The Community Where Ambitious Entrepreneurs Belong, with Chad Johnson

Shannon Waller: Hi, Shannon Waller here and welcome to a special edition of Inside Strategic Coach with our fabulous coach and my coach and dear friend, Chad Johnson. So Chad, I am so delighted to have you on the show. You're one of my very favorite humans in life. I tell you that so it's not a surprise. I know that. And you're also my coach in Strategic Coach. So I am excited because the purpose of this conversation is to have, A, get to highlight who you are, what you're up to, how you're such a dynamic coach, because you really are, so people can get more familiar. But then also just to talk about your entrepreneurial journey and why you are a Strategic Coach program coach and all of the good things. So I can't wait to dive in. But first of all, thank you so much for being here. and talking with me.
 
Chad Johnson: Shannon Waller, are you kidding me? I am so honored to be on this podcast with you and I am humbled, Shannon. And I mean that, that I get to be your coach. I still, it's a little surreal to me. My whole coach journey has been just a little bit of one of those wonders that I just sit there and go, man, I can't believe I get to be in this space with these people doing this kind of work, right? And you're one of them, Shannon. I'm so grateful. I mean, mainly for your friendship. You're a gift to me, and I mean that. And so to be here with you talking about all things that we both love, I'm just so excited about it. Thank you.
 
Shannon Waller: Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. All right. So there's so much to talk about. I have to figure out how to get it into a reasonable timeframe. So let's start off with you. You have such an interesting, storied history of entrepreneurship in terms of things that you have done. And it's covered a lot of grounds, which I actually think is cool. I love your dimensionality. How's that for a compliment?
 
Chad Johnson: I've never heard that put that way.
 
Shannon Waller: Is that a new one?
 
Chad Johnson: You put it in almost a positive spin. I like that. Dimensionality. Well, it's true.
 
Shannon Waller: I like what people have done and tried and tested different things. And then you bring lessons from each of it. And you're like, okay, I'm never doing that again. But you're like, okay, but I can bring this from it.
 
Chad Johnson: Got lots of that.
 
Shannon Waller: You really do. But it comes together in this magical way. So what I noticed that you can connect with everybody, everyone in the workshop room, you can connect to and really in some way. So let's get started. Tell us a little bit about you, like when you got started, your entrepreneurial journey. My question with you, because I know you, is like, did you have a choice about being an entrepreneur?
 
Chad Johnson: Oh, sure, right? I don't know. You know, we like to say we're all unemployable, but my journey started, you know, in the backyard at Hacienda Heights, Southern California, Los Angeles area. One of eight kids, too many avocados in the backyard, right? And I'm like, man, I was at the grocery store. I saw, I forget how many at that time, I think it was like five for a dollar. Okay. So, I mean, that tells you a little bit how long ago that was, but I remember going to my mom and going, oh my word, we have these all over our yard. What are we doing? And we were just throwing them at each other and so I said, can I fill up the wagon and go door to door? And so I started knocking on doors, selling avocados, you know, and all of a sudden, if you're selling for six for a dollar, it's the deal of the day. And we had a lot of them. And it really woke me up to the fact that there's value around you all the time, everywhere. And often it takes just a moment to see it, right? And to say, hey, there's a need or there's an opportunity, or we can do something better with this.
 
So that really whet my appetite. And I, after that was constantly looking for those things. And it wasn't long after that, it's a little older, I … my dad had a business where we screen labels on glass and I'm like, could we put little names of people on mugs and sell custom mugs? We got these accounts at little gift shops and stores in the malls and we would put the decals on mugs and fire them on the glass and then restock them and get orders. I got my brother involved, we called it Johnson Brothers Mug Company. It's funny, none of these put a lot of money in my pocket. I mean, it gave me spending money. It gave me all the things. And at that time, if I had enough money to go skiing, I was excited. I had not that big of a vision, I guess, in that moment. But it was just these little things along the way.
 
And I fell in love with skiing. I said, man, I'll make a cool T-shirt. I hired a guy to design a logo. And they said, ski crazy. I had some guy. It was the 80s. It was all fluorescent and whatever. And I stood on the street corner in the summertime in my ski boots and ski poles selling these things. I had bought a lot of them and put all my money into it, you know, and so it was just these constant things, right? And didn't really get serious about it until, you know, I started to think about growing up and marriage and all the other things and started trying to start some other businesses. I had a mobile espresso and coffee business. I had a window cleaning janitorial business where I was cleaning all of gardens and fast food restaurants, you know, coming in and out and doing their window cleaning.
 
And so, I mean, it was kind of one thing after another, but yet, you know, Shannon, the thing I didn't realize back then is that ambition, passion, vision, the ability to sell something, the willingness to work really hard, caring about customers, that's all awesome, but you cannot scale a business around that. And I had no concept of Who Not Now, or Unique Ability and Unique Ability Teamwork. And so, so many of the things that I did were really short-lived because it was built on my energy, my everything. and I did not surround myself with people with other corresponding strengths and capabilities. So, yeah, and I could go on and on, but that was the beginning.
 
