Former NFL Player's Story is For Anyone Who Feels Overwhelmed By Life Right Now | Anthony Trucks

Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. Today's guest is former NFL star and American Ninja Warrior Anthony Trucks. His journey to becoming a star athlete though is a crazy one. He was given up to foster care at the age of three, endured beatings, starvation, and forms of torture. But, he was ultimately adopted and raised as the only black person in a loving, albeit poor, all white family. He struggled to find his way through high school, but found sports, but also became a teen parent, then married his high school sweetheart, found his biological father at 21, but then had his NFL career cut tragically short by a devastating injury, but he then started a business, but it almost failed. Had twins at 25, but discovered his wife was having an affair, got a divorce, lost his adopted mother and father, contemplated suicide, but didn't. Bounced back, remarried his ex-wife, and took what he had learned from his previous business, and has now created a new and thriving business called Modified Identity, teaching others how to navigate the crazy shifts that we all have to learn how to deal with. Anthony, welcome to the show, dude. Hey, thanks for having me, man. You got You got it down. You do it better than I do, Tom. Dude, your journey is insane It's insane. Like legitimately, especially the stuff in your early life is is really crazy. You used the word torture. Um that is that is so hard to deal with. You and I know each other. Um I've seen you off camera a lot. You are so light and loving. How the hell is that true? Given what you've been through. Man, that's a question I'm trying to figure out every day, I think, which is beautiful cuz it's part of my work, right? But, if I go back to the roots of it, I think it's because I know what could have been my life. It It It's pushed me in a place to every day be grateful. Like I have three kids now, right? One's 15, I got 10-year-old twins, and it still amazes me that they're in my home with me. As odd as it may seem for a lot of people, like that's a unique aspect. And so What do you Give Give me clarity on that. What do you mean that they're in your home with you? That it's not a broken family? Not that it's a broken family, but my norm I had So that was him and my daughter and I was I was like hugging her and you know, playing up like I told my wife I said, I will never know what it's like to have that warmth from my father. Like I'll never like I'm so close to them yet so emotionally distant from their experience. And so for me it's like I'm I'm presently aware of the world I live in and and I always choose like I know what took place. And if you look at statistics, any prison in America 75% of the inmates are former foster kids. 50% of the homeless population former foster kids. Like 1% of us graduate college. So statistically I know I'm not supposed to have done you know, anything I'm doing we'll call it on paper. And so I'm presently aware of like, man, this is my real life. Like every day it's like this is great. Like I enjoy it. And I have my ups and downs, man. Obviously there's a lot that are within that. But then I also realized that a lot of my anger was was carried because of what people had done to me, right? What my mom had did to me, my dad not being present, my wife having an affair, like all these things. And then I got to a point where as I got older I realized unfortunately a lot of people weren't given tools to work through life well. So I got to the point of having a true forgiveness when I realized that the actions they took weren't malicious to hurt me. It was like they just were doing the best they could and I happened to be affected negatively. That gave me a lot of release and I've been like a joyous person ever since, man. I'm so happy guy. That's interesting and and I'd love to paint the picture because I think it would be easy and if I'm really honest, dude, my initial inclination was to just assume that you had a naturally positive disposition. But when I heard you talk about actually no, when I was growing up I was I was angry and there was aggression. I don't know how much you and I have talked about this by the way. So I worked with a kid that was in foster care. So my audience has probably heard this story too many times. so it to you really fast, but I to get extra credit in college, I went to USC, which is in the middle of the inner city, South Central Los Angeles, just one of the worst school districts in the country, a terrible neighborhood. And so of course they give you the most problematic child. And when you had talked about being one of those problematic kids, I was like, "Whoa, I know what that looks like up close." This kid was tiny, but he was so aggressive, and he would just go punch people for no reason, which for me was like, I having grown up in a loving home, not having had much with people that had been in foster care previous to that, Yeah. it it was so startling to me. So I was that kid, man. I was that. I mean, sixth grade I got in 16 fights in the sixth grade. And I didn't it didn't really I wasn't allowed to go to summer camp because I was a flight risk. Like I was a problem. Wasn't in trouble time, like we just don't want this guy in the woods cuz we don't know what could take place. So I was that kid, man. I just I had a lot of pent-up anger. And what's even worse is throughout the system, I was never allowed to actually play any sports until I was 14 because my real mom had what's called parental rights. So she can make decisions on whether or not I did things. Even though you were in foster care? Exactly. So she didn't live there, but she was she's also just a pathological liar. She's a little bit mentally not there. And so she would make up these excuses. At one point, she blamed my foster parents for me being in foster care. It's a very weird dynamic. So my life for a lot of years was I had a lot of weird back and forth emotional issues with her and what she would lie about, like she wouldn't go to visitation, she'd make excuses. So I had a lot of energy there, and then I didn't feel like I fit cuz of how I looked in my household or at school. And so I had that same energy, man. It was just this really it's a dark cloud. Like it just it covers all base of your life and you get used to it. It's almost a normalcy inside of that craziness. It sucks. Now, when you say it's a dark cloud, what's the it being the outsider, not feeling like you fit in, or what do you mean by that? Imagine every day waking up feeling like you're like in just cold water all day. Like just discomfort. Cuz I didn't have I didn't have like a home. My three siblings, I didn't know where they were at. My real mom was just she's gone. So she'd do things like, you know, pack a bag, wait by the window, I'll be there 8:00 to pick you up. And as a foster kid, all you want to do is go back with your family, whether or not they're good or not. And so I'd sit there and cry myself to sleep every night when she would do this. I'd wet the bed like with no like miss I'd always wet the bed that night. So like at 14 years old, I'm still wetting the bed every night she'd do this. So I just had this this dark emotional cloud of like never feeling comfort. Just I I got bathed in a craze is what I tell people cuz you just you go through the days of just knowing like this doesn't feel good, but you get used to it. And that's where you're asking, how do you have joy? Like I still know what that feeling is like. So the fact that I'm not there, it's like, oh, I feel so much better. Yeah, that that's interesting and it's interesting to me that it came from a realization that they were doing the best that they could. I think that people break into sort of two camps. One, you have all right, people have done me wrong and so I want to see them punished for that. And then you have people who are like, all right, that that isn't going to serve me. Pursuing that it's not even about them. Like I'm not the one of the coolest things that I heard and I don't even remember where I heard this and I'm going to paraphrase, but like that forgiveness isn't about the other person, it's about you, right? 100%. And how old were you when you when that clicked for you? 32. Oh [ __ ] so this is recent. Oh yeah, man. I'm talking like 4 years ago. I So I just happened to meet you after you had made this switch? Yeah, a couple years after. 100 Yeah, yeah, about 2 or 3 years after. Now now we have to get into some really interesting [ __ ] How much of you what you've accomplished as an athlete is really [ __ ] extraordinary. And I've heard you talk about putting a chip on your shoulder. This is something that I talk um to people a lot about. It's what I call the advanced class. So the the basic [ __ ] is work hard, be diligent, do your thing, know why you're doing it, right? Focus on the light side. And I and I really think people should spend 80% of their time Yes, soft stuff. People should spend 80% of their time there. It's It's far more beautiful. It It lifts you up. It's elevating. Mhm. But when I think, Anthony, about the times where I like what was it that separated me from people who were smarter than me or that had more of a leg up than me, it was dude, I had a chip on my shoulder. I was not prepared to let people be right about me. All the people that doubted me, all the people that thought that I was just going to marshmallow my way through life. Like I really like was [ __ ] that. I'm going to do something. I'm going to do something extraordinary. And it was it was in the hardest times that I would rely on the sort of um the element of like a dark energy. Yeah. I'm curious to know how much of that propelled you to greatness. Yeah, man. I uh a heavy amount of it. Because it's it's it's kind of like you said, right? There's the the aspect that it all feels good and I'm driving for this stuff you can put on paper, but it's it's different when you have those moments. And as a statement of my work I say, it's what you create creates you. And when I was 15, I actually pretty much checked out. Like at 14, 15, I was like, I suck at football. My mom got diagnosed with MS before I lost her, you know, 17 years later. My older brother went to the military and I chalked it up and I was done. And I remember this girl in Mr. Howell's English class made the statement and the statement was was simple, but to me it was powerful. She said, "The reason I'm so bad is because I'm in foster care." And it wasn't anything more than her saying an excuse out loud that I had been saying inside and I just heard like it sounds stupid. Like that's going to be an excuse because I had no control of the situation, but that directs my life to be a criminal, to be checked out. And so I had this desire like I'm just going to do what great people do. And it was players, right? Great athletes. I want to be a football player. So this is where this chip started coming and getting built. I spent like every single day like I sat in my backyard football near 500 times. I ran every route I could. I lifted every weight I could. No idea what I was doing, but every day I got to this point where like I stacked and stacked and stacked to where like when I showed up the next year, Tom, you couldn't take this from me. Like you're not going to catch this ball. This is my ball to catch. You're not going to catch it. I'm going to knock it down. You're not going to tackle me. You don't deserve this today. And I'm going to tackle you cuz you don't get to you don't get the right to run away from me. And it was just this this sense of like I earned this. I own this. You don't get to take this from me. And that's where that darkness kind of picked picked in. But I you can't have that until you do that dark work. And I think people want to get there and be like, "Oh, I did a couple things." Like, no, no, no. Like, it ain't about a couple things. It's about this deeply seated rooted sense of you where you do not have the right to take this future from me. And so that became this driver for me of every day like I wasn't at 25 when I was, you know, in the NFL. I wasn't playing because of the day before. I was playing because of 10 years earlier. Like, you know, I did this work, bro. You don't get to make this tackle on me. You know, you don't get to get you like you don't get to block me today. And that's this this this compounding effect over time that just built this I have that still. Like people think like, "Oh, he's happy." And I'm happy guy. Don't get it twisted though, man. When it comes to work, there's like that switch that has to flip on. But that's where it does come from that dark. You have to pull from the things that motivate. It's not always a joyous spot for me. Sometimes it's looking at my kids and realizing like, man, I could have it way worse. Or looking at like my past and saying, you know, and I and this is truth for me. At this age of my life, I'm very aware that I I want to be desired. I want to be wanted. But the thing is it's because of a childhood thing. My mom didn't want me. Like, you know, my mom didn't care for me. And so because of that when I show up now, it's like I do these things, but I'm doing them because I'm serving people to get the thank yous that make me feel desired. So it's a weird I call it I call it weird sense of selfishness. Like, I selfishly want your thank you. I want you to say I appreciate you and thank you. But I only get that when I show up big and heavy to serve you. And that serve it isn't always from joy, man. Sometimes it's from like I don't want to get off this planet and and have a drip drop left in me. Dude, that that is that's some deep [ __ ] So, I don't know how much you've looked into Buddhism. Um I have a very conflicted relationship with it. And and I want to be very clear. I have a surface level understanding of Buddhism. I do not claim to have like some deep theological or spiritual understanding of Buddhism, but I went into Eastern religion really hard as a teenager and in my early 20s. I self-identified as a Daoist for a while. That just there was something about the way that they approached the world that I found very compelling, which was all an echo of Yoda for me, which was sort of how I got obsessed with that ideology. And one of the things though that always made me stop short of really embracing Buddhism was the sense of trying to transcend the mud of the human existence. And I wondered I now I can put the words to it. How much of this was really conscious in my mind in my early 20s I won't speak to, but now looking back I realize the energy that you get from [ __ ] that I'm not leaving life without having spent everything is the thing that made me look at all suffering is born of desire. I'm actually willing to embrace that, right? The the whole Buddhist notion that merely wanting something is what causes the pain when you're unable to achieve it. And when you achieve that you're always going to want to achieve the next thing and and so it becomes this sort of vicious cycle. But it also means that I am I am bringing my will to the table and what I will define as the the entire meaning of life is to see how much of your potential you can turn into actual usable tangible skill set, right? Which to me is what your journey is really been about is like I'm actually I have all this raw potential as this skinny kid because I'm sure people just assume that you're naturally built like a truck, but of course you were not. And you put all this time and energy into getting faster, stronger, tougher. And that equates to, you know, a career that only a few hundred people at any one time are able to have in the NFL. So it's it's, you know, this really extraordinary transition of potential to actual ability. And I found that if I didn't want something with an almost uncomfortable level of obsessive desire, I I didn't push myself hard enough to get all the way there. So, I was able to look at Buddhism and go, "I get it. I agree with you that the suffering is coming from my desire to be something more than I am, to have more than what I have." Yeah. But, also the cool [ __ ] in my life comes from just knowingly bathing in that like Yeah. desire and how it it fills you. It's uh It's a different kind of drive. You know what it is? I think a lot of people genuinely are scared of that. Like, I don't I don't think they're separate for a lot of people. This is what the work I do now. It's not the tools and techniques. It's like, is the technician sound? Can the technician dive into those waters? And the people hear it all day long. Like, oh, you got to work harder, do crazy stuff. But, like, because of my upbringing and like being comfortable in that we'll call it that darkness. And then, in football, you're you're bathed in discomfort every play. Like, you're just every play it's someone running at you. They want to hit you as hard as they can. After a while, it's like you find a sense of ease within it. And so, like you're talking about if it doesn't make me uncomfortable to the point of like I got to pull on that, I feel uncomfortable. It's a weird level. So, where most people are have discomfort, I find a grace in a comfort. I I like it. It's weird. And it's it's like, lo and behold, they're successful. It's not an accident. It's like, I spent more time where you don't want to go. But, when you can go to that place and get used to it and get comfortable with it, it's like your demons become your assets. They become your allies. And it doesn't have to always be bad. I'm not coming out of the world and being mean or negative when I do it. Sometimes it's me sitting back like showing up like, I got to I got to work my tail off today. I got to show up even when I'm tired. I'm on a road trip right now. I'm going to show up for people still, right? Like, there's a a sense of push, but it's not it's not this thing where you can always be comfortable. I had I So, you know, I had an argument with my wife yesterday navigating this whole thing here. But, like I'm good with that. Like, I cuz I know I know this is where I get to show up the best, right? And so, when people are trying to seek that comfort at all times to get the success, you're automatically set yourself up for failure. Try to find the things that make you incredibly uncomfortable and get normalized to it. That uh yeah, I think there's a lot of power in that. One thing that I am curious about is why do you think that when you have this um hurt or anger or sense of rejection, that it manifests as anger or aggression? Um it seems pretty universal. And even when you put it in context of what's happening right now with people lashing out between peaceful protest versus rioting versus looting. Like I mean, there is there is definitely a sense of like, "Yo, if you if you ask people to hold that in long enough, it will manifest as aggression. It will manifest as violence. Why Why is that the manifestation?" I think cuz there's no way to logically get it out. Well, first off, usually what happens is when people do things to you, you're not okay with it. So, logically, I'm not going to do something to you I'm not already okay with you doing to me, right? So, I can't do that back to you. But, I'm hurt. So, I want you to hurt. So, how do I hurt you? Like I have to I I I do bottle it. When I go out, I just I think it's a concept of when emotion's high, intelligence is low. So, I think even it's the society right now, everyone's crazy emotional. There's just an emotional peak. And I don't think people have any logic except for go to that baseline, the id, which is like, "What's my desire right now?" And my desire is just to do blank. And I take off and do it. And I think about it later. Like what's Like if you're arguing with your wife, you say something and you're like, "Ah, sorry, I didn't mean that. I was just angry." Like we're not We're emotional. We're not thinking logically. And so, I think we get to the point of having these things happen. And I did a bottle it up and I bottled it up, and it came out of me punching people and hitting people. One is, I didn't have the the psychological tools to communicate to get it out, right? To be able to to talk it out, we'll call it. And And usually, that's a slower process. I want it out now. And so, it's easier just to go punch a bag or punch a person and get it out. Now, what's crazy I found is in doing that it doesn't go away now. You think it does, but it didn't it didn't fix anything. I got more trouble, you know, like it ended up being more problems. And so I started realizing that if I can try to This is my solution for a lot of stuff. When people wrong me or do things wrong Societally I've had a lot of the called black moments. I've been, you know, called a [ __ ] while driving like 3 4 years ago, you know, I've I've been trying to be run off the road and called like Afro-dick at the airport. Like weird stuff, right? And it's in those moments that the past Yeah, seriously it was the weirdest I've never heard anybody call me that. That is such a way I can't even make that comment make sense, but okay. It's just odd, right? So these moments like they happen and you think like I probably freaked out, but I've got to this point where the moment I realize like man, like this person I'm dealing with, the way that I can not embrace that It's actually interesting concept. When I When I don't embrace it, this isn't for me, it might have been from like Gandhi, he says, you know, when when someone tries to give you a present or gift and you don't take it, they have to walk off with it. And it made so much sense to me. This was years ago like around that time when I was kind of shifting. I was like, man, so when people say things, do things, my first thought is I'm not going to take this in. Like I'm just not going to embrace what you're trying to give me right now. You got to walk off with it. The logic is also I've never met an incredibly joyous, happy, internal person who's trying to make me feel bad. So I almost automatically flip to this thing. Like what's going on in this guy's life that makes him feel like he needs to say that to me, right? Like Why why would I So I get to this place of pity and almost like almost a little of compassion for the human trying to hurt me. They call it They call it hug your haters nowadays, right? But for me I've found that that gives me a lot of peace to progress in the not getting crazy emotional, and I can make logical decisions that don't cause me to go in some weird direction, but I think for most people they don't have that capacity. So that when it comes in, it goes out as anger. It goes out as aggression because it's all I have. I'm being given that. I got to give it back. Yeah, man, that God. So this whole problem becomes so [ __ ] complicated because of the truth of the human condition. So, um going back to what you said earlier, it's like if someone is making me hurt, I'm going to want to make other people hurt. And so, you get this um where it feels right to take that aggression and then put it outward. And I don't think I I think you're right. I think it's a high emotion and it's not people engaging the intellect. But, and here's where it really gets complicated, I think that emotions have a purpose. So, when I put humans in I I always try to get people to understand you're having a biological experience. So, what do I mean by that? You have a brain and your brain is causing you to interpret the world in certain ways. It just It is. And if you understand the way that your brain works, if you understand the just sort of inherent inclinations that it has, um the easiest way to explain this is the brain is you may not actually be living in the matrix, but your brain is creating an artificial reality. Now, how do I know that? Because if your brain were trying to present a reality to you, it would simply tell you, at least visually, it would tell you the number of photons reflecting off of a given surface. Now, none of us have that experience, right? It is not a mathematical experience. So, our brain goes, "Okay, I don't really care about the objective reality. I want to give you enough meaning to interpret here to be able to move through the world in a meaningful way." So, we're having this biological experience. We're evolved creatures, so we have tendencies that have kept us alive in the past. And so, when you have something like an emotion, like a propensity towards peace, love, or violence, then there's some reason that that exists. And when I think about um for me to go through my own physical transformation, I hate working out. I don't I do not find it interesting or engaging in any way. You talk about that level of discomfort having to sit in it. Yeah. Dude, every rep [ __ ] sucks and you only make gains when you're in the reps that really hurt. It was like Muhammad Ali said, "I don't even start counting until it hurts." You know, so it's like you have that. So what I had to tap into was imagining my wife being attacked and saying, "Am I really going to accept that I'm not strong enough to defend her?" And so that was the thing that like kept me going, getting in that dark place, that anger. And so I was like, "Whoa, anger actually really has a purpose." And if you have people submerge their arm in a bucket of ice water and try to see how long they'll leave it. If you tell them, "Right when you want to pull it out, get angry, yell, scream obscenities." They can leave it in something like 30% longer. I've I've read that. And so it's like, all right, there's there's real power in that anger. So you start putting all of this together and it's like, "Ooh, it can be a dangerous cocktail of the human experience." Mhm. It's funny as you say that, I think back to my college days when I was actually preparing to run 40s for the NFL. The thing that I used to think of was like at the other end of the 40, somebody's tackling my my son. I had a son at the time. So like this what you're talking about literally was like a driving force for me of like why I need to go as fast as humanly possible. It's another level of emotion like you said it has a purpose and it can be used if you're comfortable using it. But most people they they run away from it so frequently. It's like they just seek the the the the joy. And I hate that cuz at the same time if you're seeking that joy like you don't realize that the most of people are successful are telling you it's in the moments outside the joy. And but people are so afraid to get it and that they keep asking, "How come I'm not successful? How come I'm not successful?" You're not listening. Like you're just not listening and you're not applying and so I don't feel sorry for you at a certain point. Like I need people when I talk to them like I'm trying to make you uncomfortable. I literally tell people like my clients I'm like, "I'm trying to stretch you." It is um it is really interesting when people begin to like really integrate. So you talk about Young and the integration of the shadow and finding a way to um make yourself basically a whole and understanding all of the different parts and the pieces which I think is is really critically important. And do you know who Coleman Hughes is? I don't. Doesn't sound familiar. Oh, dude, look him up. He's really interesting. He's super young and he just had somebody on his show and I I forgive me for not remembering this guy's name because I actually think it was the the person he had on his show that had this insight. I can't remember, but anyway, the point was you've got Martin Luther King with one ideology which is using sort of this meta meta narrative of religion, unity, bringing people together, sort of love. And then you had Malcolm X who was like, "Fuck this [ __ ] right?" Like there is there is this real sort of visceral energy to rising up and black power. And they and they were talking about how why the there's so much energy to the rising up to the anger and leaning into that and how that can really animate a movement versus something that's that's a more calm, unity, loving approach. Mhm. And like what do you do because Coleman Hughes himself is is very sort of intellectual, he's very calm. He was saying like, "I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to get people to catch on fire with the way that I approach the world because I don't have that sort of visceral, high energy quality. And I think this is part of what we see rippling through society right now is is just being animated by anger can be so intoxicating. Like there is a like you running the 40, like me working out, there is an intoxication to rage. Yeah. And you know what's funny is that is that intoxication of rage because that's what we're commonly used to and we almost what It's like people here like addicted to your struggle. There's like this consistent like rage I have also with not being in a place I want to be. You mentioned earlier like that wanting is what creates the separation. I feel like this angst. And I think that the other perspective like Martin Luther King when you're talking about the peace, that's growth. And most people in the world to say blue collar society, the growth isn't there. Like they're not taught as kids that they're you know their parents didn't teach them, they're not looking to read the books, they're not Peace isn't the same that people are seeking. They just What am I used to? I'm used to being mad cuz I hate my job and I hate my wife and my kids piss me off and then this I got in trouble here and I got this I'm living in this darkness. I'm cheating on my wife. I'm cheating on my husband. Like there's this constant So you're almost like going to a place they're already at and they're normally at, right? So it's like they can grab onto that and that pulls them and like, yeah, it's like that's probably where they get used to that normalcy and it feels more like you said, it's more intoxicating. Like when I get mad, it's easy. Like ah, it's harder to calm myself back down to get to that place of of joy and peace again. And so I think that unfortunately we're in a society now with everything going on is like the this the media helps spark it up. My brother's actually in the military and he does some things that I can't even talk about, but it's uh he's like, we don't even realize that right now other foreign powers are injecting into our social timelines things specifically that didn't happen here to to spark us all and divide us. And they're playing on the exact emotion you're talking about. They're playing on that anger, that angst, that that that that fire that people have to get them more fired up cuz that divides people. Whereas peace brings people together and and we're in a society that shows that we have been used to divide. We've been used to that. And that that negative emotion is carried in that space whereas the peaceful come together, it's not commonly practiced or taught in in ways that our society actually needs. Yeah, one thing, man, I'd love to know. So you grew up at least starting at I What age? 14? 13, 14? In an all white family? Six. That's when you moved in? Oh oh oh, but you just didn't get adopted. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. So um walk me through what that's like and I have a very pointed question I want to ask and I am super curious to hear your answer. So as you grew up, did you feel that you were an like a a person behind enemy lines? Did you view yourself as a black man in a white family and like I need to sort of see what's going on here or was there a sense of integration or something completely different? Yeah, so it's interesting. So there's there's two sides. I I to see two sides of white America, I guess. So, growing up I I didn't have like in the family I was loved. There was never I couldn't even point out one singular moment where it was ever like a joke or negative or anything of pointing out that I was worse cuz I was black. Never once. But then that's my immediate family, but then I had like my grandma my grandma who grew up in Alabama during, you know, the segregation area. Like she I she at one point I found out later like told my family like, "Hey, don't let you know, his mom don't let her adopt a little black kid." Like it's above me, right? Uh and then you go to school, man. Every day at school I was the only one of two kids that were looked like me in my entire elementary school. I wasn't even around black culture till high school. Right? So, I got to see the the disparity between like how I was seen at school. I wasn't accepted. I wasn't the normal see We know you go to restaurants. There's eight of us in the family and be like, "Table for seven?" No, he's with us. And then the Yeah, the host is would like scoff like, like, "Okay." Like, so yeah, I saw it. Like so it's kind of like I'm behind enemy lines, but I got one of the enemies guarding me, we'll call it. It's kind of the best way to explain it. But man, I got to see all of it. I had family that was also, you know, middle-class America. I got to see the white privilege and the perspectives of it. And so, I do carry a vastly different view than most people um because of what I I got to with my own eyes see for all my life. Like even to now I have aunts and uncles in in conversations I'm having that are very interesting, to say the least, honestly, cuz it's like I see I see the different sides in a really weird way that uh that I I don't even talk about. It's funny is I talked to my wife like, at what point do I share my racial my views to the world cuz I don't know if either side would accept them, to be honest. Well, that's interesting. Well, tell me more. Uh so, so here's the best thing. We'll start on one side. So, I don't like to I like to the Covey seek first to understand then be understood. So, I want I want people to to realize I understand that the other side would call it the other side of white America. My best friend in the world is a white police officer. If you looked at him, bald head, like just white guy. Yeah, that's who he is. So, people automatically assume that he's like one of the bad guys. He's not, right? So, I have that side. I have all my family. I have, you know, the dynamics. And so, what happens is now the conversations are I see the plight of white America right now in a sense of there's a lot of guilt that is completely misunderstood because it's like he's like, "I didn't do anything." And my my family is like, "I didn't do anything. I don't know how to feel guilty with this right now. I didn't I wasn't a slave driver. I didn't do X. I didn't do Y. I didn't do Z." And so, I get the pain of like, "How do you feel guilty for something you didn't intentionally do?" It's like you were born into it. Like, when you're born, you don't know you're breathing air. You're just breathing air. When you're born into that world, you don't realize what it is. And And so, there's that part of that side. But there's also, you know, the aspect of of like they've been in the conversations when there's no black people around. Like, they they tell me about how they go sometimes. So, like they kind of also get it at the same time. So, part of me is like I I'm I'm on boarding a lot of the emotion of my white friends and like my white family members of like trying to really feel like how do we do the thing that that they're talking about like make this world better. How do I How what do I say? The hardest part is like, "Tom, I've got people who I know have golden hearts, but they're deathly afraid of saying anything. They want to support, but like I don't I don't want to say if I say, you know, black lives matter, they say, 'What do you know about it?' If I say all lives matter, then they say, 'How dare you?' If I say I support you, 'Show me your support. If you're doing something, why weren't you doing it 10 years ago?' Like So, where So, it's like where do they get to the point of like I want to speak out cuz the system's not going to be changed by us. We're not in control of the system." And so, it's like there's got to be a perspective of I think black America understanding the position that white America is in. Yes, be pissed and be angry. We're up here. We've got to get to a logic at some point that says, "Let me see what they're going through so I can actually give sound advice of how we can move forward, right?" But then you also have the flip side of black America that's just pissed because of like, "How did you not know? How could you do this? And this has been going on. And we've been saying something. We were kneeling and nobody listened." And so, I also get that. I've had my black moments man. I 100% feel it and I get it and like I'm not ever going to say that that you know writing and everything was bad. I wouldn't do it. I'm not going to say it's right. I'm not going to say it's wrong cuz like you said it's an expression of emotion. I can't I can't gauge or tell you what's right or wrong. I can tell you I wouldn't do it cuz I don't think it's going to help me personally but I'm not going to condemn them for doing it. And it's also this weird vicious cycle of the emotion that they have it's placed in a position where I don't think that we have this thing that if somebody walked out of a building and said hey all right we're doing this everybody would turn around and walk away. I don't know what that solution is and I think societally until we have that solution we're all going to be emotional and spinning our wheels. So when I have conversations with my white friends they're like well look you know that this is why we look at them like this cuz they're out looting what look at the media shows and look what they're doing. I'm like and I totally get that. It it it gives me a perspective like okay makes me look bad and if I'm in a situation that with a police officer they're looking at the news in their head before they walk up to my car. So like that that's a sucky situation. And it's this weird conversation I've been having on both sides of we have to really get to a point of stepping back for a moment and see like what work do we got to do. And it's not the same work. Like that's the scary part is it's kind of like uh imagine if like as me and my wife for example we're back together right? At one point I had a woman that lived with me in my house and she lived with somebody else at her house another man. I didn't want to go into her house cuz there's a guy