James Lawrence – The Iron Cowboy

Disclaimer: The Transcript Is Auto Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors

 

Intro: 00:00 From ABC News Radio, KIBT 1490 in Southern California, this is BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio, with your host, Tyler Jorgenson.

Tyler: 00:14 Ladies and gentlemen, I want to welcome everybody out to BizNinja Entrepreneurial Radio. We’ve got a really cool guest today. Unlike some of the last guys that have been here, we have James Lawrence, the iron cowboy. James, to a lot of people, some people have heard about you because you’ve got a big following and some people haven’t. Most have not, not enough. I’ll tell you what, not enough people have heard of you and as I’ve gotten to know you a little bit recently. When I mentioned it, I say, have you heard of the iron cowboy? And that people kind of lookup and think and I’m like, you know, you did like 50 Iron Man’s triathlons and everyone starts nodding. And like, oh yeah, I’ve heard of that guy. But even before you did that, I can ask you more about that in a second. You set some world records. What were some of those first big things that you did that kind of started getting used to simplicity?

James: 00:59 I think the first thing I did was, I did a form of fun run and my wife told me I was pathetic. And so that got me some notoriety and some laughs up thanksgiving. But the reality is, is that kind of kick-started my journey and put me on a path that I would’ve never expected. In 2010, I broke a world record for the most though Iron man done in a single year. And that was, uh, 22 events in 30 weeks, which was just for me personally, it was just training grounds for what I really wanted to accomplish was a 30 full official Iron Man’s in one calendar year. And I did 30 events through 11 countries. And then I learned a lot about the sport. I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about the tribe community. And the great news is, I accomplished that and it was awesome. But it left me with this incredibly empty feeling of, I can do more. I want to push myself. I want to learn. I want to grow. I want to challenge myself. And that ultimately led me to the 50 triathlons 50 days, 50 States campaign and that happened in 2015.

Tyler: 01:59 Okay. So not necessarily a natural born, you know, freak of nature athlete. Uh, your wife has, you joined, you know, come out in a fun run. And you’re sucking wind and uh, didn’t impress her. You know, but to say the least. So in order to keep her impressed or get her happy again and impressed by James, you know what, I’m going to start doing triathlons.

James: 02:21 Yeah. Well it was interesting. What she did was she signed me up for a marathon. She said, you know what, your performance was so pathetic in the four miler. I’m going to make you do a marathon. And so she did that and it too was an awful experience. But those are the experiences where we’d grow the most and possibly look inward for answers. And you know, I like to say that I wasn’t going to allow that moment to define me or defeat me because it was, it was humiliating at best. And so I did, I looked inward and I found the sport of triathlon. And, uh, and you could say jumped in with two feet and just found it a new passion that I never knew existed.

Tyler: 03:00 So you go fun run, marathon. And then when was your first triathlon?

James: 03:06 It would have been in 2005. Yeah.

Tyler: 03:09 So out of curiosity, were you decent as a competitive triathlete or were you more, you know, cause when you’re doing 50, 50, 50, that was more not competitive speeds. Right. You’re going for sure at that point. Did you get to where you’re pretty decent in terms of, uh, finishings

James: 03:26 yeah, absolutely. You know, I’ve been doing this sport for a decade, realized I had some natural talent when it came to cycling. I had to teach myself how to swim and, and uh, I got pretty good at running as well and put the three together and it’s triathlon. And you know, I started to win races in my local area. I’ve gone to, uh, half Armour world championships three times. I’ve competed in Kona, which is Ironman world championships. I’ve won a few full iron distance triathlon events. So, yeah, I, I’m not the fastest on the block and every event, but, uh, I love to mix it up. I love to do that. And then I’ve kinda, you know, I enjoy the, the adventure now of it. I’m really, really busy. I’ve got five kids and I do a lot of speaking and I do a lot of these adventure type races and so it just takes a certain sacrifice and commitment to be able to race at a high level for a really long time. And um, I’m not willing to put in that work in order to do that. I’m more in the enjoyment phase of it. I did race for really competitively for a long time. It’s just a different mental kind of grind, a different type of training. And I did that and I had a lot of success doing it and I really loved it. I, I love the glory days of being fast and I’m still fast. I’m still competitive in my age group and I still love to mix it up. I’m super competitive, but like, we’re going to talk about it a little bit later, I hope. But I, I’m doing some really fun, adventurous this year that I’m more excited about than ever over trying to best the next guy. My age group.

