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

0:00:04 All right. We are going to do an episode that people really liked before. It was a trip report.
0:00:10 I did a trip report when I went to Austin. I just went to LA and I wrote down a bunch
0:00:14 of notes. So most people when they travel, I don’t think they really do this, but I call
0:00:18 them micro memories where I just write down like one to three words that wouldn’t make
0:00:22 sense to anybody else, but there’s a story behind it for me or there’s something, some
0:00:26 insight, some stories, some crazy thing that happened. I write them down all trip. And then
0:00:30 what I did this time was I just published them on Twitter and I said, Hey, here’s all
0:00:35 my notes. Ask me about any of these. I wrote down 21 things. Why don’t we try that? Sam,
0:00:40 why don’t we take this list of 21 and you just pick numbers that you think are interesting.
0:00:44 And then I’ll kind of explain the thing for the trip.
0:00:50 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it
0:00:55 like the days off on the road. By the way, when you take these notes, where are you taking
0:00:59 them like on your phone? Like you just have a running notepad on your phone. So I have
0:01:04 two. I have a notepad pen and paper that I take to everywhere I go. And then I have
0:01:08 also my phone in case I’m just like not there. So Apple notes, it’ll just be Apple notes
0:01:12 or that it’s nothing fancy. And you discard the notepad after it’s done or you refer back
0:01:16 to this like constantly. Most people come home and they unpack their bags. I basically
0:01:20 just unpack my notes. My bag is actually still sitting over there. It’ll be there for three
0:01:24 months. But what I do is the very next day, instead of saying, oh, I got to catch up on
0:01:28 work and emails and slack and all this stuff. The first two hours, I basically just take
0:01:35 my notes. I typed them out. And I try to squeeze, you know, 20, 30, 40% more juice out of the
0:01:38 trip just by reflecting and being like, okay, what was that? What was that story? Oh, I
0:01:43 should follow up with that person. Or what was the takeaway there? And how am I going
0:01:48 to implement that? Or, um, oh, I need to shot this story. I wanted to share with somebody.
0:01:51 Let me write this and make sure I send it to that person. And so I take a couple hours
0:01:55 first thing and I basically unpack my notes.
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0:02:37 All right, tell me about the low status technique for becoming a high status person at a conference.
0:02:45 All right, so I went to reconvene, which is a real estate conference and met this guy
0:02:50 there that I really like this guy right away. And then I just noticed that he was like probably
0:02:54 the most popular guy there. So there was maybe 200 people there or 150 people there. He was
0:02:58 my favorite. And I think it was everybody’s favorite, just based on the reaction I got.
0:03:03 And I was watching him and I was like, what is this guy doing that has made him everybody’s
0:03:07 favorite person here? I think that’s what we all want. We all want to be liked, especially
0:03:12 when we go to these big public events with strangers. And he’s a big fan of the pod.
0:03:17 His name is Will and he’s got this Twitter account called student rent pro, I think is
0:03:22 his name. Basically what this guy does is he owns a bunch of rental properties, student
0:03:28 housing like houses for students in South Carolina. So, you know, frat houses, rowdy
0:03:33 houses, just students living together, he owns a bunch of properties there, bootstrapped
0:03:37 it, no outside investors, that’s what he does. I’m talking to him. He loves the pod. As
0:03:42 soon as I got there, he makes a reference to the pod from like, he’s like, he introduces
0:03:45 me to somebody else. He goes, oh, this is Sean. He’s real good friends with Orlando
0:03:50 Bloom. Remembering this one, I can say like, three years ago. So I was like, wow, that was
0:03:56 a deep, deep, deep reference. And he goes, and so I’m watching him and I go, how come
0:04:01 everybody here loves you? And he goes, you know, you said that thing when Huson Minhaj
0:04:07 came on the podcast and he shared this insight about comedy. And this was before me and you
0:04:10 were going to get on stage. We were doing our first live show in Vancouver and I had
0:04:15 texted us in a picture of like 2000 people in the audience. And I was like, dude, give
0:04:20 me some tips like how the fuck are we supposed to entertain this crowd? We’re podcasters.
