#041 "Robbie Crabtree - Performative Speaking Joins On Deck"

The Brandon Zhang Show

Today, my good friend Robbie Crabtree is returning to the show. Robbie's course Performative Speaking was recently acquired by On Deck, a company building a private goal-driven network platform and a new approach to continuous education (the name may sound familiar as I interviewed Erik Torenberg one of the founders, 5 episodes ago. Robbie has also been a long-time friend and has helped me drastically improve my own public speaking both on the podcast and in real life. I am so excited for this new chapter of his life. On today's episode, we talk about the acquisition, the future of online education, building accountability and shipping speeds.
Links:
On Deck Performative Speaking
Thread on On Deck Acquisition
Robbie's Annual Review
Robbies Twitter
Contact Me:
My Twitter
My Website
4 Key Takeaways:
1. Over the past couple weeks, they've [On Deck] basically released a whole bunch of tweet threads, showing kind of the process that's played out in 2020, how they hire, how they're building what their plan is.
2. I don't want to tell people that I'm good at something. I want them to see it. I want them to understand it because I'm giving them value and I'm demonstrating it on a regular basis. And so for me building in public, whether it comes to my writing, whether it comes to YouTube, whatever, maybe even Twitter, it's a way to show that I know what I'm talking about, rather than telling people that they should believe me.
3. The best thing is they [On Deck] have a team of people who all kind of have specialties. So instead of me having to wear every hat, as a founder and having to worry about marketing and customer service, and answering emails, and sales, and course creation, like content creation, and actually teaching and working one on one with students, you can remove a lot of that stuff. And say we have somebody who understands the questions you should be asking in the application process, we have somebody who can schedule this out and make it make sense. We have somebody who understands how to track the student or fellow experienced throughout the entire thing. And it allows me to then just get into this creative space and this teaching space to do what I do best, which is create content, create lessons, work with the actual fellows in the course, and make sure they're achieving the results that they need.
4. I love experiences and culture and history and telling stories and going and traveling and experiencing myself. So to me, I've always said like, my ideal job is to take over like Anthony Bourdain his role, and just explore that world tell those stories have those experiences. And that's really what drew me to him and why he continues to live in my head.