Tom Scott

Stealth Mode

Design + Elite Talent + Community. Dropping soon 🔥

Founder

Unreasonable

Unreasonable builds community between entrepreneurs, institutions, and investors to profitably solve pressing global problems. As an Unreasonable Mentor, I'm part of an international network that is dedicated to leveraging business to solving the seemingly intractable societal and environmental challenges of our time. My expertise is helping build and scale teams for companies going through hyper-growth.

Unreasonable Mentor 

Fearless

Co-founded Fearless from the spare bedroom. Grew to 50+ people, 8-figure business in 3 years.

Not actively involved in the day to day operations.

Co-Founder & CCO (Exited)

Fierce

Fierce is the design studio of Fearless Group.

Co-Founder

Fearless Community

Fearless Community was born out of an old community I founded called Candles.

Fearless Talent

Fearless Talent is the Talent business in Fearless Group.

Wiser

Clients - Thriva, 10X Banking, Starling Bank, Toyota, BT/EE, Farfetch, Gousto.

Principal Design Consultant

Source

Clients - Eurostar, Zoopla, Guardian News & Media, Kamet Ventures, Graze, Bookatable, Ticketmaster.

Anytime Fitness

I charmed people with my British accent. Became a Personal Trainer at a local gym, hustled day and night training locals on health and fitness. The owner then asked me to take over the gym, grew the gym membership count by 112%. Managed a small team of salespeople.

Sales Director

Carnival Cruise Line

Somehow managed to blag my way into being a "Fitness Director" on the 4th largest cruise ship in the world aged 18. 

I ended up selling detox packages between $15,000-25,000 per week. I was speaking to between 100-200 people in seminars on how to lose weight, book people into a "consultation" and then I'd upsell them. 

I hated selling crap detox packages, but I did travel to over 50 countries before I was 18.

International Fitness Director

Over the last 4 years, I co-founded a £10m+ revenue company in design.

We built products and teams for FTSE 100, start-ups and everything in between.

Then, in 2023, we decided to part ways.

Now, I have a hypothesis when it comes to hiring design talent.

I believe every company is looking to:

1) Reduce the time to hire 
2) Hire the top 1% of talent

I'm building an exclusive design network, will the sole purpose to connect the world's best designers with companies who want to level-up in design and build world-class teams. 

For companies, they will get a pre-vetted list of designers who have been verified in a short timeframe so they can get on with executing projects and creating a team without wasting time on sourcing, interviewing and procrastinating.

My credentials: 

- Worked with elite CDOs to build out design teams.
- Helped build a design agency, so I get design in and out. 
- Built design communities in 46+ countries.
- Interviewed the world’s best leaders on various topics.

My results: 

- 80k+ designers following my journey on socials
- 100m+ impressions in the last 4 years
- 500+ design hires in the last 5 years, in 9 countries.
- Saved companies £1.1m in agency fees, through our innovative talent model.

Email: tom@itsverfied.io
Twitter: @tomscottt

Co-Founder & CCO

There’s a lack of senior designers. 

Every team could do with more. 

If you’re a “Senior Product Designer” with a lean towards UX, you’re in demand and can easily move adding 10-20k to your salary in the process. 

Views of a recent conversation on why there is a shortage of user-centric seniors. 

Thoughts? 

#design

Building: Verified. Placing the top 1% of designers and leaders. Post about design and self-leadership.

My ADHD has often restricted me. 

4 main symptoms:

- Rejection Sensitivity, even projected rejection. 
- Focusing on ONE thing. Can’t sit still. 
- Lose everything. Ask my loved ones. 
- Emotional regulation. Why I often quit jobs. 

It’s affected relationships in and out of work. 

I was a naughty kid at school, but I now look back and think it was undiagnosed ADHD. 

Now starting a new business as a solo-founder my ADHD is causing me a lot of new challenges I need to overcome. 

Some days I procrastinate until 4pm, some days one thing will happen and will throw me off, some days I can only work for 2 hours, some days I work for 14 hours. 

It can be difficult to manage, but with love and understanding, it helps. 

It’s our duty to manage our ADHD, but for anyone who manages or hired people with ADHD, some basic understanding on how to help them feel safe and not afraid to speak up on this topic will create an absolute superhuman in your team. 

P.S. Lauren has taught me so much about this, she posts great content on ADHD in business, worth a follow if you’re interested. 

Big up all us ADHDers! Just doing our best 🙏

The irony as I write this is I’m procrastinating 😂 

Back to work. 

#ADHD

Building: Verified. A design company helping hire the top 1% of talent. Post about design and self-leadership.

You don't "need" a portfolio to assess digital product design candidates. 

It's easy to create a polished portfolio with 100's of templates you can copy from, put a little bit of text on it and blag yourself through an interview process. And, when it's a non-design hiring manager, it's gets easier. 

Here's a few other suggestions: 

1. Testimonials and conversations. So many people get jobs this way. 

2. Proper questions. This will come down to the skill of the interviewer. 

3. Ask them to observe a workshop/meeting and ask them to offer feedback. You will see how they observe, and where they can add value. 

Portfolios are nice to have, not essential. 

We have a retention problem in design, maybe we need to look at how we bring people in? Just a suggestion. 

P.S. We're building our own career rubric to assess candidates who we put forward to roles. I'm bored of relying on portfolios. If you fancy hiring designers in a different way, let me know. 👋 

#design 

3 observations I’ve made about the design market:

- Content Designers are being let go at an insane rate. I believe a lot of companies are Content Design as a luxury hire. Content Design is where research was 10 years ago. CONTENT IS EVERYWHERE. Rah! 

- There’s not many design recruiters left in-house. Which makes sense, as not many companies are scaling design teams significantly to accommodate a focused design recruiter. Lots of these awesome people have merged roles they hire for or set up their own agency. 

- Design leadership is being effected, because in a lot of big organisations the most senior design practitioner is middle management in the wider scheme of things (another post in itself) so it’s easier to cut middle layers, put all the ICs under a CPO and voila. Nightmare. 

All these roles will come back with a vengeance. 

Some ideas to get through:

- Fractional roles 
- Micro-agency 
- Consulting 

Or, go and live in Bali for £1k per month and let this all blow over. 

P.S. as a community we are stronger. Together we rise.

Why are designers failing to get buy-in? 

I’m seeing a rise in CPDO’s and designers who can balance operational effectiveness/efficiency with customer focus. 

What’s the point having a seat at the table if you don’t know what to do when you get there? 

P.S. My WhatsApp conversations are basically design therapy. 😂

#design

The #1 reason people leave design jobs 👇

Burnout, and can't do their job effectively. 

Many companies get in the way of good design through poor design operations resulting in overwhelming designers with meetings, admin, and general BS. 

"I'm always in meetings" 

"I only have 4 hours of focus time a week" 

Common phrases I hear. 

How can design teams be more efficient?

Some companies are scaling design teams to some truly huge numbers, but it seems to be creating duplication, more meetings, more politics etc.

#designleadership

I speak to 3+ non-design executives a week about design. 

Mainly Chief Digital Officers. Often, they work in large (10,000+ people) companies. 

A few insights I am seeing at the moment: 

- They see design as a crucial part of their team. 
- They believe the wider executive team do not understand design fully. 
- CEO's often do not mention design, it's about shipping product. 
- Focusing on business metrics. Design happens to be part of that.  
- 90% of them tell me Product has more power than Design. 
- The other 10% say Product/Eng is a serious bottleneck for design work. 

There's very few CDO's (Digital) coming from a design background, common backgrounds are business SME's (especially in larger companies), product, eng. 

I want to share Ahmet's comments on an earlier post about getting buy-in for design: 

1 - Pick a revenue generating product or service. 
2 - Fix the design of the product or service. 
3 - Show the business impact, distribute the results to key stakeholders. 
4 - Work with the business to show what impact it could have across the wider product suite. 
5 - Hustle to get a small trial team to keep proving the ROI. 
6 - Ask to make design part of the business strategy, through budget for a design practice, and announcement in the annual report.

Don't ask for the seat at the table (hate this analogy), make your own.

P.S. If you know any non-design executives I can speak to about design, I want to create a video series with a CIO, CMO, CTO, CPO, CDO talking about their thoughts on design. Think this would be gold content. 

#designleadership 

I coined a job title last year “design politician” because a few people who want to step into design leadership roles do not appreciate the amount of politics you have to navigate in certain organisations to get things done. 

Great insight here into a common theme I see in my conversations around protecting their teams but having their own desires to get things done to demonstrate their ROI. 

How do you handle politics to get things done? 

#designleadership

Typical company: “I need a Head of Design who can execute my ideas” 

No, you need a IC, who is execution focused. 

With a high-level consultant 1-day a week. If the founder/CEO will genuinely listen to them. 

The obsession of getting a big name in for them to get frustrated and leave is expensive and a waste of time if that person cannot contribute to the strategy of products and services.

2 underrated career tips for longevity: 

- Take 3-6 months off. To explore your curiosities, spend time with family, travel and expand your consciousness by being a human being not human doing. Looking for a job is not time off. 

- Travel. You become a better person, you learn different cultures, different ways to lead communities, families and yourself. 

Some of the greatest and happiest people I’ve met have been folks who live off-grid, off the land, sharing their wisdom and healing.

It’s not coincidence that places like Bali, Costa Rica and Tulum are full of burnt out British people who are seeking something bigger than their reality.

99% of the time, I do not read job descriptions.

I look for very specific information to tell me exactly who I need to put in a role. I don’t need someone to tell me a Product Designer role will include prototyping for example. 

Things to include when writing to designers:


- Why is this role live? 
- How big is the team? 
- What can they be fired for?
- Who’s going to be their boss? 
- Where does design report into? 
- How efficiently do they operate? 
- Whats their expected deliverables? 
- How mature is the design organisation? 
- How does design work with engineering? 
- Who’s the highest exec sponsor for design? 

You’re writing to designers in the hope they can imagine working at your company. 

P.S. asking about engineers is underrated, you could do great work, but if engineers are below-par it will be slow and tedious.

Agent for Design Leaders. 

3 months ago, I posted about deaign leaders having a career agent. This is relevant to all digital leaders IMO. 

Someone who:

- Gets you paid speaking engagements 
- Builds your personal brand through content 
- Puts you in front of the right companies. 
- Keeps you informed of the latest insights 
- Exclusive access to the top executives. 
- Retreats focusing on connection, community etc. 
- And, so much more. 

I’ve spoken to a lot of people about this, I’m convinced this is a needed service. Including executives who hire leaders, and having this white-glove service would be premium and they’d expect the highest quality candidates. 

Often, the best leaders are ones you don’t know about as they are busy doing the work leading teams. 

3 ideas on how this could be paid for:

- As part of a premium community
- % of your salary, engagement fees etc. 
- monthly retainer 

This will be for leaders who want to gain authority, change industry, get the top jobs, connect with fellow world-class peers, be oversubscribed with speaking invites and get into the right circles. 

Building a brand is more than just writing copy. 

Right now this is in my roadmap for later in the year, it makes sense to me, it combines everything I love to do. 

Would you buy this service? 

P.S. I’m trialling this for 1 person right now, will let you know updates. Probably on my newsletter or here on LinkedIn. 

#design

After 6-months break, I'm back building design teams. 

In the background working on: 

- Getting the brand sorted. 
- Business strategy is nearly done. 
- First few hires start in a few weeks. 
- New content plan underway. Very focused. 
- Getting a reliable accountant/legal team set up. 

The hustle is real. Let's go. 

Verified V1 is simple. 

We use a vetted exclusive talent network to build design teams. Currently trialling this with a select few people and companies. 

The mission for year 1 is:

- Work with a select few companies to place Senior-Staff IC’s and their leadership team to appoint design executives. 

- Build the brand through content, newsletter, events, masterminds. Both personal and company pages. 

- Hit 50% margins, with the plan to give away 5-10% of profit to great causes I am passionate about. 

- With projected financials, we’ll need a lean team of 5 spread across the next 6 months. Focused on efficiency, not just numbers. 

This is just the starting point, the mission is a lot bigger. 

My top priorities right now:

- Launch the website, brand, decks.
- Hire a top recruiter in the US. 
- Land 3 clients. Aiming for 100k rev in 3 months. 
- Open up the talent network. 
- Onboard my new hire. Boom. 

My biggest challenges:

- Staying focused. The roadmap is so exciting. 
- Hiring a top recruiter in the US. 
- Balancing short term revenue vs strategic work
- Building out the network as a premium community 

P.S. what do you think of the name? 

#buildinginpublic

Lots of companies have made design leadership redundant in this economic downturn. 

In-house design leadership is clearly seen as a luxury, and not a necessity. 

