Our returning guest today is the founder of Master Talk. He coaches ambitious executives and entrepreneurs to become the top 1% of communicators in their industry. He has a popular YouTube channel called Master Talk with the goal of providing free access to communication tools for everyone in the world. A big welcome to Brenden Kumarasamy. Hey great to be on, Thomas. Thanks for having me, it’s good to see you again. It is my pleasure. As you’d be a returning guest, I’d like to start with, Who are you? Who am I? I mean, I guess I’m a regular joe like everyone else, but I think what I am is probably a man with purpose. I remember the first time we did this, I wasn’t really sure what Master Talk was at the time. I was just making videos in my mother’s basement and I just started making them better, but I think now, the mission has evolved a lot into how do we make every human being on earth a great communicator. So I would say I’m a guy with purpose and I’m a guy who loves his family and who loves the people around him. That’s my best shot at the question.
Yeah, well the interesting thing about that question is it’s so open to interpretation, but thank you for the answer. The next one’s going to be a bit more of an easy one. You ready? Let’s do it man. What’s the meaning of life? You’re funny man, I love this. Yeah, okay, when you said questions were interesting, I didn’t know they were this interesting. Okay, let’s let’s jump in. So I would say meaning of life, I think John Donahoe explains this so well. In an episode he did with Lex Friedman, which is this Thomas, he says that the meaning of life is fascinating because we didn’t even think about it until like 100 years ago. Like because before that 100 years or 200 years, human beings even think about the meaning of life, because they were so focused on just surviving, making it the next day. Whereas because we’ve advanced so far as a species, we’ve gone to a place in our life where the meaning of life is now a question to even ask. So I think that that’s a fascinating point that he made, but the other piece to that is I fundamentally believe an answer to the question, a finite answer, like a clear answer, actually leads to sorrow and depression, because if the meaning of life had a finite answer and you weren’t that finite answer then everyone who isn’t that, loses.
Its kind of like the whole idea behind Heaven and Hell, assuming those things exist, well then what is the line between Heaven and Hell? If I kill someone, does that mean I go to hell or, not that I have obviously. If I stole two bars of candy instead of five, does three bars mean I go to heaven and two bars mean hell. So these finite definitions are what kills us. So essentially my answer to the question after giving all that context, Thomas. I don’t think there is a meaning to life, but there is meaning if you choose to create it. So in my case, if you look at my life, I don’t really think life has meaning. I’m not super religious, but I think for me it’s all about, okay, well while I’m still here on this, in playing this game for a set period of time, I might as well just create my own.
So what’s your meaning? I love it, man. So this is something I’ve wrapped my head around a lot and I’m happy to tell you mine and it requires a bit longer. So I’ll go for a few minutes on a little monologue here. So I was, I was watching a TikTok the other day Thomas and the TikTok, it starts with Taylor Swift winning this award. Don’t worry that this leads to something. So bear with me for a little bit. So basically the TikTok is about her winning an award which is a Woman of the Year by, by an organization called billboard Music Company. So she stands up on the podium right in 2014 and she, you know, she talks you know for 20 minutes, but the TikTok shortens the last 30 seconds of her speech and the last 30 seconds sounds something like this. Your future Woman of the Year is in a choir, Somewhere is 11 years old. She’s playing piano for the first time and her dream is to be a singer to be a musician and we need to take care of her And then the TikTok flips like for the last couple of seconds and then a few years ago by and Billie Eilish wins women of the year, she’s like the youngest inductee in the history of Billboard, she’s 17 years old and she wins and she gets up on that stage and she’s got like all of these fancy clothes, her weird like shades and she gets on and she just says something like, oh my God, like every other inductee is like super successful and I don’t know how I got this word, but thanks billboard and then the last 30 seconds of the speech, that’s what really changed my life Thomas and really gave me uh an ability to explain my purpose to other people And the last 30 seconds she said uh and uh you know, Taylor Swift really stole the show seven years ago, but I kind of summarize what she said, which is the following in 2014 when she gave her speech around the future woman of the Year, I was 11 years old and I was starting choir for the first time and I was learning to play piano.
So the only thing I have left to say billboard is thank you for taking care of me and she walks off stage and when I heard that TikTok, I know it’s super random Thomas, but I think why it’s so vital to my life purpose as I thought about who’s taking care of the next geniuses of our society. You know when Elon Musk was 15 years old Thomas, Nobody gave a shout about it. Nobody cared who Elon musk was. He was born in South Africa. He moved to Canada to his university degree there, but nobody cared because he hadn’t won yet. So he didn’t have any resources for communication. Nobody was helping him develop the skill which I could still do today. And I thought about the next Elon musk right now during our conversation, we’re having right now, there’s a 15 year old girl or boy who is the next Elon must somewhere in the world, we don’t know who it is, where they are, but I want to make sure to serve that person because nobody else is doing it. So my life purpose, my mission in life, my meaning is how do I create a world where every genius that’s ever going to live in the human race is an exceptional communicator.
Because if all of them were the human race as a whole, would advance at lightning speed. And that’s really the reason why I live. That is a fantastic answer that I wouldn’t have been able to give you last time I was on the show because it’s for sharing it. It touched on something which we spoke about before recording, which was your very active podcast Guesting. Do you mind sharing a little bit about your approach, 100% brothers. So so let’s let’s start with principles, right? So principles is self awareness is the key right to understanding how to be successful in life and self awareness to me because I feel it’s not well understood. I know Gary V talks a lot about but there’s not much like granular definition here is I think a human being who is self aware understands their strengths as as well as their weaknesses equally. So in the same way I could tell you how great I am X Y Z and we’ll talk a little bit about that as to why like podcast casting as a medium. But the other pieces also understand what I’m shit at and I’ll give you a couple of examples right now.
