My guests today are Bridget Hilton and Joe Huff who are co-authors of the best selling book, Experiential Billionaire: Build a Life Rich in Experiences and Die With No Regrets. Before you dismiss this episode thinking you’re too busy making a living and you don’t have the resources to do the things you want to do, my conversation with Bridget and Joe delved into exactly that fear:
“People get scared because it’s easier to wrap their heads around what they have to lose than what they have to gain.” – Bridget Hilton
Bridget and Joe surveyed over 20,000 people from all walks of life and the result is eye opening. People’s regrets are very similar no matter their age and income status and in our conversation, we talk about why people often put things that matter in the fictional world of ‘someday.’ But more importantly, we talk about the exercises described in their book that can help you have that sense of urgency to start doing the things you love.
If you have a bucket list that you’ve stowed away in that fictional world of ‘someday’ because you think you don’t have the time or resources to do them or they’re simply too big to make them happen, this episode is for you. Our conversation will walk you through the actions you can take to start building a life rich in experiences with no regrets.
Bridget Hilton and Joe Huff are obsessed with experiences. Determined to unlock the secrets of their power to transform lives, they have spent years interviewing social science experts, conducting the largest study on life experiences ever done, and turning themselves into experiential guinea pigs. Together they have trained to be samurai, danced with the northern lights, tracked silverback gorillas in a hailstorm, stood face to face with hungry lions on safari, absorbed life lessons from Maasai Mara tribesmen, sped across glaciers on dogsleds, built schools for kids in need, studied with monks, helped give 50,000 people hearing, swum with sharks, and explored the experiential riches life has to offer.
Together they have been interviewed on the Today Show, Good Morning America, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, The Verge, Buzzfeed, Entrepreneur, Monocle, Inc., Fast Company, and The Los Angeles Metropolitan Local News.
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Zack Arnold: I am here today with Bridget Hilton and Joe Huff, who are the co authors of the best selling book Experiential Billionaire: Build a Life Rich in Experiences and Die With No Regrets. The two of you are also self proclaimed experiential guinea pigs. And this is going to be a very short list because otherwise it's going to take up the entire interview, but you've trained to be samurai, you've tracked silverback gorillas in a hailstorm, you stood face to face with hungry lions on safari, you studied with monks, you sped across glaciers on dog sleds, you swam with sharks, and maybe just as or even more importantly, that we're going to talk more about, you've helped over 50,000 people have the ability to hear. This by the way, just the shortlist your work has been featured on The Today Show, Good Morning America, in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, I'm running out of breath, dear Lord, this is one of the most challenging and exhausting intros I've ever done. How in the world have you accomplished all of these things? So excited to have you here today to talk about all of that and more. Bridget and Joe means the world to me that you decided to prioritize your time to share your story with me. Thank you.
Bridget Hilton: Thank you so much for having us.
Zack Arnold: So here's where I actually want to start. We have two co authors of a book talking about experiential billionaires. The irony is not lost on me that one of you was named to the Forbes Inc 30 under 30 lists. And while you were on that list, you were broke. And the other Have you filed for bankruptcy at age 27. Help me reconcile these things. I'm going to start with you Bridget.
Bridget Hilton: Well, I think though, the Forbes conversation is part of a longer story. But it was one of the funnier things that happened to us. And it was honestly the impetus of the whole, the name of the book. And this is like a while ago, it's like in 2015 when I was on that list, but at the time, I mean, we were running our company, and we were having all of these amazing experiences around the world. And people saw me on that list. And I had all of these, you know, old friends from high school or whatever, reach out to me and say like, Oh, can I borrow some money? And I'm like, we don't really have any money. But sorry to tell you that. But so we started like this inside joke between me and Joe. And we would say we're not billionaires yet. But we're experiential billionaires.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I'm very glad that you clarify that because it's a much more interesting and engaging way to ask the question, explain the title. Because as soon as I saw the title at first, I was like, Wait experiential billionaires and like, is this like a Richard Branson book or something? Because you just you make these assumptions about what it is. And as soon as I read the subtitle, and started to dig in a little bit deeper, I'm like, Oh, I get it. But I wanted to just kind of take whatever those myths, misguided assumptions might be about who the authors are, or what you believe, is truly important. The term billionaires has nothing to do with money or wealth, or at least how we traditionally define wealth. So Joe, same question to to bridge it. How do I reconcile this fact that you're going to teach me how to be an experiential billionaire yet? You've filed for bankruptcy? Like, what's that all about?
Joe Huff: Yeah, you know? Well, firstly, the bankruptcy story. You know, it's funny, I guess, that's part of the bigger underlying message that your wealth doesn't dictate how rich you are in life, right? So, and your wealth is one of those things that can change throughout, you know, time it can be, we can make money lose money, things can happen. But our experiences we don't lose, right. So the more that we're actually investing in experiences, and you can invest in experiences, regardless of whatever your financial situation is, if you're creative. So for me, and first like that, the bankruptcy story, I like to joke about it, because when I actually went bankrupt, I went to file for bankruptcy. And they told me that it costs $2,500, to file for bankruptcy. I was devastated. I was like, going to file for bankruptcy. And then I had to go around telling people I'd like to be bankrupt, but I just can't actually afford it. So I couldn't even afford to be bankrupt. But the thing about that is, you know, since then, I've been able to become very wealthy in experiences. And actually before then I was doing a great job and, you know, investing in experiences. And really, this, you know, to really go to the answer of the real question, what the book title what the message is, what the core of this all is, is that whatever you call it, whether you call it fulfillment, whether you call it happiness, whether you call it you know, no regret or having content, you know, about what your life's about purpose, all of those things. The reality is we have this like equation or head where if we have enough money, we'll have that thing. We'll have that feeling that makes us feel like life is okay and We just really strongly believe that that is wrong. You know, the thing that life that, you know, the measurement of life is our experience of life and the amount of experiences that we have during our life. Right. So, the bankruptcy, although that happened again, that was also quite a long time ago, I've been able to since then have a really, really amazing life. And who knows, I could file bankruptcy again, people do things happen, you never know. But the experiences I have, I have forever, and those are the things that are going to I'm going to take them to my grave, you know, to my dying day, I'll be able to look back and think I suck the marrow out of life, I actually got, I did the things I said I was gonna do, and some of them didn't work out, hence the bankruptcy. Sometimes you just gotta roll with it. But that's, that's the whole message.
Zack Arnold: I love it. And I'm glad you both share that because they just I wanted to get it out of the way immediately, like, Okay, fine. A couple of wealthy entrepreneurs are going to tell me that I need to have more life experiences great. Like, the last thing I need is Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos telling me the value of experiences, I don't have time for that I've got kids, I've got a job, I can barely pay the bills. So I just I wanted to get all those objections out of the way for people to understand that this is a completely different lens for us to look at our lives and how to measure our lives. And the idea that I've been sharing with people for years that is so in alignment in slightly different words to what you're talking about. And this is one of the speeches that I give, especially to my students that I train students to run Spartan Races, because I want them to use physical challenges to develop the mental and emotional resiliency, for the shitstorm. That is our lives, right. And I talked to them about how you, we don't measure our lives so much in weeks and months or years. But I believe that in order to truly live a meaningful life, you should measure it in meaningful moments. Right. So my, what I'm trying to do is collect as many moments and memories as possible. And the word that you're using experiences is pretty much the exact same idea. So as soon as I saw that, I'm like, Yes, get them on the calendar, we must talk and break all this down. So I just wanted to make it very clear for people not to be afraid of the word billionaire, because it means something very, very different in this equation
Bridget Hilton: I love what you're saying about collecting moments, we think about that so much. And like we like to think about this like fictional guy named Bob. And we think about Bob's funeral. Like at the end of your life, like at Bob's funeral, you're not going to say like, Oh, I loved Bob, like he died with $10 million in the bank, like you're going to talk about, like, you know, how he took his kids to like national parks, and how he watched the sunset with his wife every night and how like his coworkers loved, you know, volunteering with him at the animal shelter, like all these people are going to talk about the moments that they had with him and the experiences that they had with this person. So I love like where you're going with that?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and the that reminds me one of my favorite lines from the book. And I don't know if it was specific to Bob or not. But when you reach the end of your life, you're not going to say, Can I hold my wallet just one more time. Right? Like, that's such an eye opening moment. And it's funny, but it's also like, oh, man that hits you. Right, because that's the way that we're trained and conditioned, is that we're taught a very specific definition of what success means what Rich means what wealth means. So these are words that I want to help everybody redefine today that how you define the word rich, or how you define the word wealthy is very individual. And oftentimes, it's very, very different than what society wants you to believe it is. And where I want to get started. Or to truly start digging deeper into this. You mentioned this idea of the end of your life. This is a big catalyst for this entire book is this very specific Cornell study about how people see in view the end of their lives. So can you give people a little bit more context about how that was a really big inspiration for this entire movement in this book?
