Strategy Discussion with Heather Clayton Staker

This transcript captures a strategy conversation between Gary Sheng and Heather Clayton Staker, with Tim Joo present for the initial overview. The discussion focuses on Heather's expertise in education innovation, her "Guide School" initiative, and how it can be leveraged to support Alpha Schools' ambitious scaling plans, particularly for guide training and the new corporate campus school strategy.

Um, Okay, good news. Yeah. Um, I basically said, Joe, I want to own the whole funnel for parents. Um, yeah, and he was like, cool, thousand parents. He didn't give me a timeline. thousand paid parents. And, uh thousand what does thousand paid parents mean though? Um, that get their kid into the high school into some school. at full price. I don't. we'll figure out we'll out as we go. But basically, look, um let just start working together.s. I mean like it's one step, one small step of getting but I needed I needed that clarity because I was doing like at the end they like, I't you know almost need to beained. But like there's so many issues with this high school, I was taking ownership of a lot of it, right? Like was it closed?. Okay, cool. There were so many issues with the high school that I was taking ownership. It was like fragmenting my time. it was also great for a building relationships, so it's like whatever. I'm happy with that, but um I I just some more just talking to Jack and and and Garrett like they were talking because I was asking them about the customer conversion process, right? And it kind of veered off to something else, but they were like, they were like, yeah, we have like three or four teams that like it takes. something that should take two days, sometimes three weeks because because we and he was like, there's three or four teams, they don't respond, everything is disjointed, is streamlined and I'm like hearing and I'm like I'm a dictatorship under me, okay, so exactly how it should be run, though. let's let's work together.. And so basically, I wanna dominate Central Texas. And you know what I wanna do? I want to in the actual corporations could be different, but it's like Apple school. Yeah. Google school. Google school. Oracle schools. Okay. Am my goal is to open up, you know, the reason I'm not I've actually punted on theith based stuff. Do you know why? Okay, why? Because unless it's a a well an explicitly wealth focused church, which makes no sense by the way, it just against the principles. they're not gonna wait to afford it, right? So I'm literally shutting out everything else, right? Joe gave me directive to get wealthy parents to you're going top of the market. We're talking about.. I, I'm dude, I'm done trying to push my own vision for things. You know, cause like, when I'm ready to fucking literally compete with alpha schools in general? I will have dude I will have no problem communicing my vision, right? But Joe, this what Joe wants. thousand students at 40K. Wow.. Right? Yep. And he didn't give me a timeline. Well, ultimately, but you know that we we you know that it's more than anything about a process we got get started, because like, we don't wanna over overly scale something, we don't even know works yet. So we need to do our first parent event ASAP, right? and but one person I'm bringing on is beef. I don't know if you met. I've seen refer to in your document. So beef is did musicals for Kanye, he was a executive producer vice. he just really good im media perfect person to work with on this. So this is an example of a okayR for us, right? With at, you know, 10 to 20 students each. Each by fall, 20,enty six, 2025, and the only way we do this is as in look, the funny thing is, if they don't approve this, then I'm gonna coast. But I'm do you know what do you know what this owning the outcome allows me do? It's like Joe, you're fucking own staff is in my fucking way. I'm owning this. Give me a fucking budget. Or tell me how much you're paying these fucking people. cause I can undercut them. I can find people that are way better. They don't have a funnel cost, bro. They don't have any of these fucking numbers. They have no they have nothing, dude. And they have no urgency. I railroad through everything needed to basically make this happen. And so right now, the three things I'm committing to me updated, and we should be warrooming this out. Look. I'm I'll reiterate just to make it super clear. Well, I actually didn't say this far. I see you as a warlord.. I feel like you were a warlord in the past life. Thank you right? Don't you feel that way? Sometimes, yeah. Yeah, dude, you're looking you looking chieftain. and I've I've actually told myself that. Yeah, but but then you need to work on things that fit that arit, right? And this is perfect, right? But we we practically want to do is get parents pissed. that that they even were even considering sending their kids to a normal ass elementary middle school. Like, you know what I'm saying? And and to your point about like the um like getting the getting the pairs that are in transition. It's like a six year old that's a body to go to elementary school or like or the other, you know, the other high school, yeah, exactly. Political team, um do you ag agree with that? trying to social, absolutely. I just see it harder for six to seventh.. Because then they have friends and everything, right? Trump political team, um movement like a parent parent, parent movement team. It's like events, etetera. Yeah. Um, I will request budget for like the new organically find these charismatic parents, and then we will request separate budget for that, right? I don't want to sell too much things at once. But it's like basically like it's like one one event per campus, right? I mean, corporate campus.. Right? And then the final thing is um what thing. I mean, you can start to see how, like my my life is way more foc is gonna be super way more focused. Well, that no, that's actually it. Dude, this is actually it. and it's it's it's very possible that this pace for this the Trump political is in like, yeah, can you describe political. So let me explain the executive order, right? Yep. The executive order is basically the first phase of it is basically Trump is like all my department heads. I'm not looking anything. All my department heads what AI what futuristic education stuff do you allocate grant money? That's so there was a timer for that. There's about 75 days left.? because it was announced on the day before that we talked about at the layout thing. So, I don't know how many days ago, but it's like around 75 days left. We got to move. So we got we have to influence the writing of the grant policies. You understand? And so but it's also like, okay, then then let's fucking work with the manufacturing companies. In matter of fact, Google doesn't even do manufacturer, but it does AI, right? So, it actually be great. So, look, so it's basically AI corporate campuses. Manufacturing, right? It's like one one or both, right? It's like hard tech or AI, right? And then we can literally get the schools paid for. by the by by the government by the federal government. So what it be the school would it be the corporations? Could it be? I think we have I guess the reason why this is so exciting is because we could get multiple like it could it could literally be it could literally be profitable from from day one, right? Unlike all this fucking shit, which is the opposite of profitable, right? Every fucking kid, they probably spend 200 K just get here. and then then then if you throw on scholarship, Joe spending another 200 K, right? It's ridiculous. So this is it, right? And then it's like I'm not even you know, even having the budget for this, but I will, you know, any time that I'm that Joe's in the office, you you text me and I'll like shout. I'll literally shot you out. I'll go in the office just shout you out. But you you do that for me too. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So so associates ourselves other but it's like Timew, right? So, I'm not requesting initional budget for for that, because you're already being paid for sure. But these are the new things of a budget for, okay? So but this is not overriding this stuff from yesterday. The stuff from yesterday, this is this, this this is that. Okay, so it's the stuff from yesterday align with this. That the direction literally that. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure. Well, dude, it emergently happened, because I was like pissed because my friend Ron figure if you met him, I don't think so. But my friend Ron, who literally, dude, I had the whole video filmed. of I was standing here. Ron and I had a whole whiteboard laying out the future of officeha schools, right? The Jewel was, oh, wow, cool. And then where I was like the first step is hiring Ron, this was ten days ago. And he said yes, and then he's been dragging his fucking feet and have had to like literally hold his seat to the fire and be like, what the fuck are you doing, Joe? You said yes. And we're gonna help you a lot. And and and then he was like, well, what how many students are gonna bring? And I was like I was like thinking about the response. I was like, how many do you want? No, no, I literally said, how many do you want? He said a thousand. I was like, done.. because you know no one else can do this. I know. So you and I together will fucking crush this. okay, so let's talk this out loud. I'm recording this. Yeah. So, why let me almost quiz you, why are we going to why do we both believe that fith communities are good for Alpha's future long term, but also not the right fit right now, given in lieu of the Trump administration, in lieu of the lie of the desire to get revenue and profitabilityuu Austin being a hub for manufacturing. Yeah, well, I mean political I mean, you in a little of revenue, but political money is on the table, and we haven't 75 days government daddy money. 75 days. So that should take priority over everything else. Everything will take that it will take longer churches are gonna be wrong.'re not going anywhere. the desire for church schools is latent potential ready to be unlock any time, right? But the politics at the subsidies of these schools is gonna go away. If I ironically, though, our work can help Trump stay powerful because education and manufacturing is anyone could get behind, right? And so that's I'm literally yes, I'm literally saying our actions will help Jill become way more powerful and Trump be more powerful. And honestly, bro. I will p pitch Trump golf school in fucking Austin. And so he can literally be right next to these fucking things. that's that's one that'll kill you for sure. A hundred percent, dude. And you know that he has no Trump towers or golf courses in Texas, all all over None of Texas. And people ask me, well, what do you think it is? I don't fucking know. you ask him, but but like he he' strategic about his real estate, right? He has a a DC capital, he has morolog Florida, but now he's gonna have Texas. He needs a he needs a war room. He needs a war room. disguised as a school, right? That's b That makes sense., I mean, Texas to me is like aervative it's going to be the most powerful city besides DC in the world. and actually, it'll go pound for pound, right? for DC. so you're talking about Austin. If Austin Austin in D if with our actions, you know like Peter Kel talks about definite optimism Bro, like we can make Austin the second capital of the US. That's funny that you said that because I've always believed that we could make this is before we had this conversation, that we could make us in the AI of the US. X drop. We can make it the cultural capital. We can make it the education capital. We can make it a lot of capitalitals. We can make it the golf capital. We can make it everything. We can make it literally the only thing that will