When Her Body Spoke, She Finally Heard

00:00 Sometimes life stops you in your tracks in a way that you never expect. For Brooks Bell, that moment came in her late 30s when she was told she had colon cancer. Up until then, she was that driven CEO who could fix anything, carry the weight, and keep going. What followed wasn't just a health battle. It was just this full reset on how she lived, how she connected, and how she found joy and fun. In this conversation, Brooks shares how 00:29 facing cancer, stripped away the old armor and opened the door to a completely different version of her life. Four days later, got my colonoscopy and I woke up and the doctor came over and I could see in her face that it wasn't good news. And she said, sadly, we found a tumor and uh it's the cause of your bleeding. It's pretty early, it's pretty small. It was only two and a half centimeters. And she said, but it's almost certainly cancerous. 00:59 I'm Maciel Huli, and this is the Life Shift, candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. 01:16 Hello, my friends. Welcome to the LifeShift Podcast. I am here with Brooks. Hello, Brooks. Great to be here. Thank you for wanting to be a part of the LifeShift Podcast. This has been a passion project that I never could have imagined for myself, even five years ago. When I was eight, my dad had to sit me down when I was visiting him. My parents were divorced and lived states apart, and he had to sit me down one day after summer camp to tell me that my mom had been killed in a motorcycle accident. 01:46 At that exact moment, or whatever words came out of his mouth, it was like, okay, anything that we had planned for my life was like no longer possible. The parent that I lived with full-time, the place that I lived full-time, the school that I went to, the friends that I had, they were no longer possible because everything was gonna change at that next moment. And because of the time period, late 80s, early 90s, nobody was talking about... 02:15 kids with dead parents, like kids will bounce back, you'll be fine. I absorb that and just pretended everything was fine for, took me about 20 years to totally grieve what I feel is appropriately for my mom's death. But behind the scenes, I always wonder, do other people have these line in the sand moments from one moment to the next, everything is different. And so that's really where the Life Shift podcast comes from. And now I get to talk to so many amazing, inspiring, 02:45 flawed, all the parts of being a cool human. I get to talk to them about these stories that have really changed their lives and how the human spirit has so much resilience and the ability to move through things that in the moment were like, no way I can get through this at all. And then you look back and you're like, whoa. So thank you for just coming on this journey with me being a little part of my healing journey through whatever we're going to talk about today because the young version of Matt didn't get to have these conversations. 03:14 Yeah, it's really amazing what you're doing. think I'm sure so many people have a moment that redirected their life. Before we get into your story and talking about your life shift moment, maybe you can tell us who Brooks is in 2025. Like, how do you identify? How do you show up in the world these days? Well, right now, I mean, I guess high level professionally, I'm the co-founder of World Class Clothing. It's a nonprofit clothing brand. 03:43 that is all about getting people to get their colonoscopies. How I show up in the world today is a full-throated colonoscopy enthusiast. And I- Not something you hear too often. No. I mean, it's, I'm really, I mean, you go to my LinkedIn, those are the first two words on my, on my subtitle. I'm obsessed with colonoscopies for many reasons. First of all, they prevent colon cancer. That's the main reason. 04:13 And also they're very funny. There's so much energy around them. It takes people by surprise. You don't know any other colonoscopy enthusiasts and it creates kind of vulnerable conversations. It's something that connects me with people actually, because people do not expect to talk about their colon or their colonoscopy with a stranger and suddenly they are. And I don't know, I feel closer to people as a result of kind of going in this direction, which is really what I'm trying to do. You know, I think for most of my life, 04:42 I felt isolation for many reasons. I'm sure many people feel isolated and lonely for most people are that way. And most people want to change that, find a way to connect with people. And I felt blessed that this is sort of my way into that. I love that. And I think it's important. I think you're right, because so many of us, I'm mid 40s now almost, growing up, 05:10 was very much a case of like, there were just so many things that we wouldn't talk about. Like, even if it was the only thing consuming our lives, whether that was some kind of illness, whether that was the death of my mom, whether that was money, religion, like all the things. And the more I do this podcast, the more I talk about all the things that I wasn't allowed to. And what I realize is how powerful it is. 05:36 I'm sure you see this all the time. takes the stigma out of things. It takes the uncomfortable parts of those, what those originally were, to be a little bit more commonplace. Like people are talking about grief now and all the things that would have made our parents very uncomfortable for a long while. And so I love that you are leaning in and making people uncomfortable because I'm sure it's opening a lot of eyes and it's creating a lot of... 06:05 change, at least in each individual person. you seeing that the fruits of your labor pay off in that way? Yes, absolutely. And actually, as you talk about what we talk about today, this morning I was getting a bikini wax. And as I was laying there getting my nether region waxed, I had this memory of just like, not that long ago, maybe like seven years ago, perhaps. 06:31 I was going on a vacation and I was a CEO of a different company. And I think I slipped out saying that like, Oh, I'm going to get my waxing for this vacation. And I remember the person who I was speaking to, their reaction was just like, you know, awkward, you know? And I was like, Oh no, it's not that I'm getting my eyebrows waxed. It's not what you think. Of course I was getting a bikini wax and my eyebrows waxed, but in that moment I was not comfortable. 07:01 sharing this, you know, I mean, a non taboo thing now, but just not long ago, it was a taboo for me to share that. So I was just thinking, gosh, how far I've come knowing that, you know, tonight I'm going to talk about it with the world. This bikini wax, was not, I was kind of ashamed of not that long ago. There's so many of those things where I think there are much more taboo, like in our head, I feel like they grow bigger. 07:31 as a taboo topic, the more we don't talk about them. But then when we start talking about them, they're just commonplace. And it's just like, OK, you're being a human like millions of other people that do the same thing on regular basis. Kudos to you for what you're doing with your story, but also just helping so many other people through that story and your brand. So to get into your story, to give us an idea of the before version of Brooks. 07:59 Can you kind of paint the picture of your life leading up to what we'll call your most pivotal moment for today's conversation? Yeah. So I was born and raised in Alaska. Kind of grew up in a pretty unique experience. Small town. It was Anchorage. It was the largest town in Alaska, but still kind of a smallest town, 300,000 400,000 people. 