How to Become the Person Your Goals Require with Anthony Trucks

In this episode of Success Leaves Clues Podcast, our guest is Anthony Trucks—former NFL player, American Ninja Warrior competitor, keynote speaker, and creator of the Dark Work Framework. Anthony shares how an unexpected transition from professional sports led him to build a coaching business focused on the one thing most entrepreneurs overlook: identity. He explains why success isn't determined by what you know but by who you become, how identity shapes business growth, and why high performers often hit invisible ceilings despite having the right skills. Anthony also discusses the lessons he carried from the NFL into entrepreneurship, the importance of embracing feedback, building consistency through "dark work," creating systems that scale, serving clients before chasing revenue, and why the best businesses are built on solving one problem for one person exceptionally well. Whether you're an entrepreneur, coach, executive, or ambitious professional looking to unlock your next level, this conversation is packed with practical insights on performance, leadership, mindset, and sustainable business growth.

You can find him on:
https://www.instagram.com/anthonytrucks/
https://speaktofreedom.com/
https://go.speaktofreedom.com/
https://bookedsolidchallenge.com/
https://linktr.ee/anthonytrucks
https://www.facebook.com/AnthonyTrucks
https://www.youtube.com/c/AnthonyTrucks1
https://www.anthonytrucks.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/anthony-trucks
https://darkwork.com/

Transcript

Anthony Trucks 0:00

Which is a core piece of me, which is you you you cannot attain or sustain above who you are. The identity thing of what I am. So if I didn't see myself as a great football player, I never would have done the things to prepare to be a great football player, to play as a great player, to fight tooth and nail for a spot, to show up. Now that's because I identified as a football player. When I left that space and I didn't identify as a business owner, I didn't do business owner things.

Davis Nguyen 0:24

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues, the podcast where we interview business owners on how they built their businesses and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is David Swain, and I'm a business coach and a founder of Purple Circle, where we help business owners achieve their first six-figure, seven-figure, and eight-figure year, all without sacrificing their quality of life. Before becoming a business coach and before founding Purple Circle, I started to scale several seven and eight-figure coaching businesses and have been a consultant at several businesses doing over $100 million each, including some that are publicly listed and doing over a billion dollars each. In every episode of the podcast, you're going to learn lessons that took R, yes, years to learn, and you'll be able to learn that in minutes. Remember, if you're a new business owner or an established business owner, every episode is going to give you the clues in order to elevate your business.

Pedro Stein 1:08

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues Podcast. I'm Pedro, and today I'm joined by Anthony Trucks, a former NFL player, American Ninja War competitor and performance identity coach behind the Dark Work Framework. Anthony has spoken and consulted for organizations including Amazon, PayPal, and Chick-fil-A, helping high performers reveal their identity to break through ceilings that skill alone cannot solve. Welcome to the show, Anthony.

Anthony Trucks 1:40

Thank you for having me, man. Appreciate it.

Pedro Stein 1:42

Yeah, great to have you. You know, Anthony, I'm gonna tell you something about me. I'm kind of a comic book nerd, you know, so love the first editions, the origin story. So let's rewind a bit, you know, because every coach has that moment where they look at their life and say, Yeah, I guess this is what I'm doing now, right? So when was that for you, man?

Anthony Trucks 2:02

Uh, you know, it's accidental. I think that's how it always starts for a lot of folks. The moment of, like, that's what I do now, I for sure would say ties into what I was introduced to this world of speaking. I didn't know that uh speaking coaching consult in that realm. I didn't even know Tony Robbins existed until 2014. Like it was complete nuance to me. I'm like, oh, this is this world. I was a former NFL guy, opened the gym business, I was running that whole thing, and then got introduced to this work. And so it was uh, I was in an event called Experts Academy by a guy named Brendan Brichard. And you know, I walk in day one, and it's weird to me. Everybody's out here, you know, clapping and jumping and hugging and talking to each other. I'm like, this is weird. What are you guys doing? Like, and then by you know, it's it's a four-day event by day four. I'm jumping, I'm clapping, I'm hugging, you know, I'm in. Drink all the Kool-Aid, we'll call it. But I was introduced to it because I I found that that that there may be a benefit to my experience of life that I'd navigated where I'd gotten to a place beyond where people are stuck still. That was kind of the introduction. It was like, there's a thing you've navigated that other people are still stuck in. If you can take what you've experienced and go back to codify a process for them, you could help them. So that was kind of the process of introducing myself to coaching beyond fitness coaching, but more of the mind.

Pedro Stein 3:11

You know what? Um, I watched that movie when you mentioned Tony Robbins, right? And I watched that movie Shallow How and I'm in Brazil, right? And that he does his trick, and I'm like, I don't get the joke, right? Because I'm always like, who's this guy? And uh down the road, like 10, 15 years down the road, I'm like, oh now I get it. Remedy funny. Okay, now let me ask you this. Um, because in the early days, remnant in the coaching space, it's almost like calling, I'm helping people, there's some advice giving. We're testing waters eventually, right? Yeah, and we get to a point and uh we're built we realize we're building a real business around this, right? It's almost like a shift that happened. So can you walk us through how that looked like for you? Like, was it like the first paying customer? Was it like the first invoice, you know, when you realize, okay, this is a real business?

