Start With A Win - Olympian Ruben Gonzalez Interview

Episode Date: May 15, 2019

Ruben Gonzalez is a 4-time Olympian in the sport of luge, and he talks with Adam about the winding road that brought him to where he is today. Ruben has dreamt of participating in the Olympics since he was 10 years old, but after riding the bench in soccer throughout high school, he realized that he needed to find a different sport. Always one to accept a new challenge and never back down, he decided to pursue a sport that has a high turnover rate due to injuries: luge.Living in Houston, he knew he would need to train elsewhere, so he wrote a letter to Sports Illustrated and – surprisingly – received a response. He talked to a coach in Lake Placid, New York, about his ambitions, and was laughed at for attempting to start an Olympic career from scratch at the age of 21. However, as Ruben told the coach his life story and mentioned that he was born in Argentina, the coach suddenly got excited and agreed to coach him if he would compete for Argentina. The sport of luge had been declining in participation, but an athlete from South America would breathe new life into the sport.After cramming 10 years of training into 2, Ruben qualified for his first Olympics. The lessons he learned began with that first phone call, which instilled in him the importance of perseverance. Over the years, he also learned to be mentally tough in preparing for the fight ahead of him, from the next curve to the next race. On a daily basis, Ruben writes down his goal (which right now is “Beijing 2022”) and he focuses entirely on doing whatever needs to be done to get there. Specifically, he works in 90-minute increments which allows him to be extremely disciplined and productive with a sole focus during that time without being tempted by distractions.Ruben tells the story of his coach telling him after 20 years that he is still too tense. Ruben changed his focus from avoiding the walls on either side of him to a spot 30 feet in front of him, putting on blinders to not even acknowledge the presence of the walls and instead just keep his gaze ahead. He describes this concept of “changing the focus changed the experience” in the business sense as well, encouraging listeners to consider focusing on what is in their sphere of influence rather than being distracted or discouraged by what is going on around them.Finally, Ruben simply states the key concepts that he wishes to convey to listeners: be a student of success by reading biographies and focusing on personal development and by carefully deciding who you spend time with. Those who you allow to speak into your life have the potential to greatly help or harm you.Links:“Think and Grow Rich”: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Landmark-Bestseller/dp/1585424331Connect with Ruben:Website: https://ruben-gonzalez.com/“The Courage to Succced” book: https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Succeed-Unlikely-Four-Time-Olympian/dp/0975554719/ref=sr_1_5?crid=2SVVWBFZ10H3R&keywords=ruben+gonzalez&qid=1557076578&s=gateway&sprefix=ruben+gon%2Caps%2C142&sr=8-5“Dream, Struggle, Victory” book: https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Struggle-Victory-Olympian-Realize/dp/0975554751/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_5?keywords=ruben+gonzalez+olympian&qid=1557076685&s=gateway&sr=8-5-fkmrnullConnect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ 

At top of the 12th floor of the Remax World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With a Win with CEO Adam Kantos. And top of the 12th floor, Adam Kantos here at Remax World Headquarters overlooking a beautiful, a little bit of a foggy downtown Denver today. Here with a very special guest, an amazing four-time Olympian going for number five here pretty soon. We've got the multiple book author. I mean, this guy just does not stop with the success things. It's amazing. And we're super glad to have him here today. Ruman Gonzalez, glad to have you here. Thanks for having me, Adam. I'll tell you, I've read so many of your books and even your latest one, How to Get to Where

You Want to Be. It's 50 Simple Ways to Reach Your Goals Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible. I'll tell you, I love these principles, the story behind them. It's a lot of no BS checklists for creating success in your life. I've got a really good BS meter, so I check myself. I love it. I love it. So let's go back to the beginning here because you were a benchwarmer on your college soccer team, right? Yep. I lived in Houston at the time. I was an oil brat. My dad was a chemical engineer with Exxon. And I've got a lot of heart, but no body to go with it. And so when I was on the bench all my life, I'm a slowpoke. Always had the Olympic dream. And when I was 21, I'm watching the Sarajevo games on TV. I see Scott Hamilton, then 18-year-old kid, he wins the gold medal. And

he gave me hope. I thought, man, that little guy can do it. If he can win, I can at least play. I just have to find a sport. I won't be in the next Olympics. It's a done deal. So you're 21 and you're like, hey, I want to go to the Olympics. What do you do from there? Because usually people grow up participating in a sport.

