In 1984, three years after he retired from boxing the first time and seven years before he’d return to have perhaps the greatest comeback in the sport’s history, George Foreman was given a Horatio Alger Award that honored how he overcame adversity to become a success.
The honor was nice for Foreman, but what really stuck with him that night at the banquet was the speech given by Mary Kay Ash, a fellow Horatio Alger nominee and the woman who founded the cosmetics company that bears her first name.
As Foreman remembered, she said, “My father told me when I was young that if you learn to sell, you will never starve.” That line hit Foreman like a right cross to the face. It was the kind of punch to the psyche that he never forgot.
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