CW 1140: Listener Questions & The Laws of Human Nature, Famous Author on Power & Strategy, Robert Greene

Hey Jason, congratulations on your 1,000 podcasts. That's amazing. You are so productive. Not only that for creative wealth, but everything else that you do. Pretty incredible. Hope all is well. Just want to let you know I'm thinking about you and hope things are going great.

Hey, I'd like to introduce someone whose.

Voice you've heard on the show before.

And that is Chad.

And we have a fantastic little YouTube.

Raffle for you, Chad.

What's it all about?

Yes, we have an exciting opportunity coming up for you to be able to win a free ticket to Meet the Masters coming up in March or a $500 travel allowance. Here's what you need to do to be able to win one of those things. We will be selecting a winner on March 4 when the contest ends and all you have to do is go to the YouTube channel, which is YouTube.com Jason HartmanRealEstate. Subscribe if you haven't already, then pick any video to watch. There's a variety of categories, everything about real estate investing from finding the right markets, analyzing real estate deals, the economics of real estate investing, property management, financing. There's a whole wide range of videos that you can choose from and choose one that you think would be interesting to you. Watch it and then go to the comments section and comment. Just a quick one sentence comment on something that you learned from that video and make sure to include the hashtag JH live in the comment and that will enter you into this raffle.

Okay, so that's real easy.

You just go to YouTube.com Jason HartmanRealEstate.

Subscribe to the channel and then watch.

Any video you like and make a comment below the video of one thing you learned.

Include the hashtag JHLIVE and that will.

Enter you in the raffle to win a free ticket to Meet the Masters.

Or or a $500 travel allowance. This ends on March 4, so be sure to get it done before March 4.

We look forward to seeing you at Meet the Masters.

Thanks for joining us. Chad.

Thanks.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you Follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Greetings from Beautiful San Diego, California, and welcome to episode 1141-140. You know what that means. Well, first off, this is Jason Hartman, your host. But that means this is a 10th episode show where we talk about a topic of general interest, but it always circles back to real est. And we are going to talk to Robert Greene today. He is the famous author and a returning guest. He's been on the show a couple of times before, and Robert is out with a new book. And by the way, I had not finished his book at the time of this interview. I finished it afterwards, and I gotta.

Tell you, it's really good.

It's all about the laws of human nature.

I really enjoyed the book. So, yeah, I think you'll enjoy this interview.

So we'll dive into that. Adam, we've got a listener question first before we get to the Robert Greene interview. Fire away.

All right, we got this one from Brandon. He went to jasonhartman.com ask, which you should go to as well if you have a question. And he said, first off, a little promo. He said, I love everything about Jason Hartman's Creating wealth show, from the why and the how to of income, property investing and how this vehicle truly can help someone create cash flow and wealth to the big picture economics discussed. Overall, tangents make for great entertainment. Gee, you never do those. And I even learned from them, too, let's just say.

Me a tangent.

Are you kidding?

Let's just say it has taught me a wealth of information and knowledge that I have been able to personally apply to my journey to help me reach my goal and dream of financial freedom. So thanks for the love.

Yeah, that's. Yeah, thanks for the love, for sure.

Yeah, appreciate it.

But he didn't just have love, he had a question, too. He wants to know. He says some personal finance authors and gurus like to subscribe and teach the live below your means philosophy, while others, such as Robert Kiyosaki, teach live above your means or expand your means. What are your thoughts regarding this topic in terms of truly creating wealth?

That is a great question, and it is a big, deep philosophical question that we could discuss for a long time. So, Adam, there's kind of two major philosophies on this. And Brandon, of course, one philosophy is you should have an abundance mentality, right? And this would be more along a lot of new age Speakers and thought leaders will talk about, have an abundance philosophy, an abundance mentality, you know, source abundance, right. You know, the secret, all this kind of stuff, right.

There's nothing new about the secret, by the way.

That's biblical.

It went back thousands of years.

