Let's chat and design
Charles Postiaux reviews UI designs from Mobbin, Notion Mail, and Glassdoor, breaking down what works and what doesn't. He shares his daily routine balancing content, client work, and health, and explains how he learns design through pattern recognition and hands-on Figma redesigns.
Chapters
All right, we are live. Is everything working well? Can you hear me? Is it all good? that. I just finished, uh, a call for a project, so running just a little behind schedule, but I did my best to be on time. How is everyone doing? Hey Josh— oh, Joshua, sorry. Joshua Jumbo. Hope everyone is doing well today, having good weather, working well. Today is really nice. Such a nice weather today. Just unfortunately super windy, like crazy wind. Hey, Sumit. Welcome to the to the live stream or to the show if I can call it that. Hey, I don't know how to pronounce your. I'm sorry, Slotzka Sko. How are you doing? The project is going to be a kind of like a community, community livestream platform, product, app, a lot of things. But yeah, pretty interesting. And I mean, very relevant because I run this little livestream show with not many people, but I can still bring in some of my experience in there. So that could be pretty cool. It's going to last probably 4 or 5 weeks, so we'll see how it goes. My only worry is, you know, can I keep the consistency with making those 3 different videos every week, making the live streams on Wednesday? I think it should be fine, but it's a nice little, let's say, challenge as well. Will be cool, looking forward to that. And yeah, super, super excited about it. I will make some— I will keep working after the live stream. But that's cool. I've got myself a new camera as well, so for the— not this one right now, it's the old one, but there should be— I hope if I can figure it out, there should be a better quality for the livestream, a better quality for the videos as well. So a lot of new things coming up. There's also the video, the reason video on Friday. He's still— we're still working on it, editing it, refining it, but Should be like a nice, nice little 25-minute video. The reason is pretty cool. I don't know if you saw it on like the comments on like the not the comments, the community post. But it's a nice. I don't want to say too much, but it's a I think it's a cool, cool reason. And obviously, the YouTube members will be able to get access to that Figma file. Nice. We need more designer streaming. I agree with you. Unfortunately, some it depends on like the I feel like Twitter is the easiest way for some depending on like. What you work on in the project because of NDA. And Twitter is maybe the easiest way when you do like those short-term maybe projects and you don't have that many restrictive NDAs. But otherwise, it's a, it's a bit tough. Like, I don't— like, I probably cannot share any of the work for a while because the company will be working on those. It's more of a vision project, which is like My favorite thing. It's you can it's very you know wide open, a lot of opportunities, a lot of options, flexibility. The brand is not too like you know developed, so I have a lot of freedom in terms of UI, in terms of branding. So that can be like a really really fun project. But yeah, like I keep wondering the problem I'm always afraid is like you know when you design you need to kind of be in the flow. You need to be focused on what you're working on, and so. It's not always easy to to chat with you guys, make it somewhat entertaining, and then design as well. So it could be a nice little a nice idea maybe. But yeah, for now it's nice to to do that. And it's so cool. I've got so many new members on the on on YouTube as well. We've got Udaya. We've got Gorav. We've got Satya. We've got Komachi was. Who came back. We've got Anand Jain who also came back as a member. So, so many rejoined. A lot of people joined this week, so I'm super, super happy about that, super hyped. So, and I just want to thank them because, you know, like, the ads on the videos don't bring a lot of money, and so that's always nice to like be able to have like a self-sustaining environment and audience that can help with like, you know, paying people for like editing the video. There's also going to be a sponsored video in 2-3 weeks, 3 weeks I think, that we're working on right now. And that's going to be a really cool one as well. It's going to be a really nice redesign video, so I hope you will be there for it and enjoy the video. But yeah, that's super cool. And, uh, We have Chrome here. Oh nice, it works well. And we've got some new design as well. Like, I don't know, I feel like Mobbin is such an easy, an easy platform to like check stuff. Unfortunately they don't sponsor me, they don't sponsor me, but such a cool platform. And oh, that's nice, look at that. Now that's a really smart way to break down signup screens because the problem I see with so many screens is they They're like this where they just stack up a ton of text fields to fill out and you just, you don't want to do that. So when it's just one step like this, it's just super easy and then it looks cool and then it unlocks other things. I feel like that's such an easy way to do it. That's a really clean way. Link has done a great job at it. Nice little navigation tab, very minimal, very few steps on it. Nice button. Oh, the buttons are not aligned with the— I don't think they are. Copy PNG. Yeah, maybe I'm wrong, but are they aligned? They're not. Uh, that is unfortunate. A little mistake here. And I think the padding for this here was Why is it suddenly— the paddings on that is really not good. Like, you can see it's very small here but very big here. So it would have been good to push that a little bit more. But, you know, you do what you can with what you have. Otherwise, really cool. But they're doing some cool work. Maybe that could actually— maybe that could be a video, you know, reviewing this onboarding flow. I mean, I've just done it, so maybe not. It's like the— why would the livestream, you know, like I just saw it on the livestream and I have to watch it again on the YouTube video? It makes no sense. Well, that's cool. I like the— honestly like the interface. Beautiful design. Small, simple, clean. Beautiful colors. I don't know if it's like a yellowish orangey color on the gray, but Feels good. But anyway, like after the livestream, probably I'm going to review some of like work a bit more on the on this new project coming up, or actually that has started. There's a lot of cool opportunities on there. Have you guys been working on like some cool projects recently? Are you are you hyped about some stuff coming up or you're working on? Even if it's, you know, even if it's you have a boring job, a boring design job because that you have to pay the bills and then, and then you have to, you can still do what I always advise is to redesign concepts and post them on socials or post them on your, you know, portfolio and case studies. That's for me, I consider that a, a project as well. It doesn't have to be something you get paid for. Obviously, if you get paid for it and you also learn from it, that's That's just the best, but you cannot always get what you want. Sometimes there's a price to pay. I mean, sometimes always there's a price to pay. But yeah, I hope you're working on some cool