Exactly. So how did you overcome that particular question in your life? Well, you know, when I was 10, I caught the Olympic dream. I'm watching it on TV. I thought that's what I want to do. I had a lot of desire, but no belief. So nothing happened, right? You got to believe something's possible to really go for it. When I saw Scott Hamilton, now I got the belief to go with the desire. And so I went to the library. I thought, I got four years, and the clock's ticking, and there's all these East Germans are already good at my sport. I don't even know what my sport is.

So I got a big book about the Olympics, and I looked at the list of the summer sports. It took me five minutes to realize, man, you got to be a super athlete doing this stuff. There's no way. And I got down, and then I'm looking at the list of the winter sports, and the analytical side of my brain kicked in, and I was always very perseverant. My nickname in high school was Bulldog. So I thought, I need to find a sport with a lot of broken bones and maybe a lot of quitters. And I just won't quit, right? I'll make my perseverance help me out.

So now I'm looking for tough sports, ski jump, bobsled, luge. I live in hot and humid Houston, Texas, right? Perfect combination there. Oh, yeah, right. So, ski jumps out. That would have been suicide. Bob sled, where are you going to find three other nuts that want to do that? And so, I left the luge. I'd never seen it on TV. I just had a little picture of a guy on a luge, and I thought, you know, that looks like a tough one. That's the one for me.

So, a luge is like this little thing you lay down on that does 100 miles an hour down the hill? Yeah, kind of like laying on a cafeteria tray. Oh, wow. Yeah. And you're flying, yeah, 80, 90, 95 in some of the tracks. Wow. Pulling 6Gs on some of the curves. I mean, it's a tough sport.

And you're not inside of anything. It's just like you hovering a couple inches off the ice doing. That's it. Pointing my toes and wearing a spandex suit. And the helmet is just for decoration, right? It's just to make the lawyers happy. But it's very, very counterintuitive. It's very hard to learn.

Kind of like when you're learning how to snowboard, right? You're in trouble for seven days. Well, in the luge, it's about seven years before you figure it out. But it didn't take you seven years to figure it out. Well, they had to cram 10 years out of training into just two years, because the next two years, I had to compete in the World Cup circuit to get these World Cup points so you can have a World Cup standing. Back then, the top 50 got to go 51 watched it on tv beijing it's they keep making it smaller uh in beijing is gonna be a top 35 and so um wow and

beijing is in 2022 2022 that would be your fifth olympics that'll be the fifth if i make that one i'll be the oldest ever at 59 okay so let's say when you make that man yeah it's a good thing yeah yeah and uh you know what? Like you said before, I'm realistic. I'm going to do everything I can. I can control what I can do. I can't control what the other guys are doing. You just showed up at somebody's doorstep saying,

hey, I want to learn how to ride the luge. I mean, what do you call it? The luge. We call it a sled. Luge is a French word that means sled. Oh, okay. And it's funny because they don't even do the luge in France. And what are you as somebody who drives the luge?

Well, we're lugers, unfortunately. I'm a born luger. But, yeah, when I saw the luge and figured out that's the one I wanted to do, I didn't even know where the track was. So I wrote Sports Illustrated a letter. I asked them, where are you going to learn how to luge? And they actually wrote back, and they said Lake Placid, New York. And so I called New York, and I said, I'm an athlete here in Houston.

I want to learn how to luge. I'm meeting the Olympics in four years. Will you help me? You have to humble yourself and ask for help. Well, this guy, he asked me, well, how old are you? I said 21. And he starts laughing. He says, man, you're too old.

You should have 10 years experience. We start them off when you're 8, nine, 10 years old. No way. And I knew that hanging up the phone's not an option. I got to keep this guy on the phone somehow so I can think of something. And I'm just telling my life story. And I happened to tell him that I was born in Argentina and he gets all excited all of a sudden. He says, if you'll go for Argentina, we'll train you. We'll help you. We'll do everything we can. And I said, why? A minute ago, you weren't going to help me at all. He said, the sport of luge is on the verge of getting kicked out of the Olympics because we're not global enough. It's Europe, US, Canada, and that's it. So we're recruiting, but you're still

going to have to qualify. And so we're going to, you're going to get hurt a lot because we're going to, you know, we need to rush you because you have to be able to compete. And if you make it, then wow, let me check. Wow. You'd be a whole new continent. We don't even have anybody in South America. So, so the U S helped me out. It was a win-win, but if I had hung up, that'd been it. So how many times, you know, as a realtor or as a salesperson or any, any, you know, you take the first no and you quit and that's a good point. Opportunity. Yeah. It's, I mean, you, you've obviously gotten over a lot of hurdles. You talk about, um, you know, you're going to crash a lot or whatever. I mean, when

