How I Built A $400 Million Company With Joe Rogan! (Incredible Story) Aubrey Marcus

28:04It makes me a very good communicator. It allows me to understand how my words could be perceived. What a what a gift. That's my superpower. Thanks dad. But it comes with a cost also power is right. Of course. And the cost was. And sometimes still is less now. I have to be you know, 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.

28:53How you would respond and what you would explain it's mentally exhausting and anxious. You know, and it's 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, like, 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 like like nine different ways that that thing could be interpreted the wrong way. And then I have to manual like with manual override of my own consciousness be like, it's all good. They know you they love you. They're not going to take any of these different interpretations.

29:35And then abandon you or get mad at you or anything like that. This process you describe 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.

30:22I 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 psych... like psychonotic technologies that can get you there from sensory deprivation tanks to sweat lodges to lots of things.

31:01But I have done many and not most of the plant medicines of 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.

31:47Because for me, that's been the process. Again, psychonotics, the ability to look inside and see everything. As Rumi said, you know, we're not a drop in the ocean, we're the ocean in a drop. So if you want to understand anything about the cosmos, you can look out at the cosmos, you can look inside into your inner cosmos with a K. And that's the way the Greeks spelled it and say like, okay, like 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? You went on a, you called it like a vision.

32:29Is it like a vision mission? Carom of the word you used. Yeah, after high school. Yeah, that was it. A vision mission. Yeah, it's, I mean, there's a, 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, you know, 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.

33:09And it's not to say that the medicine is better or worse. It certainly worked out really well for me, but that was a 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 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 describe that from 20 onwards. You were still relatively sort of lost in seeking approval and parting a lot, drinking a lot.

33:55So 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 wanting to be loved, still wanting 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.

34:43I 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, you know, from an 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.

35:32So 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 going to start a men's nail polish line because I saw like Chuck Lidell and my friend Roger Wetter, they were painting their nails. I was like, yeah, men can paint their nails and I started that at bomb. There was so many failures and I really thought like, I'm just never going to succeed. I mean, I made it, I made a decent living. You know, I always 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.

36:12When you think about that moment and the factors that aligned to make it, it happened 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, you know, kind of like sometimes if you have a young, a young stallion and they're fucking around in their heart, you got to run them a little bit. You got to run the stallion. I had to run a little bit. And my partner at the time, Caitlin, we were running.

36:51You know, 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. You know, I was running. And I think I needed to do that. And at the same time, I was also exploring, exploring in that path. It's like an unexplored experience. And I had this feeling. I just had this feeling when I watched Joe Rogan do comedy. And we're talking 2008. You know, this is not the Joe Rogan of now. Right? The way different thing. He was the fear factor guy. The UFC just, you know, the UFC commentator, but the UFC wasn't what it is now, not even close.

37:30But 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, 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 like that. It's very difficult to bridge that gap in that kind of social construct. So he started a podcast. And, and I was following what it was like, oh, wow. And that was old Joe Rogan days back with Brian Redbent. And there was no podcast advertising. Then again, podcast was in its infancy. He had no podcast advertisers.

38:10So 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's like, okay, cool. And it's like, it's fleshlight. And then his manager team is 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, you know, advertise for this thing. So which is a sex toy for anybody that does. Yeah, it's a sex toy for men.

38:43But 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.

39:17And 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 give you the say, yeah, fuck 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 is some knowledge inside me that know this coffee with Joe Rogan is important.

39:56And 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 neutrosuticals that actually could functionally impact performance. She worked with basketball teams.

40:35So 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 Bodie, my friend, who so one gave $50 ,000, the other gave $60 ,000. And that was the start of on it.

41:17Is 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, I'm like a all natural, neutropic that really worked in a new tropic being a cognitive answer. And I was like, you know what, Joe, I'm going to 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 alpha brain. And with alpha brain, I sent it to Joe and Joe was like, man, this is amazing. It was actually way too strong at that point.

41:52It 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 alpha brain, 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.

