Stop Being Liked. Start Being Needed. | Bestselling Author Robert Greene

Robert Greene has sold over twenty million copies of The 48 Laws of Power. His books are favorites of rapper 50 Cent and millions of people trying to get a grip on the dynamics of power. They've also been banned in prisons. He doesn't lose sleep over any of it.

In this episode, Greene takes me through the winding road that led to his first bestseller: 60-plus jobs, years living across Europe, a brutal rejection from a magazine editor, a stint in Hollywood watching power moves play out up close, and finally, a sunny afternoon in Venice where he improvised the pitch of his life to a book producer he'd just met.

Greene talks about why making yourself indispensable is the most important of his 48 laws, and what that actually looks like in practice. Don't make people like you. Make them need you. Spread your roots across a company, build a skill set nobody else has, and become the person who's too costly to lose.

He also gets into how he's handled critics throughout his career, the difference between knowing your life's task and being a con artist, and why every bad boss, dead-end job, and rejected manuscript ultimately ended up in his books.

His newest book at the time of this recording was The Daily Laws. Nothing in his career, it turns out, was wasted.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

But real pleasure fulfillment comes from something much longer. So when you reach a point where you're 30 years old, you've been serious, you've learned all these skills, you've gone to school, but you've tried different jobs, and now you're ready to start your own business, and you have that level of wow, I've done all these great things, that is a much greater pleasure and thrill that you'll ever have in life than from something immediate. Hi, my name is Robert Green, and I'm the author of six books, including the 48 Laws of Power and The Art of Seduction, and you're watching Behind the Brand with Brian Elliott.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Everyone, I'm Brian Elliott. Welcome to another episode of Behind the Brand. Robert, thank you so much for your hospitality. Having us into your home, I usually ask my guests, how did you get this job?

SPEAKER_03 1:00

How did I get this job? Well, I'm very lucky, but it's also a mix of luck and a lot of hard work. I was in my this was we're going back 25 years. Um I was kind of a very struggling writer here in Hall in Los Angeles. I was about 35 years old. I wasn't, I was kind of depressed. Things weren't really working out. I wasn't very successful. And I was in Italy on yet another job, and I met a man there who was also on the same job, who was a packager of books, kind of like a producer of books. He designs them and puts the whole thing together. One day we were in Venice, Italy, and he just asked me a question Do you have any ideas for a book, Robert? And suddenly, I don't know what it was, it was a sunny day, the gods were smiling on me, and all of my pain and everything I had been through in life, it just welled up in me. And I improvised a pitch, probably the greatest pitch I've ever done, about a book about power. And I told him a story and I kind of gave him an idea of what it could be like. He was so excited, he said, Robert, you write a treatment for that, and I'll try and sell it, and I'll pay you for a year and a half to write it until we sell the book. And that was a turning point in my life. You know, as when it came out, I was 39, and I suddenly went from this kind of somewhat failing, you know, like one of the millions of failing screenwriters in Los Angeles, to this whole other world. And it was the turning point in my life, and I've never looked back. So that's why I'm here. If I hadn't met that man, I'd probably still be in that stupid one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica, an alcoholic, and who knows what else.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

That is an amazing story. Um, in this series, we like to tell origin stories. So if it's okay, I'd like to let's go back a little further in the chronology, maybe another, you know, uh 20 years. And uh I ask it with context, because uh there's a lot of young people, and maybe not so young, people with life experience, who uh maybe resetting right now. You know, it's kind of a big reset. Or maybe they're coming right out of school and they want to know what they uh they're trying to figure out what to do with their lives. What were you thinking early on as a kid? Um I I'm from this area too. I was born actually in Van Nuys, in Van Nuys Hospital, not too far from here in the valley. Um and uh have stayed in LA my entire life. So I I love this little neighborhood. I love, you know, we're on the east side today, but um what did you what were you thinking about when you were growing up?

SPEAKER_03 3:30

Well, um I was very ambitious. I'm still very ambitious. I don't deny it, I don't hide it. You know, I wanted to be famous, I wanted to be successful, and I was always drawn towards words and language. I was obsessed with words from a very early age. And then suddenly, around the age of nine or ten, I got really in love with books. And I knew by the time I was in high school that I wanted to be a writer. It was very clear to me.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Who were some of your those early influences?

SPEAKER_03 3:58

Well, I was reading a lot of novels like Fyodor Dostoevsky was one of my favorites. I read a lot of novels of Theodore Dreiser. I read a lot of, I read Machiavelli's The Prince when I was 15. I was even reading Nietzsche when I was in high school. These were some of my main influences, among many, many others. Yeah. Um and then uh so I knew I wanted to become a writer. And you know, a lot of people, you they can say, well, Robert, you're lucky because you had that clarity. But it's not that easy because I didn't know what I wanted to write, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

And put a time step on that. What what time period are we talking about here?

