ANTHONY TRUCKS: “I would not have been able to create the experience of their childhood opposite of mine without entrepreneurship.
“And so for me, being in this realm, what I realized is these three things are the most critical, I’m going to tell you right now, that tie into my ability to love my life the way I do now and to have created the who I am. For me, I went and said, ‘Who do I want to be?’ Not what I want to do, but who do I want to be? That's a great statement, and it goes—and I might have said it already. I can't recall—but the first achievement is difficult. The next one is inevitable because it's who you become along the journey of the first achievement that you maintain so you can continue to achieve at that level.
“So for me, the goal has always been to say, ‘What is the thing I want to achieve? And then, who must I become to get that?’ And then in that, I go, ‘What experiences must I experience to be able to rewire myself to achieve that over and over and over again?’”
INTRO: I’m Amy Porterfield, ex-corporate girl turned CEO of a multi-seven-figure business. But it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the confidence, the budget, and the time to focus on growing my small-but-mighty business. Fast forward past many failed attempts and lessons learned, and you'll see the business I have today, one that changes lives and gives me more freedom than I ever thought possible, one that used to only exist as a daydream. I created the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast to give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies to help you do the same. If you're an ambitious entrepreneur, or one in the making, who's looking to create a business that makes an impact and a life you love, you're in the right place, friend. Let's get started.
AMY PORTERFIELD: Well, hey, there, friend. Welcome to a special Monday episode. Now, if you’re an O.G. you’re thinking, “What the heck? An episode on a Monday? What is going on?” Well, I'm so glad you asked, because this is a very fun and exciting week. We are kicking off a week of gratitude and giving.
Remember Oprah's Big Give? Remember years ago, she'd give away, like, “You get a car. You get a car”? Well, let's not get a little too wild here. I'm not giving away cars. However, I wanted to do something along the lines of something fun like that and put my own twist on it, because I am feeling really grateful.
I'm grateful for you. I'm grateful that you hang out with me each week, for being a part of this entrepreneurial journey with me. I'm grateful that you are saying yes to something that gets you excited, which is building your business and creating your courses, and doing all the things. I'm just so grateful I get to be a little part of your journey, and if I can support you any step of the way, I am here for it.
So this week we're doing something a little different for my week of gratitude and giving. And who knows? Maybe this might become an annual thing and get bigger and better every single year. Spoken like a true entrepreneur, right?
So each day this week, Monday through Thursday, I'm going to release a podcast episode featuring a very special clip from some of my entrepreneurial friends. You'll hear from Anthony Trucks. He's a new friend. He blows my mind. He is so incredibly valuable. Jasmine Star, who you know is on speed dial with me all the time, so I want to share her greatness with you. And then, my friend Glo Atanmo, who always brings the heat, always inspires and makes you feel like you can do anything.
And they're going to share something that entrepreneurship has given to them. So they've recorded specific episodes for you. And again, they're going to share what entrepreneurship has actually given to them and why they are grateful for it. And my goal is to get you thinking about all the things: the experiences, the freedoms that entrepreneurship has brought you and why you're so grateful, too, because I know it's been tough. I know you've had setbacks. I know you deal with the challenges because you all share them with me. And I was thinking, you know, when you're down in the dumps, when things are hard, when things aren't clicking, you've heard people say, “Get grateful.” Like, if you're grateful, you can't be sad. If you're grateful, you can't be stuck. If you're grateful, you see the light. And what better time than right now to focus on feeling grateful, right?
So the fun's not going to stop there, though, because I haven't even shared the whole giving part of this experience this week. So you're going to hear from my friends, and they're going to light up your world. But I'm giving away a grand prize to one lucky person. So that grand prize includes a one-year subscription to the Full Focus Planner—you know how I feel about that—a six-month membership to Social Curator, and you're going to get a signed copy of my book, Two Weeks Notice, plus all the bonuses that I'm sharing for anybody who preorders my book. So you're going to get the Side Hustle starter kit, the Ultimate Side Hustle Checklist, ten side-hustle scripts. You're going to get the Five-Day Mindset Reset, a ticket to my VIP virtual event for the book, like, all these really cool bonuses, so that’s included with the signed copy of my book. A membership to GrowthDay. And to wrap this up in a big cozy hug—now, don't laugh at me, but you're going to love this. If you don't have one, you're going to thank me later—you're also going to get the best blanket in the world: a Barefoot Dreams blanket. I can't give you the entrepreneurial journey without it. If you already have one, either you're going to keep it for another room or gift it to a friend who needs one. But if you don't already have one, I will change your life. Okay, a little dramatic, but I will. Just get ready. Plus, I'm giving away some fun prizes to five runner ups, so we'll be announcing every winner this Friday, December 2.
So, how do you get entered to win in this special week? Well, each episode I release this week will have a different way of entering, which will include a new gratitude challenge each day. At the end of each episode, I'll share what you can do that day to get entered. Every day you participate, you get another entry. So the more you participate, the more your chances are that you're going to be the big grand-prize winner.
