Mar 6, 2017
Tyler Jorgenson: Ladies and gentlemen I want to welcome everybody out to BizNinja Radio. We have a really cool guest today. We have James Lawrence the Iron Cowboy.
James Lawrence: What's up?
Tyler Jorgenson: James, so a lot of people, some people have heard about you because you've got a big following and some people haven't.
James Lawrence: Most have not.
Tyler Jorgenson: Not enough, I'll tell you what not enough people have heard of you. As I've gotten to know you a little bit recently when I mentioned it I say have you heard of the Iron Cowboy, people kind of look up and think and I'm like he did like fifty Iron man triathlons, and then everyone starts nodding like oh yeah I've heard of the guy. But even before you did that, I'm gonna 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 kinda of started getting you publicity.
James Lawrence: Can we hang on let me tell them what I'm doing then and then we can edit this out.
Tyler Jorgenson: Okay. All right so what was the first thing that you did that got you some notoriety?
James Lawrence: I think the first think I did was I did a four mile fun run and my wife told me I was pathetic and so that got me some notoriety and some laughs at Thanksgiving. Reality is that kind of kick started my journey and put me on a path that I would have never expected. In 2010 I broke a world record for the most half iron mans done in a single year and that was twenty two events in thirty weeks. Which was just for me personally it was just training grounds for what I really wanted to accomplish was thirty full official iron mans in one calendar year, and I did thirty events through eleven countries. I learned a lot about the sport, I learned a lot about myself, I learned a lot about the tri community. The great news is I accomplished that and it was awesome but it left me with incredibly empty feeling of I can do more I wanna push myself, I wanna learn, I wanna grow, I wanna challenge myself. That ultimately led me to the fifty, the iron mans fifty days fifty states campaign and that happened in 2015.
Tyler Jorgenson: Not necessarily a natural born you know freak of nature athlete your wife as you come out in a fun run and your second wind it didn't impress her.
James Lawrence: To say the least.
Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, so in order to keep her impressed or get her happy again and impressed by James, you know what I'm gonna start doing triathlons.
James Lawrence: It was interesting, what she did was she signed me up for a marathon and she said you know what your performance was so pathetic in the fur miler I'm gonna make you do a marathon, so she did that. It to was an awful experience but those are the experiences where we grow the most [crosstalk 00:02:58] and possibly look inward for answers and you know I like to say that I wasn't gonna allow that moment to define me or defeat me because it was humiliating at best and so I did I looked inward and I found the sport of triathlon. You could say I jumped in with two feet and just found it, a new passion that I never knew existed.
Tyler Jorgenson: You start to, you go fun run, marathon and then when was your first triathlon?
James Lawrence: It would have been in 2005.
Tyler Jorgenson: Out of curiosity were you decent as a competitive triathlete or were you more, you know when you're doing fifty fifty fifty that was more not competitive speeds right you're going for more completing it at that point right? Did you get to where you're pretty decent in terms of finishing speed?
James Lawrence: Yeah absolutely. I've been doing this sport for a decade, realized I had some natural talent when I came to cycling. I had to teach myself to swim and I got pretty good at running as well and you put the three together and it's triathlon.
Tyler Jorgenson: Right.
James Lawrence: I started to win races in my local area. I've gone to the half iron man world championships three times, I've completed in Kelona which is iron man world championships, I've won a few full iron distance triathlon events. I'm not the fasted on the block in every event but I love to mix it up I love to do that. Then I've kinda of, I enjoy 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, so it just takes a certain sacrifice and commitment to be able to race at a high level for a really long time. 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 loved 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 gonna talk about it a little bit later I hope, but I'm doing some really fun adventures this year that I'm more excited about then ever, over trying to best the next guy in my age group.
Tyler Jorgenson: I think what it sounds like you're saying is that it gets to a point where winning is fun and winning is great if that's your goal, but it sometimes, cliché in hand, the joy is in the journey right?
