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

Shaan Puri

Alright, 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, and I just went to LA. I wrote down a bunch of notes. Most people, when they travel, I don't think they really do this, but I call them **micro memories**. I just write down 1 to 3 words that wouldn't make sense to anybody else, but there's a story behind it for me. There's some insight, some story, or some crazy thing that happened. I write them down all trip. What I did this time was I just published them on Twitter and 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 you pick numbers that you think are interesting from this list of 21, and then I'll kind of explain the things and the tricks?

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

I have two things: a notepad, pen, and paper that I take everywhere I go. I also have my phone in case I'm just not there. So, it's just Apple Notes or something; it's nothing fancy.

Sam Parr

Do you discard the notepad after it's done, or do you refer back to it constantly?

Shaan Puri

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 three months. But what I do is, the very next day, instead of saying, "Oh, I gotta catch up on work and emails and Slack and all this stuff," the first two hours, I basically just take my notes and I type them out. I try to squeeze, you know, 20, 30, or 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 gonna implement that?" Or, "Oh, I need to share this story with somebody. Let me write this down and make sure I send it to that person." So, I take a couple of hours first thing, and I basically unpack my notes.

Sam Parr

Alright, tell me about the **low status technique** for becoming a **high status** person at a conference.

Shaan Puri

Alright, so I went to Reconvene, which is a real estate conference, and I met this guy there that I really liked right away. I noticed that he was probably the most popular guy there. There were maybe 200 or 150 people, and he was my favorite. I think he was everybody's favorite based on the reaction I observed. I was watching him and I thought, "What is this guy doing that has made him everybody's favorite person here?" 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. He's a big fan of the podcast. His name is Will, and he has a Twitter account called Student Rent Pro. Basically, what this guy does is own a bunch of rental properties for students in South Carolina. These are houses for students, like frat houses and sorority houses, where students live together. He bootstrapped it with no outside investors. As I was talking to him, he mentioned that he loves the podcast. As soon as I got there, he made a reference to the podcast. He introduced me to someone else and said, "Oh, this is Sean. He's real good friends with Orlando Bloom," referencing a story I told about Orlando Bloom three years ago. I was impressed; that was a deep reference. So, I asked him, "How come everybody here loves you?" He replied, "You know that thing Hasan Minhaj said when he came on the podcast? He shared this insight about comedy. This was before you and I were going to get on stage for our first live show in Vancouver. I had texted Hasan a picture of the 2,000 people in the audience and asked him for tips on how to entertain this crowd since we're podcasters." He said, "Start by talking about things 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.'" He also mentioned that comedy is a low-status art form, meaning self-deprecation. You should make fun of yourself, call yourself out, and poke fun at yourself. That is how you connect with people. Will said, "I stole that. I stole that hard. Once I heard that, I really owned it." At the event, when someone would ask him what he does, he would say, "Oh man, I do the hardest form of real estate that pays you the least amount of money, so you don't even want to talk to me. Go talk to him; he's awesome." Then, when someone would ask, "What does that mean?" he would say, "I do student housing, but tell me about you." He was always making it about the other person or someone else. If anyone ever gave him a compliment, even when I called him the favorite guy there, he would respond, "Oh, thank you so much for saying that. I'll be sure to disappoint you next time." He is just the master of this low-status approach. He told me at the event, "I stole that," and he also uses that on Twitter. He said, "Everybody at this conference on Twitter always goes on there to brag about their returns, how awesome they are, or brag about their methods. I just do the exact opposite. I'll go on there and say, 'Well, today, I'm some 19-year-old's bitch. I gotta go fix a toilet in a frat house right now. Wish me luck.' I'm always talking about how bad my business is, how hard it is, and how I don't envy myself." He said, "I just say it how it is. I shine a light on the worst parts of what it is and the uncertainties of what I'm doing. But I'll tell you what I think: I can out-raise everybody here. I've never raised any money, but if I wanted to, I think I could out-raise everyone because what I've been doing on Twitter has built a lot of connection and trust, and I think that goes a long way." When I watched him at this conference, he was doing something that Ben Levy is a master of. He realized that the way to build value at a conference is not to puff your chest out and say, "Hey, come look at me. Come talk to me about my greatness." Instead, he would connect two people to each other and gain goodwill from making that connection. He would keep doing that, saying, "Oh, this is Sean. He'll never tell you this, but his podcast is a huge deal. This guy's podcast is incredible. You gotta talk to him about this." Then he would say, "Sean, this guy, we call him the multifamily king of Dallas."

