Grand Slam Journey
This podcast discusses various topics around - sports, business, technology, mindset, health, fitness, and tips for growth. Topics range from what sports have taught us and how we transitioned from a singular focus and pursuit of our athletic goals and dreams to the decision to end our sports careers and move into the next phase of our lives. My guests share how they found their passion and purpose, tips for maximizing potential - holistically - physically and mentally, how they transitioned from one chapter of their lives to the next, and how to drive success in sport, business, technology, and personal life.
Grand Slam Journey
59. Brett W Smith: Former World Champion Boxer on Shattering Ceilings, Navigating the Human Experience, Entrepreneurship
What if you could redefine your limits and ignite your potential? Embarking on this journey with us is none other than former world champion boxer turned entrepreneur and coach, Brett W Smith. We delve into Brett's sportive escapades, personal explorations, and endeavors of mental toughness, exploring his pathway to success as he shattered societal ceilings and navigated life's untamed waves. From the heart of Sydney to the depths of the Egyptian seas, Brett's life is a saga of courage, resilience, and an undying spirit.
Brett's candid recounting of his athletic journey and transition to coaching is nothing short of inspirational. His experiences, from the rugby field to the boxing ring, have shaped him, but it's his exploration of past traumas and their influence on his present reality that resonates deeply. Brett's insights into the mindset of a successful athlete turned coach illuminate the road less traveled, a path strewn with hard-learned lessons and hard-won victories.
Our conversation reaches a crescendo as we dig into mental health, self-care, and the power of pushing beyond one's perceived boundaries. Brett's story finds resonance not just in the sporting arena but also in the business world, where his drive, discipline, and resilience echo. His passion for aiding others in their journey towards personal growth and his zeal for teaching people to listen to their true selves is a testament to his strength and character. Join us on this enlightening journey with Brett W Smith, as he navigates life's challenges and motivating us to chase our dreams.
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And I had to ask myself some tough questions about exactly what I was doing and why. And a lot of it come from a child approving others wrong and approving or do things when others said I couldn't. Now I've just got so used to stretching myself and succeeding and pushing myself beyond what people say is okay and succeeding and doing it again and again and again and not accepting what society considers the ceiling and creating my own ceilings. And you know, when I quit my job $110,000 a year with three kids under three, three mortgages and no guarantees and everyone told me I was crazy and all my staff mates, my workmates, took bets on me to how long it would take me to fail and come groveling back. That comes from continually pushing those ceilings and that comes from self-belief. That comes from going. You know what, if I can lie on the floor of the blue hole at 90 metres alone, you know if I can punch through and do things and win world championships when people say you can't and I can do this and I can do this again and again and again and again.
Brett:And we did. We started the electrical business and it went on to have fantastic success. And we started the development company and it's had fantastic success. And then my coaching business is really flourishing and people want to stifle because of their own set of belief systems and they're not my beliefs. There's only a reflection of the things you can't tolerate or accept within yourself, and that is no longer my problem. I'm just getting started.
Klara:Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Grand Slam Journey podcast, where we discuss various topics related to finding our passion and purpose, maximizing our potential, sports, life after sports and transitioning from one chapter of our lives to the next, growing our skills and leadership and whatever we decide to put our minds into. For my guest today, brett W Smith, areas of all of the above. I've been thinking about how to introduce Brett and our conversation, and the truth is that I find very few words to describe what Brett had shared in the journey of his life. Brett is someone who seems like had packed three or four lives into the duration that he has lived thus far, and he has a long and exciting list of things and shattering ceilings ahead. I've always considered myself a driver, but the experiences that Brett has gone through and learning to navigate the human experience, as he calls it, is, in many ways, making me speechless.
Klara:As is typical for my guests, brett has grown up being an athlete. Being from Australia, he grew up playing rugby and then discovered boxing. Life adventure had taken him on travels through different countries and adventure becoming a master diver, where he has explored depths of 95 meters with oxygen, something I still cannot fathom After returning back home from his travel and exploring the depths of the ocean in Egypt. He then returned back home, picked up boxing again and became the WBF and WBU world champion in boxing. After his boxing career, he then went on to open two businesses, one being an electrician and one developing homes, and now he is on his path of starting his next passion project coaching. Brett is someone who has gone through so much in life, including dying at 6 months old, being kidnapped and then somehow escaping at age 7 or 9. He has gone through so much and has worked on himself so much to overcome some of the mental model challenges and the boxes that society often wants to fit us into, that I have no doubt he'll be a great coach and serve many others to uncover their passion, their potential and help him get on a journey of whatever they define as their success.
Klara:This is a long conversation and I could have asked Brett thousands of different questions. We talk about sports, navigating life's challenges, entrepreneurship, mindset, the mind and body connection, mental health, shattering glass ceilings and navigating the human experience. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. If you do, please share it with someone you believe may enjoy it as well. Consider leaving a review on Ampo Podcast or Spotify, and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. This is your host, clara Egochova. Thank you for tuning in, and now I bring you Brett W Smith.
Brett:I had that really challenging time recently. I did the Sunshine Coast marathon and I've trained my whole year for this. This is my now, this is my boxing, this is my world and I've trained the whole year for this and I've got a coach for it. I've been pushing for that sub three hour time. You know 415km or 650 miles I suppose it would be Paced time. It's been moving. It took a lot of work. I actually crossed along a 306, did underpaced. I've got a bit of six minutes faster than my previous best.
Brett:It was a really good run, really enjoyable run really spiritual run like I really went within, called all my guides. I had my whole team behind me spiritually, pushed me on and supported me when I fell short on the previous attempt. A little bit before that, but the two weeks leading into it I had a family. I've got a family of six, a wife and four children and myself and they all got chronically ill, bad flu, like really bad flu, not COVID. Well, we don't know because we didn't test, because we've never tested the children, but my wife and myself have both had it twice in 2021 or something like this, and we just act professionally or adequately and just stay home and rest. I'm not too worried about the diagnosis these days.
Brett:You know you're always going to get a bit of a bump. Everyone was sick and I've actually got a coach right now helping me explore my healing abilities as an energy healer, and she's a lady that helped me heal my son, who's now five in November, so almost four years ago it's all about now. He was really sick in ICU and it come up to me then that I just had to go. This was actually here for me, coming through him, because he is my little mirror and he is my clone, so I had her support me then to help me help him heal himself. For me be a part of that it was a huge moment in my life and also connection to my son's eye level of himself and anyway. So, like four years later, I got this calling to that. I'm ready now, as I'm stepping more into the coaching and I've removed myself from my monetary business this year to a certain extent. I'm still the director, I see everything, but I have made time for him and for myself to explore what's next and it come up to me to engage her. So I've got her as a spiritual coach for a three month extensive block and the first thing they come up was healing anyway. So all the kids and my wife got sick before this marathon and she's like this is here for you. And I'm like I cannot get sick. She goes this is here for you, like this is what you want, this is what you want to explore. It's now your time to sit in that disease and heal them and not allow yourself to succumb, because you are here to support them.
Brett:And I did that for two weeks straight. For 17 or 18 days straight, I spent every night with each individual child as they fell, supporting them, healing them, calling on whatever they told me they needed from a higher level. And I did that for 18 days. And the day before the marathon I said I'm done, I'm going to mum and dad's, my parents place, because they live very close to the marathon, on the Sunshine Coast, by the beach. And I said I'm done and my wife goes, you're leaving me when I'm sick. And I said babe. I said this has been like 18 days. I'm running a marathon Sunday. It's Friday evening. I'm going sat day to spend some time alone. And I did that and I was completely exhausted. The sat day at my parents and they said you look terrible. I said I'm just energetically fatigued, I haven't done anything, but I've been calling on energies that are greater than me and they've been passing through me, and you try to tell this to your parents from the industrial era era, who are just like you're just crazy, son.
Brett:And they understand me and understand my energy. They've learned to just be with me and work with me at whatever level I'm at. But yeah, I was completely exhausted and it was not my physical being, it was from having something I can only explain pass through you that isn't yours and I feel like I was passing energy through me to them to support them. And it took a toll on me. But I ran a PB on the Sunday and I woke up Sunday and I checked out my Garmin watch which showed me complete other body stress. The 24 hours before made no sense because all I did was rest, but it was the stress of something greater than me.
Brett:And then I woke up on the Sunday morning 5am for the marathon. I checked my watch it was all blue, it was all ready, it was energetically supporting me and I remember the whole race, particularly after 30 kilometer mark when it got quite challenging. I was just calling my gods. I just keep calling them in and calling them in and they kept supporting me and although I didn't get the sub three hour, I had a way more enjoyable race than seven weeks prior where I was all alone and I learned some tools to call in something great of me to support me, and I only wish I had these tools when I was at the peak of my boxing career, for example, but, that being said, I have them now, in the biggest part of my life. You know, talking about getting sick. Sorry, I got a bit sidetracked.
