Robert Greene - Power, Seduction And War

Full transcript: Robert Greene on London Real

6:06 This is London Real. My name is Brian Rose, this is Nick Gabriel, and joining us today is Mr. Robert Greene, who’s the author of such titles as The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, the 50th Law that he wrote with 50 Cent, and his newest book, which is called Mastery. Robert, welcome. Thank you for having me. My pleasure.

6:27 It’s a great privilege to have you here. I was reading your books, uh, like eight years ago. I think I first found out about your books after I read The Game, which I’m sure you have a whole… Maybe I’m good friends with Neil Strauss. I’m going to be seeing him in a few days when I get back to Los Angeles.

6:41 He’s a great writer, isn’t he? Yeah, he’s a great writer and he’s a really interesting person. Okay, it was funny, because I was reading his book. It was actually The Art of Seduction, and I had gone to a Thai boxing training session, and we did a lot of sparring, and it was really aggressive, and a lot of guys were there, and later we went to the changing room, and I pulled my bag out, and The Art of Seduction was right there in a men’s locker room, and everyone was in towels, and they just, everybody stopped, and it was like a pin drop, and, like, they didn’t know what to make of the book.

7:10 You know, it was like, and I didn’t know what to say. I was just like, whatever. But I was wondering, do people know what to make of your book sometimes? Well, on that book, the cover has this sort of pink stripe down the middle. It looks a little bit like a vagina, and so I could understand in the men’s locker room it might, you know, might elicit some weird looks, and stuff.

7:31 Um, well, the titles tend to be a little bit intimidating, and, you know, some people understand that I’m not advocating that you go out and crush your enemy totally, that each of the laws in this book depends on the circumstances of your life, and whether, if you’re running a big business, yes, you need to crush your enemy totally, you need to control your market. But if you’re an individual working at a job you don’t want to, you don’t have enemies to crush. So sometimes people are a bit mindless.

8:00 They think these are the laws, and I have to apply all of these laws, even though in the introduction I say it depends on where you are in your life. Some laws work, some laws don’t. Be a little more Asian and fluid in your thinking. Don’t be so formulaic. And so, uh, I can’t help if people are like that, but I drum it into them in the introductions to each book that you have to approach these books in a little more fluid manner, and kind of go with the spirit of them.

8:26 Yeah, you mentioned Asian. I mean, how, how many of your, of your ideas in your books are kind of more Asian influence, or East influence, as opposed to West? Very much so, because I’m hugely interested, particularly in my first three or four books, in strategy, and you have kind of an East-West dichotomy when it comes to strategy. The West, militarily, is all about crushing that enemy, bombarding them into the dust, vanquishing them. Sort of a Clausewitz style, you know, military strategy of overpowering the enemy.

9:00 And Asian, I’m generalizing a little bit, but Asian philosophy is much more subtle, much more sophisticated, for hundreds and for thousands of years. The Chinese have had to deal with a much different dynamic than Europe, a dynamic in which there’s a lot of civil war potential, and so you have to be, you know, war is like the worst thing that you want. Sun Tzu says war is the last resort. A general that has to resort to war is generally a bad general, you’re trying to avoid it.

9:31 So their whole strategy is using the other means of defeating the enemy, psychological, whatever. So I’m much more interested in that form of warfare than the direct, kind of military strategy of Clausewitz. But what I love is people like Napoleon Bonaparte, who exemplifies more of the Asian philosophy. So my books are totally keyed in to the more Asian style of strategy. Wow, that’s fascinating.

9:58 Now, when you talk about the Western form of war, all I have is images in my mind of the US bombarding Iraq and Afghanistan, and I know they do some ops and some covert action, but it seems like 5% of it to me. Well, the classic example, which I do in The 33 Strategies of War, is the Vietnam War. There you have the two forms of warfare side by side. And what’s so interesting is, you have the mightiest military in the world, the United States Army, with so much money, so much technology.

10:26 We’re talking about the 1960s, and you have the North Vietnamese, who are basically from the 16th century. They have no technology, um, and they kicked our butts through pure strategy. It’s one of the most brilliant stories ever. And so I go into the, um, the Tet offensive, which was their greatest piece of strategy in that war, and they, they they totally defeated us through strategy. It’s the most classic example I can think of in history, because it’s so much about technology versus strategy.

10:58 And the, the, what wasn’t expecting, was it something they kept under wraps? Or was it expected in one part of the country and they hit it in another part of the country? Was that, well, it was a total uh, um, distraction-type thing, where, when they first, the first attack was in Saigon itself, um, yes, Saigon itself, hitting a Marine compound. And so then the Americans are expecting here, and then they start attacking some other, uh, camp outside of Saigon, and then all the lights are on the map.

11:31 Suddenly, here’s an attack, here’s an attack, here’s an attack. They had no… they didn’t expect it at all. And it, it, it wasn’t what was so brilliant about the Tet offensive. It wasn’t designed to militarily defeat the United States Army. Unfortunately, thousands, well, however you want to look at it, thousands of Vietnamese North Vietnamese lost their lives in it.

11:49 If you just look at it in a battle sense, they didn’t really win, but it was designed for politics. It was designed to make the American public turn against the war, because they knew that, that politics, that war is a whole strategy. It’s not just about winning on the battlefield. It’s winning the public opinion. It’s winning the political side, and they so diffused the American public’s interest in the Vietnam War that it was the turning point, and that’s what their whole strategy was.

12:15 So it was so fluid, so sophisticated. It was like the difference between uh, have you ever watched Star Trek, when Spock would play three-dimensional chess? They were playing three-dimensional chess on the Americans. I love those old Star Trek. When, no, what I’m talking about, when you mention those, I love guerrilla warfare.

12:32 I think it’s fascinating, and I think what people never understand is they know sooner or later you’re going to leave, whether it’s Afghanistan or Vietnam, and all they have to do is survive, right? And that’s why they ultimately, you could say, we always win, because they need to survive. And that’s why when they talk about negotiating with the Taliban, I’m just like, are they really going to negotiate? Because they know sooner or later and also they’re much more motivated than usually the other armies, because they’re fighting for their own land.

12:58 They have nothing else to go to. Yeah. Wow, that’s crazy. I’m sure you’ve been asked this question many times, but I have to ask it. I was just wondering what you learned personally from 50 Cent.

13:10 Well, the thing, I was, you know, I’m a big believer that, um, that we’re animals, that we’re not just these rational creatures. So there are things that you learn that are not just in words. There can be, uh, just a person’s energy, for instance, and he, uh, being around him, um, he’s so confident and calm, and so full of power. Um, and I would feel like, God, what’s wrong with me? You know, I don’t feel the same way as he did.

