E319 – Brenden Kumarasamy – How to Master Your Talk and overcome the fear of Public Speaking

Junaid Ahmed 0:12
Thank you for tuning in to hacks and hobbies with your host Junaid were visited by our amazing guests coming from all walks of life to learn their story, their struggles and their journey on how they got to where they are today. So stick around.

In this episode I'm speaking with Brendon Kumara Swamy. He is a business transformation consultant at IBM But more than that, what really drew me into his vibe is the way he Hold himself up and the way he is teaching others. I connected to Brandon through the unconventional Leaders Group. And we've got to share each other's stories in the green room and few times ago in the back in the past, and he's been generating some really cool content on YouTube, where he's teaching you how to actually speak. So I've learned a lot through that. He's also a speaker and weekly spoken to, in front of many organizations, helping many people and learning the art and Mastering the Art of public speaking, Brendan, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. My pleasure, dude. Sweet man. So tell me a little about a little bit about how you got into This business of mastering to speaking ability to public speaking mastery.

Brendan Kumarasamy 2:09
Yes, for sure, man. So when I was in university three years ago, I used to compete in these things called business competitions. So think of it like being on an NFL or a sports team, but for nerds. So instead of spending three times a week doing drills that your sports coach tells you to do in the morning, we would literally spend three hours for each practice, preparing a business problem and solving it, and presenting backslides to senior executives of companies. So it was like a sport to us. Suffice to say, in the last three years, I've presented over 500 times. And I had zero intention of starting a YouTube channel. Like for me the law, the only thing on my mind was get the corporate job, run the race, get the American dream, but once I got it, I realized that there was a lot more to life than that. So When I was in university once again, one of my students came up to me and said, Hey, like, how did you learn how to speak in public? And I just said, I don't know. Like, I just did it. And they're like, but don't you have like videos that you can refer to us? And that's when I started watching a lot of the YouTube videos on the platform. And I realized that a lot of the tips that other coaches were giving, were very general like, Oh, just be yourself or like, Hey, man, just get up on stage. And I was really tired of that, because there's a lot of purpose driven entrepreneurs that really need this type of information that's very specific, but can't afford a speech coach like me. So that's where master talk started.

Junaid Ahmed 3:40
do that so awesome. What's really funny about that is, you know, have gotten the same thing. Just get up and be yourself and start talking. And same with videos when people are creating the live videos. And when people are creating videos, they'll just jump in and like hey, I'm trying to do this video. But it all comes down to You know, when you're creating content for somebody, you really need to focus on what specifically are they looking for. So it's really cool that you focused on public speaking and focusing on the tips and points that get you in the mindset of actually starting to speak because it's that mindset. Right? That makes a big difference when you start speaking on on the stage.

Unknown Speaker 4:25
Absolutely.

Junaid Ahmed 4:27
Yeah, man. So, you started master talk, you got your corporate job. And you're presenting 500 times over the past few years is our desert you mentioned.

Brendan Kumarasamy 4:42
You got it. Like just this week. I presented yesterday, I'm presenting today, and I'm presenting Sunday. So even in the next couple of days, I'm presenting five, six times.

Junaid Ahmed 4:52
Wow, that's just amazing. And what that does, it's just like exercise. The more you exercise a specific habit a specific thing, the better you get at it. And that's exactly how athletes are so good at playing their sports and, you know running people who are who run marathons, people who run sprints. they've practiced and practiced and practiced that same ability over and over being consistent. That's what you're able to do, which is really cool. So tell me again, yeah, no, go ahead. Go ahead. I want to get some of your feedback on you know what I just said?

Brendan Kumarasamy 5:32
No, of course, I think I think what's what's interesting about the artists public speaking much like any sport or the any skill is the transition from passion to obsession. So when I started doing presentations, I didn't think much of it like I used to, you know, present a couple of times to would happen but as you slowly progress and as you start to see that you're improving, and you see that end game which is to win the competition or to win the the trophy or to win the result. You get a lot more intense and you present a lot more. So in the same way that if you start playing football or fundraising or playing basketball for son, then you realize, hey, you're really good at this. Oh, let's try playing varsity. Let's try playing professionally. And then oh, let's try get into the NBA. So it's a step in its own and public speaking is no different. So if you can transition from passion to obsession, you'll speed up your learning.

