Show Up - Anthony Melchiorri

Josiah: Anthony, thanks for taking some time to chat. I've been really looking forward to this. I enjoyed reading your book on the flight from California here to New York this morning in the hotel and was inspired by your life story. One of the things that stood out to me most in reading it was this notion of don't let others define you. You have to define yourself. To get us started, how do you define yourself today?

Anthony:
Well, let me go back to that. I was just having a conversation this morning with someone who works at a hotel, and I used to work with him. When he first started, he wanted to be an actor, and this was just a job to get him through. Then, over a period of having a family, and he loves going to the gym, he's a personal trainer, he realized that he loves this job, and this job has given him a lot, and this is a quality good job. It's allowed him to have time off for his training, allowed him to have a family and allowed him to take care of his family. So that's what I love. I love basically inspiring people to know that you want to be an actor, singer, a dancer, banker, lawyer, doctor, great, try this industry. If you can get out without falling in love with it, good luck, because most people that come into the industry learn to love the industry, and there are so many different jobs in this industry.
So that story that I just heard 10 minutes ago, 'cause he was just a little antsy five, 10 years ago. Now he's just like, he's so happy because, "I run to work. I love coming to work." He goes, "I want to be outside. I want to be talking to people. I don't want to be inside. I want to be a doorman. I want to be out there talking to my guests." He has his own little business out there. He's running, he's the doorman and he's doing his job, so that's what I love about this business. So that's where I'm at. I'm at really showing people I love this industry. I came into this hotel that I used to run, and it's like I'm home.
This is the greatest industry. I can't talk about it enough. Everything I've done, it's just to do everything I can to promote this industry, whether be in the book or the show or whatever I'm doing or speaking gigs. I'm working right now with a company I'm doing some consulting for out of Boston. We're working on a leadership program to help their leaders really get to the next level, and they're all amazing leaders. They won't learn anything from me, but maybe I can say something to give them a shortcut to help them maybe not fall into the pitfalls that I fell into.

Josiah:
I love it. One other thing you mentioned in the book is the notion of staying relevant. You talk about introducing people to the industry. What stands out to me is it feels maybe hospitality becomes even more attractive over time where alternatives are working in a soulless warehouse or so much of our life becomes so automated I wonder if the value of human connection goes up. But how are you thinking about relevance today and staying relevant?

Anthony:
Well, there's real relevance and there's fake relevance. So it goes into allegiance is the other word that I talk about, and it's called authenticity. So you won't see a lot of posting from me. You'll see some posting, and I have all the social media channels, but it's not something that if I don't feel I can't do it. So if I'm somewhere and I say, "Hey, let me take this video," fine, I'll take it. But if I'm sitting at a restaurant, typically I won't start taking pictures of my food. I won't sit in my office and say, "Okay." My social media manager will say, "Hey, we need this, we need this, we need this, we need this." It's like, "Okay, whatever." I'll do some of it, some of it I won't do. Last night I did some voiceover of some video coming up. I'll do some of it, but I'm relevant by being true to who I am, and who I am is to showcase this industry and to love this industry.
So everything that I do is authentic online, whether it be social media or not. I have a little bit more difficult time managing it and planning it because I don't want to do the work of, "Okay, so now you got to do a video about this." "Well, how about if I do this? How about I'm in a meeting and somebody takes a video of me in the meeting, you'll get a lot better content than if I'm just sitting in front of a camera and talking to the camera?" Which I do. So being relevant is being true to who you are, letting people know what you're doing. I have the book, I have the show. So you have to let people know what you're doing because if not, they're like, "Where's this guy?" But I probably don't do it to the point where people think I should do it. I do it enough to be relevant.

Josiah:
It's interesting. Before we started recording, I overheard you actually talking to a housekeeper here at this hotel and you were asking her about her family. It was a very human-to-human moment. I'm curious where you think about drawing the line between what needs to stay private and what can be public and what I can share, whether it's social media or other media.

