PDM 012: Effective Communication ft. Brenden Kumarasamy

Narrator: Welcome to the home of Project Dream Mastery. Here at PDM, we are challenging the status quo of what it means to follow your dreams and how to unlock the power those dreams will bring to your life. The show experience will be unscripted, authentic and transparent. So now sit back, relax and get inspired with your hosts Lucas Johnson and Patryk Labuzek.

Patryk Labuzek: Hey guys. You know those moments where you wish you knew exactly what to say and how to say it or how to communicate the message effectively? Well, today we have someone really, really special joining us that will share some of the tools, tricks and tips for helping you navigate the waters of effective communication per se. This is surely an episode you do not want to miss out on!

Lucas P. Johnson: Welcome to the 12th episode of the Project Dream Mastery Show where we help inspire you to follow your dreams, defy expectations, dream big and love deeply. My name is Lucas Johnson based out of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Patryk Labuzek: And I'm Patryk Labuzek based out of Dublin, Ireland.

Lucas P. Johnson: Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast to be the first to receive new episode releases and if you have any questions that you would like answered on the show, please tag us on Twitter or Facebook at Project Dream Mastery. Just in case you are interested in the full experience, this episode is available with video. So check out our website at ProjectDreamMastery.com/listen to watch now.

Patryk Labuzek: So guys, this episode is going to be very, very valuable especially for your ability to communicate effectively. Like I said, today we have someone special joining us, Brenden from Quebec, Canada and for this episode, we will be focusing in on the power of silence, the power of pause, the power behind effective communication in general.

Lucas P. Johnson: Paddy, I am super excited. Let’s get Brenden introduced properly to the show. Brenden is an experienced speaker and facilitator who understands that audience members need to walk away captivated and above all, inspired to master the art of communication. He believes it should be seen as something to look forward to rather than a burden that must be overcome. Brenden has worked with distinguished clients such as IBM, McGill University, Upstarted and many others. He also has an incredible YouTube channel by the name of MasterTalk where he provides insane value about topics related to effective communication and we hope to provide an incredible experience in today's episode all aligned. Super excited. So without a further ado, welcome to the Project Dream Mastery show, Brenden. We are super excited to have you and look forward to the chat ahead.

Brenden Kumarasamy: Likewise. It's great to be here, you two.

Patryk Labuzek: So Brenden, first off, there are no expectations on this show. If there are, you know, we're all for defining them. So, you know, just a fun, say what you think and let's break the ice. So as a kid, did you have a vision of becoming a public speaker and an educator as well? So can you tell us how that all began? Tell us your story and what inspired you, inspired you to chase your dreams?

Brenden Kumarasamy: Yeah. The short answer you two is absolutely not. You know, it's five years old. I grew up in a city called Montreal in Canada. And in that city, it's one of the few places in the world where you actually had to speak multiple languages to thrive in it. So in Montreal's case, I needed to know French or else I wouldn't be able to converse with other people in the city. But I didn't know French. So my parents sent me to a French education system. That's where the problem started. Not learning language obviously. I'm grateful I know French today. But in presentations, my whole life, not only was I uncomfortable at presentations but I had to give them now a language I didn't even know. So you can imagine me as a grade two or three-er standing up in a classroom and just going bonjour. So definitely wasn't the intention, Patryk, to be this YouTuber, a person making videos. But what shifted was when I went to university, I used to do these things called case competitions. So think of it like professional sports but for nerds. So other guys my age were, you know, playing like football or footy or rugby or something. Clearly, things I'm not capable of doing. What I did instead was I watched other people give presentations and I did that competitively for three years. And then after I graduated from university and joined corporate Canada/America, I just asked myself what I could do to make a difference in the world. And that's when the idea for the YouTube channel came to be because I realized a lot of the information was frankly garbage on YouTube when it came to public speaking. So I started making videos in my basement and here we are today.

Lucas P. Johnson: In the basement I see. So, you know, one thing I was reading from your website is when you first published your first YouTube video, it was probably one of the scariest things you had to go through. So talk about that. I just, you know, I feel like that's what people fear nowadays is having those people always looking at you, having eyes on you at every point in time.

Brenden Kumarasamy: Isn't it funny how something as simple as insecurity or fear gets in the way of so many of what we want to do in life. Isn't that like insane?

Patryk Labuzek: So true. Yeah.

Brenden Kumarasamy: Crazy. And in my case, you know, I wasn't any different. I was, I mean think of it like this. I started a YouTube chat on public speaking communication and started coaching C-level executives when I was 23. Who the hell am I to do that? Right? So when I was sitting there in my basement with my first video, I didn't want to post it because I was really scared. And it was a huge hit to my ego boost because by then I was one of the best speakers in the country. But my video was horrible because I didn't know how to present on camera. So I didn't want to post it. But what made me shift and this is a question I have for people to ponder with whatever dream or idea you have is the following. Who suffers from your inability to take action every day? So every day that you wake up and make the decision not to do what you want to do, who suffers as a consequence of that decision? And the more specific you are about that person, the more powerful the answer becomes. So in my case, it's a 16-year-old girl named Julia. Julia is really smart. Julia is very well-educated. She's a superstar. She's going to be like a huge leader in whatever she does and she's in high school. But she's definitely afraid of public speaking but she knows she needs to get better at it. So, you know, she likes YouTube. She watched a lot of YouTubers, like famous people. Not be obviously. And types public speaking tips on YouTube because maybe she'll find something useful. But what does she find instead? She finds a bunch of old white dudes who are like 75 years old who don't know anything about public speaking. So she looks at those videos and goes public speaking is not for me. Closes the laptop and that the belief that she has that she'll never master public speaking will remain throughout her whole life unless I do something about it. So if Brenden's option A is do the thing and Brenden's option B is watch millions of people for the rest of time suffer from public speaking because they can't afford somebody like me. When you have those two options as an ultimatum, your choice becomes very obvious.

Lucas P. Johnson: Wow, that's

Patryk Labuzek: Very powerful.

