Problem Solving for Your Career: What a Former Google and Facebook Product Leader Learned About Building Something New — with Prabhu Balasubramanian

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Okay, I have been so looking forward to this interview.
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My guest today spent nearly two decades as a product leader in tech, online advertising, online video, e-commerce, smart home, mobile devices.
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If you've used the internet in the last 10 years, you have probably touched something that he helped build.
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And then two years ago, he walked away from all of that to do something for kids.
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He is now the CEO of Inflection Point Learning, the makers of Beast Classroom, an elementary math curriculum for teachers and schools who want deep challenge and real joy in math class.
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He is also a husband and a dad of two.
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I met him the way I find a lot of great people lately on LinkedIn.
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He wrote a really thoughtful review of a book by a friend of this show, Jason Major.
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So I immediately asked him if he would be open to sharing his perspective on this podcast.
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He thinks about problem solving for a living.
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He has seen the creator economy from the inside, and he brings a thoughtful and unique perspective to the world of education.
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Prabhu, welcome to First in Class.
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This is Teachers with Money First in Class.
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I'm Krista Jones, and this show is for the educator who's done accepting the story that financial struggle is the price of a meaningful career.
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Let's get into it.
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Thank you, Krista.
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I'm excited to be here.
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Really appreciate it.
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For someone who has never heard of you yet, who are you and what do you do?
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Well, uh, right now I am the CEO of Inflection Point Learning, as you mentioned, and we focus on building rigorous, joyful math curriculum for elementary schools.
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And before this, I had a long career in tech, as you mentioned.
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I worked at both Google and Facebook.
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I spent some time at YouTube.
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And I think of myself as a builder of products and services that solve real problems for people.
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And I've worked in a bunch of different spaces, as you mentioned.
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And this is my first time working in education, but my journey to this came through my experience as a parent.
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I'm married to my wife, and we have two kids who are 10 and 5 now.
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So that journey as a parent has sort of been a parallel journey to my journey as a professional and has given me a lot of the perspective that I that I bring to my work.
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What does a normal work week look for you right now?
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Normal work week is hard to define in a small, fast growing company.
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But I think a lot of what we focus on is one, making sure that we're building a great product for the teachers and schools that we serve, two, making sure that people know about it and that they understand how it might solve some of the problems that they might be facing in their own school.
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And third, really building a strong culture in our company.
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We want a team that sees the opportunity to create and build for the educators we serve and also to express themselves through their work and to connect with our colleagues, which is so important and is especially an important thing to focus on in this modern world where we're all distributed and connecting over screens often as you and I are now.
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So then to bring it back a little bit, you spent almost 20 years at Google and Facebook and tech.
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What kind of products were you building and what's something that you loved about that work?
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So the biggest thing I've loved about my career in building products is just solving problems for people and solving problems where you have to look at them from multiple perspectives to figure out what to do.
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So when you're working on something like online advertising, you have to think about the end user who's seeing the ads, but you also have to think about the advertiser who wants to get the word out about their product or their service.
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Uh when you work in online video, as I'm sure we'll talk a little about here, you have to think about the viewer, the creator, the advertiser potentially.
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Sometimes the that viewer is watching for free.
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Sometimes they're paying money, and those are those are different implications you have to think about.
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When you're building a hardware product, you know, I focused on smart products for the home.
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First of all, getting them built is this very complex ecosystem of partners that you work with.
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But then when you're building something for the home, it's kind of like building for a classroom.
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There's not just one person who's using this product, it's a whole family of people or a whole, a whole class of people.
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And you have to think about not just what it's like for any individual, but how to build a great experience for a group of people together.
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And just putting myself in people's shoes, understanding what kind of problems they have, especially in technology at a large company, there's not a single type of person you're building for.
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You're building for many types of people.
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It's kind of the same in education.
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Schools are incredibly diverse, teachers are incredibly diverse, students and their needs are incredibly diverse.
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And one of the most fun aspects of this journey that I've been on for the last year plus in my role at Inflection Point is just learning how many different kinds of schools there are and how many different ways of running a classroom there are, and how many different perspectives there are on what good math instruction looks like.
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And I think one of the ingredients to building a great product or uh building anything that that is designed for other people to use is curiosity about what they might need and what they might care about, and being able to to take that curiosity, use it to learn, and then distill all of those learnings into creating something that is going to address those needs.
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I love how you tied that back to the classroom.
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That was my immediate thought when you were talking about building tech products for different types of people and different levels of audiences.
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It's exactly parallel to things that we see in the classroom for educators.
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So then what made you decide then in 2024 that it was time for a new chapter?
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I will say, you know, my last gig at Google was working on consumer hardware, and that can be very satisfying and very intense work.
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And so I did feel a need for a break.
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I also had been in the big tech journey for quite a number of years.
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I thought it would be healthy to take a moment to think about what I wanted the next chapter of my career to look like.
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Obviously, the option to do that is a luxury that I had that not everyone has.
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But if you can find that space, I do feel in moments of career transition, it's just really hard to think deeply and critically about what you want to do with your life if you're immersed in a thing that is all consuming, which all impactful work is sort of consuming by default, not just because of modern work culture, but because if we want to be excellent, excellence takes energy.
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And if you're gonna do something, you want to do it well.
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But then if you're thinking about what to do next, it can be hard to balance those things at the same time.
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So I always recommend for people, if you have the option, which not everyone does, taking some space is helpful.
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And it's not even just the time to think, it's actually there is a there's a psychological and almost physical decompression that you experience when you can take a real break.
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And my mindset when I first left Google in 2024 versus in 2025 when I felt ready to take on this challenge.
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I went through lots of phases of, you know, what do I want to do?
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It was also timing-wise, we're we're still in a moment of great transition in in technology with the advent of AI, but that was sort of in the early stages of it.
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And I took some of that time to just learn what was happening, which is hard to do when you are trying to do a job.
