Finding Your Voice and Using It to Make a Difference with Brenden Kumarasamy

Thanks for having me, man. Awesome. So first things first, I'm curious how you decided or what happened to you in your life that you decided that public speaking was something that you wanted to get into. I'm always curious about what brings people to what they're doing today.

Think of it like professional sports, but for nerds. So all the guys my age were playing rugby or football or baseball. I wasn't one of those guys. I did presentations competitively and that's how I learned how to speak. But I accidentally got really good at coaching communication. , especially since I was doing it for free. Back then, it wasn't even a business. I was just helping the other students get better at it so that they could win competitions.

And then when I graduated from college and I started to work as a technology consultant at a Fortune 500, I had the idea for Master Talk. Cause I realized that everything I was sharing with them wasn't for, wasn't free on the internet, and then it led to what it is today. . Amin: That's awesome. And you are bilingual. You speak English, you speak French. Was that something that helped you quite a bit when you were trying to teach others how to public speak?

Because both languages have different nuances and different styles. Absolutely. So it was a hindrance at the beginning and then it became a benefit later. So what does that mean? as I grew up in Montreal, which is a city for those who don't know where you need to speak French. So if you don't know the language, You're in trouble basically. So my parents actually sent me to French school to learn the language, but I did not know the language. So my whole life I was presenting.

and I didn't know what I was talking about. because it was a language I didn't know and it caused a lot of stress. So I actually never thought I was a great speaker until maybe seven, eight years ago. So this is pretty recent that I realized I had to gift for this. Cuz most of the time, all of the presentations I did, I suck. And I also got a crooked left arm cuz of a surgery I had when I was younger too. So I, I wasn't, I didn't feel like I was the guy. For communication.

But then later in my career, actually being bilingual was super helpful. One in the Montreal market. I actually trained some of my clients in French. But the other piece to that is because I resonate a lot with the whole idea of how to present in a second language. Cause I struggle with that for most of it.

It's just a different level for other. . Amin: Yeah. Yeah. and what do you do when you get those nerves? we all do, right? But what do you do when you feel that anxiousness? the way I see it is it's a relationship to manage like a marriage rather than something you need to divorce yourself from. So what does that mean? So let me give you the analogy that I was used, which is the boxing ring analogy. Let's say there's one side of the ring which has our fear has our stress has our anxiety.

And the other side is the message. Why is this important? The goal is not for the fear to leave the ring Amin, but rather make sure that when the message and the fear meet in the middle of that match, that your message gets the knockout punch. So for me, if you use me as an example, I had every excused not to do Master Talk, right? I think I started the YouTube channel, I was like 22. I started coaching and I was 19. And a lot of the people I work with today are much older than I am.

So why did I have the confidence? The reason I did it had nothing to do. Older people. It had everything to do with the 15 year old girl who couldn't afford me. So I just thought, nobody's helping that person. So even if I had a lot of fear and no money, and I was making videos on my mother's basement for the first year, the message was incrementally more important than the fear that it was attached to. So I always overcame it.

They're always jumping from one idea to another versus going, if I could only contribute one thing that's meaningful to society, what would that one thing be? And I realized for me, I'm terrible at most things. I don't cook, I don't know how to do chores. Like I'm not good at that stuff. But when it comes to. Communication and rather conveying the idea of communication in a way that gets the larger public to say, oh, this is cool. I wanna work on this.

I felt I was the only person in the world who had that gift, or very small people who did for communication, public speaking specifically. So I told myself, how do I prioritize my time to make that work? So the point that we didn't talk about in that 500 podcast, whatever the number is, 80 to 90% of those shows Amin had zero listeners. Like literally zero. I was episode one, two, or three. and some of them were sports podcasts or weed podcasts. There's a bunch of random stuff.

So why did I say yes to them? Because I was repping for my future self, the person who was going to be on the bigger shows, the person who was going to be on those platforms. I was preparing myself in a way that most people in their twenties couldn't have before. Cuz podcasting is a new vehicle of conveying a message. So I'm preparing myself for 35 year old Breden.

So can you just talk a little bit about if it impacted you at all growing up and how your parents played into that?

