Blaze Your Own Trail - S2:E26- Make Shift Happen with Anthony Trucks

Episode Date: September 3, 2020

Anthony Trucks is a former NFL Athlete, American Ninja Warrior on NBC, international speaker, host of the Aww Shift podcast, and the founder of Identity Shift coaching. He uses cutting edge science and psychology to upgrade how you operate so you can elevate your life and business to reach your full potential. After being given away into foster care at 3 years old, being adopted into an all white family at 14, losing his NFL career to injury and more he learned how to shift at a very young age, and now his life mission is teaching others how to Make Shift Happen in their lives. In this episode we discuss: Anthony's childhood Adversity he face at a young age A pivotal moment Getting into Football High School days A crazy play during College His mentors His NFL career And more! Connect with Anthony: Website: https://anthonytrucks.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anthonytrucks/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/Anthonytrucks/ Connect with Jordan: Follow on Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanjmendoza Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordanjmendoza/ Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/blazeyourowntrailmastermind/ Need help with your Sales or Marketing Strategy? Book a call today! https://calendly.com/impulseconsulting/30-minute-discovery-call This episode is sponsored by Venessa C. Crandell. If you are looking for someone to help keep you motivated and encouraged during these trying times make sure to connect with Venessa on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/venessa.crandell Installing strategic sales systems & processes will stop the constant revenue rollercoaster you might be facing which is attainable through our 6 Week Blazing Business Revenue Coaching ProgramBook a discovery call with Jordan now to learn more! Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode is sponsored by Vanessa C. Crandall. If you're looking for someone to help keep you motivated and encouraged during these trying times, make sure to connect with Vanessa on Facebook. The link will be down in the show notes. Hey, everyone, so excited to share this interview with Anthony Trucks with you all. We will learn really all about his journey from childhood through high school, where he played college football, a little bit about his NFL, career in some of the other projects that he's working on. So I hope you enjoy it. And I will chat

with you right after the episode. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. I'm your host, Jordan Mendoza. And I've got a very special guest today. His name is Anthony Trucks. And I'm going to give him just a second to tell you who he is and what he does. Hey, everybody, man, appreciate you having me on. Names Anthony Chucks, former NFL athlete, American Engine Warriors, speaker, coach, author, and founder of identity ship. We help people expand who they are to reach their full potential. And at this point, my time, my life, man, I'm a father and a husband. I'm a guy that does some interestingly cool, weird stuff.

I work with large companies and small individual companies, and I get a chance to, even moms and dad, everything between to help them kind of navigate the pitfalls of life. Awesome, awesome. I love that. Appreciate you sharing the intro there. And, you know, on my show, what I love to do is rewind because I think there's a lot of value in getting context into who you are as a huge. and, you know, what your background is and, you know, where you came from.

And I do know a little bit about your story, but there's going to be people listening that maybe haven't heard it. So I would love to really rewind. Let's go back to the formative years. You know, where did you grow up? Where were you born and raised? And tell us a little bit about, you know, elementary middle to high school days. All the old school stuff, man. So, so it's interesting. I realized years ago that my story is not my story. It's actually my experience, but it's your story. So it's you who's listening right now. Yeah, I'm talking to you you're in your car and your headphone. I don't care of where you. I'm talking to you.

So this is for you. And really, the idea is if you'd extract lessons from things that I experience that you don't have to experience them, but you can get all the good stuff out of it. So one of the big things for me is I realized years ago when I was given away in a foster care at three years old that I didn't feel like I mattered.

We all get there at some point in time. My real mom said, you know, I don't want my four kids. Let's get rid of these kids and gave us to a system that just, you know, did not take care of us. Imagine being beaten and starved and tortured before the age of six by like multiple different homes. It's like five.

By the time you're six years old, you don't have much of enjoyment of life. You don't really feel like you fit anywhere. And what is this is a kind of complete shattering of your childhood. And so from six years old to 14, I was still in foster care, but I had an interesting dynamic. I'm a black man. I was only black person in an all-white family that was very poor. So for a lot of years, I had dynamics of diversity and school issues in a very non-diverse

area. My real mom was in the background, but just messing things up on purpose. And so for a lot of years, I just did not like a matter. And so up until 14, like I was just a lot of, leaf in the wind. And we get there. Sometimes in life, we feel like a leaf in the wind if, you know, we can't figure out what job we're going to have or, you know, we always can be fired, give my relationships in the rocks and I can't seem, you know, to figure out how to have friendships or lose weight and feel comfortable about myself. Like, we can get like a leaf in the wind

a lot, unfortunately. So for me, at 14, I got a chance to do something that kind of gave me a little bit of a self-worth, which is play football. And I sucked. I sucked real bad. Like, I wasn't really good at this, this thing. I obviously went on later on to play in the NFL, college football university of Oregon but prior to that man I spent two years being trash on the football field and this is a thing that I think I really want you guys all to grasp and pull out of this is the experience of it I'll tell you real quick but I want you to grab the lesson from it too the experience was I went two years was really sucky at it I got adopted and my adoptive mom got diagnosed with MS my older brother one of six got went out to the military so I'm floating

solo sucking at this thing and I'm like you know what I'm checking out like whenever you get to the point of trying something and you realize that you suck at it, what you usually don't do is continue to keep trying to do it. Usually you're like, you know what, this sucks. I don't like how this feels. I'm not going to do it anymore, so you don't do it. And then you disappear and you start making excuses and it becomes a norm to do this action when things get hard.

So for me, two years suck and I did that I checked out. And I was in a class, Mr. Howell's English class, and these two girls talking to each other. I have no idea I was listening. And I got the gift that I wish everybody, is listening right now, you could all get this same gift. Because I had this dream of doing something, but I chalked it up because it was hard. And the gift I got was this girl making one statement when she said was to the other girl

and says, well, the reason I'm so bad is because I'm in foster care. And as much as it's like, oh, it's just nothing big. Here's what it was. She gave me the gift of hearing my excuse out loud. And I heard how stupid it sounded. I was like, that's a really, man, is that the excuse you're going to use why you're not going to chase football anymore because you were a foster? because I had told myself that foster kids, man, we're not going to do very much.

And I didn't know at the time, statistically in America, any prison, 75% of the inmates are former foster kids. 75, man, 50% of our homeless population are former foster kids like me. And 1% of us ever graduated from college. We are not set up to do very well. So me check it out was the norm. And these girls said this thing. And I got this gift of like, oh, this excuse is poor.

Because some of us is like, you know what? My goal is to go for a run today, but my shoes. I can't find them. I don't like the way they feel. So I'm going to get started next week. Or I'm going to get this job. I'm going to go to school next month or next week. You know what? School's so expensive. You know, I don't know if I have time to study. Like we make dumb excuses. And so it ends up happening is like, yeah, you're going to watch Game of Thrones. You're going to go watch your coursework and get that done. You got a choice. So this choice allowed me to dig back in an area and do something that most people are deathly afraid of doing.

I gave all my energy to be successful before I knew I'd be successful. I could not and cannot guarantee for you that the success is going to come from the hard work you do. I can't guarantee that you work in your tail off is going to be the thing you need to do. I can guarantee if you don't, you won't get it, though. You're not going to trip and fall face first into a pile of a million dollars or an amazing marriage or body you love. You got to work the tail off with no guarantee. Here's a crazy thing, though. There's so many people not working that it almost guarantees you succeed.

It's weird. That's kind of level. And then also understand that your level of hard work, man, it's not good enough. Unfortunately, that's kind of the thing we've got to tell a lot of people. Let's be real. You've been telling yourself, been working as hard as you can. Your dream to demand certain levels that you just are not willing to give up,

but your work ethic sucks compared to your dream. It might be great to be broke. Your work ethic is probably great to be broke, let's be honest. But it's not good enough for you have that job or that money or that car you want. So I learned these lessons at 15, and they progress knee forwards to a lot of cool stuff in life. And one of the stops along the way, which we definitely want to chat about,

is college men. I went from being a sucky athlete that year. The very next year, I put work in, dude, I drove myself into the ground, catching footballs, running routes, lifting weights, everything you could imagine. The next year, I showed up an animal. And it wasn't an animal because I was, you know, a better physical athlete. In my head, I deserve this. And that's the thing people don't grasp. Like, you will fight for what you deserve. But if you don't work, you won't think you deserve very much. And so a lot of people, they're not, They're not fighting because it's like in the dark, you know in the dark you, you ain't doing the work. Like, you know when it comes down.

You keep finding ways to tuck away. So you're like, you don't shock for yourself. I did. I'm catching this ball. You're not. I'm tackling you. You're not tackling me. Like this side's going to be.

And we, every single play, I had done far too much work for you to take any bit of this from. And it showed up in a way to work two years later. I'm going from his foster kid who sucks at football being nobody. But the only athlete in the last 10 years in my high school to be offered a college to division one scholarship to go play football for multiple. school schools. And it wasn't just because I was the fastest kid because I wasn't. I wasn't the most skilled. I wasn't. Dude, I was just an animal. And I mean, I got video of me bear crawling because I got tripped. I bare crawled 10 yards and made a solo tackle on a sweep in the flat. Like there's a weird video of me doing it. Like it exists. I told myself, I was like,

that doesn't happen because of athleticism. That son of a gun was not going to get outside of me. It was just a fierce desire to, you are not going to get this on me. And that's what propelled me. And when you have that, the sky's a limit for your life. And it took me to a great place. University of Oregon, man. I got to play football there and a whole bunch of more weird stuff after that. Yeah, man. Yeah, no.

And appreciate you sharing all that. It's really, really good context. And there's some really powerful lessons there. I think, you know, the first one being, you know, it literally took a sidebar conversation to shift your whole world. Right. And sometimes, you know, we're in that right place at the right time, hearing the right things that we need to hear.

And that was like a paradigm shift for you where you just decided to go all in. And with this relentless pursuit and no one was going to stop you now, right? And I think that's so important to hear because, you know, the inner game really does control the outer game. You know, what happens between our two ears has a great impact on what we actually put out into the world. And so you made a decision to, you know what, my excuse was lame. You know, I'm not going to not going to use that anymore. I'm going to go to the opposite. and I'm going to prove every single dang person wrong and no one's going to stop me.

So let's talk about college. So what was it? You know, you're getting scholarships left and right. What was it about Oregon? And I know you had a, you know, Hall of Fame coach and Nick Alliotie. You got, you have, you know, Don Pelham was, I mean, what a great staff that was there. So what was it the staff? Was it the environment?

You know, what was it? You know, as a duck fair, I just want to hear. What was it that brought you there? Yeah, I had a lot of offers, man. I had committed to Washington State already. I took a trip there. Then Mick Allioti, he was my main recruiter. He recruited in my area of the country.

Dude would not stop calling me. He would not leave me alone. And I vent was like, whatever. I will just take a trip to Oregon. Just you'll stop calling me so I can tell you no. Because like you got to come to the facility. You got to come see. So I went inside and fell in love with him, man.

It was just, it was the all said guys that were also local guys. There was a lot of, you know, Demetris Williams and a whole lot of guys that were just from the Bay Area that were down. down there, right? Ramone Reed also was in the Bay Area specifically with me. And so going that was like, oh, it's kind of like I got guys that can go back home, back and forth with everyone one too, but also like it's close to home. The family can drive up here, beautiful facilities, like, hey, it's a good spot to go. So I went there. The funny thing is I hated D.P. And Nick Gallaudi was not a nice guy. It's just to be honest, like they weren't happy people.

It's a football. It's a football world. When you come from high school to college, you don't grasp, like the next level past college is the highest level in the world for your sport. you're not coming in and they're not coming like oh let's get this young guy to do well no there's a level already set that we're playing at catch up young buck and so when you come in like i did hate them like i was like and why did i hate them wasn't because they were bad people i hate them because they made me stretch to do things and i did not feel comfortable with the level of output i had to give in the weight room or how i had to run practice or what i had to learn the playbook or how i had to show up every day or like the way i communicated how school had to be done there was no leniency there was no

There was no wiggle room. There was nothing. And so, you know, for years, like, I had to figure it out. The first year, though, I had this knack of, like, I don't like not being great. I don't know because it makes sense. I just, I don't like at this point in my life doing things and not being the best at it in a weird way. And I'm a fun, like, laughable. I'm a happy guy, but I still want to, I want to win.

And so I remember my sophomore year, I just played my true freshman year, me and Hello, Tynata. And I think one other guy, I can remember who we've all played. And the next year, like, I didn't play much. So next year, I had a shot at becoming a starter. But I had to beat out a red shirt, right, senior. Like, guys, been up for five years. And so I had this in my head of like, well, all I can do is every play be an animal in training camp. And so I did, dude.

And then fast forward, I end up being able to beat out the fifth year senior for a starting position, my true sophomore year. And it was this thing where, like, a DP to this day will add one number to this day. but the time he told me was the hardest fought battle for position he's ever seen in his career as a coach because I was not backing down and I earned it.

Like I earned every single bit of it. I'm entrusted my teammates. I was making play left and right. You could like, how did he get that? Because I just wanted to get the ball. And so for a lot of years in my head, I was thinking, I did well.

It should be nice to me. They still weren't cool. They didn't alleviate the pressure was always like that. But then I know how it turned out at the end in a positive way to where fast forward like 10 years, me and DP,

we had to hang out in Colorado at the speaking event because he was done with coaching at Oregon. I was trying to figure out as interim before I went to UCLA. And it was crazy because at the time I told him and said, you know, whenever I left college, like I did not like you when I was there, knowing that you were in town from recruiting visits, like that unsettled me, even though I didn't have to go anywhere. Just the thought of maybe seeing you out in the public, like it drove me insane.

And I said, but when I got to go to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and my coach was John Gruden, John Gruden was like a baby doll. It was easy. In comparison, John's not an easy guy. He's a hard and old stuff. dude. But that whole squad, like, because I dealt with DP and Alliotty, dude, it was a walk in the park. They, they had iron, like sharpens iron, they say. They had legit forged me into this different dude inside for like everything going off my back and I knew

it meant to hear how I was being coached the poster or hear what I was being coached on instead of how I was being coached, how to navigate, how to be a good man, how to show up and be, you know, presentable, be on time, how to work hard, how to have personal pride. Like, there's things that were ingrained that they taught. And I hated the thought of it at the time. But now it's such a huge piece of who I am as a human. And I mean, I got through a lot. I got through a ton just because they were who they were.

And they held the line consistently, held the line. Here's the line. And I'm going to hold it. And if you keep bumping up against the line, you're going to keep getting shocked. But when you can understand where the line stands and you stay in that area, even though it's hard, the life gets easy. Yeah. You know, it sounds like it was all business for them, right?

It was getting you prepared, literally prepared mentally, physically, emotionally for that next level. And like I said, you got to, you got to Tampa Bay and it was a cakewalk because you had already endured everything, you know, the time you're going to put in front of you. So, yeah, DP once I told me one thing and he said, you know, at the end of the day, your mom and dad drop you off as an 18 year old young man. And yes, my job is making better football player, but my job while you're here is to make you a man. He says, if you walk out of you or not, I did not do my job. And I grasped that more than anything else because his way of doing it was to score of football. I love it. And how much of the lessons that you learned from both of them do you plug into the coaching and the work that you do?

All the time, man. There's always little things and nuggets I pop in there. It's just it's things that were the foundational years of me developing me because my sophomore year in college, I had a son. That very same first start of college, my sophomore year, I also got to meet my biological dad. I got to find my very first start in Mississippi State across the country. I got a game ball national TV. You got to meet my dad and my start. So I had a lot of cool things happen.

But like they, it was there present. I had a grandfather, you know, take his own life. Like they were always there in presence. So it wasn't always all business. But the purpose wasn't to make my life horrible. It was to make my life better later. Love it. I love that.

So I've got some questions about a game. And we're going to, we're going to, this will be a flashback for you. Last back. December 29th, 2005, Oregon, against Oklahoma. 14 minutes left in the fourth quarter. They're on the goal line. On 10. What happens next?

Oh, man. I'm on the outside, right side, and we're trying to stop them from going in because I think that they, if they score again, they're going up. And it's going to be hard. It's hard to get. I think it was like 1714 or something like that, I want to say. 177, I believe. 177, that's right.

And so they're ahead. we're like, we don't, we don't figure this out, man. We're, we're going to be kind of screwed. So we had to figure out some way to get it. And I didn't even have a thought of my head of anything where we got to stop them. So I remember the ball is hiked him on the right side. And I see like Adrian Pearson gets the handoff. He's running the middle of the lane, right? And so he's like a couple people inside. And I think I like, I jump over a body. I don't know who might have been Matt to me. I jump over him. And then Adrian isn't aware of his position on the field. He believes that he has probably like right at the goal line. So he thinks if I extend the ball, score and touchdown.

on not today. So he happened to be like at the four or five yard line and the ball is just sitting there right in front of me. He handed me, without even knowing it, handed me the football. And so in my usually when people are doing that, you don't think like because you think he's down, like you don't know what's going on. You don't think this. But for some reason, my brain said, oh, take that. So while he's extending it, I just grab it and I roll to the ground and we get a turnover and we come out of that. We score some points. And obviously we didn't win the game, unfortunately. Although I got MVP on defense because I balled out that game. But here was the crazy thing. And I always, this is one of those plays I run over in my head all day long. Why didn't I just keep running?

Why did I fall to the ground? Because if I don't fall to the ground, like, I grabbed that thing. I could sprint out. Nobody knew. The refs had no idea what happened. I had to, they had to like, go watch the replay to see what took place to understand whether or not at the ball. If I had took off out of the left side, their whole team wouldn't have known what took place. Nobody. I would have been to the far end zone before they say no. So apparently I lost the game for the ducks, so I didn't do that. But I'm just kidding now. But that was one of those plays, man. Yeah, crazy, crazy play, right? And if you would have ran it in, it would have been similar to when Joe Walker picked up the Kaelin Clay drop. You remember that Utah game? And he literally runs

it all the way down and no one knew. They were like, no one knows. They thought they had the score and then we ran it all right down. That's exactly what it would have been. So that's cool, man. I wanted to ask you about that because I knew that that particular play out of pretty pretty much everyone. I mean, you got a handoff from Adrian Peterson. Not many defenders can say that, right? Yeah, yeah. So that's pretty cool. Pretty awesome. So let's talk about after college. Did, you know, what was the experience like for you? Did you get an invite to the combine? Did you go? Yeah. You know, what was that whole process like for you? I think it would be good contact, especially for those that are listening that are aspiring athletes and they want to get behind the scenes.

So I came out of college. And the thing. I came out of college. And the thing. is I came out and I kind of popped onto the scene because I did a true like, you know, my, we call it red shirt freshman year. I got hurt my sophomore year, unfortunately, but towards the back end of the year, so I didn't get to finish out strong. Junior year I was, I was kind of doing well, but not real well. In senior year, I became an animal. I led the Pactan at the time in tax, tax for loss, force fumbles, fumbles recovered. And I missed a game against USC, so I was like sixth in total tackles, but I was pushing to be first or second. And, and yeah, man, so I came on the scene. So when it came the end of the year, a lot of, a lot of

scouts were like, we don't even know where you came from. So if I'd have had that, and here's the worst part, that year in the draft, they took seven linebackers, my year. The next year, 24 linebackers, I believe. Like, it was this, like, literally if I had a red shirt, it could have been something different from my career. It's always good or should of what, you never know. But my journey was like, all right, no one knows who I am.

My coaches also, Alioti and them, they like to recruit at the time small guys. They recruited guys that were like strong safeties that could be linebackers, get them big, have them be quick. That was how we hold the edge. So they listed my title as strong safety. But I was really an outside linebacker. So the scouts came in and are like, what position do you play? So not only did I come out of nowhere, no one knew where to place me, which was not fun.

So I ended up getting, you know, these looks from teams because I end up doing well. I get about 235 pounds. I'm running a 4-49, 45, 140. I bench like 225, like 27 times. Like I'm an athlete. I can move. I'm a good-sized dude. And go to the combine, do my thing, and then go home and have another workout or two.

and then it comes draft day. This is an interesting thing. It's like, again, a guy just popped in the scene. Some teams like me. Tampa Bay of all teams like me the most. No one really still knew who I was, but I was like, all right, we're going to say how this plays out. So Tampa ends up, you know, fifth round like,

hey, give me a call. We're going to draft you fifth round. Cool. All right, cool. Fifth round comes. They pick somebody else. Hey, sorry, it didn't pan out. We're going to pick you, got you.

Got you. Hey, you're the next one up. Joe Barry is the coach the time. My linebacker coach the time. Okay, cool. Sounds good. Yeah, I'm inside to the family. everybody's there. Hey, six round, here we go. Comes a titty-da-d-d-c Comes across. Not me. All right, cool.

Seven's round. Sevens round. Okay, cool. They got two picks. He's like, hey, we're going to get one of these two picks. I'm like, finally, right? So if seven-pick comes up, not me. Second one, I'm like, cool, going to be me. Not me. My teammate, Justin Finlayson. So I'm getting into the back and the draft, I'm like, I think it drafted. Sucks. It's not a great feeling, right? Especially when, like, I was bawling, but it's how the world works. They didn't draft me linebackers that year. And so like right after literally the draft closes within five minutes, I got five or six teams calling me offering me, you know, I got a $15,000 signing bonus post draft, which means they're called a priority for a agent that we'll call it, you know,

like they just kind of wanted you if you were still left around. So chose Tampa Bay, and that was the beginning of my career going out there and fighting as an undrafted guy. And when you go and drafted, man, it's a climb. The draft is, it matters. Unfortunately, it matters. There's opportunity, but dude, it's difficult because it happens is, You're just the guy they're going to see if you can make it. Whereas if you get drafted, there's an investment in you. Your name's there. Like, it's a different kind of attachment to it.

And so I was always fighting, man, just trying to find a way in. And NFL stands for not for long. I mean, I don't know how many stories you want, but there's times, ups and downs and left and right. Teammates, you know, give me the wrong place. I would go in there and look bad. And at the end of it, man, injury took my career from me, playing against the eagle.

Somebody jumped on my back, tore my shoulder out. And that was the end of the whole run after three years. Yeah, man. Yeah, a lot of a, I mean, lot of battling, like you said, but, you know, I think you were already prepared to battle, right? You were battle ready, right? You're built for it. So when that injury happened, you know, when that person landed on you, did you know, I mean, did you have a good feeling? Did it hurt that bad that were you said? It's a funny thing is in the game, you have this adrenaline.

It felt like, you know, you feel something like, oh, that's off, but like your finger, you know, it messes up. You keep playing, you know. So I felt it, but it wasn't like this like shot of pain. I can't move. It wasn't debilitated. I kept playing. And I didn't even notice it, in fact, until, like, the next morning. It was the next morning I woke up and, like, I could not. And the thing is, the next morning, like, I slept in, because you see it. It's training camp. I slept in first preseason game. So I slept in, and I slept in past the time that the treatment center opened up.

So when I woke up, I couldn't go to the treatment. But, man, like, I couldn't lift my arm or, like, move my laptop. And then everybody was off campus from this place we do at St. Vincent's School in the Trough for the Steelers. And so like I came in I think like two days they were gone. It's like a day and a half later we ended up having our first meeting before the facility for even treatment opened up. And we had watched the game film and it was all good and well. And then yeah, next day I know like after that I'm like I played well.

