Master Your Mind & Watch What Happens - Robert Greene

Shaan Puri

One of the best parts about this is there are so many levels to it. When I tweeted this quote out, **Darmesh** — who's the cofounder of a $2.03 trillion company — retweeted it and said, "This is exactly what I needed to hear today."

Sam Parr

Man, 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 wish I could just do a four-year degree on four or six of these Robert Greene books — because they're amazing. In particular, *Mastery* absolutely changed my life. I read it when I was twenty, twenty-two years old — about eleven or twelve years ago. It totally changed my life. I had thought being a generalist was the way to go, but according to *Mastery*, it was not.

Robert Greene

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

Sam Parr

How many books do you read to write one book? So, for *Mastery*, how many books did you consume to write that one? Or *The 48 Laws of Power*?

Robert Greene

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

Shaan Puri

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

Robert Greene

Well, a question I get all the time—and it's an extremely important question—is this: when you were born, your DNA made you completely unique. There will never be anyone in the past or the future who is exactly like you. Your parents who raised you are also unique. You are a unique individual from birth. When you were very young—two, three, four years old—you were naturally attracted to certain things. I call them *primal inclinations*: things you loved deeply, that you were drawn to. I tell the story in the book about Steve Jobs: he was seven years old, walking with his father in Sunnyvale, California, and he passed by an electronics shop. He was fascinated by the objects in the window: the design of them and how beautiful they were. It was at that moment he fell in love with technology—not just as machines, but with the design of them—because he was a brilliant designer. You had those moments when you were five or six years old. But the problem is that at 18, 19, or 20 you might take a wrong path. You listened to other people instead of yourself. You listened to parents who said, "You should go to law school," or "You need to go to business school," or "Become a doctor—get something practical and make a living." You become alienated from that deep love you had when you were four, five, or six years old, and you go down the wrong path. The way back is to reconnect with who you are—what you truly love and what your interests are. There's a process for that. I've consulted with many people about this. The problem is you're so tuned in to what other people are telling you that you're not listening to yourself. You don't know what makes you unique. If you look at all the really successful people—the great entrepreneurs or people in any field—they're one of a kind. There's nobody else like Kobe Bryant out there (God rest his soul—my favorite basketball player). You lost that uniqueness somehow. If you're in your thirties, you can get back to it, but you need to be practical in life. You can't suddenly start all over and say, "I've been learning these skills; I went into law school and I'm not happy—now I'm going to be a poet or a rock star." You've already learned skills; you have to build on what you have and take it in a direction toward something you really love. You may have to compromise a little, but when you're in your thirties you can still do it because you're young enough and your mind is still flexible. As you get older, you get more rigid and set in your ways, and it becomes harder to do this. In your forties it's still possible, but it's getting harder. In your fifties it becomes very difficult. The real lesson is: **if you're 20 years old, do not go on that wrong path, because it gets very difficult later in life to adjust**. But if you're in your thirties, you must reassess. Get a journal and every day write down what really excites you in life—what made you open a book and think, "Wow, that attracts me." For me, whenever I see an article or story about early humans and how we developed 30, 40, 60 thousand years ago, I get so excited I can't believe it—we were actually like that, and look who we are now. You have subjects that can draw you in, but you've become alienated from yourself. You're not listening to that voice in your head, and you need to find your way back.

Sam Parr

Alright. I read a ton—I would say almost a book a week. The reason I read so much is because my philosophy toward reading is that I want to see what works for the winners I love and what strategies they use. I also want to see what mistakes they made, what common flaws they all had, and I want to avoid those. HubSpot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in 2025, and I did. I listed out **seven books** that made a meaningful difference in my life and explained the differences they had on me and the actions I took because of each book. I also listed my very particular ways of reading, because I'm pretty strategic about how I read so much and how I remember what I read. I put this together in a very simple guide: seven books that had a huge impact on my life. You can scan the QR code below if you want to read it, or there's a link in the description—**you guys know what to do**—just click it and you'll see the guide that I made. So it's the seven books that had a massive change in my life this year so far, and also how I'm able to read so much. Check it out below. 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 me because we've done some interesting things in the business world.

Robert Greene

Yes, and...

Shaan Puri

Sometimes, they look down on us, too.

Sam Parr

Yeah. Sometimes they look up to us. A lot of times they look down on us. I can't speak for **Sean**, but we're fortunate to have people look up to us. Even I sometimes think, *I still don't know what my life's task is; I still have doubts.* I remember you said, "You have to listen to yourself," and maybe your self is yelling at you—but so is everything else, so it's kind of hard to hear. Can you actually walk me through—you said you consult with people. The interesting thing about being a historian like you is, with billionaires, I imagine they're like, "Be my oracle; tell me what to do." What questions do you ask to journal? Or what is your seven-day exercise that you do with someone who's hiring you to help them find, or to give them, their life's task?

