Jeff Musser
Episode 136

Narrator: Welcome, friends, to another episode of the Story & Experience Podcast. Join your host, Japhet De Oliveira, with his guest today and discover the moments that shape us, our families, and communities.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, welcome, friends, to another episode of the Story & Experience Podcast. I am sitting here opposite a new guest. Excited to have the energy of this guest on this podcast. If you're brand new we have 100 questions, they're about stories and experiences that shaped this person into the leader that they are today. They get to pick a number and we get to explore it and see where it goes. I'm going to ask the first 10 and then I'll hand it over to them. Let me begin with the first one. Could you tell us your name and does anybody ever mispronounce it?

Jeff Musser: My name is pronounced Jeff Musser.

Japhet De Oliveira: Musser.

Jeff Musser: It's often pronounced Musser. My high school nickname was Muss and I still carry that to this day.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, really?

Jeff Musser: I'll pretty much respond to anything. Even if I cut someone off on the freeway and they call me something, I'll even respond to that.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's really nice. And how do you hear them?

Jeff Musser: It's visual.

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay, okay, okay, okay. All right. Sign language. That's great, that's great. I'm glad you responded. All right. So, Jeff, what do you do for work?

Jeff Musser: I am the director of investment management. We have a little over $2 billion worth of investment assets-

Japhet De Oliveira: Wow.

Jeff Musser: In our treasury. And we also have a little over $2 billion worth of debt. And I'm tasked with overseeing the asset side.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's fantastic.

Jeff Musser: So our stocks, our bonds, our hedge funds, our private equity, all that stuff.

Japhet De Oliveira: You enjoy that?

Jeff Musser: I've been doing it since 1985.

Japhet De Oliveira: Wow. Okay, all right.

Jeff Musser: So I'm a protected class now they can't get rid of me.

Japhet De Oliveira: You have tenure, you have tenure.

Jeff Musser: So I've been here since, I think, 2003.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, really? Okay. You've been here in the sense of working at Adventist Health since 2003?

Jeff Musser: They were a customer of mine in 1987.

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay.

Jeff Musser: That's when I first started coming out here and visiting them and doing business with them. And then in 2003 the treasurer at the time, Rodney Wehtje, asked me if I would-

Japhet De Oliveira: Switch over.

Jeff Musser: Leave the dark side of the force and come here.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, that's fantastic. Any secrets for us poor, civil, simple people? What's the wisdom of investment?

Jeff Musser: Oh, it's definitely buy low and sell high.

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay. [inaudible 00:02:45].

Jeff Musser: That's what we try to practice up there. It doesn't always work if we're-

Japhet De Oliveira: You guys have done an amazing job though.

Jeff Musser: Well, thank you.

Japhet De Oliveira: You guys have done some amazing stuff.

Jeff Musser: It's the team.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's fantastic.

Jeff Musser: Probably one of the longest teams as far as we don't have a lot of turnover there. Some of the guys I work with there for over 20 years. It's amazing what we get done with such a small staff, having such a large amount of assets and the complexity of them. I'm really proud of us.

Japhet De Oliveira: You're not somewhere in New York standing on the floor waving papers around screaming or anything like this right now?

Jeff Musser: No, those days are over. Those were the days when there was a good old boy network.

Japhet De Oliveira: You're not in a boiler room, right?

Jeff Musser: No, no. I was at UBS prior to this and we had 1,200 people under one ... In one room.

Japhet De Oliveira: Wow, wow.

Jeff Musser: So it was the largest trading floors in the world. You couldn't hear anyone specifically because with 1,200 people talking at the same time it sounds like a hum so they have those Bose sound canceling speakers all around. You can feel what's going on in the marketplace without looking at it on a screen. You can sense when something's going on in a particular asset class or some country or some ... You can hear the volumes pick up-

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, wow.

Jeff Musser: And everyone look a certain way.

Japhet De Oliveira: Anybody jump off the chair and scream, "Hallelujah," and others cry.

Jeff Musser: There are a lot of crying. There's a lot of crying.

Japhet De Oliveira: A lot of crying.

Jeff Musser: It's not an easy game.

Japhet De Oliveira: No, no, no, no. No, indeed. All right. Hey, that's fantastic. Hey, practical things. In the morning when you wake up, first drink of the day: water, coffee, liquid green smoothie? Where do you go?

