#240 Matt Kalina (TandemStride) — The Business of Trauma Recovery

Matt Kalina [00:00:00]:
Of aimlessly wandering, trying to figure out what's next after your life changes or someone close to you's life changes. And I realized there was nobody really doing anything there. So I took my decade of startup experience and started to think about how can technology be applied to a problem space that my family had been living for a decade and really started to explore that about 2 years ago, which is when I started Tandem Stride.

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 Matt Collina. Matt is the founder and CEO of TandemStride, a healthcare marketplace that connects trauma survivors with peers, care partners, and providers to support long-term recovery. Inspired by his family's firsthand experience with traumatic injury, Matt is dedicated to building solutions that close the gap between emergency care and ongoing support, and founded TandemStride here in Cleveland back in 2023 towards that end. Under his leadership, TandemStride has raised over $5 million to realize this vision of a more connected and compassionate model of recovery. In our conversation, Matt and I explore the often overlooked realities of life after traumatic injury, why peer support is such a powerful layer of care, how his family adapted to his brother's traumatic loss of both of his legs in 2020 and have come together through TandemStride to building the support platform they wish had existed. By meeting people in moments of real crisis and not months later. We also talk about Matt's evolution as a leader, his Ohio go-to-market strategy, the power of incentives, the business of trauma itself, working with his family within the company, empathy, and coming into your life's work.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:43]:
Matt is an inspiring entrepreneur and exudes passion for what he's building here in the spirit of that life's work concept. So please enjoy this awesome conversation with Matt Kalina. Lay of the Land is brought to you and is proudly sponsored by Serity Partners. As a wealth management firm, Serity Partners shares Lay of the Land's same dedication to serving local business owners, and the Serity Partners Cleveland team understands the challenges that entrepreneurs and founders face here in Cleveland, Northeast Ohio, and beyond. Wealth comes with complexity and increased demands on time and resources. It is easy to become overwhelmed. Serity Partners clients benefit from a unified team of local specialists who coordinate across both business and personal needs. With Serity Partners' commitment to transparency and putting clients' needs first, complexity can become clarity.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:32]:
To learn more, please visit seritypartners.com or call 216-464-6266 today. Serity Partners, proud to be recognized as one of the top financial advisory firms in the country. Before we get into your story, I just wanted to share at a high level why what you're building really resonates with me. I thought that could be a fun place to start. So I grew up in a family where my dad has been in a wheelchair from the time I was a kid and my mom, his caretaker and really his advocate. And so I remember and today see how clearly, you know, how foreign that reality was and is to so many people and how hard it is for people to really like empathize with what the day-to-day looks like, both for my dad and for my mom. And yet the, I would say, most meaningful support that they ever receive comes from other people that have lived something similar, other folks with MS or comparable diseases for my dad, and really other spouses and caregivers for my mom. And so this idea behind Tandem Stride and what you're building of community and people who have kind of walked a similar path just deeply resonates.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:45]:
And so I just wanted to kind of start off with an appreciation for what you're doing, because I think that's, I don't know why it often takes experiencing it before you can kind of like fully grasp the other people's situation. But I'm glad that it's at least in a person with the agency and entrepreneurial spirit to try and like make, make a better situation out of it.

Matt Kalina [00:04:06]:
Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. I mean, I feel like in many cases it can be super isolating. And when you find that community, it's like your eyes are opened because that you don't have to figure out how you like associate that with someone else's lived experience, which might be totally differently. I didn't know that. I appreciate you sharing that background and makes a lot of sense.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:27]:
Totally. I mean, with that in mind, I'd love if, if you could kind of just take us through the, the you beginning, know, when you think about Tandem Stride, you know, where it comes from, both through your own kind of lived experience and also simultaneously when you reflect where your interest in entrepreneurship generally you feel comes from?

Matt Kalina [00:04:46]:
Yeah, I think I never like thought about being an entrepreneur or even focusing on this injury care. I think the reality of like the situation was, you know, I, when I was an undergrad, when my brother's accident happened, I actually worked for the State House of Representatives in Ohio. I worked for Speaker Batchelder and I didn't know anything about venture-backed startups or tech companies or anything like that. I thought I wanted to be a lobbyist and like, I don't know, change the world for better or for worse by representing interests that were aligned with me. And I actually had a lot of friends that volunteered with JobsOhio when that got started. And when my brother's accident happened, it was a completely different, like a new experience. I'd never been through anything like that. No one I knew had anything like materially changed their life in the way that that sort of shook my family to its core.

Matt Kalina [00:05:45]:
So like there's one side that is like this experience that we went through and the bond and what we learned through that experience. But applying that in like an entrepreneurial capacity took a while for me to like draw that correlation. But when I was working at the state house, I had friends that were working for JobsOhio. I started like Googling some of these people and Mark Kwame was one of those. And I joined a company a few years after my brother's accident because I was frustrated with healthcare and the challenges my family was going through, seeing my brother like literally have his legs cut out from under him. But it felt like the system wasn't designed to help him be successful. And one of those companies was, it was called CrossChecks at the time. It was based in Columbus and it was a small group of people looking to make a difference in healthcare.

Matt Kalina [00:06:33]:
And I didn't know much about it, but I had a friend who was a designer there, a graphic designer. Who helped build out some of the product design stuff. And I was like, you know what, I'm at a stage in my life where maybe I can jump into this thing I know nothing about, which was venture-backed startups, and try to make a difference. I was part of that organization for almost 8 and a half years, and that was my first, like, exposure to the startup world or tech scene. And it was really eye-opening for me how if you have the right vision and mission and you want to make a big impact, it's really about pulling the right people together and going deep into a problem and not necessarily always having a solution in mind, but just wading into that problem and trying to bring attention to it and find resources and people that sympathize with the mission that you're on to build something really meaningful. And it was only like after that experience, as I was, you know, leaving with CrossChecks, which then became Olive, that I started to like reflect on my family's experience decades before my brother's situation and realized that injury, unplanned injury is a huge problem. And nobody's waded into those waters. And I thought about how my family responded to that situation and started looking for solutions or companies that I could help accelerate this mission of, you know, helping people that find themselves in that situation, oftentimes of no fault of their own, but sort of aimlessly wandering, trying to figure out what's next after your life changes or someone close to you's life changes.

