The Jordan Harbinger Show - 581: Robert Greene | The Daily Laws Part One

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

Robert Greene (@RobertGreene) is the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers on power and strategy. His latest book is The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature. [This is part one of a two-part episode. Stay tuned for part two later this week!] What We Discuss with Robert Greene: The one simple reason why Robert Greene's work resonates among the hip-hop community's most accomplished artists. How seeing the world through a lens of radical realism allows you to be prepared for the worst life can throw your way. What we can do to uncover a career path that aligns with what has brought us joy in the past (hopefully before working 80 jobs we hate like Robert did prior to writing his first bestseller). Why we shouldn't fret if we haven't found our calling early in life -- the experiences we've had and lessons we've learned along the way combine to give us a unique edge when we finally do find it. Always stick to what makes you strange and weird. What made you a "weird" kid makes you an interesting adult. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/581 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. You get something out of everything. Combining your skill sets is very powerful because we live in a world where you have such access to information that the best entrepreneurs are combining things that nobody ever thought of and starting a kind of business that involves kind of very strange skill sets, but is so unique that it takes off. So never give up, never say that this was wasted time. Nothing is wasted.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game, astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional journalist-turned-poker champion, Russian spy, or music mogul. Each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker.

If you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it, we've got those episode starter packs. These are collections of your favorite episodes organized by topic that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or to help somebody else get started. I always appreciate it when you do that. Now, today, I'm always, always so excited to talk to my friend Robert Green. His work has not only been a perennial seller, but has stamped its influence everywhere from Russian

parliament to the U.S. prison system. And when I interviewed Robert for the seventh anniversary of my last show, so this is going back probably seven years or eight years now, he strongly encouraged me to keep going with podcasting and really master the craft. And I took his advice to heart. Now I'm more proud than ever to bring him back on the show for his newest book, The Daily Laws. If you haven't heard of this book yet, everywhere you will. The book is one of those, each chapter is a new day of the year kind of thing.

So this conversation doesn't follow the book because it kind of can't. And it's a little bit all over the place. I picked out some of the more, in my opinion, interesting bits of daily advice for this discussion. So it's going to seem like a conversation that doesn't quite have a map or a through line, which is hopefully okay with you. It seemed to work for us. Today, Robert and I cover some deep insight into our own nature as humans. What makes us so easy to manipulate, how our dark side built as the result of our upbringing,

creeps into everything that we do as adults. Now, if this sounds familiar, it's because I almost always cover similar topics with Robert. We even get into some career advice on this one because I wanted to break the mold and get a bit of a different interview from Robert, since he's on so many podcasts recently. If you've ever been manipulated, have seen deep dysfunction in others and possibly even in yourself, this episode will really open your eyes. There's a lot to cover, so let's get started. And if you're wondering how I manage to book guests like this, it's because of my network and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger. slash course and most of the guests on the show, subscribe to the course and contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, here's part one with Robert

Green. So we did a show about two years ago and I went through a lot of the laws of human nature and your newest book is kind of, I don't want to say a calendar, but it's daily. It's meant to be consumed day by day. And of course, like any kind of weirdo interviewer, I plowed through the whole thing in about two days in audio form, which is... do it day by day. You're supposed to have taken 365 days. I guess we didn't have that much time, though. I was going to say, I could have taken a year to prep it, but it would have been really, really slow and grueling process. This, and I'll mention this in the intro to the show, this is going to be a little bit of an all over-the-place conversation because of the book is. That's what the book is.

Right. And there's pieces where I'm like, that had nothing to do with the previous day, but oh well. So that's why the show is going to be a little weird. It's a PSA for the audience. I do want to start with why you write these books because I think, and I've looked at some of your negative reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. There are negative reviews. Believe it or not, there's at least one or two. And people will say, this guy is a sociopath and he's creating more sociopaths. This guy has evil on his mind because otherwise, why would he create this monstrosity that people are reading to learn how to hurt other people? And I know that that's not why you wrote these books. Well, they're not evil, obviously, according in my opinion. You know, when I first came up with the 48 laws of power way back in

95, I wasn't writing from a position of power, right? I never had any power up into that point. I had been kind of a failure in life, to be honest with you. I had 60 some different jobs. I tried journalism. Yeah, On and I counted one day. We got up to like 64. And then I said, I know I'm forgetting some things. There's probably more like 80, but we count. at 64. She commented because she knew me back then. She said, God, you've had so many different jobs in the three years I've known you. I said, well, you should just go back further. So anyway, I had never had any positions of power, right, but I had observed, I was a very keen observer. I had some of the worst bosses you can imagine. What we might classify today is psychotic bosses. I had every variety of it. And I'd seen all of these power moves going on. And it struck me

that this world is intensely hypocritical. It really, really piss me off. That this is what goes on in almost every single office. People, or you put three people together, politics takes over. Egos take over. The person who has the power and the leverage tends to go as far as they can with it. Right. They use their power.

They intimidate. They do all these things. Not every boss. Right. Don't get me wrong. But a lot. I don't do that with my team. Right, guys?

Okay, well, I'll talk to them later. But my experience had been this, right? But the books don't describe it. The books describe power as if it's all about being compassionate, empathetic, being a team player, you know, cooperating. These are what management and self-help books were all about. And I go, this isn't my reality. This isn't the reality of the work world. It's bullshit.

