The School of Greatness - 1 Robert Greene: How to Master Anything and Achieve Greatness

Episode Date: January 24, 2013

Today I’m launching something I’m very excited about. It’s called The School of Greatness. I’m constantly connecting with inspiring individuals such as creative entrepreneurs, world class athletes, and interesting celebrities. I love hearing their story about how they’ve achieved greatness and wanted to share their message to a broader audience. For that, I’ve created this

Hello everyone and welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes. I'm an author, lifestyle entrepreneur, former pro athlete, and world record holder in football. My goal with the School of Greatness is to share with you stories from the most inspiring business minds, world-class athletes, and influential celebrities on the planet to help you find out what makes great people great. So please leave us a review over on iTunes and join us on the web at schoolofgreatness.com

to be notified of each episode when it comes out. Now let's get after it. Hey everyone, I am very excited to finally be hosting this show for you. And it's my goal to release a new show every two weeks. But my first group of interviews are all coming out this first week. I am constantly inspired by the interesting people I meet, and it's my goal to share these relationships with you and the world through this podcast. And our first guest is Robert Green, perhaps the premier student of what it means to be great. His work has proven immensely influential from the start

as an international bestseller with the 48 Laws of Power, in which he dives through 3,000 years of history and studies and has sold a couple million copies all over the world. The book was popular in the hip-hop community for entrepreneurs, celebrities, athletes, and actors like 50 Cent, entrepreneurs, celebrities, athletes, and actors like 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Will Smith, amongst many others. He has since written other bestselling books like The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, and The 50th Law with 50 Cent. Robert is incredibly influential and this interview had our guests crying and left me with a profound admiration for his work and his greatness. This episode is about an hour and a half long and we don't anticipate to continue to have this long of episodes, but Robert is such an excellent guest that it would have been a shame

to cut the interview short. As you begin, you'll see that this show gets progressively more interesting. So without further ado, I present Mr. Robert Green. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Robert. Hello. Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited. I'm very excited. Now, first off, before we actually get into some of the content, why did you decide to cover this topic of mastering? Well, prior to this book, I had been working for, let's say, 13 years or so, researching power in all of its different forms,

from great political figures to seducers to artists, et cetera. And then I had the opportunity to actually interact with a living power figure of 50 cent. And I noticed that all these people sort of shared something, that there was something that's a quality that they all had. It wasn't anything physical. It was something about how their minds operated. And I just thought if I could figure out what it is that these people shared, it would be like the ultimate book. It would be like the ultimate secret to power itself. I could

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

The 48 Laws of Power is really big in the hip-hop community. And he was just curious to meet me. He was just curious to meet me, and we met in the back room of a steakhouse in New York City back in 2006, I think it was. Wow. It was kind of intimidating because I was the only sort of white guy there. You had a huge entourage. We had a huge entourage. It was kind of like something out of The Godfather. But it ended up we hit it off really well.

You wouldn't think of looking at us because, you know, we don't look similar or anything. But we got along really well. We shared a kind of interest in strategy and warfare. We like to talk about sports and power maneuvers and what people are really up to and in the music business what this executive is doing and why it fits in with the 48 Laws. So we connected really well on that. Wow. And so we decided to do a book together.

I spent about six months. For six months, I was pretty much hanging out with him. Really? I'd go back and forth, back to L.A., but I was in New York a lot. Wow. I would hang out with him in all his meetings. I went to his house and hung out at his strange mansion in Connecticut that he bought from Mike Tyson. And then I went to Vegas a lot with him, you know, partied with him.

Neither of us are like real party animals, but, you know, so we got to know each other pretty well. Wow. And being around him, you know, I was sort of considering, I never got to be around Napoleon Bonaparte. I'm not that old. And I thought this is my chance to be around a real kind of, I call him the Napoleon Bonaparte of hip-hop, to really see in real time, you know, what a power figure is like.

Wow. And he was amazing. And I deduced from that time that the secret to 50 is his fearlessness, and that's what the 50th Law is about. Amazing. I'm sure you have tons of stories you can write about six months basically shadowing him. Did you live there as well, or were you just kind of like, you know? No. I mean, I did spend a few nights at the mansion in Connecticut.

That's amazing. But, no, I'd go back to my apartment in New York. But I was pretty much, they gave me incredible access to him, and I'd be in all the meetings, and I saw how he handled himself. And, you know, he really embodies, like, a lot of the laws of power and the art of seduction and the strategies of war and mastery. So it was exciting, yeah. Wow, that's amazing.

I'm going to have to ask you later more about that. But let's go into the six keys of mastery, the secret to ultimate power over yourself and your craft. The path to power is surprisingly simple. Tell me a little bit more about that. Well, you know, we have this myth that people who are highly successful or high achievers, that maybe there's something that they had good luck or they have a large brain or there's something genetically freakish

about them. You know, it could be Steve Jobs or 50 Cent or Leonardo da Vinci or anybody else. Or their parents were successful or had money or something like that. Or they just inherited a large brain or something. But in fact, I discovered, I firmly believe, I've been researching this for years, it's not that at all. It's a process that people go through, and it's a very rational process. It's a process that I can describe to you in great detail.

It follows various steps that kind of go chronologically. And once you know this process, it's really, really empowering. It makes you so much more conscious of what you're doing. And so basically I'm taking all of these great masters that I've studied and I'm sort of deducing from their stories this path that they followed, deducing from their stories this path that they followed, from a great apprenticeship to working with mentors to working with other people, et cetera. And I think knowing about this can help you,

give you incredible clarity about your own career, where you are now, and where you're headed. Very cool. So what follows are the keys to this path. Very cool. So what follows are the keys to this path. Yeah, the thing that I'm trying to tell you is that you possess all of the tools that you need for success and achievement. It's right there. It's basically you've inherited a brain that evolved over millions of years, and it has this latent power of mastery.

I describe in the book how this power evolved over the course of millions of years, but it's there in you. You have the tools. It doesn't matter if you were born in poverty, if you never went to a good school, if you've had bad luck. The tool is there at any moment, even in your 20s, 30s, or 40s. It's all a question of learning how to use this tool, how to awaken this power. It's latent in you, and I'm going to show you how to basically exploit this.

So a lot of people say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but you're saying that it doesn't matter how old you are or anything, you can actually. Is it any craft or is it any skill or is it we're limited to certain things? You know, I thought the other day, I'm not really particularly good with my hands. My father was really good with his hands. He could build anything. I sort of translated that to building books. I thought, well, you know, what if I spent now like the next ten years as a craftsman just learning how to do carpentry?

I bet you I could actually master it. The problem is that I'm not as interested in it as I'm interested in writing books. So you can't master any craft if your heart isn't in it, because you're going to peter out after five or six years. You have to find something that's in your powerhouse, something that appeals to you. But if you have that, if there is something that appeals to you, and, of course, everybody has these interests in them, what I call these natural inclinations, once you work with that, yes, you can master anything.

The attitude that you can't teach a dog new tricks, if you feel that way, then it's going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're going to feel like, I can't master anything. I tricks. If you feel that way, then it's going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're going to feel like I can't master anything. I have no ability to learn skills. You're already three steps behind. So a lot of it is your attitude. Right. Now, when I read this quote here, everyone holds a fortune in his own hand,

like a sculptor, the raw materials he will fashion into a figure. When I read that, I think of some of the self-help type of books and, you know, authors who talk about, you know, paint a picture in your mind of how you want your life to look, about how you want to be this way. And there is a way to, like, think of certain things, but really there's a process to following through in order to becoming great at something or having something look a certain way.

Is that correct? Right. And that's the process we're about to talk about, some of these steps that you talk about in your book. Yeah, I mean. Because you can't just say, I want to have this, and paint your picture like in this quote here. You can paint that picture, but then you have to take the steps, right?

You have to do both. So if you just start going into an apprenticeship and learning things without a sense of direction, without really knowing who you are, if you listen to your parents, to your friends, and you end up in law school or business but it doesn't suit you, then all of the six steps are meaningless. If you know what you want to be, if you know you're going to be a rock star or a football player or something, but you have no patience and you can't go through this process and you just want power and fame and attention right now, then you're screwed as well. So you need both. You need a sense of direction, purpose, and you need some discipline. I call it

self-mastery, and we're going to teach you self-mastery. Awesome. So how do you discover your calling then? How do you figure out what your life's task is? You know, some people, we were talking before this interview, but I was talking about some people have, you know, they want to find their purpose or they want to leave a legacy, but you talk about the life's task, which I think is very interesting, but how does someone discover this? Well, it's like you already know it. It's in you already.