Matt Kalina [00:08:05]:
And I realized there was nobody really doing anything there. So I took my decade of like startup experience and started to think about how can technology be applied to a problem space that my family had been living for a decade and really started to explore that, you know, about 2 years ago, which is when I started TandemStride.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:24]:
And when you were thinking about and navigating this problem space of unplanned injuries and all the downstream experiences that you have that come with it, I mean, I would imagine there are unfortunately, you know, an abundance of gaps of places you could have chosen to focus. How did you just going about honing in on what problems you actually wanted to solve and, and really just kind of the formative part of that for Tandemstride?

Matt Kalina [00:08:52]:
Yeah. So I think honestly, like my— I was at Crosstrek's Olive, which, which worked in hospitals, health systems, insurance companies. And I really became really aware of that space. Like, what do hospitals care about? What do payers, health plans, and insurance companies care about. And even at one point there, we started a or Medicaid a managed care company while I was there. And that's really where I think the connection and applying the use of technology to improve the care journey and like the economics of care and outcomes really kind of the light bulb went off for me. In managed care, a lot of times what happens is you have responsibility for a large population or a segment of the population. And your job is to try to think about delivering solutions to them that overall improve their quality of life, improve outcomes.

Matt Kalina [00:09:40]:
And if you do that, it reduces the expensive strain on the system for people using it the way that it's not intended. And I applied that to like my family's experience. And like, at first my thought, you know, when you think about injury care, you know, my brother was in a horrible accident and lost both of his legs when he was 23. And when we start talking about trauma and injury care, most people I talk to are like, oh, You must like work with the VA or is it veterans mostly? And it must be like really, really bad accidents. But as I started to like lean into this and think about it more, not only reflecting on my family's experience, but other people's experiences, I realized that this is a massive problem. You know, it's the number one leading cause of death for people under the age of 50, 140 million people every year globally. Have a temporary or permanent disability because of some planned injury event. And when I thought about, you know, my interactions with hospitals and health systems and insurance companies at Olive, I realized like the incentives are so misaligned, especially in injury care.

Matt Kalina [00:10:44]:
There's so much alignment around, you know, helping patients with chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension. There's like systems of care that we're really looking to like improve and then increase access to. But in injury care, the incentives are so backwards because it's unplanned. Like, no doctor can put a stethoscope on your chest and say, hey, you're going to get in a car accident in a few weeks. It's just impossible, really hard to get ahead of the prevention side of it or the early detection. And so what happens since it's in that weird gap, it relies solely on emergency care. You get in a motor vehicle crash, or in my brother's situation, he was run over by a train. You get taken to the hospital and a team of strangers, they don't, they don't call your doctor.

Matt Kalina [00:11:28]:
It's just the doctors that are on call. And their primary objective is to make sure that you don't die. And then the second primary objective for an emergency department or a trauma program is throughput, getting people out of that system because they've got more ambulances and helicopters coming in. So what I realized was like, there's this situation that happens a lot, a ton. Millions of people, tens of millions of people every year find themselves in this circumstance and the incentives of the people that sort of quarterback the early innings of this care journey, their incentives are to like make sure the person doesn't die and then get them out of here as soon as possible and try to avoid infection and reasons that they would come back. And there was no like net that caught people, like no emergency department in the US calls a patient a week or two after and says, hey, how are you doing after we saved your life? Most, most trauma survivors don't even know who their surgeon was and may never actually even meet that person. So it was really thinking about my view on like injury care is one, it's, it's massive. It is the most underdeveloped sector of modern healthcare, which I think is a, is a fertile ground for building something brand new from the ground up.

Matt Kalina [00:12:38]:
We don't have to deal with like, this is the way it's always been done or entrenched workflows. We just, we just have a gap. And I think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity, so. The first thing we decided to do was like, okay, what's like a basic ubiquitous thing? If you get in a car accident, you know, my brother lost his legs. Like I never knew anyone that lost their legs. The first thing that we need to do is like bring people that had the experience to, to people that are newly experiencing it. So we can close the gap between like all those tribal knowledge and lessons learned. And so we started with peer support.

Matt Kalina [00:13:11]:
So we would go and get patients like my brother who were 5, 10, 15 years from some sort of disruptive injury event and connect them with people that were newly injured. And we just started listening and understanding where the gaps were, because there was not a system to look at to try to improve. It just didn't exist. So we had to go from the lived experience of anyone who's gone through it and said, you know, what's your biggest challenge right now? That's one thing that we ask every patient that comes into our platform. What's the biggest challenge that you're facing that you could use some support on?. And from there, we've started to build out an infrastructure and a platform that helps people navigate that. And we can start anticipating the needs of people coming into the platform because we've had thousands of individuals that have gone before them at this point.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:54]:
What do you hear when you kind of go through that listening exercise?

Matt Kalina [00:13:58]:
Yeah, well, you know, at first, like one of the things we did is we worked with a lot of the hospitals and the trauma centers because we figured, hey, they kind of know, they take care of these people and they should know what is going to happen next. And what we saw all the time when we went to the hospitals was, you know, encouraging the patient for certain medications they need, things to reduce infection, wound care, or physical therapy, occupational therapy, and rehab. When we started asking the patients or the individuals going through it, that was the last thing on their mind. They were thinking about, how am I going to get my kids to daycare? Will I ever be able to work again? I've been in the hospital for 2 weeks. I'm behind on my utilities. And I can't work. Will I be able to pay rent? So, it was all of these life circumstances that come into focus and they came into focus super fast because nobody was setting up and preparing to go into surgery and thinking about the time they needed off of work or who was going to coordinate care with their kids. They may have been on the way home from work when this happened and immediately, abruptly, even, you know, dinner on the table that night has changed.

Matt Kalina [00:14:58]:
So, what we realized was that we created a space for people to like raise their hand and signal for like, hey, it's great and all, you want me to go to physical therapy and you want me to take these medications and worry about this stuff, but like, I've got to get back to like getting my life in order. And so it's really about like helping people address the crisis that they're dealing with. And only once you do that, can you start to help them work through and process what happened, either that's from a psychosocial perspective or behavioral health perspective. And then once you get through that, then you can start to think about quality of life improvement and helping people navigate functional recovery, return to work, and those sorts of things. So the reality is it's all the stuff that you'd think about, like if your life stopped immediately, like, you know, hey, I was supposed to submit that assignment or do that thing at work. And I have not been able to do that because everything materially got disrupted. And then you start to really figure out, How am I going to feed myself? You know, what am I going to do? There's not a doctor or a nurse a call button away anymore. I've got to figure this out for myself.