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And so that was another great reason to take some time and and to try to figure out what relationship that might have to what I wanted to do next, which is still an evolving question for a lot of us, I think.
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I think it's something that we get to revisit through multiple seasons of our lives of really digging down and asking yourselves, what do we want to do and why?
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Which we'll talk more about later.
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But so then I know that you got an email from the art of problem solving, and they were announcing a new company that was adapting the curriculum for schools.
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And you applied the same day.
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Can you tell us about that and what made you move so fast on that?
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Yeah, you know, that there's uh if you listen to career advice podcasts, they often say cultivate multiple options, approach those options in in waves or in cohorts, and you want to be sort of running a structured process to figure out your next thing.
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I didn't do any of that.
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I was in a place where I was ready to start doing that, and this came up and it ticked so many boxes in terms of just being interesting that I really wanted to jump on it.
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And by the way, the context there is my son, who was in third grade at the time, was at an art of problem-solving learning center with it in in the Bay Area where I live.
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We have we have a few of those.
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And he was doing after-school math with this program called Beast Academy that he was really enjoying, we were really appreciating as parents, and it was giving us this connection to a broader community of folks who who really cared about math excellence and and problem solving.
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But wouldn't it be nice if this same type of joyful, rigorous learning experience could happen during the school day as well?
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And so this email came that said, hey, we have this great program.
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We are going to start a new company to adapt that program for use in real, you know, elementary school instruction during the school day with uh with teachers.
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That sounded like kind of a best of both worlds situation to me.
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And I really got excited about working on that.
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And you know, I've stayed connected to the education world in in different ways over the years, and and my my brother, who's also a product leader, has worked in education as well.
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And so uh it's one of the problem spaces that I've often thought it would be really fun to work on.
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And it just so happens now, like I have elementary-aged kids, and working on elementary math seems perfect.
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And so I, to be honest, that cover letter I submitted that night, like I stayed up late that night and submitted it in the form.
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If we read it today, it would probably seem long-winded and like, you know, meandering and all of these things.
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Uh, but I think it communicated authentic passion and excitement, which is one of the most important in ingredients for any role, especially when you're proposing to do a thing that you have no evidence you know how to do, which is the situation that I was coming with.
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Like I could make a lot of analogies, and those analogies are they they prove true every day in my work, but uh I had never worked on a product for for teachers in schools, and I'd never worked outside the tech industry.
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I don't think of us as an ed tech company.
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We are a technology ed enabled education company.
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Technology is really important to our solution, but it's not the whole solution.
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And and there was, and I'd never been a CEO before.
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And by the way, you know, in case you're some of what your listeners are navigating is how do you work up the motivation and the courage to try something new?
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I've also never been on a podcast before, and we're we're doing this today.
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And I I think it just it starts with little things, and you look for things that you've done that seem like they could be related.
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And I told a story in in the interviews that I had that I think resonated with the folks who were making that decision and with the team that was already assembled.
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And actually, as I told the story more, I got more convicted that this would be a really great fit.
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And so I think of it as a fluke.
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I think many things turn out to be exciting opportunities, start as flukes, and I'm really glad that I'm I'm here and have the opportunity to work with this amazing team on a problem I really care about.
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Thank you for sharing that journey.
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There's a word that comes to mind.
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Well, every year I like to choose a word of the year for myself.
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Sure.
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And so I kind of do that in place of like a New Year's resolution.
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I'll choose a word of the year for myself.
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My word this year was delegate, and I've done a lot of that.
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I hired an assistant and all these different things.
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I've already chosen my word of the year for 2027, which is audacity.
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You had the audacity to just go for it and put yourself in a room, uh, you know, online room or physical room or whatever you want to call it.
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To do things that you had never done before.
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And the worst that can happen is people can say no, right?
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And you put yourself out there, and I'm sure your company now is so glad that you did.
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And also, I'm so glad that you did for this podcast.
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I also think there's, you know, there's a real relation to the work that we do.
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What is problem solving?
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One way of describing what problem solving is is tackling challenges you haven't seen before.
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And I think that is essential to life as a professional, as a human, especially in a fast-evolving world.
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And and so if we're each of us living that journey in a different way, it makes us much more prepared to prepare the next generation of learners, of thinkers, of professionals to tackle challenges like that as well.
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Yes.
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So I'm glad you brought up problem solving.
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That is a big reason why I was hoping you would come on the show is to talk about exactly that.
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Because I think when a lot of people hear the phrase problem solving, they might be transported back to math class and maybe have different feelings about that.
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Maybe they're thinking about word problems or a worksheet, but you mean something much bigger when you refer to problem solving.
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And I think that's really important here on this podcast because many of the teachers I talk with want to build something, an online store or a tutoring practice or a product or whatever it might be, some sort of income on the side.
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And then sometimes they get stuck and they maybe have just decided, well, I'm not a business person.
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And I think what's actually happening is that they're trying to solve a brand new problem and they're so used to having the answer key.
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I think as teachers, we get used to having all the answers.
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It can be hard for us to become students again.
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It's a real skill to be open to problem solving, to solving problems along the way.
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Um, and I think that's something that we can get better at on purpose.
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So let's talk about problem solving.
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When you say problem solving, what do you actually mean?
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I think problem solving is about being able to look at a complex context, whether that's a math puzzle, whether that's a a situation in the classroom, whether it's a a business opportunity, and organize your thinking about what's important in that context, what outcome you're trying to get to, and what steps you could try to get there.
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The word try is important.
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Real-world problem solving rarely has a single linear path to success.
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And therefore, you have to be operating in the mindset that you're going to try some things that work very well and some things that work very poorly.
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And all of the above are learning opportunities.
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I guess I would also, you know, for the teachers who are listening, I would challenge the idea that this is different from the way that you normally work, because a lot of what building is about is thinking about who you are serving with whatever you were building and understanding them.
