When John hired me, he gave me one mandate, one that was strikingly similar to what Ruth had told me when I started instructing at Flywheel: “Be yourself, Alex. Let it fly.”

  This, of course, made me very happy. It is such a great thing to hear from a boss or a family member or a friend. The reason it’s so great? It perfectly aligns with what we should be doing anyway. The toughest job in the world is being fake, because we have to wake up every day and remember that lie, or adjustment, that we’ve been telling ourselves. Just be you. Don’t pretend, don’t be a phony, don’t imitate, don’t brag, don’t falsify. Don’t try to be an original. Just be yourself and you will be. A lot of people will accept us for who we are. Some won’t, and that’s OK. It’s mainly their problem. Be real, be true to ourselves. We sleep better that way, I promise.

  As nice as that was to hear from John, though, I didn’t need it. We don’t need someone else to tell us to be ourselves, to give us that green light. We are the ones who decide that and decide to express it to the world.

  Being authentic was the only way I knew how to be when it came to the bike. I took the military school discipline, the cadence of all of the marching and drilling I’d done, my voice, my experiences, my love of music, and the ability to connect and communicate with a broad range of people, and folded them all into one package. We are all the sum of our experiences. On the bike, I express who I am. I don’t try to be anyone else. I play the music that I listen to, the songs that move me. Yes, some of them are risqué, but that is real and authentic, too, to me and to the stories the music tells. I put my purpose and intent and heart and soul into it all.

  I do this now when I’m not on the bike, too. The bike has prepared me to do it in real life, as well.

  Authenticity is our source of power, our source of being.

  The thing is, we can’t pretend to be someone or something we’re not and also truly activate our greatness.

  I was faking it through my entire life until I got that first job at Flywheel. I faked my way through school. I faked looking good—it was only on the outside. I faked my smile. I faked my way through my relationship with my dad. I faked that I was OK.

  With that janitor job, I stopped. I brought myself to that job every single day. That was me mopping those floors. That was me who got the instructor job and led those classes. That was me who got hired by Peloton. The bottom line is this: I didn’t “make it” until I stopped faking it.

  A lot of people use the phrase “fake it ’til you make it” when, say, they are getting a new job or trying something new. The idea is to pretend or try to pull one over on someone else—like a boss—until we figure it all out. Again, I just don’t think this is the right thing to do. The idea should be, instead, to bring ourselves to the job or the task, and not even think about faking it. “All you can do is show up as your most authentic self,” as Mel Robbins, author of The 5 Second Rule, says.

  CHAPTER 9

  DO NOT OUTSOURCE YOUR GREATNESS

  True greatness is not activated by others. It’s done by ourselves.

  The path to activating our greatness has plenty of roadblocks. Trust me. I’ve had head-on collisions with all of them. Many of those roadblocks don’t necessarily have to do with us per se, but instead have to do with the relationship between our inner, true self and other people. All of us allow other people to define us, in real life and on social media. We look to them to tell us we’re great, whether that’s in person or through “likes” and heart emojis.

  We don’t need others to tell us we’re great, to validate us. We need to do it ourselves. Do not outsource your greatness. I let myself be defined by others for a good portion of my life. I doubted my own self-worth and greatness. And there is no heavier resistance in life than doubt.

  I want to tell you how I stopped doing that and, in the process, took a giant step in activating my own greatness.

  * * *

  Leaving Flywheel to join Peloton came with a stipulation: I had a noncompete that stemmed from my prior contract, which meant I would have to wait three months before starting at Peloton. My new company told me that I should consider those three months a vacation and take the time off to heal my body—which I had put under some duress for three straight years—and to clear my mind. I started getting paid at signing, so I had the freedom to just chill.

  But it turned out that I didn’t want to. Almost immediately, I started to get restless. I missed the grind. I missed instructing classes and missed the interaction with the community. Being benched, albeit for a good reason, sucks. Period.

  Being in the city and not teaching only amplified that restlessness. So I decided to leave New York for a bit. I flew out to Los Angeles to link up with a friend, Archie Archibong, someone I’d met in the city. He’d graduated from engineering school at Columbia University and was working at a tech start-up.

  But even out there, with the welcome change of scenery, I remained antsy. Peloton expected me to take those three months off and chill and then enter their training program. But I decided that I’d do something different.

  Instead, I started to train myself in the Peloton method. My idea was to be ready for work on day one. Behind the scenes, I signed up for Peloton and started taking classes. I studied the instructors, analyzing the overall shape of the classes and making note of how and when they looked into the camera to connect and interact with the riders. I calculated the intervals and the climbs, and paid close attention to the cadences used during those climbs and on the flat parts of the ride. I studied these rides with the focus and intensity that I should have had while in school or basketball practice.

  In the back of my mind, I felt like I had some responsibility to not just work hard at this, but also to outwork it. I didn’t exactly feel pressure to do it but felt something more like a duty. At age twenty-three, I was the youngest instructor that Peloton had signed, and I wanted to prove to the company that they had made the right decision by recruiting me and that I belonged with the top instructors in the world. But the bigger reason I outworked it was that I was Peloton’s first and only Black instructor. I felt like the impression I made at Peloton—within the company and with the riders—was somehow about much more than just me. This was something—this duty to represent something more than just myself—that I would think about in a much deeper way later on in my Peloton career.

  At the end of those three months, I flew back east and reported to Peloton’s headquarters. I met with the training instructor, Christine D’Ercole. She asked me what I knew, if anything, about the Peloton instructing method.

  “I don’t need training,” I told her. “I’m ready to contribute right away.”

  She was dubious, I could tell.

  As proof, I asked for a test. I asked her to throw together a random playlist of songs, and then I would show her what I could do. So she did. I hopped on the bike. She played three random songs and I “taught” a class.

  When I was done, she left the room, saying she was going to “talk to someone.” When she came back, she informed me that I could skip the training.

  I was struck by how … nice she was about it. It dawned on me then that while the preparation I did for this “test” was spot on, the way I approached that actual day was a bit off. I had the wrong mindset. I came in all hotheaded, trying to prove something to her and to Peloton, like some sort of rogue. I felt competitive. What I didn’t realize is that Christine—and Peloton—were there to actually help me. We were a team, and I was already part of it. We worked together and lifted each other up.

  It was the first lesson I learned on the job at Peloton, and it’s one I’ve never forgotten.

  * * *

  My initial Peloton class was February 3, 2016. My mindset for that class was simple: I want to hit these people with something they’ve never seen before. The red light of the camera went on. I was live. Jay-Z started rapping through the speakers.…

  I remember the feeling I had when the red light flicked off and I stepped off the bike that day. I had succeeded in bringing something different, as Ruth said I would. Every instructor at Peloton was great—John and Fred and Jayvee and the rest had, in fact, done an incredible job of recruiting the best spin instructors in the land. But I brought something else to the table. Not better. Just different and authentic to me. No one had my background. No one brought what I did to class. “Nobody built like you / you designed yourself,” as Jay-Z said in “A Dream,” which was the first song I ever played at Peloton.

  I ran with that feeling.

  I still had a lot to learn, though. The Peloton experience was different from the Flywheel one, for sure. While there were some riders in the studio when I joined, the platform was built on livestreaming and on-demand “coach-to-camera” content. That took some getting used to. You don’t get that huge, instant reflected vibe that you do when you have a full studio. It’s kind of the same experience you have when doing a Zoom or other type of virtual “calls” as opposed to in-person meetings (except that, in my case, I couldn’t see the people on the other side of the camera).

  I had to learn how to utilize my motivation in a different way, to get myself ready and in the right frame of mind to work hard and find intensity while I was essentially by myself, to find the motivation and then sustain it on my own. I did that by looking into the camera and visualizing someone out there, riding a bike in her attic, looking for help and the motivation to maximize her opportunities in this thirty-minute session. I had my monitor, and while I couldn’t see faces, I could see—through avatars and numbers—who was out there working hard, coming back to class after class, hitting personal records.

  I came to learn that the camera, in a peculiar but very real way, could create more intimacy than a live class. It made me appear as if I was closer to the individual rider, and speaking to him or her individually. There was a lot of power in that.

  The storytelling, I learned, was different, too. Your emotions are much easier to read in real life, in front of people—you can make big, exaggerated gestures with your arms, for instance, to get something across to those in the room. But on video, with that more intimate feel of a close-up camera, you have to emote mainly with your face, with expressions, and with variations in your voice. It’s kind of the difference between stage and movie acting. What that means, in the end, is that you have to embody your emotions more, really absorb them, and then project them outward.

  All of that, as it turned out, suited me very well. Instructing at Peloton to a camera forced me—really, freed me up—to go deeper into what I was feeling. That helped me, too, on a personal level, with my self-examination, which improved my overall mental health. In the process, it would provide me with the chance to help others do the same.

  That said, for my first few months at Peloton, I went as hard as I could and was still a bit of a hothead. My classes were physical, athletic, and tough. In feeding off my raw emotions, I was teaching for the body. I hadn’t quite figured out yet how to teach for the mind. I think a lot of people make this same mistake, particularly early on in their careers.

  I treated every class as an audition (and still do), for myself, for the riders, and for someone else who wasn’t in class that day. I wanted everyone to have such a transformative experience that they would go tell their friends about it. That way, I thought, I wouldn’t just add riders. I would multiply them.

  Though this was great, it was also exhausting—I felt like I was sprinting all the time. We all did. Peloton was growing at hyperspeed, well on its way to becoming the largest interactive fitness brand in the world. Literally everything John and Fred and Jayvee had told me would happen, did happen. In fact, it was happening faster than they said it would. They had underpromised and overdelivered.

  I didn’t realize at the time that, in some senses, it was all going a bit too fast, that I had been neglecting some things within me that needed to be addressed. All of that changed rather abruptly with one phone call.

