Modern Wisdom12 Laws Of Power For Life - Robert Greene | Modern Wisdom Podcast 383
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
125 min read · 24,997 words- 0:00 – 6:06
Intro
- RGRobert Greene
You have so much time to live. It's your time. You possess it. It's your empire. It's your treasure within you. And it can be 60 years, it could be 20 years. Whatever it is, it's yours. And you can inadvertently give it away by wasting your time, by getting involved in people's trivial fights, by working for other people that you hate. They own your time. You have to show up every day at eight o'clock and you're miserable. They own that thing that is your only real possession. So your goal in life is to realize that that is your treasure, and you don't want to give it away inadvertently to other people. (air whooshing)
- CWChris Williamson
Robert Greene, welcome to the show.
- RGRobert Greene
Thanks for having me, Chris. My pleasure.
- CWChris Williamson
Is it true that you've had more than 80 jobs in your life?
- RGRobert Greene
Well, my, my girlfriend and I once counted, and we got into the 60s, right? And then it kind of became a blur. And sometimes I would recall, "I think I had this job in college." And so we just kind of estimated upward. But I can at least count 60, in the 60s, of actual jobs, and there probably is more.
- CWChris Williamson
Pretty wide-ranging.
- RGRobert Greene
Doesn't say g- great things about me. I was very restless as a young man, couldn't quite find my way. I hated working for other people, more or less. That was sort of the gist of it. And I, now I've kind of found the perfect life because I don't have a boss above me.
- CWChris Williamson
You were, was it 36 when you got the book offer for 48 Laws?
- RGRobert Greene
Well, I was 36 when I pitched it to, to the man who packaged at Yost Delford, then we sold it, like, a year and a half later. So I was probably 37, somewhere around there. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, it's inspiring for people that are thinking, "I should have my shit together by the time that I'm 30," and still feeling like ...
- RGRobert Greene
Totally together, but, you know, yeah. It is, it is inspiring, you know, because the, the lesson that I tell people is that I never gave up. Even in the worst moments where I was very depressed and really were kind of doubting myself, there was a little voice inside of me that kept me pushing, going forward, knowing that I really was, I did have some kind of talent as a writer. I'm not good at anything else in life, but I had some kind of talent as a writer and that it was worth, you know, being, keeping, keeping myself, keeping a spark to hold the light and never giving up. So that was kind of my lesson.
- CWChris Williamson
What's so interesting about power in the modern era?
- RGRobert Greene
Well, the interesting thing is that people are so damn hypocritical. So it's, I mean, this was the case 25 years ago when I wrote the book, but nobody wants to admit that they're interested in power. They like to package it in all these different forms. "I just want to change the world." "I just want to make a great movie." "I just want to write a great book." Yeah, those, those are motivations for sure, and there's alwa- always a part of it, but come on, admit that you love the sensation of power. You love the fact that you have a degree of control over your own life, that you can, that you can more or less influence the people around you, that you don't feel helpless. But nobody wants to admit it, but everybody is after some form of power in this world. So that's kind of the modern dynamic. Things have gotten much more competitive than they were 30, 40 years ago, but nobody wants to admit that they have a competitive, ambitious nature.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the difference or how do you differentiate between power and status?
- RGRobert Greene
I'm not quite sure how you mean that. Can you, uh, elaborate?
- CWChris Williamson
Well, people use ...
- RGRobert Greene
You mean your, your, your status in life?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah. S- status just generally as a tool that permits you access.
- RGRobert Greene
Well ... Well, you can have the status or status, that's, that's how you pronounce it, um, in life.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
You can have a s- You can have a position of power, but you yourself are not very powerful. So power is an inner quality. Power is a sense of control over your emotions, a sense of being able to see into the future and kind of devise plans for getting what you want, being strategic in life. It's kind of thinking ahead. It's a certain form of ra- of rationality. We find plenty of people in positions of power, and believe me, I've worked for them. I was on the board of directors of American Apparel and the CEO was a very charismatic man, but he was comp- all over the place. He had no control over himself. That is not power. So you can have status without power. You can have power without status, but eventually you will get the kind of position that you want in life if you have this degree of self-awareness and self-control, at least I believe.
- CWChris Williamson
Talking about the new book, which is Daily Laws-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... is there a romantic arc, a sort of a sense of, uh, coming full circle with Ryan releasing The Daily Stoic a few years ago, and him being one of your apprentices not so long ago, and now you creating a book with that sort of model, assisted by him in the future? Is that quite nice to think of it like that?
- RGRobert Greene
Yes, it is. What it means is my former apprentice has now outshone me.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
He's now, like, more powerful and famous and successful than I am, and now I'm following in his footsteps. But I'm fine with that because youth rules the world. I'm happy at some point to leave the stage. He's an extremely s- smart, very brilliant guy, and, you know, to feel that I am kind of imitating him is, is fine with me. I'm very happy with it because I, I love Ryan.
- CWChris Williamson
I think it's quite charming. It's quite a nice way to do it.
- RGRobert Greene
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
So what I've done is-
- 6:06 – 14:01
Success Through Action & Purpose
- RGRobert Greene
- NANarrator
First one, win through your actions. And the law is, demonstrate, do not explicate. And I think there's a story about Sir Christopher Wren in here.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. I, I mean basically we tend to talk too much. We're very verbal, chatty creatures, particularly in the world today, and it's not a very powerful way to be. If you're in a position where you have to explain yourself, explain why you did something, explain why your work is better, explain why your idea is better, you're already in a weak position, right? Because people don't really trust words anymore, right? Because everybody talks. We're inundated with advertisements, with people who can bullshit it with, bullshit us with all kinds of words about how great they are. You know, it's, it's the era of con men and con women. And so the fact that you can actually demonstrate your idea through an action by making people feel that your idea is superior, by making them feel that you're actually a person of power, that they can make them feel that what you did was the right thing to do and was justified is much more powerful and effective than blabbing a lot of words, right? And, you know, I give in, in The 48 Laws of Power, in that chapter, I give you dozens of strategies for how you can make that, put that to life. But that's, that's the general gist of it. And Christopher Wren's-
- NANarrator
And it's kind of-
- RGRobert Greene
... stories are pretty much perfect example of that, right?