James Lawrence: Absolutely.
Tyler Jorgenson: 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 Lawrence: Yeah a lot of people hear what I do and they just assume that dude is rich and single.
Tyler Jorgenson: Right.
James Lawrence: And I'm not I've got five kids, you know we had five kids in six and a half years. Right now their ages eight to fourteen or eight to thirteen and it's just a 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 them do triathlon.
Tyler Jorgenson: Right.
James Lawrence: My oldest daughter does volleyball and I was at the tournament all afternoon today. 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 fairy and a unicorn.
Tyler Jorgenson: But they'll all find their path and their thing.
James Lawrence: Absolutely.
Tyler Jorgenson: We're really similar with our four kids is whatever they want to do as long as their being active.
James Lawrence: Right, yup.
Tyler Jorgenson: Let's, I think we have to talk a little bit about the fifty fifty fifty because it's a ridiculous like feat.
James Lawrence: Maybe we should tell people that possibly don't know what an iron man actually is.
Tyler Jorgenson: That's a great way to do it and then we'll explain how you stack them together, so let's do that.
James Lawrence: So an iron man distance triathlon any triathlon is swim bike run and an iron distance is the longest standard of the family. It's a two point four mile swim, followed by a hundred and twelve mile bike ride, and then once you get off your bike you run the standard marathon which is twenty six point two miles, so all of those put together it's a hundred and forty point six miles that you have to cover by yourself, your own grit and your own will.
Tyler Jorgenson: How long does that typical take, maybe not the fasted guy but the competitive iron man athlete.
James Lawrence: Yeah so your fasted guy does do it in about eight hours. That's your top tier professionals the peak of their career. Then you have a seventeen hour time limit. Your competitive men are gonna be coming anywhere in between nine and eleven hours, and then your competitive women anywhere between ten and twelve. The professional women are dipping into the low nine hours, which is awesome. As you evolve in the sport guys are like k I wanna finfish an iron man, okay I wanna break twelve hours, I wanna break eleven hours, I wanna break ten hours. Those are kinda your bench marks.
Tyler Jorgenson: Some listeners maybe thinking, okay I did thirty minutes on the treadmill the other day.
James Lawrence: Yup.
Tyler Jorgenson: But their talking about moving consistently for eight to seventeen hours.
James Lawrence: Yeah, exactly.
Tyler Jorgenson: And so.
James Lawrence: It's no joke it takes most athletes or individuals that have a desire to do a bucket list iron man, I mean it takes a good year possibly two years of prep.
Tyler Jorgenson: They prep for it and then they go out and a lot of them like you said their first goal's just to finish that means close to fifteen, sixteen, seventeen hours of work.
James Lawrence: Yeah, I think anybody's goal, like we run a coaching team and when I have an athlete that's doing an iron man for the first time I'm like dude let's make it to the start line healthy, that's always an accomplishment. Then, it's your first iron man 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 and 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.
Then once you do that then we break it down and we start breaking down the events and shooting for time goals and execution goals and things like that. 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 and that day.
Tyler Jorgenson: Awesome. You start, you know, you struggle in the fun run, you start getting into a little bit, you do thirty events in a year, which is already amazing, but you said it left you empty and so you went for, let's first talk about why you felt empty after setting a world record that's recognized by the Guinness Book, and then you did, what is the fifty fifty fifty?
James Lawrence: I've always said I wanna find my mental and physical limits and then I wanna know what I'm gonna do when I reach that limit. Whether I'm gonna push through that and accomplish more or if I'm gonna you know say hang my hat that's good I've found my limit. You know with all of these we do a charitable aspect to it, a fundraising campaign and in 2010 and 12 we were building dams for Africa. I didn't hit the fundraising mark that I wanted to do and so there was an empty feeling about the charitable donations, there was an empty feeling about my physical and mental limits. I just had the sinking feeling that there was more, that I wasn't, I haven't reached my potential in fundraising and pushing myself myself to my satisfaction.
It's interesting 'cause it was right near the end of the campaign in 2012 I had completed twenty seven of the thirty 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 not right now, so I kinda bided my time but I knew there was more and I conceptualized the fifty fifty fifty which was fifty consecutive iron mans, fifty states so that would take us fifty days. Fifty iron mans, fifty days, fifty states.
Tyler Jorgenson: Just to kind of do some math 1) 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 whose done what they're doing probably twelve to fourteen hours, I'm curious how long were those taking you?
James Lawrence: Yeah it's interesting, I ended up having to average twelve to fourteen hours every single day for fifty consecutive days in order to keep pace, in order to give us enough time to get to the next state. There's so many, If I can humbly say this is one of the greatest endurance feats that no body knows about yet, just because there was the massive logistic component to it, there was the physical component to it, there was the mental component to it, there was the fundraising component to it, there was the family aspect to it. There was just so many things and people, it's interesting 'cause we wrote a book that I'm incredibly excited about because people know the story because they, well people think they know the story because they know oh yeah the iron cowboy fifty iron mans, fifty days, fifty states, but that is just the headliner, you know, because there's so much that went that took for us to accomplish that and the blood, the sweat, the tears, the sacrifice, the emotions, the stories the people we met along the way.
What's really interesting, I love the way that we wrote the book is it's some what of an autobiography and a journey because we flashed back to my past and my journey on how I got to this point. It's actually really really cool because not only does it kinda paint the whole picture of what we went through on the fifty 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 to go beyond what everybody said was impossible.
Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, so, not only, so this is crazy right you achieved this thing that I think most people, I've watched your documentary, even a lot of your sponsors didn't think it was gonna happen.
James Lawrence: Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson: You know, when it got started most of them were thinking hey this is great we like James we'll support him but really like is this, this isn't possible, is what I think they were down deep if they were honest with us all. There were some comments on that made.
James Lawrence: You know, not even down deep they would think that, on the surface they told me that. They said dude we love you we've loved being involved in your whole journey, we're not gonna tell you how many we think you're gonna make but the number's not fifty, but we'll get behind what you're doing. It was really really cool for my journey to not only watch the sponsor but the forms and the message boards to watch that energy shift from you're a moron you can't do this, you're being reckless, to holy crap maybe he will, to becoming supporters and advocates for what I was doing. It just, it was a really humbling experience for me to go through that experience and be the center and watching that happen was a really neat experience. It was a really hard experience because we took a lot of shots for what we were doing and how we did it. I just have to realize that we made the best decisions that what we thought at that time and I stand by them a hundred percent 'cause the journey wouldn't be what it was without them.
One of the biggest takeaways and things that I've learned is you can't, don't ever judge anybody 'cause we don't know their circumstances what it feels like to be them going through what they're going through in that moment. That was 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 back story here, I don't know the emotion, I can't feel what he's feeling right now. So it's helped me not to be so quick to judge and criticize and to really appreciate and just have a better understanding of other people and what they're going through and what they're trying to accomplish.
Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, I think, I was actually gonna move right into that question, kind of like how do you handle, like the haters right? The more popular they get, and it's just the bottom line the more you are, the more awareness and the more reach that you have the more influence you have by very nature of how humans work people start picking sides and at every age people deal with it at a different way. Like I first learned it in high shool, like okay when you start like excelling in certain things in high school people pick sides. It probably goes all the way to preschool, but the bottom line is it happens no matter what point of human but the bigger you get the bigger of a you know you have in your reach and your influence the stronger that polarity gets, especially when you start doing unique and big things right. When you started you already split up the community with haters likers and [inaudible 00:17:17] you guys made some judgment calls that further polarized that audience.
