Today we're here with Courtney Reum. He's the co-founder and managing partner at M13. Lots going on today. So Courtney showed up at our office like two minutes later, our office manager came in and said, we're about to have a fire drill.

They are all about to be evacuated anyways. Courtney tripped across little Tokyo with us, and here we are.

And he also got kicked in the face like a couple days ago. Hey, that that's all accurate.

Thank you for the tour. A little Tokyo and yes, a little little kickboxing kick on, Arye. Great.

So shout out to second spectrum for letting us use their offices. Totally.

MS13 is an L.A. based brand development and venture capital firm. And Courtney has had a lot of amazing investments. You can go to his website and see all sorts of things. Pinterest, bird, lift, bring. It's a great list. And you're the author of Shortcut Your Startup.

Before that, you're at Goldman Sachs and you're the founder of the V, which is something I have.

I care very close, but not a bucket. Yes.

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Great. And recently, you're on stage with Paris Hilton and the upfront summit. Well, I'd like to think she was on stage with me.

Yes, good hands are good hands. I love it. Okay. So that was my attempt at the introduction. Why did you tell us a little bit more about MS13? Sure.

So I'm 13. We started officially a couple years ago here, very probably in Los Angeles, kind of borna this belief that the world's changing quickly and media, entertainment, consumer brands and certainly tacker all kind of converging. And my brother and I had interesting backgrounds in that we both were to Goldman Sachs. I came for more the consumer side. He came from more of the tech side. Good news as worlds meet in the middle. So obvious ways I direct to consumer brands, but many, many other less obvious ways.

And I'm sure we'll get into. And so we thought, you know what, it would be great to kind of start a 21st century holding company for the future of how consumer tech brands were created. So we're actually set up as a as a platform, as we like to call it, that has a maybe a three legged stool. And it's a venture capital fund, a brand studio that we call Launchpad, and then a cheeky little term we use called propulsion.

That's kind of our our team and are pillars that we're cross-functional across both brands in the portfolio and brands.

We we start great. So tell me more about that. So like how many people do you have at MS13?

They're doing all three of those stool legs so automated. We have about 30 employees. And I'd say the fun side for what will be a Turnour million dollar fund is constructed pretty similar to a fund of our size. There's a, you know, maybe half dozen people full time on that. The launchpad side has a a few dedicated employees, many more because we've started different brands. But in terms of dedicated, full time employees, it's a handful there.

And in probably two thirds, three quarters of our people were cross-functional across both. And I think the difference is, you know, people throw out terms like products as a platform or community, and that's great.

And I believe in them. But hiring one person doesn't mean you have the right to build community. It's pretty hard to do with one person that doesn't scale. We've tried to set up an organization in a way that's pretty different.

You just you just sort of answered one of my questions was the kind of company that comes to you. So the ones who get investment out of the fund are series and beyond. And yeah.

So I think out of the fund, you know, David, you're you're a pro. I'm just getting getting used to this. But I'd say we're series a focused for the way I see the world going.

If you're serious a focus, it means you got to do plenty of things earlier or else you're not going to be in the game. We've done a couple strategic slightly later stage thing like series B, but series A focused. And then I think you just got to have plenty of features.

But yes, that's that's right. And we're all we're all consumer tech focused. So we're deciding if we wanted to find that more broadly or more narrowly. So we're kind of figuring that out.

And the earlier s_s_h_ stuff is that is that stuff that's generated in-house or that you're finding that people are coming to you for? Yeah.

No, people come in us. We we we've set it up so that I guess the any brand we start out of our launchpad could be funded out of our fund but never have the obligation and we don't want to write the first check.

And the only check is that it's kind of a little more of excel or incubator model and get more into it.

But the brand partnerships we have over there, you know, we have a joint venture with Procter and Gamble. We're doing some brands with Tony Robbins.

Those are self-funding and usually so it puts up the first capital, you know, first couple of million. And then if we kind of have some proof of concept or attraction, the fund along with someone else would would look at it.

