922 In Order to Be Successful You Must Do This: James Altucher

Want to be successful? You gotta fail first. If you want to accomplish anything great in life, it's most likely not going to be an easy path to get there. Sometimes, things fall into place for us. But more often than not, things fall out of place, and we find ourselves sitting in failure. Sometimes it's our fault, sometimes it's not, but whatever the case, failures are hard to handle. I myself understand failure. I used to live on my sister's coach. My injury immobilized me, and for months, I wallowed in self-pity. Finally, I realized that my failures and hardships didn't hinder me from greatness. My sister kicked me out, and I learned to fight for myself again. My guest today knows all about failure and how it can set you up for success. In addition to having incredible hair, James Altucher is an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, author, venture capitalist, and podcaster. He has published 20 books, and he is a contributor to publications including The Financial Times and The Huffington Post. He is also the host of The James Altucher Show in which he interviews innovators, creators, and just all around amazing people. James has founded or cofounded more than 20 companies, 17 of which have failed, but he hasn't let this slow him down. Failure is a big part of James' story. In fact, I believe that anyone who is remotely successful has probably experienced an extraordinary amount of failure in their life. Why? Because overcoming failure is a step towards success. At one point, James lost almost all his money. He was completely broke. He had less than two hundred dollars in his bank account. But somehow, he was able to build his business back up, and change that two hundred dollars into fifteen million. Want to learn his secret? Then tune into Episode 922 and get ready to be blown away by entrepreneur, author, and hair inspiration, James Altucher. When was the last time you cried? (6:01)What are you proud of yourself for and what do you regret as a father? (10:08)What is the one thing that has changed your life the most drastically? (13:06)What do you attach your self-worth to now? (30:17)Why do people either love or hate money? (34:06)What is the pathway to becoming financially free without letting money control you? (42:30)What’s the best investment you’ve made over the last 5 years? (46:10)Is there anything you are afraid of people knowing about you? (54:48)What James remembers experiences the attack on 9/11 in the streets of New York City (13:06)What to do when you make a lot of money (24:37)How to manage major fears that stick with you (26:18)How to healthily think about your money (31:15)The best place for a Millennial to invest their money right now (50:00)Plus much more... If you enjoyed this episode, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/922 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 922 with serial entrepreneur and bestselling author, James Altucher.

• 0:08Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:34Lewis Howes?

  A few quotes I want to share with you before we get started. Nelson Mandela said, "Do not judge me by my successes. Judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again." Thomas Edison, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that it won't work." Bill Gates, "It's fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure." And Michael Jordan, "I failed over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed." If you are afraid of failing, if you're afraid of success, this episode is for you. I've always been taught that failure is the way. You must fail in order to succeed,

• 1:18Lewis Howes?

  and that's why I've never been afraid of failure. I've been afraid of judgment. That's been my big thing I need to overcome is the fear of insecurity and doubt around other people judging me. But the fear of failure should never be something you're afraid of because that is the only way to grow and gain what you want. We've got a great interview today with James Altucher where he shares a story he's never shared before. And it had me on the edge of my seat wanting him to continue to share more and more really captivating story that is going to inspire you and is really powerful. It's going to remind a lot of you about some things that were very challenging for you as well at one point.

• 2:00Lewis Howes?

  If you don't know who he is, super successful guy, American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, author, venture capitalist and podcaster. He's founded or co-founded more than 20 companies, 17 of which have failed. That's right. He's batting, what is that, like 7% or something, right? He has published 20 books and he is contributing to publications such as the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, and he's the host of the widely popular podcast, The James Altucher Show. He does some great episodes over there as well. Check them out. I've got an episode out there right now with him where I share a lot of new stuff also. And in this interview, we talk about how he was able to build companies from such a young age. He was

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  really talented at a young age. What it's like to be a jack of all trades and how that has supported his career. How he was able to lose all of his money, completely broke, and build his businesses back more than once, literally going home from $15 million to less than $200 in his bank account. Yes, crazy stories. An incredibly heartbreaking story again that he's never shared before. And what it was like, not only in New York City during 9/11, but on the streets as the first plane hit the World Trade Center. He talks about this story, how he watched it happen from the building next door. Crazy. And what he's most proud of and what he regrets

• 3:26Lewis Howes?

  he did as a father. That and so much more. This is going to be a big one. Make sure to share with your friends, lewishouse.com/922 and check out the show notes for all the info. And now, let's get into this episode with James Altucher.

• 3:46Lewis Howes?

  Anyways, we are here. Welcome back to the School Grains Podcast. We've got my man, James Altucher, in the house.

• 3:52James Altucher?

  Lewis, thanks for having me on. You know, I'm going to take over the podcast for a second. We met early 2013. We were at that one talk, that mastermind talks. Remember, it was a competition. So whoever provided the most value to the audience.

• 4:05Lewis Howes?

  One 25 grand or something, right?

• 4:06James Altucher?

  Yeah, some, seems like huge amount for just winning. The contest and the audience would vote and you gave a really it was you me Ryan Holiday, Tim Ferriss, A.J. Jacobs, a couple of other people in our universe and you gave this really inspiring talk about your football career, your injuries, your sister's couch, you're late building your first, getting your first dollars from your first business and kind of the happiness that gave you and the validation that gave you and how you built up from there. It was a really good talk and I went up there and just said entrepreneurship sucks and blah blah blah. So I lost clearly.

• 4:45Lewis Howes?

  Neither of us won though.

• 4:46James Altucher?

  Neither was one. You know why Joey Coleman won? So Joey Coleman won.

• 4:50Lewis Howes?

  Smart.

• 4:50James Altucher?

  He put everybody's picture from the audience on the wall. So of course, if you see your photo, it's like a natural cognitive bias. You vote for the person who put your kid's photo up there. So he was he and he used it as part of like connect with your customer. Like he had that.

• 5:04Lewis Howes?

  And they told a story about a few people in the audience and he it was smart because he spent like 10 hours of research and did the extra work and he deserved to win.

• 5:13James Altucher?

  But that was seven years ago, almost to the day, and we remember that. That was like a very interesting conference, the way they structured that contest and I still I could feel I could pick up the phone any day and talk call any of those speakers. Like somehow there was like a bonding thing that happened at that one conference.

• 5:30Lewis Howes?

  Yes, that's right. And you've been on the show. I think this is your fourth time, I think.

• 5:33James Altucher?

  Yeah, and you've been on mine probably just the same amount.

• 5:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly. And here's a question. You probably I think you started your podcast shortly after mine. I started seven years ago, literally like a month ago.

• 5:44James Altucher?

  Yeah, so I started mine. I started filming the episodes in like December 2013 and then I launched in January 2014.

• 5:52Lewis Howes?

  2013. Got you. Okay, yeah. So I was, yeah.

• 5:56James Altucher?

  So I was a little after you.

• 5:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:57James Altucher?

  Yeah, my first guest was I think either Tim Ferriss or Tucker Max or one of those people.

• 6:04Lewis Howes?

  Now, here's a question I ask everyone before they jump on. So pre-interview.

• 6:09James Altucher?

  I did shape before. Yes, thank you for asking.

• 6:11Lewis Howes?

  No, but the question I had, the question I asked before, but I wanted to ask you during. So people actually know the questions I ask beforehand since we're podcasters and you've come on before. The question I always ask is, is there anything off limits? And I already asked you that. And you told me what kind of was and what wasn't.

• 6:27James Altucher?

  Yeah, no, I'll describe my answer, which is that I never mind hurting myself. I just don't say things about others that could potentially hurt them. So I'm always fine saying how stupid and idiotic I am on any one area.

• 6:40Lewis Howes?

  Yes, and the second thing that I always ask, which I didn't ask you yet, but I'm gonna ask now, is, since you've done so much content, so many interviews, what would make this the most powerful interview you've ever done?

• 6:55James Altucher?

  Wow, that's interesting, actually. No one's ever asked me that.

• 6:59Lewis Howes?

  Because if we're gonna take people to spend their time listening to this, asking them to spend however long we're to do this for, ask them to share it, if we're asking people to do this, for me, I feel like it's a duty, it's a responsibility and obligation to get the most out of this moment. So that's why I always ask that question, because I'm like, we gotta really get in there.

• 7:21James Altucher?

  I think if we both end up getting value out of this interview, then that's a real powerful interview. Because if you're asking me questions where you wanna learn the answers for yourself, and then I'm asking back and we're both learning, then that's... If we're elevating each other, chances are it's gonna be good for the audience. And that's usually like a good goal for me.

• 7:48Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 7:48James Altucher?

  So if I'm able to help you because of the questions you're asking, and you're able to help me because of our back and forth and stuff, like and the way you're asking the questions and so on, then I think it's a great podcast.

