The Rich Roll Podcast - Aubrey Marcus: A Warrior Poet On Embracing Resistance, Self-Love & Why Outward Success Is An Inside Job

Episode Date: August 14, 2017

Experimentalist. Unconventional fitness junkie. Entrepreneur. Human optimizer. Psychonaut. This week's guest defies any singular title. But the underlying ethos that defines Aubrey Marcus is best captured in one brief phrase: Warrior Poet. On the business front, Aubrey is the CEO of Onnit -- an optimal human performance company he founded just six years ago that has grown to one of the INC 500 top 500 fastest growing companies in America. Offering a wide array of products, Onnit produces supplements for cognition, mood, bone and joint function; fitness equipment such as kettle bells and jump ropes; personal care products; and foods that range from Himalayan salt to coffee. Online, the Onnit Academy boasts copious helpful information on all things human optimization. And if you visit Onnit HQ in Austin (where we recorded this conversation), you'll find a cutting edge training center & ju jitsu studio that many an elite athlete call home, including Super Bowl champion football players, Stanley Cup winning hockey players, Olympic gold medalists, and mixed martial arts champions. On top of being a very active CEO, Aubrey hosts both the Total Human Optimization Podcast as well as The Aubrey Marcus Podcast, both dedicated to exploring and expanding human happiness and consciousness. The accomplishments are impressive. But what truly interests me about Aubrey is his uniquely mystical path to success. His philosophical perspective on the human experiment. His uncommon devotion to continued expansion of consciousness. And his unusual blend of alpha male masculinity with esoteric spirituality. This is a conversation that examines the metaphysical intangibles that catalyzed Aubrey’s unusual path. It’s about self-worth, self-love and self-discovery — and why outward success is always an inside job. But mostly this is a conversation about what it means to be human. To live meaningfully. And with purpose. I think it's safe to say that Aubrey and I are very different people. But I think that makes this conversation special. I sincerely hope you enjoy the exchange. Peace + Plants, Rich

If you don't feel like you're worthy of the success you're trying to manifest, you'll destroy it. And I think that's a big thing that people don't realize. The law of reciprocity will hold for your own self-belief. You really have to believe that you deserve everything good that's coming to you. You have to love yourself, feel that you're worthy enough, have forgiven yourself, because otherwise you'll bring upon yourself punishment to justify how you feel about yourself so doing that work is actually getting yourself in alignment with that universal reciprocity so saying man i've done the work i've done the hard labor i really deserve to reap some

of the abundance from this abundant universe and then you'll start to create situations more favorable for that that's aubrey Marcus, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, my name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. Welcome or welcome back to my podcast, the show where each week I roll up my sleeves, I get down Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome or welcome back to my podcast, the show where each week I roll up my sleeves, I get down and dirty, I go deep, I get intimate with some of the planet's most thought-provoking thought leaders, change makers, paradigm breakers across a wide expanse of subjects including health and wellness, fitness, nutrition, relationships, business, creativity, athletic performance, social betterment, and so much more. creativity, athletic performance, social betterment, and so much more.

Man, I got to tell you, I'm pretty wiped out today. I'm recording this on Saturday afternoon. And so last week I put in this huge training block. Tuesday, I ran a solid hilly 34 miles from Calabasas to Venice, my longest training run to date. And then a day later, I flew up to Lake Tahoe for a brief two-day high-altitude mini training camp with my coach, Chris Houth, along with Olympic medalist swimmer, Caroline Burkle. And I did that mainly to work on cold open water wetsuit swimming and running in preparation for the Otillo World Championships coming up in just three weeks. So for those of you who are new to the show or to me,

Otillo, or as they say in America, Otillo, is a swim-run ultra in the very, very cold, chilly, Swedish archipelago south of Stockholm. It's about an eight to nine hour plus race that entails about 40 miles of running and six miles of swimming with over 40 transitions, traipsing basically island to island, all these like little islands that you're kind of leapfrogging over.

And among many things that make this adventure race so unique and interesting is that you compete in teams of two, not as a relay, but you do it together. And my teammate is my coach, Chris Houth. but you do it together. And my teammate is my coach, Chris health. And Thursday, we basically swam and ran most of the day at over 6,000 feet and put in a good percentage of the volume, uh, that the race is going to dole out about six miles of swimming and 20 miles of running over the course of that day. And we were working on acclimating to the weird gear. You do this entire thing in a modified wetsuit with your running shoes on and hand paddles that you swim with and then hold when you're running and a pull buoy strapped to the thigh. So it was all about trying to really acclimate it used to what it's like to swim with

your running shoes on, what it's like to run in a wetsuit, how to communicate with your teammate strategy with Chris and all that kind of stuff. And then Friday we put in another long lake swim and then an amazing trail run up at 8,000 feet on the Pacific Crest Trail up at above Donner Peak. And then I flew home in the afternoon yesterday. So I'm pretty tired. My training has not been optimal over the last couple of months with all the travel, but I'm really happy to have put in this huge week. It's my biggest training week in many, many years. I got to say the altitude just crushed me. And also it was meant to be an experience acclimating to cold water, but the lake just wasn't that cold and running in a wetsuit and a very dry 80 plus degree weather

beyond just the weird looks that we were getting from people driving by made it more like bad water prep than cold water prep. But in any event, it was a great experience, super instructive and helpful and punishing, but mostly humbling. Uh, Otolo is going to be a very, very hard event. And I have nothing but crazy respect for the athletes that specialize in this discipline. Uh, and I'm really looking forward to the experience just a few weeks from today. For those who are interested in my training, you can track everything that I've been doing on Strava. Just search my name there.

I've been putting up Instagram stories. I chronicled the whole thing on Instagram stories the last couple of days. And I also shot a bunch of videos. So I'm hoping to put together kind of like a vlog of that experience. So look forward to that. Also, when I was up in Tahoe, I recorded a podcast with both Chris and Caroline Burkle. And I'm excited to post that later this week. So there'll be more information on all that good stuff then. Okay. Today's show today, I sit down with a guy who this guy has intrigued me from

afar for quite some time. Experimentalist, unconventional fitness junkie, entrepreneur, human optimizer, Aubrey Marcus. Aubrey is the CEO of a company called Onnit, an optimal human performance company named one of the Inc. 500 top 500 fastest growing companies in America for 2015. Onnit produces a really cool wide array of products, everything from supplements for cognition, mood, bone, and joint function, fitness equipment like kettle balls and jump ropes, personal care products, and foods that include everything from Himalayan sea salt to coffee and on and on and on. The Onnit HQ is in Austin.

It's this really impressive situation there, which in addition to being the headquarters for the actual product company, also comprises this incredible gym and jujitsu studio where everyone from Super Bowl champion football players, Stanley Cup winning hockey players, Olympic gold medalists, and mixed martial arts champions train. It's really impressive. and Mixed Martial Arts Champions train. It's really impressive. And on top of being a very active CEO,

Aubrey is also the host of both the Total Human Optimization podcast, the Aubrey Marcus podcast, as well as the Warrior Poet Project, dedicated to exploring and expanding human happiness and consciousness. What Aubrey has built is certainly impressive, like beyond impressive, but that's not really

why I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to talk to him because I think he has a very unique and unusual perspective and way of thinking, a very philosophical way of conceptualizing not just fitness and nutrition, but everything from spiritual growth to masculinity, what it means to be human, what it means to live meaningfully and purposefully and expanded. And I'll explain a little bit more about what I mean in a moment. But first. Okay. Also, before we get into the conversation, I want to share some awesome news with you guys

in relation to my recent podcast with Scott Harrison of Charity Water. I got this email the other day from Jason who works with Scott at Charity Water, and this is what he wrote. Rich, we've seen a great response from your podcast in the last week. As of this morning, there have been 100 new spring subscribers directly attributed to you with an average subscription value of $25.40. That's $30,480 of annual recurring revenue. Typically, we start to see the engagement tail off, but I will continue to monitor and send you another update in a couple of months. Thank you for helping us grow the spring. So that's awesome. And then I got another email the other day

that says this, I'll take the opportunity to quickly update you that we now have 115 new spring subscribers directly attributed to you with an average subscription value of $26.60, equaling $36,708 of annual recurring revenue. That's almost an additional Wells worth of value in just two days since we last communicated. Best, Jason. How cool is that, you guys? That is amazing. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I can't tell you how happy this makes me. Mostly that as a community, this RRP tribe, that you guys, that together, we can make such a profound difference in so many lives. I mean, think about it for wells for villages will now have access to clean water for the very first time in history because you guys took action. The impact of this is astounding. It will have

just unimaginable consequences on current and future lives beyond our imagination. And it just blows my mind. It warms my heart. I'm so inspired by all of you that we, as a company, my company, has decided to sponsor one well, an entire well, every single year from this point forward. So check it out. That makes almost five wells this year alone. Five wells, five villages permanently transformed for the better by virtue of this little podcast that I put out every week. Unbelievable. I am so grateful. But here's the

thing. Can we make it 10? I think that's pretty darn doable, you guys. Most of you guys have an extra 20, 30, maybe even 40 bucks a month that you can donate for such an extraordinary life-changing payoff. So I want you to really think about the impact that each and every one of you guys can have and how amazing it will feel to make that impact. So stop what you're doing and really consider making a donation to Charity Water via The Spring, their monthly subscription service. or via the spring, their monthly subscription service. To learn more and to join, all you gotta do is go to cwtr.org forward slash Rich Roll Spring, cwtr.org forward slash Rich Roll Spring.

I'll put that in the show notes as well. Really important that you use that URL so that they know that you're coming to them through this podcast and together we can cultivate this community spirit over building these wells. And together, we can cultivate this community spirit over building these wells. And again, thank you so much. So, Aubrey. Aubrey first came onto my radar via his many appearances on Joe Rogan's podcast, which I listen to frequently. And like I mentioned previously, I just dug how he thinks about life and how he articulates his unique perspective in a compelling

way. And it struck me that the two of us together on the face of things, two very different types of people with some varying opinions and perspectives would make for a compelling conversation. So when I was in Austin this past spring, I made a point of reaching out to Aubrey. Aubrey was game. We sat down and what transpired is what I think is a pretty interesting conversation. So this is a conversation about many, many things. It's about the vision quest that catalyzed Aubrey's unusual path. It's about ayahuasca, his perspective on that, which I think is pretty interesting. It's about his entrepreneurial journey in leveraging podcasting to launch and grow on it. It's about his upcoming book on the day,

but mostly it's a conversation about how self-worth, self-discovery and the internal work are really the keys to outward success. Okay, this might be my longest introduction in the history of this podcast. So I appreciate you guys listening. Should we talk to Aubrey? Let's talk to Aubrey. All right, man. The warrior poet in the flesh, man.