But the more contemporary version, of course, is the secret and that kind of thing, right? And then on the other side of the spectrum, there's the be prudent, be conservative, be careful and thoughtful. Be the millionaire next door, like Thomas Stanley talked about in his film Famous Book on the topic. And then to contrast that with the abundance mentality, Robert Kiyosaki says, you know, these other speakers will say, cut up your credit cards. And he says, my credit cards make me happy.

The Marie Kondo route, right? I hold my credit card, it gives me happiness.

Exactly, exactly.

So I can see both sides of.

This, and there really are two sides of it.

So I guess where I come down on this idea is try to have a kind of, you know, Adam, I think it was you that was on with me recently when I talked about all the toys I used to have. And I used to constantly want to buy these toys. You know, I had a big yacht, I had. I bought two airplanes. I had a big motor home. I've had lots of big houses over the years. And, you know, I could easily afford all that stuff. It was really no problem to afford it. But just because you can afford it and just because you can buy it doesn't mean it makes your life better. And that's one of the lessons I really learned, is that the more transactions anybody engages in, the more complexity and really the more problems they're going to have in their life. You know, I have a fairly complicated life even now that I've refrained from buying a lot of those toys. It's just you engage in more transactions and just more things are going to go wrong. You know, you're going to have more insurance claims, you're going to have to manage more things. You're going to get in a few more disputes because you're just writing more checks to people, you know, and there's going to be disagreements. It's just the law of large numbers, right? And so the abundance concept of living above your means or that kind of idea isn't necessarily going to make you happier. And believe me, I can tell you that for sure that. And by the way, we talk a lot about money on this show because, hey, that's what the show is about, right? It's about creating wealth. And money does not make you happy? Okay. I hope I didn't burst anybody's bubble. It definitely does not make you happy, but it will positively. I can guarantee you, it will positively make you happier than poverty. That I can promise. Okay, so the other philosophy here is the famous book, the Richest man in Babylon. As I recall, I read that book many, many years ago, but the idea was to live on 70% of your income and save 10% of it, invest 10% of it, and give 10% away. You know, that philosophy was like the 70, 10, 10, 10 philosophy, right? So there's all kinds of thinking on this stuff. But I would say that the. The best thing to do is to be generous with others and reward yourself in fairly reasonable and smaller ways. It doesn't have to be massively extravagant. Okay? If you have a success, you want to reward yourself and set up that kind of system where you're sort of almost tricking yourself into understanding that there's more, that this is good, that I did good, I deserve a reward. So whatever your thing is, right, is it going on a trip, Is it buying a new gadget or, you know, some new clothing or whatever, Right? Maybe it's just going out to a nice dinner, you know, it doesn't have to be buy a yacht and get a second and a third home, right? Because those things, those big, expensive, permanent toys like that, really do require more of your time, more of your management, and they create more complexity. So I guess I went a little off topic because I didn't just say whether it was live above or within your means or live way below your means. I didn't really answer that question exactly. But I definitely can say, try not to complicate your life. Money should make your life better and easier and give you more peace of mind. You can create a lot of complexity with money, and I have certainly made that mistake many times, and I am trying to be much more thoughtful with that. Even though I can afford it, doesn't mean I should afford it. Adam, what do you think?

Well, I think first off, Brandon's gonna love that answer because he said he loves your tangents.

Well, it is a tangent.

Yeah, that's one thing. But the other thing I would say is when you said money doesn't buy happiness, it was, money gives you choices, and your choices can make you happy. So Aaron and I have talked and we have both said, you know, even if we made.

And Aaron is your wife.

Aaron's my wife said, even if we made a ton more money, there's not really anything in our life we would change. I mean, we would invest more and help us become truly free sooner, I guess. But we're happy with our life. And if you're happy with your life, then if you're living below your means, that's fine. If you're living above your means, it may or may not be fine. You have to define what your fine means, I guess, in that sense. But yeah, that's what I think is as long as you like it and it works for you, then go for it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I think, for example, in your case, right, you should buy a nicer house. Okay? Nothing wrong with your house now. It'll, it'll do the job. But as you grow and you know, you've got all these real estate investments now and you're continuing to buy more, you know, at some point you decide, hey, you know, get a bigger, better house.

