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From Boardroom to Black Belt
Huntley Smith's career path has been anything but conventional. As a Business Strategist and Performance Expert, he bridges the worlds of corporate excellence and physical discipline, bringing a unique perspective to professional development.
Leadership Journey
With over 15 years of experience spanning 45+ businesses across 30 industries, Huntley has navigated the full spectrum of corporate leadership. Beginning in sales, he climbed through the ranks to Sales Director, General Manager, and Managing Director before moving into C-suite positions and sitting a board member. This journey eventually led him to management consulting, where he discovered his true calling: helping organisations overcome their most complex challenges.
ThoughtLab: Where Science Meets Strategy
As the Founder of ThoughtLab, Huntley pioneered an innovative approach to performance optimisation that combines business strategy with psychophysioergonomics—the science of how mind, body, and environment work together. This powerful methodology creates the ideal conditions for peak performance, whether in the boardroom or beyond.
ThoughtLab works with executives, business owners, and teams to cut through conventional wisdom and provide practical tools for operating at their absolute best—physically, mentally, and strategically.
Clients range from top tier executives to ambitious startup founders, service teams and even professional athletes, all united by the desire to perform beyond their perceived limitations.
Thought-Labs goal: Develop your People | Elevate your Business | Transform Perspectives
Martial Arts Mastery
Huntley's commitment to excellence extends beyond business. As a first-degree Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt with 22 years of experience on the mats, he's earned notable accolades including SASCA SA Champion and FILA SA Champion. He runs Arte Suave Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a network of clubs throughout Southern Africa and Mauritius.
More than the competitive achievements, Huntley values jiu-jitsu for its lessons in discipline, awareness, and resilience—principles he seamlessly integrates into his professional development training.
Professional Development Approach
As a Professional Development Trainer, Huntley rejects generic advice and corporate jargon. Instead, he offers:
● Practical wisdom backed by real-world experience
● Clear, actionable strategies for immediate implementation
● Hard-won insights from both business, martial arts domains and building world champions
● A no-nonsense approach to performance optimisation
His training focuses on the mechanics of success—breaking down complex concepts into simple frameworks that drive measurable results alongside actionable tools that can be implemented into your business. Whether addressing performance optimisation, purpose-finding through adversity, or human behaviour patterns, Huntley provides tools that create lasting impact.
Philosophy
For Huntley, true transformation happens when individuals and organisations align their physical, mental, and strategic capabilities. It's this holistic approach that enables his clients to consistently "punch above their weight" in their respective fields.
In a world of consultants promising quick fixes, Huntley offers something different: authentic expertise, zero pretence, and transformative strategies that have actually worked both in the boardroom and on the mats.
1. Meta-Mind
Leverage cutting-edge insights from evolutionary psychology, biology, and neuroscience to understand the mechanics of your greatest asset, your mind.
2. Managing Chaos and Order
Learn the difference between chronic stress (bad) and conscious stress(good) and how to manage and leverage both for high performance.
3. Purpose Through Adversity
Using evolutionary psychology, Examine why tackling hard challenges is deeply ingrained in our nature and critical to our sense of fulfilment.
4. Living a Black Belt Life: What It Takes to Be Part of the 0.1%
Mastery isn’t luck—it’s built through discipline, long-term thinking, and an unshakable mindset. Whether in business, sport, or life, the top 0.1% play a different game. This talk breaks down what it takes to operate at that level, drawing from two decades of high-performance coaching, management consulting, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
5. Strategic Goal-Setting Framework (SGF)
Implement our proprietary Strategic Goal-Setting formula built to standardise goal setting across your business.
6. Temperament Analysis for Enhanced Team Dynamics
Master the art of quickly assessing and effectively managing diverse personality traits within your organisation and customers.
7. Emotional Intelligence
Master the single biggest predictor in management success and corporate development through the RULE EQ framework and take your management team interpersonal skills to the next level.
8. Management Mentorship
Development of conscious leaders and teams who can navigate complex interpersonal dynamics, are accountable to the business, who have a high level of EQ, management skills and drive team performance.
9. Intro to AI
This talk unpacks Artificial Intelligence in your business, how we should be using it, what we should and should allow, considerations for ethical use, updating policies and procedures, protecting your data as well as a general understanding of the use of AI in your business.
