All right, so time to welcome Thomas Wilson with the negotiations consulting and portfolios playbook. Thank you again.
Well, it's good to be here. Thank you so much. Thanks Debbie for putting this whole thing together. Just so all of you know where your money is going, I'm donating my fee to Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center. It's a place not far from my house that helps men and women entering back into society from prison and people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. So just in case you're wondering where your money's going, the folks that could afford to pay, I just want to thank you and they thank you. I appreciate it. And in case you want your money back, tough sucker. It's already spent.
Negotiation is a critical skill for us as designers, researchers, freelancers, consultants. If we want to be paid fairly, we want to gain influence and we want to grow our careers. Many of us undervalue our work. Some of us fear negotiation and we think it makes us look difficult or ungrateful for the work or the opportunity. But understanding power is really key here and how to use it. Because it doesn't always come from a title or seniority. It can stem from your expertise, your track record of results, as the kids say if you've got the receipts, or your control of valuable information. These are also called gatekeepers or librarians of information. Sometimes those people that hold that access to important information have more power than the people in the C-suite. I talk about this a lot with my friend Jeremy. I've been on two different shows of his on his podcast and a little section of his book 'Beyond UX' is dedicated to this. But communicating your value clearly and confidently changes the dynamic so that you're not just asking for more money. You're demonstrating why the ask is justified. This is how we get our needs met. I'm going to share this deck with you after. It's got lots of information and links.
One of the biggest things for me in this business is what I keep coming back to: people simply don't know who they are. They're not choosing jobs that are best for them, best for their DNA, their upbringing, their skill set, how their brain works, their mental models, their neurodivergence. So they're not picking the right job for themselves and they're not picking the right opportunities. What happens is they end up struggling and coping instead of thriving. One of the things that concerns me a lot that I see online is that typically when people badmouth the notion of archetypes or mental models, the first thing they do to gaslight or create a straw man argument is say, 'Hey, this stuff is BS because Myers-Briggs is BS and it's not rooted in science, and the DISC assessment is BS and not rooted in science.' The truth is those two things are very popular or have been in the past, but they're diminishing. This is a false argument. The reason it's false is because there are many that are rooted in science and are very respected by NASA, the military, Harvard, you name it. The largest organizations in the world do several of these. I just want to burn through these really quick so you understand that you can go take these and get a really good idea of how you solve problems, what your emotional intelligence and EQ is. Anybody can go take an IQ test, but this is all about who you are and how you solve problems, how you were raised, and your values. Those are all important factors when we're trying to make smart decisions and sell ourselves in the marketplace.
The Clifton Strengths Assessment is an assessment that measures how you think, feel, behave, and conduct yourself across 34 themes. It's definitive about your specific dominant strengths and skills and talents. The ESCI is really important. It's used by Harvard. If you go take the Harvard MBA right now, you will take the ESCI. If you take any of their strategic leadership or organizational psychology courses, you will take the ESCI. Some of these cost money, some are free. They gauge your emotional and social intelligence and whether you have the traits that leaders have, because not everyone is designed or born to be a leader. The Big Five personality traits, OCEAN: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. It gives you a really good lens on your personality and type. The KAI, the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory. If you've followed me online, you know I've talked about this one several times. I'm connected to these people. Dr. Kirton was a really smart guy. He basically says that all of us fall on a continuum. On the far right are the high innovators, on the far left are the high adapters, and the 65% of people in the middle are basically brides, the glue people who are a little ambidextrous in how they solve problems and are creative. You often hear people talk about the unicorn, someone that spans that entire gamut, and it's very rare. Most people favor a specific spot on that bell curve. All this stuff is rooted in science. The RDCA gets an honorable mention. It's the Rissman Diagnostic Creativity Assessment, a creativity assessment that gives you immediate feedback and is diagnostic rather than predictive as to where your creative strengths and weaknesses are. I want you to consider taking these things. Find the ones that are free. The Big Five is free. The KAI will cost you about $100. The ESCI might cost you $50. The Clifton Strengths Assessment you can probably do for free. It'll give you a really good idea of who you are, even tell you the types of vocations you should be in. A whole lot of people are choosing to do things they're not great at and they don't know why.
Let's get into the negotiations. I like to quote myself: you have no right to ask for more compensation until you can prove you're currently doing more than your current agreement or job description entails. If you've got a job description, an agreement, or a contract and you go above and beyond, delivering more than you said you would and kicking ass, you have the right to ask for more money. That shouldn't be something you fear. We're going to arm you with some tools to give you strength and confidence going into those kinds of conversations because they are, in a way, battles, a chess game. We need to know how to play the game to get our needs met.
The fundamentals: you need to understand emotional intelligence, your EQ. Effective negotiations are about being able to read emotional cues and respond. Active listening: use your hands, face, body gestures, nodding, your eyes. It's important to watch the eyes when doing active listening. If someone's talking about something deep or traumatic, you need to acknowledge that with your whole person. Before COVID, we did all this stuff physically in person. Now we do a lot over Zoom or Teams, but you can still see people from the bust up, so you can still see their face and hands. Just be cognizant of those things. Adaptability: there's a great show on Netflix called 'The Rehearsal.' It shows people using diagrams for different possible outcomes and rebuilding sets for people to reenact things in a psychodrama format to rehearse how a negotiation might go. You need to be adaptable. If you have a rigid idea of how your negotiation will go and it doesn't go that way, you need to know how to pivot and think on your feet. Clarity and communication: you need to clearly articulate your value and what matters about the ask in ways that resonate and build rapport. That leads to reciprocity. A good negotiation means we all get our needs met. It doesn't mean one person screws the other over. The givers gain. We'll talk about that in a second, but you give to get.
The givers gain is a principle coined by Dr. Ivan Misner, founder of Business Network International. The core idea is simple: by helping others first, you create a network of people naturally inclined to help you in return. Sometimes people reach out to me on LinkedIn with a job that's less than I'm willing to accept. I always take the time to say, 'Hey, I'm not interested, but here are three people I know that fit your needs.' I always ask in that first email who the contract is for, the company, and the hourly rate or pay band. If it's something I'm not interested in, I take two seconds to refer a friend or someone I know is out of work. It's easy to say 'not interested' or 'how dare you,' but somebody else might be really happy to get that $60 an hour. It's important to understand that we're here to help and lift each other up through referrals.
