 So Ben, I don't know if you remember this, but I certainly did. And I had to bring this up in our prep to AJ because I was curious, as I was doing research for this show, I was like, wait a minute, all of this sounds so familiar. And it hit me that this is not the first, well, this is your first time on the art of charm, but not your first time on a radio show with AJ and I. And a very long time ago, we had a show on Sirius Radio called Game On. And you and Duncan from the Berry Life were our guests in Los Angeles. Do you remember that Ben? Yeah, I do. Many moons ago, in another lifetime, we had a discussion where you know what, we probably had quite a few less list items crossed off at that point. That was probably yeah, that was right when we were doing the MTV show. Yeah, I think it was season two was like in the kickoff and we were doing PR for that season. The things that I was remembering, I was like, wait a minute, basketball with Obama. Wait a minute. I know who this is. Yeah, yeah, I'm sneaking up on you. So yeah, how's the last 10 years been for you guys? Less inventful for us. It sounds like you've been having some fun though. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's good to reconnect guys. Well, yeah, I guess we we should start there and you can fill our audience in about the Berry Life and then just in a brief on where you are now and we can kick this off. Absolutely. So it's it's good to be back. I guess I should say first and foremost, after the long hiatus. Welcome back. It's good to see you guys and I I'm excited to sort of share where where I'm at because for you guys, it's been the same. You've had this this robust evolution of what you do. And my evolution has been very unexpected and still continues to kind of flower, so to speak. So I'm excited to fill you guys in on where I'm at. But you know, if we take it back to the beginning, you know, to tell the story properly, I got to go way back to high school when I was growing up in Victoria, BC. And I'm going to make this quick. I'm going to try and make this story as quick as possible. But I think it's important to understand where this came from because it really sort of sheds light into where I am right now and why I'm doing what I'm doing. Because I was in my first year of university. Actually, I just got just graduated from high school. But I always put so much pressure on myself to succeed to the detriment of my own health because I had an academic scholarship and I was playing pretty high level rugby. And I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well in sports and in school. And ultimately, I just started to shut down. I was working myself to the bone. I was worrying about my performance in in rugby. And I started to get anxiety. I started to lose sleep. And I started to get depressed. And this was a feeling I'd never felt before. I was always a type. I was outgoing, happy, go lucky guy. And now I had trouble going to school. I had trouble going to rugby practice, like I had trouble eventually even leaving my parents' house. So I was completely crippled by this depression. And it felt like it just knocked me off my feet. You know, I never I didn't know what to do. I didn't know who to talk to I hadn't ever experienced anything. I just thought I was broken basically. And what happened was, number one, I finally started talking to a therapist, which ultimately was the most important piece of my recovery. But another important piece was, I started to be intentional about the people I surrounded myself with. And I tried to and this was just by necessity because I felt so shitty. I tried to surround myself with people that gave me energy, because I was so low. And I realized that there were so many different types of people out there. And there was all these kids my age that had already started their own businesses, right? And I never met kids like that in my high school. There was kids that were creative, they would just think of something and then do it or they were kids that had traveled. And these were the types of kids that started to make me feel more alive. And I started to feel inspired just being around them. And so at some point, I was like, okay, I'm going to try and only surround myself with people like that, that inspire me. And there was only one kid that I knew of that was inspiring and he was a filmmaker from my neighborhood, he just made summer movies. And his name is Johnny. And so great name. And I called up Johnny, I was like, Johnny, you make these movies, I would love to make a movie. I have no idea how to do it. But do you want to make a movie? And he said sure. And we called his older brother, Duncan, who was also on the show with you guys last time, we called our other buddy Dave. And the four of us got together and we're like, okay, we're making a movie, we have no idea what's going to be about. But the serendipitous thing that happened was Johnny got assigned a poem in English class that he was in his first year university. And the poem was called The Buried Life. And his old 150 year old poem, he read it just because it was homework. But when he read it, something struck a chord. And he was like, Oh, shit, this poet is talking about the same thing that the four of us are talking about. And that is we have all these things that we want to do in our life these we have all these dreams. But we never actually tried to go after any of them because the day to day buries them. And we have these moments when we're inspired to go after them, but life gets in the way. And so we thought, okay, we're not the first people to feel like this, if this guy wrote this in 1852, let's make our movie about this, like let's make our film about going after our buried dreams. And that's where the bucket list started to come from was just thinking about all the things we wanted to do before we died. And then we thought, let's help other people as well achieve their bucket list items, because we're definitely going to need help with achieving ours. So it makes sense just to keep paying that back. And that was the premise for the documentary this is back in 2006, by the way, on an island in Canada, we're like, we're going to go for a two week road trip. We're going to tackle our list. We're going to help other people. And it'll be amazing. And then we'll, we'll show our friends this little film that we make. And what was unexpected is that as soon as we started to travel and we just beg, borrowed and stole to get this road trip off the ground, and we like board an RV, we got a camera on eBay, we just started throwing parties as fundraisers so we could pay for gas. And we hit the road. We didn't even really tell people that we were doing this road trip, because it was so weird, right. And so we hit the road. But people slowly started to hear about it. And emails was trickle in and they'd be like, Hey, I saw your bucket list on your website. Get up in a hot air balloon. My friend works for Remax, she can help you get in a hot air balloon or you want to ride a bull, my uncle has a bull ranch or, you know, you want to make a toast to strangers wedding. My buddy's getting married. I'm the best man I can sneak you in. And then they started to send us their dreams, asking for our help. They're like, Can you guys help us fly a fighter jet? Can you help me sing a duet with Beyonce? Can you help me, you know, ride a horse through a drive through? So we're like, holy crap, we had no idea it would actually people would care, right? We're just doing it for fun. But people were inspired to go after their list just