Speaker 1Have you ever taken psychedelics?
Speaker 2Have I? Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. People are suffering from the narrowness of their experience. A lot of it coming from technology. There's something incredible about just simply being alive. And so many things that science is uncovering about the world that we live in is so awesome and so amazing. And we have such hunger for something larger than just the daily struggle. And I felt it very deeply in coming so close to death and how the world looks and feels differently after that experience. And I want people to feel something like that in their own lives. It's a book where you don't have to nearly die in order to have it. I'm trying to show you how you can bring these kind of experiences into your day-to-day life. It's a very practical book on that level. But I feel like there's something people are really, really, really missing. A sense of not being connected to other people, connected to their environment, to the world that we live in, and to themselves. Disconnect from themselves. And so that's what this book is about.
Speaker 3There's this funny Louis C.K. bit. It's called Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy. And he's on Conan, I think. And he's talking about how everything's great, but we're all miserable. And I think it was 48 Laws of Power. I forget which book it was. But there was one story that I might be butchering. But I think you said that some of the first bits of writing ever discovered was about one generation complaining about the next generation saying, They're lazy. They care about all this new technology. Their music sucks. Is that real?
Speaker 1That's like one of the first writings ever? Is that true?
Speaker 2Yeah, it was like on a stone tablet. I think it's like ancient Babylonian or something like that. And it's like one of the oldest pieces of writing. And it's complaining about the young generation.
Speaker 3And, well, my takeaway when I read that was like, it was this really important feature, which like, everyone thinks something is different with their generation. You know, we are either better or you'll hear people say all the time, they go, in this economy, what are you talking about? It's like, well, the economy could be booming and everyone will always say, in this economy, it sucks. Or they'll always say like, well, crime these days. It's so high. It's like, no, it's actually way lower than ever before. But there's something where you want to like say, this period is the worst. And my question to you is, is that actually true? Is this time actually different? And how do I be happy?
Speaker 2Well, it's a very legitimate question. And I don't think you can quantify is the problem. Because, you know, you look in movies from the 20s and 30s. And everybody is smoking and drinking like you can't believe. They're like four or five whiskeys at dinner. You know, they're having martinis left, right and center, right? That is the equivalent in the past of antidepressants, right? So people were feeling that then, most definitely. And cigarettes, they needed all of these stimulants continuously. It's kind of shocking. And then in the past, you know, in England, for instance, people didn't drink water. They drank ale, right? And to quench their thirst. And so people were continually drunk and on all sorts of things throughout history. So it's a very good point. How can you compare that to now? We have technology on this new level, social media on this new level. And in some ways, it's altering people. It's altering our minds. It's rewiring our brains in ways that aren't necessarily healthy. And this is a new phenomenon. So if your experience is coming so much from your phone, if you're interacting so many hours of the day with your phone, a lot of that is stuff that is, if it's on Instagram or X or TikTok, it's being programmed by other people, algorithms, etc. It's not your own experience. People are telling you what your life should be like. They're programming what you see, what you feel, what you hear. This isn't like a human. We are animals that want agency. We want to be able to control something about our own lives. I feel like people have a sense of powerlessness, that they're on this ride that technology is taking them on. And particularly with AI, the fears that, you know, we're creating something that we're not going to have any control over. That is the only element that I think is different now that would make me say that there's a level of crisis that maybe didn't exist. But as I said, I don't have data to back that up, and I could be wrong.
Speaker 1Well, we do have first-hand kind of experience with the way the world around us feels and how it operates. You know, if we just kind of as a thought experiment, I think of Americans who are like, you know, of adult age, 90 plus percent have a smartphone. Of people who have a smartphone, how many would you say are addicted to their phone? Meaning they are using it more than them. They want to, and it is in some ways kind of like become the main source of pleasure in their life. It's taking a larger and larger chunk of their life. I would say that number is probably also like. Everyone I know, myself included. So you have this thing that exists in the world where if, you know, somebody came from the past and you're like, yeah, there's this thing now. It's affecting 90 plus percent of people. And of the people who have it, 90 plus percent of them are addicted to it. And then how often they take the. The dosage, like seven hours a day, you know, it's like, well, what is, what is that? That is like a wild state of the union, you know, just to walk into.
Speaker 2No, your point is very valid. I know I've told this before another podcast, but I have a special bicycle because I can't hike or anything. It's a recumbent bike. And I got like the lightest weight one I can, because we have these incredible hills here and I go way up where there are no cars, way up into these hills. And it's. It's incredibly beautiful. And I'm just like, whoa, this is so therapeutic. And then people are walking by me and they're like this, you know, they're walking in the most spectacular Los Angeles in this beautiful, you know, bucolic part nature part park. And they're like this, right? They're talking to someone or they're like reading something on the Instagram while they're walking outside. That to me is like mental illness to me, because being healthy, you have to be observant. You have to be. Connected to your environment. You have to be connected to what's around you. You know, you have set up situational awareness to use a military term, you know, and that that level of disconnect is very troubling. The other thing is, I talk about this in my sublime book. We're gifted with this brain. That is one of the most incredible, amazing things in the universe. This insane product of evolution, the human brain. And in a very short period of time, on the scale of evolution, 40,000 years, we've taken this brain that we evolved with language and look at the world that we've created. And that brain operates with certain laws and has certain tendencies. It's extremely restless. It consumes a lot of our energy, physically a lot of our energy, right? And it wants to learn. It wants to conquer things. It wants to develop skills. And when you have generations of people that everything is fast and easy and quick, you can get things at the tip of your fingertips without any effort. It's rewiring the brain. It's rewiring human nature. It's creating people who are spoiled, who expect everything to be fast and easy, who have no patience to write an essay, who have no patience to read a 400-page book because, wow, I could just get AI to give me the paragraph on it, you know? That, to me, is what scares me. Because it's very dangerous.
Speaker 3Well, I think everyone agrees with you. But what's the, how do I fix that? I mean, I'm an addict as well. Like, and you said something cool. Hi, I'm Sam.
Speaker 1Yeah. I, too, have a problem. Okay, yeah, right.
Speaker 2It's like smartphones anonymous here.
Speaker 1By the way, everybody listening to this is listening to this on their phone instead of, you know, enjoying wherever they're at in the moment.
Speaker 3But, like, you have this thing in the book where you talk about, like, the circle. You're like, life's a circle. And, like, a lot of technology. Be on your phone. It, like, shrinks that circle. So, you're only looking through this small thing. And I noticed that. We actually did a podcast on, like, this, the feeling of awe. And, in my opinion, I, my circle is tiny right now. And the only way I'm ever able to, like, expand it is through travel. Like, being in places or experiencing the emotion of awe. Or your kids.
Speaker 1Getting your kids to experience awe. Then you start to notice it, too. Like, you know, wow, look at this.
Speaker 3Yeah. And what I want to know is, like, what can I do to get out of this? So, I normally. Tell people, like. You only have to listen to a few minutes of Robert Greene to realize that all the information that he's getting for his books. Which are amazing, by the way. Is from reading tons and tons and tons of other books. Well, I try to do the same as well. I read about a book a week. I devour books. And they've changed my life. And so, what I did with the HubSpot team was they asked me which nine books shaped my year. Shaped 2026. So, I put together a list. And I also added a whole bunch of information on how I read so much. Hint. I'm not actually a fast reader. I just have a methodology. for consuming a lot of information, and I think also retaining it. And so if you want to see which books have changed my life this year and how I read. So much information, how I retain it all. Then click the link below and you can get the guide right now.
