1696: You Can Call Yourself an Entrepreneur When by James Altucher on Business Startup Advice

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[00:00:30] This is Optimal Work Daily. You can call yourself an entrepreneur when by James Altucher of jamesaltucher.com. It's not really such a great thing to be an entrepreneur. There's no real freedom in it. People think that starting your own business gives you freedom. It doesn't. When you work a corporate job where you only realistically work for one to two hours a day and you can leave your work at the office, then you have freedom. Entrepreneurship equals slavery.

[00:00:59] You are a slave to employees, partners, investors, a board, clients, potential buyers, reporters, landlords, random people off the street who try to come into your office and rob you, etc. On Quora recently, someone asked, when can I call myself an entrepreneur? I'm happy to share some general guidelines. If someone hasn't had this experience, they shouldn't call themselves an entrepreneur. Lying awake at 3 in the morning wondering about...

[00:01:27] A. I think I have to suck up a lot tomorrow. Note to self. Bring up with therapists that I never really feel like the real me anymore. B. How am I going to make payroll next week? C. How do I solve the fact that Wade, employee number 6, now has a bad attitude that is spreading to the others, i.e. they smoke cigarettes in stairwell discussing reasons they hate me? I know this because I tape recorded it. D. How do I deal with complaints from client number 1 about employee number 3?

[00:01:57] E. How quickly can I package this company up to sell the d*** thing so I can sleep again? F. The site is too slow. How can I find a programmer who knows what he's doing? G. I have 8 new features in my head. Can I get them up on the site within 24 hours? H. I miss the insurance payment. Hope to god none of my employees get hit by a car this month. I. Why won't client number 2 pay his bills on time? Should I hire someone to break his legs?

[00:02:27] J. Is it me? Do I need to improve my sales technique? Do I need to donate to someone's charity again? K. Why do I feel every pulse of my blood running through my whole body right now? L. Is it 6am yet? Oh shoot, it's only 3.05am. I've been thinking about all this stuff for only 5 minutes. Should I get up and work or try to sleep? I'll try to sleep. I'll count sheep. But only after I figure out how to make payroll.

[00:02:55] M. My competitors are all better than me and they all go to parties where they meet clients and make money. M. Can I introduce my potential client to a potential girlfriend? O. How come we didn't get enough publicity for our launch? Is it because I'm not cool enough? Oh, and if you've never used these phrases, you shouldn't call yourself an entrepreneur. I don't like to say anything bad about my competitors. They're all good guys and I respect their work. After all, this is a big enough field that we've all become friends.

[00:03:25] But perhaps the one difference we have with them is... To potential client. The pay is not a lot right now, but this is only temporary while we look at putting you into more of a management position. To potential employee. This particular job is not fun, but we have some fun stuff coming up that we can put you on. Potential employee again. He's about to get screwed. I can get that done by the end of the week. No problem. Thinking, by end of month or two. No problem.

[00:03:53] Of course you have insurance. To employee. Please don't get sick that week. We have plans to open offices in various parts of the world. To potential buyer in front of map with pins in China, Paris, London, NYC, LA. Just come inside and sit at a desk. To random people walking in street right before potential buyer of company visits. We want to work with you. Just tell us what you can pay and we'll be happy.

[00:04:21] To get client to say yes before you start telling him about add-ons. Of course it's legal. To secretary when taking prospective client out to lunch in front of prospective client. Hold all calls. I don't want to be bothered at all for the next two to four hours. This is a very important lunch. We can do that. To anyone who asks you about anything. I'm going to be personally involved in this project. Me. To anyone. Your sales should triple after this. To client who hires us.

[00:04:52] I agree with you completely. I'm going to improve that. To client who tells you why he doesn't like you. Chances are electricity in NYC will keep running on January 1st, 2000 if you hire us. I said to Con Ed when hiring us for a Y2K project. Oh, and you can't call yourself an entrepreneur until You've logged at least 60,000 plus useless air miles in a three-month period. You cry with hands over your head thinking, What the f*** did I just do?

[00:05:21] Remind me to tell you about the time I met Tupac's mom. You get a crush on at least one employee. You've gotten a four-page email from an ex-employee listing all of the reasons they don't like you anymore. Now friends with that ex-employee. You realize you've suddenly been defriended on Facebook by a reasonable chunk of ex-employees. You think of four new businesses you'd rather be starting than this stupid one. Howard Lindzen called me while I was writing this to see how I was liking the new blog design his guys did for me.

[00:05:49] I figured I'd add to the 53 things I've learned from Howard Lindzen. So I asked him, Howard, how do you know when you can call yourself an entrepreneur? I was sort of disappointed in his answer. He said, You can call yourself an entrepreneur when you wake up at 3 a.m. and you are super excited to get to the office and begin the day. You just listened to the post titled, You Can Call Yourself an Entrepreneur When?

[00:06:17] by James Altucher of jamesaltucher.com And thank you to James for letting us share his work today. A little bit about him. He's an entrepreneur, a writer, investor, trader, and podcaster. You could call him a jack of all trades, which of course many entrepreneurs are and maybe you can relate. And on his podcast, he interviews a bunch of talented people from many different backgrounds. The podcast is called The James Altucher Show

[00:06:42] and it's always in the top charts in the business category of Apple Podcasts for very good reason. He's also written a bunch of books and you can find all of them at jamesaltucher.com. Some additional fun facts about James. He is a national chess master, a seed investor in Buddy Media, which later sold to Salesforce.com for a whopping $745 million. And if that's not enough for you, he's also co-owner of Stand Up New York, where he occasionally performs stand-up comedy.

[00:07:11] So again, very wide range of skills and life experience and you can come by jamesaltucher.com for a lot more. But I think that is going to do it for today. I thank you as always for being here and being a subscriber and I'll see you back here tomorrow as usual, where your optimal life awaits.