Shoulders kind of funky. I'm waiting to go see somebody like I need to take care of this. Like nobody was couldn't even call. Everybody was gone. And and then it's funny. It's like in between the time of I'm at a filming like film watching session, I'm getting praised by special. teams coach, getting praised by the defense core. I'm getting praise. Like, hey, great job. Made a mistake here and there, but a way to go get it. Like, I got smashed them dude like

saw stars. So like I did. I played all right, right. That's some love. And I go up to the room like, I'm going to wait here until the treatments that are opens at like about an hour, maybe 15 minutes into me kind of just chilling, killing time, get knocking the door, GM. Hey, we want to let you go. Oh, well, that sucks. I don't know why. I have no idea this day, but I ended up going down and saying, all right, well, you know, I do need to go get my shoulder looked at. There is something that's and bothering me. So I end up going and getting checked and turn up the shoulders torn. It's all busted out and yada yada. And so it ends up being the end of my, at that point, the end of my season. And I watched them all going win a Super Bowl against the Cardinals that year. And then it ended up

being the end of my career, hold it from Monster. Wow. Yeah. And you had to, you know, sit there and watch that. You know, sit there and watch and make that run and go get that victory. I'm sure that was definitely tough to do with. Yeah, it's fun. It's part of the process, though. I'm a man of faith. I believe there's a plan and a reasoning behind all of it. And sure enough, man, there was a bigger plan for my life post football. There's more than when I saved my brain. I did find out there was some mental, you know, well, not cognitive,

but there is some brain damage physically because of football. It's in capacity, man. I get to be home. I get to make money doing things I love to do in a different capacity. Would it be nice to be able to play and make it all millions. I'm not going to lie, I was just twisted. But then also for me, grow up with foster care, the ability for someone to say, hey, you're not here anymore and go.

That really rooted me back to that feeling of just a lack of consistency and control. I'm not good with that. I mean, I can adapt to change really, really well. But something like that, like you're here and then, hey, your whole entire family, which your team is not your family anymore, that it triggers me a lot. So I was like, I'm cool. I don't mind to an extent not playing. I missed a game for sure, but I didn't miss all the nuances like that.

So what was the recovery like? and while you were recovering from this injury, what were the thoughts that you're going through? Did you already have a plan in place? Did you know you wanted to go the, you know, entrepreneurship route or, you know, being a speaker and sharing your story with people and going that route? It was not it when I came out. My degrees in kinesiology, open to gym when I came out, you know, novel idea for an athlete. None of us do that. So I came out.

I just didn't want a boss. A week into being a personal trainer at 24th or fitness, I realized that the amount of knowledge I had. Just think about most guys and girls that want to be personal trainers, they in fact are trying to get on to the team to be around to be a strength coach to be in that weight room. So for me, it's like, well, hold on. I have my degree. I got a higher education of most of these guys are the same. But what I have that they don't have is I spent time being that athlete. Like I understand what it feels like the rigors of the connection.

So I'm like, we go and do that. So I got in and I was teaching, you know, at this personal training place 24-hour fitness. And I realized that in the first like week or two, my master's, trainers are asking me questions like, okay, how would you do this? I tell them. Okay, how would you do this? And after a while, I was like, oh, how would you do this? So I started like learning from me, I'm like, uh-uh, that's not where I'm going to be. So week into having a job as a personal trainer, uh, I quit. I was like, I'm taking the rest of my NFL money, which wasn't a whole whole lot. It was enough to start a business. I was like, I'm going to go up my own gym. And so I did

the stupidest that I could have at the time, which was I went to open a gym with no business sense, no business, you know, license, no business plan, nothing. And I just opened up this 8,000's welfare facility and ran it into the ground in nine months. Although, I got, I figured it out and fixed it. So for the next six years before I sold it later on in like 2018, actually it was more than six years, like 10 years later. But I close it down and just consulted for a good four year period. Man, I just, I went to the whole like the microcosm of the world dealing with people, understanding business and the systems that are processing, all these weird nuances,

dropping the ego, like almost losing it multiple times. But man, I just figured the stinking thing out. But that was the big thing. It's post football trying to find out. I mean, one big thing is my identity crisis. I had a massive one. Who is Anthony without this game? And that's a really hard one for a lot of athletes.

But yeah, coming out of it was this very unique dynamic of trying to figure out where I fit in the order, what I'm going to do, and do I have a job. And so, yeah, I went into entrepreneurship because here is a big thing. I didn't want a boss anymore. it's a big piece of it too. I did not want somebody who was I had to ask for two weeks off. Since I was 18 years old up until the age of 25, I had always had to ask, can I take a week off? My schedule was made for me. I didn't have a chance. I couldn't, if I got a break for Christmas, you're here the day after Christmas. You better be here. So Christmas night, get in a car and drive

home, catch a flight, whatever it was. Like Thanksgiving, I would literally would fly home for Thanksgiving and the very next morning catch red eyes back the night of Thanksgiving. So I could be a practice with the Steelers the day the morning up. I drive right from the airport straight to the practice facility suit up and go. Like that was my life. And so now that I don't have to do that, I want to be in control. And so what that meant was me figuring out all these things it took. And that was ridiculously difficult. That's where I understand why people are like in the real world is crazy. Non-football, because another stuff I learned from football I could use, I can't go out and tackle people on the street anymore. You know, like there's a lot of things that I

don't get to bring to the next world. And that was a hard thing of navigating that whole situation, but man, I've got to the back end of some really difficult situations down. Now, I teach a lot of stuff in business and I teach a lot of things in a mental aspect of how it all ties together. So it's been a blast, but it did not start that way. Yeah, well, you know, and you're always going to learn in a struggle. You know, we're always going to learn the lessons that we need for the next venture or that next chapter of our lives, you know, so going through that nine months and almost losing it all and then having it run successfully for years and years and years later, you know, that, that I'm sure definitely helped pave the way for bigger things.

Yeah. Yeah, I did for sure. I mean, without that stuff, it doesn't, it's a thing, it's a lot because a lot of doors. And I tell people all the time, just because I played sports, are like, oh, you played the NFL, is why it's easier for you to be a speaker. Because that was a progression. It was the gym, and then I broke that stinking thing, learned, like, I did speaking and the consultant. I've done a lot of different stuff. I've met a lot of forks in the road to get here, but none of it has to do with how good I was at football, like at all. I mean, nobody, I mean, if anything, it's like, Oh, you play the NFL?

Cool. All right. How smart are you? What do you know? How can you help me? You may get an extra five seconds of talking time with somebody, but it's not the only way to get five seconds. It's like a cool story starter.

But in fact, I believe it's more of a stigma I have to break now. If I tell people I play the NFL's a stigma of like, oh, here goes another cocky athlete we got to deal with. Like, that's sometimes the stigma. Or if this girl, this guy has a bad experience in high school or college with a football player, guess who they start putting me in the box of immediately, right? That's where I get to go.

So it's not always his benefit. There's a lot of intangibles that I then have been able to apply to my life and my business over time. But even those took time to learn how do you apply? How do you apply a certain level of grit towards your business? Like in football, it's easy. Like, I'm tired. I don't stop. I hold on.

I grit it out, right? But in this world, it's like, all right, you got to sit here for the next half hour and keep writing that page of the book. I need you to film those 15 videos with joy. I need you to edit this and sit here and be focused. You just sit here for an hour. You can have ADHD and listen to it. a client and then from there be able to form weight and structure and then do it again for six more hours today. That's the kind of grit. Like there's a difference to it. And so when you can

understand it to carry those intangibles over, you can have success, but very little of it has to do with my football career. Absolutely. And so what are some of the biggest lessons that, or biggest tips, I guess, that you share with clients that are working for you, right? Maybe they're they want to be an entrepreneur but they just don't know the right steps to take right they and you have you've gone this firsthand right from not getting even the business license to oh wow I think I need one of these now right so you kind of fumbled through all those things so what are some tips that you can share with the audience that you would give to somebody that's like you know I kind of want to do this but I need to know at least these five things before I even get started

yeah yeah there's a lot so I mean so the beginning of it all ends up being there's a strategy and then there's executional strategy. There's a lot of people will get all the information they need and think they need, and it's really stupid to me because what happens is you don't realize that all you want to do is start executing and then information becomes apparent to you. So some people will spend all day being asked calls.

I'm going to ask a bunch of questions. I'm going to do nothing with it. And I hate that that's the way it works for a lot of people, but it is. So at this point, like for me, I don't talk to a lot of people about things because I just don't know who is invested enough to actually take the information and run with it. And it's tough.

It sucks because there's probably good people that really want the information but the last 50 people have ruined it for you. So what happens is you've got to understand as information, right? You've got to get the strategy, which means drop the ego, ask for help,

get a strategy you can apply and just dig into that one. Second thing is you've got to be in the identity of the human being that will have those things. This is why my work in identity is so vastly important for people and sometimes they misconstrue the necessity of it. There's a lot of studies that are done.

And nowadays a mindset, and there's a one study that came out in 2018, It's a really good one. And it breaks down the fact that some people are like, I just got to have a strong mindset. Here's my strategy. Strong mindset. I'm going to be great. And then you have this new word, which isn't new, but it's 10 subtraction.

People have what's called the imposter syndrome, imposter feeling. And it's like that thing right there is probably one of the biggest killers of dreams in a world because you can have all the information you want in the world. You can have all the strategies being applied for a great mindset. Affirmations, do hard work. You can grind. But if you don't self-categorize, self-categorize. identify as that thing, your mindset is of no use. The study showed for specifically

entrepreneurs that if they don't self-identify or self-categorize as an entrepreneur, then all the stuff they're being taught or things are doing in mindset, doesn't latch on, doesn't become useful. So for a lot of people, like, you have the information. It's all there. You got to start learning how to self-identify, how to self-categorize as that person and what it takes, what it looks like to get there. Because once you do, saying I have a strong mindset is irrelevant to an extent. Like, it's part of it. But once I say I'm an entrepreneur, well, that's my identity.

I'm self-identifying. And we as human beings will protect that identity with our actions without even knowing it. It's the mom who knows she's a mom. So how dare you say I'm not a mom? It's the person who like you make fun of their art. And they're like, no, no, I'm an artist. I don't know who you are like, that's who I am. Don't you dare.

Uh-uh, we're going to do that right now, right? It's like when you have that for, whatever it is because you self-identify, the mindset of it is not as necessary because the things that you would have to say, I got to put a strong mindset to write that book because I got to get it done. When you're an author, you find joy in that. It's not this arbitrary willpower, you know, draining task. No, that's just who I am. It becomes effortless, effort. And it's effort that you give out, but it doesn't drain your soul. So now you find joy in doing this thing. And that's why a lot of people like, how does so-and-so make it look so easy? Like, that drives me insane to do,

but they make it look like it's fun because it's who they are. It's apparently not who you are just yet, because if it was who you were, you'd get it. And you then have all the things that person has. But the fact that you don't have those things goes to show that's not who you are just yet, or you'd have it. Makes sense. Makes sense for sure. And so you talk a little bit about your book, I'd love for you to share it, the name of it with the audience, give some context around, you know, what are some of the insights that they're going to learn from it? In terms of what specific thing? What the biggest takeaways are from this book?

Anyone that gets it in their hand and they're reading it, what are the biggest things that they're going to take away? So one book is called Trust Your House. So that's my life, Borgue by Fire. It's the book that was written put out a couple years ago. And that one's more of like understanding how my brain thought through a lot of different hardships of divorce and being, you know, being a single father and dealing with that craziness and my wife having an affair and then sports stuff, I've been foster care.

So you get a chance to see behind the scenes a lot of the hardships of my life and understand kind of a little bit of why I think the way I think and how I operate. The next book I'm writing, which is it's in process now is one that's really based on understanding who you are and how your identity is responsible for your success, period. Once you understand really the root of how all success takes place, it's funny that it's taken so long for identity to become more prominent oddly enough. So that's the second book, it's really a clear picture of why, now that I understand who my identity is, because it's a way to figure it out inside the book, and I understand where I want to go, how do I get there? How do I

make an identity shift? And that's what I teach. As a book, there's a process I use called the shift method, and that method is loosely kind of unpacked in the book. But the process is what all my coaching programs are built around. At the root of me, I tell people I'm a speaker. It's simplest that they can understand. The reality is I'm a coach. I'm not a fitness coach. I'm not a sports coach. I'm not even a life coach.

My identity coach. I coach you in understanding how I take this, this concept of where I want, and I don't just try to achieve that thing, but how to become the person who has that thing? Because once you become the person who has that thing, it's not really an achievement. It's your normalcy.

And if your normalcy is to make $100,000 a month, I don't feel pretty good, as opposed to the person that achieves that they might slide it back downhill. But the person who is that person, again, they'll fight for what they deserve. If you think you deserve that, they'll fight for it. If you don't, you may get it once or twice and question it. And then it slides back down. You'll add a client that sold a business for $1.1 million.

And then after the fact, couldn't seem to get himself to get back online. I was like, dude, what's the problem? And I got to the root of it. He's like, you know what? I sold it for 1.1. But I just feel like it was an accident. Like, I didn't deserve it. He didn't self-categorized as a person who could do that.

Super weird. once we got through that whole craziness, now he's making $35,000 a month with a process of the program. It's vastly different because he finally realized I was like, damn, I am the guy who did that. Like, that's what it is. And here's what it was.

A lot of people in life, we have things go wrong. We have these, you know, things that fall apart. And when I realize this is that when you lose something you've been digging into, you leave the military, you lose a spouse, you lose a family member, lose your job. You lose a piece of who you are. And it's this piece of fruit kind of feeling.

And the fruit falls off the tree, and it withers and it dies. And we're like, man, I suck and all withers and it dies. And then over a lot of years, I started like kind of understanding more about myself and other people. I was like, oh, I see this massive problem. The problem is we think we're the fruit, but we never were.

We've always been the tree. We're the people that created that job, that got that partnership, that got the relationship, that made that money. They got that's always been new. But the problem is, is you stop giving nutrients to the tree. So now all the fruits are dried. Like it all dried up and died because you know, you stop watering and fruit in the tree. So if you go back and prune that tree, water the tree, take care of the tree, you'll produce more and better fruit.

So that's kind of where a lot of my work dials in is getting the fact that people like, hey, this is like these things happen. But you didn't lose everything. You in fact still have everything. You just let's a piece of fruit. Let's make some more. Yeah, no, and I can definitely relate to that a lot. And I remember, you know, when my mom passed away in 2012, I remember I literally felt like the world ended. You know, like it was so close.

to her, talk to her twice a day, and then all of a sudden she was gone. And I was like, I was in a fog. I remember being a fog for almost a year and not even realizing some months had gone by because I had essentially basically went into darkness instead of light. I said, you know what? Like, I don't know what to do with my life. I don't have this person to call on and help me out with things. And then, you know, I came to this epiphany and I realized that I'm actually adding less value to her by being that way. You know, I'm letting less value to my wife and kids by staying this way. And I have so much more to offer to the world, you know. And so what life take two. A hundred percent. Yeah. And that's, and so now I've been on that mission to use her story

to help inspire other people, right? To help other people with everything that she went through in her life and it's it's been helping people right like you said you're you sharing your journey our stories aren't for us there to hopefully impact somebody else in a way that gets them to look at things differently to shift their perspective in their mindset yeah I agree it's a big piece of it so that's why I work is all day long now I love it I love it so for folks that are listening do you work with people at all different levels you know do they have to be entrepreneurs could they know maybe be in a corporate role you know yeah A teacher, anybody, okay.

Anybody who has an ambitious desire. I don't do well with the people that you have to get off the couch. I do well with the people who have an ambitious desire, because that's what the structure is built around. It's not built around a specific, like you've got to be a left-handed basketball player from Fiji. Like, that's not designed. If you have an identity and you have an ambition to create or do or have something more, no matter what, I have moms and dads who work in, you know, just regular jobs in Chicago

and people that are entrepreneurs in different countries, right? They all have an identity. They all have an ambition for whether it's a better marriage or a better body, whatever it is. But the thing is this stuff is always the headache for a lot of people. There's always this thing of, like, when I was a kid, like when I was a kid trying to be better at football, I did get met with the things of, what are you doing, bro?

You suck at football. Why are you even lifting those weights? Why are you doing it? I got met with that. I got met with the feeling of like being an imposter. But I realized like, hey, this is what they do. I'm going to be that person. I'm glad that some part of my brain years ago thought that, which is why I think it's what I do, why I do what I do.

And I realize, like, I just got to do this. And over time, I can create this next thing. So no, it's not just an entrepreneur, but it's anybody with ambitious desire who's looking to start attaining that actual thing now. Like, not a year from now, not six months. Like, how do I start getting progress towards it now? That's where you come to see me. Love it. Love it. And one thing I want to ask you about, I saw you and your wife on Instagram. You did this really amazing thing called the Venmo challenge. And I'd love for you to share that, a little bit of that with the audience, because I think it's a really cool concept. You know, I think most people listening have probably seen the, you know, the pay it forward, Starbucks where you're going through the drive-thru line and you're paying it forward. But this one really took it to the next level and you're able to engage your community and get people involved in helping strangers. So I really love the concept and love to hear about it.

