In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Brian Saunders, an English language facilitator and founder of the Super Speakers Toastmaster Club in Nicosia, Cyprus. Brian shares a personal story of hitting a low point at age 49½—relationship trouble, job loss, and regret—and how he chose to relocate from the UK and rebuild his life, emphasizing that it’s never too late to start over. He outlines his expertise in language learning, urging continuous immersion through listening to movies, audiobooks, radio, and reading, and stresses the importance of critical listening. Brian’s top business advice is to join Toastmasters International, citing it as the best avenue to improve communication, leadership, and business value. He advises his younger self to stop comparing himself to others, highlighting the uniqueness each person brings, and references Les Brown’s message about living purposefully. On happiness, he promotes self‑compassion, encouraging kindness toward oneself when goals aren’t met. The book he recommends is Jack Canfield’s Success Principles, from which he distilled the lesson that we can’t change yesterday but can shape tomorrow. His favorite quote, “Some you win, some you learn,” encapsulates his view on learning from both success and failure. Finally, he provides his online contact details: LinkedIn (Brian Saunders MA Native English) and Skype (briansaunders11).
Chapters
Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Brian Saunders with us. He's an English language facilitator and founder of Super Speakers Toastmaster Club in Nicosia, Cyprus. So welcome to the show, Brian.
Thanks very much, Tyler.
Of course, man, pumped to have you here. We'll dive into the first one. The first question I have for you, Brian, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
You know, I was thinking about this, and my message here is it is never too late. Even if you've blown stuff before, if you made a mess of stuff, it is never too late. I did some pretty stupid things back about 6 or 7 years ago. I got in trouble, blew up a relationship, I quit on my job, everything really just went badly pear-shaped. Age 49 and a half, what am I going to do? But you know what, what the lesson for me out of all this has been, that you can start again. I literally got up and left the country. I left the UK and I started again. Yeah, I've got loads of regrets, of course, and I've had to rebuild a lot of stuff, but life is good. And I just want to encourage folks, you know, wherever you are, you can start again. It's never— there's never an end point.
Thank you for sharing that with us, man. The next one I have for you is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
I think my expertise, if you like, is speaking, communicating, working with people's language and developing especially their English. And I feel that to do that, I need to feed myself. And it's really to encourage people, feed yourself with language, listen to stuff, listen to movies, read books, listen to stuff on Audible, get on the radio and listen. Be a learner, be a listener, be a learner all the time. I push myself to learn a foreign language because I know it's good for me to do that so that I'm better at helping other people learn English. So I would just encourage people, hey, read, listen, hear a lot of stuff and listen to it critically as well. Don't just accept it, but listen, hey, could that be better? How could I do that better? That's a great thing to do.
And what is your best piece of overall business advice?
I could talk about goals, skills, read this book, read that book, go to network meetings, all that stuff. You've heard all that before. I want to just say the best bit of business advice that anybody gave me and that I followed up was join Toastmasters International. You know, wherever you are in the world, there are Toastmasters organizations right across the whole world. There is nowhere better to improve your communication and your leadership and therefore your business skills and your business value. So my advice is get out there and find a Toastmasters club and do it soon.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
I think stop comparing yourself with everybody else around you, especially your family, people in your family, maybe your class, your, your student class, your workplace, wherever you are. You are unique. You bring something special to the planet that nobody else has got. I love I love what Les Brown talks about. He says, you know, on your deathbed, you better have done what you were supposed to be doing here. Otherwise it's not good. And we're all unique. We have something to give. And I would tell myself to stop comparing myself with everybody else around me.
And in your— it might tie in— in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Yeah. Being— I think I've only really been discovering this a little bit more recently. Being a bit more compassionate to myself. Be compassionate with yourself. Treat yourself a little bit more kindly. Yeah, for sure, push yourself. We have goals. We want to challenge ourselves, improve, try new stuff out. But don't beat yourself up about it when it doesn't work out. Um, I find myself now, 55 years of age, I'm trying to be a little bit more careful with myself and say, hey, you know what, if it goes wrong You can try again. You can do new stuff. Be a little bit more compassionate, I think, would be great advice for anybody.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
That is just such a ridiculous question. How do you expect me to find one thing out of Jack Canfield's Success Principles? You know, I got the book here. I could find 101 things. The one thing I think, though, from kind of tying into a lot of the rest of this is, you know, we can't change what happened yesterday, but we can change what happens tomorrow. And I want to encourage, you know, get out there, read the book, because it's about embracing your future, not just living in the past and thinking, well, it could have gone and it could have done and it could have been. So for me, it's kind of let go of the past. I learned that really from reading Jack's book. Fantastic.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
I heard this just fairly recently. I think it's so cool. Some you win and some you learn. And that for me is a great quote. Some you win, some you learn. It's not about losing. It's about falling over, getting back up again and learning something from it. Learning out of life, learning out of the stuff that goes bad in life, learning out of the stuff that comes good in life. So yeah, some you win, some you learn.
I love it, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where is the best place for people to find you online?
Okay, so I'm on LinkedIn, Brian Saunders MA Native English, and you can also find me on Skype as well, Brian Saunders 11, all lowercase letters, Brian Saunders Perfect, man.
Thank you again for joining us. Really appreciate it.
Thank you, Tyler. Cheers. Bye-bye.
The podcast you just heard was published with Anchor. Got something you want to say to the creator of this show? Send them a voice message using the Anchor app, free for iOS and Android.