Klara:No, that's great, well done, but I didn't get sick.
Brett:I didn't get sick and that was a big key moment for me Because it meant I've made substantial progress with a space I'm trying to truly explore and you know it's not for everyone. You know calling yourself an energy healer and you know, for me being a full tradey working class blue collar construction, it's an interesting space to be exploring.
Klara:Yeah, the purple bunch of stigma that comes from your background to where you are now, so 100% interesting. Thanks for sharing that story and congrats again on the performance. That seems fantastic and how great you are able to achieve your PR despite all that has been happening with your family in the previous two weeks, so that's an amazing recovery.
Brett:It's just a super interesting experience to kind of realize that it is always greater than you and this what you take. You know you get to choose what the experience is, and for me it was an experience of growth to test and stretch something I was trying to explore versus the victim mode of poor me, and then I'm sure I would have succumbed to serious illness had I allowed the emotions to drag me to that position, if you know what I mean.
Klara:Yes, the mind and body connection is definitely interesting and something I hope we will continue to dive into in our conversation today and, if anything, the past seven minutes is probably a great example of what is yet to come for the following hour or so. But before we dive into many more of these topics your athletic journey, entrepreneurship, and now transitioning to coaching and spirituality I want to maybe pause for a second and give you an opportunity to introduce yourself to our listeners, please.
Brett:Yeah, brett W Smith, I guess I struggled to describe what I am these days. I guess I'm shown up here now and 2023 is a big year for me to reflect on the coach that I've become, both within and and, yeah, it's become time to step into that space of creative space to do it. Yeah, I guess I'm a coach now, but I've been blessed to have success in sort of multiple business startups and have a pretty strong sporting background through every league, through boxing and also marathon running. Now, as a 42 year old, I've been learning that for me, sport never stops. You know, the music may stop in whatever professional or serious sporting side you might be operating from, but really, when the music stops, it feels like, now more than ever, it's just the beginning and an opportunity to explore what's next.
Klara:That's kind of me now Awesome and I'm always curious about the upbringing and how we find some of our first at least athletic endeavors and journeys Was your upbringing. Like Brett in Australia, I have international guest list so I'm always curious what's like to grow up in different countries and different times and just what shaped us into who we become at that point in time.
Brett:Yeah, sure, I mean, I grew up in Sydney, australia, a place in the southern shy, so south of Sydney. I come from a working class family. You know, my father was a third generation underground coal miner from a tough mining town. So we grew up with working class values, something I'm very proud of and hold strong to my successes not through academic success, I guess you might say, but just from sometimes having to grind it out and work harder than the rest to succeed. And although I'd like to try and think I work a bit smarter than harder these days, I do both. You know, and I feel when you can work harder and smarter, you are the point of difference in the environment that you're surrounded by, and I think that's been my point of difference. I had those values instilled to me from a young age. But yeah, I grew up in southern shy, sydney.
Brett:I played sport from the youngest age I can remember I started playing rugby league at four and a half years old. My father was always a coach of the local A grade or the, you know, under 18s, under 20s. You know a good caliber football teams and winning premierships and you know a lot of the players that went on to play first grade rugby league over here, which is, you know, it's a significant sport in Australia. It's one of the leading contact sports, I suppose you might say. But yeah, as I have been asked of these questions of late, as I've started to explore, I've started to look back what's kind of got me to where I am and my well no, it's not a childhood memory I've been blessed to go back and do what they call a regression session on some stuff to do with. You know past life and kind of life traumas, and you know I suffocated and died at a very young age, at six months old, and my father resuscitated me and brought me back to life, although at six months, in this human experience you don't remember that in a physical being per se. The trauma and the things that are instilled in your being beyond that are something I never even discovered until I think I was 40 years old. I had what they call a regression session and really shine some light on why not why, but you know parts of why I might have made some decisions I've done or validated myself the way I had, and when I looked back on it, when I went back to that event, my father breathed life and you know, I think I was searching for his validation or he was doing with searching to bring me back, you know, and there's a lot of things that go on in our experience that often shape the direction we go.
Brett:I clearly remember I don't remember my age, but I was sort of eight or nine years old and I was dragged into a car by a guy I could only say a guy, an old holding vehicle. I escaped, but like those moments when you start to go and dive deep into the territory I've been blessed to explore, I mean my late you know I'm a late years and my 40s. You know the last 10 years I've spent debriefing my previous 30 years before that and we start looking into those events at a very young age. They are what shape your current reality, you know. You look at those pivotal years between zero and seven and they are where a lot of your current police systems that you operate from. Unless you decide to unpack them, they are where you operate from potentially for life and the impact they have are massive. And yeah, so that's, I guess, a little bit about my growing up.
Brett:I went to a state school. I I left school at 15 because I felt I wasn't meant for there. I've always been very anti-establishment, anti-authority. I guess I'm not so much that anymore. I've just learned to accept the environment. Not accept, but work with the environment that I am in and let the environment that I'm in think it has my support or it doesn't. But I navigate it to see what is within me. I believe our perspective and our view is very much governed from within. We see what we choose to see and we sculpt our own reality. It's not by forceful, by choice from the external environment. It's a little bit about me, I guess.
Klara:Wow, there's a lot of factors there. Brad, Maybe Curious if you could talk a little bit more about the athletics you did mention your dad was obviously in the sport, so it seems like you had the common sports passion there. How did you get into the first passion I guess rugby. That didn't end up being the main sport. You transitioned to boxing, which is really what got you popular, at least in the athletic world. What was that journey like and the discovery of the different sports that you have been part of?
Brett:Like I mentioned, I played rugby league from a very young age. I probably played, I think, about 150 games for junior rugby league. I was a good young footy player, a halfbacker, a playmaker, I might say, I don't know. I would be the quarterback of the NFL world, but you know the playmaker, the ballmaker, and I played from, like when I was four and a half. I got into sport because my father was coach in those sports, like I mentioned, at a very young age and yeah, I played right through to I was about 14 years old. I broke my leg in a grand final. So the final, so that competition, we won the game, but I broke my leg and I was already realizing I was getting a bit small for the sport and at 14, people are starting to grow and evolve and hippoturity and I kind of was like stalled there. At the same time I wasn't growing and I'm still a very small guy now and, yeah, I decided I'd often been, I'd been doing boxing as a side sport for two or three seasons.
Brett:I was a very busy kid my parents get me very occupied outside of school because I actually had this conversation with my mother yesterday, over the day before, about she goes. I didn't think there was a diagnosis of that back then. I said, well, there was, because some of the kids at school had been diagnosed with this and that. And I said but you guys just kept me busy and you kept me stimulated, and I appreciate that because you know that is a key ingredient to being a good parent, I feel. But they kept me busy by boxing your own pros. So football over here, rugby league is played in the winter season. The other six months a year I'd go and learn the box and I really took to it and I really enjoyed it and I really enjoyed A the combat, b the idea of there's no one else to pass that ball to or run from, it's just you in there, and that was a real stimulant for me. That really really attracted me.
Brett:I've always been, I think, a loner, a soul. Well, I'm very what do you call it? An extrovert. I have also been very shy. I'm very if parts of me is not that, and I always like the solo, the lonesome part of it, and it is very lonely sport in a lot of ways, and it's just you in there and there's no one to blame and say I was in.
Brett:I started boxing at 12, 13 years old. Like I said, at 14, I broke my leg in the grand file and decided to go into boxing About at 15, so at 15, I think I had about six amateur fights for four or five victories on a state a novice state title, so a state title for kids that had had up to six fights or 10 fights or whatever it was, and I did quite well and then the music kind of stopped for me a little bit. At that point in my life I took some hard roads in different ways. I fell into drug and alcohol abuse and substance abuse at a young age and it wasn't the first like it happened at 16. It was like a catalyst at 16. Like you come to a screaming head and I'd left school I think I'd mentioned prior. I've been working from 15 years old. I had decided that I was my own man, although I was just a boy and just a child. But I was working with grown men, not always the right role models or examples. For sure I don't blame anyone for my self because I was always going to gravitate to the naughty kids and the naughty men. But yeah, I kind of spiral a little bit out of control at 16. At 17, I went back to rugby league, funnily enough, and we had a really successful year. We won the comp. I won Best in First in some way, even though I was very off the rails. And then my life did definitely spiral out of control and I ended up in a really bad way in a rehabilitation detox facility at 19,. My 19th birthday at 21.
Brett:I left the country when overseas and I was gone for four years. I had some amazing experiences, lived in some amazing countries. Lived in ski resorts in America, accident, vermont. I sailed yachts from Miami to Rhode Island, lived on a yacht for I don't know, I think, four months. I worked in construction in Rhode Island. I lived in Egypt for a year and a half and really found myself there. Yeah, I really really found myself there. I got riding and technical diving there, which was a really pivotal change in time in my life. I really kind of found myself as I was out of control, ozzy. Still I really found myself and realized that that was something coming through me, greater than me. That really intense level of me was actually me. It wasn't someone searching to be someone else or trying to be or trying to prove themselves Like I'd spent 21 years or 22 years, 23 years doing it. At that point I really found myself as that person and that was okay.