Shannon Waller: I didn't even know some of those.
 
Chad Johnson: Yeah, I keep so much secrets. They weren't raging successes, most of them, you know.
 
Shannon Waller: Now, weren't you also like an EMT?
 
Chad Johnson: Yes. At 18, I did go to school. I became an EMT and I worked as EMT as an ambulance jockey, I like to call myself. And then I really did that so I could be a ski patrolman because I really had a passion for snow skiing. That was my goal. And so first winter of ‘89, I guess. Yeah, it was ‘89. I got hired as a ski patrolman up in the local Big Bear Mountains there in Southern California. And I just fell in love with being in an outdoor environment, adventure, but helping people in that environment. Like literally going to their beck and call in a real moment of like, I'm in trouble. And I just, I loved it. You never know what the call was going to be. I love the anticipation of that and being able to be a help. I love people. It was all about the people. So I literally could have from a, just loving life, people serving, whatever. I could have done that quite a long time and did actually quite a few seasons before meeting Jenise, falling in love, right, all the things. And all of a sudden I'm like, you know, this isn't going to cut it for my …
 
Shannon Waller: From ski bum to successful entrepreneur.
 
Chad Johnson: Something's got to change.
 
Shannon Waller: Exactly. So if I recall correctly, weren't you also in financial services?
 
Chad Johnson: Again, I'd done all these like entrepreneurial things. I'm a ski patrolman. I meet Jenise, fall head over heels. And, and I have this big vision of let's grow this amazing life and whatever. And then I realized, okay, it's going to take resources. I literally struggled with some entrepreneurial things early on in our marriage, trying to get things off the ground. And I'll be real frank with you again. I didn't understand some real basic things about myself and others. My brother comes to me and he was a firefighter paramedic with a great department. He had great income, steady job, benefits, all that stuff. He's like, Chad, you're married. You have a couple of kids. You need to get your act together, get a job. And I'm like, this is so not me. But it was weird because I realized now it was a bit of a man test, I call it. And it was time for me to grow up and quit chasing shiny objects and actually stick with something and just not jump to the next thing.
 
And that was some of my entrepreneurial tendencies was find the shiny thing. Oh, go do that. I'll jump into that. It was immaturity really for me. And I didn't understand that, but long story short, he talked me into being a firefighter paramedic. So I literally went back to school, became a paramedic, you know, went to the fire academy, did all the things, got hired as a firefighter paramedic, the whole time knowing, this is really not me, but it's a responsible thing to do. But after a year of being in the fire service, Shannon, I was dying because it was not entrepreneurial. Obviously, the first thing from it, I was in a union. I remember going to the union meeting and saying, hey, how does the department make revenue and how do we, you know, make a difference? And everybody's like, shut up. We're just trying to get a 2% cost of living increase here, you know, like, and I'm like, ah, and then the other part of it was maintenance.
 
I realized, again, I'm so grateful for our men and women that serve in all the areas. But my skillset was just not there. And I found myself, Shannon, literally it's so bad wanting there to be an accident, right? So that I can go help, right? I'm like, right. I'm not going to whack something, an engine all day and check the inventory and the ambulance on the med box. I'm like, I can't keep doing this. So it was just a misfit. And so after a year, got a probation the day I got off, I went home to Jenise. I said, I got to quit. She's like, what? Like this is a five-year journey and no joke. Jenise is such a trooper. I mean, what an amazing woman, but she literally is like, okay, I'm with you. What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? And I'm like, I don't even know is the thing. I don't know, but I got to do something. I get a call from my buddy, Mike Willis. And he's like, I want to fly you to Colorado Springs. He didn't have no idea. I just made this decision. And he basically talked me into quitting the fire service and jumping into finance as a financial advisor with UBS. They had just bought Ping Weber.
 
Yeah, so I went and I got hired there, went to New York, got my Series 7, my insurance licenses, my brokerage licenses, all the things, and started that journey. So yeah, I ended up doing that almost, well it was about two and a half years, nine months of complete, unbelievable failure the first nine months, and then literally found an answer to how to bring in revenue and then started crushing it for the next year and a half, almost two years, at which time my father called and my uncle, and they said, can we have you come back to LA from Colorado Springs and manage and lead our family business? So that put me back in the business space. So yeah, it's been an interesting journey.
 
Shannon Waller: Well, and I appreciate so many aspects of that. What you learned about yourself, what you learned about the market, what you learned about different professions, what you're suited for, what you're not suited for, with whom you wanted to spend time, with whom you did not want to spend time, what you wanted to do, what you didn't want to do. And having the experience in everything from being an EMT to financial services to window cleaning, you know, all the things. It's like, it's just given you such a dimensionality, which is kind of amazing. And you bring that. So before we get into how that translates into coaching, which is pretty profound, you've mentioned Jenise a couple of times. So let's talk about your family, because you can't know something about Chad without knowing about your family. So can you please talk about your family, how many kids you have, how many grandkids you have, and the amazing partner with whom you do that?
 
