Transcript of Ben Nemtin: Stop Waiting for Motivation and Start Checking Off Your Bucket List Today | Mental Health | YAPClassic

Hey, young improfiters. What's on your bucket list? Whatever it is, my guest today believes your biggest dreams are more achievable than you think. In this YAP Classic, I spoke with Ben Nemtin, the motivational speaker, bestselling author, and star of MTV's hit reality documentary series, The Buried Life. Ben didn't just dream big, he made his dreams happen. He crossed off an incredible bucket list of items like playing basketball with former President Obama, throwing the first pitch at a Major League Baseball game, and even sharing a beer with Prince Harry. But what truly sets him apart is his mission to help thousands of others turn their dreams into a reality too. So if you're ready to stop waiting and start doing, let's get right into my episode with Ben. Hey Ben, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, I'm excited for you being on the show as well. So for those of you who don't know Ben, 15 years ago he created a list called 100 Things to Do Before You Die with his 3 friends. And he decided that for every bucket list item he would accomplish, he would help a complete stranger accomplish something on their list as well. And what was supposed to be a 2-week road trip turned into pretty much a lifelong mission, eventually leading him to an MTV show called The Buried Life, a New York Times bestselling book. And today he's also a very in-demand motivational speaker. In fact, I follow Ben on social and it seems like he speaks in a different city every day. And so I can't wait for my listeners to hear all of your bucket list advice and all of your life-changing stories. But before we get into it, I did wanna touch on your upbringing and talk about mental health for a moment because you are an expert on this topic. You grew up in Canada and I read that when you were younger, you were always traveling with your parents. So let's talk about your upbringing and how that influenced your adventurous spirit that you have today.

So my dad was actually a clown. He was like a theatrical clown. He played music and he wasn't necessarily the clown that does balloons at parties and stuff. He would do theater shows. We would travel around to different kids festivals or different cities and he would do a show. It would either be in some exotic location like in Africa or somewhere like Sweden, or it would be on a ski mountain. We had this really interesting upbringing where we would travel with him to these cool locations. And he played music. So what he would also do is when my mom and my dad met, they would travel Greece and they would play music in the tavernas for a free room upstairs. So in Greece, you have the bar and then you have a couple rooms above it. So they would play music, pass around the hat, and their payment would be free room and board. And so my parents have been to Greece 15, 16 times. It's their favorite place to go. So when I was 2 years old, they brought me to Greece for the first time, and they still would do that thing where they would play music in the taverna and travel around like that.

And so they would just bring me with them, and they would sit me on the bar as a 2-year-old, and then they would leave and play music in the corner, and they would just leave me on the bar, and I would hang out. And then at the end of the night, they kind of picked me up, and off we'd go. And they put me in between them on their Vespa with a little hockey helmet and kind of travel around Greece. So I've been to Greece a few times and we've always traveled and they've both— I think from them I learned that there really wasn't any rules around how you had to live your life. I think subconsciously we either absorb that, that there's this expected route that we have to go on and we feel like that's what we should do. It doesn't need to be pressure from our parents. It's pressure from society. And I think at an early age, subconsciously, I learned from them them that there really were no rules and you could create your own life based on what made you happy. And they never really made very much money. We didn't have a lot of money growing up.

It's not like we were scraping by, but he was a performer and my mom was kind of an independent business coach for women and then did this and that. But their life was so rich and they still to this day live like that. And we had a Westfalia van where we travel around and camp. And to this day, they drive down to Mexico every year in the van. and play music and, uh, meet people and they had this very rich life. And so it's, uh, yeah, that's definitely what I learned from them growing up.

That's so cute. You know, it's such like a unique little story and considering how much you travel now, I, I, now I understand kind of where you get that from because it's a very unique upbringing that you had. So, you know, you ended up getting a scholarship from my understanding of college and you had an opportunity to play on the rugby team, which in Canada is a really big deal. But you ended up falling into depression your first year of college. So talk to us about that. From an outside perspective, seems like everything was going great. You had great parents, you guys traveled, you got a scholarship. Why did you think that you ended up falling into depression? What happened there?

I put so much pressure on myself to succeed in school, in athletics. I, I really wanted people to like me, you know, like I just kind of, for whatever reason I put, I, I've always put a lot of pressure on myself. I was on the under-19 national rugby team, and we were training for the World Cup, and I was worried about missing a kick because I played flyhalf. So that's like a field goal kicker, and you're the quarterback, kind of. So there's a lot of pressure on that position. And so I started worrying about, oh, crap, what if I miss an easy kick at the World Cup? And what if I blow this opportunity? And I had missed a kick in the end of our championship game in high school. And so I really didn't want that to happen again. And at that age, everything is so black and white and so life or death. Whether your friends like you or you don't, you're living in this little bubble of high school, so you really don't know that there's so much more out there and that these things that you think are such a big deal when you're younger in your high school years or early college years, you realize, well, I'm not even going to remember that this happened on my deathbed.