You knew when you were a child you were interested in certain things. I know for me personally, I was interested in books and in history. I was just obsessed with history. I wanted to know how people lived 1,000 years ago. And this is when I'm six, seven years old. But everybody out there who's listening to this, you have the same experience. to know how people lived a thousand years ago. And this is when I'm six, seven years old. But everybody out there who's listening to this, you have the same experience. It could have been sports, could have been something physical, it could have been music, airplanes or anything,

right? Yeah. It's not that you knew exactly who you were going to be or the career path, you know, but you were drawn to certain actions that fit with you. When you did them, you did them well. It felt right. This is when you're a kid. Now, what happens in life is you grow distant from it. I call it a sort of a voice inside of you that drew you to these things, that drew me to history and writing. And that voice starts to get weaker as you get older,

as you listen to your parents and they tell you you've got to make money and you listen to your friends and they tell you this is cool and that's not cool. And by the time you enter college and then you leave college and you enter the work world, you don't really know who you are. You've lost touch with that. And it's okay to lose touch with that throughout the course of your life. Everybody does. I have myself. But that voice needs to be there so that at some point you can come back to it

and you can reconnect with who you are and think deeply and say, this is what I was meant to be doing. And it's not a question of suddenly saying I'm going to quit my job and start playing the guitar or anything like that. It's not where everything has to be fun and pleasurable in life. It's more that you're crafting a career path that suits to some degree your interests and that eventually 10, 20 years down the line is going to lead to you being your own boss, being able to sort of do whatever you want to do, and bringing out your uniqueness.

And so it starts with a bit of sort of reassessing who you are, thinking deeply about it, and getting excited about what you're pursuing. The main thing that we know about the brain is you don't learn deeply enough if you're not engaged in what you're learning. So you could spend 10 years learning law, but if it doesn't excite you, the depth of what you're learning, it just doesn't stick. Right. But if you're excited, you can learn in two years what would take other people 10 years.

So it's the key to everything. If you don't follow the advice in this chapter, you're going to burn out, and you're going to find yourself when you're in your 40s replaced by someone who's younger and cheaper. Interesting. Was there a moment in your life where you got off your path and then you did? And then the moment where you've discovered that, okay, writing books about these topics is what I really need to be doing? Well, it's an interesting example in that I knew I was going to be a writer when I was very young, but then I sort of started in journalism, and that didn't fit, and I didn't like it.

And then I got into, I started writing novels, and that wasn't working too well. Then I got into Hollywood. So I knew in the general scheme that I wanted to be a writer. This is typical with a lot of people. You know sort of generally what you want, but you're applying it in the wrong way. I was patient. I learned skills. I learned how to research, how to write.

And then when I got an opportunity to write a book back in 96, I knew this is it. All of my apprenticeship now could be applied to writing books. This was my life's task, writing the kind of books that I'm doing. So that's a very common path. It can take you many years, just as long as you have an overall sense of purpose and direction. Interesting. Very interesting. So we've got a couple examples here.

Want to talk about these examples? Well, I mean, I could talk for 20 years about Da Vinci, and I'm going to be giving a talk about him. He's the icon of my book. And, you know, he's a great story of someone who in childhood was just drawn to nature and to drawing it on his own without any teachers. He sort of stole paper from his father, who had a lot of paper in the house, and just started drawing. And there's no reason, we can't rationally explain why da Vinci decided to draw on his own as an eight-year-old, nine-year-old boy. And he ended up staying true to this sort of inclination throughout his life

as far as capturing nature and understanding it in a scientific way as well. So he epitomizes this. Freddie Roach is a wonderful example. He's the great boxing trainer, the trainer of Manny Pacquiao. And, you know, Freddie started life as a boxer. He was pushed sort of into it by his father. He was boxing since he was six years old. And by the time he was 26, he retired from boxing because he had taken way too many punches.

And he was good, but he wasn't that good. And he realized he got very depressed, began to drink, had a terrible job as a telemarketer in Las Vegas. Began to drink, had a terrible job as a telemarketer in Las Vegas. And then he realized that really what his life's task was, was teaching boxing, was to become a trainer, not to give up all of the skills that he had developed and go into medicine or something, but to build on his incredible knowledge of boxing, but to actually be a teacher of it. In that way, he wouldn't have to take the punches, but he could feel like he was in the ring.

He's a competitive person who loves strategy. Being a trainer is the ultimate position. When he started becoming a trainer, just a light bulb went on in his head. He goes, this is my life's task. So he's also a great example of it. I think a lot of great coaches were actually good players and not great like Phil Jackson or someone like that and they actually realize

they might go through a stage where maybe I'm not supposed to be a player but they discover coaching which I think is interesting because it's still the same topic but very cool so we've got right here submit to reality the ideal apprenticeship. And what does that mean?

Well, it's called Submit to Reality because, quite frankly, when you leave college or you're young, you're not really, you don't have your feet on the ground. You're not really connected to the real world. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not a judgment. It's just true. I was like that as well.

You come out of college or your early years with all sorts of illusions about life, about how you can do this or that. It's all going to come to you. This is what people are like. In your university years, you learn a certain way to learn, which is very passive with books. And then you get into the work world, and, man, it's like you're getting hit by Mike Tyson or something. It's not what you expected. You're blindsided. People are political, manipulative. It's not easy. It's competitive.

No one trains you for it. So I'm going to take you through the steps of showing you how you need to approach what I consider your apprenticeship. It can be five, ten years, something like that. This is the key part of your life. All of your skills, your discipline, your patience, your ability to learn, to sit back and observe other people, to get along with other people and know how to play the political game, it's all developed in this apprenticeship.

And if you don't go through a good apprenticeship, then nothing's going to save you in life because you've developed the kind of bad habits. You haven't developed life skills. And so if you're downsized or your career takes a wrong turn, you're in trouble. You're at sea. You don't know how to readjust. And I'll say one more thing. The key to the apprenticeship in life in the 21st century is skills, skills, skills, and skills.

You want to be accumulating skills, not just one skill, but three, four, five, six, or seven. You have to take advantage of the information age, the incredible access to information that you have. In your 20s, you want to take on, it can be just one job, but it can be three or four jobs. And the more skills you acquire, later in life you're going to combine them into some new business that you start or something like my weird books or whatever. You're going to find

the way that really reflects who you are. But if you don't develop these skills in this really competitive, hyper-competitive world, forget it. Right. And you think you have to have an apprenticeship in order to become a master. It's not that I think about it.

That's reality. It's reality. Okay? You know, it doesn't matter what Robert Greene thinks or Lewis or anybody out there. It's like the voice of God. Just accept it. The voice of God tells you that human beings evolved over so many millions of years. The brain operates a certain way.

Information has to be accumulated and then become automatic and stored in the lower parts of your brain so that you don't have to think about everything that you do. There's a process that the brain goes through. And if you don't go through it deep enough, you don't develop enough long-term memory, everything gets short-circuited, you're never going to be creative enough. If you don't go through it, you have to go through an apprenticeship. Just trust me. Very interesting.

So make sure if you haven't gone through one yet, you're going through it. Well, you are going through one. Let's just say, let's put it this way. You are going through an apprenticeship. You're just not doing it right or you're not paying attention or you're not conscious. You're not crafting it. You're letting circumstances craft it. You want to consciously mold that apprenticeship like a sculptor molds clay. Very interesting. So what are these examples? What are these related to? Albert Einstein. Well, Albert Einstein is a great example there because we think of him as just this genius

who just suddenly woke up with the theory of special relativity in general. Albert Einstein, for 10 years, went through this insanely rigorous apprenticeship, mostly on his own, thinking night and day about this one problem related to special relativity. And he would go through these thought experiments. He'd be at a party with people, and he would still be thinking about it. He'd be walking with friends on a bridge, and he'd still be thinking about this experiment. And eventually, after 10 years of insanely intense ruminating over this one problem, intense, ruminating over this one problem and working out equations, etc., it blossomed into this insanely, one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science.

