E 271: Why Hustle Culture Breaks Connection , Guest Anthony Spark

Well, hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Adult Child of Dysfunction.

Today we have with us Anthony Spark.

He is the founder of Spark a Change Coaching, a values based practice for sustainable personal and business growth.

A top 5% leader in global network marketing for 20 plus years, he's a life and business coach, helping clients eliminate 10 plus million dollars in debt, grow income and build impact driven lives worldwide.

I would stop right there and say welcome Anthony, but I like what you wrote at the end, so this is what I'm going to really read because this is you.

He said, I started working full time at 15 and built businesses early, achieving what most people would call success by my mid-20s.

From the outside, things look solid.

Income, leadership, momentum.

But internally he learned that progress without alignment comes at a cost.

He hit seasons where he was winning on paper while slowly disconnecting from himself, his values and the people he cared about most.

The realization forced him to slow down, tell the truth about what wasn't working and rebuild from the inside out.

He learned that habits shape identity, that money amplifies who you already are, and that integrity is what makes success sustainable.

The hope he offers is simple but real.

You don't need to start over or become someone else.

With honest reflection, support and consistent habits, you can heal what's misaligned and build a life that feels grounded, meaningful and genuinely free.

That's the Anthony Spark I want to meet.

Love it.

Love it.

That's the real.

That's the real real.

That's the real real.

That's the one.

That's the other like, oh, is there anything else I should know about you?

Well, yeah, that's you.

Yes, for sure, for sure, yes.

So welcome.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

It's an honor and a privilege.

Hopefully a lot of people can be helped by the challenges and learn from them and be able to grow and I'm just so glad to be here.

It's such a pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

Well, I appreciate it and I think that we all have challenges.

Like challenges are not new, that they're not something that people can avoid.

It's just part of life.

And it's really how we deal with them and how we let them get us down or keep us up.

That really it's what makes us.

But you kind of learn the hard way along the way that success is not just a number on paper.

It's about what's truly inside.

So talk a little bit about that.

Yeah.

I want to give you my, my history.

I think That'll probably be the best starting point, if that's good.

Oh, absolutely.

So I came from a pretty dysfunctional family.

Now I have.

My mom has said, well, you're not represented.

My mom is wonderful.

Just to be clear, she comes from a very dysfunctional family, but she did, all things considered, quite an amazing job actually.04% now in the network marketing industry.

So we.

Oh, amen.

But I say that because my mom, I'm the eldest of three.

I have a sister that's two years younger and have a brother that's eight years younger.

And we're all extremely big earners with healthy relationships and a great life.

So I do want to preface that.

That's from my mom.

But my.

I do come from a really dysfunctional background.

My mom was a single mom most of my life.

My dad ended up getting addicted to painkillers, went to prison, womanizer, couldn't get out of his own way.

And his mom was.

Got married at 15 or had him at 15 out of wedlock.

She was Jewish, come from an upper middle class Jewish family.

You probably know them, the Zuckerbergs.

I'm just on the wrong branch of the family tree.

So Mark Zuckerberg's like a second cousin I've never met.

And my dad's brother is schizophrenic and it called him for money when the first came out that we could contact him.

So that door closed pretty quickly.

But I had a crazy family time growing up.

My dad was into a lot of different things, couldn't get out of his own way.

My mom's dad or my mom's mom, she was misdiagnosed with bipolar or schizophrenia when she was actually bipolar one.

She had a traumatic situation.

She was raped in college, became an alcoholic.

And my mom basically had the house from the time she was 8.

She'd come home, her mom be passed out on the floor.

So my, my grandfather kind of like was running a company and he was paying for like every treatment he could and he was embezzling funds from his company to try to make his wife better.

He ended up going to prison.

My mom and her sister had to live in crazy thing where they'd have a shotgun and an area probably similar to the one we mentioned earlier.

And so I grew up with a crazy situation.

You know, my, my dad, when my, my.

My grandfather did pass away, they took the money and they bought a deli.

And my dad hired.

Hired a coat.

He was sl.

Stealing money out of the drawer that ended up, you know, just leaving his Business partner with everything or holding the bag with everything.

But I was working at 13, and I was working full time at 15, and I wanted to buy stuff and my mom needed money, so I worked.

And I worked 40 hours a week in ninth grade.

So I. I'm 37.

So I grew up in a lot different of a world for anyone that's like 25 or younger, you know, Tammy's 29, so we grew up much in much similar time frame.

I got you, Tammy.

Couple times, you got it.

I got you.

I got you.

But I've grow.

I grew up much similar.

If you take people that were born in, like, I was born in 88.

I grew up much more similar all the way, really back to even 60, 70, 65, than just people a few years younger, because I didn't grow up with social media.

There's no gig economy, no cryptocurrency, no anything.

But anyway, that's a little bit.

I could give you tons of stories.

I got stories for days, I bet.

I mean, you just threw like 19 different things.

We could talk about any one of those.

We could pick when you talk.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, Tammy.

