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

one of the best parts about this is there's so many levels to this so when i tweeted this quote out da who's this you know c cofounder of a twenty thirty billion dollar company retweeted says this is exactly what i needed to hear today i feel like got rude of know why i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a road less travel never back bad i am so excited to talk to you i've read all your books and i've always thought that instead of whatever they're teaching at universities i was like man i wish i just do a four year degree on like four or six of these rubber green books because they're amazing wow and in particular mastery it absolutely changed my life i rather go when i was twenty twenty two years old about twelve years ago eleven years ago totally changed my life it changed my life because i thought that being a generalist was the way to go but according to the book mastery it it was not yeah well you know we live in these fantastic times with so much technological power it's just almost incredible you know i mean yesterday i was working on my new book and i had a question and i just did it an ai surgeon and it's just insane what it can do for you but the problem is the human brain is what it is it isn't a piece of technology that that somebody developed recently it's something that has hundreds of thousands of years of development and it has a certain way that it operates in a certain grain to it and you wanna go with that grain and you wanna be excited by learning and you wanna make connections in the brain between different things and you wanna be able to focus so deeply on something i like to think of the brain as this kind of landscape and it can be rich and it can be one where all these different plants are emerging or it can be like a wasteland and if you learn different things and you focus very deeply and you're excited by what you're learning then all of these connections will start happening in the brain and so if you go through that apprenticeship focused and developing real skills in whatever that is by the time you finish your apprentice apprenticeship let's say you're thirty years old you'll be set and you'll be able to create your own business you'll be very creative you will laid the groundwork for something really important to happen but if you're distracted if you're focusing on a hundred different things that's not how the human brain functions we function when we go deep into something when we bore deep deep deep deep deep into a subject i know when i'm writing a book which i'm doing right now the first attempt that i make it something is very superficial not interesting you wouldn't believe how bad my writing is on the first go but i go deep deep deep into what i'm thinking i cross it out i do something else i edited by the tenth time i go into it something interesting is happening so when you focus deeply on something ideas will come to you and sometimes those ideas will be brilliant how many books do you read to write one book so for mastery how many books did you consume to write that one or four eight laws of power it's hard to estimate but it's somewhere around three hundred some could be upwards of that and you know sometimes if a book is is bad and believe me i could i read a lot of bad books i kind of skim them you know oh this passage is really sucked so this chapter is meaningless are kind of float through it but if a book is really good and you know i could there are some books that are incredible i'd say maybe about a fifth of them reached that level i'll focus very deep i'll even re reread it several times it's probably why my health suffered and why i had a stroke is because i read too many books i do too much research but i wanna get at the reality of what i'm writing about i don't wanna be superficial because so many books out there at least for me don't really go deep enough into the subject to kind of skimming along the surfaces so sam was talking about mastery and you have this concept of people finding their life life task their life's task and i think that's great but i know a lot of people who are maybe in the thirties or forties who don't know that that is and maybe they feel like it's too late or they're stuck or don't know where to start can you you know what's the sort of pocket book guidance you have for somebody like that who's looking for who who's trying to figure out what that is and what tools that could use to figure out that life's task well it's a question i get all the time and it's an extremely important question the idea that i have is that when you were born your your dna there's something completely unique about you genetically there's never gonna be anyone in the past or the future who will be like you your parents who raised you there also unique so you are a unique individual you were so at birth right and when you were very young two three four years old you attracted to certain things naturally i call them primal inclination things that you loved very deep with you were drawn to that you were attracted to i tell the story in the book of steve jobs he's seven years old he's walking with his father in sunny california where he grew up and he passes by an electronic shop and he's just fascinated by these objects in the window the design of them and how beautiful they are and it was at that moment that he could of fell in love with technology not just as technology as as a machine but as the design of it because he was a brilliant designer so i'm saying you had those moments when you were five or six years old but your problem is when you were eighteen or nineteen or twenty you took a wrong path you listened to other people you didn't listen to yourself you listen to your parents who said robert you should go to law school and this is what you know some of what my own parents told me you need to go to business school you need to go become a doctor you need to get something practical and make a living and you're alienate from that deep deep love of something that you have when you were four or five years old or six years old or whatever it is and then you go down a wrong path so the way is to get back onto that path and the way is to reconnect with who you are with what you truly level on what your interests are and there's a process for that and i can go into it and i've consulted with many people on this thing but the problem is you're so in tune with what other people are telling you you're not into yourself if you don't know what makes you unique and if you look at all of the really successful people in this world people the great entrepreneurs or in any field they're one of a kind right there's nobody else like it a a kobe bryant out there you know god has sold my favorite basketball player they're one of a kind okay so you lost that somehow and when you're in your thirties it you can get back to it but what you need to do is you need to be practical in life you can't just suddenly start all over and go i've been learning these skills i went into law school and and i'm not happy with it you can't now turn around and say well i'm gonna be a poet or i'm gonna be a rock star you've already learned skills you have to build on what you have and take it in a direction towards something that you really really love right you need to be practical and you may have to compromise a little bit but when you're in your thirties you can still do it and because you're you're young enough in your mind is flexible as you get older you get rigid you get set in your ways and it comes harder and harder and harder to do this process when you're in your forties it's still possible but get it's it's getting harder when you're your fifties it's getting almost very very difficult so the real lesson for people out there is if you're twenty years old do not go on that wrong path because it gets very difficult later in life to adjust but if you're in your thirties you have to reassess yourself you have to get a journal and every day you have to write down things about what really excites you in life what it was when you opened a book and you read about something and you go wow that just d attracts me i know personally whenever i see an article or a story about early humans and how we develop thirty forty sixty thousand years ago i i can't believe it i'm so excited i can't we were actually like that and look who we are now you have subjects like that but you just become alienate from yourself you're not listening to yourself you're not listening to that voice in your head and you need to find your way back alright i read a ton i would say almost a book a week and the reason i read so much is because my philosophy towards reading is i wanna see what worked for the winners that i love and what strategies they use and then i wanna see what mistakes were did they