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

He would just keep connecting people. He would give you this really hyperbolic intro where he'd be your hype man. He'd make you feel good, and he just kept doing that. He kept making connections and giving people two ways to intersect. "Oh, you know, you guys will get along because you're both really into X." Boom! What that does is create this 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, the guy that everybody knew, and the guy that everybody felt completely not on the defensive with. Because people felt they could be real with him, they actually formed real connections. I thought it was really awesome to see in person.

Sam Parr

Two things: dinner with millionaires, and the richer the guy, the weirder the guy.

Shaan Puri

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. When we go to a city, often Ben will say, "Alright, here's a bunch of our friends, 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?" We sort of stack a schedule from there. One of the things that really stood out was that the more successful the person, the richer the guy, the weirder the guy, with really no exceptions during this trip. When I say "weirder," it would be that they have weird hobbies, weird marriages, or relationship dynamics. It would be that they have just really weird social skills. What I realized was that I always assumed by default that people are just normal, chill, just chill normal people. I don't know, I just put that on people; that was my default assumption. I realized I really need to stop making that assumption because it is way, way wrong when it comes to these kinds of outlier successful people. I thought about that and I was like, "Is it that they are successful because they're weird, or are they weird because they're successful?" I think there's a bit of both going on. For example, I think they are successful because they're weird in that they're willing to be unconventional. They didn't go get a job, and they didn't look at some industry and assume it was well-run. 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.

Sam Parr

Like, what's an example?

Shaan Puri

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... you know, I don't want to put them on blast like that. But I mean, you've seen this in San Francisco.

Sam Parr

I think those particular people tend to be on the coast in cities like LA, San Francisco, and New York. I know a handful of people that are worth nine figures who live in Missouri, where I'm from. I think that they are shockingly actually normal. If you've gotten extremely wealthy at a young age and you live in one of these cities, you should assume that they're going to be a freak.

Shaan Puri

Do you?

Sam Parr

I know what you mean.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there are also just like rough edges. You know, social norms are very weird, right? Like, we were at a breakfast and there were two people there who didn't know each other. So we were like, "Hey, I could make an intro, but it'd be easier if you just introduce yourselves." What I thought would happen is, if I say, "Hey, make an intro," like, Sam, what are you going to say? If I just say, "Hey," maybe you guys can introduce yourselves since you don't know each other. Two people.

Sam Parr

Hey, what's going on? My name's Sam. I live on the East Coast and I work in the media industry. I work on a podcast and I'm super into health and wellness.

Shaan Puri

Great! You said your name, where you're from, what you do, and maybe something you're really into or 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 two minutes later with his company's EBITDA and the terms of their recent acquisition. I was like, "What is going on?" I think rich people are just really, really out of touch with what they are willing to share and overshare about themselves.

Sam Parr

But that happens. I think that happens to you and me.

Shaan Puri

I'm the cause if they.

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but you know, it wasn't bad. It was actually really fascinating and interesting. I did note, like, "Wow, that's not a normal thing to do." I think that's, you know, I enjoyed it in the moment. 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.

Sam Parr

Alright, so when I ran my company, The Hustle, I think we had something like 2,000,000 subscribers. We made money through advertising, but we didn't actually make that much money per person reading the newsletter because advertising, in general, is kind of a crappy business model. I remember sitting down and thinking, "What are all the different ways that I can make money off The Hustle that aren't advertising?" To make sure that you don't make this mistake, Sean, the HubSpot team and I went and looked at a bunch of different ways to monetize your business. We put it all together in a really cool document where we laid it all out along with our research. We called it, very appropriately, "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. Now, back to the episode. What about dressing well versus dressing comfortably?

Shaan Puri

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 this is currently like a fascination for you.

Sam Parr

This is an $80 t-shirt, Sean.

Shaan Puri

So, an $80 t-shirt.

Sam Parr

It's the T-shirt that the dude, Jeremy, wears in *The Bear*. So, it's called "Fashion." Hello!

