Robert Brix Glover

ATEOTT 14 Transcript

EPISODE 14

[INTRO]

“On sentencing day, or I guess the day where I was going to see if I was going to be considered guilty of whatever, the judge looked me in my face and he says, “In my 30 years, this is going to be the ﬁrst time I’m not putting someone in jail for felony robbery, but I don’t have to put you in jail because your life is over. Your life is over. Everything you’ve worked for up until this point is now null and void.”

[00:00:41] LW: Hi, friends, and welcome back to another exciting episode of At the End of the Tunnel. So, this week, I’m interviewing Robert Glover, also known as Brix Fitness. I ﬁrst discov- ered Brix on YouTube when I somehow stumbled across a video that he created, which was like this mini-documentary narrated by him and featuring all of these really interesting clips showing his weight loss journey, and it really got my attention, because he’s so transparent about where he came from and how he transformed his body. And it deﬁnitely was not an overnight process.

At his heaviest, Brix was close to 370 pounds, and he tried every fad diet under the sun, but kept falling off the wagon as people do. And then after one of his best friends died from an obe- sity-related health issue, Brix decided that it was time to get control of his weight once and for all and he went on a mission to lose more than 140 pounds.

So, we’re going to talk about his story and how he found the motivation to stick with it long enough to actually compete in a fitness competition. That’s right. He was on stage with ripped- up fitness professionals and he competed, and he went from barely being able to see his own feet, to having a six-pack. So, we’re going to talk about how all of that happened and how he eventually became a health and fitness YouTuber with over half million subscribers to his chan- nel where he pumps out tons of free content to help other people who are looking to gain control over their weight.

One note, there is some adult language in this conversation, and Brix often refers to himself as fat. But ultimately this is not a conversation about body shaming or making anybody feel bad for being heavy. It’s about his own experience. And if you listen with an open mind, I think you may

ﬁnd that what he has to say about his body transformation can really apply to any sort of physi- cal, emotional or even spiritual transformation where you have to get to a point where you say, “You know what? Enough is enough.” And you have to take different steps to ﬁnd your way out. I think you’re going to love Brix’s story. So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to Mr. Robert “Brix” Glover.

Brix, thanks for coming on to the podcast. As always, I’d like to start my conversations off by talking about childhood. So, when you think back to little Brix growing up in Brownsville, New York, and/or Germany – I know there’s a little story behind that. What was your favorite toy or activity back in those days?

[00:03:28] RG: My favorite toy was probably my big wheel. If you want to consider that a toy/ mode of transportation up and down the block, or my Transformers.

[00:03:40] LW: What did you like about Transformers?

[00:03:42] RG: You know, manipulating the toys and kind of putting things together. From what I remember, that was the appeal of Transformers for me.

[00:03:51] LW: Did you ever do like a Transformer Halloween cost – Were you that deep into it, or the movies?

[00:03:56] RG: I did, but I made it with construction paper, and staplers, and staples. I got photos of that.

[00:04:04] LW: Have you seen that there’s like an Instagram video of this kid who has a Trans- former Halloween thing on? His dad pushes him. It’s like a car and then he like stands up and you just –

[00:04:15] RG: Yeah, I’ve seen that.

[00:04:16] LW: That was cool, right? So that was you.

[00:04:19] RG: Yeah, that was me. That was me right there.

[00:04:22] LW: What’s the story with Brownsville and Germany?

[00:04:24] RG: I think I was about 2 or 3 years old, my dad – If I’m reciting the story correctly. My dad and my mom was having an issue, and he decided to take me. He was the Army at the time. So, he was stationed in Germany. And I lived with my dad for four years in Germany until I was about 6 or 7 years old, around that time. So that’s how I ended up in Germany. But then I moved back to New York City, to Brownsville when – I guess my dad told me, I started asking for my mom. So, he shipped me back on a plane by myself six years old.

[00:05:07] LW: That’s a pretty stark contrast going from Germany to Brownsville.

[00:05:10] RG: It was a total culture shock for me, and I remember, because I didn’t speak much English.

[00:05:16] LW: You spoke German.

[00:05:17] RG: Yeah, I spoke – I was ﬂuent German. I didn’t speak English at all.

[00:05:20] LW: Wow!

[00:05:20] RG: Yeah. So, I came home to New York with my mom and she was with my step- dad who – That was an interesting scenario that I inherited once I moved back to Brooklyn with my mom.

[00:05:34] LW: What was that like learning English as a ﬁve-year-old black kid in Brownsville?

[00:05:40] RG: It’s crazy, because I remember pretty vividly having the communication barrier between my family and the people at school. But I picked it up pretty fast. I remember, it didn’t set me back too far in school. So, I must have picked it up quick enough to not have to do a grade-over.

[00:06:04] LW: That must have resulted in some loneliness, I can imagine.

[00:06:09] RG: Yeah. I don’t remember any like clear memories around that, but I can imagine that it would.

[00:06:15] LW: How would you deﬁne your childhood? And I don’t mean as adult Brix looking back to the ﬁve or six-year-old, but maybe like the 10-year-old brix. What was your relationship with childhood at that period of time?

[00:06:30] RG: I just remember seeing a lot of people in pain. I remember like my family, we all lived together. There was about 3 families in my two-bedroom apartment. So, I was very close with my cousins. There was a lot of things that in retrospect I didn’t understand what was happening, but there was things that I was seeing that I felt like I shouldn’t be seeing for sure. But if we’re talking about from the perspective of maybe 10 or 11-year-old Brix, I just knew that it wasn’t normal. My life wasn’t normal. I was very aware of that early.

[00:07:08] LW: Were you experiencing any mental health issues back then that early?

[00:07:12] RG: Yeah, I do. I remember having night terrors as a kid. I remember experiencing these like deep feelings of guilt, and I guess that’s the best way to describe it. I know I felt a lot of guilt and shame as a kid. Don’t know why. I can’t really speak on why and where that came from, but that’s a very distinct memory I have.

[00:07:35] LW: Did you have a lot of friends?

[00:07:37] RG: Not really. I mean, I grew up with my cousins around. I have two siblings. So, I guess those were my friends. There were a few people that lived on my block that we played on the street together. I wouldn’t say I had a lot of friends, but there were a few people.

[00:07:53] LW: Brownsville is considered the hood, right? As hood as it gets.

[00:07:59] RG: That is hood of all hoods.

[00:08:00] LW: Right. What’s it known for? Were there any hip-hop references to Brownville?

[00:08:05] RG: Yeah. So, M.O.P was an iconic rap group from Brownsville, Brooklyn. There’s Helter Skelter. There’re a lot of underground rappers that probably a lot of people would know about. But, yeah, M.O.P was the biggest artist that was connected to my hood. They had a song called Ante Up. It was like a robbery anthem.

[00:08:28] LW: Right. Robbery. Speaking of which, I read that you may or may not have dab- bled in some gang activity as a kid? Was that happening around that time?

[00:08:39] RG: That was culture, man. That was culture in my hood. So, yeah, deﬁnitely got caught up in that as a teenager.

[00:08:48] LW: And when I grew up in the South, I remember we used to eat mainly to get full or because something tasted good, and that was it. That was all the consideration, right? So I’m curious what your relationship with food was at that time growing up.

[00:09:09] RG: If took more than 12 minutes to make it, I never experienced it. That’s a good way to kind of sum it up.

[00:09:19] LW: Boxed, microwaved, all that.

[00:09:21] RG: And Rice-A-Roni, Chef Boyardee, ramen noodles. That was pretty much all we ate, and fried chicken. If my mom got her check, she would probably make some baked maca- roni and cheese. But for the most part, there was the high-sodium quick foods in the box, in the can, so processed. Yeah, that’s all I knew.

[00:09:43] LW: What were your sort of life aspirations at that time? Because I mean you may not have remembered it, but you were essentially a citizen of the world. Like you’d been outside of Brownsville. You’ve been to Europe. You’ve experienced international air travel and all of that. I’m sure – So you had more of that than the kids in your neighborhood. What were you thinking about where you were going in life or what were the possibilities were when you were a kid?

[00:10:07] RG: I wanted to be a vet. That was my ﬁrst dream. I was very into pets in general. Not just dogs – Especially dogs. I was a dog person very early in life. But as I kid, I had a snake, I had lizards, hamsters, ﬁsh.

[00:10:25] LW: You mom was okay with all that?

[00:10:28] RG: I had that with my dad. And then, yeah, my mom – Eventually, we adopted a dog. I remember that. And we had hamsters with my mom. Yeah, she did let us have pets. I had an iguana.

[00:10:56] LW: I’m assuming you went to high school and did all that stuff. Did you get into sports?

[00:11:01] RG: Yeah, I played some varsity basketball. The school that I went to had a football team. We had a one-hour commute to get to the practice field. So, I wasn’t willing. I’ll pass. Be- cause originally the first high school I went to, I went there because I wanted to play football. I got kicked out first day and ended up going to a different school that the football coach was not – Football is not really big in New York City anyway. So, I ended up playing two years of varsity basketball.

[00:11:35] LW: What you get kicked out for?

[00:11:37] RG: I always had a baby face, and I’ve always been a really nice, calm-natured person. And in the hood, that’s looked at as weakness. So, ﬁrst day of school, somebody pretty much tested me and I felt like I had to make a statement very early. It’s like jail. It’s like you feel like you’re in jail. I felt like I had to make a statement. So, I broke homie’s jaw, and I got kicked out of school.

[00:12:08] LW: Was that your ﬁrst ﬁght?

[00:12:09] RG: No.

[00:12:09] LW: So, you’ve been practicing making statements and you knew the rules.

[00:12:14] RG: For sure. I wasn’t a troublemaker. I wasn’t a bully. But if it came across my ta- ble, I handled it.

[00:12:24] LW: At that time in your life, did you have a mentor or someone who is kind of in your corner who was trying to kind of guide you along that righteous path at that time or was it mostly like gang inﬂuences and things like that?

[00:12:38] RG: Yeah. No. The male ﬁgures in my life, that wasn’t their agenda.

[00:12:45] LW: Any female? Like older people who kind of saw the potential in you and said, “Hey, Brix, take this path.”

[00:12:53] RG: My grandmother tried to encourage me to stay out of the streets. She was probably the only person. If anybody ﬁts that description, that would be my grandmother.

[00:13:02] LW: And you eventually went to – Was it Norfolk State?

[00:13:05] RG: Yup.

[00:13:06] LW: Why Norfolk State?

[00:13:08] RG: My kid’s mom and I, we were dating since high school, and I was a year older than her. When I graduated, I went to school down in Florida. That’s a long story. That didn’t work out.

[00:13:20] LW: Where did you go?

[00:13:22] RG: I went to a community college in Tampa.

[00:13:24] LW: Okay.

[00:13:26] RG: Yeah. And I was staying with my dad who this was the ﬁrst time he and I have basically reconnected for the most part. It was probably a good 6 or 7 years since we connected up until that point. So, I moved down to Florida. I was living with my stepmom. He was hardly there, because my dad was a travel nurse at the time. And that situation went south pretty quick. Yeah.

[00:13:53] LW: Power struggle situation?

[00:13:55] RG: Yeah. My stepmom – Can I cuss on this?

[00:13:58] LW: Yeah.

[00:13:59] RG: Yeah. No. My stepmom didn’t really fuck with me like that at all. Yeah, she wanted me out of there. There was some things that went down. She made sure I got out of there.

[00:14:12] LW: During this time, were you self-ﬁnancing your education or did you have a scholarship? How does that play out with your decisions that you were making to go to this place and go to that other place?

[00:14:25] RG: I was working a part-time job. At the time I was still kind of in the streets. So, I had little hustles going on.

[00:14:32] LW: Pharmaceutical salesman type thing?

[00:14:34] RG: Yeah. That type of deal. Because that was all I knew. I tried to do the McDon- alds thing when I was 17. That lasted for a few weeks. And then I ended up getting a job at – I was doing UPS customer service down there in Tampa. So, I eventually let it go. But the bottom fell on that situation before I can really kind of ﬁnd the straightened arrow.

[00:15:03] LW: So why Norfolk State?

[00:15:05] RG: So, it was my kid’s mom. She went to a high school that specialized in health profession. So, she graduated with her LPN in Norfolk State. It was a school that was on her list for the RN program. The school is notorious for their registered nurse program. And I also wanted to ﬁnd something that was not as far as Florida, but still away from New York City. So, I applied when she applied. A few of my friends from my block, we all applied together. And then it was probably about 7 or us, we just packed up a rental van and just moved in sort of dorms.

[00:15:40] LW: Did you have kids at that point?

[00:15:42] RG: No.

[00:15:44] LW: Okay. So, college is where you kind of picked up a lot of weight.

[00:15:47] RG: Yes, unfortunately.

[00:15:50] LW: What was going on there?

[00:15:51] RG: That was the culture. I don’t know if this was just an HBCU thing, but the freshman, 15 for most, was the freshman 50. This was the ﬁrst time in my life I had access to unlimited food. Like the amount of food was always – My mom, when she bought a box of cereal, she would put it in individual Ziplock bags and keep it in her room and she would ration them out. That’s the lifestyle I lived my entire life. I had to ask her to have more than two eggs. Like scarci- ty mindset to say the least. And it wasn’t so much a ﬁnancial thing towards the end of my childhood. When I was a teenager, we weren’t super poor like we were when I was a kid.

But anyway, so this was my ﬁrst-time having access to unlimited food, and I didn’t know much about nutrition. I didn’t know how calories worked. Yeah, I started putting on a lot of weight that ﬁrst year in college.

[00:16:57] LW: Were you ﬁt before all of that? Did you have a good body image and everything before that?

[00:17:03] RG: I’d never considered myself fit. I wasn’t obese, but I was always what you call big boned, right? Whatever that means. I’ve always been a husky kid, a thick husky kid. But I was athletic. Like I said, I played varsity basketball, but I was never what you would call fit. You would never look at me and say, “Hey, that guy is fit.”

[00:17:28] LW: How much weight are we talking?

[00:17:30] RG: So, freshman year I gained – Well, that first semester, I probably gained about 40 pounds one semester. Yeah, easily. And then I was having issues with financial aid. I couldn’t come back to school that following semester. So, I went back home to New York. But yeah, that first semester, I definitely gained at least 40 pounds.

[00:17:53] LW: Did you recognize that something had happened, or did you just feel like that was just you getting older?

[00:17:59] RG: In retrospect, I remember having to buy a pants size up, and I said, “What the heck is going on?” I don’t remember showing up in the mirror at this point. The whole weigh thing didn’t really hit me until one day my mom came down to visit. I was working at Best Buy at the time. I’ll never forget it. And her jaw dropped when she see me. Her jaw dropped and she’s like, “You are not my son.” That’s what she said to me. “This is not my son.” I’m like, “What the hell is she talking about?”

[00:18:31] LW: In the middle of Best Buy, she wanted to have that conversation.

[00:18:33] RG: Yeah, in the middle of Best Buy. Yeah, walked in. I’m on the clock and she’s like –

[00:18:37] LW: You’re happy to see your –

[00:18:38] RG: Yeah. I hadn’t seen her in probably two years.

[00:18:41] LW: Wow!

[00:18:42] RG: And she’s like, “You are not my son.” But at this point, I was that fat. And I don’t know how it happened, but that was the moment that I realized that, “Holy shit! I had really put on 150 pounds [inaudible 00:18:55].”

[00:18:56] LW: How much do you weigh total at this point?

[00:18:59] RG: Right now?

[00:19:01] LW: No. Back then in Best Buy.

[00:19:03] RG: I would get an error message anytime I got on the scale. I know that scale went up to at least 350. So, I don’t even know. Honestly, I say my heaviest is 360, but I probably pushed 370 to be honest. I have some photos where I’d think I was almost 370.

[00:19:22] LW: And then what happened after that conversation? Did anything shift?

[00:19:26] RG: No. No. I got mad at her. I was in my feelings, because I’m like, “Ma, what are you talking about?” I guess a seed was planted, because that’s the ﬁrst time I realized that I was fat, which is strange, because it’s so obvious that I was fat. I was fucking fat. But, I mean, no. My life was so stressful. I’m taking 18 credit hours. I’m working –

[00:19:46] LW: So, you were back in school at that point.

[00:19:56] RG: Yeah, I was in school.

[00:19:57] LW: And you were paying it all yourself.

[00:20:00] RG: Yes. Well, I was going in debt obviously. I wasn’t paying anything out of pocket at the time. But yeah, I had a very stressful life. School – My daughter was born in ’06. So, I had a newborn around this time, because I think that’s the reason why my mom came down, to see my daughter right when she was born.

[00:20:20] LW: So, you were still with your high school sweetheart?

[00:20:22] RG: Yes.

[00:20:23] LW: Did you guys got married at that point?

[00:20:25] RG: Yes. We’d gotten married, because we had to in order to get insurance, because her mom’s insurance recently kicked her off and we needed to have a – She needed to have a chance of status at her job in order to qualify for health insurance, because initially we were paying for the visits out of pocket, the prenatal visits. And we weren’t able to do that the whole entire time. So, yeah.

[00:20:49] LW: So, the Best Buy insurance?

[00:20:52] RG: No, her insurance. So, she working as an LPN.

[00:20:56] LW: Okay.

[00:20:56] RG: Yeah, the hospital insurance needed her to have a change of status in order for her to qualify for health insurance.

[00:21:07] LW: And what was your mental state like at that point? You’re now a new dad. You’re fat, to your own admission. Your mom called you out. You’re married, living with your high school sweetheart. How was your mental state? Like when you think back, waking up those mornings and going to bed at night, like how are you feeling about yourself and about life?

[00:21:27] RG: I remember being depressed a lot. But I’ve always been an optimistic upbeat person. So, I hid a lot of my pain. I didn’t let the world see it. And I just remember feeling like a robot and just very unfulﬁlled, and food was my escape from reality, because I just didn’t like my life. My relationship, I wasn’t secure in my relationship, because she was a very pretty, petite woman who had been with me prior to me putting on all this weight. Of course, that created a lot of complexities. Yeah, I wasn’t secure.

So that, I’m pretty sure, put a lot of weight on our relationship. And she’s an amazing human. I don’t know how she did it, to be honest. I don’t know how she dealt with me all those years. To this day, man, I give her a lot of credit for how she navigated the entire situation.

[00:22:29] LW: Did you develop any tactics or coping mechanisms to hide the weight that obviously wasn’t hiding the weight, but you thought in your head, it’s like, “If I wear a big shirt, then it’s going to hide my –” Whatever.

[00:22:42] RG: I think less about physically trying to hide it, but just more overcompensating in other areas to make me feel light or –. I’m from New York City. So, by nature, we’re like really ﬂashy people from my hood at least. That’s how we did it. So, I wore a lot of jewelry. I made sure that my car had 20 inch rims on it at the time, which was a big deal. I did a lot of –

[00:23:16] LW: A lot of externals.

[00:23:18] RG: Yeah, a lot of that type of stuff.

[00:23:18] LW: Validation.

[00:23:19] RG: Yeah. And honestly, I wanted my clothes to be small as possible, because I felt extra fat when I wore big clothes. I needed little jeans. That was the wave at the time. The bag- gy jeans had went out of style. So now my jeans ﬁt – Now when I look back at those photos, I can’t believe I wore those jeans.

[00:23:42] LW: Where would you shop? How did you ﬁnd clothes?

[00:23:45] RG: It was tough. I’ve always kind of been a good bargain shopper. Back then, I think it was Plato’s Closet. It was like a secondhand. I would ﬁnd designer jeans.

[00:23:58] LW: Big enough to ﬁt you for 370 pounds.

[00:23:59] RG: Yeah. So, there were certain brands, right? There were certain brands, a few brands. But for the most part, I wore a lot of Polo, because that’s the only thing, the only brand that made 4Xs. Their jeans have been to 46s. I was the Polo guy for the most part.

[00:24:19] LW: Almost by default. Like you had to do Polo.

[00:24:23] RG: I had to.

[00:24:24] LW: Yeah. That’s awesome. Your wife never said anything about it?

[00:24:30] RG: No. She never made me feel like the fat ass that I was, bro. I can’t remember ever seeing anything. But on top of the weight, she also made a hell of a lot more money than me. So that was something else that made me feel very insecure. I remember that bothering me a lot. I mean, I think overtime, being with someone who is just irresponsible who didn’t take care of himself, didn’t have any pride about his appearance. I mean, I did have pride about my appearance.

But as far as my health, the way I took care of myself. Eventually, I’m pretty sure that’s what led to her kind of stepping into a more masculine role in our relationship. That, of course, I felt emasculated, because I wasn’t behaving like a man who should be respected, should behave. And that, on top of insecurities, in top of the health issues, on top of the mommy issues and all the mental health stuff that I was dealing with, the depression and anxiety. It was a formula for disaster. And that’s why like I said, I give her a lot of credit, because never once did she make me feel how I was feeling about myself. She never said anything to me to make me feel bad at all. Not that I could remember.

[00:25:53] LW: You said somewhere that you had never had a salad up until around this time.

[00:25:58] RG: I was 30 years old when I ate my ﬁrst salad. Yeah. 30 years old, yeah. Around 30. Right before my 30th birthday.

[00:26:16] LW: Talk a little bit about getting in trouble with law.

[00:26:20] RG: Okay. I just graduated and I had landed a really good job. And I was making the most money legally that I’ve ever made in my life.

[00:26:34] LW: And you weren’t doing any of those other extracurricular activities at that point.

[00:26:38] RG: Yes, completely. One morning, I had a photo shoot. Because at the time I was a music artist. I had a single on the radio. I had opened up Kendrick Lamar. I did a few days with Mac Mill. This I thought was going to be my thing. But anyway, so I had a photo shoot that day, and the Jordan Cement 4s, which was a very popular shoe at the time was being released. And I had to have them.

So, I’m on line with a gentleman. We’re on line for four hours. We exchanged pretty much our whole life stories. We get to the front of the line. He’s ﬁrst, I’m second in line. The Foot Locker workers comes outside, he says, “Hey, the next person in line who wears a size 13 can buy the shoe.” This guy wears – He wears size 9. I already know that. Like I said, we exchanged life stories. So, he walks in the store and I’m like – I called him by his name. I’m like, “Bro, what are you doing?” And he kind of just like ignored me and he bought the shoes. And I’m not justifying myself.