13:44 It made me realize that even though I write these books, and I feel like I kind of use some of the laws, that I don’t have that kind of energy that he has. And it made me realize that, you know, I want to aspire to more, that I, to feel more Zen and not so afraid, and realizing, you know, I can take risks and not worry if I lose here, there. Just, he had this, really, because he faced death. I think that’s what I write about in the book. You know, he came just inches from dying, uh, and, and he really should have died.

14:18 He had a, a bullet that went through his jaw, right here. Um, usually don’t survive that, because he came so close to death. Nothing phases him now. What can be a more powerful attitude in life than that nothing phases you? So being around him, I felt like I want to feel like that.

14:38 You think it could just be something as mundane as a function of his testosterone production? I mean, it’s been shown that testosterone, um, imbues people with that sort of calm sense of confidence, and testosterone makes you calm. Yeah, that’s not usually my experience. It’s been shown that, um, yeah, it’s, it’s been shown that, um, that’s why the alpha male is always the most promised. He’s the one most Zen.

15:02 My question was, do you, when you first started talking about 50, was, do you think he was born with it, or do you think it happened after he was, you know, shot 12 times and came back? Come, or is it part of it that, not fake it till you make it, but you think if he constantly puts himself in that, I am powerful mindset, then, then his self will come up, will catch up with that? Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. It’s a combination of things.

15:23 I asked him about this a lot, and he said that, um, ’cause he was a hustler on the street of Queens, dealing crack cocaine in a very dangerous environment in the 1980s. Uh, he said that he felt like he had this ambition gene that other people didn’t have, that he was born with an incredible amount of ambition to get out of the hood, and to get out of the, the, uh, the, um, hustling racket, and that other hustlers might have had aggression and that testosterone, but they didn’t have the ambition that he had. And he claimed that his mother, he inherited it from his mother.

16:01 His mother died when he was 15. She was murdered. She was a dealer herself. She was also, he says, a lesbian, although not completely, because she had him. Um, she was like this really aggressive, ambitious woman, and he thinks he got it from her.

16:15 Now I’m not, I don’t ascribe necessarily completely to that belief. I don’t think something like that is genetic. I think there’s a mix of things and qualities, and he found his way into hustling, and he saw a way out, which was music, and he grabbed it, et cetera. I think it’s more that he had what I call this kind of deep connection to what makes him different from other people, right? So he always, even when he was dealing drugs, he didn’t want to deal drugs.

16:44 He wanted to be a businessman. “I’m not a drug dealer, I’m an entrepreneur.” You know, I don’t know where that comes from. So, I, you know, it’s just pure speculation, but it’s a mix of I think a mix of maybe an extra in there of more drive, but also he’s more connected to what, to who he is, and he’s a little bit smarter about how to get there. That’s fascinating.

17:08 You know, a theme of our show is kind of being aware of your own consciousness and why you do things the way you do. It, you know, why, why do you want to get money? What’s the real motivation? And I was wondering, do you find with powerful and successful people that they have a way, like 50, of reflecting on themselves and seeing, like, why, why does this motivate me? Yes, very much so, and that’s a huge part of the power game.

17:28 It’s, it’s the theme in all of my books, is the ability to reflect on yourself and to see yourself as if you’re looking at another person, and to be credibly self-aware, and, and how it operates in your daily life. Is, for instance, you do something, and it’s a failure, you lose, or the other person wins, or, you know, you do succeed in whatever capacity that is. Now most people get emotional. They get, “Man, that was just… I’m sorry, I can talk, I can talk.

17:58 You know, uh, that other person screwed me,” you know, they get all keyed up in the moment, right, and they don’t learn the lesson. Powerful people, whether it’s power, seduction, war, mastery, 50, they take a step back, and they, they may, they get angry in the moment, like I do, like 50. A dozen, they take a step back and they go, oh, wait a minute. Maybe I’m the, uh, maybe I caused this problem, or maybe I have to step back and analyze rationally what that other person did, or I had success, but maybe why I had success was a bit of luck, and I can’t just repeat that.

18:32 That ability to step back and look at yourself and be aware, there’s, that’s the, that’s the cutting edge between someone who can get there and someone who can’t. And, and, uh, mastery to me is all about that. Can you, can you explain mastery, or the concept of how that leads into your latest book? Well, this book is, it’s not about how to be good at something. It’s how to be great, and how to be the ultimate at whatever it is you do.

18:58 And I’ve been studying people like Napoleon, Louis the 14th, 50 Cent. I’ve been a business consultant for several years now, and I noticed that these people reach a level of intelligence that’s superior to other people. It’s not an intellectual intelligence, it’s a practical intelligence. They know their field so well, they’ve been doing it for so long, that they have what I call a fingertip feel or high-level intuition, and that’s mastery, and I explained to you where it comes from.

19:28 It’s the ultimate intelligence you can have. If it’s in jiu-jitsu, you’ve been doing it for 10, 20 years, you’re not even thinking. You know exactly what’s, what’s you can read the mind of your opponent. Right? I have in the book one of the masters that I interviewed is a man named Freddie Roach.

19:43 Are you familiar with Freddie Roach? Yeah, yeah, sure. He’s a boxing trainer of Manny Pacquiao, many. He has a gym in Hollywood. It’s very famous.

19:50 Um, okay, take Manny. Uh, take Freddie Roach. His father was a boxer, so he gets Freddie into boxing when he’s six years old. He’s training day and night, boxing at the age of six to 18. Um, then he becomes a professional boxer for eight years.

20:07 He, he’s a pro, he’s a pro. He fights over 50 fights, which is a fight every two months, which is pretty heavy schedule, and he’s a gym rat. So between the age of six and 26, when he retires from boxing because he got hit too much, you could add up the hours, and the insane amount of experience this man has in boxing. Then he’s out boxing. He’s wandering around Vegas.

20:30 He’s depressed, he’s drinking a lot. He has a bad job. He goes back into the gym where he had been trained by this sort of master trainer, Eddie Futch, and he becomes an apprentice trainer to him. So for three or four years, he’s apprenticing under this, this genius. Then he goes on and starts his own training by the time you arrive at the year 2000, when Manny Pacquiao arrives in his gym, and, and this great relationship occurs.

20:55 If you added up the number of hours this man spent with boxing, it would be an insane number. And because of that knowledge, because he, he would say, ’cause he spars in the ring with his boxers using those, uh, padded mitts, he doesn’t have to. He knows exactly where he is at each second. He’s internalized the boxing ring. It’s inside of him.

21:14 He has a feel for it. He has such a feel for boxing that he was able to take it to another level of strategy. That’s mastery. When you bypass the cognitive loop and your body is just responding to the stimulus without your mind getting in the way. Yes, very much so, and it applies not just to sports.

