#839 - Robert Greene - 12 Raw Truths About Gaining Power & Respect

28:36And negative capability, he wanted to answer the question was, why is Shakespeare another one of your countrymen? Why was Shakespeare so brilliant? Well, his characters were so realistic, because he made them as real human beings and what he could do was they weren't stick figures. Shakespeare could think of a person and entertain two things about them at the same time. They could be both evil but also have a strain of goodness inside of them. There were complex human beings are complex. A negative capability is the essence of being creative. It means you can hold two thoughts in your head at the same time, two thoughts that apparently contradict each other, but you can entertain them and not grasp at one or the other.

29:22And a past judgment immediately. So you're able to deal with ambiguity and you're able to say, life isn't that, isn't that? It's kind of both at the same time. That is creativity. That is real thinking. You know, I mean, I could go on and on about my ideas about live ideas and dead ideas, but this is real live thinking. I have been playing with an idea that's basically the same thing, just repurposed with a silly meme from me, which is a cognitive superposition. So like, how in physics? In physics. Yes. And then when you decide you collapse the superposition down, but that I try to, you know, think in superpositions as much as possible.

30:04There's a very good book written about like that. It's not perfect. It's pretty good book, called the possibility principle you can look that up. He tries to apply those kind of ideas and physics to day -to -day life and psychology. It is interesting. It's worth looking at. So much depends on reputation. Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone, you can intimidate and win. Once it slips, however, you are vulnerable and will be attacked on all sides. Never let others define it for you. Yeah, um, you know, so when I wrote the 48 laws of power, I tried to, I've somebody through my whole life loves playing games.

30:48I don't mean that in the abstracts. It's, I mean, literally like chess, backgammon, sports, poker, whatever. And I like the cleanness of a game. It's like, you do this and you can win it. But there's also a psychological element in it. So, particularly when you're playing poker and you're bluffing, and I was always fascinated by this. It's a game of chance. You don't really know what cards you're going to get. But that fellow over there, he's been bluffing. He bluffed before. I'm sure he did. He's going to do it again. Right? So, the psychology starts entering into the picture in a game of chance.

31:32It's not a game to this skill, certainly skill involved, but a lot of its chance. And because he bluffed before and he's got that look in his eye, it could be a woman and don't mean to generalize, or I'm going to fold. Okay. So you don't realize that so much of the game of power has nothing to do with data and you being better person at something. A lot of it is pure psychology and intimidating people and winning before you even enter into a battle. So if you have a reputation, you carry it with you and the reputation has to be real. Personally, I don't know how valid this is. I have this reputation now of being this Machiavelli in characters.

32:19And so if Robert's five minutes late for a meeting, it means he's playing a game even though it's probably just a traffic. But my reputation now kind of put people a little bit on the heels, you know, where it's not necessarily true about me, but it kind of goes ahead of me and it makes the implementation proceeding. And so it's an extra form of power. So the idea you have to, the overall arching idea to pull us out of the specific is power is pure psychology, pure psychology. And what I mean by that is the CEO of a company, he doesn't get there based on, it's not like baseball where it's balls and straws, sorry, you probably don't know.

33:07I'm a ranger, I'm a Texas ranger's fund, I'll have you know. Oh, okay, all right. Well, it's not like baseball where it's balls, you know, you hit, you have a good batting average or OPS, all right, you're gonna get in the line up, they're gonna bat you in the clean up spot. Okay. Life isn't like that. So the way somebody rises to the CEO and I know because I was on the board of directors of a publicly traded company is not about metrics. It's not about things that they've actually done. It's about psychology, right? People rise to positions of power because they know how to play the game and they know how to play the game of psychology.

33:44They know how to appear. They know how They know all the psychological little gambits. And that's why I wrote the 48 loss of power. It's kind of like, this is the game of life, the game of power. The rules are a little bit nebulous. But here's how you play, you play by mastering these little psychological bits. One of them is your reputation. I'm fascinated by reputation and credibility, especially given what I do now. But my previous life, I was a club promoter. I ran a club promoter. I ran nightclubs for a very long time. Club promoter. But what do we call that here? Club, it would just be a promoter.

34:30It's called so marketing for nightclubs essentially. The guy stood on the front door with the guest list and the bands for the IP and all of the hot girls names. And then after a while, we owned a group of guys that did that and then we owned a group of guys that owned a group and you started build up this company. And in that, every single nightclub that you've ever been to is the same thing. It's people getting drunk in a room to music. It'll never be anything else. You can dress this one up pink and give out inflatable flamingos on the door or this one's really cheap or this one's on a wednesday and it's sort of naughty that you shouldn't be going out on a wednesday.

35:08Dress it up however you want. It's people getting drunk in a room to music. That's all it's ever going to be. And what I realized from doing that was the power of reputation. This isn't the reputation of a person. It's the reputation of a brand. But if your company is known for always putting on good parties, then you get to benefit from that. And what happens is, when you have a reputation for putting on good parties, more people come. So you have better parties. Yep, correct. So this is the sort of odd, and this is the really important point. Never let others define it for you. and when you are vulnerable, you will be attacked on all sides.

35:45Because as it's going up, it does, it proceeds you. It continues to do work for you exponentially growing and growing. But when you're starting to go down, even your best work will sometimes be derogated to be worse than it is. So you have done something that is good, but because of your reputation, you're a liar, you're a phony, you're a grifty, you're a shell, you're a fake. That's right. Yeah, credibility is the one thing that you should never sell because you cannot buy it back. There is no return policy on your credibility. And people are so getting back to the word stupid. I mean, it's a thing to tell you.

36:18They post things on social media when they're young and not realizing that five years later, and they're trying to get a job at a law firm, they're like, you know, sure, they're doing incredibly ridiculous things on Instagram and that part of their reputation. everything you do is reflected through the social world, right? Nothing is an isolation. People are continually judging you. So you have to be aware, you have to think before you post, you have to think, how are people going to take this? If I say this stupid rude thing that comes right out of me because I don't control my, my, my tongue, it's going to ruin my one fault step will ruin your reputation.

37:05There's a British MP who is receiving on the receiving end of a tweet from 2009, which has come back around. You can read about this. You like get these Estonian retards out of my house right now. So I don't mean to laugh, but those terrible. Well, Stovians are very smart people. Get these Estonian retards out of my house right now. I want these as whatever. And she's had to do this roveling apology. But I mean, I mean, when was Twitter, when did Twitter start? Probably 2008 or so? This is early, this is the equivalent of the big bang. This is the, whatever it is, microwave cosmic background of tweets.

37:43And yeah, I just love that. I really, I really think that the reputation point can't be overstated. And I've got to see in this industry as well, both whether it's authors, podcasters, YouTube, There are some people who have traded reputation and credibility for money or for short -term trades that didn't make sense and they've not ended up coming off in one form or another. They've tried to cash it in. Like, going to Spotify and... No, not that.

38:20Interestingly, with Joe's move to Spotify, that was something that he got an awful lot of credibility for. And that's one of the interesting things. Had it been with a different platform that didn't carry as much weight, gravitas, they have their own reputation, it becomes multiplicative as opposed to sort of subtractive. Yeah, no, of course. Like getting a Nike sponsorship is cool. Hooray for you. That's not you selling out. But getting a sponsorship with some brand that everybody thinks is really lame. That is selling out. You're obviously only doing it for the cash. But you know, there's a ton of guys is that it held political positions or have swayed with the wind just blown with the way whatever it goes this way whenever it goes that way.

38:59And the interesting thing is, even if they've made a ton of money from it, even if it's been advantageous in one domain, I actually think that if you gave them the opportunity, they would give all of it back and some to be able to regain their reputation. I think they would give anything they could to be back in the Cool Kids Club. And there's no return policy on credibility. Well, the other thing about reputation and credibility is it has to be consistent. So you have to like, it's like a brand you're known for something. You know, for being strong, you know, for being self -confident, you know, for being macchi evellian or whatever it is.

39:37The funny or light haunted. And there's a certain kind of, you know, shape to it. And if you're like all over the map and you're going over here, your reputation is about about that is about this. It looks weak. It makes it look like, because we want to feel like people judge on appearances. They don't judge on the reality of who you are. They don't know who I am or who you are. They judge on what they see and what they how we appear. And if those appearance, they want to have something consistent that they can grab onto. They want to say something simple. That guy is funny and that's who he is.

