19 James Altucher: Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream

Think making millions will bring you happiness? Think again. After selling his company for 15 million, living like a rock star and then pissing it away as fast as one can imagine, our next guest hit rock bottom and was contemplating suicide. He's turned it all around now and his journey is as inspirational as […] 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is episode number 19 with James Altucher.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  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.

• 0:33Speaker 00

  What is up all my lovely greats out there in the world? Thank you for tuning in today. I have to apologize because I was just at a five day leadership workshop. And at one point in the last couple of days, I found myself screaming during an exercise extremely loud. And I screamed a little bit too loud for too long. My voice is just now able to speak a little bit, but as you can tell, it is very, very raspy and hurting me right now. So I'm going to make this brief. And I'm glad that I actually did this interview

• 1:14Speaker 00

  with James a couple of days ago. So before my voice went out. Luckily, a couple of things that happened in the last couple of weeks. And it's been two weeks since I've updated this podcast. And I am truly sorry. My goal is to do this every single week. And so many of you have been emailing me and messaging me and posting pictures on Instagram, asking, when is the next episode coming out, Lewis? I cannot wait. So I'm going to be back on track. I was gone for two weeks. Most of you know that I had the USA national championships for team handball a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, my team did take third place.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  It was upsetting, a little bit annoying, frustrating, all these different things because I did want to win and I wanted to be the US national champion. And I trained really hard all year for it, but I'm actually going to do another episode just on the lessons that I learned and why it was actually better for me getting third place and then first place this time around. And I have some interesting points I want to share with you. I'm going to do that soon. Again, I was, after the USA national championships, I went to Toronto and spoke at Mastermind Talks, which was this awesome high-end business mindset event where Tim Ferriss and Mark Echo and a lot of other

• 2:31Speaker 00

  big, successful business minds were there speaking as well. Had an awesome time there in Toronto. Big shout out to Mastermind Talks and then went to New York City, hosted my little mastermind group and had some other great meetings there about my next book that I'm working on, which I'm going to keep quiet for a little bit. Then came back to LA right after that, went on this five-day journey in this leadership workshop that changed my mindset on a lot of things, tons of breakthroughs. And now I am trying to get my voice back. Today, I actually I had a huge injury on my elbow in the USA national championships. I landed on my elbow.

• 3:15Speaker 00

  When I was trying to take a shot at one point, someone hit me. I fell down straight on the elbow and it started to swell up like a big like a big softball was in my elbow of fluid and it was pretty painful. And the fluid wasn't going away. It just kept getting bigger. It looked like I had a Popeye elbow. It was like I had a reverse muscle on my elbow. It was like sticking out like a little balloon. So I went to my, my doctor friend today, who I do CrossFit with and had that sucker drained. And the needle that he stuck into my elbow was literally as thick as a pen. It was a little scary and luckily he numbed it first, so I couldn't feel it. I just, I just felt a lot of pressure. But anyways,

• 3:57Speaker 00

  if you go on Instagram, you'll see a nasty picture of the fluid that I took out of my elbow earlier today. And it's kind of interesting, a little gruesome, but interesting. Now, what I want to do is talk about this episode. I'm extremely excited about this episode. And I'm blessed to have already done the interview. So I know exactly what you're going to be learning. But I want to start today with a quote that I feel fits this episode extremely well. And the quote is from a guy that I like, Tony Robbins. He says, "People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed. And the more they find a way to succeed.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self fulfilling prophecy." Now, the reason I chose this quote for this episode is because I'm about to introduce you to a very smart, interesting, funny, wise man that I met a few months back, actually at Tim Ferriss's, one of his book parties for his last book. But then we were both speakers at Mastermind Talks in Toronto. And he is a very successful trader, investor, hilarious and smart writer, and one of the best entrepreneurs out there.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  Well, a lot of people reach out to him for advice and they lean on him for his expertise. Now, here's a guy that has built and sold multiple companies, sold them for tens of 20 millions of dollars. And then he has an amazing story because he'll build a company, or he did this in the past, sell it for 15 million, then blow all 15 million in less than a year and be completely broke, having to ask for money from his parents and friends. And then he'd build a company up for another 10 or 20 million and lose it all again in a few months or so. And he did this a number of times. It's kind of amazing because he would get all this success, he would get this momentum,

• 6:05Speaker 00

  then he would go on a downward spiral and just crash every single time. And recently, in the last few years, he's changed all that. His mindset's changed, his attitude's changed, his...

• 6:18Speaker 00

  Strategy has changed and his discipline in his life has changed for the better. And it's amazing to see the transformation and see what he's able to create now. Once he did a few simple changes in his life. And he's going to share with you what these changes were. What the big mistakes people make all the time in business and life. How people can get successful then screw up and sometimes never get back again. And he's going to share a lot of interesting stories. This is an extremely funny guy. You're going to want to make sure you listen all the way through to the very end. Um, and I want to make a quick shout out to all the fans out there on the School of Greatness.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  Who have been tagging me on all their amazing, uh, pictures on Instagram. Uh, working out at the gym. I've got people from all over the world. Literally tons of countries who are tagging me where they are in front of awesome landmarks. So thank you for doing that. Keep posting your pictures on Instagram and on Twitter and tagging me in them. So I can see where you're listening to the School of Greatness. And I want to give a quick shout out to the review of the week. And it's from Cupcake J nine two nine on iTunes. Who says, I absolutely love this podcast and find myself listening to different episodes over and over. There's so much negative in the world today.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Just flip on the news that it is nice to imbibe in a hefty dose of positive as often as possible. Thanks for all the awesomeness. Thank you, Cupcake J nine two nine. And thanks everyone else who left reviews this week. With that, guys, let's let the class begin.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  What's up everyone? I am with a new recent friend of mine, James Altucher. And he told me to pronounce it like I'll touch her. Is that right?

