The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Superpowers for Good: The Skills You Can Master to Leave Your Mark on the World by Devin Thorpe

Episode Date: October 23, 2021

Superpowers for Good: The Skills You Can Master to Leave Your Mark on the World by Devin Thorpe Over the past decade, author Devin Thorpe interviewed more than 1,200 people-including Bill Gates-for his podcast. Hundreds of times, he asked, "what is your superpower?" The answers have been so inspiring, he's written this book. He continues his podcast, seeking inspiration from changemakers. (Visit http: //superpowers4good.com.) The focus will be the lessons you can learn from them. Are they superheroes? They are no more superheroes than patience or optimism are literal superpowers. For the past decade, Devin worked to align his journalistic writing-much of it for Forbes-with the principles of solutions-oriented journalism, which focuses on repeatable efforts that provide measurable relief to social and environmental problems. This dogma holds that there are no heroes, examining the processes and tools rather than the people wielding them. Repeatedly, however, Devin found the people were essential to the processes. How do you remove Bill Gates from a story about the Gates Foundation? He isn't a savior. He isn't a Marvel superhero. But there are things you can learn from him. You can also learn powerful and vital lessons from the BIPOC women featured in the book who have been-and will be-guests on the podcast. With this book, the exploration of superpowers you can use to change the world is just beginning.

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. 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 who's boss here from thecrisvossshow.com thecrisvossshow.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast who saw that coming anyway that should be the rest of the name of the podcast. The Chris Vaughn Show. Who saw that coming? So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation.

It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold.

But the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom-made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com.

So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold. Actually, it's a byline. It's a tagline. I think I just made shirts. Anyway, guys, please go to all the places that follow the show and all that good stuff. We have a returning guest. I think he's been on like three or four times now. We had him on twice during the coronavirus lockdown epidemic. He's the author of six books,

and I don't know, he's probably going to have one written by the time we get done with this show. But he's written a new book that you want to take and pick up. He's got a lot of books. Pick them all up, actually. Superpowers for Good. The Skills You Can Master to Leave Your Mark on the World by Devin Thorpe. He's going to be joining us today to talk about his new book and all the wonderful things he does.

He is a best-selling author who calls himself a champion of social good. In 2020, he was the Democratic nominee for Utah's third congressional district. He travels extensively as a volunteer doing service, as a journalist finding heroes, and as a speaker sharing what he's learned. As a Forbes contributor, he covered social entrepreneurism and impact investing, reaching an audience of over 2 million people. He's produced 1,200 episodes of his podcast featuring luminary change agents, including Bill Gates. His books have been read over 1 million times. I'm about like 1 million and 5 behind him. Help people do more good is

what he does. And he helps nonprofits raise millions of dollars from being a crowdfunder. Welcome to the show, Devin. How are you? It's a thrill to be back, Chris. Thanks for having me. You're very kind. Yeah, you are also kind. You're always a gentleman when you come on. You would be great as a British person, too, if you just have that British gentleman sort of thing going on there.

So give us your plugs for people who want to find you on the interwebs and learn more about you. Oh, yeah. There are two places to find me, devinthorpe.com or superpowersforgood.com. Those are easy places. And I'm most active on social media, on Twitter, but that's at devinthorpe. I'm also on Instagram with the same handle. I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn.

There you go. LinkedIn. Yeah, where those people are all, it's all about them jobs and stuff. So you've published this new book. It just came out September 7th, 2021. What motivated you to write this book? You know, what motivated it was very external. I was doing my podcast and had been doing it for years.

And one of my friends slash fans said, Devin, I noticed that you ask your guests, what is your superpower? And he said, those answers are the best part of the show. You should write a book about all those answers. And that resonated with me as someone who's written some books. Oh yeah, I probably should.

