The Game that Changed my Relationship with Money transcript

There's a game that I've been playing for over a decade. It has helped me have a lot better relationship with money. It's changed my relationships with people and it's allowed me to get what I want and it's called the happy money game. I want to tell you what the happy money game is, tell you the story of how it came to be, and then I want to talk about what the happy money game says about money and how that can change your life.

When I first started coaching, I was a venture capitalist and I didn't need to be coaching. And I was just coaching because I was not such a great investor. And I needed to coach my CEOs so that my investments could be successful. And pretty soon my name got out there, people started coming to me and I had two very famous people come to me looking for coaching. And so I played the happy money game with them. And the way the [clears throat] happy money game works is that you go back and forth with somebody and each of you make a proposal of how you're going to work together.

This isn't just financial, but it involves financial. So, it's how we're going to work together, it's how payment's going to happen, it's how the exchange of money is going to happen. And the game is that you make a proposal, then I make a proposal, then you make a proposal, then I make a proposal. And the person who wins is the person who comes up with a proposal that both people are excited about. Not both people are happy with, not both people can live with, but that both people are excited about.

And so you go back and forth and then finally somebody says, "Oh, this I'd be excited, you'd be excited." And that person wins the happy money game. The first client who came to me, our agreement was that he would pay me a lot of money to work with him. And if he failed to do the work, he would double that amount of money. And I would stop working with him and he would have to do an exercise for a month, video himself doing the exercise, and if he failed to do the exercise for a month, then he would pay me triple the amount of money.

And then the other famous wealthy person who came to me, the agreement was that he couldn't pay me money. That there was no way that he was allowed to pay me money for my services while I was giving services and there was no expectation of payment. And those were the two solutions that we came up with for something as simple as coaching an executive. What made it exciting for me and the other person to have these two very different agreements?

Well, the first person, they had a hard time seeing through any work on personal development. But they really liked to win. So, they often wouldn't meditate, though they'd tell themselves they should meditate. They'd tell themselves that they should, you know, do emotions, should cry, should whatever, but they weren't doing them. And so when we found that, it made total sense that we would set up a set of criteria that if he wasn't doing the work, he would lose.

And the more he didn't do the work, the more he would lose. So, we were basically finding a way that money could help him >> [clears throat] >> understand himself better. The other person, he bought everything and everybody wanted him for his money and nobody really loved him and nobody really cared about him and it was always people after him for his power. And so, the only thing that could work where that coaching would be successful is if he realized that I was there just to be there because I was just interested in being of service to him.

Because everything else could be justified as he was buying love, buying affection, buying support. So, these were literally my first two paid, non-paid clients. And and that's how the happy money game worked. And we were both, or all three of us in this case, excited about the agreement that we came to. So, usually when people listen to that story, one of the things they'll say is like like Joe, like how could you agree to not get paid?

How could you be excited by that? And to me, this was a place where I was coaching because it was what was natural and useful to me and it was what was inspiring me. And there's a thing that I live by that basically I won't do something for money that I won't do for free. And so, it was a very easy exchange for me to make and I also assumed over time that that level of support will pay for itself in some way, right? My experience is when I deeply support humans that there's always an exchange of energy that occurs as long as I am not coming from a place of being above them.

I have noticed that like if I come from a place or anybody comes from a place of like, I'm here to help you, then that really gets in the way of the energetic exchange. That's the first question that people usually ask. The second question that people ask is, how on earth could somebody agree to pay triple the amount of money if if they like fail? Like how why would anybody do that? It's because it was clearly a mechanism that would allow him to succeed.

You know, now that that's been whatever maybe 10, 12 years ago, both of them have paid me in in spades. Like they you know, the amount of references, the the amount of support that I've gotten in my life, it's all paid for itself. And I know that both of them feel like it was a great investment in in the way that they got to benefit. And so, when you do deals with people and both people benefit, you tend to keep on doing deals with people.

Right? And if you do deals with people where people feel great about it going in, then they're more likely to be successful. As a matter of fact, one of the things I'll say is the amount of energy it takes to put a deal together is the amount of energy you're going to have to maintain to keep that deal going well. Right? So, if it's a lot of work, when I was a venture capitalist, if there was a lot of work to like try to make it happen, then you knew that this would be high maintenance going forward.

