Pod Insights The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway The Art of Power, Seduction, and Mastery — with Robert Greene About this episode Robert Greene, an author who writes about strategy, power, and seduction, joins Scott to discuss how to build power, the roles we all play in daily life, and how to find your life’s task and achieve mastery.
Follow Robert, @RobertGreene.
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Transcript 10,374 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:27 Scott Galloway? Episode 355. 355 is the country code for Albania. 1955, Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California, and Albert Einstein died. What did Albert say after sex? That seemed fast to you.
1:42 Scott Galloway? Oh, that's good. That's good. Go, go, go!
1:53 Scott Galloway? Welcome to the 355th episode of the Prop G Pod. What's happening? I am, I'm trying to be humble about this. I'm on a big fat fucking yacht in Ibiza. I had never been on a boat or a yacht, or whatever you call these things, until about five years ago. And I went on one and okay, I get it. I get why people want to be rich. I totally get it. I was invited by some friends. Oh my God, is that a nice way to spend a week? So anyways, I'm back on the boat until this whole, all this shit comes crashing down again. But anyways, in today's episode, we're speaking with Robert Green, an author who writes about strategy, power and seduction. Keep me on the boat, Robert. I'm only on for seven days. Daddy wants to be on eight days next year. I've wanted
2:38 Scott Galloway? this guy on the pod for so long. Robert's written seven international bestsellers, including The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War Mastery, and The Daily Laws. We discussed with Robert how to build power, the roles we all play in daily life, and how to find your life's task and achieve mastery. Really enjoyed this conversation. This guy, he's, I found him on TikTok. And I just found myself, every time I see him, he has, he is such, he has such a clear, puncturing way of talking about the dynamics of relationships and power. So here's our conversation with Robert Green.
3:27 Scott Galloway? Robert Green, I, we were saying off mic, I have been trying to get you on this pod for six months. And I feel like I knew you before you were famous, but unfortunately, you're now famous, but I'm still really happy that you're here. Welcome.
3:41 Speaker 04 Thank you so much for having me, Scott. My pleasure.
3:44 Scott Galloway? You kind of pop up and you give this really thoughtful advice from someone who's led a pretty robust and experienced life, probably with some ups and downs. I would just love to get your origin story. I don't actually know much about you.
3:59 Speaker 04 Well, I don't know how far back I should go. From Los Angeles. And basically, I knew from an early age that I wanted to be a writer. I just couldn't figure out what was the right form of writing that was, that was, that fit me, that suited me. So after graduating university, I went to Berkeley and then to the University of Wisconsin and Madison. I got into journalism. I lived in New York for four years. I went to, I worked at various different magazines, like Esquire magazine was my first job. And I kind of, I hated journalism. It was a terrible fit for me because I was a classics major in university. My subject was ancient Greek and Latin.
4:42 Speaker 04 And my timeframe is like in thousands of years. I like books that last hundreds of years. Writing that has ancient and wisdom that, that lasts. And here journalism was like, you'd write something and then the next day it was completely forgotten. It was just went against all of my instincts. So I got out of journalism. I lived in Europe for about five, six years. I backpacked. I had jobs in, in Ireland. I had a job in London. I was, worked in a hotel in Paris. I taught English in Barcelona. You name it, I did it. And I tried writing novels and that failed. And finally, I came back to Los Angeles where I'm from. My father wasn't well. I got a job in Hollywood, thinking Hollywood was the answer for me.
5:27 Speaker 04 Screenplays and working, you know, the glamour and all. And that was the worst fit of all because you have no control, you have no power as a writer. You have like 800 people coming in after you and changing everything that you write. And it's kind of a soulless world and I just hated it. Then I got the chance, I was in Italy for one of my thousands of different jobs. And I met a man who's a book package. He asked me if I had an idea for a book. And suddenly I was I was very depressed. I was in my late 30s and I just felt like my life wasn't adding up to anything. And I just kind of spouted out to him all of this stuff that was brewing inside of me about power, about history, about Louis XIV, who
6:09 Speaker 04 I was reading a lot about, about Machiavelli. I kind of improvised the 48 Laws of Power. And he he got so excited. He said, I'll pay you to live while you write this book and then I'll package it. And that's that's sort of my origin story. And it's been it's been an incredible journey since then.
6:26 Scott Galloway? That's the professional side. To the extent you're comfortable. Sounded like you had a life that didn't foot well to long term relationships, going around the world, kind of doing what you want to do. Like, talk about that side of your life.
6:37 Speaker 04 Well, I've been in a relationship. We're we're now married. We've been together for 30 some years. So I have had a relationship. Prior to that, I had many different relationships because I, as you said, I travel a lot. And I don't have any children. My children are my seven books I I consider. I have cats. I'm a big animal lover. I don't know. I don't what else would you want to know about the person side? It's not very exciting. I just live in my house and I write.