Here I am. You ready to rock? I'm ready. Let's do it. Nice to meet you. Yeah, good to meet you too, brother. I've been following you from afar for a spell. I heard you a bunch on rogan other podcasts and been uh you know tracking how you've built this incredible company and uh wanted to have a chance to meet you and talk to you it's funny i was in austin and and uh it just occurred to me yesterday uh that i was like i should try to figure out how to get in touch with you like it's a last minute thing and i and i and

i realized we have the same book agent so i called up and i was like bird you got to put me in touch with aubrey so i'm glad that uh you made time on a last i didn't expect you to be able to carve out the time so i appreciate it i was at home writing so you are uh you're working on the book look i don't need that much of an excuse to get me out of writing so i was like oh yes absolutely i would love to yeah it's cool bird's awesome he's been i don't know what your experience has been with him but he's he's a fantastic guy and i'm so grateful to have him in my corner so yeah likewise you're in good hands how are you doing with the book it's a motherfucker man yeah it's uh it's a beast especially research

writing like if i can just espouse philosophy you know that doesn't need citations I can write pretty quick pretty efficiently and I'm really comfortable in that realm you know drawing on personal experience and kind of logic and kind of sorting your way through complex metaphysical issues but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty and every fact that you say needs a citation you can't just like have diarrhea of the mouth like you can on a podcast but it's good it's a discipline that you know i think is helping build my skill set my knowledge base you know this is in a way you know helping me sharpen my sword you know get my game a little tighter so that and because i found some things that things that you even take for granted you know random things yeah um that you think you know but then

you actually go look for the citation you're like well maybe that's not quite, you know, random things that you think you know, but then you actually go look for the citation. You're like, well, maybe that's not quite right. Maybe that's just one of those things you take for granted. But when you really look deeper into it, you find out some things that you didn't know. So it's been a good process. Yeah, that's cool. I mean, my experience with that is that you go into it with an idea of what you think it's going to be, and then it starts to tell you what it is and that leads you in sometimes a little bit of a different direction yeah totally are you like what do you have like a release date like are you i have a manuscript due date which is june 30th right and

then from there we're looking at march april release that's cool is it still it's called seize the day own the day own the day okay right right right that's cool man i'm excited for you with that thank you yeah it's a great it's a great process to go through it's cool to get the whole cornerstone of of my philosophy you know about human optimization down in one place too you know because it's cool to write articles but then you have to rely on this whole giant blog and people linking everywhere but now this is gonna be like all right this is a perfect day as far as i can see right so the idea is it takes you through one day exactly kind of how to manage your day and optimize every aspect what does one perfect day look like right you know and obviously it's a unique take on you know kind of how to live your best life right yeah if you

do one day then you can do five days right do days, but at least you know what that one day is, a little bite-sized entry. Let's talk about your philosophy, because you're an interesting cat, dude. You're a little bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, you're a super alpha male kind of guy, but you're also the warrior poet. You have this very spiritual side to you that I think traditionally or historically has not been sort of associated with masculinity. So I think it brings up a really interesting conversation about gender identity and what does it mean to be masculine or to be a man. And I feel like we're in a very interesting kind of phase in culture right now where those lines are getting blurred in a kind of unique way like

suddenly it's all about transgender you know you see like a lot of things that you know 10 years ago was not part of like the cultural discussion and now it very much is but i think you're you sit at this interesting intersection point between extreme masculinity but also super interested in you know more esoteric subjects that i think were kind of traditionally the purview of you know the guy in the white robe with a man bun sure you know what i mean sure so talk about that a little bit yeah i mean that was the idea of the warrior poet right like before there was on it before any of this i mean i had this idea that we should be able to travel down both extremes and experience

life to the fullest by expanding the spectrum of experience so you know be able to know what it feels like to you know throw a punch or a kick and see someone's knees wobble you know and know what it feels like to be fasting on a mountaintop for five days and getting closer closer contact with your consciousness like all of these different things that used to actually in in some warrior traditions like the bushido of japan where a great samurai like miyamoto musashi or great swordsman would be the best swordsman and also great at calligraphy and writing and this kind of well-balanced approach or even socrates who was known for his philosophy but also like ferocious like a lion in battle you know where people were

more balanced as you said people got kind of steered into one way or another whether it was that kind of classic warrior archetype of a physical athlete you know kind of the the jock that you see it showing up in all these 80s movies right or it was the wall street broker who had the same idea but just a different battleground you know it was business instead of sports but missing that other side and then there was the other side there was the hippie there was the stoner there was the philosopher who was you know out of touch with their body and i really saw the value of both sides and you know i didn't invent it this as i said this is part of old warrior cultures but that idea the warrior poet, fuck, yeah, that's the way I want to live. Yeah. If you go back in time, if you go back in history, you know, whether it's the samurais or,

or every other sort of religious spiritual tradition, there was, you know, this very masculine sort of iconic, uh, persona that embodied all of those things. I mean, Shiva, I mean, you could go on and on and on who these characters are and we've lost that right like you're either somebody who lives in their head because you're an executive or you're just in the workforce or you're an athlete but we've segmented these things and we've decided that you have to adopt one identity or the other and that's how you define yourself and that's who you are and in some sense we've lost that that um you know uh enthusiasm for being not necessarily renaissance but just for being sort of more comprehensive in how we you know walk through

the world yeah that's balance to me you mean really i wanted to find balance by stretching the spectrum out to the extremes as far as possible and understanding you know both elements like what how instead of just finding balance by staying really close to the center that wasn't interesting to me or being out of balance by being too far on the inside or too far on the young side i wanted to say all right let's broaden the spectrum let me go as far out on each side as I can, experience the most extreme spirituality where I'm shedding the identity of myself, my ego, and my body as aggressively as I can, or go in the other side and be embodied as much as I can and go into some of the toughest

sports and competitions and trials of physicality that I could find. And that's where some of the greatest magic is that you can find, is just testing your limits on both sides. So that's become a real passion of mine. Self-knowledge and through experience. But it also brings up how you define balance in your life. I think we sort of think about balance as

sort of being balanced in every moment throughout the day like where we're giving everything its proper due and attention moment by moment and you know my experience is my relationship with balance is very different like i go into the extreme and vacillate between one thing or the next and in the sort of macro sense, I think I'm a balanced individual. But when I'm in something, I'm like all in it, right? It's a different kind of way of thinking about balance. It's like a longer time window that you're looking at balance, right?

It's just stretching that graph out to months, years, a lifetime. Because you could pursue something on one side for years even, but then to find balance, perhaps in the recovery from that or on the other side you spend years on the other side so it's stretching the window by which you define balance out to your life and then that's how you decide balance because i agree like to pursue and to really push the boundaries on either side you need to dedicate chunks of time

you know you need to do longer spiritual fasts or diets, like I've done, to really push that envelope. You can't just do it in a day or an afternoon. You have to dedicate yourself to that. Same with the other pursuits. Where does this come from? What's the origin story here, man? I think for me, it was...

I mean, I know you had a naturopath stepmom right so i'm imagining like a little bit of a hippie mom that helped that definitely helped um i think what it really was is i was i was really into sports you know sports were kind of everything when i was growing up like i was here in austin uh High school here in Austin. And obviously high school sports in Texas are crazy. We get 3,000, 5,000 people that are basketball games. It was an obsession at that point. And so I was pretty out of balance. And I was at that point kind of pretty atheistic, actually. I'd seen what I felt like were the faults and failures of organized religion and discarded all spirituality because of

that but then as kind of like a rite of passage when i was 18 um you know and my father actually you know encouraged me to do this to go out with a shaman in the mountains of new mexico and have my first psychedelic experience your dad encouraged you to do that what kind of dad do you which was rad your dad's like a businessman right he was yeah he was a commodities trader but he also sought this other path and when i was when i was 18 he encouraged me he's like all right you should go out and have your vision quest you know and um i was super nervous never done anything like that that's a trip like because i would i would imagine a guy like that's like look man you got to go to business school and you know he was that way too he was like he was a real a unique character as well because he was still i mean he still wanted

me to be like a bond analyst or some kind of very conventional you know go work at goldman sacks he wanted me to go to the you know go to the school with the right you know credentials all of that but then he also understood that there was some value because he'd found that to get balance in his own life because he was way out of balance so he'd used that kind of you know experiential spirituality path to help bring a modicum of balance in his life that's interesting so this the whole psychonaut thing comes from the dad you know yeah but i mean there's obviously that's part of your dad i mean he wouldn't have married a naturopath doctor right right right if he hadn't figured out a few things that plants could do for him uh-huh so you're 18 when you do that so where do you where do you go i went to the mountains it was the mountains of new mexico uh-huh and um and then took a combination of

psilocybin and mdma and you're still in high school. I was just graduated. Yeah. About to go to University of Richmond. And I went out there and I had no idea what to expect. You know, I was worried I was going to lose my mind. I'd never been out of control, but I just kind of. Were you like a partier in high school or just pure job? Drinking. Drinking. Yeah. Texas football. I mean, I think I smoked weed once with my brothers and just ate a bunch of food and listened to Led Zeppelin or something like that. But nothing that I would consider anything more than out of the party setting. Right. So, yeah.

