James Altucher - The Rich Employee

C opyright 2015 James Altucher

First Edition: September 2015

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Cover design and interior layout by: Erin Tyler

Ebook design by: Ian Claudius

Executive Producer and Managing Editor: Claudia Azula Altucher

ISBN (Ebook): 978-0-9967243-1-9

ISBN (Print): 978-0-9967243-0-2

T here are 100,000,000 employees in the United States.

3,000,000,000 employees worldwide.

This book is dedicated to all of them.

W hen I first wrote Choose Yourself, many people wrote me and said, what if Im not an entrepreneur.

Not everyone is an entrepreneur. Ive been an employee as often as Ive been an entrepreneur.

Choose Yourself was when I was at my worst moment, not only financially but physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Its how I recovered. Its how I literally saved my life. I called it my daily practice and I described in detail how I used it to not only survive but thrive.

It doesnt matter if you are an entrepreneur. Or an employee. You can choose yourself and thrive and change the world. Every day I bring my energy into the world by first concentrating on how I can build up the energy inside of myself.

Having a Rich Employee mindset is critical to creating the life you want to live, whether you work for yourself or you work for, or with others.

Corporations filled with rich employees will change the world. People with a Rich Employee mindset will first choose themselves and from that vantage point, do whatever they want.

This book is for people who want to do what they want. Individuals who want to pursue their lifes dreams. And for the people who work with them and are inspired by them.

More specifically, this book is for:

Your success is determined by the success of the people who work for you. If your employees understand the company, the brand, your needs, your bosss needs, so much so that they see their own futures stapled to satisfying those needs, then you will succeed.

Ultimately a manager is guiding a ship. You cant do anything about the weather. You just have to make sure everyone is doing what they are supposed to do to take advantage of the good weather and to survive when there is bad weather.

The Poor Employee will jump ship when theres bad weather. Will do a mediocre job when there is good weather, and is always planning mutiny.

The Rich Employee wants to help you get to your destination and beyond. A culture of the Rich Employee Mindset will create abundance for your group and everyone in your company, including customers, and shareholders will take notice and see it.

Many people think in terms of Should I stay at this job or should I be an entrepreneur?

It doesnt matter. You get out of a situation exactly what you bring into it.

If you bring in the Rich Employee mindset then you come out rich (in health, mind, body, bank account).

If you bring in the Poor Employee mindset you come out poor.

Theres the story of the two men who visit a Zen master.

The first man says: Im thinking of moving to this town. Whats it like?

The Zen master says: What was your old town like?

The first man says: It was dreadful. Everyone was hateful. I hated it.

The Zen master says: This town is very much the same. I dont think you should move here.

The first man left and a second man came in.

The second man said: Im thinking of moving to this town. Whats it like?

The Zen master said: What was your old town like?

The second man said: It was wonderful. Everyone was friendly and I was happy. Just interested in a change now.

The Zen master said: This town is very much the same. I think you will like it here.

This book is about becoming the second man. The one who will make the most of any situation. The one who will weave abundance out of any job/location instead of just get by until he is dissatisfied again and is forced to move on.

Why would an entrepreneur read a book about being a Rich Employee?

Being an entrepreneur still means you have a job. Its just that you created the job!

And your job is much more difficult because everyone knows the rate of failure of all startups is 85%! Theres no way around that statistic.

Ive done due diligence on hundreds of companies. Im invested in about 30. Ive started 20. Ive had my 85% failure rate, sometimes very painfully.

I wish I had known the principles outlined in this book.

Often we write about the things that were hardest for us to learn. I had to spend twenty years or more learning these principles in dozens of situations, and by analyzing thousands of other examples.

The Rich Employee morphs into the successful entrepreneur who, in turns, will know how to make his own employees Rich Employees.

This feels good. This creates value and innovation in the world.

This is success.

A t some point we wake up.

For me, it couldve been the time my father told me that after a year of nursery school, there would be a year of kindergarten, then six years of elementary school, six years of middle school and high school, four years of college, three years of graduate school, and then about forty years of workThen retirement. Like grandpa, he said. I was three years old.

Or it could have been the time my boss was screaming at me at work for some small misstep I had takenand did not know yet that I had just received a job offer from my dream company. Mid-yelling I was able to hold up my hand and say, Its ok. I quit. That was a good moment.

Another time was when I quit a job to join the company I had started 18 months earlier. Another time was when I realized that I had squandered that company when I sold it and lost all the money.

Theres been quite a few times. I went from employee to entrepreneur, back to employee, back to entrepreneur. Never quite getting it. Never quite fully realizing. What was there to realize? That it was over.

The Industrial Revolution had given way to the so-called Knowledge Economy was now giving way to something totally knew, a brand new live child of historical tectonic shiftsthe Idea Economy. I wasnt always ready for this. I lost my way. Many times I hit my head against the wall and said, Why is this happening to me AGAIN!? And the rate at which I was saying this was happening faster and faster. The world was just changing too fast and I didnt understand what to do.