Brad Johnson: Ariana, so I have to ask, you literally go from bedridden for a year to completing six IRONMANs on six continents in one year. How did you make that happen?
Ariana Luterman: Well, Brad, wait, can I start by just saying thank you for having me on the show? I’m so happy to be here. I’m so excited to be here.
Brad Johnson: Of course.
Ariana Luterman: I will say that just like anybody who sets out to do something that seems seemingly impossible, make a million dollars, start a company, do anything that just seems crazy, it’s hard. You have to have this level of delusional belief in yourself, and you have to have a really sincere, delusional belief in this goal, in your mission, you know? You set out to do something, and it doesn’t make sense. There’s a lot of moments along the way where it would be easy to quit. It would be easier to quit. It would just make sense to quit. And over and over and over, you have to tell yourself, “No, no, no. No, I’m sticking with this goal. This is my mission. Let’s do this thing.”
Brad Johnson: Well, as we were chatting before we went live here, you said you grew up running triathlons, so this wasn’t the first time. But tell us more, what were the health issues you faced? If you’re bedridden for a year, I’m assuming it’s very serious, so give us the backstory before you went on this crazy mission.
Ariana Luterman: Yeah. Okay. So, I’ll give you the backstory before I got sick as well.
Brad Johnson: Okay.
Ariana Luterman: I grew up racing triathlons. I grew up in North Texas, in Frisco, Texas. It was really safe for me to just go out my back door and bike however many miles or run however many miles. And I did my first triathlon at seven years old. I fell in love with it. I loved how it was so you versus you, you know? My mom signed me up for soccer and basketball and all the things, and when I showed up on game day, some people hadn’t practiced, and therefore we’d lose, and I hated that. And I loved how with triathlon, if I put the work in, it would always show. So, fast-forward, I moved up to adult triathlons. I did adult sprints, but I never really did anything more than an Olympic distance here or there. IRONMAN is like the pinnacle of triathlon.
Brad Johnson: What is Olympic versus IRONMAN, for those that are unfamiliar?
Ariana Luterman: Yeah, for those who are unfamiliar, an Olympic is about a one-mile swim, roughly a 24-mile bike, and then a 10K run. An IRONMAN is a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike, and a full marathon run, which is 26.2 miles.
Brad Johnson: Wild.
Ariana Luterman: So, IRONMAN is truly the pinnacle of triathlon. Anybody who ever does a triathlon, in the back of their head, they’re like, “Wow, it would be so cool to do an IRONMAN one day.” I was good as a kid, but I was never great. We spoke about this before, but truthfully, I didn’t go to college for sports. I was nothing incredible. I was sporty, but it was never going to pave the way for my life or a career. Fast-forward, in college, I went to UNC Chapel Hill, and my senior year of college was really interesting. Your senior year, most people are applying to corporate jobs and begin the job hunt. And a lot of my friends, I noticed, were signing contracts in places they didn’t necessarily want to live in, doing things they didn’t necessarily want to do.
I began applying as well because I thought that’s what it meant to be an adult. And unfortunately, two of the most important people in my life passed away back-to-back. It was my grandma who helped raise me and my best friend, Josh. So, I was hit square in the face with the life is short mentality, young. I was 22. And that’s when I decided to do what any normal 22-year-old would do. I decided to move to Australia to pursue a PhD in food science.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Sounds like a regular plan.
Ariana Luterman: Kind of interesting, right? Casual. I made it only six months into the program when I got really sick. It was weird. It kind of came on all of a sudden. It was fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, all centralized around my GI-related issues. And I went to a couple of doctors, tried some different medications. Nobody in Australia could figure out what was wrong with me. This was January of 2023. And so, I left Australia, moved back in with my parents, and spent 12 months truly seeing every doctor, getting every test done. It was 12 months from hell. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with me. And at one point, I wrote my own obituary.
Brad Johnson: It was that bad.
Ariana Luterman: It was that bad. It was really scary.
Brad Johnson: I would assume you get to Australia, you’re pretty healthy, you’re a college kid, probably pretty active. You have 12 months of hell. What did that do to you? Like, physically, did you lose a bunch of weight? Were you in bed, you couldn’t get out? Just paint a little bit of a picture of what that looked like.
Ariana Luterman: Yeah. Every day was different. Some days hurt to get out of bed. Some nights I would sleep next to my toilet because my stomach was so ill. I would randomly wake up with 105 fevers, randomly. I’d have to go get an IV just to keep fluids in me. It was so strange. And then there were days where I’d wake up, and I felt completely fine, and I’d sit down with my parents, and we would all look at each other like, “Am I even sick? Is this even real?” It was strange. It was a really scary time because every doctor that I went to couldn’t figure it out. Nobody had an answer. I got test after test, and everything came back normal. And when that happens enough times, you start to lose hope that you’re going to get better, hence writing my own obituary.
But I’ll tell you, the day that I wrote my own obituary is also the same day that I applied to break a Guinness World Record, which is really interesting. A lot of people don’t know that they actually happened on the same day. And the reason is because I wrote my obituary, I stared at it, I realized that it only assumed one outcome. It only assumed that I was going to die. But laying in my bed, I remember asking another question, and I asked myself, “Okay, what if I lived? What would I do differently? What would I change about my life?” And my answer was movement. I would give anything to walk to my mailbox and not be in pain and not have a 105 fever randomly on a Tuesday morning and be able to sleep through the night without having severe stomach issues, and be able to eat a meal.
Oh my gosh, to be able to eat out, I would have given anything to just go to a restaurant and eat out. And so, I thought about my childhood sport, triathlon. I thought about, you know, it would be really cool to reconnect with that but not just do a triathlon. If I got well, it would be really cool to do an IRONMAN. Like I mentioned, IRONMAN is like the pinnacle of triathlon. If you’re a triathlete, especially a child triathlete, you look at IRONMAN like, “That’s what I want to do one day.” And so, I Googled world records in IRONMAN. I knew I was not going to go pro or anything, but I was like, “Maybe there’s some crazy record out there.” I found this record: six IRONMANs, six continents, one year, to be the fastest female to do it.
So, I submitted an application. And fast-forward, month 11 comes around, of being sick. I found out I had melanoma skin cancer. Had to have an emergency procedure, get that cut off immediately. It was really scary. And now I’m completely bedridden because I can’t walk either.
Brad Johnson: Wait, this is on top of all the other stuff going on.
Ariana Luterman: This is on top, yes.
Brad Johnson: Good lord.
Ariana Luterman: Like when life knocks you down, sometimes it kicks you a few extra times too, just to see what you’re made of. Month 11 of being sick, I found out I had melanoma skin cancer and had to have an emergency removal procedure. And so, now I’m bedridden. I can’t walk, and I can’t keep food down. I’m sick as a dog. So, at this point, I’m like, “You know what? I could go two directions here. One, I could give up. I could throw in the towel. I could say, ‘Who cares? Whatever. I tried. I’m out. Peace, world.’ Or two, maybe I could heal myself.” So, I started researching. I researched every drug ever created, every single protocol ever done, and I started asking.
