Robert Greene: How to use the 48 Laws of Power to get what you want in business

27:12People 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 going to 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 going to tune you out and they're going to move on to somebody else. And so changing the, scrambling their expectations is a form of silence, is creating mystery, because that's what this is all about.

27:50Sean, do you ever think about this stuff? I thought of it when Sam said something kind of amazing to me. 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. And we called it the 100 ,000 Club. And we all started posting. And we got there. And he said something like, my goal is by the time I'm 40 to be off the internet. Like just sort of disappear from the internet. And I've only ever heard of people saying, I want to become more famous and more digital and have a bigger platform and a bigger audience and more followers.

28:33And 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 turn 40. I almost didn't believe it. In fact, I still only half believe it. But I loved it. 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 many times on this podcast, in the last five years of this podcast, he's come on and be like, I've decided I'm a fitness influencer now.

29:04And 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 seven, reinvent yourself. 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 grander frame for what I'm doing. But I appreciate that. I like that. I do like going back to the bottom of the mountain. And so when you're saying this about silence or about disappearing, I don't think there's a lot of that, which makes it, I think, even more valuable.

29:38It's more rare. It's more different. But I also think it comes with a season. You need almost a season of loudness to get people to care. If you're nobody and you disappear, then you never were anybody, right? But if you have a season of loudness followed by a season of silence, that seems more optimal. That's what I wrote in my, as you can see, I'm taking notes while we do this. That's what I wrote in there. 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 going to operate.

30:08And that combination is what's more powerful. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah. So what is Sam going to do when he turns 40 then? uh that's a great question but uh 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 i do believe in reinventing yourself like 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 file you know find your life's purpose and go after it but there's like these weird pivots to get there.

30:44It's not a straight line. And I believe in like these forcing functions to make you pivot to kind of find where you're supposed to be. So where will that pivot lead you when you get off the internet? You don't know, you're going to discover 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, But I think that for the last 20 years, since the internet has been around, you hear the A word, authenticity, thrown around a lot. And I actually think that based off your works and reading history, being authentic, that's actually kind of a new thing.

31:30That'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 over glamorized 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.

32:09I think of too often we humans get trapped in kind of words and things that are black and white, they're this or that. So you can create the veneer, the appearance of authenticity, right? Which is very important. It's 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 is very powerful about you, but you're conscious of it. You're not just operating 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?

32:54And then maybe in four or five 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 their authentic character is no longer interesting, right?

33:38Because tastes change. And maybe right now, kind of saying what you think about certain things is cool, but in three years, it won't be cool and you'll look stupid. it. 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 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?

34:26Because 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 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?

35:09Boldness 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. your face just becomes like that and you lose a sense of that boldness that you once had.

35:49And 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 repulses people. They don't want to join you.

36:35But 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 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 want to be infected by the energy of someone who's bold, who knows what they want, right?

37:16So that's the main thing is your first impressions are critical. And if people see you as timid and differential and all closed and not so certain, they're going to run away from you. Unconsciously, they're not going to want to be part of your team. Well, one of the best parts about this is there's so many levels to this. So when I tweeted this quote out, Darmesh, who's the 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 thousand wealthiest people in the world.

37:56And 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, 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 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.

38:25He 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 two-hour podcast recording. 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, he's like, I do this thing in the middle of Lake Tahoe. I go, I do the breath work. 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.

38:53I'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 breath work and stuff, he's like, you know what? Every day I heard 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 the rocks and I'm just around this guy.

39:24And I asked 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 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 the level that Elon played at. I just want to, there's so many levels to this.

40:04Yeah, I mean, we're infected by the energy of the people around us, right? And we pick up things, we're too attuned to words, 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. 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 are always have some terrible thing happening to them.

40:56They'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 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 you, not exactly look up to, but you're like, oh, they are playing the power game, like textbook perfect? 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.

41:40So I remember some 25 years ago or 24 years ago, I met a man named Dove 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, his level of confidence, right? He was incredible. And he built this factory, this vertically organized factory in Los Angeles. He created 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?

42:29He 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, you know, I could say, you know, 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 Beyonce. 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. Appearance is how you appear. But with politicians, I will not go anywhere near that because we have no way of knowing.

43:11We 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 two 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. Who are some of those folks? Well, you know, I'm being a little bit selfish here, but I'm friends with a head coach of the NBA, Mark Dageno, who's the coach of the Oklahoma City Thunder, and they just won the NBA championship.

44:04I knew him eight years ago when he was the coach of the G League team at the Oklahoma City Thunder. And this guy is absolutely brilliant at the game of power. And it's not like he's Machiavellian, not at all. He's a great leader. But he understands 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.

