Ben Nemtin - Co-Founder of The Buried Life | Unearthing Your Buried Life: Achieving Your Bucket List Dreams

Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott D. Cleary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network. The HubSpot Podcast Network has incredible podcasts like Nudge, hosted by Phil Agnew, where you'll learn these science behind great marketing with bite-sized, 20-minute episodes packed with practical advice from world-class marketers and behavioral scientists. Nudge is fast-paced and insightful, with real-world examples that you can apply to your business. Listen to Nudge or a success story wherever you listen to your podcast. Today, my guest is Ben Nemton. He is the number one New York Times best-selling author of What Do You Want to Do Before You Die? A book that illustrates 200 of the wildest things to do before you die. Now global gurus has recognized him as the world's third best motivational speaker behind Simon Sinek and Tony Robbins. He is also the star of MTV's highest rated show ever on iTunes and Amazon called The Buried Life, which documents four childhood friends mission to pursue the world's greatest bucket list while encouraging others to go after their own. The show has inspired millions to follow their dreams and has been featured on the Today Show, the Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, Fox, NBC News, and more. Over a decade ago, Ben was battling with depression, which led him to drop out of college and to feel more alive he and three friends created a bucket list of 100 things to do before you die. And they borrowed a rickety old RV which they used to criss-cross North America, achieving the unthinkable. They planned to take two weeks, but 10 years later. They're still on their mission and every time they accomplish a dream, they help a complete stranger cross something off their own bucket list. Their journey has been all the way to the White House where they played basketball with President Obama. They've had a beer with Prince Harry. They've reunited a father and son after 17 years. They've surprised a girl with a much-needed bionic arm. President Obama called Ben and the group and The Buried Life Inspiration for a new generation and Oprah declared their mission truly inspiring. Now we spoke about the origin story behind starting The Buried Life. We spoke about helping other people check items off their own bucket list. Reasons why people don't live on their own terms. The biggest regrets, 76% of people have when they get to the end of their life, how to live a life that you won't regret, why it's so hard to be true to yourself, how a list can help, how to overcome fear, lack of deadlines, and waiting to feel inspired, which are the biggest emphasis and blockers in achieving your own bucket list. And then ultimately the formula to be successful at any bucket list item that you put on your list, how to achieve success at that item so you can truly live your best life. So I grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, which is a Canadian you know is just off the coast of Vancouver. Not many people know that, but it's on an island so it's a smaller town. And when I was going into university, I was really what I thought at the time I was living the dream. I was an academic scholarship to University of Victoria where all my buddies were going. I was just made the the United Nations National Rugby team, which on the west coast is a huge sport, right? It's like it always says the third biggest sport in Canada behind hockey and hockey. So it's like that's where the national team trained. My high school coach was an ex-national team coach so this was like football in the south. So I made the national rugby team so I was fired up. But I put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed. So we were training for the World Cup and I was I was worrying about my field goals. I played fly half, which is like the quarterback and the field goal kicker. And this pressure that I put on myself, I started getting anxiety and and this anxiety would hit me in the middle of the night, in the of the night. And I started to have trouble sleeping. And so this lack of sleep, this constant pressure, this anxiety, it all built up and I slowly started to slide into a depression. And I had been a pretty happy, go lucky guy up to this point. You know, I had I was a type. I was social. A lot of friends, great family. But now this anxiety was stopping me from going to school. So, so I dropped out of school and it was stopping me from going to rugby practice. So I got a national rugby. It was crippling. Yeah. I was I was stuck in in decision. So what my anxiety the way it sort of manifested was I couldn't decide whether I could go to school or not. So I'd be stuck in this indecision and ultimately that indecision would lead to my decision which would be not going just because I was in the middle. So I drive to school and I couldn't get out of the car. I drove back home. Or I would get on my rugby stuff but I couldn't go to practice. And this was, you know, for someone that had never experienced anything like this, it was terrifying. Right? And I got to the point where I couldn't leave the house. And my parents would they tried many things to help and nothing was really helping. And they would just encourage me to just go for a walk every day. And sometimes I would pretend to go for a walk and hide in the driveway. So it was it was very, very bad. And these feelings lasted for months. I dropped out of school as I said. And at the end of the school year that I dropped out of my friends came and they literally sort of pulled me out of the house and they're like you're coming to work with us in Bamfelberda for the summer. We're going to come work with us in a new town. We're going to go live and work there for the summer. We want you to come and I reluctantly agreed, right? They sort of forced my hand. And when that happened I was forced to get a job. So I started to slowly get a bit of self-confidence because I was doing something for myself. I was started to talk about what I was going through to my friends. I started to realize that I wasn't the only one that was going through these feelings or had experienced some of this stuff. And at that point I just thought I was totally broken, right? I just thought I was messed up. And I didn't realize that other people had actually experienced these types of feelings of anxiety and depression because no one had talked about it. I hadn't talked about it. People weren't talking about mental health back then. This is 2002. So I start to realize, wow, okay, I'm not the only one. And that helped. But the other piece that was ended up being really pivotal for me was I started to meet new types of people that I realized were giving the energy. And I start to understand that some people gave me energy and some people drew energy from me. And at that point I needed to be around people that gave me energy. I met these kids that had started businesses. I met these kids that already traveled. And I was energized just by being around them. And so on my way home after that summer I was starting to feel back to myself. But I also mentioned that I also found a therapist, you know, and that ultimately was the biggest piece of my recovery. So I don't want to underplay that it was just sort of finding people that gave me energy. There were there were many things that contributed. And we can speak to that a little later on. But just for the sake of condensing the story, the thing that was pivotal in terms of a decision that changed my life in that at that time was on the way home as I was driving back to Victoria. I made a decision. I thought, you know what, I'm going to try and only surround myself with people that inspire me. Just like these kids I met. So when I get back home, I'm going to try and only surround myself with people that inspire. And that decision would totally change my life. Because I got back home. And there was only one kid that came to mind when I thought about my friends. I didn't even know him very well. His name was Johnny and he was a filmmaker. And he was going to McGill at the time in Montreal. But he grew up in Victoria. And he always made movies in the neighborhood. And I thought, man, I want to make a movie. So I called him up. I said, Johnny, you make