08:24 Parents were both small business owners. My mom was a first female orthodontist, actually on the West Coast. My dad was an immigration attorney. And actually, a kind of a fun thing is that when I was a teenager, I was hit by a moose in my car and a school bus and a minivan in uh six months. You have all these stories from growing up in Alaska. uh Anyway, I left that. I went to college, moved to North Carolina. 08:53 met my husband actually as a teenager. I was 18. I started dating. We've now been married for almost 20 years. And I started a basically a website company that turned into an online marketing and a B testing company when I was 23, as soon as I had graduated. And this was around the year 2003. And my first client was AOL. And so 09:22 I was, uh know, AOL was trying to get America online. Literally. It was still the dial-up days. had my stack of CDs. Yeah, didn't we all? Yeah. So I was in the business of designing pop-ups that actually resembled those CDs quite a bit. It was like a thousand hours free. No credit card required. Click here. For the love of God, click here. And so, and they would be tested. So they would be like an ongoing A-B test so that 09:51 the best pop-up would have the most reach and it would be data-driven. Basically, they hired me as a consultant and as a small agency to feed them more pop-ups to go into their A-B tests. My stuff was winning. That's the reason why I kept working with me. My background was in psychology, but I was very young. The internet was so immature at that time. mean, was a lot of low-hanging fruit. 10:20 But I started designing emails and landing pages and registration paths. I mean, kind of the whole gamut of the early internet. And before I knew it, I had like 12 employees and that grew to 50 employees. And we started working with other brands like Wall Street Journal and American Express, Under Armour, The Gap. And I just had amazing roster of clients over the next 16 years. So I was 10:48 a CEO when I was 23 and grew this company. You were a go-getter. Were you really driven or was any of that kind of happenstance or were you just like... I was extremely driven. Extremely driven. I mean, I was hardcore and also very lucky. know, kind of getting into the internet at that time, there was a lot of money in the business. AOL was a great client and... 11:16 combined with them being a great client. And I had some design talent, some data talent, but it was a great match for the moment and extremely ambitious. I hired a team, I learned how to be CEO, how to learn how to sell. I it was a massive learning opportunity. I I made a ton of mistakes along the way. But that's how you get better, right? Definitely. But I mean, it's... 11:44 I don't know that I would really wish this lifestyle on most people. ah There were a lot of things, know, that a lot of life experiences I didn't get to have because I was too busy writing my business. What made you so driven? Did you, was there anything in childhood where you just like? Well, I mean, both my parents were business, small business owners, and I think they wanted, you know, their children to be successful. Like most parents, I think they pushed me. 12:13 I think I had this idea that in order to be successful, I needed to make more money than my mom. I had no idea how much she made, but I knew she was successful as an orthodontist. She was successful and I thought I had to outdo her. I think that was an underlying motivation when I was younger. It's curious because I had similar drive. mean, obviously I didn't start a really big fancy company, but 12:42 I felt like I just had to be the best at everything, but mine came from abandonment, fears that if I wasn't perfect, my dad was also going to leave. And so everything I did was not to be better, but rather to not be hurt. Like, so I just had to be good so that I didn't get emotionally hurt like that again. Not that my dad ever would have. 13:08 left if I got a B or you know wasn't successful in whatever way but just curious how how people are so driven and not like like me who ran a you know like it was out of a trauma response and not so much like I I want to do this and I in my case it was more that I had to fulfill the privilege that I was given. My mom grew up with an alcoholic 13:36 both actually, both of her parents were alcoholics and she had a horrible life, childhood and lifted herself out of that, got to college and then just somehow, I mean, just her drive kind of got her out of that. And she was very poor as a kid. And so for her kind of having enough money was a big driver. And so then suddenly she... 14:01 was making good money was raising us, you know, kind of amongst this abundance. And I think she had this, I think when she was really young, she thought that people who had money were jerks and were morally corrupt, you know? And so suddenly she's raising these children who have money. And I think she was terrified that she was going to raise us as jerks, you know? So I had this idea that I was born with this moral failing, you know, that I was born a jerk. 14:31 And also I had incredible opportunity and I had to be like super successful, fulfill this like privilege I was given and be super nice and super great. You know, the nicest, most charismatic, loving, giving, generous person possible. And so to earn these gifts. And so I had just deep self-worth issues, a huge amount of guilt from kind of what I was born into. 15:01 Hmm, it's interesting. And I didn't mean to pull that up if it's something that feels a certain way, I knowing you for this very long time that we've been talking, I feel a lot of those things that you described, but they feel real. It just feels like you turned into the person that you are kind of running to be to prove something but like a real version of that. 15:31 just in the short time, it feels very authentic that you are kind, caring, want to give back to the world. I don't know if it's true, but it feels that way, you know, in this conversation and the way that you project yourself. It's really interesting how sometimes the things that we try to prove become real. Like we become these people almost like in spite of it, because it's like, you know, we were we felt forced to do it. But now here we are. We've become this. 16:00 this good person and so I mean. Well, I'd like to think I'm a good person. You know, we all have our flaws. Well, yeah, you can't be a good person unless you have a couple of flaws. Then you're just fake. Right. Anyway, you were you were successful doing you were you were you had this business. said 16 years and things were kind of going well. Well, it was kind of the moment that was the big shift was 16 years in the business actually just sold this year. 16:29 after 21 years. So it continued after, after I left. At 16 years, it was a pretty stressful year. This was basically 2018. We, we had a tough year. We had lost a couple of clients and we had opened a West coast office and it wasn't going as well as I, as you know, as I wanted it to. We had launched a product and there, you know, people like our 16:57 We were having a hard time selling it. was just like we were kind of beyond out in front of our skis. And it was on me. I was putting on myself as this idea that I was the only one that could save the business, you know, that I needed to fly the West Coast constantly and be there for that team. I had to go sell this product. I had to, you know, save this partnership relationship. I need to sell these huge clients. If I sold these huge 17:27 clients who replaced the ones we lost then would help me not have to let any of my team go. I wouldn't have to have bad financials and the shame of not hitting my financial goals, all of that. Whether or not it was actually on me, I was putting it on myself. And so at the end of that year in November, I was at a conference, was in the hotel room and I went to the bathroom and looked down and saw for the first time blood in my stool. 