Expanding vertically or horizontally? #2

Hey beautiful human 👋,

I wanted to kick-start this month’s edition with some good vibes.

I was so happy to see how well my first newsletter [back] was received. Thank you for all the email replies and comments; let’s keep this newsletter going!

I’ve been a little quiet on socials this month because I’ve been suuuper busy; focusing on launching the new update to my Figma course — Variables & Conditional Statements baybeh!!!

I still can’t believe over 7,000 designers have taken this course.

Here’s a sneak peak of me karate chopping variables for dinner.

The great news is that everything has now been filmed, my team is now powering through the post production process (it’ll be bangin’ once again)!

Expanding vertically or horizontally?

I’ve spent the last 2-3 years teaching UX/UI design. We’ve hit some incredible milestones and I’m genuinely so grateful.

With 3 courses out (covering end-to-end UX/UI design, deep-dive UX research and Figma), I’m now at the cross roads and thinking about whether I should expand horizontally or vertically. This means either dive even deeper into UX/UI or go broader into no-code, entrepreneurship, marketing, sales etc.

If you’ve never heard of this concept before…

Imagine you run a 🍋 lemonade stand.

If you expand horizontally, you start selling not just lemonade, but also cookies, sandwiches, and iced tea, diversifying the range of products you offer to your customers.

On the other hand, if you expand vertically, you might start growing your own lemons (upstream integration) or open your own chain of stands (downstream integration) to control more parts of the lemonade supply and sales process.

Actually…

If you’ve got a moment, I’ve put together a ✨ very quick survey to help me learn a little more about your journey and what you’re currently struggling with which would help me decide my next steps.

You’ll get a 20% discount any of my offerings for just 5 minutes of your time.

And on the topic of expansion, expanding horizontally and vertically can also apply to you as an individual — for example, do you want to become a 🦹 suuuper duper specialist or do you want to 🌉 diversify your skills to expand your offerings?

Once again, there’s no right or wrong answer, it’s dependent on your situation and objective.

A great way to think about this is, where do you see yourself in a couple years time. What is the vision and goal?

If you are looking to move up the ladder within a larger organisation, think about what the skills are required for that role and work backwards.

If you are looking to venture out to start your own business, think about what skills are required to be a business owner and then work backwards from there.

Here’s a more practical example — a Design Manager will need the experience and leadership skills to manage a team. In contrast if you are looking to jump out to freelance and build an agency your focus might need to be on sales because you need to generate revenue.

🔔 So, my question for you is — what’s your plan, are you expanding horizontally or vertically?

Bite sized learnings

1. 📆 Hiring decisions: It's often the case that we wait too long to let team members go. Usually, we notice a problem, hope they'll turn things around after a honest talk, but end up having to let them go anyway.

   1. 💡 Learning: It's better to tackle these tough conversations head-on and sooner.

2. 👀 Eyeballs matter: Getting noticed is crucial, whether it's for landing a job, drumming up freelance work, or selling more courses. This month, I couldn't put out any YouTube videos, so I doubled down on Instagram stories instead. It worked — more people noticed my content, saw that I was still alive and my sales picked up.

   1. 💡 Learning: The more frequently you get yourself out there, the more people will think of you when they need your services.

3. 💸 Moving motivators: Growing up, money was tight since my parents had modest jobs (factory worker and travel agent), and that fear of being poor really drove me to succeed financially. Now that I’ve reached a specific milestone, I've found that money doesn't push me as much.

   1. 💡 Learning: It’s important to keep reassessing your motives to make sure you’re leading a meaningful and satisfying life.

Useful lil links

• Descript - If you can edit text, you can edit videos.

• Apple Design Resources - Apple launched new design resources on Figma.

• Codux - Build UI visually with production-ready code.

• Wegic - Cool app to magic your site, chat by chat.

• Spaced - Organize your Mac OS menu bar items into groups

Things I’m vibin’

⚡️ Misc: Nobody likes a shmelly bathroom, right? Well, my partner came up with a neat solution — volcanic rocks… in beautiful packaging! We popped them in both of our bathrooms. The very next day, a friend came over and said ‘What’s the smell?’ … obviously in a good way.

🥊 Fitness: Struggling with tight hips? Here’s a little tip from my own experience. I’ve been using trigger balls on my hip flexors, and guess what? I can now kick high [someone’s head level] and my hips feel way looser. It was super painful at first, but totally worth it. I did this every other day, holding each position for 3-5 minutes.

🧠 Miscellaneous: When I was 24, I hit a bit of a quarter-life crisis and really started thinking about how no moment in life ever repeats itself. That idea hit me so hard that I ended up getting a tattoo around my neck and shoulders to always remind me of it. Just the other week, I found a beautiful ring that reminded me of this idea. I bought it right away.

How can I help you?

Here are a few ways I can help you achieve your career goals:

💼 Build confidence in end-to-end UX/UI design (10 hours) - You’ve mastered the tool and UX research and now you want to learn how to lead, design and manage a project end-to-end. Dive deep into every little step alongside me with a real-world project.(80+ designers — New course ✨)

🖥️ Master Figma (10 hours) - Become an expert in Figma so you can get more done; faster and better. This isn’t just a technical course about features, it’s an end-to-end course on how Figma fits into a real-world project. (7,000+ designers)

🔍 Dive-deep into UX Research & Strategy (10 hours) - Learn how to run UX and business research to make more strategic and data-informed decisions for larger scaled projects and improved stakeholder management.(700+ designers)

⚡️Design 10X faster with 8,000+ pre-designed components - If you’re starting every project from scratch, you’re probably wasting a lot of time. Leverage Shipfaster UI to speed up your process dramatically.(3,400+ designers)

That’s it for this month’s newsletter!

Let me know how you found this month’s edition; what did you love or dislike?

It means a lot to me.

Mizko