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

alright we are gonna do an episode that people really liked it before it was a trip report i did a a trip report when i went to austin i just went to la and i wrote down a bunch of notes so most people in the travel i don't think they really do this but i i call them micro memories where i just write down like one to three words that wouldn't make sense to anybody else but it there's a story behind it for me or there's something some insights some stories 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 asked me about any of these i wrote down twenty one things why don't we try that sam why don't why don't we take this list of twenty one and you just pick numbers that you think are interesting and then i'll i'll kind of explain yeah the thing for the trick i feel like i could rule where to know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a road by the way when you take these notes where are you taking them like on your phone like he's was having 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 like not there apple 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 us like 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 i gotta catch up on work in emails in slack and all this stuff the first two hours i basically just take my notes and i typed them out and i tried to squeeze you know twenty thirty forty percent more juice out of the trip just by reflecting and being like okay what was that was that story oh i should follow with that person or what was the takeaway there and how am gonna 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 alright tell me about the low status technique for becoming a high status person at of conference alright so i went to recon which is a real estate conference and met this guy there that i really like this guy right away and then i just noticed that who's was like probably the most popular guy there so there was maybe two hundred people there or a hundred fifty 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 them and i was what is this guy doing that has made him everybody's favorite person here i thing think that's what we all want we all wanna be liked especially when we go to these you know big public events with strangers and he's a big fan of the pod his 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 like basically like houses for students in south carolina so you know f houses rory houses just students living together he owns a bunch of properties there who trapped it no no outside investors that's what he does i'm talking to about him he loves the pod as soon as i got there he makes a reference to the pod from like he's like he he introduces me to somebody else he goes all this is he's real good friends with orlando bloom remembering this one while bloom story i said like three years ago so i was like wow that was that was a deep deep deep reference and he goes and so i'm watching him and i go how come everybody hear loves you and he goes you know you said that thing when hudson min h came on the podcast and he he shared this insight about comedy and this was before me and you were gonna get on stage where we were doing our first live show in vancouver and i had texted hu in a picture of like two thousand 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 podcast and he and he said he goes start by talking about things you're either you see there or you've seen in vancouver or 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 it goes the second thing is a comedy is a low status art form meaning self deprivation make fun of yourself call yourself out poke fund 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 you know i once i heard that i really you know own that and so what he does at this event somebody would be like so what do you do he'd be like oh man i have the i do the hardest form of real estate that will pay you the least amount of money so you don't even wanna talk to me you go talk to him he's he's awesome and then somebody like what what does that mean like i do student housing but but tell me and he's always making about you or making about somebody else and so he would make fun of himself if if anybody ever gave 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 right like he's just the master of this low status thing and he said he did this he's like he goes so i he when we're at the event told me i stole that and he goes i also used that on twitter he goes everybody on here conference at twitter they always just go on there brag about their returns to brag about how awesome they are brag about their method he goes i just did the exact opposite i'll go on there and they'll talk about how well today you know i'm i'm some nineteen year olds bitch i gotta go i gotta go fix a toilet not in a f house right now you know wish me luck he's like i'm always talking about how bad my business is how hard it is how you know i don't envy any i don't envy myself like you know whatever he goes i just say it how it is and i'll say i'll actually shine a light on the worst parts of what it is and and the uncertainties of what i'm doing he goes but he goes tell you what he's like i think i can out he's he's like i've never raised any money but if i wanna to i think i can 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 levi he's 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 talk you know come look at me come talk to me about my what he would do is any two people he would just connect them to each 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 guy's a this guy's podcast is incredible you gotta talk about this and sean bi guy he's we call him the multi family king of ballast this has a the flavor flavor of just some people up he would just keep connecting people he would give you this like really hyper intro where he'd he'd be your hype man he'd make you feel good and he just kept doing it kept making connection kept giving people two ways to intersect oh you know you guys will get along because you're both really the x boom and what 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 at the same i thought it was really awesome to see in person two things dinner with millionaires and the of the guy that we are the guy okay the original guy the weirder of the guy is a is an obvious one for me so what we do with these advances is we kinda stack meetings with a bunch of interesting people that live in that city so when we go to a city often ben will say alright here's like you know a bunch of our friends or a bunch of people we know or loosely know you know who do we wanna hang out with and how busy do we wanna make this trip we we 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 