
How Hailuo 02 is Crushing Google Veo3 with 11x Cheaper Video Production
In the video below AI Agents A-Z explore how Hailuo 02 manages to outperform its pricier competitors while maintaining a streamlined, automated workflow that minimizes technical headaches. From its leaderboard-topping performance to its ability to empower creators with limited resources, this model is more than just a budget-friendly alternative—it's a fantastic option for video production. Whether you're a social media creator, a small business owner, or an educator, the insights ahead will reveal why Hailuo 02 might just be the tool you didn't know you needed. Sometimes, innovation isn't about spending more—it's about doing more with less. Hailuo 02 AI Overview The Importance of Cost Efficiency
One of the standout features of Hailuo 02 is its affordability, which sets it apart in the competitive field of AI video production. For 1080p video outputs, it is six times cheaper than Google Veo3, and for 720p videos, it is nearly 11 times more cost-effective. This substantial reduction in cost does not compromise the quality of the videos produced, making it an ideal solution for creators working with limited budgets. Whether you are producing promotional content, educational videos, or short films, Hailuo 02 ensures professional-grade results without overspending. Its affordability opens up opportunities for smaller creators and businesses to access advanced video production tools that were previously out of reach. Performance Validated by Leaderboard Recognition
Hailuo 02's capabilities are underscored by its ranking on the imagetovideo leaderboard, where it holds the second position. This recognition highlights its ability to deliver high-quality videos through an automated workflow that seamlessly integrates scene generation, image creation, and sound effects. Despite its lower cost, the model's performance rivals that of more expensive alternatives, solidifying its reputation as a reliable and efficient tool for video production. This ranking not only reflects its technical proficiency but also its ability to meet the diverse needs of content creators across various industries. Hailuo 02 AI Video Model Automations
Watch this video on YouTube.
Take a look at other insightful guides from our broad collection that might capture your interest in AI video generation. Streamlined Workflow for Enhanced Productivity
The Hailuo 02 model is designed to maximize efficiency through its streamlined workflow, which minimizes manual intervention and simplifies complex production tasks. To fully use its capabilities, you need to configure its workflow effectively. The process begins with setting up API keys for the Miniax and f.AI platforms. Once connected, you can link nodes to handle essential tasks such as: Scene generation
Image creation
Video production
Sound effects integration
The model employs a looping process to generate and merge video clips seamlessly, making sure a smooth and efficient production pipeline. This approach allows you to focus on creative storytelling while the system handles the technical aspects of video creation. By automating repetitive tasks, Hailuo 02 enables creators to allocate more time to refining their narratives and enhancing the overall quality of their projects. Automated Video Creation: How It Works
Hailuo 02 simplifies the video production process by automating complex technical tasks. The workflow begins with inputting a story or concept, which is then broken down into individual scenes. Each scene is assigned prompts to generate images, videos, and sound effects. These components are automatically assembled into a cohesive video using FFmpeg endpoints. This automation allows you to focus on crafting engaging narratives while the model handles the intricate technical details. The result is a streamlined production process that reduces the time and effort required to create high-quality videos. Potential Challenges and Limitations
While Hailuo 02 offers numerous advantages, it is important to consider some of its limitations. For instance: Integrating background music may require external tools or premium server access, adding an extra layer of complexity.
The configuration process has a learning curve, which may require time and effort for new users to master.
Despite these challenges, the model's overall benefits far outweigh its drawbacks. For creators seeking an affordable and automated video production solution, Hailuo 02 remains a strong contender. Its ability to deliver high-quality results at a fraction of the cost makes it a practical choice for both novice and experienced users. Applications and Versatility
Hailuo 02 is particularly well-suited for creating short, story-driven videos. Its automated workflows and template-based design make it accessible to users with varying levels of technical expertise. Additionally, the platform offers community support, allowing users to troubleshoot issues and exchange ideas with other creators. This collaborative environment enhances the overall user experience and fosters innovation. Whether you are producing content for: Social media platforms
Marketing campaigns
Educational purposes
Hailuo 02 provides the tools and flexibility needed to bring your vision to life. Its versatility makes it an excellent choice for a wide range of applications, from promotional videos to instructional content, making sure that creators can achieve their goals efficiently and effectively. Final Thoughts on Hailuo 02
The Hailuo 02 AI video model represents a significant advancement in AI-driven video production. By combining cost efficiency, high performance, and automated workflows, it offers a practical and accessible alternative to more expensive models like Google Veo3. Its ability to produce high-quality videos at a fraction of the cost makes it an invaluable tool for creators looking to streamline their production processes without compromising on quality. Whether you are a small business owner, an independent creator, or part of a larger production team, Hailuo 02 provides a reliable and efficient solution for your video production needs.