Robert Greene

Okay. You know, as you... the problem is in this era of social media we have so much information coming at us that we're confused and distracted. There's all this noise, this static going on in your brain. You're hearing what people are having for lunch, you're hearing about some outrage or problem, and you can't focus. The main thing here is you've got to really go into yourself. You have to cut out all that crap. You're taking it casually—because a lot of people who come to me, I can tell right away they're not serious about it. They kind of say, "Well, I'm not really happy; maybe Robert can help me figure it out." No. Damn it. You have to figure it out. It's not up to me. If you're not taking it seriously, you're playing a game. You kind of have dreams and wishes. No—you've got to take this seriously. Your life is at stake. Time is short. You could die tomorrow. Life is shorter than you think, so you don't have time to waste. Take this thing seriously. That's the number one thing I tell people. What "take it seriously" means is that it requires time. You're going to carve out—let's say—a week of real focus. I think you could do it longer than that, but in your scenario: a week of clear focus. You're going to get a journal—a book—or a computer. If you do it on a computer, I recommend an actual book because the brain and the hand—there's a process, there's a magic that goes on when you handwrite something. I'm going to ask you to handwrite everything. In this case, writing in a journal is the best idea, I think. You can even sometimes use a voice recorder because I do that too, if that's something you prefer. But I don't want you to be on the screen all the time. I want you to be really listening to yourself deeply. So you're writing things down. Begin by saying: "These are the things that I love" and "These are the things that I hate." You can divide the page in half and do that if you want. Things that you hate and dislike are a very important part of figuring out your life's task. Personally, I didn't figure out what I was really meant to do—which is writing these books—until I was about 38 years old. I was kind of lost and wandering. But one thing I knew very early: *I hate working for other people.* I hate the politics. I hate the egos. I like to control things, so I need to work for myself. 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, quit, and whatever. Knowing what you hate is very important for knowing what you love. So you cut things out. Cut all the stuff out that you don't want to do. If you're not interested in math or numbers and you're more of an idea person, write that down. Write the things you love and the things you hate in the present moment. What this is really about, Sam, is you're connecting with yourself. You're not connected to yourself, and that's the number one problem people have. They're listening to other people, they're imitating other people: "Oh, this is a cool person, I want to be like him or her." No—you've got to be yourself. You're not connected to yourself, so this journaling process will take you through several days of reconnecting with who you are. The other thing you need to do is go into your childhood—into your early years. We begin by looking at the present moment: "I hate working for other people," "I love this kind of subject or that kind of thing." Now go deep into your childhood. I compare it to being like an archaeologist: you're making a dig. You're not going back millions of years—you're going back to when you were four or five years old. In those early years you were open to the world. As we get older we get closed. Certain things excited you in a way you can't even recall now. It wasn't about words; it was about feelings. I tell the story—like Steve Jobs, and the story of Tiger Woods with his father in the garage. He was like two years old; his father is hitting golf balls in the garage—one of those little plastic balls—against the wall and Tiger's sitting there in his baby chair getting so excited, kicking his legs: "Oh my God, this is incredible." Right then and there he had discovered his life's task. It wasn't an intellectual process; it wasn't, "I'm two years old, golf is interesting, I'm going to study it." It was in his heart. It was something deep you can't put into words. It's almost pre-verbal, but something really excited you. For me, when I was a child, it was language and words. I was obsessed with words and books and just the magic of a word itself. It boggled my mind how incredible that was. You had those moments—whatever it was—so we're going back into your childhood. We're digging and digging and digging. You also have to cut out all of the other voices. Part of the journaling is: I listened to what my friends were telling me; I listened to what my parents were telling me. Cut all that shit out and listen to yourself.

Shaan Puri

I have one follow-up, or I guess a clarifying question. I have a **five-year-old** today and I think about what I observe in her. I would guess most of the things she really loves are pretty common. Since she's a baby, if music comes on she loves to dance. My one-year-old is the same way; my four-year-old is the same way. Does that mean she's going to be a dancer? They love to play video games on the iPad—does that mean they're going to be a gamer or a game designer? Some things are just so common: everyone loves cookies, loves ice cream. Does that mean they're going to be into **Ben & Jerry's**? Is there another angle to it, which is you're sort of uniquely into it, or maybe others are not? You have to look for the things that others are not into. How do you differentiate common dopamine things we all like versus *my life's task*?

Robert Greene

Well, it's a great question. I like to refer people to this book by Howard Gardner called *Five Frames of Intelligence* — I might not have the title exactly right. The thesis of this book is that there are five kinds of intelligence. Some of it has to do with math and patterns, some of it has to do with words, some of it is kinetic (the body and moving the body), some of it is social, and some of it involves music or visual skills. He studied this very deeply and asserts that every human being has one of these intelligences that stands out — that kind of dominates their brain. So it's not a trivial thing like "I like to play video games" or "I like to eat cookies." It's something deeper and more primal: a certain direction that your brain heads in. With your young daughter, ask: is she into physical things, or does she have some kind of intellectual interest that draws her? That's very exciting. All children like to move, jump, and run; that doesn't mean they're going to be athletes. Some people are simply oriented that way — movement is their dominant interest. You can also see it in the negative: they're not into math or words, they're just into moving around. At four it may be hard to see, but by seven or eight it often becomes very clear what their mind and brain are attracted to. The problem with parenting is projecting your own interests onto your child — projecting who you are and what you like. You haven't understood that they're an individual. Your daughter is unique; she's not you. She has your genetics, but she is a girl with different experiences and also carries the genes of her mother. Imagine being in her skin and seeing the world from her perspective.

Robert Greene

From that point of view, you can see the things that she doesn't like, that she hates. But what is her mind drawn to? I'm pretty sure that if you focused on it deeply, you could see some of the outlines of what that is. The main thing you want to do is **let your child discover that for themself**. You don't want to push them in a direction that you think is better for them. Let them discover it on their own. When you see it — which you will with your daughter; maybe it'll happen soon or maybe in a couple of years — you want to **encourage them**, even if it's something that you think isn't good for them. If you think, "Oh, you can't make a living at that," still encourage them. You want children to be excited by learning. If you turn your five-year-old off from learning for whatever reason, man — you're a bad parent, I'm sorry to say. That's the number one thing: they've got to be excited by something. What is that thing they're drawn to? I believe that if you went deeply into it, you could almost figure it out right now. We could even talk about it, but I think that's right. That would be my answer.

Shaan Puri

It reminds me of one thing, Sam. I want to hear your question about maybe one of his other concepts or books, but this just reminds me: Warren Buffett has said the best thing his dad ever taught him was the importance of an *inner scorecard*. He says most people live with an *outer scorecard*. The thought experiment 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? That's the funny example he gives. He says the same thing about investing: would it be better if I were the best investor but everybody thought I was the worst, or if I were the worst investor but everybody thought I was the best?

Robert Greene

"What's the answer?"

Shaan Puri

Well, he's—he's like... For him, he attributes most of his success to the fact that he has a very strong **inner scorecard**.

Robert Greene

I

Shaan Puri

See, he's not immune to the idea of an **"outer scorecard"**—that is, caring what other people think of him. However, he listens to himself first and foremost. He carries an **"inner scorecard"** and marks his actions and choices in life based on what he thinks is the right choice and what constitutes a good life for him, which is totally different from what other people have. He says that's the importance of having a strong inner scorecard.

Robert Greene

Yeah, I mean, this isn't rocket science. This is **very basic stuff** — very basic human psychology.

Sam Parr

I want to ask you about *silence*. I think there are two reasons why I love your books. The first takeaway is that they're about human nature, and human nature generally doesn't change. That's the core of it. So you kind of give a blueprint for that. The second thing is that, particularly with *The 48 Laws of Power*, the most important thing is **self-control**, which is quite challenging. In particular, you write a lot and talk a lot about silence. You say, "It's actually better to say as little as possible, because when you talk too much you make yourself look stupid or you reveal your true intentions," which you don't always want to do with social media. Particularly in Sean's and my job, it's very easy to talk too much. Are there any examples—someone who's popular or someone doing a really good job—that you think are a sort of master class on how to use silence to their advantage?

Robert Greene

I think of various musicians like **Michael Jackson** or **Beyoncé**. I mean, Jackson is sort of before the era, obviously, of social media, but he was somebody who knew that occasionally he had to withdraw completely from the public eye. The thing about Michael Jackson was he was very clever and very savvy about things. He actually had *The 48 Laws of Power*, and when he died his estate had the book and they auctioned it. Somebody bought it for $300,000. If you look on it, he annotated everything in there — he wrote in the margins, etc. But the thing that Michael Jackson understood, even before he read the book, was the importance of disappearing. He understood the public very well and the magic of attention, because attention is "the whole game" when you're a celebrity. He understood that when you're too present, people know you too well; they take you for granted. So he would disappear for several years in between albums. Nobody knew what he was doing, and it made everybody talk about him, made everybody fantasize about him, made everybody wonder, "What's the next trick that Michael Jackson's going to perform?" Beyoncé will do the same thing. I was once asked by a famous female rapper named **Saweetie** — we were having dinner and she asked me the same question: "I'm in social media; how do I disappear?" Well, it's not a matter that you're gone for several months, but you don't have to post every day. You have to create some mystery around you, and even if you do post you're not so obvious. You don't say exactly who you are, exactly what you had for breakfast, exactly the clothes that you're wearing. You create some mystery around you. That is a form of silence; that is a form of disappearing because the whole...

Robert Greene

If people know exactly who you are, there's no fantasy element anymore. They're going to get bored with you and turn their attention to somebody else who seems interesting for the moment. You can be too present — too in people's faces. They know everything about you and start to take you for granted. You're *too familiar*. If you're in the public eye, you have to shake things up. People have to say, "I thought you were like this, Sam, but now I'm getting this idea that maybe I didn't know who you are." You can do that by **disappearing for a week or so**, and then people wonder, "What happened to Sam? Why isn't he posting?" Or you can do it by **putting things on social media that scramble people's expectations of you** — scramble what people think of you. I know in my line of work: if I wrote the same book — if I did *The 48 Laws of Power, Part Two* for my second book — it would probably have some success. People would be interested, but it starts to get predictable. So I make sure every new book I do is different and goes off in a different direction so people can't take me for granted. Keeping them guessing about what I'm going to do next — going off in a new direction and challenging them — is part of the game. If you become too predictable, people are going to tune you out and move on to somebody else. Changing or scrambling their expectations is a form of silence; it's creating mystery, because that's what this is all about.