  * * *

  To this point, the arc of my relationship with my dad went from being great pals when I was really young, with him even spoiling me at times, to him getting sick and everything starting to go awry. I never lost respect for him, but when I was sent off to military school and for the years following that, we disconnected almost completely, only dealing with each other with rage and hatred, which culminated on that Thanksgiving Day, when he told me what he really thought of me.

  But after I got the job at Flywheel, there was a slight shift. He never really inquired about anything or asked how I was doing or anything like that. But the fire of his fury toward me seemed to have waned. He just seemed sort of disinterested. Maybe the fact that I had steady work and he saw me hustling took a little of the sting out of his anger toward me. I would never know how he really felt, though. He never expressed himself that way. He was still that clenched fist.

  During my “no days off” period at Flywheel, I was in East Hampton on the weekends. I would sometimes stop by the house to say a brief hello, usually when I knew my mom was there. I would even, on rare occasions, spend the night there if I needed a place to crash. My dad and I found a way to coexist somewhat peaceably during those short visits. There was always tension—when I had dinner with my mom and him, there was always something bubbling up just under the surface that felt like it could erupt with very little prompting. But, by then, I could keep it together, at least long enough to get out of the house without an incident. I purposely kept any interactions with him as short as they could be.

  My pain—which has become my inspiration—has a lot of sources. My failures, my problems at school, etc. But by the time I was instructing at Flywheel, it came mainly from my dad. Some of that pain started when he was sick and when, even as a six-year-old, I realized that he might disappear from this earth for good at any moment. But most of it came from the anguish of our relationship after he got sick, all of the hatred that spewed from both of us.

  By the time I got to Peloton, though, I had been out of the house for years. I was living in Brooklyn and didn’t interact with him much, if at all, seeing him maybe once every few months. I felt too good by then to allow him to mess with my vibe. I believed that I had effectively removed him from my vision, that he was no longer the focal point of my pain, of my life. I told myself that I kept him only in the back of my mind.

  But I was lying to myself.

  He was still there, still front and center. I still did everything I did with him in mind, consciously or subconsciously. And, in that way, he was still the most important person in my life. All of which made what happened next even more impactful, but not necessarily in the way I had always envisioned it would be.

  * * *

  On April 4, 2016, almost exactly two months after I had started at Peloton, I taught two classes, one at 9:30 A.M. and the other at 6:30 P.M. After that last class, I walked outside of Peloton’s Chelsea studio into a sixty-five-degree early spring evening. I was wearing a hoodie and shorts and had my backpack on. I was feeling good. Physically, I was pleasantly tired, my muscles loose and relaxed. Mentally, I was on the high that usually lasts an hour or two after every class.

  I was headed to the subway, back out to Brooklyn, when my phone rang. I saw my dad’s name pop up, which was unusual. He rarely called me. I kept walking as I answered it. He said hello and immediately started talking, just some small talk about who he had seen in the neighborhood recently. Weird, I thought. It’s not like him just to call and chitchat.

  He paused for what seemed like an unnaturally long time. And then he started talking again. He told me that he had seen an article in his local paper about me and my work at Peloton. He paused again.

  “Lex, I just want to let you know that I’m proud of you,” he said. “You’re doing it.”

  I immediately stopped in my tracks. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. I could hear the cars go by on the streets and the conversations of other people around me with an odd clarity. I snapped back to reality, squeaked out a quick “thanks,” and then we said goodbye. I started to cry. Tears of joy, relief. I walked down the stairs to the subway in a complete daze and rode home, sitting on the seat. I listened to some music, but I have no recollection of which songs. When I got home, I threw my backpack on a chair, and it all hit me with a boom.

  He validated me.

  That thought left me elated for a moment. But then I started to feel a little confused, an emotion I couldn’t figure out right away. A moment later, though, I realized why I felt that way: I had never needed that validation to begin with.

  Though I felt good and was starting to look good by then, I realized at that moment that I had still been merely existing and not really living. I was just getting by. I was suppressing the positive things in my life, which is nearly as bad as suppressing the negative ones. And I realized how bad this had been for my mental health. Living my life this way—doing everything just to prove my dad wrong—was bad for me. It didn’t allow me to grow, to fully live up to my potential, to be great.

  I had been yearning for years for that very moment, that congratulations, that expression of pride. Once I got it, though, I wondered why I had been yearning for so long.

  It came down to the doubt I felt about myself. I didn’t feel worthy of being his son. This realization did a few things for me. First, it opened up an entire new level of empathy and sympathy for my dad. I started to fully realize his pain—caused by circumstance, by himself, and by me. But it had always been more about how he viewed himself and not much about how he viewed me. Realizing that helped me process all of those years of anguish.

  I understood that despite the hatred and resentment I had felt toward him, I loved him and always had and always would. Both Jerome and Jared, when they were young, had lost their fathers to cancer. Both of them had reminded me many times over the years that you only get one dad, and that I should reconcile with mine sooner rather than later. I didn’t understand what they were saying until that moment. I understood now that I loved my dad because he was my dad. Period.

 

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