Media Credit: AI Agents A-Z Filed Under: AI, Guides
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Reuters
31 minutes ago
- Reuters
More AI bots, less human visits on the internet
July 3 (Reuters) - This was originally published in the Artificial Intelligencer newsletter, which is issued every Wednesday. Sign up here to learn about the latest breakthroughs in AI and tech. Professionals spend, on average, three hours a day in their inboxes. That single statistic, which Grammarly CEO Shishir Mehrotra shared with me in my exclusive story on their latest move, is the key to understanding his company's acquisition of email tool Superhuman. The vision, he explained, is to build a network of specialized AI agents that can pull data from across your private digital workflow—emails, documents, calendars—to reduce the time you spend searching for information or crafting responses. This vision of a helpful AI agent, however, isn't just about getting to inbox zero. It's a preview of a much larger, more disruptive shift happening across the entire web. Scroll down for more on that. Do you experience this shift in your work or daily use of the internet already? Email me here, opens new tab or follow me on LinkedIn, opens new tab to share any feedback, and what you want to read about next in AI. Read our latest reporting in tech & AI * Exclusive-Intel's new CEO explores big shift in chip manufacturing business * Exclusive-Scale AI's bigger rival Surge AI seeks up to $1 billion capital raise, sources say * Grammarly to acquire email startup Superhuman in AI platform push * Meta deepens AI push with 'Superintelligence' lab, source says * Asia is a formidable force in the AI race. Register, opens new tab to watch the live broadcast of the #ReutersNEXTAsia, opens new tab summit on July 9 to hear from executives and experts on the ground about what digital transformation looks like there. A new internet with more AI bots than humans For decades, the internet worked like this: Google indexed millions of web pages, ranked them and showed them on search results. We'd click through to individual websites—Reuters, the New York Times, Pinterest, Reddit, you name it. Those sites then sold our attention to advertisers, earning more ad dollars or subscription fees for producing high-quality, engaging or unique content you couldn't get anywhere else. Now, AI companies are pitching a new way to deliver information: everything you want, inside a chat window. Imagine your chatbot answering any question by scraping info from across the web—without ever having to click back to the original source. That's what some AI companies are pitching as a more 'optimized' web experience, except that the people creating the content will get left behind. In this new online world, as envisioned by AI companies like OpenAI, navigating the web would be frictionless. Users will no longer bother with clicking links or juggling tabs. Instead, everything happens through chat, while personal AI agents will do the dirty work of browsing the internet, performing tasks, and making decisions like comparing plane tickets on your behalf. So-called 'agents' refer to autonomous AI tools that act on a user's instructions, fetching information and interacting with websites. The shift is happening fast, according to Cloudflare, a content delivery network that oversees about 20% of web traffic. It started to hear complaints from publishers like news websites about plunging referral traffic in the past few months. The data pointed to one trend: more bot activity, less human visits, and lower ad revenue. Bots have long been an integral part of the internet—there are good bots that crawl and index websites and help them get discovered and recommended when users search for relevant services or information. Bad bots are usually the ones that could overwhelm websites with traffic to cause crashes. And then there is a new category of AI bots made for large language models (LLMs). AI companies send them to scrape websites using automated programs to copy vast amounts of online information. The volume of such bot activity has risen 125% in just six months, according to Webflow data. The first wave of AI data scraping hit books and archives. Now, there's a push for real-time access, putting content owners on the internet in the crosshairs, because chatbot users want information about both history and current events—and they want it to be accurate without hallucinations. This demand has sparked a wave of partnerships and lawsuits between AI companies and media companies. OpenAI is signing on more news sources while Perplexity is trying to build out a publisher program that was met with little fanfare. Reddit sued Anthropic over data scraping, even as it inked a $60 million deal with Google to license its content. AI companies argue that web crawling isn't illegal. They say they're optimizing the user