My Takeaways From ‘The Rich Employee’ By James Altucher

COLLIN HARNESS

An entrepreneur is someone who has a job, but it’s a job he made up all by herself.

The Rich Employee is a book about about working for a business and also being an entrepreneur. It is a collection of stories and tips and actions from James Altucher which he used to be successful at the business he worked for while starting other businesses on the side.

Here are all my takeaways from this book:

A.) Be an entre-ployee. Become an employee and an entrepreneur. Only after you have created a successful side business, leave your current business to go run the other business. Link your financial success to the success of the business. Do not jump off the cliff, but have ropes and safety gear.

B.) Millionaires have multiple streams of income.

C.) Build up your skills at your current job and leverage them to help people outside of your current job.

D.) People will have multiple jobs and careers over their lifetime.

E.) Be creative, write a blog about what you do, then consulting, get more skills, do speaking

F.) Luck = 1. Persistence + 2. Diversification (ideas)

G.) Always assume you are the least intelligent person in the room. Always. Do this in every room, dinner and situation. Try and listen and learn from every single person. When someone is done talking ask at least one question.

H.) Ask better questions, get a better answer.

I.) People remember how you made them feel. They will not remember what you said.

J.) Excellence spreads like a disease.

K.) The CEO is the lowest employee. He has the most bosses, employees, customers, investors, board members, banks, media etc. Must be willing to do every job.

L.) Always find meaning in what you are doing. Trust that excellence is noticed and rewarded in the long run.

M.) Get out of your head and find someone to encourage.

N.) The only thing you have control over is your mindset, your habits and the choices you make internally about how you’re going to deal with a situation.

O.) Leadship = 1. An ability to inspire others. 2. An ability to help define a vision. 3. Execute on a vision. Etc.

P.) Over promise, over deliver. Raise the bar and then keep raising the bar.

Q.) A rich employee is:

• Loyal
• Does not gossip
• Who did I help today?
• Gives credit to his boss and other employees

R.) Write down your long term values.

S.) Learn about your biz competitors, industry and history.

T.) The people who own are getting wealthier. The people who sacrifice ownership for the myth of stability are getting poorer.

U.) Create a side hustle apart from your current job.
– Create a process or system for your side hustle.

V.) Qualities of a great side hustle:
– Be obsessed with your topic
– know more, love more, express more. More passion
– Spread the love: Pinterest, Instagram, blogs, other sites pointing back to your site
– Make more content content. Some will be good and some will be bad. Make more.
– 1000 true fans. You don’t need the world, just loyal followers.
– The soft sell. Talk about the benefits of a product you use and link to it. Do not ram it down your customers throat.

W.) QVC-A
Quality – everything needs to be high quality.
Value – When you give a billion dollars worth of value, you get a billion dollars worth of value.
Consistency – Do something every week at the same time without fail
A- Authenticity – Be yourself and be real

X.) True mentally strong people are constantly focused on others.

Y.) The only way to learn new things is to ask questions and be curious.

Z.) Mentally strong people give themselves permission to do something that has never been done before.

AA.) Experience are more valuable than goods.

BB.) Get good at 3,4,5 things and then find the intersection.

CC.) You are the coach of your future self. You are the only coach of your future self. Everything that happens in your future is a direct result of what you do today.

DD.) The more haters you have, it means you will have 10 times the number of people who love you but are silent. When they offend, don’t defend.

EE.) Study what you did. Learn from your past to get better.

Website recommendations for learning new skills:

• Fedora
• TedX
• Coursera
• Coursmos
• Highbrow
• Skillshare
• Curios
• Lynda
• CreativeLive
• Udemy

James Book Suggestions:

• Are you fully charged?: The 3 Keys to Energizing Your Work and Life – By Tom Rath
• The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-to-5 – By Taylor Pearson
• The Miracle Morning – By Hal Elrod
• How Successful People Think: Change your thinking, change your life – By John Maxwell
• Become an Idea Machine – By Claudia Azula
• The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life’s Perfection – By Michael Singer
• The Architecture of Persuasion: How to write well-constructed sales letters – By Michael Masterson
• Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Persuasive – By Robert Cialdini
• 7 Habits of Highly of Highly Effective People – By Stephen Covey
• Tomorrowland: Our Journey From Science Fiction to Science Fact – By Steven Kotler
• StrengthsFinder 2.0 – By Tom Rath
• Bounce: The Science of Success – By Mathew Syed
• The Startup of You: Adapt to the Future – By Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha
• Seven Years to Seven Figures: The Fast Track Plan to Becoming a Millionaire – By Michael Masterson
• Mastery – By Robert Greene
• A Curious Mind: The Secret To A Bigger Life – By Brian Grazer
• Quitter – By Jon Acuff
• Powers of Two: How Relationships Drive Creativity – By Joshua Wolf Shenk
• Lean In – By Sheryl Sandberg
• The War of Art and Turning Pro – By Stephen Pressfield
• The Obstacle Is the Way – By Ryan Holiday
• 80/20 Sales and Marketing – Perry Marshall
• To Sell Is Human – By Daniel Pink
• Play It Away: A Workaholics Cure For Anxiety – By Charlie Hoehn

I would highly recommend this book for any employee or entrepreneur.

The biggest investment you can make is in yourself, because no one else is going to invest in your knowledge or growth.

You have to choose yourself through the daily practice: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

What books or tools would you recommend? Leave a comment. I want to hear from you.