Lucas P. Johnson: Yeah. That's powerful. You know, I always hear people, they want, they have this vision and they're like oh, I can make, I can make some money, I can make some dough. All right. Let's take, you just saw this opportunity to change someone's life and, you know, you posted in our form here just about how you want to, you know, help people achieve their dreams. And that's exactly what we are here to do. What influenced you? I know that you talked about your school days and, you know, had to learn different languages and so forth. What has influenced you most so far in your journey? You know, being that 23 year old, you're taking charge of your own life, you're conquering your demons at 23. Man, wow. I'm 23 now. I mean I need, I need to start working on that, man. So C-suite executives. That is crazy. I want, I just want to hear more about that.

Brenden Kumarasamy: Yeah, absolutely. So there's definitely a lot of things there and I love the question. I would say that the big part of that for me was understanding who the real enemy is. So let's say I asked you, not you two. You two are pretty smart people. But in general, let's say we ask the average Joe who, you know, does stuff. And we say who's your enemy? They'll always respond with the following. Oh, that dude who cut me off in traffic or my girlfriend and my mom. I hate, I was like hey, why are you bashing on your girlfriend or your mom? What's going on here? I was like whoa, I mean like what's, but anyways. What they don't understand and what most people don't understand is that we all have the same enemy whether you're from Dublin, whether you're from, you know, the States or whether you're from Canada or anywhere. We all have the same enemy and I'll give you the answer. It's time. You can throw money at time. You could yell at time. You could scream at time. You could tell how much time has cut you off in traffic. But time always wins in the end. And once we realize that, the only way to defeat time is to figure out how to optimize for it, how to reinvest it better, how to use it better to our advantage. So I realized at 19 or 20 that time was my enemy, not that person that I had a crush on that didn't want to go out with me or that other thing that was going on in my life. But that, you know, we're all facing time and you have to beat it. So now that I've realized that, the next step for me was to figure out how to get really smart really quickly and answer all the hard questions about life in a very short period of time. And I got lucky and that's why I think a lot of my influencer on MasterTalk came to me. There was a lot of very generous people that didn't have to create content for me because I couldn't afford, you know, these things. I was a student like you guys. Literally a couple of years ago, I couldn't even afford a bowl of Ramen. That generously shared their information for free. So an example I can point out right now is Lewis Howe's podcast, The School of Greatness. I was listening to Lewis since I was 17 or 18. He started the podcast seven years ago and he had no reason to start it. He was a multimillionaire already, already had a very successful online business. Didn't need to do that. So why did he do it anyways? He did it to create a legacy for people like us who can't afford like one-on-one coaching with him which is probably like a hundred thousand dollars an hour. So when that happened, I learned very quickly how other people were living their lives and I started picking heroes and completely shifting what I did. So one example that people can do right now because I know we don't want to speak like too far away from the goalpost here. One exercise that you can all do that nobody does is to write your own funeral speech. When you're in the casket and your sister, your brother, your family are write, are saying what they want and what they, what you stood for, what you valued, what do you want that piece of paper to say? And the more specific you are about what you wanted to stand for, what your value system is, what you're trying to fight for, it's much easier to work in reverse.

Lucas P. Johnson: Paddy, we actually had someone on our previous, one of our previous guests actually talked about that same idea and, you know, working through that exercise and that was powerful then and to hear it again the second time around is even more powerful because

Patryk Labuzek: It insane how people from, I just find it marvelous actually how people like with similar mindsets because I like to think we all have similar minds especially our guests and us on this podcast is we have very similar ideas at the same time about different things like that time's our enemy. We kind of discussed that as well in our previous episodes and our previous guests, like Lucas mentioned, were saying exactly the same thing as you are now, Brenden, which is just like wow, it's mind blowing that, you know, people from so many different geographical locations have this universal I'd say mindset towards, you know, developing personally and, you know, thinking outside of the box that for the most part helping orders and leaving a legacy behind is much more important than earning that dollar and, you know, putting it in your bank account. So thanks. Thanks for your input. It's very, very powerful. It's wow. Speechless.

Lucas P. Johnson: Brenden, I'm curious. We actually had our last guest talk about their, if you feel comfortable, what was in your funeral speech?

Brenden Kumarasamy: Yeah, for sure. And nothing's off limits with me, guys. So feel free to ask me anything. Pretty open book.

Lucas P. Johnson: Are you sure?

Brenden Kumarasamy: Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. Anything. I've never said no to a question so ask me anything. But yeah. So for me, the funeral speech is very simple and it's grown over time. Your answer's going to change. For me, what matters and where I derive my happiness is from doing great things. And that is not the case for most humans and a great example that I recommend as a documentary for people to watch which I'm sure you two have watched is called Free Solo. So Free Solo is basically the story about a guy who climbed the biggest wall in the, in the world, one of the biggest ones with no rope. So if he makes one mistake, he just dies. This is what free soloing is. And they asked Alex in one of the interviews in the documentary, why did you do it? Like what matters? Like why did you even want to attempt this? And his answer was really interesting. He said that, you know, some people around me, they get really happy whenever they start a family, whenever they have kids, whenever they go through the regular motions of how we're biologically wired to be happy. Right? And I'm for those too. But what he said was that his happiness is derived from doing amazing things. For nine out of 10 of those years where he was preparing for that wall, he didn't want to do it but what kept him going was this whole idea of what lies outside of that. Like if I get through it, what opportunities lie for the world and the greatest opportunity that he saw even if it meant risking his life literally is somebody else growing up would want to do better than him. And I felt, I thought that was crazy. I was like this guy's insane. But it made so much sense to me, so much sense. Like when I started MasterTalk, I didn't have this big grandiose vision for people. And we could talk about passions of why I think they're BS too. It's kind of like a fun thing to talk about. But the idea was I didn't have this idea of like being this big YouTuber. I just started making videos in my basement, my mother's basement more specifically where I still live today just to help people. I was like okay, let's start making this thing with my phone. I don't really have any money. I was like a broke student. Over time though, I started realizing what the bigger vision of MasterTalk was going to be which is this idea that Dale Carnegie was born in the wrong time period of history. Yeah. We have a book to remember him by. He's a public speaking expert but we don't know what he sounds like, we don't know what he speaks like because he didn't have this YouTube thing that we have right now that. That's literally the biggest gift to humanity I would argue. But I have this opportunity because I speak multiple languages, because I have that executive experience that I'm generous enough to share the information like everyone before me that when I die, people can learn from me forever. But it didn't start that way for sure. So the funeral speech is basically like leaving a legacy, creating a world where every single human being on earth who wants to learn communication can do it without paying a dime

Lucas P. Johnson: YouTube university at its finest right there. MasterTalk. Crazy. Got all this content. It's gonna be there forever. I mean, you know, we have so much content that's uploaded every single minute on this platform. And Project Dream Mastery, we even upload our podcast episodes up there. So that's one of the best parts. This right now, what you're providing us, you're providing for our guests is going to be there for as least as long as YouTube is alive. Right? So throughout your life so far, what dreams have you pursued and what actual steps have you taken to make them a reality?

