Transcript of Anthony Trucks: The Playbook for Turning Your Expertise Into a Profitable Speaking Career | E15

But I was like, my degree's in kinesiology, I played sports, business should be simple, right? And then you get in and then yeah, 9 months in, a guy rolls up on a Harley, serves me eviction letter from the landlord 'cause I hadn't paid rent in 3 months.

My next guest earned a full ride to Oregon, led the Pac-10 in sacks, and made the Pittsburgh Steelers. Then a shoulder injury ended it before he ever played a single regular season game. 4 months later, he was broke.

That was the, the last straw for me. I'm like, there's no way I'm gonna be this intelligent, this skilled, I'm not gonna feel post-NFL and be broke like this the rest of my life. There's no way it's happening.

He's now a bestselling author, international keynote speaker, and the creator of the Identity Shift methodology.

I think we have more information than we need to be successful.

Yeah.

There's, there's literally too much, and a lot of it's free.

Yes.

The separation is not what you know, it's who you are with what you know. How do you wield the sword of knowledge you have? If you don't wield it and you aren't prepared to go through the gamut, You don't get to sit at the table with me.

How does a kid from foster care become the person teaching others how to find their identity?

Oh.

Anthony Trucks, welcome to Business MVP.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for being here. So, yeah, you grew up without the foundation most kids take for granted. Now Fortune 500 executives pay you to help them figure out who they are. You know, how did you, how does a kid from foster care become the person teaching others How to find their identity?

Oh, what do they call it? Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Yes.

Yeah, we call it, it's just a bunch of things. I mean, here's what I will say. I have a story. We'll hear my story, I'm sure. But the story is not my story. It's my experience. And I could not tell you the definitive daisy chain of events that got us to here. What I do know is I had a lot of crazy happen and I navigated the crazy past the moments where most would quit. I couldn't tell you exactly why I did, but I did. And in doing that, you get, you get kind of access to different skill sets, different awareness, different knowledge. And then you find that what I navigated in certain segments of my life tangibly, it's not something that would make sense to them. But the intangibles I've garnered are valuable. They can be applied in different kind of areas of life, different verticals of companies and businesses. It's more of like that life experience taught me some things that I've now brought to different walks of life to teach that benefit other people's walks of life.

Yeah, totally. So, kind of want to back up to the sports piece. You made the Steelers roster, and then, which is an amazing accomplishment, right? And then a shoulder injury ended it before you ever played a regular season game.

So— Yeah, that was fun.

That's heartbreaking. Yeah. So, tell us about that. And then, you know, then I think the next thing you did was you opened a gym, right? That nearly failed. And so, that became kind of a rough period for you, which we'll talk about. So, Walk me through that period, you know, the shoulder injury and, you know, into the gym.

Well, NFL stands for Not For Long. Most people don't know that. It's like you get in, you get hurt, you get out.

I love that.

And it's not everybody, but it's like my shoulder to this day still doesn't move smooth on the left-hand side. Like, this is as high as my shoulder goes, whereas this one will go up as high as I need it to. This one's just stuck here. So, it's just, it's part of the journey of the game, and you sign up for that. So, you know, it's, it could happen. But then from that, I did come home. And the thing is, With me, I'd always had this itch for business. So when I was a kid, I wanna say like 10 or 11 years old, I started doing like door-to-door washing cars and, you know, mowing lawns and doing different stuff. And then eventually doing yard work, progressed up to having a paper route at the age of 12, from 12 to 14, solo.

All right.

I think I did every day for 2 years by myself. I maybe had one sub in the entire time, but I had this like itch. It was like, I liked the idea of I could be free under my own volition. If I wanted to create something, I could do my own thing and have freedom. So, When I got done with the NFL, before I wanted to, I did not quite know who I was, what my value was, but I knew I didn't want another boss. 'Cause while you're playing professional sports, you got bosses. Like, people don't realize that.

Lots of 'em.

I am told where to be, when to be, what weight to weigh. Like, all these things. Like, I don't have freedom. And in the offseason, say it's the offseason, great. You still have— the NFL has to know where you're at 24/7. 'Cause if they have to drug test you, which they do in the offseason, You have 24 hours notice. And if you aren't in the place they expect you to be, you could get fined, like, and get in a lot of trouble. So it's like you don't have freedom. Whereas— so when I got done, I'm like, I don't want to be confined again by just a random company. So I ended up— I wanted to do my own thing. So I started a business. Did have zero clue what I was doing. Like, I didn't— I didn't have skill sets. I never owned a gym. I never had a business acumen. I never even had a gym membership at any point in my career. But I was like, my degree's in kinesiology. I played sports. Business should be simple, right? And then you get in and then, yeah, 9 months in, a guy rolls up on a Harley, serves me eviction letter from the landlord 'cause I hadn't paid rent in 3 months.

So yeah, I, I was at a very interesting conundrum. We'll call it a precipice of like, what is the next step to do?

Yeah.

And it ended up being a very necessary and beneficial headache. It was, it was my crucible. 'Cause I believe the gym for me at that time was a microcosm of the world. It was the interaction with people I'd bypassed. 'Cause again, I'm playing sports till I'm 25, 26. I come home and now I'm like, I got people that are in my same world, the gym world, the fitness world, the business world, working world.

Yeah.

That have been there since they were 18, 19. So you got people that have got 7, 8 years ahead of me of doing this work. And I'm like, I gotta navigate this. And so I had to catch up fast. And it was a very interesting, just pressure cooker. And so I learned a lot about me, about people, about business in that window of time. And I would say for 6 years, every 2 weeks, it was like, can I pay rent? Can I pay rent and payroll? Like, it was like cycling.

Yeah.

It was actually payroll and then rent and payroll. So always a cycle. So I'm like, every month I'm stressed out. Like, how am I gonna pay these people what they're due? And so I paid every 2 weeks. So we'd pay like, okay, 2 weeks I got the payment due for my team. And then next 2 weeks I got the rent and the payment due for the team. Like, and I can't figure this thing out. So yeah, I had a choice at one point to go, do I dive in deeper or do I quit? And my wife and best friend both were like, just give up. Just give it up, dude. Just get a job, file bankruptcy, just move on.

Right.

