 This is something you can use if you already have a job, it's how to get more money, how to boost your career if you already have a job. If you don't have a UX job yet, this is gonna be a great way to get you into the position where you can get your first job and actually really nail it. Hey, Jonathan here from AJ and Smart. And today's video I'm gonna talk about the number one strategy for getting a job in UX, or to be honest, in almost any field. But because I came into my career as a UX designer, that's just what I know, so that's what I'm gonna be talking about. So, first of all, for anyone who doesn't know who I am, I'm a UX designer at At Heart, but I started a design agency called AJ and Smart almost 10 years ago. We've worked for all of your favorite clients. I've worked on hundreds billions of different UX projects and I've also been hiring designers for the AJ and Smart team for the last 10 years as well. So, the concept I'm taking this from is called the Canvas Strategy. Now, the Canvas Strategy is in my opinion the best way to boost your career, but the great thing is most people, even if they learn about it, most people won't learn about it, but even if they do learn about it, they won't actually execute on the Canvas Strategy because usually a lot of young designers are not humble and they think they know everything. So, that's one of the reasons why a lot of people watching this video will also not take action and not do anything about it. So, if you're one of the few people watching this and actually does something about it, really, really great. Okay, so what's the Canvas Strategy? The Canvas Strategy is something I learned from a guy called Ryan Holiday. Ryan Holiday wrote The Obstacle is the Way. He wrote a lot of really great New York Times bestsellers and my team will probably put the link to his Canvas Strategy article in the description, but the Canvas Strategy is in a nutshell. It's about learning how to get what you want by learning how to get other people what they want and even an easier way of thinking about it, it's about making other people look good as well. That's another way. So, a quick example would be a lot of people ask me, how did my company, how did AJ and Smart end up working with these massive, cool brands? Like, how did we end up working with Twitter? How did we end up working with companies like Lego? How did we end up partnering with the guy who wrote the book Sprint, for example? Well, almost every single one of those cases, which helped boost my company into the stratosphere, were related to the fact that I was using something called the Canvas Strategy. And the Canvas Strategy, basically, there's like three steps in the beginning. One is you need to know where you are in the food chain. So, for example, three or four years ago, maybe I'll take a piece of paper here and write on it, the lovely AJ and Smart Notepads, which we're not selling, don't worry. Like, paranoid that people think I'm trying to sell something here. So, the first thing is you need to know where you are. So, know where you are in the food chain. So, for me, okay, let's talk about working with Lego or something. And actually, I'll even change Lego to Jake Knapp, because a lot of people know, Jake Knapp is the guy who wrote the book Sprint. There's like a billion copies of it up there. And a lot of people were surprised that I managed to get in touch with him and then work with him, and then he connected me to a lot of other big companies, like Twitter, for example. So, I realized that I was here and Jake was up there. And because I realized this, I was humble enough to realize that I can't just go and say, hey, by the way, Jake, let's work together. Connect me to all of your cool clients and that's what a lot of people do. That's a really big mistake a lot of people make, is they're like, hey, can you look at my portfolio? Hey, I wanna work at AJ & Smart. Hey, I'll do an internship at AJ & Smart. Or even they'll say, hey, I'll do a free internship at AJ & Smart. And they think that's enough, right? First of all, we don't do free internships, so don't ask. But they don't think about where they are, who we are, all of this kind of stuff. So that's step one, just understanding where you are in the food chain. And it's also good to know who's below you, right? So below me right now would be junior UX designers who want to learn things. So what you're wanting to do in a nutshell and in a very simple graphic is me, the person, let's say Jake. So in my life right now, or in my life three years ago, it was me, the person, the people who I wanted to get in touch with and access their networks. And then under me was like junior UX designers who I was teaching through the YouTube channel. Okay, so step one is knowing where you are in the career food chain, okay? And if you're just starting as a UX designer, then you're nowhere, you're at the very bottom and you have to accept that. And the sooner you can accept that, the sooner you can actually boost your career, okay? Step two, and this is the step a lot of people skip. Let's say you want to get in touch with me, you're like thinking, oh, I'll just send Jonathan a message and ask him what he wants, right? That's the biggest mistake you can make. You're putting work on me if you're asking me what I want. So the second thing is learning and doing the research on what the people want that you're trying to access. Now the people are the people working at the company you want to work at. Or for example, it might be someone who you want to access their network. Let's say Chris Doe, right? You probably know Chris Doe because he's got a big YouTube channel and we did some videos together. I didn't just send Chris a message and say, hey, will you come to Berlin? Let's do a video together, right? You have to think about what are the things that would be interesting for this person, right? I did my research and a lot of people would just send Chris a message saying, hey, what can I do for you, right? And it's a waste of time. So do your research if you want to access somebody and access their network. For example, as well, if you want to work at a cool company, if you want to work at an agency, so what are the things these people want or what are the things this company actually wants to do? Okay, so or the team that maybe you want to work on, maybe you want to work on the Oculus team at Facebook or something. What is it that they would want? What is it that they're looking for, right? And number three is then you just do it, right? So let me give you a good example. One of the people who work at AJ & Smart today was one of the people who was writing the show notes for my podcast for about six months. Didn't ask him to do it, didn't know who he was. Maybe I didn't even know for a little while that someone was even doing the show notes, but I was like, holy crap, like this person's doing something that was so annoying to me. And when he finally sent me a message saying, hey, I'm going to be in Berlin, which a million people do every week, this one person who had already figured out, oh, this is something that Jonathan doesn't like doing and made my life easier. This is someone I