[00:27:48] LW: You’re size 13.

[00:27:49] RG: Yeah, that was my size, and I’m real big on integrity. I’m real big on code. There’s a culture in the sneaker game. But you just don’t violate certain rules. He was obviously trying to resell the shoes, and it was a very clear – He violated. And again, how I handled this situation was wrong. But he came out the store and I just took the shoes from him. I was upset. I reacted. I felt disrespected. So, I took the shoes. And a few days later, I was –

[00:28:26] LW: Did you pay him for the shoes?

[00:28:27] RG: I would have, if I had cash. Because I had my debit card. And that’s a part of the story. Whenever I tell that story, if I have a cash in my pocket in that moment, I’m throwing the cash on the ﬂoor. It wasn’t about robbing this dude. I had plenty of money. But it wasn’t about that at all. But yeah, so I made that terrible decision to take the shoes from the dude. And the

Foot Locker got the whole thing on camera. A few days later, I get a call, “Hey, bro. I see on the news. The police are looking for you.” I’m like, “What?” At the moment when he said that, I had no clue why. Why are the police looking for me? And then it hit me, like, “Oh, shit.”

[00:29:09] LW: So, when you got the shoes, the guy just kind of stood there shocked that somebody just took the shoes out of his arm and you just kind of walked away, or did you run away, or what did you do?

[00:29:17] RG: No. I didn’t run. I walked away, because I knew I was going to do it. I told the girl who’s with me at the time. I’m like, “Yo, go start the car.” When we went inside, I’m like – Be- cause I already knew I was about to take them.

[00:29:30] LW: So, it’s pre-meditated?

[00:29:30] RG: Yes, for sure. I walked away. He tried to follow us, and I told her to pull over. Be- cause I’m like, “Why are you following me? What are you going to do?” I got out the car and kind of walked up to him like, “What’s up?”

[00:29:45] LW: Brownsville style.

[00:29:46] RG: Yeah, facts. Because I’m like, “Why are you following me?” Yeah. So we got back in the car and drove off and then a few days later I got the call from a friend, “Yo bro, you’re on the news.”

[00:29:56] LW: So, he’s the one that’s pursued the charges, the guy?

[00:30:00] RG: Yes. Off the record, once we get off the record, I’ll tell you the wildest connection about who this dude ends up being. It’s crazy.

[00:30:12] LW: Okay. So, you’re looking at – What? Five to 10 on a felony charge?

[00:30:17] RG: Yup, Five to 10 felony robbery.

[00:30:20] LW: That’s crazy. For a pair of shoes?

[00:30:21] RG: Yeah, bro.

[00:30:23] LW: They’re handing out guys 5 to 10 years in prison for a pair of shoes.

[00:30:28] RG: If the item is worth $150 or more or something like that, I think that was the threshold. Yeah, it’s considered felony robbery.

[00:30:37] LW: That’s crazy. Just throw somebody’s life away. Five years in a cage?

[00:30:43] RG: Yup.

[00:30:44] LW: Wow! You obviously didn’t know that at the time?

[00:30:46] RG: No. So the case, it took about 7 months for the whole situation. So, I went to court on sentencing day, right? Or I guess the day where I was going to see if I was going to be considered guilty of whatever, the judge looked me in my face and he says, “In my 30 years, this is going to be the ﬁrst time I’m not putting someone in jail for felony robbery, but I don’t have to put you in jail because your life is over. Your life is over. Everything you’ve worked for up until this point is now null and void.”

[00:31:24] LW: What did he mean by that?

[00:31:26] RG: He’s saying that me being a black man with a felony, he told me I threw my degree away. He said, “You just threw your degree away. You’ll never be able to get a job. I don’t need to put you in jail. Your life is over.” He looked me in my face and told me that.

[00:31:43] LW: Was he a black judge?

[00:31:44] RG: No. He was an old white judge. Old white judge. And those words haunted me for a very long time. For a very long time.

[00:31:52] LW: Did you have a lawyer?

[00:31:54] RG: I have a court-appointed lawyer. I couldn’t afford a lawyer.

[00:31:57] LW: Man, you’re lucky.

[00:31:59] RG: I know, bro.

[00:31:59] LW: 90% of the people in jail had a court-appointed lawyer or no lawyer at all.

[00:32:04] RG: Yeah. He was kind of trash, but I don’t even know how – I mean, it was my ﬁrst offense. I had a degree. I had a really good job up until that point. So, I had a lot going for myself that worked in my favor. I guess he ﬁgured just giving the felony, it was enough.

[00:32:25] LW: Okay. I want to do a quick pause, because I saw a video of you doing a self- confessional before you went into court and then after you went into court. When did that start? When did you start doing these confessional videos? Was it tied to your Best Buy stance where you got into gadgets? How did that even start back then?

[00:32:46] RG: So, like I told you, I was doing music at the time. So, I was doing like a video journal for – I don’t know why I was doing a video journal, but I have tons of these like video journal entries where I’m talking about just random things in my life. I don’t know what inspired me to do that. I’ve always been a person that documented things. I love capturing memories and moments. But yeah, so I don’t know exactly why I was recording that, but I’m glad I did.

[00:33:25] LW: When did you start doing it? Do you remember? Did someone give you a camcorder at one point in your life and you’re like, “Oh, let me use this.”

[00:33:33] RG: Yeah. So, my grandfather – Damn! You’re making me think about this. I’ve never connected these two. My grandfather would record us a lot, and he always had whatever latest camcorder that was out. And I’m always intrigued by it. I would always kind of make home movies. When the Blair Witch Project came out, I kind of took a little Blair Witch situation. So, I

[00:34:07] LW: What would you do with it?

[00:34:09] RG: It would just sit on a hard drive. Sometimes I would look at it, but for the most part, I didn’t.

[00:34:15] LW: You kept these little tapes and these little mini-HD tapes or whatever in little boxes somewhere?

[00:34:21] RG: Yup. That’s what it was back then. You’re right. This was before everything went digital. But yeah, I would just keep them in a shoebox. Yeah. But that video that you’re talking about, it was on my webcam. It was on my webcam on my computer. Yes, I’ve always kind of just been into documenting what was going on in my life. Very valuable stuff now for me.

[00:34:44] LW: Yeah. It plays a role in what happened later. That’s why I’m bringing it up now just to see what the genesis was behind that. Because it’s not usual for someone to do that, especially around court, a situation where you’re looking at possibly going away for a long time. Because if you were convicted, you would have been taken to jail right away, I’m assuming? So that could have – That was a pivotal day.

[00:35:09] RG: I almost shit myself in that court. Because I didn’t know if I was going to walk out of that courtroom that day.

[00:35:17] LW: Was your whole family there in the pews?

[00:35:20] RG: No. The girl I was dating at the time was there. And then I had a really close friend by the name of Shante, who I’m really close with still to this day who was at the court with me. And that was it.

[00:35:32] LW: You had a kid at that time, right?

[00:35:33] RG: Yup, both of them. I remember having to call my kid’s mom about this situation. Yeah, I had both my kids at this time.

[00:35:43] LW: Did anybody understand your perspective? Or did they all thought you’re just being a knucklehead when you did that?

[00:35:49] RG: I think most people – Because I wasn’t a bully, and I wasn’t a thief. And people know that about me. They also know that I don’t tolerate disrespect. So, nobody thought I was being a knucklehead. Everyone agreed that I made a bad decision. But once I explained to them what happened, they’re all like, “Okay, yeah. Yeah. That’s something you would do.”

