MILLENNIAL MENTOR: A-LIST MOVER & SHAKER AUBREY MARCUS
WHO ARE YOU?
Aubrey Marcus
Age: 34
CEO of ONNIT (a Total Human Optimization company). As a company, we look at people as an entire entity and try to find the tools that can help them achieve optimum performance, happiness, and personal goals. At ONNIT, we are dedicated to providing our customers with supplements, foods and fitness equipment aimed at helping them achieve a new level of well being. We will continue to look for tools to round out that Total Human Optimization package.
UNDER THE HOOD
I
was a lifelong athlete and my stepmother was a nutritional doctor, so I got used to the paradigm of what I ingested affecting my performance. I graduated from University of Richmond with a degree in philosophy where you learn the art of solving puzzles – some of the greatest puzzles in the world and life itself. Learning the process of trying to solve them, makes solving the daily life puzzle, easy. When it came time to solve the puzzle of Total Human Optimization when I was founding ONNIT in 2010, I knew the correct approach. I had already worked in marketing, pharmaceuticals and a variety of fields that gave me certain levels of expertise, but I also knew how to find help. We went into the fields and found the best doctors, psychiatrists, neurosurgeons and athletes to help round out the best performance tools that we could create; that’s really how ONNIT was founded.
WORST SPILL & HOW YOU RECOVERED
The worst spill we had was a security hack early on in our founding. We internally discovered someone had laid a bug in our system and was intercepting customer data. We had the choice of keeping this internal (once discovered), as the information had not been tampered with. We chose instead to go public immediately and shared the ‘breach’ to our customer base to alert them. We apologized and offered to rectify the situation in any way we could. Though this is never something you want happening to your company or your loyal customers, the response was an interesting one. What could have been potential catastrophe – turned into a rallying point. It was really an interesting and pivotal moment where we gained the trust of our customers and turned disaster into something that created long term customer loyalty.
IF YOU COULD HAVE A BUSINESS LUNCH WITH ANYONE (DEAD OR ALIVE) WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY?
I think I would say Elon Musk would be someone who I would definitely like to have lunch with. I like his approach and how he looks at competition in the market.
FAVORITE ENTREPRENEUR?
Same guy. When I look out there, there are not too many people that I would put on that list and Elon Musk is at the
top of it.
WHO IS YOUR PERSONAL MENTOR?
I’ve had many mentors and it’s hard to say which one of them is my personal mentor. I try to learn as much from people as possible. Everybody I encounter is a mentor. I’m constantly in a student position, so it doesn’t matter if it’s one of my employees or someone with a 10 billion dollar hedge fund- to me, they are all potential mentors. There’s opportunity to learn everywhere. There isn’t one person that I’ve patterned myself after, or anything of that sort. I just try to collect everything that I can and always be available to learn.
WORDS OF WISDOM
Track the effects of your own fear of failure. You have to go 100% IN. If you are afraid of failing – you are likely holding back. Trust that failure is part of the process. Don’t allow it to affect you’re own self-love,self-worth, self-validation, and go all in for your win. There is no such thing as failure, there’s only experience. Experience breeds success.
DIGITAL AGE
Website: onnit.com
Facebook: /OnnitLabs
Twitter: @onnit
Instagram: @onnit
