425 James Altucher: Reinvent Yourself and Create the Future

"No one will ever give you permission to create the future." - James Altucher If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/425 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 425 with James Altucher.

• 0:07Lewis 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.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to another special edition of the School of Greatness podcast. I'm excited because we've got James Altucher back on the show. He's been on a number of times. We'll have those linked up in the show notes at lewishowes.com/425 to go listen to those ones. But this is the first time he's actually been on video too. So we've got the full video interview on our YouTube page as well. If you want to see the experience of James Altucher over video. For those that don't know who he is, James Altucher is an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and got one of the biggest podcasts out there. He's founded or co-founded more than 20 companies and says he's failed at 17 of them.

• 1:17Lewis Howes?

  He's a frequent contributor to many of the top publications out there. And USA Today named his last book, Choose Yourself, as one of the 12 best business books of all time. And he's done it again with a new book called Reinvent Yourself. And it's been interesting to see him reinvent every area of his life over the last year and a half, two years, from his relationships to his actual physical possessions. He only owns like 15 possessions now. He's homeless and talks about what that's like, not having any possessions, getting rid of his houses, his homes, his stuff, and essentially leaning out in his entire life and reinventing every area of his life.

• 2:02Lewis Howes?

  His health has reinvented everything. So in this interview, we talk about how to cultivate innovative ideas to reinvent ourselves. Also, the future of jobs and which ones are growing the most and which ones are going to be gone eventually. James's formula for reinventing yourself. The story of why James sold all of his possessions and decided to become homeless. And why you shouldn't think about what's missing in your life. Also, how if you're not reinventing yourself, we talk about this, how you're slowly fading away. If you're not constantly in a reinvention phase in some area of your life, what's going to happen to you?

• 2:43Lewis Howes?

  And I think that's important for everyone to take on and consume that information that we're constantly in a state of reinvention or we're slowly fading away. And what does your reinvention look like? And are you doing the right things? So I hope you guys enjoy this one. If you do, make sure to tweet out or tag me on Instagram or Facebook. The link, lewishouse.com/425. And let me know what you think. What do you get out of this the most? Let me know and tag at Altucher as well over there. So without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only James Altucher. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. We have a legend in the house, James Altucher.

• 3:28Lewis Howes?

  Good to see you, man.

• 3:29James Altucher?

  Lewis, I'm so glad we managed to do this. We were just talking the other day and then you said, come on over and do a podcast. Here I am.

• 3:36Lewis Howes?

  It's perfect timing.

• 3:37James Altucher?

  What a great studio you've got here. You've got the wall of greatness up there. And I've got podcast envy. You've got so many great guests that I'm really impressed. There's Larry King, there's Tony Robbins, there's Arianna Huffington, there's pictures of you with everyone, Sarah Blakely. Really great guess.

• 3:54Lewis Howes?

  Thanks, man. And now you'll be on the wall.

• 3:55James Altucher?

  Now I'll be on the wall.

• 3:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes, exactly. You've got many books out. One of them is called Choose Yourself, which we had you on before to talk about this. How many books has this sold? 300,000? 200,000?

• 4:05James Altucher?

  Uh, actually, I'm over a half a million books on that now.

• 4:07Lewis Howes?

  Half a million books?

• 4:08James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 4:08Lewis Howes?

  That's gotta be in the top.

• 4:09James Altucher?

  I'm really grateful for that.

• 4:11Lewis Howes?

  It's gotta be in the top 1% of 1% in terms of authors who sell a book.

• 4:15James Altucher?

  Well, I've written now 18 books in total. If you add up the other 17, it still doesn't equal this book.

• 4:21Lewis Howes?

  No way. So this sold the most?

• 4:22James Altucher?

  Yes.

• 4:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Why do you think that sold the most of everything?

• 4:25James Altucher?

  Well, I think because we're in this time where two amazing things are happening. One is, is that technology is such that people can say, "Look, I don't need X, Y, and Z to do the thing that I love to do most. I can just do it." So I was sitting with a guy a few months ago, and he said to me, "What I really want to do is make YouTube videos that are successful and sell ads on them." And I said, "Well, why don't you just start doing it?" And he said, "Well, I don't have the right camera equipment." And so he got it, he got halfway there. Because some people say, "I really want to do a TV show, but I don't have an agent. I don't have a network. I don't have a script writer. I don't have all these things." So people get stuck at that point. So he skipped that, and he said, "Okay, I can make videos on myself." But then he said, "I don't have the right camera."

• 5:09James Altucher?

  And I said, "Let me see your iPhone. This one iPhone right here, this is better than all the video cameras from 10 years ago."

• 5:14Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 5:15James Altucher?

  So, so just start making YouTube videos. It's the, it's the skill of storytelling, not the, not the equipment that's gonna make you successful or not. A great example is Michelle Phan. She was doing makeup videos. Her first 60 videos got no views. Then she did a video on how Lady Gaga, how to do makeup like Lady Gaga. Totally blew up. Now she has a $30 million makeup company.

• 5:36Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 5:36James Altucher?

  But she, it was only then that she bought the equipment to do good videos.

• 5:40Lewis Howes?

  Quality, yeah, yeah.

• 5:41James Altucher?

  Yeah. And that's the story with everybody. You have to, you know, there, there, you have to ready, fire, aim. So you get ready, "This is what I want to do." Then you just start doing it. And then, as it starts to coalesce and you realize, "Oh, here are my mistakes, and here's what's working." Then you start to, you know, aim. "Okay, now I'm gonna upgrade my equipment. Now I'm gonna upgrade my, my studio." Whatever, whatever you need to upgrade. But, but ready first, fire second, aim last.

• 6:06Lewis Howes?

  I know. I think you really gotta be... In kind of more action mode than planning mode. You've got to put something out there and gain feedback from people. You can't just say, oh, I need to have everything look perfect first. And I think this is something that I did early on. I just, I never had perfect design early on. I never had the equipment, but I was just so good at taking action consistently. And then I'd see, oh, here, I'm getting a little bit of results with this one thing. So let me put more time and energy in making this better.

• 6:31James Altucher?

  No one will ever give you permission to create the future. So because no one else knows what the future is. So, so if you're gonna have, if you're gonna do something with impact right now, that means you're already creating the future because that's what makes impact. It's something that's different from the present. So no one is gonna give you permission to do that. You have to, you have to give yourself that permission. Now, this is almost cliché-ish, like give yourself permission. But I've seen it time and time again. I've seen it in your stories that you've told. I've seen it in my own life. People say, right before, right before that moment where I'm doing something completely insane, people will always tell me, you can't do that. And they're doing it out of, out of, they're not yelling at me. They're doing it because they care about me. Don't, you can't do that. Don't do that. It's scary.

• 7:15James Altucher?

  Um, but that's when you're, you're on to something. You're gonna do it and you might fail and then you go on to do the next thing. Or you, it might work and now you've done something well. So with Choose Yourself, what I did here was, um, and, and you know, this is a book that's already a couple of years old, but what I did here was, uh, I decided I'm gonna self-publish. I did, I did books with mainstream publishers and it, and it didn't quite work for me. Worked for other people, but it didn't work for me. And so I said, I'm gonna hire a book designer. I'm gonna hire an interior designer. I'm gonna hire good editors. I'm gonna work with the best at, the best teams at marketing. And I, I professionally self-published this book and it's been my most successful book and I made the most money out of it.

• 7:54Lewis Howes?

  Half a million sales. You, you also do different, you can also kind of manipulate the, the pricing. You can change it on Amazon for

• 8:01James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 8:01Lewis Howes?

  special weekends for like a dollar or 99 cents or two bucks. And then you can put it up to $20 or whenever you want to, right?

• 8:07James Altucher?