be competing is DC with this monopoly on federal funding, which is fine. great. just see to the government. and then guess what? I I've a plan to create a DC school, too. Right? But I will strategically, the spik E POB is that we focus on on schools we can start within a 30 minute driving radius because we want to be able to micranage that process to make sure there's high quality. We don't know what the learning experiences gonna be, but it's gotta be top of the line and then means so we're gonna have to be. We're gonna have to be there in the, right? Selecting every single person and making sure everything. as we build momentum, we're the first three pilot schools, we will get so much demand for every campus having one of these and then we can start considering expanding to to faith- based stuff. but moving to other cities in Texas? Houston, San Actually, let me walk that back. Fuck theake based of we' gonna just nail the corporate campus plan and then what we're gonna do is we are going to go to Dallas like you said, Hou like Dallas? Yeah, our city would be Dallas Houston and Houston just o gas, whatever, energy, but there's just tremendous money in highland Park dollars, like you know everyone knows it. That you I said, you know't no Dude, do you know why Joe loves lips? he gets to absorb people sprays. That's a good point. what it is? He's literally being like distill your best ideas into four points. And I'm gonna absorb it. Have you seen the jet movie the one? Yeah, of course. that makes sense. It's a good analogy.assic movie too. Joe is Joe is like trying to absorb the smartest people in the world. into his brain. Or at least record it. It's his version of your CIA for sure.. hundred percent. It's like a CI knowledge files. So combined with that, yeah. All right, man. I just kind of run that by you. No, I think it's tremendous, it makes sense. So what I what I do to help you so obviously I'm not the political stuff, whatever, I'm gonna have to think about how I'm gonna strategy here. I think that you help me deep research all these all all the topuses rank them based on where we should start first and how we should start. I would even say like what are upcoming events that we we will definitely bump into I don't know. you know what I'm saying like how do we get the funnel going? That's why you. So my head I'm like I have a friend who works as a program manager at Apple, so perhaps I can ask him for I don't know how to skin this, though, like a community is it a community initiative? Because I have community program managers at these big type companies. I believe so. I think it'll be all case by case, because you'll have a community manager that's like, I'm gonna charge of the community and I don't really like this. It's like it't fucking matter what they like. It doesn't, yeah. Okay. So how about this? give me give me until tomorrow. Let me research the shit out of this. That's all I'm gonna do today, and I'm I'm not even blocked on on that research, but but the project is blocked. Sorry, the approval is not blocked on this, but us actually having a good plan to execute this? You know, take your time to well, don't take your time, I'm just doing a good job, but like it doesn't have to be as. Well, yeah, I'll I'll get it. I I'll think about it a lot by the end of day now, because I do I want to get movement on this, I we only have 75 days. It's really not a lot of time. And you're going to the White House this weekend, right? for me to have it could be Tuesday. I might have meetings just literally Tuesday through Friday.ically, you. So then it would need to be done well before Monday, or at least before.. I get maybe we can meet on Saturday. I'll. I can be in the I'll get to work, look how much of kind of a Power play this is. This is a gift that I give her. I know I saw. And then she has it in every episode down. Really? Power. That's that's super. I didn't know it was you though, but I imagine there was a definitely not someone in the org. Cool. All right, man, we'll good stuff. Thanks for hopping on and let's crush it, man. That's this is a vision work. putting all So, um, decided to get to know you a little bit, you wanted to sit down here? Yeah. Please.. Okay. Um that second. Yeah, this just the bundle where the big deal good It's definitely quiet intentionally, because of all the sound paneling. We'll love to learn more about, you know, what, uh your goals are and everything and how it can be helpful. And I'm I'm excited to share a little bit of my myself too... he's like, oh, you two need to meet because you have similar visions or some. Oh, yeah, and I just know that'll we'll be able to have some fun collaborating on a lot of things. So, um yeah, a little first, so I was I was I was brought up like to set the bar for um well, Joe helped me set the tone for my role right right from the beginning, uh a month and a half ago where we were talking about like alpha schools. I was getting pretty inspired. and I was like, you know it would be fun is an impactful, um even if it's not immediately, it's to create Dobos in America, but focused on education. But but it's only people that have deep urgency and don't like just to talk. So you can imagine like the d Dubai education minister, you can imagine even strategically education leaders from China, even though there's a kind of a cold war, right? We want to absorb the best ideas. We also want to build relationships ultimately, we want alpha schools, whether it's spreaded as alpha or not in other another countries as well, but also like the top education mines across the country, right? And so um what that a morphed into was when I actually started was just trying to figure out like, what are all the blockers to to being able to scale, right? Because like, you know, what what what none of us want is there to be so much demand for alpha schools, but alpha schools not even be ready, right? Like, for example, they're not being guide training, right? That can allow for these schools to even exist because, you know, it's so it's so it's there's a lot of AI, sure, but this is a human endeavor. It's a human endeavor, right? And so your job is literally as important as Joe's job. Like, because if our guides are not great, the experience sucks, right? You know that. what I've been whiteboarding a bit is like sequencing of what the first schools to start off with. I want to just kind of share this with you. So, um what's interesting about Central Texas is it's becoming a manufacturing hotbed, like a high tech, AI, hardtech hotbed, and um, you know, Joe is a big fan of like high price early on so that you have more room to experiment. Because if you if you're trying to recruit parents that can't afford anything, you have to subsidize everything you to give scholarships. Do you know who doesn't need scholarships? Employees at Apple? Employees at Google, employees at oracle, employees at, you know, manufacturing hard tech, you know, companies. And so what I'm exploring right now is like starting it could be as early as elementary school up at these companies, because often the parents are like 30, 35 anyways, right? And so like kindergarten is actually perfect. So Yes. Yes. Well, that's the idea, right? And um and so I've been thinking about like well again, I am someone that wants to see all the kind of categories of schools happen as a as a man of faith, like, I want to see like I want to see church schools everywhere. util completely agree, and there's built in guides because there's hierarchy that is often like merit based based on how much you contribute to the you know the the parish or whatever the communities call it the flock. So um my spiky POV around the corporate campuses, even though I want to see church schools everywhere is like, we don't even need to leave it to chance on whether because it's literally the base pay is so high, right? That even even entry level employee can probably afford 40K a year for their kid. So, um we' working on our brain li for that. I'm like ninety0% of the way approved for this strategy, uh, which I'm excited about. And um I will absolutely need guide training for this. So, yeah.s so exciting. those types of outside the school system opportunities, like the church schools, the corporate lab schools, I went to have you been toul Khan's lab school? Yeah, so the base of academy is a lab school. So you there and the same idea. It's that they're only using academy and stuff but it's the same idea. So it's such a perk for their employees. You don'm I'm sure they'reed. Yeah. It's such a great, so is it literally on the first floor of my. Are you? I worked for the Clayton Christians Institute for Disrupt. That's a very cool way. Oh really? I'm a fan I'm a fan. disruptive innovation into the day, I was on the State Board of Education in California, like a senior in high school because they had one student member. a week each month living Sacramento by myself on the State Board of Education. So I've been an education literally one of my partners is in a call. I'm gonna try to have him end a call early Hey sweetie. Hi, how are you? Okay, hey, I'm in a meeting. I'll tell you about it. bye. Um, my uh my partner on all this, um he grew up in Compton and was also, I don't know what the exact role was, but something like that from Yeah, so anyways, um great people, great people here, but um sorry, interrupt I've been to education for since I was a teenager, always said, like, this is where I'm heading my career. But then ended up HBS, McKenzie, more of that background and uhation? Well, you here, Ron. Do you wanna talk about just how early you how early we were all talking about how early she got into education. yeah, I mean I was the earliest in the grew up in Ir.. I worked with allviation work and then specifically with Markley Thomas and how young you? Yeah, yeah, was it was a good work, but it was like it's you know circles I was like, okay, not doing that. And then coming here and understanding the opportunity of I was like, okay, this is a lot more progressive and actable. I'souraging. When David send me bankers boxes ofefs to read with waivers design, the only way to innovate really in those big state bureaucracies is by getting a waiver granted. So every change you have to get a waiver granted and have someone like me who knows nothing but proof the waiver. It's so inefficient. There's nothing like sitting in that for a year to be like, I got to work outside the system. This isrible doesn't, I literally was just like, I'm tired of being like I was like the kid like, the, get the, I'm like, I'm you find you at so I started off working at alleviation. I was working at the Union rescue. I would shel Thursdays and I would like suggest ideas and then they move me up to like a board member and then, obviously the councilman and the members and oh, this and meet that person and do this thing and and so I'll just just shake a hand kiss and like like got introduced into like the education, e go system and my own gripes and just like they wanted to give me IEP and all this other and I was just like, you know, like, this is not working. So um I actually dropped out of high school. after my junior year, because I was just like, I'm ready to work. when I like fix this. So how very interesting work of college I got here, so I was like to somebody learning listening, but. Yeah, I was I was a comicard.? I get you like a water or a good. Not too far from Elandre right by each other. Right before I went to I went to Saint Bernard, which is in Play Vista., yeah, superiliar. My first job was at the Ho Foods of Rose Krans and PCH., right next to the to the world market. That was my first job, so after I dropped out of high school, the next week I got a job there. Yep, I prepare foods and and I was like on myare time helping kids on homework and in the projects. what's your r now? Well, just joining