It really pissed me off that no one was writing about the truth about the kind of power games that go on, particularly in Hollywood where I was working. Oh, yeah. But I worked in a detective agency. I worked in a hotel in Paris. I worked for newspapers, magazines, you name it. I did all sorts of different kinds of jobs. And this was what I had seen.

This was the truth. And nobody really wanted to write a book about that. So I wanted to rip away the curtain, show people, this is what really goes on in the world of power because I had been on the wrong end of it. I had suffered because of my naivete, my natural naivete after graduating university and thinking everybody was just so interested in ideas and getting things done. And then I had this rude awakening that no people are interested in their egos and kind of promoting themselves. So I wanted

to sort of show the reality of what goes on in this world, right? And sort of help people like myself who are naive, right, deal with these kind of power games that are going on. And so I wrote from that perspective, but there is a level of irony involved, which tricks people and makes people make those kind of comments. So when I say, play on people's need to believe to create a cult like following, you know, people are going, Robert is teaching people how to create a cult? Well, nobody's going to use that chapter to actually literally create a cult. What I'm telling you is, the world we live in now, there are cults everywhere. Political groups are cults. All kinds of organizations are formed like a cult. It's part of our 21st century. And so I'm showing you,

I'm opening your eyes up to the nature of the world right now, right? When I say, always get other people to do the work, but take the credit for it. Right. You know, realistically, people who do that, which is the nature of a lot of jobs, you know, in Hollywood. I've done great with that. Just look at this podcast. Yeah. Yeah. So far so good. Yeah, exactly. So when I, in Hollywood, I would do all the writing for a screenplay, you know, bits of dialogue. My name was never put on it. Never, right? So that's kind of the nature of things. When politicians give a speech, they never write the speech. You never know who wrote the speech, right? This is the nature of the world. I'm just revealing it to you. And in the chapter,

I describe how you deal with that when somebody does it to you. And I know from the emails I've gotten, since that book came out 23 years ago. You're talking about 48 laws of power? Is that how old the book is? Yeah. Wow. I know. It's older than a lot of my readers. Yes, it is. So since 1998, when it came out, I've received thousands of emails from readers, right? And occasionally there'll be someone who'll say, I'm certain that my boss read your book and did this bad maneuver to me, and I feel kind of bad. But 98% of them are saying, you know, I didn't realize that I was outshining the master, law number one. Your book opened me up to that reality and saved me.

So most of the readers coming to my book, the real sharks out there don't need to read a book. look like that. This is their nature already. It's their nature already. The people who need it are people who like myself who kind of came out of the universe, were kind of naive by nature, and needed some awakening, needed to kind of learn the rules, the laws of power, so that they could play the game. And the other thing is, I'll shut up in a minute. No, no, you're good. The other thing is a lot of the power game traditionally was kind of older white men, at least in my experience in Hollywood, right? And so, you know, I wanted to like open the doors up and show everybody how the power game worked. And which kind of affirms what I'm saying here today or right now

is that among the first readers of the book, the ones who loved it the most who gave it its kind of popularity were hip-hop artists and people in the African-American community because they had traditionally been locked out of the game of power. And people like 50 would tell me, I wrote a book with 50 cent, would tell me later that. You don't call them 50. You call them 50. I don't want to sound like a fake thing. It's pretty, that's pretty witty. That's pretty witty. Robert Green. I don't even call him curse. I just say 50, 5-0, whatever you want, right? I'm a nerd. He knows that I know it. Yeah, I think as long as all the cards are on the table, it's fine. Okay. Anyway, he said, you know, he dealt crack on the streets of Southside Queens. He said,

nothing prepared me for the music business. That was the most hardcore power games he'd ever seen. And the book, the 48 Laws of Power, really, really helped him navigate that world. So I think that kind of shows that that's really the kind of the essence of the book. It's like, sort of a handbook for those who've never had power, how to deal with this kind of environment. Yeah, rappers like Rick Ross do use your material and love it. I interviewed him a few weeks ago. He's pretty amazing. He's really smarter than I would have kind of expected just based on the music. I mean, not that you can really assess someone's intelligence, but I figured anybody focused on this is not really going to be thinking about, no, he's looking for chicken places to buy and looking for cars that are going to go off the value. He's an entrepreneur, highest order.

Really? I'm going to be doing an event with him in December. Oh, really? Ted, a live talk here in L.A. He mentioned your stuff in his newest book and or on my show. I can't remember which one it was. But, yeah. I heard your books are banned in prisons, and I remember writing you an email about this a long time ago.

Are they banned or is it just popular? Both. Both. It depends on the state on the particular prison. Okay. So, like, the state of Utah, I believe, correct, has banned it. The state of Pennsylvania, I believe, has banned it. Okay.

Certain states. I don't think like the art of seduction is banned because nobody in prison is going to be, I hope. Well, you never know. You never know. Yeah. I hope not. But I believe the war book and the power book are banned, right? Yeah.

And I've gotten a lot of emails from people in prison who said, you know, Robert, thank you. This book has helped me. Because if you think about it, I mean, I'm saying Hollywood is bad. I'm saying the music business is bad. But imagine being in prison. Yeah. That makes Hollywood look like kindergarten. to be honest with you, right?

I would imagine it does. I don't have that much experience in prison. That we know of. Hollywood is, yeah, that I'm willing to talk about in public. Hollywood is bad. You know, I'm not a movie star or anything like that. Well, I guess it's worse for people who aren't, right? I suppose if you have power and leverage, maybe it's great.