Anthony: I just share my professional life and pictures of my daughter playing volleyball or my daughter in theater, but everything else, there's no need to. There's nothing that I can contribute. So if I was, I don't know, a family therapist or if I was, I don't know, a soccer coach or something and I was teaching my kids how to play soccer and I could share that with people, sure, but there's nothing... everything I am professionally is the hotel business and connecting to people. That's it. I'm just not that person. There's some people that can do that. People say, "I can never have a camera on me and do television."
I'm like, "Well, I can. That's easy for me. But would you do something where it comes behind the scenes?" No, I did it once for Travel Channel, and it was the life in the day of Anthony. It was with my family. If you go online, you can see my kids when they were little, and they still get crap from their friends about it. My daughters, none of them wanted to be on it. They said, "Yeah, we'll do it," and Now it follows them everywhere. So there's no need to do it. I don't have a need to do that.
But my number one priority is, "You see that housekeeper? Her mom's having some issues," is to let people know in this industry, if you work hard and you do your job, hopefully the caretakers of the building, whether it be the general manager, whoever it is, they understand that this is a building to protect people. This building, whether it's a traveler and you're protecting them from the elements they have to sleep, it's their home, whether it be a safe place or they feel safe when they come off the streets of New York or it'd be a housekeeper when they come in and they know if they do their job, they're going to have good benefits, they're going to be spoken to properly, and they're going to have a great Christmas party. They're going to be able to get promoted, they're going to have bonuses, they're going to be taken care of because every single one of us wants to be taken care of, period, and the industry does that.

Josiah:
In the book, you talk about not wanting to be in the hotel industry, you wanted to be in the hospitality industry. Is that what you mean by it?

Anthony:
Well, I'm in the people business, right? I hate when people say that 'cause it sounds so ridiculous, but that little moment is going to be my favorite moment of the day talking to the housekeeper because she's so appreciative of whatever we did when we were here. The team's doing a great job now, and she likes the people now, but she still feels connected to me as well, and that means something. This room has been renovated five times since I've been here. The lobby's been renovated. They've done great things in this hotel since I've been gone. So the business is flourishing, it's doing great, but that people still feel my connection, that's it.

Josiah:
I appreciate you saying that because a lot of people that will be listening to this conversation, I think, aspire to many of the things that you've achieved, whether it's as a general manager, as somebody who's taught millions on hospitality, you've appeared on TV, but this element of connecting with other people is something that anyone, regardless of where they're working, can connect with, and it also feels deeply meaningful. Just hearing and watching you talk about this interaction, it feels like something that no matter what level of success it's something that will always be important in part of our lives.

Anthony:
I say it all the time, I'm going to be a general manager again. I'm going to come back, and I'm going to run a hotel. I don't know where or when, but I'm going to do it because I miss it. Everything I've done in my career, what do I have to prove? What am I doing? I love teaching, so I was able to teach personal branding at Cornell, an online class. I've done the podcast for 802 shows. I'll continue to do that. I've wrote my book. I've been on TV for 12 years. I've run great hotels. I've spoken all over the world. I still do that, but I can't tell you how much I miss running a hotel. People say, "It's different today, it's different," whatever, it is. But that connection that I just made with that housekeeper is... I miss the comradery. I miss the team. So maybe I'll never do it, but that's my fantasy.

Josiah:
I love it. I love it, and I can't wait to see what you do there. So one of our listeners, James Ferguson asked...

James:
The world has changed. How have you adapted your leadership style to support the wants and the needs of today's hoteliers?