Sam Parr

"Sean, do you ever think about *this stuff*?"

Shaan Puri

I thought of it when Sam said something kind of amazing to me. He said, "You know, we're doing this podcast, and not long ago — a couple years ago — we were in a group chat where a bunch of us who had 10,000 followers were like, 'You know, wanna get to 100,000? Let's make it.' We called it the Hundred Thousand Club, and we all started posting, and we got there." He said something like, "My goal is, by the time I'm 40, to be off the internet — like, just to... just sort of disappear from the internet." I really never — I've only ever heard of people saying, "I want to become more famous," or become more digital, have a bigger platform, a bigger audience, and more followers. It was the first time I'd heard somebody in my friend group say the exact opposite — like the goal is to *push delete* when I turn 40. I almost didn't believe it. In fact, I still only half believe it.

Sam Parr

And... and... but...

Shaan Puri

I loved it. Yeah. I think Sam also does a good job of the scramble. On one hand he'll be a CEO of a media company, and then he'll post a video of himself skateboarding or dunking. I'm like, "Oh—you could? I didn't even know you're athletic." Many times on this podcast over the last five years, he's come on and been like, "I've decided I'm a fitness influencer now." Then he pivots and says, "I'm all about fashion and style." I'm like, dude—no offense—but you're not the first guy I think of when it comes to fashion. He'll annoyingly quote you, Robert. He'll be like, "Whatever—rule number seven: *reinvent yourself.*" I told him I was picking up the piano this year. He's like, "I love it—reinvent yourself." I was like, "That's a much grander frame for what I'm doing, but I appreciate that." I do like going back to the bottom of the mountain. So when you're saying this about silence or about disappearing—I don't think there's a lot of that, which makes it, I think, even more valuable. It's rarer, it's different. But I also think it comes with a season. You need almost a season of loudness to get people to care. If you're nobody and you disappear, then you never were anybody, right? But if you have a season of loudness followed by a season of silence, that seems more optimal. That's what I wrote in my notes—*this is seasonal.* I think I've been one-track minded about too many things, where it's like, "This is good; therefore always do this." Actually, you do need different seasons in how you're going to operate, and that combination is what's more powerful.

Robert Greene

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

Sam Parr

That's a great question, but the reason I said that was...

Robert Greene

But how old are you now?

Sam Parr

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

Robert Greene

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

Sam Parr

Yeah... I don't know. I think I'm a gregarious person — I talk a lot. For the last 20 years since the internet has been around, you hear the word *"authenticity"* thrown around a lot. Based on your work and reading history, being *authentic* is actually kind of a new thing. It's a relatively recent idea: now you can just film yourself on a camera and you've been told to be authentic. But the most powerful people on earth aren't really authentic — they wear masks and they're acting. An interesting takeaway from your book is to understand what outcome you want and which masks you need to wear. I actually think that being *authentic* is over-glamorized and often ineffective when you want a particular goal. For some reason we assume being authentic is good, and I don't know if I agree with that.

Robert Greene

I think too often we humans get trapped in words and things that are black and white—you're either after this or you're that. You can create the veneer, the **appearance of authenticity**, which is very important in the public eye. That doesn't mean you're completely faking it. It just means there is something natural and powerful about you that you're conscious of. You're not operating without thinking; you're aware of what makes you look authentic, and you lean into it and amplify it. Maybe in four or five years it's a different mask or a different form of authenticity, but that doesn't mean it's completely fake. I think it's important—for a politician, for an entertainer, for anybody in the public eye—to create the appearance that they're not fake, that they're not saying things just for attention, and that they actually believe what they say. But you have to be aware that that's the **game** you're playing. People who aren't aware of the game they are playing have no control over themselves. They will say stupid things. They will be authentic when their authentic character is no longer interesting—because tastes change. Maybe right now 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, adapt to the times, and play a middle game: recognize the importance of appearing authentic and playing that game, but remain aware of it so you can consciously control it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you have a few of these quotes that are so good I just want you to unpack them. I kinda want to read you something that stood out to me that resonated, and just hear you riff on it—maybe where that comes from or where you think that needs to be applied. Or, if you could shake somebody and get them to sort of hear this message, you know, what's that? One of them I tweeted out today. It was great. You talked about how being timid is very dangerous, and you basically said: don't take action when you have hesitation or doubt; it infects your execution. The quote was: > "Timidity is dangerous. Be better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes that you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid."

Robert Greene

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

Shaan Puri

Well... one of the best parts about this is there are so many levels to it. When I tweeted this quote out, Dharmesh—who's the co‑founder of a $2.03 trillion company—retweeted it and said, "This is exactly what I needed to hear today."

