5 Random But Useful Things I Learned At A Private Equity Conference

All right. We are going to do an episode that people really liked before. It was a trip report. I did a trip report when I went to Austin. I just went to LA and I wrote down a bunch of notes. So most people when they travel, I don't think they really do this, but I call them micro memories where I just write down like 1 to 3 words that wouldn't make sense to anybody else, but there's a story behind it for me, or there's something, some insight, some story, some crazy thing that happened. I write them down. All trip. And then what I did this time was I just published them on Twitter and I said, hey, here's all my notes. Ask me about any of these. I wrote down 21 things. Why don't we try that, Sam? Why don't we take this list of 21 and you just pick numbers that you think are interesting and then I'll kind of explain the thing from the trip.

By the way, when you take these notes, Where are you taking them? Like, uh, on your phone? Like, you just have a running notepad on your phone?

So I have two. I have a notepad, pen and paper, that I take to everywhere I go. And then I have also my phone in case I'm just like not there. So Apple Notes, it'll just be Apple Notes or that. It's nothing fancy.

And you discard the notepad after it's done, or you refer back to this like constantly?

Most people come home and they unpack their bags. I basically just unpack my notes. My bag is actually still sitting over there. It'll be there for 3 months. But what I do is the very next day, instead of saying, oh, I got to catch up on work and emails and Slack and all this stuff, the first 2 hours, I basically just take my notes and I type them out and I try to squeeze, you know, 20, 30, 40% more juice out of the trip just by reflecting and being like, okay, what was that? What was that story? Oh, I should follow up with that person. Or what was the takeaway there and how am I going to implement that? Or, oh, I need to share this story. I wanted to share with somebody. Let me write this and make sure I send it to that person. And so I take a couple hours first thing and I basically unpack my notes.

All right. Tell me about the low status technique for becoming a high status person at a conference.

All right. So I went to REConvene, which is a real estate conference, and met this guy there that I really liked this guy right away. And then I just noticed that he was like probably the most popular guy there. So there was maybe 200 people there, 150 people there. He was my favorite, and I think he was everybody's favorite just based on the reaction I got. And I was watching him and I was like, what is this guy doing that has made him everybody's favorite person here? Because I think that's what we all want. We all want to be liked, especially when we go to these big public events with strangers. And he's a big fan of the pod. His name is Will, and he's got this Twitter account called Student Rent Pro, I think is his name. Basically what this guy does is he owns a bunch of rental properties, student housing, like basically like houses for students in South Carolina. So, you know, frat houses, sorority houses, just students living together. He owns a bunch of properties there, bootstrapped it, no outside investors. That's what he does. I'm talking to him and he loves the pod. As soon as I got there, he makes a reference to the pod from like, he's like, he introduces me to somebody else. He goes, oh, this is Sean. He's real good friends with Orlando Bloom. Remembering this one Orlando Bloom story I said like 3 years ago. So I was like, wow, that was a deep Deep, uh, deep reference. And he goes, and so I'm watching him and I go, how come everybody here loves you? And he goes, you know, uh, you said that thing when Hasan Minhaj came on the podcast and he, he shared this insight about comedy. And this was before me and you were going to get on stage. We were doing our first live show in Vancouver and I had texted Hasan a picture of like 2,000 people in the audience. And I was like, dude, give me some tips. Like, how the fuck are we supposed to entertain this crowd? We're podcasters. And he said, he goes, start by talking about things you're either you see there or you've seen in Vancouver. Just make a reference so that it's like, I'm here. You're not getting my spiel. You're getting me here right now. Presence. He goes, the second thing is comedy is a low status art form, meaning self-deprecation. Make fun of yourself, call yourself out, poke fun at yourself. That is how you connect with people. And so this guy Will goes, He goes, I stole that. I stole that hard. He goes, I've been doing that. You know, once I heard that, I really owned that. And so what he does at this event, somebody would be like, so what do you do? He'd be like, oh man, I have the— I do the hardest form of real estate that will pay you the least amount of money. So you don't even want to talk to me. You go talk to him. He's awesome. And then somebody is like, what does that mean? He's like, I do student housing, but tell me about— and he's always making it about you or making it about somebody else. And so He would make fun of himself if anybody ever gave him a compliment. Even when I called him the favorite guy there, he was like, oh, thank you so much for saying that. I'll be sure to disappoint you next time. He's just the master of this low status thing. And he said he did this. He's like, he goes, so I, when we're at the event, he told me I stole that. And he goes, I also use that on Twitter. He goes, everybody on here, everybody in this conference at Twitter, they always just go on there, brag about their returns and brag about how awesome they are, brag about their method. He goes, I just did the exact opposite. I'll go on there and I'll talk about how, well, today, you know, I'm, I'm some 19-year-old's bitch. I gotta go, I gotta go fix a toilet in a frat house right now. Uh, you know, wish me luck. He's like, I'm always talking about how bad my business is, how hard it is, how, you know, I don't envy any, I don't envy myself. Like, you know, whatever. He goes, I just say it how it is. And I'll say, I'll actually shine a light on the worst parts of what it is and, and the uncertainties of what I'm doing. He goes, but I'll tell you what, I think I can out— he's like, I've never raised any money, but if I wanted to, I think I could outraise everybody here because what I've been doing on Twitter has built a lot of connection and a lot of trust. And I just think that goes a long way. And then when I watched him at this conference, he was doing something that Ben Levy is a master of, which is he realized that the way to build value at a conference is not to puff your chest out and say, oh, hey, come talk, you know, come look at me, come talk to me about my greatness. What he would do is any two people, he would just connect them to each other and then he would basically get the goodwill of having made that connection and he would just keep doing that. And he'd be like, oh, this is Sean. He'll never tell you this, but his podcast is a huge deal. This guy's podcast is incredible. You got to talk to him about this. And Sean, this guy, we call him the multifamily king of Dallas.

