I’ve established myself as this like mental giant. I can do these really hard, long challenges. In fact, it’s my gift. I’ve been given the gift to suffer. And for years, I was like, this is the worst gift anybody’s ever been given from God. It is so damn freeing to show up on your life and and live your life without a care about what anybody else thinks. Now, that doesn’t mean about like, don’t care about people and don’t care about things, but like stop caring so much what anybody else’s opinion is of you. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

I’m incredibly excited about today’s episode. Firstly, because while I was recording this and having the conversation with our guest, I left incredibly inspired, motivated and just driven to do more and do better. And we have none other than the iron cowboy himself, James Lawrence on today’s episode. You might know James from his 50, 50, 50 back in 2015. James decided to set out and attempt 50 ironman’s in 50 days in the 50 States in the US and that involved all of the travel, the logistics as well as doing those events, which on average took about 14 hours every day and then trying to work in the the nutrition, the recovery, the travel, everything in between. He managed to break a world record doing those 50 ironman events back then. I remember watching that and thinking, this guy is absolutely nuts. I don’t know how he’s getting through this. And then he obviously was successful with it. Then in 2021, James decided to step it up.

He wanted to prove that it wasn’t just a fluke and that some of the criticism that he caught in 2015, he wanted to prove that he could legitimately do this and just prove all of the doubt is wrong. So he decided to set a challenge to do 100 ironman events in 100 consecutive days. And he not only did that, but he did one extra. He went 101 consecutive ironman events in 101 days, which smashed the world, his own world record. And I can’t really see this being broken. Now on today’s episode, I talked to James a bit about those two events, but also what motivates him? How does he push through those hard times? And just coming away from this conversation, he’s an incredibly generous giving person and someone who just wants the best for people. And it’s something that I really took away from this conversation was that sometimes we limit ourselves and we don’t set challenging enough goals. We don’t push ourselves and we are capable of much,

much more. So this is an episode I’m going to listen back to on multiple occasions just because of the way that I left after this podcast. I thought, wow, this I can do a lot more than what I’m currently doing. So let’s get into the episode. Hope you enjoy this one. I know I certainly did while I was recording it. Here is our episode with the iron cowboy James Lawrence. Welcome to the effortless swim podcast. My guest today is someone who I planted the seed on recording a podcast with several years ago and we finally managed to organize it. It’s the one name the iron cowboy James Lawrence. James, welcome to the podcast, mate. Yeah, thanks, Brendan. That’s totally my fault. It was funny. I was going through some like old messages on Facebook and you and I had been going back and forth and trying to arrange it and literally we’d set it up. You’re like, I’ll call you in an hour and then something happened and three years later I reached out and I was like,

Hey man, you ready to do that podcast? And one week later we’re here. And so I think I think over time we’ve just become more efficient. Yeah, exactly right. And look over that time you’ve achieved just a little bit. So we’ve got even more to talk about them. We would have a couple of years back. So I’m looking forward to getting into it. So just to start things off in a little bit more light and harder manner. Is there any memorable or funny moments during any of your endurance challenges that you remember or that stand out to you? Oh man. In terms of swimming, in terms of swing side of things as well, which I want to get to. Oh, swimming. I was in this wasn’t memorable. It was actually my worst moment ever swimming. I I’ve been doing endurance racing for 20 years and we’ll dive into a little bit of my career and what happened. But I’ve established myself as this like mental giant. I can do these really hard long challenges.

In fact, it’s my it’s my gift. I’ve been given the gift to suffer and for years I was like this is the worst gift anybody’s ever been given from God. But but I recognize that our our teams willing to suffer intentionally gives hope to other people that that are dealing with stuff that they didn’t ask for. So my careers had really high peaks where I do these massively big projects and then it just like wrecks me and then I recover and I come back and I do it again. And the last one there was a big gap between when I did it the huge event in 2015 and then 2021 I did it again and that was the biggest challenge I’ve ever done in my career is called the conquer 100 and I know we’re going to talk about that. But then it really destroyed me physically but more importantly it wrecked me mentally and I crashed violently on day 59 had multiple concussions over my career but my brain actually got stuck in hyperdrive fighter

flight and I couldn’t get back to parasympathetic and so it took me over two years to recover from this and when I came out of it. I thought I was ready to get back to racing and I was just going to use my past experience to and my mental toughness to get me through some of these races and I got invited to go do the world championships in Sweden for the swim run which is a race called Otillo and it’s actually pronounced to do which stands for Island Island and it’s a race where you swim in your shoes and you run in your wetsuit and you run across the island jump of the water swim to the next island and repeat that process and so it’s a 40 it ends up being 40 miles of running and and 6 miles 10 K of swimming and I I’ve been swimming my entire not my entire life but for 1520 years and I’m proficient I’m not great but I’m proficient and I was just really relying on my experience and I’ve never DNF to race in my life and

