The Brandon Zhang Show

On today’s episode, I am talking with Juvoni Beckford, a Senior Software Engineer at Google. Juvoni is also the epitome of a lifelong learner as a voracious reader, a passionate community builder with a keen interest in systems, habits, and productivity methods. In today’s episode, we talk about building anti-libraries for reading, how Roam Research promotes bottom-up writing, and finding your archetype through reflection.  

Links:
1. Juvoni's Twitter
2. Juvoni's Website
3. Brandon's Twitter
4. Brandon's Website

Mentioned:

Reading Tweet Thread (Over 6500 likes)
Roam Research

5 Key Takeaways:  

1. It may take eight years to write a book and it may only take eight hours to read that book. That's a significant asymmetric tradeoff that you as a reader would take. And so when I saw these cartoons, where people had were able to acquire multiple abilities, or even like avatar, The Last Airbender, we had these four elemental traits, I realized reading, I can start acquiring multiple abilities and start skill stacking myself. So for example, I'm based in New York, and rent negotiations were coming up. So I got the book, never split the difference. And that had some very concrete tactics that helped me get thousands of dollars off my rent. 
2. I think one of the biggest things that a number of people, especially in the personal development spaces, it tends to be much more masculine energy. And even in the productivity space, a lot of masculine energy, masculine energy tends to focus on the outer world. And building things and hacking this, or shortcuts to this. And a lot of feminine energy is more so about the inner world. And I find that fiction really does a good job of sort of capturing the inner world. So fiction, I use to develop emotional models about how to feel deeper within myself and how to relate to others better. 
3. Your most valuable books are actually not the books that you've read, it's the books that you will read. So an anti-library is a way to, you can purchase or borrow or collect books that you want to read ahead of time. And this is also very vital in maintaining reading momentum. Because if you always have another book that you can pick up, it's much easier to get into that routine of reading more consistently over time. And now you can also be a little bit more strategic with your reading, and the books that you purchase. I tend to do a lot of problem-driven reading. So I tend to read books that are very relevant to some obstacle that I'm trying to overcome or a friend is trying to overcome.
4. When it comes to meditation, I find that mindfulness is an important practice of fundamental practice, especially if you're someone who is a lifelong learner. Because what ends up happening is that you have all these ideas that build up in your head, and it becomes like this mad circus.
5. I'm a very big believer in the Craftsman mindset over the passion mindset. Because the passion mindset, you're led to believe that you're just born into the world with this innate passion, and you just have to discover it. But I think it's more so of cultivating something that you can be good at. And then you become passionate about it, by discovering how useful this skill or ability is, and how much people appreciate you and evaluate what you're able to do. So for me, introspection was a necessary exercise to be able to fly my plane, which is me, and navigate the turbulence of life. 

Today, I am speaking with Hiten Shah, the co-founder of FYI, a company that helps you find your documents in 3 clicks or less. He previously co-founded CrazyEgg and KISSmetrics as well. In our conversation today we talk about how his upbringing shaped his entrepreneurial spirit, how to separate the forest from the weeds, and finding the definition of success. 

Links:

1. Hiten's Twitter
2. Hiten's Website
3. Brandon's Twitter
4. Brandon's Website

Show Notes:

My Billion Dollar Mistake (Blog Post)
Hiten's Never-Ending Twitter thread for startup resources. 

5 Key Takeaways 

1. I really love to dig in and feel like I have the ability to learn something I didn't know anything about really fast, just by asking the right questions, digging, obviously googling around, and things like that. And I think that that like that's like something that I would want to be instilled in as many people as possible so that they can kind of achieve, you know, the most that they possibly can while they're alive.
2. I would recommend this to almost everybody, which is throwing the mental models away and start with basically first principles or what I would prefer to call basics. And if you start with the basics, then the mental models are very obvious, because you started with kind of the core.
3. Reddit created fake accounts early on and kind of seeded the communities, or the whole community at the time, through those fake accounts and the content that was posted on them, in order to kickstart the community. Right, that is a classic kind of example of what we would put as some somebody who was doing growth, hacker type responsibilities. While all these things around conversion optimization, those are just like marketing tactics. Those are not growth hacks.
4. The crux of no code is just the fact that more people can build things faster. Okay. I think I think the speed part is what people don't talk about. If you're doing no code, it better be faster than writing code. If you're doing the no code, and it's not faster than writing code, then are you really doing no code?
5. That realization, that self-awareness, once you hit about a dozen employees, or a dozen team members, you're gonna get it. And if you don't get it, like it's gonna take you years to figure that out. And by that time, you'll realize that you screwed a whole bunch of stuff up and you wish you were different. This is the consistent pattern I've seen, even for people who run organizations differently than I do.

