Strategic Spiritual Counseling: Business Vision and Divine Guidance

Date: June 9, 2025
Location: Two Hands Coffee, Austin, TX
Format: Strategic mentorship and spiritual counseling session

Executive Summary

A comprehensive strategic discussion between Gary Sheng and Peter Han covering Gary's evolving situation at Alpha School, his deepening partnership with Dr. Lael Alexander, and their shared approach to faith-based business strategy. The conversation explored spiritual discernment in business decisions, the challenge of helping exceptional talent focus their efforts, and Gary's vision for creating flywheels that enable transformational work. Both participants demonstrated mature integration of spiritual principles with practical business strategy.

Alpha School Domain Conflict and Strategic Response

Territory Dispute Resolution

Gary explained a recent conflict at Alpha School: Quote: "Long story short, this guy that is new but not as new as me met me, realized I was in his lane that he wanted, called up Joe McKenzie and a bunch of other people and said, this is my lane for y'all. FYI. Secured his power... So this is a new hire? No, it's like this guy in his late 40s who was hired in February, so at least a couple months before me, and saw that I had skill sets that are very much overlapping with what he wants to do. and solidified domain authority, and then called me saying, I'm canceling your event."

Spiritual Response to Conflict: "And initially I was frustrated. I was like, I just started to be like, God has everything covered. So I just like was peaceful about it."

Commission-Based Transition Strategy

Gary outlined his preferred future relationship with Alpha: Quote: "The longer answer is... It's very possible that I shift into what I want to do, which is, well, what I hate that God wants me to do and what makes sense. It would be what you kill, the old model. I'm going to New York to meet with some wealthy Jews. I'm willing, if I get good terms from all sides, to bring the first step back."

Friend-Focused Approach: "My top priority at Alpha is just to get my friends who really want to work there to be there. I've told them, you guys want this way more than I do. And I care about you guys."

Lael Alexander Partnership Strategy

The Focus Challenge

Gary identified the core challenge in working with Dr. Alexander: Quote: "He literally has like maybe over a dozen projects that he's working on. I realize my job, one of the jobs, the most important job, Lyle is working on the highest ROI things for humanity. It seems so simple, but it's not easy. And you know why. One of the reasons why is he's very friendly with his friends. So he'll do a project that's a complete waste of his time."

Productivity Enhancement Goal: "The goal is not to make him 100% efficient, it's to get him 30%... No, literally, he wants to make more money so he can tinker more. He loves tinkering on stuff."

Divine Intervention Recognition

Gary connected Lael's heart surgery to spiritual awakening: Quote: "And I think he's getting closer to the logical conclusion as well as surrender because you know what happened to his heart. God smote him. Everything just makes it so much clearer now, bro. When God gives you a super gift and you don't use it, if you don't recognize who gave it to you, it'd be like, Remember who gave it to you. You're not God."

Purpose Reminder Role: "Because it's not like on an ordinary basis people are like, remember, you know, that's such like an odd thing for anyone to do, right?... Almost no one's doing that, including his wife. His wife is not like in bed just being like, remember, you're the smartest man on earth, and you have a mission."

The Integration Vision

Gary explained Lael's quadrillion-dollar opportunity: Quote: "What Loyola has, so the quadrillion dollar opportunity, and I'm kind of saying this over the course of the next 45 years or so, is integration, right? So right now we have a bunch of siloed academic fields... what the layout's capable of doing is compressing everything into unified utility, where I coined this term called hyper context."

Consumer Product Strategy: "We're trying to find a consumer product that we can sell that meets the moment... the bullseye we targeted was Johnny Ives. A consumer product that meets the 6.5 billion dollar valuation that he got."

Peter's Spiritual Business Wisdom

Collective Discernment Practice

Peter shared his approach to major decisions: Quote: "I can't just trust myself because I'm emotionally involved... It's your will versus God's will, right? Now, I don't open that door up to everyone, right? I only do it with maybe three people who I trust in my life... I pray with my best friend every week about these things. He lives in Singapore and I pray with a couple other people saying, help me discern."

Community as Wisdom: "Paul said in Galatians, we collectively have the mind of Christ. Right. So only when we come together, right?... when we come together and share what part of Christ that we see, because we have all unique filters."

Managing People and Expectations

Peter's advice on working with others: Quote: "One of the hardest things I've learned is that... People tend not to be as generous or as open as I am when I try to build things. And that's okay, right? So, I can't open up doors as quickly as I can because my hand only doesn't dedicate to me, it doesn't dedicate to them. They're not ready."

Kingdom vs. Execution Balance: "The heart of God is to redeem those who can be redeemed as opposed to... Just Executors... But that's not, is that Kingdom, right? Maximizing? Probably not, right?"

Business Flywheel Philosophy

Mission vs. Execution Order

Peter's framework for building sustainable businesses: Quote: "But then the execution to achieve that mission may not come in the order in which he wants to, right, in terms of, in Lyle's mind, the priority in which he wants to solve things, because To build that flywheel, you all, and we talk, anything that's kingdom will eventually be self-sustaining, will not require more and more money to go in, alright?"

Strategic Sequencing: "So, he might want to solve problem A, but it's more prudent to get the flywheel going to start and solve problem C, alright? So that you can make enough money off of the companies that surround you."

Gary's Market Positioning Insight

Gary's recognition of his market timing challenge: Quote: "I have a mental model now. I've realized that I'm not saying this as a compliment to myself, I'm saying this in reality. I'm often way ahead of the market, so much so I can't make money. And so, we have to meet the market where it's at, have runway to do what we really want to do."

Faith-Based Leadership Principles

Christian Identity vs. Christian Living

Gary's observation about cultural Christianity: Quote: "It's easy to be a Christian. In fact, it's hard to not be a Christian in Texas. That's what I realized. To be a Christian, right? In Texas. It takes no courage. It takes courage to actually be a Christian."

