In this episode, Anthony Trucks shares his incredible journey about how he rose from adversity by trusting his hustle so that he could become what he is today. He makes us realize about how adversity is just a circumstance and how you can rise above it.

About Anthony Trucks

Anthony Trucks went from a foster care to the NFL to becoming an entrepreneur, coach, international speaker, author and consultant with numerous successful businesses. He teaches entrepreneurs what it means to trust your hustle and to get out of your own way to attain success in your business and your life and no one in the world does it quite like him.

An incredible father of three children, he travels around the world to literally use football or use entrepreneurship and his story to help youth see possibility and a different way of living life. He gets it that all of this isn’t just about acquiring, accomplishing and achieving but it’s also about giving back.

What Anthony Stands For

Anthony believes in doing things for somebody else. Others don’t have to give you the permission to do it. He says that, “If it is not you, who? If not now, when?” So, he takes the message that was given to him and pushes it out into the world in a space where there are others who need it.

Key Takeaways

• Trust your hustle.
• Don’t make mediocrity your goal.
• Statistics don’t matter. So, go after it even though your chances are low in percentage points.
• Do not look so much into your negatives or focus just on the bad things.
• Emotions are driven from actions whether they’re good or bad.
• Perspective precedes enlightenment.

Looking into the Future

Virtual reality and 360 cameras will change the entire world.

The Nightmare Gift

Anthony talks about how he once ended up in a dark place in his life after dealing with unpleasant circumstances and how it forced him to start thinking about who he was, what his role was and how he shifted his mindset.

Resources

• Write everything down in spreadsheets.
• Streamline the content and use technology to do multiple things at once.
• Your cellphone and apps in it are your biggest tools.
• The Book: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Interview Links

• AnthonyTrucks.om
• RenewUniversity.com

The Doozy

Trust your hustle, pay attention and learn the lessons along the route.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey everyone, Mel Abraham here, the author of the #1 best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy where we get a chance to teach you how to capture what you know, the wisdom, the ideas in your head; capture, package and monetize it and in this episode, I get a chance to speak to an amazing, amazing individual but also a good friend of mine.

Someone that I’ve had the opportunity and the blessing to share a lot of time with, working with him at events and being kind of colleagues in the entrepreneurial space and even getting a chance to understand ourselves personally. I think you’re in for a tremendous treat with this friend of mine.

Anthony Trucks is with us today. If you don’t know Anthony, you need to get to know Anthony. He’s got an incredible, incredible journey; incredible story that allows you start to realize that adversity is just a circumstance and that you rise above it and he went from foster care to the NFL. He lived a life that’s worth telling a story about.

And since that time, since his time in the NFL, he’s an entrepreneur, he’s had numerous successful businesses. He’s an entrepreneurial coach. He’s an international speaker and author, consultant. One of the greatest roles he serves though is a father of three and an incredible father that I’ve seen him with his children and how he cares for them.

He teaches entrepreneurs what it means to trust your hustle and to get out of your own way to get success in your business and your life and no one in the world does it quite like him. He had an incredible experience and background to bring to bear on that and the other thing that hopefully, he will tell us a little bit about is this is a guy who gets it.

He gets it that this isn’t about all acquiring, accomplishing and achieving but it’s a lot about giving. It’s a lot about giving back. I’ve seen a number of posts from him, a number of things where he is going into other countries to literally use football or use entrepreneurship or to use some of his story to help youth. To help youth see possibility, see a different way of living life and coaching them along that way.

I think that when you’re been given a gift and I think that the ability for us as entrepreneurs to live a life of our own design is a gift. It’s an opportunity yes; it’s a responsibility but it’s a gift we ought to embrace wholly but also realize that we need to give it back and Anthony certainly does that.

Mel: Welcome, welcome to the show Anthony. It’s a blessing and honor to have you here with me.

Anthony: Thank you, Mel. I don’t know if I have ever heard an intro that good yet. Appreciate it.

Mel: Don’t ask me to do it again. I don’t know what I said.

Anthony: It’s recorded so we’re good. We will get it later.

Mel: Do me a favor, you know? I kind of gave my slant on it just because I know you and the time that we spent together but the audience may not know you. Give us kind of a quick glimpse of who you are, kind of the journey and I think I kind of know the answer to this but did you really expect to be here at this point in your career, in your life?

Anthony: No. You know what’s odd is I get that question actually more times than I would expect to because I guess most people but it’s not so much the same framing but how did you get here? Like, how did you end up here, right? Because for me I grew up in foster care.

My very first memory is of my mom giving me away to foster care and life starting out completely like horribly. Not caring that I even exist and it made me feel completely unworthy and like foster youth in America, we’re set off for failure.

I found out recently that, 75% of inmates in prison are former foster youths. So, statically like I’m not supposed to do very well but my first memory and that kind of left me in this place of feeling like I’m worthless but I rolled on to different parts of my life and it’s odd I found this really close connection to entrepreneurs and business owners because essentially when I look at it, I became kind of an entrepreneur when I was 3.

