Episode 13
DISCUSSING THE 2022 TECH RECKONING W/ JONATHAN LEHR OF WORK-BENCH
Episode Description
In episode #13 of The Big Bo $how, Big Bo (a.k.a. Jason Blumstein, CFA®) sits down with Jonathan Lehr, the Co-Founder and General Partner of NY-based Venture Capital firm Work-Bench, to discuss the state of technology post the 2022 downturn. Additional topics discussed:
How technology is being implemented to augment the human interaction experience
The importance of discipline in both the start-up technology world and creating long-term sustainable wealth
How the end of 0% interest rate policy may have aided a needed cleansing in the technology space and economy as a whole
What Miami Heat basketball can teach us about the importance of building a great culture
Hope you enjoy the $how!
Episode 13 Key Takeaways:
00:00 Introducing Jon Lehr, the CEO of NYC-based enterprise venture capital fund Workbench.
06:06 Taking a humanizing look at AI technology and its impacts on the everyday.
10:43 Is AI designed to replace humans or aid humans?
13:58 The residual effects from 2022’s Tech Wreck and reasons tech stock evaluations may focus more on fundamentals moving forward.
21:34 How is VC investing changing as interest rates rise and money is no longer “free?”
26:16 Wrapping up the episode with shared loves — food and the Miami Heat.
Episode Transcript
And welcome to episode 13, lucky 13 of The Big Bo $how. I’m Big Bo also known as Jason Blumstein, the CEO and founder of Julius Wealth Advisors. We have a great show for you here today. And by the end of the show, you'll learn about what the Miami Heat, cookies and cream ice cream, and being boring all have in common. So sit back, relax and enjoy lucky episode 13 of The Big Bo $how.
-
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
All right, let's get into Episode 13. AFriday the 13th Big Bo $how. I'm very excited. For today's episode, we have Jonathan Lehr, co-founder and general partner of Workbench, an enterprise technology VC firm in New York City. I thought John would be a great person to bring onto the show at the end of the year, after a rough year in technology in 2022. So without further ado, Jonathan Lehr, give me a little introduction of you and Workbench and welcome to the show.
Jon Lehr
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Jason, really looking forward to it today. So hi, everyone. I'm John Lehr, co-founder of Workbench, we’re a nine year old enterprise VC fund based in New York City, we focus on leading seed rounds. And what we love to do is really nerd out on all things go to market, that's an area where based on our background, our past lives and corporate IT for many of us on the team, were able to really help the startups that we work with in a differentiated way to get their go to market going land big customers and even think through their sales strategy.
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
All right, awesome. So why don't you nerd out a little bit more, John, and tell me about your entrepreneurial journey starting Workbench, and lessons you learned along the way?
Jon Lehr
For sure. So we really tell our founders when we're working with them that compared to many other VCs, we really have more empathy. Me and my co-founder, Jess, we launched Workbench, at this point, almost 10 years ago. July is gonna be our big 10 year anniversary, which we are looking forward to. And, you know, back when Jess and I made an early bet on New York in 2013, being a huge tech hub, specifically for enterprise that really wasn't a known thing, but based on both of our past lives, working at large corporations, so just worked at Cisco Systems, helping with their Agile Software transformation. And for me, I was at Morgan, Morgan Stanley, but not as a banker. I was actually on the IT side of the house, in a really interesting role called the Office of the CIO. That was the team. And basically, we were tasked at the tail end of the financial crisis with figuring out how to drive new efficiencies, cut costs, enable new capabilities, but do so really at a fraction of the budget that we were spending historically. And to give some context, Morgan Stanley made a $4 billion IT budget at the time. And there were cost pressures out the wazoo to spend less on vendors, obviously, reducing headcount. So it was a really interesting time for me personally, because you were at this interesting paradigm shift where the IBM's the EMC is the Cisco's where we spent hundreds of millions of dollars with them, their capabilities, were not keeping up with the new environment, which was creeping up which back then, before all this AI hype, it was the beginning of big data, the early innings of cloud new security paradigm. So what we did is we actually turn to the startup community, which back then was predominantly in Silicon Valley and met with those startups met with leading venture capital firms like the sequoias excels the trees into the world to figure out which of those startups could actually help us internally to again, drive new capabilities, cut costs, etc. And doing that day in and day out for several years. Not only did I learn, really, enterprise technology up and down the tech stack, but I would argue more importantly, learned customer empathy. How do startups navigate selling to in close deals with Fortune 500 companies and it's that background that really helped shape the strategy that Justin I have at Workbench which is really inverting the VC model. So we made this early bet on New York and we made a bet on inverting VC. Whereas most Silicon Valley firms would hang out in the Google or the Twitter cafeteria looking for a couple kids, frankly, that were building cool tech to fund them and then lobby to the big banks. What I saw firsthand is that far too often was a square peg in a round hole. So what we set out to do in Workbench in 2013, and we still do today is