- NANarrator
Yeah. He had these columns in a church and, um, this, this critic, this other guy who was, who thought he was a great architect, and Christopher Wren was the greatest architect of his time, said, "You know, I don't think there are enough columns here to support the roof. It's gonna fall down." And Christopher Wren goes, "God, what an idiot." You know, I mean, obviously I know what I'm doing. But instead of arguing with him, what he did was, he put in an extra column, just like the guy said, but he left a little space of like six inches at the top. So it actually wasn't supporting the roof. So the guy got the feeling that he won the argument, but in fact Christopher Wren had won through the action because he never did what, really what the guy proposed for him to do.
- RGRobert Greene
There's a subreddit called R/MaliciousCompliance. Are you familiar with this?
- NANarrator
No.
- RGRobert Greene
It's phenomenal.
- NANarrator
Educate me.
- RGRobert Greene
It is absolutely outstanding. So it's just people that have been asked to do certain things and they-
- NANarrator
Oh, yeah.
- RGRobert Greene
... follow them to the absolute letter of what's been... (laughs) It's completely not what the person asked for, but it's malicious compliance. It's one of, one of my best reads. If you're ever bored and you need to go down a rabbit hole on Reddit, I highly, highly-
- NANarrator
Well, there-
- RGRobert Greene
... recommend that.
- NANarrator
... is a great novel written on that very subject by Milan Kundera called The Joke in which he, people in like a, some kind of prison camp were asked to do these different tasks. And they did them exactly to the letter, but it's a hilarious novel doing exactly what you're talking about. So I will check out the, the subreddit. Malicious compliance is good. Right, next one. Next one. Uh, money and success. Daily law, concentrate on maintaining a high sense of purpose and the success will flow to you naturally.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. Well, a lot of people get caught up in, in sort of immediate emotional things like, am I getting enough attention on, on Instagram? How many followers do I have? Am I making a n- as much money as other people? And if you get caught up in your 20s like that, you're gonna fall d- you're gonna end up in a kind of, at a dead end in life. Because really what brings success, ultimate success in life is kind of realizing something from deep within. You have a purpose, you have an... You understand that there's something that you were born to do, something that connects you to your childhood, to your deepest inclinations, right? And so in your 20s, you're not in a hurry to make money or increase your Instagram followers to a certain number. You're in a, you're in a position where you're going to learn as many skills as possible. You're gonna follow that purpose, which for me was learning how to write and trying journalism and trying Hollywood, et cetera. And you're gonna take your time and you're gonna be calm but intense about that. And then eventually success will come. And when it comes, it's like you're able to then go to the next step because you know, y- you, you're... It's the purpose that guides you, not the money and not the fame. So like after I finished The 48 Laws of Power, you know, I could have gotten all drunk with the success and I could have, could have like just kind of created The 48 Laws of Power Part Two, et cetera. But instead I realized, "No, my purpose is to continually branch off into other directions to try new things." It's not the money that interests me. I don't mind the money. Don't get me wrong. I love the fact that I'm able to make a good living. But what really drives me is actually fulfilling this deep need within me to express what I believe is what I call my life's task.
- NANarrator
You talk about hyper-intention and that sometimes holding onto things too tightly can actually cause us to be less effective at it. You say hyper-intention cause hyper-anxiousness. I think that's something I've been considering a lot recently, especially after the last year where everyone's been locked up, ruminating, more neurotic, fewer experiences, less adventures, less opportunity to get outside of our heads. I think that's certainly something a lot of people will have been seeing.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, definitely. I mean, we all have that feeling like, um, you're trying so hard to get something and the effort is actually kind of messing you up, right? It's kind of getting in your way. Like in a seduction setting, if you're so nervous and you just really, really want to please that woman that you want to seduce and that's all your energy is going into, you're gonna give off vibrations that are gonna be kind of off-putting. You're trying too hard, your intention is too obvious. But if you kind of let go, it's more a process of letting go inside of yourself and not... And realizing that by letting go, oftentimes when I'm blocked in my writing...... trying too hard. If I take a step back and I relax and I listen to some great music or watch some football on television, suddenly the idea comes to me because I let go of that inner tenseness that, that kind of envelops you.
- CWChris Williamson
It's difficult though, right? Because if this is our life's calling, if you've done the explore period during your 20s and you're getting toward finding what you think is your true life's, life's calling, you take it seriously. And you can quite easily kid yourself into believing that the consequences and the repercussions of your performance can be very grave, this is super important, and you start to grip more and more tightly to what it is that you're doing, it makes you tense, and your performance suffers.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. I mean, def- definitely. But you have to learn certain strategies of letting go, and it only comes through experience, you know? I know, um, for instance, I, when I was writing my war book maybe 14 years ago, I bought a pool table and I thought shooting pool will be a great way of relaxing myself, right? And then I'll be able to learn some strategy and I'll become a hustler maybe in the end. And so I played every day and I got better and better and better, and then when somebody would show up to play against me, suddenly I was just terrible. I completely melted in, in, you know, under the pressure. Shots that I could normally make, I was bungling left, right, and center, and it was because I was taking it way too seriously. I was too invested in winning. And then when I learned to kind of let go and relax and kind of enjoy the game and not show off, I was actually performing better. I wasn't performing brilliantly, don't get me wrong. I'm not of the hustler level, but I was actually performing better. So you learn through experience, you learn through writing seven books, through trying to hustle your way on a pool table and things don't work out, that you have to take a step back sometimes and let go. It's not easy, but you learn this through experience.
