April 8, 2025 • 53 mins
Robert Greene is a globally renowned author and thinker best known for his groundbreaking books on power, strategy, and human behavior, including the international bestsellers The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, and Mastery. But before becoming a literary icon, Robert struggled through decades of uncertainty—working over 50 different jobs, battling self-doubt, and feeling lost in his 30s. It wasn’t until age 37, after years of rejection and frustration, that his life changed with the release of The 48 Laws of Power, a book that would go on to sell millions of copies and influence everyone from CEOs to world leaders and hip-hop legends. In this episode, Robert opens up about the real pain behind his rise, the dangerous truths about power, and the deeply human experiences that shaped his work.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro and Robert's Get Rich or Die Trying Moment
06:25 – 50 Jobs, Self-Doubt, and a Dream to Write
13:37 – Suicidal Thoughts and The Emotional Cost of Unfulfilled Potential
25:11 – How to Become Powerful and Master Relationships
35:54 – Why You Shouldn’t Follow All 48 Laws—and Who Actually Did
48:49 – Surreal Moments, Paparazzi, and the Prime Minister of Italy
Resources:
Robert's Instagram
Robert's Website
Sneak Peak of Robert's New Book, The Law of the Sublime
Coaching and Staying Connected:
1-on-1 Coaching | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | LinkedIn
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Robert Greene (00:00):
Does everybody have a get rich or die moment?
(00:02):
Well, first of all, you have tobe 37 years old and feel like
you're a loser and peoplelooking at you like, Who is this
person who's that age and hasn'treally done anything? Then you
will feel like, get rich or dietrying. The contrast with where
I was five months ago in mysmelly, one bedroom apartment in
Santa Monica, where nobody wouldpay attention to me, and
suddenly paparazzi orphotographing me in my swimsuit.
(00:24):
It was shocking. It was surreal.
You don't like your work, yourcolleagues aren't listening to
you. Your boss tunes you out.
You are completely powerless.
You have no effect on people, noability to
Randall Kaplan (00:35):
influence them.
Lot. 20 do not commit to anyone.
It's
Robert Greene (00:39):
about keeping some independence, some room to
maneuver the game of life. Thegame of power is to have
maneuverability. So in life, ifyou have options, you have
power.
Randall Kaplan (00:56):
Welcome to a Search of Excellence. My guest
today is Robert Green, who needsabsolutely no introduction
whatsoever. Six time New Yorktime, Best Selling Author books
you're going to know the bestfour day, Laws of Power, art of
seduction and mastery. Robert,thanks for being here today.
Thank you so much for having me.
Randall, I appreciate it glad tobe here. Let's start with your
family. You were born in BaldwinHills, raised on the west side
(01:17):
of La your dad was a chemicalsalesman for 40 years at the
same company. Tell us about theinfluence of your parents that
they had on you, and tell us alittle bit about your mom, which
you haven't talked about verymuch. Well, my mother is 98
she's still alive and kicking,doing really well. She's
Robert Greene (01:34):
She was basically a housewife. She started a
business that didn't last verylong in the 70s. So she
basically was a housewife, butshe was an artist. She studied
art at UCLA. She's has an eyefor design and fashion, and what
I got from my mother was herenergy, her persistence. She's
somebody that just never stops.
She's got more energy than I dowhen she's 98 so the this, this
(01:56):
kind of relentless pursuit ofsomething is sort of what I
inherited from my mother. Frommy father. He was sort of a
gentle person. He was a reallygood dad, and we bonded on the
level, mostly of sports. But Ithink what I got for most from
my father was my ability to workwith people, because he was a
(02:17):
great salesman. Everybody lovedhim. It was really strange and
almost poignant. At his funeral,all these people came up who I
never met before, saying howmuch they loved my father, how
wonderful it was to work withhim. He was a really, really
good salesman, because heunderstood people. He was really
good in dealing with eachperson, different cultures. At
that time, a lot of his clientswere Korean. He got really into
(02:40):
Korean culture. He was just aman with a great deal of empathy
and had good social skills. So Iinherited that from my father.
So I think those two sides kindof balanced themselves out to
produce Voila, here I am, who Iam. You
Randall Kaplan (02:58):
were very introverted as a kid, and you
always love books. Do youremember the first book you read
and what impact it had on you? I
Robert Greene (03:04):
cannot remember the first book I read. I can
remember the experience, thoughthey back in the day. This is in
the 60s. They would hand youthis mimeograph sheet with a
list of like 200 books, thepaperbacks that children could
order for like five cents apiece, right? And I checked off
like 75 books. My father waslike, Paul, you know, order 75
(03:27):
books. And I did a lot of themhad to do with war because I
just loved reading about WorldWar Two. My father was, you
know, he didn't fight, but hewas a mechanic during World War
Two. He worked on planes. I wasobsessed with World War Two
because it wasn't that distantat that time in the 60s. So a
lot of the books had to do withbattles and warfare and strategy
(03:49):
and sports, the two things Iloved the most. So that's what I
remember. These really cheap,poorly printed paperbacks, just
stacks of them that I orderedand read a lot
Randall Kaplan (04:00):
of people, as they grow up, they get, for
whatever reason, into drugsseriously in the drugs, you got
into some serious drugs in highschool, but now you've done your
research, but, but you've lookedback. And after that, even
though you were depressed, yousaid, you look back, finally, on
the drug experience. How onearth can someone who does drugs
and have a drug problem lookback and thought that was a good
Robert Greene (04:20):
thing? I didn't have a drug problem. Let me
correct that. I was mostly itwas a search. For me, it was
like kind of a spiritualexperience that I was looking
for. And so for us, it wasassociated with being out in
nature, going to concerts, youknow, like the Grateful Dead and
things like that. And so itwasn't just for wasn't an
(04:40):
addiction. It was kind of liketo have sort of a transcendental
type experience. And I had someof the most intense, beautiful
experiences in my whole life,and I remember them very
vividly. You know, trips to theocean and just seeing everything
just utterly, you know, theawesomeness of nature. Just
(05:00):
being alive, which is thesubject of my new book. So it
impacted me very deeply on aspiritual level. It was never
like an addiction. So when Ileft Berkeley and I went to a
University of Wisconsin, Ireally didn't do any
hallucinogenic drugs anymore,but it was a period of a year in
my life that was so intense. Icould still feel it in my body,
(05:21):
how exciting it was. So I wasusing drugs, not not for just
fun and kicks, but for, like,something else, something more,
something deeper. I wassearching for something. So you
Randall Kaplan (05:32):
went to Berkeley, then Wisconsin. My
daughter went to Wisconsin,Madison. Yeah. Badgers, yeah. Go
Bad. Go badgers. Although I wentto Michigan, Go Blue. So I root
for Wisconsin, Ann Arbor, yeah,and I ran. I did. I did root for
the Badgers when Michigan wasn'tplaying grade school. I'm not
sure who misses it more, mydaughter or me, because all the
(05:54):
parents would go, would have thebest times. Was it? KK, there,
when, when you were around, wasit? What the KK, this crazy bar.
Everyone goes, it's fun. Thinksit was on State Street. Yeah,
it's called the college club,yeah, yeah, sure, great, yeah,
insane. So many people graduatecollege and then they basically
the real world hits them in theface. I want to know what the
experience was like when you satdown one day with a guy who
(06:19):
asked you to lunch and he wasthree martinis in when he told
you something. What happened?
Well,
Robert Greene (06:23):
I was working for this magazine called atencioni.
It was a magazine for ItalianAmericans, very fancy, very
glossy, actually a very goodmagazine. And I had just
recently been hired, and I wrotethis article on a trip to Italy,
which I thought was really goodand really interesting about,
you know, the Amalfi Coast andall that. And so he takes me to
(06:45):
lunch, and I'm expecting him topraise me, and instead, he's
basically saying, Robert, Idon't think you're a very good
writer. I don't think you weremeant to be a writer. You're not
disciplined, you don'tunderstand your audience very
well. You just write whateveryou feel like you don't, you
don't have, like, a good senseof communication, you know, like
(07:06):
journalistic skills, journalismis all about communicating
quickly an idea. And he says,You know, I think you should go
to law school or businessschool, save yourself the misery
that trying to be a writer willwill have on you, and just go to
law school and go to businessschool. And I remember because
I've always wanted to be awriter since I was a kid. I love
literature. I love writing. It'slike my main passion in life,
(07:29):
you know? And so at first I waslike a gut punch. I was like,
damn, what's this guy tellingwhat's his problem? And I I sort
of saw him as he's drinking hismartinis. There was really his,
his issue more than mine, andthis image came up to my mind
that I've never forgotten, oflooking at him in the eyes he's
having as martinis that it waslike a house with a decent
(07:51):
exterior, but the insides wereall rotting, and all the wood
was full of like termites andjust rotting. He was like
rotting from the inside. And itwas kind of like he was envious
of me. I didn't take itpersonally, but in the days to
come, it sort of affected me,and it kind of weighed on me,
and I came to the realizationthat in some way, he was right.
(08:11):
It wasn't that writing wasn'tright for me, because I've
always wanted to be a writer,and I knew that I was a good
writer. It was that I was in thewrong field journalism, and it
was a signal to me that I wasn'tpassionately involved in it, and
because I wasn't passionatelyinvolved in the work, it wasn't
really of high quality. So Iunderstood I had to get out of
(08:31):
journalism, which was sort ofthe epiphany that I had. And I
did get out of journalism. Somany
Randall Kaplan (08:37):
young professionals today, and I have
this intern program we talkedabout a little bit before the
show, and I've mentored hundredsof students and young
professionals. Have no idea whatthey want to do. You knew you
wanted to be a writer, and theybounce around. You had
Unknown (08:51):
50 jobs
Robert Greene (08:52):
before you were at least, probably more more,
Randall Kaplan (08:55):
and we'll get into your big break in a minute.
But let's talk about some ofthem, hotel receptionists. You
were a tour guide. You did a lotof you worked for a
screenwriter. You wrote somenovels that you didn't finish.
What was the worst job you everhad, and the worst experience
from that job, and what lessonsdid you learn? The
Robert Greene (09:14):
worst physical job was in Greece. I was very
sick. I was in hospital. I hadto pay my way to get off this
Greek island. I had no money, soI did construction work. And I
basically had to pull nails outof pieces of wood all day long,
you know, and getting all bloodyand everything. That was the
worst physical job, the worstmental job was I worked for a
detective agency, I believe, inPasadena, somewhere like that.
(09:36):
And I was a skip tracer, whichis basically somebody who stays
in an office. You're not adetective. You sit in an office
and you try and hunt down peoplewho've skipped town, who've left
debts or have dropped, you know,got from they haven't paid their
bail. They, you know, theywhatever the word is, and so my
job was to find them over thetelephone. Now. Google, Van No,
(10:01):
no, no. Google, late 80s, yeah.
And you had a script you wouldcall, like the mother or the old
ex girlfriend, they would giveyou the numbers. And you had a
script of how you would sort ofdeceive and manipulate them into
believing that you were a friendand that you were just trying to
look for this guy, right? Andso, you know, you'd have to say,
you know, oh, I remember. Youwould make up a story that would
sound like you knew them inschool. And unfortunately, I was
(10:24):
really good at it, but I felt sodepressed. I felt so ugly inside
because
Randall Kaplan (10:32):
you were conning them and these poor
Robert Greene (10:35):
people who knew their story, maybe they, maybe
they were doing it for a reason.
You know, I felt sympathy forthem. I've always felt sympathy
for the underdog in life, andhere I was the oppressor. Here I
was the police person trying tonab them. I felt ugly, and it
was a really horrible period inmy life. I was only at the job
for three months, but it was sosoul sucking. I've had a lot of
(10:56):
soul sucking jobs working inHollywood. That was probably the
worst. But I could go onforever. All that stuff prepared
me, gave me material for the 48Laws of Power, the
Randall Kaplan (11:10):
Hollywood job I'm particularly curious about
because we live here and we bothhave tons of friends in that
business who get yelled at everyday they do shit work. It's it's
a horrific experience. Thankyou. What is your worst
experience working in Hollywood?