This guy's like the Flavor Flav of a conference. He's just hyping people up.

He would just keep connecting people. He would give you this like really hyperbole intro where he'd be your hype man. He'd make you feel good. And he just kept doing that, kept making connections, kept giving people two ways to intersect. Oh, you know, you guys will get along because you're both really into X. Boom. And what, what that does is just creates this like enormous glue and goodwill at a conference. So you need people like this at a conference, but also for him, he actually ended up being the high status guy. He's the guy that everybody loved. He's the guy that everybody knew. And he's the guy that everybody sort of felt completely not on the defensive with. And so because people felt they could be real with him, they actually formed real connections at the thing. I thought it was really awesome to see in person.

Two things, Dinner with Millionaires and The Richer the Guy, the Weirder the Guy.

Okay. The Richer the Guy, the Weirder the Guy is an obvious one for me. So what we do with these events is we kind of stack meetings with a bunch of interesting people that live in that city. So when we go to a city, often Ben will say, all right, here's a bunch of our friends or a bunch of people we know or loosely know. Who do we want to hang out with and how busy do we want to make this trip? And we sort of stack a schedule from there. And one of the things that really stood out was the more successful the person, the richer the guy, the weirder the guy, with really no exceptions during this trip. And when I say weirder, it would be that they have weird hobbies, would have that they have weird marriages or relationship dynamics. It would be that they have just like really weird social skills. And what I realized was that I always assumed by default that people are just normal, chill, just chill, normal people, right? Like, I don't know, like I just put that on people. That was my default assumption. And I realized like, I really need to stop making that assumption because it is way, way wrong when it comes to these kind of outlier successful people. And I thought about that and I was like, is it that like, are they successful because they're weird or are they weird because they're successful? And I think there's a bit of both going on. So like, for example, I think they are successful because they're weird in that they're willing to be unconventional. Like, you know, they didn't go get a job and they didn't look at some industry and assume it was like well run and they actually disrupted it. And you know, they grinded it out for 10 years taking no salary to try to get to that success. So because they were willing to be unconventional in their career, It really shouldn't surprise me that they're also unconventional in their marriage and unconventional in their hobbies.