Brenden Kumarasamy: Absolutely. So let's talk about how I think passions are BS and that's a great way of starting this conversation. I never had any dreams growing up. For me, a dream was getting out of poverty and this is how we all start. Right? We start by surviving and then we survive and then we thrive. And after we thrive, we start to, you know, gain wealth, enjoy it and then we go, what do we do now? What happened with me was I accelerated through all of these steps. That's when the big believer that decisions are way more important than passions. So the thing about passions, what are you passionate about? There's so many people, so many influencers who ask us this question but what does a passion even mean? They're general, they're vague, we don't really understand them and they're unlimited. You can be passionate about anything, your family, this podcast, your dog. How are you supposed to create something meaningful out of that? That's why a lot of people get lost because if we all had an answer to the question, we wouldn't be asking it in the first place. So there's clearly an issue here. There's clearly a disconnect. So I'll use my own personal story. The better question everyone needs to be asking themselves is not what they're passionate about but rather the following. What does the world need them to do most now and why? Let me repeat that. What does the world need you to do most right now and why? So for me, when I was 12, it wasn't to be a YouTuber. It was to get a job in accounting. I was really good at math and I was pretty stupid in every other subject in school. So when the career counselor came up to us and said you guys need to figure out your future. I said look, I'm tired of my mom living in poverty all the time. Let's get out of that. So I just spent six hours on the internet, eliminated all the jobs that I didn't want to do, like being a plumber or things like that which obviously full respect to plumbers, just wasn't for me because I don't have the hands on experience or, you know, that stuff. But anyways, I got to accountant. Never changed my mind. Then after I was 22, I got a job at one of the biggest accounting firms in the world after a lot of networking and a lot of, remember at this point, Brenden doesn't have a dream. It's just let's make some money here. And then after I transitioned to say oh, maybe I could be a technology consultant. That sounds a lot more fun, it pays a lot more and it's a lot more interesting. So I grinded another 18 months. Did better at that. And every decision I made in my life, I had to do a certain amount of things to get there. So accounting, I needed to be really good with my grades, I needed to network, I needed to get better with my communication. And then to get into consulting at IBM, I needed to get better at competitions, I needed to compete in these weird things called case competitions where I'd present to senior executives at 20, 21 years old. And every decision I made led to MasterTalk. If I never made any of those decisions, I would not have the expertise to even coach people on communication at this age. And that's the point I'm making. Don't focus on passions. They're BS. They're general. Unless you already have it which I don't think is most people on the call. Rather I think the focus is what's the next move that you need to make? What's the next decision and why does it selfishly benefit you? Keep making those decisions and I promise you in five years, you'll find something really interesting to do with your life.

Lucas P. Johnson: So instead of taking the passions, you're making them, making them actionable.

Brenden Kumarasamy: Absolutely.

Lucas P. Johnson: Simply.

Brenden Kumarasamy: So I'll give an example. Let's say you're a starving artist right now. You know what your passion is. You know, you want to create this art. You want to create this amazing thing. So my suggestion is you do two things. You either figure out a way to monetize the art by hustling or b) you get a comfortable side job and then you build your passion on the side. They both work as long as you're taking action. So in my case, I still have my day job. I make, you know, a six figure income being a corporate, you know, person at a company. And I love my job but I don't have to starve anymore. I can pay all my mother's bills. I retired her at like 52 and I can build MasterTalk on the side and spend every waking minute outside of working talking to people like you and building the brand. There's no one or the other. It's rather make the best move that maximizes your probability of success. I hate this whole idea of burn all the bridge. It works for some people but I don't think it works for most. And then after that, you build something meaningful then you hopefully make it a full-time thing.

Lucas P. Johnson: I love that. I don't know if you're familiar with our background but Paddy and I both have a full-time job too during the week. We're both doing the whole thing hashtag adulting as they say nowadays. All those kids nowadays, what do they thinking? So we both have a full-time job. And that was just really powerful because instead of people just saying oh, I have a dream. Okay. That's powerful. Yeah. I have a dream. That's what we want. We want you to go out and dream big but you can't make that dream a reality if you aren't actionable, you aren't doing anything, you aren't setting goals and just setting the goals is not good enough. Like back here, I have a whiteboard. You can't see it but it's got all my goals and it's, you know, you got your smart goals, they're actionable steps. So what am I going to do to achieve this within this timeframe? Here at Project Dream Mastery, we truly believe that if you're going to at least do what the mission, you know, dream big, defy expectations, all the, all the jazz that comes with our show is you actually have to be actionable. So what you're saying right now is so applicable and I'm glad it only took us what, 12 episodes to get to that. But man, those actionable steps, bro. That's actionable steps. Whoa. So I think you touched on this already but what influences you most when achieving your dreams today? Would you say that's, you know, yourself in 10 years, 20 years? Like what is your biggest influence?