Anthony Trucks 4:06

That's a good question. I don't know if I've been asked this question before. I like this. I would say the first time for me, yeah. So it was when you when I got paid, but what it was is I began with the whole thing, and as I say it the whole thing, and not in a negative play, but it's like, I just want to serve, I'll do it for free. And then you come to quickly find you can't do it for free. Because if you have to do something else to be able to subsidize your life and pay for your life, you can't give this, it's all. And what it was was I got this one speech. It was uh it was a $15,000 speech when I made it real. Prior to that, I got like some $2,000 speeches, some $5,000 speeches. And I was kind of building up. But it was I got this speech, and there's a reason why this is you know leading into coaching, is at a certain point I kind of built up and I was like, I made more in this one speech than I could make in five to seven other ones. I'm like, this actually could be real. But then even more than that, the thing is I realize when I'm off a stage, I'm unemployed. That was the dance. Like when you're off a stage, you could have a contract in the future, but pandemic clearly told me, like, hey, quarter million dollars of contracts of speeches. Yeah, no, it's gone, right? So you're like, I gotta find a way to make sure I'm making revenue. And I also noticed that speaking was like a one-to-hour thing, and I couldn't really change a life in a single hour from a stage. I can plan a C, but I can't change a life the way I want to. That introduced me in that speech to people that were looking to have a consultant come in for a company you might know called Amazon. And this was like an interesting dance. I'm like, I was in this kind of discussion about what their needs were, and I'm like, shoot, I'm just this guy that I think's tucked away in his gym, but this massive global company could use me to benefit them. I'm like, let's see what that looks like. I come to find it was not that they weren't intelligent because they're obviously smart people, it was that they needed some codification and some mechanisms they could apply to help what they do be better. And so I dove in and worked with one individual uh as a one-on-one coach for four years, helped him become a VP, and first in his family at a publicly traded company to be a VP. And it was this dance of realizing that that really I had this high that was beyond the money of it. Like it's one when you can make the money doing, which is great, but when you actually find that the the thing you do gets people's lives to change and then they're happy to pay you, that's the awakening portion. You're like, shoot, if I if I go and lead in and take what I know and I've experienced and make it to where you can absorb it and apply it to your life and win, and you're happy to pay me. Well, I'm happy to take the payment. So let's find a way to make more of that take place. That was the introduction. That speech was a catalyst to that moment for sure.

Pedro Stein 6:21

Okay. No, I have a specific question for you. You're a former NFL player, right? And uh that is moving to coaching, it's almost like an identity shift, right? Um, you're usually used to say, yeah, I play at this, and now you're doing that. Um, can you see or tell me or walk me through uh what skill set did you use from the NFL world that you use in the coaching space?

Anthony Trucks 6:49

Oh, there's a lot of those ones. But I will say that there wasn't an awareness that I had these for a while. When I got done playing sports, and this could be anybody, like if you've ever sold a company or you've ever left the military or you've left sports or a child moving out of the house, like whenever you wake up in the thing you've given your all to, you can't do anymore. It's an identity shift. You're having to wake up and go, how do I valuable to the world, right? It's a big piece of it. Um, but then for me, the thing, oh, was a question, just to make sure I think you asked it, I lost it for a second.

Pedro Stein 7:16

I I would say it's almost like not necessarily a question, it's the evolution piece and the identity that you like you realize the skill set from NFL that you're like, oh, I went through that environment, I'm using this in coaching, you know?