Chad Johnson: Yes, I'll tell you, I always had a vision and a dream as a young person of finding someone, right, that you would just be able to have this incredible soulmate connection and do life with. And I knew I wasn't that great by myself, to be honest with you. I was just literally like, man. God is so good. You know, I meet Jenise at a wedding and I wrote a book about the story. Okay. It's called How to Win a Heart, but it's the whole journey of kind of how we met and dated. But I had literally sat down and wrote down all the things I wanted in a, in a woman, if I could dream. Right. And then I'm like, oh my gosh. And who am I? Right. I was like, I better get to work out becoming something, you know.
 
Anyway, it was so amazing, though, in meeting her at that wedding. And just it's weird. I knew in that moment that there's something special. And went home and told, I was renting a room from a lady at that time up in Big Bear. And I said, I met the girl I'm going to marry. And of course, you know, I'm flippant and I say things, but I never said it before. And I never said it since, you know, it was just that thing. Ended up finding, you know, sales. But Shannon, I literally realized sales, when I meet entrepreneurs and their spouses, I can always tell they're good at sales, right? Because they've tucked themselves into beautiful situations that I sit there and go, man, you must be good, you know, because I married up, I married so far above my pre-grade in Jenise. And literally, I look back and I just go, I still can't believe that that's, you know, we just celebrated 32 years of marriage. August 15th, yes. So grateful. And I told you I liked her. I really do. And we have 11 children to prove it.
 
Shannon, I say, I came to Coach and we just had a couple of kids and then I got in a Dan 10x workshop room and I had no idea he was just talking about your business. You know, I'm like, okay, honey, I came home and I go, we gotta have like eight more. And I said, if we're gonna 10x this thing—but in all seriousness, the blessing of Jenise in my life, I literally look at my life as before Jenise and after Jenise, you know, in the trajectory of just having a wise, brilliant, hardworking, strategic partner that I get to share the thoughts, the visions, whatever. And she's been such a gas pedal. Yeah, and an accelerant, right, to everything that I've wanted to see happen in life and including, you know, I'd written down, Shannon, as a young boy, I was one of eight and Jenise is number 9 of 12. So we came from these very large families, but I'd written down, man, if I could, I would love to have 10 children, which is just a bizarre thing for a young guy to write down, but I meant it. I just loved being a part of it.
 
And I think about all the things we do at Coach. I love being a part of a team. I love being a part of a healthy, thriving culture that challenges one another, that spurs one another on, that makes each other better. And I think that's what great organizations are at the essence. And ideally, that's what we are in family or community is we're with people who love us enough to see us through the hard times and the ups and the downs and to speak truth in our lives and make us better and all the things, you know. And I think for me, Shannon, there's such a relationship between the work we do as entrepreneurs in building companies and building culture and building team and the things we had to do at home. And that's so much of Coach.
 
And the value of coaching my life is that it applies universally to everything I do. It's not a, oh, this is business stuff. And a lot of people kind of think of business as, oh, it's in this little box over here. And that's where you do work stuff and career and life. And no, it's who we are. Right. And we get to bring those skill sets, those tools, those mindsets. So, yeah. And those eleven, four of them have been fortunate enough to find their soulmate, right, and the love of their life. And we've got four married and our 14th grandchild is on the way. So these kids, everything I taught them is starting to bear fruit, you know.
 
Shannon Waller: They're 10x-ing as well.
 
Chad Johnson: Our oldest, Katie, has six. Kyle is expecting her fourth. Baylor, our son, had his first. And then Caroline's got three. So yeah, it's just been absolutely beautiful.
 
Shannon Waller: You get to end up with a lot of grandchildren.
 
Chad Johnson: There's a good chance, Shannon. There's a real good chance. If everything goes, you know, who knows? I don't count my chickens before they hatch. I like to say, you know, that's all their work. I like to say I found a Who for that, you know, for having the kids now. I mean, what an incredible delegation, right? It's like you're on go. I love it.
 
Shannon Waller: The other thing that's so cool about your family, because you share this, you ski with your family, you've brought them in by video to workshops sometimes. I mean, you guys sing together. It's magical. It's so beautiful. This is a very cool family who gets each other, loves each other, supports one another. It's pretty cool. I mean, I'm a family of two. It's myself and Julia. And then I have two girls. Like my mind boggles at 11. So Jenise is a miracle as far as I'm concerned.
 
Chad Johnson: She is. Yeah, she absolutely is. I think I wanted to write the book, Ten Kids Is Easier Than Two Kids. You know, it's more than 10x Is Easier Than 2x. You know, it's my little small contribution. And of course, I can say that because I'm the guy, you know, right. Jenise would be like, well, let's talk about this. No, but …
 
Shannon Waller: She's, well, I've had the opportunity to spend a little bit of time with her, so I'm in awe and she's beautiful. How do you look like …
 
Chad Johnson: That's the problem, right? She's amazing.
 
Shannon Waller: She is amazing.
 
Chad Johnson: Absolutely amazing. She just keeps getting better and younger and more amazing.
 
Shannon Waller: Oh, I know. She's so amazing.
 
Chad Johnson: Yeah.
 
Shannon Waller: Okay. So you've got this incredible entrepreneurial career, asked by your family to come back to the family business to lead and run that. And your family is growing. So at some point you joined Strategic Coach. So let's talk a little bit about your Coach path, if you want to think about it, from being a client to being a coach. And if you're listening and you're not aware, every single one of our coaches is also a client, which is very cool. I actually might be the one exception to that, but it's cool because you're client first, actually. And coach second. So it has to be working for you in order for it to make sense to be a coach. Talk about your Coach journey. It was obviously instrumental in your life or you wouldn't be doing what you're doing.
 
Chad Johnson: It was profoundly instrumental in my life. I say outside of my meeting Jenise, right, and my personal faith in the Lord, Strategic Coach is the biggest inflection point and transformative event and experience in my life. And I don't say that lightly. I think a lot. The day I ended up moving from Colorado Springs back to Los Angeles, City of Commerce, the company's screen-printing labels on glass bottles, right? For growing up, it was Pepsi Cola and different soda companies and whatever. Then it ended up being like Grey Poupon mustard for many years, when it was in the glass jar with a screen-printed label, and then it was different cosmetic companies and wineries and specialty food, Bob's Big Boy dressing jars, all these retro things that people might recognize. And I had spent some summers in that business growing up in high school, worked in it, and early on, for a brief stint in our marriage, thought, hey, I'm gonna jump back in there in the age of, I was 23, was learning all aspects of the business, but I really had a conflict of, I was probably naive. I was extremely ambitious. I had all these ideas. I wanted to go, go, go. I wanted to change. I wanted to transform. And my father and uncle were like, who is this kid?
 
You know, my uncle's like, Chad's the guy that borrowed my hammer and never returned it. And here I'm going to let him run a company, whatever. And I get it, these guys saw me through this light, and I wasn't ready in so many ways, I look back. But at 32 years old, I get the call, and both my father and uncle said, Chad, we think you're the one that we want to manage this thing. When I came into the business, I had incredible vision. I was so excited about what I saw could be, right? There was this, in my mind's eye, what the team could look like, what the culture, what our growth could be like, who the clients, our customer experience, all the things. And I went to work. And yet I still didn't have so many of the mindsets, tools, and capabilities that I have today. And all of a sudden, two years into that, I was seeing some growth, but it was so linear. It was so tedious. It was so exhausting. And it was tapping me, not only physically, but emotionally, because I was not spending the time with my family that was growing at the time.
 
And I had this incredible conflict of when I'm at work, I feel like I should be at home. And when I'm at home, I feel like I should be at work. and how do I navigate these things, right? I wanted to be an entrepreneur because I believe freedom was a driver. I mean, it's always been a driver. Yes, I wanted freedom of time. I wanted freedom of money. You know, Coach, we talk about those four freedoms, freedom of relationship, freedom of purpose. All four of those were important and they were the drivers, and yet I wasn't experiencing that, right? And so my colleague, Mike Willis, who I worked with at UBS, calls me out of the blue two years into my, you know, leading this company, and he says, Chad, you've got to join Coach. And I said, who's Coach? What's Coach? He goes, here's the website. Just call, sign up. And Chad, do yourself a favor. Do not quit after year one. Go three years. And I had a huge amount of respect for Mike. He was a constant learner grower. I mean, this guy was just somebody who had really done amazing things. I'd watched his life.
 
And so I trusted him. And I just said, I mean, that was the amount. I'm a Kolbe 5 Fact Finder, right? You would have thought I would have done maybe more research, but my trust was so legit there. I was like, I'm in. And I'll be real frank with you. Back then, $5,000 is all it took to get into the Program, but it was a check in my life. And at that time, you had to make $100,000 personal income. I made literally just by the skin of my teeth. And that was probably because I had to sell a few things, you know, and get there. So I barely qualify, I'm writing this check with this trust because of somebody else. And Shannon, I'll say this, when I went, I heard somewhere, I don't know if it was marketing material, if it was just kind of whatever, but it was this promise of, if you give us three years, we will double your income, we'll double your time off. And like I said, I don't know if that was an official slogan ever, but that stuck in my mind. And long story short, over three years, Coach more than doubled my income, more than doubled my time off, and then did it again, and then did it again, and did it again.
 
