not being talked about or not being talked about in a way that you personally find useful or like a perspective that you personally have in the design space in particular, there’s a lot of content about like how to become a UX designer, that sort of thing. So it’s like, and it’s probably the same for a lot of topics is finding your unique angle on it now is important that the number of the space is more saturated and leaning into your personality, because that is sometimes your point of difference is that there’s only one of you.
And then you have lived your experience and white has led you to this point. And that could be an interesting angle to put on anything that you want to teach or share. But so that, and also just get freaking started. People seem to like, I don’t know, obsess over perfecting the video, set up in their audio.
And I think it’s Roberto Blake who says that your first 100 videos are going to like be. Not good. I, again, I’m not sure if we can swear this
Nathan: [00:43:45]
You can swear. That’s
Charli: [00:43:46]
Okay, going to be shit, Nathan, they’re going to be shit. And so you should just need to get through them and like get in the habit of producing and getting used to seeing your face and hearing your voice.
So yeah, if it’s something you want to do get started sooner rather than later, so you can get that awkward stage over with faster.
Nathan: [00:44:00]
Yeah. Yeah. And then like gear and everything else. You just like gradually replaced thing at a time
Charli: [00:44:06]
Exactly.
Nathan: [00:44:07]
And gradually upgrade it. he did something last year. No, I’m trying to think two years ago, I hate what is time anymore.
Charli: [00:44:13]
Knows
Nathan: [00:44:14]
You made a font and that’s something that I like looked at.
There’s like normal people. There’s designers, and this is the way that I think, and designers who can make a font. And for anyone who’s just listening to the audio. I’m like doing stair-step things with my
Charli: [00:44:30]
Yes. You have to imagine
Nathan: [00:44:34]
So that puts it in a category of like, I just think of that as an incredibly difficult thing and not like a great moneymaker, like there’s a lot of difficult things are high difficulty and high rewards, you know, the effort versus impact, like you’re at the top of both.
Right. And that’s the reason like, okay, great. You know, that’s very difficult, but you did it and there’s a high, high financial reward. I’m curious the way you thought about making a font, because the way that I see it is that it is very high effort in low financial rewards. but maybe the reward and impact comes some of the.
Charli: [00:45:16]
I would say, I definitely have not, I dunno, earned even a minimum wage in my sales yet from the hours producing the font. I’m just trying to edit it up right now. Cause it was, I was sold across a few different platforms, but I think I’ve earned about six, 2,600 pounds from it so far, is like not bad.
I don’t know what that is in us dollars. should I Google that quickly?
Nathan: [00:45:40]
Sure. Let’s do it. be the episode where we Google everything
Charli: [00:45:44]
3,606 us dollars is around about how much I’ve made from the font. So it’s not
Nathan: [00:45:50]
Any matter, a thousand hours into it. And so $3 hour. don’t know.
Charli: [00:45:55]
But the cool thing about it is one. It was just a thing I wanted to do. I thought it would be fun to try. Cause I’m, I’m an avid like font collector myself, and now it is my passive income. Like I, and, yeah, the bulk of that income has come in the past year where I’ve done minimal marketing for the font.
I’ll like tweet about it or share whenever someone else, someone posts like an image of them using it. but there’s not been a huge concerted effort gone into that. And so that’s kind of cool. It feels it’s my first passive income that I feel better about than ad sense, for example, cause this is the thing created and I don’t know.
It’s more intentional.
Nathan: [00:46:35]
Well then you also get to see it in use around the oh, that’s my fault.
Charli: [00:46:41]
Yup. Yup. It’s really fun. It’s it’s especially cool because I just created it as a hand, drawn looking font, but people very quickly just started using it as a font to annotate designs because it does look handwritten and yet it is also like highly readable.
And so I really leaned into that as the, like in the way that I frame the font now and the way that I market it is. Yeah, this is to annotate your designs in a really clear and legible way that still looks and written. And we even use it on the convert kit website.
Nathan: [00:47:11]
Do it comes full circle.
Charli: [00:47:12]
Yes.
Nathan: [00:47:15]
On that note. I want to talk about the intersection between having a full-time job and life as a creator, because I think people would, would think of it as, oh, I have this, and then maybe I have this one side hustle or I ha like ha and, and you’re able, I think, through the leverage that you’ve made with, like coming into the job with a, you know, established audience and habits and everything, you’ve been able to build, you know, like a small design empire.
