#302: Own the Day, Own Your Life - Aubrey Marcus

Aubrey Marcus (IG: @aubreymarcus https://www.instagram.com/aubreymarcus/) is the founder and CEO of Onnit http://www.onnit.com/, a lifestyle brand based on a holistic health philosophy he calls Total Human Optimization. Onnit is an Inc. 500 company and an industry leader with products touching millions of lives, including many top professional athletes around the world. Aubrey currently hosts The Aubrey Marcus Podcast https://www.aubreymarcus.com/blogs/aubrey-marcus/tagged/aubrey-marcus-podcast, a motivational destination for conversations with the brightest minds in athletics, business, science, relationships and spirituality with over 10 million downloads on iTunes. Aubrey regularly provides commentary to outlets like Entrepreneur https://www.entrepreneur.com/, Forbes http://www.forbes.com, The Doctors https://www.thedoctorstv.com/, and The Joe Rogan Experience http://podcasts.joerogan.net/. He has been featured on the cover of Men's Health http://www.menshealth.com, and his newest (and first!) book is Own The Day, Own Your Life http://www.ownthedaybook.com/ from HarperCollins. Enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Peloton https://www.onepeloton.com/, which has become a staple of my daily routine. I picked up this bike after seeing the success of my friend Kevin Rose, and I've been enjoying it more than I ever imagined. Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right to your home. No worrying about fitting classes into your busy schedule or making it to a studio with a crazy commute. New classes are added every day, and this includes options led by elite NYC instructors in your own living room. You can even live stream studio classes taught by the world's best instructors, or find your favorite class on demand. Peloton https://www.onepeloton.com/ is offering listeners to this show a special offer. Visit onepeloton.com https://www.onepeloton.com/ and enter the code TIM at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. This is a great way to get in your workouts or an incredible gift. Again, that's onepeloton.com https://www.onepeloton.com/ and enter the code TIM. This episode is also brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The Tao of Seneca, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  No, we're just seeing an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Peloton. And I'd heard about Peloton over and over again, but I ended up getting a Peloton bike and the whole system after I saw my buddy Kevin Rose. I've known him forever, some of you know. And he showed up at my gate at my house a while back and he looked fantastic.

• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

  I asked him, I said, "Dude, you look great. What the hell have you been up to?" Because he's always doing a weird diet or another, but it only lasts like a week or two. So he always regresses to the mean after like 75 beers. And he said, "I've been doing Peloton five days a week." Now that caught my attention because Kevin does nothing five days a week. And you know I love you, Kevin. But it really piqued my curiosity, ended up getting a system, and it's become an integral part of my week. I love it and I really didn't expect to love it at all because I find cycling really boring usually. But Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home. You don't have to worry about fitting classes into your schedule or making it to a studio with some type of commute, etc.

• 1:28Tim Ferriss?

  New classes are added every day and this includes options led by elite New York City instructors in your own living room. You can even livestream studio classes taught by the world's best instructors or find your own favorite class on demand. And in fact, Kevin and I rarely do live classes. And you can compete with your friends, which is also fun. Kevin, I'm coming after you. But we usually just use classes on demand. I really like Matt Wilpers and his high-intensity training sessions that are shorter, like 20 minutes.

• 1:58Tim Ferriss?

  And I think Kevin's favorite is Alex and everyone seems to have their favorite instructor, or you can select by music, duration, and so on. Each Peloton bike includes a 22-inch HD touchscreen, performance-tracking metrics. I think that, along with the real-time leaderboard, are the main reasons that this caught my attention when cycling never had caught my attention before. It's really pretty stunning what they've done with the user interface to keep your attention. The belt drive is quiet and it's smaller than you would expect, so it can fit in a living room or an office. I actually have it in a large closet, believe it or not, and it fits with no problem. So Peloton is offering all of you guys, listeners of the Tim Ferriss Show, a special offer,

• 2:43Tim Ferriss?

  and it is actually special. Visit OnePeloton, that's O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N, onepeloton.com and enter the code TIM, all caps, T-I-M, at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. Now, you might say, " Meh, accessories? Wait, I don't need fancy towels or whatever, other supplemental bits and pieces." No, the shoes you need. You need the clip-in shoes, and those are in the accessory category, so this $100 off is a very legit $100 off. So, if you want to get in your workouts, if you want a convenient and really entertaining way to do high-intensity interval training or anything else, or you just want to get

• 3:26Tim Ferriss?

  a fantastic gift for someone, check out Peloton. OnePeloton.com and enter the code TIM. Again, that's O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N.com and enter the code TIM at checkout to receive $100 off any accessories, including the shoes that you will want to get. Check it out. OnePeloton.com, code TIM.

• 3:51Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. Whether you need a logo, custom website, app, book cover, or anything else, 99designs was created to make great design accessible to everyone, that's you, and to make the process as easy as possible. I've used 99designs for years now. I've used them for book covers, some mockups for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller, illustrations of all different types for the multi-volume The Tao of Seneca, which you can check out, and other graphic design projects for a long time now. And I've been very impressed by the quality of their designers and illustrators. And you don't have to take my word for it. You should check out some of my projects at 99designs.com/tim. I really encourage you to take a look because you will be impressed.

• 4:36Tim Ferriss?

  99designs.com/tim. 99designs has freelance experts in more than 90 design categories. And their platform lets you work directly with one designer that you choose, if you like their stuff, which is what I did for The Tao of Seneca, or you can get concepts from multiple designers and then pick your favorite. So whether you're starting a business or just looking for extra design help, resources, et cetera, 99designs has a solution. Right now, you guys, my listeners, can receive a free $99 upgrade on your first design. To check out your first free upgrade, please visit 99designs.com/tim and click the link on the landing page. You can also find their samples of projects from you guys, listeners,

• 5:18Tim Ferriss?

  who have used 99designs for logos, apps, even product packaging. So check it out. 99designs.com/tim.

• 5:30Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to interview incredible people who have done incredible things and to tease out the habits, routines, life lessons, and so on, that you can apply to your own life. My guest this episode is Aubrey Marcus. You can find him on Instagram, on Twitter, et cetera, @aubrymarcus. He is the founder and CEO of ONNIT, O-N-N-I-T, a lifestyle brand based on a holistic health philosophy that Aubrey calls total human optimism. I've spent a good amount of time with Aubrey and he walks the talk in every way that I have possibly observed over the last few years. On it is now an INC 500 company is one of the fastest growing private companies in the country and an industry leader with products touching

• 6:15Tim Ferriss?

  millions of lives, including many top professional athletes around the world. Aubrey currently hosts the Aubrey Marcus podcast, a motivational destination for conversations with the brightest minds in athletics, business, science, relationships, and more with over 10 million downloads on iTunes. Aubrey regularly provides commentary to outlets like Entrepreneur, Forbes, The Doctors, and The Joe Rogan Experience, on which he's appeared several times. He's been featured on the cover of Men's Health and his newest and first book, which is on my coffee table right now, is Own the Day, Own Your Life from Harper Collins. Without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Aubrey Marcus.

• 6:58Tim Ferriss?

  Aubrey Marcus, welcome to the show.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  What's up, Tim?

• 7:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, man, I'm gonna shake your hand because I don't usually do video. And here we are in the Shanghai of Texas, otherwise known as Austin. I've never seen so many cranes in one place in the United States.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's thriving.

• 7:14Tim Ferriss?

  It is really thriving and I think we're on the cusp of all sorts of fun in the next couple of years.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  I like it. People whine about it like, oh, you know, Austin used to be this kind of reminiscing fantasy thing. I think it's just getting better.

• 7:24Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think it's, uh, it's like talking to someone who went to a concert in the early days with any band. They're like, Burning Man used to be so cool, man. In 2007, before you got here in 2008. Grateful Dead, I was at their first show. Now it's so uncool. So there's, there's a lot of discussion along those lines about Austin, but you are one of the people I know best here in Austin. And I'm thrilled to have you in front of the mic.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, I'm glad you came out. It's been dope. Got to hang out, have some wine, have some dinner.

• 7:55Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. And I know I'm not impressing anyone with my 45-pound deadlifts in the Yonah Gym. You have a lot.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  No, but it's your persistence, though, Tim. It's the fact that you do it so many times and only do that. That's actually, oh, wow.

• 8:08Tim Ferriss?

  That's true. Well, the last time you saw me in that gym, I was working on a program from Jersey Gregorick, the 63-year-old former world record holder in Olympic weightlifting, doing only overhead squats, if I remember correctly, for like an hour and a half.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Like all day. Yeah. Let's Tim do an hour more overhead squat.

• 8:26Tim Ferriss?

  So part of the reason I wanted to have you Here to have this conversation is that I feel like you are one of the people who really walks the walk in checking the boxes of these overlapping spheres of life, whether that is body, business, let's just call it balance. I'm actually borrowing this bit from a weekend event one of my friends went to not too long ago. But you've done a really good job of integrating those various pieces. And so this format of this particular podcast is going to be a bit experimental and jarring, maybe, in its lack of transitions. But I want to start with a question I was recently asked at a small dinner. And the question

• 9:08Tim Ferriss?

  was posed by a guy named Michael Hebs, who's fascinating guy, very good chef, organizes dinners around specific topics very often. So he did one, I think it was called Dinner or Dining with Death. And it was in cooperation with NPR, and it was a facilitated conversation around mortality. And he's done many of these and had a small dinner with him in LA with about six to eight people. And no one really knew any other attendee. And to break the ice, he started with this question, which just opened up the floodgates so that everyone got very vulnerable and very open very quickly. And this is it. So thank you, Michael. When is the last time that you cried tears of joy that you remember?