  Yeah, you control everything about it. So, uh, you know, even just a few months ago, there was an article that appeared in the New York Times, which mentioned the book. So, so this book catapulted three years after it was published. Cause it's still, it's an evergreen book. It's still relevant now, but, um, Just a few months ago, it was number one for all nonfiction on Amazon.

• 8:26Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 8:26James Altucher?

  So it just keeps on going. So the other thing that happened in that that makes choose yourself very interesting is that the economy changed. So right now, you know, half, half of all jobs, basically, are are held by people who don't need a college degree for those jobs. And what's happening soon is, pretty much, half of all jobs are going to be freelance jobs. You're going to be, companies are outsourcing, companies are demoting people, nobody's happy in their big jobs at at corporations. So you kind of, the economy is such that you kind of have to say, well, I need to choose myself now because no one else, if you let anyone else choose you, then the results are not going to be as good.

• 9:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:05James Altucher?

  If your boss chooses you for something, it's not going to be what you ideally want to do. You have to choose yourself for for ultimate happiness and well-being. But it's the same thing with, but the problem is, people don't know how to do it. So that's why I wrote now, Reinvent Yourself, to kind of get people to that point where, okay, well, I've been in this situation for five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, I don't know how to make this change in my life, or I'm scared to, or how do I pay the bills while I'm doing this, or whatever. And so Reinvent Yourself was sort of a natural outcome of choosing yourself.

• 9:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. You know, it seems like more and more, no one has the same job for more than a few years. You know, they're always looking for a new job to grow and to be inspired, and they're looking for new companies with a different vision. And then also, as entrepreneurs, we're constantly reinventing ourselves, you know, from my early stages of playing sports to doing LinkedIn, to doing webinars, doing online marketing, to now the podcast, to doing books, and just constantly evolving every year. I'm constantly looking for ways to reinvent myself personally, because I feel like that's the only way you can do it. If you try to stay to the same thing over and over for a long time, it's going to go out of style, or people aren't going to want it anymore, right?

• 10:13James Altucher?

  Right. Well, look at it, let's look at it in terms of music. Like, even the best, best bands ever, okay, they have their kind of like glory period of five to seven years, and then they spend the rest of their careers just touring on those.

• 10:30Lewis Howes?

  Playing their old hits.

• 10:31James Altucher?

  Yeah, on their old hits. I can't, I can I can't think of that many bands, I mean, maybe you could think of where for 50 straight years, they had hits. I mean, a great example, I mean, there's so many great examples, but like Bob Dylan, you could see every five years, he reinvents himself. That's why he wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Beatles maybe reinvented themselves once, and then that was it. They, they, they went out. The Rolling Stones, they're always reinventing themselves, but when they tour, they play the old hits.

• 10:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, Madonna's a great example.

• 11:00James Altucher?

  Madonna's a great example.

• 11:01Lewis Howes?

  She reinvents every two years, it seems like, to kind of like stay in tune with the, the themes of the, you know, the music world, but she's been doing it for what, 25 years?

• 11:09James Altucher?

  Yeah, and Louis CK is a good example, when he realized he needed to rewrite his act every single year. And Jerry Seinfeld was always fighting that. He would do the same act, but, but he's also rewriting his acts now, and, you know, but this is not just, we're talking about, you know, sports and comedy and artistic endeavors. This happens in professional endeavors as well. Like, you can't just work for, for the same company forever, because that company is changing and reinventing, and you might get demoted. You, you can't outsource your self-esteem and your, your, your sense of, of self-worth to another company or organization, because they're gonna let you down. They're gonna break your heart. So you have to be able to say, okay, well, I'm no longer, they're no longer satisfying my needs. I'm gonna jump ship and do this other, either job or

• 11:52James Altucher?

  career. Think about your careers, not just jobs. Again, you were, you, you, you've done courses on LinkedIn, with, you know, about LinkedIn, you've done webinars about LinkedIn, you've also played arena football, you've done handball, you're doing podcasts, you've written books. These are not just different jobs, they're different careers. There, there are ways.

• 12:12Lewis Howes?

  Different skillsets, yeah.

• 12:13James Altucher?

  Yeah, and you have to develop these different skillsets. That's what this, and it's not like, it's not like it was so incredibly hard that writing a book will be the only thing you do in life. You're gonna do many things for the rest of your life. That's what life is here for. So.

• 12:28Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:28James Altucher?

  You know, that's reinvention.

• 12:30Lewis Howes?

  Do you think people are screwed if they don't start thinking about how they're going to reinvent themselves?

• 12:35James Altucher?

  I think so because I think, you know, Kevin Kelly, who is, he's got a great blog. He's a, I've known him for a long time. He has this great quote, and he's a founding editor of Wired Magazine. He has this great quote, productivity is for robots. So, so what that means is it's not about like rushing around, being as productive as possible 20 hours a day. And some people say that, that you have to like work, work, work, work, work, and then, you know, reap the benefits later. You know, what he's really saying with productivity is for robots is that everything that is not about you learning personally is going to eventually be outsourced or automated. And so you kind of have to have, create your own, have your own ideas about what you want

• 13:19James Altucher?

  to be and what you want to do, and then, you know, work to, to create it, and then eventually either outsource it or move on. So, you know, and of course, Tim Ferriss talks about this in the, in the Four Hour Work Week, where eventually he started to automate his processes. So he moved his work week down from 80 hours to four hours. That was the premise of that book. But I think it's more, it's more happening on a corporate level, on a Fortune 500 level, where entire layers of middle management and middle employees, and even the workers working at the factory, that's all being automated or, or moved to another country. What's going to happen when self-driving cars are driving everybody around? It's 90% of the auto industry is just going to disappear.

• 14:02James Altucher?

  And it's not like they're going to be just transferred into the self-driving industry. That's going to be a smaller industry. So-

• 14:09Lewis Howes?

  They're going to have to reinvent themselves.

• 14:10James Altucher?

  They're going to have to reinvent themselves. That's just one industry. Same thing's happening in publishing, in the music industry, in accounting, in the legal industry.

• 14:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, there's new softwares coming out that makes everything simpler for accounting. You don't even, you know.

• 14:23James Altucher?

  Yeah, and also like, let's say, let's say you and I were doing a contract. We're going to be partners in some new business. I don't need a lawyer. I'll go to LegalZoom, download a document, and we'll sign it. And so, so, so many things are, are happening now, and companies are catching up, individuals are catching up, and, you know, hopefully the listeners are, are catching up.

• 14:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, so how do we cultivate this idea of kind of- Reinventing, but it's more like innovative ideas for ourselves to create something new. How do we cultivate these innovative ideas?

• 14:51James Altucher?

  Well, let me ask you a question. When you switched into, I don't know, did you play handball since you were a kid?

• 14:57Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 14:57James Altucher?

  Okay, so, so how did you decide I'm gonna be an Olympic level athlete in handball?

• 15:03Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 15:03James Altucher?

  And what did you, what was the first thing you did?

• 15:06Lewis Howes?

  I saw it on TV. I watched the 2008 Olympics. I was sleeping on my sister's couch still with the, I'd just gotten my cast off from playing football from a surgery. And I watched the Olympics and instantly I just had a new idea. I said, that's something I want to do. I was just like, I'm gonna play on the USA.

• 15:21James Altucher?

  So something, something stirred inside you, like you felt it.

• 15:24Lewis Howes?

  It's like a dream, a new dream was created.

• 15:26James Altucher?

  And that happens to people, I don't want to say every day, but like once a year, a couple of times a year, once a month. That you feel that and you don't always pursue everything, right? I'm sure there's many things you would like to do that you don't pursue.

• 15:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, don't have the bandwidth for, it's not the right timing or whatever, yeah.

• 15:39James Altucher?