[00:36:13] LW: Did that experience of getting the probation, how did it shift your perspective on things?

[00:36:20] RG: I felt like I had another chance. I had another chance. Yes, in the back of my mind the felony thing was going to be an issue. And I remember leaving the courtroom feeling like – Excuse the pun. Just I felt like, “Okay. Yeah, it’s time to change some things up.” And I have videos from around that time where I spoke about my realization of having to evolve, like having to grow as a man. Having to do better, and I was very aware of that. This was kind of the rug being snatched from underneath my foot and me hitting my head on the concrete hard as hell and saying, “Okay, you got to live different now.”

[00:37:09] LW: And then something happened to a friend of yours. Was that soon before that or after that?

[00:37:14] RG: It was probably a few months after – I don’t remember. I think I got – So I got convicted in October, and he passed away in January. He was a close friend. I couldn’t believe it, man. I couldn’t believe it. He was in his late 20s. And it tore me up.

So, he passed away from lifestyle-induced medical conditions. He had high blood pressure. He had diabetes, sleep apnea. And yeah, he just kind of passed away in his sleep. He had a young kid at the time. Yeah, it was tough.

[00:38:01] LW: What happened on March 1st, 2013?

[00:38:06] RG: Man, I woke up that morning and something just felt different. Something clicked. It’s one of those things that’s beyond language. Trying to explain what that morning was like for me. I knew that my life would never be the same after that morning. I made a decision to be a different person. I kind of took on a new identity in that moment.

[00:38:34] LW: So, you’re 346 pounds that morning. Are you still with your wife at that time?

[00:38:40] RG: No. Me and my wife, we divorced maybe two years before.

[00:38:49] LW: Estranged, or friendly, or what?

[00:38:52] RG: We made it work for the kids. We weren’t friends. But she was extremely patient with me. Extremely patient with me. She handled that whole situation like a G. She’s a G, bro, to this day. Such an amazing human.

[00:39:08] LW: So, when you woke up, you’re by yourself?

[00:39:10] RG: Yeah, because I had just kicked my girlfriend out. That’s another story. So, yeah, I was single. I was living in an apartment. I had two roommates.

[00:39:21] LW: What were you job at the time?

[00:39:24] RG: I didn’t have a job.

[00:39:26] LW: Because of the felony?

[00:39:26] RG: Yeah. So, I kind of started hustling again, which is another big part of the story, because I reached a point in my life where I felt a calling to sacriﬁce every shortcut, every one. I had to give it up. I felt – Oh man! That story gets kind of deep, man, because a lot of my close friends, they’re in jail to this day. And had I not made that decision when I made it, that would have been my fate for sure.

[00:39:58] LW: You didn’t have a car either at the time.

[00:40:00] RG: No. My car – My car was jacked up. So it was out of commission. I was still making payments on it, but it wasn’t working. It hadn’t been working for months.

[00:40:10] LW: What did you do? March 1st, is going to be – This is it. It’s going to be a new life. What’s the ﬁrst step?

[00:40:16] RG: The ﬁrst step for me – Because I had already ﬁgured at this point the best place to invest my energy and to trying to make my life better would be to lose weight, right?

[00:40:31] LW: Why? Why lose weight?

[00:40:34] RG: That’s just what I’ve strategized in my head. Okay, at the time, I’m still thinking about pursuing music. I wanted to be more conﬁdent. I wanted to be more marketable. I also didn’t want to be depressed anymore. So, it just felt like that, the ﬁrst domino, that if I just tip this one over, everything else would pretty much get better. And like that’s exactly what happened. That’s exactly what happened.

[00:41:02] LW: Had anyone mentioned that to you before? Like any of your mentors, maybe in the music industry say, “Hey, Brix. If you just lose a little weight, man?”

[00:41:10] RG: Yeah, I had people on my team that would tell me that all the time. Particularly the women that was involved in the movement. They’re like, “Brix, man. You make a lot of music about the ladies and you kind of got this appeal. If you lost some weight, man, you’d be unstop- pable.”

[00:41:27] LW: You’re like, “Well, Biggie Small is the biggest rapper ever.”

[00:41:30] RG: Yeah. But I always wanted to lose weight. I struggled with – I’ve always been on some sort of weight loss kick for pretty much the entire time.

[00:41:40] LW: So, you were the fat weight loss guy.

[00:41:42] RG: Yeah, exactly. I was doing The Atkins. I was always doing something, and it was always short-lived. So, I wanted to lose weight. I wasn’t the fat guy that was embracing it. Be- cause remember, I wasn’t fat all my life. This was something that was moving me. So, I deﬁnite- ly didn’t want to be fat anymore.

[00:42:04] LW: Had you connected diet with exercise at that point in your life?

[00:42:08] RG: Yes, only because I think it was the South Beach Diet b ook. I had it in my house. Don’t know where it came from. I wouldn’t have bought it, and none of my roommates would have bought it. I have no clue where that book came from. That was the book that was in my home when I decided to lose weight. And I pretty much understood that diet was the biggest piece in weight loss. I don’t relate to a lot of people who’ll say, “Yeah, I thought was if I worked out and pretty much eat whatever I wanted, I would lose weight.” I never understood that. Yeah, I understood it, that nutrition was the biggest piece.

[00:42:48] LW: At that time, you’re 300 something pounds. Let’s say you weren’t at home, and Brix now, 2020 Brix, walked into your apartment. What are some of the signs that the person who lives in that apartment is on the plus side of 300 pounds?

[00:43:08] RG: I mean, obviously, what was in my cupboard.

[00:43:11] LW: What would you see?

[00:43:13] RG: A lot of Oreos, a lot of ice cream, a lot of fucking cereal.

[00:43:21] LW: Coke, pop, that kind of stuff?

[00:43:22] RG: Yeah, I drank a lot of soda. I drink a lot of fucking Hennessey, bro. I used to drink a lot of alcohol. So, there was always bottles in the crib, empty bottles, full bottles. I was kind of a junkie person too, which is a big part of my identity now. I’m like super OCD neat freak.

And that’s something that I’ve developed intentionally, because I connected being messy to being fat.

[00:43:52] LW: So, you went to the kitchen pantry, you threw all that stuff out day one or what happened?

[00:43:56] RG: Threw everything out. I threw everything away. Like everything. My roommates were so annoyed with me. But I was a madman about this. I was obsessed to the umpteenth level, which in retrospect wasn’t a good thing, because I would hit the wall. It happened a few times. Because altogether, I lost 150, 160 pounds, but I gained back 60 pounds maybe 4 times, 5 times.

[00:44:29] LW: How did you know this time was going to be different though when you started in March of 2013? How did you know that wasn’t just going to be another fad time you’re going to quit after a month?

[00:44:38] RG: It was just a knowing. I wish I can give you more than that. I knew that this time I wasn’t going to quit. Prior to this morning, I had some dark, dark, dark days where I contemplat- ed taking my own life. And I knew that if I ever gave up on myself again, that that’s where I would end up back at that place of not wanting to live anymore. I had this ﬁre that drove me because it was either this or death.

[00:45:17] LW: You had a premonition as well about your future?

[00:45:20] RG: I did. So very early in my weight loss journey, I didn’t know at the time what purpose meant. But in retrospect, I just started feeling that this was why I was born, right? Every- thing I had gone through up until this point, it was all just making so much sense. And I was so conﬁdent in my ability to take this weight loss thing to the ﬁnish line that I would start speaking about helping other people lose weight. Even before – I was still over 300 pounds.

[00:45:58] LW: You’re still fat.

[00:45:59] RG: Yeah, I was still over 300 pounds. And I had this vision of sharing my story that hadn’t happened yet to help other people get control of their bodies and of their lives.

[00:46:14] LW: And you would go to work and police people’s diets as a fat person?

[00:46:20] RG: Listen, in retrospect, because I did this certain Instagram post or Facebook post that would pop up, and I was trying to encourage people and I would almost judge people who ate bad foods, man. But I was still a fat guy doing this. It was strange.

[00:46:39] LW: And when did you get your ﬁrst tangible moment of success where whatever you were doing was you that, “Hey, I’m actually making progress here.”

[00:46:49] RG: Yeah. The ﬁrst, about 70 pounds came off pretty quickly. My body changed fast.

[00:46:58] LW: What’s quickly? Couple months?

[00:46:59] RG: Six months.

[00:47:01] LW: Okay.

[00:47:03] RG: I lost maybe 70 pounds in the first six months. So, for the first month and a half, I had a deal with a friend of mine. Because at the time I had a pretty decent social media following, and he had just opened up a gym. It was basically a storage unit where he had some dumbbells and some [inaudible 00:47:25]. So, in exchange for him helping me with exercise, I would help promote his gym. I was always in a group of at least four people, five people, and I got to the point where I didn’t want to do that anymore. I didn’t want to wait 5 minutes in between sets, because three people had to do their sets. So, I eventually branched off on my own. But yeah, so for the first maybe six weeks, I worked with him.

[00:47:53] LW: And you were so conﬁdent in your journey in that time that you would literally take your shift off and video tape fat Brix? And I call you that, because you call yourself that. So, I’m not like making fun of you, but I know that’s how you refer to your old body.

[00:48:08] RG: Alter ego.

[00:48:09] LW: Yeah, your alter ego, fat Brix. I mean, that is bold stuff, man. Because I barely will take my shirt off and I wouldn’t be considered necessarily fat by any stretch. But what was the mentality? You must have been so convicted in your mission.

[00:48:28] RG: I was so sure of what I was going to achieve with my body, that it was like I was going to need proof that I used to be fat. I was that sure of it. And I just wanted to document this, man, because I knew how powerful it would be to have the footage, to have the proof every step of the way. Not just what I look like, but what was going on with me mentally. Some of the road- blocks, some of the victories. I wanted to capture it all, and I was very intentional about it. I had a vision for a documentary very early in the game. So, I just started recording. I honestly wish would have done it more, but I got some good stuff. I got some really good footage that it’s nos- talgic to do that stuff. It never gets old.

[00:49:23] LW: Okay. So, you’re working out on your own now, and what’s that? You’re going to the gym every day, six days a week. Doing what?

[00:49:31] RG: This is one example. And my life continuous to unfold like this. I had moved into an apartment that I don’t understand how I got approved for, right? Got approved for apartment. I’m walking around the neighborhood, maybe a few days after I moved in, and I see that they’re building a brand-new YMCA walking distance from my apartment when I didn’t have a car. So, this sort of like synchronicity, that’s around the time that that began for me. And it never stopped till this day.

[00:50:03] LW: But what’s interesting about that is the old Brix probably wouldn’t have even cared that they had a YMCA right next door? So, you were – It’s like you were open to it and you saw that it was there.

[00:50:15] RG: Yeah. It just felt like purpose. Like this is supposed to be happening right now. I was supposed to get approved for this apartment that I didn’t qualify for. I was supposed to –

[00:50:27] LW: Well, you applied anyway. Why did you apply anyway?

[00:50:29] RG: What’s so crazy, I remember the day I applied. I did a little video. “Hey, I’m ap- plying at this space. I’m probably not going to get it.” I have all of this stuff. But I applied anyway. I mean, I needed a place to stay. I was taking some shots in the dark, and I was good at speaking to people. And the owner did the tour. Come to ﬁnd out, the owner had already sold the property. And they were just trying to get some tenants in there. She wasn’t going to have to deal with me. So, she kind of just – Whoever seemed like a decent human being, “Here, you can have the place.” That’s kind of how that happened.

[00:51:11] LW: Serendipity.

[00:51:12] RG: Yes.

[00:51:13] LW: So, then you basically lived in the YMCA. That was your second home.

[00:51:19] RG: That was my second home, six days a week.

[00:51:21] LW: You were the norm to their cheers.

[00:51:23] RG: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. There’s some of their employees that I still keep in touch with to this day who remember watching my body change over that year or so that I worked out there.

[00:51:36] LW: So, 70 pounds is pretty signiﬁcant. I mean, you must have been so hyped after that.

[00:51:43] RG: You couldn’t tell me shit. You couldn’t tell me nothing. I was on top of the world, man. I was ﬁtting in clothes that I dreamed of wearing. And it was literally a dream come true. I had a whole new body even just after 70 pounds. I had a whole new body. And this new conﬁ- dence – It was everything. It was everything. If I can bottle that feeling up, man, and sell it, I’d be rich for sure.

[00:52:19] LW: Had you gotten your diet in check at that point? Or were you still working on that?

[00:52:24] RG: Yeah. So, I had a very aggressive approach to dieting. I made a lot of mistakes with that. I think I did some damage to my metabolism, because I was under-eating for a good period of my weight loss journey. I was under-eating, which is why I kind of advise against that. I made every mistake that you can possibly make with weight loss during my journey. Again, I was supposed to, because these are the experiences that I help guide other people with.

[00:52:59] LW: You mentioned before that you would gain weight back. Was there a correlation between lifestyle and gaining weight back, or was that just a natural function of the process where you could be doing everything right and gaining weight back?

[00:53:14] RG: No. The reason why I would gain weight back is because I was so extreme with my approach that I would just hit these points where I would say, “Fuck it,” and I would just take two months off, three months off and I would just binge. I would just binge and I would stop working out. And every single time though, I found my footing and I got back to it.

[00:53:41] LW: So even then when you were binging, you knew you were going to get back to it at some point and continue on.

[00:53:46] RG: Yeah. It didn’t feel like me quitting. I would just like almost blackout for a month or two and then catch myself and then get right back to it.

[00:53:57] LW: How were you paying the bills during this process?

[00:54:00] RG: In ways that I shouldn’t have been.

[00:54:02] LW: Okay. Were you concerned about potentially getting back in trouble with the law or anything like that? Because you’re in probation still I’m assuming?

[00:54:09] RG: Yeah. Man, I don’t know who I thought I was, bro. I mean, I was 100% in survival mode and I was very comfortable in the survival mode. That’s the mode I live most my life

© 2020 At the End of the Tunnel 28 ATEOTT 14 Transcript in. And, man, I moved to California on probation. I wasn’t supposed to leave the state. So, I would do stuff like that. I don’t know if I felt invincible or I was just that stupid. But I always felt supported. I always felt guided, and it was never – I never was afraid to do these stupid things. But it’s because I was supposed to learn these lessons. I was supposed to do exactly what I was doing at the time.

[00:54:51] LW: I’ve met a couple of guys who – One was a pharmaceutical salesman. Another one would grow it and manufacture it. And they would have very strict rules and they would say, “Look, if you follow these rules, the chances of getting caught are miniscule, to none.” Did you have rules or tactics? We don’t have to get into the speciﬁcs of them, but I’m just curious if you had rules when you were doing what you had to do to pay the bills to make sure that you were being as conservative as possible so that you didn’t ever have to have any kind of confronta- tions with the law.

[00:55:36] RG: That’s the key, and the word conservative describes me perfectly. I wasn’t the “hustler” that was –

[00:55:43] LW: You’re not on the corner.

[00:55:45] RG: No. I wasn’t trying to – I was literally just – At this point, trying to take care of my kids and keep my phone on. So that was the minimum. And I don’t know if I felt like that had some karmic value to it, but I wasn’t hustling to be buying bottles. I was trying to just survive. And I guess that’s how I slept at night at this point.

[00:56:11] LW: And you also went through an internal transformation as well. Can you talk a little bit about your mentality and forgiveness piece and all of that?

[00:56:21] RG: Yeah. So very early in my weight loss journey, I’ve felt a pivot from a pure weight loss journey to just a journey to being a better human being. And I knew having a healthy body was a big part of my ability to be just a good person. Like when you think of a good person, I wanted to be that. I wanted to be what the world would consider a good person.

So, I started reading, at the time it was the Law of Attraction stuff. Like the ﬁrst book was The Secret, and that opened up my mind. I had never heard of anything like this. And the thing that made me feel empowered was being able to sit and reﬂect on my life and connect certain thoughts or beliefs through the condition that I was manifesting, right? Every shitty situation that I found myself in I connected it to a thought or a belief. And yes, it’s stung, but it also made me feel empowered like, “Okay. Well, if you could create this not so ideal life with your thoughts and your beliefs, then you can turn things around.” And I adopted that intention very early in my weight loss journey.

[00:57:52] LW: I love that. If you’re the problem, then you’re also the solution.

[00:57:56] RG: Yes.

[00:57:57] LW: All right. So how long did it take you to get all those 140 pounds off?

[00:58:04] RG: Three years. It would ultimately take three years. I hovered around 250, 260 for most of that three-year period. That was kind of like sticking point. That’s where my body felt – I think that’s where my body wanted to stay. So, it took three years to get to my goal body.

[00:58:27] LW: Is that when you did the ﬁtness competition?

[00:58:28] RG: Yes. That was the ﬁnish line for me.

[00:58:33] LW: When did you come up with that idea and how crazy did it seem to other people? Did you ever mentioned it to anyone?

[00:58:40] RG: Yes. That was a goal that I set very early. So let’s say March 1st was the day I decided to change my lifestyle, and this is just an estimate. So let’s say June. I said, “You know what? One day I’m going to step on a stage.” That’s my goal. I know I needed a target. I needed a target to drive me, and me competing in the fitness competition was that finish line for me. So yeah, I set that intention very early. And people thought I was crazy. I was very vocal about my goals, man, to this day. I’m so confident, and the promises attached to my life, the vision, I’m very vocal about it. And people would laugh at me.

I had a homeboy to this day, I remember having this conversation with him. I was still fat. I told him, I’m like, “Yo, you know what? A ﬁtness industry is a multibillion-dollar industry. This can be my shit right here.” And he’s laughing. He’s like, “Brix, what are you talking about? You have a double chin. You have a double chin.” I’m like, “Yeah! No. This is going to be gone soon.” So, I was very vocal about my goals. And I have friends who were supportive, but – I don’t know. A big part of the culture in New York City is jokes. So, everybody would joke me. And I never really took it personal. But I don’t think anyone really seen it like I did until they started seeing it.

[01:00:17] LW: How did you feel when you – You came in what? Second, or third, or –

[01:00:20] RG: I didn’t place, because the class that I competed in, I wasn’t supposed to compete in that class. I was supposed to – What I did was classic physique, and I was the biggest dude there. It’s normally smaller dudes with little legs. I was supposed to do – It’s like right underneath body building. It’s not physique. So, you don’t wear the long board shorts. You wear –

[01:00:48] LW: The tight – Yeah.

[01:00:50] RG: Yeah. I forgot the name of it, but I couldn’t place. But the judge did give me like a really dope shout out.

[01:01:00] LW: Because you probably had the biggest transformation overall.

[01:01:02] RG: Yeah. Yeah. He acknowledged what I had achieved with my body. So that was a win. I mean, just jumping on – I had no aspirations to place. I didn’t care about placing. Just stepping on that stage was the biggest win for me.

[01:01:18] LW: Did you know anyone else in the world who is going on a similar journey at the same as you or had done it before you and you kind of use them as a model for what you could do?

[01:01:29] RG: I would see pictures online. It’s not like I had a –

[01:01:34] LW: You didn’t have a Brix in your life that you were modeling your journey at.

[01:01:38] RG: There was just a bunch of random photos that I will come across that I would hoard, that I would put as the backgrounds on my laptop, my cellphone. But I didn’t know these people. I didn’t know how to reach them on social media or anything like that. They were just random pictures that I come across.

[01:01:56] LW: Was that the impetus for you putting together your sort of many documentary?

[01:02:00] RG: Yeah. I wanted to show people this process in as much detail as I possibly could. Yeah, that was deﬁnitely the inspiration behind me documenting.

[01:02:12] LW: Talk a little bit about that process. Did you have experience with putting together little mini ﬁlms and all of that?

[01:02:18] RG: No. Just what I would do personally with myself. I didn’t have any experience at all. So, I didn’t know what I was doing at all. I just ﬁgured if I just gather enough footage, I could meet someone who would know what to do with it, to put it together. And that’s still in the making, because I still want to do the documentary, man.

[01:02:40] LW: Right. It’s more of a trailer what you put together before.

[01:02:42] RG: Yeah, I put a trailer together. And me and the person I was working on the documentary with, because we started. I just felt like this story wasn’t complete enough. So yeah, I’m just continuing. It’s going to be [inaudible 01:02:57] does come together though. It’s going to be big.

[01:03:02] LW: And you posted your ﬁrst YouTube video. So, you’re probably the most natural ﬁt for YouTube of anyone I’ve ever talked to in these interviews. I mean, you already had a cata- log of doing these same kinds of very open, transparent, vulnerable, the things that actually go viral on a YouTube platform. You’re been doing that for years.

[01:03:24] RG: Yeah. And at the time, I didn’t feel prepared though. For some reason – Be- cause it’s different when you’re making videos for yourself that you don’t really have any plans for. This is just really for me. I have no intention of sharing any of this stuff. I mean, before, of course I came up with the idea to do the documentary, but all my personal video experience before then was 100% for me and my family.

[01:03:53] LW: But the YouTube was a way to help other people obviously.

[01:03:56] RG: Yes. That was the thing that was most exciting about it, especially when I was post-videos. And reading some of those comments, it felt so good. It felt so good, and it deﬁnite- ly was the fuel for me to keep going with YouTube. Because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I had never operated an SLR. I had never edited a video in my life. And I’ve been doing it all myself, honestly, up until a few months ago. I’ve had a few people help with a few videos. But 90% of my stuff was done by me.

[01:04:31] LW: Had you ofﬁcially retired from the music thing at that point and you were going to commit yourself fully to the training and helping people?

[01:04:39] RG: Yeah. After I got in trouble with the law, I kind of gave up on music. So, this was 100% what I was going to do in my life. This was my plan.

[01:04:49] LW: What was the vision and where are you right now in the spectrum of that vision?

[01:04:54] RG: Initially it was okay. I was going to be a personal trainer. So, I got certiﬁed, and I got an opportunity to work at the YMCA in Korea Town, which was my ﬁrst legit trainer job. But the hours sucked. I was away from my family at the time. This was before I moved back to Vir- ginia. I was living in L.A. at the time.