I can say that's just the high.

Who am I?

Like, what happened the first in one minute, I can't even imagine.

But you did good things.

I mean, okay, so I get it because I, I kind of started there.

As far as the working, it was the same thing with me.

My mom was a, you know, a drunk, my dad and a drug addict.

My dad was a drunk.

If I wanted anything, I. I bought it myself.

I mean, literally, that's what it was.

I can remember going to.

Getting up in the morning, going to school, running track, doing diving, and then going to friendlies and waitressing from the time I was, I think I told them I was back then, you could lie about your age.

You could get into the pizzerias underage when you were 12 and tell them they were 14.

You know, you could do all that stuff back then.

So same thing, work full time.

I actually moved out in high school because my dad, senior year, thought it was a good idea to give me a curfew, which I've never had one or one boundary my entire life, let alone lots of boundaries.

Like, that was crazy.

So I totally get that.

And I mean, you came from a long line, though, of successful people as far as on paper.

Yeah.

So not successful.

No one in my family is actually successful.

No one is, so.

Which actually was a good indicator.

So my whole Dad's side of the family, they're all brilliant, you know, like 150 IQ.

But because of the emotional damage and very often the lack of the emotional regulation, undiagnosed mental illness, and just the terrible generational kind of in things that they inherited, they are very under.

Underperforming.

Financial.

My mom, she's a nurse.

She's been a.

She just retired as a hospice nurse.

So she did well.

She put herself through school and you know, she had a.

You know, her husband was philandering and you know, she.

So she held it down.

But that's why we were, we weren't there a lot.

She was working all the time.

But in New York you got one income that's not enough money, you know, so we were always struggling regardless.

But there's really nobody in my family that's really successful.

I have some cousins, my mom's cousins, extended.

But very, very few people are, you know, successful even in, on paper.

Interesting.

I mean, it's, it's funny.

And we were just the opposite.

Where our family was looked on the outsides.

Perfect.

My mom was a child psychiatrist, my dad was a high end stockbroker.

Like, we lived, we lived in a beautiful home and everybody thought everything was great and.

Yeah.

And it was just funny when people later now people that I went to high school with, they'll hear my podcast something or read my book and be like, what the.

We had no idea.

And I'm like, of course you didn't.

I had the best mask.

I was so good.

I pulled them out.

I had like stacks of masks.

Like all you rich people have shoes, you know?

Yeah, it was, it was crazy.

But so talk about how when you get what.

When you realize really your life was like, okay, I'm burning out and I'm might have money and look good on paper, but I'm not happy.

Yep.

So when I was just turning 18, I was on the track to go to med school.

I knew I wanted, I knew I want to make a lot of money and I was good at school, I was good at learning.

And I do.

I want to do something that made a difference.

And that was the best I could figure.

Now I didn't want to be a doctor.

I just want to make a lot of money and help people.

And there was no gig economy, There was no social media, so.

But a friend of mine, it was like his bs high school job, I don't know if I should curse or not, but his bs, okay, so his high school job, they'd smoke pot in the Basement, sell skis and.

But he told me there that he met a guy that told him he was going to retire at 28.

Now, I never heard of that again.

There's no point of reference.

So that was a singular moment in my life that I thought you either were born rich or you worked your whole life.

You can make a lot of money.

But retiring on 28 was never an idea that I realized was even a possibility.

So I said to my friend, like, I would do anything if I didn't have to work a regular job and I could be with my future family, because I always wanted a family.

I always wanted kids.

I said, I do.

As long as it's legal and ethical, I do anything for that.

And honestly, as long as it's ethical, I don't even mind if it's legal.

So.

But I got to know him and my friends like, well, what if it's like a pyramid or a scam or he's going to get you.

And it happened to be in the network marketing industry.

There's a lot of talk about that and a lot of bad actors in industry.

A lot of great ones, too.

But I said, maybe it is a scam, but two things.

First off, it is a scam.

I'm 17, I have nothing to get.

So this guy's like the worst scam artist ever.

So there's no risk for me meeting this guy.

Second of all, my family are criminals.

My dad works on the weekends as a bouncer and at the strip club that his cousins open to laundry their drug money through.

I'm not worried about meeting a guy at Starbucks, you know, so anyway, so I met him and I didn't listen to what Reddit and everybody said.

And I'm, I'm.

I think there's a difference.

You could be optimistic, which is great, but sometimes you can take advantage of.

You just assume everybody's out, everybody's good, which that's kind of.

And that's better than cynical, which is everybody is terrible.

Terrible.

But skeptical means they could be great, they could not be.

I'm going to get the data, I'm going to get the facts, I'm going to find out what it is.

So.

And that was kind of where I was at.

But I got to know him, and he had a great family and he had a great life.

So ultimately I said, this is what I want.

And I had to go through getting to know them.

I had to prove myself.

I was 17, my hair was down on my shoulder.

I was smoking half ounce of pot a week But I was precocious, I was hard working and I was, I was a worker and I was willing to do whatever I could.

