Greg Voisen
Well welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen the host of Inside Personal Growth. And Brenden Kumarasamy is on the other end of the line with MasterTalk in Toronto, Canada. Hey, good day to you there, Brenden, how you doing?

Brenden Kumarasamy
Very good. Greg, how are you?

Greg Voisen
Good, was good to have you as a guest on Inside Personal Growth. For all my listeners, Brenden does not have a book, we're not going to be talking about a book, we're going to be talking about talking. And he owns a company called MasterTalk. And it's mastertalk.ca. That's in Canada stands for Canada. And what I would like to do, Brandon is let the listeners know a little bit about you. We're gonna get into some of your starting up of this company and why you did it and your passions here in a minute. But he is the CEO of MasterTalk. He's the founder of mastery doc in a coaching business, he started to help and business, help ambitious executives, business owners become the top 1% communicators in the industry so that they can accelerate their success in the workplace. He also hosts a successful YouTube channel by the same name. With over how many subscribers now Brendon?

Brenden Kumarasamy
I think we're at 30,000, something like that. 30,000.

Greg Voisen
So he's coached many executives from companies like Salesforce, Amazon, IBM, Morgan, Stanley, Blue Cross, J, Walter Thompson, Deloitte, Verizon, and the list goes on. Well, Brendon, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. And it's always good to have a good communicator on the show. You know, doing these podcasts certainly hones your skills as a communicator. And after 1020 of them, you would think that I would be even better at what I do. But you started master talk in your mom's basement. And you started sending out emails to university professors. And you were getting quite a negative response. Tell us a little about yourself. What propelled you to keep going in spite of over 2000 ame emails that you were sending out, I think it was 500 a month. And you just kept hanging in there because you didn't have it automated. You were actually cut, paste, cut, paste, cut paste, which I thought was kind of funny. And it's good. You would think that in the younger generation, because I'm not nearly as young as you weren't already had that automated stuff figured out. But you were just tenacious, and you hung in there. Tell me why you were tenacious. And really what propelled you to hang in there.

Brenden Kumarasamy
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Greg, you know, for me, I still haven't figured out the automation part even today. So I still I'd still need some help with that. But the other piece, actually, unfortunately, I wish it was 500 a month. It was actually 500 a day, Greg. Oh my god. That's how ridiculous it was.

Greg Voisen
Are you up at night? Yeah,

Brenden Kumarasamy
very, very late. Well, luckily, I only had to modify a few things. So obviously, I didn't know how to personalize emails either. So probably took me three, three hours, three and a half hours, every single day. And I did that every day, for 100 days straight. And I guess to your point, you know, the reason I was so tenacious, to be honest, I was really bored in life. You know, I was I was I had a three year successful stint in presentation competitions. I had the greatest time of my life in college doing these things called case competitions, to professional sports for nerds grind. And by the time my college career ended, and I started working in corporate America, so to speak, it was a great company. It was a great work. I was the technology consultant at IBM. But it wasn't the same level of thrill excitement that I had with those competitions. So for me master talk was I never even thought of giving up on it because I thought of it as a hobby because that's it just started as a social media content at the beginning later turned into a coaching practice. Accidentally we get into why that is. But then the other piece to that was, I just didn't see myself doing anything else. But the biggest mistake I made in that journey, I was tenacious, but I was a little stupid because and stubborn, where I should have stopped up for a few 1000 emails and said like, why am I targeting university professors? They all hate my guts. They all think I'm too young to do this. I should probably focus on somebody more open minded, like a podcast host as an example.

Greg Voisen
There you go, like somebody like me, well, you know, 95% of the people that come on this show, they have a book, they've got a platform, your platform is master talk, and I was like, let my listeners know that is you know, go to master talk.ca and check out some of his videos go to his YouTube channel as well. I got just typed in master talk, it's gonna pop up. But, you know, look, tell us a little bit about you tell us a little bit about your background. But there's always a history to the history meaning the family you lived with the mom and dad you lived with? How did you develop such a passion for wanting to help people become top 1% at communicating and becoming a better speaker? What propelled you into this? What did your parents want you to become? Usually when you come from an Indian family, and I'll just say this right out, it's like you will be a programmer and you will do good, you know, so I just want to know what happened.