with the the department that we' spitting up where we get a truck a lot of it, it's called the alpha bet where we're betting on like approaches, experiments that we think will pay off a lot. like things that have never been or I guessalk Khan has tried it sort of a version of it, right? um where Salon's lab on the first floor is a is a is a is a school. that useson academy, of course, but, you know, a bet that we're taking is the corporate campus schools. um you know. So we are co-irectors of alphabet.. timely to qu we were speaking with Joe we'reo, there's no path for guys, there's no measurement of success and no infrastructure. and he was just like, oh, we're being in guy school. I was like, oh.. today this is this is like a week a week or so ago when you brought in? I have worked for the Clay Christians Institute fornovation for my way back at like 2007 or something was to focus on blended learning, which is anytime schools are using online learning and a bricking more So I've been on that for long as it's been around. I' a long time, with in the entire. And so and so categorize that so it created the taxomy and one of the models is called the flex model. And that's where you're really shifting so that AI will back then it wasn't AI. which is online learning is doing all the instruction for the students and then they do whatever it is the rest of the day. And so started geeking out about that phenomenon.le in my middle school. rotlex. I remember we got the chrome book like yeah, all that. I remember the transition because I was like, I hate this so much. and then the Chromebook was like, oh yeah, you don't have to talk to teachers much and they kind of come and guide and before all this stuff. That's great. So you so so until August of this year, I had a firm called Ready to blend. and I was helping schools do blended learning, most schools did station rotation.ipped classroom, the models that you can do while preserving so the disruptive innovation is more the flex model, whereas the teacher role fundamentally pivots, the way from traditional instructions entirely to guides. But you ask them up, when I would go do workshops and say, here are various typ of learning, I'll show you all of them. I'll show you station ration, I'll show you foot class, you want to show youlex model. They all walk out the door and station rotation and classroom it doesn't require disrup we're gonna do this one?no we're of learning, we're innovating, but really what it is is giving devices and electronic white boards and technology and cramming it. It's kind of just checking their innovation budgets right. So they're cramming it into their existing. So I did that for several years and and did train the trainer I'm used to training teachers. I mean this is what I've done for a long long time as training teachers. But I'm like, okay, I am almost 50 years old. I want to actually disrupt this model. Ever since I was 17 in California and seeing the bureauracy I like, I want to disrupt the model and I don't feel like more station rotations are gonna disrupt the model. So I wanted to start guide school. My background with the flex model is mostly active academy, so ten years ago we moved our family to Austin to put our kids in the first Acton academy that were six kids in the school. I ended up working for them so much. I wrote the forward to their book, so really action academy, helped systematize their whole school. The fascinating thing, though, when I found when I met Joe Lamar. school is offshooted. You know that, right? So Brian Holt there was a guy who actuallyademy, he left Acton started this, Joe was an investor, but your is still super well, which is funny because I see that more than other people know the acton DNA so well, so let's to the point where your students have the same password on their computer as the act and the students have. I love school. Oh, wow. wow wow. I'm so glad we're meeting. stuff everything like watch core skills, um what are the other things? The afternoon thing they called a quest, but like so many of those structures are exactly the same. It's the same word. It's just become it's sort of like two populations you see like the migration of two it's just like evolution yeah, so it's sort of funny because my brain is like,Wa, it's kind of a launch, but it's not really a launch right? So it's like it's really different. But but still it's just funny for me because I I know both populations pretty well now. So Meto had this desire to start action. How do you mean Joe? I have a really close friend named Brian Yachman, who's super wealthy and crosspaths with Joe somehow and he knows my work. He had his own kids at Acton academy for a while. He's funded. My brother run an Acton academy in Provo, Utah, so he funded that school club club school. And so Brian, when he met Joe, he's like, I know something you have to work with, you guys have this, we' passion about. So I was like, I'm leaving sustaining innovation behind me. I'm just go all in on the structured innovation and I'm gonna call out that it's time to drop teachers and move to guides. What an odd word sustaining innovation by the way.. Anyways, sorry interrupt so it was it was risky for me because there's a lot of money to be made, in traditional professional development. And so I was like, I don't know if there's any more people that are trying to justrupt alphaet on yourself? I's up in the past four weeks. I started school in September when Joe's team funded it partially. Andit? It's aist. He like I wanted a. want to be incentivized to grow it.. It's. You don't have to share it like how much did he want for put in half a million and half he put some of the second? That's not bad. So if he puts in the tr then. That's that also incentivizes him to grow it too, because he wants to see successful businesses grow. That's awesome. Well, let's help you. what happened until just very recently, I've been trying to become like a teacher's college for anyone who wants to expand into this kind of model. And found there's not much more market for it. It's really hard. School district like, I don't really see this being actionable for my teachers right away. We're not gonna vote and do this. It's a bit of a situation because I think that the growth of your business is contingent on the growth of alpha because of the p suitability, right? So one thing that we have been talking about was even what the executive order was just like, there's a huge opportunity for teacher and do you want to talk about where we're going to be next next week? Sure, yeah. we' next Friday. So's so cool. Yeah, Paul, the director of Trump, but also who has direct contact with every department. And so really, this is a timely opportune meeting of us because um you can help us well, we were already going to ask not ask. We were going to shape the the policy around how teacher training is funded. So right, basically, just to give you a lay of the land of like this executive order, the first phase is a 90 day period with now seventy5. where, um they are writing the rules for how money gets allocated for each of the departments as it relates to AI and education, part of whether earmarking, but they haven't said how much, but it's gonna be substantial, is teacher retraining. So you could get I would actually h and it's not it's not hard to spend up a nonprofit, but like if you needed to have a nonprofit had taken a big grant, we would just let you know, and then like or you would find out and um, like my general view on a lot of things is the opening AI model where it's a nonprofit wrapping a foreprofit. So you can get best of both worlds. Institute, which is a nonprof their brand, which is nice and their credibility, but but then they just I give them a percentage. Oh, that's great. Anyways, um I think what you're doing is great and, of course, people are not going to understand it because they have to understand the whole model of education and that I think like what I imagine Joe is not I think Joe should should understand if he doesn't already that that we are trying to do a step function improvement in education and all the design choices of that flow down from a way better model that you're not going to meet people where there at. Like, I think it's a waste of your time to meet people where they're at as you've learned. through the sust verypt what's happening right now. existing and trying to help them disrupt themselves or do just like all the alpha model and just know that it is quite literally our jobs like Joe has committed to Joe sometimes fun or Joe often funds duplicant efforts. So I'm not saying we are the only team that will own the scaling of alpha schools, but like our inbound of schools with latent desire to be started is like in the dozens. We have dozens of schools that are waiting to be started that are elite level. We're starting strategically with central Texas because we want to be able to drive to every school and micranage them candidically, right? Micromanage their excellence and I'm so glad we're having this conversation because we we put we we put like a dotted line, like we need we need someone we need someone that understands the alpha model, understands how to start it from scratch and like, I mean, whether it's you or someone that you then help us budget for that you you know and trust. Like we're talking to the perfect person that would know who you would need to hire to help in alpha, sorry, and for example, an apple parent start a school. Right? Is that correct? I'm really good at and also the thing that helps me with specifically withpha is that in March we went to Malawi and I led the group that has been implementing with 49 students, 15 teachers in Malawi. with alpha. Wait? So I amm the lead guide right now on the Malawi project. So I'm think the crash course on like twoour learning tech support. on like I can do text support with kids inaui. I'm getting really fast learning curve for tech support to which is a big part of right? So let me just logistically ask. we're we're going soon have a lot of demand from parents from all these corporate campuses. Do you need to build out your team? Can we budget out? Like you having funding from really us to help you expand almost like an agency? Because I can see like you having like a school, an alpha school startup and I don't mean that in the entrepreneur, I mean, like kick start zero one school, get the ball rolling a agency. Do you see what I'm saying? Like, I don't I don't I don't I don't trust I don't trust anyone I've met so far to be able to do the zero to one for a alpha, you know, kindergarten you know? So what do you need to like to because you can't you can't you have the in. Yeah, you can't cone yourself, so you ultimately probably need to hire people under an agency that revenue What I mean is just like a little that like we can rely on that has full bandwidth to be able to help us start schools. I love. to get catch you up just with the past four weeks, I texted Joe, which I almost never do. I try and work withage. He's my guy on the board. Doino. We're helping his son I'll just be very brief. We're helping his son get into college. Yeah, just out of cury to Joe, I try and just maintain that board relationship in theage. But I was so stuck four weeks ago because I was like, I've spent a lot of my capital trying to build something that will scale to school districts in the general population. And what I'm and doubt was the mandate. And Joe knew that and Noraj knew that and it was like, we're building guide school to try to reformulate teachers worldwide. And I was like, Joe, as a result of that, I'm not building something that Alpha actually means, and I'm seeing all this demand from Alpha. They need guides, the rest of the world doesn't need guides yet? And should I pivot right now? A choice, do I keep trying to fight for the larger world or do