Anthony Trucks 7:29

Perfect, making sure. So in that process, I lose myself. And what I don't realize is I haven't lost the intangibles. Most people think if I can't do that, I'm I'm worthless. But I'm like, no, no, no, there's I've learned this over time. I got a good metaphor for this. Uh, when I lost football, I lost the fruit of my labor. Like this beautiful crisp apple, right? And it fell off the tree. And like a regular apple, you can lay on the ground for a little bit, farmer picks it up, takes it to a store. I buy it, take it to my house, it'll last for a little while, but eventually it goes rotten. Football, when it fell off the tree, that was a thing. I feel good for a little bit. I used to play in the league, no big deal. And then after like a year or two, you're like, holy crap, it's a rotten apple. I feel like nothing and worthless. And then what happens is you don't realize that that focus is the worst one you can have. Here's why. Whenever you look at you being the fruit of your labor, you are the thing you created. I'm the money, I'm the house, I'm the car, I'm the body, whatever. What ends up happening is when that thing gets hurt or you lose it, which you sometimes have no control over, you lose yourself. I had this understanding that we have never been the fruit. We've always been the tree. The tree produces these fruits. And the production of the fruit is what allows you to be able to be amazing. And if you don't realize that, what happens is these intangibles, like you mentioned, you don't bring the new part of your life. You think I'm worthless without this stuff. Where realastically, those things were what made my career for foot football, made my career for the gym business, made me a dad, maybe a husband. The most critical ones that I think have helped me do what I do now is the idea, which is a core piece of me, which is you you cannot attain or sustain above who you are. The identity thing of what I am. So if I didn't see myself as a great football player, I never would have done the things to prepare to be a great football player, to play as a great player, to fight tooth and nail for a spot, to show up. Now that's because I identified as a football player. When I left that space and I didn't identify as a business owner, I didn't do business owner things. Therefore, no matter what books I read, what coaches I hired, I wouldn't do the things I needed to do. And so part of it was like I needed to realize like I must identify as that thing, even if it's a fake until you make it to begin with, but eventually become that thing. Now, true intangibles that I think have brought been brought over that help me, I don't have an off switch. But that doesn't mean that the that the gas is at full bore every day. Like for me, I I don't know what it's like to go, oh, I'm I'm gonna stop doing that because it's hard. That if of all things in my life have realized that I can do hard things for a long period of time, longer than most human beings can. But I'm not saying that I'm going like all day long. It's more so just a consistent, like if 10's the good the gas full, I may some days be at an eight or a 10, right? But 90% of the days, I'm at a steady two or three. I'm just trudging through nonstop and I will not get, I just won't stop. I don't know how to. Football teaches you that. Like you have a bad play, but you don't quit the game right there. You go to the next play, and the next play, the next play. So every day for me is just another play. I have good plays, I have bad plays, but there's not a thumb, like I'm not quitting the game. And so those little pieces have been huge. Other portions that have been massively beneficial are the ability for me to take feedback from other people and coaching. So as a coach, I love being coached. It sounds crazy to say that, but most people do not like hearing bad news or bad thoughts about themselves, which is really what improvements are. Like you have to be able to told, be told, hey, this is where you need to improve, and then you can do the work. In football, every day they go, Hey, you suck, you suck at this. What are you doing? You sucked at that, right? Not that you actually suck, but it's like you mess that play up. It doesn't mean that I crawl into a ball in the corner and cry myself to sleep. It goes, all right, mess it up. Now I have information to do better. Let me go out there again and do it better. That dance. Most people cannot take that the critiques. They they see critiques as criticism. And if the critique is, which is usually it's objective, it's a critique. You didn't do that right. This could have been better. They see it as a criticism of self. They shut down, which means they don't get insights, they don't know what to improve upon, they spend all day doing effortful work and then nothing returns the way they want to, all because they couldn't take feedback and coaching. As an athlete, you're bathed in that discomfort. So when it happens, you're like, oh, this is normal, and you just keep on moving. And most people can't handle that.

Pedro Stein 11:26

Yeah, mostly I think like results are on the work you're avoiding to do, right? Most people are in that same spot. Now, I want to understand the evolution of it, right? In your business. Like we're talking about nine years. Um, you already browse through that a little bit, uh, speaking gigs, and then you move to an hour uh and consulting and all that. And what I'm trying to understand here is the evolution of your ideal client profile at the start, who you were serving, and who do you serve now, right? Because the reason I asked this is because I see a lot of coaches out there that at the start they're just trying to make it, right? And they're trying to help everyone. But eventually they sharpen the blade, they attract a certain type of people, and uh that's what I would love for you to walk me through.

Anthony Trucks 12:12

I'll give this this is very clear. I figured this out years ago. I am not good at getting you off the couch. But if you're off the couch and running, I can help you find that extra peak potential. So I I used to begin with working with people trying to motivate, right? It's a big thing. Everybody wants to motivate. You can do it, get after it. The world's your oyster. You can do everything, right? Which is it sounds good, but everybody hears that, everybody says that. And most people, they don't really want to change their life. They just don't want to say they do, and it sounds good, and they just keep doing the same thing stupidly over and over and complaining about stuff. The people that I have come to work with and find that are my best demographic are those that are already up operating, but they've found that they're very good in an area, but they're struggling in other places. Business is going smooth, body's out of shape, marriage isn't doing well. They're not good parents. Or the marriage is great, but they can't find a way to make their career run smooth. They're bad with money. Like uh they they maybe they don't have a sense of confidence of self. There's little nuances. I found that our identities are not one single thing, they're comprised of many different components. I've found ten that I like to focus on. And I may find that they have eight that are great, but two that are detracting from the other eight. Or they have only one going well and wondering why they can't get the rest of the stuff going. So I work with people that are already ambitious and getting after it, but are wondering why I can't hit that next level I'm looking for. I can dive in, parse it up, and figure out exactly what we need to do, not just habit and action-wise, but identity shift-wise. Who do they need to become to have that part of their life be what they want it to be? Okay.

Pedro Stein 13:40

So a little bit of a game of pretend here. Let's pretend I'm your avatar, your client profile. I'm spinning my wheels, but I'm already operating, right? Uh, you're you don't have to motivate me. It's just that I'm hitting a ceiling, as it sounds like, and I'm not being able to by myself hit to the next level, get to the next level, anything like that. Okay. So, first of all, how would I be able to find you and your business marketing-wise?

