The School of Greatness - 19 James Altucher: Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream

Episode Date: June 6, 2013

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 […]

This is episode number 19 with James Altucher. 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. 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 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 weeks ago. Unfortunately, my team did take third place. And it was upsetting, a little bit annoying, frustrating, all these different things because I did want to win.

I wanted to be the U.S. National Champion. And I trained really hard all year for it. U.S. 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, 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 big successful business minds were there speaking as well. Had an awesome time there in Toronto.

Big shout out to Mastermind Talks. Then went to New York City, hosted my own little mastermind group and had some other great meetings there about my next book that I'm working on, to mastermind talks, and then went to New York City, hosted my own 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. mindset on a lot of things, tons of breakthroughs. And now I am trying to get my voice back. Today, I actually had a huge injury on my elbow in the USA National Championships. I landed on my elbow when I was trying to take a shot at one point. Someone hit me. I fell down straight in the elbow and it started to swell up 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 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 felt a lot of pressure. But anyways, 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. 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 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, 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 was kind of amazing because he would get all the success. He would get all this momentum. 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 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. And I want to make a quick shout out to all the fans out there on the School of Greatness who have been tagging me on all their amazing pictures on Instagram, 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 to 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. 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, CupcakeJ929, and thanks to everyone else who left reviews this week. With that, guys, let's let the class begin. 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 i'll touch her i'll touch her fast so james i'll touch her 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. 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 we can lay the context for everyone. 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 lost my home, my family, my friends, money, jobs. Now, 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 built a couple of companies, lost it all, but how did you first get into business? Sure. And 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 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 want to 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 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 driving. And I had a software background. So I was doing all the programming. I showed them the internet. 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 going to 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 were making websites for the Wu-Tang Clan, Puff Daddy, Death Row Records, Miramax, Warner Brothers, HBO, Time Warner, New Line Cinema, Disney. We were 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. We had about 450 employees built up. So there was a lot of management involved.

I sold the business. And, you know, I basically hit my goal. 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. And suddenly you're living the nightmare.

And I couldn't get it right i kept starting up making money 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 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. And I had to keep figuring 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, you know, I have a more holistic view 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. Now, what you did the first time, I think in the story you told me, you sold your first company for like 15 million. Is that right? Yes. And then you said that you lost it in about 15 weeks. You were spending about a million dollars a week. Is that right?

I was so insane. It was crazy. I was basically losing. And this was cash. It wasn't like BS internet stock paper. It was basically a million dollars cash a week I was losing. And when people say, oh, I lost a lot of money, they always seem to end up with $10 million at the end or whatever. And you don't feel sorry for them. I was like 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 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. I'm supposed to get some money out of my house over the weekend and then I'll drive down and pay you back. And they said no. 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 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, you know, 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.

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. Now, what was the main motivation for you wanting to make a lot of money in the first place? Well, initially, I didn't. I mean, I really thought I was going to be a writer or, you know, somebody who was going to 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 1,000 people with the company that I sold it to. And I was trying to make more. Suddenly, I became crazy.

I thought, oh, my gosh. I actually thought to myself that $15 million was not enough, that I actually needed. I thought I needed $15 million to be happy, but I actually then suddenly thought I needed $100 million to be happy. happy, but I actually then suddenly thought I needed a hundred million to be happy. And what I, what I wanted to do with a hundred million is I wanted, my main goal was I wanted to make a Superbowl ad with just me walking around in the street doing nothing. That was my only goal. I thought then I would be happy. So then I would try to make $100 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 riding the internet boom.

So I thought at the time I was just very lucky. 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 cashed in on the life insurance policy. That's how just disturbed I was.

Wow. Now, did you have support to help you get back on your feet or your wife or family or anyone, friends were like, all right, what are you doing? Let's get together. Let's help you out. Or what happened? What switched it around? 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. At the end of the day, I really didn't want to kill myself. I really did want them to eat food and not starve to death. I had to figure out how to keep going. 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 with my relationships with my my parents and so on I wasn't surrounding myself with the people who loved me I let my mental

health go down the tubes I wasn't I had stopped the people who loved me. I let my mental health go down the tubes. I had stopped coming up with ideas. I figured, okay, I made the money. I don't need to be smart anymore. I'm done. And I let my spiritual health go down the tubes, meaning I forgot to be grateful for what I had. I forgot to count myself blessed for having helped people and having

succeeded and having created a lot of jobs and wealth for others. I forgot to be grateful for this. And instead, I became desperate and I felt that I had scarcity instead of abundance. And all of these things caused me ultimately 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, you know, what do I need to do today to improve my health in all four of those levels? And what did you start doing? Well, I started sleeping eight to 10 hours a day. That's extremely important.