I pivot alpha? And he wrote me back in general. He's like, to tell you the truth, I feel pretty relaxed about it either way, and if you're gonna get there. But if the revenue you need is at alpha right now, maybe just make like the product for alpha and just customize for them and do exactly what Step wants. And I was like, okay. So I fired my product team, met with Steph, and I was like, we're gonna do alpha branding. You're gonna star in these videos. We're gonna do alpha guys. Do you need any help with the website and stuff?, I was I started my career as a Google software engine on the front end on Google Cloud. I' you know, I can spin this stuff up really quick. I also have anyways, we can help. We can help, even just as friends, like just to quickly get things going. and I'm hungry for any feedback you give me to make the passion it. amazing my gosh. I don't think that Jack there's no way that Jack understood just how relevant this connection was. Which is Jack's wonderful, by the way. Yeah, I came up with sending her. I'm giving her. And it needs to be like, this is how alpha does a real doing it. So so the way weructured it now is for each of milestone, I hit for her, like we got our first videos done. She buys a few more guides tickets. for them to come to guide school. And so that gives us some capital like kind of prepay tickets. But I need to think about and what? So the ticket is to come to the day. It's like an hour guide, eight guide boot camp yet it's gonna be all remote or we'd have four days in person and then the rest remote. One thing we have said, though, is that it won't be at alpha inundating alpha with like two Steph and CC has built a guide training and I'm like, go with that doing that max that out, you can probably have twice as many people coming you where can be? It can be the next, is literally neur's to well, they literally just picked it. And so I don't I would just ask Niraj when that campus is ready for even like training events. It's not going to be ready for like high school for a while, but like you have real estate a hundred percent now, right? It just got closed in terms of at least got decided from four different options. I don't know. I would just I would just hit up, but um is guides on board, then they are they go through your, let me show you is actually a well to figure out now it's seems super sweet, but a way to see, because we're trying to figure out where do you pass the tortion between that hiring guy and and a guys hold coming in, or does guide school help hire guy, right? You, that's really important place. like, if if guide schools's being handed really bad guide candidates, then we're be given an impossible job. And so this goes into what we were speaking about is just like, what is the criteria, what ten, what you, capabilities, responsibilities, uh, who is what is the archetypes, right? people that are passing through, because even what we were speaking about earlier today, Gary, is I were some of these guys that should be people in if they're guiding for the lower level, because if you're a teacher it's almost vibes's different. I know this is so obvious, but I don't know if you've seen it, but I' So basically we have this right now on the hiring guys and then they come in and they do a day stuff, and then the guides and the students do a survey to decide who should get an official offer. And then Steph gives them an official offer and they're off the races as a guide. The next step is it exists right now is that stuff invites them on to do some 18 grades of work art, so like learn these things. I know they have to learn how to master a Rubik cube. There's some skills that they have to learn to like showg growth minds that and then they come to an office in downtown Austin, some of the real estate you guys have here. And then they spend a day at every level at spyglass learning the ropes. So it's a super awesome system. It really premier because you get so much time at Alha drinking withit. So one thing we had to figure out was, well, where would a to scale this, what needs to happen? And we recommend that you think about it as two different processes because they're kind of different. So this one, the hiring process, what skide school focusing in on right now is the training process. So assuming that Steph sent us goodaw material, can we turn that water into wine and make them guys? The question. um but I think that you face another issue too, which is the hiring process, that's in a probably be a problem like two, just seeing how much is on the stuff's plate, like how could theiss you really hire hundreds of guys? It'll just be something else scale up also. But we just think it's a separate process. The other thing a note about the hiring process is that it includes a shadow date and that is a constraint on your scalability because you can't have hundreds of people coming in and shadowing. But for now, we don't have a solution to solve that. We feel like you kind of have to meet your guy hand in the person, whether it the shadow day or an inperson interview and so we're like, just keep doing that for now and let's focus on once you've given them an official offer of what happens that. So up the part we focusing on. Does that like Does it make sense? does it with and then also do you agree with our focus for now? Or do or do you think no guide school really to be thinking about the whole problem? I, and I would like focus on like like marketing, right? And then I would have somebody else was doing like, oh. a different team or a part of the marketing. or whatever. It's like I was such a drop off in terms of quality, like oh, yeah, we're getting past for instance, if I was an editing and the person that shot it was on a different team, and when we get, you can only do with raw material is allow to do it like it's not.re good.'s my standard, then there's this is like going like objective, right? So it's like, if the hiring process isn't like at the guide school level year Yeah, okay. One sec he's the one person. Who? 12 your own. That's awesome. What's his name?. He's number five. Wait, Grayson? Grayson, yeah. Like Grayson Allen? Yeah, yeah, well, Gray Texas. How do you. well, that sounds. My name is his name, that's. I grew up in Aurora, Illinois. My parents are from China and went to Duke. Chinese name sounds like No, my my name is Gary. um and so I'm just it was it was a stupid comment. But my Chinese name is Shai, and that means prosperous abundant forest. which is a cool um It's apt only um but only not apt because I get bitten by mosquitoes every time I stepped outside so uh like my joke is that like I I love nature, but I also love civilization. because I don't like all the welts that I get I get on my on my hands and stuff in my whole body. I would encourage some level of documentation of like best practices for hiring to get to crossover just as like a this is the archite I ever hiring for these grades. It's architect are not for these grades. This is where we're looking for and at some level of like assurance insurance to make sure that like the people that passed through were like good. according to like what like I think that you are the person that defines good, in in conjunction with Steph, right? But like, ul have a risk point right here hand, right? Because she me raw material that it's not up to quality, then I train them and they're not up to quality, they can blame me. So I notice that's like a place, you start off even like, is it just you right now on the team on on this? No, Alan is there. He's one of the film guides. He's execive producer. And then I have contractors and I have a writer, executive producer in terms of like film stuff? but in terms of like understanding this academic the import hiring people, everything I have someone that I think that let's just about. I think, honestly, we' you most, in my opinion, like valuable is like here. Like, how do you in bed with cross over? Even if it's like not even if it's like some level, like some collateral actor given them or some even training them from like hiring for for alpha or even if you're hopping on the call, you I don't know, like the formal guys that are being hired here are not up to bar. They seem to me to be pretty good, although there is a high there's a high fail, so that makes me wonder if it's of hiring or draining. I don't know. Well, it's an evaluation period that needs to be done, I think from just interactions that I've, everybody seems cool, but it's like what are we measuring, right? Because like even for the sake of the example, there's kids right now old. in the high school side, whose projects aren't done. it's like, is that skills issue? Is that accountability? Is that operations? Like, where is the bottom neck? Why are we a month almost out of school in? Right? We have like capital cities identity month, that's reputational risk if helpful students might like the best if, right? So it's like there's no one to really point to finger at it. There's also no exact like so I think like I think the more ownership as well that you um you take over the whole outcome, not just like that last part, the more funding you'll get as well. um and revenue you'll get. So I have someone that I want to introduce you at minimum, and then you can feel out if you want to the the director of student life of UATX, you know what UATX is? So uh, the director of student life is um she's wonderful. and she has a deep, she's like a nerd about education formats and stuff and she Alison, what's your last name? What's your last name? Allison Roper. Um, she once she found out about the alpha model, she was like obsessed and she totally agrees that you had to start as early as possible in the developmental funnel if you want to call it that of a of a human's life, universities like honestly too late, in my view. and she she's ready to exit anytime. um and so I that was actually my first choice before I met you uh about who could own the school launch process, you know? hour or two hours ago. Literally and I didn't I think the guide process full of funnel should be owned by you because you're already doing it, why create risk when you don't have to and then you get part like if you only partly own this process, you'll you'll, even if you're like, oh, I own only own the four through six, you'll get partly blamed for the outcome, right? Even if you crushed it in those last four to four to six. So, um, just think about on the outcome level and then just reverse engineer from what is actually needed in terms of the team. And also reverse engineer from the fact that we're about to bring you so much inbound. And so I'm like, get ready, right? Get ready. And like and like, I'm not saying don't experiment with digitalide training. I think you need to, but we're going to have a lot of inbound training. So set up a facility, have a whole facility where we can have the we can maybe even have students, maybe they get discounted tuition or something, if they're willing to put up with all the circuits of having people come in, so high tech high in San Diego, they do that, they have all their students there, but then they also have a master's degree program for people that because they say our programs so unique, high tech, high can't hire anyone out of any teacher's college. So they build it adjacent to one of their schools. and it's a smart way to go is that they have students that experi. The thing that I don't $40,000 a year parents really want to be that unless you did a really sensitively. So I think that there's an opportunity to have a new type of lab school that has students there. It's a little bit of a different proposition for those students because part of their role is to help train the guides. But in exchange they either get tuition discount or we just make it for them, like this is like a consultant role, something that gives you a