Brett:When I got riding to technical diving, I pushed for a hundred meter dive, which was a really insane dive or attempt on air. There was no mixed gases at that point. I mean, there was training, I just didn't have the training. So diving on air to 100 meters is considered quite inappropriate, not acceptable. Anyway, we're doing a lot of that.
Brett:That dive went really terribly wrong and the diver that I was diving, english diver Ben, disappeared from me at 85 or 90 meters and he, as it turns out, shot to the surface and got severely bent, spent about three or four weeks in the chamber. Thankfully they had a chamber in that part of each by that stage, because there wasn't. It was literally installed that year. He got severely bent. He was not a cripple but really struggled for a long, long time. I've fallen out of contact with Ben now, but I thought I'd witnessed him die. I then had to spend an hour and a half to two hours decompressing alone. I think you know I witnessed that I wasn't till I got to six and three meters for the final part of my decompression, a lot of support divers come in looking for me because he basically popped out of the surface no fin, no mask, like he was a mess when they found me and they wrote on their slates. They wrote on their slates that he was okay with the surface, he hadn't died, which I'd thought I'd witnessed doing, which you can imagine.
Brett:An hour and a half of anxiety thinking that had happened. It's funny when you start looking about. So he did survive and become very clear that no one would dive in Egypt anymore, in that part of Egypt and the other. Like this is crazy what you're doing. I started exploring those depths solo. One of my deepest dives solo is 90 meters at the bottom of the blue hole in Daha, which is clay. Many, many lives, many, many technical divers lives and I ended up laying on the bottom of the blue hole for 10 minutes alone because no one else would dive with me. So I just went and decided it was something I'd do by myself. So there's lots of tough questions. I say similar to the ones that you're asking in round 10, 11, 12 and a championship boxing match or what you're asking at 35, 36 Ks, you know, a gold time of running marathons.
Klara:I do see a lot of similarities there.
Brett:You're very alone, you're asking tough questions and at those depths you're severely you got heavy depths of narcosis and you're always thinking straight. But, yeah, a bit sidetracked there with the travels. But I come back from overseas at 26. I had some things not go perfectly well. I moved to the Sunshine Coast. My parents were there, I had a bit of a bad experience or bad relationship and I was over in a really negative space mentally. I didn't know anything about mental health. Agile was my mental health prescription or management plan, you might say. And yeah, I found myself in a pretty average way at 26. And I decided to go back to boxing and that's when my real sporting success began and it dragged me out of addiction. Once again. It was always there for me. Boxing, the sport of boxing, has always been there for me in the darkest times of my life and although I'm not in those places anymore and I've managed to navigate and manage my life better now, it's always there for me when I need it. It's always there for me. The punching bag is right here behind me in my gym and workplace. It's always there to let off some steam.
Brett:But yeah, I was blessed to have a pretty successful professional boxing career which come out of nowhere. It was there for me in my darkest times of my life and I did what I always done. I worked harder than most, I trained harder and I went on to have a pretty brief senior image of boxing career. Like I said, I had six image of fights. As a young kid I had him walk in the gym bar then just to punch a bag and kind of help myself through some darker periods in my life. But I hadn't really done any boxing properly from 15 to now 26. And I went on to have a little amateur fights. I turned professional, very raw, still very angry. I watched some. As I start to load my YouTube channel up now, I watched some very early professional fights just these past two weeks and, geez, I was raw and God, I was angry. But you know what? I want them by knockout, I want them with dominance, I want them on walk through the people in front of me because I hated myself as much as I hated the person in front of me. At that point I truly feel and, yeah, I went on to have a pretty good professional career.
Brett:I won a state like Queensland State title over here State title professionally. I held the Australian low way title for, I think, two and a half years, defended a few times. I went on to win an IBF Australasian regional title, a WBA Pan-Asian regional belt and a WB UNIWBF World titles, which are minor world titles, I guess when you compare them to the bigger, the bigger belts like the WBC and WBA. But nonetheless it was more than I ever ever set out to achieve in sport and once again saved my life. And yeah, although there are different battles now and different challenges in life, whether it be parenting or relationships or business, it's always there for me.
Brett:I run marathons now as a multiple business startup with four children, I run marathons and it is my go-to now and I still have boxing. I'm still involved with the sport, not as much as I would like, but as much as I have the capacity to do and do well. If I'm going to do something, I like to do it well and do it to the best of my ability, and I give about one day a week or the fight nights when I operate as a cut man or a strategic coach or a specific coach for specific parts of the sport or performance of mindset coach to certain athletes. I give them what I can give them, because I know that that is me and my capacity and that's all I can operate from at this point. So that's a bit of a lot about my sporting Shona.
Klara:Yeah, but there is so much to unpack with that. Fred, I'm even just curious. You mentioned I just decided to go travel overseas and seem like you just pick random places. What drove you to that decision and how did you pick? I guess US, I can understand, speaks English, so, but like Egypt, it's very different, plus Arabic. Right, there's a very different culture and just getting around If you're in not a touristy area, I mean that can be difficult itself. So what made you decide to do that and how did you pick those places you wanted to go to?
Brett:They picked me, clara. I went away. I think I was going to travel for six to 12 months. I was gone four years. I just got lost and I went to London. I lived in London, the UK, for a year and a half. In total. I went there for six months.
Brett:I had a friend of mine who was one of my best friends. May he rest in peace, jay Superfly Rose. He was one of my closest allies and friends after school. He was about five years old. He was a real rap bag in high school but he was in like year 12. So he was in his graduation year when I was coming into high school in year seven. So the age gap is very significant at that part of your life. By the time I'd left school at 19,. I was 18, 19,. I was very much off the rails and Jay was always like a big brother, but he also he got me. But he was a very deep person as well as crazy as he was. He was actually really deep and we really really leveled up each other and we had some really deep conversations at a young age and just I love that guy. And he unfortunately asked the way. I think it was 13 years ago now, 12, 13 years ago in Nice in Paris. But it was one of my closest friends.
Brett:I went to London and I it felt like I'd left the Sutherland Shire in Sydney and moved to the Sutherland Shire in London, because everyone I went to we'll live in with people from where I grew up with. You know every part of me went to was people from school. You know London is a big vibe. It's a big place for South Africans, australians and New Zealand people to congregate. It's a good place to start. You can get a job. As you mentioned, it's English speaking. The visas are quite acceptable, like in America, it's not easy to get a working visa for an Australian. We're. London is a place to go and base yourself and at least start, and I was going away for the six to 12 months. I wanted to do a little bit of Europe and I did that. I was there six months.
Brett:I couldn't get a job as an electrician. I'm an electrician. I left school 15 to become an electrician and I couldn't get a job. So I found out in a magazine over there called the TNT, which is like a travel. I don't know what it even stands for, but it's a travel magazine for New Zealand, south Africans and Australians. It's such a big community there. It's a good place to get work. And I couldn't find a job as an electrician. There was a barbecue chef's job advertised at a local salting club in the docklands in London and I rang them and I said are you after a chef or somebody who cooks barbecues? Because I'm an Aussie and I can cook barbecues really well. And they said please, come down. And that's where I started my working journey in London.
Brett:I couldn't get a job and even when I got a job as an electrician, I kept working there. It was a great community. I learned to sail there and also I've met some really great people who are outside of my Australian community. And even when I went back so I went from there I went further overseas, to America, first in Egypt. I always went back there and worked because I've built such a great community and a bunch of friendships that was different to what I was used to, because I was used to my Australian cultures. And anyway, jay, my friend, like I said, who unfortunately may arrest in peace he was back in London and he said we're going to the States and we found this job opportunity in the TNT magazine and I was looking for snow makers in Vermont. As you might know, where are you from again? Where are you in the?
Klara:USA. I'm currently in Texas, in Austin.
Brett:So yeah, very hot here opposite of snow.
Brett:But, as you know, like the months on the East Coast, it's not known for its snow, unlike Colorado, or like the West Coast it's known for well. It's a skier resort by choice, more or less Like, if they don't have a good season, they employ people like us and bring us over and pay us, you know, minimum wage, give you a working visa, and we blew snow, so we will snow makers at night, so we'd blow snow all night so that the East Coast Americans could ski by day. And that's how we found that. We found our job there, and then we we stayed there for about six months.