21:30 It applies to a lot of other endeavors. You know, I wanted to ask you, Robert, um, it seems that a theme that runs through all of your books is what, um, one of Neil Strauss’s friends, his name is David D’Angelo, even Pagan is his, his, a real name. He says that, uh, if you want to be successful in any field, you have to adopt what’s called the critical counterintuitive, which is you look at what everyone is doing and you pretty much have to do the complete opposite.

21:55 And so my question to you is, was there a specific point in your life when you were looking at the world and had that realization that, like, if I’m going to be successful, or I see all these successful people and they are just doing something different? This isn’t the way my mom and dad taught me. It wasn’t, this isn’t the way schools taught me it was going to be. Well, I would, if I can, I would take a little issue with David D’Angelo’s philosophy there.

22:19 I don’t even think you need to go there. You need to know yourself so well, in your own voice, and your, what makes you unique, what makes you weird, and follow that, and that will work better than doing the opposite of other, other people. It’ll actually naturally fall that way. So for me, for instance, I struggled originally as a writer. I worked in journalism, and it didn’t really fit me.

22:40 I didn’t like the, the kind of, the, the crappy environment, and the fact that you wrote something and it was only there for a couple days. Then I got into film and television, and I hated the political nature of it, and you had no control over what you did, and they would come in and take what you wrote and just change it. And then I got into book, books, and when I had my chance to write a first book, the natural tendency would be to write something that you felt secure would work as a book, to fit into the pattern that other people have set.

23:12 If you’re going to write a book about power, look at what other people have done about power. And I didn’t do that. I made a very strange book that was a huge risk. It has a structure that no other, you, you can’t tell me any other book you know that has a structure like that. I created my own structure with the things on the margins, with the stories and the interpretation and the images.

23:36 Um, and that’s because I, I was either going to do what I wanted to do and die trying, but I’m not going to write a cookie-cutter book on power, and because I listened to myself and I followed what I wanted to do, I naturally created that counterintuitive thing you’re talking about. I naturally created something that nobody else has done, and if people would only do that in their own ventures and stop being such conformists, they would find their way to what you’re talking about. That’s a great answer.

24:05 Thank you for that. M, you were telling someone, I, I listened to you on an interview, and you said that a lot of people kind of plow ahead in their 20s and 30s and try to go down these conformist roots, and it’s easy, and they’re young, and they’re making money, and then sometimes they get into their late 30s and 40s, and then they have this realization, which maybe I did. I left a job in finance about two years ago, after 10 years of doing it, where they’re like, wait a second, this isn’t what I want, because I never tried to figure out who I am.

24:31 How old are you now? I’m 41. Wow, see, that’s a great story. People ask me that all the time in talks lately. Well, it’s too late for me, and I always say, you know, late 30s, you’re fine.

24:43 Early 40s, you’re still okay. Maybe in your 50s and 60s, it’s starting to get a little bit late. But the great thing about the internet, and this new environment that we’re in, is that you now have the chance to follow more of what you wanted to follow. Right? If 15 years ago you wouldn’t have been able to do this, you would have had to go through the mainstream media.

25:00 Think, if you want to have a radio or television show, forget about it. You would have had to play the game on their terms. Now you can play it on your terms. So what I’m telling people is, you, there’s a new world out there. The new world is much more democratic, and thank God, and the barriers to entry aren’t what they used to be.

25:17 And what you want to be doing in your 20s, uh, you don’t necessarily have to know what you want. You don’t have to be so certain that I’m going to be a writer, or I’m going to be a lawyer, whatever it is. Actually, it’s better to loosen up a little bit and experiment with the things that you’re interested in, and develop skills in whatever it is. I don’t know what field you were in, but I’m sure you developed some kind of skills that you’re using now. Right?

25:39 Yeah, I am. I agreed. I can’t say that I did the wrong thing, because I did develop a bunch of skills, but I think I was following a path that wasn’t necessarily true to myself. Right? And now you feel like you’re on the right path?

25:51 Definitely. Yeah. And so, um, as long as you’re not wasting your 20s, you know, doing mindless stuff or just taking some job like in a bank or a law firm where you’re not really developing yourself. This is the era where you want, you have this opportunity, and you need to build the opportunity to find what you really want to do. It’ll come maybe in your early 30s, your mid-30s, as long as you have the skill, and you haven’t given up, and you’re disciplined, and you’ve kind of self-mastered, you’ll be able to make that great adjustment.

26:23 And I have a story in there, for instance, of Paul Graham. Are you familiar with Paul Graham? No. He’s a Silicon Valley guru who started this company called Y Combinator, which is worth about five billion dollars now, and it’s an apprenticeship system for people who want to do their own tech startup, and he’s going to teach you how to do it, and he takes a cut in your business. And it’s things like Reddit and Airbnb.

26:48 They all came out of Y Combinator. Okay. Um, he spent his 20s, you know, messing around. He’s heavily into computers. Then he didn’t like consulting jobs, so he got into art and painting.

27:03 And he, but he was in New York and he wasn’t making any money, and then finally he got a chance because he heard an ad on the radio about Netscape, was going to be the new frontier, was making your own business online, and nobody had done anything like that. And he decided, all right, I’m going to make the first application to allow you to build an online business, and then he made, he sold it to Yahoo for $50 million. But here’s the classic. I call it a hack apprenticeship.

27:29 You hack your way to what you want. You try this, you try that. It doesn’t work. Then you try this, it works. All right, I’m going to follow that path.

27:37 If you follow it for a few years, then you find a better path. Maybe in a couple years, you’ll see that you want to do something a little bit different, but take advantage of the times that allow you to do that. MH, I read a book called The, the Signs of Sports Training. Yeah, there was one of the concepts the author was explaining was how, if you learn one sport, learning each sub-sport becomes easier because you’ve unlocked that ability. And I’m guessing it’s the same with mastery.

28:02 Once you put in your 10,000 hours for one subject, then every subject becomes easy to master. Is that right? Oh, completely. And there’s a debate in the, in neuroscience, about that, and I think it’s a silly debate, whether skills in one area transfer to the other. But I think it’s clear, the demonstration, because it’s not just the fact that learning one sport now makes it easier to physically do the other sport.

28:25 It’s a mental thing. You’ve learned, you’ve gained the confidence in yourself, and you learn the process that it takes. So in, for instance, in the book, I have a story of a fighter pilot. He’s one of the masters. He’s called the last American ace.

28:39 Um, ’cause he shot down several planes during Desert Storm. Um, and there are not many dogfights left in the US Air Force. And his story was, uh, he’s, he’s Caesar Rodriguez. He’s sort of this short, squat, uh, Mexican. I think he’s from Puerto Rico, but he’s American.