  But you already had training as an athlete, so you knew, okay, this is another sport. This is something where I, it's like, almost like a backdoor into the Olympics because, or into the US team. Because who else would think to do this?

• 15:51Lewis Howes?

  No one else is playing, yeah.

• 15:52James Altucher?

  So it seems like an old man swore I could probably squeeze in here and get good enough. Okay, so what's your, what did you do next?

• 15:58Lewis Howes?

  So next I started researching. I went online and started researching like USA handball, handball teams in Ohio. There was nothing in Ohio. Then I said, okay, where are the teams in the country? And, and I started looking at like, what are the best teams? Because if I'm gonna learn this quickly, I need to learn from the best. So I learned that the New York team had won the national championships over the last few years. So I was like, okay, when I make enough money, I'm gonna go to New York City and learn from these, this play, these players, this team. And for about the next year, I was like, well, how am I gonna do that? Because I have no money. I'm broke on my sister's couch. That's when LinkedIn started kind of opening up for me and I started to make like a few hundred bucks a month teaching LinkedIn. So I said, okay, when I make enough money doing this, then I'm gonna leave Ohio and go to New York City. To like, see what this is like.

• 16:43James Altucher?

  And by the way, when you were in New York City, it's not like you stopped making money on LinkedIn.

• 16:46Lewis Howes?

  No, no, I was still doing that.

• 16:47James Altucher?

  These things were interweaving each other.

• 16:48Lewis Howes?

  They're all interweaving, yes. So I, about a year later, a year and a half later, I,

• 16:54Lewis Howes?

  Started really making a lot of money, like just kind of started happening. Everything started to unfold and happen after a lot of action taking. And so I moved to New York City for a month. Now, the whole time for this year, year and a half, no one would respond to me on the USA national team for like the headquarters. No one would respond to me at the New York team. I would email people, I would call numbers, no one would get back to me.

• 17:14James Altucher?

  How were you getting better during this time?

• 17:16Lewis Howes?

  I was just training as an athlete, but I was, I still hadn't played handball yet. But I still had this idea of like, I need to go and at least explore it so I don't regret not trying to see if I could make this. I was like, at least I gotta go and try it so I can kind of eliminate it from my mind as something I, I wanna do or don't wanna do in the future. But if I, for me personally, I, I know that if I think about something and I wanna do it, if I don't at least explore it, I'll think about it for the rest of my life and I'll regret not trying, not giving it a go. So, um, so I say, okay, no one's getting back to me anywhere. I'm emailing people every month, I'm trying to call people every month, no one's getting back to me. So I say, screw it, I'm gonna go to New York for a month. I had a couple of speaking gigs in New York for like LinkedIn something. And at some social media conferences and I was like, I'm just gonna go stay for the month and I'm gonna show up at their practice

• 18:01Lewis Howes?

  cause they had the practice address of where they practice on the website for the New York team.

• 18:07James Altucher?

  So you, you, so, so you got ready by, by constantly training?

• 18:12Lewis Howes?

  Training, yep.

• 18:12James Altucher?

  And then you just, you fired?

• 18:14Lewis Howes?

  That's it, I just showed up and I just showed up to practice when I said they were playing, cause no one picked up or got back to me.

• 18:18James Altucher?

  No one gave you permission to do that?

• 18:19Lewis Howes?

  No one gave me permission, I showed up and the first day I got there, I was the only American on, who was in the court. And it was all these former professional players in Europe who now moved to New York and kind of like live and play for fun.

• 18:33James Altucher?

  So, so as a white man, you were basically the minority on the American team?

• 18:37Lewis Howes?

  I was like, they barely spoke English, I was just like this outsider. And, um, I got there and I go, hey guys, my name's Lewis, I'm, I'm here from Ohio and my, my goal is to make the Olympics and play with the USA national team. And they just all started laughing. And then I just showed up every single week. I ended up moving to New York. I didn't go back to Ohio. I stayed there for the next year and a half and nine months later I made the USA team. But I was there every single week practicing and just like learning and taking action and.

• 19:04James Altucher?

  So, so what you did was exemplifies something that, and this isn't original to me. I'll describe where, where it comes from. But I call, in my book, I call this, um, you reinvent yourself by finding your plus minus equal. So your plus was all, all these people, you wanted to be around the, the best in the world.

• 19:24Lewis Howes?

  People better than me, yeah.

• 19:25James Altucher?

  Right. So you could learn from them. So you have to find your plus. And at first they're, they're virtual. You maybe you watch YouTube videos of them. You read books about them.

• 19:32Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 19:32James Altucher?

  Um, you, you, you study things that they write or photographs they take or videos they shoot. So then, then they became real for you because you actually joined them and, and started hanging around them. Then you have to find your equals because if you're just crushed every day in a game of handball, it's going to be hard for you. You need lessons, but then you need people who challenge you.

• 19:50Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 19:50James Altucher?

  So people who you can say, oh, I got that one more point off him. I feel challenged and you get better and better and you can measure your results.

• 19:56Lewis Howes?

  And there were people there that were like that who were on the team who were kind of beginners. So.

• 20:00James Altucher?

  Right. So you, you found, you found your peer group. You found your, your, your new cohort. And then you find, um, it's almost a bad word for it, but you call, I call the, the minus, which is people you could teach. I don't know if this was, uh, you know, a catalyst for your reinvention, but ultimately you play people in handball that you're a lot better than. And then you could teach them and that solidifies your learning.

• 20:20Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:20James Altucher?

  So, and that's almost every reinvention, you know, you and I have both had hundreds of people on our podcast. They've all reinvented themselves and I bet you in every single case, there's a plus minus equal.

• 20:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:30James Altucher?

  So that, that, that happens with all of them. Like I talk to anybody from, from a rapper to a, a huge entrepreneur, like a billionaire entrepreneur. They've all had their plus minus equal.

• 20:40Lewis Howes?

  You start somewhere where you're going to learn from a mentor or a coach or someone who's at the top or someone who's greater than you. And you gotta find, you know, it's the same thing with sports. You find teams that are kind of like your equals and you never know which way it's going to go. And then you have others that you're teaching. And I think this is a platform that I have where I'm constantly sharing information from great guests like you, where I'm able to share new information to people that may not have access to it. So I think we're doing that constantly. We're interviewing people that maybe are greater results than us in certain areas. And then we also connect with other people on the same level and then we're sharing it with people who are-

• 21:12James Altucher?

  Sure. And you learn and kind of, it's sort of has almost like a chemical transformation inside you, everything you learn and how does it work for me? So this concept of a plus minus equal, I read in Ryan Holiday's book, Ego is the Enemy. Where did he get it? He got it from Frank Shamrock, who's a big mixed martial arts instructor, who talks about the plus minus equal. So all of these things get passed around and passed around and it's like a game of operator. They change with each person that you learn from. So everything you learn, like every time I do something where I think, okay, here I'm learning something new. I will immediately write down in a notepad or on my computer, here's the 10 things I learned from it. So I'm visiting LA this week. That's why I'm here in your studio.

• 21:54James Altucher?

  And the other day, we went to the museum, The Broad. I don't know if you've been to it.

• 21:59Lewis Howes?

  Downtown, right?

• 21:59James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 22:00Lewis Howes?

  Amazing, I hear.

• 22:00James Altucher?

  Beautiful museum, all this, all these pop art exhibitions. And I hadn't been in a museum in 20 years. I read every description and immediately, and it's all about creativity, of course, like all these amazing artworks. So immediately after I left, I wrote down, here's the 10 things I learned about creativity from just visiting The Broad for a couple hours. So, so with everything I tried to learn, or if I have a podcast guest, I'll, I'll research and research and research, do the interview. And then right afterwards, here's the 10 things I learned from this guy.