So he went through the process. He didn't just suddenly wake up as a genius with a large brain. He spent 10 years of intense. Yeah. You know, we know the 10,000-hour rule. So Einstein spent 10,000 hours easily thinking on his own about this problem as he worked at the Swiss, the patent office in Switzerland. And then he spent another 10 years ruminating on a larger theory of relativity

that related to gravity. So 20 years of 20,000 hours yielded two great theories. And I'm not saying anybody could do that, but if you love physics and you went through that sort of intense process, something amazing would come from it. Interesting. And what about Paul Graham? Paul Graham I have is, you know, I hope you guys know about Paul Graham.

He created Y Combinator, one of the most amazing businesses on the planet. He created Y Combinator, one of the most amazing businesses on the planet. It's basically an apprenticeship system for people who want to start up a new tech firm. And Paul Graham, he was a computer engineer, and he's a great model for our age as far as the hacker mentality when it comes to apprenticeship. He didn't really know what he wanted to do. He loved computers. He loved art. He followed both of them, learned an incredible amount of skills in his 20s,

going to Harvard as a consultant and then as a painter, et cetera. And, you know, he didn't really have an exact sense of where he was headed. And suddenly he hears something on the Internet from Netscape about, this Netscape, the Internet's going to be where businesses are going to start selling their products. Back in that day, nobody had any idea about this. And a light bulb goes on in his head, and he goes, I now, I'm going to be the one that's going to create the first sort of online source for running a business online.

But he had spent his 20s developing so many skills, knowing what he hated, knowing what he loved, knowing how businesses should be run, knowing everything about computing, that he was able to now exploit this opportunity and turn it into a business he sold for $50 million to Yahoo. Wow. So, again, about the skills side of things, you don't necessarily want to have all the same skills in one area, but you want to have a broad sense of skills so you can bring it together?

Yeah, I mean, that's the age that we're living in. It's not the age that's specialist. Another person in the book is a woman named Yoki Matsuoka, an incredible genius. person in the book is a woman in Yoki Matsuoka, an incredible genius. She learned first electrical engineering, and then she decided to go into robotics. She became a master at robotics. Then she decided to go study neuroscience, and then she became a master at neuroscience. And now with all of that knowledge, those three skills and a couple more, she's on the forefront of this new wave of technology that's going to change everything that we have about how we live,

making technology more organic and biological, something that connects more to the brain and how the brain operates. She learned all of these skills, and now she's in a position to combine them in an unbelievable way. That's the path you really want to follow. Now, I've had a number of mentors throughout my whole life. I've had a lot of great coaches who've been my mentors in sports. I've had business mentors, kind of just personal life mentors. And I feel like I'm always preaching to my friends,

you've got to find a mentor who can help you accelerate your learning. So let's talk about the mentor dynamic. Why is it important to have a mentor and how to find the right one? Well, here's the deal. I make the point that there are no shortcuts in life. If you're looking for shortcuts, good luck. You have to accelerate things. Well, okay, so that's my next point. So there are no shortcuts. You've got to go through the process. But you have to accelerate things. Well, okay, so that's my next point. So there are no shortcuts. You've got to go through the process. But there is one way where you can, as you say, accelerate, and that's by finding a mentor.

Now, you have to find the right mentor. It has to be someone who's a good fit. You don't choose someone just because they're sexy and have a big name and they're popular and everybody loves them and they're charming. You choose a mentor that fits you, that has some of your same interests, that has a good fit character-wise as well. And also that you say, you know, 10 years, 20 years down the line,

I'd like to be sort of like that person. So you've got to choose the right mentor. But this is what happens if you find the right mentor in life. Their experience, which is much more than yours, becomes your experience. They're able to show you things that you need to do and other side paths you need to avoid. It'll save you years of doing things on your own where you're going to learn on your own and fail on your own and wasting so many of your valuable years in your 20s or whatever, a mentor will show you this is exactly where you need to go.

These are the skills you need. This is how you do it. The mentor will also provide you incredible feedback in real time. They're going to show you, you know, this is where your skills lack. This is what you need to practice. You want a mentor that's going to be a little bit tough on you. You don't want some softy who's just going to say, go out there and choose someone who may seem a little bit mean or tough.

It depends. If you're thin-skinned, that's not good. But generally a tough-minded mentor who's going to be able to criticize you. In the book I have a fighter pilot as one of the masters that I have, Cesar Rodriguez. He's called the last American ace. He flew in Desert Storm. He had this guy teaching him flying at some point who was just the meanest bastard. He made his life miserable.

He made him do the same maneuvers over and over again. He just hated him. But God, this guy upped his game incredibly. So you'd like maybe someone a little bit tough. And I say that their power, their way of doing things, their way of thinking, just by being around them, you're going to be able to absorb these incredible, valuable lessons. So it's not going to shorten your mastery, but it's going to streamline it and maybe accelerate it. I guess it's the same as shortening it.

But a very important thing, if you have no mentors in life, if you can't find them, you can find people who are pseudo-mentors on writers that you admire or other figures that you can study. But it's best to get a real-life person interaction in front of you. One other thing I'll say is you'd be surprised. People who are powerful that you admire, they are looking for protégés. Don't be intimidated. If you have skills, if you're disciplined, if you have good character, you have a lot to offer someone in a position of power. It's a satisfying relationship also for the mentor involved, so don't be intimidated by that.

Right. I like the idea of the tough love, but don't be intimidated by that right i think that i like the idea of you know the tough love but i think you need to have both because sometimes i remember having a specific coach in college for football where he was just always on me non-stop yeah but he never showed that he like cared about me yeah like that i never felt like loved at all it's just like you suck you're you've got to do this better. And I remember I left that college just because I felt like I didn't even care. He told me later, you know, he really did care. That's why he was still on me.

But I think you need to find someone who's tough on you, but you know outside of that experience that they're still there for you and supportive. You're right. That's a very good point. In the book, I talk about the Zen master who finally found this kind of tough love mentor, but in the end, once he had achieved enlightenment, this mentor suddenly softened up. So you can sense that. If someone's just mean and has no compassion for you, you're right, that's not the right situation. But you feel it from the other person.

You can tell whether they truly care. There's one other thing, though. You have to be careful. Your goal in life is to surpass the mentor. You don't want to get somebody that you admire so much that you're just going to imitate them. Your goal is to be greater than they are, to outdo them, to sort of have them eat your dust, so to speak. You're going to be more famous than that person. And you have to have it in the back of your mind so that you just don't become this slavish little protege or disciple.

And later, as the relationship develops, you assert yourself, and you maybe even think that this person's sort of old-fashioned and I'm going to go beyond him. That's another important element. Interesting. So what are these examples here? Well, very briefly, Michael Faraday came from poverty, son of a blacksmith, and he rose to become one of the greatest experimental scientists in the history of science.

And the story is unbelievable because nobody in England could pursue a career in science unless they went to Oxford or Cambridge or a very fine institution. And in order to go to those institutions, you had to come from the upper classes. Faraday found his way through an amazing process of discipline and a self-apprenticeship. And then he discovered he found his way to the greatest mentor that he could possibly find, a scientist at the time named Humphrey Davy. He just fits everything I just told you about. He developed so many skills that once Davy needed a protege,

Faraday was the absolute best person to do it. And through this relationship, he was able to gain this career in science. And Ramachandran, he basically, he's like a lot of people nowadays, or maybe a lot of people nowadays, he didn't feel like he fit anywhere. He was kind of an individualist. He wasn't someone that just wanted to fit into the nine-to-five structure of how science was, you know, where you just got a job.

It was like a job. He was sort of a romantic when it came to science. And he managed to find the one man who could be his mentor who was as weird as he was. And he glommed on to him. And this man changed his life and basically made it who he is. Interesting. Very interesting. So see people as they are.

We'll talk about social intelligence a little bit. And I think this is, for me, this is probably one of the most important things, is understanding social intelligence and how to go through life, deal with people with social intelligence. Well, this is the 48 Laws of Power chapter here. And what I didn't want to do is give you the impression, you, the reader out there, that all you need to do is learn skills, practice on your own, become really great at what you're doing, and then that's enough.

Because we're social creatures. We're the preeminent social animal on the planet. Everything that we do comes from learning from other people. Right. And if you're not, you could have the most skills in the world. You could go to Harvard and be brilliant. But if you can't deal with people, you're in a lot of trouble. Yeah.

