2025-06-23: Gary Sheng & Tim Joo - Marketing Crucible Strategy & Personal Brand Development

Date: June 23, 2025 Location: Phone conversation Participants: Gary Sheng, Tim Joo Duration: Extended conversation (1+ hours) Context: Strategic planning session covering internal Super Builders marketing program and Tim's education thought leadership brand

Key Themes

1. Marketing Crucible Program Development

Origin and Motivation:

"Over the weekend I came up with this idea for the gauntlet the crucible. Basically for marketing and it was just I came up with it because I kept reading those emails to the organization. And every email in the last two weeks has been about marketing everything about marketing marketing marketing."

Program Structure - 12-Week Curriculum:

"The first three weeks is every week the assignment changes. But the first three week is trying figuring out how to go viral on twitter. After that, it's figuring the next three weeks is how to go how to figure out how to go viral on tiktok and instagram. Then after that, it's how to get go go get viral on like youtube. And then the last the last one is how to go multi-platform viral."

Joe Liemandt's Approval:

"I came up with five Hot takes and I emailed it off to joe. I didn't know how he would accept it, but he loves it. And so I'm planning on kicking this off on monday of next week a week from today because that's june 30th."

Collective Learning Philosophy:

"So like every week there's an assignment where someone has to experiment with like video creation generative ai video creation Posted on twitter and then um by the end of the week, we'll see Okay, who has the most impressions who has the most engagement who went viral?"

2. Super Builders Organizational Critique

Avoidance of Essential Skills:

"Super builders in general are fucking Trying this trying to avoid doing shit that they know deep down is going to make them relevant, right? Like there's still tons of people who are like, I don't want to do marketing I just want to buy code apps and i'm like brother. You're going to turn into a fucking irrelevant person. You're probably going to get fired."

Learning from Gauntlet Model:

"I didn't really I don't know about you but I didn't really learn all that much from the instructors at Gauntlet right all of us really just learned by being assigned some sort of project with it with accountability baked in a deadline and you had to get it done."

Strategic Positioning for Tim:

"If Joe sees that you and I and whoever else is able to collectively uplift everyone in Super Builders specifically regarding one thing that he's disappointed in us collectively about then that gives us boosted credibility boosted authority and a lot more trust for them for us to then go out and explore different other school models."

3. Joe Liemandt Leadership Analysis

Pattern of Disappointment:

"Every time Joe comes in he doesn't seem very impressed with everyone, right? He obviously loves strata because they're the Texas Sports Academy because of the furthest ahead but everywhere everywhere else. He generally seems like bored and unimpressed right."

Bold Vision Requirement:

"I think it's because no one's really came to him with like a fucking super big bold audacious vision that makes Joe think like wow. Okay, this is this is something that excites me. This is impressive, right? Everyone's trying to like iterate towards it."

Gary's Critique of Joe's Approach:

"That's my biggest critique of him. Is that like he's totally detached from reality while having deep conviction in how to build a company, but he's not built a good company right now... He's like Brian Johnson feeding off the corpses of companies that have hit that have had success, right? That's that's what Trilogy is dude."

Need for Skin in the Game:

"He needs to he needs skin in the game, bro. He doesn't have skin like he has he has financial skin in the game, but he needs to like he can't just be looking from afar about how someone builds a following and because because he because he's like giving social media advice without being in social media."

4. Personal Brand Blueprint Development

Tim's Brand Positioning:

"Tim Jew is the go-to for blah blah blah, right? ... uncensored thoughts on the future of education. Yeah, right. Yeah. Because think about it, right? Do you think that any of these super builders have the balls to say what you you could say and what and what's needed to say or importantly needed to say?"

Target Audience Definition:

"People that are unsatisfied with the existing default school options. It can be inspired to create the next generation of schools for children worldwide."

Unique Value Proposition:

"My unique magic my willingness to post raw uncensored my raw uncensored opinions about the current state of education in the world."

Content Strategy Framework:

"We can basically be like brain lift as a service for like different kinds of schools and we are interviewing experts in education, but you're and you're putting out the interviews to do the blog."

5. Educational Models and Innovation

Dual Enrollment High School Model:

"I just got breakfast with a friend who for decades has been like a mentor... his wife has been building schools where junior and senior year you take classes all you're doing is taking classes at college in person... by the time you graduate high school, you have two years of college credit."

Impact Vision for Tim's Influence:

"If I'm wildly popular and influential, how is the world different? I would assume that I will at that point will have influenced indirectly or enabled directly or indirectly of the expansion of dozens of different school models."

Creating School Optionality:

"Let's say a couple years from now there are just they're just like better attempts at like there's a direct causation of your readers the people in your community having started schools where they're excited that it represents a better model."

6. Core Educational Philosophy and Polarizing Beliefs

Parental Responsibility Critique:

"I think the my most polarizing belief in regards to education is that that too many people have just fucking given up on it... It's like incredibly incongruent to like the entire generation or multiple generations of parents that that that lie to themselves and tell themselves. I really care about my kids. My kids are my most important asset."

Educational System Dishonesty:

"How can you how can you tell people and lie to yourself that like kids are your most important resource when you you clearly don't really give a fuck about the education of your children. It's it's it's like dishonesty because it goes back to what you were saying the other week. It's a fundamental lack of honesty."

Missing Parent Mobilization:

"There's not an army of parents that are like this this public school education system or this education system is shit and we need to improve it. Where is the mobilization of all these families?"

Problem Worth Solving:

"I want to show these people that this is a problem worth changing despite what you might feel about it. Despite what your peers feel about it. Like this is the problem the most important problem that must be tackled. It's the one that everyone already discards as unsolvable."

7. Anonymous Content Strategy

Founding Fathers Model:

"I want to like I want us to consider to maybe instead of creating the Timothy Jew like personal like account, maybe maybe we create we buy a social media account. That already has followers. It only costs $2,000... how the founding fathers a few of them published letters anonymously."

Complete Uncensored Freedom:

"Bro, imagine just completely uncensored. I think here's the issue with you being like a barber, bro, is that people would trace it back to you, right? Yeah, and then like do weird shit to sabotage your life."

Ender's Game Reference:

"It reminds me of Ender's Game... his older brother basically kind of coerces the younger sister to write competing. They both post suit anonymously and through their postings they influence world events and eventually the older brother becomes the leader of the Earth."

Shadow Side Strategy:

"We should be the and I want you to look into how the Catholic Church all this should be in a brainwave by the way, basically like a brainwave for like like, okay, dude, one of our spiky POVs needs to be Mackenzie Price is doing a great job as like a public figure that has many constraints... we need to create the shadow side of the future of education."

8. Angry Parent Network Development

Alternative to Alpha Constraints:

"One way to get around you need to go through Jonathan fucking Stewart for events. Yeah. It's just to not do Alpha events literally just create a angry parent network that has nothing to do with Alpha."

Capital Factory Strategy:

"We get free space for having critical conversations about the future of like society and education Society and it's like a it's like it's a brand that we own you and I... we don't use Alpha explicitly because of that doesn't look like a sponsored bullshit."

Content Pipeline from Events:

"Our content pipeline would be so easy, bro. We would just basically voice transcribe all of our meetups and then turn them into essays like that... you have photo only to the extent that you know, if you were actually at the meetup, you could shape the essay that pops out at the end."

Working Around Constraints:

"It goes back to what I was saying to you two weeks ago, right? Like if we we should just find an area where there's no constraints. Right or less constraints and by doing this."

9. Courage and Leadership Philosophy

Courage as Competitive Advantage:

"None of this is hard, but even but recognizing that that is basically what we need to do is like yeah, it has taken some time because... I'm pretty if I am going to spend much more time in Austin, I want to do I want it to be something that I enjoy which is talking to people and yeah, getting them excited in person."

Mission Clarity:

"It's very very clear that we're called to do something that other people can't do because they're bitches... none of this is hard, but even but recognizing that that is basically what we need to do."

Educational Leadership Requirements:

"I think that as long as whoever is running this program collectively is committed to do the exact requirements and more, right? So if the requirement is a you know, you post at least 12 times, you know, the expectation that I would assume for anyone who's helping me leave this or manages is that whatever the activity requirements are that we exceed them."

10. Strategic Implementation Planning

Marketing Crucible Timeline:

"We're getting graded on like social media impressions and all that bullshit so the idea here is that um Like june obviously is just a baseline. And then if we start off on june 30th, we have the entire month of july to accumulate Objective metrics of whether this is successful or not."

Gamification Strategy:

"An ideal outcome for one month is to take people from Their their june grade, right? So if they have an f because they don't even have 50k impressions take them from f to a d Or a d to a c or c to a b or b to an a."

Agency Model Application:

"It kind of it's kind of like an agency right where it's like a no, it's like a no fee agency... I had like this agency idea I was toying with um I was toying with like years ago where I was like it was like a personal brand acceleration agency."

Strategic Insights and Outcomes

Educational Leadership Development

The conversation revealed Tim's natural evolution toward educational leadership through the Marketing Crucible program, which serves as a testing ground for curriculum design, accountability systems, and student engagement - all transferable skills for running innovative schools.

Organizational Navigation Strategy

Both Gary and Tim demonstrated sophisticated understanding of working within organizational constraints while building independent leverage, particularly around Alpha's hierarchical limitations and Jonathan Stewart's gatekeeping role.

Content Strategy Innovation

The anonymous content strategy represents a breakthrough approach to sharing uncensored educational reform ideas without personal consequences, potentially creating significant influence while maintaining professional relationships.

Parent Movement Mobilization

The "angry parent network" concept provides a pathway for grassroots educational reform that bypasses institutional constraints and creates authentic demand for innovative school models.

Personal Brand Architecture

Gary's systematic approach to personal brand development, including target audience definition, unique value proposition, and content strategy, provides a replicable framework for thought leadership in education reform.

Next Steps and Action Items

1. Marketing Crucible Launch: Implement 12-week program starting June 30th with weekly assignments and metrics tracking
2. Anonymous Account Acquisition: Research and purchase established social media account for uncensored education content
3. Capital Factory Partnership: Reconnect with contacts to secure free event space for parent network meetings
4. Content Calendar Development: Create systematic content pipeline from events to essays
5. Expert Interview Series: Begin interviewing education innovators for brain lifts and content creation

Conclusion

This conversation marked a significant strategic breakthrough in positioning Tim as an education thought leader while addressing organizational challenges at Super Builders. The Marketing Crucible program serves multiple purposes: improving team performance, demonstrating Tim's educational leadership capabilities, and creating leverage for future independent initiatives.

The anonymous content strategy and angry parent network concepts provide innovative solutions to institutional constraints, allowing for authentic discourse about education reform without professional consequences. This represents a sophisticated understanding of influence building in constrained environments while maintaining strategic optionality for future ventures.