William “King” Hollis is a motivational speaker, author and coach who has traveled the world. He has spoken his way to success, rising from homelessness to becoming one of the world’s top motivational speakers. Hollis talks with rolling out about his motivational book, The Best Gifts Come from the Bottom.
What inspired you to write this book?
This book was created in my mind about eight years ago when my career first started. I grew up with a learning disability, and I couldn’t read until I was 16. I always had a story in me, and that’s what I learned throughout life. I feel like every single one of us has a story in us. I feel like as a 32-year-old man, I got a long life to live if God graced me with that time, but I said I want to go against my fears. It’s important for people to tell their story, so I wrote a book on communicating and teaching people how to tell a story, how to identify what type of speaker they are because I believe going into this next generation, it’s going to be individuals that have to learn how to communicate and articulate the things that they want.
How do we make people feel comfortable telling their stories?
Sometimes we must believe in our dreams before our dreams believe in us. And the dream will only be ignited when you take that first step. Once you take that first step, that dream will start to creep towards you, and every day you wake up with that commitment. If you don’t want it for yourself, it’s not going to come. There’s no motivational speech, there are no words to be said, it must start first within you. You must first understand that we only have a moment to live on this earth. We think we have a long time, but we only have a moment.
How did you come up with the title?
I want you guys to go look up some of the greatest stars you’ve ever known and look at their stories. Look where they come from. They haven’t always been stars, and haven’t always been rich. So in order to try to replicate and create some greatness in the people that you look up to, you got to understand where they come from. You got to understand that a tough situation is only a situation. What I tell people is when I created this title, I looked at myself. I started from the bottom and I will tell the world that I am a gift. Where does the best gift come from? On Christmas, where do you place the gifts? In the cereal boxes, where do they place the gifts? When I say the best gift comes from the bottom, I truly believe that everything starts from the bottom just like a flower.