Brett:Jay, my friend, went to Florida. He had met a beautiful girl from Florida and I stayed in Vermont. I was pretty crazy in Vermont so I was like still out of control, but it was a party lifestyle environment where you could get away with that lifestyle. And then the sort of the music stopped and it was like time to move on. So I flew to Florida to see Jay. I ended up bumping into the girl that I was seeing in Vermont, a younger American girl, carrie, and I bumped into her so randomly in Florida and she said you've got to come meet my parents. I went to a country club which is so American and had Thanksgiving or 4th of July, so I really profound American day with her family in this country club and her dad said Bryson. He said like I like you, man, you need to come sail with me. He said we're leaving from Miami in two days. You need to get your way there. We're going to sail this yacht up the East Coast, past Cape Fear and past Cape Hatteras and finishing road. Oh, and I'm like man, I'm broke. He's like I'm going to pay 150 US a day. We're going to feed you. You're going to drink it as much as you like. I was like man, I'm in and that's what that just happened. And I'm always it's something I teach now about creating the environment you want to create. I'm always in the right place at the right time to meet the right people to make the right deals. It's something I teach in business now, but energetically, when I look back, I've always been that guy just always fall in and I always fall forward. I never say no to an opportunity and I didn't. So we sailed this yacht. I worked on the yacht for three months just deckhanding and cleaning it and then, like man, I'm going to go back to England.
Brett:My parents arrived to travel Europe in about two months. He goes you're not going anywhere. So then I started renovating houses with him, me and his daughter actually separated. I mean, I was living at their home at that point. The music show my time here is done. You've been an amazing family. You've been so good to me. He goes no, no, no, no, it's my daughter or separate. He goes no, no, no, we've got a house to finish. He goes I'm going to put you up in a rental of mine. And he keeps working for me. I'm like okay. So I did that for a couple of months.
Brett:I literally flew back into London the week before my parents arrived to do a month long trip through Europe with me, and that's what we did. We traveled Europe and I was in London for another six months. I worked at Chelsea Village. I don't know if you guys follow football in soccer. I know it's not as big over there as it is in Europe, but I worked at Chelsea. I worked at Stanford Bridge. I worked at their home ground for six months, so a lot of live games and then I decided it was time to explore the Middle East and I left England with a couple of friends We'll plan on going to Egypt. We're going to sneak into Israel, although it's not accepted, but then pass through the rest of Middle East. We're going to sneak in and sneak out and go to Lebanon and Syria and then ideally finish in Turkey.
Brett:And once again, I left with two or three friends and I got lost. So we traveled to Egypt. We got to a little place called Dahab and I loved Egypt. I loved that. You talk about the shifting culture. You talk about the Muslim culture, very different values and beliefs, and I was very much a crazy guy, but I learned a lot about traveling. I learned a lot about culture. I really resonated with learning more about myself from exploring other cultures. That's something I really pride myself on.
Brett:And anyway, I was there a week and then we're there too, and with one friend when I'm going back to London they're on my trips over and the other friend of mine, simon Duck. He said are we moving on soon? I was like you know what, I kind of like it here and he goes right, ok, so we stayed another few weeks and he goes man, I'm out of here Like I'm going to head back. I was like, right, well, can't tell. See you, see you in the flip side.
Brett:And, yeah, one month turned into two and then I fell into a local dive shop owned by the Bebren people.
Brett:So the Bebren people are the people of Sinai, the indigenous to Egypt. So before the for the Arabs, I guess you might say, and before the traditional Egyptians, and they become my family, you know, I moved into a little mud brick home in Aslar, a little township out of town, and I lived there for eight months and I become a dive instructor or dive master. I think I went back to London because I was broke, got some more money and come back to Egypt for another eight months, become a dive instructor and really established myself there and really enjoyed the people. And I've been saying I'm going back there every year for the last 18 years and I swear we're going to have a reunion by the time it reaches 20 years. We're going to get back there and I'm still very in contact with a lot of the Egyptian and Bedouin people. And it was definitely a massive period of change in my life and something that I look back on as one of the most pivotal parts of that time of life.
Klara:And Egypt is such a fantastic place for scuba diving. I was actually just in Egypt about a month ago in Sharma El Sheikh, so we did a few dives, but I feel like we need to have a separate conversation for just diving.
Brett:I need to get some of the tips because I need to go back.
Klara:There is so much to discover and some amazing dives right there in the Red Sea. But I'm curious. It seems like you are so driven to this extreme sports and it almost seems like pushing the body through and past limits to you don't even know what the limits are, I mean whether it's boxing or running marathons or gosh diving through 100 meters.
Brett:I can't imagine that Not even by yourself. 95 was my, my back step I found out recently in a reunion but 90 solo, 90 meters solo, yeah, I've always been driven by the idea that you're only limited by your imagination or yourself. I feel that we always put our own ceiling in place and that for me it's just glass and I like to shout at things and push through what is known as normal. To be honest, I feel and it is something that has come up lately, past few years, you talk about that regression session and and dying at six months old and greenery born and then you know, a few years ago, or not even a few years ago, the last few years I explored with plant medicine and I was going to have a full rebirth and I physically died and it was something I can't explain. It was intense and I just always feel like my life is supposed to be explored, because you never know when the music is going to stop and I really feel like I want to not die wondering and I push myself to get the absolute 110th percent out of myself for this time why I'm here. I am very conscious of my physical self these days. You know I did my cave dive and basic cave diving back in 2018. And then I went back and did in Australia and I went back and did my try mix because I did try to dive 100 meters on air. I was trying to be a little more professional and dive for try mix and mix helium with the gases to avoid that narcosis. Then I ended up getting bent in 2019.
Brett:I spent five days in the chamber. I become very conscious of my physical burn and it's nothing to do with me. I don't have a death wish. I'm not looking to die. I think back then I didn't care. I think when I was pushed for 100 meters I really didn't care. I didn't have anything to preserve myself for by pushing myself beyond my limits. Now I've got four young children and that is a big difference in circumstance. It's a big difference in my evolution and the expectation I hold for myself, and I will not allow myself to be greedy or selfish and die doing something I love, because I'm just doing something I love. It's a different thing to die on that race course of doing a marathon, having a heart attack, for example. If that happens, that is part of the human experience and my expiry has come and that's okay. But I'm really conscious of myself these days.
Brett:I think spending five days in the chamber with my wife, eight months pregnant, with our fourth child, was a real time to spend alone. And you're in a chamber, you're in a capsule, you can watch some DVDs and you've actually got a nurse there a lot of the time to moderate, check you, but you are spending a lot of time alone. I had to ask myself some tough questions about exactly what I was doing and why and I think a lot of it comes from a child approving others wrong and approving or do things when others said I couldn't. Now I've just got so used to stretching myself and succeeding and pushing myself beyond what people say is okay and succeeding and doing it again and again and again and not accepting what society considers the ceiling and creating my own ceilings. And you know, when I quit my job on $110,000 a year with three kids under three, three mortgages and no guarantees, and everyone told me I was crazy and all my staff mates, my workmates, took bets on me to how long it would take me to fail and come groveling back. You know that comes from continually pushing those ceilings and that comes from self-belief. That comes from going. You know what? If I could lie on the floor of the blue hole at 90 meters alone? You know if I can punch through and do things and win world championships when people say you can't and I can do this, and I can do this again and again and again and again.
Brett:And we did. We started the electrical business and I went on to have fantastic success. And we started the development company and it's had fantastic success. And then my coaching business is really flourishing because it's my passion project turned into a success and people want to stifle because of their own set of belief systems and they're not my beliefs and I don't judge you for judging me, but you're only seeing. You know the things you don't like or the things you don't like to hear about.
Brett:What I'm saying is only a reflection of the things you can't tolerate or accept within yourself, and that is no longer my problem. You know, I held onto those beliefs for a lot of years and I accepted that. As you know, it stifled me and it stopped me from exploring the biggest and best parts of myself and me. I'm just getting started, you know, and I've got no intention of stopping because of what you or somebody next to me or anybody else has to hold on to. You can hold on to what you need to hold on to and that's yours. You can learn to own that or not own that, but maybe I'm just going to do what I need to do and I won't stop till I get that three hour marathon.
Brett:Yeah, and you know that might kill me trying, but it is a big part of what I do and what I do is pushing beyond what people accept as limits.
Brett:But there are only limits to other people of my own, and I like to think I can help coach other people to push to their own limits not my limits, not the society's limits, not the narrative or the inherited subconsciously from their upbringing, but the limits that are truly within them and what they can do within themselves. And that is, that is where the magic happens. When you learn, come back to yourself and you learn not accept the narrative and you learn to talk to yourself and listen to yourself, whether it be the subconscious mind, whether it be a higher conscious mind, whether it be your family, that are guiding you beyond this experience. Whatever it is, you know when you start to listen to that and start to take action on those parts of this experience. That's where the magic is and that's when you will reach your ceiling. Your ceiling, not what others to see or think they know is best for you, but yours, what's deeply and truly meant to be for you.
Klara:And I have so much what you said, brea. I have so many questions just trying to protest how we handle everything through the time we have.
