313: Side Hustle Income - How Charli Prangley Doubled Her Side Hustle Income in One Year

All right. I am very excited about this. You heard this on our, well, couple podcast episodes ago. But we officially have a sponsor for the Food Blogger Pro podcast. It's actually our sister site, Clarity. C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com we built Clarity, really as a solution for a problem that we had for Pinch of Yum, which was figuring out how do we organize and optimize our content, how do we get a clear look at it, and then once we get a clear look at it, how do we build campaigns around or kind of projects, groupings around things that we want to improve and enhance. And Clarity is the tool that we are working on continually improving. We're right in the middle of building and growing and optimizing the tool itself. It's the tool that we built to solve the problem we had for Pinch of Yum. And you can sign up and use it, and instead of spending thousands of dollars building this thing on your own, you can sign up for $25 a month forever. That's a campaign that we're doing 25 forever for anybody who wants to sign up in the kind of first year, really, of when we're allowing people to sign up and use the tool kind of in the beta stage here. One of the most powerful ways that bloggers are using Clarity is to do what I talked about before to make their content better through the use of campaigns or groups or projects. You might think of a campaign as a group of projects that need similar updates. So might be old posts that need to be no indexed or deleted seasonal posts that you need to be need to be refreshed. Maybe you want to create a campaign around posts that you want to do a full revamp on. Or you could use Clarity to slice and dice your content and see where the broken links are or where alt text is missing. Maybe there's some content you want to reshoot or top posts that you want to go back and make sure that they are continuing to do well. Campaigns really are the heart of how bloggers are using Clarity right now. We're going to continue to add on and build functionality down the line, but it's really the main thing that we're focused on right now. It's filtering, and then after you filter, you can build campaigns against it. It's maybe a little bit hard to understand, but if you want to test it out, if you want to take a look at Clarity, that's probably the best way to do it. And the best way to do that right now is to go to clarity.com again it's C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com food F O-O- and you can sign up for the waiting list. We'll follow up after you sign up for the waiting list and onboard you so you can make sure that you understand your content that you have within Clarity and understand some of the campaigns that you can use early on. We'll also invite you to be part of the Slack group of early users that are using Clarity and sharing the different ways that they're using it, feedback that they have on it to help guide the tool as we are developing it. And really just a way to see what other people are up to and doing as they're improving, optimizing their content in service of growth of their site. So Again, that is clarity.comfood C-L-A-R-I-T I.com food and that will get you access to that 25 forever plan. We're offering that to the first 500 users of clarity. That 500 mark is what we're going for where we have a super solid group of users early stage who can offer feedback. Once that happens, we're going to switch over. We're going to figure out what the pricing mechanism for Clarity is going to be on an ongoing basis. But if you sign up in this early stage, because we are early, because we're growing, we want to solidify that monthly plan at $25 a month forever. So that's the bonus that you get for being an early user of Clarity and, and you can get that by going to clarity.com food all right, let's go ahead and jump into this week's episode. Hello, hello, hello, this is Bjork Ostrom. You are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Today we are talking to charlie from charliemarie.com she's the creative director at Convertkit, but she also does incredible work with her side hustles. She has a YouTube channel, she does Twitch, she creates content, she is putting together products. All of these different things are a part of kind of her kind of CEO of herself. That's how I like to look at it. Even if you work a 9 to 5 job, you are the CEO of your own career. And I think sometimes we only think of CEO as the role of somebody who's leading a company. But, but you are the captain of your ship. And Charlie talks about what that's like for her and how she does that well, how she thinks about branding her personal brand, how she thinks about diversification as it relates to the income sources that she's getting. So for those of us and most of us listening to this podcast, this would be true for those of us who appreciate the idea of building a thing and also have a full time job. This is gonna be a great interview because Charlie's gonna be talking about how she does that and does that well and some of the ways that she's been focus, but also some of the ways that she's been able to work intentionally over the years. She talks about things like working in public, where she actually streams her work. We talk about the difference in her highest earning income, side hustle, and then some of the areas that just kind of help support that. So there's a lot of great information packed into this episode and really appreciate Charlie being so open in sharing all the different ways that she's creating an income. So let's go ahead and jump into this interview. Charlie, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, Excited to chat here. It's always fun for me. Inspiring for me to chat with somebody who's a digital creator and like a really good digital creator because the you, you, you pull up the video, it's like the scene is set, it's lit well, like you have great design behind you. It just feels like maybe what we'll do is we'll just schedule a bunch of interviews from here on out. It'll be like a series that we do with you.

Right? Yeah. Well, the background's already prepared, you know, so anytime.

Exactly. Reason being is because you do a lot of this. So for those who aren't familiar with who you are and what you're about, if you could share your background, not only what you focus on in kind of your day job, but also you aren't unfamiliar with pressing record on a video and publishing that you have a YouTube channel and some other channels as well. So tell us a little bit about what you're about and what a day or a week looks like in your life.

Yeah, so by day or like, I don't know, sort of into the evening, because I live in Europe and work for a US based company. I'm the creative director at ConvertKit. We're a creative marketing platform. I believe that actually you all at Food blogger Pro use ConvertKit, so.

Yeah, yes, we do. Yeah. Yep.