As opposed to two or four? Two hours a day. Wow. 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 going to make an appointment with myself for 3 PM, not 3 AM. Like 3 AM is, is I never have meetings at 3 AM, 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 going to meet James. I'm going to meet at 3 p.m and we'll discuss these worries i'm gonna go back to sleep now i like that and the other thing very important i had to eliminate screen time um after like 6 p.m 7 p.m in order to in order to be asleep by let's say 8 or 8 30 so no computers no tv no phones that was that we mean nothing you know and even no no news nothing like that, no emails. And I had to just 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 easier 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? So I would build up connections and starting from scratch, I would build a network by coming up with ideas for other people, which 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. Because there's only so much you can execute. 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 right now let's talk about sleep really quick because there was another guy at this conference that was an attendee. I think his name was Amir. And 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 around 7 or 8 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 anything in business and your career as well. Now, do you feel like that sleep for you was what kind of shifted things? Absolutely. And look, I am not the physical specimen that Amir is, but there's so much evidence that a good sleep schedule, like eight to 10 hours, could replace any antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication. It helps with your digestion and metabolism. So you stay fit more naturally.

It helps me with my concentration. It also allows me to get a lot more work done before, let's say the business phone call startup around nine or 10 a.m., in so many ways, sleep is great. And it just reduces stress and anxiety. And also, every time I get back into this schedule, and I've been 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. And normally, I get sick a lot. So when things are on the downturn, I'm getting sick all the time.

But I've stuck to the 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. Wow. Impressive. Now, let's talk about money really quick. Your story about money is probably similar to 80% of Americans, at least 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 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? You know, you know, there's one, I'm going to 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 a good feeling to exceed your expectations. Now, that doesn't mean, okay, I'm going to live in a shed or, you know, everything's going to go to crap and I'm going to be happy about it because that's really hard for people to do. We're culturally, we want certain things in our lives and, you know, we want to be with, you know, the type of people we like and so on. So it's hard to totally make expectations go to zero and nor should you. But 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 going to be happy unless I'm going out with, you know, a supermodel and I have a million dollars in the bank or $10 million 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 want to, my goal in life is to never go to jail. So that includes real physical jail. It also includes kind of the mental and emotional and even financial jails that we often put ourselves in. that we often put ourselves in. Right.

And again, what happens though is that you have this idea and 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. You become like this magnet, like this super magnet and money flows from unknown sources straight into you. When does this happen? When basically you give up the goal of I'm going to make $10 million.

I'm going to have a successful business with 1,000 employees. have a successful business with a thousand employees. When you give up all those goals that seem important, they actually turn out to be superficial things that keep you jailed. If you just focus on the four aspects of health and also this feeling always that you're already abundant, like 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 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 right now let's say you're not very goal oriented i would say i like to set goals uh sometimes financial sometimes physical whatever may be emotional goals uh relationship goals things like that and let's say you are a company and you've got your company's goal is to make $100 million. You've got 1,000 employees. You're trying to get $100 million or $500 million, whatever it is. Should you not be setting those financial goals? Should you instead be setting, I'm going to create a culture of positive energy where my employees are happy, we're more connected, we're more inspired, we're understanding and all these different types of things?

Or should you completely wipe out that financial goal? 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, built tens of billions in revenues. It's kind of funny. The company was called Applied Semantics. I had an opportunity to, two little stories. I had an opportunity to invest in them well before Google bought them.

And I said, no, this is stupid. Like, search engines are dead. And I had an opportunity to buy 50% of the company for basically like a million dollars, which was super cheap. How much would you have gotten from that? How much would you have made? Me, personally, because I would have done it through a VC fund, I probably would have made like $200 million. Oh, my gosh. But another quick story.