Right, but we're talking about downsizing.

But, but. Oh, really? You have four kids. Yeah, down 30.

We have a 3,500 square foot house. We don't need that.

Yeah, but I mean, you can improve the house, you can make it better, you know, whatever. But I think mistake would be go buy a depreciating yacht, buy some expensive depreciating cars that really don't matter much or buy a second home. Don't buy a second home. Okay, I had second homes. I had second cars. I didn't even mention those as toys, right? And those things do not make your life better. And I remember one day I realized that, right? I remember I was rushing to the airport one day when I lived in Newport beach and I remember going into.

The garage and thinking for about 30.

Seconds, which car should I take to the airport? Because I was just going to park there. Well, guess what? I took the wrong car because when I got to the airport, my wallet was in the other car. And of course, you can't get on.

The plane without your id.

And so these things complicate your life.

You know, they don't always make it simpler.

And it's another insurance policy you have to manage another car wash that's needed.

Another different kind of dealership you need.

To deal with because the car is a different brand. And you know, really I would say better things maybe, as you create more wealth, but not necessarily more things. Maybe that's a distinction. I'm not sure. Thoughts?

Yeah, that sounds about right. I would agree with that.

Well, hey, we are talking today about the laws of human nature. And our guest is Robert Greene. I hope you're joining us for Meet the Masters. We should explore this topic more. I'd love to hear some more. Jasonhartman.com Ask and I hope I at least made some attempt to answer that question. But let's get to our guest, Robert Greene. Thanks to all of you who have registered just this week for Meet the Masters. We appreciate that. For the rest of you, get your tickets. Jasonhartman.com masters and let's get to our guest and talk to Robert Greene.

Foreign.

It's my pleasure to welcome a returning.

Guest back to the show and that is none other than Robert Greene.

He's out with his sixth book now. He is a very well known author on subjects relating to power and strategy. His newest book is called the Laws of Human Nature. Robert, welcome back. How are you?

I'm fine. Thanks for having me. Jason.

Good.

It's good to have you.

So tell us about the new book.

And guess, you know, there's a lot we can do obviously to master ourselves. And you've got the book on mastery and laws of seduction and power and so many. All of your works are like this whole, it's a dive into history. They're fascinating, I mean, really well researched.

Well, I wanted to give people kind of a code book for deciphering the behavior of the people around them because it's my premise that a lot of the problems that we suffer from in life come from the fact that we basically misunderstand and misjudged the people around us. And this means we are very bad at seeing the character of the people that we decide to hire in our business or that we bring in as a partner or a colleague or even as an intimate partner. And these kind of bad choices that we make in which we misjudge people's character and what's really happening behind their smiles and the facade they present creates a lot of pain and problems for us.

Oh, it's probably one of the costliest things in life, wouldn't you say? It's got to be the costliest.

Yeah. And I, I do a lot of consulting with very powerful people, CEOs, athletes, etc. And you'd be amazed at how so many of their problems in life have to do with they may be great on the basketball court or in figuring in, you know, coming up with a business plan, but when it comes to people and political nature of people dealing with them and managing them, they're actually quite inept. So I wanted to write a book that I thought would really, really help people in the most practical way and give them a Kind of a guide for understanding what's happening behind all the smiles and the facades that people present you.

Well, that is a very, very good topic and certainly needed. These mistakes are incredibly significant and even more so in the digital era, wouldn't you agree? When we don't have the chance to judge body language or be around people. So many of our relationships, at least for me, are, are virtual. They're with people over telephones and email accounts and so forth.

Yeah, we need the people's physical presence because we're basically. I try and make the point in the book that we are animals, that a lot of what we get from people is not on the conscious level, has nothing to do with words. It's feelings we get. It's non verbal communication. It's sort of we pick up the moods, the people in front of us and, and we judge them based on that. And that can be very accurate information. And when you're dealing with people in a virtual realm, you get none of these cues that we are designed as a social animal to be able to pick up and use. You're just getting words on a screen. And it's extremely easy to misinterpret.