all make where were the common flaws that they all had and i just wanna avoid that and so hubspot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in two thousand twenty five and i did that and so i listed out seven books that made a meaningful difference in my life and i explained what the difference that they had on me or what actions i took because of the book and then also i listed out my very particular ways of reading because i'm pretty strategic about how i read and how i read so much and how i remember what i read and things like that and so i put this together in a very simple guide it's seven books that had a huge impact on my life and you can scan the qr code below if you wanna read it or there's a link guys know what to do there's a link in the description just go ahead and click it and you'll see the guy that i made so it's the seven books that had a massive change in my life this year so far and then also how i'm able to read so much so check it out below you know i i'm only saying this to give you context robert but millions of people listen to this podcast and sometimes they look up to sean and i because we've done some interesting things in the business world yes and i don't they look down on us too yeah sometimes they look up to us a lot of times they looked out at us no they and and i can't speak for sean but even you know we're fortunate to have people look up to us and even i am sometimes like i still don't know what my life's task is i still have doubts and i think that you said something here you're like you have to listen to yourself and like maybe yourself is yelling at you but so is everything else and so it's kind of hard to hear can you actually walk me through you said you consult with people and the interesting thing about being a historian like you is like very billionaire i imagine they're like be my oracle tell me what to do what questions do you ask to journal or what is like your seven day exercises that you do with someone who's is hiring you to help you find or you know hiring you to give them their life's task or help them find it okay well you know as a as you as you point out the problem is in this era of social media we have so much information coming at us that we're confused and we're distracted right this all this noise the static going on in your brain you're hearing what people are having for lunch you're hearing about this outrage this problem you don't have a you know not able to focus so the main thing here is you gotta really really go into yourself you gotta cut out all that crap you're taking it seriously because a lot of people who come to me i can tell right away they're not serious about it they kind of well not really happy maybe robert can help me figure it out no damn you have to figure it out it's not up to me you're not taking it seriously you're playing a game you kind of have dreams and you wish know you gotta take this seriously your life is at stake time is short you know you could die tomorrow life is shorter than you think so you don't have time to waste so take this thing seriously that's the number one thing i tell people and what take it seriously means is it requires time alright you're gonna carve out let's say a week of real focus and i think you could do it longer than that but let's just say in in your scenario a week of clear focus alright you're gonna get a journal a book or compute if you do it like computer i recommend an actual book because the brain and the hand there's a there's a process as a magic goes on when you hand write something i'm gonna ask you to hand right everything but in this case writing in a journal is the best idea i think okay so you're gonna start writing in a journal you can even sometimes voice recorder because i do that too as well if that's something you prefer but i don't want you to be on the screen all the time okay i want you to be really listening to yourself deeply okay so you're writing things down you're gonna start writing you're gonna begin by saying these are the things that i love and these are the things that i hate and you can put you can put it in and you can divide the page in half and and do that if you want so to give you an example things that you hate and dislike are a very important part of figuring out your life's task now personally i didn't figure out what i was really meant to do which is writing these books until i was about thirty eight years old okay i was kind of lost and i was kind of wandering but the one thing i knew and and i've known at a very early age is i hate working for other people i hate working for other people i hate the politics i hate the egos i'm i like to control things so i need i need to be somebody who works for myself right i can't work for other people i'm really bad at it i never held a job for longer than ten or eleven months in my entire life i was always dissatisfied quid in whatever okay so knowing what you hate is very important for knowing what you love alright so you cut things out you cut all the stuff out that you don't wanna do you you're not interested in math you're don't interested in numbers you're more of an id person i don't know what it is but you're gonna write down the things that you love the things that you hate in the present moment alright and you're gonna what this is really about sam you're connecting with yourself right because you're not connected to yourself and that's the number one problem people have in this world they're listening to other people they're i imitate other people oh this is a cool person i wanna be like him or her no you gotta be yourself you're not connected to yourself so this journal process is gonna take you through several days of reconnecting with who you are the other thing that you need to do is you need to go into your child into your early years so we begin by looking at the present moment i hate working for other people i love this kind of subject or this kind of thing in in the world now i want you to go deep into your childhood i compare it to being like an archaeologist you're making a dig right it's you're not going back millions of years you're going back to when you were four or five years old and i want you to because in those early years you were open to the world you were really open was we get older we get really closed certain things excited you in a way that you can't even recall it's not the same to you now right it didn't have to do with words it had to do with feelings so i tell the story i told you like steve jobs there's the story of tiger woods with his father in the garage she's like two years old i don't know something like that his father is hitting golf balls in the garage you know there's one of those little plastic balls against the against the wall and tiger is sitting there in his baby chair and he's getting so excited he's kicking his legs oh my god is incredible right then in there he had discovered his life's task basically it wasn't like an intellectual process it wasn't well i'm two years old golf is really interesting and i'm gonna study it it was in his heart it was something deep you can't put it into words right you had that moment it's almost pre verbal but something really really excited you for me when i was a child it was language and words i was obsessed with with words and books and and just the magic of a word itself it like bog of my mind how credible you had those moments whatever it was so we're going back into your child and we're digging and we're digging and we're digging you also have to cut out all of the other voices part of the journal is i listened to what my friends were telling me i listen to what my parents were telling me cut all that shit out and listen to yourself that's pretty great i do have one kind of follow or i don't know clarifying a question on it so i have a five year old today and i think about like what i observe and her but i would guess that you know most of the things that she really loves are pretty common like she like since she's in a baby like if music comes on she loves it dance my one year old is the same way my four year old is the same way does that mean she's gonna be a dancer right like they love to play video games on the ipad does that mean they're gonna be a gamer or a game designer like like there's some things that are just so common everyone loves they love cookies they love ice cream does that mean they're gonna be ben and jerry's like is there another angle to it which is like you know you're sort of uniquely into it or maybe to others or not you have to look for the things that others are not into you know i guess like how do you differentiate just like common dopamine things we all like versus my life's task well it's a great question i like to refer people to this book by howard gardner are called five frames of intelligence i think i'm sorry i might not have the