16. Bill Perkins: Author of Die with Zero

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 16 of our brand new podcast, Book Thinkers: Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview some of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can now use to achieve more and live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview the author Bill Perkins. After training on Wall Street, Bill made his fortune as an energy trader. He's recognized for his glamorous lifestyle, his high-stakes poker games, and his numerous charitable contributions. Our conversation touches on his brand new book, Die With Zero. Die With Zero is all about getting all you can from your money and your life. Now, this was a special conversation for me because Bill embodies much of what I want out of my future life. So without further ado, please enjoy this amazing conversation. All right, Bill Perkins. Well, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. I'm excited to have you talk a little bit about your new book, Die with Zero, today. So can you introduce yourself to everybody in the Book Thinkers family?

Uh, yeah, my name is Bill Perkins. Um, I was born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, went to school at University of Iowa, came back as a to New York City to be an assistant, assistant, assistant peon in commodities. Kinda worked my way up through the commodities field, made my money trading natural gas and energy derivatives, you know, whatever. Million ways to get rich. I got rich, lucky, worked hard. And I have 2 daughters, a fiancée, a stepson, and a dog. I hate onions, I love to travel, I really love to travel, um, and, and I like, um, I like changing people's lives for the better.

Fantastic. Well, the Book Thinkers, my audience, everybody knows that I love to travel, so we have that in common. In your book, as I was going through it, it helped to validate much of how I view the world and spending money on experience and things. And so there's, there's a question you pose right in the beginning. You call it everybody's question. It's, what's the best way to allocate your life energy Before we die. And so can you talk a little bit about the underlying meaning behind the book and maybe why you wrote it?

Yeah. So, you know, from the day you're born to the day you die, you have a certain amount of hours and those, those hours make up what I call your life energy, how you choose to spend them. You can stay in a cave or go on a trip or whatever, and you go to work. And so the real, that's the only resource you really have is, is your time and how you choose to spend it. spend that while you're here on planet Earth? That's like the big dilemma, right? And so obviously we go and spend time to ensure our survival. In modern society, it's not hunting and et cetera. It's going to work and making money to pay the bills, to provide for shelter, to provide for a time when we aren't able to make money, et cetera. And then after that, we're working for other experiences we want to have. That could be philanthropy. helping the community. It could be going to the club.

Get ladies here.

It could be get ladies like my friend Dan Bilzerian. It could be, it could be anything, right? And so these are the, these are the choices we have, we, we, we're faced with constantly, right? And, and in a modern society, we actually have the dilemma of, of choice, of too many choices, right? Which is, which is a benefit and a curse. And so, you know, I start the book off talking about my best friend Erin that I've known since she was 3 and about how her husband's life came to an abrupt end from clear cell sarcoma. And basically his death is just— and the choices they made before he died, right? Knowing, absolutely knowing that he was going to die within 2 months.

Right.

Right. And so we have kind of a slightly elongated dilemma on how are we going to spend our time before we die.

Mm-hmm.

And so this is what the book isn't about, telling you how to spend your time. It's about giving you a thought process and a methodology such that you spend the time the way you want to. You get off autopilot and you get the most you can out of those hours. So Hopefully most of us have more than 2 months left, but whether it's 2 months, 2 years, 20 years, or, or 80, you know, I want, um, I want you to get every single bit. I want you to suck every last bit of the adventure that you possibly can, no matter what your resources out of life. And, and that's, that's kind of that, that dilemma, that question. Like, you're like, okay, well, how do I do that? And I think it's not like I'm going to write a formula. We're not going to, we're not going to confuse you with formulas and et cetera. Right? Like, we're going to talk to you conceptually. Like, how do I— what's my thought process?

Well, in your early 20s, you had a roommate, Jason, and he spent a couple months internationally in Europe backpacking, and he even took on some debt to do that. Now, sort of at the same time, you kind of joked in the book that you'd go out on a date, and if the girl ordered popcorn, you'd be sweating. So like, at that point in time— yeah, yeah, at that point in time, How weird was it that he would take on debt from a loan shark to go out and travel? And then how did his experience when he came back, like how did that change or reframe the way that you thought about it?