7:08 Scott Galloway? I find you such a like a fascinating person. I was just curious to kind of get some of the pillars there. You you write a lot about, I would argue, you're kind of the premier thought leader on the the concept and the term or the practice of power. And that's where I'd like to start. Can you define power?
7:27 Speaker 04 Well, there are many ways to to approach that subject. But the way I like to look at it is, there's much in life that we have no control over, practically almost the entire of its circumstances that we have no control over. But there's a small margin that we can control. And particularly in dealing with people, because we're a social animal and power is a social game. It's not a game of algorithms, etc. It's a completely social game. And people are very complex and people are very difficult. And so power is an ability to understand people's psychology and to move them in the direction that you want or that you need them to move in.
8:12 Speaker 04 So that you don't have all of this friction in your life, you don't have all of this resistance. You know how to get people to do things that are in your interest, but they don't even realize they're doing that in your interest. So it's increasing that tiny margin of control that you have over life from like one percent to like two or three or four percent. So that, you know, you have a sense that you can you can control events in your life. And a lot of that has to do with controlling yourself with power over yourself. If you're somebody that can't control your own emotions, a lot of the laws of power have to deal with that. So like always say less than necessary. Learning how to talk less in in the right circumstances.
8:56 Speaker 04 Learning how to manage your appearances, a lot of it has to do with self-control. So that's kind of my long-winded answer about what power is.
9:05 Scott Galloway? You speak about how we're all born actors and how part of being a social animal is basically being an actor. What did you mean by that?
9:15 Speaker 04 Well, it's it's it was for for thousands of years. It was the governing metaphor for for human life was the theater and acting. Particularly like in the 18th century where everybody thought they were an actor. When you entered the public realm, you were an actor. We've kind of lost that idea. Uh, we everything now is all about being authentic, et cetera. But if you look at children from a very early age, children are continually acting. They're continually putting on the mask that they need to get what they want from their parents to please them or to have a fit or whatever. They're consummate actors and they love play acting and role playing. So it's something that's bred in us very deeply. And when you're in the social realm, I uh, people may not like to hear this,
10:00 Speaker 04 but you're never ever completely yourself. You're always putting on a role. You don't talk the same way to your father as you do to your children. You don't talk to your boss the same way that you talk to people who work for you on and on. So. In every situation in life, unconsciously, most often, you're kind of crafting how you behave, how people see you, according to the people that you're with. You are an actor. Some people are conscious actors and they're better at it. Most of us are unconscious, we just sort of drift through life, kind of playing the role that we think is proper, and often making a lot of mistakes. But we are all continually acting. Even in the moment where you're thinking you're being a hundred percent yourself,
10:44 Speaker 04 you're still an element of acting when there are other people involved.
10:48 Scott Galloway? So how would you coach a young person, a young man or woman, who thinks, okay, I buy into this notion that we're all playing different roles in different environments to maximize success and reward in those environments? What do you think is the right training for someone who can establish that social capital faster than their peer group?
11:09 Speaker 04 Well, you have to be self-aware. First of all, you have to be aware of the concept. So a lot of young people aren't aware of that concept. They think that what matters is just being themselves. That's just why they get in a lot of trouble. You know, they post things on social media, not realizing that it's going to become public. People are going to read it, they're going to see things about your character. They don't really want, they don't want to be exposed. So you have to be aware of the phenomenon, that's rule number one. And once you're aware of the phenomenon, then you realize that people judge you on appearances. Unfortunately, that's just the way things are. And so you have to manage those appearances. You have to craft them for each particular audience that you're dealing with. So when you're in the work world,
11:52 Speaker 04 you have to create the mask, if you want to call it that, that fits that environment. Now, yes, you can be creative, you can be a weirdo, you can dress differently, particularly in the world today. But still, there are social roles. Still, there are rules, still there are things that you have to conform to. You can't completely be yourself. You know, I remember I went to Microsoft once to give a talk and everybody there was kind of dressed alike, really buttoned down. And then I worked at American Apparel. I was on the board of directors there and everybody was, you know, completely dressed differently. And if you look like somebody that dressed in Microsoft, people would have laughed at you. You were too straight, right? So every place that you deal with has like kind of rules about how people look, how they dress, how they behave. You have to learn how to
12:37 Speaker 04 fit into that environment. So you have to be self-aware and you don't, you're not the same way when you're at the work world, when you're in the social world, you kind of change, you shift, you shift the mask that you're wearing. But you're aware of the fact that people are judging you on appearances. And then based on who you're dealing with, because that's just the culture, you're dealing with individuals all the time. You have to kind of be sensitive to who that particular person is and, and their insecurities and their problems. And you have to kind of craft the role that you're playing, the acting that you're doing on their personality, their quirks, their tastes, their personalities.