James Lawrence: Yeah, and you know I love the way you just put it and how back it starts and the division and what not. I heard it put really brilliantly the other day and I'm gonna butcher it and I'll do the best I can. Basically it said, the way that I look at it is for every one hater, negative person that I get I have ninety nine others that are advocate supporter and I'm having an impact on them and everything. What this individual said was you have a hater that's amazing go get ten more because that means now you have nine hundred and ninety people that you're influencing for good, and once you have ten haters go get ten more, 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 a favored in the positive side that the more haters and what not 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, and I'm having the impact that I want.
Every time I get a message or a comment or something that is negative or is someone attacking me I sit down for a send and it sucks and it hurts 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. It stings and it 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 and like I take a deep breath and I'm like okay dig deeper, grind let's go get some more haters.
Tyler Jorgenson: Absolutely, and yeah you know we sometimes 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 the people that are the fans are usually, frankly not as vocal. Sometimes they're just enjoying the moment right? The negative people 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 popup ad I didn't like that, no need to respond I just wanted to let you know. I'm like awesome, I love that you don't even need to tell me, you don't even need to respond back, I'm sorry you didn't like the website experience, my website, just don't come to it anymore.
James Lawrence: That's 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. That is a complete choice, you're choosing to follow me, I'm not begging you to follow me. You're a click away from me disappearing from your life.
Tyler Jorgenson: That's it. That's it.
James Lawrence: It's that easy. I'm not begging you.
Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, stand up just walk away from the computer.
James Lawrence: Yeah it's easy.
Tyler Jorgenson: The internet is not, yeah exactly, it's not part of your soul it's so funny.
James Lawrence: I love it.
Tyler Jorgenson: You hit the fifty fifty fifty and you have this book coming out 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? What is it that people are, that you think what is the big take away that you want people to get when they read your book?
James Lawrence: I think what's interesting and because of what I've accomplished now, people don't know the backstory they just go dudes a genetic freak, he's disappointed to do this, I can't do that, he's completely unrelatable. As soon as I finished the fifty they're like you need to go get genetically tested you're a freak. I was like okay let's go get tested. The results came back and it was staggeringly overwhelming, I'm white, Canadian and normal, I may be less than normal I don't know, but I started didn't have any type of advantage of any kind.
My story really comes from a very like I didn't know how to swim even, I struggled through a four mile fun run that I got up off the couch to do, but people they don't see that side of the story. 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 and I just blocked all that out and I went on my own journey, I created my own lane. I started to do me and my passion and people don't know the backstory you know to the extent that it is but we lost everything, like half of the Americans did and we were a struggling family.
I had an opportunity to hit the reset button and so what I want people to get out of this is really it's totally cliché but wee really can do anything we want to. 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 and I didn't expect anything to be handed to me. I went out and I grind 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 mom that's struggling that everybody has their own version of hard and that we have our, everybody, every moment of everyday is making decision and this is something that my mom said many many times when I was growing up and something I'm a huge advocate of is ten percent of life is what happens to us, and ninety percent is the choices and the decisions that we get to make with those things. Ten percent is just it is what it is, it's the crap that life dealt you but you know what we have a choice and a decision with everything that we do. You have to decide nobody's gonna make those decisions for you and no one's gonna do that work for you. You have to and you can go out and create your own future.
So I share my journey, my backstory and I hope it gets people moving and engaged. 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. Trust me I don't think I'm perfect and I grind and I have challenges, and I struggle, and I fail, but I get back up. I wanted to write this book because not a lot of people know about the story and to me the story has impact both with women and with men. I'm middle America, I've got five kids, I live in a community, I go to church, I am middle America, I had a corporate job. So, my goal with this book is to hopefully impact someone to make a decision to 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. I hope my journey helps people to see that realize it and go do it.
Tyler Jorgenson: Awesome. I, that was one of the takeaways I really got from your documentary, from watching a lot of your interviews was that everyone has their own hard right. One of the stories that was really touching for me was how your last few races you had challenged your mom, how much of the last few races did she do with you?
James Lawrence: Every single day we put on a five K asked the public to come out and join us and we donated all that money to charity to combat childhood obesity. So, I challenged my mom to come do the last five K of the last five races with me.