Robert Greene (11:32):
I worked for a television company that produced
one of the schlockiest TV showsin the 90s. I'm so embarrassed,
but I don't even want to tellyou the name. Oh,
Randall Kaplan (11:41):
come on, you gotta tell us the name. Rescue,
911, okay,
Robert Greene (11:46):
I'm really it's almost like admitting I was a
porn star or something. Howembarrassed I am to say that.
Anyway, I was like a researcherfor this show, and God, you
know, you're like calling thepolice chief in some town in
Iowa, asking for stories ofpeople that he's like, brought
back from death, you know,stories of like a pet pig that
(12:11):
was caught in a fire. Thefiremen had to perform CPR on
the pig, you know. And then theywere going to go out and film
that, you know. I mean, thatkind of stuff, you know. And I,
I was always more of an elevatedmentality. Not that I'm a snob,
but I was always into, like,interesting movies and
literature and stuff. And hereI'm, like, making phone calls
about a police a fireman who'slike, had prep do mouth to mouth
(12:34):
resuscitation on a pig, youknow, things like that. That
was, that was pretty bad. But,you know, I don't know. I saw a
lot of very manipulative tacticsworked on people. And that's
where the law of the 48 Laws ofPower came from. And some of it
kind of disturbed me, you know,like I would write whole
(12:54):
sections of dialog for ascreenplay as an as an
assistant, but, and it wasprobably the best dialog in the
script. But I never no one evergave me credit for no one knew
that I had done that line thatwas so funny. So law number
seven always get people to dothe work, but take the credit
for it. That's where that lawcame from. I could go on and on
(13:14):
and on about that.
Randall Kaplan (13:15):
Let's get to the book in a little bit. But I want
to talk about the period wegraduate college. We're usually
22 years old, and for the next14 years, you were kind of lost.
You didn't know what you'redoing. Things are not going
well. Your parents were worriedabout you, and you had suicidal
thoughts. So did you everactually think about killing
(13:36):
yourself?
Robert Greene (13:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, my girlfriend, then my wife, now
she can attest to that I was Iwas pretty low. It's this
feeling like you know thatyou're good at something, you
know that you're destined forsomething I was at, a feeling
like I was destined to dosomething interesting and maybe
even great, right? But youhaven't done it. You've kind of
wasted. What is it? You're lost.
If I never felt like I wasreally meant to do something
(14:01):
important. I wouldn't havegotten so depressed. But the
discrepancy between what Ithought of myself and what I had
achieved was getting wider andwhat bigger and bigger and
bigger. And as you say, I'm inmy mid 30s, and I'm seeing all
these young people come up whoare so smart, who've already
directed their first film, whoproduced their film, they've
(14:22):
written their first novel. HereI am, 3637 and you could put,
take that word loser and attachit to me. At least I felt that
way. It hadn't really added upto anything solid. So, yeah, I
was deeply depressed, and atmoments I thought of suicide. So
Randall Kaplan (14:38):
many of us have a big break, right? Things are
not going well my own life, Icame to LA I lost my job five
and a half weeks after movinghere. I had $3,000 in the bank.
Got fired from that job sixmonths later, well, I got a job
in Orange County. They wanted tomove. I said, No, fired from
that job eight months in, wow,got a record, yeah, big time
(14:59):
record. Worst legal start to alegal career that you could
probably have. Well, yeah, andso Eli Broad hired me after this
terrible stretch I had, and thatwas my big break. Tell us when
you were in Venice, Italy abouta guy named Joe stauffers. Tell
us what happened next.
Robert Greene (15:19):
Well, I was there on a project that a friend from
Berkeley, a college friend, hadinvited me on to write a book to
help launch a school thatBenetton was starting, a media
School, which is a really weirdconcept, a book to launch a
school. And
Randall Kaplan (15:33):
for those people who don't know Benetton was in
such really cool clothing brand,they had, like, the rugby it was
blue and had wife.
Robert Greene (15:41):
Yeah, it was a bad experience. It was just like
all these Italian peopledrinking espresso all day and
arguing and discussing, andnothing ever got done. Nothing,
you know. And so I like to getthings done. And this man, Yost
offers is in New York, is a bookpackager, which is basically a
man who produces books, like aman who produces or a woman who
(16:03):
produces movies. And he wasthere to produce this mythical
book that we were going towrite. And we were both walking
on the caves of Italy, ofVenice, one of the most
beautiful locations in theworld, in the Piazza San Marco.
And he suddenly asked me, in hisnice Dutch accent, whether I had
any ideas for a book, andsuddenly there's like a light
(16:26):
bulb that went on in my head,like, wow, I could write a book,
not a novel, not a screenplay,not a play, but a book, a non
fiction book. Never reallythought of that before, and I
got kind of really weird andexcited inside, and I improvised
an idea that turned into the 48Laws of Power. I told him a
(16:48):
story. I said, I've been throughall these terrible experiences
like we were having in Italywith all these Machiavellian
characters. I told him a storyof King Louis the 14th and his
Prime Minister, or hisattendant, his finance minister,
sorry Nicholas Fouquet, whothrew the most magnificent party
in honor of the king. Right? Theparty that people were talking
(17:12):
about, it was like the greatestparty they'd ever attended. And
the day after he was thrown inprison, and spent the rest of
his life in prison, he had outshown the master. He people were
liking him more than the king,and because you were he was
offending the king's ego. He wasthrown into prison, ostensibly
for financial reasons, forcorruption, right? Never
(17:34):
outshine the Master, I said,Yost, this is an example in
history of something soelemental, a pattern in people,
their insecurities, their egos,that if you inadvertently trip
their ego, and it's your boss,you're going to pay for it. In
the old days, you would bebeheaded or thrown into prison.
Now you will be fired. He got soexcited by that, he said,
(17:55):
Robert, I'll pay you. I'm notgoing to do this accident. I'll
pay you to write the rest of thebook when we'll sell it. He paid
me. This is 1996 he paid me 3000a month, which, back then wasn't
bad for somebody who was prettymuch living paycheck to
paycheck. My method was I wouldwork six months in Hollywood and
(18:17):
make a fair amount of money andthen quit and write for six
months till I had nothing, andat that point I had nothing. So
3000 a month was pretty good forme. You
Randall Kaplan (18:25):
call this moment a get rich or die moment? Does
everybody have a get rich or diemoment? And if you don't, what
do you say to people who arehoping to get one?
Robert Greene (18:35):
Well, first of all, you have to be 37 years old
and feel like you're a loser andyou have your parents, like,
kind of whispering things andthese phone calls that are kind
of disturbing you, and peoplelooking at you like, maybe, who
is this person who has who'sthat age and hasn't really done
anything, then you will feellike, get rich or die trying
kind of thing, right? So ifyou're in your 20s, it's hard to
(18:56):
feel that kind of desperation,right? Unless you're so
ambitious that by the time, andthere are young people like
that, you're 23 and you haven'tmade your first million you feel
like that kind of thing. But itwas mostly that I was so
desperate to save my life. Andit was really like saving my
life at that point that I wasgoing to work, I was going to
(19:19):
kill myself to make this bookwork, and I did, literally. I
didn't kill myself, but I workedso hard, night and day, day and
night. Just poured every lastbit of energy I had into that to
make it something great. I callit in my war book, my strategy
book, The Death ground strategyin battle, when an army has its
(19:40):
back to a mountain or to theocean, and it's either defeat
the enemy or die that army willfight with three times, four
times the energy, right? Well,my back was against the ocean. I
was gonna, like, kill myself ifI didn't succeed. And because of
that energy, I worked so hardwith so much desire and so much
emotion that I. It all into thatbook.
Randall Kaplan (20:01):
There's something ingrained in us that
our parents know best, right?
Our parents want us to go to lawschool or I'm Jewish. You know,
you should be a doctor, andeveryone believes that your
parents, yeah, I'm Jewish. Weshare that. So thankfully my
mom, thankfully. My mom didn'tsay that I needed to be a
(20:22):
doctor. She wanted me to be adoctor, but
Robert Greene (20:26):
you a lawyer.
Second best, don't want to
Randall Kaplan (20:29):
admit that to people today not proud of that
moment. Did it? Did it because Ithought $70,000 back in 1993 I
was rich. There's nothing Icould do on $70,000 I made after
tax, they $48,000 like allright, do parents actually know
best? No, why not? Because
Robert Greene (20:50):
everybody's different. Everybody is born
with a different DNA, with adifferent wiring of their brain,
with different tastes, withdifferent proclivities,
different inclinations, and whenparents try to impose their own
values, their own experiences,on their child, they're doing a
disservice. They're harming thesoul of that child, right? So I
(21:11):
can credit my parents in thesense that they put a little bit
of pressure, like Jewish parentsalways will, right? But they
weren't too forceful with it,but I know a lot of people who
felt that pressure, you know,got to be a doctor, got to be a
lawyer, got to follow this pathor that path. And when parents
do that, a lot of times, whathappens is, you enter a
(21:31):
profession under the belief thatI need to make money, that I
need to be comfortable, right?
Because that's the mostimportant thing, you know. It's
to have the insecurity of notknowing where you're going to
how you're going to make aliving, is terrible. I
understand that, but it's notconnecting to you, right? And
I'm not going to say this aboutyou, but a lot of people who go
into becoming lawyers, they dothat out of the desire to make
(21:53):
money, not out of a connectionto law, not out of a connection
to the rhetoric of law, to theback and forth element, to the
to the confrontational aspect.
It's because they want to make aliving out of it, money. And
then they get into their late20s, their 30s, and there's no
connection to it. They don'tfeel that. There's no energy,
(22:15):
there's no desire, there's noemotion. And they start tuning
out, and their work suffers. Andthey start, you know, being
distracted and thinking of otherthings. And then slowly, as they
get older, they feel like, damnit, I missed it. I should have
done something else, right? Soyou have to learn at a very
early age to not listen to yourparents and to listen to that
(22:37):
voice inside of your head thattells you what you want to be?
For me, that voice was writer.
Be a writer. Be a writer, not bea lawyer, not be a doctor, but
be a writer. And if that voicegets drowned out by the voices
of your parents, you're in a lotof trouble.
Randall Kaplan (22:51):
I know a lot of lawyers. I fucking hated every
minute of law school, couldn't Imean, I got to read these cases.
I had no interest. It's like, ohmy God, how do I read this and
understand it. I practiced sounsuccessfully for two and a
half years, there wasn't amoment I sat on my desk where I
thought I love what I'm doing.
This is rewarding. This is justthe best thing ever. And most
(23:12):
lawyers I know today areabsolutely miserable. Oh, good
well, but they get golden hang.
I mean, we had dinner. Maybe wehave some really, really good
friends. He's a lawyer, verysenior lawyer. Charges $2,000 an
hour. And I said to him, and I'mnot going to mention his name,
but we'll call him Jim Bob. Isaid, Hey, Jim Bob. I said, Do
(23:32):
you like what you're doing thesedays? He said, I fucking hate
it. And I said, Well, you'remaking a few million dollars a
year. You have all these fancyclients. He said, Well, I'd
rather be doing something
Robert Greene (23:42):
else. Yeah, very common scenario, and it's
Randall Kaplan (23:45):
too late, you know? He said, What am I gonna
do now? It's the only thing Iknow what to do.
Unknown (23:49):
He's 50 he's 58 too late. 58 book. It's two kids,
Randall Kaplan (23:55):
mortgage, private school. Yeah, nice
vacations. $4,000 a night, hotelrooms. When they go away, I tell
Robert Greene (24:01):
people that as a cautionary tale, because I've
heard stories like that. You donot want to be that person. I
tell them who's 55 years old,who looks back on their life and
says, God, I could have beenthis, or, in the words of Marlon
Brando, I could have been acontender. I could have been
great at this, and I never didit right. And then that feeling
(24:21):
of regret is like a wound, apain that never goes away. It's
going to haunt you till you die.
You don't want to be thatperson. Is what I tell people.
