Why I don’t teach every UX topic and & why my focus is your UX superpower

[00:00:00]

Teaser

—

One of the things I admire the most about Steve Jobs was his ability to stay focused and say no. Steve Jobs knew that if he had said yes to every idea that people brought to him, he and Apple would not have been great at anything, but by saying no to many ideas, opportunities, et cetera, it allowed him and Apple to be great at what Apple is great at.

That is a mindset that I really take very, very seriously in my own career and my own business. And when it comes to my business, my UX job search accelerator, career strategy lab, I. I say no to so many things because I’m laser focused on one thing, making career strategy lab the best possible resource for UX and product people to get hired and increase their salaries.

And so I wanna share more about this focus and this [00:01:00] mindset and how I see other UX career coaches. Maybe not adopting this mindset and what happens as a result of that. So let’s dive in.

Intro: Hey, I’m Sarah Doty, a user researcher and product designer with 20 years of experience. In 2017, I noticed something a little ironic. UX and product people, despite being great at designing experiences for other people, often struggle to design their own careers. That’s why I created Career Strategy Lab and this podcast to help you navigate your UX job search, grow in your current role, and avoid skill and salary plateaus all in a chill and BS free way.

So whether you’re. Stuck in your job search or wondering what’s next in your UX career. You are in the right place.

Main Episode

—

Steve Jobs super focused and was not shy about saying no to many things and. He said no because he [00:02:00] knew that if he said yes to everything, apple wouldn’t be great at anything. And he and the team had a vision of focusing on consumer desktop, kind of professional desktop, eventually the laptop, et cetera.

And this is why in the late nineties. He famously cut a large percent of the company’s product lines, including printers and PDAs and peripherals and all these things because he knew that if they were trying to make a printer and a PDA and everything else, the quality of that desktop computer at the time, and then the laptop would not be very good.

It would be compromised because the time, the energy, the money would be spread too thin and that focus, because Steve Jobs was not shy about saying no. That focus led to iconic breakthroughs, right? Maybe even your iPhone that you’re listening to this podcast on right now, [00:03:00] your computer, et cetera.

But who knows if that would’ve happened, if Steve Jobs had said yes to everything. And in the same way, you need to be very intentional about what you say yes to in your career, right? How you spend your time, how you spend your energy, et cetera. Because if you say yes to everything, how are you gonna be great at all of those things, right?

It’s, it’s why I am such a huge fan of. Encouraging you to invest your time and energy in timeless skills and not trendy skills, because eventually trendy skills or trendy software may not exist. But if you invest your time and energy in timeless things, then those skills will be with you for many, many years to come.

Now, when it comes to my own career. I wanna share a little bit more about how I apply this idea of saying no and [00:04:00] focus to what I do. So specifically with Career Strategy Lab, one of the things that I notice is that many other people that do UX career coaching, frankly I don’t know how they do everything they say they do, because some of them have full-time jobs.

Some of them teach at universities or colleges. Some of them are doing brand sponsorships, sponsored videos, sponsored emails. Some of them have courses on other topics in addition to ux, career related things like AI or research or who knows what. And I just think to myself, how in the world can you be delivering on the UX career coaching that you supposedly provide?

And have the research course, the stakeholder course, the AI course, do the branded emails and have a full-time job and or teach at a university, right? I honestly have no idea and I’m not gonna call people out. That’s not my style. But I will say that anecdotally, know some of these people are not [00:05:00] delivering because when people join Career Strategy Lab, , they fill out a little form and one of the questions we ask them is.

Oh, hey, did you consider doing anyone else’s UX career coaching? Or did you previously do anyone else’s UX career coaching or courses or whatever? And we have definitely had people tell us they’ve taken other people’s courses, programs, et cetera, and frankly been let down, and I’m summarizing here, but one of the themes is that they only scratch the surface and that.

They were not present in their community if, if community was a component of said offering, right. And of course I don’t know this for sure ’cause I’m not in everyone else’s courses and communities, et cetera, but the math kind of maths, right? If you are doing five, [00:06:00] seven other things, how can you really also be great at.

All of those things. I, I just don’t think it adds up. And so that’s why I am really intentional about what I say yes to. And I, for example, have been asked multiple times to create a UX bootcamp. Why would I do that? That is a massive amount of work. And what is the trade off? It’s going to distract me from what I do to advance my own business of.

My UX job search accelerator, career strategy lab, and be present for the people who have trusted me and joined that program, right? Brand sponsorships. I get brand sponsorship opportunities all the time, but I know that. Those brand sponsorship videos don’t take like 30 minutes. It’s days or weeks and back and forth and email and phone calls [00:07:00] and all this stuff, and I just think, ah, that sounds like a nightmare.

I would rather spend my time or energy investing in my own business and redesigning parts of the experience inside Career Strategy Lab. Then making some little sponsored video for like 500 or $5,000, right? Because everything I say yes to, it means I’m saying no to other things, and I’m so laser focused on delivering the best experience possible inside career strategy lab that, and if my team were here, they would say, I’m really ruthless about saying no to many ideas, including my own ideas.

I might have an idea on a Monday, and I think we’re gonna roll with it, and then by Friday I realize, wait a second, this does not pass the Steve Jobs test. Right? I know that it’s an interesting idea, but if I zoom out and look at the big picture, I realize, no, that idea means we’re not gonna do these [00:08:00] three other things over here.

An important lesson here around this idea of focus is being comfortable not being everything to everyone. And I know that might seem counterintuitive, but I personally don’t wanna be everything to everyone, right? And I’m not shy to admit if someone asks me about design systems, for example.

I’m not the design systems person, right? I’m gonna go tell them to learn from someone else. If they want me to teach a workshop on UX writing, for example, I’m not gonna teach that workshop ’cause I’m not an expert on that. Now, do I know UX writing and content strategy, and do I do it all day long for my own business?

Absolutely. But I also know that I have this North star of being the best possible source for. Resources, curriculum, community, et cetera, related to advancing your UX career. [00:09:00] So if I say yes to all of a sudden learning everything there is to learn about design systems, that is going to take away from my North Star goal, right?

And so I think. It’s really important to not let your ego take over and fall into this trap of trying to be everything to everyone and being okay saying, you know what? I’m not the person for that topic, but maybe you should go talk to these three other people, or something like that. Right? Because I know it could be easy to let your ego get in the way, or if it’s a brand, for example, in my case that wants to pay me 500 or $5,000 to make some video.

I could think, oh wow, that’s a lot of money. But then I also think, wait a second, if I do this other activity in my business, that could help a lot of people, or that could generate way more than $5,000, you know, in the long term. So saying no and having that focus [00:10:00] filter helps really put into perspective how I spend my time and energy and prevents me.

From going down that path of wanting to be everything to everyone, but that’s never gonna happen because I don’t wanna do that. another thing I wanna point out about this idea of focus, whether it’s Apple or me, is that specialization, really builds trust and results, right? And because I’m not an expert at everything.

It means I have gone deep in a lot of things, and this is not to brag, but it’s, it’s very similar to Apple, right? Like Apple was not making printers, right? They left that up to like HP for example. But Apple really nailed the desktop and they really nailed the laptop. Would they have nailed the laptop and the desktop if they also made printers and a bunch of other stuff?

Probably not. And in the same way. I really [00:11:00] believe that in order for my team and I to be the best possible experts at helping people advance their careers, navigate their job search, et cetera, we need to say no to other things. And in doing so, we are able to continue to build our very deep and robust knowledge around these topics, and we’re able to serve more people.

As a result, we’re able to see what works, what doesn’t work, et cetera. Right. But we can’t do that if we’re also trying to teach a course about design systems and UX writing and make a UX bootcamp and make videos for everyone that wants to sponsor videos with us. Right.

So I thought it would just be interesting to give you some examples of how I have said no to other opportunities that have come my way in the past, I don’t know, six months or so, and what I chose to do with my [00:12:00] time and energy instead. I would say about five months ago, I had a brand come to me. You’ve all heard of the brand, and they wanted to do a partnership together and they weren’t really sure what they wanted.

And so I thought, I’ll entertain this idea. And then after, I believe it was three or four phone calls and many more emails than that, I realized. That wasn’t gonna work, and they kinda lied about their budget and it was really $500, which was a total waste of my time. So when I said no to that, what did I do instead?

One of the things I did was put into motion a migration from our previous curriculum platform to a new platform so that our community and our curriculum are now all in the same place, which is amazing for the experience, right. Pretty terrible to have to log into two [00:13:00] platforms, but that’s how it was set up for a while.

Now everything is in one place though, but I would not have been able to have everything all in one place. Now, if I’d also been making these little videos for this brand right, it would’ve delayed the launch and migration of our curriculum from this old platform. To now the new platform where the curriculum and the community all live together.

I wanna just kind of go down this path a little further because I think this example also highlights like the domino effect of progress and saying No. And so let’s keep rolling with this idea. So because I said yes to these brand partnerships a couple of months ago. We migrated the curriculum, got it into the same platform as the community, but guess what?

That unlocked, that unlocked our ability to, how shall we say this, launch, I guess, some [00:14:00] new AI tools inside the career strategy lab experience because. The curriculum was now inside this platform. And we are now able to deploy these AI tools. So as an example, so we’re not being abstract. Like if you’re in career strategy lab and you can’t remember where a lesson is, you can just go to the AI tool.

We call it sage, like sage advice. And you can just go to Sage and be like, where’s that lesson where Sarah had the templates and. Scripts for how to cold DM or message hiring managers. And then SAGE is like, oh, here it is. Right? Or Hey, Sage, like I’m a UX researcher with 10 years of experience in Seattle.

Are there any other people in Career Strategy Lab with similar background to me? And then Sage is like, oh yeah, here’s five people who’ve worked in UX research from Seattle with at least five years of experience. Great, but we could not do that. With the prior [00:15:00] setup of the curriculum being in this other platform.