When I was given away I got to this point where I was just wandering the world. Like, I felt it was like an island, didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. When I was brought up I was scared, completely felt lost which was kind of the first feeling an entrepreneur gets as they jump into the space. Like, I don’t know what tomorrow brings. I got this business idea and my mom pushed me in that space but as an entrepreneur, our hearts push us there because a lot of go to make an impact, leave a legacy.

But 11 years of craziness of life, starvation, torture and beating and stuff that really was horrible, I got to a point where I had kind of a second moment an entrepreneur feels which is: I got to this place where I was chalking up a football because I just got a chance to play football. I couldn’t play it because I wasn’t adopted yet.

My adoptive mom was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and then, my brother, he went to the military. So, I was kind of wandering around in life and I was literally about to give this thing that I loved and this girls in class, my English class says, just some girl next having no idea I am listening because the reason I’m so bad because I’m in foster care and I was like, “That sounds ridiculous. That sounds horrible.”

And it made me start thinking about like is that how I’m going to be 20 years from now, 30 years from now and it gave a complete shift. I went home and I worked; I worked my butt off and became better at football. Next year, I got pushed to as a sophomore. I had a chance of playing in college in scholarship then I went to the NFL.

That second moment is the one we have this dream that we want to bring into the world as a business owner, entrepreneur or we’re in a business and we’re struggling and we just don’t know what to do. So, sometimes we chalk it up like I was about to do. And what I learned was, this is my company’s message, way back then, I didn’t know it back then but I hustled, I grinded, I worked and I got this success.

And I think a lot of us as business owners or aspiring business owners, we don’t comprehend that we have a lot of tools, right? If someone can teach you to do something, we have the techniques of how to do it but we lack the technicians sometimes and that’s where the whole message of trust your hustle boils down to is, you got to hustle but if you don’t trust your hustle, it won’t happen.

So, I did and I pushed me to a lot of places in life. I didn’t kind of comprehend the ability I gained back then that made me successful later on. Because I did get a chance after NFL to open a business which was a gym, ran it for 6 years, became a six figure consultant just to kind of try out some new thing and became successful at that and I was like, “This is really cool” and then, I got unfulfilled.

There was this day when I woke up one day and I just didn’t find I loved this gym I had, I didn’t love the consulting and I ended up in a seat in a Brendon Burchard even at Experts Academy. And I was just kind of sitting and listening and it really just, it started to happen, I got that same feeling of love for something new again and I sort of had an internal shift but it wasn’t until … like I think moments of life are these big catalysts and it was April 15, 2014 and I was sitting in a hospital room and I was holding my mom’s right hand and she took her last breath and it was one of those moments where you start to think about like why are we here, what are we doing.

It just made me question, “How am I who I am?” The statistics don’t well up to me being successful. I had business that went past the whole 5 year realm of 95% fail. I got a chance of playing in the NFL somewhere that few human beings get opportunity to play and so, statistically I don’t exist. You know right on paper, “He shouldn’t actually exist.”

And what I realized was because my mom, she impacted me and this woman had left her, this world after 17 year battle with multiple sclerosis; that she couldn’t fulfil her life and live. She couldn’t walk, move, talk and I started thinking like—she impacted me so I can then go venture off. And I started thinking about, “Who do I want to work with?”

And I realized that people, like the fact we can do this and talk is because an entrepreneur, someone had an idea and a vision and they wanted to bring it into the world. Like it was more of, not a quick buck but an impact and a legacy and I realized for me, I want to impact those people. Because of the impact that was left on me, I can actually do it.

So, my sole purpose is to impact people who impact people because that allows me to reach more people with the compassion I have which is I just want, I want to live life and be happy. I am so incredibly grateful for my health, for my kids, for people like yourself in my life and that’s all I need. I don’t need a bunch of money. I just need relationships and so for me, if I can help teach other people to do that, it makes my life feel like I did something on this planet.

Mel: So huge Anthony. I mean, it’s so cool to hear—solution nation to really think about that journey and it’s easy to just flippantly say, “Great story.” But let’s got back for a moment and look at this. I mean, statistically like you said, the odds are against you but the thing is that all statistics fit in this like spectrum of a maybe it’s a bell curve but that doesn’t mean you require to be in the belly of the bell curve.

And I think, society has a tendency to push us to the belly of the bell curve and the belly of the bell curve is mediocrity and it’s not a place to live. I can’t imagine and I know for certain you don’t do it Anthony but I can’t imagine that we’re waking up in the morning going, “Yeah, today I think I’m going to be mediocre.”

Anthony: Yeah, not at all. That’s never the goal. At least for me, it’s not. No, and the fact is that it takes one, there’s so many things that I think, we can take away from that. One is that statistics don’t matter and it’s really easy to say, “Well, only a few percent make it to the NFL.” But why shouldn’t you be that few percent. (Yeah, exactly).

Mel: There’s no reason that just because it’s a few percentage points, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be in that category and then, I think the other thing to realize is that and this is where I think it’s really important, I start to think about what you do and what I do and some of the stuff with thought leadership and thoughtpreneurship in Thoughtpreneur Academy.

