OneTenHundred

Eric Boggs (00:01)
Brooks, hello. Thank you for joining me today. Where does this day find you, physically and mentally?

Brooks Bell (00:04)
Glad to be here, Eric.

I'm in my home office in Raleigh. Had some good caffeine this morning, feeling great.

Eric Boggs (00:19)
Good, good, good. So I know this conversation started from something I wrote on LinkedIn about my own faulty wiring when it comes to happiness and joy. And you wrote a really nice note to me that was surprising about how you, I'm reading my notes, spent four years of rewiring yourself to feel joy. And so I'd love to hear about that.

I guess start us with where were you four years ago.

Brooks Bell (00:53)
Well, six years ago, I left my company with a colon cancer diagnosis and did six months of surgeries and chemo to kind get through the surgery. when I went through that, was coming off of 16 years being the CEO of a 50 person company and having, you know, lot of, I mean,

A lot of happiness, mean, still it was sort of, I was building my career, but I was also traveling the world. I did have a great relationship. I I had a lot of amazing things. I was happy in my career. But also had a lot of stress. I would, I remember distinctly many times driving home after a day of

like 10 hours of 30 minute back to back meetings, just fantasizing about sipping that first glass of red wine and being able to finally like kick back and like let the stress like steam off of me. And of course, you know, and I was doing that like five days a week. So having splitting a bottle of wine with my husband after work, and I knew I should probably cut back on that, but I also felt like

Eric Boggs (02:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Brooks Bell (02:20)
All my peers were doing that and not that big of a deal. And then of course getting colon cancer, that was a takeaway that maybe that was a factor, maybe it was a stress, I don't know. But now I was motivated to heal and take care of myself and get involved with nonprofits. on some level I felt like, oh, I have made it. I've arrived, now I'm in my post-career life, now I can spend all my time doing good.

I'm going to be happy now for sure. And I did do some pretty cool stuff. And I had found purpose, which was amazing. But then fast forward two years later, with purpose, with free time, with my health, with financial security, with everything I wanted and appreciation for life, all the good things, I was still feeling

a lot of anxiety and just not feeling joyful. I remember the moment I was driving to a retreat in Esalen, which is in Big Sur in California. It's like kind of this, one of the original like rarer woo woo retreats. And just driving along this beautiful coast and feeling, I was like, am I excited or am I anxious?

Eric Boggs (03:39)
Mm-hmm.

Brooks Bell (03:48)
and I think I'm anxious and I have no reason to be anxious. Why in the world would I be anxious? I'm to go off and like write and like soak and be in nature. I mean, why am I not joyful? And that was the beginning of all of this work.

Eric Boggs (03:52)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you're famous now for colonoscopies and colon cancer, right? Like that's what you're known for. yeah, mean, I think it's a, in some ways it's a surprising admission. It's also not a surprising admission at all, frankly, that you would have a lot of career success, a huge health scare and come out of the huge health scare well and okay and still.

Brooks Bell (04:11)
Yes.

Eric Boggs (04:33)
be looking for something and still not have the thing. And so it sounds like it took you a little while to understand that you still weren't finding the thing that you were looking for. What steps did you take after that to kind of work on yourself or think about what some of the issues might be?

Brooks Bell (04:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, well that weekend was like kind of the first step in a long process. So I went to that. I had decided that I was going to take like six months to kind of not do anything, to rest fully. I had been doing a lot of work, you know, on the lead from behind project and getting Ryan Reynolds to get a colonoscopy. And again, really amazing thing. But again, stressed out by the whole thing, depleted. And I was like, this time I'm not going to do anything. I'm not going to think about what's my next.

Eric Boggs (05:18)
Yeah.

Brooks Bell (05:24)
project. So and then funnily enough, I'm thinking, maybe while I'm resting, I'll write a book.

Eric Boggs (05:33)
Yeah, yeah, like tell me about it. mean,

even this whole thing, right? Like I think even my message I sent you is like, as if I don't have enough happening, I'm just gonna start talking to people and recording it. So yeah, I get that. Yeah, it's like when you're wired away like you do and you don't feel alive or, you know.

