In this legendary episode, Chad Cooper, owner of chadecooper.com, shares how he has used his strategies to retire from Microsoft at age 35 and shared them with others who want to lead a legendary life. If you’re frustrated with your job or feel like you’re on your way to a dead end, check out this episode where Chad shows us how to find our purpose, lead a legendary life, and, if it’s right for you, start a thriving business or nonprofit as well!
You will discover:
– How to break free of the myth of balance with a “3rd mover”
– The legendary life your were called to live
– What genius is and how to find it in yourself
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome, once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And here with us today is yet another high demand coach and the one and only, Chad E. Cooper, who is a renowned author, speaker and coach known for empowering individuals and organizations to achieve legendary lives a retired fortune 500 executives. His experience spans leadership full on, philanthropy, the end personal development. Now. Chad’s groundbreaking book, time isn’t the problem you are. Offers transformative strategies for success, advocating for effective time management and accountability. His mission centers on helping people align their actions with their values, fostering a legacy of impact and excellence through his engaging workshops and coaching, Chad inspires others to lead purposeful lives and create meaningful change, and he’s here with us today. Chad, so excited to have you on the show out of the gate. My question for you is, in your experience, opinion, practice? Would you say that everyone is called to lead a legendary life?
Chad E. Cooper
I would say, Scott, thank you for really a powerful, powerful question. And I say that it’s a powerful question, because when we look at legendary we could look at that both objectively and subjectively. And I would say that it is more fulfilling to regard that from a subjective right, what is my definition of legendary, not what Hollywood’s is, or society, which is a really low bar, what their their definition of that is. So I would say legendary is about whether you had the courage to live a purposeful, fulfilling and adventurous life, right? And so what are the characteristics that go into that may be very different for somebody in one stage of life than somebody from a completely different demographic in a different stage of life. The question is, at the end of it, do you say, hey, I want to redo or have regrets, or do you say, Yeah, I made some mistakes along the way, but, man, those mistakes actually were things that I needed to know, and they created lasting fulfillment. That is about being legendary, is about being able to say you had the the audacity to step forward and be able to to be courageous through the journey.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So I love that, the differentiation between objective and subjective and and, and so what I’d like to do, I’d love for you, to add a little bit of just color to that, what that looks like. So because we’ve seen like, you know, the Elon Musk lives a legendary life, maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t, I don’t know, but a lot of people go there with the objective idea, right? It has to be big. It has to be flashy. It has to be Hollywood. What are some examples stories you have from folks that you’ve worked with that are leading a legendary life, but it doesn’t look hot and flashy like that?
Chad E. Cooper
Yeah, so I would say looking at somebody like an Elon Musk or an Oprah Winfrey or Bill Gates. Lots of sorry about that. Lots of subjective opinions in political slants towards these people. And really what it comes down to is, what’s your definition, and are you living to the standard of your definition? So if you’re going to compete, compete against your standards, not society. So what does that really look like? I would say legendary is really in the category of genius, and genius is, I would say, some of my teachers would say is, is, are you radiantly expressing your gifts? Right? Each of us is like a fingerprint. We were we are unique, and there’s a specific purpose to why we are here. Okay, finding out what that is. Mark Twain said the two most important days of your life, the day you were born and the day you find out why, right? So when you find out why, it isn’t about whether you can run, you know, SpaceX and Tesla and Doge and in blah, blah, blah, all this stuff at once. Oprah Winfrey probably runs seven companies as well. The question is, is, what’s the quality and what’s the impact, and do you have radiance and joy in the journey? So the more important question, and legendary to me, Scott and to my clients, is, who are you deciding to be, regardless of what it is that you’re going about doing.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. I love that. One of the tension, the probably the biggest personal tension that I feel in kind of the pursuit of my why and really living that out, is navigating this idea of balance right? Because I know there have been times in my life when I’ve made significant progress toward my why? And they weren’t very balanced seasons, right? And they cost me something. And then there are other times when I was very balanced and everything was working, and like it’s I was juggling all the balls, but I didn’t really feel like I was moving a whole lot. And then vice versa. There were times when I was imbalanced, I moved way off. And then there were times when. I was, you know, balanced, and I made a ton of progress and and so it feels like it feels slippery, this idea of like, what is the role of balance in pursuing our why, in leaving a leading a legendary life?