Junaid Ahmed 6:20
Wow, that that really puts a lot of things in perspective, because I keep thinking, or I have been for the past two years, hey, I want to do this one. I want to teach this one specific ability or you know how to use your smartphone better to shoot videos. And I just keep thinking, thinking thinking about it. Sure. I wrote some things around it. But you're, you're really, you know, you hit a nerve there where you know, you got to turn that passion into obsession. So I obsess over it more and more and gain more clarity. I think my trouble is and I am spread too thin, and there's not enough butter for this bread. So tell us a version of your story, your journey that no one's heard of before.

Brendan Kumarasamy 7:18
Then no one's heard of before. Dawn's interesting, um, because I'm usually an open book. So I usually share all of my, my life. But I think what one thing I would say, I guess publicly, is I think one of the reasons that I was successful was because of my alcoholic father. So when I was growing up as a kid, I had a father who, you know, wasn't very supportive of who I was, didn't really care about what I did or what I said, and you know, wasn't really there for me and my family.

But I think what the gift from that was, it really pushed me to do better in life, right? Because when I was 16, I made a difficult choice, which was, Do I spend the rest of my life to get him to stop, you know, drinking? Or do I focus my life and saying, hey, this person is not good for me, I need a free focus on energy on something else. So I'm probably one of the few 16 year olds you'll ever be, well, I'm not 16 anymore, but when I was 16, at the time, that lived in the same house as his own father for seven years until he passed, and never spoke to him.

So that's probably one thing that comes to mind.

Junaid Ahmed 8:27
Wow, that's, that's really strong. And it's kind of interesting to see that 10 of like, what motivates people that that that I'm trying to say is, I recently watched the Tony Robbins documentary on Netflix, I'm not your guru. And in there was a story or there was a there's a participant who said the same thing. I mean, when she Younger her, her dad never gave her the love that she thought she deserved, right? And she stopped talking to her dad. And then when she came to this event she opened up about why you know why she wasn't doing that. And the connection that she had her father was very different. And she was able to break through from that to bring her father to be connected with her father before he passed away six months later, but again, it comes down to you know, it's like both party have both parties. I don't know if that makes sense. But both parties have to be on the same playing field but then sometimes it's just system possible.

Brendan Kumarasamy 9:56
No, for sure did like, like in my case to like, I have the To speak to have a free pass to as well. And I think it was a very healing experience. But I think at the end of the day, I think what it comes down to is like, in my life, I've always been really focused on this idea of hatred, you know, like, Oh, I hate this guy. Like, I want to prove them wrong. I'm gonna show everyone that I'm right. And, you know, I got the job that I wanted, I hit the goals, but the issue is hatred is it's not a very sustainable motivator. So when when I when I hit all my targets, and I got the corporate job when I was 19. I was like, oh, what do I what I do with my life now. So it's it was really that transition to impacting others that really kept the motivation going or else I would have kind of lost direction in my life.

Junaid Ahmed 10:40
Beautiful, yeah, that that takes us to the next question, you know, what are some of your motivations for the things that you do? And he just went into that, where you know, helping others you get that that feedback from them. When you help somebody you know, there's there's a chemical reaction that happens in our brains. I can't remember the terminology of it right now. But um, you're absolutely right. When you when you find your purpose, what you're supposed to be doing, what's really fulfills you, is when you realize, you know, where your mindset needs to be.

