Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream with James Altucher

American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, and bestselling author – James Altucher

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James has made millions, lost it all, made millions, lost it all, and made it again. His net worth has gone up and down. He’s gained more wisdom than most, and tells it like it is. Discover the 4 bodies that are critically important in your quest for a million. Plus get unexpected tips on the best ways to choose the best idea, and be happier!

Resources Mentioned on this Podcast:

• Choose Yourself! by James Altucher

Check out JamesAltucher.com for more info!

You can follow James on Twitter

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript:

Jaime: Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and I'm so thankful to have James Altucher on the show today. I met him back in November; I saw him speak. He was utterly amazing, and I knew I had to have him on the show. He just came out with a new book, if I can show you, on Kindle. I don't have a hard copy. It's called Choose Yourself: Be Happy, Make Millions, and Live the Dream. He's started many companies; he's made millions; he's lost millions; he has a ridiculous story that I wanted to share with you today. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, James.

James: Thanks for having me on the show. This will be fun.

Jaime: The funny thing is I love the "be happy, make millions, and live the dream" because that's what everyone wants. It seems like, especially with your story, that it is a lot more complicated than that. Go through a quick synopsis of the story that you've got because it is such a great one.

James: Yeah, so it's complicated, and that's sort of the reason why I wrote the book because it doesn't have to be so complicated, and it doesn't have to be so painful. I mean, life in general is painful, and we all have moments of fear and emptiness and "what am I going to do with my life," and "how am I going to survive?" That's normal pain, but on the quest for let's say a million dollars it doesn't have to be such an utterly rocky road like, for instance I had. So I wrote the book to teach people how to choose themselves for success, instead of relying on all the institutions around us that try to tell us what to do. If other people are writing your rules, then things are not going to work out for you. You kind of have to write your own rules in order to find that success. 

Jaime: So, how do we do that, right? It's great. Tell me about how you made millions and lost millions. Then, I really want to get into how we can do that now because I would rather not make millions and lose it. I want to learn from you.

James: Losing it is incredibly upsetting. I'll tell you how I made it. I was, well, because I've made it and lost it, I had to make it and lose it again, and make it to hopefully not lose it again. I've had to do this three times in three or four different industries. I probably had 10 or so careers in the past 20 years. Then, this addresses a lot of issues, like when people ask "what should their purpose be in life" There might not be a single purpose, but initially, I was working for a tiny, little entertainment company called HBO. I was working on a cubicle, and doing random programming, and I had an idea that they should basically create and build a website. At the time, nobody even, this is the mid-nineties, no one even knew they needed a website. I said to them, "Look, you make great original TV shows. How about I do an original Web show for you?" So I made marketing websites for all of their shows, but then they let me do whatever I wanted for a Web show. I did this idea I called "Three AM". I took a camera crew, and I walk around New York City at three in the morning, on a Tuesday night, interviewing people "Why are you out at three in the morning?" Because if you, for instance, are out at three on a Tuesday night, it's probably a reason, and it's probably not a good reason. 

Jaime: No, yeah.

James: Yeah, there's probably even much worse reasons than that. I was interviewing everything from like drug dealers, to homeless kids, to prostitutes. I was going out to sneak into prisons. I was hanging out at underground radio stations. I was hanging out, you know, for weeks at a time with homeless kids who were just surviving on the streets. With transvestite prostitutes who were surviving off of whatever it is they survive off of. I did this for three years. It was very fascinating to see all types of people that I wouldn't normally get to know and to meet. I'm a very, usually I don't stay out late. Then all these other entertainment companies started saying to me, "I want that. I want you to do that for me, or something like that". I built up a little company, and it became not so little. I built up the company that built big websites for entertainment companies. So I was, started to do, I did Miramax dot com, New Lion Films dot com, Time Warner dot com? All the divisions of Time Warner hired me. I did, my company did all of HBO's websites. I did record labels for Sony, BMG, Universal, Interscope, Disney. Ultimately I did more mainstream brands too, American Express dot com, ConEdison dot com. I built up a company, sold it for millions of dollars, and then I thought, "That's it. I'm done. I'm finished as a human being. I achieved success."

Jaime: Success.