Now let’s continue with the domino effect of saying no. So because we said no to the sponsorships, we got everything in one place. We launched these AI tools now, and now it’s gonna happen. the AI tool, Sage has been only live for like two weeks, but already we’re hearing from people. I’m able to move faster because I can find things more quickly.

I am able to find other members similar to me and spark relationships with them, and I’m able to get feedback at 11 o’clock at night when I know the Career Strategy Lab team isn’t available. But I sure as anything can ask Sage. Hey, Sage. Here are three bullet points from my resume. What could I do to improve them?

Right? Or here’s some texts from my portfolio. How can I make it 10% better? That is the power of saying no. But those three things would not be able to have happened if I was off making [00:16:00] workshops and courses about AI and creating a bootcamp and teaching about user research and stakeholder management and writing a book and a million other things, right?

So. I thought that example would be helpful for you to get a glimpse of how I say no and remain focused, because when I say no, I think about, okay, if I say no to this, that’s gonna unlock this and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And it allows me to not get distracted by, and maybe you’ve heard this phrase, but by the idea of shiny objects, right?

Because. Sure. If some company wants me to create a UX bootcamp and pay me money, that could be a shiny object. The brand that wants me to make some videos for $5,000, that could be a shiny object. But when I stop and think about what are my long-term goals and what am I not gonna do if I say yes to [00:17:00] this other thing?

That helps the no be a lot easier to say. And side note, no is a complete sentence. You don’t have to to tell people why. You can just say, no, I’m not interested. I actually have a saved reply in my email so that when I receive inquiries to do partnerships or content or whatever, I just type a few little letters, shortcuts.

And it essentially says, thanks for considering me for this opportunity. I’m not interested. Period. And that’s it, right? So just remember, you don’t need to justify or explain in, you know, great detail why you are saying no to some things. No is no very simple. Right? Alright, so Steve Jobs power of focus saying No, what are you saying yes to if you say no to things or what are you not [00:18:00] doing?

’cause you say yes to other things, right? I want you to think about number one, where in your career do you need to say no? In other words, where in your career do you maybe need to narrow your focus? Are you trying to be everything to everyone? Are you trying to learn every single skill and software and trendy new thing that LinkedIn design land tells you you need to learn?

Right? Question number two. If you are currently seeking out UX career coaching, I would challenge you to think about, okay. What else does this person have going on? Right? Are they also doing brand partnerships and doing sponsored videos and sponsored emails and doing AI courses, and speaking at conferences and making courses on other topics?

What might that mean for their level and depth of [00:19:00] knowledge when it comes to getting hired in ux? And what does that mean in terms of the amount of time that they might have to give you? I don’t know, but something to think about. Alright, and number three, can you think of a time in your career when you regretted.

Not saying no to something, right? I think this one’s important because I sure as heck have definitely said yes to things that I should not have said yes to. And then when I’m doing that thing, I’m like resenting it and I’m so mad at myself because I’m thinking of all the other things that I could be doing that are way more valuable than that shiny object that I decided to say yes to.

So that’s our little lesson for today. The power of no, the trade off. When we say yes to things, what are we saying no to? And the ripple [00:20:00] effect that that can have in our, in my case business. But you’re smart. You can apply that to your career also. So. That is all for today. If you wanna learn more about the UX career coaching, I do inside my UX job search accelerator Career strategy lab.

Whether you have 20 years of experience, 15 years of experience, one year of experience, I would love to tell you more about it. Your first step would just be to go to career strategy lab.com/hired. You can learn more or shoot me a DM on LinkedIn. That’s where I’m most active. So you can find me on LinkedIn quite easily, and it will be in the show notes below.

All right, that’s all I have for you today. I will see you next time.

Outro: Thanks so much for listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. Now make sure to follow so you don’t miss an episode, and you can check out all of our episodes@careerstrategylab.com slash podcasts now to learn more about how to [00:21:00] apply UX and product strategy to advancing your career. Whether that means leveling up in your current role, getting a new role, getting freelance work, or just being ready for the unexpected, then I invite you to watch my free UX job search workshop@careerstrategylab.com slash hired.

And please feel free to send me a DM on LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you.

Post Roll: Hey there. Before I go, I wanna speak to you specifically if you’ve applied to 50, 100, 200 or more jobs and you haven’t secured an offer or interviews yet. First of all, I want you to know it’s not your fault. It is challenging out there and learning how to navigate the job, search, interviews, negotiation, et cetera.

It is not something that we are taught. Your boss is too busy to help you. Your friends just give you vague advice. Your family doesn’t really know [00:22:00] how hiring in UX works. This is why I created my career strategy lab, UX job search accelerator. If you are tired of your DIY approach. Not leading to the results you want, then I challenge you to consider.

Maybe it is time for a pivot, just like products pivot. Maybe your job search needs a pivot too. So head over to career strategy lab.com/apply to learn more or have a call with someone on my team or myself so we can answer all of your questions. Hope to talk to you soon.