44:54And 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 three months ahead, but even try to think a year or five 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 two years, three 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 to everything, who you draft, et cetera.

45:53But to me, the way he manufactured this recent championship is one of the most brilliant examples of the 48 loss 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. All right, listen, the two most beautiful words in the English language are email subscribers. You need more email subscribers.

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48:00Start scaling your content today. I want to ask you about 50 Cent because 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. 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 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.

48:37and 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 or 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 actually he's done.

49:12You 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 story a little bit. I mean, a lot of people know it, but, you know, he was, his mother died when he was like eight or nine 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 drove crack. And he talks about it in 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?

50:00Nobody. 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 50. And so when I met him, you know, I was a little bit intimidated because, as you can tell. Did he reach out to you or you to him? Yes, his literary agent reached out to me and set up a meeting in New York in the back room of a steakhouse on Madison Avenue, right? It was 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 intimidated.

50:50I was kind of intimidated. But then I learned later on that he was sort of intimidated by me because he thought he was meeting the 48 Laws of Power guy, the sort of Henry Kissinger type. And he was a little bit 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. And he's always seeking to be in control of a situation. He wants power. And you don't get power by being out there and being yelling and being angry and being thuggish.

51:30So I was very impressed by how kind of thoughtful he was. 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 nerdy white guy, Jewish white guy from Los Angeles and this rapper from Southside Queens. 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 six months and I witnessed some very interesting things.

52:15I remember he was on a phone call in one of his offices. The doors were closed. It was 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? 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 dropped a single that he had done with Robin Thicke, we're going way back here, and it got leaked onto the internet.

53:11And 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 and the room went 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.

53:43We'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 said 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 going to roll. Heads are going to roll. This is what we're going to do, right? It was total theatrical. He never, none of it ever happened.

54:18He 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 the only thing people could talk about on the internet. That was brilliant, right? Instead of freaking out, he was calm. He thought of, the internet is all about attention. It's all about creating stories. I'm going to take control of this and I'm going to create my own story. And I was absolutely amazed.

54:58That to me was the 48 Laws of Power in Action. I mean, I had so many stories with him. It was one of the most fun elements of my life, going to parties with him, going to the awards ceremony in Vegas, meeting Floyd Mayweather Jr., going to his house in Connecticut. 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 Tupac was interested in Machiavelli and then 48 Laws of Power came along and that's 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.

55:41And I was like, I don't know if that's true, but like I'm hooked. I'm in. If it's banned for prison, it must be the best. And then you're huge in the hip hop community and black community. And I was like, 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, those guys admire you. Even the billionaires, the athletes, all the successful people admire you.

56:16So 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 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 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.

57:05I wrote the 48 Laws of Power in that apartment. And then 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 four or five months after it came out because 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 Andriotti, since passed away, the most Machiavellian Italian politician of the modern era.

57:54I'm sitting in his office, I'm interviewing him. You know, man, my life right now, just five 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 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 I had spent all of these years.

58:41I 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 had jobs. I lived in Europe and I wandered around. 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 on a project that I won't even discuss. It was so stupid. I met a man there who was there for the same project who was a book packager. And we were both really unhappy with what we were doing there. We were walking in Venice, Italy, and he's Dutch, and he asked me if I had an idea for a book.

59:35and 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 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 had 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.

1:00:25Now, if you make a mistake, the same mistake, you're fired. It's the same game, you're just snot is 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 afford to try and write this treatment because he was actually offering money once he had the treatment.

1:01:08I 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.

1:01:49And I think I've read that. I don't know how many books you've sold in general of all of your books, of your seven or eight 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, I don't know if you meant to do this, but it's a timeless thing that can be readable and awesome for 50 or 100 years.

1:02:31Yeah, I mean, 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 going to have to go back to working at some crap job after this book is a disaster? Yeah, maybe. Maybe you'll have to go back to doing temp work or something.

1:03:14so it could have easily been a disaster but it didn't and so um 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 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 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.

1:03:56And 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 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 their 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 power? Okay, well, the try of this is to get out of the moment and to be observing the situation that's in front of you.

1:04:38So, 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, what happened to you 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 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?

1:05:22You'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 guy. 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.

1:06:10Get 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 will 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 a supreme acute observer of people.

1:06:51Sam, 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 this 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. Go solve a real crime, whatever.