Tyler: 04:51 Yeah. I think what it sounds like you’re saying is it gets to a point where, um, winning is fun and winning is great if that’s your goal. But sometimes kind of cliche in hand, the joys and the journey, right. And absolutely answer you’re out. And I love that you are doing a lot of cool adventures and you include your family a lot in a lot of this, which is really neat.

James: 05:12 Yeah, a lot. A lot of people, they hear kind of what I do and they just assume that dude is rich and signal happy and I’m not. I’ve got five kids, you know, we had five kids in six and a half years and right now they’re ages eight to 13 and it’s just crazy time. We’re just busy. But we do, we include them in a lot of that we do. We encourage them to be active in whatever they like to do. I don’t make the blue triathlon right. My oldest daughter does volleyball. And where I was at the all afternoon today. And then my, my second daughter does gymnastics, my third daughter does basketball and my son does gymnastics and my other girl just likes to float around like a ferry in a uniform.

Tyler: 05:52 But they’ll all find their path in their thing. [inaudible] absolutely. Yeah. We’re really similar with our four kids is whatever they want to do as long as they’re being active. Right? Yep. I think we have to talk a little bit about the 50 50 50 because it’s a ridiculous like maybe we should, well that possibly don’t know what an Iron Man yeah actually is. That’s a great way to do it. And then we’ll explain how you stacked them together. So let’s do that.

James: 06:17 Yeah, so an Iron Man distance triathlon, any triathlon, swim bike run and an iron distance is the longest standard of the family and it’s a 2.4 mile swim followed by 112 mile bike ride. And then once you get off your bike, you run the standard marathon, which is 26.2 miles. So all of those put together. It’s 140.6 miles that you have to cover yourself, your own, your own grit and room whale.

Tyler: 06:46 And how long does that typically take? You know, maybe not the fastest guy, but the competitive Ironman athlete.

James: 06:52 Yeah. So your fastest guy does do it in about eight hours. That’s your, your top tier professionals, the peak of their career. And then you have a 17 hour time limit. You’re competitive. Men are going to become anywhere between nine and 11 hours. And then you competitive women anywhere between 10 and 12, the professional women are dipping into the nine low nine hours, which is awesome. But yeah, you know, as you evolve in the sport, guys are like, okay, I want to finish an Ironman. Okay, I want to break 12 hours, I want to break 11 hours, I want to break 10 hours. So those are kind of your benchmarks.

Tyler: 07:26 So some listeners may be thinking, okay, I did 30 minutes on the treadmill the other day. Yep. So, but they’re talking about moving consistently for eight to 17 hours. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so

James: 07:42 it’s no joke. It takes most athletes or individuals that have a desire to do a bucket list Ironman. I mean it takes a good year, possibly two years of prep.

Tyler: 07:53 So they prepped for it and then they go out and uh, a lot of them, like you said, their first goal is just to finish. That means, you know, close 15, 16, 17 hours a work.

James: 08:03 Yeah, I think, I think anybody’s go like I could, we run a coaching team and, and when I have an athlete that is doing an Ironman for the first time, I’m like, dude, let’s make it to the start line healthy. That’s always an accomplishment. And then you know, it’s your first Iron Man. And I, and I tell all my athletes, I say, look, you have one shot at your first Iron Man and your goal should not be to push an incredible pace. It shouldn’t be to try set a land speed record, it’s to go out there and be grateful that you get to do an Iron Man today. You should try to smile your way through the event and thank the volunteers and then have enough energy at the finish line to pump your fist and pound your chest and say that was a good amount of sacrifice and a lot of hard work and I just accomplished something really cool. And then once you do that, if you want to do more than we break it down and we start breaking down the events and shooting for time goals and execution goals and things like that. But your first one should be an experience. And like we alluded to earlier, it truly is about the journey and getting to that start line and then enjoying that moment in that day.