So I'm showing you that social intelligence plays a key role in mastering. It has a couple elements, elements of learning how to read people, how to be very intuitive and shut off that interior monologue and pay closer attention to the signals that people are giving off. If you're a master at reading people, it has a great effect on everything that you do. It will make you socially brilliant, and it will also give you this more intuitive sense that you'll be able to apply to other aspects of your life.

And the other thing is knowing about human nature, not being so naive, understanding the role of envy, passive aggression, people's laziness, how they're going to steal ideas from you. If you've got these two sides where you know how to read people and you're not so naive, you'll be pretty good. And then, you know, I talk in the book about letting your work speak for you. Don't get too obsessed with the social game as if that's all that matters.

Really, the work that you do is actually the best tool that you have for social intelligence. If your work is good, if it shows attention to detail, if it shows that you're thinking about your audience, if you're writing books that are addressing your readers, that shows that you're socially aware. People will sense it and know it through your work. That's the ultimate application of this chapter. You know, Benjamin Franklin is the icon of social intelligence,

absolutely brilliant man, great writer, scientist, inventor, political figure. I'm sure there's things I'm leaving out. But he was also just so adept at the social game. He knew when it was necessary how to mute his own colors. When he first entered politics, he didn't assert himself at all. He sat back and observed everything that was going on around him. He knew how to blend in and dress like other people.

Then when he went to France, he knew how to blend into France and suddenly become someone else. He just was brilliant at it. And, you know, I love him dearly. Temple Grandin is a great example because this is a woman born with autism who rose to mastery. And autistic people generally have a harder time because they're not so socially gifted. And she taught herself how to deal with people.

She learned social intelligence as if she were learning how to operate a machine. It was kind of Spock-like, but it was brilliant. And she's transformed herself into someone who's quite graceful socially, can do lectures well. And it's a great story considering what she overcame. Right. And I think social intelligence is definitely an art form. Would you say that this is the greatest art form that anyone can master?

Well, I wouldn't put it that way. I want to give everything its proper proportion and its importance. So if you think of social intelligence as the greatest thing that you need, there are a lot of people out there like that, and you can turn into a charlatan, into a bullshitter, someone who thinks that gift of gab and just like you want to talk your way out of everything or whatever. Yeah, and we've all met those types. They're charmers, but they don't deliver.

Yeah, and we've all met those types. They're charmers, but they don't deliver. So if you've got the charm, but you can't deliver, your work is sloppy, you haven't really developed any skills, you're not conscientious, it really comes down to your character and how deeply you care about the quality of your work. So let's just say you can't avoid being socially intelligent. It's extremely important, but it's certainly not by far the most important thing in life. It's one key element in your path to mastery. There's no shortcuts.

There's no shortcuts. So awaken the dimensional mind, the creative actives. What is this all about? Well, once you've put in your 10,000 hours, you've gone through an apprenticeship, you've learned from a mentor, you're socially aware, you reach a point where your mind becomes full of information, full of knowledge, and you start to experiment and be creative, and the mind naturally awakens with this energy. I describe how I can help you enhance that creativity that's going to be awakened, how to be fluid, how to not. You know, a problem people have, let's put it this way, you become the product of your education. You went to business school. You learned certain things, certain models.

And then you're just going to become this person that's just going to apply what you learn. You don't think. You become the prisoner of what you learn. And creative people and masters are actually the ones that rewrite the rules that they learn. They're the ones that subvert them, that change them, create something new. subvert them, change them, create something new. So you have to be able to assert yourself at some point and let go of the things that you learn and be less conventional and more fluid. It's the longest chapter in the book, and if you read that chapter and you don't have an idea about creativity, then I don't know what I can tell you.

and you don't have an idea about creativity, then I don't know what I can tell you. And Darwin, he's a good icon of that, that he spent so many years observing things in nature, and after 20 years, the theory of evolution and natural selection just sort of exploded in his mind, and all of these associations started happening. He's actually an incredibly creative person. People don't give him credit for it. He created the greatest revolution in science and thinking that has ever occurred. Our world will never be the same after what he discovered. And basically it's the fruit of an incredibly laborious apprenticeship.

And Teresita Fernandez is an artist who, you know, essentially had, I mean, our artists have to obviously be creative. But she sort of is the type of person that had very fluid forms of thinking and knows how to get in touch with her unconscious. And, you know, so I wouldn't necessarily put these two as the icons in there. I have Mozart, for instance, or a musician like John Coltrane, to sort of show you that in music, which we think of perhaps as maybe the most creative art form, these are people that spent years learning the language of music.

And by the time they had spent their youth doing that, they were able to completely revolutionize and create a whole new genre in music. So the next part you're talking about is how to fuse the intuitive with the rational for mastering. Well, you know, we'll keep this one real short. Basically, I'm fascinated by intuition, high-level intuition. Napoleon Bonaparte is the icon for me, a man who on the battlefield had what they called a coup d'oeil, a glance at his eye, he could tell exactly what was happening on the battlefield. He seemed to know exactly where to send his troops, exactly where the key battle would be fought. It was almost like an occult power, but it came from insane rigorous discipline and knowledge

of warfare. And after all of that knowledge, he had what I call a high-level intuition. And that's what Bobby Fischer has in chess, Einstein in physics, Mozart in music, on and on and on. Now, is that similar to social intelligence, or what's the difference between social intelligence and intuition? Well, with social intelligence, you're developing one part of it, a kind of intuitive feel for people that you can read them.

Right. That's almost sort of an immediate thing that you can develop in a short period of time. You're right to make the connection. This is an intuition not applied to people, but to your whole field. And I'll say one last thing about it. The world that we live in is really complex. Any field that you go into, if it's business or sports or whatever, is much more complex than it ever used to be.

We can have that discussion why, but let's just all agree on that. And the problem that you're going to have is you're going to be overwhelmed by the information you need to know. You're never going to quite master it. You're always going to feel like, I need to know more. I don't quite know enough. And it's overwhelming. It's distracting. It's confusing. Mastery, you master the complexity of your field. You went through such an intense apprenticeship that that field is now internalized,

part of your nervous system hardwired into you. You know what's going to happen next. You don't have to think deeply. Ideas come to you. When you're at that point and you've mastered this complex field, then, as I said, you've got what I call the philosopher's stone. Everything you touch will turn into gold. I like that.

That's pretty cool. Do you want to share examples about these two really quick? Well, I'll just say about Cesar Rodriguez is that he's a great story in that this is a guy who didn't come from a glorious background. His father was in the military. And he sort of backed his way into becoming a fighter pilot and ended up as a competitive guy who loved it. But he had no natural skill.

He was not a golden boy. He was not Tom Cruise in Top Gun. He was one of the other guys who plods along like a lot of us, like I'm that way, a slow learner. But he applied himself with such intensity. He practiced harder than any of the other pilots that slowly, slowly, slowly started rising up in the hierarchy, getting admitted to fighter pilot school, getting admitted to this level, being promoted here, that ended up he completely outpaced, outshone all of the Golden Boys who first entered with him

because they had never developed the discipline and the skill that he had. And by the time that he flew in Desert Storm, I described his dogfight that he was in, which essentially looked like he was dead, he had such a feel for this plane and for battle. In a millisecond, he made these incredibly right decisions that saved his life and ended up turning it around and killing this big fighter, that he had this feel for the plane that was so intense, and so he sort of epitomizes what I'm talking about. The intuition that you're talks about, yeah.

Yeah, that Napoleonic thing. Yeah. So what's this quote all about? It's just everything we've been talking about. It's not, it's, look, we're heading into a future that's going to be sober and realistic. It's not a reality show. It's not about glitz and glamour. It's about people who have skills who can solve problems, because we have a lot of problems. It's a about glitz and glamour. It's about people who have skills who can solve problems because we have a lot of problems.

It's a competitive world. You are like a carpenter or a bricklayer. You're doing something simple. You're learning how to do something well. You're making it well. You're a workman at it, and it can be business or whatever. Take that sober approach. Stop thinking that everything has to be, like, sexy and glamorous.

It's actually quite sexy and glamorous to be a solid, good workman or workwoman who knows how to solve problems, who knows how to build things well. Ground yourself in that reality and not stop dreaming so much. I think that's sort of what the quote's about. Interesting. Very interesting. Do we have any questions right now for Robert? So there's not too many times you get to do a Q&A with the Robert Green, so now is your chance to ask any questions.