My parents and I started asking every single one of the people that we knew in our network and our friends, everybody, “Has anybody been to the parts of the world that I was in and had the symptoms that I had?” We found a protocol. Family friend had had kind of something sort of similar. And I worked with a family friend practitioner, and we came up with a protocol, but the catch was the medication was going to cost $30,000. Brad, if somebody looked at you and said, “Your kid is sick, and the only way to heal them is $30,000,” you’d probably figure out a way to pay for it, right?
Brad Johnson: For sure.
Ariana Luterman: Well, the problem was we didn’t know if this would work because I basically came up with the protocol. We weren’t sure that it was actually going to work. There was no guarantee. So, we appealed to insurance. There was a tiny, tiny percent chance that insurance would cover it because we didn’t have a positive test. And on December 6th, 2023, my 12th month of being sick, I get a call from our insurance company saying the medication will only cost $10. And the exact same day, I get an email from Guinness World Records saying, “You’ve been approved to chase a world record. Ready, set, go.” So, I took it as a sign. This medication’s going to work, and I’m going to chase a world record.
I couldn’t even walk down the stairs. My parents were laughing when I was like, “You guys are going to watch me break a world record.” They were dying laughing. They were like, “There’s no way. What are you talking about?” I was like, “You just watch.” Six weeks later, I finished the medication. Sat down. I could eat a meal. My fever broke. I was okay. I had successfully healed myself, and I googled ‘best IRONMAN triathlon coaches in the world,’ and I emailed all of them. And so began the journey.
Brad Johnson: Did you ever figure out what was wrong? What was this magical medicine? Did you get some crazy virus in Australia? What happened?
Ariana Luterman: It was a really crazy parasite infection.
Brad Johnson: Oh, wow.
Ariana Luterman: Yeah. Gnarly.
Brad Johnson: So, somewhere you picked up something in Australia, and nobody could diagnose it, and here’s this medicine that cures it, and it was basically, “Boom, I’m back to my regular self.” Obviously, probably took some time to build muscle back and everything after 12 months.
Ariana Luterman: Yep.
Brad Johnson: Wow. Well, we should probably get to the other side of this story. Because I’m guessing there are a few people listening and watching that are like, “Okay, I need to hear this.” Okay, so you email these coaches. I’m not an IRONMAN person, I’m not a triathlon person, but what sort of coaches would people in that sport know the who’s who that you were reaching out to?
Ariana Luterman: No. So, truthfully, I didn’t even know who I was reaching out to. I just googled ‘best IRONMAN triathlon coaches in the world,’ found this list of 100 coaches, and just started emailing people. It was crazy, you know? I guess you could equate it to anybody setting out to do anything. You need investors, you need whatever it may be. Like, “Hey, I have this dream, I have this idea, I want to conquer this. Look at the scoreboard, I’m not going to lie. You wouldn’t really know that I have what it takes, given how sick I’ve been, given the trajectory of my life. But if you take a chance on me, if you bet on me, I’m all in. I’m the racehorse you want to bet on.” Most coaches didn’t reply. A couple of them said, “No, you’re crazy.” A handful of them…
Brad Johnson: And you told them, “My goal is to run six IRONMANs on six different continents within a year and break this record.” That was clearly in the email?
Ariana Luterman: Oh, yeah. And the best part was, “My first IRONMAN is in 10 months. Are you willing to train me?” Crazy. But on the phone, I got on the phone with four coaches, and my final question to them, because it’s like a mutual interview. I asked all of them the same question: Do you think I can do this? Three of the coaches said, “Oh, once you start training, if we end up working together, I’d need to see how you progress and whatnot, but maybe. We’ll see.” One coach said, “If I’m your coach, hell yeah. You’re going to be able to do it.” And I immediately signed with Jason. That was him. I knew that I needed to be coached by somebody who was seriously confident that he had the abilities, because, I mean, it was such a crazy thing to set out to do. I knew that I needed people on my team who were just as delusional as me.
Brad Johnson: I’ve got a few thoughts, but I don’t want to interrupt. Keep going. Where’d it go from there?
Ariana Luterman: So, we started training. We started training. Day one was messy.
Brad Johnson: Is this still in Texas, or had you made the jump to San Diego?
Ariana Luterman: No, this was still in Texas.
Brad Johnson: Okay. Nice.
Ariana Luterman: Still in Texas. Still living with my parents
Brad Johnson: Nice, good training weather, in the summer, I’m guessing.
Ariana Luterman: Oh, my God. I did every single run on a treadmill and every single bike indoors in a garage because I tried to run one time outside, and I made it, I don’t know, maybe not even a half a mile, and was so sick. It was hot. It was muggy. My body was weak. I couldn’t do it. And instead of throwing in the towel, I was like, “All right, this isn’t the way, but there has to be a way.”
Brad Johnson: Had you lost a bunch of weight over that year? I mean, I’m thinking if you’re having stomach issues, throwing up, having to get IVs, I mean, were you looking like a skeleton as you start this training?
Ariana Luterman: I wasn’t entirely skeleton. I found four foods that I was able to keep down. So, for almost a year, I was only able to eat eggs, chicken, almonds, and bananas without being in pain, so that’s how I kept myself alive. It took a while for me to ever eat another banana after that. I won’t lie.
Brad Johnson: I bet.
Ariana Luterman: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: Okay, so when did you start your training? What was the date?
Ariana Luterman: We call it January 1st, 2024. It was so messy.
Brad Johnson: Okay. And the goal, 10 months from now, so October? October of 2024…
Ariana Luterman: Was IRONMAN California.
Brad Johnson: Okay, so starting with North America.
Ariana Luterman: Yep. Decided to start close to home just because just in the off chance that I couldn’t finish or something happened, you never know. I figured I’d start close to home. I didn’t want to be in Africa or something. You never know.
Brad Johnson: And so, the record you were breaking, six IRONMANs, six continents, all have to happen in one year, and then you have to be the fastest female to complete those six races combined.
Ariana Luterman: Yep.
Brad Johnson: What sort of pace does that mean? As you were getting into your training, what were you shooting for?
Ariana Luterman: Yeah, great question. So, the record that stood was roughly 84 cumulative hours, where if you break that down, that’s about 14 hours a race. Now, if you look at the average times for females, 14 hours is pretty average. I mean, the average time is actually a little bit faster than that. And so, I realized pretty quickly that this wasn’t necessarily a test of speed. This record was going to be a test of true endurance. Can you keep going when the mission, the goal, the record loses this shiny excitement of, “Oh, yay, I’m chasing a world record”? You know, it was about a two-year endeavor. So, setting out to do something and knowing that it was going to take about two years to be “successful,” can I do it?