• 22:30Lewis Howes?

  Smart.

• 22:30James Altucher?

  So, and then that gives me a chance to, to potentially use other outlets too, for the podcast. Like, okay, I could maybe write an article about this on LinkedIn or whatever.

• 22:40Lewis Howes?

  What do you say is your last, the last time you reinvented yourself? What was the thing? Or are you in reinvention right now? Or was it- Months ago, or?

• 22:48James Altucher?

  I mean, definitely, I am in reinvention. We're constantly in the state of reinvention. It's just a matter of deciding what it is we're reinventing. So, so I'm in the process of, I just wrote a children's book, actually, a month ago. I'm in the process of-

• 23:03Lewis Howes?

  With Molly, right?

• 23:03James Altucher?

  Yeah, Molly Han, actually, who's a great illustrator. I'm in the process of writing some fiction. I'm running a business revolving around my content. And then another thing happened to me about seven months ago, maybe, or last March. I decided, okay, I am traveling around a lot, I'm staying in Airbnbs a lot. How about we try and experiment? I had leases on two apartments that were coming up. And I said, not only am I going to cancel the leases, I'm not even gonna go back to the apartments and I'm just gonna throw everything out in the apartments. So, I didn't wanna do the, you know the Marie Kondo book, the magic art of tidying up?

• 23:45James Altucher?

  So she says, okay, minimalism is good, but pick everything up and decide if you love it or not. You know, hold everything to your heart and like, do I love this and I'll keep it? Or I don't love this, so I'm gonna throw it out. I decided, I'm not gonna love anything and I'm just gonna throw everything out. So I paid a friend of mine, her name was Lisa. I said, Lisa, just go to these apartments and don't even call me. I'm not gonna pick up the phone, don't even call me. And you can either keep everything, throw everything out, donate everything, or sell everything and keep the profits for yourself. And so she went out there to one of my apartments. She had a whole truck. She took, she took her husband, her kids, her nephews, nieces, cousins.

• 24:28James Altucher?

  And they, they literally, I had, I think I had three or four beds in that house. Computers, TVs, dishes, thousands of books.

• 24:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 24:38James Altucher?

  All my clothes, everything, and she just cleaned up. And I, I remember I called up that landlord a few months later and she said, what did you, you hire a cleaning crew? That place was spotlessly empty. And one call I did pick up, my daughter Josie was in the apartment at the time and she calls, and I didn't explain to her what was going to be happening. And she's like, uh, Dad, this entire family of people just walked into the house and they're pulling like the beds out, is this okay? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, just, and she said, they're pulling my bed. Like- I said, just let them take everything.

• 25:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 25:12James Altucher?

  So now, of course, my, my, she lives normally with, with her mom, but she was happening to be at the house.

• 25:18Lewis Howes?

  That's hilarious.

• 25:19James Altucher?

  So, but, and, and Lisa did call me up one time and I picked up the phone and she said, are you sure you want me to throw out your diploma? I'm throwing everything else out, throwing, she threw trophies out that I had made when I was 18, I mean, that I've gotten one when I was 18 for chess or whatever. And she said, are you sure you want me to throw out your diploma? It's really nicely framed and yeah, I can see you spent money on this. And I'm like, absolutely, I want you to throw out my diploma. I have not even thought about my diploma. I can't even remember what I learned in college, like let alone care about my diploma. So definitely don't, don't give that one away. Burn it, just throw it in the fireplace. And so she did.

• 25:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow, amazing. So, um, and then the New York Times wrote a, a front page article about you and what, what section was it?

• 26:03James Altucher?

  Oh, it was the front page of the fashion section on Sunday. So you could see me.

• 26:07Lewis Howes?

  That's huge.

• 26:07James Altucher?

  So I was, so I, I worked that for a whole, for at least three or four weeks afterwards. Like every time I saw my two daughters, I was like, you have to listen to me because I'm a fashion expert right now. And they, they didn't know how to respond to that. They were like, you're not a fashion expert. But, um, yeah, that was a, that was a real interesting article.

• 26:27Lewis Howes?

  Because they kind of picked up that you were doing this experiment, that you were getting rid of everything in your life, all physical possessions.

• 26:34James Altucher?

  Everything, I mean.

• 26:35Lewis Howes?

  And you have what, 13 items, 20 items or what do you have?

• 26:37James Altucher?

  Yeah, basically I max out at 15.

• 26:39Lewis Howes?

  15 items.

• 26:40James Altucher?

  Yeah, so if I, if I buy something new, I have to, like if I buy a new t-shirt, I bought this t-shirt the other day, I have to throw a t-shirt out. So, so, and by the way, you, people think, oh, that's expensive. No, you could go into Dwayne, you go into a pharmacy and buy three, pack of three t-shirts for $12. So it's not so expensive. So, so, but I, I carry basically all my belongings with me, so I.

• 27:00Lewis Howes?

  Everywhere you go.

• 27:00James Altucher?

  I live in your apartment right now.

• 27:01Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing.

• 27:02James Altucher?

  If you want to send me mail, this is my address right now, Louis's apartment.

• 27:06Lewis Howes?

  School of Greatness headquarter, yes. So you have like a lot, you have a laptop? What do you have, a phone, a laptop?

• 27:11James Altucher?

  Yeah, laptop, um, phone. I actually got rid of my tablet because I, you could read on your, on your laptop or your phone or whatever. And. And then I just have like a couple outfits.

• 27:22Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 27:22James Altucher?

  Toothpaste, toothbrush, but I stay in Airbnb, so they always come equipped with like

• 27:26Lewis Howes?

  Towels and everything.

• 27:27James Altucher?

  Shampoos and towels and furniture. You never actually really need furniture. Now, someone will say, oh, well, it's better to own and rent to me. Maybe that's true, but for me, I get to experience all these great houses and locations all around the city and the world and live, you know, experience other people's lifestyles and by the way, just live my own lifestyle that I want to live at the same time. So.

• 27:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Do you feel like you'll do this for a long time or is this just a reinvention phase that maybe it'll?

• 27:55James Altucher?

  I feel like I will do this today. I don't worry about a long time from now. So many people think, oh, well, I'm gonna settle in St. Louis and live there the rest of my life. I could die tomorrow. I, I, I'm gonna be on a plane tomorrow. Maybe the plane will crash. I don't know. So. Certainly a big risk to go 35,000 feet up in the air at, you know, 600 miles an hour. That's pretty risky if you think about it.

• 28:16Lewis Howes?

  It is.

• 28:16James Altucher?

  So I'm taking a huge risk tomorrow and if I survive it, then maybe I'll live this way another day.

• 28:22Lewis Howes?

  There you go. But you're not thinking like, oh, in a couple of years I'll have my own place again. You're just like, this is all I'm thinking about right now.

• 28:27James Altucher?

  This is all I'm thinking about right now.

• 28:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Amazing.

• 28:30James Altucher?

  It's too stressful. You know, that's the whole point, really. It's not just about giving up possessions. People call that minimalism, but that could actually be really stressful, giving up, giving up all your possessions. The real key is giving up the things you think about. And so then you could focus, then you let creativity in and you could focus on, this is what I really want to do is figure out, um, you know, interesting things to talk to Louis about or interesting things to write about or interesting things that are funny to me or businesses I can start or things I can do with my own business. So, and so on.

• 29:02Lewis Howes?

  What's the most meaningful thing in your life right now?

• 29:05James Altucher?

  Well, I think, uh, and they work hand in hand. I think, I mean, and, and by the way, uh, there's a cliched answer, which is my two daughters are the most meaningful thing to me. But that, whenever someone says that, I think to myself, that's a lot of BS because. First off, I really hope my daughters, and this is the job of being a father and a parent, is that you want them to kind of be adults and grow up and move away. And I love them, and they'll always be in my life, and they'll always be the people closest to me. But I did my job. They're good kids. They're about to be adults, and bam, done.

