The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Kurek Ashley, The Transformer, Author, Success Coach, Speaker

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Kurek Ashley, The Transformer, Author, Success Coach, Speaker The live version is happening Sept 27th - 29th. https://kurek-ashley.mykajabi.com/stop-whats-stopping-you-live-training kurek-ashley.mykajabi.com

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, thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, come here to the great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. As always, what would we do without you? Well, we'd just be sitting here talking to Mike all to ourselves, which is Wednesdays around here. Anyway, you know, because you guys are here listening to the podcast, I have a reason to talk to myself. Otherwise, my psychologist says he'd have me committed,

which is often enough a tactic he always wants to myself. Otherwise, my psychologist says he'd have me committed, which is often enough attack he always wants to attack to use, but I seem to escape his office every time, and they're looking for me currently now. But aside from that, I hope you're not in the same position with your psychiatrist, but tell your psychiatrist to listen to the Chris Voss show. You can go to, that's about the only way he's going to get through to me. You can go to youtube.com, fortune.chrisvoss. You can go to goodreads. the only way he's going to get through to me. You can go to youtube.com, FortunaSKrissVaz. You can go to Goodreads.com, FortunaSKrissVaz. See all the crazy places we are on the internet, the big LinkedIn group as well, and the LinkedIn newsletter. Today, we have amazing guests on the show. We only have amazing guests that we book on the show. We turn away all the other others. We're just like, you're just not amazing enough to be on

the show. Today, we have Keurig Ashley on the show. He's the multi-talented coach that we're going to be talking to. He's also an author. He was the author of the book, How Would Love Respond? You can find that wherever very books are sold on those interwebs around the international systems. Keurig is considered to be one of the most in-demand first-class speakers and sought-after success coaches in the world. He is recognized as one of the premier experts in the Western Hotels, the Australian Royal Air Force, and Carlton United Brewery have hired him to teach them tactical success strategies that have

produced awe-inspiring results. His private list of clients include Hollywood film and TV stars, movie directors, producers, and cinematographers, and quintuple platinum rock band hit music composers, top business leaders, oil executives in Kuwait, Olympic gold medalists, and professional athletes in sports teams, and the list goes on and on. Welcome to the show, Kierke. How are you? I'm great, Chris. I'm talking to you from the Sunshine Coast of Australia, but if you'll recognize my accent, it's more from Chicago. There you go. There you go. We've got the whole world win experience going on for our listeners. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. Keurigashley.com. K-U-R-E-K-A-S-H-L-E-Y.com.

There you go. And Keurig, you seem to be a master of all trades. Give us a rundown in your words of kind of some of your history, your background. What got you into this space? Well, Chris, it's kind of a unique question because I've kind of always done it since high school, but I thought that my path was going to be being an actor. So at 12 years

light about my age and I got on stage at Second City in Chicago and I was working with Jim Belushi and George Wendt from Cheers. Oh, wow. You know, and then I moved to L in Chicago, and I was working with Jim Belushi and George Wendt from Cheers. Oh, wow. You know, and then I moved to L.A. when I was 18 and working. It took me three years to get my first job, but that was Two of a Kind with John Travolta, Libby Newton-John, and then started working. And in 1989, I was doing a Chuck Norris film called Delta Force Two, And unfortunately, I was involved in a helicopter crash where five guys died on the set. And, you know, it just took me into a really negative

tailspin, you know, pumping cocaine on my nose and smoking cigarettes and drinking booze. And I mean, I wasn't partying. I was trying to kill myself. Luckily, I got a success in everything in life. But it really forced me to really get back into my personal development. And then I just started finding out that I was more and more passionate about doing this than being in the movies. Oh, wow. So you did the whole movie thing and you thought that was going to be a way to go. It looks like, what was it? 33 years ago, Delta Force 2, there was a crash that killed several people in the thing. You wrote a book about this and your experience and also your recovery.

