The UX Consultants Lounge

Erika Hall and Mike Monteiro - Consulting with Backbone: Authenticity, Humanity, and the Value of Hard Truths

• Kyle Soucy • Episode 6

Share episode

In this episode of The UX Consultants Lounge, host Kyle Soucy sits down with two legendary figures in the UX and design consulting world: Erika Hall and Mike Monteiro, co-founders of Mule Design. Known for their honesty, wit, and willingness to challenge the status quo, Erika and Mike bring decades of experience—and a few well-placed truth bombs—to this candid conversation about UX consulting.


Key Topics Covered:

  • The Origin of Mule Design: Why they chose the name Mule and how it represents their approach to consulting—doing the work with intelligence, honesty, and integrity.
  • Lessons from the Trenches: The challenges of running a consultancy, firing clients, dealing with contracts, and why you always need a good lawyer.
  • The Current UX Climate: Why UX professionals are not to blame for recent industry turbulence, and the role speculative tech growth has played in overhiring and layoffs.
  • Being “The Helpers”: Mike and Erika’s advice on contributing to meaningful work—whether in civic tech, local organizations, or community projects—and embracing the value of problem-solving skills.
  • Marketing and Business Development: The importance of putting yourself out there authentically. Erika shares how being consistent and unapologetic about your expertise helps clients find you, while Mike encourages consultants to embrace honesty and avoid sounding like machines.
  • Why Authenticity Matters: A bold call to action for UX consultants to stop trying to fit in, stop being bland, and start telling hard truths—because that’s what clients actually need.

When asked to describe UX consulting in one word, Erika says, “Lost”, and Mike delivers a punch: “Dead.” Listen to the episode to hear their powerful explanations and why the future of consulting requires honesty, backbone, and humanity.

Connect with Us:

- - - - -

Links and Resources Mentioned:

Submit a question or story: Have a question or topic that you'd like us to cover in a future episode and/or want to share an anonymous consulting story? Submit your questions and stories.

Don't want to miss an episode? Be sure to sign up for the podcast newsletter.

Thanks for tuning in! Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

I can’t wait to have you back in the lounge for our next episode!

Kyle Soucy:

Welcome to the UX consultants lounge. I'm Kyle Soucy, founder of usable interface an independent UX research consultancy. You can find out more about my work and the services I offer at my website, usable interface. com. I'll be your host here at the lounge where I'll be providing a place for UX consultants to gather, share stories, and learn more from one another. So we're almost there. The end of 2024. I don't know about all of you, but I'm ready to put this year behind me and I'm definitely looking forward to taking a little break for the holidays. I hope that everyone gets an opportunity to relax and recharge and just be with your loved ones. I know I really need that right now. Reflecting a bit on this year, I'm super proud of myself for starting this podcast back in July and getting six episodes out before the end of the year. I would love to be able to publish more than once a month but c'est la vie. It's not easy to fit this in with my work and family, and I'm all about quality over quantity. This podcasting endeavor has been a lot of fun. It's challenged me in so many new ways, and I really love having this creative outlet. And I hope you're all enjoying it as much as I am putting it out there. That being said, I have to share with all of you that this episode. just about broke me. There were a lot of technical issues with mics and sound that made editing pretty painful. But the result is nothing short of amazing. I don't do this often, but I'm going to pat myself on the back for this one because I'm pretty proud of how this came out considering the issues with the raw recording. I was actually at a point where I really wasn't sure if I'd have an episode so I'm so glad that it worked out. Without further delay, my guests today are Erica Hall and Mike Monteiro. Two people who probably don't need any introduction in our industry, but I will do the honors anyway. They are both co founders of Mule Design. They are both prolific writers and speakers. Erica is the author of Just Enough Research, and Conversational Design. Mike is the author of Ruined by Design. Design is a job. You're my favorite client and the collected angers. A collection of essays about design, ethics, and social responsibility. As anyone who knows them will tell you, they tell it like it is. And this episode is definitely marked explicit for that reason. Seriously, though, they are two of the most authentic people on our industry, which I truly admire and appreciate. And it definitely made for some great discussion. The topics we focused on included the origin story of Mule Design and their holistic approach to their services. We talked about the reason they named their consultancy Mule. And why you should probably never name your consultancy after a horse. We discussed some of the challenges their business faced over the last 20 plus years and how it's helped shape how they do business today and the advice that they give others. And a little bit of a spoiler here, get a lawyer is the takeaway. We spent some time on the importance of putting yourself out there, but in an authentic way. Apparently, self promotion doesn't have to be a dirty word when it's done correctly. Erica and Mike really emphasized the importance of owning your voice. They challenged all of us consultants to embrace our humanity and stop sounding like machines. They stressed that authenticity and honesty, even when it involves difficult discussions, is what sets great consultants apart. They also stress the importance of repeating yourself in order to get your message out there. And I got to tell you, that's one I struggle with constantly. You know, with LinkedIn, Blue Sky, whatever. Sometimes it can feel like you're a broken record, just trying to get your thoughts out there. They've reassured all of us that it's necessary. Mike shared some great advice about writing books as well. You know, I've toyed with the idea of writing a book for a very long time, but I keep putting it off for various reasons. There's actually two different books in my mind that I would love to write. I feel like Mike's message in this episode has pushed me to explore this more deeply. Lastly, while reflecting on UX consulting in today's climate, they both shared the same belief that we, as an industry, are not at fault for not proving our value. Erica discussed how overhiring in tech driven by speculative growth rather than actual value creation has contributed to the industry turbulence. Mike encouraged consultants to be the helpers that Mr. Rogers refers to during these turbulent times. You're using our skills to contribute meaningfully to communities, civic tech, or smaller organizations that need problem solving expertise. As always, if you only have a short period of time to listen, I've added chapters for all the different discussions so you can jump around as much as you desire. Erika and Mike are always fun to listen to and they always drop some serious truth bombs that can be hard to hear, but necessary for us to take in. So let's get to the interview. Please enjoy Erika Hall and Mike Monteiro. Hi, Erica and Mike. Welcome to the UX Consultants Lounge.