experience, and that they'll try to offer links to the original sources when they aggregate information. Website owners are experimenting, too. Cloudflare's new 'block or pay' crawler model, launched Tuesday, is a new model that already gained support from dozens of websites, from Condé Nast to Reddit. It's a novel attempt to charge for the use of content by 'per crawl', although it's too early to tell whether publishers would be made whole by the loss of human visitors. Chart of the week Data from Cloudflare reveals how drastically the web has shifted in just six months. The number of pages crawled per visitor referred has risen sharply—especially among AI companies. Anthropic now sends its bot to scrape 60,000 times for every single visitor it refers back to a website. For site owners who monetize human attention, this presents real challenges. And for those hoping to have their brands or services featured in AI chatbot responses, there's growing pressure to build "bot-friendly" websites—optimized not for humans, but for machines, according to Webflow CEO Linda Tong. What AI researchers are reading A study from MIT Media Lab, 'Your Brain on ChatGPT, opens new tab,' digs into what really happens in our heads when we write essays using large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Google Search, or just our own brainpower. The research team recruited university students and split them into three groups: one could only use ChatGPT, another used traditional search engines like Google (no AI answers allowed), and a third had to rely on memory alone. The findings are striking. Writing without any digital tools led to the strongest and most widespread brain connectivity, especially in regions associated with memory, creativity, and executive function. The 'Search Engine' group showed intermediate engagement—more than the LLM group, but less than brain-only—while those using ChatGPT exhibited the weakest neural coupling. In other words, the more we outsource to AI, the less our brains are forced to work. But the story doesn't end there. Participants who used LLMs not only had less brain engagement but also struggled to remember or quote from their own essays just minutes after writing. They reported a weaker sense of ownership over their work, and their essays tended to be more homogeneous in style and content. In contrast, those who wrote unaided or used search engines felt more attached to their writing and were better able to recall and accurately quote what they'd written. Interestingly, when participants switched tools—going from LLM to brain-only or vice versa—the neural patterns didn't fully reset. Prior reliance on AI seemed to leave a trace, resulting in less coordinated brain effort when writing unaided. The researchers warn that frequent LLM use may lead to an 'accumulation of cognitive debt'—a kind of atrophy of the mental muscles needed for deep engagement, memory and authentic authorship. The takeaway? Use AI tools wisely, but don't let them do all the thinking for you—or you might find your own voice, and memory, fading into the background. AI jargon you need to know Imagine if every device required a unique charging cable. AI has faced a similar challenge, where each external tool—like calendars or email—needed custom-built connections, making it slow and complex. Introducing the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a new standard from Anthropic that's gaining traction with major players like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. It serves as a universal adapter for AI models, enabling seamless communication with diverse tools and data. This means AIs can better manage tasks, integrate with apps, and access real-time information. MCP is vital for the rise of autonomous AI agents because it eliminates custom integrations, paving the way for more integrated and helpful AI in our daily lives. LLM, NLP, RLHF: What's a jargon term you'd like to see defined? Email me, opens new tab and I might feature the suggestion in an upcoming edition.
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The Independent
32 minutes ago
- The Independent
Tesla sales fall to three-year low due to Musk's Trump ‘allegiance'
Tesla 's electric vehicle sales have fallen to a three-year low, with a 14 per cent drop in customer deliveries during the second quarter. Analysts attribute the decline in demand for Tesla vehicles to Elon Musk 's allegiance to US President Donald Trump, leading to protests and boycotts. Concerns over brand reputation and intensifying competition in key markets like China and Europe have further dampened Tesla's sales. The Cybertruck, despite production plans for over 250,000 units annually, recorded only about 5,000 sales between April and June. Tesla's closest rival, Chinese manufacturer BYD, saw its electric vehicle sales hit a new high in June, with over 1 million units sold in 2025.


