When we bring guests onto the #WeGotGoals podcast, we know they aren't just inspiring individuals because of what they've accomplished, but because they have a unique perspective on goal setting that we can't wait to unpack.

Lee Kemp, seven-time wrestling national champion with three gold medals in the World Championships, four in the Wrestling World Cup and two in the Pan-American Championships, might just have the most fascinating outlook on setting goals we've ever had the privilege of sharing on the podcast.

In 1980, Kemp was headed to the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow when he heard the news on television: President Carter announced America's boycott of the Olympics. This news, which may have sounded like a disappointment to avid sports fans at home, changed the course of Kemp's life forever.

"That was going to be the launching pad for my success," he told me during our interview. "Well, that launching pad wasn't there. That flight had took off and I wasn't on it."

Kemp is one of the most decorated athletes we've interviewed, but this defining moment in his career, which he describes as akin to a death in the family, propelled us into a deeper conversation about setting goals - how you respond when the one thing you're fighting for doesn't come to fruition.

Although many of us don't face literal Olympic-size disappointments, Kemp's story is relatable to every up and down we experience in our careers, relationships, dreams and goals.

"Sometimes life throws you something that you can't really understand, like a death, like a sickness, but you still have to, to move on," he says.

That's just what Kemp did. Two phrases that Kemp's role model and fellow wrestler told him in a high school wrestling camp fueled his fire throughout his wrestling career: "anyone can be beaten" and "anyone could be a champion." He took those two pieces of advice to heart at this inflection point in his career and created a fresh pathway to becoming a champion, even if his view of what "champion" meant changed.

"I went to graduate school ... I got an MBA and I went to work in New York City in marketing and start[ed] to focus on just developing other skills."

Kemp describes owning his own car dealership for 14 years like being in the ring.

"I felt like I was in a wrestling match every day trying to tackle all the things you tackle [owning a business]."

Although Kemp is grateful that wrestling made its way back into his life - he coached at the 2008 Olympics and now helps out coaching his son - he recognizes the lessons he was forced to learn may be more valuable for life than what any Olympic victory could have done for him.

"I'm kind of almost glad that things didn't go the way I thought, because I would have just been very satisfied in all my success in wrestling ... I wouldn't have [had] to really venture out to gain other skills to learn how to do other things."

Kemp's unique perspective in the professional, corporate world and as a professional athlete allowed him to see that across every industry, there are days when you have to dig deep, pull yourself together and make it through something tough.

"I realize is that every industry and discipline - sports, business, anything - there is this overwhelming drive on how can we be successful no matter what discipline that we're in," as Kemp puts it.

The 1980 Olympics were, of course, a disappointment and an unfair turn of events for Kemp. But his story of resilience is far more impactful, far more resounding, to the rest of the world than any gold medal.

Listen to how this Olympic athlete's goal setting mindset changed based on one life event, and how he's taken success into his own hands for the present and the future. And if you like what you hear, subscribe where ever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts.

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Transcript:

JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatlife.com. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen, and with me you have Kristen Geil and Maggie Umberger.

KG: Hi Jeana.

MU: Hi Jeana.

JAC: Hi Ladies. How are you?

MU: Doing well

JAC: And Maggie, you interviewed Lee Kemp this week, right?

MU: I did, I interviewed Lee Kemp. He's a world champion wrestler who has a story unlike any we've ever heard from an athlete before, and it was not only eye opening, but really inspiring to talk to him this week.

KG: One of the things with Lee is, unlike every other guest that we've had here on aSweatlife where we focus on goals that they've achieved. But with Lee the conversation, always has to include a goal that he actually missed out on, not through any fault of his own. Can you give the reader a little background of what goal he had to miss, not because of anything that he did, and maybe how that's still affecting him today?

MU: Lee is an incredibly decorated athlete. He has won so many titles as a world champion wrestler and so he has so many accomplishments that he can speak to and that are really inspiring to hear as someone who would be a guest on our, on our podcast anyway. But the main story that we ended up talking about is one that was defining for him because it was a goal he missed out on. He did not get to go to the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the US boycott. And that was a goal for him and just hearing him outline it from his perspective of being such a world-class athlete and having the chance to go, to compete at an Olympic level and he didn't get to go and it wasn't his fault and so the aftermath of that was what we ended up talking about as a story of resilience, a story of finding a new path to success when what you thought was going to be your launching pad and envisioning some goal, having to rewrite the script and find success in another way.

JAC: And to hear Lee speak—it’s sort of interesting because this is such a defining moment for him and it is a defining topic when he speaks to young athletes when he speaks to athletes who are adult age. Maggie, do you think, do you get the sense from him that he ever got over it?

MU: I'm not sure that he did and I don't even know how I would either, like putting myself in those shoes to be at that level of athleticism and be deprived of the opportunity to compete is a huge loss, and he talks about it as such as a loss for him because he never—it wasn't like he competed and lost the Games, he just never got the chance to go. And so I don't think he's gotten over it, but where he's pivoted and the things he's done since then have truly proven that he doesn't take no for an answer and that he's going to write his own success story no matter what, and I think that was the most inspiring piece of this talk. And so hearing that he went to grad school, hearing that he started his own business and that now he helps coach his son in wrestling. He's been to the 2008 Olympics as a coach and he's written a book. He will have a movie produced about him. There are so many avenues that he can still say are success stories for him. But I think the biggest takeaway really isn't even in a tangible goal, but it's the way that you have to respond to failure. And we all in our lives deal with that on a small scale and on a huge scale. We don't always talk about the things that go wrong. We talk about the big success stories and just looking at that as holding it up as this amazing accomplishment. And sometimes it's those moments of falling down that are way more defining and way more empowering to an individual. And so that was what I was so grateful to talk to Lee about so openly.

JAC: And it sounds like he learned a lot from that. And so did you. So here is Maggie with Lee Kemp.

MU: So I'm here today on the #WeGotGoals podcast with Lee Kemp, and Lee, I'm going to try to say all your titles, but I might get it wrong, so please correct me if I am, but you're a seven-time national champion who won three gold medals in the World Championships and four in the World Cup of Wrestling as well as two in the Pan American Games. So you're a champion wrestler.

LK: Yes, I got that down.

MU: So how did you find that sport and when did you realize that you might have the potential to be very good at it?

LK: You know, that's a good question because I started out playing basketball, you know, in seventh and eighth grade and I started wrestling really late by today's standards. You know, most athletes or even people that are good at anything, you know, they start when they're six, seven, you know, four or five if, if, whatever, you know, whatever sport, gymnastics, swimming, wrestling. But I started only in ninth grade. Prior to that, I played basketball and the reason why I got into wrestling because I wasn't very good at basketball and I made a good choice. I didn't grow, didn't get any taller, and maybe I wasn't, uh, I just wasn't very good. And so I found wrestling through some friends in high school who were wrestlers and the high school gym coach, he was the wrestling coach, so he was recruiting people to come out for the wrestling team. And back then we had wrestling in gym class. I don't think they do that anymore. I got in and the one lure that got me in is that the coach needed 138-pounder and I weighed 138. So he threw me out there right away on the freshman team. So that's how I got started.

MU: The magic number 138. So usually on #WeGotGoals, we ask two big questions, one of them being, what's a big goal that you accomplished and how did you get there? Your story is very interesting because at the point where you earned your sp