I, I don't say this as like this kind of like, look at me special. I internally don't know where the switch to stop exists. I don't, I don't know where the— and I think a lot of people call it the give up, the quit. I may not be going 100 miles an hour, but I'll go, I'll go 20 miles an hour endlessly. Like, I'll move. I don't know how to turn it off all the way. So thankfully, I would say, I didn't know how to turn it off. I knew I was gonna keep moving. I was like, if I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna go out giving my absolute all, swinging. And I hired a guy that I didn't— I could afford, that I trusted to help me. And 4 months after that window of time, we had quadrupled the revenue of the company, got out of financial stress, all that kind of stuff. And it spun up positively. But that was the first step for me figuring out business, like really understanding it. And I wouldn't say I mastered it by any means. It's taken years to get there. But at that time, I was just like, all right, I at least have some, you know, working understanding of how business should operate in a way that I had no idea.

And it allowed me to pair business acumen with my actual intangibles from sports. And that's what helped me be successful long term. So you say, how did I get in front of the Amazons? That little window there helped me.

You know, when you're talking about not quitting, like, do you think your sports athletic background is what instilled all of that in you? And like, that's you know, what kind of propelled you in the business world?

Yeah. 'Cause football, you make mistakes every game. I don't care who you are. You may be like, this guy could have scored 3 touchdowns. I guarantee you on Monday or Sunday, whatever, Monday after the game, they're peeking in going like, yeah, you messed this up, this up, this up. Like, there's gonna be double the amount of mistakes that were made in every given play. You get 70-something plays typically. So what happens is you have to realize that it's just a moment. It's not who you are. And so when something goes wrong, it's like, all right, just a moment. It's like, all right, it just happened. So what do we do? How do I— that play happened. I can't bring that bad negativity into the next play, or the next day, we'll call it.

Right.

And so if I bring it to the next play, then I mess up all the success I could have in the future. And the next steps I do, every play beyond that, they're all going to be bad plays. So it's like, if I'm going to have a sequence of events unfold, I want to be in control of them in a way that gives me What that means is I can't latch onto the negative of this play. I can't quit because it was hard. I can't. I just gotta go, all right, that happened. Let's go to work. And you do that again.

Yeah.

And again and again. Yeah.

That's great advice.

And so football, it teaches you how to navigate that window of discomfort. It happens so quickly, so many times, you're bathed in it. Like, it's just, it's normal. You don't even notice. Like, it's, you have no idea it's how you function. But until other people go like, how'd you keep going past that? I'm like, you had an option? I mean, there's an option to stop? I don't— I'm confused. Like, it didn't— it didn't make sense. 'Cause it's like, if that's gonna happen, that's the worst case, right? It's the worst case. What is the other option? The other option is like, try something that might work.

Yeah.

So I saw something recently. Some guy goes, you know, I wanna try this business thing out, and I'm doing this thing. And one of my buddies with a job comes up and goes, you know, what are you gonna do if it fails? He goes, Worst case scenario, I get a job like you have.

Like, right, that's it.

He says, like, I do my thing and if it doesn't work out, worst case, you're okay, right? I'll go get a job. There's enough jobs out there. Like, that's what I'll do.

I mean, that's a great way to look at it too, because then you're not really operating in like a fear mentality, you know, or like, you know, you're just, you're laid back, you're giving it your all and, you know, what's the worst that can happen? So I think that's great advice. Yeah, definitely. You know, so I guess, so did the gym technically fail or then eventually it didn't actually fail?

So I bypassed some things, didn't I? No, I didn't get, I didn't get that far in. So I, I got this guy who helped me out. 4 months later I was doing well. We actually ended up investing in a space to go to a bigger place. So we actually expanded the gym size into a whole new area. And then a few months into that, we came weird with the landlord wanting to charge us more rent. 'Cause in, in commercial spaces they can do what's called triple net increases. So a triple net lease means that if they do upgrades or change stuff, they can charge you more. But I had to submit my gross revenue every single month, which was part of the contract I should have never signed. So as they saw me doing well, magically my triple net's going up. Didn't know why, but all of a sudden I'm paying more money. Eventually I couldn't afford the rent. They like, the rent almost doubled on me after a while. I went from like $6,000 to $12,000 a month.

Jeez.

I couldn't, I was barely making $1,500 a month for me to pay my rent and everything. I wasn't making much money. And so what ended up happening was I kind of moved out of there, went to a smaller space, and eventually got this idea. And I was actually at one point broke again, 'cause it happened. I had to borrow $5,000 from my ex-wife to pay bills 'cause I tore my Achilles and I couldn't go to work. It was crazy.

Yeah.

But then here's what happened. After I borrowed money from her, and just so you know, like when I say ex-wife, I don't mean like amicable at the time. I mean, I hated her. But I had no other option. I had to swallow all my pride to do it. I'm now remarried to her, which is a whole different conversation we can get into. We have an amazing marriage now, 10 years deep in a remarriage. But this window of time, this little segment, broke.

Yeah, it was tough.

Couldn't pay bills. Had to swallow my pride as a man and go, I need rent money. I need you to help me out. That was the last straw for me. I'm like, there's no way I'm gonna be this intelligent, this skilled post-NFL and be broke like this the rest of my life. There's no way it's happening. I'm gonna find a way to access revenue. And the way I could figure out how to do it was like, if I— besides selling drugs, by the way, I have to go find like, hey, how can I be of value to make that? What can I— who has money that they're trying to find a solution towards? And I started getting ideas. And so I went to this company called PG&E in California, the power company in the Northern California area. They burned down a city. I think everybody knows about it. If you're not in California, that's what they did. And Paradise, it was like Paradise City or something. So what happened was I got this opportunity to go and start speaking for them and put an idea out of like, hey, what if I create this whole new movement process to warm your people up to diminish lost workdays and injuries to help you guys save money.

It took me, I wanna say, like a year to finally get them to agree to it. And when they did, it was a quarter-million-dollar contract. That was probably about $220,000 of profit. Like, it was—

Mm-hmm.

I had given a little bit out to some people that were doing the work with me, but they just got paid hourly. I got the lion's share of the contract. And so I was like, okay, Now I figured out that there's some ways to make money outside of this. So what I did is I closed the gym down. I had made enough money. My lease was up at the place I was at and I paid bills off and I was like, good. And I was like, all right, I'm gonna try it. At the time I'd been introduced to the speaking world. So I go, I'm gonna try my hand at the speaking stuff. So in this window of time, I actually closed the gym. I don't, I don't, doesn't go out. I don't go bankrupt or anything. I just closed the gym down. I have money to kind of live off. The problem was I wasn't focused on how to make money in this industry. I was just like, I got money so I can play around. And so I did, played around and I burned through a good chunk of that. I wasn't in debt though, thankfully.

