Thomas Green Here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the episode today, we have Ronnie Coleman. When Ronnie was a professional bodybuilder, he was a winner of the Mr. Olympia title for eight consecutive years. He is widely regarded as the greatest bodybuilder of all time and has the most dominant bodybuilding physique ever to grace the stage. Winner of 26 IFBB professional titles. He’s also renowned for his combination of size conditioning and extremely heavy workouts, also making him the strongest bodybuilder and Mr. Olympia of all time. Ronnie, welcome. Thank you for having me. It is my pleasure. What goes through your mind when you hear those words? I was just thinking when you said that, because I’ve heard that so many times now. When I was going through, I tell people that when I was winning all those Olympia championships, I never really enjoyed them, because I was always getting ready for the next one after I won one.
So I didn’t really start thinking about stuff, you know, until I kind of retire, like, oh wow, I can’t believe I did that. So it’s really humbling to hear it and it’s real kind of unbelievable to hear too. But it’s lifted from Wikipedia and Wikipedia is like an objective source, so they don’t allow salesmanship in Wikipedia. So that stuff is factual, so just interested to know how you feel about that. Yeah, yeah. I’ve never went to Wikipedia before, but I guess it must be true since I hear it a lot these days. Well I got, the first question that I planned on asking you is a real simple one. You ready for it? Oh yeah. How do you become the best in the world at something? Well, I try to tell people you need a few principles in life to go by.
The first one is, gotta have a lot of determination topped off with a little, a whole lot of motivation. You gotta have passion for something, you gotta have passion for it. The more passion you have, the more you’re gonna love it. And one of the most important things you gotta do, you gotta be able to sacrifice, if you can make sacrifices, like no other person, you can be just about any kind of champion you really and truly want to be. And I always tell people perseverance. If you can persevere something, because there are always times where at least with me when I was coming up there were a few times I kind of wanted to give up. I didn’t have a motivation that I thought I had, but I came around real quick, because there was a whole lot of passion involved in what I was doing, so perseverance, motivation, determination, dedication and I always gotta tell people also if you got a, you got some faith in you, you could always always succeed too. You have all these principles and you are able to hold onto all of them at one time, I think you can accomplish anything in life that you want to, because not only did I apply all these principles to being Mr. Olympia, I kind of applied them when I was in college too. I had to have all of these things, because not only did I go to school, I also played football, so I had to have a lot of motivation, a lot of determination, a lot of passion for what I was doing and I had to make some real real hard sacrifices, I mean some of the hardest ones ever, some of the ones that I thought that I, that I couldn’t even make, you know, like there were a lot of times that I wanted to go party, a lot of times where I wanted to have a girlfriend to hang out with.
But the sacrifices I made are what got me through college, what got me through all those Olympia champions. Even got me through working full-time for the police department. So I tell people if you have all these principles and you hold onto them wholeheartedly, you can do just about anything you want to in life. And that’s kind of the reason why I was able to work full-time with the police department and full-time body building, because I had all those principles wrapped up into one at all times too, at all times. Thank you for that. I think it’s a great answer and leads me nicely onto the next question, which is I read the book. If you wouldn’t mind confirming the title of the book, that would be great. “Yeah, buddy!”. Had to be done. And towards the end of the book, I stumbled on like a gem really, which is your Rules for Life, which I actually think could potentially be its own book.
So I kind of feel like there’s potential for a book by Ronnie Coleman or your rules for life, but the first one is open your eyes. Yeah, I think it touches a little bit on the concept of luck, which not many people talk about who are great achievers. So what’s your thoughts on number one, Open your eyes? Yeah, one of one of the biggest life lessons that you know, pretty much had uh learning life, you know, open your eyes, you know, have a vision for what you want to do and what you want to be uh lodges lodges Probably, maybe it’s 10, of it, but it’s, it’s also a lot of hard work and a lot of dedication and I like I was saying earlier, you know, all those principles that I mentioned earlier that also becomes involved with it too.
