#202: Jared Semik (Eternium Aerospace) — Transcontinental Electric Flights

Jared Semik [00:00:00]:
Not to completely go down the the rabbit hole of my personal life, but, you know, rock climber, skydiver, scuba diver, skier, snowboarder, ride motorcycles. I'm not really afraid of anything, not the least of which is failure. So it's one of those things where why not dedicate your time to something that can improve your own life or improve humanity? It's something that is, it's a passion of mine. It's kind of digging into things that no one else is digging into.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:25]:
Welcome to the lay of the land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I had the real pleasure of speaking with Jared Semick, founder of Eternium Aerospace, a long range zero emissions aircraft development company focused on sustainable transatlantic flight. As a multi service military aviation veteran across three global deployments, starting with the Marine Corps in 1999, Jared is an aerospace research and development engineer with twenty plus years of experience working with next generation zero emissions aircraft systems, performing various roles across research and development, aircraft system engineering, program management, talent and supplier development, and corporate partnerships for several global industrial and aerospace corporations, ultimately responsible for the development of 14 proprietary technologies. In addition, Jared holds a BS in mechanical engineering and business administration and has earned two US patents for the Aircraft Systems and Propulsion Space. As you'll hear in our conversation, Eternium is a multi decade endeavor. And Jared has taken a very strategic and intentional approach to all aspects of building this company. From establishing local partnerships with organizations like NASA Glenn, to the tiered development strategy that stages the development of different commercially viable milestones, like the power unit, superconductive motor, and ultimately Archangel aircraft itself.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:57]:
Jared has an awesome perspective on risk and is a believer in the philosophy of nothing ventured nothing gained, and all the best things in life are on the other side of one's fear. This philosophy spans both his personal pursuits of rock climbing, mountaineering, scuba diving, skiing, and more in addition to his approach to business and building at Eternium. We cover the challenges faced in achieving aircraft range and efficiency, the intersection of creativity and engineering, technological breakthroughs required for achieving zero emission travels, building for the long term, and a whole lot more. So please enjoy this fascinating and educational conversation with Jared Semick. Lay of the Land is brought to you by Impact Architects and by ninety. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio, Impact Architects has helped hundreds of those leaders, leaders, many of whom we have heard from as guests on this very podcast, realize their own visions and build these great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love. If you two are trying to build great, Impact Architects is offering to sit down with you for a free consultation or provide a free trial through 90, the software platform that helps teams build great companies.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:21]:
If you're interested in learning more about partnering with Impact Architects or by leveraging 90 to power your own business, please go to ia.layoftheland.fm. The link will also be in our show notes. So from the the outside looking in at your career, Jared, there's this incredible diversity of roles from your military service, both working with the marine corps and and the US army to engineering, research and development. In my assessment, though, as an outsider looking in, if there was a a thematic thread that that ties all this work together, I would guess that it's avionics and and aerospace. And that thread and aspiration and most of the folks that I know who share it goes back to when they were kids. So I would be curious to start there. Just when you reflect on on your whole career, what moments do you recall in your life that first sparked this this interest in in flying and and aerospace and and innovation in that regard?

Jared Semik [00:04:23]:
My dad's, my dad was former air force. So, you know, I I grew up kind of as an air force brat. I was too young to be anywhere he was stationed or to remember anywhere he was stationed. But, you know, a lot of that stuff I mean, it doesn't die. Being a marine, it's it's been twenty years since I've been in the marine corps. You know, it really doesn't die. So when you have kids, all those little nuances and mannerisms that, you know, you kinda take for granted, they all just sort of bleed out. My dad was always fascinated.

Jared Semik [00:04:47]:
He was one of those guys that that would run out the doors and, you know, if you if you heard a helicopter or a jet or something that sounded like a mil military aircraft, and he just the game was to to point out what the aircraft type was, you know, and I got pretty good at it. Yeah. And then, and then I would say, I mean, having that as a foundation, my dad always really liked, aviation from his air force years. I liked it just I mean, because I was always fascinated, But then you think my mom sort of took it into the next gear. She got me a discovery flight when I turned 16. And so I started flying and just, it kind of goes from there. You just sort of go down a rabbit hole. I don't think I originally set out to be in aviation or aerospace.

Jared Semik [00:05:28]:
I was one of the only eight year old kids that was telling everybody they want to be an architect instead of a firefighter or, you know, or an astronaut or anything. I was like, I want to be an architect. And you're like, you even know what that means? I was like, yeah, it's designed. I just, I want to design buildings. You know, I was fascinated with architecture at the age of five, six, seven, eight. And it's it's funny how life kinda takes you in those in those directions. But the reality of it is just that, you know, that was a that was a rabbit hole that sort of kinda went down the space of reality. It it wasn't like a like a theoretical thing.

Jared Semik [00:05:57]:
I was starting to see it with my own eyes, you know, and I started kind of enjoying that. And then, you know, came time to to decide whether or not I wanted to go into college or go into the trades or go into, you know, military. My My dad was in the military. I said, you know what? I'm I'm not entirely prepared to spend another four to five years in school because I was like, I need a break just just just for my life. So I said, I'm I wanna go in the military. I landed on the Marine Corps just because I like the I like the culture. I picked aviation. Most of that was basically my recruiter.

Jared Semik [00:06:27]:
I wanted to be a grunt. And he said, there's no way there's no way you're gonna ace the ASVAB, and and I'm gonna put you in as a grunt. You're you're either gonna go intel or you're gonna go on the aviation side, or you're gonna be doing something that's using your your brain. I said, okay. So that means I can't be a grunt. And they're like, you can get somebody else to do it. I'm not gonna do it. I was like, that's fine.

Jared Semik [00:06:46]:
He's like, what did you do? He's like, I wanted a avionics blahdy blah. I was like, alright. That sounds pretty cool. So he explained it to me. I ended up picking that. I ended up getting the Kiwis and Cobras, and then that bled over into airframes and power plants, and I was a helicopter air crew for a while, so I was a aerial observer. And that was actually an interesting segue because Yeah. That that all came from starting in avionics and then kind of bleeding over to the airframes and and, flight line side.

Jared Semik [00:07:12]:
They came in. They're like, alright. Well, we need volunteers to to do this new, VRC 99 project with, Spay War out of San Diego. So, like, this is a whole engineering development side. This is where you segue now into my engineering rabbit hole because I started doing all this engineering. I was the only I was only the only enlisted air crewman on the West Coast that was on experimental flight orders. So that was kind of a feather in my cap. So I did that for a while in my last, my last deployment, and then that just kinda segued into my aerial observer work and never became a crew chief, but it was always just, an aerial observer.

Jared Semik [00:07:48]:
And then getting out and I had the entrepreneurial spark. I was like, alright. You know, I got bigger fish to fry. I'm like, shit. No. They stay. Well, I wanted to start a business. I had a bunch of business ideas.