Anthony:
My leadership's never changed. One of the things that's changed is my attitude. In the beginning, I was working out of fear and insecurity. I didn't know a lot, so my fear basically ran the day, and that came off as aggressive. That came off as very insecure I would imagine when I was younger, but I never changed my philosophy of... The one thing that I hate more than anything, that I just dislike is, "The generation today, oh, the generation today, they don't want to work." Every generation blames the other generation. There are people in my generation that don't work, don't want to work, that were lazy. There were some people that were high achievers. In this generation, I know a lot of young people that can lap me and wave to me as they're lapping me. They're amazing. You're one of those people.
That's why I'm here 'cause I was very impressed with the way you're going about your business. Then there are people in this generation that do want to take the easy way out. Every generation's different, so I'm not going to change based on that you want more flex time. I'm not going to change because you don't want to work on the weekends. I'm not going to change because you don't like maybe the tone I use. What I will do is, "I'm sorry, I don't mean to say it that way, but did I disrespect you? No." "But you were a little loud." "Well, I'm deaf, maybe that's why I'm loud." So my point being is I will always meet people where they are, but I don't have to change who I am because hopefully, I've never been really mean to people that I've worked with.
I've been tough, very direct, but I think it's if people want flex time, give them flex time, but you still have a business to run. So when I was coming up in this business, if I asked my boss for something that he perceived as I was being a little of a diva or I was like I didn't appreciate him, he would yell at me. Lots of bosses. In today's day and age, the employee is in charge. That's the way it should be. There's a business to run, and if you are an employee of mine and you want to work and I hire you and you say you can work Monday through Friday, and then you come on and you say, "No, I can't work Monday through Friday. I can only work Thursday, Friday, and Saturday." I say, "Well, when I hired you, it's Monday through Friday."
"Well, I don't want to work that." "Then, okay, we'll try to be flexible but it may not work." That's a fair and honest conversation. I'm not mad at you, but what I understood was that you can work these days. We have a business to run. The business has to come first or no one gets paid. I have a mission statement that I put up years ago, my first general manager job, "Every question can be answered and any answer can be questioned," and I put it everywhere. You had to carry it in your pocket. We put it on the walls simply to let people know is you can ask me a question and you can challenge my question, but I will give you an answer. You may not like my answer, but I ain't backing off of my answer if that's good for the team.
So we have to learn how to deal with flexibility, how to deal with today's mindset, but also understand we're running a business and everybody wins. Everybody can be successful, and the people that are trying to undermine the team, the team will kick them out. I don't really have to kick them out. The team will just take care of it. If you have that kind of organization where everybody's one, there's nothing better than that. Somebody, there's a room that I worked for the company, this hotel company, and I was like, "Wouldn't I tell you if I did it? Because it's just not who I am." I don't have guests, I have employees. My employees, our employees take care of the guests. If I truly believe that and truly understand that and truly transparent about that, they'll take care of my guests.
So if we're having problems with the hotel and we're having challenges financially, let's share that in a really clear, transparent way to say, "Hey, these are the changes we have to make. These are the things we're going to do," and we deal with it, whether it be union, not union, whatever. But at the end of the day, the housekeeper who gets on the train at 5:00 in the morning, gets at work by 6:30 or 7:00, punches her clock, and then goes to clean toilet bowls and change linen and clean somebody's room 18, 12, 14 times a day, five days a week and then goes back on that train at 4:00 or whenever they get off, goes and is the mother or whatever she does in her life, take care of the children, whatever she does, maybe she has a side business, that's a long day. My only mission is to make sure that person feels appreciated, and if that person feels appreciated, I got a good business.

Josiah:
Again, just using this interaction before we started recording as an example is it stands out to me because I think people who work in media or people who have a presence of following, sometimes it's hard for me to tell how much are you saying because you think this is going to play well to your audience versus is this you authentically? But I overheard a very authentic interaction and you weren't on camera, nobody was recording, and nobody was looking. I don't even think you knew I was overhearing you.

Anthony:
I could care less.

Josiah:
Yeah.

Anthony:
How many hours of television do I have? 200. It's just hours and hours and hours. You wouldn't catch me somewhere along the line being inauthentic. You won't catch me because I'll give you an example. When we do the TV show, the new show we just did, we do basically the same way. I am somewhere, matter of fact, we did the Breakers Hotel. I'll give you a perfect example, and I'd never seen The Breakers before. It was like, "You've never been in The Breakers?" "No." So they put a scarf, actually I think we shot it, they put a scarf over my head with my eyes closed as Alex was holding me, who's the producer and bringing me in looking down. So when I went on camera and said, "Wow, this is gorgeous." I didn't want that to be inauthentic. I didn't want that I've seen it before 'cause then I can't do it.
Then they're like, "Well, just make it up." "No, I can't make it up." So every show we've done on Hotel Impossible, I've never seen the owner. I've never seen the hotel. They say "Action," I turn around, I walk. I walk down the block, I see the sign or I walk into the lobby, and my producers know an outline of what they think I would want to look at, but I've never seen it before. So when you say, "Am I playing to my audience?" I don't even know what that means or how I would do that 'cause my audience are people that want authenticity. When we did focus groups when I was on television early on, I had the highest rated focus group based on authenticity and knowledge of content. So I don't even know what that means.