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And that is exactly what being a teacher looks like.
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You're in a classroom in front of 20, 25, 30 kids, whatever it might be.
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And to excel in the job, you have to understand their needs.
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And I think that is a form of problem solving.
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You're looking at a context that is extremely complex.
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It's a human context, and trying to decide the next set of steps to take.
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And yes, there's scaffolding, there's a curriculum that helps you, there's administrators that help you, there's peer mentors that help you, there's the students themselves that tell you what they need.
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Sometimes they're unreliable narrators, sometimes they they they tell you accurately.
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But the that scaffolding doesn't remove the need to think on your feet, literally, in the case of a classroom, and assess a situation and decide what to try next.
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And when it doesn't go well, decide how to recover from that and try the next thing.
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And I think, you know, to the extent that you're a person is thinking of what they're doing as starting a business, it's exactly the same.
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And there are going to be some things going into it that feel very comfortable and some that feel very uncomfortable in the same way that teaching some subjects might feel very comfortable, and teaching others might feel very uncomfortable.
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And so I think teachers already have a lot of the experiential ingredients to be successful at this type of work, but they might not necessarily be thinking about it this way.
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Yeah, we get to put that name to it.
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What separates someone who gets better at problem solving over time from someone who stays stuck?
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So our view as a company is that one of the biggest things that separates them is actually access to challenge.
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And in a classroom context, that becomes a responsibility of the teacher to provide appropriate challenge and make sure that every kid is being met where they are with challenge that will raise their ceiling over time.
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In it, you know, as adults, I think a lot of the challenges that we need to face are challenges that we choose to take on ourselves.
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And so access to challenge, I would translate that for an adult as appetite for challenge and sort of willingness to take risks, to try things.
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I think that's a that's a big thing.
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If you don't try new things, you will remain stuck by definition.
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The second is a keen ability to observe, because if you try something and it doesn't work, but you don't understand why, then you haven't actually learned anything.
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And eventually, like as you get better at it, you're able to anticipate.
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You look at a situation and you say, here are some things that I could try.
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There's seven, but actually three of these won't work for reasons I can anticipate.
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So I shouldn't waste any energy trying them.
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And then here are four others that are more credible.
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I'll I'll try to navigate which ones are might be the biggest bang for buck and I'll try those first, right?
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So I think observation and critical thinking are also very important to problem solving.
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The other one that comes to mind is uh being comfortable with your own lack of expertise and what that means for the resources that you should seek out.
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Yes.
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Like there are very few weeks where I am not doing a significant number of things that I didn't had never done before or have no idea how to do.
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Yes.
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And that's not just in my in my role here.
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That has been true in my work for a long time.
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And for me, temperamentally, if I have too many weeks in a row where that's never true, I start to feel uneasy because it means that there's no opportunity for growth.
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But I think just because you're facing a challenge doesn't mean you have to already know how to solve it.
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What you have to know how to do is go get the information and the resources and the help in some cases that you might need in order to solve it.
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In an entrepreneurial journey, especially in a solopreneur journey, there's often a mindset that, like, okay, someone invented this term solopreneur, and it's double-edged because actually, I'm sure you, as a solopreneur, many of the most important things that you have done in this journey, you did not do alone, despite the portmanteau.
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And it's actually often a waste of energy to try to do it yourself.
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And ideally, what you want is the things that you're amazing at way better than anyone else, that's actually where you pour the most of your energy.
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And the things that you need to do will not unlikely or feel unlikely to be distinctive at, you need to build fluency in over time, and in the meantime, you delegate, like to use your word of the year.
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And I think that there's a little bit, I will say, I think teachers sometimes have a lone ranger mindset that can be unhelpful in this type of work.
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Not all of them, of course, but I think that because you're the master of your classroom and as by the way, it's you and 25 kids, and you just have a very different relationship with that situation, it can be uncomfortable in your teaching work and also in your work outside of teaching to seek out help and resources.
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And I that's something I would really encourage folks to do because otherwise you're not leveraging your energy in the in the best way possible.
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Okay, quick pause.
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Think about the last resource you made for your classroom.
00:20:10.799 --> 00:20:16.079
The one you stayed up finishing, the one your teammate asked you to send her, and you did for free.
00:20:16.319 --> 00:20:18.319
You are already doing the work.
00:20:18.480 --> 00:20:20.880
You've been doing it for years.
00:20:21.119 --> 00:20:27.440
The only difference between you and a teacher with a Teachers Pay Teacher store is that she hit publish.
00:20:27.599 --> 00:20:28.160
That's it.
00:20:28.400 --> 00:20:32.160
Same skills, same late nights, same folder of ideas.
00:20:32.400 --> 00:20:34.240
She just listed hers.
00:20:34.400 --> 00:20:36.880
That's what TPT Launch Lab gets you to.
00:20:37.039 --> 00:20:49.039
30 days, one step at a time, and the templates, the descriptions, the pricing, the terms of use, all the stuff that makes you want to just close the laptop already handled.
00:20:49.599 --> 00:20:55.279
I keep this course priced super low on purpose because money should never be the reason a teacher doesn't start.
00:20:55.440 --> 00:20:59.680
You listen to this show so you get the podcast friends price.
00:20:59.920 --> 00:21:08.480
Use code podcast at checkout, and the entire course, plus bonus guides and templates, comes down to just$20.
00:21:09.119 --> 00:21:11.839
That code is my thank you for you being here.
00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:15.680
So go grab it now while the promo code is still live.
00:21:15.839 --> 00:21:17.680
Link and code are in the show notes.
00:21:17.839 --> 00:21:19.759
Okay, back to the episode.
00:21:26.079 --> 00:21:33.599
You've mentioned that problem solving matters to everything, not just math or STEM or career readiness or whatever it may be.
00:21:33.759 --> 00:21:35.519
But you mentioned that it matters a lot right now.