Jared Semik [00:07:58]:
I had just ideas in general, and I I knew I wanna do something big. I mean, it's it was stirring in my soul. I didn't know quite quite exactly what it was. And then and then on top of that, I was going to school for for engineering. And then I just it was on on the mechanical side. I decided to stay away from electronics because I did all that. And I sort of wanted to bring the two elements together. So mechatronics kinda became a thing and, you know, and I just landed in aerospace.

Jared Semik [00:08:21]:
And I I like developing new technologies just because I'm creative.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:25]:
So where do you feel that entrepreneurial inclination came from?

Jared Semik [00:08:28]:
God, I had a I had a lemonade stand. I had a I had a lawn mowing landscaping company when I was a kid. I sold everything. And it's funny, you know, every time you read anything about entrepreneurs, where did this come from? They say it's I think the statistic is, like, 80 something percent of entrepreneurs were entrepreneurs from childhood. Most of them had, like, paper routes. Most of them sold things. They, you know, they were in some kind of business activities. It certainly, a

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:56]:
pattern. Yep.

Jared Semik [00:08:58]:
Yeah. No. A %. I mean, but that's that's essentially where it came from. And and like I said, you know, when I was transitioning from the marine corps, that was I mean, when I was telling everybody what they were you know, what I was gonna do. It was funny. A lot a lot of guys were, oh, you're gonna be back. You're gonna be back.

Jared Semik [00:09:11]:
I was like, no. Which is funny because I was. I did come back. I was like, man. This is killing me. Because, I mean, I was I was sort of, I was pretty hardcore. I had I had a couple, couple of guys. Like, you're definitely a marines marine.

Jared Semik [00:09:25]:
And I and I did. I I I absolutely loved it. It sucked Yeah. In a lot of regards. But

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:29]:
Say say more about that.

Jared Semik [00:09:31]:
More about what? Being a marine's marine, what what does that mean? Everything's a spectrum. Marines are are known for being a little little too gung ho. I have the four main branches of the, the military. I guess if you exclude, the space force and the coast guard, if you talk about all combat arms spaces, the Marines are, are kind of known for their, they're just overly gung ho. Well, the thing is, is inside the Marine Corps, there's a spectrum And you get some guys, like, not to talk complete smack, but, like, you got a lot of guys that are, like, admin, guys that are, like, logistics, and they don't wear their uniforms really tight. They're not PT ing all the time, so they're not they're not exercising. They don't keep themselves super fit. They're not into all the green side stuff, which is, you know, it's all brown stuff.

Jared Semik [00:10:13]:
So, like, they're not gung ho for special operations or any kind of, like, infantry activities and things like that. And it's just I mean, there's a matter of it's a matter of motivation. So when you say a marine's marine, it's like maxing that whole marine coreness. And and most people can can recognize and be like, oh, this guy's just over the top. And a lot of it, it got me a lot of places. I was I was well awarded. I was meritoriously promoted. Out of the four promotions I got, I think let me see.

Jared Semik [00:10:43]:
Well, I got early promoted to Lance Corporal, but meritorious PFC out of boot camp, meritorious corporal, I got put up on a meritorious sergeant board, for picking up sergeant, and I got early promoted to a lance corporal. So pretty much every single time. And then I, you know, I was getting unsolicited recommendations from from our pilots to go into, in the MESAP, which is basically, programmed to go on the officer side. You know? So they're like, oh, you need to be a leader, blah blah blah blah blah. And then a lot of people basically say that's when they're like, you're a marine's marine? And every marine kinda knows what that means.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:12]:
So where does the idea of flight electrification come from? How long are you ruminating on this? What was the the kinda moment?

Jared Semik [00:11:20]:
I think it's a natural convergence of technologies. It's it's one of those things. If you're if you keep yourself on the cutting edge of tech, which I do, I've I've been studying all the patterns. I've been studying the cutting edge since I was gone in early high school. I originally wanted to to work for Fermilab and, maybe CERN as a as a particle physicist because I was fascinated with all the work that they were dealing with accelerators. And it was it it was it was just one of those things keeping up on what are the trends. And I would say about ten years ago, I was working for a company, as a sustaining and development engineer, and they were a fortune 500 or fortune 200 company, one of those, And tremendously risk averse, very stodgy company. I mean, very steadfast.

Jared Semik [00:12:07]:
I mean, they're they're really good, really good, in terms of their shareholders, industrial powerhouse. But if you're an r and d guy, if you're into development, it's it wasn't necessarily the place to be. So I had to I had to exercise those muscles somehow, and I'm I'm a lifelong artist. So all that creative juice is constantly coursing through my veins telling me, like, you gotta find, you know, let's do new things. Let's push the envelope. So in the whole process of being completely bored at the job that I had, I was starting to look at what the Vanguard was, and you started seeing this convergence. You started hearing more and more about fuel cells, more and more about electrification. At at that point in my career, Tesla wasn't really even a thing just yet.

Jared Semik [00:12:46]:
Not to the, not to the degree it is now. You start hearing about the Tesla Roadster and things like that. I mean, I was heavy in the, in the fuel cell space because, one of the divisions that I worked for in that company was, was, the hydrogen fuel cell division out in, Connecticut and just kind of fell in love with it. So I knew that it was a new space. You know, there's a lot of theoretical philosophical drivers in the thought process of that. Some of that was just the, the two sides of me being, an environmentalist, being an outdoorsman. I'm very sensitive to the to the environmental impact that humans have. And then also the military side, when you're thinking in terms of non fossil fuel alternative means of conveyance, you look at that and you say, well, if if there's if it's a possibility that we can not fight so much, not fight so many wars over commodities Yeah.

Jared Semik [00:13:36]:
You know, this is this is sort of a win win for both the environment and both geopolitics. It democratizes energy production. And if you're democratizing fuel sources and things like that, it sort of distributes the, the influence. And it also sort of like, it diffuses some of that, some of the dominance of stronger parties over others, and that's pretty much where your a lot of your conflicts are driven is mostly economics. So it was one of those things where it's like, I I'd like to kind of focus some of my intellectual abilities on on that process. And then, of course, with the convergence of of what I was seeing in the market and some of the general ideas that I was already starting to work on, I just started getting to work. And, you know, it just I had a problem statement and I've already yeah. I'd already seen what has gone on with the the eVTOL market and, you know, some efforts in out electrification.

Jared Semik [00:14:24]:
I was just like, why is nobody able to accomplish this? I don't think it's that difficult of a problem. It's just a it's an energy equation. You know?

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:31]:
What was that that problem statement at the time?

