72: Brett Smith - From Boxing Rings to Serial Entrepreneurship

In today's episode, Ryan speaks to Brett Smith, a former world-rated and Lightweight professional boxing champion.  

Mentally battling addiction during his boxing prime, Smith rebounded and returned to the sport even stronger. He later left his high-paying job to start a successful business that scaled to seven figures in just two years. Additionally, he serves as a mindset and performance coach at Conscious Hooligan, demonstrating the same determination and tenacity in all his endeavors.

Tune in to learn more about:

• What attracted him to boxing and the earliest memories of the sport ingrained in his mind
• Succumbing mentally to addiction and how he dealt with it and redirected himself
• Coming back to boxing and navigating through it professionally
• What options did he have when he recognized that his boxing career was coming to an end
• Brett's toughest match in the ring and what he feels it took from him
• Why if athletes venture into business their odds of succeeding are very high
• What he has to leave in the ring to be successful in business 
• Amazing insights from his personal experiences on how to prepare and navigate your second wind

…and so much more!

Are you looking for Career Clarity for your next step, for more information, or to book a consultancy, make sure you check out www.2ndwind.io  

Links:

Instagram: https://instagram.com/brett_w_smith?ig 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-w-smith 

Resources:

You Can Heal Your Life: by Hay Louise: https://www.amazon.com/You-Can-Heal-Your-Life/dp/0937611018

Mind Power into the 21st Century: by Kehoe John https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Power-into-21st-Century/ 

Transcript

Brett: 0:00

We really did the one percent. We took a lot more serious recovery was a big part of it. I remember we met with Malmendinga Steve Edward to introduce me and he just kind of shook his head at my recovery. Like I was driving hundreds and hundreds of like thousand K a week to train and you know he just shook his head like coming from a really professional sporting coaching Queensland you know legend status to watching this boat drive down from Sunshine Coast to Cooper every day to train was ridiculous. So we changed a lot of things. We got really serious and, yeah, we went on and had some pretty good success.

Brett: 0:32

I end up retiring on my own terms with a record 19 wins, two losses and a draw Was my own terms until last year. I decided I would come back at 42. But then everything happens for the reasons and it was obviously right. It was obviously meant to happen and the lessons were there and I really embraced and enjoyed the preparation. I can't say I ever did stop to enjoy the preparation in a boxing prep when I was in the middle of my career because you were just killing yourself to be the best.

Ryan Gonsalves: 0:56

Hi, I'm Ryan Gonsalves, and welcome to a second wind Academy podcast, a show all about career transition through the lens of elite athletes. Each week, I invite a guest to the show who shares their unique sporting story. Please join me to delve into the thoughts and actions of athletes through a series of conversations. Don't worry, there's plenty to learn from those of you that aren't particularly sporty. Elite athletes are still people after all. Let's be inspired by the stories of others.

Brett: 1:29

Brett welcome to the show. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me on board tonight.

Ryan Gonsalves: 1:36

Great, I am looking forward to our conversation because you've transitioned in and out of sports and now I'm really intrigued to talk about how you are giving back to the sport and helping that next generation come through. I think there's going to be a lot that our listeners can take from this conversation, so thanks for taking the time out to join me today.

Brett: 1:59

Yeah, no, it's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, 100% what your podcast reaches. All parts of me have transitioned through sports my whole life. I've been going to business going on eight years ago and that's correct. I now give back to the sport in some levels. I assist in coach in different parts and I also work on performance and mindset in different parts. I give back to a range of other sports as well, so it's not just boxing. I'm involved in junior netball. I only coach for my daughters one of my daughters and in Taekwondo actually we're not one of my daughters Very active family and that involvement with team sports.

Brett: 2:43

Boxing is a very solitude sport in a lot of ways, but you need a very good team around you to really succeed and that's often forgotten. That said, there's only one person they get punched in the face and that's you. But there really is a broad team in the background working tirelessly to try and help those boxers, help me, help people try and reach their best. And although I'm quite busy in business these days, I'm lucky enough to be involved with, you know, a handful of high-calibre young professional fighters. It keeps me very stimulated with this sport and also, you know ringside and the fight nights, I help out with the cuts and that's very, very much a part I love.