met. So, you know, the third step, and this is someone I met up with and then this is someone who ended up doing an internship at AJ & Smart and this is someone who works at AJ & Smart still two years later. So the third step is actually do it. So a lot of things around building your career is trying to figure out where you are in your career, who you want to access, and what it is that you can do for them. And I think it's really interesting. So when I do interviews, I did a video recently enough on how to do a UX job interview. One of the biggest mistakes people make is they do no research on the company. They don't do research on AJ & Smart. And so when they come here, they don't really have anything they can give, they don't really have anything they can say. They're just like, well, here's the prototypes that I can make and everyone can do that, right? Everyone knows how to use Figma. Everyone knows how to use Adobe XD. If you don't, then it means you're just not looking at YouTube videos on how to do it. It's very easy, but not everyone is willing to do the work of like, where am I? Where do I want to go? And what is it that I have to do to get there? Now in the article, The Canvas Strategy, which teaches you a little bit how to do that, there's like these three keys for getting in touch with people who are maybe outside of your field where you can't really access, or getting in touch with people at companies who you can't really access. So like people, maybe VCs who are investing in companies that you wanna work at. So the three keys are find new trains of thought to hand over to them and explore. So what you're trying to do is maybe contacting these people with ideas. So saying, hey Jonathan, by the way, I've been watching what you're doing with your YouTube channel, and here's some ideas that I would have to grow it. Here's some ideas, and here they are. I've already made the video, goodbye, see you later. The second thing is find outlets, people, associates, and connections. So connecting people is super powerful. That's something that I do a lot. If I'm trying to access somebody to do a project, sometimes I'll connect them with someone that I know they would love to be connected with. And that might even be just getting them on someone's podcast that they maybe wouldn't feel comfortable asking themselves. So making connections is something that's really powerful. That's something that can really boost your kind of canvas strategy. The third thing is finding inefficiencies, waste, and redundancies. So basically looking at someone's process or a company's process and saying, hey, by the way, maybe a better way for you to do this. And here, I've already done it. Here you go, just handing it over. And these are just three examples of things that you can actually do if you don't have ideas for what you would provide for someone or a company that's above you. So that's the canvas strategy. And the canvas strategy is basically trying to figure out, so I wanna work, and I'm just gonna use A.Jane Smart as an example again. So someone wants to work here, a lot of people wanna work here, and they kind of know, step one, they know that they're a junior, they know they don't have a lot of experience, so they know that technically they don't have a really good chance of working anywhere. So step one is really accepting that and saying, okay, right, I don't have any proof that I'm good at what I do, so I need to prove myself, right, whatever, I'm at the bottom of the ladder. So the second thing is saying, but I can see that A.Jane Smart has a really bad website. Oh my God. What someone did recently is saying, I can see that A.Jane Smart has a, there's no webpage for the podcast or something like this or something like that or maybe the thumbnails on YouTube aren't great or something. And then the third step is just doing it and handing it over and saying, hey, this is what I can do, this is me, that like just creating some attention. And I think this might rub some people the wrong way because you're thinking, hey, I shouldn't work for free. I've heard of all, I've read all these articles which is never work for free because I'll demote myself and I'll cheapen design in general. I think that's a complete bullshit. First of all, nobody here at A.Jane Smart, none of the interns work for free. People would like to work here for free, but we don't allow it. However, people who work for free in general, people who do things for free, in my opinion, almost always get ahead faster. I'll give you a good example. We still work for free today at A.Jane Smart. For example, Oak, the meditation app, which is one of the most popular videos on this channel, we did this project for Kevin Rose who's like this Silicon Valley investor who's invested in some of the coolest companies in the world, no chance of me ever meeting this guy. He's too busy, but I worked out a way using the canvas strategy. By the way, and of course, thousands of people would be messaging saying, hey, I'll do stuff for free. But I figured out, hey, this is what he probably wants and I just did it and my company just did it and we sent him, we said, hey, look, this is what we've been working on. And he was excited and I flew over there and spent my own money to fly over there. And that moved A.Jane Smart from here to here. And that, by the way, then ended up making my company a lot more money than it would have if I hadn't done that. So you have to understand that doing free work, even though it might be below you, what you're actually doing is pushing yourself even further ahead of other people because you're getting in there before, while everyone else is thinking, should I do this for free? You're already, well, you're already getting ahead and meeting people and making the connections. So what I would recommend you doing is reading up on the canvas strategy and think about, okay, so maybe I'm working in a company and there's this person above me and I'd love if they would promote me then use the canvas strategy. Or you're a junior that just came out of college and you're here and you wanna start working at the startup, figure out some people who are working there, figure out who the boss is, contact them, using the canvas strategy. Don't say, hey, I am a designer, look at my portfolio. Don't say, hey, I wanna help, can I do something? Figure out where you are, do your research and then just do the thing and show them how you work. So that's basically it. I hope if you like this very low-fi video, give it a like, let me know in the comments if you agree or disagree with this canvas strategy approach to getting a job or to boosting your career. And let me know if this sort of low-fi approach is something that you like. All right, thanks so much, goodbye. Okay, I don't even know how long this thing will record. Oh, this sucks, I'll get a different hand. Know where you are. And I actually don't know if that's reversed, but whatever. That's because I'm on my own at the AJ and Smart Office here in Berlin and nobody else is here. By the way, this does get back to how to get your first UX job or how to use strategies to either boost your career or get your first job. I'm getting to that.