“You are just one shift away from unleashing the unlimited success that awaits,” shares Anthony Trucks. After many adversities including being placed in foster care at a young age and losing his NFL career to an injury, Trucks learned the power of “shifting your identity” to reach your full potential. Tune in to this NEW episode of Million Dollar Monday to hear more.
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“You are just one shift away from unleashing the unlimited success that awaits,” shares Anthony Trucks. After many adversities including being placed in foster care at a young age and losing his NFL career to an injury, Trucks learned the power of “shifting your identity” to reach your full potential. Tune in to this NEW episode of Million Dollar Monday to hear more.
Chapter Summaries
Key Takeaways:
Resource Links
CONNECT WITH MILLION DOLLAR MONDAY!
Follow us
Hello, and welcome to Million Dollar Monday. I'm your host, Greg Muzzillo bringing you real successful people with real useful advice for people with big dreams. I understand and big dreams. I turned an investment of$200 and a lot of great advice from some really successful people into my big dream Proforma. That today is a half billion dollar company. I'm excited to chat today with my special guest who knows how to make shift happen. And, he is a coach, a speaker, an author, a former NFL player, a CEO at his own business Identity Shift, where he helps people upgrade how they operate to be, do, and have more Anthony Trucks. Thanks for joining me. Thank
Anthony Trucks:You for having me, man.
Greg Muzzillo :No, it's all good. It's all good. And I love what you say that you are just one shift away from unleashing the unlimited success that awaits and it is so true. It is so true. And, I love your book. Got to talk about that identity shift. So it's all about shifting. It's the name of your business name of your book. It's the name of your kind of business model, but let's start at the beginning. Tell us your story, you know, your growing up years and what were those things that shaped you, into everything that you are today and most importantly, your mindset today?
Anthony Trucks:Yeah, I think there's this quote that I love. I don't know where I heard it wish I could find out, but the quote goes a smooth sea makes not a skilled sailor
Greg Muzzillo :Yeah, true, true,
Anthony Trucks:Right. It has to be with this desire for us to have easy lives. And we miss out on the actual aspect of the strength We need to have a great life, cuz life doesn't get easier we just get stronger. For me growing up. I dealt with a lot of that difficulty. I got Rocky seas early, so I was given away into foster care. At three, I grew up in a really heinous environment of being beaten and torture, just starved by some weird people. I eventually got put into a family. It's my current family. I grew up as the only black kid. And I'm really poor all white family wasn't adopted to, I was 14. So 11 years. 14. Yeah. So didn't have much self-belief didn't think I was capable of much had no skills that people that was supposed to take care of me didn't my person who was supposed to love me. My own mom didn't love me. So I just had a lot of, these different dynamics, but the question was consistent. Like who am I? Who's Anthony? Where do I fit? I'm a foster kid. I'm you know, the only black kid in this all white family in an all white community. Like I just, I felt like an outcast a lot. I wanted to play sports. I wanted to do this cool thing, but then I found out like a lot of us do when you try something you haven't done before. You're usually not pretty good. Like, it's you don't inherently have this skillset. So I just, I was met with a lot of just discomfort and disdain for a lot of years. And it led me to a point at 15 years old, wake up. And it was the first time I did it many times since then, but I woke up and god, I didn't wanna be this guy anymore where this path was going. I was not happy with, you know, like this, this wherever this is going doesn't feel right. And it was the first time I said, I'm gonna figure out, like, how do I answer the question of what does a great football player do? Because I wanted to be a football player back then. That was the first thing. Right? But that question could be put on anything. How, what does a great husband do? What does a great wife do? What does a great coach do? What does a great business owner do? But at that age of 15, I had to answer the question. What I found was it takes a lot of out of character actions I had to catch footballs and lift weights and run routes. And my teammates from the year before were like Trucks, man, you suck. Why are you catching footballs? You suck. Why are you running routes, man? You're horrible. Why are you lifting weights? And that's what it feels like. You get, the feedback from the world that says, Hey, stay in your box, man. Don't, don't try and be better. What? That's not who you are. Well, what if I don't like who I am? You know, like, what if I like what I'm doing? So you got to do different things. And so in doing so I stayed the course against the odds and lo and behold, I got football scholarship played in the NFL and great things happen. A lot of crazy things along the way as well. But that's kinda where this identity thing first seeded itself for my life. So
Speaker 2:We got a lot of surely it's football season, right? It is. And there's a lot of people that are gonna wanna know who did you play college ball for? And if you want to talk about who did you play pro ball for?