1:07:24And 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's what it's kind of rooted in, I think. That's like the foundational step, which is like, don't react, reflect. 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 helped so stupid why you have you're right there but he's still gonna write the ticket you know why couldn't you wait like three minutes oh no it's already written he can't he 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 I think he's this poor schlub who's got this miserable job.

1:08:14Everybody 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 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. 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.

1:09:00So 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. You say something that kind of disarms him. Well, maybe now you have the power to get him to stop writing that ticket, whereas opposed to your aggressive energy. Fuck, man, I deal with that. Every single person gives that to me. I'm not going to still write your ticket just to spite you, you a-hole.

1:09:37No, 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 Chris Voss's book, Never Split the Difference? Like if there was any takeaway, it's basically, so Chris Voss was like a 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.

1:10:14And 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 poppy way of like learning about it. It was like easy to learn. read about. But you have a book, 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 confused. But you have a whole book on seduction, which I wish I would have read this when I was younger, because you outline all these interesting ways, basically, seduction, not meaning just sleep with people, but seduce someone into basically doing what you want them to do.

1:11:02And it gives your books, Sean. Robert's books are pretty great. They tell you the history, but then they also the history of a person who's a story of this rule. But then you outline the tactics and strategy, which is the best format. And so that was another winner. And it taught all these tactics on seducing people or getting them to buy into your whatever you want them to be up by. Yeah, I mean, I know Neil Strauss, and he quotes the Art of Seduction in the game. But Art of Seduction is 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.

1:11:47It's a book for people who you want to fund your project or who you want to hire you. It also is something that you maybe want to 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 draws people to you and what repulses people from you. So that's what the art of seduction is about. Did it make you more likable? Were you, was pre and post Robert different?

1:12:35I got interested in seduction in the 80s when I, well, obviously I was a young man, 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 fashion weeks or whatever. The most beautiful women in the world staying at this hotel at 22 years old, you know, and God, 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?

1:13:21I 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 fairly successful at meeting and seducing women, not on his level, not on 50 cents 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 writing the book. Some of my own failures and some of my own successes.

1:14:08So 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, et cetera. Like, 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 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? Did the study and the process of writing it actually help? Well, a writer is a writer. I'm not out there running for political office.

1:14:44I'm not, you know, on a stage entertaining people. I'm a writer, okay? So you judge me by that barometer and not by other things. And I talk about, I think about like Machiavelli himself. He was this mid-level diplomat 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 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 prison briefly and he went off into the countryside and to get himself back in power, he wrote a book called The Prince, right?

1:15:32This 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. 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 prints, who 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.

1:16:17He 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 imagine is 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 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.

1:17:10So I can't dunk a basketball unlike Sam. 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 know it because of 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 because 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 going to be like Machiavelli with his 600 years of influence.

1:18:00But I will have some influence over people after I die. That is power. That is ideas. Ideas shape this world. And 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. I love that. That was a great answer. Do you have your one-liner of your life's task? I'm just curious. Yeah, to change people, to change how they think, and to change how people act. That's always been 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 two times maybe even three times i'm a flawed human being so i'm not the epitome of the 48 Laws of Power.

1:19:05But 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? Because whenever I read your books, it's a very serious topic, and you spend your life reading and writing about very serious things. 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.

1:19:54And then two hours later, something will be frustrating. So we all go up and down, up and down. But I 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 going to change people on a very deep level.

1:20:41So 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 fulfillment, when you pull back over a course of months or years, it's off the charts. I have an incredible sense of accomplishment. Particularly this book here, it's a book on the supply. I've been working on it for six 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.

1:21:22And 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.

1:22:02So 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 space. 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.

1:22:36you've changed me and hopefully this is a gateway drug to introduce you to even more uh people who you could potentially change you know i 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 uh full but i i'm very grateful to have audiences like this you know so thank you so much for 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 This is you're in the business of ideas and influence. I mean, this is, I'm on the podcast. I'm supposed to be talking.

1:23:10I'm supposed to be paying attention. And I'm sitting here furiously writing notes to myself of small nuggets of wisdom, 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. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no day's off. On the road, let's travel. never looking back. My friends, if you like MFM, then you're going to like the following podcast. It's called Billion Dollar Moves. And of course, it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the number one audio destination for business professionals.

1:23:46Billion Dollar Moves. It's hosted by Sarah Chen Spelling. Sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist. And with Billion Dollar Moves, she wants to look at unicorn founders and funders. And she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader. Many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic. She does it with unfiltered conversations about success, failure, fear, courage, and all that great stuff. So again, if you like My First Million, check out Billion Dollar Moves. It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Again, Billion Dollar Moves. All right, back to the episode.