Mike Monteiro:

Hello, Kyle. How are you?

Kyle Soucy:

I'm good. I'm good. Now that all the tech is out of the way, the worst part, now we can have fun. So I absolutely love that we have an opportunity to just connect and chat today about consulting. I look up to you both so much, and I'm just always so grateful for. everything that you share, about your business, about consulting. So when I made a wishlist of guests to have on this podcast, you both were right at the top of the list. So this is really just making my day, just so you know.

Erika Hall:

Ah, that's very kind.

Mike Monteiro:

You, um, you need better role models, Kyle.

Kyle Soucy:

Oh, yeah. Well, for the listeners, could you start us off just by explaining, the services that you offer and really the origin story of Mule Design?

Mike Monteiro:

It's all you.

Erika Hall:

Oh, that's all me? Wow. Okay. I'll do it. I'll do it in reverse order. The origin story is that, we met at another consultancy at the beginning of this millennium, essentially, right as everything was getting wobbly before the dot com crash. Like we managed to have, a couple of good gigs right before that. And we really enjoyed the work of design consulting. And we really thought that, the thing that was most important is being very selective with the clients because we saw how much, those client relationships, I mean, if you're a consultancy, like that's, you are what you eat and we said, okay, like we, I like looking back on it, it seems wild. That, I'd, only been working in design consultancies for a couple, three years at that point to say like, yeah, let's just start our own company, but sure. And so we started, and it was good that we started in 2001 because there were no jobs at that point. Like the layoffs now are. Bad. And the industry is much, much bigger. If you think about everything about design and technology work and all of that, but if you just imagined like a meteor hitting. Design and technology. That's what it was like, nobody I knew had a job. every startup folded, every consultancy folded, The people who'd made money in the. com boom went to Thailand and other people went into the restaurant business. Yeah, it was like that. And so it worked out because we said, well, if we start our own company, then we'll have jobs. Like literally no one I knew had a job. Except, Yahoo, which is so funny in retrospect, Yahoo was the only company, still standing at that point.

Mike Monteiro:

I think you have to explain what Yahoo was.

Erika Hall:

still exists.

Kyle Soucy:

I still have a Yahoo email address as a backup for all my emails.

Erika Hall:

yeah, it still exists. It was a directory and, then they made a lot of little products

Kyle Soucy:

it's funny to think back though to that time where Yahoo was like the hot employer. Everybody wanted to work there.

Erika Hall:

At that point in the, in say 2002, it wasn't that everybody wanted to work there. It was, they were literally the only people hiring. Anybody who did like a web or technology thing. It was wild. So we had to go down there. Like we got our first client and then we got a couple clients and then we had a friend who'd gone to work there who started, who hired us in and then we got hired. So we did a lot of work with them initially. And, it was like, I ran into everyone I'd ever worked with before, like this information architect, this designer,

Mike Monteiro:

They looked so sad. Yeah.

Erika Hall:

was fine. There were a lot of good people there, but the company was, uh, one of the reasons that they hired us to do a lot of work initially was they were very engineering driven and they were trying to move like, it's what Google did later to try to move in more of a design direction. So a lot of our work was also mentoring teams. It was even wild when we first looked for our first office space because it was a little bit like it is now. There was so many vacancies and there were so many organizations that had leased a tremendous amount of square footage before the crash and they were locked into these long leases and we'd walk in to see sub leases and there'd be three people at a desk in 10, 000 square feet. Or we'd walk in with a group that used to be a design agency or was still a design agency. And we said, Oh, we're starting a design agency. And they said, Do you have clients? Do you know where to get clients? Do you have extra clients? Can we have some clients? And that's when we backed out and said, okay, it seemed daunting at that time to take on a whole commercial lease. But, but we're like, we don't want to be around this energy of, hey, things were, you know, Awesome. Two years ago, but now we're really scrambling because we were starting a new thing and a lot of people were cheering us on because it seemed so bold to start something at that time. Cause everybody was sort of looking backwards at what had been with like the rah rah. So it was similar energy to, to what we just went through with the zero interest rates and all this nonsense and that big crash. And the fact that we were starting something new felt really, optimistic to people. So we had a lot of goodwill and a lot of people, cheering us on and helping us out and helping us do our little networking and stuff like that. And so the first couple of years, were Rough because there were times like, okay, we have to find clients. Where are the clients? And everybody was trying to figure out what to do since there'd been so many expectations about, Oh, the new economy and the internet is changing everything. And the expectations were so high and everything came crashing down. And, businesses were looking at each other what is, what do we use the web for anyway? And so it took a while to come back around. And then by like, I'd say by 2004, like a couple years into it, things started to get steady. And we're like, okay, this is a real thing. We moved offices. And. Then we started hiring people, et cetera, et cetera, and went from there.

Kyle Soucy:

Oh, okay. So you started hiring people in 2004 and you started with just the two of you, is that right?

Erika Hall:

Mm hmm.

Kyle Soucy:

That's, I was curious about that.

Mike Monteiro:

wait a minute, so, but we had people working with us before that.

Erika Hall:

Yeah, I guess, cause it was just the two of us and then we had, we pulled in, friends and colleagues of ours to,

Mike Monteiro:

had contractors working for

Erika Hall:

Yeah, we did, yeah, we did have contractors.

Mike Monteiro:

Mostly because we couldn't trust ourselves to have employees, like having employees felt like, a big deal, a lot of responsibility, like we have to take care of these people. And it's not that we didn't want to, we, it felt like we, didn't want to let people down.