Thank you for that. And I think one of the things you mentioned is that if, if it weren’t for, you know, looking out for those lucky opportunities, you may not have been a bodybuilder at all, which is really interesting. Number two, is to be grateful. Any thoughts there? Yeah, yeah, I don’t, I’ve never took anything for granted, you know, I’ve always been real humble about everything I’ve always appreciated, you know, everything uh I’ve gotten in life because for the most part, you know, I’ve always had to work extremely hard for everything that I’ve gotten from, you know, graduating college, uh moving to Dallas from Louisiana coming out here, um finding a job when I didn’t have one and uh worked at domino’s pieces for two years delivered newspapers for a couple of years there. And uh the lucky part about it is what I was talking about earlier, Open your eyes is uh I got this job at the police department, had it not been for that job at the police department, I never probably would have become a bodybuilder.
So you know, I always try to tell people, you know, be grateful for everything that you have in life because anything could be taken from you at any moment. You never know. You always gotta realize how fortunate you are, you know, to have the thing that you have, Why do you think that you’re able to be grateful? But maybe some people might struggle to do that. Uh you know, I’ve seen a lot of stuff, you know, working for the police department. Uh some people are just uh I think that you know they’re old certain things because you know of who they are, they are not grateful for the things that they have in life. Like I said uh you the the thing that you have, they can be taken from you at any any moment.
You never know when something bad is gonna happen to you. You know, you can just be riding down the street and something could fall out the sky and hit you on the head, you’d be buying down the street and car across the name and run head on into you and all that you ever worked for in life, it’s gone and just that blinking a lot bigger than I so anything bad can happen at any time, you know? So that’s why that’s why I say I always be grateful for what you have. There’s always somebody else out there that’s doing a whole lot worse than you always, no matter what you think, there’s always somebody doing a whole lot worse. Well the next one I think is probably my favorite one. And also something that I think I’d describe you as which is number three is be relentless. What your thoughts about that rule I have saying when I was winning Olympia, if you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you always got.
And what I’m pretty much saying is I had this formula for winning the Olympia and it wasn’t nothing easy about it was it was hard, but I figured if I did it every single time that I got ready for a show then you know, I always get the same result and for eight years, eight long years straight it happened that way. So I always say be relentless about what you’re doing when you’re trying to accomplish a certain goal, trying to achieve a certain goal and you will always achieve it, thank you for that and this next one reminds me of you’re when I watched the documentary the first time you win. Mr. Olympia, which is why I would like to talk to you about this separately but rule number four is to have passion.
Yeah, that goes back to what I was saying earlier, you know, that’s one of my principles for being successful, have passion if you got passion for some you kind of like never really worked a day in your life, that’s what I had when I was you know, bodybuilding, that’s what I had when I worked for the police department, I loved I truly loved and look forward to what I was doing each and every single day. I had a ton of passion for both of them and uh it made it that much easier even though you know what I was doing was kind of hard, difficult and dangerous, I still had a lot of passion for it and I still look forward to doing it each and every single day because of that passion and that love that I had for doing it and for me, you know, it was like I wasn’t working, I was doing what I loved to do, I had a lot of passion for it, so I love doing what I was doing, that’s what I mean by having passion, that’s why I was able to do what I was able to do too because I had passion for doing both of them, both of them at the same time, even though both of them were extremely hard, I had a lot of fun doing a lot of fun.
Any thoughts for people who maybe haven’t found their passion, any, anything that springs to mind for you there, You know what? I try to tell any value that that will halfway listen to me. Uh God put it out here for a reason. Most of us we have Korea and we have a colony. A career is something that you do what you go to school for pretty much. You know, you you get out of school, you you look for doing this job because that’s your career, but you’re calling is something that you don’t really think you can make money at it and it because you have so much fun doing it and and it kind of, it kind of comes easy to you but you still have to work hard at it, you still have to work hard because it’s your calling, you know, and my career was working for the police department, my calling was being a body building, but still all in all, I had a lot of passion for doing both of them and I truly feel that each and every single one of us have that purpose in life.
