#29: Brandon Zhang - Online courses & Twitter growth

All right, welcome to another episode of Cyber Patterns. Every week I show readers and listeners the patterns driving success on the internet. Today we've got somebody who knows quite a lot about that. We've got Brandon Zhang. He's got over 40,000 followers, has helped Visualize Value, has helped On Deck, and now he's helping Maven with their courses. He actually runs a course himself called Maker's Mark where he teaches how to grow your Twitter. That's actually how I met him. So he was super helpful to me.

and I hope he's helpful to you. Enjoy this conversation. Yo, what's up Jason? How you doing?

Good, man. How about yourself?

Pretty good, pretty good.

Nice. Where are you at these days?

I'm in San Francisco right now. I'm In the Bay with the fam, the South Bay, not the city.

All right, cool. You coming back to New York, right?

Yeah, I'll be back soon. I'm visiting in July for a bit and I'll be back like late August for most of the year.

Good stuff, man. Good stuff. Well, it's good to hear from you. Good to hop on. Dude, let's chat Twitter. You took a little Twitter break. What's going on and what was the reasoning?

Yeah, I think it was just like I needed some time to reset. I was busy with doing work on the side and just having a bunch of these projects going on. Thought at the time it would be good to take some time from Twitter to rethink what I wanted to work on on the side and then how that would inform some of the things I'd post on Twitter as well. But overall, just think the content I was consuming on it felt pretty repetitive as well. I think that was like in part the algorithm, in part like the people I was following, like it was kind of like people I wanted to, I kind of wanted to switch it up a bit as well. So just decided to take a break, you know, have a nice fresh restart, you know, go travel and stuff and then come back to it.

Very nice. And you're working full-time at Maven now or part-time?

Yeah, full-time, but just over the summer. I'll be going back to school in the fall, but Got you.

So what are you doing at Maven?

Yeah, so it's a combination. I do a lot of stuff on the growth team. So figuring out how do we help instructors acquire students. And then also, you know, as an instructor myself, like giving input and working with the product team on like, you know, what are some things that would be valuable and make it easier for an instructor to run a course on the platform and manage, you know, students, because At the end of the day, you know, hosting a live course is a lot of work and you know, you're worried about a lot of things. You're constantly thinking, you know, operationally, like, is this going right? And there's so many different things that you have to manage that, you know, we're just trying to build out some of the things to make it a lot less stressful, a lot more streamlined, and just so that, so the teachers and instructors can just focus on the teaching aspect.

Got you. Yeah. When I think of like teaching a course, the biggest hurdle in my head is always selling the course, but not until now did I really think about, oh my God, wow. It must be a lot to actually like do it every day, have the Discord going, have all the chats and all that. It's a lot, right?

Yeah. I think, and the thing is, after you do your first one, I think marketing becomes a little more natural because then you see the actual outcomes of people and you're like, damn, what I'm doing, this actually works. And obviously you'll get feedback on things to make adjustment, but overall you're a lot more confident about what you're trying to build and what you're trying to share. And then you've seen a couple people come out of it and you're not like, I'm not taking credit of any, what anyone is doing, but in part they were, I guess at least they started out from this program, right? At least The base case is like this program gave them some sort of inspiration or accountability to go out and do it. You know, you can take parts of like, you know, maybe you've helped them a bit with content, helped them a bit with, you know, some of the tactics and frameworks and things like that. But then the day it's just like getting them started and then once you see that outcome pay out, you feel a bit more comfortable sharing and marketing about what the program is.

Yeah, 100%. So when you're giving advice to, other creators and course makers? What are some of the tips that you give?

I think coming to that point, it's like focus on the outcome. If you're teaching something, be realistic about what type of outcomes your students want, but also don't be like— I think this is pretty common advice for anyone creating, but don't wait for perfection or until you feel really comfortable about a topic. Like just using myself in audit as an example, like when we first started, like we were just talking about this 'cause it was coming up to like a year now where we've been teaching Maker's Mark, but we were talking about it when we started and we were looking back at some of our brainstorming docs. Like our, we initially thought our target audience would really be like students like us. We thought like, hey, maybe they'd resonate with our story and they would want to take a program to like have similar outcomes as us. We quickly realized like, students didn't really care about what we were doing, but a lot of founders and stuff did. They were curious about how we got started. So yeah, my advice would mainly be just get started. You learn a lot along the way, and that's where you have the most fun in trying to figure everything out.

Got you. That's super interesting. Are there any, I guess the word micro communities, or any communities that you see definitely flourishing on Maven or just in your experiences?