Brooks Bell (05:42)
Let's start a podcast.

Yeah, my restful

state will be writing a book and having never written anything, having no idea what I'm doing, you know, I'm just gonna start writing. Like the ridiculousness of that. As I've told this story a couple of times, they're like, and you never were writing. I'm like, yeah, I was just gonna write a book. So actually that was my intention for that week. It was a writing workshop and it was a meditation workshop. So I was like, I'm gonna decide if I'm gonna write a book.

Eric Boggs (05:52)
Yeah, exactly.

Totally get it. Totally, of course. Yeah.

Brooks Bell (06:18)
you know, kind of get warm up a little bit, see if I like it. And when, and I was talking to another participant as she was asking me about my intention and told her I was gonna write a book, and I also said, I'm feeling quite anxious right now, and I'm realizing that if this feels like a very big decision to write a book, and it almost feels like it's the same level of decision as like,

having children. And she kind of laughed, she laughed at that a little bit. She was like, she was writing a book. She didn't think it was that big of a deal actually, but she was like, huh, that's kind of interesting. You think it's such high stakes to write a book. And so one of our first, and I was thinking about that. thought I was surprised at her surprise. And so we were, one of our exercises in this workshop was to do what's called morning pages, which is, it's a simple exercise, basically just in the first thing in the morning,

Before you go to bed, you get a journal and you put on a timer for 10 minutes and you just write whatever's on your mind. And it could be anything, but you can't lift your, like you basically just had to write something for 10 minutes.

Eric Boggs (07:30)
Okay,

so stream of conscious, pen can't leave paper. Okay.

Brooks Bell (07:32)
Exactly, exactly.

Just to kind of get you going. So in the morning, my first morning pages, I was like, what am I gonna write about? Well, maybe I'll write about why am I anxious about writing a book or writing, know, putting my words down. And that was the beginning of like this crazy experience that happened all week. I was like, well, why am I afraid of? I was like, I'm afraid of writing down my thoughts. I was like, well, why are you afraid of that? And I was like, well, that

I won't like what I'm gonna write. I was like, well, what are you afraid of that? Why? I kept saying, why? Why are you afraid of that? And I was like, well, I'm gonna write something that is scary, or embarrassing, or shameful. And I was like, what might that be? So I kept going until, in a way, opened a portal as I kept digging in of what are the things that you might write that you are afraid of writing or exposing?

Eric Boggs (08:16)
Yeah.

Brooks Bell (08:33)
And that simple exercise, I started writing and digging deeper, deeper, deeper into like, what are the things you might write down that you're afraid to write down? That are like, because it feels like they're permanent or like I have to answer for them or I don't know. And it was this exercise that, you know, kind of accidentally brought me into like, helped me access like a whole bunch of shame that I had not really been recognizing.

Eric Boggs (08:48)
Yeah.

Brooks Bell (09:02)
that had been building up for so long. And that week I kind of kept doing these morning pages and kept following the thread. And it was one of the most emotional, like, I was starting to write stuff where I wanted to throw up as I wrote it. It was, and I was sobbing and felt nauseous. I was getting into like the scariest, most,

Eric Boggs (09:04)
Yeah.

Wow.

Brooks Bell (09:28)
awful statements, fears, like beliefs, know, like just a jump.

Eric Boggs (09:33)
And

this is self-driven. This is you in a room in a bed by yourself. You're not working with it.

Brooks Bell (09:38)
Yeah, I just

started writing with Morning Pages and it just like poured out of me the next three days of like some real dark stuff that had been in there for a long time. I know, well I have those journals and I haven't looked back at them. But it's, and they're not as scary.

Eric Boggs (09:48)
Well, sounds like a good start for a book.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I'm kidding, but

it probably is, yeah. Anyway.

Brooks Bell (10:02)
Yeah,

but the thing that was so awesome, mean, three days in of this, I was just like so wrung out emotionally. And I was thinking, I'm supposed to be at Esalen having this great woo woo time. And I feel like crap, know, like just dark and awful. And I thought, I hope there is some benefit to this because I just now feel depressed. This is not great. This is awful. I don't know why I'm even doing this to myself.