Yeah, but, you know, in prison, all gloves are off. And it's not just violence. It's all kinds of weird mind games going on to kind of create a hierarchy. I'm the dominant person in this block, et cetera. And so people would write me saying, you know, I was so confused and people were, you know, I just didn't know what to do or what, who was where and the wardens were which side people were on. And your book really helped give me some clarity. And sometimes somebody would write, right, and say, I didn't quite feel comfortable with this. I used your book to take over cell block A. Then, okay, I don't know about that. Well, maybe, maybe you did it to do something good. Who knows. The fact that they're writing you emails from prison, though, should tell you that they're not following all the rules, because I'm not sure how allowed that is. Yeah. I think a lot of these people wrote to me after they got out of prison.

That makes sense. But a lot of people in prison, so like 50 had a 550, had an assistant. His name will come to me in a minute because I want to give him a shout out. He's a great guy. Anyway, he'd been in prison for like 20 years. He was caught up in that New York law where if you had three drug offenses, you were put in prison. It was just ridiculous because he was like not a dealer or anything. Yeah. It was so unfair. And anyway, it was before my book came out, right? So he can't say, but he told me, you know, what kind of the life was like in prison.

And he said that your book really described it. And he could understand why people would find it extremely helpful because he was not the powerful person. He was kind of like this kind of small guy who was just sort of not used to that kind of environment. And it was extremely frightening. Oh, man. I can't even imagine. So stay out of prison, will you? Stay out of prison is the moral of the story.

Yeah. That's third times the charm. The book is designed to make you a radical realist. Or many of your books are designed to make you a radical realist. And that for me is, tell me what that means and why it's important. Yeah. Well, it's really the kind of the goal of the daily laws in a weird way. But the idea for me is we have to deal with so much illusion and bullshit and crap in our world.

When we leave university, we're filled with all of these misconceptions about people from our parents, from our peers, from just the atmosphere of being in school, what professors teach us. So we don't have a real grip on reality. And then when we enter the work world, we're usually kind of bitch-slap by it. And sorry for the exception. No, all good. And you're the one who's going to get canceled, not me. That word is cancelable?

Everything is, yes, that one for sure. Yeah, of course. Oh, okay. I don't know. I'm not the arbitrary. If I knew what could get canceled, I'd ever see that. So you got female dog slapped. Yeah, it's even worse somehow.

Okay. Go ahead. So suddenly reality is right, right in your face. And you don't know how to deal with it. And you make a wrong step here and there. You get involved in some kind of emotional drama. It kind of creates a wound that lasts forever. You end up going down this rabbit hole that you can't escape on into your late 20s, et cetera.

and you started off on the wrong foot. So I tell people, imagine the following scenario. You have all these illusions about yourself, right? You think you're probably greater than you are. You have a bit of grandiosity. You don't really know what you're good at, what you're bad at, what you were meant to do in life, what I call your life's task. So imagine that you could have this radical realism

where you understood who you were, what you're really good at, what your strengths are, what you're not good at, what you were meant to accomplish in life, you had real deep clarity about what you were destined to create in this world. That would be incredibly powerful and liberating for you. Then imagine dealing with people in your life, your bosses, your peers, your children, etc. You're walking around and you have no idea what's going on in their minds. People wear masks. They pretend to love you, they smile. I love your screenplay. Jordan's fantastic. While they're actually thinking, God, that guy's the worst ride I've ever met, right? I'm not saying

this personally. No, I mean, it's true. I would never, if I had a screenplay, it would be terrible. Okay. So you have no idea what's going on in the minds of people, right? It's our nature. We're born actors. So imagine also you have this radical realism where you could see into them. You could actually see through the opakness of people and understand what's going on, not completely. You have a better idea if they really do like you, if they really are interested in your ideas, if they are planning to help you or planning to sabotage you. Think of all the mistakes you would avoid and all the powerful forms of connection you could create with people. It would be awesome. And then finally think about the world at large. So the world has what we call

a zeitgeist, since you speak German. I'm going to use some German. Spirit of the Times. Yeah. Okay. We have a Spirit of the Times, right? And this thing is always changing. It's never static, right? So you walk through life, you don't really know where the world is headed. You don't realize that in two or three years your career is going to be hitting a wall. You're going to be downsize. You're going to be out of work. You don't know what's the next step, what's the next move to make. And then also you start a business not realizing that that business is not, you know, going to be viable in six months. Imagine finally that you have that ability to see what's going on in the world, to see realistically the trends happening. So radical realism is the most

powerful form of thinking that you can have in my world. It's not something that's depressing. It's not people think of realism as kind of ugly and drab. They think fantasy. see is wonderful and beautiful, and reality is kind of, uh, but actually radical realism is very inspiring, it's very beautiful way of looking at the world, to sort of accept this is the world as it is, as opposed to how I want it to be or wish it to be, is actually a profoundly moving and almost, I hate to use the word poetic, but, you know, to see the world, to see things as they are, is very, very powerful and very inspiring, I find. So you're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Robert Green.

We'll be right back. Thank you for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. To learn more and get links, all those URLs, all those codes, you don't have to write those down. They're all in one place. Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals is where you can find it. Please consider supporting those who support us.