And I actually started work on it. I started organizing all the material several years ago. And then with the congressional race and the pandemic, I set it aside. And then this spring, I decided to come back to that project and I dusted it off and I discovered I'd made some real progress. And all that was really left to do was just to write it because the material was all there. So I sat down and wrote the book. And here's the thing, Chris, if you'll forgive me for saying so,

this is the book I learned the most from and value the most of all the books I've written because instead of sharing my wisdom and my insights, I was sharing the wisdom and insights of other people. And as I was gathering their wisdom, gathering their insights over and over, I was feeling like this is really profound stuff. My life will change because I'm actually listening to this. I'm learning something new and I'm going to be a better person because I did it. So I hope people accept it, feel it, learn from it the way I have felt like I've learned from it in writing. Yeah. It's interesting how the teacher, I think, learns more than the student,

right? Yeah, for sure. You sit and you look at it and you go, wow, there's a lot to learn here. Some of the times when I write stuff, I'm like, this helps me more than it helps other people. Screw other people. This is for me. That's right. I like this. This is good. So give us an overall arcing view of the book or some tidbits or some tease-outs that you want to tease out on the book.

We might as well start at the end. One of the things that when I talked to Bill Gates and had him on this show and was talking to him and asked him about his superpower, he mentioned patience. And there's a little bit of irony there because he actually describes himself as an impatient optimist. And so he was talking about his superpowers in my conversation with him as patience and optimism. The optimism was not much of a surprise. Entrepreneurs are very optimistic as a group. And it worked out pretty well for him. So, you know, his optimism was not surprising, but patience.

How's that a superpower? But the way it is that, let me get into the weeds. Can I get into the weeds a little bit? Please get into the weeds, sir. I'm going to wander off into the weeds. Please forgive me, people. But Bill Gates has been the biggest funder of the fight to eradicate polio. And most people think polio has been eradicated because there hasn't been a case of polio in the United States in about 40 years. But polio is still endemic in two countries, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They have had cases continually forever.

And there aren't many anymore, but there are still cases. So he's the big funder. Rotary International has been the leader in this effort, and Bill joined Rotary's effort about 20 years ago. But he's the biggest funder. So it's a big deal. A decade ago, in this context, he said, I think the problem is we need a better vaccine.

And it's a long-term project to do a new vaccine because vaccines take a long time usually like he said when we spoke he said it's going to be 25 years since we started working on a an hiv vaccine until we have one And that turned out to be optimistic because the vaccine that he was talking about wasn't approved. It was about a year later after he and I spoke that the HIV vaccine that would have taken 25 years didn't work. So it didn't pass all the hurdles. And so it's not in use. So there's still, it's not an HIV vaccine after 25 years. So it takes a long time to make a vaccine. And so it was interesting that he thought there was a need for a better one. A decade later, it's now being introduced. It's called the novel

polio virus or polio vaccine. And it's better than the past vaccines that have been used for the last 50, 60 years. Jonas Salk developed the first one, and then Sabin came up with another one, and now Gates has led the development of a third. And it really is the linchpin piece for eradicating polio. And it is the essential new tool. You think about being willing to say, I'm going to spend a lot of money, hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a new vaccine over the next decade. And a lot of people around him would have said, Bill, there will be no polio to vaccinate against in 10 years. We're making such great progress. Don't waste your time and energy. But he had the foresight and the patience to invest in that. So that was profound.

So I spent a little time, and please forgive me. I'm not really rambling here, but I'm sharing a bit of a long answer to your question. I spent some time trying to figure out how do you learn patience? Because we oftentimes think of ourselves as either being patient or impatient. You're married to Melinda. Melinda. I blew the end of this joke. Melinda Gates.

That's how you learn patience. Yeah, maybe. But the real issue is our expectations and our expectations are entirely conscious. Think about how many times have you gotten upset because the fast food took too long? Yeah. And on the other hand, maybe you've been willing to sit out for two days waiting for the new iPhone. Probably not. But people do that. And you recognize waiting is not the problem.

It is the alignment of our expectations with what's happening. And so it's really remarkably easy because our expectations are conscious to just say, oh, I was wrong. I will adjust my expectations and anticipate that this will be done in 30 minutes instead of five. And it'll be great. It'll take a year instead of a month. It'll take five years instead of one year. We just adjust and we can move forward. It's really remarkable. And I never thought about that. I always thought of patience was something you either have or you don't have. And then suddenly I'm learning, oh, we can control patience. We have absolute control. Would the Disney lines be a good example of that? At Disney, when you go, they tell you,

there's a sign that says you will wait two hours and everybody accepts that because it's a given. There's no, it manages their expectations. So is that a good example? Yes, that's a perfect example. You should have consulted me for your book. Yeah, I should have. But yes, that's the trick. And so with all the superpowers in the book, we've tried to look at how do we develop them and you and i will never have in the book there are there are like 60 superpowers in the book uh you and i are never gonna have 60 no one should try to have 60 but there are everyone can have two or three things you have 59 maybe 59.9 59.9? You could have 59.