Telegraph
35 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The tycoon who gave away his fortune to 20 people
As an engine failed on Carl Barney's flight out of Nevada, the aircraft floated upward – then plummeted. 'A stunning silence followed, a sense of futility and fate,' remembers the 84-year-old multimillionaire, who was born into a threadbare existence in wartime Britain and went on to make his entrepreneurial fortune in the USA. As the plane nosedived from 12,000 feet on that clear evening in January 2014, he remembered the meeting he would miss and then thought: 'I'm going to die.' 'I wasn't scared. My life didn't flash before my eyes,' he recalls. Instead, he thought of his recently updated will and the 20 family, friends and former employees who would receive large sums of money. It made him happy to imagine their reactions but he also considered: 'What a shame, I won't be there to see their faces.' Barney braced for the crash – but it never came. As the plane made a sharp curve and levelled out, it dawned on him that he would survive. In the years that followed, Barney drew up a plan. Instead of waiting until he died, he would give away his fortune now, carving out 20 sums of six figures or more for each of those people in his will. He would do it with a condition: they were to spend it within the next five years and solely on their own happiness. Barney was born in Maidenhead, in 1941, in the post-war rationing years. 'I remember licking my plate clean, we all did,' he says, speaking today over Zoom from his light-filled Pacific coast home in California. He left Britain at 17 and hitchhiked to Australia with £86 and three shillings in his pocket. Three years later, with a taste for seeing the world, he arrived in America, this time carrying $100. For the next two decades, he worked various jobs and made money in real estate before entering education management at 39, building a multimillion-dollar network of private colleges. He was in his 60s when he came to a realisation: 'I was wealthy. I thought 'now what?'' The picture of a prosperous life, tanned with thick white hair and in the kind of shape that belies his age, Barney is precise and considered when he speaks, gracious but pragmatic. He explains: 'My wealth became a problem. A lot of people would like that kind of problem. I'm not a big shot. I don't like planes and yachts and a big lifestyle. I didn't want to just throw it around.' With no children, he had given little thought to what would happen to his vast fortune beyond contributing to causes he cared about. 'In the last 10 or 20 years, I've spent more money on charities than myself,' he says. So he wrote a will. 'A lot of people say, 'I'll leave it to the hospital or church or some big charity.' I think that's a mistake because none of us get successful and wealthy without a lot of help. I made a list of people who, in one way or another, had contributed to my life, and allocated a certain amount of money that I thought would be impactful in their life.' To overlook them, he says, would have been an 'injustice'. The will rested in the far reaches of his mind until that 2014 flight. In the months that followed, he asked his financial advisor and executive coach what they thought about bringing bequests forward and turning them into pre-quests: gifts that expressed gratitude while he was still alive. 'My coach kept saying, 'This is ridiculous, you can't do this to people, how are they gonna react?'' But Barney kept returning to it: 'It was a personal, emotional and mental struggle. It's just not done. Was it authentic? Would it alter the friendship? And how can I give away this money while I'm still alive? Maybe I would need it.' He thought about what was motivating him: he wanted to give his friends the gift of happiness, as he writes about in The Happiness Experiment: A Revolutionary Way to Increase Happiness, his book about what happened next. And so, one at a time, he began inviting them to his home for dinner to share some news. Collin*, 54, an employee and friend of 20 years, and his wife Rachel*, 47, arrived to an intimately set table, with a chef-prepared meal of beef filet and red wine, on 27 December 2020. 'The invite came at least a month beforehand,' remembers Collin. 'It was intentionally vague. I thought he was either going to tell us he was dying or getting married.' Barney had flown them from their home in Oregon and, while they ate, he turned the conversation to happiness. 'When we finished, he eased in. He told me how much I meant to him and that I was in his will. I remember being choked up. I thought for sure he was dying.' Rachel, who had just been made redundant from her corporate job; was overwhelmed when Barney revealed a six-figure gift: 'Collin and I stared at each other. I had tears in my eyes. I just kept saying thank you.' Just as he would for all his beneficiaries, Barney explained that this money was not to be spent on paying off debts or bills but to invest, now, purely in things that bring them joy. To assist, he would give them a financial advisor and happiness coach to identify what they derive their happiness from and plan their spending accordingly. Barney didn't need to approve the plan but once it was ready, he would send the money. It was a lot to take in. 'He was pretty particular from the get-go about how he would do this,' remembers Collin. 