It was, there were many things going on. First of all, it just shook me to the core. I was just like, this is the craziest thing I've ever heard of. Right? Like it was just like, what? And plus I was so driven, like I need to make it and climb this ladder in commodities. You know, I was on the floor where it was like, It was tough. I mean, it was racist and cutthroat and, you know, rough and tumble. And, you know, you wanted to be the smartest, absorb the information as fast as you possibly could, as possibly could. And that was my mission, right? And the fact that he was going to take a break, like a sabbatical, like he was some tenured college professor, right, and go to Europe was like, what? You know, it was like he could have been going to Mars. And then he was going to go in debt. And if he came back and he didn't have his job, he was going to get his legs broken. Well, you know, my, my head started spinning and, and, um, you know, he was determined. Like, he was gonna— like, this is an adventure he wanted to go on, backpacking his life. And so when he came back, the first thing was like the stories and the adventure, and it was like, oh wow, the reward was huge. Huge reward, right? But I was still very focused on the risk, uh, part of it. I was very much living in fear. Fear, so and that fear paralyzed me. And so when he came back and he slotted back into a screen clerk, there wasn't really any discernible difference between his salary and his earnings and his possible career trajectory than mine. I was like, okay, I got that wrong. And then you know he started paying off the loan shark. He didn't get his legs broken. I'm the effing idiot. You know what I mean? And and so I missed that chance to go. I didn't have really the gumption to go by myself like he did, and and and I figured okay. You know, I was kind of, you know, I wasn't realizing I was a complete idiot right, right away. It took a while until, you know, enough time had passed where I was going to go to Europe and I realized, wow, I'm not having the same trip. You know what I mean? I'm not in my— I'm not that young guy in his 20s that can go sleep in youth hostels and, you know, couch surfing and meet people on trains. I'm that creepy old guy.

You know what I mean?

That doesn't work for me.

Mm-hmm.

And so it was very much a different European trip for me than what, um, what my buddy Jason Rufo did. And so it, you know, that was another, another lesson on timing. You know, I had other lessons on timings and other thoughts on timings, but that one was very condensed and immediate. And I was like, wow, I missed my time for that trip.

I'm so blessed that I had a very similar moment, but it did happen to me in my early 20s. And so I had a friend that went and backpacked around Thailand by himself. And he came back and I remember we were sitting at a family dinner. He was over my parents' house and he told everybody about the trip and about how he went to this silent meditation retreat and got to meditate with monks. And I sat there and thought, wow, I never thought of solo travel as an option for me. And I did pretty well right out of college, making really good money for somebody. And I said, you know what, I need to do that. So in early 2019, I spent 5 weeks in Argentina by myself. completely changed my entire life, completely changed my entire trajectory. And last year I went on to do 4 or 5 more countries on top of that. And now my girlfriend, she works remotely. And so we travel a lot and it's such a beautiful experience. And then you talk about memory dividends on top of that and why traveling when you're younger makes more sense. So can you explain what a memory dividend is?

Yeah. So first of all, I want to say I'm very envious of your life. Like, uh, I just want to say I went to Australia once to go visit my brother. as an older person married, and there were all these young people taking gap years, which is kind of foreign to Americans but very common in Europe. And they would go to Australia because Australia needs laborers. They make like $25 an hour, you know, which is ridiculous money. And then they go backpacking through China, Asia, India, Thailand, all these places. And I thought, goddamn it, these people are living a much better life than me. And I had 1,000x the money, right? And I was just like, their choices is what gives them that fulfillment. But what they're getting, the memory dividend, what I'm going to get to is, is that when you have an experience, whether it's your first kiss, hit a home run, or travel, right, or even go in philanthropy, you get the joy of having that experience. But you also get joy and what I call a memory dividend. You get experience from recalling it or discussing it, like you discussing your trip right now. It's an experience in itself. So not only do you get joy doing the event, you get to withdraw on your memories. You get a little bit of joy every time you recall it, you discuss it, etc. And those, those dividends are the stuff of life, right? When you sit around and you sit around with friends and you're telling stories, right? That's what makes you interesting. And that's what gives you pleasure. And often those, the summation of years and years and years of recalling those memories, well, that pleasure will often be higher if we were going to give a numerical, like let's say we give a 55 to your trip, but your memory recall and the memory dividend over the years may add up to 1,000 or 500. You know, each experience has its own, you know, memory dividend. It has its own way it fades over time. And it'd be impossible unless I were God to like quantify and measure them all out. But the concept is the same. You invest in experiences, it goes into the memory banks, and you withdraw that memory and collect dividends throughout your life. And that's a very, very, um, crucial concept to get across because when you're, you're like, well, do I save and invest and get an 8% return or do I invest in this experience? Right? Like you gotta, you now, you now have a framework to think like, oh, 8% a year from now, that more, many more trips versus this trip right now where I'm gonna be talking about it, you know, 50, 100, 700, you know, 1,000 times every time I meet somebody. Hey, buddy, you know, did you wanna hear what happened when I went into Thailand? You know, that's something for people to think about. And certain experiences will produce certain memory dividends and certain ones won't. So, you know, I don't try— I try not to tell people this is not a travel book, right? This is just, hey, whatever it is that you choose, realize that You're going to get a dividend out of that experience when you invest in it. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And you say it's just like the compounding effect. It's just like the compound effect. Over time, those small experiences sort of multiply and they compound on top of each other. And it creates this beautiful life resume.