We'll stick around for about 5 to 15 minutes. He's got a lot going on. He was just in the New York Times today, a nice piece about him, so you guys should go check that out. So he's got a lot going on, but for about 5 to 15 minutes, if there are some questions worthy of Robert's time, we will go over those. So Deb's saying, this was so uplifting. I've always thought of myself as a failure because of all my experience. So thank you from Deb.

Thanks so much, says Mariah. My son is in college and was given your book for high school graduation. He's a great fan. What advice would you give to a young 18-year-old man? Well, it depends, but, you know, it's very important. I obviously think that going to university can be very important. But some people aren't necessarily geared for an academic career. And the most important thing is for someone to find their way to what they want to accomplish in life and to have any degree of clarity about that

and to basically have the philosophy that they're going to learn by doing. And what I mean there is a lot of young people, I know I have this problem myself, you get a little bit intimidated. Academic university life tends to make you feel a little more passive. You need to go out there and try your hand at starting your own business or developing skills in some area and be willing to fail, be willing to be criticized, and to just practice and practice and get kind of a tough skin and feedback, et cetera. And, you know, if you go through the university system that's fine but don't think of that as the

end of the end all or be all to your career i know that paul graham who runs y combinator which is this as i said this incubator for tech startups he says that people that come from the best schools are not at all necessarily the best entrepreneurs. You find that it's a character thing. If you're persistent and tough and you love what you're doing, it's worth 1,000% more than a degree from Harvard. So that's sort of my advice. Interesting, very interesting.

I've seen a lot of great people. Brian saying, great job. I see Renee. Yes, this was great. Loved all your books. Robert, Webinar was excellent, said Jim Rice. So a lot of great feedback and comments coming through. Let's see.

You got a question, Tom? Yeah, here's a good one from Carol from Toronto. She says, hey, Robert, out of all of the masters that you studied and researched, do you have a personal favorite? Well, historical research, I'd have to say Leonardo da Vinci, because in war it was Napoleon and stuff. But the reason I love da Vinci is he seems to be like from another planet. If you go through the lists of his inventions, his discoveries, you know, from building a device that he could fly in and the different kind of,

he made this thing where he could open doors and close them automatically and lamps with adjustable lights and new kind of presses for hoists for engineering. The guy was like, where did all of this creativity and power come from? It's almost unbelievable, and that's why his name means so much to us. And what I loved was reading about him and discovering that it all came from this high level of discipline and patience. And his motto in life was in Italian, ostinato rigore, which means stubborn rigor. He just was stubborn. He just would spend longer learning what he needed to learn than anybody else.

And so I just love reading about that. Interesting. Go ahead, Sean. This is a good one, Robert. Rob Mac asks, what's more important in choosing a career, passion or money? My passion is music, but I see other fields that I can make money. Oh, definitely the passion. I'm glad you raised that.

In the apprenticeship phase, I make the point of you want to choose learning over money. So if you're going in for an entry-level position somewhere, you don't want to choose a place that's going to necessarily give you a big paycheck. There are lots of problems that happen because of that. You suddenly are under pressure to perform. You're not necessarily ready. You want to choose a place where you're are under pressure to perform, you're not necessarily ready. You want to choose a place where you're going to learn the most.

And it may not be the sexiest place or you may have to have half the pay. And in the end, you're going to make much more money than if you followed the path of choosing something because the paycheck is bigger. You're going to find when you're younger that you become addicted to that paycheck, and then it's going to be very hard for you to accept earning less money, and it's going to sort of set the pattern for your life. And it's interesting. You go from the modern masters, let's say, from Paul Graham to Santiago Calatrava to Steve Jobs,

who's not in the book for various reasons, but none of these people were motivated by money. And if you read the Steve Jobs biography, it stands out in black and white. It's repeated a hundred times. He really didn't care about money, and he honestly didn't care about it to the point of it would actually annoy a lot of people he worked with. And look how much money he ended up making in the end. a lot of people he worked with, and look how much money he ended up making in the end.

So it's not a matter of just becoming a guitarist. You have to make a living. You have to make money. But it's a matter of choosing something that's related to music, that interests you in some way deeply, and that stirs your curiosity. You want to learn this. That's so much more important than the paycheck. You also want to develop the life skill of being able to get along with less money when you're younger. It's a valuable lesson that I learned, so that's what I've learned.

Yeah, I spent about a year and a half on my sister's couch with no money and no income and basically surviving off of her ramen noodle for about a year and a half. And look at you now. And I don't need anything like I travel around the country with four suitcases to my possession. It's like I'm happy to be. Well, one other thing I'd say about Freddie Roach, when he was offered to become a trainer, they didn't pay him.

So he had to keep his telemarketing job and work nights as a free trainer for, God knows, a couple years. And I make the point in there that that's often going to happen, like you're going to be offered these free internships or whatever. If it's the right place, you really need to take it and not think about what you're missing. Right. This is a great one. Where did it go?

Liz just asks, what do you think about Machiavelli's approach to whether it is better to be loved or feared? Well, you know, I'm a great student of Machiavelli. He's my mentor in some ways. And, you know, that's a phrase that's applied to a specific situation, which is a ruler of a country. It's better that people fear you than love you. Love is not something you can control.

They can easily get tired of you and love someone else, but fear is something you can control. They can easily get tired of you and love someone else, but fear is something you can control. And, you know, I don't know. It doesn't necessarily apply to mastery. I would say that in the work world, let's put it this way, you don't want people to love you. A lot of young people make this mistake. They think that the game is to get people to like them, to be charming and nice,

and that they can control their destiny if their boss likes them and if colleagues like them. It's the same sort of thing that Machiavelli is talking about. You have no control over that. And, in fact, being liked is not an important quality at all. It's being needed that is important. Your skills are necessary. They can't fire you because you're not replaceable, because you have skills, because you've got good character,

because you're disciplined, you're conscientious. Then they need you, and you have much more control over your destiny. If it's just that they like you, maybe at some point they won't like you, or they'll find somebody else that they like more. So that's how I would apply that Machiavelli quote. A lot of people have asked this question, so I'm just going to summarize about 10 different questions for you, Robert. But basically, they were all just wondering, what's the best way to go about finding an actual mentor? Well, you know, it depends on the field that you're in. And so there's always going to be someone in that field that you respect.

I know it's funny out there, probably in the audience, is Ryan Holiday, who sort of set this up for me. Ryan was sort of my apprentice for a while, and now he's gone on to write his own book and start his own business, and he's going to be running this planet at some point. And Ryan basically approached me because he liked my books, and I could see that he was someone that had good character and that was really disciplined and worked hard and had some skills. So I jumped at the opportunity.

You want to look for someone who maybe is overworked, has a need for a protege. That's what Freddie Roach did. He found that this guy didn't have anybody else to assist him as a trainer. You want to look for people that have a need for it. And it's a little weird. There has to be a fit where they're going to, it's almost like a parent-child relationship. So there's a little bit of a seduction involved going on here,

where if you make the mentor feel like they get to now share their skills and their knowledge and they're passing along something to another generation, it's a very nice feeling. It's fulfilling, right? It's very fulfilling. So you've got to find a person that maybe is in that position to do your research. The main thing is do not feel intimidated by their position or their power. People are more in need of a protege and more wanting to have one than you think. Now, here's a great kind of question that I get all the time.

I've got a sports business company, and a lot of people ask me questions about how to break into the sports industry. So Matthew is saying, I love the presentation. My question is, what if you're in your early 30s, spend eight years in a career that you don't love, but it's very lucrative with a high salary, and you know your passion is in a field where you'd be forced to make a serious financial sacrifice? And you mentioned this briefly, but I guess what do you do when you feel like you're stuck?

And again, you can always teach an old dog new tricks. What do you think? Well, you make the break, and you make it as soon as you can, but you don't make a full break. So whatever that field was, it's hard to do this in the abstract, but whatever that field was, you don't want to turn your back on the skills that you learned. I met recently with a woman who interviewed me, went into law school, became a lawyer, and she knew it wasn't her passion, and then she knew that she wanted to be a writer and a journalist. So she got out and became a journalist specializing in law and legal issues

so she could combine the skills that she had developed that were very solid and important and use them in something that she loved more. And now eventually she'll be able to get rid of that law stuff that she's not so interested in and just be a writer. So you want to build on the things that you have. But you have to understand that you, you know, I didn't start writing these books until I was 36, 37, so it's not, being in your 30s is fine. But the clock is ticking.