Randall Kaplan (24:30):
You write this incredible book, your first
book, it's unheard of almost foryour first book to be such a
best seller. Everybody knows thebook. When I told people that
you were coming on my show, Iwas like, Robert Greene, I love
that book. 48 Laws of Power.
They're telling me about all thelessons. Let's start at the very
beginning with the title of thebook, the word power. When I
(24:54):
think of power, and before Iread the book, I thought, all
right, well, power. Power meansyou can dictate everything.
You're in control of everything.
You got it all, and everyone'sgot to listen to you, and you
can basically do whatever youwant. That's not the definition
of power, is it?
Robert Greene (25:11):
No, it's not, because it's a social game.
Power is a complete social game.
It's pure psychology. It'screating the appearance of
power. It's making people likeyou, making people want to be on
your side. And if you're abully, if you're forcing people,
if you're telling people what todo, it's like you create a
counter reaction, and theysecretly resent you, and they're
(25:33):
going to work against you,right? The game of power is to
play on people's psychology tothe point where they do what you
want them to do, but willingly,of their own volition. They
think that they're helpingthemselves, but they're really
advancing you. It's a verysubtle game where you think what
you're doing is helping you, butin fact, it's having the
(25:54):
opposite effect, right? You'renot aware of the consequences of
your action. You're talking toomuch. You think by talking a lot
you're going to impress peoplewith all of your knowledge and
all your intelligence, and infact, you're making yourself
look weak and insecure. Alwayssay less than necessary. Law
number four, some of the book iscounterintuitive, some of it is
(26:15):
kind of common sense, but someof it is counterintuitive. I'm
trying to show you the subtlegradations of the game of power,
the social aspect, becauseknowing how to deal with people
is not easy. Nobody hands us abook when we graduate college
saying this is how it works.
People are very tricky. Theynever tell you exactly what they
(26:36):
think about you. They smile, butthey're not really on your side,
and so you have to be veryalert, and you have to
understand the subtle nuances ofthe game of power.
Randall Kaplan (26:46):
You said that the feeling of being powerless
is more corrupting than thefeeling of power itself. What
does it mean to be powerless,and why is that more corrupting
than power?
Robert Greene (26:58):
Well, you know, put yourself in this situation.
It's very it's very simple. It'snot it's not that complicated.
It's not rocket science. Yourchildren aren't listening to
you, your son, your daughter,they're tuning you out. You yell
at them screaming. They don'tthey have nothing. They won't
listen to you at all up to acertain point. No, no, I'm just
pending a scenario. Okay, soyour children are tuning you
(27:18):
out. Your wife won't listen toyou or your husband very
annoying habits that you wishthem to change. You don't yell.
You try to change it, butthey're not changing. You don't
like your work. Your colleaguesaren't listening to you, right?
Nobody cares about you. Yourboss tunes you out. You are
completely powerless. Nobodywill listen to you. Nobody will
(27:39):
do you have no effect on people,no ability to influence them. I
think we can all relate to howmiserable that feels right to
have the fact, because we'reanimals that you know, life is
tricky, it's chaotic. We wantsome control. We want the
ability, to some degree, todirect the circumstances that
(28:00):
are happening around us, and thefeeling that you can't influence
your children or your spouse oryour colleagues or your boss is
the worst feeling in the world,and I know that feeling very,
very deep, profoundly, because Ihad it right, but the sense that
you have control over yourselfand you can control. You can
(28:22):
move people sort of in thedirection that you want, that
you can kind of, you know how toappeal to their self interest to
get them to do what you wantthem to do. Is a different, much
different feeling. It's not joyand pleasure. It's not ecstasy.
I don't say that, but it's acalming effect. It's a fact that
I can dictate, to some degree,the course of my life. Let's
Randall Kaplan (28:43):
go through some of the laws right now, and as
you said, some of them arecounter intuitive. So I was
raised in Detroit and was alwaystaught to be humble, right? You
shouldn't be the person thateveryone is pointing out. You
shouldn't be the person who'slouder boisterous. When I was in
law school, there were peoplecalled gunners, and gunners were
(29:05):
the people raising their handevery time the professor would
call on them, they wouldn't shutthe fuck up, and they wanted
everyone to know how smart theywere. And a lot of times they
weren't that smart. They justlike being heard. Our company
goes public. Company has a $14billion valuation the day it
goes public, it shoots up to35,000,000,086 days later.
(29:26):
Witnesses. This is 1999 october29 1999 and I'm 31 years old.
What company is this? AkamaiTechnologies.
Robert Greene (29:36):
Oh, yeah, sure, I remember that post IPO.
Everybody
Randall Kaplan (29:40):
want to talk about the wealth, right? I
didn't want to talk aboutanything. Eli Broad told me this
reporter from Detroit called meup, Jerome Levin, he was the
business reporter. I read himgrowing up. He calls me up and
he says, Hey, I'm Jerome Levin,yeah, I know I want to write
this profile about you. I said,Wow, thank you. I'm flattered.
Not interested. And he said, whynot? He said, I just, I want to
(30:03):
keep my life private. He said,Well, you really can't. And he
said, so I'm going to write thestory with or without you. I
call Eli Broad, who's also fromDetroit. I'm sure he knows
Deron. He knew Deron. I said,Hey, what do you think of him?
He said, Yeah, he's a good guy.
He's going to treat you fairly.
Said, Well, you know, I reallydon't want to, don't want him to
write the story. And he said,This will be your coming out
(30:26):
party. I said, I don't want acoming out party. And he said,
then there's one reason to doit. And he said, you can
influence the outcome of thestory. So I had to do it. He was
writing it. Either way, itinfluenced me, but I had so many
opportunities. He invited me onbloomer television. I had
(30:47):
nothing to talk about, and theywere going to what's it like to
be a founder of this company. Solaw number six, court attention
at all costs, doesn't make anysense to me. Why should we do
that? Well,
Robert Greene (30:58):
I try to make the point, which is a very important
point that people miss. I thinkit's in the preface. I'm pretty
sure it's in the previs, becauseI wrote it that each law depends
on the circumstances, so youcan't be blindly applying each
law, no matter where you are, nomatter how old you are, no
matter what your position is,that it's foolish. Life doesn't
(31:19):
work like that. Each personfaces different circumstances.
In some circumstances, you wantan interaction with boldness. In
other circumstances, you don'twant to outshine the master.
When you're in certainbusinesses, courting attention
at all costs is extremelypowerful. You want attention is
power, particularly in the ageof social media. But sometimes,
(31:40):
in some situations, courtingattention is the worst thing you
can do. It makes you lookaggressive. Makes you look over
eager. It makes you lookinsecure. So damn it, stop
applying my laws willy nilly, nomatter who you are, think about
your circumstances and yoursituation be intelligent. Apply
them intelligently. And the lastlaw of the book is assumed
(32:01):
formlessness. And I explicitlystate in that law, throw out all
47 laws that you've just readbecause they're ridiculous. Just
learn to be in the moment andapply what matters in that
particular moment. So it alldepends on where you are, and in
that particular moment, courtattention was maybe the wrong
strategy. I think a lot
Randall Kaplan (32:19):
of the people who are raising their hand and
talking the whole time, I thinkthey're insecure. And so many
people I know who have mademoney, especially younger people
who have never made money morebefore, I think there's a lot of
insecurity that goes intocourting attention themselves.
Yeah,
Robert Greene (32:34):
but look at this, people in social media, in
quote, unquote influencers.
They're those people who areraising their hands like that in
law school, and look how, youknow, they've got 5 million
followers. They're making sevenfigures. Whatever it is, they're
doing pretty well by courtingattention. It just depends on
who you are, the kind of personyou are, and the kind of world
you're in, the culture you'rein, and the circumstances.
Randall Kaplan (32:58):
Okay, so we're not going to take all these
literally, but I still want togo through some Okay, so I had a
boss in South America, notreally a boss. He was a junior
boss. He had been the assistantto the chairman, which I was as
well before, and he was not agood person, not a good person
to learn from. We do all thiswork, and he'd take all the
(33:20):
credit for all the work, andyou'd sit there in these
meetings with Eli, and wecreated these 80 page, very
complicated financial models,and his name is Jim. Jim's
giving it to our CEO, Eli, andI'm sitting around the room.
What's going on here? But yousaid that get others to do the
(33:42):
work for you and don't share anyof the credit. How could you be
a good leader or learn fromsomebody? If that's the case?
Robert Greene (33:50):
Well, first of all, a lot of the laws, I'm not
preaching. I'm not saying what'sgood or bad. I'm saying this is
how the world operates. Do notbe naive. Do not be a naive
yokel like I once was when Ientered Hollywood, thinking that
if I wrote it, I was going toget credit. Understand the law
of the jungle. The Law of theJungle is that there are
(34:13):
vultures out there who arecircling around you at every
moment, willing to take wantingto take your work and eat it up
for themselves. They'rescavengers, essentially, is what
they are, okay? They're there.
Do not be naive, all right. Andso the best thing to do is to
understand the dynamic,understand that people are going
to take credit for your workwhen you're younger, when you're
(34:34):
starting up. I mean, if you lookat people giving speeches,
politicians or newscasters whoor comedians who seem so
eloquent, 1000s of people arewriting all of their material.
Comics aren't writing their ownjokes. They have a team of
writers who are writing theirjokes. Newscasters aren't
writing their reports. They haveall these researchers doing it.
(34:55):
That's how the world works,right? You. Don't be stupid.
Understand the dynamic. And yes,when you get to a position of
power, you're probably going tobe using that yourself anyway,
because it's hard enough, ifyou're like somebody in the
public to do all of the workyourself, right? It's too
exhausting. You've got a team ofpeople doing it for you. You
(35:17):
don't put their name on everysingle thing that you do. That's
just the way the world works.
I'm trying to open your eyes tothe way of the world and not
make you not so damn naive
Randall Kaplan (35:29):
when we're terrified of things, our
prefrontal cortex makes terribledecisions. You freeze. It
impairs your ability to do a lotof things, and law 17 in the
book is keep others in suspendedterror. So how on earth can you
do that in any way, shape orform, and still function as a
(35:51):
rational, objective personmaking good decisions you're
taking
Robert Greene (35:55):
you know, as I said, everything has a context,
right? So if you're completelypredictable as as a leader, as a
boss, if everybody knows whatyou're going to do next, you
don't have much power in thesituation, because people can
read you like an open book. Theyknow exactly what's coming,
right? And they're going to usethat against you. Even if you
(36:17):
are a boss, the people workingfor you are going to manipulate
you. They know that you're thisis the next thing that you're
going to do. If you'reunpredictable, if they cannot
guess what's coming next fromtheir leader, it keeps them on
their toes. Well, I don't knowhow he or she is going to
respond to this report that Ihave. I better make it really
good, as opposed to if I writeit this way and I calm the
(36:42):
leader into thinking, there's agreat report. I'll just give the
appearance of that, and he orshe will love it, right? You
want to get the best out ofpeople, so sometimes that little
touch of unpredictability keepsthem on their toes. Now,
obviously, creating terror is abit of extreme thing for me to
say, but please understand, I'mwriting a book that is, you
(37:02):
know, a marketing tool. So if Isaid, keep people in suspended,
you know, anguish, whateverdoesn't have the oomph of it. So
I use the word terror, but theidea of being unpredictable is
an extremely powerful tool. Andit's a book about power. It's
not a book about being nice.
It's not a book about peopleloving you. It's a book about
power.
Randall Kaplan (37:22):
Law 20, okay, do not commit to anyone. Once
Robert Greene (37:27):
again, it's not about relationships. It's not
about your wife or your husbandand not committing to them,
okay? It's about keeping someindependence, some room to
maneuver the game of life. Thegame of power is to have
maneuverability. It's likewarfare. The army that has room
to move its soldiers has morespace, can maneuver in different
(37:50):
directions, has more power,okay? So in life, if you have
options, if you have the abilityto go here, here or here, you
have power, okay? But if you'vecommitted to this person, I'm
going to help you when, nomatter what happens, you've lost
your independence, you've lostyour autonomy. Now you have to
go this direction instead ofperhaps choosing this, this or
(38:11):
this to serve your owninterests. Okay? So it's so easy
to fall into the trap of alwaysgiving, of always committing to
these people and losing yourindependence, and I'm trying to
make you aware that power liesin keeping being the middle man
where people want your servicesand they have to fight for it,
as opposed to just immediatelyjoining this side or that side.