nice thing on your resume. I don't know, but I think that there's an opportunity to set up a lab school where you just it's function. It to get guide through the through the hopper. We can get crane of here. I this is so good. I think that I did not expect to say this, but I think you could be helping pioneer in the future of just adult education in general because I think built into, let me just be frank, our guides, they're wonderful people. They're not trained about where the future's going. Um, and like and I think like it could be in your spiky PLB that like we we subsidize the actual cost of these first, you know, any not end number of guides and like make the training even more in a little bit even more intensive that to cover the many different I feel like every AI has changed everything, right? It's it's changed like like I one of the most viral posts about have you heard of gauntlet AI? One of the so one of those viral posts I was I was in that program and just the the full story is that the reason why Yes, I think that's smart for him to do that. So I was in that program and I didn't know that when were stack ranking people. Joe loves that. I was at the top of the list, Joe will comes a meeting with me. That's the full story, right? Um But I I had a really viral post explaining my experience at gauntlet where I was like AI that experience at Gauntlet and just with AI it's diving deep, changed the way I view everything. Everything has to change, including like the way that we like educate and develop adults, right, to be able to develop kids, right? Because you they can't bring their old paradigms here. They can't, right? And and and they also the way that we sell the guide training is also everything, you know, I'm whether it's part of my role or not, I'm happy to spend as much time as needed with you, just to like, because because well, I don't want to be shoving kids' parents, kids into school where the guys aren't great. Like, seriously, like we we we we feel deeply passionate about what this could be without people like you getting all the support that they need. It's going to fail. there's so many failure points. You know that. There's literally so like if you don't get the right school leader failure point, right? If you don't anyways, you get it.cky in our world where I'm building just is that because I have been following the category for so many years, I do see some places where it's better in other schools than here. Schools are also doing what I call flex model. It's a one is a problems with fully customized as I'm like, okay, I'm just paroting back to you, because I what you're doing. So I would love this to be something that we keep on the agenda is I would love permission to say, yes, that was a great launch this morning and let me tell you four things I've seen other people do to make that a better launch. And that's something that we don't yet. just ask someone who's really a lot of this I was I mean I've trained I want to go there. I've trained a lot of schools that are trying to do something like this. You obviously are on path to do that. So what what happened is alpha leakrog Acton. I always said actor was the best. What happened was once Joe P in on the software opportunity and got really curious around how to makeore skills effective it a software is the totally can I can't say this peoplepha don't like hearing it, but Acton still has some better yangpha has, right? And so it's just a matter of like wanting to bring in the best from everywhere. I disagree about alpha it depends where you're saying alpha, right? Joe is the most logical Joe is incredibly logical. Like if you can present an argument, he'll be, oh, that makes sense. You know, go ahead. Like, I I've never met Steph. I don't know anything about her except I've heard good things, but like is like me exactly what we're doing, which totally makes. I just think it would be cool at some point to bring like can improve on what we're doing. Well, I mean I wouldn't wait at all that. I' starting a fireside where I'm invite a lot of people. So the space I'm doing that is this the gauntlet graduate office on 1705 Guadaloupe. I've been doing my first one at um 9 pm today. Actually, I mean, I don't want to assume that you're free or anything, but like it's pretty late. But um like, I would love to do one with you, where you get to talk about your experience because, okay, you don't have to imagine this. Seventy um, if you include some people tuning in, but it's like 50 plus engineers obsessed with trying to build useful ed tech and don't have any education background. Okay, um but we also should invite guides and other people in the alpha ecosystem to to attend these talks to. And uh but, you know, people like you had that sort of like Joe loves, oh, do you okay, do you okay? You have those you had those spikey POVs. I want to say, don't shy away from those because those are the ones first of all that give Joe respect of you, um and you what I'm saying in general, he loves it when people are such an expert that they can be like, this sucks. And and so just never feel afraid of that. But, um, yeah, the other thing is that like you have these like engineers that are hungry to figure out how to add value, including I look, I could singlehandedly get engineers to to help you build out tech for guide school. Like to whatever extent you you do. that want to do something immediately, we need a new light text for places like Malawi. Because so there are projects for sure that could be built immediately. That would be amazing. So like light like a two hour learning light that would be able to go to Maui and let me tell you the place that's doing the best in Malawi right now is imaginewide. They have these tablets and they only offer you like five questions up front and that's what they base your lesson. So it's not there's no it's not your own Wi-Fi. I'm why they're not using the full or they shouldn't communities like for kids that are, of the kids in the refugee camp in school. So the majority of kids are out of school, they don't have any formal education. They wander into the community center. There's no like, what's your profile? Which one's your laptop? Let's see how far you've got and your dashboard. There's not that kind of continuity. That's literally what I experien what I wasring at what. I was going to a community center. They got updated facilities, computer lab, et cetera, no programming forructure, no handle any device and it has to be rugged and super intuitive about how to use it. and any random can answer a few questions and adapts to their level in terms of the basic literacy and nivers. So what we have right now overs serves them five million times looking they need something that's like rugged, simple, just like basic literacy and numeracy. And we could be that? It's just like right now we're spending so much time trying to helping up like the Ferrari. Do you know the best way for me to sell this to them as me doing a fireside chat and then teeing up and teeing up, hey, what's something that that that our gaunt litters can build? And then and then after that, I will help you to a PRD product requirements document for that. So let's just plan that for I could even say, look, I don't, I'm I'm doing a test one tonight with a friend. um, who could also be one of the people that do of other people can't do it because he's literally one of the best engineers I know. But uh basically what what um it's context is not Joe's um providing context is not one of Joe's superpowers. So the context, you have seventy, eighty engineers being paid $200,000 a year, um to figure out how to be helpful with very little context. And not being introduced to anyone or anything, right? So, um you can imagine how excited one or more of them are going to be to know you exist, there you're giving them permission. And and like if you're you would be doing them a favor. You would be doing them a favor. Yes, you would be doing. You would be doing them a favor by getting help for yourself, which is wild, right? And so that's the that's the situation. They're rewarded for helping people like you, but but like there's basic things like orgchart and blah, blah, blah, that we will we will we will fill in the gaps over time. um because we've identified them as down as a upstream issues that affect everything, um, but there are also upstream opportunities if they get created. But um it's on look, overall, it's music to my ears and uh my my my true and like poetic answers is to stay in flow state for the rest of my life. My my um my immediate goals is to start um multiple, you call it labs. I almost scary like uh campus uh corporate campus schools. um at least three that get a pilot program up and running by the fall of 2025. That would require U you and I inran to work very closely together ASAP. um which is totally cool. I'm bake you into our strategy if that's okay, because I want to work with you and also, I think together we can both secure more funding and revenue. But look, I, you know, just to kind of riff on some fun ideas, like we are we are candidly, we are two of the most connected people on the planet. And that's part of why we're going to the White House, part of why um, you know, one of the opportunities that we're we're literally putting on pause because we want to focus on Central Texas is a school in Chicago, um with Chance the rapper, Vicens, uh, Lupe Fiasco, the Bulls organization, Northwestern um, you know, uh, uh, you know, the mayor, the the next mayor of Chicago, Alexi Janolius, who's going to be one of the next presidents in the next 10 years, for sure. He's that talented um and then the governorritker, right? So you have a full stack waiting to deploy into like a super advanced school the future. um one of the biggest ballenecks was you, right? We were like, okay, we have this demand. We're like demand machines. Like we can generate demand so easily, like and we have that connections like we just know like, you know, you know one of our strategies for like these culturally relevant schools is to throw a block party to to announce applications? because we we know all these like music artists, et cetera. You can imagine the same thing happening. We know Kendrick Lamar, we know his team, we you know all the nonprofits. We also know a bunch of um families and influencers that were affected by the Pasadena fires. And so so we have like everyone DMing us, when can we start at school? I'm like like we had to do sequencing, right? And so we need to like nail as you, you know, you would get the you uh you fully understand this. We have to nail the blueprint in Central Texas, 30 minute driving radius just so we can micromanage the process so that by the fall 2026, we can open like 100 schools, right? But until we we like, you know, there's going to be, let me be clear. There's going to be um a lot of failed schools that are going to be opening up in the fall because they're feeling the pressure, oh, Joe wants this. So, and I'm going to be rewarded for opening up a school and and it's like, look, you're you may be you may get you may even get a promotion like in the be, oh, Joe's going to be, oh, well, look at that news article. But like, the parents are going to be pissed, like the guys are gonna be hopefully not that bad, but like probably not as good as they should be. Like and so, like the systems that need to get right in the first. There's right. It's not as infinite number. and that was one of my first questions is, let's size here. Are we talking about five changes compared to traditional classroom 50,000? And I think if you were to start a school, say you were to get a space on the Dell campus in Mountro and you were to hire some people that are confident. Michael and his CEO and head of AI. Yes. So we right profile for a guide and the right profile for a lead guide, which is another