But if you come up to me and you go, oh, I'm so sorry that you, oh I'm, you must be really hard for you. The first time you go, it's not that hard. But after the hundred time you hear, your mind gets conditioned into believing that it's actually a bad thing. So growing up as a kid, a lot of cousins and aunties, they would always come to my house and always touch my arm. But in my head I was just like, but they both work, as you can see on this podcast, in this video.

Like they, like I can dance with both and I can get a glass of water with my left one. So I never saw it as a problem Amin until other people labeled it as a problem. So I always grew up with the insecurity that other people gave to me. I got lucky in school though.

I think the reason is because I'm Canadian, so even if people picked on me like every other kid, it wasn't as bad because a lot of my friends who didn't speak English, by the way, they would try and converse with me through their body language. They would defend me in front of the other kids, and I just got really lucky with that.

It's short, quick, but for me, when it comes to what you exhibit as confidence, know, I can see that you made that commitment and you're like, all right, I'm gonna, Arm, whatever, right? It's just another person. we were talking about, I can't pronounce his name, but Nick Voitchitch, I think is, this is his name. No arms, no legs.

And the guy is, he's a happy guy doing his thing, but if other people didn't point it out right, and he was surrounded by others that had no arms and no legs, it would just be another normal for him. And so you work with what you have and you, move on from there. Now coming back to your ambition, you are probably on the top like five of my list of people that have huge ambitions, right? And it's awesome.

Like I love talking to you and I, I get more energized after I talk with you because of that one thing specifically. So how, where does that ambition come from? some people will be happy with where you are now. you're not 40 yet. And you've achieved your level of success, people will be happy with that. And they'll be like, all right, I'm good, but you wanna go ten, hundred, thousand times bigger. So tell me about that. Like where does this ambition, where does this drive come

So a lot of it was driven by anger, I'm going to be the best. I'm gonna prove everyone that I can do this and that's what ended up happening. So I, I got the job that I wanted, but then after he passed away, I realized that the game was rigged, . It's like, oh, I wasn't trying, I was trying to be this person, but I wouldn't have became that person if you never immigrated to Canada in the first place. He's the reason I became successful.

, as Tony Robbins says, if you're gonna blame someone for your failures, you have to blame them for your success too. And then when that happened, I started realizing, okay, what's the bigger game that I want to play? What's the real point of my life? And I think the reason I became so ambitious over time, besides the whole situation with my dad, was this idea that when you ask yourself really hard questions about life, like the one I asked earlier, that's just one of them.

I call them 80 20 questions. , you know how like we have the 80 20 principle. What are 20% of the actions that get you 80% of the result? I'm framing that in the context of questions. What are 20% of the questions that lead to 80% in one's clarity in life? So I've just asked myself thousands of these questions and I just realized this idea that we're all gonna die anyways. So going back to the reverse, when we reverse engineer the end, go, what's the point of life?

Am I, would I be happy with just having a few million dollars in my bank here? And I realize that I'm just one of those people, like I'm not, I'm not gonna compare myself to Kobe, but I think we have the same personality trait where it's like we don't get a high off just success. We get a high off of doing really cool shit. and I just think we're, people are just wired differently that way.

So I think about those iconic moments or getting on the podcast that I don't have access to yet, or getting on that stage or shaking that person's hand or coaching Elon Musk one day. That's also on one of my goals list. So it's not about achieving it. Ah, Amin. It's more about the visualization. And one example from this is from a documentary that I highly recommend people listen to and watch called Free Solo by, I forgot what the guy's name is. Did you watch it?

. Amin: This is that, the one where he is climbing, the wall in Yosemite. You got it. that's an awesome video. It scares the crap outta me watching it, but it's Yeah. Tell me about it. Yeah, I was so scared. and the guy I just remember, his name is Alex Holmote. and the guy, what was interesting cause there's one scene in that documentary I'll never forget for the rest of my life. And the scene was about him and his girlfriend.

He said, my girlfriend gets enjoyment out of her family and buying gifts and celebrating the holidays, and that's all amazing. Like he's not hitting on that by any means, but then he goes, for me, I get excitement in life from doing important. Things. So for the last 10 years I was scared of El Capita. I didn't wanna phrase solo that, but then I thought to myself, what if I did? What lies on the other side of that?

