NutraBio Founder Mark Glazier Talks Dirt Bikes, Discipline and Tequila

You might know him as the CEO and founder of NutraBio, but there’s a lot more to Mark Glazier than just supplements. 

Headlines Over Sidelines recently caught up with Glazier to discuss health and fitness, and find out what this industry pioneer likes to spend his time on when he’s not building badass brands. 

On his love of motorcycles 

I have two dirt bikes and four street bikes. I have Choppers and Harleys and a BMW Adventure Bike, which is kind of on-road/off-road. I just love to ride, and to get away with myself and go out to the desert for a few days. It just lets me change my whole perspective in life, and re-energize, recharge and refocus. I like the excitement of getting on a dirt bike and going into the mountains. It’s part of who I am. 

There was one ride where I hadn’t ridden in 15 years, and I decided I’d get a dirt bike with my friends and let them build it up. It was a KTM 500, and of course they had to re-gear it and give it more horsepower and more torque and stuff like that. I hadn’t been on a bike like that in 15 years, and my first ride on it was to the gas station before we put it in the truck and took it up to a ride called LA-Barstow to Vegas – a 400-mile desert race. It also happened to be 23 degrees. It was just insane. During it, you just hate every second of it, but you know it’s exciting. Every time you stop, you’re like ‘oh my god, that was amazing.’ By the time I finished, it was probably the most challenging thing I’d done since I was a kid. It took every bit of energy, focus, and drive. I rode off a cliff and smashed up; I wiped out in a rock garden – it was physically challenging, mentally challenging, and I look back and it was probably the most fun thing I ever did. 

It’s weird about motorcycles – most of the time when I’m on a bike, it’s just to get out there, and become part of nature and relax. Going out into the mountains and riding through these twists, you really feel part of where you are. You’re part of the landscape; it’s not like driving a car. It’s a feeling of just energy in your body and oneness, and it’s just incredible. But then the next day, I do some stupid adrenaline junkie stuff. I don’t do anything dangerous, but two years ago, I saw on the news that Death Valley hit the highest temperature ever recorded on planet earth, so two hours later I was on an airplane to Las Vegas. I got there and it was 116 degrees in Vegas. I took the BMW and went straight through Death Valley at 120 degrees. It didn’t hit that 131 degrees – I missed it by a day – but it hit 124, and that was a lot of fun. 

On drive, discipline and where that comes from

I think a lot of drive is from within. It’s something that you push yourself to. I think what martial arts taught me was not so much the drive, but once I have that drive to do something, is how to accomplish that – how to have the discipline to do that. Because you can have a dream to do something, and then the first day you start failing and you’re out of it in a day, a week or a month. You need that inner core and you need that discipline to make sure you can stick with it. The first time that I think I realized that drive was – I don’t think I’ve ever told this story before – I was in summer camp, I guess I was in third grade. It wasn't a sleepaway camp; you just took the bus up into the mountains, and twice a week they’d have these huge wrestling matches. They’d have these mats set up, and we all had to be in a circle around them, and it would be king of the mat. One person would get on, you’d wrestle, and the winner would stay while you go around the mat. 

This summer camp was maybe six weeks, and for the first four weeks, I was massively skilled at skirting around the mat and never having to wrestle. I literally went almost the entire summer camp scared to death, and I never got on the mat. One day I hear, ‘Glazier! Get up here!’ So I got up on the mat, and I was scared shitless. But I won the match. And for the rest of the summer, I never lost and I came home with the trophy. It’s a little trophy and I still have it. 

At such an early age, I learned this lesson about fear, and what it can do to stop you from achieving anything. I always look back on that when something is in front of me – I’m going to open this brand up, and I’m going to be the smallest guy – and I remember that story. It’s 50 years later or more, but I remember that feeling of that turn from being scared to death, and letting my fear hold me back and not even trying, to where I unleash that fear and use that same energy in another direction. That story took me into martial arts, and got me to learn all those other skills. Sometimes you’re lucky to have these lessons in life that are dramatic. 

On being a tequila connoisseur 

My day-to-day tequila preference is a brand called Fortaleza, and that’s one of the best brands on the market.  

My go-to tequila is something called El Tesoro White Label or El Tesoro OG. They’re a couple of bottles that haven’t been around since 1991 and 1996. Luckily I have a pretty decent stash of them. It’s probably the greatest tequila ever made, and if you’re lucky enough to find one of those bottles, they’re anywhere from $3k to $5k now. They are still sitting on shelves once in a while and you can pick one up by accident. It’s just amazing tequila that you can’t get anymore because the agave plant itself used to be harvested every nine years, and now it’s every three to four years. The soil was different; the cultivation was different – it can never be replaced even with great brands these days.

The El Tesoro you can still find, but it’s not the same as it used to be. You won’t find that around. 

You can follow Mark’s adventures in tequila on his Agave Idiots Tequila Club Facebook page, or learn more about his industry-leading supplement brand NutraBio here.