On today’s BEP Talks, I sat down with Ted Kopecko, a commercial architect turned bestselling author, to uncover the real meaning of success and fulfillment. After decades climbing the career ladder, Ted Kopecko realized true joy comes not from titles or paychecks, but from aligning your purpose, mindset, and time. His story is a powerful reminder: don’t just work for a living—design a life you love. Whether you’re just starting out or rethinking your journey, let Ted Kopecko’s insights inspire you to invest your time wisely, create value, and chase freedom on your own terms.

If you’re contemplating a career pivot, rethinking retirement, or searching for more meaning in your day-to-day, this conversation is for you.

Check out Ted Kopecko’s bestselling book Finding Joy, and visit www.FindingJOY.us for additional resources and courses.

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Well, hello once again and welcome to this very special

edition of BEP Talks, where we have incredible people

from all walks of life, all ages, all stages

of many, many different careers who come to BEP

Talks and share so openly, so

generously their beliefs, their

experiences and their passions. This is what I love doing most

of all, to be honest with you, we never have exceptions

and we're not going to start today. So a very special guest, you'll join

me in just a moment is Ted Kopecko, who

I think we're going to have a. I know we're going to have a great

conversation and I believe it is going to hit home

for many. I hope that it does

and I hope that it sheds great light

into your life. So here

joining us today on BEV Talks is Ted

Kopecko. Welcome, Ted. Hey,

Bev, how you doing? I am doing great. Oh, I love your

background. It goes great with my BEP Talks jacket and it goes

well with my blue eyes. I have blue eyes, too.

So we're very well coordinated. How wonderful. So, Ted,

welcome. I am thrilled that you are here.

Let me give a little bit of a background to our listening

and viewing audience head with more

than 35 years as a

commercial licensed architect and real

estate broker, climbed the ladder,

took the journey, made the commitment, as so many

people do, and reached great levels.

You attained great heights. And then

something must have happened. Something must have

happened that made you feel, well, I'm going to have you tell the

story, but made you think or feel or sense

that were you climbing the right ladder? Were you climbing

the ladder for the right reason, for the right goals?

Talk to me about that, Ted. Well, thank you.

And I gotta tell you something, Beth. This is an honor,

an honor to be honored to be here on bep.

I love what BEP stands for

because what's interesting, it aligns

perfectly with Finding Joy Journey of youf.

And, and we're all walking stories in

life, right? But you know what's interesting

is that most of our stories are the same.

They may have a different flavor of ice cream to them

because I look at us as all different flavors of ice cream, right?

But we, we all generally are in the same boat in life.

There's a few of us aren't, but most of us are. We all experience

going through life and you know what

we were taught we were young and how that

translated into our adult life to

get into somewhere about midlife going, my gosh,

is that all there is? Is this it? Did that time go?

Did that did our family Grow up fast and

then realize there's not a lot of time left for us, you know,

in terms of where we're at in our life. I mean, how many times you

open up an article or newspaper,

here it on the news that somebody you've known for years have

passed away. And then we start, right, and we

start looking at our own life and going, wow, did I

accomplish what I wanted to? Am I happy?

Where is my, where's the joy in my life now?

One thing I will say is that the, the book Finding

Joy, the acronym of JOY

is Journey of you. So joy has a

different context with the book. It's just not that fleeting

moment of happiness. It's really our journeys in life

and how we were synchronized. And this epiphany actually

came to me many years ago,

and that was actually through my dad. Oh.

And my dad had, he was,

you know, he, he was a,

a father that cared for his family, did

all the right things, worked for, was trying to

climb the corporate ladder. He got really high up within

the company he was with. It was a major HMO

and he worked there for 42 years

of his life. And, and he invited me to his

retirement dinner. Now I was, I was probably

in college at the time, right. And I was going, wow, this is

pretty cool. It was at a major hotel in Los Angeles.

And one of the things that stuck out to me was that

he received a gold watch

and the proverbial gold watch and a lot

of accolades. And

the next day I was thinking about all that and it's really kind of stuck

in my mind going, wow, that's, you know. Yeah, it was impressive.