Tyler: 09:02 Awesome. So you struggle on the fun run, you start getting into it and get a little bit, you do 30 events in a year, which is already amazing. But you said it left, you empty and so you went four for it. So let’s first talk about why you felt empty after doing, after setting a world record that’s recognized by the Guinness book and then what is the 50 50 50

James: 09:24 yeah. So, you know, I, I’ve always said I want to find my mental and physical limits and then I want to know what I’m going to do when I reach that limit, whether I’m going to push through that and accomplish more or if I’m going to say, you know what, hang my hat. That’s good. I found my limit. And you know, with all of these we do have a charitable aspect to it, a fundraising campaign. And in 2010 and 12 we were building dams for Africa and I didn’t hit the fundraising mark that I wanted to do. And so there was an empty feeling about the charitable donations. There’s an empty feel about my physical and mental limits. You know, I just had this sinking feeling that there was more than I wasn’t. I hadn’t reached my potential in fundraising and pushing myself to my satisfaction. And so, you know, it’s interesting cause it was right near the end of the campaign in 2012 I had completed 27 of the 30 and I just looked over at my wife and I’m like, I just asked her a question. I was like, I don’t think this is it. Do you think this is it? Her answer was, you know, not right now. And uh, and you know, so I kinda, I kind of bided my time, but I knew that there was more, and I, and I conceptualize the 50 50, 50 which was 50 consecutive Iron Man 50 States. So that would take us 50 days. So 50 Ironmans 50 days, 50 States.

Tyler: 10:39 So just to kind of do some math one, you’re talking about traveling the entire country. So there’s travel time. You’re talking about the average Iron Man taking, you know, someone who’s done what they’re doing probably 12 to 14 hours. I’m curious, how long were those taking you?

James: 10:56 Yeah, it’s interesting. I ended up having to average 12 to 14 hours every single day for 50 consecutive days in order to keep pace in order to give us enough time to get to the next state. If I can humbly say that this is one of the greatest endurance feats that nobody knows about yet. Um, just because there was the massive logistic component to it, there was the physical component to it, there was a mental component to it, there was a fundraising component to it, there was the family aspect to it. There was just so many things and people, it’s interesting cause we, we wrote a book that I’m incredibly excited about because people know the story because they, what people think. They know the story because they know, Oh yeah, the iron cowboy, 50 Iron Man 50 days, 50 States. But that is just the headliner, you know, because there’s so much that went on that took for us to accomplish that. And the blood, the sweat, the tears, the sacrifice, the emotion, the stories that people we met along the way. And what’s really interesting, I love the way that we wrote the book is it’s somewhat of an autobiography and a journey because we flashed back to my path and my journey on how I got to this point. And so it’s actually really cool because not only does it kind of paint the full picture of what we went through on the 50 but it gives people an opportunity to get to know me and my family a little bit better and what it took and what makes us tick. To be able to even conceptualize this and think that it was possible for us to go beyond what everybody said was impossible.

Tyler: 12:24 Yeah, so, so this is crazy, right? You, you achieved this thing that I think most people, you know, I’ve watched your documentary and so even a lot of your sponsors didn’t really think it was going to happen. You know, when it got started, most of them are thinking, Hey, this is great. We like James, we’ll support him. But really like, is this, this is impossible. It’s kind of what I think they were down deep. If they were honest with this, they, there was some comments on that made,

James: 12:50 you know, not even, not even down deep. They were thinking that on the surface they need that. They said, dude, we love you. We’ve loved being involved in your whole journey. We’re not going to tell you how many we think you’re going to make, but the number’s not 50 but we know we’ll get behind what you’re doing. And so it was really, really, it was really, really cool for me and my journey to not only watch the sponsors but the, you know, the forums and the message boards to watch that energy shift from you’re a moron, you can’t do this, you’re, you’re being reckless to maybe he will to becoming supporters and advocates for what I was doing. It was a really humbling experience for me to go through that experience and, you know, be the center and watching that happen was, it was a really neat experience. It was a really hard experience because we took a lot of shots or what we were doing and how we get it. And you know, I just have to realize that, you know, we made the best decisions that we thought at the time and I stand by them 100% cause the journey wouldn’t be what it was without them. And one of the biggest takeaways and things that I’ve learned as you can, don’t ever judge anybody because we don’t know their circumstances, what it feels like to be them going through what they’re going through in that moment. And that was just such an incredible lesson for me to be able to go through life and have experiences and look at people and go, you know what? I really don’t know the full backstory here. I don’t know the emotion. I can’t feel what he’s feeling right now. And so it’s helped me not to be so quick to judge and criticize and to really appreciate and just have a better understanding for other people, what they’re going through and what they’re trying to accomplish.

