#894: Book Club: Die with Zero, Maximize Your Life Experiences

The Dental A Team Podcast

Kiera reviews the September book club selection: Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins. She compares the Die with Zero method with profit-first, talks about applying this mindset in her own life, and how to enjoy life richly.

Find the full book club rundown here!

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:01.346)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and it is book club time. And this is one of my favorite books and I am so excited and I hope you read it with me. And if you didn't, hey, well, here's your opportunity to read the book club. I will give you a synopsis and hopefully I make this so intriguing and so exciting that you definitely want to go read it. So this book is called Die With Zero and you better believe that it is gonna trip your minds up. So if you're a prophet first person, if you don't even know what the heck I'm talking about,

Well, welcome, because this is the book club all about fulfillment. As always, thank you guys so much for being podcast listeners. Please do me a solid and go leave a review today. Go leave those five stars. Share this with someone that you know might be considering how are they generating the revenue in their practice? How are they? What's their fulfillment life plan? But share this podcast because my goal is to get this podcast into the hands of every dental practice to be able to positively impact and inspire offices to be the best leaders.

the best teams to serve their patients at the highest level and truly be able to give back on a level that we as far outside of our, our wildest dreams and to do it with ease. This podcast was made for people just like you who don't just understand you, but are you I've sat in your shoes. I am a business owner. I come to the table with expertise and understanding and humility and love and compassion and no judgment. And I just ask that you guys share this with a dentist who right now could benefit from having that.

positive impact in their life. An office manager who might be struggling with their team or maybe someone who's thriving. Share in a Facebook group, share in a group that you're a part of. Go in there. You guys, I had an office reach out and they're like, Kiera, we're struggling. We're dropping Delta Dental and we need some verbiage. And I popped onto our website and I went to our podcast and I typed in insurance dropping verbiage. And there's three incredible podcasts. So truly anything you guys might be struggling with or wanting to know more about, I guarantee you in our almost thousands of episodes.

you will be able to find that. And if you can't find it, email me [e-mail]. Our team truly lives to serve you and they want to make your life easy. So reach out. We love you guys. So the broadcast today is Die With Zero. You guys, I'm so excited and I can't wait to talk about this. So Die With Zero, it's funny, my brother, I actually called him. My brother is in business and finance and I said, know, Rhett, that's his name.

Kiera Dent (02:27.468)

I said, Rhett, I have a question for you. This was a couple, gosh, this was probably a year ago. said, if you had an opportunity to grow your business to insane heights, would you do that? Or would you kind of like chill and coast? My brother's super brilliant. He's an MBA. He works for a really large company. His job is to go in and inspire teams and to help them out. And he's also efficiency, which means he also fires people. And my brother is someone that I think is one of the most incredible people.

Like I truly look up to him. He's two years younger than me. And I said, Rhett, what would you do? And Rhett told me, said, Kiera, you know, if I had an opportunity to serve and to give, I would make my business as big as I could possibly make it. Okay. Fast forward a year, Rhett came to me and he said, Kiera, I've actually been thinking about that conversation. And I read a book called Die With Zero. Have you read it? And I said, you better freaking believe I've read it. Let's talk about it. And he said, I actually think I've changed my mind on your business or business ideas in general. He said,

I actually think I would find what fulfills you versus slaying away for your entire life. He said, die with zero definitely gave me a different perspective. And I thought, I love this because die with zero. actually think I was talking to my husband about this morning before I got onto podcasts. And I think die with zero is such a mind trip because it's contrary to what we've been taught all of our lives. We've been taught, go to work, save for retirement, get your retirement at 65.

And then go and live this glamorous retirement life. there's profit first with Mike McAllux, which I'm obsessed with profit first. And I remember when I did a book club with our team on profit first, one of our team members, she's like, I cannot handle die with zeros mentality because profit first is talking to us about building the profit and saving and building this whole piece. And I was zero is talking about like living in the moment. So I'm here to say, I actually don't know which camp I sit in.

I actually think there's beauty in both of them. But this Die with Zero, Getting All You Can From Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins. So if you haven't read it, I strongly encourage you to read it. It's going to be incredible for you. But Die with Zero, I'm just gonna give you guys a couple little quick synopsis of some of the points in the book so we can book club on it. So there's 10 points that they have in here. Number one is maximize positive life experiences. Number two, invest in experiences early.

Kiera Dent (04:50.456)

Three, aim to die with zero money. Four, use all available planning tools. Five, give money to kids in charity early. Don't live life on autopilot. Seven, plan in terms of seasons. Eight, no one to stop. And nine, take big risks early, not later. Okay, so lots of things in here, but really he said, gosh, I'll read you guys this quote from him.

He said, if you spend hours and hours of your life acquiring money and then die without spending all of that money, then you've needlessly wasted too many precious hours of your life. There's just no way to get those hours back. If you die with 1 million left, that's 1 million of experiences you didn't have. And if you die with 50 ,000 left, well, that's 50 ,000 of experiences you didn't have. No way is that optimal. The question we must answer is how to make the most of our finite time on earth. Ooh, like I love it.

Because that's, think, I think that's the question. And so when we look at these 10 aspects of it, again, like I'm saying, I don't think my perfect camp is here, but I think like my conversation with my brother was very much one of, right? Like we all think of the fear, like what happens if we run out of money? My conversations with Ryan Isaac of Dentist Advisors, he's my financial advisor, there are always conversations around, well, Ryan, like how do I know I'll have enough money to make it to me being?

97 years old with my cotton candy pink hair and I'm living the most fulfilling life as well. And so this whole principle, my mom and I were talking, my grandma, she just turned, I believe she just turned 90 and I talked to my mom and my grandma has like, she's done well. Her mom, so my great grandma passed away and there was this like very large fortune that was left. And I talked to my mom and I said, mom, grandma's not gonna be alive for that much longer.

and she fell and she slipped and she fell and she broke some vertebrae and some ribs. This is a 90 year old woman and my grandma is still so afraid of money and this woman has more than enough money. She's definitely not gonna be dying with zero. And I talked to my mom about this because there's also this piece of my mom, maybe there's these weird pieces of it, then she'll get an inheritance from her mom. But I talked to her about this book and I said, mom.

Kiera Dent (07:06.35)

Grandma, like what if you could actually live this incredible world with her where you made her last decade of her life the best decade of her entire life? Where she's doing all the experiences. But what's crazy about it is my grandma is now 90. And that to me, I think is the premise of this book of like, why did my grandma wait until she was 90?

And who knows if she'll even be able to do it. But in the book, I remember there was like a definition of the ideal optimal life is we want to make it too. So if I plan to pass away, I hope I make it to a hundred, maybe 130, but let's just say I pass away at 97, which feels a little creepy right now to me to like put a death date on me. but the hope is that like, I'm living my fullest, most richest life all the way up until like 96 with my health and all this. And then in my last year, my money and my health kind of like,

nose dive and I go out of this world fully rich in life experiences and really living to the fullest. Now my other grandma, she's my adopted grandma and she is, I believe she just turned 96 actually and she's been able to paint and she goes on trips and she hangs out with her elderly group. Her husband passed away, my gosh, like at least 20 years ago.

But my adopted grandma, she is very vibrant and I'm looking at her and at 96 she's still walking up and downstairs and yes she's had a knee replacement and there's some things going on with her eyes, but she paints china and has like very world -renowned china painter. She teaches, she has a kiln in her house. I wish I would have taken lessons from her when I lived with her and I never took advantage of that. She reads, but just recently probably within the last, I don't know, three years

she stopped traveling, but up until then she was traveling. And I think about her and I have no idea where her financial state is, but I think about her and I'm like, that's the life that I want to be living where I'm healthy and I'm taking care of my health and I'm able to do all the things that I love doing until like my last, like hopefully six months of my life. And then like at that point we're gone. And that's what I think Bill Perkins whole point in all of this book is, which is why I love it is thinking differently of not a saving until we're out of money or saving until we're at this certain space because

Kiera Dent (09:15.95)

He talked about in the book of like going to Italy, maybe when we're 40, but like if we could have gotten in our 20s, we're younger, we're more vibrant, and we have longer time for the investment of that experience in our life rather than less time with those experiences and talking about how, yes, we're always trying to save money and yes, we need money to survive. I'm not here to discredit that for one second, but is there a balance between the amount of money that we need and the life experiences that we're able to maximize? So that's why he's saying maximize our positive life experiences.

Are we spending money on experiences rather than just saving money? Now, this is where the mind trip is because we still need money to be able to survive. And so how are we able to maybe accomplish both? And that's really what I think I'm obsessed with with this book club. And I hope you guys are geeking on it with me and I hope I'm challenging your beliefs as well. But he said, expect invest in experiences earlier because that allows you to have that longer term ROI on life experiences. Like if you were to even think back on the last 10 years of your life, what are some of the highlights?

Gosh, like the last 10 years of my life, like I'm just gonna do my 30s for you. Jason graduated pharmacy school. We have hit all seven continents, which I'm obsessed with going to. We went to Bora Bora. We've been able to buy our first home. We've gone through IVF together. I love, love, love being able to travel with my parents. We were able to go with his parents and my parents, both to Hawaii. We surprised them with a trip to Hawaii. guys, really did not cost me hardly anything. took...

like very inexpensive flights, I bought them early, but it was one of the most incredible experiences to do that with my parents. Traveling with Jason, because Jason's philosophy was, we're not gonna travel until we retire. And my philosophy was, when we retire, we're gonna be old and it's gonna be a lot different to travel. Like, I wanna travel while I'm young and I can still hike up a mountain. And it's crazy, because even within our 30s, my knees and my hips actually are a lot different than they were when I turned 30. And so Jason and I, just traveled to Tokyo.

This is the life of not having children. People are like, how do you travel so much? Well, one, traveling gives me life. And two, I just, truly do believe in this, like living and having life experiences now rather than later. I remember Jason and I were in pharmacy school. I was, I am not joking. I was making $12 an hour while we were in pharmacy school. We were at that point, $65 ,000 in debt for his pharmacy school. We had no help from either of our parents.

Kiera Dent (11:36.59)

We didn't have scholarships. I'm making literally $12 an hour. This was not that long ago. It was 2016, 2017, 2018. I was working at the dental college, so I did get some great health benefits that way because of it. We lived close enough that we rode our bikes every single day to and from school. And Jason told me that we were too poor that we couldn't travel. And I said, excuse me, no. So I remember every month.

like when the end of our bills would come, I would literally look around my house for anything that had a tag on it that we hadn't used yet that I could go return to the store to make our ends meet. Like this is CuraDense real life. We did not turn the AC on. We were in Arizona. We kept our house at 80 degrees, sometimes even up to 85 degrees. We slept with the fan on at night, not the AC. We're talking it's 117 degrees outside.

We decided to make sacrifices to be able to put, would put, think 20 to $25 a month away in my travel fund. I put it in a high yield savings account, so something like Ally, and I just started putting money away. Every single month I was like, okay, here's our expenses, this is where we can be, this is how we can cut costs, because I'm so adamant that we're gonna be able to travel, and I just started putting money away, like as much money as I could put away. Anytime I got a raise, I didn't live on that raise. I literally just put that money straight into our savings account.

And while we were in pharmacy school, you guys, I'm not kidding, I'm making 12. I was able to get up to 14 and I ended leaving that job at $18 an hour my last year there. But I was able to pay for me and Jason to go to Ireland and then we also were able to go to Paris with my brother who had just come home from his mission to Paris with my parents. Jason was a little nervous about that. But that came from me literally like discipline, putting money into my savings account every single month.

scrapping down like we really, I price matched, I took my little like ads from the grocery store to Walmart, thank goodness they were price matching at that time. It was the best when our cereal was on sale. But I was so committed that even in pharmacy school, I wasn't gonna go into debt for it more. So our debt was only for Jason's loans. But I also wanted to make sure I was having life experiences. I went and scrapped and I did a little window washing business.

Kiera Dent (13:51.958)

I did a natural dog food business with my friend. I helped her out to get extra cash and all of that money, I just kept putting that into our savings account because for me, that was something of life experiences that I wanna have. I will never regret going to Ireland with Jason and I will never regret going to Paris with my brother and my parents. Those are some of the best highlights of our life that Jason and I have, but again, that's my life. This is Kiera's life, this isn't your life, but I wanna let you know, like for me, it was so important that Jason and I traveled while we were young.

I mean, I remember landing at midnight where jet lagged and we're both, he's hitting class kudos to him. I don't know how he did pharmacy school. And I'm going right back to work because those were the cheapest tickets that we could find. We heard about a website called Scott's Cheap Travel. We were able to get tickets round trip to Copenhagen for 250 bucks. Like when you want to do something, there's a million ways for you to do it inexpensively if you want. And so,

The reason I love this is because some people, like I was reading up articles about this book and some people were saying like, this is only for like entrepreneurs or this is only for the high wealthy. But I thought like, no, I was making $12 an hour and we were in pharmacy school and we're still able to find the way because making those early experiences, that was fuel and energy. And Jason and I still to this day talk about those experiences. And so.

But then like, then there's the flip side, right? So then we started to get more responsibilities. We think about having kids, we buy a house and then you start to think of like, Whoa, well, how much money do I need for the future? And that's what Bill Perkins talked about in here of like, when you're younger, doing some of these experiences cheaper, we'll actually have more life experience and fuel and energy that gives you to then you don't need as much money per se during that time. And also, I mean, Jason and I, we scrapped it down. lived on protein bars going all around Ireland. Like I will today stay, never eat special K.

these like strawberry protein bars. We ate so many of them and Jason and I giggle anytime we see him in the grocery store like, you want those? No, me neither. That's what we lived on. Like we went to Ireland, we were not living amazing. We were in the tiniest little car eating these like protein bars. I remember writing in my journal one day on our trip. I said, the angels saying today our hotel had breakfast that we didn't know about. So we didn't have to eat protein bars today. But the things that like those are experiences. And that's like, I think the reason I love this book is because it's

Kiera Dent (16:05.998)

To me, it's talking about, I think if you merge, die with zero and profit first together about life experiences, but also preparing for the future. I think that there's beauty in that life because we're living this rich life. We're living all these things and die with zero, I think really makes you question what you want to do. So one of his pieces where he says, plan in terms of season. So if you were to look at your, like again, pretend I'm going to die when I'm 97. I hope I make a hundred. Today I'm 38.

If I look at all my life segments, so maybe from 38 to 40, what do want to do? From my 40 to 50, what do want to do? Maybe 40 to 45, 45 to 50, 50 to 60, 60 to 70, 70 to 80, 80 to 90, 90 to 100. He talks about looking at those seasons and what are the experiences that you want to be having during that time of your life. Jason and have built vision boards where we literally have like at 36, we want to do this, 37, we want to do this, by 40, we want to do this.

We haven't gone like clear up to 90 and what that looks like. But in this book, he talks about that because then we live, we're planning our life in seasons, understanding that maybe our health won't be as optimal when we're older. But that's what he also talks about is like, why are we waiting and spending money when we're like older and rather than spending money on our health now, but we're saving all of our money to get to retirement, but we're not taking care of our health today. And I think that that's like the whole mindset around this book is

Really truly planning and living on these life experiences and aiming to die with zero money. Like how cool will it be for my grandma? To have life experiences in her last decade of her life But yet how much greater would it have been if she would have spent this money earlier? Maybe spent more time with her grandkids. Maybe spent different things But like I think there's the fear and that's I think the fear of dying with zero is but what if I run out of money? What if I live longer than I planned for?

I guess we just get innovative and he does talk about that in there of how you can plan that out a little bit better. But then like when he talks about giving money to kids and charity earlier on, he said like how much better is it like pretend my parents are going to get a payout in their gosh probably 70s from my grandma but how much greater if she would have given that money to my parents in their 30s when they could have used that money for a down payment on a house or

Kiera Dent (18:20.396)

Jason and were so like in debt and if my parents were gonna have money, I don't plan for my parents or Jason's parents to have any money. I keep telling them like, I want you to die with zero. I want you to live life to the fullest. That's gonna make you the most fulfilled. But just think if you're going to have extra money in surplus, give it to those people earlier on potentially as a way for them to have more life experiences earlier on as well. So, so many crazy fun things in here. But again, I love the perspective of.

I think my greatest takeaway from it is living with life. And like he said, I will repeat the last part of my favorite quote from the book where he said, finding it here, the question we must all answer is how to make the most of our finite time on earth. And that's really what I think I want to leave you guys with. I definitely encourage you to go read it. There's so much in there. And there's so many pieces about basically really trying to get our health and our lifestyle and our experiences to get the greatest ROI, just like we do with our dollars.

Again, I'm not saying if you're a huge spender, I don't think that this is the model for you. You're already living high. And maybe your job is to listen to Profit First a little more and put some more savings in there. If you're someone who's just always saving and never having those experiences, I think this would be an incredible book for you. And if you're someone like myself who's in the middle of sometimes I spend and sometimes I save, but for me, I want to end my years.

having the life where I had the most experiences. I work because I love to say yes to things that I want to go to and do. That doesn't mean I have to have millions. That doesn't mean I have to have thousands. That means I need to plan my life in seasons and plan what I want to do and really know what lights me up and what fires me up and to experience those things. Maybe it's just spending time with your family while they're here. Maybe it's, I don't know, there's so many pieces, but I love planning out the seasons of your life. So.

I encourage you guys to read it. If you read it and you loved it, I'd love to hear from you. If you read it and you hated it, I'd love to hear from you. Because I love to hear the different sides of this book because I think it does charge. But like my brother, how interesting in one year he said, go and build and slay and do all these things. And the next year he was like, actually have more life experiences and do more fun things so you do die with zero. For me, yes, I want to take care of future generations. We don't have children. I would love to have children.

Kiera Dent (20:36.898)

but I have a ton of nieces and nephews that will be my legacy. And so even though, yes, I want to leave a legacy for them, I guarantee you, I would rather make memories with them than leave them a check. I mean, and I think there's a way to do both, but I also know for me, I'd rather spend so much time with my parents and my grandparents than having an inheritance from them. That makes me so emotional because I just think about, I love my parents so much and I don't know how much time I have with them.

And I would hands down rather go on trips to Maui with my parents or trips to wherever we go or spending time with them, making memories with them rather than them leaving me an inheritance. Like that's my job and my responsibility to figure out how to take care of my life, not expect my parents to leave it. Again, that's my own perception. Everyone has their own, but I think most of us would probably fall in my bucket. We'd rather have more time and more memories with those that we love rather than.

them leaving us a check. Now again, you might have people that you don't like and you'd rather them just leave you a check. But I think that's the whole premise of the book, which is why I absolutely loved it. And I hope you guys read it. I hope you loved it. And if you don't, I'm not offended. Please send me because I want to just give you guys things that make and challenge your perceptions and beliefs. So with that, that was our book club for this month. I hope you loved it. Next month, I hope you read it. It's called, let's see, the next one is going to be

The Power of Fun, How to Feel Alive Again by Katherine Price. So be sure to join us next month. I think this one's fun. It's got confetti on the front cover of it, which is why I picked it, because I believe life should be fun, if you can't tell. But definitely, The Power of Fun, going and enjoying that, How to Feel Alive Again with Katherine Price. So I hope you join us next month. As always, if there's a way that we can help you look at your business, this is what I actually am obsessed with doing, is looking at your business and your practice and...

helping you figure out what do you want your life experiences to be and what do we need your business to produce and to create while creating the most incredible experience for your team and your patients. So that way you can die with zero or die with whatever you want, but that you've lived the most fulfilled and rich life. And that's really what I do for our doctors in our consulting. And I'd love for you to be a part of that. So reach out [e-mail]. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.