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

0:00All right, we are going to do an episode that people really liked before. It was a trip report. I did a trip report when I went to Austin. I just went to LA and I wrote down a bunch of notes. So most people when they travel, I don't think they really do this, but I call them micro memories where I just write down like one to three words that wouldn't make sense to anybody else, but there's a story behind it for me or there's something, some insight, some story, some crazy thing that happened. I write them down all trip. And then what I did this time was I just published them on Twitter. And I said, hey, here's all my notes.

0:31Ask me about any of these. I wrote down 21 things. Why don't we try that, Sam? Why don't we take this list of 21 and you just pick numbers that you think are interesting and then I'll kind of explain the thing from the trip.

0:52By the way, when you take these notes, where are you taking them? Like on your phone? Like you just have a running notepad on your phone? So I have two. I have a notepad, pen and paper that I take to everywhere I go. And then I have also my phone in case I'm just not there. It'll just be Apple Notes or that. It's nothing fancy. And you discard the notepad after it's done or you refer back to this constantly? Most people come home and they unpack their bags. I basically just unpack my notes. My bag is actually still sitting over there. It'll be there for three months. But what I do is the very next day, instead of saying, oh, I got to catch up on work and emails and Slack and all this stuff, the first two hours, I basically just take my notes and I type them out and I try to squeeze 20, 30, 40 % more juice out of the trip just by reflecting and being like, okay, what was that?

1:38What was that story? Oh, I should follow up with that person. Or what was the takeaway there and how am I going to implement that? Or, oh, I need to, this story I wanted to share with somebody, let me write this and make sure I send it to that person. And so I take a couple hours first thing and I basically unpack my notes.

1:58All right. Tell me about the low status technique for becoming a high status person at a conference. All right. So I went to reconvene, which is a real estate conference. And I met this guy there that I really liked this guy right away. And then I just noticed that he was like probably the most popular guy there. So there was maybe 200 people there, 150 people there. He was my favorite. And I think it was everybody's favorite, just based on the reaction I got. And I was watching him and I was like, what is this guy doing that has made him everybody's favorite person here? I think that's what we all want.

2:31We all want to be liked, especially when we go to these big public events with strangers. And he's a big fan of the pod. His name is Will, and he's got this Twitter account called Student Rent Pro, I think is his name. Basically, what this guy does is he owns a bunch of rental properties, student housing, basically houses for students in South Carolina. So, you know, frat houses, sorority houses, just students living together. He owns a bunch of properties there. Bootstrapped it. No outside investors. That's what he does. I'm talking to him. He loves the pod. As soon as I got there, he makes a reference to the pod from like, he's like, he introduces me to somebody else.

3:08He goes, oh, this is Sean. He's real good friends with Orlando Bloom. Remembering this one Orlando Bloom store I just said like three years ago. So I was like, wow, that was a deep, deep, deep reference. and he goes and so i'm watching him and i go how come everybody here loves you and he goes you know uh you said that thing when hassan minhaj came on the podcast and he he shared this insight about comedy and this was before me and you were going to get on stage we were doing our first live show in vancouver and i had texted us in a picture of like 2 000 people in the audience and i was like dude give me some tips like how the fuck are we supposed to entertain this crowd We're podcasters.

3:45And he said, he goes, start by talking about things either you see there or you've seen in Vancouver. Just make a reference so that it's like, I'm here. You're not getting my spiel. You're getting me here right now. Presence. He goes, the second thing is comedy is a low status art form, meaning self-deprecation. Make fun of yourself. Call yourself out. Poke fun at yourself. That is how you connect with people. And so this guy, Will, goes, he goes, I stole that. I stole that hard. he goes, I've been doing that. Once I heard that, I really own that. And so what he does at this event, somebody would be like, so what do you do?

4:23And he'd be like, oh man, I do the hardest form of real estate that will pay you the least amount of money. So you don't even want to talk to me. You go talk to him. He's awesome. And then somebody's like, what does that mean? He's like, I do student housing, but tell me about, and he's always making it about you or making it about somebody else. And so he would make fun of himself. If anybody ever gave him a compliment. Even when I called him, you know, the favorite guy there, he was like, oh, thank you so much for saying that. I'll be sure to disappoint you next time. Like he's just the master of this low status thing.

4:52And he said, he did this. He's like, he goes, so I, when we're at the event, he told me I stole that. And he goes, I also use that on Twitter. He goes, everybody on here, everybody in this conference at Twitter, they always just go on there, brag about their returns and brag about how awesome they are, brag about their method. He goes, I just did the exact opposite. I'll go on there and I'll talk about how, well, today, I'm some 19-year-old bitch. I got to go fix a toilet in a frat house right now. Wish me luck. He's like, I'm always talking about how bad my business is, how hard it is, how I don't envy myself, whatever.

5:28He goes, I just say it how it is and I'll actually shine a light on the worst parts of what it is and the uncertainties of what I'm doing. He goes, I'll tell you what, I think I can out. He's like, I've never raised any money, but if I wanted to, I think I could out-raise everybody here. Because what I've been doing on Twitter has built a lot of connection and a lot of trust. And I just think that goes a long way. And then when I watched him at this conference, he was doing something that Ben Levy is a master of, which is he realized that the way to build value at a conference is not to puff your chest out and say, oh, hey, come look at me.

6:02Come talk to me about my greatness. What he would do is any two people, he would just connect them to each other. and then he would basically get the goodwill of having made that connection and he would just keep doing that and he'd be like, oh, this is Sean. He'll never tell you this, but his podcast is a huge deal. This guy's podcast is incredible. You got to talk to him about this and Sean, this guy, we call him the multifamily king of Dallas. This guy's like the flavor of a conference. He's just hyping people up. He would just keep connecting people. He would give you this like really hyperbole intro where he'd be your hype man.

6:32He'd make you feel good and he just kept doing that, kept making connections, He actually kept giving people two ways to intersect. Oh, you know, you guys will get along because you're both really into X. Boom. And what that does is just creates this like enormous glue and goodwill at a conference. So you need people like this at a conference. But also for him, he actually ended up being the high status guy. He's the guy that everybody loves. He's the guy that everybody knew. And he's the guy that everybody sort of felt completely not on the defensive with. And so because people felt they could be real with him, they actually formed real connections with the thing.

7:07I thought it was really awesome to see in person. Two things, dinner with millionaires and the richer the guy, the weirder the guy. Okay, the richer the guy, the weirder the guy is an obvious one for me. So what we do at these events is we kind of stack meetings with a bunch of interesting people that live in that city. So when we go to a city, often Ben will say, all right, here's a bunch of our friends, a bunch of people we know or loosely know, who do we want to hang out with and how busy do we want to make this trip? And we sort of stack a schedule from there. And one of the things that really stood out was the more successful the person, the richer the guy, the weirder the guy, with really no exceptions during this trip.

7:46And when I say weirder, it would be that they have weird hobbies, would have that they have weird marriages or relationship dynamics. It would be that they have just like really weird social skills. And what I realized was that I always assumed by default that people are just normal, chill, just chill, normal people. I don't know. I just put that on people. That was my default assumption. And I realized I really need to stop making that assumption because it is way, way wrong when it comes to these outlier successful people. And I thought about that and I was like, are they successful because they're weird or are they weird because they're successful?

8:26And I think there's a bit of both going on. So 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 and they actually disrupted it. 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. What's an example? Well, I don't want to say a specific story to make somebody feel weird, right?

9:00Because 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. Yeah, I have. I think those particular people, they tend to be on the coast in cities like LA, San Francisco, and New York. I know a bunch of people that are worth nine figures that live in Missouri, where I'm from. Not a bunch, a handful. And I think that they are shockingly actually normal. I think it's, 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.

9:36Do you know what I mean? Yeah. There's also just like rough edges. So, you know, social norms are very weird, right? Like we were at a breakfast and there was two people there and they didn't know each other. And so we were like, hey, like, you know, I could make an intro, but it'd be easier. You just intro yourself. And what I thought would happen, if I say, hey, make an intro, Sam, what are you going to say if I say, hey, maybe you guys introduce yourselves. You guys don't know each other. Two people. I would say, hey, what's going on? My name's Sam. I live on the East Coast. I work in the media industry.

10:13And I work on a podcast. I'm super into health and wellness. Great. You said your name. You say where you're from. You say what you do. and you say maybe something you're really into or kind of like a hobby that's a big part of your life. Yeah. Totally normal, chill thing to do. At his breakfast, one guy just starts with his name and literally he finished two minutes later with his company's EBITDA and like the terms of their recent acquisition. And I was like, what is going on? I think rich people just really out of touch with what they are willing to share and overshare about themselves. But that happens.

10:50I think that happens to you and I. I'm the cause. If they listen to the podcast and they realize that we talk about numbers a lot, what he was trying to do is to either show off or impress you that, yeah, I thought that this is just what you talk about all the time. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And it wasn't bad. It was actually really fascinating. It was interesting. But I did note, wow, that's not a normal thing to do. And I think that's, you know, I enjoyed it in the moment, but like, and then by the way, the other person at the breakfast did the same thing. I was like, okay, cool. We all just went deep really fast, which is weird, but cool in its own way.

