Ben Newman

In this episode of The Rundown with Rene Knott, Rene sits down with world-renowned performance coach and motivational speaker Ben Newman for a powerful conversation about purpose, discipline, and the mindset behind sustained success. 

Newman shares the deeply personal story behind what he calls “The Burn”—the internal fire that pushes people to live with urgency and intention. For him, that burn comes from losing his mother at a young age and realizing every day is a gift she never got to experience. That perspective helped drive his early success in finance and ultimately led him to a career inspiring athletes, executives, and teams around the world.

The conversation also explores leadership lessons from working with legends like Nick Saban, the power of discipline and standards, and why even high performers still need coaches and accountability.

It’s a candid discussion about resilience, preparation, and how connecting to your “why” can transform the way you show up in business, sports, and life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So you discovered something that I love. The burn. And it's not so much you discovered it, but you named it. Explain to the people what the burn is.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

You know, for me, it's it's watching my mom come to the dinner table with an IV stand like I'm a waste of day. I'm 47, she died at 38. I've been given nine extra years she never got. I've seen things that my children have been able to do that she never got to see with me. Because they've already lived way longer than I was as a seven-year-old boy when she died. Come on, I'm not wasting a day. And that gives a burn and a fire that everybody has through maybe it's pain, challenge, sacrifice, sacrifice you're maybe making for somebody right now. But when people connect to that burn, Renny, it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Well, I have someone with me, Ben Newman, who's been a part of my life since I moved to St. Louis, always been an inspiration, but now he's inspiring and motivating people all across the globe. One of the premier motivational speakers on the planet. Ben, thank you. It is always awesome to see you.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

I mean, over 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I know. I was much younger then. In fact, I had hair a week.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

So did I, but I'll tell you what, I think we both make the bald head look good.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

I'm trying. I'm trying. What do you want to like eight ball and cue ball hanging out over here? Um I want to start with this. You go from finance to motivational speaking.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

How does that jump take place? Well, it actually started because of the work in the financial world. And, you know, and I say it very humbly, but I got off to a really fast start. I had to grow up fast. I'm a kid from the loo. I was born in St. Louis and grew up not too far from where we're sitting. And my mom was divorced when I was six months old. And uh, the reason why my father was a drug addict, alcoholic, manic depressive, bipolar, everything under the sun. My mom, this strong, powerful, loving, energetic woman teacher, said, enough is enough. I just have to get a divorce. I can't raise the kids in this state. And so then my mother ends up getting a rare muscle disease, passes far too soon at 38 years old. And my mother's life and her story and how she lived, and we had 24-hour nursing care in the house, put this fight inside of me, this fire that when I would connect to the days that I now get to live that she never got, I just was unwilling to waste a day. So I get into the financial services world and all of a sudden I'm just going. And people were like, man, what is up with this guy? Like, he just attacks everything. And there was so much tied to it. You know,$100,000 of term insurance put me through college. So there was the deep meaning of the work I was doing, but there was also just not wasting a day. And the next thing you knew, about 18 months in, a little boutique firm up in Chicago said, We'll pay you$500 to come and speak and tell us what you're doing. And I'm like, I didn't even know that was a thing. Like you paid me$500, all expense paid trip to Chicago? Like, I'm all in. And it started the story of doing the work that I now get to do today. Wow. What's the largest crowd you've been able to speak in front of? 12,000. 12,000 all at once. So you remember the old Bradley Center in uh Milwaukee where the Bucks used to play, now it's no longer there. And so I spoke there, and uh I actually came out to Eye of the Tiger. I was wearing a boxing glove, boxing robe. I had guys take the robe off, unwrap my hands. I mean, I went all in. I went all the way in. You're in front of 12,000, I'm going all in. And uh it was a blast.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Wow. How do you not get nervous? You know, especially when you got to look at 12,000 people to go, I need this message to hit home with this crowd.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

How do you not get nervous? So I've always loved to speak and communicate. So it for me, it's actually never nerves, it's anxiousness. Like, let me go. Let you go. Okay. It's time to go. I had a tiger. And I believe for anybody, right? Whether you're a speaker, whether you're running a medical device organization, whether it's you're working for a nonprofit, you have to be prepared every day. And if you're prepared, you should be anxious to go. If you're unprepared, that's when you get nervous. Okay. So if you bring me in to speak, I promise you I'm gonna be prepared. You know, we'll have planning meetings that say, hey, why are you bringing me in to speak? And figure out what's the victory that we want to create for your audience. Well, if I do my job, my job is done before I get there. So then I want to deliver the message that we've created together, which is a unique process that I've now done for over 20 years. And so there's never nerves. It's like, it's like, let me go. Like, let's do it. Like we plan this out. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

So you discovered something that I love the burn. And it's not so much you discovered it, but you named it.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Explain to the people what the burn is. So I'm gonna do this different because you've heard it so many times from me. But I could hear it again. No, I know, but I'm gonna I'm gonna tell it different because, like a kid from the Lou, and there's a great St. Louis story. But uh uh a dear friend of mine had me do a speech during COVID. And it was Ed Milette and Andy Frisella, and they had this business group, thousands of people online. It was supposed to be in person, and it was gonna be Marshall Falcon Eye. Well, greatest show on turf, Marshall. Like they had, heck yeah, I want to like warm up the stage for Marshall. Well, it turns to COVID, it's virtual. Will you still do it? Of course I'll do it. You're gonna warm up the virtual stage for Marshall. I said, that's fine, but like, can I hear Marshall speak? I want to learn from Marshall. She always knew Marshall's note-taking his mindset. So at the end of the speech, Ed Milette says, Hey, Marshall, can I ask you a question? Will you tell everybody about the room that you're in in the Hall of Fame? I'm like, the room that you're in in the Hall of Fame? Like, I've been to the Hall of Fame, you've been to King. I was there with Aeneas invited me when he went in. And I'm like, there's no, there's not separate rooms. Like, what is this question all about? And Ed says, answer the question, Marshall, please, for me, and don't be humble. And I'm like, where is this going? And Marshall says, Okay, I'll give you the real story. He said, For the players that are in the hall of fame, we say there's different rooms in the hall of fame. So the first room is the players who were great players who made it to the Hall of Fame. The next room is the players who are in the Hall of Fame who went to the Super Bowl. The next room is the great players who went to the Super Bowl and won the Super. And he starts going down and he said, uh, I'm in the last room. And he got real humble and he said, and the last room is the room of about 10 individuals who have ever walked the face of the earth who have a list of accolades that are like this long. Went to the Hall of Fame, set these records, MVP, that, that, that, that. I'm just like, man, never heard it that way. And Ed says, It's beautiful that you accomplished all that, but tell us how you did it. And he says, I grew up in a house with 11 kids in San Diego. And every day when I was a kid and I would leave to go practice, he said, I'd walk out of that house where a great sandwich was white bread with sugar on it. And I would say to myself, every day from the work I'm gonna do today, nobody in that house has eaten white bread and sugar sandwiches again. And he said, To this day, even in the work that I do retired, having achieved all that, I still have that in my belly, this feeling that there's no more white bread and sugar sandwiches. And he goes, he looks at Ed and he says, Ed, I don't know what you call it. And I'm yelling at my screen, it's on Zoom. That's the burn, Marshall. It's the burn. And so to me, everybody has it.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

You know, so for Marshall, it's white bread and sugar sandwiches. That's not happening again. You know, for me, it's it's watching my mom come to the dinner table with an IV stand, like, I'm gonna waste a day. I'm 47, she died at 38. I've been given nine extra years she never got. I've seen things that my children have been able to do that she never got to see with me because they've already lived way longer than I was as a seven-year-old boy when she died? Come on, I'm not wasting a day. And that gives a burn and a fire that everybody has through maybe it's pain, challenge, sacrifice, sacrifice you're maybe making for somebody right now. But when people connect to that burn, Rennie, it's well, so here's what.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Why do you do you come across people who still need to hear you tell them something to get them pumped and ready to go?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

I think there's well, everybody's different. Yeah. So whether it be the work that I did at Alabama, which was like receiving a doctorate and leadership from the greatest ever. I mean, five years with Nick Saban, and then 11 years with Chris Kleiman at Kansas State and North Dakota State. I mean, I was with two of the winningest coaches of all time. I'm receiving a doctorate. And one of the things that that that I found for me in coaching and leading others that they exemplified was everybody was different. Saban would talk to, you know, he would talk to Jerry Judy differently than he's gonna talk to Mac Jones, because those guys are wired different. You know, Chris Kleiman was gonna talk to Deuce Vaughn far different than he was gonna talk to Deuce Green on the defensive side of the ball. And so what I learned was everybody's different. So you have to figure out why is Rennie not connecting to that burn? You know, the period of time when he was like operating at his highest level, maybe he didn't call it the burn, but was he connecting to something deep? Why did he stop? Did the success cause him to stop? Like, why did the discipline stop? Was it actually that connection to the burn? Was it something else? And so I think a lot of times people, as we get older, we're running businesses, we're running corporations. And still, people love my work in sports stories. That's only 30% of my work. 70% of my work is still corporate. This is business leaders. I mean, I had a talk with a gentleman who went from a$40 million biomed company yesterday, wants to hire me to coach them, to a$2 billion exit. Just retired last week and says, Man, I've always had coaches. I played college football. Like, I still need a coach. Will you coach me? And people who understand it know like you don't have to go through life by yourself. And so that's where a lot of times the coaching becomes individual, but it's for everybody. But you got to be willing to go there.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

The relationship with what you do in sports is obviously like this because you've been around so many teams. But does this say something about sports, about having a reason to go out there and do something that not everybody's willing to go do?

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah, I think when a team commits to do something together, and you know this, but a team has a willingness to do that. We're checking egos, coaches are checking egos, but a team wants to do something special. There's just a dynamic to that. Where people are are they willing to work for something bigger than them. They're willing to say, hey, we started off 10 and 0, but we still don't even know how great we can be. When you're around teams like that and you've followed them for years, you've worked with them, like you know exactly what I'm talking about. There's just you just feel it.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

And there's an attraction power. And I I see that in business as well as in sports. But sports is the great example that everybody wants to see. Look at U.S. women's hockey, US men's hockey. We all just felt it. Yeah. But it's it can be in the business world, but you have to work on developing that culture. And a lot of times, business leaders, he or she, they don't slow down enough to say, can I develop that culture here? They say, ah, that's in sports. No, it's not. You could have that team right there in that office. That biomed company didn't go from 40 million to 2 billion because they didn't believe that they were going somewhere special. There was a culture there.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

What are the principles of success? When you when you look at it, and of course I've read the books, so let you know right now. But when you look at it, we talked about the burn, we talked about leadership, but what does it take beyond those two things for people to achieve what the goal is in mind?

SPEAKER_00 12:00

I think it's discipline. I mean, if if there's one thing, it's discipline. So every single individual watching this right now, they could all sit right here in this chair, and you could say, tell me about the period of time when you were most successful in your life. Sports, it could be right now where you are. You know, you and I both know, we've been around so many great stories of people. There was discipline attached to the reason why they were being great. Now you say to them, share a period of time when you were struggling, you were going through pain, you were going through challenge. There was a lack of discipline oftentimes. So there becomes a gap, which sometimes it's because of challenge and adversity. It could be depression. There's real things that happen in life, but when you stay connected to your discipline, your discipline keeps you in the fire and it keeps you working.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Standards. Where do standards rank?

SPEAKER_00 12:53

I mean, to me, standards are everything. You know, Coach Saban, everybody tries to claim on the internet, everybody claims on the internet the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Everybody puts that out there. Oh, like, look at this quote I came up with. That was Nick Sabin. That was Coach Saban and nobody else. But Coach Saban taught us, and I remember when I walked into interview in 2017, you walk into the Malmore football complex in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and you feel the standard. You literally feel it. Like you feel it. Like there's something different going on in this building. And when you're part of an organization, and I was blessed to be part of that organization for five years, and you're surrounded by that, it just raises you up. You can't show up there and do something 50%. You do it to the standard. And it made everybody better. So what you end up having is a choice when you leave that environment. Well, what if I do that in everything? It doesn't mean I'm gonna be perfect, doesn't mean I don't make mistakes, doesn't mean I'm not a child, but can I raise the standards as a father? Can I raise the standards as a husband? Now I mess up as a husband all the time. Ask Amy, ask my kids, I mess up as a dad, but I try the best I can. But you show up to be your best. That's the standard. The standard is being your best. And we all know when we're not showing up, and we all know when we look in the mirror, that feeling when you can say, Man, I gave it my best today. That's the real standard.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Can a person succeed without all of these principles? Can a person make it to the top if they're not following all of that? Or is it inevitable that they're gonna fail at some point if they don't follow standards and doing the same things the same way and having that burn and those things?

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Maybe if they were born in the dugout after a grand slam, they was hit by somebody else for them. I I I think you can. And look, there's amazing stories of you know, this person was in the right place at the right time. But I I mean, if you really study, because I love I love to study a story, right? Let's take Michaela Schifrin. So she's the second woman in her event to ever win gold twice, 12 years apart. Well, that's not happenstance. It's crazy 12 years apart. That's not happenstance. And after her her her lack of winning for such a long period, that's not that doesn't happen. Well, how does it happen? Because all these things that we're talking about. So that's not you people have to work for these things. So whether you take a Michaela Schiffer and whether you take a business owner, I don't think there's any luck. I I think it comes from great choices, great decisions. My mom taught me what I think is the greatest life lesson I've ever learned. It's not how long you live, it's how you choose to live your life. And so it really comes down to your choices. You either choose to do it or you don't. And if you choose great strong behaviors and disciplines and standards every day, the byproduct is some good things are gonna happen. It ain't gonna be perfect, but some good things are gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

As you look at where life is for you right now, are you at the top of the mountain right now, or do you feel like you're still pushing and climbing and scratching and not there yet?

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Well, like I mentioned the names of like Ed Milette earlier, who was interviewing Marshall. I have a one quick conversation with Ed, and I'm like, man, I haven't accomplished anything like that. So I try to keep those friends in my life who make me feel like, man, one day I'm gonna like maybe I'll accomplish something. And I'm I've been blessed with relationships like that. Tim Grover has become a dear, dear friend. And even to this day, and Tim would get mad for me probably saying this, but you know, he was the mental coach and the strength coach for Michael Jordan, Dwayne Wade, Kobe Bryant. And, you know, he'll call me to check on me. And every time the phone rings, I'm like, is this really Tim calling? And I'm you know, hey man, I'm just calling to check on. And it's it's a blessing because when I talk to Tim, I realize how far I have to go. So, what those relationships have done for me, it's the blessing of having relationships like that to teach me and to show me there's more, but it also keeps me from being seduced by success. But I've asked you this before and asked you this again.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

You burn so brightly. How do you not burn out? Because you're an intense individual, especially when you start talking, but in a good way. When you start talking about motivating people at them today, I'm doing pretty good. I'm working on it. Um, but what keeps you from burning out? Because I can see you say, I've got the house, I've got the kids, I've got the account, I've done all I need to do taking care of me.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

So I think it's my working out, believe it or not. Like, like working out, and I do it every day, is something for me that just there's something that just makes me feel good. Like when I do what I say I'm gonna do. So working out actually brings me energy. Uh reading books actually kind of relaxes me. Sometimes I have a hard time focusing, but reading books relaxes me. And I actually try more than I ever have now to find a great documentary. And sometimes I think that surprises people. Like, I mean, I watched one yesterday and I just sat on the couch, I had a couple extra hours. I'm like, you know what? I'm just, I need, and I and I know it. I just need some time here. And I just watched this documentary, it was great, and it just recharges my battery. So I'm pretty aware of making sure I take care of myself. Okay. But probably the most significant thing is I still have two coaches, which I think surprises people. Yeah, you know, one of my coaches, Laura Pierce, she's worked with me for over 20 years. I mean, as long as we've known each other. And she knows the ins and outs of how I think. Even if I may subconsciously not recognize some of the behavior she may. Let me ask you a couple questions because she just knows patterns of behavior in me. So I just that's been a very important thing for me to make sure that there's somebody there to check how am I showing up. Because if we stop working on us, it's pretty hard to continue to help others. So it's all right to always have a coach. And you should probably seek out coaches. I just I think it's a and I don't want this to become a solicitation for coaching, but yeah, I mean, whether it, whether it's a coach, whether it's a best friend that you could say, hey, like we're going to the gym together. You gotten sloppy, I've gotten sloppy, man, we're going to the gym together, or an accountability partner. There you go. But yes, I think something that makes you say, Man, I'm not doing this by myself. Why would you want to do it by yourself anyway? I mean, who who grew up playing youth sports and you did it by yourself? I mean, even if you were playing tennis, you had a tennis coach, you didn't even know. Yeah, you got your cut man, you got your trainers, you got everything.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

You got a team. You got a team. You got a team. Everybody's got a team. You got a team. So I'm gonna ask you this question to finish with. If you hadn't become the motivational speaker that you are today, yet you have this burn, you have this energy, you you have this focus, this dedication, the accountability, the responsibility, and everything else, what do you think you would have become if not the motivational speaker?

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Man, I've never had anybody ask me that question. I had a good career going in financial services. The easy answer, the easy answer would be that uh that I probably would have been continued to be a good advisor because I was a I was a darn good advisor. But you know what? When I accepted Christ in 2008, and then I was encouraged by Laura Pierce, that same coach, don't ever try to control the decisions, just surrender every day and let God open the doors. Uh, I think God would have pulled me away from being a financial advisor, maybe wouldn't have been a motivational speaker, but I think there would have been something where there was impact on others. Because I love that. You know, that there's so much that we do, and I know this about you too. There's things that we'll do that people have no idea that we did them. You know, it's a little phone call, it's a piece of advice, it's the people that when they reach out for us. And so those little things that drives me like no other. There's so many things, stories you and I were never gonna tell anybody. But when you do that one thing, it feels so good. So I feel like I would have been called to some some calling to just serve an impact. Isn't that the thing about character?

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Is that character is the the things you do when no one's watching? That's when the real character is revealed. And when you are a real character in more ways than what. Always great to see you. Thank you.