Amin: Hello, and welcome back to the Be Well, Do Well podcast.
Today I'm super excited to have a conversation with an amazing entrepreneur, Brendan Kamarasamy is the founder of Master Talk, where he helps ambitious executives and coaches become top 1% communicators in their industry.
I recently attended one of his presentation workshops and it was so well crafted that I felt like I was watching a master painter do his thing.
Brendan, welcome to the show,
. Brenden Kumarasamy: You're too kind Amin.
Thanks for having me, man.
Amin: 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.
Brenden Kumarasamy: For sure.
so the origin story started in university slash college.
I went to business school, but the goal is never for me to be this entrepreneur communication coach.
The way out for me and most immigrants who come to Canada, my parents immigrated from Sri Lanka in the early nineties, was the education system.
So I went to business school to be an accountant.
That was the goal.
So I went there and I started doing these things called case competitions.
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.
Brenden Kumarasamy: 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.
Amin: Yeah.
Interesting.
Do you enjoy public speaking yourself?
Brenden Kumarasamy: I do, I definitely do.
I think communication is super fun and public speaking is super fun, but I have nerves like everyone else.
so I don't just, for example, the analogy I always give is, let's say men, you are getting lunch and Elon Musk calls me and he goes, Hey, I saw your episode on Amin's podcast.
It was great.
I saw your YouTube joke.
Can you coach me?
I'll pay a million dollars.
Would I be stressed out?
Yeah.
it's Elon, of course, I think the fear is always going to be there.
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?
Brenden Kumarasamy: 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.
Amin: That's awesome, man.
That's pretty powerful.
you've done a lot of podcasts.
You and I are just talking right before we hit record, that, you've done, 500 plus podcasts, so obviously that helps when it comes to doing the reps, but how do you find the time to do all of this?
Brenden Kumarasamy: It's a great point, man.
I think for me it's about making the time here.
Here's a question that I get people to think about.
I call it the focus question that I got inspired by Warren Buffett from, and the question is, if you could only accomplish three things in your life, and only three in your entire life, what would you want those three things to be?
And I feel a lot of people why they're unsuccessful is they're always marrying themselves or rather not even marrying themselves.
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.
Amin: Yeah, that's amazing.
And a lot of our listeners are actually probably in their forties or fifties, 35 year old Brandon's gonna be pretty powerful.
I wanna get back to the idea of ambition, but first I wanna talk about what you brought up as your crooked arm.
So when you were growing up, kids.
Are just sometimes cruel and they're, and they, they say things, they don't mean to be unkind, but it can come off as unkind and parents are even more protective of their kids.
So can you just talk a little bit about if it impacted you at all growing up and how your parents played into that?
Brenden Kumarasamy: for sure.
so I feel for my parents' side, it was actually worse than at school.
And the reason is because in Indian culture, which is the one I'm from, or Sri Lankan culture, they always have a tendency of reemphasizing your flaws.
So for example, let's say somebody doesn't have an arm, which I'm grateful I have both.
Let's say somebody doesn't, if you never comment on you just talk to them.
They never realize they have a problem.
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.
Amin: Oh, nice.
the, there's this book I read, it's called The Four Cs, by, Dan Sullivan, and he talks about how confidence actually happens at the end.
You start with commitment, then you have courage, then you find the capability, and then eventually confidence.
it's a great book.
If you haven't read it, it's actually really good.
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
Brenden Kumarasamy: from?
first of all, Amin, that's a very kind of you, since you, since your, I'm sure your network is a lot more impressive than mine.
So if I've already made your top five list of ambitious people, it means a lot.
so thank you.
, so I'll start there.
I think at the beginning it came from a bad place.
So when I was younger, I grew up in a dysfunctional household, and my dad was an alcoholic.
So for me, a lot of that early stage was proving him wrong.
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.
Amin: yeah.
So you're like thriving on the actual process rather than the outcome.
Brenden Kumarasamy: Yeah, I call this visualizing iconic moments.
