490 FBF: Power & Mastery with Robert Greene

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It's my pleasure to welcome Robert Greene to the show. He's a famous author on power and strategy. He's the author of several books, including his latest book entitled Mastery. The 48 laws of power is another great one. The Art of seduction, the 50th law, 33 strategies of war. And he's just got a prolific amount of work on the subject and covers a lot of controversial areas that other authors just don't really touch. Touch. And it's great to have him here. Robert, welcome. How are you?

I'm fine. Thank you very much for having me on your show.

Well, the pleasure is all mine, and I like to give my listeners a sense of geography. Are you located by any chance in Los Angeles today?

Good guess. Yes, I am. That's where I'm born and raised and that's where I live right now.

Yeah, fantastic. Well, that's where I grew up, too, so we're both Angelenos.

Oh, cool.

Well, yeah. So tell us a little bit about your latest book, Mastery, and then I want to touch on some of the other books as well.

Well, Mastery is basically a book about what I consider to be the ultimate form of power that a person can have in this world. I think we are in an environment that is incredibly competitive and difficult. Very few people have any sort of job security anymore. The competition out there is globalized. It is intense. It's every day. You can't let up your guard ever. And I've noticed that in all my years of researching very powerful people, they reach this level of an intelligence. It's not an intellectual intelligence, it's a practical intelligence. They reach this high level where they've mastered their field. You can visualize it in a way where if, let's say you're profession with chess, it's just a metaphor, but after 10, 15 years of playing chess, you're now like a grandmaster and you're no longer thinking about the chessboard. It's like internalized. You have a feel for it being something in larger dimensions, what they call chunks. And I believe that happens in any profession. And once you reach that point, you're on a whole other plane. You're so creative that nobody's going to replace you, that you're able to see trends and answers to problems that just aren't visible to others. And so you're going to be continually in demand. You're like a Steve Jobs or whomever that is. It's not that you have to ignore being good at politics and Being a social person, which is a component of mastery. But once you get to that point, you've got a command and you're in demand. And I wanted to show the reader that it's not a matter of your brain size, what college you went to. It's a matter of going through a process with a lot of effort and intensity, and you will get there. And it's an incredible feeling. And it's in all professions. The book covers everything from science to sports, to working with your hands to the arts. So it encompasses everything.

Well, I think you lay out a few steps, maybe. There are four major steps, if I'm remembering correctly in the book. Find the thing that is your passion, your great area of interest. What are those? If you'd go over them.

Well, the first step is the most important. If you don't follow the first step, you're never going to get there. And it's not me just saying that it's the pattern of all highly successful people. For this book, I researched a lot of very powerful figures in history, and also I interviewed nine contemporary masters to show that it's a very modern thing. But in all of these stories, everybody starts out with a step one. And what I call it is discover your calling or your life's task. And the idea is simple. You're born with a unique set of DNA. Your brain is wired in a totally different way. There's something unique about you. And what separates very powerful, successful people from others is that they are very clear early on in their life about that quality in them that makes them unique. It could be a subject that fascinates them, a problem, an activity, or whatever it is. And that clarity carries on until their adolescence. And then when it comes time for choosing a profession, a career, they have much more clarity. There might be a bit of exploring where they're trying to figure out exactly how to apply their interest. But there's a higher degree of clarity than what most people have. And because they're so clear about it and they focus so intensely on something that is emotionally engaging to them, they learn much faster and more intensely than other people. That's the key to everything in life.

Sure.

And so you need to be following that path, and I show you very clearly in this chapter, that you can discover what these inclinations are that you have and carve out a career path that will set you more in that direction than you might be going. A lot of people choose careers because there's money involved or because their parents said, this is what you should do. And they do all right in their 20s because they're young and etc. But then they hit a wall in their 30s because they're not engaged emotionally, personally with what they're doing. And disaster ensues and you're not aware of where the disaster comes from. And it's because you're tuning out. You're not fully engaged. And so this is such a critical step, I can't emphasize it enough. And I show you how at any point in your life you can take this step. You can review and figure out what it is and head in that direction.