28:59 Um, and he went into flying, and he was not a golden boy. The golden boys were these guys who just had a feel for flying. They were fearless. They didn’t, the physical process didn’t bother them, ’cause it’s pretty rough, MH, and they just had like a video-game-type feel for it. Okay.

29:18 And he wasn’t. He was like, it was driving him crazy. He would get panicky. He said he felt like the plane was beating him up every time, ’cause it is physically demanding. And all he did was, he remembered he was a quarterback in high school.

29:33 Um, and the same thing happened in high school, where I, I can’t do this, I’m not physically gifted, I’m short, I’m not. And he just overcame it by practice, practice. He learned. He got smarter than other people. He devoted more hours, and he did the same thing when he went to fighter pilot school.

29:49 He just practiced harder than anyone else, ’cause he trusted the process, that when you repeat something often enough, the brain likes that, and you learn it, and it becomes automatic, and it leads to something else, and something else, something else. So learning any skill brings you that confidence and develops that pattern of repetition. How repetition can become a powerful thing. Hard work trumps talent every single time, pretty much. Um, I’m a huge believer in that, and I want to debunk the myth that it’s all about being born with a high IQ or, Mommy and Daddy send me to the right school.

30:23 Every story in the book is pretty much about someone who’s more persistent than others. So I even make the case at Albert Einstein, and he says it himself. He was simply more persistent. He spent 10 years meditating on one problem, and he cracked it. Thomas Edison was this insanely persistent person who basically invented electric light as we know it now, with the most incredible laborious, tedious process, but he wanted to crack this problem, and nothing would stop him.

30:53 So hard work definitely trumps anything else. What do you think’s in this spr. I just, when Nick mentioned this 10,000-hour, uh, phrase that you hear a lot, I, I was just curious of your thoughts on that. Do you think it is simply the 10,000 hours? ‘Cause it sounds like Freddie Roach spent more than 10,000.

31:08 He did 20, 30,000 hours, and my book is more about the 20. What happens to you after 20,000 hours? Look, it’s been statistically… studies have done it. It’s a fact. The 10,000-hour thing is an amazing idea, because they did these studies, and they showed that people in chess and music and some sports, after essentially 10,000 hours, give or take 500 here or there, the brain is now operating on a different level.

31:35 It knows it so well that you see a change in people playing chess, and they’ve demonstrated it. There’s no argument. The 10,000-hour rule exists, and I believe in it. Um, so the idea is people, even Mozart, went through 10,000 hours before he became a great, really great musician. There’s no way you’re going to go around it.

31:55 In other words, there’s no shortcut there. There’s no way that you’re born brilliant and you only need 2,000 hours. It’s been shown. No, you need the 10,000 hours, but I maintain that if you follow something that you love, then the 10,000 hours doesn’t feel like boredom. You’re able to push past the initial barriers, the initial obstacles of the tedious nature of it, and you have, it’s easier to have the patience to go through the repetition.

32:23 If you’re not doing something that you love, you’re never even going to get to the 10,000 hours. You’re never going to get there, ’cause you’re going to tune out. So I go on and I try and describe what happens at 20,000 hours, but that’s, that’s Mastery. And that’s just, as a rough, if you did something part-time, 20 hours a week, that’s 10 years to get to 10,000 hours, pretty much. If you do like three or four hours a day for 10 years, that would add up to 10,000 hours.

32:49 And that’s not that impossible, really. I mean, most people don’t, you know, you take weekends off, and you maybe do eight hours someday. It’s not actually not as much as you think. It really can fit into 10 years. Some people work so hard it can fit into seven, eight years.

33:04 Depends on how, how much you love it. And the 10,000 hours encompasses not just the actual physical repetition of what you’re trying to get good at, but it’s also the research surrounding that topic. Just immersing yourself in that. To, yeah, so in other words, if you’re, um, let’s just say you’re a writer, because it’s easy for me to say, um, and you’re spending an hour looking on Facebook. That doesn’t count, you know.

33:25 If you’re sitting there, uh, messing around, that doesn’t count. Some messing around is productive, and I engage in so it’s a little hard to quantify, but it’s really those hours where you’re focusing, and if your field probably will require several things. It’s not just physical, or whatever. It usually requires three or four different skills. If you’re focusing and paying attention to the skills and things that are required for that field, that will count towards the 10,000 hours.

33:53 What have you mastered in your life? Well, I think pretty much this, what I’m doing. You know, and um, it was interesting because here I’m writing a book about mastery, and at one point in the process, um, I’ve written the first four chapters. There’s six chapters. I’ve written the first four in the introduction, and the publishers are getting really antsy, because I’m really late in delivering it, and we wanted to publish it in the fall this year, and they say, look, we’re going to have to cancel this project unless you, or delay it, unless you get finished the whole book in 10 weeks.

34:29 And first I was physically exhausted by that point, and second of all, these were the two longest chapters in the book with massive amounts of research to combine and collate. I can’t do this in 10 weeks, so I go through this sort of anger. I’m yelling at my agent. I’m really pissed. You know, I’ve made them a lot of money with The 48 Laws of Power.

34:49 How dare they treat me like this? Then the second or third day, reality starts to sink in, and, well, I don’t really have any control. You know, I can get angry, but I’ve already wasted a day being angry. By the third day I gave in. All right, I’m going to try it, ’cause I had no choice.

35:03 And I pulled it off. I turned it in like five minutes before midnight on the deadline, but I tell you, by the time I had worked so hard, I was like, I was on another level, and now, okay, now I feel like I’ve mastered it, because the intensity of that experience, by the five weeks into it, and I was sitting there writing about high-level intuition, ideas were coming to me out of nowhere. The pressure had made me experience what I was writing about. So not all hours are equal.

35:33 You could, could there be an argument for that? Very, very much so, and I make the case that um, 5 hours of intense work all in a row has more value than 5 hours stretched out over two days or three days. The mind works better at that intense level. Like the mind is a focusing machine. It thrives off of focus, and the more you focus on something, the more you get a grasp on what it really is, and it’s not easy to do that if you’re breaking it up into here, there, and there.

36:07 Ten years of Einstein working on the theory of special relativity is not the same as 10 years of a physics student who’s, you know, 15 years old. It’s, it was the intensity of it that matters. What is your process to writing? If we just take a quick segue, I mean, you are you the guy that makes himself sit down at 9:00 a.m. in the office with no distractions and you have to write 5 hours? Or no, I’m, I’m more fluid than that.

36:31 I’m not a rigid kind of person. It maybe is a detriment in a way, but, um, I, I kind of go with the flow. So first of all, so much of my work is research, so I’m never really just sitting down and writing. I have to go through all of my note cards. I, I make the case that organization is a high-level skill, and is, and is creative.

