BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 315: How to Read Human Nature to Succeed in Life with Bestselling Author Robert Greene

Episode Date: January 31, 2019

Interested in learning techniques that will virtually guarantee you success, regardless of your field of interest? Of course you are! On that front, today’s show will not disappoint! Brandon and David interview bestselling author Robert Greene, whose latest book is titled The Laws of Human Nature. Robert discusses brilliant concepts regarding earning the trust of others, determining who you can trust in an interaction, and developing the super power of reading other people’s non-verbal cues. He also shares valuable insight that will help you positively impact the emotions of others around you, put yourself in a peak state of performance, and activate the power of your own emotional connection to things you are passionate about. And do not miss Robert’s advice on making sure others cannot manipulate or deceive you, or what he’s learned studying Leonardo da Vinci and others who have mastered their crafts! If you want to become the investor who gets deals first, gets the best prices on rehabs, and is less likely to be fooled in a transaction, download this episode right now! In This Episode We Cover: Robert’s mentor-mentee relationship with Ryan Holiday What a mentor is looking for a mentee What are the laws of human nature Understanding human nature and why it’s the most important skill Seeing through people beyond the surface Validating the good in people Flattery vs. recognizing somebody’s strength The different biases and how we’re governed by emotions – Conviction bias – Appearance bias – Group bias Techniques to resist these biases How to present yourself Mastery and being emotionally connected to what you do And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Webinar BiggerPockets Podcast 245: Creating Wealth that Lasts Generations with Bestselling Author Ryan Holiday (Podcast) Insight Timer Brandon’s Instagram David’s Instagram BiggerPockets’ Instagram Books Mentioned in this Show The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Mastery by Robert Greene The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff The Art Of War by Sun Tzu Principles by Ray Dalio The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday The Book on Rental Properties by Brandon Turner Long-Distance Real Estate Investing by David Greene Tweetable Topics: “The most important thing you are looking for is not a glittering resume, it’s not charm, but their character.” (Tweet This!) “The most important skill you can develop in life is understanding people.” (Tweet This!) “The energy that you present people, is how they’re going to see you.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Robert Robert’s Personal Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show number 315. I had to look it up. What I mean is your attitude and your energy, how you approach people, getting into their mindset and attending to them and confirming and validating their self-opinion, I think that's kind of a game changer. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everyone?

This is Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. David Green. What's up, Copper? What's going on, partner? Everything is code for on this end. Actually, this is better than Code 4. We have like one of the best podcast. What's code for? I don't know what's like everything's fine.

I don't need any backup. The situation's under control. Okay. Right. And it's actually better than Code 4 because we just interviewed Robert Freakin' Green, a stud author on some very, very popular books regarding success, understanding people. I mean, this is like an elite level person.

One of the best podcasts we've ever done. My brain is still like kind of like throbbing with information that he just landed on us. And a little known fact, he's actually my cousin. That's actually not true, but we do talk about that a little bit. But Robert Green, yeah, Robert Green is a New York Times bestselling author, just a rock star. He's written a lot of books like the 48 laws of power, mastery, the art of seduction. And now his new book on the laws of human nature. It really is just a fantastic understanding of how people think. And now, why is this important for real estate investors? Like, again, this is not a real estate show today specifically. But this show might be

more important for real estate investors than almost any show we've done. Because Because at the heart of success to becoming a real estate investor, at the heart of success to becoming a real estate agent, the heart of success to becoming a plumber. Like, I mean, anything, right? The business owner is understanding people and how human nature affects people. How do you get people to like you? How do you get them to sell you their house? How do you get them to want to work with you?

These are all things we talk about today. So it's fantastic. Make sure you pick up his book as well, a lot of human nature. But in addition, we'll get to the interview here in a second. Before we do, let's get today's quick. Tip. All right, today's quick tip is very simple. One of the laws of human nature we talk about today is something called, what is it, the appearance

bias where people tend to see things that look good and assume that they're more professional, successful, correct, true, whatever. Like, whether right or wrong, it doesn't matter. This is how people think, right? Which is why David actually in the show, David will talk about like wearing a suit when he's meeting clients, helps so much. So what I want to mention is this. when people go to your bigger pockets profile, what do they see?

Do you have a professional looking picture up there? If you're a pro member, do you have a video uploaded? Pro member is going to add video to your profile. Why is that important? Because it adds that appearance of professionalism and you look good and they can connect with you. Do you have your descriptions filled out? Have you filled out what deals you're doing, what you've invested in? All that stuff can be on your profile.

Your profile is not like your Twitter page or your Facebook page where you know, you want to make people like, I don't know, see your political leaning. But this is like, are you somebody worth doing business with? And people will give you five seconds to look at your page and decide that they will make a snap judgment. So go to your page and tell me what you see and then make adjustments accordingly. And that is just a quick tip. Brilliant. Brilliant.

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Well, with that, I think we're pretty much ready to get to the episode. Let's bring in the Godfather. All right, here we go. Again, today's guest is Robert Green. And he is just fantastic, very famous author. We are very lucky to have him today. In fact, actually, last fall, Robert suffered a. stroke. And so he did very, very few interviews for this book, but we were lucky enough to get him

and he'll talk a little bit more about that later in the episode. So with that, let's get to the show. Robert, like, thank you so, so much for joining us today in this interview. I've been really, really looking forward to this for quite a while. So I actually learned about you, Robert, from Ryan Holiday, who I know you've worked with in the past. Ryan Holiday, who is on episode 245 of the BiggerPockets podcast, BiggerPockets.com.com show 245. Ryan, is a fantastic author. He's written some great books as well. And he's a real estate investor. And so we had him on the show here. And he's fantastic. But I want to know how you actually connected originally with Ryan Holiday. Can you tell us kind of how that came about?

Well, Ryan was sort of my mentee, or I was his mentor, however you want to put it. He came to me. I think it was in like 0.5, 06. I was having lunch with him. It was quite a lunch with him, Tucker Max and Neil Strauss. And Ryan sort of tagged along. He was about 19 at the time. He was a college student at Riverside, UC Riverside. And he was a fan of my books. And he was sort of hinting that maybe he would like to do research for me. And I've had the worst luck hiring researchers. People might be good looking in Los Angeles, but they're usually not very bright. I had really, really bad luck with researchers, spent loads of money and had no good results. So I decided, all right, why not try it? This guy, he understood.

answer my books, that's a good start. And he did really good job. He was unusual. First of all, he asked questions. He listened to me, which is quite a skill these days. And then, you know, he did the kind of work that would actually help me instead of just making me have to double over what he had already read. And I go, wow, this is, this is a rare fine. And then I was at the time on the Board of directors for American Apparel. And Ryan fixed my Wikipedia page, which, as I said, I'm kind of a techno moron. And I was, wow, that's amazing. And I got the CEO of American Apparel. He fixed his Wikipedia page. And then he hired him and he became the marketing director at American Apparel. And the rest is history. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, I like that story. I've heard little bits and

pieces of it before, you know, just on various interviews and times that, you know, I talked to Ryan, but I just, I love the fact that, like, he talked to you became, you know, you became basically his mentor in a way. And then he just did a really, really good job. I mean, this is something we see in the industry all the time in the real estate space where people like, they want a mentor. They want somebody to help them figure out what to do next. And so then they come to them. I mean, imagine if Ryan would have come to you and been like, you know, Robert, I really want you to teach me everything you know. Go ahead. Go ahead. And just like, wait for you to just unload. Like it's very different, isn't it? Yeah, it's like when you're looking for,

if you're in the inferior position, you're looking for a favor from someone who's powerful, you have to do a little mental jujitsu and you have to think, it's not about me, it's about them. What can I do for them that will save them time, make them look better, help them in their work? Because everyone is so rushed these days, we don't have time. So instead of thinking about you and how brilliant you are and how much they can give you. You have to think about what you can give them. And if you're not ready to give them because you're not skilled enough or you're just not prepared, then don't do it. You know, you have to be offering something that's valuable to the other person. And Ryan ended up was.