Brenden Kumarasamy: So everyone's going to give you a different answer, guys. But I think for me, what influences me is the heroes that came before me or the heroes that are still alive. So for me, you know, my biggest influence in my life besides my own family is this guy named Scott Harrison who was the CEO of Charity: Water. It's basically a nonprofit that he started to help the water master, you know, get access to clean drinking water. And he used to be a night club promoter in New York. You know, his girlfriend was on Vogue Magazine. You know, he sold bottles of champagne for $500 in clubs. He's a really interesting guy. And then he went on to be like the leading voice in sanitation and health, raised over $360 million for charity like 12 years. Really fascinating dude. And the reason why I respect him so much is he's trying to solve a problem that literally would never impact or affect his family for forever because he lives in the U.S. He lives in New York. So this problem, this idea that, you know, you won't have water to drink will never impact him. But he's still relentlessly ruthlessly trying to solve it as if it was his own problem. And I think that's so inspiring because it really taught me this better lesson is that most people are keyboard warriors. They talk a lot about solving problems, about all this injustice, like all the crazy stuff we've seen this year but they don't take responsibility for one of those problems. And I think that's the difference between someone who's actually doing something interesting versus someone who just flops on the side and does nothing is this idea of saying public speaking is a hard thing. Public speaking is one of the hundred things that pisses me off about society. But public speaking is the one problem I'm going to take ownership of. So if this problem is not democratized, if I can't share all the information or 99.9% of it for free, then I am going to consider myself a failure. And I'm going to consider myself a waste of space on earth. I know it's very extreme but that's also why I'm very efficient. I don't try and get lost with the 50 different problems or rather 50,000. I rather say every human being should be solving two problems in their life. One problem that they're uniquely positioned to solve which is me with public speaking and the second problem is what I called the world's easiest problem to solve because most people, they always go back to the passion thing. What problem are you passionate about solving? Instead of just saying look at the 17 SDGs, you know, the UN sustainable development goals. Everyone looks at those problems and they go what am I passionate about? But nobody looks at those same problems and goes, you know, out of these 17 things, which one's the easiest one to solve? Why don't we just get rid of that one first? And for me, the answer is water. So I'm solving public speaking and the water crisis and I spend my whole life just focused on those two problems. And hopefully I solve them before I'm dead.

Patryk Labuzek: Yeah. The great thing that you mentioned, Brenden is the whole, the action that you have to take. Because like you're saying, people have passions and you kind of have dreams as well, what we're all about here in Project Dream Mastery. But you need to make, you need to do something, you need those actions to transition you from one state, from one to another. And in the background, I'm a computer scientist myself. So, you know, back in college, we learned about things like automation theory and all that kind of stuff. And it's exactly the same that it's like I bring to life what I've learned about computers. Think about traffic lights. You know, before the light goes from green to blue or from green to red, sorry, the transition has to happen. It has to be an action. It has to be the most effective, the most efficient way to solve a given problem. And the same applies to our lives. The same applies to our goals, passions, whatever you want to call them. You need to make an effective, efficient action to establish yourself, to do what you want to do in life. Things are not going to happen by themselves. So I love what you just said there, Brenden, and have full respect for people like you.

Lucas P. Johnson: So I want to take a side step here and I want to focus on something that is near and dear to my heart. And I feel like, Brenden, you're going to appreciate this is the power of silence, the power of a pause. Just did it and I took that pause to really give someone the time to think about what's next. Changing your voice, changing your pitch, changing your, you know, changes the mood. So how many times have you been in a conversation and either neglected to have that pause, to have that silence to let someone think? And when was it in your life that you learned how to implement that into an effective, an effective conversation or communication?

Brenden Kumarasamy: Yeah, absolutely. So the idea with the pause is very simple, you two. Pauses allow us to emphasize specific parts of a presentation to make it sound more powerful. But the better question we need to ask ourselves is not how to pause but why we don't pause. Right? Because most of us know that theoretically okay, we need to pause at specific parts of the president. I showed in the videos how to do it. But in a podcast setting, why don't we do it? The reason is because we're scared to pause because whenever we pause oh, I wonder what Patryk and a Lucas think of me right now. I'm kind of like nervous right now. And there's a fear whenever we pause. So the question we need to address is where does that fear come from? And more specifically, where does the fear of public speaking even come from? And the answer to the question in my opinion is by pondering where we give most of our presentations in the first place. And most of those presentations whether you're from Dublin, whether you're from the States, whether you're from anywhere is in school, high school, college, university. Most of the presentations we give are forced and are in that setting. We don't wake up one morning and go hey, Pat, Lucas, you want to like get breakfast and present all day? Not a thing.

Lucas P. Johnson: Breakfast sounds great. Is that an invite, open invite? Because I mean you might have the entire audience coming to join us.

Brenden Kumarasamy: Yeah, in Montreal.

Lucas P. Johnson: We can meet in the middle.

Brenden Kumarasamy: Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. For sure.

Patryk Labuzek: It's only the middle for me, guys.

Brenden Kumarasamy: That's the point. Right? So we're all sitting in high school together. Teacher comes up to us and three things happen. One, we never get to pick the topic and it's generally something we're not passionate about. Think about the Renaissance in history class and you're sitting there like what's that? Like a fruit or something? Number two, teacher or rather not the teacher but the student doesn't care to listen to you not because they don't care about your presentation but because they're worried about their own. They got to present in 10 minutes, they got to present in five minutes. They're thinking about their own presentation. Number three, teachers are too stressed to coach you. Teachers are great. Teachers are well-educated. Teachers are well-intentioned but are also too stressed. When you have 50 students in a class and you got two classes to go through all of them, you're not going to sit there for 10 minutes and go hey, Lucas, Patryk, let's spend 10 minutes thinking about your presentation. Let's recap. One, you never get to pick the topic. Two, teachers are too stressed to coach you. Three, students are too busy to listen to you because they're worried about their own thing. And this behavior gets perpetuated in every single presentation we give: languages, maths, sciences, arts, music, gym. We're taught to believe on and on again that public speaking is a chore. It's a responsibility. If you're at school, it's tied to a grade. If you're at work, it's tied to a result. And if you fail at any part of that journey, you get punished for it whether it's a lower grade at school or a promotion that you don't get at work. And that is the fundamental issue of public speaking. So whatever we're standing up in those crowds or those conversations that we have and we pause, we immediately get afraid because we think back to those high school presentations. We go oh, I remember when I was pausing and my audience looked at me like this and we just think that we're stupid and that we don't have anything to share. That's the core issue. So the first step to mastering the pause, it's actually not practicing it. It's to first realize that the fear that comes from the pause is not our fault but rather the system in which we grew up learning public speaking to begin with.