Okay, so, Robert, I've got to ask you, because I'm sure there are people listening that are thinking. That's just never been clear to me. Some people, you know, they knew as a kid what they wanted to do. Certainly what you say makes absolute sense. We all know that the subjects we liked in school, we did well at those usually, whether it's, you know, liking the subject or even liking the teacher or professor because you relate to them better or relate to the subject matter better. So you just pick it up naturally because it's your area of interest. But just maybe one tip on how someone can discover what their main area is.

The point of mastery is slow yourself down. There's no shortcut. There's no one week suddenly or one year plan. This takes time. And so discovering your life task also. And a lot of people are not very in tune with themselves. They've been listening for too long to what other people have to say. They're not aware of what their actual interests are, of who they are. So it's going to take a couple of. For people like that, it's going to take a couple of months. But I say something for A simple, banal example will be when you open a newspaper or you check something out online, you're surfing a site that you like. What is that subject? That when you see the headline, you go, God, I have to read that. That just fascinates the hell out of me. Now I know for myself, if I crack open the New York Times and there's an article about some discovery about our earliest ancestors, I can't explain to you why, but I am so excited by that. I will read every single article on that subject. Well, there's something like that for you. There's always something that lights up your eyes, like when you were a kid, where you want to read about it. These are signs. I give you in the book many other signs, but this is a sign of something that excites you in a primal way that probably dates back to your childhood. And you should follow these indications. You should also follow things that you hate. You're in your career path and you hate working for other people. You hate the politicking and all of the gamesmanship involved. Look at that sign. It's a sign that you are probably an entrepreneur. You're probably meant to be working for yourself. You probably have that individual risk taking, cavalier spirit that is not comfortable working for other people. These are signs and you've got to start becoming aware of them.

Yeah, makes sense, makes sense. Talk to us a little bit more about the mastery subject. And I love how in your books you tie in so much history and so many historical figures. Every person in business likes to quote and talk about power and talk about the art of war. Some like to relate to Napoleon. Thoughts there on some of the historical tie ins. Maybe some examples.

Well, the icon of this book is Leonardo da Vinci. You know, like my war book was Napoleon. The power book was like Louis XIV, seduction, Cleopatra, 50th law was 50 cent. But here da Vinci is sort of the icon in that he's not as mythical as people make him out to be. He's somebody who came from a rather disadvantaged background. He was an illegitimate son. He was kept out of all of the noble professions. And so the only really avenue for him was to pursue art, which actually was something that he deeply, deeply loved. And I show clearly in the book that what makes da Vinci so absolutely astounding was an unbelievable work ethic. His motto was ostinato rigore, which means obstinate rigor, persistent rigor. He said, I'll figure something out just by sheer persistence and work, plus a lot of love. And I have all sorts of examples of all these other icons in our history that we look up to as being almost superhuman, like Mozart, like Einstein, Michael Feherty, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford. And I show clearly that what separates these people is an incredible level of persistence and work ethic. And they've put in their proverbial 10,000 hours to the point of maybe 20,000 hours. And that's exactly the foundation that makes them so incredibly brilliant. And one of my favorite stories in the book, I mean I know your audience is business people, but this book relates to these stories, relate to anybody in any field, is about Charles Darwin. Because what's such a good story about there is he's a young man who doesn't really know exactly where he sits in this world. He's not good at school. His father thinks that he's kind of a loser. He just likes to go hunting and observing things in nature and collecting specimens. And finally he gets this chance to go on a voyage around the globe on the ship the HMS Beagle. And his father says, you're a fool to go on that. Why would you think of something like that? There's no money. You have no training in it. And he grabs it. There's something inside of him that tells him this is it. And in the process of going on this voyage, he transforms himself from this sort of naive, inexperienced young man to someone who becomes the greatest observer of nature that we've ever had in history and transforms himself into a scientist. And I take this as a metaphor for the transformation that can happen to any person who goes through what I call a rigorous apprenticeship phase, like Darwin went through. So these are some of the historical figures that I have in the book from all different fields. And as I said, I have nine contemporary figures, like the great architect Santiago Calatrava, or the scientist Temple Grandin, or the. The great entrepreneur Paul Graham, who started the company Y Combinator. So there are lots of stories in this.