I can’t sing, I won’t be able to get drafted to the NBA. I’ll never be a basketball player professionally anyways, maybe in my backyard but never that or when it came to YouTube, I never edited a single video in my life. I suck at editing. I suck, I hate the camera thing like putting a camera and doing all that stuff. So understanding that like being very self aware about all of my weaknesses as much as my strength allows me to hire out effect. So going back to podcast guesting what I realized is at the end of the day to share my message with master talk. There’s many ways to do it right? You can go on TikTok, you can do all of these 100 different tactics but I realized that helped the most is podcast guest because that’s the medium. I shine out podcast guesting YouTube videos and like keynote speeches are probably the three mediums where I feel I’m world class at. So instead of waiting on the algorithm to save me, right. I think the last time I was on your show I think I had like 2000 subscribers or something, something really low. I just said like wait a second if I just am the world’s most guested podcast or even if the show is super tiny as long as they care to interview they care about the topic.
If I just do 2000 podcasts or 1000 podcasts a year and I develop a raving fan base like people who genuinely know me because we’re having a deeper conversation and you, you’ll always know me well if I have 5000 of these people regardless of their podcast size, if they just share my YouTube channel 10 people have 50,000 subscribers, I’ll still win. Right? So I think the key is I just realized that podcast guesting was the most efficient medium because like I just feel I’m better than most communication coaches at this. And then the other piece is it’s a numbers game, you just meet a lot of people, you build friendships instead of like being transactional. Like I’ve never gotten a client for me. It’s not about that. It’s about like building the friendship the relationship. But when you’ve been on like 10,000 shows, which will be the case for me in like 10 years Like you’re done, you’re gonna be like, and everyone’s gonna those 10,000 people shirt with 100 people, you have a million subscribers and you’re done. Right? So yeah, So how many podcasts have you been on? Do you know? I was on 18 last week, So I had to guess, I mean, my friend always shoots me for overestimating the number, so I’m gonna be pessimistic here.
If I had to guess. I mean, I think we met like when I was starting my run, like I think you’re a podcast number like 10 or something like that’s how early I think our show was. I think I’ve been on four or 500 at this point. That’s probably what the number is now. Probably. But I don’t really know to be honest brother. I don’t know. It’d be nice to know that metric though. No. Yeah. And and then the other piece that I wanted to add to that for God is also balancing your strengths and weaknesses what you genuinely like. Like this. I genuinely like this. It’s not like, oh my God, I have to talk to Thomas, it’s like, yeah, like I haven’t seen Thomas in like a year and a half and it’s a great way for me to keep in touch with people, right? So it’s, it’s fun for me, whereas other people who are more introverted and you’re right, I should probably get the stat behind that. You know, there’s other people who wouldn’t like this, you’d be like, oh my God, podcast guest is not for me, I’d rather just like make more videos on other socials. So I think it’s really understand your strengths and it also goes back to what you do in life. Like think about me, I’m the coaching space, right? There’s pros and cons to that, the pro is, you know, high margin business.
You don’t need a lot of clients to make multiple six multiple seven. So it’s very easy for you to make a living if you’re great at it. But there’s a con and the con is, you gotta really love people, you gotta really be energetic And if you don’t like people you can never do well in this business, so it’s about understanding even the game that you’re playing and that’s where self awareness is key. So if someone is really good at coding and they’re really introverted, they shouldn’t be a coach, right? They should, or be a podcast guest, they should be like an engineer at Microsoft and make $300,000 a year, right? So it’s all about understanding who we are and what we want to do? So based on all that, would you say that you’re successful, fascinating question. I didn’t expect this conversation Thomas really pretty, I would say this is a tricky one because what is success at the end of the day? I think for me personally I am successful because my metrics of success are probably very different than most people. Like even today I still live with my mother, right?
Like what am I? 26 have a successful business now, I still live with her because I want to spend more time with her. It keeps my, my burn rate low and I know we’re entering recession, so it’s got to be smart with my cash flow. But I think the other piece to that is for me, success and how I defined it when I was like 19, it still is the same today, it’s just changed a little bit, was making 50 grand a year, Right? So the second I was making 50 grand a year, which was like a long time ago, I was super happy and I think a lot of happiness is expectation right? In the sense of if we have, if we have a certain expectation, like I want to buy a Ferrari, let’s say, I don’t personally, but let’s say that is the goal and you haven’t bought it, there’s gonna be a delta of unhappiness there. But the other piece Thomas is going like if you really ask yourself the hard questions to figure out what you’re happy with then, then you’re successful and for me the definition of my own success is having enough money to sustain master talk in my living standard, which is the money I’m currently making.
So I’m good with that. And the second piece, which I didn’t have last time we talked and I do now is because I had a corporate job before, uh, in, in our first conversation was being able to use every minute of every day doing exactly what I want to be doing. Like every meeting, I look at my calendar, even if I work a ton, I I look forward to it. So I start my day go, yes, I get to start with the conversation Thomas, then I get to do this, then I get to do that. But in corporate you don’t get that luxury, but I could have been making way more money and corporate had I stayed there, it’s not the case anymore. But when I made the decision to quit, that was the conundrum that I had to face. So yes, I do believe I am successful. And now the goal is really bonus at this point. So what was it like to leave, hardest decision of my life brother, hardest decision of my life. And the reason had nothing to do with money. That what had happened was I would say like a late, late 2020 that’s when my business started getting traction purely by accident and I had nothing to do with YouTube actually still lose money on my YouTube channel, The because that’s mostly to give back to society, right.
