Award-winning filmmaker and keynote speaker Brett Culp knows a thing or two about transformation. From capturing heartfelt stories on film to inspiring audiences around the world, Culp is no stranger to the power of storytelling—and its ability to ignite change. As the keynote speaker for Sell-a-bration® 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee, Culp led the closing session titled “Superhero Leadership in Uncertain Times.” His message was simple but profound: leadership is not about titles—it’s about mindset.
We sat down with Culp to explore his views on leadership, overcoming fear and why every real estate professional has the capacity to be a superhero.
Culp: I spent a decade of my life as a documentary filmmaker, traveling all over the world capturing amazing inspirational stories. I started doing screenings and people found those stories very inspirational, very uplifting. They started to invite me to come to their corporate conferences, not-for-profit events and community events to not just share my films, but to share my heart. That started me on my passion and desire to get better as a speaker, to learn how to speak and do it professionally. I’ve been doing that now for about seven years and I love it.
RRC: Your keynote emphasizes that leadership is a mindset, not a title. Can you share a story from your filmmaking that brought this to life?
Culp: You know, it’s interesting, my films themselves are full of stories of everyday people who have made an extraordinary impact. That process of interviewing each one of these individuals […] seeing their capacity to be a real-life superhero shaped my perspective on leadership.
In the past, I thought that leadership was about titles and positions—it was about something you worked up to in life. Now I started to realize that leadership is not a position or a title; it’s not about what it says in your email signature or business card. Leadership is the decision you make moment to moment, every day, about how you’re going to respond to the world.
Does this world exist to serve you, or do you exist to serve the world? Are you here to spread light, or are you here to be self-absorbed to get what you want? Are you here to love everyone, or are you here to be afraid that there’s not enough for you, so you fight back and create drama? That’s a choice that we all make.
RRC: Real estate professionals have faced serious challenges in recent years. What advice would you give to those struggling to see opportunity in uncertainty?
Culp: When you’re going through a time of uncertainty—when there’s a lot of chance, when there are a lot of unknowns—you have a choice in how to react.
You can either react with fear: see the mess, see the chaos, feel that maybe you’re not enough. Maybe you don’t have what it takes. Maybe the world is your enemy, and you have to battle with it all the time.
But I’ve found the more empowered mindset is to look at every single one of those challenges as an opportunity—a possibility to say, “Okay. This is unknown. This is changing. But I’m not the only one facing this. Some are just better at faking it than I am.”
There’s a choice we can make in terms of mindset and perspective—to say, you know what? When there are unknowns, when there are changes, respond with: “Good!”
I’m not going to lie on the ground and cry. I’m going to stand up. I’m going to learn. I’m going to educate myself. I’m going to come to events like [Sell-a-bration®] and take a step ahead. While others are running around in fear, I’m going to sit in confidence and power—because I know I have the might, the strength and the resourcefulness to make something beautiful happen, even here.
RRC: In your experience, what are the most common traits of individuals who successfully step into leadership, even when they don’t see themselves as natural leaders?
Culp: Anyone who is successful in leadership—at their core—has a deep sense of grounding. They have a presence within themselves. They are not grasping and waiting for others to solve their problems […]. That is follower mentality.
They are the kind of people who can meditate in silence for an hour and remain undisturbed. They can walk into a room without knowing a single person and still feel confident that, by the end, they’ll have five or six new friends.
Not because they’re the most charismatic. Not because they have all the answers. Not because they’ve figured everything out. But because they trust themselves.
They believe in their own capacity—their resourcefulness—to figure it out. Even if they don’t have all the answers right now, even if they lack the experience to sort it all out, they believe that with every step they take, another answer will come. And then another. Everything they need for the journey will appear along the way—if they choose to trust themselves.
RRC: Your films center on resilience and optimism. What have you learned from the people you’ve documented?
If there’s a common theme in every single one of my movies—every story I’ve ever told, and every story I’ll tell today—it’s redemption. It’s light in the darkness.
We all wish that the positive things in life—the good things, the success we want deep down in our hearts for ourselves, for our families, for our loved ones—we all wish that journey would come only with love and light, and nothing else.
But what I’ve found—and what my cinematic journeys have shown me time and time again—is that it’s by going through the darkness, the difficulties, the tragedy and sometimes even the trauma, that we discover the depth of ourselves. The best of ourselves. The truth of our being. We find strength and resilience we didn’t know we had.
For me, what’s been so powerful is looking at my own life, embracing my own pain and trauma and choosing my faith to say: As painful as this is, as difficult as this is, as much as I would never have chosen this—I still believe that light is on the other side of this darkness, and I must enter it.
I must enter the shadows. I must come to grips with and face all that I do not want to face—all that is difficult, all that is hard, all that is painful. But if I do that—if I don’t run in fear—if I face reality, face the truth of myself and the world, then on the other side, I find a deep power within my very being. Within the being of those around me.
That power allows me to live with a kind of love, passion and generosity that helps me see, feel and experience light everywhere.
But it requires us, sometimes, to stand in the darkness with one little candle, all alone, and say:
“I believe.
I believe in me.
I believe in the people around me.
I believe in the world.
Even though I feel like I’m surrounded by darkness, I will stand here and hold this light—and I will not be moved.”
