BUILD26 Keynote Speaker to Share Journey from Homeless Teenager to Motivational Mentor
A global motivational speaker and author since 2015, Brown’s presentation on March 17 will illuminate his core belief: everyone has the power to be extraordinary by choosing to be their best self, especially when it matters most. Debunking a common perception, heroes are not just ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Tapping into his 30-plus years in franchise development, the former SERVPRO® executive will share insights and practices to create a culture of heroes that helps leaders grow their people’s potential—not just their business.
Why Excellence Matters
As Brown emphasizes, achieving organizational excellence is about building a culture of heroes at every level that pushes beyond the status quo.
“When I talk about heroes, I’m not talking about people who raise their hands and say I’m here to save the day,” he said. “It’s about people who will raise their hand and say I’m here to serve today. When we build that culture of heroes, we end up with organizational excellence and ultimately customer loyalty, two things that I think are really lacking in the world today.”
Across industries, Brown is dissatisfied with the permeating low standard of service and believes we can do better.
“We lowered the bar of customer service during COVID, and most organizations have never rebounded,” he said. “We still hide behind that COVID excuse, and it doesn’t really take that much to separate yourself from the competition.
“It used to be show up and be excellent,” he continued. “Now, it’s just showing up. When you can show up and be excellent and serve at a high level, that’s when you build that reputation of excellence that drives customer loyalty.”
On the individual side, Brown has asked thousands of people around the world what it means to be a hero.
“Everybody says it’s ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” he said. “I don’t believe that anybody was meant to be ordinary. There’s nothing ordinary about the talents, gifts and abilities that you were endowed with. It’s bridging that gap and convincing people of their own extraordinary capacity to not only do their work but to make a difference in their communities, in their business and most importantly, in their homes.”
Believing the greatest leadership roles of our lives are at home, Brown said his job is to convince people of their superpowers and that they can be the amazing humans they were meant to be.
People go to work for their dreams and their goals and the things that are important to them. As leaders, if we can bridge that gap and say, “You plug your personal brand into this brand, you can get there from here.”
“I can’t tell you how many people I talk to who have convinced themselves that there’s nothing special about them—that I’m just an ordinary person, trying to get by, doing my job, taking care of my family, going through the motions.”
He said it literally breaks his heart.
“Whether you are a great mom or dad, great spouse or significant other, great business leader, great human, whatever your talents and gifts and contributions, there’s nothing ordinary about that,” said Brown. “It’s shining a light on that for people and saying, ‘What you do is extraordinary.’ My wife gave up her career to take care of our special needs son (who has autism), and she pulled the potential out of him. It’s something that great leaders do.”
From Homeless Teen to Motivational Mentor
Brown’s own extraordinary transformation spans his blue-collar roots as a homeless teenager dumpster diving in Michigan, to a franchise change agent to a motivational guru.
Over two decades, he helped transform SERVPRO, at the time a little-known family business, into a $2 billion leader in the cleaning and restoration industry with more than 2,300 locations. He said he would not be here today without his heroes and mentors.
“I went through some really dark times as a teenager,” said Brown. “I’ve been homeless more than once and I’m a ninth-grade dropout. These heroes came along and helped shine a light on the path, taught me things that I didn’t know and gave me opportunities that I probably didn’t deserve, but they saw something in me that I didn’t and believed in me when I couldn’t. They changed my life.”
Brown plans to share stories of his personal heroes in his BUILD26 presentation.
“From those who saved my life to those who are in my home right now—my bride of 30 years, my son who’s amazing and the people who are important in his life.”
Brown’s speaking origins started when the SERVPRO owner pushed him on stage in front of about 1,000 franchisees at the company’s conference in 2002. After years running the show backstage, that conference planted the seeds.
“I think it found me more than I found it,” said Brown, who has since delivered more than 1,000 keynote speeches in over 10 years with no two exactly alike.
The HERO Effect grew out of SERVPRO’s differentiating service excellence, realizing that customers viewed their franchisees and insurance partners as heroes.
“When everybody else was running out of the storm, our people were running into the storm,” he said. “That’s where The HERO concept was born. It then took on a life of its own and became The HERO Effect. It ultimately pushed me into retirement from the franchise world and has taken me around the world sharing this message.”
Minding the Gap
Brown finds the biggest gap in business today is the distance between organizational goals and personal goals.
“We think people are going to get up every single day and go to work for our goals,” he said. “They don’t. They go to work for their dreams and their goals and the things that are important to them. As leaders, if we can bridge that gap and say, ‘You plug your personal brand into this brand, you can get there from here.”
He emphasized a leader’s role to clear a path for people to do what they do best and realize their full potential.
“Sometimes when we have really good people on our team, we burn them out,” he explained. “They’re the last ones we develop because we think they’ve got it all together and we put them in roles they’re not qualified for, or they don’t want to do. And then we wonder what happened to them. Part of a leader’s job is to put the right people in the right roles where they can excel and be happy and fulfilled and make their greatest contribution to the organization.”
He offers his own experience at SERVPRO, thinking he would spend the rest of his career there until someone believed in him and pushed him on stage.
“I’ve learned that you don’t develop leaders for your purpose,” he said. “You develop them for their potential. Even if that means they one day leave you.”
By doing so, organizations will get a reputation as leaders of building people, not just building a business.
“You’ll have a reputation for mentoring and coaching and guiding and pulling out that potential,” said Brown.
And his own motivational role?
“When I started this, I had no idea where it was going to take me,” he said. “My only commitment was that I would go where the message leads.”
Brown has spoken before many diverse industries, from the top one percent of wealth advisers in the world to entrepreneurs to community leaders to manufacturing and construction audiences.
“This is a message than transcends what we do for a living,” he said. “It’s about what we bring to our work. Anybody can do what most of us do. People may come to us for what we do, but they come back to us for who we are. I never know who’s in the audience who really needs to hear that message.”
SOWing the Seeds: His Grandmother’s Wisdom
Brown’s HERO Effect Every Day newsletter offers actionable tips including “SOW What? Growing the Good Stuff at Work and in Life.”
“I’m 58 now, and the older I get the smarter my grandmother gets. And the smarter my father gets.”
Inspired by his grandmother, the SOW acronym stands for Find Good Soil, Be Open, and Work the Land.
“It starts with good soil,” he said. “Looking at people and seeing their potential, maybe what they don’t see. And knowing that you’ve got somebody with good soil to plant those seeds and the mission, vision and values that we as leaders pour into people.
Sometimes leaders miss the ability to be open to what grows.
“When a leader pushed me on stage in 2002, he saw something in me, but he didn’t know what was going to happen. He set a wheel in motion that turned out to be my destiny. It meant that I would ultimately leave the company, but he was more interested in growing that potential.
Brown disagrees with the current notion that people don’t want to work. He said they do want to work, but they want to do meaningful work.
“They want to work with a leader who will help them grow in an organization where they can move up,” he said. “They want a career path. Also, in an organization that has community impact, tied to something bigger than the business they’re building. Work is good for the soul. My grandmother used to say, ‘We need calloused hands, not calloused hearts.”
Universal Pain: Surviving the Storms
If there is a common thread among Brown’s worldwide audiences, he finds that everybody is hurting and suffering in some way.
“It could be with a special needs child or a diagnosis they didn’t see coming,” he said. “It could be frustrations with their work or the things going on at home.”
Brown believes that we often suffer in isolation; we suffer in silence.
“Sometimes when we’re in a storm we don’t realize we’re getting stronger and that we’re more equipped to handle this than we realize,” he said. “Sometimes we think we’re the only ones, but there are people coming right behind us about to go into a storm. If we can encourage them and lift them up, to move them in a way that inspires them, it’s not only a great privilege it’s a responsibility.”
His audience’s personal stories are the most fulfilling part of his work.
“The greatest reward is when people tell me that while I was speaking, they were thinking about the heroes in their life—whether it’s a child, a partner, spouse, a friend, a colleague, or a customer. They tell me their story. More than anything, they’re looking for hope. The hope that whatever they’re going through is ultimately for their benefit.”
Implementing The HERO Effect
Putting The HERO Effect into practice starts with a few critical steps.
“First, are we growing our people?” asks Brown. “We’ve got all of this technology coming at us including AI, etcetera. We’re trying to balance that against taking care of our customers, getting new customers, doing that work.”
He cautions that we sometimes lose sight of the people who are executing on our behalf.
“People don’t do what they tell you to do, they do what they see you do,” said Brown. “Modeling is the most powerful of all teachers. As leaders, we have to start on the inside of the organization.”
Next, heroes help people.
“Great leaders create an experience for people on the inside,” said Brown.” They help them see their path and chart their course.”
Heroic leaders are also accountable to the people around them, taking responsibility not only for growing the business but for growing people.
“They don’t take it lightly,” he said. “They say, ‘I see you and I hear you and you matter to me.’”
Brown said heroic leaders also see life through the lens of optimism.
Part of a leader’s job is to put the right people in the right roles where they can excel and be happy and fulfilled and make their greatest contribution to the organization.”
“They look at their industry and they see what others can’t see,” he said. “They see how the industry’s changing and how it’s being influenced. They’re willing to force change upon themselves before the industry does it for them. That’s how they stay one step ahead of the competition. Instead of running away from AI, they run toward it. Instead of moving away from technology they embrace it.”
Brown said great leaders also understand that technology should never replace human connection.
“When the Internet came out, it was going to destroy the world,” he said. All this technology just pushes human capacity. It may change how we do business, how we work, but it doesn’t replace humans. It allows us to function and work differently, better, smarter.”
Conquering the Impostor Syndrome
Even Brown is not immune to the all-too-common impostor syndrome.
“Every time I step on the stage it’s a privilege and an honor, but I struggle with feeling qualified,” said Brown.
His lightbulb moment?
When he consulted a mentor early on who told him that the things you think disqualify you are the very things that qualify you.
“Who’s this ninth-grade dropout to stand on the stage?” he asks, rhetorically. “Who’s this kid that was a street rat, homeless more than once who lived in a car, dumpster dived for food? It’s all those things that we go through and come out on the other side that qualify us to lead and to contribute and to help others. We teach others what we need to hear ourselves.”
Brown’s first book, The HERO Effect, launched his philosophy in 2017/2019. His second and much lengthier book, Unleashing Your Hero, followed in 2021 and focuses on his heroes. In between books, Brown found that the message revealed itself more.
“The soil is a little richer, the lessons are a little deeper. Having taken it all over the world to thousands of audiences, it’s pretty remarkable how it continues to grow and evolve. That’s why I know it’s something much bigger than me; I’m just the messenger.”
Lorelei Harloe is a freelance writer from the Washington, DC area.