But he also spent 42 years of his life there. And I remember growing up,

I hardly saw him. And when I did, he would come

in at 9, 10 o' clock at night, you know, and, and he was

drawn out. He didn't look happy.

Yeah. And, and you know what was interesting was I fell right

into that, into that lifestyle,

you know, after I graduated from. Doesn't that make sense? It's

like, it's what, you know, it's what you saw your dad led by

example and you followed it. Right. And

that's what most of us do. What, what, where

we wind up in our life is what, what,

what was downloaded to our cerebral hard drive?

What were we taught by our teachers, by our parents, even

at a very young age? What type of mindset

was calibrated for us? Did we have a fixed mindset

or a growth mindset or somewhere in between? And we

talk A lot about that in the book. A lot of studies out of

Stanford University with Professor Carol DeWitt,

who is just, who's an expert at mindset.

And so that calibration early on has kind

of led us into this lifestyle that most of us lead. You

know, we go to high school, we maybe go to a trade

school or out of high school, we get a job or

we go to college. And out of college we get whatever we were

studying, we go get it, and then we work for the rest of our life

away, generally speaking, we're in that college

apartment, it turns into a house, maybe we have

a partner with us, we start a family. And

lo and behold, that job that was

just to go get our first car with turns out to be a

lifelong journey for us. And we, and

being responsible, we're paying the bills, we're doing all that good stuff.

But then we wake up somewhere around 60,

thinking ourselves, oh, my word, do I have to

work the rest of my life away? You know, when you look at the stats

of all this stuff, the, the average,

the average Social Security check is around 1300 bucks.

Whoa, 1500 bucks somewhere in that

vicinity. Right? That's not going to get you far.

No, no. And what tends to happen to most people, not that

they've done anything wrong in their life, is that they have to

strap on an orange apron or a blue vest at Walmart.

And until some disease takes us out,

we're working until the. And, and that's how we structured our lives.

What finding joy is really about is to question

our mindset. Can we change? Can we take that

rejection of our life and

change that? Can we look at ourselves, a

new identity, look at our time,

how we're spending our time? Are we job

led or are we joy led?

And there's the foundation of really

our journeys. Joy is

mindset, identity,

time and our, and our direction. Where are we

headed? Where is that destination? So when all those are

lined up,

it's much easier to find the purpose you were, you

were given to increase

your value, or clarity of purpose, I should say,

increase your value

to ultimately have more life freedom.

And isn't that what we all want? Yes,

I believe it is. A couple of things.

Earlier on in the conversation, you said, you know, that

we all kind of had a pattern, a program,

if you will, a schedule of life

in our generation and our parents

generation. That was pretty much,

I'm trying to think, was it by design or by default? And maybe

it's actually the exact same thing. Is that,

yeah, it just. What Happened. But that was the design then is, you

know, follow in, get a job, be responsible for men. It was to be

a provider for, for women mostly of that generation. It was, you know,

to, to be at home and raise wonderful

citizens of the world. So, and I have

to say, I love what you said. You said around midlife we kind of have

this wake up call and then you said somewhere around 60.

So thank you for saying 60 is somewhere around mid life. I

mean, I really appreciate that thing.

That's a good thing. And we look and we say what's

left? And I thought how paradoxical that when people are

retiring and they're saying how much time do I have left?

That they actually give you the gold watch so you can keep track

of how much time you do or do not have left. Kind of,

kind of paradoxical. So something

tells me, and this is the first conversation we

met a few minutes ago, that

your journey, which of course was experiential.

What made the light bulb go off in

your mind? What were the circumstances for

you? Boy, I'm really glad you mentioned that because

the end of the story was when I was

standing over my dad in the hospital,

he was on a gurney, had a massive

stroke and

in his idea of retirement

was that he wanted to go play golf. Yeah, right.

He had, he had the wherewithal

working and so forth to the pensions and all that,

that he was a very avid golfer, you could play golf

anywhere. And

two years into retirement he had this massive stroke

right when I was standing over that

gurney and looking at him and I was whispering in his ear,

seeing how much I loved him

and, and I was thinking to

myself, my word, all he had was two

years to enjoy

his life, to experience the things he actually

wanted to experience versus being told what to do

most of his life by going to work, sitting at a desk and so

forth. He made it through the

stroke, ironically. Oh.