- 14:01 – 18:17
Cultivate Negative Capability
- RGRobert Greene
- CWChris Williamson
Next one, cultivate negative capability, and the lore is develop the habit of suspending the need to judge everything that crosses your path. Consider and even momentarily entertain viewpoints opposite to your own, seeing how they feel. Do anything to break up your normal train of thinking and your sense that you already know the truth.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. Well, whenever you are facing like a project or something that you're creating or building, there's a level of anxiety involved. Like, you're not quite sure of what you need to do and you're anxious for getting the right results, et cetera, and this kind of tightens you up from within. And what happens with most people is, before you start, this is really has to do with your creative process, which is extremely important no matter what line of work you're in. So when you start your project or, or a s- a problem that you're solving, you're generally only thinking of two or three possibilities, let's say A, B, or C. And A will be something that you've done a million times before, so you're naturally gonna be thinking of doing it that. And B might be something that you heard somebody else do or whatever, maybe you'll try that out. And C is some kind of odd thing that you probably will never try anyway, anyway. And so you're gonna follow these paths, right, because you already assume what you think is the answer before you've started. And negative ca- capability is to start with a different mindset, is to let go of that certainty, is to allow yourself to have something, to have some mystery, to let y- to tell yourself, "I don't know the answer. I don't know exactly what the right path is to follow. In fact, I'm a bit flummoxed by it. And so instead of trying A, B, or C, maybe I should also think of D and E and F. Maybe I should look into what other people have done. Maybe I should look into what my enemy, the person I hate the most, has done in this situation. Maybe shou- I should entertain ideas that I normally would never entertain." And so the ability to keep a sense of openness while also feeling a little bit anxious about the answer is the essence of negative capability. So you're not in a rush to get an answer. You're let, you're open to all kinds of different possibilities.
- CWChris Williamson
There's a Mozart and Bach story with that as well, that Mozart didn't really tend to absorb in many other artists, but with Bach for some reason he did, and that actually added a big flavor to the way that he played.
- RGRobert Greene
Well, you know, particularly as you get older and you've had some success, you think that you know the right way or you know the right way to write a book or, or do a great podcast or whatever, and so you get kind of closed to, to other possibilities, right? So in the case of Mozart, he was like that, but then he was like looking at the scores of the great composer Bach, who had kind of fallen out of fashion by that time, and he was going, "My God, there are actually things in here that are far superior to anything I've ever composed. It's, he's on another level than I am." And so he was able to drop his ego, a very important part of negative capability, and say, "This is actually a superior form of music," which was counterpoint. He said, "I'm gonna actually try and incorporate Bach into my music. I'm not gonna imitate him, I'm gonna incorporate his ideas," and it led to a whole new level of creativity in his career and, and music that's, that's survived the centuries. So the ability also to drop your ego and admit that other people might have a better... Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
- CWChris Williamson
It's interesting that people can be so nimble like that. Think about the startups at the moment, wha- you've got companies that have less than 50 employees making... they're, and they're in the FTSE 500 or FTSE 100. Why? Well, it's because they're able to adapt very, very quickly. They don't have these huge-
- RGRobert Greene
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... diseconomies of scale. They're not these big fat leviathans-
- RGRobert Greene
Right. Right, right, right.
- CWChris Williamson
... that people need to drag lumbering along with them. They're able to move with the market and they don't have these cultural challenges where the guardrails are brought in.
- RGRobert Greene
... and then they get bought out by Google or Microsoft or Amazon-
- CWChris Williamson
And ruin it.
- RGRobert Greene
... and it's all-
- CWChris Williamson
Then they ruin it. Yeah. (laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
And ruin it. Which is the sad fate of our world right now. But I completely agree with you on that. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- 18:17 – 28:35
Remake Yourself
- CWChris Williamson
All right. Next one. Uh, remake yourself into a character of power, and the lore is, "Remake yourself into a character of power. Working on yourself like clay should be one of your greatest and most pleasurable life tasks. It makes you, in essence, an artist, an artist creating yourself." And there's a story. I can't pronounce his name Aurore Dupin De, Du, Divant?
- RGRobert Greene
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
The novelist that did Indiana.
- RGRobert Greene
Uh, George Sand?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes. But-
- RGRobert Greene
Is that George Sand?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, but that was-
- RGRobert Greene
The woman?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- RGRobert Greene
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. Well, it's basically, um, we're creatures, we're animals that judge people by appearances, and we don't like to admit that, but we pick up s- vibes from people's appearance, their face, their body language, their presence, and we kind of judge them based on that. And once we've judged people, that's kind of who they are in our mind. And if you let people continually kind of pin you down, "This is who you are. This is who you are, Chris. This is, this is your type," et cetera, it kind of limits your freedom because their opinion of you will actually constrain what you can do, right? Your reputation kind of precedes you. And so you wanna turn this around and think of your image as something that you get to play with, as something that you get to create. It's like your greatest work of art. You wanna take control of the process of how people can judge you, right? Which is- you think is a little bit different. You should, "Well, I should just be who I am," but you're never exactly being who you are. You're always, in some ways, crafting your words and your persona and how you present yourself depending on the people you're dealing with, and I'm simply telling you here to take greater control over that, to make it more conscious, to think of yourself as a kind of actor in this world, right? And your acting is you're not just doing anything, you're not just being yourself, but you're learning to play a, a role, and you're learning to sometimes change your image, right? And some of the most powerful people in this world, you know, like a, a David Bowie, for instance, or a Pablo Picasso, they were constantly changing their image every five or six years. It didn't make them seem crazy. It made them seem incredibly powerful. We wanted to see what is the next incarnation of David Bowie? Who's he gonna be now in the '80s, et cetera. It's very powerful, right? And in the case of George Sand, she was a woman at a time where women novelists were not very successful, and she decided that she was gonna create this image of, of a woman who dressed like a man, who almost had the appearance and spirit of a man, and she took a man's name, George, and that became her image, and it was incredibly successful and incredibly powerful. It added to her aura as, as a successful novelist. So that's sort of the essence of that lore.
- CWChris Williamson
Are you familiar with the Theranos story and Elizabeth Holmes?
- RGRobert Greene
Yes, I am.
- CWChris Williamson
Very similar with her, right?
- RGRobert Greene
In what way?
- CWChris Williamson
She decided that she-
- RGRobert Greene
She, um-
- CWChris Williamson
... was going to try and take on masculine characteristics. She purposefully made her voice lower. She- I mean, she was a complete charlatan and-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. She-
- CWChris Williamson
... is going to jail for a very long time.
- RGRobert Greene
She wanted to be, she wanted to be, she wanted to be Steve Jobs, et cetera.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. Uh, I mean, of, of course you can... It does no- if you have nothing to back it up, if it's only image, if it's only, you know, playing a role, that's not gonna get you very far. There has to be some substance behind it. You know, a, a David Bowie or a George Sand, these are very talented people who were great artists, right? So it's not that you're just a con artist. So, you know, you can take that too far. But, you know, if only she had, Elizabeth Holmes, had had a, like, a really brilliant idea that would, had actually foundation, all of those black turtleneck sweaters and that kind of Steve Jobsy in appearance in, in her, in her podca- um, whenever in her, you know, in, in the shows that she gave to deliver her product, would've been that much more effective. So it could have been the right answer here if she had had something to back it up.
- CWChris Williamson
It's the same as Fyre Festival. If that had actually worked, everyone surrounding it would've been hailed as marketing geniuses, and the same-
- RGRobert Greene
Which-
- CWChris Williamson
... with Elizabeth Holmes.
- RGRobert Greene
The one, the one in the Caribbean? Which festival was that?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, Fyre Festival. I think it was on-
- RGRobert Greene
Oh, Fyre Festival. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 28:35 – 34:40
Judge People on Behaviour
- CWChris Williamson
next one. Uh, judge them on their behavior, not on their words. What you want is a picture of a person's character over time restrained from the natural tendency to judge right away and let the passage of time reveal more and more about who people are. This is something I see play out pretty much every single year that I exist on this planet.
- RGRobert Greene
Well, um, you know, I do a lot of consulting work with people in various l- lines of work in, uh, you know, sports, in politics, entertainment, et cetera. And the number one problem that people have is they've hired someone, a business partner, a manager, an employee to help them, and it ends up they're a disaster, you know? They're like, trying to get the company away from them. They're just so incompetent. "I had no idea. You know, tell me, Robert, how can I, how can I get out of this?" Well, I'm gonna te- tell you how to get out of it, but first I'm going to teach you the number one thing is never hire these fuck-ups in the first place. And the reason you're hiring them is because you're judging them on their appearance, on their dazzling resume, on their charming smile, on the cool clothes that they're wearing, right? And they kind of charm you and they kind of con you with their appearance, and that's sort of the, the animal part of our nature where we're kind of dazzled by how things look. You need to look below the surface. Character is something that's etched so deeply in people they almost cannot control it. It's what creates patterns of behavior in their life. That is who they are. Some people have a good character and some people have a very bad character, and instead of good or bad, I like to say strong or weak.... strong character is people who can take criticism, right? That's the number one thing you want in somebody that you're hiring or working with, or even an intimate partner. You want to be able to criticize them, criticize them on some level in a constructive way. If they can't take any criticism, it shows a weakness in character, and you're never going to be able to work with them on any level. You also want strong character people who can handle stress. So many times these people hired someone who seemed so great, and then the shit hit the fan and they kind of withered and turned into these whiny little five-year-olds, right? Well, stress reveals people, who people are, and I instruct people, "You can't put people in stressful situations right now, but in the interview process, you can make them sweat a little bit. You can make them a little bit nervous. You can put them in a little bit of stress to see how they react." And I show you how, what- what is the proper reaction and what isn't in those kinds of situations. You want people who can work as a team, who are not so s- so ego-driven and it's everything is about them. But you kind of subsume their ego and work with others. These are signs of a strong character. The opposite is weak character. Stop looking at the resume, at the smile, at the pretty clothes, at the charming words, and get under that surface and look at their character, 'cause that is really what is going to determine, you know, how well you can work with them. And work, choosing people of bad character is going to make your life hell. Believe me, I've been dealing with this for, for 25 years in my consulting. I have a lot of stories about that, so very important.
- CWChris Williamson
I was talking to a Navy SEAL and he brought up a really nice, uh, dichotomy around how people hire and fire. He said that people hire based on skills. So they look at someone's resume and they have this particular qualification and this was their last job and so on and so forth. But they fire people based on their attributes. So it's not the fact that they weren't able to do the job. He uses, as a Navy SEAL example, he said, "Look, Chris, if you said to me, um, 'I want to be able to hit a target at 25 yards with a handgun.'" He's like, "Give me a couple of weeks. I can teach you to do it. That'll be fine." That's a skill. What I can't teach you is how to take criticism or how to be, uh, how to have humor or how to have empathy or how to be a team player or how to be resilient or how to have grit or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So you hire people based on the skills, then realize that they might have the skills that you require but their attributes and their personality and their character are completely sideways, because during-
- RGRobert Greene
Correct.
- CWChris Williamson
... any 90-minute interview, you can't see, you can't stress test the character. So yeah, I would be, um... I think that's a really good way, to try and make someone sweat purposefully to create some-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... discomfort is a good idea.
- RGRobert Greene
Well, so, so when you do that, when you do that, you want to see whether they're, they- they can say something like, "You know, actually, Chris, I don't know the answer to that. That's a good question. Let me think about it." Or, "No." The- the- the idiot, the- the bad, weak character response is, you know, to get all defensive and say, "Well, you know," blah, blah, blah, and blame other people or say, you know, trying to justify why your idea is the best. You're already revealing that kind of underlying inability to take some kind of criticism. So, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Those people that struggle to sit with that discomfort, even if it's just in an interview and do get defensive and do start to bluster, it's-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... you know, that's the pebble at the top of an avalanche, I think, and something worse is gonna happen down the, down the road.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, I mean, so don't, don't look at the resume so much. Don't look at whether they went to some great business school. Try and see patterns in their past. Look at that resume for certain patterns, right? So if they were continually being fired every couple of years from some job and they say, "Oh, I had, this boss was terrible," et cetera, no, look at maybe that there's a pattern that's kind of recurring in their life and it's going to recur with you in the next, next time it goes around. So be focused not on the- the skills and the glittering resume, but when, um, people are trying to disguise, because if people have weaknesses in their character, they're doing everything they can to disguise it from you. Unconsciously they're doing that in the interview in the initial process, right? And then months later it'll, it'll leak out, right? So you want to be a detective and you want to get under that facade.
- 34:40 – 39:45
Use Absence to Increase Respect
- RGRobert Greene
- CWChris Williamson
"Use absence to increase respect. The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporarily withdraw from it. Uh, temporarily withdrawing from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity." And there's this Napoleon quote where he says, "If I am often seen at the theater, people will cease to notice me."
