#150: Jeffrey Stern on Entrepreneurship, Product Management, Investing, Passion & Ambition, the Race to the Bottom of Attention, Founding Insights, Flanuering and lots more (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness Podcast)

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:06]: Let's discover what people are building in the Greater Cleveland community. We are telling the stories of Northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs, builders, and those supporting them. Hello everyone and welcome to the Lay of the Land Podcast where we start exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, for our 150th episode, do it. We will be doing something a little different. Every 50th episode on Lay of the Land thus far, I have tried to honor the request I occasionally get from listeners like you that from time to time, you'd actually like to hear more of my own thoughts and flip the proverbial script from host to guest. So on the 50th episode, I explored my own professional journey, the concept of startup ecosystems, and what it takes to actually get that entrepreneurial flywheel going. On the 1 100th episode, I reflected on what universal lessons I think we can take with us from lay up the land overall. What are these patterns and commonalities across all of the stories that we've heard from people trying to build great things? From what inspires and motivates Founders to pursue entrepreneurship in the 1st place to where founding ideas actually come from to the meaning and importance of culture, which brings us to episode 150. Personally, I am much more a fan of listening than I am of speaking to reference the greatest Cleveland entrepreneur of all time who, unfortunately, we will not get the opportunity to ever have on this podcast as he did pass away in 1937. But, fortunately, there is quite a lot written and documented about John d Rockefeller. He often recited a poem that reads, a wise old owl lived in an oak. The more he saw, the less he spoke. The less he spoke, the more he heard. Why aren't we all like that wise old bird? For me, this poem resonates deeply. Lay of the land has become my oak tree in that regard as it allows me to hear, to listen, and to learn. But, with all of that said, for the 150th episode of Lay of the Land, I'll continue this now tradition of taking a deliberate pause and doing my best to share some of my own thinking and reflections.

Fortunately, my friend Jonathan Setofsky runs his own podcast called Wisdom Wealth and Wellness and hosted me graciously as a guest where I got to share some of my own thinking, and really in great company as he's featured many far wiser than myself on his podcast like Dan Ariely, one of the pioneers of behavioral economics, Greg Harden, an executive and performance coach to folks like Tom Brady and Michael Phelps, as well as Joel Greenblatt, a renowned value investor and author of one of the books that actually got me into investing in the 1st place many years ago, as well as many others. In our episode, which I am resharing on Labelland today. Jonathan and I cover a whole variety of themes across the worlds of Product Management, Investing, and Entrepreneurship. Explore some other really fun topics as well. I really enjoyed being the guest on a podcast for once. So with that, I hope you all enjoy this conversation station as much as I did. And if you do, I encourage you to check out other episodes from Jonathan's podcast as well.

---What's fascinating to me about this overall is, like, why you would even opt to do entrepreneurship in the 1st place because there are evidently so many reasons to not do it. You know, just the all encompassing nature of it that anything but relentless focus is typically fatal to just, like, deluge and ubiquity of rejection, the emotional roller coaster, and just, like, the probabilistically low likelihood that you're gonna even be successful---

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:03:54]: Welcome to wisdom, wealth, and wellness, podcast on overcoming behavioral biases and blind spots, sponsored by Satovsky Asset Management, and this is Jonathan Satovsky. Today is a, apropos day to talk to this guest, Jeffrey Stern, the co founder of axuall, a healthcare Workforce Intelligence startup, which has successfully raised $41,000,000 in funding. He holds a position as a partner of Impact Architects, where he's dedicated to assisting fellow entrepreneurs in achieving their best, and fostering growth in their ventures. In addition, he's had professional roles. Jeffrey hosts the Lay of the Land podcast focusing on entrepreneurship in Northeast Ohio, which is why I'm wearing my Michigan Wolverine shirt today in case he is getting brainwashed by the Ohio State Buckeyes. Anyway, apart from his work, Jeffrey occasionally engages in investing And providing advice to other entrepreneurs. Jeffrey is an optimist who believes telling the story of those most inspiring builders around us is one of the best ways to learn and inspire more to build. Thanks for coming, Jeff.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:03]: My pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:05:06]: So, I hope the Ohio State Buckeyes haven't got into your under your skin yet, Right? They haven't indoctrinated you with their colors, I hope.