Lucas P. Johnson: One of my favorite things about that, Brenden, is that you have a chance to regroup your thoughts too. You have a chance to capture okay, did I really want to say that? Like what's next? You know, what's next? And just over the course of the last week, I'm not going to go over the last 90 days or last six months, I mean COVID's really making the mind go all over is especially in your day job, you're not saving lives. You know, life's going to keep on moving on and you need to be ready to be thrown into a situation. And that public speaking, going back to school, you're not given or you're given a topic and, you know, people don't really care about it. They just want you to get it done with. Okay? A lot of times we get put in situations when we don't know how to cope with that. We don't know how to make that a great experience. And taking a minute to just think for ourselves and this is just you're being practical about being in, you don't even have to be presenting, just taking that minute to pause and think, taking that minute to have silence and let your thoughts come back and get in order. It's just, I don't know, it just all comes together whenever you say so put it together like that. It just, from me, it comes together which is, which is great. I hope it helps others too. So what are some of the most important lessons that you've learned throughout your life that you would consider as a takeaway?

Brenden Kumarasamy: Absolutely. So given the context of public speaking in the context of life. So that public speaking, the remedy to the fear of public speaking, how do we, how do we fix this? How do we like unlearn those bad habits? The way you do it is by what I call the repeatable presentation. And I'll give you an analogy to demonstrate this. Let's say you want to learn a new skill like piano. You got two options. Option one is let's all spend, you know, go kumbaya and like pick 15 different songs and figure stuff out. And for Mozart, that's going to work but chances are none of us are Mozart. So that's probably not going to do well. Option two which is more cooler, more effective is saying let's practice one song 50 times. So if you're playing that song that you really like, that we all jazz to, that we all enjoy and I'll use Lucas here as an example, we all go to a black tie event or something, like a really fancy gala. And then we see a piano. Lucas knows the song. So he goes up there and he starts playing that piano perfectly because he knows it. And everyone just getting around him saying man, Luke, he's such a mate. You're so amazing at piano even if you only know one song and you go oh, yeah, I'm the best. This is great. And then you get that validation because we all need some of it to some degree. We get home and we go well, if everyone thinks I'm great at piano, let me go tackle those other 15 songs and master them too. That logic that I just demonstrated we apply for literally everything. Podcasting when you two started, you'd probably talk over each other all the time. You go crap, Patryk, like, why do you keep talking? You know, and it's like a mess but then over time you grow to figure out your chemistry. Same thing in cooking. You don't know how to cook. The first time you figure it out. YouTube it. But we don't do this with public speaking. It's Wednesday. Our boss, our client, our teacher comes up to us and says, Patryk, Lucas, I need a presentation for Friday. You go looks like I'm not talking to my family for two days. You present, get everything together, you put 10-15 hours of work figuring out the content, going on Wikipedia half the time, you got the slides together and you present it and then you crumble it up, throw it in the garbage and move onto the next presentation. And that's why most people suck at communication. What the best speakers in the world do and I'll use Gary Vaynerchuk as an example here is they present the same thing hundreds of times. So even if you work at a bank, there's something that you're passionate about, there's something that solves a problem for somebody else. Is it a recipe that you made? Is it a parenting tip that you want to share? Is it how to run marathons? Whatever it is as long as it helps somebody else. If you make a presentation around that, you can do that forever. So going back to Gary, 13 years, okay, he's been speaking now, probably 150 now. He gets paid over a hundred thousand dollars per speaking engagement and the speaking engagement sounds something like this. Hey, hey, guys. So Soviet Union, yeah, came down from there. I'm in the States now. Do you guys have any questions for me? That's it. That's the speech. And he gets paid a hundred thousand dollars to do it. And he's amazing. I'm a huge fan of what he does. But that's the point that I'm driving. If you find that problem to solve for somebody else and I'll give your presentation sample for the both of you. It's a presentation on the podcast. What's the, what's the vision of the podcast? What are you trying to achieve? Who are you trying to help? And you can use that as promotional material for every local presentation that you give in Dublin, Patryk, and that you give in Carolina, I forgot it was South or North Carolina.

Lucas P. Johnson: It's the Carolinas. Who cares?

Brenden Kumarasamy: Right. Carolinas. Who care? That you do at your local chamber of commerce to promote the show. But the magic of that type of presentation is you get addicted to it because somebody comes up to you and says, you know, Patryk, you changed my life. That was an amazing episode. I'm going to watch it tonight. And then you're going to get addicted. I'm want to present this to a thousand people. I get like a hundred people watching my show. That's the point. Then you get slowly addicted. For life, what I would recommend is this habit that nobody talks about that helps you become what I call more insane. So let's talk about that. The one habit that nobody does that you should do is not yogurt. Okay? Let's forget the yogurt. Let's forget the healthy eating. Let's forget all of this exercising. Am I saying it's not important? No, but that's not the focus of anybody's life in my opinion. The one habit you need to do every day is you need to ask yourself a hard question about life. If you do that, in 30 days, you'll figure out exactly what you're supposed to do and then you'll go eat your damn yogurt. Okay? But you need to figure out why you're eating the yogurt in the first place. Here's a couple of questions that I guarantee you nobody will do but if you're in the 1% who does, you will go from A to Z like overnight. What are you pretending not to know? If you had all the money in the world, what would you do with your time? Break it down. What does your perfect day look like? Are you in a house? Are you with a girlfriend? Are you married? Are you with a boyfriend? Are you eating? What are you eating for lunch? Is there a dog in the house? Are you even in a house or are you switching countries during the day? Nobody asks themselves those questions. And at the end of the day, what is it that's worth fighting for? What pisses you off so much about society that's worth your time to fix? You don't ask yourself any of this stuff. You two do but most people don't. And once you do that, you'll be one step closer to what I call stepping into your insanity. I have this quote that I love that has really made me successful that would've made me more successful I knew this at 14 instead of 24, the age I am today which is the following: Be insane or be the same. If you want to be like everyone else, that's totally fine. But if you're listening to this episode, if you want to make a difference, you probably want to do something important with your life. My advice is the only way to do that is to make decisions that only make sense to you. Don't you too find it odd that as a 22 year old I started a YouTube channel, not on vlogging, not a comedy but on public speaking communication tips. I started coaching C-level executives at 23 but I also still live in my mother's basement. I'm literally speaking to you on a mattress that I sleep on and I don't own a car and I don't plan on moving out of my mother's house for another seven years. So why do any of these decisions make any sense anyways? I don't have a girlfriend. I'm not trying to go out on my own and be independent. Brenden, you're a grown man. Why do any of these decisions make sense? And that's the punchline. If they only make sense to the only person that matters which is you, you're probably on the right track.