And I saw this from workshop one, Shannon, workshop one, I literally remember being so out of my skin happy with like, this is my place, these are my people, they're speaking my language. I had had personal coaches. I had had a business coach that I was paying to make me better. And yet I realize now he didn't understand my Unique Ability. He was trying to shoehorn me into what a business owner or CEO does, right? Anybody that tell Chad Johnson, hey, go lock yourself in a room and write down all the processes for your company over the course of two days is literally very naive about Unique Ability and very hopeful. Nothing was happening. It was like a complete opposite of who I was. And I came to Coach, all of a sudden for the very first time, someone saying, hey, wait, what if you did those things you were unbelievable at and you left everything else and got others to do those things? And I started talking Unique Ability and Lifetime Extender and Time System and all the things, all the things, Gap and the Gain. I mean, you go on, Unique Process, Unique Method, I mean, right? Bigger Future, Largest Check, smallest check, every single thing just resonated to the core.
 
And I like to tell people, Shannon, I was the worst Coach client. And I mean that in the sense that I hear our clients say this, I'm not doing the tools. I'm not doing a Strategy Circle. I didn't do an Impact Filter. I'm not scheduling my Free Days, Focus Days, and Buffer Days, right? I'm not filling the blank, all the things. But what I did do, as I showed up at Coach, I put my rear in the seat. I listened, I did the thinking, I did the exercises, I worked, I got in the breakouts and I talked with really smart people from a lot of different industries. And I went away with more clarity, vision, mindset shifts. And I didn't realize that Coach was in the process of rewiring my brain—literally rewiring my brain to think right about business and about all the things that business entails, entrepreneurship and value creation and all the things. And I tell our clients now, right, they come to Coach, guys, you gotta give yourself these three years. You didn't undo your brain, you know, in a few minutes. You've been thinking a lot of ways for a long time that have not served you. And to rewire that thinking, it's the greatest gift that I can give a person or entrepreneur.
 
And I mean it when I say this, I didn't realize how much self-inflicted brain damage I'd given myself by thinking wrong about my situations, who I was, how I created value, all the things. And I really mean this, we have neuroplasticity in our minds, right? And it's been proven if we think right, we literally rebuild neurological pathways in our brain. And I think that's what Coach, like I said, did for me. But I got to see that transformation of, here's my vision, here's where we're at. And quarter by quarter, year by year, there's phenomenal coaches along the way. You know, got to experience so many different coaches in those early years, and then finally took this job to Dan at 10x, right? But I like to tell people, you know, they sit there and go, oh, you know, what coach should I get? What coach? I said, doesn't matter. I said, all our coaches at Coach are great because they're all people that love what this has done for them. It has helped transform them and their businesses and they believe in it and they can share it with incredible wisdom and practicality. You're going to get the value; get in the room and go do that.
 
And I got to experience that with our coaches. I really did. I don't know, Shannon, I could go so many different directions with this thing, but it was a radical inflection point. And I didn't see it year one. I didn't see it. I knew I was in the right spot. I knew I was with the right people, doing the right things, thinking the right thoughts, right? And it took time for my experience to catch up with my mindset.
 
Shannon Waller: Well, I mentally wrote that down. Inflection point is such a perfect way to describe Coach. You've been working long, working hard, I call it brute force method. You've been doing that and you know there's a bigger future out there for you. And you know you've got the smarts, you know you've got the vision, you know you've got the work ethic and all the things, but you hit what we call a Ceiling of Complexity, or ceiling of frustration is how it feels.
 
Chad Johnson: Yes.
 
Shannon Waller: And then you start to rewire some habits, some patterns, some ways of thinking about things, which, I love your point. It totally rewires your brain. It does. New myelin sheaths get laid down and new connection points. And then you can't unthink them. Once you're focused on The Gain, you start not hanging out in The Gap so much. Once you focus on Unique Ability, you're not really tolerant of doing things you're incompetent at. Like you just shift. And then the thing that's really cool about you, this to me comes out in your coaching, but also when I hear about how you live your life, you are brilliant at translating those to other people to help them get that too. And that's what a coach needs to do. You, you provide enormous amount of leadership by your own personal examples, you lead in your own personal life, you lead certainly in my workshops, which is why you're my coach, right? I just feel like you're confident in providing direction, which is our definition of leadership.
 
And because I think you have all of that past experience, and you know yourself so well, you've done that hard work of reflection. I don't think you're a bad client. I mean, you put your rear end in the seat. That actually is the number one success criteria for doing the Program is actually to be there. The other stuff is bonus. You know this, we both had clients, you're like, they do all the thinking. And then the night before, they're like, oh, should I come back? I don't think I've done anything. And then thankfully they get on the plane or they get in the car and they put their butt in the seat in the next morning. And we start off with usually some version of reflection called a Positive Focus. And they're like, oh my gosh, I did this and this and this and this. And then they open their book and they're like, I did everything.
 
Chad Johnson: Yes.
 
Shannon Waller: They weren't conscious of it, which is the downside, but there's magic to just sitting and doing the thinking in the community because that's a vital part of it. And it's transformational. Talk to me about your take on leadership. I know that's a huge question and probably something I should have you on my Team Success Podcast for, but you're not afraid or you step willingly into that ability to help other people get the gains that you have. So can you just share a little bit about that because I find it an amazing gift and I love watching you in action.
 