Tyler: 14:26 I was actually going to move right into that question, kind of like how do you handle like the haters, right? Because the more popular they get and it’s just the bottom line is the more awareness and the more reach that you have, the more influence you have by the very nature of how humans work, people start picking sides at every age. People deal with it in a different way. Like I first learned it in high school, like, okay, when you start like excelling in certain things in high school, we’ll fix sides. And I mean it probably goes all the way to like preschool, but the bottom line is that it happens no matter what point of human life. But the bigger you get, the bigger of a uh, you know, you have in your reach and in your influence, the stronger that polarity gets, especially when you start doing unique and big things. Right. So when you started, you already split up the community with haters, like reason that you guys made some judgment calls that further polarized that audience.

James: 15:20 Yeah. And you know, I love the way that you just put it in how back it starts in the division and whatnot. And I heard it put really brilliantly the other day and now I’m going to butched it and I’ll do the best I can. But basically it said, you know, the way that I look at it is for everyone hater negative person I get, I have 99 others that are advocates, supporters and I’m having an impact on them. Everything. And so what this individual said was, you have a hater that’s amazing. Go get 10 more because that means now you have 990 people that you’re influencing for good. And once you have 10 haters, go get 10 more and get as many haters as you can. Because for me, the balance of haters to people that I’m having a positive impact on is such favored in the positive side that the more haters and whatnot that I get, I love it and thrive on that because that means that’s the bigger, the other part of the equation is bigger and more successful in it and I’m having the impact that I want. And so every time I get a message or a comment or something that is negative or is someone attacking me, I sit down for a second and it sucks and it hurts out. But then I realize that person’s coming from a position of hatred and jealousy and then that means I’m also having a positive impact on the other side. So it’s things that hurts and I hate it because I’m human and I have feelings and emotions. But then once I actually dissect it and realize the magnitude of the opposite side of that coin, I’m like, I take a deep breath and I’m like, okay, dig deeper, grind, let’s go get some more haters.

Tyler: 16:55 Absolutely. And yeah, and you know, we started to use the term polarity, which would imply that it’s an equal balance, but I think you’re right. I think that usually you have, but the people that are the fans are usually, frankly not as vocal as sometimes they’re just enjoying the moment. Right. But the negative people for some reason, just enjoy being loud. I got a weird email the other day that was basically just like, Hey, I was on one of your websites and there was a pop up ad. I didn’t like that. No need to respond. I just wanted to let you know and I’m like, awesome. No, like I love that you don’t, I don’t, you don’t even need to tell me. You don’t even need to respond back. And I just, I’m sorry you didn’t like the website experience my website. Like just don’t come to it anymore. Yeah.

James: 17:38 You know, I had that similar experience. I’ll have someone that’ll just attack me in some way. And I’m like, dude, let me direct you to the unfollow button. It’s like, that is a complete choice that you’re choosing to follow me. I’m not begging you to follow me. You’re a click away from me disappearing out of your life.

Tyler: 17:54 That’s it. That’s easy. I’m not backing you. Yeah. Stand up. Just walk away from the computer. Yes. It’s easy. The internet is not it not, yeah, exactly. It’s not part of your soul. It’s so funny. So yeah. So you hit the 50 50 50 and you have this book coming out. What, like what made you want to turn that story and put it into a book? What made you want to tell the story behind the story and what is that you think? What is the big takeaway that you want people to get when they read your book?

James: 18:21 Yeah, I think what’s interesting and because of what I’ve accomplished now, people don’t know the backstory. They just go due to genetic freak. He’s dispositioned to do this. I can’t do that. He’s completely unrelatable. And as soon as I finished the 50 they were like, you need to go get genetically tested. You’re a freak. And I was like, okay, well let’s go get tested. And the results came back and it was staggering. The overwhelming, I’m white, Canadian and normal and so I may be less than normal, I don’t know. But I certainly didn’t have any type of advantage of any kind. And my story really comes from a very, like I didn’t know how to swim even. And I struggled through a four-mile fun run that I got up off the couch to do. And so, but people don’t, they don’t see that side of the story. Right. And what I did is I stopped listening to what everybody else was saying and I was like, no, this is what I’m capable of and this is what I can do. I just blocked all that out and I went on my own journey. I created my own lane and I started to do me and my passion and, and people don’t know the back story, you know, to the extent that it is, but we, we lost everything like half of the Americans did and we were a struggling family and I had an opportunity to hit the reset button. And so what I want people to get out of this is really, and it’s totally cliche, but we really can do anything we want to. And I, I believe I proved that I went above and beyond what anybody said was possible. Not because I was genetically gifted, but because I went out and I did the work.