Joe Huff: Sure, yeah. That that study revealed that 78% of people like three out of four people, their number one regret, toward the end of their life was the things they didn't do. It wasn't the things that they did. And we actually ran a study ourselves of over 20,000 people. And we reaffirm that and it wasn't even with people just at the end of their lives, it was with people really across all ages, most people's regrets were the things that they hadn't been able to do or accomplish yet, for whatever reason. And you know, that's a really eye opening statistic, but it's still hard for people to like put that into their daily life and act upon it because it seems like people know this stuff, you know, they think they do they think they know it, but that's just not how we act. For whatever reason, we still keep putting everything off until this fictional you know, someday in the future when we're going to go and do those things that matter to us, and then we just never get around to it until it's too late. Hence all those regrets and that's really the subtitle of the book, you know, build the life rich and experience and die with no regrets because at I think that everybody, you know, when they really think about that, you know, they get to that, that moment for the end and they see all the missed opportunities, it's really easy to picture that and picture how that's gonna feel, you're gonna know, like, I actually didn't try or I didn't, you know, make that a priority. So that's a big part of it, and that we actually have a real personal story, I think this can, you know, illustrate a little bit to more about like, the, the money part, because really, you know, you nailed it, by the way on with your comment. But the excuses are the reasons people will dismiss this right away. And it's a great, you know, these people are rich, or, you know, they've obviously got more resources. And the number one excuse people have is they don't have enough time, and they don't have enough money. And that's why they don't do things. You know, we didn't start anywhere near that, you know, I grew up my parents met on an assembly line making brake pads in the Midwest. So the closest experience I had to a trust Bond was trusting they would fund a trip to the ice cream truck occasionally. And yeah, I didn't go to college. Unfortunately, I, I barely graduated high school. And I started my life off with this moment, though, where, right when I turned 18, I just managed to graduate high school and I came downstairs and I found my dad slumped over at the kitchen table. And he was white as a sheet and just completely drenched in sweat. And, you know, we call the ambulance and send to the hospital where we assumed he had heart attack, and which was scary enough. But that actually started off a crazy two months, nightmare for our family where he didn't just have a heart attack, he had heart failure. And that moment was the beginning. Like where, you know, he basically went right on to the life support, they bumped into the top of the heart transplant list, they told us he has very low odds of survival. He wound up needing the defibrillator paddles right away, that hurt so much, he decided he didn't want that to happen again. So we were we were sat there just like waiting for this terrible outcome. And my dad was really young, he's 48 years old. And I just remember thinking this is all wrong, you know, thinking about all the things my dad had never done that he wanted to do. He was that person in that statistic. And that Cornell study, you know, like he was literally going to be that person that put everything off for this future that just doesn't exist. And so many people, I think we just think we have more time. So for me, that moment, though, just gave me this great gift of urgency to start doing things. And I still and this ties back to that money and time thing. I didn't have any resources, but I suddenly had urgency. And then that got me going that got me like, okay, what can I do? What What can I do with my time and the money, the little bit of money and time that I have. And I made listen, I did all these really fun things. Like I went like freediving and I went, you know, I did like crazy hikes around my area. And I went and learned how to clip dive and I went skydiving, I saved up for a couple months. But I did it, I put it on the calendar and did it. And you know that that got some momentum going. And that led me all the way through my my life journey of like being able to eventually bootstrap a small business that turned into a larger business. And that got me to the point where I met Bridget and I started this whole other journey. But, you know, I guess the point really there is that we all have the same, you know, constraints, however we want to look at it. But it's about making, you know, steps forward to like, start having those experiences.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and one of the things that I want to tap into a little bit later in this conversation, I'll put a pin in it for now. But if I were to the problem that I have with this interview is there's an embarrassment of riches. And I could probably do a 90 minute interview on every chapter. We're not going to do that, because I want to be respectful of your time. But what I want to get into a little bit later, the one that I really resonated with more than anything was how to turn negatives into positives. So I definitely want to go there in a little bit. But what I want to do is unpack some of the core ingredients that I think you're talking about, which are that number one, there was urgency. And I know the one of the main purposes of your book is how do we help people have that urgency, without a near death experience, right without a gun to your head or defibrillators, or you've lost everything in your homeless? Like ideally, we can create urgency without that I want to talk more about that. But I feel like the the ingredients that are necessary are there's urgency. And it's not it's not like you eliminated your fears. I just think you find a way to manage the fear where the fear of the unknown or the fear of cliff diving or the fear of you know, chasing Silverback gorillas in a hailstorm is less than the fear of regret. And that's the fear that I often have to tap into. And if the third thing you add is intention and purpose, when you've got urgency, you can manage the fear and you've got purpose like you're unstoppable and you don't need any money to be able to move forwards.
Joe Huff: Yeah, just so it's clear my dad actually was was very lucky. We were lucky my dad got the heart transplant and he had this second round of life that was you know, obviously very, very important for all of us to witness but what sunk in to your point was that The health situation with my dad wasn't avoidable. But the regret was. So that's what drove that intentionality, that urgency that, you know, forward moment that makes you kind of unstoppable all of a sudden, because now all of a sudden, you can see this is the real fear is this regret not the fear of like, you know, trying some new thing, whatever that thing might be. It's the regret fear. So I appreciate you can jump in there.
Bridget Hilton: Oh, no, no worries. I was just going to talk about time constraints and urgency and how, you know, we call it Sunday syndrome, because it's all of these people say, you know, someday I want to do this, but I'm gonna wait until you know, I graduate college, I'm gonna wait until I, you know, get married or have kids or until the kids are older until I, you know, retire, you know, insert excuse here. And then it just like comes into this like, abyss of this fictional day of Sunday. And that's why people regret things. And that's why we really try to drive home the urgency message, because this isn't like, you know, this is like your life. And it's, it's you need to like, put a time constraint around it, because nobody has like deadlines in their personal life. And like, that's what we're really driving home. Is that like, it's happening right now you have to like, do the things you want to do now, because Tomorrow is not promised? And we don't know how long we're going to have.
Joe Huff: Yeah, the value.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, given that you're talking to an audience of largely creative people, I can guarantee almost all of them are saying, Yes, I will definitely get to this later. A law. I'm going to procrastinate later, I'm going to get to this later. I've got other things to do now. And you've got a couple of very practical steps to help introduce this urgency, because like you said, and I want to emphasize this, near death experiences should not be the only thing that led urgency to the value of your life. I've never had one of those near death experiences. But for me, the urgency came from having kids and being a dad and realizing and I know that Bridgette, you also worked in the entertainment industry on the music side, and LA for years, it will completely consume you. There are zero boundaries, they will take everything from you that they possibly can until they find somebody else that's willing to pay the passion tax all over again, right. And it was when I realized when I had kids that I really had to either make a choice, or I had to find a way to blend both of them together with boundaries. That was when my urgency came along. And now I constantly feel a sense of urgency, thinking, Oh, my God, like my son, he's going to be out of the house in five years. He's been in our house, like, how is it that he's almost 14 years old? That's an urgency that changes? Well, do I want to help him with his homework? Or do I want to do this thing when I've got this other word project know that urgency is there. So talk to me about other strategies that you share, there's a couple of really good ones in the book about how anybody can introduce urgency and stop procrastinating and putting this into the magical mysterious land of Someday.
Bridget Hilton: So I'll do the first very short exercise we have in the book is a Memento Mori chart, which is basically 76 of blocks that you fill in how many years that you've lived so far. So for me, it's an interesting, interesting exercise in here, because I'm 38. And I'm exactly halfway through the average American lifespan. So I have this card that I see every single day, I have it on my bookshelf. And it reminds me that I'm exactly halfway through the average lifespan. So if I want to do something, I better like start, you know, planning it right now, right? And a lot of people really resonate with this exercise, because they never thought of it that way. Because I think in our heads, the average is like, Oh, I'm gonna die when I'm in my, like, when I'm 100 years old, and my sleep and like, it's gonna be all good. Look, a lot of people really feel that way. But the reality is, unfortunately, not that. So when we have people do this exercise, they can kind of see how many boxes they have left. And then it also makes them think of the different generations in their life, right? Like you were saying, like with your kid, you have five years left. So you're like, Okay, look at this chart, I have five years left, where he's going to be at home. So what do I want to do in those five years? So I want to take him on this road trip with just you and him? Do you want to like, you know, teach him how to whatever skill that you want to teach them, like, you've got literally five years until he's out of the house. And this exercise makes you think of like those little things that you want to do in the constrained time. So I just I love that exercise.
Joe Huff: Yeah, it's the math, the math continues to right. So it's like, yeah, there's five years and you break it down into okay, you know, say your parents are already in their 70s. Like, my mom is actually 82. And so she's already gone beyond in the bonus round, pass the average, right? But if you somebody's like 70 years old, and the average is 76. And you see that person once a year, then you can do the math and go Well, I'm only going to see them maybe six months. times, that's not enough. You know, if with your kids, you take a vacation once a year, and there's only five more years while they're in the house, okay, that's five more trips. Is that enough? And if it's not, once you put that kind of clarity into that problem, it's a little easier to make changes, I think, because then you can see I have to do this now.
Bridget Hilton: Yeah, like fire in you. I mean, like, for me, like when we were writing this book, and we put that exercise in the book, it like, instantly made me book a trip. So I'm from Michigan, and my dad like loves hunting. Go Blue. Yeah. Like his life revolves around like hunting and always has, and I've always been like, someday I'll go hunting with you, right? And I kind of always pushed it off until like, you know, whenever. And then when we did this exercise, I was like, oh, like, damn, like, I need to like, book this trip immediately. Because I don't know how many years that there's going to be left where he's actually out in the wilderness and like hunting animals, right, like so. So I booked it immediately. And I went, and I was like, I'm so thankful that I did that. Because like, who knows what's going to happen.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I can very much speak to how well this exercise works. And this will talk a little bit more about the difference between the logical brain and the emotional brain. Going through this, this book, obviously, I go through lots of different books, talk to lots of different experts. I can't do every single exercise and end of the chapter activity and all like, you guys have so many bonus resources, such an embarrassment of riches. So my first reaction was, as I was reading that, that chapter, and I'm going through and I see that exercise, I see the chart with the 76 boxes. My logical brain said, yeah, I get it. But then I'm like, You know what, just do it. So I literally spent 30 seconds, and I just crossed off the boxes. And I looked at it and I was like, Oh, shit, I get it. Now. Like, I felt it. There's a difference between I get it and I feel it. And just the 30 seconds of doing what I already know the outcome was going to be seeing less empty boxes than filled ones, I felt something. And the impetus for that. And this none of this is just to fill the podcast. This is actually the thought process is I thought one of my challenges right now is that my kids have surpassed the time where our Friday and Saturday nights were movie nights. And one of the concepts that you talked about in the book is it's the last time for something but you don't know what's the last time whether it's the last time you put your kids to bed, or whatever it is. And I thought I'm trying to find something I can do with Friday and Saturday nights because my kids are too old and too cool for movie nights. And I thought, Well, what about like, you know, not an adult version? Because they're only 11 and 13. But like, a funner version of a game night that's more sophisticated than like Monopoly, right? I wouldn't have thought of that. And I wouldn't already be putting ideas and research on my calendar if I hadn't physically crossed out those boxes, because I felt the urgency so it worked even on me. And I'm immune to this stuff because I talk about it all day long like Avid God me. So I'm already trying to figure out how do I turn Saturday nights into game night? Because I got five years left. That scares the shit out of me.
Bridget Hilton: A little like Shark Tank with them like they go Yeah, one business that would be so fun.
Zack Arnold: Well, my son has already started a business. It's funny enough you bring that up because our actual the the activity we have right now is that he's turned the carport in our house into a haunted house. And he thought it was just going to be like, yeah, just put up a few skeletons and cobwebs. That's fine. He actually got KTLA and ABC Seven over here to do a featured news story. And we had like 500 people at our house last Halloween. And now he's like running Google ads. And he's like, I want to double the amount of people I'm like, oh shit, what have I gotten myself into? But that to me
Bridget Hilton: I want you to know that I am actually a professional haunted house. employee. That was one of my first jobs was to work at a haunted house. I don't ever talk about this. But if you need someone just let me know.
Zack Arnold: I was gonna say your I think you and I are gonna have to meet in person. And we're gonna have to get your professional opinion. Maybe we need as an extra scare actor. But the reason I bring all Yeah, yeah, I'm in wasn't Hill. So I'm not that far. I'm like 10 minutes or less. Oh, great. So then you're definitely going to have to come. And by the way, you'll probably see a Google ad for my son's haunted house, because he's running Google ads as we speak. The point of all this is that there, there are very few memories that I'm going to remember more than this, right? And it's a giant pain in the ass. I mean, the amount of time and effort and running to hardware stores and like all the things that he's doing like logistically, he and I sat down and had multiple, like production meetings, all of which he scheduled, like, let's figure out what we can do. You can help me with this. And here's our calendar. And I looked at him like this is a lot and it's overwhelming and the timing of it with my own business. And with the strikes going on like this. The timing couldn't be worse. There's no way in hell I'm not going to do this. Because it's collecting moments and memories, right?
Joe Huff: Yeah, most things that are worth it. They're not easy, right? They don't have to be super difficult, but it takes effort. You know, that's why we always use like looking and things like that as an example, what's your kid going to remember the night that you made a pizza from scratch, or homemade pasta, or when you ordered in again, you know, like, it's nice to share. It's great to share a meal when you order in with your kids and your family. But making a meal is an experience, right, having, you know, Halloween walking through the neighborhood's cool, creating your own Halloween, like scare Fest in your carport. That's really cool. You know, that's something that you'll talk about 20 years later, you know. So I think that's really, really cool. And you're right on your spot on with it.
Zack Arnold: Yeah. And I think that something else that factors into some of the things you talk about in your book is how this can kind of snowball. So if I were to work, reverse engineer, from the time he was two or three years old, 34567, he always got really excited about just doing a few decorations on the outside of the house, I've never been a Halloween person, hopefully he doesn't hear this. I've never been interested in Halloween, it's never been my thing. Like I did a couple of trick or treats growing up. But it was I was never interested in it. So I was like, begrudgingly like Alright, sure, we'll go pick up the new hanging skeleton or whatever or fog machine and every year, it was, let's buy a new thing for him. It was like, I'll buy one new nice animatronic, or whatever it is. And then all of a sudden, like I said, it converted from oh, we're just going to have this one afternoon where we're going to put up the cobwebs. And because it became a habit and a ritual. Now all of a sudden, it's become this thing, where I'm pretty confident by next year, he's going to ask all of us to move out. And he's going to turn us our entire house into this, like Universal Studios Horror Nights experience. But it started with the equivalent of just going to make one pizza one night together, and it just snowballed into something else. So talk to me a little bit more about this idea of how you can get a much larger return on investment on these experiences and start small rather than I gotta I gotta make $50,000. So I can take my family on a Europe trip for a month.
Joe Huff: Yeah, that's a big, big thing. A big deterrent, surprisingly, is the same thing that actually gets people motivated in the first place. And that's like bucket lists, right? People look at big ticket bucket list things and they, they dream about it, and they fantasize about it. And that gets them, you know, like this dreamy kind of victory, I really want to do that thing. But then it becomes a deterrent because then the realistic side of them is like why can't do that I don't have the time I don't have the money it's got I don't know how to plan it, it's a, it's a heavy lift. So the way to like really satisfy both those things, is, whatever you're doing, you have to build in the smaller steps. And that way, you're having these valuable experiences the entire way along the road. So you know, we like to use travel, because travel seems to always be really high on people's lists. About for instance, say you wanted to go to Italy, do a vacation there, maybe it's gonna take you six months, maybe it's going to take us three years to plan it. It just depends obviously different people in different resources. But along the way, you can do all kinds of fun things that involve that that same end goal, that are going to be enriching and rewarding, like learning how to make Italian food at home from scratch are like learning how to speak Italian with a free app on your phone and going to Italian restaurants and learning about where all the different, you know, foods are far from different, you know, wines, watching Italian movies that are like classics, or movies that take place in Italy, etc. So there's all these things you can do that create these memories that have value that are building towards something bigger, but then if the bigger thing actually never happens, you didn't just put it off indefinitely. You weren't just like, Well, I'm just gonna wait until I can do this big thing to do anything. And that's the big mistake. Everybody seems to want to make, you know. And again, I think one of the things that our our study showed really clearly was that people do know this stuff, when you ask them what the most important thing is the most valuable thing in their lives. Everybody talked about experiences, nobody said my car, nobody said my watch or my diamond grill or whatever. You know, people all said something that was a personal experience of some kind. Yet, the amount of those things that were doable things you know, they weren't all bucket list things that they asked that they said they didn't list like, go to Italy or you know, do some big trip, it was something small, something attainable, I regret not keeping in touch with old friends, I regret not going back to the state I grew up in or, or learning the, you know, a little bit more of the language that my parents spoke so I could get more of our history, etc, etc. That was the kind of stuff we heard over and over. So the smaller things are really the meat and potatoes. And this is this goes back to two. This goes back to what you said about the wealth thing. And I think that the reason the wealth metaphor, you know, works is we really believe everyone can become experientially rich, but not everybody's going to be rich. Not everybody is going to be financially rich. Just sorry to break it to everybody. That's that, you know, and a lot of people might you know, a lot of people can work really hard and have a great life, but not everyone's going to be Bill Gates. or Bezos or whoever. But you can fill your life with really meaningful things. And we all see this. We all know people that have a ton of money that are miserable. And we all know people that don't have much money at all and are super happy. That's because some people figure out life, they figure out how to invest in the moments and the people and the relationships and the things that make it worthwhile. And it just takes that effort just like your Halloween, haunted house, it takes a little bit of effort to find those moments.
Zack Arnold: Well, I know that you also have an exercise that goes a little bit deeper. And Bridget, if you want to talk a little bit more about this idea of a treasure map, because to me, this is not it's not the antithesis. But it's the alternative to the bucket list, which helps you avoid some of those traps of this would be amazing. But most everything on a bucket list does end up on your Sunday list. Because it's so overwhelming to think what do I do at 2pm, tomorrow to make this happen. So tell me a little bit more about this treasure map exercise because I really found this really interesting this approach to goal setting.
Bridget Hilton: Yeah, this is my favorite exercise in the book for sure. And it's, it's in the very beginning of the book, and it kind of takes you through the path of how to like complete your treasure map. So what it is, is, if you can imagine your doctor just called and he has some really bad news, you only have one year left to live. And so what you what we're asking people to do is write out numbers one through 10. And just take some time and think about what you would do in that one year. Like now that you have like a finite amount of time. Like Like you said, it's probably not going to be quote, travel the world, it's probably going to be very specific, like I want to go to I want to go on a safari or I want to go like, you know, move to nature, I want to teach my kid had to, you know, ride a bike and how to read and like these things that are like very essential to them. Like it's not going to be like very
Joe Huff: Unrealistic.
Bridget Hilton: Unrealistic goals. Yes. So once you write down those 10 things, and again, it doesn't have to be about like climbing Mount Everest, or whatever it can be like, you know, I want to take a video and give it to my kids and teach them all the things that I've learned. So take a look at that list that you wrote down and ask yourself, how many of those things are you actively working towards right now? And what we found in our in our keynotes and our conferences that we've done and whatnot, is the answer is none. None of those top 10 things that you want to do before you're dying in one year, are you actually working on right now. And so that's a really scary thing to do. And it gives people the urgency to do this things. And then we continue the exercise and we go okay, your doctor just called again. Now you have 30 days, what would you do in those 30 days,
Zack Arnold: I fire my doctor, dear, terrible Doctor, Doctor, the worst doctor ever, but continue.
Bridget Hilton: He actually calls you one more time. And you said Yeah, right, really bad. One day, love to live. And of course, those things that you're going to do in that one day are never like, I'm going to travel the world. It's always like, I'm going to call x person and tell them that I love them. I'm going to forgive this person, I'm going to spend time with my family or my friends, or do like the one thing that I really want to do on the one day. And that's a really eye opening exercise. Because it's like, why aren't you doing this things today? If they're so important to you, it's the number one thing that you would do the one day that you have left to live? Why aren't you doing those things today?
Joe Huff: Yeah, and a key part of the exercises, they have to be things you can actually do, right. So at the end of the exercise, you have to actually say, you know, we tell people like, do those things. Now, this is something that you know, is going to cause you immense regret, like deep, deep, deep regret, do it now. And then you've got that off that list that's gone, not now you actually can move forward knowing that, you know, you take in that regret away from your future. And again, it's a really powerful, powerful tool. Very powerful step for somebody to take.
Bridget Hilton: Yeah, it's kind of like the anti like hustle busy culture, because that excuse doesn't really make sense in this, you know, it's like we can't be too busy maintaining our lives to like, stop and do the things that matter most to you.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, what I'm doing right now is I'm amassing all of the wealth and all the time so that I can do it when I retire someday. Because that's what I've been taught. That's how the system works, right? I learned to do one specific thing and I get very specialized in that craft, then I'm a widget in a machine. I do that for 30 or 40 years. That's then when I get to start living my life. That's what I've been told. That's how life works.
Joe Huff: Yeah, kids, kids get it. You know, kids don't do that kids want to do everything they want to do right now all the time. And there's a lot to learn from kids because they haven't been beaten down by a system. You know, even though people don't act accordingly, you know, even though we know our experiences are the most important things. People don't act like that. It's not our fault. It's not anyone's fault, because we're taught that are literally taught to put things off and that everything will fall into place if we just focus and you know, creatives, especially by the way, I feel like people that are in industry, that whatever industry people are in, the more creative, I feel, surprisingly, is when people are more dedicated to that art or that craft or that thing to the point where they, they literally sacrifice everything else, you know, I know a lot of people in the industry living here in LA, that work just incessantly. And they get a lot of really cool experiences along with the job. And I think a lot of people use that as an excuse, perhaps. And this is same with musicians, and everybody that's touring the world and doing all these things. But there's definitely an imbalance point where people are only working. And then they're not actually stopping to figure out what those things on their treasure map are. Because even if you're delivering something of value to other people, and you're doing a bunch of other really cool things, you've got stuff that you're going to regret inside you that you need to figure out what those things are, you need to get that treasure map going. And you know, it's a treasure map, by the way evolves, because obviously as you check things off, and as you grow, things change, but getting that compass, you know, going so you're you're headed in the right direction is really, really helpful, I think, for people to have that sanity.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and the irony of it all, and this is just a soapbox, that I will literally die on. And I talk about this on just about every podcast. And it's the reason why this is the perfect fit for the narrative that I'm talking about. The irony of it is that in order for you to be truly great at what you do as a creative, it doesn't matter what the craft is acting, writing, directing, editing, composing, it's your diverse array of life experiences that make you a better artist you have and you're losing all of those life experiences, because you're focused just on the craft. And yes, there's a certain period of time, you just learned the hard skills, you learn the software, you learn the notes, whatever it is, right. But then after a certain point, what differentiates you and provides true values of creative? Are the life experiences outside of your job, what you're waiting to do Sunday? Because you're too damn busy working?
Joe Huff: Yeah, exactly. It's getting that perspective. Definitely. And we've had some really fun conversations with folks already. That already dug into the book, a friend of ours that's in the industry told us just the other day that their agent, they got an offer to go with some family gorilla tracking, just like we had done and it's in the book, as you know, in the beginning our story about that and their agent, they asked their agent, you know, they were gonna go and they told them, the agent said, You really shouldn't go, there's a lot going on right now. It's not a good time, blah, blah, blah. And they said, they read the first part of the book, and we're like, Screw this, and they booked the trip. And when they literally sent us a message and said, I just want you to know that your book changed my life already in the first few pages.
Zack Arnold: I love it. So there's a couple of nuanced things that I want to get into then bigger picture. They might seem like tangents, but they're actually going to be leading somewhere. The first of which is why a year and a month and a day, why not a five year plan or a 10 year plan? Or you've got like, what Where did these specific numbers come from? Are they intuition? Were they research? Where did these come from? That you were so specific with your treasure map?
Bridget Hilton: Yeah, I think like, the first part is like the very short but then in chapter two, we do go into like, well, you can't do everything you want to do in one year, right? But the treasure map with the one year one month one day is just to install it your urgency and like what you want. And like those are really, really important things. If you only had like this very short amount of time, what would you do, but we do go into like making bigger goals around like a five or 10 year plan, like, like a career for an example. You can't build a dream career that you want in a year. Like that's just not going to happen.
Joe Huff: We're a family.
Bridget Hilton: Yeah, we're family, right? Like, yeah, I want a family. But is that going to happen in the year now? Like, let's be realistic. So there's things that we go into a little bit later in the book that are those five and 10 year plants, but I think is really important just to get that urgency in the treasure map.
Joe Huff: Yeah. And also, I was just going to add in, you know, that's, that's one of the things that happens is when people find out from a near death, death, illness type of scenario, it is a short time usually people usually don't get told, you know, you've got 10 years to live, people that have something suddenly happen. It's usually something sudden, that's the whole nature of it, and that's when clarity comes into play. It takes that to get clarity.
Bridget Hilton: Yeah. Using a near death experience without actually having it hopefully, the
Zack Arnold: other reason that I bring it up to is that maybe we're just reading the same things. And it's the, you know, collective conscious. But I've always been annoyed when people use the example of what would you do if you have one day to live? I'm like, That's not helpful to me. Everybody would do the same thing you'd call the most important people you want to be with your family, like, you're gonna get the same boring, generic answer. He gives somebody a year who that gets complicated, because now you got time, but you don't have too much time. So I've had a very similar exercise that I've used. And I don't know where I got the one year from other than intuition, which is why I was curious how you came to the exact same conclusion that I did.
Joe Huff: Yeah, I think that one year also is interesting, because if you truly only had one year left to live a year, still enough time to do some remarkable things. And you would find a way, if it was literally your last year, you would find a way you would no care if it's run a marathon or a hike a mountain or you know, do something really, you know, a big bucket list thing. If it was possible to do within a year, you would most likely find a way because that's your only chance. Right? So I think that that's powerful to show people how to do some of those more difficult things to
Zack Arnold: Yeah, the the other procedural question that I just I gotta be honest, both I and my producer are racking our brains. And it's, again, it's not a total tangent. It'll seem like it. But there's a reason I'm asking How the hell did you survey 20,000? People? That's not easy. How did you actually do that? And the reason that I'm asking you is because I want to better understand who the actual people were that were surveyed. But just how did you take it upon yourselves to survey 20,000 people?
Bridget Hilton: So the first step was that we started asking people that we knew of course, like, and that's really like, made it more interesting is like, I would like I asked, like my grandpa, for example. And then I asked, you know, my friends, and like other people, like of all ages, like, what are your biggest regrets right now? What would you want to do in the future, you know, what's keeping you from your dreams and your goals. And it was just so interesting. And so we kind of got a little bit deeper on that. And we started going to like retirement homes and talking to a lot of elderly people, because you know, who better to like spread their wisdom than people that have kind of seen and done at all. And that led us to serving way more people online. So we have a part on our website that you can go to, in you can take the survey yourself and like, be, you know, added to that 20,000 plus list. So a lot of it was done online, actually.
Joe Huff: Yeah, and really, this all was born, as we, you know, we basically came to this point of like, where we feel like the most important thing we can do now is help other people find a way to live experientially rich lives. And that's when we really started investing a lot more time and money into creating, you know, these tools, with the book and the card deck and some of the other stuff we did. So part of that was like, we need to know, you know, where some of this other research that we're reading and seeing stands, you know, in on its if it stands on its own, outside of, you know, some of these places, we've read it so so we used, you know, companies to do online surveying that, you know, we can choose the demographics and figure out, you know, basically, what makes sense, or what's true and false and whatever. And that's why it was really interesting to hear, again, some of the stats that we found that were people that were toward the end of their life, actually the same kind of regrets were happening with people that were in their 20s. But we wouldn't have even guessed that until we actually did the survey and saw 20,000 Plus results come in.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that's one of the things about this, it was so intriguing to me is that most of the kind of end of life surveys or books or anecdotes, it's always somebody at the very end of their life and yours. To me, it was very interesting, because like you said, it is people in their 20s or 30s that have very, very similar regrets and you're like, but you've got all this time, but they still feel that same regret. The other thing I'm curious about and I think I already know the answer. I'm not a data scientist, I'm not a statistician, but I dabble I'm a bit of a nerd. I'm obsessed with human psychology is one of your survey questions to clarify the level of income that somebody is to get a sense that across all incomes, whether somebody made 50,000 A year or 50 million that it just that was largely irrelevant? Did you qualify for income and wealth?
Bridget Hilton: We did we we have a whole range of incomes from people making not that much to people making millions of dollars a year and it's honestly it's very similar on all regrets.
Joe Huff: Yeah, and a lot of there's been a lot of peer reviewed studies on that topic and you know, about you know, what the they vary, I would say but about where their break point is from up make more money. Even X it's not, you're not significantly happier or measurably happier, etc. And, you know, again, I definitely want to, I think this is a great time to, to talk about requalify, that it's not about making money versus making having experiences because they're not like, like to your point, they're, they're connected, they're not, you know, separate things. The more experiences you have, the more value you create for others, the more permission you give to other people to live and experience their goals, the more interesting perspective you have to bring to your job and your career. And people generally, I think, have a much higher trajectory that are more well rounded and have more perspectives. So it's not that they're separated to, so you can still make money and have experiences. And of course, we beat you know, everyone would shut this podcast off and never ever listen to us. Again, if we said, you know, you can't have more experiences, if you have more money. Sure, it'd be nice if we were all rich and could do whatever we want. The point is, you don't have to be definitely.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and the the equation that really changed everything for me, and I'll make sure we link to this in the show notes. But I did a conversation with Dr. Tal Ben Shahar, who's one of the world's leading academics on understanding the psychology and the science of happiness. And the equation that we're all taught is that success plus money equals happiness. And you have to learn how to flip those around. If you can find happiness and contentment with what you have and where you are now, then the success and the money come, but it's really hard to wrap our heads around that. And I think one of the key ingredients is we're talking about here to have the happiness now is I can develop all these different life experiences and habits that create these moments, not independent of or it's going to stop me from becoming successful or wealthy. It actually leads you closer to it, but it's counterintuitive.
Bridget Hilton: Yeah, exactly.
Joe Huff: Well, we actually have the equations in the beginning of our book.
Zack Arnold: I know that's why I'm like, Oh, they're equation minded personal development writers just like me. So I resonated with a lot of that.
Joe Huff: Yeah, the ones in our book, if you remember, it was, you know, money times a lot equals wealth. And we should be experiences times a lot equals wealth, because that's really when people feel rich in life.
Zack Arnold: Exactly. So I want to now I want to come back to the pin that I put into our earlier conversation, to better understand how we can turn negatives into positives. I do a lot of mentoring with people in all stages of their careers all the way from people that are just about ready for retirement, making major career transitions, or people just coming in to any industry and talk to people about internships, and everybody's got their own stories and experiences. But forever in a day, as it will be known going forwards. Bridgette, you have the best I'm a 19 year old intern story ever in the history of humankind. So let's start our conversation about turning negatives into positives by sharing your story of being a 19 year old intern.