- RGRobert Greene
Right. I mean, it's very counterintuitive to our social media age where we think the only way to gain power is to be immediately present continually every single day on Instagram or whatever it is, with the new TikTok video, never letting one hour go by where people aren't clicking on you, right? So it's kind of a hyper, you know, a mood that we're all caught up in. It's very infecting. And it's not based on, on real psychology. So if you're so much in people's face, if you're continually there, they're naturally going to grow tired of you. They're naturally going to think that you're kind of weak, that you're trying too hard for attention. They may not say it, but they feel it, a slight level of contempt from within, right? And so if you disappear for a day or several days or a week, people are gonna start thinking about you and they're gonna wondering, "Well, maybe I didn't really know Chris. Maybe he's a little more mysterious and dimensional than I thought of. Maybe there's something going on. Maybe he's disappeared for this reason or that." And as they think about you and as they maybe fantasize about what's going on in your mind-It kind of creates a sort of a seductive process where they're- your spirit is entering their head, as opposed to them being so filled with you that they wanna vomit and get rid of you. You're creating an appetite where they wanna like now know more. It's an incredibly powerful dynamic. And so in a, in a dating situation it's extremely obvious. That's the most obvious of all. So if you're continually bombarding people with texts, you know, love bombing them, "I love you. I need to see you," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, people might initially think that's kind of cool, you know, "I- I don't get enough of that." But after a couple of days, it starts to get a little bit tiring and you begin to wonder about the other person. "Maybe they're desperate. Maybe it has nothing to do about me. Maybe they're just desperate," right? And so, you know... But if they've created this pattern where they're texting you and then suddenly they don't for a day or two, you go, "Wow, maybe I've done something wrong. Maybe they don't like me as much as they liked me before." And now it makes them want to try harder to please you. So learning how to absent yourself in this social media age is extremely important and it's not easy, I know, where you're trying to always post something on Instagram. It's not just absence, it's just creating a sense of mystery so people have the sense that they don't thoroughly know you so that they can disdain you. Right? You wanna keep them on their toes and occasionally do something unpredictable that will surprise them. That's sort of the art here.
- CWChris Williamson
There's two things that I really like about this. The first is the pattern interrupt that you have that makes people realize, "Oh, hang on, there's something different to what I'd expected here." And the next one is the scarcity creating demand that you use the example of the tulips, that, uh-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... bubble market and that, like, demand was simply created through scarcity. And think about anyone that you kind of admire. Some of them may be omnipresent, but the ones that are omnipresent have to be so talented and so likable that they're constantly delivering you something that's very, very nice. And even they will be pattern interrupting by supplying you with something that's slightly different and it's always worded a little bit more and they're always sort of forward-thinking and creative, but the people that are aloof, they're the ones that have this sort of mystique and they're kind of, like, mysterious and attractive and you don't really know what's going on with them.
- RGRobert Greene
Right. Right, right, very much so. I mean, we lived through that with, with Donald Trump here in the United States, where he was so much in your face that it was just, like, you- you know, you, you couldn't avoid it. Even if you didn't wanna think about him, you were thinking about him night and day. And initially it was powerful in a perverted sense. He captured so much of our attention, but eventually so many people got tired of it. Even his own supporters got tired of the daily tweet, et cetera, and it really turned against him 'cause he didn't know, he- i- he didn't know how to do your pattern interruption, if that's what you call it. You know, he didn't know how to surprise or do something different 'cause it was his character that made him always do the same thing, and he didn't- never ever knew how to absent himself. So, you know, these are, these are powerful lessons. And then there are people like an Elon Musk who doesn't really absent himself very much, but he is kind of keeping us on the toes. We never quite know what he's up to next. You know, he can, he can do that pattern interruption that you're talking about.
- 39:45 – 43:47
Become an Object of Desire
- RGRobert Greene
- CWChris Williamson
Appear to be an object of desire. Build a reputation that precedes you. If many have succumbed to your charms, there must be a reason.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, I mean it's... I- I give people a very banal example. You're- you're looking for a restaurant, you're with your- your- your friend, your girlfriend or boyfriend, and you pass by a restaurant. Looks kind of nice, but there's only one couple sitting at a table in a rather vast room and you go, "Hmm." Even though you don't admit it, you go, "No, let's not, let's try, let's look at somewhere else." And you pass by this restaurant, it's packed with people that are all laughing and drinking, you go, "Yeah, let's go in there. There must be a reason," right? So a lot of our human desires are based on what other people are desiring, right? There have been very interesting intellectuals who have written about that, the mimetic, the imitating aspect of our desire. If other people think something is cool, there must be a reason for it. I must think that- maybe I should think that it's cool as well, right? So you wanna continually create des- um, triangles of desire where the product that you create or the person that you are is desired by so many other people that it creates a kind of a viral effect and attention is brought to you. So, um, I- I don't like to often admit this, but I'll tell the story about how I seduced my current girlfriend, um, who I've been with for a w- quite a while. Um, it was like my birthday, we had already had two dates and I didn't think she was that into me. I wasn't quite sure, you know, the level of interest in me. So, uh, this is before I wrote The Art of Seduction, I have to admit. So I invited her to my birthday party knowing full well that eight of these really beautiful women would be there who happened to be my friends at the time, right? They were gonna be all around the table. And I knew that seeing that she would immediately seem- assume that these women were kind of interested in me or that there must be something enticing about Robert to have attracted all of these beautiful women. It could have been totally fake, they were just friends of mine, but it- it worked as a charm and she admits it to this day. So, um, creating triangles of desire is extremely important. This will... If- even if it's a product that you've, that you've created or in a seduction facet, you know, and I talk about in my last book about the French designer Coco Chanel, who was really brilliant at that, whenever she created some design, some new kind of outfit or whatever, she made sure that sh- pe- women saw other women wearing her outfits everywhere. She purposely hired models to do that and they'd go, "Wow."... other women are buying this. I have to be interested in it, so even in a marketing sense, you want to continually create these viral effects.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, mimetic desire is a hell of a drug. There was, um ... wasn't there something, a marketing campaign that was done with cigarettes and women? Wasn't it seen unbecomingly to, for, for women to smoke for a while, and then they got models and they paid models to walk down some street in New York? Have I got this right?
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, th- this was Edward Bernays. I talk about that in The Art of Seduction. He was a, a, a cousin of Sigmund Freud, he was one of the most brilliant public relations people in history, and he created this, like, liberty march-
- CWChris Williamson
That was it.
- RGRobert Greene
... in which women walked down S- Fifth Avenue in, en masse, smoking cigarettes. And it wasn't now this kind of dirty little thing that, that louche women did. It was now a liberty, a liberty thing, a liberating thing. It's great for women here in the 1920s, it's a new era, but it's not just one woman in a dark corner. It was like hundreds of them marched down the street, all smoking. And it had a- it was immensely effective. It's one of the great advertising campaigns of o- of the modern era.
- CWChris Williamson
Didn't they call them, was it like freedom torches or something? They'd even given them-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, I think so.
- CWChris Williamson
... some cute little name.
- RGRobert Greene
I think so. I think you're right, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- RGRobert Greene
It's been a long time since I did that story, but yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I have no idea where I've pulled that story from e- I've totally bro-scienced it out of thin air.
- RGRobert Greene
Well, it's from my book.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, pp- there we go.
- 43:47 – 48:07
Time Lost Can Never Be Regained
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, right, next one. Next one. Uh, "Time is all you have. Resist the urge to respond to trivial annoyances. Time lost can never be regained."
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, well, I talk about this, I don't know if it's the same law, but I talk about, um, dead time versus live time. And what I mean by that is, um, you know, you, you have a lot of possessions in this world. You have your car, your house, you know, the money that you've saved, et cetera, et cetera. All these things, even your loved ones, can eventually be taken from you, and they will be taken from w- you at some point in life 'cause that's the nature of our transient existence. The one thing, the one thing that you own that can never, ever be taken away from you, ever, until you die, is your time, right? So when you're born, you know, when the ... and the fa- cut, the umbilical cord is cut, you have so much time to live. It's your time. You possess it. It's your empire. It's your treasure within you, right? And it could be 60 years, it could be 20 years. Whatever it is, it's yours, right? And you can inadvertently give it away by wasting your time, by getting involved in people's trivial fights, by working for other people that you hate. They own your time. You have to show up every day at 8:00 and you're miserable. They own that thing that you, it's your only real possession. So your goal in life is to realize that that is your treasure and it's something that you own and you want to make it your own. You don't want to give it away inadvertently to other people. So let's say you're working at that shit job and you have that horrible boss and you're miserable, right? That time that you have there, those eight hours, is what I call dead time. It's like something that was ori- originally kind of green and started turning brown and withering and dying on the vine that's died within you and it's totally brown, right? And you're miserable and you're resentful and you go home and you're bitter, et cetera. You can turn that around and make those eight hours alive time. You tell yourself, "All right, this isn't my future. I'm not gonna be flipping burgers at McDonald's forever, okay? So maybe when I go home at night, I'm gonna start studying something. I'm gonna go to night school, I'm gonna create a different plan for my life, all right?" Also, the people in this restaurant, maybe there's some interesting psychologies going on, even with my coworkers. Maybe I can learn something about how to deal with people. Maybe I can learn what my weaknesses are. Maybe I can develop some kind of empathy with it. Maybe I can see that there are things that I can learn even from the worst possible job. Suddenly that dead, brown time starts turning green and green and a little sprout starts showing up on the tree limb, right? So that's how you create alive time, by saying, "It's mine. I'm gonna create something worthwhile out of it. I'm not gonna give it away to others. I'm not gonna be sucked into their dramas and their, and their games that they try and get me to play with. This is my time. I'm gonna own it."
- CWChris Williamson
I spoke to a friend on the show and was sad about the fact that I used to have an, uh, very small minor existential crisis every time I went to the supermarket after work at 3:00 in the morning. So I was working in a nightclub and then I'd finish up and then it would be 3:00 or 3:30 AM and I'd realize I didn't have any food for tomorrow or there was no milk or whatever. And I'd go into the supermarket and it was just the perfect amalgamation of fatigue and hunger and "What the fuck am I doing in a supermarket at 3:30 in the morning?" Uh, and, and, and I just used to always feel a bit sort of wistful or melancholy or whatever. And I said to him, and he's like, "Do this the next time that you go in. When you go in, someone that's stocking the shelves or the person that you speak to at the counter, like, just genuinely care for 30 seconds about how their day is going. Like, invest-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... yourself in them and say, 'Hey man,' like, 'how, how you doing tonight? Little bit late, isn't it?'
- RGRobert Greene
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
'Like, is everything okay?' Uh-
- RGRobert Greene
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And it made me realize, I was like, "Look, if you focus your energy outward, not inward, you are going to-
- RGRobert Greene
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... sort of free that and open it up a little bit," and it made a big difference.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, that's very true. I, I agree with that 100%.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Next one.
- 48:07 – 52:46
The Madness of Groups
- CWChris Williamson
"The madness of groups. Never relinquish your ability to doubt, reflect, and consider other options. Your rationality as an individual is your only protection against the madness that can overcome a group."
- RGRobert Greene
Well, what often happens is if you're an individual and some- and you're entertaining an idea...You might be a little bit skeptical and you might tell yourself, "Hmm, maybe that's not the best idea." Maybe after a couple hours you see from another angle and you go, "Now, you know, maybe I shouldn't follow that path. That doesn't seem quite right." But in a group setting, the very opposite happens. When a group starts entertaining an idea, that ability to step back and detach and to analyze this suddenly goes out the window, right? Because other people are, are focusing on this idea and you get caught up in the group mentality and suddenly everybody is signing off on this idea and not reflecting on the possible negative consequences. So if you're an individual and you choose a particular path and it fails, you're gonna pay terrible consequences. The stakes are high, so naturally you're gonna think more deeply about the possibilities. But when you're in a group and the boss is advocating some kind of ridiculous scheme that everyone's kind of buying off on, in the back of your mind, you go, "If this is wrong, if it fucks up, well, I'm not gonna blame because it's everybody else there." So all these kind of group mentalities start kicking in and it's kind of a madness. It's a kind of delusionary process. If you as an individual went through that delusionary process, you would be homeless, your life would be a complete wreckage right now, right? If every time you thought of some idea, you immediately convinced yourself it's brilliant, it has to work, and I'm not gonna pay any consequences, you would probably be dead. But in a group setting you can get away with that. Oh yes, and, and, and how many Hollywood meetings when I worked in Hollywood before that did I actually see with my own eyes this very dynamic where some really bad script was being entertained by some producer, but because the producer liked it, everyone was now like, felt the need to kind of say, "Yes, I think it's pretty good," even though everybody knew it was a shit script. And suddenly this thing that you thought was the worst movie that ever was ev- em- the worst script that was ever written is now being passed into production. It's going to happen. And nobody in that group meeting kind of raised their hand and said, "You know, uh, Mr. Producer, I think there's some things that really need to be changed. I think the whole idea is actually pretty rotten. It's not gonna work very well." If one person had done that, then maybe something had changed, but the whole group signs off on it and this really pathetic, stupid movie actually gets made. Believe me, I saw that time and again. So groups have a kind of madness, a kind of delusionary process where the consequences of what you, of what could have go wrong are suddenly spread out about so many people and you get drawn into the kind of group mentality where you, it's, it's natural. You don't wanna be that one person saying, "No, I don't think this might be so good," because you're gonna be maybe be ostracized. People are gonna wonder about you. So it creates this kind of insanity dynamic in the group, and it's very dangerous.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the solution then as an individual? How do you play that game?
