Conversation with Tim Joo - May 7, 2025

Context

Strategic planning discussion with Tim Joo regarding parent movement building in Central Texas, focusing on strategies for launching microscools, engaging with communities, and building relationships with influential parents. The conversation took place at what appears to be an office setting, with some brief interruptions from other individuals.

Key Topics

• Strategic approach to building parent movements in Central Texas
• Creation of "parent clicks" with group discounts and click leaders
• Targeting faith communities and corporate campus parents
• Building relationships with "super-parent influencers"
• Creating a 18-24 month roadmap for launching multiple microscools by Fall 2026
• Using afterschool programs as a bridge to full school launches
• Developing church-based school initiatives
• Apple Watch recording strategies for documenting conversations and building personal CRM systems

Strategic Insights

• Focus on high-end markets first (Apple, Dell employees, wealthy church members)
• Build hyper-targeted community-specific events rather than generic parent events
• Partner with existing influential parents rather than trying to be the direct evangelist
• Create documentation (potentially a documentary) to scale the model to other regions
• Build in-house parent content agency and branding factory to support parent influencers
• Typical budget suggestions: $100K per event (potentially 27 events), plus afterschool program coordinators

Next Steps Discussed

• Tim to refine strategic document with spiky POVs (Points of View)
• Tim to begin church visits to explore faith-based school opportunities
• Plan for initial community-specific events
• Develop more detailed budgeting for full initiative
• Get Alpha Schools email alias for formal communications

Raw Transcript

[Beginning of conversation with some small talk and introductions]

Gary: This is genius. Getting groups of parents together that are basically tribes, you should you should you should name them. you should name them something. like clicks, clicks, clicks, parent clicks, target parent clicks, give them a group discount. What do you think about that?

Tim: I' phenom Click discount, yeah. and then, yeah. and then we even nominate like a leader of the click, and then give them a little like, extra discount.

Gary: here's what I was thinking to this satellite for for the for the evangelizer role.

[Brief interruption with someone else]

Gary: I want you to think about as one important spiky POV that you really flesh out is like, a spiky POV is we must make parental influencers in each community rich. I I think, dude, like, you're gonna basically be able to find moms, some dads with like certain probably moms that are just stay at home mom that get six figures just from your shit. I and I bet you Joe would fucking love that.

Tim: I the way I envision is that like the OG parents, like one of the appeals of selling like, hey, you could you could be a mom in the first word dad in the first chord is that, like, as this gets pushed out nationwide, like, you'll have ample opportunities to build your own brand that if you want to, around this mission of putting your and then you'll be backed with like pay media and it's gonna be the whole media branch pushing you.

Gary: That's interesting. Because there's nothing better than organic not what would be organic, right? Like if you truly believe in the missionary, if you just yeah, and I think we should have a central Texas based marketing agency dedicated just to helping create parental influencers. I would bake in that into your budget, literally like full full time content agency with proven results, by the way. I think that they they're hiring some shitty marketers right now. in alpha, terrible, no results.. But I'm saying this to myself. but they'll just find really good marketing people, budget for that, and just let's blow up a number of I think another spiky POV bro that you should add is like relying on Mackenzie to be the evangelist is is is terrible. because she's everyone's gonna be like, of course you're gonna push your old fucking school. It's terrible, right? Terrible to be the bottleneck. I'm not saying she's doing a terrible job I'm saying has to be the parents. It has to be parents that weren't the founders. that that that organically came across alpha. organically makes no sense.

[Conversation continues with detailed strategy discussion about parent influencers, church outreach, and budgeting]

Gary: You want you want you probably either either some like teenager in Central Texas or some Sri Lankan kid will do that. Ideally, it's someone that's in Central Texas. They understand Central Texas, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? and we put down on the spiky POV when we're hiring that team, it should be someone that culturally understands the nuanced in the Central Texas, right? So I think like the situation that you're in is like a very interesting one, because it's like, if you picked the wrong path, like, oh, I'm gonna vicecode some bullshit. Like, you you would you would fail, right? But it's like if you if you picked like being a high level movement strategist, like almost CEO of like a movement of parents inside Central Texas, you'll like you'll be able to negotiate with Joe, like 1.2 million salary in a year, right?