(38:34):
I
Randall Kaplan (38:34):
think so many people who read the book don't
take the whole context. I mean,as you explain it today. I've
talked a lot of people about thebook, and I crush your enemy,
and they talk about all thisstuff. Oh, Robert is a bad ass.
You know, he's telling us allthese things, and I'm taking it
to heart. But you said that youdon't follow all 48 laws, and if
(38:55):
you did, you'd be an uglyperson. I'd be a monster,
Robert Greene (38:59):
yeah? But you wrote them, yeah, but, I mean, I
never intended for anybody onthe planet to follow all 48 the
person who came the closest thatI knew who followed the 48 Laws
of Power was 50 cent, right? Iwrote a book with him. He's a
really nice guy. He's a reallygood person, actually. I mean, I
know his reputation and the kindof thuggish front that he gives,
(39:22):
but he's actually a very decentperson, very wonderful to work
for. He's got good he's got goodvalues, etc, so, but he follows
the laws, and he's he's not abad person. But, you know,
there's everything is for yourcircumstances. Some people, the
laws would be terrible to apply,because it's not your
(39:43):
personality. You're not a boldperson, so interaction with
boldness will just lookridiculous. You'll make all
kinds of mistakes, you know. Soyou have to know what fits you
as a human being, what makes youcomfortable, what makes you not
feel ugly inside. You have toknow what your circumstance. Are
you have to know what couldpossibly work in this situation
or that situation, and apply thelaws. And all 48 will never be
(40:07):
in play for you.
Randall Kaplan (40:08):
So how many of the 48 should we master to be
great? You
Robert Greene (40:12):
know, in some cases, it could be only one law
to understand and master. Youknow, you certainly don't want
to crush your enemy totally.
That is a law that has to dowith businesses, because you
better believe it. Believe itthat businesses use crush your
enemy totally all of the time,particularly in the tech world,
where it's very competitive andvery cutthroat. You don't think
(40:36):
Google or Microsoft or Facebookdon't operate by crush your
enemy totally. Come on, they do.
But you, as an individual who'slike a lawyer or an artist or a
rock musician, you're not goingto crush your enemy totally,
right? Obviously, anybody whothinks that doesn't understand
how to read a book, right? It'scontext. It's who you are. So,
(40:59):
you know, it could be just onelaw always say less than
necessary, not always spoutingout about things. Or it could
be, never outshine the master,because I got fired several
times for outshine the masterwas very painful experience. You
know, at some point in yourlife, one law will save you from
from some misery, from somepainful experience. One law will
(41:22):
do it the trick for you, andmaybe over the course of your
life, there'll be 12 or 16 ofthose laws. I don't know. I
can't put a number on it. One of
Randall Kaplan (41:29):
the human conditions that has always
surprised me is that when you'resuccessful or something great
happens to you, people are nothappy for you. And your book
comes out, and the New York TheNew Yorker magazine calls you a
total creep, and you had a lotof haters. So what, what was
the, what was the reaction whenpeople started criticizing your
(41:51):
book? Did you care? And howshould people deal with the
haters when something goodhappens to them? Well,
Robert Greene (41:55):
you know what? I don't I didn't really have that
experience. It's one time. Ihave to correct you a little
bit. I think it was the New YorkMagazine. They had an article
that called the book ChickenSoup for the solace, right? And
I took that as kind of funny.
That was kind of a funny thing.
I was surprised that I didn'tget as much criticism as I did.
To be honest with you, I wasexpecting a lot worse, and the
(42:16):
only people who were a littlebit difficult or nasty or hard
to deal with, were friends,strangely enough, because here
they saw somebody who they knewas this guy who was just
struggling to get by to pay hisrent, who never really had any
success, and suddenly he's beinginterviewed on these television
(42:39):
shows, and these magazines andnewspapers are doing articles,
and envy came in, and theyweren't so nice to me anymore.
They were kind of mean spirited.
So I had some of that fromfriends. A lot of friends
weren't like that, but ingeneral, people treated me with
more respect than I actuallydeserved. I didn't have to ever
face a great deal of criticism,and I'll tell you this coming
(43:03):
from a place where my life uptill then, was such a struggle,
you know? I mean, I'm not toexaggerate, because there are
people who had it worse. Thereare always people that have it
worse. So I don't mean to beoverly dramatic, but I had
struggled a lot through life, soto have a couple of people
criticize me for this, that andthe other go away. I don't care.
It's like a mosquito on anelephant. It doesn't bother me
(43:27):
at all. You know, I'd beenthrough already so much that it
didn't matter. I had a prettythick skin. What you
Randall Kaplan (43:33):
say about friends is just so true. I was
young. I made all this money, Iwent to good schools. I did
well, and there's a certaincompetitiveness among people,
whether it's outwardly orinwardly, subconsciously, and
when someone does really well. Imean, I have friends investment
bankers, and they're making themost money. The lawyers are kind
of the second tier in terms ofmaking money, but when one of
(43:56):
your buds makes tons of money,it really, really, really
affected some of my closestfriendships. Yeah, and you
really find out who your friendswere. I remember walking through
an investment bank, and theyseparated the management part,
the money management part of thefirm through the bankers.
Investment makers is what'sknown as a Chinese wallet. You
(44:18):
know, they can't talk to oneanother. And I remember one of
the colleagues, one of my bestfriends, said, you know, and
it's, it's, I mean, it was a bigdeal, you know, I'm 31 years
old, and we're, I've at least onpaper worth over $100 million
hundreds of millions of dollarson paper. And one of the guys
who was an investment bankerdoing really well, and said, and
(44:41):
I'll call him Jim Bob again. Sohe said, Jim Bob's never going
to catch you. I was It's likesomeone hit me over the head
with a hammer. And I thought,Gosh, and I had to keep walking.
We're having a conversation. AndI remember thinking that night
as I sat. Around to it. Why? Whycan't people be happy for you?
Robert Greene (45:02):
Why wasn't he I didn't understand what showed
that he wasn't happy for he washappy.
Randall Kaplan (45:07):
He was unhappy because he was envious. Oh yeah.
You know, these guys were thetop of the top. They went to
Harvard, Stanford and Warren,their investment bankers. Well,
that, you
Robert Greene (45:16):
know, look, I've written a lot about envy in the
48 Laws of Power. Never appeartoo perfect. It's all about
envy. And if you appear tooperfect, you're going to attract
envy like a magnet, and you'regoing to suffer for it in the
laws of human nature. I have anentire chapter just devoted to
envy. How what a prevalent humantrait that is. And first of all,
(45:38):
you have to understand that it'shuman nature that we're built.
Our brains are built throughcomparison. We compare
information. That's howintelligence, that's how our
language works. It's how thehuman brain has become what it
is by comparison. Information asa social animal, we're also
comparing ourselves constantlyto other people. It's ingrained.
(46:00):
It's wired into our systems. Sothe point of my book, The laws
of human nature, is, stopfeeling so superior. Stop
feeling like, Oh, there. Envy isI'm not there. He's a
narcissist, but I'm not. No, youall share that trait. Everybody
feels envy. To this day. I stillfeel envy, but I'm able to
(46:21):
confront it and realize that Ihave that flaw, and by
understanding it, then I can bemore compassionate to people,
but also I can understand what Ican do to deflect envy from
other people. So maybe I'm notcriticizing you, but maybe you
were doing something that wasmaking them feel you were kind
of rubbing it into them a littlebit.
Randall Kaplan (46:40):
I never did that. Never did that. Never. In
fact, I would never want to talkabout the money. I was
embarrassed almost. You know,you have imposter syndrome. You
know you think at night, Ireally you deserve all this
money. I rewind,
Robert Greene (46:51):
I take that back.
Yeah, but a lot of peopletrigger envy because they boast
too much they want to displaythemselves to the world. Look
how great it is. Look howwonderful my life is. You're
naturally gonna stir up envy. Soit's your own fault sometimes,
right? I
Randall Kaplan (47:07):
mean, we built, I built my dream house. When I
was 31 years old, my friendswere all living envious. Well,
they're, they're in apartments,you know? They're, they're an
apartment and but it was, Imean, it's almost embarrassing
to have your friends come over,because they're looking at this
house, and it's spectacular. Andyou know, I remember talking
(47:28):
with my wife at the time, do webuy it or do we not buy it? And
this crazy thought would be, areour friends going to come visit
us at the house? Are they goingto be envious? Is it going to be
weird? I got to tell you, it wasweird for a lot of people. Yeah,
very weird,
Robert Greene (47:43):
yeah. Understand that. Understand that it's
natural, it's human to feel thatway and to kind of, you know,
don't take it personally. Wetake too many things personally
in
Randall Kaplan (47:53):
life, I hurt, huh? It cannot hurt,
Robert Greene (47:57):
yeah. But in some ways, I understand it. You know,
I understand it. When people,like friends, would kind of give
bitchy, passive aggressivecomments about my book, they
would say things like, Well,Robert, you must be making a lot
of money with that book, as if Iwrote it just to make money,
which is the case at all, right?
But they were trying. It was alittle subtle passive aggressive
(48:18):
dig that they were getting inthere, right? And I would get
other digs like that, and itjust goes off my back, like,
that's what people are like, youknow, that's the animal that we
are. I'm not going to take itseriously. Yeah, it hurts a
little bit. I understand in themoment it hurts, but in the days
to come, it doesn't bother me atall, because I understand that's
(48:39):
just how humans are wired.
Randall Kaplan (48:42):
Like so many people, it takes years and years
to become successful. What wasit like when it became a best
seller?
Robert Greene (48:49):
I compared it to Disneyland, where you have here
in Anaheim, you have the Mr.
Toads wild ride. I went fromlike, kind of living in this
crummy, one bedroom apartment inSanta Monica, to being jetted
off to Italy and meeting thePrime Minister, former prime
minister of Italy, it was likeMr. Toads, wild ride I was
having. It was like being ondrugs. I was having a wonderful
(49:10):
time. It was surreal. It wasreally surreal. And I mentioned
this Italian junket, it wasprobably the first, it was the
first press trip I took, Ithink, no, no, maybe the second,
but it was like early 1999 andI'm invited to Italy, to the
island of Capri to present mybook. And so, you know, sure,
(49:32):
I'll, guess I'll do that. AndI'm suddenly like flying
business class, which I've neverflown before. And I'm taken to
this island to this if you everbeen to Capri it's one we've
been there spectacular,spectacular, very ritzy, very
fancy, put up in the finesthotel. And then weirdest thing
of all is I'm walking around inmy swimsuit. The paparazzi are
(49:55):
following me and takingphotographs of Me. You. Know,
Like the contrast with where Iwas five months ago, in my
smelly, one bedroom apartment inSanta Monica, where nobody would
pay attention to me, andsuddenly paparazzi or
photographing me in my swimsuit,you know, it was, it was
shocking, it was surreal. It washard to understand the
(50:16):
discrepancy, and kind of, youknow, make sense of it all, but
it was still a thrill, andnothing will ever in my life,
you know, to the day I die, willever compare with that trip to
Italy. It was so weird, and Ihad such a great time, and it
was so exciting. It was like, itwas endless thrills, but it was
(50:36):
also like, Why Why all of asudden now I'm getting this
attention. Do I really deserveit? You know, it's kind of
weird. Did
Randall Kaplan (50:46):
you have imposter syndrome, little bit, a
little bit, but you got over it?
Robert Greene (50:50):
Yeah. I mean, I had a sit down meeting with the
former prime minister of Italyin the magnificent palace, where
he still had an office, and hewas considered the most
Machiavellian politician inItaly's history. He had a very
kind of sketchy career, and he'dwritten an article praising the
(51:10):
48 Laws of Power. And Harry wasin office, and he didn't speak
much English, and my time is alittle bit weird. So he was
talking to each other in French,because I speak French pretty
well. I was sitting here talkingin French in this magnificent,
gilded office in the palace inRome to this former Prime
Minister bantering about power.
