The Game with Alex Hormozi - I Gave Away $2M and I Wasn't Happy... | Ep 423

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

Are you truly aligned with your values? Today, we go back to when Alex (@AlexHormozi) talked about the time he donated a large amount of money and why he didn’t feel happy about it after. He dives into how finding meaning or purpose in life greatly exceeds some material aspects of your life and the values you choose to live with will give you the ultimate fulfillment in the end.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(1:10) - Alex seeks meaning in actions, driven by purpose.(2:55) - Create and assess meaning in your work engagements.(4:08) - Challenge beliefs, except those deeply held.(5:35) - Evaluate created meaning and fulfillment in your pursuits.(7:45) - Live in alignment with values; decisions reflect upheld values.(10:03) - Legacy notion: Passing wealth can potentially harm recipients.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

As we kind of reached another, quote, mountain top or whatever you want to call it as we've kind of succeeded in business and whatnot, I created another happiness placeholder, right, which I now call it meaning or fulfillment. The wealthiest people in the world see business as a game. This podcast, the game, is my attempt at documenting the lessons I've learned on my way to building acquisition.com into a billion dollar portfolio. My hope is that you use the lessons to grow your business and maybe someday soon partner with us to get to $100 million and beyond. I hope you share and enjoy. I gave away $2 million personally donated to Afterschool All-Stars in the form of cash and actual physical products. We gave 250,000 bands like workout bands, like digital ones.

You know what I mean? Like Fitbits. 250,000 kind of Fitbits to kids in underprivileged city so we can encourage them to get fit and healthy. And we donated $1.2 million to fund the staffing. And I can truthfully tell you that when I did that, I did it because I wanted to feel better. And I can tell you now that it didn't actually make me feel that much better. And I share that because I don't know how many people would say that.

And I just want to keep this channel 100% real. I think a lot of times, at least for me, like I want to do things because I want to find meaning. And I had a really, really interesting conversation. And so the other day I had a four-hour conversation with, I'll say a friend of mine, but I consider him a friend. Hopefully he considers me a friend. Dr. John Barardi, and he sold his company or the majority stake in his company

for over nine figures. And he doesn't do anything right now actively. And I've had two unbelievable conversations with John, and I'm always very grateful for my time with him. And there were two statements that he made through that four hours that have stuck with me since then, and one from the former conversation that I had with him that really kind of changed my life and my outlook.

And from the first conversation, what he talked about was how he said, you need to look at things and consume content for people who are outside of the matrix. And I was like, what do you mean by that? He was like, everyone's inside of the matrix. Everyone is trying to make money, right? Everyone's trying to make money.

They're operating from a place of scarcity. They're operating from a place of desire of wanting something more than what they currently have. And whenever they're doing that, they're like, they're operating from a different energy level. And I don't think you use that exact word, but that's kind of how I perceived it. And that was like my big takeaway from the first one.

And I think that between my first conversation, my second, was about six or nine months. And I'm feeling this kind of shift that's happening within us, you know, Lail and I, as we start this channel. And, you know, we write the book, which you guys, if you haven't heard of it, it's a $100 million offers. It's got a lot of good reviews. It's 99 cents. I made it 99 cents because I want everybody to be able to afford it. And that's as cheap as Jeffrey B. will let me do it. And so, yeah, I'm still true to the cause of having nothing to sell you.

All right. And anyway, so I had this conversation with John. And the first question I asked him when I shifted the conversation to kind of personal stuff, I said, now that you, you know, you've made what you have, you made your exit. I was like, you know, how do you create and destroy meaning? And he was like, huh, that's an interesting question. And I was like, like, in work. Like, how do you create and destroy meaning in the things that you work on?

And he paused and he looked at me. And I felt like he was staring into my soul. And he was like, why do you think work needs to be meaningful? I was like, ugh. okay, and this is why I love talking to people who are outside of the matrix, right? There's just so much perspective. And later in the conversation, I was like, well, then outside of work, you know, like, how do you gain meaning?

