The School of Greatness - 425 James Altucher: Reinvent Yourself and Create the Future

Episode Date: December 28, 2016

"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

This is episode number 425 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. 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 lewishouse.com slash 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 wanna see the experience of James Altucher over video. For those that don't know who he is,

James Altucher is an American hedge fund who 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. 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. 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? 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 slash 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. Good to see you, man. 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. And here I am. It's perfect timing. What a great studio you've got here. You've got the wall of greatness up there.

Yes. 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 guests. Nice, man. And now you'll be on the wall. Now I'll be on the wall. I'll do this in person. 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 is this sold? 300,000? 200,000? 200,000? Actually, I'm over a half a million books on that now.

Half a million books. Yeah. That's got to be in the top. I'm really grateful for that. It's got to be in the top 1% of 1% in terms of authors who sell a book. Well, I've written now 18 books in total. If you add up the other 17, it still doesn't equal this book. No way.

So this sold the most. Yes. Wow. Why do you think that sold the most of everything? Well, I think because we're in this time where two amazing things are happening. One 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 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. 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. So just start making YouTube videos. It's the skill of storytelling, not the equipment that's going to 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 to do makeup like Lady Gaga. Totally blew up. Now she has a $30 million makeup company. But it was only then that she bought the equipment to do good videos. Quality. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the story with everybody you have to you know they're 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 going to upgrade my equipment now i'm going to upgrade my my studio

whatever whatever you need to upgrade but but ready first, fire second, aim last. I know. I think you really got to 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 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. No one will ever give you permission to create the future. Because no one else knows what the future is. So if you're going to do something with impact right now, that means you're already creating the future. Because that's what makes impact. It is something that's different from the present. So no one is going to give you permission to do that.

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 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, 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. But that's when you're, you're onto something, you're going to do it and you might fail. And then you go on and do the next thing, but, or you, it might work. And now you've done something well. So with Choose Yourself, what I did here was, and, and, you know on and do the next thing or it might work and now you've done something well. So with Choose Yourself, what I did here was, and this is a book that's already a couple years old, but what I did here was I decided I'm going to self-publish. I did books with mainstream publishers

and it didn't quite work for me. It worked for other people, but it didn't work for me. And so I said, I'm going to hire a book designer. I'm going to hire an interior designer. I'm going to hire good editors. I'm going to work with the best teams at marketing.

And I professionally self-published this book. And it's been my most successful book. And I made the most money out of it. Half a million sales. You can also kind of manipulate the pricing. You can change it on Amazon for special weekends for like $1 or 99 cents or two bucks, and then you can put it up to $20 or whenever you want to, right? Yeah, you control everything about it. So even just a few months ago, there was an article that appeared in the New York Times which mentioned the book.

So this book catapulted three years after it was published, because it's an evergreen book. It's still relevant now. But just a few months ago, it was number one for all nonfiction on Amazon. Wow. So it just keeps on going. So the other thing that happened that makes Choose Yourself very interesting is that the economy changed. So right now, half of all jobs basically 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. Companies are outsourcing, companies are demoting people. Nobody's happy in their big jobs at corporations.

So 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. 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 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 with a natural outcome of choosing yourself. Yeah. 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 another 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? Right. Well, let's look at it in terms of music. Even the best, best bands ever, they have like glory period of five to seven years and then they spend

the rest of their careers uh just touring on those playing their old hits yeah on their old hits i can't i can only 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 can 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 went out. The Rolling Stones, they're always reinventing themselves,

but when they tour, they play the old hits. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, Madonna's a great example. Madonna's a great example. She reinvents every two years, it seems like, to kind of stay in tune with the themes of the music world. But she's been doing it for, what, 25 years? Yeah, and Louis C.K. 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 he's also rewriting his acts now. But this is not just... We're talking about sports and comedy and artistic endeavors. This happens in professional endeavors as well. You can't just work for the same company forever because that company is changing and reinventing and you might get demoted. You can't outsource your self-esteem and your sense of self-worth to another company or organization because they're

going to let you down. They're going to break your heart. So you have to be able to say, okay, well, they're no longer satisfying my needs. I'm going to jump ship and do this other either job or career. Think about your careers, not just jobs. Again, you've done courses on LinkedIn 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. They're ways- Different skill sets, yeah. Yeah. And you have to develop these different skill sets. That's what this... And it's not like it was so incredibly hard that writing a book will be the only thing you do in life. You're

going to do many things for the rest of your life. That's what life is here for. So that's reinvention. Do you think people are screwed if they don't start thinking about how they're going to reinvent themselves? I think so because I think Kevin Kelly, he's got a great blog. 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 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 reap the benefits later. work, work, work, work, and then reap the benefits later.