36:55 You must not think of organizing a book or a film or a project as something drudge or something. It’s strategy of the highest level. Organizing your thoughts is strategy, and it can be very creative, and I have a system of taking note cards that are colored, putting them in boxes with different tabs, and using these cards that I can now move around to organize my book. It’s very free-flowing, and so when I write, um, often times I’m just not in the mood, and I know I’m not in the mood, and really, I know that at 3:00 I generally hit what I call my golden hours.

37:31 I don’t push it when I hit my golden hours, and I feel it, like I take three or four hard hours of writing when I’m really inspired, and that’s what I do. So I, I don’t like writing when it’s kind of dead inside. I want to write when, when passion’s flowing, and everything, passion’s flowing, and I’m feeling it, maybe a little bit of anger, maybe something going on, got to channel that a little bit. The note cards seem very old school. They are, and you know, people tell me, why don’t you put them on computer?

38:01 But old school is not necessarily bad, you know, um, because I can see them in three dimensions, and I can see the colors, and it’s tactile, and in taking the note cards, I’m thinking, while I’m, while I’m taking the note cards, I’m writing the book as I’m taking notes. Um, and you can’t do that on a computer. I can take these cards and shift them around like in seconds. I guess maybe I could do it on a computer, but no, it needs to be spatial, I think, to a certain extent, and even like you said, tactile.

38:32 Yeah, and it’s a whole process. I think, I mean, people have seen my note cards, they, they think there’s something wrong with me, because it kind of looks obsessive compulsive. It looks like a madman, you know, these shoe boxes, giant shoe boxes filled with these cards. I was thinking about a quote. They always say that those who can’t do, teach, and I was, was wondering if people ask you, okay, you’ve outlined all these laws of power in a research-based, but have you practiced them in your life, as the CEO, or as the 50 Cent, or is this, well, I’m not a CEO.

39:01 I’m the master of my own domain. These books, um, you know, Machiavelli, uh, well, he was a, he was a low-level diplomat, but Machiavelli was never a powerful man. Okay. He was sort of, I didn’t know that, interesting. He was a diplomat, as I said, not very high level, midlevel, in for the city of Florence, and then when the Medici came back into power in Florence, he was out.

39:28 They threw him out because he was with the Republic, and he was in disgrace, and he decided to write a book to try and ingratiate himself. In other words, Machiavelli never really had power, real power. But if you consider how much influence he’s had on the world, his power far outstripped any king or Medici in the scope of world history. So, the person behind the throne can often be the most powerful. Now, I get to, I’m on the board of directors for the company American Apparel, right?

39:57 Um, I’ve been working with the CEO, Dov Charney, for many years. That’s rare for a writer to do that. Yeah, it’s rare for a writer. Yeah, well, you know, Dov, I don’t know if you know his story at all? No, I know, I know the company’s very different and very progressive, but I don’t know his story.

40:12 Now, well, he’s a, I did it because he’s a, he’s a fan of the 48 Laws, and he’s a strange guy, and I like people in business who are not your type. He’s not at all your typical CEO. He’s, he’s got this insane libido, talking about testosterone. He’s, and it gets him in a lot of trouble, you know, he’s, he’s screwing with all the, I shouldn’t say that, he, I take that back, but he, he has, you know, this huge sex life is a huge part of his life, and, um, and he’s just strange.

40:43 He’s a strange guy in a world of, you know, button-down CEOs. Um, and he created a business that reflects his own weirdness. It’s this amazing factory in Los Angeles, where they make everything. There, um, it’s no sweatshop labor at all, and he pays them a good wage, and he gives them health care, et cetera, and it’s brilliant. Um, so I loved his story and where he came from, and, and, and what kind of leader he is, so I I was attracted to that.

41:13 Um, but I’m not the CEO. I’m the, the man behind the throne, whispering into his ear, telling him what he needs to do. The modern Machiavelli, basically. Maybe I wouldn’t know. That’s a bit presumptuous.

41:25 We’ll say it for you. Okay, all right. Can you, um, exercise some of your laws and your research at that level? Is that why you’re there, to kind of help out in that? Yeah, and you know, it’s more of a mindset than me sitting there consciously going, oh, I need to apply law three or four or five.

41:42 So being on the board of directors, for instance, um, and being an outsider, because most of the people on a board are insiders. Um, they would get all panicky about this new scandal, or this report, or this degree of debt, that we’re not making enough money here or there, and I was always of the like, now come on, let’s look at the larger picture, stop panicking, stop worrying about, stop reacting to everything, and think about where you’re headed a couple years down the line, and let’s get the, let’s get the house in order and everything settled down, and not be so driven by the quarterly report, and, you know, has followed that, and we’re totally going in the right direction now. So it’s more like a mindset and a philosophy of being strategic and not being so reactive and emotional.

42:31 Don’t you notice that, Brian? That successful people are very much more big-picture people, and those who focus on the minutia of every little cog in the machine. I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it, but I mean, you could say you know Jeff Bezos does that, you know, focuses on the minutia. So, or doesn’t he get people to do that for him? Maybe he does.

42:48 You know, I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about that. Does that something that you, um, you sought out as far as that position, or is that something that found you? It found me, which is like how most things are with me in life. You know, they find me, and, uh, if I like it, I take it.

43:03 If I don’t like it, I don’t take it, you know. So, I, reading on your Wiki page, you apparently had 80 jobs, if I’m not mistaken? Yes, I did. I did, uh, you know, I left college, and I went and lived in Europe for a couple years, and I bummed around, and I did construction work and dishwashing, and I worked in a hotel as a receptionist, and I taught English. I just did everything.

43:24 Were you ever concerned that, like, maybe you thought weren’t coming together? Did you well, I, I wasn’t so concerned. I was a little bit concerned. My parents were really concerned. They were quite concerned by the time I was in my mid-30s, they were wondering about me, but, um, I knew I wanted to write, and I got depressed because I hadn’t found what I wanted to do, but I never gave up.

43:43 I really never gave up, and, uh, so when the opportunity came to write a book, I was so ready. I call it, in the 33 Strategies of War, I call the death ground strategy. It’s based on Sun Tzu. It’s one of his, in one of his chapters where he says you want to put the army on death ground, where their backs are to the mountain and the sea, is, they’re facing the their backs are to the sea, and the mountain is right there, and it’s either win or die. You know, and that’s death ground.

44:18 So I talk in the book about putting yourself sometimes on death ground to motivate you, and when, by the time that book came, opportunity, I was on death ground, because it was either make this book work or go back to sucky Hollywood jobs, so I wasn’t going to let that happen. You know, great story. It’s an interesting, it’s almost an immigrant mentality. We talk about sometimes on the show. I mean, yeah, I’m an immigrant here.