I’m only starting to make money now from it. It was clubhouse clubhouse was actually the reason I was able to quit corporate because I was super early on clubhouse and as you can probably tell, I like to talk a lot. Clubhouse was like my, my medium. So I got on there and I just bled on clubhouse. I think I was like 8, 10 hours a day on clubhouse. It was nuts like in the earliest of days with my friend Billy and that’s why I got a bunch of clients from from that that like that three like that 90 day window, that’s when I was able now it’s useless. But those tiny day windows was that’s key. So essentially what happened was I had a standstill in like May 2, 2021 right replace 50% of my income and I was, I was in in a promotion cycle with IBM and I had to call to make because I was working like 90 100 hours a week. I was doing a corporate job that was paying me really well, But I was working 70 hours a week, I was doing master talk for 30 and I was barely surviving for the other hours that I was like awake. So I had to make a tough call and the reason it was so hard for me because my whole life, my identity was tied to getting a corporate job.
That was really my exit into into riches which it was for me and I had to give up that identity to pursue master talk full time. So it was very challenging. And honestly, the only reason I was able to do it was because of my business partner was double my age. He’s got a lot more wisdom than me, he’s still my personal coach and he’s a lot more mature And he’s the one who saved me 3-5 years of my life when I should have been quitting at 28 or 30 years old. I was able to quit corporate at 25 and make it work so nervous before handing the letter or we’d confident dude, I was kissing my pants. I honestly felt that like the day before I was planning on quitting, I planned it for like I planned the coup for two months and don’t get me wrong, I was saying this is a cabinet. I loved my job. Like it was a great company. Like I know a lot of people like it on the corporate, I really enjoyed it. I think it was just a matter of where am I investing my time now and the day before. I honestly felt when I told my when I would give my resignation.
I know it sounds bizarre. I felt they would say like you’re not allowed to leave Like you can’t leave. Like I honestly felt like some part was like, Oh, I like I can’t leave. Like I saw the contract, so when I quit, I remember I had a call, I don’t think I’ve ever served this. I was on a call, it was like June 11 or something, you know. So it was like may something, excuse me. I got a call to my manager and I just said, hey, I’m leaving. Like I’m leaving IBM, I’m giving like a six week notice, which was like insane. Nobody gives six notices. I just wanted to leave on good terms because they became a client after, right, like six week, like, and I was like, okay, I’m leaving, I’m leaving the, you know, job, I’m gonna pursue this thing. And I literally thought he was going to say, oh my God, like it’s game over. Like you, you can’t leave. And the guy just said, hey man, really sad to see you go, you’re definitely one of the top employees at the company in our department, but you should go pursue your dream. And every of every person I got on a call with the head of north America for IBM. Like everybody was like, what is leaving? You can’t leave this company.
But then when I told them what I was doing, they said, hey man, I think you should really pursue this. I’ve been watching YouTube videos for like nine months because all the executives knew I’d made YouTube is they just didn’t, it was a business and they said, hey, I think you’re doing something really important. Like I was making prank videos. So all of them supported me and they may try clients as I left. And I said, oh my God, Like I could do this. Like people actually want to see me win at this and then then I was able to, and then after I replaced all of my income, which took around 90 days that at that point I was, I was flying and now I can’t even believe the life I have. Honestly, I’m really grateful. Well 90 days is impressive. Do you think you probably could have done it before then I could have, honestly, I could have, it’s just the reason I, I had to quit because a member of thomas, I had replaced half of my because remember I want to make it clear the goal wasn’t 300,000 to quit my corporate job. The goal is like 50 if I can make 50 I’m good because I live with my mom right? Like it’s, it’s fine, right? I don’t have a mortgage. I mean we pay it all together now. Like I have very little risk.
The only risk I had, which is no longer a risk. But at the time it was was I was the only breadwinner in the family. Like my sister wasn’t working, I paid for all of her education with my IBM seller paid off all of her family debt with the money I was making from corporate and and my mom’s on a pension, I didn’t want to work anymore because she had worked in a factory for life and for once in her life she could have a break because she was in poverty for most of it. So I was really stressed about leaving my corp job. Like I was like, oh my God, how am I supposed to replace 73 K, which is what I was making at IBM and I was like, okay, this is stressful, but you’re absolutely right. I think what happened was when I had replaced like 36 K or something. I said, wait a 2nd 10 clients just give you 36 K if I just get and they all love me like it’s like I’m a city coach. They were like, yeah we’ll refer like to other people to do whatever. I was like, oh, like if all of them refer one other person, like I love replaced all of it even with no effort, even if not not guesting on any podcast, like not doing anything. So I was like, yeah, I got this and that’s when that’s when things started to work, but you’re right, I could have done it six months ago, but I also think like before I quit, So I quit in June 2020, 21, but you’re right.
I probably could have quit early Jan, but I think the lesson is everyone’s got our own kind of cycle, but the best way to move quickly in life is honestly like to always question your beliefs because if wasn’t there, I probably would’ve seen that corporate job for another three years, right? For doing this full time. Well, congratulations for everything that you’ve achieved in that time. It’s very impressive. You touched on fear, what would you say your greatest fear is now Greatest fear for me now, which is completely left field that you probably would expect is honestly romantic relationships. Like I think the reason I’ve I’ve had some success in life and I’m still learning and growing right from people like you and people around me is I learned from people who had done life before. Like when I was 20, I don’t know if I told you this last time, But a lot of my reason, a lot of my success came from a guy named Louis House, who’s the host of the school of greatness podcast. So when Lewis was getting started, that’s when I started listening to podcasts. So I was listening to his show from episode one. I actually just finished an episode this morning before I even got on this call.
So I’m always listening to people and what I learned from Louis and just watching his life and other people like him Is health and wealth is really easy to optimize if you’re serious, if you’re serious, okay, there’s a caveat that means like for wealth. Okay. Yes, I get it totally empathetic. The average income in the UK or the us is probably 50,000. But given that caveat You know, 70% of people drink beer, you know like it’s a lot of people have pets, you don’t need to have these things, right? Not to say like I’m against all of that, but there’s a way to optimize your wealth unless you get unlucky. But there’s a way to do it. Like it’s just people aren’t willing to downgrade their lifestyle. This is just my personal opinion. But anyways, basically what I’m saying is if you make 15 live on 30 you can be wealthy, right? You can figure it out. So that’s what I did. You know when I was making 70 K. I mean I was living on 30 that’s why I had like a nine month emergency fund when I left I. P. M. But anyways, I’m getting to a point here. The second piece is health, look, health is easy to optimize if you’re serious about it.
Once again have accountability buddies run every day, eat an avocado like pistachios and just don’t eat the ship that people tell you like to eat. Like McDonald’s like skip. Yeah, like soft drinks skip that. But relationships, my friend that is the conundrum the puzzle I have I have yet to solve and the reason is every person I’ve admired in my life has gotten that wrong, as per my definition, which is to have one healthy relationship with Children and being happy or at least somewhat happy with that individual 40 years every, every genius of our society, a large percentage except maybe like Richard Branson has like messed that up, like Jeff Bezos Lewis house, so it’s created a lot of fear, so I’ve actually never dated, I’m only starting to now and and it’s something I’m really worried about into some extent less worried than I used to be about. Will I ever find that person. So I think my, my rationale now my strategy and I’m happy to share it with, you know me, I’m super open open and and I’m still figuring it out honestly for me, the strategy now is to get to a place financially with Master Talk where I’m guaranteed success, so I’m doing well, but I’m not guaranteed yet.
I want to get into those bigger numbers, like probably, you know, like half a mill like get into that level where it’s like guaranteed at this point that I can’t lose and then at that point then I’ll probably, it’s funny, I should say as a podcast, but I’ll probably like stop doing business, like I’ll probably just stop with the clients I have and just do it recurring close the business, just coach, those 50 people and honestly spend 80% of my life dating and the reason I say that is because I don’t want to wake up at 35 B. A. Multimillionaire and not have a family. I think that would be an ultimate failure and and knowing that at 26 I think gives me an advantage because I have nine years to make this work because I only need to find one person. But that’s the greatest fear that I have right now since. Yes. Yeah, thank you for the honesty is very transparent. Of course man and the great answer and very insightful as well, of course. So the next one is completely random. Even more random than the prior questions. Let’s say you go outside for a moment, you notice something sort of glistening in the grass, you pick it up and sort of brush it off and a blue genie sort of pops out of this this lamp that you found and says thank you for releasing me.
I will grant you three wishes. You can’t wish for more wishes. Can’t bring back anyone from the dead and you can’t make anyone fall in love with you. What are your three wishes? Interesting constraints. Okay, so I’ve heard the question before, but I’ve never heard the constraints except the unlimited wishes as you said, I can’t wish for bringing someone back from the dead and I can’t wish for I can’t wish for someone to fall in love with me. Okay, fascinating. Okay, I would say the first wish is to have an unlimited amount of money. That’s probably the first wish because if I have an unlimited amount of money I could just do crazy things. Like I could find every every crazy idea in the world without ever worrying about getting returned. That would be fascinating. But then it might devalue the value of money but if I’m the only person who’s unlimited money I guess about the money would still be super valuable. That probably the first thing I would just find a bunch of crazy things like all crazy things that wouldn’t even be a limit, it would just be like we find every crazy idea until every until we find all the Elon must that would be the first wish.
What would be the other two, I probably need to spend more time thinking about it. But let me give you some impromptu stuff right now and then I’ll spend another half a day thinking about it getting letting you know two years when I’m on a kid or something. Ah What are the other two things? So unlimited money would be one of them. The other thing I would wish for not necessarily for someone to fall in love with me, but I would wish for like an app that helps you find your soulmate for everyone, not just me, but for like everybody, I think that would be interesting, there’s like there’s like an episode and by the way I’m probably thinking so I’m sure there’s things you thought about that I haven’t thought of, that would be the third wish I’d probably collaborate with other people to figure out which is but the the there’s an episode of Black Mirror. You ever heard of that show Black? Right? So there you’ve seen the episode. So there’s an episode called Hang the DJ and and hang the DJ. It’s like, it’s basically this episode for those who are listening, you probably have seen it, but people are listening is like you get you get placed into a simulation and the simulation helps you find the one and like very efficiently.
It’s a fascinating app. And I think if that existed it would make our lives so much easier, because like you could like go through the apps, you sexually attracted. You go through the entire list and just like the app just tells you you don’t have to waste 10 years of like nonsense. You just find that person you’re done. So I think that would be super magical. That would be the second thing I’d wish you not just for me, I want to I want to keep that gift to myself. I would keep that for for everybody. I think everyone should be given that. And what would be the 3rd piece I would say the third wish is probably, I mean once again, I would probably change this later. But right now the third we should probably be listening skills If every human being had exceptional listening skills. No, I wouldn’t make that my third Wish the third wish would be to be immortal. That would be the that would be the third Wish the reason being is that one of my questions is if you, if you could choose to be immortal, but the caveat is that you cannot die at all, would you take that option?
That’s on the list of questions I would, I would. And the reason I would is because for me personally, everyone’s different and I’m sure you get different answers. But you know, one of my worries thomas, which I know is really bizarre. Like some people, a very small percentage of the popular, let me give context. This might sound really actually, maybe your audience is bizarre. Which is good is, you know, what’s interesting about Elon musk thomas is he doesn’t think in the span of 100 years, He thinks in the span of 100 million years. So literally when he’s on a podcast and he’s talking, he literally says things like, You know, the window for being a multi planetary species might end. We don’t know how long that’s gonna last. So I need to make sure we become a multi planetary species before I die in the next 50 years or else what have been 200 years. We don’t have that window anymore. What if it’s not possible to go to Mars. So just the fact that he’s thinking that way is so deep, it’s so crazy, right? It’s like totally out of the scope as of the regular human being on earth, right? And I’m kind of similar. I mean even saying that puts me in a weird spot, but I’m kind of similar in the sense of My biggest worry is like there’s been like 118 billion people who have been alive so far in human history, like 100 and 1020 billion.
And I think I’m the first human being to be alive right now, who actually cares about making every other genius for the rest of humanity, exceptional communicators except maybe like dale Carnegie except I think the difference in me and dale, but I can’t know that for sure. I’ve never met dale because he’s not, he wasn’t alive when I was alive is the medium of technology before me that existed before. Didn’t allow you to immortalize your ideas because you can only do it in books basically what dale did. I’m sure if dale was in my era, Right? He would have been like me being on being under podcast and talking to maybe who knows, but or maybe would have been lazy, who knows? But I think the, the caveat is my worry is if I die, which is going to happen right? In 75 years or something is the people after me if they’re not as generous as me, they’re not going to coach the next Elon musk for free when the person needs it for free because they can’t afford it. And that’s my biggest worry. So if I was immortal I could just coach all of the Elon’s myself and I would just develop an expertise. I would just be number one in the world forever, right?
Because I could just live forever. So, and I just coach everyone myself. So that’s what, that’s why I would stay in varna. So you’d be immortal and you’d have unlimited money. Yeah, that would be the, to the third one. I don’t know what the third one was. I had to figure out what the third one was. Oh yeah, the ap Yeah, I would love the app. I think that would be super amazing. It was just 29.6% probability of your finding a match. That was the episode. I think I would. Exactly. But I would wish for it to be 100%. I think it would be such a it would be so cool. It would be, it would be such a gift. I think to humanity. Wait, I have mentioned your, your transparency in some of your answers. The next one is if everyone spoke their mind, would the word world be a better place? No, I don’t think so. And I think the reason is because most, most human beings don’t have that level of consciousness to deal with the truth. I think that’s just the honest reality. I’ll give you a personal example, my own mom. My mom is an incredible human being, right? She’s amazing.
Like I don’t know how he got so lucky with her. But but what I will say this is just me being perfectly honest. There’s things that I don’t tell her and the reason I don’t tell her because I know she can’t handle the stress and the pressure because I know her too well. Again, example, like just a month ago, like our sink, like a little pipe, Okay, water was just flooding. Like who cares? Like you just hire a plumber 200 bucks. It’s fixed. She was stressed out of might Over that pipe that I that I spent $200 solving for it took an hour was done. Like you just hire somebody to do it. So all of my my like things that I worry about, I never sure I knew that was my mother Because I know she can’t handle it. So I share that with other entrepreneurs doing 678 figures and I go and I process my emotions with them right? And I have those conversations. So so the reason I mentioned that personal example is I definitely don’t think most human beings, I think 99.9% of human beings can’t handle the truth. I mean I’ll give you another simple one. I mean since we’re being honest, but I will give you a raunchy one, I mean think about like women, right, how most of them don’t have orgasms in bed because they’re too afraid to tell their significant other men or women, right, That they’re unhappy in that situation.
But then can handle the truth of of the fact that you gotta adapt. So just the fact that I mentioned that, I think it puts me in a very, very small percentage of men in the world, right? And and that these are just weird, funny, random examples that come to mind to just showcase that the answer is definitely okay. It’s a good one to think about in terms of the sharing of worries. So is it actually beneficial to conceal the truth in that particular instance? Is an interesting philosophical question. The next one is, is living life to the fullest possible two parts. That one part is. I I think fullest is the definition right? Like do I think I’m living life to the fullest? I like to think so. I mean, I get to be on podcasts, get to do all these things and get to, but, and I feel alive. I mean, you can tell I’m like super crazy and I’m alive. But but if your definition of being full is living life to the fullest is having unmet expectations that you haven’t achieved.
You’ll never live life to the fullest. So for example, if I wake up and I see my calendar and I go like, shit, I’m not on joe Rogan this week, I’m not living life to the fullest. If that’s my definition then, so it will be right. But I think living life to the fullest just means Living to the definition that you set for that, for that, for that constraint. So for me, I like to think and there might be gaps there, but I like to think I’m living life to the fullest cause I get to spend every minute of every day doing what I want to do. But there’s definitely moments where I’m on sales calls with people who are just not a fit and it’s just like an annoying 20 minutes out of my life too. So, and they’re just like really rude people. So I think there’s like a balance where we find the expectation for living life to the fullest and we said it. But I think if those, if those expectations are realistic and we’re happy with that, I think there is there is an opportunity there to live life to the fullest for sure. So the next one is, is there anything you should have let go of a long time ago, but you are still holding onto mm I feel like this is a therapy session for me thomas.