because we were going after ours. It was almost like in a funny way, we were giving people permission to dream by going after our dreams. And I started to realize this ripple effect that happens when you do what you love, you inspire other people to do what they love. And I always thought it was selfish. But I realized you're actually empowering other people to do what they want to do just by being your true self and doing the things that you love. And for me, this was the first time in my life that I had started to go after the things I truly wanted, where I thought I had been going after the things I wanted. But I was I was I was going after the dreams I knew other people said were quote unquote success, make the national rugby team, get the academic scholarship, you know, go into medicine. This was the path I was on. And it was liberating for me to write down the things that I wanted. And then it was it was energizing to start to go after them and to share them with people and see people step up to help. And how much, you know, this fun that we were having and this momentum that was building was so contagious that we just kept doing it. And this two week road trip ended up lasting. Here we are 15 years. Right. And we started to cross off these list items that we had no business crossing off and we helped people we had no business helping. So now I've come to this point where I've sort of realized, wow, this this bucket list thing is very powerful. It's more than just adventure and travel and skydive and go to Europe. And it's it's really a device to remind yourself of the things that are going to bring you true joy and happiness and fulfillment. And in today's day and age, everything pulls you away from that, it feels like. And so we rarely stop to think about what we truly want. And the biggest regret we have in our death bed is not living for us. 76% of people on their death bed. They their number one regret is I wish I would have lived for me, not what other people wanted for me or what was expected of me. And so I've come to realize that this is a huge problem. And this is the problem I'm hoping to solve is get less people to reach their death bed and and realize shit, I blew it, you know, and I want people to at least try and prove to themselves that things are possible. Just like you have proved to yourself that these things are possible. And you have shown your listeners that these things are possible by doing what you love, right? By pursuing and listening to your true authentic self and letting that lead you. And I think that that's where you make your biggest impact. And that's how you become the most successful person personally and in business. And so that that's what brought me here. One of the things that comes up while you're speaking about all of this, some of the memories of our first conversation way back in Los Angeles has now coming up. And I remember how parallel all of our stories were. And you bring sharing this all again. I'm like, Oh, right. And we had such a blast. And there's two things that come to mind here that I wanted to touch on at this point. So number one is when all of us started in 2006, and we were just about a couple years later, getting started, all of this technology was brand new. And we were all excited. And in 2006, I was managing a bar, a rock and roll of music venue, which I was doing everything. I was was the talent buyer. I was the bar manager. I was bar tending. I was I lived there. I had a room upstairs. That was of the bar that I worked at just so I could get everything done and just be around the place at all times. But I remember with all the technology and this was social media wasn't really a thing yet. It was still in its infancy and it was still getting the bugs worked out of what it was going to be. But I remember going everything is going to be happening online. And if and I remember that there was a lot of excitement around it. And I wanted to be a part of that. And I did not know how I was going to, but I was going to figure it out. And this brings me to the second point, which is when I started to tell my friends what I wanted to do and what I was looking into, they all laughed at me. They all said that I couldn't do it. There's no reason why I should be doing it. And when we discuss the future, our dreams, what we want to accomplish, the missions in life that we want to achieve, there's a way of presenting it that rallies people and gets them interested in your story and wanting to be a part of it. And we'll get to that. And then there's another part of people who, and AJ mentioned this earlier, the naysayers who their first instinct is the crap all over what your thoughts are and dreams are and what your reach is because they're utterly terrified of having to do that for themselves. And the only way that they can deal with that situation is to grab crabs in a bucket to make sure that you don't get out and that you're locked in so they don't have to see you escape. They're what they consider their own torment, which is the prison they've created for themselves because they're unwilling to break the chains of of their mind. So I think I don't think if I if you look at the research out of Cornell by this psychologist Tom Gillivish, who found that most people regret the things they didn't do at the end of their life, not what they did do. You also learned that there's these three barriers that stop people. And the biggest is what you're speaking to, which is fear. There's this huge fear around going after these things that you felt back in 2008 or whenever you started to actually go towards this, which is like, OK, what are people going to think? And the fear of failure. And both of these are fears that never go away. You rarely overcome these fears and then are ready to do it. If you're waiting for the perfect time, it will never come. If you're waiting to feel inspired, you'll never feel inspired to do it. You're always having to move through this discomfort because that discomfort ultimately means growth, right? You're never going to grow unless you feel that unease. It forces you to learn about yourself. You're pushing your boundaries, right? So it doesn't feel comfortable because you're expanding and most people get stopped at that fear. And so when you spoke about these friends that you told these things to and they said, Johnny, get real. This is a dumb idea. And I'm looking out for you and I'm your good friend and I want the best for you. And I just don't want you to blow it. You've worked so hard to become this manager at this bar and you've put in all this time and work and you're sleeping upstairs and you put in the equity, like this equity of energy to be where you are. And you've built this career and you want to go and do what? Like this thing that doesn't make any sense. I just don't think that's a good idea. Well, good intentions, right? A lot of them were looking out for you. And then a lot of them just, they're not living their true self and they subconsciously don't want you to live yours because that's just going to make them feel even shittier, right? And more stuck. The thing that I stumbled into sort of unintentionally was being very intentional about the people that I surrounded myself with. So I tried to start to only surround myself with people that if I shared this idea, they would say, fuck, yeah, that's amazing. You have to do that, right? Or just by being around them, I felt like I could do anything. You know, for instance, I this kid that I knew from high school started a clothing line right out of high school. I