Shaan Puri

Nothing like buying an $80 T-shirt and then having somebody else say, "Is it an $80 T-shirt?" It makes you feel great.

Sam Parr

I apologize. Dog fashion? Hello? No? What about...?

Shaan Puri

You're speaking a language I don't even know. That's the problem. I just can't even recognize it.

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

Alright, so I mean, obviously, if you go to Los Angeles, you're going to see a bunch of beautiful people. I started just paying attention to it while I was there. You know, on the flight, I was like, "Man, people really dress beautifully for this flight. This is really cool." 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 gotta go bigger. You know, you want to launch rockets or artificial intelligence, whatever. You're not ambitious enough."

Sam Parr

And what does New York tell you? They go...

Shaan Puri

You're not powerful enough.

Sam Parr

They go.

Shaan Puri

You're poor. Yeah, exactly. You're not rich enough. [LA] basically whispers, "You're not hot enough." This is why people are injecting all kinds of stuff into their face, lips, and butt... all kinds of things. To me, that part is a bit of a turnoff, but I do appreciate the dressing well component of "you're not hot enough." The funniest part was, I went and our buddy Sully lives in LA right now. I saw Sully a few months ago when he was living in San Francisco. The guy transformed! Dude went from like SF startup scrappy style to cool guy LA chic. And not even in a try-hard way, just casual... very casual but well-dressed casual. 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 a couple of choices." I literally was just like... he was explaining to me, and 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."

Shaan Puri

And I realized, okay, you know, I've had this in my mind: this choice, which was either to dress comfortably or to dress nicely. It's one or the other.

Sam Parr

It's not.

Shaan Puri

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. It's pretty easy to change this. I remember 10 years ago, I actually hired a stylist in San Francisco to come to my house. She threw away all of my clothes. She took everything out of my closet, and then she took me shopping for one day. We bought a whole bunch of new stuff, and it was like $300 to do it. It was great! But that was 10 years ago, and since then, I have gone back to my old ways. I've copied many things from Sully in life, mostly business stuff. But this is something else I'm going to copy from him, which is to do a very simple upgrade of style here. Do you?

Sam Parr

Know why you thought that dressing well is the opposite of being comfortable? It's just because your clothes didn't fit right. If you wear really nice clothes, like a tie and a nice shirt, if it fits well, it's not uncomfortable. I think that... do you value art at all? Does art talk to you ever? Do you ever feel inspired by beauty? In what form do you find inspiration?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, not paintings, but...

Sam Parr

Me neither.

Shaan Puri

You know, things that are beautifully simple designs, right? A lot of furniture or interior design in a space—interior design of a space to me—really stands out. If I walk into a space that has a certain vibe, it's like... I don't know, I just can't pay attention to really anything else in that moment. I know that the same space, with just a different set of lights, furniture, plants, and whatnot, would feel completely different. It's the same shelf, you know? Somebody has created this vibe.

Sam Parr

So, I agree. I like architecture and the energy of a room, as well as furniture. For years, I thought art just meant paintings or sculptures, and I didn't find inspiration from those things. I thought architecture or clothing wasn't art; that it was a waste of time and energy. Then, when I kind of realized, I'm like, "No, it's actually just as important as art. It's not a waste." I started giving into that feeling and realized this is what makes my soul sing. I should embrace this stuff, and it's worth the effort. This isn't simply utility; it could also be something that inspires me or resonates with me a little bit. Once I realized that it's all related to self-expression and that it's all art, it kind of changed my perspective. Do you know what I mean? Instead of just saying... instead of just saying...

Shaan Puri

Music is probably the easiest one to appreciate.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and instead of saying, "Well, I'll just pay someone to do this," I actually realized, "No, I want to learn." I want to learn what these things are communicating or what goes into it. In a weird way, in art, I don't want to just phone it in. I want to actually figure out what makes beautiful art or what language I want to speak when I'm communicating this. Do you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

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

Sam Parr

Was that the holographic Kobe Bryant thing?

Shaan Puri

The Kobe, the Kobe, the Kobe floating into heaven... and the other one, that's just a strawberry. I was like, "Wow, this is beautiful." I bought this strawberry NFT that, you know, is currently worth $0, but in my heart, it's still worth something.

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

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

Sam Parr

And yeah, I want to learn about him, but would that ruin the pod? No.