Patryk Labuzek: I love that you mentioned the thing about habits. I'm trying to drill into our audience how habits are important to how they shape who we are, who we become and our successes. I just wanted to kind of ask you how, from your personal experience, how do you build the habit?

Brenden Kumarasamy: I start with the overarching vision first. I think habits without vision don't last, don't stick. So for example, that's why my biggest habit is ask yourself a hard question about life because the only way to be extremely efficient and productive is to first understand what's worth fighting for. And once you do that, then it's easy to stick to any habit. Like if you think about me, for example, as of this recording, I currently have content until July of 2022 on my YouTube channel. 2022, guys. Like I'm literally what, almost two years ahead of schedule. Why? Because I'm afraid, not a habit, I love James Clear but, you know, it's not like that stuff. But what I'm pointing at is I'm afraid that I'm going to die in the next three or four years for a random reason. I'm not sick or anything but I'm worried that if I get into a car accident at 27, there's literally nobody on earth, guys, that is going to democratize this information. I'm the only person who is doing this at the age of 24. Nobody else can inspire 16 year olds. I'm the only person who can do it. So because of that, I'm writing everything in advance and I'm filming everything in advance. So even after I die, the videos are still going to keep playing every week. Right? That's how crazy I am. Right? So the point is there's no like easy fix like drink some lemon juice in the morning that's going to make it into like figure that shit out. It's just saying if you were to live life from the end first and you ask yourself a hard question about life every day, you slowly start to morph controversial thinking. There's a great question that kind of helps people because I'm saying a lot right now. So the actionable step is the following question that I got from a book called Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel for those that don't know started a bunch of companies like PayPal. He was the guy who started with Elon Musk. Did a lot of great stuff. The question that he asks in the first page of the book is what is the truth that you believe in that most people disagree with you on? So what is something that you believe to be true that most people think is BS? The reason why this question is beautiful but also why people don't want to answer it is because it forces you to answer something controversial. But the truth is, the reality of the situation is that all great ideas stem from controversy. If you want to do anything great with your life, in my opinion, you're either doing one of two things. You're following somebody's crazy idea or you develop your own crazy idea. And all of those crazy ideas stem from controversy. Like me with public speaking, I think that I can build a million sub channel just on communication tips which sounds ludicrous. Right? But I just think that it's very much possible. So for you, for those of you who want to stick to one habit, who want to figure out how to exercise every morning, figure out the crazy idea first. And the crazy idea doesn't need to be a YouTube channel on public speaking. For me when I was 19, the crazy idea was getting a job in accounting because I was the first person in my generation of families to graduate from university. So I didn't even think it was possible to get a job. Then after I got a job, the vision slowly increased. And as I developed those quick wins, I went from 19-year-old kid who thought that PricewaterhouseCoopers which is one of the big four accounting firms was a water bottling company with a hundred dollar prom suit to now I want to be the next Dale Carnegie. Like it's a progression.

Patryk Labuzek: Okay. So now that you actually bring up the whole topic of controversial talk and you being a public speaker yourself, I'm quite interested in how do you deal with like the critics and the haters out there especially now that you run a successful YouTube channel.

Brenden Kumarasamy: Right. The way that I deal with it is the following. If your ideas matter, if you understand the cost of admission of doing what you want to do, the haters kind of become secondary. So I'll give an example. It's all about relativity. Right? If we only focus on the haters, they'll drown us. But rather, if we say are these five people that hate the guy who like literally makes videos, doesn't swear at any of them and just makes communication tips for people, are those five haters more important? Or is 33-year-old Rebecca who is a mental health advocate who's really scared to speak her voice out to the world but because she watched my videos, she can present to a hundred people instead of 10. What's more important as a scale? And if you really reflect on that, the answer becomes super obvious. Right? Rebecca's obviously more important. But if you always keep reminding yourself of that person and not anything else, really just that person, the haters become a secondary thing. And one thing I like to drive for people because maybe being an influencer isn't your thing which is cool. For you, it is because you have this podcast. But for most of us, maybe it isn't. So my advice is every time you decide to do something in the same way I wouldn't have became a professional athlete is the following question. What is the price that you're willing to pay for the life you want to live? Okay? What's the price of admission? Are you willing to pay the price to become the thing you want to be? And if the answer is no which is going to be for 99% of things, then it's great because you can focus on the 1% of things that you are willing to pay. So in my case, am I willing to wake up every day at 6:00 AM and exercise and do yoga so I can get drafted for the NFL? Hell no. Like no way. I'm not willing to put in that work. I exercise every day. I do like my 20 minute, my 15 minute. I walk with my mom for 30 minutes. Ask her how her day is. I don't go crazy on my athletics. I don't want to be a professional athlete. The same way I don't want to do most things in life. But YouTube, public speaking, MasterTalk, I'll pay any price to get there. That's why I'm making the content. That's why guest on 20 podcasts a week. I'm probably going to have a world record of the number of podcasts I've been on because I want to make this work. I don't care about anything else besides solving the water crisis, my family and public speaking tips for the world. But everything else in my life, not willing to pay the price. I'm not willing to go vegan. That's why I like my chicken. I'm not willing to solve climate change because it seems too complicated for me to do. I'll do those little things but I won't go about it. But those three things, donating a shit ton of money to Charity: Water, becoming the number one speaking coach in the world by being the most generous and taking care of my family, the people that actually give a shit about me. Those three things, I'll pay whatever price I need to pay. But everything else, I won't. So for you who's listening, figure out the two or three things that you're willing to give up anything for. I go on podcasts like 1:00 AM because of time differences. I'll do whatever it takes. But everything else I don't care about. So that's the key. Hope that makes sense.

Patryk Labuzek: Oh, yeah. Completely.

Lucas P. Johnson: It's incredible to hear your story. I mean just hearing you speak, obviously public speaker but hearing you speak at 24 years old and just the value and your own values but the value you're giving, 99.9%, you know, sometimes you run a hundred percent of the content just throwing it out there. And you're two years in advance, man. All of these things. I have, I have so many sticky notes just of the stuff that you're providing for free. You know? There's so many, you know, having the controversial topic. That one stands out because even doing a podcast and having all these people that are looking at you like aw, man, got a podcast. Okay. You know, people look at you and judge you on everything. And for us, it was definitely a milestone in our life but also one of the scariest things I think we have, we've had to do, we've done. And we've done a lot of stupid shit in our life so far. I mean especially in different countries. But starting something like this, starting a movement or focusing in on just public speaking and, you know, focusing in on this two, you know, finding your why. You know? It's just, it's crazy, man. And you bring a lot of value just in this 45 minutes that we've had so far. So I just want to with that, what challenges or obstacles have you had to overcome to get where you are today?

Brenden Kumarasamy: Yeah, like a bunch of them. We probably don't have enough time to talk about all of them but I'm happy to list a couple. I mean, you know, I grew up with an alcoholic father and for seven years, we lived in the same house and never talked to him. Right? Until he passed. That's one struggle that I had which ended up being a blessing for me because in many ways he was a big gift to my success because I always wanted to beat him. I always wanted to show that I could live a better life. But it's all about how we take those stories. Right? So that's one. Second one is of course, when I started the YouTube channel. A lot of tenured professors that I emailed in like different universities across Canada that I thought would help me, that I just wanted feedback on the videos, chastised me. They told me that, you know, you're too young. You don't know anything about public speaking, blah, blah, blah. Even if they never watched the video or try to learn anything and weren't open minded. And it really hit my ego really hard. Right? When people, you know, get in your way and things like that. But I think at the end of the day, guys, and you know, there's still challenges today that I'm sure I'll have the future. But I think the overarching theme here is the following. There are always going to be roadblocks but you need to ask yourself before you even dive into it is are the roadblocks worth it? Like I know what's waiting for me on the other side when I hit a 100K followers and when I get to a million. There's going to be like 10% of my audience are going to like shit on me for literally no reason. Like none. Right? Because I have a crooked neck whenever I speak. That's just like a birth defect. So people go like who's this guy teaching public speaking. I'm sure that'll happen. It doesn't happen now obviously because I don't have that huge of a following. And that's the price we got to pay for the ideas we want to share. So you need to really reflect on if your ideas are worth the tyranny. And for me, if I was a relationship coach or a marriage coach or something like that, I wouldn't bother making videos. It's not worth it for me. I don't want to go into the public eye with those things. But public speaking tips, nobody else is doing it. Like I need to do it because all these high schoolers are relying on me especially the next Elon Musk, the next person. Like Elon is such a good example. Like if I existed in Elon's time, he would be a much better communicator because when he was 12, he would've watched my YouTube videos. Right? So I want to be there for the next change maker. That matters way more than the 10 people who tell me I suck even if I don't swear or do anything bad in my videos.

Lucas P. Johnson: There's just so, I'm just speechless. I mean there's just so much value that you just

Patryk Labuzek: The power of pause. Right? The power of pause.

Brenden Kumarasamy: Look, I'll throw you guys a special tip I usually don't talk about at all. So you guys will get the special scoop. Why am I so wise at 24? Why do I know so much about the world? The reason and the best way to summarize this because a lot of my private friends ask me this is I live with the assumption that I'm already dead. So all of the pitfalls that any normal human being would have, I make the assumption that I already made them. So my wife divorced me. My kids left me. I didn't take care of the, I was a bitch. I was like really bad with people. I treated everyone wrong. And then on my death bed at like 42 because I drank myself to death, I'm sitting there and I ask some spirit for a second chance. And by some random like course of life, I just got really lucky, I was given that second chance. So I've never gotten drunk in my life. I've never been in a bad relationship. All of my parents and the people that I'm around really like me. I don't have a negative person in my life. So I didn't make any big mistake yet. Why? Because I live with the intention that I'm already dead. So with that intention in place, I avoid all of the pitfalls before they come up. So now when I look at my life, I know exactly all the pitfalls that are coming in my 20s and I step over each of them.

Lucas P. Johnson: So with that said, how has, how has your outlook on relationships, love and friends shifted or altered throughout your journey from that perspective?

Patryk Labuzek: Yeah. So the way that I kind of think about this, guys, is like let's separate life into three categories that Lewis does really well: relationships, health, and wealth. So I thought my whole life that wealth was the hardest of the three to get because I never had any money. What you'll find especially if you just get yourself a comfortable job that makes $60, $70 grand a year and you don't buy too many material things, wealth is actually the easiest of the three to get. I know it's hard for a lot of people right now that I'm sure are struggling like I did a couple of years ago. Truth of the matter though, wealth is the easiest of the three if you don't want to buy a Ferrari or something. Number two, health. Health, all you need is accountability. Sure. A lot of people like argue with each other. I'm not a health expert or anything. I'm just giving you my thoughts here. You know, people argue with each other what's healthy, what's not. But at the end of the day, if you generally eat the right things, you exercise regularly, you don't do too crazy, you can solve for that, you know, without having a six pack or whatever it is that you want. Relationships, two different categories: romantic ones and, you know, like intimate ones with your best friends and things like that. So intimate ones, I can definitely speak on in the sense that what I found is that the only thing that matters is what I call the inner circle. So whenever I think about life, I think of it like a, like a dinner table. So let's say I'm sitting on the dinner table. Let's say you're all sitting on your own respective tables and there's 10 people on the table. Those are the only 10 people that I give my time to outside of things that selfishly benefit for me. So let's say my sister is there, my mom is there, my close cousins and like out of the thousands of people I met when people ask me how many friends I have, I probably say like six. Those six people are sitting there. Like the people who would like come visit you if your mom was sick, like those types of people. Right? And that's it. Like that's, that's the circle. And I reinvest all my little time that I have available outside of these podcasts with them. Right? Because I know projecting once again that when MasterTalk becomes really successful, people are just going to want a lot of things from me. But I know those six people will like me, those eight, 10, whatever will like me for who I am. And I got lucky in life. I Already locked that circle it. So I already have those 10 people. I don't plan on [inaudible] anyone else.

Lucas P. Johnson: Sorry to interject. You didn't say if, you said when. When MasterTalk is successful. That's what we preach here. It's not if. It's when this is going to happen. You're making it actionable. You're saying hey, this is going to happen. That mindset right there is why MasterTalk is going to crush it and why you're going to, you know, you say you're not an influencer yet but man, I can see 365 days, we're going to see a million subscribers on your YouTube channel. There's going to be people that are going to be reaching out to you on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and any of these other platforms, TikTok for, you know, I don't know why. You know? So I just wanted to interject there and say you are going to crush it, man. I know that you're saying oh, I'm just this little guy here now. But I think you're crushing it right now. You've got this outlook on life that so many people, they can't find themselves. They can't find who they are to even remotely get to where you are now. People don't give themselves enough time to think about it. You know, the power of that pause and really in your own, in your own personal life, they don't give themselves the time to really think about who, where, when, or what they want to become.

Brenden Kumarasamy: I love, I love the interjection. I'm glad you brought that up and you did that in such a cool way. I loved it. I was like oh, well done. But anyways. That's intimate and romantic. Honestly, that's the only area of my life I haven't figured out because it seems that every one of my heroes that I look up to is either divorced or has issues in their relationships. So that's still something I'm thinking about that I don't have an answer to for today. But I think that the reason why I mentioned that and I'm very public about it is this idea about, you know, we're all, we're all work in progress. You know, even if I have some answers to life, like what I'm supposed to do with it, how my life's mission is to democratize the world's information on public speaking, there are many questions I still don't know that I have yet to figure out and that's definitely one of them. So it's a journey for sure.

Lucas P. Johnson: So much great content today. Paddy, do you have any last questions here?

Patryk Labuzek: I don't know. I'm overloaded with information here, you know, and sometimes you just have to sit back and take it all in. You know, the power of the pause. Think about it, analyze it and most importantly make an actionable, make an action to get those ideas out there and make them real. So yeah, I think I'll pass on the question here.

Brenden Kumarasamy: How about we summarize what Brenden said in three points so that people have something actionable for today. Ask yourself a hard question every day about life. Okay? That's the first thing you want to do. Second one is write your own funeral speech. The third thing that I didn't mention that I will now is to be more insane. And how do you do that? Communicate the weird things that you do with everyone else around you to figure out who your true friends are. So if you think about me because I like setting the example, I absolutely love working on great things but I also listen to Justin Bieber. I love Taylor Swift. I can speak three languages. I like karaoke and ate. And I dance in my basement an hour a day. So those are bizarre things. So for you, I'm sure you two don't mind that I do this but that's the point is some people do. So when I did that when I was 17, I was telling people what I did outside, you know, passion. People just said yeah, by the way, Brenden, that party on Friday, yeah, just don't come. So you'd realize that people like you for the image of you, not you. So let me repeat that again. One hard question every day. What are you pretending not to know? If you had all the money in the world, how would you spend your time? All that stuff. Figure it out one question every day. Number two, communicate the weird things that you do on a daily basis with everyone around you to figure out who is there actually for you. And number three, write your own funeral speech. If you do those three things, I honestly believe that you'll be well-positioned to watch all of my YouTube videos on public speaking and be in the right position to figure out why you even want to be a master communicator in the first place.

Lucas P. Johnson: Cool. Well, that kind of, that gives us the recap we were planning to do here. But you have any other feedback before I close, wrap us up?

Brenden Kumarasamy: No, that's it. You two are awesome. Thanks for having me.

Lucas P. Johnson: Okay. So, if you're interested in connecting with Brenden, you can find additional information in the show notes or check out his awesome YouTube channel by searching for MasterTalk on YouTube.

Patryk Labuzek: Also, Brenden has a great website with additional information related to booking him for engagements. So check it out at MasterTalk.ca,

Lucas P. Johnson: With that said, I'm going to give you just a brief recount and I think you captured all of that, Brenden, but there's a few things that really stood out to me in this episode. You know, stepping into your sanity, be insane or be the same. Not taking responsibility, solve your problem. Do not yoga. Ask yourself a hard question about life. The one question that I wrote on its own sticky note was what does the world need you to do right now and why? 23 years old, coaching C-suite executives. That is just humbling and I appreciate you. I value for jumping on this show today. It's just incredible. Another point who suffers as a consequence of that decision that you made. Understanding the real enemy is time. Time is always going to be the enemy. And if you understand that, you're going to be able to conquer those demons faster and optimize your life for the best and utter success. As you touched Brenden already, the funeral exercise, man. Two guests talking about that. That just says enough to go maybe practice that if you're, if you're listening right now or watching us on YouTube. Passions are BS. Start, get out of your head, getting out of where you are. Have a start. Decisions need to be actual. Habits without vision do not last. And last but not least, don't be afraid to have this controversial topics. So I'll pass the bat to Paddy to give you your homework for this week.

Patryk Labuzek: Yes, yes, yes. As we know, homework is very, very important especially to develop yourself. So guys, follow Project Dream Mastery on all your socials. And on Thanksgiving Day 2020, we will be giving away some pretty sweet merch to some of our followers. So make sure you keep on top of the things there. You know, ask yourselves the questions Brenden proposed. Very important. Thirdly, read Talk like Ted by Carmine Gallo. It's a really good book and will open your eyes for sure about how, you know, how to understand some of the additional principles related to effective communications. And then last but not least, there's another good read, The Storyteller's Secret by Carmine Gallo, same man, same author there. So make sure you check that out when you have some extra time.

Lucas P. Johnson: Don't forget to check out Brenden's channel as well. Going to be, going to a million subscribers within the next 365. I see it. I have that vision and you are making it actionable. So we just launched our Patreon Membership Community where you can become one of our elite supporters and gain exclusive access to early releases, live streams and Q&A. We have a few different tiers available with some pretty sweet perks. So make sure to check them out and consider supporting the show. Go to ProjectDreamMastery.com and click the red button that says Become a Patron to learn more. As we reach our monthly goals, we will have some pretty sweet giveaways. If you have not already, please make sure to review the show, subscribe, like and share so that we can reach more amazing listeners like you. All of our shows are available in both audio, video and written form. So make sure to check out our website to access the full experience. Again, thank you so much for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode to come. Talk soon.