How to Have It All As An Entrepreneur w/ Aubrey Marcus

There is a lot of debate over whether or not you can quote, have it all, whether you can have. I think it was Randy Zuckerberg, that's her name, right? Who says, who says you can, you can. You pick three of fitness, sleep, family.

She just picks a bunch of areas and says you can only have three. Pick which three you're gonna focus on. And then there's some people say you can have it all. What's Aubrey's opinion?

You can have it all.

Tell, tell me more.

The, the reason is, is because time is not what people think time is because like 30 minutes of absolute presence with someone is worth three days of, you know, kind of half assed absence on your phone. You're taking a trip, but you've never really paid attention, you know, and like using in the example of relationship, right? Like if you're truly present with somebody and like truly there and you're looking at them with all the love and presence and admiration and everything that you can possibly bring, and you're there with them in that moment. That short amount of time is way more valuable than days that you could spend on a vacation where you're half working, half on vacation, half focused elsewhere, half distracted, half resentful, half lusting after somebody else that you're interested in and all of these other things going on. So you can have that relationship that you know, that connection there that's more important. So in that way, time can be compressed because time is the rate limiting factor. And then the other thing is it's typically energy. Like, and if you can have enough energy, then you can really accomplish a lot more things. You can see your friends at the end of a long day, you can accomplish more tasks. I mean, the efficiency with which you can accomplish something is really dependent on how focused and how energized you are. So I think you can have it all. Some sacrifices will have to be made, of course, but you know, I, I'm a huge proponent of that fully well.

Rounded life you have seemingly built that you have from the outside looks, you have a very integrated life where you're building a company that you love and reflects you and your vision. It seems like it's almost like someone painted a picture of what was probably in your head. The culture here is amazing. So what, what do you attribute that ability to integrate all of that to?

I think it's like a, you know, balance. If I have a God, it's balance. You know, like, I wanted to ask.

You about work, like work life balance. That's the, like that Word.

Yeah, I mean, I think balance in general. I mean, balance to me isn't. Isn't just being a centrist. Like, balance isn't just staying tight and doing the same thing over and over. Balance is also recognizing that there's time for extremes. There's time for complete, you know, cut off from the company where I'm out in the mountains, that I'm on a spiritual journey or complete, you know, exercise of recreational intoxication like a burning man or something. Something along those lines. Like, there's time for the extremes and then there's time for the. All right, 16 hours a day, working, writing, only focusing on what I need to get done, but knowing where that inherent balance is. You know, like, I just finished this huge book launch push, and now balance to me is 12 days in Sedona where I'm hardly going to be on my phone, I'm not going to be on my computer, my social schedule is already going to be built out. I'm going to have virtually nothing to do but cleanse and hike the red rocks and hang out on my ranch. And that, to me, is restoring the balance of weeks of travel and these other things that are there. And that is something that I always keep in mind. So if I party really hard, then the next day it's not, you know, cheeseburgers and pizza, it's green juice and maybe an IV and maybe all the things that I need to do, like, I'll try to get back to balance as soon as possible. And sometimes it's a longer timeframe, sometimes it's a shorter time frame.

Do you listen to your head on that? Meaning I know I went out and got blitzed and now I need to recover. Or is it more of a this is how I feel and I'm responding to that as, as my signal.

It's a little bit of both. When I'm being smarter, I can listen to my body and have that direct communication. And I think I'm getting better at that, you know, like, really asking the question, all right, body, how are you actually doing? Not like what my fear generating machine, you know, in. In my head is trying to tell me. But, you know, the head is a good strategist ultimately, you know, depending on how it skews the data on its lusts and its fears, and it's these different cravings and aversions that it may have. But. But the more you can tap in and actually ask yourself, like, all right, what do I need right now? What do I really want? Where is this voice coming from the better off that I am. And I think I'm getting a little better at that as I get older.

Onnit is how many years old at this point?

July 2011, we launched Alpha Brain. And that's when our company became the company that it is now.

Okay, so in that ramp up period now it's easy to walk in here and see all the amazing stuff that's going on. But in that ramp, ramp up period, did you go through periods of burnout? Did you go through periods of, of being out of balance?

Totally. I mean, and that's, I think that's, I think the thing, like balance isn't a state that you maintain constantly. It's like an accumulation over a lifetime. Like, did you lead a balanced life? You know, and because there could be years where you're in a sprint, but there must be years then, you know, where you're in recovery and decompression, you know, like that's the time doesn't have to be absolutely equivalent, one for one, you know, that's not exactly how it works. But overall you have to be balanced. And there was periods where there was just relentless, relentless push. And this book was a recent one. Like, I was so fucking exhausted by the time this ended. Like my body actually finally just completely gave out. I got sick, you know, and I was like at home and I was, I was done. I was at the end, you know, because I had pushed and compressed every little thing I could do for the full month leading up to it and gave it all I had. And there was times where I did that writing. There's times where I've done that in other ways. And then there's times again where I just find, you know, the ways to rest and recover and restore. I'm going to do a liver detox when I'm out in Sedona. I'm going to really try, try to reduce stress down to an absolute minimum to counterbalance this incredibly high stress load that I've been carrying.

At what point did you feel like you could go back into balance when you were ramping up on it? And the reason I ask is because so many entrepreneurs, myself included, get used to that ramp up grind. And then getting out of that mode is almost more difficult than the passion and the motivation to get something started. And I know so many entrepreneurs who get to the multimillion dollar level, the eight figure level, celebrate it, but don't really ever give themselves the permission to back off. And this has become, I don't know.

If they're comfortable I don't know if they're comfortable backing off. I don't know if they're comfortable knowing the self not in motion. Like, perpetual action is distraction. You know what I mean? Like, so if you're continuing to move and continuing to do stuff, you're continuing to validate yourself. So you're providing external validation for your own self love and self worth. And that's something that's core at a lot of entrepreneurs, is this need to validate yourself externally. So you're removing an external validation source because you're not in the seat of power. You don't have people who depend on you. You're not driving action. You're not creating something that maybe your dad made you feel like you were worthy of love when you were doing something awesome, and you internalize that. And so only when you're doing something awesome do you feel worthy of love. So do you actually let love in from those people around you so you can get stuck in these traps that are actually more emotional than anything? And I think probably the key for me was becoming aware and observant of these psychological and emotional traps that I could fall in and recognize, like what was actually essential for the business and what was me just needing to feel important or me needing to validate something about myself or. Because there's typically periods where you can let the company, you can let the company be. And, you know, in the early, early days, if I would take time off, the company would be a little worse when I came back and I'd have to fight some fires and it'd be like, oh, Jesus, here I go back in the office, what happened? What went wrong? You know, and then there was a period in the middle where it kind of stayed the same, you know, Like, I could leave and retract and go down to Peru and drink ayahuasca and come back and be like, hey, it's not it. We're okay. We didn't really improve anything, but we didn't fuck up. We didn't fuck anything up. That's amazing. Like, good job, everybody. And now I can. I have such a team in place that I can leave and come back and things are better. And I'm like, damn, things are all better. You know, this is amazing. Okay, now how can I provide value on top of that? So I think it's the earliest days, you know, you have to be willing to take a few losses. In the middle days, I think you can probably maintain and tread water, you know, and then in the later days, hopefully things will continue to grow on the momentum that you've created, and you'll be able to even take more time.