Brandon Clift | The Path of a Warrior: Rethinking Modern Masculinity | Tom Rowland Podcast Ep. 127

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 127 with Brandon Clift.

Introduction: A Legacy of Adventure

Tom Rowland: There are those in your life that mean a tremendous amount to you, and sometimes you don't realize that until many, many years later. What an impact, what a small little legacy someone left on your life. Today's podcast is kind of about that a little bit. There was a gentleman in my life. He's ten years older than me. He was friends with my sisters, and he was a little different than everybody else. Growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I didn't know anyone that really was doing anything like what this guy was doing. This guy was going out snow skiing, being a ski instructor. He was racing sailboats on the level of the America's Cup. He was traveling and going to places, and his sense of adventure was more than anyone else that I knew.

Tom Rowland: He exposed me to this sense of adventure, to this sense of optimism that you could do anything. You could make your life any way you wanted it to be. You didn't have to do what everybody else was doing. And I didn't realize how much that played a part in the way that my life eventually turned out until many, many years later. That guy's name is Bill Clift, and Bill moved to Australia and just developed a wonderful life for himself there. He has always had this great sense of adventure and this great sense of optimism, and he was always just a real fun guy to be around.

Tom Rowland: The last couple of years, I've met his son, Brandon. Brandon also was very impressive and has done some pretty cool stuff and has a very interesting story. So I had the opportunity to sit down with Brandon and learn all about what he's been up to, and boy, the story is incredible. For a 26-year-old, this guy has a tremendous amount of maturity and really a lot of insight on life. I enjoyed the conversation. I hope you will too. Onward to an awesome conversation with my friend, Brandon Clift.

Catching Up and the Start of the Journey

Tom Rowland: Alright, Brandon. How are you doing?

Brandon Clift: Doing well. Thank you, Tom.

Tom Rowland: I'm glad you could be here. So you and I have mutual friends and family friends, and we have been friends with your father almost my entire life. He eventually moves to Australia and comes back a few years ago, and then you came, and we all got to meet you, which was super cool. Since then, I've been following you on social media and just watching what you're doing. I see you're coming through town, and I wanted to catch up with you because it seems like you're doing some really cool stuff.

Brandon Clift: Honestly, the opportunity to do something like this is really cool for me. Having spent the past six months just traveling around the Americas, South America, and now up here, it's always good to know that there's family anywhere you go. Having a connection to people like yourself has just been a blessing, a real blessing. And I love coming to Chattanooga. I love coming in and working out with you and the other men. It's a beautiful environment in this town, but also what you've created.

Tom Rowland: Thank you. Well, tell me, what have you been doing? You've been traveling around. What started those travels?

Brandon Clift: So I had a bit of a quarter-life crisis. I'm past that now. In mid-2017, I lost one of my businesses, took a humongous hit, and it was a very tough time for me as a young entrepreneur, nearly losing almost everything. It really started to throw things into question for me about what I was actually spending my time on. For a long time, my mentors and my parents were saying, "Brandon, you're 25. Be a 25-year-old and have fun. Go do things." And my mentality was, "No, I'll do that when this is done." I'm not the kind of person that goes out and parties and drinks. That's not me.

Tom Rowland: So what was this that needed to be done?

Brandon Clift: Basically, my mentor put it this way. He said, "Go out, drink, and do what you need to do as a young man so that when you turn 40, you don't buy a Harley Davidson, cheat on your wife, and go through the crisis then. Be a young kid now." And he said, "Sell your business. If it's for a loss, it doesn't matter. You'll have another. But go out and have fun, and you will never regret it." It was hard. It was tough. I'd built my entire identity around my business.

Tom Rowland: And what was your business?

Brandon Clift: I had a gym on the Gold Coast in Australia that specialized specifically in people who had struggled with depression and anxiety and who had never been to a gym before. It was the only hole I could see in the market, because we have probably the most flooded city in Australia with fitness professionals, and it's also an area that's near and dear to my heart. We created this beautiful family of people who wanted to get in shape but also be vulnerable in the process. We all knew each other very well.

Growing Up and the Making of the Masculine Mask

Tom Rowland: How did you go down that road particularly? Did you have training in that, or did you just see that this was a need?

Brandon Clift: I think there are many variables that play into that. My upbringing was beautiful. I had beautiful parents, and they really worked their hardest to give me every opportunity possible. But being raised as a young man in Australia — I'm sure this is everywhere — Australia has this real mentality around how boys need to be raised. If a young boy falls over, skins his knee, and starts crying, it's not uncommon to hear a dad say, "Don't be a sissy. Get up. Stop crying and be a man." That's not how my parents raised me, but going to a private all-boys school in Australia, that's exactly what I got. It was don't cry, don't show emotions, be tough. If anyone tries to make you feel weak, punch them, get into fights, prove that you're not weak.

Brandon Clift: Not to say that I was a perpetrator of that behavior growing up. It just put me in this kind of dichotomy as a young man: okay, I need to be successful, make money, drive a nice car, date the most attractive women, and if anyone tries to tell me I'm not tough, I need to overpower them. There was this dichotomy I was living, because that's not who I wanted to be. I've always been an emotional person. I've always been someone who likes to connect with people, and not through force but through mutual admiration. So it was a very confusing upbringing, because I had a dad who was saying, "It's okay to cry. It's okay to be emotional. Show your feelings." And so I'd go to school and show those feelings and then get beaten up in the process. It put me in a state of mental conflict as I became a young adult and came out of university. I had to learn some things the hard way.

Tom Rowland: Your dad is such a wonderful person. I can see that it would be interesting as a transplant to Australia, seeing him in an environment where what he's telling you is not generally accepted. He's the guy who was giving people hugs thirty years ago before the bro hug was in fashion. "Why shake hands? Give me a big hug." He's just such a wonderful person. That's interesting that it's such a different culture there. Well, it's not — that culture exists here certainly. But what's different is that your dad was coming into that culture as a transplant, telling you that this is okay and everything's fine. But as soon as you go out into the world, it's completely opposite.

Brandon Clift: Yes. And it's not just the environment in school or what I learned from my sports coaches. This is on TV. It's in movies. Who are the protagonists in male-dominated movies? You've got the brunette crew cut who doesn't show much emotion, solves things with his fists, doesn't do a lot of talking but does a lot of action. These are the role models we've been given growing up. The only enthusiasm we get out of these protagonists is "yippee-ki-yay," and that's about it. Usually we're just given these models of men that don't talk about their feelings, don't talk about their problems. They just handle their business on their own.

Brandon Clift: I think that's where a lot of the issues are today with men's mental health. A lot of men have this belief that if they're struggling with anything, they need to be a man, and that looks like taking that problem, going to their cave with it, and not coming out until they've figured it out. Or smashing it. Or having all that hidden and repressed dissatisfaction come out sideways through mind-altering substances or really difficult periods of life. The best way to coin it is emotional irresponsibility. In Australia, yes, it happens a lot, but you're right — I see it a lot here. I saw it a lot in South America. I believe that if we had more consciousness around this, we'd have fewer men taking their lives.

The Breaking Point and Facing the Shadows

Tom Rowland: So is that what led you into creating a business around this and bringing fitness into it? Because of your experiences, you just saw, "Man, I could make a difference right here"?