I can't have it. You can have 59. I'll try. I'm bored. I'm bored and delusional. I'll think I would. But the idea in the book is that you look through it and you say, oh, these are the ones I'm really going to focus my energy on. The ones where I really can make these into superpowers.

These are already existing strengths. I'm going to flex those muscles. So there's 60 of them. It may be possible that maybe all of us have certain ones we've already mastered inside of ourselves. Yeah, absolutely. Do I get a cape for that? Yeah. In my mind, the idea is to strengthen our existing superpowers. Yeah. Do I get a cape for that? If I have five of them or 10 of them or something? Yeah.

You should definitely bake yourself a cake if you have five. No, a cape. I'm sorry. Oh, cape. Cape. Sorry. I'll have a cape. I'll have a cape too.

Clearly, I've had a few cakes in my life. Yes. Definitely. When you master your third superpower, you get the cape. Okay, cool. Yeah. All right. So there's like levels like gold, silver, platinum, one, you get the cake. All right. So there's levels like gold, silver, platinum, one, two, three.

That's right. Master of five, I get. There you go. The lasso. The lasso? The golden lasso. The golden lasso. Or whatever it is.

Do I get the bikini outfit of Wonder Woman? I don't think I look good on me. I don't know. But there's still time. I'm still working out at the gym. Maybe. I don't know. This is pretty cool.

60 superpowers. That's a lot of superpowers. I'm tired just thinking about it at this point. Yeah, and yeah. I wonder how much you use that patience in his divorce. Sorry, we're doing a lot of Bill Gates divorce jokes because, you know, it's topical. What are some other top superpowers that you think are super important, like at the top of that list of 60? Yeah. So I think one of the most important, and I hate to rank them, but optimism, which Bill mentioned, but you're probably familiar,

at least a little bit with the website, Indiegogo, the crowdfunding site. I talked to Slava Rubin, who is the guy that kind of led the creation of that. He's one of the co-founders and he was the CEO for a decade about the creation of that. And he shared with me that his superpower is optimism. And I've seen that with a lot of entrepreneurs. And so as I dug into the weeds around optimism, one of the things that I figured out is that, in fact, there's good research that shows that optimistic people are more successful. It actually works. It has an outcome, has an impact on our lives and our results. And so that's a pretty important lesson. And so I came away with that. And similarly, there are things we can do to bolster our optimism. Some of them are challenging.

Frankly, it's harder than patience. I'm going to have to read your book. Is eating as many tacos as you can on Taco Tuesday, is that a superpower? It didn't make the book. I'm not saying it's not a superpower, right? Because the book is not the sumum bodum of superpowers. You can have a superpower that's not in the book. When I get the book, I'll probably just add that 61. Yeah, there you go.

Taco Tuesday. There you go. What are some other ones that you think are really important to master? Yeah. There are a lot in there that are fun. Taco Tuesday. There you go. What are some other ones that you think are really important to master? Yeah. That aren't taco. There are a lot in there that are fun. But one of the ones that I thought was most fun that I discovered is a woman that she's in her 70s. And she told me that she's fearless.

And I'm a little bit skeptical of the fearless. I'm thinking of this woman. She's in Chicago. And her name's Ina Pinkney. When you've got a name like that, you are fearless. Yeah, I guess so. But so she told me, she said, Devin, I jumped out of an airplane once and I said, okay, but you were afraid. You overcame your fear, but you were afraid, right? Nope. I was not afraid. And I was a little skeptical until she explained her secret on that. And it is preparation.