17:57 I was just thinking, oh my God, this is like the last thing I need right now. And I freaked out. was like, that's not normal. What should I do? And so I called a doctor from the hotel room and talked to a doctor and she was like, oh girl, you're fine. Everyone has that at least once time in their life. It's a hemorrhoid, you're age. You're fine. I was 38 years old. And so I hoped it would go away and that she was right. 18:26 But I started to pay attention. You know, after the conference I flew home and I was still seeing some blood here and there every few days. And so I decided to call a primary care doctor and actually go in and get physically examined. You know, I thought I just really need to do this the right way. You know, I was just talking to her on the phone, like, I really need to have someone like see if they can find that hemorrhoid. And so went in, had a meeting, she examined me. She was like, I don't feel anything, but I think that's what it still is. It's just probably further up. 18:55 in your rectum. And at that point I was like, okay, you didn't find anything. There's no evidence and you're still going with the same conclusion. I would go with the other conclusion. And I wanted her to tell me to get a colonoscopy and she never went there. And so I decided after that meeting that I was just going to cold call a gastroenterologist and get a third opinion and see if I could get the colonoscopy. So a month later I went in, it was New Year's Eve. 19:24 and I was supposed to go to a holiday party and it was a zombie party that evening. So I'd had all the zombie gear ready to go and met with a gastroenterologist and she was, for the first time, was like, yeah, you've been bleeding for two months now, you're 38. This actually kind of sounds like colon cancer and you're not too young. And she was like, and we need to get you in for a colonoscopy ASAP. 19:54 And that was the first time that I really had the fear of cancer. I did not go to that party. I went home and had a cup of tea. Totally ruined the party mood. Got my quote on? I that's not a party news to get. Right. And it wasn't, I didn't get diagnosed. It was just more like she really, I could see in her face, just like real It's just possibility, which is scary. I mean, in one case, she was the one also who 20:24 I don't remember exactly the conversation anymore, but she probably asked me exactly how it looked. And now in retrospect, this thing did not recognize or seem like a hemorrhoid, a hemorrhoid. mean, this is like gross topic. This is why we don't talk about it. Who wants to talk about like the nature of their shit? But it's especially it's bloody. mean, ew, gross. So gross. This is like the grossest topic, but it's super important because 20:53 If it's bright red, like in the toilet bowl, that's one thing. If it's almost black, it's completely different. means it's bleeding at the top of your colon. In my case, it was almost like it was woven through and almost like a tomato skin or something, kind of somewhere in the middle, but it was woven. So that's not something that's happening at the end. It's somewhere in the middle. So you can really get a lot of clues. I mean, when you think about it, if you have a dog, you're looking, whenever time you pick up your dog's poop, you're thinking, 21:22 about their health, like is this a good poop, a bad poop? You're really thinking about your dog and how they're doing, how their eating is. For yourself, you should be doing kind of the same thing. There's so many health clues of what's going on. Were you super in tune with your health before this or were you someone that was- Kind of. Okay. Kind of to like the way, I know. I I worked out, I did Pilates. I felt like I had good awareness of my- 21:51 abs. I tried to eat a salad every day. I didn't smoke, didn't do drugs and got good sleep. So I took care of myself. Yeah. So you were healthy. I was healthy. I drank maybe a little bit more than I should have. I don't drink anymore at all. But at the time I would split a bottle of red wine with my husband a couple of times a week, plus have a couple of glasses on a Friday or Saturday or both. 22:21 It would add up to being a couple of glasses five days a week, which in retrospect, you know, does add up. But overall, your approach was to be a healthy human being. you weren't like me that I told you before we started recording, skipping the doctor for five years. Maybe you were kind of paying attention and doing regular things that we should be doing as human beings. I had a naturopath. I was getting acupuncture. I was definitely talking to doctors. I definitely did my my annual. 22:50 I mean, I took care of my health. Yeah. So this is important. This was something you recognized that was like wildly was important. Yeah. And actually one thing I should just add, since we're on this topic, kind of what goes in the story, I kind of skipped over it because I don't talk about it very often, but um when I was 24, it was six months after I started my company, I had a stroke. And ah it was, I had just hired my first employee and I lost my ability to read, write, speak, walk, everything. 23:19 and massive stroke. You can still see it on my brain MRI today. It's like permanent, like egg size, you know, damage to my brain. I fully recovered. It took about six months to a year. And my husband stepped in, helped me run my company while I was recovering. And it was actually a really amazing way for us to, we actually bonded over the experience, got engaged kind of as a result of it. So terrible experience, positive in some ways as well. But that 23:49 even though I fully recovered, that experience helped me understand that I was not invincible. And probably when I went into the hospital saying like, I'm having a stroke, they were like, eh, you're 24, ew, you know, it's probably something else. And so I learned that you have to advocate for yourself and that, you know, sure, I was ultimately proved right, I did have a stroke. And this time with blood in my stool, I was like, you know what, I can't possibly be healthy and bleeding internally at the same time. 24:18 And so that's why I need to understand what is going on here. Yeah, no, super important. Glad that you found a second and then a third opinion, because imagine if you had been like, oh, telehealth says it's fine. So many of us are like, OK, well, that's a doctor. Right. So but if you're really I mean, there's a gut feeling. I think we all have that gut feeling that we sometimes dismiss. And it sounds like you were like, no. 24:46 We're paying attention to this. It's super important. You take all the downside risk. It's your body. I know. And the doctors, they also take risks. They don't want you to sue them. They don't want to get it wrong. They don't want to tell you something that they don't want to cause any harm. Obviously, that's their entire Hippocratic oath. that makes them, know, like it just changes kind of their incentives are not completely aligned with your incentives. And they're good people who are 25:15 doing their best, but it's your body is at risk and your health, your life in some ways is at risk. so, I don't know. think there is like, I'm not saying you don't, I mean, I think it's very important to trust your doctors, listen to them. They are experts and also trust your body and just try to find that balance, kind of take all the evidence, how you feel, what they're saying, the whole thing and building. 