Anthony Trucks:Yeah. Yeah. So if you guys are, if we can see the videos, a big helmet to my side and it's a Oregon helmet. So I played the University Oregon and I'm a duck and in the NFL. I played for the Buccaneers, Red Skins and the Steelers. The NFL is an interesting acronym that says it stands not for long, not national football league. So in my third year tore, my shoulder came home and, and that was actually another massive crisis, but that was my, football years for my formative years. For sure.
Greg Muzzillo :All right. So then you're on a great path. You wanted to play ball, you did play ball, you figured it all out and then it sort, it sounds like it was taken away from you then what happened?
Anthony Trucks:Well I broke my life, man don't don't we all do that. Sometimes we, go in and we are in control, but we're sometimes not realizing that we have the controller and we're like, we're half asleep and our thumbs on the left side, you know, it's drifting things to the side. So I came home and when I lost football, I lost myself. I didn't see myself as, as anything more than the game. And it happens anytime you've given so much to something to where it's, who you are when someone asks, well, who are you? Oh, I'm a hedge fund. You know, founder. I happen to be a coach. Like it's great, but who are you? And if you're nothing more than that, what happens is when you lose that thing, not if, but when, because at some point you will lose it by choice, because you decide to retire or leave or by chance because something happens, pandemic, right? You'll wake up one day and go, who am I? And if you don't have an answer for that, you get to a deep hole. And I did that. I came home football, took it all from me. I was like, well, who am I? I had three kids. I was married to my wife in my high school sweetheart. And it all came tumbling down, man, everything went out the window and anything that I could identify with that made me me was gone. And so I had this long journey and what I call the fog of life, which is I'm getting up, I'm wandering through this fog every day. And I don't feel like I know who I am or even the effort I put forth is worthwhile. And so I just got to a point of like I was suicidal and everything was just downhill. And that was what happened. The way I tell people like metaphorically is it's like we're, we're all the apple, like all of our fruit of fruit of our labor, this, you know, this amazing. I got the apple. Okay. Then what happens is the apple falls off the tree and we feel horrible, like the apple off the tree and eventually that apple rots and we feel rotten and that's how we operate our life. But we don't realize we were never the apple. We were always the tree. And when you, wow. Yeah, man.
Greg Muzzillo :Say that again, because there's so much wisdom there. I, yeah. I just wanna chew on that. Say it
Anthony Trucks:Again. We have never been the apple, which we think we are. We have always been the tree.
Greg Muzzillo :What does that mean to you? I love it. Well, if you think about, so we're the tree that produces ongoing apples. yeah.
Anthony Trucks:You got what it's all about man, it's it. Okay. Because there's fruit of our labor, which is the relationship. It's our health. It is our career for me, it was also football. And when you only focus on the piece of fruit, you lose sight of the tree, which means you don't give it the nutrients. You don't get it in the sun. You don't take, you don't prune the branches. So all of a sudden the rest of the fruit dies. So now my relationship fails. My body was out of shape. I wasn't a good dad all because I only saw myself as the fruit of football. So when I went back years later and said, let me take care of this tree, like, which is really taking care of building this identity. It was a realization of man. I could actually create more and sweeter fruit, the tree, made that first piece of fruit. So what if the tree showed up differently, included better fruit. And that's, that's really what a shift is. I shift into the individual. Who's not tending to the apple anymore, but identifies as the tree and bolsters itself, does the things to create deeper roots, to get in great soil, to really get that vitamin D and create better fruit.