Today, I am speaking with Ana Lorena Fabrega, she is a former elementary school teacher who is now an edupreneur, a passionate educator outside the classroom with a vision for the future of education and a strong desire to break the mold. She writes a weekly newsletter on education called Fab Fridays and hosts "Show and Tell" on Youtube with David Perell. In today's episode we are going to talk about Synthesis School, an exciting new startup in education, setting anti-goals, and what schools can learn from Y-Combinator.  

Links:
1. Ana's Twitter
2. Ana's Website
3. Brandon's Twitter
4. Brandon's Website

Mentioned:

Ad Astra
Synthesis School
Y-Combinator 

5 Key Takeaways: 

1. Synthesis is a new online school built by the founding teachers of Ad Astra, the school started by Elon Musk at SpaceX. It is an online school with no speed limit for kids who want to solve problems and think outside the box.
2. I got tired of creating compliance and teaching kids to embrace the status quo. And it just didn't feel right to me to enforce things that I didn't generally value, like tests and grades and memorization and homework. And it's interesting because these are all things that I had to unlearn. Because if you go to teaching school, you know, I went to ed school, and they teach you this way, right? Like, oh, this is how you assess kids. This is the incentives that you use in order to get kids to learn.
3. What I really like about micro-schools is that it's tailored to the kid, right. And you don't have like this gigantic class that you need to teach to, but it's just a few kids. We were talking about the benefits of that, right, like kids rise to the occasion, and they teach each other. And you really get to form the curriculum around the merging interest of the kids and what they need at that moment. And they also like that, it's really flexible.
4. In school, we learned prescribed methods in order to achieve prescribed outcomes, right. And this typically involves just mimicking existing ideas. And often we don't even question things. We just do them because that's the way we've always done them. But if we want to come up with something really original, and solve problems in new ways, then and actually see what's truly possible, then we need to think from first principles. 
5. I'm fascinated by Y Combinator, because I feel like it's the kind of project-based learning experience that I envisioned for kids, right. And there's a lot that we can learn from there. But basically, it's this idea that you know, kids and humans, and we just learned by doing and by being really actively engaged on whatever it is that we're learning, this idea of being a passive consumer and listening to a lecture and you know, yes, it works for some people. But really, when it comes to applying that knowledge later and making it stick, you need to be working on something. And good schools are able to set that culture for learning and the conditions for invention, right, and then just let the kids build and create. And this, again, doesn't happen through lectures.

On today's podcast, I speak with Anna Gat, the CEO and founder of Inter Intellect, a startup dedicated to bringing people together for intellectual discussions and salons. On today's episode, Anna and I talk about how Inter Intellect was created, finding your ikigai, and what goes into a perfect inter intellect salon meeting.

1. Interintellect
2. Anna's Twitter
3. Interintellect's Twitter
4. Brandon's Twitter
5. Brandon's Website

5 Key Takeaways: 

1. After some time, it became clear to me that going about solving how healthy intellectual life can flourish, maybe approaching it with a self-defense toolkit is not the right thing to do. 

2. Nowadays, there are a lot more diversity and ideas, opinions, and experiences. And the people are quiet if the environment is set to encourage this kind of friendliness and openness. And then people will actually come with their metaphorical or actual, you know, snacks and wine and listen to each other. 

3. This is the same for online communities, you can't just like put random people together and say, now you're a community, there has to be something being done there. And the other thing is culture and I think, you know, creating the rights and responsibilities of a community. 

4. I had this moment of clarity, when I understood that I don't want to have a meta life, that I no longer want to teach and write and write movies and translate novels. I felt like the world is upside down, and everybody's needed, it was a call to arms moments. 

5. I think that's so so important because, in England, We always talk about the zone of genius that everybody has not everybody's a genius, but every single person has a zone of genius. And your zone of genius comes from the mid middle part of your Venn diagram, right? Just like, lay over each other, all these different things that you're good at, and see what is in the middle and just either find the job that fits that or make it. For me, what was in the middle of my Venn diagram, I was looking at companies that would be doing this, and I couldn't find anything. And so I had to start my own startup, right. 