25:42 kind of a model as we get older, better intuition about kind of what is the right path for you. Right. And you also had the proof of concept of listening to your body when you sought help for the stroke and, you know, and probably shifted your perspective of not being, like you said, not being invincible and like things can take you down no matter what age you are and probably made you pay more attention to your body, I would imagine. That's right. Yeah. And I think it also made me healthier, honestly, like having that stroke. 26:12 All of that invincibility kind of thing became invincibility and I knew that I needed to take care of my body early on. Right, because you don't want to do that again. You don't want to force your body into that route. But now here you are with potential news that like, this is probably not a hemorrhoid. This could be something worse. So you skip the party. Fine. Yep. That's what I would do. later, got my colonoscopy and I woke up. 26:42 And the doctor came over and I could see in her face that it wasn't good news. And she said, sadly, we found a tumor and it's the cause of your bleeding. It's pretty early. It's pretty small. It was only two and a half centimeters. And she said, but it's almost certainly cancerous. And she's like, and that's gonna be, you know, what's about to happen to you is gonna be hard, but we caught it early and we will find out how early soon. I remember I didn't cry. 27:11 You know, I was just like, I was shocked, you know, but also I was, been afraid for a few days, you know, that this might be the case. I was like, Oh, this is like, I mean, at first I was like, okay, well, I guess I'll just figure out how to deal with this. Cause I figure out how to deal with all the stuff in my business, you know? And then I remember a nurse came in and she was like, how you doing, honey? You know, like, did we find some hemorrhoids in there? And I was, and I was like, uh, no, I know they found cancer. 27:40 And then she looked at me and she was like, are you okay? And when she said that, I was like, no. And that is finally, you know, I started crying a little bit at that. mean, someone had to like point that out. I might not be okay. Cause you were a problem solver. were, you could fix everything before, right? With your business. Having the emotion out of the gate. was just not my, my instinct. was just definitely to go straight into like, okay. 28:10 let's start problem solving, not like emoting, not feeling. I was not great at feeling out of the gate. I think that it was the beginning of a very long journey of ah getting through it. then, mean, it's now been six years since then. I am cancer free. was now, it was ultimately stage three A. There's a lot of people don't know this, but there's... 28:38 multiple stages within a stage. So there's stage 3A, B and C, A of course being the best. And basically between stage A, 3A and 3B, there's a 10 % difference in survival. And my tumor was one millimeter away from being a stage 3B tumor, in which case I would have lost 10 points of survival. I would have gone from like 70 29:07 Let's see, what was it? It was like, yeah, 83 % chance of survival. It would have dropped down to more like 74%. And that makes a pretty big difference. like you want to hold onto every single percent of survival when you are in a fight like that. Like going from what feels like 0 % chance of dying in the next five years, you know, even of course, you know, we can all die of all kinds of things in the next five years. Do you still feel like it's 0 %? 29:35 to go to a clear 13 % chance of death in the next five years as a 38 year old, that's a little bit too much for comfort. And then if it had gone to a 25 % chance or a 50%, I mean, it's super intense having to think through the idea that you might lose your life in the next five years. 30:00 up to that point, we feel well, I mean, I guess you have the the scare in your early 20s. But even up to that, I just don't think a lot of people think about dying. I unfortunately have been thinking about it since I was eight. But that's just because of my own personal experience. But I was thinking as you're kind of facing this news and going through the process, were you someone that was more glass half full or glass half empty as you were? 30:28 learning new things or moving through the next surgery or whatever you needed to have. I was a very stressed out glass half full, know, very anxious, but glass half full. I think now I'm much less anxious. I've built a lot of new skills of managing anxiety and reprogramming, repatterning my body. But I mean, I've always been pretty positive, you know, like, I don't know. feel I mean, I feel that from. Yeah, I felt 30:58 pretty in control. And I think the way I dealt with it was go trying to figure out exactly what I, what was in my control and how do I do as much of that as possible. I remember reading a study that said that if I exercised and these were not the words from the study, but it was a word that a doctor had kind of said. said, exercise like a fiend. was like, then 31:27 the study shows that your chance of recurrence in the next year will go down 47%. I was like, okay, 47%. Like I will exercise like a fiend. And so was like, what is that? How, like how hard? Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to, want to do Pilates classes a day. Exactly. What it ultimately was is I, um, trained for my first triathlon. 31:53 And so for me, it was like, I'm just gonna start to run. I'm gonna start to bike. I'm gonna start to swim. I am going to work out a couple hours a day. I'm gonna work out until I drop. And I'm gonna eat as cleanly as possible. I'm gonna get as much fiber as possible. I'm gonna grow my own vegetables. I'm going to, everything's gonna be organic. I'm also, I I went off the deep end in terms of like, 32:22 how clean my food was and how much I worked out. I I remember I got a whole new set of cookware and knives. I took a knife class on how to chop and learn to cook, cooked everything out of this one cookbook. I I was basically making all my own food so that it would have the max amount of nutrients and I'd have the max amount of control. I mean, it was a lot. Yeah, I mean, I... 32:49 don't think you're the only person that's ever done that. think we all just, if we can control as much as we can when there are other things that are totally out of our control, I think we lean in hard. a natural thing. Yeah, don't, I mean, is it sustainable? No. For a little bit of time, right? Until you feel comfortable and then we just kind of start becoming a human again and kind of leaning into that. What was the the hardest part of that journey for you of like getting to 33:18 where you are now of being cancer free. It took a couple of years of delay. It was, guess, getting to know who I am. was the so I mean, I had been this business owner, you know, and it just sort of like the name of my company was Brooks Bell and my name is Brooks Bell. And so I was sort of like, and I'm saying it was kind of an obnoxious I see it as obnoxious. I was like, I'm Brooks Bell of Brooks Bell. 33:45 you know, who is she, you know, this brand I've created, you what does my brand need from me? You know, I was definitely fulfilling what I felt like people wanted from me. And I don't know, just who is sort of going back to sort of like this, this, what is the person that is like the most, the smartest, the best, the perfectionist kind of the whole perfectionist kind of thing. And so after cancer, was like, okay, I'm Brooks Bell. Who has cancer? 