James: I don't have to work on anything anymore. Of course that's the first step towards an utter spiral downhill that can't be stopped. There was one summer after that where I probably lost about a million dollars a week. This wasn't on paper either. This was cash. I had pulled cash out of the business, and I was just so stupid and so, I just had no sense of business or money or anything. I built up a good business, and I had forty employees. I sold it and negotiated the sale and did the whole thing. Then I just didn't have any clue as to what do with money. Kind of the worst aspects of my personality came out, and you know I only say this because I ended up with zero. I lost my house. I lost all my friends; I had no friends at the end of this. I lost, I had no money; I had like a hundred dollars in the bank on the day my house sold. I was able to pull a tiny little bit of money out of it, but nowhere enough to recover. I had to kind of start from scratch again, from real zero. It was just phenomenal to me. I thought I had this chance to have my kids enjoy their life forever. I mean, I was so depressed with this, that I honestly thought if I could kill myself my kids would be happier because then they would at least make money off of the life insurance policy. I actually thought this would be better for them than for them having an actual father. I had to ultimately figure out "Well how am I going to stop? How am I going to turn this around?" I had no clue. We don't learn how to fail in school. We only learn how to succeed. I never had come anywhere close to having anything fail before. The arc of my life had been one move straight up. I mean, I was thrown out of graduate school, but I didn't care. I didn't view that as a failure. I wanted to work and to make money. This was the first time I really thought like "I don't know how to turn this around." I had to figure it out, which I did. I built up, over time. It took a really long time. I had to build up a new career and a new business and several many new businesses until finally one succeeded again. I sold that, and then made millions of dollars. I lost that money. I still had no clue as to what it meant to have money, and the lack of respect that I had for myself whenever I made money. I had to start from scratch; I had to take a look back and say "Well, what works, and what doesn't?" I have to just stick to what works, and if I stick to what works, I have to have faith then that if I trust myself and I choose myself, and I do what works, and I don't do what doesn't work, then I'll make the money again, and I'll stick with it. That's in fact what has happened. I have to knock on wood with that because it's what I call a daily practice. You have to do this every day. It's just like jogging, for instance. If you don't jog every day, in a week or two, you're not going to be able to jog anymore. If you're usually jogging six miles a day, then maybe you will be back down to two miles. A week after that, maybe you'll be back down to one mile. Any muscle needs to be constantly exercised, so the muscle for success, which I break down into four different areas, always has to be exercised. If you don't, it atrophies just as quickly as your legs will atrophy. You know once it atrophies, failure is right around the corner. There's really no way to avoid it. If you try to run a six mile race after not running for a year, you're going to fail. That's exactly what happens if you don't exercise these sort of success muscles. At least this is true for me. It might not be true for others, but it's totally true for me. The principles are so basic. I kind of think they are true for others , but I only know it's really true for me and for my readers who have communicated back to me that it's also worked for them. That has numbered not just in the tens or twenties but the thousands. I've been very grateful to able to get this message out in a cheap way. I don't charge anything, and I don't sell these big make millions and pay me a lot of money first. My message is on my blog, and I'm very happy to share it with people. My message is in my book, Choose Yourself. Before anybody thinks that I'm trying to sell this book and make a ton of money, A, you don't make a ton of money on books; B, on page one of my book, I have an offer. If somebody can prove to me they bought the book and prove to me they read the book, I will pay them back. The reason I structure it like that is if people get something for free, I know from experience they don't value it. If people buy a book, most people don't read a book. If people can prove to me they've done these two things, I'm happy. That means they got the message. Whether they like it or not, I don't care. Just a seed has been planted; I will pay them back. 

Jaime: I love that. I read that at the very beginning of your book. I was like that's such a good idea. You're right. People don't value anything that's for free. I've gotten I don't know how many books for free. I'm like I meant to read that, but of course charging a little bit of money makes a difference. But then you get the incentive that I'm totally going to read this book. Not that I want the money back for this, but in general, people push forward just for that little piece of carrot at the end of the stick. 

James: They know they have the option. There's this optionality in there that has value. So whether or not they take the option doesn't matter, but they have an option which they value. 

Jaime: So how do we, as you were saying, right, you have these four things that you really think everybody should be doing because it's worked for you. I love the way that you say that too. "It works for me." Most people are this is the way it works. You're not saying that at all. You're saying it works for the people I've talked to, and it works for me too. Tell me about the stuff that works for you, so that way we can do it too if it works. 

James: What I've discovered is if I broke it down into, it's almost as if we have four bodies, and all four of them need to be healthy. Physical. Emotional. Mental. Spiritual. I'll through them in very simple ways. So physical, we kind of know what it means for that to be healthy, although even there it's often hard to change behavior. So sleeping well, eating well, and exercising are just, if you did those three things you're going to be physically healthy, and you avoid 99% of diseases and illnesses that hit people. You know, I've kind of, it's very interesting about the anti-aging industry. They always say "Well, take resveratrol, or take this pill, or take fish oil, and you'll live forever." What I do is the reverse. I look at the top ten things, the top ten killers of, you know, that happen in the United States. Cancer, heart disease, strokes, Alzheimer's, you know, and all sorts of other things. Kidney disease, whatever. I look at what the causes of those things are, and I simply avoid those causes. For instance, if you don't smoke, suddenly your chances of not having a heart attack or not having cancer skyrocket. Not smoking is very basic for being healthy. Eating, don't eat junk food. Your chances of not having a heart attack or not having diabetes skyrocket. Don't drink alcohol. It's very hard for some people, so you limit it. Whatever you can do. Your chances of not having a heart attack, diabetes, strokes, or Alzheimer's skyrocket. Sleeping well is another way to avoid even like the common cold. Notice whenever you're sick with a cold, if you just sleep, your body's going to tell you to sleep, and you'll just feel better in the morning. You won't have a cold. So then there's the emotional body, which is a little more subtle, but every bit as important. Every one of these bodies is equally important. Some people think well, I'm just going to work on one, and I'm not going to worry about the others yet. Every one is equally important. It's almost like there's this ethereal blood that flows between all four bodies and has to keep pumping through all four to survive. So with the emotional body, what does that mean? It simply means be around people who you love and who love you. It's that simple. Be around people who inspire you and are who supportive of you and who are positive to you. If you're around people that you're going to argue with all the time, that's a lot worse than being around people, in general, inspire you. You can have interesting questions and challenge discussion, and you move things forward in your life. If you're all the time thinking this person said this to me and that person said this to me, that's no good. It's not healthy.

Jaime: Did you have that before? When you lost all your friends? Was it that sort of relationships? Did you have people that you loved being around?

James: No. I didn't, I didn't discern correctly whether I was being around good people or bad people. Now I'm only around people who are like really good and really trying to improve others. They're trying to improve me, and I'm helping them improve. I don't mean this in necessarily a self-help or self-improvement way, but just in general, I want people to feel good being around me. I want to be around people who make me feel good. It's just as simple as that. If someone doesn't make me feel good, then I gradually eliminate them. Not in a mean way. I don't say I can't talk to them any more. If you make plans to go out to dinner with a friend, and they're constantly late, eventually you stop making plans with that friend. It's not like you argue with them, and you say "You're always late." It's just not worth it to you to make plans, then wait around for thirty minutes for that friend. You gradually drift away, and that's how you do it. You don't engage further by arguing with them about it; you disengage. That's kind of the subtlety there. That keeps your emotional body healthy. 

Jaime: Okay.

James: The mental body, incredibly healthy, or it's incredibly important. You have to, and this is what I did. I bought waiter's pads, and I started writing down business ideas every day, dozens and dozens of business ideas, usually, at the very least, ten ideas a day. It was really hard. It would make my brain sweat to write down these ideas. Again, if you don't exercise this every day, it will atrophy incredibly quickly. If you exercise it every day, it's amazing what happens. Within six months, you're like an idea machine. You have more ideas coming out of you than anybody else around you. You can tell; you can see it. I started writing down ideas every day, and it really was like a six month period before I started to see the results. The results build up over time. Years and years later, the results are amazing. They generate millions of dollars. Finally, the spiritual body. Everybody interprets spiritual however they want, so I kind of interpret it as I make sure I feel grateful for the abundance in my life. If there's zero dollars in your bank account, then you might ask how can there be abundance in your life. Well, there's always things that are abundant in one's life. If it's raining a lot, there's an abundant amount of water in your life. I'm always grateful for everything that's abundant in my life, and I try to, let's say I'm grateful for my children. I could care less that moment about my kids. What I really care about is that feeling in my body that gratitude gives me, as opposed to a feeling of anger which feels differently in your body. When you're angry, you can't deny your body feels one way. When you're grateful, your body feels another way. Gratitude is something you can practice all day long. 