Like, what's an example?

Well, I don't want to say a specific story to make somebody feel weird, right? Because these people listen to the podcast, so it's not, uh, you know, I don't want to put them on blast like that. But I mean, you've, you've seen this in San Francisco.

Yeah, I have. I think those particular people, they tend to be on the coast in cities like LA, San Francisco, and New York. I know a bunch of people that are worth 9 figures that live in Missouri, where I'm from. Not a bunch, handful. And I think that they are shockingly actually normal. I think it's if you've, if you've gotten extremely wealthy at a young age and you live in one of these cities, you're very— you should assume that they're going to be a freak. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Uh, there's also just like rough edges. So, you know, social norms are very weird, right? Like we were at a, uh, breakfast and there was two people there and they didn't know each other. And so we were like, hey, like, you know, um, you know, I could make an intro, but it'd be easier, you know, do you just tell your, you know, you just intro yourself. And like what I thought would happen if, if I say, hey, make an intro, like Sam, what are you going to say if I say, hey, maybe you guys introduce yourselves, you guys don't know each other, two people.

I would say, hey, what's going on? Uh, my name's Sam. Um, I live on the East Coast. Um, I work in media, the media industry, and I work on a podcast. I'm super into health and wellness.

Great. You said your name, you say where you're from, you say what you do, and you say maybe something you're really into or kind of like a hobby that's a big part of your life. Yeah, totally normal, chill thing to do. At this breakfast, one guy just starts with his name and literally he finished 2 minutes later with his company's EBITDA and the terms of their recent acquisition. And I was like, what is going on? I was like, I think rich people are just really, really out of touch with what they are willing to share and overshare about themselves.

But that happens. I think that happens to you and I. I'm the cause. If they listen to the podcast and they realize that we talk about numbers a lot, and what he was trying to do is to either show off or impress you that, yeah, I thought that this is just what you talk about all the time. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, but it wasn't bad. It was actually really fascinating. It was interesting. But I did note like, wow, that, you know, that's not a normal thing to do. And I think that's, you know, whatever. I enjoyed it in the moment, but like, and then by the way, the other person at the breakfast did the same thing. I was like, okay, cool. We all just went deep really fast, which is weird, but cool in its own way. So yeah, the richer the guy, the weirder the guy. All right.

So when I ran my company, The Hustle, I think we had something like 2 million subscribers and we made money through advertising. And we didn't actually make that much money per person reading the newsletter because advertising in general is kind of a crappy business model. And so I remember sitting down and I'm like, what are all the different ways that I can make money off the hustle that aren't advertising? And so to make sure that you don't make this mistake, Sean, me, and the HubSpot team, we went and looked at a bunch of different ways to monetize your business. And we put it all together in a really cool document where we lay it all out along with our research. And we call it very appropriately, we call it the Business Monetization Playbook. Go to the description of this episode and you're going to see a link to that Business Monetization Playbook. It's completely free. You just click the link and you can see it. Back to the episode. What about dressing well versus dressing comfortably?

Okay, this is right up your alley because I think you are on a big dressing well kick. Not displayed today with your white t-shirt, but You, right? This is like currently like a fascination for you.

This is an $80 t-shirt, Sean.

Is that an $80 t-shirt?

It's the t-shirt that the dude Jeremy wears in The Bear. So it's called fashion. Hello.

Nothing like buying an $80 t-shirt and then have somebody else say, is it an $80 t-shirt? It makes you feel great. I apologize.

It's called fashion. Hello.

No, what am I like? You're speaking a language I don't even know.

That's the problem.

I just can't even recognize.

I paid $80 for this t-shirt. So yeah, I think I know a thing or two about fashion.

