- Hi, I'm Charli
and I'm the creative director at ConvertKit.
That is the first time that I've introduced myself that way.
I got a promotion recently, it's been very exciting.
And in this video,
I wanna tell you a little bit more about my new role
and about the process that led to me being promoted.
(bright upbeat music)
Let's start at the beginning because as Julie Andrews says,
"It's very good place to start." (chuckling)
I have been doing pretty much the same role
for my whole career.
I have always been the designer within a marketing team,
obviously throughout the like nine years or so
that I've been working in, you know,
as a designer out in the world,
I have been growing and learning.
And my role within the company has been elevated,
I guess, is a word for it.
But like at a basic level, my role has always been the same.
I've always been a marketing designer.
I love what I do.
I hope that comes across in my videos
that I really do truly enjoy my job.
I truly enjoy being a marketing designer,
but also for awhile now, I've wanted a new challenge.
I've been craving a change and like craving the ability to,
as I put it in a Design Life episode that we did
at the start of this year, which is a podcast of mine,
by the way.
In case you didn't know,
I have a podcast with a co-host.
We talk about our design careers and give design advice.
It's very good. I think you should listen to it.
But in an episode earlier this year,
I was talking about potential
and how I felt like I wasn't living up to mine.
Like I felt like I had more to give and I had this gap
where I was like, I know I can do more,
but I just don't know how to get there.
I feel like I am capable of much bigger and better things
than what I'm currently doing.
I feel like, and that might, may sound big headed.
- [Femke] No, no, no.
- But I have these ideas for myself
and like this vision for what I want to do
for my career and to do for the world with it, you know?
And I just feel like I'm getting frustrated
by things taking so long.
I can look back now and listen to that and know
that that was a sign that I needed something new, right?
I needed a new challenge,
but I was also in a position
where I didn't wanna leave my current company.
I love ConvertKit.
I feel very sold on the mission.
The company values very closely align with my own.
The people there are fantastic.
And I feel like they, you know,
take care of me and everyone else
on the team really, really well.
It's a fantastic place to work.
And so I just like wasn't even considering
going anywhere else and looking for a new challenge
but because this is kind of like dialogue
that we have at ConvertKit with our managers,
my manager knew that I was ready for a change.
And like I wanted something new.
I really wanted to lead a team,
in particular, is what I wanted.
I saw the next stage of my career
being leading a small design team
or like leading the creative team within a company.
And I was like hopeful
that maybe there's a way
we could make that happen at ConvertKit.
As this turned out,
I think the role I've ended up in
is honestly several steps ahead
of what I thought would be next in my career,
but we'll get into that.
So that was one side of what was happening
is that I knew I needed a new challenge.
I was craving more responsibility,
more leadership opportunities.
That's just something that I've always known that I wanted
to do is lead a team.
It's one of the reasons like,
along with many other things,
why I've not been interested in doing YouTube full-time
or going freelance full-time
because I wanted to get to the stage in my career
where I was leading a team.
And I felt like that would be something
that I'd really enjoy doing and really thrive in as well.
So my manager knew
that that was something that I was aiming for
and the leadership team at ConvertKit could see
that I had more to offer than what was prescribed
in my current role.
So along with all that,
we also realized that some things needed to change
within our company for us
to truly reach our like company potential as well.
What's happened is we've done a reorg,
like a reorganization of our like company structure.
I won't go into all of the details of it
'cause I'm sure you're not completely interested,
but what it's ended up meaning is that the marketing team,
like what was formerly the marketing team
has kind of been split in two
where we have two teams,
one, the marketing team, who is focused on activation
and acquisition of new customers through product marketing,
through demand generation.
But then we also have the brand team
who was focused on brand awareness
and of building our reputation
and positioning ConvertKit within the market
as an essential tool for creators being a part
of the creative community.
And this brand team
is what I'm leading as creative director.
The hope is that this split of having teams
with clear ownership of different company objectives,
awareness versus activation, acquisition,
that will allow us to reach our potential as a company
and to reach all our goals and expand our influence
in the greater community and get more creators using us
and loving ConvertKit.
So my role as creative director is to manage this brand team
and to take ownership of this objective
of creating brand awareness for ConvertKit,
which obviously goes well beyond
what I thought would be next in my career
of managing a designer or two, you know.
The design stuff is still a huge part of my focus.
Like I'm still a designer, that's what I know best.
And I am still leading the development of our visual brand,
maintaining consistency with it and all of those things
that I have been previously doing.
But now I'm bringing in the strategy element as well,
which is really exciting
and definitely gonna be a challenge
because it's not something
that has ever been my responsibility before,
but it is always something that I've been involved in
and being very active in.
I have a lot of ideas and now it's kind of like,
it's my job to bring them to life.
I don't think I explained the brand team yet.
So let me tell you a little bit more about who's on that.
So I'm now managing three people and we're hiring a fourth,
we're hiring a new marketing designer to replace essentially
most of the hands-on design work that I've been doing
for product marketing, you know,
designing for convertkit.com and managing our graphics
and assets production and all that sort of stuff.
Currently on the team,
we have a storyteller.
who writes these amazingly beautiful profiles of creators.
And we have a producer,
who is producing this amazing video series
called Creative Sessions, where we feature musicians,
they play songs.
They tell us about the stories behind the songs.
Also filmmakers telling us about their process
and like teaching us how they approach things.
It's like a behind-the-scenes look at how creators create
what they create.
How many times can I say create?
And then we also have a filmmaker,
who produces these amazing documentaries,
as well as is the person who edits
and puts together all of the creative sessions as well.
