023 Making Shift Happen With Anthony Trucks

Hey there, real quick, before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. Welcome to this episode of the affluent Entrepreneur show. This one's a special one. This one, I'm bringing a dear, dear friend of mine on. Anthony Trucks is in the house with me. This go around. And here's the thing. When you have a chance and you meet someone in your life that has a huge heart, a huge soul, a desire to give, a desire to serve, you hang onto them real tight. And Anthony's become one of my closest friends, especially in this, in this business and the work that we do. And when you hear his story about how he moved from foster care, which he would have been a statistic, to where he is today and what it took to get there, it's mind blowing. But he's talking about. We're going to talk a bit about identity. Identity that shifts your money, your finances, your world, your relationships, how he put back his relationship with his wife. They were divorced for three years, put it all back together, became a good debt, all these things. Identity. Because he's got a new book coming out called the Identity Shift. And so we're going to talk about upgrading your life. This is a special episode. You got to listen to it, you got to share it, and I'll see you in the episode. Anthony has got a big heart. Check it out. Cheers.

This is the Affluent Entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom, because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur.

All right, Anthony, so good to have you here, my good friend. This is an exciting time for you and I'm so blessed to have you as a. As a guest on the show and be able to Talk about what you got going on, because you got some good stuff going on.

I got a lot of stuff. Most of it's good. Yes. Like 99 of is good. So we're good. It's all good stuff.

There you go. So, hey, just so you know, for those of you, you heard my introduction about Anthony, but I'm gonna maybe get a hear a little bit from Anthony himself about what he's about and where he's come from and kind of the road he's been on. I mean, when you meet this guy, he's got the biggest smile, the biggest heart, the biggest spirit out there. And when you hear his story, you gotta ask yourself, what's your excuse? Because he shows up and he shows up in a big way every single time I see him. So, Anthony, I'm gonna hand it to you for just a second, just to maybe fill people in on some of the backstory and your journey and. And how we're here.

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot to that. But we. We'll keep it short, sweet, and. And to the point. I'll keep with short, sweet, and pretty. Like. Like Mel.

No, no. You know, I. Man, I. Interesting childhood, man. I grew up in crazy. And I didn't navigate my identity when I was given away into foster care and grew up in an all white family, really poor. So I'd like navigate who was I in that situation and tried sports, had to figure out who I was in that situation, went to college, thankfully on a scholarship, and then had a kid at 20 years old to figure out who I am at that situation and met my real dad at 21. I had to figure out who I was in that situation and then left the NFL or like, sorry, left college, went to the NFL, created a new Persona, then left the NFL and had to figure out who I was at that point in time. Like, I just, I kept having to navigate these different parts of who I was in the good and bad times and got to really low time at one point, like suicidal. Like, this was life after football. I didn't want anything to do with it. Not a good father, not a good husband, just not a good anything, in my opinion. And it got to a point where I finally, for the first time was like, I was tired of being like a leaf in the window and letting life kind of control how things were moving around. And I decided to kind of figure out how to get back into control. And interesting was some of the things I'd learned, I just, I'd done. I'd learned previously but hadn't applied in the way that I could. I could find a way to apply them purposely. But when I did Game changer man, life all of a sudden became this, this kind of different game where I was in control and I wasn't stressed out. And so now I get to go to a place in life where I've fixed a lot of my crazy in life. I've navigated and fixed my marriage after three years divorce, I'm in good shape, I'm a good father, I have a good business. Like everything moves smooth but it's because I figure out how to navigate and control my identity. And so it's something that I go back and realize it's a great tool for everybody to have if they could apply it to where you can get honestly whatever you want out of life. It's just a matter of knowing what you know, but then also applying it.

And I know that I'm just going to put it out there. Right now you've got a book coming out called the Identity Shift and I have an advanced copy that is already dog eared with highlights in it and everything. I mean I think this, this question of identity, we talk about it on my show in the construct of financial independence and money and wealth and, and I believe that we have multiple identities in the sense of how do we show up financially, how do we show up spiritually, how do we show up in relationships, physically, all those things. And it's just curious because you've done so much research. When I read the book and have gone through it in this one you've done some research, but you've also done some introspection. You've, you've looked at yourself and, and I think we're in a, in a really interesting time in society today where a lot of people have lost their identity. They haven't. I'm, I don't even know if they've lost their identity. I don't know if they understood the importance of the identity and that they're showing up a certain way because they see themselves a certain way and, and I don't. And you go into some of that in, in, in the book. But I'd love to hear your kind of your perspective because sometimes people think the identity is the byproduct of what we do and we believe versus do we put the jacket of the identity on and then show up?

Yeah, I think, I think what happens is it's built, it's always built, which is a good thing because if something is built once, it can Be built again. There's a way to codify it, right? We have an identity in place now. All of us currently do. But it was designed and put in place when we were kids. Young teachers, preachers, coaches, leaders, kind of taught us things. Television shows, radio news, movies. We just learned things and we adapted, based what we wanted to accept. So what happened is we're living in these identities that quite literally have limitations. And they have. They have these issues that we're usually unaware of. Like, there's a statement of. It's hard to see the label when you were inside of the jar. And so a lot of us living inside the jar of our lives, and we cannot understand how our identity was built. Once you understand the things that kind of allow you to manipulate it, the levers you can pull, you can actually realize, like, oh, like this is not something I have to live with forever. We'll call it the jacket. I can take off and put a new jacket on. But the reality is always running. It's always there. In fact, it. It's. It's so constantly there that it's who you are when you aren't thinking about who you are. It's when you just show up and you're kind of in flow. It's this interesting, like, it's. It's so hard to put into words, to be quite honest, because it's like anytime that you have a reaction or you think something, or even you're passing times, you're daydreaming. Like, that's your identity showing through. It's how you see, how you feel, how you read. But if you get to a chance of understanding, like that is what leads your actions, which creates your life. Like, then you go, oh, okay, well, I have control. How do I adjust this thing? It was easy. You just go back and look and say, oh, this is how it was built the first time. Let me rebuild it a second time with actual intention this time.

It's who you are without thinking about who you are. I think that kind of nails it. You're really not taking the time is there's so. So often we are unintentional about who we are when we're not thinking. I think for me, a couple times in my life, I showed up and I go, wow, that was kind of crappy. That was ugly. That was not who I am. And how. Why did I show up that way? And. And how do I fix that? How do I. How do I notice it in advance and realize that whatever that identity was, whatever that thing that was coming out was coming out is not the identity of who I want to be, who I want to be seen as.

Yeah. I mean, it's. The thing is, it's. It's actually hard, though, because a lot of people don't want to see that. And. And most people will assume that it ends up being tied heavily to, you know, what information I have or just chance or luck. And. And it's very hard to first put the controller in my hand and go, oh, I have control. Because that gives a certain responsibility and also certain ownership to previous faults. Because if you start realizing that you've been in control for, like, a long time, you have to go back and go, oof. That means that I was. I was partially the one responsible for some of these things that went on. But I tell people, man, it's okay, but you are the common denominator in all your problems. A reality. Right. Either you created it or you're accepting it. And so it. It does suck. But, hey, but here's the cool thing. Now that you realize that you actually can be in more control and control a different outcome.

Yeah.

But it does take ownership of identity, being a cause.

So good. So good. Because, you know, I talk on the show about how I lost one third of my net worth in a Ponzi scheme, and. And then I was responsible for it. And a lot of people said, how are you responsible for the guy stole from you? I said, I was responsible for a bunch of choices that got me there, kept me there, kept me invested, kept me going through. And until I was willing to take that responsibility, I was not going to be willing to make the changes, to make sure it wouldn't happen again, to repair it, to grow from it, to do things differently. And I know that you may relate to this, being that you went through the breakup that you did when my son was. Was really, really young, and I went through the breakup with his mother. And, you know, we're dear, dear friends today and everything, but we went through a rough patch, you know, obviously, with the custody and all that, and I showed up as an angry, angry dude. I mean, and which anger and martial arts is not a good combination.

Yeah.

And so, I mean, I was. I was. I was literally going into my friend's dojo where I worked out, and I was so much more advanced than a lot of his students because he had just started dojo. He had to pull me aside, says, you're killing my students. You're killing my business. You gotta stop. And. And I had to reflect on that. I think the beautiful thing with the book, uh, the subtitles, upgrade how you. How you operate to elevate your life. And I think that's the beautiful thing is that. And you mentioned it just a second ago, but I want to make sure that is clear. The audience, wherever we are, is where we are today based on identity, choices, habits, behaviors, everything else. But it doesn't set where we're going. It doesn't have to set where we're going. I think the big thing is, is the realization, you know, when you. When you. The subtitle of the book saying upgrade how you operate to elevate your life. The realization that what has happened to us, that brought us here, what has happened to us in our lives, whether it was our choices, our decisions, our habits, our identity, doesn't set the trajectory. It's the wake behind the boat, but it's not the direction the boat's going. And your book is this recipe for how to shift that. Your book is a recipe for taking responsibility for the things that you can. Can control, to shift things in the future. I think that it's an incredible thing. And so when you came upon this, what made you realize you could shift? What made you realize. Because it is about shifting. What made you realize that, wait a second, I have a lot more control than I did? Because you came out of a situation where you were completely out of control. You were young, you didn't have a Voice until effectively 14 years old and everything. But what made you realize that you could shift and, and, and explore this?