you crash going down the side of a mountain or down the luge course, uh, what are they just like pick you up and dust you off and put a couple casts on you? I'm sure there's broken bones involved. You learn how to fall. It's kind of like martial arts, right? Those guys learn how to fall. But no, but it's still, sometimes if it happens to, the first two years are the worst because you have no spatial orientation. You don't know where you are. You make a mistake on curve seven and you don't even know you made a mistake. So you're late on eight and you crash on nine and you crash because you didn't fix it in seven. Right. And so it takes a while. I mean, the first two years I was crashing four out of five times and then slowly I started figuring it out.

And by the end of the second year, I'm crashing one out of 100. And doesn't mean I'm great. It just means I'm getting down. I mean, I tell people realistically, I'm, I'm like a 16 year old kid that just got their driver's permit. And now imagine that kid, they put them in a room where right outside the Indianapolis 500 speedway. And you gotta, you're going to be racing against Mario Andretti and Al Unser and all these greats. And I felt like I didn't belong. I couldn't even look them in the eyes. I'm thinking, what the heck am I doing here?

So the first two years was a physical challenge. The second two years was a psychological challenge. And I just forced myself to keep coming back, get those points. And with just a few weeks before the Olympics, I cracked into the top 50, and I got to go. I got to play with the big boys. That's awesome. Amazing. So you get to the Olympics. And I mean, there's a lot that goes into being an Olympic athlete. I mean, just take us through a few of these principles,

some of the key points that our listeners who are in business, in life, things like that. Because I know there's a lot of clarity in your mind. There's different things you run yourself through in your daily systems and techniques and things like that. Give us some of the key points that you think are incredibly important. Sure. One thing is when this guy said it's going to be tough, right? And he tried to talk me out of it. He said, look, before you come to Lake Placid, two things. If you want to do it at your age in just four years, it's brutal. Nine out of 10 people quit. When he said that to me, I started smiling. I thought this works right into my plan. This is awesome.

What's the second thing? He says, expect to break some bones. And I said, great. And so before I went, I put on mental armor because I knew this is going to be a battle. This is going to be tough, right? And so my attitude going in was a broken bones, a temporary inconvenience because bones heal 40 days later, stronger than before. And so you have to prepare yourself for the fight, right? It's like when I started my business, right? I used to sell copiers in Houston. When I started speaking professionally, okay, the day I started my business, that's almost like the, that's your declaration of independence, but you still have to fight the war. And so you have to be, you said clarity,

you know, you have to know where you want to go. I write down my goals every morning. My goal, right? One goal, focus on one thing. I try to work in 90 minute chunks, right? With no interruptions. We homeschool our kids. They're at home, a lot of interruptions, but I trained them. I told them, Hey, you give me you give me four chunks of 90 minutes in a day. In between, we can play games, we can go outside, whatever. And so the 90-minute thing, that's in Edison. I learned that from Thomas Edison, right? He would focus on one thing.

You focus on one thing, and then you focus on the next thing, and then you focus on the next thing. You don't multitask. So let's back up here, because you talked about writing down your goal. Restate that for us. Well, Beijing 2022, that's all I do. In the morning, you don't have to write, you know, war and peace. No, just write Beijing 2022 and that's it. Now my day has a focus. Now it has a reason. That goal makes me work harder. I like speaking. You've heard me speak. I got to speak for you guys.

Gosh, it was a bunch of people in Vegas. Yeah, I had the honor of introducing you. That was fun. That was a great group. I mean, realtors are such a fun group. They're a blast. And so, but you focus on that one thing that you want to do. But as much fun as I have up on

stage, I don't live to speak. Right. That's just my job. That's okay. That fuels that. That's my vehicle that allows me to create a certain lifestyle and allows me to train, right. Because I'm the sponsor. I don't have sponsors, you know? And so, so, uh, that's my, and the luge, believe or not first 25 years, I white knuckled it. that's my, and the luge, believe it or not, first 25 years, I white knuckled it. I started so late and they rushed me so much. I was scared to death. I hated it just now. Well, just before the Vancouver Olympics, I started liking it. And now when I came back after a seven year break, I'm mentally tougher and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm more calm. I'm sliding better than ever. Now they've got me doing yoga. I said,