• 7:59Lewis Howes?

  I've got a good first question then.

• 8:00James Altucher?

  Sure.

• 8:01Lewis Howes?

  So you've had, I think you're one of the most brilliant writers.

• 8:04James Altucher?

  Oh, fair. I don't know about that, but thank you.

• 8:05Lewis Howes?

  Of our time in terms of captivating attention and constantly hooking with your storytelling.

• 8:11James Altucher?

  Oh, thank you, that's high praise.

• 8:13Lewis Howes?

  Yes, and especially on Facebook. And we were talking before how I hope you do solo episodes, like you rant on Facebook and telling these stories, because they're amazing.

• 8:22James Altucher?

  And I'm sorry to interrupt, but... I've been, so we just, as we discussed before, I've been thinking about that somewhat, like, what if, instead of every episode being an interview, and I always admire all the people I interview, and they're always great, but sometimes I do wanna just tell stories, and I think, you know, a lot of people who have listened to my podcast, they haven't necessarily read the 3,000-plus, nor should they read the 3,000-plus articles on my site or whatever, and, and I do see in podcast world storytelling is kind of moving up. I don't know if you've seen, like, even, like, true crime stories are moving up, all sorts of storytelling. And so, I just, I,

• 8:58Lewis Howes?

  I think you'd be great at it, man.

• 9:00James Altucher?

  I think it'd be fun, but I'm not sure yet.

• 9:01Lewis Howes?

  Plus, you're a comedian, and you have a comedy store that you've bought in New York City, so you've been practicing, I feel like you would just be able to make it amazing. So, that's my goal for you, is that after this, you start doing solo episodes.

• 9:12James Altucher?

  Alright, I'm gonna do it.

• 9:12Lewis Howes?

  Do one.

• 9:13James Altucher?

  Yeah, do one, do experiment.

• 9:14Lewis Howes?

  Start next week, and just do one of the stories that you posted on Facebook, and just, read it out loud.

• 9:19James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 9:20Lewis Howes?

  And add them. So, anyways, here's my first question. You have gone through so many different life challenges. I feel like every time you write a story,

• 9:28James Altucher?

  Even since I've known you.

• 9:29Lewis Howes?

  I mean, in seven years, but even just before that, you have so many crazy stories that you write about on Facebook. I'm curious, when was the last time you cried? Because you go through a lot of these pain and adversity, but I don't think people ever know if you actually show emotion or cry.

• 9:47James Altucher?

  I think, I think about two weeks ago, I was thinking of my daughters, so I have, I have two daughters, my lovely wife, Robin, has three, two daughters and one son, so together we have four daughters, one son. And I was thinking of, I was thinking of my two daughters, they don't normally live with me, and it's been a long time since they've lived with me, and so sometimes I miss them, and I wonder, when they're going through a hard time, sometimes I wonder if it's because it hasn't been a more steady presence for them, and that made me sad, missing them in that sense, and, and, and you know what? They're both going through their individual hard things, because one's 17, one's 20,

• 10:29James Altucher?

  and, you know, sometimes it's hard when there's distance. And like, I see them as much as I can, they don't live that far away, but they have school, they have responsibilities, they have other things, and so, I was missing them, and I felt sad about that, and that encouraged me to cry.

• 10:44Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 10:45James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Lewis Howes?

  Do you cry often, or is it like a?

• 10:47James Altucher?

  Yeah, maybe like every few weeks.

• 10:49Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 10:50James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 10:50Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 10:51James Altucher?

  So, everything could do it.

• 10:52Lewis Howes?

  That's great, man.

• 10:53James Altucher?

  Yeah. I don't know if it's great or not, like.

• 10:55Lewis Howes?

  I think expressing emotion, whether it's privately or publicly, it doesn't matter, but expressing, allowing ourselves to feel is a powerful thing as opposed to numb.

• 11:04James Altucher?

  Yeah, I mean, I agree, because I'm generally an optimist. Like, if you ask me, "How's the world gonna be a year from now?", I'll usually think it's gonna be

• 11:11Lewis Howes?

  It's gonna die.

• 11:12James Altucher?

  Better. I'll usually think it's gonna be better a year from now than a year ago.

• 11:17Lewis Howes?

  Even with the election coming?

• 11:18James Altucher?

  Well, I'm actually most worried about coronavirus, but that's another topic. But, uh, but we could talk about any of these things.

• 11:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 11:25James Altucher?

  But, um, because I, okay, election, I don't even, how much does the President of the United States or any politics affect you?

• 11:32Lewis Howes?

  Zero, zero. Like, it affects me if I allow the negativity to take over

• 11:36James Altucher?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 11:37Lewis Howes?

  my mind. Otherwise, it doesn't affect me if I have to spend a lot more on taxes or whatever, like, unless something drastic changes, I don't know what would change. There's no real power they have to change.

• 11:47James Altucher?

  No, but I know, but also-

• 11:48Lewis Howes?

  Unless it's a war.

• 11:49James Altucher?

  Right.

• 11:49Lewis Howes?

  Then it would change my life.

• 11:50James Altucher?

  Okay, so like, January 3rd, my kids came up to me, and instead of the usual bantering they do and annoying whatever they say to me, they were like, "Dad, are we gonna get drafted?", because that was when, you know, that guy Iranian was, you know, Soleimani was just killed. Or is it, is there gonna be a draft? Are we gonna, is there gonna be World War III? And so, it kind of inspired me to call up a military expert and do a podcast, what's actually happening? Because one thing I noticed with social media, and that kind of, the kids get swept up in that, is that basically, everyone's a spectator arguing with each other about meaninglessness. Like, they're so, it's so stupid.

• 12:27Lewis Howes?

  Wasted energy.

• 12:28James Altucher?

  Yeah, so wasted. And, and I try to explain to the kids, they're just, you have to understand the difference between a spectator and an expert. And the experts are not arguing with tweets.

• 12:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 12:36James Altucher?

  Except for the president. But, or you might not be an expert. But, uh, so, so, so I, I wanted to calm my kids down, but in a sense, calm everyone down and actually find out what's going on.

• 12:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 12:48James Altucher?

  And so, so, so I do feel when there's, I do get sad when there's like painful things happening or when my kids are worried or when I see a horrible situation, but in general, I'm an optimist. Although, for myself, I kind of, you know, I think about lots of things. A very, very emotional person.

• 13:06Lewis Howes?

  You have two kids, right?

• 13:08James Altucher?

  Two of mine, but then three, five altogether.

• 13:10Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yes. And your two biological daughters are seventeen.

• 13:15James Altucher?

  And twenty. So right now, right now, we have literally, their ages are seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one.

• 13:21Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, that's crazy.

• 13:22James Altucher?

  Yeah, and four girls, one boy.

• 13:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:24James Altucher?

  So, so many, I feel like my period now is starting to synchronize with their periods.

• 13:29Lewis Howes?

  They're crying and eating ice cream the same days they are.

• 13:32James Altucher?

  I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm watching Friends and crying when Ross and Rachel break up.

• 13:35Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 13:36James Altucher?

  It's painful.

• 13:37Lewis Howes?

  Okay, I'm curious about this now. As a father of two daughters, what's something that you're really proud of yourself that you did really well as a father over the last twenty years? And what's something that you really regret? That if you could go back and relearn, do something differently that you would do differently with your daughters? As a father?

• 13:54James Altucher?

  Yeah, the regret is easier to say, which, and by the way, a lot of people say, oh, I have no regrets, else I wouldn't be here where I have to. That's always BS when I hear that. Of course, everybody has regrets. So I wish I had just hugged them a little bit tighter. I remember getting off, you know, for a while, I lived upstate, upstate in New York. I remember getting off the train, my oldest one was a little kid then, and she was just running, and she jumps right into my arms. And I just wish I had held her like a microsecond longer. And those moments like that. In terms of what I've done well, it's hard to say because they're very good kids in general, and I, I love them. But what I've done really well recently is my oldest daughter dropped out of college, and I'm very proud of her.

• 14:34Lewis Howes?

  She chose herself.

• 14:35James Altucher?

  She chose herself, and I kept telling her, you know, everybody.

• 14:37Lewis Howes?

  She skipped the line.

• 14:38James Altucher?

  She skipped the line completely, because that's just it. She's majoring in like acting and theater, or she was, majoring in acting and theater. And I, and I would say to her, you know, you're in your school in the middle of wherever, and there's, you know, two teachers and a little acting program. But you, or you could be in New York City auditioning for things and getting a huge head start on everybody. And she's like, well.

• 15:01Lewis Howes?

  Getting real life experience, networking, trying little mini things, yeah.

• 15:04James Altucher?