• 8:13James Altucher?

  I'll touch her fast.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  I'll touch her fast. So James, I'll touch her.

• 8:19Lewis Howes?

  And we just met at a recent conference, Mastermind Talks recently in Toronto. And it was an awesome conference and I remember watching James talk and thinking that he was probably the funniest person I've ever met. Um, so I wanted to let him share some of his stories and experiences and he's got a new book out called Choose Yourself. And the tagline is perfect. It says, be happy, make millions, live the dream. And it's pretty much what everyone wants, I would say in life is to be happy, make millions and live their dream. But you made millions, you were living the dream, but I wouldn't say you were happy based on some of the experiences you told me about. And I just want to read the first paragraph in your book out loud so that people can, we can lay the context for everyone.

• 9:02Lewis Howes?

  And then I want to dive into some of these stories about what actually happened, if that's cool with you. And first paragraph, you say, I was going to die. The market had crashed, the internet had crashed, nobody would return my calls. I had no friends. Either I would have a heart attack and I'd simply kill myself. I had a $4 million life insurance policy. I wanted my kids to have a good life. I figured the only way that could happen was if I killed myself. My expenses were out of control. I'd made some money and amped up my lifestyle to drunken rock star status. Then I promptly lost it. My bank account bumping along zero during the worst economy in maybe 20 years. I'm talking about 2002, but I could also have been talking about 2008, the year I

• 9:46Lewis Howes?

  lost my home, my family, my friends, money, jobs. Now, this is a, for me, when I read this first paragraph, I was like, this is going to be an awesome book, some great stories. So tell me first, how did you get into business? And you, you, you'd built a couple of companies, lost it all, but how did you first get into business?

• 10:09James Altucher?

  Sure, you know, I don't even think I've ever actually told the story of how I got into business. I really did not want to be a businessman. So I was, all I wanted to do was either make a TV show or write a novel. And at the time, my brother-in-law was running a business making CD-ROMs, which in the mid-'90s essentially was like raising your hand and saying, "I wanna go bankrupt pretty quickly." So, I was at HBO at the time, and I was in charge of making all of HBO's websites. So, I essentially outsourced everything to him, to my own brother-in-law. It was a great strategy. And then I left HBO to join his

• 10:53James Altucher?

  company because he needed the help, and I essentially became the CEO and the founder of the company, because all of our revenues I was, I was driving. And I had a software background, so I was doing all the programming. I showed him the internet. Nobody, nobody knew how to program on the internet at that time. So, I was one of the five people, say, in New York City who could actually do sophisticated programming on the internet. And so I figured, "Okay, I'm just gonna do this for a little while and then get back to figuring out how to publish a novel." But, we got more and more clients. We basically, uh, got, we were making websites for the Wu-Tang Clan, Puff Daddy, Death Row Records, uh, Miramax, Warner

• 11:35James Altucher?

  Brothers, HBO, Time Warner, New Line Cinema, Disney. We're making, we were, we were the, the entertainment company website developer. And so that was our sector. And then, I'm always in favor of selling a business as quickly as possible because I find the processes of running a business to be very unpleasant. But we had about 40 or 50 employees built up, so there was a lot of management involved. I sold the business, and, uh, you know, I, I basically... Hit my goal. Uh, and what I soon realized, when you live the dream, it's actually, you live the dream for like two seconds. And it's very easy to have it turn into a nightmare. It's a very, very fast slope. It's not even a slippery slope. It's like an elevator.

• 12:20James Altucher?

  And suddenly you, you're, you're living the nightmare. And I couldn't get it right. I kept starting up, making money. I, I seemed to be very good at, uh, going on, you know, making the money when I was focused. And then as soon as I made it, I thought I was finished, quote unquote, and that there was, I was done. There was nothing more to achieve and then I was a finished human being. And that of course is the quickest way to fail as a human being. That's not what is intended for us as a human being. And so I would always then essentially, uh, fail miserably. Like it would be unbelievable and striking to the people around me, how quickly I would fail. It was like I was an expert at it.

• 13:02James Altucher?

  And I had to keep figuring it out, how to make it back again until, you know, more recently, after going through this once, twice, three times, you know, now it sticks. And I've, you know, I, I have a, a more holistic view of, of what I've done poorly and what I've done well. And I have to stick to the discipline or I'll fail again if I don't stick to the discipline.

• 13:26Lewis Howes?

  Now, what you did the first time, I, I think in the story you told me, you sold your first company for like 15 million. Is that right?

• 13:32James Altucher?

  Yes.

• 13:33Lewis Howes?

  And then you said that you lost it in about 15 weeks. You were spending about a million dollars a week. Is that right?

• 13:40James Altucher?

  I was, I was so insane. It was, it was crazy. Like it was, I was basically losing, and this was cash. It wasn't like, you know, BS, internet, stock, paper. It was basically a million dollars cash a week I was losing. And when I, when people say, oh, I lost a lot of money, you, they always seem to end up with 10 million at the end or whatever. And you don't feel tired of it. I was like, I hit zero. There was one weekend, I called my parents and I said, I don't have enough money to buy diapers for my children for, for, for the weekend. Can I drive down like 200 miles to your house, pick up a few hundred dollars and return it to you? I'm supposed to, I'm, I'm being foreclosed on.

• 14:24James Altucher?