Matt Kalina [00:16:01]:
And that's really where we start to build in a layer of trust and support and helping people get connected with things like rent assistance programs, utility payment programs, just to give them a place to like pause things and get control. And only once you do that, can you start to help them think about how they get reintegrated back into the care ecosystem and all the stuff that they're doctor and nurses were telling them to do. But half the time that stuff falls on deaf ears because that patient's sitting there racing through their mind on like, what am I going to do when I get out of here? It's not anything that this doctor's saying, because I've got to figure out, I'm going to have this conversation with my kids. What am I going to do for work? And like the life aspects of it, less of the care aspects of things.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:42]:
So that might be a great place just to introduce what TandemStride is and how, you know, you thought about trying to fill that gap. I mean, again, I think it's, I think your framing of it in contrast to trying to ameliorate a status quo in healthcare is, is pretty unique. 'Cause often there's, there is an entrenched way it's been done, but if, if you have like a greenfield opportunity and you get to be a little more creative with it, what would that understand? Like how, how— Absolutely.

Matt Kalina [00:17:08]:
I mean, like it's, it's been a really cool and rewarding experience. One, I, I think the first thought process was we built a, a mobile app that would allow a patient while they're in the hospital or shortly thereafter to download, create a profile, and get matched with somebody that's been through something similar to them. Because I felt like when, when my brother went through this, I was like frantically Google searching anybody that had been hit by a train or lost their legs before. So I could be like, hey, what am I supposed to do? How can I be helpful? Like, I don't know. I would say so many stupid things like, hey, it's gonna be all right. Like, we're gonna climb a mountain one day. And that's like not what you need at that moment. And so I think there's like this human connection and, and like in a situation that's totally new..

Matt Kalina [00:17:48]:
And so that's how we like started going down this path. It's just a mobile app that will allow a patient to create a profile and match with somebody else who's been through something similar to them. And what it's turned into is we figure out what these people's needs are, and now we're creating a platform, an ecosystem of all the different things that come into focus for these people to help them connect with. One of the things we launched last year was our, our Tandem Guides program. It's good to get advice from a peer mentor. Or somebody who's been through it before you, but like, when you've got to figure out how to submit a disability application or enroll in one of these support programs that might be available in your community, sometimes that's not always super helpful. So we actually started to add in like sort of case management and SDOH sort of support services. We also, a patient who's in the app could be talking with a peer and they might be saying like, hey, I keep having nightmares about the accident I was in.

Matt Kalina [00:18:40]:
Like, we've heard that a ton. And so we actually offer therapy where you can actually request an appointment right in the app and see a therapist straight through the app. And I think like what we've seen is one, there's nothing here today. And so we get the opportunity to build something new. And the difference about like injury care as opposed to any other sector of healthcare is like the problems are fast, immediate, high priority, and people are in crisis. We don't have the luxury of like scheduling somebody out a few months. So we first started like talking to patients and they said, you know, I need to talk to a therapist or I need this social support service. We kept referring them to providers that already existed in the community, but it would take them 3, 6, 9 months to get an appointment scheduled.

Matt Kalina [00:19:26]:
And this person has a utility shutoff notice and an eviction notice coming to them in a week. And we can't wait a month or 6 months to do something. So we had to start to like rethink like the way we deliver care to be always on and responsive to these needs because we don't have the luxury of scheduling appointments out, even though that's the way everything else is accessed in healthcare. We had to start to think about like financial clearance, like how do we get people's insurance information and that stuff in a way that allows us to not get in the way of providing the care because we don't have the luxury of waiting months. Solutions need to activate in minutes. And the needs that people have are so high that if you delay, the opportunity to like make an impact dramatically reduces. If you miss a connection, someone's life, the trajectory of it changes dramatically, especially in these moments, which I think has created a really interesting focus for our team. It's not about like, how do we do these things in the way that we know that they're done? It's like, how do we meet these members where they are? Finally design a system that allows us to meet people where they are.

Matt Kalina [00:20:33]:
And provide meaningful help at that time. And that's been like tough as we recruit, you know, social workers and case managers to come in. They're so used to the structured clinical environment of like scheduling appointments, doing these things. But like, we have to have a protocol that says if someone's in crisis or has a utility shutoff notice, they're high priority and they should be seen today. The average time between like hospital admission to enrollment in our app is about 9 days from their discharge date. So it's like very soon after they leave the hospital. And we have a goal of more than 50% of our appointments that are requested, the patients are being seen in less than 72 hours because we cannot let these things sit and we have to build out the right protocols to have the capacity to support that. Because the reality is it's just, it's not okay to let somebody wait 3 months when their life and their environment and circumstances will change dramatically over that time period if we don't get them the support they need, which is a challenge.

Matt Kalina [00:21:33]:
But I think it's one that allows us to like reimagine and rethink the way care is delivered. And it's also where things need to go. I mean, the consumer experience in healthcare is trash. It's horrible, it's cumbersome, it's not transparent. And we get an opportunity to do that in an always accessible, always on, very transparent way. Because we have to, which is super exciting.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:57]:
Lay of the Land is brought to you and is proudly sponsored by Roundstone Insurance. Headquartered in Rocky River, Ohio, Roundstone shares Lay of the Land's same passion for bold ideas and lasting impact from our community's entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders. Since 2005, Roundstone has pioneered a self-funded captive health insurance model that delivers robust savings for small and medium-sized businesses. They are part of the solution to rising healthcare costs, helping employers offer affordable, high-quality care while driving job creation and economic growth throughout Northeast Ohio. Like many of the voices featured on Lay of the Land, including Roundstone's founder and CEO, Mike Schroeder, Roundstone believes entrepreneurship, innovation, and community to be the cornerstones of progress. To learn more about how Roundstone is transforming employee health benefits by empowering employers to save thousands in per-employee, per-year healthcare costs, please visit roundstoneinsurance.com. Roundstone Insurance, built for entrepreneurs, backed by innovation, committed to Cleveland. I think you kind of framed this question for me, but so in your own experience, in this moment of crisis, chaos, your mind's racing, you're trying to Google to figure out, you know, how you can best be of service to your brother at that point in time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:14]:
Obviously, Tandemstride didn't exist then, but had it existed, walk me through how someone becomes aware of what Tandem Stride is and how it can be useful to them? Like, hopefully one day, you know, it's a household name. It's, it's top of mind for everyone. But like in that kind of moment where someone else is in a moment of crisis and they have no idea what's going on and are trying to figure it out, how would they even, you know, become aware of the services and platform that you're offering?

