Considered to be one of the best speakers in the world, Les Brown struggled his way to the top. He will inspire you to hustle hard, stay hungry, and always believe in the power of now.
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00:00 and I was sleeping in my office.
00:02 It was hard when just over three years ago
00:08 in the Penobscot building in Detroit, Michigan,
00:11 where I was operating my business
00:13 and I fell on some hard times.
00:16 It was hard coming into the lobby
00:18 and the security said, "Excuse me, Mr. Brown,
00:20 "can we see you for a moment?"
00:22 And I said, "Yes," and I walked up to the counter
00:24 and he gave me an envelope.
00:27 And he said, "Would you mind reading it here?"
00:29 And I opened the envelope and the envelope
00:31 was from management that said,
00:33 "This is an office tower, it's not a hotel.
00:36 "Please do not sleep in your office."
00:41 And I said, "Excuse me, sir," I said,
00:44 "I just work long hours in creating my business.
00:48 "I'm an entrepreneur and right now things are bad for me,
00:52 "but they're not gonna be this way always.
00:55 "I'm not trying to make this my home."
00:58 And it was hard coming through the lobby.
01:00 And sometimes they would laugh,
01:01 there's a guy talking about becoming successful.
01:04 And look at him, he's bathing in the bathroom upstairs
01:08 on the 21st floor, he sleeps on the floor.
01:11 Him and two other dreamers up there, look at him.
01:16 It was hard, ladies and gentlemen,
01:18 coming to speak to people.
01:20 And I was facing financial difficulties in my own life.
01:24 I was behind on my bills and my dreams
01:26 and I'm saying to them, "You can live your dream."
01:29 It was hard, ladies and gentlemen.
01:31 It was very difficult to pick myself up each day
01:34 believing that I could do it.
01:36 There were times that I doubted myself.
01:38 I said, "God, why is this happening to me?
01:41 "I'm just trying to take care of my children and my mother.
01:44 "I'm not trying to steal a rock from anybody.
01:47 "Why did this have to happen to me?"
01:50 It was rough when I lost my job.
01:54 And I could not find a job.
01:56 It was humiliating and embarrassing, borrowing money.
02:01 And then I couldn't pay the money back
02:03 when I told them I would.
02:05 That's rough.
02:08 How people look at you, how they respond to you.
02:12 It's very hard.
02:15 Here's what I discovered that happens to you in life,
02:17 that you will go through things
02:19 and while you're going through them,
02:20 you can't understand why it's happening to you.
02:23 But after you go through it,
02:25 you get back and you look at it and you say,
02:27 "Oh, now I understand why I needed that lesson."
02:31 Then I saw that that was preparing me
02:33 for bigger and better things.
02:36 See, most people want it easy.
02:38 See, easy come, easy what?
02:40 Easy go.
02:42 Learning those things that you don't like to do.
02:46 But you know that in order for you
02:48 to get where you want to go,
02:49 this is one of the hoops that you have to flip through.
02:53 And I'm saying to you, whatever you gotta do, do it.
02:55 Because if you don't,
02:56 life is gonna whoop you until you surrender.
03:00 What do you, how do you hang in there
03:02 during the hard, difficult times?
03:03 Less, you must have faith.
03:05 You've got to believe in yourself.
03:10 You've got to believe in your abilities.
03:12 You've got to believe in your service,
03:13 your company, your ideas.
03:16 Unquestionably, you've got to have faith.
03:20 And that faith gives you patience.
03:23 That it's not gonna happen as quickly
03:24 as you want it to happen.
03:27 A lot of things are gonna happen
03:28 that will catch you off guard.
03:30 And so therefore, you've got to deal with
03:32 and handle it as it comes.
03:35 And not only that, but that faith and patience
03:39 drives you into action.
03:41 You've got to keep moving.
03:43 By continuing to push forward,
03:45 by continuing to run toward my dream,
03:49 that one day, I would have my own talk show.
03:54 It's a long shot, ladies and gentlemen,
03:55 from Liberty City, an abandoned building on a floor.
03:59 Never knowing my mother or father,
04:00 it's a long shot being here with you today
04:03 in this dome in Atlanta.
04:06 It's a long shot.
04:07 My mother used to say,
04:08 "Birds of a feather flock together."
04:10 If you run around with losers,
04:11 you will end up a loser.
04:13 It's necessary that you get the losers
04:16 out of your life if you want to live your dream.
04:19 Ask yourself the question,
04:20 the people in my life right now,
04:23 are they contributing to my growth and development?
04:26 Are they making me a better person?
04:27 Is it making me stretch mentally
04:29 and emotionally and spiritually?
04:31 Is it getting the best out of me?
04:33 See, this is the only life you've got.
04:35 That you get the energy drainers out of your life,
04:38 people who don't want anything,
04:40 people who are not striving,
04:41 people who are not challenging themselves,
04:43 people who aren't growing,
04:45 people who have stopped dreaming.
04:47 It's necessary that you align yourself
04:49 with people and attract people into your business
04:52 who are hungry,
04:54 people who are unstoppable and unreasonable,
04:57 people who are refusing to leave life just as it is
05:01 and who want more.
05:02 See, ladies and gentlemen,
05:03 if you don't use your talents,
05:05 if you don't use this power,
05:06 this force that you have within you,
05:08 you're going to lose it.
05:09 I travel a lot speaking around the country
05:11 and I was out of Detroit for around two months.
05:13 I came back to the airport,
05:15 went in the parking lot,
05:16 put my key in the ignition,
05:17 turned the key,
05:18 can anybody tell me what happened?
05:19 (audience murmurs)
05:21 Can you tell me why the car did not get started?
05:24 The battery was dead?
05:25 Why was it dead?
05:26 I had not been using it.
05:29 Repeat after me, please.
05:30 If you don't use it,
05:31 - You don't use it.
05:32 - You lose it.
05:33 - You lose it.
05:34 - If you have the ability to play an instrument,
05:37 the world's greatest said
05:38 that if I miss a week of practice, I know it.
05:41 And if I miss two weeks, the critics know it.
05:43 And if I miss three weeks, my audience knows it.
05:46 If you have the ability to draw well,
05:49 and if you don't use that talent eventually,
05:52 you're going to lose it.
05:53 If I don't speak often,
05:55 and I one time at one point in my life,
05:57 I missed speaking for around six months.
06:00 And when I came up before an audience,
06:02 I was rusty, I could not get my thoughts together.
06:04 I could not have the power,
06:06 the kind of confidence that I needed
06:08 in order to make it happen.
06:09 So whatever you want to do,
06:10 whatever idea that you have,
06:12 the longer that you're sitting on that idea,
06:15 you are either creating or you are disintegrating.
06:18 If you're not using it,
06:21 your skills are diminishing every day.
06:25 Two hours on a television program the other day,
06:27 lady called in and she said,
06:29 there's something I'd like to ask you.
06:31 And I said, what is it?
06:32 She said, well, I have this thing I want to do,
06:35 but I've been unemployed.
06:36 I lost my job for two years.
06:38 I haven't been able to find a job.
06:39 I don't have the money,
06:41 and I don't have the contacts,
06:42 and I really don't know what to do.
06:44 I said, excuse me.
06:45 I said, the fact that you don't have the money
06:47 or the contacts really is not the issue.
06:49 I said, what's the real issue?
06:51 She said, what do you mean?
06:51 I said, what's stopping you from doing what you want to do?
06:55 She said, well, I don't know.
06:57 I said, but if you did know, what would your answer be?
07:00 She said, well, I think maybe I'm afraid.
07:04 I said, what are you afraid of?
07:05 Maybe I might fail.
07:10 See, a lot of people allow fear
07:12 to stop them from living their dream.
07:15 Answer your calling, whatever you're called to do.
07:19 Don't count yourself out.
07:20 Don't say, I can't do that.
07:22 You are bombarded with negative stuff every day
07:25 that beats you down, and you will find yourself
07:28 unconsciously engaged in self-destructive behavior.
07:31 If you don't program yourself, life will program you.
07:35 It's gotta be your passion.
07:38 You gotta love it, ladies and gentlemen.
07:40 You gotta love it.
