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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Bill Perkins in the house. My man. Good to see you, brother. Great to see you. Great to see you, man. For those that don't know you, you have done amazing things in business and financially over your life. You have...
As a hedge fund manager trading mostly natural gas, you've brought in over 2.2 billion in profits for your businesses. You've personally brought in over $600 million to you individually over the years.
Chapter 2: What is the core philosophy of 'Die With Zero'?
And you've had an incredible experience unlocking financial freedom for yourself and showing others how to do that as well. And a lot of people struggle around the idea of money, around the idea of... How do I make money? Am I deserving of more money? Is money good? Is it bad? What do I do with my money? Do I save it for a rainy day? Do I keep it all until I retire when I'm old and can't move?
Do I give my money to my kids? Do I give it to charity? What do people do with their money? You've had an inside look around some of the richest people in the world, some of the biggest celebrities in the world. massive personalities, and you've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly, and you've also experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly around what money can do for people.
I'm curious, where did your fascination with wanting to make more money come from originally? And what do you believe was the true unlock for you from not having a certain amount of money to it becoming an abundance that started to come your way? What was that moment where you started to see it unfold and unlock in a bigger way?
I think it was when I was younger when I didn't have any money and I was out trying to conquer things. And I was having lots of thoughts about what is it all for? What does it all mean? I was a screen clerk, which is basically a peon, assistant assistant peon. And when you're in Manhattan, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a millionaire, right? Very rich people. But
When I was younger, I was like, oh, they're old. Now, they were younger than the age I am right now. I'm 54. Right. But when you're growing up, I was like, oh, gosh, what are they going to do with the money? Buy another car and drive their kids to school? Like, what is use of it? Right. For me, it was all about the girls and the parties and stuff like that.
Things that a 20 year old, 21 year old, a 22 year old would think. But. You know, the more I thought about it and books I read like Your Money or Your Life, which was a very influential book for me, the money wasn't the goal. The life was the goal. The fulfillment was the goal. And so once I realized- Money was the tool. Yes. Money is, it's like hammers and saws, right?
Like you can keep buying hammers and saws, you can go to the hardware store, but the hardware store, the tools that you get out of there, that's not the goal. The goal is the house and the things you build, right? And so money is the tool to build your life.
right to give you the experiences you want with your friends or hedonistic or charitable it doesn't matter the type of experience it's just money is just one of those tools in your toolkit and so once i started to think about that that i wanted to have an adventurous life a life with scars a life with mistakes a life with risks um you know money had its place
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Chapter 3: How do memory dividends enhance our experiences?
right in in building the life that i wanted and so i think that's when i started to unlock kind of my fearlessness
risk-taking I'll go anywhere to try and acquire this tool to build the life I want but really it's about building the life I want and you know trying to figure out what kind of life I want you know like you know a lot of times I think I'm building the life I want but it was really what was advertised to me you know you're young you're impressionable it's like I want my life to look like a rap video or I want my life to look like this right and then I do it I'm just like oh I don't this is not really me this is not really fulfilling to me and so I
I've had many journeys about what will fulfill me and what the money's for, but ultimately it's just one variable out of what I would call the three variables, your wealth, your health, and your time. How do I allocate those resources over my life to get the most fulfilling life? And so I think a lot of people look at money as the goal and it's not even close to the goal.
The goal is a fulfilling life. And so is there a calculation or a formula on how to develop a fulfilling life where money is a part of that equation?
Yeah, I wouldn't say there's like a formula, like do this, multiply by that, X, Y, and Z, but there are mental models, right? Like how to think about it. The first unlock is like what tools, you know, I'm in this organic spacesuit, right? And I have a finite time here on earth. what tools are at my disposal, right? Well, I got my health, right? But this spacesuit is going to decay and die, right?
So that's how much time I got my health. And there are things I can do. There's many great books, many great authors and things you can do to maintain this spacesuit as long as you can and be healthy, right? There's time and time management and mainly the time to the grave, but also the time in between seasons of your life, right?
Because as you start to pick out the experiences you want to have in your life, they kind of obviate other experiences. You know, I use very crass examples, like the time to be going out to the clubs and dancing with glow sticks is probably before you get married and have kids. Right.
And so if in your life, over the totality of your life, you want to have that experience, it probably goes into a time bucket pre-marriage, right? Not after marriage, in order for you to get the maximum fulfillment score. Right. And then the spending of money, right? Like when I go to work, I try my best to attribute what am I working for? What is the money for?
What do you think about when you're doing that then? Well, I think about one, survival and the lifestyle that I have, the things that I normally think I'm going to be doing for now until the day I die. But I think about the activities, how they will change as my life changes.
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Chapter 4: What is the time bucket framework for life experiences?
It doesn't mean you can't be in still great shape to your age.
No, no, you can still be in great shape, but I'm just saying my ability to do certain... Like, listen, I can get... I was recently... You're not playing college football anymore.
No, no, no, no, no.
Last year, I was in great shape. I got down to like a 9% body fat. My cardio VO2 was over, but my... my lazy 28-year-old self will smoke myself in a race.
Really?
Like, smoke myself, right?
Doesn't need to warm up. No, no, just go.
Not stretching, anything, right? Right. And so, and then on top of that, if I race him, I'm sore afterwards. Like, my knees hurt. You need to recover for a week. Yeah, cartilage in the back is kind of, you know, all those things, right?
And he's just hopping around, you know, no sleep, able to do whatever, yeah. He's just like, that guy.
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Chapter 5: How does timing affect the use of money in life?
They're their own person. They're adults. They're not going to listen to you anymore.
They're not going to listen to you anymore anyway, right? Like, you're on the advisory committee. Yes. I think I'm already on the advisory committee.
They call you when they need money. Exactly.
I'm on the advisory committee. And you hopefully have done a good job. But your job, that part... of trying to control your kids is done you mold through advice from that point on and so a gift is a gift and my gift is set and it's done if I want to if I come into a windfall and hit the lottery and I feel like hey I want to give more to them I can add to it but I'm living intentionally like hey
This is when they're going to reach peak mental maturity, mental acuity, and physical maturity. This is where they're going to hit plateau, et cetera. This is when it's going to have the most impact on their life, right? It's going to have less impact on their life because they can't even convert it into the experiences they were later on in their life, right? And so it's their adventure, right?
Their adventure to have. I don't want to control people from the grave. Yes. Right? Here are the rules I set forth. You must do this. I'm just like, what kind of human being does that? Like tries to control another human being with money, right? I want them, like you've done your training, have the adventure you want to have. Right. And so that's how I think about that.
Now, the having the zero part is, you know, one of the 17 questions. Yes. Is if I spend, I have only, the only thing I have is my life energy and that's the time I have on planet, right? On this planet, the minutes, et cetera. So if I spend that time Going to work. Let's say I'm just digging holes. I'm digging holes. And they give me this thing called money.
Could be chucking shoes, token, could be anything. They give me this thing called money. And then I just hold it. and then I die with it, I've essentially wasted my time digging ditches. I've worked for no reward. We can see on his face that that's asinine. You don't wanna go do something that you normally wouldn't do with all the other activities you can do on this planet.
Almost infinite choices. We don't want to go do that for no reward, right? So we're going to work for something, right? And a lot of us are going to work, you know, some of it, we enjoy it, we enjoy what we're doing, we enjoy teaching people, but that reward, when we slice up the reward part, that is for us to use as a tool in our tool bucket to maximize our fulfillment.
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Chapter 6: What is the psychological crime people commit regarding money?
We look at all the adversity we have to deal with and we overcome, right? And so that not giving a what people think and only listening to your dreams is a superpower forged in adversity, right? And so, like, I just, you just, so, you know, a lot of people walk around like, I don't care what you think or whatever, and they're thinking this about whatever. I'm just like, I don't give a ****.
I don't give a ****. And like, I don't care. That's their problem, right? Like, and everybody cares a little bit, right? To the extent that people's thoughts will interfere with my priorities, I care more, right? But in general, on the not giving a scale, I'm on the further scale because I grew up in a period where, you know, I was born in 69, right? There's, you know, racial attitudes going on.
We're just coming out of the 60s, right? You know, being, having that And then just having to deal with that prepares you, you know, for this period of like, I'm not afraid to look like a fool. You guys thought I was a fool. You know, you thought I was full at birth, but on skin color, you thought I was inferior at birth on skin color. You thought this about me on, you know, on skin color.
So you just don't give it. Right. And so my dad and the trainings of being a minority in a city during that time period prepared me for like, Who cares? I'm already a fool. Might as well try.
But some people who maybe have grown up in a lot of the similar adversities or worse or a little bit less adversities, they might take that adversity and say, well, I don't have the skills. I'm never going to be able to do this. And they stay stuck in that. They don't say, because of this adversity, I don't care and I'm going to go for it. They say, because of this adversity, this is who I am.
I think, you know, I think it's, I think the victim story is marketed to people. And if you don't take that more victim story, I think they would have the same experience as me. Really? But, you know, I don't want to go too deep in it, but I would just say that it wasn't conscious, right? You just felt it. You know, you just had pride, right? You're the underdog pride. And it came.
And I guess some people, they might have, you know, I was lucky. I had a father and a mother, right? Who, you know, two college educated parents, my dad via scholarship and my mom later on in life. And so if anybody was designed to succeed, it was me. But there were, you know, when I was led on my own and it's time for me to do it on my own or, you know,
Who moves from New York City to Texas to go? The decisions I made were kind of just like, it can be done. When I had not that much experience, but I knew I can recruit people to Berlin to do this solar development project in the Nevada desert, and then sold it to Capital Dynamics and made my friends and myself a good chunk of change. And also putting solar on the grid.
It's just this belief that you can figure it out and you can do it. And so I guess that there are some people who get dealt the clouds of inferiority and it stunts them. Yes. And I would hope that somebody somewhere along the line flips it.
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