movies. I want to make a movie. Let's make a movie. And that was kind of like a scary phone call to make because I didn't know the kid. I was just like, and he was like, I was just talking to my friend Dave about something like this. I remember Dave. He was two years younger than me in high school. I'm going to call your older brother Duncan. How about the four of us get together? We can talk about making a film. And so we all got on Skype because they were in Montreal. And we started talking about this film that we had no idea what it was going to be about. Right. And so serendipitously, Johnny is in English class at McGill. And his English professor assigns the whole class homework. And they have to read this old English poem called the Buried Life. Okay. So it's called the Buried Life. And it's 150 year old poem. Johnny reads the poem because it's homework. But this poem strikes a chord and he sends the poem to us. He says, guys, read this poem. And the poem, he's like, guys, this poet is talking about the same thing that we're talking about right now. And we were having these conversations about like we have all of these things that we want to do, these dreams, but we never have tried to go after any of them. All we do is just talk about them. And we get inspired to go after them. But then the day to day buries them. And so this was the Buried Life. Like you have these things you want to do. Life gets in the way. You push them. You push them until you die. And you realize I didn't do any of them. So we're like, okay, this dude was talking about this feeling in 1852 in England. We're not the first people to feel like this. Let's call our film the Buried Life. So we borrow the name. We're like, we're making this film the Buried Life. We don't know what it's about, but we know it's going to be called the Buried Life. And then our next logical step was like, well, what are our buried dreams? And the way that we figured those dreams out was actually by thinking about death. So we asked ourselves this question, what do you want to do before you die? Because we thought the thought of death actually put our life in perspective by internalizing that it made us really realize that we didn't have a lot of time. And so we asked ourselves this question, what do you want to do before you die? And the answer to that became the bucket list. So this was our sort of tool to figure out what was important to us. And our bucket list grew from there. And we just pretended we had a million bucks. We pretended we had the ability to do anything. So we wrote down anything from go to space, play basketball with Obama, make a TV show, pay off our parents mortgage to grow mustache, get something named after you, you know, drive across the country literally asking and everything. Ask out the girl your dreams. Anything, if anything, that was there were two rules. Anything, you have to pretend anything is possible and you have to pretend you have 10 million dollars in your bank. So we had no money in our bank. So now we had to make some money to go on this road trip because we're like, let's go on a two week road trip in 2006 and we'll go after our bucket list. But we'll also, because we need, we're never going to accomplish any of these things on our own. Let's ask other people the question, what do you want to do before you die? And if we can help them, we will. So we'll do one thing on our list and we'll help a stranger. That will be sort of our mantra as we travel. And so we board an old RV, we bought a second hand camera on eBay. We worked two jobs throughout the summer. I was working as a beer rep for Moulson. I would get my stuff done in the morning, visit all the accounts and then in the afternoon, I'd cold call companies pretending we had a production company. Looking for sponsors, we'd throw parties as fundraisers. You know, we'd be just bank boron stealing to get this thing together. We took out a $2,000 loan and we got sponsors on board and a local juice company paid for our gas, happy planet, juices, which is like a naked juice of Canada. So now we're just 2006, we're taking two weeks off at the end of summer, we hit the road. And we don't even tell anybody what we're doing because we don't even really know how to explain what the hell we're doing. And what happened was people started to hear about this road trip. And email started to trickle in through this website that we built where we posted our 100 dreams. And people said, hey, I saw your bucket list online. And I saw, I saw number eight ride a bowl. My uncle has a bowl wrench. He can get you guys on a bowl where I saw make a toast to a stranger's wedding. My friend's getting married. I'm the best man I can get you in, right? We got invited to 12 weddings in two weeks. And so news started here about, and now it was national news. And now we're getting hundreds of emails. We come back from this two week road trip. And we've had these incredible experience. We've helped people accomplish their goals just through the help of other people. And we get back and I'm like, holy crap, we got to keep doing this. And so this two week road trip ended up lasting 10, 15 years. And the list items that we originally wrote down that we thought were completely impossible. You know, right, a New York Times best seller sit with Oprah, make a TV show, slowly they start to fall off the list. And then we realized that helping other people achieve their dreams actually even meant more than those big ticket list items. And so we just kept doing it. And we moved down to LA and we sold the show. We did the book. And what I realized is that this whole bucket list process, what it did for me was it for the first time in my life, it gave me permission to say what I really wanted. And back when I was in high school, I wasn't living my dream. I was living the high school dream. I was living the dream I thought I wanted. Playing on the national rugby team, being the athlete, you know, being the student that got the scholarship, being popular. But what I wanted was something different. And finally I was around kids that enabled me to be my true self. And by writing down what I truly wanted, it forced me to actually think about what do I want for the first time in my life. And it was liberating. And I also let go of what other people, what I thought other people would think mainly because we were just like, I had the confidence of being around people that encouraged me to be who I was. And this experience changed my life, right? And it completely brought me back to who I truly was. And now I've realized, wow, this bucket list, it's more than just adventure and travel. But usually you think about a bucket list as skydive travel Europe, you know, those types of things. But if my definition is a bucket list is anything that's going to bring you joy and happiness. In a world that tends to bury that because all your personal passions are the first things to get pushed under the rug, right? Because there's no deadlines for them. So we think we have all this time. So we continually push them, push them until, you know, 76% of people realize that they're out of time because the biggest regret people have on their deathbed, this is through research out of Cornell. The number one regret is, I wish I would have lived for me, not what I thought others wanted for me or what was expected of me. So this is a huge problem. This is the biggest problem on Earth. That three quarters of the population reach their deathbed and they realize, damn it, I blew it. And so how can we, it's incredibly sad. It's incredibly sad. I was going to mention, I wanted to ask you just one thing on this point because you actually mentioned something that was interesting permission. Permission to look at life through your lens and fully understand what you want your life to be. And you realize this over the course of the buried life of your bucket list. Do you think that, and I want to keep going down this road, and I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I just want to highlight the problem so people can try and start to solve it. Do you think that people, where do you think a lot of people are, and that's 76% that reach the end of their life and they aren't happy? Do you think it's that people understood what they wanted or they maybe didn't understand what they want, what they