Not the talk is clicking. The clock is ticking. And, you know, you're going to be, the more you wait, the more addicted you are to that paycheck, the harder it's going to be because you have responsibilities at that point. You may have a family and things like that, right? Exactly. But more than that, it's your ego and your pride and your way of living. And if you wait, you're trapped.

And you're going to wake up and not feel like you did anything that fulfilled you deeply. It's going to become boring to you. So you really got to, I say, make the break now, but don't completely give up the skills you've developed. And Donna's kind of saying something similar to that. She said at 56, I've accomplished a lot, but there's more to, but I feel there's more to go in my natural areas of attraction, which is dance, acting, writing, language studies.

What are your suggestions for someone who's, you know, 15s? Well, it sounds like you've been doing the right thing. Well, I don't know, but you've learned some amount of skills. You have a lot of experience. And just basically what I said about the last question is you want to find a way to bring all of that experience into something really unique and interesting. So I make the point that the greatest masters, like a Benjamin Franklin, they have all this experience and mastery and creativity, and they're older and wiser. and mastery and creativity, and they're older and wiser. And that's like the ultimate kind of power that you can have because you can be young and master things and very creative,

but you really don't know enough about life itself. So you have a lot of life experiences, and you want to find a way to bring all of that together into something. I don't know if it's some kind of work of art, some sort of job that's your passion. If you don't have to worry about making money, if you're reasonably secure, then be a little bit bold and try something new. And if you're going to write a book, write a book that combines all those things that you just mentioned that you're interested in. Right. And in your book, you actually talk about kind of like young geniuses or protégés

or prodégés, or prodigies, I mean, and Dan is talking about here, he's asking a question, my daughter is 13, is she too young to get started in her mastery apprenticeship, or what's a good age for that? Because you don't want to be too smart or too young, because then you don't develop, right? You mentioned that in one of the chapters here. Well, here's the most important thing for young people, especially at that age, is you want to really, really encourage them to be learning some kind of skill. And the reason for this is simple.

So that skill could be sport that they love, chess, music, dancing. Once a child at any age learns the pleasure that they get from developing skill at something. It's a lifelong lesson. So they learn that in the beginning, that first year of playing the piano was boring and didn't really like it. But the second year started getting kind of fun. They could start playing things that they liked. And the third year became really exciting. When you get older in life and you're 22, 23, and then it starts getting a little bored with your work,

you remember that. You remember, well, if I stick with it, if I go in it long enough, I'll start hitting this what I call the cycle of accelerated returns where the practice becomes more pleasurable. If it becomes more pleasurable, you practice harder, and it becomes even more pleasurable, and you practice even harder, and soon enough you're Mozart or Tiger Woods. Without the scandals. Without the scandals. Without the scandals.

I forgot to mention Tiger Woods because he's a great musician. You're not going to sit there and hit 20 million golf balls unless you love it. And he truly loves it. So it doesn't have to be that she studies music and then will become a musician, It doesn't have to be that she studies music and then will become a musician, but she's developed this life lesson that learning something has a payoff and you can defer immediate pleasure. We talked about Cesar Rodriguez. When he was in the midst of having to learn how to fly a jet

and it was driving him crazy and he thought he was a failure, he remembered back to when he was in high school. He was a football player. He was the quarterback of his team. I've met him. He's a pretty short guy. He's about 5'6", 5'7". You wouldn't think of him as a quarterback.

He wasn't physically gifted for the position. He managed to get there and become a successful quarterback through sheer practice. He remembered, ah, by practicing, I surpassed everyone else. The same thing will apply to flying a jet. So that's what you want to instill in your 13-year-old. Right. You made a great example about the basketball player, Bill Bradley, as well, about how he was just practicing three to five hours every day, weekends, on a cruise ship,

like all sorts of crazy stuff, right? Yeah. Bill Bradley's a great example. I mean, he was tall, so that helped. He was awkward, right? He was awkward and he was white. He couldn't jump very high and he wasn't fast and he couldn't dribble really well, but he loved basketball.

He loved hearing the swish of the net. He just was addicted. And so he created the most insane practice session I think anyone in the history of sports has ever created. He basically willed himself into becoming a great basketball player. I'm old enough to remember Bill Bradley, and this guy was just the smoothest player you'd ever seen. He had eyes in the back of his head. He could dribble brilliantly.

He just had a feel for the game. It came through this practice that he put himself through. He wore glasses in which he couldn't even look down at his feet, so he learned to train himself to dribble without looking at his feet in between these chairs day and night and day and night. He's a great example of what you can do through practice and willpower.

But Jan is asking, do you know any methods that you can use to find out your life's purpose or your life's task? Well, you know, it's a little bit complicated, and that's why I wrote a whole chapter on it, because you don't sometimes know what truly interests you

and what was sort of influenced by others and by what seems cool, et cetera. So you have to kind of go through a little bit of a process. You know that you're attracted to certain kinds of things, certain activities. They present a challenge. We know from neuroscience that when a person is faced with a challenge that's a little bit above them and that they're excited about, they learn and retain what they've learned much deeper than someone that's bored, that's tuned out, or that it comes too easy or is way too difficult. So you want to choose something in life that's a bit of a challenge, that excites you,

that makes you curious. And don't think in terms of clichés like, I love music or something really large. When you were a kid, you were interested in certain patterns and certain ways of doing things, something excited you about nature or questions about life. That is the source of something that you want to explore. What excites you in a primal way and makes you deeply curious when you open the newspaper this is the first article that you or check online this is the first article you go to right you know for me the moment i see an article about something that uh about uh animals or dinosaurs or or

discoveries about ancient humans, ancestors, my eyes light up, I go straight for it. I can't stand not reading anything like that. What is it about you if you were to look at a newspaper, which is covering everything, art, home, technology, that draws you and you have to read that article and you have to bookmark it and send it to your friends? You're looking for things that just excite you in some primal way.

Interesting. And, Sean, while you're getting the next question together, I just saw Sherry Croy just got a copy. Thanks, Sherry. And Paul said he just bought three of them. So thanks for that, Paul, and everyone else who's signing up right now. Keep sending the e-mails forwarding along so we can get you those bonuses. What's the next question, Sean?

Maria was curious as to why Steve Jobs was not featured in the book. Well, it was mostly a question of logistics. So I interviewed nine contemporary masters. And believe me, if I had the chance to interview Steve Jobs, I would have grabbed it. At the time I was writing the book, he was very ill. I tried, actually, to make contact with with him and I knew people who knew him. But little did I know that there was a book already underway, the book by Walter Isaacson. So first of all, Steve Jobs isn't somebody that probably would have agreed to this for various reasons that

I understand. Second of all, he was dying at the time. And third, somebody was writing the book. The other option was to use the Isaacson book, but it came out just as I was nearing the end of writing Mastery, so it wasn't logistically possible. So I read the book recently on my own, and I'm going to give talks about it. I'll write articles. He's just an incredible example, embodiment of all the things I write about. I'll just say one thing about him.

He is someone who felt very passionate early on about two things, about computers and about the design of computers, how they interacted with people. And so his life's task wasn't computers. He was not a good engineer. That was Steve Wozniak. He was a mediocre engineer. His task wasn't to design computers because he was actually a geek who loved electronics. His life's task was to combine these two interests into something that nobody had ever done before

and nobody has done since, which is to make technology like a piece of art, aesthetically pleasing. And look what he managed to accomplish by pursuing that. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. John asked another interesting question, again, specific to him, but everyone apply these questions to yourself. What advice would you give to a 24-year-old convicted felon who is currently a telemarketer, who is at his parents' house with only a high school education? I want to make music and inspire people to follow their dreams.

What steps could I take? So, John, first off, make sure you grab a copy of this book. It'll probably be the best $15 you spend for your education. Well, I mean, I like your story because you've had some experiences. You've got a story that most 24-year-olds don't know. And so that already is actually an advantage. Think of that as an advantage. Think of that as like your education.

Instead of university, you might have gone to university. The real education. The hard knocks. Yeah. So don't ever get discouraged. You've got actually a heads up on other people. The other thing is stay at home. Live with your parents. don't worry about money,

don't worry about what other people think about you, and just spend as much time as you can. I guess you said it was music. I don't know what aspect of music it is. Working like a fiend, developing the skills in a particular thing, You know, working like a fiend, developing the skills in a particular thing, and somehow finding a way to incorporate your hard experiences in life. If you're writing music, writing songs that kind of deal with that, you know, that reflect some of the things that you learned in prison.