Matt Kalina [00:23:38]:
Yeah, that's a great question. So there's a couple of different ways. Like our primary operations are in Ohio today and we're going really deep to integrate ourselves as like this new system of care infrastructure. We work with 80% of the trauma centers across the state of Ohio and are working to implement this as a standard of care as part of the care journey and discharge process for trauma patients. We actually had MetroHealth in Cleveland recently put out a paper. They did research on our ability to engage people in peer support in the hospital environment and how that connection helped us understand their needs after they leave. But we work with most of the major hospital systems here in Ohio. So that's how we go.

Matt Kalina [00:24:20]:
We educate and work with the trauma programs and the emergency department staff to make sure that they know this is something that's out there and they are educating patients on it. We're working to get better at that. The second way is that we work with insurance companies and health plans. We started with Medicaid managed care because as you can imagine, a population that's in a more challenging socioeconomic status, like Medicaid, if you can't go back to work in a few weeks, things start to change very quickly. And so we actually had a pilot we started last year with Molina Healthcare in Ohio in their Medicaid population. And we actually would reach out to patients, you know, if they go to the hospital, we know that the trauma staff is likely engaging them there, but we actually hired trauma survivors and Youngstown, Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton. And we have these people that when we know one of these patients shows up in the hospital, we'll actually have them go in the hospital and talk to this person. So my brother will walk in with prosthetic legs on and say, hey, how's it going? I, I know what you're going through.

Matt Kalina [00:25:25]:
Talk to the patient, their family, let them know that this is available to them. We do that as an extension of the clinical team because there's so much that that patient is processing, so much information that's exchanged. But when a trauma survivor who has been in the hospital bed that you're in shows up, the engagement and the ability for you to get value out of that interaction right away, like these people know what I'm dealing with, is super important. And then we even have teams that will call patients after discharge and say, hey, we know you were recently in the hospital. Here's what we do. This is offered by your insurance company. It's no cost, and you can get access to all these different support and services. You may not think you need it right now, but there's a ton of things in here that will help you forge this path that you're on.

Matt Kalina [00:26:07]:
And that team also, because they're geographically all over the state, we also knock on patients' doors. We have the whole team actually coming up here to Cleveland next week, and we get a list of patients that were recently discharged and we go out in the community and we knock on their doors because oftentimes after some sort of injury event, you're, you're at home for a little while. And there's an opportunity to like let them know that this stuff is out there. And we're really doing a lot on the grassroots side to show the impact that this can have. And I'm proud to say in a 9-month period, we got this engagement from about 5,000 trauma survivors across all 88 counties in the state of Ohio. And we're planning to quadruple that in 2026 because when people receive the message, they are like, oh my gosh, I've been waiting for somebody to reach out and ask me how I'm doing and provide me support. When we call patients, 1 in 4 of them downloads the app the first time we talk to them. Because they're in a situation where, hey, I don't even remember what the doctor said I was supposed to do.

Matt Kalina [00:27:06]:
I'm lost. What do I, what can I do? And there's finally something there to sort of fill that gap. So there's a ton of different ways. It's hospital-based. We have community outreach teams and we work with our insurance partners to send direct mail, you name it. We haven't put any billboards up or wrapped any buses yet, but the trauma population is massive. And there's a ton of people that find themselves spiraling out of emergency care, unsure of what the next step should look like. And we're doing our best to get the word out that there is a place you can go that will help guide you on that path.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:40]:
That's pretty powerful.

Matt Kalina [00:27:41]:
Very cool.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:42]:
So I can speak a little from experience here, but it's notoriously very difficult to partner with insurance companies and health systems, particularly as a startup. And so I'd love to just hear your reflections on over the last few years building this, how you how you made those a reality and, you know, speak a little bit to what the actual business model itself looks like.

Matt Kalina [00:28:03]:
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, there's, you know, I think in order to really affect change, it's got to think about all the players in an ecosystem and how to best coordinate and choreograph. And this is work I did a lot at my last company, and it was great because we were in healthcare. So I had a lot of, you know, friends that were CIOs at health systems or new plan leadership. But one of the things that we started to do early on was, you know, I'm in Cleveland, my family's from here. My brother was a peer mentor at MetroHealth for a long time. I knew the trauma team at UCF. We've been doing stuff in the space of injury support.

Matt Kalina [00:28:41]:
My family has a nonprofit and we support trauma survivors. We've been doing that for over a decade. So we know a lot of these programs and really it was, Hey, you guys are doing amazing work to save people's lives. And the trauma programs are the first ones to say, we're not super great at when people leave here. We really just, you know, help people as best we can while they're here. We cross our fingers and hope that we gave them enough education and what they needed to the point where they don't come back unless they absolutely have to, and they can just live a full and meaningful life. So when we first started talking to the trauma programs, we knew a lot of these people and it was, Hey, we're thinking about building something here to help bridge this gap. And that community accepted us with open arms.

Matt Kalina [00:29:23]:
We got very quickly connected to the American Trauma Society and the Trauma Survivors Network. And what I noticed was that on the hospital side, there's this evolution that's happening from a clinical practice perspective. Trauma programs historically have been focused on optimizing outcomes and care related to pre-hospital and during hospital care, but there's actually a new emphasis on survivorship. We're getting really good at making sure people don't die and mortality rates are improving and more people are surviving injury than they ever have in history. But the trauma community and what I've found is that they're open to the fact that what we need to do is start improving quality of life after trauma care. And so we actually partnered very early on with the American Trauma Society to help them understand the needs of this population after they leave the hospital setting, because that's a space that they did not have a lot of exposure to and a lot of information on. And we have a very tight relationship with them. We actually, you know, did a webinar on one of our programs here in Ohio with the American Trauma Society, and we had 120 hospitals sign up across 22 states to use our platform.

Matt Kalina [00:30:36]:
So one, the hospital side, I think the timing is right. The trauma community is saying, we know we need to do better in this space. And what we're doing is trying to evolve their thought process by shining a light on the challenge that their patients are seeing once they leave the four walls of that hospital. And that's a really, I think, sympathetic and symbiotic relationship that we have. Now, the other side of that is the health plan and insurance side, which has its own complicated mess. And so when we started that path, I mean, what I did is I just like cold LinkedIn messaged every Medicaid managed care provider in the state of Ohio and said, hey, we're doing some amazing work with some of these hospitals. And I think that there is a huge opportunity in trauma to provide better coordinated care because when you look at this population, you know, 1 in 4 will develop post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, or depression, or it will be exacerbated if they had that prior to their traumatic injury. And that usually happens within 6 months of leaving the hospital.

Matt Kalina [00:31:34]:
25% of people will show back up in the hospital within 6 months because infection, a number of things that, that contributes to them coming back to the hospital. And to me, that was a challenge because it's like the reason emergency department use and readmissions happens is because there was a breakdown in the system and that was a last resort. So what we did is we reached out, sent a bunch of LinkedIn messages to all these Medicaid managed care providers. And one that responded was the team at Molina. And we sat down with them and said, hey, we think that there's a gap here. And what we realized was unlike every other like chronic condition patient population, trauma and physical injury was not one that was super well-defined or understood in the insurance space. So we actually started digging through the data and what we realized was like, holy cow, there's a huge portion of our members that have one of these things occur to them.. And there's really no apparatus to provide a specialized tailored support for them.

Matt Kalina [00:32:35]:
And it's pretty easy to see the financial and ROI story of if we connect these people and can engage them in a meaningful way, we can really reduce emergency department utilization, readmissions, and all the things that sort of signal like a breakdown in coordinated care and recovery. And so what we started to do is frame injury as a chronic condition, just like diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. I always make the correlation of like, you know, how is— my brother has to put on prosthetic legs every day before he gets his kids out of bed. How is that different than checking your insulin? But it's treated completely independently. I mean, injury looks— is normally looked at as like an episode and it's over.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:12]:
Yeah.

Matt Kalina [00:33:13]:
So that's what we've been working with our health plan partners on is like, how do we show the opportunity that there is by building something specialized for this group? I think what we've been surprised by, and most insurance companies are surprised by, is how massive this group and this category is. And that's what we're doing now as we work with other plans to show them how big this group is, how the system is breaking down for them. I think what we're seeing is a really an openness to engage in this way because it doesn't feel that there's anything solving it. And we've had you some, know, early wins that have been super helpful. Like in October, we just accepted the Pinnacle Award, which was put on by the American or the Ohio Association of Health Plans because of our work with Molina. So we're doing our best to get the word out on that this category exists. It needs sort of its own tailored solution. And when you do that, you can really change outcomes and improve things that are economically and financially sustainable.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:13]:
So you've been on this journey for about 2 years along the way. In parallel to all this, you've you've raised venture capital, I think over $5 million from investors, some, some big names in healthcare. What's the picture that you're painting to your partners on the investment front and just the kind of what's the moonshot here? Like, how do you think about what success ultimately looks like and where, where you can take the company and, and the kind of grander impact that you're, you're hoping to have here?

Matt Kalina [00:34:42]:
Yeah, I mean, I think, and this is constantly evolving as as we continue to wade into the waters of this problem space. The positioning, you know, initially started as like, hey, there's an angle here with— there's an opportunity here with peer support and building connection and lived experiences. This actually came up in, you know, my last like board meeting last quarter. The company's starting to mature and we're seeing like traction. We're growing. The team's 23 people now, which is crazy. And we're serving thousands and thousands of people. We have, I don't know, 50, 60 people a day that are downloading our app in Ohio and engaging in support and services.

Matt Kalina [00:35:19]:
And their board members were like, who are you going to be? You know, and I was like, okay, that's a really thoughtful thing. And over the last couple of weeks, I've been doing a lot of thought into that to define this because I'm like, we're going down a path as a company that I need to provide a vision for what it is that we're doing. And the question was like, are you a peer support company? Are you like a post-discharge platform for connection? Are you a trauma company? And I think what I'm, what I'm anchored on now is I actually just wrote this and shared it with our internal team at the Tandem Stride Manifesto. And we are all in and going deep on injury care. And I think my view is this is a large enough problem. You know, 140 million people every year globally with a permanent or temporary disability from an unplanned injury event is a huge challenge. Nothing exists here today. And I see this as a path where if I look at like where there's the most green space, it's the most underdeveloped sector of healthcare, bar none.

Matt Kalina [00:36:23]:
Nothing exists here. And I think if we can build something really meaningful that addresses people's needs when they need it, where they need it, and the questions like, are you a healthcare are you a tech-enabled services business? Are you an app? Are you whatever? I think my, my view is we are focused on defining and engaging this category in the most meaningful way. And we will be whoever we need to be to go deep in that. And so I think there, over the long arc of time of what Tandemstride is, right now we look like an app and then we have some tech-enabled service stuff because we're providing therapy and all this other stuff. But we're building out a partner ecosystem right now where we actually have like a long-term pain management company, a DME provider, pharmaceutical companies that all have a different view of this patient's journey that we can provide convenience and access to. And then I'm like, then you kind of look like a marketplace or ecosystem product. And so I am less focused right now on saying like how we will do it, but what I am really clear with the team on is this is a category that nobody is looking at and everybody that's around it and peripheral to it are, it's not hard for them to say something needs to happen here. And I don't know exactly what all that will be, but I am here for the long haul.