42:32Right. 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 to, you know, applied to having a website and having a shopping card, 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've been developing over all of these years in between all of the partying that I was doing and all of the other stuff.

43:09And 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. You say rocket ship, would you mean? So 2010 on it was founded by me and with the investment from those two individuals that I mentioned, Bodian 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.

43:53And then at that moment with the alpha brain 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 in 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, you know, 35 million, 45 million, you know, then we, 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.

44:45We were able to sell the company to Unilever and have a huge exit, which has now given me, you know, an amazing blessing of abundance of resources. And one of the coolest parts about that is so many people in my life, you know, talking about community again. So many people in my life got little pieces of the company, you know, like my friend, McCot McCot Brooks, who's now an actor on law and order, he was, 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, I was giving out equity like candy. I was like, I love you, man, here's some shares.

45:23And then all of a sudden, all of those shares turned into huge amounts of wealth, you know, 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 want it was like being on this gigantic hundred person craft stable of everybody you love and everybody wins in 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.

46:05We got people to, you know, 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 was, 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 going to be people listening to this who are the version of you at the start of that roller coaster.

46:50Yeah. What would you say to those people? Because I mean, a lot of our listeners 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, I hear mine to say how 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?

47:32And 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. 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. I mean, I meet so many people are like, yeah, I'm going to start this clothing brand. I'm like, and I've been done a few things with different clothes.

48:01And that's a hard business. 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.

48:44Okay. So see it. A few thoughts sprung to mind when you said it talked about seeing it. So the first one is what role does seeing it because you talked about the adversity. You kind of like glossed over the adversity of the journey. And I think part of the reason I start this podcast in the first place was because I think the adversity matters just as much as the eventual achievement for sure. 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.

49:18Well, 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, you know, there was still some part of me that was like, wow, it's really actually coming true because 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 wouldn't be like, why buy your nail polish when I just get any nail polish. I didn't really see it right.

49:55And with on it, I saw it right, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, sorry about that, you know, people got access to credit cards that happened us.

50:33And 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 cyber security. I mean, I thought we did, but we didn't obviously. And there was a choice point, you know, nobody, nobody else externally discovered it. We discovered it internally. We fixed it. And we could have just kind of crossed our fingers and hope 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.

51:12Like 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, you know, a discount code for any on it products that you want. And like our deepest apologies for any inconvenience, this 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, we like these losers can't even secure our credit cards or whatever. They actually trusted trusted our company and trusted me more because of just how authentically I shared about that story.

51:58So that's one version of a of adversity that comes from those things that those monsters that come from the grass that we're slithering around or hiding in the in the tall grass that you don't see and then all of a sudden you have to confront them. And it's going to 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 were 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 and this is the best we can do.

52:39And that was that was kind of the guiding principles. I was bound by this value structure. And the value structure was the kind of the guiding light through all of it. And it it worked. When you said about seeing it, one of the things that came to mind as well was when you can see the compet competitive landscape often that's incredibly intimidating. I think there's, you know, entrepreneurs often talk about how being a little bit delusional and naive is actually a driving force. And where they to know how difficult it actually was, like where entrepreneurs to have seen your hardest darkest days, they might not have bothered.

53:19So my second question here is about seeing it is, what would you say to an entrepreneur that starting a business maybe in the same, you know, 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 corporate did this. And Joe did that. Like, I've got this idea, but there's so many competitors. I just won't bother because I'm sure when you started, there was a big competitive landscape. Sure.

53:44It gets more and more difficult, you know, 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 your 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.

54:25And yes, you're still going to receive immense challenges. Now, there's going to be times is 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 cash pocket lips 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.

55:13And we made it. And we made it because of the relationships that we'd, you know, held with honesty and with good faith with everybody. We weren't 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 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, you know, like we're going to pay you in four months for the products that you're delivering. And they believed in us. They backed us. And that was what a that's got us through that moment. So that's the FF that walked down.

55:50Yeah. You made a big mistake and he made a big mistake. He had also we had, you know, he had an equity position. He had options that he that he, you know, forfeited whoops. You know, our current CEO, our current CEO, I mean, not current CEO, the CEO that emerged Jason Havie. He he he couldn't he's such a sweet, such a sweet guy, but he couldn't help but send on the anniversary of that day or the CFO walked out. And and just told us straight up that we were we were going to be out of business for the next couple of years on that anniversary. You'd be like, hey, how's it going? We're still here.

56:35Just set up a text. 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. They're therefore they aren't deserving of those kind of good good moments. Exactly. per se. You left in 2020. I don't see a huge desire from you from looking at what you're doing now to get and 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 a certain he's really not actually running any of the companies that he's running running owning.

57:34He'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 Havi 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 you know 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 that will allow us to you know kind of accumulate can then be applied to really great projects that can benefit again.

58:25Part of the end of the photos for the good of all. So yeah, I mean, I'm still 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 going to be there's going to be another kind of reload and birth of a new kind of wave of things that will come out and and there's also but there's so many other things now I'm going in many different directions.

59:03Of 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. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is net suite.

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1:00:19That's netsweep .com slash Bartlett. 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 learnt 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 learnt that relationships mean you're in prison. Basically the like the narrative I'd learnt because my father, I was I think subconsciously convinced he was in prison in his relationship.

1:00:56So it took me a lot of awareness and unpacking to like realize that to the point, whereas as I sit here today, I'm in a great relationship. Obviously it has all the same, you know, natural imperfections of 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 going to 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.

1:01:26Well, that would be multiple wives. Okay. Polyamory is multiple loves. So yeah, my journey with love was was interesting because, you know, again, I had my first major partnership with someone who's now my best friend. And also the best man quote of my of my wedding with my wife is was my former fiance, Caitlin. And we had a relationship where it was not it was not polyamory. But however, we could bring other female lovers into into our equation, right? Into our female lovers. Right. So other girls could we could have sexual experiences with the family. And so that gave me kind of this release valve to my desires because I simply again, I was bound by this kind of feelings of value in this feeling of anybody who I'm with is me living a different life.

1:02:27So I can't cheat. You know, there was one moment while I did 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 it's actually legitimately unethical. Right. Like you're you're manipulating somebody you're lying to them. You're not telling the truth.

1:03:06And so after that one experience of feeling how just awful I felt when I actually cheated on his story. I was in Moscow, 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. It wasn't quite right, but it was beautiful. We had a beautiful relationship and I love Caitlin.

1:03:49I 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, 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.

1:04:24So 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 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 a idea.

1:05:10What 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 Caitlin, I would have been so jealous. I'm like, no man ever, never under any circumstances. I'm the lion. And, you know, like I had these old, old other kind of constructs and ideas. Thanks to, you know, it was really the book, Sex It Dawn by Chris Ryan, then 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.

1:06:04And 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, your erotic sunlight can only shine on me. I was like, this is absurd. It 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 going to, I thought I was going to breeze through because I had a girlfriend first. So Whitney, after a period of three months, she first she was like, you know, you're out of your mind.

1:06:45Go fuck yourself. I'm out. I was like, that sucks, but I understand your decision. I'm not going to 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.

1:07:29Like 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 going to vomit, cry. I wanted a 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.

1:08:13And 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 of me. And that was one of the really powerful lessons that Pauli Amory 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.

1:08:47And 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.

1:09:23And 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 that 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 parameters that I had and the paramour is the term for the other partners you have outside of your primary partner.

1:09:59I 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 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. And but every little minute dishonesty would get exacerbated into a massive, massive issue because there's so much pressure in the system because of the natural emotions of jealousy.

1:10:41And, you know, worrying about whether my partner really loved me the most. 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 my consciousness, all of my love, I couldn't do it.

1:11:29And so with that knowledge, then, you know, I met, of course, I met by Lana and by Lana, like, you know, immediately I'd been in love with her for a little while. And we could tell that story if we like, but I'd been through the polyamory journey. So when I met by Lana, 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?

1:11:57For 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 twilight sunsets of just glorious, beautiful experiences. And then the hard 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.

1:12:42There'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 evolution of your own character through that process. So has anybody made it work long term? It's rare. And I don't think I have a good model for it because I think part of the problem 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.

1:13:24It'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 long term level. But I think it's just because the culture hasn't blossomed for that to really be possible. I've often wondered 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.

1:14:03So 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 called jealousy to prevent that happening. Yeah. And there's also the genetic impulse to actually, I mean, again, we're having sex, but the impulses 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.

1:14:44So there is a, there is genetic support. And then 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, you know, your genetic DNA. It's like, will this be the best, 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.

1:15:20But 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're 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 a 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.

1:16:00And 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.

1:16:40And 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. Violin. Oh, yeah. Violin. Violin. You'll face the lights up when you say her name. Yeah. Why is that? What does she mean to you?

1:17:17I 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 that'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 Violin, I had like, no, no. I love you so much. I wouldn't change a thing about you. And it's this crazy thing that sounds like 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 Vailana.

1:18:04I wish I could go with a straight face and say like, there's your Vailana out there. And for Vailana's 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.

1:18:42But really, but really though, like, I just, I just knew I could feel it. And I knew it. And I knew she was, 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's you complete me know we're two complete beings of different skills attributes, polarities, energies, emotionalities, sexualities. But we merged together and together were just so much more and life is so much more beautiful. And so, you know, it's a, it's a dream and it's a dream. And it's, there's no, there's no compromise. There's no compromise at all.

1:19:30And that's what all that, you know, you go to a wedding and you all the old timers would be like, yeah, you gotta learn to compromise. And you're gonna have to pick your battles. And 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 because we're willing to go into the deep together. If there's something that's that's 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 drank ayahuasca together.

1:20:04And 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 will 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, cleaning the connection and the intimacy between us all the time. When you look back in hindsight, because 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.

1:20:43So like, had you met Vylaana 10 years earlier, one with us, you 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 Vylaana? 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, what, like, you really care that much about that particular type of pleasure you get in your genitals?

1:21:29No, you're carrying about it because it's your ego because somehow that makes you're 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 what my impact could be on someone's heart and what their impact could be on my heart. 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, Stephanie and Savannah and Lorraine, 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?

1:22:07Because 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, 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, Philana, because I've really, I've felt what this is really like. So that's, I think, step one of, you know, many step journey. Is there a piece of work as well around, I guess that's maybe a Jason or attached to what you've just said, but learning how to control one's emotions, you talked earlier on about anger and snapping.

1:23:00And the thing in relationships is if you haven't got control of that, the relationships are not going to last, and especially, 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 going to pretend I don't. But I was, 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, what to get better at conflict resolution from an emotional standpoint?

1:23:36The 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 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. My, I have two really dear friends, Christine Hasler and Stefano Sifondo, and they just let a workshop at our Fit for Service Summit.

1:24:20And 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 develop was he actually goes into the plow stretch position where he puts his legs over his head when he's in that, when he's in that angry state. And they actually, once soon as he gets angry, that's their agreement that he's going to go into that position. And if he's going to yell at her, he's going to have to yell at her from between his own legs through his own ass. So, like they develop this method that they'd literally use.

1:24:57And there's some of the most conscious people there, you know, there, but they have as they have a strategy, they have a practice. And so, Vailana 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, now we enter a new parlay. It's like the pirates when they're all shooting each other and they're like, parlay.

1:25:31And then they go and they're like, all right, let's talk this out a little bit. Okay, so you're like stepping outside. Right. So we'll have like, we'll have a construct. We'll be like, basically call 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, this construct we call bedrock where any time we're in like the deepest state of love will be like, this is the bedrock. This is where we're always returned to. This is the nature of our love. And so either one of us can go bedrock. And we go in in a matter of 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.

1:26:09So 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, Vailan and I, we've had a couple fights that lasted, you know, a day, two days, because we weren't able to get to the point of radical ownership.

1:26:59We were still kind of pointing a finger and not able to meet in the middle of like actually own 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 want to take more? 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 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.

1:27:36There'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 Gortman? 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.