don't lift any weights. You're too tight from sitting down writing books all the time. So they have me doing all these stretching exercises so I can have a better start. But the whole goal for the next four years is, hey, if next three years is we need to gain one mile an hour before curve one. And that's because you drive fine. Your initial pull is good, but you can't even get yourself down to paddle and, and increase speed. So we get one more mile an hour before curve one, that's going to translate the whole way down. And with that new sled, you just got, you got a shot and that's all I need to hear. You got a shot. I w I was, um, going through a lot of your speeches, some of the key success points that you have

that you deliver to your audience. They're fantastic. And you talked about white knuckling the sled. And then you had this coach that came in and said, hey, you're too tense. Yeah. I mean, that took me because I thought, OK, here's a guy who's been to the Olympics so many times. You're, you're essentially the master of your sport. You're better than everybody else on this

planet doing it. And, and there's a guy who walks in and goes, you're too tense. Oh yeah. No, but, but I'm not, I'm not. So I'm good enough to make that cut, but, but within the cut, right. It's kind of like the, uh, uh, the NBA starts or the NFL, right? Every year, you know at the beginning of the season, there's two or three teams that have their Super Bowl quality. Everybody else, they're not there yet, right? Or they're restructuring or whatever. They're not there.

So I'm one of the guys that gets to play, but I'm not in my eyes, right? I mean, when you watch me on TV, laymen can't tell the difference, but coach who's a four-time world, you know, three-time world champion, four-time Olympian, he can see, right? Ruben, you know, he's an Austrian guy, Ruben, you must relax, right? Well, for 20 years, he's telling me you must relax. And then another buddy who's also a great loser, he was number four, fourth place in Lillehammer. He's my coach now, Jonathan Edwards. He said, I can't believe you've been doing this so long and you're still scared.

I mean, what's going on in your head when you're going down this, you know, sliding? And I tell him, man, as I see those walls going faster and faster, I get tighter and tighter. And by the bottom half of the track, I'm stiff like a board. I'm surprised I can even drive because I'm so scared. And he said, luge is not about speed, okay? We're a sport that's surrounded in an environment of speed, but you can be clocked at the fastest time. But if you crash at the bottom of the track, you still lose the race. Lose is about who has the lowest time consistently, right? The best time. And the only way to do that, the best way to improve your time is to focus on what am I going to do on every section of every curve so I can drive the best lines, so I can have the best time

consistently, right? And so what you need to do is you need to put on blinders, just like a horse, put on blinders. Don't look at those walls. You focus on a spot about 30 feet in front of you and just focus on what you need to do. And if you do that, the fear will go away. And I trust him. And he's got, you know, he's got,

he has fruit on the trees, right? Fourth place in Lillehammer. And so I said, okay, I'm going to do that. So that night I visualized about 100 runs with blinders on. The next day, my next run, the fear went away. Changing the focus changed the experience. And what do most people focus on? The economy, right?

Well, stop listening to the economy. Stop focusing on the economy. Don't watch the news. Don't take the economy. Stop focusing on the economy. Don't watch the news. Don't take the paper. Buy your competitor a subscription to USA Today. Let them get all negative, right? You just focus on who do I need to talk to, who do I need to call in the next 10 minutes to move my business forward. And it may not be to make a sale. And most of the time, it just may be to work on your relationship with that person, work on your trust. So when they do need somebody, they're thinking about you,

positioning yourself. When I sold copiers, I knew, you know, after about three months, I knew my numbers. Every time I knocked on a door in downtown Houston, I mean, I cold called every building in downtown Houston. I knew I made five bucks, whether they bought or not. Actually, it was 20 bucks, whether they bought or not. And and so I knew but I could only sell about one out of 20 so the other ones I tried to try to sell on paper if I could because that gave me an excuse to you know to touch touch them several times a year and create a relationship and then I just want to be number two with everybody else so when their copier did break down or they needed something or they called me. But you were focused on one thing. Yeah. And that was getting that done. I love this.

You know, you race the track 30 feet at a time. It is. And that's really, I mean, I truly believe one of the major fundamentals of success. You know, when you're involved in something, it's not, okay, what are we going to end up doing tomorrow? It's what am I going to end up doing five minutes from now? And then five minutes from then, and then five minutes from then, and then, and just on and on. It just, it simplifies what you're doing. Kiss method. I love the kiss method. Yeah, it's fantastic. And I, I just, this whole concept of just relax and let your brain only have in it what you need to have in it. It just, and I noticed, you know, one of the messages that you deliver is you stopped, you know, it goes down to the, don't watch the news, don't read the newspaper, only have the things in your head that you need in order to do that next 30 feet. So you talked about corners, you know, each corner doing it

right and how that corner affects the next corners. What do you do if you mess up a corner? Well, if you're late, most of the time, if you're late into a curve, you need to steer really hard to get your sled back in line. Because if you don't, then as soon as you hit that curve, it's going to slam you with a lot more G-forces and it's going to throw your sled up, which bleeds the hit that that that curve it's gonna slam you with a lot more g-forces and it's gonna throw your sled up which bleeds the speed off and then it's gonna come down it's called looping if you ever watched um uh cool runnings there's a part where the jamaican bobsledders crash they're on the kreisel kreisel is just a german word that means carousel it's a

big circle curve right well they entered late and they didn't correct. And you're going to see the sled goes up and down and up and down, and then it comes too late and it crashes. So you have to be ready. If you're going to be late, just crank it. So you get back. You're still going to lose time, but you're going to lose less time, right? And it's minimizing the errors that you make the whole way down.

And just getting to the finish line, right? Yeah. And you know, it's the only sport that's timed, the only Olympic sport that's timed to the one, one thousandth of a second. Even the hundred yard dash is one, one hundredth. And everything counts. Even your breathing counts. If I hold my breath the whole way down, which is really easy to do when you're scared half to death, you're going to be a half a second slower. Half a second, that's 500, one thousandth of a second. That's a lot, right? But if you exhale, just imagine, and they teach us, exhale at the entrance and exit of every curve, because that'll help you stay relaxed. If you're relaxed, you're going to have faster reaction time. You're going to be

faster. You'll be better. It seems like a lot of those very precise sports end up occurring through relaxation. Is that pretty common? Yeah. And you always hear about biathlon, where they shoot and they ski. They're always talking about, oh, yes, you have to control your heart, you know, because you're going 90 miles an hour when you're skiing, and then you have to slow down so you can aim, right? Right.

Well, the luge is the same thing. At the start, it's a very, very hard, you know, you're an animal at the start because you're trying to generate speed. But then you want to totally relax so that you can actually have your best lines and think. So our audience likes to take away a couple of key concepts from the success of our guests. And, I mean, you've got a lot of really good honed in things. I mean, you're a lifelong student of success principles. It's crystal clear in your writings. And I sit here and I look at it and I go, oh my gosh, I recognize that. Oh, yeah, that's great. It's so cool. And you put in one of your books, don't just read this once,

keep reading it, take notes, things like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Once in a while after a speech, somebody will walk up with a book, right? And it's all, I mean, it's all underlined and highlighted. I think, man, I want to give them a hug, right? It's like, yeah, you're a student.

That's awesome. You know, you're going to go places. What are your top takeaways for our listeners? Golly, you know what? I think the one, like you said, I've been a student of success all my life. When I was 10, when I was 12 years old, my dad got me to read biographies. He said, if you study the lives of great people, you'll figure out what works and what doesn't work in life. And then in college, I discovered personal development. And whoa, my gosh, I've been reading those books ever since. And you read Think and Grow Rich, and he, you know, Napoleon Hill will reference somebody that wrote a book 30 years before, and he references somebody else. And you just keep going back, and you read them all, and you always end up the same place, Proverbs. But

I would say that who you hang around with, what you read people, who you hang around with, you know, what you read and who you hang around with, those two things will determine where you end up. If you're going to read all the right books, you hang around a bunch of whiners and losers, man, they're going to take you down. Right, right. So the whole, I'm sure somebody, you know, back to Proverbs wrote it before Jim Rohn said it, you know, the average, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, I truly believe in that. I love that. And it's simple. It is. Success is simple.

It's hard. I mean, it's... You got to do it every day. Yeah, and it's going to take everything you got. It doesn't take what you don't have. It takes everything you got every single day. But it's fun. It's a fun ride.

That's awesome. Well, Ruben, thank you so much for being with us here today on Start With A Win. Some amazing success principles in here, some gold. I can't stress enough the books that you need to get. Ruben Gonzalez, How To Get Where You Want To Be is his latest book, 50 Simple Ways To Reach Your Goals Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible. You can find all these books on Amazon. Yeah. Don't get them from my website. It will take too long. I'll run out. Check them out on Amazon. And Ruben is a public speaker. You'll see him around on the public speaking circuit. And Ruben, again, thank you so much for being on Start With A Win. Oh, it's great. Thanks a lot.

Thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. We, it's great. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget to go onto iTunes and subscribe, write a review, or rate the show. It helps us get the word out and reach more people. You can follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, Start With A Win.