  I'm going to supposed to get some money out of my house over the weekend and then I'll drive down and, and pay you back. Uh, and they said, no. Uh, and so I hung up on them because I needed to find another way to get the hundred dollars. I did not speak to them again. They tried, you know, uh, calling over the next six months and then unfortunately, six months later, my father had a stroke and died and I had never spoke to him again after that moment. So,

• 14:49Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 14:50James Altucher?

  You know, all, all of these things, money is so tied up to emotions and stress and anxiety and whether we, how we feel about ourselves in life and how we feel about others. It's really important to kind of learn the internal lessons of health first. So that when things are going well, you know how to appreciate it and be grateful for it and survive and succeed.

• 15:13Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Now, what was the main motivation for you wanting to make a lot of money in the first place?

• 15:19James Altucher?

  Well, initially I didn't. I mean, I really thought I was gonna be a writer or, you know, somebody who was gonna be artistic in some way. And I didn't expect that money was in the cards for me, but then suddenly, you know, I was a businessman. I was closing on clients. I was dealing, I was managing a lot of people. Ultimately, after I sold my company, I was managing up to a thousand people with the company that I sold it to. And, uh, and I was trying to make more. Suddenly I became crazy. I thought, you know, oh my gosh, uh, I, I actually thought to myself that fifteen million was not enough, that I actually needed, I thought I needed fifteen million to be happy, but I actually then suddenly thought I needed a hundred million to be happy.

• 16:04James Altucher?

  And what I, what I wanted to do with a hundred million is I wanted, my main goal was I wanted to, to make a Super Bowl ad with just me walking around in the street doing nothing.

• 16:16James Altucher?

  That was my only goal. And I thought then I would be happy.

• 16:19Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 16:20James Altucher?

  So stupid. So then I would try to make a hundred million by investing outrageous amounts of money in startups and stocks and other things. And just had no sense of the value of money. I had no sense of what made a good business versus a bad business other than the business I had been in where I was, you know, I was riding the internet boom. So I thought at the time I was just very lucky.

• 16:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:42James Altucher?

  And, you know, uh, and then when it was all lost. I thought that was it. I had one lottery ticket and I blew it. So the only way my kids now are going to be happy because now I completely defined money with happiness, which is ridiculous. I thought the only way my kids would be happy is if I killed myself and they cash in on the life insurance policy. That's how just disturbed I was.

• 17:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Now, did you have support to like help you get back on your feet or, you know, your wife or family or anyone, friends were like, all right, what are you doing? Let's get together. Let's, you know, help you out or what happened? What switched it around?

• 17:15James Altucher?

  No, I had no support and I had lost all my friends. So I basically had nothing. The only thing really keeping me going was I had to make sure my kids would have food to eat. And so I really, and you know, at the end of the day, I really didn't want to kill myself. So, and I really did want them to eat food. So, and not starve to death. So I had to figure out how to keep going. And so it was important to take a step back and say, well, what did I do wrong? And what I did wrong was I let my physical health go to crap. I let my emotional health go to crap, you know, as evidenced by, you know, my relationships with my friends, by evidence by my relationships with my, my parents and so on.

• 17:59James Altucher?

  I wasn't surrounding myself with the people who loved me. Uh, I let my mental health, uh, go down the tubes. I wasn't, I had stopped coming up with ideas. I figured, okay, I made the money. I don't need to come up, I don't need to be smart anymore. I need, I'm done. And I let my spiritual health go down the tubes, meaning I, I forgot to be grateful for what I had. I forgot to be, to count myself blessed for, for having helped people and having succeeded and, and having created a lot of jobs and wealth for others. Uh, I, I forgot to be grateful for this and instead I, I became desperate and I felt that I had scarcity instead of abundance. And all of these things caused me ultimately

• 18:42James Altucher?

  to, to lose this money. So I had to take a step back and on all four of those levels, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual, I had to every day focus not on what my goals were for tomorrow or regrets of the past. I had to focus on exactly, uh, you know, what do I need to do today to improve my health in all four of those levels?

• 19:06Lewis Howes?

  And what did you start doing?

• 19:08James Altucher?

  Well, I started sleeping eight to 10 hours a day. That's extremely important.

• 19:13Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to two or four?

• 19:15James Altucher?

  Two hours a day.

• 19:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:18James Altucher?

  And I was so stressed and anxious, I couldn't sleep. I had insomnia. So I had to tell my, if I woke up at three in the morning all stressed, I had to tell myself, listen, I'm gonna make an appointment with myself for 3pm, not 3am. Like 3am is, I never have meetings at 3am. But suddenly I was so anxious, I was having a meeting with myself to discuss all my anxieties. So I said to myself, you know what, I'm gonna meet, James, I'm gonna meet you again at 3pm and we'll discuss these worries. I'm gonna go back to sleep now.

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  I like that.

• 19:47James Altucher?

  And the other thing, very important, I had to eliminate screen time after like 6pm, 7pm. In order to, in order to be asleep by, let's say, 8 or 8:30.

• 19:58Lewis Howes?

  So no computers, no TV, no phones? Was that what you mean?

• 20:01James Altucher?

  Nothing. And no, and even no, no news, nothing like that. No emails. And I had to just, you know, read books or spend time with my family. And then I would go to sleep very early and I would wake up very early and start working. And the way I would start working is, I would take a waiter's pad, because it's easy to write down lists of ideas and waiter's pads, you can buy them bulk and very cheap. I would go out to a cafe, so I would quote unquote, "go to work", and I would start taking down ideas and writing down just idea after idea of businesses I could start or things I can write or any ideas, ideas for other people's businesses. Because then I would share those ideas with the people and then they would say, hey, how about I pay you to do this idea?

