Anthony Trucks - Own Your Identity And Overcome Anything
16 Jul 2023 · 58 min
Podcast interview (Hustle and Flowchart) with Anthony Trucks discussing his life story—foster care, adoption, college/NFL career, business setbacks, near‑suicide, recovery, and his shift into identity coaching. He explains his 'Shift' method for designing, developing, deploying and sustaining an identity to achieve goals, and shares examples (clients, American Ninja Warrior).
Chapters
If you're not good by yourself in a room, you got some darkness. It may not be a lot, but for me, that's what we distract with drugs and alcohol and beers and, you know, women and men like that. We'll distract ourselves. We'll always be with people. If you find yourself incredibly uncomfortable alone, you feel yourself drawn to your phone to text people or call people to go out to eat. That's how you know for sure there's something going on. And any kind of darkness, if you want it to not feel dark, you put light on it. And essentially, light is bringing to the world. Because the problem most of us have is, like, we don't want to see it ourselves. And, oh, man, we don't want the world to see it. Oh, no. Right. Because what if they feel bad? And we as humans need acceptance? And so when I don't have the acceptance, I feel really bad. So I'll hide that stuff so nobody sees it. And then, you know, it's just a scary thing, and it compounds, compounds, compounds. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast.
We're here.
We're here.
And we're here.
We made it to our own podcast today.
Is that what Jimmy Fallon says?
You're here.
You made it?
I think so.
I think he says that at the beginning of every episode.
Said that as an intro before. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't watched Jimmy in a while.
I don't either.
I've been off the late night train, I guess, for watching those guys.
I don't know.
Pretty much ever since I've been watching gardening a lot.
Ever since the COVID stuff kind of happened. I've kind of checked out of the news for a while because it's like, I feel like you watch one news station, they're telling you one thing's happening. You watch a different news station, they're telling you a different thing's happening. And I'm just like, I don't know who to believe. I'm turning it all off.
Always do your research, folks. Yeah. Who knows what to believe anymore? But yes, I'm kind of the same. It's a lot. It's coming at you fast, but I think what's cool about. So we're chatting with Anthony Trucks today. This dude has an extremely interesting story. Lots of downs, obviously. Some ups in there as well. Lots of ups. As well. I mean, usually balance out some way. But yeah, I mean, what. He's gone. He takes you back all the way from what, foster care and going, you know, being in a lot of different homes, and I've got some experience in that, being on the other side of the system. It's interesting, but it's tough, man. It's super tough. But he's been through it all the way to, you know, his college years as a Duck at Oregon State. Yep.
For what, The Bucks Few years, I think. Washington Redskins, when they were called the Redskins, but I'm not allowed to say that anymore.
It's a football club now.
Washington Football Club now. And then he was also Steelers. That's right.
So. And then he hurt himself at the Steelers. So not taking away anything from his story, but the dude's gone through, like, some interesting stuff to get.
He was on American Ninja Warrior.
Yeah, that's right. And we'll get into that a little later in the episode. But it's. It's interesting, but he's had some super crashes down. Like, just think about it. You're in the NFL. He's. He's playing, you know, at this elite level, and then gets hurt, but then, you know, he has nothing. So just think about that. Like, you hear this story a lot with professional athletes, like, oh, they retire and then they. They just completely flop or they go broke. A lot of them, like, yeah, they just don't. They can't keep doing what they loved or.
So many people's identities are tied to their career. Right. And that's really what we're talking about here is like, how to not be so tied to your identity and how to actually shift your identity around, into the. Into identifying as the person you want to be.
Aw, Shift. Shift. You like that?
That's the name of his podcast?
I do believe so. So, yeah, check out. Ah, Shift.
I just like this.
I hope that's the name of his podcast.
I'm pretty sure, actually, I don't think we even mentioned it, but I know I read it somewhere, and if it's not, it fits. Because he says shift a lot. Yeah.
If it's not, go to anthonytrux.com because that's where that's sort of the home base for everything he's doing real active on Instagram. So check them out there.
Yep.
And we're taking notes.
We're always taking notes. So we. We got you back. If you don't want to take any notes. We got you back. So they're free for two weeks. Of this episode going live, go to hustleandflowchart.com/comp, c o m p. It's hustleandflowchart.com comp. Get the notes, and you're going to get a lot of little nuggets of wisdom in there.
Nuggies?
Nuggies. What else? Anything else, Matt?
I mean, there's a lot of other stuff we can talk about.
Anything we should mention here or we get to go.
I think we should go. Bring it over to Anthony.
All right. He's getting a little firepower here, so get ready, y'. All. Anthony, we're going. We're live. How you doing, my friend?
I'm doing well, man. How are you doing?
Amazing. And kicking off our day with conversation with you. That's a good time. And you just always come with the ball energy, man.
I try. That's who I am as a human. It works.
It does, man. Well, we were just nerding out about this podcast studio or office, I guess you got now, right? You just revamped the bad boy.
Yeah. It's a green screen. Just kidding. It's really.
An expensive green scene. Yeah.
What do you call? I think you called. Yeah, for sure. Didn't you call it your cockpit or something? Right. Last time you.
It's a cockpit, bro. I got like. Yeah. I mean, if you look at it from my angle, I got, like, three screens, and I have all these weird plugs and cameras. And so it's like I settle in. I just sit. And to be full transparency, man, it gets a little bit warm in here. And so I walk out here, my wife's like, did you just work out? Feels like bottom half is a little sweaty and stinky, I guess. Nice.
Well, you're burning calories while podcasting, so that's awesome.
There we go.
Yeah. Well, I gotta give a shout out to Chris Ross. He connected us. Said like, you are the best human to follow on Instagram. He's like, you'll soon see why. And it's true, man. It's just like day after day motivation. Just like, almost like, rah, rah, whenever you need that little. Pick me up.
Yeah. When I was doing some research, I was just noticing you've been on so many different podcasts. And I'm like, oh, we have so many mutual friends. It's crazy that we haven't crossed paths. I noticed that you've been on Justin Shank's podcast, who we're actually chatting with in a couple hours today, and you've been on Michael Trainor's podcast who's like, a really good friend of ours who we go way back with. And I was just like. I was blown away. I was like, how have we not crossed paths yet?
So sneaky guy in the background nobody knows about. I'm gonna be like that in, like, two years. Like that overnight success, like he just popped out of nowhere.
Yeah. Nothing on your life before, right?
Yeah, I'm just a loser. Loser, baby.
I love it. Well, take us back, man.
Yeah, let's get into it. I know there's something that I will probably nerd out for a minute with you on, which is American Ninja Warrior. Me and my family are, like, huge fans, so we could talk. Touch on that in a minute. But let's. Let's get your backstory a little bit, because I know your backstory is kind of what created the person you are today. So let's dig into that a little bit.
Yeah. So I was given away at three years old to a foster care system in California. That was not a very good system. It's better now. It's not way better, but it's difficult. And. Yeah, man. So I started my life in this realm of not feeling like I mattered. Mom didn't love me enough to keep me. And so I just got. I experienced a lot of craziness in the foster care system and landed in a home, which is my home now. Only black person in an all white family. Really poor growing up. And so, like, a lot of my identity has always kind of been unstable and unclear. Like, I don't know who I am, where I fit, where I belong. It's just. It was tough, man. School. Was a bad kid in school. Stinky kid in school, too. It's a lot of craziness. And so after 11 years in the system, got adopted at 14, tried it for football. Horrible.