Brenden Kumarasamy
Some part of me thinks, Greg, that you are from an Indian family yourself. Read my mind. So yes, to your point, my parents immigrated from Sri Lanka in the early 90s, which is a small country south of India. And I was I was born in in Canada, thankfully for me. And to be honest, right, the first 20 years, I wanted exactly what my parents wanted. So how it works is to add to the analogy even further, you either should be an engineer, a doctor, an accountant or a loser, you get to pick which under the floor you want to be. And luckily for me, I wanted to be an accountant, like genuinely not because my parents forced me to. But because I was really good at math, and I thought it was a stable job. And I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, frankly. And my parents were factory workers great. So they didn't have a lot of money. So for me, it was about how do I create a stable job and income for the people that I love, so that we can all be happy, and my mom doesn't have to work at some factory anymore. So that was the journey at the beginning. So for the first 20 years of my life, I never really developed a passion for communication, right? I always like to say that communication chose me, I didn't really choose comms. And I'll tell you why. Because I grew up in a city called Montreal. And for those who don't know, Montreal is a city in Canada, where you need to know how to speak French, which is a language I did not know. But I went to French school. So my whole life I was presenting in a language, I didn't even know. So that's one piece. The second piece is I have a physical disability in my left arm, it's crooked. So because of that, whenever I speak, even today to executive teams, people always look at my arm, they don't look at my face. But when I was younger, it bothered me so much, because people weren't looking into my eyes when I was presenting and always caused me a lot of nerves. And then you would think that communication expert studied in comps. I have a bachelor's degree in accounting, right? So yeah, I didn't think I was going to do this for a living but life and destiny and other plans for me.

Greg Voisen
That's very good story. It's very cool. Well, Brendon, you know, can you give the listeners, you know, you have all these videos with tips. Right? And, and I think everybody loves tips, because it's something they can take away for themselves in any busy executive out there. Um, you know, I used to teach a Dale Carnegie course where we would get videoed when we're making our presentations. And then they play the video back and they'd say, you know, here's critiquing, this is what you can do. I don't think many executives are going through that kind of training anymore as much as it was done. But give them a few tips about becoming a better communicator. And I think the key is, communicator, this occurs at every level, it's not just a talk before 1000 people, it's literally one on one, it's really breaking it down to the micro instead of the macro, because if you can get the micro done well, you can do the macro.

Brenden Kumarasamy
Very well said, Greg, and I'm with you on this, you know, communication for me. It's like juggling 18 balls at the same time. So one of those balls is body language. One of them is facial expressions, one of them smiling storytelling, and it can get really confusing really quickly. So the question on my mind has always been when teaching this to other people, what are the three easiest balls to juggle that I call my easy threes. Because if you can just do those three ideas, you can get really good at speaking really quickly. So let's start ball number one or throw it back to ball number one is the random word exercise, pick any word soapbox calculator, light bulb home and create a 62nd presentation on the spot using that word. This serves two purposes. Number one, it helps you think very quickly on your feet. When you're an executive or CEO of a business. Your life is filled with uncertainty. It's never okay. This is exactly what you're going to do it every minute of the day. It's Hey, Brendon. Hey, Julian, I need to jump in this meeting right now. Because the other guy is sick and you need to deal with it. You need to manage it. So if you want to talk about avocado toast for 60 seconds, Greg, you can talk about anything for 60 seconds, which is purpose number two, if you can make sense out of nonsense, you can make sense out of anything. So I encourage executives, especially people who are a little older who have children or nieces and nephews to do this three to five times a day. And ideally, just do it with your family because it's fun, and it gets you results pretty quickly.

Greg Voisen
That's a really good tip, because it's impromptu speaking. I know I was in college, I used to be on the debate team. And I used to be on the speaking team. And I always did well, right, I always placed well, but they were competitions. It's a little different, right? But I think if people think of it as a competition, and say, okay, I'm here to be number one, I'm here to be in the top 1%, as you say, then it takes on this sense of responsibility, you know, for being a good public speaker, or being really good at listening. And I'll have a question for you about listening in a minute. So can you give the or I would say, what characteristics and skills? Do you believe someone needs to hone meaning to get better? To be a an effective communicator?