You know, I want to ask you, Ryan obviously knew what his strengths were. So when he came to you and said, hey, I'd like to help with researching, he knew he'd been doing that. We know Brandon and I met Tucker. He's the author of, what was it, Brandon? I hope they serve bear in hell. Yeah. So Ryan had some experience as a research assistant. So when he came to you, he knew what he was good at. He probably had a very clear and articulate value proposition that he brought.

And my guess would be that's one of the reasons you're like, okay, let's give him a shot. And then he excelled at it. Do you have some advice for the people? Like Brandon and I get this a lot. People reach out to us and say, oh, I really want to learn everything you know. Tell me what you need help with. And we hate it because they've now given us the job of trying to figure out, what are you good at? And how could you help me?

and how will I know if this is working? And like you said, it just makes it worse because now you've got to go double up everything they did and try to slow down and teach them when they were supposed to be helping you. For the people who want to establish that connection, can you share what it was about Ryan

that made him stand out and how people can know what their strengths are so they know what's offer? Well, he began with some knowledge and some intelligence. So he understood my books. At the time, I was researching my war book. I think I was finishing it.

He had read it. He had done his home. You know, a lot of people don't do basic homework, and it's so easy on the internet now. You know, when I was starting out, I had nothing like this, but you have to know the people that you're trying to ask favors for. So do some simple research. Find out what they need. Find out what is missing, what their weaknesses are, where you could really fit in and help. So already I could see that there was this knowledge that he had.

He knew my books. He understood my way of thinking. The problem I had been hiring researchers is they think they understood my books, but they didn't know how I thought. So they would read an entire book and it was like useless because they would highlight the things that were not necessary or interesting to me. But Ryan really, really understood what I was trying to say and how I actually researched the book.

So I could tell there was a level of seriousness. He wasn't putting all of the onus on me, like you said. He was there to prove himself. What can I do to prove myself? And when I suggested researching, I tried a little experiment with him. Normally I gave people a lot of information about what I need for research. And I thought, I'm not going to give Ryan any of that. And let's see how he does, sink or swim, whether he can figure it out on his own.

And he did. But the most important thing you're looking for is not a glittering resume, is not people's charm, but their character, which is something I talked. talk a lot about in the laws of human nature. Are they someone who's conscientious, who's disciplined, who doesn't have a big ego, who's going to listen to you and puts the attention on you and your needs? Or is it all about them and their glittering future

and all they think that they can offer you? That was sort of the key difference between Ryan and all the others. Yeah, that's fantastic. I think anybody, you know, that that's probably the number one question we get. I mean, probably number one is how do I get a mentor? So for those people listen to this show right now, that's asking that question in your head, Go back and just rewind the last like two minutes and just listen to that whole thing again because that was so key to be able to find somebody that can help mentor you and to help push you along.

So you mentioned the laws of human nature, you know, your newest book. I want to know why you've written a lot on a lot of different topics, but what made you want to write on human nature? And then can you just tell us a couple of minutes about what is the book about? What is human nature? What do you mean? Well, I'm of the opinion that we are actually animals, which I don't think anybody would dispute. And just like your dog or your cat has a particular nature and certain patterns of behavior, so do we.

We're a lot more complicated. But our behavior fits into certain patterns because we evolved a particular way going back hundreds of thousands of years ago. So I'm fascinated by these elements in our nature that have not changed since the beginning of time. And I wanted to sort of explore that and illuminate it for people out there. Because I think a lot of people, look, the most important skill you can develop in life is understanding people. We're a social animal. All the technical brains in the world won't get you very far if you are really inept in dealing with people. And I'm sure that's extremely important with real estate agents.

It's a people business. And I know because I've dealt with several. We fired our first real estate agent because she did not understand our taste. She didn't listen to us. She started showing his houses. It had nothing to do with who we were. She wasn't attuned to us. So my point in my book was, this is the most important life skill you can develop.

It's the ability to understand the people around you and to understand yourself and to know what motivates human behavior. It's not necessarily what you think. A lot of our nature is slightly negative. We have certain faults and certain proclivities, such as how emotions govern our behavior. So if you understand something very basic, like the fact that people aren't really thinking animals, they're emotional animals, they feel before they think, that kind of alters how you will approach them. So I wanted to completely alter your way of looking at the people around you and make them much more transparent. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think people tend to focus, especially when they get into real estate or, I mean, really any business, right?

Whether it's investing, agent, you know, they want to start a plumbing company. people focus really heavily on the tactics. Like, here's how I do this. And I don't focus as much on the, here's how this, like, here's how I have to interact with people. I mean, like, I'll, I'll admit I'm the worst at it. Like, I'm really good at some tactics about things. But when it comes to, like, sitting down and making people feel good or getting people to do things, I'm not always the greatest at it. But in real estate, you have to be good at those things.

So what are some of your, I guess, maybe, I don't want to call it surprising, but like, or more, more interesting pieces, like maybe the chapters in the book that just stand out to you the most? Or what are some people of the human nature that just really stand out to you is interesting? Well, you know, I wanted to explore some of the dark side in human nature because I think it's very real. And we've all dealt with people

who are extremely difficult and have obviously some psychological problems and they can make our lives miserable because we get entangled in their emotional dramas and we don't have any distance. So a lot of the books, focuses on traits that are like that, but we tend to see them as something that only other people have. So I have a chapter on narcissism.

And I want to make it clear to you out there that you are a narcissist as well. So it's not so important for you to be labeling other people. It's a human trait. We are all self-absorbed, you included. There's a scale. Some people are much more self-absorbed than others and they have a problem. But you are the same way. So let's be a little more realistic and a little more humble about it.

So if you can come to terms with the fact that you are also very self-absorbed, you can begin to change that dynamic. You can begin to become more empathetic, more attuned to other people. Only once you realize that you are not really like that. And I did the same thing with the chapter on aggression is always the other person who's aggressive. I'm always, you know, I'm never, I'm the best intentions. I'm an angel. It's not true.

We all have aggressive tendencies. How do you channel your aggression? Do you turn it inward into kind of hating yourself and taking drugs and things to escape? Do you turn it into being vicious and pushing people around? Do you become passive aggressive? Or do you turn it into your work and make it something productive, something that actually contributes to society? So, you know, I can go on and on. There's a trait about what makes us a social animal.

and how a lot of our thoughts and feelings are not our own. They come from the people around us. We are extremely susceptible to the emotions of the people around us. So I want to change your concept of who you are. You're not as much of an individual as you think you are. You are much more vulnerable to the influences of people. Let's talk about that for a minute, about that we get our emotions from the people around us.

Because, you know, I find that true. We oftentimes we'll cite, like, There's a famous quote. I don't know. I think Tim Ferriss made it famous, but I don't know if he coined it, but you are the average of the five people you associate with the most. Like if you hang around five people who are overweight, you're probably overweight. If you hang around five people who are super fit, you're probably fit. How does that play into this idea that we are the people around us? Well, this is part of the nature that I'm going back to early, early on in our evolution. So when we were evolving well before the invention of language, we were a very weak animal compared to. to all of the predators out there in East Africa. But the one strength we had was our ability to function within a group and understand people before the invention of language. But part of that was we developed kind of complex emotions.

