The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: E242: How I Built A $400 Million Company With Joe Rogan! (Incredible Story) Aubrey Marcus

With Joe Rogan as my partner, we sold out in 12 hours,

zero to 60 million.

How?

Step one, it was fucking wild.

Aubrey Marcus, the man who built and sold on it

with Joe Rogan.

One of the fastest growing human performance companies

in America.

My mother was a professional tennis player.

My father was a pioneer.

And that was the driving desire.

It's like, my parents were big.

I know I can be big.

And I was frustrated because nothing was happening.

There were so many failures.

And I really thought, like, I'm just never going to succeed.

But I think the key moment for me was that Joe Rogan said,

I can meet you 30 minutes for coffee.

I was starting a supplement company.

I went to Joe.

What supplement would you like the most?

I'm going to make the best one that's ever been made.

That was the pivotal moment that changed everything.

Alpha Brain, I really felt like I didn't want to do anything

without it.

We sold out of that product in 12 hours.

We could barely keep it in stock from $0 to $60 million.

We were an Inc. 500 fastest growing company

over the next four years.

I mean, I couldn't have designed a fantasy better.

But it comes with a cost, right?

In that moment, I realized, like,

I'm not going to fly into a fit of rage and hurt somebody.

You can see how much it still affects me.

What happened?

Aubrey, when I read through your story

and a lot of people's story, what I tend to see

is a series of almost dominoes that have fallen

to make the person who they are today that sign in front of me.

Can you take me to the first domino

that you think was significant in your life

that fell to make the man that I see

sit in front of me today that I've spent the last couple of days

learning and researching about?

I mean, the first domino is my mother giving birth to me,

of course, right?

Like, it starts from the drop.

It starts, and we can't ignore all of the things

that happen at birth that have nothing to do with us.

And I was super blessed.

My mother was a professional tennis player.

Went to the semifinals of Wimbledon,

lost to Billie Jean King.

Like, legit professional tennis player.

My father was a commodities trader,

and he was a pioneer in his field.

So he was actually kind of stretching what the market

and what the world understood about futures trading.

He's written up in a book called Market Wizards.

They split up really early, and so I got two more parents.

My stepmother was a naturopathic doctor

who worked with a lot of the NBA basketball teams

and the Lakers in the 80s, the Knicks in the 90s,

the Heat in the 2000s.

But from the naturopathic side,

not within the team aspect of it.

And then my stepfather was a SWAT team squad officer,

just big, badass, burly man.

And from all of those sources, I got models of greatness.

I got models of really testing yourself

to see what you're capable of.

And I think that's the foundation of what I was.

And then there's my grandmother

who inspired this craving desire for knowledge,

just to learn about the world.

And I think the key moment for me,

with all of that framework with my parents,

that craving for knowledge instilled by my grandmother,

if my grandmother's tattooed on my arm, actually.

And then I go and do my first psychedelic medicine journey

after high school when I'm 18 years old.

And I really feel like I wanna find the knowledge

and then be able to distribute that to the world

in an interesting way.

I wanted to build my own legacy, so to speak.

And in that first psychedelic medicine ceremony,

I felt my body disappear.

And I felt what I could only call consciousness

or maybe even use the word soul,

even though I wasn't religious at all.

So I didn't believe in souls,

but I felt something come online.

And that was kind of the genesis of me being where I am now

even though that doesn't have a lot to do

with all my business accomplishments and anything else.

It's this desire to be great

because it was modeled for me in the parents that I had,

this thirst and quest for knowledge.

That quest for knowledge turned inward

with the psychedelic medicine journey.

So I was looking inside, that's the field of psychonautics,

which is really the field that I'm the most passionate

about, psychonautics, the exploration of the inner aspects,

the inner cosmos of who we are.

And then offering what I learn out to the world.

And sometimes that comes out in the form of products

and practices and workout equipment

and supplements like with the company on it

that I started sometimes it's with a podcast

or a poem or a story.

And yeah, that's probably one way to look

at who is Aubrey Marcus.

If you were to draw a circle around all of those products,

the content, the podcast on it,

and your current mission today

through all of the work you're doing,

what is the mission there?

If I had asked you right now,

what is your mission in life?

What would it be?

If you were to ask me, I don't know, 15 years ago,

it would have been just to make a big impact.

I just want to be big.

I want to be big.

My parents were big.

I know I can be big.

I feel it in me.

I feel like there's something big

that's supposed to emerge, right?

And I was frustrated because nothing was happening.

And so I founded my company and I created on it.

And then things started to get big.

I started my podcast, things started to get big.

I wrote my book, things started to get bigger.

And that was the driving desire, right?

It was actually, and yes,

I wanted it to be for the good of all.

I've always felt very connected to everybody else

and recognize that you sitting across from me right here,

you're just me living a different life, right?

Like we're all part of the same source of life itself.

So I did always have this belief,

like I want to contribute to the greater good of all.

As one of my teachers,

Don Howard said para el bien de todos for the good of all.

So that was always there,

but it was a lot more about me.

It was a lot more about me being big, if I'm being honest.

And now, right now, some of that's removed.

It's like I've accomplished that thing

where it's like Aubrey has made his mark,

but that doesn't even matter anymore.

Now I look out at the whole world

and I say, all right, world,

what do you need and what do you need from Aubrey?

Like what can Aubrey do to help you the most?

Like I hear you, like I know that you're hurting

and I know that you're beautiful,

you're beautiful in every way.

And what can I do to actually serve the world

in the best way possible?

And that's the mission, man.

Do you have an answer to that?

I do, to the best of my knowledge now,

it's a working plan, a working hypothesis.

And obviously one, it starts with the self,

you know, you have to start with yourself.

So we need to recognize how unbelievably powerful we are,

how our thoughts can actually impact our reality.

Now we know this with thousands of placebo studies

showing that the mind can influence

what happens in the body depending on what it thinks.

But we kind of discard that,

but like what Joe Dispenza is talking about,

like why not use that?

Why not actually understand that our beliefs

can create our reality?

Why not take the position of sovereignty

and use some of the stoic philosophy and say,

well, I don't know if everything happens for a reason,

but I'm gonna make sure it happened for a reason

because I'm gonna learn from anything that happened,

any challenge, any trial, anything,

any way in which I may have been a victim,

I'm gonna use that as something to bring out something

even greater within myself, right?

No matter which way I've acted out, you know,

maybe there's things that you need to apologize for,

maybe there's things you regret, that's fine,

but that doesn't mean that you aren't worthy of love.

And your love shouldn't be conditional

on how successful you are,

how beautiful you are, any of that.

So when you bring in that self-love,

you understand the power of belief

and you really start to,

and then you shift the mindset out of victim consciousness

into I'm a sovereign being,

and yes, there's some gnarly shit that happens,

but I'm gonna use that gnarly shit

as the diamond grindstone for the sword of my soul,

and it's gonna make me stronger

and it's gonna make me sharper.

So step one starts with the self.

And step two?

Let's go.

Step two, community.

I think that we all, you know,

have a deep invitation to reimagine

what community looks like.

Everybody right now is living individual lives,

getting individual amounts of resources,

and then holding on to those tight,

and everything gets really awkward when you go,

you loan a friend some money or you loan this,

and then they have to go out and do their own job

and make their own little bit of money.

But we've lost this sense that we used to have of tribe,

where the whole tribe, you know,

which was typically somewhere under 150 people

according to Dunbar's number.

And I think that's kind of accurate.

You have your people, your tribe, your community

that you're really working together with.

And I think one of the things that really needs to happen

for both our mental health

and also for the organization is

we gotta get back in touch with community

and make it more of a we thing.

So if I happen to be quite good at making money,

and my sister over here is really good

at singing medicine songs inside the deep, hot black

of a sweat lodge, well,

she could charge a bunch of money for that,

but that's not right.

You want everybody to be able to get the medicine

of an Anipi or a Temescal.

So instead of her having to go out

and then get another job doing some other gig,

and then make her own money,

what if I just shared my money with my sister

and understood that she was offering medicine

to the tribe in a different way?

I was offering the medicine of money in a different way.

And so we get this more holistic group kind of consciousness

where not only, and this is just talking about resources,

resources is only one level.

So resources start to be shared,

mission starts to be shared.

We start to understand what we're doing,

healing together in a group,

mirroring things for each other.

So this feeling that we're all in this together,

I think that's the second step out of,

and there's four, four steps.

What's step three?

Well, step three moves from worrying about just your tribe

to worrying about all mankind.

Like it opens the field up a lot bigger.

And when you talk about that,

you have to start talking about how can we actually use

our voices, use our influence, use our ideas,

these are stories, stories are really powerful

to actually reshape the narrative

of what culture is right now and tell a different story.

Tell a story that isn't me versus you.

It's me and me, and what are we actually trying to do?

You know, like there's a whole different type of story

that can be told, and it's not what the media,

it's not the story the media likes

because of course when you're afraid

and when you're in this agitated state,

you're gonna get glued to the news,

and I think people need to understand

that there's a lot of money driving a lot of decisions

that are very manipulative to try and keep you in a place

where you're disconnected, disempowered, divided,

and so there needs to be another story

that gets us connected together, unafraid.

We gotta really deal with this collective fear,

this fear that's just whipped around the world

and deal with this collective fear,

and then say, all right, we are one people,

we are one people, and these one people

need to come together for the future of our planet.

Like we have to, and I think there's a lot of fear

about the top-down dystopian control version of that,

where it's like some banker or some elite group of people

somewhere saying, I know what's best for everybody

and I'll just lie to everyone, I'll control them all,

and we'll figure it out, that's not the way.

Everybody, it has to come from the ground up

where people are really communicating with each other,

people are really understanding what's going on

on a larger scale, and what are the things

that you can do to really make a difference?

And to me, I mean, one of the things is just

live a new story, so start living the new story of the self,

live the new story of the community,

and live a new story of your relationship to all humankind.

And by living that new story, that story becomes more real,

and it becomes attractive to people

not living that story.

So instead of trying to attack people

from the other paradigm, just make your story so vibrant,

so full of love, so full of laughter,

so full of erotic charge that everybody is like,

I wanna be in that story, like write me into that,

write me into that movie, that movie looks great,

like I'm done with this shit,

and to do that together, I think,

is the next kind of most important mission.

And step four.

Step four goes all the way to your relationship to God

and the cosmos.

Now, God is a difficult word because there's a lot

of different ways that people have used God

in oftentimes violent ways.

That's not the God I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the all that is, the source,

the infinity of intimacy and love

as one of my teachers, Rabbi Mark Gaffney,

would say, like the infinity of intimacy,

love, eros, life, capital L, life itself.