And then this amazing thing happened. It was the last day and I've been there for a few days now and was gonna leave that afternoon. And that morning, just remember I was like sitting alone. I decided not to go to the last set of sessions. I was just eating at breakfast on the cliff, like looking at the waves in the distance. And Esalen is just beautiful. It's just a beautiful, very magical place.

And I was just thinking, gosh, this is so beautiful. Like, my god, this I like this moment, this moment, I wish I could bottle it. And I was thinking, I just, was, I thought, what can I do to capture this moment? I was like, maybe I'll describe it. So I started writing out everything I saw. I said, well, maybe, maybe I should draw it. So I started drawing it. then I, and I was like sad that I was gonna leave Esalen and like forget this moment. And I was starting.

And there was something about that where it was almost like this my I started becoming extra. I started noticing everything and everything slowed down and I felt this unbelievable sense of gratitude and love for the world. I was that I was eating something. I think I had like some it was like I remember it was like it looked it was something it was like Nutella like they had something on the buffet that was like Nutella.

And I remember having a lick of the Nutella off my spoon. And I was like, oh my God, this is the best tasting Nutella I have ever had. And I was just thinking, know, like the smells were elevated. The taste was like it was elevated. I mean, I was just like almost getting high on life. And then I remember walking to the lawn, just thinking this is so beautiful. This is amazing.

so much love and joy. And I sat on the ground in the grass and I was like, I have never smelled grass. And so I flipped over and rubbed my face into the earth and I was like, the smell is amazing.

Eric Boggs (12:35)
you

You touched grass, like that's the like thing.

It's like you people need to touch grass. You touched grass. There you go.

Brooks Bell (12:44)
I know. And then

I remember a fly landed on my finger. I'm like, where'd you come from little fly? Like, you're so cute. I mean, it was just, it was like I was high and it was like the most overwhelming sense of joy and it lasted for like a few hours. And, and then I kind of kept journaling. And one of like takeaways actually from that experience, I mean, I felt very lucky to experience like this, that intense, joyful, blissed out kind of state. I was like,

I thought, realized, my takeaway was like, if I can dump the fear and the shame, you know, I like, I almost had these two, the visualization was like two big tanks and they're both filled with liquid and one is filled with fear and shame liquid and then the other one is sort of love and bliss and joy and they're connected by like, you know, they are connected in some small valve and the more I can dump one, the more the other one can fill up.

Eric Boggs (13:43)
Yeah.

Brooks Bell (13:43)
but the

more one is full, if the fear and shame is full, it's gonna be very hard to fill the joy and bliss tank. And that every day little drip drops are going in to both, or particularly the fear and shame, and you gotta continuously kind of dump it, get it out, so that you can get the other tank activated.

Eric Boggs (13:49)
Yes.

Yeah, so it sounds like journaling was the fear dumping mechanism for you or hack.

Brooks Bell (14:08)
Yeah, journaling

was how I did it at Esalen. And it was like the combo. I don't think if I was just sitting in my guest bedroom or my office trying to journal, I would have had the same effect. It was kind of getting out of my environment, getting in other environments and kind of having the right conditions so that I could do it. And actually, the other thing I did is with the morning pages, you had to share what you wrote with somebody. So I had to read these journal entries aloud to a stranger.

Eric Boggs (14:21)
Yes.

Brooks Bell (14:37)
And I think actually that was good, because it was sort of like I had to face it. And I was actually have the other person say like, wow, that's intense. But I mean, you're lovable. Let me give you a hug. It kind of helped me like make it real and also neutralize the stuff that I was writing.

Eric Boggs (14:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I think the openness in that process is like the feature, right? My friend Eric Severinghouse said I interviewed last week, and I don't know what order all these will come out, but the thing I'd said to him, and I will say to you, is I think the single greatest service that entrepreneurs can do to other entrepreneurs is talk about this, because it's a universal experience. And we all feel...

inadequacy and hopelessness and fear and whatever it might be in different ways based on who we are, where we came from, who our parents were, who are, you know, right, but it's, it's universal. It's never straight up into the right for everyone. And so talking about this is kind of my purpose with this thing that I'm doing. And I appreciate that you would share in this way. And so that was four years ago.