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 your own ideas about what you want to be and what you want to do, and then work to create it, and then eventually either outsource it or move on. So, and of course, Tim Ferriss talks about this in the four-hour workweek, where eventually he started to automate his processes. So he moved his workweek down from 80 hours to four hours. That was the premise of that book.

But I think 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 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. 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. They're going to have to reinvent themselves.

They're going to have to reinvent themselves. That's just one industry. Same thing is happening in publishing, in the music industry, in accounting, in the legal industry. Yeah, there's new softwares coming out that makes everything simpler for accounting. You don't even – Yeah, and also like 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 legal zoom download a document and we'll sign it so so so many things are happening now and companies are catching up individuals are catching up and

you know hopefully the listeners are catching up yeah so how do we cultivate this idea of kind of reinventing but it's more like innovative ideas for ourselves to 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? Well, let me ask you a question. When you switched into, I don't know, did you play handball since you were a kid? No.

Okay. So how did you decide I'm going to be an Olympic level athlete in handball? Sure. And what was the first thing you did? I saw it on TV. I watched the 2008 Olympics. I was sleeping on my sister's couch still. I just got 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 want to play on the USA. So something stirred inside you. Yes. You felt it. It's like a dream. A new dream was created. And that happens to people, I don going to play on the USA. So something stirred inside you. You felt it. It's like a dream. A new dream was created.

And that happens to people, I don't want to say every day, but once a year, a couple times a year, once a month. 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. Yeah, don't have the bandwidth for. It's not the right timing or whatever. But you already had training as an athlete.

So you knew, okay, this is another sport. This is something where it's almost like a backdoor into the Olympics or into the U.S. team because who else would think to do this? No one else is playing. So it seems like an old man's sport. I could probably squeeze in here and get good enough. Okay, so what did you do next? So next I started researching.

I went online and started researching USA handball, handball teams in Ohio. There was nothing in Ohio. Then I said, okay, where are the teams in the country? And I started looking at, like, what are the best teams? Because if I'm going to 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 going to go to New York City and learn from these players, this team. And for about the next year, I was like, well, how am I going to 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 going to leave Ohio and go to New York City to see what this is like. And by the way, when you were in New York City, it's not like you stopped making money on LinkedIn. No, no. I was still doing that. No, these things were interweaving each other.

They're all interweaving. Yes. So about a year later, a year and a half later, I started really making a lot of money. It 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 will respond to me on the USA National team for like the headquarters. No one will respond to me at the New York team. I would email people. I would call numbers.

No one would get back to me. How are you getting better during this time? I was just training as an athlete, but 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 got 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 got to go and try it so I can kind of eliminate it from my mind as something I want to do or don't want to do in the future. But if I, for me personally, I know that if I think about something and I want to 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 going to 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 going to go stay for the month and I'm going to show up at their practice because they had the practice address of where they practice on the website for the New York team. So you got ready by constantly training. Training, yep.

And then you just fired. That's it. I just showed up, and I just showed up to practice when I said they were playing because no one picked up or got back to me. No one gave you permission to do that. No one gave me permission. I showed up, and the first day I got there, I was the only American 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. So as a white man, you were basically the minority. I was the minority. I was like, they barely spoke English. I was just like this outsider. And I got there and I go, Hey guys, my is lewis 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 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. People better than me. Right, so you could learn from them. So you have to find your plus. And at first, they're virtual. You maybe watch YouTube videos of them, you read books about them, you study things that they write or photographs they take or videos they shoot. So then

they became real for you because you actually joined them 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. Yes. 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. And there were people there that were like that who were on the team who were kind of beginners. Right. So you found your peer group. You found your new cohort. And then you find – it's almost a bad word for it, but I call it the minus, which is people you could teach. I don't know if this was 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. And that's almost every reinvention. 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. So that happens with all of them. I talk to anybody from a rapper to a huge entrepreneur, like a billionaire entrepreneur. They've all had their plus minus equal.