Greg Muzzillo :I love it. I love it. Anthony, I'm gonna tell you why. I think there were a lot of people that lost their apple, or lost big chunks out of their apple over the last year and a half with COVID and and, and people need to shift back to, I never was that, whatever it was, I was the tree that made it happen. And if I take care that tree, I can make other apples repairs or whatever happen again.
Anthony Trucks:Heck Yeah.
Greg Muzzillo :Yeah. I love it. All right. So what did you, what, what did you do next after you had to redefine yourself and make that shift? What was the next fruit?
Anthony Trucks:Yeah, the next fruits I created was like, I want to create more fruit than football was. Cause when football was the only fruit you're like, oh, it's all there is. And then people leave the game of football or spark basketball or soccer, whatever it is, you leave it or the job or the career, whatever it is and you leave it and you go, I'm nothing without this. Like, no, no, no, no, no. How do we go back and take care of this and see what else that tree can produce. And so for me, my going back and taking actions was okay, let me, I realize this one thing, which kind of sucks, but it's a reality. Greg is I had to look at my life and realize I was the common denominator in all of my problems. Me, boom.
Greg Muzzillo :As much as people want to point at others, until you look in the mirror and realize, no. It's that guy in the mirror or that gal in the mirror. Right?
Anthony Trucks:It's either you are creating it or you are allowing it. You were the one letting it happen in your life or you, the one that's created the problem in the first place. And so that was a really hard realization because, but then here's what it did. It gave me this freedom to go, let me work on that now, because until you accept that you don't work on it and it persists, it just stays in your life. It shows up. It's like kind of like curing the symptom or curing the root. Right. I can go ahead and say, I'm gonna give you some ora-gel for your teeth cuz it hurts. But I probably should take care of that tooth at the root, you know what I mean? Like I can numb it. So the difference for a lot of people is they just kind of numbs thing. I was like, let go to the root. And so I went and found like. I'm not a very good dad. I'm not a very good husband. I wasn't showing up as the best man. Therefore yeah, sure enough. These symptoms kept showing up in different place. I had to keep putting out, but it's like, no, go to the core. So it started with me going and sitting in a couch, we looking at a brown wall and saying, why is this happening in my life? Why, what was your role in this Anthony like seriously? What was my role in my marriage was my role in the business. And like really, it was met with a lot of tears and realizations. And then when I couldn't see something, but I knew there was still problems. I asked other people, Hey, when you look at my life, people that I respected, by the way I said, when you look at my life, what do you see that I don't see? And they told me some things and I, you don't want to hear about yourself, but you need to. And so I was able thankfully to put the ego away when I heard it and go, sucks. But you know, Hey, it might be true. And now I could do the right work because that's what people are missing. They are doing work but not the right work. So they look at people and go, well, I'm just going to do this. I'm going to do that. It never gets any better because they're not doing their stuff.
Greg Muzzillo :How can somebody know if they're doing the right work?
Anthony Trucks:If, if you get down the pathway and you wake up and you go, I am burned out, I'm broke and I'm broken inside. because the thing is, if you do the right work, things start to pan out. It's inevitable, right? If I, if I plug the holes in the bucket, it stops leaking water. But if you put pluggy stuff all around the holes, the water still leaks. So you'll know when you start doing and here's what it'll feel like too. It will feel really soul crushing, like in terms of what you have to accept to do. I don't say that as a deterrent, I say it as a reality, most people think changing your life and fixing things is really easy to do. It's simple. You just go to the, no, you're gonna have to go and uproot some stuff that makes your soul wanna cry. But here's a cool thing. I think it might have been Robin Sharma who he says change for better It is hard in the beginning, ugly in the middle, but beautiful at the end. And that's the path we have to be accepting of. And it means you have to go in and find that stuff and realize it'll be really hard to beginning messy and then beautiful.