Bridget Hilton: Oh, wow, I, I honestly haven't really talked about this on any podcast or anywhere. So this is kind of funny that you brought it up. I'll guess I'll start like right before this story. So I grew up in Flint, Michigan. In my entire existence, when I was a kid, I was obsessed with music. My whole life revolved around music, like every single little thing that I did was like, I'm gonna be in the music industry someday. I don't care about anything else. I don't care about school, I don't care about literally anything. So I started my quote unquote, career in the music industry. By doing all of these jobs that like nobody else wanted to do like cleaning up trash at music venues and getting coffee for people at radio stations, and like passing out like, you know, 1000s and 1000s of flyers outside of venues when it was like zero degrees outside, in like selling, you know, bad T shirts out of vans all over Michigan, and Ohio and Kentucky and all over the Midwest. And eventually, like I took all of these like little steps that were just so like, you know, not fun, quote, unquote. But all of those steps led me to getting an internship at Universal Music Group, which used to have an office in Detroit. No longer but that's how the music industry is. But so I finally like got this dream, you know, internship when I was 19. And then eventually and I was literally living in my car and like with, like, 13 other couches around like the metro Detroit area, like just bouncing around people's apartments because I didn't have any money like I was making zero literally $0 So it was a struggle. But eventually I got the coveted job of the mailroom clerk when I was 19. And it was literally the best day of my life like I can Still remember exactly like how I found out and how I felt. And I was just like, you know, I'm never gonna struggle again or whatever, which as you know is like total BS, but that's how I felt at the time. So less than two weeks after I, you know, started this mailroom job, it was like before I even got my first paycheck, which by the way, it was like I was making $20,000 a year. So wasn't, wasn't really rolling in the dough. But I was driving to work, and it was like on a Tuesday morning, and that's when like, all the SoundScan reports came out for the new releases for albums. And so the company always had like, a Tuesday morning meeting at like, nine in the morning. So I'm like, driving in, it's like 855, I like pull up right to where, like, where the parking lot is. And then I hear like, the siren like behind me. And I was getting, like the sound that nobody wants to hear, especially if you're broke, you really don't want to hear that. And I knew that, like the tabs on my car were expired. And that, you know, I so I had previously gotten some ticket that I didn't pay, of course, because I like basically was homeless, and I didn't have anywhere for them to send me the ticket. And, and they pulled me over because my tabs were expired. And then they found out that my license was expired, because I didn't pay this ticket. And basically got like handcuffed and thrown into a cop car right in front of where everyone was having this meeting on Tuesday. So I was like the brand new employee, like they took a huge chance on me because I was like, so young. And then everybody at the office watched me get thrown into this cop car and take him to jail on a Tuesday morning. So eventually, you know, we're back in jail, I'm like sitting there all day, all night, I have no money, no intention to like, I have no idea like how I'm going to like pay to get out of jail. And they also like took my car, obviously. So no idea how I'm going to do that. So I use like my one call from jail to call my boss. And like, you know, it starts with like the pre recording clip with like, this is a call from the Detroit jail. Laughter hazard and for them, basically, that I wouldn't be coming in. And the the only way I could get out is if they like took money out of like my upcoming paycheck to pay for my bail. It was this whole thing. And long story short, like I ended up staying there overnight. And it was just this horrible experience of like, I finally like reached my goal, like my biggest goal in life was to be in the music industry. And I'd like screwed it all up by like, you know, making this mistake and not paying a ticket. And you know, really what happened is I thought that my life was over. And like, it's a funny story now, but it was not funny then. And I really thought that, you know, everything would go up in flames. But what happened is like, everyone just kind of made fun of me. And like I was this kid that like they saw go to jail. And it didn't really, like affect my career or my life at all after that, like other than, you know, constantly having to like make payments on like getting my car out of the lot and whatnot. But it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened in the music industry, thankfully. So now that I'm older, it's like, okay, it's funny to me like it was to them.
Zack Arnold: I've heard horror stories of things that have happened in the music industry. So yes, it could have been worse. But you definitely win the internet for today as far as brand new 19 year old interns getting their first breakout job and literally not that you think the story is going to be at a high note when you get arrested in front of the board meeting and everybody sees you. But no, no, oh, no, you had to add a bonus, which is that my boss is going to bail me out. So anybody that's thinking, Oh, well, let me tell you this crazy internship story. I'll say, just just listen to this one. Let me send you a link to this. And you tell me how crazy you think your story is.
Bridget Hilton: Now that I'm the boss, you know, like Joe and I have a couple of different companies now in and I promise to bail out any like future employees just so I can like pay it forward in the world.
Zack Arnold: Right. Yeah. So though, in and of itself, very entertaining story. But for the sake of conversation, there's a lot more that goes whether you had said that, well, there were never really any effects that came from it. But I would argue that there were probably a lot of positive effects that have come from having that negative experience. And you talk a lot in this chapter about turning negatives into positives. And there's one very specific concept that I have loved for years that you brought up specifically and I zoomed right in and I know I'm probably gonna say it wrong, but it's this Japanese philosophy of is it Kintsugai? Am I saying that wrong? Right?
Bridget Hilton: You can be saying it right. I don't really know.
Zack Arnold: I want to dig into this a little bit for Are there. And it's really a very visual and practical version of understanding how to reframe negative experiences and take something positive out of them. So can you explain this a little bit further? And why this is something you featured in the book?
Bridget Hilton: Sure. So first of all, I think one of the most interesting things about our survey of 20,000 people, we asked what was the most valuable experience of your life, and a third of the people said, a negative experience. And when I did the survey myself, I actually was one of those people. So I went through this crazy year in 2020, where I got separated, and then I had to move and then my new place got broken into several times, and then our company listen was at a very, in a very bad spot where we had to layoff our employees. And like, there was all these things that were happening that were super, super negative, and at the time, I became super depressed. And it was by far the worst part of my life. And in my entire life, this is like the worst year. But what I think now, you know, and 20, the end of 2023, is that that was actually the most valuable part of my life. And the Kintsugai stuff is, is basically say you have, like a teacup, and there's a crack in it, what they do in Japan, they fill it with gold, and so it's even more beautiful than it was previously. And it's really like the cracks that give us like the character and like, give us the the depth and like the beauty in our lives is like going through these negative experiences. And that's really what I experienced in my own life is that I took this really, really horrible year and turned it into, you know, what's now experiential billionaire. I mean, Joe, and I started writing the book, right after this happened. So, and he has some examples of that as well, that we've gone through in the last couple of years, but, but a negative experience can really like, turn everything into something that's beautiful.
Zack Arnold: So Joe, I'm, I'm assuming you have a couple of golden cracks in your teacup of life, I would presume?
Joe Huff: My tea cup looks mostly golden. It's a great cup with some, some little porcelain marks in it here and there. At this point. Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's the typical, you know, the hero's journey story, right, you know, you have to take the every day, the normal person that, you know, goes through some trial by fire some, some really difficult situation. And, and whether willingly or unwillingly, you know, somehow makes it through somehow survives and gets to the other side, but they're not the same person, right, they become something greater than they were, they come out a better version of themselves. And this is really, to me, like, this is the real essence of taking, basically getting the most out of life, like really, really, really taking those negative things, and turning them into some kind of fuel and positive, you know, outcome. And if you can, you know, get good at doing that, and realizing you're gonna get through it, you're gonna get to the other side, and you're going to be better and stronger because of it. It's just a super powerful thing. And for me, that happened to me in my life, you know, several points in the beginning story about my dad. And you know, obviously, that was one moment, my dad actually did pass away a decade or so later. And that coincided with myself with getting divorced. And with having my dog actually died suddenly and sounded like this typical country western song, like my dad died, my wife left my dog died. And at the same time, I reframed that, you know, I stopped, I stepped back and thought, you know, well, I'm lucky that I had my dad and great relationship with him and he got these extra years from this heart transplant. And I'm really lucky that I had been married in the first place and had a good relationship for as long as I did and lucky I live in a place where I can own a dog and have a dog and get that kind of companionship and I just kind of started turning it all around into like, it's not woe is me because really, once you look at the whole rest of the world, everybody's going through stuff we all know that we don't know what the person sitting next you are driving next to on the freeway or whatever, everybody's going through things is what we do next that matters. And that to me, I think is really really the powerful part of the Kintsugai, or Kintsugai or whoever we say is you know, taking those moments and and really showcasing it's like I didn't get here without battle wounds in those battle wounds. I'm really proud of those made me who I am.