Brett: 3:25

Without being selfish to the coaches, you really do get the best seats in the house. You're all action, you're all in, you're very involved with the fight and you do take the highs and lows. I mean, you do take those losses and wins as well. But it's a different beast with a coach and a fighter and, like I said, without being selfish, you kind of do get the best of both worlds in that split second of a moment. You know you don't get the highest of highs that you get because you just cut me and help me out or, you know, help me out one day a week or two days a week. My capacity at this point is about that, but you do. It's not as high as high as high, but probably not as low as low as, but it definitely keeps me very passionate and involved with the sport, so that I'm very grateful for yeah.

Ryan Gonsalves: 4:10

That really is interesting. Got my mind going already. What do you think attracted you to the sport of boxing in the first play?

Brett: 4:17

For me, to be totally honest, boxing was a sport that I high functioning young kid, I suppose without putting labels on things Very busy kid, very full on, very energetic I wouldn't say overly hyperactive as a young kid, but very energetic, very full on and I played rugby league all my life, from like four years old because my father was coaching footy. That's what he did. My brother was nine years old, so he played rugby league. From when I could walk. I was around a footy field on a weekend. I was ball boy from as again, as early as I could walk. So I just trans.

Brett: 4:52

You know, I was playing footy at four and a half years old, in the under sevens I think, and I was pretty blessed. I played with a lot of good quality players, you know, when I transitioned into my actual age group. So I went from four and a half in under sevens because I didn't have under sixes. Then the next year I was in under sixes at five and then by sevens I'd reached my actual age group and we really had a real blessed bunch of talented football players and I put a lot of those names well ahead of me. I was lucky enough to be a halfback, so I was very much a playmaker and a ballmaker and maybe the brains of the outfit, but there was definitely a lot more talent on that field than me and that's actually where I met one of the guys that introduced us, david. But yeah, I started boxing in the off seasons to rugby league. Like I said, I was pretty full on and I wouldn't even say hyperactive, I'd say very full on and involved and energetic, and I needed stimulation and mum, dad, took me to the boxing gym in the cross season, the off season, and I did that for three or four years, from about 12 years old I think. Then the under 15s I well, no, under 14s. I snapped my leg with two minutes to go, running down trying to score a try in Shark Park and Sharky's main ground, there for the grand final, two minutes to go. I remember it clearly as a 14 year old. I forgot a lot of things in my life, but there's some things that are ingrained in your memory.

Brett: 6:11

Yeah, so I snapped my leg and I think that was at the point where I'd realised I was too small for the game. I knew it and I was never. I didn't grow like the other guys grew. I was late to mature, you might say, and a nice way of putting it. So I went. You know what? I was going to? Go all in on boxing for a year and I think I had five or six amateur fights for four or five victories.

Brett: 6:33

I won a Novostate title or something like this out of the Southern PCYC under a fantastic old coach's name, skip Fred Lentful. So that was my introduction to boxing. It was a part time thing and then it really did consume me. The initial part was the fact that I could fight people my own weight as a small kid, so that was very attractive. As I got older it was like I can go in there and it's me or them. There's nowhere to hide, there's no 13, 12 other players to pass the ball to on that field, it's just you and them. And that was very attractive to me, I guess, throughout the years. And I fell in and out of the sport. So I did box from, say, 15 through full when I retired at 33.

Brett: 7:17

I had lots of highs and lows on my journey. Lots of highs, I traveled extensively, but I had my fair share of lows, you know, with substance and alcohol abuse. I don't get attached to that story per se anymore. But it was a big part of my life, my battle addiction quite heavily at a young age, at a junior age, at sort of late teams through to, through to. I left the country when I was 21 and and even beyond. But I think escaping Australia and the Southern Shore, you might say, definitely helped at that point in my life. Then I'll never really step back in. Yeah, sorry you first.

Ryan Gonsalves: 7:50

Yes. So, brett, just let me understand sort of that time series a little bit, because you know for you, you know this terrible break as a, as a junior rugby league player. I guess that opened up then that opportunity for you to take boxing more seriously was what was it like then for initially, for that dream of rugby league? To what extent was that dream for rugby league then taken away from you? Were you then too late to be able to progress after that broken leg?

