Our guest this month is one of the most dynamic and powerful speakers of our time.
 
He is Mrs. Mamie Brown’s baby boy as he tells us in his best-selling books Live Your Dreams and It’s Not Over Until You Win!

Adopted by Mrs. Mamie Brown when he was six weeks old, Les grew up to be a three-time State Legislator from Ohio, host of his own television talk show, and a hugely successful speaker, winning over 80 awards for his work.
 
Those awards include the Council of Peers Award of Excellence — the highest honor awarded by the National Speakers Association — as well as being selected as one of America’s top five speakers by Toastmasters International.
 
His presentation series, “You Deserve,” recorded for PBS, won a Chicago-area Emmy and became the leading fund-raising program of its time through PBS stations throughout the country. Les, thank you so much for joining us.
 
Janet Attwood: I’m thrilled that we have another incredibly successful entrepreneur as my co-host to conduct this interview. Stephen Pierce is one of the top Internet marketers in the world today, after taking the Internet by storm with his book The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth About Internet Marketing. Stephen, thank you for being with us.
 
Stephen Pierce: All right. Without question, we just heard the introduction about you and you’re widely regarded as one of the top speakers in the Personal Development field. From your beginning up to the point where you are right now, you’ve had quite a journey.
 
What role did your passions, the things that are most important in your life, play in achieving the success that you’re enjoying today?
 
Les Brown: You said it’s been quite a journey, and it most certainly has been! I want to thank you for this opportunity to share some thoughts with people.

I want to say to everyone, I’d like you to think about some goals and dreams you feel strongly about, particularly something that’s your passion, something that turns you on.
 
Oliver Wendell Holmes said that “most men and women go to their graves with their music still in them.” The whole purpose and mission of Healthy Wealthy nWise is about helping people begin to find ways to release what Elizabeth Browning called the ‘imprisoned splendor.’
 
Not to take your music with you; to do that which you came and showed up to do, the calling of your life. I believe there’s a reason for all of us for being here.

In answer to the question you asked, passions played a major role. My first major passion was to take care of my mother. I’m adopted. I was born in an abandoned building on a floor with a twin brother.
 
When we were six weeks of age, we were taken in by Mrs. Mamie Brown, who had only a third-grade education at age 46 and she adopted seven children. She was a domestic worker in Miami Beach, and we ate the food left over from the families for whom she cooked.

We wore the hand-me-down clothes of the children for whom she babysat. I was listening to you saying it’s been quite a journey.
 
I just left Switzerland, speaking to 3,500 doctors and scientists.

Who would have thought by pursuing the passion of one, taking care of our mother, and two, wanting to do something meaningful with my life to make her proud, that I would have the opportunity to fly to Switzerland, to be driven from Zurich to Basel and give a 25-minute presentation to 3,500 doctors and scientists and manufacturing workers for $45,000?
 
No one could have told me I had the ability to do that. There are people who work for a whole year and don’t earn $45,000, working 40 hours a week. When I look at the journey and what you are talking about in terms of passions, the only way I got here was through the passions that drove me.
 
Bill Bailey, whom I think is one of the great motivational speakers around today—and who a lot of people are not familiar with, but was one of my early mentors—said, “If you’re casual about your dreams, you will end up a casualty.”
 
People who are able to do something meaningful and significant with their lives are people who have some passions to drive them.

They take hits, they have defeats, they have disappointments, but they keep on keeping-on because that passion, it gives you the fuel to out-distance everybody else, and you have fun while you’re going through the process.
 
Stephen Pierce: Many people are not able to see where they really want to go because they only see all the things that are in the way. You had to overcome prostate cancer. That’s just one of the many obstacles that I know you’ve had to deal with.
 
For many people, the opinions of others have become an obstacle in their life because the negative words and negative views people have about them is something that they are embracing. It’s holding them back.
 
Taking that into consideration, and all the obstacles that you had to deal with, how did you overcome them? Give us a specific strategy on how we can overcome them and also let us know how you actually did it.
 
Les Brown: One of the first things I suggest that you do is what I talked about earlier. Stephen, language is the software of the mind. You show me someone who’s going through a tough time and all I want to do is have access to them, because my goal and objective will be two steps: number one, to increase their belief about the possibilities of where they are, and number two, to override the story that’s in their head.
 
What you do, what you accomplish when you have defeats, when you have disappointments, when you have setbacks—and we all have them—you will fail your way to success. When you have someone say to you something no one ever wants to hear—three words—“You have cancer.”
 
It’s according to what’s between your ears that determines your self-explanatory style. You can say to yourself—according to the way most people think, because cancer’s the most feared word in the English language—“Oh, my God! I’m out of here. This is it.”
 
Or, you can say, as I said, “This is just something I have to work through.” It never dawned on me I was going to die. I had some fleeting moments when people said, “Oh, my father died of prostate cancer” or “My uncle died of prostate cancer.” For a week or so, those hits came over and over again.
 
“Faith comes by hearing and hearing” even if it’s a lie, and I was petrified for a few days, but I had to recover because I constantly program my mind. If you don’t program your mind, your mind will be programmed. I say to you, it doesn’t matter what you’re going through. It doesn’t matter where you are.
 
Take the time first to begin to reprogram your thinking, to expose yourself to positive messages, to read Scripture, to listen to positive, uplifting music. I love the theme from “Rocky.” I love the theme from “Shaft.” I’ve gotten so many tickets driving while playing those.
 
You’ve got to have positive people around you to build you up. I’ve got a quote on one of my motivational messages, “When life knocks you down, try to land on your back because if you can look up, you can get up.” Oh, I had to listen to my tapes when I was going through stuff.
 
I was going through divorce with someone whom I loved very much. I was going through the grieving process of my mother being diagnosed with breast cancer.

There she was suffering, and I couldn’t take her place. I couldn’t stop the pain. I was saying, “Mama, I’ll die for you. God, give it to me. Don’t take my mama.”
 
I needed someone to pray for me. I needed someone to speak to me and say, “Les, it’s going to be all right.” See, when those times come—and they come for everybody. Joseph Campbell calls it the “long, dark journey of the soul” – during those moments is when you grow mentally.
 
That’s how you build your character. That’s how you build your faith. That’s why we’re told, ‘In all things give thanks.’ because whatever you are going through, it has not come to stay. It has come to pass, and so rather than just go through it, you want to grow through it....

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