But no, I'd say traditional kind of sourcing and hustling like anyone that's. Series A do plenty of cedar seed type checks. I'm sort of surprised, actually, that there isn't more of this in L.A. because you're relatively new at this. I think Pam is doing some similar work. Is that fair?

You did it. What's the this the way we're set up or consumer tech or similar tech?

The world just changed in that.

When I was at Goldman Sachs, tech was a category or vertical. Now, I think obviously we all know it's a it's a horizontal overlay on every category.

But I think we're really entering this consumerization of everything, meaning consumer used to be a vertical. I was in consumer products and did things I helped take on Roman Republic. Now consumers really a horizontal as well that overlays on every category. And so that's why even a year ago when we started, it was consumer tech. But it was like a consumer brand. It could be taxable. Now out of the fund with truthfully Dunmore, what I'd call tech brands that have a consumer overlay or a consumer facing angle, and with that included a purely software brand like a social network.

Or would you invest in it musically?

Yeah, I think I think I think it could.

We've actually just made investment in one SaaS company not using our thing, but it's a multi-sided marketplace around experiential marketing. We saw the need state from all the brands we'd been in. All the Lord knows how many demos and things we did from Veev and we saw it as a way to get much better data and experience your marketing. You know, we're like brand demos. I mean, is a truly not category. It's crazy how big it is, but nobody really assaulter gotten good data.

And what about for want of a better word, consumer enablement? So we end up doing a lot of SaaS companies and other software companies that are supporting the consumer sales somehow. You know, for e-commerce or. Yeah. Advertising or whatever it is.

Yeah, I don't I think the short answer is maybe. I tend to leave things like that probably to the pros like you. I think we have to be careful. Doesn't cross into territory. We're not as familiar. Like, yes, we we do tons of stuff with Shopify, but doesn't mean I have permission to kind of look into their backend or know how to invest in it. So that would probably be pretty close to the to the line.

Tell me more about can consumer as a horizontal well.

You know, I started noticing this in earnest probably about 18 months ago before we decide we were gonna raise a fund. I got like three calls in a very short span from friends of mine to a and they're fun.

One was health care fun. One was a fintech funder can actually even remember. The third one was. And every time I was like, why? Why are you guys as we BGP in your funding? I mean, I might do it, but I know nothing about health care. And I certainly know nothing about fintech. And it was this idea of, no, but we're having you know, brands are gonna have a consumer facing angle and you're the best consumer person I know.

So, you know, I do think it goes back in some ways to to what Joe Marquet is in our friends over there doing with this attention economy stuff.

It just comes down to, you know, getting people's attention.

That's such a big thing that you have to. Things that didn't previously have to be branded now have to be branded or have to have some kind of brand voice that didn't before.

It seems like DTC, there were much of DTC companies that were getting venture backing for a while there. And now that seems to have fallen out of favor a bit. Is that accurate?

I think that's a fair statement. I you know, I think for a long time there's been this misconception of like, what is DTC mean? Right. Like not everything is meant to be subscription. Not every not every salesman to be e-commerce. I mean, I always say, even if you don't believe in omni channel, believe in omni present, because you just never know now. Right. I see something at a store. I might not buy it.

Then I go look at the company's website. Then I might look at Amazon just for the house. I mean, you just never know.

So it's misleading to kind of say DDC to me.

It's also that when we start brands like that, they really have to have a reason for being so out of our launchpad. We just end of the year launched two brands of Procter and Gamble and one brand as a menopause focused brand, and one brand is an exmos raised skincare brand. Now, I'm banking on the fact that with Procter Gamble IP that these products work in, they're efficacious. But if they are both men, apartment you menopause can afflict people for years, if not decades and eczema, psoriasis.

If you have it, it doesn't go away. It just flares up, flares down. So I can give you an efficacious solution. You call that day to see your subscription?

I call it just your lifetime value, but it's something that's that's a good and that someone should want to stay on for a very long time as our hope.

So it's a little different mindset of how you think about DTC, I guess.