Is that correct? Well, the first five chapters of How Would Love Respond talk about the helicopter wreck and what I went through. And the reason I do that is because, you know, when people see you on stage, they think, well, everything you touch turns to gold. And, you know, you're the lucky one. My life, I think the creator probably gives me more problems than the average person just so I have better seminar content. And so I put those first five chapters in there to show people really where I come from and how the tools in the book work to really transform your life. But the funny thing, Chris, is the last chapter is called The Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Publisher.

And what that's about is that I went through another catastrophe as I was finishing the book. So I wrote it in real time so that people can see I'm a real guy. And here I am using the tools again in my book to turn my life around. Wow. Wow. And you entitled the book, let's see, How Would Love Respond? Why did you call it that? Well, I was coaching someone, and it just came out in what I was teaching. And the most powerful thought you can have is your identity. It's the words I am. It's whatever follows, that's your identity.

The Bible, I'm not religious. My mom was Jewish. My dad was Christian. I was just really confused. But the Bible says, you know, you do not know love. You do not know God because God is love. And if you study human beings, love has always been the most powerful driving force for people to do amazing things. You know, the love of their family, the love of their country, the love of their cause, whatever that is. And so I thought about, well, what if you identified yourself as love? How would you respond differently

to everything in life? So would you allow yourself to stay poor? Would you inject drugs? Would you abuse alcohol? Would you allow people to abuse you? But that's not how love responds. And so the question itself really wrote the book. Wow. There you go. There you go. And so how long, you've been coaching for quite some time now, then? How many years have you been coaching now? Well, sometimes you hate saying it, but it's like 40 years now. I must have started like three years old, but it's one of those things that I'm still very passionate about it, Chris, and that's because what I teach is all based in physics. It's the law of cause and effect. That every result has some action or series of actions that will create that.

So, you know, the results that I produce with people, I mean, I took Olympic athletes to win gold medals at the Sydney Olympics. You know, people who were told it was impossible to have kids all have kids now. I worked with a guy last year who cured himself of Tourette syndrome. Wow. You know, it's across across the board but it's pretty phenomenal and i guess that's where the the name they call me the transformer comes in you know because i've transformed so many people's lives that's right you have that as a nickname the transformer it comes from there they're actually doing a documentary on me for netflix and something it's called the and it's you know and then we're working on a TV show where I'm going to work with some kids who are going through problems and transforming their lives as I've done before. It's an interesting title, but I've kind of accepted it because it's really what I do.

I mean, even coaching kind of doesn't suit the bill anymore just because everybody and their uncle is a coach these days. My dogs are coaches. I have three dogs who are coaches. They coach me on how to walk them. There you go. And then most people are married, so they have their wife coaching them to tell them what to do. So there's that. But no. So what do people normally come to you with needing help with? And what do you usually specialize in helping coach people with? Well, the first thing, Chris, is that I get people from all walks of life. I mean, there's big companies I work with, mom and pop businesses, sports teams, athletes,

people who just want to turn their lives around. I would say one of the most phenomenal cases that I've ever worked with was we started getting emails into my office from a bunch of different people wanting me to work with this one person. The name was Joe, is Joe. And so, you know, I said, well, send me the emails. Let me see what's going on. Cause it's really weird that we're getting like all these different people asking to help this one person. As I looked at the email addresses, it's all the same person. And it turns out she was diagnosed a schizophrenic with seven personalities. Oh, so all the personalities emailing you.

Yeah. And so I wrote each one of them separately and said, and look, you know, I can only talk to her directly. It's the coach client privilege and the rest of those things. So just have her call me. Well, a few days later, we're closing up the office and the phone rings and one of my staff comes in and says, hey, it's her on the phone. I'm like, who? And I go, Joe. I'm like, okay, we'll put it through to my office. And she said, what are you going to do? And I said, I have no idea, but I will not come out of my office until she's one harmonized human being. And five and a half hours later, I came out and still to this day, it's like over 20 years later, she's still one harmonized human being. She's got a

job. She's got a, you know, does martial arts. She harmonized human being. She's got a job. She does martial arts. She's in network marketing. She's got friends. It's a complete transformational turnaround. That is awesome, man. What do you find most people struggle with in life that you help or give value to? What do you find most of your clients are struggling with these days? Telling stories. They want, they want to keep repeating what's happened to them or what's going on in their life. But see, it's not even the truth.

It's an edited interpretation of what we think happened. But it's the story that's drama. You know, it keeps you stuck in your story and then it keeps the rest of us stuck listening to it. Because every time you tell the story, you got to relive the experience.

So if you stop telling that story and only start telling the empowering stories about how you are going to turn your life around. But most people, when they do that, they don't want to stop telling the story and they think that I'm being judgmental or complacent about the whole thing. No, if you really want the help, stop telling.

The only time I tell the story about the helicopter crash that I was in is only for teaching purposes. I don't tell it in life because as I tell this story, I'll get very emotional about it because I'm reliving it again. Well, that's not a good thing to keep putting yourself through. Yeah, definitely. And people seem to embrace their stories almost as like an excuse or, you know, to them it almost becomes an identity sometimes. It actually does, Chris. It's spot on. You know, because when you're in that drama, when you're in that pain, people come to you and go, tell me what's happening.

And a lot of people interpret that as love, like I'm being loved right now. When that story wears out, you know, because people have already heard it, they go into more drama because that's where they get more attention because they find out if I'm not in drama, nobody really pays attention to me. I mean, like when you're doing really good in your life, you probably get less attention from people. So you have to learn how to get that love from other sources and actually real love, stealth love, instead of keep going from drama to drama. I mean, you know, there's people in their lives that that's all they seem to be going through. Every time you catch up with them, it's just another drama story. Yeah, it's it's interesting to me.

We seem to live in a world where people are victim competition. And everyone seems to be competing to be the biggest victim. You know, like, oh, you'll hear a story, and they'll be like, oh, you're not a victim. I'm a victim. I'm loyal to you. You're my story. It's like victim competition of who can be one-upped. You know, I saw a good example that I saw recently was on The View with, I forget her name, she usually hosts, but she got in a kerfuffle where she was trying to put herself one up, you know, racism in America and the black experience, unfortunately, with slavery and stuff over Jewish people and denouncing Jewish people as not a race.

And it was the one-upmanship of trying to do victim competition. And I see so much of that in today's world. I see it in social media. I see it on, I see it in the news. It's really become a part of our culture for the last three generations where it's all about the victimhood narrative. And I'm a victim. And sometimes it leads with, it turns into empowerment, but most times it's just it's just a woe is me i'm a victim you know even successful people like i saw recently um the who's the bat who's the tennis star she mrs williams she's retiring and and she posted about her retirement as a victimhood story because she's female and she has to go take care of her family and

and woe is me if she can only be male and then she wouldn't have to deal with these problems and you're just like the whole victimhood competition thing that seems to be prevalent in our society just is really astounding it's because you get attention i mean yeah you know you know reality tv which is actually not real at all it's just scripted the funny part chris is that you know my tv show the transformer we were steve mclaughlin who produced i robot with will smith and marty weiss she's a writer for disney you know they were bringing me around all the studios all the networks in in you know paramount and fox and universal and survivor and we were

talking about the show and every one of them said, all the producers said, man, I will force my kids to watch your show every week, but I'm going to produce it. Wow. Why not? And they go, well, there's no drama. You know, you're just a little dicker and stuff. And you got no nudity, no drunkenness.

You're actually trying to help people. Wow. Yeah. And they go, that's not TV. And, you know, if you look at it, I mean, you know, Tony Robbins had a show on for two episodes that was canceled and Jerry Spurrier has been on 25 years. Exactly. They love their drama.

They love their stuff. But, you know, if you want to, you know, not wind up that victim at the end of your life, you're going to have to drop that story and then start telling the stories of the life that you do want to live, you know, because all great achievers were visionaries. We're focusing on, I mean, if you study any successful people, Oprah, you know, I've been friends with Sylvester Stallone since I was 18 years old and I did the movie Lockup with him. And, you know, John Travolta, I've done two fellows with them And, you know, they've all had challenging lives. You know, Sly sold his dog for $25 at 7-Eleven and then had to buy him back for $15,000 once he got the movie Rocky. And then he even had to put the guy in the movie. But that's Marcus Stallone, who's in two Rocky movies.

You know, they've all gone through that. But if you ever study their story, you'll see that they always talked about where they were going to go and who they were going to become, not where they were right now. Yeah, it's interesting how people hold on to that. And, you know, it's become a real narrative in our society. It's in a narrative, like you mentioned, in movies and TV. It's always about the being a victim. And then you see it after a while in the constant feed where, you know, a lot of these movies, they just promote this victimhood sort of narrative as well. Yes. And, you know, I, I was doing a program in Sydney. This is about 20

years ago and they had a woman whose daughter died of an ecstasy pill. This is Australia, so that's a big deal. The whole country heard about it. And she was talking to these troubled teens, trying to get them into this program where they're going to get coaching. In a school where nobody's made it to university in like 10 years. And so she got up before me and she went into whole victimhood. My daughter was this, you need to do that. And all of a sudden it started turning into a swearing contest.

You know, F you, we're throwing stuff at her. She's saying it back to them. And she stormed off the stage all angry that, you know, they didn't buy into it. Well, that's what victimhood does for you you know people if you're a victim well predators prey on victims you know have more victim stuff coming to you for doing that instead you know i talked to these kids about changing your lives and you know what's the outcome if you don't and you know 100 out of 117 boys 116 took me up on the offer to join the program and years later i was out at the sydney convention center and eight guys come running up on me i think i'm about to

get beaten or mugged and they go mr ashley we're in university i'm like what they go because of you and your program you know we were from blacktown high school and we went to university and like oh congratulations i way better than i thought was going to happen here. And they said, yeah, man, you were like in the combat mode. I'm like, well, I am from Chicago. That's true. That's true. So let's talk about your website.

How can people work with you? How can people reach out to you and get in touch with you and some of the different things that you provide to people? I noticed there's some online training, a free 10-day course, and different products. Chris, I have a brand new one coming out in two weeks called Stop What's Stopping You. It's about getting people past procrastination because it really seems to be the dream stealer for people. And it's not a big sales course as if you watch what I do and how I do it. I'm not the big sales guy. CuricAshley.com, there's a couple of free courses on there now, but the Stop What's Stopping You will be out in two weeks,

and I can send you the link for that if you want. More on KeurigAshley.com. If people write me, Keurig at KeurigAshley.com, I actually write people back. I'm pretty famous for it. I will tell you, there's more times I can tell you I'm on stage and somebody raises their hands and they say, Hey, you know, I wrote Keurig, and I'm just waiting for, Oh, here it comes.

You know, like I didn't write him back or, you know, that one person slipped through the cracks and they go, and amazingly, he actually wrote me back. Thank you. It was great. It's just because, you know, I'm a real guy and, you know, people see on stage and they see that I've been in the movies, all this stuff. And they just think that somehow I'm not, I don't know where that comes in, but I'm a real person. And, you know people see on stage and they see they've been in movies all the stuff and they just think that somehow i'm not i don't know where that comes in but i'm a real person and you know if people take the time to write i write them back there you go there you go so you've got like i mentioned online training free a 10-day course i imagine people can work one-on-one with

you as well yep yeah i have my one-on-one coaching. I also have my group coaching. It's called the Success Inner Circle. And then I have the Life Success Club, which is the automated download stuff, but it's a real coaching program. It's been going since 2003. The results people have gotten from the Life Success Club is astronomically amazing. And it's super economical for people because money has never inspired me it doesn't it's not what drives me you know when you add value on the planet you make money like chris with your show you know you obviously you attract a lot of people because you do a quality show and that's just the way it works it's not a big sales pitch thing and so that's the way i

operate and the big sales thing kind of turned me off when people were really jamming it down your throat. John, act right now. I'm easy to get a hold of. If you're interested in coaching or whatever, just send me an email. We'll get on a Zoom call. I won't try to sell you because that's the wrong client for me. It has to be a perfect fit because I cheat. I choose winners.

Every sports team I've worked with, every athlete I've worked with have all won. The clients that I work with get astronomical results. But those are the've worked with, every athlete I've worked with have all won. The clients that I work with get astronomical results. But those are the people who say, you know what? It's time for me. I'm ready to put it into action. Let's go. There you go. And it looks like with the Inner Circle invitation, you can have 12 months of private small group coaching that's on there.

So is that probably good for companies and things like that? Absolutely. And, you know, the great thing about the group dynamic, Chris, is it's just, you know, I know we're in a virtual world these days where, you know, we're doing programs online, all this stuff, you know, COVID, you know, kind of changed the dynamics of it. But there is nothing more powerful than a bunch of kindred spirits or like-minded people getting together because it also creates an added dimension to what happens in your training and your learning. Plus people ask questions that you may not have even thought of. And then once you hear it, you go, oh my goodness,

that was for me. I got that. That's really the power of the group dynamics that I really love doing this success in your circle calls. And we have a library of all the calls that have already been done. There's already 100 calls in there. And people are changing their lives even for their first live call by just listening to some of the calls in the library. Oh, wow. Yeah. So they can see other people being coached and all that good stuff.

Yeah, it's 25 people max. And we have two groups, one for the northern hemisphere and one for the southern hemisphere just because of time zones. And, yeah, it's awesome. It's a game changer. That's pretty freaking awesome, man. That's awesome. What else do you do that we haven't touched on that we want to tease out

to people to get in touch with you and work with you? Well, you know, I would just suggest that everybody, you know, if you're interested, the first program that you're talking about, the 10-day online course is called Get Out of Your Bad Mood. And people, well, I'm not in a bad mood. Well, any mood that doesn't support your happiness and success is deemed as a bad mood. But here's the distinction, Chris, between successful people. Now I'm talking about holistically successful, not just people who accumulated money, you know, who have the health and fitness, the happiness, the relationship, all that stuff that they want, and the wealth. The difference between those people and the masses, by the way, the masses,

the most consumed drug on the planet are called antidepressants. Right. So that's the masses. And if it's not the drug the doctor gives you, well, it's reality TV, it's shopping, it's, you's you know facebook it's all that stuff where people are just trying to distract themselves from the bridge being out on their road to life the difference between those two groups because we all go through the same stuff everybody went through covid drama everybody with global financial crisis but the way that was so

cool we had to give it an acronym, the GFC. Just so you know, Chris, more people died from KFC than GFC, but people don't really freak out over the kernel. The difference between those two groups, successful and unsuccessful, we all go through the same stuff, but successful people, we manage how we think and feel differently. So if you think and feel differently during your challenging times, you're going to be able to respond differently. That means act differently. You're going to produce a different result. So as an example, the GFC, people were freaking out, selling their homes, shutting down their businesses, successful people were buying them. Why? People, right? So as you see, you know,

we're all going through the same stuff, but you have to learn how to manage how you think and feel differently, differently than others and differently than you used to do yourself. And that's what the 10-day course does. So I highly recommend that you jump on. It's free. It's, again, not a big sales thing. And then, you know, sign up for the list and then you'll get the information for the course coming out in two weeks called Stop What's Stopping You. There you go. That sounds freaking awesome.

Well, it's been wonderful to have you on the show and talk about all this stuff. And people should reach out to you and work with you. Thanks, Chris. I appreciate that you have me on your show. And anytime you want me back, I'd be honored. Thank you. Thank you very much. Give me your.com, if you would, so people can find you on the interroads, please.

Yeah, kurekashley.com. K-U-R-E-K-A-S-H-L-E-Y.com. My name is Polish. My mom, I think, was drunk at night because my brothers are Jeff, Steve, Rick, Ron, and Corey, and I got Kurek, which, by the way, means water faucet or small chicken in Polish. So we don't really have to spread that. But there you go. Well, I mean, at least you got the unique name out of all of them, right? That's one way of saying it. There you go. There you go. You got to put on that spin, you go. Well, I mean, at least you got the unique name out of all of them, right? That's one way of saying it.

There you go. There you go. You got to put on that spin, you know. You guys got the average names. I got the cool names. So it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you, Kirk, for coming on. I really appreciate it, man.

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