• 20:44James Altucher?

  So I would build up connections and started from scratch, I would build a network by coming up with ideas for other people, which I would, I would give freely. People would steal ideas from me, no problem. I became abundant with ideas. So if anyone wanted to steal ideas from me, I was happy to let them steal from me.

• 21:00Lewis Howes?

  Because there's only so much you can execute.

• 21:02James Altucher?

  Right, and so you build your network when you help other people and they never forget it. So 11 years later now, I can call the people I helped in 2002 and said, hey, that was great how you did that idea. Now, um, let's meet up for coffee and see what we can do for each other now. And it always works. You build your network that way.

• 21:22Lewis Howes?

  Right. Now, now, let's talk about sleep really quick because there was another guy at this conference that uh was an attendee. His name is, I think his name was Amir. And it's, this guy was like the most physically fit human being I've ever seen in my life. He's like a Canadian kettlebell champion. And I said, what's the secret to being like fully present in your body, living a clean, healthy lifestyle? The first thing he said was sleep. He said he turns off everything, um, you know, around seven or eight o'clock. He goes to bed around 10 or 10:30 every night and naturally wakes up around 5:30 every day with no alarm clock. And he said, sleep is the most important thing to having the most optimal body performance, which is going to help you with your mental performance and uh anything in business and your career as well.

• 22:07Lewis Howes?

  Now, do you feel like that sleep for you was what kind of shifted things?

• 22:10James Altucher?

  Absolutely. And look, I am not the physical specimen that Amir is, but you know, there's so much evidence that sleep, uh, you know, a good sleep schedule, like eight to 10 hours will, could replace any antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication. Uh, it, it helps with uh your digestion and metabolism. So you stay fit more naturally. Uh, it helps me with my concentration. It also allows me to get a lot of more work done uh before, let's say, the business phone call start up around nine or 10 a.m. Uh, in so many ways, sleep is great. And it just, it just reduces stress and anxiety and make, and also every time I get back into this schedule and I've been

• 22:53James Altucher?

  this way now for, let's call it three and a half years, I haven't gotten sick at all in the past three and a half years. So I, and normally I get sick a lot. So when, when things are on the downturn, I'm getting sick all the time. But I've stuck to this sleep schedule for three and a half years. I don't get sick. And that also includes eating well. Exercise, but sleep is number one.

• 23:16Lewis Howes?

  Wow, impressive. Now, let's talk about money really quick. Your story about, you know, money is probably similar to eighty percent of Americans at least is that if I make a lot of money, then I'll finally be happy, I'll be successful, I'll be fulfilled, my life is complete or whatever. But that's obviously not the case because every time you made money for a while, you blew it all, millions and millions in, you know, no time. And you weren't happy, you were extremely depressed. So what does it mean to really be happy then? And what are people missing out on?

• 23:46James Altucher?

  You know, you know, there's one, I'm gonna take an extreme, which is to say, let's say you have no expectations at all. Then every single day, you're going to exceed all your expectations. And it's pretty good when all the time you look around and you say to yourself, you know, in every possible way, I'm exceeding all my expectations. Forgetting for a second that you had no expectations, that your expectations were so low, they were zero. It's, it's a good feeling to exceed your expectations. Now, that doesn't mean, okay, I'm gonna, um, live in a shed or, you know, everything's gonna go to crap and I'm gonna be happy about it because that's really hard for, for people to do.

• 24:30James Altucher?

  We're culturally, we, we want certain things in our lives and, you know, we wanna be with, you know, the type of people we like and so on. So it's hard to totally make expectations go to zero, nor should you. But the, the, always check yourself though. Are the expectations you're setting for yourself, not goals, but actually prison bars? So if I say to myself, I'm not gonna be happy unless I'm going out with, you know, a supermodel and I have a million dollars in the bank or ten million dollars in the bank or whatever. You're not actually, that's not actually a positive thing to set goals like that. That's actually prison bars. And you don't wanna- My goal in life is to never go to jail. So that includes real physical jail.

• 25:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 25:16James Altucher?

  It also includes kind of the mental and emotional and even financial jails that we often put ourselves in.

• 25:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 25:23James Altucher?

  And again, it's what what happens though is that you have this idea and I am I am not even exaggerating at all. Once you really stick to this concept, you'll make millions of dollars. So there's just no way you can avoid making money. Money gets it you become like this magnet, like this super magnet and money flows from unknown sources straight into you.

• 25:48Lewis Howes?

  Now, when is it? When does this happen?

• 25:51James Altucher?

  When when basically you give up the goal of I'm gonna make ten million dollars.

• 25:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 25:58James Altucher?

  I'm gonna have a successful business with a thousand employees. When you give up all those goals that that seem important, they actually turn out to be superficial things that keep you jailed. If you just focus on on the four aspects of health and also this feeling always that you're already abundant. Like, there's there's no way in which you or I or any of the listeners were already extremely abundant people. That's why we're able to listen to these podcasts and do these podcasts. We're already very fortunate and very abundant people. And accepting that abundance and embracing it all the time when scarcity is trying to make you feel afraid and anxious.

• 26:43James Altucher?

  That's when money gets attracted to you. And it's it's unbelievable how it happens. There's no way to predict the ways in which it's going to happen.

• 26:52Lewis Howes?