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Oh, man. That wasn't too long ago. That's a more frequent occurrence for me, actually. And as I've done, you know, a lot of work on my life, and it hasn't been the external stuff that ever makes me cry tears of joy. It's not a big on it success. It's not something external that happens. It's really just sitting in a moment. It can be with a lover that I'm sharing a night with, and I'll just start crying. And just the experience of enjoying that simple moment, or laughing with friends, or, I mean, it's actually a rather frequent occurrence. And that's one of the best indicators for me that the path that I'm on is yielding the kind of fruit that I'm really looking for and looking to forage. Because I catch

• 10:33Speaker 02

  myself doing that all the time. Actually, today, I had a little informal mentorship with one of my employees. And just as I saw that breakthrough moment, I saw that moment where, you know, I was talking about her working not on her business and not on her career and on it, but on her heart and how that and she was like, yeah, it's a big project. And I go, yeah, it is a big project. And I saw that light come up and just the tears will come in that moment for me, too. It's just like, fuck, yeah, you know, like I'm, I'm, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And then just the gratitude for being able to do what I'm supposed to be doing, it'll just, it'll come.

• 11:05Tim Ferriss?

  Is that something that has always been the case? Or is that something that has become more frequent with any kind of trigger or catalyst?

• 11:15Speaker 02

  It's, uh, it was very rare, you know, I think it was very rare because I think most of my life I was trying to achieve something. I was trying to validate myself externally, trying to say, if I get to this point, then I'll be successful. Then I'll be, you know, living up to my potential, then I'll be that. And whether it was in high school for basketball, like, oh, if I make all state honors, then I'll be there. If we make it far in the playoffs, then I'll be there. And it was always this next thing, but it's never the next thing. You can keep searching for that next thing. You're not going to find it until you turn that gaze truly inward. And as that process is gone, and I've almost kind of exhausted the external thing. So it's kind of forced me to go internal because when on it was successful and the external was great, then, and I still wasn't that happy deeply.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  And I was like, all right, it's definitely not external, like this is internal. And that's driven me deeper and deeper inside my heart.

• 12:09Tim Ferriss?

  So if I look back at my own experience with relationships with people who have unfortunately taken their lives, it's not the depressing, outwardly depressing cases that you would expect. It's actually very often the people who have a lot of money, not always, certainly. But it strikes me that for instance, one of my best friends, Andrea in high school, then two friends later in college seemed to have everything going for them. And I shouldn't say of course, but I, nobody saw these coming. And they were, they all had a good amount of money.

• 12:48Tim Ferriss?

  And my theory related to that, based on what I see also in people who are from the outside looking in, very, very successful, very, very wealthy, but miserable, is that for a long time, for most of life, if you're fighting for every scrap to get this external validation, you can envision a day when I have X, it'll all be great.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:13Tim Ferriss?

  And this anxiety I feel, this fill in the blank that I feel will go away, and then it doesn't go away. And so then, at that point, if you've checked the boxes, it seems like you can lose hope, or if you grow up rich and you realize it does not, in fact, is a panacea to solve your problem. So my question then, walk us through how you shifted your gaze to be more internal, because I've, I've seen that in you. We haven't known each other that long. We've known each other a while.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:38Tim Ferriss?

  And I'd love to just hear how you made the decision, or how you were forced to look inward, because a lot of people get to a point where the outside world, third parties would think of them as successful, but they never shift the gaze.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:55Tim Ferriss?

  So, so how did it happen?

• 13:56Speaker 02

  It's in combination from like, external pressure, you know, external pain, internal pain, like pain as a motivator to let you know that something is wrong. And then, so that's kind of like your engine light blinking.

• 14:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  And then it's the practices that I've employed that helped me have that introspection to actually go searching and figure out what it is. So it's always been a combination of that pain, plus the tools to go seek out where that pain is coming from.

• 14:22Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  And I was fortunate, you know, I was given an opportunity to do a vision quest when I was just out of high school. And I was staunch atheist, zero spirituality.

• 14:32Tim Ferriss?

  How did that come to me?

• 14:33Speaker 02

  That was through my father, like one of, and I'd had a lot of issues with my dad, but he was in a lot of pain himself, and that had taken him down, you know, to try everything, from primal therapy to all kinds of different conventional methods, eventually into psychedelics, working with, actually with Stan Grof, doing holotropic breathing, doing LSD psychotherapy, doing, and he found a shaman who worked with psilocybin in the mountains, and you know.

• 14:57Tim Ferriss?

  Where was this?

• 14:58Speaker 02

  This was in the mountains of New Mexico. And he, after high school, in that traditional kind of vision quest kind of idea, said, you know, you should go experience this. Because at that point, you know, he would talk about anything on the fringe of spirituality. And I'd, growing up here in Texas and getting washed with religion, capital R religion. I was like, fuck that, you know, dad, like, I'm not interested in that. Like, I saw the dungeons of the Inquisition. This is bullshit, you know? This is bad. And he's like, no, no, just check it out, you know, and see what happens. It's a vision quest. And I respected, like, you know, Native American culture enough and traditional culture enough that I was like, all right, I'll give it a go. And I was fucking terrified, like terrified.

• 15:39Tim Ferriss?

  Can you explain to people or describe what that vision quest entails?

• 15:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's kind of, it's a traditional rite of passage where typically a young man, but it can be any man, goes to find an aspect of themselves that has been hidden, some calling, some piece of them that they don't know about, that they aren't aware of. And that's certainly what happened. You know, I was given a tea in the mountains in a very isolated place with a very loving and warm, you know, mushroom shaman. And she gave me a tea. And then after a little while, I felt my entire body evaporate into geometry. And I was like, oh shit.

• 16:17Tim Ferriss?

  No way.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Like, I got a lot of things wrong. You know, like, there is something else to this experience. And that was just this, I stayed up all night writing and there was thunderstorms and the coyotes howling. I don't know, they sounded like wolves, but I'm probably coyotes being in New Mexico.

• 16:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  And, and it was this crazy night of just realizing that my whole paradigm at that point had shifted. I'd realized that I'm not just body and mind. There's something else that I access, something that could observe both of those things. And that's been kind of like the fallback, you know, teacher for me. And finding the ways then to not just use the medicines, but find ways to get there in other means, because that's kind of like a feast. You can't feast every night. Finding the other ways to access that identification point.

• 17:03Tim Ferriss?

  So you do not have kids, as far as I know, at this point, that you're aware of?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  But if I do have any kids out there and you want to claim it, like, we'll talk about it, we'll figure it out. I'm in a pretty good spot now.

• 17:14Tim Ferriss?

  Support at anna.com.

• 17:18Tim Ferriss?

  When you have, if and when you have kids, I'm not sure if that's in the cards, but if you do, would you walk them through, let's just say you have a son, it doesn't necessarily matter, son or daughter, would you walk them through or introduce them to a rite of passage like that?

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Fuck yeah, like undoubtedly.

• 17:38Tim Ferriss?

  How would you structure it? What do you think it would look like?

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Well, I think as a parent, as a dad, you have to kind of get out of the way because part of the vision quest is getting your kid out of your purview, you know, like allowing them to become their own man. So I would find someone who is, you know, separate enough from me that I wasn't influencing the experience and someone I trusted. And, you know, I know a lot of people right now and I'm sure I'll know a lot of people even then. And talking to, you know, MAPS and talking to Hefter and talking to those organizations that are working on the legalization of these as medicines. I think there's going to be a lot of cool options for people to do that completely above board and legally by the time I have a kid. I mean, they're targeting 2021 for MDMA therapy and psilocybin sometime after that. So I think there's going to be a lot of options and it's going to become more common.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  And, um, you know, I'd just send them with someone I really trusted and allow the process to unfold. And that's the thing, you, you really don't want to guide it too much. You want to have the guide and allow the medicine and the, and nature and everything around them to, to be the teacher.

• 18:41Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sure there are people watching or listening who have had early, say adolescent or high school or college experiences with psychedelics, but viewed them in retrospect as uncontrolled, recreational. So do you think the reason that vision quest stuck with you, how much of it was psychedelics versus the ceremony versus the guidance? I mean, if you had to try to weight those factors, how would you?

• 19:08Speaker 02

  They're inextricable, yeah, they're inextricable, you know, like the experience itself blends together and becomes inseparable. Like you couldn't take one part and have it all be there, you know? It was the trust that I had in the guide, because I think one of the big problems with taking psychedelics half past is like, am I going to die? You're right, right. Is this going to, am I going to, am I going to get busted? By the cops, is this is this is right environment? What is that? Is that person looking at me funny?

• 19:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  You know, like all of these crazy things come in and can steer it into really squirrely pathways. But having that steady, loving presence available and just being out in the land and having it and knowing that I was part of a lineage that had done this thousands of times for many, many generations. That what gave me the support system to be able to really let go. Cause I think you can really stay tense and fight, you know, fight these experiences and you get stories and reports of people taking incredibly high doses and they're like still so bound up. They can't even release into it, but having a guide that really you trust is absolutely essential. Cause they're really guiding you through this massive bursting of a cocoon, you know?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  And it's, it's pretty terrifying on its own and having somebody there to help is absolutely essential. And I only, I only recommend doing it in that context until you're somewhat of a master yourself.

• 20:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, agreed and definitely get external verification that you're master. Not, I've been on YouTube and I think I understand this well enough. I'm a black belt now.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I watched Triple Rainbow three times. I know what bliss is.

• 20:37Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. What did you think you wanted to be when you grew up, when you were 16, 17, 18?

• 20:45Speaker 02

  You know, I think I really, I was always into history and I was, I would look at all the great conquering heroes and the great kings and the great, the people who had led these big movements. And I looked around and obviously, you know, Genghis Khan was kind of an asshole, you know? I didn't really want to kill people and that's not the way it's happens anymore. So really the people leading the movements, you had politicians, but they didn't seem like they were quite doing anything that I was interested in. And then so you had, you know, business leaders and thought leaders and authors. And so I think I always knew I was going to end up in one of those categories. Either leading an organization or writing books or speaking or something. And interestingly, I doubted myself the whole way because I failed at absolutely everything I tried and.

• 21:30Tim Ferriss?

  Like what? What did you try that didn't work out?

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Literally everything. I mean, I tried gold mining. I tried some. A variety of different online retail from sex toys to skincare to I tried oil and gas. I tried like.

• 21:44Tim Ferriss?

  Oil and gas like trading.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  No, I was like invest like investor relations, you know, like trying to convince people to go bet on some wild cat. Fucking oil well in the middle of nowhere that never works, you know? And I'd get some stock options like this one's gonna hit, never hit, nothing. But now, looking back, I'm grateful because I literally failed at everything that wasn't directly going to serve my purpose. And all of those failures, all the lessons gave me the strength to be able to hold an organization of this magnitude that I'm holding now, like the person that I was then couldn't run on it. Like I couldn't write the book that I wrote, I couldn't do the things that I'm doing. I couldn't have this conversation now because my ego would get in the way and all kinds of things. I wasn't ready yet. And so the universe was like, no, not ready.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Fail, fail, fail, fail, fail. And but I was like, man, I'm just, I'm thirty and I failed at everything. You know, I scratched out a little money here and there, you know, I was doing all right, doing better than some of my peers when I would go buy bottles at the club and party like I could buy a more expensive bottle than they could. And so everybody's like, yeah, Aubrey, you're killing. I'm like, I'm not fucking killing it. I'm like blowing it. And that was, that was tough. And then finally, it just kind of lined up with the, the right timing and the right idea and the right person leading it, meaning me. And it was able to come to fruition.

• 23:03Tim Ferriss?

  So let's, let's start with a snapshot of where we are now, and then I'm going to go back to you and your dad and sixteen for a second.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:11Tim Ferriss?

  So Onnit, what is Onnit? How many employees do you have? What are you proudest of that Onnit has done or is doing?

• 23:20Speaker 02

  We have Onnit's, we call it total human optimization. So what I realized early on is that you couldn't, and you mentioned this in the intro, like balance, you really can't specialize in only one thing and really reach the potential of that thing. You have to support everything else. Like you can go super hard in one direction, but your health is going to fall apart, your relationship's going to fall apart. And ultimately, that's going to start being weight, it's going to be anchors, it's going to drag against. Your progress and it's going to be a headwind for you in anything that you're doing. And it's the same with the body. Like you can take great supplements, but if your nutrition is shitty and your workouts are shitty and your sleep is shitty and your mentality shitty. So what? It's not going to matter. So total human optimization is the idea to raise everything at the same time.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  And really try to incrementally improve and it's not as flashy and sexy as this thirty day transformation expert in this one area, but. It really works and it's through to the bone. And I think that's what I'm probably most proud of is that. On it is what it appears to be. Like you go there, the people who are there from me to Kyle to everybody who's in the organization. They feel that movement. The people who follow on it, they feel that movement. I think it's just the vibe and the authenticity of what we stand for, the ability to be a little bit better tomorrow than you are today. And I think that's probably what I'm most proud of. How many employees do you, do you have? Hundred and eighty employees. If you count our yoga studios and count the gym and count the other entities that we own.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  How many employees did you have ten years ago? When did Onnit, when did, when was Onnit founded? Onnit started in two thousand and eleven. Well, originally two thousand and ten, zero employees, two thousand and ten. I was making like hangover supplements, mostly because I was partying too much. Yeah. And I was, you know, really a lot of this was, well, where's, where's the need for me? Well, at that point I was just drinking my head off because I was unhappy. So I first started making hangover supplements and then realized like, ah, that's not where I'm going. Where I'm going is to really improve my life in all areas. And that's when we pivoted to AlphaBrain and different things. And yeah, we started, we started and there was one employee who was like, kind of like my right hand guy, part assistant, part, you know. Whatever, everything, the everything guy.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Odd job. Odd job, hundred percent. And then, uh, yeah, we started getting geared up with AlphaBrain and then when it hit. And we actually started having sales, then it was just like grabbing every friend that had something of a shaky job that I could trust and say, quit, quit, quit, come. Yeah. You know, and let's fucking figure it out. And I was in the attic of a little boutique that my fiance at the time, Caitlin, was running. And we were in the attic of this boutique and we were just bringing out literal trash bags of orders that we were handling. From the top of it and that's, that's how it started. I mean, we didn't have a lot of, I'd blown through the only funding I got. I got a hundred thousand from my friend Bodie Miller, who's the Olympic skier at the time, who's a really significant friendship for me.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  And then an old investment banking contact that somehow didn't go broke when all the wildcat wells, you know, dried up and, you know, I don't know how he ever made money because everything I ever saw him do didn't work, but he gave me 50 grand. So I had a hundred and $10,000. I blew through a lot of that trying to market these hangover supplements and it was like, literally like the last $20,000 invested in a, an order of AlphaBrain on net 30. And then it hit. We sold out in 24 hours.

• 26:36Tim Ferriss?

  So net 30, meaning you had 30 days to pay for your manufacturing one and cover the cost.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Exactly. It was all in, man. It was just like, here we go. Let's see.

• 26:45Tim Ferriss?

  So I, I promised I'd get back to this. So I wanted to not leave people hanging and then we're going to come back to the attic. 16. You, you mentioned you had a lot of maybe a complicated relationship with your dad, conflicted relationship. Vision quest. Was that an overnight experience or was it multiple days?

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Overnight.

• 27:05Tim Ferriss?

  Overnight. Alright, so you have this vision quest. Uh, two things. If you're comfortable talking about it, how was your relationship with your dad complicated? I think that's true for a lot of people. Right? As, uh, for those people who want a good quote, I think it's Ram Dass, formerly Richard Alpert. You can look up his history, but he said, if you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family. So we all have our stuff. We all have our stuff. How was the relationship complicated? How would you describe it? And then did the vision quest affect it in any way?

• 27:37Speaker 02

  It did, but that took a long time to unpack. In fact, that's still unpacking, honestly. Like there's actually been an understanding, a realization that's actually led to a lot greater happiness for me. And, and I'll talk about that, you know, when I get to it, but if I go from the start, you know, my dad was a tortured soul and from his father, who I never met, you know, his father used to hold trials for him and his brother. He was a lawyer and he would hold trials like Franz Kafka style. They're like six and eight years old and put them on trial and they'd have to petition their defense and he would hammer. And cross examine them and then then read out their sentence, you know, and like some crazy shit like that. So it wasn't ever like physical or sexual, but like massive like emotional mind.

• 28:17Tim Ferriss?

  Serious head games.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Serious. And so he, my dad had, you know, he had a lot of his own demons and he started on the path to heal himself. As I said, to try and pass as little as that as he could off on his, uh, off on his sons. But, you know, he didn't quite get there by the time he had me. So one little thing I would say, I remember one time he was playing ping pong. I was about four years old. He's playing ping pong. He mishit the ball. Ball goes flying off the thing and I run, I run by and I go home run. I'm a little kid. I'm like, the fucking ball went out of the thing. Two days later, corners me, throws me down in a corner and starts yelling at, how could you? How could you insult me like that in front of my competition? How dare you? Blah, blah, blah. And I was like, wow, wow, wow. Like I didn't, I couldn't even fathom that.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Like, you know, it is so lost, you know, gone out of my mind.

• 29:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  So it built this kind of fear around everything I say could be misinterpreted.

• 29:11Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Especially with that delay.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Exactly. The delay was the killer. Like if it was right away, you're like, you know, hot stove ouch. Okay, I get it. But that forced me to internalize it because I'd be going over everything I said the previous day, the previous day. So there's this massive lack of trust around my dad, which I didn't really realize. And then fast, going fast forward. And we had a good relationship in a lot of other ways. You know, he was a brilliant man and taught me a lot and I'm grateful for our relationship. But I didn't realize that I never really trusted men, particularly men that had that kind of paternal role. So anybody who I had in that kind of father category, even peer category, like even when I give him a hug, I'd be like, yeah, I'll hug you, but I don't fucking trust you.

• 29:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Like, I don't know if one thing I said, you know, a while ago or is going to cause you to go off. And I didn't really realize that I was doing that to more people other than my father. Like it was extending universally to all men. Until recently, you know, someone who I had held in that kind of father mentor kind of role. Our relationship really got, you know, went askew and went haywire. And I realized like, oh shit, you know, I'm really damaged by this. Like this is really traumatic to me and where's this coming from? Oh, this is coming from my dad. This is that same pattern.

• 30:24Tim Ferriss?

  Did that just to occur to you while you were in the shower or what was the, were you journaling? What, what prompted that realization?

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it was, it came kinda slowly and it was unpacking, you know, I'm constantly doing different work and introspection and it was somehow that pain, that external pain, again, going back to external pain being one of those indicators, like, why am I fucking devastated by this? Like, why am I completely floored? Why am I, this is applying universally to everything. I was like, really crushed and I couldn't bounce back. And then, so it just forced me to keep looking, like, what is this? Like, why do I care so much?

• 30:59Tim Ferriss?

  When you say crushed, was that something your mentor or the person in that role had said to you that threw you off?

• 31:05Speaker 02

  It was an instance that repeated the pattern where I had, you know, and I don't want to get into the details specifically, but like, I had said and done, you know, I'd said and done some things that were interpreted in a way that I didn't intend and it caused a, it caused a break in our friendship.

• 31:21Tim Ferriss?

  Right, a rift.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  And, and a lot of anger. And so it was that pattern of, I'm never safe. No matter what I say or do, it can be interpreted in a different way and I'll never be safe. And it, and it really allowed me to look at that and, and analyze that and say, all right, I gotta get to the bottom of this and I gotta understand where this is coming from. And simultaneously, like, I met Kyle Kingsbury, who's become one of my best friends, probably if I was to get married now, he'd be my best man. And he's also probably the most stable dude I know. And so like, it was a combination of having one example of like, the most, oh, I can really think I can trust this guy. Like, you can push him to the extreme and he doesn't shift, like, under pain, under duress, under fatigue, under psychedelics,

• 32:07Speaker 02

  under alcohol, under anything.

• 32:08Tim Ferriss?

  There's an incredible amount of self-awareness from what I've observed

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:13Tim Ferriss?

  of him under duress. I've seen him under duress and he can go from that initial experience of overwhelm to completely centered and

• 32:22Tim Ferriss?