Yeah, man. So my wife happened across it. I'm not sure where she saw, but she saw it. It was her brain child. She's like, hey, let's do this because we're always trying to find ways to get back and do some cool stuff. And it wasn't even a social media ploy type of thing. And she just knew. And we knew that if you're going to be able to reach something, you got to employ the people that you have contact and access to. So we're like, all right, let's do this. We went on social. Like, hey, we're going to collect the next 24 hours as much money as we can through Venmo. Just send me whatever you can. Here's my Venmo. Send the money on over. And we'll do as we'll take this and put it together and we'll give it 24 hours. to a restaurant and we'll just give it to whoever the server is. We're not going to vet them. We don't have anybody in mind whoever happens to be serving us at that table. And so over 24 hours, I think we got in like $1,540 or something like that. We typed a little bit more on made it 16. My wife's idea was like, well, let's split over two because like, you know, we want to give somebody a lot, but like if we can give two people a really good gift, let's do that because it's better spread to love, right? So we do. And we go to the restaurant. We went to the yard house first. We're like, man, I really hope. we're just praying. We're like, we really hope that God puts the right person in front of us

that needs this. And so this first girl, like if she comes and she's, you know, nice, great. They have no idea what we're doing. Ask questions. We're just talking and chatting. And, you know, she's doing a phenomenal job going above and beyond the entire time. Almost as if she knew we were there to give her money, right? But nobody knew, obviously. And so at the end, my wife goes in the restaurant, she's like, hey, to the manager, can you turn the music down? We want to do something, tells him, tells him what it is. She goes, oh, yeah, he says, it couldn't have picked a better person. She's had a really, really bad day.

She just got this job promoted after a year of grinding. After three years, got moved up to be a service. She's been fighting for this. Had a bad day, but she's just taking her licks, and she's just smiling. You would have not known at all. She had a bad day. She was just amazing. And so, yeah, she got the money and ends up being like she's a degree away.

So my cousin's wife is best friends with her older brother, as a weird way to explain, I guess. So we're really connected, but like it's a phenomenal family. They are just their people that work hard. It's like it's part of their DNA. They do great things as a family. They're just good people. So we're glad like, God gave us the right person. And then the next night we're like, man, how do you top that the next night?

We're like, well, we'll figure it out. So we're going to go to Cheesecake Factory. Cheesecake Factory had too long of the way. So my wife's like, let's go to sauce, another place in downtown, Wanna Creek where we live. So we go to sauce and we get there and we get asked to get seated. And like, what's the size of the group? Because it's a table in the bat that could fit in nine.

And we're like, we're to kind of separate the groups because we had a lot of people. Like that group over there, we'll go here. So put us in the front of the restaurant this time instead of the back. And our server we get is very interesting. Like she's 23 years old, same as a previous girl. And the other table was with us. One of the girls was like asking questions to come to find out. This girl, you know, group of a single dad.

They're in a situation. We're back home in California. There's fires going on. They had to be evacuated. But like she couldn't go home to help her dad because the boss wouldn't let her out of work. But the other girl who had a similar situation, they let her go. So she comes to our table, we can't ask, she starts to tell us and she's crying because she can't help her dad. And, you know, it's just, it's tough.

And like they didn't let me, but they let her. She's such a good employee. She still came in and didn't call out, like all that stuff. And then come to find out that morning she woke up to find out that when the restaurants were closed and she was an unemployment, she was saving up because she's smart. She was saving up. Somebody hacked into her unemployment account and took a thousand plus dollars from her account. Wow. So she's sitting there crying.

And so we're like, God gave us an even better fit. Like, so we, at the end of the meal, and she still was awesome. She served us amazingly. Like, she apologized for crying. She was great. Everyt was on it, right? So at the end, we're like, man, we got to start doing this more often. So we just get good service everywhere.

But not like she got it. She cried. She had to sit down because she was like, you know, a ball. But then, again, someone knew. I think it was, I don't know who or how everybody knew her. But there was a weird tie to that one, too. I still recall it. But I remember, like, it was just cool to see her message and find out, like, that it really, you know,

you know, they didn't think that people like us or things like this existed or happened to people. And sure enough, it did. So I was just, I was happy to be able to do it, you know, from a selfish standpoint, I'm able to do it for somebody. But I was more happy to give that gift to people from all over the country who follow me, all over the world. People were done in the far as like the United Kingdom. Because now what happens is as much as we think that we see these videos on social media, they're separate from us. They're going on at a distance.

Like, these people got to actually take their money from their pocket and put in her pocket and see her response and what it did for her. And that's, I think, the kind of things that make the world better. Everybody wins. Everybody won in that situation. 100%. And now you've planted this seed, right? You planted not just one seed, but you planted seed all over the internet of people that say, man, why can't we do this? How can I start this up, right?

Anybody can do that type of challenge. So, yeah, I wanted to call that out because I thought it was so cool. And, you know, we are blessed to be a blessing, right? If you have something more than somebody else has, then. you know, share that with other people. So I really love that initiative. Um, so as we wrap up, I would love for you to just share, we're the best places to get in touch with you. You know, one thing I really enjoy about you is you're active on social. You know, you interact with people, you're with your audience. Um, and, and you're very down to earth. So, so that's really a cool thing

because, like you said, some people, you know, from the, you're an athlete, you've, you've been in the NFL and, and there are some people that, that have egos about that type of thing. Um, you, you, you clear, We really don't. So we're the best places. You know people are going to listen. They're going to get a ton of value out of this. So we're the best places to reach out and connect with you. Yeah. Just find me on Instagram, Anthony Truff, like you said, or Anthony Trucks.com. There's a lot of cool things you can find out. You can take there, as I stumble over words, called the slower go quiz. You can find out whether you have a slower go identity and what that means about your success. Awesome. Awesome. Well, hey, this has been amazing. I appreciate you coming on the show and hang with me for a little bit. bit and I know again people are going to get a lot out of this episode so thanks so much for taking the time my pleasure hey everyone thank you so much for listening to that episode with anthony

trucks what an incredible journey he faced adversity but he's a fighter man he fought through he excelled and now he's doing amazing things as a coach as a speaker and lots of other projects going on so make sure you connect with him all of his info will be down in the show notes if you have not subscribed folks please subscribe subscribe to the show and tell your friends about us. Also, if you have enjoyed the show, make sure to give us that five-star rating as well as a nice review because that will help us move up in the rankings. And as you know, our goal is to impact as many people as possible. Thank you so much for listening. And I'll talk to you on the next episode.

Hey, thanks again so much for listening. Just want to give a shout out again to our sponsor for this episode, Vanessa C. Crandall. Her info is down on the show. make sure to send her a friend request, connect with her. She can really help you navigate these trying times if you need that extra motivation or push. So make sure to connect with Vanessa. And I can't wait to chat with you soon.