40:15This guy is that. They want a very simple formula. And if you can't be consistent, if you're all over the place, if you're changing your ideas, you're conservative, then you're liberal, and you're trying to tack with each wind to get power. Yeah, you'll get some power that way, but it'll make you look weasily. It'll make you look distrustful, and people won't like that, and your reputation will be one of somebody who has no soul, who has no core. So reputation also has to have a consistency, a corridor with a soul that binds it all together. Especially if it seems like it's being done for a contrived reason.

40:53I think people are fine with people changing their mind as long as show me your working. Explain to me how you got from that position to this one. Don't do it beyond the tolerance level that we all have of, this is a little bit too much. I've updated, I used to be pro this, now I'm anti that. Yeah, I I really do think an awful lot about the value of a reputation and In another way, it's very Never let anybody else define it for you You know allowing that sort of vacuum to to see pin Looses your power over your reputation and it allows other people to derogate it on the other hand if you're very Machiavelli in person Poke holes in your enemies reputation and you will destroy them bring up things that are inconsistent with the reputation and you will have room be like a popping a balloon it'll just go like that you know what I talk about how in that chapter how PT Barn and played that game to ruin other people's reputation and make people wonder is he really like that I guess not because I just saw this fact that contradicts it so I'm giving you some very evil Machia alien advice up there if you have enemies.

42:08One of the meanest things, I'm not a mean person, I don't like being mean. Yeah, sure. It's true. But I spent a thousand nights on the front door of nightclubs with drunk people. So you need a few defense mechanisms and what you realize, especially when people have had alcohol, is that people fall into only a small number of buckets and behaviors usually pretty predictable. And one of the things that we realized is kind of a script that we could run when somebody was getting a little bit mouthy, remembering that we're flanked by big British gorillas. Right. You've got door staff all around you.

42:40No, not me. I was the guy that I was the dude in the skinny jeans with the clipboard. I had the, you know, six foot six dudes with leather gloves on. I decided me. They were giving me your ID, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things that used to what it was so mean, but it worked so well. If somebody started, they'd been ejected or they hadn't been allowed into the club or something had happened, And we'd always say, mate, sorry, you need to get away from your breath stinks. And it's completely unfalseifiable because unless someone's going to come over and smell it, they can't say, no, it doesn't.

43:11And it just immediately enters this person into this. Do you just watch the color drain from them? So yeah, oddly breath, apparently, halitosis is reputation as well. Or just body odor. Yep. That's great. Any smell? It's just, it's so... I'm going to remember that. It's really good. but it re -ed out your breath. Stinks, I need to just, can you give me a little room? Oh, it's just used to pull people apart. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Element. For the last three years now, I have started my morning every single day with Element. It is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need, and nothing that you don't each grab and go stick pack contains a science -backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium and no sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients or any other junk.

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44:39Always stick to what makes you weird odd strange different. That's your source of power, which is similar to occupy your niche, embrace your strangeness, identify what makes you different, fuse those things together and become anonymally. Yeah. Well, you know, in this world, if you're replaceable, you will be replaced. Right? So if in your job, you're in your 20s and you're doing something that other people could do, By the time you become 28, they can hire somebody 24 when they hired you, but for less money, they will do that right away. It's a brutal world. So if you're replaceable, you will be replaced.

45:28So the only defense about that against that is to be irreplaceable in this world. And the good news is that you are at your core irreplaceable. There is something strange and weird about you. Once again, I hate to say, but it's a chapter that I'm writing right now for my sublime book. Okay, and so on, I explain in mastery where that comes from biologically, your DNA, how you are marked, as a unique individual at birth, the combination of variance in your chromosomes, is mathematically impossible for it to ever be replicated. Yes, the variations are The differences are in great between you and me, but those little differences are the differences between me liking this kind of hip -hop music and you liking a different kind of hip -hop music, right?

46:19It creates your inclinations, it creates your tastes. And so what the game of life involves is knowing your uniqueness, is knowing who you are, or is knowing what makes you weird and what makes you odd. Okay? And the problem is, is that we're social animals, and the pressure, continually on us, is to fit into a group, is to be like other people, to have their ideas, to have their values, to have their tastes, to dress like them. Okay? And that happens when you're young, you're in your adolescence, we all go through that phase, I went through that phase. But if you keep on that track when you're in your 20s and on, which is happening a lot today through social media, you're going to lose that sense of what makes you odd and different.

47:11I compare it to a voice. When you're very young, that little voice in you is going, Robert, you should be a writer. Chris, you should be a blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know what it is, right? It's telling you something. And as you get older, you don't hear it anymore because you're hearing all the other way, you're hearing your voices, if you're parents, the teachers, the culture around you, your peers, your friends telling you, this is what's cool. This is what's not cool. And that little voice comes completely drowned out. And so you don't know who you are anymore. And you're afraid, particularly young people today.

47:50I mean, maybe it's always been that way are so afraid of being different. They're so afraid of being odd. But look at all the powerful people in this world. Look at your Elon Musk's, look at your celebrities in entertainment, in business and politics. They're one of a kind. They have like, I hate that word, but it's like a brand. They're different. They stand out for something that's truly different. You know, even Albert Einstein. There's nobody else like Einstein. There's nobody liked DaVinci. Okay? That's where your power lies. And you'll go, oh, but Robert, those are people that were brilliant, that were talented.

48:28I'm not like that. I don't have that. Well, bullshit. You do have that. It's just you're not you're forgetting about it. You don't want to put the effort into it. I talked in mastery of a woman named Temple Grandin who was born with severe, severe autism. And she was able to find her way to become a very brilliant professor, academic writer and about animals, animal behavior, and about autism itself. She found her way to it when she couldn't, when she was three or four, she couldn't even speak any language. She was going to be hospitalized. You have that potential. It's just you're not putting the effort in you, you were lazy.

49:10You want to fit into the group, you want to conform because it's easy. But your oddness, what makes you weird, what makes you different, that little strange quirk and how you want to dress yourself, that little strange quirk in your musical tastes, that little quirk in the food that you like to eat, that is who you are. Those are signs from deep within from your color, from your soul, this is who you are. And if you lose that, not only are you not going to be successful in life, you will also lose yourself and you will be, miss, you'll be unhappy, you'll be unfilial, you'll be alienated from who you are.

49:51And you can get away with that when you're young because you're happy, you look good, you've got energy, things are going right. You get into your 30s and you're like everybody else and you don't know who you are and you don't know what you like anymore. You're just following the trends. You start to get depressed and you start going down this rabbit hole and things can turn really ugly. So you need a bit of courage in life. You need to go, okay, I am weird. I am strange. You know, lean into it. So when I had the 48 laws of power, when at first, when I first wrote the book. That being published yet, it was a very strange looking book and it reflects my own strangeness.

50:39Things on the margins, stories, everything broken up, images, quotes here and there. It's kind of how my brain is. A hodgepodge, kind of a mess, really. And the publishers, they bought the book and then they came back to us and they said, Robert, can you kind of maybe make this more like other books. Can you get rid of all those sections and everything? And I said, no, take it or leave it. This is the book as it is. It's odd, it's strange. They didn't like that because if it doesn't fit into all the other books that have had successful, it's too big of a risk. If this movie isn't like the movies that were made last year, who knows who will go see it, people are so conservative.

51:21But because it was odd, it stood out and it was successful. If I had succumbed and I compromised and made it more like other books, I wouldn't be here talking to you. Sometimes you need a little bit of cajonus, you know, a little bit of courage, you need to stand up and say, I'm okay being different. It's fascinating that lots of people, maybe most people want to be extraordinary in some way, but also don't want to stand out in a way that allows them to be mocked. But, you know, the latter is the price of the former. You can't behave the way that everybody else does and expect to not get the results that everybody else gets.

51:59It's like, I think about regressing to a mean that doesn't exist. Everybody is idiosyncratic and unusual in their own way. And we're all imagining this sort of odd 50th percentile avatar that is the most acceptable. But when we think about why we love the people that we love, of, we don't love them for how average they are. No one's ever said, you know what it is? I'm just besotted with how predictable all of her opinions are. No one's ever said that. We love people for ex -centristicities. And a friend George has the idea of non -fungible people, like non -fungible tokens, that it's irreplaceable.