Brandon Clift: Yeah. I think to get the motivation to do that, there has to be a myriad of experiences for that to occur. For me personally, 2015 was a tough year, a real tough year. This is when I started to move and shake in my industry. And with that, I was taking all of my dark stuff with me. I thought I was rising to the top as a personal trainer, and I was teaching at the time. I thought I was taking all the good stuff with me, not realizing that I was actually dragging all those shadows, as I like to call them, with me as well. They were really starting to come out a lot, especially if I'd had a couple of drinks. It was very hard to control my emotions.

Brandon Clift: Basically, I had a lot of things happen in a small period. My grandfather passed away. My uncle got diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. My dog got poisoned from snail poison. There was infidelity in my relationship. All these things happened at one time, and it caused me to snap into a mini psychosis of sorts, you could say. There were panic attacks. I remember getting behind the wheel of my car and just driving down the road going, "Well, that tree looks strong. That tree looks strong. I could do something here. I could just end it all."

Brandon Clift: Something just came to me in one of those scary moments. One night I had an argument with my girlfriend at the time and found out some things that were pretty soul-crushing. I had a panic attack and thought, "Now's a good time to get behind the wheel of a car." I took off to get home as quickly as possible, driving down a road called the Sovereign Mile. It's this long road with huge gum trees and palm trees along the way. I just put my foot down and knew the tree. It wasn't one of those split-second, last-second turn-the-car-away scenarios. But probably the second I got to about 100 miles an hour, I took my foot off the accelerator, put on the brakes, and pulled over — because a voice came into my head.

Brandon Clift: It was strange, because it was my voice, and it was as vivid as if I was sitting right next to me in the car. And what I heard was, "Nah, dude, before you knock on that door, you need to leave some form of impact on this world. You've taken the very best life has had to offer up until now. It's time to give back." It was weird how clear that was, and that is verbatim exactly what I heard. So I drove home, fell into my bed, and cried for about twenty minutes straight. What I discovered later, as I've learned more about the male psyche and worked in men's mental health, is that those twenty minutes of crying and everything that led up to it were a series of years of me repressing, hiding, and denying so much anguish and emotion, because I was too afraid to be vulnerable around my peers, my colleagues, my staff, and my family. What we learn in psychology with men is that the more we repress, hide, and deny these feelings, they will always make their way out eventually.

Tom Rowland: In one way, shape, or form? Or it manifests in many different ways, I'm sure.

Brandon Clift: Many different ways. But in my experience, Tom, do you ever have those moments where you go, "I told myself I would never do that again"?

Tom Rowland: Of course.

Brandon Clift: It's a repetitive cycle. So my question would be, what is the underlying shadow that's driving the bus that's causing those things to happen? It's a process of taking these parts of ourselves that we may be ashamed of, that we don't want to see or face, and certainly don't want others to see — the parts we hide and repress — and pulling them out and putting them right in front of us to say, "I see you. I know how you turn up. So before I say that thing I always regret, before I do that thing I always regret, I'm going to acknowledge you and understand that you are a part of me. You may never go away, but as long as I put you in the forefront of my consciousness, you can't control my life the way you have been." Because if I push that right behind me where I can't see it, he's right next to my hamstrings, and anytime I take strides in life, he just cuts me.

Brandon Clift: This process of identifying these shadows has been really powerful, especially working with other men. A lot of men are overcoming their plateaus in life because they're seeing the same trends and habits that are holding them back. They can actually acknowledge them as a part of themselves. Who modeled it for them? Where did they learn it? What environment did that cancer grow in? It's the first stage of acknowledging and understanding that we as human beings are fallible. We're imperfect. We make a lot of mistakes, but we're too afraid to show it on social media or at the work Christmas party.

Tom Rowland: Now this business you had that dealt with people who had never been to a gym before — was it all men, or men and women?

Brandon Clift: It was majority women. The women were saying, "Where have these men been all our lives?" They wanted to be a part of it. The few men we did have just wanted to be around that safe environment where they could be vulnerable with men, and men could be vulnerable with them.

Tom Rowland: Now, is this the business that you lost in 2015?

Brandon Clift: We lost a huge portion of it, yes. But there was enough left to sell in the end and kind of build back.

Tom Rowland: And so as you lose that, it sends you down a different path. What happens after that?

Brandon Clift: It was interesting. Going through that period, one thing I hadn't learned at that stage of business was to be able to remove emotions from the scenario and look at things objectively. I was taking all of it personally. Long story short, our subtenant was paying half our rent — a very expensive location — and he skipped on his contract and disappeared. No amount of legal action or suing was going to make it feasible for us to cover that lease, and basically the doors closed. For me, it was really tough because I'd built all of my identity into this business. To me, it was a personal attack, and it put me in a bit of a tailspin and made me start to question what was important. Taking off was just a matter of what my mentor said initially: just go have fun.

Tom Rowland: So that's where you are right now — just out having fun. After you went into this tailspin, you righted yourself and realized, "I'm going to travel, I'm going to do all of these things." And that leads you to today?

Brandon Clift: Absolutely. Six months since I took off.

Discovering the ManKind Project

Tom Rowland: Well, along the way, tell me about this ManKind Project. I've followed you on social media and seen you talk about this, but I'm not familiar with it. It looks really interesting, and I want to know about it — because your dad is also part of this, right?

Brandon Clift: Absolutely. So I'll give it a premise. Up until the age of nine, I was terrified of my father.

Tom Rowland: Of your dad?

Brandon Clift: Exactly — that is the exact response. Because we would go out to a social event with other families and other kids, and everyone would see this happy, jovial, exciting person, because what Dad was doing is what we call masking. He was putting on this happy persona for the rest of the world to see. But the truth was, he was battling some things, some demons. And we got to see the demons. He brought that stuff home and would project it onto us, just like many men, women, and people do. It's a human trait we deal with as a society. However, one day there was a breaking point, and I saw a side of him that terrified me. He saw that fear in me, and it broke his heart. He didn't hit me or anything like that. I just saw a degree of anger in him that I had never seen. That was a breaking point where he said, "I need to do something about this." So in 2002, he found the ManKind Project. He initiated through their rite of passage, the New Warrior Training. From that moment on, he and I began to build our relationship. And I'm happy to share that he's my best friend today.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome.

Brandon Clift: I love him dearly, and we're very close.

Tom Rowland: So when he finds this, what does it look like? You found it through him, but when somebody happens upon this, how are they going to find it?

Brandon Clift: Usually at a huge transitionary period of their life. I believe the ManKind Project turns up at times when men are facing ultimatums. We've had a lot of men do our initiation because their wives have basically driven up and said, "If you don't take him, I'm leaving him." We've had other men come and say, "If I don't do this, I'm going to lose my family." We find a lot of men don't do the training voluntarily just because they want that one degree of extra growth — because they usually end up getting 45 degrees of growth from that point. But generally, it's men who are given an ultimatum, or who realize they need to quit making the same mistakes and start taking responsibility for their actions and the implications of their actions.

Tom Rowland: So what is it exactly?