because I prepare really hard I’m super mentally tough I’m physically dominant and it’s a partner race too so as me and Carly who is my partner in this race tethered together in the swim and the gun goes off of this race it’s about a 400 meter run and then you jump into the first swim which is about a little over 1000 meters or 1200 meters of swimming and it was dead into a current and it was pretty choppy waves well I started to get sick and started to throw up in the water and then started to have a panic attack and I’ve never experienced this before and so I was just like really going through my mental practices and calming myself down I kept looking around and I’m like holy shit we’re dead last like we’re the last people in this because it’s a world championships right and I was just like I was taking for granted like preparation and all this just total rookie mistakes 20 years into my career and we get out of

the water we clear a couple more sections run across a few islands do a couple more swim sets and we get to the point and there’s a guy standing there like this and he’s like sorry guys you didn’t make the cut off I was like what I was just so so embarrassed and then just completely devastated that I let my partner down because I’m telling you 20 years in racing I’ve never done that and so that was one of the worst experiences that I’ve had in the water and I’m going to share one more really quick 2012 it was the one it was our second world record I was doing the most Ironman’s in a year that anybody had ever done all official races we did 30 Ironman’s 11 countries and it was the year the St. George Ironman they had microburst winds come in and it was it was part of the world record and one of the races was one of the races that’s in my home state and my wife was preparing to do it while we had five little kids and I was out on

the road trying to break this world record and so she we show up at the race and the conditions were perfect like it was a great start and the gun goes off and everybody takes off and it was this chaotic like swim and I love I love that I hate that they’ve gone away from the mass start but I loved it and I’m just swimming there with my wife or just cruising and she’s not a great swimmer and so I’m like just you watch me site off of me I’ll let I’ll nail the line and we’ll get there and all of a sudden the water starts to get choppy and moving and I can hear a like a speedboat and I’m like why the hell is that boat so close to us and turning the water upside down and all of a sudden I pick up and it is pandemonium around us like a microburst storm system came in and turn this reservoir upside down and all of a sudden we’ve got six eight ten foot waves around us and you keep like one of the the course was you had to swim around

this island and I’m like okay I can see the island I can see people getting on boats and abandoning the course and and one of the one of the boats came up to us and is like hey guys the swims canceled and I’m like bullshit it’s canceled I have to swim point four miles and for this to count and so I look at my wife and I’m like are you okay she’s like I’m great I just keep swimming and I’m like okay I’ll be right here with you site off me and so she is swimming as hard as she can and I figured out like I’m just going to dolphin dive underneath these big waves and I can be more efficient well it gets to the point where I look at my watch and I’m like oh shit the cutoffs to 20 and I’m not going to make it if I stay with my wife and so I’m like sweetheart are you okay I got to go and she’s like yeah yeah fine go go go go make the cutoff and so I turn myself inside out and I try to make this swim cutoff while an Ironman

swim cutoff is about as to 20 and my my my normal swim times about 105 not great but I’m like not out of the conversation yet I got out of the water an hour 51 and I’m just standing on the shore waiting for my my bride to come out of the water my come on make it make it make it all of a sudden I see her and she’s coming and she pops out of the water at two hours and 21 minutes and this cutoff and so kind of it was kind of a heartbreaking so those are my two worst swim moments I’ve ever had and I got a few more because but we’ll move on from from that but that was a long answer to a simple question nah man I love it the amount of the amount of swims you’ve done in in the endurance events that you’ve done like it I can only imagine what has what has gone wrong and maybe what’s gone right at some point as well in terms of the 5050 50 or the Conquer 100 what lessons did you learn just in terms of getting through the swim

to stop chave to make sure that you you know went the right pace what was some of those things that stood out to you after going through that day in Daya yeah it was interesting that the 15 the hundreds were so different in terms of logistics and preparation and where my where my body was where my mind was there was about five years difference between the 50 Ironman’s 50 days 50 states and excuse me and then the Conquer 100 which we did in one remote location and every single day we were in a new state new environment some of them are open water some of them were pool well on day number five in Santa Cruz California I tore my shoulder on the swim and I was a wrestler and I had some shoulder problems and just like just the volume of leading up to that race because I put in a ton of preparation and so the 50 just became pain management because it hurt so bad in fact I did two days in a row the day six and day seven where I swam it with just one

arm and I was figuring out how to adjust to the limitations that I was having and then I quickly realized in terms of pain pain reaches a certain certain threshold and then it just doesn’t get any worse and if you can learn to manage that level of pain you’ll be okay and so I just I reintroduced the other arm back into the swim technique and it was the most painful you know our 10 hour 15 in my day in terms of like pain management but it really really helped me develop that mental toughness and recognizing okay I get to choose how I navigate this this pain and then it was interesting I had the complete opposite experience in during the hundred where we were doing a hundred consecutive 2.4 mile swims it was all in a pool we started in March it was every weather system we could have imagined went through this amazing footage in the documentary that’s coming out next month of just like this cool snowstorm happening and