Brenden Kumarasamy
Absolutely, Greg, there's a lot. But let me give you the most important one, which is consistency. You know, the reason we admire the person who goes to the gym is not because they go once, it's because out of the year, they'll go 190 times, they'll go 200 time, that's the person we admire. And the problem is communication is twofold. One, we don't know what to practice. And two, we don't know how to measure the progress. So because of that, we're, it's harder for us to go to the quote unquote, communication gym, because we don't know we're practicing. And we don't see the results as quickly as a weight loss goal. Because if you do weight loss as an example, and you go to a gym, you eat the right things, even if you don't have a coach or a superstar expert telling you what to do, you'll probably lose two or three pounds in a month, by doing just the right things. That makes sense. But we don't have that equivalent in communication. So for me, the big the big takeaway here is everybody listened to this podcast book, 15 minutes into your calendar. Like right now, as you're listening to this every single day, to just do the random word exercise, the best way to speak is to speak and we have other x's that we're happy to talk about. But the main idea is can you raise it to 100? Not Am I doing this? Well, not? Am I doing this correctly? Oh, well, Brendon to prove this, but more in the sense of, are you just doing 100 reps. And if you do that, you'll definitely get way better at the skill?

Greg Voisen
That's very good. You know, I just had a gentleman on here, Thomas Moore. He was a podcast that we did on a book called the eloquence of silence. And Thomas Moore is well known author probably 24 different books or so. And I always think about what used to be referred to in the industry as pregnant pauses, right? Like this pause in when you're speaking or in even when you're one on one communicating, speak with about the power of the eloquence of silence.

Brenden Kumarasamy
For sure, Greg? So pausing is really important. And communication serves a few purposes. Number one, it allows you to emphasize the key points of your message. If you're talking at the same pace the entire time, and you don't pause the audience listening to the show, or your speech doesn't know what is the most important part. But if I take a pause, before I share something really important, everybody gets drawn in and says, okay, whatever Brett is going to say next, he's hinting at me that it's really important through the technique of the pause. So that's why pausing is so important. The other purpose that it serves, is it removes filler words. So the best way to get rid of a Yeah, is to replace them with nothing. So instead of going, great question, Greg, we replace it with great point, Greg, here's my thoughts. So notice how I pause there. Which leads me to the last point, how do you practice this? So the way that you practice this is a little uncomfortable, but my way of doing it gets you results very, very fast. It's an exercise I teach clients called the endless gaze. So the endless case is really simple. Find somebody you love in your house or somebody around you sit in front of them, and stare into their eyes for three minutes straight without saying a single word you can blink. But you can't talk. And a lot of married couples. I've done this with Cat lasts three minutes, but if you could last three minutes, what happens is you get really comfortable pause. zing uncomfortably for three minutes. So when you go back into your presentations, it's really easy for you to pause for three seconds.

Greg Voisen
It's a great tip, because I've done that. And you start off very uncomfortable. And like you said, you move to this spot of being more comfortable with it, after you've completed it. And the more you do it, just like you said, practicing it. This whole element about intentional communications, what has to happen to one's demeanor to become a more intentional communicator? In other words, you know, we live in a really fast paced world out there, people are moving at lightspeed, they frequently put their foot in their mouth, because they don't think about what they're going to say before they actually say it, right? And it ends up being more detrimental to them than it does having a positive with the people they're working with, whether it's individually or even in a group. Talk with us a bit about intentional communication, and what has to happen to our demeanor and our mindset, our mindset, even more importantly,