And additionally, it wasn’t just a test of speed. It was still a test of endurance with, okay, can you keep going when you get injured? Because it’s inevitable. You’re probably going to get injured. Can you keep going when two years of being in full IRONMAN shape, going from bedridden to full IRONMAN, that’s absurd, unheard of. Are you kidding? That doesn’t even make sense. Day one, Brad, it took me several months to even be able to ingest a gel. I couldn’t even eat gels, and that was kind of what I was going to be eating for all of these races, right? So, it was crazy. Again, this is so similar to so many things in life, in business, in everybody’s life. You set out to do something that makes absolutely no sense. It is highly delusional, and there are so many reasons why it could fail, and it would make sense to fail
Brad Johnson: Looking back, you shared the story of the spot you were in when you made this mental decision. And I’ve kind of, you know, you read these stories where people find God when they’re on their deathbed, right? Was it one of those like, “If I ever get through this, I’m just setting this crazy milestone,” and then you get through it, through the health issues, and you’re like, “I’m not sure I want to follow through on that crazy promise I made to myself.” When did that kick in? That had to kick in somewhere.
Ariana Luterman: That definitely kicked in. I can tell you a specific story on when that kicked in and what I did when it did. So, it was, oh, gosh, it was still so early in the journey. I was still living at my parents’ house, still just doing baby bike rides. Maybe I got up to about an hour, hour and a half max on the bike, which by the time I was racing, I was up to seven-hour bike rides, if that tells you anything. So, you wake up one morning, and you’re like, “Why am I doing this? I have a second chance at life. I could go get a normal job, move to a cool city, be young. I’m 24. Be in my 20s. Just have a normal life after being bedridden for a year,” right? Because mind you, I graduated college and moved straight to Australia. I didn’t really have any kind of normalcy.
And I looked at myself in the mirror. I was brushing my teeth that morning. It was, like, 5:30 in the morning. I was like, “Ariana, oh, my gosh, before you can train your body to do something impossible, you have to train your mind. There’s no way I’m ever going to be able to do this if I wake up and every day I’m doubting myself. I got to figure out a way to train my mind.” So, that’s when I did something kind of peculiar. Most people, when you’re working out, you’re listening to pretty upbeat music, right? It’s kind of like a little dopamine release. If you’re cycling in the garage, you got the lights on. You got the music pumping. Maybe you’ve got Strava up. You’ve got something visually interesting on the TV just to keep it interesting, right?
So, I thought, “Okay, what would happen if I stripped all external dopamine, turn the lights off, put my music only on the softest piano music, and try to push myself hard for today’s workout? What would happen?” Then it’s only up to me in my mind. I have to pull from my deepest internal why of why I’m doing this. So, I did it. And then I did it again, and again, and again, and again, and for months I only trained like that. I’d turn all the lights off in the garage. I’d run on the treadmill. You know, there’d be, like, maybe my phone light, something very small, so I wouldn’t trip on myself. But I’d run on the treadmill, or I’d bike on my bike, stationary, and only listen to soft piano music or no music at all. And I think it trained my mind pretty well.
Brad Johnson: It’s very counterintuitive to what most 20-year-olds are doing with a cellphone that never leaves their face, just constant stimulation. What did that teach you about yourself?
Ariana Luterman: That I am so much stronger than I thought I was. I don’t think people have any idea how strong they are. I think a lot of people are willing to quit really early on because they’re afraid. I think hitting rock bottom, you’re just not afraid of failure anymore. I was like, “What? I was going to die. What am I going to do? Not be able to cross the finish line of an IRONMAN? Okay. I’m not scared. I’m not scared to go to those dark places in the pain cave where it hurts. Everything hurts. I’m not scared.”
Brad Johnson: You’re reminding me, I had a conversation actually many years ago on my former podcast, Jason Khalipa, who was a CrossFit Games champion, also pretty good at putting himself through pain. And he won the CrossFit Games, and then the next year, he finished dead last in the first event, and he passed out on a run. And he learned that everybody at that level trains insanely hard and has some pretty decent genetics, and it was all mindset was the top 5%. And his mindset coach, back to your pain cave, I like that term, I’m going to borrow that.
Ariana Luterman: Borrow it.
Brad Johnson: He said he had a mindset coach that he hired, and when it started to hurt, the legs started to hurt, the arms started to hurt, the natural self-talk is, “I want to quit. I want to give up. This hurts. This sucks,” all the stuff we tell ourselves. And this mindset coach had him rewire it and say, “Good. I’m starting to build muscle finally. I’m at that point in the workout where I’m making progress.” And it was such a simple little framework, and I’ve never thought about a workout the same since.
Ariana Luterman: I love that.
Brad Johnson: So, how much of that resonates with you?
Ariana Luterman: I love that. It completely resonates, and I’ll tell you, before my first full IRONMAN, I had never done a marathon. I’d never biked more than 90 miles. When I stepped on the start line, we truly weren’t sure if I was going to be able to finish. And a close mentor, family friend of mine, I asked him if he had any advice, and he said, “Ariana, when you’re in the middle of the race, and your body is screaming at you to stop, one, that’s information. Take it as information. You know, there’s a difference between quitting because you’re risking an injury, and you’re risking your health.” I didn’t want to end up back in the hospital. “Versus quitting because your brain is just trying to protect you and because you’re afraid. Those are two different things. And secondly, when it hurts, tell yourself it’s supposed to hurt.”
I think a lot of people quit because they’re like, “This is uncomfortable. I don’t want to be doing this. Is this supposed to be how it’s feeling?” And just like your friend, or the guy that you spoke with, yes, actually, when you’re on hour 10 of a race, and you haven’t stopped moving for 10 hours, your body is feeling exactly how it’s supposed to be feeling. You’re doing great. Yes.
Brad Johnson: What, for those that have never run a triathlon, for you, what was the hardest part of the race? What section? Where did that start, that self-talk start to happen? The negative self-talk, or your body saying to stop.
Ariana Luterman: Great question. So, since the beginning of this journey, I realized a lot of athletes step on the start line of an IRONMAN not entirely convinced that they’re going to finish. And I realized that one of my competitive edges, not only with all of the mindset training that I did going into every race, all of the visualization exercises, everything that I did, I was also convinced every time I stepped on the start line that I was going to finish, regardless of what it took to get to that finish line. Maybe I need to walk. Maybe I need to sit down. Maybe I need to do whatever I need to do, but I’d already decided I was going to finish. Therefore, there was never a gap in my mind as I was racing.