stuff. Hey Samir, happy to have you back on the livestream. Today I'm not really sure. I just finished a call for a new project that I'm working on, so I just I really don't know. If you have any— I'm going to look at some designs I think that could be cool for like, I don't know, just a fun little routine to have, chat with you guys, spend a nice little hour together and answer your questions. If you have any questions, I'm always here and happy to help. Later today I'm going to also try to figure out this new camera I bought and see if we can make it work or not. Because the problem with the one I have right now, it's a big— it's not a big problem, it's like a nice problem to have in some ways, where I want to record in 4K. All right, I want to record in 4K so that in this stream it looks nice, and when I make videos and you see my big face on the screen, I want it to not look super pixelated. And so the problem with the camera I have is that after 20-30 minutes, even if it's cold, even if after 30 minutes the camera just overheats and just stops working. And so that's really difficult when I want to make a really decent video that usually takes 2-3 hours to make. And I have to figure out something. And I'm not even talking about when it's summer and it's like 30-40 degrees outside. It's just impossible. So with this new camera, hopefully we will still have really nice, cool quality video, 4K, and I can record for as long as I want. So I need to set that up and see, yeah, figure it out. But it could be really nice so that you can get a lot better quality videos. And I think they would just feel and look better. And ultimately what I show you guys on the designs, what I do, it's like, this is personal brand. This is the brand. If I record something in low quality visuals, that's going to be the brand. That's how people are going to perceive me. And so investing, even if it's— yeah, investing in better quality and nice visuals can really help, I think, improve the brand, even if it's really long-term. But, you know, that could be really, really cool, I think. And I might not be so down to— so hesitant to record like full cam videos, even if they perform a lot worse than the redesigned videos. Although I feel like they're valuable. I don't know if you watch the full cam videos, it's like, you know, The one with how to get higher paying clients, for example. These kind of videos are more strategic, but I feel like people don't really enjoy them so much. Or maybe like a fraction of of you guys enjoy them. Definitely, I think it's not so much about that. I think it's mostly that the redesign get more new viewers and these strategic video they get more of the the casual viewers. Another beautiful. Web app, Sana. And I say beautiful, and then they cut this like that. They should do like a nice little transition, but I mean, it's fine. Look at this beautiful drop shadow on here. It's, it's really nice. And they have a little— oh wait, oh, so the paper is slightly gray, and then they have a little inside shadow as well, inner shadow. Interesting. And look at those buttons. Really nice buttons. Yep, that's my life now. I just appreciate the nice little, nice little buttons. This text is bigger, no? I don't know. It looks super cool. That looks so nice. And I mean, you know, when you have beautiful design like this, I think it's such an amazing Routine to have to look at them, appreciate them, look at the details. If there is something you notice, you can copy it, go into Figma, break it down, and see how it works. And then when you work on projects that require you to be that good, that's just a lot easier and more enjoyable. Like the project I'm going to work on, I'm going to have so much more fun working on it because first of all, it's a vision project. It's like dream project for me. You can just imagine anything you want. Without too many technical limitations, and you have free, almost like carte blanche for the UI and the branding. Is just what more to ask? And I'm paid what I want to be paid, so all good. But that looks super cool. I think there are—I don't know how many people are working on Sana, but I think it's like 200 people, 300 employees, like a massive, massive company. Now look at this. Look how beautiful that is. You need to have some rules around the corners as well because they are super rounded. How do you make it consistent throughout everything? Like, how do you decide on this one versus the other one? It's so nice. And you see just a little difference between the card background and then the card static trigger background is slightly different. The outline is slightly darker and the background is slightly darker. So nice. And you can see, I don't know, I think the outline for the white card is lighter than the one on dark. Look at this beautiful blue color here. Maybe I should have used that for the redesign video dropping Friday at this time on Friday. Exactly this time, whatever time it is. Where are you? Where are you based actually? People watching this right now. If you don't know, I'm based in France, in the northern part of France, where we make champagne, which I don't drink. I don't, I don't drink alcohol. I don't like it. It's a shame for, for me. It's almost like a, a crime. Hungary, nice. So I think you're the first viewer from Hungary. I've never— we've never had people from Hungary before. Nepal, very cool. We are a very, you know, we're like a small tight crew together, but we're all over the world, which is super cool. Nobody can really claim that. I feel like when usually when you make content, it's people are always from like the same The same area, but here is look at us: India, Morocco, Tunisia. Wow, that's so cool! I've only been I've been to Tunisia and I've been to Morocco, but I've never been to India or Nepal, Hungary. But I don't know, Hungary or Hungary. I don't want to pronounce it badly. But yeah, I have other I have new places to visit. That's so nice. Look at us chatting, reviewing designs. What more can we have? It's just the best. Beautiful design. Sana is— oh yeah, look at that. They got the award nomination, award nominee for 2025. Congratulations to them. That's a new chat. You see how different it is? I think that's something interesting to realize also is with so many AI products right now and so many AI chats, so many lookalikes. So how do we make something that looks different, but at the same time that feels like the product we have? That's a difficult exercise sometimes. That's such a nice little interface to have. Yeah, I really like their— the Sana product team has done a really good job. Look at this little floating, floating bubble here. So cool. Unfortunately for me, it's not a good A good product to redesign because it already looks great. But yeah, would be very fun. It would be super, super fun to work on that. Beautiful folders as well. I'm taking note. You should take note as well. Take note of like the cool screens you like. You can always copy them and put them on like a Figma file and keep them there as like your little creative vault. And always great to come back to them later on. Add instructions. That's so nice. The only thing I realized that I feel like is missing in the AI chats is being able to make it interactive. Like if you want to, if I want to, you know, sometimes they tell you we can do this, we