We got a career and we gotta call it, God did not put us here just for us to be here. We have a purpose. Everyone, all of us, no matter what it is, you know what did you say your your calling is now? Oh yeah, it’s still the same. I’m a body builder uh for the most part uh probably gonna be, you know till the day I die, you know, I’m still going all over traveling all over the world, doing seminars, doing, you know, personal appearances and taking tons of photos, signing millions of autographs. So I’m still a bodybuilder, still doing my calling accurate, that you’re now sort of a mentor to other people so you can share your knowledge on that topic.
Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah. Uh mentor role model, you know, all that stuff, source of inspiration because you know, uh I truly enjoy doing what I do. Well that takes us nicely to the next one. Number five Ronnie’s rule number five work as hard as you can, you have touched on some of that already, but anything in addition, uh it’s, it’s kind of self explanatory, you gotta put like 110% in just about everything you do when you try to achieve a certain goal, you got to work as hard as you possibly can every time you get a chance in it, work as hard as you can And go as hard as you can and put 110% in it and you will nine times out of 10 come out on top Most most of the time, 10 times out of 10 I believe, Especially if you work hard enough, 100 percent in agreement.
There is some, shall we say work life balance opinions that are coming out at the moment in terms of you know whether or not there should be some and when I think of this topic I think like if you’re if you’re obsessed with the goal that you’re trying to meet then it’s not really work. But there are some people who say that you shouldn’t work too much because there’s a work life balance consideration. Have you got any thoughts around that topic? Oh yeah, I truly believe that but I think that that pretty much goes for a lot of people that don’t really enjoy what they do. There are some jobs out there that you don’t really enjoy. Like uh when I worked for dominoes I didn’t really like doing that. I only did it because I had to, when I was throwing newspapers. I I didn’t I didn’t like that either. I only did it because I had to.
So yeah, there are some jobs out there that you know you really don’t want to work that much at. But once you find that job that you really and truly like I think you should work as hard as you can when you can and then when it’s time you know for your breaks you should uh brake as hard as you can while you can you want to work all the time. You gotta gotta have some break time in there for sure. So if it’s your dream work as hard as you can, if it’s not your dream, maybe take some breaks. Yeah, but you should take a break in both of them, I think still uh because like you said, it ain’t all good to work hard all the time. You gotta have, you gotta have some break time in there in there too. And uh I’ve always enjoyed my break time.
Always enjoyed that. So Ronnie’s Rule number six, something that you referenced already. Keep your faith high. Oh yeah, yeah, I’ve always kept my face real high, I’ve always believed and I was gonna always succeed at anything I put my mind to because I’ve always had faith in everything that I’ve done, you know, I’ve always had faith and everything was gonna always just work out the way that it was supposed to, because if I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing then, you know, nine times out of 10, 10 or 10 times out of 10, the end result is gonna be achieved if, you know, I believe in my mind and uh I keep my faith that you know, it’s gonna be done, it will be done and it has always always gotten done always, I have always achieved, I’ve always uh everything has always worked out for the best my whole entire life because I believed it was gonna work out and it always has Never wavered, not 1 ι on my faith.
Never Well the next one is really interesting because it’s about number seven is keeping a positive attitude and I wonder in your answer, if you could cover maybe if that’s possible to cultivate or you think it’s something that you learned in your upbringing? Yeah, I’ve always had a positive attitude just about everything I’ve always done, you know, uh no matter what it was, if I was the doing it, I had this feeling and I’ve always kept the attitude that, you know, it was gonna always work out for the best and and the reason why, because, you know, it always did and I always stayed positive and I always kept my attitude positive towards everything I’ve always done because I’ve always believed that if you stay positive about it, then it’s gonna always work out.
And uh it has always worked out because like I said, I’ve always kept my attitude positive that it was gonna work out. The next one is a very pragmatic one, and I’m interested to know whether you’re still doing it now. Number Ronnie’s rules, Save your money. Yeah, Yeah, I’ve always, I’ve always done that. I still have three retirement plans now started when I, when I first started working for the Police Department started, you know, saving money and uh still doing it to this day, still have all three of them say to this day, so yeah, I still believe in that one to still take that principle over to your business as well. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got my degree in accounting and yeah, I have used it. That’s for sure. So I will always be alright in that, in that aspect of like, I’ve seen this one in your, in your other interviews, Shall we say in in prep for our conversation?
It’s number nine is stay humble. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve always been who I’ve always been, you know, I’ve never changed from they won for the, for the most part. You know, I’ve always just seen myself as just a normal guy, regular guy, just like each and everybody else. Uh, I always tell people I’m a regular guy, normal guy. I’m just a little bit bigger. That’s all it is to, it ain’t no diff between me and you, we’re all the same in this world. Yeah, we’re all the same. The Last one. And I’ve also noticed this in your conversations as well is number 10 is have fun. And some of those videos on YouTube where you’re throwing away around heavyweight and doing your affirmations, I can see you having a lot of fun. There any thoughts Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve always bleed in having fun because like I said, if you got passion for something, you gotta have fun with it no matter what it is.
You know, if you’re having fun with it, that means you enjoying yourself and what, who wants to be doing things in life where they’re not enjoying themselves and not having fun because I believe that’s what life is all about enjoying yourself and having fun, you know? Well you’ve referenced dominoes a couple of times in your answers and I wanted to ask you about the extremes of maybe taking a job at domino’s because they’re willing to give you free pizza because you’re hard up for cash. And then the other extreme is Mr. Olympia being the best in the world at something where people want to give you money for various different reasons. What do you think about those two extremes going from one to the other? Oh, uh, you know, there was a need for both of those extremes at the time that I was doing when I was working at Domino’s, I really couldn’t afford to buy food, you know, So I had to eat pizza for a living.
Most of my money went to paying all the bills like car, note the insurance rent and all that kind of stuff. Phone bill and I just didn’t have a lot of money to buy food with. So, you know, I ate pizza and uh, when I got tired of eating pizza, I called burger kings ask them if they were tired of eating hamburgers and they’re like, yeah, so I’m like, well, let’s trade. But I got tired of eating burgers. I called Kentucky fried chicken asked them the same question and I trade with them. So, you know, you just gotta find there’s a well, whatever will, there’s a way to survive and that was my way of survival. You know, eating pizza, hamburgers, fried chicken and tacos because Taco Bell was in that food court too. So yeah, I know how to survive. I’m a survival. That’s how how you make it in, in life, survive an entrepreneurial trade to, to go trade with people.
I reckon not many people thought that, yeah, it wasn’t that hard for me to figure it out because I did get tired of and that’s probably why I don’t eat it today anyway anymore cause I ate so much back then for sure I did, I probably haven’t had domino’s since that since I worked there either. I always had to get another brand. Besides that I ate way too much way too much. But two years, it’s even the same thing. Just about everything will do that to you though. At least it did me well the the year buddies and the phrases in the, in the gym to get you to lift the heavy weights, um kind of interested to know whether you’ve used that in other areas of your life and whether you think that there’s crossover. So if I started saying, you know, yeah buddy, when I’m about to take on a business.
I don’t know a task or something. Something is that going to help you think mm I have, I said in some other a couple other times before. Yeah, for sure. Uh but you know I can’t think of nothing, you know a particular reason why I was saying but you know if somebody asking me a question that’s real simple you I might just say you know yeah buddy, you know just to answer that question but not you know yelling at him like I do in the gym. So do you reckon that there’s some some crossover to be had for other people? Oh yeah for sure for sure. But not not too many of the mother phrases though but you know for sure for only a year on the year buddy though and when it and too many times you gonna say ain’t nothing but peanut I ain’t nothing to do it. Well that’s actually the next thing I’m going to ask you about and it’s a quote from the book and what it means to you nothing to it but to do it.