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:13]: No, not so much. Not so much.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:05:14]: Okay, good. Good. All right. So let's let's kick it off. You know, you're fascinating, a fascinating person, just a wealth of knowledge for a young age, just have so much to talk about. But you wrote in your blog, If you start a sentence with, I could be wrong, but. You probably should proceed with a question instead of a declaration. Most everyone knows a lot less about how the world works than they think they do. I love that. The concept of unknown unknowns is intriguing. Jean Marie Avillard used talk about that actually. You know, if we can just focus on the unknown unknowns, the upside will take care of itself. But can you provide examples of situations where, when you or people you've worked with were unaware of their lack of knowledge and how we can mitigate that cognitive bias.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:08]: Sure. Sure. I think, probably most of my experiences are examples of this. I don't know. Any situation that you go into, you go into very rarely knowing what you don't know. But that's kind of what makes it interesting and fun in the 1st place versus if you were, like, fully omniscient and, you know, figuring out how to operate in that in that uncertainty. I think about this idea mostly in the context of trying to figure out and prioritize learning what is true, over being right. And I think that's typically very challenging because, typically the stronger your conviction that you have in something, the deeper the story you're telling yourself, is. The deeper that becomes entrenched in your mind, the harder it is to unsee it or see, like, an alternative path that, may actually be true because that would mean you were wrong. And that to me is kind of the whole essence of entrepreneurship and what it looks like. So there's a concept.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:07:14]: I was gonna say we call that anchoring bias. But, yeah, go ahead. You know?

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:17]: The so the concept that I'll I like to think about and it just seems to come up all the time is, the idea that the business that your company succeeds with is very rarely the business that your company starts with. And it's rare because it is so difficult to discern at the onset of what you're building, the exact combination of product and market that's gonna result in the, elusive product market fit, and what, you know, what will actually result in business success. Answer. So much of the startup journey is just trying to survive long enough to continue to ask you questions, and refine, you know, those combinations of things to unlock real value. And embedded in that sentiment, I think, is that you really just have to fall a lot more in love with the problem that you're trying to solve than the solution. Because your solution more often than not is not gonna be correct. It's not gonna be the final solution. And so it's just this constantly humbling process of try and build and iterate, and survive as you as you learn and kinda work your way through, you know, what is working, what isn't working, and trying to double down and reorient around what actually is working.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:08:36]: I love that. So what problem is actual? And maybe just for for for those that don't know, what is actual what problem is actual trying to solve in in your current venture? What's what's the the root of it? How did it originate? Maybe give a little background.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:51]: Yeah. So when a doctor goes to work at a health system, they go through a background check, like like you or I would for a normal job. But because they are doctors, it is more involved, as as it probably should be because Yeah. On the nefarious side of the spectrum, drum, you're trying to avoid doctor death kind of situations where someone might be impersonating a doctor. And then more practically speaking, if you were to go see a cardiologist, you would wanna be pretty sure that they studied cardiology and not, you know, nephrology. And so It's possible. Yeah. Yes. So all that's good. Like, that is a good premise, and I'm glad that this whole process exists. The challenge though is that the time, after a doctor is hired and before they can start practicing, to do this verification takes about, in the industry, a 100 days on average. And that is problematic because, health systems can't enroll doctors, nurse practitioners, PAs, all all kinds of clinicians, in in insurance, and so they can't bill for them. And they also can't the doctors themselves can't practice. So on average, you have doctors who are worth between $7,101,000 a day in top line revenue to a lot of these large healthcare institutions, who are maybe onboarding a few dozen clinicians at a given time. And so you add up a few dozen clinicians at $7,000 a day over a 100 days, and it adds up to a very large number, of dollars that health systems are leaving on the table, particularly in the wake of this, like, macro backdrop of there's a clinician shortage. There are not enough practitioners across the country to to fill the the medical need that our society has right now. And so there's this, kind of also race for for talent, within the the medical industry, writ large.