Speaker 2Get outside your house, go out into nature, go out into Central Park or go out into Connecticut somewhere and leave your goddamn phone behind, lock it in a drawer. You can't possibly access it now and you're hopefully with a friend who didn't bring their phone along with you. So you're forced, cold turkey, to go out there and what it'll do for you just on that one level is you're gonna have like that addiction sense of, wow, I need to know what's going on with sports. I need to know who won the election. I need to know, but you can't do it. And so your mind is now gonna be focused outwardly. It's gonna be focused on what is around you, on the sounds, on just the sense of your body moving, right? Like climbing a mountain is an incredibly, it can bring you that sense of awe as you get higher and higher up in the sky and you're forced to interact with things that aren't human, right? That take you out of your daily little, that little small circle and will give you that sense of awe. I had planned originally to write the book. I was gonna go travel all over the world and have all these sublime experiences before my stroke. And then obviously with my stroke, I can't do any of that. I'm like trapped in this room that you now see me in. Where I spent practically seven years writing the book. I had no outlets for doing the things. I couldn't travel. So I was forced to find it in everything around me. In just looking up at the sky, just interacting with my pets, my animals, with my wife. Just watching people, just looking, just the sense of being alive. And in the book, I try and make it clear the things that science is uncovering about the world around us. About the strangeness of the world that we have been born into. You're born, you're kind of thrown into this world. And when you're a child, you're three or four years old, you don't understand it. It looks, everything looks strange. And you've got that sense of awe and wonder like constantly. Like a two-year-old is like, whoa, what is that? What is this? What is that color? They're just looking at everything. You once had that feeling and you've lost it, but you can get it back by, by slowing things down, by putting your phone away, by doing simple things like taking a walk, by just giving yourself some time to be alone and withdrawn to yourself and just reconnect to your body. It's a lot of it is putting a lot of that technology away and opening your senses up to the world. And each of the chapters in the book, I have exercises at the end of the chapter for kind of realizing what I've just talked about. So I have a chapter in the book, about childhood, because as I said, when you were a child, the world was naturally sublime. Wasn't, I mean, unless you had a very troubled childhood, don't get me wrong, but for most children, the world is naturally weird, strange, and wondrous, right? And I have exercises for how you can recapture the feeling of time that you have when you were a child, where it wasn't all schedules and past, present, and future. I got to get this done and blah, blah, blah, but to feel the flow of time within you, it's not gonna make you more successful in your job, but if you have moments like that, where you can spend an hour doing some of these exercises, slowing things down, feeling just the sense of actually being alive inside your body, you will naturally return to something that is more human and that will connect you in some way to the sublime. -
Speaker 1You had this amazing line in your book, where you're talking about how, why change, chasing things, why we, you know, adults feel flat inside, and there's something about us that feels flat, so we chase things, but then even when you get them, you still feel that sense of flatness, why is that? -
Speaker 2Because, you know, it becomes like an addiction, so you're constantly looking for external stimulation. As I said, you're born to this world with this restless mind, and if you ever try to meditate and just sit on some cushions and kind of empty your brain, empty your mind, you will realize how it's impossible. The mind is just going like mile a minute. Thoughts are just coming left, right, and center. It's in a very, very restless organ. So we humans need continual stimulation, and you can get that stimulation in one of two ways. You can get it externally, and nowadays, that is the source of possibly our problems. You know, if you're bored and you want entertainment, two seconds flat, you get something on Netflix, you get something streaming, you watch it on your phone. You know, you don't have to, you don't have to do anything to get this kind of external stimulation that you crave, right? And you get it, and then it leaves you kind of empty because now you want more, you want something else, right? So you have to find another source of external stimulation. Even travel can get like that. You know, you just bring your own problems to Bali, for instance, and you're sitting on the beach and you're just thinking about your schedules and about your social media and your Instagram feed. You're just bringing your problems with you, and then you come back to your job, wherever, and you're back to your nervous self, you know? So it can't come from without. I mean, I'm saying like when you take your hike, you're absorbed in the world, but that is a sense of, of something coming from within you. That is your own experience. And when you're doing it through your own experience, and it could be love of another human being, 'cause I have a chapter on love, or it could be coming with your connection to an animal, or it could come through some physical adventure, the experience is your own. Nobody is programming you. Nobody is telling you what to feel, what to think. It is yourself. And as you go through that, the feeling is very exciting and fulfilling. And you want more of it. It's not like this addiction, where I need somebody, like this baby that needs constant stimulation from somebody else. You can climb a mountain, and you can feel not only spiritually uplifted, but physically uplifted. Your body and your mind are responding to these things. And you can't get that from your goddamn phone. You can't get that feeling of climbing a mountain. I did something difficult, arduous, but I feel, wow, look at this. There's no experience that could be programmed on your stupid phone that can ever give you that kind of sensation.
Speaker 3The best part about your writing is you find the best stories which do an even better job of teaching this stuff versus just the theory, which is also good. Can you give some examples of what you're talking about with some cool stories?
Speaker 2I have a chapter in there I think people are going to relate to most because it's similar to my other chapters. It's called Measure Your Self. Measure Your Self Against the Immense and the Impossible. And the idea is, and it's called The Dynamical Splendor, and the idea is we humans have powers that we don't even realize that we have. If I plucked you right now onto an island in the Pacific that's uninhabited and you're alone, suddenly you would discover, because you had to, all of these skills, hopefully, other you're going to die, that you have for like finding food sources, making things, for building a shelter, right? We're incredibly inventive, persistent, willful creatures. That's who we are. And when we face something that's impossible, so difficult, something almost superhuman can happen. And I tell the story in there, it's a famous story of this plane that crashed in the Andes in Argentina in 1971, '72 with a rugby team from Uruguay going to Chile. And there were like 45 people on the plane and a lot of them died in this crash. They crashed at the foot of this incredible 14,000 foot up high mountain, so they were trapped. They had only like their spring clothing because they didn't expect to be trapped in the Andes. They were just traveling to another city. So they had spring clothing, they had no equipment. They were these young kids that had never climbed a mountain before or got in such a situation. And they were facing death every single day. It was horrifying. They ran out of food. And so they ended up having to like eat the corpses of some of the people who had died already just to stay alive. And one of the young men, Nando Parado, he lost his mother and sister in the crash. And he was thinking of his father and his father back in Uruguay. If he died, Nando died, and the mother and the sister died, the father would die, because he was a family man his whole life. And so he goes, I've got to get out of here. I've got to get out of here. I've got to find a way out of this trap, right? People had tried to climb it in their group, and they couldn't get halfway up this hill because the altitude would kill them, the cold. They had no equipment. To climb a 14,000 foot high mountain in the winter in the Andes, you need all these kind of ropes and pylons and all sorts of equipment. They had nothing. He decides. to get over this mountain. I don't care what happens. I'm going to, I gotta, to get back to my father and so he chooses two people and they start this climb the two other people are like ready to give up he keeps climbing and climbing the altitude's making his heartbeat like crazy but he keeps climbing climbing he reaches what is close to the summit and it's like the side of a skyscraper it's just pure rock and ice how the f**k am i going to get up that right he just takes he's got like the equivalent of a pick that was built from the uh the detritus of the airplane and he kind of cuts a little bit of a hole in the ice rock he puts his hand in there he's able to put his foot in there he climbs like for two hours that way because he's so determined he gets to the top and he realizes that he that there's more mountains of surrounding them so now they're gonna have to somehow get over in another set of mountains there's no way they could do it they don't have food so but then he sees that maybe there's this like gap between the two mountains that could possibly be a way out toward the green fields of chile outside all these mountains and he convinces one other person to go with him on this and first of all then on top of this mountain they spend night they're probably the first humans who've ever seen this the stars and and and at night in this particular location and he's like amid all this suffering and death this world is so beautiful uh it's such a strange thing anyway so he's like i'm gonna go up to the top of the mountain and he's like i'm gonna go up to the top of the mountain and he's like i'm gonna go up to the top of the mountain and he's like i'm gonna go up to the top of the mountain climbing down the mountain on the other side is harder than going up because it's the the steepness of it the long story short they finally get to the bottom they finally find people they finally get rescued and about 18 of the 50 people on the plane survived and they get a helicopter to go back and rescue the people that they had left behind the original crash they go how the hell did you ever get up this mountain experienced climbers can get up this mountain how did you do it it's impossible i don't even believe that you did it and so the story to me is about having a sense of purpose like my father the love of my father i have to help get back for him and facing an impossible situation we put limits on what we think we can do but there are actually no limits you put people in difficult situations this either crushes them or they rise to a new level they discover new resources in themselves and that kind of power and that determination to me is what makes the human animal incredibly incredibly sublime so that's one of the stories that's a great story