  A few minutes, it's

• 32:24Speaker 02

  It's remarkable. And we're talking about Kyle Kingsbury, who's our Director of Humanoptizization, former UFC fighter. But yeah, it was a combination of one spinning off and then one being solid and realizing somewhere in there, I can't pinpoint the moment, but I realized, oh, like this is all stuff from my father. I've never really trusted men ever since that point. So that was like a second weird coming of age at 36, I'm about to turn 37, where I finally felt like I wasn't, I didn't need to prove anything to my dad. I didn't need to get validated. I didn't need to show him that I was worthy of love anymore, or any other man for that matter. And I could actually trust that I really do have male friends and I really do have people who I can trust. And if they go off, that's okay. It's not me. It's not my fault.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  It's just a pattern that happened from when I was growing up. And that's been huge for me. That's been huge. Cause I've always retreated to females as my solace and my comfort. And having like male friends that I can really rely on and trust and kind of be vulnerable with in a really authentic way. I mean, I would go do ceremonies and stuff, but I'd always kind of keep my shell up. You know, and now to be able to relax into that, it's just, I feel like a much happier individual. You're like much more solid, like having, having, you know, brothers of the way.

• 33:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  You know, it's cool.

• 33:45Tim Ferriss?

  Well, if half the people you encounter are like potential threats.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 33:49Tim Ferriss?

  That's a lot of

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 33:50Tim Ferriss?

  Day to day existence.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  And I can't even, I mean, I sympathize so much with people who've had both there, both those roles be off-center, off-kilter. You know, like if you had your mother and your father, let's say your father was abusive and your mother permitted it and there was some weird dynamic there, then both sides you don't trust. And then you just don't trust the fucking world.

• 34:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  You know, I was super lucky. I had one half dialed in.

• 34:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  You know, so I had a place to retreat. I had a place to rest. You know, if you have neither, that's a hell of a challenging road. But the good news is you make it through that, you'll be even stronger because of it.

• 34:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And you can help people if you do the work. And I'm going to get back to the attic in a second, but if you do the work, what I've realized also just recently, and I mean, I'm 40 now, but if no matter your circumstances or the hand you've been dealt, if you do the work to uncover the wounds, heal the wounds, or at least accept that they exist and begin to process that, that you're not only doing the work for yourself, but you can then in turn help other people who've experienced the same thing or similar things, right? So it's really valuable work, hard to understate.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  That's almost the turning point, right? When you take your lessons and your knowledge and then you can help other people, at that point, you got the inspiration, you got the momentum. That's the final healing catalyst. It's not healing yourself. It's then knowing that you've, everything that you've suffered, all of that pain you've endured can now help someone else. It alchemizes it instantly into something that's valuable, something you can be grateful for. And when you're grateful for something, it's no longer trauma. Like you've healed it. Like that's the full circle is gratitude for that, for what it's given you.

• 35:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, at least for me too, the regard for myself or healing myself, what, this sounds really odd to say, but wasn't enough to motivate me to do the work I knew would be really difficult. But as soon as I realized, oh, well, even if I have no regard or very little regard for myself, if I can then develop a toolkit, learn about A, B, and C, and impart that to other people, that's enough to motivate me. And since have developed more regard for myself, but it's like, hey, you gotta take what works. And for me, it was that realization, oh, I can actually hand this baton off to other people. So let's work with what motivates.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Look at every like great epic novel, like, like what gets the hero inspired? It's not, it's not his own safety. He's fine, like chopping wood and being in the force. But when, you know, the oppressing force starts fucking with his family or starts fucking with his kids, you know, then, then you unleash William Wallace.

• 36:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  You know, like, like if they didn't slit Murn's throat, like there may not be Scotland.

• 36:35Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  You know, there's just, there's just the UK. You know what I mean? Like what we're wired to really care for those we love almost more than ourself. It's just part of the social dynamic and you can tap in, you can like hack into that current and use that to your advantage. And that's like the cleanest burning fuel you got. That's like a fusion reactor from the sun, you know?

• 36:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  And that's, that's really what's going to motivate you, not the other, you know, ego based stuff. That's like burning coal, you know, you're going to run out of that shit at some point and it's not going to work for you.

• 37:03Tim Ferriss?

  And you have to breathe in the fumes too.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 37:05Tim Ferriss?

  So you're just turning or you have turned 37?

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Tomorrow.

• 37:10Tim Ferriss?

  Tomorrow. Happy early birthday, man.

• 37:14Tim Ferriss?

  All right, 37. So if we rewind the clock, I think you said 2011, right? So you're like 29, 30 and fulfilling orders out of the attic. I remember those days, by the way, when I started my first real business, also in sports nutrition. I remember the, when I decided to get a fulfillment company was when I was, I, I had to race off to the post office to ship off packages. My car wouldn't start, so I got on my motorcycle, used motorcycle with a garbage bag, big like dark garbage bag full of boxes.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:50Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm wrapping it around the throttle to try to make it to the post office, almost die, obviously. And I get back, I'm like, that was dumb.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  You didn't want to go Santa Claus style?

• 38:01Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Hold it over your back.

• 38:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'd have to, yeah, I'd have to really switch grips if I went Santa Claus. So I, so I decided just to risk life and limb with it on the throttle and came back, I was like, okay, now it's, it's time to start to outsource things up. The question I wanted to ask you is, all right, so you, you get up to bedding the farm on.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  Which is a very small farm.

• 38:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, it's a very small farm.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Not that great, just.

• 38:23Tim Ferriss?

  You're bedding the backyard on this manufacturing on an alpha brain with not 30 terms.

• 38:31Tim Ferriss?

  Let's, if we bounce out, say, two years, so to thirty-two. From sixteen to thirty-two, it could even be earlier, from like twelve to thirty-two, do you remember any point in time when you were like, wow, this is the richest I've ever felt? Because I remember, I remember one very specific day in my experience, but when was that? What was that moment when you were like, wow? Like, I feel successful, or I, wow, this is more than I could have anticipated.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that happened pretty quick after that, because that, you know, with those net thirty terms, I was able to, and the sales, I was really able to scale pretty aggressively without taking on extra capital or anything, and we had no overhead. I mean, that was just the cost of the product itself and a couple of friends who we were paying like twenty-five, thirty grand, whatever, we could kind of push together, and then, you know, it started to grow a little bit from there, but it was a lot of sales, you know, just product costs and a lot of shipments, no additional advertising, because at that point, you know, Rogan was the business partner, he was the advertising engine, he'd bought into the company, so I'd give an equity in exchange for the, for the marketing. And I was, you know, there was serious money coming in, and I started looking at houses,

• 39:45Speaker 02

  and I was looking at this house, and I was thinking, maybe, you know, six hundred, seven hundred thousand dollar range, really get a house I could sink my teeth into, and I saw this house that was a million dollars, and I was like, a million dollar house, like, damn. I was like, I think I can swing it, I think I can fucking swing it, you know, and it was just because it was my, it was my dream house. You know, it had a nice backyard, and I envisioned what's there now, which is axe throwing and slack line and pool and deck and fire pit, I was like, I can do this here in this house, and it had my style. And I just, you know, at that point, again, a little bit early, but I still went for it, like, I think I can, this thing looks solid enough, I can go in, and when I went into that house, that was like a big moment for me, because that was a, that was a real house, that was like a, that was a big boy house.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  I was like, I got a fucking big boy house. And that was, that was really the moment for me, where I was like, damn. This is awesome.

• 40:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and you've turned it into the Aubrey Marcus House of Ninja Warrior Training and assorted delights.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's been heaven.

• 40:45Tim Ferriss?

  It's, you mentioned a name that for those people who don't have contacts, I want to explore for a second. So you mentioned Rogan, Joe Rogan. So some of you listening, of course, know who Joe is. Most certainly, I would say arguably the most powerful, single sort of interview format podcaster.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:03Tim Ferriss?

  Period. Part of the inspiration, certainly one of the inspirations for me starting my own podcast, was being across the table from Joe and having such a wonderful experience.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:13Tim Ferriss?

  Able to go long form, be myself.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Battle robes.

• 41:16Tim Ferriss?

  He fed me, you know, I don't know if I ever told you this, just, I'm going to digress for a second because that's what I do. Very first time I was on his show, he said, because I've been on twice, he said, um, do you want some bulletproof coffee? Sure. So he gave me like a huge, I mean, it must've been like 24 ounces of bulletproof coffee. And then he goes, do you want some Alpha Brain? I was like, sure. So I had like a handful of Alpha Brain. And then he goes, do you want some pot? And I was like, I don't even smoke pot, but I'm a little intimidated. Joe's an intense guy. And I, maybe it's spending time in Japan. I was like, can't say no. All right. So I go into this interview on like 24 ounces of butter coffee, a handful of Alpha Brain and pot, which I never, I very rarely consume.

• 42:00Tim Ferriss?

  Nothing against it. It's just not really my plant. And man, oh, man, that was, that was a hell of an experience. But, uh, how did you first meet Joe? Cause I think this is going to tie into maybe a theme that I want to explore.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  I listened to Joe do comedy, you know, and I'd seen him as the, I was a huge UFC fan all the way from UFC one, literally. Cause my dad was a fan of the sport. We'd watch that together. That was some of the good times, memories of watching.

• 42:26Tim Ferriss?

  It was a brutal first UFC.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 42:28Tim Ferriss?

  I still remember the first match.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  That Savat Foot Fighter kicked the tooth out of that sumo guy.

• 42:33Tim Ferriss?

  Into the commentators. Oh, boy, this is different.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was pretty epic. And so I'd seen him there. And so I think that probably drew me to listen to his comedy show. And then I listened to his comedy show. I was like, oh, shit. He's thinking about the same things that I'm thinking about like he's done psychedelics. He's into worrying about aliens and supervolcanoes and all this stuff was like, man, I gotta meet this guy. And I kept, I kept running into him at different events because I'd go to some of the UFC's, you know, when I could. And I'd see him out and at that point he was still going to clubs and occasionally going to strip clubs.

• 43:05Tim Ferriss?

  And did he have the podcast at this point?

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Uh, no, I don't think he did. And when I first start at that point and then, um, but you know, I'm just a fan at that point. So I'd say, Hey Joe, you know, blah, blah, blah. And you know, you get, you're in like kind of fan zone.

• 43:19Tim Ferriss?

  Fan zone, yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  At that point. And you know, I kept, I saw more of his comedy show. Then he launched the podcast. And then that was super early in the podcast game and he had no commercials and it was just him and Red Band and they were just bullshitting. It was just like a fun thing that they were doing.