So, I went in there and within like two hours, I felt my body pretty much evaporate and something else persist and that thing with now i quite comfortably call consciousness i didn't even have a name for it i was like whoa there's something beyond this physical experience and i was at that point it just recalibrated you know my whole life you know from from there i all right. You know this is another side of life this You know this consciousness this feeling that I have now is as good as hitting that game-winning shot. It's just completely different It's on a whole other side of the spectrum and it's as valuable as anything I've ever pursued on the other side because the the knowledge and the information and the way I was able to look at things and

Re-evaluate all my decisions in my life, I realized that that needed to be a key part of my path. And so that really helped propel me along that side. Now, a few other things. I always did like writing poetry. I had kind of a writer's instinct for a long time, and that was something of a balance to the sports. I would imagine that probably got repressed, though, in high school well it didn't it didn't work yeah you know i would write i would every girl i wrote a poem to like instantly instantly my stock just

plummeted you know it was so frustrating to me because in a era long gone you know that was uh that was courtship right that was how you won someone over if you were the a great athlete that asserate yeah exactly exactly but it was just laughable you know you wanted at that time the kind of that still that kind of counterculture movement of like the person who didn't give a fuck was the person that was the most highly sought after you know it was in that kind of nirvana era right and and i think uh i think that was really frustrating to me and i if i go back and read my old journals it's just littered with frustration like oh i got all of these talents that would have been appreciated back a long time ago and here i am

and it's not being rewarded by society so you come back from this vision quest experience yeah like what do you tell dad i mean i told him everything and he just kind of he'd been there he'd know he'd known what that was and he just you know acknowledged like all right you know and now the beauty of it is this is a it's a show not tell kind of a kind of thing it's not like he was trying to put his own interpretation or his own you know spin on what happened you know he's like well now you've seen this path for yourself and you know this path is your own so right explore it as as you will and and that's the that's the cool part about it so you head to college and and now you got a different your perspective's a little bit right so for sure

you end up studying like philosophy right yeah and civilization classical civilization double major yeah uh-huh um yeah that's a you know that's that's a unique choice for a jock type guy right right and so you had to figure out some things yeah after that experience well i would imagine you're kind of gestating on a bunch of different you know sort of spiritual ideas right so the atheism is kind of getting pushed aside and you're making room for some new concepts yeah because i felt something that i felt like extended beyond what you know rationalist imperialist science could explain you know i felt something that felt eternal beyond the existence of the body.

What in religion they would call the soul, like what you could also call consciousness. I felt that, so I needed to find my own way to explain that. So I went deep into religion, philosophy of religion, and I tried to understand it from that perspective, from the science perspective, and then carve out you know spiritual metaphysical understandings as well so how do you define that for yourself today that's really a challenge because it's um it draws from a lot of different language and lexicons that you know have a lot of different people have talked about you know so

i like to use the word consciousness i like the idea that there's a collective consciousness or a source which could also in a religious context be called god this like universal force that i've come into contact with and felt and experienced and it feels like we are a small piece of that like we're one facet on this giant diamond you know one grain of sand on this giant beach but the beach is also a force itself and so you can get that from you know in in different ways in eastern philosophies and other philosophies they just have different lexicons and different kind of concepts even in you know traditional monotheistic, if you go into the deeper mystical teachings, you'll find the ways that they describe this.

But I really encourage the experiential path. Go out and don't take anybody's word for it. Just go out and experience it. Find the ways that you can get in touch with these forces, whether it is psychedelics or meditation or ecstatic dance or float tanks or yoga, whatever your path is, all of them are valid. Holotropic breathing or shamanic breathing, all of these ways can start to get you in touch and then see for yourself, find out what you can find. So it doesn't really, it can't be sort of quantified in terms of, well, I'm sort of Buddhist or I'm sort of, you're just looking for universal truths that kind of find their through line and thematically resonate with you through the various experiences that you have. or another thing are ultimately fallacies anyways you know like even even national borders you know

like oh i'm american not canadian well we're fucking everything at this point you know we picked up little bits of all of these cultures little ideas from everything you know but we just carve out these lines and say okay we're on this side of the line or this side of the line that's not real i mean even like even these we just like these binary systems even like the idea of guilt or innocence like is anybody ever really fully guilty or fully innocent but nonetheless at a certain point we draw a line and say okay you're guilty you go to jail you're not guilty you don't go to jail you know everything is the nature of the human brain you know we need to categorize everything we need to

put everything in a certain box so that we can understand it and i think it's a control thing too that way we feel like we you you know, we feel safe, right? But it is all illusion. I mean, why do we even look at the globe the way we look at it? Why should it, you know, what if you just flipped it upside down and redrew all the maps? You know what I mean? You would look at it and it would look like a different planet to you.

You know what I mean? And that's just a tiny example of how we do that throughout our day with everything. Symbol making brands. It applies symbol making everything whether it's politics it applies to nutrition and the way we think about food and we break it down into well it's carbohydrates protein and fat but you know really that's that's a very deductive approach to looking at not just food but anything right or saying something's good for you or bad for you right when everything is dose dependent and person dependent you know that's good fat well yeah 100 but if you ate only sticks of butter you know for your whole life no longer is it good you know and it's something that's bad for you at the right time and in the right place maybe it's okay you know what i mean

so yeah we do like to to create these buckets where we can put things but really it's all as you said an illusion so when you're in college are you starting to feel like you're i would imagine that's this is creating a little bit of attention with with you know your social environment right if you're in college it's about you know you know what college is about is yeah going to class and if you're starting to explore these more esoteric ideas that's going to set you apart a little bit i would imagine yeah classmates it did but you know i always i always find myself being able to relate to people on their on their level you know and i didn't have a big agenda there was no kind of proselytizing you know concept where i was trying

to convert people to my way because i didn't even know what my way was so if the you know the idea of the time was all right beer pong get drunk you know go try to find some girls to talk to like i could get right in that mode without you know stress just like all right that's the that's the micro game we're playing in the big game you know like got it let's have fun doing that and so i was able to kind of maneuver through that but what i was frustrated in was that these what i felt like you know was the full representation of who i was you know certainly wasn't appreciated or celebrated at large you know it was kind of like a curiosity rather than the goal know, like everybody wanted to just put you on one side or the other. And, you know, I didn't fit in either side.

You know, I fit in both sides. Were you starting to go on more of these vision quests at this point? Yeah. Yeah. Where does the ayahuasca come in? Ayahuasca didn't come in until later. So that was kind of the,

that one is harder to do locally. Especially at that time when I was doing it. That was six years ago. And it's amazing how much more prevalent it's become in six years with shamans traveling all through the states and offering ayahuasca here locally. But back then that was a lot less common. And also now I run in those fields so maybe I'm more exposed to it. But I do know that it's a lot less common and also now i'm you know i run in those fields so maybe i'm more exposed to it but i i do know that it's a lot more common uh so anyways i just read this book um a book was called shaman healer sage interesting book but i knew that that the author of that book

was leading retreats down to peru where he was offering ayahuasca. Not him himself, but he partnered with some other shamans. So I just wrote in a letter and signed myself up. And it was right about the time that I was starting Onnit. But at that point, Onnit was much more of a vague idea. I kind of had thoughts that it was just going to be, it was going to make like hangover pills. It was really what I was thinking about making. I had a very kind of niche idea of what on it could be. Um, and then went out to do the ayahuasca and

not only, you know, I've talked about these experiences many times, but not only was it incredible personally, you know, changed the way that I approached death. My fear of death showed me different, um, capabilities, it felt like of my consciousness and the ability to heal my own body, it's felt like and do amazing, magical, seemingly magical things. It also gave me a very clear direction of what on it could be, and the way that I needed to, you know, adjust things and, and do things in accord with, uh, the most fluid path to allow myself to express, you know, what was really inside myself and allow, um, you know, people to really understand and grasp what this thing was going to become. That's amazing. So you

came out of it with that level of clarity. It was really incredible. I mean, I could see, I could visualize everything all the way through you know even to now like nothing that's happened with on it has been a surprise and i think a lot of that was because that night under the under the influence of that you know hallucinogenic dmt containing brew in the jungle listening to the icaros and the sounds of the birds and the stealthy jaguars you know going through the jungle and the crocodiles in the water in this whole crazy environment that i was in i was able to see something incredibly practical about how to um how to build this business

it's super interesting to me i've had a bunch of people on the podcast who have had similar experiences and i i certainly can't deny the the um the impact of those experiences on various people's lives and it's undeniable in your life i see it in i see it in rogan as well um it's it's curious for me and and uh i i'm like you know i i have like a mixed emotions about it. I'm a long-time sober dude, in drug and alcohol recovery for a long time. So when I think about somebody saying,

the answer to your dilemma lies in the power of a mind-altering substance, that's good news to me. You know, like that triggers my inner addict and it makes me, you know, crave that experience, which is scary to me, right? Because the danger flags run up for me. And so I don't know that I'll ever do it. But I've talked to so many people that have had, you know, amazing experiences with it. So I have no judgment on it and I have no experience with it directly.

But I also think here's one thing I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on. I have some friends who have not only done ayahuasca, they've made it like this incredibly frequent practice. I was with a friend in New York City a couple months ago and went out to lunch with him, and he was telling me about all his various experiences and i think he said he had done it like uh like like almost a hundred times in like a year and a half wow like that's literally like hey it's tuesday yeah let's and i was like whoa you know like if

you can't find what you're looking for through, you know, a couple periodic, you know, experiences, like why are you going back? Why are you going back? Why are you going back? Yeah. And that's, there's a lot of good points there. And I think, you know, as I was saying earlier about whether something's good or bad, you can't say that ayahuasca is either a drug or a medicine. It just depends completely on the user, how you're using it, the the user how you're using it the intent from which you're

using it you know like tylenol for example it's a good medicine for a lot of people but you take too much your liver is going to fail and you're going to die you know ayahuasca in the same way it's it can be an incredibly good medicine but it can also just be a drug you know it can be something that you can use to chase altered states of consciousness to get out of however you're feeling yeah to escape your reality and so i think it all of these things are neutral tools and it just depends on how you use them but the experience you know to go back to your sobriety thing the experience tends to feel like hyper sobriety like it tends to feel like you're now less drunk on your ego and your delusions and all of these things that we're drunk with in our waking life and all of a sudden you're actually sober for the first time in your life

like the fears the greed the the ego the identity all of these things that have clouded your vision and made you think a certain way it feels like that gets lifted and for the first time you're actually clear-headed and so it's an interesting thing because a lot of people, and I'm not necessarily advocating that it's a path for you, but a lot of people who have had addiction issues and have had drug issues, it's a much different experience than I think you'd expect because it's almost like you're more you than you've ever been. So it really does feel like hyper-sobriety.

Yeah, no, it's interesting. I mean, I had this guy, Gabor Mate, on the podcast. Yeah, I know. I just had Gabor on mine, too. Oh, you did? Amazing guy. Yeah, he was incredible. I mean, he blew my mind.