Anthony Trucks 14:06

Yeah, yeah. Just go look up uh, well, if you're looking, just searching, searching, darkwork.com is our website, anthony trucks.com. It's all the Instagrams, Anthony Trucks, can't miss it. Uh, that's the first piece to find us. If you're gonna go to the second part of this, maybe it's gonna be like, how would I focus on the first steps of helping you? First things first is the cool thing is the people I work with are intelligent humans. I don't have to explain to them they need to do something differently. The problem is their intelligence sometimes becomes the issue. And here's what I mean by that. Uh, they will they will look to programs, uh, information, books. So uh speak to freedom is our program by like doing different seminars and stuff. They'll look to different things informationally without realizing it's not what you know, it's who you are with what you know. I heard recently Layla Hormozy said that she had a client that was struggling to get to the $10 million market. She goes, Look, the problem isn't that you don't have the books or the knowledge like you have us as clients as a coach. She says, You're trying to build a $10 million business with a $5 million identity. There's a huge separation there. Now, within it's a lot of nuance. So, what I do, I will I walk into people's lives and I will literally dive in. We do something called roots and fruits. It's an assessment. We look at the five roots that create the tree of who you are, and the five branches that create the fruit. The roots are faith, family, health, friends, and emotional control under heightened situations. If those roots are deep, they can withstand the storms of life. The tree has base. It can also pull nutrients in to create the fruits, which is career, education, finance, escape, and purpose. If you look at all these areas, what I like to do is dive in and figure out individually where would I score myself, why would I score at that. And then once I get a real number, what do we have to work to improve it? But even before we do that, once I have a score for it, we look at where things are connecting and it it will say creating issues for other parts. As an example, somebody might go, man, my my business is like a six, my marriage is like a three, and you know, my parenting's like a five. I'm just, I can't, the business. I just need, I need more coaches for business. And I go, well, let me let me hear like your walk me through your day-to-day. But I go to work and I'm here from you know, this time to this time, I'm getting things done, but then I don't really get it done. So I bring my work home. I gotta, you know, get some more work done at home. And then my wife's mad, so we're always arguing. I go back to work, I get work done there, and then I'm, you know, because of that, I'm drained, so I can't be the parent I want to be. So I go, let me, let's ask, let's just pause and pull it back. So it sounds like there's an issue with your relationship. Yeah, but that's not a big deal for work. I go, let's talk about this. I'll dive in and find that there's this issue that maybe they're bringing work home. And so because there's work coming home, wife's pissed. Well, why aren't you folks in the family? I want more of my husband at home. Da-da-da-da. You find that if they're able to get better with the relationship at work, because what happened or home, when they have that energy come to work, that's the reason I can't be focused at work. I'm fighting at home, my heart's heavy, I'm not even energetic at work. So yeah, I don't get stuff done. But then if the if the home life's good, like wife's happy, I go to work light. Sure, I get more work done. I'm like, what's up, Bill? How you doing? Hey, Susan, having a good time, work gets done. I don't bring work home anymore because I'm getting it done ahead of time. Wife's happy, we're joyous, I'm gonna be able to go take trips with the kids because that's happening. We're making more money. Now the family can go on better trips and vacations. Like, you don't find these little nuance pieces. So I can kind of peek in and find more and go, all right, you're an intelligent, smart human, you have the information. Let's now do the shit that makes your butt pucker. Let's find out how to be able to be a better husband, a better dad before we focus on work stuff. Because once that's done, we can actually go and do that better. Then as you start to grow the business and everything's moving on your company, your career, more you do. How do we navigate the growth of that? Uh call it execution-wise, scheduling-wise to get things done so you maintain that. And you start seeing that they're having to grow into things they didn't see at first were parts of the identity that are traits required for the goal they wanted. So for me, when I'm diving in, it's not going like I'm smarter than you. It's going, let me see things you're not seeing and help you navigate these different things in ways that allow you to optimize your ability in the areas that makes everything cohesively run better.

Pedro Stein 17:56

Okay, a couple things. First of all, uh the Layla Hermosi mentioned very interesting, right? The identity identity thing. Um, like I worked in sales as a high-ticket sales closer for a business coach. And that is that say in sales, right? Is don't sell with your wallet. So get outside of your own self and sell the thing without you being involved. It's an identity bit. And uh that it's interesting that you she uses that for the business too, which makes total sense, right? Now, the second thing that I want to mention is um I like how you framed it, Red. You're ended up coaching the whole person, it's all connected from personal life to work to fitness to and so that's very interesting. Okay. Now, moving forward with my game of pretend, I'm still your avatar here. Okay, uh Anthony. Um, so can you walk me through giving me a little bit of a peek behind the curtain, which you already did, right? A little bit, but how does it look like to work with you, right? The structure a little bit more as a one-on-one, are we talking about one too many and um the outcomes I can expect?