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:10:51]: So you're trying to shorten the time frame onboard qualified clinicians.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:57]: Yep. So the the verification process today is manual. You're, you know, you're calling the state medical licensing companies you're calling the the specialty medical boards. You're you're going to the internship, residency, fellowship programs to ensure that doctor Smith is doctor Smith. And we built software, to automate that process and really cut down and expedite the whole onboarding.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:11:22]: Well, exciting, exciting stuff. I'm looking forward to see this unfold. I'm sure this might be one of many ventures in your future based on the little that I've learned about you over the years. So good luck and, yeah, exciting stuff.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:39]: So- Thank you.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:11:40]: So here's the question. Listening to your Lay of Land podcast, by the way, congratulations, great podcast, Lay of the Land, for anyone that wants to tune in here about Startup Nation in The wonderful state of Ohio, middle bedrock of our country. But in your Heathers episode, you did a recap or takeaways from all the founders you interviewed and you interviewed some interesting people. We talk about 4 tenets of the reason to pursue entrepreneurship: agency, autonomy, culture, impact. How do you see 1 create an opportunity that's something from a nothing moment? How would you how do you do that? Or how do you advise, You know, young people that are coming to you that want to just have a notion and start moving.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:25]: Yeah. It's it's, it's a really hard question, and I I don't know that I have a great answer. But I I I do think about this a lot because I I get to talk to a lot of founders and them how how they did it. Yeah. But what what always drives me to what's what's fascinating to me about this overall is, like, why you would even opt do entrepreneurship in the 1st place because there are evidently, so many reasons to not do it. You know, just the all-encompassing nature of it that anything but relentless focus is typically fatal to just, like, deluge and ubiquity of rejection, hit the emotional roller coaster with, you know, euphoric highs and devastatingly demoralizing lows, and just like the probabilistically low likelihood that you're gonna even be successful and that if you have the aptitude to be a founder, you could probably just get, you know, a well paying stable job, but, evidently, a lot of people opt to to do this thing anyway. And so it is worth asking that question, you know, how and why would 1 opt to do that, and where does that opportunity come from? And so take some observations, and I I don't know that any of these are particularly novel. I think a lot of people have studied, you know, founders and their psychology but you need a baseline level of ambition, and that baseline tends to be just very high for for these kinds of people. And hand in hand with that level of ambition is there's a they just exude a certain passion for whatever it is that they are building. And I I think that's important, and it sounds like simple. You need passion inhibition. But, if they didn't have those things and they were rational, they would give up. Because for all the reasons, you know, just mentioned, knowing how hard and humbling the whole journey can be. The reality is is if you're not obsessed with the problem and curious about it to a degree that probably, like, deters other people if you were just to talk about it with them, say you're going to fail, I think, relative to someone who is that obsessed with it. And there is always someone who is that obsessed with it. And so there's like another trite, but I think true saying, which is if you're working on something that others perceive to be hard work, put it something that you yourself find fun and feels more like play and that you're deeply and innately curious about. That's basically an indication that you are working on something that you can really excel at because to the degree that you can work on something that that is fun for you like that, but looks really hard to other people, then you no one can outcompete you because you're just doing it on your own volition.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:15:07]: I love that. I love that. I I I think just being self-reflective, I think that's actually my own career path, is that I myself had a passion for just Freedom and financial freedom and the pains of what it caused people in health, relationships, and the like. And, yeah, so I guess I can't teach that passion to others to, like, enthusiastically go after it and try to share that for others.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:31]: You know?