Oh, it's very easy. I mean, very easy. That's why, you know, the millennial generation, I mean, they just want to do everything by text. It's ridiculous. One guy, a millennial friend of mine, he sends me this text and he says, I think I want to start a charitable foundation. Can you tell me how to do that? Oh, yeah, I'll get that right on that. You know, I mean, I have a foundation I started 14, 15 years ago and you know, let me see if I can fit that into 140 characters.

Yeah, exactly. We asked you on Twitter.

Ridiculous.

Well, you know, that's a. I have a whole chapter in my new book about that chapter on basically on the art of influence and persuasion. It's called Confirm people's self Opinion. And it's basically about getting outside of yourself and your own needs and desires and getting into the mindset of the people that you're dealing with and understanding that they have their own problems and issues and they have an opinion about themselves, that's extremely important. They like to see themselves as basically good, cooperative is basically intelligent and rational and independent. Like they make choices on their own. And if you go and try and get a favor from someone, like he's asking you for advice and you're not aware of their mindset of how busy they are, what they're thinking of, what matters to them and you're only locked into yourself and what you need. You're going to probably alienate them, you're probably going to irritate them and have the effect, the opposite effect of what you wanted. So being able to get inside the skin of the person you're dealing with is one of the most important life skills because you can't go through life without the ability to influence people and at least get them interested in your ideas.

Oh, no question about it. Is that just basic rapport building or empathy? You know, understanding where someone's coming from, walking the other Indians moccasins for a mile, as the saying goes. There must be more to it than that, I assume.

Well, there's more to it than that, but empathy is an extremely important part of this book. I have a chapter in Transforming Our Self love into Empathy. I maintain that we are born with extremely powerful empathetic tools that come from our early childhood when we were connected to our mother and in a very deep and visceral way. But we don't tap into these skills. But it's more than that. It's also understanding the individual that you're dealing with. Right. And understanding their problems, their issues and what they're looking for. So for instance, if you're someone who's not powerful and you want to connect to somebody who is powerful, who can help you, perhaps as a mentor or an investor, you have to get into what their needs are and their self interest is. And you have to take the leap into their psychology and spend the time doing some research and thinking very deeply about what will appeal to them. How can you save them time, how can you make them look better.

Right.

So it's just not a matter of being empathetic. You know, you have to go deeper than that. You have to look very closely at the individual you're dealing with and figuring out how you can tailor your request to their world and their mindset.

Absolutely, absolutely. Any particular action steps on that? I mean, you know, back to that first question that we considered. Do you have to always be with someone physically to apply many of the things you outline in the book?

No, you don't have to be.

You don't have to be.

But it's certainly helpful, right?

It's very helpful. But I believe that I'm able to discern a lot about people's character through their emails, through their text messages, through their Facebook posts. For instance, that Twitter post that you got from that guy asking for advice, you know, etc. Reveals an awful lot about that Person reveals a basic selfishness reveals youth and callowness. They don't have enough life experience to realize how that's going to be received by the other person. You could pick up a lot from, you know, the digital messaging and stuff. You just have to sit there and interpret it and read between the lines. I think I'm very good at getting the subtext of people's posts, but you asked me for something more actionable. The thing you have to realize is that when you're asking people for something, they are naturally going to be resistant to you. People are busy, they have their own concerns, their own problems.

Sure.

And when you come to them, particularly if they don't know you, they're going to resist you. Why should I spend the time? They're defensive, Right. So your first move always has to be to lower their defenses, to get them to relax in your presence, to get them to feel comfortable with you. So for instance, this young man, if he was tweeting you or perhaps he got your email, he could have come in with a much more interesting approach, complimenting you about your work and saying, you know, how much you've helped him in your life and saying, I appreciate it and left it at that. And then hope that you respond and then build a correspondence at some point, introduce the idea that maybe he could help you in some small way. But your first step must always be to lower people's resistance. And the way to do that is to what I say, confirm their self opinion, make them feel good about themselves, make them feel that they're respected, that you like them, that there's some kind of rapport between you. Because people will respond to that. And their natural defensiveness to strangers and outsiders will not disappear. But it will lower enough that you might have room to start entering their mind. It's kind of like a military operation. You're trying to break through their defensiveness. You go, hit them straight on like that guy did with his tweet.