Burnt through a good chunk. I was like, all right, I probably should figure out how to do this right. And so I did. I figured some things out, started getting better. And then I had an idea. I go, when I closed the gym the first time, I hadn't mastered it. I hadn't actually figured out how to do this right. And so I was like, I'm gonna open it again with the intention of selling it. But when I do, I want to make sure I build it as a business, not Anthony's job that he owns. So I did. I built it as a, like a kind of Anytime Fitness, 24-hour access kind of style. But it, it held equipment that you would see at a sports training facility, kind of like a CrossFit, but with like indoor turf and, you know, different stuff. And so I built out this entire gym and made it turnkey. And it was, it was rocking and rolling. I sold it in 18 months for double the investment to get it built. And so I finally, like, for me, I suddenly solved that piece and went, you know what? I actually have mastered the gym thing.

I can put that down for the rest of my life. And I have, I'll never do a gym again. But that was kind of the idea of like, I wanted to know that I could master it. And I did prove that. And now I've progressed into stuff beyond that now.

I love that. So there's an irony to your story though, that I don't think people talk about enough. So you literally didn't have an identity growing up, like going through the system, foster care. We, you know, we talked about that a little bit. So Now identity shift is your entire business, right? So was that intentional or did you realize it after? Like, was it just— okay.

I would, I would say that I, not that I didn't have an identity, but the one I had didn't serve me. And the company, the base that we talk about is identity shifting. It's my book's about, but the brand's called Dark Work. I believe it's the things you do that aren't seen, aren't sometimes appreciated, like the things you do that test your mettle. that eventually you come out into the light and you go, no, I'm gonna get after this. And you fight differently because you've put so much in. I have this mentality that I say, I've done too much work in the dark to lose in the light. And it's based on the fact that—

I love that, actually.

That's great. Yeah, right? And you've done it too, I guarantee. Like, the hours spent navigating the podcast and the setup and who's gonna do this and what links and who's the team coming up. These little things behind the scenes people don't pay attention to. They just see this. We're talking. Hey, guys. Right? But you and I both know it's a lot of late nights, early mornings testing it. Why aren't there views? Where are we gonna put it? What's the short look like? The heading, the copy, right? Get all these things right. That's just the podcast. That's not talking about the business that generates revenue and lead generation, conversion, fulfillment, you know?

Yeah.

And so people wanna have these things, but they don't realize that the way that any of us got there was things that happened in the dark, good and bad. And so I go back to my years as a kid, you're— I was always, and we were always being wired through experiences. So the identity I did carry back then was one that thought I was weak. I couldn't do much. I wasn't capable or even deserving of great stuff in life. Lowly foster kid. I call it a submitter's identity. I submitted to the will of the world. I submitted to difficulty, to excuses, to all these things that, like, made me crumble under pressure and difficulty. And so then I got to watch other people have great things, go, I want that, but I have no idea how to access it because my identity isn't understanding the path there.

Right.

or that I could walk the path if I saw it. Over the years, I started to do things that were outside of my current identity, what we'd call out of character in a positive direction, that were incredibly— I'll say it like this— incredibly butt-puckering things to do. It's the simplest way I can say it. The stuff that makes your soul tighten up at the— I have to do what now? Oh my God. You know, like your body. And it's not that you do it one time.

Out of your comfort zone.

Right? It's can you do it every day? 20 minutes a day for the next 5 years kind of thing. Like, can you do that? And most folks don't grasp that that's the separator that not only allows you to have success, but develops that sense internally of like, I deserve success. And so a lot of folks want to have that identity shift without submitting to the dark work itself. They want to be great in the light, but not want to prepare in the dark.

Put the work in. Yeah. Yeah.

And so a lot of it is, as simple as that sounds, There's a ton of depth to it at a neurological level, a psychological level. Every person that me and you probably can look at and go, I admire that human, there's a window of time nobody knew them. Even Gary Vee talks about it. He's like, there was years I was just me and the one guy behind the scenes. No one knew who I was. I was just doing my thing. He says, but you do that and little by little you get smarter and better and efficient. All of a sudden now you start getting more eyes. So when you eventually step into the light, there's an air of confidence because I've gone through stuff. You're just watching me do it for the first time.

Yeah.

But I've been doing this for decades, right? That's the dance that so many people, especially now in this world of social media— I'm great. There's nothing wrong with me. Look how perfect I am, right? That whole world is difficult because in order to be great, you have to suck. And people are not open to sucking nowadays as humans or in a skill set long enough to get great. So there's always this gap I call an identity gap of I want this, And I'd love to be at this point in time at some point, but who that is is so far from who I am, and I'm not willing to do the stuff at all or consistently enough to close that gap. So I just live a lifetime going, wish I had that. And even worse, oh, the bitterness, the envy. They start talking about you negatively.

Oh, yeah.

Like, who are you? You think you're better? What makes you deserve this? Or you got X amount of dollars, you should do this with your money. It's like, why are you spending my dollars? Why are you worried about me? Like, I don't care who you are. I've, I've earned this. That is the beautiful, uncomfortable dance for men.

But I think there's a lot of parallels with sports too, with this, what you're describing. Like, I love that you're giving these examples because people in the business world, like, they, they have to fail their way forward. They have to work hard. That's exactly what you described. But it's also like in the sports world, right? Like you had to, like when no one was looking, you had to practice ad nauseam. You had to put everything into it. You know, you didn't just show up and be great, right? So it's a lot of that same mentality. So I love this example. Yeah.

And the thing is, a lot of folks, they want it to be— I think they want to have the success. They go, I'm prepared to fail. No, you're not.

Right.

You say that until the moment arrives. There's embarrassment or you look funny. And then that's when it's who you really are. And most folks, they'll talk a big game. And when it comes— I'm talking push comes to shove, crumble. I'm talking straight crumble. And it's like the people who are above who know what you're going through, we see it. You think we don't? You're like, oh no, I'm good. I'm like, no, I can see what you're going through. It's okay. And they just want— they don't want to have you see them sweat. But the truth is, man, that is the price of admission. It's actually a reason I would respect you, because I know that when you finally achieve something, you can sustain it. But on top of that, I know you went through what I got through to get to the table I'm sitting at. I want to help you. But if you try to cheat your way to the top and do this, I can't stand when people are like paying for things to bypass the work. Like, it drives me insane because one, you're like, it's like stolen valor to me. It's like stolen business valor.

