From foster care to the NFL to a successful entrepreneur, Anthony Trucks has accomplished things that most people would never think possible. In this episode, Anthony joins us to share the different shifts he had to go through and how he found purpose through the lessons he learned along the way. Tune in as he shares his journey and get insights on how you can find your own identity and clarity to make that shift happen and unlock your full potential.

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Making Shift Happen With Anthony Trucks

Welcome to Power Your Profit. My name is Susie Carder and I am your profit coach. I have Anthony Trucks with us. He’s a former foster child. He’s an NFL football player, a competitor on American Ninja Warrior. He’s an author, a life coach and an entrepreneur. From foster care to NFL to successful business owner, Anthony Trucks has accomplished what statistics would say is impossible. As a speaker and success coach, Anthony teaches people how to design and build a better life and business by learning how to access their power of identity to tap into their full potential and make shifts happen. Welcome to the show, Anthony.

Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.

You’re welcome. I did your formal bio but what’s your bad-ass list? Why should we pay attention to you? What is that thing? Your secret sauce that you do that magically. You do better than anybody else and share. You get to brag a little bit, Anthony.

It’s funny. With the first question that I have on my podcast is, if I’m walking around town and you sit down next to me, why should I listen to you? And if people can go anywhere, they want with it, uh, about like the dial at the braggadocious. At the end of the day, I’m a guy who broke my life. I went to the NFL, had a high peak of life, then came and crashed into the bottom and climbed out of it. The things that I’m oddly good at is I’m able to navigate the internal sense of myself, my identity well, which means that I can look at the things most people won’t look at because they give you access to the places you want to go.

I have found a unique way to get to a great place of the beautiful work-life harmony but still going at peak pace, so I don’t burn out and I don’t also fall short of stuff. I get more done than most people do in less time but I don’t do it at the sacrifice of those around me, the relationships I have or my health. I got a good flow. I got a good peak pace.

How do you tell people do that? That’s part of your jam and what you do in the world.

Look at it as like two areas or two ways to focus on this. One is going to be destination. Destination is, “I’m trying to get people to get to the point of making more money. Dropping guilt and overwhelmed.” Guilt and overwhelm are huge pieces of this whole process. At the same time, I don’t get to that foreign place I want to get to, which is I got great momentum. I’m at peak pace and everything’s still moving and moving smoothly.

It takes it back to the beginning of, “There are two parts of the emotional side.” There’s also the structural, strategic side of this. How you do it is you have to tap into the emotional side first because the emotion drives us to solve problems that are usually solved with strategies and techniques and tactics and tools. The emotional side is most people don’t go through any process. They wing it. Life falls apart. They survive.

When you ask how, I created a process years ago called the shift method. All of this ties back to you. You were the common denominator in all of your problems. Remember, you’re the one creating them. You’re the person. Let them endure. You’re accepting them and creating them. Letting them come into your life. If you realize that first piece and you go, “Great. If I’m the common denominator, then what can I do?” In some places, you may not have a bunch of power. In someplace, you have a ton of power but the very first piece is emotionally being able to look at yourself and go, “I suck here. I’m not good here.”

Now, when we’re successful, you’re making good money. That’s the last thing you want to do. The hardest people to get through to are the ones that have success financially. It’s a weird thing in our world because everything is so encapsulated with finances and money that we have this false sense of superiority as a human.

There are people that they are bad people but make good money or they don’t understand. Only because you’ve got some money doesn’t mean you’re a great human, so it’s in between. Whenever you go to those people and go, “You’re experiencing hardship in your life. You have pain. You got to work on some things for you.” The immediate thing they have is this ego wall comes shooting up. “I don’t need help with that. I got this.” It’s like, “Okay, cool.” If that wall comes up, you get to live in that house you hate. You get to hang out there and stay there but it’s cool.

The how part of it at first, this method is a see stage. We have three stages, see, shifts and sustain. The first stage of this is the see stage. It’s your ability to take a look at yourself in ways that we’ll call self-awareness but it’s a little bit deeper. Give yourself this perspective that you don’t want to see because it hurts but you need to see because it will finally give you the permission you need to improve in a certain area of your life.