Oh, this is so weird. It's likeI was like I was on drugs or
(51:32):
something. You're
Randall Kaplan (51:34):
listening to part one of my incredible
interview with Robert Greene, asix time New York Times best
selling author whose booksinclude the 48 Laws of Power,
the art of seduction andmastery. It's an incredible
interview, very insightful andeducational. Can't wait for you
to listen to it. Be sure to tunein next week to part two of my
incredible interview with Robert
Unknown (52:00):
you.
Does everybody have a get rich or die moment?
(00:02):
Well, first of all, you have tobe 37 years old and feel like
you're a loser and peoplelooking at you like, Who is this
person who's that age and hasn'treally done anything? Then you
will feel like, get rich or dietrying. The contrast with where
I was five months ago in mysmelly, one bedroom apartment in
Santa Monica, where nobody wouldpay attention to me, and
suddenly paparazzi orphotographing me in my swimsuit.
(00:24):
It was shocking. It was surreal.
You don't like your work, yourcolleagues aren't listening to
you. Your boss tunes you out.
You are completely powerless.
You have no effect on people, noability to
Randall Kaplan (00:35):
influence them.
Lot. 20 do not commit to anyone.
It's
Robert Greene (00:39):
about keeping some independence, some room to
maneuver the game of life. Thegame of power is to have
maneuverability. So in life, ifyou have options, you have
power.
Randall Kaplan (00:56):
Welcome to a Search of Excellence. My guest
today is Robert Green, who needsabsolutely no introduction
whatsoever. Six time New Yorktime, Best Selling Author books
you're going to know the bestfour day, Laws of Power, art of
seduction and mastery. Robert,thanks for being here today.
Thank you so much for having me.
Randall, I appreciate it glad tobe here. Let's start with your
family. You were born in BaldwinHills, raised on the west side
(01:17):
of La your dad was a chemicalsalesman for 40 years at the
same company. Tell us about theinfluence of your parents that
they had on you, and tell us alittle bit about your mom, which
you haven't talked about verymuch. Well, my mother is 98
she's still alive and kicking,doing really well. She's
Robert Greene (01:34):
She was basically a housewife. She started a
business that didn't last verylong in the 70s. So she
basically was a housewife, butshe was an artist. She studied
art at UCLA. She's has an eyefor design and fashion, and what
I got from my mother was herenergy, her persistence. She's
somebody that just never stops.
She's got more energy than I dowhen she's 98 so the this, this
(01:56):
kind of relentless pursuit ofsomething is sort of what I
inherited from my mother. Frommy father. He was sort of a
gentle person. He was a reallygood dad, and we bonded on the
level, mostly of sports. But Ithink what I got for most from
my father was my ability to workwith people, because he was a
(02:17):
great salesman. Everybody lovedhim. It was really strange and
almost poignant. At his funeral,all these people came up who I
never met before, saying howmuch they loved my father, how
wonderful it was to work withhim. He was a really, really
good salesman, because heunderstood people. He was really
good in dealing with eachperson, different cultures. At
that time, a lot of his clientswere Korean. He got really into
(02:40):
Korean culture. He was just aman with a great deal of empathy
and had good social skills. So Iinherited that from my father.
So I think those two sides kindof balanced themselves out to
produce Voila, here I am, who Iam. You
Randall Kaplan (02:58):
were very introverted as a kid, and you
always love books. Do youremember the first book you read
and what impact it had on you? I
Robert Greene (03:04):
cannot remember the first book I read. I can
remember the experience, thoughthey back in the day. This is in
the 60s. They would hand youthis mimeograph sheet with a
list of like 200 books, thepaperbacks that children could
order for like five cents apiece, right? And I checked off
like 75 books. My father waslike, Paul, you know, order 75
(03:27):
books. And I did a lot of themhad to do with war because I
just loved reading about WorldWar Two. My father was, you
know, he didn't fight, but hewas a mechanic during World War
Two. He worked on planes. I wasobsessed with World War Two
because it wasn't that distantat that time in the 60s. So a
lot of the books had to do withbattles and warfare and strategy
(03:49):
and sports, the two things Iloved the most. So that's what I
remember. These really cheap,poorly printed paperbacks, just
stacks of them that I orderedand read a lot
Randall Kaplan (04:00):
of people, as they grow up, they get, for
whatever reason, into drugsseriously in the drugs, you got
into some serious drugs in highschool, but now you've done your
research, but, but you've lookedback. And after that, even
though you were depressed, yousaid, you look back, finally, on
the drug experience. How onearth can someone who does drugs
and have a drug problem lookback and thought that was a good
Robert Greene (04:20):
thing? I didn't have a drug problem. Let me
correct that. I was mostly itwas a search. For me, it was
like kind of a spiritualexperience that I was looking
for. And so for us, it wasassociated with being out in
nature, going to concerts, youknow, like the Grateful Dead and
things like that. And so itwasn't just for wasn't an
(04:40):
addiction. It was kind of liketo have sort of a transcendental
type experience. And I had someof the most intense, beautiful
experiences in my whole life,and I remember them very
vividly. You know, trips to theocean and just seeing everything
just utterly, you know, theawesomeness of nature. Just
(05:00):
being alive, which is thesubject of my new book. So it
impacted me very deeply on aspiritual level. It was never
like an addiction. So when Ileft Berkeley and I went to a
University of Wisconsin, Ireally didn't do any
hallucinogenic drugs anymore,but it was a period of a year in
my life that was so intense. Icould still feel it in my body,
(05:21):
how exciting it was. So I wasusing drugs, not not for just
fun and kicks, but for, like,something else, something more,
something deeper. I wassearching for something. So you
Randall Kaplan (05:32):
went to Berkeley, then Wisconsin. My
daughter went to Wisconsin,Madison. Yeah. Badgers, yeah. Go
Bad. Go badgers. Although I wentto Michigan, Go Blue. So I root
for Wisconsin, Ann Arbor, yeah,and I ran. I did. I did root for
the Badgers when Michigan wasn'tplaying grade school. I'm not
sure who misses it more, mydaughter or me, because all the
(05:54):
parents would go, would have thebest times. Was it? KK, there,
when, when you were around, wasit? What the KK, this crazy bar.
Everyone goes, it's fun. Thinksit was on State Street. Yeah,
it's called the college club,yeah, yeah, sure, great, yeah,
insane. So many people graduatecollege and then they basically
the real world hits them in theface. I want to know what the
experience was like when you satdown one day with a guy who
(06:19):
asked you to lunch and he wasthree martinis in when he told
you something. What happened?
Well,
Robert Greene (06:23):
I was working for this magazine called atencioni.
It was a magazine for ItalianAmericans, very fancy, very
glossy, actually a very goodmagazine. And I had just
recently been hired, and I wrotethis article on a trip to Italy,
which I thought was really goodand really interesting about,
you know, the Amalfi Coast andall that. And so he takes me to
(06:45):
lunch, and I'm expecting him topraise me, and instead, he's
basically saying, Robert, Idon't think you're a very good
writer. I don't think you weremeant to be a writer. You're not
disciplined, you don'tunderstand your audience very
well. You just write whateveryou feel like you don't, you
don't have, like, a good senseof communication, you know, like
(07:06):
journalistic skills, journalismis all about communicating
quickly an idea. And he says,You know, I think you should go
to law school or businessschool, save yourself the misery
that trying to be a writer willwill have on you, and just go to
law school and go to businessschool. And I remember because
I've always wanted to be awriter since I was a kid. I love
literature. I love writing. It'slike my main passion in life,
(07:29):
you know? And so at first I waslike a gut punch. I was like,
damn, what's this guy tellingwhat's his problem? And I I sort
of saw him as he's drinking hismartinis. There was really his,
his issue more than mine, andthis image came up to my mind
that I've never forgotten, oflooking at him in the eyes he's
having as martinis that it waslike a house with a decent
(07:51):
exterior, but the insides wereall rotting, and all the wood
was full of like termites andjust rotting. He was like
rotting from the inside. And itwas kind of like he was envious
of me. I didn't take itpersonally, but in the days to
come, it sort of affected me,and it kind of weighed on me,
and I came to the realizationthat in some way, he was right.
(08:11):
It wasn't that writing wasn'tright for me, because I've
always wanted to be a writer,and I knew that I was a good
writer. It was that I was in thewrong field journalism, and it
was a signal to me that I wasn'tpassionately involved in it, and
because I wasn't passionatelyinvolved in the work, it wasn't
really of high quality. So Iunderstood I had to get out of
(08:31):
journalism, which was sort ofthe epiphany that I had. And I
did get out of journalism. Somany
Randall Kaplan (08:37):
young professionals today, and I have
this intern program we talkedabout a little bit before the
show, and I've mentored hundredsof students and young
professionals. Have no idea whatthey want to do. You knew you
wanted to be a writer, and theybounce around. You had
Unknown (08:51):
50 jobs
Robert Greene (08:52):
before you were at least, probably more more,
Randall Kaplan (08:55):
and we'll get into your big break in a minute.
But let's talk about some ofthem, hotel receptionists. You
were a tour guide. You did a lotof you worked for a
screenwriter. You wrote somenovels that you didn't finish.
What was the worst job you everhad, and the worst experience
from that job, and what lessonsdid you learn? The
Robert Greene (09:14):
worst physical job was in Greece. I was very
sick. I was in hospital. I hadto pay my way to get off this
Greek island. I had no money, soI did construction work. And I
basically had to pull nails outof pieces of wood all day long,
you know, and getting all bloodyand everything. That was the
worst physical job, the worstmental job was I worked for a
detective agency, I believe, inPasadena, somewhere like that.
(09:36):
And I was a skip tracer, whichis basically somebody who stays
in an office. You're not adetective. You sit in an office
and you try and hunt down peoplewho've skipped town, who've left
debts or have dropped, you know,got from they haven't paid their
bail. They, you know, theywhatever the word is, and so my
job was to find them over thetelephone. Now. Google, Van No,
(10:01):
no, no. Google, late 80s, yeah.
And you had a script you wouldcall, like the mother or the old
ex girlfriend, they would giveyou the numbers. And you had a
script of how you would sort ofdeceive and manipulate them into
believing that you were a friendand that you were just trying to
look for this guy, right? Andso, you know, you'd have to say,
you know, oh, I remember. Youwould make up a story that would
sound like you knew them inschool. And unfortunately, I was
(10:24):
really good at it, but I felt sodepressed. I felt so ugly inside
because
Randall Kaplan (10:32):
you were conning them and these poor
Robert Greene (10:35):
people who knew their story, maybe they, maybe
they were doing it for a reason.
You know, I felt sympathy forthem. I've always felt sympathy
for the underdog in life, andhere I was the oppressor. Here I
was the police person trying tonab them. I felt ugly, and it
was a really horrible period inmy life. I was only at the job
for three months, but it was sosoul sucking. I've had a lot of
(10:56):
soul sucking jobs working inHollywood. That was probably the
worst. But I could go onforever. All that stuff prepared
me, gave me material for the 48Laws of Power, the
Randall Kaplan (11:10):
Hollywood job I'm particularly curious about
because we live here and we bothhave tons of friends in that
business who get yelled at everyday they do shit work. It's it's
a horrific experience. Thankyou. What is your worst
experience working in Hollywood?
Robert Greene (11:32):
I worked for a television company that produced
one of the schlockiest TV showsin the 90s. I'm so embarrassed,
but I don't even want to tellyou the name. Oh,
Randall Kaplan (11:41):
come on, you gotta tell us the name. Rescue,
911, okay,
Robert Greene (11:46):
I'm really it's almost like admitting I was a
porn star or something. Howembarrassed I am to say that.