Like, you're not— Yeah.

You go and buy— like, I hate when they send me these things like, paid $2,000 to be Forbes number 1 top 10. Like, I'm not paying.

Oh yeah.

For some fake thing.

Vanity metrics, we call that.

You know, it's like, that doesn't do anything. And, and if you, but we know, like, if I see that, I know what you did to get on that. So I don't respect you the same way. Right. But there are other publications that don't do it that way. Vastly more respect. Everybody below you doesn't see that, but eventually they find out other shoe drops. There's a lot of dynamics to it, but you gotta, you gotta fight through it, man.

Yeah. So, Break down the business model for me. You have coaching programs, keynote speaking, books, podcasts, the Dark Work Experience. How do all of those revenue streams work together and what does that business look like today?

Yeah, so the, the main company is Anthony Trucks Industries and what it turned into was essentially I am a speaker. I speak as my main career. I'm a travel the world. I talk, I get on stage, I do consulting workshops, coaching books, all that fun stuff. That business, uh, for Dark Work is my brand. It looks like speaking on stages, which done properly leads to lead generation from the audience. We also do paid traffic as well that runs them to a, a channel that lets people know what do we do, obviously introduce them to our work. And then we have a free community, a paid community, and then a, a one-on-one coaching model as well as like a mastermind process. That's, that's my brand of what I do for my Dark Work brand.

Wow.

In doing that, people went, Anthony, how'd you build that? How did that come to fruition? I go, oh, I did this, this, and this. And they were like, you did what? I was like, you don't do that? No. Oh, let me show you. So I started teaching. I'm talking— it was not even an intention to teach people how I built a speaking business. And I'll say it this way. The Speak to Freedom brand we have is really built on how to get great at getting on stage. It's not all skill set. I think a lot of people look at the skill set, which is good. I think it's a low-hanging fruit for a marketer because more people want to People are more afraid of dying than speaking on stage. So if I— so what they do is they solve the short pain of like, let me teach you how to be better skilled so you don't look as bad. And I'm like, that's good. Go hang out in front of your mirror for a decade and not get paid. But wouldn't it be nice to get on a stage and talk to people to really make the impact?

Let me show you how to do that. So that's what I focused on there. That was my big thing of how do I get on stage and do this? And so the way the model works is on one side I do the speaking, on the other side I have a company that teaches you how I built that business and brand. And that one's monetized through the aspect— we have a whole, like, a new tool we launched that does a lot of the lead gen outreach for folks. It does all the lead gen outreach. And the other side of the coin, it's, it's pretty much walking hand in hand to build that speaking business, which a speaking business isn't just speaking. It is speaking, it is coaching, it's consulting, it's workshops, it's books. Done properly, it's an ecosystem of service and a solution to somebody's problem. And so the 2 brands are very complementary, right? I speak as an individual, and because I'm— this brand runs, I'm running it with the intention of sharing what I'll learn with my clients. So I do it systematically and with structure as opposed to winging things. So it helps this business be better functional.

On the other side, I'm running the speaking business while speaking. So I'm going, hey, this is what's working in real time. So what gives me credibility to teach you this is here's how I do what I do. I'm on stages, I'm speaking, I'm dealing with, you know, meeting planners and bureaus and clients. I'm doing the work I'm teaching you. It wasn't that I did it 5 years ago or I used to kind of do it, or I have experience teaching other speakers. Like, no, I am that person and I'm teaching you from structure.

Yeah. So how do you actually get the companies to pay you to speak and coach their executives? And what does that sales process look like?

Very simple. Well, each one should be its own vertical. If we talk about Speech of Freedom, there should be— well, let's take that aside. Let's say my business, my speaking, my coaching, my consulting. I think each one of them should be their own individual silos that have synergy between all of them. Meaning I should be able to look at the channel of speaking. I have my own process for lead gen. I do outreach. We have a conversation, a process to close the deal. We'll call it a sales conversation, logistics of like fulfilling on that. So it's like, how do I prepare for the event? I do my thing. At the end of that event, I want to actually, as a process we do called speech spin, that's supposed to spin up more business after the talk, which allows me to get more stages, more coaching, consulting. So that feeds into the rest of it, but that's its own silo of lead gen, conversion, and fulfillment. When it comes to doing the consulting, same thing. I can go straight to a company and go, hey, are you looking to do this for your company? Do you need help with this X, Y, Z thing?

And so you talk to 'em about that exact need for a long-term consultant, or at least a workshop to teach my system for them. That can also transition into doing— if I work with, say, an executive group and they go, hey, we love this stuff, we wanna teach our entire company, great. The next step, I believe, is not just having me come and do some virtual trainings. Let me come to the next company's event and speak to everybody. Then when I come later on, they know who I am. So it's like a synergy of how those kind of pieces work. So I can go from consulting to speaking. Other channels, same thing is going to be your lead gen for coaching. So I'm going to do— we do paid traffic, paid ads to drive traffic in. I think there's 3 ways to kind of get audience to know who you are. I say build, borrow, buy. Build an audience. organic social, borrow shared stuff, find someone that has a community, talk to their community, and then buy.

Yeah.

You pay money to the ads gods, and the ads gods give you leads, right? So you do that whole machine, and, and the coaching in and of itself, its own silo, its own revenue-generating machine that can then also create credibility and connections with people that live and work in companies that could bring me in for consulting and for speeches. So it's all kind of a synergy, but each one needs to be its own individual silo.

So across everything you've built, what's the biggest mistake you've made and what did it teach you?

Biggest mistake, and this is gonna be the common one people say, is it's trying to do everything and touch everything. Because what ends up happening is after a while you gotta, you gotta, this is the identity stuff. This is gonna be a tap in, I promise. So when I say I wanna make a million-dollar business, I can't run a million-dollar business with a $100,000 identity. It's not gonna work.

Yeah.

A $100,000 identity is I'm gonna do as much as I can, keep as much as I can to myself, and I'm gonna have a lot of a little. It's all me, but I, I don't have very much. What that looks like is my, my mistake was I'm gonna figure out how to do all the social myself. I'm gonna make the ads, I'm gonna run the ads on Facebook. I'm gonna take the course for all that kind of stuff. I'm gonna do the sales calls. I'm gonna then convert the clients. I'm gonna make sure that I'm, I'm fulfilling the clients. I'm gonna get testimonials. I'm gonna also do social. And it's a machine you're doing all by yourself. What happens is If any one thing takes more energy, everything else gets less.

Yeah. I've experienced this. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. And so then the scary thing though, as you know, is like, all right, I gotta bring somebody in. Well, who do I bring in? And what do they do? And what do I pay 'em? And how do I not lose money? And the thing is, is that that mentality will keep you stuck. It did for me for a long time. A guy named T.D. Jakes, one time I heard him say, if your dream is big enough to do by yourself, your dream isn't big enough.

Agreed. Yeah.

I gotta find a way to go through.

And I think it's, yeah, I agree. It's leverage, right? But then it's also surrounding yourself with people that know more than you in different places, right? Because otherwise you hit the ceiling. So, I totally believe in all that.

Yeah.

And we talk a lot about that on here.

Yeah. So, my thing is I had to find the people and it started with me. I was like, all right, the first thing I gotta do is I gotta find someone that could help me generate more leads. If I can get more leads faster, then I can actually fill the bucket faster, which could create more revenue quicker. And so, at first, what I did was I kept doing social, everything else, but I did not handle lead generation from the marketing standpoint. I had a whole bunch of calls. It started filling the call bucket up. I'm like, all right, well, I got leads now, but I can't handle all these phone calls coming in. So, as I started doing that and fulfilling, I was like, all right, I gotta put someone else on these calls. So, I got a salesperson to come in. So, salesperson comes in.

But you have to build everything big enough to actually have the permission to then do that, right? So, I think that's important too, you know? Yeah.

Or you can go, I can't afford all this. Let's just make it work. You just tell 'em the truth.

Like, hey, yeah. Or you feel like telling 'em you can afford it. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. I agree though. I think, and also it's like an investment.

Yeah. Yeah. And that, that's what it is. And that's why most people, they're, they get scared of the investment. I think for 2, 2 reasons. One is in and of itself, it's scary to make the investment. It's just, you never know for sure if it's gonna come back. And, but if you have the right people, it can. And I think inevitably it will if you do it right. The other part of it is, you'll find your old identity clings on so tightly that it doesn't let you expand. For me, what I had to do was step in and go, look, I don't have a lot of money, but what I do have, I'm gonna pay this person now with the, with the belief that they're gonna bring it back tenfold. One guy one time told me currency is called that because it has to go into the current to flow back to you increased. I go, I like that language. So I started doing it. Yeah.

No, it's bigger risk, bigger reward, right? The old saying. Always. And that's what most people's identities can't do. Yeah. So, I mean, for people listening, it's like you've got to surround yourself with the right people. You've got to think bigger than just what you can do, right? So, I think that's the message here. And you've got to take the risk, right, if you want the bigger rewards. So, I think this is all really, this is all awesome.

So, yeah, it's the same thing everybody says, but few people actually fully grasp you have to do. But then you do it.

Yeah.

And then you start learning how to do it and you go, I'm not going to die. I'm surviving this.

It's scary, right? But I think for me, at least, like in my experience, and you probably relate, it's like you just have to start small. And it's like you just one step in front of the other and you just kind of build each thing, right? You can't do everything at once, like you said, right? Or you're not going to be great, right? And my always, my big thing is like, I don't always want— I feel like I do a lot, right? So my whole thought in my brain is like, well, if you do too many things, then you're just going to be mediocre at everything. And I have this fear of, right, of just being mediocre at everything, right? Like, how do you— you can't be great at everything, right? But we also don't want to be mediocre at everything. Yeah.

What's even worse is if you, if you do that and you are mediocre and you start believing that you're mediocre and you think that this business—

And then that you show up that way. Yeah.

Yeah. And then, then you go, then you convince yourself that it's not going to work when really it would have worked if you'd have got out of your own way.

Yeah.

But, but the thing is, people—

Back to like surrounding yourself with the right people though, right? The right people.

The right people. But it's also, you could be surrounded by the right people, get nothing done. Like you have to be a leader too. There's a lot of components to this. And I say I wish people would get it. I don't. I don't wish they would all get it. And there's a reason why I say I don't wish they would all get it.

Yeah.

It's because I know that I had to go through the gamut to get it. And I hope they do. But I've in experience noticed that some people, they don't deserve it. They want it, but they aren't prepared or willing to do the work required to actually get the thing they want. I don't feel sorry for those people. It actually bothers me because what ends up happening is they get spiteful, they get blamey, and then they end up hurting not just their life, but they also hurt the people they could have impacted. So like, I hope they get it, but if they don't, I used to like feel bad, but I'm like, nah, that person, they just didn't do the work to get it. A simple example is this. It's a personal one too. I have a son, he's 16 years old. I got a son that's 21 as well. He's 22 here at the end of the year. But I got a son plays football. Mm-hmm.

Yes.

He wants to be a starter on the team. He wants to go to Division 1 school and play football. I'm watching his day-to-day actions, realizing that I've told him everything to do. He just doesn't do it. It's like he's, he's like going at his own pace. And I go, bro, this ship is leaving the dock. It's leaving the dock in a year and maybe 2 years.

Yeah.

And you're like, you're like 2 and a half years away from it. You're going at your pace. That ship's gonna leave. So as much as I tell him, like, it's on his own, his own dock, and if he doesn't do it, I'm not gonna feel bad. So look at the business world. It's very similar. Like, there's all this information out there. I do not Sammy, believe there's nothing— I think we have more information than we need to be successful. There's literally too much, and a lot of it's free.

Yes.

The separation is not what you know, it's who you are with what you know.

Yeah.

Who are you as a person? How do you wield the sword of knowledge you have? If you don't wield it and you aren't prepared to go through the gamut, you don't get to sit at the table with me. I'd love for you to be there, but if you don't do it, I don't feel bad for you for not being there.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. So I want to shift a little bit to the books that you wrote. So you've wrote 2 bestselling books. So tell me about the process of turning your methodology into a book and how that book became a business tool and not just a product on a shelf. Because I think a lot of people, right, like they are like you, they have great ideas, but they don't know how to get it out there. So how do you do that?