Kyle Soucy:

I can only imagine. I've never had employees and I would be so scared to, to have to feed them along with myself and have that pressure to do so. Is, so is that something that you both aspired to do to, to one day have employees? Was that like the, I don't want to say the benchmark of success, but was that always a hope that you would have internal employees?

Erika Hall:

Yes. Hmmm

Mike Monteiro:

One of the earliest decisions we made, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions we made, was we had a discussion about how big we wanted to be. And for some reason, we both felt really comfortable at the number 12. I mean, with me, it's probably some weird lapsed Catholic bullshit where that's as many people as I can picture sitting on one side of a table. But, the number 12 always felt right. So it's as much aspiring to have, like, we wanted to work with other people. It's not so much that we wanted to have employees. It's just, we wanted to work with other people. I really enjoy like working on stuff together. Like side by side, or at a whiteboard or whatever. I like being in a room with people working shit out. And back then there was no like, let's hop on zoom and work shit out, which I'm sure is just fine as well. Back then that's what we were looking for. Um, but I think the smartest decision we made was, but never more than this.

Kyle Soucy:

more than 12.

Mike Monteiro:

Never more than 12.

Erika Hall:

Yeah, because I have friends, Who have consultancies and they have been in, in growth mode, and it means something to like, we want to get to a certain size. And our perspective was always about the work, right? When we named the company Mule, right? And that was kind of a reaction to all of the ridiculous. 90s fancy consultancy names were like, we're here to do the work. And our tagline was designed to work because a mule is a designed animal, right? You take the majesty and strength of a horse

Mike Monteiro:

I'm terrified of horses.

Erika Hall:

So you take the majesty and strength of a horse and the smarts of a donkey or a jackass, depending on how we're telling this, because a horse, horses are great. I love horses, but you can get a horse to, to do essentially whatever you tell it to do. And,

Mike Monteiro:

You, you, most people think jackasses are dumb, which is, I mean, it just speaks to the, to the amazing horse lobby,

Erika Hall:

Yeah.

Mike Monteiro:

Horses are really stupid.

Erika Hall:

No, they're not. They have high emotional intelligence. They're

Mike Monteiro:

now you're just talking about, we have this argument about the dog all the time.

Erika Hall:

The dog is not stupid. He has high emotional. There are different kinds of intelligence. He has high emotional intelligence, low spatial orientation. And mules have a reputation for being stubborn, but they just have to trust that the person leading them or guiding them or working with them, is not going to endanger themselves or endanger the animal.

Kyle Soucy:

Glad you explained it because I have that listed as a question. Why is it called Mule Design? And it's a great reason. I think that it's perfectly fitting in that way. So that's pretty brilliant.

Mike Monteiro:

Do you know the Grand Canyon story?

Kyle Soucy:

No,

Mike Monteiro:

When they first, uh, and by they, I mean white colonizers and, genociders, started taking people on tours of the Grand Canyon, or like let's get to the, let's get down there. There's things we can kill down there that we haven't killed yet. Uh, they, no, they, no, no, they started with horses. And so it turns out when you tell a horse, Hey horse, go to the bottom of that giant hole, a horse will do just that in the quickest way possible. So everybody at the bottom of the Canyon got horse meat for days. after that, because those dumb little fuckers just jumped. And then eventually they, yeah, so they ran out of horses, and then probably some guy named Shep had a donkey with them. They said, let's take the donkey. And so they said, donkey, take us to the bottom of the canyon. And the donkey was like, Jesus Christ, fucking colonizers. Sure. But found the trail, and the donkey would go down the trail, but if the donkey stepped on a rock that was loose or something, the donkey would just stop and say, Yeah, Shep, we're done here. We cannot go down this trail. And that's why they have that reputation for being stubborn. They just won't do stupid things. They won't put themselves in danger, and if you're riding the donkey, then you know, that benefits you as well. So

Erika Hall:

but they're kind of small and so that's when you add the horse to get the size and stature.

Mike Monteiro:

and that's how you make a mule

Erika Hall:

That's how you make a mule, so yeah,

Mike Monteiro:

in an ungodly fashion.

Erika Hall:

And I'll say that it is proven to be a really fantastic, Name, as far as the whole brand reputation goes, because if somebody hires us, if the client hires us, and they start, Asking us to do things that aren't in their best interest, or they say something like, why are you arguing with me? We can just like point to the sign and be like, you hired a company called Mule. Because you needed, you needed an outside perspective to, to save you from yourself and to like, see the hazards and not just be like, okay, sure. I'll do whatever it's in the name.

Kyle Soucy:

Love it. And, I guess this is a word to the wise, for the listeners, that if you have a logo or a name with horse in it, maybe you should rethink that.

Erika Hall:

Horse. Horse. I'm, yeah, I'm trying to think if there are any, consultancies called, horse.

Kyle Soucy:

was thinking about that too, I'm like, I don't think I

Erika Hall:

Yeah, any horses? Yeah. So we called ourselves mule and it's fun for everybody. Like clients always, that's always their number one question at some point they're like, so why are you called mule? And it's not an arrogant name because the problem, so many consultants come in arrogant. And like we come in confident, but we come in listening, right? Big ears, mules have big ears. You know that there's so much lore at this point. We don't like, I don't think that's important to the client engagement so often, but

Mike Monteiro:

Yeah. But I mean, if we're talking about like, fun facts about mules, they're sterile.