13:18 Speaker 04 It's just a matter of being aware and observing. If you can become a social observer, if in any environment, you can pay deep attention to the people around you and get a kind of an intuitive sense of who they are and what their tastes are like, then you'll be a very successful actor in this game.
13:35 Scott Galloway? That goes to one of your themes, and that is a fundamental thing that people need to understand is that people have egos. Talk a little bit more about that insight and what we see in business and politics, or even our personal lives and the role that understanding everyone has an ego plays.
13:54 Speaker 04 Well, um, you know, it, everybody has one, as you say, and a common mistake is to think that somebody who's very powerful, for instance, like your boss, doesn't have an ego because they're so, or doesn't have insecurities. Of course, we know they have an ego, but they don't have insecurities. That insecurities are very much tied into their ego. So the more ego that you have, the more insecurities that you have. And so law number one is never outshine the master.
14:23 Speaker 04 So if you try so hard to please people in the company or in the group, the person above you is going to think that you're that you're trying to outdo them, that you're better than they are. You're triggering their insecurities. That's part of their ego and you're going to be in trouble. And so you have to realize that everybody around you has these insecurities, has these egos. And instead of inadvertently tripping on them, inadvertently triggering them, which is what a lot of people do in life. You have to be aware that the person you're dealing with has these insecurities, wants to be appreciated, wants to be validation. The great American psychologist William James said that validation is the single greatest human need.
15:07 Speaker 04 People have this deep desire to be validated for who they are, for their work that they do, for their values, et cetera. That's a very important part of their ego. So being aware of that and being aware that that you could be inadvertently offending them in some way will really improve that, just being aware of their particular insecurities. And you know, law number one is law number one because I have violated it prior to writing the book several times. And I've accumulated stories from almost everybody that I've dealt with in my life, podcasters, et cetera, people who've come to me for advice. And every single person I talked to has had stories like that where they inadvertently made their boss
15:50 Speaker 04 or somebody around them feel insecure and then paid a price for it. So just be aware that everybody has this. Everybody has their insecurities. And the more you can pay attention to that, the less turmoil and drama that you will inadvertently create in your life.
16:08 Scott Galloway? And that really, that really hits because I think a lot about addiction and I think everyone has a certain amount of addiction. And I've recognized that I'm addicted to the affirmation of strangers. That I think that's probably a component of my success, but I try and modulate it, that if you're too concerned about what people you're not going to meet.
16:29 Scott Galloway? And not concerned enough about the people in your life, you have an issue. So you you suggest that power is a skill, something you can learn. If someone is listening right now and feels powerless, stuck at work, lacking influence, kind of what you described in your late 30s. What's sort of the first mindset shift or kind of cognitive behavior? Or what actions would you suggest such that they feel they have more agency, more power to get unstuck?
16:57 Speaker 04 Well, I mean, it it depends on the on the circumstances, obviously. So if their if if their problem has to do with their career and their job and they're not going anywhere and that's the source of their powerlessness, then I go back to something that I wrote in my fourth book, Mastery, and figuring out what your life's task is, what you were meant to create, what your destiny is, and the career that actually suits you if you're young enough to make that change. And heading in the direction that you were suited in is a great source of power. So the feeling I had that almost made me quite suicidal when I was in my 30s was I wasn't I was powerless because the career choices I had made weren't appropriate for me. So that can be a major source of powerlessness.
17:43 Speaker 04 The other thing is to be just become much more aware of the people around you. So what's happening in the world today is everybody is turning inward. Everybody is becoming, not an introvert, but they're becoming much, much less observant people because they're so locked in their virtual worlds. They're not paying attention to the kind of nonverbal cues that people are giving. And so the main thing is for power in the social realm is you want to turn that around and have put less attention on yourself and more attention on the people that you're dealing with and be excited about that. So in order to understand the social game, which is the source of power, you have to kind of want it, you have to kind of love being around people and love observing them.
18:29 Speaker 04 But today, people have become very inward. They're not observing enough. And those kind of skills are degrading. And when you don't have social skills, when you don't know how to say and be the right kind of person in social situations, you're never going to have power. So it's a matter of becoming a consummate observer of people that I think is the main thing that will turn you around. You know, now that's easier said than done. But you have to kind of take baby steps in this. You can't transform yourself overnight into a great social observer. You have to put yourself out there more in the world. You have to get outside of your virtual worlds. You have to actually go to bars. You have to go to clubs. You have to mingle with people.
19:14 Speaker 04 You have to become more social. Social is a skill. And if you develop that kind of skill, then the power game becomes much smoother for you. And you understand how to deal with difficult people because there are a lot of toxic people out there. You're observing and you understand the nuances of all the different people that you're dealing with. So those are some of the things that I would recommend.
19:36 Scott Galloway? We'll be right back after a quick break.