On today's podcast, I'm speaking with August Bradley, an ex founder who helps small to mid-sized businesses enhance operations with Notion. August also recently created his Notion course, Pillars, Pipelines, and Vaults which he has created content around on his Youtube channel which has reached over 20,000 subscribers. On today's episode, we talk about how August came up with Pillars Pipeline and Vaults system for managing your life and business, why August believes in quantified self, and how science and technology can enhance human performance.

Links:
1. Year Zero (August's Community)
2. August's Twitter
3. Brandon's Twitter
4. Brandon's Website

5 Key Takeaways: 

1. The biggest failure is we don't do the things we tell ourselves, we're going to do, the commitments we make to ourselves. And so that is the first challenge to overcome. And I address that with the focus segment. 

2. So the quick ones are in front, I'll take two or three minutes, just get them done and knock them off your list, shorten the list, you might have one that's immediate, that's the bold yellow lightning bolt the front, if there's something I have to do, the second I sit down, I flag it as immediate, and I don't miss it. Then after that, the rest are first, second, third, fourth, I go up the fifth priority, but I try to really just have up to three. Because really three big priorities in the day is a lot, even two is reasonable. 

3. Because I'm working with small companies with founders who are very dominant in the company's their early stage companies. And even if they've raised a good amount of money, the founders are very intertwined. And I was finding as I would implement systems and processes for the small companies, that it wouldn't work if the founder, like if the founders life was not organized, and systematized and together, so if the founder was kind of a mess, but the company was structured. 

4. Some of the most powerful things are simple effect. Many, most of the most powerful things are relatively simple. But those are the game changers, they changed the whole trajectory of the curve. 

5. Everyone I had admitted so many people had with Evernote was the became this bottomless pit, even when it was our primary system for expanding our minds, it was even then a bottomless pit because you couldn't really structure and resurface, you might get lucky with with the AI engine recommending something but usually not. 

On today's podcast, I interview Robbie Crabtree, a trial lawyer who is in the process of building out a transformative speaking curriculum at Performative Speaking. On today's episode, we discuss what that curriculum looks like, his love for pop culture, how we met, and why his favorite character is Harvey Specter.

Performative Speaking

From talking to Robbie these past couple of weeks, I know he has been putting together the groundwork for his masterclass “Performative Speaking.” I will be joining the inaugural cohort in 2 weeks to truly take my speaking to the next level.

The caliber of some of the 30 other members is amazing and the energy of the cohort is contagious.

There are still 20 spots left remaining and I would love for some of you guys as part of my community to come and join me on the journey. The price tag is a little steep, but for the lifelong friends that you are going to make and the lifelong skills you are going to build, I can confidently say that this will be a case of compounding ROI.

The course is a live, synchronous 5-week long class, which is exactly how a speaking course should be conducted. You will be able to practice in front of others, get direct feedback from Robbie, and learn to break out of your speaking comfort zone.

If you want to learn more about the course, schedule a call with me here (another lesson from Robbie, constantly put your action into practice) or take a look at the full course curriculum here. 

Links:

1. Robbie's Website
2. Robbie's Twitter
3. Brandon's Twitter
4. Brandon's Website

Mentioned:

Robbie Personal User Manual
Jack Butcher's Design Fundamentals Course
Jack Butcher's Build Once, Sell Twice Course
Write of Passage

5 Key Takeaways

1. It's not normal for most lawyers to try case in general, like a single case. Because most lawyers are not trial lawyers. Most of them work in a corporate office. Most of them work behind the scenes. Most of them are doing transactional work. Very few are doing litigation or trial work.
2. And I quickly responded, "I want to try the biggest, baddest, most serious, most high profile cases that there are. That's what this county does. That's what this office allows our attorneys to do. I'm one of those attorneys. That's why I'm applying here." I learned a couple of years later from the attorney that was seated to the right of that head attorney, that that's the moment that he was sold on me as an attorney because that's exactly what he wanted.
3. And that really is what performance speaking is about is being able to walk into a boardroom and pitch your ideas to a bunch of executives who are all your bosses, or to go into an investor group. And say, this is why you should fund my startup at this amount because I can make you feel something about the product I'm offering. 
4. After every trial, I would go back and talk to my jury. And so I would get this feedback from them every single time about what had worked and what had not worked.
5. The reason that is my favorite quote is because that really should be the idea of, in my opinion, everything in life, we don't want to make it complicated. We want everything to just be very simple. But we also want it to be important. 