SPEAKER_03 4:33

Aaron Ross Powell, you mean the actual year? You want me to reveal my my my age? Well, I think that you've earned it. I think you know you have a certain amount of life experience. Trevor Burrus, Jr. I don't care. Um well we're talking about I was born in 1959.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:46

So we're talking like the mid-70s, basically. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

I mean, so you know Hemingway sort of just had his final hurrah maybe a decade before that. And you know, and so that was maybe, you know, a part of that. I I think putting timestamps on stuff is so interesting because it really gives it context and relevancy of what was happening at the time. I mean, this is, you know, uh pre-Vietnam War. Um this is, you know, America coming out of the 50s, uh, a very happy time, heading into a very divided time. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:21

Yeah, and I it was sort of like the end of the whole hippie drug era. You know, I went to Berkeley, it was my first college. It was kind of depressing, actually, because you know, it was sort of the the the rag end of the whole exciting movement of the 60s. There were a lot of drugs. It was a very kind of a heavy time, actually. The mid-70s is a very weird, confusing time for a lot of people. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

My dad talked a lot about it. Uh he he grew up in that same time period, that same area. Oh, and then I'm the same age as your dad, wow. Well, he said he followed the Grateful Dead around and so did I. And uh deadhead.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

I'm a total deadhead.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Or was. Yeah. And you know, he the way he describes it, it was fascinating, but also complex and volatile. And I mean sort of everything and nothing has changed, right? Since then. It's still kind of volatile and complex even today. Uh okay. Uh how about your parents? Did they um say Robert, you should really think about uh a career in engineering or get a real job as an attorney or something, forget about this writing thing.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

Well, um, you know, my I'm Jewish, and so Jewish parents, their dream is their son to be a lawyer or a doctor, you know, and I never lived up to their dreams. Um and they knew I wanted to be a writer. They were they were wonderful parents, I shouldn't complain. They never tried to to you know overtly tell me what to do. It was kind of, you know, they kind of covert about where I should go in life. But, you know, I was I had long hair, I can show you pictures, I look like a total druggy hippie back then. They were a little bit concerned. Um but they were very understanding, and when I got became went to Berkeley, I was an English major. They didn't say, oh, start going to law school and things like that. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, but this is also Sandy Koufax era, too, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Like the we had I met Sandy Koufax when I was a kid. Is that right? One of the high points of my life. Yeah, I mean, amazing, right? And you know, if Sandy can do it, Robert can do his writing thing, right? Trevor Burrus, Jr. Sandy was a pitcher, I wasn't gonna be at baseball, but well, what I mean is Sandy didn't go into medicine or law, and he's, you know, a prolific Jew. And my dad, all all of our family on my dad's side's Jewish as well, uh, with New York roots, and then moved out here to Hollywood. Um so that resonates with me a little bit. I'm I'm picking up on the vibe. Okay, uh so you you got past sort of the maybe the pushback of the parents. You had enough courage or at least uh freedom that they allowed for you to flex and go find yourself. You're at Berkeley. Um so what did you do between sort of the 20s and that age 39, where you're you're a middle-aged man with your very first real marker of success, at least according to the world?

SPEAKER_03 8:01

Well, I had a lot of fun. So after I graduated college, um I went and lived in Europe for several years. I traveled around with a backpack, and then I got jobs. I lived there for like several years. I ended up living in Europe for about four or five years, combined with several trips over there. I worked in a hotel in Paris, I was a receptionist, I did construction work in in Greece. I taught English in Barcelona. I worked in a television company in London. I was a tour guide in Dublin, Ireland. I had a blast, and I was trying to write novels. And then I went back to New York. I'd never lived in New York before, thinking I would get into journalism because I wanted to, I had to make a living, right? I couldn't just write poetry and novels and such. So I got into journalism and I got a job at Esquire. So that was legitimate. My parents, you know, they could they could be proud of that. And I got that job through my writing skills. I sent them a short story. And I was in journalism for many years. Wasn't a good fit.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

I mean it kind of sounds very Hemingway-esque, you know, traveling to Europe and living in Paris and and, you know, also the editorial, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:08

