750 6 Years of Greatness

THE SCHOOL OF GREATNESS IS TURNING SIX. I’ve been hosting The School of Greatness for six years. We’ve done 750 episodes. That’s 750 conversations with inspiring people like Kobe Bryant, Scooter Braun, Maria Sharapova, Tony Robbins, Sarah Blakely, Maria Shriver and more. When I started, I hoped it would reach millions of people. Now the podcast has over 90 million downloads. My life has changed for the better because of The School of Greatness. I hope yours has, too. Anniversaries are a great time to reflect back on how far you’ve come. That’s why, for this Five Minute Friday, I bringing back a conversation with Robert Greene from my first podcast episode ever. Robert Greene is a best-selling author known for talking about strategy, power, and seduction. His books include The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law (with rapper 50 Cent), Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature. You can hear the sound quality was different back then. That’s because I started out recording episodes on my iPhone! I now have an entire team that supports me and my business. Robert discusses the idea of having the discipline to achieve mastery after finding something you’re passionate about. Interestingly enough, that’s why I started this podcast and why I continue to do it. Thank you for listening and joining me in the pursuit of greatness. Learn about the concept of mastery and see where it all started in Episode 750. In This Episode You Will Learn: What powerful people have in common (3:05) Why Robert Greene wrote a book with 50 Cent (4:35) The secret to 50 Cent’s success (5:52) Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:10Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to Five Minute Friday. This is episode number 750. And also today is the sixth year anniversary of the School of Greatness podcast. Guys, we are doing this together. We are living our lives fully. We are taking on our dreams. We are learning lessons from the challenges we go through, and we are one huge family. And I'm so grateful for all of your support over the years. And this Five Minute Friday is with our very first guest, Robert Greene. And I'm so excited to, to share this with you. It's when I did it on my iPhone and the audio recording was bad. Just to show you that it doesn't matter where you're at now, you can always improve any area of your life, your health, your relationships, your business, and take things to another level. So without further ado,

• 0:55Lewis Howes?

  let's dive into this Five Minute Friday.

• 1:06Lewis Howes?

  Thanks so much for coming on the show, Robert.

• 1:09Robert Greene?

  Well, thank you very much for having me. I'm excited.

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  I'm very excited. Now, what, first off, before we actually get into some of the content, why did you decide to cover this topic of mastery?

• 1:20Robert Greene?

  Well, prior to this book, I had been working for, let's say, 13 years or so researching power in all of its different forms, from great political figures, to seducers, to artists, etc. And then I have the opportunity to actually interact with a living power figure, 50 Cent. And I noticed that all these people sort of shared something, that there was something that, a quality that they all had. It wasn't anything physical. It was something about how their minds operated. And I just thought if I could figure out what it is that these people shared, it would be like the ultimate book.

• 2:04Robert Greene?

  It would be like the ultimate secrets to power itself. I could, I could reduce it to something relatively simple. A process that these people went through to, I say attain sort of a superior level of intelligence. And once you have this intelligence, basically the world is yours to conquer. If, if you have setbacks, as they're inevitable in life, you'll know how to get back on your feet. It's just like the key to everything. So I wanted to share, share this knowledge that I had from so much research with my readers. It's amazing. Now, can you tell a little bit more about your national with 50 Cent? I think that's pretty, pretty cool that you actually wrote a book with him. And how much time did you get to spend with him? And what did you really learn about how we got to where he is?

• 2:48Robert Greene?

  Well, he, he contacted me, uh, the 50, the 48 Laws of Power is really big in the hip hop community. He was just curious to meet me. And, um, we met in the back room of a steakhouse in New York City back in 2006, I think it was. Um, it was kind of intimidating because I was the only sort of white guy there. You have a huge entourage. He had a huge entourage. It was kind of like something out of The Godfather. But it ended up, we, we hit it off really well. We, uh, you wouldn't think of looking at us because, you know, we don't look similar or anything. But we got along really well. We shared a kind of interest in strategy and warfare. We like to talk about sports and power maneuvers and what people are really up to.

• 3:33Robert Greene?

  And in the music business, what this executive is doing and why, you know, it fits him with the 48 Laws. But we connected really well on that. Wow. And so we decided to do a book together. I spent about, for six months, I was pretty much hanging out with him. Really? I'd go back and forth, back to LA, but I was in New York a lot. I would hang out with him in all his meetings. I went to his house and hang out, hung out at his strange mansion in Connecticut that he bought from Mike Tyson. And then I went to Vegas a lot with him, partied with him. Neither of us are like real party animals, but, so we got a lot, we got to know each other pretty well, you know. Wow. And being around him, uh, you know, I was sort of considering, I never got to be around Napoleon Bonaparte.

• 4:17Robert Greene?

  I'm not that old. And I thought this is my chance to be around a real kind of, I call him the Napoleon Bonaparte of hip hop. To really see in real time. You know, what a power figure is like. Wow. And he was amazing. And I deduced from that time that the secret to 50 is his fearlessness. And that's what the 50th law is about.