That’s one of the first issues because no matter what, it could be an area where maybe you’re having issues as a parent. Maybe it’s an issue in the health. If you don’t own the fact that maybe your poor commuter care is a parent or maybe you’re not the most patient or maybe in your health, you can’t stop eating candy bars. Who knows what it is? If you don’t, you’re never going to do the work on that thing. It will keep enduring and keep creating more pain and you won’t even notice.

It’s like the stinking fish in the room. It’s like there’s a smell but I keep sleeping up. I keep wiping the window walls down but it still stinks because it’s that one thing you’re not focusing on. Is this a novel idea? No. This is not something always heard before. This is a very common statement I believe, but a lot of people will not finally wake up to this damn simple idea. They don’t be.

I think part of it too, as we come more accomplished, your ego has to be in play because that’s a fake it until you make it. You get that credibility, then you’re not faking anymore but you have this high ego and that’s what you’re talking about. It’s hard to get through to that high ego and be humble enough as a student to put the ego down because that’s part of our success formula.

Ego’s good. The ego is not a bad thing. When I played the NFL, here’s what ego does. Ego protects the current identity inside. This whole medical shift is to shift you at an identity level. The things that need to be done that are hard to do, they are so natural to you that they’re hard not to do at some point.

Only who you are in a flow but the ego will protect the current identity. Bad or good, it or protects it. When I was playing football, part of my good identity was I was a football player. My ego said, “Don’t eat that trash. Get to work outside time, study your playbook, recover your body, work hard and practice that.” It wanted to protect the internal identity and be in alignment.

At the same time, when I got out of the NFL and I wanted to start a business, the ego is not in a positive place. It’s like, “I don’t need these plebes helps. They didn’t play in the NFL. What do they know?” This ego was a bad thing because I’m entering this world 8, 10 years behind my peers. They’ve been there. They’ve been in the regular world way longer than me and my idiot self comes in with this massive ego. I wouldn’t accept the things I needed to know to get better.

The interesting thing when I was studying for our call, 78% of NFL players go bankrupt or fall into severe financial stress within two years of retirement. You retired and you picked up a ball in another arena. Talk about how you did that and what made you different. That’s a staggering number.

I was close to it.

Did the ego crush them? Was it like they had no other life purpose? What do you think?

This is the one that I have speculation as to what it is. I have no definitive facts. I’m going to talk from a position.

You have an insider scoop on the speculation. I would respect your insight more than my insight.

I think what happened, I got done. I opened a gym business and I didn’t want any of anybody’s help. No one could tell me what to do. Within months, I was looking at bankruptcy. I was looking at my lease pretty much been not fulfilled, so they’re going to sue me and have to file bankruptcy because I couldn’t afford to pay upfront this four-year lease I signed the first commercial location. I’m falling into that trap pretty quick. Now thankfully, I figured it out. I had some great mentors pop in but this is one of the things.

Whenever you look at the athletes, when we come from that world, we are put on massive pedestals. We’re on TV where you’re asking for my autograph. “Look at me, companies are paying me money to show their stuff.” I got dinner once a week easily, if not more, to go and sit with some guy and talk about his financial investment company because they wanted to be a financial advisor of mine. I’m meeting these massive, amazing steaks once a week because I was on the team. It’s this weird thing where the reality is you’re seen as.

When you leave the game, you still have that feeling. “I’m great. I’m awesome. I’m brave.” If people want to give you help, you’re like, “What have you done? You didn’t play in the NFL. Who are you?” I think part of it is we don’t want to go back to the regular human level. The ego gets into a position where it says, “I’m not going to do what regular humans do. I’m going to let my money make me money.” What a lot of guys do is, first off, they live the lifestyle still because they want to have that nutriment and that sense of, “I’m great.” They keep spending money when they know they’re coming in.

The second part of it is they want to go and be investors but there are people who are investors that aren’t good investors. You’re not an investor. You only have money. It’s not wise to invest money. We have no idea how. There’s a guy named Raghib Ismail. I don’t know him personally. This is a story I heard. I want to say he had $120 million in the bank or something ridiculous. He had made such poor investments. He was extended to $200 million. With a hundred plus million in the bank, you’re still bankrupt, had to file bankruptcy. He couldn’t pay their debts.

It’s weird when you start looking at why these guys go bankrupt. I believe they end up not having a perspective of the fact that they are regular humans and done with the game. You are only a person. What helped me when I came home was I was only months away from the removal of the ego. I had gotten to a tough spot financially.

Fame wasn’t doing well because I couldn’t pay the bills. I eventually put everything down and said, “I’m not doing this thing. I don’t know anything about this. How about I do what I did to give me the highest level in the world for my sport of football?” Which was to get somebody who was a coach, a guidance person or a mentor.

What’s interesting is my coach, he couldn’t do what I could do on the field. Most people’s coach is always got to be someone that’s above where you’re at. I’m like, “There’s a lot of people that are billionaires with coaches who don’t make billions of dollars. How does that happen?” There’s a Rolls Royce salesman on a Rolls Royce, but probably not. There are people who are experts on something. They don’t own the thing that they’re trying to be an expert on it. They haven’t excelled in that area. What I’ve found was I had not taken into account.

In fact, when I played football, my coach was good at being able to see more than I could. I could see what was right in front of me. I could see what was right here. What’s going on? Whereas he could see the entire field and that’s the difference. When I stepped back, I was like, “I got to figure this out.” I hired someone who knew more about this area that could see the field in ways I couldn’t.

That happened to me when I sold my business for millions. We sold it for $10 million, and all of a sudden, my identity was lost because, all of a sudden, I didn’t have this pain. I was an icon. I would walk in the room, everybody would know me, then all of a sudden, I walk in the room they’re like, “Who are you?” I’m like, “What? I’m Susie Carder.” They’re like, “Who’s that?” It’s humbling.

That’s all things. What’s interesting, as you say, in a way that it’s different. For most football players, that’s also a big piece of it. We lose our identity and we don’t know how to fill it back up. We have this existential vacuum sucking things and to fill this gaping hole we can’t figure out how to fill it. Whenever it happens and it will happen for some reason for everybody.

There’ll be a day when you wake up and either by choice, you sold your business or by chance, I lost my career to an injury. You can no longer do the thing you were meant to do or you were doing before. The interesting thing is, as humans, we are built to be in motion. We don’t have a lot of fun sitting still. I prefer putting the puzzle together than I do staring at the finished puzzle. Natural things.

The minute you put it together, you usually break it all apart and put it in the box. Like, “I did it. Been there, done that.”

Whenever we’re moving towards something and we wake up and we can’t move in the same direction or we don’t know if we’re moving in a direction that’s worthwhile. You get that big hole, that crisis and that’s a tough place to be for anybody. Whether you’ve made a bunch of money and you sold somebody that money, it’s like, “I got money but I’m not happy.” That’s a sucky place. It’s like that thing where that identity shift thing that I talk about. That’s a heavy piece of it. How do I proactively or in the middle of a shift manage this properly, so I don’t go falling off a cliff?

How do you help people manage a shift? It’s easy to say. All this is so easy to say and it’s not anything new but the distinction is having somebody do it. “That’s my success. Not what I’m teaching.” It’s when you finally do it. You master your money. You’re looking at who you’re being, your accountability, what you’re not doing, what you’re sabotaging. How do you help people make that shift and make the shift happen?

The first part is to see the stage I talked about. That’s the first part of it. The second part is to the answer to the question you’re asking. Once you’ve got an idea of what I got to work on for you, it could have been like, “I got to work on and find another purpose for these idle hands.” For some people, they got to find a way to fix the marriage because like, “I’m going to work. I do a lot of work but I know that when I get home, it would be an argument because I’m doing too much work. There’s not a presence at home,” or the kids don’t feel like they’re present with their parents. Whatever it might be. The other parts of the shift. The shift stage has three distinct segments of it. One point is going and say, “I need to look at what is the thing I want to shift into?”

