From Men’s Health” data-reactid=”31″>From Men’s Health
But then, he says, “I went on my vision quest when I was 18, and I had my first experiential experience with what I felt like was an authentic spirituality to me: a psilocybin journey in the mountains.” Marcus recounts how he felt that his body evaporated while his consciousness remained. He realized his mission was not to dispel the myth of God; it was, he says, “to refine what that is. It’s just to actually talk about what’s real.” Just as a musician knows when an instrument is out of tune, Marcus says he can tell what is true and what isn’t and has used this bullshit meter to sift through ideas like Toltec beliefs (big on personal freedom) and the work of literal sorcerer’s apprentice Carlos Castaneda (there are no blessings or curses, just challenges). He studied classics and philosophy at the University of Richmond, where he was also in a fraternity.
The high-low, fuck-yeah-big-ideas style persists. After Marcus tells me that his aptitude for naming truths is invaluable in conflict mediation, I ask how he would have handled a situation I was in recently, when two women started yelling at me at a Celine Dion concert. “You look at someone like Viktor Frankl,” Marcus says of the writer and Holocaust survivor in a contemplative tone. “He was in Auschwitz. And he says, ‘The last of the human freedoms is the ability to choose our attitude toward any given situation.’ He couldn’t get out of Auschwitz. You couldn’t get away from these bitches.”
Marcus has a dizzying conversational effect; it’s hard to tell whether you’re soaring toward galaxy-brain revelations or just getting high on hot air. He is able to take an idea that is inherently true—say, that humans used to spend more time outdoors and be more physically active and that both things are good—and use it to tell you why you need to buy Alpha Brain nootropic supplements featuring ingredients like oat straw and cat’s claw; or get an Onnit-brand steel mace, a warrior-training tool first used in ancient Persia; or sign up for Fit for Service, a $12,500-a-year series of retreats that purport to ready you to help others by first helping yourself (airfare not included). “The most important things are free,” Marcus says. “How are you breathing? Are you getting enough sunlight? Are you drinking enough water? Are you moving? Are you having sex? These are the things that shouldn’t have a monetary value associated with them. Most of us do have money that we spend on stuff. So this is just one option that I think is a good place to spend money: optimizing the self.” As a non-Onnit member of the elite fitness community tells me, “Aubrey is really good at coming up with stuff to sell. Using a kettlebell is not rocket science, but Onnit will make it rocket science. Aubrey is calculatedly genuine.”
In 2014, the duo opened the Onnit Gym in Austin. Marcus says that because “we didn’t really have a strong foundation in fitness education,” they partnered with veteran trainer Joe DeFranco, who opened DeFranco’s Gym at Onnit Academy based on a grounded, classical approach to strength training. Eventually, Marcus met John Wolf, the trainer who would develop Onnit’s techy approach to primal moves, the kind of intricate kettlebell flows and mace and club wielding you can see Marcus showing off on Instagram. “We felt that our own training methodology was as good as or better than DeFranco’s for what our needs were,” Marcus says of the switch to Onnit’s signature style in 2016—which, of course, requires a specific set of Onnit–supplied tools to take part in. “It just made sense to say, ‘Hey, thank you for everything so far, but we’ve got it from here. It’s all love from here on out.’ ”
Ian Desmond was working in Onnit’s smoothie shop in 2017 when Marcus hired him as his assistant, eventually promoting him to chief of staff. (The 32-year-old still sometimes makes Marcus’s smoothies.) Desmond, who has a borderline-psychic ability to amiably anticipate Marcus’s needs (a seltzer, a moment of peace), is explaining that his boss is about to embark on a social-media fast and then a two-month sabbatical when a 29-year-old man sporting a novelty Christmas jacket walks up. “What do you do at Onnit?” I ask. “This is Erick Godsey,” Desmond says. Then he jokes, “He’s director of fire.” Godsey’s roommate, video producer Wyatt Hagerty, tells me, “Erick sees into every part of you. It’s like living with a mystical owl.” “I’m Aubrey’s external brain,” Godsey kind of explains. Later he more helpfully clarifies that, in addition to serving as director of content, he leads seminars on dream interpretation. “A lot of people have dreams about Aubrey,” Godsey says. Two days from now, Desmond, Godsey, and I will take part in an ecstatic dance based on the hero’s journey.