Erika Hall:

They're sterile. Yeah. It's a chromosome mismatch, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, so when we would come in, especially like pitching against other people, there, all these consultancies with these, silly, names and we're just mule. We're just here to work. We're here to help you get something useful done. And we're not going to pretend we're special because we're consultants, because so often when we go in to work with a client teams, like a client team Often has, so much knowledge, so many skills, but just because of the way. their position structurally in the organization. People aren't listening to them or they can't get a broad perspective. And so when we come in and we're like, we're just here to partner with you and get something done, we're not here to prove that we're smarter than you. If you have a good idea or you have a question or you have something that you need our help with, we're here to help you with that. And we're really here to listen and we start from listening. And so I think all of that whole entire vibe has been true from day one. Like we're not here to have a named process or, put on airs or anything, Or to come in. Like we're better than anybody working internally. And I think that's the problem, not just consultants, but that's a problem with it. And I'm seeing this with like designers and researchers have trouble. getting influence in organizations because they don't realize how arrogant they're coming across. But if a client asks us to do something stupid, we're gonna not do it, right? So that's the thing. We're not going to come in, like we're better than you, but we're also going to meet you as an equal in this process. So That's our whole vibe.

Mike Monteiro:

yeah, you know your shit. We know our shit. We work together. We can make better shit Can you say shit on this podcast? It's Absolutely.

Kyle Soucy:

And you, when you first started, was it design and research services and has it continued that or has it changed?

Mike Monteiro:

It's the same

Erika Hall:

it's the same thing. Yeah.

Kyle Soucy:

You go. Yeah.

Erika Hall:

Yeah, cause we've always, we've always had a really holistic perspective on, on this stuff. And, and so we would come in and say, initially when we first started, it was like, we'll help you design websites. Cause that's what the thing was at the time. And, And that includes thinking, it's like, what is this for? What are you trying to accomplish? Everything was always really goals driven. And if a potential client could not articulate a good goal and a goal we could get behind, if they were just like, Oh yeah, we just want to try a thing. or we just want to spend some money. We wouldn't take the work or we want to do something evil. It's what's your goal? Okay. What's the best way that we can help you meet that goal? And yeah, initially it was a lot of okay, we're going to help you, with your strategy. We have to do research. We have to think about the writing and the content and the words. We have to think about the visuals. We have to think about the information architecture and the structure. It was always in as holistic a way as possible and depending on the project, like we used to go out and like we'd have the technologists either, On our staff when we had employees or we would bring them in. And, yeah, sometimes we would deliver like the whole entire production ready thing. And then other times it would be more the upfront, but the key part is that we would never take on work further down the process without having done the research and been involved in the strategy upfront. And, and, one of our, most fun origin stories around that is we took on a project, in around so of 2005, 2006, we were a few years into it, and we took on a project that was like a referral from a colleague of a friend sort of thing, and it wasn't that big of a project, but the client was An entrepreneur with a lot of ego and, and at a certain point, he wanted things done a certain way. And that way it was, let's call it stupid. And he had a print designer that he was working with. And he was like, Oh, my print designer made me these like concepts that were of course, not at all. Right. And he's like, I want to use his design. And you just build all this stuff out. And we're like, that's literally a violation of the contract. We won't do that. And they said, no, you've got to do it. And then I said, you're fired. That was, I think, the first client we really fired. And then they, and then they,

Kyle Soucy:

said that.

Erika Hall:

Well, yeah, I mean,

Mike Monteiro:

no, we're

Kyle Soucy:

did.

Mike Monteiro:

tired of it.

Erika Hall:

yeah, I said something pretty close to that. I mean, I'm sure I didn't go like, you're fired. I think I said, okay, according to the terms of our contract, we're going to terminate the agreement and keep the deposit. I'm pretty sure I said exactly those words. I'm like, that's a violation. What you did is a violation of our terms. So we're just, and we did a half and half thing. Okay. And I said, we're going to keep it. And then That's also the project where, I learned to never ever give out my cell phone number cause they were like calling me on my cell phone, like mad, I made this dude mad. Like he yelled at me for a full 10 minutes about like, how dare you do this? How do you do this? And then hit one of the VPs was like calling me on my, I didn't answer my cell phone for a week. And then we got a letter from their fancy Silicon Valley law firm demanding the deposit back. And that's when we had to find a lawyer. And that was actually a huge favor to us. Like it was horrible at the time. Like so many consultant, consultancy learning opportunities, places where you really grow in your work, are at the time miserable experiences. And having these dudes call my cell phone mad at me. And getting nasty grams from fancy law firms? Unpleasant. But the effect of that is we went through our network and we said, Okay, we have to find a lawyer. And that's how we met Gabe, who, who became a really good friend of ours and like a really important part of our business. Cause we went in and we met him and He was also kind of just starting out and he wrote a letter back to them that essentially said you violated the contract, you're not getting your money back, bye. And they never bothered us again because it wasn't worth their time and they saw that we had representation. And then after that, Gabe helped us do our incorporation, like we'd been a partnership up to that point. And we did our corporation and he helped us get everything set for employees and he redid our master's services agreement. And he's been our partner in contract negotiations this whole time, and if it weren't for that jerk violating the contract, we never would have met Gabe. And because of the relationship with our lawyer, we were able to take on, work with really huge organizations. As a small organization, we could work with anybody because we knew that we had this backup. And we successfully negotiated. like contracts with just enormous companies that tried to kick us around and we'd be like no you can't kick us around and so that really worked out.

Kyle Soucy:

Now that story, is so perfect and I remember hearing it in the Fuck You Pay Me talk, Mike that you gave for Creative Mornings, was that like, I don't know, 2010 or 11 and still, to this day, that is the best talk for, just the best story for just that, It how important it is to have a contract, have lawyers to be professional, and to keep the relationship really just honest and make sure everybody knows what they're responsible for.

Mike Monteiro:

And, and that talk ended up being the basis of a book, yeah. Which I just revised, about a year ago. And the amount of revision that went into that book probably, tells me that I would have changed that talk a lot. The book was way too business friendly for my tastes ten years later.

Kyle Soucy:

Okay.