That's interesting. Can you tell us more about this relationship with PDG because they're pretty good at launching consumer brands. I've been doing it for a while. What do they see in you guys and what are you adding in? How was that relationship work?

Sure. Yeah. I think, you know, a little bit of our one of our North stars with M 13 is what would someone like a PSG be like if they started from scratch today? And we're kind of a 21st century digitally native, but digitally, you know, derived company.

And, you know, I think it's I just think it's a risk when you when you're Unilever and you show up or pay a billion dollars for Dollar Shave Club on 2 million of sales, you know, that's a risk like people can lose their jobs over that, not to be flippant, about a couple hundred million dollars. But I think we've started a system with Procter and Gamble who said, look, if we start this partnership from scratch, we can figure out a win win where you don't have to show up for dollar shave or something like it, have it be a competitive process.

Chances are that your your dollar shave club at 50 million was still showing a lot of interesting signs. Not every brand gets a 50 million, gets 100, gets a 200, as we all know.

But you're you're you know, you can see the velocity in the direction. So we said, can we create some of the Procter and Gamble where we help with what they need help with? They actually are very good with R&D and IP. They're horrible at.

That's called zero to 50 million or zero to some number. Depends on the category, but then they're really good at 50 or 100 and beyond. So if we think we're good at that 0 to 50 years, 0 to 100, can we come in an attempt to do that?

And so we biscoe a partnership with them where we start brands, they put up some capital, we contribute some as well. And then basically if we're able to show some success with these brands, the goal is ultimately to have them end up back with proctoring. And so I have the certainty of knowing that if I build something with a certain amount success, I have a, you know, somewhat of an exit baked in. And they know that this brand will come back to him.

Yet it's been field tested and it wasn't wasn't on their dime. But more importantly, on their time, because the focus is always the issue.

Will they help you with distribution as well? Well, they will and they won't. They will. But these brands are meant to kind of be digital first so they can open admit that we generally do digital better.

But I think to go back to my other comment of omni present, you know, if you go into a grocery, you're going to c_v_s_ when.

Jaegers and c_v_s_, they go to all the c_v_s_ thousands. I can't remember me there. I think there's like tens of thousands. Yeah, when we do it I'd say, oh, let's go. Tested end cap here for a specific purpose of c_v_s_ will give us the test for five hundred stores or thousand stores. That's what I'm looking for.

So it's a little bit mindset, but yeah, they'll they'll help with retail distribution in due time.

And what is this sort of digital playbook, if you will, or what are you doing that you think is sort of yours special sauce that they they haven't yet gotten for the 0 to 50 million?

Yeah. You know, I'm glad you ask because I think it's it's really just one of the bigger tenants of MS13 in general, which is that, you know, we would be around all these brands. We would meet a founder of Warby Parker and a founder of Bonobos Pants. And they they certainly know each other and they certainly call each other if they need something. But everyone's too busy being heads down and building their own company to really stop and go, ha!

Like, is this go to market strategy? Is it increasingly similar to company A and company B? So can we have this unique position of of kind of being on some boards and advisors and angel investors in some of these and start our own thing where we said, gosh, these have more in common than not?

And I think even since we started, there's more in common, because the way you do, say, Facebook or other other digital advertising continues to evolve. But there's this playbook where we can, without being totally prescriptive, we can say, hey, this is what your first hundred days should look like. This is what your first year should look like. And I think we're starting to have enough data and pattern recognition to go, oh, for most of these brands, as PR makes sense, the first X number of months other than maybe a Keystone story or something like that.

Let's say you were saying you don't need PR in your first hundred days.

You know, as a general rule, I don't I think you need enough press to let someone know it's out there. But you don't. I don't know that.

I think you need ongoing press, because what I found is, you know, most products press isn't helping you sell the product to help him with awareness, which is kind of pretty squishy.

But, you know, if you're doing digital marketing well, and I had my last hundred dollars or I know if I had 10000 hours a month, I put it toward PR, would I put it toward trying to drive some learnings and put it towards something with a more tangible outlier or at least more tangible learnings?

