Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Your Altucher Confidential guide March 27, 2018 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( [Altucher Confidential] Allow Me to Introduce Myself Dear Altucher Confidential Reader The greatest moment of my entire life was when I made the decision to choose myself. But what does “Choose Yourself” really mean? Well, I strive to answer that question time and time again through what I write to you. That is my goal and that is my promise to you. My Story I built my first company in the ’90’s while working at HBO. The company built websites for entertainment companies. Bad Boy Records, Miramax, Time Warner, HBO, Sony, Disney, Loud Records, Interscope, on and on. That year, I saw that kids in junior high school were learning HTML. So I sold the business for around $15 million. I felt like a genius. But I did everything smart, until I did everything stupid. I bought an apartment for millions. I rebuilt it. I bought art. I played a lot of poker. I needed a ladder to get to my comic books. I began investing in companies. A million here. A few hundred thousand there. One IPO, I put $2 million in at $20 and watched it go to $0. I took helicopters to Atlantic City and would gamble for 48 hours straight while drunk. I had never had money before in my life. I had everything I ever thought I wanted. I started another company. Huge investors including CMGI, Allen & Co., Investcorp and Henry Kravis put money in. I started a VC fund. I invested in more companies. Then internet stocks started to go down. This is ridiculous, I thought. The internet is here to stay. I knew nothing about stocks or valuations or anything resembling rational thought at the time. I doubled down. Then quadrupled down. Then 8-octupled down. From June 2000 until September 2001, I probably lost $1 million a week. I couldn't stop. I was an addict. I wanted to get back up to the peak. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to have $100 million so people would love me. I was the worst kind of idiot. Writing this now I can barely breathe. I had two kids to take care of. I felt like I was going to die. That zero equals death. I couldn't believe how stupid I had been. I had lost all my friends. Nobody returned my calls. I would go to the ATM machine and feel my blood going through my whole body when I saw how much was left. I was going to zero and nothing could stop it. There were no jobs... there was nothing. I lost my house. One weekend, when I had $0 left in my bank account, I called my parents to borrow money, but they said "no". "College was enough," they told me. I tried meditation to calm down, but it didn't work. I never slept. I lost 30 pounds. I couldn't talk to anyone. I couldn't move. I stopped having ideas. I cried every day. I felt like I had won the lottery (I did) and now there would be no chance for me. I would look at my daughters and think I had ruined their lives. I went from feeling immortal to feeling dead all over. There was never a moment when I didn't feel sick. I had let everyone down forever. I moved 80 miles north of NYC with the tiny bit of money I took out of my apartment after selling at a million-dollar loss. I didn't leave the house for three months. Finally, I had to either die or feed my family. That’s when I began to realize something: Success in today’s world ONLY happens when you choose yourself. Choose yourself for happiness. Choose yourself for freedom. Because if you don’t choose yourself, someone else will, and the result won’t be pleasant. And when I began to understand that, little by little, I started to pull myself off the floor: - I started to exercise every day. I started to eat better. - I started to only be around people who loved and supported me. I broke off all ties with anyone who I felt bad to be around. - I wrote software again. Instead of blind-investing in the stock market I downloaded 50 years of stock data and started statistically modeling what happens in hundreds of different situations. Doing this, I developed ideas for trading systems, which I shared freely with several hedge fund managers, some of whom gave me money to manage. - I wrote down ideas every day of articles I could write about the internet and stocks. - I prayed every day. I was grateful for my daughters. I was grateful for what I had. I didn't fight reality or regret. This was my reality and I had to make the best of it. - Every day, I came up with ideas for new businesses. I had a waiter's pad. I would go to a cafe at six in the morning with about four books and read for an hour or two and then start writing down ideas for new businesses, articles, trading systems, etc. - I started a hedge fund. I started a fund of hedge funds. I started a newsletter. I did deals. I made introductions every day, expanding my brand-new network from scratch. I got involved in a mental health company I sold for $41 million. - I started a website, Stockpickr!, which got millions of unique users. I found advertising for it. I sold it to TheStreet.com. I had made millions again from scratch. And then I lost it all again. And then I built it up again. In a completely different way but using the same basic fundamental techniques of health that I described above. Of trying to create value for people. Of trying to go from success to success. That was many years ago, and a lot has happened since then. I now get to do what I love every day. I get to write books that mean something to me and I get to share my thoughts in this newsletter. I get to choose myself. And it’s all in pursuit of my greatest mission: to help other people choose themselves, too. I have opened up to you. I am not shy about my failures, my weaknesses, or my experiences. I want to share with you all of my fears, my thoughts and my ideas. Ultimately, Altucher Confidential is about digging deeper and exploring what it means to be human and achieve well-being in a world that is increasingly complicated. I want to navigate the confusion together. The triumphs too. Watch Your Inbox… Thank you for letting me share my story with you. I hope you now have a better sense of who I am, and perhaps what you can expect from Altucher Confidential. But not completely. I like to keep you on your toes, too. As I’ve mentioned, you will receive a letter from me in your inbox every day, Monday-Friday. Remember to whitelist james@jamesaltucher.com so that my emails don’t get sent to your junk box. That said, keep an eye on your inbox. I am so excited to get started. Sincerely, [James Altucher] James Altucher Add james@jamesaltucher.com to your address book: [Whitelist us]( Additional Articles & Commentary: [The James Altucher Website]( Join the conversation! 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