• 29:41Lewis Howes?

  Okay, besides family, which is everyone's answer, what's the most meaningful thing?

• 29:44James Altucher?

  I think that my writing and podcasts interweave with each other. So I really believe in this, in, I really believe that my own personal experiences of failing to reinvent myself, constantly failing, and then how I got over that over and over and over again, and then failing again, and then getting over it again. This is, to me, meaningful to write down, because then I get responses like, "Oh, I'm going through this right now also, and this gives me some clues as to what I should be doing." And that's all writing is, is that we're all detectives in this great mystery of life, and all we can do is share clues with each other.

• 30:26James Altucher?

  There are so many self-help writers who just say from top down, "This is what it means to be a leader." I don't want to know about that. I want to know when people failed to be a leader, and how they came up from it, and then that might give me a clue as to how I can be better at leadership or being a leader in my own life. And the same thing with reinventing and choosing yourself. I don't have the answers for anybody else. I just know what I did to experience these things. That's why I asked you what you did, because I learned from what you did. I never thought of that, like, "Oh, I'm just gonna show, if I'm interested in something, just show up where the team is practicing."

• 31:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:06James Altucher?

  "What a great idea. I've never heard of that before. That should go in my book."

• 31:09Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly.

• 31:10James Altucher?

  And because I self-published, by the way, maybe it will go in my book. I still got three weeks to go.

• 31:15Lewis Howes?

  There you go, yeah, reinvention. What do you think, you know, in the previous, we've had you on, I think, three times now. You're the second most interviewed person on this show.

• 31:24James Altucher?

  A great honor.

• 31:24Lewis Howes?

  The second most.

• 31:26James Altucher?

  Who's the most? Who's beating me?

• 31:27Lewis Howes?

  You got him, Chris Lee, who's like a leadership transformation coach, yeah. So, and we'll link up all the previous ones to everyone else. If you haven't heard those, make sure to check those out.

• 31:37James Altucher?

  You've been on mine quite a bit too, by the way.

• 31:39Lewis Howes?

  I have been on, yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it.

• 31:41James Altucher?

  No problem. You're coming on again when your next book comes out.

• 31:43Lewis Howes?

  That's right. That's right. I'm curious, what's the biggest lesson you learned? You know, if you guys listen to the previous ones, you talk about all these different mistakes you made in business of making millions and then losing it all in like two days every time or whatever, over like a summer every time. It was a million dollars a month.

• 31:59James Altucher?

  It would happen so blindingly fast, it would be like, I am really one of the least intelligent people on the planet.

• 32:08Lewis Howes?

  Most brilliant, and then you're the least intelligent.

• 32:10James Altucher?

  I'm the least intelligent person who's ever been on this podcast.

• 32:13Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Okay. What do you think's the biggest lesson, looking back at all those mistakes or those things that you did? What would you think is the biggest lesson you learned? And do you have any regrets over the last 20, 25 years in your business kind of career?

• 32:27James Altucher?

  You know, I will answer the first question first. I think that the biggest lesson I've learned is how common the experience is of making a mistake and coming back from it. So, so there's this, you know, you know, I think things happen in the reverse order of how things, people think they happen. People think things happen in beginning, middle, end. What really happens is end, and then despairing fog where you can't even see two feet in front of you, and then beginning. So again, I'm going to ask you, what happened? You just described a story. You were on, you were sleeping on a couch at your sister's. That tells me that there was an end.

• 33:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes, my football career was over.

• 33:12James Altucher?

  Right. So, so you started your story with an end. So, and then there's a fog. Like you saw something on TV and you didn't know, you started doing research, you didn't know how to get involved. Nobody was returning your calls. You know, they laughed at you. You, you know, there's this fog in the middle. It's not even, you don't even know it's the middle because it's so foggy. And you don't even know what to do. Like, oh, should I go to New York and just show up there? What's going to happen? And then there's the beginning. Now you're on the team.

• 33:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:43James Altucher?

  Bam, beginning. And if that story's not over yet, right? Like, you're gonna continue to be on the team. So we haven't reached an end to that story.

• 33:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:49James Altucher?

  But, but that was the story, though. That's how you ended the story, was you did end, fog, beginning. And so I think that's the commonality of all of these reinventions and all these stories of, of failures and mistakes and growth. It's not like your failure or my failure is. Everybody goes through this, and everybody I've had on my podcast has gone through this. Where we, we end something and it didn't work out the way we thought it was gonna work out. It wasn't like, ugh, I did it. I made it to the Olympics and got seven gold medals and now life is over. It's like, no, you, you, life continues. Something bad happens and, and you're on your, your sister's couch. And then there's that fog, and then there's the beginning. And all these, there, there's a commonality to all these stories.

• 34:28James Altucher?

  So when I've lost, let's say I've lost all, all my money, I've lost all my belongings, I've lost my family, marriage, everything. They all have the same thing in common, which is something ended. I didn't know what to do. I started with, um, recapturing that, that, what I call this daily practice that I talk about in Choose Yourself, where, okay, rather than worrying and regretting what happened, I gotta focus today on my physical health. I've gotta be around people who are good for me. I've gotta be creative, and I've gotta be grateful and compassionate for, for what I have. So I have to every day check those boxes. And then, you know, bit by bit, I climb out of the hole that I had dug for myself, and a new beginning can start.

• 35:10James Altucher?

  But it always gets back to kind of following this daily practice and making sure today I check those boxes. Cause the only way I can predict a good tomorrow is if today is a good day. And then today is a good day only if I'm not sick in bed, I'm not around bad people, I'm not doing boring things, I'm doing creative things, and I'm not complaining. I'm being grateful instead of complaining. You can't complain and be grateful at the same time.

• 35:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Do you, do you have a lot of bad days still? Or have you kind of like worked it so well that you know exactly what you need to do when you wake up to when you go to bed?

• 35:42James Altucher?

  Uh, yeah, I have, I have days where, um, where, you know, the, the devil always flirts with, with you, you know, you, you, and I don't mean this in a religious way, I'm not, I'm, I'm sort of a-religious, but, uh, but you're always, your, your, your brain wants to complain all the time. Like, oh, I'm not getting enough food, or I'm not, they're not returning my phone calls from the national handball team, or whatever. Like, your brain always wants to kind of discourage you. Um, and you, and I just have to say, okay, this is, this is what my brain is telling me. But the reality is, I'm gonna check the boxes on physical, emotional, mental, spiritual health. And I just always have to pull myself back to that whenever I feel those demons coming up. Cause they come up every single day.

• 36:26Lewis Howes?

  They do.

• 36:27James Altucher?

  Like, there's always, there's always, you know, I'm like a shy person, for instance. So, whenever I'm about to do a podcast, like, let's say I'm going to do a podcast with, I don't know, Barack Obama. I've never done a podcast with him, but I say, let, let's say even he agreed to do all my podcasts. I can guarantee you 10 minutes before the podcast starts, I am praying that he's about to cancel. Because I'm just too nervous, I'm too nervous. I, I, we were, we were, um, having a coffee down the street from here, just so I, I always make sure I get to a place early. I scope it out, and then I go get a coffee, and, and so I'm in the area. I was praying you would say, oh, I gotta cancel. Lewis Howes just canceled. Okay, all right, I'll just have a coffee here, go home.

• 37:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, no stress, right?

• 37:12James Altucher?

  Go home and watch TV or something.

• 37:15Lewis Howes?

  Well, I'm glad you didn't, uh, I'm glad I didn't cancel, so you're here.

• 37:19James Altucher?