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23:22 Scott Galloway? We talk a lot about struggling young men on the program and that our belief is we're evolving a new species of asexual, asocial male. And I worry that there's just millions of young men who aren't developing any social skills other than video games. And they're just, if they don't establish those skills by the time they're 30, it's going to hurt them in a lot of dimensions. Do you have any thoughts on, other than just obviously being more social, do you have any thoughts on government policy or general changes in our culture to help younger people get more socialized and develop those skills you're talking about?
23:56 Speaker 04 It's, I don't know if there's necessarily a program, a government program, that would cover it because as you say, it is a cultural problem. It's more a matter of technology is really, is really at fault here, you know? So for instance, when it comes to dating, and you know, I hate sounding like I'm somebody so old that I'm kind of preaching from another era or something, but in the era where you just date by swiping on a phone, you're not going out there, you're not putting yourself out there and, and having that possibility of rejection and having to deal with people in the flesh and seeing them and having eye to eye contact and having to kind of impress
24:37 Speaker 04 somebody for the first time without, you know, it takes a lot of guts to do that. So, technology is a lot of the problem and so, my advice particularly to young men is to try and go on a diet, to try and reduce that and to tell yourself quite simply that if you don't do this, if you don't get out of your pornography, your video games, your addictions to your phone, stop spending so much time on them, then you're messing with your own brain and by the time you're 30, you're going to have lots and lots of problems. It's really holding you back in life. And so if you, if you are ambitious, like I was when I was younger, if you're not ambitious,
25:21 Speaker 04 then none of this advice will have any impact on you. But if you are ambitious, realize that you're sabotaging yourself, you're holding yourself back. And so, I don't think any program will help on that level because... The tech companies have so much power, they have so much money, that they're not gonna, you know, disarm themselves. They're not gonna agree to any of these things. It has to be up to you as an individual to make a decision that this is destroying my brain. This is destroying my life. It's not making me a social animal, right? And so I have to let go of it. You can't go cold turkey. You can't suddenly throw away all your technology. It has to be, as I say, kind of a diet. You have to go say, all right, I'm gonna reduce it for an hour.
26:06 Speaker 04 I'm on the thing for like four hours a day. I'm gonna try and reduce it an hour slowly, bit by bit by bit. And I'm gonna force myself to go out in the world. It can't be something that somebody foists upon you. It has to be an individual decision. Of course, if it gets some momentum and you see your friends doing this, I think then maybe it could turn into kind of a cultural movement. And my hope is, because we are humans, because we're animals at heart, that a point will be reached where young people will be really fed up with this and will have a hunger for more social interactions. I might be being a bit Pollyannaish there, but I think a point like that could be reached and then it could turn into a cultural movement.
26:48 Scott Galloway? I hope so. Let's move on to seduction. Speak about the differences between cold seducers and warm seducers.
26:56 Speaker 04 A cold seducer is generally a man, but it could be a woman. In the past, courtesans were cold seductresses and the coquette is a typical cold seductress. But a cold seducer is basically able to control themselves to a high degree. Their interest is either they want something out of the other person. For a man, that will generally be sex. Back in the day, back a hundred years ago, and it still persists today to some degree, for a woman, it could be getting money, right? But they want something out of it, or marriage, or whatever it is. And so their heart isn't really into it. They're in there for something else.
27:38 Speaker 04 And so in order to do that, in order to make that successful, they have to be very good actors. Because if somebody is trying to seduce you and you detect that there's a manipulation involved, if you detect that they're cold. That at heart, they're after something, after they want sex, or they want money, or they want marriage. It's very hard for you to fall under their spell. So the cold seducer is a bit of a paradox, because they know how to make it seem like they're interested in you. They know how to make it seem like they love you. And they draw you into their world, and when they get what they want, then that's the, that's the power that they have. Whereas a hot seducer is somebody who is genuinely, absolutely
28:23 Speaker 04 seduced first by the other person that they're seducing. And those are kind of the best seductions. So you fall in love with somebody, you're so interested in them, but they're not maybe interested in you. Now, in order to get them to, to like you or to love you, you have to seduce them, you have to draw them into your world, you have to go through some of the things that I talk about in the book. But you're emotionally engaged, you're hot, you're after them, you want that. And once you get them involved, then that kind of back and forth of both of you being kind of emotionally engaged creates a really beautiful dynamic and things can proceed. But it all comes down to what you're after and the level of emotional engagement that you have with the other person.
29:08 Scott Galloway? I love that. We talk a lot about that sexual desire, while it's been pathologized, can be a wonderful thing that can turn you into a better man. Make you want to be kinder, make you want to be more successful, make you want to groom, make you want to dress better. Make you willing to take risks, make you a better man. Well, we're pivoting around here, you had a lot of books we want to touch on here. You said in your book Mastery, where you said it was the way, a way of showing there's more to success than just power and seduction, that real fulfillment takes time and depth. What were you seeing in society that made you want to deliver this message?