They can— like certain experiences, like, oh, you were in college and you had a love affair and you had a great romance, you might just sit in your bed and reminisce about it and get that, you know, and you may not talk about that much. But if you went on a trip to Thailand and with monks, etc., you're going to talk about that at dinner and you're going to laugh about the crazy story when you missed the train and you had to sleep on the couch and whatever it is. And then they're going to laugh and milk's going to come out of that nose and that's going to create another experience, right? You're gonna be like, the last time I told the story, this milk came out the guy's nose and then the waiter did this. You know, it just—

Yeah.

It's radioactive, right? It can be— these experience, these memory dividends can be radioactive some of the times. And so It's hard to quantify them, but it's easy to get the concept. And that's what I want to get across to people is that, you know, when you, when you finally retire, you know, people have this kind of idea that I'm gonna be on Carnival Cruise and I'm gonna be heliskiing and wave running. And I, I'm telling you, I've been around and I've seen these tour buses, etc. It's not like that at all.

Mm-hmm.

You mainly retire on your memories. You mainly retire on the investments you made in the memory bank. And you withdraw on the memory dividend in retirement. So, when people say, oh, what are you doing spending this money? Got on this boat, you're in Greece, whatever. I'm like, I'm investing in my retirement right now. And, you know, there's a story about that with my dad that hit me really hard in the book.

Yeah. Well, the retire on your memories. So, when I read that, I circled it 50 times and I took a picture of it and sent it to a bunch of people and I said, this is what I've been trying to articulate to all of you for so long. retire on your memories. And I'd love to have you tell the story about your dad because I think it's, it's pretty eye-opening for people.

You know, my dad got to the point where he was a pretty stubborn guy. So his health had deteriorated, he would refuse to leave his room. You know, he had to have physical therapy. And one of the gifts I thought I would give him is, is, is an iPad. I got an iPad. And he played at the University of Iowa Hawkeyes from '59 to like, I believe, '62 or And he was on the Big Ten championship team. And he, you know, he had all these friends and he was on the team that won the Rose Bowl. But, you know, he got there the year after. I got that confused in the first version of that because a little family history was actually pulled up. There was a big investigation going on.

Mm-hmm.

And so I digitized these old football reels and put them on an iPad. And when I came to visit him, I was like, here, Dad, I digitized— I want to show you this. I gave it to a pad and he sat there. He was laughing and he was crying and reminiscing and calling out guys' nicknames and watching plays and go Scoot and, you know, all these things. And I was just like, holy shit, this is what you retire on. Because my dad would not leave the house, you know, wouldn't leave the room. He was too, you know, it was too stressful on him and his body couldn't really— was The ability to create new experiences outside of his, you know, in his physical position was severely diminished, right? It was, it was down to the point of almost zero, right?

Mm-hmm.

Or close to zero for me, you know, giving. And, and what experiences that gave him joy were the memories and the iPad. With that iPad, that gift, that shamelessly sentimental gift was like a huge eye-opener. It was like, bam, that's what you retire on, buddy. That's why, you know, and I started thinking about it. It's like, oh, this is why your grandparents— and they want you to come over and, you know, what do they talk about? The old times. They talk about when you were young and they talk about this and they want to tell stories and they want to hear the story again and they want to hear what's going on in your life. So you better have an experience to tell them, right? You need to invest it, right? And they want to talk about the old times and that's what they retire on, you know, the memories and experiences of their life with you. And your new experiences that you're having now. And so that hit me like a ton of bricks.

