Money does not equal value

What if everything you've been taught about value is wrong?

For most of my career, I measured the worth of my work in revenue, returns, and results. Until I realized that even when the numbers checked out — something was still missing.

After 12 years of studying human work and what makes it truly meaningful, I arrived at a simple but radical conclusion: real value was never about money. It was always about peace.

The people who create lasting, genuinely valuable work aren't the ones chasing market trends or solving problems they found in a boardroom. They're the ones who looked inward — at their deepest gifts and their deepest needs — and had the courage to bring both into the world at once.

In this episode, I want to challenge the way you think about value entirely. Because for too long, we've outsourced that answer to marketplaces, industries, and financial returns — when the truth is, everything you need to understand about the value you're here to create has been inside you all along.

This one is for anyone who has built something that looks successful on paper but still feels like something is missing. And for anyone still searching for what they're truly here to give.

🎙️ Do Happy Work — a new way to think about the work you were meant to do.

Follow on Linkedin: Olivier Egli 

Transcript

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I'm your host, Olivier, and this is the Do Happy Work podcast, where we look at work in a different, more natural, and more peaceful way. I have been studying the value of our work for over 12 years. And it all started with recognizing that in traditional marketplaces, just the way we traditionally function, value is always tied to a return on investment. It always has somehow a financial meaning. And for the longest time that was that was a principle that I used to run with. That's how I functioned in my daily work. I would do something and see value in it if it would convert into money in a satisfactory way. And the problem with that was that even though the numbers checked out, it always left me still longing for more. So somehow our understanding of value in work is skewed and broken. And that's because we understand value as the thing that matters to us most. So when something is valuable, it means that it does well according to that which we consider as relevant. And in this day and age, that is money. We understand money as the relevant thing. It has become the yardstick with which we measure everything: success, growth, how well we're doing, how relevant something is. The problem is just that at a deeper level, it is completely insignificant. We cannot do anything at a deeper level with higher returns. There is something that is missing. There's something that we ignore in our work that makes even valuable businesses non-valuable. And I think it's really time that we break this paradigm. It's time that we shift it and redefine value in the sense and in the way that nature sees it. Because in nature, value is rather simple. It is an energy that has just a tendency of spreading itself across an entire ecosystem and balancing things out. So it means that somehow there's something at a deeper level that always wants to find balance. And in us humans, that's peace. We all long for the same thing. We all long for a peaceful existence where we can realize ourselves, where we can grow as ourselves, where we can show up as ourselves, where we have the liberty and the freedom to be seen, heard, understood as who we are, and where we can express what we have freely and in collaboration, but still exist as individuals. That is the yardstick for value. Okay, I want you to understand that this is the desire that exists in all of us, and a business will always only be truly valuable if it supports that truth. That one truth. Of course, no business can address the entirety of it, and neither should it. But each one of us contains a nugget of this truth and has as an obligation to serve this need, this deeper need for peace in the people that we call our clients and our customers. But when can we do this? When are we so free and enabled that in our work we can actually support this need, this desire, this demand in humans to be free and to live a worthy and full life? When can we do that? What kind of work does that? What kind of beautiful work can you do that does that? How do you get there? How do you understand that value that you can contribute? Well, you need to know two things. And the first one is of course, what are the gifts that you even have in you to give? What is the entirety of everything that is in you that you can put forward, that you can offer to the world? I've spoken about this many, many times. There are all these layers of inner tools, inner gifts that you have been shipped with that you can grasp, that you must understand, that are here for you, for the taking, that you have to receive in gratitude. And then there are all these external gifts that you acquired in the last decades through experiences, through skills that you learned, through things that you acquired. But that's just one side of the equation. You now just know what you have in you to give, which is insufficient to create value and to be of value. You also have to know, well, who do I throw these gifts at? Like, where do I go with these gifts? What do I address? Traditionally, people will tell you, well, find a problem and then solve it. That would be the classical way of thinking. I do not believe that problem solving is a good value trigger at the base. It helps you on the daily to solve to solve problems, helps you to actually create more of your value and to refine your value, but it is not the value itself. I know through all my research that I've done in the last 12 years that the one thing that helps us create value from our gifts is when we recognize a need that we are cut out to address. Then when we see something that really lusts for our gifts, something that we are best cut out to address, that's when value suddenly emerges. That's when it just sparks out of us. That's when it suddenly happens and becomes real. And that is not a coincidence, it's actually a natural phenomenon that you and I know very well. It is through the cut, through the hardship, through the opposition, through the dark experience that value comes out of us. Resilience, strength, and all these properties that we associate with growth, they only happen once we're faced with something that is lusting for it, when there is a desire for it, when there is urgency, when there is a need. That's why needs are so relevant. Without needs, your your gifts will remain dormant. But once you understand that there is a need that needs you, that needs your gifts, you have both sides of the equation. You have the full picture to understand what the value is that you are caught out to bringing to the world. You know what you have to gift, and you know where you have to lead that gift. You know what you have to focus that gift on. However, and this is where it gets tricky, and this is where I really ask you to pay attention. Looking for needs is not done in the way that business teachers and business schools tell you to do. It's not about looking around you and identifying needs. It's not about looking in marketplaces and in industries, it's not about reading the Wall Street Journal and recognizing the latest trend as in opportunities where you could throw your gifts at. On the contrary, you have to look inside, you have to look inward. The need that you are here to address is the need that exists inside of you. And I know this sounds counterintuitive because this sounds like you are going to serve yourself with your gifts. And that's precisely what I'm asking you to do. That's precisely what the current work world doesn't get. We have externalized everything about our doings, about the creation of value. It is time we bring everything back into our own context. We internalize it again, both the giving of gifts and the addressing of need. Because when we do this, we address it a very personal and very intimate need. A need that we know so well that it sits at our heart, at our core. We just happen to share it with the world, which is happen to allow the world to partake in the addressing of the needs, and we share that with the world. But when we do this, when we bring these two things, these two internal things outward into the world, so we now share ourselves with the with the world after having sourced both the gifts and the needs that we want to address from ourselves. Well, guess what? Now we show up authentically, we show up not as people who meddle in things they have no business being in. We we don't have the weird savior and helper syndrome when we try to just be a good samurai so we can feel better about ourselves, or where we we start helping people or dealing with people and serving people about whom we know nothing. When we serve ourselves, when we use our own needs as the yardstick for the needs that we want to address, well, then we become honest, then we become also people of integrity, and then there is everything is rooted in compassion because we understand ourselves, we also understand the people that we serve. This is a very relevant step in understanding what the value is that your best work can create. And I really hope that this sinks in and also makes a little bit of sense that you realize that for too long you have allowed value to be a financial term and not a term of human relevance that empowers us to lead better lives, but also that you have externalized all the factors that you use to create value. Don't do this. Internalize them. You have all the ingredients inside of you. You have your God-given gifts, and you have the gifts that you acquired along the way, and you have your innate curiosity, this hunger, this desire, this need that cannot be satiated, that cannot be satisfied. That need exists outside of you in other people as well. And when you address it and you share with the world, these people will come forward, and these people will recognize you for who you are, and these people will understand that you embody value and that you are truly valuable.