This morning, the guy who was like 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 wow anyway maybe if i ever go broke again i can always call my third cousin and uh ask him for money he probably won't give you diapers either though no no he'll probably turn me down third cousins are uh are further away than parents that's crazy wow what a story so oh so another company though yep apple you know steve jobs is 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 used 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 going to be automatic he never even had to think about the money and I'll tell you in in in from 2002 to 2007 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. 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 want to look at my bank account while I was building a successful company because I knew it was coming.

Wow. You know what's interesting? You say this. After I got injured playing football and I was recovering on my sister's couch and trying to figure out what I was going to do next. And I was for 15 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 mentor of mine, who's got a number of different products in market and a 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 15 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. And when you add enough value to other people's lives. And I was like, but I can really feel like I'm ready to make this money right now. You know, I can really use it. And he was like, it's going to 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. And then what happened? And then it started flooding in like gangbusters. 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 hosting these live networking events all around the country,

these 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 not offline. And I said, you know what? I'm seeing all this value in connecting with people face-to-face. If I can bring that to people that have businesses together in the same city, 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 300 to 500 people to show up to 20 different events I hosted in one year. And by just adding value, I started to make money from doing that. And then I just learned how to make more and more money and it just started to come in. Yeah. And that's how it

happens is basically, you know, LinkedIn is a great example where you were almost 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. Yes. Okay. It makes sense then. LinkedIn's worth $2 or $3 billion, whatever it's worth. I don't know.

But by being a mini LinkedIn, a personal LinkedIn, you are automatically going to be worth a sliver of what LinkedIn was worth, which is a lot of money. A sliver of $2 billion is going to be a lot of money. Right. 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. Interesting. So you're telling us... I always try to emulate Google, and it works. Interesting. So don't focus on the money or the financial goals at all. Focus on adding value and building something amazing for people. If you had to do only two things, it's a 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, of you. And, and then you'll start to tie into the abundance that, you know, is important for feeding your family and for providing for you and for luxury and whatever else you want.

Now, let me play a little devil of advocate just because I know people are going to 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 got to focus on the money or else I've got to fire everyone.

Their lives are dependent on the company. What do I do now? Sure. And so, and I've been through that, like whether you have 10, 50, a thousand employees, you always stay up at night wondering like, look, how am I going to make payroll? Not this week, but six months from now, my brain would race all night long. And the way to do it is not to say, OK, well, I'm going to 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 going to come up with 10 ideas for bigger websites to pitch them. And I'm going to go tomorrow, call them up and pitch them. And then I'm going to call 10 of my other customers. And then I'm going to call my friends who are, you know, C-level executives at other companies and start pitching them on ideas. But 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'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 deliver value. You organize a conference or a meetup and you get paid immediately. So you just have to work hard and make sure you're delivering value. The value comes first. 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 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, 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 that fast that your muscle atrophy.

It's the same thing with the idea muscle. You have to come up with ideas every single day, 10 ideas a day, till your brain is sweating, till it hurts. And then, you know, just like with physical training, 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. 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. Right, right. That's crazy. I love it. Now let's talk about, okay, so we said don't focus on the money and again i think about the expectations i want to make that whole i want to make that clear about

the expectations thing um is it not to have high expectations or what is that specifically 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 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 right this sounds kind of corny and a little self-helpish so so but you could but it's practical stuff so part of your ideas could be who am i going to introduce to today so if you

could introduce five people uh a day to each other or 10 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. If you just keep doing that every day, by the end of the year, you've introduced 3,600 people to each other. So these people become your tribe. It's to their incentive because you're adding value to them. It's to their incentive. Because you're adding value to them, it's to their incentive to make you successful. And so being healthy in these ways translates down to very practical ways like that. I could give many, many examples every week even in my life right now, just totally random examples. Now, you didn't learn this stuff at an early

age though because you were messing up 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 thirties. Is that correct? Early thirties. Yeah. Until I would say until like three years ago. Okay. So you're really too old,

really too old to be learning this. I wasn't very good at it. Now, what shifted and how did you learn all these different – because obviously your attitude changed. You're more grateful, which I'm 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 things you don't have all the time. Now, what shifted?