Josiah:
I want to come back to that 'cause I'm really excited about this now-

Anthony:
And I'm sure you've talked to people about me and they say, "Oh, he's the real deal."

Josiah:
Oh, yeah.

Anthony:
I'm sure-

Josiah:
Oh, yeah.

Anthony:
Have they said that?

Josiah:
Oh, yeah. Kevin downstairs on the way out, we were talking a little bit.

Anthony:
What did he say?

Josiah:
Yeah, the same thing.

Anthony:
I love Kevin.

Josiah:
I'm always trying to get him for some dirt or some things that we could talk about, but he loved hanging out with you and talking with you, and I think-

Anthony:
Did he say nice things?

Josiah:
Beautiful things. So I think that's where it becomes really important is to talk with people who have worked with you, who know you really not know your public persona, but really know you.

Anthony:
They knew me way before, this was my first GM job. You mentioned the name Chip Rogers before. Chip Rogers is Chip Rogers. Behind the scenes or in front of the scenes, he is who he is. He's not putting this on. He really cares about this industry. He really loves the people in this industry, and you can see the fraudulent people.

Josiah:
You talk about protecting people and in the book, you have numerous examples of this, I think, both of people you work with and of guests and including a couple really sad stories of cases that I think happened earlier in your career where something happened and it changed how you think about protecting people. That seems to be a natural extension of if you care about people, you want to protect them. I wonder if we could talk a little bit more about what it means to protect people. It could be guests or employees.

Anthony:
Well, I look at it from this part. There's a lot of people that are a lot better than me. They're giving their times on Saturdays and Sundays, they're volunteering constantly, and they just really, really have a deep need to volunteer. I'll volunteer where I need to... and I've done volunteer work, and I love it. But when I have a job, whether it be as a father or whether it be as a business person, what is my responsibility? My responsibility is that person that's coming from Iowa or Vegas or Florida and is coming to New York first time or 100th time, they're going here for some reason. They're coming for a wedding, a funeral, tourism, business, they come into those doors. Those doors closed, they're my responsibility from where they go to the bathroom, how they shower, hot water, comfortable bed, nice employees.
Somebody comes in and tries to do damage, we take care of that, security. So that's how I take care of it. That's my job. My job is to ensure you are taken care of. Same thing with a housekeeper. You don't have linen and you're stressed out? Shame on me. You should have linen. "Well, we don't have the money." Okay, let's figure out where we can get more money from somewhere else so we can buy linen so this young lady doesn't have to be late to get home. She doesn't want the overtime. She just wants to get home for whatever reason. She has a life, and she wants to get home. This young lady was taking care of her mom. Her mom's got some issues. She wants to get home to take care of her mom. So that's how I look at it. That's my responsibility, it's what I'm being paid for. It's when I'm on TV and I'm doing a TV show and I'm doing, whether it be Hotel Impossible or any of the other shows I've done is, you invited me in. You are screwing up your business.
I'm going to give you some tough love all from the heart, but I ain't going to take your crap because if your business is running well, you wouldn't need me. So I'm going to help you, but I'm not going to look in your medicine chest. I'm not going to, "Gotcha!" I'm not a, "Gotcha," kind of guy. I'm just not. Matter of fact, there's a lot of shows where producers would want to do something. I'm like, "No, we're not doing that," "But that'd be great, you want to do it." "I don't want to do it." So the calmer shows the more business shows, the shows where I'm calm, really just running a business are my happiest shows and my favorite shows. They're not the production company's favorite show 'cause they want ratings. I never thought about ratings. I never did anything 'cause I thought that would rate. I never thought anything or did anything or said anything because I thought my audience wants to hear that. My audience wants to hear the truth.