Jared Semik [00:14:34]:
It was a question of more or less about why is the range performance so abysmal. You know, you look at you look at, like, Eviation. Eviation out of Israel, they're a battery electric aircraft, and they're pretty much one of the only ones that's actually sort of flying with any sort of pedigree in their data. And they started I I wanna say they started at, like, 500 miles, and then now they're now they're back down to they're, like, 250 or five or 250 or 300 mile range. And if you know anything about aviation, anything under about 500 miles is is is almost unusable. I mean, you could you could have something like local, local flights, but I I don't know where that market would be. If you can't if you can't get, you know, five to 500 to a thousand miles, because there's there's FAA, there's FAA minimum requirements for fuel and range, You have to have a certain amount of time worth of fuel or alternative fuel per given range over land and then and then basically twice that if you go over the ocean. So it's it was basically just that that question.

Jared Semik [00:15:35]:
Like, why is the range so terrible? And after that question, what would it take to get to that to that usable range? And to me, usable range was transcontinental. It was transcontinental or transatlantic. It ended up just sort of morphing into the two because, I mean, transatlantic is essentially transcontinental from The US. So I set the point. I started running the numbers, and then, you know, I kinda came up with what kind of percent improvement in the power propulsion system and also the, the aerodynamic efficiency, in terms of, like, lift to drag coefficient ratio. What kind of improvements are you gonna have to to see in that? And I just started getting to work. I mean, and that's that's where I ended up, you know, coming up with the, our high temperature superconductive motor that we now have patent on. And then while developing that, I started building a relationship with the guys at NASA Glenn, and they started lobbying some of their their newly developed technology, which is essentially higher power density replacement to fuel cells.

Jared Semik [00:16:32]:
So at a certain point, you ask those questions and they just start ticking down ticking down the boxes. Like, okay. Let's answer these questions. So you do a bunch of hand calculations and you you see, like, is this feasible? Is this or is this just something that we we're not gonna be able to do with current technology? And the the reason why the aircraft companies right now that have terrible range is because of of several things. They're using batteries, and battery, specific energy is garbage, compared to both jet a and, let's say, something like hydrogen. Hydrogen fuel cells are notoriously heavy and volumetrically, they're not very dense. So there's there's a problem with that. There's only so much power production you can put into an aircraft without suffering, mass and volume penalties.

Jared Semik [00:17:11]:
And then they were using a lot of off the shelf components, a lot of off the shelf designs. So some of our competitors are using they're they're not really changing the efficiency of the aircraft design itself. And then they're also not changing the efficiency of the motors. They're using off the shelf brushless DC motors. You know, nothing's do nobody's trying to go into any exotic spaces. As a result, you put all those components together with with zero improvement, that gap between jet a, what we use now in jet, jet engines, and say something like hydrogen, which is notoriously not volumetrically energy dense, you can't bridge that gap because you can't carry enough energy in the hydrogen, and you sure can't do it in batteries. If you're if you're doing it with the way they're doing it, it's sort of kinda like off the shelf components and no real exponential growth in performance. Yeah.

Jared Semik [00:17:58]:
You can't carry enough energies that limits your range drastically. And that's essentially the opposite of what we've been doing. Is it like, okay. Let's improve the prop propulsion efficiency and and propulsion, density, power density, the the propulsion system, and then the same thing with the, energy conversion efficiency of the power system. Put those together. There's synergy in in the in the increase of the what they call, thrust specific energy conversion efficiency. Not gonna get into those deals. You can you can go down that rabbit hole and get get lost.

Jared Semik [00:18:26]:
Yes. But, you know, coupled coupled with that in the the aircraft geometry, we increase efficiency across all the metrics. That's the only way you're gonna get it done is improving every aspect of that orders of magnitude from where they currently are.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:40]:
Let's introduce Eternium here to kinda ground the rest of the conversation. Like you mentioned, there's a million rabbit holes for us to to dive into from here, but but let's just Yeah. You know, put put it out there. How would you describe what Eternium is at the highest level? And what are your ambitions and vision going forward?

Jared Semik [00:18:55]:
Eternium Aerospace is a long range electric aircraft development company. We're essentially an engineering company. Most of what we're doing is is engineering related, and so we're essentially being the technology quarterbacks. Our core competency is the high temperature superconductive motor and the propulsor that is attached to it. That is what we're developing in house, and then everything else is basically being co developed with under partnership with other our co development partners in industry and also partners like NASA and soon to be ARPA E. And that's, long and the short of it. Our overarching vision is to produce, hopefully, the first, because it'd be nice to be on, on the front page of the newspaper or Yahoo News or whatever. The overarching vision is to have zero emissions equivalent to the Charles Lindbergh flight.

Jared Semik [00:19:45]:
So we wanna fly from New York to Paris or New York to London, depending on what makes the most sense, very likely to be Paris, but we'd like to hop the pond using a production worthy zero emission aircraft. So not not necessarily a one off like the, Spirit of St. Louis, but something that is potentially going into production for both defense and civil applications. That's essentially a 3,200 nautical mile flight. And, you know, we have an entire sequence of events that have to happen before that. Yeah. But that's the ultimate it's

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:17]:
the ultimate vision. In your exploration of the the Vanguard, as you called it, electrification of aviation efforts to date and recognizing, you know, the the gap, the the that delta between where the industry is and where you recognize it, it it could and perhaps should be. Why hasn't it gotten there? And and what was the earned wisdom that allowed for you to recognize, for one, that it might actually be possible and

Jared Semik [00:20:45]:
to create

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:45]:
a business around actually making it happen. How did you know that you could get it done, and why hasn't it been done yet?

Jared Semik [00:20:50]:
Well, some of it is just self confidence in my my engineering abilities. You know, I've been very successful in pretty much everything that I've been able to to engineer and reengineer and improve. Some of it is is my own personal abilities and then, you know, and then I think some of it is just my confidence in leadership that I grew over the years in various positions that I've been in. The ability to make a team, you know, the ability to to kind of accomplish something that has a lot of moving parts. It's one of the aspects of skill growth that you get in the military, especially the marine corps because, I mean, the marine corps has got a lot of moving parts that all have to kind of, you know, work in concert with each other dynamically. A lot of pivots, a lot of contingencies, a lot a lot of that. So once you get used to that space and you sort of lose any sense of fear of failure, which I don't have any of that, Not not to completely go down the the rabbit hole of my my own personal life, but rock climber, skydiver, scuba diver, skier, snowboarder, ride motorcycles. Like, I I'm not really afraid of anything, not the least of which is fear or failure, I mean.