Yeah I say that quite a bit too um because you know yeah makes it easier easier to do ain’t nothing to it but to do it, you know, so the if you want to get things done, that’s the way to go about doing them. Ain’t nothing to it but to do it, have you got any thoughts on goals most part I’ve always set goals that I knew for a fact that I could accomplish. So I always trying to set tell people to set goals that you know uh ha what set them where you know, is you put your all into it that you can accomplish it, like, you know, for me, I I’ll never set a goal, I have to be a politician or something like that, that ain’t something I’m really, really trying to accomplish, I would really want to accomplish, even though I’ve had people try to tell me to do that, but no, I don’t think so, that ain’t one that I don’t think I want to accomplish.
One that I’m going to put a whole lot into trying to accomplish, cause it’s you know, it’s just not what I wanna do, you gotta say gold that you know, something that you really want to do, you got a lot of passion for it, you know, set those types of goals. Have you got any thoughts on maybe um making goals that are slightly out of your reach versus making goals which are more easily achievable? Yeah, my thing is set goals that are within your reach that way, you’re not likely to be too disappointed when you don’t achieve them, because most of all the goals that I’ve said, I’ve achieved all of them, you know, uh because these are goals that I know that I can reach. I know I’m gonna have a lot of passion behind uh achieving them.
So I’ve always tried to say goals that I know that I can reach for a fact, not unreachable and uh ain’t really a whole lot of success behind those types of goals. I don’t think any goals you got at the moment. Uh Not a whole lot. Uh I’m getting ready that I got some things that I’m working on right now, like um trying to be one of the first body, be able to come out with uh like a natural natural wine, one with you know, lower in carbs, low in calories, something like that. Uh So I want to be one of the first ones to do something like that. So I’m working on that right there as we speak right now, coming out with a wine that’s you know that’s good for you I’ll say.
And when do you reckon that’s uh that’s going to be available to the public? Uh As soon as I go through the taste test because in order for some to be good, it’s gotta taste good. So as soon as I finish the taste test I think I’ll have it wrapped up probably within about another six months, I’ll say it’s gonna take at least that long. You know the taste go through all these taste tests because you just don’t want to make something that’s you know that’s good for you that don’t taste good if you want something that you want something to be good for, you want it to taste good too. So that’s that’s so that’s that’s what I’m in essence, that’s what I’m in the process of doing right now. Are you gonna be sneaking some extra protein into your wine? Yeah, If I can if I get to taste good, Yeah, it’s all about taste too.
So yeah. So for sure if I can get protein in there and make it taste good. Yeah, I’ll do that too. Well, we’ll have to wait and see. Next one is inspired by the book. And that is, victories aren’t always something good. That’s a quote from the book, because losing can be will teach you more than perhaps winning will. So your thoughts on losing. Yeah. Yeah. I say that because I’ve lost a lot coming up, I lost a lot of time. And uh it made me appreciate winning that much more. And then uh sometimes you have to lose in order to know when to quit. So that’s when I say losers is probably uh good for you when it’s it’s time to give it up, you know, Because there’s there’s a time limit on everything that you do everything.
So who was in the at the end, it probably wasn’t that bad for me because it was time to give it up. Time passed passed by and I had my my good days and it was time to let somebody else have it. The follow up to this is about your thoughts on giving up. But I think the timeline here is actually before you one rather than at the end of your career. and the quote, I think that you said was, I don’t think this is for me and I’m done with this bodybuilding stuff was I think what you said and the context is other people, so maybe someone is thinking about giving up right now, What do you tell them? Yeah, you know what, that, that, that that goes back to perseverance. Uh I said that in uh, 1997 after I went back to my room, got off stage, you know, uh I been bodybuilding for about seven years, eight years at that time, and uh, I didn’t like the way things were going, you know, I was getting beat by people that would never be able to beat me, and I’m like, oh man, maybe this bodybuilding thing ain’t for me, it’s time to get this up, and then I said to myself, wait a minute, I can’t quit bodybuilding.