0:04:24 And he said, he goes, start by talking about things you’re either you see there or you’ve
0:04:27 seen in Vancouver. Just make a reference so that it’s like, I’m here. You’re not getting
0:04:34 my spiel. You’re getting me here right now. Presence. He goes, the second thing is comedy
0:04:41 is a low status art form, meaning self deprecation. Make fun of yourself. Call yourself out, poke
0:04:46 fun at yourself. That is how you connect with people. And so this guy will goes, he goes,
0:04:51 I stole that. I stole that hard. He goes, I’ve been doing that. You know, once I heard
0:04:55 that, I really, you know, own that. And so what he does at this event, somebody would
0:05:01 be like, um, so what do you do? And he’d be like, Oh, man, I have the, um, I do the hardest
0:05:04 form of real estate that will pay you the least amount of money. So you don’t even want
0:05:08 to talk to me. You go talk to him. He’s awesome. And then somebody’s like, what, what does
0:05:11 that mean? He’s like, I do student housing, but, but tell me about, and he’s always making
0:05:15 it about you or making about somebody else. And so he would make fun of himself. If anybody
0:05:19 ever gave him a compliment, even when I called him, you know, the favorite guy there, he
0:05:22 was like, Oh, thank you so much for saying that. I’ll be sure to disappoint you next
0:05:27 time. Like he’s just the master of this low status thing. And he said, he did this. He’s
0:05:32 like, uh, he goes, so I, he told when we’re at the event, he told me, I stole that. And
0:05:36 he goes, um, I also use that on Twitter. He goes, everybody on here, everybody in this
0:05:40 conference at Twitter, they always just go on their brag about their returns and brag
0:05:45 about how awesome they are or brag about their method. He goes, I just did the exact opposite.
0:05:49 I’ll go on there and I’ll talk about how, well, today, you know, I’m, I’m some 19 year
0:05:54 olds bitch. I got to go, I got to go fix a toilet in a frat house right now. Uh, you
0:05:58 know, wish me luck. He’s like, I’m always talking about how bad my business is, how
0:06:02 hard it is, how, you know, I don’t envy any, I don’t envy myself like, you know, whatever.
0:06:06 He goes, I just say it how it is. And I’ll say, I’ll actually shine a light on the worst
0:06:10 parts of what it is and the uncertainties of what I’m doing. He goes, but he goes, I’ll
0:06:14 tell you what, I think I can out, he’s like, I’ve never raised any money, but if I wanted
0:06:18 to, I think I could out raise everybody here because what I’ve been doing on Twitter has
0:06:23 built a lot of connection and a lot of trust. And I just think that goes a long way. And
0:06:27 then when I watched him at this conference, he was doing something that Ben Levy is a
0:06:32 master of, which is he realized that the way to build value at a conference is not to puff
0:06:36 your chest out and say, Oh, hey, come talk, you know, come look at me, come talk to me
0:06:41 about migrations. What he would do is any two people, he would just connect them to
0:06:45 each other. And then he would basically get the goodwill of having made that connection.
0:06:48 And he would just keep doing that. And he’d be like, Oh, this is Sean, he’ll never tell
0:06:53 you this, but his podcast is a huge deal. This guy’s, this guy’s podcast is incredible.
0:06:57 You got to talk about this. And Sean, this guy, he’s, we call him the multifamily king
0:06:58 of Dallas.
0:07:01 This guy’s like the flavor, flavor of a conference. He’s just hyping people up.
0:07:04 He would just keep connecting people. He would give you this like really hyperbole
0:07:09 intro where he’d be your hype man. He’d make you feel good. And he just kept doing that,
0:07:13 making connection, kept giving people two ways to intersect. Oh, you know, you guys
0:07:19 will get along because you’re both really into X boom. And what, what that does is just
0:07:23 creates this like enormous glue and goodwill at a conference. So you need people like
0:07:27 this at a conference, but also for him, he actually ended up being the high status guy.
0:07:31 He’s the guy that everybody loved. He’s the guy that everybody knew. And he’s the guy
0:07:37 that everybody sort of felt completely not on the defensive with. And so because people
0:07:41 felt they could be real with him, he actually found real connections at the thing. I thought
0:07:42 it was really awesome to see in person.
0:07:47 Two things, dinner with millionaires and the richer the guy, the weirder the guy.
