The School of Greatness - 16 Ben Nemtin: How to Achieve Your Wildest Dreams

Episode Date: May 1, 2013

What does it take to achieve your biggest dreams? For Ben Nemtin and three of his Canadian friends, it was a willingness to announce their dreams to the world, take massive action, and help others along the way. They have proven over and over that no dream is too big to achieve and anything is […]

Welcome to episode number 16 with Ben Nemton. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Yo, yo, yo, what is up, greats?

I hope you're having a fantastic day today. It was super sunny today in LA and all day yesterday I was on the beach playing some beach volleyball, having some good time with my friends, but I'm back on the beach, playing some beach volleyball, having some good time with my friends. But I'm back on the podcast today. And I'm excited about this one because I've got a good friend of mine. His name is Ben Neptune, and he is one of the stars of the show on MTV called The Buried Life. And if you haven't seen this show, you got to go check it out. So you can find some episodes online or something.

It's very inspiring. What they do is they basically find things that they want to do on the, put them on a bucket list and then they go cross them off. It's pretty cool, but they also go help other people check off things on their bucket list. It's very inspiring show and I encourage you to check it out. Before I get into Ben and the show and what you're going to learn today, I want to give you a quote for the day. I want to start doing some quotes. I really like quotes. So I'm going to start sharing these, hopefully each and every week, each and every episode.

The quote for today, I've got this on my wall right now. It is, be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. And that's by Oscar Wilde. And I like that one because sometimes we can forget about the path we're on and the journey we're on. We kind of get sidetracked. Maybe we've got too many shiny objects or too many opportunities coming our way. But really, you got to stay focused and you got to be true to who you are and do what you feel is right. So be yourself because everyone else is already

taken. That's my quote for the day. Hope you like that one. Here's what you're going to learn in this episode with Ben. Now, I've known Ben for a couple of years from an event called Summit Series, actually. We met each other. And I wanted to get him on here because every time we talk and hang out, he's super inspiring. He's always got something that he and his crew,

his Buried Life crew, are chasing or going after or are on a journey to achieve and to learn and grow. I really like that. In this episode, you're going to learn some great things about how to accomplish your own dreams and how to accomplish your own goals. He's got a six-step formula for accomplishing any dream. Now, this formula is pretty cool, and I believe in it myself. You're going to want to make sure you take notes during this six-step formula. He's also going to share his journey about how he went from just a young kid from Canada, and he and a few of his friends basically

had this idea to create a show, and now they're on MTV, and they're doing even more shows now. So they've got some great stories and some great experience. He's got to share with you on this episode. I'm excited for you to learn it. I want to go really quickly into the review of the week before we get into my interview with Ben and this week's review. We got a bunch of awesome reviews. I appreciate you guys leaving your five star reviews over on iTunes,

but this one was from Jeff Thornton. And Jeff's title said, A True How's To For Greatness. You like how he used my name, How's To? Get it? He said, This is just another success to add to Lewis's already fantastic portfolio. This podcast delivers high-quality content that stimulates your mind and motivates you to continue to follow your passion. I started this podcast and finished all the episodes in two days, truly amazing lineup and fantastic material. And Jeff goes on for a little

bit, but I appreciate you, Jeff, and you are the review of the week. So thanks so much. And with that, guys, I appreciate all your reviews and comments. I'm getting you a lot of listeners sending me Instagram photos of where you're listening to the podcast. Someone was at Newport Beach the other day posting an Instagram picture saying how inspired they were on the beach listening to this. So thanks again. If you want to post a picture on Instagram and tag me at Lewis Howes of where you are listening to the podcast, I'll give you a quick shout out next time. And with that, guys, let's get into the episode with Ben Neptune. What's up, everyone?

I am back again with a friend of mine and a special guest. His name is Ben Neptune. What's up, brother? I am back again with a friend of mine and a special guest. His name is Ben Neptune. What's up, brother? How are you doing, Ben? I'm good, man. How are you? I'm doing excellent. We were just chatting about some of the cool things you're doing right now with your production company and selling some new shows.

And I want to get into that in a second. But what you're most known for, I guess, in kind of pop culture is the show you did, which is The Buried Life. And for people that don't know what The Buried Life is, it's a really cool show that was, I guess it had, what did it have, two seasons on MTV? Yeah. Two seasons on MTV. And it's basically a bucket list with Ben and his three of his buddies where they go

around and try to cross things off the list like make a television show. I think you had be on Oprah, play basketball with the president, a lot of other cool things. I think become a number one New York Times bestseller was one which you've achieved a lot of these different things. And it's an extremely inspiring show. It's actually a show that I wouldn't think would be on MTV, but I think you guys pulled it off amazingly. So congrats on that. Thank you, man.

And what was the, I guess it was back in, was it back in 2006 when you had the idea for the show? Yeah, in West Philadelphia. So tell me how it came about. So we grew up in Victoriaoria bc up in canada um you know all four of us went to similar high schools in the community so victoria's pretty small we kind of all knew each other um so it's duncan and johnny who are brothers and dave who is johnny's best friend so um i was going to college at the time.

It was actually a friend of mine who started a clothing line out of high school with no experience in fashion, no money from his parents, no connections. He took out a loan and started this clothing line. It was such a cool line. I was just like, dude, how did you do this? He just sort of said, well, I just did it. I was gravitating towards people that were doing really cool things. I just sort of thought, fuck, I want to do something like that.

I want to make something cool that my friends will respect and that I could really have a lot of fun doing. And I saw some videos that Johnny had been posting on Facebook of him and his friends partying at McGill University. And he had made these videos that were just the most inspirational party videos you've ever seen. They just made you want to go out and get drunk with your friends. I called him.

I was like, Johnny, let's make a movie this summer. He was like, I just got back from Cuba with Dave. We were talking about making something. Serendipitously, Duncan, Johnny's older brother, had come up to me in the bar in Victoria and been like, let's do something. We all got on Skype, actually, because it was the only thing that we could afford. We started having these calls about making a movie. We didn't know what we wanted to make a movie about, but we decided that we wanted to make something. And we kind of kept on coming down to these dead ends creatively about what kind of documentary we wanted to make.

And finally we got frustrated and we said, okay, let's just make a list of everything we would want to make a documentary about. Like what do we want to make a movie about? Let's not think about what we should make it about. Like if we could make a movie about anything, what would it be? And so we all went our separate ways for a week and made this list of things we would want to make a movie about. And then we came back around the circle, so to speak, and went around and everyone said

there are things they wanted to make a movie about. And we just liked so many of the things that people listed off. Someone said, well, why don't we just do all of these? And so that's kind of where the list was born. And at that same time, Johnny was at McGill and he was in English class and he got assigned this poem in English, you know, 100 called The Buried Life. And it was this poem by Matthew Arnold written in 1850s. And there's this English poet who was like in his 50s. And there's four lines in this poem that really spoke to Johnny and kind of resonated with him. And he brought them back to us.

And those, the lines were, 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 uh he was like guys this is like what we're talking about this feeling of unrest and this feeling of like we want to do something but we don't know what it is you know it's like we have all these things we want to do but we get you know kind of buried by life and uh but you have these moments when you know what it is

and then it just gets buried and then you have another moment of inspiration and then it gets buried and you end up like never doing the things you really want to do right so he said we said i said like okay well let's take this name like we don't even know what the the movie is or the project but let's just call it the buried life. Interesting. And from then, from there, we took sort of the next step, which was we decided that we were going to base it around this question, what do you want to do before you die? And we were going to ask people, you know, as we traveled, what do you want to do before you die?

And base the documentary around that and talk about why they had or had not done the things they wanted to do in their life. By doing that, maybe we could find direction of what we wanted to do with our life because we didn't really know. We also had this idea that we would make our own list and on the side, we would do our list. But we never thought our list would be in the documentary. We always thought that would be a little too self-serving.

We would ask people and we would profile them but we would do our list on the side and that would be something different. So we didn't have any money. Our parents didn't fund us. How old are you guys now? Now I'm 29. How old were you guys at the time? 22, seven years mean. 22.

Okay. Seven years ago. Gotcha. No money. You're broke. And you got these ideas. Yeah. We're broke.

We're like, we want to make a movie. But no one's ever made a movie. No. I didn't even know how to use a camera. I was studying sociology. Right. No one even knows what that is. Right. how to use a camera. I was studying sociology. No one even knows what that is. Johnny and

Duncan had grown up making skateboard movies, snowboard movies. They made weird wizard movies when they were kids. They had played around with cameras and editing, but no one had gone to school for it. Duncan and Johnny went up to the oil rigs and made some money so we could build a website and buy a camera. And then I would just call production companies. No, I would call companies in the phone book pretending to be a production company, get through the CEO, sell them on the movie we were making, sell them on the idea that they should get involved. And this local juice company ended up giving us enough money to pay for our gas. Wow. That was all we needed. We bought an RV.

We made two four matching t-shirts with the buried life on it. And this like logo with the shovel and we, we took off and we were like, okay, we're going to go after this list and you know, we're going to, we're going to talk with people. We're going to ask what they want to do before they die. And if we can help them do the thing that they want to do,

then that's, then that's what we're going to do. Right. Amazing. Yeah yeah so it's so we set out as you know just a couple friends basically going on a road trip for two weeks to make a documentary and the first day we did it we ended up getting on the front page of the newspaper in our local town wow and uh then that sort of ended up getting some media buzz and then it was provincial news you know which is the equivalent of state news and then it was national news and and then we had all of a sudden you know we had our list post online this is back in 2007 right so this is oh This is 2006. YouTube was sort of just getting going.

I remember we started Twitter in 2007. But we did make a simple website. And we posted our list. And so we noticed our inbox was starting to fill up. People were starting to email us being like, hey, I saw your list online. You want to ride a bull? My uncle has a bull like shut up yeah or like you guys want to make a toast to stranger's wedding we got invited to 12 weddings in two weeks to make toast oh my gosh yeah um and then people sending us like emails saying my my my friend wants to do do a duet with michael

buble like can you help him or i want to fly an F-18 fighter jet. Please help me. Setting us their dreams. What we realized is people were really starting to get inspired by the idea of four guys going after their dreams, their dream list. We didn't really expect because

we thought in the beginning we weren't really going to be... Us doing our list wasn't really going to be us doing our list wasn't really going to be part of it but they just wanted us to finish you know they just wanted us to do the things on our list and they would i remember one one list item was lead a parade and we crashed this parade in penticton it's like a small town in bc and we just drove our rv like made it into a float and and we were we were going through the parade and people in the crowd were yelling at us saying, you know, nice one crossing off number 12. Shut up.

We were crossing off. And so that was kind of a cool thing because we were like, wow, people are really rooting for us. So we – so yeah, we kind of were able to – and when we were crossing off things, we didn't think we could cross off. We like opened the 6 o'clock news at a major news station. Playing basketball with Obama. What's that? Playing basketball with Obama. Yeah.

Ultimately, it sort of built to that. Right, right. We finished that two-week tour. A producer saw us on the news. He emailed us and said, if you guys ever thought about making a tv show and one of the things on the list was to make a tv show we ended up getting offered a show in canada but we turned it down because they wanted to own the the buried life basically so we just you know

we didn't care too much to do that much to do tv so we just decided to keep doing it ourselves we went back to school but we raised more money the next year and bought a bus, got a crew from LA and filmed more the next summer for two months, still going for the documentary. And then had this epiphany, like we were making this to inspire our friends, right? And then we kind of had this epiphany that was, you know, if we make this documentary, none of our friends are going to watch it you know maybe it gets into a film festival but it's not going to have the effect we want like if we want this to be seen like we got to make tv so we decided to make our own pilot and start coming down to la to hustle it down here and so that's what we did and you know we made our way to the right production company that could

get us there and slowly but surely kind of caught our way there. So when did the first episode air on MTV of The Buried Life? It was 2010. I think it was early 2010. So 2006, you have this idea. Well, your friend has a fashion line and you're like inspired by this idea that he's creating something cool and you like it. You and three buddies get together and say, let's create something cool like a documentary that's going to inspire friends. It turns into a TV show and four years later, you're on MTV.

Yeah. That's pretty amazing, dude. It is when you think about it like that. I mean, yeah. I mean, it was, you know, four years is a long time. There's a lot of ups and downs. Right. And you probably thought it was too long. We also didn't start it to make a TV show. Right. I think it's important, you know, like we didn't, we didn't design buried life as a pitch. Right. It wasn't until year two when you were like, okay, let's make this a show.

But you really had no experience, you know, four years prior to the show coming out with raising money money with being on camera maybe you guys had done like some goofy videos before but not actually being on camera and all the different facets of what you need to do to produce a great show you just kind of learned it along the way right yeah now whatever did you guys ever come close to like creating some type of documentary type like a 60 to 90 minute documentary or did you guys just never even get there no we haven't got there we still want to and it's still one of our uh goals you know and we still film everything but the story i don't think the story

is quite finished okay keeping oh you mean your story yeah in general because you haven't crossed everything off your list we don't't crossed, and there's some major things we want to cross off our list like go to space that we haven't done and make a movie like a feature film which I think would be really cool to show in the documentary. But

it's all we have all the footage is there. So it's definitely something that we want to do. Now how many, were there It's all – we have all the footages there. Right. So it's definitely something that we want to do. Now, how many – were there 100 things on the list or were there more than 100? There was always 100. But we – it's not a static list. It's dynamic.

I mean we add stuff to it all the time. We take stuff off. I mean as you grow, your priorities change. Sure. We see something like, oh, that would be really cool to do let's let's try and do that and and we and we add something so we've done about like technically i think we've done about 79 or 80 of the list that as it stands right now i mean the list on our facebook page um but we've also done a lot more that we've taken off okay you've done a lot more that we've taken off. Okay.

You've done a lot more that you've taken off. Why don't you keep it on there if you've already done it? Why wouldn't you just leave it on there? It's a good question. We've talked about that. You're not proud of it or something? No, because we – yeah. We don't want to tell anyone.

We like having the list at 100. Right. There's big things on there that we still want to do that we don't want to take off to put on other things that we have already done. But eventually, I think the list, the cap will come off 100 and we'll just have a sort of a longer sprawling list of the things that have been done. But we just haven't really gotten there yet. Gotcha. Now, but you're pretty close. You're like 80% done, which is pretty amazing.

And you're only 29. Is that right? Yeah. 29. You've completed 80 of the a hundred things you wanted to do before you die. You've got probably many years left on your life, but you know, for a lot of people, um, they probably don't cross off you know 10 things on their on their list by the time they're 50 and it's because they have a buried

life now why do you think what are some of the causes for people to have a buried life do you think and just never really get around to doing what they want to do um i mean i think there's a lot of a lot of things and you know it obviously varies um from person to person i definitely don't claim to be an expert in in this sort of area but i mean from what i found just from the people that we've met and in my own experience really just with doing these things is, um, you know, I think people are stopped by the usual suspects like money, you know, kind of time and that,

that idea that you get in your head, like, I don't, I don't have time to do that. I have to work, you know, or I have to study or that's going to, that's going to take up too much of,

of, of my time. But I think a lot of the time, too, it's also fear. People really don't do it because they don't think they can or they think they're going to fail. When we made the list, we decided to add things to the list. We said, okay, if anything was possible, what could we do? Let's not even think about how we could actually do these things

or even if we ever could. Like let's just pretend for a second that we can do anything. That anything was possible, right? Yeah, anything. Like get on the cover of Rolling Stone. Play basketball with the President of the United States. Make our own movie. Like just what would we want to do if we could do absolutely anything?

Walk on the moon. Like the craziest shit you can think of. Right. walk on the moon like the craziest shit you can think of right and that was a really important step for us because that was the first time we just pretended that we could do anything and once you go down that road you realize that you really can i mean i think people limit themselves just from the get-go because they don't think they can but they don't know their potential until they try and once you try and you end up actually, even if you don't know how you're going to do it, even if you start the first step, once you do the first step, you, you, you

can, you can figure out what the second step is. And then the third step, like people see these, their dreams as these huge Everest goals. I mean, that's why everyone talks about like Everest, you know, the climate, right? It's not, that's not what it's about. You know, it's like for us play basketball with Obama, huge dream. How the fuck are we going to do that? Like, I don't know. I guess I'm going to start by asking all my friends if they have any connections to the white house, who has uncle who knows a guy who knows a guy who's a Senator. That's. And the only way you do that is by talking about it. And by talking about it, you put it out there and people step up to help you.

So like we don't do this stuff on our own. We do it with the help of other people. So, you know, I think that people stop. They just sell themselves short right away without even trying. And it's funny, like people are afraid of failure or I don't think I can do it. But failure is always just one step in the right direction. Yep. Now, here's an interesting question for you.

What do you think people are more afraid of? The fear of failure or failing at something that they want to like put their big dreams and goals out there and having being ridiculed or people say, i told you so or whatever it may be or reaching their actual big goal and what that'll do once they reach it i think i mean i think it's the fear of failure but not so much the the fear of getting ridiculed as much. I think it's more the fear that they will lose confidence in themselves, that they will begin to doubt themselves in other areas of their life. If I can't do that, I can't do this, I can't do this, I'll never amount to that. Where if they stay in the things that they know they can do,

then they're successful. I have a decent job. I'm pretty good at it. I get some sort of validation out of it. My boss tells me good things. It's safer. But when you step out of your comfort zone, it's also scary. For instance, take the example of you're living in Alabama and you want to move to LA to

be an actress. You've always wanted to be an actress. You've known since you were a kid that you had dreamed of doing that. But everyone's telling you, you can't just pick up and move to LA. You can't just do that. You don't have a job down there. You don't have a car. Everybody's trying to make an LA. What makes you special? And you start to believe that instead of just like going from this place of, you know, like when you were a kid where none of that mattered. It just was this is what you dreamt to do. And as you get older, people start telling you you can't you start

to listen to them and and you start to believe that and by actually doing it and then you know not succeeding you really believe that and that's like even that's that's pretty scary so i think that is what holds people back right i think the power of belief in yourself is a is a huge factor and where we where we go in life in our career and things like that. And I think for you guys, it sounds like to me, one of the key factors was putting it out there first. Like here's the things on our bucket list in the news and on Facebook and wherever on your blog. And then people actually emailing you say, Hey, my uncle's got a bull that you can ride on. That's not going to kill you. And then you actually go right on the bull. I don't know if you rode on it or someone else did. You rode on it? No, no chance. No.

Right. But you guys go and ride on the bull and it's like, okay, we got a small win. I mean, that's a big goal probably for 99.9% of the people in the world never ride on a bull. So that's a big thing, but it's not like playing with the president. So it's like a big step, but it's also like telling yourself that you can do these things by putting it out there. People are going to support you and you're just going to keep going forward to achieving the things you want until you cross them all off, I guess. But if you don't actually put it out there, then it's never going to happen.

Exactly. A lot of people don't put it out there because these huge dreams become these big things in their mind. But the thing is when you talk about them and you talk about them with passion, which is usually how you talk about the things that you really want to do, that excites people. People want to just feed off that energy and they want to get involved you know i mean for us we didn't know what we were doing in the beginning but we just fucking talked about it a lot and told everyone and and you know our first manager was my godmother our first lawyer was dave's dad's friend you know like we we just people stepped up to help and right you don't never know who knows someone who knows someone but if you keep it hidden no one will will be able to help you and

it's definitely been one of the keys to our success is is like a putting it and whether that's putting it out online you know like we made a list on and made a website or just talking about it where wherever we went or strategically reaching out to people. I think that sharing what it is you really want to do is extremely important. And even before that is the power of writing it down. It seems like a simple thing, but it really is the first tangible step. There is a difference between the thought and something that's real on paper. It seems kind of airy-fairy, but it's not.

We kind of see it as the difference between a dream and a project. Dreams have a funny way of staying dreams. But if you think of your dreams as projects, like I said before, you can think of the tangible steps to getting them done. Right. You just chip away at it just like any other project. And it's on your list. And just do your homework and get toilet paper is on your list. Do it because it's on your list.