can do that, we can do that. And you have to type, yes, I want to do this specific thing you said. But you cannot just click on it. You cannot just have a little arrow and then you can click on it and like, okay, let's do this one. And I think that's going a little backwards in UX experience and just interaction design. So that would be super cool if they started doing that a bit more. You can still hover a text and use that as a reference, but you don't have any interactive experience in the chat. So that's unfortunate. Oh, Glassdoor, they did a redesign not so long ago. I mean, not so long, maybe 3 years ago, 2 years ago. I don't know. I don't think it looks really nice. I feel like they want to be now kind of like a LinkedIn social media app. But I like their, their like, I like the typography they have. Clean typography, beautiful green. It's like not too dark but still readable and bright. I think Claude recently rolled an interactivity in its web chat. I think it's the— isn't it the chart thing when they can now make like visual charts? Because I've tried that and it's pretty cool, and I think it's a— it's going in the right direction of making interactive. But that would be really nice to have a way to, I don't know, just make it a bit more clickable. Oh, and did you also see the news on ChatGPT or OpenAI with their new strategy of going more towards business and enterprise clients rather than being more B2B than B2C? I feel like that's an interesting move, but I guess that's where most of the money is. But if you do that, you lose so much, so many people. But they keep losing money. So how do you survive on that? How do you like, how do you make money if you, if whoever you have right now doesn't bring you money? It's not sustainable. Oh, Notion Mail. I've never— anyone use Notion Mail? I feel like it came out last year. They hyped everybody or like promoted it a lot and It looks really clean, but it reminds me a little bit of Linear in some ways. But I guess they expand the ecosystem, so it's not that bad either. I guess ultimately they want to be your go-to everything app, have the whole ecosystem on that, and then they can upsell you. Oh, that's actually— I like that, like that floating little Email window panel. That looks really cool. And again, beautiful blue. I don't know what I have with the blue colors right now, but I'm really into those like bright, brightish blue. It looks so nice. Most of B2C are on the free plan anyway for ChatGPT. Don't cover it. Yeah, that's the problem with a lot of consumer apps. I feel like it's just People just want free stuff all the time, which I get. Like, I'm on that same boat sometimes. But something I've realized after starting to earn money is that when you pay for stuff, it's a lot more convenient and enjoyable. But yeah, and I feel like it's still like AI is still not like widely used from what I'm seeing people do is they usually use it for like just a little question, a little request, but it's not part of their routine and their, like, the process that they have compared to maybe professionals who use it a lot more. And so I don't know if it's because of that, but yeah, looking at people, like, they will do everything. They will, they will make so much— they will take so much more efforts to get something for free than to actually pay a little bit for it. Like I'm seeing where I live, there used to be places where— oh, there's a neighbor doing some renovation. I hope you don't hear it too much, the little buzz. Oh boy, you can hear it a little. I'm going to try to reduce the mic a little bit. Anyway, where I live, there used to be so many places where you could try to sneak in and park for free, but these people You can literally have a parking spot if you pay $0.70. And so people would go into such difficult lengths to save $0.70. I don't know. For me, it's crazy to think about it this way. But yeah, I think, I don't know, I'm really excited to see how OpenAI and Claude, even Gemini, like Google are going to handle the future of AI and if there's any more players that are going to come in as well. That's a beautiful, uh, beautiful battle that's going to take place. What am I talking about, Viziz? I'm not sure. I talked about AI and I think we talked about like How OpenAI is going to shift from B2C to B2B because probably there is more money to make. And you know, B2C people, they usually don't want to spend money on stuff. They prefer the free version of whatever that is, even if it makes them have to do so much more efforts to get it. And so I said that people living here around where I live, they would go to such extreme lengths to avoid paying 70 cents for like a parking spot. And so, and I like, I don't know, it feels like it's so much nicer when you pay for things, even if it's not a lot of money. It's like, it feels so much better. This is the interactivity feature I talked about. Oh, okay. And we're also reviewing some new design on Mobbin that I think could be cool. We looked at Sana, we look now at Notion Mail. I don't even know if people use Notion Mail, but it looks pretty nice. I feel like it's sometimes so hard when it's like when you have such a moat, like people are so used to your product and they stick to it for so long, like it's really hard to break that pattern. That's why it's so important to have a good onboarding flow. Always connecting it to design, right? But having a good onboarding flow makes it easy to adapt the product, to adopt it, and to reach that activation point. It is so nice because then once they're into the product, they don't really want to switch to something else. They have to restart the whole process. It's like when you buy a new phone. When you buy a new phone, you have to restart the whole process of, okay, I need to import my apps. I need to import my passwords. I need to reconnect to everything, right? You want to keep the same thing or make it easy to switch. Same here too, actually. Yeah, it's I think it's just human nature. That's why like B to C with ChatGPT is just most people universally will prefer to make extra efforts and try to do everything to get it for free rather than pay a little bit of money and. Unlock a much better experience, and I used to think like that too. But yeah, I realized that it's completely worth it sometimes. Obviously, it depends on on a lot of different things. But yeah, what else do we got on the live stream? I mean, on the live stream. Oh yeah, we also reviewed Glassdoor. I think I like their the blue in the logo that they have. I think. Who designed that? Is it Collins? I think Collins redesigned their, their logo and branding. It's okay. I think I really like their typography and the colors, but yeah. And so then after the live stream, I'm going to be busy working again on the, on the project, figuring out some— I think for now it's going to be like understanding the product for this new project that I'm working on and see. I'm going to do the process that I always talk about in the videos, so that's, that's pretty fun. And yeah, it's going to be pretty cool to work on that, get some inspiration, jam some cool little wireframe ideas, get into that flow back, that habit. That could be cool. Now I'm always going to see— oh, that's— yeah, for members, for the pro members, I wanted to record the— I mean, start writing and recording