The most common message I get from designers at all levels is how design has moved into product teams, reporting to a Head of Product, removing a centralised design function. 

Here’s 5 reasons I believe design leadership is getting cut in certain organisations: 

- C-Level change. Leaders not positioning design correctly, thus non-design execs do not see value. 

- Big consultancy comes in to do “re-org” and then 3 months later, they have a whole team in there. Such great new business. 

- New CEO’s coming in and cutting costs, seeing design as a luxury, focusing on 1-2 year survival not how design can infuse business strategy 3-5 years out. 

- Overspending on big design teams, duplication of work, poor efficiency of design. Seen this so many times in the last 6 months. This results in redundancies when the company wakes up to what the ROI of big teams. 

- External facing leaders who are in the public domain, but aren’t delivering anything of value internally. 

What do you think? 

#designleadership

4 insights I have in the design industry right now: 

- Lots of start-up founders are looking for Design Leaders can be a player-coach, do IC work, manage upwards and sidewards. This never works well. I’ve made a few suggestions bringing in a Staff/Principal level IC as “Head of Design” and then bringing in a VP/CDO 1-2 days a week as a fractional leader for advice/guidance to the executive team. Same cost overall. 

- I speak to 10+ design leaders a week, 80% of those are unhappy in their roles. Reasons often include not allowed to actually do their role, lack of budgets, sold the dream, not enough buy-in. This is an interesting time for leaders, some are questioning do they even enjoy this anymore? Being so beaten up by politics can effect even the optimistic of people!

- There is a tendency for companies to do a “Glamour search” often EU companies looking in the Bay Area not realising the enormous amount of money it would take to get someone out of there. There are so many future CDO’a quietly doing their work, not vocal externally, but these are the ones to find. 

- I am seeing trend of big companies building teams in India and other countries as they have an over lower CapEx, but getting solid results, if not better at times. I love India, so I am all for this. I’m excited for this market in 2023. 

P.S. these insights are often always from my perspective, conversations and thoughts. 

Any other insights you’ve made in design this week?

#designleadership

Out of the 10 design leaders I speak to, 80% want to quit their job. 

They often have:

- Big teams 
- High salary 
- Decent budget 

But, in the grand scheme of the organisation they are effectively middle-management. They can’t get that coveted seat at the table, if that’s even a thing. 

Design leaders are by nature change-makers, so they get frustrated with lack of influence and take control of their own destiny. 

5 roles I’m seeing leaders move to: 

- CPDO
- CXO
- Entrepreneur
- Consultant/Fractional
- Staff IC

I had a fascinating chat yesterday about the rise of CPDO’s, people who can balance operational efficiency with customer experience. I feel more non-design execs can quantify this role more. 

You speak to a lot of CDO’s and they don’t know what they could be fired for, whereas product it’s clear. 

Any thoughts? Feedback welcome.

Some Design Leaders are overpaid for what they do vs what they can truly deliver if allowed. 

Big companies bring in leaders with a ton of experience, sell the dream and stick them into middle-management inside the wider company.

They end up doing more admin vs true leadership work. 

These companies need strong design managers/ops at half the price and some fractional leadership support. Everyone wins. 

The design leaders at these large organisations are often bored, frustrated, disillusioned and ready to leave. 

Put any top role in front of these leaders, and 99% of them will be interested in a chat. 

There’s very few at large organisations who truly have a “seat at the table”. 

P.S. I’ve seen this multiple times in multiple orgs. 

#leadership

3 big challenges design managers face:

- Being included too late. 
- UX debt not being addressed. 
- Hiring the best design talent. 

I’ll add lots of companies get 500-1000+ applicants per job for a “Senior Designer” but 99% of those will not be right. Hiring designers is subjective. 

What would you add? 

#designleadership

Should hire a design leader from a non-design background? 

I've never seen this end well, but, a large company (one I will not name) appointed a design exec who is from an engineering and business SME background, taking over a team of 100+. 

Many design teams are reporting into CPO's, CTO's, CMO's, so it makes sense in certain companies the leader may not have a design background. 

I've also seen design leaders from agencies go "in-house" not deliver and vice versa. Different companies need different types of leaders. 

What do you think? 

I believe to grow design maturity in an organisation, you need a designer by trade, who understands business and how to integrate design into the business strategy. And, who can manage upwards, downwards and sideways with huge effect. 

#designleadership 

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