ALL
ABOARD
By Jake
Poinier
Les Brown motivates people to greatness, and puts new speakers
on the fast track to transforming their own audiences.
You don’t hear Les Brown’s laugh— you feel it through your muscles and bones like there’s a freight rain passing by. “Everyone’s born the same way: dumb, naked and speechless,” he says, punctuating
the sentence with his trademark rumble of laugh-
ter. “No one comes in with anything.”
Brown knows this better than most, having
been born into poverty and adopted at six
weeks (along with his twin brother, Wesley) by
Mamie Brown, a 38-year-old single woman
who was a cafeteria cook and domestic
worker in a low-income section of Miami.
Growing up under the care of the woman he
calls “Mama,” Les was inspired to overcome
his circumstances. He worked his way from
radio DJ and community activist during his late
teens and early 20s, to a career in politics and
broadcast TV, to several best-selling books and
a National Speakers Association CPAE Hall of
Fame honor.
Brown vividly remembers his first formal speaking
engagement in 1974 at East High School in Columbus,
Ohio. “The goal was to motivate these kids to get a
vision of themselves in the future, and to do the things
they needed to do to make their future bright and excit-
ing,” he says. “I quickly realized that if you can hold
Brown’s purpose is changing lives.
young peoples’ attention, you’ve got something going on.
It’s a piece of work to do that!”
Along with his presentations to school audiences and
kids in juvenile detention centers, Brown also discovered
an early passion for training new speakers. “I used to assist
my high school drama and speech instructor, and I was
so fascinated with him that I wanted to help people dis-
cover their power voice,” he says. “It was a way to change
the way students thought, a way to touch their hearts and
help them achieve academic excellence.”
After developing a reputation as a speaker and a speech
coach, Brown soon began to receive paid invites from
churches and organizations. Yet his guiding principle
always remained the desire to change lives. “Believe it or
December 2010 | SPEAKER | 13
