An Ode to James Altucher

As I’ve previously written about regarding Jackie Robinson, there are few people in this life who accomplish several lifetimes worth of achievements. It is rare to find someone who is willing to make hairpin investments, take creative risks, be unafraid of the brightest spotlight, run a highly successful podcast, can make a viable career as a writer and do all of this from a place of experience rather than be a pundit (eww…pundits). Obtaining mastery in any one of these fields is an impressive accomplishment in itself, but to frequently achieve in many different avenues of life is nothing short of other-worldly. James Altucher is one such phenomenally rare human being.

In my opinion, the most foundational aspect of James Altucher is his writing. He has written numerous books over the last twenty years and he remains a resident atop the various bestseller lists (New York Times, Amazon, Washington Post, etc) in the business genre. However, to call him just a business writer is to do the poofy-haired oracle a great disservice. His books are motivational as well, in an authentic way-akin to Jon Acuff. His writing captures his wisdom forged in all of his past and present pursuits. His most recent book, and my favorite from his offerings, Skip The Line serves as a microcosm for his career. Altucher uniquely gives advice such as Don’t Smoke Crack with your ideas (don’t be delusionally optimistic) and provides exercises on how to become an idea-generating machine. He doesn’t just motivate the reader to go forth and blaze their own path, he practically dares them to do it. As mentioned before, the world could use a little more hustle.

Altucher is very much an advocate of working out your creativity muscles. One of his pillars is to generate and write down 10 new ideas per day. He then escalates this concept to varying degrees by introducing challenges such as to come up with 10 ideas to improve a company you admire and then send it to them, generate 10 ideas for a business you could start right now, have what he calls idea sex i.e combine concepts from two different fields and use that to generate 10 new ideas per day. Altucher admits that not every idea is going to be a winner, and that level of honesty is refreshing. The point of the idea generation drills is to encourage quality through quantity. His advice on idea generation has helped me with my writing, though maybe it’s a bit soon for me to give advice.

However, calling James Altucher a serial writer would be selling him short. He has started numerous businesses over the course of his career. Many, through his own admission, haven’t worked out (though, even trying in the first place already sets him apart from most people). However, he has had some successes too. He owned a comedy club in New York City that hosted some big-name comedians. This is an impressive feat on its own, but even moreso when some context is factored in. Altucher had to swim amidst an ocean of competition in NYC, and yet still made the venue financially viable; pulling this off took some serious tenacity. Altucher is less of a serial entrepreneur these days and instead has focused his mass economic winnings towards the field of angel investing. The world could use a few more James Alutcher’s.

Besides his writing, Altucher has parlayed his knowledge into a fantastic podcast, The James Altucher Show. The intro to each episode starts with a voiceover boldly stating This isn’t your average business podcast, and he’s not your average host. Cliché as it may be, that intro is slappingly accurate; Many business podcasts bring a cold air of indifference to the topic being discussed, yet Altucher packs all of the impact his books are known for into his podcasts; his shows are a No Monotone zone for certain. One of the characteristics I judge a podcast on his how informative it can be to an enthusiast (though not expert) to the topic at hand, and Altucher’s show is accessible to those of many different experience levels. Prior knowledge isn’t the gatekeeper to his content, though ruthless desire is, and his tempo demonstrates that in droves.

With all the energy Altucher brings to his endeavors, he also brings some serious intellectual firepower along for the ride as well. After graduating from Cornell with a degree in Computer Science, he would write code that merely needed to be maintained by him periodically, thus allowing him more time to read and write more during his days; he would write 3000 words per day in his early 20’s as he honed his craft (for context, I wrote The Case Against Memes with a pace of 500 words per day). He’s been literally hacking his personal development for decades, and the results clearly show. Think of him as a less-arrogant Tim Ferriss (sorry not sorry, Tim; you’re a bit grating). Not only is his cognition a few orders of magnitude higher than that of a mere mortal (his status as chess grandmaster supports that), he’s a unique problem solver. A few times in his writings and his podcast, he talks about his daughter’s college rejection. Rather than going to community college, spending a year backpacking South America/Eastern Europe or going on a mission trip to Africa like every other applicant, he recommended that she take up driving a racecar. His reasoning was that no other applicant could boast about that on their application letters’ and he turned out to be right; his daughter got accepted the following year (hooray!).

Altucher penned a data-backed yet uniquely Altucher-esque argument about pandemic NYC, only to be met with absolute scorn from none other than the comedic Don of NYC, Jerry Seinfeld. I hope you’re sitting down for this, because Altucher wound up being accurate on many of his claims. Residents have fled NYC and the city has indeed raised taxes to compensate, as Altucher predicted. The 90’s icon (cue the boss fight music) did not take kindly to Altucher’s assessment of lockdown-era New York. However, Seinfeld brought neither data nor solid reasoning to the table in his counter and no amount of calling Altucher a “putz” changes that. Also, putz? Seriously? Did my grandmother come up with that? And this was the funniest guy of the 90’s?  

Essentially, James Altucher is an example of when large amounts of human capital funnel towards a focal point long enough to make a large impact, before shifting towards another target. Over and over again, impact after impact, Altucher keeps reinventing himself with a seemingly endless supply of both ideas and vigor. His high IQ along with his willingness to take business and creative risks are exceptional. Altucher is certainly welcoming to newcomers, just leave your excuses at the door.