key to our strategy is actually starting with the pain point. In enterprise software, there's a real business pain point. There's priorities, there's budgets that go. So what we tried to do is map out where the biggest pain points are over the next 12 to 18 months where we could find startups to solve those challenges and build a firm on that strategy. What's really what feels really good is, you know, nine years and just in, I can feel confident that New York is thriving, that this strategy is working. And you know, we've had the very fortunate opportunity to work with incredible founders, and really help make those positive inflection points early in their go to market journeys. But it was definitely not a sure thing. And there's been, you know, a lot of growth along the way. So all those ups and downs have definitely made for an incredible experience that we wouldn't trade for anything in the world.
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
Awesome, awesome. So you said a few things there. That resonated with me, one of them. And what I think is unique about you and Workbench and just knowing you for a few years now, is you're kind of like a startup of startups, if you will, meaning like when you talk about inverting the VC model, enterprise tech, it's not really like sexy, like a lot of people in the IT world or technology world always are trying to be sexy, and to the moon and all that nonsense, in my opinion. But you try to change the game in a way. And that's also, you know, the parallel to what I'm trying to do at Julius is that what you said was that you saw people were trying to put a square peg in a round hole. And that's something that I noticed within just the financial services industry. Yep, we're working at major, you know, investment managers and banks and all that major Wall Street firms date, in my opinion, we're doing the same thing. Like they just push investments that people think, Oh, if you're the best investor in the world, like that's all you are. But when you actually talk to people, most people don't even know the difference between a Roth IRA or a Roth 401K and traditional simple things like how to finance their home. So they take out a HELOC. So people just needed advice, but Wall Street just pushed investments. So that's what that's one of the things that I did in China startup Julius Wealth Advisors. So within that whole vein, a whole realm. Talk to me a little bit about letting you nerd out for a little bit. I might not understand most of the stuff you're talking about. But can you just educate me and the audience a little bit about what AI is, and enterprise tech and machine learning? Because that's always been like huge buzzwords. So I'm just trying to see what the reality is, from someone that lives this every single day?
Jon Lehr
Yeah, I'll actually take it in maybe a different way, which is just humanizing a bit. So anyone who had to travel this week may have unfortunately been hit by, you know, planes being unable to run due to the FAA systems having an issue. And at the end of the day, that's a perfect example of enterprise technology impacting the real world. That likely is software running on a mainframe that probably had to get patched or updated or may have had an issue and it takes down a whole system, right? What a lot of the companies that we're working with, when you think about cloud, when you think about scalability and resilience, they're trying to help companies take legacy old applications that probably have tons of cobwebs on them in a digital sense. And the person that built it and maintained it may have left the firm like 20 years ago. You don't know who the hell that turns we might have been like Milton in the basement, the red stapler from the office phase, right. So as you hear things like modernizing applications, it's really about moving them to the cloud and rewriting them so that there's more resiliency baked in, right? It gets a surge of users in an old school way, it may break the system and it's down. When you think about being able to use the cloud, right? There's elasticity where you can scale up and scale down. When you think about things like AI and you know, ChatGPT is all over the news. It's really about how do you just understand anything from a conversation or just log data that may be repeated usage around for something and at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is just use statistical analysis to either fully automate something, or aid someone in doing it. So if you think about call centers, and chatbots, that's a great use case where behind the scenes, who cares what kind of AI or natural language processing they're using? What you want to know is, if you call Verizon or a spectrum or something, do they know who you are? You say you are right, can they validate it? So from a security perspective, they make sure it's you and then it's not someone trying to steal your number or your cable right? Number two, when you call them with a repeat issue? Do they have the right database Is and matching internally to know Jason is associated with this number and not ask you the same questions every time they train three to 10 Different people to fix the issue. And for the actual calls to support the person themselves, can they be armed with the right information based on the whole corpus of knowledge that they have? They're constantly as a company, remediating their own support issues, how can they learn from them to either automate some of those interactions know immediately what you might be calling about, have their own diagnostics know, hey, there's an outage in your area, or you've been doing X, Y, and Z, historically, people like you are likely to upgrade to this plan. So both from a big business efficiency, and in many cases, making the consumer experience better. That's where a lot of this different technology comes into play.