And then as well as doing that, as well as doing design work and managing the brand team at ConvertKit, I have a YouTube channel where I talk about design. I've been doing that for almost eight years, so it's been a while. And I also make a lot of other content. I have two podcasts, well, three, I forgot one momentarily. I have a design podcast that I host with a co host, a friend of mine. I have one called Inside Marketing Design where I speak to other marketing designers in the tech industry. And I have the Future Belongs to Creators podcast that I do with some teammates at ConvertKit. I also stream work on Twitch. I tweet a lot, I write a lot on my blog, maybe not as much as I should. And I'm currently working on writing a book about marketing design as well.

So yeah, just when you say marketing design, can you explain that, what that means? And for those who aren't familiar with.

That term, I love to explain it because I believe it is a very undervalued role in design and in tech. So marketing design is essentially a role within a company where you're designing the marketing materials, designing for the brand to promote a tech product or a service or something like that. So it's the design of the marketing site, marketing materials that go out on social media or in advertising and those sorts of things.

Yeah. And the design in that case wouldn't just be like you think of print design, you're doing a poster. What does that include from a design perspective that graphic design wouldn't? What are the other like filters that you're looking through or like parts of your brain that you're having to tap that would have to be educated if it was a graphic designer.

Yeah, yeah. So marketing design is a very like, I think it's quite a tech specific role and because of that it's very digital, so you might end up doing a bit of print work, but most of it is digital design. And you're using a lot of the UX UI design thinking that product designers, the ones designing the apps that we use, might, might use in their process, but you're applying it to a website that markets the product instead of applying it to the product itself, if that makes sense.

It's interesting because it's one of the things I've learned over the past few years is like when you're launching an app. So like Convertkit being an example, you have what you would call the marketing site and then you have the app. And a lot of times it's like app.convertkit.com or like we're working on an app called Clarity. So it's app.clarity.com that's an entirely different like branch where you're making considerations around ui, ux how somebody would use it. But then there's like, for us it's Clarity C L A r I t I.com clarity.com, there's a marketing site and that's just clarity.com and the considerations that you have around that versus the app are very different.

Exactly.

Did you getting into design know, like, hey, I'm actually interested in marketing and design. Awesome. There's this thing that I can build a career that I can build around marketing design. Or have you kind of moved into that in the last few years and said, like, wait, this is kind of the sweet spot for me. I didn't know this existed five, six, seven years ago.

I feel like my answer to this is kind of in the middle of what you put the options you just gave and that I. I've been a marketing designer my whole entire career, but I didn't know that that was its own like, specific niche to start with. I started out as a graphic designer on the marketing team for a company that distributed fridges and heat pumps. Like, you know, super sexy. First job in the design industry?

Yeah, totally.

And moving into tech, I saw this role called marketing design and I was, I was like, wait, but is this a marketing role or a design role? And the company was like, it's kind of both. Like you'll be designing, but like your marketing mindset really, really helps you be successful in the role. And I was like, perfect because I'd studied both those things in university and yeah, that's what I've been doing ever since.

Do you think, are those things ever conflicting? A lot of times you think of like design and engineering or like in the food space. If you have a food blog, you'd think of like speed and like aesthetic and photos. Like the more photos you have, the slower your site goes.

Right.

Do you feel like with marketing design that like, if you think of the old school classic like squeeze page, that's what I'd think of like Internet marketing. And a designer would look at that and they'd be like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. And you might have a beautiful site, but then like a marketer or even like conversion optimization person look at it and be like, wait, here's what you have to change. And then they change it and it like doesn't look as good.

Right.

Do you, are those conflicting things or do you feel like there's a happy medium where the most well designed version can also be the best performing from a marketing standpoint version of something?

It's, it's both and it's both because it is this push and pull between the art and the science, which is what I love about this role, and that you are thinking about conversion and the user journey and the user experience and all that, but you're also thinking about the brand that you're building through the design. I think brand is especially important when you're marketing a product. Maybe more so than when you're like in the app and in the product itself. Because the brand can be a big reason why you choose to pick one company over another. And I guess for food bloggers as well, I'm sure they know this. That you know your brand could be a big reason why someone chooses your blog over another to follow. So it's about like making those decisions to improve the conversion rate and like, get people to where you would ideally like them to be going without compromising the brand. Because no one wants to like, feel like they're being sold to or feel like they're being like forced down a path. So yeah, it's a fun box.

When you say compromise the brand, what's an example of how that might happen?

Ooh, okay. I have a really good one and that is that I refuse to, to put like a pop up on our site to subscribe to our email list or like anything really. The closest I'll get is an exit intent. So when someone's moving away from the site, I will accept a pop up there, like trying to catch them before they leave. But I think it compromises the reading experience or the user's journey to have something interrupt them when they're reading on your website. And so I am not a fan of pop ups and I think that they would compromise our brand if we implemented them.

We just had this conversation because we have on Pinch of Yum, which is the food site that we have kind of the sister site to Food Blogger Pro Brother site, we have a exit intent pop up on desktop, but the implementation of that is hard to do on mobile. So it ends up being this thing where you're like, it's not truly exit intent. And just this week we had, we had a conversation. We're like, we need to like scale this back a little bit because we heard some from, from some people and Lindsey, my wife, who oversees kind of day to Day at Pinch of Yum, along with Jenna, had, had received some feedback. They were like, hey, this is kind of a hard. There's a lot of stuff happening here and to your point, that impacts the brand and somebody's thought on what it's like to interact with it, but. But the hard thing is it's not measurable. So how do you make decisions on something where it's kind of like it's more the art side than the science side, and especially if you're working with a team. But even as an individual, how do you say, like, wait, this is just kind of a feeling I have. How do I know if it's right or not?