I said, “It only takes one.” You had this woman that came into your life that came into your life by choice. She adopted you. She took you under her wing. She loved you. She cared for you. She nurtured you. She guided you and she gave you the fuel to go on, to turn around and say, “Here’s someone who took care of me” that didn’t have in the end, had a challenge with her voice, challenge with the mobility but I’m going to carry on the lessons I learned and it impacts just one, just one soul on this planet then that’s good enough for me.

Anthony: That’s it. Yeah. That’s really it. We can be the one. I think what a lot of people don’t comprehend is the reason those statistics take place is because we think about them as we live our life. Like, how am I supposed to … I get what the numbers say. But the reality isn’t tied to that. The reality is, I have to just think differently and that’s makes me separate.

Mel: Absolutely. So, let me ask you this question about that. What would you say because I know that we’ve—both you and I have lived with this and had to battle with this but what would you say to someone that would come to you or someone saying to someone that you’re coaching as why should you, who are you to step up and try to lead this charge?

Anthony: Yeah and I think that that’s where. I don’t know if there’s someone that gives you permission. It’s not like someone that says, “Oh you’re the one that’s supposed to do it.” It’s like you just decide you are because it’s a whole thing. If not me, who? If not now, when?

And for me, it was a session of, I just feel like I’m supposed to…what’s cool is when I got past the initial thought of why me? It was like, I’m doing this for somebody else. Well now, what it boils down to is, I’m now doing this because I want to make sure that I take this message that was given to me and pushed out into the world in a space that just seems to need it.

And then, there is validation past that. Once they get past myself, people are like, “Holy crap, thank you.”

And I’m like, “If there’s a thank you out of this, I’m supposed to be doing this.”

So, I continue to keep pushing forward.

Mel: Beautiful. I mean it’s so, so true that—someone was interviewing me and they asked me a similar question and I said, who are we to withhold that one word that that one person needs that’s going to change their life?

And so, cool. If I talk to one of your closest friends of some of the people you’ve worked with, customers and ask them, what you stood for in their eyes, what do you think they would say about you? About Anthony Trucks, the Anthony Trucks.

Anthony: They would. I don’t know. It’s funny because everybody thinks I’m always happy, always smiling. I’m incredibly happy like all the time. I don’t have many off days but one thing I know they would say is I care. Like, I genuinely do care. Like my employees and my staff, they’re like my family.

I have my gym and I ran it for a long period of time and loved them. I’m very big on trying to teach people how to get better out of their own way. Like that’s really, when people ask, “What do I do?”

I teach people to get out of their own way and it all starts truly, internally but it’s philosophical and lovely-dovey as it sounds, it’s not really me saying, “Love yourself. Believe in yourself.”

It’s me teaching you how to do things where you can actually feel that for yourself because that I believe, if where people actually have changed, when they apply something new to their life, they get this change like, “Oh crap, I can do that.”

Well now, you feel better. You feel more powerful and you feel like, “You know what? I can take the next thing and the next thing on.” And so, that’s for me is what it is. I want someone to always leave my presence being better.

If I don’t know if it is 5 minutes, like 30 seconds I met you but if you saw this face, I want this face to be, it will pop into your head and you’re like, “You know what? Good humans actually exists still.”

Mel: Absolutely, absolutely. And you live that. I know just from the first time that you and I met, that you lived that. That you really kind of take that on and you know, I look at this in this context of when we look at this, Solution Nation, you start to ask yourself this. What are the micro-successes? I call them micro-successes that kind of your; those mini successes that life’s like this relay race and then, every time you get a little bit of success, you keep on going. The challenge we have is that we are horrendously great at beating ourselves up and carrying dirty laundry and we’re horrendously bad at celebrating someone’s success.

Anthony: Yeah. It’s weird.

Mel: No matter how small it is.

Anthony: And someone ourselves. I think when it comes to other people’s success, sometimes their success holds a mirror to your lack of it and then, you beat yourself even more and even more and so for me, I also look it like, whenever you beat yourself.

There was a dove study that was. It was like a video. They did where they asked a person, “Hey describe yourself to a sketch artist.”

And that person would like describe themselves then have this picture that had somebody they knew come in and describe the same person and they would show the two pictures. The one that was described by the person themselves was always like this ugly one. The one described by somebody else was always beautiful.

And it was thing where like, you start looking at, well, why do we look so much at our negatives. Like we do always just focus on the bad things we have. I think for me it boils to a lot of us, like my old company of this message, “Trust your hustle” like trust is an emotion.

And what I found is that like you talk about the successes. Emotions are driven from actions whether it’s a good action or a bad action, you feel good because there’s something that happened. You feel bad because something happened.

Even if it’s just the way you perceive it, but it’s an action and for us, what happens is we have thing that life just happens and we look at them negative things, so what it does is we see only that and it builds this negative trust.

So, when we start saying, “Can I chase that? Can I do that? Can I be the non-statistic?”

Our body says, “Well, we feared that this. Ah, I can’t do anything else.”

So, we shut down when the reality is if you can perceive it differently, new filter and see past those past things, you know what? I learned this from that and this from that and this from that.

When I start seeing this hope and a possibility of just having something new take place and you go forward, and you have a success and as you have success, well now it builds a new positive trust. So, the more you go down the road, the further you get, it’s like, well you know what? I got these 10 things done, I can probably take this next one on. It’s a little bit higher and you keep climbing and climbing and climbing that you get to this point where it’s like me right now, I couldn’t believe, I closed my gym and ventured into this new world and I did it because I just trust my hustle. I trust that I don’t know at all what tomorrow will bring just like I didn’t as a kid. But I know I’d bring me.

I bring this guy that’s just…I’m a figure outer. Like I’ll figure it out and that’s what works. It’s only because I’ve had it happen in the past, because I just took a leap, got success and I trust myself.

Mel: So true, so true and I think that’s why I believe that we all need mentors and coaches and masterminds, people in our lives because we have our no’s against the what I call “Our no’s against the tree bark”. We can’t see ourselves. We can’t values ourselves and a coach, a mentor or some of these folks that are in our lives, they get a chance to take the behind you and show you other facets that you don’t appreciate, and you don’t know.

That study is an amazing, amazing study because it’s really easy for us to highlight our negatives, to feel inadequate and look at that, and so to have someone that goes, “No, you got this man. That was really good.”

Anthony: It’s a new perspective.

Mel: Huge.

Anthony: I tell people “Perspective precedes enlightenment.” Like we have, enlightenment are these “AHA” moments of like “OH”. Like I didn’t even think about it that way and you get that from just looking at something a little bit differently.

Which to somebody it’s a mentor who gives you like, “Hey, I see what you’re seeing. I get that. Look at this like.”

“Oh!”

As the new perspective precedes that enlightenment which helps you move forward.

Mel: So, so, so true. Dang, yeah. This is cool. So, and I know that you are a hustler. Question is that if you look back on your journey, if you look back on the path and I can already, just in our short conversation, I can see patterns in you.

I’m one of those, look, I’m an accountant by trade so it’s I’m trained to recognized patterns whether they’re behavioral or numeric and things but what are the 3 habits that you think contributed most to your success?

Anthony: Oh, man there’s a lot of them. Like one of them is just I’m grateful. I think it’s a humongous thing to be grateful. Like every day I wake up and I know where I could be. I know exactly where I could be which typically wouldn’t be a good place at all. One of the big things is I’m very ethical and moral with how I operate. Everybody always like asks me those question of like, “How do you get through it. Who is your mentor?”

And for me I tell them, “My mentor, my guidance like besides my faith was right.”

And people are like, “What does that mean?”

I say, “Well, at the end of the day there’s things you know are right and wrong. We as human know right and wrong. Our body physiologically we know, we can feel right or wrong.”

Mel: Absolutely.

Anthony: The problem is what is usually wrong feels right. What is usually right feels wrong. It feels like it’s hard. Like being honest. You find 20 bucks, giving it back, that’s hard but it feels awkward but that’s the right thing to and for me, I go right all the time and it leads me to a place where it’s like even if it may have done, somebody else would have done what’s harder to do end up in a place where I can go to sleep every night comfortable, wake up every day knowing I’m going to give to world in a positive way.

I have no dark holes. I have no… I’m really a big believer in what you do in the dark comes into light. So, I don’t do anything in the dark. I just do right.

And then, the third one for me is just consistency. Like, as a human in all aspects, the way I treat people, the way I treat my kids, the way I speak, the way I think, it’s just how I hustle every day, I think consistency is; what people fail to comprehend is the determinant between success and non-success, it’s you start something and I don’t get quick success, I got to do something else.

Oh, be consistent because you will learn a lesson along that journey that nobody else learned because nobody else kept going when you did. And that thing becomes a huge separator for people.

Mel: Stay on the path, stay on the path. I remember doing a post one time about the fact that so many times people look at other people. They’ll look at our mutual friend, Brendon Burchard. They will look at you. They will look at different people and they go, “Oh they’re so gifted.”

But you know what? They’ve been … yeah may be, there’s a gift; there’s a talent there but at the same time what they really have been gifted with is the gift of discipline. The gift of staying on the path, staying on the journey to sit back and say, “No, I know that this is right” and this whole idea of living a right life, I think is huge.

I agree with you. I think we innately know right from wrong and yet we still make choices that are incorrect. I look at it and say, there’s two of the most important decisions we can make in business and life is:

• What am I going to stand for, and
• How am I going to show up?
• And if we get that dialed in, the rest of it’s easy.

Anthony: Yeah, true. You just take care of it when it comes.

Mel: Absolutely, absolutely. So, really cool. And I think that there’s a lot to take away in this no matter whether you’re starting a business, in a business, or just living life that may help you out. The fact of the matter is that, we’re going to obstacles, we’re going to hit challenges.

• Whether it’s health, whether it’s work, whether it’s financial
• Whether it’s relationships
• It’s how you deal with it that’s going to get you through it.

Anthony: Yeah, that’s life man. Life is what happens between your plans.

Mel: It certainly is. As soon as the ink is dried on the plan, guess what? (Changes) start writing again.