Mike Monteiro:

And also, I mean, from a practical standpoint, 10 years ago, I was writing about client services because most designers at that point were still working in agencies and as contractors and consultants and whatnot. And one of the biggest or at least the most practical change, That doesn't involve dystopia, is that designers moved in house,

Kyle Soucy:

Mm hmm.

Mike Monteiro:

Most designers are unemployed, but previous to that most designers were in house. Which, I mean, maybe there's a relationship there between those two things.

Erika Hall:

You mean designers were working in consultancies before that?

Mike Monteiro:

yes. But uh, if, if, if you don't go to work for people, they can't lay you off.

Kyle Soucy:

Right?

Mike Monteiro:

Right?

Erika Hall:

Yeah,

Kyle Soucy:

no such thing as job security

Erika Hall:

Oh, yeah.

Mike Monteiro:

Uh, Jobs. Go ahead.

Erika Hall:

No, I was gonna say that uh, a few more people have to die before we can really write the history of Mule.

Mike Monteiro:

That's doable.

Kyle Soucy:

ha. Ha, ha.

Erika Hall:

so many stories from this, but we had,

Mike Monteiro:

Wait, am I one of them?

Erika Hall:

No, you are not. Oh my God. You're not one of them. We were working for a client, that actually laid off the entire division we were working for while we were in the building.

Kyle Soucy:

Awful. Oh.

Erika Hall:

we had the

Mike Monteiro:

Oh, that was the worst.

Erika Hall:

that was the worst. The project had been going great. We've been working with them for like six months. They just agreed to a big change order. But meanwhile, I think what was happening is that the board had decided to position for an IPO. And we were working for a more so called entrepreneurial part of it. Like, Oh, we're developing a new service. And so it was horrible because we had to walk past, everybody was putting their stuff in boxes. Like you shouldn't have to look at your consultant or your vendor, your contractor in the face while you're packing up if you got laid off. So that was horrible. This company should have just said, Oh, we have an all hands meeting. It was so unprofessional, but then I was really worried because we just invoiced them for like 70, 000 or something. And my only thought was I would like that money, please. and and I was really worried because they came back to us and they're like, Oh, do you have documentation of the time? And I was like, what a mess? Cause we don't, because we were working with this whole group of people who knew what we were doing, but it turned out like one senior vice president. Had not gotten laid off and she just went to the c suite and said pay these guys just pay them And so we actually got paid pretty quickly Because of the relationship and so that's the other important thing to say is that yes have the contract Yes have the terms Explicit that everybody agrees to, but the thing that will save your bacon every single time is that relationship. Like just because there was an executive who could talk to the other people, like this is absolutely true with getting paid. If you need to get paid faster, if you need to get paid in a particular way, if you need to change something, it's not going back to the contract. The contract is the last stop gap. The thing that matters, the thing that will save your bacon every time is having that good relationship with people.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah.

Mike Monteiro:

I think

Erika Hall:

If you're a consultant and you're starting

Mike Monteiro:

a new project somewhere, there's 2 people who you need to find on your 1st day. And the 1st person is the person who wanted the job that you were brought in for. Because that person can either be your best friend or they will fuck you at every corner out of spite. And it's much, much better to have them be the former, which means you have to, You have to be incredibly empathetic to the position that they were in, because yeah, there's a good chance that they might have been able to do the job. And there's also a chance that they couldn't, but they will have a lot of information to help you, that can help you do the job. And if you manage to work together, you're going to do a much better job than separately. So building some goodwill with that person is tremendous. The second person you need to find is the person who cuts the checks. Not the person who approves the invoices, but the person who actually cuts checks. Because one of the things that we found out, in times of famine is that, companies will tell you like net 15, net 30, don't take anything above net 30, fuck that. But. There are times when you need a check tomorrow, and if you have a relationship with the person who can actually cut you a manual check, you can get that check tomorrow. No matter what anybody says, that person can always cut you a manual check, and they are much more inclined to do it. If it's a person who they already have a relationship with and those people are all eminently bribable. So on day one, find out what they like. It's usually it's. Bourbon, chocolate, or weed, and you bring it to them.

Erika Hall:

yeah. So updating for these times, it's probably not cutting a check right now. It's probably sending a wire or doing a bill. com or whatever. Come on. We haven't had a check book in 10 years.

Mike Monteiro:

It's the same thing.

Erika Hall:

Yeah.

Kyle Soucy:

But talking about the layoffs, you mentioned, witnessing one way back when, but now we're in this time again with these mass layoffs, with UXers. The last couple of years have been turbulent to say the least in consulting land. A lot of us have been questioning if we've done enough to demonstrate our value, in the industry. What do you think? Do you think we can do better at demonstrating our value? Are we partly at fault for these turbulent times?

Erika Hall:

Should I take that one,

Mike Monteiro:

Yeah, this is all yours.

Erika Hall:

this is all me, this is,

Mike Monteiro:

let me say this to start. None of it is your fault. Now Erica can do the nuanced work.

Erika Hall:

no, yeah. Cause this is what people have been talking about in that, whether it's, design, research, writing, content strategy, whatever, none of it is your fault because, it all really does go back to the zero interest rate stuff, right? These organizations vastly overhired because despite the fact that, practitioners talk about user experience, what most tech organizations are in the business of is shareholder experience. And it's not even all shareholders. It's like the majority owners and the analysts and their quarterlies. And so the thing that is a tough message is that so many people have been hired. Like if you look at the hockey stick, like hiring of like right before and like through the early, like 2020, the pandemic times, whatever, They were not hiring people in order to deliver business value by creating things for customers and users. They were hiring people to support a growth narrative, which means they didn't value the work. They valued What hiring those people said to their investors. And that's really, tough to hear that. You were hired just as somebody could say, look, we value research. We've hired a hundred researchers. So they never valued the work. And so you can't prove your value if you were never valued in the first place by the organization. And so the way to tell. What your relationship is to that value is to say, okay, what business are we actually in? And are we in a real business or is my company really functioning like, As security, are we first and foremost an investment asset? And if you look at the narrative in the business and technology news from the last 15 years, what was anybody talking about? It was unicorn, unicorn, unicorn. And it was who is getting a billion dollars in investment. And that is where the story was located. I mean, yeah, it was like, Oh, these companies are doing fun. Okay. Convenient things, but it wasn't that the design was so good. It wasn't that the technology was so good. It was that this company represented a tremendous amount of investment. And and then when the, financial, context changed, then the growth story turned into, an efficiency story. And so there's fuck all anybody can do about that except go to work for a real business that actually makes money by creating real products of value for customers.

