How to build an empire from scratch?

Yuvraj Jadhav ‏ @yuvrajj20 How to get things done? I plan to build empire ! but how to put that first few first bricks in place?

ANSWER: I don’t have an empire and I’ve had my ups and downs. But I can answer this question:

I moved to NYC with $0 in my pocket. I worked at HBO. I was a “Jr. Programmer Analyst” but on my voicemail I put “This is James Altucher from HBO”. For all anyone knew I was the CEO of HBO if all you did was listen to my voicemail.

I then told everyone I worked at HBO. If anyone asked what I did there I just said, “to help them come up with new ideas.” Because I truly believed that’s what I did.

And then I had an idea: HBO does great original TV shows. How about I do original web shows for them. So I did.

And then other companies, even competitors of HBO, wanted to know how I did that. So I started doing it for them also. Why not? HBO wasn’t going to fire me. There was nobody else out there who knew how to build websites then. So I worked hard. 20 hours a day. And started making good money. Then it was too much for me to do. So I started hiring people. More and more people. Then we needed to move offices we had so many people. So finally I quit HBO. Then we sold the company and I was helping run the resulting entity of over 1000 employees and a billion dollar market valuation.

And so on.

Another way to say all this is the 12-step slogan: “Fake it til you make it”. This doesn’t mean “Lie until you make it”. It means: get the knowledge and then already visualize that you’ve succeeded and act accordingly. Do it! Fake it til you make it!