There was never any doubt of, “Can I finish?” Because I’d already decided I was going to. So, it was the how the race was going to go that was the question mark. Obviously, doubt does creep in. It hurts a lot. There’s a lot of moments during a race like that where you’re very uncomfortable for long periods of time. And of course, you’re training a lot, and so you are able to train to reduce that. But a race is still a race. Things go wrong. It’s not if, it’s when. For a 12-hour race, a lot of things can also go wrong. So, I actually don’t have a specific moment race to race, but I will tell you that they happen all the time. In South Africa, I experienced that probably 25 times throughout the race, just moments of like, “I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can do this.” I woke up race morning in South Africa, mind you, there’s only one IRONMAN on the continent of Africa.
Brad Johnson: Okay, so that was the one.
Ariana Luterman: So, for me to break this record, I had to race. I woke up race morning with a fever. Try doing an IRONMAN with a fever. What? I woke up. I had a fever. I did not feel good. I definitely had had food poisoning or something, who knows what. And I was not okay. But I was like, “All right. If I want to break this record, we got to do this thing.” I jump in the water. I immediately get stung on the face by a jellyfish. Ow. Ow. Okay, I already have an out.
Brad Johnson: That doesn’t sound pleasant.
Ariana Luterman: One, I have a fever. No. No, it was not. I’m not a masochist. So, definitely that part was not enjoyable. I already have so many outs, and the race has just begun, you know? I’m on the bike, and it’s brutally hot. I lose all of my nutrition. Boom. Another out. I have another perfectly good excuse as to why I don’t need to cross the finish line. But I didn’t train my brain to think like that. I think so many people chase something, again, that sounds delusional or feels impossible or feels crazy. Again, whether you’re building a company or you’re chasing something in life or in athletics, you’re doing something that feels hard. And when things go wrong, you use those things as excuses, little ticks as excuses and reasons why you’re allowed to quit, you’re never going to make it, ever. You can’t use those things as excuses.
Brad Johnson: Did you have any mantras or sayings, as you were doing your mindset coaching that when you hit those moments kind of helped you battle through or get back on track?
Ariana Luterman: Yes. That is exactly what I did. I had so many little rituals that I did before every race that kind of ceremonialized each one in a way. Before every race, I would actually dedicate a mile of the race to different people that helped me get there. So, as I was racing, because more often than not I was alone in a lot of these places, people who were tracking me could look and know that that mile was for them, a friend, a family member, a coach, a nutritionist, whomever.
Brad Johnson: And they knew. It wasn’t just you.
Ariana Luterman: And they knew.
Brad Johnson: You told them.
Ariana Luterman: Correct. Yeah. I would message everybody the day before the race. And then, as I was racing, I could also hit a certain mile on the bike and know this one’s for my sister. Okay, I’m pulling strength from my sister. I can do this. This one’s for my dad. This one’s for my mom. This one’s for my coach. Oh, I got to make this one really good because it’s for my coach.
Brad Johnson: He doesn’t want the slowest mile, I can guarantee that.
Ariana Luterman: He doesn’t want the slow one, for sure. So, that was one. Two, I would also write a letter to myself to read on race morning, and they were always different. It was usually whatever I needed to hear that morning. But some of them in Australia, I was pretty beat up, even though that was my second race. My bike and my luggage were lost, so I thought I was going to have to do the IRONMAN without any of my things, but luckily, they showed up on my porch the day before the race. So, mentally, I was just a little bit all over the place. I also limped for 13 miles in my first IRONMAN due to a bad bike fit because I had gotten a new bike throughout the journey. And so, going into Australia, it was only 30 days after IRONMAN California, and my knee was still pretty, pretty bad.
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, there are probably a few out there thinking right now, okay, so let’s rewind. So, January 1, 2025, or ‘4.
Ariana Luterman: 2024. January 1, 2024.
Brad Johnson: 2024, the adventure begins, 10 months of training. Around October of 2024, IRONMAN 1 in California.
Ariana Luterman: Yes.
Brad Johnson: Now, rewinding, you said 84 hours was the record. It was about a 14-hour average. How’d California look out of the gates?
Ariana Luterman: Yeah. Okay, great question.
Brad Johnson: Was it, “We hit the time. We’re behind. We’re ahead.”?
Ariana Luterman: So, California was a big question mark. Like I said before, I’d never biked more than 90 miles. I’d never run a marathon. We didn’t really know what was going to happen. Crossing the finish line in California was insane because I limped 13 miles on the run. My leg, I had pinched a nerve and just really messed up part of my leg due to a bad bike fit. And so, my right leg, I dragged behind me for 13 miles. I couldn’t lift it off the ground. I didn’t even know that I could do something like that. I had no idea I was that strong. I crossed the finish line in 12:18, definitely on track to break this record. And so, I was like, “All right. That was brutal. That was hard. That was really hard, but we’re on track. Let’s keep going.” 30 days later, I was in Australia.
Brad Johnson: So, only 30 days, because I was thinking, okay, you do one about every two months or so for this. Okay. Before we get to the…
Ariana Luterman: There was strategy in that because it was either you break them up like that, or we clump two together back to back at a time and then give a longer window so I can have a true training block.
Brad Johnson: Got it.
Ariana Luterman: That was the strategy.
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, for those, I’m trying to think of… I was a football player, so we just sprinted and then rested a lot. That’s how our training went. But I’ve run a couple Tough Mudders, done a HYROX with my wife. My body hurt the next day. At the last HYROX, I didn’t walk right for a couple of days. What’s your body feel like after a true IRONMAN? Are you just roasted for a week? Like, when are you back to normal?
Ariana Luterman: Brad, have you ever been hit by a bus?
Brad Johnson: Not yet fortunately.
Ariana Luterman: I haven’t either, but that’s the closest thing that I think doing an IRONMAN is probably similar to.
Brad Johnson: Everything hurts?
Ariana Luterman: Everything hurts. And it’s different person to person, depending on how hard you’re pushing, depending on how bad you’re sunburnt, depending on how well you fueled on race day, and how well you fuel after your IRONMAN, of course. After my first IRONMAN, I did in fact take a shot of tequila with my friends to celebrate, and ate a brownie, and that was about it. And that was probably the worst thing I could have done. I did not wake up okay. After that, I got way better at recovering throughout the journey. But yeah, IRONMAN 1 was pretty brutal.
Brad Johnson: So, is it a week, and your muscles are starting to feel normal? What’s kind of standard for you?
Ariana Luterman: I woke up after IRONMAN 1, and my skin hurt to the touch. I wasn’t even sunburnt. It was just everything. So, yeah, I’d say it probably took me a solid two weeks to get inflammation down. And then, within two weeks later I was stepping on the start line to do another IRONMAN.
Brad Johnson: So, with one coming up 30 days… So, after you completed California, you’ve got another one on the calendar 30 days later?
Ariana Luterman: Yep.
Brad Johnson: And it’s about two weeks until you’re back to normal. Are you doing any sort of training in those two weeks? Is it just kind of nothing?
