Robert Ri’chard on PTSD, Faith in Hollywood, and ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ (Part 2)

John Farrell: How has focusing on your faith or putting your faith first affected your place in the Hollywood hierarchy?

Robert Ri’chard: Well, you know what? God has taught me that all you need in life is good people, good music, good food, and laughter. I love being a teammate. I have a sports mentality. Going to work is one of my favorite things. I learned that through the Bible. I learned from my pastor that one of the closest things that you have to heaven on Earth is work. When you are passionate about what you do and what drives you is just what you want to pursue, that is a little slice of heaven. So, I love going to work.

God provides. I’m not looking for someone else to hand me a job for my happiness or my salvation and the things that I’m a part of, God brings them to me and sometimes I’ve missed opportunities. I’ve gotten headstrong or arrogant or thought that I knew what was best for my career and I turned down jobs that ended up blowing up and God goes, “I put that right in your lap and it was right across your desk, and you didn’t receive it.” So now I say yes to all the projects that I want to be a part of. Pretty much all projects because God’s bringing them to me for a reason. Whether it’s to be an example on set, to show people what professionalism is, to put out great products and entertain people at their homes.

God’s given me a very strong voice. He’s put me in this public, global awareness, like a platform, I think to reach people and to talk. And through my art and through my craft, I’ve been able to go and talk to universities, businesses, and schools. I’ve gone to community centers and people are affected by the messages that I’m bringing.

What’s great about it is I always recognize it as an absence of time when I’m with others. When I’m with people – let’s say we have an hour schedule – it flies by. Two hours, you’re like, “Oh, wow. That was two hours. We had a great time.”

Non-Acting Ventures

JF: As you mentioned, you do have several businesses outside of acting. You have a fitness/nutrition company and you do business coaching. How do you balance all that with what, according to IMDB, seems to be a very flourishing acting career?

Robert: First of all, I love what I do. I occupy my time with the things that really drive me. Number one, like I said, God’s purpose for me is to be of service. So, all the things that I’m pursuing right now, it’s really to serve others and I enjoy it. I enjoy being there to inspire people, to educate people, to show people, to teach people.

I grew up in a household where it was very much understood that if you can’t teach somebody how to fish, you are not a fisherman. So, in my life whether it be coaching for acting, whether it be talking about health and wellness, whether it be talking about people who are suffering from inflammation or people have psoriasis, eczema, people who have muscle and joint pain, I’m there to explain to people what is going on internally about their body.

I’ve talked to doctors, medical professionals, people who were experts. What you were dealing with is inflammation. Essentially all pain comes from swelling. And in the Greek language the suffix “I – S” is suffering. It’s inflammation. So, whether you have pancreatitis or deep vein thrombosis, or you have a thyroid issue, all these things that are described medically, the medical term is you have an inflamed mention of the root word. People are trying to figure out how to attack inflammation in life.

This company that I work for in Newport Beach is called Elite Performance Medicine, and it’s saying, “God’s nature … what God put on this earth, we’re putting all earth ingredients in formulas to attack your inflammation so that your swelling goes down and your body can heal itself. We are nourishing your cells so that your cells can defend itself against toxins, viruses, disease, injury.” I’ve gotten behind that.

It’s a young company right now, but it’s growing, and people are coming back to me going, “I was suffering from alopecia. I was suffering from muscle and joint pain. I had tennis elbow, carpal tunnel. I had a pulled tendon. I had cystic acne.” All these different things and the customer is saying to me, “Hey, your product EPM healed me. I never experienced any side effects and the pain went away.” That’s because our mission is better science, better medicine, and our business transforms suffering for all. We work through God.

In Ezekiel 47:12 it says, “Their leaves will not wither. Their leaves are for healing.” And it’s talking about God providing what it is on earth to tackle anything that you’re suffering from before you get to heaven. We pay homage to God first and God works through us to help people with what they’re dealing with.

You can go to the website; it’s www.epmproductx.com. Or you can type it on Google, EPM Products. It’ll come right up. If you’ve got muscle and joint pain, Reborn is outstanding. If you have any kind of fine lines, wrinkles, sun spots, age spots, grab the Allure. It’s outstanding. It’s what I use. I’m 38 years old and everyone’s like, “Hey, you’re a model of health.” I’m like, “It’s the stuff that I’m using.” It’s made with all active ingredients. There’s no inactive ingredients in anything that we’re using in our formulas.

Our founder is a microbiologist and had this question of you go to the drug store, you look at everything on the shelf, you turn the bottle around, and read the ingredients. There’s a section called “inactive ingredients” on everything. And our founder asked, “Why are there inactive ingredients in what I’m putting in my body? Makes absolutely no sense.” And so she said, “We’re going to formulate products that have no inactive ingredients.” I’m with that. That sounds outstanding.

JF: What is HighwayFit and the African-American Male Wellness Initiative?

Robert: HighwayFit is my social health initiative with my doctor. There’s a statistic that Harvard put out. Seven out of ten Americans are overweight or obese. That means they have a body mass index, a BMI, of 25 or higher. That extra weight is a gateway to other diseases, complications, and medical conditions. So, I asked my doctor, “What can we do that would be the easiest possible workout that’s the most effective?” And we figured it out.

What we did using science – I went to school for engineering – we asked a lot of important medical questions and what we figured out was essentially the pool workout is the best workout for anybody. It’s weightlessness. So, we said, “Can we bring the pool workout to land? Can we figure it out?” It’s no weights, it’s no gym, and it’s no travel.

So, everybody, right now, is in their condition whether it’s snowing outside, you can’t go to work, your kids are at home with you, you’re a family leader, you have a lot of responsibilities, you’re at work all day long and you can’t get to a gym. All that is all out the window when it comes to HighwayFit and it’s only 10 minutes. If you got 10 minutes to shower, put gas in your car, brush your teeth, you have 10 minutes for your general health.

Our goal is to get two thumbs up at your next general health checkup so that you’re getting healthy organs, you’re getting the right amount of oxygen, you’re getting the right amount of exercise. The medical community recommends 90 minutes of fitness per week and HighwayFitness is 10 to 15 minutes. If you’re doing 13 minutes a day out of seven days, you just crossed the mark – 91 minutes. It’s exactly what I use and we’ve helped over 2 million people at this point.

That’s how I got involved with the African-American Male Wellness Initiatives and they made me the national spokesperson because we are encouraging people, especially the community of people who do not go see their medical professional. Hey, you need to know your numbers – your cholesterol level, all of your biometric numbers, your weight, your BMI, and you need to go see your medical professional at least bi-annually. Then through that, so that you get two thumbs up, commit to a level of fitness per week, whether it’s walking or doing HighwayFit. We need you to do that for your own health.