Brett:Sorry, I talk a lot of time. No, this is awesome.
Klara:You know I'm wondering again. This is, I think, part of the unfortunate realities of life. I actually wonder that sometimes, when you're born and go through some of the tough childhood things like you know, you describe some of these circumstances that had happened to you that are just crazy to begin with. Maybe it's the best way that's coming to my mind, because how do you deal with something like that? I wonder if there are certain resilience that is instilled in you that allows you to push to much harder things that most people would be able to on average if you kind of grew up in comfort.
Klara:I always say comfort is the enemy of progress, and I realized that even on myself.
Klara:You know, just my upbringing wasn't anything grand, but I've gotten used to a certain level of standard of living, especially in America.
Klara:America is all about comfort, and the more you create comfort around yourself, the harder it is to push yourself out of the comfort zone.
Klara:I feel like the body gets easily spoiled by that, and so how do you kind of navigate from that drive that in some ways seem like serve you? There seem to be two sides right Well, in the athletic endeavors, because you have been able to push through more pain and wanted it more than anybody else and seem like we're disciplined and even destructive to some degree, but your body hold up to where, at some point, you actually need to be able to switch, because that mindset will carry you only to a specific point. Right, I think? Even looking at my own journey, if we look at our strengths, at some point our biggest strengths will also start dragging us down as some of our weaknesses, and you need to kind of repivot them and play with how you use or create different strengths to lean on, to compliment them. How do you look at it, whether it's your athletic journey or maybe your business journey that you started later on?
Brett:Yeah, like you said, there's a whole lot there to unpack. So we'll start with the strengths being your weakness. And in my later life, in my business life, I have to learn that you know more is not always more and sometimes less is more, and that that bullet a gate and just go until you can't go anymore, until you stop to your full level. Well, that's not a position of longevity or sustainability, particularly in your business. You know I'd work 12, 14, 16 hour days when I started the business and I learned the hard way that, like you, can't do that. And then I worked the hard way for the poor staff that I had. At those periods I expected everybody to be like me, to be so just driven, and that had a negative effect on me and my business in parts and the transition. And then you learn to grow and as I started to scout my businesses, I've learned that I'm not the best at everything and that my ways are not the best actually and that just go, go, go is not necessarily always productive and that as I employ different personalities and different personality traits. I learned that and it's taken me a lot of learning. Thinking me wrong, I'm still learning now, but more so as a coach now I understand them more than ever. I wish I knew what I knew now then. But yeah, you learn to well.
Brett:I've had to learn to pull back on BME and employ people that are better at certain roles than me. You know, like I'm a bull at a gate, I'm a startup. I'm good at that. I'm good at the entrepreneurial kind of bang bang and many things done at once. You know, very similar to an athlete. So an athlete's very similar to a business person, whether it be management leaders, leaders in general, team leaders. Those personality traits are the same as the ones within an athlete, and a lot of it is the dominance, the decisive, you know that really competitive, that really direct personalities, results driven, or the look at me, look at me, the influencers.
Brett:You know the inspiring, the enthusiastic, confident, those kind of the charming kind of personalities that make those leaders. Well, those kind of people, people like me. As you start to grow and evolve, you learn that you're not the conscientious one. You know you're not the accurate one, you're not the compliant one, you're not the detailed one, you know we're not the steady one who is a good listener, and you know you're not stable, you're not steady. All these kind of attributes which create our personalities and our behaviors in the different levels of different personalities. And as you start to grow and learn in business, you need all those people. You don't need the conscientious one, leading from the front talking to your clients and being charming, but you do need them to review the time sheets, you do need them to criticize your different work method statements, the way you do business. You do need the steadiness and the good listeners for the complaining clients, for example, or the staff issues. You know, so you learn, as you start to understand yourself, that the different ways are better than yours and there's nothing right or wrong about any of them. It's just different ways and different personalities and no one's better than the other, but it's just an ability to take a different perspective. I think that comes with emotional intelligence is knowing how to communicate with people. So my wife's quite a steady in nature, she's quite relaxed, and my driven, intense personality can actually have a reverse effect on her. It can actually be insulting to her and I have to learn to pull back myself and try and communicate on her level. And I don't know how to succeed, but at least have an emotional intelligence to recognize that and also recognize that within your business world. I think that's a big part of, I guess, recognizing your strengths and weaknesses and how. What served me as a professional boxer and an all-nothing diver, slash runner, slash person in life, slash startup business, multiple startups, how that has helped me do that, but how it hasn't been or wouldn't be successful for longevity, for sustainability, for scaling a brand and for growing a business. No, my ways are not gonna be the way for that, but I will grow it, but I'll employ people to do that that are better than me in those certain personalities and roles. You know you don't go and create someone who's an influencer or got a dominant personality to be your IT guy. You know you want that conscientious, stable, listener, detail-driven, takes directions. Well, because that's their strengths. And you learn to take people's strengths and you learn to utilize those strengths. That's what's worked for me.
Brett:But those early years you talk about resilience. Of course, of course suffering creates resilience. Of course hard times build strong people. You look at the wars that their parents and forefathers fought through and went through and you look at the weakness in society today. I don't mean it nicely, it's not a judgmental thing, it's just everyone's so weak. You know, it's not like I'm a bigot.
Brett:I had a professional fight. Don't ask me why, but it was what I was supposed to be doing at that point in my life last year, at 41 years old, and you talk about trying to relive like it was just something I had to do. You know, at 41, it's not as fun getting punched in the face as it was. So you talk about when the music stops and that there is life after your professional sport. There really is. I run marathons now and that is for me more stimulating because I've had the opportunity to go back and be punched in the face at 41. You know what I actually get a lot more value out of running now than I do getting punched in the face and my connection to that sport is to help out in corners on big fights or to coach one day a week with some really high-level professional fighters. So that keeps me involved with the sport. But you know I was getting off track there.
Brett:But last year I raised $20,000 for a mental health organisation which is being in Australia called Living, because you know mental health is such a big thing. So I'm very conscious not to criticise or say that it's a weakness. There is a big stigma. But I do believe that there is levels of resilience that haven't been built or instilled in this current society and it's not their fault and it's no one's fault and we do need support. And I've been through my own levels of journey of mental health from a young child and I do believe a big part of my behaviours with addiction, with substance abuse, with validation, come back to my mental health. It also come back to things like ADHD and you know I got diagnosed at a very late age, at 40, but those things played a part. But I also feel it was a part of not understanding yourself, not knowing how to moderate yourself, not being given the tools or the acceptance in a current society and narrative where you must do as you're told instead of exploring yourself. So that is a really big conversation about today's society. But I know for a fact resilience is not built upon comfort.
Brett:Okay, so those experiences, the heaviest parts of my life, are what gives me the grit to get up and drive forward and be the leader my business needs, not the conscientious one, not the steady one, but the leader, the dominant. We're gonna walk through, we're going into battle today and you're coming with me and I will take you there and I'll be on the forefront and I will wear it with you. That comes from those experiences. You can learn those tools. You can learn them because I'm teaching them now, so you can learn them. But a lot of it is familiar, it's become innate, it's become just what I do, and that is the reason that's what I do is because I had those heavy experiences you talk about.
Brett:If your belief systems are created, this is proven science. These are subconscious belief systems created between zero and seven. They're not created between two and seven or three and seven or when you logically believe, you remember from, say, five and seven, because you know, most people wouldn't remember what happened in their experience. That three they were learning subconsciously, proven scientific, proven neuroscience proven that you learn. Your a big portion of your makeup, of your belief systems that you and I carry now, unless we wanna unpack and change them, are created between zero and seven. So I died between zero and seven, six months old.
Brett:A lot of my trauma I never realized it but that was a part of that experience getting dragged into a vehicle at seven and nine I think I was nine, I don't even know. I asked my parents how old was I? We don't remember, was I or not and these old, my parents were away and my grandmother was looking up my name and then a bar and the police were there and it was hectic and but you know that is traumatic. Looking back at the time she was like, hey, you're okay, son, like everything's okay, because I didn't get dragged away and it could have been had a stropically worse. No denying that, people have been through a lot worse than I've been through, but nonetheless it is an imprint. It is imprinted into your belief systems and you can't change that unless you decide to deal with it. But it does build your strength because you survived it.
Brett:And then I survived rehab, and then I survived getting knocked down and knocked out and getting back up and getting the MRIs and the CAT scans on the mind. And you know, and I did survive diving it although maybe I should not have, I did survive those crazy, crazy dives and they do build something within you that allows you to go further than the common man, you might say. But I'm no more uncommon than anyone else. I've just pushed myself into uncommon situations and experiences, some by chance, some by accident, some by choice and some just forced upon me at a young age. So, yeah, and they are definitely something that the average consumer of life doesn't always get to experience, and I'm grateful, you know. I'm grateful for all the trauma because I'm different. We're all different, every single person, every single person on this planet is different. But I've been blessed. There's no doubt I've been blessed with some levels of experience that have shaped me, and it's not until I get on and have these conversations and actually start to.