29:40 Speaker 04 Well, I was seeing the fact that we live in a, a culture that's so technologically proficient that people weren't paying attention to what actually makes success in life, which is your brain. You know? Um, and the brain is this insane instrument. It's incredibly powerful, incredibly complex, incredibly beautiful. And it has a certain kind of inclination, what I call a grain to it. And when you work with the grain of the brain, I'm sorry for the priming there, but when you work with it, amazing things can happen. You can flourish, you can become very creative, you can, you can reach that level of mastery. And my worry and my concern was
30:22 Speaker 04 That with technology, people are relying so much on other things that they're not, they think everything is easy, everything can be fast. That if I want power or success, I can hack my way to it. I can get into cryptocurrency and in a month I can make a million dollars and then I can do this, I can do that, I can do that. All these illusions. Whereas the truth of it is, true mastery, which is a beautiful thing to attain in any field, is something that lasts for ten, twenty, thirty years. And it takes time and it takes effort. It takes years of work. It takes a point of an apprenticeship of maybe the proverbial ten thousand hours, although some of that has been debunked. But it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of effort.
31:09 Speaker 04 And people don't want to hear that. They want to hear that I could do it in four hours a week. I could, I could master something. I want to hack, I want a drug, I want something to give it to me quickly. So my concern was, people don't understand how the human brain works. It's so simple that when you spend time learning something, something that you love and that interests you, amazing powers start emerging from that.
31:36 Scott Galloway? What do you think separates, in addition to the ten thousand hours, someone who's a real master versus just average? And how do you think young people can try to sort through a lot of this, sort the signal from the noise and find something that they have the potential to be a master at? I think mastery creates reward. I've always found, don't follow your passion, follow your talent where you can develop mastery. Help young people, a lot of people will say, how do I find my mastery?
32:05 Speaker 04 Well, the first part of your question, I mean, some people will spend twenty thousand hours, I don't know, just put a number on it, and they don't end up becoming a master. So this man wrote to me, said, I've been a painter. Um, for my whole life, um, I've been painting for forty years. I'm in my fifties now and I'm not a master. So, Robert, that debunked your idea. And what I tell them, my answer to that is, it's not a question of hours, it's a question of intensity. What makes a master is somebody who, by the time they're twenty-five, have put in the amount of work that you have put in by the time you're in your fifties. Cause the human brain is most creative and most fluid when you are younger.
32:48 Speaker 04 And when you're, so you wanna build those hours in that intense practice and discipline when you were younger, because that's when you were most creative. So that by the time you have put in a lot of hours and things start clicking in your brain, you're twenty-nine, you're thirty, the brain is fluid, things are happening, you've got energy, amazing things will happen. It won't happen. It can happen, but it won't be as likely to happen when you're in your fifties and sixties. You're more set in your ways, you're more rigid, your brain is slowing down. So it has to be a function of intensity. But when it comes to finding your life's task, which is the first chapter of mastery. And quite frankly, to me, it's the most important thing in life.
33:32 Speaker 04 Even in power of all the books that I've written, it's the most important thing for anyone to find in life. Because when you find out what you were meant to create, what your task is, what you're, you say your talent lies in, there has to be, of course, an element of love in it. Um, the whole world just opens up, right? You will gain power, you will find, you will be good in the seduction game. Men or women will ever, will come to you because you have, you're moving in the direction that your brain wants you to move in. You're learning quickly, you're becoming creative, and you fulfill, you know, your, your dreams from when you were younger.
34:12 Speaker 04 I think the worst feeling for people that I've found, the most tragic thing is to get into your fifties and tell yourself, God, I could have been something else. I, I went down a wrong path. I could have found what I wanted to find. And I didn't do it because I listened to other people, because I was more interested in money than I was interested in mastery. And it's a regret, and it's too late at that point. So. It's a function of emotional, and we talked about this in seduction. It's almost the key for everything, is your emotional engagement. So you're not going to learn, you're not going to put in those 10,000 hours or whatever it is that's required.
34:53 Speaker 04 If you don't actually love or have some degree of interest in it that's very deep and profound. So if you're told to become a lawyer because that's what your parents told you to do, you can, but it doesn't connect to you emotionally. You could spend 100,000 hours as a lawyer, but you're never going to reach a point of mastery because it doesn't connect to you. The brain learns fastest when you're in love with what you're learning, you know? So you've got to figure out what that is. And it's a process, it's not easy. It's not like I could give you a formula to tell you how to do that tomorrow. It's, you have to go through a process of introspection.
