Your Transformation Station - 43. Have You Heard of the Bucket List Guy Trav Bell

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

"How can you create a transformation in others if there's no transformation in yourself?" Join (Greg Favazza, podcast) host and creator as he interviews "The Bucket List coach", (Trav Bell).  Trav will go into the acronym of Bucket List and teach us why we need one. He describes the state of affairs of employee disengagement to inspire us to action. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coming up on your transformation station. You'll find a way to help them. And before you know it, you really are, not that this is a big therapy fucking Dr. Phil session here, but you'll find that you'll inadvertently. Welcome to your transformation station. It's your transformation station. We're tapping in to surpassing expectations

from the most successful people in the modern day and honing in on new foresight, methodologies. and clairvoyance you never knew. This is your transformation station with your host, Greg Favaza. A definition of success. If I could go back, there's not many things that I would go back for, but... What do you do when you lose your purpose?

It's okay to struggle. It's okay that you're not okay. I am your host, Greg Favaza. Together, we will go on a job. journey. This show is all about surpassing our internal dialogue. Rediscovering your true identity. New foresight. We have a chance to make the world a better place for our children. Start living in the example today and become your future self tomorrow. If you can leave our viewers with some good advice to follow, what would you let them know?

These things that you're afraid to do, Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to your transformation station with your one and only, of course, Greg Favaza. Suppose you're someone aspiring to learn how to connect to the world. How can you create a transformation in others if there's no transformation in yourself? This question is often what I think about. Your transformation station focuses on 30-day challenges, three-hour refinement, connecting clarity, the idealic life, interviews, investing your time. This is your transformation on how to decode ourselves through the realization of others, a transformative experience, and establish our own transformation. Now, let's get into this.

We're tapping in to surpassing expectations from the most successful people in the modern day and honing in a new foresight, methodologies, and clairvoyance you never knew. This is your transformation station with your. Your host, Greg Favaza. I saw your TEDx. Great, great speech, great presentation. I mean, that's going to work just to step up in front of a crowd like that and just go ahead and speak what's truly on your mind. And that takes grit, that takes passion and what you believe in. And that's why we have you on your transformation station because you have a message you want to deliver.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. doing that in front of 2,000 people, it was fucking terrifying. So even as an accomplished speaker, yeah, 2,000 people, you know,

and being with the TEDx, you know, talks, you're on a three-by-three red dot. And I've four cameras on me, and I'm like a cage monkey when I, you know, I'm like a cage monkey on this red dot because I run around like an idiot on stage normally. So, yeah, it was an interesting experience, that's for sure. Well, let's give a snapshot of who you are and what you're all about to our audience and our viewers. You built a personal training business that did for one million personal training sessions. You motivated over tens to thousands of different clients. You were featured on a TEDx that's gotten over 140,000 views and still growing to this day.

What would you like to share for our audience to get this started? Well, I think you're talking about transformation. That's what I've always been about, right? So, you know, at the end of the day, I've always been in that game. You know, in the first 20 years of my life, I was in the personal fitness training industry. And, yeah, like you said, started with one client and built it up to doing nearly two million personal training sessions over the course of 20 years with a 300 strong staff. a chain of personal training studios around Australia, tens of thousands of clients,

always, always, I don't know, I just got this, when it comes to transformation of people, I'm not happy just helping a handful of people, you know, like even as a speaker now, coaching one to many from the stage, that's all well and good, but I want to kind of change the narrative, change the conversation around certain topics.

And so for the first 20 years of my life, it was in personal fitness training, growing up as a jock, as you say in America. Not that much good at anything else pretty much. So I was either going to go to the Army, mate, or get into personal training, I think. That was kind of my roads. But, yeah, I grew up as a surfer. I still surf every other day, surf a swimmer, surf lifesaver or lifeguard.

And that led me into doing a phys ed degree, which led me to the third year of university. I started this thing called personal training in the early 90s when there wasn't an industry of personal trainers. I'm a little bit older, mate. So we've got... So, yeah, I did that for 20 years. Had my own little breakdown before breakthrough moment. I'm sure that a lot of other transformers

who follow you and what you have been through. You know, and that's why we sort of come out the other side, right? we want to help our former self. We want to help other people to or prevent other people to go through some of the stuff that we've been through. And for me, it was depression. Things got on top of me. There was some toxic people in my life.

I wasn't hanging around the best people. And, you know, some business things, some personal things got on top of me sort of at the tail end of my personal training, you know, business career there. and that forced me to look inward. And but I went down into a pretty dark place. But that's when I got into personal development and started learning about life coaching and NLP

and positive psychology and a Kagi principle and law of attraction and all these sorts of things. And it wasn't, I did that, and I did that sort of stuff instead of going on like heavy antidepressants, like antidepressants, like antidepressant drugs, I decided to sum up the courage and go to these, you know, and just learn trying to get to the root cause of what was going on rather than putting a Band-Aid over the top of it.

Was there any of influence that caused you to start thinking towards clarity? 100%. Yeah, it was confusion before clarity, though. You know, there's, what do we say? There's always confusion before clarity. There's always breakdown before breakthrough. There's always a storm before the rainbow. Wow, I like that.

And so at the end of the day, but I didn't want to go on the antidepressants, you know, because I knew other people just sleep walking through their life and become a little bit too dependent on it. And, yeah, for me, I wanted to get to the psychology. I've always fascinated with psychology. So it wasn't until a friend of mine said, hey, why don't you teach this stuff?

And that's when I put on my first seminar, and at the end of that first seminar, I'm packaging everything that I knew. And at the end of this first seminar, someone actually called me the bucketless guy. And that was 10 years ago. So I went home and registered the domain name, the bucketless guy,

and I've been doing that ever since. So why the title, My Bucket List Blueprint, what's the concept, rather the intent using that title? Yeah, that's the book. And that's kind of like what I did in a TED talk as well.

I introduced and unpacked this concept that I created, called the My Bucket List Blueprint. and it's a 12-letter acronym, 12-letter 12-step program. It's like a fucking AA, but you might need a drink at the end of it. But the point is with this whole bucket list concept, right, it's about helping people, because it's founded largely on positive psychology, and positive psychology is the psychology of the science of happiness, right? So, and it's designed positive psych is about helping people identify what brings them more meaning, purpose and fulfillment and more gratitude in their life.

So I've kind of pushed these positive psychology principles out there in the world and through my trainings and my speeches and what I did in the TED Talk and all that. But I've put this brand of bucket list over the top of it just to make it more tangible for people to kind of get. And so at the end of the day, I created my bucketless blueprint because to help people be happier now, you know, rather than, because we live in a delayed gratification society, I'll be happy when syndrome, waiting for the perfect time or someday to come around. And meanwhile, meanwhile, the depression, the anxiety,

the suicides, the use suicides, the over-prescription of antidepressants, we've even got this thing called the loneliness epidemic now, which is the adverse effect of social media, these stats are climbing, right? So something's broken. Something's broken. Even though there's so much information about how to transform your life and there's so much stuff on the internet,

so much stuff for free, yet the stats are still climbing. So something's broken. So we're trying to help people, I guess, really help my former self, is give people these tools, create tools and programs, not just me, but now we've got a, I've got certified bucket list coaches in 22 countries around the world or teaching my staff, which is really cool,

out there in the world. And at the end of the day, we're trying to do our bit to try and maybe change the narrative around mental health or around, you know, combating some of these stats that I've just mentioned. But my bucketless blueprint is one of those pieces of, I guess, intellectual property that I created to help people be happier now to create this. I say a bucket list is a tangible life plan where our career plan or our business plan should fit into our life plan and not be the other way around.

