James Altucher On Losing 9 Million Bucks And Coping With Failure

The Fail On Podcast with Rob Nunnery - Fail Your Way To An Inspired Life

Today, we get to learn from none other than James Altucher, author of self-published bestseller Choose Yourself: Be Happy, Make Millions, and Live the Dream, along with his most recent bestseller, Reinvent Yourself.

I’ll be talking to James about how to bounce back from some of life’s toughest challenges and struggles, what losing nine million bucks taught him, how being creative every single day can completely transform your life, and the best way to grow your network and connect with almost anyone, and much more.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Find out why James believes that the key to learning from failure is what you do directly afterwards to succeed.
• Hear the story of how James lost $9 million dollars in company stock, within seven days.
• Discover how James implemented his own advice on failure and lots to turn a devastating situation into a positive.
• Understand how identifying the choices you are in control of can make you overall happier.
• Hear how James spent two years going out at 3 AM to interview people on the streets.
• Find out how creativity and ideas helped James get out from under a deep depression.
• James shares about how he pushed himself outside his comfort zone to do standup comedy.
• Discover why James’ kids had the biggest impact on his life.
• And much more!

Tweetables:

“Everything has to do with energy. So you want to do the things that keep you as energized as possible.” - @jaltucher

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[0:50:05].8]

“You always want to have an evil plan. You always do your thing and then you have your thing on the side.” - @jaltucher

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[1:12:15].1]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

James’s Website — http://www.jamesaltucher.com/

James on Twitter — https://twitter.com/jaltucher

James’ book, Choose Yourself — http://amzn.to/2odc4D2

James’ book, Reinvent Yourself — http://amzn.to/2p0FsJO

Philip McKernan — http://philipmckernan.com/

Herbie Hancock — http://www.herbiehancock.com/

Miles Davis — https://www.milesdavis.com/

Brian Koppelman — http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002718/

Billions — http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4270492/

HBO — http://www.hbo.com/

Damian Lewis — http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0507073

Paul Giamatti — http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0316079

Diamond Cutters — http://diamondcutters.com/

Stanley Bard — http://www.chelseahotelblog.com/living_with_legends_the_h/2017/02/-stanley-bard-former-owner-and-manager-of-the-chelsea-hotel-dies-at-82.html

Chelsea Hotel — http://www.chelseahotelblog.com/

American Express — https://www.americanexpress.com/

Time Warner — http://www.timewarner.com/

Miramax — https://www.miramax.com/

Disney — http://www.disney.com/

Peter Thiel — https://twitter.com/peterthiel / Zero To One Book

Larry Page — https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage

Sergey Brin — https://plus.google.com/+SergeyBrin

Jerry Yang — https://www.forbes.com/profile/jerry-yang/

Craig Silverman — https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman

Marissa Mayer — https://twitter.com/marissamayer

Warren Buffet — https://twitter.com/warrenbuffett

Louis C.K. — http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0127373/

AJ Jacobs — http://ajjacobs.com/

Joe Rogan’s podcast — http://podcasts.joerogan.net/

Tim Ferriss’ podcast — http://tim.blog/podcast/

Tony Robbins — https://www.tonyrobbins.com/

Garry Kasparov — http://www.kasparov.com/

Coolio the rapper — https://twitter.com/coolio

Kickstarter — https://www.kickstarter.com/

WhatsApp — https://www.whatsapp.com/

Oculus — https://www.oculus.com/

Read Full Transcript

EPISODE 002

“JA: Then I got a job as a programmer for HBO and I really just wanted to make TV shows, to be honest, and I wanted to write novels. I didn’t really want to be a business man.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:14.1] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail on Podcast where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders face on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:00:40.1] RN: Hello and welcome to the podcast that believes, if you desire to create the life of your dreams then embracing failure by taking urgent and bold action is the only way. Today, you and I get to learn from none other than James Altucher, author of self-publish bestseller Choose Yourself: Be happy, make millions, and live the dream, along with his most recent bestseller, Reinvent Yourself.

I’ll be talking to James about how to bounce back from some of life’s toughest challenges and struggles, what losing nine million bucks in a single day taught him, how being creative every single day can completely transform your life, and the best way to grow your network and connect with almost anyone, and much, much more.

But first, if you’d like to stay up to date on all fail on podcast interviews and key takeaways from each guest, simply go to failon.com and sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page.

Without further ado, Mr. James Altucher

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:54.7] RN: Hello and welcome to the fail on podcast, today we’re sitting down in New York City with Mr. James Altucher. James, welcome to the show.

[0:02:01.4] JA: Rob, thanks for not only having me on your show but you’ve been so good about scheduling, you came straight to where I am. I know I was horribly inconvenient, so you did a great job just kind of showing up. As they say, 90% of the job is showing up.

[0:02:19.4] RN: Hey, it’s 100% true and I’ve actually got to come clean. I was telling you as well as I know I reached out to Pam as well, your girlfriend, and I was like, “I’m going to be in New York City April 1st to 3rd,” zero plan in New York City April 1st. I knew I was going to be in Toronto and actually…

[0:02:33.6] JA: Wait, that’s my trick. You’re stealing from my book. You’re not allowed to do that, that’s what I do.

[0:02:40.9] RN: So I had a flight booked back from Toronto to San Diego and I was like, “Well,” and I finally heard back and we connected and we made it work. So I canceled that, got a flight to New York City and here we are.