Well, it's important to start with that feeling. Like having the feeling of what you feel like your brand should be, especially as an individual, as a creator online, I think is really important. And for ConvertKit, we've had a lot of conversations internally about who do we want to be as a brand, and it sort of gives us this framework to run decisions through. So, for example, a really key part of our brand is making creators the hero. So with everything we do, we want to make sure we're showing creators in a really good light. And anytime there's a chance to profile a creator or feature a creator, we're going to take it. And that helps us make decisions about, okay, what image should we have here? Should it be an illustration? Should it be a photo? It should be a photo because then we can show a creator and then we're like making them the hero of our brand. So yeah, having that sort of framework for yourself can really help you when it comes to that decision making.

It's almost like making a decision once, almost like a core value. Yep, exactly who we are. And then you pass decisions through that. So that then becomes like, in the art and science, it becomes the hard, hard line. Or like a line where you're like, wait, creators are the heroes. So we have this really cool doodle, but that's not a creator. So let's focus on the creator. And for a publisher, like a blogger, you might say, hey, we want to make it. One of the values we have is to make making the recipe be the easiest thing possible. So an example for Pinch of Yum, that's a line that Lindsey drew is like, I'm not going to put an ad in between the instructions and the ingredients.

Yes.

Because then you're going back and forth between the instructions and ingredients. You'll be able to earn more. Right. ConvertKit would get more email signups if you had a pop up, but it doesn't align with some of the core values you have. Which, which I think is.

That's a great example. It's like deciding where your line is in terms of how far you want to go. And just trusting the process that the effort and the like, I guess compromises you make in building your brand are going to pay off long term. Because think of all the big companies that we look up to and admire, like the Nikes, the Apples, Patagonia, all of them have focused really strongly on brand. You know, they're not putting pop ups, interrupting your experience and putting an ad in between you, like searching for their products. They've invested in their brand and it's paying off for them. And I think we can do that as creators too.

That's great. So you do a lot of different things.

I do.

You talked about the podcast, you talked about YouTube. I saw you have a Twitch channel. Which one of those is your favorite? Like, is there one of those where you're like, I get to do this and I'm really looking forward to it today.

Oh man, that's like asking me to pick, like, which is my favorite cat out of the two that I have.

Depends on the day.

It does depend on the day. And right now, like, YouTube will always have a very special place in my heart. It's where I have grown my audience and I've got up to almost 200,000 subscribers on there. So it's just been awesome to have been accepted into that community and to be building an audience on there. But honestly, recently I have been loving Twitch. I've been doing live streaming as I work and the.

Can you explain what that looks like?

Yes, it looks like me with my webcam on and sharing my whole screen as I work inside a Figma file on design projects. It was very scary.

Are you talking over it?

I'm like narrating as I go, talking about what I'm doing. There's people in the chat and they ask me questions or, I don't know, raise topics themselves. And it's the chat that makes that fun for me. It's fun to have a little community of people giving you live feedback on your design as well.

It's been cool and kind of scary though. Like to show somebody something that isn't complete seems like that would, as a designer, like, you have the ability to withhold until the final product.

Yes.

But to not do that seems like a scary thing. So for you, what is that? What is that? What is that doing? Like, why are you doing that?

Yeah, I'm doing it because going back to like, the brand and the feeling and what you're trying to do, I am trying to teach other designers by sharing my process. I'm not creating like tutorials, like how to do this. I'm letting you learn just by following along with what I'm doing. And so, on YouTube, that often looks like me sharing a project, talking through design decisions. But on Twitch, you get to see those decisions being made in real time. And sometimes me going back on decisions because I realize they're the wrong one.

Sure.

And so it's like another avenue for doing that and for transparency.

When you're live streaming that. How long is a live streaming? Live work session.

Honestly, I think that live streaming has been a key to me finding focused design time this year as I've stepped into this role of creative director.

If you pull up another random real quick, it's almost like a productivity hack.

So I would say my live streams can go, I don't know, like two to four hours. Sometimes I'll be streaming just like, solidly working and interacting with people in the chat. Yeah.

And then is that. Is that available live after you wrap so that somebody, if they wanted to, could go back and watch it?

Yeah. Yeah. You can see them for like, 14 days after on my Twitch channel. But I also spun up a new YouTube channel just called. I think it's Charlie MarieTV Live VODs, which stands for video on Demands. It's like a Twitch word where I upload them too. So there's like a. An archive of all the streams.

Yeah. The other thing that I was interested in hearing you talk about, selfishly, because it's something that we've thought about with Food Blogger Pro, is I noticed that you did a job board and you used a platform for that that I wasn't familiar with. I'm curious to know kind of what the intent is with that. Did a little bit of reading on it, but not enough. You know, it was one of those, like, take this with Pocket to come back and read later.

Yeah, yeah.

What is the. Tell me a little bit about that platform and then also your thought with creating a kind of marketing design job board.

Yep. So the platform that I'm using is called Pallet, and they're a fairly new product from what I understand. And they are for creating a job board for your community. So it's not like a mass job board, like, I don't know, like an Indeed or whatever. Like a remote. Okay.