0:07:53 Okay. The richer the guy, the weirder the guy is a, is an obvious one for me. So what
0:07:57 we do with these events is we kind of stack meetings with a bunch of interesting people
0:08:01 that live in that city. So when we go to a city, often Ben will say, all right, here’s
0:08:04 like, you know, a bunch of our friends or bunch of people we know or loosely know, you
0:08:07 know, who do we want to hang out with? And how busy do we want to make this trip? And
0:08:13 we sort of stack a schedule from there. And one of the things that really stood out was
0:08:18 the more successful the person, the richer the guy, the weirder the guy with really no
0:08:23 exceptions during this trip. And when I say weirder, it would be that they have weird
0:08:28 hobbies would have that they have weird marriages or relationship dynamics. It would be that
0:08:34 they have just like really weird social skills. And what I realized was that I always assumed
0:08:40 by default that people are just normal chill, just chill, normal people, right? Like, I
0:08:43 don’t know, like, I just put that on people. That was my default assumption. And I realized
0:08:49 like, I really need to stop making that assumption because it is way, way wrong when it comes
0:08:54 to these kind of outlier successful people. And I thought about that. And I was like,
0:08:59 is it that like, are they successful because they’re weird? Or are they weird because they’re
0:09:05 successful? And I think there’s a bit of both going on. So like, for example, I think they
0:09:10 are successful because they’re weird in that they’re willing to be unconventional, like,
0:09:14 you know, they didn’t go get a job and they didn’t, they didn’t look at some industry
0:09:18 and assume it was like well run and they actually disrupted it. And you know, they grinded it
0:09:23 out for 10 years, taking no salary to try to get to that success. So because they were
0:09:27 willing to be unconventional in their career, it really shouldn’t surprise me that they’re
0:09:30 also unconventional in their marriage and unconventional in their hobbies.
0:09:31 Like, what’s an example?
0:09:34 Well, I don’t want to say a specific story to make somebody feel weird, right? Because
0:09:39 these people listen to the podcast. So it’s not, you know, I don’t want to put them on
0:09:42 blast like that. But I mean, you’ve seen this in San Francisco.
0:09:49 Yeah, I have. I think those particular people, they tend to be on the coast in cities like
0:09:54 LA, San Francisco and New York. I know a bunch of people that are worth nine figures that
0:09:58 live in Missouri, where I’m from, not a bunch of handful. And I think that they are shockingly
0:10:04 actually normal. I think it’s if you’ve, if you’ve gotten extremely wealthy at a young
0:10:09 age and you live in one of these cities, you’re, you should assume that they’re going to be
0:10:10 a freak.
0:10:12 Do you know what I mean?
0:10:18 Yeah. There’s also just like rough edges. So, you know, social norms are very weird,
0:10:23 right? Like, we were at a breakfast and there was two people there and they didn’t know
0:10:27 each other. And so we were like, Hey, like, you know, you know, I could make an intro,
0:10:30 but it’d be easier. You know, do you just tell your, you just intro yourself. And like,
0:10:35 what I thought would happen if I say, Hey, make an intro, like Sam, what are you going
0:10:38 to say if I say, Hey, maybe you guys introduce yourselves. You guys don’t know each other,
0:10:39 two people.
0:10:45 I would say, Hey, what’s going on? My name is Sam. I live on the East Coast. I work in
0:10:50 media, the media industry, and I work on a podcast on super into health and wellness.
0:10:55 Right. You said your name. You say where you’re from. You say what you do. And you say maybe
0:11:00 something you’re really into or kind of like a hobby. That’s a big part of your life. Yeah.
0:11:07 Totally normal chill thing to do at his breakfast. One guy just starts with his name and literally
0:11:12 he finished two minutes later with his company’s EBITDA and like the terms of their recent
0:11:16 acquisition. Like the, the, the, and I was like, what is going on? I was like, yeah,
0:11:20 I think rich people just like really, really out of touch with what they are willing to
0:11:23 share and overshare about their themselves.
0:11:27 But that happens. I think that happens to you and I because if they, if they listen
0:11:31 to the podcast and they’ve realized that we talk about numbers a lot, what he was trying
0:11:38 to do is to like either show off or impress you that yeah, I thought that this is just
0:11:40 what you talk about all the time. Do you know what I mean?
0:11:44 Yeah. But you know, it wasn’t bad. Like it was actually really fascinating. It was interesting.
