Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Ben Nemtin: Building a Badass Bucket List for Your Life and Business | Mental Health | YAPClassic
Fri, 16 May 2025
Ben Nemtin was an athlete in university with a bright future until crippling mental health struggles blindsided him and forced him to drop out of college. But through that darkness, he found purpose: a list of 100 dreams and a pact with three friends to help others pursue theirs too. Ben believes building a bucket list saved his life and living your “Buried Life” is essential for profiting in life. In this episode, Ben shares his battle with mental health, how bucket lists became his path to purpose, and how entrepreneurs can take control of their own happiness, one bold goal at a time. In this episode, Hala and Ben will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (06:12) Ben’s struggle with depression (13:47) Origin of The Buried Life and Bucket List Concept (23:47) The Ripple Effect of Purpose and Helping Others (27:51) Why Personal Goals Aren’t Selfish (33:06) Legendary bucket‑list wins: Playing with Obama (40:56) Red Carpet Escapades: Asking Out Celebrities (48:11) Unfinished Bucket List Items and Future Plans (50:00) How Death Can Be Life’s Greatest Motivator Ben Nemtin is a #1 New York Times best-selling author, keynote speaker, and co-founder of The Buried Life movement. He gained global recognition through the hit MTV show The Buried Life, where he and his friends pursued an epic bucket list while helping strangers do the same. Ben now ranks among the World’s Top Organizational Culture Thought Leaders and Top Motivational Speakers despite struggling with mental health. He has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, CNN, NBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, and more, spreading his message of mental wellness, self-improvement, and the radical possibility of dream-chasing. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/profitingIndeed Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Microsoft Teams - Stop paying for tools. Get everything you need, for free at aka.ms/profiting Mercury - Streamline your banking and finances in one place. Learn more at mercury.com/profiting LinkedIn Marketing Solutions - Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at linkedin.com/profiting Bilt - Start paying rent through Bilt and take advantage of your Neighborhood Benefits™ by going to joinbilt.com/PROFITING. Airbnb - Find yourself a co-host at airbnb.com/host Resources Mentioned: Ben’s Book: What Do You Want To Do Before You Die?: https://www.amazon.com/What-You-Want-Before-Die/dp/1579654762 Ben’s Website: https://www.bennemtin.com/ Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services - yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset, Mental Health, Health, Psychology, Wellness, Biohacking, Motivation, Mindset, Manifestation, Brain Health, Life Balance, Self-Healing, Positivity, Happiness, Sleep, Diet
Chapter 1: What is Ben Nemtin's story of overcoming depression?
I can't wait for my listeners to hear all of your bucket list advice and all of your life changing stories. But before we get into it, I did want to touch on your upbringing and talk about mental health for a moment because you are an expert on this topic. You grew up in Canada and I read that when you were younger, you were always traveling with your parents.
So let's talk about your upbringing and how that influenced your adventurous spirit that you have today.
So my dad was actually a clown and he was like a theatrical clown. So he played music and he wasn't necessarily the clown that like does balloons and parties and stuff. He would do theater shows.
So we would travel around to different kids festivals or different cities and he would do a show and it would either be in some sort of exotic location like in Africa or somewhere like Sweden or it would be on a ski mountain. So we had this really interesting relationship upbringing where we would kind of travel with him to these cool locations. He played music.
So what he would also do is like when my mom and my dad met, they would travel Greece and they would play music in the tavernas for a free room upstairs. So in Greece, you have the bar and then you have a couple of rooms above it. So they would play music, pass around the hat and their payment would be free room and board. And so my parents have been to Greece 15, 16 times.
It's their favorite place to go. So when I was two years old, they brought me to Greece for the first time and they still would do that thing where they would play music in the taverna and travel around like that. And so they would just bring me with them and they would sit me on the bar as a two-year-old and then they would
leave and play music in the corner and they would just leave me on the bar and I would hang out. And then at the end of the night, they kind of picked me up and off we'd go. And they put me in between them on their Vespa with a little hockey helmet and kind of travel around Greece. So I think from them, I learned that there really wasn't any rules around how you had to live your life.
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Chapter 2: How did The Buried Life and bucket list concept originate?
I think subconsciously, we either absorb that There's this expected route that we have to go on and we feel like that's what we should do. It doesn't need to be pressure from our parents. It's sort of pressure from society. I think at an early age, subconsciously, I learned from then there really were no rules and you could create your own life
based on what made you happy and they never really made very much money we didn't have a lot of money growing up it's not like we were scraping by but we he was a performer and my mom was kind of an independent business coach for women and then did this and that so but what they their life was so rich and they still to this day live like that and they have we had a west valia van where we travel around and camp and to this day they drive down to mexico every year in the van and play music
and meet people. And they had this very rich life. And so it's, yeah, that's definitely what I learned from them growing up.
That's so cute. It's such like a unique little story. And considering how much you travel now, now I understand kind of where you get that from because it's a very unique upbringing that you had. So you ended up getting a scholarship from my understanding of college and you had an opportunity to play on the rugby team, which in Canada is a really big deal.
But you ended up falling into depression your first year of college. So talk to us about that. From an outside perspective, seems like everything was going great. You had great parents, you guys traveled, you got a scholarship. Why did you think that you ended up falling into depression? What happened there?
I put so much pressure on myself to succeed in school, in athletics. I really wanted people to like me. Like I just kind of, for whatever reason, I put, I've always put a lot of pressure on myself. I was on the under 19 national rugby team and we were training for the World Cup and I was worried about missing a kick because I played fly half.
So that's like a field goal kicker and you're the quarterback kind of, so there's a lot of pressure on that position. And so I started worrying about, oh, crap, what if I miss an easy kick at the World Cup? And what if I blow this opportunity? And I had missed a kick in the end of our championship game in high school. And so I really didn't want that to happen again.
And, you know, at that age, everything is so black and white and so life or death, you know, whether your friends like you or you don't, you're living in this little bubble of high school. So you really don't know that there's so much more out there and that they're
these things that you think are such a big deal when you're younger in your high school years or early college years you realize well i'm not even going to remember that this happened on my deathbed like there's just no way i'm going to remember that this was something that i worried about but at that point i was so worried about doing well on this team and so i would worry about it at night and i felt this anxiety and this anxiety caused me to have trouble sleeping and so
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Chapter 3: Why is pursuing personal goals not selfish?
And that single decision completely changed my life. And it would lead me down this path that would ultimately bring me here, speaking to you. I mean, I wouldn't be doing the things I am doing now if I hadn't consciously decided to try and only surround myself with people that inspire me.
Yeah, I think it's pretty crazy how one decision can change the trajectory of your life. I mean, you've been on this mission for what it seems to be like 15 years now.
Yeah, and I think that that's a really empowering idea because it means that you can change your life at any time.
And I think we all can think back to moments where there was this pivot and it could be something very small, like something a teacher said to us or the way a teacher showed up to us before us in high school or some way a friend supported us or just happenstance when you ran into someone and then that led to your job or there's any number of things, but these little moments.
And I think it's a combination of, you have to be aware and it kind of jump on those moments sometimes. And it takes a little bit of awareness and it takes a little bit of this being proactive. And you start to go down this path that you don't know will ultimately shift your whole life. So if you think about it, if you
If anyway, as a golfer, you hit a golf ball one or two degrees off, it doesn't seem like much, but by the time that it lands could be 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 feet off center. And so this little change can be a big change over time. And that's how I look at these small little shifts that you make that you don't see them in the moment, but they can actually create this huge impact.
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Chapter 4: What are some legendary bucket list achievements?
Chapter 5: How does Ben Nemtin view the impact of helping others?
And I was at a really, I was A-type. I had a lot of friends that were also very supportive and high energy. But I really wasn't talking about what was going on at all. So I was internalizing it and I just went down and down and down and it got really, really scary.