Chad Johnson: Oh, Shannon, thank you. I've said before that when we get free, the most enjoyable thing in life is to help other people get free, right? And it's anything. If you get health, we wanna help other people get health. When you get faith, you wanna help others grow in the areas that you see, hey, this is blessing my life, this is growing me. I read a book, it was called Leaders Worth Following, I think it was the name of the book, and it was written by one of our Coach clients, actually, Tim Spiker, and he talks about this premise that it's who we are as leaders, right? It's the person, it's the character, it's the essence of who someone is that makes us, in essence, worth following. And it's one of the things, the reason why I am a fan of Dan and he's my coach, is I've gotten to observe someone over time through highs, lows, up markets, down markets, you know, all the different things. And I've been able to watch them with integrity, practice what they preach, practice what they preach.
 
So much of leadership is literally choosing your ideals, your values, the principles you're gonna live by, and then walking them out, never perfectly, nobody does, and when imperfectly, admitting it, right? Being humble enough to acknowledge that, okay, didn't fulfill that, let me make that right and move forward from there with confidence. So much of leadership to me, it goes almost synonymously with character. It's who we are when no one's watching, right? It's who we are when no one's watching. And if I can be the same person in my alone moments or when I'm treating somebody at a restaurant or I'm off the path of all the people who know me and whatever, and I get to live out the values, the direction, whatever, there's all of a sudden this confidence that I think contributes to leadership, that naturally flows into leadership, because I think there's a trust. And like I said, Dan and Babs and you and the team of Coach, you know, Coach isn't a perfect company, but it's a company that aspires to live out its values and design mission with such integrity and transparency and good communication and all those things. So to me, that's the foundation of leadership.
 
And I remind myself every day is like, am I going to live today in a way that's worth following for the people I want to help, right? Am I gonna live in a way that they're gonna sit there and go, okay, this is a step I wanna follow? For me, if that's in alignment, that's the beginning of leadership. And then the second part is knowing, you know, who are your people? Who can I help, right? And I realized that so much of my journey is finding those who were me, at some point in the past, right? It was like, I love to find the guy or gal that's struggling with, hey, what's my Unique Ability? I don't know what I should be doing. I see all these options and I'm overwhelmed. Or I love finding people who literally are, as I said before, maybe giving themselves self-inflicted brain damage by the way they think. You know, when I hear people speak, The Gap comes out of their mouth and our mindset comes out our mouth. And I sit there and go, man, I can help. I would love to help. I want to point you to some resources, some tools, some ways of thinking.
 
You know, one of the things I loved about coming to Coach was Dan put a handle on so many things. He named it, he put a handle on it so that I can grab it really quickly. Even a big heavy concept like The Gap and the Gain or an Entrepreneurial Time System or Unique Ability, he literally puts a handle on it. So all of a sudden, a whole huge bit of information is accessible and I can not only have it for myself and know it, but I can hand it to someone else and it becomes shareable, right? And so to me, leadership, I'm a big fan of just taking whatever I've been given, right? And saying, how can these things be useful to help those that are on a similar journey, right? That are trying to get to a big destination.
 
And so Shannon, I'm so pumped. I get a new number one workshop and I haven't had a new one in like three years, right? I've got my workshops, have been full. I've been able to open some awesome 10x workshops at Coach with you guys just being so great to me. But I'm like so excited for the new clients that are coming in because I get to see the biggest transformations in those areas. And so leadership to me is just helping people get really where they're trying to go. Right. You know, again, I love StoryBrand and that they're the hero. We get to be a guide because we have walked some of those things. We have been down the trail. We're still learning, you know, we're still in it, we're still on it. And I've been given so much, Shannon. I mean, think about what you've been given, right? You sit in a space of just being surrounded by, I mean, you and I were just talking about one of the clients you got to spend time with. You spend time with giants, right? And that's what I get to do. I get to spend time with giants, learn from them, right? And say, oh, here's something that might be useful.
 
And I just, to me, leadership, is that—I will say this too, Shannon, I realized that leadership is caring enough about people. Right, caring enough about people to honor the fact that when they say they wanna grow, to believe them, and then tell them what they need to hear, not just what they wanna hear, right? And I think Dan has challenged my thinking. He's constantly challenged my thinking. Coach, you guys, with different ways of looking at things, reframing things, simplifying things. I'll give you a quick example. I come into our company and we had a leadership team at that time of maybe 10, 11 people. And I realized this profoundness of The Gap and the Gain, right? I was just like, I've been given a gift. And I realized that Dan put this name, Gap, on literally all these different scriptures that I'd grown up as a person of faith believing, but not knowing quite how they fit together. And all of a sudden Dan gives me this awareness around how these things fit. And I go back to my team and I'm like, we're not gonna be in The Gap anymore.
 