52:40There is nobody else like them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you think about your favorite memories from your favorite people, it's not from the things that are easily replaceable. it's from the fact that they were just obsessed with football and when the football was on the TV you could talk to them and they wouldn't even turn to you or it's the fact that they hated violence or they loved dogs. Every dog walked into the room and they would be gone. They would be away. That's what we love people for. And my favorite strange person from history, Salvador Dali, and I would take it one step further. You said you kind of have this.

53:10It's advantageous and also psychologically healthy for you to embrace who you are fully. I actually think in some ways it's maybe I would go as far as to say that it is, ajuti to humanity. I think it's ajuti to embrace the things that only you can do. Yeah, well, in nature, the diversity of species in a habitat, make it vital, make it alive, make it sustainable. And that comes from mutations in the genetic code. Some insect has a mutation, and therefore a whole new species, a whole new thing splinters off from that and it creates variety. Well, in human culture is like a habitat in a way. So, you are marked with uniqueness by your genetic code.

54:02Insects don't really have individuality. We have individuality and they are like mutations. And so, your mutation, your difference, you being Chris, is for a purpose. You are marked that way. Because by mining your uniqueness, your weirdness, your oddness, your little quirky tastes, you're going to contribute something new to the culture, and in contributing something new to the culture, you enrich it and you keep it turning around and around and around. Cultures in the past that die on the vine don't have any variety. You can look at Soviet Union edits, most decadent, or when it was really at its worst phase, like in the 70s and 80s.

54:45There's no changes, no variety. Early on, there was also sort of weird different voices. They ended up getting imprisoned and murdered, okay? But a culture has to have variety. It has to have a diversity of voices. Like a gene pool or an immune system. Yeah. And so you, by being odd, you're contributing to that. You're contributing to the culture. By not doing that, you're not contributing at all. And it's a real waste of what nature gave you. I always think, again, about Dali. I spent quite a bit of time researching him and think as brilliant as they were, Michelangelo didn't do Dali. Da Vinci didn't do Dali.

55:23In fact, there's that famous job application that Da Vinci sends, I think, to the king of Italy and Da Vinci's sort of listing, all of the different things that he can do, I can make machines for war and a prebuy, Shay, and a blah, blah, blah. The final paragraph he writes for sentence, also I can paint. I always think about also I can paint. What is the also I can paint that I don't see in myself? What are the things that my friends really value? Perfect example. The guy that I was talking about earlier on George. I've been learning a little bit about myself and I discovered over the last year that I'm a people pleaser in some regard.

56:03And I was lamenting this to him over Christmas as we driving to go and get food. And I sort of brought up something I'd done with him, which was sort of being overly cautious that I would have done something that would have annoyed him or or stepped on his toes in some manner. And I said, I just want to sort of stop you there, because I'm aware that to you, you've been able to frame that as people pleasing in this thing that is malignant and you want to get rid of. But to me, that's you thinking about me first, which is actually one of the things that makes me love you as a friend. So be very careful, sort of labeling areas, creating an unnecessary value judgment and I think getting another perspective and that really gave me pause.

56:46I just thought, yeah, I'm so agreeable with all of these things and I hate disappointing people and I think that other people's emotional states are my responsibility and so on and so forth. And then I bring it up to a friend and he says, yeah, That's why I love you. And I was interesting. Yeah. I mean, it's good to have a little bit of control over something. So if in certain situations, sometimes it's good to be able to not be so pleasing because I'm a people, please or two. It's my nature. So I understand that. And sometimes you have the feeling that it's not coming from the right place. Correct.

57:24You're not choosing to, you're obligated to by your nature. And you're feeling a little bit of fear involved in it. The fear of just pleasing, a fear of rejection, a fear of being different. And it probably goes back to childhood and to my parents. We probably have similar parental dynamics. So, but what's good about what you're saying is, and I completely agree, and I wrote about this, I think, in human nature, is that you have this quality. You can't really control it. It's who you are. You know, it's either genetic or it comes from those first couple of years with your mother or father. So make it work for you.

58:04Find the way that it's a strength and see it as a strength and use it and don't have second thoughts about it. Use it for power, right? And don't be so conflicted about it. It's all how you look at it and there's a reason why you're a people pleaser and you If you weren't a people, please, you wouldn't be doing podcasting. It should be this asshole. I would never have agreed on podcast, right? So it's just that in moments, you wish you could control it all. It's kind of like the grass is greener thing that we were talking about before we got started. This assumption that the thing you don't have is more valuable than the one that you do or that things would be fixed if only you could have that.

58:45But what else comes along for the ride? You know, if you got rid of your people pleasing nature, what are the little parasites that your lack of people pleasingness would also have attached to it. Are you sure? You really sure that that's the thing that you want. Exactly. Yeah, well, that's where it comes down to knowing yourself and knowing what makes you different and knowing these are things you can't really change. So So my wanting to be a writer or Tiger Woods wanted to be a golfer when he's like two years old is probably some genetic component in it. And maybe there's some early bonding, but there's probably a genetic component to it.

59:30You can't control it. It's who you are. And maybe that you can't control it is a good thing. And maybe it's there for a reason. and maybe if you wanted to do something else that wouldn't work out. So my knowing that I wanted to be a writer instead of a business mentor, a lawyer like my parents wanted to be, probably saved my life to be honest with you. So knowing what makes you different is kind of going to guide you past these dangerous moments of life. to and make you want to do to change who you are because you feel pressure, social pressure to change who you are. To regress to this imaginary mean, yeah, two elements I think of me that are genetically predisposed or at least very deeply embedded.

1:00:30The first one is I've always liked to talk and ask questions. And as a child, I always used to get in trouble in school because unfortunately my voice appears to carry further than everybody else's. So even though the naughty kids would be genuinely being naughty, poking other people with fucking protractors or something, I would be the one that was hurt. Even I wasn't misbehaving as much, I would be the one that was hurt. You're being nosy, you know, children should be seen and not hurt. stopping, so no, I... asking all of these questions. Would be one of them and the other one is solitude. I'm an only child.

1:01:03I spent a lot of time listening to audiobooks in my room playing with toys on my own, throwing a ball off the wall and seeing if I could kick it off that wall and then catching it. A hours, hours, an hour's enough because I didn't have anybody else for me too. Didn't have anybody else to play with. And you think, well, God, you know, this... The things that you're punished for when you're a child are the things that you think in Malignant when you're a child you're often rewarded for if you can just find the way to optimize them as an adult. So I'm sure that your ability to sit, read or go to a cabin or write in your room and nobody's coming on and you haven't noticed and you think, well, my solitude as a child was maybe something that I lamented or that I saw as a weakness or something like that.

1:01:46And yet it's a superpower when I become an adult if I can find the way to channel it. And the same thing for the question asking or the listening to audio books, you know, what's the 2024 Internet version of an audiobook? So podcast, it's what I'm doing right now. Uh -huh, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it really just comes down to being aware of who you are, what makes you different, and being comfortable with it. And so you're going to have moments where you're not comfortable with it and you want to conform and you want to be like other people. And you know, you went through that and I went through that in adolescence in particular, on through the 20s, you make some changes to things because you think it's cool.

1:02:35But you keep coming back, you keep coming back to being alone, you keep coming back to doing throwing the ball against the wall in some metaphor. No, no, no, no, no, I'm, I kid you not the way that I like to relax now in between sessions of work, I get a tennis ball and throw it against a wall. It's the most bizarre thing. I had the same thing, because I'm American, mine was baseball. I had a ball and I throw it against the garage door and I would play all these different games with my glove on and I would catch it and I would imitate the crowd cheering me and I had, this was a home runs, etc.

1:03:11If I could do it today, I still would, so I understand that. But you You come back to these things because they're so strong in you and you can't help it and they give you relief and they give you comfort and they're who you are. And so it all comes down to, do you come back to these things or do you change because of the pressures of other people? And what is the difference? Why are some people like that and some people are not? That's the million dollar question. I think it's swimming upstream or swimming downstream is working against or working with your nature and trying to find a way to make it work for you as opposed to trying to change it so that you can find a way to make it work.