title exactly right but the point of this book is that there are five kinds of intelligence and some of it has to do with math and patterns some of it has to do with words some of it is kinetic it's just the body and moving the body some of it is social okay as some of it involves music and or or visual things he studied this very deeply and he assert that every human being has one of these intelligences that stands out that kind of dominates their brain so it's not a it's not a trivial thing of you know i like to play video games or i like to eat cookies it's something more deep it's something more primal it's about a certain direction that your brain heads in so with your young daughter it's is she into sort of just physical things or does she have some kind of intellectual interest that draws her that's very exciting okay so you know all children like to move around and jump around and run around etcetera that doesn't mean that they're gonna be an athlete i understand your question but some people are like that some people that use their dominant interest right and you can see that as i said by looking at the negative they're not into they're not into math they're not into words they're just into moving around and maybe at four it's hard to see that but by the time there's seven or eight it becomes very clear but what of their mind their brain attracted to okay and the problem with parenting is you're projecting onto your child what you like what your interests are who you are not understand that they're in the individual your daughter is unique she's something she's not you she has your genetics but she's a girl she's different gender she has a different experience from you right she also has the genes of her mother you're projecting onto her so imagine that you're in her skin and seeing her the world from her point of view and you can see the things that she doesn't like that she hates but what is her mind drawn to i'm pretty sure that if you focused on it deeply you could see some the outlines of what that is but the main thing you wanna to do is you wanna let your child discover that for yourself you don't want to push them in a direction that you think is better for them you want to let them discover it for themselves and when you see it which you will with your daughter maybe it'll happen soon or maybe in a couple years you wanna encourage them right even if it's something that you think isn't good for them that oh you can't make a living at that you wanna encourage them because you want children to be excited by learning if you turn your your five year olds off from learning for whatever reason man you're a bad parent i'm sorry to say that's the number one thing they've got be excited by something what is that thing that they're drawn to i believe they're you if you went deeply into it you can almost figure it out right now you know we can even talk about it but i think that's right that would be my answer it reminds me of one thing sam i wanna hear your question about the maybe one of his other concepts or books but just reminds me of warren buffett has said the best thing his dad ever taught him was the was the importance of an inner scorecard so he says most people live with an outer scorecard and the thought experiment he gives is like you know would you rather be the you know whether his he the funny example he gives is would you rather be the world's best lover but everybody thinks you're the worst or the world's worst lover but everybody thinks you're the best and that the your answer to that he says the same thing about investing which should i be the bet if i was the best investor but everybody thought i was the worst would that be better or if i was the worst investment but everybody thought i was the best would that be better what's the answer well he's he's like the you know for him he attributes to the most of his success to the fact that he has a very strong inner scorecard i see that like he's not immune to the idea of an outer scorecard that like other you know caring what other people think of him however he listens to himself first and foremost and he carries an inner scorecard and he marks his actions and his choices in his life on what he thought would be the right choice of what he thinks is a good life for him which is totally different than other people have but he's he says that that's the importance of having any a strong inner scorecard yeah i mean this is a rocket science this is like very basic stuff it's very basic human psychology hey let's take a quick break you know hubspot helped tumblr solve a big problem tumblr needed to move fast they were trying to produce trending content but their marketing department was stuck waiting on engineers to code every single email campaign but now they use hubspot customer platform to email real time trending content to millions of users in just seconds and the result was huge three times more engagement and double the content creation if you wanna move faster like tumblr visit hubspot dot com alright back to the show i wanna ask you about silence you're i think there's two reasons why i love your book or all of your books i think the first takeaway is that it's about human nature and human nature generally doesn't change that's the point of it and so you kinda like give a blue blueprint for that but the second thing is that particularly with the forty eight laws of power the most important thing is self control which is quite challenging and in particular you write a lot and you talk a lot about silence and you're like it's actually better to say as least as possible because when you talk too much you make your yourself yourself look stupid or you reveal your true intentions which you don't always want to do with social media and like particularly sean in nice job it's like very easy to talk too much or to talk a lot is there any examples of you think that someone who's popular or someone who's doing a really good job of sort of a master class on how do you silence to their advantage i think of of various musicians like a michael jackson or beyonce i mean michael jackson sort of before the ear obviously social media but he was somebody who knew that occasionally had to withdraw completely from the public eye and the thing about michael jackson was he was very clever and very kind of savvy about things and he actually had the forty eight laws of power and when he died his estate had the book and they auction did somebody bought it for three hundred thousand dollars but if you look on it he annotated everything in there right he wrote on the margins etcetera but the thing that michael jackson understood before he even read the book was the importance of disappearing so he understood the public very well in the magic of attention right because attention is the whole game when you're a celebrity and he understood that when you too present them people know you too well they take you for granted so he would disappear for several years in between albums nobody knew what he was doing and it made everybody talk about it made everybody fantasize about him but everybody wonder what's the next trick that michael jackson is gonna perform beyonce we'll do the same thing you know i was once asked by by a famous female over rapper named so she we were having dinner and she asked me the same question like i i'm in social media how do i disappear if i disappear well it's not a matter that like you you've gone for for several months but you don't have to post every day you have to create some mystery around you and even if you do post you're not so obvious you know to say exactly who you are exactly what you had for breakfast exactly the clothes that you wearing you create some mystery around you that is a form of silence that is a form of disappearing because the whole point is if people know exactly who you are there's no fantasy element in anymore and they're gonna get bored with you and they're gonna turn their attention to somebody else who seems interesting for the moment right so you can be too present you can be too in in in people's face they know everything about you and they start to take you for granted you're too familiar so if you're in the public eye you have to shake things up people have to go i thought that your like is sam but now i'm getting this idea that maybe i didn't know who you are you can do that by disappearing for a week or so and then people are wondering what happened to sam why any he posting or you can do it by putting things on social media the kind of scramble people's expectations if you scramble what people think of you i know in in in my line of work if i wrote the same book if i did the forty eight lost power part two for my second book it would probably have some success people be interested in it but it starts to get predictable right so i make sure every new book that i do