there’s tons of athletes in the pool just this really cool contrast but the 50 was was was pain and torture and and I hated the swim part the hundred became it was my comfort and it was the the the time of the day during that that that 140 miles where I knew the exact conditions the water temperature was the same I had my own I had my lane and it was a moment where I could actually just like exhale and relax I was totally safe. I knew we actually structured the swim in the 100 very differently because we because of the shoulder problems I’ve had in the past we knew it had to be very controlled and so we and people started going they we went live every single day but some people didn’t have time to watch that obviously and they were like man you are a metronome in the water like your swim times are almost to the second every single day how are you doing and what we were doing is we were doing 100 meter repeats and so we would

do 100 meter repeats 4200 I mean yeah 42 times and we did it on the two minute and so if I came in at 150 I had 10 seconds break and so you know your first 40 what is it 4400 yards. Yes your first 43 were the exact same time and only time difference I had every single day was how fast I did that last 100

but it was but it was the reason it was so different because I wanted to really be in control. I didn’t want to have a shoulder blow out again and the water became my safe haven it became where I had those conversations about how yesterday went how’s today going to go how am I feeling do I need to walk myself through mentally like through every single body part and like give my ankle encouragement or talk to my knee or you know I would I would really process every single day and so I really enjoyed the swim part of the conquer 100 because I felt very safe and controlled in the water. And in the 50 did you feel like you’re going to do irreparable damage to the shoulder or you just knew what the issue was and you thought I can get through it and I’ll be able to fix it later. Yeah that my mindset at the time was I know this is only a seven week challenge and I know whatever damage you do in seven weeks science is amazing and there’s

surgeons and I’ll just fix whatever the problem was and actually never ended up getting it fixed and it’s totally my fault because I get I accomplished the one thing my perception changes as to what’s possible and and then I always move on to what’s next and then I go right into training phase and then execution phase and but there was a big gap between the 50 and the 100 and you’re like well why didn’t you fix it then and I just I just love racing so much and it’s so hard to take time off to fix it because then the mind goes well I’m going to lose lose fitness and I’m going to lose momentum and I’m going to lose all these things when I probably that was would have been the perfect time to get it fixed in the recovery phase and now you know I’m getting close to 50 and I have a couple big challenges coming up over the next couple years and I did I promised my wife that after after these these next couple big races and challenges

that I’ll get it fixed but but it’s just I’ve just learned that I can manage I can manage that level of pain and it’s probably hurting my performance to some degree but you it’s rare that you win an Ironman or these endurance events in the water you can lose it on the water but you just have to be good enough to stay in touch you know what I mean yeah absolutely one of my favorite books is atomic habits by James clear and one of the things that I love about that book the things that he he talks about is having identity based habits so you see yourself as a certain person or a certain way and that makes you do the certain things that are going to be required of you to be that person and few it’s the mentally physically tough person when did you start to identify as that’s me I’m someone who was born to suffer is that something that you were as a kid you realize would it take a while to to work that out yeah I didn’t realize it

in the moment but now looking back on it I can isolate some very specific times when that became my identity I grew up in you know I have three sisters no brothers both my parents are zero interest in athletics and so I found my outlet through team sports and in school and I played every single sport whatever season it was I was playing that and and then as I got into high school I really started to gravitate towards wrestling and if you want to win at a high level you have to specialize and so I quit all sports except for wrestling and that was really when I started to develop some some grit and some mental toughness and and kind of be defined as that person and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard me or heard the story of when I sat on a Ferris wheel at a carnival for 10 days so so I grew up in Calgary Canada and Calgary’s world famous for what’s called the Calgary Stamp eat and it’s one of the largest rodeo stops in the world and it is it’s

10 days long and the city shuts down and it’s a huge party and it’s it’s food it’s ride it’s check wagon races it’s concerts and they do they set up this giant fair and and there was a radio show contest and they said we want to find out who can ride the giant Ferris wheel for the entire 10 days of the Stamp eat and the winner gets 10 grand and I was like and that seems easy I’m like I grew up a wrestler manly tough I can do that and I got on the damn ride and and I was I was shocked when I saw people like quitting and getting off the ride and and I didn’t piece it together then but now after having a lot of knowledge experience and maturity happened in my life I recognize that they were simply losing the conversation they were having with themselves and they weren’t comfortable sitting there with their thoughts and to me that’s that’s true mental toughness is being able to just sit there stewing your thoughts forgive yourself for

your past dream and imagine what the future can look like or just sit there in the present and these people just couldn’t do it and long story short I ended up sitting on the Ferris wheel for 10 days and I won the contest and that’s how I came down to the United States because I had one friend here and I got fired for my job on the ride and and so I had some time and some money and I came down to visit visit my friend in the States and I never went home but I think that looking back though you know really digging into being a wrestler and being it and getting that identity and then I really start recognize that I had control over my mind when I sat on the Ferris wheel for 10 days and it completely changed the direction of my life and so those those kind of key moments and then my entire career has been building upon that mental toughness and it’s now what I’m what I’m most recognized for is is that mental ability.