the masterclass, Product Design Masterclass Part 2, but I probably won't have the time for this week, so maybe this week is going to be more of an after-hours video, which will be really cool too. But unfortunately, it won't be the masterclass part 2 yet, so I'm sorry for that. But you will still— the good thing is with the Friday video dropping Friday, you're going to get the, the Figma file with a ton— I went through a ton of like iterations on that, a ton of different colors and like iterations on the screen and layout, but also on like the little design elements. So I think that could be still very valuable, um, yeah, for you guys. Do you think this approach of reviewing other people's work can also help learn UX instead of UI? Yeah, absolutely. Like UX, it depends who you are. For me, I think it's mostly about pattern recognition, where it's like I see something always being there, but it's not just recognizing it, it's also understanding why it's always there. Like, why is the navigation always here? Why is it always into 3 columns, right? Like, you try to figure it out and asking questions, getting hypotheses around why this might happen. Now, you don't know for sure because you don't talk with the designer who's worked on that. But it's still going to help you get into that strategic mindset. And I think strategy is really important when you work on UX. It's good, but also at the same time, you don't want to reinvent the wheel. So if you notice and understand the patterns of most products in a niche or in general, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You don't need to create something brand new and fresh in terms of UX. People like to have the same experience. Again, when you look at this, it's like X, Twitter, right? It's literally the same thing. So if you can understand this logic behind UX, then I think you're pretty much good. Now obviously, for the client, for a presentation, or for a case study, you can dive deeper into the why. And I think that's always great to showcase. But for me, that's how I pretty much— I didn't take any class. I didn't study in college about design. I didn't actually go to college. I didn't take any bootcamp for UI/UX. Actually, I think I did. I took a micro— a nanodegree, something that didn't help at all and that was pretty much useless. But I learned all of that because of taking the time to understand it and to review it and to break it down. Ultimately, the best way to learn all of that is to work under a more senior designer than you who knows a lot more. And that's the best way to do it. But if you cannot do that, then I don't know how much this is or if there are other platforms out there for it, or you could just do it yourself, like connect, create an account to a product and just try it out, take screenshots and break it down yourself. There are so many different ways to do it, but for me, it's a really, really— it's probably the lowest friction habit you can have to get better at it. Oh, that's some nice little graph here. Graph is so complex sometimes, especially in like a grid system. I feel like it's so difficult to make something that looks good, especially when you want to design it. Designing graph— ah, I worked on a data analytics app and designing the— like visualizing the data is so difficult. It's so, so difficult, especially when you want to make it responsive. Yeah, no problem, Gaston, I'm happy to help. But that's a cool little thing. I like the— oh, I like the buttons here. The buttons on the Friday video are going to be a little like this. So if you want to, you know, you could watch the video on Friday, same time as now, but on Friday, that would be really good. And actually, the next video I want to record and that I've already kind of set up and ready for it is going to be like an onboarding flow review, but I want to be a bit more hands-on. Like, past— the past reviews I've done were always me like criticizing a little bit or like seeing what could be better, doing some like light wireframes and stuff like that. Um, I want to make this next one more hands-on where I can redesign because I think you guys liked a little the the hero section redesign. And so I think that I could combine that with an onboarding flow design review. We'll see how it goes. I, yeah, I want to try it out and see if it's interesting or not. What I'm trying to do right now, or like, oh yeah, it's usually like 2 redesign videos and then 1 test video where I'm just trying different ideas because I know they won't perform as well. But there is still maybe a potential or something I can learn from them in terms of data and how viewers react to it. So it could be fun. For me, it's way easier to just design and iterate, but I completely blank out when I have to actually analyze and write stuff down before. Yeah, because I completely get that. You don't really think about it so much. And I think it's something— it's a skill in and of itself. Talking about the design, the strategy, it's another skill that you have to learn and practice and be proactive with. And so I wouldn't necessarily ignore it, or I don't know how you would react to it, but yeah, I would not ignore it or just say, um, I won't do it, it's too difficult. I can think it's a really good exercise. I mean, talking about it and explaining it, strategizing it, it's technically like, you know, painters, sculptors talking about their art. When it's modernism, like, it's like the brand new design, like brand new paintings, for example. It looks weird and interesting at the same time. And the painters are going to give you some like weird, weird advice or like explanation as to what it represents. It can be anything. It can literally be anything. And so that's kind of like how we want to talk about design, but obviously a more grounded, strategic way. Because designing and iterating is fun, and I think it's— you would have to basically have 2 jobs at once, right? Like, we would have to do the job of designing and iterating and the job of managing and explaining stuff and even selling to some extent. Let's redesign YouTube, sir. Redesigning the YouTube platform? I think there's another designer who's already done a video like that. Got any ideas on how I can fix this? Oh, I think I just told you a little bit. If you have any follow-up questions on that, don't hesitate. Yes, the hero section video was amazing. Okay, cool. I'm happy about that because I, based on like the view counts, I think retention is pretty much the same. There's slightly higher retention, but a lot less people like the video, like in terms of like liking the video. Compared to like the redesign video. So, uh, not the redesign video, the how to get higher paying clients. So I was like, did people like it or not? I'm not sure. I didn't do a ton because I didn't have a lot of time to record a video, but I think the potential— like, it has some potential. I think it would be cool. So whether we— it's like a standalone hero redesigned website video Hero section redesign video, or it's part of an onboarding flow redesign, like, critique video. I don't know yet. I think it's worth trying, but could be nice. Love your design sense. Love from Bangladesh. Thank you, Mahfuz. Really appreciate it. It means a lot to me. I'm always like, yeah, like, you're like every kind comment on the live stream or like