Interviewer/Host (2:47)

Your. Your upbringing sounds like a bucket list for many people, by the way.

Ben Nemton (2:51)

Yeah, yeah, it definitely was. Yeah. And I think what was. What was cool about it was because I saw the way that they lived you kind of just by osmosis. I felt okay to take liberties when I was growing up to go after certain passions. And ultimately I dropped out of school to pursue this bucket list thing because it was gaining momentum.

Interviewer/Host (3:13)

It seems like you got a combo of both. You got the entertainment side from your dad and you got the coaching side from your mom. So, yeah, you know, you got to travel and aspirational and fun living and then created teachable moments out of it. But it wasn't all sweetness and lights here. You know, everybody's listening to this. Oh, I going on the Vespa, and you got the freewheeling parents, and mom takes off for seven years to travel the world. I was intrigued about your story. Your first year university, you're. You're on scholarship, you're in a top school, you make the U19 Canadian rugby team. You know, so everything looks great. Everything looks like you're following the path. You're on the uni trail, you got the scholarship, you're playing rugby, you're playing for your country. But then all of a sudden, life took a few twists for you.

Ben Nemton (3:56)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was definitely the first mental health crisis I've ever had in my life. And I was, you know, as you said, everything on paper was fantastic, but I was. I put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed. And I don't really know why my parents didn't put pressure on me, but I just. I think it's because I wanted to be liked by other people. So I would. I wanted to succeed in school. I wanted to succeed athletically. I mean, in Canada, rugby is a big sport. Not as big as in Ireland, but it's probably the third biggest sport behind hockey and hockey. So it's big. And I played fly half, as he says, you know, a lot of pressure. You're calling the plays, you're kicking the field goals. And I had missed a big field goal in high school in a championship game. And at that age, you know, that was everything. It haunted me. And as we were training for the World cup, which is in Paris, I just practice my field goals every day. But this thought would keep coming back to me, which is, what if I miss an easy field goal at the World Cup? What if I blow this opportunity? And these thoughts would especially come at night and they caused me to have trouble sleeping. And so this lack of sleep, this constant pressure that I put on myself to succeed, this anxiety that I was feeling around my rugby in the World cup, it all contributed to me sliding into a depression. And I'd never experienced anything like this before. I had been very happy go lucky my whole life. I had an amazing group of friends, supportive family, and all of a sudden I couldn't go to school. So I drive to school. I had a scholarship, but I couldn't get out of the car. And so I drive home and ultimately I dropped out of school.

Interviewer/Host (5:39)

Were you having panic attacks? Was it just a.

Ben Nemton (5:41)

It was sick.

Interviewer/Host (5:42)

I mean, how did it manifest itself?

Ben Nemton (5:44)

So I felt anxiety around getting out in public. I felt like it was very difficult for me to make a decision. And it compounded because after I'd missed one or two classes, you know, it made it worse to go back. I really became a shut in in my parents house. And I was sort of crippled by these feelings of anxiety and depression which was compounded by the lack of sleep. And it wasn't until my friends came at the end of the semester that I had dropped out of and they convinced me to come work with them in a new town that I slowly started to come out of these feelings. And there are many, many things that contributed, which is important, I think to understand that there's no silver bullet for this, but some things that helped right away I got a job. So I started feeling some confidence, some self worth. I started talking about what I was going through for the first time, which was huge because suddenly I realized that I wasn't alone and that some of my friends had been through something like this before. And I met young people that were inspiring. So I met kids that had already started their own businesses, they'd already traveled around the world. And so as I was driving home after that summer away, I thought, I'm going to try and only surround myself with people that inspire me. Just like those kids that I met in a new town. And there was really only one kid in my life at the time that I felt was inspiring. And his name was Johnny and he was a filmmaker from my neighborhood. And secretly I had always wanted to make a movie or a TV show with my friends. And so I called up Johnny, I said, you make movies, I want to make a movie. I know we don't know each other. In fact, the only way I know you is because you took my sister to prom. So this is a little bit weird. So I was very conflicted about whether I should reach out to him, but he said, you know, I was just talking to my friend Dave about something like this, and I said, okay, I'll call your older brother Duncan, and how about the four of us get together and let's talk about making a movie. And so we started chatting, and we had no idea what this movie was going to be about. But we all had this. This feeling that there were all of these things that we'd always wanted to do, but we'd never even tried them. You know, it's like they were buried. And so we. It actually happened to be. Johnny was sitting in his Freshman year at McGill University in English class, and his English professor assigned him 150-year-old poem to read. And the poem's called the Buried Life. And something strikes him from that poem. He sends four lines of that poem back to us, and he says, guys, read this poem. And the four lines are, but often in the world's most crowded streets, but often in the din of strife, there rises an unspeakable desire after the knowledge of our buried life. And he said, guys, this is crazy that this poet in 1852, over 150 years ago, he articulating the exact same feeling that we're feeling, that we have all these things that we want to do, but we haven't done them because they're buried, you know, but once you unearth them, you know that those are the things that light you up, but everything kind of pulls you away from that in the day to day. And so we thought, well, I guess we're not the first people to feel like this. Why don't we take this name, The Buried Life. And even though we didn't know what the film was going to be about, we thought, we're going to call it the Buried Life. And our next step was thinking, okay, how do we unbury our dreams? And that's where this question, what do you want to do before you die? Came from. Because the thought of death actually made us think about life, you know, by actually digesting our mortality, it put things in perspective. And so when we asked ourselves this question, there were many answers. And that's where the bucket list came from. It was our answers to the question, what do you want to do before you die? And when we wrote the bucket list together and we said, you got to. There's two rules. First rule, you have $10 million in your bank. Second rule, you can do anything. So you have to pretend that those two were truths.

Interviewer/Host (9:23)

Yep.

Ben Nemton (9:23)

And you wrote down, you know, make a TV show, go to space, pay off our parents mortgage, tell a judge you want the truth, you can't handle the truth. You know, like anything that we could think of. And, and then we thought, well, there's no way we can accomplish these on our own. We're going to need the help of other people. So how about every time we cross something off our bucket list, we'll have a stranger we meet cross something off their bucket list and we'll go on a road trip. We'll check things off our bucket list and we'll ask strangers along the way, what do you want to do before you die? And if we can help them with that thing, then we will. And that'll be our film. And so when we hit the road, something sort of unexpected happened, which was strangers started to hear about our mission and they started to send us emails through this website that we built. And they said, hey, I saw number nine on your list, rideable. My uncle has a bull ranch. He can get you on a bull. Or I saw number 42 make a toast at a stranger's wedding. My best friend's getting married. I'm the best man. I can get you in. And then people would send us their dreams, asking for our help. So we got inundated with hundreds of dreams. First in bc, then in Canada. It was national news, then it was international news. And so we got these hundreds and hundreds of dreams. So we come back after the two week road trip and we thought, holy crap, we got to keep doing this. And so that two week road trip ended up lasting over 10 years.

Interviewer/Host (10:46)

Wow.

Ben Nemton (10:46)

And those list items that we had initially wrote on the list that I was completely sure were impossible over time, they ended up falling off the list.

Interviewer/Host (10:57)

And that's crazy.

Brian Buffini (11:02)

Well, we hope you enjoyed this. Quick cut. Head to the show notes to listen to the full episode. If you'd like to elevate your business to achieve your goals, talk to one of our experts on a free business consultation. Visit it'sagoodlife.combc to schedule yours today.