• 43:32Tim Ferriss?

  Everybody who knows Joe Rogan, like all in caps, Marquee Joe Rogan, should go back and see some of his early shows. No, no, I think it's inspiring to see where this, where it began.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  No doubt. And I had an idea at that point like, oh, well, he doesn't have advertising on his show. Maybe I'll hit him up for, you know, to do some advertising and use that as a chance to like meet him and maybe elevate out of the fan zone. So we can have a conversation. So I remember I set up a lunch meeting to just 30 minutes to just meet somewhere, talk to him about advertising on his show.

• 44:02Tim Ferriss?

  This was in LA?

• 44:03Speaker 02

  This was in LA, yeah. And

• 44:05Tim Ferriss?

  Did you fly out just for this or you're already there?

• 44:06Speaker 02

  I did. And actually it was, it was interesting. It was like the universe gave me a test. So Bodie Miller, who I mentioned before, Olympic skier, you know, still in his Playboy mode at the time, he invited me for my first Kentucky Derby experience. And it was like, oh man, I got a cancellation, got full VIP access, craziest parties you've ever seen, suite at the Kentucky Derby. And I was like, and I had that one meeting with Rogan that was right in the middle of that. I was like, man, I can't go. I gotta take this meeting with Joe. And it was like a cool test.

• 44:32Tim Ferriss?

  That's a good test.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like a cool test, you know? And, um, so I took that meeting and a 30 minute meeting to talk about advertising quickly turned into all those things psychedelics, supervolcanoes and genetic bottleneck theory and aliens and all the philosophical things that we talked about. And after that, he's like, Hey man, you know, I'd love to have you come on the show and we can talk more about this. So I went on the show and just as friends just started. Having a relationship with him and it was a couple of years after that I asked him the question like, "Hey, man, like what supplement would you like the best yourself?" And he's like, "Oh yeah, I'm into new tropics." And I was like, "Man, I'm gonna make the best one that's ever been made and I'll let you know about it."

• 45:09Tim Ferriss?

  Alright, so this was like made to order. This was like

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, this was it.

• 45:12Tim Ferriss?

  bespoke Joe Rogan product.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, bespoke.

• 45:15Tim Ferriss?

  So I didn't know that. Now, you mentioned in passing something earlier and I don't know if this is the product that you were meaning to advertise.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Oh, I bet it was.

• 45:23Tim Ferriss?

  I bet it was.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  I bet it was.

• 45:24Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned the S E X T O Y S.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:28Tim Ferriss?

  So what are we talking about?

• 45:29Speaker 02

  This was the number one male seller, number one selling male sex toy in the world, the one and only Fleshlight.

• 45:34Tim Ferriss?

  Fleshlight.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Yes, a convenient pocket pussy concealed in a obnoxiously large flashlight container.

• 45:43Tim Ferriss?

  Which, by the way, I should say, on this podcast, had Alice Little, who is the number one earning, as far as I know, legal sex worker in the US and one of her top recommendations was, I wish I could, or her pronouncements was, "I wish I could get a Fleshlight for every male in the country for a number of different reasons." So

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Alright, solid endorsement there.

• 46:07Tim Ferriss?

  You've left a legacy. Alright, so the, people can look that up if they would like, but that was, that was the product context for that meeting.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  That was. That was, that was the client that I was working with and I was like, "Oh man, maybe Joe will do something with this." And Joe brought that to his people and people were like, "No way, you can't do it."

• 46:24Tim Ferriss?

  Now, when you say client, so you've, you've done a lot of different things. At this point, Onnit does not exist.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  Onnit does not exist. So I have a marketing company and that boutique marketing company has, you know, a few people that are working with me and I have, again, a bunch of clients, most of which failed, but I couldn't fail at selling sex toys because people just want things to fuck. It was a very easy, easy thing to learn and not suck at, so I was able to help make that thing work. And yeah, so I had that one going and, you know, he, he liked just the ridiculousness of it. And he liked the idea of not taking this show too seriously to do something like that. And so he just went for it. And so if you go back to the old JREs, there'll be old Fleshlight ads.

• 47:06Tim Ferriss?

  I remember.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  On there and

• 47:07Tim Ferriss?

  Might actually, well, let's see. So I, I came about, now, did the, did the Fleshlight and Onnit? overlap at all or no?

• 47:15Speaker 02

  No.

• 47:16Tim Ferriss?

  Did not?

• 47:17Speaker 02

  So yeah, I started on it after I actually got myself in a position where I was able to transition out of that company with some severance, never got any other incentives, but got a pretty generous severance and took that and just wrote it into, you know, starting on it and just running. And then I had that hundred and $10,000 and I tried to dip into that as little as possible with my own, you know, utilization.

• 47:41Tim Ferriss?

  That was the severance?

• 47:42Speaker 02

  No, that was the investment from Bodhi.

• 47:44Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I got it right from Bodhi and the I banker.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  And plus the severance and just kind of rode that to the, to the very brink of nothing.

• 47:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  And then again, it just came through like right in the nick of time.

• 47:55Tim Ferriss?

  What, what are some of the, if, if, I know you read a lot, I've seen your library.

• 48:02Tim Ferriss?

  It's one of the first things I do. If I get to someone's house and I see a bookshelf or bookshelves is I go start browsing. So you can learn a lot.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:09Tim Ferriss?

  By browsing it, including which books I haven't read, not in your case, but it's like, if you see War and Peace, you're like, all right, yeah, definitely Moby Dick, like ask about those. I have War and Peace, I'm like, I haven't read it. It's too, it's too intimidating. I will get to it eventually, but.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 48:22Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe, yeah. Dot, dot, dot, maybe. Which books or resources do you view as having been very helpful in the early days of, of Onnit or later? But are there any particular books that helped you or helped you think about and develop the business?

• 48:43Speaker 02

  There is a direct correlation between my inner work and the outer success of Onnit. Like that correlation is as clean an association as anything I have. So I haven't been one that's read a lot of business books. A lot of the books that I've read have been.

• 48:57Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Internally, internally focused.

• 48:59Tim Ferriss?

  Totally fair game.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  And, um, you know, there's been some really significant books that I've read that have kind of shaped who I am. And I think the first was kind of following that line of the Toltec philosophy from crazy Carlos Castaneda through Don Miguel Ruiz. And I think actually his most powerful book, although it's a little bit hard to get into, is the Toltec Art of Life and Death, which is, a lot of people know Don Miguel Ruiz from the Four Agreements. Four Agreements, yeah. And then he wrote Mastery of Love, which is an incredible exploration of love and relationship. And then his true masterwork is the Toltec Art of Life and Death. And then the thing I liked about it is it was the first complete system, a complete spiritual, physical, emotional system that, you know, was self-contained.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Like, it was like its own religion to a certain extent, but except it was something that I could believe and I could buy into and was practical and I could utilize those principles of the warrior ethos and the principles of the Nagual, the artist who paints his masterpiece, you know, versus the person who allows the mitote, they called it, which is the dream of the world, to shape their experience. And so that transition from just allowing everything, expectations and pressures from this person and that person to shape who I was, to being, becoming the Nagual, the artist who... More proactive, so reactive. Yeah, who uses your intention to actually create the world around him and paint that masterpiece. And, and the laughter as the kind of guide, you know, knowing that you've made it. And I always say that, like, you can tell a spiritual master by the sound of their laughter.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Like, if they aren't laughing, I'm not gonna drink your cup of ayahuasca. Like, if you don't have a good belly laugh, like, you're missing the point, you know? And, and that's been a, a really solid guidebook and a place that, if anybody's searching, you know, I would definitely check out Toltec Philosophy. Toltec. Yeah. Art of Life and Death. Any other books come to mind? You know, as far as like building, you know, because part of building a company is building like a society... If Kyle of 10 years ago came to you and said, "I need three books." Yeah. What do you recommend? Aldous Huxley's Island, I think, was another crucial book for me. And that was, um, that was utopian fiction. But the beauty of that is it was seeing how a system could work en masse, you know?

• 51:11Speaker 02

  And it was the first exposure to rewriting the rules of how everything could be and understanding like, "Oh, we could just change everything." Like, everything could be malleable and then what are the downstream effects? And it's that classic clash of utopia versus dystopia and how it all merges. And that's been something I've consistently fallen back on with a lot of like help and principles. So I think that one was huge. And then honestly, personally, this has nothing to do with Onnit, but personally, the book Sex at Dawn by Chris Ryan was probably the third most influential single book. Because at that point, I was frustrated in conventional monogamous relationship and...

• 51:52Speaker 02

  I thought that humans were like lions and we were supposed to fight to the death to protect all our mates and that women should be happy if they found the right lion. You know, and Sex at Dawn is like, no, no, humans like having sex, both sides. We're always gonna like having sex and that's just the nature of things. And I go, oh, man, like I had this wrong. It's not just me that's supposed to want other lovers. It's everybody that's, you know, from an instinctive, primitive concept really is open to having a more expanded view of sexuality. And that's led me down, that was the initial domino that led me down the path of exploring open relationship, which has been a huge, you know, advancement in my own personal happiness and fulfillment. Challenging as hell. I mean, challenging as hell. But that book, if it wasn't for that book, I don't think I ever would have given it

• 52:37Speaker 02

  a try because I was operating under a false premise.

• 52:39Tim Ferriss?

  So for people who are listening and they're like, you know what? I'd like to give that more expanded view of sexuality a shot.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Good luck.

• 52:47Tim Ferriss?

  Any, any, any guideposts, any particular like guidelines?

• 52:51Speaker 02

  You have to be super committed. Like do not, you know, like know that it's going to be hell. Like you can have it all sorted. I had it all sorted mentally, understood it philosophically, understood spiritually, I understood it biologically, understood it in evolutionary terms. But the moment that Whitney had another lover, I spent 24 hours crawling around on the ground vomiting every time I thought of her having sex with somebody else. Like literally dry heaving, like, like a massive purge that I couldn't even shake myself out of like, and that was step one. And then it gets a little bit better from there if you continue to do the work, but it takes a while to make it through. Like you gotta literally go through the darkness, you know, the dark night of the soul of your

• 53:35Speaker 02

  own insecurities, all your fears and insecurities and validation points. Everything is going to be stress tested and challenged. If you make it through, you'll be really free. These things like jealousy, these things like insecurities, they will get pushed to the point where you either fix them or you just suffer in unbearable pain. So it forces you again, external pain is that force. It'll put you in pain and then it's up to you whether you can fix it or not.

• 54:02Tim Ferriss?

  So we've spent an entire podcast just discussing this.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 54:04Tim Ferriss?

  And you and I have spent the equivalent of many podcasts talking about this.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:09Tim Ferriss?

  So maybe another time. But if we're looking back, this could be professional or personal. And of course, they're so, I mean, they're two sides of the same coin.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 54:17Tim Ferriss?

  No matter how you slice it. But do you have any particular failure that you can discuss? And I put failure in quotation marks because the, the goal is to describe a failure that later ended up setting the stage or planting a seed for a success later down the line. Are there any failures that come to mind? Or a failure that you just learned a lot from and therefore that helped you later?

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. You know, I failed at so many things and every single failure was helpful. Like every single fucking failure was helpful. And there's not one that stands out, but there's some that I remember. Like, I remember early in the days of Onnit, I was allowed myself to get really stressed and I was trying to record a video and someone was knocking on my door and I didn't respond. I was trying to stay in line with the video and they kept knocking and they kept knocking. And this was when you had about 12 employees, 14 employees. And I blew up. I lost it. You know, a little bit of my dad coming out, "What? What the fuck do you want? If I don't answer the door when you knock, then I'm fucking busy."

• 55:21Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  You know, I blew up, right? And, and then I was like, "Oh, man." And I go out and I open the door and it was like the sweetest employee we had, you know? And I think her name was Samantha. And she's crying. And I go, "Oh, my God." Like, what did I just do? Like, she didn't know. You know, like, and that was like a hard lesson. Like, I am not going to lose my temper. No matter what is going on in my life, I will not allow my anger to come out on my employees ever. You know? And it was like this deep, like, I internal, like, that was deeply painful for me. Times I've done that in relationships too, you know, where I've projected my own shit and put that on somebody else and watched them suffer from the pain that I've caused. And then having to deal with that. Businesses, every business, like I said, every business

• 56:04Speaker 02

  I did failed. And then me questioning my own self-worth. Like, I'm grateful for all of that. And I'm sorry for the people who had to suffer along the way. The people who bet on me and invested in me and I failed in their shit. And the people who I hurt with my anger and the people who I hurt with my projections. But I'm grateful for the experience because without all of that and without the grace of that happening, I wouldn't be a fraction of who I am.

• 56:30Tim Ferriss?

  Allergic to anger. Something I wrestle with, something I, something I grapple with myself.

• 56:41Tim Ferriss?

  The anger piece, I'd love to touch on this because this is also part of my familiar cast of characters. And I think I've greatly improved over time with managing that as a, as an impulse, something that, that really was embedded in me early.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:59Tim Ferriss?

  And

• 57:02Tim Ferriss?

  after that experience, what was your pattern interrupt? What did you say to yourself when you felt like the physiological response of about to hit takeoff?

• 57:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:12Tim Ferriss?

  In terms of losing temper, getting angry, what, had, what was the, what was the technique? What was the approach?

• 57:18Speaker 02

  You know, it coincided with me talking, because I started talking about that experience.

• 57:23Tim Ferriss?

  If I may.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course. I was talking to my friend Duncan Trussell, who's pretty steeped in, you know, kind of Buddhist philosophy. And he had a name for it, and I think it was shumpa. And it's that feeling you get, it's that welling of energy. It's, and it actually feels good. And I think it was acknowledging like, there's some part of you, when that anger is coming, it like feels, it's a sense of power that's rising. And it's identifying that, and the Toltec philosophy also helps us, Don Miguel helped me with that. But you feel it rising, and it's like the swell, it's like the swell of a wave. And there's a choice right there where you either paddle, or you don't paddle. But to really identify the swell and identify like, oh yeah, this is gonna feel good.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  Like that power putting on that mantle, and like breathing fire, like it's going to feel good in certain ways, but the ramifications, like never feel good.

• 58:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  The burning bodies, the house is on fire, when you're breathing that dragon fire, that never feels good. So it's really a hard choice, I call it mental override, to interrupt that, that pattern when I feel that shumpa, or whatever the, whatever Duncan called it, that moment of takeoff where I start to bristle and the dragon fucking tentacles come out and it starts to come, like I can identify, actually oddly. Enough. I haven't felt this in a long time. I felt it yesterday, like yesterday and I I looked, I was leaving my office and literally I haven't been this angry in a long time. And someone's, you know, someone on my team screwed something up super bad. And it was the second time on the same thing. I was like, oh my God.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  And I found out about it seven o'clock and I looked at a table and I wanted to smash it. I wanted to take the table and throw it on the ground and like smash it. And then I was like, oh yeah, there's that thing. Like I remember how I used to deal with this thing. All right, I'm gonna go for a walk outside and I would go for a walk outside. And then I read this Japanese study and I talk about this in my book where six breaths, six deep breaths actually lowers blood pressure. So they say, take a breath. It's not a breath. It's six. Like six is the amount that it requires to get that physiological response. So I took my six breaths. I walked outside. And it wasn't gone. Like I carried it for a while. I talked to people, but I at least eliminated it enough that that initial wave of the the big wave of the swell.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  Passed. So the big wave of the swell passed and I I paddled into a few other little ones, you know, I body surfed on some whitewater of that rage for a little while.

• 59:49Tim Ferriss?

  Did a little longboard.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And I, you know, I fucking hammered a few emails and, you know, paddled into it a little bit. But just my ability to recognize that and then trust the process that I'll be grateful that I didn't paddle into that wave, even if it would have felt good at the moment.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  It's just been a gradual, slow experience.

• 1:00:09Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you mentioned a couple of things I want to underscore. Number one is that.

• 1:00:14Tim Ferriss?

  It's not a binary pass fail, right? It's not, it's not, I completely quelled all of my anger, therefore I succeeded. And if I didn't do that, it's a failure. It's like, no, if you dial back 10%, that's a big deal.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:00:26Tim Ferriss?

  Right? It's the, it's the difference between like, hey, fuckface in an email and like, dear John, right? I mean, like, that's, that's 10% is really meaningful.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:34Tim Ferriss?

  So, so that's, that's one thing that it can be incremental, but the, the downstream effect of it can be much larger than that small incremental change you feel.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:45Tim Ferriss?

  The second, when you're talking about failures, is that what a lot of folks might perceive as a failure, which is a path that isn't taken to completion over 10, 20, 30 years, can still have a lot of value. And that's why I brought up the fleshlight. Right? Like if it were not for that, you wouldn't have had the context to have the meeting.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:01:06Tim Ferriss?

  Which then led to.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  I owe my success to pocket pussies.

• 1:01:14Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that that actually leads us to, this might be your answer. This this leads us to, I'm gonna hit a couple of, a couple of rapid fire questions. I'll try not to make them long winded and therefore not rapid at all. But if you could put one short message or quote, anything on a billboard, metaphorically speaking, just to get a message out to millions or billions of people, what would you put on it?

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  You know, I heard you asked this question to Wim Hof and he said, breathe, motherfucker.

• 1:01:41Tim Ferriss?

  Breathe, motherfucker.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  That was like the the best answer to that. So I think about this and, you know, I think other podcasters have kind of co-opted that question and asked it. And, you know, I was thinking about that question and, you know, I was thinking and wasn't happy with my answer. Then I realized like, what I feel now, what best expressed the state I'm in is what I would put on that billboard that was shown everywhere. I would say, welcome to heaven, population, everyone. And that's really what I feel like we have this choice right now to engage with life, all of life and all the opportunity to smell and eat and travel and converse and meet people and have sex and enjoy and create and build. Like, this can be heaven, but we got to get out of our own mental hell first.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  And so reminding people like, hey, you know, all right, extenuating circumstances, maybe, you know, Sarajevo and certain places, yeah, it's fucking tough. I get it externally, it might be hell. But for most of us, especially listening to this podcast, we're in heaven.

• 1:02:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  We're in heaven. Like, and it's just our choice whether we want to engage in it that way or whether we want to get stuck in our own patterns that keep us in hell.

• 1:02:44Tim Ferriss?

  What what tools, and I'll volunteer one, I'm I'm beta testing this, so it's not really fair, but I'm I'm beta testing the waking up app, which Sam Harris is putting together. And it's it's actually been tremendously helpful and very unlike other programs I've tested for producing the non-ordinary states of awareness that one might correlate to the psychedelic experience.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Tim Ferriss?

  And Sam's no stranger in that arena, but he is certainly passed on the chemical and plant infusions to focus on the the meditative component. And I've found that very helpful for.

• 1:03:30Tim Ferriss?

  Becoming less reactive and more response able in terms of being able to choose the lens through which I look at the day and my interactions. What else have you found helpful personally for living that billboard?

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  You know, one of the best ones that I've found is came to me really unusually and it's the practice of ecstatic dance. And because a lot of even psychedelics, psychedelics, they kind of project your consciousness out of body. You know, from my very first experience, like my body was gone. Like I didn't have that body somatic awareness. So I was creating and patterning this separation between consciousness, mind and body. And then when I first did the ecstatic dance practice, I had no idea. I was like, oh my gosh, this is really uncomfortable. Because the idea is you listen to music and then you just move, not trying, you have a blindfold a lot of times or a really dark room, and you just move in expressive ways that push the boundaries of what your body is comfortable with, not physically, but comfortable

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  and moving, and just collapse the mind, get to a state of super fluidity, a kind of flow state where it's just music and body. And I was shocked at how I responded. I mean, tons of emotions came up, tons of like clarity came up. I had visions that were coming through in that experience. And it was this massive, massive transformation for me because I felt it all the way through to my cells. You know, instead of getting the body out of the way, it was using the body as a tool to enhance my consciousness. And so it unified everything else. Instead of siloing it and kind of pulling it apart,

• 1:05:00Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  It was pushing it all together in a really powerful way. And, you know, I've started leading those practices and doing those frequently. Like I will, if I'm feeling funky, I will just put on music, put on a hoodie, and I can be anywhere. I was just in Venice doing it in my little rental house in the middle of the day. I felt feeling kind of funky from recording the book and whatever. I just start moving. And I intentionally find those patterns that sends off the alarm signals. Like, don't move your hips like that because you'll be gay. If you move your arms too far out, if they extend beyond one foot, totally gay. You can't do that, you know, and just force yourself to move into these other patterns that you're uncomfortable with and let it, let your body. Body like let your body loose, like let your body free. We bind that up just like we bind up our psyche.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  And when you unbind the body and allow it to express freely in this safe container, not saying go to the club and do it. You know, that's a lot of external pressure.