And so I’m you think about balancing those two things and, and what you’d say to someone else really, who is like straddle.
Charli: [00:47:54]
Yeah, I think I’m getting clear on what you want from these two worlds. It’s important. So for me, it really matters to me that I’m still designing. And so, that’s why I, and like contributing to a project that’s bigger than just like my own. That’s why I like working at ConvertKit. I do not enjoy freelancing, so like, it would be hard for me to really fulfill fulfilled, I think freelancing right now, anyway, who knows that could change in the future.
That’s why I am not interested in going full-time on the creating side of things. And so knowing that means I have okay. I’m no I’m going to work a full-time job. And I know that creating is also important to me, all this content that I’m making. I don’t want to give that up either. So how do I do them both?
How do I figure this And it’s just been a, a constant, constantly changing, I dunno just way that I get this done when I was, I don’t know when I was younger, like, I dunno, five years ago, I used to wake up super early in the morning and do a few hours video editing and things like that on side hustles before starting the day, I feel like I’m older and tired now, and I do that.
But what I do now that I am earning income from my side hustles is pay people to help me. So I pay for editors. I pay for, yup. Video podcasts, editing, some VA’s who helped with my bookkeeping and content management, uploading that sort of thing, just so that I can really keep the parts I enjoy to do myself and hand off, as much as possible of the stuff I don’t enjoy.
And it’s been a worthy investment for me because of, yeah. It making it sustainable.
Nathan: [00:49:31]
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. don’t know if you posted this in slack or in, on Twitter, as I mentioned it somewhere else, but there’s a video that you were editing recently yourself. And that was a bit of a, I don’t know, not a wake up call, but I was like a reminder like, oh yeah, this is a lot of work.
Charli: [00:49:50]
that was one that I wanted to edit and then put out like two days later. And so I knew my editor wouldn’t have time for a quick turnaround like that. So I was like, well, I’m just going to do it myself. And I’m like, oh, okay.
I remember why I outsourced this.
Nathan: [00:50:04]
Yeah. That’s even outsourcing something that like, you know, well and are good at done for many years. But I think what you’ve found in that, or, I mean, the point that I want people to take away is like, you can actually create really a lot, if you set up the systems you’re willing to let go of the things that you’re skilled at, but don’t like, they’re not the thing that makes the content, know, like maybe if, you and I were filmmakers, right.
The editing and having just perfect. Right. That would be part of it where we’re like, oh, wow, that was incredible. Right. But, but like we’re, we’re teaching content, we’re sharing things. It needs good editing, but it doesn’t like, that’s not what makes her break the perks of the video. And so outsourcing that allows you to create so much more content.
Charli: [00:50:52]
Yep. Exactly. And that’s often my answer when people say like, oh my gosh, how do you do it all? I’m like, well, I pay people to help me. That’s how I do it all. I don’t do it all myself.
Nathan: [00:51:01]
Yeah. When you sit down like a video that you’re making in a given week, I don’t pick a video. I’d love to hear kind of what your process is like. Do you just sit down and flip on the camera and start talking? Or are you writing a script first? what’s your process? Like how much time does it take?
Charli: [00:51:17]
I these days, honestly, we do tend to write a script when it’s a video. Like, oh, let’s say for example, a recent one, I uploaded was one explaining the differences between, I think it was five different job titles and tech that you often see. that is one that I sat down and wrote a script for first, when I film it, I don’t necessarily, I don’t use a teleprompter and I don’t necessarily read the script word for word, but it helps me process my thoughts to write it out first.
Sometimes I find when I do a video, that’s just bullet points. It takes me a lot longer to film because I end up like talking about something and then I’m like, no, I don’t like the way I phrased that or we’ll go back and like repeat it a bunch of times. so yeah, getting that out of the way first actually speeds it up for me to spend a bit of time writing.
And yeah, I have my filming —set up like this background, if you’re watching the video version of this podcast, is just where I do my filming. And that makes it pretty easy to just set the camera up, turn it on and film. I generally like to fill more than one video at a time as well. Cause if I’m going to like, I dunno, put lipstick on or something, I want it to be worthwhile.