Sam Parr

"Isn't that crazy?"

Shaan Puri

And I then...

Sam Parr

Saw that. I thought that was we.

Shaan Puri

I just did a podcast with this guy, **Hayes Barnard**. He's probably— I don't know— one of the top thousand wealthiest people in the world. We wanted to do this podcast. Most people who come on podcasts might agree to do it and then we sort of badger them: “Hey, can we get on a call? Maybe talk a little beforehand? We’ve got some ideas about what we might cover.” You know, if someone has published a lot, you already know where their thoughts are. But for people who don't publish, you want to find their big ideas. Most people put in very little effort. Hayes was the exact opposite. He takes a ton of action. He calls, he’s got his own brainstorms. He 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—I'm gonna try to do this as best as it can be done.” He was going full force. He said, “Come out and hang out with me for the day—come do my morning routine, let's hang out all day.” He told me, “I do this thing in the middle of Lake Tahoe. I do breath work, I jump in the lake—it's cold—I watch the sunrise. I'm on such a high, I'm in such a peak mental state. I think if we do the podcast right after that, it'll be the best podcast we could possibly do.” So I went out there and spent the day with him. He’s so bold. The way he approaches life is super bold. Even after the breath work he said, “Do something new every day. It marks the day, it keeps you growing, keeps you fresh, keeps you alive.” Then he added, “You know what? I’ve never swum to those rocks out there. Let's try to swim to those rocks.” So we jumped in the water and tried to swim to the rocks. I was around this guy and I asked him about **Elon Musk**, because Hayes worked with Elon for about ten years. He talks about Elon the way I talk about him. I asked, “Describe Elon in a word.” He said, **"the ultimate alpha."** Because Elon, I would say, is probably the biggest example of boldness. The solution to making a mistake through audacity is more audacity. I think he is number one on Earth—out of 8 billion people—at doing that and seeing that. This guy [Hayes] was around Elon and had the same impression. He thought Elon was timid until he saw the level Elon played at. I just—wow. There are so many levels to this.

Robert Greene

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

Sam Parr

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

Robert Greene

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

Sam Parr

Who—who are some of those folks?

Robert Greene

Well, I'm being a little bit selfish here, but I'm friends with the head coach of the NBA, **Mark Daigneault**, 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 G League team for the Oklahoma City Thunder. This guy is absolutely brilliant at the game of power. It's not like he's Machiavellian—not at all. He's a great leader, but he understands that there's no more difficult job in the world than being an NBA coach. You have 12 to 15 people with these incredible egos who all think they're the greatest, and you have to build them into a team—a spirit that's unified and wants to play the game. He understands human nature and psychology perfectly. He built himself from the ground up as a coach in the G League, and then he started off as the coach of the Thunder. They were very bad the first couple of years, but he was very patient. He had a goal in mind. I tell people, we're so distracted and so confused in the social media world that we can't think—let alone think three months ahead. Try to think a year or five years ahead: like, a plan. 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: *this is what I want; this is what's important; this feeds my overall goal; this is irrelevant.* It doesn't mean you're inflexible. It just means that you have a direction, and people don't have direction these days. This man had direction. He had a plan. He knew exactly how he was going to lead his team to a championship. Now, of course, he couldn't predict everything—who you draft, etc.—but to me, the way he engineered this recent championship is one of the most brilliant examples of the *48 Laws of Power*. I'm not going to take credit for it by any means, but he's a figure on the rise who's going to be a coach to reckon with for the next ten to twenty years. He's the Phil Jackson of our era... he's somebody I would...

Robert Greene

Phil Jackson was somebody I greatly admired. He was definitely a *man of power* because he understood human nature and psychology.

Shaan Puri

I love that. I want to ask you about **50 Cent** [the rapper], because when somebody said, "Yeah, you wrote a book with 50 Cent," I actually hadn't — I hadn't read *The 50th Law*. I didn't know that book. Literally, I learned about that book today.

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

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

Robert Greene

Well, I mean, first of all, you have to understand his story a little bit. A lot of people know it, but he—his mother died when he was like eight or nine years old. She was a hustler herself, and so he was raised by his grandparents. He grew up on the streets of Southside Queens and he was a drug dealer, a hustler. He sold crack, and he talks about it in his really great autobiography, *From Pieces to Weight*. I highly recommend that book. But how many people from that background ended up being who he was — this successful, this multimillionaire (maybe, I don't know if he's 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 50 [50 Cent]. And so when I met him, I was a little bit intimidated, because

Sam Parr

Did he reach out to you, or did you reach out to him?

