Stop Being Liked. Start Being Needed. | Bestselling Author Robert Greene

Jun 22, 2026 · 52 min · 13 segments

Robert Greene has sold over twenty million copies of The 48 Laws of Power. His books are favorites of rapper 50 Cent and millions of people trying…

Robert Greene has sold over twenty million copies of The 48 Laws of Power. His books are favorites of rapper 50 Cent and millions of people trying to get a grip on the dynamics of power. They've also been banned in prisons. He doesn't lose sleep over any of it. In this episode, Greene takes me through the winding road that led to his first bestseller: 60-plus jobs, years living across Europe, a brutal rejection from a magazine editor, a stint in Hollywood watching power moves play out up close, and finally, a sunny afternoon in Venice where he improvised the pitch of his life to a book producer he'd just met. Greene talks about why making yourself indispensable is the most important of his 48 laws, and what that actually looks like in practice. Don't make people like you. Make them need you. Spread your roots across a company, build a skill set nobody else has, and become the person who's too costly to lose. He also gets into how he's handled critics throughout his career, the difference between knowing your life's task and being a con artist, and why every bad boss, dead-end job, and rejected manuscript ultimately ended up in his books. His newest book at the time of this recording was The Daily Laws. Nothing in his career, it turns out, was wasted. Support the show

Robert Greene has sold over twenty million copies of The 48 Laws of Power. His books are favorites of rapper 50 Cent and millions of people trying…