  Networking. By the way, she could still take classes, there's plenty of acting studios in New York City. And, and there's things to audition for, and then there's the lifestyle, and you make, you network, you make connections. And if she wanted to learn. Learn things, you know, the other things, there's online courses where you'll learn just as many skills. And she said, but don't you need a degree to get a job? And I said, I don't even know if anybody working for me has a degree like I have, nobody asks anymore. And now maybe they ask sometimes for the very first job. But skills, in this century, skills are more important than degrees. You need skills, you don't need some institution validating you, like a parking validation. Here's your degree and you, you paid, every school, by the way, has the same tuition now.

• 15:46James Altucher?

  Yes, there are community colleges that are cheaper, but all the other schools, their tuition has gone up 10 times faster than inflation over the past 40 years, every single year. And so it's just, it's putting an entire generation into poverty because they're all in debt. 30 million kids in debt. So it's horrible.

• 16:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and I care more about, I, I don't know if I would ever look at a resume with the degree in mind. I would look at the results they've created and the, the energy they bring to the table.

• 16:13James Altucher?

  Absolutely. What ideas are they, are they able to go back and forth and like, maybe you should try this? Maybe you should try that. Like, that's the only thing, really.

• 16:21Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 16:23Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, is there a moment in your life, again, there's so many crazy moments. I feel like you, you've written all these books about this and all these posts on Facebook and tons of podcasts. But is there a moment in your life that drastically changed the course of everything? From the direction you were going, I feel like this probably happens every year for you. Something always changed, but is there one thing that you're like, okay, if this one thing didn't happen when I was 20 or 30 or whatever, that I would be nowhere close to where I'm at without this one thing?

• 16:54James Altucher?

  I mean, there's, there's a lot of things.

• 16:56Lewis Howes?

  Losing the company, you know, whatever it be.

• 16:57James Altucher?

  Yeah, I think, I think a lot of people could probably say a lot of things. You know, I could say getting married, I could say having kids. But, and this almost sounds like a cliche, I almost hate to say it because it's, it's so, it was much more important for so many. This one event was much more important for many people other than me. But I was in the World Trade Center on 9/11. And I, there was a.

• 17:22Lewis Howes?

  You were in it?

• 17:23James Altucher?

  Yeah, so not up high, there was a dean in. Where I had breakfast every morning. I lived three blocks away. So I had breakfast at the Like 8am because it wasn't like Yeah, I was a day trader. So I would go out around 7:30 with my my partner, my investing partner. And we'd go to Dean and DeLuca, kind of figure out our strategy for the day, have breakfast and then walk to my apartment where I had my day trading stuff set up. And we're walking back and we were walking down Church Street, which is the the main street that goes into the world at the World Trade Center at that time. And my business partner, he turns to me and says, hey, is the president coming into town or something? Because that that looks like Air Force One, maybe because it was like really unusually low. And and then, of course,

• 18:08James Altucher?

  You saw the plane? We we so a split second later, we saw we see the plane coming in. It's 600 feet directly above us, like right above us. And there was other people in the street, all kind of like wondering, is that, what is that? And and then it it goes so fast over your head and everybody just ducked. It's like an instinct. Everybody like went to the ground, like you couldn't even not do that. And and then we're all like, it only happened within a second. We're all watching. It goes right into the building. So regardless of 9/11, which was this political momentous event, we all watched with our own eyes. An airplane crash and people die instantly. So just the act of watching an airplane crash is something you never expect. Like, everybody watched it. You didn't even watch it on TV later because it's not like that moment was filmed.

• 18:52James Altucher?

  But just seeing a plane crash is is something that has never happened to me before and I hope never happens to me again. And then everything and then I lived right there. So, you know, then just all the events of that day.

• 19:08James Altucher?

  You know, and again, everybody who lived there, who was obviously people in the building and the families of people in the building had it much worse. But like, for instance, my my business partner and I, we ran we ran straight to the fire department on my street and we said, hey, can we help? And they're like, yeah, and and and they said, okay, they threw us two suits. Can you put these suits on? They gave you suits? Yeah. And I and I said, I just want to make sure you know, we're not, I don't know how to put this suit on like we're not firemen. We just want to help with whatever you need help with. So is this like five minutes within a crash? Yeah, yeah. Hours or? No, it's right away. So cause clearly. It's crash, you're seeing stuff, there's chaos, people are running around and you're like.

• 19:45James Altucher?

  So, so the, my initial reaction was, this is weird what happens to the brain. Like my business partner, he was right away saying, we're being invaded. And I said, no, no, no, this is me like being crazy. This is me being like a kind of a crazy optimist. I said, no, no, no, it's, it's too early for anyone to be in the building. It's, it was eight forty-five AM. So it was clearly people were in the building, but like my brain was saying, no, there's nobody. And I said, that was probably some remote control accident. That's exactly what I said. And then, so we actually stood there a little bit while longer. And then you couldn't see the second plane, cause it came from the other side, but suddenly we see this other huge explosion. And everybody's like, we're being invaded and we're just, we're right next to the building. And that's why we couldn't see the other plane come through, but we saw the massive explosions from the second plane hitting. And I said, no, no, no.

• 20:31James Altucher?

  He, my, my partner said it was a second plane. And I said, no, no, no, it was just a kind of explosion from the first plane still happening. So I'm still being like. Connecting the building. Yeah, yeah. And he's like, no, we're being invaded. And that's when we went to the fire department, cause clearly there was a fire. So he said, can we help? And everyone's running around and they threw us the two suits. And I said, and, and they, they actually said, are you firemen? And they threw us the two suits. And I said, no, no, we're not, but we'll help in any other. We'll help in any way we can. We'll wear the suits if you want. And they said, no, no, only firemen. And so a hundred percent of those people died. And, cause they went all, they were the first ones, the first responders. Yeah. They, they were the first responders into the building, cause they were running. They ran into the building? Yeah. Before it collapsed. Right. Well, that was like right then. Oh, man.

• 21:15James Altucher?

  They ran all the way up and we went back to. You didn't follow them? No, no, cause they, they wouldn't let us, cause they said, if you're not firemen, you're not going into the building. Wow. And I, and we were like, well, where can we get blood or whatever? And they're like, I don't know. And we gotta go. Too much chaos. There's just like, we gotta.

• 21:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:32James Altucher?

  And so, so, you know, and then, then I was on the roof of my building and you saw it like the like the buildings collapsed and the black cloud just went over the building and

• 21:46Lewis Howes?

  Cause you're a few blocks from it.

• 21:48James Altucher?

  Yeah, we're just a few blocks.

• 21:48Lewis Howes?

  There's debris everywhere.

• 21:49James Altucher?

  Oh yeah, debris, asbestos, everything. And I remember my daughter, who was, I guess, three, she had been, doesn't normally do this. She even sensed something bad was happening, like she peed on the floor and

• 22:04Lewis Howes?

  She was three.

• 22:05James Altucher?

  Yeah, she was three. But she had stopped doing that.

• 22:08Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 22:08James Altucher?

  She did it. And, and I was still not convinced it was an attack. And then the Pentagon, we saw on the TV, the Pentagon got hit and then the TV shut off. And then I'm like, okay, this is probably an attack. And

• 22:21Lewis Howes?

  So that's what, an hour, two hours later, is that a

• 22:23James Altucher?

  Yeah, that was all within the first hour. And, and then they evacuated the whole area. I don't mean to go on about nine eleven, but they evacuated the whole area and we, and there were bullhorns, like you must evacuate. But my wife at that time was pregnant and we had heard that there was asbestos in the black cloud. So I was saying, we're not going to evacuate. So there's a whole bunch of people in our apartment. I didn't, none of us wanted to go. And so we all stayed up all night, you know, taking turns listening to Rudy Giuliani was saying what buildings were shaking. Cause we didn't know if there were any other buildings coming down. There was potential for another World Trade Center building could have fallen on our house. So we were just keeping track, but I didn't want to take the risk of a pregnant

• 23:06James Altucher?

  woman with asbestos, just six months pregnant. And the next morning, I get up and I go outside and it was the most beautiful day, like it was sunny, not a cloud in the sky. There were ashes everywhere, literally cars were overturned and there were just guys in, you know, hazmat suits, walking around and tanks. And that was the neighborhood.

• 23:30Lewis Howes?

  That's so weird.

• 23:30James Altucher?

  And then I went down to the corner and you look and there was no World Trade Center. I had grown up with that and there was nothing there. And again, this is nothing, I'm not like telling history here, just my story. And then Decided, okay, it's clear enough, we'll leave. And there's three checkpoints along the way out because no one was supposed to be in that area. We were so close. And so at each point, they're like shining these huge flashlights. What are you guys doing here? And like, what's, who's in your car, IDs? And, and then at the Canal Street, everyone's like peering in like, why is this car driving out of the area? Who are, and the police are yelling with the, the guys in tanks, the military guys were yelling. Guns, like, yeah. Yeah, who are you? Why were you here? And then, you know, that was just, so that, and then, and the other thing that happened. Evacuated and you went somewhere else.