Brett: 8:17

So I took a season off and went to boxing and you talk about, like, the effects it has on on mentally, and I don't take this stuff, any of this for granted and I don't, I don't joke about any of that, but I've always been built, I suppose might say, with him in an eight resilience. I come from a you know a couple of tough families and it's not that I haven't suffered mental health issues of my own over the years, you know, like induced addiction and depression and stuff like this. But for me and I do realize, just reflecting literally now that when I have a setback I just changed tact and go again. You know nothing's going to keep me down, it's going to refocus and go again and some and I noticed that more so now than ever you know I've had setbacks. I had actually had a professional boxing match last year at age 42 and after an eight and a half year, layoff and I refused to fight and nobody had fought a relatively guy that had been retired about 12 months in one Australian title. He fought some of the big names like Stevie Spark in Australia these accomplished fighters and I'd been out of the ring for eight years. He was a bigger fighter than me, but I wanted that challenge and I truly believe that I had what it took to win.

Brett: 9:28

I went back there for my 20th professional victory. I retired with 19 wins, so had a reality check pretty quickly in about around one or two. This was going to be a tough night of the office and I got beaten, you know, and everyone was like how are you managing this? He's like oh well, I did my best like a train hard. I did the best I could with the time that I had. I'd been out there in eight years. You can't buy that time back. You can't fix ring rust. It is a real thing and I got in there and I had a red hot crack. But my response is that and I think I did a video or a podcast about my reflection upon that and I was like you know what? I've got four young kids and I will ring side for that and they're like I has to make you feel to see your kids see a lose. I'm like, well, they see a really driven, really go getting father who does everything to win that. Everything he does in business, in sport, everything he does they go for life by the throat. He wants to win and he saw, they saw me lose and I was very humming to feed. I was like, oh well, guys, that's all good, we just changed tack, we go again, we just get back on that horse and we keep riding, so kind of a bit of a side traffic there. So I dance.

Brett: 10:35

But for me I stepped out of the sport of 15 to box. I had a year in boxing and this is where it gets a little bit interesting. My life when was unraveling quite heavily with addiction at that point and I went back to rugby league in the 17s as a skinnier kid in worse ways probably mentally and physically, than I should have been, and we went on to win the calm undefeated and I won best in Ferris State year. So it really was a bit of a rub and people's nose in it, saying that you can't do what you do on the weekends and not show the respect to your body and be the athlete you should be and then just turn up and win. And you know I did.

Brett: 11:12

No, I don't. I don't admire that part of me at all. I'm very strict on myself in this day and age. I'm very strict as an athlete. I run a marathon this weekend, funnily enough, you know I'm very, very, very strict on myself, but back then I was a 17-year-old kid and I was unraveling. I really was unraveling and I was. I did succumb mentally to addiction. I don't see it as the same thing that I saw it then. I said it was a story that I attached to. There's some generational stuff there with my family and stuff and I was happy to attach myself to that. But I think it's just a matter of changing focus and redirecting yourself and going again, whatever the setback.

Ryan Gonsalves: 11:52

Yeah that's a lot that you as a young individual had to go through. As you look back at that period and that you know moving into, coming out of rugby, dealing without substance abuse at the time, how did you deal with that?

Brett: 12:04

I don't think I managed myself very well at all or dealt with it very well at all. I spent my 19th birthday in a rehab and detoxary rehabilitation center in Northern City. I didn't have the skills to manage myself at all then and back then, you know, mental health was a topic more discussed in AA meetings, the idea of actually talking through, you know, you're just labelled, and that's where I've got a little bit of problem with that space these days, that it creates a victim in people where there doesn't need to be. I acknowledge and I'm very conscious of how I try and verbalize this because I acknowledge that addiction is a real thing in a lot of people's minds. But for me, after a 10-year kind of journey of self-discovery and coming back to myself authentically as I have been able to be, I've learned that there's no such for me. And I'll say for me because I don't want to pretend I'm a doctor or anything or that I just know what's true for me and I know that it's true I might add it on a lot of fronts that addiction is a level of escape and when you start to face the realities of the fear, the trauma, whether it be generational, whether it be stored, whether it be validation, just trying to fit in, whatever it is, and it always comes back to those core topics that are created as a child, like these are.

Brett: 13:25

Our fingerprints are created as very young, young age, and that's you know. We live and breathe what we learn in the first seven years of our journey, we might tack on some of the years between seven and 14 and then maybe 14 and 21 gets a snippet as well. By then you're fully developed and you are believing the beliefs that you learn at a very young age. So it's taken me a long time between I'm 42 and I've probably been working on that 10 years. But back then I didn't have the skills and I didn't have the support. I had a very good company that I worked for, an electrical company. I left school at 15 to become an electrician. They supported me wholly. They paid for rehabilitation, they kept me employed after I finished it. But it was a real tough challenge, coming out growing up in the show out and not coming out of the rehab clinic at 19. Like I couldn't wait to escape the country at 21 with that way.

Ryan Gonsalves: 14:16

And so I know you spent time overseas and part of that recovery process. I'm interested to understand how sport, how you know finding, boxing and navigating your way through that period. What was that transition moment for you like?

Brett: 14:30

May when I so I left the country at 21. I come back at about 25. I've got a beautiful wife and four young children now. I have been with Taren 15 years. I think about that. Anyway, before that I had a previous girlfriend.

Brett: 14:47

It was an emotional breakup and I had come back from Australia after a year and a half in Egypt. I teach in Scuba Diving and I come back and flew straight into the show out, right in the middle of the Kranale Rites and I just couldn't quite fathom what was happening. I've looked at Australia very judgmentally, particularly after a year and a half in the Middle East and country, very respectful of the Muslim culture. And then, coming back to that, I was just like I'm out of here and mum and dad had moved to the Sunshine Coast. We had come here for many, many more since my childhood as a school holidays. It was always their dream to retire and that day had retired up here.

Brett: 15:22

So I come to the Sunshine Coast. I had no friends, I had no real relationships other than my parents. I met a girl in Europe, in the UK, and we actually reconnected over here on the sunny coast. It didn't work out. It was a very messy and emotional breakup for me and I was falling. I find myself falling back into a place I didn't want to be and I said I need to do something else. I need to do something else. I need to get out of this rut. I know where it's going. I know where it's going to end because I've been there and that was boxing. So I walked back in a gym at 26 years old. I had, I think, 11 amateur fights in a very short consecutive period within 10 months, and then I lost a state title which we felt short chain, for this is amateur boxing. Nothing is it given these days, or ever and never has been. And then a Lord, australian or professional boxing career as a very raw, angry, emotional kid, really Like I was still that kid at 26, 27 years old.

Ryan Gonsalves: 16:20

At that time for you turning pro as a boxer, what had you dreamt of? What was your end game Sorry, I missed that. As a boxer, what was it you were trying when you turned to become a pro boxer? What were you really trying to achieve? Did you set your sights on being a world champion, or was it simply something to distract you or take you away from your day-to-day life?

Brett: 16:45

I love the way you've said that distraction and when you say day-to-day life, you could probably have said pain, like I was running from myself. At that point I was very angry, I was lost, to be honest, and boxing helped me find myself. I really didn't, like I said, I didn't know anyone. I didn't have any great relationships. The relationships I had that I'd grown up with in Sydney were all based around substance and alcohol and drug abuse. So what boxing did do for me? It didn't happen straight away, but once I turned professional I chalked up some good victories in pretty fast succession and I actually I was in the local papers a lot and the local news of an evening. And what it did do? It gave me an identity when I didn't have one, and it gave me a pretty healthy identity. It made me proud of who I was and helped me find myself. And it helped me dig deep when the chips were down. It helped me keep hunting when I wanted to give up. All the things that attracts those broken children to boxing or the hard luck stories. You know I come from a loving family, but we're blue collar, we're working class, we didn't come from much. So it was all of that to me.

Brett: 17:56

I didn't really care about winning titles at first until I got to about I think I was eight, no, five or six knockouts, something like this. I had an underfeated record, one draw. My first fight was a draw in Cranulla. I was a technical draw, so a head class, so I didn't go to the judges and, yeah, I got the opportunity to fight for the Australian title. That was when I went, wow, I've actually done something with my life, because to that point I mean, I traveled the world, I finished my electrical apprenticeship in 19, but I was plagued with just negative beliefs and, you know, lack of self-love. I really struggled to accept myself. I guess I never really. I guess I felt that I fit it in.

Brett: 18:38

So when I got the opportunity to fight for that Australian title and half the boys from Sydney come up for it, I really felt like I'd done something with my life. Like I said, even though I'd done pretty well, I bought my first property at 19 years old, like I'd been quite successful. But I didn't feel that way, where boxing gave me an identity that I can't quite explain how proud it made me of myself In a person that still felt like a broken child inside and then to win the Australian title and it really felt like I climbed to the top of the mountain. And I say this I've said this a hundred times over, I'm sure, but everything after that was just a bonus the Australian title I didn't realize it, I didn't sit out to do it. But when that opportunity like to become the champion of your country and I held that I'm very patriotic and I'm very proud to be an Australian and to hold that. For two and a half years I defended it multiple times. It was a real highlight of my boxing career.

