Ep 12: ‘The Bucket List Family’ Dad on Living Life Like an Adventure

From the outside, Garrett Gee’s life looks like a dream. He travels the world with his wife and three kids, documenting their adventures for millions of followers as The Bucket List Family. But the polished exterior sits on top of one of the wildest entrepreneurial stories you will ever hear, and a family that works hard to live its values every single day. Garrett and Blake have a lot in common. Both founded companies that became incredibly successful, and both sold them for life-altering amounts of money. That is where their paths diverge.

In this conversation, Blake sits down with Garrett to unpack the story of selling Scan to Snapchat for $54 million, the seven standards he and his co-founder wrote to stay wealthy in the ways that matter, his surprising default answer on social media, and the childhood pain he calls his superhero origin story.

“We might be richer, but who’s wealthier?” ~Garrett Gee

The Conversation

A DM, a Surf Trip, and an Unlikely Friendship

Blake and Garrett had followed each other on Instagram for a decade before a single DM changed everything. When Blake posted about how pivotal surfing had been in his mental health journey, Garrett chimed in to say the same, and Blake replied with an invitation to fill a last-minute opening on a surf trip to the Maldives. Garrett said yes to a week with total strangers, met all of Blake’s friends before he met Blake, and spent the trip terrified on waves out of his league. He explains why being really bad at something felt healthy: kids try scary, difficult things all the time, which is why kids progress and carry so much joy. Adults ease into their comfort zones and stop trying hard things.

The $54 Million Story

Garrett’s company Scan was a simple QR code app that boomed: Shark Tank, Google Ventures, more than 100 million downloads. Then came a two-line email from the CEO of Snapchat. Within days Garrett was negotiating an acquisition between college soccer practices, with his wife nine months pregnant, coached by an acquisitions lawyer who insisted the opening offer of $40 million was not the ceiling. When the deal reached $44 million, Snapchat offered $10 million more if Garrett would skip his senior soccer season and start the next week. He turned it down on the spot, then a call with his co-founder reframed what that money meant for everyone else involved, and the deal closed at $54 million. Three months into the job, it felt like shackles on his heart. He quit, ran into his old coach at church that same Sunday, and went back to play his senior season after all.

Richer or Wealthier?

A week after the acquisition, Garrett’s co-founder Kirk posed the question that reshaped his life: picture someone with no money and a strong marriage next to the two of them with a lot of money and broken marriages. Who is wealthier? Together they wrote seven standards to hold each other to: a strong marriage, strong relationships, meaningful community, spiritual health, mental health, physical health, and freedom. Garrett walks through the bell curve of money and fame: more should make you happier and happier, but there is a natural point where the curve bends, it is different for everyone, and a couple has to watch each other’s curve, not just their own.

Getting Paid to Travel the World

When Garrett kept his promise and asked his wife Jessica what she wanted next, she said a little bit of traveling. They set the acquisition money aside, sold two cars and everything else in a yard sale for $43,000, and traveled for as long as it would last, documenting everything as a family journal before the word influencer existed. Brands said no for a year, then came discounts, then free stays, then paychecks. The Bucket List Family became a thriving business without ever touching the acquisition money. Years later, in a final interview for a job at Nike, Garrett joked that they would have to pay him more than getting paid to travel the world with his family, heard the words out loud, and declined the next day. He and Blake unpack how saying a decision out loud lets your body tell you whether it is right.

The Dark Side of Social Media

Nobody on the planet has benefited more from social media than Garrett, which is why his answer surprises people: his default is no. Social media is default terrible for the human soul, and anyone who opts in should do it deliberately, knowing exactly what the trolls and the comparison will cost them. His own kids will not have accounts before sixteen, and even then only after a real conversation about whether it is right for each of them. Garrett also clears the air on the infamous cliff jumping video, walking through what actually happened at Lake Powell, why hesitation is the real danger on a cliff, and how a patient father-son moment was cropped into a viral controversy. From there, he and Blake get into the parenting question underneath it all: how hard to push your kids, and how to make sure they know it comes from love and not expectation, because they are enough either way.

Villain or Hero

Garrett’s parents divorced when he was nine, and the stepmom who entered his home made the next six years what his family calls the dark ages. He describes years of emotional abuse, never feeling safe in his own house, and the two seventh grade friends who invited a lonely kid to sit with them at lunch and, whether they knew it or not, saved his life. Holding his firstborn daughter for the first time, he understood in a single moment what parental love should feel like and that he had grown up without it. He refuses the advice to simply forgive and move on. That pain is his superhero origin story: when trauma changes you, and it will, you get to choose whether it makes you a villain or a hero. The episode closes with a challenge from Blake: record a short video message for the friends you have drifted from, and be the one who plans the trip.

About Garrett Gee

Garrett Gee is an entrepreneur, adventurer, and the dad behind The Bucket List Family. He founded the mobile app Scan as a college student and sold it to Snapchat for $54 million, then set the money aside, sold nearly everything he owned, and set out to see the world with his wife Jessica and their three kids. What began as a family journal has grown into one of the most beloved family travel channels in the world, guided by a handwritten list of seven ways to stay wealthy in the ways that matter. At 39, he added professional soccer to the list, representing Tonga in an international tournament alongside one of his childhood best friends.

Links
Instagram: @garrettgee
YouTube: youtube.com/c/thebucketlistfamily