So, in today's episode, you're going to hear from Anthony Trucks. After that, stick around to hear how to get entered today. And then check back tomorrow for some gratitude from my girl, Jasmine Star, along with how to enter tomorrow by completing the gratitude challenge. All right. So let's get to it and kick it off with Anthony Trucks.
ANTHONY: Hey, there. My name is Anthony Trucks, and I am actually genuinely excited at the opportunity to speak with you today. Now, I know you have an amazing life you're living, and you want to be more amazing, and so you're spending time improving yourself. So kudos to you.
Now, I am a former NFL athlete, an American Ninja Warrior on NBC, but I'm also a speaker, author, and a coach, and I teach people how to make shift happen, which is, we’ll remove the F and you get what it means. And so in our time today, I'm going to make sure that when you are done with me sharing with you, you're going to have some insights you can actually apply to your life in real time to make shift happen.
And really, it boils down to a couple things: setting your own skill and understanding what that means. Also, being able to weave in parts of your actions into a life that allow you to build what you want outside of the judgments of other people. But really, how to create a control for yourself and to rebuild who you see yourself to be. That's a key piece of it. My work is in identity, and making shift happen is about making an identity shift. And I'm not going to go deep in that with us today, but I really want you to realize I'm going to teach you some stuff right now that if you apply it, at least even absorb it and let it come through you—we’ll call it through osmosis—it'll be a game changer for your life years from now.
So for me, I came from an environment where my life wasn't that great. So if you’re going to know why identity is my thing, it might help for you to know kind of who I am. And so at three years old, I was given away into foster care. I experienced a lot of torture and starvation and abuse that kind of took a sense of self-worth out of my soul. My own mom didn't want me. I had three siblings. I had no idea where they were located. And I went through this world that was designed to really put us in bad places. In fact, in prison, 75% of prison inmates in America are former foster kids like me. So I was not set up for great things in any way, shape, or form. I identified at that age, as this kid who didn't matter, and so when you feel like you don't matter, nothing else matters to you. And that was my experience of life.
And I went through this journey to get to this point of where now I am a speaker on stages across the world. I get to share the stage with people like Tony Robbins and Magic Johnson and Rob Lowe, even Nicole Kidman. It's crazy. And so I get to do amazing things, write books, and be on Good Morning America. And it's great, but it's not the norm. And so when people look at me, they go, “I don't know how you got to that point. Like, how in the world did you kind of cross that chasm, to go from this kid that should have statistically been tucked away in the world or doing crime, and you're now this person serving at a high level?” And I go, “There's a way, and I'm going to talk to you about that way now.”
So for me, what I've realized is identity is a big piece of who we see ourselves to be. And if we're talking about this week's about gratitude and being grateful, it's really being grateful for who you are and who you've built yourself to be to now. I know that all of us in life, we have become somebody. And identity, in my definition, is who you are when you are not thinking about who you are. It's your state of instinctual flow, we'll call it. And that state’s a beautiful state. And the idea is that has been created through experiences that you've had in life that have taught you about things, whether it's love or finances or what's possible and what your beliefs may be. It's rooted in things that you've experienced.
And for me, my experience as a young kid was, I'm not worth much. But I was able to shift that over time. And the way that I did it was I kind of ran full force into the world, which most of us do, right? We just kind of go crazy, and we don't realize that sometimes we're going the wrong direction or we're going with the wrong people or we're taking the wrong path to begin with, right?
So for me, I had to take a look at my life. And as I progressed through it, at one point, I got to a really interesting head. And I’m going to fast forward heavily because I don't want to spend time on me. I want to spend time teaching you from my life.
So I had gone through foster care. At fourteen, I was adopted. I got a chance to play football for the first time. I was horrible but figured out how to get really good. Fast forward. I got a scholarship, after four years of playing high-school football, to go play football at the University of Oregon. Played there as a Duck. Had my kid my sophomore year of college, my very first child, my oldest. Met my father for the first time, my biological father, my sophomore year of college. Married my high-school sweetheart, who went to this school with me, and that was the mother of my child. Got a chance to play in the NFL. Was blessed at an amazing, you know, situation there until I had an injury. Came home, had a couple more kids, lost myself completely.
I had got to the edges of my current identity’s ability to master my life. It's a big piece. I had got to the edge of my current identity’s ability to master my life. See, all of us have these identities that have been crafted, created, built. We've gone through stuff. And you either have these moments where you have shifted on demand or when crap hits the fan. See, most of us, like me, my life hit the fan over and over. I kept shifting. I kept growing. I kept expanding. But I got to a point in time where my body and my mind and my identity could not progress into the next stage. So I kind of botched my life.
Next thing I know, I'm divorced. I have three kids that are not living with me. I'm living in a five-hundred-square-foot studio apartment all after the NFL when I had lost my career. I had a gym business that was never really, truly successful for a long time. And I had to figure out, how do I fix this?
And so what I did is I went through a three-year hiatus of being divorced and navigating things to finally figure my life out. And when I did, I was able to find this beautiful space where I could take on the world and create something different. And I did it through entrepreneurship, genuinely, because I believe, at the end of the day, you have to have control to be able to create. If I don't have control, I can't create. I can think, and I can talk, and I can tell someone what to do, but if I have no control, I can’t create. And entrepreneurship gave me a control.
