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

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
All 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. Ask 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.

**Sam Parr** (0:52)
By 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?

**Shaan Puri** (0:59)
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. So it'll just be Apple Notes or that. It's nothing fancy.

**Sam Parr** (1:09)
And you discard the notepad after it's done or you refer back to this like constantly?

**Shaan Puri** (1:13)
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? What 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 share 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.

**Sam Parr** (1:58)
All right, tell me about the low status technique for becoming a high status person at a conference.

**Shaan Puri** (2:04)
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 or 150 people there.
He was my favorite, and I think he 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. We 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, like houses for students in South Carolina. So 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 and he loves the pod. As soon as I got there, he makes a reference to the pod from like, he introduces me to somebody else. He goes, oh, this is Shaan. He's real good friends with Orlando Bloom. Remembering this one, three years ago. I was like, wow, that was a deep, deep, deep reference. He goes, I'm watching him and I go, how come everybody here loves you? He goes, you said that thing when Hasan Minhaj came on the podcast and he shared this insight about comedy. 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 Hasan a picture of 2,000 people in the audience.
I was like, dude, give me some tips. Like how the fuck are we supposed to entertain this crowd? We're podcasters and 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 owned that. And so what he does at this event, somebody would be like, so what do you do? And 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 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 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. And he said he did this. He's like, he goes, so he went over 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, 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, you know, I'm some 19-year-old's bitch. I gotta go fix a toilet in a frat 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 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 the uncertainties of what I'm doing. He goes, but 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 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 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 talk, you know, come look at me, come 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 multi-family king of Dallas.