Speaker 3i'm kind of messed up i like reading a lot of like world war ii and holocaust books and me too it's crazy like there's this one called um the escape artists and it's one of the only guys to escape from uh auschwitz uh one of the only jews i never heard of this it's fantastic i mean it's you know i don't know fantastic because i don't know how to describe it but it's definitely riveting and he tells the story about how he basically um hid under a bunch of dead bodies for many hours for the uh three days actually and then he eventually walks across poland and it's like when i read these stories my instinct i started reading some of these crazy stories because if i ever feel down and depressed i'm like i gotta read this so i know that like life is perfect but it's actually cool to have a different takeaway now what's your favorite book in your life what's your favorite book in your life i've read a lot of books where it's more so like i can do anything if these guys can do this surely i can have a difficult
Speaker 2conversation well there's a man uh victor frankel who wrote a book man's search for meaning very famous book he was in auschwitz he was in concentration camp and his he later became a psychotherapist and his discovery was that the people who survived that kind of the most awful circumstances were the ones who had some kind of purpose for their life they had some kind of something to get to live for once they got out if they ever got out right they had a book they had to write they had a family member they had to save they had some reason for trying to stay alive and that's what kept them alive hey
Speaker 1let's take a quick break you know that feeling when strategy is done the brief is written everyone's aligned and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content that someone is usually you and it's due tomorrow well the breeze assistant from hubspot can help it works right inside hubspot you can draft a campaign copy blog posts emails all in your brand voice all using your actual customer data so you don't create just content you create content that converts check out hubspot.com the agentic customer platform for growing businesses i'm curious robert do you have a definition for yourself what your purpose
Speaker 2is well um it tends to make me seem kind of arrogant and grandiose but what the hell i'll throw it out there anyway i felt like all of the miserable jobs that i had i was very depressed and very miserable in my mid-30s and no success but in the back of my mind i'm living for writing because i've always wanted to be a writer i hadn't quite given up my dream and then i got a chance i met a man who was the book package who asked me at one point in italy if i had any ideas for a book and i kind of improvised what turned into the 48 laws of power and he ended up paying me to live while i wrote the book and we became partners on the project it felt like to me that all that misery all those bad jobs all that stuff in hollywood that i'd gone through there was a purpose for it and the purpose was for me to be able to write that book that i think call me as i said grandiose has helped a lot of people deal with very difficult power situations and then i had my near-death experience i was driving a car in los angeles my girlfriend now my wife was sitting next to me and she basically saw something going on that was very wrong she called nine when she didn't pack she called 9-1-1 and it was a matter of seconds if they had arrived 30 seconds later or a minute later i'd either be dead or i'd have intense brain damage and so i survived that i'm still alive i'm still alive i'm still alive i'm still alive i'm still alive i'm still alive i'm still alive and the purpose was for me to write one more large book the sublime despite all the physical limitations that i had and that i i would stay i was kept alive for a reason to write this particular book so and quite honestly without that sense of mission or purpose i would never have made it because it was such a difficult thing to do when you can't type and you have to handwrite an entire book so i'm not sure if i'm going to be able to do that but i'm going to be able to do that so i definitely have had that those feelings of something larger pushing me
Speaker 3forward i uh i think i i read a lot i and i've noticed that um reading should fall into one of two categories the first one is just entertainment and the second one is education and when i really want to learn something it's most people tend to get 10 books on the same topic and they think that's going to master it and what i have found it's probably better to get one uh cornerstone and reread it multiple times and truly master it and i have felt this way you're going to think that uh this is too grandiose and ridiculous i have felt that with 48 laws of power mastery artist seduction auto uh maybe maybe auto war but for sure um it sounds like sublime and 40 laws of power as well where i was like man i wish i would have dedicated two years to mastering these like four texts um because like human nature i'm like this is applicable to everyone why wouldn't this is the number one thing i should ever learn actually is there a world where this should just be like a two-year or one-year mat like course like a like a college thing where where i'm just going to like master some of your texts i mean that exists for i would imagine for machiavelli that probably that exists for um some of the great um philosophers and psychologists yeah you
Speaker 1could take a course on shakespeare and go through all his works right
Speaker 3yeah like has anyone ever proposed doing that for robert green books
Speaker 2yeah i mean um i would have to probably get involved in that because there's a there's a a gap a gulf between the knowledge that's in a book and putting it into practical effect i've consulted with individuals before the problem with a course is if you're i think it would have great value for the 48 laws of power for instance if in college somebody were to teach that but i don't know where because college isn't supposed to teach that but i don't know where because college isn't supposed to be practiced supposed to be teaching you about power it's supposed to be teaching about things that are useless that you're never going to do in your life but i could see a course you know it would probably have to be like in the business school to be honest with you this is the work world you're going to enter and here's some laws that you're going to learn that are going to help you deal with the egos and the politics of people sitting there
Speaker 1and it's lesson one or there's like you know a 15 minute thing that actually stuck with people what do you think about that what do you think that thing would be from the power course what
Speaker 2would it be i'll always say less than necessary people talk way too much they're always talking talking talking talking particularly the year of social media they're just revealing way too much about themselves learn to withdraw power is about absence and presence if you're always present people take you for granted they grow bored with you if you're always absent you have there's nothing to talk about but if you know the dialectic between presence and presence you're always present you're always absent it disappears sometimes to not talk to not be there to not be there for like a week or so and then people are starting to talk about you again so i would teach them that that would be my first course the second course the second week would be about egos never outshine the master know who you're dealing with play the perfect courtier these are the dangers of of people's egos out there and you've got to be careful and you've got to not inadvertently offend the wrong person so that would be like the second week or so but how do you
Speaker 3apply that to uh like sean and i or yourself as well i'm looking at your instagram page it's awesome you have you have five videos that you posted yesterday they're amazing i follow you how does that apply to people who are trying to like promote well i'm
Speaker 2out there now a lot because of the sublime book but i i disappear for quite a long time and i never ever post a my private life so there's a level of mystery there if i was completely uh transparent about my private life then i'd be violating a lot of the 48 laws of power but i know certain things that i've got to like withhold from the public do
Speaker 3you guys uh so you're a laker fan so you i was going to ask you about this guy but i was like i don't know if he knows about this but if you're like his friend you do do you know who josh
Speaker 2kushner is he's the new owner of the lakers yeah