By the time I was graduate high school, I was working 60, 70 hours a week.

It's taking AP classes, you know, you know the deal similar thing.

So I started in business and I got into network marketing and I expected to exceed succeed immediately, which was absolutely not the case.

But I did.

I focused and channeled all of my energy into fixing the financial problem and to ultimately getting out of having a job.

I got together with my wife at 20, we started dating and then like four months in I'm like, your parents also give you a curfew?

Like just move in with me.

So we like took their luggage and just moved her out.

She dropped out of nursing school.

You know, that's a, probably wasn't the best idea.

We combined our bank accounts but we would have got married immediately but we had to save up the money.

No one had money.

So he got married a few years later.

But that whole time, so I'm in a relationship and I'm building my business.

By the time I was 25, I was able to leave my full time job and my wife left her job at 29.

But in those probably late 20s, 25.

I have a personal theory that I've experienced that you can come from a super traumatic background and you can have all this baggage and you can do with all that stuff and you can hold it together and it doesn't really catch up to you typically till about your mid-20s.

But that's where stuff starts to break, where it's the I'm never going to be like my dad, I'm never going to do those things.

And now you have to deal with the double edged sword that you're doing these things and the judgment of yourself that you said you'd never ever do those types of things.

So we're making money and we're succeeding and we're growing up levels, our income's improving, but my marriage is dying on the vine now.

I don't know how to have a successful marriage.

I had some good examples in my life, you know, from the network marketing end, but I didn't have it modeled for me.

I didn't know what it was even supposed to be.

So I like to talk about it.

It's like trying to put a puzzle together upside down.

Like if you don't even know what the puzzle is, it's hard enough to put the puzzle together, but if you don't even have a Point of reference.

It's almost impossible.

So at that point I got to a point where I was talking to some different people and you know, and I was always networking.

That was my business.

And it was a girl I started talking to and I'm like, you know what?

I might, in the right circumstance and the right moment of weakness, not be faithful.

So I wasn't unfaithful, but I said, there's a potentiality.

I said, I'm never going to do that.

I'm never going to do that.

So I said, I just have to get divorced.

My wife had a lot of codependent tendencies, which I'm sure you've read lots of stuff on codependency, having alcoholic parents.

So she was trying to make me happy.

And I had a lot of codependent people in my life and I was counter dependent.

You know, that was my trauma response.

Ultra like, don't, don't with me.

Don't get in my.

I'm.

I'll take care of me.

You know, I've always had to take care of me, you know, so ultimately I basically.

My wife went on a trip and she came home and I just said, you know, no warning.

I just said, we need to get divorced.

And it was extremely traumatic.

And the reality in doing that and kind of.

I'll make sure I wrap this question as I tell these stories, but we did get divorced.

Who we.

That relationship we had, we don't have, but we got remarried to the same, the same person, just a different version.

And one of the things that one of my marriage counselors had said in that time, they like, you're cheating on your wife.

And this was kind of leading up to that.

And I said, listen, I do a lot of up, but I do not cheat on my wife ever.

Right?

Yep.

He said, well, your business is your mistress.

All you do is you give all your time, all your energy, and everything goes to your business and you leave the leftovers, which is basically nothing for your wife.

And that was a reality check.

So that was where I had to start to really reorient myself because I knew instinctively, I knew inside that this isn't going to work.

I'm either going to do this business the way I'm doing it to no one's fault but my own, or I'm going to stay married because I can't do this like this and be married.

It's not good for my wife.

I can't have a marriage.

So it basically became what felt like a choice between my vocational success and my Marriage.

And one of the only things that I have a regret and I'm shameful about is I almost chose vocational.

I was close, I thank God I didn't.

I got four beautiful kids.

I wouldn't trade my wife and my marriage and my family for any amount of money or vocational success.

But as a young idiot that my cognitive abilities were still finally developing and coming from the trauma, I almost chose that.

But we had to really start working on who are we and what's our relationship and what's our priorities and not putting business ahead of everything else.

And I switched, especially as we started to have kids.

But it became my family's primary and here's my working hours and whatever doesn't get done in the I can increase efficiency, I can do better, but I'm not chasing this never ending, you know, increase and fans and performance and billion dollar valuation.

We make more than enough money.

It's nice to have more, but we're going to keep family first.

That's a little bit kind of on the marriage and where it really started to break.

Talk about identity, authenticity and that kind of stuff.

But I think that's a good starting point for the question.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And all of that is nor and amazing that you chose, honestly, amazing.

I mean, I'm so glad I don't even know you and I'm so glad.

Like I'm so happy for you.

But that's not normally the way it goes.

Normally there's so many, like you said, these abandonment and attachment styles and it just would be easier being that person that you are.

Like you said, the I can take care of myself.

I've always had to.

I don't need anybody else.

Yeah, that would be typically the way I would think most people would lean.

Yeah, it's important my wife hears that I give proper credit here.

So three things.

First, I helped to plant a church and I had a pastor and a friend of mine who's become one of the most successful churches.