Now, let's talk about what the happy money game has taught me. The first thing is that money is far more interesting to me if it's aligned with what I care about most, which is helping people awaken or people understand themselves. So, I was using money as a tool for that in these two experiments. But, what it taught me was that alignment was critical in my life. If I wanted to have a life with money, it needed to be aligned with who I was and what was important to me.

So, typically what I see people do is they're like, "I'm going to make money over here and then I'm going to have my love over here. I'm going to do this thing for money so that I can do this other thing that I really want to do." And my experience is if money is something that you have to do to get to what you love, rather than a tool to create what you love in the world, then money is not in alignment. It doesn't come easily to you.

Whereas, if money is a part of getting to do what you love and it is a tool to do what you love better, then money becomes far more fluid in your situation. So, I notice when CEOs aren't trying to get money, but instead are trying to build their mission and money is a part of what is necessary to do that, money comes easier to them than CEOs who are just doing it for the money. And I think about this the way that I think about my girlfriend in college.

My girlfriend in college used to play tennis. She was very good. And her tennis coach took one of those baskets out and put it on the court and said, "Serve it and hit it." And she served it and hit it like two out of five, three out of five times. And then he put a quarter down in the middle where that basket was, pulled the basket away, and said servant hit the quarter. And she didn't hit the quarter once, but she would have hit the basket five out of five times.

And for what when money is the basket, you hit it every once in a while. But if money is something you have to go through to get to your real aim, and your real aim is that quarter, whatever that mission is, if that's the quarter, then you're going to hit the basket more often. The second thing that the happy money game can teach you about money is that money is a tool for anything you want in the world. And right now you are using it as a tool.

So, you are using it as a tool to be able to hang out on YouTube for 20 minutes and watch this video. You're using it as a tool to play video games. You're using it as a tool to buy yourself freedom. You're using it as a tool to like be able to sleep on a comfortable bed. You are constantly using money as a tool. And most people think about money as there's somebody who has money, and my job is to get money so that I can have the things that I want.

And this is a very disempowering approach to money. It means that I have to get it from somewhere, and and there's kind of like a connivingness to that, and then I can have what I want. Rather than I have money, which you do have money, don't know how much you have, but you have some, and I am going to choose how to use that tool of money to build the life that I want. And those are two very different relationships. One is the relationship of a consumer, and one is the relationship of an investor, right?

And when you have a relationship as an investor around money, you're using money. When you have a relationship as a consumer around money, money is using you. And that's why it feels so deeply disempowering. And so when you start to see that money is a tool to achieve what you want in the world, and in this case it was self-awareness for these two these two gentlemen, then you automatically see, "Oh, right. Anywhere I using money, I'm actually building the a life represented by this tool, and it's a deeply empowering situation rather than a disempowering one.

Another principle about money that this game can teach you is that framing makes all the difference. So, money and negotiations are typically framed as you or me. I get it or you get it. It's going to be one or the other. It's It's like a zero-sum game. It's black and white. And that's how it's framed. And there's some limited supply of it, and so somehow or another we have to see who's going to get how much. First of all, there's not a limited supply of it.

There's more money now than there was 10 years ago, and there was more money 10 years ago than there was 20 years ago. Money, just for whatever reason, keeps on expanding, right? So, there is money out there. So, the question is like, what are the frames that you choose to have around money that cause pain for you? There's probably a frame is there's not enough. It's hard to get. There's probably a frame of like, if I get it, somebody else doesn't have it.

Or if I have it, somebody else can't have it. The beliefs that you have around money will change the way that you interact with money. And so, right now, however you're interacting with money that doesn't serve you, I guarantee you there's a way you're looking at it that doesn't work for you. And so, you can actually just change that and have a whole different relationship with money. And if you're really interested in like, how do I identify the frames that you have around money, we have some easy experiments that you can run, and you can get them right here that will help you identify the frames that you have around money and what frames are holding you back.

The other thing that it taught me around money is that your fear around money is linear, but not accurate, right? Which is I'm in a relationship with you, and therefore I need to make X amount of money for this to be fair. Right? Which is not a great way to grow a consulting business or a coaching business, or uh to have a great relationship with people. And most of the consultants that I know know this deeply, which is the more you provide value, the more easy it is for you to make money.