It's it's difficult to find it, but, you know, people like, you know, Charlie Munger talks about following your natural drift. Steve Job talks about, you know, that kind of passion. Paul Graham talks about it, I think in a in a recent essay that he actually had kind of exactly about this. But it's like it's certainly backed up by, you know, the hundreds of founders that I've gotten to learn from. That sentiment and I I don't know exactly how to cultivate it, but it is requisite. And so there's that. There's kinda like a mentality. But then there's also, you know, where does the opportunity origin come from itself? You know, where do where does that astounding insider idea come from. And from that perspective, I think you can be a little bit more specific about where where they come from. And the framework that I've used to think about it is the ideas themselves tend to come from within or without. And so that's just helped me, like, remember this thing. But, within refers to people paying attention to their own problems or their own curiosities. And if you try to solve a problem that you yourself experience, the entrepreneurial journey from there is one of realizing that what you have solved for yourself is useful to other people because other people have most of the time, your problems are not unique. And so you can scale whatever it is that that you'd worked on for yourself. And that's in contrast to ideas that come from without, which I think is more about trying to observe external forces that come from the world, at large and is about paying attention to, you know, paradigm shifts and and, the the waves of technology. And I I think that's ask where actual and my own founding story comes more into play because, you know, they were not problems directly felt by me or my cofounders. They were problems acutely felt by health care practitioners, but we were able to ask the questions like why is that the way it is, and we could imagine a future that we thought should exist, and that's what we've been working kind of backwards from towards.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:17:38]: So you sort of stumbled into it. Like, wait a second. That's a problem. I think we might be able to come up with a fix for that. It's interesting.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:44]: We exit yeah. It we did stumble into it. We actually had asked chief medical officers, You know, what keeps you up at night? And there's enough pattern recognition there to be like, they want us to solve credentialing. And we didn't know what credentialing was, but, you know, from there, we learned.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:18:01]: I well, that's a great that's a great process. I I I wow. I've heard this from other founders and obviously other people have heard the idea of move fast and break things. And you wrote on your blog, sort of an iteration of this of move fast and break things works at the expense at the expense of broken things, you know, for consequential products. It is more important to get it right than to get it fast. Getting it right costs more time upfront, but affords higher velocity later. Do you think and because you've been in this startup nation ecosystem and everyone sort of regurgitates the same ideology, I guess, the group think. It's kinda cool that you've you're spinning it on its head and looking at it and saying, wait a second. I hear that, but let me look at the opposite side of that. That's how I'm perceiving the way that you're writing that. But, do you think the tech culture pendulum, and I guess maybe that's the point that the pendulum goes too far where everyone believes a certain thing. It goes, you know, too far and fast and everyone's in common with that common theme. You know, done is better than perfect, mindset and building. You know, what is what is the price culturally, societally, you know, even Institutionally that, we're commonly paying for these novel ideas and technologies that were brought to market quickly instead of durably.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:23]: Yeah. That's a fun question. I think we we we can talk about the price. I will say, I don't I think the value of move fast and break things, you can't just write off entirely because I mean, evidently, it was really, valuable for the firms that did it when they did it. And it was like a real declaration of what they stood for and how they were going to build things. Spray. Like, this came out of Facebook, but companies, I think, like Uber and others kinda carried the flag. And so if you wanted to work that way, that's totally okay. You know, you don't have to work at those companies. It's very opt in, but I think it was like an effective filter, and very communicative of the kind of culture say that they wanted to to work with. The challenge and and this came from my own perspective, tempered and reined in by the industries that I've worked in, which have been health care and government infrastructure, was just that that kind of philosophy wouldn't work. Because it if you think about like who the customers are in those industries and who I've I've been trying to sell to over the last decade, you're talking, I mean, literally about secretaries of state and chief medical officers.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:20:35]: Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:36]: And they tend to be just very risk averse professionally because the consequences of of broken things and things going wrong in government or in health care are perniciously bad, you know, and the incentive to rethink the way that they have always done things is pretty low, even if it's not a great way that it exists today. And so it tends to be very zero sum thinking and very short term time horizons. And you so you have to, like knowing, like, in an maybe in an ideal world, you can, you know, recreate government and health care, and maybe, you know, the bar that I set is too low. But, you know, we exist in this world, and so I'm trying to figure out how to make the way we do things better, that's practical. And so from a product management perspective, which is is, like, day to day, and professionally, like, what I focus on. I just became to believe it was gonna be a lot more effective, especially for startups operating in these spaces to to say, again, I didn't come up with this idea of going slow to go fast, but to to follow that path, because, you know, when you think about, like, an MVP, for example, in the context of a startup, in in these industries, the regulatory compliance bar and laws that you have to comply with and and, security and IT standards that are in place are typically something that's only Fortune 500 companies would even have to contend with or or be aware of. And so you have to be a little bit more intentional about how you're gonna approach building something from scratch with very limited resources, while trying to build trust in in these kinds of industries.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:22:23]: This is not necessarily directly related to this, but, you know, you're of a generation that's, you know, go into social norms. People have grown up with, I guess I see, like, little 3 year olds with a screen, right? You know, here's their babysitter, the iPad, you know?

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:41]: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:22:42]: So we're living on screens, you know, 11 hours a day, You know, obviously without understanding the long term impacts or, you know, repercussions of social media and how this has been depicted in movies like Social Dilemma, but where do you think the line of I mean, you're doing something very clear. Okay, we're saving the healthcare companies I mean, the hospital's time and onboarding people. That's that's clear and that's there's no it doesn't seem like there'd be a downside unless the diligence wasn't thorough enough, put if the diligence is thorough enough, that's it's a win win for everybody. But in many businesses and start ups, I don't I'm curious your thought about the line of responsibility of whether people think about the unintended consequences of what it is that they're creating, sort of like junk food. Look, you know, I met a guy that, and I won't mention names, that was like, look, I tried to sell organic blueberries, nobody bought them. So I started selling Chicken wings and pizza and fast food, you know, and that's what's sold. I needed to support my family. So I wonder where you think the Let's the role and ethical responsibility of people are when they are trying to feed their family versus just, thinking about the impact of of what it is they're producing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:55]: Yeah. Well, the the thing that comes to mind that I I will never be able to unhear after having heard it that I think just to me captures the entire dilemma that we face, and I'm not actually that optimistic about it. But it was, an earnings call a few years ago, I believe, with Reed Hastings, and he was talking about, Netflix's competition. And, when you would think about that, you might think, you know, it's HBO or it's Hulu, but he very explicitly said that they are competing with sleep.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:24:29]: I heard that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:30]: And and and so yeah. I mean, this is a race to the bottom, for for attention. And say social media has just been on this track to optimize for anything that can vie for your attention. And, obviously, there's been enough of a of a business upside in that to, I think, you know, even bring companies like Netflix, that that you wouldn't think of as social media companies, but into this kind of, race to the the bottom of attention. And, you know, like you think about TikTok, which is maybe just the latest and most terrifyingly powerful iteration of something that is vying for your attention. But I think that's pretty clearly what's being optimized for is, you know, how what can we build that just consumes more of your eyeball time. When I heard

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:25:31]: that when I heard that Reed Hastings one, I actually I I I realized, wow. He actually he he had got me until he told me what he was doing. I actually probably did lose many hours of sleep. Once he told me, I was like, I'm not letting him get me again. I'm I'm turning this off. I'm getting a half hour of quiet time before I go to sleep. So it helped me actually hearing that he was screwing my sleep, you know? It's It's kinda interesting. But but, I imagine younger, professionals. I hope that younger professionals that are starting up and and doing things that are impacting the world aren't doing things just to optimize for profit and really do understand or at least give a forewarning how many people on Netflix actually know that they're optimizing for sleep Or for, you know, their competition is sleep and they're winning, as he said. Because we're optimizing for sleeping, we're winning, you know? Yeah. So it's like, wow, that is so disturbing, you know? Unbelievable.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:23]: Yeah. It's a Black Mirror episode in in of itself. Yeah. Through Netflix.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:26:28]: So, anyway, you this, Kamai, you mentioned your bio. We talked about this briefly before the show started. Your bio mentioned you incorporated the concept of flanuering in your life, and I I happen to love this and, not too many people might be aware, but, what is Flenuring to you and why do you like it? Tell us your how you stumbled upon this.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:47]: Yeah. Yeah. So to me, I and I I took Spanish and and not French. So but I believe it translates as as wandering of the sorts. I've I've come to think about it really just as walking without purpose. And I I love this this word because it was something that I one of my favorite things to do in life, just truly a genderless exploration. I didn't have, like, the vocabulary to to know the there was a word that captures the spirit of this idea that you can, there is no destination. There is no objective. You you are you are just walking for walking's sake and leaving yourself open to, experience, see, smell, hear, whatever it is around you and just follow what feels interesting and compelling. And especially in New York where, you know, everyone's always walking with purpose and pace. Yeah. I've always just loved this planuring concept. The word itself, I I read, I think for the first time or at least the first time it resonated in a meaningful way was, from Nassim Taleb, who I who talks about it in a more professional context, where the idea is more about leaving yourself, holding the space for optionality and knowing that you wanna keep yourself open to to opportunities as they arise and be able to jump at the ones that will compel you to jump, and that you need to actually hold the time and space to think about what it is that you wanna do. And I you know, practically speaking, I think at least the way I interpreted what he was talking about in this professional context was in the form of something like a sabbatical, you know, where you without a plan, without direction, without an agenda, can just kind of sit and see opportunities in the world and and, really kind of lean into your intuition about which of those feel most exciting to you.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:28:53]: I I think I don't know if this is a, this maybe may not be precisely accurate, but I remember hearing a story a number of years ago about a guy, a Japanese train operator and the Japanese subway stations were very slow and very loud as they got into the stations, but the guy happened to be a bird watcher. And he was maneuvering about and he saw the bird with a very sharp beak fish without making a ripple in the water. And he was, like, Went back to his engineers, and they designed the tip of the front of the Japanese bullet trains With the same tip as that particular bird, it increased velocity and reduced the sound as they entered the stations. So, You know, I think it's a concept called biomimicry. You can add that

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:29:43]: It's amazing. Amazing. So, you you you also have a passion for, obviously, reading and investing wisdom. You know, As you say, conventional investing wisdom prescribes certain investment behaviors based on companies' historical performance. But you've written If you followed conventional wisdom in the past 20 years, you'd likely missed out on some of the investment opportunities during your lifetime and the companies behind them that basically took a totally unconventional approach like Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, Shopify, Nvidia. If conventional wisdom is out, how Well, how how would how do you invest? And what would you say, you know, do you use as a framework for evaluating investments? And do you think that they Will become commonplace in the future, and or, you know, will these apply in the next 5 to 10 years, in your opinion?