risk point that's on my mouth is like they're saying these people need to become lead guides, they need to own their own campuses. And for me, that's less guide schools and it's more like HBR skills. Do they know how to just run a good organization? Do you know how to manage people? Do they know how to manage culture? Some of those things matter way more. And that's partly like the learn it's tough less to learn from helping back to an academy scale. So now, Acted says they have 300 schools around the world have the guys that know how to run an organization. So it's different profiles. You need the person that loving all be with the guide, but then the lead guide needs a difference. It's quite simple, though. Let me show you, you need them to be a philosopher an entreprenerial genius, ideally parent, I'm just making a joke. joking. super like like legitimately, we need like early on, we need like super humans. And like but, you know McDonald's A hundred percent. Well, Chick-fil-A, like in Joe Joe knows the founder of Chick-fil-A or CO whatever, but and so there's a lot that we can learn from from these franchises that ultimately have really good people that can follow SOPs, but like until we have that, with your help or with your with you leading the way, really, and then we can just be like, okay, we're going to work with your agency on each of these schools. Like, we we we feel very blocked, honestly, because we're, again, we're like demand generating machines, but like, we we we care about the student experience as well to say the least, right? Anyways. Yeah, good. So I think let me, what would be the most helpful to you? Like, in a different ways is I wanted to grow but haven't been able to. So I could propose those to you and you could decide, yes, let's give her capital that she can grow in those ways. So for example, I would love to have what I' doing right now is taking everything we we're seeing happening at alpha right now and just stealing it here's my t. I have one of these for each of the ten, ten concepts of like weekly town halls. It's one of the ten things that needs to happen for the systems you said? Yeah, these are the systems. town hall and kind of like deconstructed it. to like the top 10 principles, right? For a town hall. And so we're trying to video that right now so we can show people, here's how a town hall looks. so each is a one on-one limit list meeting, right? What are the main things that need happened in a one-on-one limitless meeting? like, the guide well, what are the key things that the guide needs you doing? So deconstructing each of the part of each of the parts of like your ten pillars. If I say there's sort of 10 pillars of these are the non-negotiables, we need to start introducing these on day one, what would the pillars be? So looking through all the artifacts, I can find it outlet to say, here's what you're doing right now. there needs to be parallel work to define how to improve these, because I am teaching right now based on and I'm canning this based on what's happening now, but what we're taking is how to improve them. So for example, this morning we watched the launch, it wasn't a good launch. He talked about, I mean he listening to Remind me launch what the opening meeting. But it's important. It's like the' all come together for 20 minutes and it's that time when you like meet together and get your energy and set your connection before you of it's totally fine. He hasnt had any training. So he story and then was like, you? I was like wait, there is no question. There was no like socic discussion after that. There was no what does it need to have? Because the whole thing was about grip, but then there was no So I was like, oh, there's like really low hanging fruit for how to turn his little speech into something that was like a moment, right? So he just needed a little train, a little scaffolding like, here's a protocol for how to do a lunch. You just you show your story about Shackleton, but then here's the next step as you ask this interesting question, and then you raise the energy by saying, okay, but what if your sister was on that boat? Would you then turn around? Right? And then you you you give a protocol and then at the end, you're like, okay, so how do you show grit as you go into working on your project right now, which is due four weeks and you're not done yet? Is it by meeting with aide to get your next mil so figured out? Is it by turning off all distractions or is it by finding a running partner who's going to help you encourage you throughout the day? Whatever your options are. And then it's then they go out and they have attention. So this is an example of how I look at it and I'm like, oh, it kills me that like, we're gonna just be canning and packaging that when so do you see the do you see what I'm saying? So anyway, let's just something I'm thinking about is like I would love to see even improve the guy and make it be like even better. Well, I feel like, again, the Gauntlet people are gonna love you because they're gonna be, oh my God, this makes so much sense. And so I because like, okay, if it's it's true, right, that guides are essential to every school and like it's built in tech distribution to help you createec for guides, right? And so what I can imagine is almost like what I don't like about the CCAT, I don't know if he made you take it or anything, but like it's very specific for like a remote engineer, right? It's basically like an IQ test for like a remote engineer. Like it's like a test you on, you know, whatever. And there needs to be, I think, both a test, like, like let's say there's like, you know, down the in down the line. There's like thousands of guide applications a day, right? Likeosso needs to have a assessment that that is like basic, like, I don't know. It's not even, I don't know, I don't want to call basic. It just like, you would know what scen like Well, I think you know what I'm saying, right?, they were hiring their guides and they found that about 25 of them couldn't sit down at lunch with a student and just have a conversation like I was like cool and you know how's math? Do you have any friends? Like what what's your day like? Which for someone like this view you I haven't already tell you to be really good at that. But for like 25% of the people that came in, it wasn't intuitive. So it would be really rad to be able to preassess for some of those basic things. And they are definable. They are definable. The other thing that would be an interesting project would be to build the AI bot that can train, if not also assess for some of those discrete skills. So like, you sit down with a stranger, it's a student it's just. It's just there, listening listening or watching. score you at the end for like how you became their friend. That's incredible. I love that and that also that is a product that would attract a lot of these gallant people because they'd be like, I could build this for you, but I could also build that will also be the same technology useful for any sort of person that is trying to learn social skills. I think what we should do here is if you have any this stuff that you can just send over so he can like so within and that we just get like a jam session or onto phot top next week, it'd be out of prioritize them to a r map. all the things that you're saying I'm holding all things that you're saying and it's definitely like yeah, there's just sort of like, I mean it's it's pretty clear we need to closely collaborate. Also practically speak, I would if you can see see Joe on this just so like and and do us a favor, because we're still not 100% percent approved on this department and stuff. Like we're like again, ninety, 95%, uh really ninety nine%.. about more Yeah, just because he's not around, he doesn't know what's happening. candidly, candidly. And uh so it being like slapping him in the face with that you enjoyed meeting with us, that you want to closely collaborate with us? And, um, on in the immediate on a lot of things that we talked about, really, really really just however you want to frame it. And then like send over the materials in the same email, I will be awesome. as where we go, and put everything in and then it is where it needs to be like all these things superable. And it would like agree on all these things. like even for the crossad being cooler when I then you, the whole like it's audable. just in a nutshell though, what you're working on right now is getting these three campus left in the. that also the first that's the first uh goal and you know, Joe has very ambitious go for for what Alpha's scaling looks like, but it like I said, the goes sort of go fast., you met? yet he's private schools and he he's. How that? I sus to to integrate something into a model that look, I mean, look, we're systems thinkery, not everyone is, right? You can' you can't shove a product, you know, and try to disrupt the culture and everything. Everything has to change, basically. So, you really do. I mean, they need like a within a school or an autonous unit that they're setting up. But for now, one thing that he said is we're going to a guide at any school that takes two learning so that that guide can be run a pilot. They've tried this. It hasn look, it's not my job to to to tell Joe to stop bleeding money to broken experiments, but whatever.. What's? Oh, I mean, I just know that it's it's they've tried this before and then the the principal or whoever else often sabot it because it's conflicting with their own career and whatever. So, like like, I mean, we started this conversation early on talking about how churches are massively under utilized. And so the idea of starting a school, the bottleneck is not even real estate, it's um and so it's not like, oh, we we must partner with an existing school because it's hard to get school buildings. That's a false assumption, actually. And the the real and then another false assumption that Joe has until he met us was, oh, it's really hard to get demand for parents to go to our schools. he's not like P is like the school is still super early stage startup, but just with so much resource in capitalism, so it kind of completes like, what is true of what needs to be like optimized? So it's like they don't even have a template for what we're comp makes across the nation. We have to be careful because school got in this predicament, very familiar with school. Valley project and it had tons of funding. So they built like the hundred million platform, but they didn't have they wereing the yank. They couldn't figure out all the soft part and it's just these are And so you have to have your soft systems so but button up. And so one of my friends was touring an old school and the whole, I think is students that are learning like here, like student driven, empowered students and on the school visit, my friends literally heard one of the teachers saying, you sit down, I make the decisions here, not you. And it's like, wow, like, how do you get the culture right? And that is everything in these schools, getting all the all the systems right you can have awesome software, but unless the people know the systems. it's just not gonna have that and the acad partly because we thought the idea skills was cool, but we partly moved the town halls and the intentionality is the culture. and we were like we want our kids to be in like nurturing, loving less toxic place, the typical schools. So that's what parents really want. They want I was telling, um one of your engineers, I was he was in charge of it was not an engineer. Dave K. He's um one of the two out one you guys, but he's a trilogy I actually, but he's also been charged with building out the playgrounds on these schools. And I was like, I had so much money into the playgrounds. This place gapes need to be like nature and beautiful. Like rip down that spyglass