35:33 Speaker 04 You have to look at things that really, really, truly excite you. The great psychologist Abraham Maslow talked about impulse voices in infants. Infants have these voices inside them and say, I like this food, I don't like that food. I like this activity, I hate that activity. It's not something that they can verbalize, it's something very deep inside of them. And all of us have these impulse voices when we're very young. But we stop listening to them as we get older and we start, we lose touch with what we really like and what we really don't like. We're listening too much to other people, particularly in the era of social media. So a lot of figuring out your life's task is getting rid of all that noise,
36:17 Speaker 04 of getting rid of what everybody is telling you. It's getting rid of what the culture is telling you. It's getting rid of what people in social media are telling you. And it's listening to yourself and listening to what you love. I mean, I could go on for hours and hours and I wrote a book on it about your life's task because there are other things I could talk about, but I don't want to take up all our time. But the main thing is... Going into yourself and not listening to other people that will help you get there.
36:44 Scott Galloway? One of the things we talk a lot about here is storytelling and you're such a great communicator and storyteller. What advice do you have for someone who wants to develop their skills as a storyteller?
36:57 Speaker 04 Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I take that very seriously. It's what I work the hardest at because it is my belief that a book or any kind of idea, people are resistant to. There's so much there's pain involved. I've got to read 30 pages, have to listen to somebody on a podcast. It's too painful, but when you tell a story, all of those resistances go down and people want to enter into it and they want to hear it. They want to hear what the ending is. They want to hear what the moral of the story is. It's a brilliant way to seduce people into your idea, to trick them into
37:34 Speaker 04 it in a way. And so this kind of storytelling that I do is you don't want to be overwhelming people with fancy words, right? I hate people who overwrite. I hate people who think that they're so clever that they can be all into like the language itself. You must think that a story is a form of communication. You are communicating something through your story, the idea, the premise, the thesis, whatever it is that you're trying to communicate. Get rid of all that extroverbage and be direct and tell the story in a plain, pared-down fashion. To me, it's much more powerful.
38:15 Speaker 04 Then keep aware that in each paragraph of your story, people are either engaging or they're disengaging. You want to keep them moving inside that story, almost like a landscape that you're leading them through so that they don't like deviate and go off and underboard. So each moment you have to think, am I engaging the reader? Am I making them want to go on? How do I do that? How do I create suspense? How do I make them feel that there's something coming up that they want to keep finding out, but then in the end isn't what they expected because the surprise or the unexpected is the most powerful form of storytelling?
38:57 Scott Galloway? We'll be right back.
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41:16 Scott Galloway? We're back with more from Robert Greene. On the Diary of a CEO, you said you've come to terms with your own narcissism, irrationality, grandiosity, and aggression.
41:26 Speaker 04 Yeah.
41:27 Scott Galloway? All under the auspices of talking about masculinity. What did that process teach you about what it means to be a man in today's world?
41:35 Speaker 04 Well, I grew up in a different era. Now, you know, my father, because our fathers have a big influence on our concepts of masculinity. And my father, he was a very quiet man. He wasn't boisterous. He wasn't out there. He wasn't like performative masculinity, which is what we see a lot of nowadays. He was very quiet. He was a salesman. He was a, he just, he worked at a job for 40 years of his life. He was very solid. And, but he was really good with people. And so my idea came from him, which is a kind of a quiet strength, a kind of calmness, a kind of the ability to not get freaked out about everything, to not be so emotional
42:19 Speaker 04 and yelling, and to just be calm and centered and kind of infect other people with that calmness. So my idea of masculinity had very much to do with him. And then, of course, from that, there were icons in the culture at the time, like a person like John F. Kennedy, who had this kind of quality, that charisma, very calm, but very confident, kind of projected it. And it was very, very, to me, that was kind of my icon of masculinity growing up, even though I was like five or six years old at that time. But he had a huge impact on the 60s. So these icons, these role players, play a huge part in, in, in forming your idea of what it means to be a man.
43:03 Speaker 04 And today, the role players, the people, the icons that we look up to, don't have those qualities at all. They're very performative. They're very emotional. They're very aggressive. They're about being in your face. It's kind of this idea of the more I show how aggressive and masculine I am, that means how, that is how masculine I am. But it's a farce. It's a total, it's a total con game. The more people, this is what my father told me, the more you're out there aggressive pushing, the more you're revealing your deep, deep insecurities, you're actually a ba- little baby, a little child inside of there. You're not strong, you're not calm, you're not centered, you're not masculine. You're performing what you think it is, but you're not feeling it.
43:46 Speaker 04 And when it's the Andrew Tates of the world and the others, whose names I won't mention for reasons, I don't want to get in trouble. Um, you know, if those are all of your icons, then you, then you're lost. Because you think that that's what matters. And the problem is, is it's going to cause you so many issues in life. Because it's a quality that in the end puts people off. It might work here and there in some environments. But you're going to be offending more people than you're getting uh allies and uh on your side. So. To, I don't know if I'm answering your question or not, but. The problem for us today is these icons that we have, we don't have anymore. That kind of calm, quiet, centered.