All right. So I mean, obviously if you go to Los Angeles, you're going to see a bunch of beautiful people. And I started just like paying attention to it while I was there, you know, on the flight. I was like, man, people really like dress beautifully for this flight. Like this is, this is really cool. And I remember that Paul Graham once wrote this essay called Cities. He says that every city is kind of whispering something in your ear. All the major cities, you know, San Francisco is sort of whispering in your ear, you're not ambitious enough. You got to go bigger. You know, you want to launch rockets or, you know, artificial intelligence, whatever. You're not ambitious enough.

And what does New York tell you?

They go, uh, you're not powerful enough.

They go, uh, you're poor.

Yeah, exactly. You're not rich enough. LA basically whispers, you're not hot enough. And this is why people are injecting all kinds of shit into their face and their lips and their butt and all kinds of stuff. And to me, that part is a bit of a turnoff, but I do appreciate the dressing well component of you're not hot enough. And the funniest part was I went and our buddy Suli lives in LA right now. And I saw Suli a few months ago when he was living in San Francisco. The guy transformed, dude. He went from like SF startup scrappy style to cool guy, LA chic, and not even like in a tryhard way, just casual, right? Like just very casual, but well-dressed casual. And I was so inspired by it. I was like, wow, this is my same friend, two different cities, comes across two different ways just by, you know, a couple of choices. And I literally was just like, he was like explaining to me. I was like, shut up. I just looked at his tag. I took photos of his shirt while he was wearing it. I was like, I'm buying this exact outfit and that'll be my starting point. And I realized, okay, you know, I've had this in my mind, this choice, which was either dress comfortable or dress nice. It's one or the other.

It's not.

But when I saw him, I was like, oh, he's comfortable and dressed like, duh, that was a false choice. Stupid story I was telling myself. That was dumb. Pretty easy to change this. Um, and I remember 10 years ago, I actually hired a stylist in San Francisco to come to my house and she threw away all of my clothes. She took everything out of my closet and she took me shopping for one day and we bought a whole bunch of new stuff and it was like $3,000 to do it and it was great. But that was 10 years ago and like, you know, since then I have like gone back to my old ways and I've copied many things from Suli in life, mostly business stuff. But this is something else I'm going to copy from him, which is to, you know, do a very simple upgrade of style here.

Do you know why you thought that dressing well is the opposite of comfortably? It's just because your shit didn't fit right. If you wear, like, you can wear really nice clothes, like as much as a tie and a nice shirt. If it fits well, it's not uncomfortable. I think that, do you value art at all? Like, does art talk to you ever? Like, do you ever feel inspired by beauty? Like, or in what form does it, do you find like inspiration?

Yeah, not paintings, but, you know, things if they're like beautifully simple designs, right? Like a lot of like furniture. Or interior design, like a space, which is kind of like, like interior design of a space to me is like, it just really stands out. If I walk into a space that's got a certain vibe, it's like, I don't know, it's just like, I can't pay attention to really anything else in that moment. Cause I know that that same space with just a different set of, you know, lights and furniture and plants and whatnot would feel completely different. Same shelf, you know, somebody has created this vibe.

So I agree. I like architecture and I like energy of a room and furniture. And for years I thought art just meant like paintings or like just like sculptures. And I don't find inspiration from those things. And I thought architecture or clothing, that's not art. That's a waste of time. That's a waste of energy. And then when I kind of like realized, I'm like, no, it's actually like just as important as art. It's not a waste. And I started giving into that feeling. I realized this is, this is what makes like, this sings to my soul. I should like give into this stuff and it's worth the effort. This isn't just, you know, it's not simply utility. It could also be something that just inspires me or just sings to me a little bit. And so once I realized that they're all, it's all related to self-expression and it's all art, it kind of changed my perspective. Do you know what I mean? Or instead of just saying—

music is like that, right? Music is probably the easiest one to appreciate.