Yeah, I think what it is, is, well, the fact that life was different, right? The fact that life had changed. Because if you look at statistics of foster kids, which is what I was, you know, going through, is, you know, 75% of prison inmates are former foster kids, and half the homeless population spent time in foster care. So when you have numbers like that, the reality of the fact that I didn't go down that path tells me that something was different. Right? So. So I realized, like, we all have a control, and we hear that a lot. Like you have control over, you know, what, how you respond to certain situations, how X, Y and Z. So I've always looked at it like nothing is definitive. It's funny as. As much as we think it is and we're locked in place, it's really just a choice to stay there. The acceptance that, That I can be no different is a very interesting. It's like. It's a saddening acceptance, in my opinion, because what you're saying is this is who I am, which means that what I have is all I will ever have. That's like, oh, good, that hit. Yeah, it's. It's heavy. It's a heavy thought to. To own. But then it's like, well, if you. You want more, do different. Because if you think. If you look at anybody I've ever seen successful in any capacity, I'm sure, yourself included, when you look back on to be the woman you used to be, not you, obviously, different woman, somebody else. But, like, we look back, there'll be a moment in time when someone go, hey, who were you? What were you, like, when you weren't successful or when you were doing Blankety Blank? And people put their eyes up to the sky and they'll go, I don't. I don't know. I was. I was just different back then. I thought differently, I processed differently. I just. You know, it's hard to put your mind back in that space because you've grown past it. You've literally upgraded how you operate. And that. That tells you, like, you've already done this at different times. The thing is, when you did it, you just did it by sheer survival or trial by air, just sheer luck. Whereas, like, all right, well, if I could do it accidentally, what if I could do it intentionally? Like, what. What would. What would it look like if I could try? What are the pieces? What are the parts? So I went back through my own life. It's like, where did I. Have I done this before? Where I'd gone from a place of not being so great and found, like, another level. And I looked and I saw it was there. It was there. And then I was like, okay, how does that work? Like, psychologically? Are there. Are there terms for this? Does it make sense in terms of, like, what, I could put words to it, or is there any kind of neuroscience that ties to this? Like, does the brain work in certain ways? It may be like. And you start uncovering all of it. Like, little stuff. There's something called the mirror neuron system that I didn't even know was super cool. But, you know, like, if you were out and about somewhere and you see somebody, like, burn their hand on something, you go like, oh. And, like, you rub your fingers together because you can. You can feel it, right? It's. It's a mirroring of the emotion of the feeling of it all. It's no different. We watch somebody walk across the stage and get an Emmy and go, I want an Emmy. I want that car. We're doing a mirror. Mirroring system. And so the reality is like, that system helps feel something, right? So the idea is like, well, if I can already feel what it has, to have that. Like, what if I have that as an attachment now because I felt it, and then work towards getting it. What happens is when I. If you think about, like, when you want something, you can almost taste it, that new car, the new house, like, we can. It's like a rooted, palpable, backside, subconscious driver for me now. And so if I can put that in there because I saw it and felt it because somebody else did it, well, now I can drive my subconscious thoughts towards it. And then the cool thing is, the more that I do it, the more it becomes who I am. I rewire my pleasure centers. I rewire my patterns of reaction. I just. Because it's what I want now. And after a while, when you've done it a bunch of times, that thing. A bunch of times, it's not. Hey, I just. I did some martial arts. Like, no, I'm a black belt. It's a different thing. It's a different ownership as to what it is.