Speaker 3man josh kushner's interesting brother of jared so josh kushner is someone who would fit in your book in a variety of ways so basically josh grew up in a very wealthy prominent new york real estate family and he's a very wealthy man and he's a very wealthy man and he's a very his father had a fall of grace because he did some messed up stuff and went to prison for it and then jared married ivanka trump and became trump's right-hand man very polarizing but josh is um he he i believe he's a liberal he's like speaks about it occasionally and he became an investor where at the age of 21 he was one of instagram's first investors and he now is probably the he's probably had the best probably 10 year run as a venture capitalist and he is so wealthy now he's probably worth 15 billion dollars he's 41 years old he so is so wealthy he just bought the lakers and josh is interesting because he is a textbook case study on implementing a handful of the laws of power he really doesn't have social media he um he uh is quite silent you know that he dates this beautiful woman but you don't really see him ever take photos he enters with boldness into certain situations i mean he bought the lakers when he's 41 years old it's a very interesting story and i think it's a very interesting story and i think it's a very interesting case study would you agree sean on like how this guy has risen because money when you're investing money is a commodity so a company whoever's taking your money has to choose you uh based off a variety of weird um characteristics and the characteristic that he has is this mystique about him and i think that it's been um play i think he knows exactly what he's doing and it's like he's just like playing the game
Speaker 2perfectly yeah it could be a combination of he might be somebody who's not comfortable in the limelight and then he leans into that and he creates a kind of a weird sort of power out of it i get a lot of um not a lot but i get some celebrities who come to me whose name i will not mention who say you know robert i've got to be out there all the time how do i create an air of mystery when social media depends on always having something that people can see and i tell them you know um you can disappear for a week it's not going to kill you and in fact it's going to make people wonder why have you where have you gone during that week so i say like beyonce would disappear for like a year and a half without posting anything at all and then would suddenly emerge with a new record and now she would be out there in that time that she wasn't out there people going crazy speculating about what's going on in her life so knowing that you have to some points even if you're a celebrity even if you depend on people's views and likes disappearing for a while and creating some air of mystery is absolutely critical because people are going to grow tired of you there's an attention economy and if you're flooding them with your image at some point like oh god i'm so sick of that and then somebody else will come along who's like younger and fresher and different and they'll be looking at them so you have to you have to learn how to withdraw sometimes and create that mystery that makes people want to to hear you when you come back given that
Speaker 3you've read thousands of history books and you have seen cycles do you have any um predictions on what will happen with ai in the next 10 years or so it's the same thing as um this time is different that energy is is happening right now and people are saying crazy stuff like this is the last machine that will ever need to be built this will build everything else is do you have any um do you have an outlook
Speaker 2well um i'm i'm a born uh pessimist i i have a negative bias to my brain and i'm always the one that will raise my hand and say i i don't really buy that hype so first of all i think there's deep deep wells of resentment and fear among the public about ai and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know what to do with it and i don't really know on the evolution of ai in in the sense of on the evolution of ai in in the sense of on the evolution of ai in in the sense of politically people are so upset that they politically people are so upset that they politically people are so upset that they demand that there are laws in place demand that there are laws in place demand that there are laws in place that are going to regulate ai that are that are going to regulate ai that are that are going to regulate ai that are going to put they're going to limit cap going to put they're going to limit cap going to put they're going to limit cap these data centers that people are these data centers that people are these data centers that people are getting tired of and so there's an getting tired of and so there's an getting tired of and so there's an energy and that level of fear among the energy and that level of fear among the energy and that level of fear among the public can actually translate public can actually translate public can actually translate into something very real but on the into something very real but on the into something very real but on the other hand i mean i know the scenarios other hand i mean i know the scenarios other hand i mean i know the scenarios of the singularity and it takes over of the singularity and it takes over of the singularity and it takes over what drives me crazy with these what drives me crazy with these what drives me crazy with these technology these new technologies is technology these new technologies is technology these new technologies is that that that i wrote a whole book laws of human i wrote a whole book laws of human i wrote a whole book laws of human nature about how humans have a dark side nature about how humans have a dark side nature about how humans have a dark side irrationality grandiosity irrationality grandiosity irrationality grandiosity envy short-sightedness envy short-sightedness envy short-sightedness you know on and on and on there are 18 you know on and on and on there are 18 you know on and on and on there are 18 of them i only listened for of them i only listened for of them i only listened for self-absorption okay when you create a self-absorption okay when you create a self-absorption okay when you create a new piece of technology like this it's new piece of technology like this it's new piece of technology like this it's not like something that's that just not like something that's that just not like something that's that just comes out of nowhere it's humans that comes out of nowhere it's humans that comes out of nowhere it's humans that created it and now that dark side of created it and now that dark side of created it and now that dark side of human nature is going to be able to use human nature is going to be able to use human nature is going to be able to use this new technology for very very this new technology for very very this new technology for very very dangerous purposes the levels of dangerous purposes the levels of dangerous purposes the levels of phishing and scams that we're now phishing and scams that we're now phishing and scams that we're now receiving on our phones is mounting receiving on our phones is mounting receiving on our phones is mounting every day and just imagine what it's every day and just imagine what it's every day and just imagine what it's going to be like in a couple of years going to be like in a couple of years going to be like in a couple of years you know how criminals are going to be you know how criminals are going to be you know how criminals are going to be able to use this for all kinds of able to use this for all kinds of able to use this for all kinds of nefarious purposes how the information nefarious purposes how the information nefarious purposes how the information to build a dirty bomb a biological to build a dirty bomb a biological to build a dirty bomb a biological weapon is at the hands of some crazy weapon is at the hands of some crazy weapon is at the hands of some crazy person somewhere i don't know where person somewhere i don't know where person somewhere i don't know where right yes it could cure cancer yes it right yes it could cure cancer yes it right yes it could cure cancer yes it could cure climate could cure climate could cure climate global warming i don't know but it global warming i don't know but it global warming i don't know but it could also lead to an apocalypse just as could also lead to an apocalypse just as could also lead to an apocalypse just as easily easily easily so i'm very fearful of that scenario and so i'm very fearful of that scenario and so i'm very fearful of that scenario and i'm very afraid of what it's going to do i'm very afraid of what it's going to do i'm very afraid of what it's going to do to the human brain among young people to the human brain among young people to the human brain among young people being able to write an essay and read a being able to write an essay and read a being able to write an essay and read a 400 page book 400 page book 400 page book is absolutely an essential skill in the is absolutely an essential skill in the is absolutely an essential skill in the 21st century right but you're not developing any mental skills. You're not developing any discipline. You're not developing the ability to put something on paper and then edit it and then change it with your own thoughts. And eventually that's going to catch up to you because you're not going to be able to ever think on your own. You're going to always be depending on technology to answer every single one of your questions. I have fears, you know, and those are my fears is the dark side of human nature takes it over. People aren't going to be having the patience to learn anything anymore and that it's going to create massive amounts of resentment among the masses of people who feel like they have no control over the future of their career. Why did I study this field? Why did I become a lawyer? The profession of lawyers is going to be decimated by AI. Absolutely decimated, right? Why have a lawyer? I mean, it's actually, this is one possible good thing about. AI, don't deny. But you can get any answer you want about some lawyer, a legal problem, so you'll never need a lawyer anymore.
Speaker 3Were you using it for sublime, for research? Never. Not once.
Speaker 2Well, nowadays, if you Google something, a question, that little AI box comes up. So I should say.
Speaker 1Close my eyes, scroll past it.
Speaker 2No, no. I'm not going to lie to you. But I never did any major, no research things, just little itty bitty things like, when did that person die or facts like that.
Speaker 1He's like, besides the apocalypse, mass resentment. And the loss of human mental cognition. I think it would be great. It would be great, yeah.
Speaker 2I had to write in notebooks for the Sublime book. And I had two notebooks. I'd write in one and then I would rewrite it in another notebook. Literally rewrite word for word and edit as I'm rewriting it, right? In the end, I probably have 120 of those notebooks.