• 24:14James Altucher?

  Went somewhere else, but then I came back a few days later. Cause I was just an idiot and I figured, okay, I need to be here when the stock market opens. But my mind was not correct yet. Your mind gets scrambled. And so I decided, you know what? The market's gonna go down a little bit and then I'm gonna buy as much, I'm gonna borrow and buy as much of the stock. I mean, it's smart thinking, I guess. It was sort of smart thinking, but I was really, I did not know anything about investing at the time. Of course, this is 20 years ago, I had no clue what I was doing. And so I put all my money in the stock market at the open and it, the market went down huge. And then the market went down huge the next day and I like then borrowed like triple the amount. No way.

• 24:57James Altucher?

  And put it all in and it went down huge again, huge again. And finally, I'm like about, I had just made, I had made millions selling a company a few years earlier. And now I was like just about at zero. Cause I, I had borrowed and the market had fallen 10, 15%. I borrowed like 500% at this point. And, and then I remember it was, I think it was the Friday morning. It opened up on a Tuesday, the following Tuesday, and then it was the Friday morning, um, or the following Monday. By Friday morning, I was so broke. It was like 10:20. I said, I can't take it anymore. Just sell everything. I need like a few thousand dollars left because I'm gonna die. And then four minutes later, the market went straight up for the next eight years, seven years.

• 25:42James Altucher?

  No, I would have made so much money if I just held on to the end of that day. Which is a classic kind of story, but I went broke. And I remember I immediately had to put my apartment up for sale. Couldn't really sell it because it was an FBI quarantined area for the next seven months. And couldn't sell it. And I just went. That was the first time I went absolutely dead broke was starting from those events. And of course, again, I just from qualifying, many people had had far worse families, people. I mean, we were right there. We saw the people jumping off.

• 26:15Lewis Howes?

  You saw people jumping off.

• 26:16James Altucher?

  Yeah, yeah, cuz they were, you had to back off cuz they were landing.

• 26:19Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh, man.

• 26:20James Altucher?

  And.

• 26:21Lewis Howes?

  What does that do for you when you watch someone jump and kill, essentially commit suicide? Forced to commit suicide.

• 26:27James Altucher?

  I think the.

• 26:28Lewis Howes?

  Because of the fires.

• 26:29James Altucher?

  Yeah, I mean, by then, my mind was already scrambled, like this, the plane. It was weird cuz I never saw an image of this. The plane went into the building and what was weird was it's like you saw this little edge of the plane on fire, but still sticking out and the building itself looked jagged, like it's still up there, but it looked like it was, it looked like a bad scissor had tried to cut through the building. And so it was like off somehow and blurry cuz of all that heat. And, and so that was the image that really, it took about six years before I stopped at least once every week or so, you know, dreaming about that. Not pleasant dreams, but like really horrible dreams. And that was really affected me much, much more.

• 27:10James Altucher?

  And then, and then of, just then, just all the calamity for, for months and years that happened to me afterwards. It happened to everybody, it happened to that whole area. But, you know, ultimately had to start from scratch with everything because, for me, again, I always have to say, I don't really tell the story because everybody else had it much worse than me. So I don't like to say.

• 27:31Lewis Howes?

  But you got to witness and experience it from the ground level, from your own experience.

• 27:34James Altucher?

  Yeah, and I, and again, it was more, it was, it was now in retrospect, I see how my brain was so just, I should not have been functioning for a good long while afterwards and I tried to. And then that's really the first time I went broke, I lost my home. I mean, I was sometimes so upset, like the police had to be called and I had to be like medicated. And I was really, yeah, it was really an upsetting.

• 27:59Lewis Howes?

  Your wife at the time would call the police?

• 28:00James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 28:01Lewis Howes?

  And. So like crazy manic?

• 28:04James Altucher?

  Not quite manic, just like I was suicidal, like.

• 28:06Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 28:08James Altucher?

  I didn't know what I was going to do because. You had no money and you had these kids and you had to take care of everything. I had two kids. I had no money. I was living in, you know, I just had a lot of money. So I was living. And I was an idiot. Whatever you make a lot of money, you should, this is what I tell people now is you should let the money kind of marinate your soul a little bit, like get used to it. Instead, the first thing I did was I bought like the biggest apartment I could find and ramp up my expenses beyond any level imaginable. And so I had all these expenses. And I had no, and by the way, there also there was this internet recession happening, like the internet bubble had burst. I was an internet guy. So nobody was returning my calls. I had no opportunities. I had no skills at that point.

• 28:49James Altucher?

  Nothing going for me, no money. I couldn't sell my place. I was losing it. And every day I was watching myself lose it. I didn't know what my kids were gonna do, so I thought I had failed them. I had this life insurance policy for them, but I was kinda. I really, I say I was suicidal, but ultimately I really didn't wanna kill myself. I didn't wanna do it. And it's actually really hard to kill yourself without hurting yourself. I didn't want to do that. And

• 29:14James Altucher?

  I just didn't know what I was gonna do. Wow. So you're just kinda like manic stress, like, yeah. Yeah. Wow. So that was, there was definitely a before and after in that, because that changed my life in a bad way for a long time. But I needed it because that's when I learned a lot of things about myself and recovering and bouncing back from that. And I wouldn't, I don't wanna say I don't regret what happened, because I do, but I also know that there was, I learned a lot about myself coming back from that. And I learned about bouncing back and I learned, not quite, not quite anti fragility yet, but at least resilience. Later on, I think I learned how to turn negative events into something positive. But back then I was just miserable and barely treading water until I started to get a glimpse

• 29:59James Altucher?

  of the sun and how it could maybe come back. But that took a long time. Would you say that was the most fearful moment of your life? Or was there another time? Yeah, no, that was definitely the most fearful. Yeah, yeah, cuz a plane crashed right over my head and and then also I thought the world was over. Like you get that feeling, once my optimism washed away, I instantly thought, oh, that was it. The world's over. Like, it's ending. Because my brain was so messed up. And so that was, I was definitely afraid and then a week later, a week and a half later, I was afraid because I was going broke and then I was miserable because then if I had waited like three and a half minutes, I would have made all the money back.

• 30:38Lewis Howes?

  You would see the money going up a little bit, yeah.

• 30:39James Altucher?

  It was like such a cliche that it happened that way too and uh but it happened.

• 30:45Lewis Howes?

  Would you change it if you could go back and change these things?

• 30:47James Altucher?

  Absolutely, 100%. Although, I would change it for the sake of myself then, but for the sake of myself now, I don't think it would be a good thing because I really did sort of come out of literally those ashes, a much better person in so many ways and I learned so much. Not from that, those events, but learned about myself from the events that happened afterwards of coming back and like how to come back from, you know, disaster. And again, it was like, it was disaster in the sense I was, I had, I had no family at the time, other than my family that I was taking care of. So I had, and I had zero, zero cash, zero possibilities, no one to take care, you know, no one, I couldn't call anybody and say, hey,

• 31:29James Altucher?

  wire over some money or lend me some money. I had nothing. And, and I had to and I was ashamed because I had, people knew me in one context, oh, he's this old, this company, he made his money. And now I just had nothing. So I was, I was more ashamed than I'd ever been before. And so I had to figure out, how do I, I didn't even think it was possible to bounce back. I thought I was just gonna fake it until, I was just praying to die every day. So. So that was the, definitely the moment. I was most afraid throughout the next few years. I'd never stopped being afraid from that moment until many years later.

• 32:05Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel afraid now?

• 32:07James Altucher?

  Sometimes.

• 32:08Lewis Howes?

  Worried about what?

• 32:09James Altucher?

  Well, I, I always tell my wife now, I almost have a PTSD about, not about that, about looking at my bank account. Cause I remember there was one time shortly after this, a few months after this. I hadn't looked at my bank account, I was too afraid. So one time, it says, "Do you want to check your balance when you're in the ATM?" And I said, "Sure." Now, it's gonna, I mean, it's gonna sound crazy, but two years earlier, it had said, "Over fifteen million."

• 32:36Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my god.

• 32:37James Altucher?

  The exact same account. Now, it said, "A hundred forty-three dollars."

• 32:40Lewis Howes?

  Holy.

• 32:40James Altucher?

  And that was it, that's all I have. And...

• 32:42Lewis Howes?

  That messes with your brain.

• 32:43James Altucher?

  Yeah, and, and look, I was very privileged and blessed to have built up a company, but I thought I had won the lottery. I wasn't really a natural businessman. I had, I didn't think I was, and I wasn't really interested in business. And, so I think that, that's it. I have never, I have, and I can't get a job. I don't know what to do.

