Master Your Mind & Watch What Happens - Robert Greene

One of the best parts about this is there's so many levels to this. So when I tweeted this quote out, Dharmesh, who's this, you know, co-founder of a $20-30 billion company, retweeted it, says, "This is exactly what I needed to hear today." I, man, I am so excited to talk to you.

I've read all your books and I have always thought that instead of whatever they're teaching at universities, I was like, man, I wish I could just do a 4-year degree on like 4 or 6 of these Robert Greene books because they're amazing.

Wow.

And in particular, Mastery. It absolutely changed my life. I read that when I was 20, 22 years old, about 12 years ago, 11 years ago. It totally changed my life. It changed my life because I thought that being a generalist was the way to go, but according to the book Mastery, it was not.

Yeah, well, you know, um, we live in these fantastic times with so much technological power. It's just almost incredible. I mean, yesterday I was working on my new book and I had a question and I just did an AI search and it's just insane what it can do for you. But the problem is the human brain is what it is. It isn't a piece of technology that somebody developed recently. It's something that has hundreds of thousands of years of development and it has a certain way that it operates and a certain grain to it. And you want to go with that grain, and you want to be excited by learning, and you want to make connections in the brain between different things, and you want to be able to focus so deeply on something. I like to think of the brain as this kind of landscape, and it can be rich, and it can be one where all these different plants are emerging, or it can be like a wasteland. And if you learn different things and you focus very deeply and you're excited by what you're learning, then all of these connections will start happening in the brain. And so if you go through that apprenticeship focused on developing real skills and whatever that is, by the time you finish your apprenticeship, let's say you're 30 years old, you'll be set. You'll be able to create your own business. You'll be very creative. You will lay the groundwork for something really important to happen. But if you're distracted, if you're focusing on 100 different things, that's not how the human brain functions. We function when we go deep into something, when we bore deep, deep, deep, deep, deep into a subject. I know when I'm writing a book, which I'm doing right now, the first attempt that I make at something is very superficial. It's not interesting. You wouldn't believe how bad my writing is on the first go. But I go deep, deep, deep into what I'm thinking. I cross it out, I do something else, I edit it. By the 10th time I go into it, something interesting is happening. So when you focus deeply on something, ideas will come to you and sometimes those ideas will be brilliant.

How many books do you read, um, to write one book? So for Mastery, how many books did you consume to write that one? Or for 8 Laws of Power?

It's hard to estimate, but, uh, it's somewhere around 300. Some could be upwards of that. And, you know, sometimes if a book is, is bad, and believe me, I go, I read a lot of bad books, I kind of skim them, you know, oh, this passage is really sucks, or this chapter's meaningless. I'll kind of float through it. But if a book is really good and, you know, I could, there are some books that are incredible. I'd say maybe about a fifth of them reach that level. I'll focus very deeply. I'll even reread it several times. It's probably why my health suffered and why I had a stroke is because I read too many books. I do too much research, but I want to get at the reality of what I'm writing about. I don't want to be superficial cuz so many books out there, at least for me, don't really go deep enough into the subject. They're kind of skimming along the surfaces.

So Sam was talking about mastery and you have this concept of people finding their life, life task, their life's task. And I think that's great. But I know a lot of people who are maybe in their 30s or 40s who don't know what that is, and maybe they feel like it's too late or they're stuck or don't know where to start. You know, what's the sort of pocketbook guidance you have for somebody like that who's looking for— who's trying to figure out what that is and what are the tools they could use to figure out that life's task?

Well, it's a question I get all the time, and it's an extremely important question. The idea that I have is that when you were born, your, your DNA, there's something completely unique about you genetically. There's never gonna be anyone in the past or the future who will be like you. Your parents who raised you, they're also unique. So you are a unique individual. You were so at birth, right? And when you were very young, 2, 3, 4 years old, you were attracted to certain things naturally. I call them primal inclinations, things that you loved very deeply, that you were drawn to, that you were attracted to. I tell the story in the book of Steve Jobs. He's 7 years old. He's walking with his father in Sunnyvale, California, where he grew up, and he passes by an electronics shop, and he's just fascinated by these objects in the window. The design of them and how beautiful they are. And it was at that moment that he sort of fell in love with technology, not just as technology as a machine, but as the design of it, because he was a brilliant designer. So I'm saying you had those moments when you were 5 or 6 years old, but your problem is when you were 18 or 19 or 20, you took a wrong path. You listened to other people. You didn't listen to yourself. You listen to your parents who said, Robert, you should go to law school. And this is what, you know, some of what my own parents told me. You need to go to business school. You need to go become a doctor. You need to get something practical and make a living. And you're alienated from that deep, deep love of something that you had when you were 4 or 5 years old or 6 years old or whatever it is. And then you go down a wrong path. So the way is to get back onto that path. And the way is to reconnect with who you are, with what you truly love and what your interests are. And there's a process for that, and I can go into it, and I've consulted with many people on this thing. But the problem is you're so in tune with what other people are telling you, you're not listening to yourself. You don't know what makes you unique. And if you look at all of the really successful people in this world, people, the great entrepreneurs or in any field, They're one of a kind, right? There's nobody else like a, a Kobe Bryant out there. You know, God rest his soul, my favorite basketball player. They're one of a kind. Okay. So you lost that somehow. And when you're in your thirties, it, you can get back to it. But what you need to do is you need to be practical in life. You can't just suddenly start all over and go, I've been learning these skills. I went into law school and I'm not happy with it. You can't now turn around and say, well, I'm going to be a poet or I'm going to be a rock star. You've already learned skills. You have to build on what you have and take it in a direction towards something that you really, really love, right? You need to be practical and you may have to compromise a little bit, but when you're in your 30s, you can still do it. And because you're young enough and your mind is flexible. As you get older, you get rigid, you get set in your ways, and it comes harder and harder and harder to do this process. When you're in your 40s, it's still possible, but it's getting harder. When you're in your 50s, it's getting almost very, very difficult. So the real lesson for people out there is if you're 20 years old, do not go on that wrong path because it gets very difficult later in life to adjust. But if you're in your 30s, you have to reassess yourself. You have to get a journal, and every day you have to write down things about what really excites you in life. What it was when you opened a book and you read about something and you go, wow, that just attracts me. I know personally, whenever I see an article or a story about early humans and how we developed, 30, 40, 60,000 years ago. I, I can't believe it. I'm so excited. I can't— we were actually like that, and look who we are now. You have subjects like that, but you've just become alienated from yourself. You're not listening to yourself. You're not listening to that voice in your head, and you need to find your way back.

All right, I read a ton. I would say almost a book a week. And the reason I read so much is because my philosophy towards reading is I want to see what worked for the winners that I love and what strategies they use, and then I want to see What mistakes did they all make? What were the common flaws that they all had? And I just want to avoid that. And so HubSpot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in 2025. And I did that. And so I listed out 7 books that made a meaningful difference in my life, and I explained what the differences that they had on me or what actions I took because of the book. And then also I listed out my very particular ways of reading because I'm pretty strategic about how I read and how I read so much and how I remember what I read and things like that. And so I put this together in a very simple guide. It's 7 books that had a huge impact on my life, and you can scan the QR code below if you want to read it, or there's a link. You guys know what to do. There's a link in the description. Just go ahead and click it and you'll see the guide that I made. So it's the 7 books that had a massive change in my life this year so far, and then also how I'm able to read so much. So So check it out below. You know, I, I'm only saying this to give you context, Robert, but millions of people listen to this podcast and sometimes they look up to Sean and I because we've done some interesting things in the business world.

Yes.