Jared Semik [00:21:53]:
So it's one of those things where why not? Why not dedicate your time to something that's that can improve your own life or improve humanity? And it's just it it's something that is it's a passion of mine. It's kinda digging into things that no one else is digging into. I mean, you know, and then when I look into the industry and you ask that question, like, why why hasn't this been done? Try not to be too nasty with this statement, but I don't think people are very innovative. I mean, is the one of the one of the traits that I noticed a lot of times in organizations, a lot of engineers, they're they're they think they're pragmatic, but there's no no creativity, and they seem to think innovation is incremental change. So when when you look at something like, say, electrification of of aircraft, there is some work. You have, like, NASA, you got Hymenix, you got a couple of these companies that are that are doing things that are adjacent to what we're trying to accomplish, but no one's really sort of trying to eat the whole elephant. I had a conversation with one of the guys in in acid gland. He kept asking me, you know, why are you guys trying to do it all? Why don't you just be a motor company, or why don't you be, like, a brain turbine company, or why don't you do this? I said, well, here's the here's the issue.

Jared Semik [00:22:59]:
So going back to what you were asking, what did you see in the industry? The answer to that is if we were to wait, this is actually what got him when we had this conversation, he was like, in this moment, is when I told him, I said, if we if we were to wait for the industry to separately develop these technologies, so these components and systems on the you know, mesh them together, it's gonna be forty, fifty years. I'm not even kidding you. You know, everyone looks at aerospace and like, oh, it's super innovative. It's not. It is 100% the least innovative industry out there right now. It's super risk averse. There's not a lot of pushing in any one specific direction very hard in terms of innovation. You get the rarities, like you get SpaceX because Elon Musk, I think, is I think we have a very similar personality in that regard as leaders of companies where why not? And let's do let's do what our dreams tell us to do.

Jared Semik [00:23:50]:
Unfortunately, you've got organizations that are out there, some of the large OEMs that they they've got a lot to lose. They, you know, got a a tremendous amount of legal fear over failure. They've got the reputations to, to be mindful of. All these different things kind of play a part. And once you start building a culture like that, you have a bunch you hire essentially engineers. The the engineers that are being successful in that company are the ones that don't rock the boat, the ones that are basically doing what they're told, and they're moving the needle steadily, but also very slowly in a direction. So when you see a lot of these companies that are being built by some of these, like, former Boeing, Lockheed, etcetera, employees that are like, oh, I wanna make this. They also still have that mentality of, like, let's not be some spicy assholes about it.

Jared Semik [00:24:37]:
Like, you don't they don't get in there and they don't start throwing punches. So they'll they'll be like, alright. Well, we wanna we wanna see what we can do. And then what they do is they just kinda take a bunch of off the shelf things. They they incrementally improve them, and that's just it's not gonna get it done. I'm sorry. We're not gonna get there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:52]:
Yeah. So so you have the this kinda grand ambition, married with your personal gumption to achieve that mission in the face of what is a difficult technical problem. And we can talk about and I'd like to understand a bit more about, you know, the physical feasibility of all this. But I think really interestingly in your assessment there, this kind of marriage of engineering and artist mindset.

Jared Semik [00:25:17]:
Yeah. A %. A %. And what's really sort of the that's the nucleus of the of the r and d spirit. I hate to say, and I'm not I'm not trying to bad mouth engineers, But I think one of the more frustrating things is, is just simply that is that you have a very, a lot of very uncreative people that are very good at, you know, they're on the spectrum of, problem solving. And they don't seem to follow much of a vision. They seem to think that the numbers will guide them to the place that they need to be. And unfortunately it's sort of the worst case of analysis paralysis where they start convincing themselves that it won't work because they'll start seeing things in the data because they didn't they didn't take the risk.

Jared Semik [00:26:01]:
And I think that's I think that's the third element to that equation, really, is is obviously the the the logical capacity, sort of like your IQ, and then you have sort of that that other dimension of intelligence that I think is is sort of the creative element. And then you have sort of where are you on the spectrum of risk aversion? Risk aversion is probably one of the most frustrating things in the industry. Risk aversion is is what stagnates an entire economy, you know, because people, I don't wanna risk this. I don't wanna do whatever. I said, well, yeah. But no risk, no reward. Damn. You know, I I don't know how many times I've talked to people and they look at me weird when you're like, why would you jump out of a perfectly good airplane or, you know, why are you climbing? It's like, that that's ridiculous.

Jared Semik [00:26:42]:
That's dangerous to say, we're all gonna die. You know? And None

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:46]:
of us make it out alive. That's true.

Jared Semik [00:26:48]:
Exactly. And it's like, to me, it's sort of like that why tiptoe through life only to arrive safely at death. Everything in between that is why not risk it? Why not? Why are we gonna sit here comfortable when we could have shot for the stars? And that sort of lack of risk aversion, I think is the other driving factor is that I'm not terribly afraid of anything and creative and also have the, cognitive faculties to, to be able to work through the problems And then also nurture everybody else into those spaces. I mean, one of the things I really love is is teaching and kind of being sort of like a personal life coach slash guidance counselor. So be able to kind of inspire people into that space. It's just I mean, it's a convergence of personality traits. And I think unless you have that, I don't think I don't think you're gonna move into that space. And I think if you look at a lot of the entrepreneurs that are out there that are kinda crushing it right now, Elon Musk and, the guy who's, he's the he started Anduril.

Jared Semik [00:27:46]:
He also Lucky. Yeah. Like, those guys, it's just like, you know, I've got an idea, I've got a vision, I'm creative, I want a thing to happen, and they can work through the problems, and they can build a team. And, I mean, in a larger regard, Steve Jobs, I I know he wasn't doing the the majority of the engineering, but he could definitely form a team and, you know, he had a good, you know, sense of strategy and marketing. And, you know, he was a genius in in his specific idiom. If you don't have those elements, you're not gonna drive the ship right. And I think, unfortunately, when you look at the greater the greater industry, it's the reason why the startups are always the ones that eat everyone's lunch. Because once you get to, say, a legacy OEM like a like a Boeing or a Lockheed or a McDonnell Douglas or Northrop, unless you're constantly refreshing the culture, kind of like Airbus has been been trying to do, But unless you are refreshing that culture and continually making it innovative, people lose the idea of what innovation really even is, if that makes any sense.

Jared Semik [00:28:51]:
And then the culture just kinda died, it stagnates. And then you get what you know, you get a lot of this, like, let's squeeze the lemon more and more. And it's like the the lemon's dry. Get a new lemon. You know? It just

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:02]:
Yeah.

Jared Semik [00:29:03]:
It I think I don't know. I think this is the thing that that amuses me is is sort of like the psychology of it all is, you know, what happens in the cycle of of companies when you when you just kinda let them kinda get stale.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:17]:
So so now they understand the the new lemon. Right? Like, what what does it take to build an electric aviation company? And you you mentioned that, you have this kind of staged approach. You you mentioned the the superconductive motor, the power unit, ultimately, the goal being this this aircraft holistically, partnerships with NASA. From the outside, I imagine this is quite a capital intensive undertaking. Give give us a sense of the timing, the road map, the where Eternium is today, and the progress thus far.