Yeah. Well, I look at you, and we've known each other what feels like a long time, but we have. And I've watched what you've been able to accomplish. What. Watch how you've operated. And, you know, you could have been in a place which we probably wouldn't have known each other if you kept going down that path, but with no family, no wife, and literally no real future. And you chose. You chose and you said, but you. You chose in a way that I think a lot of folks struggle with in the sense of who do I need to be to have the things that I truly dream of, the things that are so near and dear to my heart. And you're living proof that you were divorced for three years. You lost connection with your kids. You weren't necessarily a good dad. Today you're a pillar. I mean, we went through a dad program together because you chose to do it and invited me, and I'm honored to be part of it. But the fact of how you showed up shows me and should show, is a role model. And this is why I'm so high on this, on this book. You know, people will come to me and ask, well, how do I make money? How do I do this? Wait a second. Let's figure out who you are first. Figure that out, because when you get that done, you'll make the right choices. And the results are the proof of those choices. And I think that, that's huge. You know, I want to, I know that we, we have a short amount of time, but I want to touch on something that in reading the book and it was early in the book and I think this is something we all need to think about and you tell us, tell a little bit of a story about. You were at, at your worst moment, you were suicidal. You had disappeared. You sent a text to your, to the folks that you knew cared about you and said, you know, tell. Tell them who their dad was. I mean, which as a, as a, a single dad at the time, you know, for me, thinking back as a single dad, man, that just ripped my heart out. But there was a convers, a dear friend named Richie that really hit home for me and I think it's important for people to hear what was said there and the basis of that, that conversation. If you would just bring that.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. It was, it was, it was August. I want to say it was actually 10 years ago now. I just recently found out someone sent me a message in 2021. So it was like August 6, 2011, but it was. Yeah, I went to the. I went down this whole journey of, of wanting to like, no longer be here and take my life. And I sent a te. Some friends and family that said, please tell my kids who their father was. And it prompted the, the community of people that were around me in my area to go searching for me. And so I got back after, you know, nothing was done, thankfully. And then two days later, I went back to the gym because you don't know how to go back to the world, so you just go back to the world, I guess. And so I go back to the world and, and one of my co workers, right, an employee of mine who was also a previous high school teammate, football was getting Richie. And Richie, he's a straight shooter, man. He's a straight shooter guy. He's a police officer now. And he just, he's a good dude, man. Came from a good family, shows up. Well, anyway, so this to the point where he takes me to the back office and he says, first off, don't ever do that again. Like, and he said more, more cuss words than I just said. He said, secondly, when I found out, man, I threw up in a toilet. I was like, what do you mean you threw open a toilet? He says, well, I thought I'd lost a hero. And for me, the interesting thing is you don't, you don't hear those words from a friend, you know, you don't, you Hear them from, like, somebody who doesn't pay attention to you. Someone like, thinks they know you from a distance, you know, because if they always say, don't meet your heroes, right? Because your hero might be somebody that would let you down. So to have them say that meant a lot. And I was like, well, why? And he goes, well, because a lot of the people in this world, like, witness community. We all seen you do what you do. We've watched you grow up, we've seen what you've done, we've seen you become what you've built. And so you inspire a lot of people without even knowing it. He said, and it was a very interesting seed that got planted because it was quite literally the first time in my life I was like, well, maybe all this craziness of my life up until that age, age, maybe it had a purpose. Maybe there was some reasoning behind why it was all going on. I didn't quite know. That's the worst time to go out and tell people how to live a better life and be happy. Right? Because I wasn't happy. But it was a seed, I say, because the seed took years to get, you know, to get roots, to get water to grow. But it started with one person that was very close to me, seeing me in a way I hadn't seen myself.

Here's the thing, and I hope that the, the viewers and listeners will, will take this to heart. We don't know who's watching. We don't know who's watching us and how we live. As an example, whether it's your children, whether it's co workers, how we handle adversity, you can either be. I used to tell the kids at the karate school, you have two choices, two paths. You can either be an example or you can be a warning. And we all are examples in some sense. And I'm hoping that, that they take that away. Because when I read that, it hit me hard, this realization. Because I look at my son as, you know, he just had his first child, so I'm a granddad now.

Yeah.

And looking at him and saying, I did something right. And I look at you with your kids and I look at you with your wife and the turmoil you went through, the things that went through. But you know what, my friend, man, you're doing it right. You're doing it right and you're doing it right now and not living in the past and saying, you know, with, with guilt and shame, you know, there may be some of that there, but, but you're saying, I can't fix that, but I can fix the future.

Always can. And the future, this arbitrarily bright place, everybody sees it like it's all great there. And it is, but only if you choose to make it great there.

So this is cool. Now this book's coming out.

Yep.

In a few weeks.

Yep. From now, from this moment of recording, it's like the 10th, 14 specific days from the day. So Tuesday, when we're four coordinates, it'll be two weeks from now.

And I think that, that when we look at life, whether it's financial because you're a dad, you're a husband, I mean, those two roles first, because I see how you prioritize it and bless you for doing that because it's the way we need to live. Family first. Are an entrepreneur and a successful entrepreneur. Doing, doing well. Have built a very successful business. You're a role model, you're a speaker, you're an author. Now you've got all these things going on. And when you think back just five, six years ago, could you have imagined you'd be here today?