And I sometimes they look down on us too.

Yeah, sometimes they look up to us. A lot of times they look down on us. No, they— and, and I can't speak for Sean, but even, you know, we're fortunate to have people look up to us. And even I am sometimes like, I I still don't know what my life's task is. I still have doubts. And I think that you said something, you're like, you have to listen to yourself and like maybe yourself is yelling at you, but so is everything else. And so it's kind of hard to hear. Can you actually walk me through, you said you consult with people and the interesting thing about being a historian like you is like very billionaires, I imagine they're like, be my oracle, tell me what to do. What questions do you ask to journal or what is like your 7-day exercises that you do with someone who's hiring you to help you find, or, you know, hiring you to give them their life's task or help them find it?

Okay. Well, you know, as I, as you, as you point out, the problem is in this era of social media, we have so much information coming at us that we're confused and we're distracted, right? There's all this noise, this static going on in your brain. You're hearing what people are having for lunch. You're hearing about this outrage, this problem. You don't have a— you're not able to focus. So the main thing here is you've got to really, really go into yourself. You got to cut out all that crap. You're taking it seriously because a lot of people who come to me, I can tell right away they're not serious about it. They kind of like, well, I'm not really happy. Maybe Robert can help me figure it out. No, damn it. You have to figure it out. It's not up to me. You're not taking it seriously. You're playing a game, you kind of have dreams and you wish. No, you got to take this seriously. Your life is at stake. Time is short. You know, you could die tomorrow. Life is shorter than you think, so you don't have time to waste. So take this thing seriously. That's the number one thing I tell people. And what take it seriously means is it requires time. All right, you're going to carve out let's say a week of real focus. And I think you could do it longer than that, but let's just say in, in your scenario, a week of clear focus. All right. You're gonna get a journal, a book, or a compu— if you do it on a computer, I recommend an actual book because the brain and the hand, there's a, there's a process, there's a magic that goes on when you handwrite something. I'm gonna ask you to handwrite everything, but in this case, writing in a journal is the best idea, I think. Okay, so you're going to start writing in a journal. You can even sometimes voice record it because I do that too as well, if that's something you prefer. Um, but I don't want you to be on the screen all the time. Okay, I want you to be really listening to yourself deeply. Okay, so you're writing things down. You're going to start writing. You're going to begin by saying, these are the things that I love and these are the things that I hate. And you can put, you can put it in, you can divide the page in half and do that if you want. So to give you an example, things that you hate and dislike are a very important part of figuring out your life's task. Now, personally, I didn't figure out what I was really meant to do, which is writing these books, until I was about 38 years old. Okay. I was kind of lost and I was kind of wandering, but the one thing I knew, and, uh, and I've known at a very early age is I hate working for other people. I hate working for other people. I hate the politics. I hate the egos. I like to control things. So I need to be somebody who works for myself, right? I can't work for other people. I'm really bad at it. I never held a job for longer than 10 or 11 months in my entire life. I was always dissatisfied, quit, and whatever. Okay. So knowing what you hate is very important for knowing what you love. All right. So you cut things out. You cut all the stuff out that you don't want to do. You, you're not interested in math. You're not interested in numbers. You're more of an idea person. I don't know what it is, but you're gonna write down the things that you love, the things that you hate in the present moment. All right. And you're gonna, What this is really about, Sam, is you're connecting with yourself, right? Because you're not connected to yourself. And that's the number one problem people have in this world. They're listening to other people, they're imitating other people. Oh, this is a cool person. I want to be like him or her. No, you got to be yourself. You're not connected to yourself. So this journaling process is going to take you through several days of reconnecting with who you are. The other thing that you need to do is you need to go into your childhood, into your early years. So we begin by looking at the present moment. I hate working for other people. I love this kind of subject or this kind of thing in the world. Now I want you to go deep into your childhood. I compare it to being like an archaeologist. You're making a dig, right? It's, you're not going back millions of years. You're going back to when you were 4 or 5 years old. And I want you to, because in those early years, you were open to the world. You were really open. As we get older, we get really closed. Certain things excited you in a way that you can't even recall. It's not the same to you now, right? It didn't have to do with words. It had to do with feelings. So I tell the story I told you, like Steve Jobs. There's the story of Tiger Woods with his father in the garage. He's like 2 years old. I don't know, something like that. His father is hitting golf balls in the garage. You know, there's one of those little plastic balls against the, against the wall. And Tiger is sitting there in his baby chair and he's getting so excited. He's kicking his legs. Oh my God, this is incredible. Right then and there, he had discovered his life's task. Basically, it wasn't like an intellectual process. It wasn't, well, I'm 2 years old and golf is really interesting and I'm gonna study it. It was in his heart. It was something deep. You can't put it into words, right? You had that moment. It's almost pre-verbal, but something really, really excited you. For me, when I was a child, it was language and words. I was obsessed with words and books and just the magic of a word itself. It like boggled my mind how incredible. You had those moments. Whatever it was. So we're going back into your childhood and we're digging and we're digging and we're digging. You also have to cut out all of the other voices. Part of the journaling is, I listened to what my friends were telling me, I listened to what my parents were telling me. Cut all that shit out and listen to yourself.

That's pretty great. I do have one kind of follow-up, or I don't know, clarifying question on it. So I have a 5-year-old today, and I think about like what I observe in her. But I would guess that, you know, most of the things that she really loves are pretty common. Like, she loves— like, since she's been a baby, like, if music comes on, she loves to dance. My 1-year-old is the same way. My 4-year-old is the same way. Um, does that mean she's gonna be a dancer, right? Like, they love to play video games on the iPad. Does that mean they're gonna be a gamer or a game designer? Like, there's some things that are just so common everyone loves. They love cookies, they love ice cream. Does that mean they're gonna be Ben Jerry's? Like, is there another angle to it, which is like, You know, you're sort of uniquely into it, or, um, maybe others are not. You have to look for the things that others are not into, you know. I guess, like, how do you differentiate just, like, common dopamine things we all like versus my life's task?

Well, it's a great question. Um, I like to refer people to this book by Howard Gardner called Five Frames of Intelligence, I think. I'm sorry, I might not have the title exactly right, but the point of this book is that there are 5 kinds of intelligence, and some of it has to do with math and patterns. Some of it has to do with words. Some of it is kinetic. It's just the body and moving the body. Some of it is social. Okay. Some of it involves music and, or, or visual things. He studied this very deeply and he asserts that every human being has one of these intelligences that stands out, that kind of dominates their brain. So it's not a trivial thing of, you know, I like to play video games or I like to eat cookies. It's something more deep. It's something more primal. It's about a certain direction that your brain heads in. So with your young daughter, it's, is she into sort of just physical things or does she have some kind of intellectual interest that draws her that's very exciting? Okay. So, you know, all children like to move around and jump around and run around, et cetera. That doesn't mean that they're gonna be an athlete. I understand your question, but some people are like that. Some people, that is their dominant interest, right? And you can see that, as I said, by looking at the negative. They're not into, they're not into math, they're not into words, they're just into moving around. And Maybe at 4, it's hard to see that, but by the time they're 7 or 8, it becomes very clear. But what is their mind, their brain attracted to? Okay. And the problem with parenting is you're projecting onto your child what you like, what your interests are, who you are. You're not understanding that they're an individual. Your daughter is unique. She's something— she's not you. She has your genetics. But she's a girl, she's different gender, she has a different experience from you, right? She also has the genes of her mother. You're projecting onto her. So imagine that you're in her skin and seeing the world from her point of view, and you can see the things that she doesn't like, that she hates. But what is her mind drawn to? I'm pretty sure that if you focused on it deeply, you could see some of the outlines of what that is. But the main thing you want to do is you want to let your child discover that for yourself. You don't want to push them in a direction that you think is better for them. You want to let them discover it for themselves. And when you see it, which you will with your daughter, maybe it'll happen soon or maybe in a couple of years, you want to encourage them, right? Even if it's something that you think isn't good for them, that, oh, you can't make a living at that. You want to encourage them because you want children to be excited by learning. If you turn your 5-year-old off from learning for whatever reason, man, you're a bad parent, I'm sorry to say. That's the number one thing. They've got to be excited by something. What is that thing that they're drawn to? I believe that if you went deeply into it, you could almost figure it out right now. you know, we can even talk about it. But I think that's right. That would be my answer.