On today’s episode I talk with Kaleigh Moore a freelance writer with present clients including AT&T, Shopify and Stripe. Kaleigh also writes about retail for publications like Forbes, Vogue Business and Adweek. In todays conversation, we talk about the apprenticeship model in freelancing, how she has streamlined her writing process and the future of sustainable fashion. 

Links:

1. Kaleigh's Website
2. Kaleigh's Twitter
3. Brandon's Twitter
4. Brandon's Website

Mentioned:

Creative Class

5 Key Takeaways

1. The apprenticeship model for freelancers is kind of like training wheels. So if you're not ready to fully dive into prospecting, and trying to get new business, but you know that there is an established writer out there who's doing what you want to do, and they are maybe really busy and need help. Just putting out the ask and saying, hey, if you ever have overflow projects, or you need help with things, I would love to use this model with you and to learn from you.
2. So I roadmap that [client onboarding] out from the very first conversation when I work with somebody new. And then also, if I'm training somebody as well, I always make sure that they see the full process and how things are progressing step by step as well.
3. Yeah, a lot of different things. I worked in a lot of different industries on a lot of different types of writing projects. I quickly learned was that I had to learn from scratch every time I said yes to an opportunity where I didn't know anything about the subject matter. And that was exhausting. So the quicker I could specialize and really lean into what I already had a foundation of knowledge around, which was the e-commerce world, the easier the tasks would get. 
4. But I heard somebody on a podcast a while ago, talking about how if it [a book] is not a good fit, and they don't enjoy it, they just give up on it and devote their reading time to something else. And I've just finally accepted that that's okay to do. And I think that that's also helped me maintain a better reading habit because I'm not trudging through a book that I hate. I'm like, okay, it's fine. I'm going to pass. I got what I wanted out of it. I saw what it was I'm gonna move on.
5. I think probably the biggest theme that's emerged over the years is that especially writers are often very uncertain about their abilities, and lacking a lot of confidence when it comes to pitching themselves or feeling good about what their first draft looked like, or hitting publish on their own blogs if they have something interesting or unique take on something they have this habit of second-guessing.

On today's episode, I am talking with Nik Sharma, the CEO of Sharma Brands, which helps operate your favorite DTC Brands. Nik was the director of DTC at Hint Water and also led DTC e-commerce at Vayner Media. In today’s conversation, we talk about the importance of organic influencer marketing, DTC trends in the era of COVID, and what Nik looks for when hiring for Sharma Brands. 

Links:

1. Nik's Twitter
2. Sharma Brands 
3. Brandon's Twitter
4. Brandon's Website

Mentioned:

Black Wolf Nation
Judy
Not Pot 

Five Key Takeaways:  

1. After Vayner, my plan was actually to just consult for a little bit, and, and then find something that was about to be series A that I could join and really get my hands dirty in. At the end of the year, I realized that the biggest problem with consulting is that I'm still heavily reliant on a lot of teams internally or team members internally. And so then that's when I decided, you know, Sharma brands should essentially be an autonomous growth equity firm where we could have our own staff, our own developers, our own editors, our own designers, our own strategists, and go into companies fully autonomously. And that's kind of how Sharma brands came about.
2. DTC 1.0 was heavily focused. user acquisition and convenience, being able to light up a website, whether it be on Shopify or whatever. manufacturer or access the product and then distribute it. using something like Facebook ads, DTC 2.0 was heavily focused on let's build community and brand and DTC 3.0 is kind of taking all the mistakes out of that, and really building a sustainable business from the get-go. 
3. I think in SMS, there's just a ton of garbage out there. There are brands that focus too heavily on promoting sales and discounted products. And, you know, they're not necessarily focused on using the SMS channel as a better way to connect with consumers.
4. I'll just, you know, I'll randomly say in our Slack, "Alright, who wants to quickly catch up on zoom for like, you know, five minutes randomly during the day?" just make sure like, you know, how are you feeling? If you feel overwhelmed, what are you working on?
5. I know a lot of brands are planning to do very extended holiday sales this year. And essentially make up for a lot of lost revenue from earlier in the year. But I think that overall, you know, holiday season this year is going to be more so focused on things that people were probably going to buy at some point earlier in the year but didn't need to or didn't want to or didn't have to. So that these brands can essentially make up for lost ground.