Right, so getting that relationship with that

and understanding that it matters,

it matters for the trajectory of our own soul's existence

from this life to every other life.

I think one important thing to think about

is that our lives must include our death

in our life story because our life story

is just one part of a larger cosmic story.

And so it's seeing it from this real cosmic perspective,

like what is possible that the earth can contribute

to the understanding of all that is?

What is possible that we can create,

that uniquely as an individual and as a tribe

and as a people and as a planet,

what's the unique gifts that we can offer the cosmos?

So it's just realigning that relationship,

what you might call the superstructure,

which is the ideas, the religions,

the articles of faith that people have

and really kind of clarifying those

so that people can feel the truth of them.

It's not, believe this because I said so and you're wrong.

It's like, feel this energy.

You may call it this name.

I may call it this name,

but let's see if we can feel the same thing together

and know that it's true and then actually abide

in kind of a cosmic understanding.

You've been on an incredible journey to get to

these sort of four core tenants of your mission today.

I wanna jump back into that story because I think it's,

as I said at the start,

there's a series of dominos that have had to fall

for you to get to this perspective today

and going right back to something you said earlier,

your parents breaking up at two years old.

Was that significant for you in hindsight?

If you look back as an adult,

is that a significant moment?

The ramifications of that were incredibly significant

because it brought in my stepmother, my stepfather

into the constellation of my family.

So there could be very few things

that were more significant than that

because I had four models of parent rather than two.

And with four,

I was able to get a much more well-rounded approach.

Like the difference between my father

and my stepfather were immense.

What were those differences?

Well, my father was an incredibly acute

and attuned intellectual philosopher, a thinker.

He was able to actually analyze a logician.

He was able to analyze the world

in this very kind of philosophical way

and it helped shape my mind in that way.

My stepfather brought that bear energy

of what it is to be a man, the physicality.

He was always the best to play with as a kid too

because of course you wanna play with the bear.

They know how to roll around and laugh and tell stories

and you sit on their shoulders and you go climbing around.

And it's not that either

both parent didn't have a little bit of that

but they were very different archetypes.

And so my understanding about what it means to be a man

included so many different things.

It included the eloquence of being able to write poetry

and solve problems and play scrabble and play chess.

And it involved also brute force wrestling and playing

and telling stories and standing as a hero

against that which didn't serve.

And so with two models of father,

I got to actually have a much more well-rounded kind of idea

of what it meant to be a man.

Was there lessons that you had to unlearn from that?

Of course, yeah, I mean,

you don't learn just the positive aspects of your parents,

you learn the negative aspects of your parents too.

Those are learned in ways that your mind

can't even comprehend.

So things that my dad was stressed about,

I find myself being stressed about

because it transmitted this kind of general sense

of worry about things.

So I've had to unlearn those aspects of worry.

My father also, you know,

was want to fly into fits of rage at a certain point.

I remember one time,

this is a very important story in my own trajectory.

Because my father, when he would get angry,

he would start, he would just yell, you know,

just like he would just erupt.

And it was early and early after I started on it,

and it was probably 2013, 2014,

and we had a smaller office then,

not the smallest office,

it was the second biggest office that we had.

And I had my own office and I was in there

and I was filming a video

and it was an important video for me to film.

And we had a kind of front desk customer service person

also in the office who was handling emails,

customer service things,

and also handling anybody coming in the door.

Something came up where she started knocking on the door.

Well, I didn't know it was her that was knocking on the door.

I didn't really know who was knocking on the door.

I was just trying to film a video.

And back then we didn't have a bunch of video editors.

So it wasn't like we weren't able to just stop.

I had to kind of hit it in one take.

You know, we didn't have the tech resources then.

So I'm like five minutes into this take,

I'm killing it and the knock comes.

And then a second knock and then a third knock.

And finally by the third knock,

I couldn't ignore it anymore.

I was throwing me off a mental track

and I just started yelling like, what?

What is it?

What the fuck do you want?

You know, like one of those moments

where I just got really angry.

And then I hear like, I'm sorry.

And I was like, oh man, that was our front desk girl.

It was just a sweetheart, like absolute sweetheart.

Like the sweetest.

And, and I like take a deep breath

and I like open the door and I walk out there

and she's crying in her desk.

In that moment, I realized like,

I'm not gonna do that ever again.

Like I'm not gonna do that shit.

I'm not gonna fly into a fit of rage and hurt somebody.

You know, I like, I won't.

And you can see how much it still affects me, you know,

because that was the point that that pattern broke for me.

And it's not that I haven't gotten mad

since then or whatever, but never like that.

You know, and there's something else in me.

It's like, no, never again, because I saw her

and I saw what I did.

And of course I apologize and,

but that's where I stopped that lineage transmission

and said, it stops with me.

Where did that linear transmission start in your father?

Did you ever figure that out?

Yeah, with this father, you know, I mean,

I don't know how far it went back.

I mean, I don't have a strong genealogical tree.

I didn't even get to meet either of my grandfathers actually,

but I've heard the stories, you know,

I heard the stories of that.

My dad did the best to kind of shed

as much of the trauma that he could shed.

So he would pass on as little as possible to me.

And he did his best and he was actually the one

that encouraged me to go on my own psychedelic medicine journey

because that was one of the tools that he used

to try and actually change who he is.

So that he could be better for me and be better for the world.

And he did a great job, you know,

compared to the stories of my grandfather to him,

he did an amazing job and it was my job to clean up the rest.

And that's what I'm in the process of doing

is cleaning up the rest so that when I have my son,

Huxley is gonna be his name, you know,

of course, Source willing that we have a child.

I don't wanna pass any of that on.

I just wanna pass the legacy, a new fresh, fresh legacy,

like fresh powder on a mountain, you know, like fresh tracks,

a legacy of love, a legacy of support,

a legacy of like, I'm here son.

And also you're so much more powerful than you think you are.

And let me show you and bring him through

all of the initiations, the sweat lodges,

the cold mountains, like I've climbed with Wim Hof,

when he's old enough, the medicine journeys,

bring him through this path of initiation,

but the whole way, just love, love, love, the whole way,

where that never wavers.

So he's not trying to prove something to me

so that he can get me to love him.

He knows that I love him.

Are you speaking about a younger version of yourself

and your father when you say about that approval?

That approval?

Of course, of course.

Have you got an example of when you realized

that you were following that pattern?

I mean, the examples most of my whole life, right?

Like, am I doing it right?

Am I doing it right, dad?

You know, am I doing it good enough, dad?

Is it was the subconscious dialogue

that I've been in for a long time.

Now, it was my father first, you know,

so my father was dad.

So Michael Marcus represented that image of dad,

but it would transfer to other people.

It could transfer to a mentor.

It could transfer to a partner.

It could transfer to a boss.

And I would put this kind of approval-seeking desire on them.

They would be the surrogate father,

and I would be trying to show them how good I am.

And then they would love me.

Just like when I scored 25 points in a basketball game,

my dad was all fucking love and happy.

And when I scored, you know, seven points

and had a bad shooting night,

it's not that he didn't love me,

but it felt like he didn't love me

because he was just quiet and sullen.

And I was quiet and sullen,

and all of the love felt like it'd been sucked out of the room,

like a vacuum, right?

So I learned, and that's just one example

of many different ways that I learned

that if you perform well, you're loved,

and if you don't, you're not loved.

What's this ping-pong story?

Yeah.

Well, that was just one of the moments

that my father just flew into rage, you know?

So I was four years old,

and my father was playing ping-pong,

and he missed hit a ball,

hit off the corner of the paddle,

flew up into the stratosphere, basically,

because he was trying to hit a smash,

and I go, home run, I'm just a kid.

And I was like, I thought that was a funny thing to say,

but for my father, he was so locked

in this intense competition,

which of course didn't matter.

He's not like in the ping-pong world championships.

He was in his house,

and later he started yelling at me

from like, for saying that during his ping-pong match,

because it threw him off his game or whatever it was.

So moments like that really made me kind of aware

to the point of being scared about what I was saying.

And so it gave me, and as I said before,

like one of the stoic mindsets is everything

that happens to you happens for you.

Why did it happen for you?

I look at that story now and say, okay,

at that moment, I realized that I have to be very mindful

of everything I say when I say it,

because there's drastic consequences.

If I don't, what does that make me do?

It makes me a very good listener.

It makes me a very good communicator.

It allows me to understand how my words could be perceived.

What a gift.

That's my superpower.

Thanks, dad.

But it comes with a cost, still superpowers, right?

Of course.

And the cost was, and sometimes still is,

less now, I have to be honest

and not claim a false humility,

but sometimes still is.

But the cost is like, you're not present.

You're not really present if you're thinking all the time

about every different way

that what you say could be perceived by somebody else.

And you're going through these hypothetical scenarios

in your brain about the hypothetical conversations

about if they took that the wrong way,

how you would respond and what you would explain.

It's mentally exhausting and anxious.

And I live so much of my life

playing out a million different scenarios

about every single thing that I said

and how that could be interpreted.

And as I said, I'm mostly free of that,

but every once in a while, for a text that matters,

I'll look at it and I'll see nine different ways

that that thing could be interpreted the wrong way.

And then I have to manually, like with manual override

of my own consciousness, be like, it's all good.

They know you, they love you.

They're not gonna take any of these different interpretations

and then abandon you or get mad at you

or anything like that.

This process you described starts,

according to all of the therapists

and child trauma experts I've spoken to

with something called awareness.

And that kind of allows you to take on the challenge,

but there's a lot of people that are living unaware

of the puppet master in the back room

that's pulling the strings.

What has made you aware?

I mean, everybody has their own path.

And so I don't want to sound like my path

is my recommendation, my prescription for everybody.

But for me, it's been the psychedelic medicine path.

And psychedelic medicine doesn't have to involve

taking anything.

I think you mentioned that your partner

is a breathwork practitioner.

Breathwork at the highest level is as psychedelic

as anything.

It's incredibly cathartic and magical and visionary even.

I mean, you're actually, there's been some studies

showing that actually in that deep breathing process,

you're producing endogenous levels of DMT, DMT,

which is called the spirit molecule,

which is also the active psychedelic compound in ayahuasca.

It's happening when you breathe.

So there's a lot of different psychotic technologies

that can get you there from sensory deprivation tanks

to sweat lodges to lots of things.

But I have done many and not most

of the plant medicines in the world most

and really experienced a lot of the great lineages

that have had that wisdom and then also started to look

to see how those lineages can evolve,

how we can use this unique time

where we have access to many different medicines

and access to many different ways of thinking

and psychological technologies

like internal family systems, for example,

which has been paired with psychedelic medicine therapy.