is different goes off in a different direction so people can't take me for granted so people don't know what i'm gonna do next keeping them guessing as to what the next subject is going off in a new direction and challenging them is part of the game so if you become too predictable people are gonna tune you out and they're gonna move on to somebody else and so changing the scrambling their expectations is a form of silence is creating mystery because that's what this is all about sean 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 ten thousand followers were like know we wanna get to a hundred thousand let's make it and we called it the hundred thousand club but we we all start posting and and we got there and he said something like my goal is by the time i'm forty to be off the internet like like just to just to sort of disappear from the internet and i really never i i've only ever heard of people saying i want to get become more famous yeah not and and more more digital and have a bigger platform and a bigger audience and more followers and i was the first time i i'd heard somebody but again my friend group say the exact opposite like the goal is to push delete when i turned forty i almost didn't believe it in fact i still only half believe it and and but i loved it yeah and 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 himself skateboarding and like or dunking i'm like you i didn't even know you're athletic and you in many times on this podcast the last five years in podcast he's come on and be like i've decided him like fitness influencer now and then he comes back and changes it and he's like i'm all about fashion and style and i'm like dude no offense but you're not the first guy i think of when it comes to fashion but this idea and and he'll unknowingly quote you robert he'll be like whatever rule number seven reinvent yourself yeah i told him i was picking up the piano this year series like i love it reinvent yourself and i was like that's a much you know grander or you know frame for what i'm doing but i appreciate that i like that i like i do like going back to the bottom of the mountain and so when you're saying this about silence about disappearing you know i don't think there's a lot of that which makes it i think even more valuable yeah the rare more different but i also it comes with a season like you need almost a season of loudness to get people to care if you just if you're nobody and you disappear then you never were anybody right like but if you have a season of loudness and there's followed by season of silence that seems more optimal that's what i wrote in my i'm as you can i'm taking notes while we do this that's what i wrote on there is this this is seasonal and i think i have been one track minded about too many things where it's like this is good therefore always do this and actually you do need different seasons and how you're how you're gonna operate and that combination is what's more powerful yeah no i couldn't agree with you more yeah so so what does sam i'm gonna do when he turns forty then that's a great question but the reason i said that was but how old are you now i'm thirty six i just turned thirty six the reason i said that was because i think that i i do believe in reinventing yourself like i i'm not you know blow and 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 pivot to get there it's not a straight line and i believe in like these forcing forcing functions to make you pivot to kinda 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 gonna discover when it happens you're open to it you just know that at some point you want something else yeah i i i don't know but i think that like i think that i'm a i'm a greg person i talk a lot and i actually think that i think that i think that for the last twenty years since the internet has been around you know you you hear the hayward word authenticity throwing thrown around a lot yeah and i actually think that based off of your works and but in ring history being authentic is like that's actually kind of a new thing like people that's a relatively new idea to be authentic because now you could 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 mask and they're acting and i think that like an interesting takeaway from your book is to understand what outcome you want and which mass you need to wear and i actually think that being authentic is over glam and actually is actually ineffective when you want your my particular goal and i actually think that it's for some reason it may think being authentic is good and and i don't know if i agree with that i think of of too often we humans get trapped in in kind of words and things that are black and white at this or that so you can create the v near the appearance of authenticity right which is very important is the very important quality in the public eye it doesn't mean that you're completely faking it it just means that there is something about you that's natural that you that is very powerful about you but you're conscious of it you're not just operating you know without thinking about it you're conscious of what makes you look authentic and you kind of up it and you kind of lean into it and you kind of create it okay and then maybe in 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 entertain 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 are playing have no control over themselves they will say stupid things they will be authentic when it's no when they're when their authentic character is no longer interesting right because 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 so you have to be aware of who you are and you have to adapt to the times and you have to kind play a middle game where you know the importance of appearing authentic and and playing that game but you're also aware of it and you can consciously control it yeah you have a few of these quotes that are so good i just want you to unpack them so i kinda wanna read you something that stood out to me that resonated and just hear you kinda r 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 what's that because it 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 timid is dangerous be better to enter with bold any mistakes that you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity everyone admire the bold no one honors the timid it's very important quote for me because timid humidity is is to me one of the worst sins that i think people have right and it's what is causing you to not be successful in life right bold 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 held all children are born bold right they know what they want they scream they yell they get their parents to do things the parents of their slaves essentially children are born bold you become timid becomes a habit you become afraid you become differential you're always saying yes you're always trying to please people it becomes your face just becomes like that and you lose a sense of that bolus that you wants had and the the the main thing around that idea is that people are assessing you in these kind of nonverbal ways they're reading your body language and when they sense that you don't have confidence that you're doubtful that you're hesitant they don't wanna join you they don't wanna be part of your team they don't wanna listen to you they tune you out they don't respect you okay so if you start something a project of business 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 equality that that rep repulsive people you don't wanna join you but if you show bold and confidence even if it's not real you fake it even if you make yourself believe that you're confident in bold it excites people we wanna be around people like that i know when i wrote the fiftieth law and i first made fifty cent i was amazed by how confident this guy was and it made me feel ashamed that i'm not as as confident it's he 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 won because it fed off of a we all wanna be infected by the energy of someone who's bold who knows what they want right so that's the main thing is your first impressions are critical and if people see was timid and differential and all closed and not so certain they're gonna run away from you they're unconsciously they're not gonna wanna be part of your team well like one of the best parts about this is there's so many levels to this so when i tweeted this quote out da who's this you know c cofounder of a twenty thirty billion dollar company retweeted says this is exactly what i needed to hear today yeah but crazy and saw that i thought that was we just did a podcast with this guy hayes barn he's probably i don't know one of the top thousand wealthiest people in the world and we it we wanna do this podcast and most people where they come on the podcast they might agree to do it and then we sort of badger