Anyway, I was like a researcherfor this show, and God, you
know, you're like calling thepolice chief in some town in
Iowa, asking for stories ofpeople that he's like, brought
back from death, you know,stories of like a pet pig that
(12:11):
was caught in a fire. Thefiremen had to perform CPR on
the pig, you know. And then theywere going to go out and film
that, you know. I mean, thatkind of stuff, you know. And I,
I was always more of an elevatedmentality. Not that I'm a snob,
but I was always into, like,interesting movies and
literature and stuff. And hereI'm, like, making phone calls
about a police a fireman who'slike, had prep do mouth to mouth
(12:34):
resuscitation on a pig, youknow, things like that. That
was, that was pretty bad. But,you know, I don't know. I saw a
lot of very manipulative tacticsworked on people. And that's
where the law of the 48 Laws ofPower came from. And some of it
kind of disturbed me, you know,like I would write whole
(12:54):
sections of dialog for ascreenplay as an as an
assistant, but, and it wasprobably the best dialog in the
script. But I never no one evergave me credit for no one knew
that I had done that line thatwas so funny. So law number
seven always get people to dothe work, but take the credit
for it. That's where that lawcame from. I could go on and on
(13:14):
and on about that.
Randall Kaplan (13:15):
Let's get to the book in a little bit. But I want
to talk about the period wegraduate college. We're usually
22 years old, and for the next14 years, you were kind of lost.
You didn't know what you'redoing. Things are not going
well. Your parents were worriedabout you, and you had suicidal
thoughts. So did you everactually think about killing
(13:36):
yourself?
Robert Greene (13:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, my girlfriend, then my wife, now
she can attest to that I was Iwas pretty low. It's this
feeling like you know thatyou're good at something, you
know that you're destined forsomething I was at, a feeling
like I was destined to dosomething interesting and maybe
even great, right? But youhaven't done it. You've kind of
wasted. What is it? You're lost.
If I never felt like I wasreally meant to do something
(14:01):
important. I wouldn't havegotten so depressed. But the
discrepancy between what Ithought of myself and what I had
achieved was getting wider andwhat bigger and bigger and
bigger. And as you say, I'm inmy mid 30s, and I'm seeing all
these young people come up whoare so smart, who've already
directed their first film, whoproduced their film, they've
(14:22):
written their first novel. HereI am, 3637 and you could put,
take that word loser and attachit to me. At least I felt that
way. It hadn't really added upto anything solid. So, yeah, I
was deeply depressed, and atmoments I thought of suicide. So
Randall Kaplan (14:38):
many of us have a big break, right? Things are
not going well my own life, Icame to LA I lost my job five
and a half weeks after movinghere. I had $3,000 in the bank.
Got fired from that job sixmonths later, well, I got a job
in Orange County. They wanted tomove. I said, No, fired from
that job eight months in, wow,got a record, yeah, big time
(14:59):
record. Worst legal start to alegal career that you could
probably have. Well, yeah, andso Eli Broad hired me after this
terrible stretch I had, and thatwas my big break. Tell us when
you were in Venice, Italy abouta guy named Joe stauffers. Tell
us what happened next.
Robert Greene (15:19):
Well, I was there on a project that a friend from
Berkeley, a college friend, hadinvited me on to write a book to
help launch a school thatBenetton was starting, a media
School, which is a really weirdconcept, a book to launch a
school. And
Randall Kaplan (15:33):
for those people who don't know Benetton was in
such really cool clothing brand,they had, like, the rugby it was
blue and had wife.
Robert Greene (15:41):
Yeah, it was a bad experience. It was just like
all these Italian peopledrinking espresso all day and
arguing and discussing, andnothing ever got done. Nothing,
you know. And so I like to getthings done. And this man, Yost
offers is in New York, is a bookpackager, which is basically a
man who produces books, like aman who produces or a woman who
(16:03):
produces movies. And he wasthere to produce this mythical
book that we were going towrite. And we were both walking
on the caves of Italy, ofVenice, one of the most
beautiful locations in theworld, in the Piazza San Marco.
And he suddenly asked me, in hisnice Dutch accent, whether I had
any ideas for a book, andsuddenly there's like a light
(16:26):
bulb that went on in my head,like, wow, I could write a book,
not a novel, not a screenplay,not a play, but a book, a non
fiction book. Never reallythought of that before, and I
got kind of really weird andexcited inside, and I improvised
an idea that turned into the 48Laws of Power. I told him a
(16:48):
story. I said, I've been throughall these terrible experiences
like we were having in Italywith all these Machiavellian
characters. I told him a storyof King Louis the 14th and his
Prime Minister, or hisattendant, his finance minister,
sorry Nicholas Fouquet, whothrew the most magnificent party
in honor of the king. Right? Theparty that people were talking
(17:12):
about, it was like the greatestparty they'd ever attended. And
the day after he was thrown inprison, and spent the rest of
his life in prison, he had outshown the master. He people were
liking him more than the king,and because you were he was
offending the king's ego. He wasthrown into prison, ostensibly
for financial reasons, forcorruption, right? Never
(17:34):
outshine the Master, I said,Yost, this is an example in
history of something soelemental, a pattern in people,
their insecurities, their egos,that if you inadvertently trip
their ego, and it's your boss,you're going to pay for it. In
the old days, you would bebeheaded or thrown into prison.
Now you will be fired. He got soexcited by that, he said,
(17:55):
Robert, I'll pay you. I'm notgoing to do this accident. I'll
pay you to write the rest of thebook when we'll sell it. He paid
me. This is 1996 he paid me 3000a month, which, back then wasn't
bad for somebody who was prettymuch living paycheck to
paycheck. My method was I wouldwork six months in Hollywood and
(18:17):
make a fair amount of money andthen quit and write for six
months till I had nothing, andat that point I had nothing. So
3000 a month was pretty good forme. You
Randall Kaplan (18:25):
call this moment a get rich or die moment? Does
everybody have a get rich or diemoment? And if you don't, what
do you say to people who arehoping to get one?
Robert Greene (18:35):
Well, first of all, you have to be 37 years old
and feel like you're a loser andyou have your parents, like,
kind of whispering things andthese phone calls that are kind
of disturbing you, and peoplelooking at you like, maybe, who
is this person who has who'sthat age and hasn't really done
anything, then you will feellike, get rich or die trying
kind of thing, right? So ifyou're in your 20s, it's hard to
(18:56):
feel that kind of desperation,right? Unless you're so
ambitious that by the time, andthere are young people like
that, you're 23 and you haven'tmade your first million you feel
like that kind of thing. But itwas mostly that I was so
desperate to save my life. Andit was really like saving my
life at that point that I wasgoing to work, I was going to
(19:19):
kill myself to make this bookwork, and I did, literally. I
didn't kill myself, but I workedso hard, night and day, day and
night. Just poured every lastbit of energy I had into that to
make it something great. I callit in my war book, my strategy
book, The Death ground strategyin battle, when an army has its
(19:40):
back to a mountain or to theocean, and it's either defeat
the enemy or die that army willfight with three times, four
times the energy, right? Well,my back was against the ocean. I
was gonna, like, kill myself ifI didn't succeed. And because of
that energy, I worked so hardwith so much desire and so much
emotion that I. It all into thatbook.
Randall Kaplan (20:01):
There's something ingrained in us that
our parents know best, right?
Our parents want us to go to lawschool or I'm Jewish. You know,
you should be a doctor, andeveryone believes that your
parents, yeah, I'm Jewish. Weshare that. So thankfully my
mom, thankfully. My mom didn'tsay that I needed to be a
(20:22):
doctor. She wanted me to be adoctor, but
Robert Greene (20:26):
you a lawyer.
Second best, don't want to
Randall Kaplan (20:29):
admit that to people today not proud of that
moment. Did it? Did it because Ithought $70,000 back in 1993 I
was rich. There's nothing Icould do on $70,000 I made after
tax, they $48,000 like allright, do parents actually know
best? No, why not? Because
Robert Greene (20:50):
everybody's different. Everybody is born
with a different DNA, with adifferent wiring of their brain,
with different tastes, withdifferent proclivities,
different inclinations, and whenparents try to impose their own
values, their own experiences,on their child, they're doing a
disservice. They're harming thesoul of that child, right? So I
(21:11):
can credit my parents in thesense that they put a little bit
of pressure, like Jewish parentsalways will, right? But they
weren't too forceful with it,but I know a lot of people who
felt that pressure, you know,got to be a doctor, got to be a
lawyer, got to follow this pathor that path. And when parents
do that, a lot of times, whathappens is, you enter a
(21:31):
profession under the belief thatI need to make money, that I
need to be comfortable, right?
Because that's the mostimportant thing, you know. It's
to have the insecurity of notknowing where you're going to
how you're going to make aliving, is terrible. I
understand that, but it's notconnecting to you, right? And
I'm not going to say this aboutyou, but a lot of people who go
into becoming lawyers, they dothat out of the desire to make
(21:53):
money, not out of a connectionto law, not out of a connection
to the rhetoric of law, to theback and forth element, to the
to the confrontational aspect.
It's because they want to make aliving out of it, money. And
then they get into their late20s, their 30s, and there's no
connection to it. They don'tfeel that. There's no energy,
(22:15):
there's no desire, there's noemotion. And they start tuning
out, and their work suffers. Andthey start, you know, being
distracted and thinking of otherthings. And then slowly, as they
get older, they feel like, damnit, I missed it. I should have
done something else, right? Soyou have to learn at a very
early age to not listen to yourparents and to listen to that
(22:37):
voice inside of your head thattells you what you want to be?
For me, that voice was writer.
Be a writer. Be a writer, not bea lawyer, not be a doctor, but
be a writer. And if that voicegets drowned out by the voices
of your parents, you're in a lotof trouble.
Randall Kaplan (22:51):
I know a lot of lawyers. I fucking hated every
minute of law school, couldn't Imean, I got to read these cases.
I had no interest. It's like, ohmy God, how do I read this and
understand it. I practiced sounsuccessfully for two and a
half years, there wasn't amoment I sat on my desk where I
thought I love what I'm doing.
This is rewarding. This is justthe best thing ever. And most
(23:12):
lawyers I know today areabsolutely miserable. Oh, good
well, but they get golden hang.
I mean, we had dinner. Maybe wehave some really, really good
friends. He's a lawyer, verysenior lawyer. Charges $2,000 an
hour. And I said to him, and I'mnot going to mention his name,
but we'll call him Jim Bob. Isaid, Hey, Jim Bob. I said, Do
(23:32):
you like what you're doing thesedays? He said, I fucking hate
it. And I said, Well, you'remaking a few million dollars a
year. You have all these fancyclients. He said, Well, I'd
rather be doing something
Robert Greene (23:42):
else. Yeah, very common scenario, and it's
Randall Kaplan (23:45):
too late, you know? He said, What am I gonna
do now? It's the only thing Iknow what to do.
Unknown (23:49):
He's 50 he's 58 too late. 58 book. It's two kids,
Randall Kaplan (23:55):
mortgage, private school. Yeah, nice
vacations. $4,000 a night, hotelrooms. When they go away, I tell
Robert Greene (24:01):
people that as a cautionary tale, because I've
heard stories like that. You donot want to be that person. I
tell them who's 55 years old,who looks back on their life and
says, God, I could have beenthis, or, in the words of Marlon
Brando, I could have been acontender. I could have been
great at this, and I never didit right. And then that feeling
(24:21):
of regret is like a wound, apain that never goes away. It's
going to haunt you till you die.
You don't want to be thatperson. Is what I tell people.
Randall Kaplan (24:30):
You write this incredible book, your first
book, it's unheard of almost foryour first book to be such a
best seller. Everybody knows thebook. When I told people that
you were coming on my show, Iwas like, Robert Greene, I love
that book. 48 Laws of Power.
They're telling me about all thelessons. Let's start at the very
beginning with the title of thebook, the word power. When I
(24:54):
think of power, and before Iread the book, I thought, all
right, well, power. Power meansyou can dictate everything.
You're in control of everything.
You got it all, and everyone'sgot to listen to you, and you
can basically do whatever youwant. That's not the definition
of power, is it?
Robert Greene (25:11):
No, it's not, because it's a social game.
Power is a complete social game.