Yeah, I think obviously crypto has been pretty big in terms of like a lot of people doing stuff around Web3 education, which I think is really important, right? It's such an early space as well, and there's a lot of need for different talent to be onboarded into the space, both technical and in terms of like more general skill sets. I think something else as well has just been in general, like different functions of startups, like that has been really You know, popular, you have people teaching about like sales leadership, right? We have as well Ariel Jackson, she teaches about like startup brand strategy. So a lot of these like early startup functions, like you're bringing a lot of employees that have to do a lot of different things. So being able to send them to do one of these programs and come out of it upleveled and in one aspect gives them a lot more confidence, right? To go ahead and execute on that.

Yeah. So speaking of courses, you worked for Jack in Visualize Value. I mean, that man, like, I didn't work for him, but that man has helped me so much. Just Permissionless Apprentice. I didn't even buy the course, but just the ideas and everything, like all the free value that he puts out there, I guess, taught me so much. And I've been meaning to buy one of them, but what did you learn from Jack Butcher and how has Visualize Value helped you?

Yeah, I mean, I think I give Jack a lot of credit in inspiring me and like taking a chance on me early on to kind of give me exposure and, and push me to see like, you know, what can I actually do? What can I actually work on? What am I actually interested in? I'm glad you brought up Permissionless Apprentice. I think it is an amazing product. Like Jack's worked really hard at it. I helped him in part, but it's a lot of the ideas were his and I mainly executed on the, some of the grunt work and then that project to to look for stories and different things to bring it together. But yeah, I think the biggest thing I learned from Jack is just having clarity and spending time thinking is probably the most important thing before you start anything. I would say before I got to see him operate, I was very much just tried to— didn't really value the process of planning. I would say I was just someone who would always get really excited about stuff, try and jump into the action. But from working with him and just how methodical he is, like he's done a bunch of successful product launches, like knows how to create this sort of branding around himself, but also like different things that he teaches. I think it's just like he's super methodical about everything and he is trying to think really carefully about like, you know, how do different things affect his business? What, makes sense with his business. So just, yeah, like it, I think, you know, it obviously comes across in his images and how he is able to break down really complex ideas, but he does the same exact thing like on a business level. Like he's very carefully, you know, trying to see like, does this give me enough value for what I'm paying? Like, you know, should I invest into this channel? Like, you know, he just came out with an SEO, I think, program that, you He mentioned at one point he did realize social is great. I have great traction on social, but it's not super sustainable, right? How can I explore SEO? And I know I did a bit of email marketing with him as well. I think that's obviously been built upon and improved 10, 100-fold since, but just him thinking so clearly about these different aspects and making a sustainable business. You know, my two biggest takeaways, like clear thinking and just being able to plan ahead.

Facts. I still am not great with the planning when it comes to product launches and stuff like that. It's a challenge. You know, something I love about the weekly essays is I can just kind of write and put them out there. But when it comes to like, I'm working on longer form projects right now, a book and collection of essays kind of thing. And when it comes to planning that, what's kind of your process or Jack's process like? How many months are you thinking out? How do you break that down? How do you think about that kind of stuff?

Yeah, I think one thing first I'd just like to clarify, I think Jack still, when he gets excited about it, he definitely still goes into it, but I think he's able to rein it in before he hits launch. I think a lot of people, that's where they fall. They really just want to see feedback on it. They really just want to hit launch and they'll be like, oh, I'll iterate afterwards. But Jack's like pretty patient and that's something that I would call out. I would say in terms of process, I think working at startups now, the biggest thing is just thinking. I think thinking quarters has really helped me. I think if you break it down to too much more of a micro than that, it just gets in the way of almost executing from the day to day, like doing your tasks daily. But yeah, I think like quarters are a good checkpoint for everything to like see how different projects I planned are going and things like that. I'd say setting quarterly goals for yourself are probably the biggest thing. Yeah.

Got you. Got you. So you're heading back to college. You're a history major, if I remember correctly. Do you know what courses you're taking this year? And what's your focus with history?

Yeah, so I love like post-1940s US history, so kind of modern US history, both kind of abroad but also domestically. I think there's been, you know, a lot of fascinating kind of changes in terms of like our intellectual history, you know, obviously our— and that's, you know, informed our politics. So kind of that sphere, and I think like looking at that specifically as been really insightful to connect what's currently going on in a lot of aspects. Like, you know, where a lot of people like to say like, okay, certain events today have their things rooted in X event and like, you know, they could call to like 4 or 5 different things. But, you know, being able to try and parse out and create your own idea of like, and maybe not like trying to share it to everyone in the world, but like within your own head trying to think through like, you know, this is what I think is the the current fall of events or like how different things played out. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm excited about. Yeah, I'm taking a seminar in World War II specifically. You know, I think that's a very seminal moment for the Western world, for just a lot of what's, you know, what the current geopolitical landscape looks like, but.