But the irony of the situation was

he could never play golf again. Oh. And he had to sit

in a. On the couch

watching it from tv. So I mean I, I looked

at that and I, I think that's actually where the

beginnings of my epiphany, like

reflecting on my life going, I'm in the same boat,

you know, I, I own my own. And this sounds not

braggadios or anything. I own my own companies.

I had my own architectural practice at the time. We had about

20 architects on staff. That may not sound like a big deal. Oh, that

is, I, I had a. We were doing a

lot of commercial work from healthcare Work to shopping centers and

stuff. And I saw that going,

I'm in the same boat. I just revved up the

engine sooner, you know, thinking that

this is my purpose. And yeah, I studied for

it. I got all the. But it wasn't what I wanted

to do. And after a little while,

I started looking at, my son was born, and I went,

I. I'm going to wind up with my dad. I'm going to be working

away, not enjoying some of the finer things in life. So

what can I do to

change my mindset, to raise the value of my time

so I can enjoy more

freedom in my life? And that's

what joy came about. About five years ago,

I was blogging on Facebook and talking about the word

joy, and all of a sudden I thought, what does joy actually mean?

It's not just a momentary, fleeting thing. It's really the journey

of us, journey of you. And

then I started putting a lot of these pieces together from my

life. A lot of this was a reflection on the

employees I've had in my companies and so forth. And I

started thinking, gosh, there's got to be a better way. There's got to be a

better way versus living life and becoming life

straighted. Yeah, life

straight. Instead of being frustrated. Life straight. Right.

That we go through life and go, my gosh, there's got

to be something a little bit more here. And there is. If we challenge

ourselves. Right. If we challenge ourselves. I'm sorry, if

I, I'm carrying on here. It's a passion of mine

to really talk your beliefs or experience.

It's very. It's a very subjective thing because

we've seen people, or have we seen people who,

who play by the rules, play hard,

hope there's something left at the end.

But if that's all you know,

are you really missing anything?

And that's a personal choice. Sure. You

know, somebody

on this con may be listening, is going, well, I'm. I'm happy what I'm doing.

That's wonderful. That is all good.

There's no right or wrong to this,

but what I'm trying to convey

is don't spend your time working

it away being busy, hoping for a better

life down the road. Busy

is not moving forward. Busy can get you stuck.

And again, this is, this is the

essence of the book, Finding joy. So when you go into it,

each chapter is a journey. Chapter. Journey of

mindset. Journey of time, Journey

of change, Journey of success,

Journey of failure, even journey of health.

I mean, if you're sick, it's Very hard to,

to, to, to have a great journey in life,

clearly. Yes and yes. Yes.

So we make choices. We have the right to make choices. For better or for

worse, we can always

change direction.

Are you finding or believing

or seeing or sensing that for generations

younger than we

face it a little bit differently?

Like I'm thinking of Generation Z who seem

very myopic,

who seem that, who seem to think that

their joy, their freedom, everything else.

And again, no, not saying anybody's right or wrong, but a different perspective

is the primary focus

of their life. Before

buying the car, owning the house, starting a

family. Have they kind of reverse engineered the path?

Are they, are they just taking a different

route on their journey? Have they learned

from watching those of us who are older and

wiser? Yeah, well, that, that's a great, that's a great

comment because I think the, the

younger generation back this

Finding Joy is a great

book for any decade of life

for the Gen X or the millennial.

It, it really is a perspective looking from this

end of life, the beginning portion of our adult

life to the end of our adult

life, meaning our working life. Right.

I think, you know, the, the, the younger generation, Gen

Gen X and Gen Z and

millennials and so forth had a little bit of a different

mindset shift. Especially probably the

Gen Z's, you know,

where they, they are actually more

freer than maybe the older generations have been

in terms of thinking, gee, I don't have to do it this

way. Right. And really Finding

Joy is, really highlights that

aspect of it, you know. So in some

respects I'm a little jealous of that because I think you're going to find

probably more, more

entrepreneurship with the younger generation

than there was on the later generations.