• 33:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:00James Altucher?

  And, nobody was hiring, it was a recession, anyway. So I just, I just, so, so I had this fear of always looking at my bank account after that. And so, just a couple of years ago, or recently, I, I would go years without looking at the balance, or looking at my bank activity, which is what normal people should do.

• 33:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:17James Altucher?

  And one time, I looked at my bank account and saw, oh, I really need to start looking at my bank account more, because I saw someone had been stealing from me on a monthly basis. And I didn't know. And so, and I'm good with ma, you know, I now realize where my skills are in terms of making money, and, and bouncing back, and so on. But, this one childlike behavior of not looking at my bank account, that was a wake-up lesson.

• 33:41Lewis Howes?

  How often you look at your bank account now?

• 33:42James Altucher?

  Now, I look at it every couple of days.

• 33:44Lewis Howes?

  Every couple of days?

• 33:44James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 33:45Lewis Howes?

  What does it do for you when you look at it?

• 33:49James Altucher?

  I mean, now, now I'm more neutral about it. Now, it doesn't really...

• 33:53Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't affect you either way?

• 33:54James Altucher?

  I mean, it'll affect me a little bit, like, if I'm nervous, but, uh,

• 34:00James Altucher?

  it doesn't really affect me the same way.

• 34:01Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like you used to attach a lot of your self-worth to how much money you had in the account?

• 34:05James Altucher?

  A hundred percent. Yeah, that wa, that was my self-worth. My net worth was my self-worth.

• 34:09Lewis Howes?

  What do you attach your self-worth to now?

• 34:12James Altucher?

  Well, now, I mean, I have a whole, and this is when I, as I bounced back, you know, and it took years, the, then this didn't happen just once, losing all my money. It happened a good four times, but, uh, where I would just make a lot of money, and then, lose everything, and think, "How can I do this again?", and then make it again, and then lose it again, and on and on. And so, I started to build a skillset of things that were important to me, so that it doesn't happen again. So I get to have a more balanced life. Because I think, when you attach, when your only metric of your self-worth is something that's so... Non-important for your self-worth, which is money. Money is ultimately an ancillary effect of living a good, healthy life.

• 34:57James Altucher?

  And if you say money is more important than that, money is my life, then you're gonna lose, at least for me, I'm gonna lose my money. So I just train myself to say, okay, I'm gonna, my self-worth is more a function, or I don't even say that. I say, at the end of the day, I say, today, what did I do to work on my physical health? Which doesn't mean be an athlete like Lewis Howes. It means, you know, did I eat well, move well, sleep well, eight hours. Emotional health, did I, am I good with the relationships around me and my friends? And, you know, am I removing toxic people from my life? Emotional health is very important. Because if you're arguing with a spouse, or a girlfriend, or even kids, or whatever,

• 35:41James Altucher?

  or business partners, you're not gonna be creative to do the things you're meant to do in life. And the same thing with physical health. If you're sick in bed, you can't be creative. And then creative health, every day, it's the most important exercise I do every day, which is I exercise what I call the idea muscle. So I take a pad and I write 10 ideas down every single day. And I've been doing that forever. Like, I don't, I don't, not one day goes by I don't do that. New ideas or the same ideas? New ideas. So, and they don't have to be good ideas. About what, just? It could be business ideas, it could be ideas for guests for Lewis Howes. Like, I'm just exercising. It could be book ideas, it could be, the other day, the other day, I came up with 10 game ideas,

• 36:25James Altucher?

  ideas for games I can create. And then the next day, I took one of those games and like, okay, I came up with ideas for how to make the game, 10 ideas, you know, what I call execution ideas, which help you with, you know, people say ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is everything. They don't realize execution ideas are, there's a range from bad to good. And you have to have good execution ideas. That's a muscle too. So sometimes I'll exercise, I'll write down 10 execution ideas. So it's about nothing, and I'll never really use them, sometimes I will. But if you have 3,650 ideas a year, most of them are Horrible, but you wanna just keep, you wanna just keep the wheels turning. It is a muscle and it atrophies super fast.

• 37:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:05James Altucher?

  And then the fourth leg is, I don't like, it's sort of like a spiritual health, but that just means, do I acknowledge what is, what I have no control over and just focus on the things I have control over? Most things we have no control over.

• 37:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:20James Altucher?

  So.

• 37:21Lewis Howes?

  It seems like there's two groups of people from my perspective. People are obsessed about money, making money. They talk about it, they put their attention towards it, they love it. And it seems like there's a group of people in the world that are afraid of money. They don't know how to make it, they're scared of it, it's bad and evil type of thing. Why do you think that is? There's those kind of two groups. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's not those two.

• 37:46James Altucher?

  No, I think you're right.

• 37:47Lewis Howes?

  But I feel like it's kind of, people are obsessed about it and they love it, or they hate it and they kind of reject it because they think that money is bad or whatever.

• 37:54James Altucher?

  Yeah, I think, I think for the first group, they mistakenly think money is the only way to get freedom. And so they, they obsess on, they wanna be free, and so they obsess on how much money they can make. And the irony being, of course, they work 100 hours a week for 40 years and then life's over.

• 38:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:12James Altucher?

  Yeah, so what was your, where did you spend your freedom on? Nothing. So there's, that's an extreme, right? So that's the extreme of one type. And so they think the pursuit of money is everything. And I kind of was in that category, you know, sort of. And then there's the other type where I think they wanna have an excuse in place just in case they don't make a lot of money. So they say, well, I didn't make a lot of money because you have to do something bad to make a lot of money, which is really not true. Like, as you know, and I'm sure many of your guests expressed this as well, is that relationships are really important when you're making money. And you can't have relationships if you're a bad guy, if you're a bad woman, you know. If you're, if you're a bad player in this game of life, no one's gonna wanna do deals with you.

• 38:56James Altucher?

  So now I make 99.999% of my money off of relationships I've built up over the past 16, 17, 18 years. Sometimes even 30 years. Sometimes people from my childhood. If you have good relationships and you're a good person and they trust you, they, they, you know, you do deals together. People, it's really hard to find somebody to work with. And if you could find people you know and trust and you could get in the trenches with. Then that's a valuable resource and so if you're a good person and a good player in this game, it's important.

• 39:32Lewis Howes?

  I feel like you've been on probably both sides of the spectrum where you obsessed about money and you attach your net worth, or your self-worth to your net worth and it was when you didn't have it, you were afraid.

• 39:43James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Lewis Howes?

  And you're freaking out and there's also times where you're like, screw it, I don't need anything. I'm gonna live with like five possessions.

• 39:50James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Lewis Howes?

  Where you did and it doesn't matter if there's lots of money or no money because I'm fine with nothing. And I'm gonna be happy either way. It's like you've kind of had both sides.

• 39:58James Altucher?

  Yeah, I mean, I was always originally like that. Like I worked at HBO, the television company. I just wanted to write, I wanted, my dream was to write novels and make TV shows. And I was working on a TV show for HBO and I got this call. It was my sister and my brother-in-law. He was in the CD-ROM business and it's like, oh, you gotta, you gotta see this new thing. The web, the world wide web. It was just kind of starting up and I was kind of an expert. One of the, there was only maybe five people in New York City at the time who knew how to make a website. So I said to my brother-in-law.

• 40:31Lewis Howes?

  What year was this, 19?

• 40:32James Altucher?

  1994.

• 40:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 40:34James Altucher?

  And so I, I said to him, I'll show you how to make a website. I don't want to help your business, but I'll show you how to make a website. You should do this. You should start pitching this to your clients. But he didn't speak English so well. So he said, can you, he agreed with me. This web thing is interesting. Because it was like what they were doing for CD-ROMs, but connected to the whole world. And CD-ROMs, of course, were going away. And so he's like, can you help me write the proposals? He didn't really speak or write English. He was French and they don't, they don't feel it's important to learn English. I don't know why. And so I, I would start writing these proposals for him and then he's like, I can't really go to the meetings. Because I can't sell. I don't speak English. And so I would go to the meetings and then I realized something.

• 41:17James Altucher?

  Here I am, I was working on this weird TV show idea for HBO. I was writing a novel. I was living in a little, one-room place with a, just one single foam futon on the floor in Astoria, Queens, which is near Manhattan. And, and I was good, then I would.

• 41:35James Altucher?

  Leave HBO in the middle of the day, sneak into a suit and go across the street to American Express. And then I would realize, oh, I'm good at selling something, anything, and I believe in this. I said to them, you're gonna need, and every company's gonna need, this web thing to interact with all their customers eventually. And so they said, well, alright, let's do it. And so we started. American Express? Yeah, American Express. You built a website for them? I built americanexpress.com. No way. I built sites you would not believe at this point. No, I built americanexpress.com, kinderson.com, timewarner.com. You built them? Yeah, yeah. How did you build them? I mean, you coded them or you had? Yeah, I coded them. I was a, my original background is I'm a computer science and, you know, technical guy. And, uh, and I did hundreds and hundreds of websites.