Brendan Kumarasamy 11:21
Yeah, absolutely. And just to push that even further, what I would say is my, my whole life's purpose is to optimize my life, so much so that I can optimize everyone else's. So my my point of view on this is, I think it's a lot more than just surfing, it's a duty because since we were both in the top 1% income holders in the entire world, it's a responsibility because we've been given the opportunity to, to use the resources that we have in our respective countries to then redistribute it to the rest of humanity. And I think that the thing that really pushes me and that should push your audience to react is, you know, like in master talks, just case, there's so many reasons why I couldn't have done this that were outside of my control. So for example, I just so happened to be born in a first world country, I happen to not have an Indian accent, so I can be the spokesperson for public speaking. I just have that voice. Right. And I just happened to go to business school in Montreal, where there happened to be the most intense Case Competition program in the world. So I could I learned how to speak at a top 1% level at a very young age. Right. So a lot of these things I couldn't really control, right. So it's, I believe it's a duty and responsibility to pay that forward to to the person in Kenya to the person in Asia to the person in any other continent, who wants access to communication information, but just can't afford me, which is the reality of the situation. So that's what really drives me. And another thing that drives me that I want your viewers to think about is this idea of understanding the alternatives. You know, I find a lot of us we lack motivation, and we're like, oh, like We're not consistent. How do we fix this? And I think the easy way is to just understand the people you're hurting by not taking action. That's super simple. Like I was 23 I have no PhD in communication. There is 1000 reasons why I shouldn't have started master talk. And I did anyways because I thought about the millions of people that I would not be serving, that could be really benefiting from my information now, like, I could be waiting until I'm an executive at IBM and to do this, we'd have a boatload of money, or I could have gone to a car accident 27 all my knowledge would have been lost. So if you really understand the alternative of your inaction, it really pushes you to take action.

Junaid Ahmed 13:39
Does though so beautiful, that is so beautiful, because we as human beings, the the most certain thing is in our lives is death. Right? And when we wait to do something, you don't know what tomorrow brings. So you gotta leave everything on table every single day like Kobe Bryant, Kobe Bryant, he just recently passed away. And he was so young 43 right. But he left everything on the court. So really amazing. You know, you've got to put everything. You gotta do everything you can possibly humanly possibly do today, because you don't know what tomorrow brings.

Brendan Kumarasamy 14:25
Yeah, absolutely, man. And since you mentioned Kobe, I thought I would give up. I give one of my life tips, which is implementing an admirer timer. So when we think about death, it's a very vague concepts and most of the things that we're going to pass away in like our 60s or 70s, or 80s. So what I what I tell my clients to do as an exercise is to essentially pick someone you admire.

That died at a young age that's older than you. So it's interesting that you mentioned Kobe, because Kobe is my admirer timer. So basically what I do is I see Assume that I'm going to die at the same age as Kobe, and I take actions based on that. And the reason I think this is a very powerful exercise for people, is because it makes the concept of death a lot more tangible. So for example, somebody you admire personally, whether it's a writer, a nonprofit CEO, a basketball player, since you're always thinking about them and their death date when they left Earth, you're cognizant of the fact that you can leave Earth at any point, because you're the person you admire. I personally made the same mistake, because Kobe thought he was going to live until the 70s. And he ended up expiring at 43. Right? So in that same way, I'm always living with the the the intention that I only have 20 years left, and that's why I'm investing a lot of money. I literally went from a kid who was in poverty to a kid making six figures to a kid making six figures back and forth poverty, Ellery took every paycheck that I make from Master talking my client business, and I just invested back into the business because I can be dead at any second, right? So it gets Do a lot more tangibility and you move a lot faster. I find

Junaid Ahmed 16:05
that's that's beautiful, man. That's beautiful. And what was really interesting with Colby and because I grew up watching him play and so did my cousins and you know, I am from LA. So, you know, it was Lakers all day for us every single day watching, you know, every season watching watching him play. And I was talking to my cousins and we have this ongoing group messaged group for the past, you know, two decades and we're talking in there. And like, we still can't believe it's just hard to imagine that he is no longer here. Same would I was very devastated one when I heard Michael jesse jackson passed away because I grew up listening to his music and you're absolutely right. You know setting that goal. D was was that term miles you mentioned?

Brendan Kumarasamy 17:07
Yeah, of course. So it's called implementing an admirer timer. So back to back to what you're saying, this whole idea that that Kobe was an important influence. I think the key takeaway from his life and his journey is that as purpose driven entrepreneurs, ourselves and people watching who want to make an impact on the world, the key message from his death is he just gave us a big torch and we need to keep running with it. Right, because he had much bigger plans for his life way beyond basketball. Right? You know, it's a puny his and his podcast and helping children across the world developing a growth mindset, a young age, like he was going to do much bigger things in life, and he wasn't able to. Yeah, so because of that, it's our duty and responsibility to take that torch and keep running with it.

Junaid Ahmed 17:54
Amen. Yeah, we definitely do and the only way we can keep running with that tort is by taking action by doing something that we love. By putting it all out on the table. There is a book that I recently read called die empty. And it's exactly what it talks about, you know, do everything that's in your mind that you dream of today because you never know when you're gonna go away because a lot of people when they're on their deathbed, they don't think about Oh, I wish I had spent one more day at work. No, they always talk about Oh, I wish I had written that book. Oh, I wish I wish I had, you know, done this and that. So when we have the power today, we should take action and make it happen. 100% sweet, man, this is going really good. It's rolling. Good, going really good. And don't want to be nowhere else to go. I mean, he told Coby and we talked about, you know, death and taking action. I mean, the only thing you can do, I guess go from there is how, how can we go out there and make a difference? Or how can we, because a lot of people, they think, Oh, I'm just a regular person, how can I make a difference in the world? Right?

Brendan Kumarasamy 19:29
For sure, and I actually have a very specific answer to this question, because I find a lot of the answers that we see out there are very bland in general. So the first thing I'll say is I got from this podcast, I forgot who the quote is from, but it's not from me. And that person said, that if you help one person, the world will give you permission to help everyone else. So when I started a master talk or not even master talk when I started coaching people's like students in university, you know, I was coaching people one by one And then I started coaching in groups. And then I started giving presentations. And then a month ago, I keynote it for 200 people. And now I'm making videos for the world. So it wasn't, I didn't start with Master talk, I started with coaching one person helping one person. So if you're helping one person in something you're actually good at and you're adding value to people. The world will give you permission to help everyone else provided that you're very good at that thing. So I would say just start with one person and start with asking them the following questions. What are you passionate about? And how can I add value and support you on your mission? super easy. You do that 1000 times and you'll find the answer that speaks to you that works to your unique skills and talents. The second thing I want to say is I believe every human being should be focusing on solving two problems in their lifetime, one that they're uniquely positioned to solve and the world's easiest problems. So let me explain what I mean by that. So the first one is super simple. What is the One problem where you have a world class expertise in or that you can develop a world class expertise in. For me that ended up being communication, I was the only human being that I was aware of on record in the world. That was a 1% speech, Coach B spoke multiple languages. So I can make videos on things like how to speak in a second language. And C was generous enough to share all my information for free on the internet. Whereas all my my competitors essentially don't do that. So I became instantly The only human being that could solve public speaking for the world at scale. So I needed to do that. So that's what I'm uniquely positioned to solve. The second thing that's a bit more counterintuitive, is the world's easiest problem, because I find a big mistake that we make in societies, a lot of our charitable giving, and how we give back to society is very fuel based on emotion. So for example, and there's the Australian wildfire law If people donate money to that, well human beings are starving or lack water and clean resources across the world. So I'm not saying there's a right or wrong here. But I'm saying there's a very emotion based decision rather than objective one. So what I what I challenge your viewers to think about is don't ask yourself what the world's most important, like the problem that you're most passionate about. But rather ask yourself, what is the world's easiest problem to solve? Because if we solve that problem, it'll give us motivation to solve everything else. And a good example of this in the past was the legalization of gay marriage. So if you think about that, 25 years ago, and we were having this conversation, we talked about how bad it is. But today, everything is legal in the states and everything is quickly moving forward in that direction. So the question is, how do they get solved so quickly? Right? There's many reasons right? billionaires funding a lot of these projects, very smart marketing campaigns. The fact that most of the population either has a homosexual friend So we even if we're not gay ourselves, we understand the emotional trauma that comes with it, or the struggles that other people that we know of that our friends go through it. So we got they got legalized very quickly. So in that same way you need to think about what is the next easiest problem. I personally think it's the water crisis. That's what I'm really focused on using the income that I make, to solving to helping the people who don't have access to clean water and get access to it. But in that same way, I challenge you to think about what is the world's easiest problem? What are you uniquely positioned to solve in the world? And if you're able to solve that problem for one person, the world will give you permission to solve that problem for everyone else.

Junaid Ahmed 23:41
Wow, that was that was powerful. That's really powerful because I keep thinking about Okay, what what is the easiest problem to solve and you're right water is much easier and and I've been obsessed about thinking about water for the past. Few weeks since I watched a video you shared the water in the charity water. And there's no new water being created in the world, because water is recyclable. It's it's only two elements made out of two elements. Why don't you know oxygen and hydrogen? And I was thinking, you know, since water carries no calories, how is it able to sustain life? And I'm just like reading about water in depth from all sorts of, you know, ways. It's like how water is, is a cleansing agent. It's, it's amazing and you're right, that's, that's one of the easiest problems to solve because water is available, and cleaning water is not that hard.

Brendan Kumarasamy 24:55
I completely agree, dude. Like one way you can think about it is one of the reasons One of the decision that feels the world's easiest problem, my opinion is who is resisting your change. So for example, if you take something like human trafficking, it's a very, it's a very sad problem. It's also a very difficult one to solve, simply because we don't know how many humans are missing. We don't know where the humans are. The people guarding those humans are extremely intelligent mafia groups that aren't afraid to destroy you. Right. So it's a very difficult system that we're in. But if you take something like the water crisis, the only person who's the only entity that's really resisting your change are big corporate companies that are taking advantage of Water Resources, like Nestle and Coca Cola. But the issue is that since the awareness for the water crisis has increased over the years, even those companies are investing a lot of money back into water preservation, which means the number of resistors the person who's resisting your change is a lot lower, which creates a bigger opportunity to solve the problem.

Junaid Ahmed 26:00
That's powerful, know you that that brings to that brings the conversation to something that I focus on. Since I'm a user experience designer. And when we're designing something, you want to design something that reduces the friction for you to interact with the application interact with what you're doing. And for the past decade, almost a decade and half, we have been using smartphones, and there's billions and billions of applications. And you see which apps are the easiest to use is because one, we're so used to using them, we have developed this learned ability, then you also see apps that are coming out using the ability to reduce the friction even more. And when you talking about find a problem, that's easiest To solve, you're looking from the same perspective. Okay? which one has the least amount of resistance? And how can we get this complete identity can bring awareness to people and solve problems that are a little harder.

Brendan Kumarasamy 27:18
Exactly man, like you hit it on the nail, like, especially with Charity Water. That's I'm so passionate about that. If there was a million people right now donating every month instead of 40,000, which is still very impressive. But if it was a million instead of 40,000, then the water crisis would easily get solved in 20 years, no problem.

Junaid Ahmed 27:37
Just 1 million people need to solve need to donate monthly to solve it in 20 years. So what if he had That's it? 10 million, then it would get sold very quickly. A lot sooner. Right. Wow, that's amazing. And then that story, the latest story that they put out with the spring Spring short video that was really, really good. I mean, I was I was very moved by it.

Brendan Kumarasamy 28:09
And I think that's that's, that resonates a key takeaway for us. And that's don't try and reinvent the wheel. Because you know, people talk about, oh, what's your vision? Like, find your own unique thing? No, no, don't reinvent the wheel, find someone else's doing something really good and right, and either find something wrong with it to help them or just join the ship and let it take off with you. That's fine. Right? So that's, that's what I thought about is Master Master isn't a new idea. Right? People have thought about making public speaking videos in the past on YouTube. It's just the people that were making it were very weren't very good speech coaches themselves, didn't speak multiple languages. So they didn't come from that perspective. And see, a lot of the advice is very general. So I did something about it. I took something that already exists and made it better. And Charity Water is a good example too. They do most things extremely Right. And the only issue is that since they're a nonprofit, they rely on donations. So I need to be one of those donors. But besides that they run a very tight ship. Yeah. Or my alternative is I could spend 1315 years key and make the same mistakes that they did and waste a lot of capital, which I don't want to do. Yeah,

Junaid Ahmed 29:17
yeah. So somebody who's already doing it, join the sheep. Because now you're you're, you're growing that movement that you're already passionate about exponentially, by adding people and adding awareness to it, rather than trying to do the same thing.