Monster.com giant ones.

It's meant to be for a specific niche, a specific community, and focused on a specific creator or, you know, blog, I guess, as well. So for me, I chose to curate mine around marketing design jobs. And that's the thing, is that they are Curated people can apply to have a job posted on your board and you can choose to accept it or not. And you can set your price for how much it costs to have someone post to your board or not.

And yeah, is that something that you're doing? Are you charging to have a. Yep. And then how do those people, I'm guessing from your YouTube channel, from essentially your followers. So it's a way to say like, hey, I have these followers who are interested in a really specific thing that a lot of companies really need and a company's gonna be willing to pay 100, 200, $300 to try and get their position in front of as many targeted people as possible. Can you talk about what that process has looked like and ways that you found success with that? It's relatively recently that you launched.

Yeah, it's very new, so I can't talk much about any successes I've had. I think I' had one person, one company paid a post on it so far. But you know, fingers crossed for the future. But it is my thinking with it is like you said, I know I have an audience of people who are designers or are interested in marketing design. And so it's the perfect place for any company looking to hire someone for that role to, you know, get their job in front of a bunch of people. And also like if it's a company and you know, often the designers on the team might have seen my videos as well and you know, respect the standard of the information I'm trying to get across. You can assume that okay, if someone's maybe this sounds big headed saying this but like if someone's watching my videos and like trying to learn from me, I'm setting them up for success in marketing design so they can trust like.

A student in design school essentially.

Yeah, exactly.

Like a job fair where they set up a little, a little booth.

Digital booth.

Yeah, yeah, right. That makes sense.

Yeah.

So how about in terms of earnings, I know that you shared a post. We'll link to that in the show notes and you. And you kind of break down. Okay, you have your job include that information. Here's how much I'm earning from my full time work, profit sharing from ConvertKit and then you have kind of laying out the income that you're also earning from your side hustle. What have you found to be as a creator with significant followers on multiple platforms, what have you found to be the most effective way to create an income and then advice around that for other people who are looking to do a similar thing? In a different industry.

Yeah. So I think there's. So I doubled the income that I made from my side hustles last year, which was really exciting. And I think that doubling came. I can pinpoint it to three things if we have time to go into them.

Yeah, we do. And can you say what it was and then what it went to?

Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to speak in pounds because that's the currency that my business.

Just to do the math. That would be impossible. Yeah.

So in the previous year I earned £19,638 from my side projects and then in the last year I earned 41,580 pounds. So I think it was like technically 112% growth, if we want to be.

Specific, which is awesome. Yeah. And the rough the like. Would it be like 1.4? I have no idea what that.

Like, I think it's like almost US$60,000 is. Would be what I own this year. Something like that.

Yeah.

To give us some frame of reference for the rest of it.

Yeah. And everybody who usually operates in pounds is just going to be like, finally.

Yeah, yeah, someone's speaking my language.

We have to. In order to honor that, we'll have to do the reverse whenever that comes up in US dollars.

Yep, There we go. Yeah. So.

So what do you. Yeah. Three things you attribute that to is what is. Are what.

The first thing is I managed to land a channel sponsorship which gave me consistent income throughout the year. So this is with figma. They're a design tool. I use them for my work, love them, feature them in my videos often even.

We just started using Figma for all of figma for all of our brands and the same thing. It's like awesome.

Love it. And so they pay to sponsor my channel monthly. They pay me $2,000 a month. And what that gets them is a link near the top of my description on every video. It gets their logo, it says powered by Figma at the start of every one of my videos. And it's sort of like a brand alignment, I guess is what they're paying for there.

And that's like the tool you're using, which makes it a really easy. Yes for you. Like you talk about live streaming. My guess is 90% of the time it's you in Figma.

Exactly.

Working on that. Yep.

Yep.

How did that come about? Did you reach out to them? Did they reach out to you?

Yeah, I actually did reach out to them and suggest it because I'd had a previously webflow sponsored my channel for a few months and which is another tool that I use regularly and it will also stream in a lot. They had some changes to like, their marketing priorities and my channel was sadly no longer one of them for a channel sponsorship. But I was like, this has been great, you know, having regular income from YouTube that I can count on. And so I reached out to Figma and was like, would you like to take over this slot, this channel sponsorship slot and pitched it to them, told them, you know, gave them some details on my view counts and just really tried to make the pitch based on aligning our two brands and how it would be good for them for, you know, for us to be aligned. And they went for it.

Who, who is it? Who, what person is it and how long did it take you to get to that person to have that conversation?

So luckily for me, it didn't take a long time because I feel like I've just been building up my network within this tech design, web design world for the past five, six years, something like that. And so it's a case right now of, okay, I know I'm going to know someone who knows someone at the company that I want to speak to. I think for Figma, if I remember correctly, I might have, honestly, now that I'm remembering, reached out to their CEO who I'd met at a conference and we'd chatted and I was like, hey, Dylan. Yeah. What do you think about this? And he was like, let me pass you on to the right person. I think that's how that one went down. Yeah, sure.

But I think point, important point there is. I think a lot of people might hear that and think, oh, email the CEO. But actually the important little piece before that is the phrase where you said met at a conference. Yes, yes. That work was done well beforehand and it was probably pretty genuine. It wasn't like, hey, I have this idea of like, I want to get a sponsorship. It was like, I love Figma, great to meet you. Having a conversation, showing up at the conference, doing the hard work of sometimes just like meeting people without any purpose in that interaction and you know, call it networking, call it like relationships, whatever it might be. It's a great example of kind of the phrase of your network is your net worth or your net worth is your network, like whatever that phrase is, but just the significance of the people that you know.

Totally.

Is there a way that you manage or like keep track of the connections that you have? It's been something I've been thinking about. I've been testing this app called Foak Folk App, I think, is what it is. But like. Or is it more of, like, hey, you know, that you have, you know, Gmail or whatever it is you use. You save contacts in there. But is there any type of, like, process you have around your network?

Most of mine, honestly, centers on Twitter. I'm a big fan of Twitter. I've been on the platform for over a decade. Like, it's terrifying to think about, you know, if you wanted to scroll back through my old tweets and hear what I was thinking when I was in university, I don't know. But that is the core place that I would say I do, quote, unquote, networking. I like to follow people and not just follow passively, but get involved in conversations with the people who I admire. And I will, like, you know, do that purposefully, watch what they're talking about, what they're working on, and respond to them. Give them praise when it's deserved and. Yeah, that sort of thing.

Yeah. Do you. We talked about Sean Blanc, who's a friend and somebody we've interviewed on the podcast before, feels like that would have the potential to be, like, a Twitter connection at some point. Did you.

Yeah.

Do you remember connecting with Sean on Twitter? Is that how that connects?

I'm pretty sure we've connected on Twitter. Yeah.

Yeah, he's talked about that as well. Like, the connections he's had from his Twitter followers. And I don't really use it. And so for me, it's like, it's interesting to look at Twitter because I think a lot of times we and people who listen to this podcast think of Twitter as like. Or think of social platforms as like, how do I get more traffic? How do I grow? But I think Twitter's an excellent tool to have meaningful connections with people and to build relationships.

Totally. I saw Taylor Lawrence, who is a journalist for the New York Times, I believe I saw her tweet the other day that, like, perfectly summed up my approach to Twitter. And she said, I think, sure, I guess I post a lot on here. If you consider Twitter a social network, but I see it as a chat room. I was like, yep, that's exactly how I tweet. I treat it, man. Twitter's on the brain. Treat it. That's how I treat Twitter is at more as a chat room. Less broadcasting and more conversing. Yeah.

Yes. And so somebody posts something, you respond to it. When you post something, maybe there's an opportunity to respond. Have a conversation based on that. Yeah, for sure. So Rewinding back to the start was that. That was number one.

That was only number one. Yeah. Let's speed through some others. So, yeah, number two, that channel sponsorship was £18,837 worth of the 41,500ish total. So that was quite a significant chunk having that regular income. But having that let me focus on other things that I was interested in playing around with rather than having to follow up with brands and get other sponsorships and that sort of thing. I had a couple.

It simplifies totally.

It simplifies. And really what's happened for me in the past year has been an expansion of my income streams. So I have way more income streams, but some of them are earning just little amounts. But when they all come together, it all added up to this doubling of my income. Yeah. And so the job board is part of that for this year coming.

Yeah, I love that. One of the things that we talk about, there's probably a better name for this, but the egg carton method where we're like, hey, if you want to earn $50,000 livable income in some places of the U.S. not everywhere, you know, if you're in San Francisco or New York, maybe not. But like, what does it look like to have a consistent income and you're just getting started. Some people will look at that and say, like, I gotta figure out how to get $50,000 of sponsored content.

Right.

That's gonna be really hard. But what if you look at it like an egg carton and say, okay, I have 12 spots, how do I get. Or 10 if it's a little bit easier, math wise, how do I get from 10 different places 50,000 or $5,000 a year? Suddenly those numbers look a little bit different. Then you say, okay, divided by 12, what does that look like a month? Right. So I see you kind of approaching that a little bit. Where you say, great sponsored content is an important piece. But I also have these other. How many would it be? Seven, eight different places where you're earning? My follow up question on that would be you have the increase in income from the sponsorship, that being significant, the increase in the number of places that you're earning income.

Yep.

How much of your. How do you make the decision between going wide to a lot of different places versus like going deep and getting really good at one and just focusing on that.

Yep. So I think this is a, maybe we'll call it a luxury that I have as a part time creator because like we said, I do have my full time job, which More than covers my bills. I don't need to earn income from my side hustles. It's more of like a, I don't know, building up my own business. Right. Like on the side. It's. And it's fun to explore different ways to, to earn income. So I honestly take the approach of following my own interests. I don't always make decisions based on the earning potential of them.

Sure.

It's more like how fun is this going to be to work on? Because it is something I'm doing in my spare time and I could be doing this or I could be going to hang out on the beach or you know, something else with my life. And so, yeah, that is a big part of it for me is following the interests and that keeps the work fun though. So I actually really like that I can do that.

Yeah. Huge part of it is your relationship with the work. And if you're just doing it to try and increase your income, it could potentially move towards soulless. And so part of the consideration is like what is soulful work? Plus bonus, if you're also able to create an income that you're able to fold in as kind of a greater part of your kind of portfolio that you're creating an income from. So number one, kind of more income from a specific area, number two, broader in terms of the areas that you're creating income from. Number three would be what number three would be.

And maybe this is a little counterintuitive, but actually investing in help, I spent, I think it was like 18, no, £19,000 in the past year on outsourcing on software equipment, that sort of thing.

Yeah.

And that has been key for me in being able to keep up with my side hustles alongside the full time job. So I have two video editors who edit all my content. I think I've edited one of my own videos in the past year.

How did you find those people to work with?

Well, one of them was actually a viewer of mine who, you know, had watched my videos, you know, the ones I've been editing myself for years, and heard that I was interested in outsourcing. It reached out. I thought, this is great. You already know my style and my content, what I like. Perfect. And that's worked out well. And the other is the sister of a friend here in Valencia who does video editing. It was like, great. Yep, let's work with you.

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. That's similar to how we've found folks that we work with is either friends of friends, like, hey, we know that you're good at this. Maybe you're not our first tier friends. Like I, I'm a little bit cautious of working directly with friends.

Yeah.

But when it's like friend of a friend or like family friend, there's. It's like tier two. You're not like going to hang out with them on Friday night. A little bit safer. And then also the great thing about having a group of people who follow you is that it's kind of this, it's, it's the reason people would pay you to have a job listing. Like.

Exactly.

Because you have these people who get it and know it. But then you can just take advantage of that and not have to pay anybody because it's your network and your followers. What was the video editing was a piece of it. Was that the primary thing that you had outsourced or were there other things that you'd hired people to help out with or even mentioned software as well?

Yeah, yeah. So I also outsource all podcast editing and the biggest thing for me in the last year that I added was creative VA and a VA who handles my bookkeeping. So like two assistants and the creative VA, Chloe, she handles uploading all of my content. She'll draft like the title and the description, even sometimes make the thumbnail and Instagram content for me. And that has really helped me on the like, I love the creating side of creating and not so much the marketing side of it.

Logistics.

And yeah ironic because it's what I do for my job is like marketing and design. But you know, so that's been huge because that's kept up my energy for my content. Not having to do the part that like drained me, you know.

Yeah, for sure. There's something I've been thinking a lot about is what are the things that matter if I'm doing them? Like for you, I think of just because this is the stage we're in. We have a two and a half year old. But you know Blippi, the YouTube creator. Maybe, maybe not.

I don't, I don't have a two and a half year olds.

Maybe that's why this is like I'm like, you're on YouTube, you should know this person. But it's kind of like the Internet essentially. But so kind of this like I think one of those situations where just kind of stumbled into this. But he's a. We'll do like kids songs or like he'll go to the zoo and walk through the zoo and but has like, I don't know I haven't looked, but probably 5, 10 million followers and. But there was this big to do where like he switched out the Blippi character and it was no longer him.

Oh.

And it was like a. A different character still called Blippi, but like dressed in the same thing but different person. And it's like everybody was up in arms about it.

That was the big drama in kids YouTube that week.

Yeah, in toddler YouTube. But point being, like, that's not something that can easily be replaced. You couldn't replace yourself on your YouTube channel. But there's a laundry list of things that you probably do touch and interact with that don't matter if you do it. Uploading, editing, potentially, if it's somebody who's a good editor. Are there other things that land in that category for you around things you don't need to do but still need to happen?

Yeah, I think. Well, the business admin side is one of them. Someone handling the bookkeeping, making sure that these people that I work with get paid on time. Sorting my inbox as well. I find my email inbox really overwhelming. And so having Katie, my va, who goes in and like puts things in different piles for me and tells me which ones to pay attention to has taken a weight off there and made that less overwhelming to go into Instagram as well. Like, just. I don't know, I sort of feel like when I was publishing my own videos and like doing my own uploading, I would hit upload, share it on Twitter and be like, ah, done right onto the next one, you know, and that's missing out on a big audience on Instagram. Like, it's huge. And I'm sure especially for food bloggers, they all know this, but I. I really have only used Instagram as a. I don't know, maybe I'll say like as just a person, as a human, you know, and less as a creator, you know, as a brand. Exactly. And so, yeah, it's been really helpful to have Chloe help me navigate that and suggest what to post because she's really good at it and. Yeah, just get things out there and she's helping me grow on there more too.

Yeah. So we're recording this on a Friday. On Tuesday, we will be publishing, I think, if everything goes right, a position for tinybit, which is our parent company, and then Pinch of Yam, kind of an admin assistant role to do that exact same thing for me and for Lindsey on the email side of things, because it's like email is just so overwhelming and some of it matters for you to do it, but other parts don't. What advice would you have for people who are looking to have somebody help with email?

I think getting clear on what you want to get out of it and what is your current issue. So one of the issues for me, well, the two main ones were dealing with the sponsorship requests, going through them, seeing what I wanted to explore further and what I didn't, or partnerships, whatever, that sort of thing. And also making sure that really important emails didn't get lost amongst all of the former, whether that's replies from people that I've reached out to personally or, you know, there's some like key contacts that I always need to talk to, like my video editors, for example. I also wanted to make sure that I was seeing all replies to my newsletter because if someone's going to take the time to read an email and reply to me, I want to make sure I'm reading that and like hopefully replying to them too. And so yeah, she set up my inbox in a way that makes those things clear because I knew that that was my main issues that I was trying to solve for with email.

Yeah.

Um, so trying to think through that rather than just saying like, ah, my email inbox is overwhelming. It's like. Well what is overwhelming about it?