was so blown away by this. I didn't even know how he did it. I had to ask him, like, how did you do this? I said, what do you mean? I said, well, how did you start this clothing line? You don't have experience in fashion. You don't, you know, you don't have any money in the bank. Well, I just took out a loan and I did it. And it blew my mind. It's like, oh, okay. Well, if he did that, I wonder what I could do. And that's when I thought I want to make a movie. So there's two things that happen when you surround yourself with people that inspire you or give you energy. One, they want you to win, right? They support you emotionally. They may even be there when you stumble to help you through it. They will they will help with resources. They will help connect you with people and they are champion of you as a person. They feel better when you win. The second thing that happens is by being around them just by osmosis, you feel like you can do more. It's like the high tide rises all boats. You see them do amazing things and you think, man, if they did that, I wonder what I could do. I know they're not that much better than me. They're just my friend, right? They're a regular human being. So instead of just seeing people that you don't know succeed like Oprah, you're like, well, Oprah's a saint. Of course, she succeeds. She's incredible. She's smarter than me. She's, you know, like walks on water. It's like, no, Oprah's a human being. She started the same way everyone else started, brick by brick. But you really internalize that when you see people that you know do great things because you're connected to them in a real way. So you think that you can do great things. You get inspired just by seeing them do amazing things. And that's a powerful orbit to be in because it just keeps spiraling up. And so the question is, well, what if no one in my life is inspiring and no one gives me that type of energy? Go find them. Exactly. This is where the work comes. There's no silver bullet. But you have to do the work to find one person that maybe it's in the the area that you're passionate about. Let's say you're passionate about knitting. Okay, this is your this is your calling. Put yourself out there. And this is where you have to move through the fear. Go to your city's knitting meetups, you know, look for people that have this similar interest, put yourself out there, you know, be uncomfortable, meet new people, start to talk about this passion you have of knitting and see if other people have it, or if they know other people that have it, and identify those people, find them and once you find one person that gives you that feeling. And when I'm talking about this feeling, I can I can break it down even more. You're looking for people that make you feel more alive. You're you're looking for people that give you this energy to make you feel like you're more yourself when you're around them. You know, it's easy to be around them. You feel energized coming out of every interaction. You're you're you're happier. You sort of you have this they give you this life force. And you find one person that does that. And then you hang out with their friends. Because like-minded people tend to hang out together. And you lean into that friendship. You ask them to introduce you to their friends. You go to a dinner party or you you go to a function where they're bringing their friends and likely you'll find more people like that and lean into those relationships and lean out of the other relationships. They don't give you entry because we have this this thought that we are tethered to these relationships that we have had for a long time. So I've known this person for 20 years. I can't just cut them out of my life. Well, no, you first of all, you can do whatever you want. If it's not good for you, it's not good for you. Right. There's there's no rules. You just need to make sure you take care of yourself. You don't need to like send them an email say, John, sorry, it's been a it's been a treat like we're never talking again. Because you just just slowly beat one be aware that you need to protect yourself when you're around those people and just slowly lean out of that relationship and lean into relationships that mean some of you. We grow and change so much that our relationships also grow and change. There's nothing wrong with that type of evolution of friendships of partnerships, right, in a relationship. This happens. This happens in your career. You want to recycle your career as much as you need to to stay passionate about it so that your career also gives you that energy, right. If possible, it's difficult sometimes not always possible to do that. And if you can't do that, then you want to lean into these people and these other things on your bucket list that give you that energy. But really, this whole idea, as I said, I've realized is like coming back to who you truly are, because that is what I think is going to bring you the most happiness and vitality in the long run. And sometimes you have to break out of that small town mindset and actually relocate. You know, Johnny and I grew up in the suburbs of big cities, but we were surrounded by people with small town mindset of checking those boxes, the safe route. You can't possibly have a bucket list, including Obama. We're in the middle of Michigan. He doesn't hang out here, right? And then you relocate to a place like LA and everyone has big dreams and everyone is chasing them with their fullest zeal. And you realize like, whoa, there's a different mindset that I could tap into. And sometimes you have to relocate. You know, we started this around the same time. And I think technology then had this great unifier of people wanting to help people wanting to help grow the podcast, introducing us to gas, wanting to help you guys go after your bucket list. And there's become this amplification of positive messages and support and negative messages and support and tearing people down and trolling them and telling them that they're awful. And I always go back to the man in the arena quote of I want to surround myself with people who are in the arena who are chasing their dreams who are getting knocked down, but getting back up. I don't care about the people who have a bunch of complaints about my audio issues on the podcast or the videos grainy when they don't have their own show. They're not putting themselves out there in this way. They're not being this vulnerable. Their word carries less weight to me. And if I can't find those people in the arena in my own hometown, I go to the meetup groups, I try. It might be time to move. We relocated to New York, relocated to LA. And my life has changed dramatically because of that relocation. And I was just talking about this with one of our X Factor Accelerator members, Matthew, he's at a small town in Colorado. And he's like, man, it seems like everything's happening in the Denver area. But it's like a two hour drive for me. It's really tough to get out there. And of course, it's also expensive, you know, hotel room, Airbnb. And I said, well, you know, you could start to build a social circle now in Denver. There are sites that allow you to be a house sitter, to be a dog sitter, a cat sitter, and he loves dogs. You could dog sit a weekend a month over the next six months, start immersing yourself in Denver, meeting these awesome people going on better dates. And all of a sudden, you might have that opportunity now in Denver to relocate something that's really scary, that has all of those fears come up. I can't do this. I don't know anyone there. How am I going to make friends and slowly work your way to that end goal over a few months, six months a year and be surprised what a change in location and a change in who you surround yourself with creates this possibility that we're so excited about that started the podcast and the company that started the buried life and just a video for you and your friends that became an MTV show that became your life's passion. That was all possible because we looked outside of those negative voices, those small town mindsets, those checkboxes that everyone around us seems to think is the safest option to success until they get on their deathbed full of that regret that, you know, I felt when I left grad school, my family was like, what the hell is wrong with you? You can't follow your dreams of a podcast. You can't move to New York City, not knowing anyone. What is coaching? That's not going to make you any money. Stay in grad school. Do the research, be a doctor, check that box first, and then you can live your dreams. And we kind of fall in this path of like, okay, well, my dreams will come after the next checkbox. And then it's like, well, you need the house. And then you need the kids. And then all of a sudden you've lived your life by checkboxes and you feel tied down in so many ways that a bucket list, I can't even think about a bucket list. I got diapers to change. I got a mortgage to pay. So it's amazing to start young. One of the biggest regrets of a lot of our clients is like, man, I wish I knew this stuff when I was in my 20s. I was a teenager. So I would have that mindset unpacking all of this, now understanding the importance and dreaming big, how do we actually move past those fears and put together a bucket list because you mentioned earlier, for a lot of people bucket list sounds like jumping out of planes, wrestling alligators, like adventure type stuff. But your journal really breaks down that it's not just about this adventure. There's categories as you mentioned to it. So let's dive into how we actually get started. What does this bucket list really look like? Yeah, first of all, very well said, I was inspired by your your thoughts right there. And I think that I just wanted to touch on one thing that you said, which is how difficult it is to take the first step, because that ties into what do you do? How do you how do you make this life, this these big things that you want? How do you find the purpose in your life? Big daunting questions. Well, you just do the first thing you can think of. And that is going on whatever it is, wag.com setting up a profile so that you can start to like babysit dogs in Denver once one weekend a month just to start going out there to see what happens. Like there's don't look at these things like your life's purpose or these big goals. Look at them as experiments. Look at them as projects that you're just going to go and try and see how it feels. You know, and if this thing that you do starts to energize you and you realize you're in Denver and all of a sudden you're meeting these cool people and you're realizing you just can't wait to get back there once you spend the weekend. There is your indication that, OK, I think I need to move to Denver, but you're just never going to know until you push through that fear of the unknown. I don't know anyone in Denver. You know, everyone thinks I'm like I just graduated grad school and I'm babysitting dogs. Like, come on, I'm supposed to be, you know, going on to my career. You really have to understand that if people think you're crazy, that's good. Right. That is a good sign. That means that that you are on your path of and I think that I like to look at it like this. In fact, this isn't even my idea. This is a great quote from Les Brown. Just he's a legendary thought leader and speaker. But he has this quote that has really stuck with me. It's basically something like this. Imagine you are on your deathbed and in your final hours ghosts come to the side of your bed and it's the ghosts of the dreams you never fulfilled. The ideas you had but never acted on, right? And and all of the things that you wanted to do, but you didn't do and they come to your deathbed and they say, hey, we came to you while you were alive. And only you had the ability to bring us to life and you didn't. And now we come to you and we die with you forever. The reason people think that it's crazy is because they don't have the key to unlock this gift. Only you have the key to make these things happen. We all have these unique abilities and gifts that we are supposed to act on. And most of us push them away. And that's why they come back eventually and haunt you at the end of your life. You have an obligation to act on these to because only you can realize them. So you have the obligation to at least try. Maybe they won't work. That's great. Like at least you don't regret not trying. You are at the very least going to learn something about yourself at the very least you're going to grow. So the first step is what stops most people. And so I like to make the first step as easy as possible. Write it down. What is it? Because a lot of times we don't even take the time to think about what we really want. So the great thing about writing your list is that you take something that doesn't exist and you make it real. So now you have a reminder. This is like a contract with yourself where you're taking this thing that's intangible. It's a thought and now it's suddenly tangible. And as you start to get buried by everything, you know, the chatter that everyone's saying you shouldn't do it, the obligations that you have, you come back to your list and it points you in the direction that you need to go. The great thing about writing your list too is it starts to build accountability. And I told you that the psychologist found three reasons that we don't do these things. One of them is fear. The other is there's no deadlines for personal goals. There's no deadline for your client or friend to move to Denver, right? If he doesn't do it next year, no one's going to come down and fire him. You know, no one's going to going to slap his wrist. Nothing happens. So that's why we think, well, I'll do it when I get to it. You know, it's not a good time right now to move to Denver. You know, I'm going through a rough patch in my relationship. So I need to make sure or, you know, I want to get the kids through their first year of school or, you know, all these things that are perfectly viable. But those things will always be there. So there's no deadlines. We need to create accountability. Writing down your goals. It seems very small. It creates accountability. You're 42% more likely to achieve your goal just by writing it down. And it starts to build inspiration because the second the other problem that we face is we're waiting to feel inspired to go after these things, right? And we're waiting for the perfect time. So you need to create your own inspiration through action. So you're the architects of your own inspiration just by taking action. You don't need to know how you're going to move to Denver or what you're going to do there. You just do the first thing. Go there for the weekend. Done. And you go there and then you're like, oh, OK. Now I'm thinking about I this is the area that I want to be now that I've moved here. I sort of understand like this is where I want to be. And so your next step is next time go to this area. And that's where you're spending the weekend. And then you start to meet people and then you realize, OK, now I'm going to start to put