Kyle Soucy:

Hmm. It's kind of, I mean it's reassuring. To know that at least we're not at fault. 100%, but it's also frustrating because it's kind of out of our hands, right? What can we do but just ride this wave and wait for good businesses to come along with good products that need us?

Erika Hall:

well, or, or,

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah.

Erika Hall:

because the problem is. Just the way the business has been funded and operated, you're going to get the same results. And so you either have to start a business or you have to go to work for, a business that. Is in business to do something real. And that's rough because all of the big money, like the high salaries are not because of the amount of business value you're creating through the products. Again, the high salaries represent being part of this, speculative world. And we're seeing this now with AI. So it's a tough message.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah.

Mike Monteiro:

I mean this is the time that Mr. Rogers prepared us for, right? Mr. Rogers famously told people, to look for the helpers. And I think the thing that gets forgotten a lot of times is that when he said that, he was talking to children. And we're no longer children. We're the adults. So we shouldn't be looking for the helpers. We should be the helpers. So it is time for us to be helping other people. I mean, we have problem solving skills. And there are people who need problems solved. I mean, civic tech always comes to mind immediately. Things at a large level, at a federal level, are obviously fucked. But, I mean, does your city need you? Does your town need you? Does, your local PTA need you? Does your public library need you? There's things at the local level where we can do a lot to help people. Now, are those going to pay you 300k a year? They are not, but you know what? People don't normally make 300k a year. I think, not, not to piss on a worker's ability to make money. Everybody should be able to make a ton of money, but we have been making salaries that are disproportionate. to what other people have been making for a long time. Now, I would love to fix this problem by paying everybody what we've been getting, but I don't think that's going to happen, in the near future. But it might be time for us to reset our expectations about what we can get. For the jobs that we can do helping people, there's a reason That you know, the robot car companies will pay you, 300 grand a year But also they're not going to do that for very long I got a friend who you know Just got a job at a stupid robot car company and he got laid off like within four months you can go work for the city where you'll make you know a fraction of that but Still enough to hopefully You know, do okay. And, it's difficult work, but you're actually helping people. We need to become the helpers that people need, not just sit around waiting for, oligarchs to start companies where, we can go, Grab our 300k a year for a limited time and then, get kicked off the boat and then be sad. And,

Erika Hall:

volatility is baked in, right? What we should be having, like what everybody wants, what people as say the users and customers of technology products want is a product that does something really useful and is reliable Is mostly the same for a long time, right? People want things to work. And if there's new technology that does something really useful, great. But the problem is that so many of these so called technology companies, the products are really, and we're seeing this with AI too, especially now is that. There's all this talk about, oh, we're creating digital products and services, but at the base, there are under employed, underpaid people actually providing the real services, whether it's content moderation, like horrifying content moderation jobs. That are being, run out of the global south. Whether it's people who are, oh God, what's it called with AI? The human in the loop, right? Like with AI companies, human in the loop. You have people in the Philippines who are actually watching things through cameras, right? It's like the Wizard of Oz where the technology layer is actually hiding the real worker exploitation. And so we have people in the U. S. making these big salaries helping these companies deliver, shareholder value while also participating in this exploitation. And so you have to look at the whole system and look at your role in it and do things like, collective action, either like unionization is one way to do collective action to push back on this, but just having solidarity. With other workers, even if you're all working in the same system, even if those workers are in another country, on another continent, in another role, we have to stop focusing on each of our own individual, jobs. And, and really look at the larger picture about how all of these different roles fit together and stop listening to the lies, right? Stop listening to the PR spin and saying, what is this business really doing? Because I can tell you, it's not that hard to find out what the actual business model is. And a lot of times it's not a real business. If you look at these businesses, they will never, like Nextdoor is a toxic cesspool. It has been a money losing toxic cesspool for its entire inception. And they can't change how it works because they only, make what money they do by increasing engagement. And the things that increase engagement, it is the toxicity. It is the racism. It is like having this hysteria about property crime, that's what makes next door go. And it's been money losing, but it's had this hugely, toxic effect in how neighbors in neighborhoods communicate with each other. I mean, it's also a great place to buy and sell stuff apparently, but there are all of these digital services that are bad businesses, but they still function as vehicles to transfer wealth.

Mike Monteiro:

And I know folks who are UX designers at Amazon and in their mind, they see themselves You know, much closer to like senior management and those folks like that's those are our people so they identify with them. But if you take a look at, the actual structure of the company and who's affecting what and how much everybody there, you're so much closer. To like a warehouse worker than you are to senior leadership. And yet we have these allegiances, these alliances with, you know, I, I want to impress senior leadership and you don't see the warehouse workers and the drivers as part of your brother, sisterhood, other hood. And I think, at some point we stopped identifying as workers. And just, you know, UX people have always identified as temporarily embarrassed millionaires, that's a problem

Kyle Soucy:

Now, you mentioned before, Mike, that we have to be the helpers. And I think that Is a great segue into really what I wanted to talk with you two about is with business development and marketing and something I think the listeners can learn a lot from you on. Now, you mentioned in your book, design is a job how transparent you've been over the years about the mistakes you've made in running your business and Waiting for the phone to ring was one of them that you mentioned and I'm very curious to know, how do you handle marketing and sales for mule design?