You look at trajectory of since I brought dollar shave earlier. You know, it's it's the J curve but accelerated now where you where it almost looks like something's flatlining forever.

And then it's almost I mean, it's it's a steep steepens.

It might even be steeper than a J because a lot of times digitally, you're just looking for the one or two key insights to explore and explore and exploit.

And it might seem like you move the dial one degree and that can't possibly work. And all of a sudden, you know, you kind of break through.

And so it's it's such an iterate, move, learn, iterate, learn, move mindset.

One thing I've heard you say about brands is they're not talking to consumers anymore. That you have to establish more of a dialogue. That's some of what you're talking about with this iteration aspects reign. So how do you get people to make it a dialogue

It's interesting. You know, some people take, oh, I'm going to try to launch a product and sell you that first and then kind of build community around it. Some people say, I want to build a community or if my tribe and then maybe I'll go to products eventually. So examples of the latter would be like Gwyneth Paltrow's group started is she and her products.

It was a newsletter. It was different forms of media or Dave Asprey with bullet proof.

Right. He started by kind taking out this bulletproof diet that he discovered and then got the fervent following start with the coffee and now has tons of different products.

What I think most people are missing is that, you know, when I'm like, who's your demographic women?

I'm like, that's a good one. There's a lot of them.

But that's a very general demographic. Right.

Whereas like, let's just make it something really tangible, like food where we've where we've had a lot of success, like food, tech, you know, before all these movements started, like paleo, kilo, Kito, whatever those are, those are big groups.

But I'm looking for the next AARP is auto move mune protocol at the end of the day. I think a lot of these Kito type diets are like Kito with a twist.

They're all fairly similar.

But the point is, if you have done the research and identify yourself as Oh I do AARP now I can shop Thrive Market by AIPAC. I have certain foods I can eat.

And so I don't know what the number of people that identify with that are. But let's say it's a couple million, lots more than Kito and pay a lot, but still a decent number.

Imagine if I could sell my product. I had 50 percent market share in AARP, which is a thing, and growing 50 percent market share in a 2 million dollar 2 million person.

You know, potential market can still be very big, especially you're talking about selling them different food product. So I'm generally more a fan of like figuring out your super evangelise and going more, more narrow and deep in that before you know it's deepened before you brought him. A lot of people try and go into deep mile-wide say you're marketing a women's pretty tough and Lesher Spanx.

So I love that theory, but I want to hear about how you put it in practice, because if in that case you have your very specific thing, which is already kind of defined as a niche. But if you've got something like a. Something that's not got that that predefined niche. How do you find out who your audience is?

For physical testing and products. I love what I call the farmer's market approach. Like we had a whole chapter about this in our book of like. Sometimes you little have to take your product to the farmer's market, but at least have that mindset like.

There's there's a a new social media platform that they're beta testing at UCLA. And you can and they say that 50 percent of UCLA freshmen are using it.

I'm not a freshman and I'm not at UCLA, but I know where UCLA is.

So I got one of our allies yesterday to drive down to UCLA, stand there on campus, ask someone to think about their log in to check it out, because you can only test it out, you know, if it's geo fence and then just do consumer intercepts. And in two hours at a busy time, you can ask 100 people who are using this app. What do you think? Is it. Is it interesting? And it's amazing kind of what you can learn by just kind of getting out there.

And then conversely, on the digital side, you know, it's so much about just segmenting by bucket.

Can you can you take what feels like a big budget and segment into 50 smaller budget to just, you know, test things?

And I think I just think the biggest mistake I see is a lot of people that go I maybe test them doing this.

They're just they're either too similar or too broad.

They have to get so specific in their what you're testing that you're that you see the learnings because you're shifting kind of one variable at a time, not doing either something's too different or something's too similar.

I see most people doing both ends of the spectrum, but not enough in the middle.

So the farmer's market test is they used. You've got something good enough that you can just get a table and attend and show up at the farmer's market. Yeah.