0:11:50 But I did note like, wow, that, you know, that’s not a normal thing to do. And I think that’s
0:11:54 yeah, whatever. I enjoyed it in the moment, but like, and the, by the way, the other person
0:11:57 at the breakfast did the same thing. I was like, oh, okay, cool. We all just went deep
0:12:01 really fast, which is weird, but cool in, in its own way. So yeah, the rich or the guy,
0:12:07 the weird or the guy.
0:12:10 What about dressing well versus dressing comfortably?
0:12:14 Okay. This is right up your alley because I think you are on a, a big dressing well
0:12:18 kick. Not, not, not displayed today with your white t-shirt, but you write, this is like
0:12:20 a, currently like a, a fascination for you.
0:12:24 This is an $80 t-shirt, Sean. So is that an $80 t-shirt?
0:12:35 It’s the t-shirt that the dude Jeremy wears in the bear. So it’s called fashion. Hello.
0:12:41 Nothing like buying an $80 t-shirt and then have somebody else say, is it an $80 t-shirt?
0:12:42 Make you feel great. I apologize.
0:12:44 It’s called fashion. Hello.
0:12:49 No, what, what about like, you speak in a language I don’t even know. That’s the problem.
0:12:50 I just can’t even recognize.
0:12:55 I paid $80 this t-shirt. So yeah, I think I know something or two about fashion.
0:12:59 All right. So I mean, obviously if you go to Los Angeles, you’re going to see a bunch
0:13:04 of beautiful people. And I started just like paying attention to it while I was there,
0:13:07 you know, on the flight. I was like, man, people really like dress beautifully for
0:13:13 this flight. Like this is, uh, this is really cool. And I remember that Paul Graham once
0:13:18 wrote this essay called cities. And he says that every city is kind of whispering something
0:13:22 in your ear. All the major cities, you know, San Francisco is sort of whispering in your
0:13:27 ear. You’re not ambitious enough. You got to go bigger, you know, you want to launch
0:13:31 rockets or, you know, artificial intelligence, whatever. You’re not ambitious enough.
0:13:33 And what does New York tell you? They go, uh,
0:13:35 You’re not powerful enough. They go, uh,
0:13:36 You’re poor.
0:13:43 Yeah. Exactly. You’re not rich enough. LA basically whispers, you’re not hot enough.
0:13:46 And this is why people are injecting all kinds of shit into their face and their lips and
0:13:50 their butt and all kinds of stuff. And to me that, that part is a bit of a turnoff, but
0:13:56 I do appreciate the, the dressing well component of you’re not hot enough. And the funniest
0:14:02 part was I went and our buddy Sully lives in LA right now. And I saw Sully a few months
0:14:08 ago when he was living in San Francisco, the guy transformed dude. He went from like SF
0:14:16 startup scrappy style to cool guy LA chic and not even like in a try hard way, just casual,
0:14:20 right? Like just very casual, but well dressed casual. And I was so inspired by it. I was
0:14:26 like, wow, this is my same friend, two different cities, comes across two different ways just
0:14:30 by, you know, a couple of choices. And I will literally was like, he was like, explained
0:14:33 to me, I was like, shut up. I just looked at his tag. I took photos of his shirt while
0:14:37 he was wearing it. I was like, I’m buying this exact outfit. And that’ll be my starting
0:14:43 point. And I realized, okay, you know, I’ve had this in my mind, this choice, which was
0:14:46 either dress comfortable or dress nice. It’s one or the other.
0:14:49 It’s not, but when I saw him, I was like, oh, he’s comfortable and rice. Like, that was
0:14:54 a false choice. Stupid story. I was telling myself that was dumb. Pretty easy to change
0:14:59 this. And I remember 10 years ago, I actually hired a stylist in San Francisco to come to
0:15:04 my house. And she threw away all of my clothes. She took everything out of my closet. And
0:15:07 she took me shopping for one day and we bought a whole bunch of new stuff. And it was like
0:15:11 three grand to do it. And it was great. But that was 10 years ago. And like, you know,
0:15:15 since then I have like gone back to my old ways. And I’ve copied many things for silly
0:15:19 in life, mostly business stuff. But this is a something else I’m going to copy from him,
0:15:22 which is to, you know, do a very simple upgrade of style here.