She prepares for everything she does in such a way that she never is afraid of what she's doing or what outcomes might be because she has weighed all the factors. And I thought, wow, that's pretty empowering. Yeah. So that was another one that I thought was- I used to call it looking the dragon in the mouth. And I've actually got a new agenda for my life where I'm going to do things that really challenge and expand my mentality. I do want to jump out of a plane, so I'll use that. So does she sit down? I think I got some of this from Tony Robbins. Does she sit down and pre-play the thing in her head to go through the preparation and stuff? She does some of that for sure. She describes like going into a meeting or into a room, she will stop at the door, pause, collect herself,

and make sure that she's thought about what's going on in that room and to make sure that she's ready for everything that's going on in the room. It's just, it's a quick exercise that she does. But I thought, wow, that's interesting. It's a very conscious effort to prepare so that you're never, and then when she jumped out of the airplane, she, she had an altimeter watch and she had done all kinds of things, but she'd read everything there was to know about how it was going to happen. She talked to her guide. And so there was nothing along the way in that whole process that surprised her or made her uncomfortable. She was just excited, having a fun time. There you go. That or she's just trying to kill herself. She's I'm sick of being here. I'm fearless because what are you going to do? Kill me? I'm old. I'm just kidding. I'm just doing jokes and bits, but no, I actually want to do

that. I want to jump out of an airplane But no, I actually want to do that. I want to jump out of an airplane this coming year. I want to get in a little bit more better shape to do the jump. And then, because I guess I got to ride with somebody else for it. But I want to do that just to do it, man, just to expand my mind, to just have that fearlessness of James Bond who goes, you can't scare me. I've seen some things.

Because I'm at that age now where I'm like, I've seen some shit. There's not much that can scare me anymore. But other than me stepping out of the shower and seeing myself in the mirror, that's, oh, wow. Whoa, that's scary. No one wants to see that. But anything else you want to touch on in the book that you think people should know about? Yeah, I think the only other thing I would mention is that as you think about superpowers, there are two groups that I like to focus on. And we talked about the first group. You've already got some strengths. Let's strengthen those strengths,

make them into real superpowers. The other group to focus on are those that are success limiting. So all of us have weaknesses, except you, Chris. So you may not empathize with this very much, but the all of us have weaknesses except you, Chris. So you may not empathize with this very much, but the rest of us have weaknesses. And generally speaking, it doesn't make, it's not very productive to address weaknesses unless, unless a weakness you can identify as having a real success limiting impact on your life. And for me, I think my success limiting thing is self-confidence.

I don't want to get too far into the weeds, but my lack of self-confidence is, I think, my big challenge. And so I need to work on that so that that doesn't limit my success. I may never be super self-confident like other people. That may never be a superpower, but that, but eliminating that weakness can remove the blocks in front of the tires. Yeah.

And it's, it's always a work in progress. I do remember the one weakness that I do have, since you said I was any sort of weakness. It is talk of Tuesdays. Anyway, it's a strength and a weakness. That's,

that's the way superpowers are. Yeah. I'm wearing half of talker Tuesday. So there's that. I'm trying to lose that talker Tuesday thing. It's Tuesday. So I don't know. That's where we're at. So this is pretty insightful, man. Do you want to plug any other books you put out this year that you're working on? I did do the audio book version of adding Profit by Adding Purpose, which was a book that I wrote back in 2016 or 2017. And that's one of my favorite books that I've written in that it goes directly to making a difference in the world in that the people who read this book typically are in it are in corporate positions and where if they decide to do more good it often has a lot of zeros behind it and so i was excited about so anyway i took the time to record the audio version of adding profit by adding purpose this year there you go there you go always fun so give us your

plugs as we go out anything more you want to throw out on the book before we go? I am thrilled to be here and I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to pitch. We do a podcast. It's not as cool as yours, Chris, but we have a podcast. And so superpowersforgood.com is where you can find the podcast. Subscribe there to the podcast slash newsletter, and we'll get you great content four days a week. There you go. Check it out, guys. Definitely. We've had him on the show, what, three times now? Four times now?

I think so. I think this is the third. I think on the fourth we owe you like an SNL robe, or on the fifth we owe you like an SNL robe. That or we'll just send you, I don't know, a little paper mache thing or something from that guy from Blade Runner. But it's been wonderful to have you on. Thanks for coming on, Devin.

We certainly appreciate it. Thank you. It's a thrill to be here. There you go. Order up the books, guys. Go to your fine, wherever fine bookstores are selling fine books, something like that. Don't go to the alleyways. Superpowers for good.

The skills you can master to leave your mark on the world. Devin, thanks for coming on. Thanks, Moniz, for tuning in. Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Foss. Go. Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. All the good stuff on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and all that good stuff. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you guys next time. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out.

It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can preorder the book right now wherever fine books are sold.

But the best thing to do on getting a preorder deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold.