Les Brown: Overcome All Odds and Change the World (with Lewis Howes)

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 person not by what they accomplished but what they had to overcome for their accomplishment [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome back everyone to the school of greatness pondcast i'm with the legendary godfather of greatness mr les brown thank you so much for being here thank you it's a pleasure to be here it's always a treat when great people meet yeah he's got a lot of great one-liners i'm excited already we can just stop it right there yes one of the things that uh i love about you is that you live in my favorite place in the world ohio oh yeah cause i'm an ohio guy is that right and you i grew up in delaware ohio lived in columbus for many years just had my event in columbus because i try to bring back meaning to the place that helped me so much when i was and it did so much for me i went to columbus i was 22 and became a disc jockey there and and and did that for many years and then i evolved into a community activist and became very very much involved in politics and ran for the ohio legislature was elected to three terms and then my mother became ill and resigned and went back to miami florida where i'm from originally but columbus i came in as a boy but i left there as a man i i grew up there's so many things and so many memories that helped me to become the person that i am and the people that played a major role in my life really 22 when you went there yes yes and then you moved to cleveland event later no no then then when uh after that i was elected to the ohio legislature and then i went back to miami gotcha take care of my mother my sister called me and said are you sitting down and i said what's wrong with mama she said she has breast cancer i'm adopted i'm one of seven children that she adopted and when we were six weeks of age my twin brother had a twin brother my mother adopted us and and then she adopted five other children so i'm one of seven and i always say that i i'm here because of two people 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 wow amazing yeah amazing and why did you decide to go back to to be in cleveland then why did you decide to go i just went to cleveland recently i have an investment in a daycare center there at three and so i went there to help to create a new type of curriculum that will help young people early on begin to develop the the communication skills that i think that's very important in becoming successful in life that's major your mindset and but also to to to have a value for life that that we see so much violence as children they said over 200 acts of violence when children are raised in a culture and the study that was done by dr seliman in the book called learned after optimism the 26 year most exhaustive study on self-esteem said that between the ages of zero and five that we develop permanent personality characteristics that follow us for the rest of our lives and so i wanted to develop a curriculum that would teach children that life has value and that your life has value to change their vision of themselves and to interrupt how they see themselves based upon being in a hostile culture this is a hostile culture for people of color and so to me one of the most important things to help people to overcome the psychic disrepair is creating a curriculum early on and and what we talked to parents about that our children are molding today what they will be in the future when i was a kid i was born in abandoned building on a floor with my twin brother wesley and we were adopted when i was six weeks of age i was labeled educable mentally when i was in the fifth grade i moved they put me back from the fifth grade into the fourth grade i failed again in the eighth grade i have no college training so being identified and labeled as dt the dumb twin it gave me a lot of things to overcome and one of the things that dr seliman said that when you are between the ages of 0 and 5 a word is formulated in your heart that word is yes or that word is no so when you're raised in poverty that vision of yourself that culture those circumstances those conversations those things that you observe they begin to create the lenses from which you see the world and so to overcome that is it's a major major challenge and so i wanted to use the things that i learned and and and begin to implement it integrate those into the daycare centers that we have become involved cool yeah well how many daycare centers are there and that's great three of them gotcha very cool what do you think it is that uh school is missing out on in general in the u.s 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 and what they discovered that 85 percent of them reach their goals because of the attitude their vision about themselves and and fifteen percent because of the aptitude so school as you know has been focused on reading writing and arithmetic it does not cons it does not consider critical thinking and 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 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 booger t washington high school the money that was allocated to educate kids on miami beach and carl gables versus booker t washington high schools just tremendous um difference and 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 is provide an environment and get people to buy and a lie about themselves and cause them to live a small life as opposed to a life of achievement because the culture is designed to hold us back when i graduated from high school at white high school dropout had more of a chance of getting a job than a black college graduate wow yeah so if so that kind of environment it destroys your sense of self when did you start i mean you i was uh 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 yeah but go ahead yeah and for me 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 sadersky she cooked for these families and we ate the food left over from the families that she cooked for she kept their children and we want to hand me down clothes of the children that she worked for and when i had the assignment of cleaning mr sadersky's office and shining his shoes and he was listening to various motivational recordings this is real to real 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 to you let it find you conquering a new mountain not sliding down an old one a people like zig ziglar if you give enough people what they want they will give you what you want um listening to some of the words 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 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 certainly 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 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 and so what he did was what you do on this program every day how people live their lives as 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 was based upon the the book think and grow rich by napoleon hill napoleon hill's book was a good book they consider 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 your best stuff he said les if information could change people everybody would be skinny rich and happy so he said in order to change people you 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 the motivational industries is based upon a different type of method like tony who i think is is a great speaker tony he trains to get people to go to a firewall okay yeah 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 person not by what they accomplished but what they had to overcome for their accomplishment you know so the challenge let me for instance in me having a global voice i remember when tony had sponsored by dunphy 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 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 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 he has goal was to to train me to speak to the world so i thought about it now remember something that robert chula 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 the words can never hurt you that's how lies 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 it so listening to these various speakers but then because of how i was reject rejected by gunthy ranker 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 got to learn and you 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 request every speaker get around 25 to 30 requests a year i get over 3 000 because of using that principle in and many of the speakers that i've trained now and some of them have passed me using the same technique in 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 rohn 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 can 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 here of it here i told you taught you everything you know not everything i know all right right young bloom's feet clean but the whole room know where to go so to me you know i believe we live in the greatest country in the world bar none that might make america great again foolishness we never stop being great there's no country that can compare to us and we have the opportunity i believe by multiplying voices of hope that that that weekend began to to create a new day a lady came from australia for me to train her and 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 were scripted i said that's what set me apart from all the other speakers they're scripted if you have a 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 ruth 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 at this chapter in my life as 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's supper so so so my goal is 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's 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 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 is to straighten up probably i want if i can train 77 mike williams asked me he you i wrote the forward to his book the road to your 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 i but seven is my lucky number i'm one of seven children i was one february the 17th my phone number is 702 my address is 2737 did i tell you seven is my luck joshua marshall on the walls of jericho seven times naaman dipped himself in the river jordan seven times did i tell you seven is my lucky number so i'm gonna train 77 people to speak to the world to transform lives to make a difference hora's man said we should be ashamed to die until we've made some major 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 shops to trying to outrun jeeps barefooted and yet and still 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 that's what the powerful treasure looked at yes the train said i'm gonna have to take that training with you um oh you're great already i could just touch for those that maybe aren't going 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 others around them what would you say i took toastmasters uh eight years ago i think you took it or you were part of the organization i never took toastmasters toastmasters they they selected me among the top five speakers in the world general norman schwarzkopf leah coker paul harvey and robert schuller i mean that's a very important group yes i'm the last guy standing it's pretty big i took them 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 sat 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 dumper they knocked them into a brownie i said what is it come out man dexter yeager they're 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 hear the voices i said i don't know mike i've been trying i 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 um tell a story of where you are about what you're going through and about the goal and dream for buying your mother home you know i i 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 sit 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 going to 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 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 and do what she loves to do and whatever money she earns 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 vision of myself of wanting to buy her home and and be able to provide for her and i did that i fought bought four different homes before she passed that 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 yeah and that's where i am i like that and so what about for people who want to give the people who want to speak i think they should find something that they're passionate about some subject that they can lose themselves until the scripture says if a man to gain his life he must lose it and i i thought it was about physically losing your life but it's about when i speak i go to a place of 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 so when i speak it's not about me my prayer is more of the 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'll become competent on that that when i prepare myself for speaking engagement and i still do because i don't believe that you 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 im emotional memory the next thing in and speaking there is some fear and that fear is always there i never assume 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 that's 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 getting good understanding so i have a needs assessment that i sent out and i asked him 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 that's 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 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 this 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 and experience as i said oliver wendell holmes said that once a man or woman's mind has been expanded with an ideal concept or experience it could never be satisfied to going back to where it was so when you bring all those elements in there with humor with quotes statistics and stories you are 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 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 i have a 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 i wanted this this group of people that i was talking to i wanted to challenge them to get outside of their comfort zone and to be come 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 switzerland mahatma gandhi and when i was diagnosed with prostate cancer and my psa was 2400 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 said maybe that's why henry david throws oh 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 wow at wayne state university she said i'm not going to 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 it several times in graduation speeches that he had had a narrow vision of the roles that he would play as an actor and 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 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 of 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 yeah 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 your 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 great thinker a statesman and so and then but i also trained to to be able to communicate 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 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 the day others won't do in order to have the things tomorrow others won't have they can email me at les brown 77 gmail.com did i tell you seven is my lucky number hashbrowns777 gmail.com and said i want to tell my story and make a difference and we will get well i will send them the seven principles of storytelling and some videos of how to tell your story and we'd do that free for them very cool and and also the 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 be bring some words that can help us to get a different vision of ourselves that's powerful so you have a way to email people back they email you yes if you have an option they can just get it or download it somewhere or maybe if they if they can put it all on a web page for you to make it easier if they they text hunger okay oh wait a minute no here's houston though it is it's called text when my son put this up text when to 21777 yes when two one seven seven seven we'll test it and make sure well four two four seven seven seven we'll test it yeah we'll let them know yeah yes right test that we'll test it yes or we can put it on and then that will get in there yes yes yes check that out with john leslie please yes we'll figure out we'll figure out where to send people the link or whatever um but i think it's powerful that'll be great what is what would you say is uh who was the most influential person in your life growing up my mother because i remember a reporter asker when i had a talk show years ago in 1992 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 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 there's a 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 schuler and dr um 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 always hole in court here at the radio station and you got a funny laugh man he said yes and so he just kept saying that to me and and i was out in a meet at an event and a guy was speaking and he 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 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 and he came down to liberty city when i was there i i was elected to the ohio legislature i was the chairman of the human resource committee the education committee i passed 14 bills my first term and i resigned to come back to take care of my mother i refuse to allow my brothers and sisters to put her in the nursing home so 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 i had a sperm donor yeah exactly yes i've never known my birth mother or father and and still this time 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 amy brown's baby boar 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 most challenging part of your life experience of being adopted i'm adopted too and she said my birthday i said why she said oh my birthday i know that my mother thinks about me and i say 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 think about us every february the 17th he said you call me about that i said yes he said you need to do some damn push-ups he said he hated him i said how can you hate our parents we don't even know we don't have a face we don't have a target to hate he said i hate him so that just never moved me it's just i am just when people saw me as a kid they call 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 in 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 absences 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 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 um um when they when she couldn't work anymore had arthritis she she wrote numbers and and sold moonshine and homebrew and and and she went to jail for a period of time you know and 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 when i was with her when she she passed on my youngest son's birthday and i remember holding her hand when she took her last breath and i said i thank you for choosing this i never felt that i was given away i always felt that i was chosen with love and i said i'm going to 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 going to face tough times you know my favorite book says think it not strange at your face to 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 her head food on the table and clothes on her back and she was able to make her way out of nowhere 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 some young men who they 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 and a white shirt and that's how he dress when he went to school you go to schools now you can't tell the students from the people okay yes yes wow yeah wow sounds like an amazing mother yes she was an amazing very amazing parent yes she was what would you say is the greatest lesson she taught you never give up she 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 and it was like six years ago in orlando that 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 you're in denial i said man do you know seven is my lucky number i said that cancer's getting the hell beat out of it 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 into you and give those white blood cells the capacity to identify cancer cells and kill them so you see all this stuff is it's just advanced but your mindset the biology of belief you know bruce lifton i i practice psychoneuro immunology 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 to 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 do it is major it's an ongoing process it's a 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 and all of us can do that we can go to the library and check out books when i think about augmentino 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 that 80 86 of our self-talk is negative and it goes undetected by the conscious mind that's why we're taught be not conformed 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 that will begin to empower you and minimize the distractions in your life we have so many distractions the weapons of mass distractions caused 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 said if there's no enemy within the enemy outside can do us no harm shakespeare said the forty of 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 three thousand dollars of your closest friends you've got to look at the people in your life and ask what is this relationship doing to me the 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's some people that can make you sick now some people might say les can we change him no it's a full-time full-time job changing yourself and there's some people that's so negative they can walk into a dark room and begin to develop oh behave you 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 i like it man uh i'm curious about uh i've been i've been researching for the last couple 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 and you've had an interesting upbringing without a father figure your father i borrowed mr washington got you yeah and he was a good example i read a book by sidney 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 grand 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 i'm like the lady who said lord ain't what i want to be ain't what i'm going to be but thank god i'll show you what i was exactly yes you know i have ten children five boys and five girls when the lord say be fruitful and multiply i took him seriously he took advantage of it right i'm a baby christian i'm a vagrant 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 you learn things and you grow and you evolve and my sons are very good fathers i say i wonder where you guys got that from let's come on dad we got it from you i said well i got a lot of flaws i 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 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 they don't have a vision of themselves or 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 dress and i said i want to be like that when i become a man i 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 and speaking you've spoken to over 80 000 people in the georgia dome 30 000 in poland uh 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 youngest second oldest son patrick was with me and he said you know what you're a special guy wow 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 special yes is there anything that you wish you uh didn't do yes i wish i had not waited 14 years somebody said if you want to lose something lose money you can get that back 8 out of 10 millionaires have been financially bankrupt walt disney filed bankruptcy seven times had two nervous breakdowns but don't lose time there were 14 years i sat 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 and i can compete with these guys i have the complexion of rejection 14 years i silenced myself wow 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 made i think that drives me when i speak with such energy i'm trying to make up for that time but i can't hmm 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 um and i'm assuming your biological parents are probably passed i'm assuming maybe they've been still around but if they were just happen 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 suave in your mouth they can tell you where you're from and all that i'm 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 i know that there are moments when i speak that it's not me there's something that 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 i wonder about that it's not some burning desire maybe i've met people who've been adopted or forced the kids i was a foster kid first before i was adopted and where i'd like to to say you know why did you leave me you know why did you all come back for me yeah yeah 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 yeah 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 uh two gave me life it was not immaculate conception okay they don't do that anymore they said my birth mother was in florida and she was in a in a part of florida where they they had they were chopping cane sugarcane and she met this guy from jamaica and he fixed some curry chicken for and she got pregnant i stepped into the curry all right so so i'm here because of three people you know the sperm donor my birth brother and this is mamie brown that god took me out of a 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 you all see each other anymore right or did y'all talk about us or did you were you ever curious as to whatever happened to to us and and and one of the things that happened uh my mother told us that a neighbor mr moss said mamie you've always said you wanted a child well there's a lady she has some twins she's in liberty city and 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 the liberty city 62nd street northwest 17th avenue and she said when she went into this this house the lights were off there was a mattress in the back and and she saw this woman had shoulder their hair they looked a lot alike and she had wesley and i in her arms in a um 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 will kill me if i 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 yes and she said she gave us to her and they started walking out the door and she came outside and followed her and 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 your 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 and carved to leave she said wait wait and she said my heart started beating fast and and she said i thought she had changed her mind and she said you promised you swear to god you will take care of him and she said i swear and you won't separate him she said i swear then she hit the car again said go get the hell out of here wow mr moss smashed on the gas and left and she said as i held you all and looked at you and so god has blessed me with twins is that something powerful yes amazing i'm so grateful that she chills us with love that's powerful i want to ask a few more questions this has been really inspiring and uh i already know people are going to be talking about this a lot um i want you to imagine for a moment that this microphone and headset is connected to the every person in the world has a headset on and they can hear yes what you're about to say and they can hear in their own language it's translated bold 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 could 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's 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 not conformed to this world be 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 gonna get in life you're 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 it'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 is 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't do it 17 times to neutralize that one time wow so most of us are living alive 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 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 when 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 to 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 off it's 72. i know i'm aspiring harder yes that's what i want six 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 so do i how can i support and how can we support you you're doing this now and and and help me find that 77 hungry people i got you i got a lot of them i'm sure 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 or 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 harassment 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 mock with their lives and you don't have to be the smartest person in the room you know you could be labeled educable mentally like me i remember going back to vogue t washington high school and mrs eve one of the teachers i had in special education she wrote a book called my most famous student [Laughter] you just got to be hungry you got to be hungry yes yes 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 you know 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 willie jolly who said that a setback is a set up for 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 i like that uh okay final few questions for you i feel like i could ask you many more but i want to be respectful it's okay um come with what you got my brother got it this is called uh the three truths this is called the three truths i ask everyone this at the end yes um 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 over 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 you know 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 hmm those are great truths thank you i love those ones where can we connect with you more where should people follow up with you we're going to send them to a link to get the seven i think the seven steps to better storytelling yeah seven principles of storytelling they can figure out let's get together they can go to les brown.com yes and i encourage you to get something called choosing your future dr norman vinson field said i was an incredible piece of work that i've done and i encourage them to if they're serious about speaking and ready to invest in themselves and want some coaching we uh we've just completed an online course so they can email me and and we will send them information about that and also information about when we're going to have seminars and workshops i'm going to london november the 12th i'm looking forward to going there doing a training there amazing yeah that's a big audience in the world is that right i got a big audience in london we're gonna be at the youtube the historical of course you too so so i'm excited about going back there i love going this information is all at lesbrown.com for the speaking there and your tours yes yeah they can go to my facebook thelesbrown.com yes facebook slash the les brown yes got it because they've got a lot of them i see a lot of your stuff there it's great stuff um before i ask the final question i want to acknowledge you for a moment les for your incredible joy that you spread to the world you're like you're like a virus of love thank you and inspiration it's a great virus you infect people with uh so much joy love with your child-like smile and laugh and your humor and your ability to use words and stories to transform lives it's such a gift thank you and i'm so grateful that i've had the opportunity to connect with you right now me too i feel the same about you yeah thank you so much um final question for you is what's your definition of greatness to me and i said it earlier when you're pursuing your greatness you don't know what your limits are so you act like you don't have any you you live from a place of the willingness to live life courageously to be willing to take chances to become a risk taker to make impact to go beyond believing to knowing to lean not into your own understanding to feel within yourself there's some cause there's something that's bigger than me but i'm never alone in facing this that there's a presence that will never leave me nor forsake me and that when you step into that place more of the less of me that that there's a place where we can go within ourselves there are things that we can accomplish things that we can do that i has not seen ear has not hurt nor is it in the heart of mankind what god has in store for us when we surrender life to me when you're pursuing your greatness you find something that you love that you surrender to that that that something gives you life and that you turn yourself over to that and allow yourself to be used by life that to me is what greatness is the godfather of greatness thank you so much last peace thank you for who you are thank you yes appreciate it thank you very much you

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 177,991

Keywords: lewis howes, the school of greatness, les brown, overcome all odds, motivation, as seen on ellen, podcast, the mask of madculinity, talk show, success, interview, 2017, morning motivation, its not over until I win, hungry, I'm the one, its possible, be inspired, win the day, motivational video for success, positive thinking, best motivation, best motivational video, morning rituals

Id: tNcW7rEXg0M

Length: 76min 51sec (4611 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2017