And I'm, you know, I'm not the cleanest, especially with my language, but he said, give it 30 days.

One of my business partners, Tony, he also said that because I said I'm not doing this.

That's it.

When I, I make decisions slow and I think about them a lot.

So usually when I make a decision, that's it, that's the decision.

But I gave that space.

And then lastly, my wife said, I'm not leaving, I'm not doing it.

And she's like, nope, not doing it, not getting divorced.

And she Ended up getting a tattoo.

It's like an apostle.

It's like the dot in the apostrophe and a cross and it's.

But God.

So she refused.

So my marriage and my life is because of my wife's willingness to take that kind of unbelievable trauma and say, no, I'm not.

I'm not leaving.

We're not doing that.

Kudos to her.

Yeah, she's tough.

She's tough as nails.

A lot of people, she's quiet.

She's like, you know, not going to be the life of the party.

They.

She's always underestimated.

She's tough as nails.

I was gonna say she's probably one of those real.

Yeah.

Always cute and sweet and everything else.

Until you mess with her family.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

That's literally.

And you said she came from.

Did she come from that background?

She came from a good family.

They had their own stuff, but their parents actually live here.

We moved them into this place.

So they've been married for, like, 30, 40 years, got three kids.

And, you know, they obviously everyone's stuff, but they.

She comes from a solid family.

A solid family.

So that's good.

Well, that's really cool.

Yeah.

So what.

So you fixed all that?

Everything's going good.

What do you think is what's causing people right now?

Like, what do you think is the biggest thing right now in business that's causing them to just burn out and.

Yeah.

Burn bridges.

I mean, that's what people are doing right now.

Hustle culture comparison and a lack of.

A clarity of their syntax of values.

So hustle culture.

You know, it's this debate that I've been talking a lot about between the best.

The best basketball player being Michael Jordan or LeBron James.

So you got the Michael Jordan version, right?

And then you got the LeBron James version.

Michael Jordan has more championships.

And I know nothing about basketball.

I like teams.

I like psychology.

I like studying that.

So anyone that says it gives me any bad.

I have no idea.

But we take Michael Jordan, right?

Inarguably, one of the best basketball players of all time.

You can't argue that.

Gambling addiction, clearly miserable anger issues, no relationship with his kids.

Divorced billionaire teammates hate him.

Stories of him spitting on cinnamon rolls so his security guards can't eat them.

Going to a friend's house and cutting.

Taking a kitchen knife and cutting all those pumas in half and said, you can't have pumas.

You can only have Nike.

I support Nike.

And all sorts of kind of stuff along those lines, Right?

Then you take LeBron signed at 18.

Superstar talent straight from being an 18 year old to going into the NBA.

One of the longest tenured careers.

Married his high school sweetheart, great relationship with his kids, owns lots of companies.

Less inarguably one of the best players.

People fail to recognize that they are listening, I believe, to a lot of people that have created a lot of vocational success, they've created a lot of income, they've had fans, they're famous.

But whoever you listen to, you're going to replicate their values in their life.

So if you don't have a clear syntax of values.

So yes, I want to make money and yes, I want to succeed and be creative primarily, and yes, I want to be able to have luxuries, but never in a million years, I am ultra clear that when Friday Family Night comes, you want to pay me $100,000.

We're doing Friday Family Night.

You know, I'm already taking time away from my kids, my four kids, my wife, my personal integrity, my authenticity, people not liking what I say and what I do.

And I'm not saying that my values are right.

A lot of times people will confuse because I'm very opinionated, I'm very strong about what I say.

I'm not saying that you need to live that way.

I'm not saying I don't understand that there's political fallout and there's opportunities that are lost if you're going to walk your own path.

But for me, that's more important.

So I think it's hustle culture and then comparison.

You know, when you compare one element of someone's life and you disregard everything.

Like you look at the child psychologist and the stockbroker and they're like, I'd like that life, you don't know.

So I think it's really important that people take the time to take to play it out.

Like go 30 years out in the future.

What am I going to actually regret missing?

What am I actually going to want to have?

Because if I have a billion dollar company, but I don't have relationships with my kids and I'm on my third marriage and I'm six years old dating a 20 year old, for me, that is the, that's the definition of a nightmare.

For me.

I'm not judging anybody, I'm not here to say what anyone else does, but I want to have four adult children that want to choose to live near us and want to have their families together and be at Christmas dinner, right?

And if I'm, I take my kids to karate and I drive my kids to school every day and we pick them up most days.

And yeah, I could have more vocational success and I could be making a very bigger income if I just reallocated that time to income producing activities.

I don't fucking want to.

That's a bad trade.

Right, Right.

So I think that's a big part of it.

Comparison.

And then what was the last one?

Or did you already have a clear syntax of values?

You need to know what's more important than the other.

It's not how I have values.

We all got values.

What's the syntax?

When push comes to shove, what's the thing you're going to choose?

Because what's your order?

Yeah, what is your priority?