Speaker 1Have you seen that guy who bear crawled a marathon? That's like you. That is like me.
Speaker 3I think you and Ron Chernow are the two authors that I like to read most. And whenever I get into either one of your books, every sentence is important. Who had to type that out? What did you guys do?
Speaker 2Well, so I wrote it in one notebook. I edited it in another book. Then I'd go back and rewrite it that way. Then I'd go back probably four or five times. Then when it finally seemed decent and not suckable, because a lot of my first drafts are absolutely awful, I would dictate it. And then I would print it out and hand edit on the paper, right? And then eventually that was good enough. I dictated it again. And then with one hand, I would edit it on the computer because I only had one hand that was available.
Speaker 3Holy shit. No wonder it took seven years. So a lot of times people at the podcast, they'll reach out to me and they're wondering, hey, Sam and Sean, how do you meet all these amazing entrepreneurs? How do you find all these stories? Well, I have a hack. You see, I actually have a community called Hampton. It's a community for entrepreneurs doing at least $3 million in revenue, although we do on average something like $25 million a year in revenue. We have the founders of DoorDash, of Figure, of Bluetooth. All these amazing companies are part of Hampton. And what's interesting is because of the environment in Hampton, which frankly is very similar to my first million, we have a very unique high trust environment. When people apply and go through this vetting process, they're put in groups of like eight or nine other entrepreneurs and they get real about everything. Everything that's going on in their life and in their business. And sort of like when people listen to MFM, they get inspired to come up with new solutions for business. That's what happens in real life in Hampton. It's life-changing. And so if you're a founder of a startup that does at least $3 million in revenue and you just want to go ahead and pull forward five or ten years worth of success, then check it out. The URL is joinhampton.com. Again, the URL joinhampton.com.
Speaker 1Robert, can I ask you a question? You had a near-death experience. You hung out and wrote a book with 50 Cent, had this kind of near-death experience. There was a guy who came on the podcast that was, he had studied a lot of people who had near-death experiences. I think there's books written where, you know, somebody dies for 15 minutes and they come back and you want to know, what'd you see? What was it? Have you kind of looked into that? I haven't. What would I find if I go talk to people or go read about people who've had near-death experiences? What do you find?
Speaker 2I have the last chapter of the Sublime book is about the death sublime. And I go into near-death experiences and I describe four of them. Because the literature literally, since the 1960s and advances in medicine, millions of people have had near-death experiences. So we have all of this data on them. It runs a gamut. So 85% more or less of near-death experiences are actually quite positive. You feel uplifted. You feel like, not just that you were grateful to be alive, but that death isn't something horrible. There's something peaceful and beautiful about the experience. Your eyes were opened to a different way of perceiving the world. 15% or so, don't quote me on the exact number, are hellish experiences of near-death experiences, where it's absolutely a nightmare. And you're so grateful that you got out of it. So there's a gamut. You can't completely generalize. Some people have like religious experiences where they see angels, where the presence of God is there, where they go through their whole life's history is recounted in a matter of seconds, you know, things like that. And in among that group is very interesting. There'll be people who are hardcore atheists and rationalists like Richard Dawkins type who suddenly come out of it. And now they believe in God. And now they believe that there is an afterlife. It is very strange literature to read a lot of this. Some people don't go that direction. They still remain kind of skeptical, but something strange has happened to them and they'll never be the same. There's a very great book I enjoyed a lot, but by a skeptic, and I'm not a skeptic, but I like reading all the different aspects, this book called Dying to Live by this woman, I think it's Susan Blackmore is her name. She's a neuroscientist and she tries to explain why all of these things happen. Like you have visions of a tunnel and light coming through and you, you relive your whole life's past. She explains it as something strange happening to the human brain. As it's dying, right? And it's scrambling how you normally perceive the world, how you normally experience time and all these other things. And so the brain dying has a very powerful effect on you. And that I think is, is the most, the most I can generalize about it. Cause it happened to me that strange things are going on neurologically and physiologically as the brain is beginning to die, as it's preparing you for it. And you have, you can have visions, you can have sensations. They're impossible to describe, but they make you aware of the fact that your brain constructs the world that you see. You don't realize that it isn't reality, what you're experiencing right now. Your brain is constructing what you consider to be reality. And when the brain is dying, that reality that it's been constructing for you throughout your whole life breaks down. And now you're actually seeing things. As they, as they are without the brain meddling in this, that's to me, the most fascinating aspect of the near death experience. Has it worn off? Definitely worn off. Um, but it comes back, it keeps coming back. So I had sensations of my bones dissolving and a weird taste in my mouth and kind of strange things with light, uh, upon times that it comes back in, in a sensation. I go, wow, it's there. And I can access it. When I first woke up from my coma, the sky looked different to me. And in California, Los Angeles, we have like insanely blue sky. It's just, that's one of those beautiful things about here. But the sky was even more bluer than I've ever seen it before. It was like, it was like incandescent, like on fire. And I can still get, I can still see that because it's, it's, it's, it's like very deep in my, in my unconscious and I still feel it and I can still see it. So these sensations come back to me in waves. Sometimes it can be, uh, months that I don't, and it gets a little depressing, but
Speaker 3I mean, it sounds like taking psychedelics a little bit.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. A little bit.
Speaker 1Have I? Yeah.
Speaker 2Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1Is it similar?
Speaker 2It is in some way, but you know, when you have, uh, like a very powerful, like LSD or something, you kind of, I think you're like almost hallucinating things. You're seeing things that aren't really there. You're seeing colors and waves of light that I don't, I can't necessarily say are actually there when I'm not on LSD. But when I'm seeing the sky this way, I believe that I'm actually seeing what it looks like when you actually stare at it and look at it and without the brain and without the familiar, the film that the brain puts over everything you see, I believe it's actually, I'm actually seeing what things are, but there are some similarities there is so like, you know, they have demonstrated the effect of psychedelics on the brain and it kind of removes that filter that makes everything look so familiar to you.
Speaker 3Well, did it make you fearful? Are you afraid to die now?
Speaker 2I mean, I think it's impossible for a human being not to have that fear because it's, it's part of, of, of our life instinct. But no, I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of not really afraid of it. It's sometimes I almost like yearn for the, for the peace that it, that it represented. Because of your experience or because you were? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, of course I, I go back and forth, but, um, I had a feeling of like deep, deep connection to something. Um, and when you feel like you're connected to something greater than yourself, then it takes a little bit of the sting out of the fear of dying. I don't think I'll ever lose that fear because it's, it's inherent to every living creature, but it, it, it's been, it's been kind of softened. The blow is softened by what I experienced. I don't fear it nearly as much. That's crazy. It
Speaker 3almost makes like having a stroke sound. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't go there because it's, you know, like you have cancer. Like I had a friend who had cancer, he completely recovered and now he's like walking and doing all those other things. Like Jesus Christ, I wish I had cancer. Um, and then you have people with heart attacks and they recover and then they're with a stroke. You don't recover. You don't get back your leg. You can't hike. You can't walk. You can't swim. I would not wish this on my worst. I'm sorry, but, I mean, it has to be. it's positive elements, as I've mentioned in my book, but please, please don't have a stroke. Noted. Take it back.
Speaker 1I'm curious, as a guy who studied, you know, have spent decades of your life studying both people who have executed the ideas as well as the core ideas themselves of power, of seduction, of mastery, of all these things, and then you get a chance to work with this guy, Tim Ryan, and, you know, obviously he didn't become president. So, you know, did you go in and believe that, hey, these tools, these ideas, if executed, could actually do this? And were you humbled in some way? I'm just curious what you make of that.