There's no one path. Here's what I'll say. The biggest, the biggest solution for me was taking action to find the path. 'Cause we're always at a crossroads of what to do next, and we stand there forever. I just take paths and go, all right, this one didn't work. Let me go back to square one. I went from 3 choices to 2 now. I've been doing that for a long time. The book itself, the first book was one where I realized in order to lead something, people have to know who you are. So the first book's called Trust Your Hustle.

Yeah.

It's actually an autobiography up to the age of 30 years old. And so it was just kind of like, here's who Anthony is. And people enjoyed the book. They got a chance to see who I was and how I came to be. And that led to more stuff. The other book came, like, right at the end of the pandemic. I wrote it in pandemic because I had this thought, and I was writing notes on it, but I had no intention of publishing a book. And then I was doing a conversation with somebody. He goes, he says, you have so much information. Where's the book on this? I go, I don't know. I've been taking notes on it. He goes, what notes? So I show him these notes I'd had of, like, the column that said information I've learned about this world, stories about my life, and then different data points of, like, you know, studies and research. He goes, I got to get you in touch with my publisher. So I talked to this guy's publisher and I pull up the same thing. He goes, dude, you have more for a book than almost any author I've ever seen in preparation.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, this should have already been a book. I wrote the book in 30 days. 30 days, it was done.

Wow.

It was back out to him. He's like, this is the fastest I've ever seen somebody write a book. I was like, well, everything was already here. I just, I made it words and I wrote it. Every single word. I actually, it wasn't AI at the time. I wrote the book. And, and for me, the big thing was looking back on what all I tried to do was What is a thing that I know that can be valuable as a solution to somebody else's problem? Let me codify that and then put it into writing. And that's all we did.

Yeah.

It wasn't, it wasn't rocket science. It was just like the first half of the book's like, here's what I know about identity. Here's the concept. I want you to get what it is from my standpoint. Second half of the book's like, here's how you shift it. And it's just the process. It's not, it's not supposed to be inaccessible. It's supposed to be tangible and clear to act on.

Yeah. And I think the other thing you're saying too is like you just, you have to find a way to deliver value to people and make an impact, right? Otherwise it's not going to keep getting picked up, right? So I think that's really interesting that like you were really thinking about that. Like, how do I, how do I make an impact? How do I get people to understand this? You know, what's the value? And I think that's really important.

People want to build something and hope it pops. And it's like, I haven't seen many things just pop. Usually what it is, is you make it, you put it out there, And now becomes the extra long journey of like optimizing, refining it to make it great. Most folks don't like that journey either. It's uncomfortable. You make this thing you're proud of, give it to the world, the world goes, I don't get what it is. And you go, I'll try something new. Like, no, no, no, don't start over. Just take that feedback.

Just keep explaining it.

You know, and get better and better. And that's, that's the second part of the journey that so many people just don't take.

Yeah, I love that. So the Dark Work Experience, it's one of your signature offerings. So You know, you took that concept and I guess you tried— the book was more about the identity shift methodology. But what about— yeah. So tell me about the Dark Work experience. So, you know, I know that's one of your signature offerings as well. So how do you take that concept and turn it into a premium product that people pay for as well?

Yeah. The way that came to be was no one woke up today and ever went like, I want an identity shift ever. Yeah, there's everything, you know. But the thing was, I had to go through a couple of years of refining that message to really get to the point of Dark Work coming out and knowing what it was. That became a much more gravitational message. But then what I did to codify it is like, and that's what I teach my speaking clients, same thing. You're still selling a service. I must find out what it's a solution for and create the solution. Then you productize the solution.

Yeah.

Too many people, they take the courses on making a course. Great. They make a course for something that nobody wants because it's not a solution to a problem. It's just something that you decided it was a cool idea. And they go, why isn't it working? And I go, well, did you ever test to make sure it solves a problem? Well, no. Well, then you didn't actually make a viable course. My thing has to go, how do I find a problem I'm solving and then create the solution to that? And that's not just making the solution, that's making, making it clear to the world why they need the solution, how it's hindering them. There's a lot that goes into marketing in and of itself to educate people.

Mm-hmm.

And then once you have that, now it's like, all right, how can I in the simplest way go, I know what you desire, I have a solution to the problem that's keeping you from the desire. Let me let you know that I have the solution, walk you through how mine works, and then hopefully you buy. Like, that's kind of the process. There's, there's not supposed to be, I think, a lot more to it. People will mess it up by adding 70 steps that they don't need to have. Read my 75-page book, take my 15-step, you know, assessment. Then from there, take this 4-step mini course and then buy my program for $99. Like, what are you doing?

Yeah. Like, that's way too much.

Yeah, too much.

Right.

What is, what's that? What's the thing that they want for $99? And then find a way to make that the top of the industry solution and charge $9,999. Because what I've also come to find is when I charge a price below what logic tells me will solve that problem, I don't move anything. Nothing. If you, if someone comes to you and goes, hey, Sammy, I'm not sure if you're married or not. I'm just assuming. I'm gonna say for this situation, you married?

Yeah.

Oh, perfect. So let's say someone goes, hey, I'm gonna help with your marriage. We're gonna fix all the, the crazy problems you have. Not saying it's busted or broken, For $99, you're like, that doesn't make a lot. It feels like it's like not going to be congruent. My entire marriage for $100. Like, right?

Yeah.

If someone comes to you and goes like—

You're devaluing it.

Yeah, right. Someone even just devaluing. It's me going, I don't believe that that price point is going to actually solve my problem. But if someone goes, hey, Sammy, I know that your marriage is the crux of what gives you the power to step into this world and feel like anchored. And like, don't you have a home and a place that where you feel like that's your home in the heart of your husband? Like at the backside of that, like it's $9,999 to solve this problem for you where you can have the most beautiful marriage you can ever see. That sounds like it's a stretch, but like my brain goes, it's probably gonna fix it though. The price point it's at, it probably will do the work it needs to do. No guarantee, but much more than $999 or $99.

Mm-hmm.

And so when people are making these 70-step things, I gotta give a ton of free value. You're giving me a ton of extra steps that no one wants to consume. Nowadays they go, I want the solution. How fast can you deliver it at a quality level? And that's what they pay for. So I had to go through the gamut of learning that myself also. And now it's like, all right, I know who I'm talking to. I know the solution that I have. I can language their problem. I know that I need them to get to know that I can solve it and then walk them through a few steps, like 3 steps, and then hop on with our team and then tell them how we can solve it. And if it sounds good, it's a fit. We work with you. Like, that's all people need.