Brandon Clift: The ManKind Project is a nonprofit men's organization that was created in the eighties by three men who basically decided that the pattern needed to break. This toxic masculinity was growing at a ridiculous rate — the yuppie era of the eighties. It was all about who had the nicest car, who had the first cellular phone. These men decided, "We need to start bringing some authenticity and realness back to this world and to the male persona." So they created this support group, designed to help men become better men, better fathers, better husbands, better citizens. The whole premise is creating accountability in life — for men to be held accountable for their actions, to take responsibility whether emotionally or otherwise, and to take ownership for everything that happens in their world. So there's no blaming, no excuses, and no denial. Since its conception, we've initiated just about 70,000 men worldwide into this organization.

Tom Rowland: Wow. Well, it doesn't seem to be anything that I really know about in the US. Is it over here?

Brandon Clift: Yeah, it was founded in the US. MKP does an incredible job with their facilitation, but they're only just starting to pick up the marketing side of things. Now they're really starting to make leaps and bounds in that realm, but usually it was through word of mouth that you found out about it.

Inside the Weekend and the Work That Follows

Tom Rowland: So tell me, what do you do when you find this, when you get dropped off by your wife who's about to leave you? What does it look like after that?

Brandon Clift: I can't go into specifics, because we don't want men coming to these weekends with expectations. It's about coming in with a clean slate. For me, I was quite afraid, because I'm going to this thing where there are twice as many staff as there are initiates — it's a lot of work to lead these. There are 48 processes. It varies in different countries, but in Australia there are 48 processes in this weekend that all contribute to helping a man break open the layers, like the classic onion analogy. Really, it's about breaking down the mask, the persona, the ego, and helping men understand: if you're standing there naked, no money, no status, who are you at your core? And is that enough? Because whether you like it or not, you're with that person for the rest of your life. So how can we ensure that you're able to love that reflection, bet on that reflection, and start doing things differently in life?

Brandon Clift: We look at it as: you go up and you get given a chest of tools. It's not a fix. You get the chest of tools, but then you go back to society and you have to learn to swing the hammer. There are no quick fixes in this. We have a common saying: the journey continues. It always continues. This work doesn't work for men who are looking for a quick fix — it just ain't gonna happen. But if you're a 55-year-old man coming to this weekend, you need to understand there are 55 years of conditioning and 55 years of habits to unravel and look at. There's a bit of work involved to reverse some of those habits and start doing things differently in the world. So I hope I answered your question.

Tom Rowland: Well, okay. From the outside, just following you on social media, it appears you went to this, it was profound in your life, and then you began working with this group as one of the people who leads these. Is it just a weekend, or is that how it starts — a weekend, and then there are other things that follow?

Brandon Clift: There are many ways to grow in the organization. One thing I love the most is that it's accepting of all backgrounds. You can be gay, straight, black, white, atheist, Jewish — it doesn't matter. If you want to be a better man, you're welcome. There's no preaching of a certain way of being, because it's up to each individual man to create and discover their own mission and their own ethos. But to get back to your question, it's important to understand that growth always continues. Once you do a New Warrior Training, you get a lot of tools and a lot of answers, but there needs to be continual work. So we created groups called the I-Group — an integration group. You've got the tools, and you go back to your wife, your husband, your work, and your kids. It's going to take a bit of work to start to put these things into practice.

Brandon Clift: Each week, you have an opportunity to sit in a circle with a bunch of other men and check in. How are you doing? How are you integrating? How can we hold you accountable? How can we ensure you have the support you need if your wife just isn't meeting you halfway? Because in a lot of cases, men have lost the trust and support of their significant others. That significant other might be going, "Okay, you did this weekend with these blokes. You seem to be more open. You seem to want to communicate more, but I don't trust you just yet." So there's some healing that needs to be done, whether it's self-healing or healing with others. The integration group is a great opportunity for men to have that accountability and support continually. Some MKP groups are open to men who aren't initiated through the weekend. I did it for eight months before I even went up on the mountain and did the training. It's the first thing I went to after I had my panic attacks.

Tom Rowland: You did that before you even went to the weekend?

Brandon Clift: Absolutely. Eight months, because I was so skeptical.

Is It a Cult? Belonging and the Need for a Tribe

Tom Rowland: So it sounds — I don't mean to come off the wrong way — but it almost sounds a little culty.

Brandon Clift: A hundred percent. It sounds super culty.

Tom Rowland: What's the difference between this and a cult?

Brandon Clift: With a cult, there is only one way of being, and you have to follow that way. There's no stepping outside the lines. You see examples like Jonestown, especially in the seventies out in the Western side of the US. They were preaching a way of being that had no flexibility. With MKP, you can come, you can go, you can bring your uniqueness with you. Say you're a Mormon — you're more than welcome to sit in a circle, as long as you understand and respect that there are going to be other men in that circle who may think differently, believe in different things, and may have their own relationship with their higher calling. I think that's what distinguishes it from cults. But there are definitely a lot of partners and significant others who have thrown the word out there, because all of a sudden their manly, plaid-wearing, lumberjack husband is now starting to talk about his emotions, and they're uncomfortable with it.

Tom Rowland: A lot of people say CrossFit's a cult, because it does check a lot of boxes for what a cult is. They eat special food, they wear certain clothing, they talk with certain terms — they have their own language. There are a lot of boxes checked off with this and with CrossFit and with other things that aren't even fitness related. But probably where it differs is that nobody is asking you to give your worldly possessions, and nobody is asking you to believe a certain way. What it looks like to me is that a lot of people don't have a support group around them. Women tend to do a better job of it, I think, because they have their girlfriends and they go out and do these little fun things and go to dinner. Dudes sometimes do that, but not always. For me, this group of people that I exercise with has been remarkable in that way. And also the group of fishing guides that I call my friends — it's the same kind of deal. You talk often. Sometimes it's about working out, or in the other case, sometimes it's about fishing, and then you get into other things about what's going on in people's lives. I think everybody needs some sort of group that they belong to. Don't you?

Brandon Clift: I believe so.

Tom Rowland: Did you have one before this?

Brandon Clift: I thought I did, but it was smoke and mirrors. Here's a typical conversation at a bar in Australia: "Hey, mate. How are you going?" "Oh, yeah, not too bad. Yourself?" "Oh, yeah, pretty good. Did you watch the footy on the weekend?" "Oh, yeah, not a bad match." That is the extent of a conversation. Then you might talk about the girls you slept with on the weekend, then you might talk about the additions you made to your car. That's the depth of it. But how many people go up to someone and say, "Man, how are you? Are you okay?" Those aren't conversations that I had. But I know through the CrossFit community, the depth of conversation goes a lot deeper, because there's a trust and a safety that's built when you sweat with someone.

Tom Rowland: There's no doubt about that, especially when you're doing things that are inherently dangerous — squatting PR weights or whatever — and you're counting on that person behind you to be there for you. You can't see them. You don't know if they're checking their phone. But you're going to do this, and you're going to get in a position where likely you'll need some help. Is he going to be there or not? That's just a microcosm of the world, a microcosm of your life. You can't see these people, and you're going to need them. You can't set a PR squat if you're looking over your shoulder. You have to be a hundred percent focused and know that these people are going to be there for you because they've always been there for you. You're both on the same page, operating as one — a hive mind almost.