Jaime: Then what I want to do, because I love the way you broke down those four things. Those sound really simple, and I know that they're not easy. What do you have for advice based on what you've gone through to sort of to tweak all of those things? It doesn't seem like it's something you can change overnight, and everything's fine. 

James: Yes. I did have to change overnight because I was dead broke. I had children to feed and a house to support. I just didn't know what I was going to do, and I was really depressed. I had, what do you call it, not an incentive, but a reverse incentive. I had a consequence if I didn't change my behavior. Although it's very hard for people to change behavior. There's been studies that show that even if people have a choice between life and death, whether they take a pill or not, only one out of seven will continue to take that pill. People really, and these are people who want to live, but it's very hard in general for people to change behavior. If you can't change your behavior, the important thing is to do one thing. It doesn't matter what that one thing is, just one thing so you can say "I did it." Whether it's writing down ten ideas, or whether it's sleeping nine hours, or take a four or five mile walk, or turn off the TV or not read news, turn off the TV after six PM. Avoid all newspapers because it's very important for the mental body is to not read news at all. News is junk food for the mental body.  Every body has junk food. News and web surfing are junk food for the mental body.

Jaime: Wait! Web surfing? Oh no, don't tell us web surfing is bad too. 

James: Not necessarily with stuff that's high quality, but 99 percent of the things on the internet, just like 99 percent of news is just poor quality. If you can kind of curate and find the high quality things that intellectually benefit you and challenge you, then that's great. The news, the way the news is set up, is they only sell newspapers if they make you really scared or really greedy. What we've seen in the past decade is that fear works a lot better than greed. Actually there's been Nobel prizes won on the fact that fear is much easier to induce in someone than greed. Newspaper headlines are always really scary like "Your bridge is about to collapse," or "Iran might invade," or "North Korea has nuclear weapons." None of these crises that are ever predicted ever come true, but they make you buy the newspaper. Much better is to read something that has withstood the test of time, like a good book, for instance. That will engage you much more intellectually; it will fire neurons. I always read four, at least read casually four or five books before I start writing down my ideas for the day. Again, if you're in a crisis, and you're really having a hard time getting out of that hole, just start doing one thing a day, so that at the end of the day, you can write down your list of things you did. You can say, "I did it today. I did the daily practice today."  In my book, I call this the simple daily practice. If you're really in a crisis, where you're really depressed, you may in fact need more than the daily practice. You may need at first to see a doctor, to kind of help you whether it's sleep, or with depression, or with anxiety. You may need to take serious measures so you can get to the point you start doing the daily practice and really putting it into your life. The most important thing is to get to the point where you can work on all four of these things, but take whatever measures you need to take to get started, whether it's doing one thing a day, whether it's seeing a doctor, or whatever it is you need to do. It can't be ignored. That's the one thing you really have to do to start being a millionaire. There's no one business thing you need to do to be a millionaire. You have to change yourself first. You have to choose yourself in order to be successful. Because nobody else is going to choose you, unless you choose you. That's a rule of the universe. When there's money flowing, like in the nineties, which was a very rare period. Then maybe you can win the lottery, and it's a little easier. Right now? It's the daily practice for me, or I lose everything. I know this, from experience, over and over and over. I won't, I will never veer from it, or else, it will be bad for me.

Jaime: So I love this. Most of the time people want to come to the show, and listen to "give me the newest Facebook thing, or the newest tactic that's going to make me tons of money." What's really interesting, is you're like "No, no, no, it's not about that." It's about these core things that we really need to get in place. A lot of people assume that I need to be putting a hundred hours a week on my business, not caring about any friends, not caring about anything having to do with this, because it's all about that. You're saying almost the exact opposite. In order to make millions, you have to have all that other stuff aligned. 

James: Yes, because you actually have, let's talk about business and a million dollars for a second.

Jaime: Okay.

James: Your approach is about interviewing people who have a million dollars, or more. I think that's very valuable to understand, to break that down for a second. It's not about creating the next Google, which is this very extraordinarily rare thing that happens, or the next Facebook or whatever. It's about having a million dollars. Because what does a million dollars do? Well, a million dollars at the very least gives you many years, depending on your expenses, maybe infinite years, of financial freedom. When you have that kind of financial runway, you're going to naturally be able to do this daily practice and come up with lots of ideas and lots of opportunities and meet lots of amazing people. In general, meeting people, making connections, and building your network is going to create more and more opportunities for you. I also want to say a million dollars can happen in a lot of ways. Most people don't really want to make a hundred million. They would like it if it shows up in their bank account, but a million dollars is a great thing. There's lots of ways to make a million. There's not a lot of ways to make a hundred million. That's incredibly difficult. To make a million is not as hard. I've started many businesses, and I've made many investments, and I've done other things to create my net worth. I will tell you the things that have made the bulk of my net worth, at the moment which is well over a million, has nothing to do with the businesses I've started. I consider myself an entrepreneur, but the ways, if you start this daily practice, the ways in which abundance comes into your life become so unexpected. You would be surprised; it's like magic. When people tell me, "My goal in life is to deliver the next best search engine to everybody in the world," I don't know if that's your goal in life, and you don't even know if people even need that. Most companies don't even really know what their customers want. Most companies change several times along the way towards success. If you could build up, again, if you could just build up your health and your idea machine, you're going to come up with ideas to generate money in your life. You'll be surprised at what happens. Now, if you want to start a business, you're also going to come up with ideas for businesses. The idea that you then have to put a hundred hours into that business, you know maybe for short spikes of time, but not in general. If it requires hundreds of hours a week, then you're probably in the wrong business. Things should be, every thing that is successful should happen very naturally. You know, and you'll see.

Jaime: That's what I want to hear. That's actually my next question. An Eventual Millionaire, the sort of definition, is someone that has the goal to be a millionaire, but eventually they want to do it on their own terms, with an enjoyable life and an enjoyable business. That's why I'm asking people this question. I'm asking them do you have to work a hundred plus hours a week and sacrifice everything in order to have a million dollar net worth. Personally that's not worth it for me. Mine's more about my life first and then the money. What I find really interesting is that's what you're telling me. Most of the mainstream people are telling me I have to work a hundred hours a week, and that's all I can do, and you're not telling me that at all.

James: No. I will say if you want to make a hundred million, chances are you have to work a hundred hours a week and give up everything else in your life. Then only one out of ten thousand will make that hundred million, even after that. It's very hard to make a hundred million. That's a qualitatively different number than a million. To make a million, there's lots of different ways to make a million. Sometimes the best thing you can do is not work, in order to make the million. For instance, you might introduce two people, and they might make a hundred million. They might say to you, "Here's a million for introducing us. We just made a hundred million." 

Jaime: Sweet! I want to do that.

James: Maybe the worst thing you could have done at that point was to say I need to be in your business too. Then maybe you would have made two million, but you would have worked a hundred hours a week. Instead, you didn't work at all, except introducing them, and you made a million. Again, there's lots of ways, once the idea machine is flowing, there's lot's of ways. Look, this economy, in the US alone, is a fifty, five zero, or the global economy is a fifty trillion dollar economy every year. Fifty trillion dollars in transactions happen, so a million dollars is what, one-millionth of that or so. That's not that hard to grab into. Again, not necessarily tomorrow. You're not going to listen to this video, and tomorrow, get a million dollars in your hand. If you, again, start applying these ideas, and focus on yourself, and focus on the idea muscle. Spiritual, and being grateful, being around positive people, being healthy. If you're not healthy, for instance, you're not going to be available for the opportunities. If you do all these things, then you'll have the opportunity to make a million. I'm just saying a million. That's what we want to do. A million dollars is a great thing. Then you can just put it in the bank, and relax. Sometimes people tell me "I have a million dollars. What should I invest in?" I say don't invest in anything. That is great, man. Put it in the bank. Just have the cash for awhile. Cash is cool.

