" Selling People On Their Own Greatness"
Les Brown is an engaging motivational speaker who has a passionate desire to nurture and fire up other people’s passions. He wants to set them on the road to achieving more than they have ever dared.
He challenges us to step out of living a life of mediocrity and resignation into a life brimming with personal success and confidence about the value of the unique contribution to the world that each of us has.
It is not an empty rhetoric. He is talking from experience, having already been through his own set of misfortunes and missed opportunities, to come out triumphantly and all the wiser in the end.
He started out in life as the child of a shamed mother who gave birth to him and his twin brother in an abandoned building, the result of an attempt to hide the evidence of an illicit affair. She arranged to have them adopted in their first month to a woman who herself was an unmarried domestic worker but who nevertheless inspired him by the strength of her character and her strong belief in his ability to greatness.
Brown was an unruly and mischievous student and his inability to concentrate led to him being labelled as retarded for a while. And by the law of self fulfilling prophecy, Les Brown lived the label for a while until he found some inspiration in a teacher who thought otherwise, LeRoy Washington.
LeRoy is quoted as saying,
"Someone’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality!"
This somehow provided a release from the mental shackles that had been holding him back as he realised that empowerment comes from within. Les Brown then worked his way from being a city sanitation worker into a dream job for him at the time, a disc jockey and on to having his own top-rated radio program and managing
broadcasts.
From there he started to become more of an activist, having been inspired by the activism and communication skills of his director Mike Williams who inspired his audiences. However his activism led to is eventually being fired
Not to be deterred, Brown ran for and won a seat for the Ohio State legislature and actively passed more legislature than any other newly appointed representative in Ohio legislative history right in his very first year. He later left to spend time caring for his ailing mother but continued to be active at community meetings and setting up projects
However it was his chance meeting with the great motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar that finally sparked his desire to follow in his footsteps and speak to bigger audiences. He was fired up by the power of motivation
As he wrote in his book "Live Your Dreams", Les Brown was convinced that:
"Life takes on meaning when you become motivated".
It is at that point when you set goals and let nothing get in your way. He proved that by the many nights he spent sleeping on his office floor because he couldn’t afford to rent a place to live. Any spare time he had was spent learning about and modeling the habits of well known motivational speakers and speaking, first with smaller groups then larger until he started to become known as "The Motivator". His message was about encouraging others to go after their goals with passion and tenacity.
This was the message he came to convey at the recent Engage Today Event 2009, where he put in an appearance as a top motivational speaker.
His reach started to extend to much wider audiences on tv and in large companies, eventually even his own talk show, but he also continued give talks to prison inmates
and high school students in line with his commitment to always ‘give something back’.
He has faced life’s obstacles and overcame them through the power of his dreams and he wants to share with everyone that it is also possible for us to do exactly the same despite the obstacles we face.
He wrote a best selling book called:
"It’s Not Over Until You win! How to Become The Person You Always Wanted to Be No Matter What The Obstacle"