We have a much greater range of emotions than other animals do. We feel pity. We feel shame. We feel gratitude. And these emotions showed up on the face and were a form of communication to other people. But what it meant was in the group setting of our earliest ancestors, part of our need to survive was being swept up in group emotions. If the group could feel anger or fear because there was a predator in the environment, then the whole group could bond together. And so, you know, we can go into the neuroscience of this, but we are by our nature extremely susceptible to the moods and motions of the people around us.

And I talk in the book, if you go to like a rock concert or you hear some speech by, you know, somebody that you really love, some political candidate, you notice that the whole crowd gets swept up in a kind of viral emotion of enthusiasm and excitement. And you feel differently. You feel like you're like you're one with everyone else. And it's a kind of emotion you don't feel when there's just three or four people around you. That's how these kind of viral emotions can sweep you up. And so, you know, I remember several years ago, I went to give a talk at Microsoft up in Seattle area. And here's a place of 30,000 people. And what struck me was how similar they all looked. They all dressed the same. They all have the same mannerisms. They were all kind of ordering the same food. I mean, it was not so obvious, but it was very much something noticeable.

And that's because there's a culture. at Microsoft. It comes from Bill Gates. And everybody was following it. Everybody was swept up into this and felt the need to kind of present themselves as a mini Bill Gates. Well, that goes on in your office or any culture that you're involved in. People feel the need to fit in, to look like other people, to have the same vocal patterns. You're not aware of this, but unconsciously, you're continually becoming infected by the moods and ideas and emotions of the people around you. Yeah, that's so funny. It's so true.

I notice all the time, because I travel quite a bit and I'm always like, you know, I don't know, out somewhere else. But when I'm in Denver, like everyone looks like they're just about ready to go on a hike. Like everyone's got their like, they're like vest on. And they're like, I mean, the mountain's right there. They're just going to go up the mountain. Even if they're at work, right? In Washington, where I was, you know, I've lived for the last decade, everybody looks

like they're going to go chopped on a tree. I mean, everybody has a beer. Everyone's got a flannel shirt on, myself included, right? But then I just moved to Hawaii recently. Everybody out here, including myself, are in board shorts. Yeah, yeah, I'm in Maui now. Yeah, Maui down in Kihei. Oh, wow.

Very gentle. Yeah, it's a little place. Yeah, it's much warmer here than a lot of the country right now. But everybody out here is in board shorts. Everybody out here is, you know, people move in group, whether or not we think we do or not. Like, I never thought I looked like the rest of the people of the Pacific Northwest. But when I look at myself a year ago, I look like every single guy in the Pacific Northwest. If you're in San Francisco, you just wear garbage bags around all day.

That's true. Yeah, wander around all day. It's like, no matter where you are, you had to be looking like David here. Well, Sanchez you look like you're about to be discovered. Yes, exactly. Yeah, at L.A., yeah. It's like any minute, that guy's going to walk in the door and he's going to be like, you're the star of the next movie. Come on over.

Yeah. One of the things we learned as a police officer was when you get that gut feeling that something's wrong or you should look into something. You can't, like, detain someone or arrest. one based on a gut feeling. You have to be able to articulate facts that would say why a reasonable person would believe this person was going to commit a crime. And what they taught us is that gut feeling is really when your subconscious mind is recognizing something that is outside of the baseline behavior of an area, right? Everybody else is in a busy area walking back and forth trying to go somewhere. And there's this one guy standing on the corner and he's not doing what everyone else is doing.

So your eyes hone in on him and you wait to look for like a hand-to-hand transaction. Boom, you have the facts you need to go entertain him to investigate. And as I move, from a police officer into real estate, I was very out of place. I thought much differently. Police officers are negative people. We're very blunt. We're very direct. And now I walked into this like Sissy Lala world of everyone has like huge egos and their feelings get hurt so easily. And you have to cater to other people. And I just, I felt like, like a, I don't know, like a power lifter in a yoga class. I just couldn't bend the way that these people could bend, right? And I didn't become successful until I developed those skills that we're talking about right now.

I had to learn to plug myself into that flow and operate within it to get trust from people. Then they would listen to what I had to say. Then they would see that I was sounding smart. And I've noticed the people that are really successful can flow in and out of these different environments. Pick up on the baseline behavior for that group and find their way inside of it. And one of the problems we have here, Robert, is we, this podcast is for real estate investors that want to get deals.

And a lot of them are like, where's the place I go to to get that deal? They're looking for the tactic that will work. When the people who are really good at this are the ones who establish the relationships of the people that have the deals, and they get it first, right? And it's learning what that person wants. How do I get that agent to like me? How do I get that wholesaler to go to me first? What matters to them? And that's why I think that what you're teaching us today is so important because you're showing us, this is how you fight your way to the top of the pecking order without anyone else knowing that they're even in a fight and get what you want by giving other people what they want. And it sounds like what you're saying is you got to recognize first that all the things you don't like about other people are in you as well. They're looking at you thinking the same thing. That's right. That's right. One of the things that I think is sort of really relevant to what you just said is, I'm really a big believer in nonverbal communication.

I mean, as a police officer, you probably had to learn that that's what made you think certain people were standing out. We humans communicate an incredible percentage of our emotions and what's going on in our heads nonverbally. And as a real estate agent, that can be a real mind opener for you. So people may say something. They may verbalize certain desires or wishes, but it's not necessarily the truth. We all tend to wear a mask when we're in society. We try and present our best side to people. But beneath the mask, we're giving off all kinds of signs of what's really going on.

And I'm trying to ground you in this other language that humans taught. speak, which is not verbally, it's nonverbal. And I want you to sort of, the reason I'm emphasizing this is this is a way to kind of ground you in my book. I want you to be much more observant of people than you are. Normally you go through life and you're not observing anything. You're constantly listening to yourself. You're not paying attention to the tension in people's faces, to the fake smiles they're

giving you, to the moments when their eyes really light up and the smile is genuine and describes real emotion that's going on into the kind of body language that reveals that this person actually doesn't really like you. They feel kind of some negative energy. I want you to kind of master this nonverbal language and sort of teach yourself how to become a superior observer of people first by kind of paying deep, deep attention to their nonverbal behavior. And then after that, we can go deeper into other things that you can look at, such as the patterns of behavior that people reveal and their actions and what that shows. But I want to you to understand that in every detail of people's lives, their nonverbal stuff, the kind of people they choose for a spouse, how they treat

other employees around them, how they treat those who work for them, their staff, how they treat their children. All of this are indications of who they really are. So don't get lost in people's appearances in what they present to you as a client, but try and be attuned to what's going on behind the surface. Yeah, that is so good. Because again, yeah, like you said, everyone wants to put on a mask. Everyone, myself included, David, you, I'm sure we all put on masks. That's like, this is how we want the world to see us.

But if you can get underneath that to find the true motivations, I mean, the world becomes entirely different. A good example, like maybe not a good example. I think it's a good example that something I read once in a book and I think it every day now, This comes in my head and I'm going to make everyone else think this to know. When you're talking with someone and you're standing up, whether it's at a bar, at church, on the street, doesn't matter. Look what way their shoes are pointing. This, like, fascinates me every time.

If somebody's feet are pointed directly towards you, they're engaged in the conversation they want to be there. And if they're not, yeah, if they're focused somewhere else, it means they don't really want to be in that conversation. And so what I look for is find ways to get them from not pointing at me to pointing at me in the conversation. And if I get that, right? Isn't that cool? That's very good. Yeah, and I find that myself included, like when I'm talking to somebody and I realize I don't want to be in this conversation, I look at my feet and my feet are not in the direction of that person. It's just the weirdest little subtle thing.