  Right. Now, let's say, you know, I'm very goal oriented, I would say. I like to set goals, sometimes financial, sometimes physical, whatever may be, emotional goals, relationship goals, things like that. And let's say you are a company and you've got your company's goal is to make a hundred million dollars. You've got a thousand employees, you're trying to get a hundred million or five hundred million, whatever it is. Should you not be setting those financial goals? Should you instead be setting, I'm gonna create a culture of positive energy where my employees are happy, we're more connected, we're more inspired, we're, you know, understanding and all these different types of things? Or should you completely, you know, wipe out that financial goal?

• 27:31James Altucher?

  Yes, I would completely wipe out the financial goal. And let's look at two really great companies. So Google, for their first, I think it was six years, made no revenues. They actually had even no clue on how to make revenues. They had no idea what they were going to do for revenues. But Larry Page and Sergey Brin, every day, sat down and said, "How can we make the most incredible search engine that would actually change the world? Let's catalog all the information in the world and make it more useful to people than anything else created ever before." And then, by accident almost, they came upon a company that turned into AdSense and they made, you know, tens of billions in revenues.

• 28:15James Altucher?

  It's kind of funny, the company was called Applied Semantics. I had an opportunity, two little stories. I had an opportunity to invest in them well before Google bought them.

• 28:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 28:25James Altucher?

  And I said, "No, this is stupid, like, search engines are dead." Like, I had an opportunity to buy 50% of the company for almost, for basically like a million dollars, which was super cheap.

• 28:36Lewis Howes?

  How much would you have gotten from that? How much would you have made?

• 28:40James Altucher?

  Me personally, because I would have done it through a VC fund, I probably would have made like $200 million.

• 28:45Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 28:47James Altucher?

  But another quick story. This morning, the guy who was at Applied Semantics, he wrote me and said, "Hey, according to 23andme.com," which is this kind of genetic testing thing started by, I believe, Sergey Brin's wife. He said, "According to 23andme.com, we're third cousins." So, anyway, maybe if I ever go broke again, I can always call my third cousin and ask him for my...

• 29:12Lewis Howes?

  He probably won't give you diapers either, though.

• 29:14James Altucher?

  No, no, he'll probably turn me down. Third cousins are further away than parents.

• 29:21Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy. Wow, what a story.

• 29:23James Altucher?

  So, oh, so another company, though.

• 29:26Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 29:26James Altucher?

  Apple. You know, Steve Jobs was very committed to making the best, most beautiful, most useful products of all. And I bet you and me and many of the listeners, the first time you use an iPod, there was just a smile on my face. The entire day, like all of my favorite music since childhood, for the first time I could just listen to straight through. And like Steve Jobs did that and money was just gonna be automatic. He never even had to think about the money. And I'll tell you, in, in, in, from two thousand two to two thousand seven, the only time I didn't look at my bank account five times a day and get scared to death, was when I was making a company that was actually helping people and delivering value.

• 30:08James Altucher?

  Then I knew that I had value and money coming to me. That abundance was coming to me no matter what. Even though I was once again skirting the edges of total poverty and being broke, I didn't once look at my bank account while I was building a successful company, because I knew it was coming.

• 30:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow. You know, it's interesting. You say this. My, uh, after I got injured playing football and I was recovering on my sister's couch and trying to figure out what I was gonna do next and I was for fifteen months, basically trying to make a dollar so I could live on my own. I was trying to figure out how to make money. And I was working with a famous inventor named Chris Hawker, who was a mentor of mine, who's got a number of different products in market and genius. And I remember after about six months of working with him and just like hustling to help him grow his business, I was like, gosh, I could really use some money right now. Like it's been fifteen months, I'm still on my sister's couch. I just don't feel like a man. And all I was doing was focusing on was making money. And he said something to me that I was like, that I'll never forget. He said, money will come to you when you're ready for it.

• 31:09Lewis Howes?

  And when you add enough value to other people's lives. And I was like, but I could really feel like I'm ready to make this money right now. You know, I could really use it. And he was like, it's gonna come to you when you're adding enough value. And not focusing on it as much. So it's interesting that you say that as well.

• 31:25James Altucher?

  And then what happened?

• 31:26Lewis Howes?

  And then it started flooding in like it started coming in like crazy. I mean, it was literally like within six months, I started to make a little bit and then a little more and it just started flooding because I started, I started hosting these live networking events all around the country, these like business meetups. And I was producing these events, getting all these people from LinkedIn to come in person to meet up who were connected online, but On offline and I said, you know what I'm seeing all this value and connecting with people face to face. If I can bring that to people that have businesses together in the same city. Uh, they're going to get a lot more business and get to know each other better as opposed to just being connected on LinkedIn. And I was getting around three hundred to five hundred people to show up to twenty different events I hosted in one year.

• 32:09Lewis Howes?

  And uh, by just adding value, I started to make money from doing that. And uh, then I just learned how to make more and more money and it just started to come in.

• 32:19James Altucher?

  Yeah, and that's, that's how it happens is basically, uh, you know, LinkedIn is a great example where you were almost in a, in a personal way, emulating the company itself. So you were, you know, LinkedIn is all about connecting people and connecting people who want to be successful. So what you were doing was personally even making tighter connections between people. Well, link, okay, it makes sense then. LinkedIn's worth two or three billion dollars, whatever it's worth, I don't know. But you were by being a mini LinkedIn, a personal LinkedIn, you were automatically going to be worth a sliver of what LinkedIn was worth.

• 32:55Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:56James Altucher?

  Which is a lot of money, a sliver of two billion dollars is going to be a lot of money.

• 32:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:00James Altucher?

  And it's natural then that the money's going to come in. If you pick any company that's successful, if you emulate them on a personal level, you're going to start to be successful.

• 33:08Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, interesting. So you're telling us.