I mean, it's sort of uh Well, it uh not quite as sexy as Hemingway because I wasn't working for very interesting magazines. Esquire was, but afterwards it kind of declined. Essentially the lesson is it wasn't a good fit for me. And I could have blamed I one time uh an editor took me to lunch, something I'll never forget. I've talked about it before, and I he was gonna talk about an article I had written, and basically he had like had his third vodka gimlet or whatever he drank, and he said, Robert, you're not gonna make it as a writer. You don't have the talent, you're too undisciplined, your writing is too all over the place, you don't know how to communicate, go to law school, go to business school. I'm I'm telling you, I'm gonna save you a lot of pain. And you know, instead of getting all upset and angry, I was initially, I don't deny it, it kind of sunk in that maybe because I wasn't excited about this career, it was showing up in my work. It was maybe my fault. So then I went back to Europe and I tried writing more novels and wandering around. I came back to LA to do my Hollywood career, you know, and I tried screenwriting. I worked for a famous film director, I was his assistant. Um had some very interesting adventures. I learned a lot about writing and making things dramatic, et cetera. I learned a lot about power and the power game through the master manipulators in Hollywood that I observed. And then, you know, I wasn't that's when we come to 1995, and I'm this depressed 36-year-old living in my apartment in Santa Monica.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Aaron Ross Powell There's so much there to unpack. I mean, uh if I could just maybe highlight some of the lessons that I'm hearing. Um, it seems like you had tremendous self-awareness. You know, you were at least self-reflective enough to take the criticism and sort of take inventory and decide whether or not that was accurate. Um I think that was probably another very pivotal moment in your life, it sounds like, where you could have, you know, sort of the rubber hits the road, or you you have this uh come to God moment where you're just like, what am I gonna do? And maybe the lesson for people who are watching who don't have the life experience that Robert has is um sometimes you do have to get brutally honest with yourself and um you have to listen to the critics, at least the ones that, you know, what's that journalistic saying? Consider the source. If the source is somewhat reputable, it's probably worth considering. Um and then you take an inventory. Now, that said, there have been a lot of people who've gone on to greatness um who were told very early on that they would amount to absolutely nothing. Right, right. I remember this, you know, uh I think Einstein was three or four years old before he could even talk, and they thought he was he had, you know, mental challenges. Or well Disney, I I can remember, you know, was told not creative at in the least. Uh Martin Luther King Jr., I mean the list goes on of everyone who was told to sit down and shut up and they'd amount to nothing, and then they went on to greatness. Um in my experience, I think if we're gonna call that adversity or an obstacle or a setback or a punch in the face, I think we have two choices. You know, you can get knocked down and stay down and kind of crawl away and go away, or you can stand back up and come back and fight another day. It sounds like that's what you did. You you know you had this awareness, you came back. The other thing I want to point out is um this idea that it's not original to me, but uh I I continue to hear it in themes as I talk to uh people with great minds like you, is that nothing goes to waste. So I can remember, you know, um my very first job, actually I have to confess right now that I lied about my age. Uh you had to be 16 to work at the uh lamppost pizza. Um and uh but I was 15. You sure you want that information to be out there? I think it's safe now. It's past the the uh what do they call it? I don't want to read about this in the in the newspaper, but uh apologies to you know everyone who would be ashamed of me for lying. But I I had a goal in mind. I wanted to buy my first car, was which was a 69 VW Beetle. It was $1,500. I wanted to get my license on my birthday when I turned 16, so I lied and I worked for a year while I was 15 at the pizza place. Um I washed dishes most of the time and then you know worked my way up to making the pizzas. Eventually I was even like, you know, serving the people anyway. I was running the place by the time I was 16. Um I look back on that now and the experience I had dealing with people and listening to my coworkers or trying, you know, all of that stuff. I'm now somewhat using, even now, that experience is so useful. And so I think about nothing goes to waste. You say you were struggling and maybe drinking too much, and yeah, probably it was a hard time. Um, but at the same time, you're traveling, you're in Paris and you're in Greece, and you're getting all this life experience, uh, like Hemingway, who put himself in the battlefield, right? Even though he wasn't in the war. Um and and and that's what probably helped you get to this point of you know where luck meets opportunity, right? And you you sort of are ready and prepared when when the knock comes.

SPEAKER_03 14:27

Yeah, very well put. I mean, I think the key is that I knew deep down inside of myself that I was a good writer, that I was that I was worth having some kind of success in life. Yeah. I didn't get down on that part. I doubted, you know, whether I could be a screenwriter or a novelist, et cetera. But I knew deep down that I was the only thing that I'm good at. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Well, you were dialing the frequencies, right? Just trying to find the right right station. You were you were in the ballpark, right? You were you're on the radio dial, just had to dial the right frequency.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

Yeah. And so when I look back on it, maybe it's a skewed perf perspective, but it seemed almost like fate that I had to go through all of these kind of lost moments. But um, but they were teaching me, they had a reason behind them. I was almost being directed in this in this way. And so, you know, my girlfriend and I, we once counted that I had like at least 60 different jobs. I seen every kind of power maneuver. I have had the worst bosses in the history of of mankind, I can I can tell you, right? I had all kinds of experiences. And I had learned in journalism how to write snappy, how to write well under a deadline. It all came together when I had to write the 48 Laws of Power. All those awful bosses that that you know tortured me, I could put them in the 48 Laws of Power, completely disguised by kings and princes, etc. So it was like the perfect use. You say nothing was wasted.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

So so let's talk about power because it's a 48 Laws is an iconic book. Um you have a new book out. What is the title? The Daily Laws. Yeah. So let's let's roll back a little bit from uh into 48 and then roll into the new one. Uh so break down some of the maybe the most important laws. There's 48. I mean, I'd love to talk about all 48, but maybe pick a couple that really stand out to you as useful in the context of again, my audience, you know, these are people that read Inc. magazine, these are go-getters, these are men and women who are ambitious and trying to just crush life, at the same time trying to enjoy it and not work for assholes. Um, how do they hold their own? How do they keep their power?

SPEAKER_03 16:44

Well, um there are many, as you say, there are 48 laws. One of the laws is uh I think the most important. I can't remember the exact title of it, but it's basically make people dependent on you. So you want, you don't want to appeal to people's love, to the fact that they like you. You want to appeal to the fact that they need you. Because if they love you, love is a very tenuous emotion. In fact, it doesn't work very well in the work situation. It causes all kinds of problems. They'll get rid of you tomorrow, even though they like you. But if they need you, it's like pulling out all of these roots of a plant to get rid of you. It's going to cause all kinds of damage all over the place. They need you and they can't get rid of you. So you need to make sure that your position in a company, in life in general, you're the only person who can do that.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Aaron Powell So you're not talking about bringing in bagels every morning because that's easily replaced.