44:39 So, as Nick, it’s like when you come to this city, you don’t have a home you can go to, and if you do go home, you’re almost like you’re failing by going back to Hollywood, maybe, for you. And so you kind of are forced to kind of do or die. How’d you guys find each other? Jiu-jitsu? Oh yeah, in London.

44:57 In London, yeah. Oh, of all crazy places. That’s, I wanted to ask you, what did you learn from Europe, as your experiences when you were over here working? I learned The Art of Seduction. Okay, you’ve got to expound on that.

45:13 Well, I was, I was working in a hotel in Paris where all the models stayed. This is in the ’80s, and there was this man who would come there. He was this tall Brazilian guy named Eduardo, very handsome. He was like this master. He’s the best seducer I’ve ever seen, better than Neil.

45:30 Neil’s a great seducer, but this is a natural. This man was just so brilliant, and I just watched him pick off these models like they were ducks in a barrel, you know, or whatever the metaphor is. Um, fish, fish, um, and, um, and I just sort of watched him, learned, you know, some basic lessons and tried to apply them. Uh, so I definitely learned The Art of Seduction while I was living in Paris. So cool.

45:56 Um, and I don’t know, I, I think it toughened me up. I was exposed to all different cultures, so when I came back to America, I didn’t have that kind of tunnel vision a lot of Americans have. It was a real and I learned lots of languages, which I then was a skill that I’ve used my whole life. Um, just opening up your mind. You know, young people are often too in a hurry to make it, and, um, they miss out on things like that, where you think you’re not really doing anything important, but actually what I learned in Europe in those two years was extremely important.

46:30 I think made me, maybe who I am. You know, um, someone, no, what, um, he’s just said, if, if I could go back to the 20-year-old Nick, I’d say to him, just don’t stress about things. Just relax and have fun, you know, because I think you were the same, just pushing, pushing, pushing. Right? Definitely.

46:49 I don’t regret it now, but it’s funny, I’ve got an eight-year-old stepdaughter, in my mind it’s like, okay, she gets this, goes to university and starts at a law firm, and then she’s okay, and now I’m just thinking, you know, why does that make her okay? Maybe she needs to go do this, and to go find what she really wants to do first. Well, let’s say everybody has a path in life, and there’s no cookie-cutter path that we can say for everyone, and some people are better with structure.

47:13 They intuit it, the fact that maybe there’s a little bit, they are a little bit chaotic inside, and they need structure, and they don’t want to do this, go to Europe and mess around. And I think that’s totally fine, as long as what they end up doing, or your daughter ends up doing, is something that they’re genuinely interested in, in some deep way. Then that’s fine. You don’t need to mess around. You can go straight into it, and you can be intense and focused, and it’s beautiful.

47:37 What you don’t want to do is not have the experience of exploring, to go into and to go into something that you don’t love and waste your youth doing law, and your soul isn’t into it, and then waking up in your mid-30s and you didn’t even have a youth, and you didn’t pursue what you love, and, man, you’re screwed. So do one or the other, but don’t do this middle thing, that’s going to mess you up. You, well, one thing that we discuss a lot on London Real, and, uh, that’s, um, to a certain extent, psychedelics, and that they can be a way to get in touch with your own consciousness and what you want.

48:12 Nick and I documented, um, before and after we drank ayahuasca. We were terrified before, and we talked about it afterwards, and it’s something that we seem to kind of run into a bit, and I was just curious on your thoughts on psychedelics, and if they have a way of, that’s a great question, ’cause I did a lot of psychedelics. Really? Okay, I didn’t know what you’re going to say. Now it’s out on the, now it’s on the internet.

48:30 Well, I went to Berkeley in the mid-’70s, and, you know, that pretty much says it all. That’s part of your degree, you know? And, um, but before that, I was doing LSD in high school. In high school? Oh yeah, wow.

48:43 It was the era, and I did, I did a lot of, uh, my favorite was peyote, because it was the thing of the year. Oh man, it’s the greatest thing. It’s unbelievable. I was heavily into Carlos Castaneda. I don’t know if he’s still popular, Don Juan stories, which I thought were amazing.

48:59 There’s a lot of masculine and peyote in those. It’s this Indian, I don’t know if you know what they are, these buttons that come off cactus that Indians, American Indians, eat as a religious ritual. And it’s a very mystical drug, but it’s also kind of rough, because it can make you sick, and you have to go through the sickness, and then you have, you hallucinate, but it’s a very mellow hallucination. It’s very powerful. You never panic.

49:25 It’s a wonderful thing. Anyway, I feel like that opened my mind to something that I have no regrets. I couldn’t do it now, ’cause I’m too, maybe I’m too neurotic. It’s, you know, I don’t have the openness that I had when I was young, but I have no, it completely opened my mind to thoughts that are very important to me now. And it’s funny, because I’m reading, like, I just read the Steve Jobs biography, and he, you know, he was doing all kinds of psychedelics, and, you know, look where he ended up.

49:53 I think it could be a very creative tool, and it can open up your mind. It can be dangerous if you go too far, but hey, I’m all for psychedelics. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them. That’s cool. Wow, I didn’t expect that answer.

50:05 Yeah, I mean, I did mushrooms, uh, you name it. And you’re a Buddhist now, is that correct? Well, I practice Zen meditation, uh, which involves researching and reading about Buddhism, because it is a form of Buddhism, but Zen is more than that. It’s more than, it’s not a religion in the sense of these are ritual dogma that you have to learn, and, and, and, and kind of memorize. It’s this philosophy where everything has to be real in the moment, and has to be alive, and you’re not thinking Zen.

50:38 You’re like feeling it and living it, and it’s not easy to get to that point, because we tend to intellectualize everything. So it’s not just a form of Buddhism. It’s a, it’s a whole way of looking at the world that I think is just really beautiful. Um, I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now, and it’s helped me a lot. Um, calm down and just be more in the moment and be more mindful.

51:02 I think it’s a great thing. Okay, and do you meditate? Yeah, and it’s pretty rigorous. So, um, it’s a half hour every morning in the lotus position not thinking about anything. You’d be surprised how hard that is.

51:16 Just holding the posture, but not holding the posture is hard, but not thinking about anything, emptying the mind. And then you do it, if you can, a half hour at night. Um, so it’s either a half hour or an hour every day. And, um, it has a benefit that you don’t realize at first, but I know that I’m able to, I’m much more calmer than I was. Much more able.