Ariana Luterman: Nothing. Not how I did IRONMAN. Not those first two races. Again, as the journey went on, I definitely got better at recovering faster. I got much better after a race, how to take the proper nutrition and take the proper fluids to where I could wake up the next day and I’d be much better. But after IRONMAN 1, oh my gosh, no. It was bad. I did nothing for two weeks. It was jump in the ocean and just try to get inflammation down as much as possible.
Brad Johnson: Well, at least you had an ocean to jump into, right?
Ariana Luterman: Exactly.
Brad Johnson: All right. So, we go Australia. Bike finally shows up.
Ariana Luterman: Yep.
Brad Johnson: What are the big moments from that? Hopefully, you feel better at that one. How’d the pace go? What’d you learn from that race?
Ariana Luterman: Yeah. So, that race, you asked me about mantras. The main mantra that I picked for the entire journey was, “You’re never given a dream without being given the power to achieve it.” That was definitely the overarching mantra of the entire journey. Australia specifically had something else as well. All of them had kind of their own version, too, but one that I also really internalized was, “You didn’t come this far to only come this far.” That was a really important one. It was a brutal travel trek to get there. I was in rural Western Australia in a little town called Busselton. So, you fly LA to Sydney, Sydney to Perth, and then drive three hours south to Busselton. So, it was a trek just to get there.
Brad Johnson: It had to be an accomplishment just to go back to Australia after the health situation that happened after the last trip.
Ariana Luterman: It was crazy. At one point, I found myself standing in the same grocery store that I had stood in not even that long before, and that was a crazy moment, to just realize how different my life was.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Okay. How’d we finish Australia?
Ariana Luterman: Australia was awesome. I ended up hitting 12:01.
Brad Johnson: So, a little faster.
Ariana Luterman: So, I PR’d by 17 minutes.
Brad Johnson: And was that because, as you’re running these, you start to figure out some pacing strategy? “Hey, I’ve been here before. I can do this again.” What’d you learn from the first one?
Ariana Luterman: I think a little bit of both, but as we talked about earlier, something insane happened at every race. You know, like I mentioned in South Africa, that was insane. I also crossed the finish line with pools of blood in my shoes in Africa because my feet were so swollen, and I was in the wrong shoes.
Brad Johnson: This is number three? Was Africa?
Ariana Luterman: Yeah, that was number three. In Australia, I vomited on the bike for 56 miles, the first 56 miles on a bike, vomiting. I didn’t even know that I could vomit while biking, but I spent 56 miles vomiting. A storm had rolled in the morning of the race. You know, this race in Busselton was known to have neon blue water, white sand beaches, beautiful, so picturesque. The weather was gorgeous going into it, and then a storm rolled in that morning. We had crazy four to six-foot waves. A woman actually died in the water. It was crazy, and because of how the course was set up, we were swimming parallel to the coast. And so, you were just in the waves and just getting knocked by wave after wave after wave. It felt like you were in a washing machine, and I just swallowed so much saltwater that my stomach was a wreck for the first half of the bike.
So, no, that PR actually was a big shock to me. In every one of these races, there was a serious setback and so many reasons why I could have not finished, but I was so focused on the mission.
Brad Johnson: Did you wear any sort of a Whoop or something like a trackable, like a wearable that monitors everything?
Ariana Luterman: Yeah, I wore a Garmin watch.
Brad Johnson: How many calories do you burn in an average IRONMAN? Just out of curiosity.
Ariana Luterman: That’s a great question. A lot. A lot. I don’t think I actually know the specific number off the top of my head. I was intaking so many carbs throughout the race. Your carbo load alone is insane.
Brad Johnson: Because you’re doing the little gel packs just to keep the energy flowing?
Ariana Luterman: Gels. You’re intaking liquid carbs, solid carbs. Sometimes I’d throw in bananas. Sometimes I’d throw in white potatoes, rice crispy treats.
Brad Johnson: So, you got a fanny pack you’re rolling with? How do you keep track of all this stuff?
Ariana Luterman: So, an IRONMAN is really fun because, for a lot of reasons, but one of which is because it’s different than any other triathlon in that you have what’s called personal needs bags. So, on the bike and the run, they’re obviously very long. And usually they’re multi-lap, because it would be insane to just do a one-loop, 112-mile bike. So, when it’s a multi-lap, you’re allowed to basically go into what kind of feels like a checkpoint and get your personal needs bag and replenish any of the food that you would need or also replenish any of the bottles that you’re drinking. IRONMAN also globally has incredible sponsors. And so, globally, they always have plenty of fluids and plenty of food on each course.
They are very different race-to-race, though, which is why I always brought all of my own, because whatever you train with, you should definitely race with. Otherwise, that’s a recipe for disaster. So, I would always bring all my own. But, yeah, typically, whenever I hit these like “checkpoints,” I’m just replenishing everything on both the bike and the run. So, you don’t have to carry everything.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. How many gel packs in an average race?
Ariana Luterman: Do I intake?
Brad Johnson: Yeah.
Ariana Luterman: So, my goal is usually to hit about 90 to 100 grams of carbs per hour. A gel pack is roughly, call it, 20, 25 grams of carbs. That’s a lot of gels to intake per hour. I prefer not to do that. I prefer to split it half solids, half liquids, so my bottles have a pretty significant amount of liquid carbs, usually about 50 grams, and then I will only hit about two gels an hour. Just because all of the solids are pretty rough on my stomach. That’s just through training.
Brad Johnson: So, if you were doing gels only, it’d be a gel pack about every 15 minutes.
Ariana Luterman: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: Wow.
Ariana Luterman: Which a lot of people don’t realize this, but the fourth sport in IRONMAN is nutrition. And so, training your stomach is just as important as training your muscles, and you do that through training. You go out on these long rides, and it’s important that you begin practicing your race day nutrition and the ideal kind of nutrition that you would want to intake on race day and slowly working up to that point to train your stomach to absorb calories as you’re exerting energy. Because I could eat that many gels, but is my body really going to absorb it when I’m in that state? No, it’s not, truthfully.
Brad Johnson: Well, I was always the guy that played on an empty stomach, so I would’ve had a lot of training to do.
Ariana Luterman: You played on an empty stomach?
Brad Johnson: Yeah, I could never eat before a game.
Ariana Luterman: Were you still good? Were you still a good athlete?
Brad Johnson: I mean, I was decent.
Ariana Luterman: Okay.
Brad Johnson: I mean, my saying is, “Better a has been than a never was,” right? I’m just an old guy now. It doesn’t matter. My kids are like, “Dad, whatever, we don’t need to hear any of those stories.”
Ariana Luterman: You’re still a HYROX King. What do you mean?
