I spent $2,000,000 and it didn’t make me happy..

Summary

• I personally donated two million dollars to After-School All-Stars, including 250,000 workout bands and 1.2 million for staffing.
• Despite the large donation, I realized it didn't make me feel significantly better, which was unexpected for me.
• My valuable interactions with Dr. John Berardi, who sold his company for over nine figures, led to a change in how I perceive work and meaning.
• Berardi questioned why work, or life in general, has to be meaningful, suggesting that insisting on significance can create a deficiency between reality and expectations.
• From my personal experience, shifting focus from happiness to just getting tasks done led to experiencing more joy, a principle I've found freeing.
• The idea of legacy and wealth transfer is one I’m skeptical about. I believe giving unearned wealth can be detrimental and that skill in acquiring wealth is crucial.
• My wife Laila and I decided not to leave our wealth to hypothetical descendants, underlining our belief that meaning is not inherent and wealth without acquisition skills can spoil people.
• I have come to understand that aligning actions with personal values, rather than seeking meaning, is what truly matters and allows for a more fulfilling entrepreneurial journey.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest first taking a step back to evaluate personal values, because that’s key to doing work that feels right, even if it's not always "meaningful." This is about aligning actions with values, not chasing meaning or happiness. Happiness and meaning can set up a gap between what is and what we want, causing stress. So, instead, focus on doing the tasks at hand well, according to what matters to you.

A good way to start is by questioning beliefs, especially the deepest ones. Like Dr. John Berardi said, question why things have to be meaningful. If life and work need to have grand meaning, it can create a feeling that something is missing. So, consider work as just work and life as just life, without the added pressure of them having to hold deeper significance.

For entrepreneurs or business owners, try this: when making decisions or creating products, don’t just ask if it’s meaningful. Ask if it matches your values. Is this project, meeting, or service you’re providing something you believe in? Does it reflect what’s important to you?

Another practical step is to consider how to handle wealth and legacy. My wife Laila and I decided not to leave our wealth to hypothetical descendants because unearned wealth can spoil people. I think it's more valuable to pass on the skills to acquire wealth. So for your own planning, think about how you want to manage your success in a way that aligns with your values and potentially benefits others, without the expectations that it must fulfill you.

Remember, it’s totally okay to do things without expecting a rush of happiness or meaning. Sometimes, the most satisfying path is to just get on with the work and live by the values you’ve set for yourself.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"You need to look at things and consume content from people who are outside of the matrix"

– Alex Hormozi

"By creating that I end up creating an equation of deficiency"

– Alex Hormozi

"Should work be meaningful, but by creating that I have… enjoyed the process more"

– Alex Hormozi

"She wished for a weapon but for not the skill to wield it"

– Alex Hormozi

"Nothing inherently has meaning which also gives us the power to create and destroy meaning as we see fit"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

i gave away two million dollars personally uh donated to uh after-school all-stars in the form of cash and uh and actual physical products we gave 250 000 bands uh like workout bands uh like digital ones you know what i mean like fit fit fitbits 250 000 kind of fitbits to uh to kids in underprivileged city so we could encourage them to get fit and healthy and we donated 1.2 million to 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 i share that because i don't know how many people would say that um and i just want to keep this 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 um i had a really really interesting conversation and so the other day i had a four-hour conversation uh with what i'll say a friend of mine but i consider him a friend hopefully he considers me a friend dr john berardi and he sold his company of the majority stake in his company for over nine figures and he doesn't do anything right now actively i've had two unbelievable conversations with john and i'm always very grateful for my time with him there were two statements that he made through that four hours that have stuck with me um since then and one from the former conversation that i had with him that really kind of changed my 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 he used that exact word but that's 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 i'm feeling this kind of shift that's happening within us you know laila and i as we as we start this channel and uh you know we write the book which you guys if you haven't heard of it's 100 million offers uh it's got a lot of good reviews it's 99 cents i made it 99 cents because i want everyone to be able to afford it that's as cheap as jeffy b will let me do it 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 how do you create and destroy meaning 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 ah okay and this is why i love talking to people who who are who are outside of the matrix right there's 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 work 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 and i was like ah god and so it just made me realize a lot of the you know in the in the in the book i think my first book jim loan secrets which is a gym book for transparency this book is for all businesses uh but my first book was the gym book and uh i think the opening passage uh says it's from orson scott card we question all of our beliefs except for those that we truly believe and those who never think to question it all and i always take that to heart because the beliefs that we truly hold dear are the ones that we don't e they operate in the background of our minds their 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 psychology so everything was always like does this make me happy 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 and being like no like this doesn't make me happy right 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 [ __ ] happiness and so as soon as i said this is how i'm going to live i was like [ __ ] happiness i'm just going to get [ __ ] 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 i didn't realize this but as as we kind of reached another quote mountaintop or whatever you want to call it as we've kind of succeeded in business and whatnot we i created another happiness uh placeholder right which i now called meaning or fulfillment right 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 and then the question is like when you donate are you do should you feel better i assumed that i was supposed to feel better right feel good but i didn't this has been kind of the the thing that i am doing right now or at least is what i'm thinking through so i'm sharing this with the channel it has been i use the word it's been meaningful for me to uh give myself the excuse or give myself permission rather to not find meaning in things and that has been unbelievably freeing 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 i think that for me giving myself permission to not find meaning has allowed me to accept reality as it currently is and by accepting it as it currently ends is i have 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 um i've you know i've just i've enjoyed the process more so i'll put it that way i have less uh less anxiety around those things not to see that anxiety is bad it is a human condition or part of the human condition um but it has been something that i have experienced by by first saying [ __ ] happiness earlier 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 should not be meaningful that has been very very valuable for me 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'm making this decision in alignment with those values and in thinking like that i feel like i'm 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 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 i show you this i know this is a little bit more heady than more more of my my natural stuff talking about money but um 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 um at all taking the actions that i am taking with the intention of being aligning 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 um and the books because they're in alignment with my values you know building acquisition.com and 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 uh like my favorite magic card of all time might take the gathering um 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 when you give 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 in 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 just signed our will this is probably why this is top of mind for me we signed our wills a few days ago and when we did that i realized that we don't have kids and everything that i've amassed and what's 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 him 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 100 multiplied like factored right and so it's like you know cutting by half cutting by half cutting by half cutting by half times 100 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 right and they definitely don't remember who i was not that that's 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 wraparound with this of meaning is that nothing inherently has meaning which als 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 my 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 um i don't know where you're at in your journey uh but my name is alex ramosey we've got a portfolio of companies that do about 85 million a year my goal with acquisition.com is to help entrepreneurs uh build their businesses and you know get financial freedom the way that we structured everything is i give away everything so the courses the books this book you can get for 99 cents i have this the first of a big series of volumes that i'm making of the real stuff that actually helped us build these companies um and then with the hopes that uh that we can help invest in some of the bigger ones that succeed using those materials so anyways lots of love keep being amazing and i will see you guys next video alright hit subscribe if you liked it and if you didn't i still love either way that's what bye