Is there different stages in a process that you go through when you’re sitting on a Ferris wheel for 10 days or when you’re going through a 50 or the hundred like is it you know like the five stages of grief is there a similar sort of thing when it comes to just being okay with your thoughts. Yeah, yeah for sure and and I think that’s one of the biggest problems with the distractions of social media. It’s just drawing all of our attention and it’s funny. I saw it’s a hilarious thing online the other day where someone was like mindfulness. We we’re now in a society and a time where we have to intentionally seek out and be mindfulness, meaning like inside of our own thoughts and and contemplate and meditation and you think like I don’t know how you older how old you are but I’m turning 48 and the person doing the video is about the same age and they were like back in our day that was like going to the bathroom like you were mindfulness.

It was like walking outside. It was like I had to get from point A to point B like there wasn’t anything to really distract us. And so we were mindfulness all the time and the word didn’t even exist back then is because normal life and society by as a byproduct of it you you had to become mindfulness. There was so many opportunities and moments where you’re just like sitting by yourself in your thoughts. Being mindful of of who you are what you’re doing dreaming like I talk about this from stage like as a society we have forgotten how to dream because we’re so busy fixated on what other people are doing and and we’re experiencing life through them that like we don’t we’ve we’ve we’ve stopped dreaming and that that’s paralyzing society right now because we’re so involved and connected through through these devices that we’re no longer dreaming we’re no longer being mindfulness to the point where there’s now ways and opportunities for us to intentionally

become mindfulness like it’s so crazy to me. Yeah, it makes me think of Jesse it’s like he he’s got these big ass calendar and I if you’ve seen that that we’re good friends. Yeah, so he so I ended up buying a big 2024 calendar and I have it on the wall. Big it’s like and just that alone to think 12 months in advance what are the what are the big challenges? What are the big things I want to do and let’s put those on the calendar. Let’s just take that time and then you can feel life in around that like that alone for me was just like it’s like clearing the whiteboard it’s like all right we can actually just sit here and be much more intentional with the things that that I want to do for the year. It’s that you’re right it’s just so easy to get caught into this into this trap of having the phone there and then we just don’t go and live our own lives or make plans or have big dreams and think about the next couple of challenges so is that we’re real quick

in fact it’s why I think swimming is so powerful for the Mike

because you you you can’t really bring technology into the water with you. Now we’re starting to see more of these finally headphones that work in the water and stuff but they’re a little bit gimmicky from time to time and sometimes they work and it’s muffled sound and so like I just like forget it I’m just going to swim but swimming is really an opportunity for us to be mindful and just in our thoughts and I think that’s one of the reasons why swimming is very challenging for people too because it’s like wait a second I have to disconnect in order to do this activity right and so it’s very challenging because you literally have to be in your own thoughts in the water like you almost don’t have another choice. Yeah that’s that’s exactly right and it’s that’s like why I think I feel so good coming out of the water coming out from a like from a surf it’s like if I get a good hour in the in the pool maybe two or three hours in the surf it’s like I just feel like

that like my day is much more more complete and then I can get everything else down a whole lot easier when that’s the case it’s it’s just that’s the beauty of the sport it is that that physical meditation and something that’s I’m sure you’re very good at just doing the things that you’ve done how do you get that outside of I mean you train a lot right like is that how you kind of get that get that fix and just you’re training day in day out or is there because I’m thinking of like Alexander Valkanovsky like I love UFC I love watching that and I remember hearing him when he said I don’t have a when I didn’t have a fight on the cars when I didn’t have something to work towards he got in his own head too much and became a bit depressed and hit a real low and he needed something to work towards is that do you find you have a similar sort of thing when you you just need to have the next thing ahead of you to train towards yeah and it’s not even the next thing to train towards

it’s just being intentional about doing the training or some type of activity

physical activity and getting outdoors is I’m going to cancel for this but it’s secured to depression it straight up is like you spiral in depression the more you sit at home in isolation in darkness and seriously when you distract yourself when you do physical activity when you get outside it clears your mind in fact the other night I just kind of had a rough day at a lot of my plate and my I’m just doing a ton and I love it and it’s my own fault but I just headless like the biggest thing is we’re switching a lot of our marketing the way that we’re doing we’re we’re on boarding with a new team we’re off boarding from another offloading from another one lot going on a lot of stresses a lot of different directions we’re going and I just like I was at the end of my day and I was just like feeling that anxious like I’d like like short of breath almost and I just looked at my wife sunny and I said I got to go for a run and she’s like it’s it’s like 930 at night you’ve already worked

out to them I got to get outside like I’m I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight or if I if I do it’s not going to be quality and I just one hour one hour and I I didn’t run fast I just no headphones just got outside could hear the pounding on my feet could hear my breath and was just in my thoughts and when I came home guess what I had zero anxiety I had processed a bunch of the things that that was that I was worrying about and all I did was get outside and move and it was incredible to shift I love the saying that a motion creates emotion or I’ll even say motion shifts emotions and so when you’re feeling something the worst thing to do is to sit still with no distractions because that’s just an opportunity for us to hyper focus on the problem at hand which now magnifies because in life what what we choose to focus on magnifies and so if you’re focusing on the problems the anxiety the depression guess what gets worse the problems the anxiety the depression