And so our weekly production meeting became a weekly Positive Focus meeting. And it was so hard, Shannon, because people on our team didn't have a capability for measuring their life backwards, right? And looking at the gains and the wins. And I realized that it was going to take persistent leadership, me believing enough in The Gap, them becoming able to develop that capability to measure backwards. And I said, hey, if we're going to work as a team, we're going to develop this capability. And it took time. It took persistence. It took effort with me patiently saying, okay, we're going to share a professional, a personal, a team win. And people will go, everything's great. And I'm like, well, that's not it. You know, let's get specific. And leadership isn't caring enough to keep bringing them back to it until all of a sudden they see it and they catch it and they go, oh my gosh, this is the way I think now. This is who I am now. And they're so grateful for their transformation, right? Because that's what they wanted. But leadership is helping them get there. So yeah, there's a lot of pieces that impact my thinking around that. But I think so much of it is being who we say we are, being a leader worth following, and then caring enough to share what we've been given with other people.
 
Shannon Waller: I so appreciate that, Chad, because what I'm hearing is authenticity, caring enough about yourself to figure out what your core values are, that will tell you what to say yes to and what to say no to, right? Having integrity with yourself and then demonstrating that consistently over time, which, with a coach at the front of the room or someone that you spend time with, when they keep showing up the same way in clearly what is their best self, it creates incredible safety. And it creates an environment where I am now free to be my authentic self and to have those conversations. If I feel like someone's faking it or having to become someone else to get in front of the room, I'm like, yeah, no, that's not my room, right? It's an environment that you create and that I would say we create because I endeavor to do exactly the same thing.
 
Chad Johnson: You do that thing, I know.
 
Shannon Waller: I 100% I want to create a very safe space for people. Yes, because building those new muscles for things like staying in The Gain rather than Gap is hard. You have to be open. And yes, not Dan's favorite word, but vulnerable to see you have to be willing to think differently and maybe to be wrong, right? It's like it takes some courage to do this. Chad Johnson: That's right. Shannon Waller: So doing it in a room full of other people and then the point that you make, which I think a lot of people actually don't make with leadership, is caring enough. Caring enough to keep doing it, to be consistent, to tell people what they need, not just what they want. To me, you've captured a really important essence of leadership, which I really appreciate. So that was one thing I wanted to take away from today's conversation. And that's why it's so much fun to be in your room is because it's, I mean, I'm just going to brag on you for a second. So you're dynamic. It's fun. You're brilliant at capturing stuff. You know what people have been up to. If someone's had a big business win or if they've lost 20 pounds or whatever, you're like, dude, look at you, right? Like you just celebrate everyone's progress. You definitely create an environment where people can show up to be who they are becoming, which I think is exciting.
 
And that's both personal and professional. Yes, we're there because we're successful entrepreneurs and we want to become more successful and we want to have the impact. There's freedom of time, money, relationship, but purpose is kind of the bottom line, like make the difference we want to make in the world. But you demonstrate that so clearly. And so I just think it provides incredible leadership at the front of the room. I love it. Oh my gosh, I know we need to wrap up, but is there any other, I love that you're so excited about your new number one workshop, so this recording won't be going out to them, which is great. Is there anything else that you want to share as being a husband, a father, an entrepreneur, part of a family business, a coach, that you just want people to know?
 
Chad Johnson: Yes. You know, I think Shannon, in this day and age, there's such a power in knowing what you said, who we are, what we're about. And I go to this early on in my workshops, but I have priorities. We all have priorities and to get really clear on what those are, because then they serve as a powerful filter for yeses and nos and opportunities in a world of too much noise, too much distraction, all the things. And I would love to share real quickly my personal priorities. You have to, I call it my giant five, right? My giant five. First is my faith, right? I'm a man of faith. My personal relationship with Jesus Christ is foundational. When I'm right in my relationship with God, for me, it's like I could now be who I'm supposed to be, right? And if I'm not right there, I gotta get right there. Whatever that means to be right in relationship with the Lord for me. Then if I'm right there, I get to pour into my second relationship, which for me, again, is my wife. I chose her. She chose me. And we didn't choose mediocrity. We didn't want apathy. We didn't want just an existing relationship. We want it to be like this life-giving, thriving, dynamic blessing. So that's my second priority for me.
 
And I'm like, okay, if my relationship with God is right, if my relationship with Jenise is right, we can pour into our kids. For us, that's a mission. I sit there and go, if at the end of my life I sit there and go, I missed the opportunities to be there for my child, to pour into their life, to speak, to listen, to support and see them be who they were created to be—I mean, that is a passion of mine and it's a big deal, right? I don't care whether, Shannon, you have one child. It's a big deal. It's always just a big thing. And you know this, I see your heart for your daughters, right? And I know your love for Bruce, you guys are a dynamic duo, right? But anyways, I sit there and I look at these things and I go, my fourth priority for me is my health. And some people say that's number one, whatever. I have my reasons for why I put it fourth, because hopefully I'd be willing to sacrifice my life for all three of the above if I needed to. I'd want to stand in front of the bullet for my kids. And so I just sit there and go, health is so important though, because life business, all of it's an energy game. And I love that Coach feeds all of that.
 