How did you get into it? What is your background? I mean, were you a history professor or just a student of it?

No, I mean, part of the reason why I'm able to do what I do is I don't have any traditional background. So if I were a history professor, I couldn't write the kind of books that I write because academia kind of forces you into a certain mold.

Puts you in a box.

Yeah. And my background was I studied in college Greek and Latin classics, very interested in history and literature. And then I went out in the work world and I worked in journalism, and I worked in film and Hollywood, and I had many different jobs, but I was always reading a lot of history and observing people very closely. And so I like to write books that are incredibly practical because I'm a very practical person. I don't like reading academic books on a subject that have no relationship to my life. But on the other hand, I like to relate it to history, and I like to make the reader think very deeply about their lives. So because I don't fit into these categories, I'm able to kind of be my own self, so to speak.

Yeah, yeah, very interesting. So manipulation. It's a controversial subject, but there are many books and writings on how people can manipulate others to get the result they want out of them. You know, how to change people, how to get your kids to do what you want, how to. How to get your dog to do what you want, how to get your spouse or significant other. Can people be manipulated? I think you're going to say yes to that from knowing your work. But tell us if so, how.

Well you know. You're referring to my earlier books. Sort of a subject theme in all of them. It's not so much a question. Manipulation is a loaded word. You can also use the word influence, persuasion. Can we convince other people, can we get them to do what we want them to do? Or can we get them to do something that won't hurt us? And of course we can. If not, we would be miserable, powerless creatures.

Well, and not only that, you know, I know it's a loaded word and that's why I used it, but to inspire some or instill some controversy into the discussion. But the old saying is nothing happens until somebody sells something. And whether it's selling an idea or a product, that's where a lot of progress comes from.

Yeah. So I'm trying to make you focus very deeply on the other person that you're dealing with. The greatest problem that everybody faces in this realm of persuasion or manipulation is that they're self centered. The focus of their attention is inward. So I need to sell this product, I need to make money for my family. This is what I like. The other person must like that as well, etc. You're projecting onto them something from inside yourself and you're not focused on the social environment, on what people are thinking, on their needs, etc. All of my books are simply a way to twist you like a yoga pose out of that constant self centeredness and get you to focus so that you really, really, really understand where that other person is coming from. Once you have that understanding, you can begin to lower their defenses. You can begin to make them move in your direction, whatever that might be. At the furthest extreme, you can manipulate them. And I Show in the 48 laws of power that extreme. I go into it and I show you that very powerful people can be often very manipulative. And here are some of the laws that they use in that realm. And you can either take that knowledge to help defend yourself or if you really need to, you can use it. And that would be sort of the extreme. But the thai what connects all of this stuff together is your ability to get out of yourself and focus deeply on the other person. Once you do that, a weird kind of magic can start happening. You can start figuring out other people. You're never going to totally understand that person. You're trying to sell to. There's always an element of mystery. It's a margin game. If you're able to increase your margin of intelligence and knowing about them from 5% to 20%, suddenly a kind of magic happens where you're able to align your interests and figure out what it is that's going to seal the deal or whatever it is you need. And that's really, really what my books are about.

Robert, when you wrote about the book about the 50th law, you talked about 50 Cent, the rapper. What could 50 Cent teach us?