Jared Semik [00:29:50]:
Alright. Yeah. So, I mean, this is a I mean, everything is contingent on on how much traction we can get in terms of funding and and, Yeah. Yeah. Market interest, etcetera. I mean, we're very aligned with with what other companies are are doing in terms of their vision. I think we are a marked improvement, so I don't think that's gonna be necessarily an issue. The funding is a little ish, is is the issue, but after you know, once we kinda hit the ground running, and we can actually start getting into some of these four you know, some of the more significant rounds, I I mean, start signing contracts, you know, the government contracts we're working on with the DOD and and, you know, ARPA and assets.

Jared Semik [00:30:24]:
I would say the power and propulsion system sort of basically being engineered simultaneously because they work in concert with each other. So there's it's more or less a hybrid system. I would say expect about a thirty six, thirty six to forty eight month runway, in terms of market viability. There is still about a year and a half that we have to dedicate to DO 160, DO 178, part 33 certification for flight worthiness of IFA compliance. So, obviously, before we can even land in the market somewhere. And, obviously, we this technology can be, adapted and scaled to to non aviation applications. So we can make sort of, a market landfall, I would say, earlier than that thirty six to forty eight month plus year and a half. But, yeah, I mean, it's the reason why we we decided because it is capital intensive.

Jared Semik [00:31:17]:
So, you know, we're not trying we're not trying to gather a bunch of investors and make them wait for ten years before we have a viable product such as the aircrafts. This technology is needed in the growing electrification space. So we need better motors. We need better, more powerful, energy, energy generation, power generation systems. And then working together, the entire system needs to be improved in terms of thrust specific energy conversion efficiency. So when you, when you kind of pull in those metrics, you ask that sort of question, you know, and it goes kind of back to the to the problem solving sequence. What what's your what's your go to market strategy? And a lot of that was, well, if the market needs these products now, why not develop those and essentially at the very beginning become a motor and power generation company, build all the partnerships to sort of pull that timeline in. So our our partnerships are with industry organizations that are, that have a pedigree in developing that technology.

Jared Semik [00:32:12]:
All we're doing is just offering sort of a phase change. So we're, you know, we're making large improvements on the system and the components, and then we're using everybody else who's been in the space for a long time to kind of help us in the manufacturing process. So that sort of pulls in our timeline a little bit better. And it started to kind of offload some of the the engineering work. So that's sort of thirty six to forty eight months, in terms of power and propulsion is when we'll start being able to kind of put those in other other people's aircraft and marine vessels and, you know, pretty much anything else that people are attracted to. So anytime we end up going to some of these conferences, everybody else kinda gives us a new application it would work in. And then I would say the overall runway for the aircraft, I would say, is about about ten years. So we'll probably start flight testing, I mean, depending on how successful we are at funding.

Jared Semik [00:33:00]:
I mean, it's really kinda what it boils down to. I would say eight to ten years, and you'll probably start seeing us flying that across the country if all of the calculations are correct.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:09]:
It prompts a few things I wanna follow-up with. I mean, most significantly from that I I I I would like to understand how you stay the course in what's a multi decade long undertaking I think a lot of a lot of companies might espouse certain long term thinking and and visions But it's not it's not often that they actually require that as part of the the realization of the company's goals and and your personal goals. So how are you thinking about, like, navigating that and just, you know, knowing how much work is still ahead, but the the progress you've made in identifying the the technological breakthroughs and and the sleep and power density, like, how do you piece together the road map?

Jared Semik [00:33:52]:
You're looking at it from a real world perspective. So I've driven a bunch of engineering programs, so I know how long it takes to develop certain technologies. So a lot of it is just actually getting getting down into the brass tacks, really kind of fleshing out some of the details in program management. So we have the Gantt charts, and we've got all the timelines, and we've got each increment, what our what our predicted timeline is. And I think a lot of it is just one step at a time. It's I mean, it's it's it's sort of life too. None of us know when our our last breath is gonna be. So we we're like, we've got a vision for the future.

Jared Semik [00:34:25]:
We don't know how successful that vision is gonna be because there's always contingencies. Things often come up and you have to react to them. So I am a huge fan of contingency. I've baked in two, three, four contingencies for pretty much every single way point in the sequence. It's super easy for me to pivot just by nature, and I baked the pivoting into the strategy moving forward. And I think most of it is just being extremely mindful to being kinda present in that sort of moment. Take the bigger problem statement and walk it back, you know, solve all the problems down to the to the smallest detail, and then you kinda get to work. You said, okay.

Jared Semik [00:35:00]:
Well, we need to we need to build a print package. We need to do the GD and T. We need to do a critical design review. We need to do all sorts of stuff. So, you know, form these partnerships. And really it's just that it's a day to day thing. What do we need to do? What's on your rolling action item list? So you're not gonna burn yourself out by being like, well, this is, this is gonna be ten years. I don't know how to, I mean, because I'm saying it's like, how do you, how do you raise kids? You don't raise kids by by like, oh my god, they're gonna be 18 someday.

Jared Semik [00:35:25]:
Well, you think of like, alright, well, now they're infants. What do you have to do? Well, I gotta feed them. I gotta I gotta I gotta put them down. I gotta change their diapers. And and and then as that progresses, as the child grows, your duties as, say, a parent morph with the growth of that child. It it's literally no different. I mean, the analogy is is is actually pretty strong is that you you're kind of a parent to the company. And when it's in its infancy, you do infant stuff.

Jared Semik [00:35:52]:
You gotta you gotta pull out all these elements together. And the more complex it is, the longer it takes, which is the same thing as is as animals. You look at something as complex as, as a human being, we're actually not fully developed. Look, our brains aren't fully developed until we're like in our late twenties. I'm not even kidding you. And it's Yeah. Yeah. And then you look at like physical, emotional, spiritual, mental development, all those things happen.

Jared Semik [00:36:16]:
And as you add complexity, the length of that undertaking grows as a product of that. You look at like look at single cell amoebas. They're born and dead in in a matter of like a week. You know, you look at gnats, you know, look at, Drosophila dorsi, you look at, fruit flies. Their life cycle is is is, like, what, like twenty four hours or something like that? So not a whole heck of a lot goes into it. And you look at that also with companies. So that's how you you sort of stay the course is that you commit yourself to staying the course. You say there's there's off ramps.

Jared Semik [00:36:50]:
If somewhere in there, we just all get kind of burned out, we're like, oh, I'm tired of this. I don't really want the aircraft to become a thing. I don't really care. I made a bunch of money. We we we were successful in the x, y, and z. Now I've got health problems. Whatever life throws you. But you keep you keep your eye on that on that long term goal because everything else is sort of, it's sort of a puzzle piece in that in that greater puzzle.

