 So wherever you are, whenever you are, thank you for joining this LinkedIn Live. I want to make this as interactive as possible. So folks, let me know where you're tuning in from, drop an emoji or the place you're listening to this, maybe it's at work, maybe it's at home. So today, we are going to be talking about prototyping your design career with me, Chris, and Kate, which I'll bring on in a bit. So first, let me start with a introduction. I'm Chris, a product designer. I quit my head of design job in 2020, and since then, I've tried numerous things, consulting with design sprints. I joined a startup incubator, raised some money, but nothing really worked out. And during that process of now four years, I believe, I started a UX education company called UX Playbook, helping designers of all levels with playbooks, courses, and coaching. Things like, how do I build a portfolio, or how do I grow my career, or how do I manage my first design team? So that's a bit about me. But today, we have a very special guest, and it's Kate, a product design manager and founder and CEO of Reality Prototyping, a design coaching business. So let's bring her out and say hi and learn more about what she's doing. Hey, Kate. Hi, thanks for having me. Absolutely. Our pleasure, honestly. Would you like to tell the audience a bit about yourself? And yeah, we'll go from there. Yeah, cool. Well, you might have seen a rise in coaches on the market. We've got nutrition coaches that help you with your diet. We've got fitness coaches that help you to get fit and get the dream abs. But you've also got career coaches, and they help you to navigate all the different complexities that you might be going through as you go through your career squiggle, as I call it, because we don't have career ladders anymore. We have squiggles. We have these wonderful creative looping lines that take us through amazing experiences. So that's what I aspire to do. But I'm also a design manager and do that as my day job working at Clio. And a little bit about Clio. Clio is an AI app, and we help coach people into positive money habits. So we help people get out of debt and move into being financially independent and hitting their money goals, which is a really, really, really cool topic. I think all of us stress about money. All of us have goals that we want to achieve in our life. And it's really cool to be working with AI to solve that and make that happen. So that's a little bit about me. Amazing. Well, thank you, Kate. Okay, so let me just dive into the discussion or our topic today, shall I? One second. Okay, so are you aimlessly wandering in your career? Are you experiencing massive uncertainty? Are you suffering from burnout? Well, today's topic is prototyping your design career. And there's three things I want me and Kate to discuss. How do we unlock our unique advantage as designers? The common myths that are hindering us from what we actually want, and then maybe a couple of actionable points that we can dive into. What can you do immediately after this call or this live or wherever you're watching it from later or now? So let's bring Kate back on. And I, yes, of course, want to make this session interactive. So as you're listening to us and something pops up, guys listening at home, please drop your questions or comments below. So let's dive into our first topic. Kate, I know from watching your videos and listening to your podcasts that you've been on and your presentations, you have an interesting view on a designer's unique advantage. And so I guess the first point is how would you say a designer can unlock their unique advantage or what's unique about designers? Yeah, I feel that the designers often get put in this tiny box of either, you know, you just make things look pretty or they get thrown the other way, which is you do everything and they get kind of absolutely paralyzed with all the potential roles in a team that they could do. I think some words that helped me when I think about product design is the integrator. We integrate everything. We bring in the marketing story, the compliance, the legal issues. We bring in the product vision. We bring in the user experience. We bring in, you know, the data analytics. And we integrate all of that. And I think that's very similar to the role of an architect in a house when they're building. They have to think about insulation. They have to think about electronics and piping. They have to think about the wiring and where the weather is coming from on the outside in the landscape. So the architect of a physical world has to integrate all these things. And as designers or architects of digital spaces, sometimes physical and digital, we have to integrate all of those. So I think when we're thinking about our value, when we're telling stories in our portfolio or in interviews, or even just to our teammates, we can focus in and lays it in on how did I integrate multiple parts amongst my team, not just my little itty bit over here in the corner. I did this visual or I did this user test. How did you integrate different parts? And where you can focus on that, you can really start to emphasize your kind of superpower. Yeah, I really like that. I think one thing that I really resonate with is the connector in this scenario where maybe you're working on a really complex projects with lots of different people. And I think design, how I experienced it was at the forefront of that connecting these dots and kind of seeing this view of, okay, well, what does the business want? What does engineering want? What does the user's want? And all of this stuff and to kind of zoom out and have that bird's eye view, I think it's one of the things that designers are uniquely positioned. And yeah, I think that's really, really interesting. And how does this, I guess, work when it comes to one's career? Like, if we have that unique advantage, say, of bird's eye view and being the architect, how does one apply that to one's career? It's difficult to do it for yourself, isn't it? Is it good for other people or easier to do it? Yeah, I think we often like to have that feeling of that endorphine kick where we've solved a problem, identified the problem, and we've sold it and we've ticked box, you know, we feel really good. And I think as designers, we kind of tend to optimize for that because it's clearer to show our evidence impact when we do that because we've handed over something that's of value, a decision or a prototype, a solution. However, just having that zoomed out bird's eye view and being able to map end to end, you know, what a company is doing or what a user flow is doing and where the gaps are, being able to zoom out and be the connector is in itself providing value. So