And you find a way to get it done. And you will find a way to go to Paris with someone you love. That's's just, if you look at it like that, you'll figure it out and you can look at it and you can share it and you kind of approach it the same way you do your daily tasks. makes it more attainable because then you make a project base and you kind of reverse engineer how you have to get there. And this is something I started doing back in high school and college. I started framing my dreams and putting a date on when I wanted to have the goal or the dream accomplished. And I remember specifically, and I want to talk about, I want to lead into the next thing, which is your sports background. But I remember specifically when I moved to New York City a couple years ago, I said I want to be on the USA national team for a sport called team handball in less than a year. And I never played the sport before.

And I made the team within nine months because I reverse engineered exactly what I thought I needed to do in order to get there. But it was this huge dream I had in my head of like playing for the national team and for an Olympic sport and trying to make the Olympics in four years. And I saw that you, and for me, framing my goals helps me because it makes me feel like it's real and I can take steps into achieving it. And I want to ask you, because I didn't know this about you, I'm checking out your Wikipedia page right now that you were actually selected on the Canadian national rugby team. Is that right? Yes, when I was younger, 19. Is this like the 19 and under rugby team?

Yeah, the U19. Gotcha. That's pretty amazing. I didn't know you were that good of an athlete. We have to play some basketball or something sometime. play some basketball or something sometime. Now, do you think having this background with sports and being completely competitive at a high level at a young age, do you think that's helped you in going after these bigger dreams? Do you think if you didn't have that background, you'd be as confident in kind of tackling your bucket list? That's a good question.

I think parts of it served me and I think parts of it didn't. You know, I think that kind of that determination, you know, that kind of like bull-nosed attitude, the teamwork, camaraderie, and just like the diligence and hard work that it takes to compete at a high level all those attributes that you have to have to to to do that definitely helped me i was also like captain you know of a few teams and and i think that more than anything

definitely the social i think that sort of um those skills that you learn being a captain and it's like what i like i kind of say the same thing in university. I think probably the most important thing you learn in university are social skills and different ways to get stuff done, hit deadlines and stuff like that. So I think I definitely learned a lot from that. When I was competing at a high level, I apply myself so much a lot from that. When I was competing at a high level, like I would,

I apply myself so much to the things that I do just because that's the kind of person I am that, um, I would overwork myself. And, and I remember first year college, I just, I was right when the national team was getting going,

you know, I was like on an academic scholarship as well. And I just, I put so much pressure on myself that I just totally burnt out and had to drop out of school. Um, and you know, I didn't know about balance and I didn't know, I didn't, I just overdid it. And so I learned a lot from that and, and learned about what was important to priorities in, in, in my life and what I needed to stay healthy. And so I think that it kind of goes, for me, it went both ways. Right. I got a couple questions left. I know you got to run to another

meeting, but on a post you did on 4hourworkweek.com, Tim's site, it's almost got 500 comments on this post. And you talk about your six steps to crossing anything off your bucket list or achieving your dreams. And you've talked about a few of them. You said, you know, stop thinking about it and start writing it down. And then you say, start talking about it and start sharing it with people, whether that be your friends or online or however it may be. You talk about being persistent, how you guys just went after it for three, four years and just kept going. You got your friends, parents to help out and did everything you could to figure things out.

And number five and six, you have be ballsy and help others. And I think that was one of the key elements in your whole journey was always to help others achieve their bucket list. And you weren't even thinking about yours originally, but it was helping others achieve theirs. What do you think is the most important part,

or is it all part of a whole six-step system for you? I think people that are your age and my age, they sort of, for the most part, understand this, and that's why we don't talk about it too much, because people kind of just get it, just the importance of helping out other people. And for us, what we've experienced is it's just been, and it sounds cliche, but the moments when we've been able to kind of dive into other people's lives and share something really meaningful with them because that's really what a lot of this stuff is.

When you have something that you really want to do and you end up doing it, it's this cool special moment. When we are able to help people do that, we get to be a part of that. It's more gratifying to see other people experience that and to you be there and to meet someone that at first was not a part of your life and now you've shared this moment with them and now you're very much a part of their life. It's just very cool and gratifying. And so that's been the most memorable portion of the project is being able to do that with other people. And we stay in touch with all these people and seeing what they're up to these days and the first guy we ever helped i mentioned before with this guy named brent uh we bought him a truck because he had

this business that was about to go under and he pulled himself out of a homeless shelter so we like got him a truck for 480 bucks and um you know we're like still friends with them. So, and then I think, yeah, the last one that we didn't touch on, I guess, and I think actually this is, if you, if we had a secret sauce, like this would kind of be it. It's be, be ballsy or just be audacious. Because like when I told you before, we, we pretended anything was possible when we made the list. Like if we wouldn't have done that, I don't think we would have been where we are today. Definitely not. Definitely not. If we thought about playing basketball with Obama before we decided to do it, we would have been like, Oh gosh, this is way too hard.

