Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 127, February 2020 | Page 11

Finding His Niche
Brent was born in Alberton, Johannesburg, and now
lives in the northern part of the city. He attended
school in Alberton, and began working at a wedding
venue from as young as 14 years in order to help
support his family. After school he began studying at
the then Rand Afrikaans University (now University
of Johannesburg), but dropped out and travelled
around the USA for two years, doing odd jobs to
make a living. Once back in SA, he then tried his hand
at studying marketing, while working at a designer
clothing store.
“During this time I landed an interview at Fantastic
Racing, a Formula Three racing team, and was offered
a permanent job as an event manager, so I left my
sales job and dropped out of my studies,” says Brent.
“After a couple of years with them, I realised I am an
entrepreneur, and a leader, and that’s why I battled
to deal with management. So I sat down with my
manager and said I want to start a company that does
brand activation, with their blessing, and asked for six
months to launch my new business while finishing off
with them.”
That was the birth of Chaos Theory, which Brent
initially ran out of his garage at home, and it grew into
a hugely successful activations company working
in cricket, soccer and more. However, Brent has
subsequently handed
over the daily running
of the company
and just pops into
the office every
few days while
serving on the
Exco, due to the
big changes that
have happened
in his life thanks
to the Good
Things Guy
movement.
Paying it
Forwards
It all started with
a Neknomination in
2014, the drinking game
that took the social media
world by storm in 2014, where
people would dare friends to down
a drink and post the video on social
media. “People were filming themselves
doing crazy, stupid and dangerous things while
chugging a beer, and it all seemed so pointless to
me. I’ve got nothing against drinking, and you will
find me in a pub every Friday night, but I felt we
should be more responsible what we post online.
There’s huge power in sharing positive ideas and
creating awareness through social media, and I
wanted to do that instead, with a random act of
kindness,” says Brent.
“We have a large proportion of our population
living in poverty, and I saw being nominated as
an opportunity to rather do something about that.
So, instead of downing a drink, I decided to post
a video of myself feeding a homeless person. This
is South Africa... I just drove down the road and
found someone. That’s the plight of so many South
Africans, and worth drawing attention to. I put
the video up on a Friday and it went viral, and it
changed my life.”
By the Monday Brent was being interviewed by
media platforms from all around the world, as the
view count and number of shares on his video
continued to rocket upwards. This eventually
saw him and his video featured on, amongst
others, Carte Blanche, The Espresso Show, 5Fm,
eNCA, News24 and Radio702 here in SA, and
internationally on Mashable, Huffington Post, CNN,
BBC, Sky News, Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres, to
name but a few. “Local and international news
stations and talk shows wanted to hear more. I’ve
always been a positive guy, but this really showed
me that the world is hungry for good news. It also
made me realise that we all have the power within
ourselves to make a difference.”
There was no plan or strategy. The Universe has a
crazy way of doing things, and I was in the right place
at the right time. I literally fed a homeless person to
change the way my friends looked at things. I didn’t
set out to change Neknominations, just to change the
narrative – and I think the world needed it after several
deaths due to Neknominations. Also, I think South
Africa needed it, because many had been numbed
into the belief that SA is a broken country, just waiting
to fall over. I thought we needed to collectively change
that narrative.
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