34:14 And now I get to be a cancer survivor too. And so I have this whole new like wonderful, I don't know, everyone will like me even more because of what I've been through. You know, I'm like a great leader and I'm a cancer survivor, you know, sort of this, it just kind of added to that. And this, all this armor that I had, was like, no one will be ever mean to me or say a bad, bad thing about me now that I have cancer, you know? So it kind of fed into this. 34:41 this armor, this image I was projecting and I don't know. a lot of responsibility to hold that up. Yeah. And I still felt like, okay, now I have even a greater kind of responsibility to do really good in the world. And so actually what I did after that is I did get, I started a thing called Lead From Behind and I partnered with another nonprofit. 35:05 We got Ryan Reynolds to get a colonoscopy and build a video about it. And it was awesome. It actually had 16 million views and led to a 36 % increase in colonoscopy appointments. was amazing and I was really proud of that work. And it was really hard to kind of get that across the finish line. And it was actually kind of doing that project. I don't know, it was almost like the breaking point, you know, after that. It was amazing. And I'm very dropping the armor? Breaking point? It was after that. was like, it was just... 35:34 hard to get that across the finish line and get it, get, um, I mean, it's kind of a long story just in that. I had nothing to do with the Ryan Reynolds or, you know, any, any of that, but it was that kind of going through kind of another very high stakes experience where I had to be kind of at my best all the time. And it felt like this video had to be a certain way. And there were all these other people with bigger personalities and big 36:04 obviously very big reputations. It just felt very high stakes. And I think the stakes-ness of it was just too much. And after that, I decided that I needed to kind of take a break. And I remember thinking, I need to be in therapy, first of all. And I need to decide who am I if I'm not attached to... 36:33 Another name and outcome. Exactly. Yeah, like I can't be Brooks Bell of lead from behind or Brooks Bell of this brand or that brand or this board or whatever. I can't be attached to some other amazing thing. I can't be attached to something, you know, pulling my power from something else. You I had to be like, you have to be attached to nothing and sit still and 36:59 kind of like explore like low stakes things, not have your identity all wrapped up into achievement. I don't know. a really hard decision. Yeah, it was hard. It was and it was hard to sit still. oh Very uncomfortable. mean, to kind of think, I remember we have this little kind of den and I was like, okay, you're going to go to the den and you're going to meditate and maybe journal and you're going to read a novel, you know, in your den. You're going to do nothing for four hours. 37:30 and it'll be fine. And I was like, but I'm so unproductive. I should be building something or doing something. I mean, just to sit still and doing nothing of value for an entire afternoon. I guess first we have to define value because I think with maybe with your new mindset, that is a value. Yeah. I started to realize like kind of at the beginning of that, I started to, I mean, that was kind of just the 37:59 kind of this forced structure to be like still so that if I wasn't working on something externally, it was like, I'll get to work on it internally. I'm going to make no external progress, no projects, and all the work is going to happen inside. And so I started seeing a couple of therapists actually for different reasons. Started to, I don't know, mean journaling a lot, started going to some of like some retreats, did some silent retreats. 38:27 And I don't know, just getting to know myself. Like for instance, a little anecdote is I was like, what kind of music do I like to listen to? And I was like, I used to be very into music in high school, but then I just stopped listening to music. I would just listen to whatever my husband put on, you know? And it was fine, but I wasn't really listening to it. And I wasn't, it wasn't my music, you know, it was what he liked. And it was fine. I didn't mind it, but it wasn't my music. I didn't know what my music was anymore. And so, 38:57 That was sort of like a little thing. was like, what do I even like? You know, I started listening to a lot of music and I was like, what makes me feel really good? You know, when is my head bopping, my body moving? What's giving me feelings? You know, and then how do I like get more of that? You know, discover new music that gives the same feeling, not have any shame about what that music happened to be. And I mean, my favorite, my favorite song of the summer is Disco Snails. 39:26 by Wolfman, Disco Snails. As soon as we finish, you should put that on every listener. You must listen to Disco Snails. It is such a cheesy, it's truly about snails and disco. Hey, know, snails have to have fun too. Exactly, exactly. They're in the groove, you know, on the roof. know, this is so. 39:52 I feel like it's so common for so many of us to have this challenge of meeting ourselves, of learning about ourselves, because so many of us were just conditioned to go down that conveyor belt. I mean, you jumped into being a CEO at 23 and solving all the problems, whether you were supposed to or not, you felt like you had to. And now here you are. Who am I without? 40:21 solving all those problems. am I? Like just simple case in point of like, what kind of music do I like? That's disco snails apparently, but I think it's beautiful. I think it's so hard though. It sounds like it was probably a really hard experience for you to just who's Brooks Bell not attached to anything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I ended up taking singing classes. You know, it was 40:50 not to become a good singer, but to understand sort of how it works or to almost basically not have shame when I'm singing, you know, pretty much to be like, oh, this is why good singers are good singers. This is why I'm not one of them. And and that's totally fine. It's really hard, actually, to sing well. And so I would have to practice all the time if I want to be a good singer. I had to really work on my voice. This is what it would take. I'm not going to do that. Now I understand that I'd 41:20 didn't like, it's not that I was born a bad singer, you know, or I have some shame attached to never becoming the world's best singer. Now I'm like, oh no, it's just a lot of work. And it is totally fine that I can't, you know, sing these songs very well. I also have to really like make my voice loud, you know, I have to like be, feel the power actually happen. I have to be loud, which, you know, if you're kind of ashamed, it's very hard to be loud and 41:49 I don't know, just sort of separating the shame with this failure of being a bad singer from just sort of like, I never learned it. And I didn't have time for that. And it's totally fine. How can I have fun singing or fun listening and not feel like I need to be really good at it? Did it feel like a childhood wonder