This Techie Made $166,000 In A Year With An Online UX Design Academy After Being Fired – Here’s How
Zaire Allen founded Love Circular, a digital academy for aspiring user experience and user interface designers, who build the visual and interactive components for apps and websites.
The 25-year-old launched it in July 2020, two months after he was let go as a UX designer at a mortgage company during the pandemic.
During the covid-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of people were either furloughed or fired – leaving some in limbo on how to make ends meet. But coronavirus, albeit an awful two years, was a life-changing period for some who used the lockdown as a chance to start businesses and learn new skills.
Without a job, Allen invested all his time into launching Love Circular, a project he actually thought of at university in 2017. He spent about $274 on launching it, according to Insider— covering website domains, email marketing, and the student-learning platform.
A 2018 survey of tech employees by Blind found 58% of them reported feeling imposter syndrome: feelings of inadequacy or a sense that success is undeserved. Allen said he felt the same when he lost his job and launched Love Circular – where he would teach his first cohort of students for free to test his product.
But – much to his surprise – he managed to earn about $166,000 in 13 months through a three-month boot camp he offered at $3,285 as well as other shorter courses, such as “Building your first UX/UI Design Portfolio.” Insider has reportedly verified these figures through documents provided by Allen.
He soon realised it was possible to kick imposter syndrome to the curb.
When previously asked to explain what Love Circular does and what his roles are, he said: So I’m one of the co-founders. What we do at Circular is we focus on training and mentoring people who have zero or little experience in UX design, and we take them from that level of knowledge to a working proficiency within 90 days.
“My day-to-day normally consists of operations. And that just looks like working and interacting with our students. Our students have access to a lot of material, as well as access to other students who are in a similar situation to themselves. So there’s a community being formed. Myself and the other instructors support and foster their learning by having calls similar to this one. We go over their goals and what they hope to accomplish through this program, and how we can help them get to that point.”