Nathan: [00:52:20]
Sense. What you were saying about writing the script made me think of back when I was doing like designed to tutorial content. What I would often do is I would, I would know roughly what I was going to make or like the tip I was trying to share or whatever. And I’d have like, An idea of like, here’s the fake app that I’m going to do it or any of that.
Right. and I would record the tutorial and end it and I’d look at it and say, it’s like a Photoshop tip and it’s five minutes long. And then I would set that aside. Wouldn’t delete it, but like, I’d set it aside. And then I would reset my like new Photoshop document or whatever. And I would record the exact same tutorial again.
And I would look at it if the first one was five minutes, the next one was three minutes. And like, and I never wrote a script or anything, but just the action of like doing it twice. It was so much better the second time. And that’s what I found was such an efficient process because, it still came across naturally, but I like avoided the random rabbit holes that I went down the first time where you’re like, you’re talking to, like, this is no longer useful.
Should I edit this out later? You know,
Charli: [00:53:28]
Yeah. Totally. That’s I do that sometimes as well. When it’s more of a, off the cuff video, I’ll, there’s been times where I’ve been like, you know what? I got to the end of my, 30 minutes of footage. And I feel like I should record this again to make the edit process easier. And like, so that I’m more clear on what I said and what I didn’t.
Nathan: [00:53:46]
Right. Yeah. Cause easier to get clear in the recording in a second than it is for your editor to be like, okay, the three of this plus version four of that one, like there we go. And we’re going to do a jump cut here. So it seems like
Charli: [00:54:01]
Yeah.
Nathan: [00:54:03]
That’d be great. Don’t worry about it. are there times that the full-time role and you know, you’d like your side work as a creator, like those have conflicted?
Well, I think that people are wondering like, oh, that’s, that’s great that it magically all works. I’m happy for you. I’m be happy to share examples as well at times, like that with me.
Charli: [00:54:21]
Yeah.
I think that’s a really good question because it is often the impression I think that we give across, or that I give across to people. and I find myself in weird situations where I’m convincing someone that my life is not perfect, which is weird, like find yourself but no, you’re right, totally.
There’s I think why it comes across, like it all works is because I lean into the moments when I do feel motivation. And I do have time to like batch film a video. Like I haven’t filmed a video for a month and there’s still been content going out on my YouTube channel because I filmed it when I had time.
And when I felt like doing it. but yeah, there’s definitely weeks where. I can’t get what I would like to done on my side hustle, because I know that I have to put my job first and I just have to like, accept that that’s part of the, like, it’s like a compromise you make in deciding to do them both and deciding create on the side means that I’m never gonna be able to produce as much content as someone who does it full-time can, or like take on every opportunity that someone who creates full-time can.
And I just have to be okay with that. Right. And if I start to become not okay with that, that’s when I need to like check in with it myself and be like, well, what do I really want to be doing here? Yeah.
Nathan: [00:55:36]
Yeah. I think that one way that they worked really well together is like different creative energy.
Like I’ve spent so much time recently on like, where we’re going as a company, you know, it’s like all these high level things. and very little time, like as a creator, is core to who I am.
Like if I were to, you know, write down some identity statement, like writer would be pretty high up in there, you know, writer, designer. and so if I get too far away from that, I find that, You know, I start to feel like disconnected from who, who I am at my core, but at the same time, like ConvertKit as a company does not need me to be a designer like there.
In fact, I often cause more problems. If I jumped into let me design this for you. then, Al for someone else on our
Charli: [00:56:28]
It’s you didn’t use the design system.
Nathan: [00:56:31]
Exactly like, hi, let me show you. Remember how I showed you the whole thing and how you didn’t use any of it. And now this is really nice. and so doing something on the side.
Yeah. Like I did a, I started a newsletter just talking about money, like, and doing that on the side has been like a really motivating, like get, has given me creative energy, even though it’s an additional thing. The important distinction is that I had to make sure that it wasn’t like a treadmill that I was signing up for. so it’s like going back to, you know, a season of Inside Marketing Design, right? Yeah. I have energy. It’s going to go towards this and then it’s going to go on pause. and then also like setting it up. So it’s, it’s evergreen, right? So instead of sending, a broadcast every Friday morning, you know, I set it up.
So it’s an automation and convert kit and, you know, it’s emails one through five and they just go out automatically. And when I have energy, I come in right. And like, you know, the next email is already ready to go and I’m working on one of a few later. and then I know that if at any point I stop, like here’s this asset that people can keep buying or signing up for, and using, and that like it basically the it’ll live on there’s the system it
Are there other things where, where you’re doing that or other rules that you have in that.