It reminds me of one thing, Sam. I want to, I want to hear your question about the, maybe one of his other concepts or books, but just reminds me of, uh, Warren Buffett has said the best thing his dad ever taught him was the, was the importance of an inner scorecard. So he says most people live with an outer scorecard. And the thought experiment he gives is like, you know, would you rather be the, uh, you know, whether, uh, the funny example he gives is would would you rather be the world's best lover, but everybody thinks you're the worst, or the world's worst lover, but everybody thinks you're the best? And that your answer to that, he says the same thing about investing. What should I be the best? If I was the best investor, but everybody thought I was the worst, would that be better? Or if I was the worst investor, but everybody thought I was the best, would that be better?

What's the answer?

Well, he's, he's like, you know, for him, he attributes most of his success to the fact that he has a very strong inner scorecard.

I see that.

Like, he's not immune to the idea of an outer scorecard that, like, other, you know, caring what other people think of him. However, he listens to himself first and foremost, and he carries an inner scorecard, and he marks his actions and his choices in his life on what he thought would be the right choice and what he thinks is a good life for him, which is totally different than what other people have. But he's— he says that that's the importance of having a strong inner scorecard.

Yeah, I mean, this isn't rocket science. This is like very basic stuff. It's very basic human psychology.

I want to ask you about silence.

You're—

I think there's two reasons why I love your book or all of your books. I think the first takeaway is that it's about human nature, and human nature generally doesn't change. That's the point of it. And so you kind of like give a blueprint for that. But the second thing is that particularly with The 48 Laws of Power, the most important thing is self-control, which is quite challenging. And in particular, you write a lot and you talk a lot about silence and you're like, it's actually better to say as least as possible because when you talk too much, you make yourself look stupid or you reveal your true intentions, which you don't always want to do. With social media and like particularly Sean and I's job, it's like very easy to talk too much or to talk a lot. Is there any examples of you think that someone who's popular or someone who's doing a really good job of sort of a masterclass on how to use silence to their advantage?

I think of various musicians like a Michael Jackson or Beyoncé. I mean, Michael Jackson is sort of before the era, obviously, of social media, but he was somebody who knew that occasionally he had to withdraw completely from the public eye. And the thing about Michael Jackson was he was very clever and very kind of savvy about things. And he, actually had The 48 Laws of Power. And when he died, his estate had the book and they auctioned it. Somebody bought it for $300,000. But if you look on it, he annotated everything in there, right? He wrote on the margins, et cetera. But the thing that Michael Jackson understood before he even read the book was the importance of disappearing. So he understood the public very well and the magic of attention. Right? Because attention is the whole game when you're a celebrity. And he understood that when you're too present, then people know you too well, they take you for granted. So he would disappear for several years in between albums. Nobody knew what he was doing, and it made everybody talk about him, made everybody fantasize about him, made everybody wonder what's the next trick that Michael Jackson's gonna perform. Beyoncé will do the same thing. I was once asked by a famous female rapper named Saweetie. We were having dinner and she asked me the same question, like, I'm social media. How do I disappear if I disappear? Well, it's not a matter that you're gone for several months, but you don't have to post every day. You have to create some mystery around you. And even if you do post, You're not so obvious. You're not saying exactly who you are, exactly what you had for breakfast, exactly the clothes that you're wearing. You create some mystery around you. That is a form of silence. That is a form of disappearing. Because the whole point is, if people know exactly who you are, there's no fantasy element in it anymore, and they're going to get bored with you, and they're going to turn their attention to somebody else who seems interesting for the moment. Right? So you could be too present. You could be too in, in, in people's face. They know everything about you and they start to take you for granted. You're too familiar. So if you're in the public eye, you have to shake things up. People have to go, I thought that you were like this, Sam, but now I'm getting this idea that maybe I didn't know who you are. You can do that by disappearing for a week or so, and then people are wondering what happened to Sam. Why isn't he posting? Or you can do it By putting things on social media that kind of scramble people's expectations of you, scramble what people think of you. I know in, in, in my line of work, if I wrote the same book, if I did the 48 Laws of Power Part 2 for my second book, it would probably have some success. People would be interested in it, but it starts to get predictable, right? So I make sure every new book that I do is different. Goes off in a different direction. So people can't take me for granted. So people don't know what I'm gonna do next. Keeping them guessing as to what the next subject is, going off in a new direction and challenging them is part of the game. So if you become too predictable, people are gonna tune you out and they're gonna move on to somebody else. And so changing the scrambling their expectations is a form of silence, is creating mystery, cuz that's what this is all about.

Sean, do you ever think about this stuff?

I thought of it when, uh, Sam said something kind of amazing to me. Uh, he said, you know, we're doing this podcast, and not long ago, a couple years ago, we were in a group chat where a bunch of us who had 10,000 followers were like, you know, we want to get to 100,000, let's make it. And we called it the 100,000 Club, and we, we all started posting, and we got there. And he said something like, um, My goal is by the time I'm 40 to be off the internet, like, like just, just to sort of disappear from the internet. And I really never, I've only ever heard of people saying I want to become more famous.

Yeah.

Um, not, and more, more digital and have a bigger platform and a bigger audience and more followers. And it was the first time I'd heard somebody in my friend group say the exact opposite. Like the goal is to push delete when I turned 40. I almost didn't believe it. In fact, I still only half believe it.

Um, and, but I loved it. Yeah.

And, uh, and I think Sam also does a good job of the scramble. He'll, you know, on one hand he'll be a CEO of a media company and then he'll post a video of himself skateboarding and like, or dunking. I'm like, oh, you could, I didn't even know you're athletic. And you, and many times on this podcast in the last 5 years of this podcast, he's come on and be like, I've decided I'm a fitness influencer now. And then he comes back and changes it. And he's like, I'm all about fashion and style. And I'm like, dude, No offense, but you're not the first guy I think of when it comes to fashion. But this idea— and he'll annoyingly quote you, Robert. He'll be like, whatever, rule number 7, reinvent yourself.

Yeah.

I told him I was picking up the piano this year. He's like, I love it. Reinvent yourself. And I was like, that's a much, you know, grander, you know, frame for what I'm doing. But I appreciate that. I like that. I like— I do like going back to the bottom of the mountain. And so when you're saying this about silence or about disappearing, You know, I don't think there's a lot of that, which makes it, I think, even more valuable. It's more rare, it's more different. Um, but I also think it comes with a season. Like, you need almost a season of loudness to get people to care. If you just, if you're nobody and you disappear, then you never were anybody, right? Like, but if you have a season of loudness and then it's followed by a season of silence, that seems more optimal. That's what I wrote in my, I'm, as you can see, I'm taking notes while we do this. That's what I wrote on there is this, this is seasonal. And I think I have been one-track minded about too many things where it's like, this is good, therefore always do this. And actually, you do need different seasons and how you're, how you're going to operate. And that combination is what's more powerful.