On today’s episode, I sit down with Nat Eliason, the founder of Growth Machine, an SEO content marketing agency. Nat is also the instructor of the premier Roam Research Course Effortless Output and the writer behind a personal blog that attracts millions of viewers every year. On the episode, we talk about why Nat loves Austin, the paradox of passive income, the importance of idea-flow and why Nat has invested $4500 in sleep tech.  

Links:

1. Nat's Blog
2. Nat's Twitter
3. My Website
4. My Twitter 

5 Key Takeaways:  

1. Whenever somebody recommends you like a book or article, you ask them, what did you learn from it? And then it kind of forces them to do a little bit of work explaining why it's worth your time to read this thing. And then you'll get a much better idea from their explanation of whether or not it is worth your time or if you kind of like already get the general idea you're not interested in it.
2. The joy of building a relationship with a city is so much greater than, I think the short, quick pleasures from traveling around constantly and living that Nomad life. And I think that there's a lot of kind of like deception in some of the Nomad life that is unfair to people who are looking up to it, right. It's like a lot of the people who are living in Thailand and Vietnam and a lot of these super-low cost of living places and posting about them being on the beach all the time. It's because they can't really afford to live anywhere else.
3. So when I think of what I love about Austin, a big part of what I love about it is a lot of the relationships I have with people who are focused on like, doing good work in a lot of different areas at a very high skill level. But in a way, that's like making something more available to more people. So like as a good example of this, I think like some of the best coffee I've ever had, like in the country or the world, I guess, is like literally two blocks from my house, and is this guy who's just like absolutely obsessed with coffee.
4. Because if you're ambitious enough to make a lot of money, then you're never going to be happy, like being retired and goofing off, you're always gonna want to work on something. So if you don't kind of like design your life, to have a certain amount of space to do all those fun things now, it's unlikely you're going to make space for it later.
5. Read the Recession Proof Graduate by Charlie Hoehn. 

On today's episode, I am talking with Marie Poulin, Notion expert, Digital Ecosystems Connoisseur, and Youtube creator. Marie just launched her course Notion Mastery, teaching you how to master your life and business by building workflows in Notion, if you are interested check it out in the episode description. On today’s episode we talk about the importance of workflows, systems thinking and Marie’s journey from freelancer to the full-time creator.  

Check out Marie's Course Notion Mastery. Everyone starting on Notion has the same problem, how do I start? Marie teaches how to use all the functions of Notion so that it's not just the next shiny new toy, but actually a life-changing system that can help you manage your personal life and business. Instead of importing everything from Evernote, Asana, and Google Docs, learn how to build an advanced system that works from the ground up. I use it every day to manage my work with Visualize Value. Check out the course here. 

Links: 

Marie's Website
Marie's Twitter
My Website
My Twitter

5 Key Takeaways: 

1. So I think ultimately the reason people are drawn to Notion is that they can design it the way they want, and other tools have failed them. But if you aren't solving the reason those tools have failed you, you're going to recreate the same messes inside of Notion. So similarly, like if people have been doing their standard operating procedures in Google Docs, and they're like, oh, now I'm just moving that over to Notion. But if there isn't really a workflow around it, and you don't really have routines, rituals, processes, ways of approaching things, kind of first principles. It's just another tool that's going to recreate those other problems.
2. I just haven't encountered a tool that allows you to get that much visibility, I think at both a really high like 10,000-foot level, but then also the tasks that you need to do day today to be able to pull that off. So for me, it's like such an interesting blend of being able to zoom in and out as needed.
3. It took me three years to get up the courage to do the first webinar that I did on Notion. So I was like, building up the courage, I was doing these, like vlogging challenges like I was doing, I hired a leadership coach, a speaker, coach, I did like a speaking boot camp, acting classes, like I have been working for so, so long and so hard to overcome my fear of being like on stage or on a video or just being in front of people.
4. I didn't grow up in the healthiest household. And for me, like I fast-tracked, and I did five years of schooling for years, I did night school and summer school every year because I needed to get out of a very toxic household. And I think partially I associate education with freedom. Like if I can study and do what I need to do, and like school represented freedom. For me, it was a way, to get out to do something different to be in a different city. And I think I've always associated that in my, in my brain, my body that like education is freedom. The more that I know, the more that I can make things happen.
5. I was doing design and development. So most of the websites that I was doing, I was doing the full thing, the design, the build the funnels, and just more and more, I was handling so many other pieces, right, like helping my clients with the marketing, and it's like, I guess I'm a marketing expert now, like, you're just learning so many different pieces.