And we had this amazing talk. And ayahuasca didn't come up in the context of our conversation. But afterwards, when we were done, he's like, listen, you might benefit from this. Call me. And I was like, I don't know man i mean i don't know you got the invite from gabor mate yeah i know and that's like but still but i also have lots of i have lots of you know friends and and people in recovery who are like yeah i don't think you need it you're on you're on your path and you're a seeker and i've had you know i can't say that i've had the kind of experiences that you

have had but i've had glimpses of perhaps what that might be like through you know ultra endurance sports like when it just strips you away because you're just you're you're so beyond exhausted and you're forced to meet yourself in a very pure way i've had interesting experiences with holotropic breathing you know i've had some weird ones with that where in the wake of it like the first couple times i did it were ecstatic experiences almost like feeling like i was high and then i went through a phase where i would do it occasionally and i would get super angry and i would have to like lock myself in a room and avoid other people for like 24 hours so it's obviously bringing something up from my subconscious or you know some aspect of my consciousness that needed to be looked at yeah and that's you know for people who are thinking

like holotropic breathing like that's that's like kind of the easy thing compared to ayahuasca like you can't discredit any of these these ways that you get to the to the mountain there's multiple paths up the up the same mountain you know you're really trying to get yourself to that state of consciousness and holotropic breathing for me has been as cathartic as any other medicine that i've ever taken from iboga to ayahuasca to all of these you know really intense psychedelics you know just sitting in a room breathing with a bunch of people you know probably cried more tears and felt more emotions push through me than with any other modality. It's really interesting. Every medicine path has its own kind of unique characteristics.

And you can't say that one is stronger than the other. And I have people do that all the time with drugs. Like there's a hierarchy of these plant medicines. They'll say, oh, I could never do mushrooms because one time I ate too much weed and I freaked out. I was like, yeah, everybody who eats too much weed freaks out. Like that's not the easy one. You know, like none of these are the easy button.

Like whatever your path is, and I know I've never done any kind of ultra endurance, but I've been around fighters during weight cuts. And there's a point, and I've talked to Mike dolce about this too there's a point during the weight cut where you're completely depleted of fluids of food of everything and that point where it just feels like the same parts of the brain that power down when you're on psychedelics you know they power down too and you have what's left was like the essential consciousness of the individual and a lot of times you have to fight through different anger and emotions and things that'll come up at that point but then you're left with you know real truth you know

at the baseline so so many different ways up the mountain and all are valid and all are good yeah i think whatever you choose it's about the journey up the mountain. It's not about the peak. It's not about getting there. There's no destination, man. Yeah. It's about devoting yourself to personal growth and whatever modality seems to resonate with you. And there's certainly plenty of those now.

Yeah. All right. So, you come back from this experience and you have this clarity about about on it uh and you know you just gave me a tour before the podcast it's quite an operation you got going here man i mean it is like impressive it's super cool um and it hasn't been that long right it's been like seven years yeah july July 2011, we launched AlphaBrain, and that was a couple months after I got back from the jungle. And that was really where I count the founding of the Onnit as we see now. You know, AlphaBrain kind of took this company in the direction that it is headed now.

Is that still the best-selling product that you make? Uh-huh. Yeah, I use that i use alpha brain i use shroom tech and i use the hemp force no i appreciate that you have vegan products nice yeah yeah absolutely no it's good stuff man and uh and what you're doing like 28 million in revenue now something like that those are those are old numbers yeah that was from the ink um that was from the. 500 list that we made. We're doing a little better than that now.

But, you know, don't really talk about the hard numbers too much, even though that Inc. report kind of let the cat out of the bag. But, yeah, everything is going really well. And so many different areas that have been, you know, maybe if you looked at the bottom line, not the biggest part, but just make this thing such a rich experience like the gym that you saw yeah the gym is amazing and then now we're partnering with bang muay thai and um you know 10th planet jujitsu we have a yoga studio franchise

black swan yoga which is you know one of the main stages studio here also too oh i didn't know not on not on site here yeah we have uh we have a couple we have three studios in town and one in houston right and i was saying to you like if you're if you're a serious athlete and you live in austin there's you're insane if you're not coming here to train yeah this is the spot it's pretty impressive thank you yeah it's really cool and i you know there's a couple things that come to mind and thinking about this like first of all you know there is no market more crowded than the supplement market, right? And there's also no market that is rife with more snake oil

salesmen and charlatans and people trying to rip you off. And, you know, I know a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit about, you know, this world. And I know that there's a lot of junk out there, right? And so, first of all, just the fact that you were able to create a brand and distinguish yourself and kind of rise above that fray is no small feat. And secondarily, to be able to put out a quality product amidst all the bullshit that's out there because these labs and if you're not on it,

if you're not on top of what's going on and paying attention, who knows what goes into this stuff? It's not regulated. And it's frightening, I think, for the consumer or the customer who wants a quality product, goes to the store, and it's like, how do you know what's what? Right. Yeah, it's an interesting space. It definitely doesn't have a lot of positive PR surrounding it. And I think that's really justified.

I think the old model was pump and dump. Let's get a lot of hype behind something. Oh, this is the new weight loss extravaganza. Buy this. You don't have to do a thing and you'll lose a bunch of weight. And all of these different things that people were talking about that really weren't real. And then people using that distributor model, which really forces them to cut the costs. Like if you're selling to a distributor, selling to a wholesaler, who's then selling to the customer, it really forces you to drive your cost to the floor and then put almost nothing in your supplements. And I think what's really allowed us, first of all,

our ethos, what we stand for, and also the fact that we are selling direct largely just direct to the customers it's allowed us to have a much higher cost of goods and really put some great stuff in our products you know you stepped into retail though i've seen it you know it's at a shop at air one and near my house that you guys are carrying it there and we have we have room for that what we don't have is like the bigger chains you know they all go through distributors and so the distributor if the distributors were selling to sprouts then selling to the consumer at that point you know the margins just aren't there because we have to put as much quality shit as we can in there and then also fund the things like the clinical trials that we've done which i think is a real differentiator i don't think

i've seen anybody that's using largely plant-based products and then taking them through rigorous clinical trials like we've done with alpha brain like two double blind randomized trials with the boston center for memory who reported you know people are saying oh you paid for it yeah but they reported 12 null results findings in a row before they did alpha brain i mean this is the credibility of their entire organization on the line you know there was if alpha brain didn't work they would have published it that's what they did so we you know we put ourselves on the line and then duplicated those results in both independent trials um with statistical significance so that's something that really very few companies outside of like drug companies testing drugs it It's expensive. It's expensive.

I mean, like all said and done, close to half a million dollars to get those trials all the way through and support that. But it's something that I think was important for us to do to show that, hey, what we're saying is legit. Alpha brain, not only will you be able to feel it, but here it is tested against placebo, here's how it works. I think the average consumer would be shocked to know that if they went to, you know, the store and bought a random selection of,

you know, 12 or 15 supplements, protein powders, whatever, and sent them to a lab to have them tested and then compared what the actual ingredients are to the nutrition facts panel on the product they would be amazed at how much it doesn't resemble what it's advertised to be right and a lot of that has to do with these these labs where the products are made where they're making all different kinds of stuff there's all kinds of contaminants that get into this stuff. And there's a lot of shysters ripping people off. And they're telling all these people that have little brands, like, oh, yeah, we're making your stuff.

And if you're not paying attention, they dilute it. And there's a lot of crooks out there. So how did you figure out how to align with the right labs and make sure that you could ensure that kind of quality control? Well, you got to, I mean, we audit every facility that we go to first of all like boots on the ground audits with our with our regulatory compliance team we go through the assays and the testing from the raw ingredient suppliers to the encapsulators and mixers and we just follow every step and and look at every ingredient make sure that those ingredients have been tested then look at every ingredient, make sure that those ingredients have been tested, then look at the final batch,

make sure that's been tested, and then just kind of watch every different way because, yeah, I mean, greed is a factor. And when these companies are dealing with 15%, 20% margins a lot of times in these encapsulators and mixers, it's not huge margin business. If they can carve out another 10 by diluting your product you know they might have the motivation to do that i think what's changing now is that the internet is providing such easy access to information it's really tightening up the game

like i think what you know what you were describing was incredibly common 10 years ago maybe even five years ago but now with all of the review systems that are out there all of the ways that information travels like lightning fast i mean look think about how fast that you know united stock plummeted when they pulled that dude off a plane like back a long time ago you could yank people off the plane all the fucking time wouldn't matter but people start you know if that starts to happen now the world instantly. And I think that's the way that you really get an industry that's had formerly bad practices back in line. Do you think that's enough or do you think that there's room for additional regulation? Because it is so unregulated. I really like that the free market has the opportunity to do this because I don't necessarily believe that a central regulation body is going to actually be any better. They're still as corruptible as any.

I mean, if you look at some of the regulatory bodies, like look at the scheduling of marijuana, for example. That's something severely wrong with that with the scheduling of marijuana high you know high incidence of addiction and harm no possibility of medical treatment well that's clearly false but yet nonetheless the regulatory bodies are still scheduling it as a schedule one drug like things exist like that that are clearly um clearly that the people with the largest pockets have been funding and driving these regulators towards different ends. But when you decentralize that regulation and allow the free market, you know, to say everything and kind of accredit different

organizations based on their own reputation, I think you can get actually probably a little bit closer to the truth. But, you know, one area I think that the regulations are solid is, you know, safety as far as like testing and ensuring that the products are safe for consumption. I think that's one thing that the government does do a really good job at. I mean, every facility that we've been to has FDA GMP audits regularly where they're going through and making sure that everything possible is being done to make sure that the products aren't you know harmful and contaminated and if you actually look at the the amount of you know serious adverse effects for supplements compared to drugs i mean it's a

wild discrepancy i mean pharmaceuticals are killing people hurting people left and right and supplements you hear about a few random cases that have happened with something like ephedra or like a tainted batch of tryptophan that came from japan but for the most part you know it's really actually not harming people now whether it's actually doing any good right that's there's no harm and and actually just getting what you think you're paying for right and i think that's where they like it can be neutral it's just not what you think you're yeah so the government takes care of that part and then the you know kind of the the plaintiff's attorneys are really cleaning up the other aspect you know like um different supplements claiming there was a big supplement

slips my mind right now but a big supplement a brain supplement that just um that just got busted and sued for like 100 million dollars or something like that because they were putting out information targeted towards seniors saying that this supplement was going to improve memory long term and they had some chicken shit bullshit study in a graph that was way way disproportionate and you know the mark of the free market again came and sued them and then just basically crushed that company so the free market forces are stronger i think than people realize like at any point that you step out of line you know there's an attorney or you know the fda or the fdc that's ready to whack you back in the line but first

before that happens it's the public outcry which is the first line of defense you know what social media is saying what everybody else is saying so um well in some regards like if tighter standards were to be put in place it would probably benefit on it i am reticent to give centralized power over anything just being that i've seen it misused too many times you know it's just maybe it's just the libertarian in me as well no i get that and and this is something i did a podcast yesterday with john mackie you know who's essentially a libertarian in certain respects at least with respect to business. He has some very interesting ideas about capitalism, conscious capitalism. And he's mired in this crazy shareholder war right now. There's a couple of huge hedge funds that have taken big positions in Whole Foods at the moment and are pushing for a sale. And he's trying to toe the line and prevent that from happening.