Josiah:
Hearing the truth is, I think, something that you're known for. You're known, our mutual friend, David Mullaly, I think the word he used to describe was intense. But I think what's interesting is I've known people who come across as a hard ass or they berate people and it almost... it feels very selfish. It's for them, that's their shtick. That's how they show up in the world. I think there are moments where you show up, but I get the sense that you do that because you're caring about other people. I've heard you talk time and again across podcasts, different media, whether it's on the TV production side, whether it's in a hotel, when you show up in a direct, tough love sort of way, as you mentioned, it seems like it's for the people. It's because you know that if you don't show up in that way, others are going to get hurt or not have the opportunities that they could have. Is that fair?

Anthony:
When you have a team and you've been in organizations where you've had a team and you're grinding, and you like your boss and you like where you work, but this one person is getting away with murder. Have you been in that situation? How does that make you feel?

Josiah:
Terrible, unmotivated.

Anthony:
Right, that's my job. My job is to understand why that's happening and fix it. Do I fix it by doing more training, having a conversation? Is it beyond repair where we've 3, 4, 5 times had this conversation and now they need to be promoted to customer? As I say, "You can come as a customer, but you can't work here?" I'm not doing that for me, I'm doing that to save you because you are a performer. You're a high performer. In the book, we talk about the five-star baby, right? When you're born, you're a five-star baby, whether you have disabilities or whether... God doesn't make mistakes. So you are born as the way you're supposed to be, you're five star, and then what happens? Your family pours all this into you, and then maybe during high school you work at a company or a department store and people are wearing their uniform crooked so you wearing your uniform crooked. Maybe you work at McDonald's, so maybe somebody's not nice or you're not nice. Why? You're still a five-star person.
You're still born to be the best you can be. Why are you taking up their bad attitudes and their bad behavior? I've never done that. To this day, I don't do that. That's what I'm doing. That's what I'm protecting. I'm protecting that, not me. I'll take care of myself. I'm not going to let anybody get over on me. If they do, I know they're getting over on me, and that's okay. Long-term maybe we'll both win, it's okay. That's the difference between showing up for yourself and standing up for yourself. We talk about it in the book where showing up for yourself early on was me, or I'm sorry, standing up for yourself is early on it's like, "If I feel slighted, I'm going to push, and you ain't taking advantage of me. I don't care if you're my boss or not, we're going to have a problem."
Then as I got older, I was like, "Not every nail needs a hammer, and that person is not nice and that person's nasty, but that's not going to help my career. So let me just figure out how I can work with this person better. Until I'm in a situation where I'm in control and maybe I get another job or I get promoted or that person leaves, but I don't need to fight every single thing." Early on, I was standing up for myself. As you get older, and as you try to build a career, you got to stand up for yourself sometimes, but you also got to show up for yourself. Showing up for yourself is maybe going to school at night, getting your master's degree, maybe running that little business out of your garage on the weekend and then one day saying, "Hey, like working here. Thank you very much," and now you're making candles out of your garage, making a fortune. That, to me, is your responsibility. That's why the book is about whoever is trying to make you something that you're not, it's your responsibility. It's not theirs.

Josiah:
So Anne Ward asked-

Anne:
How and by what means does he train, educate, follow up on all of those details? We all know the phrase, "The devil is in the details." As GMs, we have our own style, but what does Anthony do differently with his teams that creates this beautiful operating cadence? Thanks so much.

Anthony:
Yeah, it's a good question. When I walked in here, tell the audience what I look like for the first 30 seconds. What did I do for the first 30 seconds?

Josiah:
You got everything in order, and it is perfectly aligned. Everything's in its place, nothing's out of place.