1:28:14So 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 the example I gave on stage when I did the Darivisio Lab 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 in 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.

1:28:51Can 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 because my partner said over there, 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. I leave, run away, you know, whatever. And being able to continually confront that I think is a very, very difficult challenge that I've only seen in a cut, you know, I'm talking here about men in particular, I've only seen it in a couple of men.

1:29:30You 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 carry your bullshit story of it's all their fault and you're a victim and then go drink a couple cups of Elde that I go into the list of as Iowasca and see if Iowasca 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.

1:30:19And 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 Vailana 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, her own process with that.

1:31:00And it's our own process of of feeling any grievances we've had. And, but, you know, I just try to do my best to own, 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 like I have to, 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, that's the way that actually makes you more than to be able to be that in sometimes just that have the humility to be like, yeah, I was an idiot or I was a made a mistake or all of these things. And not, and then not pile on a bunch of shame on yourself either to just know that you're in an evolutionary process.

1:31:49And through that evolutionary process, when you evolve, you're going to 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, when I, when I'm in that state of conflict with my partner. And when he goes there and when you go saying, oh, you're right, and then the other voice somehow wins out and says, he 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 had a bit of a disagreement about something. And, you know, a couple of hours passes, maybe 12 hours or something passes, I realize I fucked up.

1:32:29So I picked myself up. And I walk over to her and I just said, 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 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.

1:33:02And it's funny that I don't get there quicker. I'm getting, I think I'm getting there quicker there. 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. It's, it's 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. But now the time is shortening.

1:33:38Now you're in hours. Then eventually you're going to get into minutes. And then from minutes, you're going to 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. But I'm definitely in the minutes category. I mean, I remember the last little conflict, Vailana, and I had actually involved this painted fingernail. I'll tell the story. So I was really, we're 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.

1:34:19I'm like thirsty. I'm ready to go up. She's like, you sure you don't want to tan your back a little bit. And I'm like, my back, what are you trying to say? My tan has not even, 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 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.

1:34:52And it's just searing pain. And I'm like, get up. And I want to 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 she said, 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. Because I knew logically that I wasn't mad at her. 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?

1:35:28She was like, well, actually, I just wanted to stay. You know, 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 because we're in the heat of this kind of emotion. And she kind of 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.

1:36:07And 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 an alignment with ethos of our relationship.

1:36:41So it's 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.

1:37:16And that's the, that's the, that's the way of it is just a shortening 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, in my experience, we actually made something to help our listeners, and they're, 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. Cool. We put them on these playing cards so people can play at home.

1:37:53There's about 70 of them. I've just select a bunch of random ones for you here. And I'm going to just lay them out in front of you. And if you could just pick one. And then answer the question, whichever one you feel cool to.

1:38:07This is like an Oracle deck on the back as a q arcade where you can see you can scan it to see the person that answered the question as well. Here we go.

1:38:21Is there something right now that you know you're doing wrong, but you haven't fixed yet. If so, how will you get unstuck?

1:38:39Well, I don't like the word raw because the way that I look at my trajectory is the 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, you know, 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.

1:39:24And it's okay that I like my coffee and I like my nicotine and I like, you know, crap, I'm 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 the 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 a, 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.

1:40:13But 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.

1:40:54And then so I get in this trap of why 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 my I wasca journeys, I have to get off everything and I'm able to do it. And I'm like, this time it's going to stick. And then I'll get that one night the night before a podcast or a night before I have a bunch of things to do and I just can't sleep.

1:41:34And that old, the old sleep med and the drawer, I flush them down the toilet, whatever, but then I'll find another one or whatever I figured 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 going to 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 going to do as more important than any individual thing and say for the whole arc of my whole life, I have to get my neuropeg chemistry and everything back in alignment so that I don't rely on these other chemicals to help me fall asleep.

1:42:42And so it's a holistic mindset shift and also a period because it's going to 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, etc. Like if you don't listen when it's time, you'll have to listen like the universal make you listen.