on the YouTube videos The likes, the members, like all of this, it always makes me super happy and hypes me up to to keep going and improve the content, make better stuff for you. So thank you very much for that. That's so cool. It's going to be a busy week. I don't know for you guys if like it's it's been a busy week or not, but. This week is going to be pretty intense. I have a lot to plan, a lot to work on, but that's nice. I feel like it's nice to rest, you know, like take a week, 2 weeks off when you can, or sometime after if you've worked for like 6, 12 months non-stop, it's good to like take a 2, 3 month break if you can. But having a routine, being able to work Even if it's a hobby, even if you don't have a job or you cannot get one right now, just having that, keeping up with that routine, having movement in your life, even if walking, going to the gym, all of this make your life better. It does sound obvious when I say it like that, but versus sitting on a chair all day or laying on the couch, staying in bed, always watching new videos and TV shows, movies, Movement creates movements, and if you can improve your life this way, if you can like eat healthier, if you can work out, exercise, walk outside, it's going to be so— there's so much potential in there. Obviously, it's not going like the good thing that comes out of it is not something you can expect per se, and it's going to take some time to compound, but so good. So much better. Hello, the members content is great. Thanks, Goraf, I really appreciate it. Thank you for, for joining as well. I did a shout out for all the new members this week, so if you want it, you can rewatch it. I don't know if I butchered your name. I'm, I'm trying my best on that, uh, but yeah, I'm happy, uh, you like the, the content for members. What does your routine look like? I usually don't really wait. I wake up usually when I want to wake up. I don't have like an alarm clock or anything. And then it's like usually in the morning my brain is very slow, so I tend to not do like really hard work, but I try to like do like a routine of like, okay, I'm going to connect with new people online, I'm going to figure out, okay, what's the next video I want to make and like how do I organize the content around it? I'm going to review some of the work the people I work with, like the freelancers I hire, did. I'm going to plan like, okay, I have these meetings to do or I have these tasks to work on today. So it's more of a strategic morning, I would say. And then some light work, admin work. If I have work on a project, I'm going to understand, okay, I'm going to review the feedback. I'm going to review this and I've done and what I want to do today. So that's pretty much it for for the work. And then the afternoon is going to be like working, working out, or a nice little walk outside depending on like the weather conditions. It's going to be usually when I work, like focused work for like 2 to 4 hours, sometimes a bit more depending on if, uh, if a project goes right or wrong. And so from like 1, 2 PM, I'm going to keep working hard, uh, record a video, work on like projects until maybe 6, 7 PM, and then 6, 7 is going to be time to have dinner, rest a little, and then from 8 to 9, 10 PM is going to again be some work. So either again reviewing some of the work freelancers have done, reviewing the work that I've done and what I want to do the next day, or optimizing, for example, a website or the copy I have on my landing page. So it's going to be less intensive work, But still nice. Your voice is a bit low. Oh yeah, it's because there weren't renovations on the building I live in. There, there are renovations, and so it was very noisy. So I tried to like lower it down so like it was not bothering you guys too much. Is it better now? I think it's, uh, louder. But yeah, like it was, uh, yeah, happy with— like that's pretty much my routine. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. For example, the routine I always— I have only 2, 3 items I want to always have every day when I work. It's to reach out to new people, it's to work on content, and it's to work on design projects. So if I can do those 3 things every day, I'm good. Now they're going to be obviously Things that happen, but if I can do those, then that's great for me. And that's perfect because that leaves room for everything else. It doesn't mean I want to fill that space with like random useless things. It just means that I'm intentional with what I have, what I want in my day, and what I don't want. So if it takes me four hours today to finish the work, then I can either do nothing else or I can do whatever I want. Right? Like I don't want to just fill it up with more things to do because I talk with some people. It's crazy. I talk with some people and they're like, oh, I have all the free time I want. I'm going to give it away for free. I'm like, why? You literally can do anything and you're just going to like give it away for free for what? Now that can be strategic thing when I say work for free if you don't have any skills, but like don't just default into giving it away for free. Like you have so many like we talked about it before. We have so many skills and there's so many layers to everything that. Work on yourself, improve yourself, learn some new stuff, and like try new stuff. Don't just default into the lowest possible output or input you can offer. But that's also difficult to do. Like, it can only be something that you learn by like either surrounding yourself with people who are more successful than you, or through trials and errors. Like, that's something I had to learn myself as well. I cannot just keep giving my time away like I've always done. Otherwise, I'm going to be in the exact same spot I've always been. The routine and the actions you take every day, the goal of them is to compound, right? Yes, it's pretty much not that good right now, but it's going to compound over time and eventually it's going to be good. Just like investing in the stock market. This is not financial advice. But don't like— that's why I'm trying to not work so much with design agencies is because I'm going to give away my time, get the same outcome every time, and in 2 years I'm going to be just 2 years older and I'm going to be in the exact same spot I am in right now, and that's not going to do anything. But it's difficult because if you have a job and it takes you so much time, so much energy and time out of your day, How do you push yourself to do more? And the answer is just you have to go through it. You have to suffer anyway, because if you stay in that same loop and you do the same thing, you're going to stay exactly where you are. And that's why so many people stay exactly where they are. Yeah, I get what you mean. Okay, cool. Sometimes it's, uh, yeah, I have the vision in my head, but bringing it out to you guys, it's, uh Not always easy, but you see it's a nice skill. I'm improving my skills as well on like how do I synthesize what I'm thinking about and think in say it in a way that's I hope easy to understand. I'll talk to. I think I talked about it before in the actually how to get higher paying clients in the video. It's like you have to say no to short term money for long term money. And it's so tough because long-term, like, short-term money could be a lot of