So using all of this and create a new emergent lineage

about how to hold these medicines in a way

that is accretive and actually supportive to our life.

Because for me, that's been the process.

Again, psychonautics, the ability to look inside

and see everything.

As Rumi said, we're not a drop in the ocean,

we're the ocean in a drop.

So if you wanna understand anything about the cosmos,

you can look out at the cosmos

or you can look inside into your inner cosmos with a K.

And that's the way the Greeks spelled it

and say like, okay, what's really on the inside?

What's really on the inside?

And the medicines have helped me do that.

Your first experience with plant medicines

was when you were 18 years old, is that correct?

Yeah, that's right.

You went on a, you call it like a vision.

Is it like a vision mission?

I can't remember the word you used after high school.

Yeah, that was it.

A vision mission.

Yeah, I mean, it's a vision quest,

but there's definitely many traditional ways

to do a vision quest, which involve fasting for four days

with no food, no water.

And that's more of the Lakota style of a vision quest

or the North American First Nations kind of style.

This was more of a medicine vision quest,

which is a little bit different in that

I'm still going on a journey for a vision

and going to a place, but the medicine was actually there

instead of the fasting and the stillness and the silence.

And it's not to say that the medicine is better or worse.

It certainly worked out really well for me,

but that was the pivotal moment that changed everything.

I actually had a vision of who I actually was.

So that first step of four in my mission was illuminated

where I started to understand the kind of limitlessness

and the undying source of who I actually really am.

I read that in your story,

but then the next sort of 10 years of your life

didn't seem to manifest what I would have assumed

a plant medicine journey would have manifested

in the sense that you described that from 20 onwards,

you were still relatively sort of lost

in seeking approval and partying a lot, drinking a lot.

So there's a, it was interesting

because I had connected to my soul that was all that is,

but myself, the Aubrey still wanted approval,

still wanted to be loved,

still wanted to make his mark, still wanted to be big.

So I was advancing rapidly in the internal kind of dynamics

of understanding who I was,

but externally I was not meeting that criteria

and I couldn't see beyond a reason.

There was not a point where I thought,

well, maybe I don't need this actually.

And actually even now, even after all this work,

it's like, I appreciate that I wanted to really go for it.

I was audacious and I wanted to have a big company

and I wanted to make a big mark.

I wanted to have resources

because resources are now opening up the possibility

for me to really tell different stories,

bring communities together, do the things

that I really want to do.

So I wouldn't have changed it,

but there was a focus on me,

from a kind of egoic identity construct perspective,

being successful.

And that was like the guiding principle

and I was failing at it really.

Like I was failing at it.

I had a marketing company and I kept getting fired

by my different clients and even if I did a good job

and I would start things, it's funny actually.

I smashed my, for those looking,

I smashed my finger and it was all purple.

So I painted it with my wife's nail polish, which is gray.

So I have one painted nail,

but it's a funny example

because that was one of my failed businesses.

I was gonna start a men's nail polish line

because I saw like Chuck Liddell and my friend Roger Werter,

they were painting their nails.

I was like, yeah, men can paint their nails.

And I started that, it bombed.

There was so many failures and I really thought like,

I'm just never gonna succeed.

I mean, I made a decent living.

I always found a client or always found somebody

that I could get a paycheck from,

but it wasn't happening until it did.

Until it did.

Until it did.

When you think about that moment

and the factors that aligned to make it happen

until it did, what were those factors that aligned?

Or what was it fate?

Was it luck?

Was it something that changed within you?

Was it being more aligned with your own sort of

authentic self?

All of the above, looking back,

I wasn't ready to hold the bigness yet.

I had to kind of like,

sometimes if you have a young stallion

and they're bucking around in their heart,

you gotta run them a little bit.

You gotta run the stallion.

I had to run a little bit.

And my partner at the time, Caitlyn, we were running.

We were partying a lot.

We were out.

I was standing on the speakers and growling.

I was training MMA with the homies.

I was running.

I was running.

And I think I needed to do that.

And at the same time, I was also exploring.

Exploring in that path is like a non-building experience.

And I had this feeling.

I just had this feeling when I watched Joe Rogan do comedy

and we're talking 2008.

This is not the Joe Rogan of now, right?

Way different thing.

He was the fear factor guy, the UFC commentator,

but the UFC wasn't what it is now, not even close.

But I saw him and I was like, I'm that guy's friend.

I know it.

Like I know we're friends.

And I would meet him after a show

or I'd run into him at a club and I'd be like,

hey man, but nothing would ever stick.

Of course, because I was a fan and he was the guy

and it's very difficult to bridge that gap

in that kind of social construct.

So he started a podcast and I was following when it was like,

oh wow, and that was old Joe Rogan days

back with Brian Redband.

And there was no podcast advertising then.

Again, podcast was in its infancy.

He had no podcast advertisers.

So I had one of my clients and I was like,

look, we should advertise on Joe Rogan's podcast.

We got to do this.

And for those of you who know,

it was the client was fleshlight,

which is a whole other story.

But I was like, Joe, we want to advertise in your podcast.

And he was like, okay, cool.

And it's like, it's fleshlight.

And then his manager team was like,

what the fuck are you doing, Joe?

You can't advertise fleshlight.

He's like, damn right I can't.

I don't want anybody to take me so seriously

that I can't advertise for this thing.

And so-

Which is a sex toy for anybody that doesn't-

Yeah, it's a sex toy for men.

But what I stipulated in that was like, all right,

yeah, we're totally down.

We'll be your podcast sponsor.

I just want to meet you for 30 minutes for coffee

and then we'll close the deal.

And that was really honestly the play.

It was a strategy.

Now I was tested.

I was tested in that moment because at that point

I was friends with Bodie Miller,

who was the best skier in the world, arguably.

At that point he'd won multiple world championships.

He hadn't won the gold medal yet,

which he eventually won in Vancouver,

but he was the best skier in the world.

And he was going to the Kentucky Derby.

And Bodie going to the Kentucky Derby is a big deal.

He gets to go with all of the, you know, the big dogs.

And it's a huge party.

And Bodie was, at that point, my best friend.

And the Kentucky Derby happened to be exactly at the time

where Joe Rogan said, I can meet you 30 minutes for coffee.

So I had a choice.

I could either say, yeah, I fucked the coffee.

We'll just advertise.

And I'll go to the Derby,

which old me would have been like Derby, Derby, let's go.

Let's party, you know, the stallion that wanted to run.

But there was some knowledge inside me that, no,

this coffee with Joe Rogan is important.

And I'm going to skip the whole Derby party.

And I'm going to just meet this man for coffee.

And I met him for coffee and the coffee turned into dinner.

And then that dinner turned into a friendship.

And that turned into him having me on his podcast.

And then a friendship developed.

And out of that friendship developed really,

I was starting a supplement company, developed on it,

as we know it now, Joe Rogan as my partner.

And then the combination of, again,

going back to my parents, my stepmother had a deep knowledge

of nutraceuticals that actually could functionally

impact performance.

She worked with basketball teams.

So she had athletic performance supplements,

cognitive performance supplements.

And I was used to that concept.

So with her help and with all of the scientific research

I could put together a formula.

I knew how to market because I'd marketed things.

And then Joe Rogan was my partner.

And so we had a way to get that out.

We had a way to let people know.

So I raised $110,000.

I got $50,000 from a kind of family friend

that I'd worked with and with different clients

and done some public relations work with.

And I had Bodhi, my friend, who so one gave $50,000,

the other gave $60,000, and that was the start of on it.

Is that money right there?

And I basically blew through and wasted all of that.

And then I went to Joe and I said, hey, man,

like what supplement would you like the most?

He's like, ah, man, I'd like an all natural new tropic

that really worked, a new tropic being a cognitive answer.

And I was like, you know what, Joe,

I'm gonna make the best one that's ever been made.

He's like, all right, man.

And I went to work and I did it.

And I formulated with all of that help

the supplement that was AlphaBrain.

And with AlphaBrain, then sent it to Joe

and Joe was like, man, this is amazing.

It was actually way too strong at that point.

It was like, it was like, it was gnarly,

but Joe's a beast, you know, he's like, he's a savage.

So at that moment, then we kind of knew we had something.

So I dialed down the formula, got it right.

And when all of that came together

and we launched AlphaBrain, it just clicked.

We sold out of that product in 12 hours.

We had the next batch going.

And the only reason I had the money

to even buy the first batch was because there was

net 30 credit terms on my purchase order.

So actually we could receive the product

and not have to pay for 30 days.

So I didn't even have the money to pay in 30 days

unless I sold it, right?

But we sold it in 12 hours.

And then there was another order on the back of that.

So I was actually sold through two orders

before I even had to pay the first purchase order.

So we grew on it from literally nothing at that point

other than the resources that we'd applied

to having a website and having a shopping cart, et cetera.

And that was it.

It was a rocket ship from there.

And also, you know, being on Joe Rogan's podcast,

people started to be aware of my ideas and my philosophies

and these other things that I'd been developing

over all of these years in between all of the partying

that I was doing and all of the other stuff.

And at that moment, I started to have a stage

and a platform and started to build a kingdom.

When you say it grew like a rocket ship

to close off that story, can you quantify that in some way

for people that are listening?

From that first launch moment to where it ended up

getting acquired by Unilever, I believe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When you say rocket ship, what do you mean?

So 2010 on it was founded by me

and with the investment from those two individuals

that I mentioned, Bodhi and Howard.

And we sold a little bit, but we had a lot of inventory.

We couldn't sell it and we were failing.

It was another failed business,

just like my men's nail polish company

was going down into the dirt.

And then at that moment with the AlphaBrain product,

we put that on sale and then from there,

we could barely keep it in stock.

We were just selling through as much as we could have.

And then we developed other supplements that went.

And we went from, I mean, we were an Inc. 500

fastest growing company over the next four years

because we actually went from zero to,

I don't know what the first year was.

I don't have all the numbers,

but imagine like 12 million, 24 million,

34, 35 million, 45 million.

Then we kind of leveled out around 60 million

in annual revenue for a while.

And then we had some real trials and tribulations

and a lot of deep tests at that point

to get us to the level where eventually in 2021,

we were able to sell the company to Unilever

and have a huge exit, which has now given me

an amazing blessing of abundance of resources.

And one of the coolest parts about that is

so many people in my life,

talking about community again,

so many people in my life got little pieces of the company,

like my friend, McCod Brooks,

who's now an actor on Law & Order.

