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Successful but not Satisfied · The Person behind the Position

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the person behind the podcast podcast that looks
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: beyond what people.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Do to discover who they are. I'm your host.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the person behind the position, Michael Chisholm. And
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: after more than 30 years building businesses, buildings, and deals,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: my guests kept noticing the same thing everywhere. People working hard, achieving,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: staying busy, and feeling stuck anyway. That observation became a book.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: a simple distinction that reframes everything. You are living life-led,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: reacting to whatever comes, or joy-led, intentionally designing it. He's
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: not speaking from theory. He's speaking from decades of failure, reinvention,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: and burnout of his own.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Please welcome Ted Kopecha. Michael, Michael, Michael, thank you. Thank you.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Thank you. That was awesome. You know, I really appreciate
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  Speaker 2: being here today. I was looking forward to your podcast.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: You give so much value out there. So thank you
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: for all your efforts. Everybody, if you're listening, hold up
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: your hand and give Michael a big shout out. It
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: takes a lot of effort to put these things on,
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: but way to go, way to go. I love the podcast.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: The person, you know, right? It's exactly the person behind
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: the position. What a great podcast. And, you know, we
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: all have that facade in front of us.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: We all have that facade in front of us. So
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  Speaker 2: I am raring to go. Michael, the floor is yours.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: You just tell me.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: So, Ted, before the book, before the message....
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: And before you started helping other people think about their journey,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: who is Ted?
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Boy, that's a, it should be a simple question, right?
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: My background, Michael, is by trade, I'm a licensed commercial
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: architect in California here. I don't practice anymore, but I
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: still have that designation out there. I'm also a commercial broker.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I buy, sell buildings and help small businesses grow, find
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: lease space for them and so forth. And then through,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: and I, my gosh, that was about 30 some years
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: of work. And I got to a certain point that
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: I went, you know, yeah, I'm successful, but I'm not satisfied.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: And I think a lot of us get to a
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  Speaker 2: certain point, whether you have a career or you're working
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: your life or whatever the situation is, we always wake
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: up somewhere in life, right? Some of us a little
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: bit later than others. The ones who wake up sooner,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: they should be thanking God for that. So they don't
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: have to carry on a life of work. And then
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden realize that at the end of
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: the day, they have no money. And social security isn't
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: helping out that much. And they got to work until
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: the day they die, strapping on an orange apron working
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: at Home Depot or a blue vest working at Walmart.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: And what we've created for ourselves, and this is the
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: one thing I noticed greatly, Michael, is that we may
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: be successful on the outside, but we're not satisfied on
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: the inside. We're not really living the life we want
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: to lead. or live, because most of our life is
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: being dictated to. And you have to go way back
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: and take a look at how all this started for
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  Speaker 2: every one of us. You know, first off, I want
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  Speaker 2: to tell everybody, listen, I don't care where you're from,
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  Speaker 2: one country you're from, how God packaged you, it doesn't matter.
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  Speaker 2: We're all flavors of ice cream. But at the end
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  Speaker 2: of the day, we're all ice cream. So You know,
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  Speaker 2: we're all brothers and sisters in the boat of humanity.
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  Speaker 2: And what I found, and I think most of us understand,
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  Speaker 2: is that we're just trying to, all of us are
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: just trying to look for a better life forward. We're
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: just trying to find a, you know, we have all
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: aspirations in our life. We want to find a better
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: version of ourselves. And that's why I started writing the book,
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Finding Joy, Journey of Youth. And joy, everybody, just FYI,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: the acronym for joy is journey of you. All righty.
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  Speaker 2: Joy is not that momentary happiness that we all maybe
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  Speaker 2: get at a Sunday afternoon barbecue with a beer. Or
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  Speaker 2: it's not the coming out of Disneyland. Joy in this
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  Speaker 2: context is our journey. So the term or the context
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  Speaker 2: is Journey of you. That's the acronym for joy. And
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  Speaker 2: isn't that true? Isn't that what joy should be about?
