What did you do to make money after you went broke?

What did you do to make money after you went broke? –@ScottEPowers

Several things:

Downsized. I had to sell my house. I severely downsized. I went from a 4,500 square foot penthouse to a 1,400 square foot house 70 miles north and I cut my expenses by 75%.

I had to get in shape. I worked out every day, I emotionally stopped dealing with people who were dragging me down, I made lists of ideas every day, and I either meditated or read from various spiritual or inspirational texts each day. I knew it was going to be a tough battle to climb back up so I did everything I could to prepare.

I immediately started writing about finance to generate income. Within a few months I had a book deal and I was writing for TheStreet.com and The Financial Times.

I was daytrading and that was doing well back then (2002-05). I don’t think day trading is practical now but it was then.

I started trading for hedge funds, then I started helping people sell their companies, then I started a fund of hedge funds. One day at the time, as the ideas I wrote began to flourish I got back into the game.

I started stockpickr.com http://bit.ly/qV3Q5E which I sold to TheStreet.com. There was a six year period where nobody was paying my salary and I had to hustle for every dollar. But that proved to me that no matter how bad the economy gets, if you’re the one eyed man (the optimist) in the land of the blind (the pessimists) then you will find the ways to make money even if we are in a Depression.