so much depends on reputation reputation is the Cornerstone of power through reputation alone you can intimidate and win once it slips however you are vulnerable and will be attacked on all sides never let others Define it for you you know so when I wrote the 48 Laws of Power I tried to I have somebody through my whole life loves playing games I don't mean that in the abstract sense I mean literally like chess back Gam Sports poker whatever and um I like the cleanness of a game it's like you do this and you can win
ET but there's also a psychological element in it so particularly when you're playing poker and you're bluffing and you're and I was always fascinated by this it's a game of chance you don't really know what cards you're going to get but that fellow over there he's been bluffing he Bluff before I'm sure he did he's going to do it again right so the psychology starts entering into the picture in a game of chance it's not game there's skill certainly skill involved but a lot of it's chance and because he bluffed before and he's got that
look in his eye could be a woman don't mean to generalize all right I'm G to fold okay so you don't realize that so much of the game of power has nothing to do with data and you being better person at something a lot of it is pure psychology and intimidating people and winning before you even enter into a battle so if you have a reputation you carry it with you and the reputation doesn't have to be real personally I don't know how valid this is I have this reputation now of being this Mackie valyant
characters you know and so if Robert's 5 minutes late for a meeting it means he's playing a game even though it was probably just the traffic but my reputation now kind of put people a little bit on their heels you know where it's not necessarily true about me but it kind of goes ahead of me and it makes it influences proceeding yeah and so it's a extra form of power so the idea you have to the overall arching idea to pull us out of the specific is power is pure psychology pure psychology and what I
mean by that is um the CEO of a company he doesn't get there based on it's not like baseball whereas balls and Star Soccer I'm sorry you probably don't even know I'm a ranger I'm a Texas Rangers Fan I'll have you oh okay all right well it's not like baseball where balls you know you hit you have a good batting average or Ops all right you're you're you're going to get in the lineup they're going to bat you in in the cleanup spot okay um life isn't like that so the way somebody Rises to the
CEO and I know because I was on the board of directors of a publicly traded company it's not about metrics it's not about things that they've actually done it's about psychology right people rise to positions of power because they know how to play the game and they know how to play the game psychology they know how to appear they know how to play the Optics they know how to intimidate they know how to say less than necessary they know all the psychological little gambits and that's why I wrote the 48 Laws of Power it's kind
of like this is The Game of Life the game of power the rules are are a little bit nebulous but here's how you play you play by mastering these little psychological bids one of them is your reputation I'm fascinated by reputation and credibility especially given what I do now but my previous life I was a club promoter I ran you were a what club promoter I ran nightclubs a very long time clip promoter but what do we call that here Club it would still be it would just be a promoter it's called Uh so marketing
for nightclubs essentially the guy stood on the front door with the guest list and the bands for VIP and all of the hot girls names and then after a while we owned a group of guys that did that and then we owned a group of guys that owned a and you start to build up this company W and um in that every single nightclub that you've ever been to is the same thing it's people getting drunk in a room to music it'll never be anything else you can dress this one up pink and give out
inflable flamingos on the door or this one's really cheap or this one's on a wedding's day and it's sort of naughty that you shouldn't be going out on a wedding's day dress it up however you want it's people getting drunk in a room to music that's all it's ever going to be and what I realized from doing that was the power of reputation this isn't the reputation of a person it's the reputation of a brand but if your company is known for always putting on good parties then you get to benefit from that and and
what happens is when you have a reputation for good putting on good parties people come more people come you better yep correct so this is the this sort of odd and this is the the really important Point uh never let others Define it for you uh and uh when you are vulnerable you'll be attacked on all sides because as it's going up it it does it precedes you it continues to do work for you exponentially growing and growing but when you're starting to go down even your best work will sometimes be derated to be worse
than it is so you have done something that is good but because of your reputation you're a liar you're a phony you're a grifter you're a shill you're a fake that's right yeah it credibility is the one thing that you should never sell because you cannot buy it back there is no return policy on your credibility and and people are so getting back to the word stupid I mean they post things on social media with when they're young not realizing that 5 years later when they're trying to get a job at a law firm they're