And he's like, why do you think life needs to be meaningful? And he's like, just hold for a second. So if you say that life has to be meaningful, then what happens is you create this desire, right, that life must be a certain way, which means we're not accepting life as it currently is. And as soon as we say that life has to be a certain way, it must be meaningful, then we create this deficit, this deficiency between where we are and where we want to be. And so in so doing, we create the deficiency that we're trying to avoid by saying it must be a certain way.

Oh, God. My first book was the Jim book, and I think the opening passage says, we question all of our beliefs, except for those, is from Orson Scott Card. We question all of our beliefs, except for those that we truly believe and those we never think to question at all. And I always take that to heart because the beliefs that we truly hold dear are the ones that we don't, they operate in the background of our minds. There are assumptions that we make on how the world is and how it's supposed to be, how it must be, how it should be, right? What we have to do, right? I'm like, I must create meaning. I should. Work should be meaningful. But by creating that, I end up creating an equation of deficiency, which then ends up making or forcing myself to not experience that, right?

And so I'll tell you a quick story. So when I was in college, I dated a girl who was really, really obsessed with happiness. And she might be completely over this chapter in her life. I'm sure she is. But at the time, she was really into happiness and positive psychology. She even majored in positive psychology. So everything was always like, does this make me happy? Does this make me happy?

Right? So it's like we're studying for a thing. He's like, does this make me happy? And so for me, I ended up actually getting really sick of that concept because I felt like I was always analyzing me like, no, like this doesn't make me happy. Right. And I got so frustrated with it. I got so in my head about like happiness, happiness, happiness,

that I remember that I gave myself the mantra, fuck happiness. And so as soon as I said, this is how I'm going to live, I was like, fuck happiness. I'm just going to get shit done and I'm going to move forward. I feel like I ended up actually experiencing more joy in the work that I was doing. And I didn't realize this, but as we kind of reached another quote, Mountain Top or whatever we want to call it, as we've kind of succeeded in business and whatnot,

I created another happiness. placeholder, right, which I now called meaning or fulfillment. And by doing that, I created yet another equation of deficiency in my own life, which is always analyzing my work and saying, is this meaningful, do I get fulfillment from this and all of that kind of jazz? But for me, what ends up happening is like if I go donate all this money and I feel nothing, I feel like I failed, right? And then the question is like when you donate, are you, should you feel better? I don't know. I assumed that I was supposed to feel better, right? Feel good, but I didn't. And this has been kind of the thing that I am doing right now, or at least this is what I'm thinking through, so I'm sharing this with the channel.

And it has been, I use the word, it's been meaningful for me to give myself the excuse or give myself permission, rather, to not find meaning in things. And that has been unbelievably free, which is just giving myself permission to. work on things that I may or may not find meaningful, but to simply do the thing. And I think that for me, giving my self permission to not find meaning has allowed me to accept reality as it currently is. And by accepting it as it currently is, I do not have a deficiency that I must resolve between where I am and where I think it should be. And by doing that, I have enjoyed the process more. So I'll put it that way. I have less anxiety around those things. Not to see that anxiety is bad. It is a human

condition or part of the human condition. But it has been something that I have experienced by by first saying fuck happiness early in my life and then creating meaning as the new happiness thing that I should be striving for. And again, I think now it's removing meaning or destroying the idea that something should be meaningful or should not be meaningful. And that has been very, very valuable for me. And so simply focusing on the work at hand and doing it well according to my values, which is whether this is meaningful or not, the way that I choose to live is according to these values.

And is the way that I am completing this work, is the way that I am showing up on this meeting, is the way that I am conducting myself, is the way that I am making this decision in alignment with those values. And in thinking like that, I feel like I am able to do it in the present rather than in the future.