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
Got it, you said something that's very powerful and relevant to my industry, as well, as you said that technology is used to aid people. And I know, within like financial services, and this has been a debate mainly among people within the industry, I don't know, to the end client, where they say, Oh, well, technology is going to replace people and replace people within the financial services industry. And I'm always just like, well, doubtful, because there's nothing that can replace a relationship and you really trust a machine or technology to have an if you have a nuanced question within your financial life, like how can they really understand you? Because I always tell people the number one answer in finances typically, it depends, because yeah, because what's right for Jonathan Lair is different than Jason Blumstein different than Big Bo different than whomever right? Sometimes there are different people. So what is your take on that? Like, what is your take on it? You know, everyone talks about AI and machine learning and replacing people, but you use the word aiding people, which is kind of how I see it, too. Yeah,
Jon Lehr
I would say that for most circumstances, you just hit the nail on the head that it's about augmenting. And it's about where do you spend time with work to drive higher value activities. So in some instances, it is about true automation, and maybe removing the human component. So we have an investment in a company alchemy, that helps a lot of financial services firms with Client Onboarding, with settlement. And for that, it's really about ingesting tons of different document types, whether it's PDF docs, other things, and being able to pull out specific data at scale. So you could process millions of documents, and not outsource that to you know, offshore somewhere and have people literally clicking manually, right. And that's an immense cost savings. But when you think about your use case, which I think is actually more prevalent, which is if you're dealing with client interactions, if you're you know, whether it's a high value, knowledge worker, whether it is back to my call center support person, being able to get the right information at the right time and automate certain of the lower level tasks, lets you then spend time actually doing the higher value stuff, whether that's learning more about the uniqueness of that particular client's needs, versus at a bigger firm right to your comment before her the square peg in a round hole, just trying to shove the same thing in everyone. So you can actually spend more time with them in a higher value way. It could also be around your own research and just learning more for yourself, and being able to spend time just differently. So a lot of what we focus on actually is about the unlocking to use human in the loop to say hey, here's aiding your job or we're going to automate some of the copy and paste work some of the document ingestion stuff, arm you with information to do new analyses that couldn't even been done before. And that's what gets really exciting.
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
No, I agree. And I think we're on the same page on that. So let's get into maybe a tougher topic here. So as I said earlier, 2022. And as everybody knows, you had a large blow up in many technology companies or companies that people thought were going to the moon, which then reality struck in.
Jon Lehr
Luckily, we don't touch crypto at all.
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
So, you know, a lot of be, you know, shut to John, earlier before the show was like, the reason I like John a lot is because in the technology world, he's very realistic. I always tend to think of myself as a logical person. Some people might say, Oh, well, you're a pessimist. Or I said, Well, actually, I'm just a realist. And I think what happened last year is more realistic. So can you talk to me about sort of this wake up call within the technology industry and what's going on right now, based on from last year, the tech wreck that took place and some of the lessons that you learned and key insights that you see going on in the current environment?