So the current like projects that the brand team works on
is mostly the output of, you know,
the people on my team,
Creative Sessions and I'm A Creative,
which is the series of the written creative profiles,
as well as the documentaries, there's also a podcast.
But as a team, we're also going to be developing new things,
you know, and I'm doing more to put our brand out there.
I am still learning what this means for my day to day.
Honestly, I've been in this role for a week.
It's very new,
but I wanted to make a video and tell you more about it.
I'm grateful to have a leadership team around me,
who I can lean on and who I can learn from as well
in this new role,
because it is just, like I said, such a step up.
And it's really exciting to me to be, you know,
nine years into my career and to be having this change
where I'm like,
I don't know what I'm doing and I'm gonna figure it out.
And I feel confident that I will figure it out mostly
because I have, you know,
the leadership team at ConvertKit who feel that confidence
in me too.
So I can sort of like, you know,
absorb that from them.
I've had a few people ask me if this means
that I'm not gonna be a designer anymore.
Like if I'm not gonna be designing things,
and I will be designing less, that's just a fact.
But the things I do design will be brand projects.
So for example,
Creative Sessions doesn't have a website at the moment.
It doesn't have a home online,
aside from on the ConvertKit YouTube channel.
And so that'll be like a thing that I will create
and there'll be many, many more things
and projects like that that need my design work on them.
So I'm excited about that,
that I'm still gonna get to be designing,
but I am really excited to be involved
in the strategy side of things.
I've always been wanting to do the type of work
that is innovative and exciting
and new and that through doing the work
and through like experimenting the things
and like failing sometimes honestly,
but finding success with other things,
I can figure things out in order to pass on the stories
and the lessons of it to other people.
I know this might sound like a weird way to put it
and like a strange way to frame it,
but I've spoken at a lot of conferences
over the past few years,
but they've all been speaking mostly
about my content creation work
and like my profile as a design YouTuber
is what's gotten me the speaking gig,
if that makes sense.
Whereas I'm hoping that in this new role,
I can be creating the kind of stuff
where that's what gets me invited
to speak at the conference.
And that's what people wanna know about
and wanna hear about.
Something that I grappled with though to figure out
if this was the right role for me
was though honestly, like the day-to-day work
and how much designing I'd be doing,
because being a designer is such a core part of who I am
like rightly or wrongly.
It's just how I define myself.
I'm Charli and I'm a designer and it's really important
that I remain being a designer.
But I also know that these feelings
that I've been having of not living up to my potential
and having more to contribute
and more to give means I have to let go
of some stuff and it's gonna be hard
to pass on convertkit.com to someone else.
But I know that I'm still gonna be like managing this person
and still being very involved with the direction
of it and all that.
And honestly, I'm excited
to have a new designer join the team
to help push me in my design skills too.
That's also something I've been talking about for a while
that I feel like I'm stagnating
in terms of my visual design abilities,
because I don't have anyone pushing me in that area.
I've got to a point in my career where I can very quickly
like work something that's good and that converts well,
but I always know that I can do better.
And so I'm excited to have someone new join the team
who can help push me in that direction as well.
And I hope that I will be a good manager for them as well
and helping them progress in their design career.
But something that people wanted to know
was what does this mean for my YouTube channel?
Will I still be able to make videos?
Will I have less time?
The answer is yes to both.
I will still be able to make videos,
but I will have less time, but you know,
we'll figure it out.
And I'm excited for my YouTube channel
to continue documenting my career
and the things that I'm doing and learning
because I've been making videos since 2014, '13, maybe.
I can't remember now even, I think 2013.
So a huge chunk of my design career has been documented
through these videos, more so in the last four years
as I've been able to share like the work
that I do day-to-day,
but still that will continue, do not fear.
And if you want to know anything about this new role
of mine, if you wanna see specifics,
let me know in the comments,
but just know you might need to wait a while
because I'm still figuring out what it all means
and how to do it,
but I'll be taking you along on the journey as I do that.
I feel really excited for the future of my design career.
I don't know if you can tell from this video, but yeah,
I'm excited for this new path forward.
And like, I'm honestly excited for the unknowns.
I know there's going to be a lot I have to learn,
a lot of things that I don't even know about yet
that I'm gonna have to learn.
I feel the sense of calm knowing
that I can see the next several years
of my career here at ConvertKit and in this role
and knowing that it's gonna challenge me
and it's gonna fulfill me and fuel me and yeah,
drive me to keep progressing.
I've been at this company for four years now.
So I've invested a lot of my time and energy into it.
And it's just exciting to be able to continue to do that.
I never really thought that I'd be someone
who would be at one company for this long.
Previously, the longest job I ever had
was, I was at Xero for about two years and eight months,
something like that.
So yeah, it's been a lot longer at ConvertKit
and it's gonna be a lot longer into the future as well,
which is cool.
Thanks for watching me.
Thanks for listening to me ramble
and share my thoughts with you
as I'm like verbally processing this new role.
Probably should have planned more
so that this was a bit more structured,
but thanks for sticking with me anyway.
And like I said, if you've got comments, questions,
leave them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer.
You know what I'd actually love to hear in the comments,
how's things going for you in your career?
What are you aiming for next?
What are you feel like you need? What are you working for?
Did you just have a big win that you wanna share as well?
Leave it down below and let's like celebrate
and help encourage each other in there.
All right, I will end this video now.
Thanks again for watching.
And I'm excited for the future. Let's do this.
(upbeat music)