Taking Charge of Your Business and Your Life

with guest James Altucher #MakingBank S5E22

As an entrepreneur, you’re not just in charge of taking care of your business. You’ve got to take care of yourself. When it comes to all aspects of life, success feeds and connects each different part. It’s too easy to get lost in the world of business and start losing yourself.  

James Altucher, an entrepreneur with experiences in the lowest lows and highest highs, is a recent guest on Making Bank. After hitting rock bottom, James learned about some of the most vital things in his life – and how to balance and care for them. Learn what areas of your life you should start maintaining, with advice on how to exercise your creativity and stay in touch with yourself.  

Aspects that Entrepreneurs Should Value  

James breaks his life down into aspects of his life that he finds most important. These are parts of his life that he values, and that he knows he needs to put time into. One aspect depends on the other, and vice versa. “I picture it like a body. So if my blood gets blocked anywhere in my body, then I’m going to have a heart attack…And so I view that there are four bodies.” 

There’s your physical body, which is staying in shape and making sure that you’re staying healthy. Putting yourself and knowing when your body needs rest, or nutrients are just one part of yourself that you need to take care of yourself. It’s easy to forget other things beyond just the physical aspects.  

The emotional body goes along with parts of yourself that you should be paying attention to. Often time, it’s hard to see how much emotional stress you’re under, especially when you’re an entrepreneur. Getting caught up and worried about your business can lead to emotional conflicts in other aspects of your life. “Like if you’re arguing with your wife all day or your friends all day, you’re not gonna get out of bed with a great business idea and be able to execute on it.” 

You’re going to spend that energy on the relationships or the problems that are causing you emotional stress – it’s taking the time away that you could use positively elsewhere. Taking care of your emotions and stress can help you make more time to do things that are benefitting your life, business, and self.  

“If you’re sick in bed, you’re going to have to have a strong faith component in your life, spiritual or religious, whatever you want to call it.” Taking care of your spiritual health is a component that keeps you wanting to move on. You need that faith to gain insights, to recognize where you can grow.  

It’s not just religion, it’s your family, your community, what you value, what you believe in. The innate good and inspiration inside of what you want to do and what you want to create as an entrepreneur is a spiritual aspect.  

Working Your Brain  

James knows that creation is important in life, but there’s even more of an emphasis on it when you’re creating a business and exploring building something. “Is this pro-innovation, will this encourage more innovations, or will this encourage few innovations?” James asks himself this when thinking about a product or an idea that he’s come up with.  

When it comes to having an idea and creating something, a lot of the time people just sit around and wait for it. But that’s not how it works. If you’re not actively being creative, it’s not going to come out of anywhere. You have to exercise your mind as if you would exercise your body.  

“So the way you exercise that idea most, there’s a lot of ways, but the way I do it is every single day. I take every single day, I take a waiter’s pad and I write 10 ideas down.” James says this is how he stays excited, and how he’s always exercising his mind.  

The more that you’re doing something like this, the easier it becomes. And this is a way how you can see your external life affects your mental health. When you’re down, it’s going to be harder to want and start creating. Trying to control too many things can also start limiting your entrepreneurship abilities.  

It takes time and effort, but you never know where it might take you. James says, “If you want to skip the line and become the top 1% in your passion or industry or career, there are many things you can do where you don’t need to put in the 10,000 hours before you get to that point where you’re acknowledged as being in the top 1%.”  

Life can take you on a wild ride – especially in business. There aren’t any specific equations or directions to follow for success, but at the end of the day, if you know what you want and who you are, you’re ahead of the game.