51:39 It was funny, ’cause last night in my hotel, there’s this guy in the room above me who’s walking around back and forth, back and forth, at 3:00, 4 in the morning. He’s driving me crazy, and so I stand on my bed and I knock on the ceiling, and it doesn’t stop, and so another half hour goes by, and I’m going to go downstairs and tell the guy down there to get this guy to stop it, and as I’m doing that, the guy comes himself, comes downstairs, and he’s, and I’m going, are you the person above me? And he wanted to fight me.

52:07 He was like this, he, I don’t know, why is this okay to talk about? He’s this hyped-up Chinese American guy, and he says, do you want to fight? I don’t know what, I think he was on cocaine or speed or something, ’cause it’s 5 in the morning, and I was so calm, like, no man, I want to sleep, I don’t want to fight. I just want to sleep. You know, what’s your problem?

52:27 I know that came from my meditation. I just was in the moment, maybe because I was tired as well, but in the moment I wasn’t going to, it was a jiu-jitsu moment. I wasn’t going to get wrapped up in his anger, no, you know, and I made him look foolish. You know, so that was, that was, I thought you were going to go, “Access law number 53,” him, maybe. Maybe that’s, we did.

52:51 You have to diffuse those situations. There’s just no upside to escalating aggression with aggression. No, and no one wins. What do you think of London as a town? Um, I love London.

53:02 I lived here for over a year. I had an English girlfriend, and uh, I had a really low-paying job, so I got to see the, the underside of London. What year was that? Uh, 1985, so a very different London. Yeah, we, a lot of riots going on.

53:17 We lived in a town area where there were riots, and it was all strikes and minor strikes, and Thatcher, this and Ro, you know, policemen everywhere, very tense. Wow. Um, and, uh, and I love, I, I like London a lot, man. I think it’s, I think it’s a fantastic city. It’s so exciting and so beautiful.

53:37 The only thing I don’t like is the weather. Um, it’s not that bad, but I just, there’s not the sun. Just doesn’t shine enough for me. Yeah, and you’re used to it? I am used to it.

53:47 And I would go to work in London when I had this job. It was in a basement. I would get there at 8:00, 9 in the morning, and it would be dark, and I’d work, and I’d get out, and it’d be dark, and I, like, never saw the light for, like, a whole week. It’s depressing, as hell. Yeah, the winters get very dark here, but I love it.

54:03 It’s a fabulous, Brian. We got to go to Florida and film there or something. I don’t know, man. Seriously, send you on your own. Robert, what’s next for you?

54:12 Do you have to get psyched up for another book? Sometimes it has had to be a new concept. Could you just take a right turn and go, you know, work at American Apparel or something crazy? No, no. I mean, I do have some possible film projects, putting some of my books into television and film, and some alternative media things going on, which are interesting.

54:30 I might give some time to but I have the idea. I have a book idea stirring in my brain that I’m not going to share, because it’s a little bit of a jinx to do that, uh, but it is a right turn bookwise. It’s not a book on a subject that I’ve done before, so it entails a risk, um, but I like doing risks, and if it bombs, it bombs. But, um, I don’t want to get on that fairy that, you know, merry-go-round, where I have to keep doing the same kind of books. Every book has to be kind of alive for me.

55:00 I’m excited about it, and I want to do it, so if I have to repeat 48 Laws of Power part two, it becomes mechanical, and then I don’t think it works. So I’m going to take a right turn, but I can’t tell you everything about where it’s going to leave me. We had another writer named Graham Hancock. He’s an English writer who is very famous, and has done a lot of research on Egypt and Ioska, and he made a right turn, I guess you could say, and started writing fiction.

55:23 I was just wondering if that’s something you would ever consider? I would, you know, I’m, I might be writing film scripts and things like that. I would think maybe doing fiction, that could be interesting. That would definitely be a right turn. Yeah, I, I think about it.

55:36 My agent would kill me, ’cause there’s no money in writing, he said it was like suicide. He was like, he just said a lot of people just weren’t buying his books, but he said he was having fun, so he’s like, he wrote it, he’s writing another one. That sounds fascinating. So, well, it’s better if you’re going to write fiction to be starting out your career, if you’re at my position, um, and you do that, then your publisher and your agent, they start getting very upset with you, and you have to deal with all these other problems.

55:59 Exactly what he said. Yeah, but, you know, maybe I’ll, I’ll need to do that anyway. Speaking of that, when you get a phone call from 50 Cent many years ago, do your publisher say no, no, no, no? You seem like the kind of guy that would be like, yeah, let’s do this. Or did you, something you had to really think about?

56:16 Um, well, it wasn’t that, the publisher really, ’cause basically, um, you know, it’s my agent that’s really involved in that decision, um, but yeah, a lot of people, you know, wouldn’t be open to the idea of doing a book like that for various reasons. Um, so, and I’m not somebody who loves celebrities. Growing up in Los Angeles, I could care less about you know, Britney Spears or whomever. It doesn’t interest me in the least, but he was so different. He had a real story.

56:46 He’s a real person, you know, who’s lived and gone through some awful things, and so I liked being around him, and so when it came up to doing a book, look, yeah, I, I took the risk, and you know, my agent was fine with it. The other benefit is now people, I have my name associated with him, so as a good marketing employee, as well, I can always talk about him. You know, I was a little bit Machiavellian. He was using me. He’s using me to kind of put his brand a little more elevated, and I’m using him to give me a little more street cred, right?

57:23 You know, now I think I have it a little bit. Definitely. And he was moving into book writing, which was quite a diversification for him at the time. Well, he had written, he did a great book, From Pieces to Weight. I recommend that book.

57:36 I’ve read it. Yeah, it’s a great book. I think it’s awesome. The thing is, I read that book, which is fantastic, but then I went and saw the movie, and I wanted the movie to be the book. The book is not good.

57:45 Yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t like the movie, but the book, I recommend everyone out there read From Pieces to Weight. It’s not bad, it’s actually really quite, it’s very well written too. Did he write that himself? No, okay. Um, I mean, it’s the same thing.

57:57 He’s inspiring it. He’s telling the stories, and then he’s giving it to a writer. It’s very subtle, but he writes his own lyrics, and he’s a great lyricist. I think, okay, that book, From Pieces to Weight, is very subtle. The way he, he’s, he weaves humor into what he’s saying.

58:11 Yeah, he has, wonder, him when he’s talking about the marketing strategies of a crack dealer on the corner, and, uh, it’s very intelligent. I love the story of, he goes into the sort of rehab program, and how he conned them into thinking he had rehabbed himself. You remember that? I don’t actually. Yeah, he totally faked them out.

58:27 He, he did all the, the, the AA stuff, and, you know, and he acted like he was completely rehabilitated, then he just went back to dealing drugs. He just used it to get out of there. Did he, did he, the 12 steps, right? Back into them? Something like that.