like you know sure they're doing incredibly ridiculous things on Instagram and that part of their reputation everything you do is reflected through the social world right nothing is in isolation people are continually judging you so you have to be aware you have to think before you post you have to think how are people going to take this if I say this stupid rude thing that comes right out of me because I don't control my my my tongue it's going to ruin my one fault step will ruin your reputation there's a British MP who is receiving
on the receiving end of a tweet from 2009 which has come back around I think I read about this that you like get these Estonian retards out of my house right now so I don't mean to laugh about that it's terrible estonians are very smart people get these Estonian retards out of my house right now or I want these whatever and uh she's had to do this gring apology oh God but I mean you know when was Twitter when did Twitter start probably 2008 or so this is you know is early this is the equivalent
of the big bang you know this is the whatever it is microwave cos cosmic background of tweets and um yeah the I I just love that I really I really think that the reputation Point can't be overstated and you know I've got to see in this industry as well both whether it's authors podcasters YouTube there are some people who have traded reputation and credibility for uh money or for short-term trades that didn't make sense and they've not ended up coming off in one form or another they've tried to cash it in like give me an
example you mean like going to Spotify and uh no no not to not name names no not that um interestingly with with Joe's move to Spotify that was something that he got an an awful lot of credibility for and that's one of the interesting things had it have been with a different platform that didn't carry as much uh weight gravitas they have their own reputation it becomes multiplicative as opposed to sort of subtractive yeah I know of course like uh getting a Nike sponsorship is cool hoay for you that's not you selling out but getting
a sponsorship with some brand that everybody thinks is really like lame that is selling out you're obviously only doing it for the cash um but you know there's a ton of guys that have held political positions or have swayed With the Wind just blown with the whatever it goes this way whenever it goes that way and the interesting thing is even if they've made a ton of money from it even if it's been advantageous in one domain I actually think that if you gave them the opportunity they would give all of it back and some
to be able to regain their reputation I think they would give anything they could to be back in the cool kids club and there's no return policy on credibility well the other thing about reputation credibility is it has to be consistent so um you have to like it's like a brand you you're you're known for something you're known for being strong you're known for being self-confident you're known for being Mack of ellian or whatever it is funny or light yeah and there's a certain kind of you know shape to it and if you're like all
over the map and you're going over here your reputation is about that it's about this it looks weak it makes it look like because we want to we want to feel like people judge on appearances they don't judge on the reality of who you are they don't know who I am or who you are they judge in what they see and what they how we appear and if those appearance they want to have something consistent that they can grab on to they want to say something simple that guy is funny and that's who he is
you know this guy is that they want a very simple formula and if you can't be consistent if you're all over the place if you're changing your ideas you're Conservative then you're liberal blah blah and you're trying to to tack with each wind to get power yeah you'll get some power that way but it'll make you look weasy it'll make you look distrustful and people won't like that and your reputation will be one of somebody who has no soul who has no core so reputation also has to have a consistency a core to it a
soul that binds it all together especially if it seems like it's being done for a contrived reason you know I think people are fine with people changing their mind as long as show me you're working explain to me how you got from that position to this one don't do it beyond the sort of Tolerance level that we all have this is a little bit too much I've updated I used to be Pro this now I'm anti that um yeah I I really do think an awful lot about the value of of reputation and um in
another way it's very never let anybody else toine it for you um you know allowing that sort of vacuum to to seep in loses you your power over your reputation and it allows other people to derate it on the other hand if you're very mauian person poke holes in the in your enemy's reputation and you will destroy them bring up things that are inconsistent with their reputation and you will have ruin be like a popping a balloon it'll just go like that you know and I talk about how in that chapter how PT barn and
played that game to ruin other people's reputation and make people wonder is he really like that I guess not because I just saw this fact that contradicts it so I'm giving you some very evil mellan advice out there if you have enemies and other news this episode is brought to you by element for the last three years now I have started my morning every single day with element it is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't each grab and go stick pack contains a highin backed electrolyte ratio
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