And just, you know, think that you're going to spend the next three years of your life not worrying about becoming famous, getting attention, being cool, getting a lot of chicks. You're just thinking about mastering music at some level. And then call me in three years, and we'll get together. I'm sure something is going to come of that. There you go. Your experience may be your greatest gift that you have right now. So I hope you're the best, my man.

And what's the next question, Sean, that you like? Yes, Matt just commented the prison question was so deep and powerful and I appreciate that. Everybody really did start off with some good response there. And I also just want to point out Jules Pierce just said, I'm so happy I've attended this webinar and I bought these books. Thank you. There's been tons of great comments that have come in like that.

Gilbert asked a great question, Robert. He says, what historical figure to read the most, i.e., who has affected you the most? I guess what historical figure did you read about? Maybe you answered that earlier with the Da Vinci. Well, I mean, they're all, I don't know if he's referring to mastery per se. They're all, like, so interesting in each in a different way. But I love the story of Charles Darwin. I know he doesn't seem so sexy, but I wanted to make Charles Darwin sexy, and I'll tell you why.

First of all, he seemed like kind of a loser when he was a child. His father thought he was sort of slow-witted. All he was interested in was collecting beetles and hunting and riding horses and being outdoors. And people just sort of gave up on the guy. They thought, you know, he's not going to be good at it. His father wanted him to be a doctor. He couldn't stand the sight of blood. Basically, they gave up, and they were going to get him a position in the church where you just collect a lot of money, and they could forget about him.

And he gets this offer to go on this five-year voyage around the world as sort of a naturalist on board. And his father's against it, and nobody knows why he wants to do it. And he decides to take this offer. And it transforms him into, I think, maybe the most brilliant scientist that ever lived. And that was his apprenticeship, five years on a ship among, like, kind of rough-and-tumble sailors and a captain who was kind of insane, a Bible-thumping captain. And he turned into this adventurer.

And I liked him because he approached life and his apprenticeship as if it were this insane adventure. And he was going to explore and be fearless and do whatever he could to learn as much as possible about nature. And based on that apprenticeship that was so rich, he made this incredible discovery. And I like it. It's inspirational because he wasn't someone that was necessarily naturally gifted. It came from a love of the subject, and it came from this sense of adventure that I try and say,

that should be the model of your apprenticeship. Your 20s are like this voyage that you're taking, and you're going to be as fearless as possible and try everything out. Interesting. What other questions do we have going through, Sean? We've gone for about 30 minutes. This is the fastest 30 minutes of Q&A so far. Do you want to go for a few more?

Robert, I'm, like, intrigued. I thought this was, like, five minutes, but this about 30 minutes. This is the fastest 30 minutes of Q&A so far. Do you want to go for a few more? Robert, I'm, like, intrigued. I thought this was, like, five minutes, but this is 30 minutes. Still lots of people on. Robert's happy to answer some more questions. So, again, try to ask unique questions that haven't been already asked or answered. I mean, and go ahead. Here's an interesting one, Robert, that Lonnie asks. It says, Robert has worked with 50 Cent and may have some insights into the African-American community.

The issue about uselessness of mastery in what is perceived as a racist society is something I come up against when working with African-American youth and encouraging them about technical mastery. Any thoughts on that? technical mastery. Any thoughts on that? Well, I know it's a real kind of false impression because, you know, you go spend time with 50 or you be around someone like Jay-Z. These are people who are really disciplined and who take their work really seriously. 50 himself never took drugs, doesn't like to drink.

He treated hustling as a job because it was the only thing he could get, but he thought of it as he was an entrepreneur and he was going to learn about business. And then when he got a chance to do music, he found the perfect mentor, Jam Master Jay, attached himself to the right mentor. And then when he got his first record deal with Columbia, he treated that like his university. And so he went to Columbia every day and studied all aspects of the record business.

Wow. These are things people don't know about. They think of him just from the image. But the guy is insanely serious and disciplined and wants to learn and actually is kind of a geek when it comes to technology and is one of the first artists to really, really truly embrace the Internet with thisisfifty.com and what he's done with the Internet. So it's the wrong impression to give.

It's the wrong impression to give. African Americans are among the biggest readers of my books, and are people, anybody from a minority who's felt excluded from things like mastery or power in this country has an incredible hunger to learn about the world and about what it takes to get ahead and things about mastery and the 48 laws. And countries like India and China and Russia, where people haven't had the wealth that we've had, they're highly motivated to learn these things. So it all comes down to your level of motivation.

And I have in the book one of the great masters that ever lived is John Coltrane, the jazz artist. And no one was more serious and disciplined than him. Discipline and seriousness is a human trait. It's not an ethnic trait at all. Now, I see some more great questions. And Sean, I'll let you take the next one after I ask this one. But I think it's Rajiv asks, again, thanks, really great webinar. He says, wanted to know what's some advice on approaching or asking someone to be your mentor? You mentioned a little bit, but what's something that you can do to approach? Well, you say at the end of that question, especially if they're well-known.

Oh, I see. Well, you know, the thing about, like, Michael Faraday is he didn't actually approach the person that became his mentor. He was very clever and indirect. He made it his work. He did this project that was so bizarre and revealed that he'd spent two years doing it that it came to the attention of someone who then brought it to this mentor, who then goes, wow, this guy's incredible. So if you can do something in your work that will get this attention or that can at least become a calling card. So I don't know what your field is.

It's hard to speak in the abstract. But let's say it's a writer. Just make it easy for me here. And you're wanting to interest me in serving as your mentor. If I become aware that you did research on a project, and that research was really, really exceptional, and I can see it by sources that you came up with, and it comes to my my attention either from you or a third party that you plan. Well, God, that's going to really get my attention and I'm going to hire you.

So you want to have something that you can show them that shows that you have interesting experiences that will entice them into the relationship. That would be the main thing that you should do. Sure. What's your next question you got there, Sean? There's a couple comments, actually, real quick. Robert, Maria said, thanks for the response. As an African-American, I truly appreciate that response.

And Nicole said, as an African-American woman, I can attest to Robert's response to that question. I think the one previously about technology and African-Americans. She said, I've used his books to overcome my inherent disadvantages to the point that they don't matter at all. Wow, that's great to hear. Yeah, and then Matt just said, I'm so blown away. This information is so transformative. Robert's story of Darwin's five-year voyage immediately brought me to tears

and reminds me of my upcoming journey. Thank you so much, guys. Well, you're welcome. I thought I'd share that with you. That's pretty good. So I think this is, I don't know if we should keep going or maybe do one or two more of this, but here's a. Let's do three more.

We could probably go all day, but let's just say, let's pick three more and we'll call it a day. No one's leaving. I know. I got more. 50 more minutes. When people are giving good questions, then we'll keep answering a few more. So go ahead, Sean.

All right. Paul just asks, what is your tip? And this is just, I'm not sure if this is, I don't really know, but I think it's interesting because a lot of people probably deal with the same battle. What is your tip to deal with laziness and indifference for a 24-year-old? I guess it probably could apply to anybody. You mean the person himself is lazy and indifferent? I guess.

That's what he's asking. Well, I mean, yeah. Look, it's a signal if you're lazy that you're not interested in what you're doing, obviously. I'm not saying anything earth-shattering there. But it's not about your nature. Let's just put it this way. It's not that you're a lazy person. First of all, we all are inherently lazy.

We all have a lazy streak, and we also have a streak that wants to do something and be challenged and have our minds engaged. So you want to feed the engaged, excited, curious part, and you want to find a way to tame that natural lazy part. I have a lazy part. I like to sit and waste time, and then it's 3 o'clock and I have to start writing all of a sudden.

So it's a very human thing. But your brain responds to what challenges and excites you. So the first thing is to realize you're not lazy by nature. It's that you're doing something that doesn't interest you deeply, and you've got to find whatever it is that excites you and makes you curious. And the other thing is not everything in life is going to be sexy and exciting and wonderful. is not everything in life is going to be sexy and exciting and wonderful. If you're playing a musical instrument, there's going to be years of pain involved where you don't feel like you're good enough and it's kind of boring.