SPEAKER_03 17:37

What how so how do we become irreplaceable or well it depends on on the nature of your work, obviously. I mean, I talk in that particular chapter of several strategies. So you're, let's say you're in a corporation. You kind of don't just depend on one person. You just don't aren't just necessary to the boss, but you spread yourself out to three or four different networks. You get a sense of every how the whole company is functioning. You have your roots in this place, in this place, in this place. So you have more knowledge that's kind of spread around. And to get rid of you is going to cause a lot of problems because you're not only involved here, but you're involved here, here, and here. And you have knowledge that nobody else has. So you want to have a kind of knowledge and skill base that makes you unique, you know? So um, and that means like just don't depend on one skill, but have several skills and don't be afraid to do that. That's, I think, is probably the key strategy here. But when it comes to if you're an entrepreneur, it's the same dynamic for an entrepreneur, it's the same dynamic for me. The way you make yourself necessary and to and others dependent on you is to be the only person who can do this job. You are so unique. There's only one Elon Musk, there's only one Steve Jobs, right? They're irreplaceable. They've they're not afraid to be themselves, to do, to do their, have their own style. And so, you know, that's that's what secures their position. So if I wrote books like everybody else, I wouldn't have that position of power. But because I'm the only one, for better or for worse, who can write books the way I do, I have secured a position in the publishing world. So it's a law that applies everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Let me ask you about critics, because uh I think it's uh it's a tightrope, right? Like uh you're walking this fine line of being abrupt or brash or you know, and and the m it seems like the more power and influence you have, the more criticism and pushback you you might get. You know, we we see Bezos go into outer space and we're like his rocket looks like a giant penis, uh it's just a flex, who cares? He didn't make it to the moon, right? It's like minimizing everything that he just accomplished because he's the richest man in the world or second richest at any given time. Um it's easy to throw stones at him, right? So how much if you're if you're the person who maybe is trying to gain the influence and power, how much credence and how much do we listen to the critic and how do we how do we manage that?

SPEAKER_03 20:16

Well, it depends on, you know, you have a sense of in my book Mastery, I call it knowing your life's task. This was what you were meant to accomplish in life, right? Yeah. And you're very firm about it and you feel very confident about it. And so when people come like that editor did and tell me that you shouldn't be a writer, you're able to deflect it because you have a dream and nothing will will, you know, get you to sidetrack from that dream. But also having a sense of accomplishment. So you're not that you're a bullshit artist, it's not that you're a con artist. You've actually accomplished A, B, and C in life, right? So if people come and attack me, I don't really care because I have this that I can always fall back on. I have a book that sold two million copies. How many people can say that? I don't care, bring it on. It's I'm fine with that. But the but the one other thing I would say about that is, is that you want to, in the case for all people of power, in any position you are in life, I have a law in the 48 Laws of Power called Never Appear Too Perfect. And the danger in the world today is the number one danger is envy. We live in a time of social media, et cetera, where it's massive envy, where we know what everybody else is doing in life, and we don't like to admit that we're envious, so we attack people passive aggressively, we subvert them, we try and throw obstacles in their way, we criticize them when in fact we envy them. And the strategy there is to learn how to deflect envy. So if you're Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, you have to have some humor, you have to have some self deprecating humor. You have to take the criticism that comes and kind of laugh at it and go along with it so that you don't appear all stiff and rigid and defensive. That's the other thing I would say.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Yeah, and I think they call that becoming thick skinned or whatnot, right? You you become accustomed. I mean, the reality is, and I can speak from experience, sometimes uh the criticism really hurts because it's true. It's like, oh, that was shit. I guess you're right. And that's when it really stings, right? But you know, it's an opportunity to take that in and you know, absorb that for what it is. Um and if it is true, at least in my case, I've tried to use that as a uh as a great um gift that a stranger has given me. I mean, on a regular basis, when I pu publish a video or write an article, there's always, you know, with the thumbs up, there's always at least one thumb down. And even, you know, uh my young son who's uh 13, he'll say, Dad, who is this person that keeps giving you a thumb down? And I said, You know what? Um, it's probably one of my peers or someone who wants to be and do what I'm doing. And and it could be. That's my theory, at least. Uh or it could be some dude in his underwear in his in his mom's basement with nothing better to do. But um, but you're right. Um we have to balance that out.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

Aaron Ross Powell We have to be able to distinguish between what is legitimate criticism and you have to look at the source. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So whenever I write a chapter, I give it to my girlfriend, Anna, because she's a great editor. I trust her. She critiques the hell out of them. Yeah. But I've trusted her. But if some schmo off the street is writing on a YouTube video comments about me, et cetera, I don't pay it any attention because I don't know who he or she is or what their credentials are.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Right. Anonymous doesn't get much credibility with me. If they want to show their face and show up and and and you know, spar with me, I'm happy to do so and listen to their criticism. But anonymous no. Uh I'm curious, was there an alternate title to 48 Laws? Was that just it from the very means, like this is what it is?

SPEAKER_03 23:52

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. There was. We had a few versions of it. One version was at the Black Book of Power. A black book is kind of like a summation, it's like the ultimate book on a subject. But we thought that that sounded a little too dark and evil and wouldn't people wouldn't know how to how to take that. But that was one of the alternative titles.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Almost there's like a like a James Gandolfini style, like a people's names that you could look up that would maybe not translate very well. I got you.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

But and then also uh I the number 48 kind of shifted. Originally I had like 52 laws. We didn't like the number 52 because it seemed too obvious, like 52 weeks in a year or something. And so we kind of I tried to narrow it down to 48 because 48 is such a powerful number. Whereas the 47 laws of power I don't know. Well, so what is it about fours and eights that's powerful? It's just obvious. You don't have to think about it. 48, it just seems like something. It's two times 24, hours in a day, two days. It's just got a resonance to it. There's kind of a symmetry to the idea of 48, you know. I think I could have done 44 laws, because that has a nice symmetry to it. But there's just something. I don't know if it's in retrospect where because the book has had success that 48 seems so powerful. But the number just has a visceral feel to it. I can't even explain.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Sometimes you just know and it's intuitive and it's it's just instinctual. I love it. Uh any other powers that come to mind that you want to share that are uh that are noteworthy that we should talk about?