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah. So, so what is Sam going to do when he turns 40 then?

That's a great question. But the reason I said that was—

How old are you now?

I'm 36. I just turned 36. The reason I said that was because I think that I do believe in reinventing yourself. I go, I'm not You know, blowing smoke. I like your, your work has had a profound impact on me, but I, I believe in reinventing yourself, but I also believe that wherever your life ends and wherever you are, like the goal is to fi— you know, find your life's purpose and go after it. But there's like these weird pivots to get there. It's not a straight line. And I believe in like these forcing, forcing functions to make you pivot to kind of find where you're supposed to be.

So, so where will that pivot lead you when you get off the internet? You don't know. You're gonna discover it when it happens. You're open to it. You just know that at some point you want something else.

Yeah, I don't know, but I think that, like, I think that I'm a gregarious person. I talk a lot. And I actually think that— I think that— I think that for the last 20 years since the internet has been around, you know, you hear the A-word, authenticity, thrown around a lot.

Yeah.

And I actually think that based off of your works and, but in reading history, being authentic is like, that's actually kind of a new thing. Like people, that's a relatively new idea to be authentic because now you can just film yourself on a camera and you've been told to be authentic. But people, the most powerful people on earth, they, they're not really authentic. They wear masks and they're acting. And I think that like an interesting takeaway from your book is to understand what outcome you want and which masks you need to wear. And I actually think that being authentic is overglamorized and actually is actually ineffective when you want your particular goal. And I actually think that it's, for some reason we think being authentic is good. And I don't know if I agree with that.

I think of, of, um, too often we humans get trapped in, in kind of words and things that are black and white. They're either this or they're that. So you can create the veneer, the appearance of authenticity, right? Which is very important, is a very important quality in the public eye. It doesn't mean that you're completely faking it. It just means that there is something about you that's natural, that you, that is very powerful about you, but you're conscious of it. You're not just operating, you know, without thinking about it. You're conscious of what makes you look authentic. And you kind of up it and you kind of lean into it and you kind of create it. Okay? And then maybe in 4 or 5 years, it's a different mask or a different form of authenticity that you have, but it doesn't mean that it's completely fake. So I think it's important for a politician, for an entertainer, for anybody in the public eye to create the appearance of authenticity, that they're not somebody fake, that they're not saying things just for attention, that they actually believe it. But you have to be aware that that's the game that you're playing. People who aren't aware of the game that they're playing have no control over themselves. They will say stupid things. They will be authentic when it's no— when their authentic character is no longer interesting, right? Because tastes change. And maybe right now, kind of, um, Saying what you think about certain things is cool, but in 3 years it won't be cool and you'll look stupid. So you have to be aware of who you are and you have to adapt to the times and you have to kind of play a middle game where you know the importance of appearing authentic and, and playing that game, but you're also aware of it and you can consciously control it. Yeah.

You have a few of these quotes that are so good. I just want you to unpack them. So I kind of want to read you something that stood out to me that resonated and just hear you kind of riff on it and maybe where that comes from or where you think that that needs to be applied. Or like, if you could shake somebody, get them to sort of hear this message, you know, what's that? Because, uh, one of them I tweeted out today, it was great.

It was—

you talked about how being timid is very dangerous. And you basically said, you know, don't take action when you have hesitation or doubt. It infects your execution. And the quote was, timidity is dangerous. Be better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes that you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold. No one honors the timid.

It's a very important quote for me because timidity is, is to me one of the worst sins that I think people have, right? And it's what is causing you to not be successful in life, right? Boldness is the most important quality that you can develop. And first of all, get rid of this misconception that some people are born bold and others are born timid. When we're a child, we're bold as hell. All children are born bold, right? They know what they want. They scream, they yell, they get their parents to do things. The parents are their slaves, essentially. Children are born bold. You become timid. It becomes a habit. You become afraid. You become deferential. You're always saying yes. You're always trying to please people. It becomes— your face just becomes like that, and you lose a sense of that boldness that you once had. And the, the, the main thing around that idea is that people are assessing you in these kind of nonverbal ways. They're reading your body language. And when they can sense that you don't have confidence, that you're doubtful, that you're hesitant, they don't want to join you. They don't want to be part of your team. They don't want to listen to you. They tune you out. They don't respect you. Okay? So if you start something, a project, a business, and you're not quite sure of it, That kind of radiates outward, that spirit of your hesitation. People can feel it, and it has a quality that, that repulses people. They don't want to join you. But if you show boldness and confidence, even if it's not real, you fake it, even if you make yourself believe that you're confident and bold, it excites people. We want to be around people like that. I know when I wrote The 50th Law and I first met 50 Cent, I was amazed by how confident this guy was, and it made me feel ashamed that I'm not as, as confident as he is, that I was even a little bit timid. It excited me and it excited everyone around him. They wanted to be part of his team. They wanted, because it fed off of him. We all wanna be infected by the energy of someone who's bold. Who knows what they want, right? So that's the main thing, is your first impressions are critical. And if people see you as timid and deferential and all closed and not so certain, they're going to run away from you. They're unconsciously— they're not going to want to be part of your team.

Well, the one of the best parts about this is there's so many levels to this. So when I tweeted this quote out, uh, Dharmesh, who's this, you know, co-founder of a $20-30 billion company retweeted and says, this is exactly what I needed to hear today.

Yeah, isn't that crazy?

I saw that.

I thought that was wild.

We just did a podcast with this guy, Hayes Barnard. He's probably, I don't know, one of the top 1,000 wealthiest people in the world. And we, we wanted to do this podcast. And most people, when they come on the podcast, they might agree to do it. And then we sort of badger them to be like, hey, would you, um, you know, can we get on a call, maybe talk a little beforehand, or, hey, we've got some ideas about what we might talk about. You know, you've published so much work that it's— we know where— we know where your thoughts are already. But for people who don't publish, like, you kind of want to find what are your big ideas. And most people put in, you know, very little effort. He was the exact— this guy Hayes was the exact opposite. He takes a ton of action. He calls. He's got his own brainstorm. He's decided, if I'm going to enter this, if I'm going to do this, it doesn't matter if it's just a 2-hour podcast recording. Like, I'm going to try to do this as best as this can be done. And so he was like going full force and he said, come out and hang out with me for the day. Come do my morning routine. Let's hang out all day. And then he's like, well, let's— he's like, I do this thing in the middle of Lake Tahoe. I go, I do breathwork, I jump in the ocean, I jump in the lake. It's cold. I watch the sunrise. And he goes, I'm on such a high. I'm in such a peak mental state. He's like, I think if we do the podcast right after that, it'll be the best podcast we could possibly do. So I go out there and I do, I spend all day with this guy and he's so bold, meaning the way he just approaches life is super bold. Even after we do the breathwork and stuff, he's like, you know what? Every day I heard you, a great quote, do something new every day. It marks the day. It keeps you growing, keeps you fresh, keeps you alive. You know what I've never done? I've never swam to those rocks out there. Let's try to swim to those rocks. And so we jump in the water, we try to swim to the rocks, and I'm just around this guy and I ask him about Elon Musk because he worked with Elon. For about 10 years. And he talks about Elon the way I talk about him. He goes, I go, tell me, you know, describe Elon in a word. He goes, the ultimate alpha. And because Elon, I would say, is probably the biggest, example of boldness and, and like the solution to making a mistake through audacity is more audacity. I think he is the number one on earth, out of 8 billion people at doing that. And, seeing that this guy was around him and had the same impression, of like he thought he was timid once he saw, you know, the, the level that Elon played at. Um, I just— wow, there's so many levels to this.