them to be like hey would you know can we get on a call maybe talk a little beforehand or hey we've got some ideas but what we might talk about you know you you've published so much work that it's we know where we know where your thoughts are already but for people who don't publish like you kinda wanna find what are your big ideas and most people put in you very little effort he was the exact this guy was the exact opposite he takes a ton of actually calls he's got his own brainstorm he's decided if i'm going to enter this if i'm gonna do this it doesn't matter if it's just a two hour podcast recording like i'm gonna try to do this as best as this can be done and so he was like one full force and he said come out and hang out with me for the day come to my morning routine let's hang out all day and then he's like look he's like i do this thing in the middle of lake tahoe i go i do a breath work i jump in the ocean i jump in the lake it's cold i watched the sunrise and he goes i'm on such a high i'm in such a peak mental state he's like i think if we do the podcast right after that it'll be the best podcast we could we could possibly do so i go out there and i do i spend all day this guy and he's so bold meaning the way he just approaches his life is super bold even after we do the breath work and stuff he's like you know what every day i heard your the 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 swim the rocks and i'm just around this guy and i asked him about elon musk because he worked with elon for about ten 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 he because elon i would say is probably the biggest example of bold and and like the solution to making a mistake through audacity is more audacity i think he is the the number one on earth out of eight billion people at doing that and seeing that this guy was around him and had the same impression of like he thought he was timid once he saw you know the the level that elon played at i just want there's so many levels to this yeah i mean we're infected by the energy of the people around us right and we can we pick up things we're we're too tune to words and and and we don't realize that we're actually there's an animal part of our nature and that animal part of our nature is picking up the energy the signs that we can read and and how people in the tone and their voice in how they stand in their posture and when we when we feel somebody who's confident it kind of rubs off on us we wanna be rounding we want more of it right i have a chapter in the forty eight loss of power called infection and the opposite happens where people who are overly dramatic or kind of drama queens who always have some terrible thing happening to them they're always a victim and they just you know and they they sort of sucked 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 it's kinda fun after reading your books because i'm like oh interesting there's that thing there's that thing is there anyone out there who you not exactly look up to you 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 so i remember some twenty five years ago or twenty four years ago i met a man named dove char who ended up becoming the founder of the company american apparel i met him when he was just starting out a man that guy was charisma in a ball he was insane with level of confidence right he was incredible and he built this factory this vertically organized factory in los angeles he created an an empire american apparel and i thought he was brilliant and he got me to join the board of directors and i was on the board of directors for american apparel for several years until it ended but then over the time we realized the guy has incredible flaws right he doesn't have self control he seems confident but in the end he was making some really bad decisions because he wasn't flexible so you know i could say you know certain artists who are able to serve stay on top of their game seemed to me to be kind of power players because they know how to mix things up but i mentioned someone like beyonce i would say somebody like fifty 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 forty eight laws of power appearances is how you appear but with politicians i will not go anywhere near that because we have no way of knowing we have no way of seeing in the present moment i see i see so many stupid people out there who immediately react to something in the news and make their judgment about this was greater 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 twenty years we'll even have a better idea and in two hundred years we'll even know for certain right so i can't even go near judging about political figures entertainer i can see i think we have some some value there some metrics and in sports obviously we do but who 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 dag who's the coach of the oklahoma city thunder and they just won the nba championship i knew him eight years ago when he was the coach of the gee 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 machiavelli not at all he's a great leader but he understands there's nothing there's no more difficult job in the world than being an nba coach you have twelve or fifteen 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 as a coach of the gee league and then he started off as the coach of the thunder and they were very bad the first couple of years but he was very patient he had a goal in mind i tell people you know 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 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 gonna lead his team to a championship now of course he couldn't predict everything clear draft etcetera but to me the way he ate man he manufactured this recent championship is one of the most brilliant examples of the forty eight levels power i'm not gonna take credit for it by any means but he's a figure on there who's gonna be a coach to reckon with for the next ten twenty years he's the phil jackson of our era he's somebody i would point out phil jackson was somebody that i greatly admired who was definitely a amount of power because he understood human nature and psychology alright listen the two most beautiful words in the english language are email subscribers you need more email subscribers i guarantee and i don't care how many you have you need more of them i need more of them you need more of we all need more email subscribers because email is an amazing way to build your business to build an audience and to build a direct relationship that's not dependent on the tiktok algorithm the instagram algorithm it's how you get people to engage directly with you so can get them to trust you to like you click products check them out check out your stuff that's how you build a relationship with people and 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a hundred thousand people and that's what i use and so for listeners with my first million there i should do in a special code so if you're thinking about hey i should have a newsletter i should have subscribers i kinda wanna build an audience that way we'll check it out they'll give you thirty percent off use the code m f m thirty go to b lehigh dot com that's b e e h i i v dot com and use the code m f m thirty i'll put the link in the description to make it easy for you start scaling your content today i wanna ask you about fifty cent because with when somebody said yeah i wrote a book with fifty cent i haven't actually i haven't read the fifty fiftieth 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 lot like the the faux leather cover one is just and i'm like excited to get it but the funny thing is you and fifty 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 that you're basically like what i think of when i think of an author and then fifty cent has this incredible story you know coming up from the streets and getting shot becoming a hip hop icon and then like a business guy or whatever so i'm just curious like hey how did that come about and be you said he was incredibly charismatic can you tell any specific stories about like either one of two things your impressions when you met them and like what stood out to you about this guy because you you know you said you're infected by the energy the people around you like tell me i would love a specific story or where you think most people don't actually really appreciate fifty story or you know what what actually he's done you know people have a very surface level understanding of him as is like oh he's just some rapper guy well i mean first of all you have to understand his his story a little bit let me know 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 hustle herself and so he was raised by his grandparents he grew up on the streets of south side queens and he was a drug dealer he was a hustle he drove crack and he talks about