0:15:27 Do you know why you thought that dressing well is the opposite of comfortably? It’s just
0:15:32 because your shit didn’t fit right. If you, if you wear like you can wear really nice
0:15:37 clothes, like as much as a tie and a nice shirt, if it fits well, it’s not uncomfortable.
0:15:42 I think that do, do you value art at all? Like, does art talk to you ever? Like, do
0:15:47 you ever feel, feel inspired by beauty? Like, or in what, in what form does it, do you find
0:15:49 like inspiration?
0:15:56 Yeah, not paintings, but you know, things if they’re like beautifully simple designs,
0:16:02 right? Like a lot of like furniture or interior design, like a space, which is kind of like,
0:16:07 like interior design of a space to me is like, it just really stands out. If I walk into
0:16:11 a space that’s got a certain vibe, it’s like, I don’t know, it’s just like, I can’t pay
0:16:15 attention to really anything else in that moment. Because I know that that same space
0:16:19 with just a different set of, you know, lights and furniture and plants and whatnot would
0:16:23 feel completely different. Same shell, you know, somebody has created this vibe.
0:16:28 So I, I agree. I like architecture and I like energy of a room and furniture. And for years,
0:16:33 I thought art just meant like paintings or like just like sculptures or sculptures. And
0:16:37 I don’t find inspiration from those things. And I thought architecture or clothing, that’s
0:16:41 not art. That’s a waste of time. That’s a waste of energy. And then when I kind of like
0:16:46 realized, I’m like, no, it’s actually like just as important as art. It’s not a waste.
0:16:50 And I started giving into that feeling. I realized this is, this is what makes like this things
0:16:55 to my soul. I should like give into this stuff and it’s a worthy effort. This isn’t, you know,
0:17:00 it’s not simply utility. It could also be something that just inspires me or just sinks
0:17:05 to me a little bit. And so once I realized that they’re all, it’s all related to self
0:17:09 expression and it’s all art, it kind of changed my perspective. Do you know what I mean? Or
0:17:13 instead of just saying, instead of music is like that, right? Music is probably the easiest
0:17:16 one to appreciate. Yeah. And it’s, and instead of saying, well, I’ll just pay someone to
0:17:20 do this. I actually realized, no, I want to learn like the, I want to learn like what
0:17:25 are these things communicating or like what goes like it is in a weird way in art. I don’t
0:17:30 want to just phone it in. I want to actually figure out like what makes beautiful art or
0:17:33 what language do I want to speak when I’m communicating this? Do you know what I mean?
0:17:38 Yeah. I’m also probably the only sucker that bought two NFTs because I was like, oh, that’s
0:17:42 beautiful art. And I didn’t mean it as like the cover your ass of like, I’m just trying
0:17:46 to get rich. Was that the holographic Kobe Bryant thing?
0:17:52 The Kobe, the Kobe floating into heaven one and the other one, that’s just a strawberry.
0:17:58 I was like, wow, this is beautiful. And I bought this strawberry NFT that, you know, is currently
0:18:01 worth zero. But in my heart, it’s still worth something.
0:18:06 All right. If you’re listening to this pod, I already know something about you. You, my
0:18:11 friend, are nosy. You want to know the numbers behind all of these things that we’re talking
0:18:15 about, how much money people make, how much money people spend, how much money businesses
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0:19:03 All right. Let’s go to one or two more things. Which one do you think is interesting?
0:19:10 Okay. I think the little luxuries in life is a good one. I think Mike Posner is a good
0:19:14 one. Yeah, I want to learn about him, but would that ruin the pod?
0:19:19 No, it won’t ruin the pod. All right. So you interviewed Mike Posner. I know
0:19:22 Mike Posner because of a song, like I took a pill on a visa. It was like the biggest
0:19:27 hit, I think. But then I also know him because he’s kind of like a hippie mellow guy. I read
0:19:32 about him or watched a YouTube video about him walking across America. And so like he’s
0:19:38 actually a little bit more guru-y, not that he’s a self-described that, but I am looking
0:19:41 to him as like an energy guru a little bit.