The older generations. Okay, interesting. With the older generations,

the older generations, we were more told just like what you said

early on, you know, go to school, get a

job, you know, get married, have a

partner, move forward, have two dogs,

you know,

and, and go live that lifestyle. And most of us did.

And I think the younger generations and so forth have

really had a,

A, a living situation that creates more

entrepreneurship in their life

than what we were given. Well,

that and all of that, you know, AI is going to change everything

and it will be interesting. I don't know that you and I will be around

to see it, but those who are the Generation

Z's right now, who are living maybe reverse engineering their,

their journey, where will they be when they'

and 60, where will they be? It'll, it'll

be interesting. We won't Be here to see it. But it will be interesting to

see for them what happens. So again, no right,

no wrong, no judgment. It's just things that trend and

change and they need to, they need to.

Are you still. Well, I'm

imagining you're still a licensed architect.

Well, I don't practice anymore. You don't? Okay, that was the next question. Are you

still involved in real estate? Yeah, I do, I do

a little deal here or there. And the reason I do that is not

so much for the, the, the commission or the monies or

anything of that nature, but really to help small businesses

because I do a lot of, I do a lot of real estate

leasing and buying buildings and so forth, using

my, my background, talents and skill sets

to help small businesses become,

show them a better way in how to do a business

within a space, if that makes sense. So I, I really

translate everything I've had in the past into showing how

they can run a more of a successful business. Beautiful,

beautiful, single. And that you're also a coach. So

interesting you said about five years ago was when you kind of had,

I don't know if it was an epiphany or you know, a light bulb went

off or what have you, but you switched

gears. You dabble in real estate still.

You're not practicing architecture any longer.

You have defined retirement in a rather

strange way, if I may say, hardly

retired. Writing a book that I'm sure

you had to do a lot of research on and soul searching

and memory bank thinking and all of that.

So how do you define

freedom for yourself?

Having been able to spend my time the

way I want to spend my time, still working.

Well, I mean, I, I look at this as giving value.

That's what I really enjoy a lot, giving.

You know, I, I never. This is going to sound maybe a little strange.

I've never had to worry about income

so much because, and I didn't realize at the

time, but I realize it now, the more

value you can give out, whether

it's experience, services or

it will come back to you

10, 20 fold. And you know, what I do today

is I give. You know,

I help people in their life. I help people to

help design their life architecturally maybe.

How about that? There you go. You're licensed, right? Yeah.

How about that? And, and really not to really expect

anything back in return. But

as you do that, the, your value will grow,

you'll get more engagements and through that you'll

become valuable in that process. Yes.

So well, well stated. That is so true. The

more you give away from your own cup, you're able to fill it back up.

And that's a metaphor that we use. And Zig Ziglar, a name

that you might be familiar with, you know, who, who said, if you help enough

people get what they want, you'll get everything that you want. And we

give. We give Zig and we have to give him so much credit, but we

give Zig Ziglar credit for that. But something tells me he may have found

that in the Bible. Yes, it might not have been an

original thought of Ziggs, but that's okay. He put it

out there and he shared it, and we continue to share it.

So

what's in reaction to your book?

Well, the book has actually done really well. It became a number one international

bestseller. So that was,

I. That, that was like hitting a home run and you never

picked up a bat before, you know, so. Wow.

So I was, I was just really blessed with that. And believe me,

I mean, I, you know, a lot what I say is, is

from life learning and so forth. But

I will always give credit to, to the Lord

on the book because, yes, I'm okay, I'm

somewhat intelligent, but I'm not that smart.

You know, I've had a lot of divine inspiration. Even though

it's not a religious book, it does talk about

faith and having faith and knowing that

there's a greater purpose in life. And it's such a great

message that the world certainly needs a lot more of that.

I'm somehow imagining that there might be, like,

workshops down the road for young people,

plot their journey, build their GPS system for

their own journey. And at least if you

know where you're going, or at least you think at any point you know

where you want to end up,

it makes sense to then travel in that direction.