11:26So yeah, the richer the guy, the weirder the guy.

11:32What about dressing well versus dressing comfortably? okay this is right up your alley because i think you are on a a big dressing well kick not not not displayed today with your white t-shirt but you right this is like uh currently like a fascination for you this is an 80 t-shirt sean so is that an 80 t-shirt it's the t-shirt that the dude jeremy wears in the bear so it's called fashion uh hello nothing like buying an 80 t-shirt and then have somebody else say, is it an$80 t-shirt? It makes you feel great. I apologize. It's called fashion, hello? No, what about it? It's kind of like, you're speaking a language I don't even know.

12:15That's the problem. I just can't even recognize it. I paid$80 for this t-shirt, so yeah. I think I know a thing or two about fashion. I mean, obviously if you go to Los Angeles, you're going to see a bunch of beautiful people. And I started just paying attention to it while I was there. 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. San Francisco is sort of whispering in your ear, you're not ambitious enough.

12:50You got to go bigger. You want to launch rockets or artificial intelligence, whatever. You're not ambitious enough. What does New York tell you? You're not powerful enough. They go, you're poor. her. Yeah, exactly. You're not rich enough. LA basically whispers, you're not hot enough. And this is why people are injecting all kinds of shit into their face and their lips and their butt and all kinds of stuff. And to me, that part is a bit of a turnoff. But I do appreciate the dressing well component of you're not hot enough. And the funniest part was I went and our buddy Sully lives in LA right now.

13:26And I saw Sully a few months ago when he was living in San Francisco. the guy transformed dude he went from like sf startup scrappy style to cool guy la chic and not even like in a try hard way just casual right like just very casual but well-dressed casual and i was so inspired by it i was like wow this is my same friend two different cities comes across two different ways just by you know a couple of choices and i literally was like he was like explaining to me. I was like, shut up. I just looked at his tag. I took photos of his shirt while he was wearing it. I was like, I'm buying this exact outfit and that'll be my starting point.

14:04And I realized, okay, you know, I've had this in my mind, this choice, which was either dress comfortable or dress nice. It's one or the other. It's not. But when I saw him, I was like, oh, he's comfortable and rice. Like, duh, that was a false choice. Stupid story. I was telling myself that was dumb. Pretty easy to change this. And I remember 10 years ago, I actually hired a stylist in San Francisco to come to my house and she threw away all of my clothes. She took everything out of my closet and she took me shopping for one day and we bought a whole bunch of new stuff and it was like three grand to do it and it was great.

14:36But that was 10 years ago and since then I have gone back to my old ways. And 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 know why you thought that dressing well is the opposite of comfortably? It's just because you're shit didn't fit right if you if you wear like you can wear really nice clothes like as much as a tie and a nice shirt if it fits well it's not uncomfortable i think that do you do you value art at all like does art talk to you ever like do you ever feel feel inspired by beauty like or in what in what form does it do you find like inspiration yeah not paintings but me neither you know things if they're like beautifully simple designs right like a lot of like furniture or interior design like a space which is kind of like like interior design of a space to me is like it just really stands out if i walk into a space that's got a certain vibe it's like i don't know it's just like i can't pay attention to really anything else in that moment because i know that that same space with just a different set of you know lights and furniture and plants and whatnot would feel completely different.

15:46Same shell, somebody has created this vibe. So I agree. I like architecture and I like energy of a room and furniture. And for years, I thought art just meant like paintings or just like sculptures. And I don't find inspiration from those things. And I thought architecture or clothing, that's not art. That's a waste of time. That's a waste of energy. And then when I realized, I'm like, no, it's actually just as important as art. It's not a waste. And I started giving into that feeling. I realized this is what makes like, this sinks to my soul. I should like give into this stuff and it's worth the effort.

16:20This isn't, you know, it's not simply utility. It could also be something that just inspires me or just sinks to me a little bit. And so once I realized that they're all, it's all related to self-expression and it's all art, it kind of changed my perspective. Do you know what I mean? Or instead of just saying, instead of saying - Music is like that, right? Music is probably the easiest one to appreciate. Yeah. And instead of saying, well, I'll just pay someone to do this. I actually realized, no, I want to learn what are these things communicating or what goes... It is, in a weird way, an art.

