EMPIRE BUILDER
Brandon Marshall wants to make people healthier
Brandon Marshall couldn’t get out of bed. For four days he laid there, trying to grasp reality.
The NFL veteran felt blindsided when Sean Payton interrupted a Saints wide receivers meeting, took him into the hallway that December 2018 afternoon and informed him of his release. Marshall had reached the end of the road. Thirteen seasons, six Pro Bowls, seven teams and one last crack at a Super Bowl dashed.
“I remember lying in bed and having this out-of-body experience and thinking, ‘This is what they were talking about,’ ” Marshall, now 36, recalled in an interview with USA TODAY Sports. “I remember being just debilitated.”
The only thing that got Marshall out of the bed was his wife and children who were arriving at the airport after flying from Seattle to spend Christmas with him.
Marshall did have a life plan. He had spent six years planning for a second career. It was time to enact it.
Marshall has since worked to build a brand that spans the worlds of media, fashion and fitness. He co-hosts Showtime’s “Inside the NFL,” FS1’s “First Things First” and the “I Am Athlete” podcast that he started six months ago along with fellow former NFL stars Chad Johnson, Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder. He also owns a production company.
Since 2012, he and his team of trainers have groomed athletes in the youth, high school, college and professional ranks at his fitness center House of Athlete in Weston, Florida, and he is planning to kick off a multicity expansion. He also has released a House of Athlete clothing line. Soon, a dietary supplement line will follow.
On the surface, Marshall is building an empire.
But the analyst gigs, the clothing line and the gyms – they’re all tools to further his mission of promoting better mental health.
“We’re in a crisis. … We’re just an unhealthy people, mentally and physically and spiritually,” Marshall said. “The mission is to bridge the gap in the mental and fitness world.”
For nearly a decade, he has sought to remove the stigma of mental health.
In 2011, after years of trying to combat mental health problems on his own, Marshall enrolled in a three-month treatment program at Massachusetts’ McLean Hospital, where after years of exhibiting volatile behavior he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. There, he received the tools and guidance that changed his life. There, he also understood the expansiveness of mental illness.
“I was sitting in self-assessment group therapy and there were probably six or seven of us,” Marshall explained. “A young lady next to me had a bandage on her arm and blood was seeping through it and she was self-harming herself and she was telling the story of how she was cutting herself the night before. The young lady after her told her story of how she tried to take her life the night before, and then there was me, this big, macho football player talking about how I’m just trying to be better and why I think the way I think, and there were a couple more stories and I was just blown away that ‘Wow, someone tried to take their life last night, another is self-harming themselves and you see the blood seeping through the bandage.’
“We all went back into the community. I said, ‘ Damn, how many people are out there suffering and don’t have access, and how many people are suffering in silence?’ ”
Shortly after, Marshall and his wife, Michi, founded Project 375, which promotes awareness of mental health and raises funds for free mental health treatment. Marshall famously wore neon green cleats during a game (drawing a $10,500 fine) to promote Mental Health Awareness Week. He and a group of other players helped lobby the NFL to begin requiring all 32 teams to employ full-time mental health practitioners. (The league did institute this policy in 2018.)
Around 2014, Marshall created the vision of using health and fitness to reach people suffering from mental illness. He wanted to expand his training facility to serve more than just athletes, but he didn’t know enough about how to run a business.
So he read Jim Collins’ “Good to Great,” which studied why Fortune 500 companies succeed or fail. Then one day while on a flight, he read a Delta Sky magazine story on Harvard business professor Anita Elberse and her book, “Blockbusters: Hit-Making, Risk-Taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment.” Marshall hunted down the professor’s number.
“I didn’t even realize that people actually read those magazines,” Elberse told USA TODAY Sports with a chuckle. “But (Marshall) did. I was immediately impressed by how much he understood the business side of things. There are lots of athletes that are smart, but I think he’s the kind of guy who does his homework. Who reads books by Harvard business school professors in their free time when they are a wide receiver in the NFL, and then reaches out to that professor and asks, ‘Hey, next time you’re in Chicago, can we talk?’ ”
Elberse did meet with Marshall and soon invited him to take part in a new executive education course at Harvard.
“He blew all of us away,” she said. “He is this sponge, and I think what he has done over the course of the program and over the course of knowing him, he keeps thinking bigger and bigger. He’s obviously very smart. He can keep up with us at Harvard, and then some.”
During one of the course’s case studies, Marshall realized how the visibility of working on major media networks would factor in the success of his future ventures.
“Magic Johnson stood out to me, and I was like, ‘Why is this guy doing television and probably losing money? This dude is probably worth almost half a billion dollars. Why is he talking about basketball right now?’ and I realized it was a platform,” Marshall said. “So, that’s when I got into (analyst work), the production work. This House of Athlete thing, this I am Athlete thing was a part of the plan back then. I wanted to start to establish myself while I was playing so I could transition smoother because since I got out of that bed that day, I’ve been rolling, bro.”
Following his retirement, Marshall wondered why the common person couldn’t have access to the same physical, dietary and mental health amenities as pro athletes.
“He comes from an underfunded community in Pittsburgh and even when he was in Orlando, and he knows the benefits of the things he’s had access to and how it would benefit the everyday person,” explained House of Athlete President Ese Ighedosa, whom Marshall hired away from the NFL in May to help him build his company. “It’s just how he’s wired. He loves sharing knowledge.”
So, last year, Marshall launched his House of Athlete rebrand. He hired mental health practitioners, massage therapists and yoga instructors to go with his staff of personal trainers to serve the general population at the 20,000-square-foot facility.
“Eighty percent of sport is mental. So why don’t we work more on that side? We don’t. We neglect it,” Marshall said. “So that’s what House of Athlete is, and as a huge differentiator, you can sign up and book a strength class, you can book a conditioning class, you could book a yoga class, you could book a cool class in our altitude chamber room, and you can book a self-assessment, which is a group of people sitting in the stadium seating and checking in on life together. Community. That’s one of the most impactful things we do here.”
The Weston facility currently serves roughly 500 patrons, and in four months, ground will be broken in Miami. Marshall said he has also begun laying the groundwork for opening 43 House of Athlete facilities in major markets across the country.
Drawing on the lessons of leadership from his time in the NFL – Marshall has notebooks filled with observations of every coach, general manager and owner whom he has played for – and the knowledge gained from the business world, Marshall believes he is on his way to delivering lasting impacts on lives. That’s his true goal.
“The results,” Marshall summed up his measuring stick for success. “Being able to come into my facility, and hearing, ‘Thanks House of Athlete. I lost 100 pounds in seven months.’ ‘ Thank you House of Athlete. I lost my brother or my mom, but being able to come to flow class with Kayla gave me the courage to face that and I feel alive and revitalized.’ That is success. Are people optimizing their health? Are they hitting their goals? Do they feel good again? That’s the why.”