Brooks Bell (15:38)
Right.

Eric Boggs (15:52)
That was step one of a rewiring as you described it. And so how did you operationalize that process?

Brooks Bell (15:56)
Yeah.

It gave me kind

of like the belief that I could feel like, it's like, what does love and joy bliss actually feel like that is like not mediated by drugs or anything else, you know? And, and it continued with a, mean, that's kind of when I started, had various therapists, you know, I really wasn't under therapy for a while. I thought like, I don't have any shame. I don't have any problems. Everything's great. And I think this

Eric Boggs (16:05)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Brooks Bell (16:30)
helped me realize like, no, everything is not great. You hid it all from yourself. So you do have actually a lot to talk about. So I started with therapy, what helped was, I mean, I learned the concept of self-love and self-like compassion. I started to realize it was sort of like I did a diagnosis basically of like, well, you don't love yourself and you're not compassionate. You're pretty hard on yourself.

Eric Boggs (16:36)
Yes.

Brooks Bell (17:00)
And I started to realize that kind of the problems were, doesn't, but that doesn't just cause you know what your kind of false beliefs are, doesn't mean you can create a new set of beliefs just cause you want to. You know what I mean? Just cause you want to be compassionate to yourself doesn't mean you just are. You know what I mean? So I think the next step was connecting with my body.

Eric Boggs (17:10)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Brooks Bell (17:23)
It was very, I was like, can't think my way through this. You know, I'm smart, I definitely know how to strategize and think, but it was like, I can't actually think through it. I have to feel my way through it. I have to reconnect with my emotions, actually. It's like, the first thing actually after that was like, I need to learn how to cry. I have to be able to cry. You no one can really cry on demand, but I was like, I've gotta make it easier to cry and.

not feel shame when I cry and just know that crying is like getting your body back into homeostasis. See it as like a useful thing. And so crying was a kind of almost, it's a bodily kind of thing, connecting with your body. There was this one guy who, John Amaral, he is a...

Eric Boggs (17:58)
Yeah.

Brooks Bell (18:16)
does something called Network Chiropractic and worked on like Gwyneth Paltrow. There's like his, he's one of the episodes of that goop thing on Netflix a few years ago. It's pretty freaky looking. The stuff that John Amaral and folks like him do, they like make you almost do like the worm on a table. I mean, it's really weird. They like touch your neck and you're like abriding, you know, like you're having an exorcism. And I was like, weird, I want to know what that's about.

Eric Boggs (18:26)
Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you're talking about.

Yeah. I want one of those!

Brooks Bell (18:45)
Yeah, actually so I actually hunted him down and signed up for a session with him and I was on a table with him for two hours and he did not get me like doing the worm because he was like you you're you are like a brain with your body being dragged behind it and We spent those for those two hours simply trying to get me to cry So it sounds like bad. He's just trying to make me cry

Eric Boggs (19:05)
Yeah.

Brooks Bell (19:13)
coming up with every traumatic thing he could think of to make me cry. But it was almost to kind of get decongested, you know, emotionally. learning to cry, getting connected to my body, and actually I up doing a lot of that spinal network chiropractic with these folks out in Asheville that...

do that, I would go out to Asheville like once a month and do a session and before I knew it, I actually was doing the worm on the table. It's super weird, I was like screaming with like six other people in the room and like yelling and just like writhing around. It's very embarrassing but it was like a cathartic kind of and super weird experience that you would do kind of on command with a stranger, very weird.

Eric Boggs (20:06)
That sounds bizarre.

Brooks Bell (20:07)
is totally

bizarre. You got to kind of trust it. And it was, but it's like, I don't know, getting, I don't know. was like, I just need to connect with my body. can't think my way through it. I can't have a lot of shame. I just gotta, I want to connect with my body. This is what I'm going to do. So.