Matt Kalina [00:37:39]:
I mean, this is a deep personal mission for me because of my family's experience that if I do everything in my power for the rest of my life to try to make the greatest impact on injury care, and nothing comes of it, I will not be upset with the time spent. And I think you need that long-term view when you're looking at defining and creating a category as meaningful, as consequential, and as large as the one that we're leaning into. And that's really what I'm focused on. And, and I think when we talk to investors and, and this space, it's like people that have that long-term view is who we need to be talking to. I've been fortunate enough to had that conversation with a lot of really well-respected venture capital firms that get it, but we are going to be unrelenting in that. We've got an opportunity to create a category that will have profound impact for a lot of people. And if we just focus on that rather than are we an app, are we a services business, are we this or are we that, we will come— our intuition and instinct of engaging and wading into the problem, but we'll become very clear the greatest way to have the greatest impact within it. Because there's nothing here today.

Matt Kalina [00:38:47]:
And I hope, I hope that we are, you know, shouting from the mountaintops and become a megaphone for more solutions to come in this space. There is fertile ground for creating value here. Anybody thinking about starting a company should come here, work with us, against us, I don't care. Somebody needs to do something here because every time I look at it, I look around and I realize there's no one else in this room trying to do something for people who truly are grasping for a solution. And every other stakeholder in this space is too distracted or disincentivized to do something in a big and meaningful way. So that's how I frame it. It's a category we have an opportunity to define, bring attention to, and we will be whoever we need to be or whatever we need to be to have the greatest impact in it. And we are in such the early innings.

Matt Kalina [00:39:37]:
Of showing people that this category needs solutions, where it's hard for me to say exactly what all of those will look like over the long arc of time. And I hope we're not the only one building it. I really hope we're not the only ones building it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:49]:
Yeah. I mean, beyond the actual creation of a category itself, which is, you know, ambitious and awesome. And I mean, your, your passion for it is, is inspiring. Have you thought about, or I guess, why is that the better approach than trying to tackle the misaligned incentives?

Matt Kalina [00:40:09]:
So, well, you know, well, and I'm.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:11]:
Just curious how you, how you've weighed those, because obviously you've thought a lot about this.

Matt Kalina [00:40:15]:
Well, I don't know. The reality is I don't know if this is the best approach. I think we're leaning into it and as we go, the green lights and things that come up become really, really clear. And I think that we're, we're just, I'm being open to the fact that Wade into the problem. It'll be clear where you need to spend time and what you're doing. The reality though, is, you know, I think we can change some of the aligned incentives by being an example. So, you know, one of the things that's happening is the American College of Surgeons, who's the accrediting body for trauma centers, is starting to put in requirements in the standards of care for the injured patient that say you have to think about patients after they leave your care. There's requirements that are now for screening for PTSD 30, 60, 90 days after they leave the hospital.

Matt Kalina [00:41:01]:
That never happened before. That is new stuff. That's finally the trauma program leaning into things after people leave acute care. And we plan in our partnerships with the American Trauma Society and other places to give people a platform to research the impacts of those things, substantiate the problem, show why changing the incentives and the requirements can actually architect a better outcome for everyone involved. We're doing the same thing with the health plans and the insurance companies that we work with. We're shining a light on the problem space they had no idea about. And in many cases, you know, most people, when you think about traumatic injury, you just like hope it doesn't happen to you. But the reality is it's huge and it happens to a ton of people.

Matt Kalina [00:41:43]:
So we've got to like stop looking away and have people look at this. Some of the other things that we're doing is you know, super exciting. We've actually started an effort on driving policy change. So we actually engage with a lot of state legislative and elected officials, many of which are trauma survivors themselves, and doing the same thing that we're doing with the hospitals by saying, hey, you guys know, and that when people leave the hospital, there's a ton of things that will come into focus that become a challenge for them to navigate. And if they don't do so, then they'll show back up in the hospital and there's ways to avoid that and help them lead a better life. We educate the health plans and we work with them to say, hey, you never really looked at this group. It's huge. And there's a lot of opportunity for improvement if we collaborate with our hospital counterparts to engage these people early in that journey.

Matt Kalina [00:42:30]:
And then on the policy side, we say there's a tide changing here. Hospitals and trauma centers are focusing more on this, but what's not happening is a lot of the insurance companies and health plans aren't thinking about how do we incentivize and reimburse for this sort of thing, because we benefit from a more connected and collaboration space. And we actually have about 11 states that are introducing legislation or making some sort of requirement on post-acute care traumatic injury support. Some states are looking at it like, hey, we're going to require this for all state employees, which brings it to the attention of most other insurance providers and the care ecosystem in that community. Some states have really well-informed and integrated trauma services because the trauma centers are like emergency response and disaster preparedness state infrastructure for natural disasters and whatever it might be. So these groups are actually really well coordinated. I think what we're doing is doing our best to define the category in a way that shows everybody that's involved that they play a part in this and starting to facilitate a dialogue on if we all think about this in the right way, there's an opportunity for things to be reimagined, which everyone benefits from. And that's a super exciting thing.

Matt Kalina [00:43:47]:
And I mean, I'm using my former experience from the Speaker's office to like think about this policy perspective. That's the long pole in the tent. And I would not advise any startup company to focus on a long-term policy initiative, but I'm not going anywhere for decades. So I'm going to start that long pole in the tent now knowing that it's going to take a long time to pay off. And I'm playing a zero-sum game here. I'm not giving up on this. So I'm probably taking a little bit more risk, not focusing on risk versus reward, investment versus return immediately where I'm doing a couple things that I don't see a return on, but I'm trying to affect a broader change that will be generational. And not you just, know, the short term of what I need to prove to have the resiliency of the business not be challenged.

Matt Kalina [00:44:39]:
But we're in a really strong position as a company with what we're proving that we can start to have some of these broader conversations to say, hey, there's something bigger that needs to happen here. Whether it's us or not is yet to be determined, but we're starting the dialogue.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:52]:
You mentioned the growing size of the team. Obviously, all this progress that you've had over the last few years working on this, how do you feel you personally have evolved as a leader and an entrepreneur?