you're highlighting here's where we have really high alignment in the team and here's where we have really low alignment in the team. And just zooming out and mapping that and visualizing that in a flow is incredibly helpful for teams. So when we think about that superpower, we can also apply that to our own search. So you might look at your career map, your journey of different places that you've been, I've been to this company, I've been to that company, I've tried this industry and that industry, I've been in management roles, I've been in IC roles. And what you'll do is you'll look at where are the areas of high alignment with my values and who I am and what I care about? And where were the areas of low alignment? And again, just mapping that out with a pen and paper or, you know, in a mirror or a fig jam in a flow, where have I been? What were my experiences? And where did I notice that I felt like I was peeling away from my true self or I was coming towards my true self? And I think this kind of reflection process and this bird's eye view for your own career map instead of a user journey map or a customer map is a really powerful tool. So I guess my question to the audience would be, has anyone ever mapped out all the different places you might not have called it a career map? But have you done that reflection and done the kind of user journey map of your job search and your life in the world of work before? And if you haven't, then I invite you to give it a go because it can create amazing insights and really help to think about where you want to move next and move forward. Yeah. And I heard that starting from your values is a good place. I guess for me, I guess it's really hard at the beginning just to be like, okay, what do I value? Do you have any other like things I could do to kind of like jog this like value thinking? Like how do you do that? Yeah, totally. It's really easy if a friend asks you, hey, you know, what am I really good at? Well, what do you appreciate about me? You can think of 10 things that you love about your mate, right? But when it comes to yourself, we always have this kind of barrier and we're not we can't kind of think about it. So the best way is to do reflective writing and to do that regularly so that it can start to come naturally. And in fact, on my website, realityprototyping.com, you scroll down, there's a free exercise and I give away one of the classes for free, which is about learning your strengths. And I give you some prompts and some questions, which you can do as a reflective exercise. It's like a fun emoji game. And that allows you to start realizing, okay, there's a pattern emerging here and you can reflect on what your strengths are. But to be concise and give you in the room right now some questions. Okay, the questions would be, where do you completely lose track of time? When are the moments when you just enter flow? And you've no idea what's happening because you're so absorbed in what you're doing. That's a brilliant indicator of something that is just really in tune because it's effortless to you. You just fall into it. You kind of melt and time stops. And you're in what Michael, I can't pronounce his name very well, but Michael says it's the flow state. And you're slightly challenged, but not so much that you can't do it and you're nervous. And you're very engaged. And then the second question is, what peaks your curiosity? And I do my little cat ears. Think about, you know, when a cat's just sitting there snoozing and then suddenly one of its ears twitches up. Something caught its attention. Something. Now most of the time with animals, they're just making sure that they're safe. But with us in a pretty, you know, safer world where bears aren't running after us every day for the majority of us, you have other things that peak your interest and make your ears prick up. And you want to pay close attention to them. So every time you notice something that peaks your interest. Oh, I was really interested in data visualization. Oh, I was really interested in the animation here. Oh, I was really interested in the psychology behind this conversation. Oh, I was really interested in how that person managed to use their mind over matter and their strength, their mental strength. And just write down those things. And again, in time, you will start to notice patterns that point to the things that you care about and values. Hmm, that's really interesting. Yeah, I, I recognize flow state when it comes, but I haven't done enough like active reflecting on be like, check mark flow state, record it, and then do it again. And then be like, okay, there's a pattern. So I think that's really powerful in terms of that kind of reflecting really, really good questions. And, and you said you have a bunch of these questions that could really trigger people's mind in terms of self reflection. So that's really cool. And you've done it in emojis, which is the most accessible kind of way to do it. And, and I would argue like pretty easy, right? And that's amazing. That's absolutely amazing. So guys, check that out on reality prototyping.com. Did I get it right? Okay, great. The the other thing I wanted to pull out of this unique advantage for designers, I think one is, I think when you are a designer, you like to think of yourself as being a creative. Maybe that's potentially why you got into the industry. Maybe you wanted to do something different, whatever the case may be of why you call yourself a designer or got into this industry. I believe that, you know, you kind of, yeah, you resonate with the word being a creative. So is there something there in terms of a unique advantage for designers when thinking about their career or their path or prototyping something in their lives? Yeah, I think the reason maybe I could step back and say a little bit about the principle of reality prototyping. And that might be so most of you will have heard of the lean loop, which was introduced by the startup, the lean startup book, Eric Reese, and the the loop starts off with learn, then build, and then measure. You learn by looking in the environment, looking in the market, looking at the competitive analysis, talking to end users, talking to the people whose lives you want to change. And you move into build, you make a mock up or a prototype, you make a fake website or a landing page that captures signal. And then you move into measure and you see what response you got, was their engagement, was their interest in your product offering in your feature. And then you use that insights to learn more and to build more and to measure more. And you go through this loop in lots of iterative cycles. And I was really inspired by this creative process, because as