I got a free membership to the gym, I lose my free membership to the gym if I quit. So that’s out of the question, didn’t want to lose that for nothing. Some people may refer to that as a reason why having a bigger reason why you’re doing something. Exactly, and that’s what I did for sure, but also, you know, I, that was one of the moment where in life, you have to re think things and reconsider things and you just have to persevere, keep going the next one. Um, I speak to a lot of business people and sometimes when they’ve created businesses, I asked them about the first client that they’ve got or the first customer. And so I’m I want to ask you, it might be a big ask because it’s a it’s a while ago but I wanted to ask you about your first professional bodybuilding competition, it’s becoming Mr. Texas and whether you’d be able to tell that story for us.
Oh yeah yeah, that’s the reason why I got into bodybuilding uh Yeah uh who on the gym uh saw me and saw how big I was and He tried for like four or 5 days then get me the do bodybuilding and uh I always told him no and he finally hit me with this free membership to the gym as you hated that show coming up, it’s uh it’s about three months, about three or four months away and I gotta teach you how to pole and everything, get this three membership, All you gotta do is just do this show and that show with Mr Texas and I’m like oh man you probably should have led with the free membership ship. I probably I probably said yeah the body building a long time ago and uh I remember doing that show and and uh it was like the most fun I’ve ever had, you know being on my stage and I’m like okay this bodybuilding thing, this is a lot of fun and they have a free membership to do it too, this is probably one of the greatest things ever happened to me, so yeah, that’s what that was all about.
Do you remember being nervous being the first competition? No, no, no, I wasn’t nervous because I was having so much fun and enjoying myself up on stage, so, you know, and I had pretty much worked real hard on that diet and, you know, train to get ready for it. So it was time to have a little fun, you know? I had never done nothing like that in my life before, so I said to myself, I’m gonna enjoy myself, I’m not nervous, I’m not scared. This is gonna be a lot of fun for me, because I worked too hard to get here to come here, you know, and to do this, so I’m gonna I’m gonna have fun and enjoy myself, and that’s exactly what I did. So, there was never any time, is it down as one of your had no significant moments in your career, given it was the first one. Yeah, yeah, it’s probably it’s probably up there, but not as up there as winning my first Mr. Olympia though, it’s nothing compared to that, nothing ever will compare to that, that was a moment in time that will never ever be produced again.
Thought of again, duplicated again, or compare to anything again. There’s one principle that I wanted to pick up on, which I haven’t heard anyone else asked you about and that is once you had one you went to go on and you won many more after your first one. Like we covered your reason for improving was because you didn’t want other people to catch you and there is a something in business and maybe in bodybuilding as well, where if you win, you’ve achieved your goal and you’re not as hungry as you once were, because you’ve achieved what you were trying to achieve, but you went the other way, you were like, well I’m going to keep getting better and better. And the question is around why why did you want to continue winning after you won Mr. Olympia because I had so much fun winning the first one and uh it was such a big moment in life for me, you know, to win something so big and so monumental and so uh well what can I say, self deserving, you know, because of all the hard work and dedication that went in and winning that first one, that uh I just couldn’t see you know doing that again and not winning again because you know, I had worked so hard to get there and so hard to win that, that you know, I wanted to win it over and over and as many times as possible because all the hard working dedication that went into it and of course, you know, I would enjoy, I was enjoying, you know, the perks that came along with the title also, that was the most important reason why the money.
