James Altucher - Think Like a Billionaire

Think Like a Billionaire

How the Most Successful People in the World Think About Work, Love, and Everything In-Between

By James Altucher

SCRIBD EDITIONS

Copyright 2019 by James Altucher

Cover design by TK

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9781094400648

First e-book edition: October 2019

Portions of this book have appeared on the James Altucher Show

Scribd, Inc.

San Francisco, California

Scribd.com

For more, visit www.scribd.com and follow @Scribd on Twitter and Facebook.

Im not a billionaire. So why am I writing a book called Think Like a Billionaire?

I often write about things that I am fascinated by and things that I had to learn the hard way.

When I wrote The Power of No, it wasnt because I was such a genius at saying no. It was because it was really hard for me to do.

I kept saying yes to things that made me unhappy. This was sending me in the wrong direction in life.

Learning how to say no which led to more creativity, achievement, friends, and freedom in my life became important to me.

The adventures I went on in my quest to gain the power of no was what I wrote about.

In several of my books Ive written about my story: How I made money, and then went broke (many times), and then bounced back.

Ive been depressed, suicidal, scared, even terrified. I had two kids to feed plus I wanted to be happy in life.

I wanted to pursue goals and dreams about things that I loved.

I didnt want people to say no to my dreams. I wanted to be healthy and have friends and fall in love.

To follow my passions and have financial success.

Its a clich to say, but we only have one life. And its pretty short.

If you spend your whole life in pursuit of money, then can you say that youve had a good life?

What if your passion was music? Or writing? Or spending more time with friends?

Well, before writing this book, I interviewed over a dozen billionaires coming from every possible background.

Ive also spoken with hundreds of other people who are the best in the world at what they do.

I found that they have many things in common. A billionaire knows how to make money. And they have very specific habits that have helped them make money.

Still, every single one of the billionaires in this book didnt sacrifice their passions to make their money. Instead, they all knew they would make a lot of money if they found a passion that could put them on the right path.

That if someone did these same things, then every opportunity is possible every goal is achievable.

But I dont believe theres one technique for anything.

We all go on adventures in our questions.

The question is: Are we the hero of our stories or just a side character?

ACHIEVING THE BILLIONAIRE MINDSET

I dont know how to define success. I guess there are many definitions.

The impact you have on the world. Your level of happiness. Perhaps some degree of financial success. Achieving a title or an award.

Much of success is fleeting. You win an award and you wake up the next day and wonder, Whats next?

Its not the success that makes one achieve impact. Nor is it just habits.

I dont like the word, habit. A habit might be something like, tie your shoes every day. Or look both ways before you cross the street.

Out of the hundreds of billionaires and other people of world-class success that I interviewed, it wasnt simply good habits that brought them the success they deserved.

It was something else.

It was a particular set of meta-skills that they slowly developed over time that allowed them to take any situation and make it work for them.

At any given point, the world is telling you what to do. Or you are telling the world what to do.

The meta-skills this book will describe are what will change you from being an innocent bystander who is thrust around by the events happening all around you, to the hero of the story that is being told by the world.

What does that mean for you?

Youll experience the arc of the hero. Joseph Campbell describes this in his book The Heros Journey , but I am going to summarize it right now.

Its the journey that can take you from stuck to unstuck.

Its what took Sara Blakely from selling fax machines door to door, to changing the way women all over the world look at themselves.

Its what took Peter Thiel from feeling imprisoned by his cushy job at one of the top law firms in the country (where he couldve risen up to the top and made millions), to creating some of the most important companies on the planet PayPal, Facebook (where he was the first investor), Palantir, among others.

Its what took Richard Branson from being upset about a cancelled plane, to making Virgin Galactic which will eventually pioneer the field of space tourism.

This is the arc of the hero:

Struggling with their current situation. Not sure what to do.

A call to action. Perhaps a disaster. Or a wish unfulfilled. Or a mysterious invitation. Or an urging of the heart.

The journey begins. The hero meets their new friends who will help them along the way.

Obstacles mount, trying to force our hero to leave the arc and go back to being a bystander. Go back to being stuck in a cubicle.

And finally the greatest obstacle of all, which our hero, against all odds, defeats.

Then the journey home, where our hero is a changed person, ready to take their new knowledge and skills to go on even greater adventures and arcs and stories and create an even greater impact.

Think about it. Its exactly what happened in Star Wars.

Luke wants to go into space. His uncle says no.

He sees a hologram of a princess who needs help. His aunt and uncle are killed.

He meets his mentor. Then his new friends, Han Solo, Chewbacca, etc.

He faces greater and greater obstacles. Escaping from storm troopers, freeing Princess Leia, getting off the Death Star. All the while learning the skills to do this. Learning the Force.

Finally, with his friends help and with the help of his new skills he is able to destroy the Death Star.

He returns home. Not just to receive a medal. But to get ready for the further adventures ahead.

The arc of the hero never ends.

Are you the hero in your story? I wonder often if I am. I try to be. I dont want to be a bystander. I dont want to be stuck. But its difficult.

I always have to ask: Am I somewhere on this arc? Because if Im not, then Im not the hero of the story being told. Im just a character in someone elses story.

What I learned most of all from the many billionaires and successful people I spoke with is that they knew which skills would keep them the hero of their story.

They recognized when they werent the hero, and they knew how to get themselves back on the arc.

This was the main thing in common with all of them.

Of course, there were specific skills they all had in common, too. And youll discover them throughout this book.

But, quietly, they always knew that there was a story about the world written just for them. And they participated in that story to the fullest extent possible.

This doesnt mean finding your purpose.

This means living with purpose even if you dont know exactly what that purpose or passion is.

So what are the meta-skills that these successful people, these heroes of their stories, used to achieve success?

Values