Anthony: Yeah, you just got to figure out your go. I think sometimes people are afraid of it changing and if you get good at changing you’re fine. I always ask people like, “What’s something you’re phenomenal at?”

“Like oh, like I’m good at making or I’m good at painting.”

Okay well, all of a sudden you’re under paint, what would you do? Or your paint brush broke, what would you do?

Like, you find a new a way to make it happen because you just figure it out and the more you do it, the more skill and confidence you have in doing that when it happens. So, just start the plan and work the plan man. It’s, you cannot see what’s around it until you start walking the path.

Mel: Brian Tracy calls it the quarter principle. The opportunities that you have today are because you got out in the quarter. They’re not because you locked yourself in a room in a box and see. So, if you’re really looking at opportunities. The reason you and I are talking today is because trust me, coming from the accounting profession, I could have been in a box.

Anthony: Sure.

Mel: It was because I was willing to get out of my way, get out in the quarter and all of a sudden, you start to see these other doors of opportunity, your friendships and colleagues and ways to have an impact and live a bigger purpose, a bigger dream. But if I stayed in the room, I would have never seen it.

Anthony: Yeah, but some people are scared of what’s outside. They’re more fearful of the unknown then they are of what could actually happen. They only look at what if this bad thing happens. Yeah, but what if this amazing happens you couldn’t even comprehend.

Mel: It’s true and I wish they would take it one step further and look at it and say because I truly believe that very few things that we, very few choices, very few things that we do in our life are ever terminal. (Yeah). We can make, we can screw things up, we can do it.

Look, the first webinar I did, didn’t know the webcam was on and I didn’t have a shirt on. Okay? And if I survived that…

Anthony: That’s great. Yeah, but once you get to that level it’s also like, I think the big thing to do is you can do that and talk about it and then, the next thing is you can act as humanity as people. Like people do these things, right? (Yeah)

That I think, the next level of people that are on our space it’s like, “Hey, I’m not perfect. I’m just better at this thing that you might need and I’m going to help you in this area.”

And when you can accept that not trying to be perfect all the time, people connect to you and part of being able to connect to you is accepting and owning your failures, setbacks and just like it, look at them the right way, the good perspective.

Mel: Absolutely, absolutely. So, looking back now, what’s the biggest hurdle that you kind of had to get over and get around and how did you do that to get to where you are at?

Anthony: Oh man. The, one of the greatest…it’s a weird one. One of the greatest gifts that I hated at the time, it literally led me to sitting a parked car waiting for a sort of opened by rat poison one night. It was usually a dark place but if it wasn’t for GPS I’m not here right now. And it was my ex-wife had an affair, she was my high-school sweetheart, the mother of my 3 kids, she is the only woman past my mom that I really had this deep, deep, deep love for.

And having going up through what I grown up through; like a connection to a woman for me is like an incredibly powerful. So, she took my family away from me which is family, the first family I had. My kids. It just left me dark and that was the biggest catalyst for me to just growth and not because of anything more but it just opened my eyes to me. It’s the biggest thing.

And it forced me. If I want to feel better, it forced me to start thinking about who am I? And you know, yeah you get pissed because she did what she did and it tore the family apart but then, the biggest thing that really open every door was, how could this be my fault?

The moment that I stepped back where did I play a role in this, that became like this humongous, oh crap look at my entire life. Yeah, she made a horrible decision but somehow I got us to a place with her obviously that left her in a point to make a decision. (Yeah) I was like, “Oh, okay. Well, There’s someone’s fault in this” and then on top of that it’s like, you start looking at, well if that’s what she was dealing with or I was dealing with, how can she… this wasn’t done maliciously to me to hate me. Like no. She was just turning into the best she could to fulfil her needs.

I start seeing that and it’s like, “Oh well, that’s the case.”

How many people in this world are dealing with the same thing so at this point like I have a great deep care for her as a human, for everybody else. She was here watching a movie with the kids just yesterday. Hanging out because I don’t hate her at any way because I feel her heart in what was going on. She was left in a place of feeling separate from me, feeling neglected and she did what she did and other people that say negative things or rude things or do bad stuff, it’s like, my first thought is like, “What are they … with”. They may be mean to me and mad at me but great happy people, I’ve never seen an incredibly happy person like being men to anybody.

So, that mindset shifted and a lot of me started looking at me and started looking at how I communicate with people, started reading self-help books, and personal development type of stuff and I’m still a guy’s guy. I’m still catching a beer and watch a football game, like I’m the dude’s dude. Like most of my guys are alpha male guys, right?

But I’m the guy they can openly talk and express my emotions and I think it became this completely freeing thing. I’m free. I will tell you everything about me; I have no problem. I don’t care what your judgements are because I realize that a good who really cares about me is not really going to make me feel bad about and when you get to that place of not caring about the judgement. Like because you don’t care about people. You still care about the judgments because you know where they actually hold weight which is a person’s life, the battle there of dealing with themselves because I was in that place sometime before.

And Life open’s up. That’s why I’m incredibly happy because I’m free and I can provide that kind of free to other people.

Mel: So true, so true. It’s what I call the nightmare gift. We all have those throughout our life and yours was the breakup with our ex-wife and with me, one of them was the partnership breakup for me and in the moment it’s so emotional, it’s so tormenting, it’s so horrendous that you don’t even know how you’re going to go on but I think you said something that is really, really powerful and I’ve talked about it a number of times in my presentations and actually, recently in a broadcast and that is you looked inside yourself and said, “I had something to do with this.”

It would have been really easy to strictly just point the finger at her and say, “You did this to me. You did this to me. You did this to me.”

But you were willing to be vulnerable. You were willing to say, “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how it is and I don’t know how big it was but somehow I contributed to it.”

And when you do that in life, you regain, I really believe, you regain the power to change and shift things in your life. If we go around blaming everyone else for our woes then we are … well, we’re playing the victim and we don’t feel like we got the ability to do something about it and that’s the only way we are going to find our ability to grow and that’s what came out of this.

Anthony: And if not, repeat that same thing because you will using those life actions every time you’re in place of decision or a place of living your life, you will fall back to that same roll and so I can get a new girlfriend, I can get a new life and do the exact same thing. It’s not till I realize, “Hey I messed up here and I will change things and I’m active in the moment.”

I am always monitoring my own brain. So, I will be active in my life’s moments thinking about, “Hey how much of you is that past guy. Right this moment how you respond.” I had a conversation with somebody yesterday online and I responded emotionally. It wasn’t like rude or condemning or anything but it was like this thing but later I apologized online. “You know what? I was childish, I was immature. I apologize. I’m not perfect. I’m human.”

But I can monitor myself. Go back and have the ability to be vulnerable enough to admin my mistakes I made and now oddly enough, we’re like somewhat cool. It’s like, he’s like, “If you are ever in the area and want to hit me up and want a bite to eat” like awkward.

Mel: It’s like in the old days when you used to get in a fight in elementary school and then you became best friend.

Anthony: Yeah but it’s also because he’s also I would say an evolved guy. He is thoughtful. So, and it’s like it allows—when you have that kind of space to be you but can also communicate to a deeper level and say, “I’m sorry. It’s accepted.” It’s not like abrasive. I feel good because we both learned something. Even if it was the way it went about, we both learned something because we’re in a place to learn it.

Mel: So true. So true. There’s so much, there’s just so much wisdom and experience that’s coming through here Anthony. It’s just amazing that what we’re getting. I think that the lessons, business or life, they’re universal and being able to be vulnerable to be in that space. It’s really easy for, especially in this social media world to, I believe that in some senses social media has dissocialized us. We’ve gone from a place where connection is confused, context is confused with connection and we’re starved for connection. We’re starved for that real deep connection and so, we can use systems and we can use processes and we can use social media but we need to connect with the humanity of each other and it’s really easy for someone out there.

You’ve done it. I know I do it. I’m on Periscope and I see the trolls I guess they call them. They come on and they just start typing things. You’re ugly, you’re this. And I’m going, “Yeah, alright. Dude, come on man.”

Anthony: I had one guy said, he typed 6668 and I was like, “Man, you’re having a bad day, aren’t you bud?”

Mel: It’s what happened with me. I go, someone said something online and I said, “Class act, buddy.” You just kind of go with it and if we took that, if we took that to heart each and every time, we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing—crawl in a hole and be afraid of our own shadow.

Anthony: I think that’s because it’s I think I would, I don’t know if you would 100% agree but it’s bigger than you. The thought for me is like we get to a place where everything becomes bigger than us. It’s when I do the message that I have, like trust your hustle messaging, it was put in me but it’s not mine if that makes sense. I’m just the one leading the charge. I have the torch, I’m passing the torch on everybody else and I think people say those things, it’s like, yeah I could get mad like you’re attacking me but that’s just me and this isn’t about just me. I’m not on this Facebook live for just me. It’s for people that are going to get something from this.

Mel: Well and that’s what’s driving me because how many times do you sit back and go, “Yeah, I want to go and do a broadcast” and you are really excited. There’s times but by chance if that one person needs to hear that message that day, I got to get on there and do it and if technology, if the advancement of technology has given us the gift of being able to permeate geographic lines and to connect with people then we ought to use it for the positive, for good to transform people’s lives as best we can and I’m with you my friend. I really think that that’s where we need to focus and continue on that journey.

Anthony: I agree, that’s what I’m doing every day. I do these things and it’s like my mind is thin but I realize, there’s like right now someone’s watching this that neither of us have ever seen or met before and the person watching is going to get something that’s true that’s going to help them, change them.

And what if I decided not to do this? What if I decided to sleep in or postpone it; all these weird little things it happened but this person could be the catalyst of change, something amazing for our entire worlds some point in time later.

Mel: You know I just look at … I don’t know, I’m a not an overly religious guy but I certainly believe that there is a higher power and spiritual and all of that. I don’t also I don’t believe in co-incidences. I look at just like, like just meeting Stefanie, my wife, my beautiful bride, how she was placed in that spot. I was going to change my flight. For those that don’t know I chased her down in an airport basically.