• 33:11James Altucher?

  I, I always try to emulate Google and it works.

• 33:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, interesting. So don't focus on the money or the financial goals at all. Focus on adding value and building something amazing for people.

• 33:24James Altucher?

  If you, if you had to do only two things, it's to start off because everybody's got to start off in small steps. Like, let's say you have a cubicle job and you're not used to this style of thinking, but you would like to. If you had to focus on two things, it's sleeping well and always counting and always viewing everything in your life as abundant. So if you're, if you're stuck in a traffic jam, oh, look at how, look at the abundance of cars. If you're in a rainstorm, look at the abundance of water, like always find the abundance that the world is just naturally vomiting up every second in front of you. And, and then you'll start to tie into the abundance that,

• 34:05James Altucher?

  you know, is important for feeding your family and for providing for you and for luxury and whatever else you want.

• 34:12Lewis Howes?

  Now let me play a little devil advocate just to, because I know people are gonna talk like this when they listen to this. What if I've got a company and I've got 10 employees and they've all got to, you know, I've got to pay the payroll every single month. We're not bringing in profits. We're not getting sales. I'm stressed out. I'm taking out loans. Company's about to go bankrupt. If I don't make some money, I gotta focus on the money or else I've gotta fire everyone. Their lives are dependent on the company. What do I do now?

• 34:39James Altucher?

  Sure. And so, and I've been through that, like whether you have 10, 50, a thousand employees, you, you always stay up at night wondering like, look, how am I gonna make payroll? Not this week, but six months from now. My brain would, would race all night long. And the way to do it is not to say, okay, well, I'm gonna have to mortgage my house then. The way to do it is to say, well, you know, I did that small little website for Con Edison. So now I'm gonna, I'm gonna come up with 10 ideas for bigger websites to pitch them. And I'm gonna go tomorrow, call them up and pitch them. And then I'm gonna call 10 of my other customers. And then I'm gonna call my friends and who are the, you know, C-level executives at other companies

• 35:23James Altucher?

  and start pitching them on ideas. But I'll, I'll do the easy work for them. I'll come up with all, I mean, I'll do the hard work for them. I'll come up with all the ideas and then it's up to them to hire me or not. But once they hire me, I, I'll make profits. So delivering value always comes first. Now, if you're a service business, you're much more connected to delivering value and then getting paid. As opposed to like, let's say a dot com company. But most of us are in service businesses. Where you, you deliver value, like you, you organize a, a conference or a meetup and, and you get paid immediately. So you just, you just have to work hard and, and make sure you're delivering value. The value comes first. And the way you come up with value is not by thinking how much money you get from these people, but really thinking.

• 36:08James Altucher?

  And really having a strong idea muscle, how can I make these people make more money? And the way you, you know, the idea muscle, eh, just, just like your leg muscles. If you don't walk for two weeks, if you're stuck in a hospital bed for two weeks, you need physical therapy to walk again because it's, it's that fast that your muscles atrophy. It's the same thing with the idea muscle. You have to come up with ideas every single day. Ten ideas a day till your brain is sweating till it hurts. And then you know, just like with physical training and, and you know this, Lewis, from your own experiences, when you have done all the training, you can say to yourself at the event, I've done the preparation. I'm here, I've showed up and I've done the preparation. I've done nothing wrong. It's the same thing with the idea muscle.

• 36:52James Altucher?

  I've done the preparation, I'm here, I'm showing up, now I can deliver value. And then everything else takes care of itself.

• 36:59Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. That's crazy. I love it. Now, let's talk about, um, okay, so we said, don't focus on the money. And again, I think about the expectation thing. I want to make that whole, I want to make that clear about the expectations thing.

• 37:13Lewis Howes?

  Is it not to have high expectations? Or what is that specifically?

• 37:19James Altucher?

  It's basically to even ignore the word expectations. So it's basically to take that step back and just say, right now, today, what am I doing physically to improve? Emotionally to surround myself with people I respect and like and love and who support me? What am I doing mentally to improve my idea muscle? So am I reading and, and am I writing ideas? And what am I doing spiritually? Which is a hard word, spiritually, but what I really mean is being grateful and counting the things that are abundant in life. Now, this sounds kind of corny and a little self-helpish. So, so, but you could, but it's both practical stuff. So part of your ideas could be, who am I gonna introduce to today?

• 38:01James Altucher?

  So if you could introduce five people, uh, a day to each other or ten people a day to each other, then you're going to create value for them and ultimately they're going to pay you money sooner or later. And if you just keep doing that every day, by the end of the year, you've introduced, you know, thirty-six-hundred people to each other. So these people become your tribe. They're, they're, it's to their incentive. Because you're adding value to them, it's to their incentive to, to make you successful. And so being healthy in these ways translates down to very practical ways like that. I, I could give many, many examples. Every week even in my life right now, just totally random examples.

• 38:41Lewis Howes?

  Now, now you didn't learn this stuff at an early age though, because you were messing up and blowing your money and doing whatever, living like a rock star for many years into your late 30s, is that correct, or early 30s?

• 38:55James Altucher?

  Yeah, until, I would say until like, three years ago.

• 38:59Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so you're early 40s.

• 39:01James Altucher?

  Really too old, really too old to be learning this, I wasn't very good at it.

• 39:05Lewis Howes?

  Now, what shifted and how did you learn all these different? I mean, because obviously your attitude changed, you're more grateful, which I'm a big, a big believer in being grateful every single day and talking about gratitude and expressing gratitude for the things you do have as opposed to being ungrateful for the things you don't have all the time. Now, what shifted? Who taught you this? How'd you learn this? Where'd you read it from? What, what happened? Till you started learning all these things and changing your life?