James: 19:48 I didn’t expect anything to be handed to me. I went out and I grinded and I worked harder than anybody else did in order to accomplish what I did. And I created my own future. I hope my story gives the guy that’s sitting on the couch or the mum that’s struggling, that everybody has their own version of hard. Everybody, every moment of every day is making decisions. And this is something that my mom said many, many times when I was growing up. And something that I am a huge advocate of is 10% of life is what happens to us. And 90% is the choices and the decisions we get to make with those things. So 10% is just, it is what it is. That’s the, that life dealt you. But you know what? We have a choice and a decision with everything that we do. And you have to decide, nobody’s going to make those decisions for you and no one’s going to do that work for you. You have to and you can go out and create your own future. And so I share my journey, my backstory, and I hope it gets people moving and engaged. And one of the biggest reasons we wrote this was cause I started to get emails. People saying, Hey, you don’t know me, but I watched your journey and I just wanted to thank you. This is what I’ve been able to accomplish because you set that example and trust me, I don’t think I’m perfect and I grind and I have challenges. And I struggle and I failed by, I get back up. And so I wanted to write this book because not a lot of people know about the story. Sure. And to me, I think the story has impact both with women and with men. And I’m middle America. I’ve got five kids and live in a community. I go to church, I am middle America, I had a corporate job. And so my goal with this book is to hopefully impact someone to make a decision and do something different and find their passions again and start living life and creating your own path. But it takes work, conviction, belief, effort, all of those things. And so I hope my journey, how people do see that realize it and go do it.

Tyler: 21:44 Awesome. That was one of the takeaways I really get from your documentary, from watching a lot of your interviews was that everyone has their own hard. Right? And so one of the stories that really was touching for me was how your last few races you had challenged your mom to do. How much of the last few races did she do with you?

James: 22:04 So every single day we’d put on a 5K public to come out and join us. And we donated all that money to charity to combat childhood obesity. And so I challenged my mom to come do the last five K of the last five races with me.

Tyler: 22:19 No, she, before that, she was like super fit and could run marathons, right?

James: 22:23 Yeah. Now my mom has struggled with obesity her entire life and has never run further than a mile. And so it was incredibly challenging. In fact, after every single 5k she did, she said that was the hardest thing that she’d ever done. But then the fallen words that came out of her mouth always impressed me. And she said, can I do it again tomorrow? And I think that’s the attitude that I want people to have. I want you to go do something hard and I want you to challenge yourself. And then I want you to realize that you grew as an individual and you learned lessons and that you should desire to put yourself in challenging situations and embrace the struggle because that’s how we learn and grow. And so when my mom said that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, can I do it tomorrow? I was like, dude, yes. That’s why I love you. And that’s where I got a lot of my grit and mental toughness from was because of that perspective and that drive.

Tyler: 23:13 That’s awesome. So you got the book coming out and we’ll make sure when this gets posted on podcast, we post the link. I believe it’s ironcowboy.book.com definitely be checking that out and tell us about the, I mean you’re not stopping, you’re still doing even, you’re doing amazing things you’ve got, so you’ve talked about your seven big events this year. What are you, what’s going on this year? It’s happened and you’re getting ready for one soon, right?

James: 23:37 Yeah, on Tuesday. Yeah. I’m super excited about this year and I didn’t realize it when I started to plan it, that it was going to be turned out to be this kind of year, but it really has turned out to be an adventure year. And so on Tuesday I’m hopping on a plane with my mountain bike and we’re heading over to Africa. We’re going to climb, we’re going to peddle the entire way from base camp to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at 20,000 feet and be the first people to do a full ascent peddling the hallway and then a really cool, awesome fun descent. So that’s going to be in Africa. We leave in two days. I will be on the mountain for six full days. Just an incredible fun time. We’ve got a film documentary crew coming with us. We’ve got with some really cool stuff with our, with our book launch that’s happening is some of the bonus stuff we’re going to give. We’re filming behind the scenes from all these adventures that we’re doing this year and they’re going to be available when you preorder the book. So that’s kind of cool. And then after I get home from Africa, I’ve got about a month to prepare. I’m headed to Greece. I’ve been invited by the Navy seals to run 235 miles, eight day stage race with some of the baddest AE’s on the planet. I’m most nervous about this race because I have no idea what the seals are going to do with me, but I’m, I’m all in. That’s one of the things I talk about on stage and I talk about going all in and having an experience. And so I’m excited to be challenged and to learn from the Navy seals 235 miles, eight days. And then I’m doing four of the hardest Iron Man’s, they’re called extreme Iron Man, meaning extreme conditions.

James: 25:05 So it’s still the 2.4 swim, the one 12 bike and the 26.2 run, but it’s in freezing water, 50 degrees or under. And then it’s through mountainous biking terrain. And then the run is the equivalent of running from base camp to a high mountain peak, 26 miles of insane elevation gain. And so I’m doing four of them. One is in Scotland, one’s in Switzerland, one’s in Alaska, and then it finishes with the famous Norse man in Norway. Wow. Those are kind of some of the really cool events and adventures that I get to do. Just my way of having fun and challenging myself on a different level. I’m really excited to go to these different countries, learn about the cultures, push myself physically, have a little bit of a different experience. There’s going to be some extreme elements involved. I hate being called and so, so it’s a challenge for me to mentally jump into these cold water and situations and then bike through these. I mean, we’re going to be biking through the Swiss Alps during some, some crazy time. Like I said, Greece is going to be nuts. You have no idea what the Navy seals are going to do. Somebody in 20,000 feet, I’m terrified where there’s going to be no oxygen and so just a wild crazy adventure year and I’m super, super pumped for it.

Tyler: 26:16 Yeah, so let’s, I mean let’s talk on that first one a little bit with Kilimanjaro. So the locals there have a saying when you’re ascending, which is poorly poorly, which is slowly, slowly, which usually doesn’t mean jump on a mountain bike and start pedaling. So you’re kind of shocking that an old adage that they teach people as you’re climbing, like how did you have to not only personally prep but logistically prep, you know, to get them to allow you to do that.

James: 26:41 Yeah, I mean special and that that they’re allowing us to do it. I feel honored that we get to, and I believe I get to see more of the mountain than I usually get to, or if I was going to go to hike it or climate because I get to climb up and come back down and then climb up and come back. I’m not to the top but hitting certain elevations because you do, you have to go slowly. One of the biggest killers on mountain Kilimanjaro is altitude sickness. People die from this. And so we, we believe we’ve put together really safe and intelligent plan in order for us to summit safely because we’re on on bikes. Even though we can travel faster than hiking, the pitch is still so extreme that we’re only going to be going two to four miles an hour, you know, as as we’re climbing. And because our goal is to pedal the entire way and not push or carry our mountain bikes, we may have to spend 45 minutes or an hour on a specific section and continue to challenge it and break that section down so that we can physically paddle the entire section. Yeah, find the right route or just technique. I’m going to have to learn new techniques on the mountain in order to navigate certain portions of this. So I’m not delusional that the challenge is going to be extraordinary and that I’m going to have to work extremely hard. But there’s that real fine balance and thing because I got to work super hard, but there’s not oxygen and so you can’t work really hard. And so there’s going to be, you know, we’ve put a lot of prep into trying to be efficient and, and really bring our heart rate down and a lot of mind power comes into this. That’s part of why I love these types of new challenges. You know, beginning part of the show you talked about, you know, racing for speed and being competitive, right? I moved on to a different type of challenge where I still have to be mentally tough in the training is different and I’m looking for these type of really fun adventures.

Tyler: 28:27 Well, that gives me a little bit more peace of mind that you’re going to be not just sprinting up because yeah, I think, you know, sometimes there is a false confidence, right? That comes with becoming really fit or really capable. Right? Where now he’s speaking, now we’re super superhuman. Now you are super human compared to this guy like me, but you still have,

James: 28:47 remember I’m totally normal,

Tyler: 28:49 but you’ve got to find your limits. Right? And that doesn’t mean find them on like in the ambulance.

James: 28:55 Exactly. No, I have, I’ve got five kids, four beautiful daughters. I have no intention of dying. I want adventure with full intentions on returning home every time. We’re very methodical with our game plans, with safety being first and foremost. Nobody wants to die on the mountain. Nobody wants to die in these cold waters. And they’re very calculated. That’s part of the reason that I’ve been able to be successful in what I do is because I do a lot of little things over a long period of time, and I do them with intent in order to become successful. And so it’s a matter of doing the basics really well and paying attention to the details to make you successful in order to accomplish your goals. Ask me, what’s the one thing you do? And I say, well, let me break down the hundred things that I do in order to accomplish this.

Tyler: 29:45 So I think that’s kind of the big takeaway I’m getting really from everything, right? It’s not only, you know, you want to set goals, you want to go after things that challenge you, but that doesn’t mean you, you know, go with that all without a parachute or without a safety. That means you, you’re methodical and you plan. I think that’s kind of what you’re saying is like people see the tip of the iceberg, but they forget that there’s the entire planning and logistics and coordination and adjustments that have to be made on the fly to push yourself a challenge. Right?

James: 30:12 Yeah. I’m so glad you brought that up because people contact me all the time and say, iron cowboy, I watched your journey and you inspired me and I have zero experience and I’ve thought of this thing that I want to do. I want to do it in four months. Can you tell me how to, you know, some pointers on how to get ready for it and like, Oh, we’ll give you some pointers, but I’m going to be very blunt with you that it took me a decade to get to this point where I could try that. And just the 50 was over two years in planning and preparation just for that 50 day event. And so I said, yeah, I will help you get it and I want you, that’s the reason I did it as so people will set a giant goals and things, but you’ve got to have the appropriate time frame associated with that goal and you have to be able to be willing to sacrifice and do the work. Like a giant goal requires massive amounts of work and dedication and sacrifice. And so yes, set the big goal, but dude, it’s not going to happen four months from now. Right. I appreciate that and I, and I will go out of my way to help you achieve this goal that you want to do, but let’s get a five year game plan here.

Tyler: 31:18 Right. It’s not for you. You just run out one day and never stopped running. Right.

James: 31:23 That that’s a movie. Yeah, for a reason. And I get, I look like Forrest Gump, but this beard has, I didn’t grow this in four months. That’s taken time.

Tyler: 31:37 And so that seems to be a lot of what you know, your central messages is one, you’ve got to push yourself, you’ve got to challenge yourself. You’ve got to find your limits. But that doesn’t mean you are without intent and you’re not doing an intelligent, you’re mapping out your field future, but you’re building your future with intent.

James: 31:54 Absolutely.

Tyler: 31:56 And I think that that is something that we really need right now as a people of the human race because I think so many of us are living reactionary lives where we just wake up cause the alarm clock said to wake up and we start reacting the entire day. We have no intent to build anything because all we do is react to the stimuli around us. And so I think if people can recognize that they can take action and that they can make a choice to set a big goal and to change their life. And I think what you are doing is helping people to be inspired to do that and I think is remarkable. So ironcowboybook.com is where they can learn a lot about that. And then where are you at on Facebook and stuff like that?

James: 32:39 Yeah. Real quick too, we also, we can help you achieve your goals. We run an entire coaching platform and that’s that teamironcowboy.com and we finish to check that out. We can help you achieve a lot of your racing goals if you’re just getting started or wanting to qualify for the world championships. My social media on Instagram is a forward slash iron cowboy James and on Facebook it’s forward slash iron cowboy.

Tyler: 33:02 Awesome. Well thank you for coming out on the show and like massive, you know wishings of success and how fun. Africa’s an amazing place. I promise you will not come back to the same. That’s the goal, isn’t it?

James: 33:15 That is the goal and it’s always an honor to talk with you, Tyler, your complete stud.

Tyler: 33:19 Thanks, man. So whether you are listening on iTunes, whether you are watching on YouTube or whether you were following us on ABC news, KMET, here in Southern California. I just want to reach out across the internet and across the terrestrial planes of radio and say thank you and my BizNinja’s everywhere you’re tuning in, it’s your turn to go out and do something.

Outro: 33:44 Thank you for listening to BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio with Tyler Jorgenson. Please make sure to subscribe so you’re first to hear new interviews and episodes. If you found this podcast to be valuable, please share it with a friend. Don’t forget to visit our online talk show at BizNinja.com to claim your reward for listening to this show.