The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Kellan Fluckiger, Coach, Catalyst, Speaker, Author on Improving the Quality Of Your Life

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Kellan Fluckiger, Coach, Catalyst, Speaker, Author on Improving the Quality Of Your Life Ultimatelifechallenge.com Kellanfluckiger.com Kellan is a Coach, Speaker, Award-winning author, and an alchemist for exponential personal growth. He is the founder of “Your Ultimate Life” which helps people create their Purpose, Prosperity and Joy every day of their lives by serving with their gifts and talents.

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.

The Chris Voss Show. Welcome to the big show. My family and friends for 15 years. And all the things we've been doing, two to three new shows a day, 10 to 15 a week. What more do you want, people? We're just giving you the most brightest and brilliant people that come on the show and make you mind smarter, make you more brilliant. And everybody else, when you're more brilliantly, you have this brilliantly.

I flunked English. Brilliantly. Hey, it's poetic license. I make it up as I go along, people. That's what I used to tell my English teacher, and she still flunked me. So brilliantly, we have these folks come by, and they share their amazing knowledge with you, make you smarter. And everyone knows once you're smart enough, you have that Brad Pitt glow of sexiness that kind of exudes off you. And people go, ooh, that person is juicy.

They must listen to the Chris Voss show. And I don't know what juicy means, so we're not going to go there. Anyway, guys, use your imagination and also refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Guilt and shaming, as always, go to Goodreads.com for Chess Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com for Chess Chris Voss, YouTube.com for Chess Chris Voss, and Chris Voss 1 over there on the tickety-tockety. The kids just love us over there, at least the intro. I'm not sure what they're doing with the rest of the show, but hopefully they're learning something, too, because, damn it, I need them to pay my Social Security. So we need to make them successful. We had an amazing gentleman on the show today.

He's going to be talking to us about a whole bunch of stuff, and I think you're going to be shocked and amazed. so we need to make them successful we had an amazing gentleman on the show today he's gonna be talking to us about a whole bunch of stuff and i think you're going to be shocked and amazed he's done so much stuff in his life we talked about in the green room we can't even put it in a full show so we're going to try and cram it in and i think you're just going to be mind blown at all the stuff that's here uh kellen flukiger uh comes to us on the show today he is a coach catalyst speaker award-winning author and performer as well we're getting him to uh i don't know do some mime uh miming on the show no we don't do miming on the show he doesn't do miming why would you make that up it's a it's a podcast chris it's audio no one's gonna see the morninging. I don't know. Mimes are... Why am I bringing up mimes?

I don't know if it's live on YouTube. If it's live on YouTube, you can see the miming. Go there. It's always a good excuse to get people to go there. So Kellen joins us, and he has had a 30-year career in the energy industry with C-suite positions in the U.S. and Canada. Behind the scenes, he dealt with depression, addiction, and a near-death experience and lived to become a beacon of light. For the last 15 years, he's built a worldwide coaching practice seeking those who are committed to becoming the best versions of

themselves. Unlike my coaching where I teach people to be the worst versions of themselves. He's written 18 books, many number one bestsellers. He's recorded 82 songs, people. I guess we're going to have to have autographs and groupies on the show now. He performed with a three times number one billboard charting choir in Phoenix, Arizona, performing to sold out audiences in the top music halls in America. He's also the host of the popular Your Ultimate Life on LA Talk Radio Live every Tuesday. He's also the host of the popular Your Ultimate Life on LA Talk Radio Live every Tuesday. He's also the executive producer and host of Creatives Save the World on both network TV and on demand.

Born and raised in San Francisco, he now lives with his amazing wife, pets, and extended family in Alberta, Canada. And his goal is to help 50 million people in 2023 discover, develop, and serve their gifts and talents to create their own version of your ultimate life. Welcome to the show, Kellen. How are you? My brain is bleeding. No, I'm fine.

There you go. There you go. I'm good. How are you doing? I am awesome. I love the radio voice you bring to the show. I feel like I'm on radio officially at this point. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

There you go. So, give us your dot com so people can find you on the internet. You know what? With a name like Kellen Flukiger, you can't hide. I had no trouble getting my website because, you know, two bucks. Because who else wants kellenflukiger.com? There it is. kellenflukiger.com. There's a URL here on the screen, Ultimate Life Challenge. Everything I do is your ultimate life. So there's a podcast. There's a YouTube channel. It's all about creating a life of purpose, prosperity, and joy that you create on purpose.

There you go. It's always good to create it on purpose because it doesn't seem to fall in your lap, does it? Never. Never falls in your lap, does it? Never. Never falls in your lap. And people live blaming externalities, the government, the economy, the weather, the neighbor, the boss, whatever. And if you live that way, you're going to be subject to whatever crap everybody else does. If you make choices to own your choice, own your life, own your decisions, you can actually create whatever you want for your life. There you go.

So give us a 30,000 overview of what you do and how you do it and how you help other people. So you mentioned my goal was 50 million, and my year starts October 14th. So I've only got a few weeks left, and then I start the next year, and I'm getting ready to reset those goals. Because you know what? Because of people like you and other shows I've been on, we've got a combined audience this year so far of 65 million. So I'm getting a bigger number because my goal, this is all I do. I help people do things they don't believe they can do.

Say yes to those yearnings to make a difference in the world. Those that feel like, you know what? I'm not happy with where I am. I mean, I may have made money or whatever. I want more. I work with those people to help them eliminate the barriers and the nonsense and the noise and accomplish those goals they're dreaming about. There you go.

And that's what everyone's trying to do these days. That's what everyone's trying to do. So tell us about your life story, your journey. Let's do a background and kind of a deep dive on how'd you get here, eh? Well, I grew up, you know, born in San Francisco, raised in what looked like a traditional two-family home. There was a lot of discipline that today would be felony child abuse. I left that childhood feeling like I was never going to be good enough and that my obligation for my whole life was to prove that I was okay. So I spent the next 30 years till I was 52, 35 years actually, I left home at 17, climbing the corporate ladder,

building big success, and then sabotaging it because I didn't deserve it. So I lived this roller coaster of growth and self-sabotage for 35 years. Going through that, I ended up married and divorced three times. Holy crap. Yeah. In and out of rehab, I had addiction issues. I attempted suicide twice. And that was all behind the scenes because on the face of it, I was a three-piece Armani big deal. And I made a lot of money, et cetera, et cetera. And finally, after 35 years of that, two weeks after my final suicide attempt in August of 2007, I had an extraordinary, I call it a divine intervention, happen. I walked away from the entire career after 30 years, started life all over again, and figured out that I needed to make fundamental changes in who I was being. And that's when I decided to become, I call it, be in the people

encouragement business, because that's really what coaching is. It's helping people do more than they think they can. And so you don't really sell information as a coach. It's encouragement and accountability. So for the last 15 years, 16 years now, I've been building that business and writing all those books you talked about. And I've got more. I've got six more underway. And I don't plan on doing anything else until I no longer draw breath because it lights up my life every day. There you go. Well, you've gone through an amazing journey in your life.

And I think there is one interesting story about how you actually died 11 years after that first divine intervention in 2007 uh i did part of that divine intervention was getting married a fourth time and the way that happened is a whole story it was a divine it would literally marry that woman. But anyway, and we hardly knew each other. So 11 years later in 2018, we went on a cruise and we hadn't been on a cruise before. I got sick. I contracted a fatal illness. I ended up in the ICU of the University of Alberta Medical Center here in Edmonton, Alberta. And my heart stopped, and I had one of those things you never think is going to happen, a near-death experience. I ended up having three conversations with God at the door

between life and eternity, and the first of those conversations was just a question, do you want to come home? And we talked about it for a while, and I said, I'm not done. So I was allowed to stay and got to make that literal choice. And if you're interested in the details, I wrote a book called Meeting God at the Door. It's on Amazon, obviously. And if you want to read about the details of that experience, it was unbelievable and put a stamp of, yes, do more on what i'd been doing for the previous 11 years and has made my passion for loving and serving every person i meet that much more powerful and so it was real i was in a coma the total of 17 days but the first three were when i had those three conversations and

the doctor told me later he said the 10-day kill rate of what you had is 100%. Holy crap. Yeah. Wow. So I had a necrotizing superbug MRSA in both lungs and in my bloodstream. Oh, wow. And he said, of course you died. It kills people.

Wow. So that was it. And I recovered from that by the grace and permission of God and by my own choice in that conversation and made a commitment then to do the work that I do now. And so when I say I only do one thing, that's it. My business plan is really simple. My accountant would kill me, but it says I never look for clients. I look for people to love, opportunities to serve, and problems to solve. That's it.

There you go. There you go. One of the things that we have here is people have called you the alchemist of the soul. How'd you earn that title? I mean, it sounds like you may have explained that to me, but hearing it in your words is probably better. Well, alchemy. I love alchemy. Have you ever, I don't know, have you ever read Paulo Coelho's book, The Alchemist?

No, but I flunk science, so. It's okay. You should read the book anyway. It's a parable, and everybody on the show should read it. It's not very thick. It's a fabulous story. But anyway, alchemy has two things to it. There's a piece of science, you know, the chemistry, but then there's also this aura of magic, right?

And some things we don't quite understand. Personal development is like that. There are steps, there are processes, there are things you can do, but then there's always some almost mystical element, meditation and connection with spirit and the divine. And you have to allow. I'm not saying you got to get to be some nutcase woo-woo whatever although I love those people too because I am one sometimes but there's an element of that mysticism in there that you just have to go with your intuition so alchemist for me fits perfectly in that description there you go and you've written several books on mediation and finding your own spirituality and stuff like that too about i think at least four i can see here meditation yeah so there's

a five volume series meditation the first one is just to teach how uh not mediation but meditation maybe i just i have plunked english too it's okay you know it's all good and then there's some others about personal meditation and personal achievement meditation and spirituality meditation on and you know physical health but it explores the role that learning meditation plays and the benefits that it brings i mean there's all kinds of medical benefits that are demonstrated in all kinds of labs so yeah that was a five volume series that i wrote there you go uh and uh meditation helps people really kind of get grounded again and kind of get back to being present as well well i i have studied many many different kinds but i boil it

all down to three steps step one learn to slow down enough to be where you are. We spend so much of our mental energy somewhere else or some when else, worrying about the past, worrying about the future, worrying about anything except here. And learning to just slow down and be present, as it were, is a powerful skill. Step two is after you slow down, be still enough to notice what is there. An example might be if you sit still in a chair for a minute, after you sit still long enough, you'll start noticing other things. The hum of the air conditioner, a little noise of a bird over there. You start noticing different things. And in that space, you'll also start noticing intuition intuitive thinking and that sort of thing so notice those things and then step three is trust that what comes to you

is truth and regardless of the style of meditation that you practice those are the three steps if you want to learn to connect to your intuition and make better decisions and all the rest of good stuff there you go and you call coaching the people encouragement business. I think we mentioned that earlier and also dream delivery laboratory. Can you give us a, uh, expand that for us a little bit? Yeah, it's kind of fun. People ask, you know, what's a coach? What do you do? You just talk to people and they miss a couple of points. Everybody knows that athletes and teams have coaches. The coaches don't run out there and play the games. They help them with mindset. They help remind them of the skills they've developed

and all the rest. So what I did is I created about a dozen fun names. I call coaching the people encouragement business. I call it blind spot protection service. I call coaching the people encouragement business. I call it blind spot protection service. I call it the obstacle obliteration business, anxiety annihilation business, the dream delivery service. And I don't have the list in front of me, but there's about a dozen of them to sort of give people the idea that it's okay to dream and you're more likely to achieve those dreams if you get the help you need. Because doing stuff alone, especially if you're running your own business or you're having difficult crap happen to you in life like we all have, it's so hard alone. I never would have made the transition from addict, attempted suicide person and everything if I hadn't done what I'm preaching. Get some help, get focused and make the, not only the regular process, but allow myself to be coached and helped. I would never have been able to do what I do.

Well, we're glad you did that and made it through it. I mean, what is it, the old saying, the five people you surround yourself with are the people you become. And so having a good coach and good advisors around you, you know, can amplify you to the next level. So you delve into C-suite executives, transformational leadership mentor, and different things like that. Who are your clients mostly that come to you for help? I think we talked about this in the green room as to who comes to you initially

and then where you go from there. Well, so there's two kinds of people. There's some people that come and what they want is a blueprint. And they ask, well, does coaching work? And what they mean is, can you please give me a foolproof step-by-step process where I don't make any mistakes and I'm guaranteed that I'll have some kind of an outcome, more money, more something or other. And the answer I give them then is you're talking to the wrong guy. Because there's no such thing as guaranteed anything. What there is...

No. You mean life isn't fair? No. I don't know. Maybe you've lived a different life. Has your life been fair? No, it hasn't been, damn it. And I keep looking for receipts so I can take it back.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you you know the line at the return counter net is awfully long i think but anyway the other kind the other kind of people are those who feel and some of them are executives like i have um usually c-suite but senior management that come and they're looking for how do i manage people better? How do I be a leader instead of just a boss that tells people what to do? How do I create loyalty in my organization? How do I get people to want to do a good job, to demonstrate a bit of an ownership mentality even though it's not their company?

What do I need to do? And often what they're looking for is, how do I make them do this? And the truth is you can't, but you can invite it by who you are being. So if you learn to see people as people, if you care about what they think, if you learn to listen, if you learn to actually understand what's going on in people's minds you can create loyalty one of the hallmarks even though i was a mess behind the scenes one of the hallmarks of my leadership thing was that i developed loyal teams who would do walk off a cliff for me and they would work any number of hours or whatever to deliver what i asked. Not because I was magic, but because I loved them and they knew it. And so they're like, we're showing up.

There you go. And people learn to, so people want to be better leaders, you got to learn to listen. You got to realize it's not about you. You've been crowned king, manager, supervisor, whatever it is. That means you serve. That means you facilitate. That means you encourage. You're you facilitate. That means you encourage. You're the coach.

You're the encourager, not the demander. So that's one kind of person. The other kind of person is... Let me get a joke in here, though. Please do. Note to self, start caring about those idiot dumbasses over at the office. All right, I just had to make that note. I'm going to pause right there and let you say that again that's brick needs to be on there twice start caring about those dumb ass idiots

in the office yeah yeah yeah so sometimes people will come and they uh this is a different kind i'm going to go back to part two in a minute but people that are coaches want to come come and they ask how do i fill my coaching practice and what i tell them is the first thing you need to do is exercise your give a shit muscle because it's a muscle yeah it's part of the body's then yeah it's the one in the heart and you know like you have to care and they have to feel it because if you expect someone to be honest with you about what they're struggling with they got a sense that you give a shit. That's true.

Same as you mentioned with the leader too. Absolutely. If they're not bought into the fact that you care about them and have a vested interest in them, they're not going to give a fuck either. No. Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. So the other group, besides the sort of people that have teams and so forth, is solopreneurs, entrepreneurs with very small teams, one, two, three, five person organizations. And the reason they look for coaching is they're like, I have too much to do. And they often get bogged down in the activities instead of the attitude of success. So if I have a problem in front of me and I'm mad at the problem and I'm mad at whoever caused it and I'm frustrated that this has come for me, my level of creativity goes way down. My problem solving skills when I'm in that kind of frustrated

thing suck. So helping people learn the skill to take an elevated view, back up, larger view, slow down, elevate your creativity, your intelligence, and everything else, and teaching people that skill is a big part of creating success for them, including sales and cash. I can't hear you, my man. I like how you put this paradigm into place. A lot of people do that. They think, you know, how do I get other people to do stuff for me? How do I get to be a leader to get people to motivate?

And it's very externally driven. Instead of focusing first on themselves and going, how do I be the best version of myself to be a leader, to be someone who can motivate people? Maybe it's in a relationship between two people and marriage, kids, et cetera, et cetera. How do I be the best version of myself to share with somebody and and motivate people to maybe be the best of their selves so there's two ways to ask a beautiful question one way to answer to ask that question is what do i need to do so that you'll do this and thus and such what do i need to do so that you'll do this and this and this the list that i want and that fails every time the way to ask that question is who do i need to be so you want to do thus and such i love that who do you want to be to to be my slave. No, wait, what? Who do I need to be?

Who do I need to be? I have a magic story about that. There's a guy that I wanted to write the foreword to the book that I'm just going to release in October. Okay? He's never written a foreword for any other book before. He turned me down five years ago. He's a friend. I know him.

He's very successful, very well known. I'm not going to give names here. And I, after five years, I wrote a book that I really thought he should do the forward for. And so I reached out to him again and he called me immediately and he said, I'm going to give you no with a caveat. And then he gave me a caveat and everything else. But the way I asked him was this. I said, look, I know you told me no before. I know you don't do this. I know da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Who do I need to be so that you'll say yes to this question?

He couldn't resist it. He called me back up and he said, no, except this and this. And the this and this was something I could do. So I have a foreword by someone who's never done that before. Awesome sauce. By asking that question, who do I need to be so that this can happen? There you go. And, and I love that.

We should put that on a shirt. We should sell coffee cups to that. Who do I need to be to make this happen? Because I love the self-accountability. I love the, I love self-accounting. It's one of my big things. I go around and beat people over the head with today, these days, because there's so little of it left in the world. And being

self-actualized as well. And everyone's, especially these days where we live in this victim competition society where everyone's fighting each other. No, I'm a bigger victim than you. No, I'm a bigger victim than you. It's constant. constant you know and and uh you know people making mistakes to screw stuff up and they don't take accountability for it they're just trying to well uh you know why did you drive into my car because you were texting uh i don't know uh the moon was over venus or something in the in the you know whatever the hell astrology uh you know stuff like that um so let's get a we brought up your uh forthcoming book that's coming out uh let's find out when that's coming out do you have a title for that book yet

i do it's called living with purpose and power it's going to be out by the end of my year which is october 14th and the reason i start my year october 14th is because that's my wife's birthday and she was part of the divine intervention in 2007 so yeah so that that's why my year starts then living with purpose and power is about it's everything that I have learned and know about how to own your life how to escape the victim corner you just talked about how to take accountability and responsibility in a loving and beautiful way to allow yourself to create purpose and the power to achieve your dreams so living with purpose and power is the book and it is if i say so myself really good good. And it has a foreword by an amazing dude. And right.

And that's what it is. And it'll be out then. And I'm excited about it because it's literally everything I've learned about how to create the ultimate life, which I live. I love every minute of every day. It's everything I've learned in the last 15 years of hard work about how to do that. And I want my greatest desire is for you to have it. Me? You, Chris Voss.

Well, you, Chris Voss. If you're not already living your ultimate life, then this is for you and every member of your audience. There you go. There you go. So we'll look forward to that coming out, and that'll be exciting to have on top of the other books that you have as well. Tell us more about maybe some things we haven't discussed on what you do, how you help people.

We've talked about income and money and not focusing on that so much. What about fixing your fear problem forever? Tell us what that's about. So I have a book called Walking Without Fear. And it is fear kills more dreams than COVID ever will. Fear eliminates more opportunities than anything else. Fear causes us not to try, not to start, to believe we can't, to give in to pressure, all of those things. And it controls so much of our lives

and it's not necessary because you know what? You can't bring me a teaspoon of fear. I had someone tell me flat out and he was very wealthy. He said, I'll give you a check right now for a million dollars if you can bring me a cup of fear. You know, and of course, everybody laughed in the audience because there's no such thing.

So if fear, it's real, the effects are real. But if it only exists as I create it, then why do I allow, and I lived in fear for all those years that i was a wreck why do i allow this thing that only exists inside of me to control my gifts my talents my output the way i show up every why do i allow that so i had an experience another one that we haven't even talked about yet, that caused me to write this book, Walking Without Fear. Wow. Let's get into it. Tell us the story. You can't tease this and leave us on the cliff.

All right. So six months after I got out of the hospital, dying and coming back to life, I woke up one morning paralyzed from the waist down. I got out of bed and fell on my face. And I got on my hands and knees and fell on my face. And so I went to the hospital in an ambulance. They did an MRI, and they took me from the emergency room to the operating room. So we did emergency surgery right now. What had happened is the

infection that had killed me in the summer hadn't completely been destroyed from my body, even though I was given an ungodly amount of death-inducing antibiotics, and it had lodged in the upper part of my spinal column. So for about a four-inch space between C2 vertebrae and T1, it had caused a cyst that had calcified and was putting pressure on my spinal column, which is why I was paralyzed from the waist down. So the doctor told me I was literally minutes or inches from death, and that's why the emergency surgery. He got in there, scraped it all out, removed a whole bunch of infected stuff. And then I was on antibiotics for six weeks with a PICC line, which is a line that goes in under your arm and literally drips into your heart.

And they do that because the antibiotics are so powerful that they would collapse all your veins. So it has to drip into your heart. But the experience was this. When I woke up paralyzed and they put me in the ambulance, this is literally six months after I'd had the visits with god and i thought what the frick i just did this how can this be happening again and on the way to the hospital i was in delirious pain i had a picture vision in my mind, anybody that's seen those World Series of poker games, you know, after they usually show them after football and stuff like that,

they're in these casinos. It's kind of purple and black. And so I'm sitting at a table, and it's first person, and I'm not even a poker player much. So I'm sitting first person, and there's these people sitting around. And then across from me i see the grim reaper in full regalia and i'm like holy crap and then he did the motion with all the chips you know the all-in motion like that wow and my heart stopped i'm in the back of an ambulance i'm in pain i'm seeing this picture and the what thought went through my mind is well when the adversary raises the stakes and i called it the adversary because of who it was not your player adversary when the adversary raises the stakes what do you do and what went in my mind is well i either fold or i call

i raised my arm which is the only thing i do, and slammed it into the stretcher and screamed at the top of my lungs. Then I call. And then the whole thing faded. Wow. Nice. And the doctor told me later that he could count on less than one hand the number of people that had come into the hospital like I did and had walked out under their own power in 10 days. Damn, dude. Walking without fear.

There you go. Well, you've run the gauntlet of several of our lives and what you've done and how you've helped people and getting to the next level. I mean, if there's anybody who can talk to people about fear and everything else, one of the things that you talk about is how you help people find their gifts and their talents i'm still looking for mine so how do you uh do that when you're helping people working with people one of the not always but nearly always the first

place we go is we examine together in a very trusting environment, just talking, how much people love themselves. Wait, I'm saying I love myself too? Have you seen me lately? Yes. Yes. I've seen you and I love you already and I mean that with all my heart. You're the only one. My mom doesn't even love me.

Here's the thing. If you don't, we can't really love other people any more than we love ourselves. What if we don't want to love other people? I'm sorry, Kellen. I'll let you go. Well, you don't have to. Here's the thing. You ask me what I do to people that want to elevate.

I have to be honest and say it's probably one in 20 people that I meet that are actually ready and willing to do the work, to find their gifts and really do something with them. The rest of them, it's like too hard because, like you said, we live in a download and double-click world. So who the heck wants to do all that work? Well, some do. So I go to self-love and I ask people, do you love yourself? When was the last time you looked in the mirror and really looked in your eyes and said, man, I love you? And I'm not talking about self-indulgence and buying all the shit you want or anything else.

That doesn't work. I'm talking about honestly caring for the divine being that you are. When was the last time? And what are you doing today? I have that on my Tinder that I'm a divine being and people seem to be appreciating it very well. I don't know what that's about. I don't know. You should ask them. I've had this up here as a divine being, and people seem to be appreciating it very well. I don't know what that's about. I don't know. You should ask them.

I've had this up here as a divine being for a long time, and I'm not getting a lot of reaction. Can somebody give me some feedback and see what happens? I don't know. I'm going to put that on my Facebook title, The Chris Voss Show, The Divine Being. I don't know. You know what? here's the deal if you have people on here who are in the business of encouraging and helping people realize what they can do and explain what they've done but do it as a way of helping others then you are doing

something good you're adding good to the world and so i honor you for that thank you you i honor you 2 000 episodes almost with so 5 000 you said so if i'm a divine being do i have uh do i have all am i on omnipotent do i have ultimate power and everything or is this just like a title that you know well that's a very good no it's a good thought and it's where where we start. Because if we are intentional creations, we're not accidents, and we all have these gifts and talents that we sometimes use and sometimes don't. What the truth is, is we do have infinite potential. So we aren't born perfect. We all know that, sadly. But we have the capability to grow, and it is those people who say, you know what?

I have this capability, damn it, I'm going to do something with it, that are the ones that create the kind of impact in the world that we've been talking about. So yes, you, Chris Voss, have the ability to add good to the world in any measure you choose. You're already doing it, and I'm appreciative of the work you do and that I get to hear and rant. Yay! There you go. Note to self, order a staff and a godly sort of robe to wear on the show. All right, Amazon probably has something of that nature

for my divine dreams. I'm sure they do. They probably even have like a Moses staff, you know? That's what I want. I want the whole Charlton Heston, Charles Heston, Charlton Heston, uh, look, you know, where he parts the Red Sea, that whole scene, everyone. Do they have a staff that turns into a snake?

That'd be kind of cool. There probably is one that, or it's probably somebody at Spear and Rhino has done that. Uh, anyway, uh, so a lot of cool things in here, uh, that I find on your website. Uh, let's talk about some of the programs and tease some of these out. You've got your private coaching, PTAC and ultimate life formula. Uh, tell us about some of these are, and some of the packages that you use to help people.

PTAC is an acronym that stands for personal truth and commitment. And it's a statement that I help people craft about themselves. Lots of us have gone to some seminar, read some book where it says, you know, and they write something that says, I am a loving, kind, compassionate, blah, blah, blah. And when I talk to people about a personal declaration, here's something what I hear, and this is funny, right? You know, I those somewhere it's on my i think it's in my computer and they'll drag it out and they'll read it and i'll say when was the last time you like read that to yourself well i don't know it's been a month or a year or a decade

okay well then it's useless a personal truth and commitment is a is literally a personal constitution now the beautiful thing is you don't need anybody's permission. You don't need anybody's agreement. This is your declaration between you and the universe of how you choose to show up in the world. So it's a sacred, powerful experience to dive into who the hell are you really? With all the fanfare and bullshit out of the way,

who are you? Who do you declare yourself to be? And so working on that declaration is a powerful process. And then the reason you do that is because then you use it as your guiding star. Do I do this project? Who am I?

This is your preparation. Like an athlete warms up before the game. My morning ritual is two and a half hours long. Why? Because I want to be the best version of me every day. Why? Because I said so. I don't need anybody's permission.

I don't need anybody's agreement. I just want to do that because I am. And so that's what a P-TAC is about. Never question the omnipotent uh divine being uh i like that uh thing let's delve into a little bit because that was the next question i queued up for you uh what is this thing about uh this morning routine and you just said that yours is quite long so i'm very curious about it i'm sure our audience is as well so every professional athlete or musician you know i you warm up you warm your fingers up

you warm your voice up you warm your muscles up why so you'll do your best performance okay if you want to be the best version of yourself then the design of a morning ritual is what set of practices would make me the very best person? Gee, what the hell is the very best person? Well, you wrote it in your PTAC. You wrote it in your declaration of who you are. So what set of practices will help you be that every day? When I teach clients, I use an acronym, SPEM, S-P-E-M.

And it stands for spiritual, physical, emotional, mental. Now, that's arbitrary as hell, and you can divide life up any way you want. But the way I think about it is we have a spiritual dimension. We have bodies that contain the essence of us. We have emotional stuff, which is all our relationships, and mental, which is our brains and capability. So I have clients start with 10 minutes for each thing and we work on figuring out what practice for 10 minutes in this area will wake it up will will connect you will make you alive and if you do that with spiritual that might be prayer it might be meditation it might be reading

something it might be watching an inspiring youtube video I don't know but it's something that for you wakes up that passion for your life p P is physical. I don't care if you're going to go work out for three hours that night. That morning, spend 10 minutes waking up your body. The E is emotional, and that is relationships. And what I usually have clients do is intentionally send some message. We you know messenger whatsapp whatever to either love someone or repair a relationship do something on purpose to nurture or repair some kind of relationship m is your brain so read a chapter or two in a book just start with that and then play with it because the goal isn't to copy mine. The goal is for you to find out what is your key that makes you the best Chris Voss today.

Is there a C in there anywhere for coffee? You know, if you want to add a C in there, you can have caspem. There you go. You know, I started doing something like that. I like your idea of it. I started doing something, you know, I found that I was waking up and, you know, the emails are coming at me, you know, all the fires of whatever the morning is and stuff. And, you know, you've got to put those out or whatever. And I just felt, you know, I'd have to go to my computer, start answering emails and usually over a cup of coffee.

And you just get pulled into the whole world and you start seeing the news coming at you, you know, this, you know, this is on fire, that's on fire, whatever the, you know, the new thing is, the bleeds that leads off the news. And it's, it, it, it started just feeling like an assault to me. And I started studying stoicism. Um, and I, I decided, and, and i was also kind of dealing with uh you know sleep and not not getting up sleep and and my uh my circadian rhythms and stuff like that we've had some people on the show that talked about it we've had some people that talked about sitting out in the sun to get your natural vitamin d in the morning and help restart those circadian rhythms and i thought you know i'm gonna do a thing I'm going to start sitting in the sun every morning and get those, get the vitamin

D for about 15, 20 minutes, get those circadian rhythms started. And then it became, what am I going to do out there? And I'm like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take my stoicism books out. So like meditations with Mark Reyes, seneca uh all those different things um and take them out there and just kind of read make notes maybe contemplate meditate i have two dogs they're huskies and they love it when i go out in the yard because they just want to play and they're like dad's out here so it's kind of connecting with them and everything else so it's kind of like a good mosh pit of all these different wonderful elements but i don't turn on my computers i go right out and i do that in the morning with my morning coffee of course and then i come in and as a fire of the computers i try and play some solo piano music uh you know

george winston or something something that makes me feel very at peace and kind of get in this frame where i feel that okay this is my cockpit i'm in control of my life. There's this alpha frame where instead of everything coming at me and just, you know, I feel like there's this assault, this battle that's taking place. It's like, okay, I'm going to take this in and everything's going to come at me at my pace and my frame as opposed to the world. What do you think of that? I absolutely love it. So all that I do in the morning ritual thing is when my i have coaching calls with people i ask them what they're doing i ask them if it is working for them is it preparing you and the way you tell is are you overwhelmed do things seem you know how how fast do you get

sucked into the and so then you tweak it and you just expand it and i said mine's two and a half hours not because it has to be but because i love it i never miss it i would no sooner skip my morning with the huskies version i would no sooner skip that than i would run outside in edmonton here in middle of winter and minus 40 naked like you just don't skip it why because it feels so flipping good. Yeah. And a lot of successful people do that. They have morning rituals.

And I don't know why I decided to wait until I was 55 to come up with one. Before that, it was just, well, for about 20 years, it was wake up and deal with the hangover. And then all that. All down that road. You've seen that movie. Yeah, you've seen that movie. So let seen that movie um so uh let's go to uh this new thing we've been doing uh kellen uh where we ask you five uh questions to get to know you better our guests better have some fun and all that good stuff now there is a penalty phase to

this so uh you might have not read this in the fine print, but if you answer all five questions right, according to our judges that we have here on staff, there's a whole line of them sitting here in suits, and an attorney too if we need one. If you answer them right, you get to return to your family. But if you answer any of them wrong or most of them wrong, I think some of them wrong, it's not that tight. We put you in the Chris Voss gulag, where you're fed the Chris Voss show goulash.

It's the gulag goulash, and you're forced to eat it. So there is a penalty phase here. So we don't want to put too much undue pressure on you, but just know that it's really important to get it right. And we have had some people throw the show, so they don't have to go back to their families, but that seems to be an issue that they need to resolve. So we'll start with the show.

Are you ready for this? I am ready, and I'm picturing, you know, some scene where they got those things in your eyes and you're forced to watch something in the gulag, right? And you can't close them. Was that Agent Orange or something? Was that a Stanley Kubrick film? I don't know.

I know. What was that? A Clockwork Orange. Clockwork Orange. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one. I've never watched that movie because I've seen the cover with the eyes thing, and I'm like, oh, that makes me, that just does the thing. All right, so here we go.

Question number one, and this is really important. You must, oh, we need you to not only give us your answer, but the reasoning for your answer in a short form, if you would. Uh, so should cereal be better served with milk or orange juice? Cereal has to have milk on it, but the accompaniment should be orange juice. So cinnamon toast crunch with milk on the cereal and a glass of orange juice, that's the one. And I know some people might say Captain Crunch,

or if you're a health food person, then you might say unsweetened shredded wheat, but whatever. Yeah. We'll just do a little add on here. Do you think that maybe a cereal would be better served if you put orange juice in the bowl or milk? You know, I think orange juice in the bowl would suck. No, it might be good. I don't know.

I mean, everything else is sugar anyway. Anyway, we'll move on. Question number two. Who would win a fight, a duck-sized horse or a horse-sized duck? I think a horse-sized duck. I think a horse-sized duck would definitely win a fight. Because the duck-sized horse would be smaller? Well, a duck-sized horse is smaller,

but I don't know if the horse, I mean, a duck's beak is pretty lethal. So if I get a horse-sized duck, they're going to have a big old clapper coming after you. And a duck-sized horse, I don't know, even their back kick isn't going to be that lethal. So I'm thinking that big old honking beak is going to be scary. All right.