They're going to be guarded.

Strong, part of their army, and they're going to kill you. You come from the side, right? Hit them on the flank, be a little less direct, right. Lower their resistance. You melt it a little bit, you might have room to infiltrate them and gain some traction.

You are a master strategist. That's great. Let me share with the listeners, Robert, some of the laws from the table of contents. Master your emotional self. So this is the law of irrationality, the law of narcissism, the law of role playing, the law of compulsive. Behavior, the law of covetousness, the law of shortsightedness, the law of defensiveness, the law of self sabotage, the law of repression, the law of envy, the law of grandiosity. I mean, there's so many, you know, the law of gender rigidity. There's a lot here.

Yeah, 18 of them.

Tell us more. I won't read them all, but what do we do with all of these things? I mean, it's amazing. Human beings are incredibly complex, aren't they?

They're much more complex than you think they are. So the people you're dealing with are more complex and are more interesting than you imagine. And we tend, when we deal with people, to simplify them, to project onto them our own wishes and desires. And we're very quick to judge them. Are they good or bad? Do they like us or not like us? I want you to stop that. In this book, I want you to judge people less. And your first effort is to understand them, to understand what makes them tick. So the first law, for instance, I'm basically telling you that we are emotional creatures. We're not rational, we're largely governed by our emotions. And so this will help you understand people and understand how, how you can perhaps influence them or what's guiding their behavior. They'll try to present themselves as being guided by something ideal or some rational purpose, but really there's some deep emotional need that's compelling them. I want you to be aware that people express a lot through non verbal behavior. They present a facade, a mask of friendliness, of being cooperative, of being a good person. But behind that mask, all sorts of other things are going on. And incredible amounts of information are being emitted through their smiles, through their facial expressions, through their look in their eyes, through their body language. When you approach them from an angle, when they first see you, are they excited or are they rigid? Do their feet point away from you? Do their eyes light up? Are they always late when they have an appointment? These are signs that show something about their character.

Mm.

So I want you, I want to train you to get behind the appearances that people present and be able to see their character and to see something deep inside of them about what's motivating them. So some people in life are toxic, they're difficult, they're dangerous. You don't want to hire them, you don't want to deal with them, and.

You don't want to marry them, that's for sure.

Certainly don't want to marry them. But people like that don't go around announcing Themselves, they don't have a big neon sign.

Right.

I'm toxic. They don't have horns or anything like that. So I want to give you the signs for what a toxic person is like before it gets too late. So for instance, when the chapter on envy. Envy is an emotion that nobody ever admits to and it's very subtle and hard to pick up. But I want to show you the signs that people reveal through their behavior and through their body language and through their actions about that you might be dealing with a toxic envious type. So that gives you kind of an idea of this approach in this book.

Yeah, absolutely. People are toxic in a lot of ways besides envy though, right? That's just one of many, I'm guessing.

Yes, they're toxic. There's toxic narcissists. And you know, once again, these people oftentimes, narcissists are extremely charming people. They know how to be very, very dramatic and overt and they can actually give you the impression that they're interested in. And they like to suck people into their worlds. They can even have some charisma. But once you get more and more involved with them, you realize that everything is about them. They actually have very. They're like using you as a pawn.

Right.

It can be terrible to have them as a business partner or an intimate partner. And I want you to see the signs or you get involved with a deep narcissist. You know, I can go through all the other dark qualities.

Yeah, right.

There's.

There's a lot of dark qualities. Are you talking about always non situational things? Like these are things that are embedded in someone's character or can they be situational too?

That's a good question. I maintain that all of us are to some degree self absorbed and that we are all to some degree narcissists.

We probably wouldn't have survived if we weren't that way. To some extent. Right.