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  Speaker 2: It is our journey in life, right? Not being stuck
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  Speaker 2: on the fence of life, not being so overly busy.
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  Speaker 2: We can't move forward, right? And then we find ourselves,
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  Speaker 2: how do we get out of this? You know, who's
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  Speaker 2: woken up at three o'clock in the morning with cold sweats,
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  Speaker 2: thinking to yourself, how did it go by so fast?
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  Speaker 2: I'm looking in the mirror and all of a sudden
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  Speaker 2: I got gray hair. You know, what has happened? I
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  Speaker 2: just remember yesterday I was holding my son in my arms,
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  Speaker 2: dancing in the front room because he was born. And
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  Speaker 2: now all of a sudden he's a man, he's married.
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  Speaker 2: Where did that time go by? And then the next
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  Speaker 2: thought that we have is like, what happens now? Do
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  Speaker 2: I continue what I'm doing? Or do I start looking
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  Speaker 2: for a new life? Do I start looking for a
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  Speaker 2: new direction? And that's what I found. I found that
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  Speaker 2: most of us get life-straighted. Right? Life-straighted. That's frustration in life.
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  Speaker 2: And we wake up at that 3 o'clock in the morning,
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  Speaker 2: and we go, and we're life-straighted. We don't know what
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  Speaker 2: to do. And this is what happens to most of us.
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  Speaker 2: Since we don't know what to do, we just accept
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  Speaker 2: where we're at. And we stay in constant struggle every
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  Speaker 2: single month paying the bills. Who resembles that fact right now?
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  Speaker 2: Raise your hand. If you're driving your car, don't raise
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  Speaker 2: your hand. But really, who says, yeah, Ted, you're on
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  Speaker 2: to something, you know? And we are because we've lived this.
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  Speaker 2: We've gone through a good portion of life. And I've
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  Speaker 2: asked myself my question. Yes, I'm successful, but is this
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  Speaker 2: where I want to go to? Is this the life
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  Speaker 2: I want to lead? At the end of the day,
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  Speaker 2: we're working our lives away and we wind up on
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: our deathbed in regret. And what Finding Joy Journey of
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  Speaker 2: You tries to do is it gives us a respite
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: in life. It lets everybody know, listen, calm down, right?
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: As long as you've got your health, what you need
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  Speaker 2: to do is download some new content to your brain
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  Speaker 2: to change the direction of your life moving forward, to
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  Speaker 2: raise the value of your time, to find a greater purpose,
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  Speaker 2: to eventually find abundant freedom, okay? Everybody, that's the secret
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  Speaker 2: sauce of success right there. I've, in my business, my
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: business life, I've owned my own businesses, had my employees
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  Speaker 2: and so forth. But at the end of the day,
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  Speaker 2: if you want to be successful, here it comes. You
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: need to find a greater purpose in your life. Because
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  Speaker 2: understand this, your paycheck is not going to make you rich.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: It's going to help you satisfy your monthly debt. That's
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: all it is. So understand that one principle. So raise money.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: find greater purpose in your life, raise the value of
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  Speaker 2: your time to become valuable in a process. Okay, are
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  Speaker 2: you tracking me here, everybody? To help others raise their
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: value of their time to gain abundant freedom in your life.
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  Speaker 2: That is the secret sauce of success. And in a
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: couple of minutes, we'll go into how does that happen, right? Now,
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  Speaker 2: I wrote Finding Joy, Journey of You, just for this purpose.