Not so much, what do I got to do because a lot of us are quick to find out what I got to read, what I do but even if I had you read that stuff, would it be your stuff to do? I don’t know. Where are you going? Most people don’t redefine a vivid vision. They don’t clarify the destination. “I want to get to this. Start working towards stuff.” Bob or Susan said, “Go buy a treadmill,” then you’re like, “I don’t even like running.” Why did you buy a treadmill? You took action and it had nothing to do with where you wanted to go. The idea first is to figure out where do I want to go? The other part of it is, who do I have to be to get there?

[bctt tweet=”What you do becomes who you are in time.” username=””]

That’s the thing that few people understand has got them success in the first place as you became someone along the way. That person you became got what you have. If you weren’t that person, you wouldn’t have what you have. It’s pretty straightforward that way. Now that I know where I want to go, it’s going to be different.

I got to say, “Am I the person now?” If I’m not, “Who do I have to become?” Becoming is a rooted core thing, like where I feel like it’s who I am to do that thing. That’s typically going to be taking out of character actions, which goes to the shift plan, the third stage of this. “I’m going to go. I know I got to become. I now have to have a plan in place to wake up every day and operate in a manner that feels out of character now.”

Over time, the more you do it and refine it and get better and fail and succeed, that one day, I wake up and I look back and go, “I don’t know what day or what time, minute but at some point, that became who I was.” Whenever I looked at this, then it was hard to do. It was hard to spend time with my kids when I wanted to go to work but I carved out the hour for them to be focused.

It was hard to get to the gym when I knew I wanted to go home and sit down because I had a long day. It was hard to apologize to my spouse when I knew I had messed up. It was hard to do that but now, I can’t go to sleep unless I do those things. That plan in place was followed enough. You get to that point of waking up as that person.

I help people go through each of those things. I dig in and say, “Where do you want to go? What have you got? What excites you? What are you scared of? Where do you want to go? Who do you have to be to get there?” Let’s take a look and we research the people in the world that maybe have that thing or you see may have some pieces of that thing and go, “What are they doing or what must you do?” We start looking at the habits in place because, obviously, what you do becomes who you are in time. A lot of the habits, the big actions, the affirmation stuff you do and a lot of that comes to also that work-life harmony.

If part of who you are isn’t saying, “I’m going to place these things on two distinct pedestals,” and have them equal, then you won’t become that person. You’ll be the same person you or with the same stressful situation in a different arena. The idea is factoring these things in, then we go, “Great. We now have it. Let’s put it into work.”

That’s the third stage which we call the sustain stage, which is all about drive hive and thrive and getting into motion and having a discipline system. People are successful. They have some good systems already. For the most part, it’s natural and to be able to, “I’m going to lock myself away. I’m going to get focused.” They’re good in that flow but now all we’re doing is saying, “We gave you a different direction,” that shifts the stage to put that flow into action.

How important is community? You’ve overcome a ton of adversity. When you look at a foster kid to NFL to competing on American Ninja, you’ve done some big stuff, an author. I think there’s the statistic. The last I read was that 70% of people want to be authors. Out of that 70% that do it, only 10% do you know. It’s a big lift. When you look at that, how important is the community? Two, talk about that journey because you made a decision as a kid. That can be a tumultuous background. That cannot be fun. It could also be your superpower because he had to go through what you went through.

A lot of who I am and all of us tie us to our childhood in some way. The things we learned, dynamics that become like staples of our persona and our identity even now. I was given away as a kid in a foster care group in an all-White family, poor. I wasn’t even adopted for eleven years at the age of fourteen. A lot of weird, like, “Who am I? Where do I fit? What’s my base?” I didn’t have it for a lot of years. I tried something new. It wasn’t very good. Eventually got good, got a scholarship to play football, progressed onto the NFL, lost a career in the NFL from there, I had a dark bottom divorced, three kids, ex-wife, business not doing very well, out of shape and turning it all around after my mom passed away.

I’ve lived a lot of life’s journeys in weird ways that I would say I wish I hadn’t but I also wished I did because, at the same time, I learned so very much about life. I think the thing for me is all these things had a purpose in ways I didn’t quite comprehend. The biggest thing is you look back on it and go, “I hated this stuff,” but in the end, it was good and useful for now. It’s all a place where it fits. I lost your question. What was the very first question you asked before I led into that to make sure.

One was community. How did you get through the adversity?

At every level of my life, I have always had a human being involved in some capacity. I was able to show myself things I didn’t want to see, whether it was my coaches or my spouse or my kids, whatever it was. In those moments, you respect those people who will give you some things. I believe that we have to have two things in order to have any success.

I believe it’s people in process. 100% people in process because when you have those situations, if I’m emotionally not there, you ask how to get through it. I need to go around people and borrow their joy, specifically borrow their joy, because when I’m in a bad mood around good people, they don’t let me stay in a bad mood.

Even borrow your belief. Borrow my belief about you or who you are. That’s carried me through some of the hardest times. Do you forget who you are? Apparently, I am because I feel like a loser now.

We need that sometimes. We’re built for connection, for interaction. The fact that I can sit here with a weird thought in my brain, sends a signal to the rest of my body to vibrate air out of my mouth to go into a microphone, to go to your ears and you hear it in real time. That’s accidental. We have to have people.

The biggest thing is I think if you say, how do we get out of problems? I couldn’t be around you all day long and be joyful. If I go home and I have no marching orders, I’m going to feel the same way pretty quickly after. You have to have a process. That’s like the way our whole company is set up. We give people coaching and coops and communities and process, “Here’s our method to walk through this to get there.” Not this trial and error, like, “Follow this. This thing works.”

You’ll wake up one day having your life in great harmony while still getting a whole crapload of stuff done. The idea is if you don’t have both, you can’t do with one. If I have processed but no people, I’ll work myself to the bone. I’ll burn relationships up. At some point, I’ll not have accountability. I’ll let myself down because we could do that pretty easily. It’s tough without that people. For me, if I look at every stage of my life, that’s the only thing that got me out. I had my gym business failing in the very beginning before I sold it way later. I had this thing in place but I was like, “This suck because I’m not getting anything done. I need to get to a Mastermind.”

In the Mastermind group, the guys taught me like, “Here’s how to do it,” but I had a whole group of people also guiding me on how to do it. It’s like that community, that humongous, like lifting what I needed was paramount to success. It happened in football and the whole team around me. It happened in my marriage, my friendships and following guidance from a counselor. All these things had been part of my life and so, yes. Community, people are huge in terms of having any success at a nominal level.

When I think people have to find the people that have the credibility, many people blindly go, “Here’s this person. I’m going to follow him.” Do your due diligence. You learn as much from the failure. Yes, I sold my business for millions but I also lost millions. Both of them are great learning experiences. I like when I make the millions, not lose the millions.

That one’s a better learning lesson. You have to make sure people have that credibility. There are a lot of people telling you what to do but have they earned the right? When I look at your bio, I look at what you’ve accomplished. I look at all the things from having that physical discipline, the mental disciplined, the commitment to cleaning your junk up. That’s powerful inside itself.

I tell people, you should not be telling anybody how to run the race until you cross the finish line.

Amen for that.

What if you’re guiding people to make the left turn you made then you find out later like, “I should have gone right.” You should probably get through all and turn around and go, “This is what I did. This is where I would have made an adjustment and a change.” Having the ability to drop your ego enough to admit those things. That’s work most people aren’t willing to do yet.

You dropped something that I want to go back to. You drop that you were in foster care with a White family, being raised by a White family. How much did that shape you? I’ve raised two African-American daughters. The biggest challenge when they got to be women was like, “Who am I now?” My daughter went to Harvard. She got into all these African-American studies. I’m like, “You’re getting into your culture.” She goes, “Mom, I’m a Black woman. Especially on the East Coast, I am a Black woman. In California, I could be anything.”

Now, I raised them to be very aware of their culture. I can be a lot of things but I can’t be a powerful Black woman. I got a community to help me. I realize that strong foundation. When you’re in that environment to go, “How much did that shape you?” That’s delicious because people see a package and they judge. They go, “Here’s this package, handsome, athletic, successful and happy marriage.” We can clean that dirt off and make it look good.

There’s a lot of joy that I hold inside because of where I could be in life.

Say that again. Come on. That was diamond right there.

I have a lot of joy inside because of where I could be in life. I’m not that I’m obviously not in life. It’s funny, every time that people ask that question, I go, “I don’t know anybody who’s like super happy, joyful, got it together for the most part that didn’t have some crazy dark hard story.” I think the ones who look at me and go, “He’s got all together. Life must’ve been easy.” Those are the people who haven’t been hit their darkness yet.

Once you’ve gone through it, you recognize it. I know for sure the levels of assess even people that are settled inside. I can’t be around people very often or too long that aren’t settled inside. Meaning they’ve gone through something at a certain level to where they have patience and a piece to them. I can sit in a room with you. You don’t have to talk to me and it’s okay. I can sit here. We can watch a TV screen and we’re at peace.

The person has to ask me a question and talk to me all day. I’m like, “Settle down. I don’t know what’s going on there but be at peace.” Those people, those are the ones who asked me, “I wouldn’t even notice you got all this stuff put together. Life seems good. It must’ve always been good?” I’m like, “No, it wasn’t.” People who have that at a certain level, they’ve been there. They gave it, like, “I’ll get you. I’m sure we could talk and share stories.” We probably could.

I call it like our stripes or our general stripes or badges, whatever it is. Like when you’re first sued as a business owner, you’re balling, then you realize that’s part of the business. If you’re going to play big, there’s going to be fallout. What do you see working with clients? What do you see that’s holding them back? What holds them back together?

We’ve touched on it. There are a couple of things. One of the most important will be the ego. The clients I work with are people that are fairly successful of it. They’re doing eight figures, usually in above or they’re in big companies where they’re entrepreneurs and companies that are doing $250 million in their business. What ends up happening is they’re the head.

The head never likes to get hit. The head loves to take action or take the ego hit. What happens is the hardest part for me is them getting to the point where they’ll start and go, “I know I’m not perfect. I’m ready to do the work.” Sounds good. The moment we find a point where they’re not perfect, all of a sudden, the wall goes up.

“I don’t know. I’m good. I got this. I don’t need it. I got this figured out. I don’t need any help right there. No, that’s wrong.” I’m like, “We’re going to sit back. You let me know when you’re ready to have me be the coach you hired before.” The beginning is, can you pause and realize that when someone points an issue out or something you’re not perfect at, it does not take away from all the amazingness that you are or the success you’ve already had.

In fact, this is a gift to you. The people who are in your life, who are willing to give you the insight that you need to improve or a gift. When you can’t take it, when you rear up and bite people’s heads off, you’re only hurting yourself because that person is now not going to give you the gold that you need. We’ll call it the map, the treasure map to the gold you seek. A treasure map, for a lot of us, is that. There’s a statement I love and it goes, “It is hard to see the label when you are inside of the jar.”

When I’m in the jar, I don’t know, the label says poor communicator, pessimistic, gets mad too quickly, womanizer, whatever. I don’t know that. I only do my thing and I wonder why can’t I hit the next year? The thing you got to work on is the label you can’t see. The people outside who can see it are trying to tell you what it says. You put your fingers in your ear and yell out loud, “I don’t need them,” and trying to cut them off.