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've got to 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- Sure. And you learn and kind of, it 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. And the other day we went to the Museum of the Broad. I don't know if you've been to it.

It's downtown, right? Yeah. It's amazing out here. Beautiful museum. All these pop art exhibitions. And I hadn't been in a museum in 20 years. I read every description. 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 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. So, and then that gives me a chance to, to, to potentially use other outlets too, for the podcast. Like, okay, I could maybe write an article about this on LinkedIn or whatever. 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? 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 I'm in the process of – I just wrote a children's book actually a month ago. I'm in the process of – With Molly, right? Yeah, Molly Hahn actually uh who's a great illustrator uh i'm in the process of uh uh writing some fiction i'm running a a business revolving around my content um and then another thing happened to me about seven months ago

uh maybe last march uh 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 going to go back to the apartments, and I'm just going to throw everything out in the apartments. So I didn't want to do the, you know, the Marie Kondo book, The Magic Art of Tidying Up. So she says, okay, minimalism is good, but pick everything up and decide if you love it or not. 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 going to throw it out. I decided I'm not going to love anything and I'm just going to 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 going to 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. And so she went out there to one of my apartments. She had a whole truck. She took her husband, her kids, her nephews, nieces, cousins. And they literally – I think I had three or four beds in that house, computers, TVs, dishes, thousands of books, all my clothes, everything.

And she just cleaned up. And I remember I called up that landlord a few months later and she said, what did you, do 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, dad, this entire family of people just walked into the house, and they're pulling the beds out. Is this okay? I'm like, yeah, yeah.

She said, they're pulling my bed. I said, just let them take everything. Now, of course, she lives normally with her mom, but she happened to be at the house that we did. Lisa did call me up one time, and I picked up the phone. She said, are you sure you want me to throw out your diploma? I'm throwing everything else out. She threw trophies out that I had made when I was 18. I mean that I had 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 wow amazing so um and then the New York Times read a front page article about you and what what section was it oh it was the front page of the fashion section. Fashion section.

So you can see me. That's huge. 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, uh, 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. 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. Everything. And you have, what, 13 items, 20 items? Yeah. Basically, I max out at 15. 15 items.

Yeah. So 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 – and by the way, people think, oh, that's expensive. No, you could go into a pharmacy and buy a pack of three t-shirts for $12. So it's not so expensive. So – but I carry basically all my belongings with me. Everywhere you go. I live in your apartment right now.

That's amazing. If you want to send me mail, this is my address right now, Lewis' apartment. School of Greatness Headquarters, yes. Yeah. So you have a laptop. What do you have, a phone, a laptop? Yeah, laptop, phone. I actually got rid of my tablet because you could read on your laptop or your phone or whatever.

And then I just have a couple outfits and toothpaste, toothbrush. But I stay in Airbnb. So they always come equipped with like 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 do you feel like you'll do this for a long time or is this just a reinvention phase that maybe it'll go back to your place? 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 going to settle in St. Louis and live there the rest of my life. I could die tomorrow. I'm going to 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 600 miles an hour. That's pretty risky if you think about it. It is. So I'm taking a huge risk tomorrow. And if I survive it, then maybe I'll live this way another day. 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. This is all I'm thinking about right now. Yeah. Amazing. 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 can actually be really stressful, giving up all your possessions. The real key is giving up the things you think about. And so then you can focus. Then you let creativity in and you can focus on this is what I really want to do is figure out interesting things to talk to Lewis 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 and so on. What's the most meaningful thing in your life right now? Well, I think – 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. Besides family, which is everyone's answer, what's the most meaningful thing? I think that my writing and podcasts interweave with each other.

