Henry Marsh: a success story

He's a full-time businessman now, but the wall of Henry Marsh 's office offers the first hint of another life. There's a large photo of a man leaping over a water barrier in a track and field meet in Berlin. It's a younger, slimmer Marsh en route to setting an American record in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 1983.

It's been 20 years since he ran his last race, but with the arrival of another Olympics, Marsh, a four-time Olympic distance runner, muses on the connection of careers.

"Athletics prepared me for this," he says in his office. "I haven't encountered any situation in business that even comes close to the pressure and stress you experience at the Olympics. I've been through the refiner's fire."

Welcome to the second half of Marsh's life. Now 54, Marsh is co-founder and executive vice president of MonaVie, a wildly successful multilevel marketing company that sells a health juice consisting largely of an exotic berry from South America.

Marsh, a 10-time U.S. champion, famously never captured the gold medal on the track in Olympic and world championship competition thanks to a luckless series of ill-timed boycotts, falls and viruses, but much of what he's dabbled in since then has turned to gold.

Only 3 1/2 years ago, Marsh and three other MonaVie co-founders — Dallin Larsen, Randy Larsen and Charlie Brink — were working out of their basements to start the company. Marsh mortgaged his home, sold property and borrowed money from neighbors and friends to finance the venture.

Since then, the company claims it has made cumulative sales of $1 billion and reached six countries. MonaVie has expanded from home basements to a corner of one floor in a leased building in Sandy, to four spacious floors of the same building.

"It's a fairy tale," says Marsh. "Really, sometimes I have to pinch myself and ask, 'Is this really happening?'"

For Marsh, it was a gutsy move, gambling so much on a berry juice, but he has demonstrated a willingness to take chances throughout a remarkably varied professional career. He took a law degree — paid for by Nike, his running club — at the height of his running career, but he practiced law only briefly.

He worked for Parsons, Behle & Latimer, a Salt Lake-based law firm, for 3 1/2 years before deciding a law career wasn't for him. He worked as a sportscaster for KSL-TV for 18 months before deciding that business "had no future." He started Athletes Unlimited, which managed and represented so called "amateur" athletes during the last days of amateurism, but after 18 months he moved on again.