Brenden Kumarasamy
yeah, absolutely. Greg, you know, for me, intentionality breeds, the best ideas, and it also breeds messaging. So what do I mean by this? You know, Oprah is famous for her talk show. And she talks a lot about her intention for every guest that she has on her podcast or on in her in her interview, in her case, and every single morning, what she would do, and she would go up to every single producer of the show and ask them a simple question. And it's the same one every day. What is your intention today? What is your intention with the guests that we have on? What is your intention with the format? And it's through those questions that allows Oprah to get really clear on why that person is there, and what is the magic that we want to create together. And that doesn't just apply with interviews, that applies with everything that you do. Because if you're not clear on why you're doing something, your messaging is going to be all over the place, you'll go here and then there and you'll, you'll be all over the place, it'll be really confusing for people. So I'll give you an example. There's a very big difference if my intention was to convince everyone else that they're a great communicator, versus convinced everyone else that I'm a great communicator. Because if my intention was to convince the world that I'm a great communicator, every single answer would just be about me. Oh, I'm so great. This is all my accolades is how cool I am. But if my intention becomes how do I make this valuable for other people, it changes the way I speak from, I'm so great to look at all the problems I had in my life. And if I could be a great speaker, come on, of course, all of you can. So it changes the messaging, right? That's why it's so important for us to be clear, yes,

Greg Voisen
the focus, it shifts the focus, you know, and, again, egos aside, you know, everybody's got one. The question is, is how do you tame it to become a better communicator, so that you're a heartfelt communicator. And I, you know, I did a course, back in 2005, and got a master's degree in spiritual psychology. And one of the things that we used to talk about was heartfelt communication. And if you would speak with the listeners about how it is that they tap into this emotional side of themselves, so that the stories they convey. And the vulnerability as Brene, Brown says, is truly there. And I think vulnerability when it comes to communicating is so important. Because for especially for this talk about executives in a company, don't care at what level when you become human, when you become yourself, when you tell vulnerable stories. You allow the other person on the other side to grow with you. And to learn from you speak about that, if you would vulnerability.

Brenden Kumarasamy
Yeah, absolutely correct. So great point. So there's two parts of vulnerability. The first one is an understanding that you don't have to be super vulnerable, like our definition of vulnerability is, is very different from our audience perspective. So what I mean here, you don't have to always talk about your traumatic past. That's not what vulnerable means. There's different levels of vulnerability. So the key is to just get started with something you're comfortable with. And it can be something really funny. It doesn't have to start with something oh my god, this is really terrible. And I grew up in a dysfunctional household. You have to start with those stories if you're not comfortable sharing them. Like one of the stories I share. It's called the blueberry story, where I tell a funny story about how I work all day. So I never see my mom and my sister even if they live right up there. Right UPS There's, but every single day, I always go upstairs and get blueberries. And I watch them. And I say, hey, do you want me to show that I care about them. So it's those little micro interactions, but it's nothing serious. But I'm still sharing the sight of who I am. That's one piece. For people who are a little bit more advanced, who want to go into their personal stories, the strategy I teach, which is more ball 60. And honestly, so if you're not doing the random, we're an exercise don't do what I'm about to recommend, which is you go online, you look up personal stories of other people, and you present them as if you're them. So there's a community called the moth, it's like an underground storytelling community. So I take their, their personal stories, and we present them like we're them.

Greg Voisen
Interesting. Now, those are all great tips for people, you know, I, you say this, but I think that to be a good communicator, one has to be a good listener. And I want you to speak about the importance of listening, when it comes to being a better communicator, because they often used to say, if you're waiting to speak while someone else is speaking with you, you're not hearing the message from the other person, number one, and you're going to miss communicate, versus if you truly are focused on the other person's message, you're gonna become a much better communicator. And that means you have to be open to listening.