He was an actor in True Blood back then.

I was like, yeah, man, you can have 10,000 shares.

Come on, just talk about this.

I was giving out equity like candy.

I was like, I love you, man, here's some shares.

And then all of a sudden, all of those shares

turned into huge amounts of wealth for so many people.

And that was such a beautiful thing,

not only for me, not only for Joe, but for everybody.

That was everybody that was around me

that I was giving a little piece of this equity to

for on it, to build that energy.

Everybody, everybody won.

It was like being on this gigantic 100-person craps table

of everybody you love and everybody wins

and the casino just empties out the bank

and we all go home and we're like, wow, we did it.

And in the meantime, we made great products.

We inspired people.

We got people to, our concept was total human optimization.

We got people to actually get back in touch with

this idea that you can be a little bit better tomorrow

than you are today.

And so every step of the way, it was something beautiful.

And then the payoff was beautiful.

It's just an absolute dream, man.

And doesn't mean that I didn't live my own little nightmares

of fear and anxiety and worry and stress

and mistakes all through the process,

but looking back now, holy shit, what an unbelievable,

I mean, I couldn't have designed a fantasy better.

There's gonna be people listening to this who are,

the version of you at the start of that roller coaster.

Yeah.

What would you say to those people?

Cause I mean, a lot of our listenership

are exactly that person.

They have an idea that they're pursuing a dream.

They may be for the wrong or the right reasons.

I mean, who am I to define what either of those are,

but what would you say to them in order to prepare them

for that roller coaster?

You have to see it.

You have to see, really see it.

Like see it with clear eyes,

not with the deluded eyes of hope

and not with the shrouded eyes of fear,

but really see what's possible.

I think people always ask me the question,

like, can you believe what happened with on it?

And I was like, of course I can believe

what happened with on it.

If I didn't believe that it could happen,

it wouldn't have happened.

You know, it's the funniest thing.

Can you believe it?

I was like, yeah, I can believe it.

Of course I can believe it.

If I didn't believe it, it wouldn't have happened.

So the first most important step is you really have to see it

and you have to see it realistically.

And to see it realistically,

you have to look at how difficult it is out there.

You know, I mean, I meet so many people like,

yeah, I'm gonna start this clothing brand.

I'm like, and I've been, you know,

done a few things with different clothes

and that's a hard business.

It's a hard, it's a grind.

That's difficult, but you can do it,

but you have to see it

and you have to see the field correctly.

You have to see the competition.

You have to see how challenging the market is

and actually see how you're going to elevate above that.

And when you can really see it,

then you can make it happen,

but it depends on how accurate your site is.

So you have to see accurately, have the discretion.

And then once that's there, you have to go all in,

like push all your chips in.

When you see it, push all your chips in, focus,

and turn all of that energy into a single point

and push forward with everything you got.

Okay, so see it.

A few thoughts sprang to mind

when you said it talked about seeing it.

So the first one is what role does seeing it play?

Cause you talked about the adversity.

You kind of like glossed over the adversity of that journey.

And I think part of the reason I started this podcast

in the first place was because I think the adversity matters

just as much as the eventual achievement.

And obviously because of the way that the media works

and the way we tell our stories,

we focus a bit more on the achievement.

But what role does seeing it play

in being able to grace those hurdles

as and when they inevitably come?

Well, the first one is to see it

actually being successful, right?

And I saw, I could see that vision.

And even as it was happening, it was still,

there was still some part of me that was like,

wow, it's really actually coming true.

Cause I'd seen it before.

I saw the nail polish company successful too.

I just didn't see it accurately.

I didn't see the market.

I didn't see the idea that this was going to be

a very difficult thing to actually convince people was cool

and that people would be like,

why buy your nail polish when I just get any nail polish?

I didn't really see it right.

And with on it, I saw it right.

And I had the right people and with the right team.

So seeing it into success is important.

And then what you're going to encounter

is a lot of things that you didn't see.

And that's where the adversity comes.

I didn't see that coming.

I didn't see that coming.

We had a security breach and on it,

was one of the early days, 2013, 2014,

when that was happening to a lot of different companies.

I think I remember Target had a big one

and it was found out and then Target was like,

oh yeah, yeah, this happened.

And sorry about that.

People got access to credit cards.

That happened to us.

And there was a choice point

and it felt like everything was going to be ruined

because we got hacked.

Somebody got access to our customer data.

We didn't have the right firewalls

and all the right cybersecurity.

I mean, I thought we did, but we didn't obviously.

And there was a choice point.

Nobody else externally discovered it.

We discovered it internally.

We fixed it.

And we could have just kind of crossed our fingers

and hoped that nothing happened.

But I made a different choice.

And in that choice,

I just said, I got to tell everybody.

So I just sent out an email.

I was like, look, y'all, I'm so sorry.

Like this is on us.

We didn't have the right security.

We got hacked and your information was compromised

and we're so sorry.

And here's a discount code for any on it products

that you want and like our deepest apologies

for any inconveniences may have caused

if you have to cancel your card or whatever I understand.

And I just came out really authentically and honestly.

And that ended up being one of like these powerful moments

where instead of the whole customer base

turning against our company,

I mean, like these losers

can't even secure our credit cards or whatever.

They actually trusted our company and trusted me more

because of just how authentically I shared about that story.

So that's one version of adversity

that comes from those things that those monsters

that come from the grass that were slithering around

or hiding in the tall grass that you don't see.

And then all of a sudden you have to confront them

and it's gonna be about how you deal

with those things that you didn't see.

And are you guided by that?

Again, that superstructure that I talked about,

those principles of if you or me living a different life,

what would I want me to receive?

I would want honesty, just somebody to be honest

and be like, yeah, we fucked up and we're sorry.

And this is the best we can do.

And that was kind of the guiding principle

is I was bound by this value structure.

And the value structure was the kind of the guiding light

through all of it and it worked.

When you said about seeing it,

one of the things that came to mind as well

was when you can see the competitive landscape,

often that's incredibly intimidating.

There's entrepreneurs often talk about

how being a little bit delusional and naive

is actually a driving force.

And were they to know how difficult it actually was?

Like where entrepreneurs to have seen

your hardest, darkest days, they might not have bothered.

So my second question here is about seeing it is,

what would you say to an entrepreneur

that's starting a business maybe in the same field

as on it was that's looking out and thinking,

oh my God, but there's already loads of competitors

and Aubrey did this and Joe did that.

Like I've got this idea,

but there's so many competitors I just won't bother.

Cause I'm sure when you started,

there was a big competitive landscape.

Sure.

It gets more and more difficult all the time.

And it's about can you get the right pieces

of the puzzle together, the right product,

the right energy behind it, the right ethos,

the right experience,

something that's actually better than the field.

I mean, when you're talking about this landscape,

you're talking about one of the beauties

of this capitalist model is you're open

to radical competition.

And that's what drives the evolution.

So you have to know that you're a little bit better.

You're a little bit better than everybody else.

And if you're able to show that in all of the ways

that you're a little bit better,

you'll be able to make it through.

And yes, you're still gonna receive immense challenges.

Now there's gonna be times that security breach

was just one of many.

We had another moment where we made a huge mistake.

We thought we were getting an investment.

We distributed all of our cash.

We had zero money in the bank.

The investment didn't happen.

And then so we had all of these accounts payable,

no money in the bank.

And we called it cashpocalypse at that point.

Our CFO just looked at us, said we're bankrupt

in 30 days, I'm leaving.

What?

Walked out of the room, walked out of the room.

I was like, all right.

And then our COO who ended up becoming the CEO

when I stepped down in 2020, right before,

like a year before the sale, he guided us through.

And we made it.

And we made it because of the relationships

that we'd held with honesty and with good faith

with everybody.

We weren't playing games with anybody.

So they trusted us.

We were like, hey, we're in a really tight spot.

But if you trust us and you allow us to pay late,

you extend our terms from net 30, net to net 60 to net 90,

maybe net 120, we're gonna pay you in four months

for the products that you're delivering.

And they believed in us, they backed us.

And that was what got us through that moment.

So.

That's the CFO that walked out.

Yeah.

He made a big mistake in hindsight.

He made a big mistake.

He had also, he had an equity position.

He had options that he, you know, forfeited.

Whoops.

Whoops.

You know, our current CEO, our current CEO,

I mean, not current CEO, the CEO that emerged, Jason Havy.

He, he couldn't, he's such a sweet guy,

but he couldn't help but send on the anniversary of that day

where the CFO walked out and,

and just told us straight up that we were,

we were gonna be out of business for the next couple of years

on that anniversary, we'd be like,

hey, how's it going?

We're still here.

Just set up a tax.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

I mean, some people, that's, that's natural selection of life.

There's some people in the hardest times they bail, right?

Right.

Therefore, they aren't deserving of those kind of good,

good moments.

Exactly.

Per se.

You left in 2020.

Mm-hmm.

I don't see a huge desire from you,

from looking at what you're doing now

to get in, get back in bed in that same kind of industry,

doing the same kind of thing.

Is that accurate?

And if so, why?

The, my desire to be a CEO is not really there.

My desire to be this kind of visionary founder is there.

So you imagine someone like Richard Branson

and it's certain he's really not actually running

any of the companies that he's running, running, owning.

He's just kind of guiding them.

And I am very interested in continuing to guide

different projects and different brands,

but I want really competent operators

to really start to navigate.

Now, I may end up actually working with the CEO

that Jason Havy, who was with on it for 10 years,

he transitioned out, so he's now no longer there.

And so we make team back up,

get the Avengers back together

and put a few other brands back on the table.

And the reason for that is because they're great products,

again, that are doing really important things.

Like I want to do important things.

And the resources that will allow us to kind of accumulate

can then be applied to really great projects

that can benefit, again,

para el bien de todos, for the good of all.

So yeah, I mean, I'm still in the game,

but I'm just doing it at a different level.

I'm not going to be the guy who's pouring over the PNLs,

who's chasing down purchase orders,

but I am the guy who can go out and meet the key allies,

put the pieces of the puzzle together,

share the voice and the kind of idea

of why these products are important.

And so that's gonna be,

there's gonna be another kind of reload and birth

of a new kind of wave of things that'll come out.

And there's also, but there's so many other things.

Now, I'm going in many different directions.

Of course, there's the podcast,

there's the book that I'm working on

and other books that are planned after that.

There's media and documentaries that I'm making

and there's stories I want to tell

and there's a lot of different things that I'm doing,

but I'm just at a level and a purview

where I have a lot of competent operators

that are helping execute on all of these different visions.

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You know, I never really usually pick

the chocolate flavored heels.

