#76 with James Altucher - Making and Losing Millions Over and Over Again

**Shaan Patel** (0:00)
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**Sam Parr** (0:24)
So the background here, by the way, Shaan, is I was on James' show three weeks ago, it actually aired today.
I've been getting people reaching out to me. James is an oddball, I like him. He's been around and done all types of interesting stuff. He's had books, he's got paid newsletters, he's, I don't know how you describe yourself, but you're just kinda all over the place, and you've done all types of stuff, and you have a really interesting life. And we thought we'd get them on here, and we could talk about anything, but do you know about James, Shaan?

**Shaan Patel** (0:57)
I know about you, yeah, I know about him. I've read a bunch of your stuff, and I was like, this guy's the shit. And then I read something that was like, I think you were talking about Bitcoin or crypto at the time, and I was like, wait a minute, is this just a guy who just sells the latest thing? Like, oh, here's the new thing, cool, I'll show that. And I was like, oh, okay, I don't know how I feel about this.
And then I've read some of your stories where you talk about how you made money and lost it all over and over and over again. And I was like, this guy is very interesting. You reminded me of like, if Tim Ferriss, you know, smoked a bunch of weed and was on the internet, I don't know, like it was just like some, some variation of really interesting guy who po, you know, who's built his brand on the internet.
You know, you always had like something unexpected. Like it wasn't the formulaic thing. Like even the fact that you own a comedy club, it's like, you always have sort of unexpected things. That's what I have sort of come to like about you. But, you know, that's my admittedly very loose knowledge about, about you.

**Sam Parr** (1:48)
Do you want to give some background?

**James Altucher** (1:50)
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like what you were both sort of referring to. I've had, for better or for worse, a lot of different interests, which I turned into a lot of different careers. And I say for better or for worse, because a lot of times I would have an interest, I'd build a business, I'd sell it, I'd make money. And then for some reason I would just, I don't know, I would totally shit the bed and lose everything. And I'm not talking about like, like, oh, I sold something for a billion and I ended up with 10 million, this is horrible. No, I would sell something for millions and then end up with zero or less than zero in my bank account.
Really just zero actually. I wish sometimes it's better to be less than zero than to be zero. Because if you like are less than zero, then that means there's a deal you could work out with somebody like, oh, I owe you 10 million, let's work it out.
And you maybe give me some so I could build, I don't know what it is. But like, I think it was a young man in the 90s, named Donald Trump, who said, if you owe two million to the bank, the bank owns you. But if you owe two billion to the bank, you own the bank.
But anyway, I would often end up at zero dollars and be depressed to the point of like suicidal, like I had kids to feed, I had myself to feed. And it's really true when you go from having money and selling a business to broke, you find out who your real friends are.
And for me, almost every time, it turned out I had zero friends.
And so I had nowhere to go and no idea and depressed. And I didn't know how to, in some cases, put food on the table for my kids after having millions. And so I had to learn very quickly over and over again, what are my interests? What can I pursue? What's an idea? How to be creative and maybe a horrible environment, and then figure out how to monetize it. And so I was a software guy. I worked in the entertainment industry. I worked for HBO. I started, I combined those two things, and I started a company in the 90s, making websites for entertainment companies.