Brenden Kumarasamy
Yeah, absolutely. Greg, you know, for me, listening is so important. You know, there's a great there's a quote on this, which is you have, we have two years in one mouth for a reason, right? So we can listen twice as much as we speak. But you know, what's missing? I find in these in the conversations around listening, it's how do we practically get better at this. And there's a strategy I teach that people can use called the goals call. So it's really simple. Pick somebody you really enjoyed talking with somebody in your life, it could be an old friend, could be a family member, or somebody is more growth minded. Ideally, somebody who's listened to the podcast with you right now. And you sit them down for 45 minutes. And here's what you do during the call. You begin by asking them, what are your top three goals for the year? And why are those goals personally important to you? Stop personal. Take five minutes, Greg, and just write out, hey, this is my three goals. This is why it's important. And then they'll communicate that back to you. Then what you do is you restate what you heard. So just to make sure I got this, Julia, you said your three goals were this? And this is why it's important to did I get that right. And then Julia will respond with Okay, yes. And I'll add a few more things. And then for the remainder of the 45 minute call, Greg, what you'll do is you will ask clarifying questions around their goals. So if they have a weight loss goal, you'll say, okay, how much do you weigh? Now? How much do you want to weigh in the future? And the most important part of the goals call is you're not allowed to give advice throughout the whole call. And if you do this for 10 people, and you just restate what you hear, you'll be pretty good at communication and listening.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, and then people will think more highly of you as well, because you took the time to listen. And one of the statements that's frequently said, is what I heard you say, was, and repeat what I heard you say? Because then people are saying they're confirming? No, no, that's not exactly what I said. This is what I meant by what I said. And sometimes you have to go through a couple of iterations of what I heard you say, right, and you really get down to the issue. Um, let's talk about the foundations of mastering any presentation, you have a video out there, it's at your main website, and it is talking about the foundations of any presentation. What are those foundations? And what do my listeners need to know about those before? I don't care if the presentation is to three people, or 3000 people, these foundational things, tips you're gonna give us are irrelevant in either case.

Brenden Kumarasamy
Yeah, for sure, Greg, to keep it simple. It's three main things. One is to find your key idea. If there's one idea that you want to get shared, that you want to make sure is remembered throughout the whole conversation or presentation you're giving. What would you want that to be and why? And for me, it's really simple in this conversation, convinced anyone who's listening to this podcast, that they can be an exceptional communicator, through the simplicity of the tips to the personal stories, through the way that I started my journey. If everyone's convinced that you'd be a great speaker, I consider that mission accomplished. So that's the key idea. The second part is your attention. How do you plan on living the intention of your message throughout the presentation, that could be the emotions that you share ideas around stories and how to get your point across etc. And the Third point is a piece on how to actually practice presentations, which is really simple that most people don't really do. And it's a strategy I teach, called puzzles. So we all know jigsaw puzzles, like those little toys that we kind of played as kids. There's like 1000 pieces, right? So the question becomes, which pieces do we work on first, when we do a jigsaw puzzle, and the

Greg Voisen
the outside edges and move in?

Brenden Kumarasamy
That's correct. Tell us why tell us why they're very good.

Greg Voisen
Well, because it allows you to frame what you're working on. And you can see the picture in your mind's eye.

Brenden Kumarasamy
Wow, very, very well explained. And you're clearly a puzzle pro Greg, which, which is the,

Greg Voisen
but I but, but I do know how to put together a puzzle. But he

Brenden Kumarasamy
explained it pretty well. So you actually use it a lot of the right words, the framing, you see the picture in your mind. But why am I bringing this up? I'm telling you this because when we work on a presentation, unfortunately, we do the opposite. We shove a bunch of content, we get to the presentation, we ramble throughout the whole thing. And then the last slide sounds something like this. Yeah, so thanks, not the right approach. So instead, what you want to do is practice like a jigsaw puzzle. Practice just the introduction, Greg 10 times 15 times your interest, two minutes, it's only going to take you 30 minutes. Same thing with the conclusion, what's a great movie with a terrible ending, last time I checked, terrible movie, then worked your way through it some

Greg Voisen
Another wonderful tip that you're given everybody a for my listeners, if you're still hanging in there, hope you're listening to all these tips, especially if you want to be in the top 1%. And again, go to Master talks.ca. Now, you have a video entitled, should you focus on content or delivery? Can you tell us tell the listeners why both are important? But that delivery makes a presentation much more meaningful. So when I talked about delivery, I was coaching a guy the other day, who was out speaking, and I told him to tell him he's a famous mountain climber, all the science, Seven Summits. And I said, you need to tell more stories. You know, you have these handouts you give to the audience, and then you're trying to fill in the words in between, but they don't really, they're not going to keep that bow you need to but they are going to keep the story about the Sherpa that came up to you and gave you the syringe to put in the guy's neck so that his brain wouldn't swell and die and you saved his life, those stories they are going to remember. So we had a nice little talk about content and delivery. And by the time he got to the third presentation, he was flying.