So you've spoken to thousands of entrepreneurs and executives. What's the one thing you see holding business owners back over and over again? And then I guess, what do you tell them? Ego.

All day. Ego. I call it EGO, everyone's greatest obstacle. That's what it is. You know why? Because all the things I'm talking about require you to have to do different things and admit that you're not great at that thing. And the ego is not good at this, especially when you're successful. Or if you, if you've had newer success, you don't want anyone to realize that you're not perfect. And so a lot of folks will go like, I'm not perfect, I can get better. But the moment you point something out, their ego wall raises up. What are you talking about? I got that, you know? So I found that's the case. The moment I can get someone's ego to subside and go, look, I need you to stop attaching your ego to being right and attach it to getting it right. 2 different dances.

Love that.

When I go, my goal is to get it right. I will go into my team meetings and have like, here's my idea. And they'll go, I don't like this and this. I go, you're right, let's try this. And I'm game to do it. I don't— there's no ego at all. Because my thing is, my team knows we want to get it right. I'll take feedback. I'll let them shut me down on stuff if it makes sense. No one's disrespectful, obviously. But if it doesn't make sense to the rest of the team, like, cool, let's try your idea. And so everybody is able to realize, like, we're going to move faster because when I am not trying to hold us in a random position, and do 2 bad things. The first thing is, if it's the wrong idea, well, now it's not gonna help us. It's not gonna move. And it's just not good, right? Second thing is, now your team goes, I'm being led by a blockhead.

Yeah.

The team isn't sharp in the same way. The team won't give their all. They're like, we're just gonna— whatever. I got a paycheck, right? But when they feel like they're part of building this thing, which they actually are the whole time, and you're like, hey, I'm just— I'm just— I'm in the same car as you. I'm just driving the car. We're all in the same seats. I'm just driving the car. We're all going the same place, right? I'm not in a chariot behind and you guys are the horses driving me. It's not how this thing is going. When we're all in that cohesive space, that helps us move. And so I work with entrepreneurs in different pockets. That's usually the issue. I've worked with executives that are VPs at Fortune 100 or Fortune 100 companies. And you find that a lot of it's like they hire phenomenal minds, but then they don't let go of the reins. They don't trust their people. They hold too tight. And it's because the ego goes, I don't wanna be the one that gets to give credit or doesn't get credit or did it wrong, whatever it is. And I go, get rid of all that and find a way to admit you need help to give yourself permission to improve.

Maybe that, that's the answer to this next question, but if it's, or you have another one, but what habit or principle from your football career do you think every entrepreneur, athlete or not, should adopt immediately?

Gotta get a coach in any, in any capacity you can that can help in your, in your short areas where you're kind of falling short. When I played professional football, here's the logic of what it is. Most folks don't like having a coach. They think they're giving up their power and their credibility to somebody else. Like, I need them. And it's like, no, no, no, you're not grasping what it is. When I played professional sports, my coach could not do what I can do physically. He just— his knees wouldn't let him do it, right? But he had awareness of a pocket of expertise that I wasn't an expert on at his level. That area, right? And also, I could operate really well and see what's in front of me. He saw the field. There was more he was seeing than I could visibly see. So you gotta get a coach that you let tell you what to do. Like, you hire them and you don't hire someone to tell them how to do their job. You hire them to tell you how to do your job better.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's perspective, right? And then accountability. There's a lot of different pieces there, but yes.

All of it. And I think— and also, you find someone to cover the area you want to shine. Shore up. Like, it may not be the entire bit. I'm not hiring a speaking coach right now in my life. Not happening. But I do have a need for coaches and like, hey, help me figure out how to kind of get my business more streamlined with the right tracking metrics and stuff, or help me train up this part of my team that I'm not skilled at, you know? And so these different areas I hire people, but I can go like, I am not the one that's the best at that, but I want to get it right to serve our clients. And so when I work with folks, a lot of it's like, hey, Where can we step back and you take the heat of the fact that you're not the greatest in the world at that and you should let somebody else do it? When the ego can take a break, we actually find improvement faster.

Yeah. So what's the best piece of advice you've ever been given? Is that, is that it or is there more?

I've had a lot of pieces of advice. One that I like to lean on is, it takes a little more to be a champion, which is from football. And what that was, my coach is like, you never know what a little more looks like, but you know when you're dead tired, You know when you have nothing left, you know when you've hit that maximum capacity.

Right.

At that moment, do a little more. 'Cause the reality is, is you're always your most important competition, and you never really know if you're getting better until that moment. It's at that moment when everything's on the line, everything sucks, that's the moment that you go like, I can't do anything. So the next thing you do is like, definitively, almost objectively, you're getting better. You can't breathe? Cool. One more lap. I can't. One more lap. Oh my gosh, I got one more lap. And then 6 months from now, you're doing 10 more laps than that. Right?

Right.

So for me, it's like, get ourselves to that point of like, I want to shut down and just a little bit more. That's what hardens you and wires you the way you need to.

Yeah, I think it's a good segue into what I want to talk about next. So your wife signed you up for American Ninja Warrior without telling you, and you became the first former NFL athlete to compete on the show.

Oh, no, no, no.

What did that teach you?

First former to hit a buzzer on the show. Others had gone on the show. Got it.

But actually to hit a buzzer. Okay.

I love that.

Even better. So what did that teach you about, you know, you know, kind of pushing yourself, but also about saying yes to things that terrify you? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I've always been a person I like to— I like— here's what I believe. Life has an amazing plan for us, but we mess it up. Fear, excuses, apprehension, avoidance. So I like that as being a good example of I just went towards something and said, look, I have nothing to lose. No one expects me to do well, but I have a standard of like, I'm going to just give my full effort to it. Like I was going to give my full effort to it. I'm not going to— I think some people, my son does this, I hate it. They give enough to where if it doesn't go right, they can go, I didn't give too much. I didn't lose too much. Like, you know, like— Interesting.

Like self-protection.

Yeah. Yeah, it's exactly what it is.

And so— Self-preservation. Yeah.

