The MOST POWERFUL Motivation For Success (It's Time To WIN BIG!) | Les Brown & Lewis Howes

Mental resolve. I think that everybody needs that because when you have goals and dreams, there will be resistance. When you have goals and dreams, the Book of Life says, Can you share.

The biggest challenge you've had to overcome?

The biggest challenge I had to overcome, and it's a continuous challenge, is allowing myself to see myself beyond my circumstances and mental conditioning to live out of my imagination rather than my history. When you are raised in a culture that constantly demean you, marginalize you, and stifle your potential to move forward, I remember reading a quote by a guy named Richard Wright who said, the impulse to dream has been slowly beaten out of me through the experiences of life. So just imagine in 1963 when I graduated from high school, that's a long time ago. My grandson said, Grandpa, how old are you? I said, 75. He said, you are old! In 1963, Here's what the statistics were in 1963. That if you're an African American, you're the last hired and the first fired. If you're an African American, that a white college trained black person has less of a chance of getting a job than a white high school dropout. That's in 1963. According to the Federal Reserve, that still exists. So just imagine when an African American graduates from college and in debt, that a white high school dropout today will earn more money, three times more money than that black college graduate. Three times more, all right? Why? Because of this paint job. I'll never forget, Louis, I saw an interview with Larry King and this white supremacist was being interviewed and he said, Tell me, why do you hate black people? He said, Because they're black. And he said, and? He said, and I'm white. So Larry said, what did you have to do with that? And this white supremacist said, what? He said, what did you have to do with your being born white, and he didn't have an answer. He just got quiet. And Larry, in that question, that strategic question, it created an aha moment, hopefully, for that young man. I saw this video yesterday. This lady said, I've got grandchildren. I hate y'all. And I'm teaching my grandchildren to hate you too.

Wow.

Yes. And I'll never forget when I was on a bus coming back from Miami Beach with my mother, and they had signs on Miami Beach that said Jews, dogs, and coloreds not allowed. And so I asked my mother, I said, Mama, why do they hate us so much? And she said, Leslie, I don't know. But don't you ever be like them. Don't you ever be like them. God is love, and he who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in them. You love people regardless how they treat you. That grabbed me because she could have very easily, because of the experiences that she had, that taught me to be hateful, because hatred is taught. It's people not born with that. And a little boy asked me, a second grader, what do you mean by you gotta be hungry? I said, the greatness within, the when. I said, when the average person starts out in life, they don't realize the odds are stacked against them. And you have got to call on everything in you to get ahead. I said, How old are you? He said, Seven. I said, When I was five years old, I was downtown Miami, and it was like 95 degrees. And I ran to a water fountain. I was with my mother. The neighbor said, Mamie, we can watch the other six, but you're going to have to take Leslie with you, because he's a little touched in the head. They didn't want to keep me. So I let my mother's dress go. We went downtown with her. We would hold her dress because she would walk real fast. And I ran up to this water fountain, Louis, and I started drinking water from it. And my mother said, Don't you ever do that again, grab me by the neck. And I talk about this in the book. And she started punching me in the face and the head. And I was shocked. I said, Mama, she had this crazed look in her eyes. I said, It's me, it's me, Mama. And all of a sudden, a white police officer came by and he said, Okay, he had a belly button in his hand. You can stop beating that little boy now. I won't have to beat him. And he looked at me as I was crying and just laughed.

Wow.

As he walked away. And my mother, she grabbed me and I was crying and she said, Leslie, I'm so sorry. But when I saw the redness in his face and how he had his Billy Club out and he was coming to beat you with it. She said, I had to do something to distract him. She said, because had he hit you with that billy club, he would have had to kill me. I'd left you and your brothers and sisters to fend for yourselves. You have no relatives. And at that moment, five, I knew that there was two worlds. I was in a world where I was limited, where I could, what water fountain I could drink from, when we got on the bus, there would be seats up front and there would be a yellow line, and there were standing room in the back where black people were seated. And Mama would say, keep moving. I said, Mama, there are seats up here. Did you hear me say keep moving? Keep moving. So when you are in that kind of environment where you are judged based upon nothing other than the color of your skin. That's very humiliating. I had another experience that really tilted the scale for me being the person that I am. And because I love my mother. I'm a mama's boy. I always say this is the Mrs. Mamie Brown's baby boy. And so I was determined that I was going to create a world that my mother could live in and not be humiliated and not be held back and a better life than she had lived in Stuart, Florida. And what I experienced coming up in Miami, being African-American, there were so many things that was just are part of the culture, things that exist now. But to believe and understand that it's going on now, it's surprising. But what is heartwarming is the broad scale support. Something Benjamin Franklin said, he said, change will never come about until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.

Wow.

Okay? And so you have white people who are unaffected by this, but they're outraged. They're saying, hey, this is not right. And they're putting themselves in harm's way. I saw one white lady, they shot her with rubber bullets and and she lost that. She's permanently blind in one eye. And so there have been places where the white turnout and other groups are very strong, but people out of a sense of humanity saying, this is not America. And it's been sustained because the people can see it. To see George Floyd have his life taken away. The guy who did that, one of the guys who was right there near him where he could have said to the cop that was on George Floyd, Come on, man. Come on, he said he can't breathe. Come on, it's four of us, he's handcuffed, he can't get away from us. Come on, get your knee off his neck. He didn't do this. So this lady saw one of the guys in the grocery store who was charged with complicity. And she said, Do you have any regrets? He said, no.

Wow.

No. So therefore, he felt it was okay to take this guy's life for a $20 counterfeit bill. that they found not to be counterfeit. So to lose your life and someone say, when you are asked, do you have any regrets? And you say, no. Man, let me tell you something, that's heavy. That says a lot.

Yeah. Do you feel like we haven't really progressed that much at all? Or is there progress?

No, I think there's been great progress. There's no question about that. No question. You just have people who, this is for the first time under this leadership that we have, feel comfortable coming out. So there are people that this level of hatred has been instilled in and passed on generation after generation after generation. What makes it seem so pervasive and so dominant has been the exposure. It's never been exposed like this. the internet. That's why North Korea and various dictatorships don't allow media to have the right to expose things, inequities and the unlawful behavior in their country, including our country. Had it not been for the internet, we would not know about this, because the television executives had a meeting after the Rodney King riots and say, When something like this happens again, we will not show it. We will just report it. Okay, so but the internet, because of the telephones, now these cops have been getting away with murder. They can't just get away with it. Although even when they go to court, 93.9% get off, never go to court. and of those who are indicted, maybe around 2% are sentenced and found guilty because the judge and the prosecuting attorney, it's on the side of that officer. So it's, it's, they can always make.

They can always make a case, I guess, for, well, he was attacking me. And this is in the, the law on how we can defend ourselves as police. Right.

When they asked, when they asked the Cops, why did you beat this guy that I said, this man served our country in Vietnam. He should not be treated like that. He was holding a baby. And they said he was fighting with one hand.

Okay, come on.

When I was on the air, and this is in the 80s, that editorialized against police brutality and deadly use of force, they said he had a threatening stamps. So I shot him. One guy I'll never forget, he was in a car and police approached the car and they shot him five times. And they said he held his hand up even though he didn't see a gun, but he moved his finger and he thought that he had a gun. And so they killed him and they got off with it. So they couldn't come up with any type of flimsy excuse. I thought my life was in danger. like the guy here in Atlanta was shot five times in the back and they said they thought he was going to turn around and shoot with a taser. And the truth of the matter is that cop was mad because his taser was taken away from him. So he pumped five bullets in him. He said, no, no, no, no, there will not be a trial here. This is taking place now. And so that level of madness and lack of value for human life It's deep in the culture.

But it's- But how did you personally- Yeah, and how did you personally overcome so much from racism as a young child when your mother essentially had to beat the crap out of you in order to defend you from the police beating you up even more to, you know, not being able to sit anywhere on the bus that you wanted to go on to, just having the challenges in school to your career, how did you personally learn the skills to overcome so many challenges in the world, in your internal mind in world and in life?

You know, the title of the book, you,'ve Got to Be Hungry, the Greatness Within to Win. Greatness comes out of adversity. And the defining moment for me, was when my mother was working for a lady named Miss Harris. I was responsible for cleaning some spots off the floor. My mother was called by Miss Harris. She said, Mamie, I want you to go in another room and find a hat that I'm looking for, the one I had three Sundays ago. And when my mother went in that room, I heard a slapping sound. I heard my mother clapping her hands. And I said, Mama, I was curious. I said, why are you clapping your hands? She said, Don't you worry, Leslie, you just keep on doing what you're doing and get those spots up off the floor. Then she came out of the room and she said, Ms. Harris, I don't see it in there. So she said, well, go in this other room and Mama went in the other room and sure enough, she started clapping her hands again. And I said, Mama, she said, what? She was aggravated now. I said, why are you clapping your hands? She said, Didn't I tell you to do what you're supposed to do? At that moment, Ms. Harris came over and she stood over me. She said, I can tell you why she's clapping her hands. And I stood up and I looked in her eyes. During this time, as a black person, you were not allowed to look white people in the eyes. You should always look down, or you could be arrested or beaten. So I looked her in the eyes and she said, the reason that I have your mother clapping her hands When I have colored people working for me and I can't see them when they go in another room, I make them clap their hands to make sure they're not stealing.

Oh my goodness.