So what would you say to someone who worked for? I don’t know, let’s say 20 years and they sold their business and they’re depressed so they’ve achieved everything they want and now they’re no longer who they previously were. What would you say to that person? Oh, I had to say to them that they don’t know how lucky they are and how fortunate they are because to work for so long and be to still sell something and make a prosthetic. Uh don’t get no better than that. Don’t get no better than that. That’s what you pretty much set out. Hopefully that’s what you said I do in the first place. You know, uh if you didn’t then uh you you went about it the wrong way. That’s all I can say. You went about it the wrong way. We we talked about the first win 1st Olympia win.
And it’s one of those big moments where it’s the, you know, almost collapsing on stage after you after you won. I’ve heard you say that you you don’t remember much after it. But the question is what I remember about those, those moments before and after. What do you remember? Well, I don’t remember too much of nothing after I won. I I didn’t remember anything until uh my girlfriend came on stage and help me up. That’s when, you know, my memory came back to me pretty much. But I guess I just didn’t such an emotional state, you know, it’s almost like you kind of faint, you know, you kind of lose consciousness for a minute or two or three or four or whether I have a long, I was down there. It’s kind of, it’s kind of like I lost consciousness for a minute there and uh and I like I said I didn’t come to until I was hipped up, got back on my feet, but as long as I was off my feet, I was out of it.
I was totally out and I guess a week at the same time, that’s that’s such a thing, well ahead. Because that’s what happened to me the documentary. There’s this one interesting thing I want to ask you about and it is they make it look like when you went and asked Kevin for help and he told you about the tip of the vodka tip. Um It’s sort of like did did some of the people, your colleagues did they help themselves out of money in a way in in the Olympia competition. And you know, my opinion is that you were going to win eventually just because of the fact that you’re talented and your work ethic, but at the same time, they could have delayed it a little bit by maybe keeping it more secretive and your thoughts basically on helping your competitors. Any thoughts that, uh, I didn’t really help them.
They help me because yeah, yeah, yeah. The, you know, that, that this way, you know, some people are, I guess that this probably has a lot of the way to do what they do with how they were raised, I think, you know, at the time that we came up, you know, that’s just the way we were raised, you know, to help each other out because, you know, I would have done the same thing had it been them coming to me? So I think jane, you know, in the era that we were born in, in the era that we were raised, that’s just the way it was, you know, back in those days. So there’s more of an emphasis on character than the outcome of the competition. Is that fair? Exactly, exactly. That’s what it that is it. That is it for sure. Well, I’ve got a um, I mean, my personal feeling is that you’ve already provided this in the episode.
So we could kind of cycle back and go over it. But I wanted to ask for a speech from you on, if you could speak directly to someone who is trying to achieve their dreams at the moment, they’re struggling. What would Ronnie say to that person who is in the place where you were, where you were trying the best you could, but you were struggling. What would you say? Well, I’d uh off look my what, 56 principles for success, pretty much what I’ve already went over, you gotta have dedication, you gotta be motivated, you gotta have some passion, most definitely gotta sacrifice one of the most important things you gotta do is sacrifice, you most definitely gotta have faith, and on top of everything, if you persevere, you’re gonna always, always come out on top, and you’re gonna always be successful if you persevere through it all, because that is, that is most definitely the key, Because had I quit in 1997, like I did in my mind for about two minutes, three minutes, I wouldn’t have persevered and I wouldn’t have been Mr. Olympia that next year, and I wouldn’t have never had this success that I have had today, so that’s what I would most definitely tell someone about achieving goals and accomplishing goals and being successful in life.
Thank you for that. What do you want your legacy to be? Uh that uh what you uh said uh when you uh first introduced me worked hard at, it was one of one of the best at it, and one of the greatest at it, pretty much because I worked extremely hard, if I have to say, so myself, I worked so hard that I can’t believe how hard I work sometimes, especially at this age, I’m getting on up there and and time has really passed me by, and uh it’s kind of hard to believe I live this long because it really hadn’t seen that long to me, 58 years can go by like almost in a blink of an eye now at least it has me.