That's just what life's about, so not everything can be sexy. But if you find something that interests you and you start applying your interest in it and learning some skills, you'll be able to surmount those barriers, that boredom, and that kind of impatience that you have because you really, really want to conquer it. If you don't want to conquer it, there's nothing you can do about your laziness. So just realize that that's not really who you are. You just need to find what you need, what your life's task is. And I see Claude Dean says, please tell Robert that his 50th law changed my life. And also, what are the top three things I should teach my kids at age 10,

or ages 8 and 10, what should I make sure that gets done? I think I know you, Claudine. We're Facebook friends. Well, it's sort of what I mentioned earlier about the 13-year-old daughter. There's a quote from, I believe it's Goethe, that says, if every child was able to follow its inclinations, they would all be geniuses. There would be nothing but geniuses in this world. But Minster Fuller said every child is born a genius. And sort of life drums it out of them.

So you want to feed their natural inclinations. I have many stories in there of great parents. Thomas Edison's mother was a really good nurturing mother. You can read about her in that chapter where she realized her son was inclined towards science and encouraged him. So figuring out what their inclinations are. If they're interested in something that doesn't interest you, don't impose your ideals on them. If they're interested in business, you know, an eight-year-old business, but you love to dance and art, don't assume that they need to learn what you love to feed, but they are naturally drawn to.

And then get them to do something in that field where they can develop some skill and get that confidence that comes. Children are the best learner. When you're a child, your brain absorbs information 80 times better than an adult. They are machines for learning. You want to feed their desire to learn by giving them stuff that excites them so that they develop confidence and they know how to gain skills. And so they'll be able to fall upon that forever in their life,

and they'll have that patience that is a life skill. That's basically what I would say. Interesting. have that patience that is a life skill. That's basically what I would say. Interesting. Brian Kruseberger asks, what's Robert's approach to deep practice? I'm not sure what deep, are you calling it deep practice or deliberate practice?

I'm not sure what that concept is. In the book and in all the books on acquiring skills, they talk about deliberate practice. And what that means, and I definitely believe in that, what that means is, first of all, expand your idea of what a skill is. I'm not... You said deliberate practice, same thing. Okay, okay. First of all, expand your idea of what a skill is. A skill isn't just like learning how to use a hammer, a nail, or shoot a basketball.

Writing is a skill. Business is a skill. Dealing with people is a skill. Marketing is a skill. They're all skills. It's just the same model, okay? The thing is, the problem that people have is they tend to practice the things that they're already good at and avoid the things that they're already good at and avoid the things that they're not good at. If you're a baseball hitter, you're just going to practice endlessly

hitting fastballs because you suck at hitting a curveball, and it's more fun to be hitting the balls out. You know, you need to spend 98% of your time practicing hitting curveballs. So deliberate practice means crafting your practice towards what you're not good at and avoiding the problem that people have of having lopsided skills where they're only doing things that they know that they're already good at. And I take that a little further in talking about Bill Bradley. That's sort of the example for Bill Bradley. You actually even want to practice things that are painful.

Pain is good. pain is a good thing first of all it toughens you um it never it doesn't become so painful after a while um and it's a signal from your brain um that this is something that you haven't mastered that is is frustrating you and you want to overcome that because if you feel like you can overcome the pain and the frustration, it gives you such confidence to keep, you know, whenever something comes up that's not good. And pain is good for you.

Pain will make you master that thing and will make it turn into a pleasure. So that's sort of how I'd answer that. True. What's the next question you got there, Sean? You know what, there's a bunch. I'm just going to ask a personal one. It's all right, Robert. I think we've got it.

I think we've got the ones that are on here. I'm a version of it. I think your book, The 48 Laws of Power and The 50th Law, and then I would say Jim Rohn's Leading Inspired Life have probably been three of the most inspirational or life-changing books for me. Of all the books you read, what do you think are some of the most inspirational or life-changing books that you've read? Well, you know, it's a great question. It's just so hard for me because since 1996, I've read over,

you know, 2,000 books on these things or something like that. It's, you know, I don't know. I like to read a lot of philosophy, things that kind of ground me in timeless wisdom, so Machiavelli plays a huge role for me. Not the prince so much, but his other books, The Discourses and Florentine Histories. I don't know exactly how to answer that. There's some books by Schopenhauer and things on Zen meditation and samurai warriors and warfare, the art of war. I don't know. I'm sorry, I don't have a sexy, immediate answer on that one. Because mostly, you know, I'm reading books.

Oh, I see Fanny Faye there. Go to her question because I know her. I'm not reading for pleasure. You know, I don't have any time off. So I'm reading books to go into my books. So I'm sorry I don't have a good answer for you there, Sean. Oh, no worries. You mentioned The Art of War, and it's one I've never read that I would mean to read. So I'm sorry, I don't have a good answer for you there, Sean. No worries. You mentioned The Art of War, and it's one I've never read that I would mean to read,

so I'll go get that. Fanny just said, hi, Robert, I love your book, especially Mastery, because it made me realize that even at 50, it's not too late to go for what you're passionate about. Hey, Fanny, I think I know you. It's great to hear from you. This is the last one I think I'll ask. Rajiv was asking, I think this is a common misconception with the art of persuasion, but he says, how can you get over the feeling that it's wrong,

not wrong to manipulate and seduce someone if it isn't in your character? Well, you know, you have to first expand your idea of what it means to manipulate. It's a loaded word that when we hear, it immediately conjures up something very sinister and ugly. But I maintain in my books, and you can argue with it, but this is what I maintain, is that we humans are naturally manipulative creatures. It's in our primate nature. You're just not so conscious of it. So you know when you go into your work, you don't say, oh, my God, you're looking really fat today,

or, you know, that was a really stupid remark. So you're tailoring what you say to people to please them, to not insult them. These are sort of low-level manipulations that we all go through. If there's a woman that you want to impress, you take her on a date. You don't just simply dress like a slob and take her to a hamburger joint. You go out of your way to impress her. Huh? I said Lewis does that. What did you say? shark. Lewis does that. Huh? I said Lewis does that.

What did you say? Oh, Lewis does that. You know, Lewis just oozes charm, so he doesn't need to worry about that. So, you know, these are low-level forms of manipulation, and we don't think anything ugly of that. So if you're not somebody that naturally is the shark, don't try being one. You know, it's not going to be good to practice some of these 48 laws. In fact, the 48 laws of power is designed to make you aware of what other people are going to be doing to you. If you're a

naive type, I tended to be when I was younger, you need to know maybe that somebody's going to steal your work and put your name on it, or they're going to conceal their intention. So try and read them not like an open book but like a closed book. So, you know, don't be so naive. Know about human nature. And if you're not comfortable practicing the more overt forms of manipulation, that's fine. You know, I don't want you to do something that you're not comfortable with. You can get along fine in life without being a manipulative bastard.

In fact, the manipulative bastards usually kind of get themselves caught in their own trap. So you don't have to worry about it. It's more that I don't want you to be a naive person who thinks that you can just trust anyone that crosses your path. So with that, Sean, I want to wrap things up and make that the final question. Do you want to say anything before I give the final word to Robert? Sure. Robert, just a huge thanks for coming on and doing this webinar. I'm pretty sure the content and advice that you gave during the Q&A has been

life-changing for a lot of people. So I really appreciate having you on, and I can't recommend it enough. I will pass it over to Robert for the final word, but on the back of the book, it says, follow the path and become a master. So Robert, final word for you. Well, I don't want people to get the impression that this is some intimidating book about Leonardo da Vinci or Steve Jobs that it's like, you know, I could never accomplish that. I know in a sport like archery, when you're first learning it, they teach you to kind of aim higher than the mark because then

you're going to probably hit it. And that's sort of my approach to life. You're going to aim a little bit higher than you think that you can accomplish. You're going to aim at mastery. If you don't get there, you're going to certainly get a lot further than you are right now. You're going to kind of at least be more creative and fluid. So, you know, don't be intimidated by the idea that this mastery is something beyond you. In fact, examples in the book are from everyday people who master their field. It is something that's a power that's latent in you, and I'm going to show you how to awaken that. Wow. What a powerful message, Robert Green.

Thanks so much, and I hope you guys enjoyed this as much as I did. Now head over to our site at schoolofgreatness.com for a link to buy Robert's book on Amazon, and please leave us a review for this podcast over on iTunes. I hope you guys have an amazing next couple of weeks and I'll see you next time on the school of greatness.