Yes. And what you found to be overwhelming was everything was equal priority.

Yes. And like I felt like I was missing things and so I was going in and like reading everything and looking at everything to try and find the gold. And so having someone come in and sort of tell me what I should pay attention to and what doesn't need to be read. Right then if you are doing a.

Four hour like live Twitch stream and you have an hour after to do email, probably shouldn't spend 30 minutes of it like reviewing random follow up delivery notifications from a package or like whatever it might be.

Yeah.

To have somebody who kind of will sort that for you and then prioritize, prioritize that and say like, hey, here are the, Here's a bucket for newsletter responses. Here's a bucket for like, like VIP or like what are, what are the different. You kind of mentioned a few of those.

Yeah, yeah.

Is it like labels within Gmail?

Yep, it's labels and as well as a specific view of my, you know, like inbox first page. You see, I don't even know how to set this up. So that's great that she's been doing it for me. But there's like a section for sponsorship requests so I can just very Quickly when I'm in that zone, go through and I have like a text expander that I can type to decline automatically if I want to, you know, sort of like an order response or choose to follow up if I want to. So I can quickly clear that out. And then there's the VIP section and then a bunch of other folders that she's made for organizing every single email, really. But they're the ones that I don't need to go into unless I'm specifically looking for something. Sure, yeah.

Yep, that makes sense. I want to switch a little bit and talk kind of as the back half of the podcast about people who are interested in doing design or marketing design for their brand really well. But they might not be good at doing marketing design. I think about that in this building that we're in, they just put up some in the hallway. We hired them to do like it's Shea, a local design company and they had all these awesome ideas painting the pictures of like the different cities around Minnesota. And just today kind of they polished it off and it looks awesome. I would not have been a good person to do that. So we hired Shay to do that. I know there are bloggers, there are creators who will like look at your site, will link to your personal site or they'll look at another blog and they think that's. I really like how that looks. That's done really well. I'm not gonna be the one who's gonna figure that out. How do people work well with designers or even marketing designers? Finding them job board plug for your job board, how do you, how do you find them? And then also how do you communicate well with those people?

Yeah. So I would say that if you find the right designer, you shouldn't have to worry about the communicating part. Like they should know what questions to ask you to pull out the information that they need.

You know, that's part of their job.

It's part of their job. Exactly. And so if you feel like you're not being heard or I don't know that the designer hasn't asked you any question. Is it just off doing something? That would be a bit of a red flag for me. Although I will recommend my friend Holly Arnett. She creates content under the brand Black and White Studios. She's a brand strategist and she has a couple of great like Instagram posts and some like freebie opt ins and things that can help you work through a strategy for your brand. So it might pay to have done something like that. Some thinking about what you want your brand to be before you talk to a designer, because then you might feel more confident that you know what you're asking for, you know, yeah, that could be a good option. And then as far as finding them, I'm gonna go back to networking and relationships. I think that's gonna be your best bet, honestly, is talking to other creators, talking to your community and seeing who other people have worked with and who they've enjoyed working with is a really great way to find someone. That's honestly how I've done almost all of my hiring. The only exception that I have is my VA, Chloe, who I tweeted that I was looking to hire a VA and she sent me an email after seeing it. So kind of I did that, but sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, I think that that's the way to go.

Yeah, that makes sense. And that, you know, I think it comes back to a little bit of what we had been talking about before, where the work isn't really even in the moment of searching or hiring. It's almost like you need to be doing this work even before you know that you're at the point. So some people, it's maybe encouraging. Some people will listen to this and be like, I can't hire somebody. Like, I'm way too early in the process to need to do that. But that time will come eventually, and you're going to be in a better place now, if you start those conversations, if you start to interact, if you start to network, if you start to ask those questions, when a year, two, three years down the line, you'll be able to move on that pretty quickly.

Yeah. And you never know what else you might need as well that you could rely on a community for. We have this little WhatsApp group, myself and a few other design YouTubers where we can talk about, like, hey, I've gotten this opportunity. What do you think about what they're offering me? And I don't know, it's just like a nice little space to sense, check and talk to people who get it. You know, there's so much value in building that.

Yeah. So you interact with a lot of creators, both. ConvertKit with your role there, with the, the, the work that you're doing with your YouTube channel Twitch. What do you see as common threads between individuals, creators, or brands who are having success with what they're building online?

Yeah. Okay. I think the. Instantly the thing that came to mind for me with this, and I think it's been. Become even more important over the past year, and that is authenticity. And I think that this is a word that has kind of become like a buzzword.

Sure.

Like, everyone wants to be authentic and relatable, but just wanting to be that doesn't mean you are. And it's. I truly believe that you can see right through false authenticity or like people trying to be relatable or whatever, when you can genuinely show up as yourself and be a little vulnerable. Honestly, at times, I think that's where people have been finding success because everyone wants to know that the, the person that they're following online is, is a human just like them who might have similar struggles or, I don't know, have ideas about things that they want to know about beyond just the, like in this case, the, the recipes that you write about, for example.