I say if you want to go west,

but you head east, you will eventually get to that point.

West, you'll get there, but it'll take a whole lot

longer and probably be more painful if you get there. Whatever. So the

shortest path, you know the two lines. If you had

to give. Well, I'm going to ask you to give. If you were

speaking to a group of young people, let's say recent

college graduates, starting out on that

common path again, whether by default or design,

that our generation was so used to by the great example set

by our parents and grandparents generation,

what would you tell them?

To be aware of their time. Ah,

right. We spend time frivolously,

let's do and

spend. You. You

spend your time Wisely as you're going through. So when

you have those working,

those working hours and the book actually goes

into this greatly were vendors of our time.

And like you said, you may get to west if

you go east, but it's going to take you a lot

more, a lot longer time to get there. Right.

So let's condense that time and go in the right

direction to increase the value of your time.

Right. Because if you go the other way, you decrease the value

of your time. Yes. You might end up having

some wonderful, unanticipated experiences along the way. You

just don't know. Life could become very interesting.

You know, I'm sorry, you're right. We are

putting together courses. The book has a book,

has a website. It's at

findingjoy us. So it's

www.finding joy us.

We are developing courses for. For

entrepreneurship. And we also have a

workbook on Finding Joy.

The workbook is pretty serious, just like Finding Joy is a serious

book. I always tell people Finding Joy is the last

human book written because AI is writing all the books today.

Oh, not a but. But it does have a really serious

workbook behind it that you can get for free. It's about 80

pages. And when a person is done with the workbook,

they will get a joy diploma.

Yeah. How. Have fun doing this. Have fun in life

and give value to others. So funny because I mentioned earlier,

you and I have never had a conversation before, but through this conversation

I was sensing that so much value in what you're doing

and why you're doing it, that and talking about the younger people

that you should have a course that there should be,

because there are lessons to be learned. And if

only the younger people, Ted, would realize that those of us who have

already taken a journey, made the mistakes, hit the

bumps in the road, all of that, that our

experience, our beliefs and our passions

are worthy of attention. We're the wise old

people. Now. People should. Younger people should, you know, value

what we joyfully offer?

Well, you know, there's a lot of books out there and I actually talk about

a number of them in Finding Joy. It's important to read

and it's important to

gain experience and knowledge from people before

us. Napoleon Hill,

Dale Carnegie from the Bible. Right,

The Bible and, and

the secrets are there. You, you

have to be able to put. You have to be able to

help yourself create the value so you can give it to

others. And Bob Proctor, he's

no longer with us, is a great example of that.

I've read tons of books

Motivational books from John Maxwell to, oh my gosh,

Les Brown. Les Brown is probably a major

mentor of mine. I love him to death.

But great examples of. Of life

living. And really

all of their themes are somewhat the same. All these

themes. And that is

take the time you have. Create value for your

time to find your purpose. Because the sub

subtitle of finding joy is finding your purpose,

your value and your freedom.

Allow yourself what I would call grace and the space.

Do that and to be willing to change

course from time to time. And

it's not always a straight path, but it's a beautiful path. It's a

beautiful journey worth traveling. And when you say, you know, guard

your time. None of

time is just not promised to any of us, to any

defined moment. Not

to get, you know, crazy about that. But you don't know.

So use it wisely because you don't know how much you

have. And you know, I have said this in my coaching time. I say, you

know, time is an excuse that people use a

lot. I don't have the time, Ted. I have

had people tell me. I have had people take

20 minutes to tell me that they did not have five.

And if we think about that, it sounds crazy, but I think we've all

experienced that. And I have gotten

into a much better habit. I'll be looking at something and I'm saying, oh, I

have to do that. How long is that going to take me? And I realize

by the time I'm contemplating could have been

done. Yeah. And then you move on

and you have room for something else.

I love this conversation. Most importantly, Ted, I want

to tell you how much I respect and

appreciate your why. Because I

think each of us, if we can find our purpose,

as you're saying, our values, our.

When you find your purpose, your freedom will follow is what

I think will happen. It's a natural sequence.

And where would it be? A better place. Yeah. We're all here with

a purpose and the journey might be different. Live it,

love it, explore it, celebrate it,

share it. Most importantly,

and I thank you for being a guest here today on BEP Talks because

again, what I said, your why, everybody's why has to be

something that

I want to put it in the right order. It can go either way. Some

find something that you're willing to die for and then live for

it. Yeah. And I think you

found it. Like I said, sometimes God gave us all the dots

in our life. We just have to be smart enough to connect them.

Ah. You know, and through

that we all Become better people together.

Like I said, we started this conversation that all of us are in the same

boat and we're here

actually to help each other to. To

form and to gain better life, better

living. And you can do

that without

chaos, confusion, everything that

sometimes life goes through without being life straighted with

yourself, without being.

Without ending life in regret,

knowing that you spent it

the way you wanted to take your life, your direction,

you know, it's, you know, honest. I love

this conversation because every. Every time we talk about it

and so forth on podcasts, it. It's almost an. It's a

never kind of ending conversation because I want people

who are listening to this conversation today walk away

and say, you know, maybe I need to reassess where I'm at.

Maybe I need to take a look at, do

what. What my final destination is. If I keep going

this way, maybe I need to change up friendships.

Oh, right. And the book goes into that,

you know, the journey of friendships and so forth. So it's. It's

we. Because it all comes back down to

the time we have here and how much time we can give to others

of value. And I know we said a lot

of that, but it's. It

really what creates a happier life,

a better life, and a more fulfilled life. Yes.

For the giver and the receiver. Yeah. It's a win. Win. It's a

win. And you know what? I love the COVID of the book because, first of

all, it is so beautiful, but it's showing beautiful colors and

it's showing lifting, it's showing rising and an

elevation, and it's very

heavenly. And whoever chose the book cover, it's beautiful.

Well, actually, I designed the book cover. Did you? Oh, my God. Just another

one of your many talents. No.

Pardon me, I.

When I started finding joy, I made the book cover

first. It was my. It was my flag, it was

my destination. You know, it was

the road map to where I wanted to go to. So

the. The hot air balloons on the COVID represent each one of

our lives individually

on a journey.

So there's meaning behind it. Yes,

and I hope people really get a good.

A good direction from it and be able to

change their life to how they want to for the better.

You certainly have found yet another purpose of your

life to be giving back to others. And

I just want to remind people that they can find the book at

finding Joy. Us. The us, I

think, has to me two meanings. So you can interpret it

as one may wish, but I just wish

you, with your courses, that so many people will at any

stage of life realize that whatever is ahead

is yet to be discovered and the journey continues.

And make the most of it, every moment, every breath.

And keep rising up as we see those beautiful hot air balloons

rising. And when you look down

on the past, it should be a beautiful view. You

got it. You have it. If you want to

get the book, it's at Barnes and Noble. Oh, so.

Or any, actually, any bookstore. They'll order it for you.

But it's been, this has been a great conversation. It could go

on for another hour. I'm sure. It definitely could.

It definitely could. You once again for

taking your time, your energy and sharing your beautiful

spirit, your beliefs, your experiences and your

passions with me. I have thoroughly enjoyed this. So,

yes, we could go on and on and on. We could keep rising. And let

us, and let us, please, God, do that. So

to the viewers, to the listeners, grab this

book, read it for yourself and then share it,

pass it on, give it to perhaps the younger people in your

life, children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, whatever people that

you care about and help them to find their joy,

to be on their best journey. And how wonderful

to know that you may have been even a

very small part of that. I think

that gift gives you so much

in return. So, Ted, as we always say here

on BEP Talks, everybody has a story to share. And

every story is worth hearing, listening to, and

then the action that you take. Of course, we said it earlier, it's about

choices. Thank you so much for choosing to be a guest

on BEP Talks. And as we always say,

may the best always be yet to come. Ted,

I wish that for you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. My absolute pleasure. Thank you, everybody. Go get the

book. Enjoy the journey. Look down and enjoy the view.

There you go. Take care. God bless.

God bless.