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  Speaker 2: You know, it's a real book, everybody. It's not something
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  Speaker 2: that is, it's not uh it's not a pamphlet it's
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: 400 pages took three years to write so a lot
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  Speaker 2: of my heart and a lot of my experiences even
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: though the book is not about me it's about all
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  Speaker 2: of us it's allowing the reader to create a respite
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  Speaker 2: in their life to create a new life forward who's
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  Speaker 2: all up for a new life forward If you're frustrated
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  Speaker 2: enough in life, if you're so life-straightened, use that motivation,
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  Speaker 2: use that frustration as motivation to move your life in
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  Speaker 2: a new direction. And we have the answers in Finding Joy,
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  Speaker 2: Journey of You. I've read many of the self-help type
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  Speaker 2: of books out there. And we actually talk about a
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  Speaker 2: lot of them in Finding Joy. But make Finding Joy,
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  Speaker 2: Journey of You one of the first books you read
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  Speaker 2: Because it's a great primer for all the other books
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  Speaker 2: you're going to get into to change your life. So
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  Speaker 2: I started really looking at this, Michael, and started thinking about, well,
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  Speaker 2: how did it get to where we're at? How did
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  Speaker 2: we get to this mindset? Because you know something, Michael?
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  Speaker 2: 98% of us have this mindset of a work life.
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  Speaker 2: We know nothing different. And you know the reason why?
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  Speaker 2: Because that's what we were taught. for at least 12
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  Speaker 2: to 18 years of our life, we were taught to
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  Speaker 2: sit at a desk, listen to the teacher, right? That's
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  Speaker 2: our future boss. We were in a room full of desks,
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  Speaker 2: maybe 20, 30 desks. Those were the future cubicles of
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  Speaker 2: our lives, right? We were teaching ourselves. Yes, we may
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  Speaker 2: have had different subject matters, but we were teaching ourselves
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  Speaker 2: to conform. We were teaching ourselves to live in a
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  Speaker 2: work environment. So that after we're done with high school
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  Speaker 2: or college, what do we do? Well, what was downloaded
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  Speaker 2: to our cerebral hard drives? What was downloaded to our
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  Speaker 2: cerebral hard drives is go out and get a job
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  Speaker 2: and work the rest of your life away. Who's all
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  Speaker 2: up for working the next 40, 50 years of your
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  Speaker 2: life away, right? And what Finding Joy Journey of You does,
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  Speaker 2: Instead of going down a pathway that you don't know
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  Speaker 2: where it's going to lead to, you think you know,
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  Speaker 2: put the power back in your hands. Put your identity
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  Speaker 2: back into how you can form it. So in Finding
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  Speaker 2: Joy Journey of You, we started to look at mindset.
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  Speaker 2: How did we get to where we're at, right? How
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  Speaker 2: did we become who we are? How did we get
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  Speaker 2: so life-straightened in life that we don't– we don't have
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  Speaker 2: an alternative. So we just stay busy. And you really
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  Speaker 2: got to look, go back to how we were, how
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  Speaker 2: we were synchronized. What was downloaded to our brains for
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  Speaker 2: those 15, 16 years. So before we get there, Ted,
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  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, you know, no, no, no, no. Michael, I
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  Speaker 2: can keep talking.
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  Speaker 1: So, so I'm, I'm, so I'm grateful, um, that you described,
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  Speaker 1: you know, joy-led, you know, and you talk about the
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  Speaker 1: difference between, you know, life-led and joy-led. But before that
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  Speaker 1: became language that you could teach, where was Ted allowing
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  Speaker 1: life to lead him?
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  Speaker 2: Oh, gosh. I thought I was in control. I was fortunate.
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  Speaker 2: I went to college. I graduated over at Cal Poly
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  Speaker 2: San Luis Obispo in California here, which is somewhat the
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: MIT of the West Coast. Right out of college, I
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: formed my own company. I hired architects to come to
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: work for me. Highly unorthodox. I don't think I would
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: actually let anybody do that because you're You're owning a
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: company and you're learning on your every day, right? But
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: I thought I was leading a freedom producing life. And
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: what it turned out was I only owned my own job.
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  Speaker 2: So it got to a certain point in my life that, yes,
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  Speaker 2: I was successful, but it wasn't what I truly wanted
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: to do. And at the end of the day was,
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  Speaker 2: I really didn't know what I wanted to do, but
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: I knew I didn't want to do that. I didn't
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  Speaker 2: want to go to the office every single day and
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: struggling every single month paying the bills. I was the
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: last one that got paid. I paid all the architects
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: off and all that. And we actually grew a pretty
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: successful firm. We did hospital work, shopping centers, and large
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: end distribution centers. Amazon wasn't really around at that time.
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  Speaker 2: They were just beginning, but companies like General Electric, Big
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: O Tires, Honda Corporation, and so forth. So I built
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  Speaker 2: a highly successful company, but I also built a life
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  Speaker 2: of work for myself, right? I bought myself my own job.
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  Speaker 2: So when people say, gee, you know, I don't want
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: to work for my company anymore. I just want to
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: go and get my own business. Yes, but be careful
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: with that thought because you may have, transferred one job
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: for another job, right? And the idea isn't so much
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: job jumping as it is finding purpose for what you
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: were meant to do in your life. And we all
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: have that down inside. One of my mentors, Michael, is
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Les Brown. I'm sure you know Les Brown, the name.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: Les is, he's an amazing, amazing guy. He's He's been
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: my mentor actually from the get-go. So everybody look up
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Wes Brown. He is awesome. And he said something that
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: is probably one of his best quotes ever. And he said,
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: you only work hard enough so they don't fire you.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: And they only pay you enough so you don't quit. Right? Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: That directly, everybody that directly leads to being life straight
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  Speaker 2: in your life.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: And it just got to a certain point that, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: maybe I didn't work for somebody. I've worked for myself.
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  Speaker 2: I was my own worst boss. Right. But what I
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: did was I bought myself that job. So it just
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: got to a certain point that I needed a direct
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: change in my life. So I did. I sold my practice.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: There were some elements that happened through there, some epiphanies
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: that I had. So my practice became a commercial broker.
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  Speaker 2: I don't have employees, but I wake up every day
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: without a job, right? I wake up every day without
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: a paycheck. I have to go out and force myself.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: I have to go out and hunt for more deals, right?
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  Speaker 2: To keep my lifestyle where I need to be. That
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: is also a really tough position to go through. So
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: what I found was a better purpose. And my purpose
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: was to give value to others, right? And that in
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: itself is probably the greatest joy in the world. When
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: I can take a person and show them a better
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  Speaker 2: pathway forward compared to where they're at, find whatever their
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: purpose was meant to be, help them develop that purpose forward, right? Now, everybody,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: I'm not telling you, go ahead and go quit your
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: job tomorrow. That's not a good plan, right? I'm not here.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: I'm not against jobs. Thank God there's jobs. But just
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: put your job in the right place. Your job was
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: never meant to make you rich. Understand that, right? Your
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: job was only there to help you with your monthly bills. See,
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: what you basically did was you traded your time for money.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, you can't sell
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: enough time at that level of exchange to move your
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: life forward. Literally, you created a work life for yourself.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: So let me kind of go back on mindset just
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: a little bit here, because that's what's really, that's what's
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: kind of set us all in motion. And mindset, when
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: I first started writing Finding Joy, Journey of You, Mindset
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: was the very first chapter. Every chapter in Finding Joy
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: is a journey chapter. It is some level or aspect
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: of life that we carry with ourselves. So every chapter
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: is a journey chapter. The very first chapter is a
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: journey of mindset. So I went in and looked at
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: a few of the noted professors who talked about mindset,
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: one of them. is from Stanford University. Her name is
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Carol DeWitt, brilliant person. And she basically said that we
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: either have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset, right?