Yeah, that's definitely true. Another thing is, I'm really big believer. I read about micro expressions. I don't know if people who understand that concept, but basically scientists discovered sometime in the 60s that people give out an expression that only lasts for like a quarter of a sense. second, a look of disgust, a look of excitement. And then they quickly hide it because they don't want people to realize what's going on. And I want you to become aware of that. So sometimes when you come approach somebody that you were a stranger or someone who you haven't seen for a while, and you come at them from an angle so that you sort of surprise them, you can catch in that instant

a look at that micro expression of excitement, they're genuinely excited to see you, or a kind of like, oh, get away. I don't really want to see. And they quickly covered it up with one of their fake smiles. These are other kinds of things like your shoes pointed, which is really an excellent observation.

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That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. So let's say that somebody is at a meeting with other investors and they're trying to get people's attention so that when someone has a deal, they bring it to them first. And they don't really know exactly how to go about making these connections. They're talking to somebody and they're getting all these negative signs. are recognizing his shoes are pointed the other way. I'm getting a fake smile. Their eyes are darting away from me. Like what's an escape route I could get away from here. Can you give us some ideas of what that person can do to turn that interaction around and make themselves more interesting or more

valuable to the person that they're speaking to? Well, it usually is something where you don't want to get in that position in the first place. So you want to understand that the energy that you present people is how they're going to see you. So if you're feeling defensive and insecure, Remember we were talking about how susceptible we are to the emotions of people around us? If you approach that client initially and you're kind of feeling insecure and defensive, they're going to feel that. They may not consciously register, but they're going to react in a way that makes them slightly defensive and slightly negative and slightly worried about you. We've all had an experience of being around insecure people.

They make us feel insecure and nervous. Because when you're around somebody who's confident and open, it tends to communicate itself to us and we open ourselves up. So you want to be able to understand that your attitude and your energy is going to infect the people that you approach. And you want to approach them differently. You don't want to be thinking of yourself and thinking, do they like me? Do I look good? Am I going to say the right things?

You want to be focusing your energy on them. Think of it yourself. How many times during a day do you ever feel that someone has come up to you and actually, made you feel better about yourself, validated some aspect of your character that needed that kind of validation, not just flattery, but that made you feel that you are actually an intelligent person, that you're actually a good person, that you actually have decent ideas. It's extremely rare. Most people are so self-absorbed, they're not paying any attention to you. If you can give that client just a millisecond of the feeling that you're actually attuned to them,

that you're actually seeking, noticing the good parts of their character and bringing it out. They will open up like a flower in front of you. I'm sorry to be so new agey here. You know, it's because you're giving them defensive, insecure, negative, neurotic, worried energy that they're going to react this way. So I have a chapter about people's self-opinion, which is probably the most important chapter for you real estate agent people out there. It's really the chapter about how to have influence over people. And it means the people you are dealing with have an opinion about themselves. They think that they are good and decent and moral. They think that they're intelligent about something, whatever that is.

They feel that they have good ideas, that they're an independent person. You want to validate that. You want to make them feel stronger about these ideas about themselves. You don't want to challenge their self-opinion. You don't want to make them feel defensive or insecure. You want to confirm them, validate them, and give them the kind of attention that they're not getting from their spouse or their children or their boss. If you just put those three principles in practice, that whole game alters. And what I mean is your attitude and your energy, how you approach people, getting into their mindset and attending to them and confirming and validating their self-opinion,

I think that's kind of a game changer. That is gold. I mean, if you can do that well, what happens is people that you're interacting with in that way, they don't necessarily cognitively realize that's what you just did. What they feel is this emotional experience of I like him. He makes me feel good. You're at top of mind. They naturally want to help you.

They want to stay in communication. They want to bring you that deal because it's an excuse to talk to you and you make them feel good. And this is something that I run into all the time, both with the agents on my team and the people who come to me and say, David, how do I get the deal before the next guy does? They think they need to understand the contract better. They think they need to understand numbers. And it just doesn't matter. You get the deal when people like you more. You make them feel good. You fill them with confidence that when you say, I'll buy it, you're actually going to buy it. Now, they don't have to worry about looking like a butthead to the guy who they said, well, I'll find a buyer for the deal. It's that ability to influence

people's emotions that really makes them make decisions. And what you just said was so, so good. And I mean, you've interviewed tons of people who are very, very successful. You've studied success and you're confirming this is what successful people do better. They're not necessarily the smartest. They don't know the most. They know how to tune into other people and make it about them. Right. And you also don't want to make it all think feel like it's about money. It's all mercenary. If you want to make it seem like it's a relationship that you're building, it doesn't, it shouldn't be fake. You actually do enjoy people. If you're a real estate agent and you don't like people, you're in a you're in trouble. So you have to actually like people. And even someone who's kind of miserable

and who kind of has a negative energy, find a way to see something that you can like and appreciate in them. So the sense that you actually like people and that you want to develop these relationships is extremely important because if you're someone who feels kind of insecure and is sort of doesn't like relationships and prefers playing video games, you're never going to develop these skills. You have to really love this. You really have to. want it. And the person that we ended up, who ended up selling our house some 15 years ago, was really a master at this game. He was really kind and empathetic. And when we just, we just had to explain to him a few things about what we were looking for. And we could tell immediately

from the first houses he showed us that he understood our taste and our mindset. He wasn't focused on himself and making the deal. He was really attending to us and what we were, what we were thinking. Yeah, that's fantastic. And I think anybody out there, whether you're, again, any business, right, but being a real estate agent, being a real estate investor, being a landlord, being a, you know, a plumber, whatever, like, understanding that how people feel about you is more important than, or at least equally important as the job that you do is so important. So I'm curious about like, what's the difference still between flattery and recognizing somebody's strengths or recognizing something that you can call out in there? Like, how do you avoid just false flattery,

and only focus on building people up. Well, you know, I'm not totally against flattery. Flattery has its place. We're all vulnerable to it. I just think you need to be very strategic when it comes to flattery. So one thing that I talk about it in the book is flatter people about the thing that no one else is flattering them about, what they feel genuinely insecure. So you don't flatter Michael Jordan about what a great basketball player he is.

You flatter him about what a smart business person is, although he isn't a very, smart business person. Because that's what he needs, that's where he needs validation from. That's a great, great advice. But it doesn't have to be fake or insincere because it probably is an element where they are good at that or there is something real. You don't choose something that is real because then otherwise your flattery will seem

very insincere. But the thing I'm talking about comes across not verbally so much. It isn't like what you say directly to valid. You don't go up to them and say, you know, damn it, Robert, I think you're a really moral, wonderful, nice person. It's fake. It's a feeling you give them. The feeling, because I said most of the communication between people is nonverbal.

The sense that you feel comfortable in their presence and that you like them is enough that speaks louder than any words. Imagine like your closest friend in the world, your best buddy. when you meet that person, there's an instant connection. Your eyes live up. You're happy to see each other, right? And it's a nice feeling because it's sort of that narcissism thing I'm talking about. Their smile on their face when they see you makes you feel like, well, I'm a good person because they react you to me positively.

You can give that same feeling. It doesn't have to be so intense with a client. By the fact that you feel happy to be in their presence, they will feel that. And that's much better than any kind of words that you could express. Yeah, that's fantastic. So to pull this into the real estate investing space, the example of this a couple of years ago, I was buying a house. Somebody contacted me.