Brendan Kumarasamy 29:37
Exactly. Don't don't compete with your admirers. I think that's one way of looking at it.

Junaid Ahmed 29:42
I think that's that's a really good point that you made, you know, the word competition is such a, it's good, but it's also very, very bad. And that's why we have a lot of the crises that we have in the world because people are competing against each other when they should be collaborating.

Brendan Kumarasamy 30:02
100 percentage. And I even like another thing that I like to tell my clients is, competition is clarity. In many ways, this competition tells you, if you should be doing the thing that you're doing. So for instance, if you want to be an actor, right, you know, your dream is to be an actor, but then you actually understand the work that it takes to become a professional actor, you know, being on set from 6am to 10pm, saying the same words, thing, the same lines, five, seven times, you realize that, hey, my competition is willing to do that. And I'm not willing to do that. So I'm not going to do that. So I think competition is actually a beautiful thing, because it helps you understand what you should be doing or what you shouldn't be doing. So in the same way that I hate writing, so I'm not really planning on writing a book anytime soon. I was willing to write I mean, excuse me, I was willing to make scripts for a YouTube channel for videos because I'm obsessed about that.

Junaid Ahmed 30:57
That makes so much sense. made some really, really good, thank you. But I think the when I think about competition, I'm looking from the perspective of the corporate competition there is right? Like we have the, the Walmarts and the targets and the Kmart and these companies that are competing on building and building products and bringing products to the market that are cheaply made. And now we can see that crises affecting the entire world because of this Coronavirus business, and how there's a lot of things that are holding down or slowing down because of the reliance on Chinese manufacturers. Hmm, no, that makes sense. So from that perspective, competition, not good but human to human competition, to bring your mind up to speed to figure out what you're really made of, and what you really want to put your time into there, the competition totally makes sense. But as companies should not be competing against each other, they should be collaborating or working together to build a better world. And I think we saw that with Microsoft's transformation in the past 10 years before they were just competing, is trying to build another operating system to compete with the iPhone, the Android. And I think recently or the past few years, they've adopted the open source Linux platform and lower their servers and can now run on Linux, their technologies around long Linux. So that collaboration is what has what has kept Microsoft from going bankrupt, but then now, they are so much farther along than they would have been. That's interesting. Thanks, Ben. I'm a tech enthusiast. So I learned a lot about technology and there didn't want to go off a topic where you wouldn't have much to say, you know what, let's get into we talked a lot about, you know, your journey, your motivation and how somebody can be a better speaker house, how all of us can compete and bring clarity to ourselves and help other organizations that were passionate. In the same vein to help them grow their challenge.

Brendan Kumarasamy 33:36
Yeah, for sure. And I would say I guess to tie since we went over, I guess the my framework on how to make a difference. Let's let's go into why communication matters and all of this, like what's, what's the what's the plug on communication? And the reason communication matters in making a difference in general, is because it is the bridge between you impacting hundreds of lives versus thousands Dozens of lies versus millions of lies. So the classic example, is a health coach, a health coach is working one on one with clients. She's making good money, multiple, six figures. But you know, she's afraid of public speaking. But if if let's, let's call her Julie. So let's say Julia masters public speaking or he gets much better at it, she'll probably say, hey, instead of coaching people one on one, let me do a mastermind with 68 people, since Susan mentioned, then she does group coaching. And then after that, she gets more confidence, and says, Hey, let me start speaking and sharing my story, my message to hundreds of people. So what happens now is Julia goes from speaking to one on one, all the way to hundreds of people at the same time. Yeah. And this also applies if you don't have a business. So let's say for example, there's a cause or charity that you care about, and you're an ambassador or you're running for politics, and you're helping someone get elected. Yeah, all this falls under the same bandwagon, where it's much easier for you to scale your message and spread your message if you're speaking to hundreds People at the same time. So for example, in my case, Master talk, the one of the reasons why I was able to grow quickly is because I speak on a lot of stages in front of like, let's say, 200 people and I tell my message, there's maybe 20 people that say, hey, I want to fold the sky, I want to learn more about him. And I also plugged the Charity Water as well like the organization. So they learn about the book, they learn about the organization, they donate money as well. So in that way, it's a lot easier for you to scale your impact on your message if you are a master of communication. So I urge all of you everyone who's watching and listening to, to watch my free videos to watch anyone's free videos and to really make it a point to master the art of communication because it's an important one.

Junaid Ahmed 35:44
I love it. I love it. Thank you so much. Communication is super important. And I want to know, what is that I can't even remember it's been so long ago but I took part I partook in Toastmasters, and they taught a lot of cool things. And I had the ability to go, you know, to go anytime go up there and start speaking and they provide you a safe space where you can learn and get better at your craft, along with the guides, but then you're absolutely right. There's so much information available available, and with your videos as well. There's a ton of information that people can get started. And I need to take more into account of how I can be a public speaker or start talking to a larger audience and find my purpose find my thing that I'm good at. So let's get into some of the questions that I usually ask my guests. What is one hobby into you wish you got into

Brendan Kumarasamy 37:00
I would totally say playing piano, because I think it would be super cool to just be at like a party or an event and just bust out some, some tunes on the piano. But I never really got into it because I'm really focused on building master talking my business. But I think after I start to relax a bit, and I start making a bit more, more money and I start to stabilize, I'll definitely spend more time learning that so playing the piano.

Junaid Ahmed 37:25
Nice. I love it. You know, when you said playing the piano, the one thing that I remembered that popped in my head was Groundhog Day. I don't know if you've seen the movie, but he was stuck in that time period. Very long time. And he learned to play the piano. So after I first think I had seen that movie A while back, but really funny things is I looked up Okay. How long did he really spend And in that town, it was like eight years, he's reliving the same day. It's insane. All right, next question. What did you want to be when you were a child?

Brendan Kumarasamy 38:14
This is gonna sound really boring. So when I was 12 years old, my career counselor comes up to a class and says, Well, everyone, you got to figure out what you want to do in life. But you know, you're too young, so don't worry about, but the thing is, I worried about it, right. So I was a kid in poverty and an alcoholic father, I need to figure out a way to make money. So when I was 12, I went back home. And they made a list of all the careers that were in existence at the time. And I looked at my report card, and I realized that I was pretty bad in every subject except math. So I was a math whiz, but every other subject wasn't good at. So I essentially just did the thing that I call process of elimination, and just removed all the careers that I didn't think I would be good at and I landed on accounting, and I never changed my mind until last

Junaid Ahmed 39:00
Oh, wow. That's amazing. Math is powerful and you know, BP doing the counting. But I think what i think i think the path that you've picked for yourself and what? really helping with your passion with speaking that thing's for sure. All right, next question. What is your favorite movie or TV show? And it's none. How about a book?

Brendan Kumarasamy 39:32
The book I would recommend is thirst by Scott Harrison. That's the one that really changes my life and the game for me, because I find losers quote that I am saying that I have which is, perspective freezes from the chains of constant complaining. I find that in society, especially in first world countries, we all have changed, but we're all handcuffed in a way, because we're stuck in our own reality. And we're always complaining about life from our own perspective. But when we start to realize what's actually happening happening around the world like really understand, those curves fall off and you stop complaining. So I haven't complained in five, six years. And I also think it's a great read for anyone who wants to master public speaking, because Scott Harrison is by far the best storyteller in the world, in my opinion, just because of the way that he was able to raise over 300 to $360 million for charity. Just from his video. LinkedIn is crazy, right? You can literally take someone who knows nothing about the charity, send them a 20 minute video and they automatically become givers. So I definitely think he's worth studying as a as an individual.

Junaid Ahmed 40:34
Nice. I love it. thrive by Scott Harrison. All right, your next one thirst by Scott Harrison. That thirst thirst. Makes sense. Yeah, yeah.

