Creating a Font as Passive Income

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

• ConvertKit
• Basecamp
• Webflow
• Johnnie Gomez
• Pallet
• Sahil Bloom
• The Bloomboard
• Jessica Hische

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: