Wendy Swire is an author, speaker, professor, and leadership consultant who is best known as the “Brain Geek” Executive Coach to her C-Suite clients. As founder of the DC Neuroleadership Group and Certified Mental Fitness Coach, she has helped thousands better understand their brains to create laser-focused results by moving from their “Saboteur” to the “Sage Brain.”

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTIONBrett Gilliland  00:01Welcome to the Circuit of Success. I’m your host Brett Gilliland and today I’ve got Wendy Sherwin Swire with me, Wendy, how you doing?Wendy Swire  00:08Awesome. I’m so glad to be here. Thank you for having me.Brett Gilliland  00:12Good to be with you. You’re calling in from Bethesda, Maryland. How’s it going out in Bethesda, Maryland today?Wendy Swire  00:19Yes, Maryland is doing just fine. It’s, we got a late fall, warm fall going on. I think a lot of parts of the country so, Brett Gilliland  00:27Amazing, isn’t it?Wendy Swire  00:28Yeah, it’s pretty wild. So people are in fine spirits.Brett Gilliland  00:32So a guy I connected to on Instagram this morning, he was put on there that he was working outside in his back deck in shorts and a T-shirt. He’s like in November in New York, if I’m getting shorts and T-shirt, I’m doing it. Wendy Swire  00:44Yeah, it’s pretty good. It’s nice. So thank you for asking.Brett Gilliland  00:47Absolutely. Well, you are, everyone knows you as the health benefits. Everybody knows, I should say the health benefits of staying in shape physically, right. But there’s also this little thing here, if you’re watching on point, if you’re listening, I’m pointing to my brain here. There’s a lot that goes on right up in here. And so you are an expert on what I would say all things brain is the way I’m going to word it. But I think it’s gonna be awesome to have a conversation with you today about that stuff. But if you could Wendy, you know, you’ve been a global executive and leadership coach, you’re an author, a speaker, an applied neuroscience consultant, I mean, what’s the backstory? Right, what’s made you the woman you are today?Wendy Swire  01:24Yeah, I love that question, as a coach, it’s a wonderful question. And I hope what people ask it of each other. So I think there’s three things, Brett, that I want to emphasize. The first is I’m a really big proponent of the energy, emotional energy and positive contagion really. And I really lucked out, I had a father, who was, you know, rags, and just poor as dirt grew up, but he really had positive energy. He was a successful entrepreneur, and just had a lot of joy in his life. So I want your listeners to really know there is neuroscience behind this, but your positive emotions are contagious, like, like the flu, like COVID. So super important. And I had that growing up. So I had a very much a role model of what that can do. Brett Gilliland  02:13Right. Wendy Swire  02:14Yield to success. The other thing I would say there’s a couple others. The other is, you know, my story is I really, really wanted to be a diplomat and economic diplomat and work on a lot of issues about poverty. And when I was young, I was in high school and college and I really thought I really thought I was going to solve poverty, like particularly in Latin American poverty and debt, I was really into it. And I actually trained, I did a stint on Wall Street to prepare me and I actually got a master’s degree in, to train as a diplomat as a diplomat in diplomacy. Yeah. And, you know, I’m getting ready. I got a good job in the State Department of the World Bank, and my father, this beloved patriarch that I just spoke of, he got diagnosed with like stage three cancer. And I’m in my mid 20s. And it was a real point, it was a crossroads. I think we all you know, I’m sure you have your listeners have you reach a crossroads? Like, do I do this or don’t I, and a door in my life had to shut down that I wasn’t going to live overseas,