The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 384: Les Brown - How To Unleash The Excellence Within You To Win

Episode Date: September 20, 2020

Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk #384: Les Brown - You've Got To Be Hungry Notes: "If you want to be successful in life, do these three things..." Change your mindset - "You don't get in life what you want, you get in life what you are." Practice OQP - "Only Quality People" Develop your communication skills - "Once you open your mouth, you tell the world who you are. Sidney Poitier wrote a book called The Measure of a Man and she said, "When you go for a walk with someone, something happens without being spoken. He said, "either you adjust to their pace or they adjust to your pace." Think "Whose pace have you adjusted to? Les needed to disrupt the vision he had of himself in order to change... Distract Dispute Inspire Expand the vision of what's possible for life Mike Williams -- "The Road To Your Best Stuff" Keys to growth: Hire a coach Use your story to create an experience for your audience "Be transformed by the renewing of their minds." "You can't fit a big dream into a small mind." "We are here to live a life that will out live us." "The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why." - Mark Twain Les has battled cancer for 27 years... The beginning: When Les's mom worked for a white family, they would make her clap her hands regularly when she was alone in a different room to ensure she wasn't stealing anything. When Les learned why his mom always had to clap her hands together, he made it his mission to ensure that he would buy her a house one day... And eventually that's exactly what he did. Negative thoughts are like weeds. They'll keep coming back. You have to keep at it and have a positive mind. Every morning, Les takes the following action: Has a verbal (positive) affirmation Writes seven things he wants to do that day Reads 20-30 pages "There is power in pursuit... Set goals beyond your comfort zone." Have a perpetual plan of action "You're never too old to learn" "You're never too young to teach" "Don't ever stop raising the bar on yourself." There are three kinds of people: Millionaires, Billionaires, and Witnesses "You gotta be hungry." Thoreau - "Go where there's no path and leave a trail." What does Les think immediately before going on stage with 80,000 people in the crowd? "More of THE, less of ME." "When you wax a floor, you need to strip it first. The same is true with coaching." "Cancer Conquerors" -- "I don't have time to die, I've got too much work to do." Excellence: Durable, sustainable advantage. "I will not fail." All accomplishments happen in the mind first... And then in practice.

When you have goals beyond your comfort zone, it introduces you to a part of yourself that you don't know right now. And when you have a coach, somebody that can take you to a place within yourself that you can't go by yourself, you discover your abilities to do things that you don't know that you can do right now. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Rixie and Meyer. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 4-4-222. In order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world,

receive Mindful Monday updates what I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking about. Also give you more details about how my book, Welcome to Management will help you become a more effective leader. Text, learners to 4-4-222. Now on to tonight's featured leader, the great Les Brown, known as one of the world's most renowned motivational speakers. Les has been on stages all over the world for more than 50 years. Also a best-selling author of multiple books, including his latest titled, You've Got to Be Hungry.

The greatness within to win. A few of the topics we discussed, Les shared a new goal setting technique as well as why so many people do not reach their goals. And one simple tweak to your process will help you exceed your goals more effectively. And then he met a mentor early in his life and Les shared the intricacies of that meeting and the three key pieces of advice that he learned

to help him in his life. You'll love both the story as well as the practical application from those pieces of advice. And then for all of us who are in leadership positions, it is critical that we develop our communication skills. And this is what Les does for a living. help others become better communicators. So he shared a number of great tips on how to be a better public speaker, to be a better writer, to be an overall better communicator. I know you'll get a lot out of that.

And then at the end, I'm trying something new. I've received a number of emails from you, the loyal listeners of the show, about a specific topic in one's career. And so I am experimenting with answering questions that I receive from you. And I will add them on to the end of episodes. And you can let me know if you'd like it or not. And if you'd like to be a part of future episodes, don't hesitate to send me an email, Ryan at learningleader.com.

All right, let's get to this episode with the great Les Brown. Les Brown. And what a joy to have this opportunity to record with you here on the Learning Leader show. Welcome, man. I feel very blessed and very privileged and honored to be able to be here on your birthday. God's about the world that he chose this day to bring you here. Well, I've been blessed because of that. When your team told me that today was one of the days that you could do it,

I thought what a gift I could give myself would be to have the opportunity to talk with you. And so thank you. Yeah, thank you for being here. So, Les, I want to get right to your story. because it is fascinating and there is a lot there. As you told me prior to recording, you've been speaking on stages for 51 years, which is amazing,

but I want to take it back even before then. So I want to take us to a specific moment and then have you go from there. And the moment I want to take us to is you're a junior in high school, you're at Booker T. Washington High School in Miami, Florida. You go into a classroom. You're looking for one of your friends, and the teacher said, go to the board and work this out for me.

Can you share the rest of that story? Yes. He asked me, he wanted me to work something out. And I hesitate. I said, I'm not one of your students, sir. I'm just here to see MacArthur Stevens. And he said, go and do what I'm asking to do anyhow. And I said, I can't, sir.

And the other students died laughing, saying, he's Leslie. He's got a twin brother Wesley. Wesley is smart. He's D.T. And he asked, what's, D-T. And they said, he's the dumb twin. And I said, I am, sir. And he came from behind his desk and 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 wow, that startled me because my mother said sticks and stones can

break your bones and words can never hurt you. That's not true. Words can hurt you and very deeply. But what he did was he disrupted my vision of myself, how people live their lives as a result of the story they believe about themselves, people who listen to you, listen to your voice, listen to your guests, and being interviewed that you distract, dispute, and inspire. You distract them from their current vision of themselves. And through them listening, you dismantle their current belief system and expand their vision of what's possible for them. And you ignite an energy, a spirit that empower them to create new chapters in their lives. And that's what he did with me. So I've read that he gave you three pieces of advice. And I may be mashing story.

together, but I want to, I want to, I want to be a variety of things, but here are the three most important thing. Okay, cool. Number one, and something that Earl Nightingale corroborated. You don't get in life what you want. You get in life what you are. You have to work on your mind, develop and expand your mind. Number one. Number two, practice OQP, only quality people. You earn within two to three thousand dollars of your closest friends practice OQP create collaborative achievement driven supportive relationships. Dr. Dennis Kimbrough out of Atlanta said if you're the smartest one in your group, you need to get a new group. And the third thing he said, which is major. He said, develop your

communication skills because once you open your mouth, you tell the world who you are. And it seems that that was an inflection point in your life, a moment that you took that advice to heart. Most people in the world actually struggle, I think, with a number of those parts. Specifically, you've made a living out of being an excellent communicator. This is a piece of advice my dad gave me when I was brand new into the corporate world after my football career was over. He said, if you create the skills, the ability to get up in front of a group and share a concise, compelling message, it will get you further. than most things in your career.

And I feel like you learned this at a young age and then put it into practice. How did you work on becoming such a quality communicator? With coaching, I saw a guy that I admired his style of speaking. His name is Mike Williams. He wrote a book called The Road to Your Best Stuff, The Road to Your Best Stuff. And I followed him around and I said, you know what? I said, I really admire your speaking style. I said, can you teach somebody how to do what you do the way you do it?

He said, I can teach you how to do it better. I said, you can? I said, yes. He said, yes. I said, whoa, man, I want you to teach me. He said, are you willing to put your money where your mouth is? I say, yeah. And so I tell people constantly, you know, you have to have someone that you look at their style of doing what it is.

want to do and that's doing it at the level that you'd like to do it. Because of their experience, because of their achievement, they can shorten your learning curve. And that's what he did for me. But in addition to that, they help you to begin and to go to a place within yourself that you can never go by yourself and be able to operate at a higher level. So when I came into the speaking industry. It was based upon giving information from the book, even to this day. I mean, my very good friend Bob Proctor and so many other speakers, they teach from the book, Thank and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Well, if information can change people, everybody would be skinny, rich, and happy. The speakers that I train, I teach them how to use their story. A story has emotion, a

story comes out of the heart. If you teach a person how to tell their story to distract, dispute, and inspire an audience individually and collectively, you can transform them. And that's what he taught me, how to create an experience with my story. Oliver Winda Home said that once a man, a woman's mind has been expanded with an experience. It can never be satisfied to go and back to where it was. And that's what he trained me how to do. And that's what I train speakers how to do now, how to transform people's lives individually and collectively when you're on that stage holding that microphone because that's why they're there. Because they want to do better. They want to perform at a higher level. And they're looking to you.

to introduce them to a level of achievement that they can go to that they can't get to by themselves. And you become the catalyst for making that happen. You said distract, dispute, and inspire. Can we break down each of those three? Because I think the reason why I think this is important less is there are managers and leaders working in all different types of businesses. Some of them speak more than others.

But all of them will be better off if they become better, communicators, if they can kick off the meeting better, if they, if they can share their ideas in a more compelling way to move their team. So can we break down what it means to distract, dispute and inspire one at a time? Absolutely. First of all, your father's a genius. Yes. Because he, he thought like Vince Lombardi. Vince Lombardi was a powerful communicator, powerful coach, because of how he communicated with his players. He took ordinary players that and they perform at an extraordinary rate because of how he communicated with him. So distract.

Psychologists call it our self-explanatory style. How we live our lives as a result of the story we believe about ourselves, this story given to us by life, this story that our circumstances, our environment, and the people around us help to create within us. That's why we're taught in the Book of Life. be you not conform to this world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Most people don't work on their minds like you do.

There's a reason that people listen to you. Why? Because you impact their attitude about themselves and how they see themselves. That's number one. So you distract them from this vision, this limited vision that they have of themselves before they come to your problem. You can't fit a big dream into a small mind. Number two, through the execution of this show because of the interviews, the new information,

the experiences that they hear, they say, whoa, I'm playing small. I can do more. So at the conclusion of the program, they're now inspired to take their performance to the next level because they're listening to your guests and saying, hey, if she can do that or if he can do that, then so can I. And you ignite their energy, their spirit. And they finish and walk away saying, I'm going to raise the bar myself. I want to do more.

I want to have more. And that's the process of transformation where our current belief system is dismantled. And now we're open. It's possible. And that it's necessary that I do more. And it's me. George Bernard Shaw said, the people that make it in this life, they look around for the circumstances that they want.

want. And if they can't find them, they create them. And that it's hard. It's hard. If you do what is easy, your life will be hard. But if you do what it's hard, your life will be easy. We can do hard. But most of us go through life trying to get off on easy street. We work on jobs where that pay us just enough to keep us from quitting. And we work just hard enough to keep from getting fired. And so you have to decide that your dream, it's necessary. This is an unfair world. It's, it's, it's not a level playing field and it never will be. And so the average person that's going to make it, they've got to be hungry. The wealth of this country is controlled by one percent. There are things in place that allow that to take place and to be

self-perpetuated generation after generation after generation. But there's some people that will get through, some people that will be able to make an impact in spite of everything that's designed to marginalize and to hold them back. And you're one of those because of your father, instilling that hunger in you to live a larger life. I mean, the difference between a Muhammad,

Ali and Larry Holmes, the difference between a George Foreman and other athletes, their ability to communicate, he was spot on because when the body gives out, when you retire because of injury or age, and you can communicate, you can do commercials or you can do seminars and workshops, when you can speak, you tell the world who you are. And now you can carve out a new chapter in your life and become as Mother Teresa would say a pencil in the hand of God and start writing a new chapter in your life. Do you have this much energy every day? You have to in 75. Man, I'm just already ready to go run through the wall, man. Where does this come from? I sense just you, you are doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing is the feeling I have right now.