In recruiting, help the recruiter help you. Provide sharp tailored resumes and clear job references. If someone's trying to hire you for a healthcare gig, have prefabbed messages that explain your worth, why you're great for the job, and list five or six bullets of customers or analogous work. Just copy and paste it. It cuts down on application time and stress. In negotiations, the givers gain is great when you're offering help for others. People are far more willing to negotiate in good faith when they feel respected and supported. Yes, recruiters and hiring managers can be jerks and ghost people, but the more you respect them even when they're disrespecting you, the more they'll remember that months from now when you say, 'This isn't a great fit, but maybe something else is,' and they'll come back to you. It's not about manipulating people. It's about creating value and trust, building goodwill and credibility. You're paying yourself future dividends by having good character and doing the right thing.
Reciprocity is a social and psychological principle rooted in behavioral economics and anthropology. When someone gives us something of value, we feel compelled to return the favor. This dynamic is foundational to informal exchanges and formal negotiations. In recruiting and job seeking, share your value. If a recruiter gives you insider tips, reciprocate. In negotiations, use reciprocity to anchor goodwill. Consider what the employer or client has offered, express gratitude, and build your case by showing that accepting your counter offer is a mutual benefit. By bringing me in at this rate, you're getting someone ready to contribute from day one. We see a lot online of people saying, 'If I do UX or research, I can do it for anyone.' Everyone on this call, especially Debbie and I, already know that if you have strong UX or service design skills, they apply to lots of different verticals. But you need to make their life easier. Make it easy to do business with you and easy to employ you. Be who you are and focus on your specific skill set and industries.
BATNA stands for Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. It's a concept from negotiation theory developed by Roger Fisher and William Ury in their book 'Getting to Yes.' It's the most advantageous course of action we can take if no agreement is reached. In simple terms, it's your plan B. If you're negotiating a salary and you want $100,000 a year and they offer $90,000, you might not budge. If you're smart, you'll try to meet in the middle at $96,000. Sometimes you'll reject it. It depends on your specific case. But if they offer more than your BATNA, you'll probably accept. Have that plan B in your pocket. Know the baseline of what you're willing to go past. All of this depends on the level of desperation and how long you've been out of work. If you haven't been working for six or eight months and can't pay your bills, you might take a little less. It's okay to understand that and have it outlined before you go into the conversation.
Theories and thought leaders. 'An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change' is an oldie but goodie. It suggests that business evolves through routines and habitual behaviors, bounded rationality, and next best action based on abductive reasoning. It indicates that businesses innovate through trial and error. We talk a lot about this in UX and design: what's our collective knowledge, what's the next best action? Businesses know that making no decision is far more costly than making a bad decision. They might make a bad decision in haste pursuing speed, velocity, scale. They don't provide time for great quality upfront research. This book was talking about that many years ago. It highlights that negotiation is an evolving process where past experiences shape future strategies. The way you get better at negotiation is to get out there and do it, applying these principles.
Another book, one of the most important I've ever read: Ralph Waldo Emerson on Compensation. His essays explore that all actions yield corresponding rewards or consequences. He's all about character and reciprocity. He says every act rewards itself. Pay yourself future dividends by laying those foundations. If you refer people and build relationships with good recruiters, they don't forget you. I've had people offer me jobs, and a year and a half later, they reached back out with something different because it was more in line with what I was originally asking. They put a note in their CRM and remembered me. The kinder you are to people and the more you tolerate the BS things they do, the more likely you are to lay those foundations and plant seeds of goodwill that will yield beautiful results in the future. This book encourages longitudinal thinking in negotiations, always maintaining your integrity and fairness. Don't flip out on people because someone offended you or ghosted you. Everyone deals with this. Just let it go.
Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics. His book introduced System 1 and System 2 thinking. You need to be able to think more rationally and slow down your thought process to make intelligent decisions, like longitudinal career decisions. System 1 is fast and intuitive but can be wrought with bias. Three things he expressed for negotiation: anchoring bias, where the first number you put out heavily influences the outcome; loss aversion, where people fear losses more than they value gains; and framing. How do you frame your value and the opportunity? If you've ever bought tickets from a scalper, one of the first things they ask is, 'Why are you selling the tickets?' They want you to say out loud that you don't need it, like 'my wife couldn't come.' As soon as you say that, they know you don't need it, and you'll accept $10 or $20 instead of $100. It's a technique used at pawn shops too. They determine if you're desperate, and if you are, they give you less money. We need to be confident, cool, and clear in our value, and understand how to articulate it without showing our hand too much.
'Negotiation Genius' emphasizes preparation and emotional intelligence. It argues that negotiation is a process of influence rather than conflict. It shouldn't be combative. You need to look at it as trying to track to the middle and find common ground, making sure you get taken care of and I get taken care of. Interest-based negotiation seeks to align both parties' deeper needs rather than just positions. It encourages the use of MESOs, multiple equivalent simultaneous offers. We used to call this the choice between two or three yeses. When people try to set up a meeting, they often say, 'Would you have any time next week?' That's a silly, wasteful query. Instead, say, 'On Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I have 8 a.m. to noon open. If we need to touch base for 30 minutes,' you're giving them a wide open bunch of opportunities to say yes. You get a higher likelihood of acceptance when you give someone several options to choose from.
Focus on cultural differences. This is really important being that this is an international conference. The Japanese do not negotiate the same way as people in North America. We don't negotiate the same way as folks from India or China. In North America or Latin America, we can be more open emotionally, whereas Scandinavian and Nordic countries are more neutral and don't show their feelings. Sometimes folks are more animated, sometimes people are afraid to offend others, which happens a lot in India, so they don't tell you exactly what's going on. You need to know where you are and who you're negotiating with. If you're doing international work, you need to know how those people operate and respect the culture. I saw something recently about Japan: when you go to a meeting and someone hands you their business card, you're supposed to look at it, reflect upon it, and put it down with respect. In America, we just throw it in a folder or put it in our pocket without looking at it. All those things we do commonly here are considered raging disrespect there.