Yeah. And it's, and instead of saying, well, I'll just pay someone to do this, I actually realized, no, I want to learn, like, I want to learn, like, what are these things communicating? Or like, what goes like? It is in a weird way an art. I don't want to just phone it in. I want to actually figure out like what makes beautiful, beautiful art or what language do I want to speak when I'm communicating this? Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. I'm also probably the only sucker that bought two NFTs because I was like, oh, that's beautiful art. And I didn't mean it as like the COVID your ass of like, I'm just trying to get rich.

Was that the holographic Kobe Bryant thing?

The Kobe floating into heaven one and the other one that's just a strawberry. I was like, wow, this is beautiful. I bought this strawberry NFT that is currently worth zero, but in my heart it's still worth something.

All right, let's go to one or two more things. Which one do you think is interesting?

Okay, I think the little luxuries in life is a good one. I think Mike Posner is a good one.

Yeah, I want to learn about him, but would that ruin the pod?

No, it won't ruin the pod.

All right, so you interviewed Mike Posner. I know Mike Posner because of a song like I Took a Pill on a Biza. It was like the biggest hit, I think. But then I also know him because he's kind of like a hippie, mellow guy. I read about him or watched a YouTube video about him walking across America. And so like, he's actually a little bit more guru-y, not that he's a self-described that, but I am looking to him as like an energy guru a little bit. Is that right?

Yeah, but I wouldn't call him an energy guru, but I know exactly what you mean, which is that he's an inspiring guy. So the backstory here is, um, I went to Duke and in my freshman year I heard that there's a guy in the dorm next door who's like some white guy rapper from Detroit. I was like, okay, cliché. And it turns out that that was Mike Posner. He's in the same year as I was and he lived one building over. And I remember hearing his songs before they ever went public. And for example, Cooler Than Me, which was his first kind of hit song. I remember hearing that and being like, okay, this is actually kind of catchy. But at the time it just seemed far-fetched to me. Like, yeah, this guy's really going to make it. And he wasn't the best rapper and he wasn't the best singer and all that stuff. So, you know, at the time we just sort of wrote him off. And then while we were at Duke, he blew up. I think the second or third year, Cooler Than Me took off. And we used to hear that this guy was traveling, like every weekend he would just go do shows, concerts at other campuses and he'd fly back. He'd fly out on Thursday, he'd fly back Sunday night and he was there on Monday for classes. And I remember being like, what the hell? And like, he had a meeting with Jay-Z's record label and I was like, wow, this is crazy. What's going on? So anyways, That was how I initially heard of Mike Posner. And over the next, I don't know, 10, 15 years, he went on this journey where it was like a perfect 3-act story, which is kind of ironic because when I did the podcast, I didn't cover any of the story as you normally would. So he is like a podcaster's dream. He's got a perfect 3-act story. It's the rise, you know, the unlikely rise of this college, you know, musician in his dorm room. Who becomes international pop star. Then he's got Act 2, The Fall, which is he's a one-hit wonder. His next song goes triple platinum, but it's still not enough because it's smaller than the first song. Then the next song goes double platinum, which is even worse. And then his record label shelves him and he doesn't even get to make music anymore. They won't release his music anymore for years.

And is he like a, does he also get into drugs and alcohol or no?

He gets depressed. He's like, I lived this lifestyle. I was on the road. I'm taking my shirt off on stage.

I'm the man.

Now I'm not the man anymore. And he's kind of bummed out and he hits rock bottom when he goes to a concert with his friend Avicii, the kind of the one friend of the music industry who didn't write him off as like a has-been. And he's now in general admission. He's in the crowd and he's like, I'm watching my friend on stage doing the thing I used to do, the thing that I want to do, which is, you know, like do this concert in front of thousands of fans who love him. I'm standing in the crowd just like a normal civilian. And he's like, I'm hoping that somebody recognizes me. And then if somebody does, they come up to me and they go, hey, are you Mike Posner? He's like, and then I realized that was my worst nightmare because they're like, what are you doing here? Like, why are you at the crowd? He's like, and then I take a, like, this guy offers me a pill and I take it. And that becomes, that rock bottom is the genesis of the song. I took a pill in Ibiza to show Avicii I was cool. The first line of that song.