designers and creatives, we have the ability to go through this problem cycle, problem solution, problem solution and learning. And I thought, I wonder if I can apply it to my own life, to my career. And so you'll see on the website, I've changed the word slightly. So learn has become listen, because we need to listen to ourselves, our inner values, our inner drivers and motivations, our inner hopes and dreams. Then build becomes visualize. So we're going to visualize whether it's like a career map, whether it's a mood board, maybe it's a series, a collage of different images that you have for your life. Maybe it's a sketch or a piece of writing. But really getting clear in your mind, what is this thing that you want to achieve in your career? What is this peak flow or achievement or goal that you want to unlock? And how would it smell? How would it feel? What would things look like and get really, really detailed into this new version of yourself? And then you want to take that and you turn it into a little baby experiment. So measure becomes this experimentation. So instead of changing your personality in your career overnight, which would be crazy, you break off a tiny little part and you say, okay, well, I'm going to play with just this. So for example, if one of your goals was to be more strategic and to have more influence in your company, you can't just overnight become the most powerful persuasive person on the planet. But what you could do is you could look at one little area where you want to land your value and your points more clearly. So you might say, how can I convey the value of what I'm bringing to the table more concisely? And in a way that persuades the people in the room that they want to hire me or they want to work with me or collaborate with me. So in this way, you might devise a little experiment before the meeting to lay out some bullet points about why articulating, why what you're doing is important and why it aligns with your clients or stakeholders. And you might then share that before the meeting and then also raise that and speak to that in the meeting. And then you will measure, do the third part of the loop, you will do an experiment and you'll see what happened because I did that. Did it go well? Did people listen to it? Did people ignore it? Maybe there were parts of it that worked and others that flopped and landed on closed ears. So then you can do another experiment the next meeting and that way we're taking our huge career progression that can feel quite big and chunky and actually break it down into really small baby steps, little experiments that just slowly get us to where we want to go in very small achievable steps rather than one big go. So that's the concept of reality prototyping. And you guys are all superpower, you know, that's your superpower. You take big, big, big problems for businesses and for users and you break them down into little baby steps, little iterations through your prototyping, through your mocking up, through your testing and learning. And you can apply that same superpower to yourself and to your career when you're thinking about solving where you want to go next, who you want to work for and the impact ultimately that you want to have in the world. That's really, really awesome. And I love using that lean loop and sort of applying that experimental process with the things that we do that things that we care about, right? It's not just this project, but zooming out and saying, okay, what can I prototype that I might like? Like, let's just say I'm a, actually, I really like architecture, but I'm not going to go ahead and study for years and get my license, right? How do I prototype that just enough? Maybe it's speaking to a friend that's an architect or watching videos, learning just a little bit to see, pulling on that thread, am I interested? Would I be good at it? Or asking myself these questions and how then do I experiment further with that? So I really love that concept. Moving on to another thing I want to talk about with designers in the industry at the moment. And I think maybe we can generalize this because not every designer will face this. So I just want to talk about some common myths that designers may be hindering themselves. Like, are there some that you've come across by coaching other folks around this topic? Yeah, for sure. Thanks for asking that. It's one of my favorite questions because the predominant voice in the design industry and also our internal voice is, oh, golly gosh, I have to be good at everything. I have to be good at roadmapping and being a PM and product requirements and marketing and I have to be good at branding and I have to be good at icon design. I have to be good at animation and I have to be good at and it's just too much. And the reality is that all of those are potential pathways and doorways that you can enter. But when you're actually in the workplace and or you're setting up your own startup and you're being killing it and getting loads of clients and being incredibly successful, you actually only need to pick one or two. You pick one or two of these things and then you use the catalyzer to set them on fire. So I want you to think about, we're sitting around a campsite and we've got these two logs, which is the fuel, the source of the fire, and then just to kick it off and ignite it, whether that's with a match or with some some bio fuel that you set it on fire with, that spark is your soft skills. So let's say I choose, I'm going to be really good at problem definition, the discovery phase, like learning about my users and then turning that into a really strong problem statement. And then I'm going to be really good at slick fast prototyping and learning at speed. So you've got those two skills of problem definition and discovery, sorry, and prototyping. And the thing that sets these two logs on fire, the spark is going to be some soft skills around how you communicate that, how you present that, your storytelling, your persuasion, your influence, your people skills, building rapport, and how do you get other people excited about those two things? How do you engage them often and early? How do you share that work regularly? How do you make sure that it's really visible and that other people can see what you're doing? That's the secret source. So pick any two skills that you want to dive in, double down on, and then may your learning and growth be really focused on the soft skills. And the reason I say this is because there are lots of designers out there that are incredible, maybe like five or six of these things. And because they haven't nailed the soft skills side, they get incredibly frustrated. They feel unrecognized, unseen, unheard, ignored. They feel resentful. They feel a mistrust of the business. All of their amazing ideas die in the figma graveyard and never see the light of day. And that's crushing, that's soul crushing. But it's because they're spreading their time, their energy, their thoughts across many different areas of expertise, and they've forgotten the spark, the catalyzer. And so I would encourage you to think, what are those two things that I am really good at and that I love? And then the rest of your time, focus on growing your soft skills and your communication. Yeah. Yeah, hugely underrated. You know, we focus so much on the hard skills as designers as we are folks that are responsible for output, but the soft skills really, really matter. Not just in the design profession, in so many other professions or being a human matters if you can communicate effectively. Yeah, absolutely. 