And it ultimately, my friends actually kind of pulled me out of the house and convinced me and rallied me to come work with them in a new town for the summer. after I dropped out of school. And I was forced to get a job. I was forced to start to kind of do things on my own. I've sort of built a little bit of confidence. I started talking about what I was going through.
I started to find different types of people that were inspiring, right? Like, as I said, when you're in high school or even college, you have this Petri dish of friends, but you don't realize that if they're not your people, there are your people out there. It just takes time to find it. And so that was something that took a bit of time for me to realize.
And I started finding these people that I realized gave me energy. These new groups of friends, they inspired me and they were doing all these cool things. They had already traveled. They had started businesses. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to try and only surround myself with people that inspire me. almost by necessity, because I needed that energy.
And that single decision completely changed my life. And it would lead me down this path that would ultimately bring me here, speaking to you. I mean, I wouldn't be doing the things I am doing now if I hadn't consciously decided to try and only surround myself with people that inspire me.
Yeah, I think it's pretty crazy how one decision can change the trajectory of your life. I mean, you've been on this mission for what it seems to be like 15 years now.
Yeah, and I think that that's a really empowering idea because it means that you can change your life at any time.
And I think we all can think back to moments where there was this pivot and it could be something very small, like something a teacher said to us or the way a teacher showed up to us before us in high school or some way a friend supported us or just happenstance when you ran into someone and then that led to your job or there's any number of things, but these little moments.
And I think it's a combination of, you have to be aware and it kind of jump on those moments sometimes. And it takes a little bit of awareness and it takes a little bit of this being proactive. And you start to go down this path that you don't know will ultimately shift your whole life. So if you think about it, if you
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Chapter 6: How can thinking about death motivate life goals?
We realized, okay, we're going to die one day. So if we're going to die, which is probably the only thing we can count on in life, what do we want to do with the time left? 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 we pretended we had all the money in the world. We pretended that we had the ability to do anything.
So our list was ambitious. It was like, make a TV show, play basketball with Obama, write a number one New York Times bestseller, sit with Oprah, have a beer with Prince Harry, pay off our parents' mortgage, go to space. streak a field and get away, ask out the girl your dreams. It was a very audacious list.
And then we thought every time we cross something off our list, let's help someone else do something on their list. And so that was the mission. We bought an RV, we bought a secondhand camera, and we planned a two-week road trip in the summer of 2006 in Victoria, BC, where we grew up in Canada. And we hit the road. And as soon as we hit the road, unexpectedly, people heard about our road trip.
And then they started to email us and they looked at our list and they said, hey, I can help you cross off, ride a boat. I can help you cross off, get up on a hot air balloon. I can help you cross off, make a toast to a stranger's wedding. And then they would send us their dreams asking for our help.
and so we struck this nerve and we just thought let's keep doing this and so this two-week road trip ended up lasting over 10 years and then the list items that we had written down in the beginning that we were convinced were completely unattainable over time they ended up falling off the list and so
we also realized that helping other people achieve their dreams meant even more than doing the big things on our list. And then along the way, like built this passion for like figuring out why do some people achieve their goals and go after them? But most people don't like,
Why are 76% of the people on the planet reaching their deathbed and regretting the things they didn't do, not the things they did? And so that's why I started to speak because I was like, okay, we need to get more people in that minority of the population that actually go after the things and be true to yourself. And really a bucket list is just a reflection of your true self.
That's the way I look at it. It's just a list of all the things that are going to bring you joy and happiness. So it's not just skydive and go to Europe. That's one of 10 categories of your life. So you want to think about your adventure travel goals, but you also want to think about your mental health goals, your physical health goals.
You want to think about how do you want to give back, your relationship goals, intellectual, what do you want to learn, financial, professional. And so that's what a full bucket list is. But When we were on that road trip, we had no idea of any of that. We were just going out to tackle our dreams and help other people. And it sparked this lifelong learning journey.
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