- RGRobert Greene
Well, as an individual you have to have, well first of all, the most important thing, this is what I do in, in my consulting, I say it's really starts from the boss, from the person who's like gonna spread the bad idea among the group, right? That you have to realize that you don't want a bunch of yes men and yes women around you. You wanna create a, a, a dynamic in which people can raise their hand and say, "This idea is shit, Mr. Boss, even though you might fire me." That's a sign, that's a strong character that we're talking about. So it really starts at the top, right, where that person is able to create a group dynamic where some kind of air from the outside is let in and people can actually express some of their true opinion. And if you're caught in that kind of dynamic where it's the boss is like that, that's very dangerous and very delicate 'cause your job might be on the line. So maybe you kind of sign off on the group dynamic so you're not fired so you still can have a paycheck and pay for your food and clothing, et cetera. But in your mind, you don't go, you don't seduce by it. You create some distance and you go, "I know this is a bad idea. I'm not gonna get sucked into it. I'm not gonna get personally involved in it. And at any time in the process, if I can bring in a little word of criticism or a little breath of fresh air, I'm gonna try and do it. I'm not gonna emotionally invest myself in this group madness."
- 52:46 – 58:11
Suffer Fools Gladly
- RGRobert Greene
- CWChris Williamson
Suffer fools gladly. Detach yourself emotionally from fools, and while you're inwardly laughing at their foolishness, indulge them in one of their l- uh, more harmless ideas. This one I thought was quite interesting.
- RGRobert Greene
Well, it's one that I'm not so good at myself and I've worked at it over the years, um, because I've hired people who are quite honestly very incompetent, who end up, you know, I, I, I violated my own law here about character and I, and I admit it and they're incompetent, they're lazy and they're foolish. And man, it gets under my skin. And well, man, I wanna beat the shit out of them and man, it's hard for me to control my emotions, but I try. I try very hard. And part of the strategy that I talk about in Suffer Fools Gladly is to take a step back and realize you are probably a fool yourself, right? You, Chris Williamson have a foolish side to himself. You play the fool sometimes even though you don't wanna play the fool. Me, Robert, you sometimes can be very foolish and very stupid even though you wrote the 48 Laws of Power, you often violate the 48 Laws of Power. There's a side of you that is quite foolish and quite emotional and quite reactive despite how great you think you are. And when you have that and you're dealing with someone that's getting under your skin, who's got really bad ideas, who doesn't working hard enough, although it's hard for me when people don't work hard enough 'cause I can excuse bad ideas and other things, but if you're not working hard enough, that's really hard for me. But anyway.
- CWChris Williamson
Effort fails very much within someone's control, right?
- RGRobert Greene
Exactly. But beyond that, if it's people, uh, they're just like not very bright and they, and they're kind of slightly incompetent-... have a little bit of empathy. Maybe you don't want to work with them, maybe you're trying to find a way not to be involved in their life in a way that's gonna have terrible consequences for you, but maybe have some empathy by focusing on the fact that you're not as great and smart and wise together as you think you are, that we all have a foolish side to ourselves. So that's how I've kind of been able to kind of overcome the fact that I don't suffer fool's glad.
- CWChris Williamson
I think it stops us from feeling so caught up in the natural vicissitudes of other people trying to do their, just go about their days. There's all of those people that you hate follow online. The only reason that you follow them is because their life is a slow motion car crash, and we've all got those. It's this odd catharsis that we have by knowing that someone else's life is consistently shit. You think, "Yes, yes, mess up again. Go on." And I don't, I don't know. I feel like if we were able to detach and kind of laugh more, be- because it's all well and good having it with that one or two people that you follow online. But when it's someone that you're a little bit more invested in, you, that equanimity is completely out of the window and you go, okay, let's try and take some of that mindfulness. Let's try and bring that over into someone else. One thing that I had in my mind, I once read a story, and I don't know if this is true, about, um, when you wrote The 48 Laws of Power, did you purposefully make it slightly less applied or a- a- applicable to, um, people being able to deploy them, because you had concerns over how much people were going to manipulate the laws in the real world? Is there any truth to this?
- RGRobert Greene
Well, um, they, I, I did want to, um, kind of keep it open-ended, and the real point of The 48 Laws of Power was to open people's eyes who are a bit more like myself, who are a bit more naive and innocent, who enter the world with a bit of that foolish side that I mentioned of. And that certainly was me when I was in my 20s, right? I suffered a lot. I violated these laws. I was observing people of power. So when I wrote the book, it wasn't with the intention of helping assholes become even better assholes. It was with the intention of protecting people like myself from having to continually deal with assholes and not being so naive in my dealing with them and being aware of kind of the games and manipulations that they play. So I wrote the book from that kind of schlemiel perspective, if you will, from that outsider perspective. And, you know, at times I would catch myself kind of not doing that so much, and then I would go return to that. And so I tried to build it into the way I wrote the book where when you read about, um, get others to do the work but always take the credit, which is what happened to me 90 times in Hollywood, I wrote it in such a way that you wouldn't feel like this has happened to me. This is what other people are doing to me. I better be aware of it. So I was trying to get cues to the reader that this isn't necessarily what you want to do, it's what you want to be aware of. Or create a cult-like following. You know, play on people's b- need to believe to create a cult. I'm not trying to literally tell you how to create a cult, although I am actually, in fact. I'm saying we live in a world of cults now. They're everywhere. They're political cults. You don't call them cults, but they are cults, and this is a key to how you can decipher what is a cult and what is not a cult. So I may have failed in some chapters, but that was my lofty goal.