Speaker 2Well, first of all, I didn't work for his presidential campaign. We've been contacted through texting, and then we've met several times, and it was more after he lost. And he ran for Senate in Ohio and lost to J.D. Vance, of all people. And so, you know, we were kind of, in that period, I was talking to him a lot, and we were despondent about the return of Trump and what it would mean and the corruption and the cruelty and what was happening to the American soul. We were deeply, deeply upset about it. And so, I didn't really think that it was, you know, it was an attempt at a particular election, because he wasn't running for office anymore. He was trying to create some kind of committee or group. And he had Republicans in that group, like Steve Schmidt. And so, it was kind of a cross, you know, it crossed party boundaries. And it was a look at, you know, how can we rebuild this country? And, you know, it didn't amount to anything. I can't say we had any effect, although we started a conversation in some way, rippled out and spread somewhere. But when I hear what Tyler Rico was saying last night in All Soft and Roy Cooper in North Carolina, and so many, so many, I was really amazed at how many women are now going to be in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, which I think is a very, very positive thing. But there's so many people who are articulating ideas that we were discussing. So, I can't say I had any effect. I really don't think I did. But we were, we were trying to widen the conversation, widen the vision beyond just, because Democrats, what's the undoing of Democrats is they just give a laundry list of policies. We're going to do this with healthcare. We're going to do this with gasoline prices. Yeah, it's important. Affordability is a very important issue. But there's got to be something else. There's got to be something a little more kind of mythic, I'd have to say, that kind of crosses party boundaries. And that's sort of what we were discussing.
Speaker 3Can you actually elaborate on the mythic thing? Because I actually totally agree with you, where there's this like je ne sais quoi, there's this like thing with certain leaders, where half the time I'm like, you know, I don't actually know what they stood for. But there's something about that guy that I want to like get behind you. And Sean was actually talking about that. And JFK to me was a little bit like that. When it comes to great leadership, what are the qualities necessary to have that mythic, that mythic ability where people are willing to follow you because you have this special thing? Well, we haven't had a leader
Speaker 2like that in a long time. So it's almost hard to visualize. It comes from a different ideological angle than I do. But Reagan had a little bit of that. He had the kind of folksiness. And he was trying to appeal to a larger vision of America. A lot of it was looking back towards the 50s, but not completely. The thing about JFK is you're right to talk about corruption. But he's also trying to appeal to a larger vision of America. And he's trying to appeal to a larger vision of America. There's John Wayne, John Ford movies. He kind of modeled himself on that, the kind of coolness, the kind of cool charisma. He was like the new sheriff in town. And he wanted to see how he could kind of exude charisma for the television camera. And he had that very famous debate with Nixon, in which people who heard it on the radio thought Nixon crushed him. But people who watched it on television thought Kennedy crushed him because he was.
Speaker 3Yeah. And like Nixon was all sweaty and like. He was all sweaty.
Speaker 2His makeup was all. Yeah. It's like a Halloween figure. That kind of element where you kind of create something a little bit larger than life, where you're something mythic, as I say, appearing. And what is the myth of America? Well, to me, what made America great was how we're builders. We create them. We're practical people. We're not ideological. We're practical. We like to build things. We like to make things. And that's always been our genius. And to go back to that kind of vision of individuals who are rugged, who aren't just so weak and are always complaining, but know who have that kind of, I guess, pioneer spirit. To me, that is the American myth. And we've completely lost it in the age nowadays where everything is so easy and fast and people have no patience for making anything. And so a lot of people are rebelling against that. And I think that kind of sense of. And I talk a lot about it, actually, in my new book, The Splime, is going back to things of the past and going back to who we actually are, what our spirit is, is to me, a way to kind of connect to what I consider that American myth.
Speaker 1You see it a lot in sports. You know, you may not see the most charismatic people in politics necessarily, but as a sports fan, there's these people that just seem to rally or moments or leaders that emerge in different things. Sometimes it's coaches that have an aura. And aura is something people say a lot. What is aura? Aura is basically nonverbal charisma. Without even having to do anything, it's just there. And every athlete eventually gets old and it ends. So it doesn't last forever. But there are these eras. Sam and I are both fans of UFC and MMA. And there was a window of time where Conor McGregor went from this but almost spoke into existence in a mythical way. In fact, he nicknamed himself Mystic Mac, because he would say, you know, I predict these things. And he would, you know, he carried himself with such self-belief that he began, you know, you didn't even have to care about fighting or Ireland or any of those things, because the guy stood for a different concept, which was self-belief. The guy believed in himself and bet on himself more than anyone who'd ever seen bet on themselves. And so that was really inspiring to a lot of people during that era. And there's this famous tweet that Jalen Brown did a few years ago, four years ago, the Celtics said, and Jalen Brown didn't go talk about X's and O's and policies and what they're going to do to make changes. And he just said, the energy is about to shift. And he tweeted that. It's a very famous tweet. They're the most winningest team since he did that. This is like years ago. And they just went on this run. They went to the finals and they won the championship. And like all these things happened over the next era. But people who almost can simplify in a way, I think one of your laws of power is speak less. And one of the things that you do is like, you don't over-explain how it's all going to happen. You just simply, with certainty, assert that the energy is about to shift. And that's kind of mythical in a way.
Speaker 2Yeah. Well, you're talking to a diehard Laker fan here. Me too. Me too. I hated it.
Speaker 1I hated that the energy shifted.