Who taught you this? How did you learn this? Where did you read it from? What happened until you started learning all these things and changing your life? 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 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've 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. I don't have to do that anymore. I don't have to come over 10 ideas a day anymore. I don't have to sleep well anymore. I don't have to be around people who love me anymore. I can eat whatever I want. When you think It's really irrational when you think about it. Yeah, exactly. So you kind of let yourself go, so to speak. 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 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 happy about it. And discipline actually creates a lot of freedom and flexibility when you'd have discipline, right? Sure. Because instead of, 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 4.30 in the morning or 5 in the morning. I'm reading a great book. 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. I play tennis, do yoga. And, you know, it's I'm totally free. 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 haven't opened up a newspaper in two years. I write for newspapers, but I don't read them. Yeah, I hate the news. This is interesting. How, how does it make you feel now compared to five, 10, 20 years ago? What's, what's the difference every day? How does it feel now? It's good because I'm not, I'm not anxious. I'm not anxious about having more money than the other person or proving myself to somebody. You never want to feel like you have to prove yourself to somebody. I'm not anxious about my health.

I actually feel healthier than I did when I was 20 years old. And 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 is longer now than when I was 20 years old. Uh, same thing for tennis and other others or yoga or other sports. Uh, you know, I see huge differences. I, you know, the idea of muscle is very important, not just for business ideas, but let's say your car gets stuck on the highway, you know, I see huge differences. I, you know, the idea muscle is very important, not just for business ideas, but let's say your car gets stuck on the highway.

You know, your tire goes out. Suddenly I have a hundred ideas about what to do and how to get home or whatever. Whereas 20 years ago, I might've been upset. I might've 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. 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 just harder to do because I also don't resent bad luck. Bad luck is – there's no such thing as bad luck. It's just luck. Right. Interesting. Now, what's been the most influential book you've read? 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 skimming through or dabbling through four or five different books a day. So over the course of a year though, I will read hundreds and hundreds of books. And so there's no one book. I mean, really almost every book I read, I get some value out of. And there's a lot of books I don't like that I won't read, but the books I do finish, all of them are incredibly valuable. Can you give a couple maybe? Yeah, a couple of readers. There's Abundance by Peter

Diamandis. I don't know how to say his last name. I think that's an incredible book. It's related to The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. They talk about all the innovations that have happened over the years and centuries and really really smart and those are the sort of books where your iq uh goes up just by reading them another book i'm reading recently is called the tools

by phil stutz and barry michaels which be very valuable they psychologists, but they kind of have a spiritual take on psychology, and it's very interesting. I really like to read strong autobiographical fiction. So there's authors like Dennis Johnson or Raymond Carver. I really enjoy books by them. So those are a few examples. I recently read Coolidge by Amity Shlaes. I thought that was a very good historical biography. Interesting. All right. So tell me about the living the dream part. What's it mean to live the dream?

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

But not just money, but opportunities and adventures pour in. You know, we met at this conference last week. What an incredible adventure that conference was. That's great. 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. And I'm,

I can't even stress it enough. Every day is an adventure right now. And that's not because I think, Oh, looking at, looking at a beautiful flower as an adventure, like that's fine. But I mean,

actual adventures, like every day things happen that blow my mind. Right. You're meeting new people. You're experiencing new things. Opportunities are coming your way. That type of thing, right? Yes. That's great. Everything. Meeting, 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, people's 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 help people instead of always be hurting. Right, right. You know, 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 have a lot in common, actually. And we exchanged a bunch of emails and talked about how we both tip in $2 bills and all these different things. I've 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,

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 idea on, on this next question. And this question is what's your definition of greatness then? 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. 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 So being great today is greatness. Like I love today. And that's the only thing I can work with. You're the man. I appreciate it, James.

You got this book coming out right now. Tell me a little bit about the book and where people can connect with you online. Sure. So jamesaltucher.com is where I blog. And at 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 use. 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 to be in a cubicle job. And so that existed for about a century. And now it's going away and 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 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. 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.

Wow. Which, by the way, I lose money on because Amazon gets a chunk or however it's distributed, they get a chunk, but I will pay people back the full price of the book. If they can prove to me that they've read it, I will pay them back. Wow. That's pretty impressive. 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. It's great. I love it. James Altshuler dot com. Thanks, my man.

I appreciate you. Yeah. Thank you, Lois. Thanks. 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' story. Now, make sure to go and check out jamesaltucher.com and get his book. He's got that promise where he's going to pay you back the cost of the book if you don't get the value from 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 going to 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. Let him know you got the book and share this with your friends as well. If you enjoyed the episode, you can go to school of greatness.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. Bye.