It's pure psychology. It'screating the appearance of
power. It's making people likeyou, making people want to be on
your side. And if you're abully, if you're forcing people,
if you're telling people what todo, it's like you create a
counter reaction, and theysecretly resent you, and they're
(25:33):
going to work against you,right? The game of power is to
play on people's psychology tothe point where they do what you
want them to do, but willingly,of their own volition. They
think that they're helpingthemselves, but they're really
advancing you. It's a verysubtle game where you think what
you're doing is helping you, butin fact, it's having the
(25:54):
opposite effect, right? You'renot aware of the consequences of
your action. You're talking toomuch. You think by talking a lot
you're going to impress peoplewith all of your knowledge and
all your intelligence, and infact, you're making yourself
look weak and insecure. Alwayssay less than necessary. Law
number four, some of the book iscounterintuitive, some of it is
(26:15):
kind of common sense, but someof it is counterintuitive. I'm
trying to show you the subtlegradations of the game of power,
the social aspect, becauseknowing how to deal with people
is not easy. Nobody hands us abook when we graduate college
saying this is how it works.
People are very tricky. Theynever tell you exactly what they
(26:36):
think about you. They smile, butthey're not really on your side,
and so you have to be veryalert, and you have to
understand the subtle nuances ofthe game of power.
Randall Kaplan (26:46):
You said that the feeling of being powerless
is more corrupting than thefeeling of power itself. What
does it mean to be powerless,and why is that more corrupting
than power?
Robert Greene (26:58):
Well, you know, put yourself in this situation.
It's very it's very simple. It'snot it's not that complicated.
It's not rocket science. Yourchildren aren't listening to
you, your son, your daughter,they're tuning you out. You yell
at them screaming. They don'tthey have nothing. They won't
listen to you at all up to acertain point. No, no, I'm just
pending a scenario. Okay, soyour children are tuning you
(27:18):
out. Your wife won't listen toyou or your husband very
annoying habits that you wishthem to change. You don't yell.
You try to change it, butthey're not changing. You don't
like your work. Your colleaguesaren't listening to you, right?
Nobody cares about you. Yourboss tunes you out. You are
completely powerless. Nobodywill listen to you. Nobody will
(27:39):
do you have no effect on people,no ability to influence them. I
think we can all relate to howmiserable that feels right to
have the fact, because we'reanimals that you know, life is
tricky, it's chaotic. We wantsome control. We want the
ability, to some degree, todirect the circumstances that
(28:00):
are happening around us, and thefeeling that you can't influence
your children or your spouse oryour colleagues or your boss is
the worst feeling in the world,and I know that feeling very,
very deep, profoundly, because Ihad it right, but the sense that
you have control over yourselfand you can control. You can
(28:22):
move people sort of in thedirection that you want, that
you can kind of, you know how toappeal to their self interest to
get them to do what you wantthem to do. Is a different, much
different feeling. It's not joyand pleasure. It's not ecstasy.
I don't say that, but it's acalming effect. It's a fact that
I can dictate, to some degree,the course of my life. Let's
Randall Kaplan (28:43):
go through some of the laws right now, and as
you said, some of them arecounter intuitive. So I was
raised in Detroit and was alwaystaught to be humble, right? You
shouldn't be the person thateveryone is pointing out. You
shouldn't be the person who'slouder boisterous. When I was in
law school, there were peoplecalled gunners, and gunners were
(29:05):
the people raising their handevery time the professor would
call on them, they wouldn't shutthe fuck up, and they wanted
everyone to know how smart theywere. And a lot of times they
weren't that smart. They justlike being heard. Our company
goes public. Company has a $14billion valuation the day it
goes public, it shoots up to35,000,000,086 days later.
(29:26):
Witnesses. This is 1999 october29 1999 and I'm 31 years old.
What company is this? AkamaiTechnologies.
Robert Greene (29:36):
Oh, yeah, sure, I remember that post IPO.
Everybody
Randall Kaplan (29:40):
want to talk about the wealth, right? I
didn't want to talk aboutanything. Eli Broad told me this
reporter from Detroit called meup, Jerome Levin, he was the
business reporter. I read himgrowing up. He calls me up and
he says, Hey, I'm Jerome Levin,yeah, I know I want to write
this profile about you. I said,Wow, thank you. I'm flattered.
Not interested. And he said, whynot? He said, I just, I want to
(30:03):
keep my life private. He said,Well, you really can't. And he
said, so I'm going to write thestory with or without you. I
call Eli Broad, who's also fromDetroit. I'm sure he knows
Deron. He knew Deron. I said,Hey, what do you think of him?
He said, Yeah, he's a good guy.
He's going to treat you fairly.
Said, Well, you know, I reallydon't want to, don't want him to
write the story. And he said,This will be your coming out
(30:26):
party. I said, I don't want acoming out party. And he said,
then there's one reason to doit. And he said, you can
influence the outcome of thestory. So I had to do it. He was
writing it. Either way, itinfluenced me, but I had so many
opportunities. He invited me onbloomer television. I had
(30:47):
nothing to talk about, and theywere going to what's it like to
be a founder of this company. Solaw number six, court attention
at all costs, doesn't make anysense to me. Why should we do
that? Well,
Robert Greene (30:58):
I try to make the point, which is a very important
point that people miss. I thinkit's in the preface. I'm pretty
sure it's in the previs, becauseI wrote it that each law depends
on the circumstances, so youcan't be blindly applying each
law, no matter where you are, nomatter how old you are, no
matter what your position is,that it's foolish. Life doesn't
(31:19):
work like that. Each personfaces different circumstances.
In some circumstances, you wantan interaction with boldness. In
other circumstances, you don'twant to outshine the master.
When you're in certainbusinesses, courting attention
at all costs is extremelypowerful. You want attention is
power, particularly in the ageof social media. But sometimes,
(31:40):
in some situations, courtingattention is the worst thing you
can do. It makes you lookaggressive. Makes you look over
eager. It makes you lookinsecure. So damn it, stop
applying my laws willy nilly, nomatter who you are, think about
your circumstances and yoursituation be intelligent. Apply
them intelligently. And the lastlaw of the book is assumed
(32:01):
formlessness. And I explicitlystate in that law, throw out all
47 laws that you've just readbecause they're ridiculous. Just
learn to be in the moment andapply what matters in that
particular moment. So it alldepends on where you are, and in
that particular moment, courtattention was maybe the wrong
strategy. I think a lot
Randall Kaplan (32:19):
of the people who are raising their hand and
talking the whole time, I thinkthey're insecure. And so many
people I know who have mademoney, especially younger people
who have never made money morebefore, I think there's a lot of
insecurity that goes intocourting attention themselves.
Yeah,
Robert Greene (32:34):
but look at this, people in social media, in
quote, unquote influencers.
They're those people who areraising their hands like that in
law school, and look how, youknow, they've got 5 million
followers. They're making sevenfigures. Whatever it is, they're
doing pretty well by courtingattention. It just depends on
who you are, the kind of personyou are, and the kind of world
you're in, the culture you'rein, and the circumstances.
Randall Kaplan (32:58):
Okay, so we're not going to take all these
literally, but I still want togo through some Okay, so I had a
boss in South America, notreally a boss. He was a junior
boss. He had been the assistantto the chairman, which I was as
well before, and he was not agood person, not a good person
to learn from. We do all thiswork, and he'd take all the
(33:20):
credit for all the work, andyou'd sit there in these
meetings with Eli, and wecreated these 80 page, very
complicated financial models,and his name is Jim. Jim's
giving it to our CEO, Eli, andI'm sitting around the room.
What's going on here? But yousaid that get others to do the
(33:42):
work for you and don't share anyof the credit. How could you be
a good leader or learn fromsomebody? If that's the case?
Robert Greene (33:50):
Well, first of all, a lot of the laws, I'm not
preaching. I'm not saying what'sgood or bad. I'm saying this is
how the world operates. Do notbe naive. Do not be a naive
yokel like I once was when Ientered Hollywood, thinking that
if I wrote it, I was going toget credit. Understand the law
of the jungle. The Law of theJungle is that there are
(34:13):
vultures out there who arecircling around you at every
moment, willing to take wantingto take your work and eat it up
for themselves. They'rescavengers, essentially, is what
they are, okay? They're there.
Do not be naive, all right. Andso the best thing to do is to
understand the dynamic,understand that people are going
to take credit for your workwhen you're younger, when you're
(34:34):
starting up. I mean, if you lookat people giving speeches,
politicians or newscasters whoor comedians who seem so
eloquent, 1000s of people arewriting all of their material.
Comics aren't writing their ownjokes. They have a team of
writers who are writing theirjokes. Newscasters aren't
writing their reports. They haveall these researchers doing it.
(34:55):
That's how the world works,right? You. Don't be stupid.
Understand the dynamic. And yes,when you get to a position of
power, you're probably going tobe using that yourself anyway,
because it's hard enough, ifyou're like somebody in the
public to do all of the workyourself, right? It's too
exhausting. You've got a team ofpeople doing it for you. You
(35:17):
don't put their name on everysingle thing that you do. That's
just the way the world works.
I'm trying to open your eyes tothe way of the world and not
make you not so damn naive
Randall Kaplan (35:29):
when we're terrified of things, our
prefrontal cortex makes terribledecisions. You freeze. It
impairs your ability to do a lotof things, and law 17 in the
book is keep others in suspendedterror. So how on earth can you
do that in any way, shape orform, and still function as a
(35:51):
rational, objective personmaking good decisions you're
taking
Robert Greene (35:55):
you know, as I said, everything has a context,
right? So if you're completelypredictable as as a leader, as a
boss, if everybody knows whatyou're going to do next, you
don't have much power in thesituation, because people can
read you like an open book. Theyknow exactly what's coming,
right? And they're going to usethat against you. Even if you
(36:17):
are a boss, the people workingfor you are going to manipulate
you. They know that you're thisis the next thing that you're
going to do. If you'reunpredictable, if they cannot
guess what's coming next fromtheir leader, it keeps them on
their toes. Well, I don't knowhow he or she is going to
respond to this report that Ihave. I better make it really
good, as opposed to if I writeit this way and I calm the
(36:42):
leader into thinking, there's agreat report. I'll just give the
appearance of that, and he orshe will love it, right? You
want to get the best out ofpeople, so sometimes that little
touch of unpredictability keepsthem on their toes. Now,
obviously, creating terror is abit of extreme thing for me to
say, but please understand, I'mwriting a book that is, you
(37:02):
know, a marketing tool. So if Isaid, keep people in suspended,
you know, anguish, whateverdoesn't have the oomph of it. So
I use the word terror, but theidea of being unpredictable is
an extremely powerful tool. Andit's a book about power. It's
not a book about being nice.
It's not a book about peopleloving you. It's a book about
power.
Randall Kaplan (37:22):
Law 20, okay, do not commit to anyone. Once
Robert Greene (37:27):
again, it's not about relationships. It's not
about your wife or your husbandand not committing to them,
okay? It's about keeping someindependence, some room to
maneuver the game of life. Thegame of power is to have
maneuverability. It's likewarfare. The army that has room
to move its soldiers has morespace, can maneuver in different
(37:50):
directions, has more power,okay? So in life, if you have
options, if you have the abilityto go here, here or here, you
have power, okay? But if you'vecommitted to this person, I'm
going to help you when, nomatter what happens, you've lost
your independence, you've lostyour autonomy. Now you have to
go this direction instead ofperhaps choosing this, this or
(38:11):
this to serve your owninterests. Okay? So it's so easy
to fall into the trap of alwaysgiving, of always committing to
these people and losing yourindependence, and I'm trying to
make you aware that power liesin keeping being the middle man
where people want your servicesand they have to fight for it,
as opposed to just immediatelyjoining this side or that side.
(38:34):
I
Randall Kaplan (38:34):
think so many people who read the book don't
take the whole context. I mean,as you explain it today. I've
talked a lot of people about thebook, and I crush your enemy,
and they talk about all thisstuff. Oh, Robert is a bad ass.