it and his his really great auto from pieces to wait i highly recommend that book okay but how many people from that background ended up being who he was being this successful this multi millionaire maybe i don't know underneath he's not a billionaire but incredibly successful right nobody so something about him is different something about him is very exciting and very interesting okay so that alone tells you something is unique about about fifty and so when i met him you know i was a little bit intimidated because i'm she if you reach out to you are you to have yes his his literary agent reached out to me and set up a meeting in new york in in the back room of a steak house on madison avenue right he's like a scene out of the godfather or something and so you know you can see on this kind of thin slightly nerdy white guy and you know he's surrounded with his paws said and he's kind of he's buff and he's a little bit intimidated i was kind of intimidated but then i learned later on that he was sort of intimidated by me because he thought this he was meeting the forty eight laws of power guy the sort of henry kissing type and he was a little bit up intimidated as well but what impressed me most about him was that he was very calm his very calm energy so people think of him as being really out there at angry thug but that's not who he is he's a very calm person he's always seeking to be in control of a situation he wants power and you don't get power by being out there being yelling and being angry and being thug so i was very impressed by how kind of thoughtful he was he's very he's actually a very interesting thinker and so in america everything is so divided everything is just so conventional and boring it just drives me crazy like a book between a a nerdy white guy jewish white guy from los angeles and this rapper from south side queens that that's that's that's a really odd mix that's exactly why you do something like that to bring two people who are strange who were 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 some very interesting things i remember he was on a phone call in in in one of his offices and doors were closest just him and i but he was on a call with a a a female celebrity whose name i will not mention i was going man this guy is a seduce he is really good at it right you know his voice and what he was saying to her and how he was making her laugh he was me was incredible right this guy got skills in the art of s deduction i could see that right away i remember once it was in like august i can't remember what year like two thousand six or so he was about to drop a a record and they they dropped a single that he had done with robin and thick we're going way back here and it got leaked onto the internet and chris lei 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 just completely ruined their whole marketing everybody was freaking out they were so upset and angry what do we do we're gonna take a lawsuit we're gonna bring them to court we're gonna get them to take it off the internet i was in there and then room when fifty 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 gonna do we're gonna go with it we're not gonna fight it we're gonna create a story they created their own story we're not gonna try and and rep press it we're gonna create our own version of what happened and here's what i'm gonna do we're gonna create the story that fifty said freaked out and was so angry and up soap said he took the big creek tv off the 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 she said blood gonna roll he to roll this is what we're gonna do right it was totally theatrical he never none of it ever happened he got his team to take the big screen tv off the tv off the wall in and smash it and they would film it you know as if he had done this and that was the story now instead of fifty reacting and getting all upset which made him look weak he turned it around and made it about him and his anger and that's what only the only thing people could talk about in the internet though that was brilliant right instead of freaking out he was calm he thought of the internet is all about attention is all about creating stories i'm gonna take control of this and i'm gonna create my own story and i was i was absolutely amazed you know that that that to me was the forty eight laws of power and action i mean i had so many stories with him you know it was by one of the most fun elements of my life you know going to parties with him going to the award ceremony in vegas meeting floyd may whether junior going to his house in connecticut it was a trip it was like a drug trip it was amazing i have lots of stories but that gives you dear your life's so fascinating because like you know tu o'clock was interested in machiavelli and then you forty eight laws of power came along and that it's like the new version of machiavelli valley i originally saw forty eight laws of power because i don't even know if it was true but there was like a rumor i saw on the internet that there's this book that is banned in prisons because it's so powerful and all the prison and then i was like i don't i don't know if that's true but like you i booked i'm in well if it's bad for prison it must be the best and then you're huge in the hip hop community and black community and i was like this is i'm i'm i'm and again i love this i wanna read what these guys are all about and so it you must have had a really exciting life because you are not a person who i would think would be buddies with fifty or whoever else you're friends with and yet you have the best type of fame where like these guys who normal people admire there those guys admire you even the billionaires the athletes all the successful people admire you so you you must have met so many awesome people i've met a lot of awesome people and you know i must say i'm 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 thirty nine forty almost was very meaningful so i don't take any of it for granted and i remember i i was when i wrote the forty eight laws of power i was living in this crappy one bedroom apartment in santa monica i mean it was nearby the ocean so you can't complain but it was a really kind of small cramped little apartment because i as i said i had no success i wrote the forty eight laws of power in that apartment and then suddenly you know i'm 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 whisk 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 of italy who's was a very famous person there named andre ot since passed away the most machiavelli italian politician of the modern era i'm sitting in his office i'm interview you know 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 it's been it's been an incredible ride and i'm i'm 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 just put it together you start suddenly you go from a a sort of non des script you know situation to to suddenly you're in the guy's office in italy in in the island of capri you know what triggered the transformation in you at age thirty seven thirty eight well a a bit of luck so i you know i had spent all of these years i wasn't a loser i worked at es esquire magazine in new york i had jobs in journalism i lived in new york for several years i worked you know i had jobs i lived in europe and i wandered around i you know but i was always writing and trying to figure life out i never gave up on myself i learned different skills at writing i also had lots of shit jobs with very bad bosses so when i was thirty five 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's there for the same project who is a book package and we were both really unhappy with what we were doing there and we were walking in venice italy and he's dutch and he asked me if i had an idea for a book and that was the turning point in my life to put it down into one like second of time that exact moment in italy in july of nineteen ninety five he asked me that question and everything clicked i i improvised what would turn into the forty eight laws of power all of my bad jobs all of my horrible bosses with their egos and their political games all the crap that i dealt with in hollywood because i'd 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 louie the fourteenth if you made a mistake you were put in prison and you were executed now if you make a mistake the same mistake you're fired it's the same game you just not as bloody right and i told him a story about louie the fourteenth and his finance mister the opening story of the forty eight 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 act i could afford to try and write this dream because he's was actually offering money once he had the treatment i was so desperate and so depressed that i put every goddamn ounce of energy i had into it all of my bad experiences life everything that i had been