Yeah, yeah. There's Diane Jacob, who's. She speaks a lot on writing as it relates to food and she talks about how important story is. Like in the food space, there's a lot of people who are like, don't tell us the story, just get to the recipe. And she's like, no, please tell us the story. It's so important to have you as an individual that has a voice and is representative in the content that you're creating. My follow up question to you on that would be, and Lindsay and I talk a lot about this is like, how do you know the level to which you are being authentically vulnerable? And what I mean by that is it's almost like at its worst, I think vulnerability can. People can hear that and they can think. It's almost like strategy. And then would maybe use vulnerability as like, this is what I'm supposed to do in order to like, be relatable.

Yeah.

Be relatable.

Yeah.

And so how do you find that balance between, like, this is genuinely me wanting to share my experience, to connect without it being vulnerable in service of like.

Yeah.

As a strategy.

Yep, totally. And that's something you absolutely have to watch. I've seen creators get that balance wrong and then watch them pull back and be much happier as people when they were actually sharing less online, you know?

Yes. Yeah.

It's totally a thing that you have to decide where your line is. And so for me, it comes back to what am I trying to do when I'm creating content? Right. I'm trying to teach other designers. I sort of aim my content at people who are a few years behind me and I'm trying to teach through sharing my process. And so for me, being vulnerable online doesn't really look like, I mean, sometimes I Tweet about this, but. But it doesn't really look like making content about, for example, the struggles that I face living in Spain. As someone who doesn't really speak Spanish, it's like, yeah, I had some, like, difficult things happen this week that were really stressful and I was, like, sick with anxiety about it in the night. And that's not really like, what I focus my content on.

Right.

Might be a brief mention if I want to vent, but it's not what I focus on because that is nothing at all to do with helping designers progress in their careers and develop the process. Right. So the more vulnerable stuff I would share is like, ah, I'm having one of those days where nothing's working. Like, I can't get it right. This carousel I'm trying to design. And other designers will be like, oh, yeah, I feel that too, you know, and, yeah, you know, that's the sort of thing I do. But also, I'll say vulnerability doesn't always have to be a, like, a negative thing. It can also mean just like, just being genuine when you're proud of something too. You know, when you've made something you're really proud of and being like, hey, I did this thing and I worked with really freaking hard on it. And yeah, you know, it's out there. I'm so proud. Here's a little bit. Things I learned along the way. Yeah, that could be another way to approach it.

Yes, totally. I love that. And vulnerability in service of your mission, like, that's a little bit of what I heard is if you're, you know, for a tiny bit, our purpose is helping people in companies get a tiny bit better. What does it look like for us to be vulnerable in service of that? I think that's a great takeaway and for me, an important consideration as we think about kind of how we operate in the world.

Yeah. And I would say sharing things that have helped you get a tiny bit better and maybe some things that you tried and didn't actually, maybe they made you a tiny bit worse.

Yeah, totally. Things that worked, things that didn't. But just being open to that and potentially not being as guarded to share things that would be helpful for other people to hear, like, oh, my gosh, I can relate to that. To your point about, like, having a bad day or, you know, nothing seeming to go right with the design process or even if you are, if you do feel comfortable with it, somebody who does share more of, like, day to day personal stuff. Hey, living in this other place and it's been super hard. I know bloggers, actually some who live in Spain have, you know, talked about what it's been like to go through the process of having a kid in a. In another country. And Lindsey lived in Spain for a semester, and I remember her when we were dating in college, she would be like, I just had this terrible experience and I was trying to interact with this person so can. Can relate through her stories for some of that stuff that you talk about. Yeah, we covered a lot of awesome things here and I know people will be interested whether they are, you know, design focused or not following along with what you do and what you're up to. Would there be one platform that you'd point people to or would that be your site? Where's the best place to follow along with what you're up to and what you're doing?

I think, yeah, head to my site, charliemarie.com, charlie is spelled without an e on the end for some reason. Yeah, that'd be the best place to find links to my YouTube, to my podcast, to my Twitter. If you're a Twitter person, I tend to hang out on there as my water cooler. So if you want to chat, that'd be the place to do it.

That's awesome. Cool. We'll link to those in the show notes if people want to check that out. Charlie, it's been great to talk to you. I know that I have a lot of takeaways and I think to the tiny bit better mantra, I think some listeners will have some stuff to take away as well. So thanks for coming on the podcast.

Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.

That's a wrap for this episode. Thanks again to Charlie for coming on and sharing her story. I know that I was inspired from it. Hope that you were as well. One quick takeaway here. A little call to action. We talk about this occasionally, but probably not as much as we should. If you want to learn how to do some of those side hustle things as it relates to blogging and building a business online specific in the food space, Food Blogger Pro would be a great place to check out. You can go to foodbloggerpro.com membership to learn more. And the thing about a Food Blogger Pro membership is you're not tied in. There's not like this recurring payment that you're committed to. You can go in and check it out. So if you're on the fence, if you think, hey, this might be helpful, this might not, I don't know, you can go to foodbuggerpro.com membership and sign up and there's a 60 day money back guarantee. So even if you get in, you're like, hey, this isn't a good fit for me. You can reach out to us, we'll give you your money back. So there's no real risk in signing up and checking it out. You can also go to foodbloggerpro.com testimonials to get an idea of how different bloggers of all different stages have been helped through the years. If you want to see some folks who have talked about that, so want to mention that as a resource and hopefully something that will help people get a tiny bit better every day forever, which is what we are about here on Food Blogger Pro. Thanks so much for listening. Hope you enjoyed this episode. We'll be back with another episode next Tuesday. Until then, make it a great week.

Sam.