0:19:43 Yeah, but I wouldn’t call him energy guru, but I know exactly what you mean, which is
0:19:49 that he’s an inspiring guy. So the backstory here is I went to Duke and in my freshman
0:19:53 year, I heard that there’s a guy in the dorm next door who’s like some white guy, a rapper
0:19:59 from Detroit. I was like, okay, cliche. And it turns out that that was Mike Posner. He’s
0:20:06 in the same year as I was and he lived, you know, one building over. And I remember hearing
0:20:11 his songs before they ever went public. And, you know, for example, Cooler Than Me, which
0:20:15 was his first kind of hit song. I remember hearing that and being like, okay, this actually
0:20:19 kind of catchy. But at the time, it just seemed far-fetched to me. Like, yeah, this guy’s
0:20:23 really going to make it. And he wasn’t the best rapper or he wasn’t the best singer and
0:20:27 all that stuff. So, you know, at the time, we just sort of wrote him off. And then while
0:20:32 we were at Duke, he blew up. I think the second or third year, Cooler Than Me took off and
0:20:36 we used to hear that this guy was traveling like every weekend, he would just go do shows,
0:20:40 concerts at other campuses and he’d fly back. He’d fly out on Thursday, fly back Sunday
0:20:43 night and he’s there on Monday for classes. And I remember being like, what the hell?
0:20:47 And like, he had a meeting with Jay-Z’s record label and I was like, wow, this is crazy. What’s
0:20:52 going on? So anyways, that was how I initially heard of Mike Posner. And over the next, I
0:20:56 don’t know, 10, 15 years, he went on this journey where it was like a perfect three-act
0:21:02 story, which is kind of ironic because when I did the podcast, I didn’t cover any of the
0:21:07 story as you normally would. So he is like a podcaster’s dream. He’s got a perfect three-act
0:21:12 story. It’s the rise, you know, the unlikely rise of this college, you know, musician in
0:21:20 his dorm room who, you know, becomes international pop star. Then he’s got act two, the fall,
0:21:25 which is he’s a one-hit wonder. His next song goes triple platinum, but it’s still not enough
0:21:28 because it’s smaller than the first song. Then the next song goes double platinum, which
0:21:32 is even worse. And then his record label shelves him and he doesn’t get even get to make music
0:21:35 anymore. They won’t release his music anymore for years.
0:21:37 And does he also get into drugs and alcohol or no?
0:21:41 He gets depressed. He’s like, I lived this lifestyle. You know, I was on the road. I’m
0:21:45 taking my shirt off on stage. I’m the man. Now I’m not the man anymore. And he’s got
0:21:50 a bummed out and he hits rock bottom when he goes to a concert with his friend of each
0:21:53 either kind of the one friend of the music industry who didn’t write them off as like
0:22:00 a has been. And he’s now in general admission, he’s in the crowd. And he’s like, I’m watching
0:22:04 my friend on stage doing the thing I used to do, the thing that I want to do, which
0:22:09 is, you know, like do this concert in front of thousands of fans who love him. I’m sitting,
0:22:13 I’m standing in the crowd, just like a normal civilian. And he’s like, I’m hoping that somebody
0:22:17 recognizes me. And then there’s somebody does, they come up to me and they go, Hey, are you
0:22:20 Mike Posner? He’s like, and then I realized that was my worst nightmare because they’re
0:22:25 like, what are you doing here? Like, why are you in the crowd? He’s like, and then I take
0:22:30 a like this guy offers me a pill and I take it and that becomes that rock bottom is the
0:22:34 genesis of the song. I took a pill in Ibiza to show Avicii. I was cool. The first line
0:22:40 of that song. Yeah, that becomes the new hit. So it hits rock bottom ends up making a hit
0:22:45 even bigger than the first one, two billion streams on Spotify. And then again, feels
0:22:49 a bit depressed because like, is this what I want out of life and is I’m just chasing
0:22:55 this high, this fame high. And that’s when his dad dies and he now act three, the rebirth.
0:22:59 And this is where he ends up doing a bunch of things. He climbs Everest. And he with
0:23:02 his friend, he actually climbed 71 mountains to prep for Everest. And he has this quote,
0:23:07 you know, you train for climbing a mountain by climbing mountains. And he climbed 70 mountains.
0:23:12 He ends up climbing Everest. He then decides to walk across America after his dad dies.
