Don't give up.

Don't ever give up those great people, didn't I now have a responsibility to also not ever give up live, fight like hell.

And when you get too tired to fight, then lay down and rest and let somebody else fight for you.

You can't be scared to die for the truth.

The truth is the only thing that's ever gonna be constant.

And you can't fear what might happen to you if you were to tell the truth.

Because what happens to you if you don't tell the truth, is worse than telling the truth will ever be.

Never give up, work hard and continue to learn.

Not only do I talk to talk, I try and walk the walk essentially, and I would say this to anybody.

Is that you know, it's really, um, it's easy.

Thio embrace hopelessness when things seem insurmountable.

And yet, uh, it's actually just a matter of time until all of the elements come together for things to be all right.

I mean, I believe that, you know, most, uh, difficult situations will resolve themselves if you are persistent And if you don't, if you don't give up entirely and that's what I never did, I never gave up.

If you're convinced that you're going to fail or fall or get hurt, that will come to fruition because that's what you're visualizing.

I never you know, I was willing to get hurt along the way.

But I didn't visualized myself getting hurt along the way on, and I think that's what that's what stops a lot of people.

And that's really what separates a lot of people from being world champions air from being as good as they can because they stopped at some point saying, Oh, no, I am not capable of this or I'll probably get hurt doing this And if you approach anything with that hesitation, you're gonna fail.

I always approached it like this is going to work.

I'm going to figure this out even if it takes me hundreds of attempts.

Um, and I wasn't, you know, the idea of falling getting back up again.

That didn't really bother me at all.

When you're young and you're a kid, you have so many.

I grew up in the hood, man, Flint, Michigan, where I'm from.

And they say if you tear through, you could do anything you wanna dio.

You could do anything you want to do.

And then as soon as you go to class, you tell them what you wanna do it.

Like, what makes you think you're gonna do something like that, man?

Crazy.

Yeah.

And I said, Okay, wait.

Which one is it?

Can I do it?

A kid?

I do it.

What s So I started to call people on that I started to call people on that.

I said, You know what?

I'm gonna go for it.

I'm gonna just try something that I've never done before.

I wanna design furniture.

I wanna be a part of this thing.

So I'm going.

And you know what happened?

Let's start work.

If you just force yourself to take a couple small steps, there's always a surprise.

The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I'm not afraid to die on a treadmill, e.

I will not be outworked, Period.

You know, you might have more talent than me.

You might be smarter than me.

You might be sexier than the you might be all of those things.

You got it on me in nine categories.

But if we get on the treadmill together right, there's two things you're getting off first or I'm gonna die.

It's really that simple.

E growing up.

I you know, I grew up.

I wasn't the richest, but I had a rich family and in spirit and in support.

And, um, you know, standing here with 19 championships is something I never thought what happened, you know, just I went on the courts with just a ball and a racket in the hope and and that's all I had.

And it is inspiring for all you guys out there that want to do something and want to be the best that you can be and want to do the best that you can do.

You just never give up because you never know what can happen.

You never know who you can inspire.

E.

A lot of times I'll be in tourism.

I run or something like that, and I'm all jacked up.

Bodies broken, minds broken, spirits broken.

I started to say What if I could pull this off when I first walked into the Navy?

Soon Recruiter's office.

He looked at me and said it only been 35 African Americans and 70 years make it through.

You know, I said to myself, What if I could be the 36th?

It's the what if I can pull off a miracle?

What if I can become someone that no one thinks I can be?

And just that just me talking about that I have the hair going up on my arms because it makes me just like what if never, ever, ever give up Chicken soup for the soul was rejected by 144.

Publishers 144.

Publisher said.

We don't want to publish a collection of short stories.

Uh, the title.

Stupid Chicken Soup for the soul.

What does that mean?

People don't buy, um, collections of short stories.

There's never been, you know, successful, uh, chain of doing that.

So literally.

We spent 14 months trying to find a publisher, and we go toe New York with our agent.

Eventually, our agent gave us the book back and said, I can't sell this.

So we went to the National Booksellers Association Convention down in Anaheim.

We went from Booth to Booth to Booth for three days, and there were 4000 publishers represented.

There we go.

Would you publish your book?

Would you publish your book?

Would you publish your book?

And we got No, no, no, no, no.

It was late on the third day that a little publisher from Florida, after we've gotten over 144 rejections said, Well, read it.

And then they said, We said, Well, how many copies do you think will sell after they said Yeah, well by it a couple weeks later and said, We'll publish it And they said, Well, maybe 20,000 if we're lucky.

And we said Our goal is to sell a million and half of the year and a half now Have you ever told someone your dream and had him laugh out loud at you?

He laughed out loud.

Now, if we had given up after 100 publishers had said, No, I wouldn't be standing here today.

You wouldn't have happened.

And so you've got to be willing to persevere because we didn't take no see, When the world says no, you say next only five or six billion people out there you could go and ask, right?

There's over 4000 publishers just here in the state of California.

So what we have is this endless possibility.

But you have to persevere.

It's as if the universe tests our commitment.

And so today we have 147 titles in print.

We sold over 115 million copies were in 47 languages and over a billion dollars worth of chicken soup for the soul.

Books have been sold worldwide.

So if you're willing to decide what you want, believe it's possible consciously envision the future.

Feel the feelings of what it would feel like if you'd achieve this goal, you can have anything, and then you take action.

Both obvious actions and inspired action You could do anything way were forced in the beginning.

I wish I could say we were geniuses and said, We're going to start our own company.

You know, Uh, that's not what happened.

You know, in the beginning, we went to every single label on every single label.

Shut the door on us.

Um, the genius thing that we did was we didn't give up way, didn't say, because these guys, you know, we use that.

What do they know?

Approach.

You know, we we didn't give up at that point.

I think that, you know, that was the genius thing we did.

We start selling our own CDs, and we built their own buzz, and then the record company came back to us.

So now we had a different negotiation.

You know, it was in the same artist, um, label relationship.

Now we retain ownership in our own company.

And it was the best thing for us.

What age should one give up on their dream?

Never is.

Goto said this.

Henry Ford said this.

Rockefeller said this.

You're only as young or as old as your dreams.

A zoo longs.

You still have dreams and visions and goals.

They keep you young.

It's the most amazing darn thing, brother.

One of greatest pieces of advice I've ever gotten.

My life was from my mom.

You know, when I was a little kid, there's a kid who was bugging me, you know, in school, on.

She said, Okay, I'm gonna tell you what to do.

She said, the kids bugging you, he puts his hands on you.

You pick up the nearest rock or whatever you could get your hands on.

You lay him out.

And I did.

And I felt better on it worked for me.

You know that That was a great lesson.

Because someone had invaded my space, invaded my being, you know?

Right?

And e was doing doing something against me that I didn't want to be done.

So I took control of the situation and I ran with on board.

Yeah, on many years later, after being, you know, uh, turned into a product, you know, by a very huge corporation that had their hands all over me on I couldn't escape it.

You know, uh, I promised myself that I would continue to move forward on, uh, do my best not to compromise in any way whatsoever, You know, not not allow anyone to put their hands on me.

E don't know what that dream is that you have.

I don't care how far fetched it might appear to be.

E don't care how disappointing it might have been as you've been working toward that dream.

But here's what I know.

But that dream that you're holding in your mind that it's possible.

See, sometimes we can't say I can do that.

But what we can say that it's possible that I can have my dream, Yeah.