Robert Greene

Yes. His literary agent reached out to me and set up a meeting in New York in the back room of a steakhouse on Madison Avenue. It was like a scene out of The Godfather. You can see I'm this kind of thin, slightly nerdy white guy, and he's surrounded by his posse. He's buff, and I was a little intimidated. Later I learned he was somewhat intimidated by me because he thought he was meeting the 48 Laws of Power guy—the sort of Henry Kissinger type. He was a little intimidated too. What impressed me most about him was that he was very calm. He has this very calm energy. People think of him as being really out there, angry, and thuggish, but that's not who he is. He's a very calm person who is always seeking to be in control of a situation. He wants power, and you don't get power by yelling and being thuggish. I was very impressed by how thoughtful he was. He's actually a very interesting thinker. In America everything is so divided and conventional. It drives me crazy. A book between a nerdy white guy from Los Angeles and a rapper from Southside Queens—that's a really odd mix. That's exactly why you do something like that: bring two people who are strange, who are very weird. It's not a normal combination. Bring them together and something interesting can happen. I was with him for about six months and witnessed some very interesting things. I remember he was on a phone call in one of his offices with the doors closed. It was just him and me, and he was on the phone with a female celebrity whose name I will not mention. I was thinking, "This guy is a seducer—he is really good at it." His voice, what he was saying, how he was making her laugh—he was seducing me. This guy has skills in the art of seduction. I could see that right away. I remember once, in August—can't remember the year, maybe 2006—he was about to drop a record. They had a single with Robin Thicke, and it got leaked onto the internet. Chris Lighty, who was his manager at the time, was furious because they had a whole marketing plan for the rollout and the leak completely ruined it. Everybody was freaking out: "What do we do? We're going to file a lawsuit. We're going to bring them to court. We're going to get it taken off the internet." I was in the room when 50 got the news. Once again, he was so calm—like Buddha. He said, "No, man. This is the best thing that ever happened to us. Here's what we're going to do: we're going to go with it. We're not going to fight it. We're going to create a story." They created their own story instead of repressing it. He told his team to stage the reaction and film it so the narrative was about him. As he framed it, 50 "freaked out and was so angry and so upset he took the big-screen TV off the wall and smashed it on the ground. He was so angry he threw his cell phone at somebody. Blood's going to roll. Heads are going to roll." > "This is what we're going to do." It was total theatricality. None of it ever actually happened, but they had his team take the TV off the wall and smash it on camera as if he had done it. That turned the story around. Instead of 50 reacting and looking weak, he made it about his anger—and that's all people could talk about on the internet. That was brilliant. Instead of freaking out, he was calm. He thought of the internet as all about attention and stories. He took control and created his own story. To me, that was the 48 Laws of Power in action. I had so many stories with him. It was probably one of the most fun elements of my life: going to parties with him, going to awards ceremonies in Vegas, meeting Floyd Mayweather Jr., going to his house in Connecticut. It was a trip—like a drug trip. It was amazing. I have lots of stories, but that gives you an idea.

Sam Parr

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

Robert Greene

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

Shaan Puri

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

Robert Greene

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

Sam Parr

That's so awesome. I think I've read that... I don't know how many books you've sold in general of all of your books — of your seven or eight books. But I think I read that **The 48 Laws of Power** came out in February 1998. I think it's accelerated, right? So isn't it selling more this year or last year than it did early on?

Robert Greene

"I'd say 2024 was the best year we've ever had. It was insane — it accelerated, yeah. And I think we're now close to **10 million** copies sold in the United States alone. Oh my God." </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

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

Robert Greene

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

Shaan Puri

I wanted to ask you about daily application of the ideas from *The 48 Laws of Power.* It's one thing to read a book, nod along, maybe even underline it, and then you close the book and go back to being exactly the person you were. That would be, I think, a pretty disappointing outcome. I think about the day-to-day situations I get into: I'm in my car, I'm in traffic, I'm in a grocery store, I'm at a coffee shop, I'm having just another meeting at work—whatever it is. I'm curious: what's one law that you think is easily applicable to people's everyday routines? One they could mark in their mind when they encounter a situation and think, "Let me approach this differently using one of Robert's laws of human nature or laws of power"?

Robert Greene

**The trick is to get out of the moment and to be observing the situation that's in front of you.** So often you're just reacting to things. You're in the moment—listening to what people are saying, caught in your own thoughts and ideas that circle round and round, or replaying your emotions from what happened to you that morning. You're not really listening. I want you to turn that off completely. Stop listening to yourself and instead *pay deep attention*: absorb your interest, your mind, your spirit, into the people you're dealing with. This applies to power, seduction, strategy, war, human nature—basically all of my books. You're too self-absorbed. Even when you go to Starbucks and you're getting your coffee, you think about your own problems or how the price of coffee is going up. Instead, look at the barista and ask, *what is it like to be him or her?* What is their world like? Let's say it's a guy—this is probably not his life's task; he has other interests. What's going on in his mind in this moment? Try to read his body language and go into this almost like a fan story in your head—what he's like, what his apartment looks like, what his girlfriend looks like, what his dog looks like. Get out of yourself. Do this again and again in every situation. It will calm you down; it will be a form of therapy. It will also make you a superior observer of people and of human nature. You'll begin to see that people say they love your ideas, but their body language reveals they're not interested at all. You'll become a superior reader of people and less self-absorbed. That is the number one skill you can develop: get outside of yourself and become a supremely acute observer of people.