  By the way, I didn't answer the second question, which is regret. I, I, I really try hard not to regret anything. Cause then I wouldn't be here talking to you, which is, which is a cliche. I hate doing any cliche, like, but I, I force myself not to regret.

• 37:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, there you go. Is there anything missing in your life right now? I, I find that you're constantly inventing, you're purging, you're... Creative, you're doing things that looks like you want to be doing. Is there anything missing?

• 37:41James Altucher?

  There are a ton of things missing from my life right now. I never, I never think about them. I can list, I can list a thousand things that are missing from my life right now, but I, I won't start that. That's one list I will not start.

• 37:52Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 37:53James Altucher?

  So.

• 37:53Lewis Howes?

  So you don't focus on those things?

• 37:54James Altucher?

  Never.

• 37:55Lewis Howes?

  Do you ever, do you ever think about them and say, okay, I'm gonna go create this, the thing that's missing, or I'm gonna make it happen, or do you just allow it to be?

• 38:02James Altucher?

  I mean, if I'm sitting and, and there's a blank piece of paper, I don't feel like they're, they're, I'm missing the words that should go on this paper. I just start doing it.

• 38:11Lewis Howes?

  I mean, if you're like, you know, if you're missing peace, inner peace, and you're stressed out all the time, and you're like, yeah, I'm missing peace right now, would you go create that or no?

• 38:19James Altucher?

  No, because I know if I'm, if I stick to being healthy and being around good people and being creative every day, and, and being, uh, uh, you know, compassionate and grateful to the, for the people around me, then it'll all get, you never reach, there's no such thing as inner peace. So you'll never reach it, but I'll get, uh, closer and closer to feeling well-being. So, so well-being, you could think of it in many different ways. As opposed to happiness, you could think of well-being as having good relationships, getting more and more competent at something, and feeling more and more of a sense of freedom. So, and freedom could be defined in lots of ways, but you could feel freedom even if you're stuck in solitary confinement in a jail. You could, you could feel good about, you know, being creative and being happy and so on.

• 39:02Lewis Howes?

  This is the beginning of the year right now when this is coming out. So at the end of 2017, what would you like to accomplish where you say, wow, that was a great year. Like that was, I couldn't have asked for anything better. I created everything I wanted to do. What would that be?

• 39:18James Altucher?

  Well, I, I, I never think about it in terms of a year, but I will think about it in terms of a day. And so, so all those things I mentioned of, um, um, you know, that daily practice I do of, of being healthy in those four areas, I want to be 1% better every day. And now it's hard to, it's hard to compound that. Like, what, what does it mean to be 1% emotionally more healthy? There's no way to quantify that. But if I think in those ways, it compounds. So 1% a day compounded is 3,800% a year, which means. You're thirty eight times better than you were at the beginning of a year. So, so that's what I aim for. I hope to be thirty eight times better in my creativity, in my emotional health, in my physical health.

• 39:57James Altucher?

  Now, I don't know what that means. It doesn't mean I'm gonna lose, you know, I'm gonna have thirty eight times the muscle or anything like that, but I don't know what it means, but I just want the mindset of improving every day.

• 40:08Lewis Howes?

  Can you, I feel like you're one of the smartest guys I've had on who knows how to take an idea and turn it to a lot of money quickly. You've done this many times in previous companies. You're doing this now with your own business. I feel like you have an incredible lifestyle where you can live and travel at any time. Nothing holds you back in terms of physical possessions or rent or car or whatever. What are you doing right now to, to generate money? I know we talked about this the other day, but what's the different things you're doing? From your ideas to creating content and you package it in such a beautiful way to generate a lot of revenue. Can you talk, can you break it down for us?

• 40:41James Altucher?

  Sure. So, so, I mean, I do a lot of different things. I have a, a, a business where I've spent many years angel investing. So I'm invested in a lot of different companies and those are, are, you know, bit by bit, like let's say there's one a year has an exit that's, that's good.

• 40:58James Altucher?

  But that's like a side business. I never even think about it. Like I don't do any angel investing anymore. I sort of did it all. Here's the, here's the thing about angel investing and I'll quickly go on to the, the, the business I have. The thing about angel investing is you don't invest and then a, a couple of days later you make money.

• 41:14Lewis Howes?

  No, it's like eight to ten years, right?

• 41:16James Altucher?

  Yeah, like I have investments from two thousand nine that are going great, but I'm probably not gonna see money from them until twenty twenty. So that money, and you have to invest like a good amount of money for it to have impact. That money I will, I will never, I didn't know even in two thousand nine, it's gonna be, it's like you say goodbye to it for eleven years. So.

• 41:34Lewis Howes?

  And you may never get it back.

• 41:36James Altucher?

  You may never get it back, but, but, you know, now, since most of my investments were in the period, let's say two thousand eight to twenty eleven, when things were kind of at a low. Uh, I don't invest at the moment and, uh, those investments are, are, now I've seen the zeros have kind of happened already. They, they, they sort of disappear early on and then now what I'm left with are all the companies that are growing. So I'm pretty happy with with what's left, but um. That's a side thing, yeah. That's a side thing. So so I decided about a year and a half ago, March 2015, I'm going to um. I decided a little before then, but this is when it launched, end of February or early March 2015. I'm going to take my writing and my podcast and I'm gonna kind of move it up a level, which means I'm going to hire

• 42:20James Altucher?

  support staff, researchers, a team to help me, um, you know, a team to help me with distribution, a team to help me make my podcast much better. Uh, I also saw um, a lot of things that I wanted to address that nobody was addressing. For instance, there was so much bad finance advice out there. I decided, okay, look, people, this is something I don't normally write about, but people need help with this. I'm not going to do this for free because I'm gonna hire people to help me. Um, and I wanna, I I think in order for something to be a really good idea, it needs to be sustainable and it needs to generate profits. So I decided I'm gonna make a business around my writing. So 99% of my writing and podcasting, I give away for free. The same as I always did. My my good writing, I give it away for free.

• 43:05James Altucher?

  But then I have a a monthly report that I put out that is a little bit extra. So a little bit extra on how to make a new business, how to self-publish a book, uh, tips on nutrition, tips on um, just all these different ways to may have a better life. And sometimes I write the stories, sometimes through my Rolodex, I find other people to write the stories and I let them link to whatever. You know, if somebody is like a really, one of the best nutritionists in the world, they'll write a a piece about nutrition for the coming new year or or whatever. So I sell that. It's like 20 to 30 pages a month, uh, and I and it's a monthly subscription. And then I have other products. One is, uh, I used to run a hedge fund, so I know a lot of hedge fund managers.

• 43:50James Altucher?

  So I will, once a month with my researchers, uh, I'll I'll reach out to different hedge fund managers I know and I'll see what they are buying and selling in the stock market and I'll pick the best ideas I could think of. And uh, I'll I'll say, look, this is, you know. Warren Buffett maybe bought, I don't know, Facebook at this price and now it's trading 20% lower. So, oh, it's probably a good buy because if Warren Buffett bought it 20% higher, it's as if someone like Warren Buffett is working for me for free.

• 44:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:21James Altucher?

  And I buy things at a discount to him. So how could it, it's hard for it to go wrong, particularly if I find the 20 best Warren Buffets out there and diversify among all of them. So I sell that for a much higher price.

• 44:31Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 44:32James Altucher?

  So, and then I have a couple of products like that. And I have a monthly book club, like where I go in-depth into my favorite books of the month. So I have, I have like four or five products and the podcast makes money, the books make money. So altogether, we started in March 2015. It's the end of 2016 right now. Since the day we launched, we've generated about 30 million in revenues.

• 44:52Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 44:52James Altucher?