07:41 It's gotta be what you are supposed to do.
07:44 You wanna sing, even though they wanna invite you
07:46 to Carnegie Hall, you're gonna sing to anybody
07:48 that'll listen to you, including singing to yourself.
07:51 I used to talk to my plants
07:53 when nobody else would listen to me.
07:55 Suppose you're supposed to build something,
07:56 you're supposed to create something.
07:58 I don't know how to do it.
07:59 Learn, do whatever is required.
08:02 Just go out there.
08:03 It's possible you can get what you want.
08:07 It's necessary, if you want it, you gotta go into action.
08:09 You gotta be willing to experiment.
08:11 You gotta be willing to fail and to succeed.
08:13 You gotta be willing to form and develop new relationships.
08:16 It's you, it's on you, you gotta make that happen.
08:18 Nobody's gonna bring it to you on a silver platter
08:20 and say, "Here's your dream manifested."
08:23 No, it's hard, yes, it's hard.
08:25 It's difficult, yes, right, and it's worth it.
08:29 It's difficult and it's challenging for kids right now.
08:32 And it's gonna take some easy, simple methods
08:36 to help bring them out of this madness.
08:39 Let's look at where we wanna go.
08:40 What is it that we want to produce?
08:41 What is it that we want to create for our young people?
08:44 What kind of world are they going to be in?
08:47 And as we think about that,
08:49 as we begin to use our collective will
08:52 and genius and resources,
08:54 it's possible that we can create an educational system
08:57 that not only will test their minds
08:59 with information and facts and figures,
09:01 but would teach them how to think and be creative
09:04 and what does it mean to be a human being
09:06 and to value human life
09:07 and how do you make relationships work?
09:09 How do you bounce back from adversity?
09:12 It's possible that we can give them a curriculum
09:14 that will give their lives a sense of purpose
09:16 and direction and meaning
09:18 and teach them how to begin to know and operate
09:21 on a higher level of being,
09:23 where they become assets to our society
09:25 rather than liabilities.
09:27 What if we leave here with that kind of consciousness
09:30 that it's possible, as opposed to saying,
09:32 "We have to write this generation off,"
09:34 that it's possible that we were born for such a time
09:37 and this, this, and that,
09:38 that maybe someone here has the idea or the method
09:41 or some plan of action or an approach
09:44 that can resolve many of the problems
09:45 that we're facing with young people today.
09:47 Whatever we have to do to save our children,
09:51 it's worth it.
09:53 (audience applauding)
09:55 So that brings me to the final step,
09:57 that it's necessary for us to begin to look at the future
10:01 and know that it's possible that we can have our dream.
10:04 Yes, it is.
10:05 Other people have done it, then we can do it.
10:07 We fail a lot of times.
10:08 Well, a lot of other folks fail,
10:10 and eventually they came back and they succeeded.
10:12 So it's possible we can have what we want,
10:14 and we know that we want to get it.
10:16 It's necessary that we align ourselves with people
10:19 that think like we do.
10:20 It's necessary we get negative, do-nothing people
10:22 out of our lives.
10:23 It's necessary we never stop learning and growing
10:25 and developing ourselves.
10:27 It's necessary that we never give up.
10:28 We know that it's you, it's me.
10:30 It's being responsible for our stuff
10:32 and deciding that we're gonna keep on keeping on,
10:35 that we're gonna find a way to win
10:36 or find a way to make it happen.
10:38 And we know it's hard, it's not gonna be a picnic.
10:40 And we've all had experiences
10:43 where we were working on something,
10:44 and we knew it was possible,
10:46 and we did those things that were necessary
10:48 to bring it into reality.
10:50 We took the responsibility to make it happen.
10:53 Other people couldn't see it.
10:54 A lot of people didn't believe it.
10:55 You were attacked, you were criticized.
10:58 People were opposing you, but you kept on doing it.
11:01 It was hard, it was rough, it was difficult.
11:03 But to you, it was worth it.
11:05 And eventually you got to a level you know,
11:08 can nothing stop me now.
11:10 I'm on the move.
11:11 Don't stop running toward your dream.
11:13 (dramatic music)
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