Tyler Jorgenson: Now she, before that she was like super fit and could run marathons right?
James Lawrence: No my mom has struggled with obesity her entire life and has never run further than a mile. It was incredibly challenging, in fact after every single five K she did she said that was the hardest thing that she'd ever done but then the following words that came out of her mouth always impressed me and she said can I do it again tomorrow. I think that's the attitude that I want people to have, I want you to go do something 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. When my mom said that was the hardest thing I've even 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 Jorgenson: That's awesome. You've got the book coming out we'll make sure when this gets posted on podcast we post the link, I believe it's ironcowboybook.com.
James Lawrence: Yup.
Tyler Jorgenson: Definitely checking that out and tell us about, I mean you're not stopping you're still doing even, you're doing amazing things. You talked about your seven big events this year, what's going on this year, and you're getting ready for one soon right?
James Lawrence: 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 gonna be turn out to be this kind of year, but it really has turned out to be an adventure year. On Tuesday, I'm hopping on a plane with my mountain bike and we're heading over to Africa, and we're gonna climb, we're gonna pedal the entire way from base camp to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at twenty thousand feet and be the first people to do a full assent peddling the whole way. Then a really cool, cool, awesome, fun dissent. That's gonna be in Africa, we leave in two days, we'll be on the mountain four 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 book launch that's happening is some of the bonus stuff we're gonna give, we're filming behind the scenes from all these adventures that we're doing this year and they're gonna be available when you pre order the book, so that's kinda cool.
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 two hundred and thirty five miles, eight days stage race with some of the baddest A's on the planet. I'm most nervous about this race because I have no idea what the seals are gonna do with me but I'm all in. That's one of the things I talk about on stage, I talk about going all in and having an experience, so I'm excited to be challenged and to learn from the navy seals, two hundred and thirty five miles, eight days. Then I'm doing four of the hardest iron mans they're called extreme irons mans meaning extreme conditions. It's still the two point four swim, the one twelve bike and the twenty six point two run, but it's in freezing water fifty 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, so twenty six miles of insane elevation gain. I'm doing four of them. One is in Scotland, one's in Switzerland, one's in Alaska and it finished with the famous Norsman in Norway.
Tyler Jorgenson: Wow.
James Lawrence: 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 gonna be some extreme elements involved. I have being cold and so it's a challenge for me to mentally jump into these cold water situations and then bike through these, I mean we're gonna be biking through the Swiss Alps during some crazy time.
Like I said Greece is gonna nuts you have no idea what the navy seals are gonna do. Summiting twenty thousand feet I'm terrified there's gonna be no oxygen. So, just a wild, crazy, adventure year, I'm super pumped for it.
Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, so let's talk on that first one a little bit with Kilimanjaro. The locals there have a saying there when you're assenting which is polle polle which is slowly slowly, which usually doesn't mean jump on a mountain bike and start peddling. You're kinda shucking that old adage that they teach people as you're climbing. How did you have to, not only personally prep but logistically prep to get you know to get them to allow you to do that?
James Lawrence: It's a special circumstance that they're allowing us to do it and I feel honored that we get to. I believe that I get to see more of the mountain than I usually get to or if I was going to hike it or climb it because I get to climb up and come down and climb up and come back down not to the top but hitting certain elevations because you do you have to go slowly. One of the biggest killers on Mount Kilimanjaro is altitude sickness, people die from this. We believe we've put together really safe and intelligent plan in order for us to summit safely because we're on bikes. Even though we can travel faster on hiking the pitch is still so extreme that we're only gonna be going two to four mile an hour as we're climbing, because our goal is to pedal the entire way and not push or carry our mountain bikes we may have to spend forty five minutes or an hour on a specific section and continue to challenge and break the section down so that we can physically pedal the entire section, yeah find the right route or just technique. I'm gonna have to learn new techniques on the mountains in order to navigate certain potions of this.
I'm not delusional that the challenge is gonna be extraordinary and that I'm gonna have to work extremely hard but there's that real fine balancing thing I gotta work super hard but there's not oxygen so how, you can't work really hard there's gonna be, we've put a lot of prep into trying to be efficient and really our bring our heart rate down. A lot of mind power comes into this, that's part of why I love these new challenges, you know beginning part of the show you talked about racing for speed and being competitive, I moved on to a different type of challenge where I still have to be mentally tough and the training is different, it's just I'm looking for these type of really fun adventures.
Tyler Jorgenson: Well that gives me a little bit more piece of mind that you're gonna be not just sprinting up because I think sometimes there is a false confidence that comes with becoming really fit or really capable right, where now we're thinking that we're superhuman. Now you are superhuman compared to a guy like me.
James Lawrence: Remember I'm totally normal.
Tyler Jorgenson: But you've gotta find your limits right. That doesn't mean find them on like in the ambulance it means.
James Lawrence: No, I've got five kids, four beautiful daughters, I have no intention of dying. I want adventure with full intentions of retuning 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, 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. 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.
When people ask me what's the one thing you do and I say well let me break down the hundred things I do in order to accomplish this.
Tyler Jorgenson: I think that's kinda of the big takeaway I'm getting really from everything right is not only, you know, you want to set goals, you want to go after things that challenge you but that doesn't mean you go without a parachute or without a safety net. You're methodical and you plan I think that's kinda of what you're saying is that people see the tip of the iceberg but they forget that there's the entire planning and logistics and coordinations and adjustments that have to be made on the fly to [crosstalk 00:33:35] to continue to push yourself and challenge yourself.
James Lawrence: 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 thought of this thing that I wanna do, I wanna do it in four months can you tell me some pointers on how to get ready for it? I'm like I will give you some pointers but I'm gonna be very blunt with you that it took me a decade to this point where I could try that and just the fifty was over two years in planning and preparation just for that fifty day event. I said I will help you get it and I want you, that's the reason I did it so people will set giant goals and think, but you've gotta have the appropriate time frame associated with that goal and you have to be able to be willing to sacrifice to do the work associated. A giant goal requires massive amounts of work, and dedication and sacrifice. So, yes set that big goal but dude it's not gonna happen four months from now. I appreciate that 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 Jorgenson: Right, it's not Forrest Gump where you just run out one day and never stopped running right?
James Lawrence: That's a movie for a reason and I get I look like Forrest Gump, but this beard, I didn't grow this in four months this has taken time.
Tyler Jorgenson: That seems to be a lot of what your central message is, one you gotta push yourself, you gotta challenge yourself, you gotta find your limits but that doesn't mean you are without intent and are not doing it intelligently. You're mapping out your future but you're building your future with intent.
James Lawrence: Absolutely.
Tyler Jorgenson: 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 because the alarm clock said to wake up and we start reacting the entire day, we have no intent to build anything 'cause all we do is react to this to the stimuli around us. I think if we can recognize that they can take action and that they can make a choice to set a big goal and change their life, and I think what you are doing is helping people to be inspired to do that and I think it's remarkable.
Ironcowboybook.com is where they can learn a lot about that and then where are you at on Facebook and stuff like that?
James Lawrence: Yeah, real quick to we also we can help you achieve your goals we run an entire coaching platform and that's at teamironcowboy.com [inaudible 00:36:24] check that out we can help you achieve a lot of your racing goals, if you're just getting started or want to qualify for the world championship.
My social media on Instagram is /ironcowboyjames and on Facebook it's /ironcowboy
Tyler Jorgenson: Awesome, well thank you for coming out on the show and massive wishing of success and have fun, Africa's an amazing place I promise you will not come back the same, that's the goal isn't it.
James Lawrence: That is the goal and it's always an honor to talk with you Tyler you're a complete stud.
Tyler Jorgenson: Thanks man.