It's like that moment when you're with your friends and it's late at night and you've been drinking or something and you come up with an idea and everyone's stoked on it and everyone's, yeah, we should totally do that. Next morning you wake up and you're like, whoa. But the thing about being audacious is that, and this is straight from Ferris, and this is straight from Ferris, is that the majority of people, 99% of people, believe they can't do great things, as I said before,

for whatever reason. They don't believe they can reach their big dreams. So they aim for mediocrity. So here's this huge group of people in the world that are aiming for mediocrity. So here's this huge group of people in the world that are aiming for mediocrity, which means the level of competition is highest for realistic goals. So statistically, you have a better chance of achieving unrealistic goals. Because not as many people are trying to get them. Because not as many people are going out right so you think that it's harder to do these outrageous things but really it's easier because no one's trying to

do it so it's like not only do you have no competition but when you when you're going after it people are like oh crap that's cool that's ballsy i want to i respect you just for trying that that's what happened with us when we decided to make a TV show. The list item wasn't being a TV show, it was make a TV show. We had to be executive producers. We had to hire our own crew. We had to choose the music. We had to do the editing. We did everything. Our first TV show offer didn't represent that. Write a New York Times bestseller. We're not authors.

Dave failed English in grade 10. He sent a copy of our number one New York Times bestselling book to his English teacher in grade 10 and was like, hey, hope you enjoy the read. And the cool thing about that is you just surprise yourself with what you can accomplish. Right. And that's what we found. And doing so, it fuels you.

You get this taste of success. It's contagious. Once you do something or start to feel the accomplishment of doing something really, really cool or really, really great, it just makes you want to do more. And you feel like you can do anything. And that's the secret that we've learned is that you can do anything anything you want and that's hilarious it's amazing yeah anyone can do anything and like when we think about the things that we're doing you know like the shows you want to make the movies you want to make going to space whatever it's like it we know that we can do anything right we just have to decide on

what it is i think it's inspiring and i close for anybody we're not special we're not better than anyone we're just you know four kids from small island canada what's up with all the canadians taking over the world coming to hollywood and just dominating you and bieber man world coming down Hollywood and just dominating you and Bieber, man. Just me and Bieber. Well, I got a couple of questions left for you. So what do you want to be remembered for then Ben? I guess I want to be remembered for,

I just, I kind of would love to be seen as kind of a blueprint for inspiration for others that want to create and be you know do big things and I just want and the only way to do that is to continue to do really really big things I mean we had

this idea when we started Barry Life that what we wanted to do with the project was, you know when you miss a really good party and all your friends are talking about it? You're bummed. Damn, I should have gone out. We want to create that same feeling for life. We want to create that same feeling for life. If you're not living the way you want, we want to give you that feeling like, oh, shit, I should be doing that.

Which is why we don't ever tell people what to do. Our whole brand is the questions. What do you want to do before you die? It's asking people. It's not telling people. I would just love to represent that throughout my life and have and accomplish really really big things and be able to like have a new york times bestseller have an emmy you know go after an oscar and just continue to push the

envelope because you can so you're not it's not telling people what to do but it's more you living the life that you want to live and through that inspiring people to live their best version of themselves as well. Yeah. And hopefully giving them the tools to do it as well. Because it's like in our book, What Do You Want to Do Before You Die? Or in the blog we wrote for Ferris, we talk about things that we've learned that have, that have helped us sort of get to where we are. Now, what's the biggest,

what's, what's the most inspiring moment that you've had so far? The biggest thing that you've crossed off that you actually thought would be the hardest thing to do. And then when, then what is the one thing over everything else you want to do that you haven't done yet? I think the biggest moment was probably being on Oprah because we got to invite our moms.