Anthony Trucks 19:03

Yeah, yeah. It's perfect. So when people work with me as a coach, right? So one, I don't personally take on anybody, it's not an executive level coach. So I have a higher fee for me personally. I found that I need to do that as we scale because if not, I won't be able to serve everybody in the world. Like the process I created is the goal, not Anthony's brain per se. Uh the way it works is very simple. It's a it's the goal is to get us into a 90-day pocket of execution without having to lean on more courses, more works, more seminar. People feel this comfort in in reading and doing, like checking off boxes, filling PDFs in. And I go, it sounds good, but life is the classroom you need to be in. That's gonna present to you way more different situations and sharpening stones than you even imagine. So I gotta get you into a flow of executing for 90 days on a plan that makes you super uncomfortable, but we both know it's what you have to do. So before that, we spend four weeks doing a complete deep dive of your identity, unpacking where you're at, why you're there, what you have to do to adjust. We actually look at some research for different identity traits, uh, and then we put together a very clear action plan. It's like, this is what I'm going to do for 90 days. I'm gonna trust it, I'm gonna execute it, I'm not gonna have shiny object syndrome, like we're gonna rock and roll. And so what happens at four weeks is all the setup. Because a lot of people, they'll get into action, but halfway in, they're like, ah, is this the right stuff to do? They didn't plan it properly. And so I'm before we get there, I'm going, we're gonna be very clear. This is what you want. Yes, that's what it takes, right? Okay, we're gonna do this. I infuse it into the calendar like it's dialed. Then what we do is we rock and roll for literally 90 days. And the whole purpose of this is for you to get in and realize the first few weeks suck the most. It's new stuff, it's uncomfortable. I'm adding on top of my current life. I'm having to find ways to adapt and absorb and do things and deal with emotions I haven't dealt with. But these are the things that become the catalyst to who you have to be later on to have what you want to have. So we work through that. And there's always these little moments in time where people go, like, ah, I didn't get it done because of X, Y, and Z. And our team has coached very clearly to have a very simple piece of language. All right, do you want the excuse or the achievement? Because you don't get to have both. It's a moment to pause and stop and go, You gave me an excuse as to why this thing you promised you'd get done by this time didn't get done. The excuse could be good, but if the excuse outweighs you doing the action, then you've actually given up the uh the achievement you're saying you want. So which one's gonna fit? And I had them stop and process it, forces them to look at themselves and go, damn, maybe I do adjust stuff. And they go, but I'm busy, I got stuff going. And I go, okay, great. Do you admire somebody? Yeah. Who are they? And they give me a name, I go, if that person followed you around for a day, what would they say? You're doing a great job, just like me? Or would they go, hey, that's not good enough to have what you say you want. And so the idea is I'm I'm continually putting them back in front of the mirror of you said you wanted this, here's the actions. We need you to do them. If you don't do them, I'm not gonna be the coach that goes, It's okay, we'll get it next time. I go, No, this is the time. The next time doesn't exist. This is the time. Let's get that done. And we just keep pushing them back to it. And what happens is eventually. These things that we all know are needle movers. They'll be good for our business, but they're really hard to do. Eventually they become hard not to do because it's who you are to do it. An example I use is I've done a podcast episode every day or every weekday now for nine and a half years. And it's not something that I absolutely love doing every day. It was hard in the beginning. It was like, man, I got it every day, do a five, it's like five to seven minutes. I gotta record that new thought, keep going, get it to the team like every single day. Now I feel incredibly gross if I don't have that thing done by a certain time. Like if I have, if I've forgot about it for some reason, it makes me feel uncomfortable because it's it's just not who I am not to do it. It's harder not to do it than it is to actually do it at this point. When that becomes the way you function, everything in life lays down in front of you. Like you're able to execute it ways. People go, how do you do that every single month? Month, that's every day. Huh? Like if they're amazed at the idea of it, right? And so the idea it's it's this thing where you start to adapt to the things that are the things that have to be done to get what you want, but they're not pulling your teeth every day. Eventually, it's just, oh, that's easy. That's Wednesday, that's Thursday, we're just keeping rolling. And now you can add more and more on top, which is what the best people we know and most successful do, yourself included. I'm sure there's things you do now that at one point you're like, I can't do that. And there's also things you do that people look at you and go, man, Pedro, how do you get that done? You're like, how do you not? It's it's it's so simple now. It's allowed you to get that little system in place, you can stack more and more and more. You've probably got 50 things on top of it over the years, which makes you you, and then even more so, it's why success for some people looks easy. How come it looks so easy for him? Because it is. It's it's literally it is easy to do the same thing. But the simplest metaphor for people there is like if you ever go to a weight room and say you want to put into a bench press, you put you know, two big plates on the on the bar, and uh, I can't move it. All right, cool, you can't move it. Well, you eventually you just keep going to the weight room and you get to that point. Some folks leave the weight room. I can't lift it, leave the weight room. Why don't I have the strength? Well, you don't go to the weight room anymore. You build up to it. Here's the other part of it. Eventually, that two plates on each side becomes like three plates on each side, and you're moving the weight, no problem. That initial weight, it's a warm-up for you. It's easy to do that same weight. The weight hasn't changed, you've simply gotten stronger at it. So the idea is a lot of people looking at folks going, how you look it's so easy to you. Yes, I have built beyond what you stopped at. So that is now easy for me, and I can do much more.

Pedro Stein 24:30

Love that, man. Okay. Now I want to shift gears for a second here. I want to talk about future, right? So I'm curious about where you're taking all this, looking ahead. Where do you see the business going? Are you thinking about scaling, hiring? Is there a next step you're excited about, Anthony?

Anthony Trucks 24:45

Oh, for sure. Yeah, the the biggest thing for me is scaling. It's always been for like the last probably four or five years, always been B2B. So me on stages, me doing consulting and workshops, coaching executives. We now literally just got done building an entire new platform that replaces like a Kajabi or a ClickFunnels that is custom designed just for us. Like it's dope. I love this thing. Uh, and the purpose of it's I want to create like the dark work ecosystem, the world you step into, community, coaching, mastermind, all in one cohesive space, one platform where you have connection and teams and everything's AI driven to an extent of like tracking and helping you analyze yourself, habit tracking tools. Um, the idea is I want people to step out of the busyness of the world and go back to the to the beauty and falling in love with the grit and the grind. I think as a human society, we we've got to this point where everything, like, how fast, how easy, how simple can I make this? Like, but when you do that, you rob yourself of the true confidence that you need to create something that nobody sees. So I want to put people back into that that kind of that that cave with other people that are similar thinking to allow them to grow. Like, for example, we have a full app platform which shows up as an app where it's a community, and you join in and you can't, it's a whole process to get you into the groove of doing dark work. But when you choose to go into a one-on-one coaching experience, you elevate beyond that. We actually shut down your access to the community. And most people go, Why would you do that? I go, because I don't want you distracted. I want you to be in with your coach and doing the work, and that's your focus. It's gonna be lonely, and it should be. I want it to be like only you and your coach celebrating. And eventually, when you come back to the group, you can tell them what you got done. Because if not, we get lost in this whole like if I didn't, if they saw it on Instagram, it didn't happen. Like, that's not the faith, that's not true. Like, you need to do this for you. And so the purpose is to put you into a place where you understand that once you've gone out into the woods and done it on your own and come back, you have a complete different sense of confidence. Think of the uh you ever heard of the the the Greek, the the gogi that they used to do with the Spartans back in the day?

Pedro Stein 26:44

Expand, please. Might have, but expand.

Anthony Trucks 26:47

Yeah, you ever see you ever seen the movie 300? Yes. So the very beginning scene, it's this video, it's like a video, it's a movie, and it's a clip where it's talking about the young boy. Oh, they just talked about it. Yeah, and then it's like the he's you know, he's fighting his dad. He fights his dad in the arena, and at 14, he's ripped from his mother and shows the mom like so sad, her son's being pulled away and forced out into the woods, and he's cast off into the woods at 14 with himself and a spear, and he has to take on the world. It's like him and his crazy wolf, right? Uh-huh. And then he comes back, a king, right? The idea is like men and everybody have they have to go into these these um these crucibles. Men and women both, obviously. It's just an example of one, but you gotta go into a crucible where it's just you and you, right? The only person you got is you, and you build and and it just it it hardens you differ. Like, I'm in a marriage, I love my wife. What I build, I still build alone. Like she half the time didn't even support the idea of what I was doing until I bought her a car and she was like, damn, this is real. I'm like, Yeah, this is real. And so the idea is like you need to have those windows where you tuck away and it's just you and maybe your coach, and you're in the dark. That's why I call it dark work. Because once you feel confident in the dark, you are the biggest monster in the dark. When you step into the light, there's a different sense of swag and power and agency that no one can take from you. I cannot give that to you when it's a bunch of like, well done, you got it. I'm celebrating every single step of the way. Sometimes you getting the workout done doesn't need a friggin' round of applause. Just do it. It's what you committed to. You get to this point where you know, like, I am dope and I can walk into any room, head held high, doesn't make you smaller, but I can see you and go, yeah, you're like me. And that's what people don't grasp, that the individuals they they aspire to be like, that's what we all function like. I'm sure if I got into a space with you, there's a certain air of your confidence, not an arrogance and and like a sense of being, you wouldn't be rude to me, but I can look at you and go, like, yeah, I can see you've been through the battles. Like, all right, let's go. You know, we can have a chat at a different level. And we'll talk about those people at a level, not to dismantle them or make them feel bad, but go, damn, if they just did this, we know what the path is, but they won't follow it. And most of it's just get after the work, do it in the dark. There's not gonna be a round of applause for every small thing. But once you get that cadence going, you really just need you. I don't need someone to every day check in on me. I don't need accountability. I am my accountability because I said I'm gonna do the damn thing and it's who I am to do it. That's we help people build that 90-day window. So you exit that as not just I've achieved something, but I have become somebody better.

