The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – 10X SUPERPOWER: How to Make the Impossible Easy By Keith Ellis

Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

Starting point is 00:00:39 We will show the world. And ladies and gentlemen, there are only scenes that that makes it official. Welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate it. As always, the Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you Lisa, with our link, it seems that that makes it official. Welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate it. As always, the Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you. Lisa, it's harsh. She's your mother-in-law.

Starting point is 00:00:50 Because, you know, I don't know. You're still working to get on her good side, and she's never forgiving you for breaking her lawnmower. Go to goodreese.com for just Chris Voss. YouTube.com for just Chris Voss. Chris Voss won the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet Today we have an amazing young man on the show

Starting point is 00:01:07 Today we're going to be talking to him about his Really interesting new book that's coming out It's going to be the first book in history To cost $10,000 It only was much cheaper than my marriage book Keith Ellis joins us on the show today He's going to be talking about his new book

Starting point is 00:01:24 Some of his insights, some of his coaching And what he does Keith is a best-selling author book. Keith Ellis joins us on the show today. He's going to be talking about his new book, some of his insights, some of his coaching, and what he does. Keith is a best-selling author and the number one superpower coach in the world. He's reinvented the art of setting goals in his classic book that's coming out, or that came out, The Magic Lamp, a goal setting for people who hate setting goals, which has helped more than 100 000 readers around the globe soon after he was the sixth employee hired by a tiny internet startup named web methods and their first vp of sales three years later they went public in one of the largest software ipos in history he then wrote the book that changed everything magic questions how to transform your life at the speed of thought some people move slower than others on thought i've seen them on the internet

Starting point is 00:02:08 though this they could use the book evidently this october keith will publish the first ten thousand dollar book in history 10x superpower how to make the impossible easy welcome to the show keith how are you i'm doing great great, Chris. Delighted to be here. Wonderful to have you as well. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Probably the easiest way is 10xsuperpower, 10xsuperpower.com. So we normally will say, hey, you can buy it off of Amazon. Where can people pick up a copy of this book other than the.com? Is that the only place to get it? So the book, again, the book is unusual. It's a $10,000 book.

Starting point is 00:02:52 I'm not even sure Amazon would allow that to be sold. You go to that website, and there's a quiz there. And it asks you some questions to see if you're actually ready for this. Taking your life to a level that's 10 times beyond where it is now is threatening to some people. Here's the weird thing. It's actually easier than what they're doing now. But if you think about it, a life where you've got 10 times as much money, 10 times better relationships, 10 times better health, some people will look at that and say, where do I fit in this new life? And so this isn't for everybody. And I guess the 10 grand price tag is one of the things that does that. But the point about that is most people in my business,

Starting point is 00:03:33 the coaching business, will try to give you some content for free and then sell you an expensive coaching system on the back end. I'm not comfortable with that. So what I'm doing is just saying, look, the book is worth 10 grand. It's worth comfortable with that. So what I'm doing is just saying, look, the book is worth 10 grand. It's worth 10 times that. It's guaranteed to be worth 10 times that. But you also get my coaching program for free. And that's what brings the whole thing to life, what I call the superpower coaching program. So it's a package, but I really want to emphasize the book part because all of us, I'm sure this has happened to you. We've all read books that are worth $10,000. We just didn't pay that for them. They changed our lives, but we didn't pay 10 grand for them. So I'm sort of saying, okay, let's try it this way. There's probably a whole

Starting point is 00:04:14 bunch of books in my Audible. I'm one of those people who buys the Audible books and then never reads any of the Audibles. And there's, I don't know, 500 of them in there or something. Yeah. Yeah. And I never read them. There's probably be a million right now if I just go read those damn books. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you grow up? What got you into the fields you went into and kind of your journey through life? I got into sales, worked my way through college selling high-end technology, actually audio equipment, audio video, which was an incredibly cool place to be when you're an 18-year-old kid. So that's what I did part-time. And then I went to school full-time. And when I got out of school,

Starting point is 00:04:56 the selling was such an easy gig that I stayed in it. And I love technology. So I've been in the technology world for a long time. When I got out of it, I left a company called LinkedIn, which your listeners probably know. They're part of Microsoft. And so I was knocking around in various places, startups, a lot of startups in the high-tech world. And then I ended up in a company called lynda.com. And Lynda was on the cutting edge of online training. They were a small company and I was brought on to create a new team for them and a new market. And within three years, they were purchased by LinkedIn for a billion and a half dollars, none of which came to me, unfortunately, but such is life. And then a couple of years after that, LinkedIn was purchased by Microsoft for $25 billion. So I was this little fish that was in a bigger fish and a bigger fish.

