E 36 Ron White: How to Master your Memory

On this episode of The Masimo Show, Rod sits down with two-time memory champion, Ron White, as they discuss how to mastery your memory.

Ron is best known for winning the USA Memory Championship in 2009 and 2010 and held the record for the fastest to memorize a deck of shuffled cards in only 1 minute and 27 seconds. But Ron isn’t interested in showing off how great his memory is, he is on a quest to help others have trained memories as well. 

Ron recalls that he was a good student and definitely an introvert growing up.  Like so many others, he and his lifelong friend Brian made the decision to join the military after 9/11 but before they were soldiers Ron had had his fair share of real-world experience. 

At 18, Brian asked Ron if he wanted a job working as a telemarketer for a chimney cleaning business.  In his first two weeks, he made a call to a guy who said “I do not want my chimney cleaned, but you are a great telemarketer - will you come work for me? I sell memory seminars and I will pay you more than you are making.” Ron worked for him for a year and then started his own company and was in the business for 8 or 9 years. 

Needless to say, If you ask Ron, he will tell you that if he’d known then what he knows now about what it takes to start a business, he wouldn’t have done it. “It was so much harder than going down to the courthouse, registering a company name, taking that paper to the back to set up an account” he recalls. He never anticipated going broke, living in his car, waking up and owing IRS $150K, and having $150 in his bank account.  

“When I was 24 years old, I thought I was a Rockafeller,” Ron said. “I was telling a guy I met in a bar that I made 20k this month and I am only 24. The guy listened and then shared he was a multi-millionaire, owned restaurants across the country, and friends with higher-ups in Microsoft.” Unfortunately, that turned out to be a lie. This guy was a high-level con artist but it was too late, Ron had given him control to run his business because he had no confidence in himself. Ron gave him total control of the business and his bank account and the next thing he knew, the guy took his money and left. After that Ron learned to trust himself. 

In the late 90s, Ron contacted Billy Burdon, a competitor who owned a company called Memory Masters.  He was 25, had been in the business for 6 years, and was asking for advice.  The biggest piece of advice Billy gave him was to create a cassette program with a call to action for people to purchase at the end of speeches. He created a cassette course in 1998 and that opened up so many doors. Duplicating himself and having a product changed his business and his mindset. 

Like so many other patriots, Ron and his lifelong friend Brian made the decision to join the military after 9/11.  Brian joined the Army and Ron joined the Navy where he served for 8 years as a reservist.  Brian still was a high school teacher and Ron was a memory expert. In 2005 Brian was deployed to Afghanistan and came back, and in 2007, Ron was deployed to Afghanistan. They both retired from the military in 2010.  

During his time in Afghanistan Ron was looking at a website and saw a news article about a memory tournament. He realized that in his speeches he was referring to himself as of the experts in the world but he had done nothing to prove that. Tournaments started in 2005.  “I needed to compete with the guys that were winning the memory tournaments and win or take out from my bio,” he recalls.  In 2008, he competed in his first tournament. He had been back from Afghanistan for about 8 weeks and came in 4th place. He resolved to train much more seriously for the next one—2009 would be his year, and it was. As was 2010. 

Never Forget and Patriotism

“After breaking records, I was thinking what is next?” Ron says.  “And then someone said how long would it take you to memorize the Vietnam wall?”  Ron thought, “I served In Afghanistan, why not do those who served in Afghanistan instead?” As a tribute to the fallen, Ron has memorized the names of more than 2,300 American service members killed in Afghanistan. He travels the USA writing the names on a 52-foot long wall from memory. It took 10 months to memorize the 7,000+ words.

Ron encourages listeners to look into getting their “black belt in memory” with his courses!