I said, ma'am, I said, Ms. Harris, let me tell you something. My mother does not steal. When she talks about you and your family, she says, I work for Ms. Harris. and she talked about our children, and she knows all your children's names and their birthdays. My mother is an honest person. She'll never steal from you or anybody. And she was so shocked. She just looked at me and she just turned and walked out of the room. And when I got back down on that floor, Lewis, and started scrubbing that floor, I said, nobody will never Make my mother clap her hands again, because they think that she will be stealing. I remember going back on the bus and I was quiet and she said, Leslie, why are you so quiet? I said, Because I'm not a man. I want to be a man. She said, you,'ll be a man soon enough. You're 10 years old. How long before I become a man? Eight years. I want to become a man now. She said, why? I said, if I was a man now, Mama, I can buy groceries for us. Listen, Mama. And we won't have to wait till the people you work for eat and then give us leftovers. If I was a man now, I would not have to wait until somebody's worn clothes for a year and we wear their hand-me-down clothes. And if I was a man now, nobody will ever make you clap your hands because They think that you're stealing. She said, Miss Harris told you that, didn't she? I said, Yes, ma'am. That's why I want to be a man now. And she just got quiet. She said, Lastly, don't worry about it. Just be a good boy. Be a good boy. and I say, I will, Mama. I'm gonna take care of you. You'll never have to work again. When I turn 18. When I turned 18, I took care of my mother until she passed at 89. She never paid another bill. I worked.

Yeah.

That tilt the scales.

That experience, that moment.

Yes. Yes. That to. To make her. She was such a wonderful. only had a third grade education. And I always say, I'm on programs, I said, because of two women. One gave me life, the other one gave me love. God took me out of my biological mother's womb and placed me in the heart of my adopted mother. So she was quite a woman. Yes, she was. I'm a mama's boy, as you can detect.

What do you think has been the greatest skill you've developed over the years? Is it the ability to overcome adversity? Is it the ability to use your words? What is that skill you think that you possess has given you so much greatness?

I think it's a combination of both. One, mental resolve. I think that everybody needs that because when you have goals and dreams, there will be resistance. An airplane cannot fly without the resistance of air. Walt Disney filed bankruptcy seven times and had two nervous breakdowns. that when you have goals and dreams, the Book of Life says, Think it not strange that you face the fire furnaces of this world. You will not be consumed. You will have tribulations. So the ability, when you are faced with something, and it's new territory, when they said, you, have cancer, those are three words no one ever wants to hear. And the oncologist, Dr. Alfred Goldson, who who was an unusual personality. He said, you, have cancer. And it metastasized to seven areas of your body, including your spinal cord. I said, Can you give me a second opinion? He said, yeah. And you're ugly too. I know you didn't just call me ugly.

He said, Yes, I did.

You ugly as well. We both were laughing. He said, But you got this. We determine the diagnosis. God in you determines the prognosis. You and God determine that. You got this. What I learned from that that enhanced my speaking. When you laugh, the mind shuts down and the heart opens up. I left there with a confident feeling in my heart. I got When he spoke it, I felt it at this cellular level. I did not leave there feeling fear. He was so good, making you feel comfortable with whatever you're dealing with, that you are not in denial, you just are defiant. And so when your show, which has changed millions of people's lives, people you'll never meet, what it does is distract, dispute, and inspire. How we live our lives is a result of the story we believe about ourselves. What you do is distract them from what psychologists call their self-explanatory style. And through the process of your own example, your own vision of yourself, the guests that you have, the interviews that you have, you dismantle their current belief system. Be you not conformed to this world. be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You renewing minds expanding their vision beyond their indoctrination and mental conditioning, and you ignite their spirit where they decide to create a new chapter in their lives. That's what you do as a speaker and as a host, and people who watch and listen to your program right now in America before the coronavirus, Suicide rate increased by 39% and children between 5 and 11, it has tripled. How do you decide at 5 to take your life? And now it is soaring the suicide rate. So what you do with this program, you're giving people hope. When there's hope in the future that gives a person power in the present. that they can get through it. They might not know how they're going to do it, but they have the mindset Robert Shuler said, Tough times never last, but tough people do. And so that you share with them a voice of transformation because, and I share this with speakers that I train, who you are behind the words that you speak are more important than the words. Because had you not gone through what you have gone through and experienced, you would not be able to speak from a place of power. You would not be able to come in and do this program and call this the School of Greatness, that you've got greatness in you. You have the ability to do more than you can ever begin to imagine. and affirm and validate people as we are facing this pandemic. It's to be able to say that from a place of power. The spirit of who you are comes through your words and people feel that when you speak and they hear it, your sincerity, your genuineness. And that's why your program is popular, because you impact people. because you know a thing or two because you've seen a thing or two.

What do you think it is that school is missing out on in general in the US? What's the main thing?

They did a study of some top achievers and successful people around the world and they wanted to find out what was the common denominator among them that enabled them to reach their goals. And what they discovered that 85% of them reach their goals because of the attitude, their vision about themselves and 15% because of the aptitude. So school, as you know, has been focused on reading, writing, and arithmetic. It does not consider critical thinking in the conceptual education. And it does not help young people begin to mold a vision of themselves that will allow them to be an asset to our society rather than a liability. In fact, particularly when it comes to children of minorities, one of the things that that the school systems do, they track and determine based upon the failure rates of African American children and Latino kids in the third grade, based upon those failure rates, they determine and extrapolate from those numbers how many prisons they're going to build. So if you can track failure, you can also track success.

So when you come up in an.

Environment that is one designed to destroy your sense of self and to give you and provide for you an inferior education. Like when I came up in school at Booker T. Washington High School, the money that was allocated to educate kids on Miami Beach and Carl Gables versus Booker T. Washington High School is just tremendous difference. And when we got books, we got the old books, books that were five and six years old, written in pages torn out of, and when they gave the test on the new books that we never got, and they said that we were inferior. We believed them because the newspaper said so and we bought that. And so one of the worst things that you can do is provide an environment and get people to buy into a lie about themselves that caused them to live a small life as opposed to a life of achievement. Because the culture was designed to hold us back. When I graduated from high school, a white high school dropout had more of a chance of getting a job than a black college graduate.

Wow.

Yeah. So, so that kind of environment, it destroys your sense of self.

When did you start? I mean, you, I was, you know, never good at reading and writing. I was held back. I was, you know, in the, the special needs classes, all those things through elementary school, middle school. Had a tutor all the way through high school. Always felt like I needed to.

Yeah. My mother's tutor was a good switch. She believed my subconscious mind was in my behind. Oh, yes, but go ahead, yes.

And I'm curious, when did you start to believe in yourself? Or was someone- My mother was working.

For a very wealthy family. She worked for wealthy families on Miami Beach. And I remember Mr. Siderski. She cooked for these families and we ate the food leftover from the families that she cooked for. She kept their children and we wore the hand-me-down clothes of the children that she worked for. And when I had the assignment of cleaning Mr. Siderski's office and shining his shoes, and he was listening to various motivational recordings. This is reel to reel, this is before A-tracK and before cassettes. And those words, I had no idea while I was shining his shoes, listening to people like Jim Rohn, when the end comes for you, let it find you conquering a new mountain, not sliding down an old one. People like Zig Ziglar, if you give enough people what they want, they will give you what you want. Listening to some of the words of Winston Churchill, the truth is incontrovertible, mallets may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but at the end there it is. And so I had no idea while shining his shoes, listening to these words, that it began to restructure my vision of myself. And I had an interruption when I was in the 11th grade, because I was in special education from the fourth grade all the way to the 11th grade. And I met a gentleman by the name of Mr. Leroy Washington. I eulogized him last year. They call him the great communicator. And I was in his class waiting on another student. He said, young man, go to the board and work this problem out for me. And I said, I can't do that, sir. And he said, why not? I said, I'm just here to see MacArthur Stevens. I'm not one of your students. He said, go to the board and do what I'm going to give you directions anyhow. And I said, I can't, sir. And the other students started laughing, saying, He's Leslie. He's got a twin brother, Wesley. Wesley is smart. He's DT. He said, what's DT? He's a dumb twin. And I said, I am, sir. And he came from behind his desk. He looked at me. He said, Don't you ever say that again. Someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality. And so what he did was what you do on this program every day. How people live their lives is a result of the story they believe about themselves. And when you have your program and your guests and as they share ideas of how they move through the things that affect them, what you do is interrupt their story. I tell speakers, I train speakers how to discover their story, how to tell their story, and how to transform people individually and collectively by creating an experience. When I came into the speaking industry, it was based upon the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill's book was a good book. They considered that the Bible of the motivational speaking industry. Well, I come to know because of my mentor, Mike Williams in Columbus, Ohio, he wrote the book called the Road to youo Best Stuff. He said, Les, if information could change people, everybody would be skinny, rich and happy. So he said, in order to change they have to create a significant emotional event that you have to interrupt a person's story that they believe about themselves with your story. And through the delivery of your story strategically, you dismantle their current belief system and inspire them to make new choices. Because at the end of a presentation, if you don't change how a person see themselves, and if you don't expand their vision of themselves beyond their mental conditioning and their circumstances, and begin to allow them to get a larger vision of themselves and begin to ignite their spirit. You touch their hearts, and as a result, they leave your presence feeling better about themselves, but making new choices, because when you change how they see themselves, all you have to do after that is to get out of the way. The motivational industry is based upon a different type of method, like Tony, who I think is a great speaker, Tony, he trains to get people to go to a fire wall, okay? I'm training people to get into their greatness, to begin to develop the courage to pursue dreams beyond their comfort zones. Because in order to do something you've never done, you've got to become someone you've never been. When you're pursuing your greatness, you don't know what your limits are, so you act like you don't have any. And one of the reasons that Booker T. Washington said, Judge a not by what they accomplished, but what they had to overcome for their accomplishment. So the challenge, I mean, for instance, in me having a global voice, I remember when Tony had an infomercial sponsored by Guthrie Rinker, and they spent millions of dollars, and it was a blessing for me that they rejected me because I have the complexion of rejection. He had the complexion of, he has the complexion of of connection. And so they said, oh, we don't believe a black guy can have appeal to the American public. I was so furious with that because it's called white privilege, you know? So I said, I don't have a backer. I don't have four color brochures. I still don't. I don't have millions of dollars backing me to develop a global voice. And Mike Williams, his goal was to train me to speak to the world. So I thought about it and I remember something that Robert Shuler said, There's never a shortage of opportunities. It's just a shortage of thinking. And so when I saw what Tony was doing, training people to go to the back of the room and sign up for his firewalk or all the other speakers to go back and get their products, I said, Wait a minute. Impact drives income and referrals. I'm going to focus on training and developing a method and technique to transform people's lives individually and collectively, as Mr. Washington did for me. When he said to me, Young man, go to the board and work this problem out for me. And I said, I can't do it. And he said, Don't ever say that again. Someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality. He interrupted my vision of myself. And as a result, my mother said, sticks and stones can break your bones, so words can never hurt you. That's our lives. Words can hurt you very deeply. And so, but he interrupted my vision of myself. And as a result of his example and the input, review, repetition, and reinforcement of that concept and how he held me in his eyes when he looked at me, I was able to die to who I was. and depart from the story that I bought into, even if you were told a lie, faith comes by hearing and hearing and hearing. You hear it often enough, it becomes your reality. Perception, not challenge, becomes real for you. And so there was no one to dispute what was said about me and I bought it. He interrupted that vision of myself in the 11th grade. And as a result of that, I began to become a different kind of person. And so, so listening to these various speakers, but then because of how I was rejected by Guenther Rinker and those guys, I said, I don't have millions of dollars, but I got a story. And what I'm going to do, I'm going to figure out how to transform audience. I'm going to figure out how to make myself stand out. I don't have the money to compete with them. I don't have the complexion of connection, but one of the things that Mike said to me, he said, Brownie, pay more attention to the listening than the telling. Study the audience, conduct communications intelligence. Don't assume that you know what they want to hear. He said, Never let what you want to say get in the way of what the audience needs to hear. And so that's what I focused on. I always do a needs assessment. When I'm training speakers, I tell them, Don't assume you know each audience is a different type of personality. Each area of industry, if you want to go big, if you want to speak globally, you want to become an expert on the audience. You've got to learn and you've got to study them so that you can have the versatility and flexibility to speak to any type of audience with your story and be able to transform them individually and collectively and that impact will drive your income and your requests. Every speaker gets around 25 to 30 requests a year. I get over 3,000 because of using that principle and many of the speakers that I've trained now and some of them have passed me using the same technique and strategies and have made millions of dollars.

Amazing.

Yes.

What would you say is the vision for your life right now?

My vision, I'm in a place of The Russian author Leo Tolstoy, he said, As I face inevitable death, what in the meaning and purpose of my life that will not be undone or destroyed when I'm gone? And so the speakers that I train and the speakers that I influence and the people they train and transform their lives. that we are literally in God's pyramid, that that work will not be undone or destroyed when I'm gone. And so my goal now, we learn, we earn, we pass it on. I noticed when Jim Ron died and Zig Ziglar died, they had not trained anybody. We don't hear anything about the people that they poured into. I've got so many, many that and go with me toe to toe. However, I tell them, trust me on this. I said, don't let this 72 fool you. I still got the fire up in here, up in here.

I taught you everything you know, not.

Everything I know, all right? Young brooms feet clean, but old broom nowhere to go. So to me, you know, I believe we live in the greatest country in the world. Bar none. We're talking about make America great again. foolishness. We never stopped being great. There's no country that can compare to us. And we have the opportunity, I believe, by multiplying voices of hope that we can begin to create a new day. A lady came from Australia for me to train her, and she's rather wealthy, and I said, why did you come to me? And she said, I saw you speaking on YouTube in the Georgia Dome. and you were speaking to 80,000 people. She said, Wow, and you spoke from your heart and you held my attention and I can see you were holding their attention. And she said, Can you train me to tell my story from my heart? And I said, Yes. And so she started to tell me a story. Whatever, you're scripted. I said, that's what set me apart from all the other speakers. They're scripted. If you have script that you memorize, then you've got to speak from your head. You've got to regurgitate that script. I said, I will train you how to speak extemporaneously so you have the versatility and flexibility to create unforgettable moments in the context of your presentation. And so we started working together. Then she stopped for a moment. I said, Can you tell me why you want to do this? And she said, Yes. She said, when I saw Dale and Roof, the young white boy who went in a church and killed nine black people, she said, I felt that there should have been someone standing to his right on trial because he was not born with that hatred in him to kill nine black people. Somebody poisoned his mind. And then she paused and said, this gave me goose pimples and we both cried. She said, I believe the world is as it is, not because a few people are violent. I believe the world is as it is because too many people are silent. And I decided that my goal is in this chapter in my life is as I face inevitable death, which I'm believing it will be a long time from now, okay? I can't believe that I'm 72. I used to think people in their 40s were old. Now that I'm 72, I feel I was a waiter at the Lord supper. So my goal is to train others how to tell their story, how to extract their story, how to organize it, how to deliver it in a way strategically to transform audiences. And I believe by multiplying those voices we all have an energy signature. There are certain people when I speak I'm going to reach them. There are some people that will hear both of us, but there are some people because of your energy signature that when you speak, they will hear you not just in their ears, they're going to hear you in their heart and as a result of them being in your presence and under the influence of your voice, when they leave your presence, you will inspire them as Mother Teresa would say, to become a pencil in the hand of God and start writing a new chapter with their lives.

Wow.

Yes. So the goal is to train up probably I want, if I can train 77, Mike Williams asked me, I wrote the foreword to his book, the Road to youo Best Stuff. He said, Brownie, how many less rounds do you have? I said, I think I got four. He said, you, need more. I said, I know, seven is my lucky number. I'm one of seven children. I was born February the 17th. My phone number is 702. My address is 2737. Did I tell you seven is my lucky number? Joshua marshaled around the walls of Jericho seven times. Nayman dipped himself in the River Jordan seven times. Did I tell you seven is my lucky number? So I'm going to train 77 people to speak to the world, to transform lives, to make a difference. Haarsman said we should be ashamed to die until we've made some major contribution to humankind. And I believe here we are living in the greatest country in the world where people risk their lives to get here, to outswim sharks, to trying to outrun Jeeps barefooted, and yet instilled last year, according to the CDC, more people, over 3,000, committed suicide than died from accidents. And these people, I believe, did that because they felt hopeless and helpless. And had they heard your voice, or my voice, or someone else's voice, that would have interrupted the vision of being hopeless and helpless, and empowered them. I had a guy who he texted me the other day. He said, I was in a very dark place and I heard your voice and it brought me out into the light. So that's what the next vision looked at. Yes, the train set.

I'm gonna have to take that training with you.

Oh, you're great already. If I could just touch the hem of your garment, I'll be made whole.

For those that maybe aren't kind to have access to more intimate training from you.

Yes.

And obviously it's a more extensive training that would cover all these things. What would be, what would you tell people on how they can organize their voice through a speech so that they're tapping into the hearts of people when they connect with them and sharing their story in such a way that it is an interruption and gets people to transform the way they look at themselves in a more positive way. and impact of this around them. What would you say? I took Toastmasters eight years ago. I think you took it or you're.

A part of the organization somewhere. Toastmasters, I've never took Toastmasters. Toastmasters, they selected me among the top five speakers in the world. Norman Schwarzkopf, Leah Culver, Paul Harvey, and Robert Schuler. I mean, that's a very elite group. Yes, I'm the last guy standing.

It's pretty big. I took down eight years ago, for a year because I couldn't stand in front of five people and share anything without stuttering and stumbling and forgetting what I was gonna say.

The first time I stood up to speak, I stood up and my mind set down. I choked. I couldn't remember anything. When I spoke in the Georgia Dome, I went to the bathroom seven times. Did I tell you seven is my lucky number? They knocked the door, Brownie. I said, what is it?

Come out, man.

Dexter Yeager, they're pausing now because it's time for you. And I made a mistake. I looked out at the audience and I panicked. I said, Mike, I don't hear the voices. I'm scared. He said, Brownie, they came to see you. You didn't come to see them. He said, Come out. You will hear the voices. I said, I don't know, Mike. I've been trying. I just don't know. I'm scared. and he said, just be scared and do it anyhow. Don't speak. I said, I don't have to speak? He said, no. I said, then what will I do? He said, just tell a story. Tell a story of where you are, about what you're going through and about the goal and dream for buying your mother a home. You know, I told my mother, I said, mama, when I become a man, I'm gonna buy your home. I said, when I turn 18, I'm going to set you down and I'm going to be able to buy groceries for us. We won't have to wait till someone eats and hope that there's something left over. I'm gonna buy brand new clothes for us, and we won't have to wear somebody else's children's clothes that they've worn all year long. When I become a man, you'd never pay another bill. I don't believe that women should pay bills. I think if a woman wants to work, she should. work and do what she loves to do and if whatever money she earned, she should keep it for herself. A man, not a grown boy, a man provides and protects. I'm from old school. And so my visioned of myself, of wanting to buy a home and be able to provide for her. And I did that. I bought four different homes before she passed. That drove me. And so, I think it's important that people find something that gives their life a sense of meaning and value that drives them, that becomes their magnificent obsession. And that's where I am.

I like that. So what about for people who want.

To give their voice, the people who.

Want to share their voice.

I think they should find something that they're passionate about, some subject that They can lose themselves. The scripture says, if a man to gain his life, he must lose it. I thought it was about physically losing your life, but it's about when I speak, I go to a place, LeBron James, when they won the championship, he was in an interview and they said, How did you do it? And he said, I had to go to another place. When I speak, it's not about me. My prayer is more of thee, less of me. I'm encouraging people who are serious about speaking. Don't just do it for the money. You can make a lot of money. I earn more in one hour than 90% of the American public earn working for five years. But when you find something that you love, you will study it, something that you love that becomes a difference between being in speaking and speaking being in you, that you will become not just confident, but you will become competent on that. That when I prepare myself for speaking engagement, and I still do because I don't believe that you're never too old to learn and you're never too young to teach. And so I pour myself into it. I lose myself into it because it's not about me, it's about the audience. So I'm suggesting to those, and I only want to work with people who are serious that what we can do for those people is right now, number one, never make a point without a story and never tell a story without a point. That's number one. That's key. Because stories can be used to transform people's lives. Not just anchor the points, but it creates a significant emotional event. And that's how human behavior is transformed. We have emotional memory. The next thing in speaking, there is some fear and that fear is always there. I never assumed that I know what that audience is going to believe. Each audience, they have their own personality and each audience, their audience inside of each audience is separated by age, by race, by income, by education. The other thing that's crucial in speaking is that as you speak and as you look at the audience, always take the time to find out who they are and all that I get and get understanding. So I have a needs assessment that I sent out and I ask them questions, you know, what are the things that you want this audience to walk away with? What are the things that you've done? Things that are stressing you out? What's the unspoken conversation? So I sent out this needs assessment. I talk with the CEO. I do research to find out their mission statement. I talk to the marketing director. And then I interview the top performers. If it's a sales organization, I talk to the top performers. And then the next step, I interview people in the audience. If you were in my position, what are the things that people in the audience need to hear? If you were in my position, that you would suggest. I ask them individually, these five people, and then when I'm on stage, I integrate that, I marry that to navigate an experience. As I said, Oliver Winderholm said that once a man or woman's mind has been expanded with an idea, concept or experience, it can never be satisfied to going back to where it was. So when you bring all of those elements in there with humor, with statistics and stories, you're able to create special moments that can transform that audience. The other thing, when you tell a story, don't just tell the story, experience the story, and the audience will go there with you.

Be the story.

Yes, you've got to be the story, the embodiment of the story, so that the audience, as a result of hearing it, that they can't rest, that you start showing up in their dreams.

Yes.

I have one of the things that I love and I'll give them an example of what I mean. Because some things are taught and some things are caught. One of the things that I spoke the other day, and I wanted this group of people that I was talking to, I wanted to challenge them to get outside of their comfort zone and to become uncomfortable with where they are. There's no saying you can take a horse to the water, but you can't make them drink. However, if you know how to speak strategically and create a special moment, you can create a thirst where they want to drink. And so when I got to the end of my presentation, I looked at them and I said, Right now I want to talk to you about Dr. Howard Thurman, who was one of the mentors of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Avid Sweitzer and Mahatma Gandhi. And when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and my PSA was 2,400. I was pondering about my life. Am I going to beat this? And I was reading his words for comfort. And he said, the ideal situation for a man or woman to die is to have family members praying with them as they cross over. But imagine if you will being on your deathbed and standing around your bed the ghost of the dreams. the ideas, the abilities given to you by life. But you, for whatever reason, you never pursued those dreams. You never acted on those ideas. You never use those gifts. And there they are looking at you with large, angry eyes, saying, we came to you, and only you could have given us life. And now we must die with you forever. And the question is, if you died today, what dreams? What ideas? What gifts will die with you? I pause and the room is silent. I say, maybe that's why Henry David Thoreau so loved God, to reach the point of death, only to realize that you've never lived. Maybe that's why one woman said, what if you live your whole life only to discover that it was wrong? Then I tell them, Live full, die empty. I had one lady who, She was 62 and she went back to finish law school at Wayne State University. She said, I'm not gonna have that ghost around my bed. I spoke at West Angeles Church in Los Angeles and Denzel Washington was on the first row. And he said, and he mentions this several times in graduation speeches, that he had a narrow vision of the roles that he would play as an actor. After he heard that, he said he decided that he was going to play a variety of roles, that he didn't want any role that said, We came to you, Denzel, and you wouldn't want to play this. You want to just be a goody two-shoe guy, all right? So I said, Wow, I hope I didn't inspire him to do training day. I got sick at that. I couldn't keep my popcorn down.

Amazing.

Yeah. Wow. So it's about creating those special moments, but the other thing is get some coaching. From people and not just anybody, someone who's accomplished and doing it on the level that you want to do it because you can't see the picture when you're in the frame. Muhammad Ali said, I'm the greatest, but he never won a championship without Angelo Dundee. Michael Jordan considered one of the greatest basketball players of all time, but he never won a championship without Phil Jackson. So get some coaching from someone who's experienced, who's operated on the level that you want to go at. When I saw Mike Williams, who wrote the book, the Road to youo Best Stuff, he was a powerful speaker, and I loved his content and the naturalness of his personality, and he had fun. And so I said, I want to be like that. So I'm a combination of Mike Williams and Earl Nightingale, who was well read, and Zig Ziglar, who had a lot of energy. And Jim Rohn has some profound quotes. I mean, just a a great thinker, a statesman. And so, and then, but I also trained to be able to communicate. You know, like Dr. King was a great orator, Malcolm X was a great communicator. And so I integrate all of these people. I believe if you love this, you will study the people that master it and you will evolve into creating your own voice with your own energy signature.

Do you have an online program as well for speaking for people that want to know more?

Yes, in fact, we have just completed one that's not online, but what they can do if they're serious and hungry. I'm looking for people that are hungry. Hungry people are willing to do the things today others won't do in order to have the things tomorrow others won't have. They can email me at lesbrown77@gmail.com. Did I tell you 7 is my lucky number? Les Brown, 77@gmail.com and said, I want to tell my story. and make a difference. And we will get to, well, I will send them the seven principles of storytelling and some videos of how to tell your story. We'll do that free for them. And also the Georgia Dome presentation and two others that I just found that would be just great for them. The seven principles of storytelling, how to tell your story, and the Georgia Dome presentation and some others that I just located. And the reason that I want to do that, I believe that if we multiply the voices of hope, messengers of hope that will provide a message of peace and a message of hope, when there's hope in the future that gives you power in the present, I believe that we can reduce the recidivism rate. I believe that we can reduce the number of our young men and women that's in the military who are committing suicide on a regular basis, I believe that we can begin to decrease crime and the violence that's taking place all across this country, because evil prevails when good men and women do nothing. Nothing happens until it's communicated. In the beginning was the word. And so my goal is to multiply the voices out here that will bring some words that can help us to get a different vision of ourselves.

That's powerful. I was going on a drive to San Francisco over the weekend. Take my girlfriend up the coast of California, and she'd never seen it. Had a beautiful experience. And as we're driving back into Los Angeles, I live in a condo building, a tall condo building. It's probably 35-40 stories high. And as we pull into the building, I'm about to park, I see police with a yellow tape and a white tent. and over the kind of driving area. And I remember just thinking to myself, there's no way someone jumped off this building. There's no way someone did this. And I asked right away, I go, tell me someone did not jump. And the guy looked at me and he just said, yeah, a couple hours ago. And I go, you're kidding me. And I later found out it was reported in the news. This was yesterday.

Yesterday.

Yesterday, this just happened. It kind of shook me up a little bit too. and literally I learned that the person who jumped is my building. It was literally right next to my window a few floors up. He jumped out of his name is Steve Bing. It's all over the news right now. And this was a very successful businessman who 50, 55 years old, I think worth, I think it was reported he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. A very successful businessman who is close friends with Bill Clinton, who I saw Clinton made a statement about as well. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since yesterday. I was thinking about it all night. You said it was hard for you to sleep last night from stuff you saw. For me, it was hard for me to sleep last night thinking about the pain and the suffering that people go through inside that we may never know about. And I was trying to rationalize, like, why would this happen? Was it drugs? Was it depression? Was it... I can't reason sometimes why this happens to someone who you think it would never happen to, or someone who had all the things on the outside that seemed to be successful, but for whatever reason, I don't know. And I don't know how to make sense of that type of stuff. Do you know how to make sense of things when you see that?

Well, I had a guy who wrote me and I kept this. this text where he had tied a noose together, he was going to hang himself, had it around his neck, and he was going to get a chair. He was trying to look a place where he could suspend himself and place to rope. And the phone rang. And he had said to himself, God, give me a sign. So with the rope around his neck and holding in part of it in his hand, He answered his cell phone and there was nobody there. And he took that as a sign and he said in that moment.

He.

Was listening to me and he remembered a statement I made that life is God's gift to us and how we live our lives is our gift to God. Wow. himself, why would I throw my life back in God's face? I was talking about the fact that we were chosen one out of 400 million sperm, that you are a masterpiece because you're a piece of the master. And he said, I kept saying to myself, I'm a masterpiece. I'm a piece of the master. And he talked himself back from those suicidal thoughts he really didn't want to die. He wanted to stop the pain that he was experiencing from the breakup of the relationship, from the loss of his job, from what he felt his life had the rug snatched out from under it. He's among those 40,500,000 people who have lost their jobs in the coronavirus economy. And so that's why what you're doing is so important because when you go through an experience, you have the School of Greatness. Not elementary school, high school, college. No one is saying to people, you have greatness in you. And those type of structures, even in church. And so the the reason that I advanced with that, you know, the Book of Life says, Greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. That you have greatness within you.

That.

Mr. Leroy Washington, who when I was so captivated by this man's oratorical skills, he was a speech and drama teacher, and he asked me to do something, you know the story, he wanted me to go before him and and read a script really before the class. And I said, sir, I can't do that. I'm not one of your students. And he said, do what I'm asking you to do anyhow. I said, I can't, sir. And the other students started laughing, saying, he's Leslie, he's got a twin brother, Wesley. Wesley is smart, he's DT. And he asked, what's DT? He's the dumb one. And I said, I am, sir. He said, don't you ever say that again. Someone's opinion of you does not have.

To become your reality.

And he did that. I was startled because my mother said, sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you. But words can hurt you. And very deeply. And when he said that, someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality. I remember going to my next class, and it was between classes. I kept saying that to myself. Someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality as I was going home, that what they think about me, I don't have to be that. It's not what they called me, it's what I answer to and what I call myself.

Dang.

You know, that was an interrupting moment. That's how your program is a disrupter. More powerful than corona.

Ooh, I love that. I always love hearing that story. That story never gets old for me. And how did you learn to overcome the opinions of others? But I think more importantly, the opinion of yourself. Because if we have the program, we have I am the dumb twin. Yes, sir. I am learning disabilities. I am this. How did you personally overcome your own biggest enemy?

He was a ferocious reader and he gave me a book, James Allen, As a Man Thinketh. That little pamphlet is a powerful little pamphlet. I've read it a lot. And the Power of Positive Thinking by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. I read that over and over again and other motivational books, Secret of the Ages by Robert Collier. And so reading those, he said, if you want to become become successful. Number one, develop your mind. And he was a fan of Earl Nightingale, that you don't get in life what you want, you get in life what you are. The strangest secret in the world. I've listened to that so many times. I've wore it out. And then the other thing he said, develop your mind. Next thing he said, practice OQP, only quality people. Surround yourself with people that you can learn from. people that have more than you, people that will help you to grow mentally and emotionally and financially and spiritually. And the next thing he said, he said, which is the master key to opening up new worlds for you, is your ability to communicate. Because once you open your mouth, you tell the world who you are. And I believed him, and I followed that. I never forget. When I was in Poland and I was in this stadium and I saw my name up and people started chanting when they saw me coming through the tunnel. And I said, Mr. Washington, this one is for you, sir.

He's gone.

I eulogized him. I said, I'm gonna make you proud today because it's my first time in Poland, you know. But I so admired him. I've never known my father or birth mother, but that the ability to connect with people that are strangers to you and can create a shift in their lives and how they see themselves, to have that sacred opportunity to share your story, and distract, dispute, and inspire them to realize as the play Lion King, Simba, you are more than that which you have become. That's what you do every day up in here, up in here.

I remember last time we talked, you said you wanted to really leave a legacy by teaching other people how to speak and communicate better. And you were creating a select smaller group, I think. I think it was either 50 or 100 people that you wanted to train. and speak. Are you still doing that? Because I had a friend who was going through the program with you or hired you, my buddy Judd. So I didn't know.

That's my dude. That's my brother from another mother. Exactly. Yes, man, from Australia.

Yeah.

Yes, I'm training, but I've had to increase that number. I do intense one-on-one training, but I'm selective. about working with a lot of people right now. But we do it virtually now. I can do it more virtually because we don't, you don't want, I'm 75. So I cannot afford with underlying issues of diabetes and cancer and 75, if you show up at the hospital, they'll push you in a code over there and say, We're about to leave here anyhow. I said, We're not going to waste any medicine on you. So I stayed out in the hallway. I'll tell you how bad it is, Louis. I'm upstairs by myself, right? I sneezed, and then I broke out and I started running downstairs. I said, Wait a minute. That was my sneeze. So I came back upstairs, and I still started spraying the lights off. I called my daughter. I said, I think I'm having a meltdown.

I want to go out the house.

She said, no, you can't go anywhere other than Walgreen and Publix and we will drive you there. You don't need to be behind the wheel. I said, I'm not that old. So I'm being very, very disciplined and keeping myself out of harm's way.

That's good. That's good.

Keep my mask.

That's good.

All the stuff that we need to do, common sense.

What do you think has been the biggest challenge you've had to overcome, let's say, since your 30s or 40s? Because the first part of your life was a lot of learning to overcome the mental challenges, the self-talk, the believing in yourself, that type of challenge, I would say, which got you to a level of success and Accomplishment and speaking in front of 100, I remember seeing a video on YouTube of you in front of like 100 something thousand people running around on stage saying you've got to be hungry, which is one of the most famous talks of all time probably. What would you say is the biggest challenge you've had to overcome since you're 30 or 40 in the last 40 or 50 years? Is there different types of doubts, different types of challenges once you've kind of mastered a certain level of success?

The biggest challenge that you face is going from believing to knowing. That's the place that you go to. I went into the Georgia Dome. I did not believe I could command an audience of 80,000 people. When Mike Williams, my mentor, who wrote the book called the Road to youo Best Stuff, he was there with me. He said, Brownie, And I said, Yes. And he saw my hands trembling. He said, Look at me, Brownie. I said, Yes. He said, you, can do this. And when he said that, I knew it. And I said, Thank you, Mike. And they gave me the microphone. That's the last thing I remember. I don't remember giving this speech, but here's what I knew. I can do this. He said, Speak from your heart. And I was working with a young man the other day, incredible voice, and he had memorized his script. And I said, I want you to give me this again. And I want you to know you can do this. You don't need this script. We're talking about your life. And I want you to speak from this place of knowing. and his whole continence changed. And he gave it from his heart. It was not the training he had gotten, it was very mechanical. You know, the Dale Carnegie course, which is a great course, said, Tell them what you're gonna tell them, tell them and then tell them.

Tell them what you told them. Yeah, yeah. When I learned Toastmasters also, yeah.

Yeah, and I said, no. Mike Williams taught me, my mentor, Brownie, never let what you wanna say get in the way of what your audience wants. who wants to hear, conduct communications intelligence, find out who they are, and then speak to that, find their sweet spot, and focus on that. And so I asked him some key questions about his life, find out about his character, and how he came to be the person that he is now. And Martin Seligman and the book called Learned Optimism, He said, Between the ages of zero and five, we develop permanent personality characteristics. And there's a voice in our heart that says yes or it says no. And there are behaviors that follow us for the rest of our lives. And what came up for him, his father, his father was a very kind guy and a very strong man, military man. he loved him, but the father didn't know how to show the love. He did the best that he knew how. And so I said, I want you to find the good. Let's focus on the good of what that experience was like. This man who was very regimented, very structured. Tell me some good things that you remember. And first it was very tense. And then he started thinking about it. His body relaxed. He said, you, know, my father, he could fix some real good hot water cornbread. I said, Is that right? I said, My mother could make a good sweet potato pie so good you can't eat it with your shoes on. You have to kick shoes off so you can wiggle your toes. That's what my father's cornbread was like. And I got a whole different personality. out of him, that other part of his personality, without a script. And I said, I want you to speak from that place of love. Let's work from that place. And we threw the script in the trash can. And now, man, when he speaks, I'm like a little kid, because I'm a groupie, man, for great speakers. And I was crying like a little baby. I said, you, did it! That's what I'm talking about! Yes, I hear you. footsteps, but I'm not afraid of you. I'm not scared. Okay.

You're gonna hear it.

Yes, indeed. Jamal Nelson, you're gonna hear that.

I love that. And I think a lot of us, we, we speak from our head and not from our heart. And it hurts us. You know, it disconnects us to other people's hearts when we're speaking from the mind only, as opposed to connecting heart to heart emotionally, whether it's from one to one or one to 80,000. and I think that's one of the things you do so beautifully and you continue to show me on this interview is just connecting to my heart and connecting to millions of people listening through story, through taking us back, through putting us in the place. I can see myself as a little boy next to you with the police officer on his horse with the Billy Billy Club. I can see that. image as if I was there and to create that connection makes it real from the heart. So you're a master at this. I got, I got to do a one-on-one session with you someday. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make that happen. So I'm gonna reach out to you after this.

I love this story. I've done a lot of research on you. There's some good stuff up in there I like to use for you to look at.

Yeah. And if you, I'm gonna show you.

And if you don't, I will use it. I said, you know, I got a friend.

I appreciate that.

David Lewis, all right? And when it comes to greatness, he is the absolute personification of greatness itself. He teaches you how to turn adversity into greatness. Let me give you an example. Oh yeah, I got a place to go. It's just very fascinating.

I appreciate that, Les. Yeah, we've got to have to, you know, once corona is over, hopefully we can say hi in person. and make it happen, whether it be in LA or if I got to come to Atlanta, we'll make it happen there. You've got this book called, you,'ve Got to Be Hungry. Why did it take you so long to finally put this book out? And what should we know about it? I want everyone to get this book.

It's different than any other book that's been out there because it's one thing if you are in a majority culture and you're part of the majority. I sent a letter to Gunther Rinker and they sponsored the infomercial for Tony Robbins and they sent me back a letter saying, we acknowledge we received your request for a partnership to do an infomercial, but you're black and we don't believe that America is ready for a black speaker. So I sent them back a letter saying, thank you for reminding me that I'm black. I never would have known that if you hadn't told me. Thank you for reviving me of rejection. He got the complexion of connections. So I said, I see you from the top. And but that was a good thing because it brought something out of me that says, My destiny is not in your hands. I'm going to find a way to win. People that are manifesting their greatness, they find a way to win. They are no matter what people, they're like Walter P. Chrysler, Christ will fill 51, 49 times in the automobile industry. They find a way to win. I remember when Muhammad Ali was knocked down the first time by Joe Frazier and Howard Cosell asked him, why did you jump up so quickly? And Muhammad Ali said, I looked around and saw where I was and he said, Canvas is no place for a champion. He said, and I jumped back up. And so when you have living your life from a place of knowing that there is something in me that I strongly believe there's a dimension about us that very few people reach for. And I think that's the greatness in that most people become discouraged when their athletic careers have been cut short and they felt that that was the only slot for them in life. And they find someplace else that they will show up and say, I'm going to take a stand here. I'm going to make a difference in people's lives. I'm going to let people know that just because things stopped over here does not mean that you don't have something of value and power over here in this area here. And so you reinvented yourself. And so that life will give us It's all type of stuff to overcome. You take a person's eyesight, then you have a Ray Charles or a Stevie Wonder. So life will always challenge us. I have this quote I love that said, In life, you will always be faced with a series of God-ordained opportunities, brilliantly disguised as problems and challenges. And so I think that those of us that have been picked out to be picked on, that the greatness has been recognized than us. And that we, as a result of that, we release what Elizabeth Browning called the Imprisoned Splendor. We rise to the occasion when others fold, when others buckle and run with the tails between their legs. And it brings something out of you that would not give birth had it not been for that adversity.

Oh man, can you just keep talking for the next five hours? I can listen to you all day, my man.

I appreciate it.

I can listen to you all day, Les. I want people to get this book. And I don't know if there's a--.

I will teach them how to overcome adversity. I've gone through so much, I'm gonna.

Share this with you.

I went through an experience with opiates. The challenging part for me was not going cold turkey to get off it, but my kids, I never forget, I was in a hospital for nine days and I didn't know it and I didn't even know how I got there. And so when my son, my second oldest son, Patrick, was driving me to my youngest daughter's house and I saw these cars. I said, what are these cars doing here? He said, you, as soon as you get inside. So I came in and I saw Mike Williams, Mike who's been my mentor for 51 years and my other kids and two people that I didn't recognize. And I said, Is this an intervention? He said, Yes. I said, who is it for? He said, For you. Me, I'm the intervention king. No, Dad, you've been in the hospital for nine days. Nine days?

No.

And then I said, Yes, you're unconscious. Why? We don't know. We would just call and said, you,'re in the university hospital. And then I went to each one of them. I said, Look at me. I taught you not the not to smoke, not to drink, not to do drugs. Do you think I would misrepresent you as your father and do something so stupid? He said, no. But there are two types of drug addicts. Dad, what are you talking about? There are people who pursue drugs and people who are prescribed drugs. You've been prescribed and you just cooperated. It's just too many. We want you to live. We don't want you to die like Prince. We want you to live. Man, I went to each one of them. That was the most humiliating experience my whole life. And so my youngest daughter said, Daddy, you teach us that you can't read the label. When you're locked in the box, you need help. And she started crying. You taught us to get help, not because we're weak, but because we want to remain strong. And I want you to do us. Do this for us. So I said to this couple, I said, okay, I'm ready to go. I said, no, no, no. We'll come tomorrow morning. I said, no. I said, you, gonna have to take me tonight. You come here tomorrow morning, I will not be here. I've never been in any place that I couldn't leave when I want to. You, you need to do this tonight. So they drove me about four hours to Middletown, Ohio, to this drug program. And I stayed there five days. People doing double dates. Are you Barry White? No. You can't be less round, the motivator. Yes, I am less round. I know that voice. You gotta be, I've been listening to you for a long time. What are you doing here? My children say that I'm hooked on drugs. So after those double takes for five days, I went into the director. I said, listen to me. There are two types of people, drug addicts. There are ones who prescribe drugs, and there are ones who go seeking drugs. I said, I was prescribed these drugs for pain, for the sciatica pain and pain for cancer that's eating 40% of my T1 vertebrae in my spine. And this guy said, every junkie's got a story. Man, I grabbed the phone on his desk. I was about to bust him in the head. And this lady, who is his Administrative Assistant, she said, Mr. Brown, please. I've been listening to you since I was a little girl, that she's crying. She said, Trouble is easy to get into and hard to get out of. Please don't hit this man with this telephone. I was about to buzz in. He called me a junkie. I called my son and said, you, better come get me or I'm walking away from from here. It was like 12 degrees outside, right? I'm four hours from Columbus. And he came, and I was leaving, the director said, He'll be back. I said, I will not. And I went cold turkey. They rushed me to the Cleveland Clinic about six different times. And I heard them say on the other side of the curtain, said, you know, if he's in his 30s, he can do it, but not in his 60s. And that night, I prayed to Mamie Brown, my adopted mother, and my birth mother. I said, I don't know your name. You gave birth to me. But I need the two of you to get together and help me have the strength to get through this. They want to give me a drug called Suboxone. and it's addictive. First time shame on them. They prescribe these drugs to me and I'm addicted. Now they're gonna give me a drug that's addictive. And they say, it's harder to get off, but at least I just be on one addictive drug. I said, I can't knowingly take something that's addictive. The other ones I didn't know, but this I cannot make myself do it. Man, I passed out. I had these dry heaves. I was taken there six different times, unconscious. The night I prayed to both my mothers, I said, I need your help. Please help me. Because I'm not going to do this. And then the the next morning, Louis, I had no gagging, no dry heaves. The next morning, when I got up, I had an appetite. The next morning, no cold chills and hot flashes. The next morning, I got my strength back and I knew I was on the other side of it. And I said to them, both of them, Thank you so much. Thank you for getting me through this experience. Y'all can rest now, because I ain't gonna be taking, I won't even take an aspirin. When they prescribe something for me at Cancer Center of America, I ask them, what's in this? Is it addictive? Do you have non-addictive pain medication? We do. Why didn't you prescribe that to me? You really want to know? Yes, I do. The addictive ones are more expensive.

Wow.

Pills, Mr. Brown. Pills pay the bills.

I'm sorry.

I said I am too, and I'm so glad that I'm not the young man that I used to be. Because I'd have tore this office up with you. Let me tell you something. You hit you over the head here. About to make me lose my mind.

Up in here, up in here, about.

To make me act a fool up in here.

Oh my God.

But you know, it's all good. Had I not been fired from radio, we would not be having this conversation. Had I not gone through the experience, There are people and why I wrote her in the book, I could have, I said, we have three lives. We have a public life, we have a private life, and we have a secret life. And I said, I'm going to share something I've never shared before. And I said, if it helps one person to know that it's possible that they can get off those drugs, then it's worth it to me. to risk my credibility and my reputation and share that with them. Because they're going to need to say, if Left Brown can do it, I can do it. At 75, he's a tough cookie. And they're right.

What would you say is who was the most influential person in your life growing up?

My mother. Because I remember a reporter asked her when I had a talk show years ago in 1990. How did you know you could raise seven children by yourself and you never had any kids? And she said, I just believe the Lord will make a way somehow. And one of the things I say to people, don't discount yourself. I didn't do what I'm doing now for 14 years because I didn't believe being labeled educable mentally retarded, failing in the fifth grade, put back to the fourth grade, and no college education that I can compete with people with PhDs and MBAs. And so for 14 years, a lot of people say they have no regrets. The biggest regret that I have that I disapproved of myself for 14 years. And then, if I say coincidence, it's God's way of staying anonymous. I went to a training and a guy was speaking. and Mike Williams had already said, Hey Brownie, you know why you go see Zig Ziglar and Dr. Robert Schuller and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale who wrote the Power of Positive Thinking? I said, Because I like the message. He said, no. He said, you, like to help people. That's in you. You're always holding court here at the radio station. And you got a funny laugh, man. I said, what? He said, yes. And so he just kept saying that. to me. And I was at an event, and a guy was speaking and it just stopped like a spell came over him. He said, There's somebody here who should be doing this. He said, I do it because I make a lot of money. And he said, I'd love to make money. He said, But you, you want to change lives. And you can make money too, young man, young lady. And he said, you, know who you are. And then he paused again. He said, the reason I'm standing up here holding this microphone and you are seated out there, I represent the thoughts you have rejected for yourself. That hit me right between the eyes. I began to cry. At that time, this is in 1980, I went outside. I called Mike Williams. The telephone call was a dime then. I said, Mike, he said, Yes. I said, I'm not rejecting myself anymore. Do you hear me? He said, Brownie, calm down. Listen to me, man. I'm not rejecting myself anymore. I said, Will you help me? One of the things I teach, ask for help. Not because you're weak, but because you want to remain strong and ask for help and don't stop until you get it. He's a strategist. And he came down to Liberty City when I was there. I was elected to the Ohio legislature. I was the chairman of the Human Resource Committee, the Education Committee, Committee. I passed 14 bills my first term. And I resigned to come back to take care of my mother. I refused to allow my brothers and sisters to put her in a nursing home. They said, oh, we found a nice nursing home. I said, oh hell no. She raised us. We're going to take care of her. And so I gave up my political ambitions. And then I was trying to find something that I can do that will allow me to be available to her and earn money too. and so I moved into this area of motivational speaking and took care of her until she passed.

Wow. What would you say now, you didn't have a father figure growing up or?

No, no, I had a sperm donor.

Yeah, exactly.

Yes.

I've never known my birth mother or father and... Still to this day, you know? No, and I never did a search. My mother's, Mamie Brown, that's, you know, I used to have a talk show and I said, this has been Mrs. Mamie Brown's baby boy. Her love was so encompassing, I never wanted to do a search for my birth parents. After she passed, I became curious because when I had a talk show, I asked a young lady I was doing something on adoption, and I said, what has been the most challenging part of your life experience of being adopted? I'm adopted too. And she said, My birthday. I said, why? She said, on my birthday, I know that my mother thinks about me. And I said, whoa. I left the show, went and called my twin brother. I said, Wesley, he said, what? I said, do you know what? He said, what? I said, do you know our mother thinks about us every February the 17th? He said, you, called me about that? I said, yes. He said, you, need to do some damn push-ups. And hug her.

He said he hated him. I said, how can you hate our parents? We don't even know them.

We don't have a face. We don't have a target to hate. He said, I hate him, but hug him again. So that just never moved me. It's just, I am just, when people saw me as a kid, they called me Mamie's boy because my mother could talk to a tree. She was very friendly and outgoing person. she loved children, but she never had any herself.

What would you say is the greatest lesson that your father taught you, even though you never met him?

I don't know. I mean, with his absence, is there anything that I gave? I gave. Father's Day, I gave my mother a Father's Day card. I used to be on radio in Chicago. And Father's Day, I said, here's. I'm doing an event. for fathers who provide and protect. And I'm inviting mothers who serve as fathers and leave the sperm donors at home. That was very controversial, but we had a full house. I never thought about that because she was strong, she had faith, she was unstoppable, she was relentless. My mother, she made a way out of no way. I saw her go through some challenging experience raising seven children by herself. She when they couldn't work anymore, had arthritis, she wrote numbers and soul moonshine and home roof and she went to jail for a period of time, you know? I just, she only had a third grade education, but she had a PhD when it came to life. And I was 10. I became a man then. And so I remember when I was with her, when she passed on my youngest son's birthday. I remember holding her hand when she took her last breath and I said, I thank you for choosing us. I never felt that I was given away. I always felt that I was chosen with love. And I said, I'm gonna make you proud that you chose us. So when I speak, I think about her and the tough times we went through and I tell people you're gonna face tough times. My favorite book says, Think it not strange that you face the fiery furnaces of this world. But I affirm no matter how bad it is or how bad it gets, I'm going to make it. And I heard her say that. That she was determined we will always have a roof over our head, food on the table, and clothes on our back. And she was able to make a way out of no way. And so she has always been my father and my mother figure. That's all I know. Mr. Washington was a surrogate father for me. I've got some young men who see me as their spiritual father and he He taught me, Mr. Brown, develop your mind. You don't get in life what you want, you get in life what you are. Mr. Brown, practice OQP, only quality people. Who you run with determines who you end up with. Mr. Brown, yes sir. Develop your communication skills, because once you open your mouth, you tell the world who you are. And so he became like a surrogate father. I watched how he dressed. As you look at me, I have navy blue, I have a red tie, white shirt. And that's how he dressed when he went to school. You go to schools now, you can't tell the students from the teachers. Yes. Wow.

Sounds like an amazing mother.

Yes, she was an amazing, amazing parent.

Yes, she was.

What would you say is the greatest lesson she taught you?

Never give up. I remember when she was very ill and and she, at that time, doctors would come to the house, Dr. Johnson, and he said, Mamie, you hold on now. And she said, I will, because I can't leave these children here by themselves. So she wasn't even thinking about herself. She was thinking about us. And so when I was diagnosed with cancer, and it was like six years ago in Orlando, the oncologist said that cancer metastasized to seven areas of my body. I started smiling and this guy said, Did you hear what I just said? I said, Yes, are you in denial? I said, Man, do you know seven is my lucky number? I said, that cancer is getting the hell beat out of it now. He said, you, are crazy. And so at that time my PSA was 2,400, now it's zero. And I'm about to get a new procedure. next week where they draw out your white blood cells and train them for two weeks and inject it back in you and give those white blood cells the capacity to identify cancer cells and kill them. So you see all this stuff is just advanced, but your mindset, the biology of belief, you know, Bruce Lipton, I practice psychoneuroimmunology, your mindset, your diet, and positive relationships. Giving yourself a healing, nurturing environment strengthens your immune system and allows you to stay here longer and do your great work. One of the things I ask people when we're training, what's your strategy for being here? You have to have a game plan. Being here is not a given. And I don't think doctors should tell people that you're terminally ill. What I think they should say is, My knowledge and ability to help you has terminated. Now you need to explore some other options.

Right, right. Wow. How do we develop a sense of belief? What I'm hearing you say is belief is one of the most important things we can have in life.

It is major. It's an ongoing process. It's an ongoing process. One, I encourage people to read at a minimum of 30 to 40 pages of something positive every day to program your mind. And all of us can do that. We can go to the library. and check out books. When I think about Og Mandino, who wrote the Greatest Salesman in the World, he was on the verge of committing suicide, went to the library, read the book Think and Grow Rich, and his life turned around. So reading and programming ourselves. The reason that most people should do that, psychologists say that 86% of our self-talk is negative and it goes undetected by the conscious mind. That's why we're taught be not transformed to this world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Listen to recordings and things that are positive. Go on YouTube and find things that will begin to empower you. And minimize the distractions in your life. We have so many distractions. The weapons of mass distractions cause most people not to begin to live their lives from the inside out, but from the outside in. You know, there's an African proverb that says, if there's no enemy within, the enemy outside can do us no harm. Shakespeare said, the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings. So you have to program yourself or your mind will be programmed. The other thing is that have goals that's beyond your comfort zone because in order to do something you've never done, you've got to become someone you've never been. You've got to become a risk taker. This God said, if you're not willing to risk, you can't grow. And if you can't grow, you can't become your best. and if you can't become your best, you can't be happy. And if you can't be happy, then what else is there? And the other thing is, upgrade your relationships. You earn within two to $3,000 of your closest friends. You've got to look at the people in your life and ask, what is this relationship doing to me? There are many people, because of the toxic negative energy draining people in their lives, they will never be successful. because those toxic relationships will compromise their power. There's a new term in psychology, in psychiatry called relational illness. There are some people that can make you sick. Now, some people might say, Les, can we change them? No, it's a full-time job changing yourself. And there are some people that are so negative they can walk into a dark room and begin to develop. Oh, behave. Be a little slow. That's all right.

I heard it.

I got it.

I went to photography class in high school where we used to have the developers. They don't do that anymore. Polaroid.

Yeah.

I like it, man. I'm curious about, I've been researching for the last couple of years about masculinity, this topic about masculinity and what it means to be a better man. I'm curious your perspective on what the definition of masculinity is to you. You've had an interesting upbringing without a father figure. You're a father.

I borrowed Mr. Washington.

Gotcha. Yeah.

And he was a good example. I read a book by Sydney Poitier called the Measure of a Man. To me, a man takes responsibility. A man provides and protects his family.

A man.

Builds a Legacy. I saw an interview with Steve Harvey and it was really powerful.

He's great.

He went to the hospital with a friend of his to visit his grandmother who was hospitalized, his friend's grandmother. And so his friend's grandmother asked him, Hey, do you know your great-grandfather's name? And so this young man said, no. and she said, Because he didn't leave you anything. If he had left you something, you would know his name. A good man leaves a legacy for his children and for his children's children. I'm a grandfather and I'm a great-grandfather of three sons. So I'm building a legacy. My children are all involved in the business. And I believe that as a man, that you hold yourself to a higher standard, even though I have not always done that. When I was younger, I was a different person than I am now. I'm not wearing any crown. I'm like the lady who said, Lord, ain't what I want to be, ain't what I'm gonna be, but thank God I show ain't what I was. Yes, you know, I have 10 children, five boys and five girls. When the Lord say, Be fruitful and multiply, I took it serious.

He took advantage of me. That's right.

I'm a baby Christian. I'm a baby Christian.

I even saved that long.

A lady hugged me the other day. I said, I'm a baby Christian. Back up.

Back up.

And so you learn things and you grow and you evolve. And my sons are very good fathers. I said, I wonder where you guys got that from. Come on, dad. We got it from you. I said, well, I got a lot of flaws. They said, Dad, nobody's perfect, you know, and we love you, you know, just as you are unconditionally. And so to me, a man has compassion, sensitivity, a very emotional, and you care. You love and you feel that you want to live a life that has made some impact. It was Gerda said, Don't ask what the meaning of life is. Ask what is the meaning of your life. And to me, a man desires to live a meaningful life. So many young people, young men today, because we live in an entertainment-driven culture, that they don't have a vision of themselves of what it takes to be a man. I studied Mr. Washington. He was one figure that I looked at and how he held himself, how he spoke, how he dressed. And I said, I want to be like that when I become a man. I want to live my life in such a way that my mother would say, I'm proud of Leslie, that my children would say, I'm proud of you. Somebody asked me the other day, what has been your greatest accomplishment? You've won all the top awards in speaking. You've spoken to over 80,000 people in the Georgia Dome, 30,000 in Poland. What has been your greatest accomplishment? I said, When my children got together and said, Daddy, when you're in pursuit of the dream and all those special occasions that you missed, we were angry with you. But when we see what you have accomplished, we've graduated from college with no student loans, when we see the sacrifice, the price of what it takes to make a dream happen. And how you started with so little, we're so proud of you. And we want you to know that. That to me was the greatest achievement that I've had. I spoke about three weeks ago in Detroit and my second oldest son, Patrick, was with me and he said, you, know what? You're a special guy. You're a special guy for you to come in here and speak to these people and train, and they didn't pay you anything. And you spoke to them and gave them everything you had as if you had received a check. He said, you,'re a special guy. I admire you. When your children tell you they admire you, that to me is special. And they work with me and now love the work that I do and they're taking it on. That to me is powerful.

Is there anything that you wish you didn't do?

Yes. I wish I had not waited 14 years. Somebody said, if you wanna lose something, lose money. You can get that back. Eight out of 10 millionaires have been financially bankrupt. Walt Disney filed bankruptcy seven times and had two nervous breakdowns. But don't lose time. There were 14 years, I said on the sideline. 14 years, I said, I don't have an investor in me like Tony Robbins. 14 years that said, I don't have an MBA or a PhD, and I can't compete with these guys. I have the complexion of rejection. 14 years, I silenced myself. And so I regret that, because there are some people that Maybe if they'd heard my voice, they would not have turned to drugs. If they'd heard my voice, their lives would have taken a different direction. And I can't get those 14 years back. That haunts me. And I think that drives me when I speak with such energy. I'm trying to make up for that time, but I can't.