Because you can have values and you can let them go all the time.

I mean, it's, I, I tell people, especially when they're so confused about that, and some people don't even know what their values are.

Yeah, I mean, literally, that's the first part.

They're just stuck in this grind.

And a lot of times it starts in that childhood and they go right into this job and they climb the corporate ladder and then all of a sudden they lose their job and they don't know who they are, what they stand for, what they want, how to have a relationship.

Like they don't know any of that stuff, but it's like you have to, when you figure that out, you have to be strong enough, I feel like, to set those non negotiables, like you said, Friday night, family night, it's not negotiable.

Right.

And that's hard to do when you've sacrificed boundaries and not learned about them.

And that's really hard to do for yourself.

Do you have any tips and tricks on people that are just starting out on that?

Sure.

Well, there's a lot of great books on the, on the note of those masks.

I think the book's over there somewhere, but it's called the Midlife Passage.

It's Jungian psychology.

I think it'd be a super valuable read for anybody that's in maybe late 20s, but predominantly late 30s, 40s, where they talk about, they call it the midlife crisis, but very often it's like a second adulthood.

And most people never psychologically make that switch where you're living for what other people said, you're living for the family values, you're living with these different things that people give you, but you're not stepping into your own authentic version of yourself.

And a lot of people never fail to recognize if you don't leave the shore and face the pirates and the storms that could destroy you, you're never going to get to where you want to go.

So I think that's important.

And talking on boundaries, obviously, Dr. Henry Cloud boundaries is a great read, but there are people that are averse to conflict and there are people are more comfortable with conflict.

Of course, if you're more adverse to conflict, setting boundaries is going to be a tougher thing because telling somebody something that they don't like, especially if you have people pleasing tendencies, if you're not used to standing your ground, if you have codependent tendencies, there's some deeper things that need to be worked on for you to be able to effectively do that and to just be like, yeah, put a boundary up, I think is a little bit reductive.

But in general, if, did I, did I move my mic?

Yeah, we're good.

In general, we need to be clear and we got to understand that we can't, no one can manage unclear expectations.

You can't not tell somebody what you need or what you're willing to do or you're not willing to do and expect them to read your mind.

And a lot of times people expect people to just know, as if it's like this secret trick that they don't care about you, they don't love you unless they can figure it out.

It's not a fair point of view.

So I know I need certain things, my wife needs certain things.

And it's not a discussion of, well, you shouldn't be like that.

A lot of people are like, well, I shouldn't be like this.

Well, you are.

So let's, rather than try to be someone we're not and argue against reality, which is a losing battle, right?

Just accept who we are and be honest about it and work within the confines of what we need and what it looks like.

And there are some people that you can't keep in your life, you know, like.

And maybe it changes.

But it got to a point with my dad, not for the stuff he did, he thinks it's that I don't forgive him for the stuff he did, it's the stuff he's.

He'll currently do.

And at some point I had to say, just because this is my dad and I've gone way above board regardless of what he thinks.

I've gone so much further than what's necessary in what I believe is appropriate.

I can't subject my family and my wife to this kind of treatment.

And sometimes there does come a Time.

And it can be really hard.

It could be long standing relationships, could be family, where it's.

I'm not even doing an indictment.

It's not even indictment.

Like we don't need to start throwing our labels that this person's narcissistic or this or that.

I think that's an unnecessary discussion.

They are, they are.

And it's not our thing.

But certain people you can't have in your life for your best interest or both best interests sometime.

But it's hard.

And being willing to walk that line and have personal integrity and have those kinds of conversations, especially when they.

There is, there's political fallout or there's vocational fallout or there's familial fallout or whatever it is.

A lot of people look at the short term, acute pain of that conversation and they disregard the chronic erosion of how much greater it is over time.

And if we over index the acute, then we're never, we're gonna, we're gonna have a much bigger problem that we're dealing with.

And at some point you do lose yourself.

You know, if you don't stand your ground, if you don't do what you believe in, even if it costs you, you lose yourself.

And if you don't look someone in the mirror that you love and respect you, the whole game is over, in my opinion.

Yep, absolutely.

And then you're just putting out the, the most defensive, ugly version of yourself into the world and then that's what you're getting back.

I mean.

Correct.

Literally.

I mean, what you put out, you get back.

And yeah, if you can't look in, if you look in the mirror and there are people.

I remember a time when I looked in the mirror and I felt disgust.

Yeah.

You know, and guilt and shame and all that stuff.

And it's just so unnecessary.

And.

Yeah, you can get, you can deal with that though.

So.

I know you mentioned.

I don't remember whether we were talking or you put it in your questions about talking and walking that line between the productivity and the shame and the guilt and how you manage that.

Yeah.

So I had to reorient everything, you know, And a lot of times we get stuck in dichotomies.

Like I can either have a good marriage or I could be successful.

It's a, it's not a dichotomy.

You can do both.

It's not mutually exclusive, but it does require a lot of intentionality and it probably requires a lot more counseling, coaching and work than most people are willing to put in to become, to have honest self Awareness to have a real emotional quotient that you can and have emotional capacity to be able to also perform at a high level is a different level of a game than just working a regular job as a teacher and being home with your family or just making a lot of money and disregarding everything else around it.

It's a much more nuanced equation.

So a few things I had to do, like I said earlier, was first, I had to prioritize my wife, my relationship, my kids and my mental health above everything else that was first.

And I had to organize my schedule, my priorities accordingly.

Which was a Friday family night, it's dinners at home.

Once the kids get home.

It's certain times I'm not going to do meetings, I'm not.

Because what will happen is if you don't have those boundaries, especially if you're a business person, you're an entrepreneur, you're creative, you like to be busy, you just fill everything up.

And the thing that a lot of people that are performers realize, and it's women too, but particularly men I find in this particular category more often, although it could always be be everything, regardless of gender, is if you, if you feel everything but you have no emotional energy left, it's effectively you're not there at all.

You have to have margin.

You can't just say, well, this is the maximum am I going to do while I have my family?

Because you're not going to make it.

There's no margin.

You don't have anything left in the tank.

If you're too tired to play with the kids, you can't even listen to the conversation.

It doesn't matter that you're there.

So that was first based on that I had to work within the constraints and a lot of people hate constraints, but that's very often you need the edges for creativity and efficiency to be able to grow.

So I had to say, okay, how can I get this hundred hours of work done in 20?

It's a different question.

It's not like I'm just going to do whatever it takes and I'll just work as much as that's inefficient.

I have X amount of time, how systems I need to build skills, I need to acquire efficiency, I need to what are the things or the low performing tasks that I can let go of that really aren't going to make a big difference from being, having over control, becoming the bottleneck of your company, whether it's a career, it's a business, whatever it is.

I also had to be Start to be willing to be counterculture for myself.

So I grew in the industry that I'm in.

And again, it's very important.

A lot of people confuse me with saying it's right or wrong.

It's, it's.

It's what's right for me.

It's not right or wrong.

It's just different people have different things.

So it was certain dress, it was certain language, it was certain belief system.

It was, you have to do everything in this way.

Which I did.

And I succeeded on the outside.

But eventually my mental health got to a point where I'm not living the way.

And sometimes it could be silly, like, like why you have.

Why do you have to have long hair and a hat?

I don't have to.

And if I had to cut it off and not wear a hat, I would.

But I want to be able to express and be who I am.

And that was the reason I became successful, was to be able to do the things and work with the people I wanted to work with and act in the way that I wanted to be.

So especially in that industry, I mean, that is a person, person to person industry.

There's no hiding behind anything in that industry.

Right.

And you're building your business on rapport and you.

Right.

And I can play the part, but there's a cost.

You carry out.

You carry an avatar, you carry that.

One of the trauma responses that I did learn, which served me and almost destroyed me, was we moved a lot.

We were financially unstable, so we moved a lot.

And I found that after moving my second time between middle school, high school, whatever, I think we moved twice in elementary school and then I moved for middle school.

So I moved three times in my grade school years.

I said, okay, I'm Anthony here, but when I move, none of that carries.

I could be extrovert, I could be introvert, I could be funny, I could be serious, I could be smart, I could be goofy.

I actually get to just, in this new environment, can be anybody.

So that served me really well in performance.

It really, really fucked up my mental health when I have this chameleon attitude where I give the humor that you like and I did the jokes that you like and I act the way that you like.

And it wasn't that I was trying to.

I was just conforming to whatever was given to me.

So I was given a per.

And this again, this isn't an indictment on network marketing or them.

It was me that they said, here's what we do, here's what we believe, said all Right.

Who do you vote for?

Okay.

What God do you pray for?

How do you dress?

How do you talk?

I'll do.

You got it.

I'll be your best foot soldier.

You got.

But I wasn't being myself, right?

So it served me in one regard, but eventually it became, I can't.

I can't carry that avatar.

That's not who I am.

That's not what I believe in that way, you know, And a lot of the things were overlapping, but it's just.

I have a little bit of a different perspective.

So having the courage to be yourself is something that most people never find.

How big of a blessing it is because they never execute it, because not everyone's gonna like it.

Especially if you spend 10, 20 years building an avatar and then you actually show up the way you are, like, oh, what's wrong with you?

Nothing's wrong with me.

Now.

There was something wrong before.

I'm sorry.

I've been showing up with a phony Persona for 10 years.

But it.

It changes relationship dynamics, it changes vocational.

It changes things.

But I think that the price is.

Is.

Is well worth it when you actually stand and live in that well, because.

Once you do, you'll never go back like you will then.

You.

There are.

There are a lot of non negotiables once you've walked a couple months or a couple years being you and not letting anybody tell you who you are or have these.

These ideas.

I remember the first time I went to a therapist, and she's like, well, who is Tammy?

And it's exactly when you said the chameleon, you know, facade.

I said, I'm whatever you need me to be.