Eric Boggs (20:23)
Yeah, I

mean I'm certainly not a so I guess I have two two sort of comments or observations um one Isn't it wild being diagnosed by someone you're like well, I'm doing fine I got it all together and like oh, you know, I don't know but yeah got some issues or whatever, but I don't have like deep problems I remember we're going to see my therapist was like hey, yeah I just want to be better at my work be better and I'm sure like 30 minutes in she was like, okay

Brooks Bell (20:49)
Hmm.

Eric Boggs (20:53)
Right? And you know, she just kind of had to work on me and she cracked me wide open. It took a little while, but she cracked me wide open and I was like, oh yeah, okay. I clearly have issues. So that's observation one. The other observation that I absolutely believe is the physical, the physicality of your mental health and the physicality of your emotional health. And it can take a lot of different shapes, right? A lot of people work out until they're about to die. A lot of people get...

Brooks Bell (20:53)
Thank

huh.

Yes.

Eric Boggs (21:22)
weird neck massages that make them do the worm in Asheville, but it's all kind of like the same thing, right? It's like you're, it's all one piece and it all has to be working together. And so, yeah, I totally believe it. Like I totally buy into it because I, you know, I experienced it in different ways, right? Like I play old man competitive soccer and, you know, scream at people and, know, for me it's more, you know, testosterone or whatever, but it's very physical.

Brooks Bell (21:39)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's important.

Eric Boggs (21:51)
and it fixes me because my brain just like flips off for a little while and then I can turn back on and

I'm like, yeah, okay, I can deal now.

Brooks Bell (21:59)
Yeah, yeah, totally. It's amazing. mean, getting connected to my body has been like my theme for like two years. It's all and it's just like, how do turn my brain off and like trust my body? I think another thing I did is that's been very helpful as hypnotherapist. have no sense. I do have no sense once a month now and it is great. It's probably the most effective ongoing thing that I've been doing of kind of it's almost like a meditation.

Eric Boggs (22:06)
Yeah.

wow.

Really?

Brooks Bell (22:29)
You don't like you don't actually it's not like you are anesthetized You are more in a meditative state. You know where you are But you're just like I don't know it's almost like you're in that weird dreamy state where you are about to fall asleep Where you know you are but your brain is like doing all kinds of like funny stuff Only you're more in control. It's as much more easy to like create a world or like I don't know just activate your imagination and

in that state you can kind of have a memory that's kind of faint and feels not important kind of emerge and you have to talk about it thinking like not that important, probably not what I'm looking for but whatever, I'll talk about it. And then you realize that's exactly what you need to talk about. And then actually that is actually a source of trauma and a belief that is still affecting you today. And by like going through and sort of reliving that,

Eric Boggs (23:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Brooks Bell (23:26)
little experience and having a different outcome is a really powerful way of kind of changing those deep-seated beliefs that you almost don't have access to the memory that caused those beliefs. You know what I mean?

Eric Boggs (23:39)
Yeah. Understanding the memory that caused the belief, right? Like to me, that's been an unlock over the past couple of years. And it's, why am I the way that I am? Well, let's take one ingredient, my parents. Well, why are they the way that they are?

and they're the way that they are and they raised me in the way that they raised me, which helped me be in. Yeah, once you just start unwinding all of those things, you know, don't get enlightenment, but you start to understand and you can start to like have visibility to like, well, I'm this way in part because of, you know, I grew up and it was like this. And the reason it was like that is because my dad had this, you can kind of peel it all the way back. yeah, like that, that is.

similar experience for me, not through hypnosis, but yeah, it's like the memory that causes the belief, I think, is the phrase that I really latched on that you said, and it makes total sense.

Brooks Bell (24:39)
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's I mean, those are can be super powerful. There's a reason I still have those memories. I remember very little about my childhood, but I started that was one of the things I was journaling. Actually, once I was in the habit of journaling, I was like, what is every memory I can think of? I was just writing out all the memories, like two sentences of each memory. And there might have been 50. And I was like, what percentage are positive versus negative? I was like, well, most of them are negative. And OK. And so

Eric Boggs (24:57)
Yes.