And don't forget, we have worksheets for many episodes if you want. Some of the drills the exercise has talked about during the episodes of this show. those are all in one easy place as well. That link is in the show notes, Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Now, back to Robert Green. It's like a superpower the way that you phrase it though as well, right? Because if we, no one can see the future, but if I have a conversation with my boss and I say, I think that went really well. He's going to support my ideas. But really, it's become so clear to somebody who's trained or read your work, for example, that what he's going to do is use this conversation against

me the first chance he gets, it would pay if I knew that, right? I should already be looking for another job based on what I know and how that conversation went. But a lot of us, we get blindsided. And every Friday we give advice on our Feedback Friday episodes, people write in with problems. And there's a lot that can't be foreseen or foretold, so to speak, but there's a lot where I think I've read this letter and it's really clear from the details that this person sees the writing on the wall. Maybe they read your book, not quite sure. But they just, go, I can't put my finger on it, but this happened before and that happened before. And now with this happening, I'm pretty sure that I'm on the outs. And I say, look, you don't know, you don't know if

that's true, but you should plan almost as if that were true. And, you know, we give them a strategy for that. And it sure pays to be ready, especially if you're going to get let go from a job or you're going to be forced to move or you're dealing with something in a relationship. So yeah, it's almost like a superpower. There's so many notes that I have about allaying people's insecurities. And so the so-called dark side stuff that we kind of talked about in the beginning of the conversation, but maybe we actually flip the script a little bit or change gears and start with some positive career advice, because it is tempting to stay with the dark side of the force when we have conversations about power and influence, I think. And not a lot of people probably go with

the positive stuff when you're sitting in front of them, right? I don't know. I could be wrong. You do mention in some of the daily laws, there are chapters about reconnecting with your childhood passions. I would love to talk about this because a lot of people think the majority of people, like you said, even go to school and through school having no idea what they should do. And reconnecting with your childhood passion seems like a really good way to at least get started on the path of figuring that out. Well, the first chapter in mastery was called Discover Your Life's task. And so the first month of the daily laws is about that the month of January. Because it's really, if I had to say it, Jordan, it's the most important thing in your life right now. And so,

particularly if you're younger. You know, if you're in your 50s or 60s, it's getting a little bit late, I'm sorry to say, but it's never really too late. But if you're younger, man, that is the most important thing you can learn. I can't emphasize it enough because I have studied throughout my years and the thousands of books I've read for my research. Biographies are the most successful, famous, creative people. And I've done consulting with people on the highest levels.

So I've seen this firsthand, and I've done it in my research. And inevitably, these are people who understood at some point in life that this is what I was destined to follow. This is a path for me. Most people is like a zigzag. You don't have a straight line. This is what I was meant to do. It's never like that. It wasn't for me.

But you kind of have an idea and it becomes clearer and clear. And you find that path and it leads to so much power, becomes so creative and so energized. Because you enjoy your work. You learn faster. you're engaged emotionally with what you're doing. It is so important. And a lot of people who were successful had a clear idea when they were five or six. Some people discovered it at the age of 12 or 18. Me, I really didn't discover until I was about 35. Is this 60 jobs later or 80 jobs later? Probably 80 jobs later when I got to write the 48 loss of power. But anyway, so it's not easy

And a lot of people get confused and why do you get confused? Well, the psychologist Abraham Maslow, who studied a lot of children, for instance, he said that children, you'll maybe know this with your two-year-old, they have what he calls impulse voices. And these are voices that say, I like this, I don't like that. I like this kind of food. I hate this. I'm going to spit it out. I like this person. I don't like that person.

They're very clear. They know what they like and what they don't like. It's so obvious to them in almost pre-verbal sense. It's like binary. Yeah. Right. Yeah, there's almost no lukewarm. With my kid anyway, he's either open-minded or it's not happening.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So everyone had that because it's the nature of being an infant in this world, right? Because it's natural. It's a voice that's naturally inside all of us. And then as you get older, you start listening to Mr. Harbinger and Mrs. Harbinger telling you,

don't do this, Jaden. Yeah. do this. You know, this is what you should behave like this. Don't behave like that. Yeah. And the kid starts getting a little confused. So I say, well, my voice tells me to do this, but I'm told not to do that. And slowly you go through a process where you're not hearing it anymore. You're hearing what teachers tell you. You're hearing what parents tell you. You're hearing what peers are telling you about what's cool, what's not cool. You're hearing what social media nowadays is telling you. I'm talking about like your career, what you were meant to do. And then

you arrive, you're 18, 19 years old, and you haven't a clue because you can't hear that voice anymore. And you're going to try this, that, that, the other, not based on things that are deep inside of you, but based on what other people have told you you should do or what they think is cool. And you're going to end up trapped. You're going to end up choosing a career path that seems seductive and interesting and lucrative. And five years down the line, you realize it doesn't really interest me and you hit a wall and you go, fuck, man, what's going on with my life? You start maybe drink. I know I'm giving a little exaggerated scenario, but you start drinking. I thought you were just narrating my exact life story. Continue. So far, spot on.