Jeff Musser: Some kind of a stimulant. It'd either be coffee or it'll be one of those pre-workout drinks with 200 milligrams of caffeine. Really healthy stuff. And then I add to that my creatine monohydrate, my branch chain amino acids. Then it's off to the gym.

Japhet De Oliveira: So you have a little chemical lab going on?

Jeff Musser: Yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay.

Jeff Musser: Yeah, I experiment.

Japhet De Oliveira: I'm glad we're recording this, this is great, this is great.

Jeff Musser: If I'm wired into midnight then I dial it down.

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay. All right. Are you an early riser or a late-night owl?

Jeff Musser: I am definitely an early riser.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh. What's early for you?

Jeff Musser: I naturally wake up at 5:00 in the morning without an alarm.

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay.

Jeff Musser: And I try to go to bed at 9:30 if I can but I don't always pull that off. I work best in the morning at my highest energy levels. I like to work out in the morning. To the gym like you do at 4:30 but-

Japhet De Oliveira: But I've seen at the gym.

Jeff Musser: You're a stud I'm just-

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, sure. I've seen you at the gym.

Jeff Musser: I got that cuddly pillow and I-

Japhet De Oliveira: I'm jealous, I'm jealous. So woke up in the morning, early for you, 5:00 AM today. What's the first thought that went through your mind?

Jeff Musser: That I had a Zoom call at 8:00 and it was 20 minutes to 8:00.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh. So you woke up late today. What happened?

Jeff Musser: I goofed.

Japhet De Oliveira: Did you go to bed really late?

Jeff Musser: No. I think I took too much time in the kitchen getting everything ready.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, oh.

Jeff Musser: I just thought the call was later and so I scrambled, jumped in the shower, and race to the office. I show up at like 7:59, turn everything on.

Japhet De Oliveira: Wow. Good for you.

Jeff Musser: No one even noticed.

Japhet De Oliveira: Well, that's good. Well done, well done.

Jeff Musser: Thank goodness for Zoom.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yes. Hey, if people were to describe your personality would they say you're an introvert or an extrovert? And would you agree with them?

Jeff Musser: I think everyone thinks I'm an extrovert.

Japhet De Oliveira: And are you?

Jeff Musser: I have some introvert tendencies but generally-

Japhet De Oliveira: They're so hidden you don't find them.

Jeff Musser: Yeah, I try to mask them.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh. That's very generous of you.

Jeff Musser: You know I love people. I love clowning around, I love having fun. I like to bring energy. I like to bring it to the room.

Japhet De Oliveira: Are you a practical joker, Jeff?

Jeff Musser: Yes.

Japhet De Oliveira: Would you-

Jeff Musser: You've heard about that, yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: I may have. In treasury there are some fun things that happen.

Jeff Musser: I'm HR's nightmare probably. It's all in good spirit.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, that's good.

Jeff Musser: But yeah, we like to practical joke. We want it to be a fun place to work. We're under, obviously, a lot of stress.

Japhet De Oliveira: Sure.

Jeff Musser: Everyone in the organization is in a tremendous amount of stress.

Japhet De Oliveira: Healthcare is struggling big time, yeah.

Jeff Musser: And we have to work with smaller staffs. Everyone's got to do double time. We try to create as much levity as possible in what we do.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's good.

Jeff Musser: It's really important to me. I don't want people to come in like robots.

Japhet De Oliveira: No, that's perfectly fine. That's great, it's great. Where were you born?

Jeff Musser: I was born in a suburb of Detroit.

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay.

Jeff Musser: Raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan which is a suburb out there. My dad, when he graduated from Penn State in the mid-50s he was acquired by General Motors and so that's where he raised me.

Japhet De Oliveira: Are you a General Motors fan?

Jeff Musser: I don't think I've owned a General Motors car.

Japhet De Oliveira: Thank you, thank you. Okay, okay.

Jeff Musser: Right now I have a Ford. My close friends know what ... My dad was chief engineer. I drive a Ford F-150 pickup truck. And I've had my share of Japanese cars and German cars. I don't think I've-

Japhet De Oliveira: You're back to the Ford.

Jeff Musser: I don't think I've ever owned a GM product.

Japhet De Oliveira: It's nice to confess some things so it's good.

Jeff Musser: No, Vega's, we had four Vega's.

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay. All right.

Jeff Musser: We had four over four years-

Japhet De Oliveira: I was close-

Jeff Musser: That tells you-

Japhet De Oliveira: I was close. Close call.