And I don't think they really took the whole thing seriously until that happened. the hardest thing was probably make a tv show because it took us you know three or four years to to make it happen and when in the first two seasons we just put our in all of our blood sweat and tears into that thing like we did not sleep for a year and a half right didn't have any social lives and and we just were like wanted it to be perfect you know um perfect. It was a great learning experience. I think that was the hardest thing. Also battling with network executives and MTV and just trying to make it true to our vision. The thing that we're working on now

is make a feature-length movie. We're writing a script for a film that we want to get out there. Very cool. I would actually also say the thing that I didn't think we were going to do that we did was crash the Playboy Mansion. You mean not be on the list

but actually just go and get in? I didn't think we would ever get in. We filmed that as our first episode. MTV was like, you guys are going to have to clear Playboy. So we're going to have to call ahead. And we said, no way. We're doing this legit. We're going to sneak in and we're going to get permission later.

And it was basically like, this was our first episode. They were putting all their faith in us. But if we couldn't do it, we were screwed. So Johnny and Dave had this idea of dressing – like it was a Candyland-themed party, like a really punk-themed party. They had an idea of dressing up like Oompa Loompas, hiding in the bottom of a giant prop cake that we would dress up like the party, delivering that prop cake to the back door of the Playboy Mansion

at 5 in the afternoon and waiting in the cake for six hours. Oh my gosh. Peeing in bottles, like just with night vision cameras. And we delivered it to the back door with like paperwork that we had made that was fake. They rolled it up the back driveway of Hugh Hefner's house. They had no idea where they were. They rolled it up the back driveway of Hugh Hefner's house. They had no idea where they were.

There was like Shawshank Redemption in there. And they just waited and popped out around midnight and got into the party. And they thought they had to sort of do their thing and get out quick. But security thought they were working the party because they were just dressed up like Oompa Loompas. So they could do whatever they wanted. Oh, my gosh. Like up on stage with Snoop Dogg they did like they did cannonballs into the grotto everyone was screaming Oompa Loompa and then we got out and Playboy had no idea that we were in there. On our episode and MTV was not they

said you guys don't need permission if If they sue us, it's just good press. And one lawyer said, you guys need permission. And so we had to go and Playboy said, no way. And we were totally screwed and we were not able to air the episode until and so we said, we could, we just were like no way we're giving up on this.

This is the best thing that's ever happened to us. We are going to write a handwritten letter to Hugh Hefner with the DVD of the first episode. We were, we, we sent him the letter and the DVD and we heard it back two weeks later. And he said,

you guys can air the episode. Just know I'm not, we're not very happy with you boys. So he gave you a slap on the wrist, but said, go for it. Yeah. And getting schooled.

Hugh Hefner is way better than even crashing the playboy mansion so anyway it was really that i i just thought i just i remember they told me that plan i was like this is never gonna work you know so anyways that's an amazing story okay so that's great i want to leave it with one final question it's what i ask everyone and that is what is your definition of greatness uh just being yourself like just staying true to yourself being yourself simple you can leave it at that what uh where can people find you online you guys got a million and a half facebook fans but where can people find you personally online to connect with you uh just my name, at Ben Nemton on Twitter.

That's probably the best store. Ben Nemton on Facebook. Awesome. I appreciate it, man. This is going to be amazing. And thanks so much for coming on. And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this inspiring episode with Ben Neptune. He's truly an awesome guy.

And make sure to reach out to him online and say hello to all the Buried Life guys online as well on their Facebook page and on Twitter and theburiedlife.com. Check out their book. Very inspiring, which is going to help you hopefully write some things for your bucket list. And what I want you guys to do is head over to schoolofgreatness.com right now, because we've got all the show notes over there, a bunch of links back to Ben's site, some cool videos from The Buried Life. And also, I want you guys to leave a comment at the end of the show notes on The Buried Life show, with one, what is your biggest dream that you'd like to accomplish?

And two, what's the biggest challenge you're currently having in trying to accomplish that? So again, thanks guys, and make sure to head over to schoolofgreatness.com to leave your comments and suggestions. And remember to go out there and do something great. Outro Music