Such an amazing realization to have. And, and then you threw your 45th birthday party to kind of continue this narrative. You threw the 45th birthday party because you wanted your mom to be able to attend, and you didn't know if her health was going to be good enough to travel. And so I've, you know, sort of as I've adopted this mindset over the last couple of years, I've dreamed about, okay, when will I be wealthy enough to throw the exact party that you talked about where all of your friends and your family and your former colleagues can walk out on the beach and see each other and hang out and be totally stress-free and you paid for most of the trip for everybody? Like, can you talk about that experience and what that was like?

Listen, you know, you can create these experiences on no money, right? You can arrange a picnic and cook it yourself and throw beans and have board games and be that outgoing person. to create these experiences. So I don't want to have people thinking, hey, you got to have a zillion dollars to do this, okay? But, you know, I, I, I was like, my mom's not going to be here forever. I don't know if I'm going to know these same friends. I'm at that, you know, I'm at the age where, um, you know, first it's like graduations, job promotions, marriages, divorces, and then funerals, right? Like kids, kids high school, you know, kids graduation, and then you start going to funerals and you're just like, oh my God, you know? And so I was like, I am— I don't know. Tomorrow's not promised. This time period will pass. I don't know if my mom will travel. And so I decided that I wanted my friends and loved ones around me. And one of the things I tell some of my wealthier friends is, look, you either need to scholarship— I call it scholarshipping— your friends that don't have as much money, or you need to get new friends. Most people choose to keep their friends that they've known for their life and pay for them. And that's because otherwise you're not able, you know, when you go on a trip, sometimes you want to bring your friends along with you. You know, most people go to the movies with somebody else, right? If your friend can't afford to go to the movies, you're paying, right? And it's a, it's a richer experience, at least for me. And so, you know, my, my mom, my friends, we came down, we had this big party. I spent a significant portion of my net worth for one event there, and it was amazing. I wouldn't change a thing. It was like heaven to me, you know. It was like what I imagined heaven to be. And so it was great. And I carry that philosophy, which is not in the book. Um, just recently my mom turned 80. She didn't want to go to, um, Scotland. We were like, we're going to Scotland. She's got Scottish blood in her, you know. Tricky stuff was going on around the times of slavery. We got some Scottish blood. We like hired a genealogist. We all— I flew him and we told mom, we basically kidnapped her, okay? And, and, and we went to her, her ancestors' home or whatever. They were like, that was the best trip of my life. And I have that memory and we have that experience and my other relatives have that experience. And it's just like, it's paying dividends all the time. It's all they talk about, right? And they talk about these other experiences. And so I've been You know, not just that one experience, you know, of the 45th birthday, but I'm applying that in opportunities whenever I get those opportunities, you know.

It's amazing.

And, and it's— they're radioactive, you know, they are radioactive.

It's amazing. And so let's, let's transition over to the topic of death by itself. And so you said in the book that you have an app that's a final countdown style app. And, uh, are you pulling it up?

I'm pulling it up. It's, it's so on my, on my page. I don't know if you guys can see that. Let me get the camera right. You see?

Yeah.

In the bottom, you see those numbers right there? It's counting backwards. That's how many days, hours, and seconds and milliseconds I'm estimated to have. It gives me, you know, a lot of people, oh, that's so morbid. I'm like, no, I find it liberating and refreshing. It gives my life a sense of urgency. Like, you know, there was many times in my life where I was on autopilot. and behaving as if I was going to live forever. You know, I behaved like my 20s were going to last forever and, you know, 30s and like, and I missed out. I didn't think about these things. You know, I think I, you know, I was thinking kind of like, oh, I can always do it later. I'm always going to have this bucket list. And when I get a bunch of money, I'll just do the bucket list. And I'm like, you know, when I really like slapped myself and said, it doesn't work that way.

No.

You're not going to be like, 80, just the day before you're gonna die, or a month before you die, and run around, do all these things and be happy. First of all, your tastes change, right? Even just— you, you're just not into it. Like, my glow sticks days at the party in the club, they kept it pretty much over. I'm not a glow stick guy anymore, you know? So whatever money I had that was meant for my glow sticks, if I didn't spend it, it's a waste now, you know? That, that experience has passed me by. Your health deteriorates, you know. For me, um, You know, I have injuries from football and I have deteriorating health. We all have a decline in health, and it either takes the ability to do certain experiences away or makes them less enjoyable. So you don't get this the same, what I call experience points from it, right? Like, um, a while ago, like when I lived in Paris for the summer, I used to walk Paris every day, 8 to 10 miles a day. If I go now, maybe it's 6, you know. So I'm getting 60% of Paris, right? That experience is 60% less in terms of enjoyment, interactions, etc. And so, you know, I realized that there are seasons, you know, you have mental decline, you have all these declines that, that, that affect, uh, your experience. And then I realized, wow, I need to sit down and not have a bucket list, but I need to time bucket my life. And I need to go, okay, in these next 5 years, what experiences do I want to have? What experiences belong here? And what experiences that maybe I'm kind of iffy about, but if I don't do them now, they're gone forever. And I need to be sure about that, right? And so, you know, I have to get myself autopilot and think about that, you know, and everybody has to get themselves autopilot because, you know, those people out there that are successful or working in a job, you know, or earning, they've gotten really good at something and, and, and very valuable at it, right? And so they're, they're creating value and they're getting paid for it. Problem is, is that you're spending so much time doing that, you're not investing in the other things like why you originally went to work, right? Like, you know, when I was younger, I was like, I want to go work and I want to make money and I want to go here, here, here, here, here, here, here. And then pretty soon it was, I just go to work and I'm making money and wow, I want to get to a million and I want to get to $2 million and I want to get to X instead of thinking I want to go travel here and I'm going to do whatever, right? Like, you disassociate why you got the money From the money, and then it just becomes Space Invaders, right? Like, you're just, you know, it's just not even real, right?

And that shift in mindset— yeah, that, that shift in mindset is worth the price of this book times 1,000. I mean, really, it is. And, uh, just so you know, I could probably go get it if you want, but I have this poster on my wall. It's called My Life in Weeks, and across the top it has 52 dots. And then down it has 88, but you can also get a version with 100. And so it's 52 weeks for 88 years of your life, and every single week on Sunday I fill in a little circle. And so I have a visual representation of how much of my life I've lived, and it's sort of like the countdown app that you have.

Yeah.

You know, that might scare the heck out of somebody, but for the right person with a good baseline and productivity, and they already kind of have done some self thinking about themselves and whatever, self-exploration, like that is a big motivator. And so—

I want to replace— see, I think people have been conditioned to fear running out of money. And I think they need to fear wasting their life. Yes, we are fearing the wrong things here in our society, you know, like, oh, what if I run out of money? And whatever, whatever, and this, that, the other thing. I'm like, dude, what about the hours of your life? What about your 20s? Who wants to waste their 20s? You know what I mean? Or 30s or 40s, whatever you have, right? And so they live in this fear and then they start acting like an insurance agent, right? They have this kind of like, well, I need to insure against this and I need to save the money for that. And I'm just like, well, you're not the best actuary in the world. You're really not probabilistically handling it. And an insurance firm that only has one client is a crappy insurance firm. It cannot be efficient. If you're worried about these things, and I talk about in the book, there's various tools to insure against those risks, but you shouldn't be the one. Right? It's going to be a lot cheaper. You're going to waste a lot less of your life energy, meaning you're going to go to work to have this money to insure against bad things happening. Right? Just like, let the professionals do it. You know? Yeah. So what? They make an 8% return. Way, way, way more efficient than what you're going to do.

I'm all about outsourced— yeah, outsource the things that aren't going to be your specialty and then go live your life. I mean, you use travel to gauge everybody's experience because it's very easy to use the example of when you're old, you're less able to endure long flights and you give a couple other reasons.

Right.

And so, you can't hike Machu Picchu when you're in your 80s, but you can today. And so, when you're older, you have an abundance of money and time, but you don't have your health. And so, part of the book, kind of like towards the middle or the end, you talk about the importance of investing in your health today. Like the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now. Don't wait until the future. So what are some, what are some changes that you've made in your life around health that you wouldn't mind sharing?