Starting point is 00:05:42 Now I understand how that whole food chain works. Each time I expected to get out because I didn't want to be part of a big company. And each time they made me an offer, I couldn't refuse. So I hung around for a while. And when I finally left, I said, I need to take what I've learned and turn it into a couple of books and turn it into a coaching program. And so that's what brought me to this point. And you've written a couple of books. They've done well. People can find those books, I believe, on Amazon. Is that correct? Yep. Yep. That's true. And so what gave you the proponent for this idea to do a $10,000 book? I suppose you don't have to

Starting point is 00:06:15 sell a lot to make your money back or something. The $10,000 book, the price point wasn't the first part. What was the exciting part for me was the whole 10X component. My first book was called Magic Lamp, goal setting for people who hate setting goals. I hated to set goals. And then something happened to me. I had one of these aha moments and I said, wait a minute, if I think of goal setting, like making my wishes come true, suddenly I'm excited about it. So I wrote that and created a framework, wrote a book about it. That was really successful. And then I did that for years. I used everything I had written in the book in my own life and achieved some really cool stuff, but it was always incremental progress. You know, you know that feeling I'm going to be 20%, 30% ahead of where I am now next year. And then 20,

Starting point is 00:07:02 30% beyond that. And it was great. It works. But I reached a point, and you can tell from the gray hair, I reached the point where I wanted more from life. I didn't want ordinary. I wanted extraordinary. And I didn't know how to get there. I feel bad about that. I'm a success junkie. I've read all the books and gone to all the seminars and listened to all these great trainers. I've learned so much, but I couldn't do the extraordinary. So I dove back into this whole research I'd been doing and all this library of success literature I have. And I tried to figure out what I was missing. And after a while, it kind of jumped out at me.

Starting point is 00:07:39 Everybody from Socrates to Tony Robbins, everybody is building their system on a certain type of questions. And I realized that these questions are so powerful, I think of them as magic questions. I was so impressed with that type of question that I went out and trademarked the name magic questions. Because it is really the heart and soul of what my teaching is about. I wrote a book about that. That was successful. Then I wrote another edition. It's now Magic Questions 2.0. And the subtitle there says it all, how to transform your life at the speed of thought, because questions are the key to doing that. So then that had happened. And I'm thinking, you know, there's still something missing. And what I figured out was what's missing is that we sell ourselves short. We focus on these,

Starting point is 00:08:31 you know, what are called realistic goals. I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, my parents, my coaches, everybody said, be realistic, you know, set your goal. Yeah, you want to set an aggressive goal, but be realistic. And what was missing from that whole thing is screw realistic. Set a goal that's impossible. Set a goal that you know you can't accomplish. And the minute you commit to that, your brain starts figuring out how to accomplish it. I know that sounds crazy. But when it's all over, when this process is done, it's actually easier than what you're doing to make incremental progress.

Starting point is 00:09:03 So that's where the book came from. And then once I did the book, I said, you know what? This book is so different. It's turning conventional wisdom on its head. Let's take it to market the same way. Let's charge 10 grand for it up front, see what happens. Yeah. Yeah. So when is the official launch date of the book? The end of next month, October. So it's almost here. Okay. So people can sign up on the website, get it. Is there anything you tease out? Like any little help tidbits or things that you help work on for people that we can tease? Yeah. Yeah. So think of it this way. I was talking about incremental progress versus this impossible goal. I put a number on that. And that's where the 10x comes from. I use 10x interchangeably with impossible.

Starting point is 00:09:47 Because a 10x leap in your life is pretty big. But it's not so big that you can't wrap your brain around it. You might think it's impossible. But at least you can think, okay, take my business. And I focus primarily on entrepreneurs. Because they understand this type of thinking about being responsible for your life, growing your life, that kind of thing, taking big leaps, big risks. So you wrap your brain around and say, okay, I would like to increase my revenue

Starting point is 00:10:18 by a thousand percent. That's 10X, right? That's impossible, but I want to do it. I'm going to commit to it. So, once you do that, your brain starts doing things, and the reason that's important, and that's the takeaway I would give your audience. If you want to do anything to really change your life, think bigger than you're thinking now. Think bigger and commit to it. Your brain will figure out how to make these things happen. That's where this magic, this superpower comes from. And part of it is about our attention, how we deal with the world around us. We're so distracted. We've got 50,000 things to do. We aren't certain what to do first. So we get into this 80-20 thing, right? I'm spending most of my time on 80% of the tasks that don't do me any good, right?