wanted, or they didn't even give themselves permission, or what was the main thing that caused them to push off, creating their own bucket list, living life on their own terms, because was it internal influence, external influence? I'm trying to understand what stops people from accomplishing this. Yeah, so there's, odds in two ways. The first is by looking at the research. So if you look at Tom Gilvitch's research, who's a professor at a Cornell, he found that there are three main reasons why we don't pursue these, call them whatever you want, personal passions, dreams, goals, the life you really want. The biggest is fear, the fear of what other people think are the fear of failure. And those, when we can talk about how to delineate what's a real fear and a real risk and an imagined fear, but that's the, that's what he found to be the number one. The second is that there are no deadlines and so we think we have this time, but we actually don't, so we've got to create accountability around our personal goals. And the third is that we're waiting typically to feel inspired to go after these things or we're waiting for the perfect time. We over plan and we forget that action is the plan. So those are the three things, the biggest barriers. When to answer your question, they, you know, specifically around like, what do I think is it that they're not, they don't know what they want or they don't go, they know what they want but they don't go after it. I think it's both. I think that a big piece of this is that we think we're living for what we want in ourselves, but we actually aren't because we've been conditioned to believe that there's this life that's going to make us happy. And so we're going down that path, but we're, we haven't taken the time to stop and really think about what makes us feel alive. Like what actually gives us energy and makes us feel like the best expression of ourselves. And so that's what I try and pay attention to is energy. Like when I do something, does it make, does it make me excited? You know, do I feel more like myself? And that's when I'm doing something, or that's around people, right? Like I get energy from people and I know that when I'm around people that are making me feel more like myself, they're the right crew to be around. And so I think first things first is stopping and going through the exercise of thinking about what you really want. And give me, as you said, you have to give yourself permission to dream. And you have to reverse the narrative in your head that it's selfish to have these goals or to pursue these things. And I know that there are a lot of people thinking, well, look, you were in college like you had no family. You didn't have any responsibilities. Of course, you can go on a road trip and go do whatever the hell you want. Well, yeah, that's true. But that's not what the big idea is about. The big idea is what can you afford the amount of time, what amount of time can you afford to commit to focusing on the things that are important to you knowing that it's not selfish. It's actually service because you can't be a better parent, a better partner, a better professional if you don't take care of yourself. It's the whole put on your oxygen mask before serving others. You can't serve others if you can't breathe, right? You just can't. So the first piece is like reversing that thought process that you might have that it's selfish and I don't have time, right? Like I got too much on my plate and I got too many people relying on me. And you may have a ton on your plate and you may have a lot of people relying on you. But do you have one hour a week to protect to learn violent, learn meditation? Do you have one weekend a year to protect, to do that trip with your family, with your friends? And can you protect that time by creating accountability around that? We can talk about how to create accountability because that's really for me been the biggest tool to drive me towards these things. But that's what I would say to answer your question. So that's a huge responsibility on you. So you understand that 76% of people do not achieve what they want to achieve in life. Now you've had this incredible career up to this point where you sort of lived it yourself and now you have all the tools. But how do you deploy them? So what is the next step in your life where you're like, I want to help those 76% well actually, yeah, I want to help those 76% of people so that they don't regret their entire life when they're on their deathbed. So this is what you're taking on now. So what are the steps that you're taking? Like after you finish the buried life now, you know, now what you speak on, what you teach over, even as like an individual, like that's like an incredibly intimidating task to take on, right? Like people have mortgages, they have jobs, and we're not talking like, like I'm sure young people that are coming out of college, they can take your example and run with it. But what about people that have been in careers for 30 years, 40 years that are 40, 50, 60? What do they do? Yeah, it's a good question. And the position that I found myself is that's who I'm speaking to, 99% of the time, are business leaders, right? Like sales leaders, partners of larger companies that are, you know, throwing client events, larger C-suite groups. And I never thought I would be speaking to those folks. But the reality is this is the human condition, right? This is a feeling that is getting worse. I think, you know, if Matthew Arnold, the poet in 1852, wrote about this, if he, if he can jump on this podcast, he'd probably say, well, this is bad right now, you know, the pandemic. And it's like, we're getting more buried by social media and less real connections. We have more stimulation that distracts us from who we truly are. And so the, the steps that I would say, and this is really why I wrote the bucket list journal, was because I was like, the only people that really know what I'm speaking about are coming to my keynotes and these are people that are, they have to work for the company or they have to be invited to the event. So I wanted a tool for my friends and anybody to, to follow, to actually make this, you know, start this process. And a lot is around like creating your, your own momentum through action, right? So the, the first step is writing down your goals, right? It's such a simple thing, but it's very powerful for a number of reasons. Number one, it forces you to slow down and think about what's important to you. So right there, you're ahead because 76% of people, this is their biggest regret. So you, first and foremost, have to figure out what you want. And I think that it's overwhelming sometimes to look at a blank piece of paper and think, what's my purpose? But what's everything that I want to do in my life? And just here's the manifesto, right? And so what I found helpful is one to, to, to put a structure to the list writing process. So in the bucket list journal, you write your goals in 10 categories. So instead of just looking at one big list, I realized that there are 10 categories of life that reflect pretty much all of the things that you, that areas you may have goals in your life. And some of those are based off of Bronny Ware's book, the top five regrets of the dying. So she's, she's a hospice worker and she wrote this book. She found that again, consistent with Mr. Gilovich's research, number one regret, wish I would have had the courage to live for me. So that's the number one regret. And we can talk about the other regrets as well. But when you think about like the, the 10 categories of life that you want to think about when you write your list, adventure travel, pretty straightforward. We all think about a bucket list and we think, you know, travel to Europe, you know, adventure stuff, maybe bungee jump skydive, that type of stuff. Those are great. But that's one of 10. Then you have, what are your professional goals, what are your financial goals, what are your mental health goals, right? What do you want to do to reduce stress? This is obviously could be the biggest category of life for a lot of people considering so many people are struggling with anxiety and depression, physical health goals, relationship goals. This is a big one. One of the top five regrets of the dying from Bronny Ware's book is I wish I would have stayed in contact with friends. That doesn't cost any money, but that means you have to identify the relationships that are important to you and invest, invest your time in those relationships. Intellectual goals. What do you want to learn? Creative goals. I think creativity is an often overlooked pillar of wellness because you think about when you're expressing your creativity, you're really being that true version of yourself. You know, that's when you get in flow state when you're playing an instrument or doing art or, you know, there's many different creative expressions, podcasting, you know, writing. So what's that thing that you can do where you get out of your head and you just, you're just doing it because you're, you're, you're flowing. So that's a big one. And there's, there's a couple more that I may have missed, but you can use, you can go to write your list.com and look at those 10 categories if you want to use them as a guide. So you write your list because now you have a reminder that your goals exist. So as you get buried by the day to day, you come back to your list and it reminds you what's important because you've taken the time to think about it. You've, you've taken something that's intangible. You, you're a thought and you've made it tangible. So now you've taken a step and that action, it gets more action and you're starting to, to move, to create your own inspiration through action. And, and how, how audacious can these goals be? How big should these goals be? I believe that you shouldn't have a big goal just because you think you should have big hairy audacious goals. Is that how you say it? Big. It is. Yeah, I think it is. I think it's a little bit odd. Yeah. So I've never actually said it out loud, but yeah, yeah, I think that's the saying. But yeah, it is a little bit, but the point is the, the big, the big audacious goals, right? So do you say, you know, I feel like people would sort of do do this and when they fill out these 10 categories, they can, they can fall into two fallacies. They'll set goals that are too small that are something they could, they know they're going to accomplish it anyways. Like, for example, like if you are professional on a professional path and, and I, I think of like, as like professional goals and monetary goals, but even like with, you know, your, your girlfriend that you're dating, you're going to say, well, you know, we're going to get married in three years and that's okay. That's a goal. I mean, and if you, if you're on a career path where you're making $80,000 and you write, I'm going to make $100,000 in five years. Well, hopefully you keep up with inflation. Like, these are not like really audacious goals, right? These are just things that are probably going to happen anyways. That's still important. But should the person be setting even larger milestones? Should the person be setting, for example, with a relationship, like we're going to not only be married, but we're going to commit to like once a month or even once a week date night, and we're going to make sure that we're always in love and always best friends and verbalize that and make commitments to that in at this, at this stage in time. 100%. So it's, I guess my answer to your question would be there's no rules with, with your list. The only rule is that it's important to you. So with that being said, that could be a huge dream. I wouldn't suggest just writing down a huge dream because you feel like you need to do something really, really big, you know, I think if you check it and you realize this is really important to me than yes. But what you said about relationships, I think that spot out, it's it's it's it's identifying what's important to you and then starting to write down things that are measurable that you know, when you achieve it, you can clearly understand like I've I've accomplished this. So it's not staying in love, quote unquote, right? It's what are the things that are specific that I know that we can commit to that we know when we've accomplished those things. So date night once a week, you know, checking in every every two weeks to have a conversation and updating this list of what's important to us, what do we really want so that it it evolves as we evolve and as our relationship evolves. So I think it's a great conversation to have with your partner. It's a great conversation to have with your family to do a family list. What are the things that we want to achieve as a family? Some I have parents that do summer bucket lists with their kids, you know, young kids that are they all the things they want to accomplish during the summer and then I it's with kids that are in college, you know, having this conversation about what's really important to you and and how and because when he and you said it, the next step in achieving your goal is talking about it. So when you talk with your your partner you say hey let's let's this is something that I think is important. I think we you know we're getting we're getting buried by by work and the kids we need to protect time for us. We need to do let's do date night once a week once every at least once every two weeks, you know, and let's talk. And so by sharing that right now you have accountability because you've spoken. So when you talk about your goals you feel accountable to the people you've spoken to and if you look at the big problem there's no deadlines. So it's hard to keep yourself accountable. You have to be very disciplined just to, you know, get up every day and and work out but if you have someone knocking on your door you're your training partner or texting you where the hell are you? You're going to get there right? So yeah. So by talking about your goals and sharing them, one, you you feel accountable to them. Two, they can keep you accountable. You don't want to let them down right? You've expressed that this is important. The other thing that's great is when you share your goals is they're they're there to support you. So let's take take the training for example if you communicate with your partner I'm gonna get in shape. I'm working out three times a week with John my training partner and and it comes Friday you know and it's the third day of the week and for your training and you know the kids are crying or you know something hits the fan and and you're like I'm not going to go she's like no no you this is I got this I know this is important to you but so they support you in this pursuit and so and this is what I'm finding in organizations is really interesting is that when you know leaders give people permission to communicate what these personal passions are then it gives them the opportunity to feel like they can be their true self which creates a culture that encourages people to pursue their professional passions but also be the person they are and pursue their personal passions and when leaders support their team to do these things it it causes really rich environment and then you see people helping each other right which is what I found through talking with you know when I come back to these organizations and continually talk about some of these ideas leaders are they're creating goal funds right for their teams there there's bucket list slack channels that pop up where people are supporting each other so how could you know you in an employee reviews and one-on-ones you check in on the personal goal as well as the professional goals because if you think about it work the workplace it's just structures of accountability that's all it is right it's leaders keep us accountable salary keeps you accountable you don't want to look bad you want to let your team down so you can insert the personal goal into those same structures to drive you forward so you know that's a little bit about like the next steps for you as a person you write your goals you share them and then you know the work that I found myself in these days as well is helping these teams create environments where they attract the rest the best talent you know retain and have empathy as a leader to be like hey yeah I know you're a human being you have dreams we all have dreams what are they let's connect and talk about them maybe I can help you and that's a powerful thing I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now because at this time of the year we like to think about new ways to solve problems right new year new you we like to think creative innovative scalable solutions that make our jobs easier in 2023 that's where HubSpot comes in it's a connected all-in-one CRM platform that serves as a single source of truth for managing customer relationships across all your teams so that you don't have to worry about the time-sucking management and mind-boggling costs of multiple solutions best of all it's free to get started learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better and get a special offer of 20% off on eligible plans at HubSpot.com slash success pod is that actually you know it's we didn't even we didn't even need to jump there right away but I think it was an important lesson the accountability piece and I was actually curious about when you were doing your own bucket list um did you find that you had more success immediately because you were doing it with friends and also sort of an add-on to that question that bucket list I've listened to some other interviews have been in and some of those items were shared items and some of those items were solo items did you find it was easier to accomplish the shared items versus the solo items or was there was there any differentiation there when you were doing that own bucket list so we had individual items and shared items as you said but we all did all of them together so I mean it's actually the first time I thought about this so for instance rideable I had no interest in ridingable I had heard any disc from rugby you know I wasn't getting on one Dave one of the guys was very passionate about ridingable he called dozens of you know outfits in Idaho and Utah no one would let them on a bowl they're like it's too much liability you never like no we're not gonna let you put that into your documentary finally found someone and and he did it and Duncan ended up doing it last minute and Johnny I did not but we all did a lot of these most list items together even if it was just one person's dream most of them were collective dreams but the the accountability of having those other guys with me even you for them when when yeah exactly and even there's no way I would have done some of the things streak of field and get away I have no chance unless I was forced into that position because they were like we're doing this you know being a crump competition in LA I can't dance like this is a nightmare for me you know survive on a deserted island you know and just have to figure out a way to make a bet on the sand and live off coconuts like ask out trying to ask out Megan Fox on the Transformers premiere or red carpet like these things made me so nervous I almost threw up but because I had those guys with me and there wasn't an option to not do it there was we just there was no option and the other thing that I think is more powerful is like when I tell the story of starting that road trip in 2006 and and getting to you know these big bigger list items and make a TV show and all that it really sounds like a great startup story you know it's just a rocket ship from 2006 to the television show was three four years and we had many times when I wanted to give up right when we we got offered a show in Canada by the way a lot of people don't know this but MTV Canada after the first tour we went to Toronto we had made a trailer we put it on YouTube it got the front page of YouTube we met with production companies in Canada MTV Canada offers a show they wanted to own the IP they went to own Berryland and we were like we just kind of want to keep doing this on our own like we don't want to we want to make a show not sell a show basically so we's politely you know declined the next summer 2007 we got lots of sponsors on board we got Palm Pilot at the time we got Levi's they helped us us buy the bus we must we you know we raised a lot of money for sponsors to enough to get a full crew from LA to follow us for two months on the road put all this money into the dock got back home realized how expensive post production is we had spent 90% of our money we hadn't paid ourselves a dime and we had turned on a show we were broke I started working in a bar didn't even know how to bartend in Vancouver and I was like we blew it dude we turned down a show we spent all our money on this dock that no one will ever see and now I'm working in a bar I dropped out of school I dropped out of school and it was the three other guys right that in those moments when I felt so down that we're like get back up you know we're gonna we're gonna keep doing this I randomly met this girl that knew my she hurt her parents were friends with my parents and I was on a random trip to Mexico and she lived in LA and she was like oh this is kind of cool you know like I can maybe introduce you to some people on a way my flew down to LA by myself met some people and started just coming down to LA learning the entertainment business need realize I need an agent realize we needed a production company we cut our own pilot from the footage we filmed so this documentary footage we're like oh let's let's cut a pilot we'd crash the MTV video wards in Vegas snuck in the whole thing filmed it we used that as a pilot ironically we got in pretending we were filming an MTV pilot and we used that footage to cut a pilot and ended up selling the show to MTV with that footage but lot ups and downs and if I was trying to do this by myself I would have stopped after the first year 2007 yeah so they really that's super important but that's that's that's also a sort of like a hidden facet and being successful in your bucket list in your goals because you have to find that support group so yeah if somebody is building out this list they probably have people in their life of course they have their family they probably they could have a partner as spouse whatever boyfriend girlfriend but not always so somebody does want to radically improve their life you mentioned a few things that could maybe detract from them being successful at this and I want to actually walk through those so people can understand fear the deadlines and the way the waiting to feel inspired those three items but I think the other item that could stop somebody from you successful is lack of accountability and that and those partners in their life that can hold them accountable so I would ask you how can somebody find people that can hold them accountable to the level where you held your friends accountable they held you accountable I think this is I like a very common question maybe because I get it a lot and you know it's like I don't know anybody that's inspiring or how do I find these people and I think that that's why a lot of people move to different cities like LA or New York because it feels like there are creative inspiring people there doesn't mean that you're going to find those people though because there's also a lot of other types of people in these cities and you can get caught up in the in the wrong types of crowds so the I'll give you my experience of what led me to this and then what I think would help so even before I called up Johnny on the phone who was a filmmaker and I was like you're inspiring I want to hang out with you let's let's let's make something about a year before a guy that I knew from high school he was younger than me and he was in high school and I was in university he started a clothing line out of nowhere I was like blown away a really cool clothing line and I I was so flabbergasted I was like how did you do that you don't have any experience in fashion it's like what do you mean I just took out a loan and I did it I was like wow I was like can I get involved like can I so immediately I was I was drawn to this person I was inspired by him and I asked if I could help not thinking about anything other than I was drawn to this dude because he was doing this thing and so I asked him if I could help and he said yes I need press maybe you can get me suppressed you know and there was this and these are the days of like cool hunting blogs you know where people would just post stuff they thought was cool and like they would just get it was a great great gig of all time you just get sent all this cool stuff and if you really liked it you'd post a photo of it right so there's this there's this guy Josh Spear who had a website Josh Spear.com and he was I saw