You need a degree of. Actually a degree. Survival skill is very healthy for you. You need self esteem and self love. And in certain situations we can be pushed into deeper narcissism. Like if we suffer a lot of failure and setbacks, we become more self absorbed. So situations can have a very big impact on us. But I want to say that these are tendencies embedded in our nature that all of us have. And certainly if we suffer adversity, grandiosity is a chapter that I have in there. And it basically, if we have success in life, suddenly our mind, our self becomes inflated and we get this idea that we're Godlike and that's a situational thing. Whereas normally maybe we have a little bit of doubt, but then something that we do hits a chord and we get success, suddenly we start losing touch with reality, and we imagine we have the Midas touch. And so success can be very dangerous.

You know what? One of my favorite quotes, Robert, that I repeat often and. And trying to remember in my own life is from Napoleon, who you've studied. Obviously, the most dangerous moment comes with victory, Right?

That's right.

That's when we become complacent, we become cocky, and we get that grandiosity. We get a little bit of that. And that can really, really sabotage one's path, can it?

Yeah. In my books, each idea is illustrated with a story of history. So there's like, a historical icon that represents that. And in that particular chapter, I chronicle the career trajectory of Michael Eisner, the CEO of Disney.

Yeah, good.

It's good that.

A contemporary one, too.

Yeah.

Who in the 70s was the most successful studio executive at Paramount and then transferred to Disney and had this incredible run of success, and it went to his head, and he created EuroDisney. And he did all sorts of bad things in the 90s. And slowly, in the early 2000s, Disney and its stock was tanking, and he was eventually fired under very bitter circumstances. But he got the feeling through this run of success that he had, that he could do anything. He could design his own theme park, he could be an architect, he could be a movie director.

He wasn't Walt Disney. He was a CEO.

He thought he was Walt Disney, but he wasn't.

Yeah, no, Eisner's story is a good one. You know what always fascinates me, Robert, is you hear. I mean, we've seen it so many times. Young success, the celebrity. You know, four years after they become famous, they're in rehab and they've got drug problems and their life is falling apart.

I mean, why you would think. I mean, you know, you look at the.

The suicide of Robin Williams, you know, you would think.

And he.

He's not that example. Just a different example, obviously.

But you would think these people have, like, everything going for them.

Maybe it really is a curse and not a blessing, huh?

Yes. And also, you know, I think about somebody like Anthony Bourdain, for instance.

Yeah, there's another example, Kate Spade.

But I think what happens in these cases is that kind of the adulation and the success. There's something kind of known as the phony phenomenon where people who are very successful deep down inside wonder whether they deserve that. They're. Maybe they're a bit phony at the.

Like.

Like the imposter syndrome concept.

The imposter. That's what I meant. Sorry, you're right. The imposter syndrome complex. Maybe there is a bit of an imposter. I even felt that some of that myself.

Sure.

And so there's a kind of a falseness to what success can do. It makes you. I say in the book that normally your feet are on the ground. You need to be grounded in reality and your opinion of yourself. You can think of yourself as being a little better than you actually are. In fact, we all do. But if your opinion gets a little too far away from reality, danger sets in, right. And you begin to feel unreal. You begin to feel that, you know, you lose a sense of who you are. And I think a lot of very successful people, particularly actors and celebrities, because.

With actors and celebrities, they get discovered and it's like so fast after that in most cases. Right. I mean, some of them certainly work for it, but.

But, you know, that's the thing. That's why it's good to have some.

Struggle in one's life, isn't it? It's kind of the syndrome of the spoiled child. You know, it's all given to you. You don't appreciate it, but you also.

Think everything comes too easy.

Like the world owes you a living, doesn't. Don't you?

Yeah, well, I've noticed that same problem with a lot of rappers who I've personally been involved with, where they have a hit record when they're 20, 21, and suddenly they have tons of money and they really don't know how to manage it. It all goes to their head. And they basically, in the music industry, can be extremely exploitative. They think they're in control, but they're not in control. And I did a book with 50 Cent, the 50th law, and he saw that very problem about what success can do to you very early on. And he's someone who came from a very bad, rough background, faced a lot of adversity, and he would not let that happen to him. He saw that happening on the streets with drug dealers, suddenly would. They're 15 years old and they're making six figures and they're going out buying fancy cars. And he was like a businessman. Even from the early days when he was dealing drugs on the street, he always forced himself to get those feet back down on the ground. Be a realist and don't let anything go to your head.