through all the skills i developed i just poured into that treatment it was literally get richer die trying at that moment and i wrote a great treatment he loved it and the rest of 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 sixteen eighteen years in the wilderness is developing skills so that's what helped turn it around that's so awesome and i 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 forty eight dollars a power came out in two thousand and or ninety eight 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 twenty twenty four was best year we've ever had was insane it's accelerated yeah and i think we're now close to ten million copies sold in the united states alone oh my god it's pretty crazy to have like a life's work right i mean that's like like i don't know if you meant to do this but like you've it it's a timeless thing that can be readable and awesome for fifty or a hundred years yeah i mean you know you never know when you write a book like that it's a very weird book and that could be good or it could be bad it looks strange you know the design of it with the things on the side and everything broken up it has all these stories from history for better or for worse i can say nobody else has written a book that looks like that or reads like that right and it could have easily failed that could have easily bombed i you know i remember god am i gonna have to go back to to working at some crap job after this book is a disaster yeah maybe maybe you'll have to like go back to doing temp work or something so it could have easily been a disaster stir but it didn't and so it's one of those strange things it's very a lot of its 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 so yeah it's it's it's insane because you never know in life what's gonna be successful or what's not i wanted ask you about daily application of of the ideas from forty to eight laws of power because it's one thing to read a book to not along maybe even under underline it and then you close the book and you go back to being an exactly the person who you are which would be i think a pretty disappointing outcome and i think about these day to day situations i get in i'm in my car in traffic i'm in a grocery store i'm at up coffee shop i'm having a a just yet another meeting at work whatever it is i'm curious what's one law that you think is easily applicable to people's day to day life to 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 of of of power okay well the the try this is to get out of the moment and to be observing us the situation that's in front of you so so often you're just reacting to things you're just in the moment you're just listening to what people are saying you're just in your own head your own thoughts your own ideas that circle around and round and round your own emotions which what you're having to 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 all completely and to absorb your your interest your mind your spirit in the people you're dealing with this pertains to power this pertains to s deduction this pertains to strategy this pertains to war and to human nature to all of my books right you're two 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 now what you do is you look at that barista and you go what does it like to be him or her what is their world like you know it's kind of weird that you know probably let's say it's a it's a guy it's probably this is not his life task he's got some other interests what's going on in his mind in this moment try and read his body language and go into this almost like fan story in your head of what he's like what his apartment looks like what his girlfriend looks like what his dog looks like and think about it get out of yourself okay do that again and again and again and again in every situation it will calm you down it will be a form of therapy for you it will also make you a superior observer of people to 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 in 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 in a a supreme acute observer of people fame 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 wanna yell at you i wanna do this i wanna do that and i was like hold on i gotta think about i gotta reflect what what does this guy wanna 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 your this is go solve a real crime whatever and so but i think but related to that the the thing before you have to do that this is to control your emotions which i work hard and i fail at all the time but that that's what it's kinda rooted and i think right that that's like the foundational like step which is like don't react reflect to the side of it is that the guy who's giving you your parking ticket you know he's got his own life he's got his own world yes it's annoying as hell he feel so helps so stupid while you have you're ride there but it'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 you can't go back but the people you deal with are interesting they're weird they're different they have their own life they have that he's he's this porsche who's got this miserable job everybody hates him like you do he's gotta receive all of this hate and negative energy from people then he has to go back to his apartment somewhere in queens and you know and and other people are kind of you know yelling at him he's got all this internalized anguish and anxiety get into the story of other people because they're interesting there i know i'm making this up i never met this guy give you the ticket off of the woman but it's fun to think about it it's fun to get out of it it's fun to imagine what they're like and then you slowly start developing this muscle where you start thinking about other people and not yourself and getting into their stories and figuring out what makes them tick so if you need to seduce them if you need to get this guy giving you a ticket to not give you a ticket you have the way to do it because you understand who he is you understand how much negative attention this guy gets every single day he's out on his job and your first reaction will be man must be a terrible job i'm so sorry for you say something that kind of disarm him well maybe now you have the power to get him to stop riding that ticket where as opposed to your aggressive energy fuck man i idea with that every single person gives that to me i'm not gonna still i'm gonna still write your ticket just despite you a hole no you diffuse the situation by coming up to him with like man you must have a horrible i'm really sorry that you i don't know whatever it is you know that's the approach well have you ever read a chris os book never split the difference like if there was any takeaway it's basically so chris 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 verbal and label how they feel and that's an immediate disarming thing to get what you want basically and sean i don't know you know like me and sean have both talked about the book the game which i i i assume you'd you know all about neil strauss and for a fourteen year old boy that was like the greatest thing ever because we like desperately wanted to meet girls and it was like a very pop pop pop way of like learning about it it like easy to learn and read about but you have a book i is it i have to remember the numbers thirty three rules of s selection is that no it's called the art s deduction art of s deduction thirty three laws a war i yeah i'm i'm getting him a bunch of i'm getting confused but you have a whole book on s deduction which like i wish i would have read this when i was younger because like you outlined like all these interesting ways basically deduction not meaning just sleep with people but like to do someone into like basically doing what you want them to do and it gives like actually may it gives like your books sean robert books are pretty great they like tell you the history but then they also the history of like a person who's a story of this rule but then you outline like the tactics and strategy which is like the best format and so that would that was another winner and it taught all these like tactics on i'm like people or getting them to be like buy into your whatever you want them to be out by yeah i mean i i know neil trials and i you know he talked he quotes the art deduction in the game but the art deduction 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 it makes a book it's a book for people who who you want to like fund your project or who you want to hire you it also is something that you may be want us to seduce a woman or a man for for sex or whatever yes but s deduction is something that you do every single day of your life right you're always bad at it or you're good at it but you're always constantly having to make people like you in some way or other so i wanted to come up with the ultimate psychology of what it