  So it's super profitable and it's helped a lot of people. Like we get testimonials every day. By the way, I'm not suggesting anyone buy any of my products. Don't buy them. You can get just as much value just reading my free stuff. Stick to my free stuff. If you think I shouldn't be selling anything, like a lot of people say, oh, you're selling your book for 99 cents. You're just in it for the money. Like, if you think I'm making a lot of money off of a 99 cent book, then you're, you're, you're out of your mind.

• 45:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:20James Altucher?

  And, and I have about, you know, a dozen or so employees. One thing I realized is I'm really horrible at being a CEO, so I've outsourced. I, not outsourced is the wrong word, but I hired someone to run the business. I, I don't really interact that much with the people in the business, but they all do an excellent job. They're all like A-plus people and they all do an excellent job. And I just write and feed them writing every day. And then they figure out how to do it and how to package it into products and they, they do an excellent job.

• 45:49Lewis Howes?

  What do you feel like every online content creator should be focusing on in terms of products? Should it be one-off or do you really love the continuity? Because it sounds like you have two or three different continuity programs.

• 46:01James Altucher?

  Well, you need, you need continuity because you don't wanna, the best thing in the world is subscription revenues and you want to hold yourself to it as well. Like I want, I, I know that I need to generate. Higher quality content next month than the month before. So it pushes me to be even more successful the next month than I was the month before. People need to have a return on investment if they're paying you for a product. So it really puts the creative challenge on me. It's almost a creative constraint. And so, so I think continuity is important. I also think, I think also not to be afraid to charge. This was a big challenge for me was to asking people for money. And, and that was a challenge.

• 46:44James Altucher?

  I felt bad doing it and people were like, why is he asking for money? He used to give stuff free. I still give the same amount, I still give more stuff for free now. Yeah. Um, but I think the main thing when people are just starting out is don't even focus on things that you're gonna charge for. The first thing is build up goodwill. So write, have a vision about what you think the world should be like. Write quality stories, not just content. I don't like the word content. Write quality stories about your vision and how it relates to you personally. And then, don't just create yourname.com and put all of your content there and nowhere else. Like write on LinkedIn, write on Medium, write on the Huffington Post, write on other, write on as many websites as you can.

• 47:28James Altucher?

  Write for newspapers, write for television networks, have a podcast, write a book. Be on as many media as possible. And it, because nobody is on, nobody is going to your destination site anymore. I mean, they might in some special cases, but in general, the, the audience on LinkedIn isn't gonna say, okay, now that I've checked LinkedIn, I have to go to jamesaltucher.com. Cause there's too many places to check out them. So make sure you go where the people are. You know, it's like Wayne Gretzky saying, you know, skate to where the puck is, where the puck is going, not where it is. So people are going to all these aggregator sites and that's where you wanna publish. Then, very important, you gotta build an email list.

• 48:08James Altucher?

  Because you need to be in, you need to have people enroll in what your vision for the world is. You need to have people basically raise their hand and say, you know what? I kind of agree with what this guy is saying and I wanna hear a little bit more about what he has to say. So build an email list is really important because those are also going to be the people who are, you know, your friends, your contacts, the people who are most likely to help you build your business by, you know, saying, yeah, he's writing about all this finance advice. I'm, I agree. He's hiring all these people. I'm gonna subscribe to this. There's value here. So your email list are the people who value what you do the most. And I think those

• 48:51James Altucher?

  two steps syndicating your content everywhere, producing content as much as possible and in as many different forms as possible, and then creating an email list. From there, if you just do those two things, you will be able to create a valuable business.

• 49:02Lewis Howes?

  What do you suggest people say, great syndicating, how do I get on all these different platforms?

• 49:08James Altucher?

  Well, I mentioned places that are open source, Medium, anybody can publish to, LinkedIn, anyone could publish to. You know, we were talking about Instagram earlier. I forget, I think it was off before we started the podcast. What I do is with Instagram, I don't just post a photo like everyone else does. I'll take the caption and make that an article. And play with the medium that you're choosing and do fun things with it. So it'll attract the new audience. And Instagram, nobody can stop me from publishing on Instagram. It's not like, it's not like they have, I choose myself. I don't want to be chosen to write anywhere. So either they, you know, ask me if, either a company will ask me,

• 49:48James Altucher?

  hey, can we republish this article or publish something by you? Or I just directly syndicate. But because I want to focus my time on reading, writing, and podcasting and experiencing things, I hire people to help me do the syndication. So it costs me money. And so that means some things I have to charge for. So that's how a business gets built.

• 50:07Lewis Howes?

  And what's the most profitable product that you have? Is it the lower end product, the higher end product?

• 50:12James Altucher?

  Uh, it's hard to tell because it's a young business still. It's been a year and a half. But, you know, I'll just be honest about the earnings. So last year, we had about 17 million in revenues and 1.6 million in earnings. This year, we'll have maybe 12 million in revenues. And two million in earnings, so we moved down on the revenues, but we moved up on the bottom line because I wanted to focus more on the bottom line this year. I saw how it's easy to get revenues, it's hard to make profits. So, so I focused much more on the, on the bottom lines with 20% improvement there. And, but I don't really know yet, um, you know, when you have four or five products, it's actually complicated to figure out where you're making money, what sources.

• 50:59James Altucher?

  It's hard to tell whether the cheaper products or the more expensive products make more money. I think I'll know within three, within another year or two, I'll know, I'll have a better sense.

• 51:07Lewis Howes?

  But you like having them all right now.

• 51:08James Altucher?

  Yeah, now you need them all. You need, you need, you need free, cheap, expensive. So, because free shows you who has signed up for your vision of the world. Cheap shows you who believes in it so much and who is being helped so much that they're willing to really value what, what you do. And then expensive shows you, okay, there are some things out there where people are even valuing it even more. And so I'm gonna put more energy into that, too.

• 51:35Lewis Howes?

  I like that. What's a question that you wish more people would ask you?

• 51:40James Altucher?

  You've asked a lot of good questions. Uh, I don't know. I think, oh, people, people, a lot of people ask me, do I feel happier since I've thrown everything out? And, uh, or, or, or I should say, that's the wrong question. I, I think the right question is how has my life improved since I've thrown everything out? Because I don't think I'm necessarily happier since I've thrown everything out. I think though my life has improved in that I never, ever have to think about any of those things. So sometime, that means the good thoughts and the bad thoughts. So I'm not necessarily happier because I miss some of the good thoughts that some of my possessions.

• 52:19James Altucher?

  Like for instance, I had a, um, an original sketch by one of the original animators of Snow War, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Of one of the dwarfs. Yeah, I had, um, an, an animation cell from the opening sequence of the 60's show, I Dream of Genie. I had, I was a collector. I have all these collectibles. I had a, a Dr. McCoy doll from, uh, the 70's. So I collected things and so I'm a little sad not having those things. I had, I used to have all my books in a big case. Every book I had written in every language and, and, and trophies and things like that. All that is gone. So it's a little sad for me there. I have pictures, photographs of when I was a kid, photographs of my family, all gone.

• 53:01James Altucher?

  But, so that's why I'm not recommending this as a way of life for anybody, because it's painful too. But what's better is that it does completely free me up for creating new experiences in my life and totally brand new from scratch with a blank slate, and I really enjoy that. And it gives me a pleasure in life that I haven't had before. So it's a new type of pleasure and experience.

• 53:26Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I like that. Okay, final few questions for you, because I'm smelling the food being made right now, so I'm getting hungry.

• 53:33James Altucher?

  Oh yeah, we have like a vegan chef making bacon flavored vegan food. I'm really looking forward to it.

• 53:40Lewis Howes?

  It's gonna be good.

• 53:41James Altucher?

  With our mutual friend who we didn't even know was a mutual friend.

• 53:44Lewis Howes?