Judges, work on that one with the attorney while we suss out these other questions. Is it better to have a superpower or be super rich? Either or. I think it's better to have a superpower. And the reason is when you have a power here's the this goes right to my coaching i love it thank you for this question you couldn't be a better straight man every person breathing air has a superpower the question is have you figured out what yours is and are you using it to add good to the world you can do more good and have more fun and make more

money using your superpower to add good to the world than you'll ever do being super rich. I know super rich people, and I used to be a person that had too much money and more money than brains and did really dumb shit. So I can tell you the superpower wins hands down. There you go. There you go. This next question is definitely interesting. Is a hot dog a taco or a sandwich?

It's neither one. It's a hot dog. It's neither one. It is not a hot, certainly not a taco. And it is not a sandwich. I'm going to have to say it's a standalone category. A hot dog, a Polish dog. And by the way, Costco still sells those for a buck and a half forever.

That's their decision is to always sell those crazy hot dogs for a buck and a half. Neither one. There you go. And I'm not sure if we can accept it because it's an either or question, but I'll have to check with the attorneys. Did I do four or am I at five? That's four. That's four. Should toilet paper hang over or under the roll?

Now, you may piss off a lot of people with this answer. I'm assuming I'm going to piss off half the people in the world with my answer. I'm an over-the-top guy because I like to pet the roll. The argument for the under is if you have cats like we do, of course, then they pet the roll and it's all on the floor. Regardless of that, I still am a toilet paper over-the-top guy because I find it easier to gather the required resources when in the position of need. There you go. And I'm single, so the correct answer when reading the card is you don't put anything on the roll,

and you just put the toilet paper roll on the side. You don't use that stupid thing, but that's what single guys do. Anyway, I have returned the things from the judges' staff here. There's a whole plethora of them. And they have said you have gotten all the answers right. So, unfortunately, you will have to be returned to your family and get to spend your life with them instead of being in the Chris Voss show gulag. So, there you go. You know, my wife's name is Joy, and she is the joy of my life.

And it would have been very distressing. In fact, when I was having that first conversation with God about coming back, most of the conversation in that incident, and I know I'm going right to serious from funny, but it was about the things that we had left to do. And she is the joy of my life. And so returning to her will be the greatest pleasure I get to have today. There you go. So give us your final thoughts, your final pitch as we go out on the show,

how people can contact you and onboard with you and get to know you better so they can work with you. With a name like Kellen Flukiger, I said earlier, you can't hide. So kellenflukiger.com. You do have to spell the name right. You can find me on Facebook where I'm quite active. On LinkedIn, there's a URL here on the screen called ultimate life challenge dot com www.ultimate life challenge dot com. That's a place where I help people explore their superpower and figure out how to

make money with it and add good to the world. So there's a place I'm active on LinkedIn. You can connect with me there. And I would love to have conversations. I love meeting people because I, like I said earlier, you have a superpower. You may already be using it, like Chris is, to do good, single or not, and toilet paper standing on the side or not. So that's how to get a hold of me.

If you want to, you can find me. All my books are on Amazon. If you Google my name, there's tens of thousands of hits, not only from my current work, but from my old executive career because of the positions that I had. So I'm not hard to find. I want to make sure that I honor Chris for the work that he's doing adding good to the world. And the thing I would leave all of you with is this. I don't care what has happened to you in the past. I don't care what struggles you've been through and how much tough stuff has happened. What matters is what you do from this moment on. The direction you're facing matters more than your velocity. Your intention and focus

matters more than what's in the past. You don't have to live in the victim corner. Take control of your life. If I can do anything to help you, I'm absolutely excited. If you want to see my podcast after you watch Chris's, it's Your Ultimate Life. And that's my podcast also. It's about how to create a life of purpose, prosperity, and joy. Chris, thank you for everything you're doing. And Kellen, thank you for coming on. You've inspired so many more people. And I'm going to look forward to your goal next year of, is it 50 million people? 50 million ends in five weeks. I'm going to have some live Facebook stuff advertising the new one.

So I'm not going to reveal now, but we've already picked a number and it is scary, terrifying. There you go. And, people can order up your forthcoming book. There'll be a link to your websites on the

Chris Foss show. So people can watch for that and get aware of, uh, uh, that book when it comes out. Cause it sounds like it's going to be wonderful to pick up and they can also pick up your other books as well guys it's almost christmas so what you want to do is you want to buy like lots of books and stock up uh that way

you have plenty to give away as christmas gifts for people as well and you can make smarter people around you smarter as well uh so thank you kellen for coming on uh thanks for audience for tuning in we certainly couldn't do this without you for 15 years that we just turned. What was it? Four days ago. We love you guys. And you guys, the Chris Voss Show family, the family that loves you but doesn't judge you. As always, refer your family and relatives to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss,

linkedin.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, youtube.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, and Chris Voss1 over on TikTok. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. My superpower is flatulence, and we'll see you guys next time.