They’re going to turn around. They’re going to walk away and you’ll never know the label. For me, the majority of clients I work with, in the beginning, it’s that ego thing. It’s not that they’re trying to be autistic or trying to be abrasive but the moment that I point that thing out in that emotional second right there, they go to their go-to, which is cluttered off, put the wall up. We’ve been trained to do that almost all of our lives. That’s the biggest issue in the beginning.

That’s a protect and defend. I’m going to protect it. I’m going to defend it because it’s worked for us in a lot of different ways. I still have people that follow me better still in denial about where the economy is and the pandemic. What’s been your secret sauce? Many people are still struggling. The last statistic was that 60% of small businesses have gone out of business because of the pandemic. We thrive. We’ve doubled. We’ve grown. What’s been your secret sauce to stay in action and keep growing?

Think about what was taken away from his interaction. I heard about this story where there was this company that came in and they were helping a third-world country. Women would walk like a mile a day to go and wash clothes and get water and that stuff. At this company, they came in and gave them at their home, these water purifiers, so that they don’t have to go anywhere. They don’t have to walk anywhere anymore.

Depression rates went through the roof. The reason is because they didn’t have a human connection anymore. They didn’t walk and talk and interact and share and have fun. For the whole day, they would sit at home. The task was done and they didn’t know what to do. I take that and tie it to what we’re doing now. We were devoid of human interaction. We didn’t connect as much. It wasn’t typical at the coffee shop like we’re used to doing. It wasn’t a street, a doctor’s office or at work. It wasn’t any of that. It wasn’t at events or meetings or retreats. We were tucked away.

[bctt tweet=”What you do becomes who you are in time.” username=””]

What I did, which was I’m glad, I think it was wise. I’m glad I did this. It was hard. It was a lot of emotional work but I did It. I decided I was never going to say no to a podcast. If anybody wants to talk to me, I’m going to talk to them. I’m not traveling as much. I’m not going on stages anymore, so I might as well talk to people. I’m not going to be going, so I can talk to you here as supposed to at the event.

On top of that, I was very proactive with like, if you know someone that would be cool to talk to, let me know, only to chat with them. I gave what people were having taken away, which is human interaction. In doing so, it made the brand have more awareness. It allowed me to refine the messaging of what I talked about. It helped me refine to a level of niching down because also initial niche. I don’t know what people used. I hate that word. I never know what this is.

Most people did, they didn’t realize that the entire world now went through the same playing field where it used to be media and social media and yet, people are doing retreats and live events. We’re in person. Everybody was now taken back to having to be online. If I’m online and I’m not crystal clear in my messaging, I will get lost in the shuffle and get lost in the crowd noise. Talking to people in podcasts and having conversations allowed me to see what did their ears perk up to. What did they ask me questions about before?

At the beginning of this, I talked about having that perfect work-life harmony at a peak pace and you said, “Tell me more.” That little thing, it sounds simple but that was figured out through these conversations of like, “Let some of the people desire. It’s what I do in my own life anyway. That’s a benefit to the world. Let’s talk about that.”

The more you lead in, that’s a business group. It wasn’t where I was freaking out, like, “I’m going to ride this thing out, then I’m going to go back.” No, I’m going to find a way to get on top of the ship and ride this thing better than anybody else’s, so that was the thing for me. It was a human connection because it was being removed.

What’s one thing, looking back at your life, Anthony, you want to be remembered for?

I don’t know if I have a definitive answer. I feel like it changes every year. I want to be remembered for being the guy that people didn’t think could exist. I love the statement of what you do in the dark comes into light. I don’t do dumb things in the dark. I have all the reasons to have done dumb things. Statistically, if you look at any prison in America, 75% of the inmates are former foster kids like me, half our homeless population. Less than 1% of us graduated from college.

I came from a divorced family. As with my wife, we were divorced for three years. Got remarried and have a great marriage now. My kids have a present father. I get to speak and talk and coach. I get to do cool things. Also, I don’t look as if you saw me walking on the street and never knew me and looked at me. There’s a level of assumptions you might have about who I am. Nine times out of ten, I’m wearing athletic clothes. I looked like an athlete. I put these shirts on because I do podcasts and I got to look nice.