Chad E. Cooper
Yeah, so let’s just get rid of the misnomer of the word balance and write what that means, because that’s a very loaded word. And when we look at balance, we have a couple of metaphors that we can use, or analogies rather. And when I had a I had a Porsche supercar, and if I’m doing 110 in that car, it was shaky. It was it was really a little bit unstable at that speed. And you either had to choose to back down, or if you pushed it to 130 it just leveled out. And it was smooth as can be, because the aerodynamics really allowed the whole thing to come together. It’s a high performing, high performing machine. And so when we look at that, we say, you know, where does balance play into that? Well, we can look at a cargo ship in the same way is there’s this thing called the Plimsoll line on the hull of a ship, and that line is a different color, and you’ll see little numbers on the on the bow of that ship. And as you add more cargo, the ship then goes lower in the water and is displaced. And there’s a point at which sir Plimsoll, from from England, was capsizing ships because they were overloading those ships with too much cargo. So there’s a balance where you say you can’t add another ounce of cargo to your life, or you’re going to end up capsizing when it gets past that line, things become unstable, and you either have to push beyond it, in this case, for a race car, or you have to say that’s the max. This is what I can handle. Yeah. So we have to make decisions, and in those decisions, we fall into a trap. Okay? So bear with me for a second. It’s really easy. We bear into, fall into the trap of the balancing act. And you’ve been taught by society, by school systems, etc, as if you put more weight here, then it does this, right? And so we have to take it off here, personal, life, relationships, right? Health, career, all of these things back and forth. But what nobody’s told us that that Elon and Oprah and Bill and Warren Buffett and and David Goggins have figured out is there’s this thing called the pivot, the fulcrum. And so if we have a fulcrum and you add here, then you have to counterbalance it here. But if we actually move the fulcrum, we don’t change the ends, we actually move the fulcrum, then we can actually have weight over here, and it still balances. So when we realize that there’s a third move and that we don’t subscribe to societal limiting beliefs, we move the fulcrum, or we move the weight. On either end, we can actually achieve balance. And balance may very well be, look, I’m working 60 hours in my career because that’s what the enterprise requires, and I’m giving 10 hours to my relationship, because that’s the quality that it desires. Let’s be honest, your partner probably doesn’t want 40 hours of your time every week. They’re going to go nuts, right? So we move the fulcrum, and it’s not a 5050 there’s no relationship out there. That’s 5050 if you ask your partner, they’re going to say it’s like 8020 and they’re putting in the 80 right? If you ask you, is 7030 so if we use the fulcrum and then we honor the plimso line, then what we do is we create outcomes instead of activity. So we focus on the outcome that tells us where to move things and where to create that balance.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. So how do you know which line it is? How do you know if you’re you’re feeling shaky because you need to speed up, or you’re feeling shaky because you need to back off?
Chad E. Cooper
Well, that goes back to our purpose. Great question, right? And what are our gifts? How do we actually find out what our purpose is? So one of the unique things that I bring to my clients and my clients are with me. On average, I think, 14 to 16 years now. So they stick with me for a long time, because they continue to get results. They continue to get an outcome. So how do we know where to take things on and off? We have to know what our purpose is. Our purpose is not the title on your desk, it’s not the amount of money in your bank, it’s not the badge on the hood of your car or on your purse, right? Your purpose is, how do you want to feel on a day to day basis? So it goes all the way back to the beginning of Who do you decide to be in the midst of what you’re doing? So when we know who we want to be, joyful, patient, generous, assertive, but not aggressive, right? When we know the emotions and feelings we want to bring into our life on a day to day basis, then the vehicles that we choose will either bring in more of those, or they will push away. Oh, that’s bringing the opposite. Get rid of that. And that’s how we turn into determine. What gets state, what stays on and what gets taken off. Does that help?
Scott Ritzheimer
It does? Yeah, it’s very, very helpful. I want to build on that, because a second factor that’s that’s highly related is it can oftentimes be difficult to distinguish between kind of that balance, if you will, or homeostasis, or like, safety, right? It becomes less about like, is everything moving toward purpose, but it’s like, like, am I, am I able to keep all the balls in the air, right? Am I? Am I gonna run a big risk, and, and so how do you, how do you deal with fear, right? Anxiety and and prioritization, especially when it’s going to move you out of that homeostasis.