Right.

But it's a very, very dangerous phenomenon that you have to struggle against constantly.

Definitely. Definitely is. Part of our big job in life is just overcoming our nature in a way, isn't it? Not overcoming, but keeping our nature in check. Right. Would that be a fair way to say it?

Yeah.

I mean, we see this with a lot of entrepreneurs. I dealt that when I was on the board of directors for American Apparel. But you see that with someone like Elon Musk or other entrepreneurs where they have a lot of success because they're just very persistent and pushy and they have a vision. And then they think that anything that they can do is correct. They can branch out into any kind of business. If there's some 14 kids trapped in a cave in Thailand, they're ones that can go save them. Even though they have no skills and no knowledge of that. They believe that, you know, they can transfer their skills to anything in life. And so, you know, we see that a lot with entrepreneurs.

Definitely, definitely true. Very, very good. Take us through maybe another one of the laws, if you would. I'm just. I mean, 18 laws here. Gosh, there's a lot. There's a lot here. Robert, as with all your books, how many pages is this book, just out of curiosity?

Oh, you don't want to ask that question. It's longest book so far. It's some 550 pages.

Wow.

But you know, when you're writing a book called the Laws of Human Nature, you kind of want it to be somewhat complete, right?

Right, absolutely.

It's not meant to be read from COVID to cover. You're going to see certain chapters that jump out at you that appeal to you. So for instance, you asked me about another chapter. There's one about change your attitude to alter your circumstances, self sabotage. And basically the idea is we don't look at the world and see things as they are. We look at the world through a lens, through our attitude.

Right.

And so how we judge events can depend on whether we have a positive attitude, a negative attitude, a hostile attitude where we think everybody in the world is against us. We have a friendly attitude. Two people can see the same thing and see it extremely different depending on their attitude. So one person goes to Paris and finds it magical, the people great. The other person sees the same things and thinks it's cold and ugly, and the people are unfriendly. A lot of it depends on your attitude. And it's extremely important to understand you can actually literally change your own life and your circumstances by working with your attitude. And we understand this in our own lives. When somebody approaches us who we sense is a bit defensive or hostile or negative, we get kind of defensive in return. We don't really like them or we get nervous.

Right.

They sense that in us and that feeds, even makes them even more hostile.

Vicious circle, right?

Yeah. But if somebody comes up to us and they look us in the eye, they're friendly and they're open, we suddenly have a much different reaction. So the attitude you bring and carry through life will constantly affect the people you deal with and will either attract them, repulse them, or leave them indifferent. And you have the power to alter that. You can't completely alter your attitude. I maintained in the book, there are introverts and extroverts. We are born that way. I haven't even been born an introvert. You're never really going to change that. But there are some things you can be. You can make your attitude more open. You cannot be afraid of failure. You cannot be so fearful in life. You can judge people less. You can be more open and accepting of what happens to you. That kind of open attitude, where you're not closed and negative and judging everything will have a very positive effect on yourself and on the people that you deal with. So that's an extremely important chapter.

Yeah, very good point. You know, I remember one of my early mentors through his awesome tapes was Earl Nightingale. And he used to say, to ask the role of attitude in someone's success or failure is like asking, what is the role of H2O in the Pacific Ocean? It's not everything. It's just almost everything. Exactly what inspired you to write this book? I mean, why? It's a bit of a shift for you? Not completely, of course, but it's kind of a different direction a little bit.

Well, I get a lot of emails from people and also my consulting work, and I noticed that a lot of people have this problem, and I mentioned that earlier on, where the number one issue that they have or dilemma is not with technical issues. It's not with their knowledge.

Right.