So where you spend time visualizing the iconic mo.
So for me, the iconic moments that haven't happened yet that I know will eventually is, having a hundred thousand subscribers on my YouTube channel and partying up with all my cousins and putting nice suits on for a day and renting out like a dinner.
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.
Brenden Kumarasamy: 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.
Brenden Kumarasamy: 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.
Amin: Yeah.
You're way up to, and I think that's why, gave me so much anxiety watching that show, cuz the camera angles, you're way up high and he's just dangling there with one finger, two fingers.
awesome.
Highly recommend everybody watch that show.
There's so many cool shows and books and audios right now.
Is there something that you're reading that's really exciting or that you have read in the past even?
Brenden Kumarasamy: For sure.
I always like to recommend Thirsts by Scott Harrison.
Scott Harrison's the CEO of Charity Water.
It's a nonprofit.
He started to help people gain access to clean drinking water.
And the reason I like Scott, he's one of my heroes as well, but the reason I'm so fascinated by his story is he's a great example.
Of anybody in the world can create impact.
You just gotta make the decision that person is you.
He literally went from being a nightclub promoter in his twenties.
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.
Amin: Nice.
Say that one more time.
Brenden Kumarasamy: The goal is not to live forever, but rather create something that will
Amin: Oh, that's amazing.
I love that.
We'll put that in the show notes.
That's a good one because, it speaks to legacy, right?
Like where are you trying to go and what are you trying to do?
That's beautiful.
we talked about you being busy making time for things rather than finding time for things.
Do you have any productivity tips or hacks that you use in your daily life to get things done, to get more done?
Brenden Kumarasamy: I would say the one I'd recommend Amin is, but I'm sure you got a lot better tips than I would pull out, is really on the idea of thinking about your life in reverse.
So for me, what I do, Is when I look at my time, it's not really a vector.
I think it's more about you test the different aspects that are available and you choose what works for you.
So like for me, I don't, I'm not a 5:00 AM club guy.
Like I don't wake up in the morning.
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?
Brenden Kumarasamy: 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
Brenden Kumarasamy: 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.
Beautiful.
Love
Amin: that.
I'm sorry to hear about your father and, parents and family.
It's so important In Indian, you're Sri Lanka and I'm Indian.
there's, it's so important.
Though I think it would be surprising to maybe the non-Asian crew to learn that you do that.
But it's actually fairly normal in our culture, isn't it?
To live.
Yeah.
Live at home.
Brenden Kumarasamy: And actually that's the tip I give most entrepreneurs who are getting started, which isn't your audience cuz they're in the forties and fifties, though some of them might be starting their first business.
It's just the tip doesn't apply so much, which is income combining.
Like I think the reason I was able to leverage up capital super efficiently is because it's not because I'm a rich guy or I came from money or of it inheritance.
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.
Amin: That's awesome.
What are you working on right now that's got you really excited?
, Brenden Kumarasamy: I would say there's no specific project I'm working on.
That's exciting.
Cause I'm always doing the same thing over and over again.
Yeah.
And I think that's what Alex Hermosi says, right?
It's not about doing the extraordinary things, it's about doing the ordinary things for an extraordinary amount of time.
and being consistent with that.
So I would say for me it's the main three.
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.
Amin: Yeah.
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?
Brenden Kumarasamy: Yeah, for sure.
Amin great to be on the show.
Thanks for having me.
So two ways to keep in touch.
The first one is the YouTube channel.
Just go to MasterTalk In one word you'll have access to hundreds of free videos on how to speak.
And the second piece is the workshop that we run that's free over Zoom, that's live and interactive.
So if you wanna jump in on one of those free calls, just go ahead and register at RockstarCommunicator.com
Amin: nice.
You are a rockstar and I appreciate your time here.
Thank you so much, Brendan.
I really appreciate your time and energy.
Hope to talk to you again soon.
Brenden Kumarasamy: Thanks, Amin.
Really appreciate it.
All right,
Amin: man.
Have a good one.