Matt Kalina [00:45:05]:
That's a great question. I think, you know, I feel so fortunate that I've had an opportunity to find my life's work and something that is deeply personal to me that I care a tremendous amount about and that my previous life experiences have given me a unique perspective on to approach and create in. And like, That doesn't happen very often, and I feel super fortunate for that. But I was having this conversation actually with my chief of staff, who I knew from my previous company recently. And there's all these like progressions that happen. You know, I feel like when I was young and joining a startup or working at the Speaker's Office for a little while, I really prided myself on being a doer, somebody that when something comes up, I'm going to go and I'm going to solve for it, you know? Then there becomes like the progression of your career where you start to think about like, it would be great to provide broader influence and maybe I manage and I take on sort of a leadership role. And then there's the whole entrepreneurial aspect, which is like building, which is a bit of doing and a bit of managing and some of that stuff. And what I've found is that now I always thought that that was like the thing as a doer, a manager, and like a builder.

Matt Kalina [00:46:15]:
And I thought that was like the layer cake of the evolutionary aspect of leadership and doing things, but there's like another one up here. And now I feel like what I'm doing now is my job is to find, communicate the category I'm in, my passion for it, what I'm doing, and find other people that see the world in a way similar that I can do, but have a different perspective. And my job now is to find other builders because there is so much to do here and so much change to affect. That you can't get by with too many doers, too many managers, too many builders. You've got to kind of architect this team and provide guidance in a way. And this this is, is part of you why, know, I put a lot of work and thought into our little Tandem Stride manifesto that I did a recording and shared out with the team. It's like, I have to put a stake in the ground somewhere and find the right people and point them in the right vector. For the most change, but, but listen to every, every one of them individually.

Matt Kalina [00:47:15]:
We just did like annual performance reviews. I met with every single member of the team and we did self-evaluations and I talked to every single one of them because in order to put the right stake in the ground and you need to understand the perspective of everybody and how they're approaching things to architect that together. And it's, it's been interesting to think about the evolution of like architecting solution-oriented organization and getting the right people together and sort of not feeling like you need to do everything, but giving people like the diffusion of responsibility and let them do what they need to do and make sure you're just pointing them in the right direction and providing the right guidance, which is a totally different capacity to operate within that I've never sort of experienced until this work now. And it's just really interesting to see how that evolution is. And it's hard to find really good people that care enough. I care a ton about this, but I think we've been super fortunate. 60-70% of the team are trauma survivors or family members of trauma survivors themselves. And they get it.

Matt Kalina [00:48:15]:
And trust me, if somebody's been through something like this, where brother had his horrible accident, the family and the individual that can get through that, the resilience that it takes, good luck getting in their way. And we're building that team here. And my job is just get out of the way and let these people follow their passion, their mission, just like I am.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:33]:
Yeah. That's also Really powerful and well said. I appreciate your framing of it as a life's work because hearing you talk about it, I mean, it certainly sounds and feels like you are building this extension of yourself that is for others, but is just everything that you're passionate and care about. So that's pretty cool.

Matt Kalina [00:48:51]:
Yeah, it's weird. It's weird.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:53]:
Yeah, it's awesome though. I think, you know, it's not, not everyone finds their life's work. What's it like working with your brother now?

Matt Kalina [00:48:59]:
Yeah, we just had our like one-on-one. Annual performance reviews, which was super funny. But I will say like my brother during his self-review was probably one of the most thoughtful ones that we got. We care a lot about this. And I think I'm, I'm so glad he's here for this journey. Not only because it's possible 13 years ago that things didn't go the way that they did, but being able to invite him into this mission has been awesome. He was at MetroHealth and was a data analyst for their population health department, focusing on helping people connect with support and services in the community and a number of other things after his accident. And, you know, one, I just wanted my brother to be there.

Matt Kalina [00:49:38]:
We did everything together throughout most of our life, but it almost felt like we all went off and did these things. Like my sister works at Tandem Stride too. She was in research at university hospitals before. And, you know, there's like this whole thing of, you know, do you want to work with your family or not? But it was like, I saw the little startup that my family had to become. Dealing with my— when my brother's accident happened, like we all came together and did whatever was needed. It wasn't that I intended to involve them in this. It became hard not to because they knew what needed to— what needs to be done in this space so well that it was just a natural evolution of bringing them in. And they also, like, after my brother's accident, all went off to do things that were really amazing and evolved a perspective in a way that is actually really valuable inside the four walls of Tandem Stride.

Matt Kalina [00:50:30]:
And so it only made sense. Obviously it's, it's, you know, sometimes it's interesting to like, you know, have like hard deadlines and work with my, my brother and say like, we need this, you know, or whatever we need to do. And we've got to figure stuff out. And there's some of those dynamics, but like, we can fight about things and get over it. We've been through so much stuff that, I mean, that's what I, that's the relationship I want to have with most of the people inside of the organization. Call me on my stuff if I'm wrong and help me understand why you feel so strongly about that. Like my brother can do that better than anybody else. And there are times where, you know, we cross our arms and we're mad at each other, but we know, you know, the mission is bigger than either of us and we've got to figure this out whether it's uncomfortable or not.

Matt Kalina [00:51:12]:
And it's been super rewarding. And I think I've been amazed at how he's evolved. He, you know, I had an interesting startup experience. Startups are different than county hospitals, but to say the least, it's easy when you have the vision and you know what we need to be doing here. To, to allow some of the bureaucracy that maybe you were familiar with or the pace to change. And it's been really cool to see his evolution and us working together. It's been a really rewarding experience, to say the least.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:45]:
What are you most excited about right now?

Matt Kalina [00:51:46]:
Yeah, what I'm, what I'm most excited about is, you know, we are in a really strong position with a lot of growth ahead of us. We're helping more people than ever. We are the worst we'll ever be today. And that's not pretty bad. We're not like really bad, which is great. So just the opportunity that we have to like make a difference in more people's lives. I mean, there's thousands of patients whose life after injury care is fundamentally different than mine and anyone that has preceded them in the state of Ohio. Expanding that beyond it, beyond Ohio or whatever is, I think, really exciting.

Matt Kalina [00:52:21]:
We're planning to like really anchor and go deep in Ohio. There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people that we are not reaching today that don't know that we exist. So 2026, you'll, you'll see us everywhere in Ohio. And that's super, super exciting. I'm also really excited. I actually forgot to mention this, but we just came out with a book. Oh, wow. So the book just came out last week.

