Carl Barney details his "Happiness Experiment," where he gifted 24 individuals a lump sum now instead of upon his death, contingent on creating a happiness plan with a coach. While some initially refused due to undeservingness or recent tragedy, the process shifted mindsets more than the funds did, exemplified by a professor buying a golf course home and a grieving couple adopting a new outlook. Utilizing his Vision, Values, and Virtues formula, Barney reports universal happiness among recipients and suggests others can replicate this via tax-free gifting limits, such as the $12 million annual allowance under current policies. Ultimately, the experiment proves that strategic financial planning combined with purposeful action can transform lives before death occurs. [Automatically generated summary]
The way this started was my sister's husband was dying.
And so I flew to England where she was living.
And I sat down with her and her husband.
And I said, you know, we know that you're not going to die.
But just in case, you know, you're in my will and you can use the money now.
So I'm going to bring it forward and give it to you now.
And she said, what is that?
I said, it's a prequest.
Bring this prequest and give it a.
She was overjoyed, burst into tears because she was a girl.
You know, that's what they do.
And she looked at it.
And it really worked very well for them because they could fulfill last wishes.
And it was a great experience.
But then I thought with my friends, you can't just, I mean, that was a family member, special circumstance, but you can't just sit down with your friends and say, look, here's a big chunk of money.
You know, hang in there and be happy.
I said, look, it's not a condition.
I said, but, you know, I want you to use this money, spend it all within the next two, three, maybe five years.
And that was a shock to them.
And I said, but look, I also want this money to have the greatest effect for you for your success and happiness.
So I want to see a plan.
And they said, well, what kind of plan?
I said, I want you to make a happiness plan.
And they said, what's a happiness plan?
So I said, well, I'll hire a happiness coach.
I'll sit down with you, do the planning with you, create the plan.
It'll be your plan, not for me to approve, because it's your plan.
But once you send it to me, I'll send you all the money at one time.
And that's what I did.
And it worked out really, really well.
And you know what the thing is, Dave?
Many of them said it wasn't the money.
It was the planning.
It was the thinking that they did and the planning that made the biggest difference.
As you know, I am off the grid for August, but that does not mean that we don't have content for you.
In fact, we do have content for you.
And joining me today is the author of the new book, The Happiness Experiment, my friend, although I haven't seen him in real life in probably a decade, if that's possible.
I assume wherever I am right now, I am very happy and hopefully relaxing and decompressing and working on my own personal happiness experiment, which is exactly why when you reached out to me a couple of weeks ago, I thought this would be a perfect interview to put up for August, because part of the reason I do it is to reconnect with not only my family and my friends, but myself.
It's to disconnect from the algorithms and the world that keep us in a certain state of neurosis and craziness and to get to pilfer a little happiness out of this existence.
But you are a happy guy.
You got a great smile.
You've built a lot of great things in your life.
But before we get into the book specifically, for people who don't know you, can you just tell a little bit of your bio that gets someone like you to write a book like this?
And then we'll talk about happiness for the duration.
You basically decided that instead of when you're gone, the BeQuest version of this, where most people then give their money away and give properties or whatever it might be, you want to do this when you were alive.
But it wasn't just as simple as just handing people money.
This is what I think is really interesting about this.
Well, it really wasn't a condition, but the way this started was my sister's husband was dying.
And so I flew to England where she was living, and I sat down with her and her husband.
And I said, you know, we know that you're not going to die, but just in case, you know, you're in my will, and you can use the money now.
So I'm going to bring it forward and give it to you now.
And she said, what is that?
I said, it's a prequest.
Bring this prequest and give it a.
She was overjoyed, burst into tears because she was a girl.
You know, that's what they do.
And it really worked very well for them because they could fulfill last wishes and it was a great experience.
But then I thought with my friends, you can't just, I mean, that was a family member, special circumstance, but you can't just sit down with your friends and say, look, here's a big chunk of money.
You know, hang in there and be happy.
I said, look, it's not a condition.
I said, but, you know, I want you to use this money, spend it all within the next two, three, maybe five years.
And that was a shock to them.
And I said, but look, I also want this money to have the greatest effect for you for your success and happiness.
So I want to see a plan.
And they said, well, what kind of plan?
I said, I want you to make a happiness plan.
And they said, what's a happiness plan?
So I said, well, I'll hire a happiness coach.
I'll sit down with you, do the planning with you, create the plan.
It'll be your plan, not for me to approve, because it's your plan.
But once you send it to me, I'll send you all the money at one time.
And that's what I did.
And it worked out really, really well.
And you know what the thing is, Dave?
Many of them said it wasn't the money.
It was the planning.
It was the thinking that they did and the planning that made the biggest difference.
I mean, were some people saying, no, I don't, no, I don't want it right now, or I'll wait, or I don't need it, or give it to someone else, or a series of other things people could say.
And most of it was they didn't believe that they deserved it.
And one couple had such a tragedy in their life.
Her, dear friend, sweet and lovely people had gone through a tragedy.
They'd lost one of their children to a drunk driver, and they were just devastated for years.
And they believed they couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't ever be happy again.
So I'm given this happiness grant.
The prequest became a happiness grant.
For me, it was expressing my gratitude to them for their friendship and the help that they'd given me because all of these people had been really close and helped me.
So this is in a sense a return for me to acknowledge their generosity by giving them this gratitude grant.
But all three of them came around afterwards.
I think their wife worked on them and said, you know, we really could use that money.
And they came around.
But it was difficult.
It was hard for me and it was hard for them because you can't just do that.
It's got to be a rationale.
It's got to be authentic.
And they need to be authentic to me.
Why was I doing this?
You know, was it sort of a grandiose gesture or a sincere, authentic gesture?
And it also had to make sense to them.
So when I sat down with them, and I did sit down with each of them in a nice dinner and at home typically, I would say, look, I'm really, you know, I had a long conversation with them and I said, and then I'm really grateful for our relationship.
I'm really grateful for what you've done for me, how you have been so generous to me with your advice, your help, your support.
And I would tell them specifically what they had done for me.
And they said, well, that's great.
They could get that.
They understood it.
And I said, so in exchange for that, you're in my will.
And I told them how much.
And they said, well, that makes sense.
And it did make sense.
I said, but look, there's a couple of problems.
They said, first off, I'm planning to live to be 120.
And they said, yeah, that could be a problem.
And I said, the other thing is, I'll be dead.
I won't be able to see you enjoy the money.
And they said, well, that's the way it goes.
And I said, but look, I have the money now.
And so I want to bring this forward.
And that says, and there was a huge emotional.
And it was like, you mean all the money now?
Is this, are you kidding?
Are you dreaming?
And so it was a big thing to accept for them.
But when they did accept it and they understood what it was about, that I was authentically expressing my gratitude, expressing my gratitude for their generosity, their support, their help, what they did for me.
Till the day you die, you're pursuing in one form or another your own happiness.
And, you know, I'm a businessman.
I'm an entrepreneur.
I've obviously made a lot of money in real estate and education.
And I'm thoughtful about this.
So I need to be sure that I've got left over for, and I've got plenty of money left over for other purposes, other charities, other things I'm working on.
I have a really wonderful coach, really super smart guy.
And he was involved with a bunch of other coaches.
So I had a source of really good high-level executive coaches.
And what we did was brief them on how we were going to approach this.
You know, we told them the story behind it and that this was happiness coaching, not general coaching, but specifically what we wanted to do is focus on this.
And most of them had never really quite done that before.
And I emphasize, you know, how does one become happy?
And I discussed this with my coach.
And we came up with the formula, if you like.
And you'll have to read the book to find out what the formula is.
And I'm just kidding, but I'll tell you briefly.
It's what I call three Vs, V as in Victor.
First off, you've got to have a vision for your life.
And the vision can be your dreams.
And I really a big, a big believer in dreams.
You've got to have dreams, things you aspire to, things look great for you.
Other things, the daily dream is your career purpose, your central purpose, what you wake up for every day.
You know, whatever you're doing that's meaningful to you, that's your vision for every day in your future.
And another vision is, I've loved this phrase, you know, Rand, Ayn Rand, and you know Ayn Rand, of course.
She said, imagine a heaven, a heaven on earth, and then not just to dream of it, but to make it happen.
And so this is what I did.
I created my heaven, you know, and most people's heaven involves a home, you know, beautiful art in their home, books, technology, friends, family, pets.
You know, create all this thing that means a heaven to you and then make it happen.
And so that's the first V, visions.
The second V is your values.
What do you love?
What do you care about?
What fascinates you?
What are you hoping to gain and keep in your life?
Such as wealth, health, love, self-esteem, family, children, pets, all of those things that we're in some way acting to gain and put into our life.
So identify those things clearly, that this is what's really meaningful to me.
This is what I want.
This is the meaning of my life of my values.
And I'm not just talking about moral values, and I'm not talking about religious values.
I'm talking about obvious things like a career value.
But you don't get values just, they don't just drop out of the sky.
You have to act.
You have to do something.
If you want friends, you have to be friendly.
You have to be trustworthy.
You have to be honest.
You have to be a good friend.
If you want love, you have to be loving and be lovable.
So there's actions that you take to achieve your values.
And the Greeks viewed virtues as the actions that you applied to achieve values.
It's not the modern view of virtues and everybody's virtue scheduling and all that signaling and all that stuff.
But this is real practical actions that you take when you want something.
If you want to be wealthy, you've got to work.
You've got to think.
You've got to plan.
You've got to start a business.
You've got to do something.
Start a podcast, a TV show or something.
You're going to create wealth.
Healthy.
You don't become healthy just by living.
You've got to eat right.
You've got to do some exercise.
You've got to do what it takes.
And the thing that the do what it takes is what I call virtues.
And in my book, I discuss this view of virtues and the actions necessary to achieve values and achieve your visions, your dreams, your purposes, and so forth.
Did any of the people that you prequested to, I'm sure some of them found it very difficult at times to come up with what would make them happy and plan and work with the coach and all that.
Did any of them come up with a plan that you then looked at, even though you did say earlier you would not.
be the you would not be the judge of the plan, but did any of them come up with a plan that you kind of were like, well, this is not my thing, but okay, good luck with that.
Well, almost all of the plans involved in some way their homes.
It's really interesting.
Home is a source of great pleasure and happiness for most people.
And most people did something with their home, either refurbishing or sometime a complete remodel.
One person wanted to buy a home.
They just hated where they lived.
They just didn't like it.
This was a professor.
He just really wasn't happy there.
He said, I've always dreamed of the dream of having a beautiful home on a golf course.
And so that was his central thing on his thing.
I actually questioned about that.
I said, you know, you're buying a home.
How is that related to your happiness?
I did challenge him a little bit on it.
And he said, oh, you cannot believe what this means to us to have a beautiful home.
And being a professor, he said, I want to invite my colleagues and my students to my home.
He said, I can't do that right now because I hate the home I'm in.
It's ugly.
But this would be such a great pleasure and joy for me and my wife.
And as I explained to it, you know, it made sense.
Another person wanted to build a home from scratch.
So they bought some land and they built a home.
So that was a central part.
But there are some things, you know, that I won't even mention them because they were a bit weird and wild, but not very many.
Just a few things that I raised my eyebrows.
But again, it wasn't for me to approve or not.
This was their personal plan.
But most of them were very rational and thoughtful.
And that's where the happiness coach comes in, because it's very hard to create a happiness plan.
But if you've got somebody that's smart, that's thoughtful, that understands happiness and works with you closely, it makes a huge amount of difference.
Do you have any fear that, you know, helping people accomplish these things, whether it's build a home or buy a boat or whatever it might be, that somehow, because that takes the work part out, that that will, you know, take a little edge off the happiness to have accomplished it?
Because you referenced that earlier, that work does mean something.
They send me photographs from Bora Bora or one man climb Kilimanjaro.
So they sent me a picture from the top of Kilimanjaro.
So I get to enjoy their happiness.
And my friendships, it didn't alter them a lot.
It would have intensified them a bit.
I feel closer to them.
I think they're closer and more appreciative to me.
That wasn't my purpose, but that's the result of it.
So I would say it definitely increased my own happiness.
And everyone there became happier, increased their happiness.
They were already pretty happy, but it took them to a new level of happiness.
And some were extraordinary.
I mean, this couple I was telling you about that were devastated by the loss of their beloved daughter.
And they were just bereft for five years.
They were just miserable.
And so they said, you know, we have to get out of this.
And this grant helped them to lift out of it.
And they are now wonderfully happy and doing great things.
And they changed their mindset.
Our daughter would want us to be happy.
And that was the trigger that turned it around for them because they were feeling guilty about being happy because, you know, how could they be happy when their dear daughter was dead?
And the coach was the thing that triggered it to change their mindset.
And happiness is a mindset, Dave.
This is a new definition.
I've got a new definition.
I'm very proud of it because there is a happiness mindset.
There's a money mindset.
There's political mindsets, which you deal with every day, political mindsets.
What would you say, since you mentioned Ayn Rand before, and I know you're an objectivist, and obviously a lot of my audience leans at least libertarian-ish, what would you say to the people that would say, okay, I'm into all of this, but I'm going to get crushed on taxes if I just start giving away all of this money and it goes before I die.
Because there has to be some component around that, right?
Well, the first surprising thing was actually just doing it.
I couldn't get my head around this.
This is totally ridiculous.
You don't sit down with people while you're still alive and give them a whole chunk of money.
You know, how do you do that?
And it was difficult for me.
So I had to come through that.
And I think that the most joy I got was this couple, as I've told you, who were devastated, totally bereft and depressed for five or six years.
And these were accomplished, bright people.
You know, they were very good people.
And that turnaround brought me a lot of joy.
And when I get postcards, pictures, feedback from my friends talking about their happiness, that brings a smile to my face, makes me increases my happiness.
But I think there's one other thing that I'm realizing things about this all the time.
For instance, this new definition of happiness, happiness as being a mindset.
I think that's really, if you'll forgive me, quite profound.
I love it.
So that's good.
But also, happiness is a lifelong process.
It's something we plan for and pursue every week, every month, every year of our lives.