So he's under fire in a big way, but we had a really interesting conversation about free market forces and this idea of conscious capitalism, which is basically a term that he coined and wrote a book about. And as somebody like yourself who is interested in consciousness and running an effective capitalist company in a free market society. How do you think about injecting consciousness into your brand and what you do? Yeah. To me, it all goes back to the law of reciprocity, right? I think it's something innately we feel, you know,

that we want to give equal to what we receive, you know, and that's something that's innate inside all of us and i think falling back on the law of reciprocity in all of our actions i think is the key to conscious capitalism it's one of the key principles of consciousness you know like if you're in the peruvian jungle and you're you know learning the rules then everything is everything is abiding by the law of reciprocity i mean they are animists so they believe everything has a spirit so if you want the flame to light your mapacho which is like a sacred tobacco cigarette cigar you know you ask the flame you know may i have your flame to light this even though you won't get a response it's about this this conscious exchange you don't take anything

if you want to eat an animal you ask the animal if you want to harvest a plant you ask the plant you know it's that they're very aware of the of the law of reciprocity and i think applying that to business is the most conscious way that you can do anything capitalistic so that's ensuring that anytime someone buys your product that they're receiving goods and services equal to what they've paid and And our goal is to not only make it equal, but greater so that they have, so that we're running a positive balance in the bank of reciprocity. So that in every single exchange that we do, we're running a positive balance. And so that means adjusting some of the different practices. Like the usual money back guarantee practice, for example, is you buy something and then if you want to return it, you got to go through this whole rigmarole.

You got to get the product, box it back up, print out your original label, fill out a survey, send it to this specific thing, and then a month later you get your refund. And that's a game because they realize that most people aren't going to fucking do it. So we wanted to change that. And so we said, all right, how do we make it not a game? Well well if they get it and they don't like it they just let us know and we give them their money back period and then some people are like well aren't people going to take advantage of that some people will but the law of reciprocity holds in in the inverse as well you know when you're willing to give somebody that much leeway and that much freedom you know generally it's going to be a select only a select few that are going to take advantage.

So we found that despite that, which is, as far as I know, the most lenient return policy in the entire industry, we have one of the lowest return rates on our products. And yes, we have good products, but I also think it's the fact that people can sense that we're not trying to game them. I think that engenders trust in your customer base too.

And that level of loyalty is going to prevent that from turning into a waterfall of people just trying to rip you off. And I think it speaks to transparency. And that's something that came up when you had that breach, right? You had a security breach. And you were very upfront about letting everyone know before any customer had alerted you to that. So, you know, perhaps a different company would have just tried to bury it and not say anything. And I think it reminds me of something that came up in your conversation with Gary Vee the other day when you were talking about the benefits of, like, if you take a long

term view in business, the benefits of leaving a little bit on the table in a negotiation and having the long view and understanding that business doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, right? We can all benefit and rise together. And it's not about having to necessarily gouge the other person. That's not necessarily the win in the long run. No. I think people underestimate what someone's goodwill and passionate intent can create mutually. You know, if you cut something too close to the bone and you end up with a partner who's half resenting you, half obligated to you, and just a little shitty about it, you know,

that partner is not going to be a good partner. But if you leave them with, and you're the point, and I think Gary mentioned this too, he's like, I'd like to leave more on the bone because it's leverage. And what he's talking about is you leave more on the table. You let them have the positive balance and the bank of reciprocity. They're going to want to give you more in return. And I think that's the game that makes things grow. And then they give you more.

And all of a sudden, you're running that balance. You're running a negative balance. Like, all right, I got to give you more. And you start to build this kind of abundance escalation rather than this, man, fuck that balance. You're running a negative balance. Like, all right, I got to give you more. And you start to build this kind of abundance, you know, escalation rather than this, man, fuck that guy, you know, which is the other idea of how it works. And it works not only for customers but employees too. Like, we have, you know, that same kind of mentality with how we treat our employees here. You know, give them as many opportunities to succeed personally and professionally as possible. Like, you know know co-pays

on food and massage and free gym and you know we don't unlimited vacation times as long as it's approved by their team and all of the things that we can do we don't have wim hof out here and take them through breath classes and whatever we can do to boost their morale and passion we realize that they're gonna give that back like i never have to beg people to work overtime when we have a sale you know people are just lined up when we're doing a five in the morning you know warehouse warehouse sale to clear out some old inventory you know we got volunteers already signed up hey anybody want to do this sure the whole thing lights up because they know you have their back right exactly and and vice versa

you know so you create this system um that really is self-reinforcing i think the the the most brilliant thing that you did in launching this company to success was understanding something that confuses me that most people don't understand, which is the incredible underpriced ROI of podcast advertising. So you understood, you know, early that this was a, this was an opportunity that was underexploited in the marketplace. And by partnering with Joe, I mean, you were able to blow this whole thing up in a way that had never been done before. And now, you know, certain companies are kind of realizing this and jumping into it, but really not that many. There still aren't that many. And when I look at the growth curve of Onnit,

it all tracks back to podcast advertising. No doubt. No doubt. We wouldn't be who we are if it wasn't for podcast advertising and for Joe. You know, I mean, that's the single greatest move that I did was bringing him on as a partner in this company. And that was, I owe a lot of credit to that because that got the momentum rolling. That got the word out. And then from there, it's just been a matter of accelerating. Like the hardest thing to do if you're out in the wild

is to start the fire. It's not to feed it more fuel. And and and joe and a few other podcasts at that time but largely joe started the fire and then at that point we're just out there you know finding dead wood and driftwood and throwing it on the throwing it on the fire and making the blaze bigger how did that come together well i asked joe um me and joe were friends at that time and i asked joe i said joe what would be the product that you would like the most and he said well i'd like a really good you know plant-based nootropic like a natural nootropic that really worked because there were some other things around at the time like the modafinils and then

different kind of chemical synthetic products but nothing that was a supplement that you could actually feel so i was like all right i'm gonna do my best to make the very best plant-based nootropic that's ever been created then went to you know my stepmom some other um some other doctors psychiatrists athletes and put together this batch and the first batch of alpha brain was so fucking strong it was like because one of the mechanisms of action is it boosts acetylcholine so it has a cholinergic reaction and a cholinergic reaction at the upper level feels a bit like a nicotinic reaction so what it would feel like if you you know had a bunch of nicotine so if anybody smoked too much of a cigar or um you know try to dip for the first time and absorb too much nicotine you get that kind of

nauseous feeling that at the tail end of the buzz and this formula was so strong so cholinergic that um it was it was borderline you know too much for most people but joe just loved it he was like this is the best i love this thing and um but regardless we knew we had something we knew that if we you know we had a driver to the formula we had some things in there to balance it out make it more robust target some different systems in the brain um but we had something that worked and then it was just about finding the sweet spot of dosage and and how to uh how to make it work and um at that point you know we still hadn't even really talked about business but basically i designed alpha brain for joe you know and then so we knew that something was going to happen

and then sales started rolling in and at that point we just kind of went back and forth a few times about what we felt like was fair and uh just settled on uh settled on a number uh-huh and it was it was cool at that point because i really got to understand what it would be like with joe as a partner because i remember when uh i've told this story before but we were negotiating his equity position and you know i was in marketing and investment banking and you know sometimes use some negotiation tactics to kind of help you know just help your case and help your position and so i said something like yeah i know it's going to carve this piece out and leave that for me so i can pass that on to my kids and it wasn't untrue i do plan on passing on some of this company to my kids it wasn't a lie but it wasn't like the most honest representation of

what i was really going to use that equity for so so, so Joe goes, Hey man, I don't give a fuck about your imaginary kids. I go, yeah, you're right. And at that point it was like, all right, we're going to do this, but we're going to communicate at a hundred. We're not going to shade anything. We're not going to overspend the cue ball. We're not going to, you know, play any kind of posturing. We're just going to say it exactly like it is like, this is how I feel. How do you feel about about that and we've always fallen back to that just communication at 100 and it's been 100 the best business partner maybe the best partner honestly i've ever had and just that you never have to think if something goes wrong you know and it's and i have to tell joe i don't think about how i'm going to position it i don don't think about, oh, man, how am I going to break the news to Joe?

There's no how. It's just, okay, when can I get him on the phone? And then I just say it like it is. And if something good happens, just say it like it is. So it's a really great way to have communication. It's something that I've strived for not only in business but in my personal life. Because when you don't have to think about how to PR your way and market your way and shade and posture,

you can just relax and just talk to people. The ability to have that juggernaut of a podcast at your disposal is just, you can't overestimate the impact of that on your business. It's just incredible. And it's always, you know, and you have a podcast, right? And I've been doing this for four years. And you look at the advertisers, and it's the same people, you know, and I have great spots, you know, Casper and Harry's and MeUndies. And, you know, there's cool companies that are, you know, forward thinking

that have the similar idea that you had. But it just amazes me that there aren't more because it's underpriced. Basically, it's an opportunity for a company to tap into a demographic of people who are already inclined to want to buy their product and speak to them directly with a human voice. And the conversion rates are super high. And yet, it's not that expensive. And the marketplace is still looking at those more traditional modes that aren't converting at nearly the rate

that podcast advertising. So I'm always like, why aren't more people doing this? Yeah, people's bullshit detectors are really strong these days. And I think podcasts allow people to get to know the host and then they can tell when the host is actually talking genuinely about the products that they're advertising. They can tell the difference between that and the here I'm just reading this ad. And I think that's another move that we've made is we don't give people reads unless they really ask for one.

We just basically send them a box of stuff and say look talk about whatever you want to talk about anything that you use anything that you like just you know explain it honestly and that's going to be the best read anyways that's going to be the best advertisement that we can do and i think that's what's been effective and it's been interesting too because we have some superstar celebrities that take our products and talk about it like ludicrous for example you know movie star platinum rapper 15 million instagram fans or whatever he can make a post about on it and you know say on it's going to help him live to be 120 best supplements he's ever had blah blah he said that before and we'll rush to our stat board and say, wow, what's going to happen now? And it's just crickets. Crickets, right?