Brendan Kumarasamy 40:45
Yeah. And by the way, if you don't, if you don't need to listen to me, though, you can listen to Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Bernie brown and Arianna Huffington who all endorsed the book. Hold on. There's a bug. Okay, cool.

Junaid Ahmed 40:55
I'll take him out. All right. What moves would you choose if you got to play character in it?

Unknown Speaker 41:04
Robert bought or

Junaid Ahmed 41:07
Robin Hood? movie? Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Brendan Kumarasamy 41:11
Yeah, I think so. And the reason is because I like Robins approach to life which is very similar to mine. Yeah, which is take the money from the rich and give it to the poor. So the way I translate that into my life is some people can afford my speech coaching, some people can't. That's just life. And as master talk becomes more, more, you know, the brand becomes bigger over the years, and my youtube channel starts to grow. I have just no choice to increase my price because time becomes a more important asset to me. But the beautiful thing from that is, I can greet like even today, that's what I do. Like I reallocate a lot of the resources into lottery winnings that I get from speech coaching, and I am reinvested back into better video production, better free resources for people. I invested back into speaking on stage Where I can get access to more people so you can find out about my videos. So everything gets reinvested back into the poor, whether it's the water crisis, whether it's whether it's, you know, my video production, so I like Robin Hood's I wouldn't want to do that.

Junaid Ahmed 42:15
Nice. I love it. Thank you. So it's no surprise that your favorite superhero would be.

Brendan Kumarasamy 42:29
I'm not very good with superhero, so it's kind of awkward. Actually, don't watch it though. But I am fond of the Joker. I don't know why. I kind of

Junaid Ahmed 42:39
like is that's probably the Joker you watched?

Brendan Kumarasamy 42:42
Yeah, I did. That was actually one of the few super heroes slash anti superhero movies I've actually watched. So not a big movie guy. Yeah, but I enjoy the Joker because he's a very, he's a good reminder for all of us to go against the grain, you know, back into our group can Leaders I think anyone who, who is insane in many ways, is an interesting human being whether Okay, maybe not in the case of Joe, because he's a bad person, but in the sense of, if you have the courage to go against what everyone believes, then that's when the big shifts, the big impact and the big opportunities lie.

Junaid Ahmed 43:20
Yeah, I like it. I like it. Last question. on that second to last, if you were a board game, board game, would it be?

Brendan Kumarasamy 43:32
Man, these are some interesting questions. If I was a board game,

Junaid Ahmed 43:37
this is a hobby. Okay, this,

Brendan Kumarasamy 43:39
this is gonna be interesting. Um, I would be a deck of cards. Because much like a deck of cards in life, we don't know. This is my favorite quote of all time, by the way, by Randy Polish for the last lecture. He says that we can control the hand we're given, but we can control how we play it out. So in that same way You know, you can be playing multiple games or multiple deck, you know, multiple things with the deck of cards. At the end of the day, you can't control what you get in your hand. You can get a an alcoholic father card, you can get a parents divorce at five card. Everyone's got a different set, but you can't change the set. So the question is, what are you going to do with the set that you're given

Junaid Ahmed 44:19
Reagan into the lemons that you got? Love it. Thank you. All right, where can my audience find you?

Brendan Kumarasamy 44:27
For sure, and I'm super accessible. So be sure to if you have any questions, you can find me on Instagram. And that master your talk so super easy to find me. I usually answer Diaz within 24 hours so don't be shy to ask me any questions. Anything you want life advice, I'm always happy to share to discuss and you can obviously check out my YouTube channel which is master talk in one word.

Junaid Ahmed 44:50
Perfect. I'll be sure to include the links to podcast so you can check out Brendon Kumara Swamy. Thank you So much Brandon for this talk. We learned a lot from you. Thank you so much again for your time. Have an awesome day.

Brendan Kumarasamy 45:09
YouTube, take care.

Junaid Ahmed 45:17
Congratulations, you made it to the end of the episode. Thanks so much for listening to our guests on this episode. Please send me an email at Junaid at Hudson hobbies calm to tell me what you loved about our guests today. You could find links mentioned in this episode on the hacks and hobbies comm website.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai