Lee Rubin has always been comfortable in front of people. Whether it was teaching Sunday school, speaking at high school banquets or being captain of the Penn State University football team, Rubin was always right at home speaking in front of a crowd.
Rubin, a 1989 graduate of Manalapan High School, took that natural gift and has used it to become a motivational speaker.
“I’m always speaking in front of crowds,” he said. “I enjoy being on stage. It’s where I’m happiest and where I can make more of an impact.”
Rubin, who majored in speech communications and minored in business at Penn State, started out speaking at high school breakfasts and banquets.
He became so good at it (he was regularly asked to return and speak again) that he decided to get paid for it and become a professional. Rubin now provides motivational talks to heads of corporations and sales representatives, and at seminars and conferences for Fortune 500 companies He is also a keynote speaker at awards ceremonies and continues to speak at high school banquets.
In a roundabout way through his motivational speaking, Rubin became a writer. He recently completed his first book, “Win: Simple Insights to Help You Win the Game of Life.”
“It’s exciting,” he said about becoming an author.
Rubin knows a lot about winning, and not just at Penn State. His Manalapan High School football teams won Shore Conference division titles and qualified the state playoffs. He was a guard on Manalapan’s 1988 basketball team that won the school’s only NJSIAA Central Jersey state sectional tournament championship in a monumental upset of No. 1 seed Trenton Central.
The idea for the book came to him in December after he spoke at an All-Shore football breakfast at Fort Monmouth.
“I got an email afterward from a parent asking me if I had anything in writing,” said Rubin, who has been a human resources professional and recruiter for 15 years.
On other occasions, people came up to him after a speech and asked if he had published anything. That started him thinking about writing a book. When he received that email in December, Rubin decided it was time for him to put his message down in writing.
Rubin uses his considerable sports background — he was a three-sport standout at Manalapan in football, basketball and track and field before going on to Penn State where he played safety for Coach Joe Paterno — to help get his message out.
“Sports examples and anecdotes do apply to life,” he said.
The message he tries to convey in his book and speeches is universal no matter the audience, he said, and it applies to all walks of life.
The message is about teamwork, overcoming adversity, not quitting, having goals and pursuing them and all along the way sticking to the fundamentals. His goal is to help everyone reach their full potential and to achieve their goals in life as well as at work.
Rubin divides his book into several categories that he said reflect his philosophy. The categories are Identity, Vision and Goals, Adversity, Leadership and Team Building and Relationships and each category has several chapters.
Along with his own insights, each page has quotes that pertain to the subject from an eclectic mix of individuals ranging from Winston Churchill to Ralph Waldo Emerson to Benjamin Franklin and Martin Luther King Jr., to Proverbs, Tolstoy and Confucius, as well as from coaches such as Joe
Paterno, Tom Landry and
Pat Riley.
Of course, because Rubin is a former Penn State football player, there is one subject that always comes up at his talks,
“The first thing I’m asked is what is it like to play for Joe Paterno,”
Rubin said.
So it was only natural for Rubin to ask Paterno, 84, to write the foreword for his book and his coach was more than pleased to do it.
“He’s still looking pretty good,” Rubin said of the legendary coach. “He’s an amazing man.”
In his foreword, Paterno, who is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame, wrote, “It was a pleasure helping Lee become a better football player. It is a joy to see him now taking the lessons he’s learned along the way and sharing them with others in such a clear and simple way. Lee knows the road to success. You would be wise to listen.”
As an endorsement, that is as good as it can get.
For more information about Lee Rubin or to purchase a copy of the book, go to www.leerubinspeaks.com.