So, I what you'll see a lot of people do is they'll say, "Okay, I'm going to do this thing, and I need to make sure that I get paid a fair amount for this thing." And I instead said, "Nah. This feels right to me. The this situation feels right, and I get to provide value, and it feels deeply aligned with me." And what I learned accidentally was, "Oh, that value that I provided created 10 other clients." Not only 10 other clients, but 10 other clients that were also this person's friend, so there was lots of wealthy clients who could pay me a lot of money.

And so, we see this all the time in people who want to come and work for us, right? "I can do X, Y, and Z for you. Just pay me A, B, and C." And then I have other people come to me and say, "Here's [snorts] three shorts that I just made for you. Do you like them, and will you hire me to do future shorts?" And that second person is going to much more likely get my business than the first person. I don't coach anybody for money that I haven't coached once for free.

Because that allows me both to know if it's a good match, but for them to know the value of it. And so, if they know the value of it, all of a sudden they're willing to pay a lot more money than if they don't see the value of it. So, what you'll see a a of people do is they'll feel like something isn't fair or they needed to be fair up front and therefore they're being super transactional which pushes people away instead of operating from connection.

Whereas if you operate from connection, you're like, "Oh, hey, I'm willing to show you what I'm capable of." That does a lot more. It also does a lot more because you find out if it's a match. So let's just say you wanted to come and work for me and I agreed I'm going to pay you $150,000 and the job is miserable and 4 years later you're like, "Jesus Christ, how do I get out of this thing?" Or you showed me some value, you found out I was a complete to work with and then you went and found a different job.

Right? Like that's a far better situation for you. So the other thing that's happening in the happy money game is you start to recognize the non-linear nature of money. Like money is a long-term game, it is not a short-term game. And what you start to recognize is the transactional way of looking at money is not always the most lucrative and it's definitely not what you have to do to make a lot of money. You can actually be in a deep level of connection around the money.

Okay, so now when can you use the happy money game? Well, the first thing you need is consent, right? You need to have somebody on the other end who's like, "Yeah, that sounds like a great way to go about creating a relationship." And it doesn't always have to be about money. You can literally play the happy money game around like who does the dishes in your house with your wife, right? There's any kind of agreement that you're having back and forth.

The idea isn't that it's a zero-sum game, the idea is that you can find something that both of you can be very excited about. So you can use it anytime there's a trusted relationship where there's two people who want to not make it that somebody has to lose. They want to make it so that both people can win. So that's one thing. The other thing is that it's really important to celebrate when somebody wins the game. Like if somebody actually wins the game, it means they won.

It doesn't mean like it means they were more creative, they figured out something that the other person couldn't figure out quicker. And so it's really important to just be like, oh yeah, you like won that thing. Definitely allowing a little of that competitive spirit to come out makes the game far more fun to play. It's just that the competitive spirit is channeled to winning the game rather than channeled to getting the most.

The other time that you would really want to suggest playing this game is when you realize that the transactional nature is going to get in the way of your of the overall goal that you're trying to set. So typically, there's a place to negotiate for a salary with a boss that maybe the happy money game wouldn't work because everybody knows that you're supposed to negotiate and you're trying to get there and here's the reality and there's not a lot of variables.

But if you have a coaching client where that negotiation can destroy the trust of the coaching, that might be a great place to use it. The other thing in using the happy money game that's really important to know is that it makes you think through everything that can go wrong. So, most people get into a deal and what they're thinking about is, oh, this will be great. This will be great. This will be great. And they don't think about what could go wrong.

And so they get into a relationship that's not right for them. You're so excited that you're not thinking about what could go wrong, which means you're only thinking about your happiness today, you're not thinking about how to be successful in the future. That's a great [snorts] time to play the happy money game. Even if you play it with yourself and say, oh, what do I actually need to be happy over the next two or three years, it'll teach you that.

It'll teach you, oh, these are the things I need to look out for. The last thing I recommend about playing the happy money game is to play it. Find a way to play this game. It is so much fun and you can probably look through your life and find at least one or two people that you can play this game with. And you get better at it the more you practice it. And the coolest thing about the happy money game, cooler than all the other stuff actually, is that it changes the way that you think about the world.

Often times when you're in a state of fear, you're in black and white thinking and you're thinking it's either going to be this way or that way. It's either plus for me or a minus for me. It's either they get it or I get it. It's very binary thinking. And what the happy money game does is it shows you, whether you're in a fight with your wife or whether you are upset with your boss, is that there is always a solution where you both can win.