Ryan Gonsalves: 19:36

You know, just listen to you, looking at you say it as well, you can tell the pride exudes. You know, can really see it, which I think wonderful. I mean, I'm just briefly. I'm now Interested. You say everything else was a bonus, but it sounds like it was a great bonus that followed.

Brett: 19:52

I mean it definitely transition into a more serious game after that. Well, I, what's next? I mean I hope the Australian title, for I guess I'm two and a half years. I got beat by jack, says I think somewhere along, not like I've like a three or four fights after this, why not even been that many, I'm not I can't remember, but I got been by him, which was he. Jack went on to win the ivo featherweight or student featherweight world title. He was a great filipino fighter but I come up back off that and I held the Australian title. I think I defend the Australian title against a great Aussie fighter. Make sure I had lightweight. The two weeks later, fruit of granola and I I fought for the wba Habitatal panacean title which secured your top 15 world ranking with the win at junior welterweight. So I went up division, which means you can't hold a regional belt and a national title in the same division. You relinquish. So you win the Australian title and you fought. For a reason you relinquish that title but because I for a period there I had the wba power and the Australian lightweight title was a magical little time in my career.

Brett: 21:02

But yeah, we went on to do better. I mean I work. To be honest. I know that there is more money in boxing now. There is more support, more sponsorship, more mainstream media. But I mean I know they still work hard in the background and a lot of them still run a whole down a full time job. But but back then we're in the dark ages. You know, besides Anthony mundine and and Danny green, you know they were holding the flag pretty much a whole Australian boxing and and the only time you got seen on tv is if you fought on one of the undercards. So we're in the dark ages a little bit. So we were very hard for our pennies and and I worked For the majority of my career.

Brett: 21:38

At the back end of it we did. I had a great boxing manager, steven edwards, and a great team down at cooperew boxing gym where I finished my career and they really, we really did the one percent we took. A lot more serious recovery was a big part of it. I mean we met with now and then go. Steve edwards introduced me and he just kind of shook his head at my recovery like I was driving Hundreds and hundreds of like thousand k a week to train and you know you just shook his head like coming from a really professional sporting coaching Queensland. You know legend status to watch in this boat. Drive down from sunshine cast to cooperevry date to train was ridiculous.

Brett: 22:17

So we we change a lot of things. We got really serious and, yeah, we went on, had some pretty good success. I end up retiring. I'm on terms with a record 19 wins, two losses in a draw was my own terms until last year when I decided to come back at 42. But they, everything happens for the reasons and it was obviously right. It was obviously meant to happen in the lessons with air and I and I really embraced, enjoyed the preparation, which I can't say ever did. Stop to enjoy the preparation in a boxing prep when I was in the middle of my career because you just killing yourself to be the best.

Ryan Gonsalves: 22:48

There are too many stories of bankruptcies, mental health issues and, unfortunately, suicide, and so I think it's time to act. Every year, we see thousands of athletes that reach a point where they need to consider their life after the sport. This might be a retirement injury, or they need to juggle dual careers between sport and a job. As a former English professional footballer, I have somehow managed to transition from sport into banking, strategy, innovation and now life coach, career practitioner and founder of the second wind academy, so I want to help those around me find their career second with. Find me on instagram or through my new facebook group, second wind academy, where I'd love to know your thoughts and suggestions. You're telling me the story there of achieving those highs turning pro, meeting some legends of australian sport and getting guidance in terms of what you know, how to become even more professional, and you were. At what point did you start to recognize that your professional boxing career was coming to an end?

Brett: 23:54

Yeah, that's a great question. I thought I could. King congs ish thong from thailand and it was a brutal exchange was a brutal 12 round war. The only time I went to full 12 rounds in a fight I'd been, I'd been sanctioned on, I think, three or four, but it was the only time that it went 12 rounds and if you know anything about boxing or even the language around, it was a fight that could have been fought in a phone box. Okay, it was that, it was just toe to toe center ring. There was no you know. After that around three or four, the lot of the skill went out of it and it was like it was a war. I think I dropped him three times. I dropped in three times three, eight counts over the course of the fight. I think I went down once and I got married nine days later and I was in a hell of a state. I'd stitch his up the front of my head. You know it's probably only one of the only males who has a makeup artist, for example.