When I moved back to Virginia, I was missing my son’s basketball games. I’m like, “All right. This can’t be it.” From 4AM to 12, and then from 3 until 8. This wasn’t it. So, I’m like, “Okay. I’m going to try to build an online coaching business. And I ﬁgured YouTube was a good way to help people. And then also build some clientele. So that was another thing that inspired the YouTube journey.

[01:05:56] LW: And now you’re at what? 600 something? Over 600,000 subscribers on You- Tube?

[01:06:01] RG: Yeah. I think we’re about to hit 630.

[01:06:04] LW: Yeah. What do you credit that to?

[01:06:07] RG: God. Yeah. Because, honestly, I didn’t see this happening, bro. And I’m still kind of shocked at times. But if I can answer that question differently, I just attribute it to just being honest and transparent and vulnerable and showing people that something that they’re strug- gling with can be achieved. I think that’s the biggest thing that draws people obviously is to see the transformation. You can argue that. You see it. I think that’s the biggest thing. And then also just giving my heart in the content, people resonate with that.

[01:07:00] LW: And you are so generous and proliﬁc in how much information you share. Not even just about your personal journey, but to help people in their own journey and also a lot of the mistakes that you’ve made. And I’m sure you’ve gotten messages from a lot of other people who have had very successful transformations as well. Or is there any that standout in your mind? Any one reach out to you and say, “Hey, because of you –”

[01:07:30] RG: There are so many message and emails that had literally left me in tears, man. It happens regularly. When you start talking about people who were talking about taking their own lives and then they credit them not doing it to something that you created, a video, or something that I shared. I couldn’t begin to describe how good that feels. It means everything to me.

So even in those moments, those are the things that give me through some of the more chal- lenging parts of what I do, because it’s not easy to share this much of my life and to do what I do. It’s not easy. But when I get the feedback, when I hear these stories, when I hear about the impact, man, it makes it all worth it. And that’s deﬁnitely an understatement.

[01:08:43] LW: Great. I just have a few wrap-up questions. Number one is how would you artic- ulate your mission as you see it? As you understand it right now?

[01:08:54] RG: I guess, because I always struggle with this a bit, because it changes based on what I learn about myself and what I learn about the people who I was born to serve, right? So, if I can put words together for it right now, it’s to use what I’ve learned through the most chal- lenging parts of my life to serve as a light. Again, just pardon the pun. Serve as a light to give people hope. To show people what’s possible when you make a decision to take control of your life through your health.

[01:09:46] LW: Looking back over the last year or so, how have you gotten in your own way?

[01:09:53] RG: Trying to do everything by myself is one of the biggest ways I’ve stood in my own way.

[01:10:01] LW: Have you corrected that a little bit, or does it still happen?

[01:10:03] RG: Yeah. I’ve started to.

[01:10:07] LW: It’s a process.

[01:10:08] RG: It’s definitely a process for sure. But I’ve hired some coaches who get on me about certain things, and I’m just a heart-first person. So, I don’t have the best business prac- tices sometimes because of it. But I just feel covered. So, I don’t really worry much about logis- tics and business as much as I should. I don’t have any fear attached to that. I’m a very intuitive decision maker. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to other people, but it always turns out to be the right choice. And I’m very confident in living like that.

[01:10:53] LW: I love it. And that actually leads to the last question. How are you deﬁning success these days?

[01:10:59] RG: Whoa! Success to me is doing something that makes you feel fulﬁlled. Doing something that is bringing the vibrations of the universe up. Success is just serving people. My

© 2020 At the End of the Tunnel 35 ATEOTT 14 Transcript life feels like a dream. And just being able to say like I – If people ask me, “Yo, Brix, how are you doing, man?” Always, my response is, “I’m living the dream,” and being able to say that is success.

[01:11:36] LW: Well, especially having come from a place where you having night terrors as a kid. And you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to make the connection between playing with Transformers as – It’s sort of a preview of coming attractions in life. Doing what you do today, which is you’re one of the icons of what transformation can look like when somebody decides that enough is enough. I heard someone call you a hope dealer. You went from dope dealing to hope dealing.

And now you’re in a place where you’re leaving every person, every situation better than you found them. And I think that’s – I just want to acknowledge your courage, and your bravery over these years, your willingness to show up. Your willingness to record yourself in these moments, these small little in between moments that may have gone unnoticed otherwise.

And now you have that rich footage to be able to weave into what you’re doing now and show people contrast and context for what they’re seeing. Because we live in this sort of McDonalds society where we want everything to happen quickly, and I think the world needs more people like you who can show people not just what is possible, but where you came from and what that process really looks like.

I think that’s one of the reasons that you are relatable. It’s one of the reasons why I personally am inspired by you and your journey ever since I came across. I can’t remember how I came across the video that – The compilation of your journey, but ever since I saw it, I probably watched it 10 times in a row when I ﬁrst saw it. Because if it’s not weight, it’s something else. Everybody is going through something. It could be emotional. It could be spiritual transformation. And I feel like that video – And I’ll link it obviously in the show notes, but it’s a great por- trayal of what that trajectory looks like for everybody. That dialogue that you include with it, the narration is something that I think we’ve all said to ourselves and we’ve all hoped for.

And we all kind of know deep down that it’s possible if we can just stick with it long enough. But the forces of life are so strong that we get swept back into our old ways so easily. And just to

© 2020 At the End of the Tunnel 36 ATEOTT 14 Transcript see someone who’s actually said, “You know what? I’m going to keep swimming back in.” It’s so inspiring. So, I just want to thank you for that. Even if you didn’t do anything else in your entire life, I think that’s enough of a gift to leave to humanity. So, thank you for that.

[01:14:22] RG: Thank you for those words.

[01:14:24] LW: Yeah, man. First, for coming on to the podcast and sharing your story. I know some of these things are kind of hard to talk about. And it sounds like a bit like a therapy ses- sion sometimes. But I’m just glad that you’re open to it and game to it. And so we’ll obviously link to everything. And I want to encourage everyone to deﬁnitely follow you on social media even if they don’t have any intentions of transforming their body. Just seeing this stuff that you share could be a really great example of how someone can share any journey in a way that in- spires people. And then hopefully you and I will get a chance to meet in person, cross paths one day when all this pandemic stuff is sorted out.

[01:15:02] RG: I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to it.

[01:15:04] LW: 100%. Thanks so much, brother. I really appreciate it.

[01:15:08] RG: My pleasure.

[OUT]

[01:15:09] LW: Thank you for listening to my interview with Brix. I hope you found it as inspiring as I did, and I also highly recommend checking out the video of his transformation, which is linked in the show notes along with a transcript and everything else that we discussed.

If you want to hear more stories like Brix’s, please make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast, and check out the archive at lightwatkins.com/tunnel. You’ll ﬁnd many other interviews with reg- ular people who’ve overcome all kinds of crazy odds and obstacles to start their movement. And while you’re there, make sure to sign up for my daily dose of inspiration email for short messages to help you get started in your day. And if there’s a movement that you’d like to hear the back story of – You know what? Text me. My cell is 323-405-9166. That’s 323-405-9166. Just

© 2020 At the End of the Tunnel 37 ATEOTT 14 Transcript text me at that number with your idea. I know it’s crazy to be giving out my number like that, and I probably won’t be able to do a whole lot of back and forth with you. But that’s really the most direct way to reach me and let me know your thoughts about the podcast.

And in the meantime, thanks again for listening. I’ll see you next week with another inspiring conversation from the end of the tunnel.

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