“There’s some crossover in my personal brand,” Marcus says. “Obviously there’s mutual benefit to things like my podcast, because I get to talk about Onnit and put in Onnit commercials for free and things like that. My social media also benefits Onnit. The bigger my following is when I promote Onnit, the more that benefits it.” In other words, Onnit is bigger than Marcus, but Marcus is more than just Onnit. And their symbiotic relationship is, in Marcus–speak, a perfect example of “flow”: a state of being in the zone (or, yes, “on it”) that leads to a nearly flawless, and in this case very lucrative, run.
All this stuff—the vocabulary, the use of proprietary items like the HydroCore “water dynamic” weight bag—feels like currency you can only spend with the Aubrey Marcus tribe. But pledging yourself to it can have value. I meet two people who were hired after doing Fit for Service, and Erick Godsey came on after taking Marcus’s Go for Your Win course. (He was so active in commenting that when Marcus announced a job opening, Godsey says the other members of the community told Marcus he should hire him.) Acolytes are natural employees when the business is, well, you. No wonder Marcus’s own teachings have been “probably my best talent–acquisition tool,” he says.
Pew Research Center reports that 22 percent of millennials, the age bracket overwhelmingly encountered at Onnit, “never” attend religious services. And perhaps you’ve noticed the deadening effect of social media. Marcus has given the victims of this condition a framework for a relatively virtuous, if insular, life. “If you look at the number-one killer, people think it’s being overweight or people think it’s smoking,” he says. “But loneliness has the biggest effects on human health. I think community is one of the biggest things we’re missing.” So Marcus has given his followers a community . . . of people just like themselves. He’s given them the mission to help as many people as possible . . . who are willing to join that same community.
The implicit promise of Onnit and Marcus’s personal brand seems to be that if you follow the rules, you will one day be as good and beloved as Marcus. It feels like the same kind of top-shelf wellness aspiration that Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop is selling. “I actually think that works against us more than for us,” Marcus says. “People end up saying, ‘Well, I’ll never be Gwyneth’ or ‘I’ll never be Aubrey,’ so why the fuck even try? What we keep trying to reinforce is: Your best is really what’s important. Your best version of you is just as good as my best version of me.”
“Yeah,” Marcus says, looking like he’s ready for his winter sabbatical to start now. “It gets exhausting when I’m so focused on where I’m going rather than just enjoying the process of doing it.” On August 11, 2018, Marcus lost consciousness while driving his Tesla. When he awoke, the car was totaled and his face flayed by the guardrail. “Metaphysically,” he says, “I think I was in a position of extreme stress and taking care of a lot of people, both in my intimate romantic relationships and through the company. And I think some subconscious part of me wanted to stop taking care of people and get taken care of.” Marcus leans back and considers his current level of happiness. “Have I always enjoyed myself the most?” he asks, crossing one Gucci-sneakered foot over the other. “No, I haven’t. And if I have any single regret in my life, I wish it was more fun. That doesn’t mean that the ego doesn’t like it. Because ultimately the ego adjusts to what you normally get and is always reaching for more; it’s insatiable. It always wants more, more, more, more, more.”
Marcus plans to practice during an upcoming seven- to ten-day darkness retreat in Frankfurt, Germany. If he doesn’t tap out early, he will have no light at all during that time. “I’m either going to go mad or I’m going to go sane,” Marcus says. “What I’m hoping to gain from it is freedom from having to do everything and just be radically with myself”—whom he will hopefully learn to love more. He also hopes to kick his sleep-aid habit; he’s taken Xanax or Valium at night for years. (“All those medications are crutches,” says Marcus. “In certain situations, applying a crutch like that is helpful. But if you used a crutch for too long, then your muscles are going to atrophy, and you’re not actually going to get stronger. You’re going to get weaker. And I think that’s the same with a lot of these pharmaceuticals. They all play their role, but more intelligent and more personal ownership about the utilization of them is important.”)
Given Marcus’s newfound quest to untether from external validation, it seems safe to assume this will be an intensely personal experience. But, he says, “if I knew that I could never talk to anybody about what I learned from the darkness retreat, I would have far less motivation to do it. There’d be less of a value proposition on the other side. So when I’m at day three in that darkness retreat, and I’m like, ‘I just want to get the fuck out of here,’ I know that if I stay, I’ll be able to share that value with more people.” If a man finds enlightenment in the dark and doesn’t Instagram about it, did he even find enlightenment at all?
When the lights come up and I go to say goodbye to Marcus, he shakes my hand and his palms are cool. “Did you have fun?” I ask. “Yes,” he says, beaming. Then he turns and poses for a selfie with a fan.