the richer the guy the weirder the guy with really no exceptions during this trip and 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 right like i don't know like i just put that on people that was my default assumption and i realized like i really need to stop making that assumption because it is way way wrong when it comes to these kinda outlier successful people and i thought about that and i was like is it that like are they successful because they're weird or are they weird because they're successful and and i think there's a bit of both going on so like for example i think they are successful because they're weird in that they're willing to be unconventional like you know they didn't go get a job and they didn't they didn't look at some industry and assume it was like well run and they actually disrupted it and you know they grind it out for ten years taking those salary to try to get to that success so because they were willing to be unconventional in their career it really shouldn't surprise that they're also unconventional in their marriage and unconventional their hobbies like what's an example well i don't wanna 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 wanna put them on blast like that but i mean you've 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 new york i know a bunch of people that are worth nine figures that live in missouri where i'm from not a bunch of handful and i think that they are shockingly actually normal i think it's if you've if you've have gotten extremely wealthy at a young age and you live in one of these cities you're you should assume that they're gonna be a freak do 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 you know i could make an intro but it'd be easier you know do you just tell your you you just intro yourself and like what i thought would happen if if i say hey make an intro like sam what are you gonna say i say and just hey and and maybe you guys introduce yourselves you guys don't know each other two people i would say hey what's going on my name sam i live on the east coast i work media the media industry and i work on a podcast i'm super to help him wellness this 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 breath one guy just starts with his name and literally he finished two minutes later with his company's eb and like the terms of their recent acquisition like the the and i was like what is going on i was like the i think rich people just like really really out of touch with what they are willing to share and over share about their themselves yeah but that happens i think that happens to you and i because if they if they listen to the podcast and they realized that we talk about numbers a lot what he was trying to do is to like 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 but i you know it wasn't bad like it was actually really fascinating was interesting but i did note like wow that you know that's not a normal thing to do and i think that's you on i enjoyed it in the moment but like and the 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 in its own way so yeah the of the guy the weird the guy what about dressing involved versus adjusting comfortably okay this is right up your alley because i think you're are on a a big dressing well kick not not not display today with your white t shirt but you right this is like currently like a a fascination for you this is an eighty dollar t shirt sean so is that an dollar t shirt it's the t shirt that the dude jeremy wears in the bear so it's called fashion hello nothing like buying an eighty dollar t shirt and then have somebody else say is it an eighty dollar shirt thank you feel great i apologize it's golf fashion hello no what what am i like yeah you're you're speaking a language i don't even know that's the problem i eye i just can't even recognize i paid eighty dollars plus t shirt so yeah i think i know it's figure two about fashion alright so i mean obviously if you go to los angeles you're gonna see a bunch of beautiful people and i started just like paying attention to it while i was there you know on the flight i was like man people really like dressed beautifully for this flight like this is this is really cool and i remember that program once wrote this essay sa called cities it says that every city is kinda whispering something in your ear all the major cities you know san francisco i was sort of whispering in your in in your ear you're not ambitious enough you gotta go bigger you know you you wanna launch rockets it or you know artificial intelligence whatever you're not ambitious enough and what does new york tell you they go you're not powerful enough they go ship poor yeah exactly you're not rich enough la basically your whisper you're not hot enough and this is why people are injecting all kinds of shit into their face and their lips and the butt and all all kinds of stuff and to me that that part is a bit of a turn off but i do appreciate the the dressing well component of you're not hot enough and the funniest part was i went and our buddy su lives in la right now and i saw sue a few months ago when he was living in san francisco the guy transformed dude he went from like s f startup up scrappy style to cool guy la chic and not even like in a tri 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 so like he was like explaining to i like shut 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 and i realized okay you know i've i've had this in my mind this choice which was either dress comfortable or dressed nice it's one or the other it's not but when i saw i was he's comfortable and dry like duh that was a false choice stupid story i was telling myself that was dumb pretty easy to change this and i remember ten 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 whole bunch of new stuff and it was like three grand to do it and it was great but that was ten years ago and like you know since then i have like gone back to my old ways and i've copied many things solely in life mostly business stuff but this is a something else i'm gonna copy from him which is to you know do a very simple upgrade of style here do you know why you thought that dressing well as the opposite of comfortably it's just because your shit didn't fit right if you if you wear like you can wear really nice clothes like as much as a tie 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 you ever feel feel inspired by beauty like or in what in what form does it do do you find like inspiration yeah not paintings but we 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 kinda 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 of what whatnot would feel completely different same shell you know somebody has created this vibe so i i agree i like architecture and i like energy of a room at furniture and for years i thought art just meant like paintings or like just like pictures 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 kind of like realized i'm like no it's actually like just as important as are it's not a waste and i started giving into that feeling i realized it this is this is what makes like this syncs to my soul i should like give into this stuff and it's a worth the effort this isn't you know it's not simply utility it could also be something that just inspires me or just syncs to me a little bit and so once i realize that they're all it's all related to self discretion and it's all art it kind of changed my perspective do you know what mean or instead of just saying instead of music things like that right music music it's probably the easiest one to appreciate yeah and it's and instead of saying well i'll just pay someone to do this i actually realized no i wanna learn like the i wanna learn like what are these things communicating or like what goes like it is in a weird way in our i don't wanna just phone it in i wanna actually figure out like what makes beautiful beautiful art or what language do i wanna speak when i'm communicating this do you what i mean yeah i'm also probably only sucker that bought two n t's because i was like oh that's beautiful art and i didn't mean it as like the cover your ass of like i'm trying to get rich was that the holographic kobe bryant think kobe the kobe the kobe floating into heaven one and the there's other one that's just a strawberry i was like wow this is beautiful and i bought this strawberry n that you know it's currently worth zero but in my heart it's still worth something alright let's go to one or two more things i which one do you think is interesting okay i think the little luxury in life is a good one i think mike pos is a good one yeah i wanna learn about him but with that ruin the pod no i won't read the bottom alright so you interviewed mike poster i've new i know mike poster because of a song like i took a pillow and a b so was like the biggest hit i think but then i also know him because he's kinda like a hippie mellow guy i read about him or watched the youtube video about him walking across america and so like he's actually a little bit more guru not that he's a self described that but i am looking to him as like an energy guru a little bit is that but i wouldn't call energy guru but i know exactly what you mean which is that he's an his inspiring guy so the the back story 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 poster he's in the same year as i was and he lived you know one building over and i remember hearing his songs before they ever went public and yeah know for example cooler than me which was his first kinda hit song i remember hearing that and being like okay this actually kinda catch but at the time it just seemed far fetched to me like yeah this guy guy's really gonna make it and he wasn't the best rapper or he wasn't the best singer and all that stuff so you know at the time we just course 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 like every weekend he would just go to shows concerts that other campuses need fly back you fly out on thursday you fly back sunday night he's there in monday for classes and i remember being like what the hell and like get 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 mike pose and over the next i don't know ten fifteen years he went on this journey where which 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 podcast dream he's got a perfect three act story it's the rise you know the unlikely rise of this college you know musician in his dorm room who you know becomes international pop star then 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 one then the next song goes double platinum which is even worse and then his record label shelves him and he doesn't get even get to make music anymore they won't release his music anymore for you years let's he like a does he also get the drugs that i'll alcohol or no 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 of the man now i'm not the man anymore and he's kinda bummed out and he hits rock bottom when he goes to a concert with his friend of each they're kind 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 wanna do which is you know like do this concert in front of thousands of of fans who love him i'm sit i'm standing in the crowd just like a normal civilian and he's like i'm hoping that somebody recognizes me and then though somebody does they come up to and like hey are you mike pos he's like and then i realized that was my worst nightmare because they're like what are you doing here like why are you at the crowd he's like and then i take like this guy offers me a pill and i take it and that becomes that rock bottom is this the genesis of the song i took a pill in ibiza to show vic i was cool the first line of that song yeah that becomes the new hit so to hits rock bottom ends 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 is i'm just chasing this high this fame high and that's when his dad dies and he now act three the rebirth and this is where he ends up doing a bunch of things he climbs everest and he got he with his run he actually climbed seventy one mountains to prep forever everest and he has his quote you know you train for climbing a mountain by climbing mountains and he climbed seventy mountains he again 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 rattle snake almost dies has to relearn how to walk after he months of fit therapy where he really learns out 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 a upbeat guy now he's he's sober he doesn't do drugs he doesn't drink he doesn't watch porn he like sings about songs that he just wants to make art that inspires shape cool so he's got this like amazing story i do this podcast where i talk about almost none of it and the reason why it was he's told that story before and i'm in the season of sort of ind my actual c it's like let me have the up the conversation i actually wanna have and so i talked to him about you know how do you actually make the songs that you make like what does the creative process for you like where does a pitt song come from how do you do that and a lot of his mindset mentality stuff so i think the podcast is gonna be great but it's different than than probably what people expect which is just kind beginning middle and end of his story with someone like him who is famous but maybe doesn't regularly have hits or a tour just how to does he just have super lumpy income i mean how does he like survive between hits laurie well so what he told me he was like i was like how did you do that and he's like well part of it is like i got financial freedom like he's like my like wealth manager guy sat down and was like hey we ran monte carlo simulations and like look like you're good you're good you're you're good and so like you 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 fucking crazy you're 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 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 of the whole thing and so i go to his house and by the way the best thing to do with these podcast is to go to people's house to film it was it nice well we filmed it in his studio which is like a side house that he has we didn't go to into the main house but it's it's at the top of this mountain so you have to like basically make a trek up this like windy road up to his mountain i was like cool i'll you know i'll pass on this windy road every day but the house itself was school is the top of is mountain and i'm standing there at the studio he's he's like oh his guy was like oh he's got a he's got a meeting right now he'll he'll be out in a second so he comes out and i just hear from the other side like like he's just so happy that he's like outside enjoying his day he doesn't even realize that we're already there and he's is like oh you're here and then he comes in and he's just like a ball of good vibes he's like energy was really like off the charts and you could people don't know this but ari we've talked about this which is we get to see the guest before the lights turn on and after the recording is over and it's very striking what people are like some people have a very stark contrast of the before pod and after pod versus when they're recorded and some people are just like the same or even better when they're off camera i would say mike was a great example of somebody who off camera like his energy was just a very very contagious extremely positive person very nice to everybody in the room took the time to do that even afterwards when he had to go like his manager was there was like hey we got gotta mike we're like yeah we gotta go somewhere he like stopped and was like hey is i gotta go do this real quick but i don't leave i wanna come back and say bye which like most musician pop stars don't give a fuck right they don't need to come back and say goodbye they they're just like yeah thanks everybody like you see i'm on to my next important thing because remember i'm a very important person and instead he was like made you feel important which i thought was he remember you from duke well we didn't actually ever really cross paths like we didn't know each other when we were there we just knew i knew of him he didn't know anything about me alright let's do one or two more well what's the little series so this stood out we again we meet a bunch of people one of the things we noticed was we would have a like a meeting or lunch or something or hang out go to someone's house who was like super wealthy and what we notice was like man even if this person is like let's say ten times the network that we have they don't have like ten times the better life they don't even have maybe two times the better life i actually don't think but just really like any link and and i don't mean better life as in like let's say their health or their family like forget those things i'm talking but even just material life like there's not that much that they can spend on that we really need or would want so we know i'm on the lookout for it like what are ways that people use money either spend money and invest money whatever is interesting to me and what i noticed was that there were very few that i actually wanted that other people had and instead what we we we flipped it and there was actually some really small little of life so like when we were i was talking to ben and ben's like dude this is this little closure luxury of life i i i missed at this airbnb like the airbnb had really cheap towels he's like yeah he's like i just recently splurge on like having amazing bath towels he's like and then i used two every time he's like it drives my wife nuts i'll use two towels every time i'm out of hour shower and like i bought the like forty dollar tower the fifty dollar towel instead of the like five dollar towel he's was like but it's the little luxury man and i was like dude that's me with socks like i will like i hate having mismatched socks so i threw all my socks away when we got acquired the only thing i bought was i threw all my socks away and i asked i said what is the highest quality sock and i just that you can find what's the answer by the way well the answer i got at that time was bam socks and now i actually have like custom socks so i went to a manufacturer and i was like hey i i want a sock like this and so now i have like a hundred hundred two hundred pairs of custom manufactured socks you really factory that i i found off alibaba yeah because i like wearing crew socks like you know like the kind of caf like like socks whatever cath socks mid calf and but like if you wear the nike compression ones they're too tight all the time so and if you just wear the means ones they're like kind of they're good but they're they're pretty basic and so i kinda made my own hybrid do you know that gen z makes fun of millennials for wearing ankle socks good i knew fashion would come back around and be on my son side because you been a work for a long time wearing non ankle socks you've been when you win this one young people don't like ankle socks they like socks that show so you're right want and like skinny jeans are not cool either right like you gotta wear like big jeans or something highway waist jeans yeah baggy and highway waist of pants are in thank god because they're way more comfortable by the way way more comfortable but they call it the words called chu so when you are like a thirty five year old that you wear skinny pants or skinny jeans it's called you're being chewy that's like the the phrase chewy how do you use it in a sentence like you're being chewy or you yeah you could do that yeah you could use it that way or you guys say like i don't wanna wear skinny jeans that's that's pretty chewy you could use it that way but yeah chu means like like for example yeah so tight jeans ankle socks it's super chewy you don't wanna be cheeky man alright well that's that's it that was my la trip report i had twenty one things we we talked about a few ago alright that's a pod i feel like i could rule where to know i could be what i want to from at all then and like a days off on a road less travel never look bag never