- CWChris Williamson
All right, last one.
- 58:11 – 1:04:17
Accept Your Insignificance
- CWChris Williamson
Accept your insignificance. The fact that you are aware of this insignificance and smallness is paradoxically what renders you powerful and significant. It is an understanding of reality that no other animal is capable of. Such awareness can begin to restore you to that sense of awe and connection that comes from a proper sense of scale.
- RGRobert Greene
Well, this is a, a, a very, um, powerful thing to me right now because it's the book I'm currently writing and it's currently what I'm immersed in, so it has great emotional resonance, resonance with me right now. And the idea is when you were a child and you were physically quite small, everything around you was larger, right? Your parents were larger, the house was large, animals were large, rooms were vast. And because of that, it created a certain mentality where you were kind of slightly frightened, but also in awe of things. You were aware that you were a small, weak creature, and it made you curious. It made you, your way to kind of get a little bit of control was to understand through knowledge, to be curious, to read books, to be interested in one, and be in kind of awe, continual awe of the world that surrounds you, right? Because in truth, this world is insanely awesome. That's what I'm explaining in my new book. But how weird and perverted is it that as we get older, that kind of dynamic gets reversed, where everything that used to be so much larger now seems smaller, and it's as if like we're Gulliver, and now we've grown and grown and grown, and everybody and thing else is now smaller around us, and we're these giants. It's our ego. Everything revolves around us, our desires, our beliefs, you know, which is, it just is, is, is so much superior to anything else, right? And so suddenly the universe that is vast kind of starts shrinking down. Oh yeah, I know about the sun, the moon, the stars. That's all the science bullshit. I know, I've heard about the Big Bang. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know about evolution. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Uh, this isn't something to be excited about like when I was a child, because I'm so much bigger now. I have understanding. It's pure bullshit. You don't have any idea. You're not any bigger. The relationship between you and the cosmos is still you're insanely small. Do you know that the Big Bang occurred maybe 13 billion years ago? Can you try to compare...You're 70 years, perhaps, or 80 years of existence to 13 billion. Do you know how small that is? Do you know how small it is, your little, you know, five-foot, six-feet of space that you occupy, compared to the vastness of the cosmos? You are incredibly small, and when you die, within several decades people will have completely forgotten about you. They won't remember anything about Chris Williamson or Robert Green, right? So you're as small as you were in a child. All that's changed is you think that you're much larger than you are. And so the process is to slowly shrink yourself back down to the reality and to look at the world and realize, this world is actually as aw- it's even more awesome than I realized as a child. You know? I, I, I did a lot of science for that particular l- chapter that I'm reading about, and to read about the big bang is one of the most earth-shattering experiences. This man who wrote a book called The First Three Minutes, a great physicist, I forget his name, he died recently, he described the first three minutes of the universe as best he could. Now probably in 100 years it'll all be seen as nonsense. But the thought of what was actually going on from this tiny kernel, this thing that was, that was our universe, was so small, you, y- it was nothing, and then it kind of explodes, and then it expands, and the heat and the, and, and the look and the feel of it and the power of it. It's like, whoa, whoa. Just to think about that was like, put everything else in my life in perspective, and to then kind of flow from that to the evolution of the cosmos, or to think about ... I'll, I'll leave you with one last thought here, Chris, is, you know, life on Earth sparked maybe two-some billion years ago, whatever scientists decide upon, um, and then there were all of these, like, little bottlenecks in which the way life evolved as it is today might have happened very, very differently. Incredibly little chance encounters. The first chance encounter might have been the first spark of life in a little pool somewhere on the planet, but then there was this thing where multicellular organisms suddenly were created, right? And it's only happened once in the history of our cosmos, 'cause we know, because there's only one line of DNA for all organisms on the planet. One organism, one piece of bacteria ate another one and created the first complex multicellular form of life. And it only happened once, and it was, like, a freakish occurrence. If it had never happened, it would just be a planet full of bacteria, right? I could go on and on and on. The disappearance of the dinosaurs 60 million years ago when a asteroid hit our planet and destroyed everything and killed off all the dinosaurs, and that asteroid nearly missed our planet. If it had missed, there'd still be dinosaurs all around the world and we wouldn't be here. And so, you know, and then you go through the 70,000 generations of people prior to you being born. Think of how odd it was that your two parents met, and how unlikely it was. Well, multiply that by 70,000, going back all the way to your ultimate, the, the, your first ancestors. So you being alive, you being, having two legs, two arms and a brain is so astronomically unlikely. So just think of that every day, and think of how small, and think of how insane it is just to be alive. So that's sort of the point of returning to that initial smallness that I was talking about.
- CWChris Williamson
What a way to finish. Robert Green, ladies and gentlemen.
- 1:04:17 – 1:05:33
Where to Find Robert
- CWChris Williamson
Daily Laws will be linked in the show notes below. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with the other things you're doing?
- RGRobert Greene
Oh, hold on with me one second. Just bear with me because-
- CWChris Williamson
It's all right.
- RGRobert Greene
... I have a, a new website that I'm supposed to promote and I-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
... and I, and I bolloxed it every single time, and now I told this guy-
- CWChris Williamson
Nice use of bolloxed.
- RGRobert Greene
... to write it down for me. Huh?
- CWChris Williamson
Nice use of bolloxed. I'm a big fan of that.
- RGRobert Greene
(laughs) Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
Very Anglicized.
- RGRobert Greene
(laughs) Okay. Um, all right. I was supposed to say my website is robergreenofficial.com. It has links-
- CWChris Williamson
There it is.
- RGRobert Greene
... to all my books and social media (laughs) and Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.
- CWChris Williamson
Didn't sound scripted at all. Didn't sound scripted at all, Robert. (laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
(laughs) It's completely scripted.
- CWChris Williamson
You nailed it. You nailed it. Look, uh, I really, really think that you've done a great job with this. It's gonna be a s- an absolute smash. It's linked in the show notes below. Everyone can go and get it there. Until next time, Robert, thank you.
- RGRobert Greene
Thank you so much for having me, Chris. I really enjoyed it. Take care.
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few months. And don't forget to subscribe. It makes me very happy indeed. Peace.
Episode duration: 1:05:33
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