My favorite are the banana flavor.

I love the salted caramel flavor.

But recently, I think I in part blame Jack in my team

who is obsessed with the chocolate flavor heels.

I've started drinking the chocolate flavor heels

for the first time and I absolutely love them.

My life means that I sometimes disregard my diet.

And it's funny, that's part of the reason

why I've had a lot of guests on this podcast recently

that talk about diet and health and those kinds of things.

Because I am trying to make an active effort

to be more healthy, to lose a little bit of weight as well,

but to be more healthy.

And the role that he'll plays in my life

is it means that in those moments

where sometimes I might reach for, you know, junk foods,

having an option that is nutritionally complete,

that is high in fiber, that is incredibly high in protein,

that has all the vitamins and minerals that my body needs,

within arms reach that I can consume on the go

is where he'll has been a game changer for me.

Love, let's talk about love then.

I often wonder, you know, we learn our models of love

and relationships very early and I've talked a lot about

how I learned my model of love,

the good and the bad, the ugly of it,

and how I was very much an avoidant

in terms of my attachment style,

I would run from everyone that had any interest in me.

I'd pursue someone and then when they showed interest in me,

I'd run.

And I was like mimicking some like deep model

that I learned that relationships mean you're in prison.

Basically the like, the narrative I'd learn

because my father, I was, I think,

subconsciously convinced he was in prison in his relationship.

So it took me a lot of awareness and unpacking

to like realize that to the point

where as I sit here today, I'm in a great relationship.

Obviously it has a lot of the same, you know,

natural imperfections as any relationship,

but one that I think is the most special thing

I've ever experienced in my life.

What's your journey been like with love?

You have a unique point to your story,

which you know I'm gonna talk about.

Yeah.

Because I know a lot of people ask you about it,

which is, I don't even know what the correct term is.

Polyamory.

Polyamory.

I always say polygamy.

I don't know why I say that.

Well, that would be multiple wives.

Okay. Polyamory is multiple loves.

So yeah, my journey with love was interesting

because, you know, again, I had my first major partnership

was with someone who's now my best friend

and also the best man quote of my wedding with my wife

is was my former fiance, Caitlin.

And we had a relationship where it was not polyamory,

it was not polyamory,

but however, we could bring other female lovers

into our equation, right?

Into our female lovers.

Right.

So other girls could, we could have sexual experiences

with other women.

And so that gave me kind of this release valve

to my desires because I simply, again,

I was bound by these kind of feelings of value

and this feeling of anybody who I'm with

is me living a different life.

So I can't cheat.

You know, there was one moment

where I did actually cheat one time in my life

and it was so miserable.

The feeling that I felt when I cheated on my partner,

like that one time I was like, I just cannot do this.

And I see, and again, no judgment, you know,

but I see so many successful and powerful men

who are unfaithful to their partners.

And to me, that's like going and skirting around the problem

and just creating a whole bunch more problems.

And it's also, it's actually legitimately unethical, right?

Like you're manipulating somebody.

You're lying to them.

You're not telling the truth.

And so after that one experience of feeling how just awful

I felt when I actually cheated on it was the story

I was in Moscow, blah, blah, blah,

it doesn't fucking matter.

Like fundamentally, I was like, this, I will not do this.

Like this cannot be the way.

And so in that relationship,

the ability for us to have other lovers that were female,

then it kind of satisfied that desire.

Although the problem was,

is that I was still always kind of searching for that.

And it was, it wasn't quite right at that point for me

at that stage of my young stallion life, right?

Wasn't quite right, but it was beautiful.

And we had a beautiful relationship and I love Caitlyn.

And I love that relationship so much.

But ultimately, I was, you know, that wasn't working out.

She didn't feel like she was going to be the queen

that was going to help me build my empire.

You know, she's a wild and magical woman,

but she wasn't kind of that warrior queen focused energy

that I was really looking for.

And then Whitney came along,

who is my next most significant partner.

And I saw that in her and I was like,

aha, I think this is the one that can be with me,

be by my side as I build on it

to what it's going to become.

And I step forward in the world.

She's got the, she's got the right stuff for that.

So we started a relationship just purely monogamous.

No other partner is nothing else.

That lasted about 18 months.

And I still felt this strong desire to be with other women

to experience the goddess in many different faces.

And I've never been any, been the type

that just wants to have sex with somebody

because that makes me feel good about myself.

No, I legitimately love women.

Like I love them.

I'm like, it's the greatest delight for me

to be with a woman, you know?

And so I had that natural desire.

I wasn't willing to be unfaithful and cheat.

So I went to Whitney and I said, hey, I have this idea.

What about, I still want to be with you,

but I think I need to be polyamorous.

And I know that for this to be fair,

that means that you get to see anybody you want to.

So if I get to do it, you get to do it.

Unlike, you know, in the former relationship

with Caitlyn, I would have been so jealous and be like,

no men ever, never under any circumstances.

I'm the lion, you know, like I had these old,

old other kind of constructs and ideas

thanks to, you know, it was really the book,

Sex at Dawn by, you know, by Chris Ryan

that actually opened my mind to this idea

that there is a different concept

that different tribes have utilized throughout history

where we didn't have this possessive kind of jealous idea

about what it means to have a partner,

that we were open to having, you know,

having your partner have multiple loves.

And I understood philosophically that our love is like the sun.

Like it's shining on all of these different places

and to have somebody be like, your sunlight,

your erotic sunlight can only shine on me.

I was like, this is absurd.

Doesn't make any sense to me.

So philosophically, it didn't make sense.

And I had my own desires.

So I said, all right, let's be polyamorous.

And I thought that I would be okay with Whitney

seeing other people.

I thought I was gonna,

I thought I was gonna breeze through

because I had a girlfriend first.

So Whitney, after a period of three months,

first she was like, you know, you're out of your mind.

Go fuck yourself, I'm out.

I was like, that sucks, but I understand your decision.

I'm not gonna change my decision.

It's the way forward.

A few months later, she came back.

She's like, all right, let's try this.

And I was already involved with somebody else.

So I had a girlfriend and then Whitney

was still my primary partner.

So that was the constellation.

Primary partner is Whitney.

She lived with me.

And then girlfriend, who I would go meet

at a different, meet at her house

or meet at a different place

and then have my own experiences with that partner.

And then when Whitney, you know,

and I really didn't have the understanding

of how hard this would be on the other side.

I thought like, yeah, it'll be easy.

Like I philosophically understood it.

Then Whitney got her first partner.

And I cannot describe to you the feeling

that I felt when Whitney had her first lover.

It was, it broke me.

It absolutely broke me.

Even though I had agreed to it,

even though I had acted on it on my end,

when she was with somebody else,

I felt like I was gonna vomit, cry.

I wanted to punch a wall.

I wanted to just, I couldn't, I couldn't even handle it.

And I also felt so ashamed

for the fact that I had no,

like very little compassion for her

having gone through this

because I hadn't gone through it yet.

And it was a really challenging kind of moment.

And of course, what did I do?

You know, whoever her partner was,

I tried to like be better than them

at whatever they were good at.

And at one point, you know,

Whitney was with a professional fighter

and I was like, I'll be a good fighter.

And I was like, how stupid.

Like she doesn't love me because I'm a fighter.

She loves me because I'm me.

And that was one of the really powerful lessons

that polyamory taught me is

you can't try to compete in somebody else's strength.

You just have to compete to be the best version of you.

And every time I would try to be like somebody else,

I would become less attractive in her eyes.

And that's, that was really a deep lesson.

But for eight years, we did the polyamory thing.

You know, we had our moments where we were off and on

and we'd have little breakups

and little issues that would come up.

But we both were free to see who we wanted to see

and be with whoever we wanted to be with

with the understanding that we were primary partners.

This had so many challenges and moments

where every different boundary that we thought we had,

well, all right, you can be with them

but you can't be in love with them.

Whoops, I fell in love with somebody.

And then whoops, Whitney fell in love with somebody.

And so that didn't work.

So we're like, okay, I guess we're able to really be

in love with somebody.

But then if you're in love with somebody,

then you want to spend, you know,

and that energy is so strong

at the technical term is limerence.

It's that new relationship energy

where you're just intoxicated with somebody.

Well, you want to be with them more.

And then the primary partnership doesn't make any sense

because the person can feel

that you'd rather be with somebody else.

And it was just, it was very, very challenging

and also very, very beautiful.

You know, the, the paramours that I had

and a paramour is the term

for the other partners you have

outside of your primary partner.

I had unbelievably beautiful relationships with them

and magical, amazing moments

and magical moments with Whitney.

You know, there was so much energy

and passion and drama in that, in that period.

But it was honest.

You know, the thing about it was,

is that it was honest.

We told each other everything,

you know, everything that happened.

We told each other the truth.

There was little pockets of withholding

where we didn't express exactly how we felt.

But every little minute dishonesty

would get exacerbated into a massive, massive issue

because there was so much pressure in the system

because of the natural emotions of jealousy

and, and you know, worrying about whether

our, my partner really loved me the most.

And, and that was a really beautiful

and deeply challenging experience.

And finally, you know, at the end,

I kind of, I kind of was like, I can do this,

but I didn't master it.

It was always, it was, it always got the best of me.

I was never really fully ever okay

with her seeing other people.

I was okay with me seeing other people and loving her,

but I could never quite do it.

I wasn't up to the task.

And that doesn't mean that somebody else can't be.

I just, I gave it my best and with all of my tools,

all of my consciousness, all of my love,

I couldn't do it.

And so with that knowledge, then, you know,

I met, of course I met Vilana and Vilana,

like, you know, immediately I'd been in love with her

for a little while and, and we could tell that story

if we liked, but I'd been through the polyamory journey.

So when I met Vilana, I was like, I'm not doing that again.

You know, I'm not doing that again.

Do you know anybody that's made that work?

Thank you.

For a time.

And the thing is, is I think it's a journey of growth

and it's a journey of transformation and evolution.

When things are stagnant or stuck,

it may be an opportunity to get things moving.

I think I would rather have the ups and downs,

the brisk wind, the floating into the,

into the twilight sunsets of just glorious,

beautiful experiences.

And then the card crashes into the rocky crags

where it's all blood and broken glass everywhere,

you know, metaphorically, of course.

I kind of, my poet's heart kind of likes that more

than just kind of steady board diminishment of life force.

There's no energy.

There's no charge there.

That never, that doesn't really appeal to me.

So polyamory is one of the ways

that you can really drive a lot of energy

and a lot of growth and a lot of introspection

and a lot of, a lot of evolution of your own character

through that process.

So has anybody made it work longterm?