Shannon Waller: Right.
 
Chad Johnson: And then fifth for me is using those talents. So Unique Abilities, we call them at Coach, right? Your God given abilities are hardwired in to make a difference, right? To do the work. Whatever that is, I don't care what you were put here to do, entrepreneurship, be this or that, but be all of it and do it in a way that just is best of class. And so to me, so much of Coach has unlocked, not only number five for me, I went for number five. But it unlocked all of these other things. And of course, I have other priorities, but those five for me, I go, if I'm at any place of unbalance or things aren't working or whatever, I go back to, okay, where am I? One, two, three, four, five. And I mean it when I say this, the reason Coach has been such a gift to me is, every 90 days, I look at those giant five through the most powerful lenses. I get the best tools. I get the best mindsets. I have the best conversations with smart people that are doing unbelievable things that are a gift to me in recalibrating, how do I have a massive, ambitious goal setting, achieving, difference-making life, but not lose what matters really, really most to me?
 
Because I see people get one-dimensional success. It breaks my heart. It breaks my heart, right? One-dimensional success of just, oh, all I did was make some money, or all I did was, oh, I crushed my health, but I lost everything else, right? We can become so easily one-dimensional, and I'm like, but we're not. We're these holistic people, right? So I just, I want to encourage our listeners, be clear on your priorities. They're yours. Own them, and then build your life literally in a way that has integrity around those things because there's so much power in that and there's so much freedom in that because of the ability to say yes or no or that's right for me; I can jump into that with a hundred percent or I can, I don't know. It's a way to stay on point, on purpose, free, and again, mine are mine, we need to choose those. I say that, I don't like the word need. I think it's so valuable when people can get clear on their priorities and then live them out, you know, ‘cause life is short, and man, do I want to make it powerful, purposeful, impactful, you know, all the things that we get to do, you know, here on Coach in particular, but anyways, yeah, that's my heart.
 
Shannon Waller: Thank you for sharing your heart. I really appreciate that. And I love hearing it. And it's great to get refreshed on what they are too. So I appreciate that. And it's interesting because all of the other things become, like the freedom of time and the freedom of money are by-products of the focus in on these things. Like it's amazing when you're aligned on your priorities, how God, the universe, whatever you want to call it, the creator. If you're clear, you get supported, is one of the things that I have observed. And last point I want to make, because I really like how you kind of captured what Coach does. And Dan has said this, and it flashed into my brain as you were talking, like Dan gave you a handle to put on certain types of experiences. And one of the things he's brilliant at is context. So he puts context around your content, right? And that would be true of all clients. And I love that because then you kind of know what to do with it.
 
Chad Johnson: That's right.
 
Shannon Waller: So when you got a lot of content and it's confusing and it's conflicted, and you're at that Ceiling of Complexity, we talked about simplifying before you multiply.
 
Chad Johnson: That's right.
 
Shannon Waller: Otherwise, no sane person multiplies complexity. Let's be clear.
 
Chad Johnson: I've tried it. We've all tried it.
 
Shannon Waller: We do. Simplify before you multiply. Then it gets really easy and fun. And don't be a complicator, whatever you do. No. No. Know some of those. So anyway, I love it, Chad, because working with you, starting workshop one, that's exactly what you do. You help people simplify, you help put context around their content. You're so excited about their freedoms and helping them focus in on their priorities and get clear and aligned and prioritizing them and giving them confidence that they can say yes to the right things and no to the not-so-great things. Like, being in your room just adds credibility, certainty, confidence to people being able to make that transformation. So that's what I appreciate about being your client. But I know that even for someone who's coming in brand new going, what the heck am I up to here? You are like, so great. So thank you for being a Strategic Coach Program coach. I'm very grateful. And I'm excited that you have a number one workshop, which does not come along very often. So if you're intrigued, do not wait. This opportunity will evaporate. Your workshop's still out. So anyway, Chad, thank you so much. If anyone's interested, well, two things. One is for dates and everything else, just go to strategiccoach.com. But if someone wants to check out you, The Big Ski Family, where can they learn more about you?
 
Chad Johnson: Okay, I’m in a new age and stage and phase of my life. The best place is to go to g5summit.com. And there's a drop down for a weekly email I do called Five Win Wednesday, or they could go to YouTube and The Big Ski Family is there. I do a weekly video every day, once a week.
 
Shannon Waller: And I highly recommend the newsletter or your email that you send out. It is wild. You share everything.
 
Chad Johnson: I share too much, Shannon. I share too much.
 
Shannon Waller: No such thing. But it's very personal. It's heartfelt. It's genuine. But it's also always inspiring. So it's how you are living authentically with your five. So anyway, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time, my friend. I really appreciate this. And anyone who gets to be with you.
 
Chad Johnson: Thank you, Shannon. You're a gift. I look forward to the next time.
 
Shannon Waller: All right. Awesome. Thanks so much.
 
Chad Johnson: Appreciate you.