him on the front page of the Toronto Sun style or Toronto Star it was like the style section or cool it was the lifestyle and it was like it just as it's cool it's cool so this is early 2000s and I was I was like I bet you he would like this my friend's clothing line anyways got in contact with just send him an email he got back to me through his website I was like wow I got in contact with this guy we sent him my friend's clothing he did a post about it I was like holy crap like that was easier than I thought I was like if my friend made a clothing line I wonder what I could do and I was like I want to make a movie so you found a way to get into into his life like through providing tons of value through associating with him through through you build a relationship by being listened like and then you showed up too which is another important thing too like when when he asked for help or whatever it is like you showed up exactly and then you know he was friends with Johnny so I started hanging out sort of with his friends so you know like mine and people tend to hang out with each other so my advice is find one person that that you think is doing something cool or that that is inspiring you know in some way shape or form and if you know them a little bit just try and get to know them a little more and see if you can get to know their friends because likely they run in a circle of like-minded people and you sort of try and go down that rabbit hole to open up your circle to these types of people and you're following your energy so you're not following it's not necessary tactical where you're like this person successful I need to hang out with this person they're making a lot of money or they're doing this like what are the people that make you feel more alive who are the people that give you energy and inspire you because by surrounding yourself with inspiring people by osmosis subconscious you feel that you can do good great things because you see your friends doing these things and you realize well if they did it what I wonder what I could do the the flip side of that is if you see people you don't know doing incredible things I think you're initial reaction is oh they're smarter than me they're better than me that's why they're doing those things but when you know them you're like I hang on this person all the time they're not that smart right they're not that great you know like I can probably do this stuff and so you're the high tide rises above you believe that you can do great things just because you know these people so your level of thinking subconsciously rises and that's the power of surrounding yourself with inspiring people so three three points that I want to go into three points that can inhibit your success right fear deadlines waiting to feel inspired so can you go into those a little bit deeper and then can you walk through how you would suggest somebody overcome these three main blockers for getting started and then succeeding at living your own bucket list and your own buried life yeah so the top three barriers number one fear fear of what other people think or fear of failure very common fears we all feel those fears I look at these as taxes you have to pay to achieve your goals these aren't going away right you're never going to conquer the fear I speak over 100 times a year to lots of people I still get stage fright I know that this is part and parcel with doing the thing that's important to me I'm pushing myself I'm going to feel that discomfort that fear but that also is a is a positive that means I'm growing that's an indicator that I'm pushing myself to evolve so when you think when you feel this fear know that part of is excitement fear and excitement anxiety and excitement very similar feelings so when I'm afraid to all right feel stage fright I'm nervous about a talk I think wow I must be excited so I can shift some of that energy into excitement so I think just the awareness that the fear is not going to go away and then it's a part of you growing you know to get to where you are you didn't coast there it's not like you conquered fear right you took risks you had to put yourself out there you're like what are people going to think in this podcast what if I fail that stops most people that fear so first the awareness that the fear is not going away you're never going to conquer it you got to push through it and that feeling is actually net positive because what I found is that when I put myself in that vulnerable position right ultimately something positive is going to come with it at the very least I learned something about myself even a full-out failure is a positive because I've learned something about myself usually it's a pivot into the direction that I know that I'm supposed to go and so so let's look at like both of those fears individually but I think at first it's just the awareness now I think it's important to look at what are the real fears and don't look at fears look at risks what are the real risks so are you risking your ego or what other people might think of you or are you risking your financial well-being are you risking the well-being of your family you know is your is your life is your is your lifelihood at risk your mortgage all of these things are real risks so I don't want to be so just non-ground in reality the basic fact that you need to look at what is at risk but I think that sometimes we inflate the imagined risks so you can write down what are the real risks so now you know this is what you're risking and if you feel comfortable putting those at risk and knowing that okay you know what if I fail here I'm not going to lose my house my family's going to be okay my health is going to be okay then I think that this is something that I can take a crack at so you sort of look at like this this fear as you know if you're afraid to go after your goal or you're waiting for the right time unfortunately you failed right because you did not achieve your goal so at least when you're trying to fail what you learn from that really outweighs any potential hit of your reputation and I think the other thing that's probably interesting about the fear of what other people think because this is something I struggle with right you know this is something that doesn't go away but the truth is when it comes to the fear of what what other people think people just aren't thinking about me as much as I think they are right they're busy living their life worried about what other people are thinking about them they're not thinking about me all the time and so they're in addition they're also more supportive like when we finally had the courage to talk about what we wanted with our bucket list the reality is people stepped up and helped the only way that we cross things off our list is to the help of other people and if we didn't talk about it and we didn't you know it's really hard to say what you want and share what you want let it go of what other people think is really difficult but you give them the chance to help you and if you don't talk about it no one can help you and we found the people stepped up in unexpected ways so that is the fear piece which is the big us which I think you know is the number one barrier and then the second two barriers very quickly there's no deadlines so we push these personal goals so we need to create accountability and that means that we need to write down our goals because then you you create a bit of accountability we need to share our goals because that creates accountability we need to have accountability partners check in with us if you want to increase your chances of success by 77% you have you send regular updates to your accountability right so if you if you say I'm gonna write my next book this year I'm like great send me a chapter a month send me send me what you've been working on every month if you say on the podcast ladies and gentlemen I'm pleased to announce I'm writing my next book you're gonna write the book because you're gonna write the book yeah you told everybody right everyone's gonna be like how's the book coming how's the book coming how's the book coming it's like crap I gotta I gotta write this thing um and so those those are ways to create accountability you you you block it out of your calendar you know just just like you put in your calendar you have a podcast recording it's very rare you're gonna miss that right with the big guests coming in like you're not you're protecting that time you need to have the same vigilance in protecting time for your personal goals these personal passions so that means protecting it putting in your calendar communicating it with people um you know setting precedes you know if you if you do a trip with your friends and it's every once a year you do it on the same weekend that's great because that's happening you have a group of friends you're going on that trip and you do it every year you keep each other accountable you know with a date your your family knows it's important to you that's that is the type of accountability that you need uh it's driving forward so the and the third goal sorry the third barrier is um what is it so no accountability fear oh waiting to feel inspired waiting to feel inspired yeah which I think we all feel right like pandemic hit I rushed out on my perfect grabbed a guitar bought it it's sitting in the corner I'm just waiting for it to feel inspired to pick up and play like it's the inspiration is never going to hit but you create your inspiration through action and the trick is sometimes we feel like we need to know the path to success I'm sure you didn't know how the how you're going to build a successful podcast and brand I had no clue but I did know that if I did it you know a thousand times and it would figure itself out eventually exactly so you would learn by doing and so you don't need to know the full path to success there's there's initial small steps you start you build your own inspiration through action so it's literally you know throwing a snowball over a hill it's the momentum it grows so that's why you want to create very easy steps in the beginning like writing it down like talking about it these things that will start tuning you know what are the the smallest things in the in the bucket list journal when you start a list item you break it down at a 48 hour action items what are the three things you can do in the next 48 hours let's create the momentum you know and so this this you're sort of the architect of your own inspiration through action and sometimes like we were talking before you you overplan we love to plan right well we'll plan till we die and then we'll forget that action is the plan action is the plan so your your plan is to learn as you go and you'll even if you don't know the second step just the first step you'll figure out the second after the first so in short you create accountability to to move yourself forward you create your own inspiration through action and you identify real fears and imagine fears and understand that you're really the architect of this whole process I love it and I want to sort of take a concept that we spoke about at the beginning and then bring it back at the end because you do speak about mental health a lot and we didn't explicitly address it but you solved the issues and and the stress you had in your life through a variety of mechanisms yes there was more formal like a therapist and whatnot and and surrounding yourself with people with with great energy but talk to me about goal setting mental health what it helps you accomplish some of the things that you've noticed that have that have improved your life and maybe your clarity of thought and your mental health and well-being as you've gone through this process because you have a mental health toolkit that you speak about and obviously it's between it's been very personal in your life as well so why is that a topic that you still speak about even many obviously there's been some impact so I want to break that down for people as well so it's not just the tangible do the next thing and it's great we set a deadline for a promotion I got the promotion but there's psychological benefits as well yeah yeah I think first and foremost I think it's important to just be clear that like I didn't cure my depression through a bucket list you know I think that what a bucket list did for me was that it helped me identify the things that are going to make me happy and bring me a sense of joy and so that's fairly intuitive but it's also overlooked you know like what are the the small things that are going to bring you as that sense of joy and and and that's the core of what a bucket list is and that's something I stumbled into because I realized in now reflecting that I wasn't living for me so I think that a lot of people are unhappy because they're not living for them which when you're not in alignment with who you are I think that causes some unhappiness now the other thing that I think is important to to talk about is that I've been through a couple pretty severe depressions since that first depression now they weren't as debilitating as the first but I am someone who is prone to these types of feelings and the thing though that I've realized is that anytime I go through any type of depression or struggle I do really learn things about myself and that's where the mental health toolkit came from me was that realizing out of necessity I need to understand habits that work for me to help me pull myself out of these dark times and so I think everyone should have their own mental health toolkit of habits you know just work for you so that when you hit stress you can use utilize these habits to to to to to pull yourself out and also I realized that if I practice these things when I feel good I just feel better so these are just things that are good for me that ultimately sometimes get pushed under the rug because we get so busy so therapy is a big one finding a therapist that you connect with right that you respect that is good at what they do that you like to talk to is really important and also hard and I think we talk about therapy a lot but we don't talk about how freaking hard it is to find a good therapist that for you and knowing that it's probably going to take a couple cracks and meetings with different therapists until you find someone that you that you resonate with I like to think about the simple analogy that if you walk into a dinner party and you start talking with people what are the chances that the very first person you talk to you're going to like you're going to respect what they do and you're going to have a connection with right and and so the reality is you're going to it's going to take a couple of people so that's the same with the therapist like you're just going to don't be discouraged a lot of people they're like all therapies not for me so really how come by you know I talked with therapists it just didn't didn't quite work well try another one like you try a couple right because I think that's that's key there's very eventually to therapy so I don't want to just gloss over the simple fact that therapy is expensive if you don't have benefits they cover it so if you can't talk with a therapist keep in mind there's other options for you there's there's lower cost options you know there's a lot of digital platforms now that you can talk with therapists virtually for less expensive if you're ever in trouble there's a there's a new uh suicide and and and um hop it's like 9-1-1 but for mental health crisis is but not 9-1-1 I've heard about this actually 9-9-88 so just dial 9-88 if you're ever in trouble you'll you'll talk with someone that's you're in your back pocket there's also crisis text line which you don't feel comfortable calling you can text crisis text line and get a response right away so just knowing that hey this is part of the human experience like if you're going through a tough time right now you are absolutely not alone the biggest thing I would encourage you to do is to talk about it whether it's via text to crisis text line calling a therapist or calling some of the cares about you and just talking about because when you talk about your struggles a couple things happen number one you give out someone else the opportunity to help you you also you get to break down what is really going on and it becomes less scary things are so much scary in your head when you're just spinning them around but when you talk about them they lose their power and you start to realize okay I actually might be able to work through some of this stuff so it's part of processing it is talking about it so you know this mental health toolkit that I've learned