There’s this great little place in Santa Monica that used to have a “Three Fer” breakfast. It was three pancakes, three eggs, three pieces of turkey bacon and three potatoes. It was unbelievable. You learned something about the potatoes, the turkey bacon and the pancakes.

A “Three Fer” in my world refers to the fact that you do not ask someone out unless you have learned three things about them. Otherwise, you are just asking someone out based on physical attraction.

When you are looking at a woman and you’re talking to her, are you really talking to her? A lot of guys will talk AT a woman (instead of to her).

If you’re really talking to somebody, you’re learning things about them. A conversation is a conversation.

Think about a conversation you would have with a buddy. When you talk to a buddy, you’re talking about things back and forth. “How was your day?” “Wow, did you see the game last night?” “How are things going with that girl?” There are three things you are talking about right there.

You never go up and talk to your buddy and just say, “Hey do you like the tea here? I like the tea here. I think the tea is really good here. It’s not my favorite tea; my favorite tea is down the street. That other tea shop is actually my favorite. It’s great. Oh, can I have your number?”

In that situation, basically what’s happening is that your penis is getting her number because you need to get that number. You’re not really communicating.

If you had that same conversation with a friend, your friend would think that you had some type of learning disability and that you should be riding the short bus to school. So when you communicate, you really need to go for the “Three Fer.”

What the “Three Fer” means is that if you did not find out three interesting things about someone — and share a few things about yourself — then why would they ever want to go out with you? Life is all about creating an emotional bond with people.

You want to get together with people with whom you have formed an emotional bond. A woman will want to go out with you when there’s an emotional bond that has been formed.

When you meet a woman, all of this can happen pretty quickly. You can ask her a couple of questions, learn things about her, act enthusiastic about what she’s saying and go deeper into conversation in a short period of time. It doesn’t have to go on for three or four minutes to really learn things about her.

If you learn about a woman and show interest in who she is as a person before you ask her out, she is going to really be excited to go out with you. She is going to go home, talk to her friends and say, “God, I met this really cool guy today at the tea shop. It was so much fun. It was like he was so interested in my caffeine addiction, and he also has to get that jolt of caffeine in the morning like I do. We were talking about work, and he’s in the same field as I am. It was great!”

Do you see what I mean? You have to give her something to be excited about so that when she talks to her friends, they don’t sit there and say, “Oh God, another guy just cruising for numbers in the middle of the day. Don’t you hate when guys just ask you out for no reason? They don’t even get to know you!”

So, that is the “Three Fer.” One of the best ways to really learn how to do this is to take a little note pad around with you, and write down the three things you learned about each person with whom you have an interaction.

If you don’t learn three things about someone — if you only learn one or two things — then you know what you need to do in the next conversation. This is something that a lot of politicians and really good business people use all the time.

This is like what a lot of people do wrong when they’re going for a job interview. They go and try to sell themselves. They’ll just talk about all the things they are going to do for the company. All they do is sell themselves.

Meanwhile, they didn’t look around the room. The man interviewing them has pictures up of his daughter, a Golden Retriever, a golf outing with his buddies, and his boat.

In that situation, I’d walk into that office and say, “A Golden Retriever? No f*^king way man! I grew up with Golden Retrievers. My last dog was a Golden Retriever. What is your dog’s name?” I’m going to bond with him personally, because it’s a known fact that people will hire people with whom they bond personally. They will hire that person over the people who go in and just sell themselves.

Success in life is based on how well you are able to bond with people personally, and not on how well you can sell yourself. The “Three Fer” works in everything.

It works in every aspect of life. So when you go and approach a woman, you better learn three things about her. If you aren’t able to do this, then you need to keep going out and practicing — practice on little old men or on whomever you need to practice on to get it.

Start becoming inquisitive about people. The more inquisitive you are with people, the better connections you’re going to have with them and the more excited they are going to be about you.