Yeah.

Brooks Bell (25:08)
It's interesting to think about which of those, why do I remember that? Because it's useful to me today. There's something from that memory that I'm still calling back to, which is why I remember it.

Eric Boggs (25:16)
Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brooks Bell (25:22)
Yeah.

So the last thing, kind how did I get to like joy is this past year has been the most joyful year, like where my baseline has been a lot higher of joyful than it really has ever been. I think the first, was like I think about as a chart, of course, being an entrepreneur, everything's a chart. Like I was like starting where, you you have your baseline, you know, basically you've got to go from like negative, you know, bar.

of like anxious, then you have to get to neutral where you're like at peace basically, you know, you're not waking up anxious, but you're like, whatever, I'm not like happy, but I'm not, I don't feel bad, but I don't feel actively good. So you have to get to neutral first and then on that you can start to like add the positive energy. And so in the first couple of years was really kind of rooting out anxiety and like,

Eric Boggs (26:03)
Yeah.

Brooks Bell (26:20)
getting rid of that. And then I was mostly in a neutral place. And I felt that's not really good enough. I wanna be feeling awesome. And I wrote an article about this in TBJ actually, last year. the key part honestly was playfulness. And I was thinking, how do get to joy? I was like, what do the kids do? They play.

I like, how do I activate some of that? And so an example of, I was like, okay, well, what's holding me back from being so more playful? And I was like, well, shame again. And like an example is, I would play my husband and his friends, our friends, like when we get together on these group vacations, we often do some karaoke. It's like a theme of our trips. And I hated it.

Eric Boggs (26:53)
Yeah.

yeah.

Brooks Bell (27:19)
I would my song I'd be like whispering. I mean, it was I was the most painful thing. And I also would feel shame. I'm like, this is supposed to be fun. Why can't I have fun? Why can't I just go with it? And I was like, what's the reason I can't just like belt it out? Like, we all know you don't have to be good. But like, why can't I even enjoy this? And so I end up taking singing lessons for six months and

Eric Boggs (27:23)
dang, that's...

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Brooks Bell (27:49)
I was like, gotta overcome this. least I need to understand. It's not to become a good singer, it's just to have the exposure therapy and just to kind of get over whatever the thing is that's preventing me from enjoying karaoke. So singing lessons is what I did. now I have a great time, I sing all the time.

Eric Boggs (27:51)
That's great.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was

going to say we got to do a karaoke night because I love karaoke. That problem you have, I do not have that problem. I got other problems, believe me. I think that.

Brooks Bell (28:17)
You do not have that yet. Yeah, that's not one of them.

I mean, now I tell ass jokes, you know? Like I started world class, you know? Yeah, like, you know, I've always had to be so professional in my life. you know, cause I have running and, you know, I have a professional brand, you know, enterprise brand. We gotta be like professional. And to realize like, oh, I love ass jokes. I love being a little off color. I always have loved that. I love swearing, you know?

Eric Boggs (28:31)
Well, you got an asshat right behind you.

Just like the candor

and humor that you use to talk about colonoscopies and have for a long time has always been really fun.

you know, your brand and your personality. And I think that's great.

Brooks Bell (29:06)
Mm-hmm. Yeah,

I think because I'm like, you know, preventing cancer, gives me kind of being a cancer survivor. I feel like it's giving me a little bit of a, you know, a force field, you know, protecting me from judgment. But now I kind of feel like, screw that. I don't even need the force field anymore. I'm just like, I love ass jokes. I love ass. You know, I love like just this whole. Yeah. Yeah, we all have colons. We got it. We got to like keep. Yeah.

Eric Boggs (29:28)
We all have them, we all need them, they all need to be healthy.

Brooks Bell (29:37)
There are so many, believe me. If you go to our website, worldclassclothing.com, the secret is you go to the FAQ and there are so many Easter eggs in our FAQ. actually, all of copy has been so much fun to write. It's a joy to read all the different words that have the word ass in it or could have the word ass in it, and we use them all.

Eric Boggs (29:51)
All right, I'll check it out.