Well, I feel like you're doing a pretty good job at it.

Thank you.

You're making a big impact. I'm curious, I don't know if anyone's ever asked you this or if you've already addressed this before. And I'm assuming your biological parents are probably passed, I'm assuming, maybe they've been still around. But if they were just happened to be here in the moment and they happen to be standing in front of you, fully aware of everything and realize that you were their son, would you ever share anything with them or say.

Anything to them that... You know what I wonder? It's interesting you should ask me that question because I saw this thing on television about ancestry and give them a swab in your mouth. They can tell you where you're from and all that. I'm curious, and it always happens to me when I speak. There are things that my children are doing in speaking that I didn't teach them. They got it from me. I wonder what did my father do? And I wonder what my mother did. Where did I get this gift from? I don't know. I know that there are moments when I speak that it's not me. There's something that happens. There's some part of me that I know that's them. And I wonder which one I got it from. And what did they do? I wonder about that. It's not some burning desire in me. I've met people who've been adopted or fostered. for foster kids. I was a foster kid first before I was adopted. And where I'd like to say, why did you leave me? Why y'all came back for me? You know, but that gets me because of the fact that there's something that they, a part of me that they deposited in me at the cellular level that has caused me to be able to go out and transform people's lives and live this life. And so for a long time I used to say, I'm here because, and I said it today unconsciously because of two people. One gave me life and one gave me love. But I'm here because of three people. Two gave me life. It was not immaculate conception, okay? They don't do that anymore. It said, her birth mother was in Florida and she was in a part of Florida where they were chopping cane, sugarcane, and she met this guy from Jamaica and he fixed some curry chicken for her and she got pregnant.

I'm something in the curry, all right?

So, I'm here because of three people, you know, the sperm donor, my birth mother, and Mrs. Mamie Brown, God took me out of my biological mother's womb and placed me in the heart of my adopted mother. But I would be, and I would ask to say, did y'all see each other anymore? Or did y'all talk about us? Or were you ever curious as to whatever happened to us? And one of the things that happened, my mother told us that a neighbor, Mr. Moss, said, Mamie, you've always said you wanted of child where there's a lady, she has some twins. She's in Liberty City and she don't want to separate them. She wants someone who will take both of them. So she said, I'll take both of them. So he drove her out to Liberty City, 62nd Street, Northwest, 17th Avenue. And she said, when she went into this house, lights were off, there was a mattress in the back, and she saw this woman had shoulder-length hair, they looked a lot alike, and she had Wesley and I in her arms in a light blue blanket. And she said, Are you the lady? Our birth mother said, Are you the lady that will take both of my boys? And she said yes. And she said, Our mother said to her, Listen, My husband was away in World War II. He's coming back home and I got pregnant and he would kill me if he knew that I got pregnant while he was away. Wow. Will you take them? And so Mama said, Yes, are you sure? And she said, She gave us to her and they started walking out the door and she came outside and followed her. And she opened the door for Mama and Mama got in with Wesley and I in her arms and she closed the door and she leaned over and she said, you, mother kissed you both on the forehead one more time. And then she hit the door. She said, Go. And when Mr. Moss was cranking the car to leave, she said, Wait, wait. And she said, My heart started beating fast. And she said, I thought she had changed her mind and she said, you, you promised you swear to God you will take care of them. And she said, I swear, and you won't separate them. She said, I swear. Then she hit the car again and said, Go get the hell out of here.

Wow.

And Mr. Moss smashed on the gas and left. And she said, As I held you all and looked at you, as though God has blessed me with twins. Is that something?

Powerful. Yes. Amazing.

I'm so grateful that she chills us with love.

It's powerful. I want to ask a few more questions. This has been really inspiring and I already know people are going to be talking about this a lot. I want you to imagine for a moment that this microphone and headset is connected to every person in the world has a headset on and they can hear what you're about to say. And They can hear in their own language. It's translated. Well, you know, a baby can understand it, you know, anyone in any language. And everyone puts their headphones on right now and you turn on the mic. What's the message you would share with the world?

I do this in my training. I said, if you had a message to the world, I would say you have greatness in you. I don't know you, but here's what I know. based upon my own experience, you have greatness in you, that you have the ability to do more than you can ever begin to imagine. You have greatness in you. That as you think about yourself, a reminder of the words of Howard Thurman who said, There is a presence in each and every one of us that waits and listens to the voice of the genuine in yourself. It will be perhaps the only God you will ever have or hear. And if you cannot hear it all of your life, will be spent on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls. When you recognize your greatness, no one will ever pull your strings. You are different. You were created on purpose with a purpose to manifest that purpose through you. You are made in the likeness and image of God and been given authority and dominion over everything on the face of the earth. But you will never exercise authority and dominion over your life. until you exercise authority and dominion over what you are not. Most people go through life living the lie that has been told about them. And we are encouraged, be ye not conformed to this world, be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. Work constantly to renew your mind, to expand your vision of yourself, to hold a vision of yourself Living in the future, living a life of contribution. He said, I'll give you all your eyes can see. Greater is he that is in you than he that's in the world. There's something in you that's greater than your circumstances. There's something in you that's greater than the adversities that you're facing. Life is just like Forrest Gump said, a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. In life, you either in a problem just left one or headed toward one. You have greatness in you. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I like that one. That's a good story. What's the question you wish more people would ask you that would actually help create more transformation in the world with your answer?

Who am I really? Who am I really? Dr. Carter G. Woodson, which I think he's one of the most profound thinkers that I've ever read. And he said, if you can determine what a man shall think, you never have to concern yourself with what he will do. He said, if you can make a man feel inferior, you never have to compel him to seek an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. And if you can make a man feel justly an outcast, you never have to order him to go to the back door. He'll go without being told. And if there's no door, his very nature will demand one. And so we have to begin to ask ourselves, who am I? MIT did a study. If I say to you, you can't do that. Somebody else has to come along and say, you can do it. You can do it. You can do it 17 times to neutralize that one time. So most of us are living a lie. Most of us, because we live in a world where we're told more about our limitations rather than our potential, we go to our graves never knowing who who we really are. That's why they say most people die at age 25 and don't get buried until they're 65. Who are you really?

What is the thing you think about the most during the day?

How much time I have left? Can I, with the time that I have left, inspire young men to pull their pants up? In the time that I have left to eliminate HIV, hood infected virus. The time that I have left eliminate AIDS, addiction to incarceration and death syndrome. Can I, with the time that I have left, amplify and train and multiply voices of hope and create a better world? Do I have enough time to do that? I almost died a year ago. you know, and I believe God gave me grace and we all have an expiration date. So I'm cranking it up at 72. I'm working harder. Yes, that's what I want. There's no success without successors. So I'm determined for people that are hungry to make a difference. I'm determined for those who can hear my voice. to inspire them, to train them, to pour into them everything that I've learned. And I know that what I've done is only a tip of the iceberg of what they're going to do. Young men like you. And I feel blessed to be in your presence.

That's amazing. And so do I. How can I support? And how can we support you?

You're doing this now. And help me find that 77 hungry people.

I got you.

I got a lot of them. I'm sure there's a lot of them missing.

I don't know. Yes, you're doing it now. I feel so blessed to be in your presence. I mean that sincerely because the Mr. Washington said to me, Mr. Brown, love, inspiration and motivation are perfumes you can't sprinkle on others without getting a few drops on yourself. He said, live a life of contribution. Decide. that you are going to live your life in such a way as Horace Mann said, you should be ashamed to die until you've made some major contribution to humankind. And I want to find other people who have that kind of magnificent obsession, who have that kind of conviction about their lives, who want to make that kind of mark with their lives. And you don't have to be the smartest person in the room. You could be labeled educable mentally retarded like me. I remember going back to Booker T. Washington High School and Mrs. Eve, one of the teachers I had in special education, she wrote a book called Bible's Famous Retarded Students.

Let's round! You just got to be hungry.

You got to be hungry.

Yes, for sure.

People that are hungry believe always strive to get on top in life because it's the bottom that's overcrowded. People that are hungry believe, do what No, not what you feel. People that are hungry have zero excuses for not pursuing their dreams. They make know their vitamin and they come back again and again and again. They operate like Willy Jolly who said that a setback is a setup for a comeback. I've got a saying, if life knocks you down, try and land on your back because if you can look up.

You can get up.

Ooh, I like that. Okay. Final few questions for you. I feel I could ask you many more, but I want to be respectful.

It's okay. Come with what you got, my brother.

Got it. This is called the Three Truths. It's called the Three Truths. I ask everyone this at the end.

Yes.

Now, if this was the last day for you, let's imagine many years from now, because you're going to be around for a long time.

Yes.

But for whatever reason, everything you've said has been erased. All the audio out there, the videos, you're on like a million YouTube videos with your audio everything, all the books, the work you've done for whatever reason is gone. But you have a piece of paper by your bed and a pen, and someone asks you to write down the three things you know to be true about your entire experiences that you would pass on. And this is all people would have to remember you by. These three truths. What would you say are yours?

I say, live your life from a place of love. He who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in them. I would say, Live your life from a place of faith. Zig Ziglar said, Fear is finding false evidence appearing real faith, finding answers in the heart. And I would say, Give the world your best. Live full and die empty.

Take the time and learn how to effectively build genuine, lasting relationships with others in your industry. Friendships and relationships have been the cornerstone to my success and so many other people that I know and who have seen grow their businesses and lifestyles.