100% agree. If you could give folks one thing, let's just say, let's just have an example here. You've suffered at these massive layoffs and you haven't had to go on the job market for a couple of years at least, but you're like, okay, well, am I up to date? I'm, you know, maybe I'm not as young as I used to be. All these things that you're telling yourself, because you're about to go back on the job market, you know, it's hyper competitive now. What are some things you would, I guess, advise or coach someone to be like, you know, it's okay. What are some of those steps or at least the first step? Yeah. So something that people far smarter than myself and qualified in psychology have found out is that there's a little bit of an order to how we think and feel and do. So right at the bottom, I want you to imagine, draw with me now is a diagram. So at the bottom you've got the results of your actions and may the be the result is that you want to get that new job, right? You laid off, you want to find a job. The next layer above is actions, the actions that lead to those results and they might be reaching out to people in recruiters, reaching out to people on LinkedIn, writing your cover letter, writing CVs, creating portfolios, these are actions that need to be done, creating a loom video to introduce yourself, creating content to help people get to know you. Before those actions are feelings, the feelings, the emotions, the physical sensations that live inside our bodies that lead to those actions. And before those emotions, which are physical in our body, is the thoughts. And it's the thoughts that we have that lead to the sensations that lead to whether or not we do the actions or don't do the actions, whether we procrastinate or whether we crack on. And so what we can do is we can change our thoughts. And if we acknowledge that and everybody in the room goes, oh, can I, aren't they just happening to me? No, you are in control of your thoughts. And just like passing clouds, they come and go. But you can hold on and focus on thoughts such as I can do this. I'm unique. I have something to give this world. I have a special perspective. I'm really passionate about these things. And I'm going to share that passion. I will always do my best. I might not get chosen, but I'm going to do put my best forward. And those thoughts lead to emotions like pride, confidence, humility, excitement, other thoughts such as no one cares. No one's listening. I'm terrible. I'm awful. Those kind of thoughts lead to emotions that make you feel demotivated, paralyzed. And you just want to put your head under the pillow and hide and make you feel a bit cowardly, right? So the first thing that I would suggest for folks to do in the room is to work backwards. What is the result that you want to achieve? What are the actions that you need to take to achieve those results to get that job? And what are the emotions that you're going to need to feel in your body in order to take those actions? And then what are some of the thoughts that you can tell yourself, that you can reframe from and flip from the negative ones to make sure you take those actions. And you can do this reflection exercise on a daily basis. What are the actions and results I want to see today? And you can really hold yourself account, because what we tend to do is we blame others and we say, it's all out there. The industry is terrible. There's no jobs. I have no control and I'm a victim, which makes you feel terrible, quite frankly, you feel awful. Why would you want to get out of bed for that? But when we take personal responsibility for our thoughts, we say, well, actually, I can control my thoughts and I can control my time and I can control my actions and I can control my words. Suddenly you're feeling really empowered and resourceful. I'll pause there. So all stems from your thoughts, but you could work backwards if you and like if you just naturally have negative thoughts, you could work backwards in order to force positive thoughts, because it's really hard, right? Where you're like, okay, I need to feel confident and think positive because usually that's where people get blocked. But I love the think about the results or the outcome and then work backwards to the action. And it's kind of like that moment of realization that if I wanted this thing, I have to start from the top. I have to start with those things. So it's a really cool visual that I'm just kind of imagining where it trickles down. But if you focus on like one or two of the layers, you might not get what you want because of you're not fixing the top layer or you're not at least making it trickle down, right? Yeah. And when I do this exercise with folks and there's one on like a Sheryl link, it's on the Figma community, I've made like a fig jam that you can do to do this exercise like a little worksheet. We actually start with how you're feeling now. So what are the results that you're getting right now? What are the actions that you have or have not taken right now? What are the feelings that you're feeling about this situation now? And what are the thoughts that you're telling yourself now? And then we can do in the other column the shift. All right. So what is it that we need to change? What are the results that you want to see? And what are the actions that you're going to need to take? And that flipping often creates a much clearer image of where we need to go next. Sometimes when we start with the future, it can feel like a blank page. I'm not sure. But when we start with where we are, most people can say, yeah, I really want to work on my portfolio, but I'm paralyzed because I keep telling myself I'm not good enough. Or I really want to raise my prices, but I'm scared because I'm scared that someone will reject me and say no, or I'll lose the client. And once we tell ourselves a different story