00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:36.720
Let's talk more about that.
00:21:36.880 --> 00:21:41.440
Why does problem solving maybe matter more now than ever before?
00:21:41.839 --> 00:21:51.279
I think it matters more now than ever before because our temptations to outsource it are higher than they've ever been because of AI.
00:21:51.440 --> 00:21:56.960
And there's a there's a real sort of using AI as a tool is extremely powerful.
00:21:57.119 --> 00:21:58.240
I do it every day.
00:21:58.480 --> 00:21:59.759
I am very grateful.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:06.240
That we have it because it allows us to move faster than we could on a bunch of problems that are really important for our customers.
00:22:06.559 --> 00:22:15.839
And I think there is a need for that acceleration and an opportunity that comes in that acceleration to just solve more problems for people.
00:22:16.640 --> 00:22:22.319
And you can do so much more as an individual, again, thinking about a solopreneur, when you have a tool like that.
00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:27.200
But it's not a replacement for deep thinking and understanding of what it is that you're doing.
00:22:27.359 --> 00:22:39.519
And I think there's a risk that I see not only in young people, but in adults as well, that you can sort of outsource your thinking to this tool that is ultimately a similecum of intelligence.
00:22:39.680 --> 00:22:43.119
It's not truly intelligence in the way that humans bring.
00:22:43.279 --> 00:22:53.440
And especially when you're thinking about making decisions about your own life, your own career, like you have to bring real judgment and insight to that process, which is hard.
00:22:53.519 --> 00:22:54.559
It's uncomfortable.
00:22:54.720 --> 00:22:56.079
It's way easier to outsource it.
00:22:56.240 --> 00:23:01.359
By the way, another way that people have always outsourced these types of decisions is just ask someone else what to do and do it.
00:23:01.519 --> 00:23:17.200
And um, like the the like ChatGPT is a is a novel vehicle for an age-old temptation, which is if you really want to make difficult decisions for yourself, you have to grapple with the accountability of those decisions.
00:23:17.440 --> 00:23:21.599
And that you might try something and fail, and there's no one to blame but you.
00:23:21.759 --> 00:23:22.640
And that's hard.
00:23:22.720 --> 00:23:35.359
And so we we want to like, you know, ask our boss what to do, we want to ask our community what to do, we want to ask our parents what to do, we want to ask our friends what to do, but they can't really make that call any more than ChatGPT can.
00:23:35.519 --> 00:23:41.759
And so, like, applying judgment to complex problems requires problem-solving skills.
00:23:41.920 --> 00:23:54.000
It requires thinking and frameworks, it requires organizing your options, it requires critical evaluation of those options, and it requires the ability to make trade-offs in an imperfect environment.
00:23:54.240 --> 00:24:00.640
And our world is ever more complex, and we just all need to be able to do that.
00:24:00.799 --> 00:24:15.039
And that matters, by the way, in our life decision making, it matters in our work, it matters in in parenting or caregiving, it matters in our civic lives, it matters in our communities.
00:24:15.200 --> 00:24:20.079
Like there's so many contexts in which this core skill of problem solving is so relevant.
00:24:20.160 --> 00:24:26.400
And it just so happens that math is a great way to practice it and to learn it, but math is just one.
00:24:26.559 --> 00:24:34.079
And I think if you spend enough time immersed in it, you realize that same skill set is coming out in all of these other ways I didn't expect.
00:24:34.559 --> 00:24:43.680
So for somebody who wants to start practicing this skill of problem solving on purpose, what's a small first step they can take?
00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:46.319
I think there's a there's a few I would suggest.
00:24:46.480 --> 00:24:48.400
One is actually math.
00:24:48.559 --> 00:25:04.480
Like I even as an adult, like there's lots of ways I personally, like even as an adult doing the types of math puzzles that we that we do, like they are interesting and challenging and cognitively engaging for people of any age.
00:25:04.640 --> 00:25:08.960
And like you could literally buy like a Beast Academy puzzles book and start working on them.
00:25:09.039 --> 00:25:16.799
Or Sudoku is like a just a it's like an interesting cognitive exercise around optimizing within constraints.
00:25:17.039 --> 00:25:23.200
Uh, second idea that I would suggest is try thinking about some decision that you're making.
00:25:23.359 --> 00:25:31.279
And I think a lot of times, you know, that if there's this uh there's this book by Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, that talks about system one and system two thinking.
00:25:31.519 --> 00:25:40.400
I think a lot of times we let decisions flow through our quick pattern matching, just make a call cognitive system.
00:25:40.720 --> 00:25:51.519
Try routing some decisions through a slower decision-making process where you actually have to build a framework for that decision and rigorously lay out options, describe the pros and cons of those options.
00:25:51.759 --> 00:25:58.000
And the more complex the situation, the more difficult it is to come up with a framework that that makes that decision easy.
00:25:58.160 --> 00:26:00.960
But I think that's good calisthenics for problem solving.
00:26:01.119 --> 00:26:11.920
And maybe the last one I would say is that try doing something interesting and challenging with someone else because problem solving is not a you know an individual sport, it's a it's a team sport.
00:26:12.160 --> 00:26:14.319
And I think there's lots of contexts.
00:26:14.480 --> 00:26:17.920
You know, even by the way, rock climbing is problem solving.
00:26:18.079 --> 00:26:24.880
And rock climbing seems like a very solo thing, but you're not the only one on the wall, and you're constantly watching.
00:26:25.200 --> 00:26:35.680
By the way, I've never I've never done rock climbing in in my life, but my understanding is you're you're watching the paths that people take and figuring out which ones work for you and which ones don't work for you.
00:26:35.759 --> 00:26:36.720
And it was really interesting.
00:26:36.880 --> 00:26:51.920
We took a family trip to Yosemite over the summer, and our we had a tour guide for one of the days, and he was talking about his free climbing experience and how the style of a climber affects how they approach climbing half dome.