'I don't think anyone's ever given me a thousand bucks, much less this. I'd be a liar if I said I didn't start thinking of all the things I could buy.' He had reservations too: 'I had not done anything to deserve this money. If he had died and left it in his will, that's easy. [But] I was still working for Carl; it was no strings attached but I worried there'd be a huge imbalance.' Barney later tells me that he had contemplated this reaction: 'I said to the people: 'This must not impact our relationship in any way; you don't even have to remain friends with me. You can think of me as dead if you like. You don't have to write to me and tell me what you're doing with the money, you don't have to send me photographs of your fabulous vacations.'' Collin and Rachel went to bed whispering about their plans. Ready to accept, they worked on their happiness plan in the following weeks. They renovated their small lakeside cabin, installed a hot tub and bought an off-road vehicle so they could share their windfall, including with Collin's three grown-up children, while staying true to Barney's request that it be spent on themselves. They joined a gym, paid for a weekly trainer and took a cruise to Japan and Korea. They didn't tell anyone. 'To this day my mom barely knows how much was involved,' says Rachel. Collin adds: 'It wasn't the kind of money that would change our lives for generations. We spent it mostly at the cabin. We were humble, we didn't brag.' Rachel remembers: 'We're usually cost conscious. Spending that much money in that amount of time felt uneasy. Watching the amount go down felt indulgent.' Five years on, it is spent. 'The most fun part was actually taking a really long look at our shared values,' remembers Collin. 'Not a week goes by where we don't talk about it.' Did it make them happy? Their smiles answer. 'It made me feel special, to know he cared about us that much. It made us closer to Carl. If he had died and left the money, a lot would have been left unsaid.' The pursuit of happiness Each of Barney's dinners followed the same script – a conversation about happiness until dessert signalled the reveal. Recipients included his executive assistant and his housekeeper of 25 years. The beneficiaries were not wealthy, although many were 'comfortable'; only one was in financial difficulty. One former employee with cancer used it to gain treatment: 'I told her use the money purely to save your life.' He doesn't reveal the percentage of total wealth he gave away, rather he calculated how much he was spending, adjusted for inflation, put money aside for eventualities like medical treatment and 'came to a point where I would have enough for myself and the rest I could use for other things'. For each friend, he determined a different amount: 'I did not want to overwhelm them more than they were going to be overwhelmed; I wanted to be sure it was going to have an impact. 'I wanted to do it right. It's a lot of money, more than they'd had before. It was also fairly sudden.' And he told each, specifically, why he was grateful. 'If I'd have just tossed the money at them, they wouldn't have been comfortable. I knew I should explain – do you remember the time you did this or when you stepped forward? – that I would not be here today and successful if they hadn't given me that help. Typically the reaction was, 'Oh, no, that's nothing', that they didn't do anything worth this amount of money. In economic terms that was true. But this was not economic.' For Barney's long-standing friends Asher*, 60, and Catherine*, 59, accepting didn't come easy. On a Friday evening four years earlier, the couple had been guests at his home when they received a call that their pregnant daughter, already mother to their two-year-old granddaughter, had been killed by a drunk driver. Their lives were shattered. 'We were emotionally paralysed,' remembers Asher of their mental state when Barney invited them back there four years later. 'I know Carl and could see he was building to something,' says Asher. When he revealed his plan and a sum 'many multiples' of six figures, Catherine remembers: 'I was gobsmacked.' Asher was instantly reluctant: 'My first thought was that this was neither earned nor deserved. It was not part of our relationship; I was worried it would change. I declined and could see Carl was disappointed.' He suggested they think about it. Over the following weeks, they did. 'As we thought more, I told Asher that if someone gave you $50 on your birthday you would accept,' remembers Catherine. 'This was no different – a gift just with many more zeros because Carl had many more zeros.' Asher began to come around: 'I thought if Carl had died, I would have accepted money in his will. Why would I not accept it when he was alive and could enjoy seeing us grow from it?' After four months, he wrote his friend a letter, accepting. 'After losing our daughter, monetary comforts had become meaningless,' remembers a tear-brimmed Catherine. 'We could never be truly happy again.' They decided that the money could help them live again and wrote a plan to spend it on health and fitness, time efficiencies, their home, indulgences and future happiness. 'Financially we were comfortable. We could buy a car or go on holiday,' says Asher. It became 'boost' money. 'We bought a better car, flew first class, stayed in luxurious resorts.' Beyond the car, they did it 'incognito', although they used a little money to help a loved one in need. They hiked up Kilimanjaro and spent money on thorough health checks. Asher's only constructive criticism to Barney: 'He asked us to spend the money too fast.' Some still remains. Their greatest gift, the couple agree, was a life coach who they saw for 18 months, something they had never previously invested in: 'It gave us hope and purpose. It's through that that we learnt to live again.' 