Matt Kalina [00:52:45]:
It is written by a close family friend, Dr. Massara, who's a psychologist. Over the last few years, she's actually interviewed my brother, my family, the first responders that pulled my brother off the train tracks when his accident happened, everybody in this ecosystem to really show the ripple effect of one traumatic event, not only on the individual, but the community, the system. I mean, his trauma surgeons and rehab doctors are, have a chapter in the book. And I think overall it's fun, like making sure the solutions that we're building help people make a difference. The second most exciting thing is like, getting that to more people. And the third, and not in any particular order, is like just bringing attention to this space because there are so many people here that are like, how do you not get this? But it's like, when you don't look at it or think about it every day, it's hard to conceptualize it. But unfortunately, you know, people all the time have some sort of unplanned injury.

Matt Kalina [00:53:41]:
And unfortunately, most people only think about it when they're in it. And so what we need to do is sort of change the dialogue and I think that's actually like really starting to take root and it will evolve in ways I can't even imagine today over the next year. And that's like beyond exciting.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:56]:
For those listening rather than watching, just what's the name of that?

Matt Kalina [00:54:00]:
Yeah, the book is called Cut Through. You can find it on Amazon. It's a true story. It's about the shortcut that took everything but gave back more. It's a really cool perspective on my brother's injury and just the community around it in general. I think it's very well written. Dr. Massara is Awesome.

Matt Kalina [00:54:18]:
She even has author notes at the end of each chapter to kind of help you think about what's happening in the context of the story. And, you know, even though it's about my brother and my family, I think somebody who's a stranger to us would find it compelling and informative, whether you are dealing with the challenge of an unplanned traumatic injury or not.

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:36]:
Yeah. That's, that's very cool. And now you're, you're working on the epilogue. Best tandem shred.

Matt Kalina [00:54:42]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:43]:
Well, I, you know, we've covered a lot of ground here. I always like to ask, you know, when you reflect on the whole journey, does something come to mind that feels particularly important that we, we haven't really touched on yet?

Matt Kalina [00:54:53]:
Yeah, I think, you know, I think there's probably many things like there's entrepreneurial.

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:00]:
Or— I'm sure there are.

Matt Kalina [00:55:01]:
You know, so it's like, I think what's important if anybody wants to like go and build something or start a company or go into something, I think being okay not having the solution fully formed is okay. I mean, I feel like this happened early on when I was going out for fundraising. Everybody's like, what's your clinical model? And how does this work? And all this stuff. And I know that that is a necessary evil, but I think the reality is getting into the problem, wading into it, those things become a lot more clear. And sometimes sitting there and coming up with a very detailed and elaborate plan can get in the way of you getting out there and trying to actually do something. And I think that that's an important thing that once I got out of my own way and stopped talking myself out of what needed to be done or how this would work. And I, I've had visions of like what this app was going to be like and how it's going to do everything. And that changes as you go through it.

Matt Kalina [00:55:51]:
So I think in general, whether it's a change in your life or circumstance or an entrepreneurial effort that's been in the back of your mind that you want to do, the most important thing is just leaning in and getting started, you know, getting your life back on track, changing something after everything seems to have turned upside down. It's just moving into it one foot in front of the other. I think that is a constant thing that I've found in my life is it's easy to sort of be in your head about things or overthink stuff. And you learn so much more by just getting into it, rolling up your sleeves and making something happen. And I would encourage more people to do that. I probably waited longer than I needed to sort of go into this journey and it's the most rewarding thing I've ever done. And leaning in even more is my primary objective over the next few years because that's where my eyes start to open and it becomes clear what it is you're supposed to be doing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:48]:
Well, I'll ask you then our traditional closing question, which is for a hidden gem in Cleveland.

Matt Kalina [00:56:54]:
Yeah, that's right. Hidden gem in Cleveland. So there's, I'm going to say Two, one that is like a personal, like sort of nostalgia thing for me. And then another one that I think always surprises people when I come here. Like, I feel like I've heard a couple of other people on the podcast talk about some interesting stuff and like, wow, I didn't know this was Cleveland. But one is Farinacci's Pizza in Northfield. My family and my grandparents, my dad and my siblings and I would always go there. I still like, they, it's like a time warp.

Matt Kalina [00:57:24]:
You go back there. It's an old family that owns it. And I think the Book of Love is still on the jukebox and we would play that every time we were there. And it just like brings me back and it's like something that is like a core memory for me as a kid. And when I go back in there, I'm like, oh my gosh, the old leather booths, the wood paneling on the walls. I don't know. It just, it's something special for me. But then the other one is Rockefeller Park.

Matt Kalina [00:57:45]:
I feel like, you know, it's like this like hidden gem that's kind of like in there. And like, I, this has happened to me a few times as I like have some of the team that isn't located in Ohio. We have people in like Texas and Florida and Tennessee, whenever they come here, we'll like do like a, go to dinner or something in Little Italy and we drive through like Rockefeller Park. Everyone's always like, oh my gosh, what is this? And I always forget how like we have some really beautiful spaces here in Cleveland and people are like, this is Cleveland? And that's always like heartwarming for me, just knowing like the little beauty pockets we have here that are often forgot about. So. Those are my, my— Those are perfect hidden gems.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:25]:
Well, man, I just want just want to, I to thank you. I really appreciate you sharing your reflections and journey. And yeah, I mean, I found it quite inspiring to hear you talk through all of it. So thank you.

Matt Kalina [00:58:37]:
Yeah, I appreciate that, Jeff, and I appreciate you taking the time to help Clevelanders tell their story. We are a hidden gem in the US, and I appreciate you shining a spotlight on this great— Thank you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:49]:
Yeah, that is really the purpose of this whole exercise.

Matt Kalina [00:58:54]:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for the time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:56]:
Well, if folks had anything they wanted to follow up with you about, learn more about the business, ways they could get involved, where would you direct them?

Matt Kalina [00:59:03]:
Yeah, you could send me an email, matt@tandemstride.com. tandemstride.com is a great website where you can reach out to us. You can find me on LinkedIn or any of the other social medias that are out there. Always open for a conversation and people looking to do their life's work, please reach out.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:19]:
Awesome. Thank you again.

Matt Kalina [00:59:20]:
Thank you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:23]:
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 @podlayoftheland or @sternfa, J-E-F-E. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:00]:
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 financial interests in the company which appear on this 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.