Whatever you want.

What are you looking for?

I can be happy.

I can be serious.

I could be professional.

I could be a hussy.

I can be anything you want me to be, right?

And at that point in my life, it was so that I don't rock any boats, right?

But once you.

I remember the first.

First time somebody said to me, well, isn't that gonna.

Isn't that gonna piss them off?

Like, they're not gonna like you?

And I remember specifically saying.

And it felt so good.

What other people think of me is none of my business.

I don't care.

I don't care.

Not everybody's gonna like me.

If you don't have any haters, and especially for those people that are in the business world and you're out there, if you don't have people that don't like you or don't like the way you do things or don't have something to say about that you're not doing your job.

Like, you haven't made a big enough impact.

Correct?

Correct.

Yeah.

I was doing it for performance.

You know, I was doing it for vocational opportunities.

I was doing it for anything that I could do that would move me forward, because I didn't want to be poor.

I felt financially.

I was financially unstable, so I was doing it based on the performance, you know?

But the reality is that it's nice if people like what you're doing, and it's nice if they like you.

It's just not worth it if you don't like you.

That's the thing that I think a lot of people, they miss.

So I don't think anybody walks through is like, I love all these people hating me.

No, but loving yourself's more important.

And that's the thing that people miss.

Right?

But people.

But knowing that someone doesn't like you, I'm like, that's okay.

I don't like everybody I meet.

I'm cordial and I'm friendly and I'm respectful to everybody I meet, but I don't like everybody I meet.

Right.

I mean, we all have this little energy field.

I can walk into a room and be like, yes, yes, yes, no.

Yeah.

Of the people whose energy I'm feeling, even.

So, what would your advice be to people?

Because there's a lot of people out there that are like, oh, I just want to be me.

I know I can do this.

I know I can be successful.

I just know it.

But I. I just.

I don't know what to do next.

Yeah, those people that are just feeling that stuck.

Right.

I think that there's four things that we need, and this is like, core of a $10,000 Tony Robbins seminar.

So free, free podcast, good value, four things.

First off, I think that you need to find good guidance, mentorship, counseling.

Overall, if you're talking in a business sense, you need a coach or a mentor because it's going to help you save the time.

You're talking in an emotional sense.

You need a counselor that you can find rapport with.

And I think that there's two things that you need to look for, particularly around coaching, but I think it also is important in counseling.

First off, they have to have the success that you're looking to espouse.

You can't teach someone to be an Olympic loser unless you're an Olympic loser.

No matter how much you like them.

You have to have the skills, they have to have the performance that They've done.

But the big one that people disregard, I said earlier, is they have to share similar values.

So if you want to play basketball, Michael Jordan can teach you.

But you got to be okay with Michael Jordan's life because it's going to get replicated in the way that he trains.

So you got to look at their values and what their life looks like.

So if you want to be really successful in business and you care about marriage, I'd be really cautious to work with someone that's divorced two or three times.

You know, I'm not saying that they're bad or judgment.

Just it's something to keep in mind.

Second is you need to have good resources.

You know, I mean, Aldous Huxley talked about having too much information, not knowing what's true.

Orwellian version of dystopian future is control.

We got both, unfortunately.

But you need to know what information to look at.

What are you listening to?

What are you reading?

What are the, what are the podcasts?

What are the things you're going to.

Because you got to educate yourself.

If you're going to get out of a spot because you got to equip yourself with skills, you need a community of people that are going to affirm you.

Most people are no people.

You got to be with people with big dreams, big goals, moving forward, they're healing.

And it could be anything from aa, if you're getting, you know, getting sober, to having a business group of people that are building businesses.

But you have to have some type of community that there's some safety and some shared values of aspiration to accomplish something, especially people at different levels that are going to give you that psychological need to connect with somebody.

And then fourth, you got to apply this stuff to a vehicle that has the ability to get you to where you want to go.

So if you say, all right, I'm going to do all that stuff and I want to be a corporate lawyer, no issue.

But again, if family values are important, partner of a law firm, it's going to be really tough to probably espouse those family values.

There's nothing, no, again, no indictment on being a lawyer, but you just got to be okay with the vehicle, the business, the vocation you choose.

You want to be a school teacher, no problem.

Super noble, should get paid more money, but they don't.

So you got to be okay with the income if that's the place you're going to go, or find other ways to create income outside of on, so, but I, I, that's why I Started to spark a change coaching, you know, because being 20 years in network marketing and coaching people and doing all that stuff, that's my passion.

It's helping people.

And it's like a hybrid.

You know, I do a lot of AI integration, I do a lot of coaching, I do a lot of psychological stuff, and sometimes a little bit more counseling.

Not that I'm a counselor, but it's accountability, it's support, it's.

It's building successful companies.

Because I think a holistic approach is the most effective way to find someone that you can really work with, that you can connect with, that can become a confidant there to have the success that you.

They have the family values that you want to espouse, if that's important to you.

And that's why I started that.

I love it.

Oh, Oh, I love it.