You're evangelist if you're giving them something really great or always pretty forgiving to a point.

Interesting. And I thought as much about sort of launching with community. I guess I tend to be sort of product first sort of person.

Does it make it more fragile at all or does it make it more robust? If you've got a community like I feel like it would be fragile in the sense that if the sentiment changes you.

Yeah.

You know, if you do one negative PR story because it's less of a tangible product differentiator.

Do you think about that the most there?

Yeah, I think, you know, like we don't do media companies, for example, but I'm on. But we do have an investment in Thrive Global. Arianna Huffington's new company, I'm on the board there. You know, she did a great job of building community via a media company, The Huffington Post.

She tried to some similar things with Thrive. I love the mission of addressing global burnout and everything else. But I think she should decide, like, what's the right cadence of like what kind of products, who, how, where, when, all that stuff.

Because I don't know. It still just comes down to trust.

Like, again, I'm not the demo, but I I do feel like I do hear some women say that maybe they feel like there's been a change in, say, goup.

Right.

Whatever made it great in the beginning. It's a different sort of thing now. Right. She's got a lot of products. It's become a little sensational. Because I think it used to be. Oh, I trust Gwyneth and Goup because they're at the cutting edge.

And the cutting edge is different than like, I guess the bleeding edge or just doing something a little more like made for TV.

Right. Yeah, I've definitely had this experience with. I mean, I think it goes across any kind of product. You're passionate users can be passionate either way. I'm a big believer in whatever is Prado's like 80/20 rule, which a lot of people say is actually the 95 5 rule. I mean, I do think in general, if you can if you can have, you know, 20 percent, those people add up to 80 percent of your volume, whatever that means or your sales, you'll be in a good place. Right.

And it's just easier to hopefully continue to service those and not have them turn on you.

So I want to make sure that we just hit the very big basics, them 13.

Then I actually want to hear some basic background. I think it ties in here. But just remind me again. So there's one aspect, which is someone could come to MS13 for a series, a check.

Yes. I mean, if you're on show for a series, A-check, that's great. But we'll see you sooner if if you don't wanna wait that long. So what are the different entry points?

What we're not doing for our launchpad is, as you can imagine, if we just started taking on everyone's kind of like, you know, orphan brands like I've gotten calls from all bosses at Goldman Sachs and this and that.

And besides the fact there's not high chances of success, that's a lot of brands. So the brands that we start really kind of have to have a purpose. They have to be attached to the right person or corporate venture.

How much do you like to work with influencers? That's if I'm a firm, a semi-famous person. Should I come with you? Come to you with my idea.

You should not not come to me. I don't think that I'm a really famous. Yes, you really can definitely come.

No, I think to us and there's some folks in L.A. doing good work with trying to kind of be like the group that works with influencers.

That's not what fulfills me or not what I want to be known for.

I mean, I've I've sat in meetings with celebrities. I won't name names, but we had an endorsement deal was pretty much done with our alcohol brand.

Veev. Back in the day, a very different deal. And the person was right on point with organic and green.

And he was on a TV show and he kind of drank or was like a stud on the show. And after the meeting, Torian, he goes, well, let me just get this straight. This is like a lot of work.

I was like, oh, sorry. You know, you're gonna get a couple of percent to get like free booze beyond one bill or whatever. And, you know, I just think those days are gone.

But there's still a lot of people that mindset. So it all depends on the person you're talking about. MUNITY in Paris on the upfront conference, people just didn't know that she had a fragrance brand that has grossed over $3 billion.

So if she has some unfair advantage or some, you know, asymmetrical thing going on in other countries, that's something we're totally open to. But I don't want to focus only on influencers.

It's it's kind of one tool in the arsenal of how you build brands since you brought her up.

Is she working with MS13? I know she's dating her brother. Well, we try not to try not to mix those two. So she's not she's not officially doing them with them.

13. We're certainly exploring some things.

And so before MS13, maybe directly before maybe, but you will.