It's rare.

And I don't think I have a good model for it

because I think part of the problem is,

is that the culture doesn't really support that yet.

And I don't think our consciousness has evolved

to a level where we can handle it.

We don't have models for it.

We have models of jealousy.

It's in all of our songs.

It's in all of our, it's everywhere.

It's like we're flying again.

We're going upstream against the cultural zeitgeist.

So if culture changes, if society changes,

I think that will become more possible.

It's of course, some people are doing it

and they're making it work.

I haven't seen it personally,

really work on like a longterm level.

But I think it's just because the culture

hasn't blossomed for that to really be possible.

I've often pondered if there's some kind of like

evolutionary Darwinistic reason why it doesn't work.

And it would make sense from a Darwinistic perspective

that I want my seed to pass on

and I want my genes to survive.

So if there's another man with my partner, for example,

then that's going to evolve me out of the gene pool.

So there's got to be some kind of, you know,

one would assume there's some kind of inbuilt in a mechanism,

cool jealousy to prevent that happening.

Yeah, and there's also the genetic impulse to actually,

I mean, again, we're having sex,

but the impulse is to reproduce, right?

That's where it's coming from.

So yes, there's somebody actually sleeping with your partner,

but you're sleeping with many other people too.

So you're still genetically, you know,

giving the opportunity to actually fertilize,

you know, many different people.

So there is genetic support,

I think from like an evolutionary biology perspective

to this concept, right?

But really to make it work,

we got to go back to that level two

that we talked about earlier, which is community,

which is tribe,

because if it's for the good of the tribe,

then it doesn't matter if it's your genetic DNA.

It's like, will this be the best situation for the tribe?

And if the tribe is in love, the tribe is thriving,

the tribe has energy, the tribe has that life force,

that then that's a creative to the overall mission,

but without that kind of tribe level understanding,

then perhaps even that humankind level understanding,

you can't actually, I don't think you can make it work.

I was reflecting as you were saying that about the tribe

on various cult documentaries I've watched,

where there's still jealousy, you know?

Even though they're a unit, they're one big family.

Of course.

You still see that jealousy throughout.

I think that jealousy is less like

about evolutionary biology and more about the ego.

The ego knows itself in relative position.

It's a construct that we create

to help navigate our life and our body and our soul.

And so it's this idea, it's a story about who we are.

And that story about who we are,

we only know how good we are compared to somebody else.

It's like, are you a good ping pong player?

Well, that depends.

Who am I playing?

You know, like if I'm out with my mates,

yeah, I'm a fucking good ping pong player.

If I'm going to a tournament, I'm the worst.

So you know yourself in relative position to the context.

And that's the problem.

In this kind of polyamorous dynamic,

there's always this thing of this person's getting loved more

or there's more attention here,

or you're comparing all of these different aspects

and attributes.

And so until you can actually observe

that ego identity construct from a witness perspective,

then you really can't escape the trappings

of comparing yourself and comparing your situation

to somebody else's situation.

Violana.

Oh yeah.

Violana?

Violana.

Your face lights up when you say her name.

Yeah.

Why is that?

What does she mean to you?

I didn't know that I could love somebody like this.

I didn't think it was really possible.

I thought it would be like a,

I thought there'd always be kind of like,

yeah, this is good enough, this will work.

You know, like we'll make this work

and we'll find the situation that'll make it work.

But with Violana, it's like, no, no,

like I love you so much.

I wouldn't change a thing about you, like,

and it's this crazy thing that sounds like,

it sounds unbelievable.

It doesn't sound like it's believable.

It doesn't even sound credible.

And I don't even know if it's reproducible.

I can't say that everybody out there, you got your Violana.

I wish I could go with a straight face and say like,

there's your Violana out there.

And for Violanas out there, there's your Aubrey out there.

And I know it.

I don't know.

I think maybe I'm really lucky.

I don't know.

But it's like, we met, you know, and I could feel it

and I could feel it and she couldn't see it for a long time

but I could always see it.

I didn't know, but I could see this possibility.

And when we got together,

I mean, I had bought the wedding ring

before we actually even had sex.

You know, I mean, if you follow the story closely,

there was a kind of experience at Burning Man, et cetera.

But really, but really though, like I just knew

I could feel it and I knew it.

And I knew she was my queen.

I just knew it and she is in every way.

She's the perfect compliment to me.

And it's not that, you know, the Jerry McGuire,

you complete me.

No, we're two complete beings of different skills,

attributes, polarities, energies,

emotionalities, sexualities, but we merge together.

And together we're just so much more

and life is so much more beautiful.

It's a dream, man.

It's a dream and there's no compromise.

There's no compromise at all.

And that's what all the, you know, you go to a wedding

and you know, all the old timers would be like,

yeah, you got to learn to compromise

and you're gonna have to pick your battles and blah, blah.

It's like, no, no, what about no?

What about no?

What about just, it's fucking incredible

and you're in it together.

And I think one of the reasons why we're able to be that

is cause we're willing to go into the deep together.

If there's something that we can't resolve,

then we have tools.

And again, the plant medicine journey,

like we'll go deep, we'll go, you know,

multiple times we've drank ayahuasca together

and big things that were brewing come to the surface

and erupt, you know, like a giant volcano.

And then we have to sort out all the magma

and all the pieces that'll come up,

but we'll keep going back in, going into the deep,

not looking away from everything.

And with that attitude, we're just cleaning,

cleaning the connection and the intimacy between us

all the time.

When you look back in hindsight,

cause I'm thinking for myself,

but I'm also thinking for the person

that's listening to this, timing plays a role.

And when I say timing, I actually mean the timing

of your growth journey, kind of crossing theirs.

Yeah.

So like, had you met Violana 10 years earlier?

Yeah.

One would assume maybe.

Yeah, no, it wouldn't have worked.

What was, when you reflect in hindsight,

what was the work that you kind of needed to do

to be ready to receive a Violana?

Well, the stallion had to run.

The stallion had to run, step one.

I needed to run.

I needed to be, I needed to experience myself

and have myself reflected in the hearts

of other people who I really loved.

And I think people think of the stallion running,

you think of just having a bunch of one night stands

and who fucking cares?

Well, like you really care that much

about that particular type of pleasure you get

in your genitals.

No, you're caring about it because it's your ego.

Cause somehow that makes you like collecting trophies.

That's all bullshit.

But what I really, what I needed was to see myself

reflected in other people and to know like,

what my impact could be on someone's heart

and what their impact could be on my heart.

You know, and that's why I have so much love

for all of my Paramores and for Whitney

for allowing that journey, particularly in that period.

You know, Stephanie and Savannah and Lorena,

all of the different people that I was with

and all of the other names that are not mentioned in that,

you're in there too, right?

Because there was moments that elicited some aspect of me,

some quality that came online, came alive.

And I was able to help something come alive in them.

It was so beautiful.

And I think that chapter of my life needed to happen.

It needed to happen.

So I could say, I've done this.

I've seen myself reflected in all

of these different partnerships.

And now I'm ready to devote that energy to you,

Phailana, because I've really,

I've felt what this is really like.

So that's I think step one of, you know,

a mini step journey.

Is there a piece of work as well around,

I guess that's maybe adjacent

or attached to what you've just said,

but learning how to control one's emotions.

You talked earlier on about anger and snapping.

And the thing in relationships is,

if you haven't got control of that,

the relationship's not gonna last.

Especially in, you know, I think of myself, you know,

the ego I had in my young years,

and I still have an ego now, of course,

I'm not gonna pretend I don't.

But I was the type of person that would just get up and go.

So if there was any conflict,

again, going back to what I said about my father,

feeling like he was in prison, I would be out of there.

And that was my response to conflict.

It was just, let's get up and go.

So was there a piece of work that had to be done

to learn how to become a master of like,

or to get better at conflict resolution

from an emotional standpoint?

The emotions will come like a wave.

And the Buddhists, they call that the moment of trigger

where you get hooked, they call it Shempa.

And then this desire to actually take that energy

and then, you know, flood it onto another person.

And it's very difficult,

it's very difficult to stop that from happening.

And so, but you can with awareness,

you can feel it coming,

and then you can start to develop your, you know,

the right, the processes and practices about what to do.

I have two really dear friends,

Christine Hasler and Stefano Safandos,

and they just led a workshop at our Fit for Service Summit.

And they talked about one of their conflict resolution

techniques, because he had that type of anger

that would come up and that would be,

and she would then withdraw and get small,

and they had this dynamic.

What they developed was he actually goes

into the plow stretch position,

where he puts his legs over his head

when he's in that angry state.

And they actually, once soon as he gets angry,

that's their agreement,

that he's gonna go into that position,

and if he's gonna yell at her,

he's gonna have to yell at her

from between his own legs through his own ass, basically.

You know?

So like, they developed this method

that they'd literally use.

And there's some of the most conscious people there,

you know, there, but they have a strategy,

they have a practice.

And so, Vilana and I have developed our own practices,

but I would say the most important thing

beyond the practices that you can do like that,

some of the practices we have is like,

there's, you know, we can say like a magic word

that'll be like, all right, when you say this word,

this level of conversation is like, is the pure level.

Like we can't, we can't fuck around anymore.

Like this word, now we enter a new parlay.

It's like the pirates when they're all shooting each other,

and they're like, parlay!

And then they go and they're like,

all right, let's talk this out a little bit.

Okay, so you're like stepping outside of it.

Right, so we'll have like, we'll have a construct,

we'll be like basically called parlay,

and then we'll be able to negotiate.

So we have some moves like that we can make,

we have for smaller things, we have this construct,

we call bedrock, where anytime we're in like,

the deepest state of love, we'll be like,

this is the bedrock, this is where we'll always return to,

this is the nature of our love.

And so either one of us can go bedrock,

and we go in, and no matter if we don't want to,

even if every part of us is fighting,

we go feel the truth of how much we love each other.

So those are some of mine,

and I don't go into plow position,

but those are some of our own strategies.

But the most important thing of all of the things

is full radical ownership of every aspect

in which you may have overstepped,

where you may have made an assumption,

where you may have made a projection

to really be completely honest

with your own culpability in the situation.

Because without that step,

there's going to be a kind of accumulating resentment.

And that accumulating resentment for that ownership,

which was not taken,

will then become the monster that eats love.

So, you know, Vailana and I,

we've had a couple of fights that lasted, you know,

a day, two days, because we weren't able

to get to the point of radical ownership.

We were still kind of pointing a finger

and not able to meet in the middle

of like actually owning, and it's not always the middle.

Sometimes it's 90, 10.