Speaker 2That's all right. No, I can appreciate what the Celtics did. Yeah. Sports has that definitely for sure. But the great thing about sports, because I'm a sports fanatic, is as they used to say, it's like you win and you, you know, there's no denying, there's no crying, there's no saying, you know, you shouldn't, you cheated or whatever. And so there's clear-cut winners and losers. The problem in American business and politics is a lot of people rise to the top who don't really deserve to be there. There are no metrics for determining why they are where they are, as opposed to sports, where you can pretty much look at statistics. I, you know, I thought Phil kind of embodied that. So in The Art of Seduction, I tried to literally kind of define charisma, because as you say, it's kind of this intangible thing. And how do you actually describe or where does it come from? And in the research that I did, you will find a very interesting phenomenon about a huge percentage of people that we would consider charismatic come from very troubled backgrounds. They had very difficult childhoods. They were either abused or abandoned, were orphans, had very, very difficult childhoods. And so their whole life, their whole sense of getting power and love was through the camera, was through the public. They emanated this need to appeal to the public, to get the kind of attention they never got from their family or their parents. And so they're very outer-directed. And the other thing is, a quality that's very charismatic is to have this kind of inner intensity. And so I think that's a very important thing. And I think that's a very A lot of it can be anger, because that's a very powerful powerful emotion but could be love or something like that but you don't have to say anything you don't have to say a word you don't have to say exactly how you feel but people can read it in your face your whole face is lit up with this intense emotion that's inside of you that's driving your gestures your tone of voice all the non-verbal things and it's read through the public as here's someone bristle brimming over with this confidence and this inner power that they they don't need to have to say anything but it's it's there it's in that aura that you mentioned couldn't you teach
Speaker 3someone to be more charismatic and what would you teach them
Speaker 2well confidence is by far the most charismatic quality that you could have as you may know i spent six seven months with 50 cent writing the 50th law my fourth book and 50 has intense charisma um and his charisma comes from this incredible sense of confidence and inner strength and where did that confidence come from you know so many people from his background in south side queens never made that they don't have it the difference is he had this near-death experience that kind of transformed him and what are you going to be afraid of after you've got shot nine times at close range through a car window you're not going to be afraid of anything shit man i survived that you know you can't kill me and so that sense of calmness and confidence that he had to me is very charismatic can you teach it well you can't teach people coming from troubled backgrounds but you can have a sense of your intention is outer directed because as i said it's it's a quotient of of confidence you can't fake confidence you can but people will read through it because it comes just as bravado it has sort of an emptiness to it but if you feel inwardly very secure and you're kind of uh on fire with some idea or some cause that's important to you and you kind of exude that confidence that i'm talking about it will communicate as charisma it may not be on the level of a kennedy or a malcolm x who i think exemplifies charisma or a maryland monroe but it will have some of that power to to it so it's teachable to that degree but the really truly powerful charismatic people like a churchill etc they're kind of creatures of certain circumstances but all
Speaker 3the people except for maryland monroe all the people that you mentioned malcolm x churchill jfk uh one was leading america to space one was trying to save england from nazi germany the other one was trying was fighting for black rights those are all the the the to to play the devil's advocate those are all like the easiest causes ever to rally behind and say i'm going to dedicate my life to this so do you find a i i i i
Speaker 2i'm sorry but i disagree with that great that i i'm i'm i'm prodding here on purpose but like well it's a prime example he came from a very bad family background he was mostly pretty much abandoned and he was felt completely unloved and for years he was in love with a woman who was in the wilderness um he during world war one he had the gallipoli campaign which was a disaster and he was a man that suffered deeply from bouts of depression okay and so when world war ii came about and when hitler rose to power all the qualities that he had were had that that would make him charismatic were kind of dormant in him and they just came to life in that particular moment because he had suffered so much politically in his life as well that he was he could rise to the moment he had learned so many valuable lessons so he wasn't just a creature of hitler because there were a lot of english leaders at the time like chamberlain who completely failed in that role there was something about him that was that was different that came from within it's not what i'm saying
Speaker 3are these people were they um did they become great like does it if i wanted to be more confident would it be because i was i am a confident human or i found a cause that was worthy of me becoming
Speaker 2that well having a cause it is extremely important for to have that because as i said it kind of creates this radiant uh thing emanating from you that that's that's very very powerful but you have to be able to embody that cause and it has to not be something that's just that doesn't seem opportunistic like so you know obviously malcolm x was was in prison he was a hustler a drug dealer and in prison he discovers the prison library which was his salvation he discovers books and the power and he researches the history of of african-american oppression in this country and it comes from within this anger he had tremendous feelings of anger for all that he had been through in the prison system growing up in boston tremendous wells of anger and now he was able to draw on this using all that he had learned from history so it wasn't like he was an opportunist that simply glommed on to the to the cause of fighting for for african-american rights it was something deep within him churchill there was something deep within him i bring up marilyn monroe because it's not a cause it doesn't necessarily have to be a cause but because it is a quality that actors and people of color and people of color have to have and people in the limelight can can exude and in her case she was an orphan who never really knew her parents but who had this tremendous desire hunger for love and the only way she could get love was from the public was from the camera was from kind of um creating this this neediness in the camera that she wants and is drawing your attention and drawing your love is a quality that a lot of actors can have and it's something that some have learned but in her case once again it was a lot a function of really of where she came from can i ask
Speaker 1you you know charisma when somebody says charisma i think that's a good thing i want more of that and what you're saying is two things you said well the by far the most charismatic trait is confidence that's an internal thing security internally but then you're saying that a lot of these most charismatic people that you studied because of their upbringing they have this outer orientation they crave the love of others and it pulls them towards this like highly external uh validation seeking path and that way charisma almost in these highly charismatic people almost seem broken it's almost like i wouldn't want that actually that sounds like a a negative thing and um i shared on this podcast recently that i i hired this coach who did this um personality test on me and he he and i scored extremely hot like all my things were really low and there's one bar that was like over a hundred it's like what is that and it was narcissism i was like oh no the worst i'm a narcissist there's no redeeming part about a narcissist and he said well the way that what it means in this to this orientation was that you um get very you believe there's something special about you you maybe can't put your finger on it and you look to the world to validate that that's true about you and you you get that and you know i'm like oh well i guess i do have a podcast that's you know me basically sitting here showing everybody how smart and funny and interesting i am i guess that is kind of what's going on every week twice a week um so i guess i can't really argue with this idea that like i guess i do seek some of that i get high highs when it's validated and low lows when i'm not seeing a special that is true about me so i guess in that way it's true can you i guess is what i said like does that resonate with your research and what you
Speaker 2believe of course i mean um you know when the attention leaves you when when when the camera isn't following you when you're not in power you're not fighting a hitler um you know you you can get very very depressed and obviously marilyn monroe committed suicide churchill had these i forget what his name is black something or others that he would kind of fall into where he just was deeply deeply depressed um kennedy you know he he was he had a lot of physical ailments i don't really know because he died he was assassinated when he was quite young but so the idea is you become addicted to the attention and to the need to have a public all the time and that can be debilitating but you know a lot of very great people aren't necessarily the nicest people on the planet and that's and they're maybe not necessarily the happiest but they create great things one of my icons in sports was kobe bryant because that guy was dead at a set level and he was a great guy and he was a great guy and he was a great guy and he was a great guy and he was a great guy he had levels of determination and persistence channeling a lot of anger that he had from probably from his childhood and you know he was just so fierce on the court and he was probably a difficult person in many ways to be around although i think later in life he kind of mellowed a little bit but i think we have to get over this notion that being great and powerful also makes you a wonderful loving kind person because a lot of very creative people in the arts or in politics or in business get very far but they're not the nicest people in the world but so what why does everyone have to be these paragons of virtue steve jobs was a raging he was terrible he was the worst manager in the world he learned some lessons later on in life but but he was he was genius at what he did and we we need people like that so we can't just be always looking for the most virtuous saintly person and elevate them because those necessarily aren't people who are going to get anything done in this world that's
Speaker 3awesome is there someone who you look up to uh where they've checked the checks all the boxes or many of the boxes where you think that they are a great person and also ethical and i admire them for how they treated their family things like that because we have a lot of great people on here and there are very few people who we are like i would trade my lives with that person or i admire them as a whole person whereas most people it's like i like that thing i like that thing the rest i don't need
Speaker 1that who do you admire the whole of or who who is the outlier that accomplished the greatness but was a great being as well