I can't remember how they found me, maybe a sign or something like that. But they wanted to sell me their house. And it was a woman who was just looking to sell quickly. She didn't want to actually, she didn't want to use a real estate agent. And when I went and met with her, she had met with other people. She had talked with other people. But the reason she wanted to sell to me, I mean, honestly, like, we just built a really good relationship because I walked in, I smiled.

I chatted with her about her house and the pictures on her wall and her kids art that was sitting there. Like that's the whole focus with. I don't even know if we talked about her house. Like other than the very end of the conversation when we walked out, like, okay, well, this is what, you know, this is what she wanted for. And okay, this is what I can pay for it. Okay, great. Let's move on. Yeah, they was definitely about, yeah, me building the relationship with her.

So I think, yeah, I think you're right on. I think everyone, yeah, needs to read the, especially those chapters, but really the whole book is fantastic. But moving slightly on from from that building relationship thing, I want to talk about biases for a minute because I find that fascinating. You talk about things like confirmation bias or appearance bias, group bias. Can you talk about what do you mean by biases? And can we talk about each of those for a minute? Well, it's in a chapter where I try and make the point that we're not rational animals. We think that we are this thinking rational, you know, kind of algorithmic animal like a computer, but actually emotions

govern us and we're very irrational. And we have biases. in our thinking patterns that reveal underlying emotions. So confirmation bias is obviously the most obvious one and the one that we all have, myself included. And it means that when we look for evidence to support our ideas, we look for the evidence that we'll do that. We don't look for evidence or anecdotes that might disconfirm our ideas.

We tend to look on those websites that we feel comfortable, will confirm what we already believe. On Facebook, we have an echo chamber where everybody has the same opinions that we do. And that's because we don't want to actually confront the fact that maybe our ideas are wrong. We want to feel them confirmed. And so, you know, people will hold an idea and then what actually happens in the world will show that their idea was really wrong. But they will still hold on to that initial idea because they don't want to feel like they are, they were unintelligent or were stupid.

So we're definitely have a bias of tendency to hold on to those ideas that we're emotionally attached to. I talk about the conviction bias. We tend to feel that when somebody expresses a strong opinion with lots of emotion and lots of sincerity, that it must be true what they're saying. We can't imagine the fact that someone who uses a lot of conviction and emotion with a loud voice is actually a converse. is actually a con artist, could actually be lying, could actually be deceiving, could actually be covering up all of their insecurities by trying to appear extremely strong with their opinions. So when you see someone out there who's extremely vociferous and extremely certain about their ideas, you can be sure that the opposite is probably going on and you should be very dubious about them. So there's the conviction bias. The appearance bias is that if someone appears to be a decent person, they must be so inside.

If someone appears to be a little rough and aggressive, they could be a thug or a criminal. I did a book. My fourth book was with 50 Cent. I don't know if you knew about that, called The 50th Law. And, you know, his appearance, I was intimidated when I first met him. I bet. The quintessential thug. but it's all show, it's all theater, it's all a mask.

Behind that mask, he's actually a really sweet, gentle person, believe it or not. So people's appearances are very deceptive, but we tend to judge them by what we see. That's another bias. The group bias is that we tend to feel to entertain the same ideas of everybody else in our group. I mean, you'll look at something like in politics, and if you belong to the Democratic Party, which I happen to, so just to get that out of the way, you'll notice that everybody who's a Democrat go down the line of 20 different ideas or policy issues.

They all agree, they all have the same opinion. They can't disagree about one thing because then that might be they're not pure enough. They're not morally pure. They're not righteous. So we are completely swept up in the ideas of the group. On and on and on. These biases exist in us unconsciously.

and they sway all of our emotions. You know, they have a thing in marketing. They call it the affect heuristic. And what that means is people buy things, not based on rational thought processes, but on purely emotion. And they've done millions of studies about these emotional biases that make people choose certain products over others. So I just want to get you over the notion that people are these rational thinking animals,

whereas instead they're riddled with these biases. And once you know that you have this bias, you can begin to maybe work against it. Yeah. So I think what you just mentioned is the key, recognizing your own bias, because it's very easy to be like, oh, that guy's bias.

He's suffering from confirmation bias or group bias and totally miss that you're doing the same thing. And what I want to ask you is, let's say that you're a homeowner, you're an investor, and you're meeting with a contractor who's going to fix your house up for you. And you don't know much about construction,

So you're kind of relying on these other non-technical trade type cues to make your decision on. What are something somebody should look for to tell if someone's being honest with them about the price of things or if they're going to do a good job or if they're more of a dishonest con artist that you should recognize some of these cues that mean you should run the other way? The most important thing I think of all is, I mean, even in police officers and FBI agents who are masters at this make mistakes, the thing you want to look at is they're trying. track record. The track record never lies. So if you see reviews or you hear from other people that they did a shoddy job on this one job, you can be sure that they've probably done it many times, several times. You want to do some research and find out their track record because what their actions in the past will speak more eloquently than anything you could judge on in the present. That is so good. You mentioned in the book, I believe, nobody does something only one.

once. Is that close, something close to that, right? Because I feel like anyone can pull it together to act like someone they're not for a brief interaction in time when they're meeting with you. But they can't keep it together for 10 years of time over their work. Right. Like it's much better to look at somebody's track record and what they've done as an indication of their character than just how they portray themselves when you meet. So this is also why like screening tenants, you know, like I'm a landlord. I have a bunch of rental properties. Why screening tenants is so important because how they've been is how they'll be no matter what they say you know like oh it was a rough time or i had a you know unique random thing happened no no no yeah yep if they if they've been evicted

before they'll probably be evicted again if they are if they paid late in the past they're probably going to pay late again and you can find all this out yeah yeah you can research all this stuff and find out if they've been evicted before and you can contact their landlords and like this stuff is so important but so many landlords out there we'll just rent to a tenant based on how they feel about that tenant, based on the mask that that tenant is wearing. No, no, no. Right? Yeah.

Always be charming and always try to present their angelic side to you. You know. Yeah. Every time I've let emotion, you know, emotion override the, the logic or the- Or the thing that happens quite frequently is you say, well, you were evicted from this apartment three years ago, you know, why did that happen? Oh, my God. This landlord was such a, was such a tyrant.

Yep. I was a victim. I had all the time, you know, they were going to throw me out under the street. And I, you know, my, and I lost my job and my husband, you know, blah, blah, blah, they put themselves as a victim. This was only an aberration. Well, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I always say nobody wants to be the villain in their own story. So, like, no matter what, people will always find a way to make somebody else the villain, even when they were, like, they were, you know, they didn't pay rent. Oh, it's because there was mold on their wall. If they, you know, they trash their apartment, it's because the landlord didn't fix something. There's just always a reason somebody else is the villain. Exactly. Yeah.

I mean, if there's like one, like the number one tip I give like any new person who owns rental property that's going to manage their own rental properties, it's like like the way you screen your tenant is the most important thing. You can buy the best deal in the world. You can get a free house from somebody and you rent it to the wrong person. You will go under. If you can't manage them. Well, it pertains to everything in life.

Yeah. As I said, we're social animals. So you pick the wrong business partner to, you know, when your startup and you're doomed, your life is going to be, they'll steal it from you. You pick the wrong spouse just because they're pretty or whatever, and they end up being a gold digger or something else like that. Your life can be ruined, you know, on and on and on. So the people you choose to work with or live with, these are all critical decisions.

And you want to base it not on what you see, not on the front they present, but on their character, on who they really. really are underneath the surface. I have this analogy that when you go to a grocery store and you grab a shopping cart, they all look the same. You don't know one from the next, right? But if you get a cart that has one of like the wheels is pulling hard to the right, it's very hard to keep it on track, right?