so get outside move your bodies jump in some water swim do all these things unplug and poof it all clears up it’s makes such a difference doesn’t it and once once throughout the door a lot of those problems seem to seem to go away I I know you’ve been running well you’ve run two retreats so far that you get people in and they and you basically like mindset weekends talk to me about what’s the inspiration behind those and then what are some of the takeaways that you’ve had from running those two retreats yeah incredible experience both for us coaches and attendees I didn’t realize how life-changing it was going to be for us and them and and we have about 25 people at each one of our retreats so it’s a little bit more intimate and you know we’re talking offline how I’ve been professionally speaking for 10 years now I’ve spoken in over 50 countries around the world it’s just been incredible like I never thought that this is what I would be doing and I mean there’s a whole lesson

in that too just like just living life and all of a sudden your passion will present itself to you and you end up doing something that’s so purposeful which is these retreats for us now but every time I got off stage people are like wow how do I become more mentally tough and I’m like oh it’s super easy just show up in your life and and have experiences and you you’ll gain that knowledge and you just here’s this here’s a secret intentionally hard things and your mind will expand and you’ll become more mentally tough it’s like one plus one is too that’s like super easy and they were like oh okay great and then they would write me back and they’re like I can’t do it on my own I just keep quitting on myself and so I’m like okay people can’t conjure up their own experiences to become more mentally tough I’ll put one on I’ll invite people to go through an experience with me and so we did the first one and every single attendee every single one man that was that was incredible

that was life-changing I could have never done that on my own and I was like whoa maybe we’re onto something let’s do it again and we did it again every single attendee man that was incredible that was life-changing and as his coaches we were learning it was just so incredible and so now we’ve got some more on the calendar we’ve got one in May in San Diego, California and I’m just like super pumped we’re actually bringing in Mike Riley the voice of Iron Man he lives right there he’s going to come speak and I haven’t asked him yet and he might listen to this he might not but I’m friends with you you’re right Faber and he lives he lives in California and so I’m going I’m going to invite him to come out because part of every one of our iron grid experiences is we do some type of combat and so in the first one we had a boxing in the second one we did Mu Tai fighting and and if I I’ve said this before on podcasts but if I had like a magic wand

and I could make a universal law for everybody it would be that every every single person has to do two years of mixed martial arts combat training

because to me it it instills confidence it it instills discipline respect body control strength agility like there’s so many things that that come from that I mean in fact in fact my son he’s 14 and from 14 to 16 every week he has to do mixed martial arts and so we have a coach that comes to our house she’s she’s a she’s a badass fighter name’s her name’s Tandy she she had a great career she she kind of pioneered the female division she was actually scheduled to fight Ronda Rousey and then got injured and then got injured and then it never happened and she was forced into retirement so she’s she’s a badass for sure and so these angry experiences have just been just been a gift for us as coaches and the attendees we learn a ton because it’s all walks of life show up to these things like we that’s one thing we can’t control who shows up and who registers and every single time we’ve had like from 22 to 65 show up and a good split between men and women

of all walks of life and we’ve just I’ve just really learned that people don’t want to do life by themselves and they’re losing the conversations that they’re having with themselves and they’re getting them their own way and so once you once you put community in place and then challenge people inside that community all of a sudden we start to see people loving leveling up in a big way and so it’s just been a lot of fun and I see it as being a big part of our business model and the direction we’re going because man what a what a better way to impact people’s lives is is through connection and activity and experiences

before we dive into the rest of today’s podcast episode this episode is proudly brought to you by form smart swim goggles they’ve been a long time sponsor of the podcast and they are my go-to goggles when it comes to tracking my training sessions and being able to see what’s happening in real time through the goggles and we know swimming is a highly technical sport but without the guidance of a coach on deck identifying and addressing technique flaws can be a challenge they’ve recently added a new feature to the goggles head coach and this addresses that problem head on it gives them as improved access to their technique awareness focus skill development and in app education and analysis head coach provides real time visual coaching via the form smart swim goggles augmented reality display during and after a swim head coach provides them as with technique feedback using two types of metrics form score and head coach skills form score is a measurement

of overall swim efficiency ranging from zero to one hundred defined by your pace and your stroke length head coach skills encompasses five key areas that will help you identify where to focus on improving with your efficiency head roll head pitch set pacing interval pacing and breathing time to neutral and after completing a session you can check back in on the form app to track your progress and head coach provides swimmers from beginner to expert with an unprecedented level of data driven guidance and understanding enabling you to boost your performance and your speed get your pair of form smart swim goggles today click the link in our podcast description or use the code effortless on check out to get 15% off your form smart swim goggles absolutely and even more so these days with social media and ai all those sorts of things like people are craving for something in real life something with other people and we run four or four or five camps overseas camps that are

this mean based and it’s like every single time it’s like you need those 20 people to come together to go through this challenging five days or seven days and then they come out of it the other side a different person they’ve made new friends they’ve suffered together with other people and that gives you such a a bigger connection than anything else you can do with someone it’s that suffering together and and going through those shared experiences that a later to make new friends quickly and I think when people do that kind of thing they often tend to know more about the other people a lot more than they would with some of their their own friends back home because they’re just they’re not isolated together but they’re just spending really sort of quality time together where they’re not distracted by work or phone or family it’s just yeah getting that kind of environment and you can have some really special things happen and I went to blink like to last week they’re here

