Before Covid, I used to get together with a group of sellers periodically. It was one of those special moments where you get a bunch of naturally extroverted golden retriever personalities in a room with the only real agenda being to actually connect with each other. Some of those connections are why MeetWell exists today. 

I want to bring it back and get us together from time to time, and I’m organizing the first one on Wednesday, October 28th from 6-9pm at Father’s Office in Culver City.

The plan is to grab a table or two outside and see who shows up. Please RSVP here (it’s free and open to anyone who wants to join).  

Fun story about Father’s Office. In my wily single years, I went on a few online dates that dragged me far and wide across LA only to find out two seconds into the date that it was going to be a bust. 

Tired of trekking across town, I decided my future first date spot would be Father’s Office in Culver since I lived down the block. When first employing my subtle OkCupid charms on Megan, my future wife, I suggested we meet at father’s office. I wrote it uncapitalized to sound like a cool, easy-breezy, not-trying-too-hard guy on the internet. 

Being new to LA, an English teacher, and a stickler for grammar, she thought I was some LA weirdo who called his dad ‘father’ and who suggested meeting women at Daddy’s office for first dates. She countered with meeting downtown, which we did, and the rest is history.

— Robbie

Hospital of Emotions is a temporary pop-up art exhibition inside a real hospital that’s been redesigned as a living museum to the spectrum of human emotions. 

Artists transformed 80 rooms (think operating rooms, patient rooms, ER spaces, nurses’ stations, the whole place!) across four floors into Gram-friendly art installations, which you wander through at your own pace. 

Here’s a good overview if you want a cute influencer to walk you through it, and here’s one if you just want to see what the installations look like with some groovy house music. 

During the Halloween season, they’re introducing Hospital of Emotions: After Dark, where the lights are dimmed, characters roam around the building, and spooky unexpected encounters become part of the experience. 

For the basement enthusiasts out there, After Dark also hypes the fact that you can add on a bone-chilling 30-minute guided experience through the hospital basement.  

Depending on your vibe, there are a few good dinner options nearby, including Woon (Chinese), The Park’s Finest (Filipino BBQ), Crawford’s (fried chicken/dive bar), and Thunderbolt (cocktails and Southern food). 

Details:

Added Value: I like this option for a client or team who would be into more of an art-forward Halloween experience. As with any great art experience, the backdrop changes enough as you walk around that you’ll have all sorts of weird things to talk about. 

Rustic Canyon is celebrating its 20-year anniversary by bringing former chefs, sommeliers, and winemakers back for a series of special dinners. 

For clients who follow LA’s food scene, this is a great opportunity to lean into the urgency of the ‘one night only’ invitation to level it up from just a regular dinner.

Details:

Added Value: Rustic Canyon happens to be where I went on my first client dinner in my early sales days. For a popular restaurant that’s twenty years in, odds are your clients may have been at some point (or at the very least heard of it), so a reunion dinner is an easy reason to suggest going back.

Oh, Mary! is an absurd, raunchy comedy about Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks before Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. 

Written by Cole Escola, the play has gotten lots of love from the NY Times and gone on to become a record-breaking Broadway hit with two Tony Awards. The LA run stars Alaska Thunderfuck (what a stage name), winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 2 (as I’m sure you all remember), and J. Harrison Ghee as Mary’s husband, aka Honest Abe.

The show is 80 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are selling fast, so I would jump on it if you and your clients are interested. 

Basics:

Dinner/Drinks nearby:

Added Value: If you have a client who loves Broadway or misses going to the theater in New York, this is a chance to catch a big hit together in LA.

Ever been hanging with a client and conversation just runs dry? Whether it’s recent and topical, or general and evergreen, the Oasis is about giving you one idea for helping in that moment.

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Like many of us chronically online people, I try to keep an eye on what's going on in the zeitgeist to throw out some conversational hot takes with my clients. Here are a few I came across this week: 

Gavin Newsom has signed a ban on reselling public golf-course tee times without written permission from the course operator. I have actually wondered where all the tee times go, but I’m a bit shocked it went all the way to the governor’s desk. Glad to see Sacramento tackling some of the hard-hitting policy issues of our time. 

New York’s fancy grocery stores are turning prepared food into an increasingly appealing alternative to cooking or ordering delivery. This was written from an NY POV, but I think much of it applies to LA as well, where places like Erewhon are basically swanky buffets masquerading as grocery stores. 

Longtime Steelers coach Mike Tomlin gives a tour of the Minecraft city he’s been building for more than 12 years. For the past 20 years, I have only known Mike Tomlin as an ultra-serious, hard-nosed leader of men. To see him come out of nowhere and talk about getting sucked into video games with his kids and then getting so hooked that he kept on playing after they grew up and left the house was something else. What a gem.

Gen Z wants Millennials to stop saying lol. They’ve had enough! 

Malibu’s speed cameras recorded more than 100,000 speeding violations in under 10 days of testing, and the city has delayed the program’s warning phase. No tickets were issued during the test. Still, the cameras don’t seem to need much help finding work. Does this shock anyone? 

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