So I really believe in a message in this. 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. 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 going to show, if I'm interested in something, just show up where the team is practicing. What a great idea. I never heard of that before. oh, I'm just going to show – if I'm interested in something, just show up where the team is practicing.

What a great idea. I never heard of that before. That should go in my book. Right, exactly. And because I self-published, by the way, maybe it will go in my book. I still got three weeks to go. There you go. Yeah, re-advention.

What do you think – in the previous – we've had you on I think three times now. You're the second most interviewed person on this show. A great honor. I believe the second most. Who's the most who's beating me and I'm 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 you've been on mine quite a bit too by the way yeah thank you appreciate it appreciate no problem you're coming you're coming on again when your next book comes out that 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. Yeah. It was a million dollars a month. It would happen so blindingly fast. It would be like, I am really one of the least intelligent people on the planet. Most brilliant, and then you're the least intelligent.

I'm the least intelligent person who's ever been on this podcast. There you go. Okay. What do you think is 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? 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 there's this, you know, I think things happen in the reverse order of how 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 sleeping on a couch at your sister's. That tells me that there was an end. Yes, my football career was over.

Right. So you started your story with an end. So end. Then there's a fog. Like you saw something on TV and you didn't know how. You started doing research. You didn't know how to get involved. Nobody was returning your calls.

They laughed at you. There's this fog in the middle. 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. Then now you're on the team.

Bam, beginning. And that story's not over yet, right? Like you're going to continue to be on the team. So we haven't reached an end to that story. 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 failures and mistakes and growth. It's not like your failure or my failure. It's everybody goes through this and everybody I've had on my podcast has gone through this where we end something and it didn't work out the way we thought it was going to work out. It wasn't like, oh, I did it. I made it to the Olympics and got seven gold medals and now life is over. It's like, no, life continues. Something bad happens and you're on your sister's couch and then there's that fog and then there's the beginning.

And all these – there's a commonality to all these stories. So when I've lost – let's say I've lost 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 recapturing that what I call this daily practice that I talk about in Choose Yourself where, okay, rather than worrying and regretting what happened, I got to focus today on my physical health. I've got to be around people who are good for me.

I've got to be creative and I've got to be grateful and compassionate 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. But it always gets back to kind of following this daily practice and making sure today I check those boxes. Because the only way I can predict a good tomorrow is if today is a good day. And if today is a good day, only if I'm not sick in bed,'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 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 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 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 going to 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 because they come up every single day. They do. 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 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. We were having a coffee down the street

from here, just so I always make sure I get to a place early, I scope it out, and then I go get a coffee, and so I'm in the area i was praying you would say oh i gotta cancel lewis house just cancel okay all right i'll just have a coffee here go home chill yeah yeah stress right go home and watch tv or something well i'm glad you didn't uh i'm glad i didn't cancel so you're here um by the way i didn't answer the second question which is regret i i really try hard not to regret anything because then I wouldn't be here talking to you, which is a cliche.

I hate doing any cliche, but I force myself not to regret. Yeah, there you go. Is there anything missing in your life right now? I find that you're constantly reinventing, you're purging, you're creative, you're doing things that looks like you want to be doing. Is there anything missing? There are a ton of things missing from my life right now. I never think about them. I can list a thousand things that are missing from my life right now, but I won't start that. That's one list I will not start. Okay. So you don't focus

on those things? Never. Do you ever think about them and say, okay, I'm going to go create this, the thing that's missing, or I'm going to make it happen, or do you just allow it to be? I mean, if I'm sitting and there's a blank piece of paper, I don't feel like I'm missing the words that should go on this paper. I just start doing it. 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? No, because I know if I stick to being healthy and being around good people and being creative every day and being compassionate and grateful for the people around me, then you never reach – there's no such thing as inner peace.

So you'll never reach it, but I'll get closer and closer to feeling well-being. So well-being, you could think of it in many different ways as opposed to happiness. 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 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.

I couldn't have asked for anything better. I created everything I wanted to do. What would that be? Well, I never think about it in terms of a year, but I will think about it in terms of a day. And so all those things I mentioned of that daily practice I do of being healthy in those four areas, I want to be 1% better every day. And now it's hard to compound that. 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 38 times better than you were at the beginning of a year. So that's what I aim for. I hope to be 38 times better in my creativity, in my emotional health, in my physical health. Now, I don't know what that means. It doesn't mean I'm going to lose – I'm going to have 38 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. I feel like you're one of the smartest guys

I've had on who knows how to take an idea and turn it into 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 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 break it down for us? Sure. So, I mean mean i do a lot of different things i have um 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 uh uh 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 of did it all. Here's the thing about angel investing and I'll quickly go on to the business I have. The thing about angel investing is you don't invest and then a couple of days later you make money. No, it's like eight to 10 years, right? Yeah. Like I have investments from 2009 that are

going great, but I'm probably not going to see money from them until 2020. So that money – and you have to invest like a good amount of money for it to have impact. That money, I will never – I didn't know even in 2009. It's going to be – it's like you say goodbye to it for 11 years. And you may never get it back. You may never get it back. But now, since most of my investments were in the period, let's say 2008 to 2011 when things were kind of at a low. I don't invest at the moment. And those investments are... Now I've seen the zeros have kind of happened already. 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 what's left. But... That's a side thing. Yeah. That's a side thing. So I decided about a year and a half ago, March 2015, I'm going to – 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 going to kind of move it up a level, which means I'm going to hire support staff, researchers, a team to help me with distribution, a team to help me make my podcast much better. I also saw 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, 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 going to hire people to help me. And 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 going to 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 good writing, I give it away for free. But then I have 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, tips on nutrition, tips on just all these different ways to 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 piece about nutrition for the coming new year or whatever. So I sell that. It's like 20 to 30 pages a month and it's a monthly subscription. And then I have other products. One is I used to run a hedge fund, so I know a lot of hedge fund managers. So I will, once a month with my researchers, 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. stock market and I'll pick the best ideas I could think of. And 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 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 Buffetts out there and diversify among all of them. So I sell that for a much higher price. 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 all together, 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 amazing so it's super profitable uh 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. If you think I'm making a lot of money off of a 99 cent book, then you're out of your mind. And I have about a dozen or so employees. One thing I realized is I'm really horrible at being a CEO. So I've outsourced. Not outsourced is the wrong word, but I hired someone to run the business. 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 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 do an excellent job 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 well you need you need continuity because you don't want to... The best thing in the world is subscription revenues. And you want to hold yourself to it as well. 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 I think continuity is important. I also think also not to be afraid to charge. This was a big challenge for me was asking people for money.

And that was a challenge. 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. But I think the main thing when people are just starting out is don't even focus on things that you're going to charge for. The first thing is build up goodwill. So 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 your name.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, write for newspapers, write for television networks, have a podcast, write a book, be on as many media as possible. And because nobody is going to your destination site anymore. I mean, they might in some special cases, but in general, the audience on LinkedIn isn't

going to say, okay, now that I've checked LinkedIn, I have to go to jamesaltucher.com because there's too many places to check out then. So make sure you go where the people are. It's like Wayne Gretzky saying, skate to where the puck is going, not where it is. So people are going to all these aggregator sites and that's where you want to publish. So people are going to all these aggregator sites and that's where you want to publish. Then, very important, you got to build an email list because 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 want to 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 your friends, your contacts, the people who are most likely to help you build your business by saying, yeah, he's writing about all this finance advice. I agree. He's hiring all these people. I'm going to subscribe to this.

There's value here. So it's your email list are the people who value what you do the most. And I think those two steps, syndicating your content everywhere, producing content as much as possible 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. Do you suggest people say? Great, syndicating. How do I get on all these different platforms? Well, I mentioned places that are open source, Medium. Anybody can publish to.

LinkedIn, anyone can publish to. 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 a new audience. And Instagram, nobody can stop me from publishing on Instagram. It's not like they have to... I choose myself. I don't want to be

chosen to write anywhere. So either they ask me, either a company will ask me, 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. And what's the most profitable product that you have? Is it the lower end product, the higher end product? It's hard to tell because it's a young business still. It's been a year and a half. But 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 $2 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 I focused much more on the bottom lines of 20% improvement there. But I don't really know yet. When you have four or five products, it's actually complicated to figure out where you're making money, what sources. It's hard to tell whether the cheaper products or the more expensive products make more money. I think I'll know within another year or two.

I'll have a better sense. But you like having them all right now. Yeah. You need them all. You need free, cheap, expensive. Yeah. 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 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 going to put more energy into that too. I like that. What's a question that you wish more people would ask you? You've asked a lot of good questions. I don't know. A lot of people ask me, do I feel happier since I've thrown everything out? Or I should say that's the wrong question. 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 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 – like, for instance, I had an original sketch by one of the original animators of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I had an animation cell from the opening sequence of the 60s show I Dream of Jeannie. I was a collector. I have all these collectibles. I had a Dr. McCoy doll from the 70s. So I collected things.

And so I'm a little sad not having those things. I used to have all my books in a big case, every book I had written in every language 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. 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. I like that. Okay, final few questions for you because I'm smelling the food being made right now, so I'm getting hungry. Oh, yeah. We have like a vegan chef making bacon-flavored vegan food. I'm really looking forward to it.

It's going to be good. With our mutual friend who we didn't even know was a mutual friend. 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. By the way, I have a really bad memory.

Okay, yes. I think I have early onset Alzheimer's. I'm a little bit worried about that. That's not good. Yeah. No, so that's why I don't know if it's just an age thing, but I think eliminating most sugar from your diet is actually helps with because they're thinking of renaming alzheimer's diabetes 3 i've heard that really maybe it's just a rumor i don't

know but but uh but i i decided i i i just don't really remember things so i'm just gonna um let's cut out sugar sugar probably will help you. 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. If I have a trouble remembering it, I can call many of your listeners and they'll tell me. 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. Knock on glass. 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. these because there's no possessions you have to give anyone obviously because you don't have anything but what they have is a a piece of paper and um 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? You know, I'm going to go to four things. Okay.

Because this is the thing where I always get back to all the time, which is what I wrote and showed yourself and I rewrite it, you know, 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, 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's really it. Other than that, I really don't give a shit actually because once i'm dead i'm dead right like there you go 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 going to exist and then there's going to 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 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 i just throughout the day i do roughly think how i'm going to achieve these you know do this one percent improvement each day and it's going to achieve these, you know, do this 1% improvement each day. And it's going to happen differently. And every single day will happen differently every single day. 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 Lewis or whatever. But at the end of the day, I'll think, I'll think of an I did list. So list. And the first things on my I did list was, well, did I do the physical, emotional, creative, spiritual? So always do an I did list, never do a to-do list. That's cool. Okay. 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 wisdom. I feel like whenever I'm around you, I assimilate this like wealth of wisdom that you have in terms of vice versa. I'm going to show up for the national chess team. I'm here, boys. Let me in. Exactly. And you just have such incredible generosity with 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 me as a peer, but also with your listeners and 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. Thank you, Lewis. It lifts me up, and I feel like I get smarter every time around you well and i will acknowledge you i will say and this is in particular your podcast because 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 um i listen to your podcast often to prepare for my own, not just when we have, sometimes we have similar guests, but sometimes we don't, but you're a great interviewer, and yours is one of the few podcasts I listen to just to keep me in shape for my own. I appreciate it.

Good job. Thank you, thank you. I hope this particular episode matches up. 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? Well, Reinvent Yourself you can get on Amazon.

And right now you can get it in either paperback or once this is out, you can get it in paperback or e-book. And they should bundle it and get Choose Yourself at the same time. Yeah. Are you going to do a discount the first week for this as well? Well, that's 99 cents. It's as cheap as Amazon lets me go. And you can 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.

Yeah, I'm trying to build my Instagram following. So Instagram at Altucher. And that's it. There you go. Okay. And the final question is what's your definition of greatness? Just having well- wellbeing 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. James Altucher. Thanks for coming on, man. Thank you, Lewis. 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 at Lewis Howes and at Al Chichur. 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 leave a comment below the YouTube channel at YouTube slash Lewis Howes. You guys mean the world to me and I wanna know your thoughts about reinvention. Have you been reinventing yourself over the years or do 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. Thank you.