Mike Monteiro:

be out there. People need to know who you are. People need to know what your point of view is. And I mean, like I said in the book, the easiest way for people to know that is if you write it up, put it where people can see it. If you're interested in like deceitful patterns. Write about deceitful patterns, not once, but all the fucking time constantly be the person. Who, when somebody's thinking, Oh, we've got all these deceitful patterns. We need to get rid of somebody goes, I know exactly who to get. They write about it all the time. And just to segue to Erica here, she's a demon on LinkedIn.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. Very active

Mike Monteiro:

That was your cue to take

Erika Hall:

was, that was my cue. I have fun. I talk to my colleagues who run consultancies all the time and it has been a really rough time. Like the tide went out, things are really great. And then all of a sudden, and that's rough. That's rough. And there's an impulse and I've seen this a lot. There's an impulse to be reactive and say, Oh, what do the businesses want, what do the businesses need? And the thing is, if you're a consultant, you need to, push organizations in the direction they need to go. So you need to start from like, why am I doing this? What's my work? What's my project? Who are my clients? Like, how? Do I want to help them? How can I help them? What's realistic? Like You really have to understand, like I said, why business is like it is and not the story of it, not the story of creating user value, but you really need to understand how businesses operate and how your work, intersects with that. And then, yeah, figure out your messages and you start doing the consulting In what you're saying publicly, like you have your thing and the thing that like, cause we yell at people with books to market all the time too. And everybody underestimates how, much repetition you need. And so, our work really tends to be. Word of mouth. Cause we've been doing it so long and because there's so many in house teams, like now we're really, we really are like consultant consultants, you know? We don't do the so called design execution anymore. We go in and we help organizations. We help internal teams. We do a lot of, training, strategy, consulting, that sort of stuff. But whatever your thing is, You just talk about it constantly and you provide your expertise, you just got there and you help people, in public, whether it's like writing up, here's what you should be doing, here's how you should be thinking about these things, write your, your opinions, your thoughts, but always think what can I put out there that will help people? And part of that is. Here's how you need to do the work. Here's what you need to focus on. Here's how you need to think about it. Like one of the things I did a couple of years ago, cause everybody I talked to really approaches design research, I would say wrong. And even in my book, I've never fully. Diagram this. And I just. wrote out a design research process for people and put it out there and that's been helpful for people and They're like, oh I got something useful and now I know to go to you if I'm having a problem with this So just be really clear on What problem you help solve? And Say that over and over say I will help this sort of organization with this sort of situation Please hire me for that. And just say it over and over and over again and provide examples. And what I would say is think of it like always being in conversation with your potential clients. Cause, cause you have to listen too. And that's, just how I am. And what I get, what I see other people doing is just reacting like, Oh no, everybody's talking about AI. So I have to be about AI now because I'm afraid of getting work. And I understand the fear of not having work, but you have to put that aside and say, if I'm here offering my expertise and my skills, What are those and what should people be doing? And if people are doing something stupid, don't go along with the stupid thing, even though you know better, because you're afraid of where your next client's coming from.

Kyle Soucy:

And, getting your opinions out there, whether it be social media or writing books the way you both have, I'm curious to know, would you suggest writing a book as a means of business development for all UX consultants? Or would you say that, it's good enough just to be active on social media? Is it

Mike Monteiro:

would,

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah.

Mike Monteiro:

um, Oh God, it's never worth the effort. Um, writing books is hard.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah.

Mike Monteiro:

I mean, and writing books is certainly a thing you can do if you're in the mind to write a book, but I don't think anybody who doesn't want to write a book should sit down and say, I have to write a book. I think, everybody chats. Everybody talks to each other. Everybody has opinions. And I think more often than not, we save our time. Our opinions for when we're in small trusted groups, and then when we're out on social media, especially, linked in, which, for some reason, we think we need to behave like our best professional selves and we. Hold we hold back on our opinions. We hold back on the shit that we actually want to say the stuff that gets people's attention and I would say just, the conversations that you're having, with your closest friends, put those where everybody can see him. Like, I think this thing that we're all doing now is stupid. I'm gonna tell you why we all have conversations like that. Put them where people can see them. And, after a year of doing that, you might say, fuck this. I want to write a book about this crap. And if that's the case, do it. But if that's not how you're wired, don't do it. Because if you're doing something because you think you should, and not because you're driven to it, it's going to suck. It's going to suck for you. And it's going to suck for everybody around you, but mostly it's going to suck for you.

Kyle Soucy:

It's just, be forced, yeah,

Mike Monteiro:

Right. But I would encourage people, just get on LinkedIn and be like your most authentic, unhinged self. Be fearless. And,

Erika Hall:

Yeah.

Kyle Soucy:

Love it.

Erika Hall:

Cause, cause, cause what I'll tell you is, and this is a lesson we learned, over and over, the years is that when we were really honest with our clients, they responded really well, especially high status people who are used to everybody, holding back or like organizations are so full of fear and people lying to each other. And your job as a consultant is to cut through that, right? Because Lying and doing the politics you want to talk about wasting time and money? It's people just performing, doing work. And so if you can be, really just candid, that's what people want, And, that's what people want from an outside advisor. But honestly, just constantly repeat what you do and what people can hire you to do over and over and over again. Don't expect that people know. Have your little pitch and tell people, just be like, Hey, I want to do this kind of work for this kind of organization because I can help solve this kind of problem. The secret kind of works. Only in the sense that if everybody you interact with knows what. you do, then they're primed whenever they're in a conversation. They're like, Hey, I know Kyle does this And I know Kyle wants to do this kind of work.