Charli: [00:57:54]
Yeah.
So maybe a rule that I have is, I was finding myself, spending a lot of time, like reading emails and reading about sponsorship opportunities and like partnership opportunities from companies. And often I would like, feel like I should explore every avenue. Cause like if someone who’s offering to pay me money, right?
Like who am I to say no to that? I should do my due diligence and check it out. You’d get a few emails in and it would turn out their idea of a sponsorship was like much lower than what your idea of responses. It was the company wasn’t a good fit, or I don’t know, you didn’t love it. and so I just decided that I’m not going to even entertain the idea of a sponsorship from any company tool, brand, whatever that I don’t already know and use, and like using myself.
And that’s just made it really easy. I just have like a text expander auto response that I can just quickly put in to send off to the people who, offer me sponsorships that I, you know, have never heard of before I don’t use.
And it, sometimes it hurts to like, think about leaving money on the table in that way, but I just have to hope it pays off longterm in that I’m making those much choices with sponsorships, you know?
And that there’s only one of me and I’d rather be creating than emailing a random company
Nathan: [00:59:08]
Yeah, you made model to help you make that decision and acted
And freed up. Not only, you know, if people talk about like, you only have so many decisions you can make in a day you know, what font to use for this heading is one of those, you know, like we make a ton of decisions that you’re just like, look, that’s a whole series of decisions that I’m not going to make. And that frees up creative energy for other things. Cause like, should I take the sponsorship or not? It’s not like a creative
Charli: [00:59:37]
Yes, exactly.
Nathan: [00:59:38]
Business admin question, that’s not.
Charli: [00:59:41]
Yeah. totally. And, another thing that I’m in the middle of right now, I said before the design life podcast is having a summer break. I’m also taking a bit of a summer break from my newsletter, from videos to allow the space to work on season two of Inside Marketing Design. and also to spend some time writing my book, which is completely like fallen by the wayside over the past few months.
You know, got out of the habit of it and that’s important to me. So, I don’t have the luxury of being able to do those things as well as continuing with the light content hamster wheel of the other stuff. And so even though it feels like it’s quite a risk, you know, especially in terms of the YouTube algorithm to stop uploading for awhile, it’s what I have to do in order to bring to life this thing that is important to me also.
And at the end of the day, that’s, what’s important. Even if my audience on YouTube stays exactly the same and I bring this thing to life, I would rather have that happen than have grown and not made it.
Nathan: [01:00:35]
Right. Yeah. I see you. Like you’re at 200,000 subscribers now. And what I hear you saying is you’d rather be like, we have this whole string of words that we can use to describe Charli and adding author to that is more important than the next 50,000 YouTube subscribers in 12 months or something
Charli: [01:00:56]
Yes. I would like to say I have a quarter of a million YouTube subscribers. I would really like to say that, but I would much rather say that I’m an author.
Nathan: [01:01:06]
You’re right.
Charli: [01:01:06]
I’ll get them both one day.
Nathan: [01:01:07]
Yeah. Yeah. You’ll get both. It’s just a matter of time. that is an interesting thing. Like if you stay consistent and steady, like so many other things that you want just come with time. so it’s good. Okay. Last thing that I want to ask you about is most people listening to this podcast are going to be newsletter creators, right?
So you started on YouTube and went to a newsletter, or added a newsletter in addition, w what would you say to the people who have started with the newsletter? Let’s say they’ve got 10,000 subscribers or 15,000. and they’re thinking about. Going to YouTube in video, especially cause, newsletters, for example, don’t have an algorithm behind it. Right. And so on one hand you’re like, yay. Every, you know, it’s a one-to-one relationship. That’s fantastic. On the other hand, you’re like, Hey, there’s no built-in distribution, there’s no discovery. and so I’m curious what you would say to someone who’s thinking about making them jump over to YouTube.
Charli: [01:02:04]
First of all, I think. You should do it because when you, when someone sees you on video, they they’ll start to imagine the words that you’re writing in a newsletter in your own voice, you know, as they read it and they’ll make more of a personal connection with you. I think video is so powerful for that.
