Do you want to tell us about some of the jobs that you had as a youth and the specific job that kicked off your fanatical obsession with creating wealth.

This gets a little personal and I don't want to do the humble brag thing there was some thread going around Twitter about like name five jobs you held in every rich person on there was trying to signal how they held like normal jobs so.

I don't want to play that game I held a bunch of menial jobs there people who have had worse than me people who had a better than me there was one point where I was washing dishes in the school cafeteria and I said if this I hate this I can't do this anymore and I sweet talk my way to computer science prof of helping t.a. his c s class in algorithms when I myself was completely unqualified for that and so it forced me to learn computer science algorithms I could t.a. the rest of the course but that desire came out of the suffering of washing

dishes in the college cafeteria which is not to say there's anything wrong with that there's nothing wrong with anything really but it was just not for me I did not enjoy it I had a active mind and I wanted to make my money and earn my living through mental activities not through physical activities but sometimes it takes the suffering of doing the wrong thing to motivate you enough to do the right thing I worked at a law firm for a while a big prestigious law firm in New York City I had a big internship there and I basically got fired for surfing using that back in the day.

this is before the internet was a big thing used net was the news groups and it was the only way for me to stay from being completely bored and I was an overpaid guy wearing a tie and a suit and I to hang out in the conference room with the lawyers needed photo copies I would make photo copies and the meantime I would be bored out of my skull this is pre-i phone thank God to Steve jobs for saving us all from unending boredom but I used to read the Wall Street Journal or anything that I could get my hands on I would have read the back of a brochure just to keep from going insane because listening to a bunch of corporate lawyers

discuss how to optimize my new details in a big contract is really dull and they got mad at me because they wanted me to sit there quietly and not read the Wall Street Journal they said that's rude that's misbehavior so I got called up and reprimanded a bunch of times and then I was finally terminated and I was sent home in shame early from my very prestigious internship destroying my chance of going to law school

and I was unhappy for all of an hour but ultimately it's one of the best things that ever happened to me because then I would have ended up as a lawyer not that I've anything against lawyers but it's not what I was meant to do

you mentioned the catering job that you had a while back that really kicked off the whole obsession

that was an envy thing when I was in high school I had to make some money to pay for my first semester at college and I had to get a job

it was a summer of 1990 1991 time frame so this was the Bush senior recession if anyone who's alive back then remembers this was actually really hard to get a job

so I ended up working for an Indian food catering company and I ended up having to serve at a birthday party for a kid who was actually in my school so I saw my classmates and I was out there serving food and drinks to them

and that was incredibly embarrassing I wanted to hide away and die right there but you know what it's all part of the plan so part of the motivation if I hadn't had that happen I probably wouldn't be as motivated and I wouldn't be successful so it's all fine

but it was definitely a very strong motivator and that sense envy can be useful and we can also eat you alive if you let a follow your entire life but there are points in your life where it can be a very powerful booster rocket