Brett:You know, you ask me a question and, as you know, this isn't a prerecording, this isn't a planned conversation, this is just whatever comes up. You know, we had a chat or like a brief idea what we're gonna talk about. There was nothing to do with diving in Egypt or travel as a whole. You know it was there. It was just like it's what's come up. So you know, I come from a blue collar working class. We're working class. Don't get me wrong. We've come from nothing. But we've built our, my kids and a different experience to what I grew up in. So it's important for me to instill those working class ethics and the mindset that's required to succeed, because otherwise there'll be another casualty of this entitled experience that a lot of people living in yeah.
Klara:I feel like it's so much harder nowadays to even just help people understand that and it's hard to explain. Maybe just an example to give I was in college coaching at a tennis club and I got in trouble because I told the kid I was instructing that she needs to pick up tennis balls because it's part of the sport. But she was a niece of the owner of the country club and obviously she went in complain right. So that's just an extreme. I know not every kid is that way, but if you know how to pick up tennis ball it's a good scale. First you can practice it the right way, and if you wanna play tennis, you for sure have to pick up a lot of tennis balls during your life. So there's something you learn even just from that and running around the court and trying to pick up tennis balls.
Klara:But I'm curious one of the things you mentioned is also gaining confidence, and at the beginning it seemed like you were driven by you can't do this and you wanting to prove people wrong because they were saying you cannot do it. How do you believe that that's sort of stepping milestone of breaking barriers and breaking goals that you thought you couldn't set for yourself really helped you get that confidence and do you think there's a different or maybe easier path than the path Fred, you have been on, cause I doubt there's many listeners who will just decide to go dive to 90 meters, even right, or even 50. So do you have some sort of tip on perhaps how to get there without you know some people who may not be prone to these extreme sports or combat sports?
Brett:No, not really, that's just me. No, I mean, of course I think it's really important to stretch yourself, whatever that looks like. It's not about extreme sports, it's not, that's just the direction I talk. It's about learning to stretch yourself out of your comfort zones and start small, take one step and just you. Look at me like after the whole conversation we've had, when the previous conversation before it was very much a deep spiritual conversation about energy healing my children.
Brett:You know that didn't come innately within me. I had to go and stretch myself to push myself to want to be better and although I knew deep within me there was a deep spiritual connection that I've always had, you know I've had to go and practice and practice and practice time and time again to meditate, to learn to quiet my mind, to get myself to a state in a position to listen to my true self and understand the communication. First, just hearing it as noise, that didn't come for me naturally. I just had to start somewhere and I had to keep pushing myself. And when I start to stretch that I'll get a little bit of momentum. And then I stretch myself a little more, the mind quiet and a little more, and then I started to get some communication, and then I thought I was crazy. But I just started to listen and I started to take that information as gospel. I started to take action on the information that was provided to me. I started to win. You know, I started to win at life, and not in a level of competition against the world, but a level from within.
Brett:And this has been one of my biggest learnings the last 10 years, but particularly seriously the last five is it's not a competition. You don't have to beat anyone. The only one you've got to beat is yourself. You know, it's not even about beating yourself. It's about being yourself Okay. So you've got to learn to do whatever's right for you, whatever that looks like. It's not about comparing to Brett, who's trying to change the world with every crazy action he's done in the past. It's a. I'll use him as an opportunity to explore my experience, but it's not who I am now. I'm not passive. I'll never be passive and I'm very full on.
Brett:But, like I spent a lot of time coming back to myself to listen to myself, to quiet myself, to get the information, to get my guides, to give me what's next, now a big part of my running is to learn to listen. I carry a dictaphone so I can record the information because it comes quite intensely when I run and it's like a meditation for me. I get a lot of important information. So I think it's important for people to just do what's right for them. If they don't know, reach out to me. I can help you. No, but find a coach that works to your level. You know this podcast when I come across. Well, I'm quite an intense person and a lot of my life has been, but you know, I work with people that aren't that and you build rapport by matching them to their style so that you can help them feel comfortable and bring the best out of themselves.
Brett:I think it's important to get support, whatever that looks like, because you need to stretch yourself. There's no growth in being the same If you're not growing. I'm sorry, but part of you is dying If you don't get some growth. If you don't get some, if someone's not watering your tree for you, if you're not watering it yourself, you know it's not gonna grow. And if you're not growing, slowly but surely, your leaves are gonna fall off in perish and you're gonna start to die from within. And I think it's really important to stretch yourself, whatever that looks like.
Brett:If you're a reader, learn to speed read. You don't know what that looks like. I can help you there too. But it's important to take yourself to another level In whatever you do. If you wanna meditate, learn to quiet them on so much that you, whatever it is. If you wanna build a charity, if you want to be the best parent you can be yeah, you know what comes with being a good parent, being a good you. It all comes back to being the best version of yourself. How could you possibly be a good parent, a good teacher, a good father, a good mother, if you can't be, in true essence, the best version of yourself? So, for me, stretch yourself.
Brett:And it was a real stretch for me to come back to myself, because I had a deal of a lot of my baggage. I had to go back and accept a lot of my parts of myself that I wasn't ready to do and then, but I had to fall forward. So I think that, if that answers your question, I think it's. No one should be like me, they should be like them, they should be like themselves. That is our true calling in life is to come back to ourselves. To come back to whatever you are, whatever you're supposed to be doing, and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. This is me. This is me and all those experiences they led me to this point right now.
Brett:And if I died today, I wouldn't die wondering. There's no part to me that would go. I wish I did this different. Would I change some things? Not really only if there's people or things that I've done that are inappropriate. I'll hurt people along the way. Yeah, I'd change that, but I wouldn't change any of it. Maybe I would've changed get into 100 beads instead of 95, but but I'll get there. I will get there. It's not off my radar. I'll let you know, clara, when we're going back to Egypt, because I'm doing 100, but I'm trying to exist now and I'll let you know, so maybe we can connect and catch up in Dahab or Ras Bahamut or Thistlegorm, and I've dived all those sites. It's amazing diving.
Klara:That would be fantastic. I definitely want to pick your brain, because we do have a trip back. We just didn't have a chance to meet all the dive sites there. I had a few more questions that I wanted to ask. One a little bit related to taking risks and it also goes to my background. I've seen my parents investing all of their money into the business they had started and you pretty much mentioned that's what you have done. You quit your job in order to start your new business and what comes into mind is that there's a saying I'll probably butcher it, but it goes something like there is no reward without a risk. How would you guide people through that? And then, reflecting on that decision you made, what helped you get that decision? Because that's so hard and especially even if you're getting money you're getting paid by somebody just deciding you know what. I'm gonna quit this. I'm gonna go full on and start my own business. What was that thought process like at that moment?
Brett:Yeah, it was a really hard one. You have to take risks in life, but I do believe there's levels of calculated risk and in business I've taken big risks. But also, as I've matured and got a bit wiser in business, I've learned to calculate what that looks like and when it fails, is it gonna put the business into a dealership or is it just gonna be a little bump in the road and a setback? But that's okay, because you've got a risk to get the reward and you've got to take chances. When it comes to what I decided to do, it was super challenging because everybody probably not too sometimes your family are your greatest assets, but they can be your biggest enemy when you wanna stretch yourself or step outside your comfort zone, because they don't mean that it's not a bad thing. They're just trying to protect you, they're trying to support you, so they don't wanna see you take risks. You've got children, you've got mortgages, but sometimes you just gotta do and it comes with a level of knowing within yourself there's a certain understanding that you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing and you need to change that and you need to take a risk to try and stretch yourself. That's what I did. It was planned. It was very planned, but I don't pretend it was without some master plan. I just said I've gotta do this. It's now or never.
Brett:I'm 35, three kids under three, you know. Better off than being hungry at six months old and hungry at 12, 12 years old, no, but I mean I was just at a point where I needed to change. I'd retired from boxing. That has a level of full from grace on its own. I was very bored. I was itchy, you know, I was irritable. I needed change. I needed something to stimulate my high functioning mind. But a bit of what I teach with the performance of mindset side of my business is getting yourself organized. So I've been easy on myself, really organized. I was creating some routine. I'd worked with a bit of a coach my first coach who learnt you to come back to yourself and listen to that information that come and that's what told me. I had to do that and I learnt that that is the biggest strength and never to ignore. If the answer is yes, you take that, don't ignore your truth. And the answer was yes. So I learnt in a really challenging time to go. But the answer is yes, I have to do it and I did it and it was the best thing I did, because we got really, really stretched. We learnt really quickly about budgets, about cash flow, about managing your finances, about debt and about mortgages and what that meant if you didn't have any money. We learnt the hard way. We learnt fast and I don't know what to say, but it was the best thing we ever did.