0:23:17 He walks across two thirds of the way he gets bit by a rattlesnake almost dies has to relearn
0:23:21 how to walk after he months of fit therapy where he really knows how to walk goes back
0:23:25 to the spot where he got bit and resumes the walk and finishes it. And anyways, he’s become
0:23:30 this very happy positive upbeat guy. Now he’s sober. He doesn’t do drugs. He doesn’t drink.
0:23:34 He doesn’t watch porn. He like sings about songs that he just wants to make art that
0:23:38 inspires people. Cool. So he’s got this like amazing story. I do this podcast where I talk
0:23:44 about almost none of it. And the reason why was he’s told that story before. And I’m in
0:23:49 the season of sort of indulging my actual curiosities. It’s like, let me have the conversation
0:23:53 I actually want to have. And so I talked to him about, you know, how do you actually make
0:23:56 the songs that you make? Like, what is the creative process for you? Like, where does
0:24:01 a hit song come from? How do you do that? And a lot of his mindset mentality stuff. So
0:24:04 I think the podcast is going to be great. But it’s different than than probably what
0:24:09 people expect, which is just kind of beginning, middle and end of his story with someone like
0:24:16 him who is famous, but maybe doesn’t regularly have hits or a tour. Does he just have super
0:24:19 lumpy income? I mean, how does he like survive between hits?
0:24:24 Well, so what he told me, he was like, I was like, how did you do that? And he’s like,
0:24:29 well, part of it is like, I got financial freedom. Like he’s like my like wealth manager
0:24:34 guy sat me down and was like, Hey, we ran Monte Carlo simulations and like, look, like
0:24:39 they’re good, you’re good. You’re good. And so like, of course, you can always make more
0:24:43 and of course, like, you know, anything could happen. But like, by and large, you’re good.
0:24:47 If you don’t let your lifestyle get fucking crazy, you’re all right. It’s like, so then
0:24:51 that gave me the freedom of like, I don’t even need to have another hit, which freed,
0:24:55 which is like, all of his hits have come from a place where he wasn’t trying to make a hit.
0:24:59 And every time he’s tried to make a hit, he didn’t make a hit, right? It’s like that irony
0:25:04 of the whole thing. And so I go to his house. And by the way, the best thing to do with
0:25:08 these podcasts is to go to people’s house to film it. Was it nice? Well, we filmed it
0:25:11 in his studio, which is like a side house that he has, like we didn’t go to the main
0:25:15 house, but it’s cool. It’s at the top of this mountain. So you have to like, basically make
0:25:19 a trek up this like windy road up to his mountain. I was like, cool, I’ll, you know, I’ll pass
0:25:24 on this windy road every day. But the house itself was cool. It was the top of this mountain.
0:25:28 And I’m standing there at his studio, he’s, he’s like, Oh, his guy was like, Oh, he’s
0:25:31 got a, he’s got a meeting right now. He’ll be out in a second. So he comes out and I
0:25:38 just hear from the other side, like, he’s just so happy that he’s like outside enjoying
0:25:42 his day. He doesn’t even realize that we’re already there. And he’s like, Oh, you’re here.
0:25:46 And then he comes in and he’s just like a ball of good vibes is like energy was really
0:25:50 like off the charts. And you could, people don’t know this, but already we’ve talked
0:25:55 about this, which is we get to see the guest before the lights turn on and after the recording
0:26:01 is over. And it’s very striking what people are like. Some people have a very stark contrast
0:26:06 of the before pod and after pod pod versus when they’re recorded. And some people are
0:26:10 just like the same or even better when they’re off camera. I would say Mike was a great example
0:26:16 of somebody who off camera, like his energy was just very, very contagious, extremely
0:26:21 positive person, very nice to everybody in the room, took the time to do that. Even afterwards,
0:26:24 when he had to go, like his manager was there was like, Hey, we got a mic, we’re late, we
0:26:29 got to go somewhere. He like stopped and was like, Hey, I got to go do this real quick.
0:26:35 Don’t leave. I want to come back and say bye. Which like most musician pop stars don’t give
0:26:39 a fuck, right? They don’t need to come back and say goodbye. They just like, Yeah, thanks
0:26:43 everybody. But you see, I’m on to my next important thing. Because remember, I’m a very
0:26:47 important person. And instead, he was like, made you feel important, which I thought was
0:26:52 he remember you from Duke. Well, we didn’t actually ever really cross paths. Like we
0:26:56 didn’t know each other when we were there. We just knew I knew of him. He didn’t know
0:27:02 anything about me. All right, let’s do one or two more. What’s the little luxuries?