Yeah, I mean, um, we're infected by the energy of the people around us, right? And we can— we pick up things. We, we're too attuned to words, and, and, and we don't realize that we're actually— there's an animal part of our nature, and that animal part of our nature is picking up the energy, the signs that we can read, and how people, in the tone in their voice, in how they stand in their posture. And when we feel somebody who's confident, it kind of rubs off on us. We want to be around it and we want more of it, right? I have a chapter in The 48 Laws of Power called Infection, and the opposite happens where people who are overly dramatic or kind of drama queens who always have some terrible thing happening to them. They're always a victim and they just, you know, and they sort of suck you into their drama and they can destroy your life. We're infected by the energy of the people around us. That's the most important takeaway that I would give here.

When you're seeing what's going on right now, um, on social media or whatever, it's kind of fun after reading your books because I'm like, oh, that's interesting. There's that thing, there's that thing. Is there anyone out there who, uh, you not exactly look up to, but you're like, oh, they are playing the power game like textbook perfect?

Uh, it's a good question, but I don't really think I can answer it because the problem is that you do need time to just to see what people are truly like, you know. So I remember, um, Some 25 years ago or 24 years ago, I met a man named Dov Charney who ended up becoming the founder of the company American Apparel. I met him when he was just starting out. And man, that guy was charisma in a ball. He was insane, level of confidence, right? He was incredible. And he built this factory, this vertically organized factory in Los Angeles. He created an, an empire, American Apparel. And I thought he was brilliant and he got me to join the board of directors. I was on the board of directors for American Apparel for several years until it ended. But then over the time, we realized this guy has incredible flaws, right? He doesn't have self-control. He seems confident, but in the end, he was making some really bad decisions because he wasn't flexible. So I could say certain artists who are able to sort of stay on top of their game seem to me to be kind of power players because they know how to mix things up. And I mentioned someone like Beyoncé. I would say somebody like 50 Cent. I'd say people like Jay-Z. These are people who understand the attention game, how to play it. And that's a very important part of the 48 Laws of power, appearances, how you appear. But with politicians, I will not go anywhere near that because we have no way of knowing. We have no way of seeing in the present moment. I see so many stupid people out there who immediately react to something in the news and make their judgment about this was great or that was stupid. I'm sorry, you have no idea. In 2 years, we will know if it was great or if it was stupid. And in 20 years, we'll even have a better idea. And in 200 years, we'll even know for certain. Right. So I can't even go near judging about political figures. Entertainers, I can see. I think we have some value there, some metrics. And in sports, obviously we do.

But who are some of those folks?

Well, I'm being a little bit selfish here, but I'm friends with a head coach of the NBA, Mark Dagnault, who's the coach of the Oklahoma City Thunder, and they just won the NBA championship. I knew him 8 years ago when he was the coach of the G League team with the Oklahoma City Thunder. And this guy is absolutely brilliant at the game of power. And, and it's not like he's Machiavellian, not at all. He's a great leader. But he understands there's no, there's no more difficult job in the world than being an NBA coach. You have 12 or 15 people with these incredible egos who all think they're the greatest, right? And you have to build them into a team, into a spirit that's one, that's unified, that wants to play the game right. He understands perfectly human nature and psychology. And he built himself from the ground up as a coach of the G League. And then he started off as the coach of the Thunder, and they were very bad the first couple of years, but he was very patient. He had a goal in mind. I tell people, we're so distracted, we're so confused in the social media world that we can't think, let alone 3 months ahead, but even try to think a year or 5 years ahead. Like a plan, right? My God, I can't think that far ahead. But it's powerful when you have a plan that goes 2 years, 3 years down the road. It gives you a sense of control, like, this is what I want, this is what's important, this feeds my overall goal, this is irrelevant. It doesn't mean you're inflexible. It just means that you have a direction. And people don't have direction these days. This man had direction. He had a plan. He knew exactly how he was going to lead his team. To a championship. Now, of course, he couldn't predict everything, who you draft, et cetera. But to me, the way he, man, he manufactured this recent championship is one of the most brilliant examples of the 48 Laws of Power. I'm not going to take credit for it by any means, but he's a figure on there who's going to be a coach to reckon with for the next 10, 20 years. He's the Phil Jackson of our era. He's somebody I would point out. And Phil Jackson was somebody that I greatly admired who was definitely a man of power because he understood human nature and psychology.

I love that. I wanna ask you about 50 Cent because, um, when somebody said, yeah, you wrote a book with 50 Cent, I hadn't actually, I hadn't read the 50th Law, so I don't know that book. Uh, literally I learned about that book today.

It's awesome. It looks like it's got like gold pages. It looks like a Bible.

Yeah, I bought like the, the faux leather cover one just now. It's so cool. And I'm like excited to get it. But the funny thing is you and 50 Cent, I mean, I couldn't think of two more opposite people culturally. It's like, you know, like I look at your room and I look at where you are and I'm just like, okay, you're basically like what I think of when I think of an author. And then 50 Cent has this incredible story, you know, coming up from the streets and getting shot and becoming a hip-hop icon and then like a business guy and whatever. So I'm just curious, like, A, how did that come about? And B, you said he was incredibly charismatic. Can you tell any specific stories about like either one of two things, your impressions when you met him and like what stood out to you about this guy? Because, you know, you said you're infected by the energy of the people around you. Like, tell me, I would love a specific story or where you think most people don't actually really appreciate 50's story or, you know, what, what actually he's done. You know, people have a very surface level understanding of him as like, oh, he's just some rapper guy.

Well, I mean, first of all, you have to understand his, his story a little bit. I mean, a lot of people know it, but, um, you know, he was— his mother died when he was like 8 or 9 years old. She was a hustler herself. And so he was raised by his grandparents. He grew up on the streets of Southside Queens, and he was a drug dealer. He was a hustler. He dealt crack. And he talks about it in his, his really great Autobiography: From Pieces to Weight. I highly recommend that book. Okay. But how many people from that background ended up being who he was, being this successful, this multimillionaire? Maybe, I don't know, he's not a billionaire, but incredibly successful, right? Nobody. So something about him is different. Something about him is very exciting and very interesting. Okay. So that alone tells you something is unique about, about Fifty. And so when I met him, you know, I was a little bit intimidated because I'm, I'm, as you can tell, did he reach out to you or you to him?

Yes.

His, his literary agent reached out to me and set up a meeting in New York in, in the back room of a steakhouse on Madison Avenue. Right? It's like a scene out of The Godfather or something. And so, you know, you can see I'm this kind of thin, slightly nerdy white guy, and, you know, he's surrounded with his posse, and he's kind of— he's buff, and he's a little bit intimidating. I was kind of intimidated. But then I learned later on that he was sort of intimidated by me because he thought this— he was meeting the 48 Laws of Power guy, the sort of Henry Kissinger type. And he was a little bit, uh, intimidated as well. But what impressed me most about him was that he was very calm. He has this very calm energy. So people think of him as being really out there and angry and thuggish, but that's not who he is. He's a very calm person. He's always seeking to be in control of a situation. He wants power. And you don't get power by being out there, being yelling and being angry. And being thuggish. So I was very impressed by how kind of thoughtful he was. He's very— he's actually a very interesting thinker. And so in America, everything is so divided. Everything is just so conventional and boring. It just drives me crazy. Like a book between a, a nerdy white guy, Jewish white guy from Los Angeles, and this rapper from Southside Queens. That's, that's, that's a really odd mix. That's exactly why you do something like that, to bring two people who are strange, who are very weird. It's not a normal combination. Bring them together, something interesting can happen. So yeah, I was with him for about 6 months, and I witnessed some, some very interesting things. I remember he was on a phone call in, in, in one of his, um, offices And doors were closed, it's just him and I, but he was on a call with a female celebrity whose name I will not mention. And I was going, man, this guy is a seducer. He is really good at it, right? You know, his voice and what he was saying to her and how he was making her laugh. He was seducing me. It was incredible, right? This guy's got skills. In the art of seduction. I could see that right away. I remember once, it was in like August, I can't remember what year, like 2006 or so, he was about to drop a record and they, they dropped a single that he had done with Robin Thicke. We're going way back here. And it got leaked onto the internet and Chris Leidy, who was his manager at the time, was furious because they had a whole marketing plan laid out for the rollout of the song, and then it got leaked to the internet. It just completely ruined their whole marketing. Everybody was freaking out. They were so upset and angry. What do we do? We're going to take a lawsuit. We're going to bring them to court. We're going to get them to take it off the internet. I was in there in the room when 50 got the news. Once again, he was so calm. He was like Buddha. And he goes, no, man, this is the best thing that ever happened to us. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to go with it. We're not going to fight it. We're going to create a story. They created their own story. We're not going to try and repress it. We're going to create our own version of what happened. And here's what I'm going to do. We're going to create this story that 50 Cent freaked out and was so angry and so upset. He took the big screen TV off the wall and he broke it on the ground. He was so angry. He took his cell phone and he threw it at somebody. He said, blood's gonna roll, heads are gonna roll. This is what we're gonna do. Right? It was total theatrical. He never, none of it ever happened. He got his team to take the big screen TV off the TV, off the wall and smash it. And they would film it, you know, as if he had done this. And that was the story. Now, instead of 50 reacting and getting all upset, which made him look weak, he turned it around and made it. About him and his anger. And that's what— the only thing people could talk about on the internet. So that was brilliant, right? Instead of freaking out, he was calm. He thought of the internet is all about attention, is all about creating stories. I'm gonna take control of this and I'm gonna create my own story. And I was, I was absolutely amazed, you know, that, that, that to me was the 48 Laws of Power in action. I mean, I had so many stories with him that, you know, it was probably one of the most fun elements of my life, you know, going to parties with him, going to the award ceremony in Vegas, meeting Floyd Mayweather Jr., going to his house in Connecticut. It was a trip. It was like a drug trip. It was amazing. I have lots of stories, but that gives you an idea.

Your life's so fascinating because like, you know, Tupac was interested in Machiavelli and then you, 48 Laws of Power came along and that's like the new version of Machiavelli. I originally saw 48 Laws of Power because I don't even know if it was true, but there was like a rumor I saw on the internet that there's this book that is banned in prisons because it's so powerful. And all the prisoners— and I was like, I don't, I don't know if that's true, but like, I'm hooked. I'm in. What if it's banned from prison? It must be the best. And then you're huge in the hip-hop community and Black community. And I was like, this is— I'm in again. I love this. I want to read what these guys are all about. And so you must have had a really exciting life because you are not a person who I would think would be buddies with 50 or whoever else you're friends with. And yet you have the best type of fame where like these guys who normal people admire, they're— those guys admire you. Even the billionaires, the athletes, all the successful people admire you. So you must have met so many awesome people.

I've met a lot of awesome people. And, you know, I must say I'm very, very grateful for my life. It's been been a blessing because I struggled for so many years. I know what it's like to struggle in life. I know what it's like to have no success. It came very late for me. So having it at my age when I was basically 39, 40 almost was very meaningful. So I don't take any of it for granted. And I remember when I wrote the 48 Laws of Power, I was living in this crappy one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica. I mean, it was You're by the ocean, so you can't complain, but it was a really kind of small, cramped little apartment because I, as I said, I had no success. I wrote The 48 Laws of Power in that apartment, and now suddenly, you know, I'm on television, things are happening. Okay, it's a little bit weird, but then I was invited to Italy in early, like 4 or 5 months after it came out, 'cause it came out in Italian. You know, the land of Machiavelli. And I'm invited to go give this kind of conference, and suddenly this guy is whisking me around to meet all these celebrities. And we're on the island of Capri, and paparazzi are following me and taking pictures of me. And I get to meet the ex-Prime Minister of Italy, who's a very famous person there named Andreotti. Since passed away, the most Machiavellian Italian politician of the modern era. I'm sitting in his office, I'm interviewing him. You go, man, my life right now, just 5 months ago it was nothing and now I'm doing this. It was almost too hard to believe. So I take none of it for granted. It's been an incredible ride and I'm very grateful.

What triggered the transformation in you? Most people don't have this sort of career renaissance where you figure it out, you put it together, and you start— suddenly you go from a sort of nondescript, um, you know, situation to suddenly you're in this guy's office in Italy, in the island of Capri, you know. What triggered the transformation in you at age 37, 38?

Well, a bit of luck. Um, so I, you know, I had spent all of these years I wasn't a loser. I worked at Esquire Magazine in New York. I had jobs in journalism. I lived in New York for several years. I worked, you know, I had jobs. I lived in Europe and I wandered around. I, you know, but I was always writing and trying to figure life out. I never gave up on myself. I learned different skills at writing. I also had lots of shit jobs with very bad bosses. So when I was 35 years old, I was in Italy, um, on a project that I won't even discuss. It was so stupid. I met a man there who's there for the same project, who was a book packager. And, um, we were both really unhappy with what we were doing there. And we were walking in Venice, Italy, and he's Dutch and he asked me, if I had an idea for a book. And that was the turning point in my life to put it down into one, like, second of time, that exact moment in Venice, Italy, in July of 1995. He asked me that question and everything clicked. I, I improvised what would turn into the 48 Laws of Power. All of my bad jobs, all of my horrible bosses with their egos and their political games, all the crap that I dealt with in Hollywood, because I had worked in Hollywood for years, just came flowing out of me almost like I was vomiting. And I said, you know, Power, the book about power, how timeless it is. In the time of Louis XIV, if you made a mistake, you were put in prison and you were executed. Now, if you make a mistake, the same mistake, you're fired. It's the same game. You're just not as bloody, right? And I told him a story about Louis XIV and his finance minister, the opening story of the 48 Laws of Power. He got very excited and he goes, this will be a great book. I will pay you to write a treatment for it, and then we'll try and sell it. And I was so desperate, I was so hungry, I was so depressed that I came back to Los Angeles. I actually borrowed money from my parents so I could, I could afford to try and write this treatment because he was actually offering money once he had the treatment. I was so desperate and so depressed that I put every goddamn ounce of energy I had into it. All of my bad experiences in life, everything that I had been through, all the skills I had developed, I just poured into that treatment. It was literally get rich or die trying at that moment. And I wrote a great treatment. He loved it. And the rest is history. So part of it was luck. If I hadn't met this man, I wouldn't be here talking with you. But part of it was I never gave up. And I had spent those 16, 18 years in the wilderness developing skills. So that's what helped turn it around.

That's so awesome. And I think I've read that, um, I don't know how many books you've sold in general of all of your books, of your 7 or 8 books, but I think I read that The 48 Laws of Power came out in 2000 or '98. I think it's accelerated, right? So isn't it selling more this year or last year than it did early on?

I'd say 2024. Was best year we've ever had. It was insane. It's accelerated. Yeah. And I think we're now close to 10 million copies sold in the United States alone.

Oh my God. It's pretty crazy to have like a life's work, right? I mean, that's like, like, I don't know if you meant to do this, but like you've, it's a timeless thing that can be readable and awesome for 50 or 100 years.