So it really helps a person create a tangible life plan, you know, and it's not, a bucket list isn't just about travel, you know, which is what a lot of people think it is. You know, the seven wonders of the world or whatever, but travel takes a lot of money and takes a lot of time. agree right and people have to wait until they're fucking 70 to do half of the shit that they want to do because in america you got like two weeks off a year it's it's crazy in australia we've got four weeks off a year you know for the average person and and it's uh for an employee anyway so um what this allows people to do is identify the other things the other things around travel

you know, not just travel, but 11 other categories for them to identify and goal set and start to build out their bucket list. No matter how small or how big these things are, it gives, allows people to, I guess, articulate, unpack, you know, what's in their head and brings it all to the surface and, you know, helping people, it's just help people. I created it, tested it. It helped people. It's certainly helped me.

And now we've really built some really cool programs around the whole concept. And it helps a person create a really personally meaningful and holistic bucket list. And that's what it's all about. So it's a 12-letter acronym that helps people literally extract. and articulate this list. Before we go down the 12 steps, could you give us some information and insight what you have gotten and gain from these 12 steps yourself?

Yeah, well, I've created it. So I've built it for me, basically. You know, and then it just so happens, I introduced it in some of my talks and it resonates with a lot of people. But, mate, I've been literally running around the world doing my bucket list and helping others to do theirs for last 10 years.

So my bucket list has been my life. My, you know, oh, by the way, you know, Greg, my bucket list for the last 10 years has also been a tax deduction. Ah. So my ticket to Burning Man, my Iron Man triathlon that I did, my ticket to Mount Everest

and all the different travel things and all the crazy things, I've done the skydiving and bungee jumping, all that sort of stuff. It's all been a tax deduction. That's very clever. So my accountant still to this day says, Trobe, not as dumb as you look, are you?

But look, at the end of the day, it has been my life. The cool thing about being the bucket list guy is I'm very congruent with. message. I am the message. The message is me and it's it's really my, who I am as a person, you know, literally out there in the world. You know, it's my values and me expressed out into the world. And, and look, mate, look at this. Look, I've got even a bucket list on the hand. So I'm, I'm all in. He's all. I've, I'm fucked. I've got to. When you go and get,

And that's not coming off either. So when you go and get yourself, when you go and get your brand tattooed on your hands, that's next level. That definitely is. I would love if you can just unpack the 12 steps for our audience. So then we can get it. Yeah, cool.

So it's in my bucket list, my bucket list. So three words there. So I won't go down the rabbit hole too much. But people would be able to give a brief overview. view of this. So M stands for Me to Personal Hero. Y stands for your proud achievements.

B, buy that special something, whether for yourself or for someone else. You, ultimate challenges, mental, physical, spiritual, whatever. C, conquer a fear. K, kind acts for others. E, express yourself. T, take lessons.

L, leave a legacy. I, idiotic stuff. our S satisfy curiosity and T is the travel adventures. It's got all that right? Yeah. So when you unpack all that, which we do in our programs, it really helps a person think more expansively about their life. But the thing is to agree, like most,

a lot of people don't even write down their goals to learn their bucket list items because of fear of failure. You know, if I write down my goal, I don't want to disappoint myself. That's why a lot of people don't even write down their goals. So I can, I go to, you know, like that TED talk we were talking about earlier, I, you know, in that TED talk, there was 2,000 people in front of me, right? And I surveyed everyone, all right, who has got a bucket list here?

You know, and 2,000 people are, yeah, some people haven't. I said, all right, well, who's got one actually written down? you know probably 10% of the audience yeah and half of them are like yeah i said okay those that have got their hand like that you haven't really got one written down and just putting up your hand just to sort of show off aren't you in front of your mates yeah yeah so there's about 5% of you have actually done all right cool i'm still in a job so the um a lot of people don't even write down their goals and and you probably know this already if you actually just write down your goals I mean, call me crazy.

Remember the days when we used to have these things called paper and pen? Remember, I don't know, it's so analog, it's so like 90s, but if you actually write shit down, something goes on in your head where it's a consciousness exercise, right? All right, there we go. And like, there's actually studies that comparing if you write with a pen and paper versus just typing into your phone or whatever,

it actually has more of a benefit. We've got a 42% more likelihood of goals actually manifesting if you actually just write stuff down. Now, goals, let alone bucket list items. So guys, you're nearly halfway there if you just write stuff down. That might be an absolute game changer for some of your watches and listeners, mate. and so, you know, and I want people, that's the first step, is to have a look at this blueprint, have a look at this bucket, this thing,

and just start writing stuff down. And here's the thing, worry about the what and the why, not about the how. That's where we overcomplicate a lot of the things that we want in life. as we think about every single step. You know, people who want to climb Everest, do they look at every single step? They rock up to the base camp and they start walking. You know, they don't think through every single step.

They address the step when they're there, when they're already in motion, when they've got as much gear as they can muscle. But there's the fear of the unknown. There's a fair bit of risk, but they don't overcomplicate the how until they really have to. So worry about the what and the why. And if there's a lot of emotion, there's a lot of good energy,

inspiration around the why, that means it's got to be on the top of your list. And they're the things that, I swear to you, that when the why is strong enough to how it'll work itself out. Right. And when the Y is really strong, you become very resourceful too. It's not a matter of resources, it's a matter of resourcefulness. You know what I mean? So, Greg, what are three things on your bucket list?

Three things on my bucket list will be to get a home for my family. I have a kid on the way. Yeah. And from there, a good source of income. but I want to travel. I want to be in places. I grew up under a rock where my family never went and took trips anywhere. Right.

With the military, so I want to be able to go out and do that. This is where you drop in Australia. So you're saying I can come by your place. I got a spot there. You can come buy it. I don't know if I'll let you in, but you can come buy it. I just mind. I want to caveat on what you said as far as,

as writing things down, how your brain is aware of it, you have to write it down on a brand new notebook. If you take some scratch paper, your brain recognizes that and you write that down, you're going to throw it away later. So you want to make sure you get a brand new notebook that's specific for the taskings that you're trying to accomplish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, um, yeah, I'm, I'm a big advocate for that. I've sort of been doing it all my life, you know, like I, the reason why I was called the bucket list guy is because I've had a list to do before I die literally written down since I was 18, right?

And the interesting, the interesting thing about that is like when I did that first seminar 10 years ago, and I'm 47 now, that 10 years ago, I, in that first seminar, I share, the fact that I had a list to do before I die, actually written down. 40 people in that first seminar had no idea that I had this list written down. And wherever I went in university or wherever I moved around, I had my little blue folder, my little scrappy piece of paper in my list. And then it was during the seminar, I started sharing the fact that I had one of these lists. And I said to the group, 40 people, you know, who else has got one of these lists actually written down?

and I quickly realized I was the only freak in the room. And I said, well, why the fuck do you get up every day? Why, why do you want to earn money? Because it's not, you know, our businesses, our jobs, our career should do two things. It should produce two things. That vehicle should produce two things. And that is cash flow and also time flow. But people actually think that's the end goal.

It's not. Because if you don't have, if you don't have any reason for, for going after the money, trying to leverage and create more freedom or more time, then it's a hopeless pursuit, right? So double bonus, though, if you love what you do and it's hitting your values in terms of your, which is your internal rulebook,

and you love what you do, you're of service to your community, you're of service to people around you, I think that's the holy grail. You get in the time flow, the cash flow, and it's hitting your values. I think that's the holy grail. I can hand on heart say that's, I've got that completely nailed.

But I can guarantee that you're not fired up. They're not inspired, which is pretty sad. You know, you can go through your whole life, work 40 years like that, like my dad, and then get to the end of it and just, you know, the fire is not lit anymore. People are dying at 40 and being buried at 80. That's interesting how you put that. If you really let that sink in, we all know. people that are living by default rather than by design.

They're just existing, they're not living. And that's why the antidepressants, the alcohol usage, drug usage, etc. People are just sleepwalking through their life. They're waiting until someday or the perfect time to come around or wait until I'm retired or whatever to go and live their life. It's like, fuck, dude. You know, like, I'm into delayed gratification, but I'm also into it. instant gratification now because because and that's why I wrote this um this book and I did the

the the um TED talk and the my bucket list blueprint all that sort of stuff is to help people be happier now are you writing a second book for those that have accomplished the 12 stops do you have any yes yeah could you sure yeah there's uh mate this book mind you has been in the um Yeah, been in the making for about 10 years. This is a big bucket list item and it should be out in like a week just before Christmas and stuff. So we're planning to go to Amazon bestseller and all that sort of thing. My publishers are pretty fired up about it and I'm just like, just get it done. Just get it done.

But now I've got a truckload of books in me. and, you know, the big, the big play for me, mate, is to help people, you know, hopefully change the narrative for people. And I've got 10 years of doing this, you know, just being, I mentor a lot of other speakers and a lot of other thought leaders. And I've always said, pick a highway, then pick a lane and then own the lane. And so, you know, because we get, we get, you know, as an entrepreneur, as you know, you can go sort of all over the place and bright, shiny object syndrome

and, oh, that's cool, I'll do a bit of this, I'll do a bit of that. So I've been banging this bucket list drum for 10 years and just deliberately kept the blinkers on. It's like, this is what I do, you know, an inch wide, a mile deep rather than an inch deep and a mile wide. And I've just, there's just been too much evidence. of people changing their lives around me for me not to stay the path and to now produce more and more books.

You know, mate, I can go and talk, right? And I've had people who are on suicide watch, you know, then get off suicide watch and then go live their life. And they're a father of like three kids. And it's when you hear shit like this and people coming off medication. I'm not saying I'm a guru.

I just maybe right place, right time. But when you get the testimonials back, I've got thanks, you've changed my life. And, you know, and they were too shy to even talk to me at the end of a presentation. And they were literally on suicide watch. I tried to kill myself a couple of times, you know, over the last six months.

Like, fuck. And when you hear shit like this, and then you get, and this is what, you know, this is the shit that really gets me going. And then you get a selfie of them and their family at Disney World and then over in Italy and going, thanks to you, I put this on my bucket list.

I always wanted to come to Italy with the family. I always wanted to go to Disney World with the family. And here I am now. Oh my God, I can't believe I was going to kill myself before I saw your presentation. And I'm just like, you know, I've got hundreds of those, I'd hate to say, over the last 10 years.

And that's enough reason for me and not, you know, that's enough reason for me not to just go all in. That is very well said. That is amazing. The feeling that you get from those messages. Yeah, that was the impetus for why we created bucketless coach is like, well, I can only help so many people in my lifetime. So I'm going to get, you know, create a framework, create a structure for other people to teach this shit. So we licensed out bucket list coach.

now we've got certified bucket list coaches in 22 countries around the world and and we're growing, you know, and they're now helping people in their parts of the world. We even got bucket list coaches in places where if you translate the bucket list, it makes no fucking sense at all. But it's like they still get it though. They still get it and they get life philosophy and they get these positive psychology principles. And we only do group coaches. coaching programs.

We don't do individual because we want to affect the lives of 10 million people. That's my legacy. You know, in the mindbuckle of this blueprint, this is my legacy. One of the legacies that I want to do. I really like that, Trav. I know your time is short. So if we can just wrap things up, if we can just get just a recommendation on some good advice to follow and some bad advice to avoid,

what would you recommend the audience? jeez um i think that the best advice is um listen to your guts a lot more listen to your gut instinct a lot more your intuition a lot more um but i will say this your your your your crowd your you know you're all about transformation is what i want to say that if you've been through some shit in your and you've had a breakdown before break through a moment. You've had that, you've had that transformation in yourself. And this is for you to agree,

and you've come out the other side. And you obviously, you've gone through some transformation and you're doing this podcast as a result. You know, like, I'm going to say this and might come across quite harsh, but how, if anyone's been through a transformation

and come out the positive, come out the other side, and they're positive and they can reflect back on that transformation and on the psychological ups and downs of that transformation. And you know there's a whole bunch of learnings in that breakdown before breakthrough kind of moment. We've all had them. Yes.