Yeah, so when I was working on this computer model, it was like a life simulator and just runs your life a zillion times. And it would just swing wildly on when you should spend money or not. And it was so hypersensitive to the health input, right? And what I realized is that your health affects you in 2 ways. One, You could shorten your life or lengthen your life. And 2, the area under the curve, the quality of your life, right? You know, and I give you the example in the book about being overweight. And I was like, well, you know, I think every pound overweight is 5 pounds of force in your knees, you know. And knee replacement surgery is one of the fastest growing surgeries there is, right? And so when your knees, when your knees go, you don't want to walk anywhere. You, you, you, you gained even more weight because of the stress on your knees. Then, you know, now, you know, yeah, you go to Paris or you go to St. Petersburg and it's great walking city and walk around, but you don't get to experience it because you carried those 5 pounds, which became 15 pounds, which means whatever. And life is just not to the maximum that you could have it. I'm not saying that you're not going to have fun, but it's not from heaven looking down. The most you could have gotten out of the ride. And so I am very conscious of my weight, my health, things that can— I want to, you know, I want to ride this ride as long as possible, right? Like, everybody wants to ride this. Everybody wants more time, right? And not only do I want to ride this ride as long as possible, I want this— I want the ride to be as enjoyable as it possibly can be, right? As adventurous as as it can be. And so I, I, I'm big on that quantified self, like what's your cholesterol, what's your, what's your, what's your body weight, what's your BMI, you know, let's, let's have some muscle tissue, what's our body fat percent, all, all these things that you can do. And if you can get the diagnostics, you know, get the diagnostics and, and, and, and do that. And I also came up with an idea. I was like, you know, I played football since I was a kid or whatever, and I've I've grown to hate working out, right? Some people, you know, I love the results, I hate going there. And I also feel like I'm wasting time in a gym. But what, you know, I've started saying like, what if I combine activities that keep me in shape, that actually give me a positive experience, keep me in shape and compounds? And I was like, I love hiking. I'm huffing and puffing. It's like I don't have to run. It doesn't jam my knees up, whatever. But I hike and I spend time with people and I see wonderful things. And so I recommend the people in the book and every day is like, find the activities, you know what I mean? That are double bonus. You know what I mean? Extend your life, keep you in shape, and you create an experience at the same time. Right? Triple bonus, actually.

Triple bonus.

Triple bonus, you know? And so, so, you know, that health thing is just, you know, it's not a health book, right? It's, but it's, you know, it's Part of the equation. You have you have your your money, your health, and your time. And health is uber uber important. I just can't stress it enough. It's and you know there are other books about that that stress it even better and go into it. But you know if you're an optimization person, your health is a very very important input. And if you think about it, it makes sense, right? Like if you have zero money, you still walk in the park. There's free resources. There's a library. You know, you can't afford this book, go to the library. You know, call your library, I want Die With Zero. They'll order it for you. You know, you know, the internet's free. There's lots of free resources and things you can do. But if you have zero health, it's over. It's done.

That's why I've been— and I'm looking at, like, you had a line in the book that sums this up pretty well. Most healthcare expense when you're older is fighting degenerative diseases. It's managing pain and it's prolonging life. And so what steps can you take today to make that experience in the future less of a burden on any experience that you have in your life? And like, what a beautiful lesson. There's so many lessons in this book that I love.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's really, um, I'm gonna get on my soapbox for a little bit on this one. Because like, um, you know, when my dad was finally in the hospital, the rack rate for his hospital, his care was $50,000 a day to keep him basically in some quasi-state of alive, okay, of machines, right? And it's like, you know, so either the insurance is paying it, your family's paying it, you're paying it for this like experience of being alive and keeping your life energy, this massive sum of money. Like, wouldn't you rather like give up those 3 days? First of all, not have that and keep your health, but give up those 3 days and have work less and spend that money when you were young and youthful and create experiences or whatever. Like, we're going in, you know, and for me, you know, we were going in the process and we're visiting with Dad who doesn't know we're there or not there, or, you know, I don't know, right? Wouldn't it be better if we went on a trip earlier in life, spent some time, imparted some of his knowledge and wisdom on us, memories that we can carry? And, you know, obviously we want to say our final goodbyes, but I don't think 3 2 weeks or 3 weeks or whatever it is, you know, that, that life extension that everybody will go through, right, that we're spending inordinate amounts of resources, you know, to, to, for a lower quality of life instead of paying attention to now, to right now. I'd rather take that money and bring it forward, you know what I mean? You know, bring it back to now, right? Like take the money from the future on that deathbed and be like, you know what, See you at the grave, bury me. Let's go, let's go, let's go out daughters, let's go out best friends, let's go out fiancée, you know what I mean? Let's go, let's go enjoy life and explore now and create some memory, some experiences that we can have the memory of living on for the rest of life. And that's how I want you, you know, that's how I want to be remembered, you know.

Amazing. Yeah, no, I do. I read a book, I think it was in Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. He aggregates all these different interviews that he did. And he had one with this guy, Muneeb Ali. And Muneeb Ali, whenever he was feeling unproductive, he would say to himself, how much would I be willing to pay on my deathbed to come back and experience this moment that I'm living right now? And it's—

Oh yeah.

It's with friends, it's with family members, it's with all of that kind of stuff. Like, you've got to ruthlessly prioritize the experience. And so, wow, what an amazing lesson. And so sort of to wrap up here, let's talk about where you are right now, because I think it's very relevant to the conversation. Where are you?

What are you doing?

Who are you with? What's going on?

I'm with my daughters and some friends. Obviously Dan, who keeps popping in here. Friends and my friend Tony and Elena, Dan and his girl, and my daughters and their two friends, and my fiancée. We're on a boat outside of Paros, in between Paros and Antiparos in Greece, in Greek waters. We're on our way to Santorini tomorrow, and you know, just out here, out here winging it and exploring and enjoy, you know, trying to enjoy life and creating lifetime memories, you know. This is for me, everybody has their, their own thing. Like, you know, I just, I explained earlier in the book that movement is life, right? Talk about we are energy processing units, right? There, when machines processing energy, they call it fuel, right? It's usually hydrocarbons or solar or something like that. And when we process fuel, it's called food, right? And that gives us the ability to move first the neurons in our brain, and then they move and send signals to our muscles to allow us to explore and enjoy the world. And so when you can no longer process energy, they will declare you dead. You will no longer be able to move. And so for me, moving about through this world, exploring, learning, discovering, That is the stuff of life. And I'm out here exploring the world, uh, with loved ones and sharing it and talking about it. And, and, you know, to me, life is discovery. You know, you, you don't know what you want. You discover what you want.

Mm-hmm.

And so I got to go out there and discover, you know, and I'm like, oh wow, you know, taste this ice cream. Ah, terrible. This one, great. You know, that's how it is. You know, we could go on this trip, not so great. Going on this trip is great. You know, it's just discovery and I'm out here discovering. Until the day I die.

Yeah, yeah. No, I love it. Failure is the best teacher, right? You're going to find what you don't like, and you're going to find what you really do like. And so where is the best place for people to find you, to get a copy of your book, to learn more about you, to follow you on social media? Where should they go? What should they do?

Okay, well, first of all, the book should be everywhere. Amazon, Barnes& Noble, independent bookstores. I hope you independent bookstores come back and kill it. But it's everywhere. I am, I am BP22 on Twitter. So @BP22. I'm frequently in the Twitter streets mixing it up. I know there's a lot of Die With Zero promotion going on on my Twitter, but I talk about everything. I'm a Twitter addict, you know what I mean? And so you can find me there. On Instagram, I am @BillPerkins. You can find me there. And I'm one of like a zillion Bill Perkins on LinkedIn, but I'm really on Twitter. If you really want to like chop it up with me, debate who, you know, troll. I like trolls too. They're funny. I like to troll back.

You have to have fun, right? Yeah, life's too serious.

I'm like, everybody's got a part to play in life, you know, everybody's got a part to play in life. So I, I, you know, I'm there.

Well, amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, I really appreciate you having me on. I'm glad you're getting value out of the book, and I hope you're able to use what's in the book to help, uh, Get your loved ones, friends, and your audience on board.

And that's a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Bill. As with every valuable book I read, I organize my biggest takeaways with the Book Thinker's Smart Retention mobile application. Once my notes are in the system, I can revisit them whenever I want. And with my favorite books like Die with Zero, I turn on my systematic reminders so that the system can optimize my retention. It's not enough to read your favorite books and then move on. You should extend your experience with each book using spaced repetition to make sure that you're flexing those neural pathways more often. And so to learn more about how our app can help you retain and implement more from the books you love, check out www.bookthinkers.com or go subscribe on either Android or iOS. As always, remember that real learning requires education and behavior change. With that, I'm signing off, and I can't wait for you to listen to another episode of Book Thinkers: Life-Changing Books.