Chris Do, I don't always agree with him on some things, but he's built a big name teaching people how to freelance and contract. He's a big proponent of negotiation scripts. You need to have a script ready, the conversation laid out with possible outcomes, and risk mitigate what it would look like if it went left versus right. He's big on value-based pricing. If you have 20 or 30 years of experience, you can do value-based pricing. But if you have five or six years, you'll be working at the behest of whatever the company is willing to pay hourly. You might be able to negotiate a few dollars more, but basically that stuff is set by what they're willing to pay. Sometimes it's market stuff, sometimes they're being cheap after a reduction in force and hiring people back at 20% less. You need to know the difference between when to do that and who can get away with it.
Let's understand power in communication. Sources of power in negotiation: legitimate power is derived from an individual's formal authority or role within an organization, like a CEO, VP, or director. A lot of people tend to lean towards the idea that everyone is the same in business and life, but the truth is it's not true. Most businesses function on a caste system or feudalism. We don't like it, but it's true. We need to know how to play that game, adapt to it, and respect those layers of power above us. If you don't, you'll get trampled on and always be at the bottom of the pyramid crying about what the people at the top have. It is a pyramid, not a continuum. Expert power comes from specialized knowledge, skills, or credentials. Plenty of people don't have a degree but know a lot and have value. Henry Ford dropped out of seventh grade. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both dropped out of college. All three have tremendous power and influence on the world but didn't have formal power. They had expert-level power. Informational power is what librarians have. People who are keepers of data or have strategic knowledge tend to hoard and gatekeep that stuff because it has a lot to do with their perceived value and power. You need to understand when that's happening and what you can do to address it. Referent power is built on trust, credibility, and your personal brand.
Your reputation. I am who I say I am. If you go read what I don't know, 18 people say about me on LinkedIn, it's true. If a bunch of people who you've worked with say you're a jackass and you're difficult to work with, it might be true. If people say that you're kickass and you know what you're doing and you provide a lot of value and you really did them right, then you get a lot out of that trust and credibility from your personal brand and your reputation. I get all of my work from email or LinkedIn. I don't go hunt and peck for it. It comes into my inbox and they'll say something like, 'Hey, I saw your podcast with Debbie Levit or I saw that you wrote this really long post or this really cool article about standing up a journey ops team and I want you to come do that for me.' So I get a lot of work from that. That's reference power, reward power, the ability to offer incentives and rewards or change outcomes for others. This is people that work in HR, people who dole out bonuses, title bumps, things like that. This is especially prevalent in the military. But that's what reward power is.
Communication techniques for in-person negotiations. Active listening. It's really important to show that you're being attentive, to make that eye contact. Remember what I said: your upper torso is visible, your hands are visible, your eyes are visible. Some people who are neurodivergent and on the spectrum tend to struggle with this, but there are lots of things you can do to remain focused. You can control your breathing. But you need to look people in the eye. It's hard for some of us, but you have to do it. When people are sharing something traumatic or concerning, you need to do the third box mirror. You need to nod and show that you're acknowledging those things and that you understand them. You can say a whole lot with your eyes and your facial expressions. Open-ended questions allow people to tell you stories, to elaborate on things. When you do that, you can pick up information, and that's good for you. You can turn around and summarize and use that information to help garner a better position, a better salary. I know a lot of this is going to sound almost manipulative, and in a way it kind of is, but this is just how things work. When we do these better, we make more money and we can thrive.
Mirroring. What is mirroring? Mirroring is basically if somebody has a more aggressive tone or they're more animated or excitable, typically if you pull back and withdraw into your shell, that's not going to be a good fit and they're going to end the interview or the negotiation. This happened to me recently. I got on a call with this guy, and I'm not joking, I thought he was on drugs or just jacked up on espresso. He was just off the rails. I was in a really peaceful, calm mood. I had meditated that morning and had just come inside from walking my dogs. I was like, 'I got to go talk to this guy about service design work.' He was lit up like a Christmas tree on the Fourth of July. I felt myself retracting, but then I started to say, 'That's really exciting. I had a project like that too.' I started to ramp up my voice and energy to halfway meet his. The interview and conversation took a wildly positive change at that moment. So remember, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. If someone's quiet and demure, match that energy.
Summarizing. This is really great. After meetings, interviews, and conversations with clients, we have the ability to click an AI button and translate and look at some themes of our conversation and get a full translation. This is absolutely revolutionary in the last four years. But you always want to restate. Remember what I said: when you're asking those open questions and getting that information, it's almost like qualitative ethnography or interviewing. When you get those key points—when they start talking about their kids, where they went to school, the big rocks they're moving at their organization and the strategies they're dealing with at work—you can pull from those things and craft excellent responses to relate to them. Typically, I like to map folks and stakeholders beforehand. I do some secret mapping, like rough personas. I'll go look at their social media, their LinkedIn, and see where we've had alignment before. Many years ago, I worked at Macy's, Bines, and Bloomingdale's, and so did Debbie. One of the first times we talked, I brought that up because we had both been in a very similar retail environment.
Communication techniques for virtual negotiations. Similar to what we just said: clear agenda setting. If you don't know what PAL is, PAL is purpose, agenda, and length. If you are conducting meetings, sending meetings, or attending meetings and it doesn't have a purpose or an agenda, I would decline and ask. You want to know what the meeting is about so you can prepare. You want to know the agenda so you can have your thoughts laid out and ready to roll in your mind or your notes, so you sound smart. You can summarize those things with action items. 'These are my action items. We discussed X, Y, and Z. I'm going to get you these files, send you these artifacts, spruce up my portfolio, and give you the password by end of day tomorrow.' Make sure you've established your agenda and clearly set those goals before the meeting. Sometimes when you're interviewing or about to talk to a potential client, they'll say, 'You're going to meet with the team.' Well, who the hell is the team? I want to know who I'm going to speak with. Can you please give me a list of the folks who are going to be there? Because sometimes they're not all on the call, and you'll drop into a meeting with a tag team of five people. You're caught off guard. For people who are neurodivergent, on the spectrum, or have ADHD, this is stressful. It's very concerning. We don't like things like that. That's how we get sent into tailspins and have meltdowns.