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Well, uh I there's one in there, interaction with boldness. And um, this is particularly applicable to entrepreneurs. Um it's about how human nature we're kind of impressed and intimidated by people who do some, who enter in with a lot of confidence and boldness and a bit of drama and surprise. It kind of appeals to the animal in us. We're put back on our on our on our on our feet and we're like, whoa, what's going on here? It's impressive. It creates it creates a distinctive impression. Whereas if you kind of enter in like with your business or your book or in a meeting, and you're kind of half-acidly promoting an idea, it already looks weak before it even started, right? If you don't have confidence in your own idea, how can I have confidence? And there's an element almost of bullshit and con being a con man. And I have a story in there of Christopher Columbus, who was in fact, came from uh the lower classes, had no aristocratic connections, was a mediocre navigator and captain, and he went and proposed this to the Portuguese king, this incredible expedition, as if he was an aristocrat. He was full of all of this confidence, and it, you know, it created an impression on the other. There must be a reason for that confidence. So having a sense of you were destined to accomplish something that you you feel that it's it's gonna it's gonna succeed, it becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Now, uh a couple years back I had Susan Cain on, and Susan is famous for writing that book, Quiet. It's a book about introverts and extroverts. And in fact, she also talks about ambiverts, a hybrid of introvert extrovert. Uh can introverts do this as well? Can they sort of uh exude or, you know, um at least uh convey this confidence even when they're not feeling so confident? Sometimes, I mean, I I am sort of a classic introvert, I have to say. Um and sometimes I'm I you know I I don't want to be the loudest in the room because it just annoys me. Um what would you say to introverts?

SPEAKER_03 27:37

Well, I'm an introvert. I'm I'm a classic introvert, and yet I I've used it. It's more a sense of you feel a con you have to know your strengths and play to your strengths. So if I tried to show this kind of confidence and boldness on a basketball court, I'd be laughed off. If I tried to show it with my artwork and my painting and my doodling, I'd be I wouldn't be able to pull it off. But I know that I have one thing that I'm strong at. It's with words and language and writing. And so I can pull off being bold because I feel inside myself that inner confidence. You have to almost deceive yourself that you can accomplish this. So I can go on the list through classic introverts who have been incredibly successful. Albert Einstein was a terrible introvert, even though he became he seems like he's sort of this comic person who's good with people, he was terrible, very, you know, very uh awkward and timid. But he knew one thing that he was so good at, and he pushed on it and pushed on and pushed on it. And when it came to physics and relativity, there was nobody else who could argue with him. So play to your your strength, play to what you know, what you're good at, what you've accomplished. And even the worst introvert in the world, like myself, can have can exude that kind of boldness.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

So let's talk about this. I mean, I'm I'm hearing you tell me uh your answer already, but let's just maybe flush it out a little bit more, which is this idea of, you know, should you follow your passion or you should follow what you're good at. What is the order of operations?

SPEAKER_03 29:05

Aaron Powell Well, it's very clear. You have to know yourself. You have to know who you are, and you have to do some searching in there. So the passion thing, it's kind of a cliche in a way. I want you to look at the things that you were drawn to when you were three years old, four years old, five years old. I do consulting work with a lot of people, people who are kind of confused about what I call your life's task, and we go through a process. You want to see something that attracted you here so deeply you can't even put it into words. Because the way the human brain works is that you don't learn things with any kind of intensity unless your emotions are deeply, deeply engaged, unless you're excited by the subject, right? Um and so if you're kind of in a field that is because of the money or because it kind of half interests you, you're not going to be learning, you're not going to have that intensity of focus that all successful people have. There's a kind of a level that you hit where the work is exactly what you were meant to do. It's what excites you, it's what your skill level, you're up to the challenge, or maybe it's a little above you, and it brings out the best in you. And you want to find out what that field is or what that subject is. And so once you find it, everything else will fall into place. So for me, I knew it was writing. I just couldn't figure out which writing form of it. But once it occurred, everything else just fell into place for me.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

I want to go back to that moment at 39, that moment of desperation, but also of opportunity when it was knocking. Was there a time that you sort of gave up and you thought this is not working out? You know? I mean it sounded like you were sort of at the end of your rope at that moment, at that crossroads. I can sort of picture it as a movie scene in my mind right now. Um but I'm also willing to bet that you were very close to just throwing in the towel at that in that very moment too. Um talk about that. How did you how are you able to survive that? Because again, the context of this question is I I'd be willing to bet that a lot of people give up too soon. They quit because it's too hard or they don't see the results. Um talk about that.

