This week’s conversation is with Ty Murray, one of the most accomplished Roughstock athletes of all time. Having earned a record-setting seven All-Around World Championships, Ty has rightfully earned his nickname in the industry as “King of the Cowboys”.

Throughout his illustrious career, Ty competed in three of the rodeo’s most risky and dangerous events – bareback, saddle bronc, and bull riding – dominating all three “rough-stock” disciplines with the singular heart of a champion.

At the age of 23, Ty became the youngest millionaire in rodeo history, and eight years later was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame.

Ty has also been a trailblazer for the sport behind the scenes – in 1992 he became a founding member of the Professional Bull Riders (PBR), which sought mainstream attention for “America’s original extreme sport.”

Ty is epic and so is this conversation – I can’t wait for you to hear his story and learn from a human who has dedicated his life towards exploring the upper reaches of his potential.

He has a very clear approach to success, a deep love for what he does and the people in his life, and a strong purpose. After this conversation, I hope you’ll be able to tap into your inner cowboy as well.

“The way you’re raised as a cowboy is you don’t weaken. If you get into a can of worms, you stay hooked and you stay committed. That’s just the way. That’s the cowboy creed.”

In This Episode:

What it means to be a great cowboy

Being a great cowboy entails a lot of things. You have rodeo cowboys, you have ranch cowboys, you have horseman, being a steward of the land, knowing how to manage your ranch, knowing how to manage your grass, especially when you’re dealing with mother nature, that can be very tricky. It’s like saying being a great businessman. That’s a word that people use a lot, “Oh, he’s a great businessman.” Well, that entails a lot and there’s a lot of different elements to it. Like, is he great at balancing the books or is he great at being a leader? If he’s a CEO of a company, can he get everybody to rally behind him and have the same amount of passion that he does? That’s a whole other element beyond knowing how to conduct a meeting or a convention or a seminar and be able to understand how to make it more profitable, how to make your overhead less. You know what I mean? There’s just a million areas that can involve and I feel it’s the same with being a cowboy.

Being in control of your emotions

I know that my profession, being a professional rodeo cowboy, you have to get in control of your emotions and you have to be able to compartmentalize things, big time…  the sport that I did, I’ll argue that it’s the most dangerous sport in the world. And that’s something that I’ve always been very aware of. I was very aware of it when I was a little boy, and I got just enveloped by this sport and this idea and wanting to be a great cowboy that could ride bucking animals and make it look easy and effortless. And the danger that’s in this sport is not only why people want to watch it, but it’s also why people want to do it.

Things can go south very quickly

I broke my jaw at nine riding a bull. My son is 10. I told my son since he was a little bitty guy, I said, “I only want you to make me two promises in life.” I said, “Only two. I’m only going to ask for two things that I want you to promise me and stick to …” And that was to never ride bulls and to never do drugs. Those are two such scary things that as a parent, you can feel so helpless. Even when you’re talking about just riding the horses that I have that are gentle ranch horses that have a good understanding, you’re still talking about a really helpless feeling when you’re a parent and your kid is on a horse. And if something does go south, which as you know, just as you know, it can, that’s a really helpless feeling. So I think sometimes people are like, “You’re so protective of your kids.” And I guess everybody’s experience shapes everybody a little bit differently but I just feel like they’re little kids, and they can be in danger and not know it. So it’s my job to mitigate that, and make sure that they’re not in a position that something could go south and they’re the one that’s going to pay for it.

Lessons from the cowboy community

I was raised as a cowboy around cowboys for this is generations. And it was just everything to me. That was all I wanted to do every day. I think when you grow up in that environment of doing these dangerous tasks, doing these dangerous events, I think that it probably most definitely had a part in shaping what I’m like. From a analyzing my personality or whatever, I would think that, like even in business, I’m no genius and I’m no educated businessman, but everything that I’ve always used in business was what I learned from riding. If you believe in something, and you have a passion for it, and you try hard enough, and you try your guts out at every moment of it because you’re passionate about it and you believe in it, that’s really the only tools that I had in my toolbox as far as business goes. But I feel like it’s something that’s really helped me.

Facing danger head-on

Instead of it [breaking my jaw] making me hesitant or like, “I don’t want to do that” or “I got to be very careful,” it almost had an opposite effect on me of “You’ve got to commit, and you’ve got to go for it, and when it looks the worst is when you got to go for it the hardest.” And I don’t know for sure. I think the reason maybe that it had that effect on me is because my dad, I grew up as a little boy watching my dad break colts for a living. That’s what he did is he started young horses. And there were times that it could get rough. And my dad would always just go to it. So that’s all I remember seeing as a little boy. I remember seeing my dad wouldn’t get safe. He wouldn’t get hesitant or back off. He would just go to it and meet the danger or the whatever you want to call it, head on. So I think that I somehow took that on.

Working smarter instead of harder

For me, I’m trying to have better skill. I’m trying to work smarter instead of harder. So there are cowboys that are just rough, that they’re just rough. They’re just tough and rough. And they’re just going to bail into it head first. I try not to work that way. I try to work smarter instead of harder. That’s why having better skills and being a better horseman are all things that lend itself to it being easier on everyone. Being a good stockman, being a good horseman, that means that you can handle horses and cattle quietly, and where you’re not stressing them and you’re not scaring them. And when you do that, it becomes safer and quieter and better for everyone involved.

Two different types of cowboys

There are two really different types of people and ideologies, but one works a lot better and it’s a lot safer and it’s a lot quieter and it’s a lot easier on everyone, where the rough way, it generally always just gets rough. And it just can turn a day that should have taken you five minutes into something that takes you all day, and it’s just rough and hard. And that doesn’t interest me. Going back to the first thing you said was that I want to be a great cowboy. That doesn’t mean just being rough and stupid. That means being smarter and having more knowledge and having a better understanding and doing things that, if you’re going to work with animals, you better get some knowledge and learn how to understand them and the way their mind works and the way you can have cause and effect. Those are things that just make all of our lives easier, me, the horse and the cow.

It starts with love

I’ve always said that you look at any walk of life you’re in, so for me, it was rodeo or being a cowboy. You see the people that are the best at it, and they have all different ways of going about it to a degree. And so when I was young, looking at champions, I can only find one thing that I felt like I knew that all of them had, and it starts with love. If you don’t love what it is, then you are wasting your time, I feel. I feel like everything has to start with that. It has to start with love. You have to love it, and whether that be my marriage, whether that be being a dad, or whether that be being a professional rodeo cowboy. If you don’t love it, if you’re doing it because your girlfriend thinks it’s cool, or your dad wished he would’ve, or it’s what your buddies are doing it, or doing that, that’s not good. You’re not going to achieve excellence if you don’t have that starting element.

After love, comes passion

I think passion and love are two different things. And I’m talking about a passion for something. I’m talking about where you think about it all the time without trying to. You love it that much that you develop a passion for it, so you’re thinking about it all the time. It’s what’s on your mind all the time, and that’s the only way that I feel like you can really get better or become great at something is if you have that passion.

Dedication

There’s got to be serious dedication. If you’re wanting to achieve greatness in something, and I’m not even going to say greatness, for me it was I wanted to win seven world all around championships. That was my life goal since I was a little kid because the very best guy, my hero was a guy named Larry Mahan, and he won six, so I made him my benchmark. I wanted to win seven. And so being able to dedicate myself, you can’t … I just don’t think you’re going to achieve something that big, or if you want to call it greatness, or if you want to be the best brain surgeon in the world, or you want your business to get to $30 million a year, or whatever it is, without dedication, those things aren’t going to happen.

Making the right decisions

I never did it to make money. I look back at it and I’m like, “Because I wasn’t doing it to make money, I was able to make the right decision instead of the decision that I thought would put money in my pocket the fastest.” And so that’s something else that I think is really important, and that’s not easy because everybody’s got to make money. Everybody’s got to make a living. I hate when I hear people say, “He just does it for the money.” Well, yeah, that’s why you go to your job every day too, is for the money. Everybody’s got to do something for the money. But the endeavors that I’ve done that I was passionate about it and I believed in it, and I was trying to make the decisions that were right for it, not for what I thought was going to get me a paycheck the quickest.

From practice to art

After dedication, you have to have practice. Practice is different from dedication. Practice is you’ve got to work at honing your craft, whatever it may be, if you’re going to be a brain surgeon, or if you’re in business, or if you’re whatever. You’ve got to practice and you’ve got to practice and practice and practice until it starts to feel like art. That’s when it’s easy, is when it starts to feel like art. So that’s how the things that I’ve been able to achieve a better level of is, like in riding bucking horses and bulls, it started to feel like art to me. It wasn’t just mechanical. It wasn’t just where you get in there and you’re like, “Okay,” because I always say that anything you do, especially in sport, there’s five basic things. There might be three basic things, but there’s a number of basic things that you have to do. And if you don’t do those basic things, it ain’t going to work for you. But it can go so far past that, just the mechanics and the basics of the things that you’ve got to do. And it can start to become like art, and that’s when it gets fun. And that’s where it feels awesome.