Maintaining engagement. Use interactive tools like polls and visual aids. If you've been going to this conference with Debbie, you've seen a lot of interactive tools, polls, visual aids, artifacts, PowerPoint. I do a lot of journey mapping and blueprints, a lot of service design. I'm always sharing different types of visuals. Those are very important when you're trying to captivate people and keep their attention. Non-verbal cues. Monitor tone. Monitor people. Sometimes people won't say anything negative, but they'll roll their eyes or look off. When you start talking about empathy and dignity with a bunch of technicals, like developers, you can tell in their mind they're yawning at you. Be mindful of those non-verbal cues. Sometimes people don't say anything, but they look away, look disinterested, look down at their phone. Make sure to get their engagement back by saying their names. Repeat people's names. Follow-up documentation. This is your action items. Summarize the key points of the meeting, email, or interview. Make sure to reach back out: 'Thanks for your time today. Those two things I said I would get to you, I'll get them to you by end of day.' Be your word. Always deliver.
By applying all those negotiation principles and frameworks, we can navigate complex negotiations effectively, secure better compensation, resources, and opportunities. It's a fundamental aspect of organizational dynamics and plays a critical role in employee relationships, contracting relationships, job roles, and interactions with your supervisor, co-supervisors, co-workers, and human resources. I'm kind of bouncing around between full-time, contractors, consulting, everybody. We'll get a little more pointed in a second.
The phases and factors of negotiation. Phases of a negotiation: first, you prepare and plan. You identify objectives, understand the interest of all parties. It's funny, I do strategy for a living and I always harp on SWOT analysis. I make fun of it—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities—but guess what? They're absolutely wonderful. A SWOT analysis is wonderful for your vocational endeavors. What are the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities about this specific job, about you pivoting from UX to product design, from UX to being a PM, from a research role to design ops? You need to have that plan laid out. You need to know what's good and bad about those decisions and how you can make better decisions based on those things. I'm recommending a SWOT analysis for your career or your next job-seeking endeavor. Definition of ground rules: establishing frameworks and protocols for the negotiation, including timelines and procedures. Make sure that's all very clear to both parties. Clarification and justification: share your perspectives, provide explanations, substantiate your position to ensure mutual understanding. Be very clear but very firm. Bargaining and problem solving: engage in discussion to reconcile differences, explore healthy alternatives. Conflict is necessary. It's inevitable, and healthy conflict is great for work, design, innovation, and negotiations. If it's toxic or negative, then of course it's not. But healthy conflict and a little push-pull is necessary. Sometimes that's what people fear most about negotiations. There's a lot of research around women being concerned about that, about how they're perceived and viewed, about being perceived as difficult instead of assertive. We all know about these biases. We can't control what other people do, but we can control how we respond. Closure and implementation: always finalize your agreement, outline terms. This is when you start doing your SLAs and all those agreements, finalizing what you're going to do or how the job is moving forward. We'll get deeper into that in a second, but basically, you'll have these five phases almost always.
Make them come to you. Like I said before, I don't go out applying for hundreds of jobs. I know some people do, but I'm going to push back on why you're doing that. That's not wise. When your opportunities come into your inbox, you get as much as 10 to 30% more. Recruiters and hiring managers pay more for people that they seek out. They're looking for that purple squirrel. They know how much they're going to pay. If you've never heard the term 'purple squirrel,' it's like a unicorn—a really unique person who is a perfect fit. If the job description says you need 10 years of healthcare experience or 10 years of banking or investment experience, you better have that experience. If you don't, you're wasting your time and theirs because you're definitely not going to the top of the pile of 500, 200, or even 50 people. We've got a lot of people clogging up the ATS system because they're not being who they are, telling the truth, and applying for things they're good for. We'll get into that in a second. Be mindful that you have leverage if you understand these things. You want to be the best possible version of yourself. You want to tell it like it is. You want your profile to really express who you are and where you've been, but moreover, where you want to go.
Probably one of the most powerful things that ever happened to me in my career. I told this story on another podcast. I was coming from Miami with all this fashion experience—taking pictures of models, putting them in ads, doing TV spots. I came back to Houston, where I was from, and went to Ogilvy. Ogilvy is one of the biggest agencies in the world. There's a creative director there named Jay, a pretty famous creative director now. He works for Material Design, worked for T3, a bunch of big agencies. I brought him my book to work on the Shell account—oil and gas, petrochemical work. I showed him scantily clad women in bathing suits, camisoles, bare midriffs—all these sexy models because that's what I did. He said, 'Do you want to do more of this work or the kind of work here in Houston? What's here is healthcare, oil and gas, petrochemical, environmental stuff. You need to look like that animal if you want that work.' I was broke, a single parent, and needed money. I said, 'I want whatever is going on here.' He said, 'You need to go retool your portfolio to look exactly like what you intend to be and the kind of work you want to get.' That was probably the best information and the best letdown I ever had. He didn't hire me, but he gave me something far better than a job—that gold in the form of wisdom. I went back and tweaked my portfolio. Within 8 to 10 months, I was making a high hourly, working for other agencies, starting to make a name for myself. It changed within less than a year.
Gender differences in negotiation. We just finished talking about this a little bit. There's lots of research on this. Harvard has done tons of research. Men are generally more likely to initiate negotiations compared to women, which can impact career advancement and salary progression. I'd like to say to any men on the call, if you're in positions of power, if you are a hiring manager, know that this happens and that women don't get a fair shake. Encourage them to come out of their shell and negotiate. I have given several women more money than they asked because they were asking for too little. I continue to mentor several women to this day, five to be exact, and I think a couple of them are actually on the call. Economic outcomes: men often achieve better economic results in negotiations than women. This is true. Sometimes it's because of aggression, assertiveness, or because women are concerned about how they're going to be perceived, about backlash. It's a fact in this business, especially in technology, that an assertive woman who speaks her mind will be perceived as something negative, antisocial, but a man can do the same thing and get different results, especially from a man. Ironically, when women get into positions of power, they can be mean-spirited and difficult with younger women. There's lots of research on that. They can also do the same thing to younger men. It's important to understand power dynamics. Yes, gender comes into play. Let's not avoid these issues. Let's talk about them, embrace the bias, look at what's going on, and try to do something better, be more conscious about how we do this stuff, and how we encourage men and women to show up at work and support one another.