Let me think, is there something that I’m still holding on to. So I can give you a quick example of something I used to hold on to that I’m no longer anymore. Then as I’m talking about that I’ll start to think of something I’m still holding on to. So for example a lot of my success in my tens was because I I always loved competing with my dad, I hated in my whole life. We lived in the same house for like 10 years and the only way I forgave him was after he died right and he was an alcoholic and all that stuff. So I never really liked him. So a lot of my success was because I was super aggressive. I was like I’m gonna show you I’m gonna prove you wrong and that’s something I held on to and honestly I’m super grateful I did because that’s what got me the level of success I did in my early choices. Long before master talk started it was mostly around getting the corporate job. But when when he, when he started to get a liver failure, I started realizing that his time was running out and that I had the wrong target. Like my whole life was really based on this idea that I was going to prove him wrong and everyone else wrong and I wasn’t able to move past that because the game was ending like like I had one a long time ago but I think what what helps me heal and help me let go of that was you know quote by Tony Robbins, I think he says it best.
He says that if you’re gonna blame someone for all of your failures and all of the sadness and disasters in your life, you might as well blame them for the good too. And the biggest, the hardest thing I had to admit in my life actually, it has nothing to do with corporate life is that my dad was the greatest gift I could ever ask for, right. It was really tough for me to get to that place. But it’s true. Like if he had never immigrated from Sri Lanka to Canada, I wouldn’t have been born in the first world country. If he didn’t move to Montreal, I wouldn’t have spoken three languages that I do today. If he didn’t force me to learn french, I never would have went through the struggle of communicating the second language, which means I wouldn’t be able to coach people in that way, which is something I think I’m the one of the few coaches in the world who can do that. And because he moved to Montreal, I was able to go to Concordia and Concordia, the world’s largest case competition in the program in the world, which is where I learned how to speak kind of like presentations or nerves, which led to master talk. If he literally did not make the decision to immigrate, none of this would have happened and I wouldn’t be talking to. And it was really hard for me to admit that is all of my success was because of him.
The game that I pretended to play the entire time competing against him was the game he created. It was a game that was rigged from the beginning. It wasn’t meant for a zero sum game, it was a game for both of us to win. So I needed to change the story from, I need to beat this person too. He gave me the best opportunity to change the world and I better make sure I don’t screw it up, right? So when that happened, it created a lot of healing in my life. And of course, I think my dad is an amazing human being. He’s not the worst date ever that exists in the world. He’s not the best either, but none of us are perfect. So that’s probably one thing two years ago. If you’d asked me that question, that would have been my answer today though, what’s something that I need to let go that I’m still holding onto right now? I mean if I mean it’s tough to be honest, I do a lot of inner work. But if I had to give an answer because I always want to do your questions justice Thomas because there are great ones. It’s probably limiting beliefs around finding my but the love of my life, that’s probably what I would say is like, even if I know internally I can make it work because it’s an output game you date 500 people and one of them will be that person.
There’s probably still something I’m holding onto that leg. Some part of me that still thinks it’s not gonna happen. So that’s probably something I need to let go. But I’ll fix it out. I’m still young. I’ll figure it out. But, but I’ll throw it out there again. A very insightful answer. And I think beneficial for anyone who has, should we say parental issues. I don’t think you’re alone in that sense. So thank you for sharing it. Next one on your inner voice. If your inner voice was an actual person, would you stay in touch with them? Yes. My inner voice is like an assassin, right? Someone who’s like kind of like Gary V in many ways. We’re like when he’s at a Jets game like jets for those are listening like football, American football. So when he’s at a game, he’s like a different person. He’s like yelling at old people. He’s like telling them to die. It’s like really funny actually. Maybe it’s not funny. Probably should have said that. That’s gonna get me in trouble. But you know, it’s like, it’s very authentic to him, right? Which I respect. Like I respect the authenticity and I try and mirror that as much as possible. Most people don’t ask me these questions. So I don’t have an opportunity to to be authentic in that way.
But I think that authenticity is is what creates the piece and for me, the universe is like a cold blooded killer. And what I mean by that is I don’t mean in the literal sense, I mean in the sense that my inner voice is someone who will do anything to win and I love people like that. You know, that’s why I coach ambitious executives, I don’t coach losers ready coach winners, like people who already won and who want to win bigger. Those are the people who like me on fire. Like notice how I said Elon musk. I didn’t say like normal person at the grocery store, right? And there’s nothing wrong with that person. But I think the inner voice for me is is definitely someone I’d be best friends with because we were just nerd out all the time and yell at people and have a great time. The interesting thing about that question is it says something about what’s going on in that person’s head because if you do say, you know, I would know, I would go nowhere near that person. It tells you something so tells you something about your inner voice must be pretty, pretty ambitious. Cool guy. Yeah, very ambitious, cool guy.
And, and but that’s assuming people ask the answer the question honestly though thomas right? Because I’m sure a lot of people if given that question, they would probably lie and they would probably say something like, oh, you know, my inner voice is really kind or some bullshit. So I think there’s also that that piece as well, whereas I’m not like that at all. Okay, well I I did I was going to ask about the what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? But I kind of feel like you’ve answered that with your goals and what you’re trying to aspire to do. So I’m going to go with an interesting definitional question. You’re a communication guy, right? What is communication? What is this like? The first question I would say communication is like this is my definition is sharing an idea to a specific audience to achieve a specific outcome. It’s assuring an idea to a specific audience to achieve a specific outcome. And that specific audience could be an audience of one, it could be communicating with your significant other to get chinese food instead of mexican food that day.