Another story for another time but the fact is that she usually doesn’t fly that day, I was going to change my flight, we’ve been running around the same circles almost geographically for a lot of time and in that moment for that 10 – 15 minutes, we ended up in each other’s lives and my life has never been the same.

Now, she is probably going to say the same and I think that we get that opportunity to affect people’s lives and when we get ourselves out of this and up here, we can affect lives and lord knows globally society and humanity needs it more than ever.

Anthony: That’s why in the course I created this tight source of community. I grew up without community. I grew up being passed around like an animal. I think that what you kind of said was dead on what I tell people all the time is what happens and how you get this amazing opportunities. I say the problem is we all have amazing opportunities. I truly from me seeing that life has some amazing plan worked out for us, we just got to be there. The problem is we mess it up. We mess it up with our judgments of another human being we see in that space. What if you saw her and like, “Uh, I don’t like her shoes.” It ca be anything like or you were in a bad emotional space but I think when we are open to the world providing something, we’re just like, “Yeah, head out of the phone. Just do that.”

Or it comes in a form that scares you a little bit or question a little bit but that like I believe the fear hides the amazing breakthrough. So, for us life has its great possibilities. Some guy in an airport meets the woman she changes life that happens for everybody all the time. We are put in a place to have it happen but I think we mess it up.

Mel: We do. We do. We become our own nightmare then our enemy.

Anthony: All the time man.

Mel: So, let me ask you this. Kind of shifting gears a little bit but if you started to look with what you’ve been through, what you’re doing now, looking forward in the future 5 – 10 years where do you think we has a society, as a humanity should be spending our time to be able to have the greatest impact—that next million dollar idea.

Anthony: I think it is virtual reality. You’re already seeing people do virtual reality seminars like they can put a person up on stage and I think for us you have the phone. They have these 360 cameras. You can like be in that space and move your camera and see everything and I think that is where we are moving because you can basically put a mask on and be sitting on a chair and moving around the entire open space.

So I think for us it’s going to be the next level is like virtual reality because you’re going to have 3 billion new people online and if I want to hold a meeting, I want to hang out with somebody, I can give you a call; we can both pull those virtual reality things on and the cameras on and we can talk in space. It’s a whole different monster that has been progressing for years but I think the next 5 to 10 years, it will be something that’s unique and complete.

I think there will technology and hardware that changes the entire world. So, it’s my…

Mel: For those that are old enough to remember the old George Jetson cartoon I think that ultimately a lot of that stuff is coming to bear. They’re coming to reality.

Anthony: Yeah, definitely. It’s going to be, I think we’re not going to even know, it will just sneak in here and all of sudden it will be like I will sit like this, we could be sitting here doing this or you can have the camera. Like you probably could do this right now and get a camera that is 360 cameras, put it in front of you and somebody could be in your office with you. They can turn around their head and they can see the back of your office. That’s what can really happen now. So, imagine.

Mel: We don’t want them to do that because I haven’t cleaned the whole office.

Anthony: Yeah I’m in the middle of my separate room or my studio. I have my filming and my lights and everything but that’s pretty much what happens. I think that next 5 to 10 years is that kind of connection and then something.

Mel: So, this is the tech question. What’s technology tools (because I know you’re kind of a digger/finder, you kind of find some things that) technology, tools or techs have you used to build your productivity to get things done better, quicker, faster, more efficiently?

Anthony: It’s kind of old school and new school mixed is how I do it but I am a systems guy. What I do is I write everything down in a spreadsheet. I have something to do, for example: I have a podcast just like you that I do, and I can get a podcast from sending an email out, having someone on the podcast and out to them loaded in 6 different places in less than an hour, if I really wanted to. It’s just bing-bang and it’s because I write every step I do down and I do that.

I’m like well what if I did this and merge this or fix this and what I do, I then get it all streamlined and then, I find technology that allows me to do multiple things at once. And so, it can be a click of a button before I just hit a button, load something and it goes like 5 different places. So, my hacks, my productivity thing is I want to make something as streamlined as possible without having to do anything more than a couple of clicks and make it happen.

And most people, they’ll go, this is the way to do it, they’ll lug that around, they will do it forever like that. For me, I’m like how can I always improve this where I can get…my thing is this. In the space I’m in, if I can get more quality content out than anybody else, I’ll flood it and I will actually be seen as better or more people know me because I have more opportunities to be seen and more consistent content

The problem is people say, “Well, I got to do a podcast and it’s going to take X amount of days to do it”. Like, I do a video every single and people why I tell I do it, they’re like, “How do you do it every single day?”

I just spend honestly about 7 to 10 minutes a night. Filming to ending to post it in six places and so, when I can do that. Every week I have 13 new videos that go out, every week. So, I get like hundreds of things done when someone may have gotten 50 or may be a 100 that’s all because of the systems and utilizing technology as it comes out. I’m not married to the technology, I’m married to the process.

If something new comes out, I will check it out. If it can replaces something, boom take it out, put it in. Always fine tuning.

Mel: Beautiful, beautiful. Is there a technological tool that you are using that allows you to do that? What are you using?

Anthony: My cellphone. It’s the biggest tool. To be honest, there is not one simple thing. A lot of it ties to the software that is out there.

