About Life, Idea Muscle & Failure Porn

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The Interview

I wanted to interview James Altucher since many months already, but the self-doubt, insecurities and other nonsense was keeping me away from connecting with him. Finally, one day I got the courage and wrote him a Facebook message. And I'm glad I did.

 

The reason I wanted to have James on my show was not that he is a  famous. If you have followed my podcast you know that I don't choose people who are famous, but people who are interesting to talk to and who are able to provide value to you - my listeners.

I knew that my interview with James would be packed with wisdom and that you'd enjoy it too. For the very few of you, who don't know who James Altucher is - I have included his short bio below for you. James Altucher is a successful entrepreneur, investor, board member, and the writer of 11 books including the recent WSJ Bestseller, "Choose Yourself!". He has started and sold several companies for eight figure exits. He's on the board of a billion revenue company, has written for The Financial Times, The New York Observer, and over a dozen popular websites for the past 15 years. He's run several hedge funds, venture capital funds, and is a successful angel investor in technology, energy, and biotech. He has also lost all his money, made it back, lost it, made it back several times and openly discusses how he did it in his columns and books. Although I encourage you to listen to the interview, because there is no other way to feel the energy and the flavor of our conversation, I have included the important points James mentioned during our talk below for you.

About money and time

If I lost $20 I could always make $20 back. But if I lose 20 minutes of my life I will never ever be able to rewind the clock. I will never ever be able to make those 20 minutes back.

 

About the idea muscle

Every day I try to exercise my idea muscle so I write 10 ideas a day.

 

About  job

Job is a very small subset of ways to make a living. Make a living - make a life. Life is much bigger than just the job.

 

About failure

There is no such thing as absolute failure. There is too much "failure porn" on the Internet. Much better is to set yourself up in such a way that failure becomes strengthening to you.

 

Don't call a failure - failure. Call it an experiment!

 

About life

Life is like experiment where we add and subtract and merge ideas and come up with new ideas.

 

About Abundance

Persistence + Love = Abundance

 

About success

The best predictor of successful tomorrow is a successful today.

 

About publishers

Publisher's don't care about you. They care how much your book is gonna sell.

Traditional publisher blocks you from your audience and from communicating to your audience.

 

About being nervous

I am still nervous every time I hit publish.

 

About being a good writer

If you write a good book in popular genre you'll be successful. But I think the key is really to focus on being a good writer. Improving your skills at writing. Because then the genre will find you.

 

Ultimately the goal of whether you're a good writer or not is if people enjoy your writing.

 

The only way you can improve as a writer is by reading and writing every day.

 

Writing is about storytelling it's not about lecturing.

 

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