1:03:53Makes a lot of sense. Sean Pourey, who does my first million, very, very smart guy. I remember one of the first conversations I ever had with him on Zoom. He had a sort of small leather black basketball in his hand and we were just talking and he was a little bit further back in his desk and he was tossing it like this and rolling it along the desk and sort of you throw it in the air. Like what? Or it wasn't like we were writing anything. It was a casual conversation between friends. I said, what are you doing? He says, I grew up playing basketball. I'm happiest with a ball in my hand. Yeah. And I thought, holy fuck, that's every time that I go to the park, if there's a tennis ball, that's now mine for the rest of it.

1:04:29And I'll bounce it in my hands until we finish up. And then I'll, you know, the tennis ball charity pool that it goes back, it goes back into the park. And I thought, holy fuck. So I came up with a name for that, which is a weirdness role model. and it's somebody who does a thing that sort of breaks the ceiling on what you thought was acceptable behavior. You've seen this guy do a thing and you go, oh my god, like, maybe I could have a ball on my desk. Maybe I could have a tennis ball or a cricket ball on my desk. And that means that I can, because I've seen this guy do it, and it's a weirdo role model or a weirdness role model.

1:05:01Yeah, yeah. Well, I think we all need that in our life. people who were different. I remember in high school, I had an English teacher who kind of changed the course of my life and he was very weird. He was very different. His way of thinking was different and how he talked about writing and literature was very odd and I, other students hated him and I thought it was just fantastic. So it's kind of interesting what you say. There was a role model I could see. And it was just a high school teacher. So it wasn't like a career path for him, but I could see that having that kind of quality was a good quality.

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1:06:47You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. And since nothing seems urgent to you, you're only half involved in what you do.

1:07:01Yeah. Well, I like to think of who the human animal is. I like to take this out of the little specific and go into the meta area here. And what it meant to be human were very creative species, right? We have language, we have consciousness, we have immense powers. Those powers developed under the pressures of necessity, of having to get things done, of having to survive in a very brutal, ruthless world where a leopard could pop out tomorrow and eat me, where there were dangers all around, where there was food with scarce. And under the pressure, we had to think, we had to be creative, we had to be inventive, we had to be strategic, the human brain evolved under immense amounts of pressure.

1:07:59Okay? That's how the brain works. And I almost like to think of it in terms of barometric pressure. So in your brain, when you're feeling that barometric pressure, it's like, I got to get this done, or I'm going to fail, and I'm not, this project won't happen, and people will laugh at me. You work like a fiend, energy, your whole body responds, right? Your blood gets moving. You accomplish things that would normally take you months, you do it in days, because you feel that pressure. You take away that pressure and you don't know what to do. And I've got like three years I could do this or that.

1:08:41You just wander around your lost. You have no energy. You have no focus. You know, maybe you play video games, maybe you're watching porn. You're kind of distracting yourself in the moment. But it's, but your energy is just being dissipated in like 20 different directions. So your brain needs pressure, it needs constant pressure, and stress and pressure is not a bad thing. We have this thing where we feel like stress is bad. It's bad for you. Bad. You know, you need to relax, but you need to chill. Stress will kill you. No, being bored will kill you. Not having anything to do will kill you is much more dangerous than stress.

1:09:22Yes, you can work too hard. You can work when there's no soul involved. I work like a fiend because I'm writing a book and it's a very hard process for me and I'm working far too much, but man, I love it. It's fantastic, right? And it could kill me, the stress could kill me, gave me a stroke, but I'd rather die under the stress than be bored and have nothing to do, okay? So feeling that pressure, it makes your eyes pop open, it makes your brain focus, it makes you alert, it makes you want to live, it makes everything seem exciting to you. She's got to get things done. So I'm writing a book right now.

1:10:04I could take 12 years to write it, but that wouldn't be very, I wouldn't feel good about it. So I give myself deadlines. I give myself a deadline of finishing this chapter by July 31st here at August 10th. I haven't finished it, but now I'm working double hard to try and finish it in time. Because if I didn't have a deadline, I would take forever on a money on a money on a money on a yeah. So create pressure for yourself is a good thing. You know, I gave a talk recently. And what you talked about Thomas Edison, the great inventor. And Thomas Edison was a young man. He's in his early 30s. He'd invented the phonograph and a new wave for the telegraph, but he wasn't hadn't really had any major inventions.

1:10:47He had started Menlo Park, his industrial park for doing research, which I talk about the 1870s, I believe. But he did something very interesting and very strange. I don't know how conscious it was, but he gave an interview with a newspaper and he said, I've been working on creating the incandescent light bulb. Now, before that, there was the arc light, which was a light that was really powerful, that used far too much energy. You couldn't use it in the house. The way houses were lit was with gas light. Gas light was dangerous, it was explosive. And the company's in America that had a monopoly on it.

1:11:29So the price is, it was very corrupt business. So he goes, I'm working on the incandescent light bulb. The report is when that's interesting. Yeah, I'm close to getting, I'm close to nailing it. Wow. And he goes, yeah, and in five years, I'm going to light the entire city of New York with the incandescent light with electric light. Oh, they go crazy. They published this article and the stock prices of gas start going down, down, down, down, down. Money flows into his coffers because the the cheapness of light of a light bulb. The profits are just insane. So money is pouring in. He goes back to his Menlo Park, where he develops ideas, and his employees who are reading a buttock, Mr.

1:12:18Edison, what are you thinking? You would just take it with the incandescent light bulb. We're not even near inventing it. We're not even near creating it. And the idea of lighting New York, what were you thinking? What were you smoking? The equivalent thereof. He goes, well, gentlemen, I said it to this major newspaper. We better get to work. We better make it happen. What happened with all the money that came in, he could now hire the people to do it, but the pressure of getting that done in five years made him do it in five years. It was a monumental work of persistence and discipline and detail, but he had a deadline.

1:12:57He didn't want his reputation. He didn't want to disappoint the public. He had to get it done in five years and he did get it done in five years. So he created his own pressure by using the publicity angle. And people are going to expect it. When's it happening? Has it happened yet? You said he was going to have happened by now. Yeah. Yeah, I think Naval Ravakant talks about how when he was at one of the first companies he ever worked for in Silicon Valley and he started telling people I'm going to start my own startup and six months later he was still there and everyone said, I thought you were starting your own startup and that was the push out of the door for him.

1:13:36You couldn't bear the expectation that he'd put not on himself only on himself but also from other people too. So I suppose our needs to be socially consistent can be bad when it's maybe be derogating your uniqueness, your idiosyncrasies and your weirdness, but if you can funnel it to motivate you to go forward. Yeah. So the reason why, you know, I don't think that I would be particularly successful being a journalist, for instance, despite the fact that I do three episodes a week for, it's been four years that we've done that, it's been six years, the show's been going, but But this is because my need to not look silly in front of other humans and how much I am enthused by the presence of others even whilst being quite introverted means that by doing a podcast, I've never not shown up.

1:14:32I've never canceled because of something that hasn't been, you know, just a viable reason. So I don't want to look silly in front of the person I'm sat opposite. If it was me in a blank piece of paper, God, the motivation to do that, you know, every, three times a week, I need to come up with a new column of a thousand words. That'd be, whereas for the person who wants to just write on their own and come up with headlines, and start, oh, guys, sit down with a person again, have a conversation with them and ask them questions, and that's not my sort of thing. So, yeah, being able to use the social mores to kind of pull you to where you want to be, to understand, again, your own, yeah, fallibility and insecurities and attach those like a south and a north magnet, and sort of use that to pull you along.

1:15:14I always like to riff on what you're saying. I always like to challenge myself. So, I never, each book that I do, I'm now on my eighth book, is different from the other one, right? And my books take several years to write, they're not like, I can't put the mountain six months. Each one is different from the last one. And I'm taking a risk because my readers Here's our expecting Roberts write about strategy power. Now he's writing about mastery, seduction, seduction. Yeah. Now he's writing about the sublime, but the hell does this problem? Okay. It's a challenge. And the challenge is good because it gets my energy levels going.

1:15:56But if I took a challenge that was too difficult, so there's a level here. So I could go here and write another 48 laws of power would be like this. It would be kind of easy. I can go here and write a book on how to build a skyscraper out of 10, I don't know whatever. Okay, I can never write it. I can never do it. It's too big of a challenge. Or, you know, the history of all human ideas. Okay, that would be the equivalent there. Okay, no, I kind of go here. It's a challenge. It's not here boring 48 laws of power part two. It's not the history of world ideas. 4 ,000 pages. It's here. It's a little bit above me.