I could probably do 10 slides on gender and negotiation. Applying consulting, freelancing, and contracting—this is where we're going to get into. All you freelancers, contractors, and people starting your own business, this is where it gets interesting. People leave jobs for specific reasons: a bad leader, bad manager, bad CEO. You get fed up and need to leave. Stagnation—you need growth, you're not being mentored, not learning, being stifled, in some cases held down and treated like a donkey. Once certain types of people realize how good you are, they just keep dumping on your head and overwork the hell out of you. You'll be working 65 hours a week while another jackass phones it in, working 30 hours, making the same money. Understand when that's happening. Don't cry about it. You can raise your hand, but trust me, it's highly likely they won't do anything, and you'll get put on a PIP or put on ice. Beware when that happens—it's probably time for you to go. Know when it's time to go. Read those social signs and cues. Know when you're loved, know when you're not. You're stretched too thin and being someone you're not. Focus on core competencies. That's why I showed those personality indicators and creative assessments earlier. There are a lot of people doing work they shouldn't be doing. Failed technicals in our business—people not good at writing code pretending to be researchers and designers, doing a terrible job, abusing researchers and designers. There are a lot of people with a certain background, linears pretending to be innovators, mathematically or linear inclined trying to be creatives and terrible at it. That goes back to the initial slide: know who you are. Go do those things. It will give you an excellent picture of who you are and what you should be doing. It will make you feel good because it gives you direction and purpose. When you look at the breakdown, you'll realize you always knew this, and now you have verification from a scientific instrument telling you that you are more this or that and should be doing certain types of work you're not doing and not fulfilled.
The very last one is forced RTO—return to office. You work remotely, and they're trying to let people go in a way that leaves them off the hook for any responsibility to pay you. They'll say, 'Everybody's got to return to office,' and they'll get a giant wave of people who quit. Then they'll hire back all those same roles for 25% less salary and allow them to be remote. I'm seeing that happen a lot lately. Again, quoting myself: the problem with third-party recruiters is they say they serve you, but when speaking to the business, they say they serve the business. Who they really serve is themselves and their own commissions. Knowing this, you need to make it easy for them to serve you and represent you.
Job descriptions and features like salary, title requirements, and activities are very misleading. Sometimes these job descriptions are absolute BS. They will put five different roles mixed up into one job description. I'm sure every single one of you has endured this. When you interview, ask what you'll actually do in your day-to-day. Clarify what happens in this role weekly, monthly, annually. What are the expectations? What will you want to see from me in the first 90 days? Clarify all that stuff whether you're contracting, freelancing, or a full-time employee. It's great if you can get it in writing. Don't be afraid to negotiate and cover your own ass. When you go to ask for a raise or negotiate a better salary, title bump, you have that information. You can say, 'You originally asked me to do X, Y, and Z, and I'm doing XYZ, PDQ, and an element OP in addition.' Once you can prove that on paper, it's very powerful leverage. Don't be afraid to negotiate and bargain. Don't be afraid to mix it up. The more you do it, the more you practice—I'm going to show you a great way to practice—the better you'll get and the more money you'll make.
You also need to consider the company when you're going to work somewhere. Someone who's a mutual friend of Debbie and I's, about eight months or a year ago, was doing a contract and being paid a certain amount. Let's say he was making $100 an hour. He was really happy, but it was a 90-day or six-month thing winding up. He said, 'I just got this offer from Google.' He was working at a no-name brand company, making decent money, but it was temporal. He was getting an offer from Google for much less. He wasn't sure he wanted to do it. I said, 'You definitely want to do it. Here's why: you want that big brand energy, that big logo. When you have Google on your resume, it carries a lot of weight. There's a big perception that you're big-time if you work at a famous company. I realize a lot of them are unethical, and I wouldn't work for most. I've worked for Google and Amazon, but I would never touch Meta. He didn't want to take the less money for Google, and I was trying to convince him he needed to. I don't remember if he did, but I sure hope he did. Weigh your options and be tactical. No job's perfect. Before making big decisions, weigh all the tradeoffs. Know what you're getting into. Will there be training? Do they give you an allowance annually to attend conferences or trainings? Do you get reimbursed for going back to school? Do you have a kick-ass 401k? There are a lot of different things that are part of total compensation that could be a sweetener. I don't get too excited about bean bag chairs and free kombucha, but I will definitely get excited if somebody says they have 100% 401k matching from day one. That's something to consider, especially if you're getting into your late 40s or 50s. All those things matter. If they have a couple of dollars less on base pay but are willing to do things like that, if you put $1,000 or $2,000 in every month and they match it 100%, that's great. Think about things like that. Weigh all those options and trade-offs. Again, with the SWOT analysis, strategy over frequency.
The ATS and job hire sites like LinkedIn, Workday filter out your resumes based on associated keywords. Make sure to put all the most important buzzwords for your business, industry, what you do, your skill sets in your profile and resume. You want the ATS to scan that stuff and for you to come up top of mind. Lastly in this section, practice with Google. Google Warm-up is an interview tool that allows you to practice interviewing. You can write an interview with ChatGPT. There are a lot of different things you can do to practice. Google Warm-up gives you instant feedback on your answers and helps you become a more confident speaker. It's a great tool. Table stakes: make sure to be yourself. Don't forget I said refer your friends who are unemployed. If the job's not good for you, when recruiters lowball or won't answer questions, block them. If they won't tell you the company they're recruiting for or the pay rate and keep doing the 'how much do you need' thing, block them immediately. The more you block them, the more they go away. Those people are like cockroaches, and we don't want them in the industry. Create preformatted response emails for copying and pasting. Have a notes program where you've already responded to key things like 'Yes, I have healthcare experience. Yes, I have oil and gas experience. Yes, I have banking and fintech experience.' Have those things ready. I've been in fintech for 15 years and done Bank of America, Capital One, Washington Mutual. If you do that sort of thing, it makes your life a hell of a lot easier and starts to automate some of these things that are taking you a lot of time. Shave off some of that time.