SPEAKER_03 31:23

Well, when you're 36 years old, 35 years old, it's very easy to quit because you're not in your 20s anymore. And you're starting to think I need to make money, I don't want to be living hand to foot for the rest of my life. So I understand that a lot of people reach that point, you know, and I was very depressed. I was kind of going up and down and up and down. I think, okay, now I'm gonna write this and this will be successful, I'll sell this screenplay or et cetera. You know, and then it wouldn't happen, I'd be down, et cetera. So it was kind of a roller coaster. And there were moments when I was pretty much ready to give up, but I was never gonna like suddenly go to law school or go to business school. I was too old for that. So I was thinking of um sorry, I was thinking, well, maybe I need to try a different form of writing where I can make a living. You know, maybe I need to get into television and sell my soul, even though that'll be very, very depressing for me because I don't feel comfortable with that form of writing. I have to get practical in some way. And that was a very depressing thought. Because, you know, we all have dreams, particularly when we're a child. And to me, the worst thing in life, the worst feeling is you had dreams and you can never live up to them. They never they never happened in reality. Yeah. And so that would have been giving up on a dream. It would have been selling my soul. I would have been able to write, but I would have been unhappy. I probably I may not even be alive right now if I had fallen down that rabbit hole. And I recognize how lucky I am. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Well, it's kind of a Shakespeare wrote about that too, right? Um what is the quote? I can't probably get it right. There's a tide in the there's a I was thinking about the the one about regret, you know, um neither pen nor tail, you know, um where he talks about if you didn't try to do what you thought you were capable of doing, yeah, that you would live with the regret. And as effectively that's the definition of hell as living with regret, the the greatest pain of what could have been.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

Yeah, well da Vinci has a quote on that that I use in my book Mastery. He says, I I forget, I can't quote it very I can't remember, but the essence of it is at the end of a day of working hard, you feel kind of a satisfaction that you've got a lot accomplished. At the end of your life, when you feel like you've worked hard and you've kind of done what you were supposed to do, you feel like you had a blessed life. And the reverse of that, which he doesn't discuss, is it's the end of your life, you're in your 60s or 70s, and you're reflecting back about all your missed potential. That is true hell.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

So, what should we be measuring while we're alive and kicking? You know, how should we be measuring our success uh beyond the vanity metrics, right? You can look at your your book and you sold two million copies. That's amazing. But what if you write an amazing book and it sells less than that? You know, uh it's still valuable, right? It's still making an impact. But how how do we measure the success? What's your recommendation?

SPEAKER_03 34:18

Well, um, it depends, you know, you don't have to sell as as many copies like that. But um if you have an an idea, if you give all of your effort, if you work really hard and you put all of your focus into it, and you've done like you wrote a book with lots of research and you know it's a good book, and yet it only sells 2,000 copies, you can feel a bit upset about it. You're gonna be upset about it, no doubt, but you're gonna bounce back because you knew that you put in all the effort. And you know, failure is a good thing. Failure teaches you what your limitations are. Because if you go through life and you have success after success, you're never learning. And then you're gonna f you're gonna have a much fur further, a word, much worse downfall because you're gonna get grandiose. So failure is a good thing. As long as you put in the effort, as long as you did your the job the best you could, okay, it didn't sell so much, I can learn from it and I can go on to the next project. Because if that failure defeats you inside, then you're you're done because you're never gonna recover your confidence. Your next effort's gonna be even more um you know, half-assed, et cetera. So you have to it all comes from within. So when you have that failure, learn from it and put yourself in a position where you're ready to make to bounce off to the next project.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:43

I love that. Talk about mastery. Well, mastery came out in I think 2013, 2012, something like that. I was basically writing it because honestly, I was getting a lot of feedback from my first three books. A lot of my readers are young. I have a uh uh they skew a little bit male, 18 to 30, it tends to be. And I was getting emails about power and war and seduction that was beginning to trouble me. It was as if people had the idea that just kind of being a bullshit artist and playing the political game was enough to be successful in life.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

Aaron Powell It reminds me of like uh that movie uh Wall Street with uh what was it, Gordon Gecko is his name, that character, it's just like just snowplow everyone, you know, typical kind of 80s mentality.

SPEAKER_03 36:32

Trevor Burrus Yeah. And I was feeling like a young lot of young people were having that. And that's not you know, that's important. I wrote the books. It's important to be able to understand the power game, how to deal with egos, et cetera. Yeah. But if your work isn't based on anything real, if you don't have real skills, if your work is shoddy, all the bullshit in the world won't be able to cover it up, right? It's gonna show through. And I was really worried that people didn't understand how to make things, how to build things. I was having visions in my mind of 40 years from now, bridges would be collapsing because people don't know how to be engineers anymore. Right. They learn a sense of the process of mastering something, right? A lot of it comes from social media and the internet, where people have this impression that you can have power in a that there's shortcuts for anything, right? Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

And people have written books on it, right? I can think of Tim Ferriss, the four-hour work we should say. With all great intentions, by the way, right?

SPEAKER_03 37:29

All great intentions, but completely contrary to my belief. My belief are there are no shortcuts in this life. You have to be able to put in the work, you have to be able to fail, you have to try again, you have to go through an apprenticeship phase, you have to try and get a mentor, you have to learn. Then maybe you can become creative, and here's how you become creative. And once you reach that point where all of your knowledge and skill reaches that creativity mastery level, the game will flow and it'll be easy and you'll have a great life. Okay? But get out of- So the reason I wrote mastery is we humans only do things that are pleasurable, right? We're attracted to the things that give us pleasure and we we refrain from things that give us pain. But we how do we define pleasure? For most people, particularly young, it's instant. I want things that are quick. I want to get it that that jolt from a two-hour movie or from a video game, or maybe from a week's worth of work.

SPEAKER_01 38:25

Well, yeah, the whole fast food movement was born on that.