  Yes, Bill Glazer, yes. One of the questions is, I think we asked this the last time, it's called the Three Truths. I don't know, I can't remember if you said this the last time, when it was, but...

• 53:54James Altucher?

  I have, by the way, I have a really bad memory.

• 53:56Lewis Howes?

  Okay, yes.

• 53:57James Altucher?

  I think I have early onset Alzheimer's, I'm a little bit worried about that.

• 54:00Lewis Howes?

  Really, that's not good.

• 54:01James Altucher?

  Yeah, no, so that's why I, I don't know if it's just an age thing, or, but I'm, I think eliminating most sugar from your diet is actually helps with, because they're thinking of renaming Alzheimer's Diabetes III, I've heard that.

• 54:13Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 54:14James Altucher?

  Maybe it's just a rumor, I don't know. But, but, but I decided I, I just don't really remember things, so I'm just gonna cut out sugar.

• 54:23Lewis Howes?

  Gluten and sugar probably will help, yeah. Okay, interesting. Well, this is called the Three Truths. This is what we want people to remember you by, so something that everyone will remember you by.

• 54:31James Altucher?

  If I have a trouble remembering it, I could call many of your listeners and they'll tell me.

• 54:35Lewis Howes?

  They'll tell you. The Three Truths is, you've written incredible books already, you're gonna write many other great works over the years.

• 54:42James Altucher?

  Knock on Glass?

• 54:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes, Knock on Glass. And if this was, you know, many years from now, it's your last day, and you get to, and everything was erased. Choose Yourself is gone, it sold millions of copies, Reinvent Yourself, and the other million books that you write are gone for whatever reason. And all people have to remember you by are these, because there's no possessions you have to give anyone, obviously, because you don't have anything. But what they have is a piece of paper, and you write down three things you know to be true about all of your experiences in life that you would pass on. These could be three lessons, three truths, something that you would share with your family, but also a message to the world about everything you learned. What would be the three things you know to be true?

• 55:26James Altucher?

  You know, I'll, I'll, I'm gonna go to four things.

• 55:28Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 55:29James Altucher?

  This is the thing where I always get back to all the time, which is what I wrote in Choose Yourself, and I rewrite it, you know, in, in other places, but physical health, emotional health, every day. 1% improvement every day, creative health and spiritual health, which just means gratitude. It's so important. It saves my life. Like, literally, when I don't do that every day, I go right into the sewer. And I mean that in every possible way you could possibly imagine. And when I do do that, it reaches me to new heights in ways that I would never expect. So, that, that's really it.

• 56:02Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 56:03James Altucher?

  Other than that, I really don't give a shit, actually, because once I'm dead, I'm dead.

• 56:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 56:07James Altucher?

  Like, it's sort of like, it's sort of like before you were born, who, who was missing you? Nobody. So for 15 billion years, nobody was missing me before I was born, because they didn't even know I was gonna exist. And then there's gonna be another trillion years after I die. So you just kind of like try on this food body as like a clothing for like 80 years or so, and then it's gone.

• 56:28Lewis Howes?

  All right. Okay, there you go. And what, is there a process every morning where you go through these four categories? Do you write them down? Do you meditate? Is there a process? Or is it kind of just throughout the day?

• 56:38James Altucher?

  I do roughly think how I'm going to achieve these, you know, do this 1% improvement each day, and it's gonna happen differently, and every single day will happen differently every single day.

• 56:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:48James Altucher?

  But really, what it is, is I never do a to-do list, because I think to-do lists are very stressful, because it's like, oh, it's halfway through the day, and I didn't call back Louis, or whatever. Uh, um, but at the end of the day, I'll think, um, I'll think of an I did list. So, and I, and the first things on my I did list was, well, did I do the physical, emotional, creative, spiritual?

• 57:09Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 57:10James Altucher?

  So, always do an I did list, never do a to-do list.

• 57:12Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. Okay. Um, before I ask the last question, I want to acknowledge you for a moment, James, like I do all my guests, for your incredible creativity and your

• 57:21James Altucher?

  Thank you, Louis.

• 57:21Lewis Howes?

  your wisdom. I feel like whenever I'm around you, I assimilate this, like, wealth of wisdom that you have, in terms of

• 57:29James Altucher?

  Vice versa. I'm gonna show up for the, the national chess team. I'm here, boys. Let me in.

• 57:36Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. And, uh, you just have such incredible generosity with your, your way of being, with your energy, with your wisdom. You're so free in sharing constantly the things you do. I never feel a sense of like, holding back of information from you with, with me as a peer, but also with your, your listeners and with With everyone in your life. So the fact that you've been through so much, you've learned so much, and you constantly are willing to share it with everyone for me is really inspiring.

• 58:03James Altucher?

  Thank you, Lewis.

• 58:03Lewis Howes?

  Lifts me up, and I feel like I get smarter every time around you.

• 58:06James Altucher?

  Well, and I will acknowledge you. I will say, and this is in particular, your podcast. And that's why I'm so grateful to be on it. And not that we're just sort of going back and forth here. That's what it just seemed like. But I listen to your podcast often to prepare for my own, not just when we have, sometimes we have some guests, but sometimes we don't. But you're a great interviewer, and I listen, yours is one of the few podcasts I listen to just to keep me in shape for my own. So.

• 58:35Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it.

• 58:35James Altucher?

  Good job.

• 58:36Lewis Howes?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 58:37James Altucher?

  I hope this, I hope this particular episode matches up.

• 58:39Lewis Howes?

  I'm sure it will, I'm sure it will. Before I ask the final question, where can we connect with you? And where should we get the book, the new book, Reinvent Yourself?

• 58:48James Altucher?

  Well, Reinvent Yourself, you can get on Amazon, and right now you can get it in either paperback, or, you know, once this is out, you can get it in paperback or ebook. And.

• 58:57Lewis Howes?

  And they should bundle it and get Choose Yourself at the same time.

• 58:59James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Lewis Howes?

  Are you going to do a discount the first week for this as well?

• 59:02James Altucher?

  Well, that's 99 cents. It's as cheap as Amazon lets me go. And you could find me, here I just said, don't go to anybody's destination site, but you can find me at jamesaltucher.com or LinkedIn, Medium, Twitter.

• 59:15Lewis Howes?

  Instagram, yeah, yeah.

• 59:16James Altucher?

  Yeah, I'm trying to build my Instagram following, so Instagram, @altucher, and that's it.

• 59:21Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Okay. And the final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

• 59:27James Altucher?

  Just having well-being every single day. Just doing those, those four things every single day, that will get you to greatness. There's no, there's no way out.

• 59:35Lewis Howes?

  James Altucher, thanks for coming on, man. Appreciate you.

• 59:37James Altucher?

  Thank you, Lewis.

• 59:40Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this interview with James. If you did, please share this with your friends. You can use the podcast app right now. If you're on your phone, just click on the share button and tweet it out. Tag me, @lewishouse, and @altucher. And if you're on Instagram, snap a little screenshot and put it on your Instagram story and let me know that you're listening. I love to connect with people who are tagging on Instagram stories. As well, and also make sure to check out the YouTube channel. We've got all the videos of the interviews over there so you can connect and, and leave a comment below the YouTube channel at youtube slash Lewis Howes. You guys mean the world to me and I want to know your thoughts about reinvention. Have you been reinventing yourself over the years?

• 1:00:25Lewis Howes?

  Or you get stuck from time to time and you're not sure how to reinvent? Or you're afraid of what it might look like if you reinvent? If you leave an identity behind and you recreate a new identity, are you afraid of that to happen? So let me know, share with me anywhere you feel comfortable on social media, what it's like to reinvent? Are you afraid of it? Are you great at it? Do you see value in this? And share with me your thoughts. I appreciate you guys. Thanks for sharing this out. Thanks for being a part of this community. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.