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: and with that uh and to make it kind of
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: go through this a little bit more quickly um we
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: look at that as saying well maybe not true maybe
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  Speaker 2: maybe there's a bandwidth of mindset none of us are
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: completely fixed and none of us are completely growth mindset
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: but maybe there's a bandwidth The truth of the matter
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  Speaker 2: is 98% of us are on the left side of centered,
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: closer to a fixed mindset. In our school years, we
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: were taught, and I started getting into that earlier, we
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: were taught to conform. We were taught to look at
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: failure as a bad thing. We were taught to sit
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: at a desk and take orders from a boss. So
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: when we got out of school, we were taught a
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: fixed mindset. We weren't, schooling was not based on a
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: growth mindset principle. It was preparing you for a work
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: world environment. So in finding joy journey of view, we
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: say maybe there's a different approach to this. Can you
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: change your fixed mindset? Pardon me. If most of us
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: have a fixed mindset, How do you change that? How
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: do you change the app that was downloaded in our
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: cerebral hard drive, right? And Michael, this is something that
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: you probably would say yes to. Most of us, there's
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: one thing that a lot of us do not do,
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: and this is cumulatively across the board. Very few of
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: us read R-E-A-D. Very few of us pick up a
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: nonfiction book and read it, right? Very, very few of us.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: And so how do you change that mindset, that app
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: that was downloaded for at least 16 years, is to read. Now,
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: in Finding Joy Journey Review, we talk about various books
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: that you can do. And what we say in Finding
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Joy Journey Review, does everybody have 15 minutes of time?
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Yes or no? You got 15 minutes, everybody? I mean,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: hopefully you do. You come home, maybe instead of turning
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: on the TV set, Take 15 minutes and sit down
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: in a room and read 15 pages of a book. Okay?
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: And we can give you a whole great book list
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: in finding joy.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: Okay?
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: So if you can read 15 pages every single day
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: for a course of one year, Michael, you know how
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: many pages you would have read? I'll tell you.
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  Speaker 3: 5,475 pages.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: 15 minutes a day will change your life if you
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: give yourself that time, right? If you can read 15
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: pages a day, right, to accumulate over 5,470, that's 18
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: books in a year. Now, what you're really doing is
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: you're changing your mindset. You're changing the app that was
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: downloaded for those 15, 16 years of life. And after
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: the course of end of one year, where do you
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: think you're going to be? Everything in your life will change. Everything.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: The way you look at things, your perspective on life, right?
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Your friendships will completely change. Everything changes, right? You look
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: at a guy, let's look at a growth mindset person.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: And probably one of those people that will, yeah. So
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: I want to bring it back to you.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: So I understand everything that you want to teach our listeners,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: but I want to just bring it back to Ted
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: for a moment because all of this was birthed out
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: of Ted's experience, out of things Ted had to go through,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Ted had to deal with, Ted had to grow out
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: of and into. So So what does Ted understand about
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: fulfillment today that the younger Ted, busy building and achieving,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: didn't understand? And what are you still figuring out today?
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, great question. The younger Ted wasn't looking
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: at freedom. The younger Ted was looking at, if I
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: just work hard enough, long enough, it'll all work out. Okay?
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: It was a simple bottom line. If I just, if
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: I can work one more day, if I can only
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: just work more in my life, because I'm working so hard,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: it's all got to work out. That's a terrible plan B.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: right you're putting you're basically the younger Ted was putting
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: on autopilot working every day yes it was there was
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: some good ego behind it right when you walked in
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: the office I had some beautiful offices right when I
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: walked in the offices you had the secretary you had
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: the staff you had everybody but at the end of
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: the day I was the one the burden was on
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: I had to go out and get the jobs every
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: single day I had to Feed the monster in the office.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: And if anybody's an entrepreneur, you understand what feeding the
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: monster is. The beast will not stop. Every two weeks,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: you would wake up going, I got to make payroll tomorrow.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: And my payroll at that time was a ton of money.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: So what was happening to me was I wasn't focused
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: on my life as much as I was focused on
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: my success. Like I said, I just thought, if I
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: just only work hard enough and do good enough, that'll
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: all pan out. When in actuality, it may not all
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: pan out. You are putting a lot of, there's a
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: lot of people that have businesses that don't make it.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: And unfortunately, the worst stories are the ones that those
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: people have worked their whole lives And somehow something happens, right?
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: A COVID comes into the environment. A bankruptcy happens. Something
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: happens that just flips the script instantly. And you find yourself,
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: all those years of work are gone, right? It's hard
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: to start over when you're older. So when I was younger,
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: I didn't think about freedom. I just thought about How
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: can I do more faster? And that's not the secret either.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: You see, what I was chasing back then and what
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: most people do is you're always, I was in struggle
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: even at that time. Because remember one thing, not only
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: did I have my own wife bills at the end
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: of the month, I had my company bills at the
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: end of the month. I had my company bills. Not
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: only did I have my lifestyle bills I had to
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: pay for, I had to go pay for the company bills.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: The company bills were far more money. I always had
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: to go out and go. I was a young guy
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: going for a heart attack. Let's put it that way.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: There was an epiphany that happened to me, Michael. I'll
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: get personal here for a second. There was an epiphany
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: in my life that happened. That was when The hospital
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: called me and said, hi, Mr. Kopecko, we have your
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: father in the emergency room. He's down here at UCD
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Med Center. Can you come on down quickly? It looked
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: like he had a stroke, right? So I went down
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: to the hospital. I was in the emergency room. He
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: was on the gurney. And he was two years in retirement, Michael.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: And this was one of my big epiphanies, like probably
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: about a good 20 years ago, where it started changing
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: my direction. And I looked at my dad and he
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: was still, he was lifeless. Doctor comes in and says,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: he's probably not going to make it till morning. Because
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: the type of stroke he had, he had a brain
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: stem clot and that shuts off the blood to the
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: whole brain. So extremely serious. And I looked at him and,
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: you know, life passes you by pretty quickly. And that's
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: what I looked at. I looked at him on the
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: gurney and I said, I remember it was just seemed
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: like yesterday. I was a little boy and you were
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: holding me in your arms. Right. Or you were throwing
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: the football for me or whatever. And I said, God,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: those times went by so fast. What happened? Well, there's
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: a side story here, too. My dad worked for 42
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: years climbing the corporate ladder at a major company. He
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: had employees that wanted his job and his his bosses
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: didn't want him to climb any faster so they were
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: keeping him down right and he did that for 42
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: years of his life and in two years he retired
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: when he had this massive stroke well what do you
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: think i mean would you guys out there bet 42
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: years of your life only to get two years of
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: retirement if you knew that? Right? You would do it differently,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: wouldn't you? So when I look back at that and
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: when I was over that gurney, I was looking at
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: my life going, I'm doing the same thing he's doing.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Maybe in a different profession, but I'm heading down the
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: same path. Right? And that's not life. So I started
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: really looking at my purpose what I needed to do.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: I know I needed to get out of what I
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: was involved with. And it sounds crazy. It was a
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: highly successful company. And thank God it was because I
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: was able to sell it to a highly successful company
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: that bought it from me. Right? And I started a
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: new journey in life. I guess the moral of that
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: story was I was not afraid to make the changes.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Most people are afraid to do anything. You say, well,
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: what happens if I get fired, right? What happens tomorrow?
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: They're so afraid. Stop being afraid. If you're going to
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: be afraid, I will guarantee you that you'll be wearing
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: a blue vest at Walmart when it's all said and done.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: So that was probably one of my biggest epiphanies in life, Michael.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: And a lot of this comes down to who we
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: are as human beings, how we were, how we develop,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: and can we change that? Can we change it to
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: a better version of ourselves? Okay. And again, back, going
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: back to Finding Joy, Journey of You, we created four
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: pillars of joy, the alignment of joy, as I call it,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: or the framework. And when that alignment's in line together,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: your life is moving forward and you're not competing against life.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: You know, we always say this. Are you joy led
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: or are you job led? Right. And you know what
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: the acronym for job is? Just over broke. Right. And so, again,
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: for your audience, are you joy led or are you job?
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Are you are you putting your life first? Are you
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: moving forward first? And you're saying, hey, Ted, Michael, that
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: sounds great, but I don't know how to do that.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: Don't be afraid to say that. Most people don't know
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: how to do that because fear gets in the way
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: of their judgment. And what tends to happen most of
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: the time, we just go back to our comfort cave.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: We don't want to go out and challenge the saber-toothed
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: tigers out in the world because all we say to ourselves,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: if we survive today and struggle, then we can make
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: it through another day and struggle and another day. And
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: then what happens is you have a life of struggle
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: until the day you die. So what is struggle? Struggle
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: is chasing money. Success chases value. So let's talk about
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: how do you chase success? Okay, so Ted, Ted, real quick, sorry.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: You know, because we.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Need to wrap our time up because our time is
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: only a certain amount of, Of course. Only about a
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: half an hour. But I wanted to get back to,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: you know, of course, our last question for our conversation today.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Take away the author. Take away the entrepreneur, the businessman,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: the architect, the real estate, the bestseller. Even take away
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: finding joy. Who is Ted behind the position?
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: I guess maybe one word is giving. You know, I
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: think most of us have a giving spirit, but we're
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: so busy in life that we don't know what to do.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: And I found in my life that I have a
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: very giving spirit. I want to help others out. I
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: want to, so no matter what I'm doing at this
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: point in life, I think it's important that we help
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: others to increase the value of their time so that
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: they're not in struggle. Because struggle is the lack of
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: freedom in life. And so what I would tell everybody,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: we skimmed the topics of finding joy, journey of you.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: The book is really about your life and can you
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: change your life? So Michael, I know because of the
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: essence of time and so forth, we didn't get into
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: some of the other aspects of it, but because we
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: go into it in really a deep form in the book,
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: the book is really there to Help a person change
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: their life forward to greater value and greater purpose. So
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: you can get Finding Joy, Journey of You at Barnes
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: & Noble or Amazon. It's in an e-book. It's also
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: an audio book and so forth. But if you really
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: want to do something fun and special, you can go
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: to the website, findingjoy.us, findingjoy.us, Go there. You can get
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: the book there. And you can also download the free
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: workbook that comes with it. It's a serious workbook, everybody.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: It's about 80 pages. It's not going to take you
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: one night. It's going to take you some time. But
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you right now, you guys finish
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: the workbook. Show me that you finished the workbook. Do
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: a Facebook reel or a YouTube video on it. 15,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: 20 seconds, right? Say, Ted, show the world that you
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: finished the workbook. Show it to me. I will send
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: you a free Finding Joy Journey of You University diploma because,
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: and I'll send that to you. It's a serious diploma.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: I want you to hang it on your wall. And
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: that's your flag to your new life. That represents your
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: past life of struggle to your future life of abundance.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: So everybody go out and get Finding Joy Journey of You.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Get the free workbook and then graduate in the Finding
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: Joy University, right? It's self-study, so you can go at
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: your own pace, but also read 15 pages a day.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: That is extremely valuable. Michael, it's been a pleasure being
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: with you today. You know, the other thing we need
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: to talk about, maybe on another episode, we'll talk about
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: the journey of health because that's one of the chapters
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: in Finding Joy. If you don't have your health, right?
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: you're not going anywhere. So it's really important to keep
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: a healthy body, to keep a healthy mind. Okay.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Ted, for allowing us to meet the
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: person behind the position and to everyone listening, maybe being
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: busy building a successful life and actually living a life
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: that feels like yours and And not always the same thing.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: I'm Michael Chisholm, and this is The Person Behind the Position.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: The Person Behind the Position
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: If you've enjoyed this episode, share it with your friends.