Zack Arnold: Is there anything more embarrassing the three Midwesterners trying to properly pronounce a very elegant and you know, just Japanese term says all incredibly embarrassing, but I think people get the point. But going back into this idea of these negative experiences, there's a couple of things that I want to zoom in here. Before we we wrap up. And the first of which, and I think you already partially answered this question. It's one thing and I had this conversation. I don't know if you're familiar with Brad Stullberg, he's been doing the rounds as well with his book master of change. And I recently had him on. And one of the concept is this idea of homeostasis, versus allostasis and how when you're going through something, you're not going to revert to what you were before you're going to revert to a new version of yourself a new version of your life. And all that's great in hindsight, when you're in it, like when you're deep in it, like when you're literally getting bent over the cop car and being cuffed. And people are looking out the window like, Oh, my God, isn't that our intern? It's hard to reframe. Everything is positivity. So hindsight can always be 2020. But do you have any suggestions or thoughts? For? Is there some reframing or question, we can ask her way we can look at the experience, we're in the middle of it? Or do we really need Hindsight is an ingredient or does everything even need to be a lesson? This is something Brad talked about where he said, sometimes things just suck, right? Maybe there isn't a lesson, but how do you handle it when you're in it? Because you guys have been through a lot. So how do you handle it when you're in it?
Bridget Hilton: I mean, for me, it's just it's very, very simple of like a gratitude practice, or not taking something so seriously. So if something bad happens, like, I mean, a really, really, really small kind of dumb example is that like, the other day, my dog got sick, and I was like, in the middle of the night, you know, it's like, three in the morning. I'm like, outside with him, it's like, but then that could have sucked, right. But I was thinking at the time, like, Oh, my God, I'm just so grateful that he's alive, and that he's, you know, my dog, like, I love my dog. And so you can just be grateful for the moment, even if it's a bad moment. And then also, like, I really, like truly try to take things not seriously. And this helps me a lot is like, if something bad happens, like when we're traveling, or you know, whatever. I think of like, like we had a moment when we were doing when we were putting out the book where something really bad with our publisher happened, right? And Joe and I, like call each other and we just started laughing. We're like, this is ridiculous, like, so I think it really helps if you can just laugh at things. And you can try to take not everything seriously, because life is short. And like, you're likely going to look back on these like bad moments and laugh or like learn a lesson. And if you don't learn a lesson, and that's okay.
Joe Huff: Yeah, I think to really add to it, you know, this is really why we're so intent on sharing this message about how this can change the way you live your life. If you're following this practice of building moments, as you put it, investing in experiences, as we put it, of focusing on those, the precious time we have, and the relationships we have with people when those negative things happen, because because bad things happen. So like things that suck happen. And there's times when you just have to get through it. And you have to stop and put it in perspective and realize that there's been terrible things that have happened throughout history to tons and tons of people. This too shall pass right where you're going to get through it one way or the other. And I think that the reason that we're so intent on spreading this message is when those bad things happen, if you're living your life in this way, in this manner, it's very comforting to know that you've got this history of like, I've been using my time wisely. I've been doing all the things I wanted to do this moment, it's not ideal. But I'm going to keep going. And I have a very, very personal story for that. And that's after we finished the first version, the first draft of the book, book was meant to come out last year actually. And my wife was diagnosed with cancer suddenly, very unexpectedly. And as you can imagine, that was absolutely extraordinarily terrifying. We have two small children. And she went through all of the, the steps that you go through and she's we're very fortunate, she actually just finished a year of her treatments, and she's cancer free now, and we're looking to the future. And it was just a really, really remarkable thing, you know, again, not to not to discount the fear and anxiety and you know, all of the other things that go along with this. But while we got to the other side, we started looking at, you know, our future and it was the same as it was before the diagnosis. Because we had done this work. We had been really very, very to your exact phrasing earlier, very intentional about what we were doing with our life and what we had done with the decade we'd already had together. There wasn't this It's like, oh my god, I, we didn't do all the stuff we wanted to do yet. And we didn't plan on doing all this stuff we want to do in the future, we already had done all that. So we just had to get through this moment. And she did it. She's just an extraordinary person and a warrior. But I think to me that that's like a really powerful message to send people that if you live this way, when you're going through those hard times, those hard times are easier, because you actually are filling up the rest of your time with really valuable things. So.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I very much appreciate you sharing that. And that was definitely one of the tougher things to read about in the book, but I appreciated how open you are about all of it. And the point that I just want to emphasize, again, that you already shared is that if you do the work up front, when you have these life altering experiences, whether it's your you know, spouse or partner gets sick, whether it's COVID, and you're locked down, and you're in the middle of a divorce, or whatever it is, when you realize that, yes, this sucks, but I really wouldn't change anything that I'm doing, then you've clearly put in years of homework to get to that point. Because I've basically built an entire business or model around people that have this massive crisis moment of oh my god, I spent my entire life doing this thing that I don't want to do anymore. And between the COVID shutdowns and now all the shutdowns that have happened recently in the entertainment industry, people are just having these it's not just a midlife crisis, it's a midlife crisis doubled with an identity crisis. Right? And when you're in the middle of these, and you're asking all these questions about the way that you're living your life, you know, if there's homework that needs to be done, I'm not immune to any of this. But both with the COVID shutdown. And now with all the latest industry shutdowns, I asked myself the question, with all this chaos that's happening, what would I do differently? Nothing, I would do nothing differently, right? Like it sucks. And you know, I'm not making any money, and I can't work, but it doesn't change what's on my calendar. And one of the things that I've taught my students in various different ways, but it all really comes down to whether I'm teaching time management, whether I'm teaching goal setting, whether I'm teaching finances, I just get into the nitty gritty of finances, and spreadsheets and whatnot. But it all comes down to is the story of your life and how you spend your time and how you spend your money and alignment with your core values. And you discovered through this latest like it was essentially a near death experience for your wife and your your family unit. Like this sucks. And this is a horrible experience, but we would change nothing. And that, to me is why learning these techniques is so incredibly valuable.
Joe Huff: It's right. It's right. And that's why you know, I think a lot of people, some people have put off I would say about the contemplating death part. But it's not that you need to, you know, constantly be thinking about your death, you just need to contemplate the finiteness of life enough to get that urgency and clarity to make those plans and do those things. Because, you know, that's the one thing that's going to happen to all of us. And hopefully, it will be one we're all 100 and peacefully in our bed, but it most likely well. And doing the work beforehand is just really, really, you know, the comforting factor of knowing that you squeezed it all in.
Zack Arnold: So there's one more area that I want to dig into the nuances of a little bit deeper if you'll allow me to indulge for the last few minutes of our conversation. But inevitably, as I'm sure you know, from your 20,000 Plus survey results, doing all of your keynote speaking, everything that you've done going around the world with all these experiences, people have no shortage of excuses. And you talk about these four big excuses most most of which we've covered the fact that I don't have enough time, I don't have enough money, I'm not prioritizing things. Other things are a priority. But there's one that we haven't covered yet that I think is really important. And that's what what if I try and I fail? Right? So I'm curious of all the survey results and all the conversations that you've had, how often do you find people regret things that they tried and they failed?
Joe Huff: Oh, that's almost never like literally never this goes just to the point of you know, they can see it again. It's It's basically when you try something and it doesn't work out you just come out the other side, better stronger. This is Bridget story about getting arrested and nothing really happens. You know, she she got the job she wanted and something bad happened. That wasn't a result of her getting the job that wasn't she didn't get arrested because she got the job. But when people try things when people go and attempt something, you know, even I would say in in a very specific example of my my life as a whole I don't believe it would be anywhere near what it is. Now I wouldn't have done almost any of those things had I not tried all of these other random smaller things that gave me life experiences that gave me the confidence to try new things like starting a business. Like I don't think I would have done that. So to me, I think that's just said A huge thing and in the survey would really bore out those results where, you know, all the results were things that they hadn't done, and they use that excuse of having fear. But nobody said, you know, I really regret that time i x and made a fool of myself because nobody remembers that stuff.