Well, actually, it's a book that is co written with 50 cent. And basically that was an interesting process in which we spent about five or six months together and I interviewed him intensely and together we kind of shaped a book. And so it was a more or less collaborative process. And it's an amazing story. I'm not a celebrity person. I could really care less about Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm more interested in everyday people and how they get by in their lives. But 50 is an amazing story and he's a very real person. He doesn't have all this celebrity crap around him. And there's a couple of things that we can learn from him. First, it's a total American rags to riches story of someone who comes from the absolute worst environment, and how he's then able to raise himself up from this bottom to be a very wealthy, very powerful individual is an amazing story and it has incredible lessons. And the other element of it is I determine that there's a quality about him that is the source of his power. And it's what I call what we call fearlessness. But it's not a fearlessness of taking, being beating people up or being aggressive or guns or anything. It's a kind of philosophical fearlessness in front of anything that happens in life. He's not afraid of failing. He's not afraid of what other people think of him. He's not afraid of being alone. He's not afraid of being different. And when you have that kind of fearless attitude, you're going to get somewhere in this world in whatever you do. And so in this book we have 10 chapters. Each chapter is about a kind of fear that you have that's very primal and very human. And here's how you confront that fear and how you overcome it. It's all, of course, illustrated. Each chapter begins with a story from his life to illustrate it. And then we go into history about other great Americans and people around the world who used a similar idea and one of the chapters, for instance, just to give you an example, is a fear that a person might have in business is a fear of other people. I know that sounds a little bit counterintuitive, but a lot of people in business don't really want to know too much about their customers, about their audience. They think they do, but they are afraid of having their own ideas overwhelmed. They want to go in with a preconceived notion because it is simpler that way. It is easier that way. And people are always more comfortable with themselves than with what other people are thinking. It is actually a fear. And we demonstrated very clearly. And what made 50 so successful was he broke down all those barriers, and he became incredibly, incredibly close to his audience to the point of having a deep understanding. He's one of the first people in music to create a website that has unbelievable access to his own audience and information from them. He's very, very close to whomever he's trying to sell. Whatever he's trying to sell. It's a fear that he had overcome. And we go very deeply into it in that chapter. So that's sort of what that book is about.

Very interesting. You know, with all of your books, it begs the question, do you have a favorite?

Well, it's. You know, they're like children, and it's sort of hard to.

You can't pick a favorite, right?

Yeah, well, you can. I mean, the 48 laws of power was my first one, and it made me transform me from an unhappy person writing in Hollywood to having this great life. So there's always a love of that. The Art of Seduction was the most fun to write, as you can probably imagine by the title. And then Mastery is the newest one, so it's closest to me. So maybe right now that's my favorite child. But the 50th law was a lot of fun to write. I can't say that the book on warfare was not fun because it was a very tough subject. But even that book, you know, has some closeness to my heart. So it's hard really to say.

Yeah, I knew that would be impossible to pick. Like asking a parent to pick their favorite child. Yeah, but interesting. Well, you mentioned the seduction book, and I mean, wow, what an amazing compilation in the art of seduction of these different Personas that people can exhibit. And you give examples of people throughout history that have done this. How about if you take a few of those? And then I would be remiss to not mention that this isn't just about seduction in a romantic or A sexual sense. But at the end you talk about soft seduction and how to sell anything to the masses.

Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to write a book about the psychology of seduction, which I say permeates us as human beings. We are continually vulnerable to. To being seduced. So certainly we think of sexual seduction and there's a lot of that in this book. But it also is social seduction, how you can charm and get people around you to like you. It's also political seduction, how John F. Kennedy seduced the Americans in 1960 and won an election. It's clearly marketing. And I go into, as you say, the soft sell. So interested in what ties all of that together, what ties Cleopatra to John F. Kennedy or whomever. And there are ties to it. It all is involving the same psychology, which is how do you lower people's resistance so they do more or less what you would like them to do. And in seduction, you're creating a kind of pleasurable environment where it's not about overt manipulation, it's about what you're getting people to do is something that they actually want to do or will like. And I'm going to show you how you can have that power. The beginning of the book, the first half, I identify nine types of seducers. And you're probably going to be hopefully at least one of these types and maybe a combination of two, possibly three. And the idea is to be a seducer. You can't just be reading a book and following certain strategies. You're going to seem cold hearted, particularly. A woman will see right through you and you won't get very far and it's not fun. So the trick is to discover what is naturally seductive about yourself as an individual. So I identify these types and I make you more aware of what makes you a coquette or a rake, or if you're a woman, a siren or a dandy, or the charismatic, etc. The second half of the book, I go into various strategies that people typically use in the seduction. All of these chapters have application to marketing, to politics, to selling anything as well. And it's clear when you read them. But the second half of the book, I kind of show you, starting from the beginning with knowing who it is that you're trying to seduce, to the last strategy, which is sort of consummating the deal, whatever that might be. And along the way I give you stories from the greatest seducers who've ever lived in all of these different fields.