You know, he's telling us allthese things, and I'm taking it
to heart. But you said that youdon't follow all 48 laws, and if
(38:55):
you did, you'd be an uglyperson. I'd be a monster,
Robert Greene (38:59):
yeah? But you wrote them, yeah, but, I mean, I
never intended for anybody onthe planet to follow all 48 the
person who came the closest thatI knew who followed the 48 Laws
of Power was 50 cent, right? Iwrote a book with him. He's a
really nice guy. He's a reallygood person, actually. I mean, I
know his reputation and the kindof thuggish front that he gives,
(39:22):
but he's actually a very decentperson, very wonderful to work
for. He's got good he's got goodvalues, etc, so, but he follows
the laws, and he's he's not abad person. But, you know,
there's everything is for yourcircumstances. Some people, the
laws would be terrible to apply,because it's not your
(39:43):
personality. You're not a boldperson, so interaction with
boldness will just lookridiculous. You'll make all
kinds of mistakes, you know. Soyou have to know what fits you
as a human being, what makes youcomfortable, what makes you not
feel ugly inside. You have toknow what your circumstance. Are
you have to know what couldpossibly work in this situation
or that situation, and apply thelaws. And all 48 will never be
(40:07):
in play for you.
Randall Kaplan (40:08):
So how many of the 48 should we master to be
great? You
Robert Greene (40:12):
know, in some cases, it could be only one law
to understand and master. Youknow, you certainly don't want
to crush your enemy totally.
That is a law that has to dowith businesses, because you
better believe it. Believe itthat businesses use crush your
enemy totally all of the time,particularly in the tech world,
where it's very competitive andvery cutthroat. You don't think
(40:36):
Google or Microsoft or Facebookdon't operate by crush your
enemy totally. Come on, they do.
But you, as an individual who'slike a lawyer or an artist or a
rock musician, you're not goingto crush your enemy totally,
right? Obviously, anybody whothinks that doesn't understand
how to read a book, right? It'scontext. It's who you are. So,
(40:59):
you know, it could be just onelaw always say less than
necessary, not always spoutingout about things. Or it could
be, never outshine the master,because I got fired several
times for outshine the masterwas very painful experience. You
know, at some point in yourlife, one law will save you from
from some misery, from somepainful experience. One law will
(41:22):
do it the trick for you, andmaybe over the course of your
life, there'll be 12 or 16 ofthose laws. I don't know. I
can't put a number on it. One of
Randall Kaplan (41:29):
the human conditions that has always
surprised me is that when you'resuccessful or something great
happens to you, people are nothappy for you. And your book
comes out, and the New York TheNew Yorker magazine calls you a
total creep, and you had a lotof haters. So what, what was
the, what was the reaction whenpeople started criticizing your
(41:51):
book? Did you care? And howshould people deal with the
haters when something goodhappens to them? Well,
Robert Greene (41:55):
you know what? I don't I didn't really have that
experience. It's one time. Ihave to correct you a little
bit. I think it was the New YorkMagazine. They had an article
that called the book ChickenSoup for the solace, right? And
I took that as kind of funny.
That was kind of a funny thing.
I was surprised that I didn'tget as much criticism as I did.
To be honest with you, I wasexpecting a lot worse, and the
(42:16):
only people who were a littlebit difficult or nasty or hard
to deal with, were friends,strangely enough, because here
they saw somebody who they knewas this guy who was just
struggling to get by to pay hisrent, who never really had any
success, and suddenly he's beinginterviewed on these television
(42:39):
shows, and these magazines andnewspapers are doing articles,
and envy came in, and theyweren't so nice to me anymore.
They were kind of mean spirited.
So I had some of that fromfriends. A lot of friends
weren't like that, but ingeneral, people treated me with
more respect than I actuallydeserved. I didn't have to ever
face a great deal of criticism,and I'll tell you this coming
(43:03):
from a place where my life uptill then, was such a struggle,
you know? I mean, I'm not toexaggerate, because there are
people who had it worse. Thereare always people that have it
worse. So I don't mean to beoverly dramatic, but I had
struggled a lot through life, soto have a couple of people
criticize me for this, that andthe other go away. I don't care.
It's like a mosquito on anelephant. It doesn't bother me
(43:27):
at all. You know, I'd beenthrough already so much that it
didn't matter. I had a prettythick skin. What you
Randall Kaplan (43:33):
say about friends is just so true. I was
young. I made all this money, Iwent to good schools. I did
well, and there's a certaincompetitiveness among people,
whether it's outwardly orinwardly, subconsciously, and
when someone does really well. Imean, I have friends investment
bankers, and they're making themost money. The lawyers are kind
of the second tier in terms ofmaking money, but when one of
(43:56):
your buds makes tons of money,it really, really, really
affected some of my closestfriendships. Yeah, and you
really find out who your friendswere. I remember walking through
an investment bank, and theyseparated the management part,
the money management part of thefirm through the bankers.
Investment makers is what'sknown as a Chinese wallet. You
(44:18):
know, they can't talk to oneanother. And I remember one of
the colleagues, one of my bestfriends, said, you know, and
it's, it's, I mean, it was a bigdeal, you know, I'm 31 years
old, and we're, I've at least onpaper worth over $100 million
hundreds of millions of dollarson paper. And one of the guys
who was an investment bankerdoing really well, and said, and
(44:41):
I'll call him Jim Bob again. Sohe said, Jim Bob's never going
to catch you. I was It's likesomeone hit me over the head
with a hammer. And I thought,Gosh, and I had to keep walking.
We're having a conversation. AndI remember thinking that night
as I sat. Around to it. Why? Whycan't people be happy for you?
Robert Greene (45:02):
Why wasn't he I didn't understand what showed
that he wasn't happy for he washappy.
Randall Kaplan (45:07):
He was unhappy because he was envious. Oh yeah.
You know, these guys were thetop of the top. They went to
Harvard, Stanford and Warren,their investment bankers. Well,
that, you
Robert Greene (45:16):
know, look, I've written a lot about envy in the
48 Laws of Power. Never appeartoo perfect. It's all about
envy. And if you appear tooperfect, you're going to attract
envy like a magnet, and you'regoing to suffer for it in the
laws of human nature. I have anentire chapter just devoted to
envy. How what a prevalent humantrait that is. And first of all,
(45:38):
you have to understand that it'shuman nature that we're built.
Our brains are built throughcomparison. We compare
information. That's howintelligence, that's how our
language works. It's how thehuman brain has become what it
is by comparison. Information asa social animal, we're also
comparing ourselves constantlyto other people. It's ingrained.
(46:00):
It's wired into our systems. Sothe point of my book, The laws
of human nature, is, stopfeeling so superior. Stop
feeling like, Oh, there. Envy isI'm not there. He's a
narcissist, but I'm not. No, youall share that trait. Everybody
feels envy. To this day. I stillfeel envy, but I'm able to
(46:21):
confront it and realize that Ihave that flaw, and by
understanding it, then I can bemore compassionate to people,
but also I can understand what Ican do to deflect envy from
other people. So maybe I'm notcriticizing you, but maybe you
were doing something that wasmaking them feel you were kind
of rubbing it into them a littlebit.
Randall Kaplan (46:40):
I never did that. Never did that. Never. In
fact, I would never want to talkabout the money. I was
embarrassed almost. You know,you have imposter syndrome. You
know you think at night, Ireally you deserve all this
money. I rewind,
Robert Greene (46:51):
I take that back.
Yeah, but a lot of peopletrigger envy because they boast
too much they want to displaythemselves to the world. Look
how great it is. Look howwonderful my life is. You're
naturally gonna stir up envy. Soit's your own fault sometimes,
right? I
Randall Kaplan (47:07):
mean, we built, I built my dream house. When I
was 31 years old, my friendswere all living envious. Well,
they're, they're in apartments,you know? They're, they're an
apartment and but it was, Imean, it's almost embarrassing
to have your friends come over,because they're looking at this
house, and it's spectacular. Andyou know, I remember talking
(47:28):
with my wife at the time, do webuy it or do we not buy it? And
this crazy thought would be, areour friends going to come visit
us at the house? Are they goingto be envious? Is it going to be
weird? I got to tell you, it wasweird for a lot of people. Yeah,
very weird,
Robert Greene (47:43):
yeah. Understand that. Understand that it's
natural, it's human to feel thatway and to kind of, you know,
don't take it personally. Wetake too many things personally
in
Randall Kaplan (47:53):
life, I hurt, huh? It cannot hurt,
Robert Greene (47:57):
yeah. But in some ways, I understand it. You know,
I understand it. When people,like friends, would kind of give
bitchy, passive aggressivecomments about my book, they
would say things like, Well,Robert, you must be making a lot
of money with that book, as if Iwrote it just to make money,
which is the case at all, right?
But they were trying. It was alittle subtle passive aggressive
(48:18):
dig that they were getting inthere, right? And I would get
other digs like that, and itjust goes off my back, like,
that's what people are like, youknow, that's the animal that we
are. I'm not going to take itseriously. Yeah, it hurts a
little bit. I understand in themoment it hurts, but in the days
to come, it doesn't bother me atall, because I understand that's
(48:39):
just how humans are wired.
Randall Kaplan (48:42):
Like so many people, it takes years and years
to become successful. What wasit like when it became a best
seller?
Robert Greene (48:49):
I compared it to Disneyland, where you have here
in Anaheim, you have the Mr.
Toads wild ride. I went fromlike, kind of living in this
crummy, one bedroom apartment inSanta Monica, to being jetted
off to Italy and meeting thePrime Minister, former prime
minister of Italy, it was likeMr. Toads, wild ride I was
having. It was like being ondrugs. I was having a wonderful
(49:10):
time. It was surreal. It wasreally surreal. And I mentioned
this Italian junket, it wasprobably the first, it was the
first press trip I took, Ithink, no, no, maybe the second,
but it was like early 1999 andI'm invited to Italy, to the
island of Capri to present mybook. And so, you know, sure,
(49:32):
I'll, guess I'll do that. AndI'm suddenly like flying
business class, which I've neverflown before. And I'm taken to
this island to this if you everbeen to Capri it's one we've
been there spectacular,spectacular, very ritzy, very
fancy, put up in the finesthotel. And then weirdest thing
of all is I'm walking around inmy swimsuit. The paparazzi are
(49:55):
following me and takingphotographs of Me. You. Know,
Like the contrast with where Iwas five months ago, in my
smelly, one bedroom apartment inSanta Monica, where nobody would
pay attention to me, andsuddenly paparazzi or
photographing me in my swimsuit,you know, it was, it was
shocking, it was surreal. It washard to understand the
(50:16):
discrepancy, and kind of, youknow, make sense of it all, but
it was still a thrill, andnothing will ever in my life,
you know, to the day I die, willever compare with that trip to
Italy. It was so weird, and Ihad such a great time, and it
was so exciting. It was like, itwas endless thrills, but it was
(50:36):
also like, Why Why all of asudden now I'm getting this
attention. Do I really deserveit? You know, it's kind of
weird. Did
Randall Kaplan (50:46):
you have imposter syndrome, little bit, a
little bit, but you got over it?
Robert Greene (50:50):
Yeah. I mean, I had a sit down meeting with the
former prime minister of Italyin the magnificent palace, where
he still had an office, and hewas considered the most
Machiavellian politician inItaly's history. He had a very
kind of sketchy career, and he'dwritten an article praising the
(51:10):
48 Laws of Power. And Harry wasin office, and he didn't speak
much English, and my time is alittle bit weird. So he was
talking to each other in French,because I speak French pretty
well. I was sitting here talkingin French in this magnificent,
gilded office in the palace inRome to this former Prime
Minister bantering about power.
Oh, this is so weird. It's likeI was like I was on drugs or
(51:32):
something. You're
Randall Kaplan (51:34):
listening to part one of my incredible
interview with Robert Greene, asix time New York Times best
selling author whose booksinclude the 48 Laws of Power,
the art of seduction andmastery. It's an incredible
interview, very insightful andeducational. Can't wait for you
to listen to it. Be sure to tunein next week to part two of my
incredible interview with Robert
Unknown (52:00):
you.
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