Most of the time, I live in a way where I meet a lot of people. They go, “I had no idea that this thing existed or I didn’t know about this idea. I love it. You shared this.” The things that I share about my life that most people won’t even divulge or share. I’d like to live my life in the space of peace by doing things that would make people freak out. That’s how I live my life. If I’m remembered for something, it’d be being the guy that did instead of things that most people would never think someone could do.

Let’s talk about your book because you make it available for us to shift our identity. Talk about your book and you have a gift for us, which is awesome and generous. What are people going to get when they jump into?

What I did is I took this concept of identity shifts. Let’s be honest, nobody in their life woke up and said, “I want to have an identity shift.” No one in the history of ever yet. Maybe in like 5, 10 years when I got this thing moving. The concept has been some I’ve worked with for years. The book was the next evolution of having these conversations. It was accidental publishing. I wasn’t even seeking a publisher. Conversations happen around the concept and someone’s like, “I want to publish this.” I was like, “Let’s do it.” The book became two parts.

One part is the concept of understanding the purpose and the benefit of an immense level of identity, where it fits in and how it silently controls our life. The other part is understanding how I control this thing that’s controlling my life because most people have no control over it, don’t understand it, and have no idea how to navigate are shifted.

In our shift method, we do that. I put the shift method in the book so you can walk through and do it. Some people go, “Great. I’m going to get the book. I don’t want to read it.” Cool, I got an audiobook. I sat and recorded this thing. I had it all mastered. Everything is an audiobook. If you go to IdentityShiftBook.com, follow the steps.

Step one, buy the book. Bring the receipt back. Step two, you have the receipt, copy that. Step three, get the button, then go to the next page. Put the code LIVE in there. You get the audiobook for free. You have a digital book. It’s like if you don’t have the paper book, you want to read it while you’re on the train, cool. Pull your phone out. It’s right there in front of you.

The third thing is a workbook. It’s a $97 workbook. We give it for free. It allows you to do the work that you see in the book. Is it all of our stuff? No, I can’t put all of it. It’s vastly too much but if you’re able to go to the base of that, it will definitively make a change this next year for you or anytime you choose to do it. The cool thing is it’s not some harebrained crazy scheme.

It ties into neuroscience in psychology, but it’s human based, which means it’s not predicated on the here and the now and some new technology. If you’re a human and you have an identity and you want to accomplish something greater where you want to be in better harmony, an identity shift will help you get there. This book shows you how.

I love it. You’re the walking breathing example. Thank you for being here, your time, and your generosity. What I can’t get people back is their time and you have poured into us. I appreciate you. We got the identity shifts. Where else can we find you? Any socials?

If you go to Instagram and that’s the place I’ve primarily live. It’s @AnthonyTrucks. I think there are one or two fake accounts that pop up once in a while but the one that you see more activity out of my face and stories, that’s the one you want to follow.

Make sure you follow him and like him. If this show has made a difference for you, please share it with your friends. Somebody needs to hear this message now. Anthony, thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you for being the breather and the journey. Thank you for being a leader. You’re an amazing man, an amazing contributor to humanity. Thank you for being with us.

Thank you for having me. Welcome as well.

Important Links

• Anthony Trucks
• IdentityShiftBook.com
• @AnthonyTrucks – Instagram
• https://www.Facebook.com/profile.php?id=11509768
• https://www.Facebook.com/AnthonyTrucks
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/anthonytrucks/
• https://YouTube.com/user/anthonytrucks
• www.AwwShift.com

About Anthony Trucks

Anthony Trucks is a former Foster Child, NFL Football Player, Competitor on American Ninja Warrior, Author, Life Coach and Entrepreneur. From foster care to the NFL, to successful business owner, Anthony Trucks has accomplished what statistics would say is impossible. As a speaker and success coach, Anthony teaches people how to design and build better lives and businesses by learning how to access the power of their identity to tap into their full potential and Make Shift Happen!