1:16:41It's going to get my energy going, but it's not impossible. That's the game of life. So if Edison had said, I'm going to light the entire world in five years away. New York was a pretty hefty list. I'm going to light New York in 50 years also. Yeah, exactly. Which is probably more realistic. It was a challenge. It was a pretty big challenge, but it was not an impossible one. We'll get back to talking to Robert in one minute, but first I need to tell you about AG1. In my quest for the best green drink on the planet, I went through just about every single option. And after a year of testing, I found AG1.

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1:18:06That's drinkag1 .com slash modern wisdom. It is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt. Yeah, the proverbial one hit wonders.

1:18:22You know what happens is you know there was a real syndrome in hip hop and you know I talked a lot about that with 50 where you come from, we come from the hood and you've never had any kind of money and then overnight You've got six figures, seven figures. You've got women like left -right center coming to you. You've got all this power and attention and celebrity and it goes to your head and you start partying and you start thinking like, well, okay, I better put on another album, But you get a little bit conservative now because you want to keep going and you think that you've got a formula for it, right?

1:19:18And then your second album doesn't do nearly as well. But if that first album didn't do well and you were smart about it, it would have taught you a valuable lesson about the music industry. So 50, he did his first album called Power of the Dollar. And I have a kind of a bootleg copy of it he gave me. It's absolutely, it's available now pretty much on the internet. It's absolutely fantastic. But right before it was to be launched, he got shot. And the producers dropped him on the prod, dropped his album. the album they didn't release it, and they dropped him from Columbia Records. It was too dangerous.

1:20:02It was a drug beef. And we can't have this guy touring if he's gonna be, if there's gonna be violence. And so he was thinking, you know, that failure, instead of it had been a big hit, what had gone to his head, he, you know, who knows what would have happened to him. Here it was like completely back to squares. It was here, in fact, worse. He had nothing. He did all this work and he had this price on his head and nobody would come near him And he wanted to learn what the lesson was from this from his this failure It wasn't really if it wasn't his fault Although it sort of was because he had been a crack dealer and it was like a previous beef That had he hadn't really resolved involved.

1:20:50So, you know, it was maybe partially as fault. Anyway, he goes, well, the lesson is, I can't be dependent on a record label. They're too conservative, they're too cautious. I'm somebody who lives on the edge. My music plays on the fact that I was a crack dear, that I lived dangerously, that I'm the real thing, that I'm not a fake gangster down the real thing, okay? So what am I going to do? I'm not going to put out a record. I'm going to do mixed tapes and I'm going to sell them on the streets of Queens and then Brooklyn and then Manhattan. You know, just these little tapes, these singles and I'm going to be as violent as first one that he puts out is called fuck you.

1:21:34He's saying fuck you to everybody who ever doubted me, fuck you to try to kill me, fuck you to the record labels, was part in my language, et cetera. So he learned from that. He learned not to take success for granted. And he built on that. And so he's not a one hit wonder. So sometimes success when you're in your 20s is the worst thing that can happen to you. Because you have no discipline, you have no perspective. You think it's just gonna keep going the way it is. You're not aware of all the dangers out there. you don't have life experience enough to realize how things could turn on you very quickly.

1:22:13If I had been given the chance to write the 48 laws of power when I was in my 20s and I had success, it would have ruined me. I probably wouldn't have had success. Why? Because I wasn't ready for it. Look, Chris, I had had so much failure until I was essentially 39 years old, pushing 40, that I had perspective, that I know what it's like to fail. And so when I had success, I wasn't like, wow, I'm the greatest thing that ever happened. I can just live off this forever. My next book is going to be fantastic. No, have a little voice in me. It says Robert, you failed so many times. You're probably going to fail again, right?

1:22:56you've seen so many people in Hollywood who started off hot and bombed. I had experienced to know that I can't take this for granted. I have to be careful, I have to be strategic. I have to build on it and not let the success go to my head. And it didn't go to my head. When I wrote the art of seduction, I was so worried that the book would fail. I was certain it was going to fail. I felt that way about every single book I've ever written. You know, I still feel that way. You know, I this next book, Sutton, it's doomed to failure. I better make it the best book of all. So if you, you can get drunk on your success, you know, and don't get high on your own supply was the phrase that 50 would always say.

1:23:48So, you know, you You want to keep your feet on the ground. You want to know that failure is nipping at your buds. Your next podcast, Chris, could be the worst one of your life. You'll say the wrong thing. Suddenly everything will start cratering. That put keeps you on the edge and you don't take your success for granted. Yeah, I'm very glad when I look back at the period that when we first spoke up until the period, the second time that we spoke. So we did about, we was about episode 78, was about episode sort of 350, something like that. And that period, if you look at the graph of plays and followers and money is like that, it's just flat.

1:24:32The graph is just totally flat between the two. There's a little upward tilt. And it's the law of anything which becomes exponential that as you start to zoom out more, it makes the very beginning look even more poultry and it's that up to there but that's only been the last two years, two and a half years. There and I you know I tell the story that there was days in 2018 the year that we launched the show where we'd been going for maybe 10 episodes, 20 episodes something you know a half way through the first year and there was days where we do no plays. I'm still releasing weekly episodes and there was days where there would be no one, no place.

1:25:12You know, my mum, listen to every episode and I got friends. I'm still in the guilt ridden. You should listen to my new thing thing and zero plays, nothing, nothing. I'm like, that's insane. And I'm glad, I'm glad. It makes me, you know, every time that I get to find a random garage in the middle of LA and think, oh, we get to light this and make it look like a cinema movie, like a Hollywood movie, in Hollywood. How cool is that? And it's framed up against something which is smaller. There's a documentary that I'd really love to get you to watch. It's called How I'm Feeling Now by Lewis Capaldi.

1:25:50So he's a Scottish singer. You would recognize ton of his songs. And basically it charts this challenge that he has. Scottish dude, a very on typical like a like a chubby young guy. It's not like a heartthrob or anything with Scottish accent as well. And very self -deprecating which is charming. He's charming in that way. But he writes these songs when he's 17. He's playing them in Working Man's pubs all around Scotland. And then he gets picked up by Universal Records and he releases this album and it goes beyond into Stella, just the biggest billions and billions of streams. And he does a world stadium tour and Glastonbury main stage, everything, everything, everything, everything.

1:26:32And then he has to do a second one. He has to do it again. And the stress of another album. He has to do a second album. And this is an interesting twist, I think, on... It's a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt. Because he is someone that I think did learn the right lessons from it going right on his first attempt, that he shouldn't take things for granted, that maybe that was a fluke that he does still need to work hard, some of the lessons that failure would have taught you. But he just has this unbelievable pressure because the bar, he's taken the chairlift to the top of Everest.

1:27:10And he goes, well, where, how am I supposed to top that? You know, it's the classic thing as well, I suppose, that you have a lifetime to write your first book and then, Well, I mean, most people maybe two years for you six years to write your second. You got this wealth, this big well to dig into material for the first one. And then it's like, congratulations. Now do it again. Yeah. You got again, but I just did. Yeah. But again, I think you'd love the documentary. It's very, very heartwarming. It's a name of it again. How I'm feeling now on Netflix. Yeah. Well, a lot of it is, comes to your own level of wisdom about, do you have some perspective?

1:28:10So it's possible that somebody could have success in their 20s and they would be able to handle it. But it's probably because they came, they had a family background or something behind it, some kind of experience behind it. Because by nature, we are always thinking that we're better than we are. Our self -opinion, we're really, I'm probably like this. I think I'm like this, right? Some people are like this. The moment you have success, you think you have the golden touch. people start a lot of the worst thing that happens to you is the people that surround you. And they go, my God, you're a genius.

1:28:53You know, you're absolutely brilliant. And then you want to bounce ideas off them. They go, that's fantastic. Go ahead, go go. Whereas you want them to say, it's shit, it's terrible. You have the worst idea. But now you're followed, you're surrounded by sycophants and yes, people. And they're telling you how great you are. You see that with a lot of celebrities. I wonder whether that was the role for the court cynic in some ways to offset the second. Oh, you talk about the court or the court gesture. I suppose so, but I don't know whether the court cynic is just like a colloquial term or whether there was a genuine role, but I could imagine that it would be useful.

1:29:27I know the gesture was there to be the only one that could mock the king with impunity, basically. But if I was a king in the medieval ages, if I was a noble king, smart one, I would have employed a court cynic and I've employed the court cynic to only come up with counter positions that even if the entire room, the whole council thought that it was fantastic. Tell me how this is wrong. That's part of my consulting with business people that I've had over the years. That's the role that I play. Bring Robert in, he'll tell us it's shit. But they don't listen to me. That's the main lesson. You know, I tell people, think of all the things that are going to go wrong with your plan.

1:30:13Let's game this out. This could go wrong. This could go wrong. The public might react this way. A competitor might be already anticipating the same thing will come out. So let's gain this out and let's make sure that the launch of your product is full proof. Okay. So we think of all the things that can go wrong. All right. Then let's alter the strategy. Let's go here a little more instead of going here. They never listen to me. Have you tried telling them it's going to go right? Then they might say, oh God, Robert said he was going to go right. We definitely need to change something. Reverse psychology.

1:30:49I might need to try that. That might be the next one. Okay, this I really like this one being attacked is a sign that you were important enough to be a target You should relish the attention and the chance to prove yourself Yeah Well, you know you want If if everything is easy in life If everyone loves what you're gonna do and you have no enemies you have no opposition nothing to resist You're just going to be mush. You're not going to amount to anything. You're not going to be able to push yourself. You're not going to be able to change evolve. Muhammad Ali said, if I didn't have Joe Frazier around, I would not have become the great boxer that I am.

1:31:35I mean, he would have been a great boxer anyway. But an anemosis like Joe Frazier put me on a much higher level. Is there not a line in Batman where the Joker says, I complete you? If he doesn't, there should be. It seems like the sort of thing that he'd like you said in there. But it is the truth though, without the Joker, what's the Batman? Yeah. I love the idea you should relish the chance to prove yourself.

1:32:05Pressure is a privilege in that way. Yeah. You know, when I was doing the book with 50 cent, the 50th law, I was very kind of timid, and I decided to make it really a book about 50, because I was kind of like, he's the celebrity who am I? So I wrote a very 50 centric version of the book about his business center. and nobody liked it. In fact, the publisher canceled the project. And here I was, my reputation was on the line. It could have been a humiliating blow to me. Okay, and so another publisher comes in and he says, Robert, you need to change the idea. You mean to make it more about you and not less about him but more about you and your style and your ideas and the intersection.

1:33:07Yeah. So, oh shit, I spent a lot of time working on this because if you do that, I'll publish the book. I go, my reputation, I'll be ruined if I don't, okay? And so, all right, I'll do it. You and he says, you have eight months to do that. I worked like a fiend. Now, I didn't have an enemy here, so, but the challenge, it was like I was in a boxing ring with Joe Frazier, right? I had to raise my game. It was the first time in my writing career, writing books that I was facing, failure, real failure. If I didn't succeed in that book, 50 would have thought something was wrong. And we'd announced the publication people, you know, I would have maybe recovered, but it would have been a major blow.

1:34:02And I had to make that book happen. And it brought out best in me. It made me do things that I had never done before. It built up my self confidence. So it's the equivalent of somebody doubting you because there were a lot of doubters around and a lot of people thinking, well, Robert's kind of finished it. We thought it was this, but he's not really. And so having that kind of pressure, like we talked about deadlines and having people doubt you, it can crush you, but it can also make you a lot stronger, it can make you a better fighter. Was there ever a 49th law? Do you want straight from 48 to 50?

1:34:41Well, he's 50 cent. I didn't know. I wondered if you'd ever thought, get a 49th thing, and then it means that I can... No, there is no 49. The 49th law is there is no such thing as the 49th law. You don't talk about the 49th law, that's what it is. Use absence to increase respect. The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you're already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired, you must learn when to leave, cultivate value through scarcity. Yeah, I mean, the problem that a lot of people have with my books and in life is they're too black and white.

1:35:23So they'll say things like, well Robert, if I'm absent on social media, nobody will have heard of me. If I don't write this book, if I don't put it in another album, if I don't produce this product, how can I do that? You know, what do you talk about? Absence like that. That's very dangerous in the world. Well, I don't talk about just absences. I say it's a dance between absence and presence, right? So it's not like you disappear so that you are a little bit less present. You're able to disappear for a while and you make people wonder about you. Napoleon said, if I show up at the theater every night in Paris, in my little emperor's box, people start taking me for granted.

1:36:08If I show up every week, they'll be gone. And that's interesting, but he's coming over. If I show up once a month, it's like an event. Oh my God, he came here. When is he coming next? Well, it's all this attention. That's the dynamic of absence and presence. If you come every two or three days, if you come every week, come a month, yeah. If you come every year, people will forget about you, won't have any power. You have to know exactly the dynamic. Isn't it interesting that this is reflected neurologically with intermittent schedule reward of variable schedule reward to which is exactly what social media and slot machines and gambling.

1:36:45It's what they all work on. Yeah. Well, what is that? So if you press a button, perfect example of this, mice get to push a button. You're into mice again. You like the mice. I need to use something as a legitimate example here. So mice get to push a button. If it's every five times or 10 times or 20 times, they get a piece of food, they will push the button, but then they will get sick. If it's intermittent, they don't know when it's going to come, they will push the button way more aggressively. And it's that the dopamine we get when we're not ready for it, when we're not ready to see Napoleon up in his emperor's box, overlooking the ballet.

1:37:28Yeah. That's real. And ever since the second episode that we did, it's always in my mind. And I always think about your face whenever I think of this particular sentence, a loophiness is alluring. I always think about that. And my housemate's dad has a similar idea, which is be good and be gone. Yeah. And it's how he shows up at parties. It's a good justification for the Irish goodbye, I think, as well, but be good and be gone. Oh, why was Robert? He was, yeah, oh, he was the color of the Irish. The color of an Irish goodbye. Leaving without saying goodbye to everybody. Yeah. That's the opposite of a French goodbye.

1:38:04It takes forever. Or you never leave. Everyone's like kissing each other and talking to each other at the door and they never leave. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so people think that nowadays, so like in a dating situation, is a common example. If nowadays, because things are different, you have a date. And if you're like texting her the next day or then are that evening, it's kind of like, hmm, something, I don't know about this guy's a little bit desperate. I'm not so sure about him. If you text the next day, it's a little bit, if you wait, take two days, but not three. She's starting to think about you, starting to go, this guy's interesting.

1:38:55Maybe he doesn't like me or maybe he does. I'm not sure. And she starts thinking about you, she starts fantasizing about you. Then the second day your name pops up, it has power, it has effect. So if you're inundating somebody, you don't give them room to fantasize. You don't give them room to think about you. And then they start one of these days taking you for granted kind of thing. So people say, yeah, but in the world like celebrities will tell me, I had this one female rap star, not the surname. name who would say, yeah, but Robert and social media can't disappear and go, yes, you can. I mean, it was before the social media era, but Michael Jackson would disappear for several years before a record.

1:39:35Beyonce disappeared for like two years in between records didn't reproduce anything. Then when she came out with a record, whoa, what a splash. You can still get away with it now. You just have to know the sweet spot. You have to know that maybe in social media, you can't disappear for a year or even a month. But if you do it for a week, people are noticing it and they start thinking about you. So you have to kind of know how to play the game. I think there's a momentum build as well that perhaps is everybody needs a price that you need to pay in the beginning. So there's a technique in ergoing.

1:40:16So when you sit on one of those indoor rower things, concept two. And what people will do in order to get the speed up more easily, they'll do little polls. And then they'll do really long polls and that's when they start to get their power in. Now, I often think about that when it comes to people beginning anything. It's like, hey, if you haven't started your podcast, you don't get to be absent in the beginning. Like, that's just called not starting your podcast, right? You know, delaying the publishing of your first book is not you being a luthan -deluring. it's you just not getting the work done.

1:40:51So there is a price, there is momentum and inertia that needs to be accumulated. And then you break expectations. So this shows that I don't have the can to show you. I launched a product last year and we had fades, coloured fades, orange to orange or yellow to orange, yellow to green. And then the third can that we released with just pure white. And I wanted to break the pattern. I wanted to set expectations and then very quickly to break them. And I thought about it kind of the same from a branding perspective there too. I think I have a convention. I think I know what to expect. Oh, that's a little bit interesting.

1:41:29That's different to what I would have thought. Yeah, but you do have created this setup for that precisely correct? Yeah, precisely correct. It breaking a convention before you've set a convention is just being sporadic and sort of scattergunning everywhere. Whereas it would be like if you'd released an article that was one of the laws from 48 laws and then the next book was different or it was on a different topic and you go, well, you haven't established enough of a style. I haven't got the expectation. You can't break an expectation that I don't yet have. And you know, this is surprise as well as I say, power is a game of psychology.

1:42:12So you have to master these very subtle and invisible rules of psychology. And so knowing some people know it by instinct, they have a marketing sense that I need to break up expectations if everything is always the same. There's no surprise. Okay, but you have to understand, you have to think about how people are going to respond. You have to understand psychology involved. That surprise gets attention. That's what's not as expected stands out and people are excited they're interested in it. Okay. And also creating viral effects is another is like the flip side of this using absence and creating absence.

1:42:54So I talk about this in the art of seduction. If you pass by a restaurant where there's just just one couple sitting there eating and go. And the menu looks good and the reviews are good. You go, I don't think we want to go there. You go a few blocks further and this is for restaurant. People are packed, they're sitting there, all laughing, they're drinking. All right, let's go in there. The food could be crap. But because you see other people doing it, you're drawn into it. Well, you are speaking. My language is an ex -club promoter. So we would do everything. We would, one of the strategies we used to have was outside of a nightclub, your cue, the length of your cue is the determinant of how busy it is inside, but the length of your cue is determined by how wide the cue is, not by how many people are in the cue.

1:43:41So we kept a two wide cue. So we would squeeze the barriers in and these people would be going two by two like Noah's Ark, but we would be able to create a cue that was a hundred yards long. Well, you see, these are things you just knew art instinctively. I don't know. So people maybe don't get that kind of thing, but that's the kind of psychology you want to play on. I talked about how in PT Barnum, he was a master of this. He had the Museum of Audities in Manhattan, right? And the whole game was to get people inside because once there was inside, there were all these really weird shit in there that was so strange and interesting.

1:44:19These curiosities, these deformed fetuses and animals. How do you get them inside? So we hired the worst possible band he could find to play really terrible music right near his museum. And they'd be playing so loud that people would run inside the museum to escape this music. That's the kind of thinking. Machiavellian Q organizing. Actually speaking of that, I mentioned I told you I'm going to Florence next week. I'll be able to see Nickolas, Tum, Tum, it's in Santa Crotch. I love Santa Crotch. What is a lesson from Machiavelli that you think most people gloss over or something, sort of a hidden gem that you wish had more exposure, more people knew?

1:45:18There's so much there you're going to tease my adult brain here, but the idea that's the most powerful idea that he has, and he has a lot of powerful ideas, is that people rise to a position, an elevated position based on a certain quality that they have that makes make some stand out. Let's say for Chris, Williamson, it's your pleasing ability, your bono me, your sympathico, whatever the language you want to use makes you go up. But a point is reached where the times change, things are different because life is always changing. And that thing that you relied on, that strength that you have, is no longer so in demand, it's not so interesting.

1:46:16The culture has moved on, but you don't know how to move on because you're addicted to the same way of doing things. So when he was saying what would be the perfect prince to talk about the prince, like in his book, the prince, would be a man or a woman, but his time would be a man who could continually adapt to circumstances, who just didn't have one form of power. He compared it fortune is constantly shifting. You have to be able to shift with fortune and write it and keep writing it up or nubber. That would be like a superhuman being who could always adapt to circumstances and not change who they are.

1:46:54Not suddenly be a confident person who's now really timid, but to use your confidence in a different manner when the time asks for something different. And so in my consulting, most of the people who fail in life that I'm working with have reached a level of power, a position, but they can't go any further. They hit a ceiling because they don't know how to adapt. They only have one way of responding to circumstances. So we think of Machiavelli as this kind of rigid thinker with this sort of aggressive ideas, because actually a very fluid thinker. And it's all about being fluid, one of his main metaphors is water, because there was a river in Florence and he'd be sort of obsessed with currents, kind of like in a sunsoon Asian way, your ability to flow and change and adapt to circumstances.

1:47:51And I wish people understood that and weren't so rigid about everything that they do. They weren't so rigid in how they read the 48 laws of power. They weren't so rigid in their politics. They weren't so rigid in their creative life. So it's finding play again in some way, I suppose. I know it's come up a lot over the last year or so for me. I think that there is not for me. I'm not doing it. Someone, maybe not you, either, you're busy. I should write a book about play about reintroducing a sense of play, what it does from a sort of psychological health standpoint. One of the greatest books ever written has already been written on that subject.

1:48:31It's a book called Homo Ludens by a Dutchman Johannhausencha, written in like the 30s, I think. Nobody could ever write a better book. He talks about the history of play and he goes devily deeply into the psychology of it. It's one of the best books you can ever read. Homo, meaning man, Ludens is playing. So it's playing man. Yeah, so you know, there's homo sapiens thinking about our brain. He's saying we're homoludens. We're the playing animal It's absolutely brain book. I could never top that Thinking about Machiavelli. I had Dr. Alexander Lee on the podcast So he wrote a phenomenal biography of Machiavelli.

1:49:15He came on the show his historian What's it called? I can't remember the name. I can't remember the name of his book

1:49:27Anyway, he told me the story. I didn't realize that Machiavelli was such a tarot way sort of little Lathario here in the who's total seducer. Yeah, but he told me the story about him where he'd been on the road and he can't remember the term that he used talks about something like a like a a nuptial longing or something like this sort of very proper British, he's horny, Machiavelli's horny, and he gets taken into this brothel, and there's a woman that he sleeps with, but the light is off, and he says that he decides to get the candle and bring it closer to her, and he sees this idiot's woman, and he throws up a sort of traumatized by the thing that he's done.

1:50:16Anna, yeah, to hear Dr. Lee, the very sort of proper British historian telling me this story about the thing is what really gets my go what I can't stand is people use the word Machiavellian and they have this image of him as this evil conniving person, you know, and they have the image of him and how he actually looks, he's like a rat and he's he was an incredibly warm, humane human being who was really very funny and witty. He was a complete Renaissance man. So first of all, he understood politics on an extremely high level. Absolutely brilliant. He was not a great tip, but he was a low level, but he had a very good sense of psychology.

1:51:01He was a great seducer of women. We know that, okay? He also wrote a play. He wrote plays and he wrote poetry. People don't realize that. He wrote the most scandalous play I think ever written, making fun of the Catholic Church, where there are rituals taking place in a church that are incredibly impious, you know, sacrilegious. It's a called mandragol, it's a hilarious play. Trust me, it was performed in the Vatican. It was so good at the time, in the 1520s. People don't realize that this man was a true Renaissance man. He was a poet. He was a playwright. He was a lover of women. He was a great strategist.

1:51:49You know, so yeah. I have lots of anecdotes about him too as well and that says, but yeah. He's fantastic. I really enjoyed learning about the man. You know, it's odd that the idea is proceed a person. The, my favorite book about Machiavelli is called Machiavelli's Virtue by Harvey Mansfield. It's a fantastic book I highly recommend it. One of the few academics that I actually really like. He understands Machiavelli, whereas most people are not on the level of him. And he writes about how relevant Machiavelli is to the world today. And how he foresaw everything going on in business and politics.

1:52:29Please, if you're interested in Machiavelli, Machiavelli's Virtue. It's one of my favorite books. One of the groups, I suppose, I think that's looking for a lot of advice at the moment is young men feeling a little lost like their place in the world is just uncertain. They don't really know or have the direction. What advice would you have for young men that are feeling a little lost in the modern world? Well, you have to be comfortable with who you are and with your masculinity. So the word masculine is now got like this negative connotation around it, which is terrible. Because you're a young man.

1:53:16It's not every young man. Some men don't feel this way. But a lot of young men, I remember myself, you've got this testosterone that's roaring through you, you're competitive, you're ambitious, you have goals, you have this energy, you want to assert yourself. But it's bad, it's bad, it's bad. You're not supposed to be like that, you know? And so, and the culture isn't about, there's no virtue in masculinity. Okay, there is such a thing as toxic masculinity, most definitely. But there are virtues in being masculine and have to be redefined and we have to have icons and role models for that. And so when I was growing up, I got to sound like I hated that when people said that when I was kids.

1:54:02So I knew you're going to hate me, but I'll say that anyway, I can't help it because it's true. When I was growing up, you know, I watched like a lot of Westerns, you know, it was the the silent a terrible kind of thing, the Gary Cooper thing. But my idea of masculinity growing up was a man who was in control of himself. Who wasn't mean, wasn't pushing people around. Who is decent, who treated women well. So treating women well is a masculine virtue, is a good thing. It comes from a position of strength. You're not insecure about your masculinity. You don't have to prove that you're a man by demeaning women, by pushing them around, by calling them horrors and bitches, it's said, you don't have to take the Andrew tape path in life.

1:54:50You can respect women and respecting them is a sign of your strength, is a sign of being secure in your masculinity. You don't need to put other people down to make yourself feel better. Okay? So we have to redefine these qualities, but there are no icons like out out there. You either have the Andrew tates out of there. You have these wimpy men who are just so afraid of being masculine. Okay? Your aggression, your assertiveness, your testosterone, it's a good thing. It's how things get done. It's what energizes you. What puts you in the world. It makes you ambitious. It makes you assert yourself and motivate yourself.

1:55:30It has to be channeled. It has to be disciplined. But you have to see, you know, we were talking about our people pleasing things and how you reframe it, you have to see who you are and see the virtue and and see the power in that. And it's a cultural problem because men are very confused. I didn't have that confusion when I was growing up. So now it's very difficult because you're being told that all these things that you feel naturally are negative. They're only negative if you can't control them. So self -control is a very masculine quality. You're able to control yourself. You're able to control your passions.

1:56:16You're able to not talk too much if you don't need to talk too much. I'm not saying that women don't have, that the opposite is wrong. These are things that men naturally have because of their biology. And I'm sorry, I do believe in these things. But they're good. They're just how you use them that can be bad. And so I just wish there were more positive role models out there. I know I Could be a real bastard. I could be a real asshole. I'm very competitive When I play games I like to win and I could be a little bit mean about it. Okay, I mean, I'm a pleaser, but I like winning I channeled it all of my aggression all of that testosterone I'm not saying I have more than anyone.

1:57:05I just have normal amounts. I poured into my books. I poured that edge, that aggression, that like, at Damien, I don't really like you. I don't like the world into the 48 laws of power. And to hear how these manipulative, these help people manipulate, these are how people can be bad and cruel. And Damien, I'm gonna get all my aggression by exposing and showing it and being as real and direct. I channeled it into something as opposed to hurting other people kind of thing. So finding ways to channel your aggressive tendencies is a positive way of being a man you have to find whatever that is. Sports is a great example but there are other things as well.

1:57:45It feels a lot like alchemy in a way. Or actually it's even it's alchemy is taking something which is bad or useless and turning it into something which is valuable. This is taking something which is uncertain. It could go either way. You know, this desire for mastery, for conquer, for achievement, and using it to propel you forward. And hopefully making the world a better place along, there's no reason that your desire to pursue and conquer and become masterful in a thing has to leave the world worse. I saw some weird zero, some thing where in order for you to become better, you need to take from the world.

1:58:30I think it's additive. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, you have to, you have to be smart and you have to be in control of yourself. And you have to be disciplined. But let's just add discipline to one of those other masculine virtues. It just needs to be redefined. We need people out there men and even women who feel comfortable with this, saying these are the virtues. This is the good sides of being a man and being masculine. And so even mastering things and even being competitive is not bad. You build a business that kicks ass, that does really well, that gives people certain things that they need it or they wanted.

1:59:25So it's just a matter of how you channel that energy and how you control it. And what the virtues are is self control, not feeling like you have to put people down in order to raise yourself up, feeling confident, not having to boast. A terrible toxic masculinity is boasting and saying, look how much money I have, look how much women I've slept with, look at all this other thing. You're just talking, it's just a lot of hot air. That's not strong, that's actually weak. Some so many powerful qualities actually come from a position of great weakness and insecurity. When I look at leaders who are always like boasting and talking about how the great things that they've done, I see a little insecure little weak child having to say these things, right?

2:00:17So it just depends on whether it comes from something solid and strong or it comes from massive wells of insecurity. Robert Green, ladies and gentlemen, Robert, I really, really appreciate your openness of being able to talk about this stuff. I think this line between human psychology and human nature is very much needed at the moment because as you said about the masculinity portion, the role models, the archetypes sort of previous lessons and channels that we would have run through. Many of them have been thrown up in the air by technology, by changing social positions. And I'm looking forward to you getting this sublime, which Yeah.

2:01:11And then when it's finished, I'll be missing it. And ready to do the next one. What's your self -imposed, rough self -imposed submission date? Well, it's going to hopefully it'll be out in 2026. Okay. You're going to have to wait two years because it's going to take a year to finish and then a year to put it in shape. And I can say it's going to be a very weird book. coming from you, that is an extra special claim. Yeah, it's the weirdest book though that I've ever written. Can you say why? Well, I'm trying to shake you up, I'm trying to make you not see the world in the same way. I'm trying to make you realize that you're looking at it in a very limited fashion.

2:01:55And so every chapter, I'm trying to challenge you and say that the world is different and actually much more exciting and interesting than you think it is. And so, I would like to compare it to taking drugs without having to take the drugs. That it's going to alter a little bit how you look at things as if you micro -dosed on something. It's books kind of like micro -dosing. So, it's going to alter how you look at nature, how you look at animals, How you look at yourself, how you look at people, how you look at your own childhood, how you look at history, how you look at art and music, and then how you look at death.

2:02:41Death is the final chapter, obviously, because death is the ultimate sublime. You know, something I know quite intimately. So it's going to be a weird book, and maybe it'll fail. Maybe I'll have 10 readers. Well, you've been certain over the last eight. So, you know, yeah, but this could be the one that fails. You never know. I've been thinking so much about all and dread as two emotions that are pretty absent. And I imagine that they fit somewhere into the sublime. I think transcendent experiences like that. Well, it's so important. I mean, I know we're at the end here, but the sublime is an unusual thing because it's combination of pain and pleasure, of awe and terror.

2:03:27And these two things in the human body and I analyzed the physiology of it, create a kind of vibratory effect in you. Where if it were just beautiful and pleasurable, wow, okay, if we were just painful, ah, but the combination of the two is startling and it makes you look at it and it has an effect on your body and it gives you chills. And so, like when you look at it the night sky, it's infinite, it's awesome. But I'm so small, I'm so tiny. It's so significant. I'm so meaningless. Put those two together and you have the sublime. Well, I'm going to see the Valdez four seasons performed in Venice in two weeks.

2:04:13So I wonder whether I'll have some sublime or some ore or some dread. I'll take some... What's the dread? Oh!

2:04:25Being in the presence of mastery like that throws into sharp contrast all of the areas where you haven't pushed yourself and you can feel dreadful for that. I often find whenever I see my friends who are in a rock band and they play like a huge gig and I'm there and you know I just watch them and command that thousands of people. Yeah, yeah. And I go, fuck you doing with your life. Like why are you? So it's a beautiful blend of the two. I tell you before we do leave, first off, everyone needs to go and pick up the 25th anniversary edition of 48 Loss of Power because it's beautiful and you get to do that cool thing with the edges of the paper.

2:05:04And it's a limited edition. It's gonna run out. And that. But also you've started pumping on YouTube as well. Well, it seems like every few days there's a new piece of content, so people can go and check that out, which I'm a massive fan of. Yeah, yeah, I can't believe it, because we started out with nothing and we're going to be hitting two million subscribers this year. So it's, you join us in the muck and the mire of the content creator world. Oh my God. It's so, you have to be doing peace signs and selfies and all the rest of it. Yeah. The pressure. You can't let up. It's almost like a bad thing in some ways.

2:05:43Aloofness is difficult when you're doing that. Robert, thank you so much. It's been a long time coming to do it in person. Yeah, thanks.