that you were kind of reclaiming? Yes, absolutely, yeah. Like that whole journey, not just the singing, but even just journaling or I can't meditate, I'm too... 42:19 I just am like, am I doing it right? I'm a little bit. I kind of don't do it either. Yeah, but I think it's I think it's a beautiful thing. I think there's a lot of us that didn't do that as children because we were kind of driving towards something because we felt we had to or we had to and now to have that I think it gives you a different perspective probably at your age too because now you have like other tools to understand the shame or the all those other pieces so probably 42:49 heightens the enjoyment or the disillusionment of certain other things? Did you have anything where you're like, hell no? I mean, I think it is kind of getting back to kind of the wonder. I was thinking about a couple of years ago, kind of I became obsessed with the idea of fun. Like, how do we break down fun as a concept? How do I optimize my life for fun? Why am I not having more fun? 43:18 You know, what is fun? When does it feel fun? Like, when is it fun versus so fun? You know? That's really deep. Yeah. So I remember, I remember going to vacation with my friends and we were having fun. I was like, oh my God, this is fun. This is so fun. I'm like, what is what's in this moment right now? Is it because there's people? Is it because we're being silly, because we're telling dirty jokes? Like, what is making this moment so fun? 43:48 I was like, I want more of that. How do I have more of this when I get home? And do it without drinking or substances. And I realized that some of, really for me, the essence of fun was playfulness. um playfulness, how do I get playfulness? And the playfulness is that you have to feel emotionally safe. Like someone is not gonna shame you or like... 44:15 No one's looking at you and judging you while you're playing. So you have to feel like you're safe and you also have to feel like it is low stakes. Play is low stakes. If you're building a company, you've got a million dollars at stake, not low stakes, therefore not fun. Is that ever fun? No. Building something amazing in the long term, maybe you have your moments of pride and achievement, but it's not fun. 44:43 You know what In the way that like playing around is fun. I was just thinking, first of all, like, okay, how do I create low stakes environments and emotionally safe environments? And, you know, and what are the things that give me pleasure? You know, I mean, pleasure was really the next thing. I'm like, what's fun? Okay, what's pleasure? And that are low stakes, you know? And so was like this whole process over the next several years of like, 45:09 You know, all buildings were like, how can I have joy most of the time? You know, how do I get to a higher level? So you can see sort of it's not like I'm not an ambitious person. It's just that my goals have completely shifts into like, how do get more fun, more pleasure, more joy, more of these like really good, good, juicy things in life rather than status or money or achievement? Yeah, it feels like you're just kind of leaning into the the human part of you rather than the 45:39 output that you were putting into the world. I think it's beautiful. think that people that haven't gotten there yet are probably like, well, what is she achieving? And you're like, all the things she just said, the fun, the pleasure, like the joy, like this. And you also have this, you had these fights with potentially not being able to do that anymore. That's right. And so now you have 46:04 There's even more incentive, I think, when you face something like that to be like, could be tomorrow, you know? And so how much joy can I have today? One thing I recommend for your listeners is that they do a death meditation at some point in their lives. So a death meditation is kind of a woo thing. You can probably Google it. I'm sure. They're definitely a thing. So I did a death meditation long before my cancer experience. 46:34 And what a death meditation is, basically someone or the one I was in, you're in a group or the bunch of people, you're kind of laying on the ground, kind of bundled up in a blanket, lights are low, and they're kind of trying to help you visualize that you are moments away from your last breath. They're doing all these things to help you visualize it. Like your body's getting cold, your legs are getting stiffer, you know, like 47:04 Your heartbeat is slowing, your breath is slowing, you're just visualizing this. And they're like, you've seen your last sunrise and this is it. So now that you're here, what are the things that you wish that you had done in your life? What are the conversations you wish that you had with your loved ones? What are the fights you had that you never resolved? What are the people you never said you love? 47:32 you know, that you wish you said, but other things you have never said that you wish that you regret and what are the things you're most proud of, you know, so they kind of keep taking you to the verge of that and then ask you to kind of like reflect. And I did that and I did this death meditation and it was, mean, I was kind of in a, I was kind of shell shocked for a week after that. It was one of the most powerful things I have ever done. 47:59 And I remember my takeaway. I put out my takeaways on a little post-it note and I put it on my monitor at work for many years afterwards. And the things that I realized, well, at my funeral, what I don't care about people saying is like, oh, she had a 50 % win rate of her tests. Oh, she had a 25 % growth rate year after year for 10 years. 48:29 care at all about the business success of the company I was building. And so I think it was probably the first time I was like, I don't know, I'm getting a little burnt out. This is not actually what I want. How am going to be spending my life? And I want to feel more joy. How do I do that? How do I get joy in my life? That's the feeling. I don't want to feel like the stress or this exhaustion or whatever. Joy is the whole game of life. So I wrote that down on the the Post-it note. And I remember 48:55 looking at the Post-it note day in, day out at work, was like, huh, joy. Like, what does that mean? How do I get that? Like I'm not feeling it right now, but like, I don't know, got a lot, a lot of stuff going on, but that's just, I don't know. It just kind of became a thing that was sort of always out of reach. So I think that's why I circled all the way back around afterwards. I was like, okay, back to the thing I learned about 15 years ago that I had too much anxiety, too much other stuff to actually take that seriously. But now I'm going to take it seriously as like, 49:25 Not just this like, I don't know, a superficial, I don't know, cliche, saccharin kind of thing, but truly as like, well, why are we even here on earth? Like if I get another 60 years, how do I wanna, what's the dominant feeling I wanna have, is love and joy. I mean, I think it's a beautiful practice. think for me, having lost my mom when I was eight, it gave me a different perspective. I mean, I pushed it down for 20 years. Once I finally grieved her, 49:53 I saw life a little differently and when my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, I was like, okay, I know how I'm gonna do this. And like a lot of things you just said, I was like, I had that final conversation with her where we both for an hour and a half just went back and forth and told each other everything because I was like, I don't wanna be at the funeral saying the things that I should have just said to her, the hard things, the good things, all the things. 50:17 And like that was the best thing that I've ever done in my life. And I can say there was a lot of sadness in that, but there was a lot of like now when I think about it, there's so much joy and happiness because I did that, because I was brave enough to do that because I just wish it for everyone. it's kind of reminded me of saying like that death meditation of like watching her go through that transition to whatever's next. 50:46 really gave me some perspective of like, okay, I don't need to worry as much. That was one of the things towards the end when she was in the hospice house, she was like, wish I hadn't worried so much, because all that matters is love in the end. And she was kind of like talking about, it was just the people she loved the most standing around her bed and seeing her. And these are the things that we should be thinking about. I think you can be quote unquote successful in a company and work and all these things and have joy. I don't think they need, they're not. 51:13 separate, like you can do them together and you can find the joy and happiness and I love that you're in this stage of your life because I would imagine, you know, I mean, tell us a little bit about why you started your company, but I would imagine this new nonprofit that you have or how maybe it's not new, but new in this period of your life. I'm sure there's some stress and those things, but also the joy and 51:39 Yes, things that come along with it. Would you would you say so? Absolutely. I mean, I think everything I've said is as absolutely left led directly to what I'm doing. So it's called world class clothing. And I realize I love fashion. I've always loved fashion as a little kid. And I was like, I want to spend my time. I don't know. Even though superficial, it's also low stakes. And it makes I just clothing is fun. and it's comfort. It's comfort. It's self-expression. There's creativity. 52:06 And so I was like, I would love to just be in that world of fashion and creativity. And then I was like, I want to be, friends, you know, I want more female friends laughing, joking with amazing women in my life. And so doing this, I'm doing it with a co-founder. Her name is Sarah Baron. She's amazing. I'm also working with Jen Knott. She's a writer in Berlin. She went to the same college as I went to, and she's super fun, super smart, amazing. 52:34 And Katie is our uh social media person and she's younger. And we just like, first we get on the phone, we talk all about our girl stuff, you know, starting to be friends first. And then we get into the business conversation, what we need to accomplish that week. But it's just by like, we're gonna, I don't want to be their boss. I don't want to be in charge of their careers. You know, we are doing this because it's low stakes. We're making fashion and we want to do a good job, but it's that if it's not fun, I don't want to do it anymore. 53:04 or if we're not friends, you know, just we're trying to start with fun and friends as the first two goals. And then of course, like we want to have, we want to have an impact. So this is the message that we're trying to get out there is that colonoscopies prevent colon cancer. maybe that, I mean, is in that they don't just diagnose it early, like in my case, it diagnosed it early, but had I gotten three years earlier, it would have prevented it because 53:33 Colon cancer in almost all cases starts as a polyp, a precancerous polyp, and polyps can be growing in your gut for like symptom free for like a decade. I mean, at your age, probably mid forties, you have a one in three chance, 30 % chance you have a polyp right now. And it could be large. I had three polyps when I was 38 and one had already, boop, turned into a tumor. so, as always, a colonoscopy, they go in with a camera. 54:03 deep into your colon, literally taking pictures, visibly looking for the polyps. And if they find one, they send these baby scissors in and they snip it out and pull it out of your body. So there's no other screening or 30 minute procedure that you can get that's pain free, quite comfortable, that literally removes any junk from your body that could kill you later. That's why colonoscopies prevent colon cancer. I think. 54:32 That's amazing. You know, like that is very exciting, very empowering. You know, we talk about all the reasons we don't want to colonoscopy. We talk about like, oh, it's invasive or the prep or, you know, the fear, all of this stuff we've covered. I mean, everyone knows all the reasons they should avoid it or delay it. We're not talking about the very important reason we should be rushing to get it the moment that we can, which is 45. So, you know, it's a different thing if you're not 45, it's not paid for. 55:01 doesn't mean you're too young for it. It's just that your insurance won't pay for it and it's just more difficult to get one. But oh my God, for everyone who's 45, they have no excuse not to go in and make their appointment for their colonoscopy right now because you have to go find those polyps and get them out. That's the one thing that everyone who's had colon cancer that I know, I know a lot of people now who have colon cancer, they're 100 % of the time regret not getting their colonoscopy earlier. 55:31 even if they were like under 45 at the time. Like, oh my God. So that is what I'm trying to, I just want everyone in the world to know that a colonoscopy prevents colon cancer. So world-class is short for world-class ass. And we're trying to make like something that's first cute, comfortable, high quality, actual fashion. It's made from scratch in Los Angeles, 100 % cotton. We're so cool. Like an actually cool product. 56:00 that you want to wear anyway, even if you don't care about colon cancer, which most people don't. We want to have something that people actually like to wear. It just says world class on it. It's not a full on cancer, cancer t-shirt. Although we do have the colonoscopy enthusiast t-shirt. Should you be in an advocate, you know, an advocacy mood. the, so we have this whole line that is fun and, and cool and, um, bunch of full of ass jokes. We want people just to mostly get comfortable talking about their ass and saving their ass and. 56:30 You know, just building a community of people who are willing to kind of go there and ask their friends, you know, if they've had their colonoscopy, talk about their own colonoscopy, talk about polyps, ask like how many polyps they found. mean, having a full blown colonoscopy conversation, because the more we do, the more we normalize this and the more people will get them, they'll stop being afraid of them. And the less people will find out that they have cancer a few years later. Right. 56:53 Which is much worse than any of the things that you listed of the prep or the experience. I've heard it's some of the best sleep that some of the people best nap you'll ever get. basically a colonoscopy is a fast, a cleanse and a nap. So all wellness related. Just think of it as a wellness, a self-care, know, two days. a spa. It's a spa. It's totally going to spa. Actually going to the colonoscopy is basically going to the spa. All of the work was done by yourself the day before. 57:21 doing your fast. There's tips. You can have gummy bears actually during your fast. That's just pro tip. Learn something new. Take out the red ones. Don't eat those. But you can have a handful. then you have your cleanse. thinking about you can have pills now. You don't have to drink that nasty drink. You can have now a pill option. It's called SuTab. Ask your doctor for SuTab when it's your turn. Chase it with your favorite liquids that are clear. 