Jon Lehr
For sure. So that's definitely a loaded question. If I start with us, I'm honestly super grateful that there's a lot of unfortunately, of course, you know, companies that are shutting down a very different funding financing world as you point out, money is not so to speak free anymore. And its people are measured not growth at all costs, but very much more so an efficient growth and the metrics you do so used to do so. I think from our Workbench perspective, something I'm really proud of ourselves on is we've been even keeled discipline the whole way through. So during peak bubble times, we were deploying the same pacing the same capital at the same ownership targets. were many other firms that I deal with said, oh, forget valuations, it'll just be marked up anyway, it'll be bigger but the world into it, though, yeah, they'll grow into it, or there's some other guy down the road, that's going to just invest at a higher price, it doesn't matter for us, we've always been focused on actually building sustainable businesses and getting those exits for our LPs, our limited partners who are invested. So for us whether it was the scary times of 22, or the boom times 21, we've actually been consistent in our openings. Appreciate it. Now, on the macro level, it's actually I would view it as really a healthy cleansing.
Again, I want to be sensitive, like it sucks that many people are losing jobs, that many people, the thing that sucks the most is I think many employees of startups, especially people that have been at a company many years that saw their valuations probably get out of hand, which is out of their control, because of their founders, maybe poor decisions, or their investors hyping it and pointing them in the wrong direction, may have broken cap tables, which means they've worked for years, and their options may not be valuable anymore. So that really sucks. But at a macro level, with money not just raining from the sky, it means that I think people are going to focus on fundamentals again, especially in enterprise technology, again, where there are more clear pain points, then crypto, which I still don't understand, and we haven't touched. And that was definitely more of, in my opinion, like a tulip bubble, especially with things like NF T's and just, you know, the small meme coins and whatnot, which was, I think, our view was always like, if you want to gamble, go to Vegas, don't do that in investing.
But, you know, for things like consumer tech, or health care, there was just money for anything. So almost anyone that had an idea or the right background, hey, I was an engineer at Facebook, or Google or I left Airbnb doing this data thing. There was just money that bigger firms, I think they were more an asset gathering mode. So they were just quick to deploy it and then raise more funds so that they could get the management fees without focusing on the long term. And the speed at which things really started moving in a time of COVID, where I think there was an initial pause of like, oh crap, can we actually diligence people over zoom to very shortly thereafter, oh, not only can we do that, but we're actually willing to do more meetings with less travel and put bigger checks in because it's some new digital age of COVID. I think it just led to a lot of bad behavior. And as a firm that's never played really the hype game, we're very much looking at this as a very net positive for the ecosystem, because there will be companies that get started tackling big problems. And as they scale, at seed a B, remember a lot of it at the end of the day is the people. And there it was very hard to find talent the last few years because those other people are either going to the Googles, the big Facebook's and whatnot, getting paid megabucks, or they're launching their own copycats of this startup themselves, maybe with a different idea, or maybe just, you know, trying to capture some of that market, creating a lot of cost pressure on their pricing. And basically, with fewer copycats, more focused and the best talent going to the right opportunities, we will see, you know, companies be able to break out.
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's great. And a couple of things. You said early on that that really resonated with me and a lot of things that I've talked about with people and clients and prospective clients, you use the word disciplined, and sustainable. So I always tell people, like creating wealth in this country is typically not that hard. But most people don't do it. Because all you really need is time and a whole bunch of discipline. And most people lack discipline, right? That's the
Jon Lehr
key, you just hit the nail on the head, people are impatient. The biggest thing I'd characterize the last couple of years from the startup side is people wanted to skip steps. You know, there's no shortcuts in life. There's no shortcuts and building wealth. People wanted to take their companies from making up numbers, but from 10 to 100 to a billion dollar valuations and just a couple of hops versus building the business sustainably raising capital with the right milestones and a risk adjusted way. Those people that did the risk adjusted way are actually fine in this environment. Yeah, the ones that leapfrog too much are now sitting on an overload company with a potentially broken cap table. So what you're saying is that the parallels are so true, because there're no shortcuts?