in here in Melbourne unreal and I was just thinking like yeah 100,000 people seeing together all there for one purpose that like it creates something special and we’ve got Taylor Swift here as well 100,000 people at the MCG I didn’t get tickets I was trying to get tickets but like I just see the videos that some friends are posting it’s like that that is something special when you get people together all for the same cause yeah it’s this immersive experience that you can’t duplicate and it was interesting the first retreat that we did it was in CNAB Utah which is fairly remote and it’s just like Red Rock beautiful

and so nobody was on their phones and then we started this like message board group with all the attendees afterwards and the connection and the communication and the the followups and everything like in three days this group of 20 plus people was just like so connected and so bonded and it’s it’s created these like lifetime friendships already it’s just been so fun and really fulfilling to to facilitate these and put it together I I had no idea that I was going to benefit so much just like emotionally and and spiritually and just all of it from from putting on these like selfishly I’m like how do how do I do these every single month like it’s just like benefits me so much to watch the the community aspect of it happen I’ve just I’ve just just really been drawn to it that’s awesome I want to read a quote I’m sure you’ve heard but it’s by by Jim Rowan when I was thinking about the podcast I’m I’m planning the podcast and I’m I’m thinking about the questions and then this

this quote just popped into my mind because I’ve heard it a lot and it’s Jim Rowan’s quote of don’t wish it were easier wish you were better don’t wish for less problems wish for more skills don’t wish for less challenge wish for more wisdom how does that relate how do you what do you think about when when you hear that quote and how that relates to what you’ve gone through over the last decade yeah I was actually on Jim Rowan’s podcast a couple of years ago really enjoyed my time with them but but I love that quote too and in fact I say from stage all the time like life’s not going to get easier you just get better and and it’s because we’re having this experience during the 50 where every single day was chaos and confusion and and I also say the quote that like

oh my gosh I’m forgetting the quote persistence and resilience only come from having been given a chance to work through difficult problems and and if you’re dealing with things in your life right now that are that are like making you pause and think and problem-solve like that’s one of the greatest gifts because as you get better again through experiences that you have to have as you get better you become more knowledgeable and can handle more things and and

in life you need to do things that challenge you every single day so that when something happens in normal life that’s a challenge or difficult to most you’re like oh this is easy I can navigate this in fact real quick story I was on a I was on a TV show called the world’s toughest race and it was a Mark Burnett production Bear Grills was the host it was on it it’s on animals on prime it’s 10 episodes mapping compass through the back back part of Fiji like we’re doing activities like a thousand foot ascend up a waterfall and jungle trekking with machetes and and there was five major camps and every time we’d come into a camp where teams of four and every time we’d come into camp like we were laughing and smiling and they were like why are you guys having such a good time? This is the hardest thing you’ve ever done and they kept wanting me to say on camera like this is the hardest race on the planet but the reality was is me and the wingman

had done a 50 day challenge and this was an eight day challenge and so for us we were like oh we have to we just have to do something hard for eight days where all the other teams were like suffering and complaining and sitting in their misery and is this ever going to end and all these other things and we were just like and this is a blast like we were having such a good time because our our baseline for what was hard was so dramatically different from everybody else I was racing and again that’s the challenge to put out there to the audience today is like do really hard things so that when hard life happens it’s like this is no big deal I what I did last weekend with my bros was way harder than this right because because look at I mean I mean rent and look at look at the look at the pandemic like when the pandemic happened everyone was so riddled with fear and chaos and confusion and the unknown and I guarantee you every single every single one of you

can look around at your peers and your friends and your coworkers and go and they’re a pile of mush on the ground and this person is thriving what’s the difference the circumstances the same it’s how they’re handling it it’s how they’re navigated it’s the experiences they’ve had in the past to deal with their current reality right so I love that called by Jim Rom and it truly it truly resonates with me because you have to do those things intentional so that everybody else is difficult becomes normal and simplistic to you

I was thinking about this the other week when I think of my I’ve got two young boys they’re five and seven and in terms of you know like upbringing I didn’t have it like a super hard you know upbringing my parents were amazing and all of that and but like physically it was very tough because we’re swimming eight nine times a week and so if I want them to have that kind of grit and determination you know that they’ve got a good upbringing as well so I’ve got a challenge they’ve got to be challenged physically give it to them in in that in that kind of way so and I and that’s something that you can voluntarily choose to do you have to choose some kind of suffering or else it’s going to it’s going to be chosen for you and that that physical one and nothing nothing better than that I love that you said it’s going to be chosen for you because I’m a massive advocate of this and and I believe if we continually choose discomfort

we’re going to have options our entire life meaning we can be comfortable or discomfort if we only choose the path of least resistance and comfort now eventually our only option will be discomfort because all luxuries of life and we we will not have become strong enough physically or mentally because we’re so complacent and lazy and and seeking that path of least resistance you’re going to wake up one day and your only option will be discomfort and the problem is is you’re not going to be ready to handle that discomfort