Tom Rowland: Through fitness and working out together in certain ways — I don't know if all fitness is like that. But when you're doing something with a team aspect, and you're sweating, and there's also humor involved, that tends to bind people like none other. It's the same thing with special forces or boot camp or the military. People say sweat and humor bind men like nothing else. Over the last fifteen years of my life, having this group of people has been such an incredible enhancer to life, because I have these friends. I didn't always have that, but it sounds like that's kind of what you encountered with this.

Brandon Clift: Absolutely. Think about it this way. Speaking to a communalistic environment like the military, or your rugby team, or your CrossFit box — what if there's a man who, for the first time in his life, wants to go speak to his father who abused him, to speak his truth, and to share that he wants to create a relationship with him, that he wants his father to have a relationship with his grandchildren? Who does that man have behind him? What if there was a community of men he could meet with every week, or call any time, that would be there for him regardless of the outcome, that would ask him the right questions and create a safe enough environment for him to finally, after forty years of hurt and pain and spite, turn around and say, "You know what? Time to break this cycle, because I want my kids to have a relationship with me, and I want my kids to have a relationship with their grandfather."

Brandon Clift: Can you get that from the person spotting you in your squat? Probably. But is that a specific environment created for something like that? There was a reason MKP was created — so that we could go back to sitting in a circle. Think about how we've evolved as a species. Could we have done it individually?

Tom Rowland: Oh, definitely not. As soon as you said "think about how we've evolved as a species," right after saying "sitting in a circle," I'm thinking there's a complete disconnect like never before in the world. I think that's one of the things about my profession, taking people fishing. For a long time, my entire job is getting on the boat with one other person and going to a place where cell phones don't work, spending the entire day doing nothing but trying to make sure that guy has a great time. And it's a really interesting situation, because a lot of times that person on the front of the boat is the CEO of a giant corporation who never gets away from his phone, who never gets away from someone wanting something. And for the first time in a long time, the person he's with wants nothing more from him than for him to have a good time — not asking about money or advice or business.

Tom Rowland: In fact, it's funny — sometimes the guest didn't even ask me what I do for a living. Sometimes you can see him squirming, because he wants to tell you, "Dude, I'm the CEO of the second-largest company that does this in the world." That was my strategy for a long time. I never asked. And later, three or four years later, I'd find out, "Wow, that guy's somewhat of a bigwig." But the first thing I thought about was disconnect, and how people thrive in a situation where all of a sudden they're connected back to people. It could be as simple as getting rid of the phone for a little bit.

Brandon Clift: Exactly. Something like three hours, no phones, sitting in a circle where you can see everyone's eyeballs and connect with each man. But if we take it back to the tribal example, ten thousand years ago, what's the worst thing that could ever happen to you?

Tom Rowland: Eaten by a tiger?

Brandon Clift: Exactly. How does that happen? You get kicked out of the tribe. Almost certain death — because if it's not a saber-tooth tiger, it's a rival tribe. We grew together. We were organized. After a battle, we sat in a circle around a fire, and we processed, and we connected. That doesn't happen today. I've worked with many returning servicemen. We see this a lot when men and women return home from the services and lose that sense of identity. They lose that communalistic environment. All of a sudden they're home, and no one's depending on them to protect them and save their life. There becomes this conflict: "If I'm not doing this thing I've grown with and been through all this..." Especially with the CrossFit example — when you test your limits with people and go through incredibly difficult, strenuous forms of resistance, you build that bond and that community. I think it's important for every single human being on this planet to feel like they're significant, that they're worthy, and that they can connect with those around them through more than just a Facebook post.

How Exercise Saved His Life

Tom Rowland: So this group has obviously had that impact on you, and had that impact on your dad, and on lots of other people. But when we first sat down, I mentioned something about exercise, and you said that exercise saved your life. Where does that come from? What does that mean?

Brandon Clift: If we go back to 2015, when I had that little epiphany or wake-up call, I was really trying to identify what the missing link was for me, because I wasn't asking for help. As a man, men don't ask for help — they figure it out on their own. That's very much the system I was running. I identified that my confidence was really low. Really low. So I thought, what could I do for my confidence? And I thought, "I know — I'm going to do the most ridiculous thing I can think of and sign up for a fitness competition five months from now and start training." Because I'd read somewhere that the best way to get out of your head is to get into your body. At this stage, I'm five years since retiring as a competitive gymnast, so I was ten kilos heavier than at competing weight, with very unhealthy drinking, all that good stuff.

Brandon Clift: I just started training and gave myself something to focus on. I signed up for a fitness modeling competition, which I thought couldn't have been more uncomfortable for me — to stand up in a Speedo to essentially be attractive for people to judge me. When I thought about that, I wanted to vomit. So I thought, "Okay, I'll choose that then."

Tom Rowland: The most uncomfortable thing you can think of.

Brandon Clift: The most uncomfortable thing. I basically treated my depression, and the triggers that came with it, as a sign to either go cook something healthy or go exercise. And it saved my life, because that wake-up call wasn't a cure. It wasn't a fix. It was just a huge change of direction, a huge one-eighty. Again, those habits are created over years, and training became a huge catalyst for me to learn what it's like to actually truly feel resistance, to truly feel what it's like to be five percent body fat.

Tom Rowland: When you say to truly feel resistance, what do you mean by resistance?

Brandon Clift: What I mean is to put myself in a pressure cooker that wasn't just my brain. My brain was definitely throwing resistance my way, but that was it. I wanted to test myself physically, because something I always remembered from one of my sports psychologists when I was a gymnast — as he got to know me, he said, "Brandon, you're the kind of person that wherever your physical stress is, your emotional is just below it. Just below." When I was training for the Australian team in gymnastics, I was so emotional. I'd stick a landing and start crying, or I'd mess up something in training and get angry. He said, "You're an emotional person, so your training is a huge catalyst to engaging with your emotions." So I started using my training as a catalyst to start facing my shadows, facing my emotions. If I had a day where I felt absolutely useless and unworthy of anything I have, I'd go into the gym and try to prove it wrong.

Tom Rowland: Kill yourself in the gym.

Brandon Clift: Exactly. If we look at Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, there was a series of deaths that needed to happen so there could be a rebirth. And speaking of the men's work and these communities and tribes that I believe are more necessary today, I want to ask you a question, Tom. Where are the rites of passage in today's society?

The Vanishing Rites of Passage

Tom Rowland: Well, I think they can be self-installed. You can have rites of passage that you create for yourself. In our world of hunting and fishing, there are traditional rites of passage: when you kill your first deer, when you go hunting for the first time, when you're able to hunt or fish by yourself for the first time, when you catch your first fish, when you're able to handle the fillet knife yourself. When you're able to do all of these things that come with this responsibility, based on the experience you've had. That's why I feel so strongly about hunting and fishing as a tradition that's passed on — because it's way more than catching a fish or killing a deer.