money. Like, I'm turning down some stuff that I'm like, me 4 years ago would be like, why would you do that? Why would you say no to that? They're willing to pay you that much and you say no? Why? But it's like, if I don't do it now, when will I do it? And how will I grow from it? But I think shouldn't be that deep too. I feel like it should come naturally to you. What do you in in about what specifically? In like the like doing the extra work because in a sense yeah that's true that I mean if you don't want like you don't have to do all of that is the beautiful thing with life is you You don't have to do usually what you don't want to do. I mean, it's like, well, I have to go to work every day and I don't want to do it. You could change jobs if you can. About what you spend your time on. Yeah, you can literally build the life you want. I think that's the biggest upside. The biggest benefit we have as humans is just we can literally tell ourselves whatever we want, and it can either be good or It can be good and bad. You can just say, I'm going to be successful. I'm going to— actually, you could say that and still not make it work. It's interesting. Every time I have a take, a hot take or an opinion, I'm like, well, the contrary argument also makes sense. So maybe it's not that interesting. Unless it's like a loop of just thinking about the most minor things for no reason. Yeah, I think that happens for a lot of people too. But working on your mindset is super, super important because like right now, even for me, like in my business, it's so difficult. I'm not where I want to be, and at the same time I have to keep going all the time, day in, day out. Now, and not every— not every day is perfect, obviously, but it's, uh, sometimes it's difficult. And so you have to really have a strong mindset and Be willing to pay the price in a way to get what you want, and be super patient because boy oh boy it takes time. It takes a lot more time than than most people think. I can talk with some some people who are like in in university graduating and like oh I'm going to get this great job. I want to work remotely. I want to travel. I want to make a lot of money. And it's like really you've never worked in your life. You don't have any experience. You have literally no skills and value for most companies, except if they want to hire you for super cheap. How are you going to get there? Now, if you're lucky and you have the right timing and perfect environment and situation, that could happen. It actually happened to me, so I can talk about it. I got the perfect timing at the perfect Literally everything aligned perfectly at the beginning, and then suddenly everything crashed down. It's like I don't have the skills to go back up the right way. So that's why it's like the the valley of despair they call it. It's like you're at the bottom of the curve, and you either switch to another thing or you keep going until you figure it out. And the fun thing is when you switch to another thing, you're going to also get into the valley of despair, and you're going to also get stuck. And that's when you can also switch to another thing and. Redo the same thing over and over again until you figure it out. And then usually it's like, oh, actually it's not that bad. I don't have to switch again. But yeah, I don't know. How did we come to that? I was reviewing designs. How did we land there? But honestly, speaking of design again, I have no idea the kind of reason I want to do for the sponsored video in 2, 3 weeks. I'm not sure. Because the I mean not the problem with Mobin, but a lot of products on Mobin look really good. So it's always difficult for me to like figure out the right product to to redesign because it has to have some you know a different take on it. That's why it's a concept redesign. Like we want to push for some new ideas and like new experiences. Perseverance for the win. Yes, sir. That's right. We have to keep Keep pushing and adapting. Like if something doesn't work, guys, after a few weeks, after a few months, like just adapt it. Figure out what's like a different perspective on that. But yeah, I feel like I'm the problem I have are like pretty nice problem to have. It's not like oh I cannot pay rent and I'm going to be on the street soon. It's okay for me. It's okay. But I hope it's still valuable, the yapping I do, to some extent. ClickUp could be nice. I don't remember who exactly, but someone tagged me on Twitter about the ClickUp design and how bad it was. But I think they had a new version of it. I think this was the— oh yeah, I think this was the old version of ClickUp where it was everything everywhere. But that could be an interesting one to maybe work on. It's just, it's just so much copy. Look at all of those copies. Imagine I have to type everything or even copy everything from the AI. The yapping could be used for reels. I've, I've thought about it, you know, like if you noticed, I did the last, I think last weekend, right? I did I went through all of the livestreams I did with the AI and I just added the timestamps on everything we talked about. So every minute or 2 minutes I switched to another subject and the title was also different every time. So I think it's super valuable and enjoyable for people to rewatch the livestream. But I'm thinking, couldn't I just clip everything and then just either make it a highlight channel on YouTube or just Make it, you know, it's a little boring, I think, on social media like Instagram, Twitter, not Twitter, Instagram, even YouTube Shorts, TikTok. They all have different content strategies to some extent where something might perform on one platform but maybe not on another. And I'm a little worried about Diluting myself too much of like, okay, I have the YouTube channel and then I need to figure out also what kind of content or shorts to post on like those other social media platforms. But if I have maybe my my editor work on it, maybe I don't know. I will keep thinking about it. But and also we like that's a really. Like, that's a lot of content. We— I don't know how many lives we've done so far. It feels like I started 2 weeks ago, but I think it's been— it's like the 8th or 9th livestream I'm doing. So that's like 10 hours almost of content. Do you imagine every like 1-2 minutes there is a clip? The amount of— I don't know the math on that, but the, the amount of clips there are available right now, it's, it's pretty insane. So maybe that could be something. And also, like, how like is the content? Like, are the people watching those valuable? Like finding value in that in the shorts or the end goal of this? What's the strategy behind it? Is it just to like get more people on the YouTube channel? Is it to like get more leads? But are leads on Instagram and only on TikTok? Like it's not because you can do something that you should do it. It's not because there is an opport like. That's something interesting nowadays with AI is people are starting to do like, I don't want to pay for this SaaS subscription. I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to build it with AI. But then they realize that, oh, it's actually really difficult to build something good. So it's not because you can build it that you should build it. Maybe paying the $10 a month is actually worth it. I remember when our team switched to ClickUp and 2 days later no one was using it anymore. Yeah. They sell it as the like, we do everything. But it's like, yeah, but it's too much. It's overwhelming. The amount of stuff everywhere doesn't want— you don't want to go here. You don't want to use it. Look at how many tabs, so many things everywhere, so many icons. Makes me tired just looking at it. And so that could be an interesting product to redesign, but at the same time, it's a little doom. Simply because they do everything. So the business model in and of itself, but they might make a lot of money. I don't know their financials. I think the best place for work and stuff is X and LinkedIn. Everything else has very low conversion. I've heard from everywhere. Yeah, probably. I think it depends on the business. It depends on what you're selling. I know Instagram can have some really good leads. TikTok can also. It depends. I think it's all about volume. Get a million views on Instagram or a million views on TikTok, there might be one person at least that reaches out and that is like your ideal client. So if you can get a ton of volume, then it can work. Now, how do you get the volume? That's the question. You can either spam clips all the time until something works out, or like just focus on that one platform, nail it, and get the people there. But it's tough. Is a skill also. Every platform is a skill. That's why ideally if you make content, if you want to specialize into a platform, you need to hire someone who's specialized into that platform. But it's— I don't know, it could be interesting to try. For me, I feel like if I do too many things, and that's why delegating is really good, if I do too many things, it's just not sustainable. The routine cannot be done if I have to post on everywhere Remind myself to post, come up with new things, schedule. And then on top of that, I need to think about the YouTube videos to make, the redesigns to make. I need to think about, oh, I also have to work with clients on projects, and I also need to manage people. So it's, yeah, it's not possible. So delegating could be really good on that if there is an opportunity, if it makes sense. For now, I'm still thinking about it. But yeah, I think there's something. There is like, there is a play for it. There is something to do about it. And you know, even as a test, like, because it's all in desktop format, like 16:9 ratio, like maybe there is like, maybe we— I just do like a highlight channel and for viewers watching the videos every week, they can get recommended this like highlight channel. And the highlight keeps them coming back to the videos every day or whatever the cadence of posting is. And so then you kind of build a stronger relationship with them because instead of consuming one video a week, they consume one video every day. It's kind of like the livestream in some ways also is that is I post on Fridays and then you also get the livestream on Wednesday. So it's like twice as much connections. And for members, for pro members of the YouTube channel, you also get the video twice a month on Saturday. So you build this ecosystem of connections and habits almost. But again, what's the end goal of that? Is it just to grow another social platform? Is it to convert them? Is it to monetize it? Is it Like, yeah, because I think, for example, the YouTube channel is a really good, like, social proof, for example. But most people watching my videos are designers or design beginners, and so it's not my ideal— like, they're not going to hire me for, like, a product audit or, like, for a project. But LinkedIn, like you said, like It could be, could be a nice platform, and I'm trying to post on it as well. I'm trying to see if it works or not, testing out. If it works perfect, we can go all in on that. If it doesn't, then that's okay. We just keep trying. Like you said, perseverance for the win. Hey, Cody, coming up almost at the end of the live stream. I hope you're doing well. I hope you have a lot of projects coming up and you're busy working on the cool ones, because there's nothing more difficult than working on, on bad projects. Um, yeah, but yeah, that's, uh Pretty cool to catch up with you guys midweek. I hope you'll have a really good— actually, I can do full cam now. I hope you can have a really good week working well on projects. I will try for next stream and for maybe video in like a week or two. I have the new camera setup so that it looks even better. You'll be able to watch the stream in 4K. You can watch the stream on your TV. It's going to be amazing. The AI slop on LinkedIn annoys me like nothing else. Yeah. And I feel like even on Twitter, there is also a lot of AI replies, for example, but it's easier on Twitter to block people and be like, okay, next. But on LinkedIn, it's just everywhere. But yeah, it's part of the game, and I think some extent maybe the companies will figure out something in the future, I hope. But I think you should also think about it the way that you make the content not— you make probably content for like the 1% of people watching your stuff, or like reading your post, or like watching your videos. You make it just for that 1%, the ideal customer. That's it. And so to get— like, you pay the price. You pay the price of the noise of the negativity of people who are not relevant to your target. And the price is that you're going to be able to— like, that's the price. And then the reward is that you get that 1%, the one client that you really care about, that watches your stuff, that sees your post, that is interested in working with you. So I think that's like, that's okay. As usual, at the end, starting and trying the template game. Template can be pretty tricky. I think I've tried template game as well. I think if you have a good audience, that could work because the key— and I guess for Framer, for example, you could get referral. I think you get 50% off whatever they're paying when they buy something from Framer with your template or your link, affiliate link. So that could be cool. The price of template, I don't know. I think it depends. They usually boost your templates for the first few weeks to showcase, to show new things. And then as soon as it's a few weeks, it starts going down. So you either have new updates coming up, which is, I think, great, or you have an audience that can keep coming back to it. But that's why on Twitter, I don't see them anymore, but you have like, my template for Framer is going to be available for the next 24 hours For free, and you can you can get it right now. It's because they have the affiliate code, and then people buy the subscription for Framer, and then they get like I don't know ten bucks every month for like a year. Microphone cheated on me, and here's what it does. Yeah, it's a pretty common like meme and stuff. Whatever catches your attention, right? Like whatever makes you it's a scroll stopper. Like that's the same with every platform done differently. But every platform has its own strategy to make you stop and get that engagement. But ultimately, you attract the people that enjoy this kind of thing, right? Again, maybe the top 1% is going to be interested, but if you post slop content, you're going to get slop consumers. That's it. Same thing with every platform. If you post trash AI stuff on Shorts, you're going to get people like that and you're