This is really important. What's your hourly, daily, weekly hour strategy and outlook on how you get paid? I look at hours as buckets. If you have a bunch of different services and list out the services and what you're willing to charge for each service, because a lot of people just have one flat rate. They're like, 'I'm $100 an hour no matter what.' Guess what? What if it's just doing a little BS logo, writing some ad copy, or doing some UX writing? You're not going to charge $100 an hour for that. You can, but you won't be competitive. If you have five or six services you're good at, and this one's $50 an hour, this one's $80, this one's $100, this one's $120—the more technical it is, maybe for prototyping, dev management, or product management, you'll charge a lot more than for designing slider art or social media content. If you do all those things and have examples, it makes it easy to look at every single hour on your calendar like a bucket and put some type of dollar in that bucket. Sometimes it'll be $50, sometimes $100, but at the end of the month, you'll have a substantial amount. You also need to make a contract with yourself: how many hours am I willing to work per week? If the average person is willing to work 40 hours, which is really 35 after breaks, and I want to get ahead, I'm willing to work 60 hours a week. What does that look like? Is that eight hours every day or 10 hours for six days? Make a contract with yourself. You can't always stick to it, but it gives you a target.
I have done this and I've said, 'Look, I'm going to work Monday through Saturday and I'm going to be willing to work 10 or 12 hours a day as long as it's something that I love and I'm enjoying.' I'll work long hours to get the paycheck that I want and to be able to have the lifestyle that I want. Always make sure that in that first DM you get the company, the hourly, the salary, and the pay range. This is most important. And these last three bullets are the most important bullets. Be yourself. All recruiters, all hiring managers are looking for that unique purple squirrel. They're looking for the perfect hire for that job. Be who you are. Do not create five different portfolios and resumes. I see this all the time. I see recruiters and hiring managers telling people to create five different portfolios. Do not do that. You want five different responses to different types of work, but don't go create five different portfolios and resumes. Do not call yourself different things. If you're trying to get a job as a high agency IC or you're trying to get a role as a lead designer, but they go to your website and it's called Acme Design and you're the CEO of Acme Design and there's nobody else at the company, you're going to lose people right there. You're going to lose hiring managers. You're going to lose people because there's a huge disconnect. It's like, okay, we're not looking for CEOs of fake companies. We're looking for somebody who's an IC and does this exact work. You need to make it easy for them to do business with you. I'm going to keep saying that. This is probably the most important slide in the whole deck. For your tools, methodologies, and skill sets, you've heard the T-shape thing before. For methodologies, tools, and skill sets, you need to have multiple T's and tools in your tool belt. Your tool belt needs to be deep with tools. But for industries or sectors, you want to focus. You want to be the healthcare guy or gal. You want to be the fintech or banking guy or gal. Why? Because in a time like this when there's massive competition, when things are heavy and saturated, a lot of people on the job market are not looking for these half-ass people that are ambiguous or don't have the specific experience they're looking for. It would take you a decade to start working in healthcare and understand all the nuances and the acronyms and the different types of stuff that goes on in the healthcare industry. It would take you a decade to understand fintech and banking and investments. So if you have that type of experience, really double down on it. Brand yourself, your personal brand. The reason is you just want to be top of mind and you want to bubble up to get that job past all the competition who really doesn't measure up and doesn't meet those minimum job requirements and they're having an identity crisis. You want to know exactly who you are and what you are and what you provide. And if you do that, the right work will find you. They'll come to you. I promise.
This is a bummer of a slide. Embrace change. By 2027, AI automation is going to replace 60 to 70% of specialized skills. So that goes back to what I was just saying. You want lots of skills. You don't want to be a specialized person. If all you do is evaluative and QC engineering and you test buttons and do AB testing, trust me, you are not going to work in the next year or two. Specialization used to mean security. Now, it's a huge risk. 15 years ago, it was cool to just be an evaluative QC engineer or testing person or someone that just does evaluative experience experiments. You cannot do that now. You need to wear more hats. You need to have more T's in your tool belt. Just like I just said, it's like paying dividends and compounded interest for your future. The more skills you add, the more they augment and they are force multipliers of all those other skills. So you need to add different skills intentionally. You need to be playing with tools that people are playing with. Whether that's Replit, Cursor, Lovable, all these tools that people are messing around with, you need to dip your toe in them if you're a designer, if you're a researcher. I know this sucks and this hurts. It hurts me, but you need to be playing around in UserZoom, UserTesting, and dscout because almost every large organization is using that stuff now and they're doing that random crowdsource research. So if you show up and you're like, 'I hate fake personas and I hate random crowdsource research' and that's how they get down, you just talked yourself right out of a job. Just have a line, know what you're willing to do, what you're not willing to do, and make a contract with yourself. There's plenty of stuff I won't do, trust me. The stronger your personal and professional brand is, the less selling and applying you have to do. It comes to you. Let's go over this. This is going to be fun. I love people who say we don't need a portfolio. That researchers and designers and UX designers don't need a portfolio. Everybody needs a portfolio. I don't care what you do. I don't care if you make spice racks. I don't care if you knit and crochet berets. I don't care if you make greeting cards, websites or software or you are an animator or a graphic designer, an illustrator or a writer or a strategy person. You need a portfolio. Everybody has a portfolio. Just about every website is a portfolio. If you know anything at all about UX and you look at that gallery view that has where you select any kind of thing from the top nav and it shows you a bunch of cards four across and infinite scrolling down, that is called a gallery view. It's also called a portfolio view or a grid. It's a portfolio view or gallery and every single website has that. Why? Because they're showcasing their wares. They're showing you what they're selling you. That is a portfolio. Amazon is a portfolio. Etsy is probably the biggest aggregate other than Dribbble and all those. These are aggregates for portfolios. That's what Etsy is. I make belts. I make dog collars. I sew wallets. Those are all portfolios. eBay is a portfolio site. I wanted to show you this because it's kind of hilarious. I've had many different iterations of my portfolio over the years. That one in 1992, I'm not joking, that thing is 6 inches thick and it weighs about 50 pounds. We used to be made to leave those things behind and a creative director or design director would look at the stuff in there. It didn't matter if you did TV, video, whatever. You would print out the screens on a giant storyboard and show the video because you couldn't be guaranteed that the person had a VHS player to look at your reel, so you had to print everything out. I was an animator and an illustrator at the time and I also did a lot of advertising, marketing, branding, positioning. I did a lot of Photoshop photo work. I used to carry that giant massive thing around. Imagine being in Houston in July and it's 112 degrees and you're pulling that thing out of your shitty Nissan pickup truck with no AC. So when people say we don't need portfolios and put all this toxic portfolio culture, please tell them to shut up. I've always had a portfolio. You need one, too. The one on the bottom is a third of the size of the one on top. That was by 1999. We got it down to a third of the size and it only weighed about 10 pounds. After that it was on a CD ROM. After that it was a Flash website. It was all animated. Now my website to the right is what my website looks like now in 2025. So yes, you need a portfolio. Please have a portfolio. It's better if it's personally branded with your name. I don't care if it's a Wix site. I don't care if it's a WordPress site. I don't care if you handcode it. If you do web design, you really should have your own website that you've designed by hand in Webflow or doing your own HTML, CSS, React, whatever. You need a portfolio. That's not debatable.