that lived there and she's not going to come into my house cuz there's a woman that lived here. Both our houses aren't where the other person wants to be. But we had to go create a new house which means I had to get rid of some stuff do some work I didn't want to do same vice versa. And I think the work we're going to have to do societally is going to be like like starting a new house. And that house that we build is going to be two parties doing stuff they don't want to do cuz here's the thing if I was building something with my buddies and we're just doing our thing like we're all going to build this house we're going to live in. If I sat down and yelled at you because you had a nicer house to keep building I'm going to sit here and drink a beer when that house is built, you don't have respect for me to live in that house. Like it's like, all right, but yeah, the whole time we're there you're going to say, "Well, you didn't build this. I built this." Right? So, it's like we really got to get get to the point of like, yes, black America's pissed because of the situation what took place, but now you got to wake up and like, all right, we got to work. Like we got to work. And white America's saying, "Well, you know, we we didn't do this on purpose." Whatever. It's like, okay, now yeah, you but you got to work to help us with these different situations. And I don't know what that work looks like, but I do know we got to build a house together. And I do know we have to at some point, like in my marriage, I had to forgive. Like I had to like I got back with a woman who cheated on me, right? Like people don't get that. I had to grasp that it wasn't a malicious thing. It was just doing the best that that that she could. And so now it's like this concept I think society is like people have to grasp that white America wasn't doing it all of them maliciously. But like we now got to to to breathe and move us up new. And like last poignant thought is the people who have created this system that's it's a created system. Let me look back at you at systematic racism. It's created. You can't deny it. It's on paper. I've I've seen deeds that say, "Don't sell this house to a black family." Right? Seen it. Bananas. And so when you look at that it's like the people who created this system, they're faceless. Like it's worse it's like my my white police officer friend, Tom, you you're the one that's the face of this. Like you're getting the flak and it's like, "I didn't do all this." Like I there's there's people above me they're in situations and places you'll never see their faces, but the lower level white America will call who's not the top tier 1% everything. Like those are the ones taking the brunt of the hit right now. And that I feel plight for, too. Cuz like like there's a lot of impoverished white families also. Like I grew up in one, you know? So, it's not like everybody cuz they're whites winning. And so it's this kind of conversation of uh back and forth of like, man, I feel the pain of of white America and I feel the pain of black America. But I'm not I'm not neutral in a sense of like, I don't know which side to choose. Like I know the side that is like, this has got to change. But the thing is how do we get there? Because I'm able to manage emotion, I'm like all right, everybody's pissed and I get that. I'm I'm 100% for it all. How do we fix it now? And fixing it is not going to happen just by yelling all day long. Fixing it is going to be like all right, I got to get up and I got to shoot to be a doctor or a lawyer or to be a you know, some other job than a rapper or you know, being a a pro athlete or or bust, right? There's got to be that in between that society and black America is like all right, let's take advantage of the opportunities. But then on the flip side, like white America has to give us a shot also. Like if the name says Jaquan and then there's John, like pull Jaquan in also, you know, like like look at his resume. There's there's certain, you know, aspects of the whole society that we're both going to have to give. We're going to have to do things that we're not used to doing in order for get this this place that we want to get to, I think. Dude, what I love about what you just said is this [ __ ] is complicated. This [ __ ] is complicated. And once we get out of the and and like you, I get it, the the intoxication of rage, of certainty, of just knowing that there are injustices and focusing on that and not realizing what the end goal is. And that to me like so I have something in my business that I call the physics of progress, which is very simply just how do you make progress in anything? And it's it is a really simple formula in my estimation and it goes like this. What is your goal? Like crazy specific. I want to be the number one linebacker for the New Orleans Saints, like whatever. But like dude, crazy specific. You what team? By when? How much? Like a really specific goal. Then what is the very specific problem that stands in that way? And then what is the what I call a lever action, so something that is entirely binary, either do it or you don't. So when you think about what made you a great football player, it was I went in and I worked out, I lifted weights so I could get stronger. I did cardio so that I could get faster. I studied tape so that I could understand the game better. Like they're very very specific things. Either you did them or you didn't do them. So, it it it wasn't You didn't say something like get better, work harder. You said, "Wake up at 5:00 a.m. and go until you can do, you know, 20 reps of 225-lb bench press." Okay, cool. That's specific, right? I'm going to lift every day and I'm going to constantly try to you know, push my max. And even these are vaguer than I would like them if I really sat down and thought about them. It is It is exactly things you either do or do not do. So, and then you have to know what data you're going to look at to assess whether or not it worked. With the progress, yeah. Right. And so, then you can move forward. If any one of those things is vague, if you don't know what data you're looking at to assess whether or not you're making progress, or you throw data out the window, or you take emotion or feeling as an example, I heard somebody say like as long as whoever is most outraged is considered most right, then we're never going to make progress. Cuz it's like, what metric are you going to steer by? And if we can get behind the goal, the problem, the test, right, the lever action, and then the actual data that we're going to look at that says we either are or aren't making progress, then okay, now we've got specific [ __ ] to fight about. And that then we can actually begin to make progress. This is exactly how I run the business so that no one is just steering by gut feel. Because, dude, gut feel can be a tragedy 30 years down the road. Yeah. And then you've lost a whole generation. It's [ __ ] scary. But what you're saying about like, "Hey, we have to build a house together." That [ __ ] is interesting. So, you have literally built a house with somebody that you had pretty pretty big beef with, I would say. So, how the [ __ ] did you navigate that? How did you step back up to the table and begin the conversation? How did you begin to forgive? What did you have to forgive? Like, how did you guys move forward? Yeah, man. First is ownership I just literally I talk about this all the time. First is ownership on my end, right? Cuz a lot of it I want to blame. We talked about hurt people hurt people. I was hurt. I shamed her. All your fault. And then I realized when I when I came out of it and felt I should have find my identity again, I started this gym and I was there 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. And so I realized that there was a point or process like where the two of us got to a point where she felt she had to make a choice. That was half me. I'd take my ownership of the situation at hand. Even if I liked or didn't like it, it usually came with some pain. I had to own it, right? And so that was the first part of it. Second part of it was uh accepting that she had done work. Like I think there's the part of like people Now, you didn't do enough work. Like it's not about like the work that I think you did. Like did you do enough work to accept that you did the work that was hard for you to do? And then when I realized that was part of it now, it was like, all right, now we got to build something, but I go into this realizing beforehand, I am not going to like a lot of this. Like I'm not. It's just It's just no way I'm going to like all the steps of doing this. Like getting back in bed with her. That was a hard one in the beginning, to be totally honest, right? It's like there's someone that someone else has been in my life. Like it's a Just be, you know, honest. Like it's tough to sit with these things. But here's the biggest thing and I love what you talked about having this metric. For me, here was my I call it North Star. I pictured myself at 65, 70, sitting in my house in my rocking chair, we'll call it, and I pictured her there with me. That was it. That was Seriously, if that's it. So all the conversation with my friends about why I shouldn't be with her, I had realized like is it getting me closer or farther away from that that rocking chair moment? If there's certain things I had to overcome, like I knew the journey that it wasn't going to be like it was going to be this and you know, to get to that that North Star. And so for me, I accepted the long haul process of what it's going to take to get to that point later on. And so every single decision I made, I stepped in and I pulled from that darkness of like, I hate this right now, but all right, I'm going to give her a massage. Like sounds odd, right? But it's like these little things. And the more you do them, I think what's cool about us as humans, we have that investment bias. And the beautiful part is the more I give to something, the more I want a return. Like love is a verb as much as it's a feeling. If I give love, I feel that love. That's why I'll change a baby's diaper and they'll poop and scream and cry, but I still love them cuz I'm giving this love, right? And so, that was my process of consistently mucking it and getting used to it and then embracing and then after a while, it becomes a pure joy. Like, I'd go through it five times over to get to where I'm at again today, but like the part of the process of it was like, "Man, where's my fault that I can truly own and am I going to show up every single day and do work I really don't want to do, but I know that it's getting me closer to this this North Star?" And the more we do that, the the harder things you do, it makes the hard things easy. And then it becomes easier and it becomes normal. See, and what's cool is everything else drowns out cuz a lot of the reasons we don't do things are things we have in our head conversationally of what's somebody going to think of me and why they would they going to say that? How do I look, you know, this way? Like, I get a lot of people in my life that are friends that are white that still won't accept that there's something off. And I don't think that it's like that they don't see it. I think it's this ego. Still the internal things of like, "But if I accept that it's off, then I may feel bad cuz I might have to admit that I'm wrong." Like, it's these all these thoughts and it's like if you just chuck that away and say, "Hey, where do you want to be 60 years from now?" I think that's the thing is when I think about the conversation that I've been having. I've been trying to tell like the friends of mine who are white and they call me cuz I'm apparently Mr. Black Guy now. I tell them, "Look, you're you're not really Like, you are, but you're not fighting for Black Lives Matter, even if you say you are. What you're fighting for is a future that you see where Black Lives Matter. And when that becomes your North Star, that's going to change the conversations in the home. It's going to change the conversations at work. It's going to change how you see people. It's cuz it's like it's can't be anchored in this one individual thought of like Black Lives Matter cuz like you said, "What does it look like?" Right? But if I'm looking at a far shoot where it's just like it's a bi Yeah, Black Lives Matter. Like, what do you have the conversation? Now I'll do that icky, mucky back and forth, up and down work that no one wants to do that'll eventually get us there as a society. Yeah, man, it is um when you talk about having to do the work that's uncomfortable, that you don't want to do, having the North Star of something that matters to you enough to fight for becomes so important. And I want to understand, like as you were going through this, why was that North Star so important for you? Was it the kids? Like why not find somebody new? Oh, I tried, man. You know, believe me, I tried. I think it wasn't that I had to go I was addicted. It was The thing is it wasn't for the kids. It was When I Here's the true how it happened. We got to this point where like we were separate. Like we were completely separate. Like I'm done, done, done with her. Not even like want to be around her. And she invited me to this to a trip, a vacation in Costa Rica. And so what happened was I got to this point in Costa Rica where we show up, she had a different room, I had a different room. And she's like, "Hey, Ash, want to go take a trip cuz I wanted the kids out of town, but I know you can't be gone for 3 weeks from the kids cuz I love my kids." Like, "Yeah." So we get there and I hadn't really talked to her about anything for a long time. I'd just been fighting with her back and forth. And the way I explain it is I got to meet someone for the first time that I'd known for 16 years. Like she had done You could tell she did the work. So then what happened was I came home after this trip and like I got to know this whole new soul. It was like, "Man, that's the woman that I married, the one that I thought I married, the one I wanted to marry." Like and I was I was actually talking to another woman at the time. And before this date, she's like, "Hey, I want to try it again." She ruined the date, obviously, cuz it was the back of my head. And so the thought was like, "Man, this thing that I I've been saying I want her for so long, we've been fighting about for so long, like it's now here and present. And I'm going to If I'm going to lean into this, I have to be able to say, "Why am I going to do this past the conversations with my friends and my family who have been there while she did this to me, right? How am I going to be able to stand up in front of my world and say, "Look, I'm taking this woman back who cheated on me." Right? How am I And so, all those things were very very hard thoughts. Like, just the thought of it even now, I'm like, "Man, that sounds kind of odd. How do you do that?" It would have never happened if I didn't know why I was doing it. And not the why that was a motivation why, the why is like where I'm trying to get to why. Cuz I think there's a difference. There's a why that's like, "Man, I'm getting it cuz I don't want to be this." But, I was like, "No, I want to be sitting in this rocking chair." And that carried weight. And I think it carried weight for me because of like my, you know, kind of upbringing. I didn't have the unity of a family, and I wanted that family. If anything for me, it's like my family unit is my anchor cuz I didn't have it growing up. And so, like that's what I wanted. But, in doing that, it wasn't sacrificing what I wanted and and, you know, and and and like I still I have certain things I want out of my marriage. And and we bicker and fight cuz we're human, right? But, the thing is we now understand where we're trying to go and why things take place and how they happened. And I think if you apply it to our society now, it's like you you now like we've wanted this for a long time. And I think now more than ever, I it's a weird I get chills thinking about it. We're in a society where I think white America's finally in a place where black America's wanted us to be for so long. And it's like now we got to create this union to where it can like what does it look like? Cuz yes, like this is the first I've had people like I've seen videos of little girls confronting their racist dads with the camera hidden. Like, that's that's I think that's where it changes. If you think of like the LT LGBTQ movement, like it was always fun to say, you know, derogatory names to people who were in that realm. And it was just like a playful thing. And after a while, it got to the point where if you say something in public, Tom, somebody you don't even know is going to be on you. Don't do that. How dare you, right? It's never been that way in my experience for racism. To where like if there's not even a gay person in the room, like if I'm in a room with no gay people and somebody says something, someone's saying something to them. Right? Where now I think it's going to be a society I'm seeing a little bit of a glimpse of it of like there might be no black people in the room, but if Uncle Bob Billy Joe says something like Susan's going to shut him down. And that for me was like, oh, that's different. And that's me saying this is like my wife when she came back to the table like, all right, she's coming back, she's saying she want now let's work on this together. What's our North Star and then we can build this marriage together. I think society we we're in a place where we can really build a cool marriage together. But we got to like I did, I got to forgive and not forget but forgive so that this person can do the work cuz here was a thing, what I believe gave her the space of of growing herself was I stopped shaming her. Cuz I for a lot of years, it's all your fault, how dare you mess our marriage up and you ruined our family and she got shamed. She was drinking and boozing and partying and everything. And when I finally was like, man, I I had a part in this, I forgive you, she could grow and she started blossoming into amazing I love her to death, man. Like and I think that's what we can do with society is like we we've got to this point of like, okay, cool and now society is moving. So I just on my side I'm like, Black America, don't mess this up. Like like let's go to work now and we got to show up and we got to take advantage of the opportunities that are in front of us. We got to do more work. Like I tell people all the time, they're like, why aren't you more vocal about Black America out there? And I'm like, to be honest, I've been trying to be a light. Like I know when I walk into a room, we walk in our mastermind, there's very few people that look like me. I'm well aware of it. But I don't show up and live in that space and talk about it all day. I just do the work and it is harder for me. There are places I don't get to go and conversations I don't get to have and you know, certain aspects of what I'm I'm able to do, clients I get to bring on and don't bring on because of how I look, I'm aware of it. But I just work harder and I do it without a disdain because of the position I'm like, if I'm going to play the game and I know the rules, I'm just going to get better than you. Football, same way. I'm just going to get better than you. And so I've been getting better and better and better and so yeah, I'm in a position where like I can keep growing and so I'm now I'm like, man, I want to fight the fight by climbing so I can show these kids like you don't just got to be an athlete and that to be successful. I did that and it was short-lived, but now I'm doing this. Like so, find other ways. And so, if I can be a beacon and talk about like, "Hey, yeah, you're going to have to work harder than than white America, but do the work. It's worth it." Like, and they're going to give you a shot a little bit more now, and the game's changed. Like, we got to show up and do our work. We can't be the person sitting there watching them build the house, and then get to the point of like, "All right, I'm living here, too." Like, it's not going to work that way. Mhm. Man, speaking of like the sort of come up and and how you think about the coming together, having kids has got to feel um there's got to be a lot of weight to like, how do I help them navigate this so that when they're, you know, sort of moving into the house, that they are building the house, and and they're building something that matters, or maybe the better way to think of it is they have a North Star that makes sense, and and I'll I'll bring it back to the way I think about the world, where they have just like a super clearly defined goal, and they know what they're trying to do. One thing that I've always struggled with with kids, and I I see a lot in your story, is when you have to come up hard, there there is a sense of drive that's there. And one of the reasons I didn't have kids was I was worried they would grow up really soft, because I really really really really, and I learned this with the kid that I Big Brothered for, who came up [ __ ] hard, was that I just wanted to make everything easy for him. I wanted him to have a taste of of beautiful things and nice things, and to know that somebody loved him. And I just thought, "Ooh, like the better path is to teach people to struggle well." So, how do you How do you think about that with your kids? Like, how do you How do you give them the the energy to push when things get hard, when they've been loved? And trust me when I say, I'm not saying neglect kids, or give them a hard time like that. I'm just saying it's [ __ ] hard when when there isn't something to struggle against. So, how do you How do you love them and still hold them accountable? Yeah, man. I uh I I love the statement that people always ask uh like how do you do it? I say, you know what? A smooth sea makes not a skilled sailor. Like there's this concept to me of like, man, I hated at the time all the stuff I went through, but now, dude, nothing knocks me over time. It's a weirdness to who I am as a human. There are very few things that I'll that get this point in my life, I don't know what would knock me over. Like I just I'm able to navigate it, but it's because of what I went through as a kid where like the the stuff that would be like a blip in my radar shuts some adults down. Like how does that Oh, and I have to have compassion, go back and pick them up. Now, my kids, I realize like I can't rob them of their hardships. Can't do it. Like my son was getting picked on at school a few years back and like my wife hopped in a car and drove down there to like save him on the street. I'm like, "No. Let him get beat up and then figure out how to navigate that." Like she's like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "He need He needs to figure this world out because at 18, he's gone. And I'm not going to be there in the Taco Bell when somebody starts punking him or touching his girlfriend." You know, like I'm not going to be there. He's got to figure these things out. Or like my my uh I I have to stop you there. What What did you say to him? Like did you tell him hey, somebody punches you, touches your girl, whatever, you punch him in the mouth? Oh, hell yes. I I'm a guy I'm not a proponent of you don't start a fight, but if somebody if somebody touches you, if physically put their hands on you, you finish that fight in the next 20 right there and there. Like it's just my my thought on life and it's not that I cuz people will do it. They'll test you and if they get you this time, they'll get you tomorrow and the next day and now you become fun for them to figure out how to be a punching bag. So, I'm like, "No, no, no." Like if somebody does it, you figure it out. And he did. Like he ended up like the next like I think it happened the next week and he ended up wrestling the kid down and got in trouble. And I bought him ice cream. Like totally cool. But that's the perspective of like and so I need them to understand that there's a celebration in showing up for yourself and fighting and navigating the hard parts. But I mean it goes like doing the dishes every day, clean the dog poop up. Like I can't find something in the garage, go open your eyes and find it. And it's not that I'm lazy, but like I'm consciously thinking about every moment I'm having with my children and and how are they going to be able to problem solve and navigate stuff and not shut down? Cuz the problem is not only is it a problem when you get older and not have had hardships, but you have more responsibilities as an adult. So, when you can't stand up, you lose more. As a kid, it's like I'm a kid. So, I get a bad grade. As an adult, it's like you get messed up and like you can't compose yourself, you lose your family and your wife, your dream. Can you like could you have access and money and time? Like way more problems occur. So, I I need my kids to have a bad childhood in a sense of like the bad moments, but I need them to have like good teaching from me. So, like I'll guide you. I'm going to teach you what happens or how to navigate this, but I need you to go through it and hate it. I need you to get comfortable in that difficulty cuz my wife and I talk about this all the time. My youngest son is ADHD, same as I had. Bad little bounce off the wall kid. She's like, "You're fine. He's going to be fine." I'm like, "Yeah, the problem is like I had people whooping me when I would do dumb stuff. Like I'm not saying it was good, but it taught me how to like control myself more. Whereas for him, like he is a maniac and if he's if he doesn't have that hardship "Well, you played football. You had that energy." I'm like, "Yeah, but I had a chip, man. Like I was fighting for more than just the football jersey. This kid knows that if he has a bad game, he gets to go home and get a slurpee. It's a different It's a different thing he's driving for, which scares me. So, like I I To be honest, like I'm purposely harder on my youngest one and I'm doing it because I love him and he doesn't get it yet, but like I'm I'm tougher on him. I make him do stuff more. I need him to get used to the discomfort and like control control control because I tell him I tell him this all the time. I have a superpower as does he. As I'm sure you have the same one. You just you probably got a scatterbrain and it just you hone it in. You just go, right? It's because that kind of personality when you make it to adulthood with the right skill sets and and right situations, you blossom. Like I've told him at 10 years old, you're going to be more successful than I ever was, to be totally honest. But we got to get you to a place in time where you can access that and utilize it. But if you get in trouble cuz you can't get through high school or you get arrested for something stupid, it's all gone. So let's get you there and then I'm going to let you out of the gates. So that's kind of where I but I need the kids to understand. I need parents who are listening to understand, stop robbing your kids that are hardships. If anything, give them more and be a great teacher. Ooh, dude, the power of the family is crazy. So at Quest, we had a thousand employees that grew up really [ __ ] hard, dude. Hard. Like you know hard. And I thought I knew hard until I met these kids and I was like, holy [ __ ] Like the way that they think about the world. Like I remember one kid saying, I have actually been told to my face by my mother, "The world doesn't want people like you to succeed." Mhm. And I was like, what? Like it is that's so unintentionally obviously, but it's so handicapping to say don't extend yourself like that. Don't try for that. That's that's beyond you. People don't want us to to succeed. And so that became my obsession is how do you get people to go into and and I was going to say to step to the starting line, but that really isn't where I want people. How do you get them to go into the gym and be like, all right, [ __ ] you think you're going to hold me back? Like I'm going to [ __ ] blow the roof off this [ __ ] It it's crazy. The the literacy rates with some Oh god, here's I'm I'm I am not the wise person that's going to see us through. I have [ __ ] all for wisdom when it comes to race, but like clearly with all this happening, like I'm [ __ ] diving in and trying to like really actually get my bearings. Say that again. What you say it has a definite psychology to it. I I'm tracking you 100% right now. So you have a it was like a hundred years after slavery, the literacy rates at at a time where the America was trying to hold black people back. Like I think that that's pretty self-evident. So, but the literacy rates were astronomical cuz people were like, "Yo, I didn't get it. I'm going to make sure my [ __ ] kids get it." And I think it was It was something like Oh god, I don't remember the date. It's all [ __ ] up. This is terrible. But there was roughly 100 years after slavery, it was like um the kids African-American kids growing up in a single-parent household was like 20% and now it's like 70%. So, it's like, "Fuck. If If it is true that having the family unit is so critical." And I'm I'm triggering off of all the things you just said, all the things I hear you talking about teaching your kids and I'm like, "Jesus, if you only have half of that equation, doesn't mean that people aren't killing it." But I'd much rather be in a space where I've got multiple people giving me rad [ __ ] advice and pushing me forward. So, it is So, thinking about sort of those second and third-order consequences of how do we really get people that are able to develop those skills that they're not getting stupid messages that that stop them from even beginning the pursuit of personal greatness. Yeah. It's a You know, it's funny. The You know the book Good to Great, right? Read it before? Yeah, man. It's I think one of the first ones is like feeling like you're a burden to the world. So, what you just talked about is actually the feeling that I think and if you would ask me like, "What's your perspective on, you know, growing up in a white family?" I think one of the benefits to it was that I wasn't handicapped with the conversation uh that came from an old black grandma or grandpa who dealt with that experience and they would say, like you're saying, "You know, you're you're not supposed to do well. The society doesn't want to see you do well." So, there's always that thought of like I'm a burden from the get-go. And so, like that wasn't part of of my upbringing and I think that was an asset to me cuz I just saw it as I got to work and I got to grind. But But what you're talking about, societally we have this conversation running and and and I don't This is going to go conspiracy or non-conspiracy, but if you look at like where drugs were, you know, kind of introduced to the the inner cities and and kind of how families were torn apart and like the jailing system. And so, it's like there was almost like a like you're saying, the numbers show at some point something happened that made the family fall apart cuz a united front is difficult to stop. And I think even like heard about the the Black Wall Street 1921 when all of a sudden these whites came in and just destroyed a city, killed 3,000 people, and no one's ever been charged. Like there was a progression. Like this is in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and it was out of the record books and nobody put in history books like '96. Like it happened. And there's like there was a systematic piece I think as well to like don't let them come together cuz united, look at they can do. And so, we are in a situation where now that's been so prevalent and I think the conversation has to come back like you're talking about of there is possibility. It exists. It may not be easy, but damn it, it exists. You're going to work towards something, and you're probably going to die early running around the streets with your buddies. Like, how about we we as opposed to making fun of the kid who's reading a book, how about we go and and push that kid to go forward? But, the problem is it's like you're trying to we're going to have to carve a new path in a rock. Like new Grand Canyon cuz that's the that's the hard part is how do you change a structure in a society where it's like I'm still, you know, in a gang, and I don't leave the gang unless I get jumped in and jumped out or killed, right? Or or grandma and grandpa, like I don't want to do better than make them feel bad cuz I go get this job at this one place and they're, you know, making me feel bad. And it's almost in some sides also in the black culture it's like, "Look at how ghetto I am." It's a sensationalizing of the negative aspect of of the culture. And so, they have all these different dynamics going on, and it's going to be a lot to pull them to starting line to say, "All right, here's where we got to go to work and go." And and I think the hard thing that I'm looking at is that doesn't happen without a good leader. And I don't know that that black America has a leader or will accept a leader. That's the problem, I think. I don't know the leader is. Like I'm putting a lot of weight in my head right now on Kaepernick. And not because he's some phenomenal, you know, leader and black activist, but he's a guy that society at a a level above the ghettos, we'll call it, is is seeing and accepting, and he can talk, but he's also accepted because he's an athlete to the level of where like these these youths want to be cuz everybody else that comes out like who are even myself included are probably I couldn't be a voice in that capacity. I'm not that level. But it's either like you got the guys who come out and speak to black Americans say, "Look, you're the ones messing up. You're causing crimes. You're doing all of this stuff." Which was it's difficult when it says customized that way. Like how they not going to be criminals to an extent? But like they get called Uncle Toms. They don't get listened to anymore. They can't lead. You can't be a leader without followers. And so it's like America and the black American needs to find a leader who they will follow who is going in the right direction. And the problem is is the right direction is to do work, to accept, to to take heed, to listen, and and own the things that we don't want to own to about ourselves to get better. And you're not going to do that unless you have a leader that they'll follow, and I don't know who that is right now. That's that I think that's the the biggest thing that scares me is like we got some traction, we can move, but who are we following? Cuz social media makes it worse. Now you got a million voices, and I'm a proponent of like everybody has a voice, but I don't know if everybody needs to be talking. Like some people need to just sit down and be quiet and listen, myself included at many times. And I think that's how progress takes place, but I don't I don't know who that person is just yet. I think you're right. That is well said. Leaders are worth their [ __ ] weight in gold. Um I am very eager for somebody to step to the plate that has deep wisdom in here. Um the person that I mourn the loss of as just sort of a a name I've read in a book, but um is Nelson Mandela. So reading Long Walk to Freedom, dude, have you read that [ __ ] I've not. Uh-uh. I heard it's great, though. going to love it so much. Mandela, in prison for 27 years, he starts getting um very militant young black men coming into the prison system who are chastising him for not being violent enough. And he said, "Let let me be clear. Violence is an option, and I do keep that in my back pocket. If it becomes necessary, I will use it." Again, this is me in interpreting. So, if I'm misrepresenting something, I'm very open to that. Um but this is how it sounded to me. So, um I'm going to come out of all this because you give up your humanity when you oppress somebody. So, it was like you saying with that gift, right? You try to give it, they don't take it, you still have to keep it. Yeah. By oppressing somebody else, you forfeit something. Forget whatever economic value you may get out of it. You're giving up some of your humanity. And I just thought, "Fuck, that's so intense." So, I end up writing this comic um called Neon Future. Of course, I abstract it, so it's about essentially people with um cyborgs versus authentic humans. And so, but dealing with that notion of you've got one group of people trying to oppress the other. You've got the other group where inside that group, they want to just now re-oppress cuz they're they're technologically so much more advanced, of course, they could. But then you have this one guy who's like, "No, no, no, hold on. There's got to be this third way." So, like that to me is sort of a a beacon of hope that I I cling to in all of this. I like it, man. That's That's a good perspective, cuz that's That's where we're at now, you know? It's literally It's almost It's odd that these are the things. These are like weird dark times, but that's it. The only way we're going to get forward somewhere is to unify. It's the literally the only way. And that And unity is not easy. It's work on both sides. We do that, and we're going to be great. Preach. All right, brother. I will let you go. Thank you so much for this, man. Really cool to connect. Uh I look forward to actually being able to share physical space with you again at some point, which would be incredible. Um to, man. Yeah, count me in. I I I'm always down there like in LA. I'm like, "I got to stop by Tom's spot." I never do. My apologies. No, man. No apologies necessary, but definitely the next time when COVID is is done, uh we will get together and hang out. It'll be awesome. Cool. Count me in, man. All right, everybody. If you haven't already figured out who Anthony Trucks is, get on it. You will love it. He puts out amazing, amazing content that I think will really push you forward in your own life. And speaking of things that will push you forward in your own life, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe here. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Muhammad Ali said, "I'm the greatest." But he never won a championship without Angelo Dundee. And Michael Jordan never won a championship without Phil Jackson. So, you've got to have someone that can see something in you that you can't see.