00:26:52.160 --> 00:26:58.000
And I think observing other people solving problems is part of how you discover your own style.
00:26:58.160 --> 00:27:02.880
It's and it and you don't even necessarily know the options for styles unless you can see a few.
00:27:02.960 --> 00:27:08.799
And I think that's as true for math, by the way, as it is for rock climbing and for many other, many other problems.
00:27:09.039 --> 00:27:16.000
I think there's also there's many pursuits that a generation ago relied on independent thinking.
00:27:16.079 --> 00:27:18.400
And in our generation, we've outsourced that thinking.
00:27:19.039 --> 00:27:20.640
My personal one is navigation.
00:27:21.119 --> 00:27:29.279
Like modern smartphone GPS is like already I don't have a great sense of direction, but I really don't have a great sense of direction because I'm still relying on GPS.
00:27:29.440 --> 00:27:30.960
Another one is cooking with recipes.
00:27:31.039 --> 00:27:37.279
You know, like my parents kind of just figured it out, and they figured out navigation too, and all of these things.
00:27:37.359 --> 00:27:47.599
And I think maybe we could all benefit from deliberately putting ourselves in challenging situations where there isn't already a map, and your interests can guide what that situation looks like for you.
00:27:47.920 --> 00:27:56.559
You said something on your intake form, which was that the most important thing that you would hope for listeners to take away is the the why behind a career decision.
00:27:56.720 --> 00:28:00.160
We we touched on that a little bit, but again, I want to go a little deeper here too.
00:28:00.319 --> 00:28:11.599
So asking yourself, are you looking for from your career creative fulfillment, a chance to convince people of your ideas, a chance to make an impact on a child, financial freedom.
00:28:11.839 --> 00:28:28.400
Most teachers don't enter education looking for that necessarily, but it's something that we consider as we get older and realize that's more important to us because that answer, your answer to that question will change everything about how you'd approach a career or a side hustle.
00:28:28.480 --> 00:28:30.799
We talk a lot about side hustles even on this podcast.
00:28:31.039 --> 00:28:39.599
So you talked about your experience in 2024, but during that time you also had seriously considered moving maybe into consulting or fractional work.
00:28:39.839 --> 00:28:44.480
And I think that could be a really smart move for somebody with your skill set, especially.
00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:50.720
Uh, you get to name your rate, you get to protect your time, build your own schedule, but you decided not to.
00:28:50.799 --> 00:28:55.599
And the reason why you said that you decided not to is because you weren't done building.
00:28:55.839 --> 00:28:58.000
So I would like to reflect on that.
00:28:58.160 --> 00:29:04.799
Can you walk us through when you were weighing consulting versus building in 2024?
00:29:04.960 --> 00:29:06.960
What types of questions were you asking yourself?
00:29:07.119 --> 00:29:10.240
Why were you being so pulled towards building something?
00:29:10.640 --> 00:29:18.000
I think at the end of the day, you're asking yourself, what kind of impact do you want to have at this phase of your life?
00:29:18.079 --> 00:29:22.799
And and how do you want to, how do you want to deploy your time and your energy?
00:29:23.039 --> 00:29:33.440
And I was actually, it it's really fun to offer expertise to someone else who can benefit from it and help them solve a tough problem that they are facing.
00:29:33.599 --> 00:29:36.559
And by the way, like a tutoring side hustle is that too.
00:29:36.799 --> 00:29:42.799
And it's also it's really fun to get diverse exposure to different kinds of problems.
00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:58.240
And I think if you have a problem-solving mindset and you start to see patterns in things, like you get really excited by plugging into different situations a little bit and getting getting your feet wet, but not having to be wedded to them for a long time.
00:29:58.480 --> 00:30:15.680
I think what I found was the downside of that was, or at least for me personally, was it's hard to deeply attribute the impact of anything that you did to an outcome because ultimately there's another owner of a problem who's going and taking a solution forward.
00:30:15.920 --> 00:30:27.519
And to be honest, one of the things that can always be hard in product building work is that question of like how much of me is there in this thing?
00:30:27.839 --> 00:30:42.079
Because things are hard to build, they take a big team, decisions you negotiate, some decisions you really love, some decisions were decisions were made ones that you made based on some constraint that you, you know, that you fell into.
00:30:42.240 --> 00:30:50.640
And there's a temptation of this sort of the solopreneur or the creator journey, like I'm going to, I have full creative control.
00:30:50.799 --> 00:30:55.039
And you give that up when you agree to be part of an organization or an institution.
00:30:55.200 --> 00:30:57.039
And I grappled with that as well.
00:30:57.200 --> 00:31:07.759
Like, oh, you know, there's there's building with others, there's advising others, there's building by myself, and sort of what are all of those things?
00:31:08.000 --> 00:31:22.160
And I've at least for this phase, I've sort of concluded I want to feel the ownership of building, and I'm willing to give up the problem variety in order to get that, because you do get that if you if you're willing to live more of a consulting life.
00:31:22.400 --> 00:31:35.920
And there is creative control that you get from building alone, but for most people, you end up giving up some level of impact because you can always build more, build better together with people.
00:31:36.079 --> 00:31:45.359
And and there's also like there's the amount of learning I'm able to do by working with the team that I work with today versus doing it by myself.
00:31:45.519 --> 00:31:48.079
Like I, it's just so much faster, so much richer.
00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:53.279
And as I thought about it, I actually, so I I know you worked with a coach that that appeared on your show.
00:31:53.359 --> 00:31:54.240
I worked with a coach as well.
00:31:54.400 --> 00:31:55.119
Her name is Donna.
00:31:55.359 --> 00:31:59.839
And one of the it was like session after session, it would be like, what do you really care about?
00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:01.599
Is the ultimate question.
00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:08.960
And what my list came down to was a list that included only, you know, three to five things.