Greg Muzzillo :I know somewhere along the way, um, you wrote something called a GPS planner. What brought you to write that and, and tell us what is that all about? Yeah.
Anthony Trucks:Well the GPS planner is like my it's a planner that allows people to actually get that destination, you know? Because I've find a lot of human beings. They buy planners with no idea how to plan. You got a planner.<laugh> feel good about it. But then what, it's just a glorified to-do list on a book, you know? And it's like, no, no, no, no. So GPS stands for goal plan start. Most people when they have a goal, they kind of, they know the, the city, but not the address. Like they have an idea of that direction, but they don't really know where it's gonna go. So need to know what that concrete goal is. Then if they do have it, they don't really craft the plan they trust. So they just kind of sit there and go, I'll get it done on Wednesday. I'll do it on Friday. But no one fit done and says what's step 1, 2, 3, 2, 27 look like, right. So that's a big thing. How do you plan? And the last thing is most people, if they do get to the point of knowing and planning, they don't start, they give themselves a deadline. I know what to do. I'm gonna get it done by this day. And I go, no, what day you gonna start it. Because if you start it, it gets done before your deadline. And then people go, I just, I got to get done by that day. No, no, no. Well why, when are you going to start? Next Monday? Why Monday? Why not today? Why not tomorrow? And the thing is when you start thinking in that manner, people go, oh, i t's, it's a different framing because it's like, w ell, there is no real good reason for me to start next week. I should probably, I got a plan. Let's do it now. You know? So it's all about the goal, the plan a nd the s tart, why the GPS, but I was created by giving people a way to understand how to plan with that planner.
Greg Muzzillo :It's kinda like that restaurant that says free crab on tomorrow. Yeah. free crab tomorrow. because Tomorrow never comes
Anthony Trucks:Yeah. Right. That's great.
Greg Muzzillo :Yeah. I love it. All right. So you're a business owner. You do a lot of public speaking. You're an author and, and this is what your most recent book, right?
Anthony Trucks:Identity shift. Yep. That's it. Identity shift, man. My baby.
Greg Muzzillo :Yeah. It's wonderful. And uh, it's great. It's great mindset stuff. What are the key lessons that you'd like to share from the book?
Anthony Trucks:A big thing for me is, uh, is to understand how identity and and mindset differ. Right? Cuz mindset's this thing that is great in action. It's a great skill. But there's a point in time when I get to this out stretches and outreach stuff, my mindset, for example, I could go into a boxing ring and I got to win and I could have a mindset that says you gotta find a way to win no matter what happens, you know, power through, you got this. At some point I will find my wits end, my brain's ability to do anything. I got punched in the mouth 17 times. Then what do you do to win? What I've found is if I am a boxer, I will find a way to win. If I'm a guy who is trying boxing with a good mindset, it's okay to give up. Because it's, you know, it's just a thing I'm doing. It's a vast difference. When you identify as that individual, you will almost instinctually find a way. And it's funny is this individually will and we don't hear them say I did it because I have a great mindset. They go, no bro. I'm a, boxer's what I did. That I'm a football player. It's who I am. I'm a mom. That's why I did that. A mom doesn't go. It was three in the morning and my kid was poop on the floor and I cleaned it all up and someone goes, Karen, why would you do that? she didn't go I have a great mindset. She goes, I'm a mom. That's what a mom does. Right. And so that identify is a big piece. So in the book I explain how to shift into the identity that has the things you want most in life. Because if you were of that identity, you'd already have those things. Yeah.
Greg Muzzillo :There's a lot of wisdom there. Most of our listeners, Anthony are aspiring entrepreneurs or people who are in the battle of building and growing a business. Tell us what key advice you have, especially for business owners looking to start, grow or scale their business.
Anthony Trucks:Yeah, for me, I think it boils down to, to starting out with a actual heartfelt problem to solve. Especially nowadays the market is very loud. Everybody's talking and if you just go in and you don't try to find a way to stand out, then you don't, that's it, you, got to stand out to stand out, so to speak. And the funny thing is, most people don't comprehend. How much better you stand out when you a re only talking to one individual, I c all i t the the man o n t he corner concept. So if I go to like a large city, t here's a guy i n the c orner with a megaphone on a soapbox, yelling at people. I naturally tune that guy out. I just, y ou k now, l ike t here's some guy yelling, but there are times w hen I'm walking down t he street and I see two people intently talking to each other and I will ease, d rop like crazy. Like what a re they? What are they t alking about? You know? Y eah. Same thing. When I'm talking to my person to solve a problem that they want help with just them, the rest of the world will eavesdrop. So if you start with a very specific problem to solve for someone specific and you talk to them, your business will blossom.
Greg Muzzillo :Yeah. All right. So I find a problem then what?
Anthony Trucks:Then you could actually have to go in and find a way to solve it. Definitively. Now this could be creating a product. It could be a service. If it's gonna be a service, you better have a system because I can't go in there and create something and, and people have to trust that. I'm gonna figure it out based on how I feel today. I'm really good at having process. That's why McDonald's works. You know, they have great processes as to how they create their hamburgers. Right, And most people don't realize that a business there's a difference between being in business and a business. Being in business means I can trade my time for money. Being a business means that if I took a break right now, there's still money coming in. And also a business. When you set it up properly, it's not based on how you feel and what you think you should do today. It should tell you what to do today because it's Monday and this is what happens in the business on a Monday. Right, right, right. And a Tuesday. Right? So for me, it's a lot of like, I have this, who am I gonna solve the problem for? What's the problem I'm, solving? How do I create a structure that allows this thing to really be a business and run? Because if the business can tell me what to do, eventually could tell somebody else what to do. And now I can take my step back and build an actual business.
Greg Muzzillo :A lot of people listening, still trying to figure out what they need to do to adjust to the new reality that we still don't even know what it might be or look like what advice Do you have for anybody listening, whether they're an employee or a business owner or whomever. Yeah. How to get their mind wrapped around what they need to do to adapt to the new reality. That's still emerging.
Anthony Trucks:Yeah. I think you have to be the one who is prepared to take a leap and catch yourself like a cat. If you fall, like, that's the way to do it. There is not definitive. I don't think it's ever been a better time in the world to start something and try because with all the circumstances, if you fail a little bit, people are more likely to let you off the hook. Like I get it. It's a pandemic. You tried though. Right? So for a lot of people, I think there's some part of us that calls in our gut and says, we should try that. And then the logic kicks in and goes, no, no, no stop that cuz this. And they start spitting a bunch of stuff in our brain of what could go wrong. I think the people I've seen who have had great success, they had a weird little gut feeling and they jumped, took a leap and rode it. And the thing is, even if they didn't get the return or the outcome they wanted, they now have more information than anybody else did to make a more informed decision the next time. So if we're in this world and your gut says, try something, I am all for like, try it now don't put your family at risk. Don't, you know, put all your life saving this. Like don't do any things in a really extend you. But if it means going into selling something and, and maybe what you're putting line in a little bit of ego, little bit of pride, like lay it down man, like take those leaps that people won't take, because you'll find the holes of gold that nobody else is finding.