There are a lot of different presentation methods for your portfolios and for your case studies. The STAR method is probably the most common. What was the situation? Describe the problem statement that you're addressing. Describe the task. What was it that you did? What was the action? What happened? And what was the result? What are those back-end measurements? If you can have them. Let's be really clear. A lot of enterprise level designers and consultants don't get those measurements on the back end. It's okay to say, 'Hey, I just went and did all this kick-ass discovery work and I did all the solutioning and ideation. I did some interviews. I did some personas. I did whatever and it turned into this prototype.' Then show the prototype and just say if they ask, the project got sunsetted, deprecated, it went away. Sometimes interest wanes from leadership and they move on and they do other projects. They get excited about other projects. Sometimes it just fizzles out. Sometimes the funding dries out. Sometimes you get pulled off of that project because it's going downhill and they move you on to something bigger and better. But guess what? You may have just spent six months or a year or two on really great work that never came to fruition. Or it was short-lived. That happens all the time. Don't be afraid to tell that story. All these people telling you that you have to have all this toxic metric theater and that you have to show that you increased the click-through rate or the signups or blah blah blah or else don't show it in your portfolio. It's 100% my entire website is filled with stuff that has no ending, no happy ending on it. And I get lots of work. I'm about to show you how much. There are also many other types of storytelling and devices and frameworks that we use. Simon Sinek's golden circle. What, so what, now what. The Minto pyramid of value. ABT, the and but therefore, and the StoryBrand framework. There are a lot of different ways to tell stories. There are a lot of different ways to do your case studies. Pick one. Go read about these. They're great. They're all useful.
Perspective, goals, and creative visualization. This is really important. A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. And a plan backed by action becomes reality. A lot of us are struggling right now. We're struggling with all of these changes that are going on in the environment, in the zeitgeist of the design community, and it sucks. A lot of this stuff really sucks and I'm with you and I've been there and I've gone through a lot of cycles and I've been really broke in my life and I've been really flush in my life and right now I'm pretty flush. So I really want to share this stuff with you. We can only change our attitude. We can only change our perceptions and how we look at things. We can't change what's going on in the marketplace. We don't have that power. That's not within our locus of control. But what's within our locus of control is how we think and how we feel about ourselves and our self-talk. I have a couple of slides about this. This is from Elizabeth Lindsay. A fantasy equals a goal without a deadline. An objective equals a goal plus a deadline. An intention is a goal plus a deadline plus a plan. That's strategy. Success is goal plus a deadline plus plan plus action. That is execution that turns into progress. Your fulfillment is personal goal plus deadline plus plan plus action. Then you get a sense of accomplishment. You get a sense of doing something and being complete that is fulfilling. Perspective, preparation, and strategy. I've read a whole lot of books: self-help books, psychology books, books about childhood trauma, lots of stuff about neurodivergence and depression. What all of these books basically say are just several things. They basically say the definition of depression and anxiety and stress is the inability to overcome your past that creates depression. Trying to be something that you're not creates depression because you're masking all the time and you're stressing and struggling being something that you're not. Not seeing yourself as having a future, that inability to see yourself as having a future, all of that is depressive. Anxiety is the stress about a future that hasn't occurred yet. It's about stressing out about something that hasn't even happened. We all do this. I want you to make a list of your goals and make sure that they're realistic. I want you to really concern yourself with your self-talk. I'm getting ready to show you one. This is probably the most important slide other than that other slide in the whole deck. We suffer more in imagination than we do in reality. This is someone that I really respect. Her name is Byron Katie and I've read a lot of her stuff. Basically what she says is when we come up with something negative to ourselves, like our boss doesn't like us or I'm not being hired because I'm a woman or I'm not being hired because I'm black or I'm not being hired because AI is taking everybody's jobs. When you start saying these things, you get into a mindset and you get stuck and we start to attract those things to ourselves whether you realize it or not. It's called arguing for your limitations and then your limitations become yours. What you want to do is attract something better and more positive to you. So you need to identify that stressful thought, that thing that you're saying to yourself, like those examples I just gave you. You need to pinpoint that thought and you need to catch yourself and you're going to do this reframing technique. It's one of the most powerful reframing techniques that will change your mindset overnight. You need to apply the four questions. Is it true? Is it true that my boss is always criticizing me? Can I absolutely for sure know it's true? Can I prove it? The answer will almost always be no. 99.99% of the time it'll be no. How do you react when you believe that thought? How does it make you feel? Does it make you feel good or does it make you feel terrible? Does it make you feel negative and dark? Who would you be without that thought in your head? So if your original thought is my boss is always criticizing me and then you do the turnaround, you find the opposite of the original thought and you consider if that could possibly be true. You do the dichotomy thing. You do the exact opposite and say is this possible? Then you find three examples of it. The example is my boss is always criticizing me or my boss doesn't like me. The turnaround number one is I'm always criticizing myself. That's actually the truth. I'm harder on myself than my boss or anybody is. The second turnaround is my boss might not be criticizing me at all. They might just be giving me feedback that's constructive and that's the way they do it. The situational turnaround is my boss might be under a tremendous amount of stress. My boss might have 20 other reports coming to them and this is just how they communicate when they're in a hurry and they really don't mean anything negative by it at all. That original thought was not true. Can you imagine if you didn't do this turnaround and you kept dwelling on that thought? You would start creating static between you and your boss. You would create a rift. You would start speaking to them a certain way. You would start dreading communicating with your boss, having one-on-ones, things like that. You would be doing it because of a lie that you were telling yourself. We all do this. Everyone does it. But you need to be cognizant that you're doing it. This is one of my favorite books ever written. It's called Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain. What she says is you need to write a list out of the things that you want to do and be and your expectations for how much money you want, the house you want to live in, how you want your relationship to be going with your significant other, and what you demand and expect from your job role. You write it down and you repeat it to yourself like a mantra. Then you say out loud with conviction, 'This or something better now manifest for me in total satisfying and harmonious ways for the highest good of all concerned and involved.' When you do this over and over again, magical things start to happen in your life and you start to attract the things that you want and desire most. As long as your conscience is clear, you're going to get those things. It's called the law of attraction. It's in the Bible. It's in the Quran. It's in all the major religions. Trust me. Ancient Judaism called the Kabbalah. It's in the Kabbalah. It's really important that you understand this. We want to not argue for our limitations and then our limitations become ours. We don't want to tell ourselves all these negative things that we're telling ourselves and that we're hearing in the marketplace. Most of them are not true. If they are true, they're just true for that person. They're not true for you. They don't have to be. There are things that we can do, pivots we can make, but the biggest pivot of all is the one that we do with our own mindsets and our own self-talk. You need to love yourself.