But some small podcaster like Shawn Stevenson, for example, or Lewis Howes, not that they're that small, they're actually growing pretty big, but some smaller podcaster will mention something and then we'll immediately see the spike. And it's because people have rapport with that individual. They feel like they know them. They feel like they've been sitting in a room as the silent friend.

And it's a recommendation from a friend rather than an advertisement. Why do you think that more companies aren't understanding this, though? I think the challenge is that it's hard to track ROI. And I think some of the big... Not if you have those vanity URLs and everything and the promo codes. It would seem to me that it would be really easy to track all that yeah and i think um i that's that's the only thing that i can think of it's i mean there's a lot there's some leakage when it comes to that you know people get those codes out and they end up on deal websites but you're right i mean you can

track it um i don't know why maybe it's not big enough i think because i think the average business i think podcasting is still a foreign idea to most people even though it's growing you know at a pretty explosive rate right now it's definitely having a moment um you know i still i don't know what it's like for you maybe it's different for you but still you know i run into people who are like how do i get a podcast and i have to like give me your iphone i'm like they don't even know that they have that purple app that's built in. They've never clicked it. You know what I mean?

And it's like literally two clicks away from being able to open up a universe of knowledge to you. And they're just like, I don't know how to do that. What's interesting is if you look at the demographics too, it's podcasts are being consumed predominantly by men which is interesting as well you know there's not a lot of female podcast hosts you know you look at the top 100 and see how many women that you see up there not that many and um and looking at the demographics of what's coming from that and so there's still massive parts of the market that just haven't really adopted and is that is that chicken or the egg is it there aren't enough hosts so there aren't enough women, or there aren't enough, you know, there's something else going

on? I think I've read different theories about that. But yeah, it's still something that's on the come up. But I think nonetheless, it's an inevitable part of human existence. I think the idea that, you know, you're going to be listening to something at random, that's just gone. Makes no sense. I mean, I haven't listened to the radio in like six years and whenever i get into a cab or i'm in somebody's car and they turn the radio on i'm like what like why are you why aren't you making a conscious choice about what you're allowing into your consciousness you're just you're letting somebody else decide that for you like you're literally asleep at the wheel yep you know i don't get it you know it's so easy and yet there is this weird barrier that somehow we've got to like get over so that you know a broader

demographic demographic of people can be exposed to this yeah i mean i think automatic integration into cars and into that's happening that's happening and it'll i mean it's spreading you look at the top like rogan's podcast is a good example i mean his numbers month after month they're just going up it's crazy how much it's still continuing to grow yeah so one one question i had for you is you're you're doing video on your podcast now right and what is the impact of that? Like, have you been doing that all along?

No. Because I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about adding that in. And I'm just interested in how that's worked for you. The move with the video is to take short clips that then you can repurpose to all your social media. So like short transcribed clips, you put them on Facebook, you put them on Instagram. They get a ton of impressions. So whereas a podcast we do will get 100,000 downloads with all of the impressions that we generate on social media from that podcast, which is like a short 30-second highlight reel or a minute long, whatever.

We can get impressions to a million you know and then that starts to fuel the growth and starts to let people know which ones they want to listen to and um just put out positive ideas i mean a big part of podcasting is yes it's a business but it's also a chance to you know make an impact to share a perspective that could be beneficial so i think that's the best you the best reason for video is for making the highlight reel because it's still a little weird to watch people talking for an hour. That's why it always amazes me that Joe has such a big audience on YouTube for these three-hour podcasts. Like, who is sitting and watching a YouTube video for that long? Apparently a lot of people. Like, I can't imagine doing that. But I think just having the video component to it puts a face to the voice.

You know, I mean, the unique thing about podcasting is it's the one form of media that you can enjoy while you're doing something else. But what happens when self-driving cars come in? And then it's just it's all about video, right? Like you can't ignore the fact that video still has to be a component piece of this yeah if you want to continue to grow and it's interesting you say that because you know it's top secret so i'll be banished from our tech team if i if i release but we're trying to think about that we're trying to figure out how we can uh how we can make podcasts something that are consumable in a more media rich way and uh so i think that's it's a good line of thinking like

it's a good place to start saying like all right how do we make this interesting for someone who really wants more immersion into the content yeah and so that's a problem that we're trying to get ahead of and solve because i think you're right yeah well i've just i've watched how lewis has been able to grow his show and you know and he started off with video and it wasn't really doing anything. And now it's been, you know, really, I think, impactful in the growth of the show. And so it's undeniable that, you know, I'm starting to like have to look at that. Dancing with Ellen doesn't hurt me either. No, that.

Yeah, I know. Unbelievable. Right. Unbelievable. And that's the beauty of podcast, too, though, because that came out of a relationship he developed with Scooter Braun, which was developed because he had a great conversation on a podcast. Like the, the awesome thing about a podcast as a podcaster is it allows you to have fucking incredible conversations with people that normally you wouldn't have

for this long. No, I can come to Austin and find a way to get in touch with you and we can sit down. I mean, it's like, it's the greatest scam in the world. You know what I mean?

Like, I'm going to go rob this guy of a couple hours of time and make him show me his gym and like, you know, in the middle of a work day, you know, and then get to share that experience. It's been, I mean, it's been incredible for me. Like, people say, who are your mentors? I'm like, every single guest I've had on this podcast, I've learned something from.

Yeah, it's a beautiful way to put it because it's absolutely true. So where are you taking this whole thing well i think for me it all comes down to the mission and you know um that became clear um as i continued on this spiritual path and i started to understand what i thought were the deepest principles of consciousness something i I call the platinum rule, which is treat others well because they're you living a different life, not treat them as if you treat yourself, but treat them because they're you. I've never really said that way. Where does that come from?

It's really maybe what the golden rule was ultimately getting at, but people say treat others as they would have as you would have them treat yourself you know so it's this kind of like quid pro quo you know reciprocity system instead of saying no no treat them that way because they are you they are you living a different life they're the same you know so it's it's separating that it's collapsing that duality into this kind of concept of unicity that we're all the same, just living different lives. We're all, as I said before, like different facets of the infinite diamond.

And so with that kind of consciousness understanding, then the name of the game is to just ease the suffering of the collective and improve the overall mood of the one one you know the overall experience of that one collective consciousness and so that's really the ultimate the ultimate game so how do you do that well you got to help the body out because when the animal is sick and the animal is tired and the animal has no energy you know then it's going to become a lot more inwardly focused their emotions are going to become more protective i mean try to go up and pet the sick tiger you know good luck with that but a well-fed happy tiger you know you can probably get away with playing around and tussling with for a minute for a minute right but humans are like that too and when we're in a great

positive state we're more likely to be giving and loving and kind and when we're sick and tired and traumatized and wounded that's when we get you know exhibit a lot of these other behaviors so kind of like maslow's pyramid of needs we got to take care of the body and that's a lot of what on it is about and then from there we got to take care of the emotional body and find the medicines and paths that can treat trauma and that's i just got back from the psychedelic science conference and amazing results coming out of bacillus iban and mdma studies for ptsd and depression so treating the emotional body and then finding reliable ways to not make spirituality something that's kept for the brahman priest class but something that can be decentralized and provided

for everybody you know sharing the tools that everybody can find some sense of connection to their consciousness and to you know these universal metaphysical principles and and that's kind of the the path you know so from the body to the emotions in the mind to then the consciousness and optimizing all together so that we just have a better fucking time so that we play this game you know with smiles instead of playing this game you know as as if it's suffering because it doesn't have to be suffering and it's going to have some challenges it's going to have some pain it's going to have some struggle but we wouldn't want to design a game any other way you know like who

wants the video game that comes out of the box with no monsters to slay you know no challenges no times that you die you know like you want that we want the challenges yeah you posted on you posted something on instagram about that yeah totally you can't yeah it's like we we are in a culture in which we have prioritized comfort ease and luxury yeah and the sort of theme that that resides beneath that is that we should avoid all suffering and avoid all obstacles so that we can, you know, luxuriate in our robes in front of our giant, you know, flat screen TV. And the truth is, is that you become alive when you're forced to, you know, confront that obstacle and communicate with yourself and discover what you're really about. And that's where you,

you know, the lotus flower begins to bloom. Indeed. And that's a beautiful, you know, it's a beautiful mission. But I think, you know, the average dude out there can understand, you know, the nutritional supplements. You can understand, you know, the gym, getting into the gym and the jujitsu and all this kind of stuff that you do. But I think for a lot of people, the light switch goes off when you start talking about spirituality, right? Maybe not with your crowd now because you've surrounded yourself with people that are of like mind. But I think the average person out there, you know, guy, I think, kind of hunkers down or kind of cuts himself off when or gets uncomfortable when you start talking about these ideas and i think that's changing but like how do you think about that and and sort of

contemplate how you communicate these ideas that are you know of the more esoteric the the key way to communicate is to show them you know that i'm i'm like them like i i think it's incredibly important like when i'm dealing because i've you know i'm friends i'm like them like i i think it's incredibly important like when i'm dealing because i've you know i'm friends with a lot of fighters a lot of hockey players and football players and athletes and here comes a warrior poet yeah and i think the first thing is is that they can see enough of themselves in me you know like we can go into the gym we can crush a workout we can go to the bar we can drink some beers and i can relate to this guy and they're like and they feel like oh man this is he's one of me right and then at the same time i have this other side which i'm exemplifying certain traits that sound interesting i'm talking

about experiences that sound interesting so it's it becomes something it's like well maybe this isn't for some other type of person maybe this is for for me. Because if Aubrey is like me but also likes this, maybe I'll like it too. And I think that's been something that I've noticed. And I think that's something that Joe does great as well. Joe is as alpha as any man ever was. I mean, you can YouTube him knocking someone out with a spinning heel kick and walking out

without even a smirk, like a straight assassin. And then a jujitsu black belt, comedian, every aspect of him that's very young. And then he'll be talking about yoga and psychedelics and all of these things. And so I think that's what has been missing. What's been missing is being able to relate to somebody and then say, hey, look, man, I get it.

I get your game and I love that game. That's awesome. But here's love that game that's awesome but here's this other game that's also awesome and at that point then people start to open up and then there's then their guard starts to go down so as soon as you can connect with people that way then and show them that the other way has tangible benefit and value then people are all about it where do you uh recommend people start like if you if you're like all right man like these are whole these these ideas are brand new to me man you know like give me a book or where should i begin this journey for myself well everybody says to start with meditation but

that's kind of like giving somebody a destination without a map it's like meditate well what the hell is that you know i'm going to just sit and be quiet and let my mind wander around try not to think about sex or whatever normal other stress that you have so i think you got to feel what the end goal of that is like first you got to taste what your target is for meditation so i think the best ways to do that are either yoga or a float tank like those two those to me kind of get you in that path because yoga after breathing intentionally and stretching and kind of going through all of those movements, you have the Shavasana at the end and that's reliably able to get you into a, what, you know, a classic meditative state, you know, a lot easier. That's what people don't get about yoga.

And I've said this before on the podcast, but all of the postures, it's not about the postures. The postures are a process or a journey to get you into a mindset where you can receive when you finally get to shavasana. It's all building towards that. And if you go to a typical yoga class, when you get to the shavasana, half the class gets up and leaves.

They're like, I did the class, I don't need that part at the end. And I'm like, the end is the thing. That that's why you're there you know what i mean like a hundred percent a hundred percent um but how do you distinguish like float tank from meditation well float tank is just another way that more reliably gets you there you know when all of that default node mode network kind of perceptive quality doesn't need you know the brain doesn't need to use that anymore because you can't hear you can't see you can't smell you can't taste you can't touch all of these things that we're constantly sensing for danger trying to read

our environment those are no longer necessary you know more reliably feels like that part of the brain powers down and you know your brain wave frequency drops from that kind of scattered beta hey what's going on what's going on what's going on to that more centered alpha and perhaps even into theta that almost somewhere in between waking and dreaming state which is the goal of meditation and it's just it's like a tool to turbo your way to that point and at least feel what that feels like so then you know maybe you don't want to go float you know multiple times a week to get there um because that costs a lot of money and a lot of time but at least if you've tasted that and you know what that's like then you can start doing vipassana meditation or open focus

or transcendental or whatever other means you get there and say all right can i get back to that state that i tasted in the float tank or get back to that state that I tasted with yoga, you know, and get there. Another great one too is ecstatic dance, which is something that I've been practicing, which is basically removing your mind as the judge of your movement. So there's just a direct connection between sound and your body and just allowing your mind to get out of the way. And that will put you in, you know, it's one of the classic kind of trance states that multiple cultures have developed from the Lakota Sundance to the Whirling Dervishes

to all these different, you know, cultures have used dance to get there. And that's another one that you can do. That'll really allow you to confront your ego in a huge way. Because you're just like, how am I looking? I don't want to be a fucking idiot. You know, like that, I mean, that interplay that goes on,

you know, is, I mean, especially for guys, I think, you know, it's harder to kind of let go and allow yourself to just, you know, move your body in that kind of way. Yeah, you start moving your hips one way and some voice in your head goes, now you're for sure gay. You know, like you have all these judgments about your sexuality and your sexuality and your masculinity and all of these things that um as soon as you let that out of the way and you

just start moving um you know you can enter those kind of classic meditative flow states you know what the psychologist would call super fluidity where it's just body and you know input and then and then you're moving so in in that same way, you know, I think flow state is another great way to get out of, you know, get out of your head, so to speak. And that's, you can find that in sports. And I think it's one of the reasons why people enjoy sports so much. I think a great overview of this whole concept is in that latest book by Jamie wheel and Steven Kotler called stealing fire talks about ecstasis, you know, these altered states of consciousness and how, you know, it's just a primary evolutionary drive to find that and once you find that and then start intentionally cultivating that that's when you can start making real

advances i think a lot of people want to know where that's going to go before they will take that first step yeah they want to have it all worked out and understood in their mind logically they want to be able to put it in that box where does that square peg go and it doesn't work that way no you know you got to have the courage and the faith to you know to engage in the attempt and and be comfortable with the unknowing and i think that's where you allow the space for some of that magic to occur yeah and not everything's going to be a hit you know like you're gonna you're gonna take some false steps like i tried this uh what was supposed to be this great medicine called cambo which is basically this poison that they extract from a frog and they burn your arm and they rub it on you and you get horribly violently ill well i got

horribly violently ill my throat closed i mean i was I mean, I was supposed to have this heightened clarity and it was supposed to be incredible, this deep cleanse. No, I just almost died and I felt sick for two months. You know, like it's not everything that I've tried has been a success. I've tried different forms of like Reiki healing where people are like moving energy and bashing chimes and it was like nothing happened. I've tried a variety of different

things but you start to find the things that that work and then but you gotta be open you gotta be open to to the try yeah you gotta be willing to to swing a few times and and miss and have a few strikeouts same same in that as in business you know if you're terrified of screwing up you're not going to get really far i mean i fuck up constantly i'm amazed at how many mistakes that i make but by just acknowledging it and being like all right well what can i learn from this you know then that allows you to move forward so let's walk through a day in the life since you're writing about it right now yeah you know it's interesting like it's it's it's it's popular to talk about morning routines what What's your morning routine? The idea is if you adopt so-and-so's morning routine

that you will become that person somehow magically. And there's so many different sort of techniques for beginning your day, all of which are good, but I think it also can be overwhelming. Like there's 20 things that I'm supposed to do before I start my day in order to like calibrate myself properly. Yeah.

Well, yeah, I mean, I'm right in that right now. So, and I'm trying to make it something that's accessible. So I think the first thing in the morning that I focus on is hydration, light and movement. So that's what really gets me going. So for me, hydration, I like having a little apple cider vinegar a little sea salt a little bit of lemon and about 16 ounces of warm water so get myself rehydrated you know get the electrolytes back in get the gastric juices flowing from the apple cider vinegar set you know kind of a base of alkalinity um and then i have these things called the human charger which

are these little earbuds that shine light into your ear holes. Oh, somebody sent me those. I haven't tried them yet, but they're sitting on my desk. So what does that do for you? So, you know, really the circadian rhythm is modulated by light. So typically we're sleeping outside and, you know, we were a lot more aligned with natural circadian rhythm going to sleep when it got dark and waking up at dawn so this really starts to simulate the conditions of bright light coming in at dawn but it's actually your photoreceptors that go through your ears and

actually even touch the pineal gland which controls the secretions of melatonin etc so i put those in a lot of times i'll go out and get actual light too we're in texas so there's a lot of sun so either way you don't have to have these fancy earbuds to do it you can now get some actual light so that it triggers your body like all right you know this is daytime and then a little bit of movement you know sometimes it's a couple burpees sometimes it's more yoga um and that's the first step and uh and from there, I like to do, you know, I like a morning shower a lot of times. And that's... Cold shower?

Starts warm. I do all my normal things in the warm. Just because the amount of willpower it takes to crank a cold right up the drop is super gnarly, right? So I start warm and, you know, kind of get in there and then i'll start the wim hof breathing we got a chance to hang with whim so that's you know inhales breathing in as much as you can and then releasing without force and you do that about 30 times until it starts to feel a little tingly and then when i start to get close that's when i flip the shower all the way to cold and then get that and i'm all done with my washing and stuff so

at that point it's just about watching my breath and so the cold water flushes over me i rotate around make sure it hits all the cold spots and then the breath will tell you you know how much more breathing you need to do if you're still gasping that means you're probably not properly oxygenated for the wim hof method so i just kind of follow the breath. And as soon as I can hold my breath comfortably, I do so. And then hold my breath for as long as I can, which starts to stimulate some of the adrenaline and things that come from a breath hold. And finish that off, close the shower down, and then grab some breakfast after that. Do you get up super early? What is your sleep routine? I don't. I'm definitely like a PM kind of brain.

So I try to get up at 8 o'clock. And sleep for me really changed dramatically when I was researching for this book. And I read Nick Littlehill's book called Sleep. I haven't read that one. And he works with a lot of like Manchester United, the British cycling team. And he talks about instead of sleep that you're trying to get in a single night um getting 35 cycles of sleep per week and so really it takes the pressure off a single night's you know sleep performance which can actually it's one of the reasons why it's hard to sleep sometimes because you get anxious about how much sleep you add so he kind of like takes all the pressure off that

and it's like fine if you get two cycles that's you know generally about three hours the cycle's about 90 minutes if you get two cycles no problem um go and get controlled what he calls controlled recovery periods throughout the day so that would be a 30 or 90 minute nap um the preferable windows are like two to three when then there's a natural lull in circadian rhythm or five to seven p.m and take a 30 minute or a 90 minute nap or binaural beats or a float or something along those lines is like a controlled recovery period to pick up these you know pick up these additional cycles interesting i never heard that yeah and so that to me has really changed the game because now i think mentally you can get in this place where like oh man i didn't sleep and then the the nocebo

effect of not sleeping you know what you're telling your mind about what you need and what you didn't get, starts to make things even worse. Whereas in this way, it's just, again, looking at balance in that longer lens, similar to what we talked about. Now we've got a week's goals. So we'll have different opportunities to pick it up, different ways that you can pick it up throughout the day. And that's helped a lot. Yeah, that's really helpful. That's interesting. Yeah, I'm going to check that book out. Yeah, out yeah it's sleep has been something that i've struggled with i mean when i'm training

super hard it's not a problem but less so and especially as i get older um it gets really tricky you know and so i started uh i sleep in a tent on my roof we have a flat roof on my house and and that has improved my sleep like tenfold yeah it's incredible that's awesome i slept the whole winter in los angeles that's awesome and the roof yeah and it and i wake i feel amazing but now when i go out of town and i have to sleep in a hotel like i'm right it's it's it's not easy yeah yeah i started tracking my sleep too with the hour ring aura ring oh yeah you are right yeah um that's been pretty cool to see as well because now i'm seeing like what periods of the night i'm actually getting deep sleep right where i'm going and where

i'm picking up my rem sleep and you can get neurotic on that stuff too though you can get to and i think if i i think if i didn't have nick little hail's kind of model of the 35 hours per week then it would be even more stressful because if it you know like even this morning it pumped me out of reading it was like 60 you didn't sleep very well right i'm like if i if that was really if i was relying on the old model like oh man i'm screwed today i got a podcast i didn't get sleep you look at my number it's terrible i was up at all these different times of the night that would be worse but knowing that all right this is this is over a week's period so this night was not so not so ideal i'll pick one up you know pick one up in the afternoon and i'll be fine um i think that that's made it a helpful tool rather than this