VB So you built a really important brand. Are you still doing food and beverage? Yes, I no kind of part of that.

I would say, you know, beverage has been one of our better categories. Traditionally we start our own brand. Veev.

I was on the board of a probiotic and kombucha company called Kavita for six years.

I want to say that got sold to Pepsi for a very nice sum. We were early and pressed Uceris and Suja the green juice revolution called Prestes Revolution.

What else? Bluebottle coffee, things like that. So it says when we know really well yet for where I think the world is going.

Beverages not as taxable, right.

If it's a chilled beverage, much less that's heavy to ship. So we're a little more focused on food and food tech. We haven't done a beverage as other fun, but never say never.

The right format, like I like shot format things, I would do that, but I generally believe like take Tick's CBD as a trend regardless of whether I'm bullish on or not bullish on it.

If I was someone that was bullish on it. You're starting to see it in beverages like vibes. I just believe if you're bullish on it, there's many other places you go upstream to look for investments versus hitting the beverage because A, there's not a ton of CBD in there.

B you're just you're just beholden to the traditional distribution networks and it gets a new agame that's much harder versus foods with CBD or tinctures or or topicals. All those things are things that would go too well before I went to beverage.

And I'm really curious about this. So let's say let's say that you come to the table the core belief that CBD is important. Mm hmm. What do you what are you looking for? Are you looking for someone who's got a great brand or community or distribution model or the supporting edge?

Like what kind of edges would make you want to pick one opportunity over another?

I think in CBD it would be a lot about the efficacy. Just because I worry a little bit that, you know, someone's like, oh, your eyes twitching if you tried to CBD or your knee hurts, if you tried it like it can't be a panacea for everything. And we live in this instant gratification world. So for CBD, either need to have some fairly immediate result.

I don't the UMNO's were generally not looking for distribution because I think we're good with that. You know, we've started brands alongside of Target and different retailers that fit with our ethos.

Like I said, I think we're going to digital products so they don't have to have that if they have a little start on it, great.

So I would say it's more about efficacy or seeing some yo's saying CBD is a pretty broad thing, that they find some white spaces in CBD that we just don't think people are looking to yet. Like I met with the company other day that was doing synthetic CBD and my first reaction was, huh, that's weird. Why would someone want synthetic CBD? Then I was like, wait, maybe it's not that weird because if you're sick, someone says, take vitamin C, I mean, that's all.

You couldn't eat enough oranges or yeah, have an orange, but you're taking vitamin C tablet.

That's all synthetic. So especially something CBD.

Do you want to make sure that you're always getting the same truest molecule when I put it in something and so stuff like that, that's that's evolving.

How do you see innovation in whether it's food and beverage or consumer brands more more generally?

Well, for me in particular, I think it's a little bit of the future is here.

It's just not evenly distributed.

Right. If you're if you're thinking about fitness, I have lots of friends who are pro athletes. It's good to see what they're being given, what they're looking at. I go to all kinds of trade shows. So I like to give you an idea.

There's a trade show called Natural Products Expo West coming up here in early March in Anaheim.

They call it colloquially the Super Bowl of Whole Foods products.

I have never once and it's food prices, beverage prices, beauty prizes, pet products, you name it.

And I've got show for 12 years.

When I first went to that show, both as a consumer and as investments, I mean, my head was spinning. I was I can't believe this.

I can't believe that.

It's huge. Two hundred thousand attendees, I think. So it's it's like, you know, half as big as C as or something.

Anyways, the point is, I don't see that much new. And when I do, it's exciting, but I tend to see stuff where I go, oh, me as a consumer.

I would definitely use that, but has no shot as a commercialized product because you can't make it at scale or you know, it'll never find the right audience at Whole Foods.

Or I can tell the mindset of founders is like, let me kind of keep this in Boulder, Colorado.

And anyways, so. So it's just the difference between those two. But it's kind of flipped for me in that we're pretty good on trends. But you just you just never know where your next idea comes from. So I love to run around the trade shows and and professional athletes, locker rooms and all that stuff.

