Billionaire’s Advice to Young People | Joe Liemandt from BigDeal

BigDeal

Codie Sanchez

Episodes

Billionaire’s Advice to Young People | Joe Liemandt

1 hour 17 minutes Posted Nov 5, 2025 at 9:30 am.

Introduction

The Forbes List and Raising Kids Without the Billionaire Label

Why Money Matters: Teaching Financial Literacy from Kindergarten

The MBA Myth: Why Business School Won't Make You an Entrepreneur

Alpha School Revolution: Where Kids Learn 2X in 2 Hours

Breaking the 100-Year-Old Education System

The Three Girls Who Proved Math Isn't Gender-Specific

Paying Kids $1,000 to Reach Top 1%

From Broke to Billionaire: The Trilogy Story

The Entrepreneur's Blind Belief That Changes Reality

From Consumer to Creator: Breaking Kids' TikTok Addiction

High Standards Are the Key to Happiness

The Food Truck That Teaches Gross Margins

Motivation Engineering: Time Back as Currency

From Tech Bro to Principal: Joe's Personal Transformation

The Billion Dollar Mission to Transform Global Education

Making Millionaires in High School

AI in Education: The Good, Bad, and Terrifying

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Show notes

Most billionaires disappear after they make their money. Joe Liemandt did exactly that — vanishing for 20 years after building Trilogy into a software empire. Now he's back with a radical mission: transform education for a billion kids using AI. In this episode, the reclusive tech mogul breaks his silence to reveal why he's betting another billion dollars that everything we know about school is wrong.

From fifth graders negotiating food truck gross margins to middle schoolers getting paid $1,000 to hit the top 1% academically, Joe's Alpha School is flipping education on its head. Kids learn twice as much in just two hours a day, then spend afternoons launching Broadway musicals, building apps, or training for D1 sports. The results? 96% of students love school more than vacation, and every single class tests in the top 1% nationally.

We dive deep into why Joe believes the 100-year-old classroom model is dead, how AI tutors can teach kids 10x faster, and why paying students to learn might be the most controversial — and effective — motivator yet. If you've ever wondered what happens when a data-driven billionaire decides to rebuild education from scratch, or if you're tired of watching kids hate school while the world leaves them behind, this conversation will change how you think about learning forever.

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