Brett:Because the question will raise oh, you need to sell this investment? We'll say, no, I don't, I just need to find a way. I just need to find a way. And you know what, when you put in stressful, challenging situations, you dig. You dig those answers out and when the answer is yes, when you ask yourself a true question and the answer is yes, should I have this business? And the answer is yes and you stick by it through thick or thin, then no matter what happens, it was supposed to happen.
Brett:Those challenges that come post-sat whether I lost my home, whether I you know whatever had to go groveling back and crawling back to my old company, whatever it may, it was meant to happen because you meant to experience that, because it's part of your bigger journey.
Brett:So, no matter what, if the answer is yes, you've got to go and you've got to embrace those challenges when they come to you and you've got to take them to what they are and you've got to realise that they will come.
Brett:But you've got to then dig deep and ask what the answer is, because you have all the answers within you, they are all within your being, they are all there, wait and be called in. But you've got to call them in and maybe you need some support on knowing how to call in. What is that true level of yourself, or what is your ego, or what is your subconscious mind, or what are your old belief systems, or what is the narrative of learned society? Maybe you need some support coming back to that you, that level of yourself. But when you do get there and you do know the sound of your own voice within you, you know that the answer is yes. There is no, no, it's not okay, because you are avoiding the true essence of what you're here, what your purpose, what your soul is shining through, supposed to experience on this journey, good and bad, so that is kind of a brief answer to that.
Klara:I think I love it so much actually, even still within it, how do you learn to trust your gut and knowing that it's the right voice? Because you always have kind of the fear on the side. So how do you delineate? I find sometimes there's a great line delineating between kind of the fear versus creating space of what you know is right for you, based on what your gut is telling you.
Brett:Yeah, well, the gut is connected to the mind, so the gut is part of your intuition, trying to tell you something. So that is definitely a thing. Again, going back to neuroscience, science-based proof, it's not just a gut, it's there, it's telling you something. And for this modern world of all the narrative, all the beliefs you've created along the way, all the acceptance of things in mind not actually be true. Yeah, it can be very, very hard to break through, to get back to yourself, but I coach that. I'm starting a 12-week program specifically for men. This round is more come back to masculine, but, yeah, I coach people on how to come back to themselves, to understand what that voice is within them, understand the intuition, understand what might be some subconscious belief systems, but also the subconscious.
Brett:You know, when you talk about your soul, like what's that Tell me? It's only all about perspective. You know your soul, your intuition, your subconscious mind, your ego. They're all parts of you and they're all here to serve you and do something for you. They're all here to protect you, they're all here to help you. They're all got a common goal different themes, they're different parts of the mind, of the body, of the soul, but they're all here. They all serve a purpose. You can't ignore any one of them. But it's really important to learn how to come back to you, your true self, whatever that means. However, you want to verbalize your soul, your highest self, your true self, the conscious hooligan within which is my stamp on my part of my world, and I coach that, and I mean now I'm sure there's a million people that they coach that in their own different levels and forms. But sometimes you've got to unpack a lot of stuff to get to it and understand what that sounds like and listen to it as gospel and to block out that narrative and to block out that noise, to accept what is truly in your highest good. That sometimes upsets some people, that sometimes loses some friends. It might lose some family, but you know what? If it is you and you know when you know, you know. So I coach people to know.
Brett:When you know, you know and when you say yes to you, nothing else matters because you're never going to cause disharmony or create something negative in your perfect world of you. If it's you, it's your true self. You're never going to neglect your wife or children. You might have to come back to yourself and that might seem selfish at times, but ultimately you're only showing up as your best level of view for them. If you can't do that, you're being selfish by not coming back to you. That's how I see it. If you can't learn, if you're a worlder, have the courage and the resilience and the guts it takes to come back and deal with your own garbage in order to show it to be your best level of yourself for them. That is being neglectful to them and to you. You know you've got to come back to you. It all starts with you. There's no coming back, there's no living your true life or your best self without being in connection to your true self. There's no way to hide from yourself.
Brett:I was just running. You know I run mathos now because I think I used to run to run for myself. Now I run to define myself. I spend myself running to find myself. You know, this weekend I run for 2,045 minutes in the bush just with me and my little dictaphone to take all the recording, because I'll never remember them all because there's so much of it, but you know so much information will come. I record it all. I'm gonna come back and I download it. You know, when I get time, I listen to it, I create programs from it. I take the guides, information. They give me a learn from myself and the power that is bigger than me. They teach me.
Klara:Yeah, I love that and I like your tip especially. I've thought about a number of times when you're running or doing some sort of exercise, like taking a recorder, because I always get the best realizations and idea when I'm active or you're doing something, you're in motion and you're going through some sort of physical struggle. On the note, you've gone personally again through trauma, you've gone through some really hard moments and even your athletic endeavors we talked about to help you find yourself. I know you're very focused now on mental health in general, which seems to be one of the biggest rising topic ever, even after this pandemic.
Klara:My theory is that we locked everybody for two years in one room or their house and people just still trying to figure out what to do with themselves now because there is a kind of residue of these lockdowns, I believe, still happening. That's my hypothesis of it. But I want to give you still an opportunity. I know this is something you're looking into deeply, anything you want to mention on that topic? How are you looking at that space and how are you looking to help people in this area?
Brett:Yeah, okay. So imagine if everyone had the tools back then during COVID to come back to themselves and sit within. We would have come out of the back of that an elevated society and something greater than we would ever could have imagined. So imagine if you just took the time to spend that time to come back to yourself and I made no claim that, like mental health man, it's real. It's a real thing and it's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. You just need some support coming back to yourself and then navigate all that stuff that we've already spoken about.
Brett:I truly believe all my traumas and all my addictions and all the personal problems I've had with mental health they were a free understanding myself. They were free understanding me and learning how to come back to me and learning how to accept me and learning how the narrative of society isn't me and that's okay, and learning to just go within and listen to the information and act upon it. When you start doing that and you start to fall forward in your truth, you start, like I said, you start to win at life and those things start to dissolve. The mental health issues, the ADHD, the depression they all start to slowly dissolve and be less prominent or less significant in your life and you start to live. You know when you start to live and you spend every day, spend time with yourself. I do it at 4.35 am every morning because that's before my kids rise. I was doing it this morning before we started because that's when I get my my me time, you know, and my me time creates my day. It's before social media, it's before anything. I will nearly have to be glass of water and then I have my coffee, which I love, and then I go and I do my meditation and I spend time, ask myself some questions and I really believe that is the answer. I'm not saying you can go from this high levels of discomfort or disease or mental trauma and problems down the baseline and back into a Navigating a perfect level of mental health. I don't pretend to do that, but I do believe it starts. You've got to start somewhere. You know you might be heavily medicated for whatever my be ADHD, depression and any depressants, whatever that looks like and like. I'm no physician, I'm not a doctor. I feel like I'm a doctor of my own mind. That's about it. But you know, I do believe we work and it is that's the thing.
Brett:A lot of people don't want to do the work. They don't do the work that I want to listen to. The rather just escape. The rather escape themselves by taking a Prescript, said. They wonder why they hate themselves or don't want to sit within themselves. They're running from themselves, they're running from the noise and I feel when you stop and spend some time I don't pretend that I learned this alone. I had a great coach, I've had some great support over the years and it's been a long journey you get to where I am. Be good, start somewhere. It's never too late. I feel.
Brett:If everyone knew how to do it I knew how to do it during COVID no one would want to come out of lockdown.
Brett:They'd be like, ah, it's so peaceful here, you know, versus like Versus aah, versus up a puppy dog locked in his cage in there right now, one of his ever gonna go skate, you know, because he doesn't know any different right now. He doesn't know that one already, now that he's free, you know, you're always free when you're free in your own mind. You're free within you. There's no barriers. It's only a perspective or a, it's only a set of lenses You're looking through. Is you need no one's locked anywhere. Even during COVID, you had all the time of the world to yourself You're more than all the time in the world to yourself that you all want to look at about you being locked up. Now you're not locked up. Yeah, you got an opportunity to explore within and, yeah, but the back of it was there's had a strong argument of suicide, mental health and because no one knows the tools, no one has the ability to regulate themselves Without some kind of intervention. Hmm, but the intervention should be you. You're the intervention. It all starts with you always.
Klara:What comes into mind, my best tip intervention right now. I've been doing cold plunging in the morning. I got the real cold plunge, yeah, and it's so fantastic to go down to the 38 39 degrees Water and just sit there for three and three and a half minutes and you just observe the mind going from panic the first 10, 15 seconds to just relaxation, joy as soon as you get out. So it's one of my best tips that I've ever really been enjoying and that morning routine and yeah, that's interesting.