SPEAKER_03 38:28

Yeah. But real pleasure fulfillment comes from something much longer. So when you reach a point where you're 30 years old, you've been serious, you've learned all these skills, you've gone to school, but you've tried different jobs, and now you're ready to start your own business, and you have that level of, wow, I've done all these great things, that is a much greater pleasure and thrill that you'll ever have in life than from something immediate. So think of your sense of pleasure, draw it out to five years, ten years, twenty years, have a plan. So when you reach a point where you actually realize your dreams, that is the ultimate high you can ever have. So I wrote that book to make people aware that reaching a point of mastering creativity is the most ecstatic thing. It's a peak experience to use Maslow's terms. It's worth going through all the pain.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

It reminds me of the marshmallow test, too, this famous psychology study of the marshmallow test. You know this, where they put, you know, a marshmallow in front of this, the like a five-year-old, and they said, you know, if you'll just wait, uh 15 minutes uh we'll give you two marshmallows. So don't eat it. And they would put the marshmallow in front of the kid and they would leave the room. Of course, there was a two-way window, and they would watch. And you know, the there was uh kids who would just couldn't wait and they just devoured the marshmallow. And then of course there were a certain number that would, you know, just wait, okay, I'm going for two. And I think they followed those kids for a couple of decades. Wow, wow. Um that's a great study. Aaron Powell Well, and and definitely found, as they extrapolated that, that the kids who were able to wait and have patience were more successful, at least on paper, than the kids, you know, who did they do they do like three marshmallows and four and then find out that the four marshmallow kids were like turned into like super Right. I'm sure there's a law of diminishing returns on that marshmallow. I never heard of it. Yeah. Uh but it's I think it was done in the 60s, pretty famous. Um but but what you're saying in essence is um, and I feel this too all the time, even now that I'm older than I used to be when I was coming out of school, and that is patience, you know. And again, we've kind of come full b circle back to nothing goes to waste, right? That the the dues I paid, washing the dishes, the pizza place, then was a springboard to for me to, you know, do the other things in my life, deal with difficult people, um bosses who were on an ego trip. Let's now bring this full present. Um talk about what's what is most on your mind right now, and as you've you know written this new book, what you'd like people to take away from it. What what was your intention?

SPEAKER_03 41:12

You know, there's kind of been a theme to all of my books, all six of them, although they cover all sorts of different subjects. And if I could boil it all down to it's having a realistic attitude towards life. It's to not look to be able to look at yourself with a degree of honesty and say, these are my strengths, these are my weaknesses, to be able to look at people and understand some of who they are and not project onto them your own emotions and not see into them what you want to see into them, but who Brian Elliott actually is, a process of kind of empathy and this sort of social skills that we can develop, and the ability to see the world as it is. These are the trends happening in the world. This is the future of my career, this is where the world is going. You have that kind of realistic attitude. It's like a sharp diamond, it'll cut through anything. You imagine if just you had one of those powers. If you could see into people and see through their smiling masks and understood what's really going on, imagine the power you would have. It'd be amazing.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Can I ask you, do you think that you've changed significantly, you know, as Robert, you know, who you are? I think, you know, identity, I kind of feel like I'm still kind of figuring out who I am. But at the same time, in the same breath, I would say I sort of feel like about every decade I kind of reinvent myself or rediscover myself. Have you had that experience?

SPEAKER_03 42:38

Yes, and no, it's kind of a balance between the two. So the person that I was at five years old, there's kind of a through line com all the way to me now, and I'm 61, 62. Yeah. Right? So um I can kind of see the child still inside of me, that I'm still kind of Robert Green, that little that little boy who was really interested in war and baseball, et cetera. But yes, I've gone through many changes. And the period in which I wrote the 48 Laws of Power is not where I am right now. So I've gone through many shifts, and I think that's very healthy.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

Yeah. And we're a product of our environment too. And again, that's why we went back to context. Trevor Burrus, Sure. You know, when you were thinking about what you were thinking about in the 60s, uh things change and environments change, and even, you know, where you were born. Uh how much do you think about nature and nurture? Do you think about this at all?

SPEAKER_03 43:28

Yeah, well, you know, part of our problem these days is we're too black and white in the way we think. Things are never one way or the other, they're always a mix, and that's kind of where wisdom comes from, is being able to see the middle way. So we're a mix of nurture and nature. Undoubtedly, genetics play a component, and I talk about that in mastery. So the fact that I have this insane attraction to words is genetic. I don't, I'm sure of it. And there's a great book called The Five Frames of Intelligence by Howard. Gardner, in which he says the way your brain is wired, there's one kind of set of intelligence that you're attracted to. It could be math, it could be kinetics and movement, could be patterns and which will lead to like music, etc. But you have those are genetic, no doubt about that. But then nurture plays an incredibly important part. Just think of the fact that you're one year old. Do you know how vulnerable and what a sponge you were when you were that young? Your whole life depended on one or two figures. You were paying such deep attention. Do you know how the info the power that has on you? You're not aware to this day how you were formed in those first months of your life in a completely pre-verbal way. So they're both equally, equally play a role. So people who emphasize one or the other, they're just foolish, I think.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

Yeah, I remember I got to talk to um Sir Ken Robinson uh before he passed. Uh we became fast friends. I was, you know, definitely enamored with his work. He wrote the book Element, which is, you know, kind of along the lines of what you're talking about, finding your true passion, fish to water, bird to air. Uh and he talks about this idea of how we some of us, you know, the the plan that's not in the minds of the people who are in our control or our our governance or maybe our parents sometimes gets beaten out of us or or we get talked out of it. You know, I shouldn't be a writer, you know, that you're never gonna make any money or forget about singing or filmmaking or, you know. Uh I still think we've we have to be careful of that um that nurture, because sometimes it's you know it's uh it's ironic how unnurturing it can be. People with good intentions give bad advice, you know. Oh, you mean when you're very young? You know, it doesn't, I don't think it's I think it's age agnostic. I think, you know, um, and that's why I was sort of wondering, you know, um how you what are the signals to know whether you should pivot or or or give it up and go to law school? You know, a lot of people will just quit. And so it's all it's it's always on my mind because maybe I'm I'm close to it all the time. I come right up to the uh, you know, to the to the bubble, and then oh something happens good, and then I can I can go back and you know I don't have to break.