It's dealing with people and political issues or managing them. And it causes a lot of pain. You know, you don't know how to deal with your rebellious teenage son. You've got a boss who doesn't listen to you, who's kind of cold and expects you to do things. You're dealing with colleagues who you don't trust. You have a partner who is a bad partner and is ruining your business. And people were writing to me and I sensed Their pain and their need for some help. And I wanted to be able to reach them on a very deep level, not just give them sort of superficial advice about. I wanted to give them a kind of what I call a code book that they can use use to help them decipher the behavior of that teenage son, of that boss, of that colleague, of that wife or husband. So they can start instead of reacting to what people do or say, they can step back and understand the context of it doesn't mean that you forgive and are loving to everyone. A toxic person is a toxic person.

Right.

By understanding them and understanding what makes them tick, you can have some distance and not get dragged into their emotional drama. Right. So I wrote this book because I was genuinely wanting to help people deal with what I consider the greatest impediment and obstacle in life, their inability to affect or influence the people around them and the bad choices that they make with associates and business partners, etc.

Robert, that is so. I mean, everything you said just, you just nailed it.

Because isn't it odd that we have.

So many technicians in today's world? There are so many people that understand all the how that, you know, what software tools to use, you know, how to run systems and set up systems. And that's all great, but I look at things like this as sort of the core foundational function philosophy. This is foundational stuff. A lot of people just skip this nowadays. It seems like, who would you consider.

The wealthiest man in the world, the most successful investor business person in the world?

Well, that's going to be Warren Buffett, right?

Exactly. Now read about Warren Buffett and read him closely, as I have for this book. And this man, one of the most important things that he did and the key to his success, of course, he did massive research on the companies that he wanted to buy and invest in. But along with that research about the financial and the spreadsheets was in depth analysis of the character of the CEO that he was going to be involved with or that he was going to put in the position of power. He understood that it's a people business and that on paper, a company may not be as brilliant as something else, but the people leading it are strong, have a vision, are persistent, are smart, are good managers. The company has high morale. He based his judgment on whether to invest in them based on the morale of the employees, based on the character of the CEO. He understood that this is the key component for success in life.

Yeah.

You know, and a lot of people are not good at that. And you can you obviously can make wise decisions and go through life without being great with people. I mean, someone like Steve Jobs, right, was brilliant, but he was not a good man.

Definitely not great with people.

But he got better as he got older in life and he understood his limitations and he understood he had to hire the right people.

Right.

You know, I dealt with somebody in my last book, Master I interviewed. I don't know, you know, if you know who Paul Graham is.

No.

Why can't.

He founded Y Combinator.

Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. I've heard of him.

Yeah, yeah.

Y Combinator is the big guy.

Extremely successful, a billionaire. And he realized that he's not good with people. He never will be. Perhaps he's a little bit on the spectrum there. He realized that he had to marry the person who was very good with people and he could depend on her to screen the good. So knowing your faults and your deficiencies is extremely important. Not all of us are gifted with great amounts of intuitiveness and empathy, but knowing that you lack that, you can compensate for it in some way. Perhaps you hire a person who will compensate for that weakness. You have to realize this is by far the most important component in your success and your happiness in life.

No question about it. You're reminding me all throughout this interview of that Zig Ziglar quote, you can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want. It's all about people and dealing with people. And like you said, you know, there are toxic people and you got to know who to keep and who to throw back. You know, like the fishing metaphor. It's very, very good stuff. I can't wait to dive into this book a little more. The Laws of Human Nature. Robert Greene, thanks again for being on the show. Give out your website if you would. Of course. The book's available in all the usual places with excellent reviews, I might add.

Well, thank you. Well, the website I have is from my first three books. It's pretty much been the same. It's powerseductionandwar.com the and is spelled out so powerseductionandwar.com and there you'll find links to my book on mastery and book that I did with 50 Cent called the 50th law, and to this most recent book and all the information you could ever want or not want.

Excellent. Good stuff. Robert Greene, thanks again for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me, Jason. My pleasure.

Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes. Be sure to check out the show's specific website and our general website, hartmanmedia.com for appropriate disclaimers and terms of service. Remember that guest opinions are their own, and if you require specific legal or tax advice or advice in any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional. And we also very much appreciate you reviewing the show. Please go to iTunes or Stitcher Radio or whatever platform you're using and write a review for the show. We would very much appreciate that, and be sure to make it official and subscribe so you do not miss any episodes. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.