Well I’ll tell you, it seemed like just what, two or three years ago I was winning you know the Olympia But in actuality that was about 20 years ago, 20 something years ago actually won the first one in 98. You know that was like 22 years ago now man, Time flies. It really and truly does well you’ve been keeping busy with your business if I’m not mistaken. And as far as I’m no one has actually asked you about the story of your business. So you know when when does that start and how how does that look for you when you first start your business? Well we started out pretty good to be honest with you uh Our first year, you know we did about about four million in sales. So I started in 2011 and I started it uh I didn’t I didn’t I didn’t I didn’t sell in the us for a couple of years because bodybuilding is real big internationally.
So we started international over in Europe and slowly worked our way here to the US about two years later, two or three years later and uh we’re steadily building it each and every single day now we just recently got into G. N. C. So uh we are working on like Walmart Target right now as we speak and some of the other vitamin stores to uh so you know we we steadily steady building it up each and every single day now slowly but surely slowly and surely. What would you say the biggest challenge of your business has been uh probably getting in stores like G. N. C. You know Walmart Target, all of all the other all the other vitamin stores out there.
That that’s that’s that’s the hardest thing to do Uh because it’s been a long time now. It’s we’ve been it’s been 11 years now and uh we’re still grinding trying to get into all those places and uh we’re getting there real slow but we’re getting there though, that’s all that matters. We’re getting there maybe your biggest wins. Uh probably G. N. C. Then uh we got amazon and uh now we are working on Walmart Target. So I I think the biggest win will be once we hit Walmart and Target in those those major changes like that. Okay well I think a lot of people who have seen your story have watched the documentary on Netflix, what do you think of it? Uh It kind of really good I mean it was like that was 2017 so that was like five years ago.
So I mean it’s probably getting kind of old now probably time to do another one, an update to that one, cause that was so long ago now, but it did come out pretty good and uh when it first came out, you know, it was pretty big at the time. I mean real big. I had some major success going on when it first came out. You know, the company grew, I grew got bigger, got more notoriety. So like I said, uh it’s probably time to do another one like that. That one is out of date. The kids have got so much bigger now, so much bigger. Well, I’ve been waiting and no one has approached me about creating a song about me. So I’m just wondering, you know, how does that happen? How do you get a song dedicated to you? Oh, I don’t have that yet. I’m I’m working, I’m working on that too. Maybe, maybe one day, you know, I mean that was, that was something did uh I think we did that one song about about a year ago that uh we, you know, we, we did it ourselves though.
It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t their idea was our idea. So we got to the, to the stage where it was somebody else’s idea yet, go on repeat for me. I put it on repeat after watching the documentary. So it was a successful, best song for sure. Hell yeah. Uh Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I ain’t got that for yet, but hopefully one day I’ll get there with my where there I did not mind. Ronnie, have you got any closing thoughts for us today? No, because it’d just be repetitive. Some of my thoughts, I’ve already said, what, two or three times already, so mine are still the same, you know? But I do get asked this question a lot, how do I go about getting into body building and learning about nutrition and working out.
I always tell people well the easiest way to do that is the way I did it. I had a mentor, I had a trainer and I had a nutritionist that taught me all this stuff, because I didn’t know anything about bodybuilding when I got into it. I didn’t know anything about nutrition when I got into it. I had people that taught me all of this stuff, so I always try to tell people, just find somebody who is very knowledgeable about training, very knowledge about nutrition and learn as much as you possibly can from them and take it from there. Okay, thank you for being a great guest today. If people want to follow you or buy one of your products, where do they go? I got my website ronniecoleman.net Instagram, ronniecoleman8, you can pretty much get everything there for sure. Okay. Ronnie, thank you very much. Oh no problem, pleasure’s been all mine. Thank you for having me like I said.