0:27:07 So this stood out. We, again, we meet a bunch of people. One of the things we noticed was
0:27:10 we would have a like a meeting or lunch or something or hang out and go to someone’s
0:27:14 house who was like super wealthy. And what we noticed was like, man, even if this person
0:27:19 is like, let’s say 10 times the network that we have, they don’t have like 10 times the
0:27:22 better life. They don’t even have maybe two times the better life. I don’t actually don’t
0:27:27 think that there’s really like any link and I don’t mean better life as in like, let’s
0:27:29 say their health or their family, like forget those things. I’m talking about even just
0:27:36 material life. Like there’s not that much that they can spend on that we really need
0:27:40 or would want. So we, you know, and I’m on the lookout for it, like what are ways that
0:27:43 people use money, either spend money, invest money, whatever that is interesting to me.
0:27:48 And what I noticed was that there were very few luxuries that I actually wanted that other
0:27:53 people had. And instead, well, we flipped it. And there was actually some really small little
0:27:59 luxuries of life. So like when we were, I was talking to Ben and Ben’s like, dude, there’s
0:28:02 this little luxury of life I missed at this Airbnb. He’s like, the Airbnb had really
0:28:06 cheap towels. He’s like, yeah, he’s like, I just recently splurged on like having amazing
0:28:11 bath towels. He’s like, and then I use two every time. He’s like, it drives my wife nuts.
0:28:15 I’ll use two towels every time out of the shower. And like, I bought the like $40 towel
0:28:20 or the $50 towel instead of the like $5 towel. He’s like, but it’s the little luxuries, man.
0:28:24 And I was like, dude, that’s me with socks. Like I will like, I hate having mismatched
0:28:28 socks. So I threw all my socks away. When we got acquired, the only thing I bought was
0:28:32 I threw all my socks away. And I asked, I said, what is the highest quality sock? And
0:28:35 I just let that you can find what’s the answer, by the way? Well, the answer I got at that
0:28:40 time was Bombas socks. And now I actually have like custom socks. So I went to a manufacturer
0:28:47 and I was like, Hey, I want a sock like this. And so now I have like 100, 200 pairs of custom
0:28:51 manufactured socks. Did you really actually that I found off Alibaba? Yeah, because I
0:28:56 like wearing crew socks, like, you know, like the kind of calf like, like socks or whatever
0:29:01 calf length socks mid calf. And but like, if you wear the Nike compression ones, they’re
0:29:06 too tight all the time. So if you just wear the Haynes ones, they’re like kind of they’re
0:29:10 good, but they’re they’re pretty basic. And so I kind of made my own hybrid. Do you know
0:29:17 that Gen Z makes fun of millennials for wearing ankle socks? Good, I knew fascia would come
0:29:21 back around and be on my side. I’ve been a dork for a long time wearing non ankle socks.
0:29:27 You’ve been when you win this one. Young people don’t like ankle socks. They like socks that
0:29:30 show. So you’re right. And like skinny jeans are not cool either, right? Like you got to
0:29:37 wear like big jeans or something. High waisted jeans. Yeah, baggy and high waisted pants are
0:29:41 good. And thank God, because they’re way more comfortable, by the way, way more comfortable.
0:29:47 But they call it the words called Chuggy. So when you are like a 35 year old that you
0:29:53 wear skinny pants or skinny jeans, it’s called your being Chuggy. That’s like the phrase.
0:29:57 How do you use it in a sentence? Like you’re being Chuggy? Yeah, you could do that. Yeah,
0:30:01 you could use it that way. Or you could say like, I don’t want to wear skinny jeans. That’s
0:30:07 pretty Chuggy. You can use it that way. But yeah, Chuggy means like, like for example,
0:30:15 yeah, so tight jeans, ankle socks. It’s super Chuggy. You don’t want to be Chuggy, man.
0:30:19 All right, well, that’s that’s it. That was my LA trip report. I had 21 things. We talked
0:30:21 about a few though. All right, that’s the pod.
0:30:28 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days
0:30:31 off on the road. Let’s travel never looking back.
0:30:32 Bye.
0:30:33 Yeah.
0:30:43 [BLANK_AUDIO]