You get addicted to online porn, you know, on and on and on and on and on, right? That's funny. Okay, so, and then you're 30, and then it's starting to get a little late. Yeah. Right? Okay. So the problem is, how do you clear away all of that, that noise, that white noise that's drowning out your impulse voices and actually hear what was your voice when you were two years old, right? And so it's a process. I've done it in consulting with people trying to help them figure it out. People will say, I haven't a clue what I was meant to do in this world, right? You talk about my early childhood. I can't remember anything. Okay, so it's not, for a lot of people, it's not obvious or easy, and I understand that. But we go through a process if I'm able to do that

with them, you know, online or in person sometimes, where we reconstruct some of the early memories of things that really excited them when they were a kid and things that they hated. And a book that I always recommend, to people, it's on the shelf somewhere right behind you. I don't see it right now called The Five Frames of Intelligence by Howard Garner. A really good book. We'll link to that in the show notes. Okay. The idea is we normally associate intelligence with kind of book learning and intellectual

learning. But he says there are five different kinds of intelligence and each is equally valid and important. One of them will be obviously words and language. It was something that I was attracted to. Some of it will be with figuring out patterns. It leads to like a mathematician or somebody interested in statistics. Another one is a little more abstract. I can't remember which one that leads to like music.

Then there's kinetic intelligence. Like athletes. Yeah. It's all about your body. And that's a very high form of intelligence. We don't think of that way. But it is a form of intelligence. There's a social intelligence where it's all about people.

And he makes the point that a child has one of those forms of intelligence that dominates inevitably. Some people might have a sub, another one that's kind of in the background, but one of them inevitably dominates in them, right? And if you choose a career that's not really in alignment with what you're naturally, your brain was wired in a particular way. It's genetic. And if you're not following that, forget it. You'll never get anywhere.

So we go through a process of trying to figure out what is just in the most general way. Let's not get so specific about your actual career choice. What is that form of intelligence that you're inclined towards? You know, it's not difficult. Were you really attracted to sports and movement? Do you find your most joyous when you're like dancing or running? And that's what gets you excited and you think about that? Okay, well, that's probably in some ways where your brain is wired.

You know, is it words in some, just the sound of words that kind of obsess you and fascinate you like it did when I was a kid? You should probably be involved in some form of writing, right? Okay, so we go through that process. What is your frame of intelligence? We kind of determine that. And then we kind of reconstruct certain key moments in your childhood where you did something and it felt right. Now, a lot of people don't have that.

I maintain it everybody has it. You just, you have to kind of dig. But you did something, and in the process of doing it, it felt like there was kind of a gnat and ease to it, as opposed to learning math when you don't like math. There's no ease involved, right? For some people, that ease is in math. Okay, let's talk about that. Let's put our finger on that for a little bit, on and on and on.

And then as we get older, I like to look at what people hate. So when I was 23, I discovered that I hated working for other people. Well, that's why I had 60-some different jobs. And that makes sense. You know, I don't like the political games. I don't like all the bullshit. I don't like all the stuff, all the things you have to play and pretend. I'm an entrepreneur.

It took me a long time to figure it out because I never had a job more than 11 months in my entire life. It took me a time, okay, I should be working for myself because I don't like working for other people. So if we detect in this person that they don't like that, and that's a lot of people, I'm afraid of the world today. You should be an entrepreneur. you should be working for yourself eventually. So that's part of the process that we go through. It's more complex than that, but that gives you an idea of what it's like.

I love this because when I was a kid, I learned how to build out of like little parts from Radio Shack, an FM radio transmitter. And it was kind of interesting because I would solder these little things in and my dad was a mechanical engineer. And he goes, wow, I wonder if my kid's going to be an electrical engineer. And then when I built it and it didn't work,

it was frustrating, but someone helped me fix it. And then I could transmit, my voice to the radio probably like, you know, 50 feet away. And that was the part that was the most interesting. And I realized they didn't really care about making the thing as much as I cared about somehow being able to talk to my friends and things like that. So I wanted to turn the power up on this thing. And I learned that you could do that by elite, like breaking federal law and attaching a high gain antenna. And then communicating with the Russians. Yeah. So yeah, accidentally communicating with the Russians. Yeah, this is like an 80s Disney movie or something.

like that cloak and dagger. But I wanted to, I said, I want to be able to talk to everyone in the neighborhood on their radios. And they were like, that's super illegal. You can't do that. My mom sort of put the gabash on that project. Then I go through this whole path and I'm good at studying and I go through college and I get good grades. And I decide, I guess I should go to law school because more school is better. So then I become a lawyer, but I already knew I didn't want to become a lawyer. And then I start the podcast in my second year of law school and I end up on serious XM satellite radio. And then I quit law. and I come back to this, and I didn't remember that when I was a kid, I wanted to be on the radio.

Wow. I only remembered it probably eight years plus after doing this. It's a perfect example. Yeah. If I'd freaking listen to myself, I could have gone to broadcasting school. No, no, no. Everything's for a reason. It was better that way.

First of all, your law career taught you some interesting things that you're never going to forget. That's true. There's some skill sets that were created then. And then if you had found your way to podcasting too early, it wouldn't have the same meaning to you. That's true. you're so excited that you found the right thing because you kind of hated law in law school. It means much more and you actually are more motivated to follow it through. Like if I had been offered to write a book when I was 24 as opposed to 35, 36, it would have

never worked. I didn't have the experience. I didn't have the desperation, et cetera. That makes sense. I mean, I didn't even get into podcasting because I thought it would be fun to do a show. I got into podcasting because I was recording a lecture of a course that I was teaching and I needed to put it online. and podcasting was the only way to put in MP3.

Wow, you've had like 80 different jobs. Yeah, I mean, this was during law school. I was teaching a networking class. I said, I'm doing them the same damn talk every week. I need to record it on my Sony minidisc player. Wow. Take it and then get it to my computer, make an MP3 file, and put it on the internet. But there was no SoundCloud.