I mean, I mean, I could imagine. But then you're like, that's not real.

But no, it's, it's, it's most definitely something where it's been a journey of just consistency, man. I think it's the biggest thing I tell people all the time, you got to fall in love with the day, not just the destination. So I have fallen in love with my days and it's led me to some great destinations.

What do you think was the hardest choice to make to get you on this path and the most important choice to make? And they may be the same thing.

Yeah, yeah, it was, it was relinquishing the ego, man. It was, it was letting the ego go away and get beat up, you know, and then, and then realizing that it wasn't protecting anything of good. Like, because we all have these egos that are protecting the current identity. Good or bad, it'll protect the current identity as it is. And at the time, man, I just had this ego that wouldn't take help, wouldn't get insight, wouldn't share, wouldn't talk. And so getting rid of that guy and putting a new ego in place that's wrapped around, around the identity of, I try, I give effort, I succeed, I show up, I. I am determined to make the next moments of my life better. As a human, that identity is protected by the ego. That's okay with saying, I suck at this. I need to get better, I need some help. And so when you can live in that space, life is much more peaceful and much more successful.

Beautiful, Beautiful. So the book. Now I think everyone needs this book. Not only do they need it, I think this is a great book for our youth to read, especially going through what they've gone through with the pandemic being shut down and not having the connection and all that stuff. There's some lost people and this is, this becomes the recipe for them to see the light and see which way to go. Where do they get it?

Yeah, you go to identity shiftbook.com it's pretty straightforward. And then when you get there, we'll.

Put it in the. In the show notes.

Yeah, use the code tas, the affluent Entrepreneur show. Well, I didn't put the E, I just put the affluent show. I don't know why I did that. I should put TA E. S, huh? Go to TAES is the code. And then you'll get the audiobook, the digital book and the workbook for free. Because the workbook is one where I wanted people to actually be able to increase the cognitive rigor, we call it, which means that you learn it in the book, but then you need to go do the work as if not. It just kind of sits there. And so if you can actually do the work, it'll lock itself in. It's very straightforward. It's some. It's like pulled right from our method called the shift method, which is in the book. But yeah, if you guys go to identity shiftbook.com use the code T A.

And you all know me, I'm a framework junkie. He's got some cool frameworks in the book that kind of walk through and kind of give you something that this is one of those books, you'll read a book and it serves you for a moment. This is one of those books that will serve you for a lifetime. It'll serve you for a lifetime because you can always ask the question, am I being who I want to be in this moment? And Anthony is a dear friend, but he also is living proof that if the answer to that question is no, you can change it. You can make it different and you can have things that maybe seem so far out of reach and just dreams in the past, but make them a reality today. So where else can they find you, Anthony? I mean, I know that you are all over the airwaves, all over the videos and the socials and all that stuff, but I want to make sure that we're following you as much as.

I'm following you the hub is Instagram, man. Go find me on Instagram. All the cool stuff you want to know about is all. It's all there. So if you just go there, that's the best place to find me.

Anthony Trucks on Instagram.

Instagram, Yep. Anthony Trucks. Yep. Easy, easy, easy peasy. Can't lose it.

You got it, man. So here's the deal. I'm going to ask you all to. And I'll put the links in the show notes, get the book, follow Anthony. This is something that when you talk about financial success, when you talk about entrepreneurial success, we too often get caught up in what's the strategy, what's the tactics, what are the hows, what are the things. But you know what? This is the foundational work that if you're going to build a financial skyscraper, the identity is the foundation you're building it on. The identity is the place that we're putting everything on. And if that's shaky, if that's faulty, if that is challenged, the whole thing is either not going to grow or it's going to fall down. This is why I want. I don't bring a lot of guests on the show, but I had to get Anthony. We squeezed it in in a limited time, and I wanted to get it out because I think it's so important to your financial future. Financial independence, as I said, is a birthright. We got to go to claim it. And the first step to claim it is to claim your identity. And the Identity Shift by Anthony Trucks is the key to that. Brother, I thank you for taking time out of your crazy busy time and schedule.

Ditto, bro.

To do this. And I look forward to seeing you soon, my friend, and seeing this thing fly off the shelves and change some lives. Brother. That's what you've done for me. That's what you're doing for so many people. And I'm blessed to call you friend.

Same man. Genuinely.

Thank you, bud.

Welcome, welcome. Thank you.

Talk soon. Thank you for listening to the Affluent Entrepreneur show with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the Affluent Entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you there.

And that's it for this episode of Building youg Money Machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright, and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.