Yeah, that's great. I

was flipping through this site and like got to the bottom and it said something like, you've reached the bottom, my favorite part or something like that. I was like, well done by someone. That was pretty nice.

Brooks Bell (30:10)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

so I don't know just having and being you know having just I guess kind of the my point is that this past year I've been feeling really great. I've been trying to figure out who am I what brings me like what is Fun, what is funny? What was funny to me when I was eight? You know it's probably still funny to me now and And just I need to throw off like just like what do adults?

Eric Boggs (30:36)
Yes.

Brooks Bell (30:40)
do, you know, that, I don't know, I just gotta like kinda go back to being the inner child and knowing that I can do that and there's like a lot of fun that is waiting for me if I can do that and build, know, and do it with friends, build more community, and just being silly, like kinda the silly person I've always been and just felt like it's inappropriate or not professional, not mature, and I'm like, fuck that, that's how I.

Eric Boggs (31:09)
Yeah, well, and you're doing it for good. Like you're a voice for something that's really important that is, I don't know, awkward for some people to talk about, I guess, I don't know. And you're raising money for the Leinberger Cancer Center. Like those are all, yeah, those are all.

Brooks Bell (31:10)
can have a lot of joy in my life.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it is.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so we

can get some folks who have a lot of high barriers to getting colonoscopies, we're putting money towards getting those barriers down. Whether it's buying them a day off of work or buying them an Uber ride or a translator to their colonoscopy. And Lineberger has done a great job figuring out how to spend the money really well. And so we're supporting them because we trust that it's going to go to a really good place.

Eric Boggs (31:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's great.

Yep, it will. That's an organization that my family and I support too. that's, yeah, they do a really good job. I will wrap this up by telling you that my wife is getting a colonoscopy. I think I'd already exchanged messages with you and like a couple days later, she was like, I'm getting it. You're not gonna believe this, but I'm getting a colonoscopy. I was like, well, I know one person that will be very happy and I'm actually talking to her. It was just a very funny kiss-met kind of.

Brooks Bell (31:56)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Good.

Thank you.

Eric Boggs (32:23)
Kinda thing is like that.

Brooks Bell (32:23)
If you

get some stuff, every purchase comes with these little stickers. One says ass on it. And what she should do is put that ass sticker on her butt cheek for her as an Easter egg for her doctor. They open up the gown for an ass on ass on the ass. Yeah, she should definitely write them a note as well.

Eric Boggs (32:41)
Yeah, she could just write a little message back there or whatever.

That's funny. Brooks, can leave it there. I really appreciate you taking the time to share all this and talk about your journey and your happiness and your joy and kind of the ups and downs. I do want to ask you one more question, and I should have prepped you with this, but I'll ask you it anyway. What music have you been listening to lately?

Brooks Bell (33:12)
I have been, let's see, Spotify said that my top was Slackwax. There, yeah.

Eric Boggs (33:21)
I love it. I love it.

is like my self-serving portion of this. Like I have an insatiable new music appetite. And so I'm just like trolling for something new to listen to.

Brooks Bell (33:27)
Yeah,

slack wax close to my fire.

Eric Boggs (33:33)
night slack wax. I will listen to it. That's Brooks Bell, co-founder at World Class Colonoscopy Enthusiast.

Brooks Bell (33:44)
Get your colonoscopy people and colonoscopies prevent colon cancer. Do not wait any days past your 45th to get your colonoscopy and you will save your own ass.

Eric Boggs (33:56)
There you go, save your ass. Thanks, Brooks, that was really fun.

Brooks Bell (34:01)
Thanks, Eric. Yeah, that was fun.

Eric Boggs (34:03)
Yeah, I appreciate you sharing all that.

Brooks Bell (34:05)
Yeah, the thing I know

we were trying to keep it tight, having slow stakes is the one point I didn't make, that this company is like low stakes. I did it as like, I'm thinking this is an art project for me and my personal, like this is to make me happy. And of course it's to raise money and all those things, but I'm not focusing on that. I'm like, if I am not happy, if I'm not in...

Eric Boggs (34:19)
Yeah.