I'm able to walk with the values that I choose rather than try and pursue meaning in and of itself, which created a deficit between where I was and where I wanted to go, which created a negative experience. Again, not that negative experience are bad, but I have a preference of not having them if I can avoid them. Real quick, guys, if you can think about how you found this podcast, somebody probably tweeted it, told you about it,

shared it on Instagram or something like that. The only way this grows is through word of mouth. And so I don't run ads. I don't do sponsorships. sell anything. My only ask is that you continue to pay it forward to whoever showed you or however you found out about this podcast that you do the exact same thing. So if it was a review, if it was a post, if you do that, it would mean the world to me and you'll throw some good karma out there for another entrepreneur. And so I show you this. I know this is a little bit more heady than more

of my natural stuff, talking about money. But I guess I make this because I know a lot of entrepreneurs are like me, hopefully, maybe not, not hopefully like me, but hopefully they're just like themselves. But if you were like me in that you strive for these things, I can tell you that I got no more meaning from giving lots of money away at all. And just thinking about taking the actions that I am taking with the intention of being in alignment with the values that I find meaningful has been the thing that has been truly freeing for me mentally. And I make this channel because it feels in alignment with my values. I wrote the book and the books because they're in alignment with my values. And, you know, buildingacquisition.com and taking interest in the companies that we do in our portfolio

has been in alignment with the values rather than saying, is this company meaningful? Is my work with this company meaningful? Because here's the one that really gets me tricked up. And this is also something that John brought up, which is like admitting that, and again, this may be contrary to a lot of people's religious beliefs. I don't mean to offend anyone that is not my intention here. But my belief, my viewpoint of the world is that when we die, nothing happens. And when you, and legacy is a myth. And so when the idea of taking money and then having my kids, right, then have something, I think that ruins people. I think wealth without the skill of acquiring the wealth is like my favorite magic card of all time, Magic the Gathering, there's a card called Burning Wish. The flavor

text on the card is, she wished for a weapon, but for not the skill to wield it. And I, always thought that was so profound because I feel like money is power, right? It's just raw energy that you can either, you know, you create hospitals, you can build bombs with it, whatever you want, you can do it with money. But if you don't have the skill of learning how to master and wield money, which is really just learning how to get it to flow to you, if you don't have that skill, that those traits, right? If you get it, it's like having all this raw power and I think it ruins people. And so I already knew, Layla and I already decided and we signed our will. When we did that I realize that we don't have kids and everything that I've amassed and was probably going

to become a pretty big fortune when we die, I'm just donating anyways. Because I believe that even if I did have kids, one, I wouldn't give it to him. And if I did choose to give it to them, here's how I think how crazy this is from a legacy standpoint. A hundred generations from now, you're diluting your gene pool, you know, a hundred multiplied, like factored, right? And so it's like, you know, cutting by half, cutting by half, cutting by half, cutting by half times a hundred, right? And that's assuming that humans are still around 100 generations from now. But if they were, I'm still not even any way related to these people, and I kind of ruin them anyways because I'm giving them wealth that they don't control and don't understand how it was generated. And they definitely don't remember who I was.

Not that that I need that, but like just being real. And the other alternative is that in 100 generations, there won't be any humans. Right. And in that case, then the legacy doesn't matter either. And so that was what was kind of like my ultimate wrap around with this of meaning is that nothing inherently has meaning. which also gives us the power to create and destroy meaning as we see fit, but more importantly, to rise above meaning and say, why am I saying that things should or should not be meaningful?

And answering and examining that question has been very valuable for me as an entrepreneur, because in some ways it's freed up a lot of my attention because of this continued obsession I had, or that I have tendencies towards towards only doing things that are meaningful, when in fact I feel like an easier thing that has been useful for me has been, am I doing things that are in alignment with my values, and those values to me are meaningful in and of themselves, and that is all. And they don't have to be that way. They shouldn't be that way. But for me, doing actions in that way, rather than putting it

and casting it in the future has been a useful mental exercise. And so I don't know where you're at in your journey, but my name's Alex Ramosey, in a portfolio of companies to do about $85 million a year. I have absolutely nothing to sell you. My goal with Acquisition.com is to help entrepreneurs build their businesses and, you know, get financial freedom. The way that we start, everything is I give away everything. So the courses, the books, this book you can get for 99 cents. I have this is the first of a big series of volumes that I'm making of the real stuff that actually helped us build these companies. And then with the hopes that we can help invest in some of the bigger ones that succeed using those materials. So anyways, lots of love, keeping amazing.