One thing that's interesting to me is just how is consumer behavior changing? Right. And like what's going on, whether that's demographics or just how people want to live in the world.

You gave me a good Segway, which is that, you know, our for our fun and everything we do.

I mean, discretionary consumer spending is still the biggest part of the the kind of non fixed part of of our GDP.

With all these trends. You don't have to be five years ahead. You just have to be kind of a year ahead, six months ahead even. Because then when people catch up to then you're six months out on the next things. I think a lot of people try to look too far. And I'll leave that to Elan Musk and people much smarter than I am.

But I do think we can be pretty good about being six to 12 months ahead of most trends.

And how do you think about when you're launching these things?

How do you think about their growth or their exit or how did you think about that at Veith about their growth?

90 something percent of companies are meant to be sailboats. And what it means is you're kind of out there, you catch a little Gösta when you move a little windows down, you're sitting there catching other little dust because you're you kind of grow like this.

And then eventually once you've really found, oh, okay, we have we figured this out now we'll put down that sailboat mass and even sailboats have motors.

So now you put down that motor and, you know, fill it up with gasoline, that gasoline is usually the money to grow.

And so it's it's just being being patient until you're ready.

Like I said first, however long that we're always much more focused on insights than actual sales.

So before we wrap up, I'm going to go back to when things here on the board of Arianna Huffington's company thrive, thrive global, not to be confused with thrive market here in L.A., which we love and think there's other people thriving out there.

But yes, how do you think? What advice have you heard there that you think it's worth passing on around how to avoid burnout and living happy life?

Well, I think he. I think it's I think it's just what I've seen from her, because I'll be honest, she's the type where she talks about all this. No e-mail or on a weekend.

And she always messaged me pretty quick. So I'm like, okay. But I think it's just about knowing yourself, right?

Like, I have a pretty high like, you know, go, go, go type of thing. And someone else might not.

And they're not better or worse, they're just different. So don't try to project Aryana. And she has that. Go, go, go, Gene, for sure. I'm sure if you did, if you look at a genetic testing.

So what doesn't seem like burnout for her might seem like burnout for someone else or.

And I think that's important because, you know, I haven't been I consider sick to mean like you're too sick to, like, come in and be on the podcast today or go to school or go to work. By that definition of sick, I haven't been sick in over 20 years.

I've certainly had little colds and coughs, all that stuff, but I have not been down for the count. And I think part of it is just that I really feel like. I know. OK. Push it to the line.

And now, if I don't do this, this and this, I'm going to go over the line and then it's gonna be bad news.

So I think it's just, you know, knowing your knowing yourself and your limits. And it's just so hard because we're all so different. So it's hard to be one size fits all. And so I've I've seen Aryana do that. And she does she does some great things around, you know, culturally around burnout because because people don't talk about cultures have burnouts, too. Right. You know, area. At one the first thing she ever said to me was she does you know, when people start thrive, I'll have two rules.

First rules, if you're gonna say something, you know, negative about someone, you know, you better say it to their face or else you're fired. And the second rule is that I can't remember.

You know, that's Zagros. It doesn't matter. I can't remember. It is true, because I think when culture starts a road, it's usually burn out of just like these gossipy little clicks or something or someone said that about me or you went and did something got and posted on up. Is it open door her last last hour.

Sorry, not open to love. Open tell us to end. And I say gutless because I'm an employer, not an employee. You know, I get it. But I also think it's like just playing sports growing up. It's a locker room mindset. You're always gonna be better at confronting something, whether it's with a person or persons or the coach versus just talked in the media in the locker room about it.

And that's to me what what Glassdoor kind of is. That's great. It's a great way to wrap.

Yeah. I really appreciate you coming today. And thanks for the last minute switch of venue and hope to have you on the podcast again. Yeah, you all are Chameleon's.

I'm impressed. I wish people could see what you did to set this up and still be on time.

So thank you so much for having me. And go Los Angeles.

Yeah. Thanks, garni.