I'm going to say this, how dare you live your life and not pay those learnings forward? How dare you die with those learnings within you? and how dare you not get them out there into the world and go help other people with those learnings. Package up those learnings, put them in a podcast, put them in a book, put them in a speech, put them in a blog, YouTube channel,

whatever the fuck, it does not matter. The point being, you need to get those learnings and package them up and offer them to other people who are fucking hurting. other people who need to hear that. I know that when I go out and talk and I mention depression and all these other things that I've been through,

I'm literally saving lives with the stuff that I inherently take for granted. Now. All right? So whatever you've been through, you need to pay these messages forward because you're inadvertently coaching your former self, even though you are coaching other people

through that expertise that you've developed. But there's so many people, nearly every person has been through some shit. But there's only a chosen few that have decided to, you know what? I'm going to do something with these transformation, you know, lessons.

And I'm going to pay that forward. You know, so. And there's too many people hurting out there right now there's some there's a whole flock of people that need to hear what you've what you take for granted now that you've come through whatever you've come through that's that's true isn't it yes that is I can't it it's it's like um you know so get good at speaking get good at but don't be a perfectionist, be a progressionist around it. You know, that's what that, and fuck it, just go and go and mentor someone.

Go and get, you know, go and go and go and just help someone that, that, that you recognize and you'll be able to recognize those people that are going through the same shit that you've been through. Go help them. And if you get that imposter syndrome, you know, like who do, you know, this is what the internal dialogue. Who do you think you are to stand on stage? Who do you think you are to go lead these kind of people?

Who do you think you are to be the coach or the author of a book? Who do you think you are? We've all got that imposter syndrome, right? And that's our reptilian brain. It's inbuilt into human beings to keep us safe so we keep fucking reproducing and keep mankind going. That's the reptilian brain keeping us safe. All right?

agree. So let's assume that that's always going to be there your whole life. It will be. And it is. All right. Even as confident and I get up on stages, I don't give a shit. No, there's still a little bit of me like, you reckon, trap? You know, do you think so?

That's always there. But a coach said this to me once, Greg. He said, I said, well, you know, like I've got this negative self. talk, you know, like this imposter syndrome, what do I do? The best thing you can do is just start helping one person. Go out and help two people, three people, four, whatever it is. Don't try and be Tony Robbins and get a stadium full of fucking people, right, right, you know, right out of the blocks, all right? Just go help some people. Okay. Go help some people. And before you know, if you get the real results and really look after them, however you do, all right,

bonus that you get paid, but go help them. And what you'll see is that testimonial, that positive reinforcement, that positive feedback from all those people will be so, that'll be so noisy that you can't ignore it. And before you know, it's so noisy that it quietens the noise in your head. No true word has been spoken. So if you're in a place where you're like, oh, I really want to do something, fucking just start helping people. You'll find a way to help them. And before you know it, you really are, not that this is a big therapy fucking Dr. Phil session here,

but you'll find that you'll inadvertently be coaching yourself. It's therapy to a certain extent. It's extremely cathartic. Trabb, how can our listeners get in touch with you if they want to know more? Go to the bucketlist guy.com. That is where I hang out. And if people want to, you know, suss out how to become a bucket list coach, go to bucketlistcoach.com.

Maybe go to bucketlistcoach.com forward slash webinars. And we run weekly webinars. That's what I'm about to jump on to now is running our weekly webinar of a bit of a show and tell about how bucketless coach works. but probably on Instagram bucketlist guy dot Trave Bell

and that's where I hang out the most but here's a challenge for you mate Greg and your listeners and watches go watch my TED Talk right called Life's Too Short by Trave Bell just YouTube it

going or by the time this comes out the book will probably be out going by the book go through the My Bucket List blueprint, do it, write down your bucket list. And Greg, you're going to send me your bucket list. Okay.

Trav at the bucket list guy.com. I would do that for you. I challenge you, I dare you to do it. Challenge accepted. Boom. All righty. Thank you, Trave. I really do appreciate your time.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. subscribe if you have not already done so. But leave us a review. Let us know how we can continue to improve your transformation station. I appreciate every one of you for tuning in. And I look forward to the next episode on your transformation station. You've been listening to Your Transformation Station. Rediscovering your true identity and purpose on this planet.

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