Interview with Les Brown
Hugh: Hi, this is Hugh Ballou again, and this is a very special episode of The Nonprofit Exchange. I have over here my good friend, Les Brown. And Les is going to share with you this movement that he has initiated. Over here, my new friend Tamara Hartley. Les?
Les: Yes?
Hugh: We have been capturing ideas on the storyboards about this project that you have got in mind. Tell people what this project is.
Les: It’s a project that is designed to make a greater impact on people on the general population and helping people to develop the tools, mindset, skillset, and collaborative, achievement-driven relationships that will allow them to create the greatest version of themselves. This is the era that the late Peter Drucker calls the Era of the 3 C’s: accelerated Change, overwhelming Complexity, and then Competition. With all the changes taking place with technology—according to the Department of Labor, over 20,000 people are losing their jobs every day, and 50% of the jobs that now exist can be done by robots—when we look at the advance of artificial intelligence and cheap labor abroad, people literally are now in an entrepreneur’s era, and they have to begin to expand their skillset so they will be able to handle what is required to be in this global economy where accelerated change is taking place.
Hugh: It is so true. You see it happening every day.
Les: Yes.
Hugh: Every day, there is massive changes. You have a special passion for those people who are incarcerated and continue to be incarcerated. Talk about that.
Les: We incarcerate more people in America than anyplace else in the world. We are making people bitter rather than better. I believe that we have to develop a higher level of consciousness on how we deal with people that have made some bad choices. My goal is, to people that are incarcerated, if prisons will allow me, to have my programs in the prison that will change their mindset, teach them how to become an effective communicator, how to develop positive, collaborative, achievement-driven, supportive relationships, how to earn money online as entrepreneurs, and how to dress like a prospect rather than a suspect.
Hugh: A prospect rather than a suspect.
Les: Yes, because the truth is, when people get a criminal background, they are not going to get any jobs. If they do, those jobs won’t pay much money. These individuals are not going to starve to death. They are going to find a way to feed themselves. As a result, that is why the recidivism rate is over 80%. If you had a factory that was producing products, and 80% of the products came back defective, you wouldn’t continue to use that process.
There has been a slight change in how we are dealing with people that have made some bad choices in our society. Rather than throwing money at caging them, they are now looking at the possibility of helping them to learn how to read because over 76% of them are functional illiterates, giving them the skillset and giving them some support to help them to be reintegrated into society. If you go to jail, you can’t stay in public housing. If you apply for a job, you have to put down that you have a criminal background. Most employers will say, “We’ll call you. Don’t call us.” They are penalized throughout their lives, even after they have paid their debt to society. That’s not fair.
My mother was once incarcerated. She sold home brew and moonshine and wrote numbers when she could no longer work at the M&M cafeteria. That was a tough time. I became a man at ten years old as a result of that. Seven children in a house that no longer had the guardian, the person who took care of us. She adopted seven of us. She said that she made a commitment when she did that that we would never go to bed hungry, and we did not. We would always have a roof over our head, and we did have that. That was a gaff in our lives that was very painful and challenging.
There are a lot of good people who made some bad choices, and I belie