Brad Johnson: Well, it was more painful than I would’ve liked. All right. So, we’ve got California 12 hours, Australia 12 hours. Africa, your feet are bleeding. What’d you end up finishing in there?
Ariana Luterman: That was…
Brad Johnson: In the 12 range?
Ariana Luterman: That was 12 hours, 13 minutes.
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, not your fastest, right in the middle of the other two?
Ariana Luterman: Mm-mm.
Brad Johnson: Okay. Where’d we go from Africa?
Ariana Luterman: So, Africa was March 30th, 2025. So, I had a bit of a break in between Australia and Africa. Africa was just brutal because of so many reasons, as I mentioned, jellyfish, fever. I mean, that was racing an IRONMAN with a fever, losing my bike, nutrition, and having serious stomach issues, and then running a marathon in pools of blood. So, that was an insane race. Then turn around, and I go to Brazil, June 1st, 2025, and I PR’d. I hit 11:28.
Brad Johnson: Let’s go. Oh, by a lot.
Ariana Luterman: Which was awesome. And that was a crazy race because right after South Africa, my hormones actually crashed, and I wasn’t able to train for an entire month going into Brazil. Talk about pivoting and being confident in the goal. The mission stayed the same, but the way to get there is what evolved. And the training that I had been doing was just too much for my body, and it honestly broke. So, I think a lot of athletes really struggle, and a lot of people, and business owners, and just everybody really struggles to know when to take your foot off the gas and when to keep it on. IRONMAN Brazil was a masterclass in that because I definitely learned that keeping your foot on the gas and going 100 miles per hour every single day is never going to make you as strong. It is not the true definition of strength, and it’s never going to make you successful.
Knowing when to take your foot off the gas is what separates the good from the great. So, I literally did not train for an entire month before IRONMAN Brazil. Maybe some afternoon walks, some yoga, some like light swimming in the ocean, but nothing crazy at all. And so, stepping on that start line, there was a lot of fear. There was a lot of fear surrounding, “Will my body give out on me?” I started this journey sick. I don’t want to end this journey in the hospital. And can I finish this? Am I even physically able to? And so, PR’ing represented so much more than just, “Yay, I was fast on the course.” It was, “Okay, this is what happens when you listen to your body, and you adjust the plan.” Yeah.
Brad Johnson: Well, sounds like the rest did you well. I mean, over a 30-minute PR from your priors. Okay, where’d we go from Brazil?
Ariana Luterman: From Brazil, we went to Japan.
Brad Johnson: Oh, I’m jealous. Japan’s next on my list to visit.
Ariana Luterman: That was September 14th.
Brad Johnson: Hopefully, you hung out for a while.
Ariana Luterman: Japan’s beautiful. I actually did not, because I had to turn around and go straight to Spain to race my sixth one.
Brad Johnson: Well, next time, hang out.
Ariana Luterman: Next time. Next time.
Brad Johnson: Okay, so how’d Japan go?
Ariana Luterman: Japan, I got 12:53. That was one of the hardest races I’ve ever done. The race itself happened in Hokkaido, Hakodate, so not Tokyo. A lot of people ask, “Is the race in Tokyo?” I, for so many reasons, I’m sure why IRONMAN cannot put a race on in Tokyo, but that would be cool. But yeah, it’s in this little fishing port city. It’s beautiful, but a typhoon actually hit Tokyo the day before, and so we woke up on race day not even sure we’d be able to race. And there aren’t really a ton of races in Asia, so I was kind of getting nervous if this race didn’t happen, would I be able to achieve this record within that one-year timeline? And it was crazy. There was so much mud. It had rained like crazy the night before.
And the swim, because of the typhoon, the water had been stirred up and churned. And so, when we dove into the water, you couldn’t see a millimeter in front of your eyes. You couldn’t see anything. One of the buoys actually blew away. I ended up swimming significantly extra, probably 30 extra minutes, because I went, and the lifeguards had us chase this buoy. We didn’t know it was moving. That was a bit of a sh*t show.
Brad Johnson: Sounds like it.
Ariana Luterman: Get out, and now we’re cycling, and the cycling course is a three and a half loop course, which is, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of race brain, but there’s this great thing that happens on race day where your brain just doesn’t quite work because you’re in the middle of an IRONMAN, and you just can’t quite think right. So, counting the loops, I know so many people did not do the right amount of loops that they were supposed to do, and they ran out of water towards the end, which was brutal. And so, starting to run, I had severe cramping in my lower back because of the dehydration, and also because I’m sure this was my fifth IRONMAN in a short period of time.
So, this race was so brutal. There were also so few spectators because I guess just the nature of where it was. It being in a small fishing port city, you didn’t really have the screams of the crowds to carry you through this. It was you versus you.
Brad Johnson: 12:53. Well, if you swam an extra 30, you weren’t that far off pace.
Ariana Luterman: Exactly.
Brad Johnson: So, give yourself a little credit.
Ariana Luterman: Exactly.
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, we’re five down. I’m just looking at the original goal. We had to average about 14 hours. You’re well ahead of pace going into your last race in Spain. What were you thinking? How many months in was this now? Give us just kind of a status update going into Spain.
Ariana Luterman: Yeah. So, IRONMAN California was October 27th, 2024, and IRONMAN Barcelona was October 5th, 2025. So, I get to Spain. At this point, everything hurts. My body is so physically run-down. My mind is there’s so much doubt creeping in. There are so many reasons why I’m afraid to go to step on that start line. And the night before the race, I remember genuinely thinking, “I don’t know if I can do this.” You know, I still have almost no toenails from IRONMAN Japan. My body is still so sore and just has not recovered. And the only thing that I could think about was there are 25 of my closest friends and family members that flew across the world to support me.
They wouldn’t have done that if they didn’t think I could do it. So, Spain was truly a moment of, “All right. I’ve built this incredible community and this incredible team that I can lean on when I don’t feel like I could do it. Let’s do it, because they believe in me.” And I crossed the finish line in 11:56.
Brad Johnson: Nice. Finished under 12. So, you crushed that record.
Ariana Luterman: Crushed that record but never got cocky once because there are so many things that can go wrong in an IRONMAN, and especially when you’re in that timing situation. You know, there aren’t very many second races that I could’ve done in a couple of continents, so if I didn’t finish for some reason, bike malfunction, gear malfunction, body malfunction, injury, health issue, there are so many things that could go wrong.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Obviously, to string six of them together within a year, that’s not normal. I don’t know what a, like a nor… Is there a normal IRONMAN person? I don’t know if that’s normal.
Ariana Luterman: Like, probably doing one a year is normal. Six in a year is definitely not, especially not at my age. That was the other thing, I actually crossed the finish line and got two world records. I’m also the youngest female to do this, because there had not been any…
Brad Johnson: What age were you when you completed?
Ariana Luterman: 25.