Truth-Telling in Business

Gary's approach to building trust through controversial truth: Quote: "We're talking about how a lot of the gay agenda is a parasite on humanity. Not an individual gay person, but the will to infect our kids with sex and gender and identity instead of science and math and communication and logic, and importantly, God. And so that built trust very quickly. I was just like, God wants me to say this."

Money as Tool, Not Goal

Gary's evolved relationship with wealth: Quote: "I'm already, like, at a clearly different place with money than other people. I don't mean in terms of a lot of money. I mean, not shooting with a gun. I, like, do not care. It just gets us to point B. It's all made up anyways... Money is just a personal desire. Literally."

International Relations and Peace Vision

US-China Collaboration Strategy

Gary's vision for redirecting superpower competition: Quote: "At 2 p.m., I've organized a call with NASA in L.A. They have a project to identify 180 blockers to a city on the moon. I was like, you know what's better than a city on the moon by the U.S.? A city on the moon by U.S. and China. We need to have a way to channel The genius of our superpower countries and all their allied countries to something that's not killing ourselves."

Personal Calling for Mediation: "I feel called to create world peace, dude... As someone that really loves what both countries could be, and just knowing that there's been people in, you know, history doesn't repeat but it rhymes, like Clarence Avon... He would be like the spiritual mediator between black entertainers and executives and Jewish label execs."

Divine Frustration Management

Peter's counsel on global concerns: Quote: "We only have control over what the Lord is telling us to do... my mantra has been as of 2013, when the Lord finally nailed this into me, that's not your problem. You can pray about it, but that's not your problem. Your problem is what I put in front of you and say to you."

Spiritual Metaphors and Reality Understanding

Neural Network Metaphor

Gary's framework for understanding human cooperation: Quote: "We're all just like nodes in a neural net. And you know when you type a prompt and a cool painting comes out for journey? We're just like one little node, right?... We're two nodes in the symphony, right?... Any frustration, fear, anything is just a misunderstanding of reality."

Free Will vs. Predestination

Their theological discussion: Gary: "I asked my friend yesterday, does God predestine everything? And we were like, no. He allows for as many people to be a main character as are willing to commit."

Peter: "God doesn't predestine individual people, right? He doesn't predestine individual people, but he does predestine an outcome... I think he leaves a lot of that for us. He is constantly driving us towards that goal, but it's up to us."

God Wave Event Planning

LA Strategy

Gary's vision for faith-based cultural event: Quote: "Marcus, my friend Marcus... He is like the first God Wave event of this group of young-ish people like me. I said my intuition is to do an event like the First Supper, but just for God people. And we were like, where should it be? And they were like, LA. Because it's the belly of the beast."

Strategic Location Choice: "There's also a lot of great creative people there. So the idea is to create a big bang moment. We're going to discern on what time. And then we'll work with you on a guest list."

Educational Reform Vision

Christofuturist Schools

Gary's vision for faith-based education: Quote: "I got the message, I should be starting faith-based ChristoFuture schools for middle school adults. Because we're not developing good boys here, good men. And the first lie is that we are, that we can teach, that we can teach people anything without getting the first foundation correct about the nature of reality."

Cultural Mountain Strategy: Peter: "That is how in that first mountain range they all build on one another, right? Is their values, principles, understandings. First, it's worked out in the family, right? Then it's actually, literally, it's taught formally in your education... It's disseminated through media... It's created and reinforced through arts, and then it's supercharged through the major business."

Personal Development Insights

Frustration as Misunderstanding

Gary's evolved perspective on challenges: Quote: "At minimum, I'm realizing that it makes no sense to be frustrated about anything. So one thing that used to frustrate me was, why does this person do that? And I realized, the fact that I would do something different, assuming that what I would do differently is the better way, well, that's why I'm here."

Patience vs. Efficiency

Peter's hard-learned wisdom: Quote: "The next step beyond that is meeting them where they are and allowing them to be fully themselves while making it better, even if it's slower. That's the hard part. It's frustrating. It took me 18 months to clean it up. I should have had that done in 2 or 9 months, but 10 years ago I would have plowed through, probably hurt a lot more people along the way."

Spiritual Fellowship and Prayer

Prayer as Community Practice

Gary's recognition of collective spiritual discernment: Quote: "Most people think that prayer is like this alone in the prayer closet. I'm not saying that's not that. I'm saying I had no hesitation this morning on my call with my mentee saying, we're praying together right now. Because we're earnestly trying to discern what God wants together."

Fellowship Value: "And I told him, you also want to do that alone. But our spiritual fellowship is so valuable... It's not just valuable, it's essential."

Key Insights and Themes

Strategic Spiritual Integration

The conversation demonstrates sophisticated integration of spiritual discernment with business strategy, showing how faith-based decision making can enhance rather than hinder practical effectiveness.

Talent Optimization Philosophy

Gary's approach to helping Lael Alexander reveals a mature understanding that maximizing exceptional talent requires spiritual as well as practical intervention, recognizing that purpose clarity often matters more than productivity techniques.

Kingdom Business Principles

Both participants showed alignment on building businesses that serve larger purposes while remaining financially sustainable, emphasizing flywheel effects over short-term gains.

Collective Discernment Wisdom

Peter's emphasis on community-based decision making for major choices demonstrates practical application of spiritual principles to reduce individual bias and increase divine guidance accuracy.

Cultural Engagement Strategy

Their discussion of the God Wave event and educational reform shows strategic thinking about influencing culture through faith-based initiatives positioned in secular environments.

This conversation represents a mature example of spiritual mentorship applied to complex business and cultural challenges, with both participants demonstrating how faith can inform and enhance strategic thinking rather than limiting it.