44:31 Speaker 04 A kind of rational. Sort of icon of masculinity anymore. Kind of to me, if I think of a movie, because I love watching old movies. I think of Gary Cooper in High Noon, one of my favorite movies. And you know, he has to face. All of these stressful situations, these people trying to kill him. He's got really good values, he's, he's there to protect. Other people, he's going to get rid of these, these horrible people who were invading this town. But he's not hysterical, he's not violent, he's just doing what he needs to do to get the job done. We don't have those anymore in our culture, and it's really, really sad, it's really depressing, I don't know what I could do. Personally to bring that back, but I think that's the source of the problem.
45:18 Speaker 04 Did I answer your question?
45:20 Scott Galloway? You did your best, but this is a difficult question to answer. I'm writing a book on masculinity and trying to outline, trying to outline an aspirational vision of masculinity without it digressing into something that feels sexist or misogynist. It tries to take the best of what the Gary Cooper masculinity, but also evolve it recognizing the world has changed and that there's some wonderful things about the progress women have made that we, we don't want to diminish and we also don't want to, don't want in any way not acknowledge the immense challenges women still face, but, but there is a notion that, the way I see it, the far right wants masculinity to be cruel and coarse, the far less wants masculinity to be, act more like a woman. And there's got to be something different than, than both of those things.
46:04 Speaker 04 Definitely, I completely agree with you. But one thing that you mentioned there is part of that masculinity is being very respectful of women and not feeling like they're this inferior species that you, that you were like, need to protect them and control them. That, that certainly doesn't work in our era, but that's never was to me, that kind of icon, speaking of masculinity. But to create something that's not on the right or the left, it has to be, things like your books will help a lot. I find though, that preaching about things, which of course I'm going to be slightly guilty of here, doesn't really work so well.
46:45 Speaker 04 So you have to find ways to kind of seduce people into other roles and to other ways of being, which is why I say, if we had people in our culture that would kind of embody this new 21st century form of masculinity, it would really help if we saw those kind of figures in our films, our television shows and the books that we read, or whatever our culture is, it would really help. But we have the opposite. We have the rap stars, we have the politicians, we have the movie actors. It seems all about just being cruel, if you say. So I'm a bit, I'm a bit pessimistic about this in the present, maybe you can help me. Maybe your book will help.
47:29 Scott Galloway? It seems like a lot of young men are really struggling and lost. What advice would you have for kind of younger men or parents or single mothers of younger men who are struggling? Do you, do you have any sort of best practices around coaching young men?
47:47 Speaker 04 Well, I have mentored a few and there are a couple that I'm dealing with right now. And it's very difficult because the culture is against them. And I try to, first of all, I think the example that you set, as I said with my father, the kind of calmness, the energy that you have is very, very powerful. It communicates in a very direct way. So if you're saying that, you know, truly being masculine is having a degree of self-control, but you don't demonstrate that self-control, then they get the opposite lesson from it. So you have to display these values. But in one particular instance, to deal with kind of like a cultural issue,
48:31 Speaker 04 this is a young man who's incredibly bright, incredibly ambitious. And I, first of all, tell him that ambition is really good because a lot of young men don't have enough ambition. And ambition is a very much testosterone-driven masculine trait. It's actually extremely positive as long as it's channeled in the right way. He has a lot of ambition. And I completely, completely enforce that and confirm and say that's a very positive value. But some of the issues are he's trying to do so many different things. He's got so many different games going on at the same time. And I see a lot of young men who do have this kind of quality, this kind of ambition.
49:15 Speaker 04 They think that they can do like seven different kinds of hacks where they're going to get power and money, et cetera. Side hustles. Yeah, hustles. And I say, no, you know, I'm trying to tell them, no. That's a recipe for disaster because you're not going to develop enough skill in one of them. And what is the common thread of all these things? I keep trying to come back to it and I can't really find that common thread. The other thing that happens a lot is they're in such a hurry to make a lot of money. And it's kind of, I don't know if it has to do with Andrew Tate, but it's kind of that cultural thing that making a lot of money shows that you're masculine because now you've got that fancy car that you can impress women with and you've got the clothes, et cetera.
49:57 Speaker 04 But that's not, that's going to lead you down the wrong path. So it's not money that matters, it's not making a lot of money. It's developing yourself, it's developing your skill and gaining a lot of knowledge and taking, being patient, just be patient.
50:15 Speaker 04 That's another trait that I think could be one of these. You know, the part of the problem here is when you say that they're masculine, you're saying that women aren't that way. And I please, that's a real false form of reasoning about what I'm saying. I'm not implying that women are impatient or that women don't have self-control. We're just talking about qualities that I think are masculine virtues. But being patient, being willing to take your twenties and not make a million dollars, but actually develop yourself and develop skills and develop your character and develop, you know, discipline is much more important than six or seven figures. So a lot of it for me in dealing with young men is calming them down,
50:59 Speaker 04 making them patient and making them grounded in certain values that have kind of been lost in the 21st century, values of doing things a bit slowly, values of taking your time, values about, you know, being considerate of other people and not pushing them around, being empathetic. Things that are kind of lost. So I, I do mentor young men and I, I'm very rec, I recognize very deeply the problems that they're dealing with. And I probably would have shared these problems if I had been growing up now.