Greg Muzzillo :And it's out there, it's out there in spades but it takes some digging to take some looking and some self-reflection. Do you have any stories or a story about people who have made one big shift? Yeah. That has really helped unleash, all that. They could become
Anthony Trucks:A hundred percent. I got a guy named Frank. He came in might have been 2019 I started work with him right before the pandemic. And he had, gone through a situation where like really tough life, you know, doing stuff where he just wasn't the most you know, amazing husband was like, I think at one point like living in like an apartment somewhere like a hotel, I don't know what it was. He said he had this time i n the shower where h e j ust woke up and all of a sudden started building something, built a business that h e a couple years later sold for a million dollars. But the problem was his identity still identified as that guy who was like, you know, drunk in the shower. So when I started to work with him, he w as like, look, I just sold a business for a million. I think it was an accident. I don't, I don't know if I deserve much more. That it's funny. He was making about$3,000 a month. And so we got working, man did some work, pushed him past those comfort zones, helped him structure the new identity. And the cool thing about an identity shift is it's not just this thing you do. And then you get to, to life, you, you actually creating and accomplishing things in real time while elevating yourself. So you, you actually do make the money while making this transformation. And so fast forward, I think it was a year and three months. I get a message. It goes, Hey, just wanna let you know from the work that we did back then, this at this time now at about a year in, I have now surpassed$1,560,000 in my new business. Wow. Seven figures. Yeah. From$3000 a month to seven figures in about I think it was a little bit over a year.
Greg Muzzillo :It sounds like part of it was, he didn't feel worthy. Am I hearing that right?. That's a huge issue. Probably got a lot of people living in a day listening right now that maybe they don't feel worthy. Maybe they don't feel they deserve success and maybe they don't even know that that's getting in their way. How can people figure that out and sort that out? What are those mindset issues that need a shift? How can we figure that out?
Anthony Trucks:They're all wrapped up inside. That's a cool thing. And the bad thing is it's all inside the identity. Like every, your identity encompasses every single part of that. Everything. There's no part of anything that lives outside of your identity, right? You identify as blank the way you do it is you go through a process. So I, as a, young guy and even as I got to my, you know, business years now, I went through it haphazardly. I just kind of did some things and figured it out. But I codified it now. Like I got it down to a really good system. So when me and Frank were working, it wasn't guesswork. I wasn't like let's try some things, throw some spaghetti at the wall. You know, I was like, Hey, here's step one. So I call, I create, what's called the shift method. When I created this, it was going through the past of my life. Clients I'd work with, but really like psychology neuroscience. How do we work as humans? And when I put it together and walk people through it, it allows you to uncover all of that stuff. Step by step there's the sea ship sustained face. When you go through them all in the right order with the right exercises done at each stage, they all set each other up to where you go through. And by the back end, you kind of wake up one day and go, holy crap. I can't even get back into the head space of the old me. How did I used to think like that? Why did I used to operate like that? Like we'll ask ourselves those questions.
Greg Muzzillo :Yeah. I don't fit in those clothes anymore. You
Anthony Trucks:Know, it's how it is. And that that's the thing we do. So it's, it's all a matter of process.
Greg Muzzillo :Process. As we wrap up our time together, you said some really key words there. Can you say each of those words and give us a sentence around them? That sounds like really wonderful advice. Yeah. for us to close out our time, go ahead.
Anthony Trucks:Beautiful. It's See, shift, sustain. It is hard to see the label when you are in side the jar. If I'm in the jar, don't see it. So you got to find a way to see yourself. Yeah. That may be self awareness. It could be outside people. We have some exercise we do to get that figured out. Then now you have to do two parts in the shift phase. You have to actually create your zone identity, your ideal zone identity, who you are when you are in the zone. Because that's the identity I want you to live as. And then I have to go, okay, great. What must I do to build up to that? What actions must I take over time to where I believe it's who I am. And the last part is sustain. How do I sustain the trajectory in that direction for the long haul to where I do wake up one day and go, holy crap. I don't recognize myself, but in a good way.
Greg Muzzillo :Yeah. In a wonderful way. Yeah. And Anthony, you are inspirational again. I think if anybody's even wondering if it's time for a checkup from the neck up, as they say, I would strongly advise, get the book, Identityshift.com. That's your website.
Anthony Trucks:Identityshiftbook.com
Greg Muzzillo :Identity shift book.com is how people can find you. Yeah. And, Anthony, you're truly an inspiration from where you came from to where you are to how you're helping people shift their lives and become the people that they wanna become. Anthony, thanks for your time.
Speaker 3:Welcome man. Thank you.