• 42:20James Altucher?

  Did you have a team also, or was it just like you coding and designing yourself? So I was a full-time employee at HBO and in the middle of the day, I'd break out and, and go to these meetings where I would sell the hell out of our services. And then you would build them yourself? And then, well, then I would build them myself, our first, like, let's say dozen or so. And then we started hiring people. We were profitable from day one. And so I had about twenty or thirty employees by the time I quit my job at HBO. So, and then I was, I was, I was the CEO of the company. And my brother-in-law, he was like the designer or whatever. And, uh, and we had employees, we had programmers, we were buying, we were renting new big office space, like ten thousand square feet of office space.

• 43:02James Altucher?

  And at HBO, my title was junior analyst programmer. And then at, by night, yeah, by night, I'm talking to, like, I remember when we were doing miramax.com. And, uh, you know, the movie studio that Harvey Weinstein ran. And it was like midnight and the people on their side in the marketing department, they were like, you've gotta get this finished by, by 1 a.m. because Harvey Weinstein's coming in and he's, he will eat us alive. Like, he, he's like the worst. And, uh, so we would do that. And we did, you know, in terms of movies, we did The Matrix, we did the Scream movies. The websites for them. Yeah, the websites for them. That's pretty cool. The Matrix website and American Express.com were both a quarter million dollars. Oh, my gosh. But just the Matrix itself. Yeah, it was a lot.

• 43:48James Altucher?

  So.

• 43:48Lewis Howes?

  You guys were making money back then.

• 43:49James Altucher?

  We were making money. I was, I was, and my salary was forty thousand a year at HBO.

• 43:55Lewis Howes?

  But they were all custom sites because there was no like WordPress plugins, there was nothing to build on.

• 43:59James Altucher?

  This is why I was a stupid business person because I didn't really understand the difference between, I didn't really understand the nuances in business. People think, oh, I'm good at business or there's a skill at business. There's no such skill called business. There's a bunch of skills in a bag. There's negotiating, there's marketing, there's

• 44:19Lewis Howes?

  Sales.

• 44:20James Altucher?

  Ideas, yeah, sales, uh, leadership, uh, execution. And then there's more nuanced skills like valuation, raising money, selling a company, selling a company is very difficult. So I didn't understand valuation. So I'll tell you a quick example. Americanexpress.com was an enormous website. It's like sixty thousand pages. So I wrote software to basically automatically generate all the pages and I put a little bulletin board to the side of every page. So in every department of American Express, they could comment and I would get emails uh, from all the comments from every department of American Express. I essentially built like a WordPress in nineteen ninety five.

• 44:59Lewis Howes?

  Sounds like WordPress.

• 45:00James Altucher?

  Yeah. And I was thinking, I was thinking to myself, I remember I was telling one person who was, um, who wanted to like intern and learn. And I said, don't tell American Express that I'm doing this because I don't want them to know how few hours I'm working on this.

• 45:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:12James Altucher?

  And here I built software that was like much later, could have been maybe a multi-billion dollar thing. And I was like, no, no, I just want to be profitable. And I didn't realize that, you know, sometimes you want to build something. I didn't understand the difference between scalability and profitability. I thought, oh, of course it's good to be profitable. Not, I don't care about scalability. I just want to make money. And so.

• 45:33Lewis Howes?

  Did you end up selling that company or?

• 45:34James Altucher?

  Yeah, we sold that company uh, for the fifteen million that I had in my bank account.

• 45:39Lewis Howes?

  Went broke.

• 45:39James Altucher?

  And then I went, I mean, then I went a couple of years later, like dead broke.

• 45:44Lewis Howes?

  Now, what do you think after all these lessons from making money, being around billionaires, losing it, making it all this like twenty times you did over in your, in your lifetime? What is the pathway towards becoming financially free without making money, making, becoming a prisoner of the money you're making? So how do you, we want freedom.

• 46:05James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 46:05Lewis Howes?

  Typically money will help us, give us resources to provide certain things, but how do we not let it control us? And, and how do we make a lot of it?

• 46:15James Altucher?

  While not letting in control. I think, I think it's a hard question to answer because all the time you're thinking, okay, what activities am I involved in that are making money and so on. But I realized, and this took me a really long time to realize because I was so afraid after that nine eleven moment, for the next ten or next nine years, all I was focused on was I better not go broke again. And so my mind was so focused on money. And then I finally was like, I can't do this anymore. I'm wearing myself out. I'm unhealthy. Nothing's going right. I'm in bad relationships. I'm in, I'm not being creative. And so finally, I said, finally, I moved out of the city. I gave up.

• 46:57James Altucher?

  I moved out of the city. I moved upstate New York and I just focused on things I love doing, like writing. And that was it, writing at the time. I just loved writing and relaxing and being more creative. And then I also had made enough in little pieces here and there that I would always turn over, I would always invest the money in private companies, not public companies, but private companies that I trusted and where I trusted the CEO. I knew the CEO had done it before. I trusted his vision and I put money with him. Because then it's like, as if you started a company, but you outsource all the work to someone better than you. And you don't have to do the work. And you don't have to do it. So yes, the CEO will make a lot more than me, but

• 47:39James Altucher?

  that's fine. He's doing, he's traveling all over the world and traveling, has 300 employees and managing them. And I get to just sit by the river and write a book or whatever. Get some advice once a month. Yeah. And so, so, so I ended up writing and focusing on that. And through my writing, I was, tell all these stories and, and I think vulnerability, when, when you're writing, a good writer is going to be vulnerable. And you do this in your books. And a good writer is going to be vulnerable. And vulnerability actually is what buys freedom. Because if you say, oh, I've been through this, this, this, this. What can, how can people ever affect you? Like, you've, you've been vulnerable about many things in your life. And someone says, "Yeah, Louis, you, this."

• 48:24James Altucher?

  Yeah, okay, bring it on. I've already said that.

• 48:27Lewis Howes?

  Eight mile yourself.

• 48:28James Altucher?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's the last, the last, the winning song on Eight Mile.

• 48:32Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 48:33James Altucher?

  And, uh, so I just was writing and building this trust and freedom and, you know, building a whole new subculture of connections and networks. And my books were bestselling books. And, look, ultimately, that's how we met. That's how I met a lot of our mutual friends. And then what happened was very interesting, is that more and more opportunities, because people saw, "Oh, yeah, this guy is smart about business." Because, believe it or not, I actually developed some skills in business over this time. I started a whole bunch of businesses and some of them worked, some of them didn't. But I was always very honest about my lessons that I learned. And I would write for all these business blogs and the Financial Times and so on. And I was also honest about myself, so people would trust me.

• 49:16James Altucher?

  And I would see more and more opportunities. And then I started networking people, like, "You should meet this person, you should meet this person." And that would get me, you know, opportunities. And so gradually, I built together this portfolio of private companies that I really believed in. And then some of them started to exit. And that was really the, the most of, and still ongoing. Like, this is what I do, but I never have to think about it. So all day long, as you know, I'm a podcaster, I'm a writer, I'm working on TV shows, I'm working on all the things I dreamed of working on 20 years ago. And now I actually get to do it.

• 49:48Lewis Howes?

  You're doing it. What is the best investment you've made in the last five years? That's paid the biggest dividends?

• 49:54James Altucher?

  Sure, yeah. And then this is actually an ongoing, so your best investments, you almost never exit. Because if a company is doing well, your worst investments, you know right away. They go bankrupt immediately. And they'll happen. But your best investments, you never really, it, it takes a really long time for them to exit. Because if a company is doubling every month, or every year, where else are you gonna get that return? You're not gonna get it in the stock market. So, most companies that are really good don't exit for a really long time. So this is an ongoing one, but a few years ago... This was during a period where I threw out all of my belongings. And I was just moving from Airbnb to Airbnb. I wasn't renting and I wasn't owning. And so, one of my friends, who I had helped, again, this is relationships.

• 50:38James Altucher?

  Ten years earlier, I had invested in this guy's hedge fund. I helped them make a lot of money. And he's like, "Why don't you just stay with me?" And he had this huge, enormous, 10,000-square-foot apartment, whatever, in New York City. And so, we would just hang out and talk every night. And this was during the, there was this big movement, hashtag Black Lives Matter. You know, people were getting killed, both minorities and mentally ill people. There was a lot of, definitely not, there was a lot of problems in law enforcement. And it wasn't on one side or the other. There was nobody to blame. The real blame is the fact that there was only guns and tasers. And these weren't non-lethal weapons.