There's just no way I'm going to remember that this was something that I worried about. But at that point, I was so worried about doing well on this team, and so I would worry about it at night. I felt this anxiety, and this anxiety caused me to have trouble sleeping. And so this lack of sleep, this anxiety, this constant pressure, it all built up. And I started to not be able to go to school, and I started to not be able to go to rugby practice, and then I couldn't leave the house. And so it just compounded. I never experienced anything like this where all of a sudden I was crippled by this anxiety and depression. And I was a very happy-go-lucky guy. I was A-type. I had a lot of friends that were Also very supportive and high energy, but I really wasn't talking about what was going on at all. And so I was internalizing it and I just went down and down and down and it got really scary. And ultimately, my friends actually kind of pulled me out of the house and convinced me and rallied me to come work with them in a new town for the summer after I dropped out of school.

And I was forced to get a job. I was forced to start to kind of do things on my own. I've started to build a little bit of confidence. I started talking about what I was going through. I started to, um, find different types of people that were inspiring, right? Like, as I said, when you're in high school or even college, you have this petri dish of friends, but you don't realize that if they're not your people, there are your people out there. It just takes time to find it. And so That was something that took a bit of time for me to realize. And I started finding these people that I realized gave me energy, these new groups of friends. They inspired me and they were doing all these cool things. They had already traveled, they had started businesses. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to try and only surround myself with people that inspire me almost by necessity because I needed that energy. And that single decision completely changed my life and it would lead me down this path that would ultimately bring me here speaking to you. I mean, I wouldn't be doing the things I am doing now if I hadn't consciously decided to try and only surround myself with people that inspire me.

Yeah. And I, I think it's pretty crazy how one decision can change the trajectory of your life. I mean, you've been on this mission for what it seems to be like 15 years now.

Yeah. And I think that that's a really empowering idea because it means that you can change your life at any time. And I think we all can think back to moments Where there was this pivot and it could be something very small, like something a teacher said to us or the way a teacher showed up to us before us in high school or some way a friend supported us or just happenstance when you ran into someone and then that led to your job or, you know, there's any number of things, but these, these little moments. And I think it's a combination of you have to be aware and, and, and it kind of jump on those moments sometimes. And it takes a little bit of awareness and it takes a little bit of this being proactive. And you start to go down this path that you don't know will ultimately shift your whole life. So if you think about it, if you— if anybody's a golfer, you hit a golf ball 1 or 2 degrees off, it doesn't seem like much, but by the time that it lands, you know, it could be 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 feet off center.

And so this little change can be a big change over time. And that's how I look at these small little shifts that you make, that you don't see them in the moment, but they can actually create this huge impact. And I think it's an empowering idea because it means that you can also make a huge impact in someone else's life. So just by being there for someone in a moment when they need it, or by a small gesture of kindness or helping hand, or even a compliment to a stranger. All these things create ripple effects that are hard to measure, but it's very real. And so it goes both ways. Like, everyone has the power to create this immense change through the ripple effect, through your daily inner micro interactions. But then it also means that you have the ability to change your life in any moment, because really a small change can lead to a huge change. And so I think we get overwhelmed sometimes by thinking about, oh, I have to make this huge, massive shift to change my life. And I don't think that's, that's true. I think that you, that you can change your life just by doing a very small thing that over time will compound and you'll ultimately make a huge shift.

Yeah, I think that's, that's super powerful. So something, Ben, I was curious about was if you still get depressed today because you seem so energetic, you always have a smile on and you don't seem like the type of person that gets depressed. So I'm curious to know if you still suffer from depression and, and what you do to manage your highs and the lows.

Yeah, well, I'm happy you said that because I still do get depressed. And I think that that is something that is like a really just a great thing to talk about that, you know, the people that you don't think struggle, struggle, you know, everybody struggles. Every human will go through some mental health crisis in their life. And that's just through the research, right? It doesn't need to be from a mental health illness, a mental illness. It can be from a divorce, stress from losing a job, bereavement from losing someone that you love. You will go through the crapper, like it's going to happen. And so I think that that's almost an empowering idea because it means that no one is alone in their struggle. If, if someone is not struggling, they've been there before, they will go through it. And so for me, you know, I, I have this tendency still to put a lot of pressure on myself, to work myself too hard. And what I've realized is this depression that I went through when I was in university, it was quite bad. I was laid out, and I've been through a few since then, but each time I go through one, it's a little bit less intense because I've learned things about myself and I've learned habits that I know are good for me.

I've built a support support network around me where there's friends that I can go to and ask for help. I have a great therapist that I know that I can lean back on and talk to if I need, or talk more to if I need. I understand what my feelings mean. So when I start to feel something, instead of it being a crisis, I catch it before crisis because I realize, oh, I need to get some better sleep, or I need to make sure I take a break and go play tennis, and I need to make sure that I do this because I know that it's good for me. So my awareness and my understanding of what my body needs and what I need to be healthy is more attuned now than it was when I was in college. And I think that's why it's a perfect storm when you're in these early ages and your first mental health crisis is so hard because you've never been through it. So you don't know what the hell's going on. It's freaky as shit, right? You also, you don't know yourself well enough to understand what you need.

And you also don't know necessarily that everyone else is going through it. So you're completely alone and isolated, which is the worst thing to be when you're feeling down. You don't know what to do, and because you've never been through it before. When you go through these things, I really believe, and I know people talk about this all the time, and usually you roll your eyes, you're like, oh, you're going to come out of this stronger. What's the benefit of this? But I really actually believe that this thing that I've been through is a gift because now I talk about it and I can see that it's a tool to help others. This thing that I thought was my weakness that I never used to talk about because I was ashamed, now I can see it's my strength, and it's lost its power because now that I can talk about it, each— the first time I talked about it on stage, I was freaked out. My hands were shaking. I had to ball them in a fist behind my back. It was— I was terrified. Next time, still shaking, but a little bit less, and then a little bit less until now.

I look forward to the opportunity to talk about it because I know that it's a tool I have to help others. And that— and the power has changed where this thing had control of me, and now I feel I have more control of it because When you speak things, they lose their power. They're much scarier when they're in your head. And so that's what I found is by talking about it, I'm able to also process it, right? Like, I can talk about it, I can break it down when I'm talking about it in therapy or talking about it with friends. So it's so important to talk about it. So I would say if you are struggling right now, if you take anything away from this podcast, it's find someone that you trust to talk about what is going on. Ideally, it's a professional. And we can talk about therapy and we talk about The challenges with finding a good therapist and, and the stigma around therapy, cuz all that is there. But just outside of that, if you can find someone to talk to, I think it's the most important thing.

Yeah. I mean, therapy, I, I, I have a therapist. I hope that stigma is gone by now, Ben, because I feel like so many people have therapists and, and therapy is really important. It's important to talk out your feelings. And I love this concept that you mentioned, you know, turning your struggles into your strengths. I think that's. Really important as well. So you mentioned sleep a few times, and people don't often relate sleep to mental health, but it's a huge component. Can you talk to us about the importance of sleep when it comes to your mood and mental health?

I don't think it's a pillar of wellness. I think it's the base of which all pillars rest. I mean, I, I have a mental health toolkit that I, that I, that are these habits that I talk about, and I, I don't even talk about sleep because sleep is the baseline. I, sleep is. For me, the most important. And there's great books out there on sleep. And Matthew Walker had a huge book that came out, and all that stuff is super interesting. I think it depends on— everyone's a little bit different. But for me, sleep is hugely impactful. And I try and get 8 hours of sleep. And it's tough for me because when I worry, I can't sleep. And so that perpetuates the problem.

Me too.

So I wake up at 4 in the morning. I can't get back to sleep. So for me, meditation is a great tool to help me sleep. So if I can't sleep, I meditate, and it may take me an hour, but slowly my mind starts to slow down, and then I can go back to sleep. I also, like, I take magnesium sometimes, which is a supplement to help you sleep. I have an eye mask. I have these, like, German wax earplugs that I get on Amazon that are great for me on the road. And all these little things. I have a chili pad that, you know, keeps my bed cold, that helps me sleep. And I think that all of these things that you can find to optimize your sleep are, are important. You don't have to be fanatical about it, but they do really help. And sleep for me is incredibly important.

Yeah, I totally agree. Sleep will change your life if you can get a little bit better sleep. All right, so let's take it back to the summer of 2006. You were 19 years old and you had the idea to gather up your friends to make a movie called The Buried Life. Talk to us about how you got that idea and what was the premise of this movie?

I came back from that summer away. I was starting to feel back to myself, lifting out of this depression. I was like, okay, I met these cool kids in this new town. I want to continue to surround myself with more people like that. There's one kid that came to mind and he was a filmmaker from my neighborhood and his name was Johnny. I secretly had always wanted to make a movie. I called up Johnny and I was like, let's make a movie if you— you know, I didn't know him too well. I was sort of going out on a limb reaching out to him. And we gathered 2 other friends. One of them was Johnny's older brother Duncan, another friend Dave. And we started talking about making this documentary. We didn't know what it was going to be about though at this point. And then serendipitously, Johnny gets assigned a poem in English class at McGill University in his first year English class. The poem is called The Buried Life. The Buried Life. So it's an old poem written in 1852, over 150 years ago. And this poem strikes a chord in Johnny and he sends it back to us.

He says, guys, this poet is talking about the same thing we're talking about right now, which basically was this idea that we felt like we had all these dreams, but we never even tried to go after them because the day-to-day buries them. Like we knew we had things that we wanted to do, but why hadn't we ever done them? It's because life got in the way and we have these moments when we're inspired, but then We get less inspired because the day-to-day pushes them. So we thought, okay, we're not the first people to feel like this. If this guy wrote this poem in 1852, let's take this name. Let's call our film The Buried Life. And our next task was to uncover these buried dreams. And the way we did that was through this question, what do you want to do before you die? Because for us, thinking about death actually made us think about life. And I'm a huge fan of thinking about death. I think that the more we can think about death, the better. And we can talk about that, but just, we stumbled into this. This was by accident. We asked ourselves this question.

Okay. Okay. We're, we realized, okay, we're gonna die one day. So if we're gonna die, which is probably the only thing we can count on in life, what do we wanna do with the time left? And that's where the bucket list came from, was, was it was our answers to the question, what do you wanna do before you die? And we pretended we had all the money in the world. We pretended that we had the ability to do anything. So our list was ambitious. It was like, make a TV show, play basketball with Obama, write a number one New York Times bestseller, sit with Oprah, have a beer with Prince Harry, pay off our parents' mortgage, go to space, streak a field and get away, ask out the girl of your dreams. You know, it was a very audacious list. And then we thought every time we crossed something off our list, let's help someone else do something on their list. And so That was the mission. We bought an RV, we bought a secondhand camera, and we planned a 2-week road trip in the summer of 2006 in Victoria, BC, where we grew up in Canada.

And we hit the road. And as soon as we hit the road, unexpectedly, people heard about our road trip, and then they started to email us, and they looked at our list, and they said, hey, I can help you cross off ride a bull. I can help you cross off get up in a hot air balloon. I can help you cross off make a toast at a stranger's wedding. And then they would send us their dreams, asking for our help. We struck this nerve and we just thought, let's keep doing this. And so this 2-week road trip ended up lasting over 10 years. And then the list items that we had written down in the beginning that we were convinced were completely unattainable, over time, they ended up falling off the list. And so we also realized that helping other people achieve their dreams meant even more than doing the big things on our list. And then along the way, built this passion for figuring out why do some people achieve their goals and go after them. But most people don't. Like, why are 76% of the people on the planet reaching their deathbed and regretting the things they didn't do, not the things they did?

And so that's why I started to speak, because I was like, okay, we need to get more people in that minority of the population that actually go after the things and be true to yourself. And really, a bucket list is just a reflection of your true self. That's the way I look at it. It's just a list of all the things that are gonna bring you joy and happiness. So it's not just skydive and go to Europe. That's one of 10 categories of your life. So you wanna think about your adventure travel goals, but you also wanna think about your mental health goals, your physical health goals. You wanna think about your— how do you wanna give back, your relationship goals, intellectual, what do you wanna learn, financial, professional? And so that's what a full bucket list is. But when we were on that road trip, we had no, no idea of any of that. We were just going out to tackle our dreams and help other people, and it sparked this lifelong learning journey.

It's so beautiful. And one thing that I really connected with, with your story was this idea that people went out of their way to help you, and that's because you guys had really good intentions and you were just trying to be of service to the world. You were trying to make the world a better place. And I can relate because when I started Young and Profiting Podcast, I had no intentions to make money. All I was trying to do is just help people listen, learn, and profit. And by, you know, month 2, I had 10 volunteers who were just working for me for free in a Slack channel helping with the movement. And it's just funny how when you wanna do good for the world, you just become magnetic and people wanna help because there are good people out there. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on, on that.

The only way that we cross things off our list is through the help of other people. I just wanna be very clear on that. You know, we had no. business or no ability to achieve any of the things that we have achieved. But people always stepped up to help us in unexpected ways because we shared our goals. Right. And I think that, you know, you, you had the idea for this podcast. 99% of people will have the idea, they'll want to do it, but they won't take that first step because of fear. Right. They're afraid of failure. They're afraid of what other people think. And that's ultimately what stops people. And that's through research, dude. And we can talk about like where that comes from, but that's the number one barrier when it comes to stopping people from achieving their personal goals. But when you don't put it out there, no one can help you. You're on your own. If you think about it, when you hit a challenge at work, typically what do you do? You go to your leader, you ask for help, you go to a mentor. Hey, have you ever been through this?

I don't know what to do. You ask a friend. But with these personal goals, we don't ask for help because of the fear. We're afraid of failure or afraid of what other people think. And then we just have lower chances of succeeding because we're trying to do it in our head on our own. So I always say when you give someone a chance to be a hero, they usually take it. And so you experienced this when you started to put this— you took the leap, you moved through that that discomfort of like, oh shit, like, what are people— is this gonna be good? What if, what if it's bad and, and, and, and it fails? Then you started to see that people were gravitating towards it because you were doing it from your true— it came out of what you truly wanted to do. This was, this is your, a reflection of your true self. And I think that at the end of the day, that is the big goal, is to be true to yourself in a world that is so hard to stay true to yourself. Everything pulls you away from that. Social media pulls you away from that.

Being disconnected pulls you away from that. The fear pulls you away from that. But when you are true to yourself, I think you're unstoppable because you're channeling this. You are the only person that can be you. And we spend most of our life trying to be other people. Anything you could do to remind yourself of who you are. And that's why I think a list is a great device to remind you. Friends that keep you accountable to these things are great reminders. But I think that what you saw is that when you were true to yourself and then you started to do this thing, it was like this gravitational pull. And then you start to see this thing happening, then you follow that momentum. And I think that sometimes we feel like we have this plan and if it's not on plan, then we got to stick to it. And I've done that a lot, but I've realized that you need to follow the energy and you need to follow what's easy. And what was easy for you, not that it is easy as in it didn't take a lot of work, easy as in you saw there was momentum and that's what you followed.

And so for me, that's been speaking. I didn't mean to be a speaker, but I did a TEDx talk and then some people asked me to speak and I love doing it and I feel like it's easy for me to do. And I work really hard, but I see that it's working. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to leave the— I started a production company with the 3 buddies that we started The Buried Life with after the show. And I left that production company, which is very hard to do speaking because I could see that it was, that was more true to me.

So following the flow. Yeah. Um, I, I totally agree with everything that you're saying. And so you came up with this bucket list, you were 19 years old, you were a little naive at the time, you know, you didn't have that much life experience. So I feel like coming up with big audacious goals when you're that young doesn't seem as frightening as if you were in your later 20s or 30s or 40s. I feel like as you get older, you feel like it's too selfish to accomplish personal goals. Like you feel like you've got all this responsibility and maybe you can't do some of the things that you always dreamed of. So I'd love to hear your thoughts about why it's not selfish to have personal goals and also how we can start to think outside the box, um, when it comes to some of these things on our bucket lists.

Yeah, great. Great point. So I think that it's not selfish to pursue your personal goals because you can't take care of other people if you can't, if you don't take care of yourself. You can't do your job if you don't take care of yourself. Uh, you can't take care of your family. You can't be who you need to be if you're not fueling yourself. And one way you fuel yourself is by doing the things that you love. So there's this big tie between purpose and your mental health that I think a lot of people are missing. And when you are following the things that you love, that are important to you, that mean something to you, that gives you a greater sense of wellbeing, that contributes to your mental health, and it, it energizes you. I think that we need to flip our thinking around this idea that it's selfish to do these things. And, and I get it. Like, I used to think a bucket list was selfish considering all my responsibilities, everything that I had to do every day. But then I started to notice that people around the world were going after their bucket list just because we were going after ours.

Thousands, tens of thousands of people through the show, millions of people. And to this day, they come up and say, oh, I saw the show and I was going to school and I decided that I wanted to travel. I met my husband when I was traveling. Now we have 4 kids and we live in Italy. Or I started a restaurant instead of being a doctor. Because when you do what you love, you inspire other people to do what they love. Just like you starting this podcast, you probably can't even count the number of people that you have inspired. So it's not selfish, it's service because you are giving other people permission to do the same and you also fuel yourself. So I think it's the same idea around taking vacation. We sometimes feel guilty when we take vacation because we're taking time off work. Well, you're not taking time off work, you're taking time off for work so that you can come back recharged and you also come back maybe with a bigger idea cuz you've taken space, you have perspective. So there are so many reasons why it's important to pursue these personal passions.

And so the first thing is give yourself permission by understanding that it's not selfish, right? Because one, you're going to inspire other people by doing those things, but you're also going to fuel yourself. And then, oh, so now you're hopefully thinking, okay, I can get around— I can back this idea that it's okay for me to have these goals. Then you look at like, what are these goals that are important to you? And sometimes it's hard to think about. You know, you look at a blank piece of paper and you're like, what's your list? And it's overwhelming. And that's why I think it's important to separate your list into categories. And so I talked about the 10 categories of life. Um, that's basically what my new book is based on, The Bucket List Journal, which I've given to you. But, uh, it just came out last week. And effectively, you write your list in those 10 categories: mental health goals, physical health goals, relationship, how do you want to give back, intellectual, financial, material goals. And then you start to move through the barriers that stop you from achieving your goals. So I mentioned there was fear.

That's number one. The other big barrier is when these personal goals, you think about them, There's no deadlines, and that's a huge problem. That's why we push them. So, you need to create accountability around the personal goals. That's why writing your list is important. That creates a small bit of accountability because you take an idea that doesn't exist, you make it real. That's why we share our goals. You share your goals so you can give other people the opportunity to help, but you also share them because then you feel accountable to the people you shared them with. If I say on this podcast, this year I'm writing a book, that's my number one goal, I'm writing a book this year. And you say, great. And then I run into you 6 months later and you say, hey, how's the book coming? And I think, oh, I better start writing that book.

Right?

So like when you share your goals, you feel accountable when you share them with your community, and then they can, they can help you. And then the third barrier, and I think we have all felt this, is that usually with these personal goals, you're waiting to feel inspired to go after them, or you're kind of waiting for the perfect time. And that inspiration just, just rarely hits.

Yeah.

So you have to create your own inspiration through action. There was never a perfect time for you to start this podcast. You were never going to have all your ducks in a row. You were never going to feel completely inspired to do it because the fear dampens that inspiration. You have to just do it and create your own inspiration. And as soon as you started the podcast, you saw the reaction and then you started to feel more and more energy and more and more inspiration. You're the architect of your own inspiration. Through action. And sometimes we just plan too much and we forget that action is a plan. You don't need to know the plan. You'll figure out the plan after you start. You do the first step, you don't need to know the second step. You'll figure out the second step after the first. It's a momentum. And so the journal is designed to create inspiration through action, to create accountability, and then to identify real fear and, and, and imagined fear.

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Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Experience the new standard in comfort and support with Honeylove. Yeah, I love what you're saying right now. It reminds me of something that Jeff Hayden talked to us about, the podcast called the motivation feedback loop. And basically what it means is that, like you said, you gotta take action. And once you get those little wins, you get that little bit of motivation to take the next step and little bit of motivation to take the next step. But it all starts with action. You have to go out and do something. To, to your point, you can't just sit there and plan and think. You've gotta take those first steps.

Mm-hmm. Yep, absolutely. And, and yeah, and that's why the fear, that's why most people don't, cuz the fear stops you from that. that first step.

Yeah. Okay. I wanna get into some story time because you've got some really incredible stories. You've been doing this for many, many years. You've helped a lot of people. So one story that really stuck out to me was about this guy named Brent who told you that he wanted to deliver pizzas to a homeless shelter. I don't wanna give away the story, so can you tell us about that?

No, it's great because you, I met you at, uh, a speaking engagement, so you were able to see, yeah, the talk. And so, you know, Some of the— at least you know my story, which is cool. Brent was the very first person that we ever helped back in 2006. You know, take you back. We're, we're, we're leaving Vancouver Island in, in Canada. We're heading to the mainland and we start to get in this RV and travel. Now there's some news starting to talk about— we would just camp out at radio stations and we wouldn't leave until they put us on the air. So we were starting to get momentum around this, uh, this idea. So emails started coming in and we got this email from this guy named Brent. And Brent says, hey guys, I'm 24. Before I die, I want to bring pizzas down to the homeless shelter. And so we're thinking, finally someone we can help. Like, we don't have much money, but we can buy pizzas. So let's go interview Brent. And so we talk with him and, uh, we find out that the reason why he wants to bring pizzas down to the homeless shelter is because he had lived in that homeless shelter for a couple years.

But he said when people came in with food to the homeless shelter, it felt like the best day. Uh, because it felt like someone actually cared about him in a world where, where nobody really cared about him. And we found that he'd actually pulled himself out of this homeless shelter by starting his own landscaping business. And his landscaping business relied on his truck, and his truck had recently broken down. And so the 4 of us thought, we gotta figure out a way to get this guy a truck. Because when we asked him, is there anything we can do to help? He wouldn't ask for help, uh, around the truck. He would just ask for help. to get the pizzas. So we thought, that's pretty cool that, you know, this guy's in a tough spot and he's not even asking for anything for himself. We didn't have much money at the time. We had $480 between the 4 of us, uh, Canadian. So it's less, right? So that's like not much cash. So we went to an RV— no, sorry, a used car salesman. And we said, this is the story of this guy in your community.

You know what? And, and the cheapest truck on the lot was $2,100. And he sold the truck to us for $480,000. And then he paid for the insurance out of his own pocket. We're at the age, we didn't even know that you needed insurance. This is all our money. And so anyways, he was— so this idea of we gave him a chance to be a hero and he took it, they saw that so many times. Drive up to Brent, throw him the keys, and he just sort of started to cry and he bear hugged me and— didn't let go for a long time. We hung out with him and his girlfriend that day, and we sort of all felt like, okay, this is what this is about, and we have to keep doing this. And that was the catalyst to continue to do this again the next summer, this feeling that we had never felt before, which was helping a stranger, helping someone we didn't know. And we hadn't done that before in our lives. We didn't I hadn't volunteered in high school or, or, or experienced that. So yeah, that was, that was very impactful.

And so you went on to do a lot of bucket list items that are really impressive. You started an MTV show, you escaped a desert island, you had a beer with Prince Harry, you even got on Oprah, and you also played basketball with President Obama, which is pretty damn impressive. So what was your favorite story? Tell us like your favorite story, uh, and like the crazy things that you did to accomplish your goals.

There's a lot of crazy stories. I love the President Obama story, but I won't tell that one because you've heard it. But just to give the—

I haven't. By the way, I missed your speech at the event, so I haven't heard it.

Okay, great. That's great.

Plus, we've got thousands of listeners, so tell me.

Okay, well, I'll tell the President Obama story quickly, and then I'll tell another one after that as well, very quickly. President Obama, we had no connections to the White House, so, you know, we just drove there and started asking people on the street if they knew anyone in the White House, which is not— didn't get us very far. But we started to send emails to people that we found. We just like contacted politicians' offices basically, and we met with a couple lower-level officials and they— and then we were— could convince them to, to meet with their boss, and then we met with their boss and we got all the way up to the Secretary of Transportation. And he put in the call to the White House. And we were stoked, and then we got an official rejection letter from the White House. And then we were like, okay, well, that's too bad. I guess we're going to have to change our tact. And so we decided, instead of going after the president, we'd go after the president's personal aide. Because the personal aide to the president, he set up the basketball games with President Obama, and there was these secret basketball games that everyone was trying to figure out a way to get involved with.

And so we found what we thought was the president's personal aide's email, and we started sending him emails every day with a challenge to a basketball game. So we said, you and the president versus us tonight, 7:30 at the YMCA, be there. And we'd show up at the Y at 7:30 and no president. We did it the next day, no president. So we did this for a week. We picketed outside the White House with signs, we sent letters, and at this point, like, no one is meeting with us anymore. So we just accept defeat and we leave. Then I get a blocked call a couple days later, and I pick it up and it's the personal aide to the president. And he's like, what's this I hear about you wanting to play basketball against the president and I? And I explain what we're doing and he's like, you know what? I can make this happen. I feel good about this. Gimme 2 weeks. I just need to run it by the press team. They gotta sign off on everything. I'll get back to you in 2 weeks. Calls me in 2 weeks. He's like, it's not gonna happen.