and you’re going to have a really hard time

I remember hearing you talk about the motivation for the for the 50 was very different than the than the hundred that and for the 50 I think I remember hearing you say it was about like you have to do this in order to be able to take that next step with your with your career and like to do it for your family and like was a very different drive and motivator can you talk to me a bit about about that and then how it shifted for the hundred yeah you know when you’re doing something that is like really big or when the public is like ruthlessly telling you it’s impossible right because that’s that’s what happened with both these projects first and foremost we tied a charitable component to it something kind of bigger than who we are because that’s always a good reason to kind of get up when when things get tough and so the first one we did childhood obesity and we it’s a terrible statistic that I share is where the first generation ever where the parents are slated to outlive

the kids and at the time of the 50 my kids were

and I was in the the school system a ton and in the elementary schools and the epidemic of obesity was just in your face and so I was like okay we’re going to do something to raise money and awareness for this and then in 08 we I own a mortgage company and things were going great and then the economic crash happened and we lost everything and we we had to kind of hit the reset button and start to rebuild and that’s when I kind of really got big into racing I was dominating the local space I started doing some coaching and then I was like okay how can I separate myself from other people in the coaching space I need I need so because I wasn’t the fastest right so I need to kind of a gimmick and so I’m like well I’ll just break some world records that’ll be a great gimmick and and went went down that route to separate myself from others but during the 50 because we’d lost everything I was like my life has potential to be different if I complete this if I don’t quit on

myself enough reasons why to get through this then then my life could be different and and I wasn’t wrong it completely changed after we completed that task because it opened 10 different doors that I was able to walk through and and create the the multi-million dollar brand that we have now and then the hundred was very different to now I have four teenage girls and a teenage son and in our faces sex trafficking and the reality of that with

we’re like okay what can we do to double what everybody said was impossible to go defy logic let’s do a hundred let’s go to 14,000 consecutive miles with no days off and let’s go do it to raise money to eradicate sex trafficking and over that campaign we raised over a million dollars which has gone on to free so many lives of that we’re living a tragic existence and for me personally the reason of the why changed because I was financially stable now

well documented something we’ve never run for never hid from we made some mistakes during the 50 we were doing something that nobody else had ever done it’s in the book it’s in the documentary it’s on every friggin thread in the triathlon world and blogs and success magazine and runners were I mean you name it we they talked about it and so part of the 100 became very personal for me and I wanted to reset my own history I I wanted to prove that I am who I said I was and my team is who they said they they

50 days and then just took that momentum and and doubled it and so it’s a very personal journey for me on the second one but in both journeys you have to you have to tie an emotional component to whatever you’re doing or when it gets real and you’re back into a corner and it’s dark and depression and anxiety setting in and you feel alone and you’re starting to really lose the conversations you’re having with yourself and that doubt creeps in

and maybe they are you know you start having all these conversations that bully in your head gets really louder and obnoxious and luck and then you’re going to choose to win that conversation or not and so the hundred became very personal the back half of it to just really cement who we are as a team and showcase what’s possible and I am so friggin excited for this new documentary to come out next I don’t know when this is going to drop but March 27 is the the premier showing here in Utah at Sundance and then it’ll hit all the streaming platforms that will go up on our social media and then shortly thereafter our new book Iron Hope will come out because that’s truly what our purpose and passion is now is to give people hope on the journey that they’re on. In fact my favorite book and you told me yours but my favorite book and James Clear Tom McCabbits is in my list but my favorite book is Man’s Search Remini by Victor Franco and it’s a story about a guy who was a a psychologist

who was in the Nazi concentration camps and he happened to be one of the rare survivors and

that book is about hope and he could tell the moment that somebody lost hope because they died and if that’s true then hope is life and that’s really what we’re trying to help people do now is give them hope on their journey because as I’ve traveled around the world I’ve just recognized that there’s not a lot of hope people are are just like walking around wondering why why they’re here what their purpose is do they have worth all these conversations are having to themselves and so our family’s mission has now become to to help people like I said win those conversations and give them hope on the journey and and help them understand that they are enough and and just keep showing up and and ultimately that’s how you win is by keep showing up

Yeah to I’ve spoke about this on the last couple of podcasts but I love the thought of finite games versus infinite games where like the infinite games are ones that you can’t win so as long as you don’t quit as long as long as you just keep at it you’re going to you’re going to to win that game like there’s there’s no end point but it’s something that you’ve just got to you got to keep doing and sounds like I’ll just share real quick story about that concept back to that race in Fiji there was 67 countries participating in this race and because the race was in Fiji the the host country kind of like the Olympics they were given a spot into the race now this Fijian team had the worst equipment they had no training they they had zero experience and nobody gave these Fijians a chance of clearing the course super challenging right and I’ll be damned they were the last team but they cleared the course and they beat every single team that quit and they understood without understanding it