Brad Johnson: 25. And technically, it didn’t take you a year. It was what? 10 months?
Ariana Luterman: It was just under a year, 11 months.
Brad Johnson: Oh, it was 11 months. So, does that count as the record? It’s 11 months and whatever, so is it now under a year? I don’t know this Guinness Book World Records thing. I’m just asking.
Ariana Luterman: I don’t think so. I think it just has to be within a year for anybody. But maybe I should ask them about that.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, you better tell them to adjust that.
Ariana Luterman: That’s true. I should get some brownie points.
Brad Johnson: You don’t want to be giving people extra days on that thing.
Ariana Luterman: That’s so true.
Brad Johnson: Okay. I wrote down a few themes. I’m going to kind of rattle through them, because number one, just being a fan of sports, a fan of humans doing things they don’t think they can do or seem impossible, I’m a fan of your story. It’s just really awesome to hear, especially based on where you were before you started this, from a health standpoint. But I also want to take a second and apply it to something bigger than just running triathlons on six different continents. So, as I look back, you have this massive setback. You go from probably normal college student, graduated, hey, time to start in the real world, and all of a sudden you’ve got this illness you can’t shake for 12 months that probably impacted a lot of things besides just your health, your mindset, like, can I go on? Writing your own obituary.
So, you have this massive setback, but you make a decision, which leads me to mindset. I want to hit pause there. Was that you? Were you just the kid that grew up that was kind of stubborn and hard-headed? Was it your parents and their leadership, and you’ve got this? What was the switch that said, “Nah, I’m not going out this way. I’m going this way”?
Ariana Luterman: I think everybody faces a moment in their life where it’s a bit of a crossroads, and you can either put on the gloves and step up and fight for the life that you want, or you can accept the life that you were handed. And I think, from a young age, I’ve always known that I want to live a different life. I want something more for myself. I want to help a lot of people. I want to see the world. I want to truly embody what it means to be human, live all of the highs, the lows, feel every emotion, just experience the gift of life. But I was also a rule follower. I was a kid that grew up, and I loved rules. I loved following rules. The idea of breaking a rule and doing something different, I didn’t want to do. I really just wanted to be like everybody else and be accepted and be normal.
And so, getting sick, I think, wasn’t just a moment of, “Oh, no, your health is being taken from you,” but also it was a moment to say, “Okay, you’re living a very different life than all of your peers right now, Ariana. Now, you can either accept that it’s going to be different in this way, or you can step up to the plate and fight for the life that you know that you want. It’s also going to be different, but the decision is yours, you know?” I think I get frustrated sometimes because I think a lot of people online push this ideology of “Quit your job, chase your dream, blah, blah, blah,” regardless of who it affects and what it costs.
I disagree with that. I do think that there are boundaries, and there are lines of, okay, I couldn’t just go and do something that was insanely different and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But within the realms of reality, and the reality that I wanted to create for myself, I didn’t have kids, didn’t have a dog. I didn’t have to worry about finances like a lot of parents do. I think it’s pretty unfair for a lot of people online to just say, “Screw everybody else and just go live your dream,” when maybe there’s a lot of other things involved, right? But given the situation I was in at 23, 24 years old, I was kind of allowed to just say, “Screw it. I’m going to take this chance on myself and go chase this. I’m going to fight for this life,” because I know one day I do want kids. I’m not going to be able to do something like this down the line. I can’t wait. It’s now or never.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. The window was there. It’s interesting. A lot of that hits home because I didn’t plan to start a business, and it just was one of those moments where it almost called to me, and I couldn’t turn it off. So, I don’t know if that is something. It’s almost like the last thing you want to do is be on your deathbed when it’s all said and done, which in a weird way, you kind of were at a young age accidentally, right? And have regrets. So, maybe that was the gift in that moment in a weird sort of way, where you’re like, “Screw this. I got nothing to lose now. Let’s go.”
Ariana Luterman: Yes. And I think people become dangerous when they have nothing to lose.
Brad Johnson: Yeah.
Ariana Luterman: When you hit rock bottom, everybody says rock bottom is secretly a launchpad. Because when you’re at rock bottom, you literally have nothing to lose. You can go all in on some crazy, delusional idea and believe in it more than anything else because I have nothing to lose.
Brad Johnson: And who cares what people say?
Ariana Luterman: Who cares what people say?
Brad Johnson: People are going to say stuff either way.
Ariana Luterman: Yes.
Brad Johnson: All right. A couple of other lessons I wrote down, I want to get your take on. So, big setback, mindset, but then the first thing you did, you set an intention. We call that at Triad, stating your vision, getting super clear on that so you can take your team with you, right? You had this vision, which wasn’t a small one. It was a massive one. I’m sure that scared you a little bit to put it in the emails that you were typing these coaches. So, you set this big goal, but then how you put it in action is you involved other people. You got a coach. A lot of people, I think, especially I’ve learned a lot of this the older I get. How, at such a young age, did you say, “I’m going to make this crazy declaration, but I’m going to make sure I’ve got somebody that helps me get there”?
Ariana Luterman: Well, I think, honestly, it’s the common tale of climbing the mountain, and you reach the top of the mountain, and you look around, and you realize there’s nobody there with you. I didn’t want that to be me. You know, I’d read so many books and so many stories and listened to so many podcasts about people that were so successful, built the million-dollar company, sold the billion-dollar company, did the thing they set out to do, went to the Olympics and won gold, reached that summit, looked around and realized I’m still the same me. Nothing changed. I just got a lot lonelier up here. I did not want that to be me. So, a really, really big intention that I set in the beginning was this is not about the record.
This is about becoming the kind of person capable of breaking a world record. And along the way, I am so focused on the journey, not the destination. I’m going to enjoy every single minute of this. Any DM that I received from any person throughout the entire journey, anybody asking me a question, anybody asking to go train, anybody who I met who was kind, who wanted to invest time and knowledge into me, I was so appreciative and grateful and present and grounded. And when I crossed the finish line in Spain, my tribe was there. Just like I said, I had 25 friends and family that flew across the world. I had thousands of other people that were supporting me at that end.
And crossing the finish line, it didn’t reveal anything other than, like it didn’t change my life, you know? I was the same person I was when I stepped on that start line. I was the same person I was from the beginning. It just showed me, okay, cool. I’m way stronger than I thought I was. Hard things aren’t that hard. They just take sacrifice and a lot of dedication, and now I have so many more people to high-five.
Brad Johnson: Well, it’s interesting you talk about your tribe. That was the other thing I wrote down. It sounded like you’d mentioned throughout you had quite a support system, whether it was your coach. You said the one you went with was the one that truly believed, “Oh, yeah, follow my coaching. We can do this.” So, he believed in you and believed in, “I can help you get there,” so confidence is always a good thing along the way. But also, that support system, I love how you said you dedicated a mile of each race to real humans. So, you’re like, “This one’s for mom. This one’s for dad.” That had to help you push through those tough moments.