playground that like cement and nature. Like, you have no idea the psychological benefit for parents. Have you been to the gathering place in Tulsa? Oh, it's just incredible. I love this. This is literally like this person needs to be a parent to be like, literally, we just this hours ago. It's so crazy So this is you. So I think I think, this is a totally one plus one equals 11 type of moment in situation. So if you can yeah, that email would help us a lot in just like securing just full buyin on everything that we talked about and um is that by July 14th, I think is mid-July, we have eight hours, an 80 hour basic guide training, ready to go. that you can to work with you on like making sure that as well designed as possible, given the time constraints we're working in really fast. you just started the project days ago. like, because I told you, I only commed it a few weeks ago. short solution hundred percent. And um I basically canceled all my travel this year, maybe besides a wedding in New York, um because of, um, yeah, besides that, um, like I was literally asked to go meet with some it's political there's probably a lot of reasons why it didn't make sense to go to China, but like, um, I was asked to go do you want a tour to meet billionaires in China with with Elon school at Astra? um, who wants to collaborate with us, but like well, that's actually that well that actually fits within this model, by the way, right? Like at Astra, you know, at what Tesla, SpaceX, campuses, they they need our help, really. And and um, you know, us three all know that you need you need a full stack of people. you're really excited.., you need a full stack of people to be able to you already know, though. like if they're missing even just like two out of whatever number of people to make a great school, and like we're not the experts in that. We we we we can we can spot obvious things like that we're missing someone like you. like but like you you would know like what is you would be able to analyze the existing Tesla family school and be like this is missing this, you know, and we need someone like you, right?. Well, it's so cool. Yeah, like I would love to have a jam session with you and just like geeking out about the everything that happens outside the two hour learning, right? That whole experience, and then how do you systematize that so that we get that just right and replicable to other places with fidelity. eager frustrated about? Have you talked to kids about their masterpiece projects at all? okay it's it's um not good. Um so you have you have kids that have been saying the same pitch when like cameras are around for the last six months and they've made zero progress. And and I'm not like, as system thinkers, we can't be, you know, it's not about blaming individuals. It's like, what is what is causing this? And it's and it's well, number one, a lack of identity of the school of like what a success look like. You know, my joke that's not really a joke is that Joe created a school for non-technical founder salespeople that don't know how to don't know where to find engineers that can actually build their vision. And, um and so you had this like AI mental health teddy bear thing that you may have heard of oh, Alex is building this. He's built zero percent of that. You have this um running app uh running up, zero0% is built. um and like it's all like a a s and this doesn't leave the room, but like, uh there there's there's Khan Academy and then there's then there's con Man Academy. The thing is, we're not deterred because the raw you know you also see that there's so many great wrong ingredients, right? importantly capital. And in a logical billionaire that sometimes just needs to be like, this is what needs to be done, right? And this is how much it's going to cost, right? But I love that you that you are thinking about everything after the two hour learning because that is the that is such a huge opportunity. And like, you can imagine if we do you like nerd out about, like different, like school models around the country? Like, for example, it'll Illinois mathematics and sciences Academy? Have you heard about that? Okay, it was sorry about a novelways. I was so grateful to have gone there like you test in on your freshman year and then you get in your shopping for until senior year. I don't know what the current model is right now, but like they gave me a lot of freedom. It wasn't it was almost not enough freedom, but like it was still a lot of freedom. They gave you entire Wednesdays off to literally do like an internship day or whatever. But like imagine if Ron and I were able to do like the best version of what we know is possible of Alpha schools, right? Like we would be we would already have like a billion dollar business by the time we're like 20, right? Because but like their lack, like it's not even going to be that much more expensive to get the right kind of coaches for like engineering and like marketing sales. They have a bunch of like guys that like are like are like generalists, good people, but but they're at the same time they're not even, but like some of them or aren't even trained in like the the softer side, right? Where it's just like nurturing emotionally, you know, et cetera. And so it's like everyone's kind of stuck in the situation where you know, no one can be blamed for anything because they were not hired for anything and they're kind of good at their generalist, but they're and so they're kind of masters of none, right? models and you just turn it into the best. copy better just for for Y... Well, like this is what yeah, as you can imagine, there's a lot of missing people that would need to be hired to make that a reality. again, raw ingredients, including money and buy like logical billionaire, that's their Mackenzie has met with 150 billionaires in the last two years, by the way. Another important context, right? And so once we get like a really good blueprint, that all of us feel confident about, then we can start bringing all this billionaires, and then, you know, we can literally just have them we can even white label like the overall, like school system because like suckberg may want to do his own like, whatever school system. power so are you helping to bring together the future of what alpha will look like you comparable like are you kind of competing against like Daveine and things that might be all serious private school sales and Jenna, who's like focusing on public school sales. I'll I'll be I'll beed. You you jump in. We' different people. We have different life goals, but um whether it's with Joe or not, I want to start the best goals in the world, that allow for the next Andy Warholtz, next Steve Jobs, next Ramanujans, you name it to never be impeded in fact, the supported in the most hyperpersonalized way that they neur neurology, they're divine purpose is, right? And so, like, and I want to look, I want to start the best faith-base schools. I'm talking to the my favorite pastor of all time, Torren Wells, who who has a church 25 minutes north and like he's excited about starting a school with me, with or without alpha schools, right? And so, like, that is a big part of my divine purpose to make sure that kids never lose their creativity agency, faith, and humanity, and are and are able to to walk fully in their divine path of their divine purpose. I think like the the it to me, all the benefit the world that where where I don't care how long it takes, it'll take forever, right, to get to a world where I call a world where democratized human flourishing. And so the reason why um I'm have deep ties with the with the Catholic church is because I help them create a a model backed by Harvard Oxford Yale, Boston College, et cetera, of what human flourishing is. Really like we we we were like it sounds so simple, it's almost silly that like we were like hey, hum like, what should humanity strive for, human flourishing? What are we missing? What is that even mean? Right? And so we literally created like this comprehensive framework that we then aligning like United Nations that are I can send you some stuff. for? Like graduates so on the note, like, look, our and zooming back down here to the immediate, we understand that the overlap of idealing it's a concentric circle, but tends not not always be the overlap of Joe's self recognized things that he's down to fund plus things that we believe are ethically good to do. And by the way, we don't think it's ethically good to scale a broken system, right? Period. Right? And so that's why we we are so we're genuinely thrilled to talk to you, because we were we were going to find someone, probably unsuccessfully on our own, like you, right? And so we are absolutely not people to be pigeonholed into, oh, we're gonna do public school sales. It's like, literally we have literally like the museum of the future and Dubai hitting us up be like, you know, is there something we could do together? you know, literally China, blah, blah, blah, Saudi Riyad, like, okay, we are we are we are we we it's not we believe we understand, we are absolutely critical to Joe actually achieving his global mission, right? what I am delivering guides between the, but it would be very interesting to do an A and you parr what we see here and then optimizing. Wouldn't that be so cool? So all of this stuff I'm just handed you is what the what is, right? I literally call these theust shows, is that must show up in the videos because it's what happening right now at atygloss. But what if we were to create the bea version, which is like we mix in our our ears. better, only. There you go. Music tourars. I mean, there's no joke. Even if I never met Joe at some point I would create a if if this were to mostly be the same, something way better than Apple schools. And because I know that there are such great raw ingredients here, including a brand that it does not live up to, let's be real. It does not live up to you. And the brand is the brand in hype around it is inflated, but we can together, we can bring it up here, right? In terms of the reality. And so let me talk about the brand. I flew out to Dallas to meet with let's just play a couple of geniuses, right? And they were like, Gary, you know, we know that, you know, you' one of the things that you want to do is create great entrepreneurial schools for kids. And he was like, we found this video that that you might like. um and they showed me a video of Mackenzie. and it was um it was through wehat because one of the partters was zooming uh, like zooming in from like China because there's he's selling schools in China right now and in Korea. And it was Chinese subtitles. It was super viral. And I was like, okay, first of all, I bet you McKenzie did not pay for that. I and and it seems like this kind of like hype, you know, not actually realistic, like cell sales, this thought leadership of what could be is like really resonating around the world. accounts. all the choice movement. So all of a sudden parents are getting Texas, they've just announced ten,000 bucks a That's just stoking demand. So so the ingredients here, I have three direct connections to Trump, right? We're only using one we're only utilizing one of them for this White House trip. We will unlock all them once we have more of a clarity about our strategy. Look, um overwhelming demand, overwhelming access might say imagination, people resource is that it's our gaining that and then it's for me for me personally to answer your question about like, what do I see? It's like I believe that this can be what it's being sold. huge reputational risk. Everyone in we' not like where the product is, those. I's like, like you are product writing and allowing and it'seaky, you know, a lot of, you should take give like support help onto our learning.s like all of these holes are like reputational risk, where it's like how the in the site. you know, doing this and then that you and then and then it's like the the baby or the approval concept is not sure, but the test opportunity for really bad. So you're trying to funding right now, we to go we're, literally we were thinking about requesting budget for you. But we didn' didn't know you existed. It was see what I'm saying? so I mean, just okay, understanding like well, you would be the expert in what it would like who would like we are what we're gonna specialize in, because we're only gonna be able to specialize in so many things is generating the demand, identifying actually, you would help us understand the archetypes of the people that would even that we would need to identify. Like we are insane talent hunters, right? And so what what we'll be doing is we'll host we'd be hosting events at Apple campus and like literally going to Apple networking whatever it is, right? We'll figure out the exact strategy to be in the rooms, but then you help us be like da d d who do we need to find? Right? And then but then it may be multiple people that we need to find. But so we're like taking directions from you on like, who is the starting the minimum sufficient, like stakeholder group of a particular campus?'s even though it's a corporate office, it's still the decision makers or these these founding families, like these people that for the find who are the is the making decision, that's what we're looking for is who are the five to ten moms at each campus and what the where do you typically post up because honestly, like, you know, I'm not saying we would have to meet every day, but like, it would be kind of nice to to be around, right? So so it's a it's possible. I mean, I guess we what we could we could work AC, we could do calls, et cet, but also like maybe even one day a week in personworking somewhere would be great..m I just two days committed to Steph and Dave that we'd have like be ready to ser up 200 guides this summer. So that's what I'm working on. The thing that's amazing to me is this the idea, because I think what if I were to take that same I'm saying it's gonna be00,000 for them to get these to get to buy their first guide registrration. What if we were to take something similar, I shouldn't be saying numbers yet for just to give you aain size and do something similar to AB tested, but for this one, it's not just stuff's stuff, which takes stuff stuff and we like, improve it, right? And that's our variable test, right? There is like um what happens if we optimize the launch, what happens if we optimize how how the coaching is done for alpha X projects? So the 10 key elements we try to optimize. And so I'm building off as the work I'm already doing there, so there's some like synergy for me. An economy is scale, but with you, I get the freedom to like, what is flourishing like? Let's start with that. I think in our roles, the way that we saw it was like, how do we like get in and like sove as many problems as fast as possible for years over to mitigate any risk, like? Like, like, okay, like and this is just us being here and like listening and being like, okay, like, oh, this person is like these three projects are done, will see something. Let's go be engineers and bring them like bring a man to like finish this We have to do those things to like okay, cool. Like, and then see my brother's school, Act Academy it's called Slope school. It's probably the best It's like UIU and Ut loudly you. Are you. well that's I'm very close with the Angel studio look, I one of my mentors is one of Trump's oracles. That sounds like a funny thing to say. um she's literally helped uh Trump avoid death multiple times. um and she talks about how she she's uh brought 30 thousand it maybe 300 thousand, I may be missing an order of magnitude. 30,000 people, let's say, through the Sundance coming of age ritual.'s a year long thing that's very challenging. Anyways, so she has deep relationships with, like basically every faith community and she talks about how like the different she compares the different leaders of different ones. And she talks about how like one of her favorites is the Mormon, uh the the latter day saints. these are so nice, uh reliable, like hold to your word. like, um and but also like, I don't know if you know who Travis is Oliphant is, one of the god Okay, well, well, you can say hi to him because he's a good friend now. Well, yeah, there we go. But uh, I connected him with with a angel studos to optimize their, you know, I just I'm good friends with Studios, yeah. So, so um we could uh look, I'm deeply tied with the the Vatican and they have they're the largest educating system and medical system and landowners in the world, right? We could like when I say that we can single-handedly, obviously with the big team, drive all like basically we could hold me to this. Like, I think that you could create a billion dollar business just working with us. Like, because of of our network and like, we understand the that that trust is the scarcest resource in the world may be tied with courage. And if you were able to have relationships with the right people that understand your heart and in each of these faith communities, you have built in distribution, right? And then what the plan there is you start with one school. You don't start with a thousand schools concurrently at the same time where you don't even know what the experiment is in the first place. Once we're happy with our, let's say, our human flourishing fork of alpha high, right? Or not even high, like elementary, like alpha or fork of alpha, right? Which my, you get it. So like, we could even start with a single faith, even across all faith, just one school that we just tested out and maybe it could be a a ladder day say I went to a ladder church for Easter to to pay respects, literally. But every, like, literally on the phone yesterday, I was with one of the founders of the non-enominational Christian movement that sort of 1992. And so like, yeah, I it's not are starting distr public schools And so there is going to be that call for like, I don't want a doctrination anymore. I got to get out. So so the simple line is my kids my choice, my faith my choice. That's. Right? And I forget if I mentioned my Internet activism background. There is probably not a single non-black person that did more to raise awareness for police brutality in the world than me. I I still regularly encounter people where certain cases, it affected them so much and it's like the root of the virality was my uh social social media engineering where I got I got one billion impressions in 2017 alone on on this Facebook page that I grew to eight hundred thousand So this is a this is a this is a new civil rights movement. Like it's it's it's and it's more than that. It's a spiritual movement because there's nothing more important than our kids, right? There's nothing more important. And um yeah, that's it. recently. So I think action goes for, yeah, if you send an email be great. Um, let's see the. and there's all those next week I'm supposed to be calling me to capture all this before school gets out? because we started seeing the clock running on that. We' like if we're gonna scale this and right now the only guy training is by coming to campus, we're all down the whole summer. So I was like, let me get cameras don't tomorrow there's a cia, but it's yeah, that's mostly true. They're opening again, no one communicates anything here. The door is gonna be open on this campus the whole summer. So so I'm picking my battles because we could seegel handedly run the most incredible summer. But like what he what he wants is like what what's more effective than also running a summer camp for alha, which I think like my spikey OPOV is that it may be just not worth our collective time to to try to reform something, but rather start anew with new experiments that reflect the human flourishing model, et cetera. So one, it'll be I think you'll just have an aha when you see the original DNA of the school. Sologan is a very pristine version of best in class active economy. So it'll just help some of the pieces come together because it sort of feels like there were fragments that were scattered and we got some of it going here, we got some of it going in there. So I would go there and just sort of smell but it's like there because they'll just awaken you to like, oh, we need to bring in some best practices from different places and and then start what you're launching in the fall with that spiritual core. Because I think some of the spiritual core got lost a little bit. Oh, spiritual core. A little bit. No, I'm not talking about religious I like yeah, a little bit like yeah, the immaterial core Thank you. Thank you. I mean this is a business is the cool It's totally like the next I think it is, just like in on the the and everyone building. Really wor about and they' working, and then and then that system. Okay, well, you guys are awesome listening to so fun. So I'm gonna be here probably Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, next week, because we will be filming the middle school. So if you're no, you're bring well, we're we're gone starting on Tuesday, actually, to the White House. We're gonna have back to back meetings, probably. But Monday, let's let's meet on Monday and then also, look, um this is, you know, I've literally, while we were talking, I was rearranging my priorities of who to spend more time with. It's to spend more time with you, basically. So, um, I mean, and cloud of skilling. Can I tell you one more dream I have? It's to create a festival called Godwave Festivales Christians across theominations, including the for just, um at least one day, maybe two, maybe three, uh, maybe in Tulsa, just because there's a lot of open land and we'd be able to get a lot of um like tax breaks and stuff like that. And there's anyways, um, don't know the location yet, but somewhere where God is the default and and maybe you could even be Utah who knows. so my dad was like basically like the cardinal for a church andered and then choir yes, absolutely. it needs to be like one giant summoning of the Holy Spirit and and symbol of unity, right? Like symbol of unity commonality. There's so much commonality. Well, I mean, Angel Studios is basically in that shape, right? Like when you talk to you know, that team, they're like, look, we're mostly ladders, but like we anyone else that ever. Besides ladders? I what I said don't Mormon like the mobs that were killing Wormons and started calling it of the druggists were rename and like, why do we use the slur as our own nickname? But anyway, I usually just say like louder, but my neck you just do it for the Latter Day saints is it's ladders climb. It's true I's if I would have put all my money in one denomination, it's not even close. It's Latter Saints because, I would put money in your thing because do you know Tele's like definite optimism framework where it's really has a lot of great frameworks. So one is like he's like, I'm optimistic about the future. That's how I feel like oh, will the future of music fest will the future of music festivals be godly and great and awesome and inspiring and have great after movies? I wonder why? Oh, because we're gonna do it, right? Oh you let's let's get the tabernacle tabernacle crew, and then we'll we'll get some uh some of our first latter day saint rap albums going. But no, but it's it's I had, you know, that festival will have every imaginable genre, including Afrob Christianity Christian Afrobeit, right? Like like anyways, um I know we we take it up so much your time, but thank you so much for I I mean, I'm gonna I'm gonna give so much thanks to Jack because, again, he had no idea what he was doing. He was just, oh, you guys are. But like this is like incredibly valuable., well, it's kind of do you want to and then