• 51:21James Altucher?

  Like, we were getting videos from friends who were police officers. "Here's another video of someone accidentally killed with a taser." It was usually a mentally ill person, or it's really sad. And so, we started thinking, "Well, what could be a solution?" And we brainstormed, and he had worked with another company when I had invested in his fund. The guy had made a sonic gun that could shoot at you and blow your eardrums out. So, we called him. My friend actually called him. I'm not gonna take credit for that, but my friend called him. He couldn't do it, but he said, "Well, how about this? How about a gun that shoots a steel, I forgot the actual material,

• 52:00James Altucher?

  but it's a steel wrap that shoots at the speed of sound and wraps around the potential criminal." That's crazy. So, this way, if someone is mentally ill or anything and is within a 21-foot radius is the law, and they don't respond to a verbal command, now you have a choice. You don't have to- You don't harm them. Yeah, you don't have to harm them. You could just, it's like, almost like mobile handcuffs. And so, it shoots at the speed of sound. It wraps really tight around you, but it doesn't hurt you. I mean, I've been wrapped plenty of times. It's not, it doesn't hurt. You've had, been shot at with it? Yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah, the- Was it hurt? No, no. If you

• 52:36Lewis Howes?

  Is it like a rope? Is it like a

• 52:37James Altucher?

  Yeah, it's a steel cable. And it but it's so fast, it's just instantly, you're yeah. And if you try to struggle, it tightens up. So you can't struggle that much.

• 52:44Lewis Howes?

  It's like a Venus flytrap type of thing.

• 52:46James Altucher?

  Yeah. And so, so lots of law enforcement firms are now, and we're to relatively uncoming. This was just a few years ago. We had the idea and then this inventor made it. And then I'm, I wasn't involved except after that, just as an investor. But I was an investor in the, the initial startup capital. So before even like the initial round. And now hundreds, I don't know how many police departments, but everybody's testing it out at the very least.

• 53:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 53:12James Altucher?

  We're doing this in LA, LAPD is testing it out. And all over the world, people, police departments from every single country are testing it out.

• 53:19Lewis Howes?

  That's very cool.

• 53:19James Altucher?

  We went public and so I'm not trying to push or anything, so I won't say the symbol. But we went public, it's been doing very well. And that's probably

• 53:28Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 53:28James Altucher?

  Been one of my, one of my best investments. So that's done well. And but I have, I have a lot of, I have like, I'm in like 20 different companies right now. That's, but that's number one at the moment.

• 53:38Lewis Howes?

  If there's a millennial in their twenties or early thirties who only has a thousand dollars to their name, what should they invest in to help them multiply their wealth in the future?

• 53:48James Altucher?

  Well, absolutely invest in themselves at that point. So you're not gonna have the network yet to invest in other things. Don't invest in the stock market because why do you have an ad? You always have to ask yourself, why? Nobody wakes up and says to themselves, I can't wait to make James Altucher rich today. Like, there's not mysterious opportunities that you, a young 23 year old, are gonna suddenly find that nobody else out of the seven million people found. So opportunities like that don't exist. But where you do have an opportunity is you can take a thousand dollars and take, I don't know, a photography course and buy a camera. And then you get a wedding gig from one of your friends who doesn't have a lot of money. You say, oh, I'll just charge you $2,000.

• 54:32James Altucher?

  Now you just got 100% return on your money. And you could do it again and again and again. That's kind of what I did with websites initially. So I didn't have any money and I just had a skill. So skills, giving yourself

• 54:45James Altucher?

  More skills is the key. That's the key to to any success. While at the same time being healthy. You can't get skills if you're not healthy in these various ways.

• 54:52Lewis Howes?

  Maybe out of energy and yeah.

• 54:53James Altucher?

  Yeah, but you've got, if you invest in yourself, that's how you double, double, double for the first twenty doubles. And that's the first twenty doubles of a thousand dollars is a million dollars. So do the first twenty dollars of twenty doubles just on your skills. And and skills are fun to learn. You might as well learn a lot of skills.

• 55:08Lewis Howes?

  They are. You just started learning comedy in the last three years. What's a skill you want to learn next?

• 55:13James Altucher?

  Uh, well, I'm still.

• 55:14Lewis Howes?

  You're doing standup comedy.

• 55:15James Altucher?

  Yeah, standup comedy is a very hard skill. That's kind of been a fascinating thing to learn. And I I'm I'm doubling down on my podcast. I'm writing a lot. And, you know, look at, look at yourself. You, you know, look at how many skills you've learned. You went from football to handball to, uh, okay, I'm gonna build, I'm gonna learn the basics of business building with LinkedIn. Okay, now podcasting so I can spread the message in this scalable way. And you build skills as you grow. That's, you know, it's not like, you know, that's really where you made the money from. You made the money. I just went to your movie premiere last night, an excellent movie, Chasing Greatness. That's, these skills exponentially grow. You couldn't have made that movie even six years ago.

• 55:59James Altucher?

  You learned a bunch of skills to make that movie. And so I just want to continue building my creativity in different directions. Very important for me is, and which I didn't know how to do earlier, is how to do little experiments.

• 56:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:12James Altucher?

  So I I always say, what's an experiment I can do? That's doesn't cost me much time, doesn't cost me any or our little money. That will, and the upside of what I could learn and maybe benefit is enormous.

• 56:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:27James Altucher?

  So for instance, going up, the very first time going up to do standup comedy, didn't take me, it only takes five minutes to do that. Didn't cost me any money to do that. And the upside in terms of, is this an interest of mine? Is this, can this help other skills? Is, can this have benefits? And it's just fun. That was a great little experiment.

• 56:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:46James Altucher?

  And then I do, I'm always doing like maybe a dozen or more experiments at any given time that are just fun for me. And and I get to learn things. I get to try things, I get, and if one thing succeeds, then it's enormous.

• 56:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:58James Altucher?

  This, this rap thing was a little experiment. Let's call this guy and see if we can, if he could come up with something and then we'll put money with him.

• 57:04Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 57:05James Altucher?

  So just little experimenting is like very key.

• 57:08Lewis Howes?

  I'm always, for me, skills is everything. And I think when you're in your twenties, you should learn as many skills as possible. Because it's like a tool belt that you can always whip out at any moment when you need something, so.

• 57:18James Altucher?

  And it never stops.

• 57:18Lewis Howes?

  It never stops.

• 57:19James Altucher?

  Like, I, you always read about the 10,000 hour rule. You need to put 10,000 hours to really learn a skill. But it's not true. If you just, if you're really good at constructing these micro experiments in the things that you love doing.

• 57:32Lewis Howes?

  Challenges.

• 57:32James Altucher?

  Yeah, challenge yourself. So this was like four or five years ago when I was first learning, as an example, stand-up comedy. I went onto a subway car and did stand-up comedy there.

• 57:43Lewis Howes?

  That sucks.

• 57:44James Altucher?

  That was, that sucks huge. Nobody wanted to hear me. Nobody, everybody was like, what is this guy doing? It's not like they paid a cover charge and they were all coming to see a comedian. And then I would just start telling jokes. And that was a way to challenge myself. I knew in a way that would help me skip the line compared to people who didn't do that. So, and I was always doing many experiments to push myself in a weird way that would cost me nothing.

• 58:07Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 58:08James Altucher?

  And so that, that works.

• 58:09Lewis Howes?

  I've got two questions left for you.

• 58:13Lewis Howes?

  This question is, is there anything that, I feel like you may not have an answer for this because you expose yourself so much. Was there anything that you're really afraid of people knowing about you, who you truly are, that would make them not like you or love you anymore? If they truly knew something about you that you were afraid of?

• 58:33James Altucher?

  You know, the other day, I was thinking this question. So I would, if I had, if you had asked me three days ago, I could have answered this. But then I wrote it up because it was like.

• 58:42Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 58:43James Altucher?

  I always have a rule, I'm not gonna publish something unless I'm afraid of what people will think of me. So I've been dealing.

• 58:49Lewis Howes?

  So when you're afraid, then you publish it.

• 58:51James Altucher?

  Yeah, I, I ask myself right before I write something and I ask myself right before I hit publish, am I afraid? Is there something in here that I'm afraid what people will think of me before I hit publish, you know, after I hit publish?

• 59:03Lewis Howes?

  Why do you do that? Why do you?

• 59:05James Altucher?

  Because if, if I'm not afraid, then probably someone else has written this already. And so it's not unique. If I'm afraid and I've been so vulnerable and I've been, you know, and there's reasons in my life that I would be afraid of this, that I could, then it's probably something that's unique and has. I don't know, it's probably something that's gonna be interesting both to me and maybe the reader and it's a little more freeing for me. You know, again, the vulnerability buys freedom. And so, in 2010, I was super stressed out again about money. Or 2009, I was again going broke and stressed and whatever, and kids and losing a home, that's all the same thing.