Tom Rowland: When you look at it in regard to what you just said, you can see the stair-step approach of dozens of rites of passage passed on to a young man or young girl, each one a stair step to further responsibility. You don't just hand an eight-year-old a fillet knife and tell him to cut a fish open until they've had experience with other things. They've cut bait with the knife, then they've cut the next thing. There's this stair-step approach: "Okay, now you're going to get your own fillet knife, and you're going to be able to do this yourself, because you've watched me do it a hundred times before, and I've guided your hand. Now it's time for you to do this yourself." That's a very simple rite of passage, but it stair-steps up to, "Okay, now you can hunt by yourself with a loaded gun." Lots of things can go wrong. You're going to drive there yourself, open the gate, close the gate. You're in charge of your destiny, and for the first time, you're going hunting by yourself. That is never going to happen in a responsible household unless there have been countless dozens of rites of passage leading to that.

Tom Rowland: Then everybody's okay with it, and you're teaching that person not only to be a full-grown responsible man or woman, but also the skills necessary to do this small task, which we're calling a rite of passage. So I think rites of passage are still quite evident in our community, especially in the hunting and fishing world. But a lot of the rites of passage have disappeared in general society. There's no question about it. A rite of passage used to be that the young warrior would have to spend the night away from the tribe. You certainly don't see that happening anymore. A rite of passage now is going to college, I guess. But that comes with so much support and so much cushion, in ways that you can phone a friend or phone home, and everything will be taken care of.

Tom Rowland: Some of the rites of passage that are self-installed — my son is going to do this. We're looking for it for him. What is a rite of passage for him? He's already done all this hunting and fishing, but what's the next step? So we chose a NOLS course — National Outdoor Leadership School. He's going to go this summer, sea kayaking and backpacking. He's going to stair-step his skills up again in these small rites of passage, which will lead to two days on his own completely. Map and compass and everything, and you've got to find the rest of the group and meet at one point. Then we're going to break up and do it again and again until you're completely responsible and comfortable by yourself in the Alaskan wilderness. Those are self-imposed. But where are they as a society? I don't know.

Tom Rowland: I do think there still are some. A responsible parent trying to raise a kid will either find his own rites of passage and pass them down. Maybe it's, "Now you know how to rebuild a carburetor. Now you know how to change a tire. Now you know how to do all of these things a grown person should know to operate in this world." But even that has gone away, because you just pick up the phone and call AAA. Most kids don't know how to change a tire. Most kids don't know how to start a fire. Where do you think it is?

Brandon Clift: Well, you just showed me a side to the hunting culture that I never considered, which I think is really neat — showing these kids what it's like to take responsibility. Responsibility for a knife, responsibility for a gun, responsibility for a property that you've entered. I think that's really cool.

Tom Rowland: And then one step further is responsibility to the animal you are pursuing. You have the responsibility to practice over and over so that when you do pull that trigger and decide this is the one you're going to take, it's going to be a clean kill. Because if you're terrible and you blow the back leg off and now you track it for a long time, and when you get there that animal is still alive — that is not a good experience for anyone. It's certainly not a good experience for the deer, and it's been a terrible experience for a young kid. But you can go around all of that by explaining, "Look, this is not what we want to do. We have an obligation to this animal." Then you start bringing in this whole culture of respect for the game you're trying to kill. You're going to eat every piece of it. We're going to practice over and over to be a responsible hunter.

Tom Rowland: A responsible hunter is not just somebody who knows their target and what's behind it, so you're not going to kill another person. You're going to make sure that whatever you're using — if it's a bow, you are dialed in perfectly, and you're not going to shoot further than you're comfortable with. You have to get within the cushion of where your bow is perfectly sighted in, and you know it's going to be a clean kill every time. Or a gun — you're going to have to go to the range and know that at 200 yards you can hit this, at 300 yards you're horrible, don't even try. Maybe it's 500 yards, maybe it's 100 yards. That responsibility, too, is something that's passed on.

Brandon Clift: It sounds like a beautiful vessel for a young man or woman to really get to know themselves. To me it sounds like there's a degree of mindfulness involved in every process, and it's up to that individual to execute each of those steps and see that the hard work and training turns up in the end result — a clean kill, the biggest point buck they've ever shot, or whatever that means. To answer your question of where the rites of passage are today, I would say that largely in common culture, there aren't many. The way we see it turn up today is pledging a fraternity or a sorority. It's spring break. It's getting laid for the first time. It's been positioned around these vain concepts. I'm not trying to downplay the Greek system, but I'm talking about the values placed upon young manhood. Nowadays it's like, "Man, you've got to get with that girl at the bar."

Brandon Clift: I believe it doesn't create a sound foundation for young boys to become men. Look at the whole premise of a rite of passage. Look at the Australian Aborigines. When a young boy is 11 or 12, they get sent out on what's called walkabout. And not just for a night — they're gone for days in the wilderness on their own. They have to craft their own spear, hunt their own game, build their own fires, survive, and then come back. The whole idea is so the young boy can die so the man can emerge. In Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, he talks about the death being one of the most important stages in a person's development, so they can re-emerge. It's like Gandalf the Grey becoming Gandalf the White. It's so necessary.

Brandon Clift: But when we don't have these rites of passage in society, we end up with little boys in grown-man skin leading our countries, our companies, our organizations, our families. You have this little boy who can grow a beard, has muscles, can throw a punch, drive a car, shoot a gun, trying to figure out how to be a man by projecting his internal frustrations at not feeling like a man onto everyone else around him. That's why I don't believe spring break or pledging a fraternity is adequate for a young boy to know what it's like to become a man. Losing your virginity doesn't make you a man. Starting a business doesn't make you a man. Hunting game and getting your first coat doesn't make you a man. What I believe makes someone a man is when they can look in the mirror, look themselves in the eyes and not flinch, not falter, and say, "I see you. I respect you. I love you. And I understand that you are doing the best that you can as a man."

Many Paths to the Same Mirror

Tom Rowland: So that's where you feel this group has brought you and many others. And do you feel the end result is what you just described — looking yourself in the mirror? Do you believe there are many other ways to get there besides this group?

Brandon Clift: A hundred percent. I'm of the firm belief that there are many ways to skin a cat, and that MKP isn't the only way. What I believe in more than anything is taking responsibility, acknowledging and understanding that things may need to change, and doing something about it. There are many incredible organizations out there that help and support men, and I firmly believe that if it's not MKP, there's something else.

Tom Rowland: Right. Somebody could find everything we've just described and outlined at a jiu-jitsu studio, or at a CrossFit community if you find the right one, if you find the right situation. Some people are finding it with their own parents and their own families. But the end result is that someone grows up having no regrets — being able to look themselves in the mirror and think, "You know what? I've given it everything I can do. I've made plenty of mistakes, I'm going to make plenty more, but I have seriously done my best to be the best person I can possibly be." I would be in support of any group that led more people to feeling that way. Because I know a lot of people don't. A lot of people have regrets. A lot of people, for whatever reason, didn't follow through on their passion in life, and then they regret it for the rest of their life. They didn't give it everything they had. When you do, you have no regrets. You have no demons deep down inside.

Tom Rowland: I mean, everybody's got demons deep inside for something, and it all manifests differently. I was going to ask you about this: when you were talking about training, and you'd feel these shadows coming up — what you were describing is what I just described as demons — you would go directly toward training or eating healthy. So many people feel that exact same way, and they go directly toward cigarettes or alcohol or meth or destructive behaviors. So exercise and eating healthy is certainly a healthier way to go about it. But do you ever think about this too — do you abuse exercise? Because sometimes I think I might. I do the same thing you do. If I'm not feeling good, I will go and just blow it out in the gym and feel like, "Okay, if I can do that, I can do anything." It's interesting to think about. Could you be overusing something that is generally considered healthy? Some people can, because some people will run and run and run, and it'll destroy your life through good things. All you want to do is run, and now your family doesn't want to be around you anymore. I've seen that happen with people going into the CrossFit world too — now their family doesn't understand what's going on, and all they want to do is hang out at the gym, and then their family goes down because they just went off the deep end.

Brandon Clift: I had some clients like that. One man comes to mind. We could tell he joined because there was definitely something he was dissatisfied with within himself that he wanted to confront. But I also realized he was using my gym as an escape from his partner, because there were some conversations he was terrified of having. So rather than think about it or have those conversations, he'd come train with us. Because I knew his partner, the one thing she'd chat about — her frustration — was that he wasn't taking the time to connect with her, or didn't feel safe enough to do so. He was doing two-a-days, and I remember saying to him one day, "Mate, where are you running from?" People would look at his actions and go, "Yes, he's on the up. He's doing everything possible to become a better man." But it wasn't so much that he was being pulled toward something positive. He was being pushed away from something negative.

Positive Versus Negative Motivation

Tom Rowland: Such a big difference, isn't it? There is such a big difference. When I learned that — just the subtleties of positive and negative — it changed my life completely. That was a perfect example of what you just said. You could have another example of an athlete who wants to beat everyone, or an athlete who wants to win and take his team with him. This guy hates to lose; this guy loves to win. It's a massive difference. The result might be the same — you win, you don't lose, the results are the exact same — but somehow there's this massive difference. It's like you can see two lines that look almost parallel, and then they just start to go away from one another. A year later, now they're here. And a year later, they're so much further away from that one tiny half a degree of difference. Over your lifetime, it just puts you in two completely different situations.

Tom Rowland: I didn't understand that for a long time — the difference between positive and negative. I read a lot of books and got that concept, and I was like, "Wow, could it really be that simple, that you either hate to lose or you love to win? Isn't that the same thing?" And then I was like, "No, that's not the same thing at all." The guy who loves to win wants everybody to come with him. The guy who hates to lose just wants to beat people down, just wants to dominate.

Brandon Clift: Look at the longevity of athletes in sport, especially nowadays at the level people are competing. Injuries are just popping up left, right, and center. Being in the competitive space and training down at the Australian Institute of Sport, you always watch the athlete who says, "I'm going to prove them wrong." They're never in the game that long unless they have a paradigm shift, because they spend all their time looking backwards at the negativity they're moving away from. They're not watching where they're going. Rather than creating a vision for exactly where they want to go, what they want to manifest, how they want their life to look, they're looking at what they don't want. So I say to my clients and to the athletes I've mentored: at the beginning, look back, get stinky, get filthy, get angry, whatever you need to get you going, to get your butt off the couch and enact some form of change. But the second that explosion goes off and you start taking off in some direction, turn around and look where you're going.

Tom Rowland: That's so interesting. How does somebody know when that is? How do you know as a trainer that all you're doing is trying to prove people wrong? You're doing all the right things — you've lost 30 pounds, you've gotten stronger than you've ever been — but now it's time to move ahead and look for the things you want, rather than destroying the things you don't want.

Brandon Clift: I'll just use examples of people I've worked with. I had one client whose dad was a professional athlete. When he was young, he wasn't an athlete. He was more inclined to play video games, and his dad projected so much shame onto him because he wasn't a rugby player or a cricket player. So he came in with this mentality of, "Forget him, I'm going to prove him wrong. I'm going to become this athlete." His dad used to say some horrible things to him growing up. He was just a young athlete, only 17 years old. He came to me — his mom came to me — and they wanted me to work with him. He was training so hard, getting injured all the time because he kept pushing it to the next level.

Brandon Clift: I said to him one day, "So you have this relationship with your father that isn't positive?" He goes, "Yeah." And I said, "Why do you want to spend all day thinking about him?" I'm thinking of a quote I heard — can't remember who from — if you spend too much time looking in the past, you'll stay there. So what's the point? You already know why you don't want to be there. You've already anchored enough frustration and anger to know that's not the way you want to live your life. So get out of that place, get out of that headspace. You only touch a hot stove intentionally once, right?

Tom Rowland: I don't know. There are a lot of people who like to do things like that.

Brandon Clift: As a little kid, you touch the stove, and Mom and Dad go, "Finally, this lesson we need to teach him — never touch the stove," whether that comes in the form of a spank or a real tough lesson. When you touch those things, you will never intentionally put your hand on it again. But the equivalent metaphor for someone who wants to live in that negative place is that they're essentially standing on a stove and just putting their hand on the element. You can only do that for so long without losing direction. To me, if you're looking backwards, you can't see where you're going forwards. There's no clarity. It's hard to keep a vision on the straight and narrow. So spend more time thinking about what you want. What are the things you want to bring into your life? Okay, your dad was a jerk — well, how do you want to be as a father? You know what you don't want to do as a father, so why not think of what you want to be as a father, as a husband, as a business person, as a citizen? That, in my opinion, is going to keep you in the game longer.

Brandon Clift: How can Tom Brady spend so long in one of the toughest positions in the world? He's practically held together by tape. How can he keep doing that? Do you think he's looking backwards?

Tom Rowland: Well, he was one I was going to ask you about. From the things I've read and heard about Tom Brady, he is definitely someone who loves to win, definitely someone who is looking for things he wants and bringing them to him through hard work and determination. But also, I feel like that attitude makes his teammates want to die for him. You do have other situations where people make it to the very highest levels, and you can just see it — they've got this huge chip on their shoulder. They're proving it every time, and they will continue to prove it over and over. They will set the record, they will do this or that. But I can just see it much more clearly now than I could a long time ago, before it became clear to me that that's not the way for me. Maybe it is a way for other people, I don't know. But it sure does seem a lot more comfortable to win and bring your team with you. It's a lot more comfortable to be in pursuit of something you want, rather than demolishing something or proving someone wrong.

Tom Rowland: But it's very powerful — both are very powerful. People can win some amazing things by proving people wrong. But it's interesting, they may never grasp this concept, because I don't know that I'm very good at describing it. I've tried to describe it to a lot of people, and I don't know that I've done a good job. You know exactly what I'm talking about, the difference between positive and negative. But I talk to some people and they're just like, "Hey, winning's winning. They're both winning." Well, yeah, I guess. But it's an interesting concept, and one I think about a lot because it had profound effects on me. I could see that I was only going to go so far trying to prove people wrong. When that attitude changed — it didn't happen immediately, but it did happen — any success I've had from then to now has been a lot more than what I would have had if I had just kept trying to prove people wrong.

Brandon Clift: Sounds like you were more focused on proving yourself right, and your own dreams and desires.

Tom Rowland: I think that's how it went eventually. But think about all that energy you're wasting when you're trying to prove people wrong. You're still accomplishing the overall goal you had — "I'm going to win this, I'm going to achieve that" — but along the way there's a tremendous amount of energy wasted.

Brandon Clift: You're giving away the best of yourself, in my opinion, when you're trying to prove others wrong. You're giving away your best energy and attention to people who probably don't matter as much as they need to for you and where you're going.

Ownership as a Gateway to Humility

Tom Rowland: That's a tough one. Does the positive and negative thing come up in your group?

Brandon Clift: That's something I've just used in a big way in my own development personally, and with my athletes and clients. MKP is more about creating an environment where you can walk away with those answers. If you come to me looking to overcome some scenario or situation you're in, for you to fully take ownership and act upon what you discover, I can't tell you what's wrong with you. It's for you to discover it yourself. When you have your own moment, you take ownership for discovering the solution, which gives you a hell of a lot more motivation to turn it around — instead of me saying, "Tom, this is your problem, and you have to fix this." Because there may be a part of you that goes, "Man, that fourth-grade teacher told me I had to do those things, and my dad always told me I should." If you can have your own moment, then you get to own the whole process.

Tom Rowland: That's interesting. There's a book very popular right now, Extreme Ownership, by Jocko Willink. You like that one? I figured you would. Biggest read of 2016. That has been a great book, one of my favorites that I've read recently. You can take it to any level. You can take it into your personal life, your business life, your own training, whatever. Basically it says that you are responsible for everything. It's not that your boss is a jerk or doesn't understand — if your boss doesn't understand, then you're a terrible leader. When you're first reading the book, it's like, "How am I going to lead my boss?" And then there's this wonderful chapter about how you lead up and down the chain. It is your responsibility. If your boss is making bad decisions and doesn't understand what you're trying to do, then you have to educate that boss in some way. You can't go in there and be like, "Listen, you're a jackass and you don't understand." But you can spend the time to teach them, and then your boss becomes your greatest ally and actually helps to get whatever challenge you're having pushed through, because he didn't fully understand it at the time.

Tom Rowland: So leadership comes in the form of leading up to the superiors and down to the subordinates. It's such an incredible microcosm of life in the military, because you have these very strict guidelines of who's in charge, who's second, third, fourth, fifth, all the way down to someone who's absolutely at the bottom. What's interesting about that concept is that when you take ownership of whatever it is — your personal life, your business, your training — there's a great amount of control that you feel that you didn't feel before. If you're taking ownership of everything in your life, your emotions, the way you're handling things, your reactions to things, and it's not somebody else's — "that guy cut me off, and you're all pissed in traffic" — then you're just a rudderless boat, or a ping-pong ball getting ping-ponged around by whatever forces there are in the world. As opposed to, "That guy really made me mad, but I'm not going to let it bother me. I'm going to keep going on my day. He's probably going to kill somebody if he keeps driving like that, so I'm going to slow down and go about my business and not let that get me upset." All of a sudden there's this control. You just feel like, "Wow, I don't have to let all of that stuff dictate the way that I feel."

Brandon Clift: I believe ownership is a gateway to humility, a true gateway to humility. I like your metaphor of the rudderless boat if we're not taking ownership. The example I've always used is that you can get washed around in the big bad waves of the world, or if you take ownership, you can plant a foot, pivot, and be able to look at all your options. My mentor always called it "own the you-know-what." If you take ownership, you then have the ability to do something about it, the ability to change the situation. But if you're not taking ownership, you're living in denial. What I love about Jocko Willink in that book is — I think the example was one of his guys tripped his boot clip and gave away their position when they were in Ramadi. He tells himself, "I should have made him run more tires to learn to lift his feet more." I think that's a beautiful example, where we take away the blame of that person — because that guy might feel horrible, especially if it involved the death of a fellow troop. How about we create an environment where that guy can learn from that and never trip on that step again? It creates a more positive environment for change. The more ownership we take in life, the more capability we have to really practice humility. If we take it further into Jungian psychology, that's when you get to be a true king in your world and establish a kingdom — when you can be humble and take ownership, which gives you the best way to lead.

Salt Lake City, a New Relationship, and the Everest Mission

Tom Rowland: So how old were you? Just turned 26?

Brandon Clift: Just turned 26.

Tom Rowland: You're pretty wise for a 26-year-old. That probably comes from some negative experiences, I would imagine — losing your business and doing all those things. But now you're traveling. You're in the middle of a move. You're going to Salt Lake?

Brandon Clift: Yeah. I decided that I've enjoyed my little six-month discovery trip, and I've decided that Salt Lake City is going to be the place to lay some roots and set up base.

Tom Rowland: It's interesting you talk about Salt Lake City, because when you mentioned rite of passage, I was thinking they still know rite of passage in Salt Lake City. The Mormons — you get to whatever age, I think it's after college, and you've got to go and do the mission work. It's incredible. I had a friend who was an NFL quarterback, a Mormon, and he was really high in the draft. He could have gone, and he went and did that mission work, because that's what he had to do. It's like, you could be the number one draft pick — no, this is what I'm supposed to do. And that's what he did, and he eventually made it back into the NFL. Very interesting story there. But they know rite of passage for sure. They take it very, very seriously.

Tom Rowland: I think there still are lots of places where there are rites of passage. There are still plenty of countries that demand military service — Singapore and others. And it wouldn't hurt if we did. Everyone gives two or four years — not necessarily for the protection of the country, but for the protection of our country's minds, probably, as much as anything. But anyway, tell me about your Salt Lake. What takes you there? Why Salt Lake?

Brandon Clift: After following my mentor's advice to go out and have fun, I wasn't a week into my trip in Peru when I met my now girlfriend. You'd think I failed my mission — I didn't. She hated me at first. Well, she didn't hate me, she thought I was a douche. So that gave me some time. Honestly, I didn't even notice her, because I'd just left everything I knew, and I was a scared young man in a new country. I went off and did some discovery of myself — went to the Amazon and spent a lot of time alone in the jungle and really started to get to know the man in the mirror. She didn't really notice me, and I didn't really notice her, until I learned better.

Tom Rowland: What were you on — some sort of a group trip?

Brandon Clift: Basically, I thought, what's the closest thing to going backpacking and getting lost somewhere? There's this program called Remote Year, where you can travel with other entrepreneurs and workers who work from their laptops. You travel around the world together, you all work on your laptops, but you can enjoy experiences together. I didn't want to go completely solo in a country where I didn't speak the language. I went with this group, and she happened to be a part of it. So Utah is where I'm going to basically set up base, but again, I can work wherever I have a laptop, and I intend to do a lot of traveling.

Tom Rowland: So what are you working on now?

Brandon Clift: We have a mission right now. In the past year, I've had three mates take their lives. It's something near and dear to me, because I was on that exact same path. I hear the same thing over and over whenever something like this happens: "We never knew. We never knew it was going to happen. No one saw it coming." I'm very public on social media, and these guys knew that I worked in the men's mental health space. My question is, why didn't they reach out? Now, do I take responsibility for their actions? Absolutely not. There's a clean line there. However, what can I do to help change the statistic? Men are four times more likely to take their lives than women. So I want to turn that number around.