Starting point is 00:11:07 How do I focus on the 20%? And the answer to that is to think bigger. Once you start thinking about impossible goals, your brain just zooms in and focuses on what can get you there. And you're not thinking about this other noise, this other crap that's surrounding you. So it really helps you focus in an age of distraction in the age of distraction. I could be an album

Starting point is 00:11:31 That's my next album in the age of distraction You could have a Jim Morrison from the door see that that because actually come on there and do a little vibe be weird poetic sort of and the frog laid You know some some some some drug fueled whatever frog laid in the wasteland, you know, some drug-fueled whatever. We're in the 60s again. I don't know what happened there. We just kind of transported to a different point in time. You have something that you call the 10X Reality Check that you mentioned on your website.

Starting point is 00:11:59 Tell us a little bit more about that. It's a quiz. It's a simple quiz. It takes about five minutes. And it asks you some questions that will tell you something about yourself. And if you answer them in a certain way, then you are qualified for the next step, which is to actually is to book a discovery call with me. It's a coaching call. We actually began a coaching program. There's no charge for it. There's no obligation, but it's where you get to figure out if you would want to work with me and I get to figure out if I would want to work with you. And that's really important, that mutual thing, because I don't want to waste anybody's time. I don't want anybody to waste my time. Probably one in a hundred people are ready to take their lives to a level that is 10 times beyond where they are now, even though it's easier than what

Starting point is 00:12:44 they're doing. Probably only one in in 100 are emotionally ready for this. So this quiz is a fun way to help them figure that out. And then if they don't pass the quiz, in other words, if they don't qualify, they automatically get subscribed to a newsletter that is called If Anything Were Possible. And it's all about the wisdom and the success stories of people who go out and accomplish the impossible every day.

Starting point is 00:13:07 It really makes a difference. What's the difference between a normal coach and what you call a superpower coach, I believe is the term. Yeah. Yeah. So what I do is I coach people on this ability they have to commit to something that they think is impossible and then make it happen. This is an instinct that's deep inside of us. Most of us don't even know it exists. And let me give you an example. When you're crawling around on the floor, you know, nine months after you were born, you start trying to walk. It's physically impossible for you to walk. It's

Starting point is 00:13:41 emotionally impossible. It's psychologically impossible. You don't know how to walk, but you keep trying and you keep trying until you start walking, right? This is built into all of us. You say, okay, that's a weird example. That's when you're a kid. What about learning how to talk? What about learning how to read? What about learning how to write? Same thing. At some stage in your life, these things were impossible for you and you learned them anyway. And then once you learned them, these things were impossible for you and you learned them anyway. And then once you learned them, you made what I call a 10X leap and your life changed forever. Okay. That's when you're a kid. None of that counts. Okay. What about when you rode a bike? You know, nobody forced you to do that. I remember having three older brothers. They'd be riding

Starting point is 00:14:21 their bike around the neighborhood. I'm on training wheels falling over. It's impossible for me to ride a bike. I kept trying. And now, as the saying goes, it's easy as riding a bike. I couldn't forget how to ride a bike if I wanted to, right? So I made the impossible easy. Same thing with driving a car. And that changes our life. And the example, so they're always, when I'm talking about this stuff, they're always people trying to mismatch and trying to say, I can't really be, that can't, no, that doesn't matter. That doesn't apply. And I say, okay, was there ever a time in your life when you were making 10 times less money than you are right now? And everybody goes, yeah, you know, I was a paper boy or I was this or I was that. And now look at you.

Starting point is 00:15:06 You increased your income by a factor of 10. You did this. You made it happen. At a time, it would have seemed impossible and you made it happen. So this instinct is deeply ingrained in us. Most people don't know we're even doing it. I bring that out. In effect, I help people get out of their own way because we've got these blinders

Starting point is 00:15:25 on about what we can accomplish. And I just say, screw that. Think impossible and watch what happens. Watch what happens. Order up the book, folks, wherever fine books are sold. What else do we need to talk about that you do? People can know more. I mean, the 10X superpower, is this a higher level than the, who's the guy who does all the 10Xing stuff, Grant Cardone? So Grant has a different approach. There are a couple of guys that do this, that talk about this. Grant has a book. He's really talking about a super deep kind of commitment.

Starting point is 00:15:57 If you really go all in in a certain way, you can get 10X. Grant's terrific. It's a kind of a, I would call it a traditional motivational piece. The guy that's really brilliant at this and insightful is a guy named Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan has a ton of material on this. I don't know Dan personally, but I've accessed a lot of his material. And he has expanded my thinking hugely along these lines and then i've taken what i've learned from these guys grant and dan and tony robbins and and earl nightingale and and you know you know napoleon hill and dale carnegie and all these these famous names and

Starting point is 00:16:37 put all this stuff into this this new system that is i, a super simplified way of looking at this so that you get rid of all this, all the kind of noise around it and just say, I can show you how to make impossible dreams come true if you're ready. Yeah. We like impossible dreams. Yeah, exactly. Fun, especially when they come true. If they don't come true, then it kind of sucks. But that's a different story. But think about that for a second. That's a great thought. Let's say you set a 10X goal and your 10X goal is, it's easy. This isn't necessarily the goal people would go after, but let's say you want 10 times the revenue in your business, right? Easy to track that. And you fall short and you get 8X. Is that a bad thing? You just increased your business revenue by 800%. Is that a bad thing? So the other side of this is it's not about achieving the goal.

Starting point is 00:17:36 This is one of those subtleties that I really want people to understand, which is one reason the coaching program wraps around the book, because I want to bring this to life in people's lives. When you set an impossible goal, a 10X goal, the benefit isn't achieving the goal. The benefit is growing into the person who can achieve the goal. That's where the goodness happens. And then when you do that, and there's no secret to it, strangely enough, it's all about adding capabilities. When we say something is impossible, we mean it's impossible for me. The way I am right now, I can't do this. I'm not capable.

Starting point is 00:18:14 What happens if you start adding capabilities? What happens if you start growing? Now, suddenly you become capable. It's like climbing a mountain, right? You get halfway up the mountain, you look around and say, wow, I didn't know this was up here. And by the time, yeah, really. And then you get to the top and this is absolutely amazing. Your point of view changes. So when you set an impossible goal, 10X goal, however you want to define it, the benefit to you of doing this, the benefit to you of being this audacious is that you get to create a different you. You get to create a person who can actually achieve these things.

Starting point is 00:18:46 And then the cool thing is, once you get to your goal, or wherever you decide to stop, maybe it's not 10x, maybe it's 8x, or maybe it's 50x, wherever you say, okay, I'm done. I've achieved what I wanted to achieve. You are a different person. You have all these additional capabilities, and you can say, wait a minute. I now want a 10X goal that's 10X beyond where I am now. And now you're building on all the goodness that you've

Starting point is 00:19:11 created in yourself and your life. The 10X, the cover of the book and in the book, I don't talk about one zero X, I talk about one zero little X, an exponent. A lot of people talk about 10x in sort of a different way. I talk about it as an exponential thing. So the 10 is, the x is always the exponent. And there's no limit to just 10 times 10. It can be 10 times 10 times 10 times 10. You can just keep growing your whole life. There's no limit. Really? Yep. I should have started earlier. No, it's never too late to start. Now, I will tell you that one of the key things here is you need to find, you need to understand that you're no longer a solo act if you want to create an impossible, want to achieve an impossible goal. You need to realize that there are people who can help you do this. And I teach people how to go about finding the right people to do this.

Starting point is 00:20:06 I call it the power of who, finding the right who to do something. Once you understand that, once you realize that the way to increase your capabilities is to recruit a who over here who has capabilities you don't have, bring them in. And now the two of you together have capabilities that are beyond just the sum of the parts. And there's no limit to that. You can bring in one who, or you can bring in 500 who's. There's no limit to what you can accomplish once you flip that switch in your brain and realize, I need to work with others. I need to collaborate. And that's a key part of this whole 10X process. That is awesome. That is awesome. So as we go out, give people a final pitch on where they can pick up the book and reach out to you for, excuse me, coaching, for coaching.

Starting point is 00:20:53 Bless you. I was trying to cut that off to the mute. So the easiest way to reach me is 10XSuperpower.com. That's where you can do the quiz. Take the quiz. There's a, also you can go to KeithEllis.com just to have some information and then invites you to take the quiz. But it tells you a little bit more about me. Either way works.

Starting point is 00:21:13 Either way gets you to that quiz. And the quiz is really all about this discovery process where you get to decide if you're ready for this. I get to decide if I think you're ready for this. And if it's a match, then we can move forward and do some incredible things. You get to decide if you're ready for this. I get to decide if I think you're ready for this. And if it's a match, then we can move forward and do some incredible things and actually help you achieve some impossible goals. Give us that.com one last time as we go out. All right.

Starting point is 00:21:41 .com is, there are two of them, 10xsuperpower.com or keithellis.com. Either one will get you to me, and we can continue the dialogue. Awesome sauce. Thank you very much, Keith, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Chris, I really appreciate the opportunity. Have a great day. You too.

Starting point is 00:21:53 Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Voss. Refer the show to your friends and family and relatives, and just tell them to do it or else. No, don't do that. Be that way. Don't do that. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Be good to each do it or else. No, don't do that. Be that way. Don't do that. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in.

Starting point is 00:22:07 Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.

The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – 10X SUPERPOWER: How to Make the Impossible Easy By Keith Ellis

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