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:36]: Yeah. Well, there's a few things I think about when I think about investing frameworks. And maybe may maybe it's like it will be helpful to understand how my thinking on it had evolves over time. Because I I first fell down the investing rabbit hole almost by, by chance and accident. In in middle school, at my school, we all had to play the, New York Stock Exchange game. And, completely by luck with no more skill than the proverbial monkey throwing darts at the at the stock market board. I ended up as a winner of the New York Stock Exchange game. And, they brought the winners down to to do the New York Stock Exchange. So, you know, you got to see the trading floor, and at I I was I was hooked. Having built though a virtual portfolio with virtual money, but in the real companies I'm really from a place of wanting to understand how the stock market worked at that point and how it was possible that I was that I was able with with truly know skill, to be able to outperform over that period of time. I started reading, like you mentioned. And so I you know, Ben Graham is the intelligent investor, Fisher's common stock and uncommon profits, Peter Lynch, one up on Wall Street, Greenblatt, so you can be a stock market genius, Klarman, margin of safety, right, all those guys. And then ultimately, like, inevitably, if you read those, you find your way to Buffet and then for me to Munger. And Munger has definitely had the biggest impact on the evolution of of my thinking with, I just felt the most grounded in reality to me. The this idea of of, you know, the irrationality and emotionality of people, the cognitive bias, the mental model frameworks. And so from from there, there was like once I saw that, it was impossible to unsee it. And so when I think about where I am today, I feel like I'm more heavily influenced now by investors like Morgan Housel and David Gardner from The Motley Fool and Cathy Wood from Arc and then also I think heavily influenced by my exposure to venture capital, from the startup and entrepreneurship side and applying somewhat of a VC thinking to public markets. And so, like, you know, I had like like anyone, I don't know, you know, how the market is gonna perform, what stocks are gonna be up or down, and I I don't and I haven't ever really felt a sense in trying to time it. But I I I have become comfortable with, an investing approach that assumes somewhat VC analogous, power law risk return profiles betting on the exponential implications of technology, innovation and, understanding that in that model, like, most of the returns are gonna come a few companies, that that really outperform. Yeah. But it I I think it stems from my own interests in technology startups, and entrepreneurship. And when you just think about how the just how software has driven the marginal cost of production for, like, everything closer to 0 and afforded this, like, technological leverage, to people across you know, I mean, AI is, like, in the zeitgeist today, but, you know, the cost of automation, the cost of transportation, genomic sequencing, just like so many technologies that used to be prohibitively expensive, are now affordable and and mass adopted. And so when you think about, you know, the Amazon's, the Netflix, the Shopify's, those companies that you'd mentioned, like, over the last 30 years, I don't know that there was ever a time where they were perceived as undervalued. You know, they were always richly priced, overvalued, too expensive, but evidently, they had been severely undervalued. And so that that guides, I think, a lot of my investment thinking. That and this idea that I take seriously, which is that buying stock is not just buying stock. It's it entails a literal ownership. And so I like to take that seriously and only invest in companies that I feel good about, let I would, like, literally wanna own or work for in some hypothetical.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:35:18]: That's a great that's a great, that's a great blend of Peter Lynch and Buffett and Munger and, and and yeah. I actually happen to have Joel Greenblatt as one of the guests on one of the podcasts, so, yeah, he's he's he's he's he's really a phenomenal guy too. Yeah. So we're running out of time, and I I I feel like I could speak to you for weeks, so I I hope to be able to have an opportunity to speak to you more because there's so much to unpack. I, I also am a massive Charlie, Charlie fan and it's Had a profound impact. Like you said, once you've seen it, you can't unsee, you know? It's like I have to pretend I don't know something now. So what what is a, I guess I'll leave with, 2 2 last things. What is a daily habit that makes you better or gives you joy? Would you say the flanuring, or is there something else? Is reading do you do you carve out time for reading and thinking?

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:09]: I try to. I don't think I can honestly say it's a daily habit though. I, though I try to do it daily. The only thing with consistency that I've been able to establish as a habit daily over the last 10 years is I do 50 push-ups every day.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:36:25]: There you go. Alright. That's good.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:26]: That's a good one. And I I feel like it's a great way to start the day.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:36:29]: I think Herschel Walker, I think, only did pushups and situps, and he was quite an athlete. So anyway, let people know, where can they connect with you? Website, social media, where can people find you if they wanna learn more.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:40]: Sure. Sure. Twitter, as Stern, Jefe, j e f e, lay of the land dot f m is where you can find the podcast, and that will actually have all the links to to, where where you could reach out directly, so that that will probably be the easiest.

Jonathan Satovsky (Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness) [00:36:59]: Awesome. Well, I'm grateful for your coming on and spending time. Your future is is gonna be, I'm excited to be a witness to what your future, how seeing Your own future unfolds. So, best of luck to them and success in every venture that you're, you got your hands on.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:17]: That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an email to Jeffrey at lay of the land dot fm or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or at @sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Tunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having end the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.