'The whole experience showed us that there are clouds that will never go away, but it is possible to flourish,' Asher reflects. 'It was unbelievable that someone would be this generous.' Barney's focus on a flourishing life was not accidental. His website carries the slogan 'love of the good for being good', from Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism – a defence of self-interest and denouncement of altruism that attracts fierce controversy for promoting individualism and free markets. Many of the millions that Barney's Prometheus Foundation has given away are to endeavours that further this philosophy. Were his gifts acts of selflessness or self-interest, for them or for him? 'Both, but not in the same proportion,' he says. 'I knew that the whole idea of my friends flourishing, pursuing happiness, succeeding and doing wonderful things would make me smile, in the same way it does when people watch their children. 'They were acting in the movie of their life and I was able to watch.' He has lived by Rand's teachings and Aristotle's, who philosophised that happiness was the ultimate human goal, all his life, long before he read around them: 'When I left England at 17 it was in pursuit of the good life, adventure, discovery. I've done that ever since.' That pursuit of happiness, he says, sits at the heart of the American dream 'despite all its problems'. 'I love the idea that life is to be enjoyed. We have the right to pursue our own happiness.' Last year, Barney appeared among the Los Angeles Times' list of California's 100 biggest donors to the White House race, following a $924,600 contribution toward Trump's campaign. But he is keen to avoid politics today: 'I want to stay positive. If I started getting into politics over the last 50, 100 years in America there's a lot to complain about.' Does he think negativity and strain have stolen people's attention? 'I think this is exactly what's been happening. People have lost sight of what's really meaningful, what it means to have a good life.' What it means, and whether it is possible, to pursue your dreams. Mike*, 63, and Kate*, 37, had worked, for years, at keeping their own business going. When Barney invited them for dinner in spring 2020, they were struggling to make ends meet. The three had been friends for 17 years and would often dine in each other's homes. This time, Barney asked the chef to make sea bass – Kate's favourite – and began talking. Mike describes 'utter disbelief' at news of their windfall. 'We were both speechless,' says Kate. 'It was a lot of money and we were in debt,' remembers Mike. 'It was unbelievable to us that someone would be this generous.' They accepted without hesitation and worked on their plan for two months. Despite their struggles, the couple loved their life and were already 'quite oriented to thinking about happiness'. But Mike says, 'Thinking about happiness when you don't have a lot of money to put towards it is a very different exercise to thinking about it when you do. Now we had the means to do things we could not previously.' They flew to Crete and Croatia for their 20th wedding anniversary, and took weekend breaks in Santa Barbara. Mike took their teenage daughter climbing in Yosemite and skiing. They made their home 'like new' and installed patios to work, stargaze and exercise from. They also shared some of their gift, helping an orphaned friend of their daughter. 'We were able to pay for some niceties, like driving lessons,' says Kate. 'Sharing was one of the big joys for us.' Mike describes Barney's benevolence as 'contagious'. 'When someone does something like this for you, if you had a trace of cynicism in your soul it evaporates. We probably paid it forward in many ways you couldn't calculate because we were just happier people.' For Kate, the great unexpected gift was how it eased the burden of worry she was used to. 'In the past when we spent money to repair something or wanted to go on vacation there was a push and pull; can we afford it, should we spend it on something else? It can dampen the enjoyment. Having Carl say here's this money with the instructions that it was for our happiness made it so richly enjoyable in a way I hadn't experienced before.' Is money necessary for the pursuit of happiness, I ask Barney later. 'Yes and no,' he smiles. 'It's [about] enough money. If you want a lavish, Trumpian or billionaire's lifestyle you're going to need a lot of money. It depends upon what your dreams are. 'I made more money than I could have expected or even wanted to. I only ever wanted enough to be economically free,' he says. His pre-quest concept proved to him that cash was only the start. 'It was the thinking and the commitment to happiness, and then what happened afterwards – what they did with that, that made the difference.' Indeed, alongside stories of his life and beneficiaries, he includes tips and planning templates for others to do the same in his book. Barney's Happiness Experiment showed him that giving doesn't have to wait. 'It should be done now,' he says. And not only money – property, possessions, time and mentoring too: 'You can give up so many things to people while you're still alive.' Five years on, with most of the money spent, Barney still hears from his beneficiaries. They are all still his friends – and many did send him photos from the holidays they bought with his money. 'If it's not one friend one day, it's another. It happens in a steady stream. They write and share the dreams that they've accomplished and I still get that warmth and love back from them.' For if he has learnt one thing it is this: 'Happiness is not just something that happens to you.'