57:47 And then you'll sit near the toilet for like a couple hours. But then you think about if people are afraid of... And you don't trust gas. Gas? Well, yeah. I mean, it's okay. It's a shitty conversation. right. You don't need to wear a diaper. You don't need to worry about like this horrible... Just stay at home. Get like a good novel, you know, in your bed, you know, near your toilet. And I like to think about like... 58:16 the concept of pooforia. mean, everyone has experienced pooforia at some point in your life. Wouldn't describe the prep quite like that. Well, the prep, mean, it's kind of like pressure washing. keep working about, it's just like peeing through your butt, you know? Eventually, it's not explosive, it's not like shit on the walls, you know, cramping or anything. It's more like a gentle, a gentle, waterfall, you know? It's like a gentle stream, you know? 58:46 And by the time you're done, you feel so skinny, so clean, and very, very proud of yourself. Yeah. You've accomplished a lot. And you prevent, hopefully, colon cancer. And you prevent a top three cancer. So this is a big stat. More people die of colon cancer each year than breast or prostate cancer. Because they don't get a colonoscopy. It's because it's massively, it's a huge disease. uh The number one cancer is lung cancer. 59:15 from smoking, then it's colon cancer. And then we get into the rest of them like breast and prostate and skin and everything else. But colon cancer is this massively deadly disease is because a lot of people die who get it. There's not, if you get it, there's a pretty good chance you're gonna die. And a lot of people get it. And so between the deadliness and the incidence, but about one in 23 people get their, or maybe one in 24 people get colon cancer in their lifetime. 59:42 And so that's like a lot actually. You think about like a city bus, there might be 25 people on that bus. Somebody on that bus is getting colon cancer in their lifetime. But it would even be higher if we didn't have colonoscopies in America. Without colonoscopies, it's more like one in 16. So it's because colonoscopies are like taking a lot of people off of that conveyor belt because it's taking out all the polyps. So you want to be on that conveyor belt. You do not want to be on the 01:00:10 the colon cancer bus, you want to, you know, and a lot of people who are getting colon cancer are the ones who have delayed their colonoscopy or have, you know, that's takeaway, I think is to do that. I would like to ask you the question that I like to ask people. And I'm wondering if this joy filled to this purpose driven this this version of Brooks, if you could talk to the Brooks waking up after your colonoscopy. 01:00:38 right after your doctor gave you the news? Is there anything that you would want to tell her? Oh my God, I would give her a big hug. Oh, I would give her a big hug. I would say, is this going to be like the biggest challenge you will ever experience? You are going to be terrified out of your mind for the next few years. And it is going to spark the biggest, like this amazing change. And in five years, you're going to be happier than you've ever been. 01:01:07 you will be feeling so lucky and blessed to have gone through it and to be able to still be around and to be in that incredible place where I can follow my purpose, fulfill my mission. I get to tell ass jokes all the time. I get to sleep in. I get as much sleep as I want. I get to make friends and have fun. And I'm living the life now. 01:01:36 And, oh my God, like I'm She wouldn't have believed it. Yeah. It's the, I mean, it's. In that moment. Now that I am through it, it's the best thing that has ever happened to me, but at great cost. And I can't say getting cancer is the best thing that can happen to everyone. It's just, have to first live, get through it. And there's so many risks and pitfalls, you know, but if you can get to the other side without permanent damage, it can open up. 01:02:06 a really very meaningful life. lot of, I mean, there's a great quote that sometimes the most meaning starts with the biggest challenge. Yeah, I would agree. I mean, through a majority of the life shift conversations that I've had, mine included, I would never wish my mom to die. But because that happened, I get to do this now. I never would have been able to have these meaningful conversations. 01:02:35 with people around the world if that had not happened. So it's hard to say though, right? Like these are really hard things to say, but resilience in the human spirit is something. I'm so glad that you've made it through that challenge and that really scary challenge so that we could have this conversation. And now you're changing the world through what you're doing, through your message, through your purpose, and just living with more joy. I mean, I think it's- 01:03:05 beautiful and I'm so glad I got to know you in this way. If people want to like connect with you or learn more about world class ass and world class and support the cause and whatever it may be, how do you get in your orbit? What's the best way to find you or maybe tell you their story? Like what are you feeling? Yeah, absolutely. if www.worldclassclothing.com is the main website. 01:03:33 You can follow us on Instagram on worldclass underscore clothing and 10 % of the revenue of every sale goes to pay for colonoscopies for underinsured communities. The clothing brand is owned by a foundation and so a world class foundation. so net profits also are being funneled to pay for colonoscopies and undersured communities. And so if someone wants to just pay for a colonoscopy, you can definitely do that too. And go to 01:04:01 Same thing, world-class clothing. There is a product, this is called Donate Your Ass Off, and you can make a donation there. And that 100 % of that, obviously, will go into the actual fund of paying for the colonoscopies. If our style is not your jam, ah can certainly help the cause in that way as well. Well, I encourage everyone, we'll put those links, easy links in the show notes so people can find it. It'll be on the LifeShift Podcast website as well. 01:04:31 And I encourage you to do that. Also, if you're 45 or younger, sign up for your colonoscopy. Thank you for being a part of the LifeShift Podcast and sharing your life story in this way and how it brought you to this version of you. just so honored. Thank you. So I love, thank you so much for giving me a platform to share this. I just want everyone to, I challenge every listener to have at least one colonoscopy conversation. Maybe it's just finding about your own family history. 01:05:00 Maybe it's asking one of your friends or parents or whatever, if they've gotten their colonoscopy, but I just challenge you. It's actually quite fun. Yeah. Well, just like we started this conversation, there's probably those questions that got people uncomfortable in a moment and gets you into a deeper conversation. So definitely take that challenge. Do it. Just talk to people more about the things that you feel are uncomfortable, because I think they're going to be valuable conversations. 01:05:28 Thank you all for listening to the LifeShift Podcast. With that, I'm going to say goodbye and I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Thank you so much, Brooks. Thanks so much, Matt. This is great. 01:05:48 For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com