58:40 It was some jiu-jitsu-type move. But, um, he had a crazy story, but like he would just talk about, just that, that, I think you’ve talked about it before, just being on the corner, and how entrepreneurial that stuff was, and he’s like, I could make as much money as just, I just had to work harder and do this, and, uh, it was like the ultimate. Almost like the internet gives this. It’s like the ultimate you can consume. With my, my book, The 50th Law, you might hate it.

59:03 That’s fine, but it’s, it’s really kind of strange, because I’m trying to, I talk about him as a crack dealer as if he’s, you know, Bill Gates selling Microsoft, and I don’t make a differentiation between his strategy that he uses on the streets and what a CEO uses in business, because I think they’re pretty similar. and his marketing strategy is just like what a real business person would do, and is actually really clever. So that’s sort of part of what the 50th Law is, and you know, I’ve been criticized for it, but I thought that was, if I was born in a different environment, I told you this before, I would definitely have gone into dealing drugs.

59:42 Definitely. That’s where the action was, and it’s where, if you were quick and thinking, and you know, you know what’s funny, is that I know that you would have definitely gone, as a start. I would have gone into music, and then I would have written a book with Ro- BR. I got to ask you a question. You probably answered this already, but we always ask, if you could make a phone call to the 25-year-old Robert Greene, what would you tell him?

1:00:06 I’d say, you’re fine, brother, you know. You know, uh, maybe don’t, I would say one thing I’d say: don’t worry so much, enjoy it, because you’re learning, and you’re someday going to, you know, be a successful writer. But, um, I can look back and say that I really lived, you know. I lived in all different places. I tried all different jobs, I met all different kinds of women.

1:00:32 I don’t have any, you know, so I don’t have to sit now and think, now that I’m in my 50s, wow, I really missed doing that. I should have done this. I should have done that. I have no regrets. It was all a great apprenticeship in writing and in life.

1:00:45 Maybe I didn’t have to stress so much. That would be all that I would tell him. But now you’re fine. It’s actually a philosophy of life that I have, that I put in the 50th Law, and I really believe it. It’s a Latin word that comes from the Stoics, and it’s called amor fati.

1:01:00 It means love fate, and it means, you whatever happens to you, you embrace, and you find it as a positive, and you find there’s an advantage to it, even the worst thing that happens to you, even death itself, is, there’s something to love or embrace about it. And it’s a really powerful philosophy, and I describe it in the 50th Law, and I kind of like to apply it to my own life. It’s so similar to the concept of, um, just letting go. You know, that’s the hardest thing to do in life, is just let go, because we think we’re in control.

1:01:31 We think we have the ability to control our surroundings and our circumstances, but our locus of control, or our radius of control, is so tiny. That’s right. Yeah. So you said recently, you said everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, then it’s not yet the end.

1:01:46 Oh, really? That’s nice. Who said that? I don’t know, I think I read it somewhere. Yeah, well, you know, sometimes I fall below that ideal, and I get upset in the moment, but generally I pull myself back and remind myself that it’s all working out for you.

1:02:01 I always try to say, okay, this is a liability, how can we convert this liability to an asset? Oh, I try to, always. Sometimes it takes me 24 hours, but I’m always like, okay, and a lot of times you can turn this bad thing into an empowering way for you. Well, the example that I talked about earlier was when I had that deadline, uh, 10 weeks to do it. That’s the worst thing that could happen to me, and I turned it into, like, the best thing that happened to me, because if I had taken the usual six months to write these chapters, I don’t think they would have been as good as if I, as I had done them in 10 weeks.

1:02:33 So I turned that really bad circumstance into an actual advantage. Wow, yeah. I find that anything I can always draw on any experience like that in the past. I, like, I got it. I got through that, so this is nothing.

1:02:45 Or even, if it’s competition, has this guy ever done what I’ve done? I know I can do this kind of, yeah, do the same. Robert, how do people get a hold of your book? What’s the best way for them to buy it? Do you have a website, etc.?

1:02:56 Yeah, I have a website. It’s powerseductionandwar.com. The and is spelled out, A-N-D, so power seduction and war dot com. Um, I also have a Mastery website, but it eludes me right now, but you’ll see a link to it on the power seduction and Mastery website. We did have deals for pre-ordering the books in the States, but now it’s the UK, so I shouldn’t even talk about that.

1:03:18 Um, so you’ll find everything there. You can get links to Amazon, go buy the book on Amazon if you want, because, uh, you know, I sell a lot of books there, and that’s good for my, my algorithms. Um, and it’s doing very well, right? Yeah, we got on the New York Times best seller list. Awesome.

1:03:35 So yeah, yeah. Um, and uh, um, yeah, I think if you check out my website, you can pretty much find out what you need, what you need, and it has links to all the press and stuff. Is it on Audible? Is it audiobook? Yeah, it has, it should be.

1:03:51 Yeah, yeah. No, it definitely is an audio version. Do you tweet as well? Um, I have a Twitter. Um, I do sometimes, but I haven’t kind of quite gotten the hang of it.

1:04:03 I got, I got to figure that out after I get back to Los Angeles. You can master Twitter, but it takes 10,000 tweets. You have it. It sounds simple, 140 characters, but it’s, it’s actually very nuanced. Quite.

1:04:15 Maybe I need to look at your tweets to figure it out. Yeah, well, we’ll talk about this. A good tweet is like a high coup, right? It’s like a very beautiful… per it. My problem is I’m really kind of long-winded.

1:04:27 Okay, I take like a paragraph, and I, I got to, and it’s not enough, and I, I just can’t fit it into that. Find some way to take that liability and turn it into, okay, I’m sure we can. Um, Robert, thanks so much for coming on. Oh, thank you. My pleasure.

1:04:41 It was great. I really liked it. It was excellent fun. I can’t wait to read a copy of it. I think I’m actually going to download it on audio.

1:04:46 What? Oh, Mastery? Yeah, listen to it, and you also have the e-version if you want. Okay, for Kendall. Yeah, I, I’m going to, as I still haven’t read, um, a, of Seduction.

1:04:55 Oh really? Yeah, really excited to read that. Yeah, yeah, that’s fantastic. Fantastic. Good.

1:04:59 Um, for anyone listening to this on iTunes, if you want to come and watch ours and see the extremely good-looking Robert Greene, you can come, uh, on YouTube. The channel is London Real TV. Uh, we’re also on Facebook under London Real. We’re going to have pictures with Robert, and, uh, we’re on Twitter as well, so come check us out, and, uh, if you’re on iTunes now, if you could just, uh, click and write us a quick review, we would love that. So thanks.

1:05:24 Thank you so much. And until then it’s about the journey. Indeed. Thanks, guys.