I thought about whether or not to even show you this. This is one of the last slides. It's not going to be in the slide that I give you guys. The reason why I'm showing you this is this is my account. This is not my account from my best month ever. It's not my account from five months ago. It's not my account from five years ago. It's my account from seven or eight days ago when I was making this deck. What it basically indicates is that I made $50,000 this month. If you look at those pink dots, those are all my direct deposits. Two of them, the one that says processing in the 521, were actually late and I'm owed $3,600 right now. So actually, I made almost $54,000 this month. I do this every month. My record is in October of 2007. I made $86,000 in three weeks. So when you see these influencers online talking about their monthly recurring revenue and what they're doing is they're regurgitating other people's content. They're selling these classes and they're telling you I made $10,000 and you go look at their stuff and they're basically frauds and they don't do this work. I get paid to do design work and I do it a lot and I'm good at it. I'm only showing you this as social proof because I want you to understand that if you put these things into action and you start attracting these things to you and you start being a different kind of employee, you're going to get a different kind of results. You need to change the way that you look at things so that the things that you look at will change. You can't keep looking at them through the same lens and crying. You can't keep talking online. You have to be something greater than you were yesterday. I'm telling you, it's attainable and you can do it. That is my bank account and you can have that kind of money too.
Frameworks, tools, and templates. This is really important. You're going to need this stuff. I was originally talking to Debbie about what we needed to share, and she was like, 'I sure hope you're going to share some statements of work and stuff like that.' I can share my own and some of how I write them. But I created this particular slide to show you what a freelance contract template looks like, what an NDA looks like, what a master service agreement looks like, a statement of work template, and one of the most important things is this one at the bottom. That's the Sgage negotiation self-assessment. This is so important. If you click on that thing and you take it, it is a kickass document that basically you go through and you fill it out and it shows you where you need to work on and what you need to hone better with regards to your negotiation skills and how good you are at the different parts of negotiation. It's an excellent tool. It's very well respected and it's free and it's in this deck.
These are a lot of helpful links. Six salary negotiation tools. These help you negotiate salaries. That link at the very bottom is tons and tons of links from a post I did for a massive job board article: top 101 websites for remote work. If you're a remote worker, if you live in a strange place like Sardinia and you want to get some work, you need to know where to go get that work and you need to work with people who are cool with people who work remote and they're not hung up on you being stateside in America and they don't say like my friend Joel Bar discovered the other day, 'We're hiring remote workers so long as you're in Texas.' Top 10 sites for gig work. This is just similar to that remote work, but this is for gigs. That's a short-term turnaround. Let's get some in-and-out money. Two weeks, three months, that kind of stuff. Gig work. You can eat on that. Trust me, I've done it. This is a real important slide to me. Eight neurodivergent inclusive job boards. If you struggle with ADHD, with autism, with anything in your neurodivergent, or you have some accessibility issues, I want you to know that I love you. That's what this slide is all about. Go find work and people that appreciate you and appreciate your brain.
That's it. Wow. I don't know why my camera isn't working, but everybody can hear me, right? I'm trying to find the actual meeting. There it is. I have a request for everybody who attended. I can't see how many people are in the meeting. How many people are here, Debbie? About 20. So all 20 of you, thank you so much for attending this and I appreciate this. I'm going to give this deck to Debbie. I don't know if she's putting it on her website or if I need to post it or whatever, but it's going to have all... just email it to me. I'm going to put it on a Google Drive and next week all the attendees are going to get a Google Drive link. What I would ask please is that if you enjoyed yourself today, if you liked any of these speakers, if you liked my talk specifically, say something nice about it on LinkedIn. I'm not an influencer. I'm not looking to hustle people out of money. I just told you I'm donating the money for this to something that's important to me. But I do appreciate the public pats on the back because I get tired of arguing with a lot of people that I think are crazy and frauds online.
Now Thomas, we are technically out of time, but you've got three questions in the Q&A. So hopefully you can give us some short answers and then we'll take a long break. The first question is from Ralita. Unfortunately she asked the question a half hour ago. It's a little time-sensitive. She said, 'You mentioned a framework that wasn't in the slides that was useful to find out how creative someone is. What was that framework?'
The Riseman, the RDCA. RDCA, the Riseman Diagnostic Creative Assessment.
Excellent. Thank you. And we got two questions from good friend Michelle Pacran. Her first one is, 'What's your advice for leadership level folks trying to get IC roles and being told BS like you're too senior to do IC work?'