Brett:Yeah, no, it's a great Concept and I mean it's free right. Jump under a cold shower like you want cold water immersion. You don't have to have the perfect. I've got a nice bath in my backyard. I've got a sauna in my backyard. You know I take um. I also use them as recovery items for my sporting, but I take those Opportunities really serious and you don't need to have the perfect. That's something people need to learn. Things don't need to be perfect to act. Have a cold shower Like it changes your day and again, like when you talk about performance of mind.
Brett:That that's a big part of that. Part Of what I teach is about organizing your life so you can create an epic routine that sets you up for success. When you start a Quality routine, you start creating good habits, and we do good habits over time and distance. Good habits have an ability of creating great outcome. They also eliminate bad habits. You know when you start creating good habits, great, and you start to learn what your goals are. You've got time to Expand upon your goals and when you know what your goals are, you learn to focus on them, because you've got more time and energy in your own head. And when you've learned to focus, you learn to take action. When you take action, you get the results of you that you're trying to set yourself up for.
Brett:So it all starts with the mind. Doesn't in one way, the other, we all. It always comes back to the glass ceiling that you put on yourself, the ceiling you create. That is only ever created by you, and that's one thing. Out of all the extremes you might call them for, what I do, that's one thing people can take away is that they might, they might. That's my ceiling. Your ceiling doesn't have to be that. But you need to realize that other people's ceilings are way extended and expanded beyond yours. So just get out of your own way and get a sled tammer, you know, mentally get a sleet of them and smash through that ceiling and take yourself to another level and whatever that looks like Like I said, it could be speed reading, could be piano, it could be sport or it could be whatever it looks like for you. Like I'd love to go back and obviously I started with mine. My Exploring of self start with me, but I've been so fascinated with human behavior over the last 10 years. I'd love to go back and study neuroscience. I didn't finish school, you know. So I'm not ruling that out in my future, because that would be putting a ceiling on what I would like to do. Yes, so at the time, right now, no, but does it really inspire me? Yeah, so I think it's.
Brett:Finding what you're passionate about is a big part of being your best self, and also just Seen what that ceiling looks like and just crushing it, just choosing to go beyond it and taking one small step at a time To get there. You know you're not going to go from having 10 bucks in the bank they haven't a million dollars overnight, okay but you can find a way to make 100 bucks. You can turn the hundred bucks into a thousand bucks. These are really sick goals. These are real, really sick things that you can transition and then you can put your focus on those goals and then you can turn that thousand bucks into 10.
Brett:What you focus on is what you get, obviously, but always burning in the right place at the right time to meet the right people, to create the right deals, you know, and that that all comes back to again. A lot of what I teach is Solving the old subconscious belief system, training you on, you know, really simple hacks, or sometimes less simple hacks, on how to evolve and be a better level of yourself, you know, and yeah, I'd like to think that I'm living proof that that's possible for me kid to drop that school 15 to what I've done is. It's not a bragging rights or a pride thing. It's more like an example. More than anything, it's just an example of what the human mind can do when it starts creating better habits instead of Abon Joe.
Klara:I love it. Thank you so much, brad. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. Maybe just last two questions to close out with, although Many of your answers probably Could be the right answer for the next one I'm about to ask. But there is a lot of things going on in the world right now. What would you want to inspire people to be doing more off or less off?
Brett:I think it's taken me a long time. Definitely the last three years I think I've elevated from a different part of my experience. So I think a big part of my experience was I just navigating the human experience and what they look like, where a lot of them on my previous story has kind of the voles about where I come from. Then I went into maybe a bit more of the ego, a bit more of the like I want to build this and kind of more monetary and creating and like look at the you know what I'm creating for my family and stuff like that. And Although that stuff's important and it's a requirement and necessity to survive in this modern world, we all need money, we all need a roof over our head and an abundance is nice too. But an abundance tends to come when you focus on providing value and give them back and contributing to society. And I've watched my personal what do you call it? My abundance will call it abundance. My personal abundance Grow both in the monetary way and both in my four young people, children and the business as I do. They've been created, they have started to really excel and take off. The more I give back, the more I provide value, the more I get and I think if people could learn that that they more they give, them all They'll get and they've been learning in a way that is stimulating their true. So when I get me comes back to come back to yourself and what it is true for you. Because just giving everything away it's not what I'm saying like giving the shirt off your back If you don't have any other shirts is not the right move because you'll freeze, but giving the shirt off your back you have others to put another one on is the right move.
Brett:I coach netball for the under sevens this year. Know nothing about netball my wife does, but I was more the motivator in the mindset coach of these seven year old girls. But I think in a society that needs a more than ever, if you have any ability to lead and be a leader and give something back to community that is going to instill Values and instill resilience and give these young whippersnappers, these young necks, levels of our society. These are going to be the people To carry our community forward in 30 years and we're going to be the old people looking back and hopefully they're there to look after us. So I think if you want to see growth and you want to see elevation of the human society. I think you need to start giving back to your strengths. Whatever your strengths are. This feels like my strengths right now. That's why I've chosen to go on a path and give them back. Coaching netball is not my strength. We're coaching people here.
Brett:So I decided to try and step back and give back to my community, the young age, where I feel I can make an instrumental difference and also give them some cool tools in the sporting world, not just physically but mentally, to be better the levels of themselves and level up from a young age. And I do that with a local boxing gym with some professional boxers, you know. Let that they get my strengths and then you own my businesses I provide value in. You know if I need electrician, there's no life without light these days. You know if you don't have your light in your home, you're considered living in a state of poverty. You know it's like if I need electrician. So that's a kind of more.
Brett:More part of my Electrical business and and my development business is creating. I don't know what America's like, but in Australia we have a real Housing crisis. There's not enough places to live for a young country growing Expansionally. It's. It's growing so rapidly that I have enough houses. My development company provides housing. So but providing housing, I feel I'm providing something to community, but I get rewarded for that financially.
Brett:So I think you'll find that the more value you provide, in whatever level of society you are operating from Well, you'll get more value back, whether it be monetary, whether it be spiritually or be physically, whatever it be, you get back when you give back, you know. So I think it's really important that people start to look at life like that and again, I don't mean it from a part of giving what you don't have. I mean from a part of giving what you do have, what your strengths are, what your assets are. I think it's important to start to give back. We need to give back more and I was Selfish and ego driven for years, but that's okay because we all go through that part of experience. But the sooner humanity can get to a part of giving and in providing value to each other, the sooner, you know, maybe, we can get through these wars and this Old human experience crap. That's really not serving us and everyone knows it's not serving us. We're closer to evolution as a society.
Klara:Love it. Thank you so much, brad. For anyone who wants to reach out to you or get in touch about anything you share today, or just curious to have a conversation, what's the best way?
Brett:Yeah, thank you for that opportunity, clara, and thank so much for having me on it. It's lovely to have a chat and it's gone in places I never envisioned or where I've gone before, so that's great. But, yeah, if you want to contact me, the conscious hooligan on our journey on Instagram. So the underscore, conscious, underscore hooligan. The same on Facebook. They're pretty new Ventures that I've created, so I'd love you to come on there and support me. Just give it a like or follow. There's a lot of links on there for any YouTube's or content that I've created. You know Facebook and Instagram. It's Brett W Smith as well, because I've been providing content before I actually lost the coaching business and they're my profiles that I use linked in for my corporate world. Brett W Smith is where you find me and, yeah, if you'd like to reach out, I'd love to hear from you.
Brett:I've got a range of programs ranging from men's work to deep work, coming back to yourself, to performance mindset, solely to Unlocking these different behavioral traits in the corporate world to help them understand each other better, to help the leaders Understand their staff better, to help drive sales, to help drive results, to help drive unity of. You know a brand we're. Often you've got your leaders driven. You got these other parts of their team that aren't, and I can help bring some unity into you know dynamic business and workplace. I coach different levels of addiction and again, it comes back to yourself first and foremost, but we use some different modalities to help eliminate those initial addictive behaviors.
Brett:So stuff like that parent and kids love kids, a lot of work with kids because they're an ex leaders man. They're our next people, so Anything like that. I love you to reach out. Just if you enjoyed listening to you or me, to follow me, and because there's more of that content and there's gonna be a lot more coming, I feel like this is what I'm supposed to be right now. So if you like me, come find me. If you don't, don't, that's cool too. Go find somebody else you like, because you need to find people that Inspire you to be better, because we all need to be better. I'm on the other Love it.
Klara:Thank you so much, brad again, for your energy, the conversation, showing your journey and creating value. It's been a pleasure and, yeah, I hope to stay in touch. If you have a trip to Austin, texas, please let me know if you enjoyed this episode.
Klara:I want to ask you to please do two things that would help me greatly when please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting platform that you use to listen to this episode. To please share this podcast with a friend who you believe might enjoy it as well. It is a great way to remind someone you care about them by sharing a conversation they might be interested in. Thank you for listening you.