SPEAKER_03 46:13

Well it all comes to, so I was talking about a realistic attitude, it all comes down to being able to see into yourself with a degree of clarity. So the great psychologist Abraham Maslow called it, I believe, impulse voices. And he says that when a child is six, eight months old, they have these impulse voices. They like this candy, they like this bit of food, and they hate that one. It's something inside of them, they know it, they are aware of it in a very primal, pre-verbal way, and so they choose this thing that they're gonna eat. We all have these voices, but then as we get older, we lose sense of them. We're not hearing them anymore because we're hearing teachers telling us this is what we're good at, this is what we should be. We're hearing friends, we're hearing the culture saying this is what's cool and what's not cool. By the time we're 16 years old, that impulse voice is drowned out by a hundred other voices, and we don't know who we are anymore. And it's very depressing, and it's why people turn to drugs and alcohol and porn, et cetera. They lose a sense of themselves, of who they are, and that is the worst thing that can happen to you. So it's a matter of self-awareness and going through a process. We talk about the need, you know, patience of being able to look at yourself, and I what I get people to do is we go through a process of journaling and we dig deep and we say, these are the things I could see when I throughout my life that I love, that when they happen, when I hear about them, I get so excited. These are the things I hate. And I give them the example of myself. I know, for instance, if I open the internet or uh uh the New York Times or any newspaper, and there's an article about early humans from 80,000 years ago, I have to read that article. I am so obsessed with our origins. It's been that way since I was four years old. That's the impulse voice. And uh on the other hand, I hate working for people. I hate political games. I hate the feeling that I have to play, that I have to court this incompetent buffoon who's my boss. That's another impulse voice that's now sending you have to be an entrepreneur, Robert. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

I love that you're so in tune. Uh maybe a couple final questions. Um What do you consider your greatest failure, i.e., learning experience, or and uh juxtaposed by your greatest accomplishment?

SPEAKER_03 48:36

Aaron Ross Powell Well, they're kind of two sides of the same story. I mean, I don't know if this is quite your question, um, but I did a book with the rapper Fifty Cent, right? It's called The Fiftieth Law, it's my fourth book. And um so the the the that the story combines both sides. So um Was this a publicist's idea or your idea? Like Well, I it was kind of um a publicist put us together, his agent put us together. And then uh I don't like working with other people as you as you all know now. And I don't like co-writing either.

SPEAKER_01 49:11

Well, and this is a departure from I mean, it's like oil and vinegar.

SPEAKER_03 49:14

It's well there's no there's no power in it. But um I really liked him. I thought he was really interesting. He wasn't what he I thought he would be like, and I wasn't what he thought I'd be like. And I thought there could be an interesting book here, bringing this kid from Southside Queens, who's a crack dealer, and this middle-aged Jewish boy from Los Angeles, whose father was a chemical salesman, who would ever think of putting those two things together? Something will happen. Okay, so I'm starting to write the book. I'm a little bit intimidated because I want to please 50. I want this and so I'm focusing a lot about him. I'm interviewing him and I'm writing about his business and about his life. And in the process, I was kind of losing who I was, you know, and my voice and what would make the book really interesting. It's supposed to be a combination. And then the publisher, Simon and Schuster, they had some of the chapters together. They basically said, you know, they cut loose the deal, they said, it's off, we're kind of firing you in essence. The contract, we're avoiding the contract.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

They didn't like the content? They didn't like the contract.

SPEAKER_03 50:19

They didn't like the content and they thought it was taking too long. Both of those things. Both of those things. And that was really painful because up to then I had three books that were very successful. I'd never really known failure on that professional level. It was very painful to me. What are you talking about? I'm Robert Green. I write books. Come on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:38

And then my agent got me in touch with somebody else who was a very smart guy, Bob Miller. He was with Harper back in those days. And he's he led the manuscript and he said, Robert, the problem here is that there's too much, there's not enough of you in it. Right? You need to bring more of yourself into this book. And it was painful to hear, but he was right. I listened to him because he's a he's a very established publisher. And so I go, okay. I'm gonna and then he said, All right, well, I'm gonna get you a new deal with Harper. That's the good news. The bad news is you only have eight months to write it. And that's like, I can't write a book in eight months. Never been able to do that, okay? But I had no choice. It was like, get rich or die trying. You know, I either succeed or this is another this will be a failure that may hurt me, really hurt me in the long run. And so I got into it with incredible energy and I poured myself into the book. A little less 50, a bit more of me. And because I only had eight months, I was writing with like this urgency that I never had before. I pulled it off, wrote the book, and it's been very, very successful since then. Sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Fifty loved it. So that was kind of like a seed of failure. I wasn't being myself, and then true success. I returned to being myself.

SPEAKER_00 52:03

I mean, we were just sitting back, you know, chopping it up, reminiscing about the good old days and all that, you know, tracking my roots, where I came from and where I'm going.