51:31 Scott Galloway? You've been very generous with your time, so I'm going to wrap up here with just a quick lightning round.
51:34 Speaker 04 Oh, oh dear, I hate this.
51:37 Scott Galloway? There you go. Sorry, boss.
51:38 Speaker 04 Sorry.
51:39 Scott Galloway? Uh, best piece of advice you've received?
51:43 Speaker 04 Uh, well, best piece of advice was I was in a, uh, it was in the nineties. I was in a very depressed part of my life and I was trying to have it both ways. I was trying to have my cake and eat it too. I was trying to be creative and in the muse movie business and I was trying to make a lot of money. And my girlfriend at the time, who I'm still with, she said, Robert, you have to choose. You can't have both. You have to choose doing what you love and being creative. And then maybe money will come, or you have to give that all up and just make money. She was right and I erred on the, on the side of doing what I love and being creative, which was writing the book that I wrote. And then all the money came in. So that was the best advice I was given.
52:24 Scott Galloway? Last piece of media you streamed or read that kind of moved you or resonated?
52:29 Speaker 04 Oh, wow. I, I, I've been reading, um, uh, I've been reading a couple, a lot of articles about, um,
52:38 Speaker 04 Kind of what's happening in the world right now, things in in the Atlantic Monthly, which I I subscribe to, which has a lot of very interesting thought, not all of them, but very interesting thoughtful articles. And I was reading one by, I forget her name, Anne Applebaum, I may, maybe it is. She writes some very brilliant stuff and she's kind of diagnosing the authoritarian turn that America is taking, but that is part of a global uh uh uh trend. And I love people who who kind of connect what we're living through now with kind of history, because I think history tells us more than we think
53:21 Speaker 04 about what's happening in the present. So I was very impressed with that article.
53:26 Scott Galloway? This should have been a longer conversation. We're gonna try and sum it up into a quick, a crisp answer. Current state of power, autocracy in the world right now and in the US, do you think it gets better or gets worse?
53:37 Speaker 04 Well, it's it's certainly in a very bad state right now. And but if you read a lot of history like I do, things turn and it's it's hard for us to see in the moment. And there've been other moments like this. They're very chaotic and people freak out. We're going through a freak out right now. So things could very well turn in five or six years, and particularly if this economy crashes and we go through very hard times. There could be a turn towards something else. And I'm not giving you a short answer, but I'm reading right now about the French Revolution. And the French Revolution, nobody expected it. Nobody thought it was coming. It was a complete shock. In a matter of
54:22 Speaker 04 two months, the whole thing fell apart. These things can happen very quickly. And I think they will, something like that, not the French Revolution, something similar could happen in in five or six years, to throw that out.
54:37 Scott Galloway? If you could go back and speak to someone you've lost, who would it be and what would you say to them?
54:42 Speaker 04 Oh, God.
54:47 Speaker 04 The two people I've lost the most was my father. And I would tell him that, you know, he was alive for my first book. So we saw that success because he was getting kind of worried about me. And I would tell him, Dad, you didn't believe in me all of these years. I mean, you were very loving and all that, but I could sense that you were doubting. And as it comes out, I've made more money than you've ever made in your life. I'm not bragging, but because I stuck to my goals and my desires and what I love, I ended up being very, very successful. And I have you to thank for that, for the patience and discipline that you instilled in me.
55:31 Scott Galloway? I think we should leave it there. Robert Greene is an author who writes about strategy, power and seduction. He has written seven international bestsellers, including The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War Mastery and The Daily Laws. He joins us from his home in Los Angeles. Is that correct?
55:51 Speaker 04 Yes, I am. I'm fearless.
55:53 Scott Galloway? So I can't tell you just how impressed I am with you. And I just think you're doing such good work. And I love how measured you are. You strike, I don't know if you, if you are, you strike me as kind. You strike me as trying to help people. You strike me as fearless. I really do. You're a real inspiration for those of us out there trying to be fearless, have an impact, have a footprint, trying to help people. I think you're just fantastic at what you do and you're, you're doing great work. It was really a pleasure. Like I said, you are, you have been, I can check off the top of the list of who I wanted on this podcast. Really appreciate your time.
56:30 Speaker 04 Wow, I'm really honored to hear that. Thank you so much. That means a lot to me and I really look forward to seeing this book that you're writing.
56:37 Scott Galloway? Thanks, Robert.
56:42 Scott Galloway? This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thanks for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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