In 1981 no one outside her hometown of Fairmont, West Virginia, even knew her name. By the summer of 1984 she was the most famous girl in America – possibly in the world. Her guts-to-glory story still sends chills down the spine and deserves retelling. Its inspirational message has become a public domain classic.

And what about the girl-next-door who could be your sister, cousin, best friend – Mary Lou Retton? The famous grin says it all. Though many might assume that success is a constant downhill ride with all the bumps smoothed out and no hard knocks in the engine, that’s far from reality.

Although Mary Lou had gone full bore for two solid years getting ready to face her long shot at Olympic gold, she had no time to savor the moment after she won. Whisked to L.A. for talk show appearances twice in one week, her trip back home more a triumphal march than a restful visit to bask in the warmth of family love, Mary Lou found her life irrevocably altered and there was nothing she could do but accept the inevitable. She belonged to the world now, so she might as well serve its needs.

And that’s exactly what this 24-year-old diminutive package of motivational dynamite has done.

Rather than dwell on past glories that she can’t hope to recapture, she uses them as teaching tools to spur others on to achieving their potential – whatever it might be.*

“I try to look at every situation with a positive attitude,” Retton explains. “I don’t go into situations thinking maybe or probably. I go into it thinking I’m going to do it.” Although she admits that it’s difficult to teach that determination, Retton also finds ways to help people relate to how she found the determination to face almost insurmountable odds. “I think you’ve gotta have that determination, that will, that desire to set a goal within you. I tell people you’ve got to take risks. You’ve got to ask questions. Only a question that isn’t asked is a stupid question. All somebody can say is `No.’ Then you try again. If I’d quit gymnastics every time I fell off beam, I’d never have made it to the Olympics. Never. I tell people you have to seize that moment. When you have a chance to make that sale or win a competition, you have to take that chance.”

No risk, no possibility. But along with risk, there’s pain. In Retton’s determination to live her dream out to its fullest, she gave up everything a young girl treasures. Family life, chatting on the phone, school, dating, proms, homecoming, free time, lifelong friends and the security of staying in your own house, in your hometown, with your own family.

“I spent my whole life preparing for the Olympics. You must prepare for anything you want to accomplish,” Retton admits. “My coach, Bela, would have us physically prepared. We would do routines and routines, over and over. It was very repetitive in workouts but we were so ready physically that mentally we were 100 percent confident.”

That confidence doesn’t just waltz into your life. Nothing replaces skill. On sales calls, the prepared professional knows what’s coming, what the objections might be, when to listen and when to speak. The prepared professional never walks into a prospect or customer’s office without all the facts, figures, product information, competitive data and the skill to open, present, and close. To do any less – to rely on flash and fast talk – is to ask for defeat before the starting gun goes off. Even if it’s your very first sale, prepare, prepare and prepare again.

“Salespeople who have never made a sale have the best advantage in the world,” declares Retton. “At my first big international meet, I was an alternate. One of our American gymnasts got hurt. And my coach came to me that night and told me that I had to compete the next morning. There were a lot of reasons for me to be nervous. This was my first meet ever to compete against the Russians, Rumanians and Germans. But, I reasoned, there’s always going to be that first time. If I messed up, who would notice? I was a last-minute substitute and these people had no idea who I was. But if I did well, and took advantage of the situation and did the best job that I possibly could, it would open huge doors. So, for rookies to really make that break they’ve got to seize that moment.”

Special moments come and go, but professionals can always depend on competition to drive their performance. Without competition, we all would become mediocre. Competition keeps you going one step further and that’s the only way to get ahead.

“Competition is wonderful,” says Mary Lou. “It only makes you better. I remember if I slacked off a little in the gym, I wouldn’t be the best because we had such talented students.”

Today, looking at the steady gaze and bright, ready grin, it’s easy to forget that just beneath the surface, Mary Lou Retton is one resolute lady. “In my athletic career I learned discipline. Bela taught us never go into something 50 percent or halfway. When we were working out and doing routines in the gym, when we were very tired and very sore, we had to pretend that we were at the Olympics and give it 110 percent. So I try to do that still. Every speech I give, every appearance I do, I’m trying to motivate them and to make it personal.”

Perhaps salespeople need to know what turns up their heat and makes them want to go for the glory. If it’s sports videos, watch them. If it’s training films, get some. If it’s actual body contact sports, join a team. Whatever makes you grab for the brass ring, you have to know you’re worth it, that you want it, and how you can motivate yourself to get it.

Retton made her name a household word at a particular time in history. As she tells it, “I think people are very proud when the Olympics come around. That’s something that makes the Olympics so special. You’re not just representing a high school or university or even a city with some of the pro teams. You’re representing a whole country. I remember in L.A. the whole city was wearing red, white and blue. It was U.S.A. everywhere, flags waving. Part of my success in ’84 was that I was the first American ever to win a gold medal in the all-around in gymnastics. I looked at my idols and they either came from the Soviet Union, Rumania or Germany…and finally someone who was born, raised and trained in the United States showed that we could do it, too. I think it opened a lot of people’s eyes.”

Retton’s journey to immortality was a one in a billion shot. A star lit up in her heaven for a fraction of an instant. When you think about it, she trained for nine grueling years, two with arguably the best and most demanding women’s gymnastics coach in the world, for four seconds of performance on one event that clinched the gold for her by five one-hundredths of a point.

Does she have a weakness? “Sure,” she says. “I’m very emotional and I have a tendency to talk a little too much. I’m a very sensitive person. If there are a thousand articles that come out about me that are positive, and one is negative, that hurts me and I dwell on it and I shouldn’t. I have to teach myself – and it’s a lesson everyone needs to learn – that you cannot please everybody and not everyone is going to like you. And not everyone is going to agree with what you have to say or with what you believe in.”

Taking her fame and fortune in stride, Retton shows the champion within by putting her fate in the hands of a higher authority.

“I feel that God has a plan for me. No one could have written my story better than the reality. Peaking at the right time; the Olympics falling right here in America; coming down to the last event where I was ending on my strongest event – vault; and having to score a perfect 10 and doing it. I’m a very fortunate young lady.”

Before hard work, a positive attitude and an expectation that success will come your way, you must define what success means to you. For Retton it’s having a goal and then “Doing everything possible to make that goal come true. Seeing your way through adversity, going through pain, sacrificing a whole lot, and finally achieving that goal. That is my definition.”

Whether success means being an Olympic champion, or making a sale, the sacrifice is an absolutely necessary part. “I think it’s sweeter when you have made sacrifices for it because when you are sacrificing – and in my case it was literally my childhood – well it was hard at the time, but look what I’ve accomplished,” Retton says.

“When I was seven years old and I had that dream, I remember watching Nadia (Comaneci) in ’76 and saying I’m going to be in the Olympics. That became the most important thing in my life. I’m very lucky in a way because I really don’t have to work for the rest of my life. I want to because I’m a very energized person and I want to do things in my life. I’ve just turned the system around. Instead of playing through my childhood and then going out and working as an adult, I worked through my childhood and now, if I want to, I can play. I’m doing a job that I love to do and I feel very lucky to have that opportunity now.”

Turning the system on its head has its advantages, but in sales, we can always strive for more and find a way to accomplish it. It’s one of the attractions of the selling life. People who find no meaning in their work remind Retton of a report she wrote in college.

“I did a poll around the university asking: If you were doing a job what would be the most important thing? a) that you loved the job or b) your salary. Everybody circled that you’ve got to love your job. It was very surprising to me. But when you think about it, if you would get up every day and go to work at something you dread doing, I couldn’t imagine that. For me, success and money are secondary to doing what you love. You’ve got to live with yourself. Your soul is what’s important. If your soul isn’t happy, you’ve got nothing,” Retton explains.

Many salespeople work long hours to try to land accounts that never materialize. How does Retton deal with all the elements that are out of her control that conspire to bring her down?

“Simple,” she says. “You’ve got to take your chances and not be afraid to fail. You have to push yourself, especially when you’re sick or tired or sick and tired of doing what you’re doing. I talk in my speech about comfort zones. We all live our lives in comfort zones, avoiding risky situations, avoiding the potential to fail. It’s real safe for us. But in order to get ahead of your competition, you’ve got to go out of your comfort zone. Now your comfort zone is something that you live your whole day, your whole life in. You go to work and do what has to be done to get by. You’ve got to try to do more. Try that little new thing, that different approach. Get out of your comfort zone and see if it works. It may, it may not, but you’ll never know if you don’t try.

“I think we all know what our comfort zones are. I think everybody has things they’re afraid of and they’ll never conquer that fear unless they just take the step. Teamwork is a very useful tool. You can really help one another to step beyond your limits as individuals and as a team.

“I say that T-E-A-M is an acronym. T for together, E for everyone A for achieves and M for more. A strong team helps everybody individually. A manager who sees a team member in a comfort zone, and sees resistance to getting out of that comfort zone, has an obligation to continue pushing for the good of the team and for the good of the individual. It may take a year or two years. It may take a week or a couple of months. It will be different for each person. But help them to come out of that comfort zone. Show them that it’s OK to step out of their normal bounds.”

And stay true to yourself. “A lot of salespeople think they have to change personality for the person or the company they’re calling on,” she muses. “I think a salesperson should definitely be who he or she is.

“You’ve got to find your own strengths and capitalize on them. My strengths in gymnastics were speed and power. At the time, all the other gymnasts were pretty and balletic and slender and flexible. That was the stereotype before I came onto the scene. But I capitalized on my strengths. You would never see me doing a floor routine to violin music with ballet moves. That wouldn’t have been me. So you’ve got to identify your strengths, develop them and capitalize on them and then use them to your advantage. You’ve got to use what you have even though you may go into a situation where they were looking for something else to begin with. Definitely.”

Play your best card and develop it to its maximum potential. Stress your strengths and make them stronger. The turtle won the race through perseverance. The hare lost through carelessness and ego. The two forces that can help build a success foundation – competition and cooperation – also spur growth.

“I think that positive energy circulates,” Retton says. “If you go into a situation with a lot of energy, a good message and a good product, you’ve got to convince people that they need you and your product, that they want this and that they can’t live without it. I really believe that if you’re completely prepared, you will accomplish that.

“If you go into a sales meeting feeling `Well, I’m not sure,’ or you’re a little shaky, people will sense that, absolutely. Now how can people learn to have that positive attitude? Well, you can tell people how important it is to look at the glass as half full rather than half empty, but they’ve got to want to believe that. Especially today, people seem to be feeling that everything is beyond their control – hopeless. But they forget that what happens in their lives is ultimately in their own hands. I would just tell people: `You personally can make a difference.’ It may be a tiny little part that they have to offer, but I think that each tiny little part makes a whole big lot of difference. But everybody has to try just a little harder, do just a little better, think just a little deeper, work just a little longer.”

After her incredible win at the ’84 games, Retton went on a whirlwind ride through every temptation she had shunned during her training years. Reporters wanting to interview her, corporations wanting to hire her, endorsement offers from every corner of the globe, a red Corvette as a prize, magazine covers, trips to the White House, autograph hounds and a life that no longer had any corner for privacy – all this for a 16-year- old girl from a small, coal mining town in West Virginia.

But it didn’t turn her head for more than an instant. Within a few months after her victory, she was back at the Karolyi gym in Houston to train for the McDonald’s Cup. No gymnast had ever come off an Olympic gold coup and gone on to prepare for another big meet, much less win it. But Mary Lou Retton wasn’t just another gymnast. She was – and is – a very special lady who sticks to her principles and her commitment. She thought about it, trained for it and won.

Being fit to win is a lifelong discipline. “To stay in overall good condition,” she explains, “my husband and I work out in a health club every day. We use stair master, treadmill, bike, and I lift weights. But I don’t work out gymnastically on a daily basis. If we have a show or an exhibition coming up, I’ll go in a month or two in advance of that and start working out. During shows and exhibitions I will do a floor routine because that’s the most fun for people to watch. It’s tough to do. That first week of working out you are so sore. I work out and I think I’m in pretty good shape but that’s nothing like gymnastics shape.”

To create a success circle, Retton suggests starting off with small goals. “Work hard to get your first one then go on to the next. Keep your focus clear. When I was seven my dream was to be in the Olympics but it didn’t become a reality until I was older, until I was good enough to make the team. I began by moving up to class three from class two then moving from class two to class one and then to elite and maybe my next goal was to win the regional competition. And then the nationals and then, of course, the Olympics.

“I think people should set smaller goals for themselves first, achieve those and then move on to bigger and better things. Just because I accomplished my lifetime goal at age 16 doesn’t mean I’m going to stop. I’d like to run some gymnastics camps or have a gymnastics school someday. I want to be a mother someday. I have a whole list of things I’d like to do.”

To make those goals a reality Retton uses techniques that include visualization. “I used a lot of visualization in gymnastics. If I were going on sales calls, I would definitely go through the approach or what the salesperson plans to say before the call. Do it at home. Do it in front of the mirror. Be prepared to take a different tack if things don’t go as expected on the call,” Retton suggests. “Anticipate what you think the prospect will say to you and be prepared for a variety of situations and answers.

