g something they owe a lot of money on. So but they have some of those too I'm sure.

Do I like Victor Davis Hanson? Yeah he's always a good interview and a great writer.

Do I play chess? I play chess with Christina before any of this business started for the first time. I hadn't played chess in a million years and I'm not sure I have the patience for it.

Get Gordon Chang? Yeah I should.

What is the secret to the universe? Well what if the secret to the universe is that you can program it and that if you learn that then you get everything you want because sometimes it feels like that. That some people have learned how to program the simulation and there are people I know, I won't name any examples, but there are people I know who can so consistently make things happen that you don't think they should be able to do that that you just wonder about the nature of reality.

Let me tell you a story about the first time I realized how influential I was or persuasive. So this is a real story. So back in college there was an organization in college called the coffee house and the coffee house was a group that was run by students. So the students volunteered to run it and there was a bar on campus so we'd have live music and served I think only beer at the time and some snacks. And I volunteered to work there to get some experience managing a thing and that was the minister of finance. So I was an economics major so I redid the accounting system and became one of these several managers working in this bar environment. And it was the coolest job because it was a bar and you know you're 18 and in those days you could drink at 18 in New York. So here is the situation. We would hire bartenders and then we as a group the so-called managers would have to fire them if they didn't perform. And one of the people that we hired was a close friend of mine. So I had talked the managers into hiring a friend and he was the worst employee. He would show up an hour late. He'd be stoned. He'd do things wrong. Just the worst employee. So the other managers put up with him for several weeks and they decided that they were gonna have a meeting and we're gonna fire him. So I'm in the meeting in which the managers are talking about firing my friend who I had recommended for the job of being a bartender. I decided that I was going to see if I could get them to not fire him. Instead of firing him that they would agree to make him their boss to make him actually the head of the managers. I forget what the title was though but that was open and I didn't want to be the head. I wanted to be the one who sort of controlled the head so to speak. I didn't want that name the title but I wanted to have the influence. And so I actually said you know what you're saying about him being fired it's all true. He really was late and he's really not much of a bartender at all and I don't think he has any of the natural talents that would make a good bartender. But you know what he does have and I argued with them. He had a unique talent stack. I didn't use those terms back then but he had a unique set of skills that would make him the perfect head of the organization that was talking about firing him right then. So we were literally talking about firing him as a bartender and within 45 minutes I had convinced everybody in the room that we should not fire him and instead promote him to be our own boss. And yeah they said well you know you're still gonna have to I don't know go through a vote or something and I sort of argued in my case and the next thing you know he was fired as a bartender and promoted to all of our bosses. That actually happened you know. And I tell that story I think has anybody ever been almost fired but instead got promoted to be the boss of the person who was almost gonna fire him? I don't think that's ever happened in the history of business. So you should not be surprised that when I later studied hypnosis and the tools of persuasion that I had a reason to think maybe I had some natural talent in that area. So it's just getting better. Was he any good at the new job? Yeah actually I guess that's the punch line. The punch line he was actually pretty good as a chairman I think was the title. He was actually pretty good. With my help we completely turned the place around. It had lost money every year every year I had been on campus for decades and I turned it all around and changed the pricing and fired some vendors and basically it was just a turnaround there and it was making money for the first time. So that happened anyway.

Here's another true story also from college. The same friend that I was telling this story about and another one the three of us we would sit in our dorm room and enjoy the things that college students enjoy when they're sitting in dorm rooms. Okay you know what I mean. And we would have wild ideas and plans for the future and I came up with this plan. I said why don't the three of us be in charge of the whole dormitory? Yes bongs were involved that is true. And I said we should be in charge of the dormitory instead of having these professional managers. So there was like a professional adult who lived there and was sort of in charge and there were these resident assistants students who were sort of like his little army of things. They said you know we should just take over. We should like be in charge of the dorm the three of us. And we hatched this scheme to try to sell to the administration the plan where they would fire the adult and they would pay us actually give us money the three of us to be in charge of the dormitory instead. Now how high do you have to be to come up with that idea? Well a year later I was in my private room which was available only to student managers the name of the title which we gave it and then we took it and we sold it to the administration and sold it to these students who are coming into the dormitory the next year and we completely redid the form of management in the dormitory. And I swear to God I got a private room and I got paid and I also you know we had the students doing the jobs of security and cleaning the laundry room and other stuff and I took some of those jobs too because yeah anybody could volunteer for them. So there were days when I would be working security at night letting people in and out of the building getting paid for that. I'd be doing my homework in between and then when there was nobody there and I was tired of homework I walked across the hall and cleaned the laundry room which I also got paid for. So I got paid to be a student manager, paid to work security and paid to clean the laundry room and I did them all at the same time. So I was working three jobs and doing my homework while I was just sort of staying up late. So the three of us we took over. Years later that dormitory still had that same structure. I think they ended up losing it but I was kind of persuasive back in college and those are just the stori