Or that that key outcome could be, you know, giving a boardroom presentation, it could be presenting on a podcast, having a conversation. But for me, communication is sharing an idea effectively enough To achieve a specific outcome for a specific audience. That’s the way I define communication and everything I do around. That shows that someone’s a great communicator. Not so let me give a concrete example, let’s say someone wants to raise $10,000 for their non profit and they’re speaking to a room of 50 executive, okay. And their ship communicators but if they raise the $10,000, I don’t have any feedback for them because as for my definition of communication, they meet, they’re great because they achieved the outcome that they wanted, but there’s a big but if their goal is 100,000 and they raised 57,000, now we have a delta. Now we have a gap between the goal that you set for your audience and what you actually achieved. So now we’re gonna tweak communication and that that business analogy also applies into a personal relationship, let’s say you take the relationship with Children, right?
Let’s say it’s your Children. Maybe not not to say you necessarily have Children, but like let’s say someone who’s listening does right in that context, it would be, what do you want that relationship to be? What’s the goal? And if the relationship is average and playing then you’re a great communicator. But if you want the relationship to be like amazing, vivacious, like everyone’s on point on the same and if that’s not the point and you’re not aligned there, then you need to improve your communication to reach that outcome. Great, great answer. Have you heard anyone say any definitions that you disagree with or not a fan of regarding communication definitions, I’ll spend that question in a different way. I actually don’t really follow that many communication experts. Like I hate the academia side of communication, I don’t like read books, I’m in a bachelor’s accountancy degree. Like I’m far from from being a communication guy. I think it’s more about, I’m a practitioner, that’s the way that I live in the same way. I like Gary V’s analogy, I think me and him are similar just in completely different ways. Like he’s very like, he doesn’t read books, he’s more like what works on the field and let me just teach what works on the field.
So the same thing with me, so I actually don’t know how other people define communication to be honest. Well if it’s based on the outcome right, then kind of makes sense. Is it better to be respected or liked, is it better to be respected or liked? I personally, if I had to choose, obviously I picked both because that’s what I try and do be respected and be like, like hopefully we did that in the podcast right balance both. Where it’s like you see me as an expert, but you also kind of like, oh, this guy’s not so bad, so, but if I had to pick one, it would definitely be respected because at the end of the day, if you get, if you’re respected and people don’t like you, they’ll take you seriously, but if people like you and they don’t respect you, they won’t take your ideas seriously. So let’s say for the goals that I have in life, it makes a lot more sense from my view of the world to be respected rather than liked. But my view of the world is not most people’s view of the world, like other people, you know the goal is survival, that’s our brain is wired.
So being like might be a more desirable outcome for most people than being respectful. But I would go with respectful person. Thank you for that. You mentioned that you are potentially going to be immortal right? When you get your wish wishes. So the next one is how would people change if the life expectancy was 500? You know, I kind of agree with what Ellen must says in in many ways that if all of us could live up to 500 it might be like a very miserable life. And the reason I say that and I kind of agree with Ellen, I don’t really know where I land right now, but I’m just kind of giving you this is what I like to do. Like Peter thiel does. I’d like to give all the points of view and kind of give my middle point because I try and listen to everybody. But Ellen says something really interesting, Even if he would live for 500 years, he says the only way to advance society is for people to die. And the reason he argues that is if you if you look at politics in the US, the people are running the country, I’m not american. But the people who are are really old people like the people in the supreme court, the people in like court President joe biden’s like what it is like late seventies or something and these people don’t understand the future.
They do understand what what three is. They don’t know someone in N. F. T. Is they don’t know what the internet is and we saw that when facebook’s court hearing. I know they’re called meta now but like facebook when Mark Zuckerberg was testifying in the Senate and they were just like asking the stupidest questions about the internet that Mark was literally like like these people like live in a cave like what happened like and it wasn’t hard questions. I’m not saying the ever needs to be technically sound and understand all this stuff But just like at a basic level how are these people supposed to run the country? So I think the challenge is if the life expectancy is 500 for people to change drastically. Their points of view in the world, people actually need to die because people uh point of view just will never change because most of us are closed minded. But I mean very few of us in the world, it’s just the truth thomas are willing to even have this much of an open minded converse like like just as a funny anecdote how many podcast guests would be willing to go this deep with you. Like very few people would be like oh my God my image, my reputation, whereas my point of view is like okay, we’re all human beings have any experience, it’s just like figure it out.
No one’s got it. So let’s just have a conversation but Most people aren’t like that. So, so because of that Helen’s fear is if if it’s already bad as it is at the life expenses 80 where all these old people are running the country instead of younger, fresh blood with the ideas who are actually energetic creating stuff and I don’t mean young as in 20, I mean younger than 50, I mean younger than 40, but definitely like 90 then then then ideas won’t move forward. So yeah, I think that’s the challenge and I don’t think it would be a fun living, but what I would like to see is if all of the geniuses of our society could live forever, that’d be cool. But then it would create an unbalanced in the world. So I guess you can’t really pick, you can’t, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Right? So yeah, I guess that’s the challenge. It’s a tricky one to navigate the in terms of if you were able to teach humanity one thing, what would it be? So for I mean, I think it would be easier to say something like love or so there’s kind of like two ways of answering that question. One is like based on my skill set, which obviously would be communication, right?