I mean, you have a lot of good information.

And obviously I'm like writing down the books you've read.

Just my book list.

But I know I'm like, my book list is.

Yeah, I pull.

I'm always like, oh, read this, read this.

I'm.

One of my clients said to me today, she's like, how many books have you read?

Like, every time I bring something up, oh, read this, read this.

Well, because that's where I get my information.

Like, when you stop learning, you stop growing, you stop having a purpose.

Like, let's go, like, educate yourself so you can.

So you can hold your.

Hold yourself strong out there.

You know, it's great.

But I love what you do.

I absolutely love it.

Tell people.

This has been super fun.

I could go on all day, but tell people how to work with you.

Everything's going to be in the show notes, but give them the basic place to go.

Yeah.

So if you go to sparkachangecoaching.com Best way to start.

Get my newsletter.

Get my free newsletter.

I give you a PDF on my book for free.

You sign up up.

But you can start learning what it is.

If you're like, hey, I want to talk, you could text me my personal cell phone number.

I've given out everywhere for 20 years.

If you got the guts, you want to text me, which most people won't, but that's 631-327-2241.

It's my personal number.

It's my real one.

But the traditional proper way, probably for people that are more comfortable.

Sign up for the newsletter if you want to book a call.

But if you got a question, if I can help, you know, I mean, the coaching stuff it's nice to make more money and that's all great, but it's really a labor of love.

And if I can answer a question or I can get you unstuck from something, or if I could add value in any way for something, it's a privilege.

No one's too busy to answer somebody that's got the guts to reach out.

But you could book a call.

Go on this newsletter.

Spark a change Coaching Instagram.

I got my amazing virtual assistant, Nemuela, who's absolutely amazing that does all that stuff.

And we'd love to connect with you.

I'd love to help.

Sounds absolutely great.

And that's, that's so true and so human, you know, And I love that about that.

You like?

I feel like if we texted you, we would actually get a person back.

You would, you would got Manuela saying, hold on, let me get him on the line.

You know, whatever it is, that's.

I think that's huge now in this world of, especially in the.

I mean, I'm.

I come from a trauma world.

Everybody I deal with has gone through stuff where they don't feel seen, heard, validated, loved, and they are afraid to reach out and then to reach out and then not have a human connection.

Yes, it'd be like a big slap in there, slap in the face.

I can't stand that.

But I will put all that in the show notes.

But before you leave, you're not quite off the hook yet.

I want you to give the listeners some Anthony Spark words of wisdom.

Last big picture idea.

I. I mentioned it and I think it's worth summing up if we're going to do a closing thing.

You can quit what you're doing, you can end the relationship, you can change.

You can quit the life you have and start in the same life, start the same vocation, start with the same person again.

It doesn't have to be that you need to get divorced and it's too far gone if you got two parties or willing to work on it.

It doesn't need to be that, you know, things have gone to in your career that you have to quit.

Although changing is not a problem, it doesn't mean that the life you've built and you've done and you.

You absolutely never can fix.

It's unredeemable.

We can decide to restart with a new perspective, a new orientation.

It's not going to be easy.

Takes a lot of work.

Most people don't have the courage to do it.

But running from person to person, from job to job, from place to place, from life to life, from mask to mask, is never going to be nearly as rewarding.

It's never going to be nearly as joyful and nearly as fulfilling as having the guts to buckle down and to figure out what we need to do to fix it to make it better.

Amen.

Thank you so much.

That was so well said, Henry Ford.

If you always do what you've always got done, you're going to always get what you always got.

You know, I mean, it just.

It is.

You got to make changes.

And yes, you're right.

Is not you.

Not easy, guys.

It's not easy, but it's so worth it.

So I tell my clients every day, close your eyes.

When your stomach.

When you feel that pit in your stomach or you feel that physiological ick somewhere, close your eyes and say, what do I need right now to make it better?

Just a little better, or what do I need right now to do to start walking in the right direction?

Amen.

And, you know, it's inside of you.

You know, everything you need to know.

We're people like, you know, people like myself and Anthony and Tony Robbins, we're just.

We're just messengers.

That's all we are.

But everything you need, you got inside.

Yeah.

So no doubt.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

And you all have one more thing.

Tammy, because you don't get enough positive feedback.

I am sure, like most people I talk to, and there are thousands of people that quietly listen to Tammy's podcast and get tremendous value.

Like, I'm so glad.

Changed my life, made my day.

Please reach out to Tammy and let her know if something's impacted you, an episode, something she's done has helped you, because getting a few messages can help you go a few more months, because this is.

You're in a.

You're in a room by yourself on Zoom, and all these people are listening, but you don't have a crowd of people cheering, knowing that it's making a difference.

So please, if this is valuable, reach out to Tammy.

Amen.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

And it goes right back at you guys.

Same thing for Anthony.

Like, let's.

It's.

We're all in this together.

That's it.

We're all in this together.

And you all have a very blessed week.

And we will see you back.

Take care.

Peace out.