• 39:32James Altucher?

  Well, you know, because I lost and then made and then lost and then made and then lost, I was able to kind of, not quite statistically now analyze, because there wasn't enough evidence yet, but I was able to see, well, what did I do on the way up? And what did I do on the way down? And so, I just started consistently doing what I always knew was the right thing to do on the way up. And the one difference I made, the one change I made, and knock on wood, I hope I keep making that difference, is I never finished. So I would always keep, do the right thing, and then I would say, great, I did it, I'm finished.

• 40:14James Altucher?

  I don't have to do that anymore. I don't have to come up with 10 ideas a day anymore. I don't have to sleep well anymore. Uh, I don't have to be around people who love me anymore.

• 40:22Lewis Howes?

  I can eat whatever I want all night long.

• 40:24James Altucher?

  Really irrational when you think about it. Yeah, exactly. So you, so you kind of let yourself go, so to speak. And, um, and, and I would keep doing that. And now I don't, like now, no matter how successful I get, no matter what's going on in my life, I, I stick to a discipline, which, on the one hand, you might think it's boring, but on the other hand, it's actually created so much exciting opportunities and different adventures every day, that every day is really just a miracle for me, and I'm, I'm happy about it.

• 40:53Lewis Howes?

  And discipline actually creates a lot of freedom and flexibility when you have discipline, right?

• 40:59James Altucher?

  Sure, because instead of, um, I don't know, I don't even know what's on TV at night anymore. Instead of staying up late and watching Desperate Housewives, I'm sleeping. And then I'm up at four thirty in the morning, or five in the morning, I'm reading a great book. I'm, I'm writing, I'm being artistic, I'm coming up with ideas. And I take a walk, I live right on the river, so I take a walk to the river. Uh, I play tennis, uh, do yoga, and, you know, it's, it's, I'm totally free. I, I, instead of being bound up by reading the latest gossip in a newspaper, or keeping up with the Kardashians, or Snoopy, or whatever, whatever it is people do. I, I haven't opened up a newspaper in, in two years. I write for newspapers, but I don't read them.

• 41:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I, I hate the news. Now, this is interesting. How, how does it make you feel now, compared to five, ten, twenty years ago? What's, what's the difference every day? How does it feel now?

• 41:57James Altucher?

  Uh, it's good now because I'm not, I'm not anxious. I'm not anxious about, uh, you know, having more money than the other person, or proving myself to somebody. You know, you never wanna have, feel like you have to prove yourself to somebody. Uh, I'm not anxious about, uh, my health. I actually feel healthier than I did when I was twenty years old. Um, and I, I can measure that directly, like, how long can I? My stamina and endurance was never good. So, how long can I stay on a basketball court, uh, playing with my friends? It's longer now than when I was twenty years old.

• 42:34Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 42:35James Altucher?

  Uh, same thing for tennis and other, others, or yoga, or other sports. Uh, you know, I see huge differences. I, I'm not, you know, the idea muscle's very important, not just for business ideas, but it, let's say your car gets stuck on the highway, you know, your, a tire goes out. Suddenly, I have a hundred ideas about what to do, and how to get home, or whatever. Whereas twenty years ago, I might have been upset, I might have said, you know, crap, this always happens to me, I'm so unlucky. Now, I'm thankful, I have, I'm literally an idea machine, and I can get myself out of any bad situation very quickly.

• 43:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 43:12James Altucher?

  So, you know, it's, it's, it's hard, it's harder to throw me off. Now, I'm sure lots of things can throw me off and make me upset, but it's just harder to do, because I also don't resent bad luck. You know, bad luck is... You know, there's no such thing as bad luck. It's only, it's just luck.

• 43:29Lewis Howes?

  Right. Interesting. Now, what's been the most influential book you've read?

• 43:36James Altucher?

  I, I would say, I mean, every day I probably go through four or five different books. Not to say that I read four or five books, but I'm probably always uh skimming through or dabbling through four or five different books a day. So over the course of a year, though, I will, will read hundreds and hundreds of books. And uh, so there's no one book. Uh, I mean, really, almost every book I read, I, I get some value out of. And, and there's a lot of books I don't like that I won't read, but uh, but the books I do finish, all of them are incredibly valuable.

• 44:09Lewis Howes?

  Can you give a couple, maybe?

• 44:10James Altucher?

  Yeah, a couple readings this once. There's Abundance by Peter DeMandis. Or I don't know how to say his, his last name. I think that's an incredible book and it's, it's sort of related to The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. And they talk about all the innovations that have happened over the years and centuries and really, really smart. Those are the sort of books where your IQ uh goes up just by reading them. Uh, another book I'm reading recently is called The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michaels, which uh be very valuable. They're, they're psychologists, but they kind of have a spiritual take on psychology and it's very interesting. Um, on, I really

• 44:49James Altucher?

  like to read strong uh autobiographical fiction. Uh, so there's uh, you know, authors like Dennis Johnson or Raymond Carver. I really enjoy books by them. Uh, so those are a few examples. I recently read Coolidge by Emily Schleys. I thought that was a very good historical biography.

• 45:06Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Interesting. All right. What about uh, so tell me about the living the dream part. How does someone, what's it mean to live the dream?

• 45:14James Altucher?

  I think living the dream is doing, doing what I do. Being healthy in these four categories. Again, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. There's, there's nothing better you can do. If, if you're happy in those four levels, it doesn't matter where you are in life, you're going to be happy. That's living the dream. And so, and again, I don't, I, I don't, it sounds almost corny, so I don't want to say it in this self-help way, so I'll, I'll make it very practical. Because what happens is you, money just pours in, but not just money, but. Opportunities and adventures pour in.