Like if everyone could learn communication, I mean the world would just be a better place, like frankly, even if people don’t want to be keynote speakers, just like communicate with your family, listening to people, hearing perspectives, the world would just be less divisive period because of the fact that we’re able to hold the space for each other well, if everyone could do that well life would just be better just objectively, but if I could teach any skill, because that’s the two ways of approaching that question, if I can teach any skill that I probably aren’t equipped to teach, I would probably um I would think of it more in terms of like experience rather than skill, so I would like force everyone to go into therapy, which is something I’ve never needed by the way, I don’t know why, I just always felt that I still don’t, but I think for most, because I just kind of self reflect on my own with my coaches, but I think most people would benefit a lot from that. Like if people could just sit down with somebody one on one and just talk especially men, I think that would be good, that would be good, So that would be, it would be more of an experience, not a skill, there’s a lot of stigma to it and I think coming to your point, I think it is a beneficial thing, I don’t think it’s a it should be perceived as a negative thing because there’s a lot of introspection, a lot of learning to be done right?
100%. Yeah. Is there anything I should have asked you about today? Mm I mean you’re pretty, you’ve covered the vision. Usually when somebody asked me that question, I go like the vision because people don’t get what I do with, they kinda just go like, oh he’s like a coach and he’s just trying to make money. Which I mean money is important but like I mean there’s a bigger play but you already asked me that question. So is there one thing mm I wouldn’t say like a question you should have asked me. But I guess one thing that I would share that that I often don’t and I and I really do is like I I think that the like it’s kind of like an original idea I had a few years ago that I’m kind of developing is I think the easiest way to solve the world’s problems is to do just that focus on the easiest problems first. Like so in my head, my utopian world and how I kind of planned on doing this in my mid thirties is like if we all if all the smartest people Thomas just sat at the table, let’s say the 10,000 smartest people in the world.
Like everybody, we all just sat at the table and we just debated the world’s easiest problem and just solve that problems would get solved a lot quicker. Like think about gay marriage, right? But what I think fascinating about gay marriage is it got solved so quickly. Like it literally went from like the mid nineties. If you said you were you were homosexual. Like as a as a context, you would get a lot of scrutiny. Like Ellen degeneres almost lost her show over it. But Located 20 years late, like in today’s era, like it’s perfectly normal. In fact, if you’re against it, you would be scrutinized for it, right? Which I think is rightfully so. But but what I think is interesting about the emergence, how quickly it was solved. So the reason I bring that up is I think a lot of us bring too much emotion into a way that we live our life. And I’m not saying the emotion is a bad thing. But I do believe if we all just sat down and said, okay guys, it seems like abortion is a touchy topic. It seems like half of America is pro life and half of America’s pro choice. But and I’m not, you know, I’m not picking sides.
I’m just looking at it from a bird’s eye view. Okay, well Does that does that necessarily 50% of the population, let’s just use the US as an example is a terrible, terrible, hurtful, like gross human beings. I mean statistically that’s impossible. We all go to the same restaurants, we all eat the same Big Macs. We all go to the same movies. We all laugh about the same ship. So it’s just impossible to assume that one side of abortion is right and the other side is wrong. So what does that lead me to the conclusion? So most people would say in this situation, we gotta fight it out. My version of this is let’s not fight it out. How about we all just sit down and solve something else together. You guys like clean water for the world? Yeah. Everyone agrees. Even the worst human beings on earth would agree with the fact that every human being should have clean water. Right? Simple. So how about we all just work together and solve that problem. Whether you’re Republican, democrat your purple, your yellow, let’s do that. And the reason I picked like I looked at all the problems in our society talk, the reason I chose communication is because no one was solving it.
I really felt I had the talent to do it. But there’s another piece to the equation I ever talked about is that no one’s going to go against. No one’s gonna stand in my way. No one’s going to say Brenda. What you’re doing is horrible for the human race. I’m gonna use every press pr strategy to ruin your life. No one’s gonna do that with me because whether you’re Republican or democrat, you’re yellow, you’re black, you’re white, you’re going to support what I do and that’s why my YouTube channel and my following, my business grew so quickly because nobody disagrees and that wasn’t an accident, that was me picking a problem that I knew I could solve, but that everyone would get behind And that’s what I think most of us should do. So let’s assume like there’s 7000 or 40,000 problems in the world. Let’s just assume that’s the number for the person of this discussion. If the smartest people just owned one, like in the same way I’m only communication, like the world would just be like awesome. But most people don’t think that way. Unfortunately like the conclusion there, the world would be awesome. Yeah, well I appreciate the share and you’ve given some great answers to some, shall we say tricky questions. If people want to know more, want to connect with you, I know you’ve got your YouTube channel, but where else can they find you?
Absolutely, man. Thanks for this conversation, Thomas. It’s super fun, super fun. You should probably tell the other guests though that you’re gonna ask this. I love it, but you should probably tell the other ones, might get scared of you, but this is super fun for me. I love this. I need to re-listen to it actually, because you asked me a lot of great questions, I need to rethink. So be sure to send me that episode after it’s out so I can personally listen to it again, but two ways to keep in touch. First one, Master Talk, just go to YouTube, type “Master Talk” in one word, you’ll have access to hundreds of free videos on how to communicate ideas effectively, and then for those who are coaching, for some reason you still are based on this conversation, go to rockstarcommunicator.com and you’ll have access to our free trainings that we do every few weeks or so. Brendan, thank you for your contribution and being a great guest today. Hey, likewise man, it’s super fun.