Episode 145 67 min Writing every day for ten years
Novelist Marcus Lee on routine, rejection and the 3,000-word mornings that produced four books and one very large drawer of drafts.
Season 4 · Episode 148 Starting from zero
Why the best ideas start as side projects
Priya Nair on building a 40-person design studio from a weekend hobby — and why she still protects time for projects that might go nowhere.
GuestPriya Nair — Founder, Northlight Studio
Episode 148 Why the best ideas start as side projects
0:00 1:02:40
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Show notes
Priya Nair never planned to start a company. In 2015 she was a junior designer at a publishing house, spending weekends hand-lettering posters for friends’ gigs. Two years later those weekends had become Northlight Studio — and today the studio employs 40 people.
In this conversation Priya walks Maya and Jordan through the slow, unglamorous middle of that story: the 18 months of keeping her day job, the free project that turned into the first real client, and the awkward year when the studio was too big to be a hobby and too small to be a business.
What we cover
- Why the lack of pressure is what makes side projects so creative
- How to price your work when you have never been paid for it before
- The operating manual Priya wrote before hiring her first designer
- Keeping play alive inside a growing studio
Why it matters
Most of the founders we interview describe the same pattern: the idea that worked was the one they were not trying to turn into a business. Priya is unusually honest about how fragile that state is, and how deliberately she has worked to protect it.
Key takeaways
- Side projects work because nobody is waiting for them — the low stakes are the point.
- Priya kept her day job for 18 months and treated the studio like a lab, not a business.
- The first paying client came from a project she gave away for free.
- Hiring the first designer forced her to write down how the studio actually works.
- She still blocks every Friday afternoon for work that may never ship.
Timestamps
Transcript excerpt
Maya When did the side project stop being a side project?
Priya Honestly, the day I started being scared of it. For two years it was the place where nothing was at stake. The moment a client paid us real money, I had to decide whether I wanted to protect that feeling or grow out of it.
Maya And which did you choose?
Priya Both, badly, for about a year. Then I wrote down the rule we still use: every Friday afternoon belongs to work nobody asked for.
About the guest
Priya Nair
Founder, Northlight Studio
Priya Nair founded Northlight Studio in 2017 as a weekend lettering project. It is now a 40-person brand and product design studio working with publishers, museums and climate startups. She teaches a yearly workshop on running a creative business without losing the creative part.
Links & resources
Episode 145 67 min 
Episode 140 50 min Designing with AI without losing your taste
Product designer Nora Lindqvist on how her team uses AI tools day to day — and where they deliberately keep humans in charge.
Episode 147 55 min Saying no to funding, twice
Daniel Okafor explains why he bootstrapped his logistics software company to $8M in revenue instead of taking venture capital.
Episode 146 49 min The quiet art of managing burnout
Psychologist Elena Marquez on spotting exhaustion before it spreads through a team, and what managers can do on Monday morning.
Episode 144 51 min Leaving a dream job at the top
Hannah Brooks on walking away from a VP role to start over at 41, and how she made the decision with incomplete information.
Episode 143 59 min How to give feedback people actually hear
Engineering leader Theo Grant shares the one-on-one format he uses with 60 engineers, and why most feedback fails before the first sentence.
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