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
Yeah. No, that's funny when you when you started saying that, I started thinking about an image when I was talking with with someone the other day, and I was showing them a chart of stuff that they were invested in versus if you just focused in on investing in the most profitable businesses, which is, which is my investment philosophy here at choice Wealth Advisors. And it was funny, I've seen this multiple times for various for all different people that have come to me recently 2020 Like during a crisis or post pandemic, sorry, there's their portfolios were just like, skyrocketing, you know, quote, unquote, to the moon again, which I've already said multiple times, right, which which is comical to me. And then you see, like, okay, just the philosophy of investing in the most profitable businesses. Well, it looks kinda like though, like, well, Well, you're, you're an idiot, like, why are you doing this? And like, you know, last year I'm up 160%, you're up 60 or whatever, making up numbers. And then you see, well, now after like today today Well, now it's actually outperforming by like 30%.
Jon Lehr
Is this the calculus Warren Buffett slide? If not, I gotta send it's exactly the same way that you would invest in her tech ETF. And then straight down. And Buffett consistently, right comparing is crushing it?
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
Yeah, yeah. And everybody, like, I remember talking to someone a couple years ago, they're just like, oh, how can you believe in, you know, Buffett and Munger, they're just like old white dudes, like, what do they know? And then there's like, I don't know, like, they've been doing the same thing for like, six years, it's work to like, why would you change? Like, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And I think you said that earlier. Right. So things to add on that topic.
Jon Lehr
I think the key is having a strategy that you prove that of course, there may be small tweaks here and there given market dynamics. But if you can invest with discipline, whether it's your strategy in the public markets and other factors, whether it's us doing early stage enterprise, where clearly there's no profitable businesses, we tried to be thesis oriented, you know, high concentration in our portfolio. I think if you can do that, and then prove it works. Stick with it. And don't try to be something that you're not,
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
no, I tell people all the time, boring is beautiful, right? Like, no, yeah, you know, boring is beautiful. That's how I got married. And my beautiful wife, I was like, I'm just boring. Beautiful. So alright, so we talked about this a little bit, talked a little bit more about in my opinion, I wrote a piece last quarter, like a quarterly letter. And I called it like, this isn't the end, but the end of an era, right? Because a lot of people thought like, like always, oh, the sky is falling, the world's falling apart. And we're going into a deep, dark recession. And I'm just like, well, that doesn't seem to be the end. Like in life, there's really only one time when it's going to be the end. And like, who cares? Because it's the end, right? But really, it's the end of an era, right? For the past decade, plus those who lived in a literally a 0% interest rate environment, there's a small time period after, like around 2018 or 2016-17, where they try to raise interest rates and then slash them to zero. So essentially 0% For the past decade plus, and essentially money has been free, which in my opinion, is what has propelled a lot of these technology companies or these quote unquote, growth oriented companies. What are you seeing in this environment? And then what are your thoughts on if you think the environment will now change, especially in the startup world, and the VC world where now money is no longer free?
Jon Lehr
Yeah. So from our perspective, right, specific to Vc, I think it is, as you're saying, the end of an era of sorts. And honestly, I'm excited for the next cycle, every factor, right there is capital available for the right businesses. And you know, right now, especially at seed, we're investing in things that are going to be scaling for years to come for us to deploy right now in the earliest stages of company's life targeting these big problems, whether it's helping people like this FAA airline issue, whether it's helping big banks or big pharma companies modernize continue to modernize their infrastructures, and a whole slew of other opportunities. The pain points continue to be there. And startups continue to offer efficient ways versus larger providers. So for us, again, since day one, nine years ago, that has not changed. And the way that we help companies is going to be the same. Now, when you think about Series A, B, C, down the road, I actually think it's going to force entrepreneurs to be more focused as they build each step of the way. And to my comment before around risk adjusted milestones, they're not going to try to raise $50 million at the, you know, series A or B, it'll be more back to where it was maybe five, seven years ago. And I think by focusing, especially as a startup, that is your secret weapon, and when money sloshes around, it's actually rather hard, because there's more people you can hire, there's more initiatives you could pursue at once. But that's the biggest secret weapon against a bigger company is the ability to be very focused on execution and overtime and build that mode into something bigger. And you know, from a macro level, I think, with money not being free, as you point out, I think it's just going to take a lot of gambling out of the ecosystem where everyone thought they were genius. Everyone was just trading away in crypto in meme stocks. I mean, it got to a point where it's, you know, a couple years ago is just too much, and letting people be focused on bait back to basics. That's really what it is. Nothing, ultimately, has changed if you pull out these last couple of years, and I'm personally excited as someone who doesn't play hyper momentum and tries to just gamble constantly. I think it's going to be a great time to be investing.
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
Yeah, I agree. I agree with that sentiment, and I get excited just like when I was looking at that chart the other day. Like, all the basics of just focusing on the most profitable business isn't letting them do the work for you. Like you said that someone might just last year they're like, the heck's wrong with you. Now people are like, Oh, maybe that philosophy isn't that bad overall, it's better to get wealthy, for you said sustainably over the long term, then try to hit a quick fix, which, as you said is no nothing in life comes easy. There's no quick fixes in life whatsoever. So let's, let's get a little bit shift out of this talk about some some fun stuff. Right. So John, as you might have witnessed, as you've been listening, John and I are very similar people. I've met John like three years ago on just like, we actually grew up in South Florida, both but we didn't know each other until we, until I moved to moved up here. And we live in the same neighborhood. And I always tell people that outside of family, there's three things that I really love in life, and I'm passionate about: food , football and finance. And I feel like John is very similar except football. And so I'll substitute football for basketball. Yep. So let's talk about that. We already talked about finance, and you got to nerd out about your financial and technology stuff. And I understood maybe 10% of that. So let's go into food. talk
Jon Lehr
the same language here. Yeah,
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
So let's talk about food here. Talk to me about your favorite food and why.
Jon Lehr
So I'll get into my favorite food in a minute. But I will say for the audience, we're gonna have to come back to this. Jason and I are due for an all you can eat sushi off. It has not happened yet. But in a future episode, after we do it, he will announce the winner and I'm gonna give him a good run for his money. I think he's gonna he doesn't know what he's up against. But in terms of favorite food, hands down, it's ice cream. Ever since I was a little kid, I'd go to my grandparents for dinner. And my grandma would always have good ice cream for dessert with me. Always ice cream cakes as a kid for birthdays whenever I could. Obviously, it's not even a question. And in college, I would play like hours of ball a day and then eat a pint or two of ice cream, which in hindsight, was not healthy. So that is definitely my guilty pleasure. So today,
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
Give me specifics. What's your favorite ice cream and why?
Jon Lehr
So cookie dough, but sometimes mixed with Oreos on top or cookies and cream together. So you've got to get the combo of the different cookie dough.
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
So you got the chocolate chip cookie dough with Oreo cookie and neck cream on top. Very good. I like that one. I like that. So my favorite food I don't. I don't really have a favorite. I kind of like all foods, but I'm definitely a big fan of cookies and cream ice cream. Obviously people I've talked to about smoked briskets. I think John had my smoked brisket. It's better than he even says it's incredible. Appreciate that. So all right, perfect. So now let's move into my favorite sport. We'll play basketball for you. So John is a huge Miami Heat fan. I'm a real one, not a bandwagon right. So he's a real one. He's pretty, he's been a fan since they came about when they came about, like, 88 I think? I remember one of my good friends had a poster above his head above his bed that had like 88 like the eight eight on the school board that I remember like that they started in 88. So you're a big Miami Heat fan wire. Why are you so passionate about that team? And tell me a little bit about that team that makes you that resonates with you for you to be such a passionate fan?
Jon Lehr
Yeah, so honestly, it goes beyond hometown pride, which of course I have and I mean just the best memories growing up watching games with my dad and brother during the lens of morning Tim Hardaway unfortunately, those frickin Knicks causes a lot of trouble but
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
It taught me how to use the sky hook. So remember this guy
Jon Lehr
We've played against each other at the ball on the weekend sometimes. Yeah. But really it is the relentless work ethic and grit. Yeah, that's it. He's always been the underdog putting aside the big three or which was fun, but definitely not an underdog Ben. But if you think back to, you know, the late 90s, early 2000s Even now we're in this rebuilding mode. When the heat made it to the finals in the bubble a couple years ago and against the Lakers. We didn't have crazy all stars. I forget if even if our players were on, maybe we had one on an all star game that year, but people come to the heat and they buy into a culture that even if people thought they were in shape before every interview after joining the heat is holy crap. I didn't realize what hard work what conditioning truly was until I went into this place with Riley and SPCO and all the great training staff that they have so the way that they work the hell out of them teach them grit get up when you're knocked down especially D Wade style and and really just play as a team. That's how you beat the superstars and, you know, last year hurt so much when Butler missed that three against the Celtics. But I'm an internal optimist with the heathen. And you know, it's been a bumpy start to this this season, especially with injuries, but our few games over 500 had some good wins this
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
week and three games over 500. Yeah. Last night, you actually loaded the stats. So I was counting. So you check exactly. John. And I joke that I love the Miami Heat as well, for many of the very pretty much exact same reasons that John knows the determination, the grit to discipline. You never can count them out. But I only told John like I was he's like, oh, shoot, he came last night. And I'm like, was it the second round of the NBA Playoffs? If not, then I haven't. I haven't watched because that's when I got into the NBA. I am outside of the heat or opposite of the heat with the NBA. Like, I just think it's absurd that you can have five teams, multiple teams that finish under 500, which are below mediocre and still make the playoffs. To me. That's absurd. So that's why I don't really follow it until the second round of the of the that's
Jon Lehr
a fair point about the playoffs, but you're missing the art of the game plays to get done.
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
That's true. They order the game on, I see that they order the game from the second round of the playoffs. So all right, John, well, that's been great. Really appreciate you coming on. It's been a long time coming. And a lot of the insights that you shared were phenomenal. If I can wrap up and take away a few things from this conversation. I think we've seen what John described as a club as a healthy cleansing of the ecosystem that took place over the past year from the low interest rate environment the past decade plus within the technology sector and in probably the economy as a whole. Boring is beautiful. Alright, I think John talked about that as well. If you've met John and I were, you know, especially John, for a technology person, this isn't an insult as a major compliment. You're definitely boring, which is great discipline, gotta have discipline, whether it's in technology, whether it's in creating sustainable wealth, many people will always try to look for that quick fix. They'll talk about their successes. They won't talk about their failures, people that are disciplined, just go to work every single day with the grit determination, like the Miami Heat, as we talked about in the final is culture, the culture of your company, whether it's the Miami Heat and basketball, what kind of culture are you trying to develop in your life and in your world and in your ecosystem? So with that, John, I really appreciate you coming on.
Jon Lehr
It was a blast. Thanks
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
for having me. Time to go get our tuna subs that we've talked about for a while. Do you follow any final words?
Jon Lehr
This was a blast and everything you said boring is beautiful. Don't skip steps.
Jason Blumstein, CFA®
All right, fantastic. All right. So till next time on The Big Bo $how. Remember, always live a life of integrity. Live a life of knowledge, gaining as much knowledge as you can. And always live a life that you're passionate about. Until next time, all the best. Thank you for tuning into The Big Bo $how.
Disclosure:
The content is developed from sources believed to be providing accurate information. The information in this podcast is not intended as tax or legal advice. Please consult legal or tax professionals for specific information regarding your individual situation. The opinions expressed and material provided are for general information, and should not be considered a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security. Julius Wealth Advisors, LLC (“JWA”) is a registered investment adviser located in Englewood, NJ. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The publication of The Big Bo $how should not be construed by any consumer or prospective client as JWA’s solicitation or attempt to effect transactions in securities, or the rendering of personalized investment advice over the Internet. A copy of JWA’s current written disclosure statement as set forth on Form ADV, discussing JWA’s business operations, services, and fees is available from JWA upon written request. JWA does not make any representations as to the accuracy, timeliness, suitability, or completeness of any information prepared by any unaffiliated third party, whether linked to or incorporated herein. All such information is provided solely for convenience purposes only and all users thereof should be guided accordingly. JWA is neither your attorneys nor your accountants and no portion of this podcast should be interpreted by you as legal, accounting, or tax advice. We recommend that you seek the advice of a qualified attorney and accountant