• 1:05:53Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:05:53Speaker 02

  But in this case, you know, do it by yourself in a dark room, put on some music, put on something with a tribal beat and force yourself to move in those uncomfortable patterns and see what boundaries and restrictions you have for yourself. And then realize like, where is that coming from?

• 1:06:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  I can't allow myself to move in space by myself in the dark.

• 1:06:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  What the hell?

• 1:06:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  You know, and so that's been a really cool tool for me that I don't think a lot of people are engaging in. But it's something that ancestrally, man, everybody was dancing as part of like Sundance rituals, trance dance rituals, all these dance rituals. That was part of a major part of ceremony for people. And I think it's great to make you feel more human again and take that performance aspect off of dancing. Like when you dance in public, it's like a mating dance. It's like a performance show. It's all about how you look. In this case, not, doesn't matter how you look, doesn't matter if it even approximates dancing. It's about getting your body to move and so many times just the tears will flow and the, and, and emotions will come up. Sometimes rage and anger, sometimes they're, ah, will all come out in that too, if I've been bottling that up.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  So it just allows the instrument to release and expel anything that's been holding. And typically by the end, you know, you just allow that, those snowflakes of joy to just come in and touch your skin. It's, it's dope.

• 1:07:10Tim Ferriss?

  How long, how long is a session typically? How frequently do you try to do it? Any music recommendations?

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, you can do it shorter, but I think minimum you need, you need probably 20, 30 minutes. Cause the first 10, 15 minutes, you're still going to be getting into it. And like the real magic happens in the middle and then fatigue starts to set in, depending on your fitness level, around 30 to 40 minutes. So I try to take an arch from, actually when I do it, I follow Stan Grof's basic prenatal matrices kind of model.

• 1:07:42Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know what that is.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  Okay. So that starts like you're in the womb, right? It's something very comfortable, some kind of music that's, you know, smooth. It's like. Like you're, everything's taken care of, the universe is good, some very kind of happy.

• 1:07:53Tim Ferriss?

  Any, any playlists you can recommend or what would people search for?

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  For that, for that music, anything with kind of like a very slow, positive kind of beat. You know, I have, I have like obscure spiritual music.

• 1:08:05Tim Ferriss?

  This would be like massage tribal music?

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:08Tim Ferriss?

  Spa tribal music?

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  It just like feels good, it's happy. And then, um, then I go into, then the next thing that happens is like the water breaks, it's chaos, right? So chaos around you, you know, you're imagining in this, in the birth process, the water breaks, you don't know what's happening.

• 1:08:23Tim Ferriss?

  So prenatal is like five minutes, 10 minutes?

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, like six, seven minutes and it's just kind of sway and I usually stretch a lot of times and kind of stretch. Sometimes I lie on the ground, a little bit, a little bit joint mobility, a little bit stretching, getting into it. And then, you know, if I'm doing the practice, I'll go into that more chaotic mode, which is a little, still hard to dance to. And it forces me to do weird patterns and I like violin, like Lindsey Stirling is a great one. And then, so it's like some weird kind of staccato violin, some beats antique, uh, music is sometimes good in there.

• 1:08:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, beats antique is great.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Beats antique is awesome.

• 1:08:56Tim Ferriss?

  Lindsey Stirling violin also, we brought up Alice Little earlier, one of her favorite types of music to have sex to.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  No shit?

• 1:09:03Tim Ferriss?

  Side note.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  I see that, I see that. Then from there, I go to like, there is the fight and that's where you actually see the birth canal and you know, you have a goal, tunnel vision. You gotta get out, you gotta breathe, you're gonna fight with everything you have to breathe. And that's that warrior archetype. So for that, it's almost always Tribe Called Red. Like that's my go-to and that's like EDM mixed with, um, like tribal Native American cries. And there's some great, great tracks for that. Like, uh, electric powwow, like some awesome tracks for that. And then, so from there, that's where you really start to express that kind of warrior archetype and allow any of those emotions to come.

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  And then finally, at the end is the more kind of ecstatic, you know, blissful, but still a beat. So some like really upbeat EDM or some really positive uplifting music. And I usually will take a break with something that's kind of quiet and serene, like welcome to Africa, everything is beautiful. Kind of vibe and then into some more, you know. Positive message like EDM and just kind of dance it out and really enjoy and express like the happiness of taking that breath, rebirthing, becoming a new, you know, embracing your new self. And that's the BPM4, which is the ecstasy of breath. And so that's the pathway for the full kind of shamanic road. Sometimes I'll just go straight to

• 1:10:27Speaker 02

  the Tribe Called Red. I think you've met him too, Porangi, who came out with this ayahuasca remixed album. He's got a couple of great tribal drum tracks, which are good. There's a remix from Drum Spider and Mose in there. I think it's tracks three and tracks eight on that. You can get it on Spotify. But I can share a Spotify playlist, too, of an ecstatic dance.

• 1:10:49Tim Ferriss?

  All right. For everybody listening, I'll put the Spotify playlist in the show notes. And what strikes me listening to this, because I know nothing about ecstatic dance, is that the narrative is really important. It seems like it's not the hero's journey, but the narrative arc of the playlist is really important.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this is just something that I came up with. I've been, obviously, you know, my father worked with Stan Grof, so he's used that metaphor. And it just kind of stuck with me, like, oh, yeah, these are all things we feel. Everything's cool. Oh, shit, everything's not cool. Everything's fucked up. And then like, all right, everything's fucked up, and I'm gonna fight, and I don't care. And there's a way out, and I'm gonna fucking make it. And it's just kind of pounding your chest, like, I got this. And then it's like through the other side, like, I got this because I got all this help, and I'm fucking grateful, and here I am. And that's, you know, the tears really flow, like, at the end, and you're like, man, life is good.

• 1:11:47Tim Ferriss?

  Now, do you use this therapeutically when needed, or is it something that you do preemptively or on a scheduled basis to?

• 1:11:57Tim Ferriss?

  Prevent.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I should do it more like prophylactically, like preventatively. But I tend to do it when I feel funky. Like when I feel funky, I'm either changing my temperature drastically, going in the sauna. Or going in the cold or doing something like this. And but this is probably the best tool because everything. It really just unifies everything for me, you know, it brings.

• 1:12:22Tim Ferriss?

  You also don't need very much.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  You don't need anything. You just need a little bit of privacy or someone you feel comfortable. Now, at this point, I'm actually comfortable doing it with other people like watching because I've talked about it enough. You know, and it's a little external pressure, but then you just breathe into that pressure. Like the the goal here is to go where you're uncomfortable. So like when you're comfortable alone, then invite somebody who might be a little judgmental and see, all right, can you still dance? Can you still that? Because I guarantee you by the time you're done and you've just expressed yourself, their judgment's going to be gone and they'll probably be dancing with you.

• 1:12:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  You know, so breathing in it's that, you know, kind of stoic training, like breathe into those areas where you feel restricted, where you feel judgmental, where you feel like the eyes are on you and try to unify that all together.

• 1:13:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it reminds me of a quote, and I'm not going to get the attribution right. Wait a second, Donald Neil Walsh, maybe someone I'm sure it might be Jim Rohn, someone can correct me. But life begins at the end of your comfort zone. And this is.

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:13:20Tim Ferriss?

  And how do you put that into practice? It's with activities like this, I mean, training regimens like this.

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  Especially for men who are tough, like men are tough and like a tough man can get in a cold bath and a tough man can get in a in a sauna for a long time. And it's like, it's in our sweet spot. We're like, yeah, I got that.

• 1:13:40Tim Ferriss?

  It's comfortable discomfort.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  It's comfortable discomfort. This is uncomfortable discomfort. Getting your arms way out there and moving those around and shaking your hips. Woo, that's uncomfortable.

• 1:13:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  That's real uncomfortable. But when you break those patterns, then there's just a whole new freedom that's available.

• 1:13:55Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned, we'll we'll go for just a couple more minutes, but you you mentioned the book. So I have a copy of this at home and a number of people picked it up and also almost immediately gone to the sex chapters understandably, but can you?

• 1:14:12Tim Ferriss?

  Describe the book. Give us, give us a preview. Why, why the book? What is it called? How did you choose the contents? Let's start there.

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  Well, really, this book is the embodiment of that idea of total human optimization, which is not just one thing. You know, I really admire the people, you know, yourself is one of those people. You'll track something down to the very nth degree and like really bring home the bones of that truth from your journey. And I've been surrounded by a lot of people who've done that. But what I felt like was missing was someone to bring it all together, like bring all the practices, who've tried all of the different things. And how does that look? How does it look to go through a day? Like, what's the morning things you do? Okay, hydration, light, movement. Okay, then how do you bring in Wim Hof breathing and cold exposure, heat exposure? What are the nutrition principles you want? Like, how do you optimize your commute to work? What are some workplace practices that you've learned?