Speaker 2well i mean it's kind of personal but i my former mentee ryan holiday uh i i very much admire him because he's incredibly successful he's he's built this empire he's a a very decent good person he is he's has raising a family he's a great father and um i used i got him to be my researcher because i saw that he had like a really good character and so you ally that character with someone who's very smart and ambitious and you've got a really good character and you've got a really good character and you've got a really good really kind of great person i've been uh i've been blessed to be friends with an nba basketball coach i hope he doesn't mind me mentioning a mark dagono of the oklahoma city thunder they won a championship and uh two years ago and the thing about mark was he's very young he was in the he was a g league coach for the oklahoma city thunder g league team he was very successful there and then he gets offered the head coaching job which he wasn't really a silly wanting because he had a really good job and to be an nba coach you have no idea because i've talked to him how insanely stressful that is imagine having to lead 15 men young men who are making incredible amounts of money who have their egos who have their needs who want all of this attention who want to be the best in the world who want to be the best in the world who want to be stars who are thinking of their future you have to meld them into a team and he had like three or four or five years where the team sucked and they were like at the bottom of the standings and yet he had faith and he built a system and he's a very high character person he's a very decent person who believes in treating his players well not spoiling them but treating them well and i was so gratified to see someone like that within a very short period of time reach the pinnacle in sports and winning a championship for a team from oklahoma city you know like okay the lakers they can buy whoever they want but
Speaker 3you're not i don't know anything about mark can you tell me the story what made him special he started out
Speaker 2young um as a g league coach he might have been like 30 or something or 31 i don't know um and he's a strategist so he's very very intelligent and he's always studying he's a student of the game and he pays deep attention to where the game is headed towards and what are the what are the new kind of strategies he can devise so he's been very he's very smart and and he he's kind of an intellectual type coach in the in in the same stamp as as phil jackson but at the same time he's very empathetic and he he he is able because he's young which helps he's able to identify with his players he wasn't like a pro he played i believe in the college level don't quote me on that um so he he wasn't a player that could could bond with his players that way but he was young enough and he had a deep deep empathy he understands the pressures that they have and so you mix that quality of someone who's social who understands human beings who understands human psychology but is also a brilliant strategist he created this new way of playing in the nba that was unheard of which was all about um going for rebounds i'm not going to get into the weeds here but instead he loaded all his players up there to get offensive rebounds which was unheard of because it was like you're exposing yourself that kind of counter-attack it was a strategy that now most teams employ he was ahead of the game so he's creative he's strategic and he's got human social skills i wrote a book called mastery and it's about mastering your career mastering your profession reaching that level where you almost don't have to think where you just have a sense a fingertip feel for what's going on okay but one of the components in mastery that people have to learn is social skills you could be a brilliant at it in business or whatever but if you're horrible with people it's going to neutralize everything so you get somebody with high analytic skills to do it and you're going to be able to do it and you're going to be able to do it and you're technical skills and you align that with good social skills you've got a very very powerful person also as i said with somebody with a very good character yeah that's awesome you wrote this
Speaker 1new book sublime and it's interesting because if i look at the books you're popular for you're famous for you've got 48 laws of power power i mean self-explanatory it's like a very masculine very sort of forceful grab it by the neck sort of word you have seduction another one control mastery another one about control and it seems like sublime is saying the almost the exact opposite it's about letting go and um being small rather than being larger than life can you explain what the book is and how it relates to the other books
Speaker 2well you kind of mischaracterize mastery mastery isn't about control mastery is about literally mastering your profession right so that you spend years learning the skills going through an apprenticeship and developing the kind of skills that will later turn into creative energy right but if you're only after control controlling people controlling the environment controlling everyone around you you're never going to reach high level technical skill you have to have technical skill in order to become a true master in chess in sports in finance in politics or whatever it is you need that high level of skill right mastery was not in the vein of the 48 laws or artist action i actually wrote mastery because i was really worried that a lot of young people particularly young men thought that the only way to get power in this world was to be manipulative and political and use their kind of ego in that way and i thought i've got to kind of balance this out with showing you the other side there so that that book was different and then the laws of human nature isn't really about learning how to which is my book aftermath isn't about like power so much as understanding human behavior on the highest possible level so that you can see the toxic narcissists before they enter your life before they ruin your life so you have high level you have antenna you have radar that you can detect the character of people before you get into trouble you hire the wrong people all that useless drama so that was that book this book it comes out of personal experience it kind of came to me that people suffer not just because in the world today because we have a mental health crisis in the united states i read somewhere that one out of six americans is on some form of antidepressant you know this is this is a crisis this is critical and it's a worldwide phenomenon so people are missing something and they're missing something and they're missing something and they're missing something in their lives they're missing something deeper than just the the paycheck at the end it used to be religion would supply that what what people were missing a sense of something larger than your individual life something transcendent important a value that was greater than just your individual struggles and we don't have that anymore and so so my book the law of the supply comes out of my sense of people are suffering from the narrowness of their experience a lot of it coming from technology uh
Speaker 1well i i'm glad you came on uh i like having you on the podcast because oh good you're so different than everybody else that we have on the podcast and um well many ways your pace is different oh yeah that's like the first thing because you know people bring an energy into the podcast before they bring information i think you bring a different pace of uh presence like a gift of presence like i yeah i don't feel like you're anywhere else but here when you're doing this and that's like something i want to do more of and be more like i think also you know a lot of people come on the podcast are helping you be successful but at a certain surface level of life right successful in your work successful in your business successful in your your job um but you kind of go you know tap on the shoulder like hey come down a few levels there's more to the game than just that it's a different sort of it's life wisdom it's not just uh sport wisdom and And I think that the life wisdom, especially this book, this book is interesting to me because I feel like my honest thing was like, I feel like nobody even says the word sublime. I don't think there's anybody out there. Like if the Tam of people who are searching for a book on sublime is zero, maybe, maybe, maybe three, uh, you know, and they all work for you. And so I think that, um, it's amazing. I, one thing I respect as a artist and also just as a man who just decides like this matters to me and therefore that's enough. That's something I kind of wish I had more courage of in my life. I think there's always a voice in my head that's looking for the, well, the guarantee of some good result. If I do all this work, if I handwrite this book for years and transcribe it from notebook to notebook, to edit it, like I would wish that there's like a clear pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. And I just really respect that you did it because you just felt like you were called to do it. There's an artistic courage to doing what you do that I envy and I want. And I, you know, as I admire that, that, you know, it's, it's,
Speaker 2it's, it's, it's a lot of some people are going to be disappointed because they want the 48 laws of power part two. I understand that. Uh, it's not the most sellable subject, but my strategy is you write a good book, you put all of effort into it. You have interesting ideas. You try and do something that hasn't been done before and you will find your audience. And if you don't, then that's groom, it's their fault. It's not my fault. So, um, it's my attitude. There was a, I did a
Speaker 1podcast with, with the music, music artist, uh, Mike Posner. And he has this great line, which is cause his first songs were mega hits. It was like, I took a pill at Ibiza and cooler than me. And so he went like triple platinum. Then his second record was double platinum, kind of a little single. And then it was like no platinum. And then he got shelved. The record label was paying him and owned his life, but didn't even want to, pay to produce the music. So for years he wrote songs that then would become Justin Bieber's hit or somebody else's hit. And he was just sitting there, not like not even out there. And he taught as he went through the whole thing and he came out the other side and he's back to having fun making music. He was like his kind of guiding like words that he said that stuck with me. He goes, I just make what's cool to me. And sometimes the whole world agrees. And that was enough for him. And I just thought, I really love that. I think that's just like such a better attitude than I want to go make hits.
Speaker 2Well, you, you, you either have one or two paths you can do. You could write for what the market says will be the most marketable and lucrative, or you can write for what will satisfy you and what you need to express. Now, if I believe that if you do something that you need to express and you feel very deeply, like it's something I have to communicate and a lot of books are written nowadays that don't have that, I believe that sense of purpose behind them. If you have a reason for writing or, or creating music, it will find an audience because the level of excitement and pleasure you feel will translate to the listeners. I believe maybe you won't go triple platinum, but you'll go probably platinum or something like that. So that's always been my guiding philosophy to listen to myself. And as I'm listening to myself to then think about my readers and how I'm going to connect to them on using the subject of the sublime,
Speaker 3I think. Well, thanks for coming back, man. We, um, we're big fans. So I, I agree. This is always a, a nice change of pace and, and it sort of feels like, um, we're in a good type of class whenever we talk to you, you know, uh, you, you definitely, we, we, almost like mentor vibes. And so we appreciate you, uh, kind of letting us learn from you for a little while.
Speaker 2Well, I, I, I love it. I really enjoy it. Thank you so much for inviting me. I, I, I'm, I'm very honored. That's it. That's the pot.
Speaker 3All right, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called content is profit and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and orange theory fitness, Luis and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue. In each episode, you're going to hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're going to hear from some of the best entrepreneurs in the business world. And I'm going to tell you a little bit more about them in just a moment. So if you're interested, you can check out content is profit, wherever you get your podcasts.
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