Chad E. Cooper
So fear is just a false emotion Appearing Real. We’ve heard of that acronym before, but we have to understand that if we want to be so called, successful, legendary, whatever that is, we have to accept that pain is one of the critical ingredients to success. If you’re not willing to experience getting comfortable being uncomfortable, you’re never going to accomplish anything meaningful. Okay, suffering, however, is completely different. Suffering is are the stories about the pain. And so I was in New Zealand with my my tribe of Maori tried as well, and we brought a bunch of of women that were struggling in life with various things. And they kept going around saying, this is such a magical place, such a wonderful place, such a unique experience and special that it really irritated one of the elders about homeostasis. And he slams down his Talking Stick called a toco toco, and he says, No, I keep on hearing everyone saying, such a magical place, such a wonderful, special place. This is what normal is. You live in such a toxic society you don’t even recognize healthy and normal. So when we look at homeostasis, it’s kind of like going to the doctor, Scott. It’s like, well, I’ve been sitting in the waiting room for 45 minutes. Well, that’s what all doctors do. It doesn’t make it okay. Just because it’s normalized doesn’t make it okay. So we really have a responsibility to ask ourselves, is this self regulating process because I’m in constant toxic and chaos, or because I actually know what healthy is. So homeostasis is the ability to be in an environment that allows us to express our joyful radiance, and we do that by knowing a purpose. We do that by being able to check into our environment and making courageous decisions. Some of those decisions are going to be painful. That’s how we achieve success.
Scott Ritzheimer
So for a lot of the folks that are listening, they either have or many are actually considering a move to break that homeostasis, to pursue their purpose. They think a big part of that is starting their own business. That’s a really tough thing to do. There’s a lot of folks who fail at it, and so then that you want to really get right, if you’re called to go for it right, you’ll find no bigger supporter than me. But if you’re not, there are probably other ways that are easier achieving your purpose. So as you’re helping folks through defining this purpose and it’s dramatic implications in their life. How do you help them navigate this world of should that lead to them starting a business, or is there another path?
Chad E. Cooper
So with that, there is a process that we go through, and ultimately, part of that process is understanding what is your purpose? Some people’s purpose is to lead. Some people’s purpose are to sweep the floors in judging that would be really a poor thing to to objectify human being. So if we look at the this from a scenario of you go to a car dealership, and the car dealership, the first thing the salesperson is going to say is, how can I help you? Yeah, I need a new vehicle. Okay? Am I putting you in a sports car? Am I putting you in a minivan, a pickup truck? We have to define, yeah, what that looks like, right? So if you want to be in business for yourself, I kind of tell people, because I get approached for foundation work, I’ve, you know, I’ve had 20 foundation or three foundations over 20 years, and people go, I want to start a foundation. No, you don’t go volunteer until you get to a point where you can’t do that anymore. You have to create a foundation. Yes, right. So to be an entrepreneur is like this, oh, I can do you know, it’s like freshman university students, they go to school in the first year, and they’re like, I get to make all the decisions. Oh, crap, I have to make all the decisions, right? Yeah, that’s being an entrepreneur. So let’s find out what your purpose is, and then let’s align that and integrate that with your gifts. Your gifts are the things that you’re given from from somewhere above. I call that God. Your talents are the things that you learn along the way. Way, when we know your purpose, we know your gifts, and we integrate that with your talents, then we can say, what’s the ideal vehicle for you to be a business owner? So the genius in your you become legendary starts to thrive.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, the bit you mentioned with the foundation is in true of every kind of enterprise, and it’s, I’m like, I’m playing around with this idea, but it’s like the Forgotten chapter of almost every successful entrepreneur’s story. It’s stunning to me how many folks don’t talk about this stage of like, early launch, pre launch, and what they did to be successful, because when you look at it. It’s not attractive. What they do, right? Like I saw this in a video, I swear to it, Gary Vaynerchuk was talking about before he launched his social media. Vayner Media and everything. And I cannot find the video like again. But one of the things stunned me is he went out and volunteered at media companies to learn media. This is a guy who built a $20 million wine business on Twitter, right? Like and like, there’s this humility that precedes the entrepreneurial endeavor that I think so many folks are quick to skip over and and your point on foundations. Go volunteer, go, be there. Go, go, get close to the game and find out if it’s really what you’re called to, and if you’ve really got what it takes to win there.
Chad E. Cooper
Absolutely, you know, it’s kind of like going into a relationship and having the expectation just understand, hey, you’re going to go into something that’s not going to love you back, is going to take from you endlessly, and maybe after, I don’t know, 20 years, then you actually have success. No, when divorces are like, four and a half years, you know, into the relationship, be careful what you ask for, right? And know what you’re getting into. And so go work in that to figure it out. That’s why we go test drive a vehicle. Oh, I thought I’d be in love with this, but I hate it, right? Yeah. So we treat it in that way where we move in and really find that tailor suited profession in enterprise that’s gonna allow you to thrive. This isn’t about surviving. This is about you’re going into it to thrive. If you’re not going in with that attitude, it’s gonna eat you alive.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s so true, especially the world of entrepreneurism. So folks have, let’s kind of fast forward a little bit. They’ve made the leap there, especially in the world of, you know, entrepreneurship, there’s 1000 things that they’re doing, and one of the most common things that just about every entrepreneur will tell you is, I don’t have time for that. But your book is called Time isn’t the problem you are. So tell us. Just tell us a little bit about why you wrote the book, and what you hope that readers get out of it. So
Chad E. Cooper
I wrote the book selfishly. When I was, I think, 18 years old or 16 years old, I picked up this audio cassette called personal powers. Before personal power two even existed by Tony Robbins, and I sat down, and actually is one of the few people that finish the entire thing, and it allowed me to say, I’m going to retire by 40 Well, I achieved that at Microsoft at 35 and so I went from, you know, going from being a student to then career, finishing that career at 35 and I went, Oh crap, God willing. I’ve got 5060, years in front of me still, what am I going to do? And this is what’s called the Apollo moon landing syndrome. Is most people don’t know the Apollo astronauts, the vast majority actually suffered from severe depression, because once you go to the moon, how do you top that? Olympians suffer from this because in their 20s, they’re topped out. So I reverse engineered. How did I build this over the first, you know, 20 years of my life, because I’ve got another, you know, several decades. And so I did it for me to reverse engineer it. And I said, Why not share this with others? Ray Dalio did that with his book principles, really, yeah, um. And so this was really about me being able to say, how do I get rid of the excuses? How did I actually focus on outcomes instead of activities, so that I’m not like an octopus on roller skates, a lot of movement and then exhausted without any actual productive outcome?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. I love that. So we’ve covered a lot of ground here. I’ve got one more question before you, though, before I let you go, and that is a question I ask everyone. So what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s the one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Chad E. Cooper
There’s, can I have two?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, go for it.
Chad E. Cooper
One the biggest secret about successful entrepreneurs is they give and they receive. You have to volunteer. You have to give. Forward. They are very generous. You have to do that right. Second is that they understand pain is part of the process of success. But the biggest secret that is not a secret at all out there, the research is clear. It’s just not being promoted or allowed you. Is this thing called social media and binge watching TV, all of these distractions, right? You want to be successful, we have to remove the distractions. The research is super clear. China is even bandit for children being able to limit what they can consume and that the rating of that content they consume, right? We have a really strong correlation of depression and suicide to how much content people are absorbing, right? So we’re comparing in comparison is the thief of joy. So if you want to succeed, you want to be, you know, a successful entrepreneur, you have to get rid of the distractions. Because the end game is not distraction. The end game of distraction is addiction, and their goal is to get you addicted. And the more you’re addicted, the more you’re away from living your legendary life. So if we can actually take those and deal with them in a surgical manner, I go out and I will will promote and send out my stuff. I rarely consume social media. I rarely do the binge watching. I’ll take a movie and I’ll watch it for 20 minutes and shut it off. Drives people nuts. They’re like, how many days does it take you? I’m like, five, right? When you are laser focused. That’s how these people are able to run seven companies, because they are not allowing distractions to come in and hijack their life. Yeah, yeah, the dirtiest open secret that’s out there.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, Chad, there’s some folks listening that would love some help finding their purpose and really putting it into action. Where can they find more out about you and the work that you do, and even get a copy of your book?
Chad E. Cooper
Yeah, I appreciate that, Scott. They can just go to chadecooper.com, E as in echo or Edward, whatever you want to say. It’s not my middle name, but chadecooper.com and from there, they can get copies of some free books that are really impactful and helpful. They can get a copy of my book in audio form for free as well. They can see where if coaching is is something that they’re interested in, I’ve come fully out of retirement. It doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t stick, and so I’m in the process of actually wanting to create global impact and getting rid of even more distractions. So just go to the website and you’ll find ways to work with me, interact with me, or get some some books and products that can help you.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. Chadecooper.com, fantastic resource. Highly recommend it. Chad, thanks for being on the show. Just a privilege and honor having you here today, and for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Chad E. Cooper
Chad E. Cooper is a renowned author, speaker, and coach recognized for empowering individuals and organizations to achieve legendary lives. A retired Fortune 500 executive, his expertise spans leadership, philanthropy, and personal development. His mission is to help people align their actions with their values, fostering a legacy of impact and excellence. Through his engaging workshops and coaching, Chad inspires others to lead purposeful lives and create meaningful change.
Want to learn more about Chad Cooper’s work at chadecooper.com? Check out his website at https://www.chadecooper.com/ where you can get the audio version of his book for free. If you’d like to support Chad you can also pick up a copy of his book Time Isn’t the Problem, You Are and leave him a 5 star review at https://amzn.to/4brrlo5
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