Yeah. I mean, um, yeah. You know, you never know when you write a book like that. It's a very weird book, and that could be good or it could be bad. It looks strange, you know, the design of it with the things on the side and everything broken up. It has all these stories from history. For better or for worse, I can say nobody else has written a book that looks like that or reads like that, right? And it could have easily failed. It could have easily bombed. I remember, God, am I gonna have to go back to working at some crap job after this book is a disaster? Yeah, maybe, maybe you'll have to like go back to doing temp work or something. So it could have easily been a disaster, but it didn't. And so it's one of those strange things. It's very, a lot of it's luck, but all of it also, it's how much effort I put into the work. To make it kind of this timeless thing. So, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's insane because you never know in life what's going to be successful or what's not.

I wanted to ask you about daily application of, of the ideas from 48 Laws of Power, because it's one thing to read a book, to nod along, maybe even underline it, and then you close the book and you go back to being exactly the person who you are, which would be, I think, a pretty disappointing outcome. And I think about these day-to-day situations I get in. I'm in my car, I'm in traffic, I'm in a grocery store, I'm at a coffee shop, I'm having a, just yet another meeting at work, whatever it is. I'm curious, what's one law that you think is easily applicable to people's day-to-day life, to the normal routines of their life that they could kind of mark in their mind like, oh, he mentioned that situation, let me approach it differently using what he's using one of Robert's sort of laws of human nature and laws of, of, of, of power.

Okay, well, the, the try this is to, um, get out of the moment and to be observing the situation that's in front of you. So, so often you're just reacting to things, you're just in the moment, you're just listening to what people are saying, you're just in your own head, your own thoughts. Your own ideas that circle around and round and round, your own emotions, which— what you're having to do in the morning. You're not listening. And I want you to turn around and pay deep attention and not to listen to yourself at all, to cut that off completely, and to absorb your, your interest, your mind, your spirit in the people you're dealing with. This pertains to power, this pertains to seduction, This pertains to strategy. This pertains to war and to human nature, to all of my books, right? You're too self-absorbed. So even when you go to Starbucks and you're getting your coffee, you're thinking about your own problems. You're thinking about how much prices for coffee is going up. Okay. No, what you do is you look at that barista and you go, what is it like to be him or her? What is their world like? You know, it's kind of weird that, you know, probably let's say it's a, it's a guy. It's probably, this is not his life's task. He's got some other interests. What's going on in his mind in this moment? Try and read his body language and go into this almost like fan story in your head of what he's like, what his apartment looks like, what his girlfriend looks like, what his dog looks like, and think about it. Get out of yourself. Okay, do that again and again and again and again in every situation. It will calm you down. It will be a form of therapy for you. It will also make you a superior observer of people. It'll make you a superior observer of human nature. It will make you understand that people say that they love your ideas, but their body language actually reveals that they're not interested at all. You'll become a superior reader of people and you won't be so self-absorbed, right? That is the number one skill you can develop is to get outside of yourself and to be an, a supreme acute observer of people.

Sam, you ever done anything like that?

I think I'm a very emotional person and I get upset, but like for example, the other day I got a ticket, like a parking ticket, and I caught the guy giving me the ticket. And so I had like this interaction and like, I was like, I want to yell at you. I want to do this. I want to do that. And I was like, wait, hold on. I got to think about— I got to reflect. What does this guy want to be doing with his time right now? And how do I use my insight into his perspective to get out of the situation as opposed to saying, you suck, you're— this is— go solve a real crime, whatever. And so, but I think— but related to that, the thing before you have to do that is to control your emotions. Which I work hard and I fail at all the time. But that, that's what it's kind of rooted in, I think. Or that's like the foundational, like, step, which is like, don't react, reflect.

The other side of it is that, um, the guy who's giving you your parking ticket, you know, he's got his own life, he's got his own world. Yeah, it's annoying as hell. You feel so helpless, so stupid. Why you have— you're right there, but he's still gonna write the ticket, you know? Why couldn't he wait like 3 minutes? Oh no, it's already written. He can't You can't go back. But the people you deal with are interesting. They're weird, they're different, they have their own life. They have— he's this poor schlub who's got this miserable job. Everybody hates him like you do. He's got to receive all of this hate and negative energy from people. Then he has to go back to his apartment somewhere in Queens, and, you know, and other people are kind of yelling at him. He's got all this internalized anguish and anxiety. Get into the story of other people because they're interesting. They're weird. I know I'm making this up. I never met this guy giving you the ticket, or if it's a woman, but it's fun to think about it. It's fun to get out of it. It's fun to imagine what they're like. And then you slowly start developing this muscle where you start thinking about other people and not yourself. And getting into their stories and figuring out what makes them tick. So if you need to seduce them, if you need to get this guy giving you a ticket to not give you a ticket, you have the way to do it because you understand who he is. You understand how much negative attention this guy gets every single day he's out on his job. And your first reaction will be, man, that must be a terrible job. I'm so sorry for you. Say something that kind of disarms him. Well, maybe now you have the power to get him to stop writing that ticket, or as opposed to your aggressive energy, fuck, man, I deal with that. Every single person gives that to me. I'm not gonna still write, I'm gonna still write your ticket just to spite you, you a-hole. No, you diffuse the situation by coming up to him with like, man, you must have a horrible job. I'm really sorry that you, I don't know, whatever it is, you know, that's the approach.

Well, have you ever read, uh, Chris Voss's book, Never Split the Difference? Like if there was any takeaway, it's basically— so Chris Voss was like an FBI negotiator and he teaches people how to negotiate. And like the main thing that he teaches is exactly what you said, which is don't react to what you hear, put yourself in their shoes and actually verbalize and label how they feel. And that's an immediate disarming thing to get what you want, basically. And Sean, I don't know, you know, like me and Sean have both talked about the book The Game, which I assume you know all about. Neil Strauss. And for a 14-year-old boy, that was like the greatest thing ever because we like desperately wanted to meet girls. And it was like a very pop, pop, poppy way of like learning about it. It was like easy to learn and read about. But you have a book. I— is it— I have to remember the numbers. 33 Rules of Seduction. Is that it?

No, it's called The Art of Seduction.

Art of Seduction. 33 Laws of War. I'm getting them a bunch of— I'm getting confused. But you have a whole book on seduction. Which like, I wish I would have read this when I was younger because like, you outline like all these interesting ways, basically seduction, not meaning just sleep with people, but like seduce someone into like basically doing what you want them to do. And it gives like actually amazing— it gives like your books, Sean, Robert's books are pretty great. They like tell you the history, but then they also the history of like a person who's a story of this rule. But then you outline like the tactics and strategy, which is like the best format. And so, uh, that was, that was another winner. And it taught all these like tactics on like seducing people or getting them to like buy into your, whatever you want them to buy into.

Yeah. I mean, I, I know Neil Strauss and I, you know, he talked to, he quotes The Art of Seduction in The Game. Um, but The Art of Seduction's different. It's not a book for pickup artists. It's a book for making people fall in love with you. It's a book for making people interested in you. It makes a book— it's a book for people who, who you want to like fund your project or who you want to hire you. It also is something that you maybe wanna seduce a woman or a man for, for sex or whatever. Yes. But seduction is something that you do every single day of your life. Right? You're always bad at it or you're good at it, but you're always constantly having to make people like you in some way or other. So I wanted to come up with the ultimate psychology of what it makes peop— what draws people to you and what repulses people from you. So, so that's what The Art of Seduction is about.

Did it make you more likable? Were you, uh, were, were pre and post? Yeah. Was pre and post, uh, Robert different.