And you can muscle your way through that for a period of time until you get tired. And then that cart is just going to run itself into one of the aisles and knock over the Captain Crunch and you make a big mess. And I feel like people are that way. It's for a short period of time. You never heard of that cart. Well, I just made it up myself. That's probably why.

I don't even know how accurate it is, but it's the way I look at it, where I will trick myself into thinking I can handle this cart. I can control this person or I can control this part of my own nature. And eventually I just wear out from trying to fight so hard to keep that thing going straight. And I run into something and it makes a big mess. And the wiser I get, I start to get into like knowing, nope, this I will not be good in this role because I cannot do this thing very well. Or this guy is he looks like all the other shopping carts. But no, I can tell this is a problem.

Would you agree, Robert, that when you get that feeling, you need to stop and slow down and say, I need to reevaluate if I should move forward? Yeah, I talk in the irrationality chapter about increasing your reaction time. So when you're coming up with an important decision, you know, step back and don't hire that person. Don't make that decision. Don't buy that product. Sleep on it. Wait another day or two and think and don't simply react. So if you're about to take that person on as a tenant because they're charming and they were smiling and they seem very pleasant and you're all, you're impetuous.

Great, let's do it. Train yourself. You're like an athlete. You train yourself slowly to never, never react in the moments and always give yourself an extra day to think about it. And try and assume, am I attracted to this shopping cart because of. certain external factors. Have I done my research? Have I actually looked at what they've done in the past?

Don't react in the moment, but step back. That is really fantastic. I once heard this. I think Oprah said, or somebody said Oprah said, who knows she said it's like Abe Lincoln, right? She's got a million quotes attached to her. But basically that every time she wants to buy something,

no matter how big or small, she waits 24 hours before making the decision to just make sure she doesn't have that emotional trigger to buy something, which I thought was smart. Right. Yeah. Fantastic. All right, well, David, I'm impressed that you got in an analogy on shopping cards.

I did not know that was a thing. So well done. Yeah, that was good. All right. So I want to touch on a couple quick things before we move on and begin to wrap things up. First of all, you talked about the appearance bias. I want to bring up something that I've noticed. You talk about appearance bias a few minutes ago in terms of people if they look good,

if they sound good. What I've also found, and I want to say you found this too, is like not. not only you as a person, but the way you present things. And to use an exact example, when I used to pitch lenders on funding my deals, or when I would pitch my wife on agreeing to buy a real estate deal with me, or when I would pitch a partner to do a deal together, right? When I would bring them a spreadsheet or a big mess of paperwork or a big whiteboard full of numbers, people automatically would get fearful because they don't understand it.

It doesn't look clean and organized. But as soon as I started spending time, like putting together like fancy, like charts and graphs and pictures and a map on there. It's silly, right? Like, why do people need charts and graphs and color to make them feel good? But the fact that I would do that, all of a sudden, everybody started saying yes, because it appeared to be good. The numbers could have been horrible. I mean, they weren't, but they could have been horrible. I think people would be like, yeah, that's great. Is that the appearance bias as well? Yes, you know, we're visual animals. That's a known fact. Vision is like our primary sense. Life is very complicated and

chaotic and messy. And we're all kind of overwhelmed by information. And that person who can present things clearly and simply with a graphic and make the idea very clear as to why you need to buy this has got a huge, huge advantage. So yeah, I definitely buy that. That's part of the appearance bias. You know, I talk a lot about that in my other books in the art of seduction and in the 48 laws of power.

the importance of creating the right kind of spectacle for people using the right colors, understand the psychology of colors, understand, you know, the simplicity of your presentation, and pay extremely important attention to any kind of visual. And that includes, like, the clothes that you wear when you're interacting with your client. You know, if you showed up, at least here in L.A., wearing flip-flops and shorts, and to go look good at a house, I might not be so impressed. I'm sorry. I'm just saying that. I won't wear my board shorts to a meeting. Well, there's some truth to that. What I found is that if I didn't dress up, I could eventually get the client to listen to me, but it was a lot of work to convince them that I was worth listening to.

Whereas when I show up in a suit, man, you just make it so much easier on yourself to get their attention and their respect and they hear what you're saying. And that was one of the things I just gave up and said, like I just need to play by the rules of the other person. If this is what they value, then it helps my cause to go along with it. And I got over my need to be an individual. And while I don't want to have to do that, why should I have to dress up just for this? That's not who I am. I had to stop thinking about me and who I am and start thinking about them.

And I feel like that subconsciously gets conveyed to the other person that you're more trustworthy because they can tell you're operating in a way that makes them feel more comfortable, not yourself. Yeah. I mean, of course, if you're selling something in the Hayd Ashbury, maybe wearing a suit wouldn't be appropriate. Right, right. You have to kind of tailor it a little bit to the area that you're working in,

and maybe that day you wear some torn jeans or something. But basically, you know, being attuned to the tastes and what will appeal to your client is extremely important. And so your clothes and how you present yourself and the visuals that you present them are extremely, extremely important. Well, you see this a lot on social media right now. You get to really control the way that you show yourself to the way. world and for people building a real estate business, they want to flip houses, they want to buy

rentals, whatever. If your page doesn't look professional, if it looks like it's very shoddy or you have a lot of inappropriate stuff on there, it doesn't matter how smart you are. People are not going to trust you with a big investment. Right, because it's so easy nowadays to design something that's simple and pleasant to look at. So, you know, we're obviously going to tune out those things that are messy, mostly because, as I said, our lives are so complicated and we're so overwhelmed with things. That just seeing something laid out pleasantly and well and well thought out is just a relief to our eyes and our senses. Orrin Klaff talks about that in his book, Pitch Anything, how the brain is always afraid. It's always looking for how it's going to be taken advantage of or hurt in some way.

And so you've got to work really hard to show people that you're not going to hurt them and why you're actually looking to help them. And for me, if I just see something that isn't clearly articulated and you're making me work to figure out what you're even trying to say, I'm done and I'm on to the next day. And that's why a guy like Ryan Holiday stands out so much because he gives you this other feeling. Like, oh, he's not making life harder. He's making it easier. How can I get him more involved than what I'm doing? And then Ryan learns a ton from you and he learns a ton from Tucker. And he becomes very, very successful much faster than other people because he's endeared himself.

I want to ask you one thing, Robert. I really, really liked your book on mastery and the point you made in your speech at Oxford about Leonardo da Vinci and how he was so committed to what he was passionate. passionate about and just threw himself into it. We get a lot of people who look to real estate to kind of become this, I wouldn't say get rich quick scheme, but they're definitely looking for it to be their way out of a situation they don't like. I don't like my job.

So I want to buy rental properties and live off the rent. And they're hoping in three to five years they can accomplish that. With your study on mastering how it works, what advice do you have for people who are under those kind of expectations? Well, you know, you can, it can work for a while. You can kind of trick yourself. have you become a lawyer or a real estate agent for the money. And, you know, I'm nothing against money.

It's, it's very nice to have money. But the problem is that if you're not connected to it emotionally to your work, if you're just doing it for the money, then you're going to burn yourself out. You only really learn. You only really get better at something when you want to learn, when you want, when you feel connected to it emotionally. I always give the example of when I was in college, I learned. French. I studied French for four years. And then I went to Paris and I couldn't speak one word.

And then I met a French girl and I wanted, you know, to have a relationship. In two weeks, I learned more than I ever learned in four years because I was motivated. I wanted, I really wanted to learn. So when you want to learn, you're going to learn a lot faster than if you're just doing it for other reasons. And doing it just for the money isn't exciting enough, isn't really going to make you motivate, is it going to make you get up in the morning for five or 10 years and go, wow, I want to, you know, I can get better at this because you always need to improve your skills. I don't care how long you've been doing something for. So you need to be emotionally attached to what you're doing. In real estate, there are certain things that are extremely pleasurable.

And you have to be attracted. You have to emphasize those things. So the idea that you are meeting and interacting with always a group of people, different people, with different needs. I say in my new book that you have to alter your approach to people. Mostly you think you're self-absor because you think you're the most interesting person in the world. And you only want to think about your own thoughts because that's, you know, that what could be more interesting than my world. But I want you to change and think that the people you're dealing with are actually really, really interesting, even the most boring person that you've ever met in your life. They have

some kind of experience, something in their childhood, something that's interesting, something you can learn from. So if you approach real estate as this is a people business and people are interesting and over the course of 10 years, I'm going to meet hundreds of really interesting, different, strange, weird people. And man, I'm going to learn from them. I'm going to learn about psychology. That's an exciting way to approach it. Also, you have to have to have to have a love for architecture and homes. I happen to be, as a writer, I'm very curious about people's homes and how they live in their homes and their domestic situation and what goes on behind the door and the curtains. And that kind of voyeurism sort of makes me excited to, you know,

would make me, I think, would fuel my interest in becoming a real estate agent. So you actually have to love the idea of a home itself and what that means and what that represents to people. on and on. You have to find emotional connections to your work. Otherwise, if it's purely mercenary, you're going to burn out, you're going to start becoming addicted to porn and taking drugs and everything. You know, you won't be able to last in it. Yeah, I love that point. I think a lot of people choose, I mean, they choose jobs and careers, but they also choose real estate because they think it's the fastest way to get rich. And then they find they don't actually love real estate. You know, me and David talk a lot about this. Real estate's great. I think real estate's the best business out there for me, right? And it works perfectly mean, I don't know a lot of people listen today. It works for them. But you got to do what you're going to love or at least get, have so much passion and interest in that you're going to stick with it. Otherwise, it's like pushing that shopping cart that I can steal that analogy from David here. Yeah. And I push it so long. The other side of that coin is being honest with yourself to recognize this is the part of the job that I like. So I know for my personality, I love real estate. I bought a whole

bunch of rental property. I flip houses and then I became an agent so I could share what I learned with people that matter to me. But I know what there's also parts of the job I don't love. I don't love the paperwork. I don't love when my clients just want to like ramble on and on for 45 minutes about what color they want to paint the wall in the kitchen, right? I have to do it, but it doesn't energize me. So I hired people that love that stuff and I have them do that part. My assistant, Krista is wonderful. She'll listen to you talk about paint for 45 minutes and have you feeling like the best thing ever, right? And it saves me from being drained from that. I like to focus on protecting people's money. Like the police officer side of me wants to protect

and serve your interest in a real estate transaction, which is one of the reasons why I'm excelling there is I just understood I like this and I don't like that. And there's a lot of investors out there that they just don't have the courage or they don't understand that if you like to analyze properties but you don't love to meet people, find someone who does love to make people. Or vice versa. If you love people, but you're just not comfortable with, numbers, be honest with yourself and say, I don't like this area. I'm going to avoid it or I'm not going to excel at it. Let me hire someone or let me partner with someone who's a really good analyst who is passionate about it and then drill down on the thing you're really good at.

And I always point out our partner here, Brandon, is so good at marketing. The guy's brain just sees angles to market something that mine would never ever see in a million years. And it comes to him naturally. So he always gears his business. Yes, this is Brandon here. I'm brilliant marketer. This good looking guy. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's very humble, so he doesn't put himself out there as a good market, but he's really, really good at it. Because he loves it, he's always excelling in that area. He's learning new stuff. He's getting it from other masters and he's teaching other people. And he shies away from the stuff he's not as good at. And when I read you, Robert, or when I hear you speaking about this,

I notice that theme comes up a lot is it's not just tactically what makes the most sense. You have to understand that emotions play a very big role in how successful you're going to be. And the wiser you are at connecting them, the better your business is going to be. Yeah, that's that's that's very well put in mastery. And I also have a chapter on this in in the new book. I talk about understanding yourself and being aware of who you are and what makes you different and knowing your own tastes and inclinations and what you what excites you and what bores the hell out of you. And a lot of people lose touch with that. It's not just simply that they try and excel at things that they're not good at. they don't really know what they like.

They don't really know that this is what their strengths are. And I want you to be more self-aware and to go look at yourself. The first step towards becoming good at anything is to know who you are, what excites you, what you're attracted to, and what you're repulsed about. I knew from early on when I was 22 or so, and I worked starting early on in, like, journalism, that I hated this job. I don't like working with people. I don't like political jobs where I'm, you know, I'm really an entrepreneur at heart.

I like working for myself. I like to control what I do, you know. So it's also knowing what you don't like and what you're not good at because you can't be good at everything. And we'll come back to this one simple idea. When you love what you're doing, you are motivated to learn and to excel and to improve yourself. You will learn at a much higher rate than if you're just going through. through the motions. And so if you understand that one basic principle that will change how you operate, you know, you will try and gear yourself toward focusing on those skills and those things

that genuinely connect to you as an individual. I mean, within reason, you have to make a living and you have to make money. And there are always going to be things and tasks that you don't like. And maybe you can delegate them, then maybe you have to do them yourself, you know. But generally, if you don't feel emotionally connected to what you're to your work, you're going to face a lot of problems down the road. Yeah, it's fantastic. Again, not on those points where people need to hit that rewind button,

listen to the last two minutes over again because it's so good. But I want to start headed towards the end of the show, wrapping this thing up. I want to be respectful of your time. So I got a couple of final questions in the next segment called our Famous Four. And now let's get to the Famous Four. These are the same four questions we ask every day.

guest every week. I'm actually going to lower it down to three because this is in a real estate show. So it's really the famous three today. The first one is, do you have any, what's your favorite like book, the one that you haven't, you know, obviously one that you haven't written? Like what's a, what's a book recommendation you can get? Maybe a favorite business book or something that would help people who are looking to improve their business. I don't know. I love thinking in terms of strategy. And it's sort of been something that has a focus of a lot of my books. So, you know, I'm big, I'm really heavily into, Asian strategy books.

So I have an annotated version of Sun Tzu's Art of War, which sort of explains in modern terms what he's talking about. I find that extremely brilliant and helpful in business. I know there's something else out there that I haven't mentioned. In fact, I know there's something, a recent book. Is his name Ray Diallo? Yeah, principles. Principles.

Ray, Ray. Dalio. Oh, yeah. Sorry, thank you. That was a very good book. I like that a lot. Yeah. So I can recommend that. Perfect. Okay. How about some of your hobbies? Also, Ryan Holiday's books. Oh, yes. Right. Obstical is the way. It would be excellent. Sorry, about my hobbies. Well, I'm a exercise freak. You know, recently I suffered a stroke about four and a half months ago. So I'm recovering from that. But prior, to it, every day I would either swim or mountain bike or do kind of a Pilates routine. So for my stressful life, just kind of constantly moving and not sitting around all the time. But swimming, I find the most meditative thing that will get me out of my mind and kind of relax and calm me. And I also meditate every morning for 35 minutes.