• 45:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:48James Altucher?

  Uh, you know, we, we met at this conference last week. What an incredible adventure that conference will let us.

• 45:54Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 45:54James Altucher?

  And things like that happen all the time. I mean, every day is such an incredible adventure now that I have stuck with this idea of being healthy in these four areas. Uh, and I'm, I can't even stress it enough. Every day is an adventure right now.

• 46:12Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 46:13James Altucher?

  And that's not because I think, oh, looking at, looking at a beautiful flower is an adventure. Like, that's fine, but I mean, actual adventures. Like, every day, things happen that blow my mind.

• 46:24Lewis Howes?

  Right. You're meeting new people, you're experiencing new things, opportunities are coming your way. That type of thing, right?

• 46:31James Altucher?

  Yes.

• 46:32Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 46:33James Altucher?

  Ev- everything, meaning, eh, you know, again, reading new things, meeting new people, seeing things happen in front of me that I never would have expected. Now, because of my books and because of my blog, also the email and the thank yous I get and so on. Well, stories is incredible, you know, to hear what they've gone through and I'm sure you experienced this as well. It's just so gratifying to, to, to help people instead of always be hurting.

• 47:01Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. You know, it's, what's, what's interesting is when I started learning about you and when we met and heard your story, I realized that we probably look completely opposite physically. But we, we have a lot in common, actually. And, well, you know, we exchanged a bunch of emails and talked about how we both tip in two dollar bills and all these different things. I've never met anyone else, never met anyone else ever who did that, except for my dad who taught me that. And a lot of other stuff we've dealt with in the past about acceptance and, uh, you know, issues with women and all sorts of different things we talked about. So it's very interesting. So I'd love to hear and see if we have a similar, uh, idea on, on this next question. And this question is, what's your definition of greatness then?

• 47:46James Altucher?

  My definition of greatness is, again, what I'm doing now, which is, not that I'm great, but being able to just consistently stay healthy, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. All we have in our lives is today. Like, the past is gone, it's dead. The future is not here yet, and there's literally no way to predict the future. You know that the sun's gonna come up tomorrow, and that's about all you know about the future. So, all we really have to work with is today. So, being great today is greatness. Like, I love today, and that's the only thing I can, I can work with.

• 48:31Lewis Howes?

  You're the man. I appreciate it, James. What's, uh, you got this book coming out right now? Tell me a little bit about the book, and where people can connect with you online.

• 48:39James Altucher?

  Sure. So, so jamesaltucher.com is where I blog, and @jaltucher is where I tweet. And the book is called Choose Yourself, and it's basically about how, this idea of how I chose myself for success. And I describe my stories very specifically and in detail, excruciating detail, about how I lost all this money, how I made money, what techniques I used. And then I tell the stories of other people who went through similar things. But I also talk about, on a macro level, how economically the world's changed. And the middle class is being systematically fired from their jobs. So, nobody was ever meant

• 49:22James Altucher?

  to be in a cubicle job. And so, that existed for about a century, and now it's going away. And it's, it's already started happening. I'm on the board of directors of a billion revenue company that's in the staffing space. So, I'm seeing it from the front lines, how people are getting fired and outsourced and so on. So, my book is about saying, don't let a company choose you, don't let the man choose you, don't let Harvard choose you, don't let a publishing company choose you, or a talent agency, or whatever. You have to choose yourself now. You have to be an entrepreneur slash artist for yourself. You could do it while being an employee, but you have to do it. And I give the techniques for how to do it. The other thing is, I feel so strongly about this message.

• 50:06James Altucher?

  I don't care if I make a dime on this book. All I care about is if people read the book. So I'm not giving it away for free because people don't value things that they get for free. But if someone could prove to me that they bought the book and that they read the book, I will pay them back for the book.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 50:22James Altucher?

  Which, by the way, I lose money on because, you know, Amazon makes, gets a chunk or, you know, that however it's distributed, they get a chunk, but I will pay people back the full price of the book. Uh, if they could prove to me that they've read it, I will pay them back.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  Wow, that's pretty impressive.

• 50:39James Altucher?

  I really think now is the time people need help and I see it just in the emails I get and the kind of things that I'm seeing from the different businesses I'm involved in. People need help right now and I want to help and I think, I feel strongly this book does it.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  It's great. I love it. JamesAltucher.com. Thanks, my man. I appreciate you.

• 51:01James Altucher?

  Yeah, thank you, Lois. Thanks.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  And there you have it, guys. Another inspiring guest on The School of Greatness. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I enjoyed hearing James's story. Now make sure to go and check out jamesaltucher.com and get his book. He's got that promise where he's gonna pay you back the cost of the book if you don't get the value from it, the way he talked about. So again, it's really a win-win for you. Go check out the book. Choose yourself. It's awesome. I've dug into it. It's an amazing read. You're gonna get a lot of value out of it and James is a hilarious, easy-to-read writer. So make sure to check that out. Tag him on Twitter and Facebook as well.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Let him know you got the book and, uh, share this with your friends as well if you enjoyed the episode. You can go to schoolofgreatness.com. Check out our new web design. Let me know what you think about it there. We've got a brand new site that's looking beautiful in my mind. Put a lot of time and energy into that, so I hope you guys enjoy it. Again, schoolofgreatness.com. Share this with your friends on Twitter and Facebook. Tag it where you're listening, on Instagram. And until next time, guys, make sure to do something great.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  You