Jaime: Cash is cool. I love that. I'm going to quote you on that. The question comes though, because you're talking about ideas and stuff like that. Most of the people I run into are full of ideas, but we're trying to decide between opportunities and distractions, right? Because there's only so much time that we can work on stuff. How do we tell which ideas are going to be good, and which ideas aren't? 

James: You can't. It's impossible. There's actual scientific studies that if you have an idea you think is good, then I call this, this is called what's called "smoking crack." Once you think an idea you have is good, it's very hard for the brain. Once you start your business around this, you invested so much psychological energy into that idea, that your brain can no longer recognize the fact that the idea might be bad. This is why the best businesses have two people. You have a partner. You know, like Google had two people; Apple in the beginning had two people; Microsoft in the beginning had two people; Facebook in the beginning had two or more people. The best businesses usually start with two people, so you can have someone who says "No, you're smoking crack on that idea." Also the best businesses tend to pivot, so Facebook goes from stalking girls in colleges to being this incredible social media network. Google goes from being a search engine to being an advertising network slash media company. Apple goes from being a microcomputer company to being the entire music industry. Things change in life and in business and in purpose and so on. You never know. The only way you know is did I keep myself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy today? That's the only thing you can say yes to. Is an idea good or bad or not? No. So then the question is how do you know which ideas to pursue? Pursue all of them. First off, most of your ideas in the beginning are going to be bad, so just throw them all out. I, even today, I'll write down ideas. I'll throw them out because it's not about writing down a good idea. It's about exercising the muscle. I don't, if I go jogging, it's not like I'm thinking all day what a great jog that was. I jogged; I did it. So now I'll jog tomorrow. Actually I hate jogging; I'm just using this as an analogy. It's the same thing with the idea muscle. Just have the ideas build, and if you have ideas, keep playing with them. Come up with a first action step. If you can see I can take that first action step pretty easily, I might as well do that. Maybe the first action step is I'll call Jack down the hall, and see if he wants to program something. I'll call up an outsourcing company in India. See if they want to write some software. I'll call up my friend who runs a chain of Laundromats. Would he use this idea that I came up with? There's so many different ways you can take a first action step. So often I'll write down an idea, and I'll just float it out there. I'll take the first action step, and then I may or may not take the second action step, depending on what the results are of the first action step. That's how I'm able to quickly churn through ideas, and quickly determine which ideas will actually have customers and which ideas won't have customers, which is a critical part of any business. 

Jaime: So tell me about where that line comes for commitment, too? I mean, I remember when I first started and I didn't really know what I was doing. I created an iPhone app a long time ago, and I had a provisional patent. I was like doing all these things and not really making any money from any of them. But I was taking action on stuff? How do we know? I was wondering do things just take off? Until I really started putting effort into one thing and commit long term, that's when I started seeing a result. 

James: You know, commitment is good, right? So think about a marriage. Obviously marriages flourish as the commitment gets deeper and deeper, but the marriage doesn't stay the same. When you first meet someone, for instance, I'm just going to be blunt. You're having sex five times a day, but then over time, you know, other things happen in the marriage. You grow deeper commitment, and you're having more things going on in your life. The marriage changes, and it's not as frequently. You know, this is not a good or a bad thing. It's how things evolve. It's the same thing with a business. In your iPhone app, what did your iPad app do, for instance? 

Jaime: It's funny that I say this. It's an iPhone app, and I don't know if anyone knows this. It timed how long you peed. It was a game. 

James: Well, okay, that's actually incredibly interesting. I'll tell you why that's interesting. It could be the case, I don't know, but it could be the case that timing how long you pee is related to various diseases. 

Jaime: Ooh.

James: For instance, diabetics have different urine.

Jaime: We're talking about pee now. Sex and pee. This is great.

James: Diabetics have different pee than non-diabetics. So do people with cancer and heart conditions and so on, or people with prostate cancer. This actually turns out to be an incredibly useful medical app. That's one idea. Another idea is you developed an expertise, or at least a process for building interesting and quick iPhone apps. 