So you know, every creator I think should try and involve video somewhere in, in part of what they make. I think that you should make videos about stuff. That’s a similar topic to your newsletter, to like tie into the audience there. And what’s worked out well for me is having a fairly educational focused video that, is one that.
Specifically created to do well in search results, you know, to help people out who are a certain topic, having an opt-in that you offer. And like specifically mentioned it in the video, not just the description, call it out, show a picture of Ronald on screen or whatever. we’ll get the people to join your email list from a video.
I found that to be a really good path, lower conversion rate than you might expect, because a lot of people, I know it’s hard to get them to take action from a video, but those who do, if the video is on the same topic as your newsletter, they’ll stick around and become like a good, good audience member for you.
Nathan: [01:03:15]
Nice. Yeah, that makes sense. I like it. I particularly liked the idea of, you know, switching to video as a media type. Now people will know what you sound like and go through this whole thing.
How do you think about, okay, maybe this is a different question.
We host craft and commerce every year for ConvertKit, right?
Charli: [01:03:37]
Well, yeah. Yeah. that just
Nathan: [01:03:39]
Now we’re depressed. But I think about like, let’s say two, the speakers that we’ve had: Casey Neistat and Mark Manson. I imagine they have very—they lead very different lives far as, like, Casey Neistat walks to the airport and mark Manson walks through the airport.
They’re going to have very different experiences as far as like number of people who I recognize them. I imagined that the majority of people who have read mark Manson’s books at this point, it’s like 5 million people or 10 million something ridiculous. Right. I have no idea what he looks like.
Charli: [01:04:15]
Yeah, I didn’t until I saw him at Craft & Commerce.
Nathan: [01:04:18]
Right. He walks in, you’re like, you know, “Hey, are you, you know…?” He’s like, oh, I’m the keynote speaker or whatever, you know, like great.
Charli: [01:04:25]
Oh, okay Yeah.
Nathan: [01:04:27]
Right. Is that something that people should think about, of, I guess the pros and cons of being recognized? Do you have any, any examples or stories of you being recognized?
Charli: [01:04:39]
I feel like I get recognized sometimes if I’m at a, either a design or a YouTube event. I’ve only had it happen, I think twice that I’ve been recognized just like out on the street.
And it was in London, where I was living at the time. And so I don’t know. It’s weird, but I don’t think it should be anything that either deters you or is the reason to make videos, you know?
Yeah. I don’t know. It’s, it’s kind of nice and I’ve enjoyed it honestly at design or YouTube events as an introvert; it gives like something to talk about. If someone comes up to you, that means, oh great, I’m not having to approach someone else awkwardly. Someone else has made that, you know, taken on that challenge.
And now we get to have a conversation and I can just ask questions about them because they already know about me. If they’ve seen my videos and, that’s just a good situation for me to be in.
Nathan: [01:05:28]
It is the single best conference hack to have an audience and a persona. And all of that, like the first conference that I ever went to, I think I spoke to two people the entire time, maybe three, maybe, but they were like the person who sat next to me, know, I guess, I dunno, lunch table one, like quietly, you know, when someone said “Hi,” like that kind of thing.
And then after I started blogging and went to a conference and like, people were like lining up to talk to me and I wasn’t one of the speakers, you know? And it was just the best hack of like, I hate introducing myself to people and I hate like, You know, all of them, I’ve done it a lot more, you know, the last decade I’ve gotten more comfortable.
But yeah, when people just come up and say like, “Oh, Nathan, I love all of your blog posts.” You know, “Charli, I loved your video!” And you’re just like, as an introvert, I guess, “I wanted to meet you, I just didn’t want to have to put in the work.”
That’s good.
All right. Well maybe we’ll, we’ll leave it there.
Where should people go to subscribe and follow all the things that you’re creating on the internet?
Charli: [01:06:30]
I think the best place would be my website: charlimarie.com. There’s links to my blog posts. Sign up for my newsletter in the footer, the videos, the podcasts, they’re all on there. The font as well, if you want to annotate your designs.
Nathan: [01:06:44]
Yeah. Buy the font, use it, send a screenshot to Charli.
Charli: [01:06:47]
Yes. I will re-share it on Twitter. Yeah.
Nathan: [01:06:51]
I like it. Well, thanks for hanging out. This has been really fun.
Charli: [01:06:53]
Yeah. Good chat, Nathan.
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