We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brandon Stover. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brandon below.

Brandon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Plato University was born out from realizing my own pain was happening at scale. Being a poor kid from the trailer park living in a broken home, I know the power of education to transform ones life. But after chasing education’s promise of a golden ticket, I graduated with an architecture degree in a career I was not passionate about or felt would make a real difference in the world.

One day I would find myself trembling at my desk, huge architectural drawings with glaring red lines scattered everywhere, staring at my reflection in the lifeless black computer monitors. I began trembling, stomach turning, feeling someone poured concrete down my throat. Asking myself, “Is this all there is to life? Is THIS what I worked so hard for?” I became depressed about my life and enraged that I had just spent a huge chunk of it supposedly working towards something much more fulfilling. Ultimately I had no meaning, impact, or sense of purpose in my life.

In the depths of my despair, I had read “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Vicktor Frankl and discovered what I was missing… a purpose. Vicktor Frankl says man’s heart is restless unless he has found, and fulfilled, meaning and purpose in life. But what was that purpose for me?

To find out, I began a project of self-directed learning exploring passions, devouring books like they were water, listening to as many podcasts as I could cram in a day at 3x speed, investing in online courses, and interviewing dozens of social entrepreneurs making a difference in the world. I started experimenting, building a portfolio of projects that allowed me to use the skills I was learning, some being utter failures, others getting me hired with mission driven companies.

During my journey, I had returned to something that had long been forgotten: a love of learning. I spent years researching the broken education system plaguing society. My purpose became a desire to revolutionize the education system, building one to help others also find purpose and solve global challenges. In execution towards that purpose, I started Plato University whose free courses have reached over 120,000+ people worldwide. And every day I wake up motivated by the purpose I am pursuing and fulfilled by my work.

Brandon, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

This is where I tell how great I am, right? Well I’d rather let the work speak for itself. Instead I’d rather tell you why I do this work. That is, I want to change world for the better.

Our world is made up of interconnected complex systems. Complex systems are defined by their individual parts and the summation of those parts as a whole. If you wish to create an intervention within a complex system you can either change the entire system, which will result in a change of its parts, or you can change the parts, which will result in changing the entire system.

I believe changing the world starts with changing the individual.

I have 2 goals in life: 1) help others cultivate meaning and purpose. 2) help push human progress forward by solving global issues.

My mission is to liberate the individual’s mind with belief, willpower, & skills for execution to ask and solve the world’s greatest challenges while living fulfilling lives.

How? Excellent question.

I believe that education underlies all other complex problems in our society. If we solve the problems in the education system, we can prepare students with the skills they need to solve all other global problems. Then, by combining what they care about with acts that are consequential to society, they can find purpose.

So I’m building Plato University, where students get an affordable, personalized college education built around their passions, highly in-demand, real world skills, and the impact they want to make. At Plato, students declare missions rather than majors, aimed at solving pressing problems like climate change, poverty, healthcare, education, and more. Completely online with personalized support and community.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Not specifically social media, but I will speak to how to build a podcast. All of Plato University’s courses are released for free as podcasts. Each of these course have anywhere from 30-60 episodes with each episode being about 10-20 minutes. Every episode delivers the educational lesson and then had a call to action for listeners to join the Plato University platform for extra resources, coaching, and more. So essentially our courses at as valuable content marketing to bring students to Plato, allowing them to try the education before they buy.

In order to grow the podcasts organically, I’ve implemented a few strategies.

First, creating the episodes to be under 20 minutes makes the content bite sized and binge worthy. People can get hooked quickly. All the content is aimed at helping them actually implement what they are learning in order to solve a problem in their life or society. So its very valuable to them. Because of this, word of mouth and sharing the podcast has been the biggest growth driver.

Second, every podcast is named in the way people search for answers. For example, our podcasting course is called “How to Start a Podcast”. Our career course is called “How to Start a Career”. You get the idea. Then, every episode title uses best practices for copywriting, creating salient hooks that both informs the listener about what they will hear and creates curiosity for them to listen. When I ask people how they found our courses they often answer something like, “well I wanted to learn this thing about podcasting, so I searched for it in Spotify. I listened to your episode about that thing and it was really good. So I went back and listened to all the episodes.”

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Actually, not yet. I still work a part-time job as a network manager for a podcast network of 19 podcasts. Plato University is a long term vision, not a startup I’m building to be acquired in 3-5 years. I’m not just trying to make money. I’m trying to fix the education system. Complex systems are well… complex. They should be handled with care and attention. That requires time. So rather than give myself the stress of needing to make a full time income from Plato right away, I’ve given myself the security of a job.

However, I make sure that the skills I am using in that part time job will transfer over to my business. Knowing the ins and outs of podcasting helps with Plato’s courses. Managing multiple teams, partnerships, and projects are required for any business. I’ve even helped this podcast network to launch and educational fellowship.

Am I moving slower? Maybe, but I won’t get wiped out to the point that I can’t put any time or effort towards the business. Success is about consistent, hard work over time. I’m just giving myself more runway. People can say “just go all in” or “burn the bridges”. I say design your life in whatever way you need to succeed based on your circumstances and personality. There is no right answer.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.plato.university/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonstover/
• Other: https://www.brandonstover.com/