Shaan Puri

It won't ruin the pod, alright?

Sam Parr

So, you interviewed Mike Posner. I know Mike Posner because of the song "I Took a Pill in Ibiza." 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. So, like, he's actually a little bit more of a guru. Not that he self-describes that, but I am looking to him as like an energy guru a little bit. Is that right?

Shaan Puri

But I wouldn't call him an energy guru. I know exactly what you mean, which is that he's an aspiring guy. So, the backstory here is I went to Duke, and in my freshman year, I heard that there was a guy in the dorm next door who was like some white guy rapper from Detroit. I was like, "Okay, cliché." It turns out that was Mike Posner. He was in the same year as I was and lived one building over. I remember hearing his songs before they ever went public. For example, "Cooler Than Me," which was his first kind of hit song. I remember hearing that and thinking, "Okay, this is actually kind of catchy." But at the time, it just seemed far-fetched to me. Like, "Yeah, this guy is really gonna make it." He wasn't the best rapper; he wasn't the best singer, and all that stuff. So, at the time, we just sort of wrote him off. Then, while we were at Duke, he blew up. I think in the second or third year, "Cooler Than Me" took off. We used to hear that this guy was traveling like every weekend. He would just go do shows and concerts at other campuses. He'd fly out on Thursday, fly back Sunday night, and be there on Monday for classes. I remember being like, "What the hell?" He had a meeting with Jay-Z's record label, and I was like, "Wow, this is crazy. What's going on?" So, anyway, that was how I initially heard of Mike Posner. Over the next, I don't know, 10 to 15 years, he went on this journey that was like a perfect three-act story. It's kind of ironic because when I did the podcast, I didn't cover any of the story as you normally would. He is like a podcaster's dream. He's got a perfect three-act story: 1. The rise: the unlikely rise of this college musician in his dorm room who becomes an international pop star. 2. The fall: 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. 3. His record label shelves him, and he doesn't even get to make music anymore. They won't release his music for years.

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

He gets depressed. He's like, "I live this lifestyle. You know, 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. He hits rock bottom when he goes to a concert with his friend Avicii, the one friend in the music industry who didn't write him off as a has-been. He's now in general admission, in the crowd, and he's watching his friend on stage doing the thing he used to do—the thing that he wants to do, which is to perform in front of thousands of fans who love him. He's standing in the crowd just like a normal civilian, hoping that somebody recognizes him. If someone does, they come up to him and say, "Hey, are you Mike Posner?" Then he realizes that was his worst nightmare because they're like, "What are you doing here? Why are you in the crowd?" Then, a guy offers him a pill, and he takes it. That becomes the rock bottom, the genesis of the song "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" to show Avicii he was cool. The first line of that song becomes a new hit. So, he hits rock bottom and ends up making a hit even bigger than the first one—2 billion streams on Spotify. Then again, he feels a bit depressed because he wonders, "Is this what I want out of life? Am I just chasing this fame high?" That's when his dad dies, leading to Act 3: the rebirth. This is where he ends up doing a bunch of things. He climbs Everest with his friend and actually climbs 71 mountains to prepare for it. He has this quote: "You train for climbing a mountain by climbing mountains." He climbs 70 mountains and then climbs Everest. After his dad dies, he decides to walk across America. He walks two-thirds of the way, gets bitten by a rattlesnake, almost dies, and has to relearn how to walk after months of physical therapy. He goes back to the spot where he got bitten, resumes the walk, and finishes it. Now, he's become this very happy, positive, upbeat guy. He's sober; he doesn't do drugs, doesn't drink, and doesn't watch porn. He just wants to make art that inspires people. So, he's got this amazing story. I do this podcast where I talk about almost none of it. The reason why is that he's told that story before, and I'm in a season of indulging my actual curiosities. It's like, "Let me have the conversation I actually want to have." So, I talk to him about how he actually makes the songs that he makes. What is the creative process for him? Where does a hit song come from? How does he do that? A lot of his mindset and mentality stuff. I think the podcast is going to be great, but it's different than probably what people expect, which is just kind of the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

Well, so what he told me was, I asked him, "How did you do that?" and he said, "Part of it is like I got financial freedom." He explained that his wealth manager sat him down and said, "Hey, we ran Monte Carlo simulations and look..."

Sam Parr

You're good.

