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 TranscriptCharli: [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