Bridget Hilton: It doesn't matter. I mean, the things that I wanted to do like for as an example, like I wanted to surf, so I learned how to surf. Am I saying that I'm like, the greatest surfer in the world that I'm going to be in the Olympics, like, No, I'm not very good at it, but I really enjoy it. And I'm really happy that I did it. Because I put it off for so long, because I thought, I'm gonna look stupid, and like, I'm not going to be good at it. But where did that get me like nowhere got me like 10 years of living in Los Angeles without ever trying something that I really wanted to do. And now I'm so glad that I did it, even though I'm not good at it. Like, I think there's like this thing in our society where it's like, you have to be good at everything. But that's not, that's not real. Like, I can be bad at things and still enjoy it.
Joe Huff: And then taking those things and actually, you know, painting the picture, like, what is the worst thing that could happen? versus what is the best thing that could happen. And when you just do that little step, it's so clear, like the best things greatly outweigh the worst things. But nobody thinks like that. Everyone's just so hung up on the worst things that they don't look at the potential greatness that could come out of it. I'm also, by the way, a terrible surfer. And I love surfing so much that every time I get in the water, I have an absolute blast, even though I'm not like a great surfer. And that's exactly the point of this match. Like you do things, you're gonna realize, oh, there's a lot more fun to be had in life.
Bridget Hilton: Yeah, I actually think like, a really interesting thing in our book, in our survey, especially is we asked people what they wanted to learn. Like, what are the top three things you want to learn in your lifetime? Right? across all ages, across all income levels? And across all ages, the answers were all the same. And the number one answer about if I could learn anything in the world, what would it be it was learn a musical instrument, learn how to cook, learn a sport. Those things are all very, very cheap to do, right? It doesn't take a lot of money to do. But people were so afraid of what other people might think of them that they didn't even try. So I could be you know, 75 years old and be like, Man, I really wish I could have just like learned a song and guitar. But I thought people would think I'm stupid. And that's so sad.
Joe Huff: And think about your talent is out in the world that hasn't ever been unleashed, because people are afraid to even look for it. And you know, that's part of the you know, the treasure map. The description I would say of it, it isn't necessarily just find your dreams, it's to rediscover your dreams, the things that you wanted for a long time and then you just buried away and forgot about because when you're a kid, you probably were like, I want to play the guitar. I want to do that. Do those things and then you just bury them. You just suppress them until they're gone. So you got to dig those back out before it's too late.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I love the idea of of rediscovering I think that that's great. And the you pretty much have both already set up. But I just I wanted to put it in your own words and really quote, because I think it's one of the one of the best quotes from the entire book and comes from page 50. It's yours, Bridget. And you said that people get scared, because it's easier to wrap their heads around what they have to lose than what they have to gain. And that to me, if that doesn't summarize the biggest excuse. It's I think it's bigger than time and I think it's bigger than money. I think those are like the sub excuses. The excuse underneath the excuse is I feel like I have something to lose. And I'm afraid of losing this versus what I have to gain. And I am the putt you guys think you're bad at surfing. You should see me be an American Ninja Warrior. Trust me. I am worse at American Ninja Warrior than you are at being surfers, right? But this was this was one of those things that for years, I would watch this on TV with my kids. I'm like, That would be so much fun, right? I bet I could do that. But it was Isaac now. That's dumb. Are you like award winning? DadBod I'm not going to be on the show. But then there was that moment it was that choice of the fears. It wasn't I'm going to live a life without fear. It was what am I more scared of trying this and endlessly failing or not trying and sitting on my deathbed hopefully at 80 or 90 and not 59 Right But saying why didn't I try this that would have been cool. And because of it I have years worth of experiences. I have years worth of friendships that I would never have otherwise. I have all kinds of injuries but I've learned from those injuries. Right so that to me is the kind of the perfect example of I want to generate a life of in a collection of moments and when I choose this goal and like you said I rediscovered something thing that I always thought was cool that I wanted to do, I'll do that someday, or I'm getting too old or I couldn't do that now. Right. And I've, it's, for all intents and purposes, the goal itself, I'm a complete and total failure. But the amount of things that I've gotten from choosing to be okay with being a failure, I would never return any of that for any amount of money. So
Bridget Hilton: We have a whole chapter in the book about fear, because I think you're exactly right. When people say things like, I don't have time, and I have money, etc. Maybe you don't, but is the real reason because you're afraid. Probably, I think everything is done out of love or fear. And like, when you're when you have an excuse, you can always dig deeper into that excuse. And you're probably going to find that you're not doing something because you're afraid.
Joe Huff: Yeah, and you're, you're, you are an American Ninja Warrior. You may not be the number one, but you did that thing. You can say like, the person that finishes the marathon last finished a marathon, they ran a marathon, you know that they don't even care if they ran it, they they did it, it completed a marathon. So whatever you're trying to do in life is just so important to get out and try it and to make those lists of those things you want to do. And you might, by the way, find out. You don't like stuff. You know, I tried stuff in our crazy experiential quest of things that I don't, you know, like, I don't regret trying them. I know now, and I've discovered things that I thought I would never like that I'm like, oh my god, actually, I love that was really cool. And now I'm, like, more interested in something that I would have never imagined because I decided to try it. So
Bridget Hilton: Yeah, I mean, same, it's like, look at like, during COVID I, I bought a bunch of canvases and I like started painting and I like basically decorated my, my place with like, things that I had painted during that time that I was like, really, you know, depressed, and but I like, you know, put my feelings into just painting. I mean, like, I can promise you like Mola is not calling me to like feature. But it was such a fun, cool creative experience. And, and on our survey, there was hundreds of people that said, I wish that I would have learned how to paint. And it's like, that's literally the easiest thing in the world is to just go to the store and get a go on Amazon and get a canvas, get some paint and like do it and spend like a day like learning and doing that. And like you're not going to regret it. But people are so afraid to even try because they think that they're not going to be you know, amazing at it.
Zack Arnold: Well, I've gotten through about 5% of my preparation document today, as I anticipated would be the case. But I want to be very respectful of your time. So before we wrap up, is there any important or vital message that we have not shared yet that you want to use to wrap up today's conversation because we barely scratched the surface of all of the value that you have in your book and your experiences?
Joe Huff: I think we're I think we've got it pretty well covered. You know, we just really hope that people will take this message to heart and will really, you know, let it let it marinate, you know, really think about what's at stake, that you know, your time is really your most valuable resource. And that's what you need to be focused on investing in is your time. Yeah,
Zack Arnold: I love that.
Bridget Hilton: If there's anything that this conversation inspired you or anyone that's listening to this to do, like, please let us know, please reach out to us. We love hearing this stuff.
Zack Arnold: Well, I can already tell you, we've got a family game night that's going to be coming up that's going to because I went through that one exercise, even though it was like homework, because I got to prep for the podcast interview. And I'm like, Nope, I'm gonna get some use out of this just like anybody else would. And we're going to be having a family game night because I specifically read your book. So in order for people to reach out and learn more about your life and your experiences in your book, and share the experiences that they have, because you influenced them shameless self promotion portion of the program. Where do I send our listeners and our viewers to find you and find your book?
Bridget Hilton: You can find us on Instagram at experientialbillionaire. Our websites are bridgethilton.com, joehuff.com, and experientialbillionaire.com.
Joe Huff: And Amazon of course, as well. Yes, I've
Zack Arnold: Yes, I've heard of that. I hear that's a good place to to buy things.
Bridget Hilton: And the almighty Amazon.
Zack Arnold: Yes. I'll be very interesting to see what Jeff Bezos his responses would be to your survey. Yes, yes. They would be they would be pretty similar to everybody else's. But having said that, I can't thank you enough for helping to create this experience today of this fantastic 90 minute conversation and hey, if you're both local, and you want to come out and you want to see a 13 year old haunted house project, you're more than welcome and invited. So
Bridget Hilton: Awesome.
Zack Arnold: Yep. On that note, thank you so much.
Joe Huff: Thanks for having us.
This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared by Debby Germino and published by Glen McNiel.
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