Imagine self-publishing 500,000,000 books. It happened and I’m going to tell you how. Everyone says that technology right now gives more opportunity than ever to “choose yourself”. That only now we have the opportunity to escape the cubicle and live a life of freedom. This is not true. Freedom starts with the choice inside yourself.… Continue Reading
The best negotiator I knew always acted like an idiot. He acted so well that I thought he was really stupid. I also thought at the time that he was my best friend. That was probably an act also. Just two years later he stopped talking to me forever. I ran into him in the… Continue Reading
I have never met a person who suddenly became happy simply by “finding their passion”. If my passion had come crawling across my bed during any of my lowest 50 moments in life and started nibbling on my ear I would’ve just pushed it away. Usually I wanted money or sex and I felt passion… Continue Reading
The other day I went out at night and fell asleep on a park bench near the beach in Miami. When I opened my eyes I pretended I had just landed on the world. I knew nothing. Now I had to learn everything. That’s the way I should’ve been when I was younger. Maybe I… Continue Reading
The worst day in my life as an entrepreneur was… every single day. You sucked the soul out of me. Like the day I had to fire my sister. Bad. Or the day that my second biggest client, who owed me a ton of money, simply said he wasn’t going to pay. He represented a… Continue Reading
“You interrupt too much,” people email me. “Let your guests finish talking.” But I can’t help it. I get curious. I want to know! Now! Over the past year I interviewed about 80 guests for my podcast. My only criteria: I was fascinated by some aspect of each person. I didn’t limit myself by saying… Continue Reading
I was fired. I asked for one more week to finish what I was working on but my boss said, “No. Clear out of here in the next hour.” I don’t know why I was fired. Other people weren’t. But I think my boss didn’t like me. So I got depressed. I was going to… Continue Reading
Robbie Abed wanted to have coffee with me in 2011. Then in 2012 and 2013 and this year. I kept saying No. Robbie told me he has 250 coffee meetings a year. So in one way of thinking about it, I’m one in 250. And over a period of four years, I’m one in a… Continue Reading
I lost $15mm cash in one summer. It was about a million a week and then it picked up speed. Ugh, I’m like reading the newspaper twice. I know I’ve written about this before. But bear with me. I bought a house. I invested in bad companies. I started worse companies. I bought art. I… Continue Reading
When I met with Bernie Madoff to see if he would put money into my hedge fund I had no idea he had a scheme. Everyone said later, “We always knew”. But on the way to the meeting, those same people were calling me and saying, “ask him if we could invest.” They would deny… Continue Reading
When AD broke up with me and cheated on me I thought I would die. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t have ideas. I cut loose my friendships. The vault in my chest sealed shut. Which, of course, brings me to the earthquake of 1906. 10,000 buildings collapsed and fires started to spread all over San… Continue Reading
Yoshiro Nakamatso would suffocate himself underwater in order to come up with ideas. He invented the floppy disk when he was within 1/2 second of his death, about to drown. He has 4000 patents. He also has photographed every meal he’s ever taken for the past 34 years. He claims he’s the most prolific inventor… Continue Reading
Claudia is a little upset at me. She doesn’t like when I give out my phone number. “You’re going to get too many calls,” she said. Ok, but I want people to text me with questions for our “Ask Altucher” podcasts. But sometimes I pick up the call. Last night I got a call from… Continue Reading
My daughter is reading my favorite book. “I’m on page 112,” she says, “of The Choose Yourself Stories”. This is my collection of more personal stories about my life. I never marketed it. Just put it out there. But she found it. Now she has a lot of questions like, “Why did you always want… Continue Reading
90% of the feedback I got about “Choose Yourself” was about one thing: How to bridge harsh reality with the world of imagination: how to become an Idea Machine. For my whole life I felt like a stray dog, dashing around until I could survive in the jungle. But I was lost and it took… Continue Reading
