How to create financial success without losing what matters with Anthony Spark | DFS 382

Hi, welcome to dust for success. I'm your host,

Jennifer Takagi, and I'm so happy to have Anthony spark with

me today. Welcome to the show, Anthony.

I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me, Jen.

Anthony has been an entrepreneur in the

network marketing space for almost two decades. That look

quite old enough for that has a multi million dollar company

that has allowed him and his wife to have more flexibility

and choices than most traditional career paths. Which

the number one reason people become entrepreneurs is freedom,

right? And whatever freedom means to you. So let's get into

it like how. Okay, so our talk title today is how to create

financial success without losing what matters. And I'm just going

to say we've had the last 20 minutes getting to know each

other and talking about like, how we make life what we want it

to be. So how did you become so passionate about the financial

success piece so that you can have freedom.

Yeah, well, I'll give you a little my bio. I

think that kind of dovetails into it. So I am 37 so I started

this right before my 18th birthday, so that's where the

two decades come. I've been doing this for more than half of

my life, but I grew up with a really dysfunctional family. My

mom was a single mom. She was a hospice nurse. She did the best

she could, but my dad just had a lot of problems. Ended up going

to prison, got addicted to drugs. Was a womanizer, so I

started working young. I was working at 12, and I was working

a 40 hour full time work week in ninth grade, at 15, and I'd ride

my bike each way, and my mom would drive me. And no one had

any money. So I worked, and I went to Europe twice, and I

bought my own car and helped my mom pay the bills. And I grew up

in a much more similar timeframe than you did, versus people that

are even five years my junior, because I'm like the last

generation that didn't have social media and no gurus, no

gig economy, no cryptocurrency. So they told me, you either go

to college, you're going to be a hobo. So I figured I'm not good

at fist fights under draw bridges, so I better go to

college, you know. And I figured I'd go to med school, and I

didn't want to be a doctor like I find some people, they have a

vocation that they want, and that's their dream. I wanted to

make a lot of money because I didn't want to be poor anymore,

because I knew that that sucked, and I knew I want to do

something and help people, so I figured the best way I could

figure to do it, I'm good at school. You know, I was pretty

rambunctious. You know, I'd study and I'd get fives my IP

exams and hungers on my regions, but I'd smoke a half ounce of

pot a week with the guys that were going to parties, and it

was pretty crazy, but I was working 60 hours a week, and I

was getting good grades, and my mom's like, all right, you know,

you you know, be careful. But anyway, I was gonna go to

UAlbany, but when I was 17, a friend of mine worked at a ski

place. It was like, his bullshit high school job. They'd like,

smoke pot in the basement, sell skis, kind of thing. But he told

me he met a guy there that said he was going to retire at 28

now, I'd never heard of financial freedom. I never knew

what financial independence was. I thought you either were born

rich or you worked your whole life. No one at the guidance

counselor gave me the option to retire in my 20s, and I remember

thinking to myself like I would do anything to be able to be

with my future family and to own my life, because I never dreamed

of labor like I didn't have a dream to be a doctor. I wanted

the rewards that I would get from being a doctor, so I said

to my friend, I'd do anything for that. I need to meet this

guy. And he said the thing that almost everyone says about every

business opportunity, oh, man, what if it's a pyramid? What if

it's a scam? What doesn't work? What if you don't make it? And I

said, maybe, maybe it isn't legitimate. What if it does?

What if it is, I think people have their risk mitigation off.

It might not be real, but I think the biggest risk is

assuming it isn't real, and then it could have been the best

opportunity in my life. And I said to my buddy, Matt, I said,

I don't know if you remember, like I'm not proud of it, but my

family are criminals, so honestly, I'm gonna suss the guy

out if it's not legit, but I got to know Tony and his family, and

they had built a multi million dollar business in the network

marketing space, and the money was great, but for me, it was

that freedom of time. He was able to drive his son to school,

and they were able to choose what they did and who they

worked with. And for me, Freedom has always been much more

important than trophies. I mean, when you don't go on the

expensive dinners and you haven't eaten the two $300

steaks and you haven't been on the boats and the beautiful

places, you think that that's the pinnacle of life. But for

me, a cup of coffee in the morning with my kids and being

able to be present is always more valuable than what these

peak expensive experiences are. Once you've done them a bunch,

you know, they're nice, but they're not what life's about.

So that's what I saw, and he had both. So I had to earn his time

and trust. Ultimately, they started to teach me this, which

was amazing. So I was just 18, you know, I really had to work

hard to earn your trust. But they taught me to build

companies in the network marketing space. Was able to

leave my full time job at 25 you know, and I started building my

business full time. I got fired. My wife got promoted. We figured

I'd focus on business. She would kind of hold down the health

benefits and keep working. She was much better at the

bureaucracy and the corporate ladder than I was by the time

she was 29 right around 30, which was December of 2019 she

was able to leave her full time job, and we got four kids. So I

had a lot of mentorship. I had a lot of guidance. I had a lot of

people teach me. And I think that without having someone to

teach you, a coach or a mentor or a guide or a top performer in

an industry, it's not that you can't make it, but it certainly

makes it a lot tougher, for sure.

Well, I love it. You You were going to go to

college so that you could, you know, not be a thug under the

under the bridge and right. How does it go, living down by the

river in a van?

Right, right? She have a shirt of him. I was

wearing it last night. It's funny. You said that from that

skit. Matt Foley, motivational speaker,

yeah, yeah. That was way before you were

born. But yes, Farley, it's been around a while, but I went to

college because I knew I would work full time the rest of my

life, and I wanted to put it off as long as possible when I went

to school and I worked while I was in school, and it one of my

professors said you could make better grades if you would just

apply yourself a little bit, and I went, Oh, wow. I carry a full

load. I work 20 to 30 hours a week at the library. I have a

boyfriend, and I party like a rock star on weekends. I don't

have time to make better grades than A's and B's, like,

right, right. B, I'll take a B, good enough.

I'm with. My degree in French has served me

well. I'm just saying

I love it. I love it. But

again, we have our reasons, and I keep hearing

people say, now, oh, you don't need a college degree. You

don't. You've never needed a college degree, unless you go

into a profession that requires it. It's the other things you

learn, and if you don't have the coaches and mentors to get you

on a path sooner and faster. It's a better choice than living

in a van down by the river. Totally.

I hear a lot of entrepreneurs denigrating

College, and they and they'll usually think like when people

start talking to me, that I'm going to be anti college, to

pretend like the humanities and these things that are read at

every funeral and every birth and poetry and the profit by

Khalil gibrar gibral. I mean, of course, it's valuable. It's just

important that you understand, not everything in life is going

to have an ROI financially. But that doesn't mean that it's not

valuable, you know. So I, and sometimes I like to clarify, I

didn't go to college because I live in New York, and even

though we had no money. I never qualified for financial aid. I

was going to have to pay for it. I found a path that didn't

require a college degree. I was working full time. I was the

father figure for my brother, who was nine years old at the

time, and I knew for myself, I'm ambitious and I'm hard working,

but if I put myself in a college environment and a sorority girl

asked me to go to a party, or any of my friends asked me to do

any substance, the answer is yes. So I figured, let me keep

myself out of that environment. You know, I'm on a path that

I'll try it. My friends are going to take at least five

years to graduate. So if I take a year, I'll catch up quick. But

I have, I have read a give or take a book a week for most of

my adult life, and I don't ever denigrate any type of education,

whether it be formal or informal. It just, it's a matter

of what direction you're going and understanding what you need

to get there. But anyway, I'm saving for funds for all my kids

if they want to be able to have the opportunity to go to college

and not worry about the finances. If that's valuable for

them, I don't, I don't think college was bad,

well, and again, my whole goal was to put

off working full time as long as possible. I mean, we all have

our reasons, but that was my top number one goal. And back when I

went to school, it was not ridiculously expensive, sure.

And so it was more of an attainable type goal, but we

learn lessons everywhere we go. So you got into Network

Marketing. What I mean? Do you do? Are you still in the same

type businesses? What is network marketing? Because some people

who listen may not know what network marketing is and how

that all comes together and comes to play so that you have,

oh, what? Financial freedom?

Yeah, well, network marketing is very

scandalous. Most people that hear about network marketing,

they have a friend or a family member that hated it, that lost

relationships, that it didn't work for. So that's a good

question. So all network marketing is, it's a company

that, rather than going through in a traditional distribution

chain, they pay people to talk about their products. Now the

challenge you run into is network marketing or direct

sales is the overarching industry. It's grown depending

on the metrics you read. Significantly since 2000

hundreds of billions, depending on what statistic you look at,

and they do 202 60 billion. It depends on the statistic that

you read per year, annually. So people say network marketing

doesn't work. That doesn't make logical sense. I mean, every

movie ticket in every movie theater in the world is like 60

billion. So no one's saying that movies don't work it. Oh, they

did for a while. Well, they did, yeah. Know, Sony got hosed with

K Pop. I don't know if you know that whole deal, but they sold

for 20 million in Netflix. K Pop's like the biggest movie

ever because they did like a direct to streaming platform.

They've made billions from that, from Netflix. But anyway,

regardless of all that, network marketing is a viable business.

Now, the challenge is, if you Google Network Marketing, you'll

find positive if you look for it, but you'll see it's a scam.

It's a pyramid. It's terrible. It doesn't work. And it's true

that 99% of people in network marketing don't make a lot of

money, but that, really, from my experience, comes based on two

things. First is the effort that's put in, because it's a

business and it takes a lot of time, takes a lot of learning,

takes a lot of effort, and most people, we all know how to be in

great physical shape, but we just might not be willing to do

the work. And that doesn't make anyone right or wrong, you know?

I mean, I was eating a bunch of Snickers last night. I mean, I

got my first workout in this morning because my trainer told

me is going to come to my house yesterday. But anyway, it's not

knowing what to do. It's desiring to be willing to do the

work consistently long enough. And then the big second one is

who's coaching you and what's the systems that you're using in

network marketing, like some industries, I find it's been

calcified. The strategy has been kind of stuck in the 1980s and

they have these hype up sign up, type businesses, people make

money from signing people up, which changes the incentive from

helping people succeed to just signing them up for something

that might not be best for them, they don't consider the second

order consequences of you just calling everyone you know and

monetizing relationships. And I believe that relationships are

much more important than money, so it really comes down to how

you approach it and the way that you do it, your ethics, your

business model, the way that you look at people not being just

money, because it's very easy. And a lot of people in the

industry, they're good people, but they kind of get stuck in

that. So anyway, network marketing, you talk about a

product you like, you sell a product. I believe now in 2025

it is all it's scandalous to say, but I don't believe that

the competitive advantage isn't a product. I believe that the

competitive advantage is the coaching and the mentorship that

can be offered that people are spending 10s of 1000s of dollars

per year to go to seminars and trainings and coaching and

certificates and in a network marketing model when done

properly, if you have a robust training system and you have

real coaching and one on one mentorship and financial

literacy and healthy relationships, and all the

different areas that you can go I believe that to be the biggest

benefit that you get. And the way I like to describe it as

people are familiar with the NFT thing. So NFT is the most

successful NFT. Now they've all obviously crashed, but in 2020

an NFT, a non fungible token, was on the blockchain. The most

popular one was these bored apes. And they were going for

50, 100 $200,000 and a lot of people didn't understand what

the value was, because it's like, why am I buying a picture

on my computer? It didn't make any sense. But the thing that

gave the value to the bored apes was that you got invited to a

private Whatsapp group with Snoop Dogg and celebrities and

high net worth people. So the people that were outside, they

were looking at the tangible product and it lacking in value,

which I agree with, but what they missed was the intangible

value of getting access to a network and a club that you'd be

able to network and talk to people and get access to people

you couldn't. And I believe network marketing, that's the

real competitive advantage of it when it's done properly.

I love that, and I love when you said that

sometimes the ROI return on investment, for somebody who may

not have heard that term before, it's not always financial. And

I've hired a lot of coaches, some better than others.

Purchase programs, some better than others, yep. But I

literally, I have a book around here somewhere, in a journal,

type book, where I listed every coach I had hired and what I got

out of them. Because, for the most part, it wasn't a financial

return, but it was the connections. It was the people.

It was putting me on, on the next path, uh, one coach had a

staff of coaches, and one of those coaches, I was a little

naive. She was a speaking coach, and it was like, help get

speaking gigs or whatever was kind of the premise. And so we

had a couple of calls, which was part of my program, and I got

the nicest email Anthony, and it said, Hey, Jennifer, I'm

speaking on a summit. I would love it if you could come and

support me. I didn't know there was an email list, and I was one

of many, and that was in 2020 actually, and I ran into her

online in another thing, and I told that story, and I could see

her on the Zoom screen cracking up because she sent it to her

whole list. I didn't know that was a thing, right? I was a

little baby in this. In the arena. And so I attended. It was

a three day Summit, big time commitment, but it was free. And

so I went because I had nothing better to do. I was an

entrepreneur, but I didn't know what to do next. Like, I was

like, you know, floundering around, and a woman came on. Her

name is Deanne randu, and she told her story. She had

everybody had a 25 minute spot. She told her story, and at the

end she said, and I'm I'm offering to the first 10 people

that sign up a free Akashic Records reading, and I had heard

of Akashic records. They're the messages of your soul, but I

didn't really know anything about them. I'd had a reading

before, but I like, I was, I just didn't even understand what

was going on, yeah. And so I was like, I want that. And I signed

up. I probably was the first one to enter my name, and we had

this lovely conversation. She just it was so gentle, so

wonderful. And then she said, this was in the fall. She said,

in the spring, I'm doing a training on learning how to read

Akashic records. Would you like to sign up? And I went, Yes,

please. That one event, that one thing from that coach that I

paid a lot of money for, that had other coaches sent me to

this summit, changed the trajectory of my life, and now

I'm an energy healer, and I do spectacular things, and I love

it so much. I do leadership also, but like this whole energy

world, and there's so much more out there. But it was because I

was looking for an ROI that was be outside the financial so you

get in these rooms, and you do meet different people, and it

does change your life. I'm I'm often asked, because I travel

quite a bit, and I go to conferences, like, anytime I

can. And people like, why do you do that? And it was like, Have

you ever been in a room full of people who are somewhat like

minded, not all right, but some like, we're in the room to see

that speaker, right? Because we're all drawn to it, and how

much power that has over you. So yeah, that whole ROI and I want

to be in the club, and there's something called The Secret

Knock or something. And I met a guy who's in the Secret Knock,

and he goes, Oh, if you're ever here, holler at me, and if

there's a meeting, I'll have you come. And I was like, Well, that

sounds amazing, like, I don't even know what that is, but

let's go.

I love it. I love it. But, yeah, you don't know

where things are going to go. You know what I mean? And it's I

find that a lot of people, they first off on the soliciting

thing. It's amazing how you don't know where things can go

and a general message can go somewhere. I do my best to make

sure, because I never, I feel like sometimes in network

marketing, I can speak just because something's effective

doesn't mean it's ethical, and I think it's really important that

we don't do things that work, we do things that are right,

primarily, and in network marketing this, there's a lot of

stuff online about people doing in a much more personal way than

just an email list with your name, pretending like, oh, like,

this is a special thing just for you and and they're they're love

bombing, and they're making something exclusive. That's not

first 10 people, but it's everybody. So for me, I think

it's really important that we say what we mean. We do what we

say. Just because something's effective, we should be careful,

because you can gain the world and lose your soul, you know

what I mean? So. But anyway, it's amazing that regardless of

the practice, we don't know where things are going to go and

who we're going to meet. I met an amazing guy that's becoming a

great friend, Tom lenoble, through this whole podcast

thing. And you know, there's a course I'm going to take. And

you know, I just got his book recently that just came out, you

know, really, really tremendous guy, but you don't know where

things are going to go. And in the network marketing space, if

you have the right people and you have the right direction, it

takes time, it takes work, but the amount of benefits that you

can gain in your personal life, as well as your financial

literacy and as well as if you commit to it, building a

substantial business like my wife and I have, it can be

really rewarding if done properly.

And it it's so much fun to get to make the

choice. My friend and I, part of me, we did a group coaching

program together, and I, towards the end, we were trying to

decide if we're going to continue or if we were going to

end it. And so I reached out to everybody in the group and did a

little one on one, almost testimonial type. But it was

like, you know, what did you like? What would you have liked

to have seen different? And after those calls, on the very

last call, which we did in the in the pro. Program. On the very

last call, two of the ladies said, If being an entrepreneur

and having financial freedom means you have to travel all the

time like the two of you do, I don't want it. And I was just

like, that's what you took away from this. Because, guess what?

You don't have to if you never want to leave your house and you

want to stay cation every weekend, every day, perfect, but

it gives you the financial freedom to have the house and

the yard that you want so that you do that, and that's where it

it all comes down is having the freedom to do what feels good

for you. We talked before we started. I do travel quite a

bit, and my husband, he doesn't want to, yeah, he's invited

everywhere I go, unless it's a girls trip, but he's invited,

and he's like, Yeah, I don't really want to go. Okay, great.

You don't have to go, but we have the freedom and opportunity

to make those choices in those division decisions. And I told

him recently, one day, I'm going to wake up and I'm going to say,

I don't really want to deal with the airport. I don't want to

deal with the other people. I just I'll just stay home, and

that will be that. And then I'll just travel occasionally,

instead of pretty consistently, but it gives you the freedom, it

gives you the opportunity. And I, I was having a conversation

the other day, and somebody made a very sweeping announcement

about one part of her life, and the next day, I called her back

and I said, Wait, that's not true. You You had bad things

happen and screw up your plans four times. But let's go over

all the times that didn't happen. And so it becomes very

easy to get sucked into the negative stories. It's like our

brains want to go to the negative so that can keep us

safe, but that cuts off all of the of the all of the

possibilities. And I even love that part of your talk title is

like without losing what matters. So did you ever have a

time when you had to struggle a little bit like figuring out

what matters and what path would be the best, the easiest, and

not necessarily easiest as in a cake walk, but easiest as in

most aligned, I guess, is a better way.

So on one note, and then I'll go to that. It's,

I think it's really important. When you have when you know what

you want, and you're ambitious and you have these desires and

these big goals, it can be very easy to denigrate other people

that have a different vision for their life. And I think that the

biggest thing is just being honest and authentic about what

it is that you want, what is that you want to do, and it

doesn't mean it's better than anybody else. I don't think that

just because you make more money, you're better than

someone that makes less. I think that makes you an asshole if you

think that, you know it's just important that if you choose to

be a school teacher, which I think is a tremendously noble

profession, and I am so thankful for the amazing school teachers

that teach my kids, you just need to understand that there's

going to be a certain financial limitation with that. So you

can't expect to live in a mansion and be going on trips to

Europe every three months as a school teacher. But if you're

okay with that, I don't think that that path is any less

valuable or less important. It's just a matter of weighing what

we want and being honest about the pros and cons and not lying

to ourselves on the topic of not losing your life. I almost lost

my marriage over my ambition and my business, and I'll kind of

tell a little bit of that story, and that's why I think it's such

an important topic. Most people, I find, especially when they

start entrepreneurship or they start a journey, is their

question. They ask is, what if I fail? And I think that as you go

down the road and you've created a certain amount of success, you

learn that that isn't the question to ask, because

anything that you apply yourself long enough to that you truly

want to have happen eventually. Time Frames vary, but eventually

you're going to get a semblance of the success you're looking

for. It might not look the same. You might have the winding road

or the spiral staircase that Trevor Blake talks about in

three simple steps, one of my favorite books, but ultimately,

you get there. The real question that we need to ask is, if we

succeed, does it create the life that we want? Because I've seen

a lot of people build really beautiful prisons, and they

build a lifestyle that they don't actually like, and they

got everything they thought they wanted, but getting to the end

of a journey and actually, quote, unquote, succeeding and

finding that nothing at the end of that journey is going to fill

the hole in your soul is one of the most depressing situations

that you see. A lot of people that create a lot of external

success end up with so I believe that you can kind of cope and

make do till about 25 or so. So I came from a really

dysfunctional family. I didn't know what it was like to be

successfully married. I had no examples of it. So we kind of

held it together. And Cal we got together when we were 20. My

wife's name is Callum, and we kind of were like working. And

entrepreneurs and working all the time, but at about 25 or so,

all those patterns, all those coping mechanisms, the things

start to break down. And there was a time where a relationship

wasn't healthy. All of my first fruits, as some would say, all

of my energy and my time and my emotion was print was going to

my business first and building financial freedom, and the

leftovers were going to my wife, and I wasn't giving her. I

wasn't being there properly a relationship. She had

codependent tendencies. I'm hyper independent, you know? So

there came a point where I said, like, I'm not angry. But at this

point, we were so emotionally divided that it was like, I

don't I might not be faithful and I'm not going to be my dad,

so I don't think I can do this anymore. I never was, but I said

this is not going to work. Thank God for my wife, because she

said I'm not leaving and I won't, and she refused, which

was one of the most transformative relationship

situations and relationship in my life. But one of the things

that my counselor told me is he said, You're cheating on your

wife. And I said, I suck at a lot of stuff, but I am not

cheating on my wife. That is one thing for sure, that I am not

doing everything else well aware I that's I got an A in that

category, Bill. And he said, No. He said, your business is your

mistress, and you give all your time and energy and everything

there, and you leave your wife and she's emotionally

unsupported, and that was a real turning point. So there was a

few times, but in the frenetic chase of success and financial

independence and the fear of poverty that I came from and

building this I almost lost the thing in life that is the most

valuable, which is my marriage, ultimately my four kids, and I'm

not looking to lose my multi million dollar business, and I'm

not saying I'm looking to go back to being poor, but if you

gave me the ultimatum that I can either have my marriage, I can

have my mental health, I can have my kids, or I can have the

money and the success and the small amount of micro fame that

it gives. I'm choosing my family every day of the week, I'm

choosing my marriage, and I had to renegotiate the way that I

was building my life. Because just because you can do anything

doesn't mean you can do everything. You're not going to

be world's best dad and an Olympic athlete and the best

husband and a CEO of a Fortune 500 company at the same time.

There's just not enough to go around. So I had to reorganize

my life, and I work for a finite amount of time, and then the

majority of my time goes to my kids, and it goes to my wife,

and it goes to my creating, and it goes to the things that

matter most. And a lot of people in my industry, it's a

performance based industry, so it's you got to do more, you got

to do more. You got to do more. You got to be bigger. Got to be

bigger. Got to do more. Bigger. Got to do more. And a lot of

people get stuck in this never ending chasing of the horizon,

chasing the wind, as some would say. And you can lose your

marriage and your mental health and your physical health, and

you get and what are you going to snuggle up to a pile of

money, you know? And I see a lot of these people, and they they

they celebrate this emotionally unhealthy workaholism. And I'm

not looking to name names, because everybody's got their

own path and I'm not here to judge, but I'm not looking to

have five championship rings and be known as the best athlete or

the fastest runner, or run a bazillion miles through the

desert and have no emotional health, no marriage, no

relationship, because what are we gaining for that? What is the

purpose of that? Because I've never met someone at the end of

their life, and my mom was a hospice nurse for a long time.

And you know, any personal development people you've read

the end of life, and no one regrets making less money, no

one regrets less fame. They regret the opportunities they

didn't take. They regret the opera, the situations or the

experiences that they miss. They regret not telling people that

they love them and being there for the people that we're all

going to die, that people try to hide from mortality like we're

not going to die. So I think it's really important,

especially if you're an entrepreneur or you're chasing

big goals and you want to change the world, you want to make a

difference, you have to keep in mind, it's still just a game.

Basketball monopoly making money on it's a game, and winning at

the game is beautiful, and it's a wonderful thing to do, but you

got to put the game in its place, in the context, globally

and holistically of your life, of what matters. And that's what

I was saying about just because something works doesn't mean you

should do it. If you do things and you can't look someone in

the mirror that you're proud of, that you believe in, that you

respect, regardless of what anyone else thinks. At the end

of the day, you traded everything for nothing. I That's

my feeling

that's kind of like a mic drop moment. And

again, the people who are in the entrepreneurial space, and I

hear a lot of people, mostly women, actually say, Oh, I don't

want that much. And I did a workshop recently, and somebody

was like, Well, I don't want that much. And. I said, Well, if

you don't have more than you have now, which was zero, if you

don't have more than you have now, how are you going to help

those people you want to help like it's the context of the

why, right? Why am I doing this? You're doing it, from what I

gather from our conversation, you're doing it to have more

time with your wife, with your family, and to make an impact.

You said you love coaching people and guiding people and

helping people grow in the network marketing space. Okay,

great. And so balance is an elusive term. I think it's kind

of overused, but you have to make time for the things that

are a priority. And you can't say your family's a priority if

you're never there.

It's the syntax. You gotta have a syntax of

priorities. You know, politically, people are always

arguing left and right. Really, if you dig in, almost everyone

has the same values, just in a different order. It's just the

syntax. It's just the order of values, you know. So I do

believe, though, it's very important, that until you're

financially free, you're never free in a free country, because

you're beholden to someone else's telling you what to do

and when you can see your family. So I do believe

financial literacy and building some sort of independent income,

whether it be through investments or building a

business, it's network marketing space. I don't care how you do

it, but being able to choose what you do and not have to do

it, I think, is one of the only ways to self actualize, like

Maslow says, or one of the ways that you can really pursue

individuation, like Carl Jung says, that you need to put

yourself in a position that what would I do if I didn't have to

do something for money? And it came to a time at this point, my

goal was financial freedom, and we attained that. And listen, if

someone wants to give me $100,000 I'm happy to take it. I

mean, I have uses for it, but I don't need more money. And that

became a real existential thing for me, which is, why am I doing

this now? Because I have to. I have a limited time with my

family for the most part, I can kind of manage things. And it

went from financial freedom and making an impact to making an

impact and additional finances. And now the reason I still do

network marketing and I've started do some coaching,

because my passion is coaching. Network marketing is wonderful,

and I'm thankful for it. My passion is coaching. That's the

thing that I love about that industry. So I've dovetailed

into doing some independent coaching, because it's using the

same skill set. It's tangential. Gives some variety, you know. So

it's fun. Me, my brother in law, we had, we just had our second

annual punk rock run for mental health awareness. And, you know,

an extra is going to be bigger, but he organized events. He's

the COO of our training company. Puts together 5000 person events

in the network marketing space. So it's cool to take a skill

that you're doing in one industry, and do it kind of

tangentially in a wholly different place, because it's

interesting, it's new, it changes. But that's at this

point my life. I was an 18 year old kid smoking a half ounce pot

a week, going to parties. Had a lot of aptitude. I had a lot of

ability, but I didn't have a direction. And I know a lot of

people that work hard their whole life, and they never

achieve financial independence. They never achieve the kind of

income that we're creating. So I've never forgotten that, and I

have a lot of differences, and I don't agree with everything for

all the people that mentored me, because how could you roll

different? But I've never forgotten how thankful that I am

for what they've done in my life. So at this point, the

reason I still do this, the reason I'm doing this podcast,

financial gain is nice, but if I never made more money than I'm

making now, we got more than enough. My family's taken care,

and we got a beautiful life. It's really at this point, can I

help a few more people create this kind of outcome? Can I help

a few more people create this kind of financial independence

in their life so they can pursue whatever it is that they're

passionate about with their kids, their family, their

spouse, their travel, their charity work, whatever it

may be that is beautiful. I love it. So if I

wanted to work with you, if somebody in the audience was

like, Oh man, I want to get hold of Anthony. I want to work with

him. If he's a coach, I'm in. How do people get hold of you?

Do you have a website like, what do you what do you do to get

people in? Because I'm sure there will be people who are

like, Oh, wait, I went in.

I would love to help. So first off, I will give

you my personal cell phone. One of the funniest things in the

world is almost no one takes the first step. So this isn't a

Google number. This has been my cell phone number for, I don't

know, 22 years. I did an interview with Mark Miller. He's

like, one of the first 10 or something in place. Something

employees at Chick fil A became super, super successful. He's

got a beautiful book secret of teams that I use as I start to

teach people about our industry. But my cell phone, you want to

just text me. I'll give you my website. You can find me on

social but my personal cell phone is 631-327-2241, can throw

it in the show notes, and there's a few paths. If I could

be of service to you, text me. You know, I'm not so busy. I

can't answer a memo or a text message. You know, if you're

looking for personal coaching, I'm going to probably work with

maybe five, maybe 10 people. The values have to align. It's not

primarily for money. For me, what I have found is you have to

charge. Money. Otherwise people don't listen. I think I'm

probably the cheapest for my level, because the money is

secondary. But we'll do a half an hour free discovery call and

see if it makes sense. I get to know you get to know me, because

not every coach is right for everybody, and not every

position and direction is right for everybody. You have to have

similar values. I got a very specific vibe, you know. So you

gotta like the person and feel comfortable. They also have to

have the results in life that you want. It's important to find

someone that's created the kind of life that you're looking for

and shares your values, because if they haven't created the

success, they can't give you the blueprint to get there. But if

they don't share the values, the way that they're going to get

there is not going to resonate with you, and you're not going

to be happy with them. If network marketing is your thing,

you could text me and we could talk about that. I take people

through a qualification process for that too, to make sure it's

the right thing and really explain how we do things and

stuff. But it'd be an honor, a privilege, to help. That's one

of the reasons I'm here, you know. And if there's one person

that hears this and either be advice or this inspires you or

whatever, it'd be an hour very well spent. Plus, I got a new

friend and Jen, that's super fun.

This is awesome. Thanks so much,

Anthony. Has been great getting to know you and and hearing your

story. Because part of me, I love seeing, well, you're

substantially younger than I am, but I love seeing younger people

succeed and create the life that they really want. So this has

been just an honor for me to witness your life and your

success and what you bring to the world that's awesome.

Thank you, and same for you. I'm so great to

see you living life and enjoying your life and doing the things

you want to do, and 33 years married with different desires

and different things. And it's just it's really special. It's

always cool to get to know people and connect with like

minded people.

Yeah, it is great. I'm Jennifer Takagi with

destin for success, and I look forward to connecting with you

soon. You.