Jared Semik [00:37:14]:
So you just what do you do? So and a lot of it's time and energy management. I'm huge on energy management. I'm huge on, time and energy efficiency. I don't I I'm mindful of not burning myself out. So you take the breaks when you can, and you don't have to be pushing all the time. So a lot of it is just, like, don't burn yourself out, don't burn your team out, and and then just kind of play the long game. So I wanna do a a

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:41]:
brief detour on understanding, you know, the technological breakthroughs that allow for achieving Transatlantic 0 emission travel. I mean, knowing you could spend probably multiple graduate level courses on this alone. But, like, how would you explain what you've unlocked to a middle schooler? Do you explain it like on five version of what what is what is allowing for for you and an attorney and to to realize this? Again, go back to earlier in our conversation, having talked about that that delta, that gap between where we are and and where you recognize we can be.

Jared Semik [00:38:17]:
Yeah. It it really boils down to what I would consider the the entire package. I I talked about thrust specific energy conversion efficiencies. I pretty much kinda coined that as a metric to encapsulate if you if you ever go on the internet, there there are there's efficiency there are efficiency maps for the usage of energy. So in each and and I know this isn't to, you know, this isn't to, like, the five year old level, but you kinda have to have this groundwork. Each molecule has a certain amount of megajoules per kilogram, per, you know, like your your fuel source. You look at something like, like Jet a. You know, Jet a is I I wanna say it's about 19.1 kilowatt hours per kilogram.

Jared Semik [00:38:59]:
It's 33.1 kilowatts hours per kilogram for, for hydrogen. When you start going volumetrically, it's it's a lot less. So it's only 2.2, kilowatt hours per liter. So understanding that your fuel source can only carry a certain amount of energy per liter, you understand that you have to improve the amount of that energy being transferred from its its ambient potential state of whatever you have it in. So what we had to do is improve how much of a percentage of that energy within the molecule was being converted into forward motion. And that's that's the that's the thesis quote. So if you look at, like, gas turbine engines right now, they're operating at about 36 to 38% in terms of thrust specific energy conversion efficiencies. 38% of that, the energy that's in a naphthalene based jet fuel, like Jet A and, you know, JP-five and things like that, is being converted into thrust.

Jared Semik [00:40:03]:
The rest of it's being thrown out as heat. Since we recycle so much of that energy within the system and we very efficiently use it for torque generation in the in the superconductive motor, since all that energy is being recycled, we capture all that heat energy and we just basically kinda turn it back in on the system. We can basically increase that to about 58%, and that's super conservative. We actually could probably go higher than that. So what that means is that we have to make those improvements because that drastic difference between the volumetric energy density of Jet a versus, say, hydrogen. Batteries were never in this conversation. They operated about 400 watt hours per kilogram. I mean, that's versus 33,100 kilowatt hours per kilogram for hydrogen.

Jared Semik [00:40:51]:
So, I mean, it's orders of magnitude less. It gets better volumetrically, but that's less relevant. It's in one point o three kilowatt hours per liter. There's a huge difference between the volumetric energy density of Jet a, which is like 13.1 kilowatt hours equivalent per liter versus the 2.6 if you're using slush hydrogen. So there's a massive difference between the two. So you have to bridge that gap. And then on top of that so not only do we have to bridge the gap, we're we still fell short. So we still weren't gonna be able to to to make that happen.

Jared Semik [00:41:22]:
So we ended up having to do is, okay. Well, how do we improve the aerodynamic efficiency of the aircraft? And in the process of using, say, a blended wing body, we found that we have greater aircraft wing volume. So when we when we start using some of the emerging technologies in terms of, cryogenic storage for liquid hydrogen, we can start wetting the wing, which means we can use all that wing volume for fuel storage on top of our center tank. So now that we can basically utilize 8,000 to 9,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen, and we can use that all super efficiently, that's what ends up getting us that 3,200 to 3,600 nautical mile range. So that loops back around to why all the things altogether at the same time, why parallel development? And that it becomes that the answer to that question is that if you didn't understand the synergies in the system, if you didn't hybridize it the way we did, and then you also didn't couple that with some of the design considerations that we had for the aircraft architecture itself, you weren't actually gonna get that synergistic increase in in range and propulsion performance. So you kinda fall flat. You're still gonna get marked improvements, but not quite as many because you weren't gonna sort of see this this, this synergy. So it all needed to be done, and then I think somewhere in there, I wanna say, I don't know, a couple years ago, came to the realization that unless we grow this organization massively, like we, you know, turn it into a Boeing overnight, we weren't gonna get it done.

Jared Semik [00:42:54]:
We don't have enough manpower. That would require tremendous amount of upfront capital expenditure, to grow the team, and I don't know of a single entity that's that's willing to risk that amount of money in investment. It's something that's that risky with such a long timeline. So basically broke it up into parts and said, okay. Well, how do we get this accomplished? That's where I ended up going. Okay. Well, we need co development partners. We need to be very clever with both the business strategy and the technology development strategy.

Jared Semik [00:43:21]:
So just kinda what we've done.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:24]:
Yeah. Well, it would take a very, you know, erudite middle schooler to follow along there, but I I think, I think I I did the best I can there. And if I I'll just play it back in my, explain it, like, on five language. But it it's a certain combination of what I'd call, like, an order of magnitude improvement in the power in the superconductive motor and in some of the the literal design of the the aircraft itself.

Jared Semik [00:43:48]:
Yeah. Okay.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:49]:
Yeah. Simplifying all all that a lot, but just to make sure I'm understanding.

Jared Semik [00:43:54]:
It's really unfortunate. I've been doing this for years now. There's no real quick, easy, and simple way. I can bring people up to speed in terms of the gap in education that they need to really understand the difference between the two, And I found that that's the only way I I kinda shy away from oversimplification because you you can't. It's like Yeah. Ask the question of, like, what makes nuclear power so so much better? Well, you can say that it's it produces more power with a lot less fuel and and all this other stuff. But when you start asking, okay, well, how does it do that? Well, for me okay. Are you a nuclear engineer? So Yep.

Jared Semik [00:44:33]:
Well, and part of it

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:33]:
will just be the demonstration that you can achieve this in this combined package. I I always go back to the the people who don't care so much about the technology and much more about as the things solve your problem. No one knows how the microwave works, but people know that you can heat your food up in it. And that's, that's pretty magical thing.

Jared Semik [00:44:53]:
A %. A %. And and that's kinda why I go back to that thesis statement. We use more of what's in the fuel. So the gap between the two gets bridged because we use way more of it. So since we can't carry as much energy, we have to use more of it, and that's what we ended up doing. So per mile an hour, per mile traveled, per kilogram of mass, we we just get it done more efficiently across the entire spectrum. So it's really kind of long and short of it.

Jared Semik [00:45:21]:
Probably could have just said that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:23]:
Sometimes it takes the the whole explanation to arrive at at the simple one. Of course. Oh, man. There there are so many so many questions here. Help me understand the, you know, the kind of partnership strategy as as a way to accelerate what is already a long undertaking. But how have you approached convincing these these formidable organizations to work with a startup at your stage to to help, you know, realize this this vision?