that if you just keep chipping away at a task and you don’t quit eventually you’re going to get there and in life sometimes it’s not in the timeframe that we wanted to but that just means we haven’t learned the lessons we need to learn along the way fast enough and the same crap’s going to keep happening to us until we learn those lessons but these dang Fijians man I’m telling you the worst bikes on the planet zero coaching no terrible equipment no money biggest smile on their faces and just like kept chipping away at the tasks and I’ll be damned to beat every single team that quit I was it was so cool to be there at the finish line when they when they finally crossed and we were there to welcome them welcome them home ah how good that is there any other any other standout lessons that you’ve had over the last decade or so that you wish you could pass on to your kids or pass on to anyone who comes to see you speak or who watch the documentary what what are some of those other

key lessons that have yeah come your way I’ll give you two more and and one of them is you know it people think the hardest thing to do is is is the thing and so they never start and and they just keep building up the enormity of it and Alex Ramosi has a great quote that fear is a mile wide but an inch deep and people would recognize that they could walk and navigate on their feet through this fear but it takes showing up and taking action and once you get started you recognize oh man that wasn’t as bad as I thought like like Brandon have you ever had a task or something that you’re totally dreading doing and then you keep putting it off and it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and then you finally have the guts to do that task and you’re like damn it that was six minutes and it’s been been plaguing me for two weeks you know what I mean and that’s that’s so the case with everything we we build it up so big in our heads and it becomes bigger bigger and bigger so challenge

number one just start like if you’ve got an idea intuition intuitions a whole huge thing like just start the other gift the other gift that I’ve given my kids is to not give a shit about what anybody thinks and anybody that’s navigating life right now and like trust me this is going to sound harsh nobody cares everybody’s

how they look and my all this other nonsense like nobody cares in fact a great book that if you want to put it on your list is the subtle art of not giving an F by Mark Manson phenomenal rate I would put it up there in my top five just because that concept is so powerful and and in fact society is being paralyzed by fear right now fear of judgment about what other people are thinking and it’s stopping you it’s derailing you and freezing you in your tracks the greatest gift you can give anybody and especially yourself is to not care what anybody else thinks it is so damn freeing to show up in your life and and live your life without a care about what anybody else thinks now that doesn’t mean about like don’t care about people and don’t care about things but like stop caring so much what anybody else’s opinion is of you and like if you if you’re good dude and if what if whatever it is man of Pokemon your thing hell yeah nail it like just be the best dang Pokemon player

you can be I got to care what your passion is anymore like just go do it I’m not going to make any I’m not going to make fun of anybody for like showing up and just doing whatever makes them happy and that’s the key is stop listening to people and if whatever you’re doing makes you happy to just keep doing it man because that’s the purpose of this life is to be happy and to find joy and if that’s what makes you happy great do it all day every day and just don’t care what I don’t I love it I feel like when I be becoming a dad like in my 20 I became a dad when I was 20 how old was I 28 I think but prior to that I I cared a lot more about what people thought and as you’re making your way you know like I was building effortless swimming I was working my way up as a coach and that sort of thing like you you kind of feel like you need to prove something to to people but then as you get a little bit older maybe get some wins on the board and

life and it’s my kids I don’t care about what other people think and it’s it is just such a different way of living and I can see like as when I was a teenager now you might look at your your parents and stuff and go like they do some embarrassing things and I can’t leave like my friends think what what they might think if you know if they see this but I can see now you’re being a dad it’s just like I’m going to embarrass the hell out of my kids because I just don’t care what their mates are going to think and I find a lot I find a lot of joy in embarrassing my kids now my kids are now four three one actually my oldest daughter just got married we’re just in such a cool space of life right now but I’m turning 48 this year and and every years I get older like my my not given F meter just keeps going up and so I mean it probably can’t get higher than it is right now but maybe it can but I just think it’s a gift to people to not care what anybody thinks do you and just show up on life and do you

like

that you got to show with honesty and integrity if you if you if you’re showing up with honesty and integrity and you’re not hurting anybody else then do do whatever you want to do like but but if it’s like impacting someone in a negative way that’s where I’m like I need to reevaluate that’s right but but don’t don’t care don’t care everybody’s things but keep showing up with honesty and integrity

James this has been fantastic I’ve really enjoyed this this conversation with you three years in the making and

stuff coming out and that a lot happening obviously where can people find find you and just let us know what what you’ve got coming up yeah please follow us on Instagram iron cowboy James that’s where we post all of our races we’re doing all the retreats that we put on the masterminds that we have the new documentary that’s coming out about the Conquer 100 I promise you it’ll be a treat you’re going to want to watch it and then our new book called iron hope coming out in January 2025 so going to be a lot of incredible things coming out and it’ll help fulfill our mission of giving people hope and then our website is just iron cowboy dot com and it links to everything there so thank you for having us on the show and allowing me to share a little bit of my journey with your audience you’re phenomenal at what you do like if I could if I could just like like hone in and just like absorb some of your swimming prowess it would be amazing

I appreciate it very much and I mean I remember watching your your 50 journey and just going this guy’s crazy I don’t know how he’s doing it getting up every morning so it’s it’s really cool to see this this come around to have you on the podcast so thanks James I appreciate it we’ll link to all those website Instagram in the show notes and go and check out documentary thanks James awesome man cheers me Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com