Yeah, I believe that we were not born to work for a living, but to live our making. And living our making will make our living. We're here to do a work. We're here, hearing my father glorified that ye bear much fruit. We are here to live a life that will outlive us. I remember being at my desk and my oldest daughter said, Daddy, are you busy? She called me and I was at my desk.

I said, no. I said, what are you doing? She said, I'm in traffic. A policeman in the center of the street stopping traffic. obviously there's a funeral procession about to come by. And then she said, whoa, oh my God. I said, was there an accident? She said, no.

She said, a hearse came by. And there was only one car behind it. She said, when I die, I want traffic to be backed up for hours because of how I live my life. When I die, I want the cemetery to be filled with people coming out to see. celebrate my life because of the impact that I made. And I think that that's all of us. All of us want to lead a legacy. All of us want to live a life that will outlive us. It was Horace Mann who said we should be ashamed to die until we've made some major contribution to humankind. Is that part of your fuel? I sense that when I receive feedback that I have helped change someone's life, it is this

powerful fuel that drives me to want to do it again and again and again. And I sense that that's got to be part of it for you as yet you're probably feeling this constant constantly from people all over the world that I watched a video or I saw you in person or I read a book or whatever. Listen to you on a podcast and it changed my life. I have to imagine that could be some really powerful fuel for you. Without question. Mark Twain said the two most important days that you're, that it's important to you in your life, the day that you're born and the day that you realize why you were born.

When I think about my life, being born in abandoned building in a poor section of Miami, Florida called Liberty City with a twin brother, being a foster kid, and then we're being adopted. I'm here because of two women. One gave us life and one gave us love. God took me out of a biological mother's womb and placed me in the heart of my adopted mother.

When I think about the fact that I was labeled, Educable, mentally retarded and put back from the fifth grade to the fourth grade and failed again when I was in the eighth grade in no college training and have been able to because of people like you, people like your father, who said, someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality. We live in a world where we are told constantly of what we cannot do. We're told constantly of what our limitations are rather than our potential. It teaches everything in school except things about ourselves.

And so when you hear those words, you have something special. When I speak, I'm saying that over and over again. You don't get this from church. You don't get this from politicians. You don't get this in any platform in the public. You have something special. You have greatness in you. And so when you think about it should not be surprising

that in the greatest country on the planet, that before the coronavirus, the suicide rate in this country increased by 32% suicide. People decide, I want out of here. I can't handle this. People decided to take a permanent solution to a temporary situation.

And it is dramatically increased among our children. Our children are watching us. You know, the movie Lion King, the play, Simba, you are more than that which you have become. And so people need to know, we're more than a coronavirus, that we're more than this situation where life is snatched a rug out from under us. There's some value in anchoring ourselves in the scripture. that I'll keep the imperfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. Greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world, that we're more than conquer us.

We're not inundated and saturated with those kinds of words that expand our vision of ourselves. We're constantly told what the death count is. We're not told about who's living and how did they do it. I'm dealing with fourth stage cancer for 20. seven years, Cancer Centers of America said, Mr. Brown, are you aware? You have four-stage cancer,

and it's metastasized to seven areas of your body. How can you sit here and smile at me? I said, seven is my lucky number. I said, I'm one of seven children. I was born February the 17th, 1945, Joshua marched around the walls of Jericho seven times. Neiman dipped himself in the River Jordan seven times. He held his head up.

He looked at his nurse and said, you know what? This is a strange one. Les, I would love to, you've been speaking on stages for 50 years. And I love to, there are people who are more at the beginning of their career

and whatever it is that they're doing. And I love moments, like specifically. moments where maybe you took a step up. Because you look now and you look back and like, well, it's Les Brown. Like he is this famous motivational speaker, legitimately a motivational speaker that inspires people to take action and to make a difference and to change and to transform and to do some positive work. Can you take me back to the beginning, though? What was it like? Because could you have predicted this or did you think this is what you would be your life's work

50 years ago that you would one day be inspiring millions upon millions of people from all over the world by simply sharing your story. What was it like at the beginning of this process? No, I can't tell you when that happened exactly, but I can tell you what that force in me, the title of my book, You've Got to Be Hungry. The description said, those who are hunger and thirst after righteousness, right thinking, right words, right feelings, right relationships, and right actions, shall be filled. And that was when I went to work with my mother. I was about five years old. My mother only had a third grade education, and she worked for wealthy families on Miami Beach. And so the neighbors would keep my six brothers and sisters,

but they wouldn't want to be responsible for me. They'd say, maybe you need to take Leslie with you, because he's got too much energy. He's a little touched in the head. And so she went to work in the place of a lady named Miss Ruby. And so this Harris asked that I cleaned some spots off the floor in the kitchen. And she said, Mamie, I want you to go in my room. And I want you to find that hat that I love to wear I'm going out today. And so when my mother went in the room, all of a sudden, Ryan, I heard my mother clapping her hands.

I said, Mama, she said, what is it, Leslie? I said, why are you clapping your hands? She said, don't you worry. You just pay attention to what you're doing. And then after a while, she came out and said, Ms. Harris, it's not in the room. So Ms. Harris said, I tell you what, go down the hall on the left and check that room. So Mama did. And once again, Ryan, she started clapping her hands.

And I said, Mama, this time she's irritated. What is it, Leslie? I said, why are you clapping your hands? And she said, didn't I tell you to pay attention to what you're doing? And at that time, this Harris stormed over to me and she looked down at me. She said, I'm going to tell you why she's clapping her hands. And I said, why? She said, because when I have colored people looking for something and I can't see them, I make them clap their hands to make sure that they're not stealing.

I dropped that cloth. I stood up and at this time, you weren't allowed to look white people in the eyes. I looked her in the eyes. I said, my mother is not a thief. She wouldn't steal from you or anybody. She loves you and she loves your children. And when she comes here to work, she gives you everything she has. And I just looked at her and she was startled by that.

And she just walked away. She didn't say anything. And I got down on my knees and started scrubbing the floor. I was crying. Water was splashing everywhere. And I said to myself, when I become a man, nobody will never make my mind. mother, clap her hands because they think that she's stealing. When I turn 18, I will set my mother down. I will pay all the bills. I will take care of my mother. That gave birth to the hunger in me,

from that time to this time. That ignited a fierceness in me. Never again, the Jewish mantra, Will my mother ever have to go through something like that? And it never happened again once I turn 18. I took over. I paid all the bills. I cut grass. I shine shoes. I sew copper, aluminum.

I sit on the corner. Hey, boy, come over here and help me move this heavy furniture or equipment. I did everything I needed to provide for my mother. And that hunger, that that was given birth on that day when someone made my mother clap her hands because they thought she was stealing. Wow.

You've made it, so to speak, at some point along that journey. Okay. And it was probably decades ago. It certainly was decades ago. How do you maintain? Because I think this could be, because that is a powerful, powerful story. and I'm very appreciative for you sharing.

Most of us will never go through anything like that. We can't even relate to that. Now, it's moving for me to think about that. But at some point, you so-called make it. You are a made guy in a sense that people are begging for you to come speak on their stages. They're buying your books by the millions. They want less brown. How have you maintained that hunger?

despite the fact that nobody is ever considering making you clap ever again. They're begging you and they're flocking to your events when you, when you've had them. How have you maintained the hunger despite all of that success? In life, Ryan, you either moving towards something and life is sending something for you. I'm telling you, when Forrest Gub said life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.

Yep. He did not lie. I can't tell you how many times I apologize to 2019. I'm so sorry for all the things that I said about you. Can you delete 2020? You have to have a ritual every day. James Allen wrote a book called As a Man Thinking. And he used the analogy that negative thoughts are like weeds.

You can't get rid of weeds. You can't kill them. You can overpower them for a minute. But once you stop using weed killer, they're going to come back with a vengeance. They'll grow through the crack of a sidewalk. Same thing with negative thoughts that you've been instilled with, that you're living in a culture where you're demonized, dismissed, and trivialized and marginalized. And so you have to have a ritualized.

And so you have to have a ritual. When I get up in the morning, I say all things work together for good, for those who love God and for those who call according to his purpose. And I have this affirmation on my wall that says, Lord, whatever I face today, together, you and I can handle it. And then I review the seven things I want to get out of the day. And then I listen to motivational messages to other speakers that I've had. admired. I mean, Zig Zigler, if you give enough people what they want, they'll give you what you want. When you look at people like Robert Schuller becoming a possibility thinker, Dr. Norman Vincent Peel, you've got to be positive in your thinking. Jim Rowan, when the end comes for you, let it find

you conquer on the new mountain, not sliding down an old one. I listen to these messages over and over and over again. Faith comes by hearing and hearing and hearing. I read a minimum of 20 to 30 pages of something positive every day because whatever you listen to when you first get up in the morning for the first 20 minutes is going to affect the spirit of your day. I go on YouTube and I even watch myself. There's a video that millions of people have watched called Les Brown speaking in the Georgia Dome, where I'm speaking to over 80,000 people. And so I watch these motivational messages. I listen to motivational messages. I read and I review my goals and I have goals that's beyond my comfort zone because there's power in pursuit. Why is that important? That when you have goals

beyond your comfort zone, it introduces you to a part of yourself that you don't know right now. And when you have a coach, somebody that can take you to a place within yourself that you can't go by yourself, you discover your abilities to do things that you don't know that you can do right now. And so having a perpetual plan of action that will allow you to continuously expand your vision of yourself. I'm still learning at 75. I believe that you're never too old to learn and you're never too young to teach. And so I'm still growing. I have not done my best work yet.

I haven't given my best speech yet. I haven't trained the best speakers on the planet. I've got a few out there, but they're more coming that I'm working on who have a hunger to make a difference and to live a life that will outlive them. So you don't ever stop raising the bar on yourself. here my father glorify that ye bear much fruit. We are here to bear much fruit and to make a greater impact every day of our lives when we take our breath. There's something that I was reading by Chadwick, Bowes, who recently passed, and he said,

take the road that is hard, that there may be many disappointments, many difficulties, and many set facts. And that resonated with me because my mentor, Mike Williams, who wrote the book The Road to Your Best Stuff, he said, if you do what is easy, your life will be hard. But if you do what is hard, your life will be easy.

And so we can do hard. But most of us have been conditioned to do just enough to get by. Dr. Dennis Vuehle said people form habits and habits create futures. This place where we are now with over 50 million people that have lost their jobs, 40 million people projected to lose their jobs before the coronavirus because of artificial intelligence. It's a new place. The rug has been snatched out from under people. We're about to experience something, Ryan, that you and I have never seen before.

when they have lifted the foreclosure rate, when they lift the eviction rate, and millions of people are going to be set out on the streets, and they have no safety net. There's a level of desperation that we will see that we've never seen before. But the people, there are three kinds of people that will come through this. people. They're millionaires, they're billionaires, and they're witnesses. And the majority of people are witnesses. They stand by and they watch. But there are people who are looking for ways to win. These people are hungry. There are people who are coming up with new innovation, people who are being creative. People coming up with a talk to a friend of mine. He called me, hey, I want to talk to you about a business dealer. What do you mean? I've created a

a mask where not only will it block and prevent people from catching the virus if you have it, but it will kill the virus when you breathe. When it hits your mask, the virus dies. I said, whoa, it's been tested by the FDA. You got to be kidding me. Oh, that's not all. I've created a device where people go in to a store when they go through. If the virus is on their clothes, are anywhere near them. When they go through, it will kill it. Wow. So, so that the people said, that progress is refusing to accept things as they are. There are people who are thinking, who are being innovative, and who said, you know what, I'm a fine way to monetize this. You got to be some solutions out here. There's got to be some profit.

here, then I'm going to find it. One of the greatest learning tools in the world that I've been exposed to is putting yourself in the position of a teacher through the process of preparing to share your wisdom with the thought of helping other people is maybe one of the best teaching tools or best learning tools in the world. This is what you do. You spend a lot of time doing this out. You're helping others.

You're training them. You're coaching speakers and leaders. What can you share about the benefits of for all people listening to regularly put themselves in the position of being a teacher in order to learn? I'm so glad you said that. The speaking industry has been governed by the Dale Carnegie course. which is a very, very course. They teach, tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them,

and then tell them what you told them. Mike Williams, my mentor, teach Brownie, never let what you want to say. Get in the way what the audience wants to hear. Conduct communications intelligence. Ask questions. Find out why they're there. What are their goals? What's the theme?

What are the things that they want the audience to walk away with? Get to know what they are dealing with on a day-to-day basis. What keeps them up at night? How can you create a mindset of being close and connected, even though geographically they're further apart, creating a sense of unity in this experience, in this space where we are? And so what I do and how I train speakers is something that you just alluded to.

Get to know your audience. Never let what you want to say get in the way of what they want to hear and what they need to hear. Do your research on them constantly. I talked to the president of the company. I sent a needs assessment for the top performers. I go out into the audience and I ask. If you were in my position and you had to give a message to this audience, what would that look like? And they tell me that and then I incorporate that and create an experience for them.

You can't change behavior until you create a significant emotional event. Information won't cut it. You've got to know how to get to the heart. It has to be a hard-centered message that will jar them and cause them to begin to look at their lives differently. Maya Angelou said that people, they'll forget what you say and they'll forget what you know, but they won't forget how you make them feel. And so your message has to touch that heart. It has to expand their mind. it has to dismantle their belief system,

how you use your stories and examples and humor to dismantle how they show up in life. Martin Seleman in the book called Learned Optimism. He said between the ages of zero and five, we formulate a word in our heart. That word is yes or that word is no? And so when you speak to an audience, there are audiences,

inside of the audience, people separated by a variety of things. And so you've got to be laser focus on converting that no into a yes. You've got to be laser focus and touching all of those various audiences and making them one audience so that when you walk out of that audience, because when they come in, they're listening to you and they're asking three questions, who are you? What do you have? And why should I care? And so when you walk away, they want to be filled and have an expanded vision beyond their comfort zone. They have this expanded vision. I can do more. 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 communicate strategically with your story,

You can create a thirst where they want to drink. I've heard you talk about this, but Sidney Poitay wrote a book called The Measure of a Man and said, when you go for a walk with someone, something happens without being spoken. Either you adjust to their pace or they adjust to your pace. I sense you less are a pace setter. and I think a lot of great leaders are, how can one be a pace setter and think of that analogy, which is a true story too, but think of it in that regard to be a pace setter in their life. Henry David Thoreau, I believe, gave us the key.

He said, do not go where the path may lead. Go where there's no path and leave a trail. You have to hold yourself to a higher standard. Robert Frost, come forth, please, sir. Two roads diverge in the Yellowwood, and I selected the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference. And I think that's the hard road. I think that's the road where you decide to become a perpetual student.

That's the road that you realize that you will fail your way to success. That's the road that you take no prisoners and eat the wounded. That's the road that you decide to always try. to get on top in life because it's the bottom that's overcrowded. I got to ask you a question about your speaking. I sense you've built up a lot of confidence. I would imagine that confidence has been built up by decades worth of performing at a high level and impacting and helping a lot of people.

What is your, when you are going on stage and let's take us to a time when perhaps it's right before you're going in the Georgia Dome, 80,000 people. What's it like the three to five minutes before you are about to take the stage? What's going through your mind? I'm saying one thing. More of thee, less of me. Get me out of the way, Lord. More of thee, less of me.

Allow me to be a channel, Lord. More of thee, less of me. Get my ego and pride out. of the way. Allow me to speak from my heart. More of thee, less of me. I am your servant. Speak through me. I'm listening. That's what I say over and over. Does that calm you? Or what does that do you? Yes. It talks me. Because it allows me to go into the zone. You know about that as an athlete. I can't, and this is crazy. I don't remember giving the speech in the Georgia Dome. I don't remember looking out at the audience.

Were you nervous? Lipes. I don't know what I was. All I know is that they had to come get me out of the bathroom. And say, they're installing. I said, but I can't hear the voices. And so Mike Williams, my mentor, he said, Brownie, go up and make your mother proud today.

I said, don't use my mother against me. I said, I've never spoken to 80,000 people before. He said, that's okay. You got this. You got this. And so we got halfway to the stage. I said, Mike, I got to go back to the bathroom. I got to pee again.

He said, pee on the stage. I said, oh, my God. He said, going up those steps, man. So when I got into steps, the guy gave me the microphone, and he looked at me. He said, I'd be it stage right. you got this. Make your mother proud. And sometimes,

Ryan, you have to have someone who believes in you until your belief kicks in. And the look in his eyes was, I could do this. Even though I was operating from my mind, when there's an argument between your mind and your heart,

follow your heart. And so when the guy gave me the microphone, I just, I went out and they pulled a curtain back. And I just spoke from my heart. But I don't remember the experience. I've watched that presentation maybe, and it was in 92, four times because it's so uncanny to see me speaking in that kind of venue. And I can't remember it. I've tried to pull it up through dreams, through hypnosis.

It has that revealed itself. But sometimes there are things and moments in our lives where we say to ourselves, I can't believe when I'm doing this. I was in a special place. I remember when the Cleveland Cavaliers, they won that fourth historic game. And there was one interview that LeBron James had. And in that interview, he said, I had to go to another place.

And there are athletes who perform far beyond what they thought they had in them to perform. They went to that zone. They went to that other place of greatness. I love hearing the mindset before you're going to do something big like that. And there are, I want to shift the gears a little bit less, but there is a common theme around the need to set goals. And you've written a lot about this and talked about why people don't reach their goals and also some of the keys to proper goal setting. can you share for me your overall philosophy on both setting goals as well as exceeding them? I'm so glad you asked that question because in my book, you've got to be hungry.

I talk about something that has never been talked about in any of the books that prevent people from achieving their goals because it always bothered me. Why is it? there are people born in the same household, same parents, same circumstances. And one does far more than the other. What is that about? And so what I realized, one night I was sleeping, I was awakened by a movie called Magnolia. Tom Cruise was the star. And there was a line in there that I'll know.

never forget. And the line was, we might be through with our past, but our past is not through with us. And I believe that something has happened. People experience something, people have gone through something. That's something that happened that caused them to have a restricted vision or what's possible for them. Something took their voice, something crippled them, and they said to themselves, I can't do this. I met a young man, his name is Jose Perez.

And he says, don't let you have a handicap be your excuse. He developed a crippling disease, and he's confined to a wheelchair. And for a period of time, he was suicidal. But then he heard my voice. His father took him and stood him up one day and said, you're going to walk and let him go. Bam, he hit the floor.

And his father didn't want to have anything to do with him. He calls me pops. This young man then decided to take on this disease. This is something that happened in this thing called life. But now, Jose Perez, he's a speaker. He's a quadriplegic, but he's a speaker. He trained people. He's an author.

He's a husband. He's a father. He's living a life of contribution. And that all of us have had some stuff. All of us have gone through some stuff that has crippled our vision of ourselves. I don't know if people, well, in businesses, people still wax floors, but when you're going to wax a floor, you don't just put old wax on top of it. You strip it first, then you put new wax on it. So in my training and my messages that I provide,

Number one, it strips away the negative toxic words that's been deposited into the ear of the listener. And it gives them some new words to expand their vision of themselves beyond the vision that the world has given them, beyond the adversities that they are experiencing. And it inspired them to say, I'm going to do this anyhow. I was on a bus coming from Cancer Centers of America. And I remember this guy who said to me, he wrote a book called Cancer Conqueras. And I was deeply disturbed because,

they told me that I had like six or seven months to go. And my daughter was there with me. And he said, and what were the chances this bus is half empty? And he and I sat by each other. I said, what do you do? So I'm an author. I said, what's the title of your book? I don't have time to die.

I'm a cancer conqueror. I said, is that right? I said, you say, you have not carved out time to die? He said, yeah, I don't have time. I got too much work to do. So, man, that changed my mindset from the fear. And so here I'm going back for another checkup to see, to confirm what they saw. And so Dr. Alfred Goldson said, Mr. Brown, got bad news for you.

I say, is that right? Yes. he said your PSA is 2,400 I said whoa I say

can you give me a second opinion he said yes and you're ugly too you didn't just call me ugly did you he said yes he said but you got this

we determine the diagnosis you and God determines the prognosis and when And I left his office, Ryan, I left his office not with a heart full of fear. Zig Ziglar said fear, the majority of people, they forget everything and run, but there's a small number. They face everything and rise.

And I left there with a heart full of faith that I can beat this. That's 27 years ago that this is not going to get. the best of me, I'm going to leave here sometime, but not from this. And it stirred up something in me. And so this thing called life, we don't know what it's going to throw at us next. But here's what we do know. Here's what the constant is. Therefore, take unto you the whole arm of God that he may be able to withstand the evil day. That if we stand up inside our same, if we go through foreclosure, if we lose our jobs, if we are diagnosed with a terminal illness, if we go through a divorce, if we go through a series of defeats in life, if we stand up inside

ourselves. Victory is ours. Victory is ours. But we will find a way to handle it, to roll with the punches, to deal with it, knowing that. that this is not the end of the world. That there's some things that happen to you and there's some things that happen for you. Had I not been fired, I would have never became a community activist. Had I not been fired from radio,

I would have never became a state legislator in past 14 bills my first term. Had I not been fired, I'd have never produced specials for public television and raised millions of dollars. Had I not been fired, I'd never been fired, I'd never been ridden a check for $5 million from Kingworld to do a talk show in 92.

Had I not been fired, I'd never became a motivational speaker and purchased a home for my mother and traveled to over 50 countries and transformed the lives of millions of people around the globe. Some things happen to you and some things happen for you. Marion White said, in life, when you don't have enough courage or insight to know that you have outgrowing, own a situation and it's time to move on you, life will move on you. And you'll pay a price for being a coward for not living the life that you were chosen out of 400 million sperm to live. Wow. I don't know. There's anything more I can add to that. That is so good. I would. I would, thank you. I would, um, uh, uh,

One question that I usually lead off with, but I'm going to close with. And I think you've covered a lot of it, but I'm still curious because you're less brown. I might as well ask you here. So I study leaders who sustain excellence, and I'm fascinated by understanding the actual personal answer of every person I speak with of what they found to be the common behaviors, virtues, aspects of those they found in their life who have seen. sustained excellence. And so I'd ask you, less, you've been around the world, right? 50 countries, you've got 15 grandchildren. You've been speaking on stages for 51 years. What have you found to be some of the commonalities among leaders who sustain excellence? Something that Warren Buffett talked about that I learned from my mother, and he talked about having a durable, sustainable advantage.

and what gave my mother a durable, sustainable advantage, my mother always acted like she couldn't lose that she promised my brother and I birth mother. She said, promise me you never separate them. She said, I won't. Promise me that you take care of them. She said, I promise you, lady, that never go to bed hungry. They always have a roof over their head.

They always have clothes on their back. And our birth mother had interviewed a variety of people. But this lady, she called Miss Mamie. She said, Miss Mamie, she got close in her face, and she said, you're the one. Take my boys. You're the one. I believe you.

I believe you. And there was something about my, adopted mother, you know, Abraham Lincoln said, all that I am and all that ever hoped to be, I owe to my mother. My godfather said that they stood there looking at each other face to face, nose almost touching. And then she said, our birth mother, go, Mr. Moss. Go now. And he said, there was a look on your adopted mother's face. I will not fail. I will not fail.

This is a non-negotiable. All accomplishments, Ryan, as you know, they happen twice, first in the mind and then in the without. All games are one in the locker room. before they ever hit the field because what's said to them. So good. Thank you, Les.

I sincerely appreciate your passion and energy and just how much you care. You could easily mail this thing in and still be really good, but instead you choose to be great. And I'm very appreciative of that. I highly recommend everybody getting the latest book. You've got to be hungry. greatness within to win. Les Brown, man.

What a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. I want to ask a favor. Okay. Go ahead. Make sure your father sees it. Oh, I'll make sure. I'll tell him that you said.

He's a fan of yours. So it's pretty neat that you would say this. And I love getting the chance to share the things I've learned from both my mom and my dad and have it have it be acknowledged by somebody like you. So it's pretty cool. Oh, yeah, you came out of greatness. I'm getting this is a virtual hug for you and for your father. Thank you.

I love it. I love it, man. This is so cool. This is part of like, I have a lot of surreal moments and this is definitely one of them. So I'm lucky, very lucky. And it's my pleasure to do this one with you last thing. Well, they've done great work with you. Once again, happy birthday.

Thank you. And tell them, don't stop now. We need some more like you. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it, man. All right. Well, I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress.

I know there's so much you're going to be constantly learning and I am too. And I'd love to continue to learn together, man. Let's stay connected, my brother. Love it. All right. Thanks so much, Les. Thank you. God bless you.

Bye for now. All right. See you. We're going to try something new for this segment of the Learning Leaders show. I think it's a good idea to experiment to try something new. and I wanted to share in public some of the emails, the questions I receive in private. My email is pretty easy to find. It's Ryan at learningleader.com.

And if a few people seem to have the same question, I would imagine many others who listen to this show have it as well. And so for the first segment of this, I will tackle a question that I received recently. recently from Dan in Boston, Massachusetts. And it is, what are some of the key elements to getting promoted? Now, it's a great question, and it's a common one, and it makes a lot of sense. And as a way of answering, I will share my story and my career path, and then we will unpack it as we go.

So first, I think it's important to think about the first job that you take and being purposeful and intentional about that. When I got done playing football and my career was over, I was fortunate to have a couple of job offers. I interviewed for a lot of jobs. I got some. I didn't get others. But the one in particular that I decided to take was from. a great leader who our family have known for many years named Rex Caswell. Now, Rex has known me since I was a little kid.

He's followed my career. He's seen me play quarterback in high school and in college and after college. And he had told me when I was interviewing with him that he felt I had the potential to be a manager on his team. However, he said the only chance you'll have of becoming a manager. is if you are an overperformer as an individual contributor. And doing that will give you the chance, the opportunity to get in the room to become a manager. And so first and foremost, you have to focus all of your effort on becoming an exceptional performer in your current role.

And that's the first piece of advice I would give is you must be exceptional right now in this specific job. do that excellently so that when others look to you, they know you're the type of person who gets results. You're able to get it done with your current job. Now, at the same time, it's important that you're working on building the skills necessary to be good at the next job, but you're doing that on your own time. You're reading books. You're meeting with mentors. You're understanding who are the excellent leaders and what make them good. If that's the specific role that you want, that you're working on your own, you're building your leadership playbook on the side while being an excellent performer with what you're currently doing. So I would say

feedback piece, advice piece number one is your output must be exceptional. You must be so good at your current role that, as Steve Martin or Cal Newport might say, you must be so good that they can't ignore you. Now, two, I think you also have to approach it with an amazing attitude. My friend Tom Ogburn, a mentor of mine, told me that leadership is about making something better than it was when you found it and doing so by developing people along the way. Leaders cannot be energy neutral. They are either adding energy or taking energy.

Now, in your current position as an individual contributor, if that's where you find, yourself. Are you taking energy or are you adding energy to the room? Are you an energy giver? Are you the type of person that others want to be around? That's important. People buy from people that they like. And if you're trying to get promoted, you are selling yourself. You are working to convince that person that you are the one to give that job. So fortunately for me, as I performed in my role as an individual contributor, I did it well enough to land as the top or near the top of the stack rankings for a few years, thus giving me the opportunity to interview for my first management job.

I was able to earn that job. Got started, was a little rocky like most first-time managers, but figured some things out, got a little bit lucky with a few of the initial hires, and eventually we were able to perform at really high levels. I rebuilt the culture along with the people on my team. we hired even better people. And within a few years of doing that job, our team was performing at a top level. Now, along the way, I should say it's critical that you are developing and building

relationships with people who are in the positions of making these hiring decisions. So as an individual contributor, I had been regularly meeting with leaders from a wide variety of jobs, some within my company, some external to the company. So just note that in the back of your mind that this was going on throughout the whole time. And as I was performing well, I was winning what our company called a circle of excellence. Other companies may call it presidents club, whatever it may be, it's the top five to 10 percent of performers in the company. In my case, a sales organization. So we'll get back to my role. As a manager, we had turned some things around. I had done well. Our team performed at really high levels. Again, the output of our work was going well. I had proven to the leaders at the company that we could put together a great group of people, hire, trained, develop, and exceed the expectations that were put in front of me by my company and did it with an attitude that was one of being an energy giver, as my friend Tom Ogburn might say.

I also learned from my first boss and mentor, the great Rex Caswell, that you are interviewing for your next job every single day. People are watching. They're paying close attention, especially if you're a performer to see how are you doing it. They're trying to deconstruct that process to understand it better. Just know that people are watching. And I didn't realize it at the time, but there was a big time leader at our company. company LexisNexis named Sean Fitzpatrick, who was in charge of an entire division. And after my team, when I was a manager, had performed at high levels for some time, he came

to me and said, I now have an opening for a bigger opportunity for you to be a director, working directly for me. And I like to see, could you do what you did on a smaller scale with that one team, but do it on a much bigger stage with more people. And quite frankly, when he came to me and asked if I could do that, I wasn't sure. But I certainly said, we've built a playbook. We've built a process. I built a foundation along with some other great leaders that I believe I can do it.

And so we went through the long process of interviewing. And I earned that next promotion from manager to director. And again, I didn't know it, but Sean was paying close. attention to me the entire time as I was building and working with my team as we were able to achieve high levels of performance. And so I urge you to think about the fact that you are interviewing for your next job every single day. Now, let's get back to the third key part. Remember, the first part is output, right? Be so good they can't ignore you. The second part is your attitude being an energy giver to each and every situation you find yourself in.

And third, and potentially as important as any, is building proper, mutually beneficial relationships with those who are in the position to make the hiring decisions. Now, I mentioned that I had won a couple of Circle of Excellence awards. And on one of those trips, I met a fascinating leader who was a West Point graduate and went to Harvard Business School. his name is Lee Revis and Lee was a senior executive at the time now he's a CEO of a company and we hit it off when we met in person and at the end of the circle of excellence trip I had asked him would he be okay if I set up a series of phone calls to talk with them to learn directly from him to understand how he was able to achieve levels of excellence over an extended period of time and he agreed and so

each time then moving forward that I had questions or thought I would email Lee and I would have a set of questions. I would be overly prepared. I would then show up for our telephone meeting. And then after the meeting was over, Lee and I do not live in the same geographic location. That's why our meetings would take place on the phone. But after the meetings were over, I would then sum up the conversation. I would say, Lee, this is everything that I learned. Here are the action steps that I'm implementing based upon what I learned from you. Let me know if I missed anything. And by the way, feel free to click forward on this email and share it with all of the other

people that you mentor. I don't know of any way to give back to you, but I thought this is a way I could at minimum document your thoughts and potentially help other people. As Liz Weissman might say, I wanted to become a multiplier. I wanted to help him help more people and show that I could do some of the work of documenting his thoughts for him. And so that built a true mutually beneficial relationship between Lee and I. And I didn't realize it at the time, but he had told me later that as a senior leader,

it is critical to always be developing your bench of leaders because you never know when you may need to call upon one of them. And that's what he was doing with me without even telling me. And so these conversations went on for six years. We had them, and sometimes multiple calls per month, sometimes a few months would go by, but many calls per year for six years until, I'll fast forward to I am well into my director role. I've been doing it for some time, and I get a text out of the blue from my mentor Lee, and he said, hey, I have an opportunity, an opening.

I think it could be perfect for you, give me a call. And long story short, that ultimately was a VP of North American sales for Elsevier Clinical Solutions. And that is a job I ultimately was able to get. And I took that job knowing it was over my head, but I thought that's what you should regularly do is sign up for jobs and work. that is pushing the edges of your zone of comfort and competency. I try to live that way. And so I took that job. But the key learning from that is, and I know this isn't what everybody loves to hear, but most high-level senior leadership jobs are filled before it ever gets posted on the company's website. Again, I realize people hate that. I realize it seems like it's not fair, but that is the reality

of the world we're living in. Why is that the case? Well, because senior leaders want to know what they're getting when they put somebody in a big position like VP of North American sales. Lee and I had built a six-year relationship. He knew what he was getting with me. He knew what I thought. He knew the questions I asked. He understood my levels of performance for the last six years. Again, I was interviewing for that job every time we talked and every quarter when my results would come for the six previous years. That's how I earned the job. I didn't earn it through the interview process.

I earned it through that six year process. And so the takeaway for you is, are you building proper, mutually beneficial relationships with others as you're progressing within your career? Because as you get more experience and do more work, the more relationships you're able to build with people who are in those positions, the greater your odds of earning one of those jobs. People use the old adage is not what you know, it's who you know.

And obviously there is some truth in that, but it's about building the relationship, a trusting, honest, authentic, vulnerable relationship with people who are in those positions, and that is how you can earn those jobs before it ever even comes open. So to recap, three critical points on how to get promoted. It's about your output being so good, they can't ignore you. At your current role, you must do that excellently first to even give yourself a shot. Those are just the table stakes. Two, your attitude and effort.

Be somebody who is an energy giver, not an energy taker. Leaders cannot be energy neutral. And then third, building mutual, long-lasting, genuine relationships so that your name is at the top of their mind when the job comes open. Again, thank you so much for the question. I hope this was helpful if you'd like to be a part of one of these segments of the podcast. Feel free to send me an email Ryan at learningleader.com.