Anthony Trucks of Dark Work: How My Experience in Athletics Trained Me to Become a Better Leader

The world of sports is not just about physical prowess or competition; it’s an incubator for leadership qualities such as discipline, teamwork, strategic planning, and resilience. Athletes, from amateur levels to professional arenas, often encounter situations that test their limits and require them to step up in ways that mirror the challenges faced by leaders in various fields.

As a part of this series, we had the pleasure to interview Anthony Trucks.

Anthony Trucks is a former NFL athlete, three time American Ninja Warrior competitor on NBC, and bestselling author of Trust Your Hustle. He spent his early years in the foster care system starting at age three and was adopted at fourteen. That path led him to college football, a scholarship to the University of Oregon, and eventually the NFL, where a shoulder injury ended his playing career. Anthony is the founder of Dark Work, an identity based coaching methodology that draws on neuroscience and psychology, and he has brought the framework into companies including Amazon, PayPal, T-Mobile, and Chick-fil-A. He hosts the daily podcast Aww Shift, now past 1,400 episodes over nine years, and runs two companies, Dark Work and Speak to Freedom. He speaks internationally on identity, resilience, and leadership, drawing on his own path from foster care to professional athlete to entrepreneur.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career? What athletics did you participate in?

I played football and track in high school, and football through college and into the NFL. What led me to speaking and coaching was the gym business I opened after my football career ended. I loved it, but I felt confined to one small city, and I wanted to reach more people in the world. When I was introduced to the idea that my story might have value at large, I decided to take it broad. That meant developing a whole new set of skills, but it’s what led me here.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

At one point, I was trying to build myself as a speaker, and I went to an event called Experts Academy as an audience member, just a regular guy. I ended up volunteering for the events, got to know the team running them, and eventually built a fitness product with the founder. That led to my first opportunity to speak in front of 2,000 people, the biggest crowd I had ever addressed. On the way to that event, my wife and I (we had just reconciled after being divorced for three years) got a call that someone had tried to take our kids from their school. I almost didn’t get on the plane. We handled the situation, got our kids safe, and I flew out nine hours later with my whole family to give that speech. I went out and delivered it, and my wife and kids got to watch my first big speech happen. People who saw me that day started asking me to speak on other stages, and the brand grew from there. It’s a story that could easily have gone a completely different direction.

Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

The first is that I don’t have an off switch. When I first opened my gym business, about nine months in, I was staring at bankruptcy. I had four thousand dollars to my name and a quarter million due in rent. I took that last four thousand and paid for a six thousand dollar coach. The very next week, my income doubled, and four months later it had quadrupled. That risk saved the business and became a catalyst for everything that followed.

The second is a sickening optimism. I trust that more than I trust fear or apprehension. If another human being has done something, I believe I probably can too. The path might be harder, but the possibility exists all the same.

The third is the ability to absorb a lot of emotion and keep moving. Most people let their emotions take the wheel and become their driver. I let the emotions spin around me while I keep moving toward the goal without letting them drag me down.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Can you share a pivotal moment in your athletic career that taught you a leadership lesson you’ve applied outside of sports?

My college coach, Don Pelham, used to say it takes a little more to be a champion. That little more mentality, doing a bit more and responding differently than others would, stuck with me. My sophomore year I tore my shoulder and broke my wrist, and my coaches counted me out. I had a choice to quietly finish out my scholarship or come back hard. I came back, and my senior year I led the Pac-10 in sacks, tackles for loss, forced fumbles, and fumbles recovered. My coach later told me he was glad I came back after quitting on him sophomore year, which stung, because I’d needed shoulder surgery, not quit. That moment taught me what it looks like to push past a point most people never reach.

How has your experience in team dynamics within athletics influenced your approach to leadership in the workplace?

Football brings together people from completely different walks of life, different values, different beliefs, all working toward one goal. A leader’s job isn’t just to do their own work and get others to do theirs. It’s getting a room full of different personalities to work in unison, even when they don’t always like each other, by teaching them to respect one another. That’s the biggest thing athletics taught me about leading in a workplace.

In what ways has facing defeat or challenges in sports prepared you for handling failure and setbacks in your professional life? What role does resilience play in long term career success?

In football, you make horrible mistakes and have amazing plays in the same game, sometimes on back to back snaps. You have to take the mistake out and put a fresh mindset back in immediately, because if you let one play sit in your head, it ruins the next one. In business, I’ve gone from a two hundred fifty thousand dollar month to a month where we made zero and lost over one hundred thousand dollars. That happened again earlier this year, and we came back stronger than before. Resiliency is what lets you keep pushing at the same level instead of just hanging around. Failure is part of the game. What matters is your response to it.

How do you apply the discipline and training regimen from your athletic pursuits to your current leadership role?

Every role, whether it’s an athlete, a CEO, a manager, or someone in sales, has specific things you have to do consistently that aren’t fun in the moment. The win is what’s fun. If you can get people to fall in love with the effort itself, not just the outcome, and you model that yourself, you give your team a real chance at success. Leadership is finding those small, consistent things and doing them without fail, so your team has an example to follow.

Reflecting on your journey, what specific skills or attributes developed through athletics do you believe are most essential for effective leadership?

Hands down, it’s communication. Not just talking and listening, but knowing how tactful you need to be with different personalities. Some people are easygoing, some are frantic, some need their confidence built up, and some need it dialed back. As a linebacker, my job was to communicate where we were going, why we were going there, and then reach each teammate in the way they individually needed to hear it. If you can’t communicate with people, or help them communicate with each other, you will never lead a team well. Strategy, technique, and tools all matter, but the daily in-between moments of knowing what to say, and what not to say, to each person are what count most.

Based on your experience, can you please share “5 Ways That Athletics Can Help Train Great Leaders?” If you can, please share a story or an example for each.

1. Having a goal

A team needs to know what winning actually looks like. My senior year, we set our sights on winning the Pac-10 for the first time in years. USC beat us, but that goal gave us a filter for every decision afterward. We finished 10–1 and lost only that one conference game, to the eventual champion.

2. Strategy

You can’t just show up and expect to win. Our senior year we played Cal, a team that had a real shot at beating us because one of their coaches had come from our system and knew how to break our formations. We adjusted at halftime as a unit and won. In business, leadership means committing to the strategy the team has agreed on, even when you have doubts. I learned a phrase from consulting with Amazon: disagree and commit.

3. Preparation

When I played for the Steelers, Coach Mike Tomlin drilled into us the idea of getting great at the small things everyone else cuts corners on. That team went on to win a Super Bowl in 2008. The preparation put in before the season built a mindset that made losing feel illogical.

4. Communication

This works in both directions. Giving feedback matters, but so does taking it without making it personal. If you can’t take feedback, you can’t get better, and that holds the whole team back.

5. Resilience

It shows up mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Can you get back up when the plan falls apart, when preparation doesn’t pay off, when the goal shifts? Feelings will tell you to stop. The people who refuse to quit are the ones who eventually win.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I would start a movement around random compliments and random hellos. We live in a disconnected world right now. People are guarded, everyone is a little skeptical, and most of what gets said to strangers online or in passing is negative or empty. So imagine if the norm shifted, even just a little, toward the opposite. Someone tells you they like your shoes. Someone says good morning and actually means it. Something that small.

I already try to do this when I am out in the world, though I will admit I am usually the quiet, keep-to-myself type when I am traveling. But every time I have pushed past that and said something kind to a stranger, the reaction is almost always the same. People light up. It catches them off guard in the best way, because it is rare.

What I love about this movement is that it costs nothing and anyone can start it today. You do not need money, a platform, or permission. You just need to decide that today is the day you say the kind thing out loud instead of keeping it to yourself. And the side effect is that it does not just lift the other person. It changes your own energy too. Giving a genuine compliment makes you feel as good as receiving one.

If enough people did this consistently, I think it would chip away at how disconnected and guarded we have all become. That is the movement I would want to start.

How can our readers further follow you online?

The best places are anthonytrucks.com, darkwork.com, and Instagram at www.instagram.com/anthonytrucks/.

Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!