[0:02:49.6] JA: By the way, it’s not all, I moved today from one Airbnb to the next so I made room on moving my schedule.

[0:02:58.1] RN: On moving day. No, yeah. No, trust me.

[0:02:59.7] JA: We literally moved in to this place three minutes ago and then you rang the bell.

[0:03:03.5] RN: That’s amazing. Just for a little context, we’re sitting what floor is this? You know?

[0:03:08.5] JA: 34th floor.

[0:03:08.6] RN: 34th floor, looking, I’m thinking that’s directly north, right?

[0:03:13.0] JA: Yes.

[0:03:13.2] RN: North facing view in Manhattan, see the Chrysler Building, do you see the Empire State Building?

[0:03:18.2] JA: I see the Empire State Building, yeah.

[0:03:19.4] RN: Just a gorgeous view though. Thanks for hosting, I really appreciate it. It’s number one on… I’ve done one of the beach with Philip McKernan, like I told you, a podcast and I think sorry Philip, but this takes the cake.

[0:03:31.7] JA: Well it depends what kind of view you like. Like a beach ocean view is of course this beautiful natural setting that humans are, it’s almost like an evolutionary thing. Like they always liked the beach, ocean view. But there’s something about kind of like these vertical cities like Manhattan where it’s just, there’s everybody on the ground and then there’s millions of people even at this high up level that we’re at right now. Just looking across, this is not the tallest building, there’s a thousand buildings out there.

[0:03:55.7] RN: Yeah, just driving in, like I in to Newark and I took a car under the Lincoln Tunnel you come out and you’re just like boom, you get hit with the energy right away. I love this city.

[0:04:06.3] JA: Yeah.

[0:04:07.8] RN: Just to get back on track, obviously this is the Fail On Podcast and, no offense, but you’re like the king of failure.

[0:04:13.8] JA: I’m the king of failure. Get out of here.

[0:04:16.1] RN: Yeah, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. No, but in a good way, right? Because you don’t just let failure kind of define you. You take lessons from it and you turn things around and you learn from it and you get better.

[0:04:28.1] JA: You know, I read this beautiful quote the other day. Herbie Hancock, you know who Herbie Hancock is? So I’m not into jazz or whatever but I liked Herbie Hancock when I was a kid and then he’s talking about how he used to play with Miles Davis and one time, Miles Davis was doing some kind of improv thing and Herbie Hancock was doing his thing and he hit a cord that was just a total mistake.

He says, “I made a total mistake, there is no way you could say I was in any way in sync with what Miles Davis was doing. Miles Davis,” he said, “paused for like a micro second and then he started playing and he made my cord that I had, that was a total mistake, he made it fit right in.” He said, “There is — no musical note is a mistake until you hear the note after it.”

I’m paraphrasing the quote because I don’t remember it exactly but it’s that same sentiment and I thought that makes so much sense that you can’t make a mistake and say that’s a mistake. You do what you do and then everything is determined by what happens next.

Miles Davis of course, again, I don’t know Jazz, I don’t know blues, I barely know who he is, I don’t know what instrument he plays if you told me, but clearly he was the best in the world at what he did. He was able to take anything he had in front of him and turned it into a work of art. So I think that’s the key is how quickly can you take an event and let’s not label it failure, but how quickly can you take an event and turn it into something amazing. That’s the key. I just read that quote two days ago but it’s really stuck with me.

So I’m going to add one more thing. You know, one key to writing, I think, is that if you think about something a couple of times in a row then that’s something worth talking about and writing about. I’ve been thinking about this one quote and to that something that’s I’m going to either write about or talk about or think more about.

[0:06:26.3] RN: No, I love that. Kind of on that note as well. I was just looking at the front cover of the Reinvent Yourself book, right? There’s a really cool quote by Brian Koppelman, the creator of Billions and just so I don’t mess it up. James is on a very personal journey, he’s telling you the story on Saturday. Sunday he’s talking about how it felt and on Monday he’s talking about how about doing it a different way, right? It’s taking action, screwing it up, and then reengineering it to find a new way, right?

[0:06:55.2] JA: Yeah, but let’s not even — I don’t even like using the phrase screwing it up because, and I’ll tell you a story that involves Brian and the show Billions but, you know, when you think about things in terms of experiments often. Life, this is a cliché, right? But clichés are worth kind of paying attention to. So life’s so short, if you waste any time in kind of this state of, “Oh I screwed up,” then that’s wasted time.

I’ve spent many years in that state. It’s not like I can avoid it. I think the key, everybody’s got ups and downs every year of their lives, I don’t know, the biggest billionaire in the world will of course age and have death in his life and get sick and have bad relationships and so on.

Everybody’s got ups and downs and it’s how quickly you can bounce back and you bounce back because of your internal sense of wellbeing, you bounce back because of the energy you have from physical house, you bounce back because of the people you’re surrounding yourself with are good people. You bounce back because you're creative and you have ideas that excite you and so on. I think that’s what really makes a life.

Do you mind if I tell you a story about Brian Koppelman and Billions? I always tell all the stories about how, “Oh I lost all this money in my first business, I was going to kill myself, I bounced back.” I’m going to hold off on that. I was on the set of Billions, before show time even fully picked it up and so Billions, for anybody who doesn’t know is a show about hedge fund manager versus a DA. The hedge fund manager, yeah, it’s a great show.

Damian Lewis plays the hedge fund...