Now, I was in an interesting situation, where I had a life that was of value to people, if I could frame it in a way to provide value. So I did that painstakingly, vulnerably. But I leaned in, and I taught things. The more I taught, the more I shared, the more I opened up, it was cathartic for me but serving to other people. It allowed me to create revenue from speaking on stages or coaching people through processes. And it also allowed me to upgrade my identity, and I did it through experience.
See, the cool thing for all of us is we don't realize that experience is that thing that rewires the brain. Your brain is plastic. It has neuroplasticity, meaning you can actually rewire pleasure centers and focus and productivity by the way that you experience your life.
Now, when life is adjusting because, you know, crap hits the fan, it's hard to rewire intentionally. However, if you get to a point where you do it on demand, with intention, you can create the kind of outcome you desire. So for me, in this window of time, I said, “I want to take control, and I want to venture into really honing in my skills as an entrepreneur.” And I did so. And the more I did, the more I created a sense of self that has an elevated identity, that says, “I am a guy that speaks and shares and serves at a high level, and I change people's lives.” And it creates this impact in the world. And what I noticed is it gives me freedom like I never have had before.
See, the most important things for me are family: the family of clients I have, family of friends I have, but also my immediate family. I have three children. I love them beyond words. My oldest is in college now. My twins are thirteen. They're experiencing life. I coach. I have all these cool things, but I would not have been able to create the experience of their childhood opposite of mine without entrepreneurship.
And so for me, being in this realm, what I realized is these three things are the most critical, I’m going to tell you right now, that tie into my ability to love my life the way I do now and to have created the who I am. For me, I went and said, “Who do I want to be?” Not what I want to do, but who do I want to be? That's a great statement, and it goes—and I might have said it already. I can't recall—but the first achievement is difficult. The next one is inevitable because it's who you become along the journey of the first achievement that you maintain so you can continue to achieve at that level.
So for me, the goal has always been to say, “What is the thing I want to achieve? And then, who must I become to get that?” And then in that, I go, “What experiences must I experience to be able to rewire myself to achieve that over and over and over again?”
And for me, the big thing is I wanted always to create a life for my kids that was different from mine. I wanted to be present. I wanted to be loving. I wanted to be there. And so what I did is I did the first thing, I set my own scale. I am in season of dad, meaning I don't want anything to interfere with my ability to be a present, loving, caring father. So the first thing is season of dad, set your scales. The world can’t make you feel bad for not reaching the world’s scale.
The second thing is schedule time to meet that scale’s level. For me, every morning, my son, my youngest son and I take at 6:25 a walk to the top of the hill. We do gratitude. We do prayer. We come back down. Do a two-minute dive in a forty-eight-degree cold plunge. And we do a ten-minute led meditation. I have this in my schedule. I spend time making sure I am experiencing something with my son so that relationship is dialed.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, my thirteen-year-old daughter and I, we get a workout in our home gym. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I spend time experiencing this moment with her. So I'm creating this identity for both of us that we do hard things, and we do them together.
And the last part is what I call doing dark work. You must do things in the dark that no one sees, that are unsupportive, that allows you to shine in the light as your new identity. Have you ever felt imposter syndrome in any way? It’s because you haven't done enough dark work, behind the scenes, unsexy, unsupported, difficult work, that when you emerge to the light, you will compete for what you deserve in life with conviction. For me, it's also all tied to an experience.
So I hope you can take that away from today. Spend time setting your own scale, schedule time to make sure that scale’s levels get met, and be prepared to do the dark work that no one's going to celebrate you for but you, knowing that that is really all you need.
Take care, and always make shift happen in your life.
AMY: Isn't he incredible? That man can get me into a good state, like, instantly.
Okay, so now for the details on how to get entered into our giveaway. This is how you get entered today. Remember, every day you can do a new entry. So you're going to take a snapshot of this episode—however you want to take that snapshot. Get as creative as you want—take a snapshot of this episode; head over to Instagram; share it to your Instagram Story; tag me: @amyporterfied; and share what you're grateful for. And then, just use the hashtag #ommegratitude. So that's just Online Marketing Made Easy—#ommegratitude. Also, if you head over to today's show notes, or the link in the description, wherever you're listening to this, and download the image we provided for you there, you could just follow those same steps as well. So we're going to make it really easy. On Instagram, we’ll tell you how to enter as well.
But just one more time: take a snapshot; post it on Instagram Stories; tag me; and then, just use the hashtag #ommegratitude; and just write one thing that you're grateful for. Easy as that. It’ll take you five minutes. All right, it will get you entered into the grand prize of a year’s subscription of the Full Focus Planner; six months into Social Curator, which is Jasmine Star’s program. It is so good. You'll get a signed copy of my book Two Weeks Notice and all the bonuses that come with it; a membership to GrowthDay; and my very favorite Barefoot Dreams blanket.
So thanks for joining me for another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast, and I'll see you tomorrow.