And sometimes you're like, I'm sticking at 10.

It's like, hold, you're like, you want to take more?

And you're like, no, hold, I'm holding at 10.

Like that's all I can take.

You got to come 90.

Otherwise like, this is an impasse.

And I will, I can't, I can't move forward

if there's fragments of that resentment that are there.

So we just keep talking, keep figuring it out

until we actually get to the truth.

And the beautiful part about that is

there's no fragments of resentment.

There's no marbles that are being added

to the marble mountain of resentment

that's going to ultimately destroy our love.

There's nothing there because we've taken ownership for it.

We've apologized for everything we need to apologize for.

And then we've evolved in our own understanding

and taken the onus and the sovereignty

and the responsibility to learn

and to be better the next time.

Have you heard of Professor John Gottman,

his study about couples?

And they found that in his study

of why couples end up in divorce.

It wasn't arguing or anything else.

It was a buildup of contempt,

which is exactly what you've described there

as the monster that eats love.

So he said they could be laughing in the studies.

They could be arguing in the studies.

It didn't matter.

It was any sign of contempt,

which is basically he defined

as like unaddressed issues building up.

So when you got the example I gave on stage

when I did the Diary of a Seal Live tour was

your partner going, babe, come look at this.

And you go, that, that's five years of being sick

of their shit, not talking about it

and unaddressed bullshit.

Just did that little micro expression.

That's like an unaddressed recurring conversation

of you being sick of, you know, whatever.

So I think that's a really central idea

to what you're saying there.

This idea of constant work and constant communication

and constant conflict resolution.

Can you imagine the world?

If all couples could replicate that.

Like when you say it, it sounds easy,

but there's an everyday battle underneath that.

And I know, cause my partners are over there

and we do this, we have the same everyday battle

because some days I don't want to talk.

And some days I think you're wrong and you think I'm wrong.

And some days my ego gets in the way

and some days the thoughts come in, just do this

and leave, run away, you know, whatever.

And being able to continually confront that,

I think is an very, very difficult challenge

that I've only seen in a, you know,

I'm talking here about men in particular,

I've only seen it in a couple of men, you know?

Yeah, the advantage that I have again is,

and this is my path and I'm not saying

that this is the formula, but the plants keep me honest.

You try to, you try to, you know,

carry your bullshit story of it's all their fault

and you're a victim and then go drink a couple cups

of El Daragon de la Selva, Ziyahuasca,

and see if Ziyahuasca agrees with you, you know?

Like it's, there's a, I'm held accountable to the truth

and it's not just the medicine now,

the medicine lives in me, right?

I've consumed it and that consciousness is within me.

So I can't allow anything that I need to take ownership for

to exist and then sometimes that'll come up in the past.

I mean, I think as my consciousness evolves,

different levels of I'm sorry are elicited from me.

I mean, I think over the past three years, you know,

being with Vilana and having separated from Whitney,

there was probably a dozen or two dozen times

where there was a new I'm sorry that came out

because I actually could see it

from a different level of consciousness now.

And I mean, she's like, all right, man, like we split up.

Like, you know, like I think she appreciated it

and I think she's still working through her own,

you know, through her own process with that

and it's our own process of feeling any grievances we've had

and but, you know, I just try to do my best to own my fault

and mistakes in it and that's an evolving process.

But I am held accountable to this idea of, no, no,

I have to be honest and I have to be real

and I have to own it and it doesn't make me less than

to admit any of these things that's the way

that actually makes you more than to be able to be that

in sometimes just have the humility to be like, yeah,

I was an idiot or I was a made a mistake

or all of these things

and then not pile on a bunch of shame on yourself either

to just know that you're in an evolutionary process

and through that evolutionary process, when you evolve

you're gonna be able to look back at your old self

and be like, damn, you could have been a lot better.

It's amazing how there's almost this mental conversation

I have sometimes when I'm in that state of conflict

with my partner and my ego's there

and my ego's saying, oh, you're right, da, da, da, da, da.

And then the other voice somehow wins out and says,

you fucked up, you know, you reacted badly there,

you should just go and apologize.

And I did this the other day with her

where we'd had a bit of a disagreement about something

and a couple of hours passes, maybe 12 hours

or something passes, I realized I fucked up.

So I picked myself up and I walk over to her

and I just say, do you know what?

From yesterday, I just want to say I'm really sorry

because in reflection, my reaction was not good there

and it didn't make sense and I realized it hurt you,

et cetera, et cetera.

And I'm really sorry about that.

I wish I'd reacted differently.

In hindsight and upon looking at my behavior,

I realized why I reacted in that way

and like it's not good enough.

The minute the words came out of my mouth,

it was like a weight I had just lifted.

It was like my ego had been fired.

I felt great.

The pressure I had on me up until that point just evaporated

and it's funny that I don't get there quicker.

I think I'm getting there quicker though.

If I zoom out on myself, I go, okay,

look at yourself over the last 10 years,

give yourself some credit.

But yeah, it's great.

All the work you've done,

do you still struggle with these things?

Yes, but they get smaller and smaller.

So like you're talking about,

like the time it takes you to go over there.

So maybe there was a time in your life

where it wouldn't have been 12 hours,

maybe it'd have been 12 days, maybe it'd have been 12 months.

Maybe actually never, you know, right?

But now the time is shortening.

Now you're in hours,

then eventually you're gonna get into minutes.

And then from minutes, you're gonna get almost to real time,

almost to real time.

And then maybe one point you'll touch real time

where you're really actually seeing.

I don't know, I'm not in real time, you know,

but I'm definitely in the minutes category.

You know, I mean, remember the last little conflict

Violana and I had actually involved

this painted fingernail, I'll tell the story.

So I was really, we were in Miami, I'm really hot.

We have these big kind of wooden backed lounge chairs.

And I'm ready to go upstairs.

And I'm like, babe, I'm super hot.

I'm like thirsty, I'm ready to go up.

She's like, you sure you don't wanna tan your back a little bit?

And I'm like, my back?

Are you trying to say my tan is uneven?

Is like, that bother you?

And I went to this whole thing and I was like,

all right, fine, I'll tan my back for you.

I guess if that's important to you.

Well, so that's what was going through my head.

So I flipped the latch on the thing

so I could lay flat down

because I was laying with my back up.

The thing comes and smashes my finger,

just like smashes, like crushes my fingernail

right between the way that the back of the chair was falling

and just searing pain.

And I like get up and I wanna like scream

and hit something because it hurts so bad.

And I couldn't disambiguate the feeling of pain

with my frustration that she was the one

who wanted me to stay there.

And if she didn't want me to stay there,

I wouldn't have smashed my fucking finger.

And so, and then I'm like in there

and I'm like kind of fuming.

And she's like, are you mad at me?

I'm like, no, I'm not mad at you.

Cause I knew logically that I wasn't mad at her, right?

But like, my whole energy was like,

yeah, I'm fucking mad at you.

And I was like, why did you ask me to tan my back?

And she was like, oh, actually I just wanted to stay.

It took her a moment, but eventually it was like,

actually she just wanted to stay herself.

And that came out of her mouth in that way.

And then I took it as like some kind of critique

of my tan gradient, you know?

And ultimately, but we got in this little conflict

and the conflict escalated

cause we were in the heat of this kind of emotion.

And she kind of walked, she was like, I'm going to the gym.

It's like, all right.

And like I took like three, you know, three minutes,

four minutes, I don't know, maybe five minutes, whatever.

And then I just sent her a long text.

And I went through every different situation,

every different aspect of it.

From the first moment, acknowledging I wasn't able

to disambiguate the pain from my anger to her,

that I misunderstood what she was saying about my back.

And that was actually just her way of saying,

I want to stay longer.

And I projected that she was critiquing me,

but that wasn't actually the case.

And I didn't, you know, like all of this thing.

And then I responded poorly in this comment and this.

And then I said, however, how you responded here,

here, here, here, you know,

does not feel in alignment with ethos of our relationship.

So it was like this whole bullet pointed long, long message.

And I sent that to her and I was like, all right,

that's the truth of it.

And then she receives that, she comes back and she's like,

all right, you know, like I acknowledge

these different things, you know,

and now here's how we can get better from this.

And then pretty soon, you know,

within about 15 minutes after that,

we were just, we looked at each other

and I was like, we're kind of dramatic, aren't we?

And we just started laughing and it was over, you know?

And so that process just gets quicker and quicker

and quicker and quicker.

And that's the way of it.

It's just to shorten the amount of time

that you stay out of consciousness.

All of that requires a level of vulnerability

that a lot of people still find very uncomfortable,

especially men in my experience.

We actually made something to help our listeners

become a little bit more vulnerable.

And these are these question cards.

They're actually taken from this diary.

So every time we have a guest here,

they write a question for the next guest.

There's been one left for you in there as well.

So we took all of the questions, as you can see here.

We put them on these playing cards

so people can play at home.

There's about 70 of them.

I've just selected a bunch of random ones for you here.

And I'm gonna just lay them out in front of you.

And if you could just pick one

and then answer the question,

whichever one you feel called to.

This is like an Oracle deck.

On the back, it has a QR code where you can scan it

to see the person that answered the question as well.

Here we go.

Is there something right now

that you know you're doing wrong,

but you haven't fixed yet?

If so, how will you get unstuck?

Well, I don't like the word wrong

because the way that I look at my trajectory

is a trajectory of evolution.

So if I'm doing it,

it must mean that I needed to do that

in order to learn how to evolve from it.

However, I understand the point of the question

outside of the semantics, which are important,

because I think we can put ourselves in wrong, right,

good, bad in this very polarized idea.

So in the evolution of Aubrey, where am I still stuck?

Where have I not actually gotten to the place

where I want to be as who I know I can be?

And it's the reliance on stimulants to keep me alert.

And it's okay that I like my coffee

and I like my nicotine and I like, you know,

cratum sometimes or whatever,

but there's a kind of reliance to go up, you know,

and then there's a reliance to go down.

And I still have, you know, sleep medication that I take.

And I know it's not good for me.

Like, particularly as a sleep medication,

like I'm kind of okay with the caffeine and the nicotine.

I could probably like maybe fast rum it for a little while.

I don't smoke cigarettes or anything,

but whether it's a cigar or whether it's, you know,

a nicotine pouch or something like that.

So that one feels like, yeah, there's a little cleaning

up to do, but it's not really,

it's not really like damaging me in a fundamental way.

But the sleep meds I think are and they're very sticky

because I get in this loop where let's take today,

for example, last night I fly into the hotel.

I'm kind of juiced, you know, I'm here in Hollywood.

There's lots of sounds, lots of noises.

