BigDeal - #48 Your Ego Is Keeping You Poor | Bill Perkins

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

🚀 Main Street Over Wall Street is where the real deals get done. Join top investors, founders, and operators for three days of powerful connection, sharp strategy, and big opportunities — live in Austin, Nov 2–4. https://contrarianthinking.biz/msows-bigdeal In this episode, Codie Sanchez and Bill Perkins explore the intricate relationship between ego and wealth LIVE, emphasizing how our ego can hinder financial success. They discuss the importance of speed in decision-making and how taking risks is often more about managing ego than financial loss. They delve into team dynamics, highlighting the roles of visionaries and executors in business. Perkins shares insights on maximizing time and money, the necessity of aligning family goals with business ambitions, and the challenges of delegation and the importance of finding the right operators in business ventures. Want help scaling your business to $1M in monthly revenue? ⁠Click here⁠ to connect with my consulting team. Chapters 00:00: Ego and Wealth: The Hidden Connection 02:50: The Importance of Speed in Decision Making 06:11: Risk: Ego vs. Financial Reality 09:04: Building Teams: The Role of Visionaries and Executors 11:52: Peak Utility of Time and Money 15:08: Aligning Family and Business Goals 17:54: Navigating Business Opportunities 23:57: The Depth of Personal Investment 24:57: Defining Personal Success and Fulfillment 25:56: Balancing Wealth and Life Experiences 27:46: The Importance of Shared Experiences 29:59: The Role of Wealth in Enjoying Life 31:11: Evolving Philosophies on Wealth and Fulfillment 32:10: The Power of Subtraction in Life 34:02: Finding and Managing Operators 36:10: Balancing Ego and Delegation 38:20: Taking Risks and Going Big 41:12: Memorable Investments and Experiences 44:01: Identifying Key Ingredients in People MORE FROM BIGDEAL: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ OTHER THINGS WE DO: 🫂 ⁠Our community⁠ 📰 ⁠Free newsletter⁠ 🏦 ⁠Biz buying course⁠ 🏠 ⁠Resibrands⁠ 💰 ⁠CT Capital⁠ 🏙️ ⁠Main St Hold Co⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I stole one of my richest friends for us this episode. I wanted him to tell us how our ego is keeping us poor, and what are the secrets that rich people use to make more money? During that time, he also is going to tell us things like how he had a $54 million tax bill one year. No big deal. He's also going to talk about decision making in general. So if you've ever wanted to make cleaner, clearer decisions, if you feel like there are these problems in front of you and you can't find your blind spots and thus can't get the problem out of the way, you're going to like this episode. And if you want to figure out how to get really rich people or really impressive people to bet on you and become a person of consequences, you're going to like this episode. So without further ado, I want to

introduce my friend Bill Perkins, multi-billion dollar hedge fund manager, best-selling author of Die with Zero, also amateur poker player, and one of the most asymmetric thinkers that I've ever heard. He encourages me to think bigger and probably made me millions and millions of dollars. through just two conversations with him. So I think you can do the same for you today. I don't think I've told the story to this group here before, but do you remember when we were walking at your house? It would have been the first time on the grass.

And we're walking along, and I was telling Bill an idea I had about how to help all of you, how to help business buyers and builders buy more businesses. And I had, like, what I thought was a really good idea, right? I was like, this is a really big idea. It's going to be big. And I'm telling Bill, and if you guys ever, like, told an idea to your spouse that you were

like, I'm so excited, this idea is going to be so big. And your spouse just goes, bat, bat, bat, bat. It just like starts kicking. Anybody? Is that just me? So Bill did the most amazing thing to me that I'll always appreciate him for, which is, I told him my idea, and he looked at me and he goes, hmm, do you think that you've been investing in small business for so long that small has infected your thing?

thinking. Do you remember this? Yeah, I remember that. And now somebody might say, well, why would you be really glad somebody said that to you? Because without Bill saying a hard thing that I needed to hear in a moment in which I was probably playing pretty small, I wasn't taking much risk at all, actually. It was something I could have a thousand percent accomplished. There was almost no world in which I wouldn't have done the first thing I was talking to Bill about. I had somebody who had seen in the future already. He had a bigger bank account than I did. He had built bigger things than I had, and he said to me, is that all you got? Is that all you got? And I will tell you that if you're not in rooms like this often or walking with Bill

along his house, you're not going to get somebody like that. And so what I hope you take away from today, we're going to talk a lot about a lot, but I want to talk about risk with Bill. I want to talk about how you make decisions. I want to talk about how you choose what you want to do next, because very few people will tell you the things that you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Am I right? Can I get a little, yep, on that? All right. So, Bill, now that I've painted you in such a lovely light. Yeah, thanks. Dream crusher.

No. No, no. I want to start with, we've talked about speed before. Right. And how important speed is to making money. And the faster you move in many ways, the more money you make. But I'd like to, I've never gone further with you into that question. How do you think about speed and moving fast?

And how do you know if you're moving fast enough on the decisions you want to make in life? make in life? Well, first I want to say, you know, not a dream crush, I just want to hold you accountable to your best self, right? Like you, you definitely had all the ingredients as somebody I would want to bet on. And your dreams, your ideas were much bigger than that. You weren't thinking bigger. And, you know, I told you at the time, I said, the money is easy. It's having an idea that you can execute on. There's tons of money. There's tons of rich guys that don't want to work, they just want to invest in somebody and make a good return. The question is, how do we find these executors?

And when we find them, they dump cash into them and they go golfing or flying or doing whatever they want to do. And so I wanted you to think big because it wouldn't be hard for you to raise money, right? Like after you went around, you were like trying to cram me down because these other guys want to come in. This guy wouldn't come in. I'm like, no, that guy can't get in, right? That's what happened if you thought about that idea three years ago?

What if you executed on that, you know, a little bit faster? What if you, you know, thought a little bit bigger and moved a little bit faster, where would you be now? How big would this conference be? How many people would be knocking down your door to figure out how you did it? And so, you know, we're human beings, we're not institutions, we don't live that long, and there's periods in our life. And I just think that life in itself is urgent and important, and your dreams are important. And that advantage of action, you know, speed implies action. You're not just speed running around in a circle.

You're moving towards your dreams. And so it's almost taking yourself serious and your dream seriously by executing. What else should you be doing, right, according to your values? And so I think it's very important. And it's, you know, my willingness to take risk and my ability or my willingness to move quickly towards my goals are the only advantages I have. What if 2025 wasn't just a year of grind, but a year of ownership

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We've never done it before, and I think it's the first of its kind. So it's your shot to be part of something bigger when it comes to ownership. Visit the link in the description to save your seat, and let's make 2025 the year we own it together. Yeah. Well, I think you got a few other too. You've got a pretty big brain. But, you know, I was like doing some research on you, which is funny to do with friends, because I hadn't, like, dug in that much in the past. And there was a line that I loved. The Wall Street Journal actually called you, well, first it said you're one of the world's most successful hedge fund managers. And then it called you the last cowboy, which I had never heard before. Do you know why they called you that? Yeah, it was somebody in the industry who just kind of said, yeah, he's kind of like the last cowboy,

the person willing to take risk to trade and kind of this commodity really put it on the line and have no fear to the result of be in love with the process, right? Like if this is the correct action to take, this is the action I take. A lot of people are afraid of risk, not because they can't stomach the financial risk, but their egos can't stand looking like an idiot or being wrong. You know? Yeah, well, talk about that a little bit more. in this community, like you just kind of mind-fucked me slightly back in the other room,

which is this idea of like, do we have risk? Yeah, most of the people when I step into a room like this, I think everybody in this room has subject verb agreement, some level of education is pretty ambitious and intelligent, which means they can get a job anywhere. So when they go out to start their business, from a financial perspective, they have zero risk, zero. You're not going to be homeless, you will not be starving,

you will be clothed, sheltered, and feed yourself. What risk you have is your ego. You don't want to be a garbage man, or you don't want to be a waiter, or you don't want to be a restaurant worker. And so, therefore, you can't take that ego hit, and then you will not go live your dreams. You'll play it safe to stay in your ego space

and your relative position amongst your friends. You don't want to look like an idiot to yourself, because sometimes we're our own worst critic. And so when people talk about risk, you know, I hear, I was at Rice yesterday at the business school. He says, well, I talked to these MBA graduates about losing it all on risk. And I literally said,

what the fuck are you talking about losing it and all? These guys can get a job tomorrow. Six-figure job tomorrow's, you know, there's no risk. Right? And so earlier on in my life, when I was a screen clerk, I was making like $16,000 a year. My friend left the floor to go become a waiter. He was making $75,000 a year cash.

to New York. This was like 20 years ago, right? So what risk did he have? He just quit and didn't want to go do it. And I went chasing the big dream, you know, to be the big trader and make a bunch of money. And so I say to most people at this level of education and intelligence, like there's no financial risk. There's only ego risk. Can you guys internalize that? Like, do you feel that as deeply as I do? Like at the end of the day, we talk about risk. And I think, oh my God, what if somebody bought a business and it failed and they, went bankrupt. And when I think that, I think you died. I'm like, oh my God, that's our fault. Did anything happen? Are we going to make it? Did we lose a limb? Does anybody feel like that too with businesses? It's like almost like our biggest fear is public humiliation. It is. It is. It is the end. So when you, you know, people, I also say that people like success, but they love a failure. And the reason why people love a failure is not that they evil, but it validates their own cowardice. right they had dreams too that they didn't go pursue

there's risk that they didn't take and so when you fail they're like see I'm glad I didn't do it look what happened to so-and-so he's a waiter now or now he's working for so-and-so you tried that big idea and it failed and he looks like an idiot I'm lucky that I'm okay looking like an idiot and I often do and so that allows me the freedom

to go try some things that have failed you know I went down to El Salvador and spent a bunch of years trying to build this giant LNG project, 500 million megawatt project, it failed miserably. How much money do you think that cost? I lost $10 million doing that. You know, when $10 million was like a significant portion of my net worth,

I tried to do one in California, went through all the works. That failed, you know. But I like to swing big and I like to take the risk. I'm like, what's worse come to worse? I'll get a job. So how do you decide, like what is your mental gymnastics that you do when you decide, I'm going to execute on this idea versus this idea. How do you decide what is going to be worth the risk or not?

I mean, you know, I say there's always a zillion ways to make money or get rich. I mean, if you think of a field, there's a millionaire in that field, whether it's shoe lastings, pizza, garbage, renewables, energy, buying business, finance, etc. So one of the things I look at is that will I be consistent, and this is the line with my values in a mission statement, Do I want to do this? Right? And then it's, can I execute?

Can I execute? Can I get people aligned that are actually going to execute? Because most of the time, I'm firing myself. I'm not the guy, right? I want to be working on my business, not in my business, mainly because I'm not the smartest guy in the room at that thing. Like, I'm not the best sales guy. I'm not the best spreadsheet guy.

I'm not the best at any of this thing. But I am the vision guy and the guy that will move fast, take risk, and willingness to learn. And I have that curiosity. And so if I stay curious and I stay consistent and I have a vision and I'm able to enroll people in that vision, then it doesn't matter what the business is. I can get rich in it. I love that. By the way, you guys, he flew in here just to talk to you today.

How about that? Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids and I want to give back to the community. Ooh. Then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setter. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business,

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We want to have a business. And I watch how you handle your team by interacting with them. You have one guy, Omar, who is totally different than you. Can you talk about how you found him, why, how you figured out that was the person you needed for this specific role? Yes. So I think it's around 2008, 2009, when all the banks were laying off everybody, right? The world was ending. No more was in New York.

And trying to convince somebody from New York at that time to move to Texas is kind of crazy. And, you know, I really had to enroll him on the vision of what he can get out of life and the things he can do here that is different from a bank. And so, and what I enrolled him is on the risk and the ability to execute in his area of expertise, right? If you're in a bank, you're way up in a bank, you're like high up in IBM or a bank, et cetera. You can't do a $50,000 experiment. Your budget is so tight. You can't go, you can't go, hmm, I think this might work, let's, uh, it's going to take $50,000 to find out the answer. May work, may not. I'm like, okay, let's Fafo, fuck around to find out, you know? That does not exist in these organizations,

right? And so the freedom to be himself, to, to execute on his area of expertise, for me to step back and let him be, us to debate and figure things out, that was very appealing. You know, Well, it's a little scary, like, that doesn't exist. Right? Like, even in our companies, we're like, if we're not failing, we're not trying. Yeah. We're not trying hard enough. We're playing it safe.

You know, the other thing that is really interesting is like, so when I came to Bill and I was trying to figure out, how do I build this next thing? And I was getting his advice. One of the other things you did that I think really highly of is you go, ask Omar about that. Like, that's not a me question. That's a him question. And so I kind of picture you as like visionary, which do a lot of people think of themselves a visionary in the room? Like you're the person who has the idea. How many people think of themselves as like implementer or operator in here?

That's interesting. 50-50 split. To me, you're the vision. And Omar is like guardrails, bumper rails? Yeah. I think, you know, a lot of times I'm like, this is the mathematical way I want to go. I understand like, hey, if we calculate the math on this and it's this and this, this is going to work. but am I going to go in, run the whole spreadsheet, get all, no, that's not me.

I don't like it. I don't want to do it. Could I do it if I had to? Yes. But this is where he's an expert, and he's going to be very detailed in thinking about it. And so, you know, like I said, I love to fire myself, right? Like, I am not the best at that. So I let the people who are best at that do that, and I get the hell out of their way.

You know, I want to be working on my business, not in my business. If you want to have a pizza pauler, you can write a person. You can make the pizza, you can do the oven, you can do the hiring and firing, et cetera. You want to be Pizza Hut? You cannot be that person. You have to be working on your business. You have to let people handle that store, do all those things,

and you're looking like, okay, next location over there. And even then, after you think, I think this is a good idea, then you get your land guy and do all the analytics about the demographics and how many people go out there and what the income is, etc. And then that's how you build an empire. Either one is okay, right? And so when I talk to you, I was like, what's this mom of the world? to you. I was like, what's this mom and pop shit you're talking about?

Let's go. You know what I mean? Let's go. You're right. The other thing that's interesting is he kind of CYAs. Like he protects you. And I think a lot of times, like when I have a lot of young leaders, I try to, I push them a lot so that they will push their team because their team doesn't protect them. And if their team doesn't protect them, then they don't protect me, right?

It's almost like shit holes uphill sometimes when you're a leader. And if you don't make your juniors handle their stuff, you're going to be in charge of it. Omar really protects you. Is there a way you think about screening somebody like that or you incentivize them so that your people are like your bulldogs? I think, you know, they understand that they have like a mini business within there, right? Like they want to get paid first. That's fine. I want to take all the risk.

And, you know, my CFO calls me meal ticket. So, you know, like, they get it. Like, I am the meal ticket, right? Like I created this organization that that's where their great insurance comes from. That's where their salaries come from, et cetera. And so as this machine keeps running, which I'm an integral part of, you know, they're fine. And so he has a very, very, very nice job, right? A lot of freedom, both where he's located, et cetera, what he does, experiments, things he wants to investigate.

I would protect that. I was like, what things do I need to make sure that this keeps going, right? So protect your meal ticket. Yeah, I love that. Well, and also be okay talking about yourself like that because I think sometimes owners were like, there's this whole like servant leadership idea, which is true. But I think you also have to say, I said to my content team,

I'm like, what is your number one creative asset right now at Contrarian thinking? What do you think they said? Great answer. They were like, is it you too? I was like, God damn it, it's me. And that feels weird to say. Right? Because it feels egotistical. You know, you're like, I don't mean that I'm the most important part.

The second we get other talent in here, like serve them, serve them, serve them. But until then, you have to be okay as the owner kind of saying, hey, I need you to take care of me. Because if I die, this dies. And right now you're killing me. And so I like the way you run your teams that way. And it's almost like it's so aligned. Yeah. I mean, they have their important function and they know what's going on, but the organization, like, we are a living, breathing organism and they have their part. And it's like, we can't have the head get cut off. Right. And we got to protect them. Like, if there's an area where there's like a question or they're negotiating a deal, like, I'm out here strategic thinking, right? Like, I may miss all these things. They have to do all that for me, and I trust them to do that for me so that my neurons can work on the other things and keep this thing growing. Yeah. Do you think you're hard to work for?

I don't know. I think there's this, at first, people think there's this idea that I'm not approachable, but I'm like very approachable. Like, I come in looking like the pizza delivery boy. I come in jeans and ball cap, you know, I'll talk about anything. And once they realize, like, wow, I have all this freedom. I have all this structure. I can push back. Like, they think I want to debate because, you know, I'm right. I'm like, no, I'm debating to come to a consensus to get to the answer. I'm just as curious as you are, probably more curious. And so I think it's easy. I'm pretty like, you know, a lot of times they're like, oh, I want to raise, where I want to do this,

and I'm like, I really don't know. Let's see what market is. Like, I'm not like, you should get paid this. I'm like, what is the market? And then I pay at the top of the market, you know? Golden handcuff them. I love that. One thing that you, you know, you have two ideas

two ideas that I've really learned a lot from. One is peak utility of money, and I would almost say also peak utility of time. Can you talk about assistance, peak utility of time first? Yeah, so I tell you talking about the assistant comment. So, you know, when I invest in you, right, it's not like you're gonna go out and like box somebody

or dig ditches, you're gonna use your brain and your neurons. And so I'm investing in your time to execute, and it's extremely valuable. I trust it and invaluable. But if you're out there getting groceries and filling up your gas tank and worrying about this, I'm like, wait a minute, you're not a $10.15 hour person. Like, why are you doing that when your neurons could be the next greatest idea for your business, make it run efficiently, make it 10X, whatever?

You should be offloading everything that is below your hourly rate to somebody else so I can get more Cody, right? Just you having an assistant, I might get 30% more Cody. I might get two codies. You get three assistants, right? And so that's a great deal for me, and that's a great deal for you. Like, shed all the stuff that you should not be doing so that you can focus on your goals and your dreams and your values. It's just inefficient allocation of resources.

Like, if you're sweeping floors, I'm like, what are you doing? If you're going to the grocery store, unless you like checking out what new nuts they have, sometimes I do. I'm like, what are you doing? What are you doing? You're denying somebody a job, and you're doing ineffective allocation of a very valuable resource. You didn't go to college

and do all this learning, you'd go through the school of hard knocks, to be pumping gas. And so, you know, I don't want to invest in that. I want to invest in Cody. I want to invest in Cody, the dreamer, the person thinking about business, and this turnover, and the booboomers,

and scaling it up, and then integrating their systems and all the other things you can do buying these small businesses and this idea that you're having. Not Cody, like, do I have enough peanut butter and milk? You know, that's just crazy. Yeah, I love it.

The other thing that you talked about, too, which I think resonates there's a lot of couples in here today, too, is getting your partner on board, too. So I remember Chris came the second time, and, you know, we were walking around, and we talked about, like, what tasks are you both doing, you know, in your marriage, too,

which is not theoretically normal for you to talk about with a potential investor, or even just a friend, a fellow business owner, and I thought that that was really useful. How do you think about getting your family, your partner on board? Because I know family is really important to you too. Yeah, I mean, we have to meet and figure, like,

what's my role here, what's your role, and how does our time get divided, right? Because if you go on this, like, adventure and your life partner, your highest value, right? Like, you know, where all your fulfillment, most, if not all, your fulfillment is going to come from this relationship, your interpersonal relationships, and you're not on board and like you're having all this friction, that's a problem. That's a real problem.

You know, and it's wealth destroying and dream destroying and fulfillment destroying just from like letting these little cracks keep like on a windshield. You know what I mean? It's like a teeny little crack and the next thing you know you can't see, right? And so I think like frequently getting aligned and discussing and having those difficult conversations about, hey, you're spending too much time on this or how we're going to allocate these resources. Are you on board getting buy-in?

And what you're buying, it's like, hey, let's go. It's going to be tough, but let's go. Yeah, it's really good. So I've kind of seen your brain in action when you're looking at like business plans or opportunities, maybe to talk about peak utility of money or just deciding which venue to use. When you have, you know, all of this optionality in front of you, how do you determine which way to go? So if you're like, I want to do, remember we were talking about on the lake, we were talking about, Well, could we do a business model where we own all the small businesses?

Yes. As opposed to should we have a percentage of all the listings of small businesses? And so as you guys play this game out, you're going to have so many different ways your business can go. And determining the best way to make money is actually quite hard often. How do you make that decision? Well, for me, it's like the most fun and fulfilling outcome, right? But, you know, there's a lot of, you know, a lot of people think at one level, like there's these de-risk businesses that people are going to be. selling that are profitable that you can pick up finance below market etc great maybe I can

pick up a couple great now I'm at scale what about all the derivative value in that business the data I can optimize now I got let's just go really big I got a million employees across all these businesses how much deeper is my insurance my paper how much data do I have I don't need a Fed survey I am the Fed survey maybe I want to market something Maybe I can partner with other businesses that sell services and take a piece of that going through all those employees. I'm too big to fail now. So there's all these other things that you start thinking. I'm not bright enough to think about all these things, right?

What value that provides and how much capital it is. But that's going to be an individual decision, right? There may be a concept enough. It's like I'm good with 20 car washes. I don't need 100,000 car washes. Or I don't want to be that big. maybe I'll pitch it out to somebody else later and let them take it from that point on. And so, you know, since I'm not doing the work, you are, I'm like, let's go big, I'll give it the money.

It's a lot of fun. I think for me, that's great, you know, but when you're there running it, maybe you're like, you know, Bill, I'm going to take it to this point, and then we can pitch it out to somebody else. And that's for you to decide about your life journey and what you want out of life, right? Because at the end of the day, the money, the business, et cetera, it's fun. But there, for me, it's just to drive my fulfillment. Like, I don't buy hammers and saws because I like hammers and saws. I'm buying hammers and saws to build a house. The same way, I don't acquire money because I like money.

The money is there for me to live the life that I want, the other things. Now, work is fun and winning is fun and doing his businesses are fun. But ultimately, it's for me to build the complete entire life that I want and be fulfilled. I want you guys to start thinking about your questions, because I'm going to come to you next. But for my final question here, I mean, you made a lot of money. You have all the toys. You know, you, maybe not all in your mind.

I can see you go up into the left and think, you know there's a couple I want still. But you have a ton of material wealth, obviously, but you keep playing the game at like a high level with a lot of risk. Why? Well, I'm not necessarily attached to the toys, et cetera, and there's certain things that I want.

Like, I will not risk things that I have for something that I don't have unless I really want that thing, right? And there's certain things that, you know, I still want. But as long as it doesn't interfere with the rest of my life, I will keep doing it, right? And so the blessing and curse of technology is that I can work for my

phone, right? Everything's on my phone. Spreadsheets, docu sign, you know, video calls. It's like, Dick Trache, you know, I'm old enough to remember, like, like, Dick Tracy cartoons, right? Two-way radio watch. It's even better than what they what they said in that regards. And so remote work, I'm able to, you know, be working on a boat on vacation and then my, you know, jump off into the water.

And I enjoy, like you said, I'm really working for my employees, right? I'm building this, right? Like, I have, if you include, I have one startup, I think they have like 100 employees, another one that's not like 40, my family office, etc. It's just like a mini army, a couple of platoons, as Chris would say, of people that, you know, I'm working for, that I'm helped building for in keeping this ecosystem growing. And then with that other capital, I help you realize your dreams, right? Like, I'm a part of the building block to do that. And that's fulfilling for me. But if it becomes an interference with my life, like you said, like I'm getting older, right?

Like, I don't want to – I'm not here to die like Scrooge McDuck on a pile of money. I'm going to use it all up before I die. And not only before I die, but before I'm unable to convert it into the experiences I want to have, right? If I want to go hellaskiing, it's not 86. It's now. I don't want to go hellasking. But you get the idea.

Your ability to convert your capital into meaningful experiences or useful experiences declines as you age. Your lung capacity goes down. Your muscle mass goes down. Your fragility goes up. even your attitude. You're like, I don't like that anymore. I used to love glow sticks partying in the club.

Now I'm like, come on. You know what I mean? I'm in lounge and listen to this jazz, right? And so there's a time for everything. And so I'm acutely aware of that. And I want to make sure that I deploy these resources at the right time throughout my life. Yeah.

I think also we talk about a lot you can't be what you can't see. And so one of the things that I really respect about you overall is you also have a shit ton of fun. Like, how many times do I get a text message from you and Luke at Skyfy? And it's like a Thursday night and I have to work all day Friday and you guys are playing fucking laser tag. Yeah, laser tag. At his house.

Werewolves, laser tags. Like a whole game of laser tag orchestrated on this, like, so I think, like, it's just a beautiful thing to see because you bring everybody along. I have been to, I have been to a multi-hundred people parties at your house. You're out of town, which is weird. Have you guys ever let somebody else just throw, like, giant parties at your house? house or you're not there? Our friend had a saying, and I agree with it, you buy stuff to give it away. And, you know, there are people who go to the movies alone, and they're either movie critics

or psychos. No, I'm just kidding. Some people do go to the movie theater alone. But, like, we want to enjoy the ride with our friends. I think, like, you know, it's always like, did you see that? You know, there's social media, everybody talking about what we saw, what we did, etc. And so, you know, I have a wake surfing boat, and the reason why I love wake surfing so much is 70% of it is there's a bunch of people in a boat. Everybody's rooting for you to get up. They're all rooting for you to do the new trick. You're having a great time.

You're sharing these memories and you're creating memory dividends that you'll be able to enjoy for the rest of your life. And so, you know, the things I have or, you know, for me and my friends and new people to enjoy, you know, in this ride. And so the ride for me to the grave, because we're all, you know, the destination for everybody is the same. It's a grave. So I'm trying to enjoy the ride, and I want to enjoy the ride with the use of the world, right?

That's what makes life worth living for me. So that's what the toys are for. It's not for me to just sit there with 50 laser-tag guns shooting in the air, you know? That would not be as fun. No, not at all. Even going to the movies alone, I mean, sometimes you want to be alone, but sitting there, you're just like, you want to turn to somebody, right? Like, even watching a home, you're like, oh, man, they've got to see this movie, right? It's true.

And the other thing I hope you guys notice, too, that I love to be. bring my friends here and show you guys firsthand, because I wish I was in rooms like this when I was younger. Like I didn't have access to fancy rooms at all. You know, it was, you know, my dad was an entrepreneur and we had other entrepreneur friends, but we were kind of like barely making it, you know?

Like we, this didn't really exist, this sort of abundance. But isn't it weird how the news tells you that people with wealth are bad? People who are rich don't give. And then you meet some of these fuckers, you're like, this guy, he invited me over to laser tags six times. I am, we're gonna be were those laser tags,

whatever, man, let's have some people. fun. Let's enjoy the ride. So I want to open it up now for questions. And as we're thinking about it, you know, money, investing, risk, raising capital, anywhere you want to go, I want to open it up. And let's try to get a few questions from people we haven't before. Okay. Right. Yep, absolutely. Here we go. Let's go hawks. It's been four years since Die was Zero. You've had countless conversations with smart people like Cody about your book. How has your philosophy changed and evolved since the initial publication? I think I've solidified it and, you know, gotten more into,

so the book is more at the 10,000 foot level, the theory and the mental models, and now I've got more into like the application layer on like how I can implement that, how can I think about fulfillment, you know. And then my wife and I, you know, we use a lot of the exercises to like, resolve what we should be doing and what is the best course of action for to take. But nothing's really changed in terms of it, the philosophy or what is correct. I think it's more correct than ever. Wow, love that.

Another question right over here. My name's Donald. I'm from Austin. My question was like, I hear a lot about people saying how, like, they do this. They want to add more to their life. but what could you talk to about what you don't do, either in how you think, mindset-wise, or habits-wise, what do you subtract or not do in how you live your life?

I think, you know, one of my biggest flaws coming out of Jersey City was impulse control. And so, you know, one of the things, and not necessarily we're trading because I'm very stoic about, like, losing money or whatever, but just in terms of interpersonal relationships, kind of having an equanimity and a stoic belief, like, hey, you know, this person is annoying

or they're frustrating me. I need to dial it. I can't control or change them. I can change how I can react, right? So when somebody does anything to you or around you, there are about a thousand ways you can react, right? And I had to look at myself and like, why am I reacting this way?

Right. And so that is one of the things I've been learning not to do is how this kind of like histrionic responses to things that annoy me, right, and interpersonal relationship. So that's one of the things I'm trying not to do. That's really good. Donald's a stud too, works at Google, and Billy is about to do his first transaction, a multimillion-dollar deal. Congratulations.

Yeah, so two smart, smart gents. Next question. Hi, I'm Andrea, based in Austin as well. So I have kind of a two-part question for you here. How do you find a good operator to invest in for a specific venture? And the second part to that, how do you manage or insist on the highest standards when there's even potentially a disconnect in expectations that were set once you're executing? I would love to hear your thoughts on that. I mean, I always say it's always an HR problem.

It's just always is. Like, we'll have a great idea or something we want to do. And it's like, okay, but who's going to do it? Who's really going to be the operator, et cetera? So it's a hunt. Sometimes you're stealing them and convincing them that they can take the risk, right? They just need a little nudge. Sometimes they're walking in your yard, you know,

and you're talking to you and asking you for advice. And you're like, hey, I know some people that would like to start. start this business, how about doing it yourself? So it's, when you recognize it, you go for it, and you present them with the opportunity. And so it's really just trying to get in line with their visions and their dreams. Is this something that they really wanted

that they just didn't have the opportunity? They didn't know how to search for it, they're not really looking for it. And sometimes it's just outright theft. You know, like pulling, convincing somebody to leave New York, don't work for another bank, and come work for you. you like I got you and it's going to be more fun and you're going to have more freedom

and you're going to get to be more of you. Yeah you definitely. It's in a role. Life's an enrollment game, right? And so they're either enrolling you in their vision or you're enrolling them in yours. And so how do we get, you see these people, you'll find them. They're out there. You search. You can you can find many different ways to find them and search them. But after that, you have to enroll them in your vision. And so you have to be good at enrolling. How often do people say no to you? They said a lot. That's Laura.

She's like, never. They said a lot as long as it's followed by a yes eventually. You know, a lot. You know, if you're aligned, if you're being a good guy, you're basically enrolling them in their own vision. You're showing them how your vision is their vision, how it's similar. So how are they going to say no to themselves? Next question, straight in the back.

Good morning. Thanks for your time today. Ben Larrabee from Colorado. And my question to you is around, I find myself wanting to be in the trenches with people and not wanting to, I want to kill my ego, right? So how do you balance offloading these tasks that are below your pay rate and killing your ego at the same time, if that makes sense? I mean, the offloading the tasks is just, part of it's just simple math and reminding yourself that you have, you have other things to do and you're denying yourself your dreams and just constantly reminding yourself. Like it's interesting, it's great, you know, to let them go and feel, and letting it, it's great to pop in and tinker, et cetera, and you feel useful and you're learning, but realize that, you know, there's the other you, let's call it U prime, that's not doing the big thing that it's meant to do,

and you're actually destroying value every time you do that. And also accepting that people are going to fail, you've got to let them fail. They've got to learn. How are they going to learn if you're always tying their shoes from them? If you're telling somebody what to do instead of what you want, then you don't have an employee. Like, you have a child.

Right? Like, it's like You're on a point. That was worth a clap. Like, you got to step back. and then let them fail, it's going to be okay, and they'll learn, and they'll grow. Like, you can't keep tying people's shoes for them. And so I remind myself of that, it's going to be okay, they're going to grow, and that I am destined for other things, right? My time needs to be spent on X, Y, and Z, or my dream is going to die.

Because nobody's coming to save you, right? Nobody's going to come and be like, this is your dream. A genie's going to come. You have to execute on that dream. And if you're down there and like, hey, you should fold the napkins this way, I'm just using a restaurant example, that dream's going to die. It's really good. We have a question over here on your left. Hi, Sage from Hawaii.

So recently we've been a little bit more open about where we've, Travis and I have been trying to go after a $200 million manufacturing business. And a lot of people have come to us and said, well, why are you going that big? Why are you doing that? And at first I was kind of like, well, why not? But I got to the point where I started asking myself that question more seriously. I think my answer is I won't know what I'm capable of unless I strive for the impossible. And I want to know, since you encourage Cody, especially to go for bigger things, what is that moment in your life where you decided to go much bigger versus staying within the box

that you either started your own mindset in or that other people told you to stand? I, you know, one of my advantages, I say willing to take risk, but I'm also like fantastically delusional that I can do it, you know. And, you know, they had on the screen, they said, legendary trade or whatever, and they said, well, what does legend mean to you? And I said, listen, there's a little bit of survivorship bias in that quote. It's not that I'm the salmon that made it upstream. It's on the salmon that tried, right? That's the legend. And there's lots of legends out there that have tried things and failed, et cetera. I just happened to be one that got there. I remember when my mom, I told my mom I was developing the solar project out in Nevada to provide

power to California. It was like, I think it was like $300 million, $400 million project that I was developing. I wasn't going to be the one to put the $400 million, but I was going to develop to the point and then pitch it out. I sold it to Capital Dynamics for like $180 million, $10, right? And spent like 20, 30, $30, $30 million in mine and my friend's money developing it. But when I told my mom, she laughed. She laughed. She was like, not laughing at me.

She's like, that was fantastic. Like, how could you possibly be doing something like this? And it's because of where she came from. Like, my mom worked for a school system of government, and I was just like, she's trapped in this bubble. But I saw a path to execution. And so if there was a path to execution, well, I'm a risk taker. and I know a lot of crazy other nutty risk takers, you know,

they won't even look at it unless they can lose all their money. They won't! Because they're like, you know, my friends are like, if it can't hurt, it can't help. That's the way they're thinking about it, right? And so, like, you know, they believe in the returns are commensurate with the risk. And so, you know, we did all the work.

We, you know, interest rates were going our way. solar panel prices were going away, we rode the curve, we sold it out, we made the money. I don't know what your execution plan is, et cetera, but if it can be done, you can do it. And I think we have one last question right here. I think we might have time for two. Two more you want? Yeah. Okay, two more.

Hi, Bill, Wendy Papazan, Austin, Texas, big fan of your book. My husband and I do a goal setting retreat every year, so I love that you do that. and we actually just utilize some of your life experience buckets, like put all of our, we've always had a, like a big list, but then we put it in our time bucket, so that was really cool. And I just have a fun question for you, which is tell me about the most memorable experience that you've ever invested in. Oh, wow.

Wow, because I, you know, Lara and I, like, I can't even remember these past two weeks. Like, we have so many different things. So I think it was the one I wrote about with my mom and my family in St. Bar, it's for my birthday party. But recently it was our engagement trip during COVID. You know, when the initial math came out, I was like, oh, man, this is a one and 20 chance. I'm going to die in the next three years, right? Just from the initial math. So I was like, I got too much money.

I need to start spending it right away, right? I need to light some money on fire, right? And so we rented a yacht, and we were like, we got to get out of here. And so Croatia was taking people where everything else was shut down. So we went to Croatia, running a yacht. I would have never went to Croatia. I discovered all that with my friends, had a great time, begged our way into Greece, got into Greece.

And before going into Greece, I got engaged, right? We had an amazing party, the biggest fireworks show. They wrote about the news because I was like, I got to light some money on fire. I'm dead in three years. You know, went to Italy, et cetera. So it was this magical trip where I got engaged, hung out with my friends, my family came on party, y'all. They went on and off.

It was just like, all right, it's the end of the world as we know it type of trip. And we really, really have, you know, we talk about that all the time. And so it was a lot of dividends. But some of it's just, you know, laser tag in a werewolves game. You know, I was playing werewolves on a birthday party, and I played the greatest game of werewolves that had ever been played. And I talk shit about that all the time. So it's hard to say, but I would say that trip with my wife and our engagement trip.

That's a great question, Wendy. Thanks. Alex, we had one more question somewhere? Right here. Okay. Hey, Bill, Ellie from Brooklyn. You talked about ingredients. What are the ingredients that you saw in Cody and other people who you want to help enroll into their own vision?

Oh, Lord. Well, I mean, she's intelligent, smart, driven, and has integrity, right? And it's like, what else, what else do you want, right? Like, she was just kind of like thinking she has this idea. And I was just like, let's just, can I have the supersized version of that? Can I, you know, can I put risk dollars in you? Like, the end of day, you're betting on, you know, she's like, I bet on her business. And I'm like, I'm betting on you.

If you say, hey, I'm going to go in the garbage business and compete with waste management, I'm going to do a better pizza version or whatever. I would have been like, okay, here we go. Here you go, right? Like, I'm betting on you. Like I said, like for every field, there is a millionaire. Like, I'm like, wow, I didn't even know you can make money at that. I didn't even know that existed, right?

Like, when I meet people. And so when you're finding people like that, you either want to hire them or invest in them. Yeah. Right. And you collect people like I've noticed. He's a people collector. I want to learn. I'm curious.

Like, I had a, I went to a SpaceX. lunch and I was hanging out there and I was like oh you know my wife was like we got to go I was like I don't ever want to leave I'm learning so much from these guys and I had a man crush on Lars this is the guy who's like designed the rockets to land backwards he's the engineer that does it's like one guy and I was talking to him about the belly flop maneuver and I was like I never want to leave never never never never want to leave and so but there's other people that are like like you're yourself in marketing and and and a charismatic and intelligent and understand business and cash flow and whatever and I can talk to you all the time

And then there's molecular biologists when you invest in them. And so one of the, the fun thing about investing is how much you learn. How much you learn, you know? And there's just brilliant, wonderful people out there chasing their dreams. And it's just like the greatest, like I don't watch TV. I'm like, I can, you know, I'd rather the human drama every day. There's great stories, there's fights, blah, blah, blah, there's divorces. There's everything, right?

Like, you don't need to watch TV. You just interact these people, you can learn. And it's just amazing how much you learn just interacting with these people, particularly in investing. Can we give Bill Perkins a round of applause? Thank you so much for being here, Bill. Thank you guys. Thank you, guys.

I'll follow you that.