00:32:09.119 --> 00:32:13.759
And one of those was I want to form deep personal relationships with the people that I work with.
00:32:13.920 --> 00:32:15.599
It's really hard to do that as a consultant.
00:32:15.839 --> 00:32:20.720
Like you, you, you, you want to be on an ownership journey with a tribe of people together.
00:32:20.880 --> 00:32:23.599
And I I I knew that was important to me.
00:32:23.759 --> 00:32:32.240
And that is a big part of sort of why I decided to do what what I'm what I'm doing now, because one thing about people who work in education is they really, really care about it.
00:32:32.400 --> 00:32:36.880
And it feels great to be part of a group that cares this much.
00:32:37.200 --> 00:32:37.440
Yeah.
00:32:37.599 --> 00:32:37.839
Okay.
00:32:38.000 --> 00:32:43.680
So we talked a little bit about the journey of being a solopreneur and what that may look like.
00:32:43.920 --> 00:32:47.279
The next part, the next couple of questions I have for you are a little bit selfish.
00:32:47.440 --> 00:32:54.400
So Prabhu spent years, like we talked about, inside the platforms where the entire creator economy runs.
00:32:54.559 --> 00:33:00.720
So online advertising, video at two of the companies that basically built the internet, the modern internet.
00:33:01.039 --> 00:33:12.799
So when any of us decide to maybe start posting videos online or starting an account or even just listing a resource online, we're playing again on a field that he helped design, which is so cool.
00:33:12.960 --> 00:33:16.240
So full disclosure, I'm a new content creator.
00:33:16.400 --> 00:33:19.200
Um I've been posting on LinkedIn for like a year and a half.
00:33:19.279 --> 00:33:20.960
So I have I've got some traction there now.
00:33:21.039 --> 00:33:23.039
I've been loving being active on LinkedIn.
00:33:23.279 --> 00:33:26.720
I'm brand new really to Instagram of actually taking it seriously.
00:33:26.799 --> 00:33:32.160
I just started like practicing speaking on camera and doing talking head reels like two weeks ago.
00:33:32.319 --> 00:33:34.960
So I'm very early in my content creator journey.
00:33:35.119 --> 00:33:37.920
So that's why I'm here to talk to you about some of that as well.
00:33:38.160 --> 00:33:47.920
If there's anything else that you would like to tell us, first of all, about your time in tech, what did you actually work on, either at Google or Facebook, in regards to the creator side of things?
00:33:48.240 --> 00:33:48.480
Yeah.
00:33:48.559 --> 00:33:56.799
So when I joined YouTube, the the problem that I took on as a product leader was at the time YouTube was entirely ad supported.
00:33:57.119 --> 00:34:06.079
And we realized that like most of the time people spend watching video in the world is actually it involves the user paying for something.
00:34:06.400 --> 00:34:11.360
Movie theater, paying for cable, paying for a streaming service, uh, whatever it might be.
00:34:11.599 --> 00:34:15.360
In those days, I think you could still rent things at the at the you know, at the video store.
00:34:15.519 --> 00:34:20.000
And we wanted creators to have the full suite of business models available to them.
00:34:20.159 --> 00:34:26.559
And by the way, sometimes the user's paying to get access to your content, sometimes the user's paying just to support you.
00:34:26.719 --> 00:34:34.480
And you know, I I remember when Patreon, for example, launched, and we also had some similar capabilities on YouTube as well.
00:34:34.719 --> 00:34:49.119
And the mission was to empower creators to build real sustainable businesses through the full suite of business models they have available to them, not just not just through advertising, and enable them to build an audience for that as well.
00:34:49.199 --> 00:34:55.199
And when I when I worked on video at Facebook, a lot of, you know, a lot of what Facebook has been great for is building an audience.
00:34:55.360 --> 00:35:04.239
And I would say the biggest insight I would have from those experiences is when you think about being a creator, being a creator is not a platform agnostic journey.
00:35:04.400 --> 00:35:07.119
For many creators, it's a multi-platform journey as you're experiencing.
00:35:07.360 --> 00:35:12.639
I think for for most, for basically all modern successful creators, it is a multi-platform journey, at least in part.
00:35:12.800 --> 00:35:31.679
But you need to invest the time to understand the physics of the platform that you're using and the culture of the platform that you're using and what the community there expects, what the platform rules of the road are, what kinds of monetization approaches work really well here versus in another place.
00:35:31.840 --> 00:35:35.119
Because it is that there's a lot of non-obvious things that you learn.
00:35:35.199 --> 00:35:42.719
And TPT is another platform you you're you're successful on that I actually know those physics much less well.
00:35:42.960 --> 00:35:43.920
But it's the same thing.
00:35:44.079 --> 00:35:46.480
Like what, you know, what do teachers buy there?
00:35:46.559 --> 00:35:48.159
What how do they evaluate quality?
00:35:48.239 --> 00:35:48.960
What are they looking for?
00:35:49.119 --> 00:35:50.320
How do you get discovered?
00:35:50.559 --> 00:36:00.719
Understanding all of those things is really important to actually building something that's going to last and is going to be a meaningful side hustle or even eventually primary income for you.
00:36:01.119 --> 00:36:10.639
The other thing I would say is I think there are a lot of kids today whose top choice of like aspirational future career is to be a creator.
00:36:10.880 --> 00:36:11.519
Yeah.
00:36:11.760 --> 00:36:19.039
And I would say I think like many careers that people have always aspired to when they were kids, it's way harder than it looks.
00:36:19.199 --> 00:36:21.599
And you have to make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons.
00:36:21.760 --> 00:36:28.480
And I think that's true of any creative pursuits are interesting because they are both a vehicle for self-expression and they're potentially a way to make a living.
00:36:28.800 --> 00:36:32.239
It can be complicated to turn a hobby into a business.
00:36:32.559 --> 00:36:35.280
It can be complicated logistically, but also emotionally.