I, uh, I got interested in seduction in the '80s when I— well, obviously I was a young man, um, you know, and I was living in Paris. I was 22. I was working in a hotel in Paris where all the models stayed for the, for the fashion weeks or whatever. The most beautiful women in the world were staying at this hotel. I'm 22 years old, you know, and come. And it was insane. And there was this guy who would come by. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. He knew that these were all these incredibly beautiful women were. He was this tall, good-looking Brazilian guy. He was so good at the seduction game. I was fascinated by it. How come he could get all of these women to go out with him on dates and I couldn't do anything? I couldn't get anywhere. I kind of got interested in it, and then I started reading books, literature about it. And I kind of got fascinated by the whole phenomenon of seduction. And I went through my 20s, what I would call my years as a rake, where I was, you know, I was fairly successful at meeting and seducing women, not on his level, not on 50 Cent's level, but on my own level, I was pretty good at the game. And so I was fascinated by years before I wrote the book, and then when I had the chance to write it, you know, all of my, all of that knowledge and experience came into, into writing the book. So of my own failures and some of my own successes. So it's been something that had been on my mind for many, many years.

In general, how self-actualized do you feel like you are in these different book categories? Power. Seduction, etc. Like, are you— if a 10 is kind of like what you think is somebody who's sort of maximally doing these things, maybe the best examples of people you've met or, or have read about, where do you put yourself? And is book writing an effective way to move up that ladder? You know what I mean? Does— did the study and the process of writing it actually help?

Well, a writer is a writer. I'm not out there, uh, running for political office. I'm not, you know, uh, on a stage entertaining people. I'm a writer. Okay. So you judge me by that barometer and not by other things. And, um, I talk about, I think about like Machiavelli himself. He was this mid-level diplomat in, in Florence in the early part of the 16th century. He was not successful. He was not powerful. He came from the middle classes and then, um, he aligned himself with the Republic of Florence. And then when the Medicis came back into power, he was in disgrace and he was in, he was imprisoned briefly and he went off into the countryside and to get himself back in power, he wrote a book called The Prince, right? This was going to ingratiate himself with the Medicis and maybe get him so he could come back and be a diplomat again. Okay. That one book that he wrote, some hundred pages long. Can you, you cannot quantify the influence that that one book has had, right? It's insane. I mean, maybe next to the Bible, you can't think of another book that has had greater impact. All of the historical figures since Machiavelli who read The Prince internalized the lessons, who loved him or hated him, who reacted against him or for him. If you had to measure that power, it's insane. It's off the charts. And yet he never made any money from it. He never realized that power. But that is true power, true influence in the world. So we can look at all the people around us who we, we imagine as having power. With all their money and their billions, but ideas are the most powerful thing in this world. Okay? You can put all you want price tags on, on, on material things, but something completely immaterial, an idea is what is most powerful in this world. So when somebody has an idea for a great business, or Steve Jobs has an idea for a new iPod. It's in his head, it's in his brain. He's thinking, and then it becomes reality. That is power. The power of thinking, of ideas, is greater than all the other nonsense in this world. So I can't dunk a basketball unlike Sam Parr. I can't dance very well at all. I can't sing. I have a stroke, so my body is kind of messed up right now. But on the level of ideas, I have tremendous amount of power and influence, and I, and I know it because the people writing to me, I'm not bragging at all. It's just very real. So on that barometer, I have actualized it. It's not whether I can go out there and command an army or become president, cuz that's not my game. My game is ideas. And on that level, I have actualized myself. I have realized my life's task and my power. And after I die, I'm not gonna be like Machiavelli with his 600 years of influence, but I will have some influence over people after I die. That is power. That is ideas. Ideas shape this world. And I, people have lost that kind of lesson. They're so into material things that they don't understand the spiritual intellectual power of thinking. Which can change this world.

That's a good-ass answer.

That was a great—

I mean, that was a great—

do you have your one-liner of your life's task? I'm just curious.

Yeah, to change, to change people, to change how they think, and to change how people act. That's always been my, my goal here, you know. Um, there's too much kind of stupidity. There's too much kind of people who don't understand themselves, who don't understand power. I'm not saying I'm superior in that game because believe me, I've made many, many mistakes. Never outshine the master. I violated that law at least 2 times, maybe even 3 times. I'm a flawed human being, so I'm not the epitome of the 48 Laws of Power, but I've witnessed people being so stupid, being so single-minded, being so inflexible, so unable to adapt. That it infuriates me that they don't understand how to actually operate in this world. So I'm trying, my books, my life's task is to enlighten people on that front.

Are you a happy person? Like, um, because when I, whenever I read your books, it's a very serious topic and you spend your life reading and writing about very serious things. Does, are you able to find joy in that and be happy?

Well, you know, happiness is just a word. And, you know, we live in our bodies and ourselves and our emotions. And, you know, at some hour in the morning, I'll be very happy and excited. And then 2 hours later, something will be frustrating. So we all go up and down, up and down. But I'd like to talk about fulfillment as opposed to happiness. A sense that I fulfilled, you know, I have a sense of fulfillment that I accomplished something. And I have a very high sense of fulfillment. So right now I'm writing a book. It's very frustrating. I can't type because I had a stroke. I can't take hikes. My life is very limited right now. But I get to write this book and it involves so much tedium and so much difficulty. But then I pull back and I go, wow, man, what a privilege this is. And this is a book I hope that's gonna change people on a very deep level. So on the micro level of happiness, I have a lot of frustration. I have a lot of tedium. I have a lot of things that I wish were otherwise. But on the level of happy, of fulfillment, when you pull back over a course of months or years, it's off the charts. I, I have an incredible sense of accomplishment. Particularly this book here, the, it's a book on the supply. Been working on it for 6 years. You have no idea the things I've had to overcome to write this book, right? Physically, the challenges have been insane. As I said, I can't type. I have to handwrite everything. I have to edit in handwriting. It's a mess. And then I have to dictate it on the computer. Then I have to edit it with one hand. I can't take a hike to clear my mind. I'm just trapped in my body, in my office. And yet I've written the book. And so I'm going to feel so proud of that, what I had to overcome. That to me, that's more important than happiness. You know, that sense, because it's very, it's something where happiness comes and goes, but a sense of fulfillment, it just sort of stays with you for a long time.

You've had such a huge impact on me, you know, when I was in my 20s and to this day still, you've had a really big impact on me. So I'm personally very like honored and thankful to be able to talk to you. But predominantly the people who listen to this are young men in their 20s, and I hope that we've kind of been the gateway drug for that because we have a lot of awesome people on here, but not everyone is necessarily wise or intentional, which I think you have that in spades. I think that's kind of your thing, which is you seem very intentional, very wise, and very calm. And I find that to be— and it kind of infects me a little bit and rubs off on me. So we appreciate you doing this. You're, you're awesome. Hopefully, you know, I think you said your goal was to change people. You've changed me. And hopefully this is a gateway drug to introduce you to even more people who you could potentially change.

Appreciate that. You know, I don't take it for granted being invited to these podcasts. I know sometimes I can be a little bit difficult because my schedule's a little bit full, but I'm very grateful to have audiences like this, you know. So thank you so much for allowing me to do this, for allowing me to, to just blow hot air for an hour and a half.

I mean, look at this. This is— you're in the business of ideas and influence. I mean, this is—

okay, okay.

I'm on the podcast. I'm supposed to be talking. I'm supposed to be paying attention. And I'm sitting here furiously writing notes to myself of small nuggets of wisdom, little, little golden nuggets that you were dropping. So thank you for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you. That's it. That's the pod.