Brenden Kumarasamy
That's awesome.

Greg Voisen
So what do you what are you going to tell our listeners about content delivery and stories? I want to throw stories in there because stories are really important.

Brenden Kumarasamy
Yeah, for sure. Right. So to your point, you know, both are important. And the reason is, because if you have great content, but terrible delivery, nobody remembers the message. And if you have great delivery, but terrible content, there's nothing worth remembering. Right? Even if even if the delivery is great. But the reason why I edge on mastering delivery, as a as a more urgent activity than content is because if you're mastering or taking initiative to work on your speaking skills, chances are, you're not dumb, chances are you have some level of expertise already in something. That's why for me, the delta of improvement has always been more important on the delivery side, because that's what's missing. And the example you gave his great like bow in both case, he was already really talented look at all the accomplishments that Beau had in his life. But the key is when it comes to the delivery of that amazing accomplishments and everything he's done. That's it's a hero. I just wanna make sure I got that. Yeah. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Right, is that hey, that's what was missing. It's, hey, how do you deliver that message? And what I was going back to, is, wait a second, high school teachers were really well educated. They had a bachelor's degrees at bachelor's degrees. How much do you remember from high school? So there you go. That's why delivery is more

Greg Voisen
important. Well, you know, and like you were, you took enough math courses in you know, what equations are, right? And speaking actually can be an equation. And what I'd like you to do is leave our listeners, Brendan, with what you would consider would be the perfect equation for creating a top 1% communication. And what Hear the elements that are in, you know, the equation.

Brenden Kumarasamy
I don't think there's a perfect equation, Greg to finding becoming a top 1% communicator. But why do I talk about that that's probably more relevant. For me my definition of a top 1% communicators really simple. What are the actions that one is willing to take that the other 99% of the population in your industry are not willing to do? So let me give you a simple example with a man willing

Greg Voisen
to sit there and do 500 emails a day manually.

Brenden Kumarasamy
But that's more to be somebody else. That's probably a B, to B.

Greg Voisen
But that's you. For sure.

Brenden Kumarasamy
But in the context of communication, though, it's a lot of people are listening to this podcast, but how many of them are actually going to practice the random word exercise once? That's probably 10%. How many of them are going to do a 10? times? Maybe 5%? Maybe?

Greg Voisen
Even percent? Yeah, maybe 10%? What about

Brenden Kumarasamy
100? What about 100 times, and now that number gets really, really small. But here's the punchline, if you're an accountant listening to this podcast right now, and you do it 100 times, you might just be in the 0.1%, top communicators of your industry. And that's really the point. That's just one example. So for me, what it means to be a top one percenter is to stack these wins on top of each other, so that you'd become unbeatable in your industry.

Greg Voisen
You know, over the years, we've seen public figures come and go, and all of us remembers presidents who were, who were effective. I'm gonna say effective and told great stories. And their delivery was wonderful. And I'm just going to say, in my lifetime, that I can remember, obviously, I remember John F. Kennedy. And I remember Barack Obama. Now, Barack Obama, to me was extremely intelligent, and had a wonderful delivery effort. If I was gonna give somebody a great a score, I would put Obama in that a score. I won't even say who I'll put in the F score. Because if we're grading papers, we've had some recent ones that that are whored are great communicators and would get an F score. So for all of you who are listening, if you want to improve your communication skills and be in the top 1%, go to Master talk.ca. Go to the YouTube videos that he's got. Like he said, he's got over 30,000 people that are doing that, check out Brendan's website where you can get speaking topics about you can book Brendon but do reach out to him if you would please, Brenda, and it's been a pleasure having you on inside personal growth and taking a few minutes to speak about how to become more of a master at the end craftsman at building a speech, practicing a speech delivering a speech and delivering communications overall, just a better communicator. Thank you for being on inside personal growth and spending some time with us.

Brenden Kumarasamy
Pleasure was absolutely mine, Greg. Thanks for having me.

Greg Voisen
Thanks.