The spiritual element

I’m not talking about religion. I’m talking about I feel like the things that I have done in my life, the things that interest me and the things that I’ve gone after, I feel like there’s a spiritual element to it, that it feels deeper to me than just, oh, I’m a bull rider, or, oh, I’m a horseman. It feels deeper than that to me. It feels more important than that to me. It feels like I have an amount of respect for it that is important to me, and honoring it, and really that kind of the art and the spiritual part are kind of the end, or not the end, but as you’re really into it and you’re really starting to do well at it, those two things kind of come together, sort of. You know what I mean? And it just feels like … That’s when it feels amazing. It’s not just some sport that you’re doing.

Confidence is earned

I know that in my sport, I feel like that you’ve got to find, you’ve got to figure out a way to, if you haven’t gained confidence through your practice and your training and the things that can give you confidence, you’ve got to find confidence somewhere because that is the one element that you’ve got to have every time, is you’ve got to have the confidence. And so for me, talking about those things that we were talking about, the love and the passion and the dedication and the practice, those are the things that helped give me confidence. But you also have to have, more than confidence, you almost have to have an ability to compartmentalize to where what you’re doing is really dangerous. The difference in riding bulls and playing basketball, or baseball, or a lot of the sports, is you still have the pressures of winning and losing, or championships, or things like that, the pressure of the ball’s in your hand, and there’s two seconds on the clock and you’re down by three and you’re at the three point line. Those are big pressures, absolutely. But in bull riding, you have the pressure of living and dying every time.

The danger was worth it

I’ve been down there and looked the devil right in the eye. I know how rough it gets. I know how dangerous it can get. I’ve had a lot of friends die. I’ve had friends be maimed. I’ve had friends that have brain injuries that changed them forever. I have friends that are paralyzed. Trust me, I know all about the dangers of this sport. But for the first 32 years of my life, it felt worth it to me.

The mental aspect of bull riding and commitment

When you ride bulls, you can’t guarantee you’re going to stay on. You can’t guarantee you’re going to get a good score. You can’t guarantee anything. But the one thing that I could guarantee every time, I only know I can guarantee one thing, and that was I was going to try harder than anybody else. And so that’s what I tried to do, and that’s mental. That’s mental. Slice it up however you want, it still comes down to your mental game of being able to commit and say, “Bull riding’s not a thing that you put your toe in the water and kind of say, ‘How’s it feel?'” You know what I mean? It’s a thing where when I try to explain it to people because sometimes people will say, “Well, car racing’s dangerous, or downhill speed skiing’s dangerous.” Or there’s these other things that are dangerous. And I’m like, “Absolutely.” I said, “But the difference is if you’re going to use car racing as an example, you’re still the one with your foot on the throttle or the brake. And when you’re talking about bull riding, the bull is in charge of the throttle. When you nod your head and that gate opens, the bull has the throttle and you’ve got to be able to decide. If you’re going to go there, when he pushes the throttle, when and if he pushes the throttle to the max, are you going to go there?

Being scared is part of the job

Somebody that tells you they’re not scared is lying…  There was always a nervousness and a scaredness always. I’m just telling you like it is, for me. I’m just being honest. There was never a time that I got on a bull and was like, “Yeah, I’m not scared at all. Not one bit.” No, there was never. There’s maybe times, with certain bulls, that your heart’s beating harder than on this other bull. Every single time I had a respect for it, because an animal that weighs 2,000 pounds can smash you without even trying to. They don’t have to be mean. When they’re that big, you’re in a dangerous environment.

The space between hesitation and commitment

You know that what you’re doing can have a very high consequence and you know that every time. To me, it makes you become more hyper aware that you better do the things that we’ve been talking about, as far as you’re not going to dab your toe in the water here. This isn’t where you want to hesitate. If you do want to hesitate, then don’t ride bulls. I understand that feeling. I understand being scared. I understand feeling like, “Man, I’m doing something I could get wiped out at,” but, if you’re going to paddle into that wave you better… I don’t know that much about surfing, other than I feel like you better go for it. If you’re going to paddle into it, you better be entered and you better stay hooked. You don’t want to go into that with that hesitation. That’s what gets you pummeled.

Having a “feel” for it

I think the layman thinks, “Okay, it’s a crazy cowboy. He gets on. He holds on for dear life.” The strongest guy in the world ain’t going to hold on for dear life, when you’re talking about how big and how strong and how fast and how powerful these animals are. What bull riding is, in a nutshell, is constantly being able to put your body into a position that counteracts what the bull is doing to try to get you off of his back. Now, when you’re talking about counter movement, without feel you’re not going to be able to have timing and balance. When I’m talking about feel, with riding a bucking animal, that feel comes through experience. It comes through practice. It comes through that dedication of practicing at it and learning it and getting good at it. That’s when you can start to feel, and you know what’s coming. That’s where you can counter it. A counter move is like a boxer. The more experience you have, you know when he is going to throw that jab, and, to counter it, it has to be timed perfectly. You’re having feel, so that you can time your counter movement perfectly.