“Be prepared to stay flexible in the situation. In your visualization, prepare for all possibilities, even the possibility that the sale might not go well. But assume that it will go well. Always prepare yourself for a perfect 10. When I visualized myself going through a beam routine, I didn’t imagine myself falling. I visualized myself on the beam – perfect. Always picture it perfect. But I would also picture myself on beam, which is not my strongest event, if I was off a little bit – and we’re talking about a quarter of an inch – and if you are off just that little bit it can throw your whole routine off and you could fall – I would visualize how I was going to make myself stay on the beam. I would find myself tucking my stomach in, squeezing my bottom and making sure I was very tight. So always visualize yourself doing the perfect 10 or the best that you possibly can be – which is getting that sale. But also visualize what you can do if something does go wrong. That’s IF.”

Visualize perfection and also visualize correction. Be prepared to save the situation. Stay on your toes. Be alert for danger signals and respond to them immediately. To do even a little better, to raise your sights and your sales, begin with your motivation to succeed.

“First a salesperson has to want to achieve more,” Retton claims. “He may have to stay longer at the office, do more work, sacrifice a little bit more. But if he truly wants it, he’ll get it. I truly believe that. My coach used to tell me: `The harder you work, the luckier you get.’

“I can remember working out. There were probably four to seven girls who would actually be working in Bela’s group. If we had even one negative girl in our group, that would bring the whole group down. One person can really put a big black cloud over you. So I try and surround myself with positive people.”

What do positive people like? “I really think positive people like a challenge,” says Retton. “When things get tough, don’t run as you expected, that’s a challenge. The positive person will approach the situation with the attitude `Here’s an opportunity. I’ll make the most of it.’

“A positive attitude is like a blanket that warms you from inside, that keeps you warm in cold times. When those cold times come, you can rise to the competitive occasion and meet the challenge. For example, during the summer games this year, I’m going to be covering the games for USA TODAY. This paper has a daily circulation of six or seven million. And people ask me: `Have you done this before?’ and I say: `No.’ And they say: `Oh my gosh, aren’t you scared? Aren’t you afraid what people will think?’ Well, no, I’m looking at it as a challenge. I’ve never done it before. I want to try it. I’m excited about it. Let’s give it a try.”

The coach’s crucial role doesn’t escape this seasoned veteran of intense competition. “Although I’m a very motivated person,” Retton says, “my coach also motivated me to reach inside to get that last drop of energy. With all the pressure and the situation the way it was at the Olympics, he really motivated me to accomplish my goals. I can remember him saying to me: `Mary Lou, it’s now or never. I want to see what you can do. The best vault that you can do.’ And that just psyched me up and I said, `All right. I’m gonna do it!’

“A good coach is number one a good motivator. A good coach works with each individual on the team in the way that person needs. Bela knew how to coach me. When I wasn’t doing well in workouts, maybe not making the correction he wanted me to make, he would ignore me. Not so much yell at me but just ignore me. Because he knew that would eat me up. I strove for his attention and discipline. It would make me so mad that I would do what he wanted just to get his attention.

“My teammate, Julianne McNamara – the two of us trained together six months before the Olympics – was a very shy and timid person. Bela would be extremely gentle with her, never yelling, never raising his voice. A good coach or teacher finds those qualities within a person and brings them out and works with those qualities. Bela’s wife, Martha, is as good a coach as Bela but she doesn’t like the limelight or cameras at all. When I went to Karolyi’s I was not very good on beam at all. She really worked with me and turned me around.

“I can honestly say that at the Olympics, balance beam won me my all around title. I knew I could do the other three events, but I also knew that I had to stay on beam. And by gosh when I got there she had me prepared. Her style of coaching was in the quiet preparation and in the repetition – doing it over and over and over. Bela and Martha believe that workouts are just like the competition. We would do full routines, with a mount and a dismount. We did not work just on separate parts of a routine – just a turn or a flip because when you get into the competition, you can’t say: `OK, Judge, watch this little beauty of a flip.’ You do the full routine. And that’s something they really embedded in my mind.

“So, in sales, if you have trouble asking for the order, don’t just practice that. Practice the whole sales call and then ask for the order so it’s part of a whole and not just out of context.

“The work ethic, discipline and determination they taught me at the gym have really carried over. I expect to work hard to achieve anything.”

What keeps her going? “The motivation to succeed should last all your life. Finding something in the job you’re doing that is worthwhile and meaningful to you creates motivation. New challenges keep motivation fresh. So come up with new ideas, develop new accounts, seek out new people and maybe do some cold calling. Reach out to new areas where you haven’t sold before. Be bold. Step out of your comfort zone.”