Like I use it’s one thing. I use my podcast or I use apps like specific apps that I have in my phone. So, I will kind of just always keep my out for new apps. There are new different piece of software that comes out but it’s really tied to the hardware which I choose to do it and I look kind of like how much use can I get out of one piece of equipment?

Because I could take my camera, get a SD card, film it, plug it in my laptop, edit it up, then put it up on some spot, load it, go and all that or I’m going to say how can I get this one thing to do all of that in a couple of minutes. That’s how I did it.

Mel: The funny thing is I tell people, people will ask me, “How do you get so much done?” And I look at them and I go, “It’s because I’m inherently lazy.” And they go, “What?”

I said, “I’m inherently lazy so I got to find better ways, I got to find productivity hacks that allowed me to get stuff done because I don’t want to do things the hard way. I want to find the better way.”

Anthony: And I think another thing if it was a software tool or technique, whatever the technology is, I take courses, I take a lot of online courses and see what I’m capable of doing because my also thought is the only thing that hinders me and my growth is my boundaries of what I think I can and cannot do which is all based now a days on technology.

So, it’s like I play football so, I think, okay here’s the boundaries in the football field but what if the boundary, what if it’s outside the stadium, right? How much more could I operate and do and run around and so for me, it’s like some people, they know of 2 or 3 things; those work for them but that’s your boundary now.

And so, if I expand my knowledge and keep learning and keep trying things, well now, my boundary expands out of parking lot, expands outside the stadium and goes from there.

Mel: So true, so true. I had a conversation just the other day with someone. I said, we get caught up in this, the education system and they think, “I got my degree so my education is over” and I said, “No, your degree process is over, your education never stops.” (Never does). It never stops and so I look at it and it comes from all kinds of places which leads me to this next question and we’ve got just one other question after that and so, this is the resource question. What is one book that you believe had the biggest impact on you that is still relevant today?

Anthony: Yeah, the first book I really read in the space was 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It for me was like, it’s kind of—it’s for the analytic—it’s pretty straight forward. It’s not like philosophical maybe it ties some concepts in and really the way we structured and broke itself down. It was for me this humongous, it was a new window that got wiped clean.

I am in control of this. Oh okay, that makes sense. I don’t have a mission statement for my life. How do I communicate? One of the things I loved, my favorite chapters, seek first to understand.

Mel: Yeah, huge.

Anthony: I use that concept every time I talk to somebody now and so, in doing that, it allowed me to say, “Oh there’s more” and then it started to have be look for other books that are man’s search for meaning and then, eventually ended up reading like The Motivation Manifesto and I read your book as well. So it’s like all these things that’s I ventured out what happened was, if I didn’t read that book, I don’t think that I comprehend how much more wealth of knowledge that would give me, so much more control on being happy in my life.

Mel: So good. So good. So, here’s the doozy question. If you could travel back to day one of kind of your beginning on this entrepreneurial journey and had 15 minutes with yourself, 15 minutes to have a conversation about the lessons that you acquired; having a conversation with hopes to try and save you some mistakes and heartache, what would you tell yourself going back?

Anthony: If I could have an answer to this but I don’t think the answer to that would be so feistier. I think for me, if I was to go back 15 years, I would just say, “Really trust your hustle.” Really I would be kind of how I would say it. I know there is a lot that most people would say. I’d say, “Hey pick this stock.” But I think the sad part is a lot of people want to change something and I had a guy that said, I’m really sorry about your past. Someone should tell you that it’s not okay that happened.

I said, “Yeah, you’re right. It wasn’t okay for it to happen”. But the truth in the matter is really for me I don’t like what happened but I appreciate every moment of it. I am who I am. I have my filter that lets me see the world the way I see it. Because of how I see the world that creates how I feel about myself and feel about the world.

So, if I was to go back 15 years and just give myself a better push it would be just trust your hustle because there is moments. I’m not going to lie to you there’s moments where I didn’t grind, I didn’t push. Like it happened but I think I don’t want to tell myself about the future but I want myself to learn the lessons along the route. I think you can’t learn the lesson if you’re not in class. (Absolutely) So, I just want to – I’m sitting in class, can I get a better text book? What is it? Just pay attention to that. Just pay attention man.

Mel: Sweet. Alright. So, this has been so cool. Anthony, you’ve got so much that I think you can share with our audience, my audience and people. It’s so amazing that so, if someone wants to find out a little more about Anthony Trucks and what Anthony Trucks is doing, where can we send them? Where can we let them go to find out more?

Anthony: Easily. Go to AnthonyTrucks.com or go to RenewUniversity.com which is they’re both spelled just how they sound. Trucks is Trucks and RenewUniversity.com.

Mel: Beautiful, beautiful. Anthony, I cannot thank you enough for being part of the show. Being part of this is a gift to The Solution Nation and the whole community and you are a blessing in my life, in my family’s life and so, thank you thank you for being a part of this.

Anthony: Welcome man. Thank you.

Mel: Let’s rock this thing.

Anthony: That was good man. Count me in.

Mel: Cheers buddy.

— End Transcript —

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