So, what are the lessons that business owners, entrepreneurs can take from having that support system, that coaching when things get tough?
Ariana Luterman: I think a lot of people who are spearheading something, whether it’s being in charge of being the CEO of a business, being whomever, whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re spearheading in life, you think it all rests on you. You think the dream has to be on your shoulders, when in actuality, my dream was turned into a shared dream. I built the kind of team where my dream became my coach’s dream. It became my friends’ dreams. It became my physical therapists’ dreams. It became my nutritionist’s dream. All of them were like, “My dream is to get Arianna to break a world record.” You know how crazy, insanely cool that is? That your dream can be carried by other people, too.
You can share that weight with other people, and not in a frustrated, annoying kind of way, in a beautiful, magnificent kind of way, because when you achieve it, they feel like they achieved it, too. I think a lot of people forget that. I think a lot of people, when they’re spearheading something, business owners, CEOs, financial advisors, whomever you are, whatever you’re doing, you think the weight of a dream is really heavy because you’re the only one carrying it. But in actuality, it doesn’t have to be that heavy. You just need to share it. You need to find the right people that believe in it as much as you do because there are going to be days when you don’t believe in it. It’s going to be really important that those other people believe in it as much as you do.
Brad Johnson: We have a saying in our lobby, it’s literally like 10 feet away from me right now, “It’s not a big enough dream if it doesn’t require a team.”
Ariana Luterman: Amen to that. Yep.
Brad Johnson: And there, I see it all the time in our industry, being a financial advisor is probably a lot like being a triathlete. You feel like it’s a one-person game. But in reality, if that’s the way you approach it, you will always have capped your growth.
Ariana Luterman: Yep
Brad Johnson: And it’s interesting because you were the only one technically running the race, but the truth is, because you had a team, you went further. And business is the same way. If you think about it as a solo player game, you’ve capped your capabilities right out of the gates. And all of our fastest-growing firms it’s a very much team-based game. It’s not all about the founder. They’ve actually shared that lift with the team, and it’s weird. You can lift a lot more when you have help.
Ariana Luterman: You can. And I think it’s so interesting because dreams can be really selfish. You can say, “This is mine. This is my dream. I want to do it on my own by myself, so when I achieve it, I can say I was the one that got me here.” But what’s the fun in that? One, that sounds really lonely. That sounds like the journey is going to be kind of miserable and not fun at all. With a team, it’s way more fun. And two, it’s a much higher percent chance that you’re actually going to achieve it with a team. I wonder what that actually looks like numerically, but I’m sure there’s a significant difference.
Brad Johnson: All we have to do is ask Chat or Claude these days. They’ll tell us.
Ariana Luterman: So true.
Brad Johnson: Well, Ariana, this has been a fascinating conversation. I learned a lot. I’m not going to go sign up for an IRONMAN, but I now know some of what it takes to complete one. So, thank you for sharing your story. I just have one final question for you on my side. So, as we were starting this conversation, I kind of shared a little bit about Triad, what we’re about. We have a philosophy here: do business with people we want to do life with. And my litmus test on that is who would actually want to surround my family with at the family dinner table? And it’s a pretty important one to me. But the other side of that is build a business that blesses your life, that doesn’t become your life. And we hit all of that, having a team to celebrate, to work hard with.
And I’m just curious, what’s your definition? What’s Ariana’s definition of doing business, doing life, that integration, how it all works together? Sounds like a lot of this pursuit was exactly that, but how would you describe that?
Ariana Luterman: Love that question. Well, first of all, I thought you were going to invite me to a family dinner.
Brad Johnson: Come on over.
Ariana Luterman: I’d love it. I thought that’s where we were going.
Brad Johnson: I’ve got two sons and a daughter, two sons that actually don’t like conditioning very much, so I’ll bring you over.
Ariana Luterman: Yeah, let’s do it.
Brad Johnson: And I’ll just say, “It could be a lot worse. Just listen to Arianna for a while.”
Ariana Luterman: Oh, we can do an IRONMAN boot camp. It’ll be so fun.
Brad Johnson: There we go. Do I have to attend?
Ariana Luterman: Yes.
Brad Johnson: Okay.
Ariana Luterman: Mandatory. I’ll bring the whistles.
Brad Johnson: My kids might enjoy that part.
Ariana Luterman: So, as it relates to Do Business Do Life, I think, like we talked, we talked about so many things that relate to that, but I’ll add one more. And it’s about how people forget the gift of being alive and of being human, and so many people want to entangle this serious intensity in business, and they forget about all the other beautiful aspects of life. I’m sure you get so many people talking about balance. Balance is hard. Balance is super hard. I totally acknowledge that, and I don’t really think I want to push balance per se. I think I’d just say bring that same intensity that you bring to work into all the other aspects of your life, you know?
Like I mentioned earlier in this, one of the greatest gifts that I acknowledged throughout this journey was the gift of being alive, feeling all of those highs, experiencing all those lows, not numbing yourself to the failures, feeling the failures, feeling that frustration of whatever is happening. Allow yourself to feel it, to experience it. Experience that win. So many people cross the finish line, sell the company, do whatever it is they’re doing, and they don’t even know how to celebrate themselves. It’s crazy how many athletes don’t even hang up their medal after a race because they didn’t PR or they didn’t do as well as they thought they could.
So, I think so much of life is just being incredibly present and feeling everything as it’s happening, being so proud of yourself, and then turning around and putting your head back down and getting to work. But you’ve got to be proud if you’re ever going to keep climbing, for sure.
Brad Johnson: Love that. Well, when’s the next IRONMAN? Do we have it on the calendar? Or are you done? You’re good?
Ariana Luterman: Not yet, not yet, not yet. We’ll see. Definitely, I’m going to pick another crazy endurance challenge. I already decided I have a couple more in me, for sure. But it’s got to be something that I care a lot about and that I’m willing to sacrifice a lot for. So, I’ve been invited to do a couple of crazy endurance challenges, but I can’t say the will to sacrifice was there. So, I’m just waiting for the next right thing.
Brad Johnson: You’ve earned a little time off. After your 2024, you’ve earned a little time off.
Ariana Luterman: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Brad Johnson: Well, thank you so much. Really, really enjoyed this conversation. So much wisdom at such a young age. And part of that is because you put yourself in a position to figure it out along the way. So, next time you roll through Kansas, whenever that may be, on a bike, on a swim, on a run, you’re always welcome at the Johnson house. Come over and have a dinner with the fam.
Ariana Luterman: Awesome. I would love to. Thank you so much for having me, Brad. This has been so fun.
Brad Johnson: Likewise. Until next time. We’ll see you.
Ariana Luterman: All right. Sounds good. Bye.