Yeah.

That becomes the new hit. So it hits rock bottom, ends up making a hit even bigger than the first one. 2 billion streams on Spotify. And then again feels a bit depressed because is this what I want out of life? And I'm just chasing this high, this fame high. And that's when his dad dies. And now Act 3, the rebirth. And this is where he ends up doing a bunch of things. He climbs Everest and with his friend, he actually climbs 71 mountains to prep for Everest. And he has this quote, you train for climbing a mountain by climbing mountains. And he climbs 71 mountains. He ends up climbing Everest. He then decides to walk across America after his dad dies. He walks across two-thirds of the way, he gets bit by a rattlesnake, almost dies, has to relearn how to walk. After months of therapy where he really learns how to walk, goes back to the spot where he got bit and resumes the walk and finishes it. And anyways, he's become this very happy, positive, upbeat guy. Now he's sober. He doesn't do drugs. He doesn't drink. He doesn't watch porn. He like sings about songs that he just wants to make art that inspires people.

Cool.

So he's got this like amazing story. I do this podcast where I talk about almost none of it. And the reason why was he's told that story before. And I'm in the season of sort of indulging my actual curiosities. It's like, let me have the conversation I actually want to have. And so I talked to him about, you know, how do you actually make the songs that you make? Like, what is the creative process for you? Like, where does a Pit song come from? How do you do that? And a lot of his mindset mentality stuff. So I think the podcast is going to be great. But it's different than probably what people expect, which is just kind of beginning, middle, and end of a story.

With someone like him who is famous, but maybe doesn't regularly have hits or tour, does he just have super lumpy income? I mean, how does he like survive between hits?

Well, so what he told me, he was like, I was like, how did you do that? And he's like, well, part of it is like, I got financial freedom. Like, he's like, my wealth manager guy sat me down and was like, hey, we ran Monte Carlo simulations and like, look, like you're good. You're good. You're good. And so like, of course you can always make more. And of course, like, you know, anything could happen, but like, by and large, you're good. If you don't let your lifestyle get fucking crazy, you're, you're all right. He's like, so then that gave me the freedom of like, I don't even need to have another hit, which freed, which is like all of his hits have come from a place where he wasn't trying to make a hit. And every time he's tried to make a hit, he didn't make a hit, right? It's like that irony of the whole thing. And so I go to his house and by the way, the best thing to do with these podcasts is to go to people's house to film it.

Was it nice?

Well, we filmed it in his studio, which is like a side house that he has. Like, we didn't go to the main house, but it's cool. It's at the top of this mountain. So you have to like basically make a trek up this like windy road up to his mountain. And I was like, cool, I'll, you know, I'll pass on this windy road every day, but But the house itself was cool. It was the top of this mountain. And I'm standing there at his studio and he's like, oh, his guy was like, oh, he's got a meeting right now. He'll be out in a second. So he comes out and I just hear from the other side, like, woohoo. Like, he's just so happy that he's like outside enjoying his day. He doesn't even realize that we're already there. And he's just like, oh, you're here. And then he comes in and he's just like a ball of good vibes. It's like energy was really like off the charts. And you could, People don't know this, but Ari, we've talked about this, which is we get to see the guest before the lights turn on and after the recording is over. And it's very striking what people are like. Some people have a very stark contrast of the before pod and after pod versus when they're recorded. And some people are just like the same or even better when they're off camera. I would say Mike was a great example of somebody who off camera, like his energy was just very, very contagious, extremely positive person, very nice to everybody in the room, took the time to do that. Even afterwards when he had to go, like his manager was there, was like, hey, we gotta go, Mike, we're late. Yeah, we gotta go somewhere. He like stopped and was like, hey, um, he's like, I gotta go do this real quick, but don't leave. I want to come back and say bye. Which like most musician pop stars don't give a fuck, right? They don't need to come back and say goodbye. They're just like, yeah, thanks everybody.