There was no YouTube, you know. No, no. So my friend said, hey, there's podcasting. You can put these files online. And that was the bird. What year are we talking about? 2006. That was just the beginning of podcast.

I think we were one of the first 800 or first thousand shows. I can only remember my first podcast was like an 08. And I was like, whoa, what is this? Yeah. It's like a downloadable radio show. Yeah. Yeah. And here we are.

So you're right. It sort of makes sense because if someone said, hey, you should start a podcast, I'd probably go, I'm not going to be some guy who records stuff in his basement. That's dumb. And then I did that for a long time. And here we are. Yeah. What do we do when we realize we've chosen the wrong career?

Like if we just get up when we realize, look, I'm not just burned out. I'm not just tired. I'm doing something I hate. I've known it for years. I'm finally going to do something about it. What is that thing that we do? Well, one thing just to backtrack a minute here, one thing I left out, the reason why you want to follow this path isn't just because it's some kind of mystical destiny sort of idea. The human brain works best. We learn fastest when we're emotionally engaged, when we're interested and excited by something. The brain opens up, we become like a sponge, because we want to learn, and our attention is much deeper, and so we learn faster. So if you choose the wrong

career for whatever reason, you know, like you go to law school and you're kind of half listening as the professor is droning on, you're kind of half reading the books. You're not involved in it, and so you're not learning fast enough, right? And if you don't learn fast enough, creativity, which is what we all want, is a function of the intensity of your knowledge of the information you've absorbed. The faster you absorb information, the more thoughts and associations you create in the brain, it starts going all the time and ideas are coming to you. If you take five years to learn something, that stuff going on in the brain won't happen. So that's why we want to do it. Okay. So you're going to find out in your career that you are not emotionally engaged. That isn't

happening. The gears aren't connecting. You're tuning out. You're not paying attention, right? And you kind of realize that. Okay, so that's, you have to be able to realize that. And not a lot of people are going through their 20s, for instance, because they're going after a big paycheck. They're unaware that they're actually not really attuned to what they're supposed to be learning. Okay. But once you have that moment, it kind of depends on how old you are. So there's not like a single formula for what you should do. So if you're 24 and you realize you made the wrong choice, that's great. Now we can go through a process and you can make a fairly radical shift in your career decision because you haven't wasted.

I'm not saying wasted. That's too harsh a word, but you haven't spent 15 years and something not relevant to you. It's only been a couple years. All right? Let's go through the process figuring out what you were to do and let's kind of change your skill set, right? Let's start heading in that towards that direction of what you were intended to do. you can make a more radical shift. But if you're in your 30s, I wouldn't recommend that because you need to make a living, right?

You have learned things. You have learned certain skills. So what I recommend is not a radical shift, but a more subtle shift, heading more in that direction. And that might include keeping the job that you have, but at night going to school or online, learning some new skills that you now can quit your plan is to quit this job in two or three years, but you will have learned things that will allow you to quit and go on to this other path. Or you figure out a way to kind of shift it. So I know a woman, Alison Hope Winer, I don't know if you know her.

She has a podcast. Many people have fun. There are two point whatever million. I thought everyone knew each other. Yeah, we all hang out. It's a really, really big cafe. Anyway, like you, she studied law, and then she realized that she wanted to be a writer. And so what she did is she went into legal journalism.

That was how she made a shift. You know, because that was, she could still make a living. She could become a writer. And then she learned true writing skills. And then she could, like, maybe write a novel if she wanted to at that point. So that's the kind of more gradual shift. If you're in your 40s, it's even more gradual that you have to do. But the thing is, you've all your life, you have been accumulating experiences.

You have to keep that in mind. So even when I was working in Greece, because I would, landed on the island of Crete one summer, and I got very sick, and I ran out of money, and I was in a hospital. Oh, my gosh. And then I came out, and I had no money to get back to Paris, wherever I was living. I had to go work in construction. You were literally stranded in Crete?

Crete. Like, is that where the Minotaur lives? Is that the... Yes. Knoisse. Yeah. Well, he doesn't live there anymore, but he was from there. Right.

Yeah, that's where he was from. And this is, like, not... There's no internet at this point. You can't just be like, hey, somebody wire me some money. If I told you what year it was, you'd be shocked. Yeah, I don't want to make you feel. Yeah, yeah. We're talking, you know, prehistoric period.

No internet, nothing. I mean, you could have, I could have made a phone call and had money wired, sure. But I was embarrassed. I didn't want to have to involve my parents. I didn't even tell them I was in a hospital. Oh, wow. So I'm working in construction, and it was a really weird world where the boss was Greek and all of the people working for him doing the construction.

construction work were like Australians and Americans in English all blonde, blue-haired, blue-eyed, blue-haired, blue eyes. You know, it was like the reverse of here because we were all people who were been stranded. Yeah, everyone just got out of the hospital. Yeah. So I was like ripping nails off of boards, et cetera. Man, I hated it. It was the worst job.

I know that I'm not destined for doing construction. So the long-winded point of this anecdote is that, I learned everything taught me what I'm good at, what I hate. I know I'm not good with my hands. That only made it clearer to me, et cetera. Yeah, you went through a long process of elimination to get there. So the point is, don't just like say, oh, I did this job. I got nothing out of it.

You get something out of everything. And if you're in your 30s, for instance, combining your skill sets. So combining writing with law is very powerful because we live in a world where that you have such access to information that the best entrepreneurs are combining things that nobody ever thought of. Exactly. And starting a kind of business that involves kind of very strange skill sets, but is so unique that it takes off. So never give up, never say that this was wasted time. Nothing is wasted.

This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Robert Green. We'll be right back. And now for the rest of Part 1 with Robert Green. I love the tip, for lack of a better word, of the instruction that you can compare the moments that you did what others wanted you to do versus what you felt and the moments when you did what you wanted to do, especially if you can remember those as a kid,

to bring out the ideas, or at least an idea of what might be right for you. Because if I look back and my parents go, oh my gosh, you bugged us and you rode your bike to Radio Shack 500 times, and you bugged us for money to buy these extra pieces, and you wanted to take the antenna off the house that we used to get cable, and connected to your device, you know, that was the stuff that was really lighting me up and getting later on, getting in trouble messing with the phone system and things like that. You know, people thought, you're going to become an engineer, but really I liked the communication

element. It just didn't really occur to me because I was too busy stealing long-distance calls from Ma Bell. You could have been a criminal, too. I was. I was. I was just juvenile and didn't get caught, right? They didn't get caught once, but that's a different story that will, I'll have to bring that out on another show. But the advice, I think, that you wrote about in The Daily laws, I think you phrased it, always stick to what makes you strange and weird. And that's surprisingly really good advice. Yeah, I mean, the people that are really kind of reach the apex of power, like an Elon Musk or a Steve Jobs or a rock store, people in politics, who we kind of hold as like icons, you can honestly say that there's nobody else like them, right? They're one of a

kind. They're weird. They're strange, right? And it's because they're not afraid of what makes themselves different. So what happens when you're younger, when you're four or five, you know something strange about you. You're kind of connected. You're in a dream world. And then you enter school and people start saying, oh, that's weird. The idea of being different kind of gets a negative connotation, right? And you want to conform. You want to be part of the group. You want to, you know, there's peer pressure. And so the idea of being different and strange kind of has a negative tint, although we might ostensibly say, oh, it's good to be different and weird. We actually are afraid of it deep down inside

because it comes with criticism, it comes with people kind of making fun of us, et cetera. So your source of power in life is actually what makes you weird and strange, right? You know, it makes you different. So I make the point in mastering in the daily laws that there's never going to be another Jordan Harbinger in this world.

Your DNA has never occurred before and will never occur again. and your parents and how their DNA and their genetic component and how they raised you will never be replicated. So you are one of a kind by nature. It's irrefutable, right? Okay, so there's something so very different about you. And it's hard to put into words

because some of its genetics, some of its early education. And that what makes you different is the source of what you want to lean into because if we can say that there are 20 Jordan Harbingers out there, they all have the same idea, there's no power behind it, right? You can be replaced by 19 other Jordan Harbingers who are doing the same thing. But if you're the only one thinking of this thing, if you're the only one creating it, that is the ultimate in power.

Now, that's the ideal, it's hard to reach, right? But to the degree that you know what makes you different and you lean into it and you exploit it, that's where the realm of power lies. Now, I don't want to seem egocentric here, so I have to be a little bit careful, but to talk about myself here for a second. Go for it. As I said, my arc was I kind of had a failure.

I was a bit of a loser by the time I was 35, 36. I tried all sorts of different things. And then I was asked if I had any ideas for books, and I kind of described this process in the Daily Laws. And it was this very interesting man, Yostelphers, who was a book package, or we were in Italy at the time. and I kind of improvised this idea that turned into the 48 laws of power. It was sort of a nice chance encounter.

It was a beautiful day in Venice, Italy, and I gave a really great pitch. And so when I created the book, because he got so excited, he said, Robert, I'll pay you to live while you write half the book and then we'll sell it. And so when I started the process, naturally, my mind gravitated towards other books out there. Sure. Right? And then I just wasn't comfortable with that. And I just sort of thought, I want to tell stories. I love telling stories.

When I first pitched the idea to this man, I told him a story. That's how I naturally am. I'm actually more of a novelist in some ways. I like creating drama and stories. And so I started writing stories like little parables for the 48 laws of power. And then I thought, I want to be able to tell the meaning of this story and not just leave it out there. So I wrote this as what's known as the interpretation of the story. Is this like the director's cut on a DVD where they're narrating how they made the movie?

A little bit. A little bit. You mean what I'm doing right now? No, just the meaning of the story. Because as a non-writer, I'm not super familiar with that. Well, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just groping in the dark. And basically, the short end of it is I was kind of creating my own thing, right?

Kind of in a haphazard way. I was falling in this path that was me, that was weird, creating stories, kind of interpret. them, then giving you some theory, then having quotes that were in kind of shapes, and then having things on the side, side material with passages from fairy tales and fables. You know how, right? Yeah, those are like boxes, sidebar or whatever they're called. Yeah. Yeah, we call those. I call it side material. Anyway, I ended up creating this book that you could hate it for very many reasons, but you can say there's nothing else out there like it. It doesn't look like another book, page by page. It doesn't read like another book because the structure is something that no one has ever

done before. You know, it's my own idea. And so it's like one of a kind. And then the publisher, when they first got the book, they loved it. They gave us an advance. And somewhere in the process, they said, you know, Robert, I think this book is just a little too weird. Let's kind of soften it a little bit. Let's make it more like other books. So that business with the story and the interpretation. Get rid of that. Just write a story and kind of talk about it. Yeah. Okay. And then fortunately, the man who I mentioned here, Yost, the Dutchman who paid me, he stood by me and I, because I said, I don't want to change it. This will either sink or swim the way it is. You know, it's a weird book, but weird sells. That's what makes it a powerful. Right. So we stuck by it and we said, no,