Nice, nice. I just had a, did a podcast with Joshua Rosenthal, Jason Levin, who is a historian and VC and exited founder and whatnot. And he keeps calling this age of Renaissance and not just because of crypto, but very much because of crypto and just ideas that are coming, the identity, values, communications, finances, and all this change. It's super interesting. And this year I've definitely— I remember when you told me you were a history major, I was like, oh, that seems impractical and now like, took me a few months, but now I'm like, oh, it's so helpful. Oh my God. Just being able to recognize these patterns and like, it's so helpful. Oh my God. So yeah.

And initially I never, you know, intended it for it to be too practical. Like I was always, you know, in the mindset of like, you know, I just learn, work, operate on the side, build side projects to pick up the practical side of skills. And you know, this is, I just loved history since I was a kid, you know, like That's what I took a lot of stuff on in high school, worked on the Hill. I worked on Capitol Hill. But now, yeah, like you said, there's a lot of similar aspects. And I think especially the writing and thinking aspect of it and being able to try and track a bunch of different things and pull in a bunch of different sources has been pretty helpful to, like you said, understand the changing landscape, how everything is shaping up. Fair.

Are there any books you're currently reading?

Specifically in this area?

Any area really.

Yeah, I think one I'm rereading, I think I recently tweeted about as well, is Recession-Proof Graduate. Super short book. It's kind of like an extension almost of like Jack's permissionless apprentice concept. It's about kind of like doing free work. It's about like, you know, how do you, I think it was written a while in the, during the financial crisis, like from someone who was graduating in their time, you know, talking about their experience in the job hunt when their friends, you know, were struggling. What were some things that they pivoted and did instead and was able to find their dream kind of book. A specific book like kind of around history or geopolitics. I think one thing I would really recommend is, let me find the specific name. But it's pretty much the premise of the book Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall. It's kind of like this premise like that the geography of the country that you live in or even the city that you live in is, you know, a big indicator of like what are some attributes that come out of it in history. Like why did certain historical events happen because of, you know, the geographical attributes of where you are. And I think that's really underrated in our usual history curriculum. Like we just, you know, think about it purely in the sense of like, you know, this person killed this person and then X event happened, or like this political thing led to this. But, you know, the root cause of a lot of political things is because of like, you know, agriculture or like, you know, trade routes and things like that. Like things in the world that we, it's hard for us to change, right? We have a lot of artificial power to like be able to manufacture certain things, but the geography of the planet, it's still like, we're not quite there yet, right? Where we can change and shape a lot of these things. Like we can, you know, build dams and stuff, but it's still, you know, we're still very much like prisoners, like, like you said, of the characteristics of where we live.

Fair, fair. Are there any companies that you're hoping to work with in the future or any, any people on Twitter?

Nothing specifically to call at the moment. That's a really good question though. I think I still intend to keep on working at Maven, like even while I'm in school for a bit, but I will definitely get back to an answer. I have like, you know, a bunch of people that I admire as well. And I think that, you know, after 2 years of operating, I guess in kind of like what people call like the edtech sector, like I would love to think more broadly about like some other sectors and to see what that's like, you know, specifically like fintech and healthtech. I think those two, catch my mind pretty quickly, but no particular thing has come to my mind as of now as I'm not really looking at the moment. But yeah, definitely a great question to consider. I'll try and think of some, a list of names. There's definitely some great operators out there.

Also curious, you're how old right now? 20, 21?

Yeah, I just turned 21.

All right, happy birthday. Thank you. What's the goal in a few years? 25, 30, where are you looking to be in life and everything?

Yeah, I think 4 years from now, I think there's 2 routes. I think that one is to keep on doing this where I'm operating at the early, at seed, Series A companies, but picking up more of an operations role as well, doing some things along with the growth side of things, like working as a chief of staff, shadowing, basically shadowing a COO or CEO, seeing how they get the company to operate because I think one day I'd want to start my own. At the moment, I think that's the route I would take if no kind of problem or idea kind of comes to me and I'm like, damn, this is something I can't pass up. But that's kind of where it leads into route 2, where if something, it's hard to predict what can happen 4 years from now. I didn't even, 2 years ago, I didn't even know I was going to be in the space in general. I had no idea what Twitter was, was cruising through high school before COVID happened and kind of placed me within the online space. But I would say the probable other option in 4 years is think about building my own thing.

Cool, cool. Dude, it's been cool having you on, and I guess that was the main questions. We'll keep it Short and simple.

Thanks, Jason Levin. It was, it was a great chat. It was a very, um, kind of forced me to be retrospective.

Oh, for sure. For sure. Uh, looking forward to, uh, hopefully grabbing coffee sometime when you are back in the city.

Definitely, definitely. Let me know whenever.

All right. Peace, buddy.