Shaan Puri

Have you ever done anything like that?

Sam Parr

I think I'm a very emotional person and I get upset. For example, the other day I got a parking ticket and I caught the guy giving me the ticket. I had an interaction and thought, "I want to yell at you. I want to do this, I want to do that." But I paused and said, wait — I have to reflect: *what does this guy want to be doing with his time right now?* How can I use my insight into his perspective to get out of the situation, as opposed to saying, "You suck, go solve a real crime" or whatever? Related to that, the thing you have to do before you can reflect is to control your emotions. I work hard on that and I fail at it all the time, but that's kind of the root. That's the foundational step, I think: **don't react — reflect**.

Robert Greene

To this side of it is that the guy who's giving you your parking ticket — he's got his own life, he's got his own world. Yeah, it's annoying as hell. You feel so helpless, so stupid. You wonder why you parked there, but he's still going to write the ticket. You think, "Why couldn't he wait like three minutes?" Oh no — it's already written. He can't go back. But the people you deal with are interesting. They're weird, they're different. They have their own life. He's this poor schlub who's got this miserable job; everybody hates him, like you do. He's got to receive all of this hate and negative energy from people. Then he has to go back to his apartment somewhere in Queens. Other people are, 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. Now, I know I'm making this up — I never met this guy giving you the ticket (or if it's a woman) — but it's fun to think about. It's fun to get out of yourself. It's fun to imagine what they're like. Then you slowly start developing this muscle where you start thinking about other people and not yourself, 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 a 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. Your first reaction will be, "Man, that must be a terrible job. I'm so sorry for you." You say something that kind of disarms him. Well, maybe now you have the power to get him to stop writing that ticket. As opposed to your aggressive energy — "Fuck, man, I deal with that; every single person gives that to me. I'm not gonna — I'll still write your ticket just to spite you, you a-hole" — no. You diffuse the situation by coming up to him with, "Man, you must have a horrible job. I'm really sorry that you...," I don't know, whatever it is. You know, that's the approach.

Sam Parr

Well, have you ever read Chris Voss' book *Never Split the Difference*? If there was any takeaway, it's basically this: Chris Voss was an FBI negotiator who teaches people how to negotiate. The main thing he teaches is exactly what you said — **don't react to what you hear**. Put yourself in their shoes and actually verbalize and label how they feel. Yeah. That's an immediate, disarming technique to get what you want, basically. And Sean... I don't know. Me and Sean have both talked about the book *The Game* — I assume you know all about Neil Strauss. For a 14‑year‑old boy, that was like the greatest thing ever because we desperately wanted to meet girls. It was a very poppy way of learning about it; it was easy to read and learn from. But you have a book — is it... I have to remember the numbers — "33 Rules of Seduction"? Is that it?

Robert Greene

No, it's called "*The Art of Seduction*."

Sam Parr

*The Art of Seduction*, *The 33 Strategies of War* — I'm getting them confused. But you have a whole book on seduction, which I wish I had read when I was younger, because you outline all these interesting ways. By "seduction" I don't mean just sleeping with people. I mean seducing someone into basically doing what you want them to do. It actually gives—your books, Sean Robert's books, are pretty great. They tell you the history, but then they also give the history of a person — a story illustrating the rule. Then you outline the tactics and strategy, which is the best format. So that was another winner, and it taught all these tactics on seducing people or getting them to buy into whatever you want them to buy into.

Robert Greene

Yeah. I mean, I know Neil Strauss, and he—he references *The Art of Seduction* in *The Game*. But *The Art of Seduction* is different. It's not a book for pickup artists. It's a book for making people fall in love with you. It's a book for making people interested in you. It's a book for people you want to attract—people you want to fund your project or who you want to hire you. It also can be something you use to seduce a woman or a man for sex or whatever. But **seduction** is something that you do every single day of your life. You're either bad at it or good at it. You're constantly having to make people like you in some way or another. So I wanted to come up with the ultimate psychology of what makes—what draws people to you and what repulses people from you. So that's what *The Art of Seduction* is about.

Sam Parr

Did it make you more likable? Were you—pre and post Robert—different? </FormattedResponse>

Robert Greene

I got interested in seduction in the eighties when I—well, obviously I was a young man and I was living in Paris. I was 22. I was working in a hotel in Paris where all the models stayed for fashion weeks or whatever. The most beautiful women in the world were staying at this hotel when I was 22 years old. No, I mean, it was insane. There was this guy who would come by. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. He knew that these were all these incredibly beautiful women. He was this tall, good-looking Brazilian guy. He was so good at the seduction game; I was fascinated by it. How come he could get all of these women to go out with him on dates and I couldn't do anything? I couldn't get anywhere. I kind of got interested in it and then I started reading books—literature about it—and I became fascinated by the whole phenomenon of seduction. I went through my twenties what I would call my *years as a rake*, where I was... fairly successful at meeting and seducing women. Not on his level, not on 50 Cent's level, but on my own level I was pretty good at the game. I was fascinated for years before I wrote the book. Then, when I had the chance to write it, all of that knowledge and experience came into the writing: some 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.

Shaan Puri

In general, how self-actualized do you feel you are in these different book categories—*power, seduction*, etc.? If a 10 is someone who’s maximally doing these things (maybe the best examples of people you’ve met or read about), where do you put yourself? And is book writing an effective way to move up that ladder? Does the study and the process of writing it actually help? You know what I mean?

Robert Greene

Well, a writer is a writer. I'm not out there running for political office. I'm not on a stage entertaining people. I'm a writer. So you judge me by that barometer and not by other things. I think about Machiavelli himself. He was a mid-level diplomat in Florence in the early part of the sixteenth century. He was not successful; he was not powerful. He came from the middle classes and aligned himself with the Republic of Florence. When the Medicis came back into power, he was disgraced, briefly imprisoned, and went off into the countryside. To get himself back in power, he wrote a book called "The Prince." This was meant to ingratiate himself with the Medicis so he could return as a diplomat. That one book—some 100 pages long—has had an unquantifiable influence. It's insane. Maybe next to the Bible, you can't think of another book that has had greater impact. All the historical figures since Machiavelli who read "The Prince," who internalized its lessons, who loved him or hated him, who reacted against him or for him—if you had to measure that power, it's off the charts. And yet he never made any money from it. He never realized that power in his lifetime. But that is true power: true influence in the world. We can look at all the people around us who we imagine as having power because of money and billions, but **ideas are the most powerful thing in this world**. You can put price tags on material things, but something completely immaterial—an idea—is the most powerful force. When somebody has an idea for a great business, or when Steve Jobs had an idea for a new iPod, it started in his head. It was in his brain; he thought it, and then it became reality. That is power. The power of thinking—of ideas—is greater than all the other nonsense in this world. I can't dunk a basketball, unlike Sam. I can't dance very well at all. I can't sing. I've had a stroke, so my body is kind of messed up right now. But on the level of ideas, I have a tremendous amount of power and influence—and I know it because of people writing to me. I'm not bragging; it's just very real. On that barometer, I have actualized it. It's not about whether I can command an army or become president, because that's not my game. My game is ideas. On that level I have actualized myself; I have realized my life's task and my power. After I die, I won't be Machiavelli with 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. People have lost that lesson. They're so into material things that they don't understand the spiritual, intellectual power of thinking, which can change this world.

Sam Parr

**That's a good-ass answer.** That was great. I mean... that was a great do.

Shaan Puri

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

Robert Greene

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

Sam Parr

Are you a **happy person**? Because whenever I read your books, they cover *very serious topics*, and you spend your life reading and writing about very serious things. Are you able to find joy in that and be happy?

Robert Greene

Well, you know, *happiness* is just a word. We live in our bodies and our emotions. At some hour in the morning I'll be very happy and excited, and then two hours later something will be frustrating. We all go up and down. But I'd like to talk about *fulfillment* as opposed to happiness — a sense that I fulfilled something, that I accomplished something. I have a very high sense of fulfillment 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. Writing it involves so much tedium and difficulty, and then I pull back and think, "Wow, what a privilege this is." This is a book I hope is going to change people on a very deep level. On the micro level of happiness, I have a lot of frustration, a lot of tedium, and many things I wish were otherwise. But on the level of fulfillment, when you pull back over months or years, it's off the charts. I have an incredible sense of accomplishment, particularly with this book. It's a book I've been working on for six years. You have no idea the things I've had to overcome to write it. Physically, the challenges have been insane. As I said, I can't type. I have to handwrite everything and edit in handwriting — it's a mess. Then I have to dictate it into the computer and edit it with one hand. I can't take a hike to clear my mind. I'm just trapped in my body in my office, and yet I've written the book. I'm going to feel so proud of what I had to overcome. To me, that's more important than happiness. Happiness comes and goes, but a sense of fulfillment sort of stays with you for a long time. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

You've had such a huge impact on me. When I was in my twenties — and to this day still — you've had a really big impact on me. I'm personally very honored and thankful to be able to talk to you. Predominantly, the people who listen to this 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 *in spades*. I think that's kind of your thing: you seem very intentional, very wise, and very calm. I find that to be... it kind of infects me a little bit and rubs off on me. So we appreciate you doing this.

Robert Greene

You're.

Sam Parr

Awesome. I think you said your goal was to change people. You've changed me, and hopefully this is a *gateway drug* to introduce you to even more people who you could potentially change. </FormattedResponse>

Robert Greene

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

Shaan Puri

I mean, look at this: you're in the business of **ideas and info**. I mean—okay, okay—I'm on the podcast. I'm supposed to be talking; I'm supposed to be paying attention, and I'm sitting here furiously writing notes to myself of small nuggets of wisdom, little, little *golden nuggets* that you were dropping. So, thank you for coming on. </FormattedResponse>

Robert Greene

Thank you so much for having me.

Sam Parr

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