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  Then how, when you go home, how do you relax and connect with yourself and connect with your, your family and your friends? And how do you drink a glass of wine? What's too much glass? What's too much wine? What happens when you drink too much? Because that's all part of life. Like, addressing all of those things, how to have great sex and then how to, you know, transition from that into the time before bed where you're taking care of yourself and journaling. And then from there, the sleep practices. Sleep was a huge one for me because everybody's telling you, and there's a bunch of bullshit out there. Like, everybody's saying, oh, you need eight, eight, eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Like, that's a fucking fantasy. Like, I might as well be riding a fucking unicorn with the, you know, rainbow headband. Like, that's not going to happen for me.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  You know, so I read Nick Littlehill's book, Sleep, and he talks about getting 30 to 35 sleep cycles a week. And then changing the dynamic of that, utilizing naps more. I napped right before this podcast. And how naps are reliably shown to be more effective than more overnight sleep or more coffee. And so just bringing in all these interesting things from books I've read, people I've met with, you know, people who've researched in different areas, and try to bring this into a comprehensive day, along with all my own mindset practices, like talking about mental override, telling stories about Bodie Miller and the great fighters I know and the great champions I know, and just put this together. And also, Remind people like, hey, like, I'm not, I haven't got it all right. You know, I tell the stories of when I used to eat, like relentlessly eat cinnamon pop tarts.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  How unbelievably unfathomably nutritionally bad that was, you know, it's like sugar frosting on sugar dough on sugar filling.

• 1:16:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Like, what?

• 1:16:42Tim Ferriss?

  Triple, the triple ground.

• 1:16:43Speaker 02

  What? What was that? You know, but I was there. I did that stuff, the double western bacon cheeseburgers and how, what the new double western bacon cheeseburger looks like with grass fed beef and raw cheese and sprouted or sourdough bread and, and how you can just live this robust life, you know, not engaging with capital F fear, which is I think the virus that underpins a lot of our malaise and try to have a real healthy, joyful expression and you know, recognize this life, as I said on that billboard, you know, welcome to heaven.

• 1:17:12Tim Ferriss?

  What is the title of the book?

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  Book's called Own the Day, Own Your Life. And the idea is, you know, fuck all these long winded transformational programs where you focus on one thing for thirty days, forty days, ninety days. Let's just focus on doing one day awesomely, you know, from top to bottom. Schedule it out, get all the practices in line. I have very clear prescriptions. Let's just focus on one day and see how you feel living one day like that. And that's all you gotta do. Just commit to one day, not only one day, just commit to one hour at a time. Just commit to like, all right, what are the three things I gotta do when I wake up? All right. Twelve ounces of water with some sea salt and some lemon. Okay, I got that. All right. Ten minutes of sunlight. Okay, I got that. A little bit of movement. Okay, I got that. Whew, on to the next thing.

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  You know, that's all you gotta do. Step by step, relax into the process, do it for one day and see what changes in your life.

• 1:17:59Tim Ferriss?

  When in doubt, six breaths.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  Six breaths to quell the dragon fire, so you don't burn down villages.

• 1:18:08Tim Ferriss?

  What, uh, this is the, the book, do you have a, do you have a site for the book?

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, ownthedaybook.com.

• 1:18:15Tim Ferriss?

  Ownthedaybook.com.

• 1:18:19Tim Ferriss?

  And if, if you were, let's see, I'm trying to think of the right age to choose. So you can choose the age of your younger self. So it could be at that 29, 30, just guys started on it. It could be far before, could be you of a year ago. Doesn't matter. You can pick the age, but what, what advice? If you had to give advice to your younger self or someone just like you? Cause a lot of people like me are like, I, I don't want to step on the butterfly. Cause I'm pretty happy with where I am. So I wouldn't give any advice. But if, if you had to give some advice to either a younger version of yourself or just someone who's similarly built?

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Advice to my younger self is going to be, you know, relax, man. It's going to be all right. It's gonna fucking be all right. You know, it's, it's this crazy thing where like in hindsight, we can always look backwards and say, man, I'm grateful for all that shit. Like I'm grateful for all my failures, but with foresight, we look at everything that's coming ahead with terror.

• 1:19:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  This next thing is going to be, oh, that's going to be the one that knocks me out. Oh, that next illness is going to be the one that kills me. Oh, that next failure, that's going to be devastating. But always in hindsight, we're grateful. So what if we switched our hindsight into foresight and was like, oh, whatever happens, I'll just be grateful for it later anyways. And then all of a sudden we're really enjoying ourself, you know? And I, I was terrible at that. The first few years I started on it, I was petrified that it was going to fail. Cause I was so attached to its success. I'm finally doing it. I'm finally doing it. It's going to fail. I know it's going to fail. It's going to fail. I'm going to ruin it, you know? And I didn't enjoy it and I didn't really enjoy those initial formative years like I could have. And, you know, so in almost every age and almost every era, it would be relax, man. Trust, like trust whatever happens, you'll figure out a way.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  You'll be better, stronger, faster, you know, wiser for it. So be grateful for it in advance.

• 1:20:07Tim Ferriss?

  Dig it.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  Dig it.

• 1:20:08Tim Ferriss?

  And where can people?

• 1:20:12Tim Ferriss?

  Say hi on the internet, learn more about what you're up to. Where would you like people to check you out, your projects and so on?

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think Instagram is probably my most active. I post to all the social platforms, but it's just @aubreymarcus on Instagram and I curate all those posts myself and it's a good wide variety of me doing weird stuff in the gym and me posting spiritual quotes and different ideas. And I actually look forward to those times where I get sideswiped by the universe because I always have some pearl I can come and I generally put that out on Instagram or a podcast. And of course, my podcast too, the Aubrey Marcus Podcast. That's a great place to listen to me have some cool conversations with people.

• 1:20:50Tim Ferriss?

  Perfect. And I will link to all of that in the show notes for folks as usual, tim.blog/podcast for all the links, resources, books and so on that we've discussed. Aubrey, good to hang, man.

• 1:21:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 1:21:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'll go under, over. There we go. We're still figuring out the setup here with the wires. That is my fault. I'll take all the blame slash credit.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  I should have gone under.

• 1:21:11Tim Ferriss?

  It's okay. Next time. Next time. A little, how's your father?

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  You know, there's, I had a friend who grew up in a cannibal tribe and that was the traditional, yeah, that was a tradition. He's a famous author, by the way. And that was the traditional greeting. They would grab each other's genitals and they would tell them, you know what they would tell them?

• 1:21:30Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  "I would eat your feces."

• 1:21:31Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  That was the greeting. Grab someone's genitals and say, "I would eat your feces."

• 1:21:35Tim Ferriss?

  I hear that's the new thing to do in Brooklyn.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  That's the hipster way to do it, guys. So feel free to take that.

• 1:21:40Tim Ferriss?

  By the way, .01% people who listen to this podcast and take everything literally, that's a joke. Please don't do that. You might get shot in the face.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  No, that's not allowed.

• 1:21:49Tim Ferriss?

  Aubrey, always fun to hang, man. Thanks for taking the time.

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  Thanks, brother.

• 1:21:53Tim Ferriss?

  And to everybody listening, as always, until next time. Thank you for listening. Be safe out there and don't forget, six breaths. Talk to you soon.

• 1:22:05Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:22:48Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out. And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by 99designs. Whether you need a logo, custom website, app, book cover, or anything else, 99designs was created to make great design accessible to everyone, that's you, and to make the process as easy as possible. I've used 99designs for years now. I've used them for book covers, some mockups for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller, illustrations of all different types for the multi-volume The Tao of Seneca,

• 1:23:33Tim Ferriss?

  which you can check out, and other graphic design projects for a long time now. And I've been very impressed by the quality of their designers and illustrators. And you don't have to take my word for it. You should check out some of my projects at 99designs.com/tim. I really encourage you to take a look because you will be impressed. 99designs.com/tim. 99designs has freelance experts in more than 90 design categories. And their platform lets you work directly with one designer that you choose, if you like their stuff, which is what I did for The Tao of Seneca. Or you can get concepts from multiple designers and then pick your favorite. So whether you're starting a business or just looking for extra design help, resources, etc., 99designs has a solution.

• 1:24:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right now, you guys, my listeners, can receive a free $99 upgrade on your first design. To check out your first free upgrade, please visit 99designs.com/tim and click the link on the landing page. You can also find there samples of projects from you guys, listeners, who have used 99designs for logos, apps, even product packaging. So check it out. 99designs.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. And I'd heard about Peloton over and over again, but I ended up getting a Peloton bike and the whole system after I saw my buddy, Kevin Rose. I've known him forever, some of you know. And he showed up at my gate

• 1:24:59Tim Ferriss?

  at my house a while back, and he looked fantastic. And I asked him, I said, "Dude, you look great. What the hell have you been up to?" Because he's always doing a weird diet or another, but it only lasts like a week or two. So he always regresses to the mean after like 75 beers. And he said, "I've been doing Peloton five days a week." Now, that caught my attention because Kevin does nothing five days a week. And you know I love you, Kevin. But it really piqued my curiosity, ended up getting a system, and it's become an integral part of my week. I love it, and I really didn't expect to love it at all, because I find cycling really boring, usually. But Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home. You don't have to worry

• 1:25:43Tim Ferriss?

  about fitting classes into your schedule, or making it to a studio with some type of commute, etc. New classes are added every day, and this includes options led by elite New York City instructors in your own living room. You can even livestream studio classes taught by the world's best instructors, or find your own favorite class on demand. And in fact, Kevin and I rarely do live classes, and you can compete with your friends, which is also fun. Kevin, I'm coming after you. But we usually just use classes on demand. I really like Matt Wilpers and his high-intensity training sessions that are shorter, like 20 minutes. And I think Kevin's favorite is Alex, and everyone seems to have their favorite instructor, or you can select by music, duration, and so on.

• 1:26:27Tim Ferriss?

  Each Peloton bike includes a 22-inch HD touchscreen, performance-tracking metrics. I think that, along with the real-time leaderboard, are the main reasons that this caught my attention when cycling never had caught my attention before. It's really pretty stunning what they've done with the user interface to keep your attention. The belt drive is quiet, and it's smaller than you would expect, so it can fit in a living room or an office. I actually have it in a large closet, believe it or not, and it fits with no problem. So Peloton is offering all of you guys, listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show, a special offer, and it is actually special. Visit OnePeloton, that's O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N, onepeloton.com, and enter the code TIM,

• 1:27:12Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:27:57Tim Ferriss?

  and enter the code TIM at checkout to receive $100 off any accessories, including the shoes that you will want to get. Check it out, onepeloton.com, code TIM.