Anthony:
Right. I came out looking at anything but you, right? So that's how I see the world. My job in that hour, whatever it was, is to talk to you. If I'm worried about the things that are in front of me, I can't concentrate. I can't give you the best of me. So when I walk in a hotel and say now you are the, and I love the word cadence, if you are the general manager or whether you're the director operations or whatever you are, when you come in, your responsibility is to make sure that it flows well. Now, first of all, you have to understand when I take over a hotel, the first 24 hours, I don't sleep. I barely eat, and I don't leave, and I don't really talk to people. I've done this at many hotels where I've walked in, and I'm nice to people. They know who I am. They know I'm coming in. "Hey, how are you? I look forward to working with you," but I keep moving.
I don't want to know they have no linen. I don't want to know that they have problems with their supervisor. I don't want to know that the pool's dirty. I don't want to know anything because I'll see it all if I'm off 24 hours running around that hotel. I remember when I did Nickelodeon, at the end of the day, I had over 500, maybe exactly 500 things on my list. Then when I showed up for my job the next day or whenever it was, when people were telling me things, I knew that, and I also knew when they were full of crap because I was like, "No, that's not true. The breakfast area is not running smoothly. I saw it 'cause I was there at 6:00 in the morning, and the young lady, we ran out of eggs at 6:00 AM. Why? I saw it." A hotel doesn't lie. 24/7, people are moving 24/7. A hotel doesn't lie.
So that problem that you saw this morning probably happened 100 times already, and it's going to happen 100 times tomorrow. So that's how I get the cadence. Let the hotel tell me where we are, and typically I'm coming in because you're not in good shape. Nobody ever hires me to run a good hotel. They're hiring me to turn around the hotels. Then I observe as I'm going through it, the managers and the supervisors and the leaders, and I'm making observations. Guess what? The observation I'm making is the observation that probably has to be made because they're going to come in, I'm the new guy, and they're going to blow smoke up my butt. So I'm seeing them in the raw environment. I see them being nasty with a guests or I see them being wonderful with the guests, or I'm in the arcade and I see that this person's super amazing with people, so I need to move that person to the front desk.
So that's how you start getting the cadence to your job, to your building, is you understand how fast you have to work or how slow you have to work based on what you observe. Again, when you're coming into a hotel that maybe not functioning well, their perspective, I wouldn't be there if their perspective was reality. So I got to come in and understand, and you said something before, it's not about me. Listen, even when I've done great things, and I talk about it in the book, and I've turned around companies, I've gotten fired. So you're eventually going to go, whether you leave on your own or you get fired, you're eventually going to be long in the tooth and you're going to go. But when I'm there, I'm not worried about being fired. I'm worried about my team thinking I'm a fraud, that my team doesn't think I'm going to say to the owner, "We need 100 grand worth of linen." They think I'm just going to give them lip service.

Josiah:
Right.

Anthony:
Does that make sense?

Josiah:
It makes a lot of sense. My last question for you is you talk in the book about be a part of what's happening in the industry. I'm curious, as you look across the industry today, what's happening right now that excites you the most?

Anthony:
What excites me the most about the industry? We're getting to the point because of technology where we can free up people to really engage with guests. So if you give you an example, if you decide to go on your phone and check it and then go to the machine and get your key and you go to your room. Okay, now that frees up a person at the desk. So that person can either come into the lobby or that person can help another person in a real way and have a real relationship. Where we have to be very careful is those touch points, there used to be many, now there are few, they have to be beautiful. They have to be meaningful. They have to be eye-to-eye, "Yes, how can I help you? How can I serve you?" We talk about servant leadership. I'm a servant leader. "You need me to shine your shoes, miss? Sure." People don't believe this, but it's true. I have never had a guest complaint about me.
Now, think about me as a younger person being insecure. I was always very aggressive and direct, but nobody ever complained about me because my job was to get you out of the bad mood. My job is to get you what you want. I always tell people when I'm training, I was like, "Get that person what they want. If you can give it to them as fast as you can so you can help somebody else." Okay? I don't like people in front of me just begging me for stuff. Just give them what they want unless you can't, and then be smart enough, and we'll have tools and understanding of how you can give them something. My least favorite quote is the customer is always right. The customer is not always right. The customer has to feel like they're right. There's a difference, and there's art in that. I know they're wrong. I'm not taking it personally. That's another thing we do in this business, we take it personally. I'm not taking it personally.