[Discussion about potential career path and strategic focus]

Gary: Come to church with me on Sunday, okay?

Tim: Actually, I was gonna go tomorrow, tomorrow night, Friday, Saturday, like t just random churches for events. talk to many just to talk to as many. I' I love that initially, man. I can't go today because I I fucked up much, man. I'm so disappointed one day on a Wednesday, I have a good and I have a good mangaature for my that I've gone I went to last year. have a huge facility no, this is like literally your divine purpose, and like, I don't know, can I ask you what you where you're divine purposes? What your faith?

Gary: Oh, yeah, I was I was looking on a very Christian like environment. My mom is like super hot, like she not it's not a big church. no, like a very well respected church. she a language school like she she does a bunch of community service takes care of all the people. So you would know if your mom got super excited about this, everyone would listen. right? That's just how it works the entire is. My brother is he all the time so even though like I believe in God, I' I don't like I need to practice more, honestly, but like, that's why I thought like, hey, if I could go into church and talk to these people and aren't foreign to me, right?

[Extended discussion about faith, church strategies, and approaching faith communities]

Gary: So what I did for this church I'm going to on Sunday is I I basically said I want I want I want you to and I think you could say this because who's to say what is the best faith baseball school? It's like I wanna create the I want to I want, you know, I work with um this billionaire that is literally all he wants to do is create hyper specialize the best schools in the world for a particular specialty, right? And um, you know, you have to believe this. like, I really like your church, I think, has a great message, blah, blah, blah, and like, you know, we would love to help you start a church, start start a school for your children in the community so that not only are you are they succeeding academically with common core and AP tests and et cetera, they're also growing up in a way that has values aligned with the church, right?

[Conversation moves to specific strategies for approaching different communities]

Gary: So, literally 27 events, um that are 100k each, um it's 2.7 million, right? And then after school program coordinators, let's say there's there's nine of them. um.. That's like $1 million dollars. yeah. Ooh, yeah, it's just seeing into future guys training them. the experience is if we're we're really gonna shoot the greatest time 2026 full time, we need to get them to train for it and then nail that you up with that that that education..

[Conversation shifts to recording strategies and personal CRM systems]

Gary: what I'm saying? And then like, literally literally you'll be dotted like a minute. and then just review it, edit it a little bit, even with your voice, right? We can even do it and I I mean, I don't feel like you need my help on it, actually. I think you know what I'm saying. But uh I'm gonna give you a w Apple Watch, by the way.

Tim: Okay, cool.

Gary: So that you can have conversations without without having a tech notes. Maybe you even want to strategically local all your dick notes, um, just to look attentive, but and also pull out any interesting things that they're say in addition to the full transcript. but um the reason why Apple Watch is great is because it does help you keep a time if if you do have multiple meetings, but that's even that's that's second yeah. it's it's it's completely secondary compared to the value of the high quality microphone it has.

[Detailed discussion about recording conversations, transcription, and building a personal CRM]

Gary: I literally have a shortcut for arinating for literally like so I literally do ZP or something and it literally has like a template like mad libs, like like you know, hey, of course sir, please process this conversation with and there's like an empty field and I just type in like what what I'm literally gonna do is like Tim Jew, right on blah, blah, blah, and I can automate the date part as well. I'm gonna do that. But then it's like literally and then at the end it's like, blah, blah blah process is transcript, right? And then I literally paced in the fucking transcript and it literally updates the CIA file on that, right?

Tim: That's super powerful.

Gary: I'm outsourcing everything that's annoying to me. And literally girl, I don't almost know I'm just telling you this because, um you know, I our brains are probably pretty similar in this way. I pay my pay MMT $5,000 a month to do my brain lives. shit. I fucking hate it and and I know I will be able to get enough money in return from being in flow state and making more impact, right?

Tim: brilliant. Yeah. sense. Yeah, you that was awesome. I appreciate.

[Conversation wraps up with final thoughts on recording strategies]

Tim: I guess now I do that you make me wanna feel like I wanna run through a wall now.