Brandon Clift: I'm taking ten of the top men in my program, which is called the Path of the Warrior, to Everest Base Camp. We're going to do the ten-day trek. Our mission is to put out a call to action for every single person on this planet who's lost someone to suicide — to write them a letter, send us the letter, and we're going to carry every single one of those letters to base camp. Then, with permission, if we can get permission, we're going to do a ceremony and burn the letters. Not read them — just burn them and let them go. Almost as a way of letting every bit of shame that person might hang on to go too. We want to sponsor two men who are battling and may not have the means to be able to do it — sponsor them entirely. We also want to sponsor another gentleman whose only son took his life last year, and he did not see it coming. We want to sponsor him to join us as well, so he can have that peace. We want to do that in April or May of next year. We're getting there. There's still a lot of work to be done. I'll admit I am nervous and feel a little out of my depth at times with this mission, but we set the intention — it's going to happen. So that's what the next six months looks like for me and my career.

Tom Rowland: Alright. How many people work with you?

Brandon Clift: I have two other coaches that work with me, and I've got a group of men.

Tom Rowland: And everybody's remote?

Brandon Clift: Yeah, everyone's remote.

The Mentor: Larry Dawson

Tom Rowland: One more question before we go, because we've been going for an hour and twenty minutes. You keep talking about this mentor. Who is this person? How does he fit into your world?

Brandon Clift: His name is Larry Dawson. He's 70 years young — he's going to kill me for saying that. Larry brought the ManKind Project to Australia in the year 2000. He's been working in relationship counseling for decades now, and he's been a huge role model for me in life. I met him when I was nine years old, when my dad did the New Warrior Training, and he's known me my whole life. The beauty of my relationship with Larry is that he understands how, through generations, we inherit a lot — not just biological DNA from our parents and ancestors, but their conditioning, how their parents raised them. So he's had this unique opportunity to see me grow, and for me to turn up to my integration group and do my work and share what's going on in my life, and for him to basically see my father in me.

Brandon Clift: He's been beautiful to hold me accountable, because one thing I love about my father is that he's never half-assed anything. He's given everything his all, which has been an example for me to do the same. So when I approach my demons, I'm not half-assing it, I'm whole-assing it. Larry's been there every step. When he found out I was in a relationship — I won't swear, but he was like, "You're doing it all wrong. You're supposed to be out having fun."

The Wim Hof Stories: A Possum and a Yorkshire Terrier

Tom Rowland: Well, I'm sure he's happy for you. When you were talking about your dad doing things all the way — when he was here a couple of years ago, I showed him the Wim Hof breathing. So he came first thing in the morning. The Wim Hof breathing has been really important to me, but not all my friends have fully embraced it, because it's weird as hell. It's so weird. You lay on the ground, you breathe super heavy. A couple of them started doing it for a while and then were like, "I don't see as much into it as you do." I do it every single morning.

Tom Rowland: So your dad was like, "What are you doing?" And I said, "Lay down here and do it with me. This is awesome. We breathe in 30 times, then you breathe all the way out and hold your breath as long as you can. Then breathe one big breath in, hold your breath, and wait as long as you can. Then do that again three or four times, and at the very end we're going to do push-ups." He grasped it right away. On the first time, you can see some weird stuff. It's almost like you're on drugs — you are really hallucinating sometimes. All kinds of stuff's going on. So we're doing it side by side. And I have an 87-pound chocolate Labrador Retriever. When we were doing this in Tennessee — it's the first and only time this has ever happened, and of course it happens to your dad. We're doing this breathing, and I am deep in. I'm seeing crazy lights and all kinds of things. It's one of the best ones I've ever done. And I hear this — "Whoa. Whoa."

Tom Rowland: Oh my god. My dog had killed a possum, and he brought it and put it right on your dad's stomach. So your dad looks up, and there is this dead possum — well, he thinks it's dead — and it is defecating all over him. My dog is just sitting there. I don't know why he put it on your dad; you'd think he would put it on me. But I hear these steps, and he walks around, then comes back and goes, "Only in Tennessee, mate. Only in Tennessee." I'm still doing the breathing. I still don't even know what happened, because I think I'm hallucinating this dream. I finally finish and get up, and he's like, "Did you see the possum?" And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" He goes, "Your dog brought a possum over here, and there is possum mess everywhere." It was one of the funniest things. I was so deeply into it that I didn't even open my eyes, not one time.

Brandon Clift: Well, here's something I want to share with you that you probably don't know — a highlight of the impact you have on people, Tom. You taught my dad Wim Hof. I came and worked out with you in 2015, and I tried it for the first time. I went back to Australia and started a free boot camp back home, just because I hated doing cardio on my own. I started doing the Wim Hof, trying it for myself. Next thing you know, I have 12 people with me every morning on the beach, watching the sunrise, doing Wim Hof — in the middle of winter, going swimming in the surf. I was timing myself with the breaths as well. I ended up getting a three-minute, twenty-seven-second hold on an exhale.

Tom Rowland: Nice.

Brandon Clift: But when I got that record, I was down by the water on the rocks, a beautiful spot in a place called Burleigh. The guys are behind me doing their breathing, and I'm just so into it — you know, when you can't tell if you've inhaled or exhaled, and you're just breathing. I could tell where every single seagull was in the sky without opening my eyes. Every time I opened my eyes, there they were, right there. I could hear the surfers' fins cutting the waves. I knew exactly if they were doing a kickback, exactly where they were, if the wave was barreling. What I couldn't tell, though, was that a Yorkshire terrier had come up to me, stood on my chest, and started licking the inside of my mouth and my nose. I had no idea that was happening.

Tom Rowland: So apparently animals aren't a part of the oneness of nature when you're doing the Wim Hof. Your dad and I — neither one of us could detect a possum either.

Brandon Clift: I finish my breath and I come to, and all I hear is laughing behind me, because they watched this Yorkshire terrier practically make out with me for about ten seconds, until the owner found out and freaked out. The dog launches off my chest. I had no clue. I came over and I'm like, "Why are you laughing, and why does my face smell like dog food?"

Tom Rowland: It's hilarious.

Brandon Clift: Powerful stuff, man. So thank you, because that's how I started my business. I had 12 to 16 people come and join me on the beach for Wim Hof, and then I thought, "I might open a gym from there." So it's pretty cool.

Closing: Write Your Own Story

Tom Rowland: Well, you've got a good story, man. I wish you all the best with your move to Salt Lake and this whole Everest deal. I know it's going to be great. So thanks for sitting down and talking to us. Lots of stuff, man.

Brandon Clift: Yeah. Cool avenues. It went in so many different directions. It's just been great connecting with you.

Tom Rowland: Alright. Thank you. Cheers, mate. Good luck. That was a great conversation, Brandon. Good luck to you and everything that you're doing, and to your dad. Bill, you're dear to my heart. Thank you for the influence that you had on me, giving me a sense of adventure and giving me a glimpse into being able to write your own ticket, write your own story, and make it a reality.

Tom Rowland: For you guys in the audience, I hope maybe this podcast has the same effect on you. Maybe it gives you a glimpse into being able to write your own story any way you want to and create anything in your life that you want to. That's what it's all about — whether that's being a hunting guide or a fishing guide or photographer or anything, finding something like what Brandon found and giving back to the world in your own way. Anything's possible, man. And no one has to have done it before you. Just get out there and make it happen. Alright. See you later.