How many homes do you. Cause I have some.
Six. Shit.
Okay.
But the thing is, the majority were from three till six. I bounced around from five, from three till six. And it's just a crappy situation, man. They just. People treat you right. Beaten and starved and tortured. Weird stuff. Dude. People. People can be a little bit crazy. And so I've since forgiven and moved on. It's really, truly, like, I've worked with that. That aspect of just like, who is. Who is Anthony and how he looks at those people and condemns them. It's like, hey, some people suck, man. Move on. Like, so I just do my thing. But, yeah, so progressed on. Was still a shutdown kid, but my adoptive mom and the Family. I got adopted by me and she opened me up pretty well. Like she. She gave me some good love and perspective and it allowed my emotional barrier to come down.
Good.
Tried out football my 14 years old, which is well behind peers and I was garbage. You call it poo trash. That's bad.
Technical term.
Technical term is a scientific term.
What, what position or positions?
At the time I was.
Man, at the time, I want to say it was linebacker. Quarterback. My first year as a quarterback, I never played in the game. Guy named Michael Belser, his dad was a coach. So I practiced. I was the starter in practice, never played in the game.
Oh, okay.
How crazy is that starter?
Weird.
Yeah, super weird. If you. Nevermind. I was gonna say a dumb joke. I'm gonna say the joke. If he wasn't a black kid, I'd say it's because I was black. That's the joke. It's a dumb joke. Just ride with it, man. I have a lot of weird. Yeah, I have a lot of weird stuff. I grew up in an all white family, so we have a lot of weird racial jokes that aren't even serious in any way whatsoever.
Oh, let everything out here. It doesn't matter.
Let it all ride. Yeah. And then we. Then I ended up progressing into playing. A couple years was bad. My mom got diagnosed with Ms. And then eventually this wake up call of like, I want to be great at game. And so I started doing all this crazy work that really no 15 year old should be doing, but I did. And the next year I came back.
My.
Was it junior, sophomore year? Sorry, sophomore year of high school. Baller. Like I just was an angry, mean, faster, stronger kid and. And progressed on to get a college scholarship. I was your homecoming king, you know, Cutest couple in the yearbook with my. My girlfriend at the time. Went on to college on a scholarship, played the University of Oregon, which is where that helmet comes from. There. Oh, there it is. We played. Our last game in college was in, what was it? Pacific Life Holiday bowl in San Diego. Yeah, I got a big whale trophy up here. You can't see.
I've seen that.
Another game.
You did.
You did. Oh, you did. Yeah, I lost. We lost the game, but I still got defense mvp.
Oh, so that's the trophy. That's bitching, man. Good for you.
Isn't that dope messing around? I robbed or stripped Adrian Peterson the goal line because he put the ball out over the goal line. I grabbed it before it went over the goal line and I got the turnover.
They didn't score.
That time they still won, though. Yeah, man. But then it progressed on and ended up playing the NFL for a few years. Tore my shoulder. My third year, came home, broke my life. I'd opened this gym business because my degrees in kinesiology, and I'd lost my identity. Major crisis because anybody yourselves, myself. When you put time into something and it's no longer something you can do, whether it's a kid going to college, leaving the military, somebody pass away, relationship falls apart, whatever it might be, when you've given it all and you can't do it anymore, like, it breaks you. You don't even know who you are. Yeah, I don't know who I was without football. And so I tried to find him again in this gym and ended up going broke. Had a couple more kids. I married my high school sweetheart, had a couple more kids because I had won it when I was in sophomore in college. And so now I got three kids. I'm not present. You know, a few, maybe a year in, I found just having an affair breaks my world apart. So that I'm like, I got this business that's falling apart. Like, nine months in, I was almost bankrupt every two weeks for six years. I could barely pay rent and payroll. And then I have this marriage falling apart. I'm not a present, dad. I'm spending more time with other people's kids than my own. My body's out of shape, and, like, I still hate. Like, I can't watch football. Just everything that made me me was just gone. And I legit drove off one night, and like, this. This wave of emotion sent a text, said, please tell my kids that her father was. And went looking for rat poison and. And thankfully didn't find any. Stopped by the side of the road in a town called Stockton. It's like the armpit of one of the armpits of California.
Yes, it is.
I've been through that.
Yeah. Yeah, I just sat there. They got a college there, too. I'm like, why would you want to go to college out there?
Why would you pay for that?
It's just a weird, dry. I don't know. I feel like it's just a town full of, like, liquor stores. It's awkward. So the cops find me by gps and I can talk. I got away with words. And I'm like, oh, my wife, she's just tripping. And she's like, then just head home. So I head home. It's like 30 people in front of my house all looking for me. Ridiculous shame. And a buddy of Mine planted a seed. He's like, first off, don't ever do that again. Like, he said harsher words, but I don't know if he can cuss. I'm not a cuss or anything.
You can say whatever you want.
Yeah, I'm not a big cussing guy. He's like, you know, he's like, don't. Don't ever do it again. Secondly, he says, I thought I lost a hero. Really weird, because you don't. Buddies don't say that. It's not. And I played high school football with the buddy. Like, it's just a guy, good dude. And I was like, what are you talking about? He says, there's people in this community, man. We've watched what you've done, and you inspire a lot of people just by how you've lived your life, by what you've gone from where you've gotten to, man. I was like, interesting. So he planted the seed, which was maybe all the craziness of my life, which I haven't even gotten. All the depths of crazy had a purpose. And it wasn't a time for me to water that seed because I was still reeling from craziness. Like, I'm not gonna go start talking about life can be great. Like, that's not my. That's. That's not your lines, man. It's not your lines. And so I went to the waves of just life because, you know, when you get crappy stuff happen. It's just a fog. And we go into this. I don't want to talk to anybody. I just. I was there for years, just, you know, like years. I ended up moving my. My gym to new place. I ended up living in a 500 square foot studio apartment in a twin bed. And my twins would. My kids like my twins and my son would sleep on the. The air mattress next to the bed. Like I'd get them dressed for school and this, I mean, it was just. Oh man, it was bad. It's like it was smaller than my dorm room in college. I'm a grown man after the NFL. I got a 9,000 square foot gym that I'm. I own, you know, like, it's hella weird. That is so crazy. And just the facade, man. I would go in the morning and train clients and go home and drink a six pack of Blue Moon and go back to work later. Didn't like me, man. Just didn't like me. I messed relationships up. I'd be with some women and I steered clear from my face. I was doing a Playboy thing. And then eventually, was it April 15, 2014. Man, this is all taking place from 11 to 15. And then I find out my mom was sick. And we go to the hospital and she loses her battle with Ms. 17 years. I'm holding her hand, I watch her final breath. And a seed kind of started getting watered, which was, man, this woman helped me become like a non statistic because in foster care, 75% of inmates in prisons in America are former foster kids. Your homeless population.
Yeah, I foster to seven kids and one for 15 months. So I know exactly what you're talking about. The system's not good. It's broken.
Eats us up and spits us out. And it's just all we can do is we're mad at the world. And then even good people like yourself, we don't let them in sometimes. It's just this weird dynamic and hella hard. And so we just, you know, I beat these odds. And so this woman was the reason I was like, damn. Like, her body robbed the ability for her to reach her full potential, but she helped me reach some mind. So I had this thought of, like, maybe it's time to have this perspective of something I can do with this weird life of mine, these things I've accomplished. Because by this time, I got this massive contract with Pacific Gas and electric for like $250,000. I'd been traveling the world, speaking and doing some really cool stuff, but really not settled inside. Still, still dynamics of just the relationship. And I hadn't really focused on it. And so I was like, I want to start talking about my story. And I actually happened across a guy named Brendan Burchard through a company I was consulting with. And like, oh, this d teach that a pussy on the Internet and sell it. And I was like, blasphemy. That's not real. And so I show up, this event, it's a bunch of people hanging out and hugging and out in Santa Clara, which is about, I don't know, maybe an hour and a half south of me. And I was like, man, this is really cool. So in the same. Listen to this. My mom passed in April, May, and then June hits June. I have this contract for quarter million. I have the gym, the lease is up, so I can actually close the gym and not have to owe anything for the rent. And I get this. This window of understanding how to be able to take my story from Bren, what he shared to go and do it in the world. So I was like, man, God opened this weird window in June of 2014, like, hey, son, go chase something. So I was like, all right. Starting on this path of just navigating, figuring things out. Companies be called trust or Hustle, all about hustling what you do. And then just built up over the years and then got to January 1, 2016. I had one of those weird moments of like, this is this bed. So I wake up. I'd gone to Russia and done a presentation. And this woman who was in Russia, I'd met her and we hung out, we'll call it at night, and didn't even speak my language. Super weird. And at the time, you're like, oh, yeah, traveling, and you got some money and you're meeting people. I woke up on January 1st because she had come in from New Year's for New Year's, and it was just this feeling of shame. My kids. I would never want my kids to be like this, ever. I would never want my kids to see me like this. My God wouldn't let me into heaven. And my mom, and she would be disgusted looking at me. And it was this feeling of like, something's got to change because I'm still not this good dad. I'm. Relationships suck. It was just weird. And so I made this decision. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna. I'm gonna swear off women for a while. So like, I went celibate besides lotion for like a good chunk of time. And. And I just kind of like, I went internal, bro. And I had these weird, hard conversations of who in the world are you in? This is where identity became. Is to spearhead this kind of figure. And at this time, I still didn't know I was. This is what I was working on. So I started looking at like, you know, what trust jostle meant and how it operates and kind my buildup. But really it was like, fix aunt. Like, I'm the common denominator. We're all the common denominator of our problems. And I hadn't dug into it. So I dug into it and I was like, all right, why is your marriage falling? Why did that fall apart? I was like, well, she made a crappy choice and you blamed her for years. But let's be honest, like, you were gone from 6am to 10pm she had three kids, twin brand new babies to deal with. You were not a good husband. She didn't do that to hurt you. She did it to help her. So I was like, ah, all right, crappy choice. But it took two people, myself included, to get her to a Place where she even felt she had to make a choice in the first place. These kids, I was trained. Like, I loved the way that I had these kids at this gym, but, like, I'd left that. I still wasn't being that present father and show up to games and stuff. I was like, dude, you're not being a good dad. That's on you. Like, sucks. Stop being that guy. Wasn't in shape, wasn't taking my body. Like, dude, take care of your body. And then business wise, like, be better. Like, learn how to really cross the finish lines to then go teach people stuff. Because I still had imposter syndrome where I wasn't living this life consistently the way I was telling people to live. And so I started kind of adjusting. And nine months later, weird, my world flips around. After nine months of having some really hard conversations with myself and other people. I even went at a conversation with a guy my wife had an affair with. Like, not your common things you do.
That's the balls squashed it.
It was weird, man. It was really. Those were not easy times. But I know I knew I needed to do it because I needed to get past the darkness, what was inside of me. And I did, man. And so fast forward nine months and my wife and I got back together. Not because of the kids or anything, but, like, because of us. And we have a phenomenal marriage now. My body, I take care of it. I'm in shape. I feel good about myself. Business is great because of what I'm able to do and impact people's lives, because I learned about this process of what I do. And at that time, we still trust your hustle. Not even a year later, I'm sitting this mastermind. It's like, so Brendan Burchard. I'm one of the few humans probably ever. I went from being a person that just randomly showed up to an event and I then speak on stage. Years later, like, I speak on stages across the. Wherever is his stage of help. And yeah, so I'm in this mastermind. It's like, me and there's Brendan. There's like Russell Brunson, Jeff Walker, Lewis house, Trent Shelton, all these amazing names. Craig Clemons. I'm gonna miss some names, but they all know I love them. And one of the guys, I'm telling about my story and what I do, and he goes, I don't like it. I go, what do you mean? He goes, the stress house thing, I don't like it. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's my little but this is what I do. And he goes, you know what? He goes. Like, it is a message of messenger. Like, there's a person that talks about it. You're the charismatic speaking. But the message, he's like, doesn't line up with the messenger. He's like, we all hustle in here. He's like, but what I'd like to know is, like, how did you navigate all those different parts of your identity that some people never get past? You've done multiple. He's like, how do you get in this room? Like, how did you. How are you here? I was like, oh, I don't know. And then the conversation, the group was like, yeah, no one's talking about identity. Like, there should be a discussion.
So.
All right. It's like around. I think it's like the beginning of 2017. And so I went kind of home and started kind of just really sticking into kind of the groove of what it looked like and doing research and realized, like, probably 90% of the content I created for Trust or Hustle was somehow oddly rooted in the processes that identity goes. It was weird how it worked.
It's subconscious, probably. Huh? It's coming out.
It was always there. And so I shifted the business to identity at that time. And I started looking into the books and the science and the starters and journals. I still do go to journals and articles or reading the science behind, but started realizing, like, man, the reason I am successful. Cause at that point, I played in the NFL. I'd actually been an American Ninja Warrior, which is a really cool experience. I've been on National Geographic. I've done other TV shows. I just got done filming another one that I can't talk about yet. So I've done these cool things, but also built businesses and all these amazing things. And it's like, it wasn't because of the books and information. Cause I didn't have a lot of it. And I hustled hard, but it's because it was who I am to do that. Like, I found ways other people couldn't find ways. And so I have, like, this Midas touch for certain aspects now. And I realized that, man, a lot of it's rooted in our identity. Our success really comes and goes with the aspect of who we are, not what we have and what we know. Because who you are will find out what you need to know and what you need to have. It's a weird dynamic. And so as I dug into, I realized, like, that's where my heart is. I love having conversations with people and having a unique way to press them into an uncomfortable area. But understand why now, or understand why they've been uncomfortable or hidden upper limit or have this invisible chain holding them back. Because once people grasp and see what it is, well, now you can fix it. And so I found that a lot of people, it's interesting, I have these conversations. This is what gets under my skin. Of all things, people always say like, hey, I want to come on and talk about mindset. I see you do mindset. No, I don't. Or I'll have a conversation. And people say, hey, can you go to my summit? I'd love you to talk about mindset. No, I don't talk about mindset. Well, why don't you talk about mindset? I can, but it's not a whole key of it. There's actually science that shows no matter how strong your mindset is, if you don't have a self categorization or an identity in the area, the mindset doesn't work for you. You're actually wasting time working on a mindset if you haven't yet or not currently working on your identity. That's why, like professional athletes come out of football. Powerful mindset. I had a great mindset, dude, I played professional football.
You needed it.
I know how to work, how to grind, right? But then I got into the gym business and I felt like a loser. I was unsuccessful. I couldn't get a dungeon because I didn't feel I was a gym owner. I was a guy, I was a football player who tried to run a gym. It's different. And so as I start talking to people, like having people understand this, there's a definitive line where if you understand where your identity is, you'll see how identity is the thing, the tool you can utilize to achieve any kind of dream. And it comes with mindset. It's actually one of the six core aspects. But that's what I teach now. That's where my life kind of has oddly, I want to say almost accidentally come to a head. Because even with all these things I've done, there's no guarantee I have the skills to be a speaker or the heart to help people like my mom. Because when my mom passed, I was like, man, she unconditionally loved me to help me reach a level of potential I didn't even know is possible. And that's what I love to do, is like, the best way I can have her name carry on is for me to unconditionally love on people and teach them how to Reach their full potential through understanding how to architect and activate your ideal identity for everyone to achieve. When you can do that, man, I see people do some cool. I got clients that like, they have this sense of like, oh, it's not who I am. And I like, I play with their head a little bit. And I've had clients launch like in four months and make, you know, like four weeks. One person in four weeks made 85 grand from a product that didn't exist before, like four days earlier.
That's the best.
And I had clients, yeah, I got clients that we like six hours of work and then launch a product, a program. It's not even that I made them. It's not strategy really. Most people have information and strategy. They're just doing nothing with it.
There's a blockage somewhere.
I don't know, I just, I can't. I just. In fact, weird when I get those things out of the way. Like people launch a woman in six weeks, launch a $45,000 product. One guy, Frank, good dude, he's in New York and he, when we first came, I was like, he sold a business for 1.1 million, was struggling to get 3,000 plus a month coming in in a different business. And we worked on some things of identity and pushed them through. He's making like $35,000 a month right now. Like vast difference. And this is the business people. I've got people that have fixed marriages after infidelity like I did. I've got people that have fixed marriages that are super struggling. I've had people, you'll get better jobs. Like, it's just interesting when you still need like look at what it is in the background. Anybody that is an ambitious, dream driven human. When you apply the stuff that I teach, man, it makes life awesome. So that's my story. You gotta have went online.
There's no barriers here other than just making sure you're outta here for your next call.
And I know there's a part of the story I think you want to get to, but I'm curious really quick on the darkness you mentioned the darkness within. Because we all struggle with some kind of darkness, I would imagine sometime in our lives. How did you. Because there's so many layers of that darkness, at least in your story. And everyone else is like an onion. But I guess I don't even know how to ask this, but how do you approach that or identify that you even. I guess you have to notice you have this darkness or this weird feeling inside of you.
Oh yeah, we know, we know. We just had to hide it. Here's where I can. You can tell if you have the darkness, if you're trying to distract us, if you don't like being alone, if you're not good by yourself in a room, you got some darkness. It may not be a lot, but for me, that's what we distract with. Drugs and alcohol and beers and women and men like that. We'll distract ourselves. We'll always be with people. If you find yourself incredibly uncomfortable alone, you feel yourself drawn to your phone to text people or call people and go out to eat. That's how you know for sure there's something going on. And any kind of darkness, if you want to not feel dark, you put light on it. And essentially light is bringing to the world. Because the problem most of us have is like. Like we don't want to see it ourselves. And. Oh, man. We don't want the world to see it. Oh, no. Right. Because what if they feel bad and we as humans need acceptance? And so when I don't have the acceptance, I feel really bad. So I'll hide that stuff so nobody sees it. And then, you know, it's just a scary thing, and it compounds. Compounds, compounds. Then you got people who want to start businesses, but they're afraid to push because there's something in the past that if they push out, that one person might out them on social media. It's dynamics, and it's like.
It's like layers. Yeah. Because it's interesting. Yeah. And. And the business is probably the outer shell of all of that. I mean, for most people, I would think it's like you have yourself as the core. You better be loving yourself first and all that stuff, because you can't love others or even your customers or your wife, kids, all that stuff. Unless you got yourself covered at the core.
You got it, because it all stems from you. There's a lot of things that people don't realize. Usually in life we have darkness because something happened, something fell off, something we earned fell apart, or we damaged something, which is like a fruit of life. If you kind of think of it kind of like a tree that has a piece of fruit on it. The fruit withers off and it dies. We feel like that fruit, like it all goes to the wayside and we feel like nothing. And a lot of people, they'll spend the rest of their life, feel like a piece of dead fruit. Just dead. Right. But then I, like, over years, realized, like, oh, wait, I was never the fruit. I was always the Tree. We're always the tree. The tree produced the fruit. I was the guy that got the NFL, the guy that built the business. I was that guy. But in my head, I thought I was the thing I created. And so when we don't realize that, we don't water the tree roots, we don't give it nutrients, we don't prune the branches, the tree dies, and then we feel dead. Like you said, dark. So you got to go back, can give it some nutrients, and a lot of it comes with. If it's a dark outside area, you got a can of water, you don't know where to put the water. You're never gonna fix anything. So a lot of people, they're dark, and they don't want to shine a light. Therefore, the work they do is wasted. They're pouring water on a plot of land, the trees a hundred yards away.
Or on the apple or whatever. The fruit is itself. It's like an analogy, man, because if you're the tree, and we are. You have all these branches and directions that are going, and each one of them are part of you, of course, but it doesn't make you who you are.
Exactly, exactly. That's. That's a lot of the simple stuff I try to tell people. We work on things, and then what happens? For, like, trying to get the dark out of you is you got to share with the world, man. That's the hardest thing, but the most freeing thing. So, like, issues with my marriage, you know, situations, you know, prior to I got arrested in high school, like, dumb things. I wrote a book, and it's got it all out. I'm like, right. It's in the light now. Like Eminem and 8 Mile. Like, there's nothing you could say to me. There's nothing in my darkness past that is not enlightened now. Because then what happens? It's like, oh, I'm free. When you put it out there, you're like, oh, wait, nobody cares.
And it feels really good, man. And then everything else is just like, we do that on the podcast, like, almost every single episode is just throw out some stuff that's been weighing on us, something that we screwed up. You know, the darkest stuff will put it out there, and it just makes us. Yeah, we get the best. I mean, we say this all the time, but, like, so many people relate and they write to us because of things like that. It's not the tactics and all that. It's being real.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Being very transparently real. And if you want to grow your Business nowadays, if that's kind of a thing for people, 100%, your key is going to be having the discussions that somebody else can't have. And when they hear you, they're enamored by who you are because, like, wow, this person's got the chump chops and the gumption just to share that. Oh, I want to pay attention. And they pay attention, man. It's really just a matter of that. And not enough people do that.
Yeah, yeah. The American Ninja Warrior stuff. We could talk about it if I feel like we have time towards the end, because I really want to get to the important stuff, the stuff that, you know, let's talk about the identity stuff. So I'm not totally sure where to start, but how does somebody sort of identify what their current identity is so that they know to even shift it?
Yeah. Well, even then, they'd have to understand why they would want to. The way I explain it is we'll go a little science. We'll go left brain, will come back to right brain. So to understand why we even want to shift it, that's part of, like, okay, what is it? Why is even the point of it? Because some people be like, what's the. Why would I do that, Ant? But how's it gonna help me? Here's how. So you think about it like, I have this picture in my head of identity equals success. And the success was put a thing, whatever you want it to be. If you want more money, you want a better body, whatever your version of what you want to achieve may be, what happens is that the equal sign is like the dash on, like, somebody's, you know. You know, call it casket. It's the important piece, and it really is. So if you think about the signs of it, the brain, if somebody said, hey, who are you? There's a part in our brain called the Default Mode Network. Dmn, actually. And it lights up when your identity is engaged. Here's the crazy thing. When I ask you who you are, it shuts down the rest. Your brain lights up and starts describing things you've done or you've accomplished or. It's weird, right?
The attributes of that thing, because you're.
Thinking about who you are. I'm a dad. And I'm a father. But it's interesting because that's not really communicating who you are, because you can also say you're a dad, and you can also say you're a mom, and you can also say you're a business owner. Is that who you are? Right. But here's the crazy thing. If I stopped talking to you and you went to daydream and you started thinking about how you felt about the job or the person or your judgments, you see, it's interesting now that thing lights up because now you're not thinking about it like who you are is coming to fruition. In fact, it's like the natural organic flow. That's just who you are. So it's crazy. Who you are is who you are when you're not thinking about who you are. Makes sense.
It's always the inverse, right?
It's super weird. It's like, everything's good now. How does that tie to success? Okay, so that means the way that I am, that's pretty much how I just am. I'm being, we'll call it. And that is essentially how you just operate like I operate. I mean, when you think about someone operating like they're just in flow. I'm like the baseball player that feel like the ball's in the air. He's not thinking about right foot, left foot, my hand here. He's just in flow.
Yeah.
Getting that ball, snatches that, the ball.
From Adrian, Peter Peterson, all that flow, right?
Same thing, dog. You know, you're.
It's.
It's secondary nature. You're not even processing. Your body's just reacting. That's your identity. That's who you are. How you respond to situations, how you have conversations, how your face looks when somebody says something to you, if you flinch when somebody, you know, steps into you. These are little things we don't think about all day. When somebody cuts me off in traffic, my boss says something, I just reacted. I'm not even thinking about it. That's who you are. How you operate now, how you operate determines how you perform. Now, whether or not I perform consistently or poorly or well, it's due to the way I see a problem, approach an opportunity, if it's an opportunity or problem to me, all these dynamics, but it will determine how I perform. High performer, low performer, high perform determines my success. I perform well as a baseball guy again, right? I've practiced, I've done all this stuff to work on. I'm a baseball player, and I react and I flow like this. Balls in the air, turn, cut, run. I perform this way to catch the ball. My performance gives me a good success, more money, better team better. You know, I get to start whatever it is. And so for a lot of people not understanding that realistically, that identity that you can actually craft, you can architect. And it's not this woo woo thing. It actually comes from actions that you do. You have to, in fact, like, architect it, create what you want, and then you program it by taking action. Literally what it is. It's just. It's kind of that simple. But not. But I do things, and after a while, it becomes this new normal for you. Now I'm operating differently. I perform differently. Now I have success. That's the first part of it. So that is why it's concrete in my head for people to do that now. A lot of people, unfortunately, they're like, I just got to work my mindset, man. I know what to do. I got to work on my mindset all the time. I know what to do. I just got to do it. Oh, yeah, Cool.
All right.
You would have done it by now. How long you trying to do that? Oh, like, six months, a year? Okay. I would have done in six hours. I'm not better than you. It's just who I am to do that kind of stuff. How do we get you there? It's a big piece of, like, how do I get somebody this level? Well, the first part is to understand, like, it's okay to not be great right now. It's okay to suck. You gotta. You gotta have a point at which you accept the fact that I'm boo boo trash poo trash, we'll call it.
That's right.
At that thing, right? And then you lean into the space of like, all right, well, how do I take these next steps in? And essentially, what it is, is I look at. It's called the shift method is what I use. See? Shift sustainability. Too many people go right to the work of stuff. We're good at trying to do stuff, but the problem is we'll do it haphazardly or halfway or we won't even do the right work. We'll end up like the metaphors, like, have a ladder against a building, Climb this ladder. Huff and Puff get to the top of the building and realize, oh, the ladder's lean against the wrong building.
That's right.
We end up like. And it happens for a lot of people. They get burnt out, and they're like, I've spent so much time. Why am I not farther ahead by now? What's going on? And what it was is you didn't do the right work. Right. That's essentially what it boils down to. And the hard thing to do for a lot of people in the very beginning is to go back and say, what do I really need to work on that's what I had to do in the business. And early on, I had to do it in the marriage. I had to do it as a parent. Like, a lot of different areas. I had to dig in and really take a look and see. What in the world is this thing? My wife's dropped me a whole bunch of these yogurts. She just dropped, like, yogurtopia. That's the best.
Four of them. Nice.
How many yogurts does she think I need?
You ain't leaving for a while.
My belly big baby.
But no, like, that's the thing. So I got to figure out these things I got to work on. And it usually comes with a lot of pain of acceptance. It's the things that you have to admit, like, I suck at this or I'm not good. Because if not, you don't do the right work. And now you're end up spinning your wheels and burning out money and burning out energy and willpower. You never get anywhere.
Well, that's cool.
A lot of it to me is.
Framing as like, I suck at this. Like. Like, I don't think most people ever admit that because they're like, no, I'm good enough, or I pushed through this. It's like. But now you ground yourself so damn low. You're like, I suck at whatever this thing is.
Yeah.
Now let's repeat.
That's the darkness. That's what you're talking about. How do I get that out? Well, put a. Put a light on it. Like, I suck at this. I'm a sucky bad. I'm a sucky husband. I'm a sucky business owner. It's okay, because now what happens? I've given myself permission to pursue better things. Until you do that, you're not going to you. And so that's why a lot of people will spend time dating the same person with a different name, because they never understand how to fix a relationship because it's same person. You do this. You do this. Actually, the person accepts me for me. No, no, no. You need to accept you for you first off. And then you can be a better human in the relationship, because you are not the relationship, the relationship's relationship. You're one of the two people in it. And sometimes what you want from a relationship, you have to give. It's a different understanding. And so now that I'm there, like, all right, now I know what to do. Now I can do the shift work, and the shift works, the hard actual work. Most people, they don't realize this is a true Reality. But I hear the statement, I've done everything I can. I've worked so hard. I don't know what else to do. That right there, humongous red flag. But you got some shift work to do. You got to stretch. Because here's the thing. The dream you have is typically up here. And I want to have this. Whatever this thing is. And your level of maximum overwhelm is way down here. You keep telling us all I can do, that's all I can do. No, no, no. To you, relatively, it's all you can do. It feels like a lot because you don't know what to do when you're not willing to push more. This is that. We'll call it the comfort zone level. People run into. And I had a client on before this, and he's giving me this kind of rundown of why he hasn't done some things and what's going on. There's a lot going on. And I say, okay, hey, simple question. If I was to, you know, talk to the person who has all the things you've told me you want, would they use excuse you just said about everything being too hard?
And he sits and he goes, no, right. And it's the truth. Because when you think about the person who has what you want, they don't even blink at the things that are shutting you down right now.
That's right.
So how do you expect to have what you want? Like, it's not going to happen. And so in the shift work, a lot of people. My true purpose is to present you with moments where you want to stop. I need to get you those levels where you want to stop. Because just like in a workout, when I've taxed myself and I'm about to throw up, up, it's only at that moment where I know if I take one more rep, I'm getting better for sure. Because I want to do this right now. It's the same in Life. That extra five minutes, 10 minutes, that extra email, that extra video you don't want to do that you'll easily talk yourself out of and like. But I got to go and make dinner. You got five minutes to record a video. Woman, like, you can. It's okay.
You know, there's a. I think there's a line in what Can't Hurt Me with She's Jesus. The book can't Hurt Me. David Goggins.
I didn't know what you were asking.
Yeah, no, I was just trying to make the reference there. But what you just said there. He always Pushes himself a little further. If he has to run a mile, he's going to go a mile 0.1 or whatever. But it's proving that you can always go a little bit more. You got more in the back.
Yeah, you always have more in the back. And when you start to understand that and actually try to do that, because one thing to understand it, harder thing to do it. What happens over time? You keep stretching and stretching to where now what's hard for you is easy. It's why people are successful who have the things we want. Want. It looks easy. It's weird. Like, it just looks like it's so hard. Because here's the thing. That's a statement that I love. And I tell people, the root of my work is in this. What you create creates you. If you think about creation as a process, though, like, it's this. Like that mile point one on day one, mile point two on day two, mile point three. And it's a creation process. It is ugly and it's dirty and it sucks and it's hard. But on the back end of that, you don't do all that work and go, I don't know if that's who I am. Like, now you're like, that's who I am. Like, that's. Hey, hold on. That's right. So now it becomes this separate feeling of. At first there was pain and anguish when doing it. You're trying and there's willpower to where. Now it's so much who you are, it feels awkward to not do it. Like, think about ladies. I see it all the time. As a good example, women who, like, you know, you look at their social media when they're in shape, go back a year ago, they weren't posting it. They had, like, pictures of, like, eagles and weird stuff. You know what I'm talking about?
You go to Facebook now they're hot.
Now it's like a picture of my yoga pants and I got my food. And like the pictures with the back turn, the butt cheeks in the mirror, it's a whole different dynamic. Well, why do they do that? Because they've done the creation work. They created a confident self inside. And as people will simplify and say, oh, I just got to do some work. No, no, you do the right work because you can do work and be the wrong work. And you get to the point of feeling even worse than before because now you're more invested and more broke. It's a whole different dynamic. But once you get to that point and you've had this entrance of understanding how to do the right work and architecting who you want to be. Because it's more than just, I want to be happy. It's like, who do I want to be in beliefs and thoughts and actions. My mindset's a big part of it, actually. Habits I have. And personal pride. When you structure those. And I call it the hard way. Habits, actions, drivers, and. Sorry, Habits, actions, reactions and drivers. When I program what I want those to be and then weave them in. Like, when my clients get done, we have it down to like a 15 minute science of every day. Do we just go to work then? And I just push them to limits and I push them past me, push them to it and push them past. I kick the ball, run up to it. Kick the ball, run up to it. It. And so we build that over time. There's this look back and there's not a moment in time. There's not some day where it's like A Tuesday the 23rd at 7pm it's not. It's like, I don't know when, but like, I'm a bad jammer right now. Like, I just. I'm dope, right? And it's a whole different confidence. And then the last piece of sustaining that over time, the C shift, sustain. How do I make sure I don't go backslide? Because people do that. They backslide in life, you know, how do I stay in that trajectory? How do I have people around me that help me stay in that trajectory? Because it's just as hard to kick out bad people as it is to enter a space of people you feel are above you because you feel inadequate. I don't know if I'm ready for that group because what if they shun me? I'm not as good as them. And I'm in some of those groups right now, by the way. I'm in groups of like, oh, I'm just gonna be quiet over here in the corner. Somebody kicks me out.
You know, like, we're both though, right? Like, yeah, we do the same exact thing. Let's just like, risk it.
What's.
What are we risking, really? Nothing.
Yeah.
Our pride maybe are like, that's what it is.
Yeah. Because it's actually risking your identity. And that's the thing is, what if somebody outs me for not being at a certain level and it's who I am? And so now I feel like I'm nobody. And once you get rid of that, you're like, oh, it doesn't matter. Like, so if so Joe Blow doesn't like me and, like, you know, I'm good. Let's keep on pressing. I do my thing and live my life. And that's why people were successful, have this weird sense of. I call it like a foolishness of playfulness with their success. Like, if you think about, like, star athletes, you know, they're super playful. Like, it's just loose. And if you think about it, it's part confidence, but it's part also the fact that they realize this. They get into a workout with you and you'll do their warmup and you're dying, and they're like, that's my warmup. It's like, I'm still killing it. They'll do the whole workout and they'll go to the thing and go hike. How are you hiking after that? How are you? That's who I am. I just gotta get it done right. It's this level of, like, I know I'm so far above the rest of normal people, we'll call it, that. I can have fun with this because even in my. My good. It's way better than you were. Great. Different sense of flow. And so for me, that's what I teach people to get to. And that's where. When people get to the root of it, there's a lot of psychology goes in the background of. I give people pictures to understand why we're doing something. But once they get like, oh, I understand how if I actually shift this identity of who I am, what I'm not thinking about who I am, I can have success almost on autopilot. I call it. Like, success becomes second nature. And when you can learn to achieve on autopilot to where the stuff you're doing now, that's really hard. Feels like a walk in the park, dude. It just starts to roll and flow, and that's a beautiful space. That's what you see successful people doing. They work incredibly hard, but, like, they don't. They don't shut down like you do now.
They've done the work. Yeah. They've architected and they've proven it to themselves. And it might look like they're proven.
It to the world.
You know, if they're posting, you know, on Instagram or whatever it might be, but really, it's. Yeah, it's just anchoring. It seems like all these new action or, you know, and building, building, building off of that identity.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. Yeah, man.
Did you want to go American Ninja Warrior or you got something else here?
No, American Ninja Warriors.
I think there's some stuff we can pull from that story, too.
Yeah, no, there's one example I was going to share that I think is kind of what you're talking about. When I first started podcasting, I've been podcasting for about 10 years now. But before I was podcasting, I was like, super shy, super introverted. I was the opposite of the darkness you were talking about. My happy place was when nobody else was around me. Right. But I started podcasting as my way to sort of open up and talk to people. In every single interview I did, I was, like, nervous. I was like, who am I to be talking to this person? They're on such a different level than me. And here we are ten years later, and I don't think there's anybody that we could pull on the podcast that I would feel uncomfortable talking to now. But it's not something that I sort of put conscious thought to. It's just like looking back from where I was 10 years ago to where I am now is just sort of like a realization that, like, holy shit, that's kind of what I did without thinking about it. And I think that's kind of what you're saying. It was just like me putting myself out of my comfort zone. And then just the repetition. Every single new episode made it a little bit easier.
And the thing is, you can't point out to one episode that happened. It just happened. Right. And on top of that, every single successful person any of us know has done this. They've all made the shift. Most of them have just done it unintentionally. They just will powered it out and figured it out and went, right, so. So the idea is like, what if you could shortcut that? What if I could do that intentionally? That's what I do. So I take what some people will take three years to do. I do it in, like three months. Because now you're thinking about every step of the way, like, people who end up losing weight. It's a good example. Most people are so set, I want to lose 20 pounds. All they focus on is the fact that I haven't lost £20 yet. That's it. They're only happy unless they've lost 20. They could lost £19. It wasn't 20, you know, but if you think about, okay, I'm going to focus on pound one, pound two, pound three. You're so in touch with the moments and enjoying so much along the way that when you get to 20, you're so used to just the process of enjoying the pounds. It's not that big of a stretch. You feel good, but you progress on and do more and more and more. Right. So the idea is like, how do I get you to do that intentionally and have joy before £20? How do I get you to have that before? Because we're constantly presently aware of what we're doing. Yeah. It feels better when you get to 20. But you're not, like, waiting until, oh, I just woke up. Oh, yeah, I met my goal. Okay, cool.
Well, it's like you're helping an architect, like a journey for themselves. Right. So they're not. They should have joy throughout the whole process, because that's their time.
Yeah, you're gonna spend more time on the mountain than hiking it. Like, think about this. If you're taking a trip, where are you guys at? You're down in San Diego. Say, I'm taking a trip to San Diego. I'm up here in San Francisco, you know, Bay Area. And I'm like, all right, I'm leave my house and, like, I'm gonna get a car. So, like, the car's late to pick me up. I get to the airport. The airport, you know, there's some delay of two hours. I eat some, you know, some cereal, some milk or something, and I got throw up in the bathroom the whole time in the airplane. I got food poisoned. I land, get the hotel, my room's not ready, and get to this amazing call. I don't know. What's a good hotel down there?
Coronado. Yeah.
All right, Coronado. Right? Let's go to the thing. Maybe I got a. What's. What's that one? What's the. What's the nice hotel?
There's a. There's a Coronado Dells.
Like, Carlton.
Oh, Ritz Carlton. You want to go there?
I show up and it. And I get there, the room's not ready, but then I get into it. I don't walk in the room and go, I'm in the room.
Yeah.
I feel great. I'm in the room. No, what happens is the room is cool, but you're still unhappy in the nice room.
Yeah.
So you get to the end of the destination, you're like, this stuff, you know, you decide on what, you know.
Close the drapes, and you're like, screw it. I'm just gonna.
Yeah, but if you have a good trip, maybe the car is late and you go to the airport. And the airport, it's like, you know what? It's delayed, but I got some time to work on My book. I've been wanting to work, and I get the airplane. I'm puking. Cool. I've been trying to lose weight. Anyways, I can't land. And I get there and it's like, I get the hotel, it's not ready. Cool. I get to take a walk around the property. I see this cool person. Maybe I meet my wife. You see it, a different perspective, right? And you enjoy it. You get to the room, you're like, oh, icing on the cake. So what I'm trying to have people do is understand, like, it's going to be hard. You're going to experience that. But if you understand how to operate, how to have an identity that sees it and feels it and flows through it, vastly different. The world and life you live is different because now you're in a better place emotionally to keep giving energy in the moment when you arrive. Because the problem is if you operate off a feeling, and if I feel like crap, I don't give fully of my energy. If I feel good, I'll give. I'll optimistically give. I like a crazy person. Like Kanye west, just flowing, dude, Nobody likes you. But everybody loves him. It's a weird dynamic.
He doesn't care.
The statement that people, you got to write this down, folks, for listening. You do not see situations as they are. You see them as you are.
So say it one more time for the folks.
Yeah, you don't see situations as they are. You see them as you are. If my identity is in this position where I'm seeing things a certain way as a filter, I experience it differently, I flow differently, I operate differently. Which means if I operate poor, I have poor performance, I have poor success. But if I operate a higher level, I have higher operation, I have a better performance, I have more success. It's a natural aspect, and most people think they have to just guess through it and hope it happens. But you can legitimately take it to a concrete level of how your day runs. Like, I've almost ventured in the line of, like, look at my work in terms of, like, kind of like, productivity is what I would call it. But the problem is a lot of people are productive at things that are not useful to them. Sure, Right. So it's like, I don't do that, but the root of the work I do, it boils down to concrete. Here's what you're doing for 15 minutes in the morning. The next 15, the next hour, the next two. Seriously. I created a planner called the GPS Planner. Super structured. Yeah, but super. And so when I work my clients through the curriculum, it's like we're doing this stuff to a organized thing where you're not guessing what to do with this work. Now I think sometimes people give them like here's some exercises to do. And it's like, figure it out. I'm like, no, we're going to teach you how to create this and then how to actually activate it the right way in your life. And how to go through the process of like the crappiness. Because just I'll give you some ins. A little bit more of the steps of my work. Design, develop, deploy, debrief the four stages of shift design the ideal identity architect. It develop a plan around the actions that must be taken. The habits, actions, reactions and drivers to make this come to life to where one day I can believe it's who I am. You can't just sit here and say I believe I can do this. Because you'll go home at one point your brain will say, shut up, idiot. No you don't. Like, you know, it happens. It's a natural part of us. Then what are the reactions? This is when people so often fail to plan out how will I react when X, Y and Z happens? Happens. Because when you can think about the reaction, you get a ton of control back.
I like that.
And then the drivers, why am I doing this in the first place? What are the drivers? Behind the reasonings is why I'm doing all these three things. When I can design that, then I can then deploy it into the world, which means I'm going to take action on it. A lot of people have deadlines. I have action days because deadlines are good. We'll press in him and procrastinate. My 15 year old son. Oh my gosh, I hate how he procrastinates. Dude, I want to shove him in his face. I've been trying to watch the show, the season two of the Boys, but I can't because the idiots always got school at the end of the night. Yeah, he's watching his stupid YouTube videos. Like, bro, we can't watch our show right now, man. That's how I feel.
But like what happens is now I get to the point of like, I take the actions and I go out and I deploy. I take the action. But I get met with the fact that I suck. This is the part where it was the hardest people, they get met with a 10 of 10 of pain. This is horrible. I'm not good. And what do I do? I run away. I procrastinate. I make an excuse. I do something different. What I tell people is, man, it's the perfect moment to take everything you learned and then go and debrief what went wrong. What can I do right? How did I react that way? You think about it. You're thinking through it. It's not going to take me 10 years because I'm constantly presently thinking about it week by week. Then I go to the back and say, okay, what do I have to redesign? What must I redevelop if I even have to or not? Maybe I don't redeploy, but now it's a dynopane again. People are quick because, like, oh, it still sucks. The good one, stick in it, because they understand why I go through this work. Then it's an 8, 7, 6, 5. It gets to zero. Here's the crazy thing. That thing that you wanted to do that in the beginning was a tent of pain. It's not that. It's like, I'm doing it and it's no pain, okay? It's joy, dude. Like, it's this. I love this, right? In the beginning, you're probably scared of podcasts, and now you love doing it. You're like, yeah, I'm excited. It's full. It's fun. That's what I'm looking to have people understand is the end of the journey. Because it's not. It's Heroes 2 Journeys. I'll kind of stop talking. I can ramble all day, as you can tell.
It's great.
There's always a huge Two Journeys. A journey is one of achievement. The other ones of transformation. You think about Mighty Ducks 2, one of my favorite movies I used to watch before games in high school, all the time. I got juiced watching it. There's the kids that are misfits, right? There's the Emilio Estevez, who's kind of like this dude. Kind of like the weird dude from his work is like, community service, I think it was, or something. And then, like, there's the girls, a tomboy, and there's a chubby kid, and there's a nerdy kid, right? And they form this team of misfits that they want to achieve something, and they eventually go through the process of, like, the montage. Every movie has a montage. It's a transformation montage. So now, you know Goldberg, the goalie. He's cool. He likes who he is, right? The girl feels comfortable. Like, the weird kid that's like a juvenile delinquents, like the Bash Brother. Like, they're all dope. At the end, they achieve. They win the championship against the team that's all black from across the town, whatever it was. And they got that kid Ben, who, like, was a punk, and now he's cool. You get all these different things, and it's like, man, that you feel good for the achievement. They score the goal. But what does every movie end with? Emilio Estevez is this guy who's a good dude now dating the kid's wife or the kid's mom. And now that kid has, like, a cool family. And then the girl feels good in a dress, and Goldberg feels confident. Bash brothers like dope. Now it's the transformation, because now they aren't the people who tried to win. They're the winners. So you could make Mighty Ducks 2, 3, 4. Right? It's a different human. So when I talk about that. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6. My goal is that's the shift work, where you're not just achieving this thing you want to achieve. You will the work I do. You will achieve your goal. The whole purpose is for you to achieve this thing so I can have you transform into the person who achieves that thing, man.
All right, so that was. Man, I wish we had some more time. This is.
This is. This is more interesting than the American Ninja Warrior stuff. I know you've talked about it on a lot of other podcasts anyway, but this is, like, this is really fascinating. So maybe if we have a round two go. Yeah, yeah. If you want to tell your story. How did you get on American Ninja Warrior then?
My wife, she's crazy. So we got back from Costa Rica. We came back in, like, a rush because someone tried to kidnap our kids out there. It's a private school. Different story for a different time. Nuts. But I'm telling you, I got a lot of weird stuff. So we come back, and then my wife's like. We're at this little apartment because we're trying to find a house and move in this weird little, like, tiny, like, 800,000 square foot whatever apartment. And she fills this document out online. I have no idea she's doing it. She's like, hey, I want to let you know I filled this thing out. It needs a video. I'm like, what? She's like, this ninja word thing. I thought it was Wipeout. You know, the thing with, like, a four.
Dude, I applied. I've gone through the stages on that thing.
On Wipeout.
Yeah, yeah.
Never made it to no snow. I was like, I don't know if I want to get my face bashed in with, like, weird, you know, I don't know, shaving cream and mud. So I was like, whatever. I did the video and I didn't know what it was, was. Well, this is like October, beginning of October, February. I get a call. It's like months later. They're like, hey, 30 days you're gonna be on Ninja Warrior. I'm like, whoa, what? Yeah, so. So I. I go and, like, Look, I'm like six, one and a half and £240. And I'm like, what is this? I look at them like, I'm not built for that.
Yeah.
Like, I'm not 5, 8, 150 pounds. Like, I'm not built for this rock climber. But I find. Yeah. I find a local gym nearby, spend about seven hours practicing, and I go down and the producers like my personal story, but they're like, go ahead and hit a buzzer. I'm like, I will. Like, sure you will. Cause never been done. At the time, I thought it'd never been done before by an actual football player. Former NFL athlete. Just found out that it did. Guy named Kamirian Wimbley actually did, I guess, in like, season four or something. I had no idea until I watched it just last night for the new season. They told me this whole time, you're the first person to do it. So, like, oh, I'm the first person? No, I'm not. But I'm the second person to hit a buzzer as a former NFL athlete on American Ninja Warrior. And. And, yeah, man, it was a dope experience because it's one of those potential things. It's like, I wanted to see if I could really do it. And I went into it with a perspective in my head of, I am a ninja warrior. Not that I'm going to try to be one. It's okay if I fall, because you know what that looks like when you watch people that you can see in their face, they're trying to do it, but they don't feel like they're like. And so if they. If they fall off, it's like, cool. I went farther than I thought I would. I'm like, no, I want to hit a damn buzzer. Like, that's. I'm coming here. I'm a ninja warrior. Why not? Why can't I be like. So I stretched out and I figured it out, dude. And I got. When I was done, the producers were like, ah, that wasn't supposed to happen.
But, like, so it was cool, man. It's a great Experience and I did it for three years. Retired, we'll call it retired this last year, which is the most recent season. And so. Yeah, man, three years and I'm done.
Yeah, no, that's awesome.
You got to go back and watch some of those then.
Yeah, I mean, I guarantee I've seen them all, but I think I've seen every season and watched every single run, so I'm sure I saw the runs. But yeah, I mean you look at the guys like the top of the top, you know, the Drew Dressels and the guy with the long hair, I'm drawing a blank on his name.
Grant McCartney.
Yeah, you got that guy. But like Drew, he just, he puts his headphones on. He's like not even worried about falling in the water and losing his electronics and stuff. He's just like, I know what I gotta do, you know, and it's just like doesn't even think twice about it. And you can tell that's just his identity. This is what I do. I hit buzzers, I get to the end.
Yeah, he's also, I don't know if you know, he's also a pedophile. You heard about that recently? Whoa.
No, I didn't.
That's right.
My wife and I were. Yeah, he was, I guess he was like 26. He was like, mess with this like 15 year old girl and sleep with her at his gym. Dude. It's a weird story. Really weird. He just won the show and then all of a sudden this comes out. Yeah, he's kind of a dirty dude. I guess it kind of sucks for the show, but you know, the show's good. There's still awesome humans. Just that guy, of course.
Oh man.
Yeah.
Well, we got one minute. So where can people go and learn more about you and check out your stuff?
Yeah. If you want to find out what your identity is, you can actually go through is a quiz called Slowergo Co or go to anthonytrucks.com the quiz is on there and it'll give you a quadrant of which of four identities you are and what you must do to shift to get to that next level so you can actually close your gap. I call it an identity gap between who you are, who you want to be and if you want to just follow me and see my stuff. Anthony Trucks on Instagram. It's probably the best way to find my work.
Instagram's great, man. Yeah, I love your account and keep it up, brother. I want to let you go because you have a minute, probably 10 seconds or something. Appreciate it, man, this has been amazing.
Yeah, this is awesome.
No problem.
All right, guys, see you later. Hey, hey, hey. Thank you for listening to that episode. This is Joe Fear. I'm sure you probably already knew that, and Matt is not here right now, but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed the episode just as much as you and I did, because, you know, he went into the production of kind of making that thing right along with me. So thank you very much, and I want to give a quick shout out to our buddies over at Easy Webinar. These guys have been supporting us for a while, a long time. And Casey Zieman is just a super good guy all around. He's actually been on the show before. He's the founder of Easy Webinars. So if you look up Casey Zieman on any podcast platform you're listening to, go check him out. Go check out his backstory, what he's all about. You can learn a lot about webinars as well. And right now, Easy Webinar, these guys are actually hooking you up with a great trial. It's a completely free trial to test out their software, soup to nuts. Check it all out and see if it's a good fit for you. If you go to easywebinar.com hustle that's H, U S T L E. If you didn't know how to spell hustle, there you go. So if you go to easywebinar.com hustle, you can go grab a free trial. And Easy Webinar literally lives up to its name. It's super simple. I mean, super easy. And it does all the stuff that you're looking for in any kind of thing. With webinars, I mean, they literally cover every single type of webinar you possibly can do. So from live to automated to scheduled at specific times, and all these crazy features in between, can't even list them all out. I'll be here way too long. They give you a ton of advanced analytics. What's working, what's not. During your webinar. Based off all these actions, you'll see who attended, how long they stayed, if they clicked the offer or if they didn't. Basically, you're gonna make more money and you're gonna work less with this thing, and you're gonna create better relationships with the folks that are listening. Cause it's a good experience. You want to give that good experience along with some great content, of course, and a killer offer if that's what you got for them. So go try it out yourself. Go check out easywebinar.com hustle. That's easywebinar.com hustole. Alrighty. So that is the end of this episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Enjoying it. Hopefully you did. I'm pretty sure you did if you lasted this long. And go check out easy Webinar when you get the chance and we will talk to you next time. Bye bye.
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