Because if I did that, everyone else growing up would look up to me and say, I wanna climb something bigger. And it sounds insane, but I think that's the way that ambitious people look at life, cuz it's just more fun. . Amin: Yeah. And I think it was the same, show, the same documentary where they did, they put him under an MRI and they watched his brain patterns when there was things that would scare other people. And for him it was just stable. there was nothing there, like there was no fear.

That was cool. That was really cool to see that his brain functions differently. So when he is climbing free solo, for those that don't know, it's no. No anything, just chalk. I think that's all. He's got a bag of chalk in his, on his waist. And, when he's faced with something terrifying, his brain is like, all right, just next step, keep going. Exactly. In other words, for people listening, if you miss one of the shots as you're going, you die. Yeah. , that's essentially what Amin has said.

yeah.

He was getting people drunk in New York City. He's one of the top 10 nightclub promoters in the city, which is actually really impressive since it's a really tough scene there. He, he had everything. His girlfriend was on Vogue Magazine. He had a Rolex watch, BMW. Most miserable human being that he knew of. And then he started Charity Water at 31. And Charity Water Today is the largest water charity in America. It's raised upwards of 700 million dollars. He's helped over 15 million.

People get access to water, and there's a great quote in the book that I always like to share, and the quote is, the goal is not to live forever, but rather create something that will, and it always stuck with. Nice.

I think I woke up like at six today by accident, but most of the time I wake up at eight or 9:00 AM I don't only start my meetings at 10, I just work until 10 or midnight, cuz it just works better for me. So I think the key is A) test everything. I don't like cold showers. I don't meditate yet. I'm still productive and I get the job. And other people like Alex for mozy, just get up at 4:00 AM and just have a coffee and they just start working until noon.

They don't take meetings until noon, so everyone's different. So I'd encourage people to never, be religious about which one they're following, but rather have the courage to try all of them. To then figure out what works for them. Like intermittent fasting works perfectly for me. I don't eat until 2:00 PM and it works great, but other people just can't tolerate that, like my business partner. So that's one piece.

The other piece is then looking at what are the three high ROI activities in my week that I want to keep repeating. So for me, it's pretty simple. Guesting on podcast. It's not a high revenue generating roi, but it's really just cuz I just like having these conversations. The second one is sales calls, and the third one is free trainings, like hosting those free trainings that you went through. So with those three things in mind, I just optimize that all the time. . Amin: Oh, that's amazing.

Amazing. I wouldn't have expected that. I thought, that you would be a early riser, meditator, that sort of thing. Cuz I think your circle is more like that, aren't they? Yes. Literally. That's actually a fantastic observation. I you're absolutely right. Everyone in my circle does that, except for me. I break every rule . Amin: That's perfect. Is there anything else that your, friends or people that know you would be genuinely surprised to learn about? You Genuinely be surprised.

I'm such an open book, so it's hard to answer this question cause I share everything about my life. I would say the thing that they would be surprised to know is that, but a lot of people know this, is that I still live with my mother. Like I still live in her basement and the reason is more because I read a blog called, "Wait, But Why" By Tim Urban? And he talks about this idea that.

You're going to be spending a lot of time with your friends, like your brothers and sisters, but you actually don't have that much time with your parents. So a lot of us in our twenties, like I already lost my dad three years ago, so who knows how long my mom's gonna live. Whereas what a lot of kids do when they're young is they move out of their parents' house really fast. They move to another country and do something else, and then it's only in the last one, they realize they're sick.

They come back and see them, and I just didn't want that regretted in my life. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Love

Cause I really didn't, my parents were factory workers and I only retired my mom like three years ago. But there's a reason I was able to. because if you combine my income with my sisters and my moms, we all live together in the same house. You're all paying down one mortgage, so you have a lot more excess cash to reinvest in the business. So I have a lot more capital deploy than somebody who's 10 years older than me who has all these expenses.

and that's just the easy hack that nobody implements cuz of stigma.

I think the only thing I started recently that's exciting is being on TikTok and Instagram, investing the capital to start doing that. So that's going to be, . I would say the next piece though is really just to keep tracking with the same actions with the podcast and things like that and doing more workshops and keynotes for b2b. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. And, consistency is key, right? And so you keep doing that in an extraordinary way. That's amazing.

Where can somebody reach out to you if they wanted to ask any questions or get to know more about you?