throughout the past 15 years are just things that help me navigate this stuff and so um if you I can talk about some of them it's some of them people have probably heard about but I think that it's like the trick is getting these things from habits into routines and so they are things like purpose right so that's why the bucket list is important what are the things that are going to bring you that sense of purpose connection talking about these things it's also meditation you know I really like transcendental meditation mainly because if I can't sleep I meditate and most of time I'm able to get back to sleep and sleep is the biggest pillar of my wellness right I know if I don't sleep I'm in trouble um nature right it's proven that just being out in nature for 20 minutes you don't even have to exercise and you get an increase sense of well-being in Japan doctors prescribe forest bathing which is getting out of nature to patients that are feeling anxious or depressed you know exercise has been super important and we all know exercise is good for us but you don't need 60 minutes of exercise you can do five minutes what I what I do is every morning I just get up and before I get in the shower and I and I build this into my routine and this is what James Clear talks about in Atomic Habits which is books around you know you just implemented these types of habits or is a thing called habit stacking so how can you pair a habit with something that you already do so just like you wake up and you brush your teeth in the morning hey if that's not a habit you can start there but you brush your teeth before you brush your teeth you just do pushups too you can't do anymore you just sit up still exhaustion a plank put a pull-up bar and just do as many as you can before each of the shower and that for me is is been key because if I don't do it first thing I'm not gonna do it I guess you just get too busy so try these things see what works for you um I put my my toolkit on my Instagram bio so it's like the one link in my in my bio which is at Ben Empton and it's the download there so you can check it out and try these things and it also talks about the science and behind them and how to get them from habits to routines so you know one the awareness that lights about ups and downs you're gonna go through it and that's actually okay in the sense that it's it's not abnormal and you're gonna learn things about yourself through this you're gonna build empathy for other people and if you're really in a tough spot you know text to crisis text line call 988 talk with a therapist talk with someone don't keep it inside because it's so much harder to solve problems on your own like if you think about it like what let's say you're you know running this this podcast and you're trying to solve a problem what do you do you you go to a mentor you you ask for help you you talk with a friend and we just so what so why is why is why would it be any different right what exactly why would it be any different for your own health for your own mental health if you if it's not a business problem it's still somebody out there can help you because they figured it out before figured out before and the stigma stops us right so the the mental stigma is still there it's getting better one of the silver lines of the pandemic is that mental health has become a national conversation dude I'm telling you I when I started speaking in 2018 my talk is a mental health talk effectively right like all of this is about you know being good to yourself so you can do your job at the highest level you can do all these things and I build my talk as a mental health talk no one was buying it right I had to rebrand it into the impossible as possible performance you know it still was the same talk but no one is buying it this was not a conversation in 2018 in in the in at the corporate level right in and for 500 companies and we're talking about much now it is which is fantastic and that's a that's a benefit from the pandemic the downside is more people are struggling it's a it's a benefit because it's a necessity it's it's become a conversation because it's a necessity so we need to continue to strip the stigma and the way we can do that is by talking about it through things like this this podcast and other conversations with friends everyone has the opportunity to reduce stigma by talking about it and we need to educate people so that they understand now what do I do and so that that's also important so just I have this conversation it's important so thank you for giving the opportunity to talk about it and I think that the connection between mental health and purpose which is really what this is is sometimes overlooked I love it okay so I have one one last question to close it up before I ask the last question most importantly where do people connect with you where's the social the website all that stuff you you mentioned your Instagram handle but other places they should go check out as well yeah so most of my social handles are at Ben Empton which is just my name if you want to check out the bucket list journal you can go to write your list dot com and you can at least look at the actual 10 categories use those as a guide but if you want to buy the journal you can just search the bucket list journal on amazon or go to write your list dot com I encourage people to write write their list and then share it on social you know like tag scott and I you know let us see it you know we can be your accountability buddies and and start this start this journey and if you're thinking about you know all the other things you have to do today and and and you're going to you know start your list on the weekend take 10 50 minutes after this podcast just start the process now because I guarantee a year from now you're going to wish you start today and if you think it's too late you're wrong I speak to a lot of people that start their list at 70 years old 80 years old a year from now you're going to wish you started today it's never too late to start your list you're just going to this is this is this is a lifelong process that you're going to continually evolve your list that's why you want to write your list in a journal not a piece of paper not on a notes app on your phone a physical thing that you actually care about you treasure so it's you're going to keep it is a safe place for your dreams to live so that you can come back to it and update it as you grow right so as you're kind of having a conversation with your partner you can update your list and I think that you know if the what I like about the journal is that one it gives you like the dos and don'ts for writing your list right it gives you quick tricks like you you want to attach a timeline you want to find your goal so it's clear you want to name specific things you want to you want to make it measurable and then you write your list in those 10 categories and the purpose of the journal is to get you over those three barriers that we talked about create accountability create inspiration through action and move through through fear I love it okay last question that I ask everyone after your career after now you now you speak globally you had incredible TV show and incredible life what is success mean to you I've been thinking about this a lot lately and success to me are two things one sleeping through the night without waking up and two because what that means is that I'm not worried about anything if I'm stressed out of worried about something I'm thinking about it in the night and I'm not sleeping throughout the night and when I sleep through the night I feel completely energized and I feel like like myself so that's the first thing asleep into the night the second is success is being true to myself you know this is I think a lifelong pursuit it definitely has been a lifelong pursuit for me it's very easy to get pulled away from that it feels like so many things pull us away from who we truly are and to to be true to yourself and and and live that way I feel like life starts to unfold for me in a magical way things start to happen serendipity starts to happen I enjoy my days more you know I I have more fun I have more energy and I am happier so so that for me is the goal and I think that if I can sleep through the night I can live true to myself everything else will fall into place