I've been doing it for eight and a half years now. Do you use any special app or anything like that or did you just by yourself? Like, what's your meditation practice look like? It's, I'm heavily into Zen, Zen Buddhism. So I try and be as untechnological as possible, although I do use its insight timer. It's an app that has guided meditations and has a timer and bells and connects you to other people that's meditating. I find that helpful. But mostly my routine.

is it is definitely a routine. I sit on these cushions in a low disposition, and it's all about emptying the mind completely and just completely focusing on the present and kind of becoming more self-aware. So thoughts will intrude like, damn, why did my agent not return my email? What's going on here? And I learned to like, why am I, why is that thought occurring? Maybe it's because it doesn't, I don't need to be constantly worrying about things that are not present. the moment. You know, so it makes me question my emotions and make me look at who I am and, you know, and what's really going on. So I use that as the morning ritual to kind of get my day off to the right start and kind of say, this is the morning and it's kind of got its own energy and I'm

kind of excited by the day that's ahead of me. If I don't start the day with that meditation because something happens and occasionally that's true, I feel totally out of whack. So those are two main hobbies of mine. All right. I like them. Number four. That was number three. Yeah, well, I skipped one.

So we're going to go famous three, almost four. So this one. Good catch though. Yeah, that was good. Yeah, that was good. Yeah, that was good. You are definitely on top of things today. So number, because number, number, number two normally is what's your favorite real estate

related book? I figured I wouldn't throw that one at you. So what do you think separate successful people from all those who, give up, fail, or just never get started even going after their goals? Well, you know, it's a combination of things, but is are you, are you someone who's relatively flexible? Let's boil it down to that. And by flexible, that means you're willing to learn from experience, you're willing to admit your mistakes and challenge what you did in the past and adapt yourself to the present by saying,

I'm not going to repeat that again. Are you fluid enough to get inside the spirit of every person that you deal with so that you're not treating them as if they were just a lot, like all the other people you've dealt with, are you fluid enough to get into their individual spirit? Are you adapting? Are you moving? Are you nimble?

Are you learning from the new things that are coming up in your field? Are you constantly reading? and are you able to take criticism? You know, so I would say it's being rigid and defensive and closed is the number one reason why people do not succeed. And being open and fluid and willing to learn and adapt is the number one reason why people really succeed. Now there are some people who are successful who can start off life being very rigid in one, you know, one track mind. and they can get pretty far. I've known people like that. They started a business. They're not very fluid and they don't take criticism well. And yet they seem to be successful. But inevitably, those people don't last. They burn themselves out. I saw that with American apparel where I worked on the board of directors. So if you want to last, if you want to constantly be on an upward trajectory, I would say that flexibility and that open learning spirit is what separates. successful from the unsuccessful.

That's fantastic. Yeah, really good. I mean, I'm just sitting here thinking about all the ways I've seen that to be true and why we don't talk about that more. Very good. That's gold, Robert. I'm sorry, I don't have my favorite real estate book. That's okay.

We'll just pretend that you said it's my book. Yeah, right, right. By far. Or you can tell people that I'm your little brother and David Green's book. We're going to go with Robert. said the book on rental property investing. Thanks, Robert. That was very nice. Amazing. Yeah, I love it. Page Turner. Yeah. That's why they actually named him Turner. That's his last name. That's my last name. Long family of page turners, how they were named. All right, David.

Tell us, where can people find out more about you? I have a website called power seduction and war.com. Don't be intimidated by that. Those are my first three books. So power. Seduction and spelled out war.com. And there you'll find links to the book I did with 50 cent, the 50th law to mastery and to my new book, The Laws of Human Nature. And if you're in the Southern California area, on February 11th,

I'm doing an event with Ryan Holiday. You can find links to that on that site as well. Super cool. Very, very good. Yeah, everyone go there. Read all Robert's books, obviously. But the newest one, I'm completely loving it. I also, I loved mastery and 40 Love the Power.

Yeah, anyway, you're fantastic. So thank you so much for joining us today. Oh, you're very welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It was fun. All right. That was our show with Robert Greene, Near Times Best Selling Author, and just all around fantastic, dude.

That was one of my favorite shows because, man, he understands people. He's done a lot of research, and that's so important for real estate investors. He did not disappoint. I could have kept that thing going for another two hours if we had been able to. I mean, he just has so much information to share. I know. Whenever we get these really like big shot authors and stuff, I'm always like, man, I just want to keep them on the phone for like nine hours. It's just like, like, learn everything from them.

Because I'm like, this guy's done more study on human nature and on the laws of power and on mastery and on all these things, seduction, right? Not just like seduction in the sexual term, but like just like getting people to like you and to want to do what you want. Like all like, he's done so much research. He's just a master at these things. I could talk to him forever. But, of course, we can listen to his books. We can read his books. So go to Amazon, go to Audible, whatever, and pick up what you don't have.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I feel like if you master what he's teaching, you will become a Jedi. They could just get people to think whatever you want. These are not the droids you're looking for. Yeah, and you'll be getting every deal that comes along. So I just thought that was fantastic. I hope we get to interview him again later. Yeah.

Well, one thing, David, I've told other people this. I don't know if I've ever said it to you. But one thing that makes David Green here such an effective real estate agent and such an effective real estate investor is that, David, you're good at human nature. I don't know if it's going to you major in psychology or what, but you do almost everything Robert talked about today. You're really good at doing. Like, I just always know, so you're very good when I talk to you.

Remember how he asked him the question? He asked that question. How often do you talk with someone where you get off the phone and you just feel better? You just feel built up and stronger. Every time I talk to you, David, that's how I feel. And I know other people who feel like they've said the same thing about you to me. So good job. on you, keep doing that because, you know, it's working.

Well, thanks, Brandon. I did not expect you to say that, but it actually feels really good. You just Robert Green to me, didn't you? You just said something to make me feel good. And now I want to buy you something or help you with something. You want to come babysit, Rosie? I got it. I'm going to fly out to Maui.

You and Heather can go have dinner. All right, there you go. See how this works? No, but that was not my intention. But now you feel good. I feel good. We all feel good. Right?

So here's, I want to make one more people feel good. So everyone listen to this show, and you guys are awesome. You listen through an hour and a half almost of just a amazing content. You're still here. We love you. You guys are rock stars. So thank you for being a part of this show. And, uh, you know, let us know how we can help you. Follow us over on Instagram. Shoot us messages. Instagram is at David Green 24, correct? Yep. And mine is at Beardy Brandon. Bigger pockets is at bigger pockets. Like shoot us messages. Talk to us. Let us know how we can help you out. If you have ideas for shows, if you have ideas for videos you want us to

pump out topics, people you want us to interview, you know, let us know, tag us in your Instagram stuff. We'll get in there. We'll comment. Like, We want to be real with y'all and, you know, just be a part of your community because that's what this is. I say this on the webinars all the time, but I'll say it again now. Like, bigger pockets is like a, is not like a real estate is not like a cliff. It's a hike, right? So real estate investing is a hike. It's up and down and it's sometimes tough.

But what bigger pockets is what this community is like a group of friends hiking together. And that's what I love about this. It's like, hey, watch out for this pothole back here. And hey, try this little shortcut here. And hey, this is hard. This is hard. It's tough. Let's do it together.

Let me give you a hand up. Let me help you. Let me pull you up to where I'm at. Let me push you from behind. That's what this is, the hike. So, you know, it doesn't work unless you hike. But if we're all hiking together, amazing things can happen as a community. And that's what bigger pockets is.

So thank you all for being a part of this. That is great. If you live anywhere near me in Northern California, please look me up. I do monthly meetups. I want to meet you. I want to hear about your goals. I want to help you meet them. I want to help share my goals.

So you can help me meet those. We can work together like Brandon just said on this hike. With that being said, we're going to get out of here. Hope you guys like it. This is a podcast you should listen to at least twice. So go rewind, listen to it again, see what you might not have picked up on the first go round. With that, this is David Green for Brandon Page Turner, because he's a Page Turner, signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small.

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