Kyle Soucy:

That's interesting that you say, like, it's okay to be repetitive, and that's one of the things I think a lot of people fear is that they're just repeating themselves. And but,

Mike Monteiro:

It's necessary like especially with, you know, the algorithms that are control run all these little networks now like like, weird little spiders and shit um the odds that you're going to say something and it's going to get seen are just assume they're zero. So I mean, if you're trying to sell a book, you got to post about it like four times a day. And I mean, it might feel like a lot to you, but if I post about it four times a day, the chances that you'll see it are maybe 10%. So think about it that way. If I'm trying to fill up a workshop, I need to be posting about it constantly or people just don't see it. Don't assume that people like you need to be tired of doing it just just to ensure that somebody might see it.

Kyle Soucy:

That's super helpful.

Erika Hall:

The reason why we have so much, as they say. Permission to talk about our shit is because which we really genuinely try to be helpful and you can tell the difference when you see like the hustlers and the grifters posting stuff and They're self promoting. You can tell the difference between like the 10 things I learned about crypto by sending my kid to boarding school posts versus the like, oh, I'm out here talking about my professional subject of interest because I am genuinely interested in it and I really want to help you. And if all of your self promotion comes from, I genuinely want to help people do useful things in the world. I genuinely want to improve the way things are done. And it comes from that place foremost. And you're in conversation about that and you're not just blasting out like a canned polished message over and over again, you can talk about yourself all the time, in terms of I really do want to help you with this stuff I don't even care if you hire me, I don't care if you buy my book, but please, God, be more effective, because that makes the world better for everybody.

Kyle Soucy:

I needed to hear that, for sure, because self promotion is hard, and you do feel like, ugh, do I sound icky or whatever, so it's it's definitely good to hear.

Erika Hall:

Yeah. If you're worried about that, you don't, right?

Mike Monteiro:

Yeah,

Kyle Soucy:

So just to wrap up here, one question I ask everyone just as a rapid fire, how would you describe UX consulting in one word?

Erika Hall:

Lost.

Kyle Soucy:

Hmm.

Mike Monteiro:

dead

Kyle Soucy:

Say more. What, what is that? reason why

Erika Hall:

I'll start lost because not leading we've been through so many downturns. We totally understand the fear of, Oh God, where's my next meal coming from? But if you're a consultant, you need to have a point of view. And I think what I'm seeing from people is just, is reacting. And if you're gonna, lead the field, lead the field. And instead, everybody's like wandering around because they don't understand the business fundamentals. that got us here. And that's, that's why the consultants are lost. You have to come out there with a really strong point of view on what's going on. And yes, sorry, things are shitty right now, but we do soft work. This is what I always come back to. If you're a UX consultant, you do soft work. you do not have a hard job. And so if you've chosen to do this, have some backbone about having a point of view and standing up to the organizations who are abusing and exploiting people and just using them to make their shareholders a lot of money.

Mike Monteiro:

I said UX consulting is dead and, um, I can maybe throw a little bit more nuance on that. UX consulting as currently practiced should die because it's awful. And look, nobody brings in a consultant because things are going well. Nobody brings in a consultant because the machine is working perfectly. People bring in a consultant because there's a problem and they think that a consultant can fix that problem. And yet most consultants, when they get put into a situation, they attempt to fit in and they attempt to be appreciated and they attempt to be valued and they attempt to be liked. And what you actually need to do is you need. Like you're being brought into a broken machine. You need to be noisy and you need to be loud and you need to be willing to point out that things are broken. And everybody who hires a consultant has a humiliation kink. They're surrounded by people who've been telling them that things are going great for a long time. And they just realized that all of those people have been lying to them. They think because things are obviously not going great. The last thing they want is somebody else in the room attempting to be liked and attempting to be their friend and telling them that things are being great. Be the person who's willing to tell them that things suck. Be the person who's willing to be honest with them. If they're good people to be selling your labor to, then they are hungry for that message. They are dying for somebody to be honest. They are dying for somebody to sound like an authentic human being. Right now we're spending so much energy. Teaching machines how to sound like humans and teaching humans how to sound like machines. If I go on LinkedIn, for example, I honestly cannot tell the difference between AI and human posts because you're all starting to sound the same. And you're all starting to sound boring and bland as fuck. And then somebody will come through, somebody will come through and start talking about like how bad everything is at this company and how stupid my boss is, or there'll be like, I just wrote a fantastic book that you all should read and that stuff just. It's like sunshine coming through clouds, and that stuff is riveting because there's so little of it right now. And honestly, if it helps people think of yourselves as the world's most advanced AI Because like you've achieved humanity. Congratulations. Now fucking own it.

Kyle Soucy:

Awesome.

Mike Monteiro:

Go out there and be your most human selves. And that includes telling. people to fuck off every once in a while because they need to hear it.

Kyle Soucy:

Well, this has been awesome. Awesome. I'm so glad. On that note, I think that's a perfect place to wrap it up. So this has been wonderful. I'm so glad you both could join me today and just share. some of your consulting wisdom with us. I wish we had a whole another hour because there's so much more I would love to talk about, but I'm so appreciative of your time. And for the listeners, I'll include, in the show notes links to Erica and Mike's books, their workshops, and any other resources that we've mentioned. And thank you so much, both again for joining me in the lounge.

Erika Hall:

Thank you.

Mike Monteiro:

Kyle, it's been a pleasure.

Kyle Soucy:

Likewise.

Mike Monteiro:

Thank you for having us.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. Take care.

Mike Monteiro:

Bye

Kyle Soucy:

All right. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for joining me. So do you have a topic or a question that you would like us to explore on a future episode of the UX consultants lounge? Perhaps there's an anonymous consulting story you want to submit. If so, click on the link in the show notes to submit your story or question from the podcast website. Until next time, keep that consultancy going. I can't wait to have you back in the lounge for our next episode.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Kyle Soucy

Host