Collaboration Forum Series 5: Building a brighter future (Week-1)

James didn’t want the life he’d had before.

He’d come back from the brink, and nights out with people that weren’t real friends, brought hangovers and more questions than answers. At that point, after moving back in with his mum and gran, he found a bike in the garage and went out for a ride around a nearby reservoir. The feeling of the wind in his face, and his legs slowly turning the pedals, released a sense of freedom he hadn’t felt for a long time.

On the bike, he felt alive and able to control his destiny, which had almost been taken from him forever. He wanted to do something with that feeling, to give back to the people who had helped him stay alive. First, it was for Macmillan, and then others followed suit, as his feats of endurance became bigger and bigger. His story on the bike started because he wanted to help others and it has become his life, his second chance.

Since James has recovered from cancer, which he did again in 2011 when it returned, he has also been hit by a truck and faced the mental torment of what he experienced. These extremely adverse events have created individual that is driven to see what is possible. But he’s also someone aware of what it takes to break down these goals, to fail, and to go on and achieve them.

He describes learning to walk as a child is one of the greatest things that humans ever achieve, let alone doing it again at the age of 28. That mindset of taking small but continual steps has helped him succeed: to set a world record for the furthest distance ridden on a bike in seven days; compete in Race Across the West back in 2019; and qualify for his ultimate aim, the 3,000-mile Race Across America.

A lot of that comes down to communication. I have my goals, but there’s no point me wanting to do those things if I don’t have the backup and support from my team. That comes from sponsors, support crew; that comes from my wife Louise and the kids. How I communicate with those people about the things that I want to achieve is important. Everybody has to be moving in the same direction.

At the end of 2016, I realised through various conversations that I’d been in a really dark place, and things needed to change. To be able to do Race Across America, I needed to be able to break the seven-day world record first. If I couldn’t ride 1,800 miles in a week, there’s no way that I was going to be able to ride 3,000 miles in eight days.

I spoke to an ex-professional cyclist called Dean Downing and asked him to be my coach. I talked to my family and my sponsors and told them what I was thinking. The people around me knew what I was doing. I didn’t scream and shout about it too much. After we achieved the record, we then sat down and explored how we could achieve the goal of getting to Race Across America.

Some of the team agreed straight away; others made suggestions of how we could approach it, and we also sought the advice of people who could help us to work with bigger sponsors. If somebody had a problem or wasn’t happy with the process, we discussed it and changed it. One member of that team is no longer part of the plans. It’s not ideal; I’d like that person to still be part of it. But they just couldn’t agree on our process and what we were aiming to achieve.

It’s about having that buy in from the people around you and communicating with your team and everybody you work with.

Humans sometimes struggle with change. We went through this huge change a year ago because of the pandemic; and now we’ve just settled into it, we’re going to change it again. But I think the change we have now is actually something we’ve been striving for. I had a conversation with somebody recently who was anxious about being back in the office three days a week. But being able to work from home two days a week, and to pick up their kids up from school, is a good thing.

There’s no reason why we can’t make these changes now.

For example, we were meant to do Race Across America last year, and we had to move into this year, and now to next year. So that’s been a constant change. Two years ago, we moved to Portugal and that was a huge change for the family. Of course, that followed changing my whole career and the way I looked at everything coming out of the other side of cancer.

Really, I’m no different to anybody else. We’re all constantly learning. Everything that we’ve learned, and everything we’ve done in life, we’ve learned to do. We all learn to walk, but I had a refresher course at the age of 28, so I’ve been through that whole process twice.

Look back on what you have achieved and use that to allow you to move forward. It’s about the things that you can do, the changes you can make and the impact you can have on people around you. It might be my story, but it’s not about me.

James Golding opened series five of Protiviti’s collaboration forum, which has been held online on Thursday mornings during the past year. To learn more about James’ story, you can watch this short film he made with Red Bull, and follow his progress here.