going to not get the people you want to have, the real people you want to get and attract from your content. Did you try going all out in templates and running design next to it? Design service and the templates, you mean? Because templates have always been for me more of a side quest, kind of, where it's like, oh, that's pretty cool. I have these designs that I like or that I've done for myself. Usually it's like, even I'm really lazy. I don't want to design a specific template for a website. It's not even my specialty. And so I would usually say, oh, I like the website that I did for myself. I'm going to give it as a template. That's it. And then it's also cool because they have like a checklist of all of the things your website needs to have to be like solid and they can recommend it to people. And so it's also great for me to like improve my skills and make my website better. Yes. Yeah, it was always something I did on the side. I didn't say I want to go all in on templates. If I wanted to go all in on templates, I would probably try to like figure out, okay, how do I make a new template Every month, something like that. Because you realize very quickly that there is a ceiling to how much you can get out of it. Like, I got the Framer annual— I don't know what to call that. You know, like the Spotify thing at the end of the year when they show how many minutes you've listened to the songs and how many songs you listen to? They do that with affiliates as well. And I think I was like in the top 20%, something like that, of affiliates. And it's like, really? Even though I have like 2 templates and only one works, and I have like a— like, I don't really— yeah, wrapped. And so, and I didn't make— I think I made $1,000 from affiliates in a year, which is super cool because it's like I didn't do anything, but It's like, really? That is top 20%? And so you realize that the people really making money is either top 1% with a specific niche that really loves it and they have a big community to get the volume in, or it's people trying to sell you something. That's it. So people are going to say, oh, I've made $10,000 with this Framer template. You can buy my course and I will tell you everything about it. If it's too good to be true, it's usually like— we always see the upsides when we have new ideas and we think about like this, those like shiny objects and shiny opportunities, but we never think about the downsides of it. It's always like there's, it's always, there's always a constraint. The platform is not going to recommend your, your template all the time. It's going to recommend it for a little bit of time and then you're going to get— other people are going to get recommended. So if you don't have a sustainable system in place, it's going to be really difficult. And obviously you get a lot of distribution and volume to make it work. Now I'm not trying to say don't do it. I'm just saying there is a price to pay for that. And are you ready to pay it? It's not as good or as free or amazing as you think it is. It's really difficult. Of course, if you're in the top 1%, the super amazing framework template with all the cool things, super well optimized, unique design, all of that, that could work. Yeah, that's why you need the system because making either new updates or new templates every 2 weeks, every month, every 3 months on top of everything else, That's really exhausting. And honestly, I think you probably would make more money from affiliates than you would make from selling your template. Again, don't take my word for it. It's just my own experience. But that's why I think so many people give away the design for free, the templates for free, is just because Framer is going to give them 50% of commission for a whole year. So I think, yeah, now if you can build a good distribution system and you can be like in the top 5-10% of creators who have like this, who have like people who love Framer and they are like, they are, have the money, that's another thing. Like you cannot sell your template at $129 if you have an audience that doesn't have the money for it. Uh, so yeah, it's, uh Not as easy as it seems. Go for free templates or really high-level one with premium price. Yeah, that's, uh, I would say that's probably go-to, and that's what I'm doing. Like, that's literally like you can download my— you can use my free Framer template and, and I get a little of like— I get a little commission from it. Actually, I might do like another template for like my website. That could be pretty cool. Not maybe not the website, maybe the— I have like a personal website Which is just like one page. That could be pretty fun on like a weekend, something like that. It literally takes me like 30 minutes and it's done. So that could be pretty fun because then it's a nice little exchange of value where you get like a cool website I use and I like, and in exchange I get like a commission for whatever you're spending. If you don't spend any money, that's all good. Like I always say, if I've never made it If I've never helped you make any money with my content, don't buy anything from me. This way I'm happy and you're happy and we're all good. But yeah, that's pretty much the livestream, I guess. Could use that. Oh, nice. I'll keep in mind. But yeah, that's pretty much the livestream. I get back to work, do some nice little vision project for a client. That'd be pretty cool. Review— I will review and work on like the video editing as well for Friday's video. Make sure to tune in for that. I think it's a really, really cool, uh, redesigned video that I've worked on and I've made. It was a struggle to make the video, but it's done and I think it's, it's really nice. I'm a UX designer trying to transition into product management role. Can you tell me any kind of roadmap in your mind? I think product management is you need to understand design, you need to understand development, and then you need to be really good at strategy. You need to be savvy. I think that's a great benefit you have because you can already design stuff like deck presentation. You need to be good at, you need to know, you need to know some like UI/UX design rules and principles and elements to be really good at it. But then what stands out is just being able to collaborate with everyone, developers and designers, know the lingo on both sides. And be extremely good at strategy and like high-level visions and micro vision and have like a really good taste to know like what's like be like a sounding board with like what is like good, bad, and be the standard that people will rely on too. Because ultimately designers are going to design for you and you will present for the client. Hope it helps. I'm not, I don't really, I don't really want to be like a designer, a manager personally. I think it's not really my My cup of tea, but it's pretty cool. It's still cool. So yeah, that's about it for the livestream. We did an hour and ten minutes. It was a little delayed, but ultimately it was a really cool time chatting with you guys on this, reviewing some of the designs on Mobin, chatting about everything and parking spots, knowing where you guys are from. It's also really cool. And yeah. Make sure to tune in for Friday's video, and I will see you guys next Wednesday for our next livestream. Thank you so much, everyone. Take care. Bye.