Jaime: That's actually what I want.

James: Maybe there are companies?

Jaime: That's a good point. It was profitable surprisingly quite soon afterwards, but I just sort of let it go because I thought it was kind of cheesy. 

James: Yes, okay, so maybe it's cheesy. But maybe though, you suddenly have a service business. A lot of people want iPhone apps, so maybe you can charge for the service. Look, I made this very profitable iPhone app. It's kind of silly, but I made this iPhone app. I can do it for you too. I charge ten thousand dollars for an iPhone app or five thousand dollars for an iPhone app. I will also provide an additional service of helping you market that iPhone app because I was able to successfully do it on my own. There's lots of you could even pivot and roll with different businesses. You might not be committed to the pee app, but you could be committed to the idea that I'm developing this expertise and developing some knowledge. I'm going to try different angles now to find how I can make money off of this expertise. Or I back off and go to the next thing. That's, again, commitment is very fluid and flexible, and it goes broader and broader. You're committed to, you could be committed to starting a business in general, or you could be committed to a tech business, or an iPhone app business, or the pee iPhone app business, or maybe a medical iPhone app business. There's lots of things that any one idea could evolve into. It's, again, keeping healthy every day helps you to know with, you'll trust yourself. You'll know what the right thing to explore is. Now every idea I just mentioned had very simple next action steps that you would be able to see. Is there a medical use? Well, I'm just going to go to my local doctor and ask him if he thinks his patients should use this, particularly the diabetic patients, or the men who are fifty years old and worried about prostate cancer. Is there a market? It's just one phone call to find out if there's a market. 

Jaime: So it really sounds like what you're doing is you've got an idea, and you evaluate, you take the action, and you evaluate that. Then you sort of go on that ongoing process of over and over and over again. That way you can make your decisions that way. 

James: Yeah, and you make your decisions. Again, it's every day a matter of coming up with more and more ideas for what you're doing. More and more ideas for customers, more and more ideas for services. A lot of people who have developed a product don't want to provide a service because the product business is different from the service business. The best businesses I know have very subtly combined product with service. Facebook is a great example. Facebook feels like a product, but if I'm Proctor and Gamble, I can guarantee you I can call up Facebook and say, "Listen. I don't know how the heck to use your advertising network. Can you send fifty people over to me to teach me how to use it? You're allowed to charge me and help me, and then I'm going to use your network." Facebook will provide that service; I guarantee you. Oracle, you think of them as a database company. For their first four or five years in business, they called themselves a database company, but they said "Okay, we're going to sell our database to you, but you're going to need us to come into your company and install it. We need to keep Oracle consultants around for a few years." They were totally a service company in disguise as a product company for their first five to ten years in business. Still a significant part of their revenues is services, but they disguise it as product because Wall Street values product more. Again, don't be afraid of service versus product either.

Jaime: Tell me one thing. What do you think is the one thing that's stopping people to hit the million dollar goal? I talk with a lot of people that have small businesses that are churning and not really sure, and they feel stuck and all that other stuff, but what's one thing? I know we have to work on those four pieces, but what's that one thing that's stopping most people that you've seen?

James: I will say that most people deny working on those four pieces, and that's why they're stuck. They say "I have to get unstuck first, and then I'll get to that daily practice stuff."

Jaime: Yeah.

James: But the only way to get unstuck is to get healthy. If you're going to do one thing, make sure you sleep well. The only way, I guarantee you that's great. If you sleep eight hours a day, so how do you sleep eight hours a day? That's actually very hard. You have to from six PM on avoid screen time. No computer, no TV. You have to not eat for three or four hours before you go to sleep. You're not digesting in the middle of the night. No alcohol because alcohol has enough sugar in it that you'll spike awake at two in the morning. No coffee after eight PM because coffee stays in the system for twelve hours. Then finally go to sleep around, with all this stuff, sit down with a book around seven or seven-thirty. You'll start to drift off to sleep. Go up to your bedroom at eight-thirty or eight. You'll start to fall asleep. Sleep from eight-thirty to five-thirty. You've just slept nine hours, and now you're fully awake before everyone else is and ready to get to work, fully energized. If you have to do one thing to get yourself unstuck, it's actually sleep more to get unstuck and more productive. 

Jaime: Really? Really? Which just sounds so crazy. Well, I have a question though. Your book is on my iPad, so what do I do with no screen time? When your book is on my iPad,? Am I supposed to buy it in hardcover too? 


James: You're allowed to use your iPad to read. 

Jaime: You are?!

James: I give that permission.

Jaime: I know we were talking about blue LED lights and stuff like that. That makes a difference in your eyes. There's so many different research studies having to do with that. 

James: Yeah, yeah, well, these LED lights spike up dopamine almost inappropriately, so we have to kind of keep the light as low as possible, or use a Kindle which uses the digital ink. You know, but look, I use an iPad to read many actually at night, so I'm guilty of it.

Jaime: Yes! Good.

James: I'm just, I just mainly mean the big computer screen where your eyes and the mouse if you're leaning forward, or the big TV if you watching all the junk on it. Really focus on curating what happens to you in the last hour or two before you go to sleep. That curates your dreams, a good eight or nine hours of your life every day. That's important.

Jaime: Do you have a preference between nonfiction books or fiction books? I've sort of heard it back and forth of what you should read before bed.

James: Yeah, I've heard it back and forth too. It's very interesting to hear what people say. I'm like fifty-fifty, although at night I tend to, in the morning I'm very, very disciplined about what I read. At night, I try then to read the stuff that I'm not as disciplined about. It's sort of like my, again, not news or anything, which is total junk, but I'll read stuff that's a little more fun and not related necessarily to what I'm doing during the day. 

Jaime: Perfect. I have so many more questions I want to ask you. I know we to start wrapping up really soon. I'm going to ask the last question, but hopefully maybe I can have you back on the show, even though you've been doing a thousand interviews like crazy.

James: Absolutely. 

Jaime: Maybe next time in New York or something? What's one action that listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million? Which we've talked about some stuff already, but go ahead.

James: Alright, so I mentioned the sleep thing and the daily practice thing. Here's what I will suggest. Again, I know people are looking for very tactical things. There are no tactical things because the way I've created most of my money that's my current net worth are ways that were so unexpected. I can't, it's useless for me to even try to describe them because for everybody it's different. The one thing I will suggest is don't time travel. So don't regret too much the past; don't be anxious about the future. Really try to stay focused on what's now. The way you focus on what's now is what you're grateful for right now. Another way is if you're walking around, look at the rooftops. Most people don't look at rooftops, particularly if you're in a city. Architects, you know that first twenty floors of a building look really boring, but then architects have a fun time when they're designing their rooftops. That's where the gargoyles are, and the gardens, and all this kind of stuff. So, look at the rooftops while you're walking around, and that's a good way to stay present and to not time travel. Be very mindful about right now. I don't mean that in a Buddha sense, although it could be. It's just about being where you are and being productive right now. 

Jaime: Perfect. Thank you, and I agree a thousand percent. That's awesome. It's something that I can get better at, and something everyone listening can get better at too. So where can we find more information about you online? 

James: Well, my blog's a great place, James Altucher dot com. A-L-T-U-C-H-E-R dot com. I'm also every Thursday on Twitter from three-thirty to four-thirty. I do what's called a Twitter Q and A. You can find me at J Altucher. Most importantly right now, everything we've talked about here and then some can be found in my book, Choose Yourself, which can be found on Amazon.

Jaime: I highly recommend it. You were telling me before that it just hit the Wall Street bestseller list which is amazing. I highly recommend it to everybody. I've already posted about it, but everybody should definitely download it. It's like five bucks on Kindle or something like that, which is insane. Go ahead and pick up Choose Yourself.

James: And I'll give you your money back.

Jaime: Exactly, so come on. There's no reason not to. You definitely should. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, James. I really appreciate it. 

James: Thank you. I appreciate it also.

Tags: business startup, Idea Validation, James Altucher, millionaire interview, Startup, Wealth Building

Categories: All, Best Life, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Fear, Millionaire Interviews, Relationships, Systems/Processes

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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