Jared Semik [00:45:47]:
I mean, you come to them with data and you come to them with vision. And when you when you first start out, you don't have everything all all nice and buttoned up. So, you know, kinda get laughed out of the room quite a bit. But we could do this thing. Oh, yeah. You can. Alright. Well, great.

Jared Semik [00:45:59]:
There's there's there's a you know, there's 400 other companies that are all trying to do the same thing. What makes you different? And you have to you have to start working through the problems. So we did a lot a lot of laboratory testing. We've got initial data. We we built the math models, did all the hand calculations, and then putting the entire package together that makes sense to you just and you just keep going you keep going back and keep asking all the industry experts. Being one yourself still doesn't it doesn't make you immune from your own personal bias. So all I did is just I just kept kind of bringing it back to people that I knew that could give me technical sniff checks. Hey.

Jared Semik [00:46:32]:
Does this are these calculations right? Does this make sense? Is this feasible? It started now kind of getting laughed out of the room because you really didn't fill it in with a lot of data. And a lot of people were like, I I don't really know what you're trying to do. And then once you start actually showing them this, this, this, this, and this, and you just start tightening up your entire product, you start you start catching the eye of, you know, the people at NASA, some of your other contemporaries in the industry. And then after a while, you start getting some advice, people start taking you seriously. You just be like, alright. Well, this is a thing. Then they start actually adding to it. So things that you previously didn't you didn't notice.

Jared Semik [00:47:03]:
So the guys that were working with Ghostworks, they they said I mean, in in a matter of a couple of sentences, they they changed the course drastically about, the direction of our hybridization, and that was probably one of the best course corrections that we've gotten. And that's what you do. You just reach out. You do a lot of networking. You really talk to a lot of people. You just get really good at at sort of kinda pitching it. You simplify a lot of things, and then you really get you get much better at taking what you've already accomplished and then packaging it. The more you do that, the more it becomes more of a cohesive narrative.

Jared Semik [00:47:35]:
It actually starts becoming real because you're starting to build it, you know, build, design and development work into some of those things that you're talking about. So long story short, it just becomes incrementally more and more attractive as you evolve the concept. And then that's when you start going to these places. They start taking you seriously and then they start helping you. And then they start getting interested. Hey. We wanna help you with this. This is amazing.

Jared Semik [00:47:55]:
We think your vision's amazing. We think what you have, but the solution that you have is legitimate. It's feasible. I think we can contribute to this, and then it just goes from there. And then that's when you start pulling everybody else on board, and then you just start kinda collecting all the chess pieces. So Yeah. It's a lot easier than you think. You just have to be very persistent, and you have to be very patient.

Jared Semik [00:48:17]:
I prided myself before this all began with being a very patient person. If I were to meet myself when I first started, right now, I would look at myself and say I'm the least patient human being ever. So my patience level has has grown has grown exponentially as a result of this because you do. You need a lot of patience. You need a lot of patience with people because you have the benefit of understanding your technology. Nobody else does. So when you start telling them how it works, you can't expect people to immediately know what's different, what's significant, how it works. So you just get really used to being able to kinda teach it as as quickly as possible.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:56]:
When it becomes a thing, people get excited. So Eating your reflection earlier of this dearth of fear of failure and your, what I would call, appetite for risk, I'm curious, what keeps you up at night in this journey? What what would be the reasons for failure as you chart the the path ahead?

Jared Semik [00:49:13]:
What keeps me up at night is the things I can't control. It is it is the human aspect. That's the thing that that keeps me up at night. It's not necessarily a fear, but I think it's just sort of like a trying to get ahead of that that wave. You're fighting an uphill battle. You really are. This this entire journey is is one I mean, the more complex you are and the more ridiculous what what your thesis is, the more the more you just encounter nothing but resistance. You know, people are like, oh, yeah.

Jared Semik [00:49:36]:
Right. Because everyone has this mindset of if it was feasible, why why hasn't anybody else done it?

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:42]:
And it's

Jared Semik [00:49:42]:
like, well, there's this and

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:44]:
there's this graveyard. Yeah.

Jared Semik [00:49:46]:
People that yeah. I'm falling through that long Everest climb of dead bodies now. So, I mean, you've got was it Lillian just folded. Universal Hydrogen just folded. Before that, a company called Zunum. They were partnered with, with Boeing. They've folded. These are all aircraft companies in in the electrification space and it's littered with this.

Jared Semik [00:50:07]:
So it's basically climbing Everest. Once you get to a certain point, you're gonna start seeing dead bodies and you have to sort of ignore that. But I think the thing that keeps me up at night is that people notice that. So there's there's now risk aversion. So I actually just had a conversation about a month ago with a guy that's been helping me with my funding rounds and things like that. And the entity that they had loaded into the breach to help us in our our current round essentially said, oh, they they're they're out because they got burned by another hydrogen company. So you have companies that have this aversion now to hydrogen because everybody else was not successful. And you've got this weird growing aversion to hard tech because, you know, you've got the Theranoses that are out there that are, oh, we can do this thing.

Jared Semik [00:50:47]:
So, like, people people start looking at these wild claims and immediately they they kinda shiver. They're like, oh, god. Don't don't tell me that you think this is gonna be a thing. Because you have a bunch of these companies that they they came out with these ridiculous claims and they they couldn't deliver. So now everybody gets painted with that same brush. When you've got you've got NASA, even NASA internally. I just had a conversation about a week ago with one of the folks at at Glenn. You know, he was saying that, like, internally, NASA doesn't even think, oh, yeah.

Jared Semik [00:51:15]:
You know, superconductive motors and use of hydrogen in aviation, it's growing. But they're like, oh, this is thirty, forty years out. I said, yeah. It is if you have the industry parcel up each one of these development programs, and they don't do it all at the same time. So it doesn't coalesce under one roof. So all of those mentalities, culture of aversion to, to risk, I I think that's what kinda keeps me up at night. I can't make people have courage. I can't make people be more comfortable with what they perceive as risk, and you can't educate everybody.

Jared Semik [00:51:49]:
And I just got asked three or four days ago, what do you, you know, what do you do? I do this. And I was like, well, doesn't doesn't hydrogens explode? Well, yeah. It it combust energetically if it's in an oxidizing environment, but you can control all that. We've been using it

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:06]:
Combust energetically. I like that phrase.

Jared Semik [00:52:09]:
Yeah. I mean, you could say it detonates. But the thing is is you can control it with a nerding. You can monitor the environment and control the mixture ratios if there is sort of, you know, an oxidizer in the environment. I mean, there's so much pedigree in terms of when you look at NASA's been using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen next to each other in in the rocket industry going all the way back to to the, you know, Nazis in in in Germany when they're, you know, building all their rockets. I I mean, they've been experimenting with that. They we know how to we know how to control it. We we also have production fuel cell electric cars that use hydrogen.

Jared Semik [00:52:47]:
We know how to control it. But the problem is, unfortunately, you're fighting against some of these ideas. People are like, oh, it's gonna turn into Hindenburg or it's just gonna explode. I heard I heard it's really dangerous. I said, if you run an aircraft into the ground with jet a, it will also explode, but we control that energy and that volatility. That's the uphill battle. That's what kinda keeps me up at night is things that I can't particularly control and sort of where everybody views the possibility of of the the technology. I think that's what sort of limits us because I have to have these conversations every single day almost, you know, trying to convince people like, no.

Jared Semik [00:53:21]:
No. This is a real thing. And until you come to them with more increasingly compelling data, everybody just looks at it like it's you're you're another wannabe unicorn, Theranos, and they're like, I'm not going to spend money in that. I don't I don't want to get defrauded.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:35]:
Yeah. Well, I I I appreciate your your persistence in this and doing it within Northeast Ohio. I think it's it's really quite inspiring. And the the journey ahead is long and and difficult, but I, I am excited about about what you're building.

Jared Semik [00:53:48]:
Yeah. Me too. If I can if I can weather the storm, I think that thanks goes to my fiancee for for putting up with the the, you know, the space we've been in for a while. I think in the end, if you stick with the vision, it's that sort of that adage. What is it? The, you know, you shoot for the moon, you miss, you end up landing on the stars. It's kind of the same thing. It's like I've always been one of those, you know, shoot for the moon kinda type people. You look at things and you're like, why not?

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:10]:
Yeah. And that that's what it takes to do something this ambitious. Anything less is not, not enough.

Jared Semik [00:54:17]:
Yeah. I mean, I I % agree.

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:19]:
Well, knowing there's there's many more things we we could talk about. I will bookend us here with kind of a greenfield, what's left unsaid question in reflection on your journey thus far and and what you're building that you would like to relay. And then we'll we'll close it out with our our traditional closing question, which is for a hidden gem in Cleveland.

Jared Semik [00:54:39]:
I don't know if I could answer the question of what what has gone unsaid. I mean, there's so many details. In your personal journey,

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:45]:
in the business journey, you know, really anything that feels powerful in this moment.

Jared Semik [00:54:50]:
I don't know. I think it's I think the journey itself has just been very interesting, and I think it's it's a one thing that kinda keeps me continually inspired. A lot of things that I've I've done throughout my life, all the climbing mountains and climbing rocks and chucking myself out of planes and flying helicopters and things like that. Those are all my adventures and this is the new one. There's so many elements to it. I'm finally able to exercise the majority of the aspects of my personality. And I think that this company is a culmination of my skillset, my experience in life, my mentalities and and things like that. And it's it's I think that's what's the most interesting if I'm reflecting on the things I've learned about energy management, like personal energy management and networking and things like that.

Jared Semik [00:55:32]:
I don't know. It's just been it's been great. We're not done yet. So, I mean, there's gonna be more things that happen, and, god willing, I think we'll land on our feet.

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:42]:
Yeah. Well, one of my favorite podcasters is this guy, Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and he talks a lot about life's work and just conceptually what that is. But to me, the way I understood how he talks about it is this lifelong quest to build something for others that is an expression of who you are and the refinement of that over time. That resonates quite a lot there.

Jared Semik [00:56:06]:
Well, and I and I think that's in in a sense sort of an adjacent way of of saying what I was saying. Like, I I sometimes get a little, a little convoluted with with my explanations. I I get too far in the weeds, but I think that's a good way of explaining it, and I and I would a % agree with it, which is kinda what I was sort of saying.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:24]:
Absolutely. That's why in the mind.

Jared Semik [00:56:26]:
It's this it's this deep expression. It's spiritual in a sense. I mean, it's another huge element of of who I am, which is the reason for Eternium and the reason for the aircraft's name is the Archangel. It's like a lot of it is just this this real deep personal journey. And it it is kinda like one of those things that's like planting a tree that you might not ever see grow to its to its full height, but you do it because you're like cause I think humanity needs something that's like this. I think we need to move into these new spaces. And it's not necessarily that they need an aircraft. It's it's what this particular direction will give us, what it means for the energy economy, what it means for geopolitics.

Jared Semik [00:57:06]:
Everything in evolution takes a long time, and it's actually really cool to to be able to take the helm in one specific aspect and just run with it. No. It's kind of awesome. So That

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:18]:
is awesome. It certainly is. Well, I'll ask you then our our, traditional closing question with with that, which is pretty unrelated to everything we've talked about, but for a favorite hidden gem in Cleveland.

Jared Semik [00:57:29]:
I would have to say, favorite hidden gem. I gotta find one that's hidden because I love the I mean, I love the West Side Market and I love the the Cleveland Art Museum. I would say there's there's probably two that are my my favorites. I would say Sophie Le Grandma. They're a like a French pastery in, Cleveland Heights. They're off of Lee. My fiance and I, we we go there actually, we just went there today. They make some of the most amazing, very Parisian pastries, and they're amazing.

Jared Semik [00:57:57]:
Like, they're they're pastry chef that I think one of the cofounders of business. I'm gonna be a pastry chef, I think, in Paris. And it's here in Cleveland. And between between that and I would say Holden Arboretum, which is on the East Side

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:09]:
Oh, yeah.

Jared Semik [00:58:10]:
Are my my favorites.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:12]:
Ah, those are perfect. Well, amazing. I I mean, Jared, I just wanna thank you for taking time. Come on, share your story. And what to me is a really optimistic and positive vision for for the future. So thank you.

Jared Semik [00:58:26]:
No. Thank you. It's been fun. Hey. Hello, podcast. If if folks had anything they wanted to follow-up with

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:33]:
you about, where where would you point them?

Jared Semik [00:58:36]:
I mean, you could look up, Attorney of Aerospace. You can do a Google search. You could also do a Google search of my my name. You can find me on LinkedIn. Both I'm I'm on a bunch of, pretty much all social media, and so is Attorney of Aerospace. We also have, attorneyofaerospace.com, which is pretty much just our landing page. You can you can send questions in the contact that goes right to the contact email folder, or you can just find me on LinkedIn or you can find me on pretty much anywhere. Just ask questions through through anything.

Jared Semik [00:59:05]:
So Awesome. We're easily findable. Perfect.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:10]:
Well, thank you again, Jared. Appreciate it. 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@layoftheland.fm or find us on Twitter at pod lay of the land or @sternfa,jefe. If you or someone you know would make a good guess 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 iTunes or on your preferred podcast player.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:42]:
Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland Founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land. The Lay of the Land podcast was developed in collaboration with the Up Company LLC. At the time of this recording, unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on the show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next week.