together. I'm going to go to this this dinner party or I'm going to do this. So you start to figure out the next steps as you go. No one has the plan. Action is the plan, right? I'm just going to reiterate that because this is so important. You don't need to know the plan and sometimes we over plan and we forget that action is the plan. So you want to take action. You want to write your list. And I think what I wanted to do with the journal is help people reframe what a bucket list is. So it's not just as you said. And as I said before, these items like adventure and travel bungee jump, you know, travel to Scotland. Those are great list items, but they only represent one of 10 categories of your life. So you want your list to reflect your holistic self. So you want to think about adventure and travel, but you also want to think about how do you want to give back? What are your professional goals? What are your financial goals? What are your creative goals? Which I think is an often overlooked pillar of wellness, creativity, because that's your full that's your true expression. So, you know, talk about me missing my creative list when I was in high school. I really wanted to make a sketch comedy show with my friends. I wanted to make a movie. Like that's all I wanted to do. And buried life became that outlet for that creativity. And it was so much fun. It was so energizing. It led to everything else. So creativity, you know, writing, playing music, you know, improv, whatever that might be. That's just your you get energy doing it, right? Mental health goals. What do you do to to reduce stress? Physical health. Relationships is a big one. One of the top five regrets of the dying is I wish I would have stayed in contact with friends. Oh, that's brutal, right? That doesn't cost any money. What relationships are you just letting slide that you would regret not fostering if they died tomorrow, right? So the journal, you write your list in 10 different categories. So you kind of get that full holistic bucket list. And then you look, I outline those three problems, create accountability, create inspiration through action and identify real and imagined fears. And you start to take these steps to do that. You create an accountability buddy. You set a deadline for your goal. So, you know, it's like your friend, I'm going to move to Denver. You know, I'm going to spend a week, a month by January, end of January, right? And I'm going to start doing that. What's your reward? Okay, when I do that and I go to Denver, I'm going to buy myself a nice pair of pants in Denver, you know? Or I'm going to, whatever it might be, like set a reward. It's like when you work out and you get yourself a smoothie at the end of your workout, you start going to work out just so you can have a smoothie because you love it so much. And you start to break it down into manual steps. So the journal was really designed to be a safe place for your dreams to live so that you can come back to them because you want to evolve them as you evolve. Just how I have evolved in the past 15 years and your podcast has evolved in the last 15 years, right? Your dreams evolve. So you want to update them over time and continue to evolve them. The things that I did 10, 15 years ago with the rest of the guys, I don't want to do anymore. I don't want to streak a field, right? I don't want to try to ask out Megan Fox. I don't want to strand myself on a deserted island or try and get Jay-Z to come to my house party. Like I just, I did that. I don't want to do that anymore. It was a different time of life. Doesn't make them wrong or bad or anything. It's just, that's what I wanted to do at the time. There's no rules with a bucket list. The only rule that's important to you is that it's important to you. And so you want a place where you can stay accountable and the bucket list journal is like your accountability buddy. So in making this list, I'm assuming there's some dos and don'ts, some guidelines to help us because a lot of members in our audience are overly analytical and we want to guide them towards action. That's the most important thing. And it's the hardest thing for so many of us, especially if we're overly analytical and we want to play it safe. We want to think of contingency plans and what ifs and all that that just leads to more buts. What's your guide on the dos and don'ts of actually getting after it? So first is write your list in a journal. Doesn't need to be the bucket list journal, but some book or notepad or journal versus a loosely piece of paper or something on your phone, an app or something because you want to have something that you are able to continually come back to. And the second is think about all 10 categories of your life. If you don't get the journal, go to writeyourlist.com. That's writeyourlist.com and you can see those 10 categories, use them as a guide and start to think about areas of your life that you may just have forgotten about, right? Big one is just like play and fun, you know? What are those things that you just do for the pure joy of it? A lot of times I found as we get older, we think that we have to stop playing, right? And I don't think that you get old and stop playing. I think that you get old because you stop playing. So you want to continue to have fun and think about all those things that bring joy into your life. So, sorry, I think that's the first step is find a safe place for them, reframe kind of what you think your list should be and then you want to attach a deadline. When are you gonna do this by? If you write your dream, let's say it's something like write a book. You know, it's a big goal. You want to write your first book. You want to put down three 48-hour action items. What are the simplest things that you can do in the next 48 hours that will start to build that momentum? So that might just be calling someone and asking for help. Calling someone that you know has written a book and just say, hey, I'm starting this process. What do I do? What's a book proposal? What does that look like? How do you get an agent? And maybe it's starting to write your first page in the next 48 hours or the outline. And so another thing I think is you really want your goals to be clear so that you are able to know when you achieve them and you can celebrate that achievement. So it's not like get in shape. It's run three miles, three times per week, right? It's not prioritize love. It's like go on one date night a week, you know, with my wife, husband or partner, something like that. And I think that you want to be sort of affirmative in your language. I will do this versus try to. And I think the other piece is now you want to start to build that accountability. So who can be your accountability buddy? And it might be the other person that you're doing it with, right, if you're, say, you know, prioritize intimacy. So with your partner, you're like, okay, one date night per month or a week, I get your partner on board, right? This is, you want to say, hey, I'd love to, you know, have more intimacy in our relationship with the kids and work. We're so busy. We never take time for us. And I'm thinking we can make time for one night a week or one night a month, whatever it might be. And that's your accountability partner is your partner. So that you both work towards that, you know, or let's say it's, you want to learn an instrument. So you might tell your partner or your boss, hey, listen, like I used to play piano and I haven't done it for 10 years. I really want to get into it. So I've got piano practice every Tuesday at five. I just want to let you know this is like, some I'm really passionate about. I'm really excited to get back into it. Well, guess what? Next time it comes Tuesday at five and there's like work that still needs to be done. Your boss might be like, hey, of course you can go to make sure we got you, go to piano, right? I know how much this is, how much this means to you or your partner picks up the extra slack with the kids because you have this. So you got to communicate these goals. You want to share them so people can help you. You want to choose an accountability buddy. If you can do it with that person, that's great. Like you're more likely to run a marathon and actually go through with it if you have a training partner that is doing it with you. Cause when you don't feel like training, they pick you up. So those are just some ideas of these small little tricks that you can do to move yourself forward. And with this bucket list, the sharing piece I think is crucial because so many times we get trapped in our own way and we don't realize the world of possibility outside of our own mind. So just writing the list is part one but actually sharing it with others even if they're not an accountability buddy is really huge because it allows other people like you said, you created that momentum and a big part of the buried life was not just you guys selfishly going after your bucket list, but then also opening up possibility for other people in their lives and being of service to them and helping them reach their goals is far more rewarding than just going after it selfishly on your own. Part of this hang up again around, you know, okay, I don't have people in my life that I feel comfortable sharing with. I don't really think they'll understand where I'm coming from. All of that is just inner chatter. And when we started sharing about our podcasts and telling people we were doing this, I was surprised how many people who not creative not podcast fans, certainly not 15 years ago, were still supportive because we were doing something that we were so jazzed up about. And just the emotion that comes through you sharing your bucket list, sharing that passion lights other people up. It gets them excited to participate even if it's not their mission. There's this numbers data that went around that I don't know if it's true or not but it works really well for me and I've shared it on the show a bunch of times where it says that in any sort of community whether that community is online or in real life, there is going to be a very small percentage, one, 2% of folks who are gonna go out and do things. They're gonna create things, they're gonna make things, they're gonna get, they're gonna make stuff happen. And then I think it was about another up to 10% out of that group will participate and contribute to the people who are sticking their necks out to make things happen. Now, the 90% of the rest of the people are gonna complain, bitch, moan, they're spectators. They get a gock and they get to do whatever they can do to fill content with what they're doing with their life while all of this stuff is going on around them. And I bring this up for two reasons. Number one, you have to find the other people who are going to inspire you. We've been discussing that through the show. I had, I met AJ in DC, I didn't even live there. And when I met him, I was like, this guy wants to get stuff done, this is rat. I'm finding a tribe, I'm finding a high-value social circle. It's the first thing that we help our X-Factor members do when they come in. The second part of that is finding those people but also having an understanding and this was brief but I wanna make sure that we put a flag here for people to understand. It's going to be typical for you to ask around and see that no one is doing anything. That is why it is so important to stick your neck out, to go check things out, to go find other people because you're not just gonna wake up one day and realize that all of your friends are doing rad shit. That's not how this works. You have to go find the people who are going to do rad shit. And when you're vocal about these things, it allows the people who are contributors to participate because what they are looking for, and AJ mentioned this, is they're looking for that spark for themselves. So if they can contribute to somebody else's bucket list or dream or creativity or whatever they have going on, they're like, well, that was easy. I helped him do that, I bet I can do that. It's all reciprocative and it's all about that finding and plugging into that energy. And we're fortunate entrepreneurial, you see a lot of that spirit. And I think it's easy for us sitting from this seat to be in the masterminds, to be parts of these groups, to go to summit series and meet all these incredible people doing all these incredible things because they chose a path of entrepreneurship that kind of leads to that lifestyle and leads to those opportunities. And for many in our audience who are not entrepreneurial at all, they will often say, well, that's cool for you guys, you have a podcast, you started a YouTube, you had an MTV show. Of course you're meeting awesome, amazing people. Of course this is naturally just happening for you. But it wasn't like that in the beginning. Like it didn't just happen because MTV signed you. It didn't just happen because Sirius signed us to do the show. It happened because where we were sitting, we were not happy. We were not happy on that path. You were on the verge of depression, if not in depression, realizing that this isn't what I wanna be doing, looking around and saying, well, there aren't very many people around here who are happy or who are also doing what they wanna be doing. So I have to take action. I have to change things. And it was that initial step that led to all these other things that we talk about. But that first step might just be the write the outline to the book. Grab a guitar and take a lesson. Go to the meetup group. Go do some pet sitting in Denver. That first step is just so crucial. Hitting record on the video camera with your buddies, hitting record on the podcast with your buddies. Like that was the crucial first step. And if I listened to all the fear in my head, if I listened to what my family was saying, if I listened to what my classmates were saying in grad school, well, I'd probably be stuck feeling pretty miserable about things and then making even more excuses in my life. Finding that, hey, very few people are taking action. There's a decent chunk of people that would love to contribute. Those contributors are the ones who invite you to the dinner, who show you a different group of people who give you the ticket to summit series that allows you to find all of this possibility to find all of these great relationships even if they don't have the same mission, they don't have the same passion. They're not as creative. They don't care about video. They're not podcasters. Just sharing that, hey, I have this thing that I'm passionate about, open so many doors in our lives that would have been completely hidden to us had we not shared what it was that we were working on. And one small decision can change your life. One simple action can change your trajectory. You know, like Johnny, if you just wouldn't have acted on that gut that you had when you met AJ, right? You have to put yourself out there to be like, hey, listen, hey, we should do something, right? You could have easily just thought, oh, AJ is what a great dude. And I'm gonna stay in touch with him and slowly never stay in touch with him. Let's bring it back to my experience, which was feeling just totally stuck in the depths of the mud. There was only one person in my life that I thought of that I felt was inspiring, just one person, and that was Johnny the filmmaker. Now, I called him three times before I got through to him. The first two times, he didn't pick up because he didn't know who the fuck was calling him, like, and even when I did call him, it was a very kind of odd phone call. Hey, Johnny, my name is Ben, you know, anyways, we've hung out once or twice. You took my sister to prom, right? Like, I saw some of your videos that you've been posting on Facebook. This is early Facebook, 2006. So just when it was in universities, and he made these videos of him and his friends partying at McGill University during their Frosh week. And it was just super fun and inspiring party videos. And I said something along the lines of, I've seen your videos you've been posting. I've always wanted to make a video like that. And, you know, I just wanted to throw it out there. If you ever wanted to make a video or a movie, I would love to do that. And he said, I was just in Cuba with my friend Dave and we were talking about the exact same thing. I said, great. And serendipitously, Johnny's older brother had come up to me in the bar in Victoria and been like, hey, you know, we should do something. And I knew exactly what he meant. I was like, I just talked to your younger brother. So like, it was this serendipity, but that's what happens when you start to follow that true self, right? I don't know if you guys have experienced this and this is a little bit out there, but this is how it works. When you start to walk that path in the buried life poem, they call it your true original course. When you start to follow that true original course, life starts to happen for you. And these big things start to come together for you and you start to be in the flow of life because you're being your authentic self and magic starts to happen. And that's what happened with the buried life. And anytime I start to not listen to that true self, stuff gets hard, life gets harder. And that could be me doing a job that I start to realize I don't love is not what I'm supposed to be doing. That could be in a relationship that I'm in where my partner and I are not attuned. So I'm not able to be that true self. That could be many different things. But when I start to feel that of like, why are things so hard? Or I start to feel a little bit down. I think, I step back, I think, I think there's something that I'm doing where I'm not being true to myself. And when I start to live from that authentic place, then magic happens. And that's what happened with the buried life. I couldn't believe how people stepped up in unexpected ways. How this road from, you know, for just snot-nosed kids from Victoria in a beat-up RV, you know, it started this path. And we just had this insane belief. And it was always, we wanna do this on MTV in the US, right? That was the big dream. Cause back then that was the Holy Grail. It was like, and we got offered a show in Canada for MTV Canada. And we turned it down. Talk about people thinking we're stupid. We turned down our own show. Because they wanted to own it and we weren't gonna be able to be in control. And we raised money on our own through sponsors. We put our life savings into it. We hired a crew from LA. We did it for two months the next summer and continue to make this documentary and then ran out of money and couldn't finish the film because we didn't know how expensive post production was. And then I went back to working in a bar, right? And I was just, we were all now at, you know, a low point because we had turned down a show and we blew it, right? And now we had sunk all this money into a film that no one would ever be able to see it. But we had this deep belief. And I think a part of it came from, we were young, dumb and broke enough to just continue to try, right? And that's why it is important to try this when you're young. But it's never too late to do the things you wanna do or be that person that you wanna be. Because I think you need to hold onto that naivete that you have when you're young. And you never have to grow old in that sense. You can always keep that youthful spirit of that adventure and trying new things that belief in yourself. And that's what we had. We just knew there was something special here and we kept plugging away. And ultimately we just made our own pilot. And then I met someone in Mexico, one family trip that knew some people in LA and she introduced me to a couple managers or a couple production companies and I started doing trips down to LA off of a buddy pass that my friend had given me for a free flight. And I deferred my business degree and I started to learn the business of entertainment and got an agent and then we found a production company and then we sold it. But as executive producers, when we sold the show to MTV, we were EPs and we own the IP and we were able to make the show our way, which was so important to keep it real and that's something that we would feel our friends would really be inspired by. But you trace it all back to that phone call. One small step can change your life. I could have stopped calling Johnny after the two times he ignored my phone call. Most people probably would have, right? You know what? Like, okay, I get busy and what am I? Why am I calling this guy again? This random person I don't know to make a movie. You know, but whatever reason, I just had this conviction and that third phone call changed my life. Well, listening to that intuition, listening to that gut, it's not like there's just a clear golden path to success. And I'm so glad you shared all of that with our audience. Johnny and I have shared with our audience the ups and downs of our own entrepreneurial journey. But when you are in tune with your authentic self, even those downs lead to other opportunities, learnings about yourself, introductions, ways to evolve and pivot, seeing things from a different perspective. But when you listen to the chatter, when you follow the checkboxes, or you just set out to do this, we're sitting in the new year. And you just say, okay, now I gotta do some New Year's resolutions, right? We're always so supportive of kids' daydreaming, but for adults, we give ourselves like one opportunity in January. We make the goals completely just get healthy, go to the gym more, find someone, just generic platitudes. And by the end of January, we haven't shared it with anyone, we've lost steam and we feel exactly where we were. So much of what we're talking about here is listening to the intuition, sharing that intuition with others, being open to what the universe is willing to share back with you and taking action every step of the way. So now that you have this great bucket list, now that you have people that you're sharing it with, you have accountability, you're building momentum, right? It wasn't like the first thing you guys did was play basketball with Obama. There were a lot of bucket list items along the way that fostered that belief in yourself, that confidence to reach further, to stretch yourself even further. So let's circle back, where's Ben right now and what is this new bucket list? Now that we know Beyonce's not on it, Obama's been checked off. Oh, I actually just did something that was really cool that I had been wanting to do for a long time. And it's this one week personal development course called Hoffman Process, which is in Northern