Jeff Musser: How ... What kind of quality there were.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh. Okay, all right. So when you were a child in Detroit, what did you imagine you would grow up to be?

Jeff Musser: Oh, I thought I was going to be an automotive designer.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, yeah?

Jeff Musser: Oh, yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, design them, yeah.

Jeff Musser: Because my dad was head of R&D at General Motors and chief engineer at Chevrolet. We were just surrounded by the racing program and all the prototypes. And I used to go with him to the office sometimes and there'd be all the designers there and I just wanted to draw cars.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh.

Jeff Musser: Oh, yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's great, that's great. Last question in this section here and then I hand it over to you. It's a leadership question. Are you a backseat driver?

Jeff Musser: Well, that depends. If it's Richard Petty at the wheel, no. If it's a 16-year-old kid with a brand-new license, yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay, all right.

Jeff Musser: We do that in our daily life. When we see someone has an expertise we let them drive no matter what field it's in. When they don't, yeah, you chime in sometimes.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's good, that's good. All right. Floor is open, Jeff, where'd you want to go?

Jeff Musser: Let's start off with 11.

Japhet De Oliveira: 11 it is, all right. Tell us about the most adventurous food or meal that you've ever eaten.

Jeff Musser: Adventurous?

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah. Food or meal that you've ever eaten.

Jeff Musser: It's about 25 years ago I was in Rome and we were eating at La Campana. It's the oldest restaurant in Italy in Rome, it's 500 years old.

Japhet De Oliveira: Nice.

Jeff Musser: I'm with friends, and everyone's ordering, and they're asking a million questions, and yada, yada, yada. And then a server finally comes to me. In the typical style that I do I just say, "What's the number one seller in the last 500 years? Just bring me that and surprise me." And that was it.

Japhet De Oliveira: And?

Jeff Musser: Everyone got their beautiful meals, and they're just pretty, and it was really nice. The server lumps this plate in front of me, and it was stacked up like a mountain, and it was all fried. And I said, "What is this?" He said, "Oh, that's brain, heart, intestine, and testicles."

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, okay, okay. All right.

Jeff Musser: And, of course, the whole table lit up in laughter. I'm like "Are you kidding me?"

Japhet De Oliveira: So did you-

Jeff Musser: But it was delicious.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, it was.

Jeff Musser: Yeah, yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, that's good.

Jeff Musser: Either they wanted to get rid of that or that was the number one seller. I got a feeling they wanted to get rid of it.

Japhet De Oliveira: We've never sold that one, here we go. All right that was 11. Where next?

Jeff Musser: 15.

Japhet De Oliveira: 15, all right. What is the one thing that you always misplace?

Jeff Musser: Oh, iPhone.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh. yeah.

Jeff Musser: Oh, yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: Do you have an iWatch?

Jeff Musser: I do.

Japhet De Oliveira: So do you find your phone with your watch?

Jeff Musser: No, but I guess you can.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, you can just light it up and make it-

Jeff Musser: I just leave the darn thing everywhere. I was mocked several times for ... People see my phone and they see that my photo on the front of the phone is myself, my own face.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, so you know which phone it is.

Jeff Musser: And they go, "Why would you do" ... "Why do you put your own face on there?" I go, "Well, because the [inaudible 00:12:11]" ... "I leave at places and then people go, is this your phone?" They know.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's good, that's good.

Jeff Musser: Definitely the phone.

Japhet De Oliveira: All right, that's good. All right, where next?

Jeff Musser: Let's see. My son turned 21. 21.

Japhet De Oliveira: All right. Share the best compliment you've ever received.

Jeff Musser: Oh, gosh. Anything from my boys with the word gas or fire. "Dad, these chicken fingers are gas. Or those coconut shrimp are fire."

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay. All right, all right.

Jeff Musser: Anything that makes me feel cool in front of them is-

Japhet De Oliveira: That's a good thing, a good thing.

Jeff Musser: It just means that I've-

Japhet De Oliveira: Succeeded.

Jeff Musser: I can communicate with them.

Japhet De Oliveira: You don't have to Google it.

Jeff Musser: Any compliment where I can communicate.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's great, that's great. All right. Where next?

Jeff Musser: Let's see. 29.

Japhet De Oliveira: 29, all right. Oh. Share three things that make you happy instantly.

Jeff Musser: Instantly.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, three things.

Jeff Musser: Oh. Well, a smile that makes me happy. Oh, waking up at 3:00 in the morning, and fully rested, looking at your clock, and know you have two more hours to sleep. You know that, right? That's a good one. I guess if I walked into the kitchen and the kids were putting away dishes.