Pedro Stein 29:16

Fun you mentioned I watched a podcast the other day. I'm not sure it wasn't Joe Rogan, uh, but it was like they were talking about Navy SEALs, and then like a guy was at an airport and the other guy was too, and it was also a Navy SEAL, but they didn't knew each other, they just looked at each other and they had done it, like they kind of understood they weren't the same energy, same level. So it's funny you mentioned that. Yeah, totally, man. Um, 100% and I saw also, yeah, similar tracks. And I and and how important is that, right? The energy and how you present yourself. Like, I saw this reality, stupid reality show these days, and uh it was like 60 days in, it was called they kind of like normal folk and they threw it a can at the can, you know, jail and all that. And um, there were guys that were picked up on just because of the way they walked, they talk, like they didn't do anything, you know, out of the ordinary, but they looked like they exactly, and just the way the guy was like looking like his shoulders were like tucked in and looking like that, scared, and the guys were like all in on them. So that that is so true, you know. Now, I'm curious about one thing, right? You're in the middle of a launch, as it sounds like, your your new uh app and your new website and all that, moving out from Kajabi. And whenever we're doing something like that, next chapter, always something we're refining, right? In the present. So, what are you currently trying to improve or tighten up in your business right now?

Anthony Trucks 30:41

Oh, yeah, great question. So the biggest things we're looking at is the the stream from I want to simplify every step of the way from the first touch point, organic or paid, to getting up to speed on what we do and who we are to converting into what we do. A lot of people are trying to go through all these like 17 levels of take this setup, read this 70-page book, and then do this other thing here. And it's it's like I I'm finding that there's just too much for people to get to. So the refinement for us is they go, how quick and how clear can I go? Here's who we are, here's who we're for, here's what we do for you. Hop on a call chat and move in, and then from there, fulfill smooth. I look at this and go, I want to scale it. And it's not purposely scaling it to make money. Like obviously, it's a piece of it. I want to be able to have revenue that allows me to grow more and make my life what I want to be. Let's just let's not naive. I want to make a lot of money. I found that making a lot of money happens well when you serve people well. And I look at what the best, most profitable companies are, and they're simple, clean, and smooth. So for me, I'm trying to get rid of all the clunkiness, the extra heft we don't need to streamline Anthony Trucks exists, dark work exists, I need this if I'm this kind of person. I'm gonna hop on the phone, talk to these people. Once I get on, here's step one through whatever steps are there, and get the result looking for. So for us, there's a lot of little peace in there. Certain pieces of the team, right? I gotta look at who's our onboarding fulfillment. What does that system look like to when they get signed up and they know exactly what's coming? Then they do that portion. There's no handoff issues, no communication issues. Um, also the front end, how can I get this in front of the most amount of lives possible? Which means I have to be able to spend. And if I spend, but I have 70 steps to get to actually being a client, then the ability to spend and recoup that to put back into ad spend diminishes. So I'm going, how do I make sure we're we're better on the content and better on the conversion tools and better on our calls and clear on the ICP, helping them get clear we're for them, those little pieces of refinement. So for us, it's to get down like a four-step funnel. Ad, landing page, book a call, hold the call. That's it. In between are some nuance, but that's all I want to get to, and I want to get damn good at that. So we can drive a lot more people in, and then from there, fulfill to where every person feels if you have a thousand people in, I want them to feel like the only one still. That's the hard thing. How do I make sure they're part of a process, part of a system? Who do I hire? Um, how do I train them? Even in advance, how do I make sure as I'm ramping things up? I ramp team up properly. Because I might have an influx, but if I can't handle the influx of like 50 new people, that's 50 pissed off people. I don't want that. How do I get more people in? Which means also, how do I ramp people up better? I got to have better onboarding systems for our team. So, like, hey, when you join on, what's my three to five day process that that person go from they have never met me before to they know what we do, how we do it in a condensed tight window. So all these little things are the pieces that we're tightening to make sure the brand can grow properly over time.

Pedro Stein 33:25

Love that, man. On the tactical level, I love that. Now, let's uh venture a little bit here on a sci-fi territory, if you don't mind. Okay. Uh love for us to have like, let's pretend we have a time machine in front of us. You can step in and you can go back nine years in time when you opened shop, right? Your coaching business, and you can give yourself one piece of business advice that you know now that you wish you knew back then. What would that be?

Anthony Trucks 33:55

It's simple, which is I'm glad it's simple. It is one thing for one person for one year. Like, what is the thing I'm doing that's a that's a solution to a problem? Big piece. In the beginning, we just I was making things to make things, and that was a problem. What I've now come to find is I need to create a solution that productize the solution. That's it. Most people don't do. They go and go, I want to make this. I think we should all do breath work. Okay, great. What is the problem that it's solving? What is the breath work problem? Like it's that's a tool. What is it solving for a specific person? So it's like, hey, what's the one thing I'm doing? Who am I doing it for? Which is when I approach them, it should solve their problem and focus on it for a year doing one thing. The reason is most folks want to spend their time building something, launch it, doesn't work, build something new. Doesn't work, build something new. And like you're not building it right, first off. And secondly, even if you spend all the time to build it, when you put it to the world, that is never gonna, it's never gonna survive the first pass. There's always gonna be problems. And if you jump ship at that moment and keep doing it again, you're never gonna leave that stage. So the idea is once I know what my solution is and I productize it and I deliver it to that person, I now have to trudge through the mud of unhappy customers, um, feedback I don't like, you know, little nuance for optimization, but once you do that and focus on it for a year, you come out the backside and you're a weapon. Every person I've known that's done this, and when I finally did this, because I probably took a good four or five years of bouncing around, making a bunch of courses and not really launching stuff, and it didn't work to me. Try something new, maybe that'll hit. And it's like, no, the the actual successes and the optimization, which is the suckiest part of it. The build is fun and easy. Here's my website business cards, logos, colors. I'm gonna film a video, right? Now I gotta go. Can I sell this to somebody and make them pay me for it? If they don't buy it, I feel a certain way. How do I get past that? How do I fix it? How do I get better at that? That's the dance. And so if I can go back in time, I tell that guy, one thing, one demographic, one year.

Pedro Stein 35:54

You're going full circle, buddy. Like you're mentioning uh it's about showing up, it's about the the the twos, not the tens, like the nines. It's like about well, it's about consistency, as it sounds like, right? Showing up, doing the thing, doing the work. Now, second stop for time machine, okay. You can go back in time. You can, I mean, you may have several moments, but I want I want the top of mind, okay, that looking back in those nine years, it's that type of moment that you're like, oh, this is why I started this. This makes sense now, right? It's like a fulfilling moment. What would that be?

Anthony Trucks 36:35

I'd probably say there's a lot of them. First top of mind is my wife and kids, and I just got back from a trip to Europe three days ago, something like that. We were in Europe, and we were, I mean, it was a it wasn't a cheap trip. We're talking on the way there, five people lay flat seats to London from SFO. They're in back, first class stuff. Um, we're staying in nice hotels, eating good food. Not even look at the I'm not even looking at what I'm spending on stuff, just doing my thing. And what was beautiful about it is the return we got back, and it's like I'm my bank, I'm not worried about the bank account. And on top of that, I have happy customers and clients who were sending messages, work with the team, the company's running, the team's holding the meetings without me present. The beautiful thing is I got into this because I wanted people's lives to be better from what I did and my life be better from what I do. That was it. Can I can I do something that people love that I love doing? And so I had this ability to have a very good trip that I could afford for my kids, to experience a part of the world that I didn't ever get to experience until this age, right? They're not even 18 years old. They're over here with at Rome and London and Paris seeing things that like I thought were never touchable. And for me to give that to my kids is great, but I gave it to them because I've given my heart to my clients and serve them well. And it's a good marriage. So when I look at this, this is why I got into it to have the freedom and the ability to do what I want in that free time. Love that.

Pedro Stein 37:58

Okay. Now, if someone listening wants to connect with your follow-up, Anthony, and we're gonna have all the links in the description here, but what's the best way for people to find you and your business and connect?

Anthony Trucks 38:09

Yeah, if you uh Anthony Trucks on Instagram, literally just Anthony Truck at Anthony Trucks or Darkwork.com or Anthony Trucks.com. Those places we can find out what we do, how we do it, go down the rabbit hole of the work we do. Okay.

Pedro Stein 38:21

You know, I feel the urge to highlight a few moments from this chat today. Okay, allow me to do so. I'll let let's start with the origin story, right? You opened up saying it was accidental. You went to that event and you drank the Kool-Aid, as you mentioned. So cool. Um, and also about how the the mindset, the NFL mindset that that shaped also the coach you are today, um, working on the doing the dark work, as you call it, right? Um, then we move to you coming to the realization that you cannot change your life in one hour, right? So that is so interesting because you're coming from a different perspective that I see a lot of coaches, which is oh, I'm kept, I want to do a one-to-many so I can scale myself, but not necessarily with you. We're talking about purpose, you're talking about scaling the impact itself because you want to help more people. And I love that because the agenda is not backwards. I see a lot of people out there with uh and uh a backwards agenda, which is oh, I want to take my family to Europe, Europe. Okay, that's great, but you're only there because it's not backwards, it's because you care about your clients, it's because you put them need their needs in front of you, right, all the time. So that is pretty cool to watch. Um that is also another thing that that popped to my mind, which is it's tied to that too. It's like making a lot of money. Like when we were talking, um, but you mentioned it's serving people, but you only make a lot of money if you serve people first. So it's the same stuff at the end of the day, you know. Um, and that I felt like in my my skin, that that really hits home when I wasn't sales. Like in sales, sometimes it's very transactional, it's very, oh, close rate, KPIs, blah, blah, blah. But the real shift is when you understand you're in that call to serve people, not necessarily to close them. Closing them is like a consequence that will help help happen if you help people and if you're the right fit as well, but it's not necessarily the reason I'm on that call, you know? And then the that changed the energy, your vibe, people pick up on that. So this was just my long-winded way of saying that. I appreciate what you do, and I appreciate being here and shared so openly today. It was great having you, man, Anthony. Thank you, man. I appreciate hanging out with you too.

Davis Nguyen 40:46

That's it for this episode. This episode, as well as this podcast, was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help business owners elevate their business through six, seven, and eight figure years, all without burning out. If you're looking to grow your business as well as get the time freedom that you are looking for, visit us at join purplecircle.com and see what we can do to help you and your business.