And I'm in a new hotel, it's pretty dope.

And I'm just not sleepy, you know, watch a cool movie.

And I got a big podcast today

and I got some other stuff I need to do during the day.

So could I have fallen asleep without the sleep meds?

Yes, eventually I could have,

but that would have come at a cost to this podcast.

And then that would have come at a cost to the listeners.

And then so I get in this trap of,

well, I can't do it today.

I got this thing to do.

So then I'll reach for the sleep meds and I'll take them.

And I know that those are deleterious to my health.

So I'm kind of stuck in this position

where I'm not giving myself the time

where I don't have any obligations

or anything that I want to offer the world

where I can really phase out of all of this.

And even when I do, because I have phased out of it

for all of my ayahuasca journeys,

I have to get off everything.

And I'm able to do it.

And I'm like, this time it's gonna stick.

And then I'll get that one night,

the night before a podcast

or the night before I have a bunch of things to do

and I just can't sleep.

And that old, the old sleep med in the drawer,

I've flushed them down the toilet, whatever.

But then I'll find another one or whatever,

I'll figure it out.

It starts calling and it's like, listen,

like, you know the solution, just pop this bottle

and you'll go to sleep.

And you'll be able to do what you need to do tomorrow.

And that voice keeps me stuck.

I'm like stuck in this limbo.

And I can't stay stuck there forever.

So what I need to do, so part of that question is like,

what do I need to do to get unstuck?

I'm gonna need to give myself the space

to really allow my neurochemistry to reset.

And also probably have to holistically change my mindset

to say, I have to look at the whole arc of my life

and all of the conversations I have

and everything that I'm gonna do

as more important than any individual thing

and say for the whole arc of my whole life,

I have to get my neurochemistry and everything

back in alignment so that I don't rely

on these other chemicals to help me fall asleep.

And so it's a holistic mindset shift

and also a period, because it's gonna be rocky

in that period where I just push out

all of my obligations, everything that I need to do.

And I keep threatening to do it.

And I just haven't made the space to do it.

I haven't prioritized it enough, but that must happen.

It must happen and it's just a matter of me doing it.

And I pray and I believe and I trust that I'll do it

before the universe makes me do it.

By having some accumulation of the negative effects

of the medication I'm taking, et cetera.

If you don't listen when it's time, you'll have to listen.

Like the universal make you listen.

So I'm gonna listen before the universe makes me listen.

That key step though of awareness

is you're clearly very aware.

And that's what, when I think about helping my friends

or I look at my friend situations

when they're struggling with something,

that first step of really being aware of it,

you even know that it's a voice that calls you to the draw.

Which means from my observation that I also fully feel

like you've done much of the hard work already

by just admitting it to yourself.

Because of the cognitive dissonance,

so many people would justify it away

or make other excuses to make it okay,

but you've confronted that.

And it's funny because you've confronted it

even at the expense of how it might make you look.

And you're willing to say it out loud as well.

That's amazing.

In that story, I also sort of through-line

to what you're doing with Fit for Service.

For anybody that isn't aware of what you'll work now

with Fit for Service, what is it?

And how can one get involved?

And if they are to get involved,

what do you hope they take from it?

It's really the technology of healing

and transforming through community.

So that's really what we're doing is,

yeah, there's a lot of,

there's coaching and there's teaching of different things,

but we're going through

initiatory explorative practices.

Now, we don't do psychedelic medicine

as far as the things you take,

but we do do all the psychedelic practices

from shamanic breath work,

which is incredibly powerful.

Many facilitators, deep, deep breathing,

huge emotional catharsis, ecstatic dance,

vision quests out on the land

or wanders out on the land, vision quests are,

again, longer sometimes.

Temescal, in nippy sweat lodges,

by the First Nations people,

all of these different initiations.

And then communication technology initiations

from circling techniques,

which teach you how to communicate with each other

to helping to collectively process archetypal grief,

masculine grief and feminine grief

and using those dynamics to help elicit the strongest healing.

But in the process of doing that all together,

deep bonds are formed.

And we have a survey that goes out to anybody

who's been to at least two of our events,

and we say, did you meet somebody in fit for service

that you know will be a friend for the rest of your life?

100% say yes.

And so we're building, yes,

there's the greater fit for service tribe,

where there's a lot of,

there's a beautiful rich community,

but the bonds that are formed with those people

that maybe you did that one eye gazing exercise with

and you started crying

because you could see yourself in that other person

or you were there with them in that one breath work

that was so intense and the wind was whipping

and everybody was screaming

and there was three exorcisms happening simultaneously

and it was fucking wild.

Like those experiences then bring a bond together

and you start to learn that actually going through

these difficult things together will actually,

form relationships and help you heal and help you grow.

And it's such a beautiful process

to continue to watch this happen

with so many different people

from so many different places,

and it's really inspiring to see people willing to,

is in some ways, as we were talking about,

nobody wants to mind,

in some ways you do expose yourself

to your own darkness willingly

by going into a breath work

or going into an eye walk or going into these things,

but you know that you're fully supported

and it's with full intention.

So in that way,

we are actually going into the darkness

to illuminate the light and just doing that together.

And it's been really incredible.

It doesn't feel at all like work.

It feels like I would do this.

And actually last year,

we switched to a donation model

because we thought like this is the way to do it.

We lost so much money that we can't do that anymore,

but nonetheless,

so I basically worked all last year

at a huge financial loss

and offered all of these different summits

and festival, all of this stuff.

And it was still worth it.

I wouldn't have changed it now.

Of course, it's fundamentally unsustainable

to do it that way,

but nonetheless, it's one of the things I really love to do

and all of our coaches feel that way

and it also draws in some incredible people

that we get to learn from other master coaches

and other inspiring medicine people

who kind of carry a transmission that we learn from.

So it's kind of like a little moment

where we get to be in our own little Jedi school

and just evolving our own internal psychic

and emotional and a physical technology.

I watched the video on your website, fitforservice.com

and it looked, I don't know,

sometimes just observing a clip or a trailer

can make you feel a certain sense of warmth and connectedness

and that's what I got.

I felt like a big group of friends

that had gone out to the desert somewhere

and were connecting at a much deeper level

than you ordinarily see

in that kind of retreat or event or whatever.

So I felt really compelled to be involved, I guess.

So I think everybody should go check it out.

Just go watch the video and go see if it's calling you

because I think there'll be a lot of people out there

that will realize just from watching that video

that it's right for them.

Yeah.

We do have a closing tradition on this podcast

where the last guest asks a question for the next guest.

See what has been left for you.

Oh, okay.

Oh, interesting.

I actually don't get to see the question

before we open the book, but this is a good one.

Who is someone you need to forgive?

And then there's another line,

which is who is someone you need to forgive and have not?

Which I guess is the same thing, but...

You know, forgiveness is an interesting thing

because it's a spectrum.

There's, yeah, I forgive you, but do you?

But do you really though?

Are you still kind of holding on?

Are you saying the words and are you there?

True forgiveness is the place of love

that sees no wrong, right?

Like it doesn't even actually register

that there was a wrong there.

Like that's the zero state of absolute forgiveness

is to get to a place of what grievance?

What did you do?

What remind me again?

Because I don't see it.

Kind of how I told this story about my dad,

the way he yelled at me.

Like I've seen so clearly,

I've seen so clearly that it gave me a superpower

that I'm able to be in absolute forgiveness of that.

Absolute forgiveness of that.

And when I get to that place where I've seen

and would never have traded it for anything,

I wouldn't have changed it one bit, right?

When I can get to that place

where I wouldn't have changed the thing,

that's where real forgiveness is.

As it's like, if they're like, I'm sorry,

I'd be like, for what?

Thank you.

I mean, like I see how this benefited my life.

So that level of forgiveness,

it takes a time to get there.

So there are actually many places

where I am in the evolutionary process of getting to that,

but maybe I don't quite fully understand

what that has given me yet.

So somebody's done something

and I haven't quite worked that into the way

that I can say like, all right, this was for the best.

If I had to say, I would have to say

the governments of the world right now.

I don't think I've fully forgiven them

in the collusion, what I've seen between the collusion

between media and politics and big pharma and big war

and this whole construct of empire.

Some part of me says like, all right,

if we take the Lord of Rings analogy,

the two towers need to rise

so that the fellowship of the ring comes together.

And that's what gets the elves and the dwarves

to get along with the hobbits and all and the wizards

and the humans and everybody comes together

and it's necessary for the two towers to be built

and to try and push their darkness on the world

so that the fellowship will come.

But there's been so much pain and so much loss

and so much unnecessary suffering

and so much unnecessary fear.

And it's hard to get to the point where I can say like,

yeah, I wouldn't change a thing with that

because so I guess it's forgiving empire

and I use empire to be that whole construct

of that kind of top-down manipulative dystopian control

that everybody has their own little oculus

to whatever part of that they see

and I'm not trying to push my own view of that

but I think we can all feel that there's a force out there

that's not in our best interests as sovereign beings.

Have I forgiven that force?

Not quite yet, not quite yet

but maybe when the full fellowship comes together

and we have all of the out

because I'm starting to see that happen

like all of the allies are forming this lattice work,

this network that's now becoming more available

because of the pressure of the force of empire.

But until that fully actually crystallizes

and it works, I don't think I'll be able,

I'm not able to forgive empire yet.

Aubrey, thank you.

You're the type of person that I love to speak to

because there's, I feel like there's no question

you wouldn't answer and the most difficult questions

but also you take a pause to answer the questions head on

and your story of personal transformation

and transition through various chapters in your life

and ego death and all you've been through,

you speak to it with such vulnerability

and openness and honesty.

So anybody that's in a different phase

or chapter of their journey to where,

you've found yourself today,

I think they have the honest roadmap

on how to progress forward

and that's the most inspiring, powerful thing.

And it's not often you get to sit with someone

who's had such tremendous business success

that can also analyze that from sort of a meta perspective

and it's now doing work that's tremendously spiritually aligned

with a new refreshing take on what their mission should be.

And in your case, it's, as you've said,

not just any more about you,

it's much more about the broader global community

and your tribe.

So thank you so much for this conversation today.

It's been an honor to meet you and spend time with you.

I feel freer, I feel inspired,

I feel more powerful for it.

And I hope we can have it again once the goblins

and the Lord of the Rings.

Yeah, let's get all the characters together.

I've never seen the Lord of the Rings.

It's just happening, here we are, here we are.

Another ladder, another connection,

another node in Indra's net was formed.

Sorry, Empire, it's happening.

Well, Brie, thank you.

You're welcome, brother, thank you.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.