• 59:45James Altucher?

  And to deal with my anxiety, I start, the doctor recommended this pill called Klonopin, which is kinda like a long-lasting Xanax. And it didn't work, so I took a large dose, didn't work, took a larger dose, didn't work, took a larger dose. So I was on this huge dose, and it worked. It was like a miracle drug, I have to say. I was not anxious at all after that. It was incredible. After three or four weeks, the reasons for my anxiety had died down, or maybe like a month or so, the reasons for my anxiety had died down, and I went to the doctor, and I tried to get off. I said, "Okay, I don't need this anymore." So I got off. One day passes, no problem. I'm like Superman, I'm not, I'm great. The second day, I couldn't sleep at all. And it was like, and then I was sitting in the middle of the night, just sitting up,

• 1:00:27James Altucher?

  and it's like, the whole world was like rushing past me. And then I found out, this is like, one of the most physically addictive drugs you could possibly take. And so, and I was taking this enormous dose that I had gotten after a couple of months I had gotten used to and depended on. And I go to the doctor, and he's like, "Yeah, yeah, nothing bad will happen, but you have to get off, if you get off too quickly, you could have epileptic seizures. There's all these, there's all these things that could happen." And he lists, and then I looked it up, and there's like fifty bad things that could happen.

• 1:00:59Lewis Howes?

  Heart attack, and this, yeah.

• 1:01:00James Altucher?

  Early Alzheimer's, strokes, dementia, blurriness, you know, seizures. And so, he said, "You gotta get off a quarter milligram every three to six months." And so, I'm like, it's like nine years later, I'm still in the final stages.

• 1:01:18Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 1:01:19James Altucher?

  Yeah, and...

• 1:01:20Lewis Howes?

  You're still weaning off of this drug?

• 1:01:21James Altucher?

  Yeah, still weaning off. Because there were times also where I got afraid... Bad things are happening in my life, you know, relationships or this or that. Bad things are happening. I better maybe not, maybe I should slow down the weaning off. And it wasn't doing anything for me because my tolerance was through the roof. So it actually wasn't, after those first few months in 2010, it wasn't curing my anxiety.

• 1:01:44Lewis Howes?

  Placebo or something, Eric.

• 1:01:45James Altucher?

  Yeah, it was not even, it wasn't even placebo, it was just purely physical dependence. Like if I stopped taking it, I would go insane. Yeah, because I had nothing left, I had no chemicals left in me to.

• 1:01:58Lewis Howes?

  To manage.

• 1:01:58James Altucher?

  Yeah, I had no infrastructure. The pill had taken the infrastructure away to deal with anxiety. So I had to rebuild. That's what gave me going into withdrawal. I had to rebuild that infrastructure and it's been taking, I'm like in the final stages of this. And I wrote about it and I wondered, you know, and A, I said I was scared actually of going completely off of it. Because it's been in my life for all of these years, even if it hasn't been working, who knows what it's been doing. Like maybe it has been helping me, yeah. And, and then I was, before I had published, I was, I was, I asked myself the usual question. Am I afraid of what people will think of me? And of course I was because I, I never call my books self-help, but other people do.

• 1:02:40James Altucher?

  I always just write my own stories and my own experiences, but people who had kind of looked towards some of my advice, would they question advice if they knew I had this addiction? And of course, my business advice or any advice had nothing to do with addiction, where people could think it. And I was addicted and so, so that was a scary thing. And that was three days ago I wrote that.

• 1:03:03Lewis Howes?

  Perfect, I love it. Before I ask the final question, you've got a podcast. Where can we find your podcast?

• 1:03:11James Altucher?

  The James Altucher Show and I'm gonna take your advice, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start telling stories.

• 1:03:17Lewis Howes?

  That's it, man.

• 1:03:18James Altucher?

  And.

• 1:03:19Lewis Howes?

  I think your podcast is gonna grow in a big way when you start telling these stories yourself.

• 1:03:23James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Lewis Howes?

  Personally.

• 1:03:24James Altucher?

  Well, it's something I wanna, we could talk about, I'm curious, like the podcast landscape has changed so much since 2014.

• 1:03:31Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy.

• 1:03:31James Altucher?

  And you really have to stay up with it and formats have changed and ideas have been tried. And I think, I, I've really been in that interview format, you know, in the trenches there with you since the beginning. And we've both interviewed the most amazing people in the world, but after a while, you wanna.

• 1:03:47Lewis Howes?

  What's next?

• 1:03:47James Altucher?

  Yeah, you have to think what's next. And I think for me, it's the storytelling.

• 1:03:50Lewis Howes?

  I think you'd be great at it, man.

• 1:03:51James Altucher?

  I hope so.

• 1:03:52Lewis Howes?

  You gotta do it. And always when you guys, when you. Get the clips of your stories and do those little cartoons within your interviews.

• 1:03:57James Altucher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:58Lewis Howes?

  Those are always too amazing.

• 1:03:59James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:59Lewis Howes?

  So just do the whole thing, you know?

• 1:04:00James Altucher?

  Yeah. No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. And I've only just recently started doing video. So I gotta, in that context, I think it's interesting.

• 1:04:06Lewis Howes?

  That'll help you a lot. So get the podcast, James Altucher Show. Uh, I follow this guy on Facebook. You're like the funniest writer I know.

• 1:04:14James Altucher?

  Thank you very much.

• 1:04:14Lewis Howes?

  Crazy, vulnerable stuff. Here's a question. I've asked you your definition of greatness. I've asked you these other things before, so I have a new question for you. Imagine this is the last five minutes of your life. And hypothetical question. And you get to leave a message behind to only your daughters. And you can only share three pieces of advice with your daughters. And this is all they would have of you to remember for the rest of their life. As they go on and get married, or be in relationships, or have kids or not. But they go on to live their life. And you can only share three things with them that they would have to remember their dad by. What would you share with them?

• 1:04:54James Altucher?

  Uh, I think, you know, I wouldn't tell them to do anything I wasn't already doing. So it's the same thing I said earlier. Stay physically healthy, emotionally healthy. Keep no toxic relationships, only, you know, and keep improving your good relationships. And be creative every, every day. And then you're gonna have a mostly happy life. The goal's not happiness, but you're gonna have a mostly good expansive life. Um, if you do that. So and again, it's the same advice I had to tell myself and, and train myself to live by.

• 1:05:23Lewis Howes?

  There you go. James Altucher.

• 1:05:24James Altucher?

  All right, sir. Thanks so much. It's been so long since, uh, since we last podcast. It's been like two years, three years.

• 1:05:30Lewis Howes?

  Has it been?

• 1:05:30James Altucher?

  Yeah. 2017, I think, was our last podcast.

• 1:05:32Lewis Howes?

  When I had my last book. Cause I came to the studio, right?

• 1:05:34James Altucher?

  Uh, well, and then I came to you, I came to your apartment, your old place. And then, yeah, you came to my, we were, we were always trading back and forth. So, so it was good to do it again.

• 1:05:43Lewis Howes?

  My man. Thank you.

• 1:05:47Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed this episode and are reminded about the power of failure, about the power of learning through trying, through doing, through action, through making mistakes. And that's where you gain your skills. That's where you gain your knowledge. Not by just thinking about something or reading about something. It's about applying something, taking action, and learning from the mistakes. Hopefully, you don't repeat the same mistake over and over. Hopefully, your failure, you learn from it quickly. That's the goal for all of us. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to share it with a friend. You can change a friend's life by texting them the link, lewishouse.com/922, or by just sharing the link on the Apple Podcast or Spotify Podcasts that you're listening to, or anywhere you're listening to podcasts.

• 1:06:32Lewis Howes?

  You have the power to change someone's life. All you need to do is share with them this interview or another interview that's impacted you in a powerful way from the School of Greatness. Here at the School of Greatness, we care deeply about impacting and changing lives. And sometimes, we've even saved lives with the message we've shared. And I'm just so grateful that you continue to show up and listen every single week. And we are constantly looking for ways to grow and improve this for you. So, thank you for your time. If you haven't left a review yet over on Apple, please go leave us a review. We've got over 6,000 5-star reviews. Please share your feedback on how we can improve, or what you loved about this, or how it's impacted you.

• 1:07:14Lewis Howes?

  We like to share this with our team, and I'm just so grateful for your time. I love this quote from the beginning. Nelson Mandela said, "Do not judge me by my successes. Judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again." And Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." You have the power to really do amazing things. But failure is just feedback. It's just lessons. It's just learning on what not to do anymore. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I love you so very much. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.