00:36:35.360 --> 00:36:37.519
I I once took a fiction writing class.
00:36:37.679 --> 00:36:39.599
Actually, I took a screenwriting class too.
00:36:39.760 --> 00:36:50.559
And that that screenwriting instructor, his sort of closing message at the end of it, and he had, you know, he'd worked on a some different shows in the TV industry, and he was like, if you want to write, write.
00:36:50.719 --> 00:36:53.760
The only reason in the world not to write is that you don't want to.
00:36:53.920 --> 00:36:57.119
If you want to make a living writing, that's a different conversation.
00:36:57.280 --> 00:37:04.880
That's that like you're not in complete control of everything that needs to come together for you to succeed in doing that.
00:37:05.039 --> 00:37:08.639
There are trade-offs that you might have to make in order to pursue that dream.
00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:19.119
And I would really support anyone who really wants to do that for the right reasons, but don't just assume that because you love the experience of writing, that you will love trying to turn writing into a career.
00:37:19.280 --> 00:37:24.960
And I think that's true of many, of many creative pursuits, and it's true of being part of the creator economy as well.
00:37:25.119 --> 00:37:35.519
It's exhausting sometimes, like trying to figure out all of these different platforms, trying to engage with your audience in a way that satisfies them, trying to deal with the way the platforms change because they're they're constantly evolving.
00:37:35.599 --> 00:37:48.559
And you got to really be in it because you believe that you have something to say and that other people want to hear it, and that you, if you're wanting to build a business, understand that from the beginning, learn about it that way, I think is really important.
00:37:48.880 --> 00:37:50.320
That's incredible advice.
00:37:50.480 --> 00:38:01.360
And I will speak a little bit, even as a newer content creator, to my experience of you mentioned curating your content to match certain platforms and the things that reward creators on those platforms.
00:38:01.519 --> 00:38:09.440
So for a while, when I first started posting, which was like April of 2023, I was like, okay, I want to be on LinkedIn and I want to be on Instagram.
00:38:09.599 --> 00:38:13.039
I'll just make a post and I'll repurpose it to each platform.
00:38:13.199 --> 00:38:15.199
And I, it wasn't going so well.
00:38:15.360 --> 00:38:20.719
And I realized I really what I think I need to do is I need to choose one platform.
00:38:20.880 --> 00:38:24.639
Cause I because you're right, I would see all these very, very successful creators.
00:38:24.800 --> 00:38:30.480
They're repurposing to YouTube Shorts, to TikTok, to Instagram, to everywhere and doing very well at it.
00:38:30.639 --> 00:38:33.599
And I realized as a beginner, at least, here's what I need to do.
00:38:33.679 --> 00:38:36.880
I need to figure out what my voice is and what I'm even doing here.
00:38:37.039 --> 00:38:37.840
What is my why?
00:38:38.000 --> 00:38:38.960
Exactly what you said.
00:38:39.119 --> 00:38:45.280
But also I need to figure out, practically speaking, what's going to light up on each platform.
00:38:45.599 --> 00:38:51.679
So what I did was I kind of did keep repurposing to Instagram, but I decided to make my focus LinkedIn.
00:38:51.840 --> 00:38:55.840
And I realized there are certain types of posts that are going to perform better than others.
00:38:56.000 --> 00:38:59.920
My carousel posts that I was posting to Instagram weren't doing anything on LinkedIn.
00:39:00.079 --> 00:39:02.159
And it can also vary from person to person.
00:39:02.239 --> 00:39:05.199
I see people post carousels that perform very well on LinkedIn.
00:39:05.440 --> 00:39:06.320
Mine just don't.
00:39:06.480 --> 00:39:08.480
Maybe it's my audience, maybe it's the way I'm doing it.
00:39:08.639 --> 00:39:18.400
But I have found that sometimes just a simple text-based post, those are the ones that I'll get tens of thousands of impressions on hundreds of engagements on LinkedIn.
00:39:18.559 --> 00:39:22.639
Whereas obviously on Instagram, I'm not going to post a text-based post at all.
00:39:23.440 --> 00:39:27.840
So now I've I think I've figured out the LinkedIn game, at least for me.
00:39:28.079 --> 00:39:30.960
And then now I'm working on figuring out the Instagram game.
00:39:31.119 --> 00:39:46.800
So for a beginner who's listening, if you're not getting traction in your content creation, or if you are thinking about starting content creation, that might be a little piece of advice is maybe just pick one platform, get really good at that for a year, or pretty good at it at least for a year.
00:39:46.960 --> 00:40:00.239
And then when you feel ready, when you're both consistent and able to optimize your content, then maybe it's time to add another platform to your plate, knowing that it's going to be, you're going to be back at freshman year, you're going to have to learn that platform as well.
00:40:00.559 --> 00:40:08.719
And I think LinkedIn is a great choice for you because ultimately what you provide is career advice and LinkedIn is a platform for people to grow their careers.
00:40:08.960 --> 00:40:17.199
But if your primary goal was to generate income from the platform where you're hosting, LinkedIn actually doesn't do that at all.
00:40:17.679 --> 00:40:24.480
They don't have, you know, a creator revenue sharing program that's nearly as robust as some of the other platforms that you named.
00:40:24.639 --> 00:40:30.239
And so understanding how that creation fits into your overall goals is really important.
00:40:30.559 --> 00:40:30.800
Okay.
00:40:30.960 --> 00:40:32.079
So last question.
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A lot of schools right now are working so hard just to get kids proficient.
00:40:38.000 --> 00:40:41.599
And you have built your whole company around excellence.
00:40:41.760 --> 00:40:44.719
We talked about the deep challenge and the real joy.
00:40:44.960 --> 00:40:47.360
And I think that's a beautiful thing.
00:40:47.679 --> 00:41:05.360
And but I also think the same question lives inside a lot of teachers, which is when you're stretched very thin, either as a student who's struggling or a teacher who's struggling in different ways, why should we reach for excellent instead of just proficient or good enough?
00:41:05.760 --> 00:41:14.639
I think there's there's sort of a there's a a broader philosophical answer, and then there's you know the answer specific to the work that we do at my company.
00:41:14.880 --> 00:41:23.199
My broader philosophical answer is is really just that like I don't feel like we are here to live for good enough.
00:41:23.679 --> 00:41:28.079
It doesn't mean that I believe that everyone needs to be excellent at everything.
00:41:28.239 --> 00:41:33.199
In fact, trying to be excellent at everything is a pretty surefire way to not be excellent at anything.
00:41:33.280 --> 00:41:40.000
Like, but choosing to be excellent is just a really important way that we as humans express ourselves.
00:41:40.079 --> 00:41:48.480
And I think that's something that you know your audience can take to whatever whatever sort of creative or professional journey they they might be on.
00:41:48.639 --> 00:41:51.360
And it's it's really fun to be great at something.
00:41:51.519 --> 00:41:53.440
It it's a lot of hard work.
00:41:53.679 --> 00:41:59.039
It's especially a lot of hard work during the phase when you know what excellent looks like, but you can't do it yourself.
00:41:59.199 --> 00:42:04.320
Uh there's a famous quote from Ira Glass who who hosted this, who hosted American Life about that.
00:42:04.559 --> 00:42:07.440
But it's really, really fun to be good at something.
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It's also really fun to improve.
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And that striving is is really important.
00:42:12.639 --> 00:42:25.280
Now, in the context of you know, K-12 schools and and math in particular, I understand that many, many teachers, many school leaders, like the reality of the journey that they're on is a proficiency one.
00:42:25.519 --> 00:42:31.599
But the the call to action I would have is every school has some kids who are proficient.
00:42:31.840 --> 00:42:33.679
And what are you doing to serve them?
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And they deserve growth as well.
00:42:36.559 --> 00:42:42.079
And they can only grow if they get access to the challenge that will help them continue to grow.
00:42:42.320 --> 00:43:04.960
In addition, for the kids who aren't proficient yet, I would say that there's it so happens, especially we believe, with the program that we've developed, that making something that is a problem to solve that is interesting and novel, is a way to engage that student in a way that things that are more obvious might not.
00:43:05.119 --> 00:43:15.920
And it turns out that the interesting novel problem is also really effective in developing the skills that drive towards proficiency and then eventually to excellence.
00:43:16.079 --> 00:43:30.320
Um, and so even though it feels like the way to support this student is to is to start with the the most straightforward way of looking at solving a math problem.
00:43:30.639 --> 00:43:37.280
I think the reality is if the student is not engaged, it doesn't matter how easy it is, they still won't bother to learn.
00:43:37.599 --> 00:43:40.320
Like challenge is itself motivating.
00:43:40.400 --> 00:43:54.000
And when we shy away from challenge, we're we're depriving our students of one of the most potent forms of fuel to drive them on their journey towards proficiency.
00:43:54.159 --> 00:44:08.880
And there's also a little bit of a, I think it's you know, the human brain develops asynchronously, and every person is different and has a different way of learning or looking at a problem that will engage them.
00:44:09.119 --> 00:44:15.760
And exposing to different kinds of problems is part of the way that you discover what really is going to click.
00:44:15.920 --> 00:44:35.840
And a lot of what we do with our program is there's just lots of different kinds of problems, and we offer multiple strategies, which is this other thing that is sometimes controversial, but it's the way that exposure is the way that you help a student discover what works for them and what kinds of problems they gravitate towards.
00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:43.199
And I see no reason why someone has to already be excellent to deserve the opportunity to have that discovery journey.
00:44:43.360 --> 00:44:52.320
And so I think no matter the current level of a student, there's an opportunity to engage them with a challenge that's authentic that needs them where they are.
00:44:52.480 --> 00:44:57.840
And that'll make the students' experience more joyful and it'll make the teacher's experience more joyful as well.
00:44:58.079 --> 00:45:01.679
Prabhu, I have loved this conversation so much.
00:45:01.840 --> 00:45:03.360
I wish we could keep talking all day.
00:45:03.519 --> 00:45:06.719
Thank you very, very much for taking the time to speak with us today.
00:45:06.880 --> 00:45:11.360
Before we wrap, where can people find you and Beast Classroom?
00:45:11.760 --> 00:45:15.199
So uh probably the best way to find me is LinkedIn.
00:45:15.360 --> 00:45:18.480
Uh we should have the link to my profile in the show notes.
00:45:18.559 --> 00:45:36.000
But what I really care about is if you are an elementary math teacher or school leader who is looking for a way to authentically challenge your students in math and uh engage them in ways that maybe your current program is not, check out beastclassroom.com.
00:45:36.159 --> 00:45:39.199
We have some great core curriculum materials.
00:45:39.360 --> 00:45:41.599
We have uh a great supplemental program.
00:45:41.760 --> 00:45:44.880
Whatever your needs are, we might be able to help and we'd love to chat.
00:45:45.199 --> 00:45:46.880
Thank you so much for your time today.
00:45:47.039 --> 00:45:47.679
This was so great.
00:45:48.000 --> 00:45:48.800
Thank you so much, Krista.
00:45:48.960 --> 00:45:50.079
It's been an honor.
00:45:51.119 --> 00:45:54.480
I'm Krista Jones, and this is First in Class.
00:45:54.639 --> 00:45:58.639
If you enjoyed this episode, follow the show so you don't miss the next one.
00:45:58.800 --> 00:46:02.239
And pass it along to a teacher friend who might be inspired by it.
00:46:02.480 --> 00:46:07.360
Quick note I'm not a financial planner, and I'm not your financial planner.
00:46:07.519 --> 00:46:12.400
Always do your own research and talk to a professional before making money boosts.
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See you next week.