And we're like, oh Jesus. Okay. So now he's like, listen, I'm sorry. I don't know if you're back in DC. Let me know. Maybe I can give you a tour of the White House. Cut to 3 months later, we're back in DC. The personal aide to the president, true to his word, gives us a personal tour of the White House, walks us through the West Wing, shows us his office next to the Oval Office, down the back steps of the White House. By the way, we didn't know what to wear, so we rented suits from a prom rental store, right? So we're like on the White House basketball courts. Manicured hedges, presidential seal on each hoop, one presidential basketball. We're shooting around and the president's not in town. And because this was back when he— I forget why he was supposed to be out of town for something. So we're shooting around and then all of a sudden I hear my friend go, oh my God, oh my God, it's the president. And President Obama walked on the court. And he totally surprised us. And we were totally awestruck. And so we met the president, we shot around with him for 15, 20 minutes, immediately forgot he's the president because he's the coolest man on earth.

We were trying to hit shots he wasn't hitting. We were trash talking. It was really, really incredible. And that was amazing because it was—

What a great memory.

Yeah, it was definitely the most impossible thing I remember writing down. I remember When we came up with that idea for the list, I laughed because it was so impossible. I was like, this is hilarious that this is so impossible. Let's put it on the list. It was definitely— and then to see him stroll on the court, I was like, wow, I guess I have no choice but to believe that anything's possible because I just proved to myself that this was possible. And I thought this was impossible and now it happened. And so now I have No choice but to believe that these things can come to fruition. And I think that that's a very common feeling, is that you don't know what's possible until you're doing it. And that's really important. You don't know what's possible until you're actually doing it. You can't even imagine yourself achieving some of these things until you've achieved it. And then you prove to yourself. And everyone has the ability to prove to themselves that these things are possible.

I wanna touch on this point because I really, really resonate with it. I always tell my listeners, and when I'm getting interviewed on other podcasts, people are like, what is your secret to life? How did you become successful? And I always say like, you have to believe that life is limitless. And I feel like once I really believe that, that's when everything started to happen. Once you really believe that there's no limits to your life. And so that's really awesome that you had that mindset shift, and I'm sure That's helped you achieve more and more of these goals. So tell us another one of your stories, and then I wanna hear what's still on your list. What have you not yet accomplished?

Uh, okay. Well, there's a couple. One quick story is we tried to streak a field and get away. We didn't get away. We ended up spending the night in jail, but spend a night in jail's on the list. So that was, at least we crossed off one.

You double, a double whammy.

Uh, you know, one of the things on the list was ask out the girl of your dreams. At the time, the girl of my dreams was Megan Fox. This was back in the Transformers movie days. I snuck onto the red carpet at the premiere of the Transformers film pretending that I was working for Us Weekly. So I had a spot on the red carpet, I had a microphone, and the cord of the microphone was just going into my pocket. And I had a camera guy with me because we were filming. And I snuck onto the red carpet in the press line. Megan Fox coming up, she comes up right up to me. I start interviewing her with this microphone, by the way, is not connected to anything. And I'm like, hey, how you doing? My name's Ben. And she's like, oh, my first boyfriend's name is Ben. And I'm like, uh, and I start to get super nervous and I start talking about something. And then her publicist pulled her away and I completely blew it. I failed. I didn't ask her out. And we did that on the show, by the way. And it It was a complete embarrassment.

I didn't ask her out. But then the next season, Duncan was like, hey, I'm going to redeem you, which is good, I guess, because he was like, I'm going to ask out Taylor Swift. That was his girl of his dreams at the time. So we dressed up Duncan like a fake country music star named Boone McCaw because we knew that she was going to be at the CMT Awards, Country Music Television Awards. So we dressed him in all white, handlebar mustache, cowboy hat, Boone McCaw. Dave was his guitar-playing partner named Patagonia. He had a big jacket with tassels, another mustache, wig. I was the publicist, so I was wearing an earpiece and I was running alongside them because then we rented a big horse and chariot and we were going to just bum rush the music awards to try and get in. And we had, at that point it was season 2, and so we tweeted out and we had probably 100 or 200 fans come out and we made fake country music. I forget what the magazine is, but basically Duncan's face on as Boone McCaw on the COVID of this magazine. We had I Heart Boone t-shirts.

Country Music Television Awards, they're happening. All of a sudden, this white chariot with horses starts to just run towards the entrance of the awards. There's cops everywhere. And as soon as it happens, all the fans are around. the entrance, and they start going crazy. And I'm running along with my earpiece on and my walkie-talkie, and cops let us through. We go to the front of the red carpet, publicists, everyone's letting us through, the producers. And then someone recognized us and they're like, no way, Buried Life, you're out of here. Because CMT is— Viacom owns MTV. and the awards. And so they knew about us and they were— someone tipped them off that we were coming or something. And that's why we had to wear fake mustaches and stuff like that. Anyways, we didn't give up. I snuck in the back. By the way, if you ever want to sneak in anywhere, just wear all black and hold a walkie-talkie. You basically look like a roadie. If you have a clipboard, that's even better. And you can pretty much walk in everywhere. So I walked in the back and I ended up nabbing 2 passes. I said I was part of Kid Rock's crew.