makes peep draws people to you and what rep repulsive people from you so so that's what the art deduction is about did it make you more likable were you were were you pre and post yeah with pre and post robert different i i got interested in s production in the eighties when i well obviously i was a young man you know and i was living in paris i was twenty two i was working in a hotel in paris where all the models stayed for the for the fashion weeks or whatever the most beautiful women in the world were staying at this hotel at twenty two years old you know and common was insane and there was this guy you 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 s deduction game i was fascinated by it how come he could get all of these women to go out with the on dates and i couldn't do anything i couldn't get anywhere i kind of got interested in it and then i started reading books literature about it and i kind of got fascinated by the whole phenomenon of s deduction and i went through my twenties what i would call my years as a rake where i was you know i was fairly successful at meeting and introducing women not on his level not on fifty 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 have the chance to write it you know all of my all of that knowledge and experience came into into writing the book so of my own failures and some of my own successes so it's been something that had been on my mind for many many years in general how self actual do you feel like you are in these different book categories power s deduction etcetera like are you if a ten 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 you've met or or or have read about where do you put yourself and and is writing an effective way to move up that ladder you know what i mean does did the study in the process of writing it actually help well a a writer is a writer i'm not out there i think for political office i'm not you know on a stage entertaining people i'm am 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 in florence in at the early part of the sixteenth 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 medici came back into power he was in disgrace and he was in he was in prison briefly and he went off into the countryside and to get himself back in power he wrote a called the prince right this was going to ing differentiate himself with the medici medici and maybe get him so he could come back and be a diplomat again okay that one book that he wrote some hundred pages long can you you cannot quantify the influence that that one book has had right it's insane i mean maybe next to the bible you can't think of another book that has had greater impact all of the historical figures since machiavelli who read the prince who internalize the lessons who loved him or hated him reacted against him or for him if you had to measure that power it's insane it's off the charts and yet he never made any money from it he never realized that power but that is true power true influence in the world so we can look at all the people around us who would we imagine having power with all their money and their billions but ideas are the most powerful thing in this world okay you can put all you want price tags on on on material things but something completely immaterial an idea is what is most powerful in this world so when somebody has an idea for a great business or steve jobs has an idea for a new ipod it's in his head it's in his brain he's thinking and then it becomes reality that is power the power of thinking of ideas is greater than all the other nonsense in this world so i can't dunk a basketball unlike sam i i can't dance very well at all i can't sing i have a stroke so my body kind of messed up right now but on the level of ideas i have tremendous amount of power and influence and i and i know it because the people writing to me i'm not bragging at all is just very real so on that barometer i have actual it it's not whether i can go out there and command an army or become present because that's not my game my game is ideas and on that level i have actual myself i have realized my life's task and my power and after i die i'm not gonna be like machiavelli with his six hundred years of influence but i will have some influence over people after i die that is power that is ideas ideas shape this world and 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 no i thought that was had a great i mean was a great you do you have your one liner of your life's task i'm just curious yeah to change to change people to change how they think and to change how people lack that's always been my my goal here you know there's too much kind of stupidity this 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 outs shine 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 forty eight laws of power but i've witnessed people being so stupid being so single minded being so inflexible so unable to adapt that it imp me that they don't understand how to actually operate in this world so i've trying my books my life's task is to enlighten people on that front are you a happy person like because when i whenever i read your books it's a very serious topic and you spend your life reading and writing about very serious things does are you able to find joy that and be happy well you know happiness is is is just a word and you know we live in our bodies and ourselves and our emotions and you know at some hour in the morning i'll be very happy and excited and then two hours later something will be frustrating little so we all go up and down and up and down but i'd like to talk about fulfillment as opposed to happiness a sense that i fulfilled you know i have a sense of fulfillment that i accomplished something and i have a very high sense of fulfillment so right now i'm writing a book it's very frustrating i can't type because i had a stroke i can't take hikes my life is very limited right now but i get to write this book and it involves so much td and so much difficulty but then i pull back and go wow man what a privilege this is and this is a book i hope that's gonna change people on a very deep level so on the micro level of happiness i have a lot of frustration i have a lot of td i have a lot of things that i wish were otherwise but on the level of happy of fulfillment when you pull back over course of months or years it's off the charts i i have an incredible sense of accomplishment particularly this book here the book on the supply but we're 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 hand write everything i have to edit in handwriting it's a mess and then i have to dictate it in the computer then i have to edit it with one hand i can't take a hike to clear my mind i've just trapped in my body in my office and yet i've written the book and so i'm gonna 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 a such a huge impact on me you know when i was in my twenties and to the states so you've had a really big impact on me so i'm personally very like honored and thankful be able to talk to you but the predominantly the people who listen to this are are young men in their twenties 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 kinda your thing which is you you're 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 and rubs off on me so we appreciate you doing this you're you're awesome hopefully you know yeah i think you you said your goal was to change people you've changed me and hopefully this is a gateway drug to introduce you to even more people who you could possibly change appreciate that you know i 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 is a little bit 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 allowing me to to just blow hot air for an hour and a half i mean look at this this is you're in the business of ideas and info i mean this is okay i'm on the podcast i'm i'm supposed to be talking i'm supposed to be paying attention and i'm sitting here furiously writing notes to myself of small nuggets of wisdom little little golden nuggets that you were dropping so thank you for coming on thank you so much for having me thank you that's it that's a pod i feel like i could rule word i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a goal travel never looking back my friends if you like m then you're gonna like the following podcast it's called a billion dollar moves and of course it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the number one audio destination for business professionals billion dollar moves it's hosted by sarah chen spelling sarah and is a venture capitalist and strategist and with billion dollar moves she wants to look at unicorn founders and fund 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 for your 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 hotspot hubspot podcast network again billion dollar moves alright back to the episode