and we reframe those thoughts as well, I'm a valuable and competent person. And this is the market rate. So I'm not asking for anything particularly outrageous. So therefore, I'm going to choose to think that I'm asking for something fair and that I am a, what's the word, being professional. That's a much more positive way of thinking than they're going to find me out I'm an imposter, you know, that kind of thing. So it's really, it's a muscle that we're building here of flipping and reframing. Yeah. It sounds like it could work for a lot of scenarios in our lives if, you know, if we could say there's like, there's a result that I'm not getting, and then you can map the now and then map the where you want to go and so forth. So I guess you've done this in lots of different scenarios of lots of different types of problems. Is that correct? Yeah. I mean, I've done it for looking at my house design, you know, my bedroom right now is a mess and I need to tidy it. And the result is that I'm spending a really long time trying to find things, and I'm not feeling peace of mind. So I want to feel peace of mind and I want to be able to quickly find things. All right. Well, what are the actions I need to take so that I can have peace of mind and I can find things? Well, I need to throw a lot of things out. I need to give some things away to charity. I need to do a little repaint. I need to make it feel calm and minimal. And I also need to buy a label maker and organize things into boxes. Okay. So what are the feelings that I need to do that? Well, I need to believe that I can do that. I need to feel not alone. So I need to find somebody that can do that with me. I need to feel like it's on budget. And so I need to make sure that I'm not spending too much money here. There's all these things. And then essentially, what are the thoughts that I need to do that? But I've also done it for thinking about the job search and thinking about promotions. I've done it for even maybe a conversation with your partner, you know, the result that we're having is we're having lots of arguments. We don't want lots of arguments. We want to be having lots of laughter. All right. What actions do we need to do in our couple to make sure that we're spending more time laughing and being silly than being so serious about these really unimportant issues? That's amazing. I'm definitely going to check that out. And you said there was a fig jam board in the Figma community. Okay. I will also try to find that link and link it to the folks below. So let's move on to some audience questions. I've been scrolling. So apologies that I'm looking away. But I've been scrolling trying to find some questions from our audience. And I have one here from my buddy, Jeremy Miller. Shout out to Jeremy. Okay. I love your talk. You did recently on shifting our mindset. Can you talk a bit about how we can use some of those mindset shift techniques to get to a place where you can better do career mapping? So mindset shift on career mapping. Mindset shift. Okay. So some of the mind shifts that I've been thinking about recently are from me to we thinking about not just about yourself, but thinking about your whole team. From your kind of your own individual PD point of view to thinking about the whole business and the business metrics and the company that you work in the other disciplines. And from positive, from negative to positive thinking, those are kind of some shifts that I've been exploring recently. How do we apply that to career mapping? That's the question, right? Wow. Career mapping. So let's take them one by one. If you were to think map out your career, you might focus on all the negatives. Well, this boss was terrible. And I didn't get the promotion I wanted. And these guys were terribly disorganized. And this person, well, they tried to sexually assault me. You know, you could just list out all the negative things. Or you could focus on, okay, well, how did this make me stronger? What was the opportunity given before me that enabled me to rise? How did I become a more eloquent, a more advanced, a more better insert whatever word you want to become person because of this experience? How did it prepare me for the next job? You can come say, okay, maybe it wasn't the next one, maybe it's the next next one. But how did this experience unlock something for me later down? I know you can only do that through reflection, right? Because we can't look into the future. If anyone can do that, please call me because I would love to be able to look at the future. So that's one reframe. The other one from me to we is you might just focus on all the things that you did. I did this project and I launched this website or this feature, and I delivered these user testing results or something. But again, it's more powerful if you say, as a team, we achieve this bigger goal, bigger than myself. And my contribution to that was this aspect. As a team, we managed to shift from here to here. And I enabled that shift by contributing X and Y. So you're seeing something a bit bigger than yourself, you're talking about contributing to the whole. And that allows you to kind of look at parallels, you know, just in the same way that you might have created consensus or alignment in a team. That's a transferable skill. You can take that mindset and those skills and you can bring that to the next place you work. Or maybe you were able to drive decision making and clarity and direction, because you were able to synthesize lots of very disparate bits of information and you were able to bring them into one place in a simple way. That's also a transferable skill. So even though the topics might change across your career, and even though the industries might change or the domain knowledge, the value that you're bringing because you are in the room, what happened because you were in the room? I want to think about that before and after. And that enables you to identify and put your finger on the value that you created, and then how you can start creating that forward as you move into your next place. So those are the things that come to mind, but we'll welcome any follow up questions to that if there was something specific you wanted to talk about. Sure. Maybe this is a bit more of a tactical question. What are some key strategies or tools you recommend for create advancement opportunities and exploring new roles within the design industry? Any thoughts? Tactics to explore new roles in the design industry. New roles. Well, new roles is going from a PD to a user researcher or becoming a PM or going from something that's more focused on UX so you are. Is that that kind of thing making shifts? I think so. I think there's two parts of this like strategies and tools, like I guess tactics on one career advancement opportunities and then two, like, yeah, moving into something new in design, like if you're doing something now, maybe kind of expanding that opportunity. So yeah. Okay. They could be approached very differently about trying to find some common ground between the two of them. So another hat that I like to describe that designers wear is the detective. We are detectives and we have our magnifying glass and they're going around like scientists trying to find juicy problems to solve. So one of the tactics to advance your career is to find a really unsexy, unexciting problem to solve in your business, whether it's in your team and just nailing it, blowing it out the out the park. And the way that you can do that is by just noticing where are some concrete tightly scoped areas that the problem is really obvious, but no one wants to do it because it doesn't seem fun or it's going to take a long time. But by you seeing that opportunity, seeing people struggle pain and coming up with a solution to fix it and doing that quite quickly and then telling everyone that you did it and showing it is going to allow people to see you as a problem solver, your impact orientated, your focus on the solution and providing driving positive change. You're not focused on moaning, picking out all the faults, focusing on criticizing, complaining why things aren't good. You're focused on just making them good. And everybody wants to have that person around. Nobody wants to have the smart Alec being like, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but there's all these problems. There's so many problems. Okay, you might be right. You probably are right. But that's not a fun energy to have around and it doesn't feel productive. It doesn't feel like we're progressing. But when you focus on the problem and the solution and you offer different solutions, now we're moving forward and everybody wants to work with that person. So that's a little kind of hack. Yeah, really like that. And your examples are so visual. Like I love your examples. Okay, they're really, really good, especially the, yeah, the person like, no, no, no, yeah, we all know someone likes that. And you're quite right. Not fun to be around. So don't be that person if you're looking for career advancement opportunities. So I have a question around, well, someone had a question around, I want to start my own work, but I'm not confident enough to start, I do have all these questions about how do I handle things on my own clients, marketing money, like, like all these unanswered questions about starting her own business, it seems like, what would you say or some some some things that could kind of reframe what she's thinking about starting her own business? Yeah. And this is a common one, right, because it's 2024. And we have so much opportunity. There's so many ways that we can create new businesses online. So I think a lot of people are thinking about this, you are not alone. If you have a pen and paper at home, or a sticky note, please grab it. And I want you to write a statement on it and put it somewhere where you can see it. Because this question will really help you break big things down small to be bite size. So with this question of, I have a business idea, you know, what do I want to do? The question I want you to write down is, what is the easiest, fastest and smallest way that I can test this? What is the easiest, fastest and smallest way that I can test this? And this can apply to literally any problem. And this is one of the foundational ideas of the lean loop, right? Instead of building a whole software and a whole product, we're going to look at all the assumptions behind this. And we're going to stack rank them in order of how risky they are. So you can imagine a load of Jenga blocks, you know, the game Jenga where you put stack blocks on top of each other. And you can look at those Jenga blocks and you can change the order. And you can say, well, what is the riskiest one, the one that if I pull out, the whole tower topples over? What is the riskiest assumption I'm making? So when it comes to building businesses and offering value to humans, often the assumption that we make is because I want it, others want it. Or because I see an opportunity, others see value too. So one of the common risky assumptions that you need to identify and validate is do enough people think that this is a problem worth paying to go away? And so you might say, I would love to hear what your business idea is, if you can put it in the comments. But you might find a way to test what's the quickest, fastest, easiest way that I can test that other people actually want to pay for this problem to go away. Because if I do all this other work and actually that assumption hasn't been validated, all that other work is a waste of time. It might cost you time, it might cost you money, emotional and energy. And we want to avoid that. We want to optimize that. We want to do the first step first. And a very good example of this is the Dropbox landing page phenomena. So when Dropbox first came out many moons ago as a cloud storage service for people's files, instead of building a software and putting it out on the market and seeing if people buy it, they just put a landing page of a website and they said, look, this is our idea, they created a vision little vision video. And this was a very small cost that's creating this short quick video to inspire people. And then people signed up their email addresses. And because so many people signed up, it allowed them to identify that this was actually something that people wanted to get behind. And you see many people doing this. Teresa Torres is a brilliant product thought leader who advocates this approach with her continuous discovery book. You even see tech giants like Elon Musk doing this. He doesn't make a car. He puts a landing page where you pre-buy the car. And then he uses that capital to then reinvest in creating. And you could do this for fashion, put up your 3D rendered designs. You can use chat GPT and Dali and so forth to make up these incredible products that don't exist. You put them online and you see if you can get people to pre-buy them, pre-order them. And you haven't done any upfront manufacturing or spending endless hours creating something that nobody wants. So hopefully this tactic and this little sticky note can save you a lot of time and money and give you the confidence you need to move forward on that business idea that you're excited about. I have that sticky note. So I've also written it down just as a reminder because we definitely need these healthy reminders. What is the easiest, fastest, smallest thing we can test? And that's a really good way to sort of frame, especially when starting a business seems like it's such a big thing, right? So many unanswered questions. But yeah, I've had the same. I've wanted to start a business for so long and I just didn't because of that framing of like, oh, I need to incorporate my company. I need to figure out taxes, but you don't need any of that, right? And the internet is a wonderful place to test ideas, like you can test that scale if something works. So yeah. I can give you an example, Chris, just with myself. Sure. I did as a as a practiser of this, you know, you meant to practise what you preach, right? But I want to be honest with you and say, I've gone off myself because we fall into ego and we think, oh, but I want people to know that this looks good. And I want it to look really perfect. And so I want to encourage you all is you will fall into that, but you just need to catch yourself and come back and say, wait, this is my ego talking, I want to look good. And I want me to look good. And I'm making this idea about me. And actually, it's not about you. It's about the other people. Will they pay for it? And is this something a big enough problem for them to willing to be willing to pay to get rid of? So just kind of catch yourself, because we all do just a bit of empathy there, self compassion. Absolutely. And if this person that asked the question really wanted more knowledge on like, oh, well, how, how do I sell? What is an offer? How do I provide value? I would suggest the book $100 million offers by Alex Hermosly. It's a really good, I would say work book. It has free courses. It's, I think, under $1 on Amazon. And there's so much value in it, because the thing that Alex Hermosly does really well is he uses the concepts from each of his books and applies it on the actual book itself. So this book talks about how do you create an offer so good that people feel stupid saying no. So that means this book, not only is it a breakdown and sort of a worksheet, but it has courses, downloadables and exercises you can go through it yourself. And it won't really cost you anything apart from a dollar. And you've, and you've also gained business knowledge and how to speak to your customers, how to make something valuable. So I would, you know, I guess recommend checking out that book if you're really interested in creating an offer without, of course, actually making it. But at least thinking about it, at least brainstorming what could be done and then finding that easiest, fastest, smallest way to test something. I have another question for UK. This one is quite specific. How do you incorporate AI into your design career? So I was on mute. I just said, mmm, good question. I think everyone's asking themselves that right now, aren't they? I think we can think about it from a design perspective, right, which is when you see a new snazzy technology in your company, it's quite tempting to just throw the technology at it. But we all know as user-sensitive designers that we need to be taking care of some kind of user need. There needs to be some kind of problem or opportunity that we're addressing. And when we just throw technology in people's faces when they don't really want it or know how to apply it, it's a bit useless. Like many products that have come and gone. I think those funny segue scooters come to mind, these floating scooters that tried to launch and failed. There are many examples of products that launch and fail. So AI can be the same. We can throw AI at something and actually just doesn't resonate. So I would replace, if you can, the word AI with the word super smart processing brain. It's not as catchy. I'll give you that. It's a bit long, but it'll help you to think about what are the types of jobs to be done. When you apply a super smart processing brain to something, it can assimilate and summarize information really quickly. It can connect different disparate elements and bring them together. It can speed up synthesis. It can calculate. It can search. But it's not so good if you want it to do something that hasn't been done before, right? Because it's all based on past learning models, LLMs. And so if you want to do something pretty future-facing, then you're going to need to think about how you apply this very smart processing brain more carefully. So in my life as a design manager, if there are opportunities where I need to summarize something or I need to shorten something or I need to critique my thinking in a very methodical way, I'll often ask ChatGPD and say, hey, how could I say this in a more diplomatic way? Can you help me to be more positive? Or I might say, hey, this is a list of criteria that I need to meet. Can you show me where this paragraph meets or falls short of that criteria? So this is something that I would have to do anyway, but it's speeding me up. I wouldn't ask it something like, hey, can you give me some top ethical concerns around this issue? I might do for fun, but I know that there'll be big holes in that because the processing data has years of systemic racism, white supremacy, gender inequality, it's got lots of flaws baked into it. So I might do that, but I'll be more critical with the way I'm using that data or that information that I get back. I'll pause there, but those are some of the ways that I think about it in my conversations mostly and when I'm thinking about solving problems. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I've heard about or even spoke to designers who've put like ChatGPD in their CVs resumes. Like, should we be doing that? And, you know, I could imagine folks just kind of listing out tools like mid-journey. Like, is that valuable for someone that's hiring like UK? Like, how do you think about that where they just talk about AI tools? Because obviously you work in an AI company. Is that a green flag or a big red flag? It's a given that if you're applying for an AI company, you should be playing with these tools. Just like it's a given if you're a product designer that you're playing with a range of different apps and products out there that you have a genuine interest. That shouldn't be a unique selling point. That just should be a given in the same way that you'd hope that, you know, the doctor you go to to help you get better is generally interested in the industry of medicine and kind of, you know, well-being. It's, you don't go into the industry if you're not getting energy from playing with these things. If it fills you with dread, then either there's a reframe that needs to happen, that exercise we talked about earlier, or that, you know, maybe that it's not the right thing for you. So when I'm looking at, I'm looking at how has someone used this tool? And if we think about this as a tool, remember, this very smart processing brain, you've just written on your CV, I used a smart processing brain. Okay, cool. What was that, tell me more. What you want to focus on is what we were talking about earlier. What changed or transformed because you were in the room? What was the impact of you using that super smart processing brain? What value did you create in the world? Perhaps you saved somebody time. Perhaps you came up with a new idea, because you fused two industries that don't normally talk to each other together. Perhaps you were able to skip out a step and make someone's life easier. Really focus on the transformation that you created, not the tool that you used. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think we only have time for one more question, Kate, if I may. And I'm cognizant as, you know, it's in the middle of the work day for you. So last one, which is quite, I guess, vague, but just love your take on it, which is how do you stand out as a candidate for your dream role? This is probably on a lot of people's mind, but they don't know how to navigate this one maybe dream role and as a standout candidate. What do you say to folks about that topic? I'm going to give you an answer and you might not like it, right? You ready? The best candidates are the ones that really go the extra mile to show that they're really passionate about solving the problem. It's not about getting the title, the money, the perks. It's not about the badge, the respect and recognition of something. It's that you're just in love with solving that problem. Now, how do you show someone that you're in love with them, right? You can't just use words. You have to turn up, you have to be attentive, you have to listen to them, you have to know that person, you have to know what they like and don't like, you have to know what pisses them off. Love is a doing word, right? It's a verb. It's an action. It's something that you can observe and see. It's not something that you can just tick off. So it's the same with a topic. When candidates come, having researched and done projects off their own back in the space because they really want to solve people's money problems and they've read up about the US in my area, the US politics and they understand how difficult it is for students getting into debt right now and they understand some of the pain points and they empathize with that. You've already started to show that you're already in the mindset and ready to do the job. I think that's a key thing. An example would be the VP of design that has just arrived at Clio. He blew his water, blew his interview out the park. He really, really, really did a great job because he didn't just show, okay, here's some areas that Clio could improve. He also showed alternatives. Hey, this is another company that's doing it really well. This is a similar problem that we could be solving. Oh, here is five ways that we could approach this. Here's some solutions and really brought together, not just a load of critique, but also a load of inspiring ways to address those problems. That was a brilliant way to start a conversation with the new company. It's coming off. Now, I know a lot of people feel a bit difficult about this. They think, oh, I don't want to do free work. I get that, but that is a bit like saying, I want to show you I love you, but I'm not willing to put my heart on the line. When you want to be in a relationship in any kind of connection, whether it's a brother, sister, mother, a lover, you can't put yourself out there, but hold yourself back. You can't say you can have my heart, but actually I'm going to protect it with an armored box. You need to be vulnerable. Part of building relationships is to put yourself out there. If you can show that it's not personal and it's not about you, it's about the problem and that you're just really in love with the problem, then I think you've done a really good job of putting yourself forward as a can-do, positive, impact-orientated person. I appreciate it. It can be difficult because you might not want to invest extra time and then be rejected, but for those of people that really like that topic and they're genuinely passionate about it, it won't feel like work because you really, really do want to solve the problem and it, therefore, it meets your need just as much as the company's. Amazing. Yeah, absolutely. If you can figure out your flow state while working on these things, you will know what problems that you're passionate about or what type of things you want to work on and that just makes this sort of dream job a little bit more accessible to you, at least you've reflected on that and you're like, okay, these are the type of places I want to work in because I just lose time and, therefore, that effort, it will seem like it's effortless if you understand that. Absolutely amazing, Kate. We're about to wrap up. Are there anything you want to share with the audience? I know realityprototyping.com. Where can people find you? How can they follow you and on your awesome journey of coaching? Yeah, sure. On the website, you can see some free materials. You can follow me on LinkedIn. You can reach out. There's also a link to book a calendarly if you're interested in getting coaching. It's not a free coaching session. It's just a chemistry session to see if coaching might be suitable for you. Soon I'll be launching an offline do-it-yourself DIY program where you have access to all my materials for a much smaller fee without the in-person coaching. Watch the space for that coming soon, too. Amazing, amazing. Very, very excited. Well, thank you again, Kate. It's been absolutely amazing and you're full of inspiration and love your examples as well. It helps really visualize your point. It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you again for coming and thanks for your time. My pleasure. It's really fun and thanks for everyone for showing up. Thanks for all your questions. Maybe we can continue the chat on LinkedIn somewhere if people feel like they didn't get their answers today. Sure, absolutely. Okay, guys, go follow Kate. Let's just quickly sign off. The next live is on March the 20th. We do these things twice every single month, the first week and the third week of every single month. If you're interested, I'll leave a link down below. You can sign up and get notified if you like these conversations and you can literally ask us anything. I know I've been juggling both things, but I will try to get to all the questions on every single live if we have time, of course. But thank you again for being here and thank you, Kate. Please, guys, realityprototyping.com. Follow her and I will see you guys in the