I don't have that muscle. I just go. And so for me, it's like, I'm gonna give all of whatever Anthony is to this and see what happens. If it doesn't do well, cool. I wasn't supposed to do well at it. But if I did and it panned out, it's like, that wasn't expected. That's super cool. But I'm usually gonna find that in the midst of doing that, there's never a negative to it. If I'd have went up there and fell on the first obstacle and fell off, at least I got on TV. That's kind of cool, you know?

Yeah.

But then think of what was possible because I gave my absolute all to it. And so that was the biggest thing from that for me. It wasn't like the— hanging on your hands and stuff was like, if I give my all to something, what could happen? And I tried it out, and I'm just, you know, I'm about 6'1 at the moment, probably about 200 and— I think it's more like £232, something like that. I'm a big dude compared to the buck 80, you know, 5'6 rock climbers who were typically on that show.

Yeah.

And so, for me, when I would swing, that stuff would creak 'cause I'm a heavy body. But again, I didn't have this mentality of like, I'm too big for it. I was like, I'm gonna kill this thing. Let's just see what happens. And then, You give that and sure enough, things pan out positively. That's a possibility for everything, for everybody. But too many people, they're giving just enough to not feel bad if it goes poorly. And then lo and behold, it goes poorly.

Totally agree. So what are you working on right now that you're most excited about?

Oh, 2 things. Technology things. So for Speak to Freedom, we built this entire platform to help people who can't seem to do enough volume of outreach to get conversations, to get booked. Made a whole new platform for that. So it's actually, it's the only one in the world for what it, what it does for this individual clientele. And you ever heard, you know, like you're in business, you know, companies that do cold outreach, they charge like, you know, $2,500 a month or, you know, $10,000 a month to do cold outreach. They have a machine that they, they built that does that. I built the machine and made it accessible to every speaker. That's what I did.

Is that out yet or not out yet?

It's called the Leads Machine. STF Leads Machine, Speak to Freedom Leads Machine. It's either that or stfleadmachine.com.

Awesome.

But literally, it's like I was tired of having— I paid a company one time $18,000 a month to do something, produced no results. If I see this guy in a dark alley, I might punch him in his throat. It just pissed me off. And I was like, how— what are they doing? I was like, what is that? What do they have magically that I can't do right nowadays? I can, I can write my emails. I just need to have a way to send it. I built the engine. That these companies run on, and I made it accessible to speakers. So now they have access to it at a way cheaper, like $650 a month. And it's also— it incorporates a whole CRM, like it's all built together in one seamless place. So, and the list is in there, like, so I have over 100,000 emails you could tap into, 2,000 a month. Like, it's a crazy cool machine. So I'm excited because it allows me to give back to speakers the tool that I wish I had. I was manual doing this in the beginning. Making a bunch of lists and follow up with the list and sending things.

It was a headache.

Yeah.

Now I give people like rocket fuel to run their machine. It's awesome.

Can they be looking to speak about anything or has to be on a particular—

Anything.

Okay, awesome.

Anything.

Because there's a bunch of topics.

I mean, it's all over the world, different topics, meeting planners, bureaus, events. It's everything you can imagine. We have clients from all walks of life, from clairvoyance up to, you know, executives that work on leadership and just very simple, you know, black and white vanilla type stuff. But it fits everybody because we're targeting people that are the ones that find speeches or people come to them for speakers that is across the board. So it solves that problem. But I, I'm excited about that because that's what I believe people need. And it's fun to watch them finally have what they need. Other side of it, we found limitations to the way I wanted to coach for Dark Work. And I had a platform we were using that had a branded app behind the scenes, but there's some technology limitations they would not fix for 2 years. And so it just bothered me. I could not fully launch the brand the way I wanted to. It was too clunky, too many headaches. I just wouldn't have the experience I wanted to have for people in the Dark Work coaching. And so I was about to like just keep waiting and somebody was like, hey, you know, you can build that entire CRM like platform.

I was like, what do you mean? They're like, yeah, whatever that is, you can rebuild that thing completely. So we did.

Yeah.

And I hired somebody and we built— it's even better. It's better than what that is. It's only for my company though. No one else gets access. I'm not like, giving access to it to anybody else. But you can do that nowadays. The big thing is I wanted to have the functionality to run my own system the way I wanted my entire business to feel. And we did that branded visual. So those are the 2 real cool things I'm excited about because they allow us to provide a better service to our clients and solve problems easier for them.

That's very relevant in the tech world these days. So that's great. So, Anthony, thank you so much. Last question. What does it mean to you to be a business MVP?

Uh, peace of mind. I'll say peace of mind.

I haven't gotten that one yet. Okay, tell me more.

My business is— I don't care who knows me. It's a very weird thing to say because I know I'm a speaker and I got to have the brand and all that kind of stuff. I love my wife and my kids. I love my time spent with them because of the business that I have and being able to be successful at this point now. I have peace when I get off of my work calls. Like, we're done here. I got something later, but like, I can go into my house and sit on the couch. I'm not worried about paying bills. I'm not worried about the private school. We can buy our kids— like, I bought my son a house after college. Well, my wife and I, to be able to do his thing. And he's going to state school in Houston. Like, we can do things.

Yeah.

And as a foster kid growing up, having nothing, being very poor as a kid, it changes things. Now, I don't have any crazy vices. I've been finding myself getting into cars a little more than I probably should in the last couple of years. But nothing crazy. I'm not buying Ferraris, just like, you know, simple cars and fixing them up. But the idea is like it provides peace to me because as long as I make more than my lifestyle needs, I have removed myself from the stress that most people have of like check to check. Can I pay bills? Can my kids have these opportunities? Like what, you know?

Mm-hmm.

So for me, being a business MVP has allowed me to have a lifestyle of peace and freedom.

Great advice. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And that's how champions think. Here are the key takeaways from my conversation with Anthony today. A kid from foster care is now teaching Fortune 500 executives who they are. Your starting point doesn't determine your ceiling. Sometimes the worst chapter writes the best business plan. And if you're grinding right now with no results and no audience, that's the dark work, and it's the only work that matters. If you got value from today's episode, share it with someone who's ready to think bigger, compete harder, and win in business. Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. And if you haven't, leaving a 5-star review goes a long way in helping us grow and reach more leaders like you. You can also watch every episode on YouTube and follow along on Instagram and TikTok @TheSammyPeterson for more behind the scenes and insights. I'm Sammy Peterson. Thanks for being part of the Business MVP community, And I'll see you next time as we continue building you into an MVP in business and in life.