1:43:27So I'm going to listen before the universe makes me listen. That key step though of awareness is you've clearly you're clearly very aware. And that's what you know when I think about helping my friends where I look at my friends situations when they're struggling with something that first step of really being aware of it, like you even know that it's a voice that calls you to the draw. Which means you know from my observation that I also fully feel like you've done much of the hard hard work already by just admitting it to yourself. Yeah, you know, because there's because of the cognitive dissonance so many people would justify it away or you know make other excuses to make it okay.

1:44:04But you've confronted that. Yeah. And it's funny because you've confronted it even in the 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 saw through line to what you're doing with fit for service. For anybody that doesn't isn't aware of what you're working out 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. You know, 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.

1:44:43But we're going through an 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 you know, shamanic breathwork, which is incredibly powerful. You know, many facilitators deep, deep breathing, huge emotional catharsis, ecstatic dance, you know, vision quests out on the land or you know wanders out on the land vision quests are again longer sometimes. You know, temescal, in the piece wet lodges, you know, 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, you know, masculine grief and feminine grief and using those dynamics to help elicit the strongest healing.

1:45:36But 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 you know, 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 drive where there's a lot of as 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 and that other person or you were there with them in that one breathwork 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.

1:46:18Like those experiences then bring a bond together and you start to learn that actually going through these these difficult things together will actually you know form relationships and help you heal and help you grow. And it's such a beautiful process to continue to watch this happen, you know, with so many different people from so many different places, you know, and it's really inspiring to see you. And you can see people willing to because in some ways as we were talking about nobody wants to mine in some ways you do expose yourself to your own darkness willingly by going into a breathwork or going into an eye or going into these things.

1:47:01But you know that you're fully supported and it's in this with full intention. So in that way we are actually going into the darkness to eliminate the light and just doing that together and it's been it's been really incredible. It doesn't feel it doesn't feel at all like like work 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 it anymore but nonetheless like 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.

1:47:42And it was still worth it. I wouldn't I wouldn't change it now of course it's fundamentally unsustainable to do it that way but nonetheless like it's what I love 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 you know inspiring medicine people who kind of carry a transmission that we learn from. So it's 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.

1:48:23I watched the video on your website fit for service .com and it looked I don't know. I felt like a big group of friends that had gone out to like the desert somewhere and were connecting at a much deeper level than you ordinarily see in that kind of like 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 see if it's calling you because I think there will 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.

1:49:09Oh okay.

1:49:13Oh 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 think guess is the same thing. 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 that sees no wrong. Right it 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 is your.

1:50:18What did you do what remind me again is I don't see it because kind of how I told this story about my dad you know 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 an absolute forgiveness of that absolute forgiveness of that. In 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 benefit in my life.

1:51:03So that level of forgiveness. It's 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 I haven't quite worked that into my 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 the governments of the world right now I don't think I fully forgiven them. In the collusion what I've seen between the collusion between media and politics and you know big pharma and big war and this whole construct of empire.

1:52:02Some part of me says like all right the two like 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 with the hobbits and all in the wizards and the humans and everybody comes together. And it's necessary for the two towers to be 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.

1:52:47Because so I guess it's you know forgiving empire and I use empire to be that whole construct of that kind of top down manipulative dystopian control that we've you know 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 interest 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 start I'm starting to see that happen like all of the allies are formed this lattice work this network that's now becoming more available because because of the pressure of the force of empire.

1:53:37But until that fully actually crystallizes it and it works. I don't think I'll be out 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 know you found yourself today.

1:54:18I think they have the honest roadmap on how to progress forward and that's the most inspiring powerful thing and you know 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 then so now doing work that's tremendously spiritually aligned. And then you know the new refreshing take on what their mission should be and in your case it's as you said not just anymore 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 for you I feel inspired I feel I feel more powerful for it and I hope we can have it again once the goblins and then Lord of the Let's get all the characters together.

1:55:05I've seen Lord of the Rings. I just happened. Here we are. Here we are. Another ladder. Another connection. Another node in India's net was formed. Sorry Empire. It's happening. We'll be thank you. You're welcome brother. Thank you.

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