What book took you the longest to write?

Well, the War Book. The war book is sort of my version of Sun Tzu's Art of War. And for business people, I've heard it's maybe in some ways the most applicable. But it was a very difficult subject because first, there's so many books written on warfare. The subject is so vast. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to take all of the most classic strategies that exist in the history of warfare and identify these and then show you the psychology behind them and how they're applicable to everyday situations, to business, to dealing with people. And that is not easy, it's not really been done before, to show you how Napoleon's use of the flanking maneuver is actually a strategy that has incredible application to running a business or to persuasion or influence. And so it took a lot of thinking on my part and a lot of work, a lot of hard work. So that book was the longest and hardest to produce.

I would agree that, you know, when you read the Art of War and try to relate it to modern times, I don't think that's very easy to do. People talk about it maybe in an attempt to sound intellectual or something, but if you ask me, I didn't find that much relation to business. Maybe I'm missing something, but. Or my attention span's too short.

Well, the Sun Tzu is an amazing book. I use it very much in my book on war. But you're right. I understand exactly what you're saying. But let's say a theme in Sun Tzu is all about not going to war unless you have to, and using your resources, marshaling them to the best possible usage so that you're not wasting lives and you're not just ruining your country in the process. Well, I create a chapter out of that which I call Perfect Economy. And that means using your resources, who you are, your business, your army, to the absolute maximum, economical usage, so you're not wasting anything. Basically, the idea is your reliance on money or technology is making you probably less creative than you want to be. You can be incredibly creative with less actual material resources and do better in your business than you are if you are so addicted to spending a lot of money and buying things that you think are going to improve your productivity, etc. That's an idea of Sun Tzu that you can take as a metaphor and apply to sports, to business, to life in general. And that's sort of what my approach was.

Yeah, very interesting. Well, of course, your books are available at the bookstores and on Amazon.com and the website is powerseductionandwar.com all written out and anything else you'd like people to know in closing. Robert?

No. Yes, you say powerseductionandwar.com there'll be links there to mastery, etc. No, I guess it's just that these are books that are meant, they're longer, they're not simple reads like a lot of self help books. But if you take the time, they're all very practical oriented and reading them, you don't have to read them linearly. You can skip to chapters that seem more relevant, but it kind of gets under your skin. I'm trying to alter your way of thinking, your life and about success. We discussed a little earlier about making you less self centered. It's a process and I'm trying to change how you think. And I think reading the books in that spirit, it has incredible practical value if you give it the time. So that's sort of the last thing.

Yeah. What I love about your work is just all the historical tie ins. I feel like I learned so much about history reading a book about power or seduction, which I would never think that would come out in that way, but it sure does. Your work is just very interesting, very well thought out. And I've got to ask you, do you have another book in your sights? The recent release of Mastery. But what's next?

Well, a lot of my books kind of come out of an idea in another book. In another book I've written in Mastery, I have a chapter on what I call social intelligence. And the idea in that chapter is to say it's not just enough to master your field and be technically brilliant at it. You also have to be really good with people. And intelligence, intellectual intelligence actually goes hand in hand with people intelligence, with social intelligence. I'm going to write a book that expands that idea into something much larger. I'm going to give you what I call a deep, deep understanding of the elements of human nature that go back thousands of years that are embedded in each person so that when you read this book you're going to have a much better sense of what is motivating the people around you. You're going to be able to read them a lot better than just kind of go apparating blindly. And I'm going to show you how you can develop this kind of reading ability. And I'm going to give you, as I said, this kind of encyclopedia about human nature so you'll have a much better knowledge of what motivates people.

That sounds fascinating and I really, really look forward to that book, we will definitely have you back on to talk about social intelligence. And Robert Greene, thank you so much for joining us today.

Oh well, thank you so much for having me. That was fun.

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