California. And it really is, I realized that if I'm gonna be talking about making yourself better, I can't forget to take time to do that for myself because I really need to live my work and be my work. You go in and you give your phone away at the beginning and you have no contact with the internet and you come in with 40 strangers and you actually don't even use your real name or you can't talk about work and you start to do this process of going from your head to your heart effectively and getting in tune with all aspects of who you are. And it was so interesting because the first thing they talked about was the importance of listening to your authentic self, right? And I thought, oh my God, this is just what I talk about. This is amazing. And this is a 50 year old process. They've been doing this guy, Bob Hoffman started 50 years ago and it's really about listening to that authentic self. They call it the spiritual self and that usually it's your intellectual self that leads your head, right? It's the rational brain and that's what's making decisions. And sometimes that's good but your rational brain will never justify moving to Denver, right? Your rational brain will never justify that third phone call to Johnny the filmmaker or to start writing the book because the odds are just not, with you can't justify the reward, right? The risk reward, it doesn't make sense. It's not logical. And you start to listen to that true authentic self and let that guide you, let that lead you. And that was a really powerful refresh for me because one, it's what I've come to realize is the basis of this whole journey. Since I was 20 years old and when I went through that depression, this bucket list and this whole journey was really just me understanding who I truly was and what I truly wanted and trying to stay aligned to that and bringing people around me that also supported me to be that and to think bigger so that I could uncover these buried dreams. And it was a really phenomenal transformational process for me when just like not having my phone and realizing how I'm such a slave to my phone versus using it as a tool and the importance of getting out in nature to connect to that authentic self. And really just the power of connection. You know, you get 40 strangers in a room and you're from all different walks of life and all around the world. And by the end of this one week, you talked about vulnerability and such power and sharing that vulnerability. And really that's what you do when you share your dreams. You're being vulnerable. And that's why people don't do it because you're opening yourself up to pain because people can take advantage of your vulnerability and that's where they can get you because this means so much to you. So that's a pain point. What you're doing is you're actually leading by being vulnerable because when you're open and vulnerable you give other people permission to do the same. And that's what I realized when I started sharing my story of depression I used to be super ashamed of my depression. I thought it was a weakness. But then I started learning about the rate of suicide and even especially through the pandemic with feelings of depression and anxiety rising so much that I thought I might be able to use this as a gift to help and a tool to help others by sharing my story. And so, you know, I did, I started speaking about it more on stage and I could see that it was impacting people and that I needed to keep sharing it because it allowed other people to share their story of what they were struggling with or talk to me about their kids that are going through depression, dropped out of school and I could sort of help guide them in at least sort of the right direction so that they could get the help they needed to serve their kids. Or, you know, when I was young I didn't know that other people struggled. It just wasn't a conversation back in 2006, 2005, right? It just wasn't something that mental health was not a cool thing to talk about. And the good thing about the pandemic is now more people are talking about it and that breaks the stigma. And so I think that when you think about vulnerability it's really courage. It's really like, you think that people will look down on you when you open up and share these things, either these dreams or even these struggles that you're having but really what happens it's the opposite. You end up looking up to those people that have the courage to do that because you see them for who they truly are and you see them for their true self. And regardless of what they want to do or what they're sharing, you feel connected to them because they're sharing that true self. And I think that's the world that we wanna create because that creates compassion and connectedness. I think that that creates a powerful ripple effect. And we've seen it in action and experienced it in all of our lives and that's why I was so excited to have you back on and share the journal with our audience and where you've come because it has been about 10 years since we last checked in. And obviously, as you talked about these bucket list change and evolve too. It's never too late to get started and it's always worth updating. We love asking each of our guests what their X factor is. What do you believe Ben makes you unique and extraordinary? Well, I'll hit the same nail on the head I think here just because it's the truth, it's me. I am my X factor and I think everyone is their own X factor. The tricky part is unbearing that, giving that true voice, some air to speak and to listen to it and to have the courage to listen to it because that's your true gift. As I said, only you have the key to unlock that gift and that is your X factor. No one else is like you. There's eight billion people now around the world. No one has the same gifts that you have. And you have an obligation, as I said, to share that. And I think that's where you'll create the most abundance. I think that's where you create the biggest impact and you'll have the most success is when you act from that place. And even if it's just as simple as making a little shift where you start to just be a little more authentic, whether it's with your clients, or with your family or with your partner and just starting to be a little more real, saying how you really feel, looking for ways to be compassionate and empathetic with other people as you move through the world and realize that, wow, that person just cut me off in traffic instead of just getting so upset. It's like, look, I don't know what they're going through. Everyone's going through something that you can't see. And so just being that sort of open and empathetic person and being true to yourself, I think is really your X factor. And it's where you'll build the best relationships in your life. Thank you so much for joining us. Where can our audience find out more about the Bucket List Journal and all the great things that you're working on, Ben? Easiest is probably on Amazon. If you search the Bucket List Journal, you can find me, I'm most active on Instagram, which is at Ben Nempton, just my full name. So write your list, take a photo of it as we've been talking about, share it. You don't need to share it with anybody in particular. Just get it out there. You're going to feel accountable to all your followers just by proclaiming it. So tag us in it so that we can keep you accountable. Love to see those list items. And if you get the journal, please tag me in it so I can thank you. And this is a great way to start the year. Thank you, Ben, appreciate it. Cheers, boys.