16:51I don't want to just phone it in. I want to actually figure out what makes beautiful art or what language do I want to speak when I'm communicating this. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I'm also probably the only sucker that bought two NFTs because I was like, oh, that's beautiful art. And I didn't mean it as the cover your ass of I'm just trying to get rich. Was that the holographic Kobe Bryant thing? The Kobe floating into heaven one and the other one that's just a strawberry. I was like, wow, this is beautiful. And I bought this strawberry NFT that is currently worth zero. But in my heart, it's still worth something.

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18:35All right, let's go to one or two more things. Which one do you think is interesting? Okay, I think The Little Luxuries in Life is a good one. I think Mike Posner is a good one. Yeah, I want to learn about him, but would that ruin the pod? No, it won't ruin the pod. All right, so you interviewed Mike Posner. I know Mike Posner because of his song. I took a pill on Ibiza. It was the biggest hit, I think. But then I also know him because he's kind of like a hippie, mellow guy. I read about him or watched a YouTube video about him walking across America. And so he's actually a little bit more guru-y.

19:10Not that he's a self-described that, but I am looking to him as an energy guru a little bit. Is that right? Yeah, but I wouldn't call him energy guru, but I know exactly what you mean, which is that he's an inspiring guy. So the backstory here is I went to Duke, and in my freshman year, I heard that there's a guy in the dorm next door who's like some white guy rapper from Detroit. And I was like, okay, cliche. And it turns out that that was Mike Posner. He's in the same year as I was. and he lived one building over. And I remember hearing his songs before they ever went public. And for example, Cooler Than Me, which was his first hit song.

19:48I remember hearing that and being like, okay, this is actually kind of catchy. But at the time, it just seemed far-fetched to me. This guy's really going to make it. And he wasn't the best rapper, and he wasn't the best singer, and all that stuff. So at the time, we just sort of wrote him off. And then while we were at Duke, he blew up. I think the second or third year, cooler than me, took off. And we used to hear that this guy was traveling. Every weekend, he would just go do shows, concerts at other campuses, and he'd fly out on Thursday, he'd fly back Sunday night, and he was there on Monday for classes.

20:17And I remember being like, what the hell? And he had a meeting with Jay-Z's record label. And I was like, wow, this is crazy what's going on. So anyways, that was how I initially heard of Mike Poser. And over the next, I don't know, 10, 15 years, he went on this journey where it was like a perfect three-act story, which is kind of ironic because when I did the podcast, I didn't cover any of the story as you normally would. So he is like a podcaster's dream. He's got a perfect three-act story. It's the rise, the unlikely rise of this college musician in his dorm room who becomes international pop star.

20:53Then he's got act two, The Fall, which is he's a one-hit wonder. His next song goes triple platinum, but it's still not enough because it's smaller than the first song. Then the next song goes double platinum, which is even worse. And then his record label shelves him. And he doesn't even get to make music anymore. They won't release his music anymore for years. Does he also get into drugs and alcohol? He gets depressed. He's like, I lived this lifestyle. I was on the road. I'm taking my shirt off on stage. I'm the man. Now I'm not the man anymore. And he's kind of bummed out. And he hits rock bottom when he goes to a concert with his friend Aviji.

21:26Kind of the one friend of the music industry who didn't write him off as like a has-been and he's now in general admission he's in the crowd and he's like i'm watching my friend on stage doing the thing i used to do the thing that i want to do which is you know like do this concert in front of thousands of fans who love him i'm sitting i'm standing in the crowd just like a normal civilian and he's like i'm hoping that somebody recognizes me and then if somebody does they come up to me hey are you mike posner he's like and then i realized that was my worst nightmare because they're like what are you doing here?

21:58Why are you in the crowd? He's like, and then I take a, like this guy offers me a pill and I take it and that becomes, that rock bottom is the genesis of the song, I took a pill in Ibiza to show Avicii I was cool, the first line of that song. Yeah. That becomes the new hit. So it hits rock bottom, ends up making a hit even bigger than the first one, two billion streams on Spotify and then again, feels a bit depressed because like, is this what I want out of life and I'm just chasing this high, this fame high. And that's when his dad dies. And now act three, the rebirth. And this is where he ends up doing a bunch of things.

22:32He climbs Everest. And with his friend, he actually climbs 71 mountains to prep for Everest. And he has this quote, you train for climbing a mountain by climbing mountains. And he climbs 70 mountains. He ends up climbing Everest. He then decides to walk across America after his dad dies. He walks across two-thirds of the way. He gets bit by a rattlesnake, almost dies, has to relearn how to walk. after months of therapy where he relearns how to walk, goes back to the spot where he got bit and resumes the walk and finishes it. And anyways, he's become this very happy, positive, upbeat guy. Now he's sober.