Japhet De Oliveira: They'd be miracle.

Jeff Musser: Oh, that smile would be huge. Oh, yeah. It doesn't happen often but that would be a big smile.

Japhet De Oliveira: That'd be a big smile. That is good. That's good. All right. All right. That was 29 so where now?

Jeff Musser: I guess I got to get up there. 31.

Japhet De Oliveira: 31, great. A huge leap. All right. Tell us about someone you'd love to eat dinner with. The sky is the limit, anyone. Who would you love to have dinner with?

Jeff Musser: Well, alive?

Japhet De Oliveira: Could be.

Jeff Musser: It would probably be Gary Larson, he's the creator of The Far Side.

Japhet De Oliveira: Far Side, yeah.

Jeff Musser: I just figured that guy-

Japhet De Oliveira: I know.

Jeff Musser: The way his mind thinks with these animals. I'd spend dinner with him, a long dinner for sure.

Japhet De Oliveira: Did you ever have one of those desk calendars, the ones that-

Jeff Musser: I had them all.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh.

Jeff Musser: Yeah, I had them all.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's so good.

Jeff Musser: Dead, I would probably say ... I don't know, probably Leonardo da Vinci. Sit down with him and say, "Dude"-

Japhet De Oliveira: Sculpt me, dude.

Jeff Musser: "What's with Mona Lisa? What's with the smile? Come on."

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, what's the smile?

Jeff Musser: "Give me the story on that. Come on. What was she saying to you?"

Japhet De Oliveira: That's pretty good. That'd be fun. All right, all right. 31 now so where next?

Jeff Musser: 50.

Japhet De Oliveira: 50, all right. Here we go. Oh. Share about who has influenced you professionally.

Jeff Musser: Wow. That would probably be everyone on my team from Brandon all the way down. My professional development has usually come from watching others. We're not all good at everything. And some of us that are good at all things rise up to the top, the rest of us that are good in specific things we practice what we do. The cool thing about my team is we have some people that are really talented in really specific areas. I try to mimic or try to copy what they do, whether they're really organized the whole bit. Professionally it definitely comes to the people I'm with. I learn through osmosis.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, yeah?

Jeff Musser: Yeah. Even though we would see people on TV and we'd go, "Oh, I'd like to inspire to that person." Like Elon Musk because he can do it all. But that's not realistic, we all can't really do that. But we can pick and choose things from people that we admire and try to leverage that.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's great, that's great. That was fantastic. All right. That was 50 so where next?

Jeff Musser: 59.

Japhet De Oliveira: 59. In your opinion, what subject would you add to a school curriculum and what age would it be for?

Jeff Musser: Well, the one thing I think is missing is ... I'd like to see more of it is household finance and investment. So teaching young people how to manage their money, the economy. How things work so that they're ready. People know what I do and I run ... It's $2 billion and they think ... They say, "Well, what's a good investment? What's a good this or that?" I said, "Well, first of all, how much money do you got? How much debt do you got? Do you got to fund your kid's college?" All the things, right? So a lot of people don't really ask the real important questions. Because it's really about the household budget, and the planning, and everything that goes into that. And I'd like to see more of that so the kids are a little bit more realistic. Nowadays, they get these sound bites on TikTok and Instagram of people that have acquired fancy cars and this and that. I don't really think they quite understand how these people got there. I'd like them to really understand-

Japhet De Oliveira: How rough-

Jeff Musser: How money works, and how to grow it, and so forth.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's pretty good.

Jeff Musser: Yeah, we need more of that for sure.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's wise, that's good. All right. What next off of that? That was 59.

Jeff Musser: That was 59. How about 63?

Japhet De Oliveira: All right. Tell us about a time when you felt lost.

Jeff Musser: All the time.

Japhet De Oliveira: I wasn't talking about your phone.

Jeff Musser: Thank God they have GPS. I don't really find myself lost as much as I tend to overthink things. I sometimes can't make a decision and I sometimes feel like I'm lost, like I'm a deer at a headlights. It's the boy scout in me, I'm always prepared for-

Japhet De Oliveira: Everything.

Jeff Musser: Yes. Plan B, plan C, plan D, plan ... I'm a typical one of those.

Japhet De Oliveira: Chess player.

Jeff Musser: One of those people that ... It can slow you down and sometimes you feel like you're lost. Have you made a decision? No, not yet.

Japhet De Oliveira: No, no, no.

Jeff Musser: Are you lost? No, I'm just still thinking. That would probably be it. I always seem to know what to do. Once I can decide where I want to go I can put the plan in place no question. It's just deciding where you want to go.

Japhet De Oliveira: It's key, it's key. That's good, that's good. Well, I guess it takes a lot of patience and wisdom with investment. And a lot of analysis, and thinking, and reflecting.

Jeff Musser: It does. It's always the things that we don't think about that the market hasn't thought about that are the things that pop up. In 2022, everyone was convinced that the Fed was going to keep rates where they were. And then the Fed changed and the whole globe said, "Wait, what? What?" It's a lot more difficult than people think. A lot of times we have to place bets with the information we have. At some point you have to lay the money down on the table, right? We don't have the luxury of a crystal ball. We have to assess the risk and see if it fits and then make our decision that way.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's good, good. All right, where next?

Jeff Musser: 81.

Japhet De Oliveira: 81, all right. What is something you've given your absolute best effort towards and why was it so important?

Jeff Musser: I hope I don't get too emotional. It'd have to be during COVID.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, yeah?

Jeff Musser: So my dad, he was in an accident, in a car accident, a race car he was designing, and he was having trouble. And we moved him ... He and my mom into an assisted living facility, a typical independent living facility. And in March of '20 my dad got COVID.

Japhet De Oliveira: Wow.

Jeff Musser: My mom and dad had been together since they met in college. Never been apart, ever, ever. I had to manage my dad's ... All his health directors, everything like that. I had to manage it from basically 2000 miles away. My mom couldn't see him, no one could see him, they kept everybody isolated.

Japhet De Oliveira: Isolated.

Jeff Musser: Isolated. It was the most challenging thing to do to advocate for someone you love where you can't see them the whole bit. It was so restricted they couldn't ... You couldn't take your phone, you couldn't do FaceTime or anything like that. They were really worried about some of those.

Japhet De Oliveira: Those were the days, yeah.

Jeff Musser: We would cheat by sending pizzas to the nurses station on Friday with our name on it, and then they call to thank us and we'd say, "Yeah, hey, Beth, can you sneak into my dad's room and do a FaceTime with me?" She goes, "Sure, Jeff." And I go, "Don't get yourself in trouble. If it's going to get you in trouble just" ... "Can you sneak in there and do a FaceTime with me?" We did everything we could to advocate for him but it was one of the most challenging things I've ever been through. Hours and hours a day.

Japhet De Oliveira: How is your dad now?

Jeff Musser: He tested positive for COVID in March of '20, the early part. He was negative by end of May, June. But he died in ... On October 1st. They wanted to-

Japhet De Oliveira: Of 2020?

Jeff Musser: Yep. They wanted to move him into hospice right out of the hospital. We said, "Nah, we're not going to do that because he" ... "We want my mom to see him before he goes and we're just not going to do that." We just moved him back in the nursing home.

Japhet De Oliveira: Did you get to see him?

Jeff Musser: We did.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh.

Jeff Musser: We did at the end. When we first moved him from the hospital to the nursing home they wouldn't allow us to see him. So what we did is we flew out there, we waited outside of the hospital doors, and as they wheeled him out into the ambulance to move him-

Japhet De Oliveira: Then you got to see him.

Jeff Musser: We go, "Hey, dad."

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh.

Jeff Musser: And then we followed. And this was in Pennsylvania, right?

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Musser: And then we followed the ambulance to the nursing home. And then you can't go in the nursing home either. They get them off the stretcher, "Hey, dad." And we moved him.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's beautiful, man.

Jeff Musser: We did every possible thing that you could possibly do.

Japhet De Oliveira: I have to ask, could you share one of your favorite memories of your dad?

Jeff Musser: Oh. Since he was an engineer my brother ended up becoming an engineer too. I started out at engineering at University of Michigan but I drifted into finance. Our favorite thing was building things in the garage.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh really? Okay.

Jeff Musser: Because my dad would build all kinds of stuff. I mean, car-related recreational vehicles, motorcycles, mini bikes, go-karts, the whole bit. We just learned so much from him.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, yeah.

Jeff Musser: He graduated number one in his class. He was just brilliant. And just his creative mind was just over the top. And so my brother and I just loved weekends, just loved weekends. We'd be making something.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's pretty good, that's pretty good.

Jeff Musser: That was the best by far.

Japhet De Oliveira: Right. That's a brilliant memory. Love that. Hey, thanks for sharing. All right. Where next?

Jeff Musser: What do we do? What did we do, 80? What did we do?

Japhet De Oliveira: 81.

Jeff Musser: 82.

Japhet De Oliveira: 82, all right. If you could only keep three possessions what would they be and why? Three things.

Jeff Musser: Keep three.

Japhet De Oliveira: Keep three. Only three.

Jeff Musser: Your house is burning down and you have to grab three things?

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah.

Jeff Musser: Okay.

Japhet De Oliveira: Sounds good.

Jeff Musser: If the house was burning down and I had to jump out the second-story window what would I carry?

Japhet De Oliveira: I like how you're on the second floor.

Jeff Musser: Well, yeah, you got to make it thrilling.

Japhet De Oliveira: It's really odd.

Jeff Musser: Just grab something.

Japhet De Oliveira: I didn't walk out the front door I had to jump out, okay. Off the roof.

Jeff Musser: It would probably be my two big boxes. I have physical memory stuff so stuff that hasn't been digitized. All the newspaper articles and stuff that my dad did. Of our past and some of those things that ... There's two big boxes. I'll just grabbed those and maybe my air fryer.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, that sounds good. Okay, I got to ask why the air fryer?

Jeff Musser: Well, if I couldn't get out the window with the two big boxes I might leave one of them and grab the second air fryer. So it'd be the box and two air fryers for sure.

Japhet De Oliveira: Wow. Those air fryers, huh?

Jeff Musser: I'm addicted.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's impressive, man. I feel like I need to Google an air fryer today. I would leave my children behind but I have the air fryer.

Jeff Musser: Kids, kids. Kids, go this way. Oh, and grab the air fryer. No, no, not that one the other one. No, no, no, the black one, grab the black one. No. I joke. I use the darn thing so much.

Japhet De Oliveira: Really? Okay, all right.

Jeff Musser: Yeah, everything else is replaceable.

Japhet De Oliveira: But not the air fryer.

Jeff Musser: Or it's on the cloud, right?

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, sure.

Jeff Musser: So we have everything on the cloud. The things I can't replace are these boxes of memorabilia going back to the 60s, 70s, and 80s-

Japhet De Oliveira: Nice.

Jeff Musser: In physical form. You just can't replace that stuff.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's really cool.

Jeff Musser: That's all I'd grab.

Japhet De Oliveira: All right, last one. Where do you want to go?

Jeff Musser: Oh.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh.

Jeff Musser: What did we do 82? How about 92?

Japhet De Oliveira: 92, all right. Oh. How would you like to be remembered?

Jeff Musser: Oh. By the laughter I bring to my audience.

Japhet De Oliveira: Is that what you want on the stone it says, "He laughed well, he laughed deep?'

Jeff Musser: Yeah. If I can bring laughter. And also I'm loyal. I practice loyalty. I think loyalty is that one thing that ... You know you have it when things are really tough on somebody and you stand by them. They make an error or they do something in their life and you still stand by them.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's good qualities.

Jeff Musser: People know me by that. I'll stick it out, I'll stick it out.

Japhet De Oliveira: Where did you get those two qualities, the laughter, and smile, and sticking at it? Was that just your DNA?

Jeff Musser: I always joked around and was a prankster since kindergarten pretty much. I think you're wired that way and I think it's hard to stop. It sometimes can dampen your career because sometimes people don't take you seriously. I just like to feel good all the time and cut up. I like how it makes people feel. I like to see people laugh.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's good, that's good.

Jeff Musser: I was never good enough to be a comedy writer but I do practice it.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, that's good. That's the way to be, man. Hey, Jeff, it's been a pleasure, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for taking the time to share some of the stories and experiences in your life, especially the one with your father. That's fantastic. The character that you are as well today, it's good. I want to encourage people to do the same thing. Sit down with a friend, ask them good questions. I really do believe we are changed by it. We learn, we discover, and we become better beings for it.

Jeff Musser: Oh, absolutely.

Japhet De Oliveira: Thank you so much.

Jeff Musser: Oh, you bet.

Japhet De Oliveira: Absolutely. God bless everybody and we'll connect again soon.

Narrator: Thank you for joining us for the Story & Experience Podcast. We invite you to read, watch, and submit your story and experience at Adventisthealth.org/story. The Story & Experience Podcast was brought to you by Adventist Health through the Office of Culture.