 So I've just been asked by one of my students how you would come in the top 1% of designers. And actually let's start with why you would want to do that. And the first reason is it will help you when applying for a job in no matter what the market is. So what does it mean being in the top 1% of designers? Does it mean you earn the most money? Does it mean you have the most followers on social networks? It depends on what it means to you, but in this lesson I'm gonna share with you some tips on how I achieved being in the top 1% of UX designers worldwide and how you can do it too. With just a little bit of time each day, I think that's the key. But I really think what it means to me is it means that when you go on LinkedIn, when you need a job, people are gonna know who you are, you have a reputation, you have a solid portfolio behind you, and it will just allow you to stand out above the crowd whenever you're applying for a role. And then that means that there's more opportunities to you, more opportunities to make more money, more opportunities to network and to become a well-known designer. So let's start off. The first thing you need to do is specialize, really. So we've all had the term jack of all trades, master of none. So within the UI, UX field, there's UX research, there's a UI design in Sigma, there's sketching, wireframing, there's user testing. So each person is gonna have a specific area within that skill set that you were excelling. So mine really is a graphic design. It's probably UI design that's my background that I came from and that's the area that I can teach best, kind of like graphic design tips and presentation skills. So really have a think about what area you enjoy most and this is gonna help us go forward when we try and present your personality to the world via Marketerd because people don't really wanna jack of all trades. They wanna specialist in some kind and that helps you move up towards the top 1% because you know, specialists are the ones that people are really after and they are the skills that people want. So have a think about what you are, what area excites you and then that moves us then on to self promotion really. So that is the key to becoming the top 1%. You can have all the skills in the world and you can be the best designer in the world. But if you don't shout about it, then nobody knows you are. So you're the top 1% to you but you're not recognized either financially or you're not recognized with your reputation online. So the top 1% of designers shout about themselves. So that is where we need to set up a couple of things for you. So if I could go back in past and I could let my younger self know something, that would be to set up a YouTube channel and a LinkedIn and maybe even a Twitter account when I was a junior and that is every day spend 10 to 15 minutes and share something on each platform. So the skill to becoming a well-known designer is actually to give, it's to give your knowledge on what you're learning. Push that out for free as much into the world as possible and people are gonna start to follow and they're gonna like your content. The best way to learn a subject is to teach it because you have to articulate it properly and it uses different parts of your brain and then it actually, I find when it comes to interviews and stuff later on, you're able to talk much more articulately about the subject because you've been practicing via these videos. So every day, if you learn something new, make a video about it, share your journey because a lot of the time, people who are learning in only juniors on these platforms and they resonate with people who are also maybe just a little bit ahead of themselves in the career. Sometimes they can't resonate with me because I've been doing it for such a long time but people who've been doing it for one or two years who've got into the industry with no experience and have taught themselves, that's where they're gonna learn the skills from and that's why everybody watching this video, my good advice is really have a think about how you can show your personality and don't be afraid to share your work. Even if you, we all get feelings that were not adequate or were not good enough in our work, I get imposter syndrome all the time but by sharing your work, it's gonna help somebody. It doesn't need, there's no best in the world this and that, sharing your work and teaching people what you learn and the lessons that you've learned and how you make yourself better and what you could do about your work when you share it, it's gonna help a lot of people and that is how you get a following on these platforms. So the lessons could be sharing the designs that you've done or it could be little one-on-one videos like this about sharing your thoughts on the subject, becoming a thought leader in something, even just sharing little bits of advice about what it's like to work in the office, what it's like to work from now, what it's like to go share your journey of becoming a UI UX designer. So by doing this and splitting it up every day, they're putting it in your calendar, just 15 minutes, you're gonna schedule that time in and then this isn't a quick thing, it doesn't take two months, six months, this takes many, many years. There are lucky people who you'll see with millions of followers who are natural on cameras and it takes them maybe a year to get like a million followers, that's not realistic, they're quite lucky. In some regards, maybe they'll have one video that will go bring in millions of viewers and 99 that don't. So if you look at my channel, I've got one with over a couple of million viewers and then I've got like a hundred which all have a thousand or so views each. And to me, there's no reason why that video is more popular than them. A lot of it is magic and it's just really, you have to put the time and effort into making these videos over time. You will get better, your presentation skills will get better and that is what will boost you up towards being a top 1%. So that allows you to grow your following on YouTube. On LinkedIn, you can share similar contents, you can share your journey and the reason I say share on LinkedIn as well is because that there are recruiters on there and they are people who hire for roles in the UI, UX, design, tree, others. And they spend a lot of their day on LinkedIn because I've said in Excel and when I've worked in places before and that's how they find candidates for roles. So if you're on there, you're posting, you're sharing your journey, you're sharing things that you've learned, they're actually gonna get to know you especially if you start adding recruiters on LinkedIn and you're gonna be the person that they go to when they get junior roles available because you're well known. Even hiring managers, people reach out to me on LinkedIn because they've seen me talk about things on there. You will get a lot of jobs in the future coming to you via LinkedIn and a lot of it might actually not be about your work, it might be about the stuff that you're sharing on these platforms. So that's why I say share it on YouTube, share it on LinkedIn. And then when you wanna be the top 1% for getting paid, that is a different story again. So the skills that you're learning throughout this process, they're gonna help you move up in your career and then within your career, there's different routes you can go down, you can go down the permanent routes where you would become a head of UX and you work for a company and that's like a long-term goal and if you wanna become one of the top percentage of paid people within the industry, then you either start your own company or you become a freelance contractor and you work for big companies on short-term projects. But again, do the work that you're doing on LinkedIn and on YouTube, they're gonna help you get those roles. Really, if you wanna become in the top 1%, you're gonna want your own business and you're gonna have to attract clients and how you attract clients is by people knowing about you. It's really sometimes not about the work you've done but it's more about the personality of you as the business. They need to build up trust and they're gonna wanna know you're doing it. They're gonna trust you and they're gonna wanna know you're doing the work. I just imagine you were hiring a someone to do work for your house and you'd seen someone talking about grooves on LinkedIn, sharing their knowledge, then you're gonna choose that guy over someone you don't know because we're in this world of content marketing and it's like an organic way of getting traffic, getting people to your business by sharing your knowledge, by putting it all out there for free, you become an authority, people trust you and then they hire you and then starting your own UX UI business, that's where the real money's involved because then you can start hiring other people. People come to you for the jobs, you can not just have one job, you can have many, you can have many designers underneath if you're doing these roles and you're the face for the business and that's how you really grow to many, many, many multiples of income per year and that's something, again, for all of these things, you need an audience and for an audience, you need to give something to share. So if I was going back in time, that's what I would tell myself to become in the top 1%, I hope that helps. If you wanna learn more about UI UX design, join me on the course, I share how to become a UI UX designer, we go through a project together on course careers, check it out, the link's in the description, there's a free introduction course, there's a great community over there and we learn things like this. It's not just about learning UI UX design, it's very much about self-promotion and it really pushing yourself to become the best that you can. If you wanna stick around on YouTube, watch the next video.