I got 2 passes. I came out, I gave one to Duncan. He got in all black. He went in the back. He walked right up to Taylor Swift who was sitting in her seat, passed her a note. The note was asking her out. And then he ended up actually going out on a date with her. That was a success.

Wow. What a great story. And I love your tip about just wearing all black pretending to be like a PR person, get in anywhere. That's so funny.

Yeah.

So I know that you guys have like other items on the list that are going to be really hard to accomplish. I think you, you want to go to space. Is that right? What other items have you not yet achieved?

Go to space, make a TV— sorry, make a movie, right? I'd like to finish— excuse me— the Buried Life documentary that we started filming for the, you know, all those years on the road through the show and everything. So it's a really cool story to tell there. Tell a judge you want the truth, you can't handle the truth. Because— but it has to be real. We've got invited to do it to judges, but I think that we've got to be in a real courtroom. And then I think host Saturday Night Live is the last one, which would be probably the hardest. Yeah, go to space is going to be tough, but I think I'm going to do that in 2024. I'm talking with this company called Worldview, which is sending these capsules up to space in a big air balloon, and it's like 8 people can go in it. So that'll be probably 2024.

Awesome. Well, I can't wait to see you on SNL. I think it's definitely gonna happen. So Ben, we're gonna wrap up the interview now. I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions that we always ask our guests, and then we'll talk about where everyone can find the Bucket List Journal. So my question to you is, what is one actionable thing our listeners can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

Yeah, write down your goals. It seems simple, but it's a very big step to write down your goals. It makes them real. They're not ideas anymore. Then they're a reminder that they exist. It also forces you to slow down to think about what's important to you. In a world where 76% of the population, their biggest regret on their deathbed is, I wish I would've lived for me, not what others expected of me or what I thought I should do, right? It's important that we slow down to think about what's important to us. Again, it's all coming back to Being true to yourself. And that's one step to being true to yourself is reflecting to understand what you really want and make sure that you're not subconsciously doing things because you think it's what's expected of you. So 76% of people on their deathbed, their number one regret in their entire life— this comes out of research from Cornell— their number one regret, I wish I would have lived my ideal self, the life I wanted. Not what others wanted for me. So no one should have that regret on their deathbed. Right. And basically the bucket list journal is hopefully designed to solve that problem for you so that you identify what your goals are and then you start to build accountability, build inspiration through action, and move through the fear so that you don't end up on your deathbed regretting the things that you didn't do.

Yeah. And I, I love the journal. I've been starting to use it. So thank you so much for giving me an advanced copy. And Ben, what is your secret to profiting in life?

Thinking about your death. And it sounds weird, but if you think about what's important in your life, you look at the top 5 regrets of the dying. They don't have much to do with money. The top 5 regrets of the dying are, I wish I would've lived for me. I wish I would've told people how I really felt. I wish I would've worked less. I, I wish I would've let myself be happier. And I wish I would've stayed in touch with my friends. Okay? So those are the top 5 regrets that people have at the end of their life. So you need to remember that your time is finite to put things in perspective. So yes, you wanna make money. Yes, you wanna be successful. When you do an, uh, a eulogy for a friend, you don't usually talk about how much money they had. You don't usually talk about how successful they are. You talk about they were a good friend. They embodied these values. And so these types of things, and if you just look at the 5 regrets, you want to make sure that you can keep death close to you so it reminds you that your time is limited so that you live with intention.

And you hear this all the time. I had a near-death experience and everything changed. My dad died and everything changed. Why does it take a traumatic experience to wake us up? How can you keep that perspective without going through that trauma or without it being too late? And that is, I think, the big goal is to remind yourself every day that this could be your last. I mean, it sounds cliché, but that's the truth. Best case scenario, you have another 50 years. But it's just interesting that if you see a 90-year-old person with a cane hunched over, shuffling down the street, You never think that that's going to be me. You don't even think about it. Well, the only thing you can count on is that will be you. Best case scenario, you might die in a week. And we just don't think about it. We think we have all this time. You don't. You don't have the time. Because when you look at the research, that's the biggest regret that people have in their life is they wish they would have done the things they didn't do. So start now. A year from now, You'll wish you started today.

That's the truth.

Yeah, I love that message. And so many really successful people who have been on the show have a similar thought. Robert Greene, Matt Higgins, Donald Miller, everybody of everybody that I've talked to lately seems to always talk about how you need to use death as a motivator and death can be your life's greatest motivator. So I really agree with that perspective. Ben, where can everybody get the Bucket List Journal?

Uh, you can get it on Amazon if you search The Bucket List Journal, should be the first thing that pops up. Or you can go to my Instagram, which is @BenNemtin, and, uh, the link in the bio will send you to The Bucket List Journal website.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for this eye-opening conversation.

Thank you so much for having me. It's good to chat again.