Josiah:
Thank you for not only taking time today, but doing what you're doing. I've listened to your shows for years, and it's shaped the way how I think about hospitality. Even back when I was on property and trying to juggle everything from housekeeping to checking people in-

Anthony:
What was your job?

Josiah:
You made me excited. It was a very, very small property, and it was so small that it was one of those jobs you got to do it all. So you had to check-

Anthony:
Right.

Josiah:
... people in and clean [inaudible 00:30:44]

Anthony:
Right, but you learned a lot.

Josiah:
You learned a ton, you learned a ton. But it's important to stay motivated. You do that on a daily basis with Glenn on No Vacancy, through your upcoming TV show, through your book, through social media.

Anthony:
But it's also something you have to work at, right? It's like anything else, I work at it, whether it be the way I eat, the way I work out, whatever. Some days I have good days. Sometimes I have bad days like everybody else. Sometimes I get kicked, sometimes I fail. I continue to have success and failure, and it's the durability word. It's the resilience word. Some days are harder than others. So let me ask you another question. You read the book?

Josiah:
Yes.

Anthony:
What was your just one line, two line takeaway from the book?

Josiah:
I would say I would summarize it as be prepared to take bold action, and that shows up personally. It shows up professionally. You talk in the book about junctures throughout your career of noticing that even big opportunities that seem hard and scary, but you knew enough about yourself, your past, the good, the hard parts, everything where you knew, "This is the best next move for me." So I think people that make good moves, it's this combination of luck meeting opportunity and preparedness, 'cause if you're not prepared, you might see the opportunity, but it's going to be like a bus. It's going to keep on going.

Anthony:
Luck equals preparation and opportunity and preparation to me equals luck, and it's okay to make mistakes. It's okay, but I've not always done everything right. I've failed. When I read the book, because it's funny, I wrote the book with John Walcott, who's my co-writer, the book would've never gotten out wasn't for him. He saved my butt, literally saved my butt, and he helped me take all my words and put them in the book. When you read a lot of books, if you read the reviews online, people say it's not how people become successful. It's how people work. So when you look at the book, it's all the ins and outs of my career.
It's not a, "Look at me, look at what I did." I'm still trying to figure it out. I'm still trying to go on in my career. I'm still trying to see what do I want to do when I grow up? Everybody's in that situation every day of their life. So it's not a book where it's like, "Oh, look at him." No, it's a book of, "Holy shit, that happened to this guy? Oh, my God! Him? He screwed up there and he did this and he did that and he wasn't sure." That's what the book's about. It's not a "Look at me," book, that's for damn sure. Thing we call life is hard.

Josiah:
Yeah, it's hard.

Anthony:
And it's your mindset. If you have the right mindset that you have to work on every day, if you feel like crap and you just ate a big cheeseburger and french fries and a Coke, and the reason you feel like crap is because you just ate something you shouldn't have. I ate a lot of crap. I eat a lot of crap, but I'm not going to blame anything else. I know why I don't feel good, because I just ate a lot of crap. If you're around negative people, you're eating a lot of crap all day. Be around people who are better than you. I walk into a room, and I like when I'm scared. I like when I'm petrified. I like when I don't know a word that they're talking about. I'm Googling stuff, I'm like, "What the hell are you talking about?" What did I ask you when you walked into this room? It's the first thing I asked you about you. How do you do this?

Josiah:
Yeah. Yeah. You're curious. You're curious.

Anthony:
Yes.

Josiah:
You want to learn-

Anthony:
Right, it's like-

Josiah:
And you're at the top of your game and you're still wanting to learn.

Anthony:
Right.

Josiah:
And so-

Anthony:
Because I know how tough it is, you just interviewed me. First of all, you reached out to me. You reached out to me in the right way. That's why you got me to say... and I heard a lot of great things about you. You brought the equipment. It was set up before I got here. Now you have to go edit it. Now you have to spend hours and hours doing this the right way. When are you going to post it? How are you going to post it? There's a lot of work to that. I appreciate that. I appreciate people. So one day, if you are sitting on the top, wherever you want to sit on and you're like, "Oh, my God, I made my dreams come true." Well, because you did the work. There's no shortcuts.