kind of another way to externalize judgment because i think you're right you can get kind of tweaked on that stuff yeah all the wearables i think there's some debate about whether this is actually helping anybody yeah oh same with like if you commit a murder they can track you down now did you see that the guy with the fitbit no some guy i didn't read the whole story but i think this guy killed his wife and they were able to prove it based on his fitbit data because his alibi didn't hold up based upon the data on his fitbit unreal so unreal well i'm not planning on murder i know but it's like but if you're in this age where you're being tracked and everything's being watched in video if you're having an affair that's next level like your wife gets your data it's like oh at midnight you said you were asleep watching a movie right your heart

your heart rate went up to 145 at exactly 11 30 and you yeah um yeah that's really funny well it's the same with that you know kind of 23 and me you know just genetic testing too you know you get these ideas in your head even with food allergy testing right you've you learn some fact like i've had people be like oh man um strawberries i've always loved strawberries but it says i'm deadly allergic to strawberries and then from that point on you know whether they actually reacted that way or not before once they have that data their mind's going to convince them oh yeah strawberries are bad and then at that point it's going to manifest that reality and this isn't woo-woo at all this is just straight up placebo nocebo science what the mind believes you know tends to manifest yeah i think

that's a big reason why i haven't done the 23andme thing right and i know there's benefits and reasons to do it and i'm still open to it but i think that's what's held me back like i don't want my i don't i want i don't want how i think about myself to be dictated by some predetermined roadmap you know in some certain way i guess yep even though it because it's not pretty it's not predetermined and that's what you plant that seed in your mind and those are powerful you know like you said once that seed is planted and it takes root it starts to shape how you perceive your world agreed so agreed yeah i mean those any kind anything that generates fear is like a virus and that virus will infect you unless you can cure yourself of it. And so whatever that is, whether it's a family history of some condition or the genetic testing or some other kind of thing that you've self-generated.

the fact that we're impulsed with fear messaging everywhere we look every single day everyone's walking around terrified by design you know in this crazy insane culture that you know we've crafted around ourselves yeah capitalism by desperation motivate people out of fear you know has been certainly an element that i think a lot of people have capitalized on and it's unfortunate you know and it's rife in this whole medical community i mean people have so much fear and they look to the doctors as you know the only knowledge source for this and and a lot of times the doctor is the right call you know if you got a broken bone or you got an infection of some sort and you need to get it done anything acute absolutely but then you know you look at the amount of training they've done on nutrition compared to someone like yourself or some of the top nutritionists, and it's paltry.

They're not experts in that. They don't know. Not only are they not experts, they don't even have rudimentary training. It wasn't part of medical school education, and yet we look to them as the know-alls and and and you know the answer people for everything and we need to expand our awareness and our consciousness around these these you know not just this profession but um how we take care of ourselves and i think by that i mean we we need to really shoulder more responsibility and take it upon ourselves to educate ourselves and to attempt and be open to these different kinds of protocols. Like you tried Reiki, it didn't work for you. It works for somebody else.

Explore Ayurveda, learn how to balance your energy systems. The body knows how to heal itself if treated appropriately. And I think, you know, you, you open yourself up for attack if you start talking about these things, but there's a lot of wisdom in this that is vacant and missing from our current uh medical establishment of diagnose and prescribe 100 yeah do your own research be you know experiment yourself you know talk to people and and again that's where i'm grateful for the decentralization of information that so many things are available podcasts Podcasts are available. Books are available. All of this knowledge is available.

Some of it may be good. Some of it may be bogus. But all in all, we can take control of our information input and start to make intelligent decisions. We've got to wrap this up in a minute. But before we do, there's a lot of budding entrepreneurs that listen to this show. What kind of wisdom can you impart to somebody who's looking to start their own business or who's looking to maybe not start their own business,

but exercise a little bit more domain over their life, a little more control over how their time is spent? I think the biggest mistake that everybody makes is they start focusing on the external before they focus on the internal. You get your internal world straight, you figure out where the boundaries of your ego are, how to control your emotions, where your fears lie, and start to get that straight and get that aligned, then everything externally that you're trying to do becomes way easier so while we're always looking for what i what i can start what i can create what i can build like turn that gaze inward first and it'll pay dividends outward you know i can directly track

how much work i've done internally to how much success i've had externally you know and that's that's the way otherwise it's almost like you're building monuments on top of a shaky foundation. And if your foundation isn't secure, you'll destroy what you've created. I've watched so many entrepreneurs just rescue defeat from the jaws of victory. You know what I mean?

Like right at the finish line, all they have to do is just execute, but something is unreconciled in their core. And so they drive that train straight into the fucking graveyard oh not just business relationships you know anything across the board i mean thank you for that because that's something that i you know talk about all the time and i preach and and and you know that's been my experience in my own life people come to me they i want to know you know help me do an iron man help me do that help me start a bit whatever it is it doesn't matter and it's like why do you want to do that like know, help me do an Ironman. Help me do that. Help me start a business. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter.

And it's like, why do you want to do that? Like, what is it? What is missing in your life that that seems important to you right now? And maybe there's a good reason for that. And maybe that is what they should be pursuing. But more often than not, they don't even know what is driving them. And without that self-understanding, that self-knowledge, that devotion to the inner work, to self-understanding, to personal growth, spiritual growth, chances are you're just reacting to your environment

in an unconscious way, right? And if you want to be really self-directed in a positive way that is setting you on a trajectory for, you know, unlocking your best self, your most authentic self, what you're here on earth to express, there's no end run around that journey and that process because it all germinates from there. Yeah, if you don't feel like you're worthy of the success you're trying to manifest, you'll destroy it.

And I think that's a big thing that people don't realize. The law of reciprocity will hold for your own self-belief. You really have to believe that you deserve everything good that's coming to you. You have to love yourself, feel that you're worthy enough, have forgiven yourself. Because otherwise you'll bring upon yourself punishment to justify how you feel about yourself. So doing that work is actually getting yourself in alignment with that universal reciprocity. So saying, man, I'vecity so saying man i've done the work i've done the hard labor i really you know deserve to to reap some of the abundance from this

abundant universe and then you'll start to create situations more favorable for that and it's again it sounds like counterintuitive to for an entrepreneur saying this but time and time again like the people who don't feel like they deserve the success have something about themselves that they hate have something that they don't like and they're running from you know they bring the world crashing down upon them forget about entrepreneurship just like for life for life you know what i mean like it applies to everything so aubrey marcus that was awesome yeah man thanks so cool to have a conversation like this. Yeah, I totally enjoyed it. Love to do it again. When your book comes out, we can talk to me.

Let's do it. All right, we'll have you up to the house in Malibu. I'll feed you a vegan dinner. There's some pretty good vegan restaurants out here in Austin, actually. You know where I ate last night? I went to Arlo's, the food truck where they have the burgers. It's like vegan junk food but it's so delicious yeah i like four cheese bold and creek casa de luz counterculture those are three really

good spots yeah those came up yeah next time i'll have to hit them up yeah no doubt all right man thanks so much so aubrey marcus if you want to hook up with him aubrey marcus.com at aubrey marcus it was warrior poet on twitter but now you switch it back to your name right everything's to my name to your name now on it.com check out all that stuff on it.com forward Aubrey Martin. It was WarriorPote on Twitter, but now you switch it back to your name, right? Everything's to my name now. Everything's to your name now. Onnit.com. Check out all that stuff. Onnit.com forward slash Aubrey for 10% off, right? Oh, shit.

You dropped the code. I know. Right, man. So, awesome, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate you, man. Thank you. Peace.

Lance. All right, we did it. That was kind of deep, you guys. Did you like it? I totally enjoyed talking to him. I hope you guys got a lot out of that. If you enjoyed it, give Aubrey a shout out on Twitter or Instagram at Aubrey Marcus. Let him know what you thought about the show and listen up. One out of every two Americans will develop some form of atherosclerosis. One out of every three is going

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this, it's really heartwarming to see people just grab onto this, make use of it and change their lives. So for more information and to sign up, go to meals.richroll.com or click on meal planner on the top menu at richroll.com. Uh, if you would like to support this show and my work, the best way to do that, to share it with your friends and on social media, leave a review on Apple podcasts on iTunes. Subscribe. Make sure you click that subscribe button. We also have a Patreon set up for people who want to financially contribute to my work, and I really appreciate everybody who has done that.

Also, I send out... I'm laughing when I say this because I was going to say I send out a free weekly email called Roll Call every week that has five or six tools and tips and articles and documentaries, just helpful stuff that I've come across over the course of the week. And I send that out every Thursday, but I have not sent this out in the last three weeks. I guess you can call it a summer vacation. I've been so inundated with so many things that I just have not been able

to carve out the time to send one of these out. I promise you, I'm going to send it out this week. I'm going to get back on it. Uh, apologies if you've been searching in your inbox for this, but in any event, if you're new to the show, yes, I send out a free weekly email. Uh, it is called roll call. It generally goes out on Thursday and it's five or six things that I, like I said, I've come across over the course of the week. A couple of articles I read, a documentary I watched, a new product that I'm enjoying, et cetera. No spam, no affiliate links. I'm not trying to make any money off this, just good stuff. So if that sounds interesting to you, you can sign up for it on my website, any of those places where you just enter your email address. And when you're on my site, we have some cool products up there. We have signed copies of all our books, Finding Ultra,

The Plant Power Way, This Cheese is Nuts. We have t-shirts, we got tech tees, we got sticker packs and like temporary tattoos and all kinds of cool stuff. As always, I want to thank today's sponsors. Casper, the number one online retailer of premium mattresses for a fraction of the price. Get $50 towards any mattress purchase today by visiting casper.com forward slash roll and using the promo code roll at checkout. And MeUndies, the world's most comfortable underwear. Visit MeUndies.com forward slash roll

to get free shipping in the US and Canada and 20% off your first pair. Also, to close this down, let's thank everybody who helped put on the show this week. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production and work on the show notes and all kinds of other stuff he does behind the scenes. Sean Patterson for help on graphics. He's the guy who puts together those cool motion graphics that I share on Instagram, as well as all the cool assets that I share on social media and on the website. And theme music, as always, by Anilema. Thanks for the love, you guys. Like I said, I'll be back here later this week with my podcast with Chris Houth and Caroline Burkle talking about our training and preparation for the Otolo World Championships. And until then, love you guys. Thanks for listening.

Appreciate you peace plants and namaste. Thank you.