Need Motivation?: Then Meet Ladue Grad Ben Newman

Ladue Horton Watkins High School has produced a wide variety of professional talent throughout the world.  Ladue has graduated doctors, lawyers, television anchors, singers, professional athletes and the like.

But likely they have not produced a motivational speaker who can turn a room full of sales folks into born-again true believers.

Meet Ben Newman, Ladue class of 1997. This 34 year old, who graduated Michigan State University in 2001, majoring in political science is out to set new standards in the industry. His first job out of college was selling newsprint out of Chicago.

After starting a career in insurance sales, he switched to motivational speaking.

Currently, Newman is traveling nationally and internationally getting sales people to stay on track and to find motivation in their collective lives. He’s already written four books.

Newman credits all of his success to the small but might support team he has assembled. That would be local retired football star Aeneas Williams; motivational speaker John O'Leary; former Navy Seal Bob Gassoff, Jr; Kim Raasch, director of marketing in St. Louis and Dusty Meehan, agent and manager of social media in Denver.

“The team means so much to me. I owe all of my success to them,” he says modestly.

“Motivational speaking has allowed me to see my dream become a reality,” said Newman.

Dad is a prominent local attorney

He is the son of Burt Newman, a prominent local St. Louis attorney. Ben chose not to go that route (the legal profession).

Just this year, he’s spoken in Costa Rica, Toronto and Singapore. He made 75 presentations this year with a goal of doing 85-100 next year. He is determined to become one of the most prominent individuals in motivational speaking world wide.

One of his passions is basketball. He was with the Ladue varsity three years and captained the Rams his senior season. He says he owes a lot to his former coach Todd Basler.

As a way of giving back, he volunteered to work on motivating the 2012-13 Ladue basketball team. He spent a week working with the squad getting them “to give everything they were capable of giving and giving their best,” in his own words. He has worked with the team over a year now.

That must have worked. The Rams went 21-6 and played for the district championship.

Family is very important to Newman

He met his wife Ami, working out at Wellbridge Center in Clayton. “One of my friends challenged me to get her phone number,” he recalled.

Ami has moved up the ladder at Anheuser-Busch the past 15 years. She is Director of Infocell,  a group that does sales analysis for the company. They live in University City and have two children, J. Issac, 5, and Kennedy Rose 3.

This Friday, Newman will be speaking to the entire sales force of the St. Louis Cardinals  Baseball team and some selected executives. The end of the month he will be doing motivational speaking for a variety of Iowa Hawkeye athletes.

He is personal friends with Cardinals Manager Mike Matheny and Cardinals scout Kerry Robinson.

Just 16 years out of high school, Newman has covered a lot of ground professionally. He plans to get a lot more done going forward.

This is a blog Newman wrote about motivating the Ladue Rams basketball team.