Bye.

Like, see ya. I'm on to my next important thing. 'cause remember, I'm a very important person. And instead he was like, made you feel important, which I thought was nice.

Did he remember you from Duke?

Well, we didn't actually ever really cross paths. Like we didn't know each other when we were there. We just knew, I knew of him. He didn't know anything about me.

All right, let's do one or two more. What's the little luxuries?

So this stood out. We, again, we meet a bunch of people. One of the things we noticed was we would have a, like a meeting or lunch or something, or hang out, go to someone's house who was like, super wealthy. And what we noticed was like, man, even if this person has like, let's say, 10 times the net worth that we have, they don't have like 10 times the better life. They don't even have maybe 2 times the better life. I actually don't think that there's really like any link. And I don't mean better life as in like, let's say their health or their family, like forget those things. I'm talking about even just material life. Like there's not that much that they can spend on that we really need or would want. So we, you know, and I'm on the lookout for it. Like what are ways that people use money, either spend money, invest money, whatever that is interesting to me. And what I noticed was that there were very few luxuries that I actually wanted that other people had. And instead, well, we flipped it and there was actually some really small little luxuries of life. So like when we were, I was talking to Ben and Ben's like, dude, there's this little luxury of life I miss at this Airbnb. He's like, the Airbnb had really cheap towels. He's like, yeah, he's like, I just recently splurged on like having amazing bath towels. He's like, and then I use two every time. He's like, it drives my wife nuts. I'll use two towels every time I'm out of the shower. And like, I bought the like $40 towel or the $50 towel instead of the like $5 towel. He's like, but it's the little luxuries, man. And I was like, dude, that's me with socks. Like I will, like, I hate having mismatched socks. So I threw all my socks away when we got acquired. The only thing I bought was I threw all my socks away. And I asked, I said, what is the highest quality sock? And I just let that you can find.

What's the answer, by the way?

Well, the answer I got at that time was Bombas socks. And now I actually have like custom socks. So I went to a manufacturer and I was like, hey, I I want a sock like this. And so now I have like 100, 200 pairs of custom manufactured socks.

Did you really?

Factory that I found off Alibaba. Yeah. Cause I like wearing crew socks, like, you know, like the kind of calf, like socks, whatever calf length socks, mid calf. And, but like if you wear the Nike compression ones, they're too tight all the time.

That's so funny.

And if you just wear the Hanes ones, they're like kind of, they're good, but they're pretty basic. And so I kind of made my own hybrid.

Do you know that Gen Z makes fun of millennials for wearing ankle socks?

Good. I knew fashion would come back around and be on my side. I've been a dork for a long time wearing non-ankle socks.

You've been winning. You win this one. Young people don't like ankle socks. They like socks that show. So you're right.

You win. And like skinny jeans are not cool either, right? Like you got to wear like big jeans or something. High waist jeans.

Yeah, baggy and high-waisted pants are in, thank God, because they're way more comfortable, by the way, way more comfortable. But they call it, the word is called choogy. So when you are like a 35-year-old that you wear skinny pants or skinny jeans, it's called you're being choogy. That's like the phrase.

How do you use it in a sentence? Like you're being choogy?

Yeah, you could do that. Yeah, you could use it that way. Or you could say like, I don't want to wear skinny jeans. That's, that's pretty chuugi. You could use it that way. But yeah, chuugi means like, like for example, yeah. So tight jeans, ankle socks, it's super chuugi. You don't want to be chuugi, man.

All right. Well, that's, that's it.

That was my LA trip report.

I had 21 things. We talked about a few of them.

All right. That's the pod.