we're going to do it our way. So the moral of the story is, if I tried to make it, it like other books, I wouldn't be here talking to you right now. My book would not have succeeded. So by sticking to what makes me different to what makes open me up to ridicule, in fact, is what made the book so successful. So anyway. This point really is well taken because there's another guest on the show, Ramit Sati, talks about financial things. One of the points he made on an earlier podcast was, I'm going to butcher the quote here, but it was something along the lines of the market and people out there want to make you vanilla. Yeah. But as soon as you become vanilla, they dump you because they already have vanilla. So you really want to be

Tutti-Fruity. Yeah, or like Neapolitan at the very least. Yeah, is that what that is? Yeah. Yeah. So like... I think. Yeah. I could be wrong. I feel like Tudy-Fruity would be fruity or than just one stripe of thing. Yeah, yeah, wouldn't have the chocolate. Yeah, there'd be less chocolate. Yeah, you're right. Okay. Well, I don't know if I'm right. I'm just speculating. But the idea is, hey, you got to take those unique angles because if somebody, and I've gotten lessons for interviewing and coaching and things like that. And I do sometimes discard the advice because they'll say, you know, if you just do it this way, this is how most journalists do it. And I'm thinking, oh, that's good. And then I'll do it and I'll go, this is really boring. And my show now sounds

like every other interviewer. Exactly. And there's a reason for that because it's formulaic. Yeah. And I'll get a lot of feedback. Hey, just ask questions. Don't add any stories. Don't add any color, just ask the questions. It used to make me feel bad, but I realized this is just people trying to make me vanilla who will immediately stop listening to the show once I become vanilla. Those same people will write in and go, shows just lost something that you had before. I can't quite put my finger on it. I'm going, I took your advice. That's the problem. I took your advice. I should have ignored you like I do everybody else. The book is, you're supposed to be read chapter a chapter a day. Did you think about what you were going to put in February? A page of day?

Did you think about what you would put for February 29? Did you agonize over what's going to go on that day? I thought about it. I don't remember what was on that day. It's adopt the hacker mindset. Yeah. It's only going to be read once every four years. I figured you put something.

Yeah. To be honest with you, Jordan, I'd be lying if I said there was some incredible ulterior motive behind it. But I did think about it at the time. Like, I don't want to put a really common, powerful idea that everybody needs to read on February 29. Right. Not to say that you don't want to read that, but maybe read it only every four years. Yeah, that's funny. I thought about that.

I thought, oh, I bet this is something he thought, this isn't that important. I'll just put it in there. I'll put it on. Everything's important, but it's not as important. Right. Yeah, it's the 365th most important concept. 366. Oh, yeah, 366 is the most important concept.

If you're looking for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger show to sink your teeth into, here's a trailer with our guest, Robert Green. If we just sit in our inner tube with our hands behind our head and crack open a six-pack of beer, the river of dark nature takes us towards that waterfall of the shadow. Yeah. So when we're children, if we weren't educated, if we didn't have teachers or parents telling us to study, we'd be these monsters. We're all flawed.

I believe we humans naturally feel envy. It's the chimpanzee in us. It's been shown that primates are very attuned to other. animals in their clan and are constantly comparing themselves. Your dislike of that fellow artist or that other podcaster, 99% sure that it comes from a place of envy. You are not a rational being. Rationality is something you earn.

It's a struggle. It takes effort. It takes awareness. You have to go through steps. You have to see your biases. When you think you're being rational, you're not being rational at all. You go around everything is personal.

Oh, why? say that? Why is my mom telling me this? And I'm telling you it's not personal. That's the liberating fact. People are wrapped up in their own emotions, their own traumas. So you need to be aware that people have their own inner reality. People are not nearly as happy and successful as you think they are. Acknowledging that you have a dark sight, that you have a shadow, that you're not such a great person as you think can actually be a very liberating feeling. And they're ways to take that shadow and that darkness and kind of turn it into something else. If you want to learn more about how to read others and even yourself, be sure to check out

episode 117 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. All right, part two coming up in a few days. Links to everything bookwise will be on the website in the show notes, Jordan Harbinger.com. Please use our website links if you buy the book. A lot of you say, oh, I buy so many books from the guests on your show. Did you use the links? Oh, no, I just Googled it. Come on, folks.

It helps support the show. worksheets for the episode are in the show notes, transcripts are in the show notes. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel at jordanharbinger.com slash YouTube. We've also got our Clips channel with cuts that don't make it to the show, highlights from the interviews that you can't see anywhere else.

Jordan Harbinger.com slash clips is where you can find it. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram, or just hit me on LinkedIn. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using the same software systems and tiny habits that I use. That's our six-minute networking course, which again is free, jordanharbinger.com slash course.

I'm teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty. And most of the guests you hear on the show contribute to the course as well. So come join us. You'll be in smart company. This show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millio Campo, Ian Bair, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others.

The fee for this show is that you share it with friends. If you find something useful or interesting, if you know somebody who could use Robert's advice or as a Robert Green fan, please share this episode with him. I hope you find something great in every episode of this show. Please share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen and we'll see you next time.

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