Shaan Puri

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 *crazy*. You're alright. He's like, "So then that gave me the freedom of like, I don't even need to have another hit," right? 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 houses to film it.

Sam Parr

Was it nice?

Shaan Puri

Well, we filmed it in his studio, which is like a side house that he has. We didn't go to the main house, but it's cool. It's at the top of this mountain, so you have to basically make a trek up this windy road. I was like, "Cool, I'll pass on this windy road every day." But the house itself was cool. It was at the top of this mountain, and I'm standing there at his studio. 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, "Woo hoo!" He's just so happy that he's outside enjoying his day. He doesn't even realize that we're already there. Then he comes in, and he's just a ball of good vibes. His energy was really off the charts. People don't know this, but Ari and I have talked about this: we get to see the guest before the lights turn on and after the recording is over. It's very striking what people are like. Some people have a very stark contrast between the before pod and after pod, while some people are just the same or even better when they're off camera. I would say Mike was a great example of somebody who, off camera, had energy that was very contagious. He was an extremely positive person, very nice to everybody in the room. He took the time to do that, even afterwards when he had to go. His manager was there, saying, "Hey, we gotta go, Mike. We're late. We gotta go somewhere." He stopped and said, "Hey, I gotta go do this real quick, but don't leave. I wanna come back and say bye." 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! See you, I'm on to my next important thing," because remember, they're very important people. Instead, he made you feel important, which I thought was really nice.

Sam Parr

Was it interesting? You from Duke?

Shaan Puri

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

Sam Parr

Alright, let's do one or two more. Well, what's the little luxuries?

Shaan Puri

So, this stood out. We, again, met a bunch of people. One of the things we noticed was that we would have a meeting, lunch, or something, or hang out at someone's house who was super wealthy. What we noticed was, even if this person had, 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 any link. And I don't mean "better life" as in their health or their family—forget those things. I'm talking about even just material life. There's not that much that they can spend on that we really need or would want. So, I'm on the lookout for it. What are ways that people use money, whether they spend money, invest money, whatever? That is interesting to me. What I noticed was that there were very few luxuries that I actually wanted that other people had. Instead, we flipped it, and there were actually some really small little luxuries of life. For example, when I was talking to Ben, he said, "Dude, there's this little luxury of life I miss at this Airbnb." He mentioned that the Airbnb had really cheap towels. He said, "Yeah, I just recently splurged on having amazing bath towels." He added, "I use two every time, and it drives my wife nuts! I'll use two towels every time I'm out of the shower." He bought the $40 towel or the $50 towel instead of the $5 towel. He said, "But it's the little luxuries, man." I related to that because I have a similar experience with socks. I hate having mismatched socks, so I threw all my socks away when we got acquired. The only thing I bought was the highest quality sock that I could find.

Sam Parr

What's the answer, by the way?

Shaan Puri

Well, the answer I got at that time was "Bomba's socks." Now, I actually have custom socks. I went to a manufacturer and I said, "Hey, I want a sock like this." So now I have about 100 to 200 pairs of custom manufactured socks. Did you really factory that? I found it off Alibaba. Yeah, because I like wearing crew socks, you know, like the kind that are calf-length. But if you wear the Nike compression ones, they're too tight all the time. That's so awesome! The Gains ones are kind of good, but they're pretty basic. So, I kind of made my own hybrid.

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

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

Sam Parr

You've been one of... You win this one. Young people don't like ankle socks; they like socks that show. So, you're right.

Shaan Puri

Skinny jeans are not cool either, right? You gotta wear like big jeans or something, high-waisted big jeans.

Sam Parr

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 "cheugy." So when you are like a 35-year-old and you wear skinny pants or skinny jeans, it's called you're being cheugy. That's like the phrase "cheugy."

Shaan Puri

How do you use it in a sentence? Like, "You're being cheugy."

Sam Parr

Yeah, you could do that. You could use it that way, or you could say, "I don't want to wear skinny jeans." That's pretty cheugy. You could use it that way, but yeah, cheugy means, like, for example, tight jeans and ankle socks. It's super cheugy. You don't want to be cheugy, man.

Shaan Puri

Alright, well that's it. That was my LA trip report. I had 21 things, and we talked about a few of them.

Sam Parr

Alright, that's the pod.