“The Instruction Manual for the People in Your Life”

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The Someday Group LLC, dedicated to helping men and women recognize that TODAY is the someday that they have been waiting for! David and Carrie Koop are both cancer survivors and have learned the hard way what it is like to come face to face with the reality that “someday”… the day you were going to focus your life on the things that matter most…just might not come. Their workshops and keynote speeches inspire audiences to make choices and take action NOW in order to have meaningful and lasting partnerships at home and in the workplace.

MO: Can you share how finding out you had cancer ended up saving your life?

David: Readers of my bestselling book will find several reasons why getting cancer was a good thing for me. Cancer saving my life is one of those jaw dropping stories. When you are diagnosed with the kind of cancer I was, Osteo Sarcoma, the first thing they do is a full body bone scan and a full body tissue scan to see if the cancer has metastasized anywhere else in your body. When they did my scans they found a massive pulmonary embolism waiting, just waiting to break loose. For those of your readers who are not familiar with the pulmonary embolism, that is the one that you turn to your wife to say “Honey I don’t fe…” and you never get to finish your sentence, you just drop over dead. So they raced me into the operating room and placed a filter in my vena cava. It is like a small umbrella with no fabric on it. The surgeon inserts it through the femoral artery in your groin and winds it up into your chest area just shy of the heart. Nine days later, that’s right just nine days later that embolism broke loose and the filter caught it, saving my life. So if it was not for the cancer diagnosis I would have fallen over dead right then and there. Yes cancer saved my life!

MO: Do you really think that most people are paralyzed by procrastination? What are some ways that we can start breaking out of our bad habits of putting things off until later?

David: Yes I do, I have seen it time after time. Many times it has been people who have more education than me (that doesn’t take much), people who have more resources than me just sitting on the sidelines waiting, planning, thinking… but never pulling the trigger. Some of them are just waiting for things to be perfect. When have you ever seen perfect? Not moving until all of the questions have been answered, never realizing that before those questions are all answered even more will rise up. If you want to succeed you have to pull the trigger. I don’t mean be reckless, but at some point you will see that the odds are in your favor… pull the trigger. If it turns out you were wrong make adjustments and go forth.

Most people fail because they are paralyzed by procrastination! That is why my lifelong philosophy of “Decide then Do” has served me so well. Well others are sitting around thinking about doing it and thinking about all the things that might go wrong or why they might not succeed, I am out doing it, getting it done and reaping the rewards.

Also I have never met a successful person who has not learned more from their failures than their successes. Go forth and enjoy the ride.

MO: As a serial entrepreneur, where does your passion for taking the road less traveled come from?

David: It started in my youth, working in the reforestation industry. Because of the weather conditions; too cold in the winter for the seedlings and too hot in the summer for the seedlings and chain saw use. I made really good money per day (up to $5,000 per day) but only got to work three months in the fall and three months in the spring. I would end each season with a pot full of money, and lots of time to spend it. Snow skiing, water skiing, motor cycle trips and hunting but after a while I would get bored, so I found new things to do to keep me active and learning. Lots of different things, I worked on a framing crew learning how to frame houses. The foreman called me lighting, not because I was fast, but because I could never hit the same spot twice with my hammer. I learned how to wire a house working with an electrician. Every time I found myself with time off I jumped into a new project just to keep my mind occupied. As I got older it progressed from jobs to companies. It became like monopoly just with real money and I liked it. The only way to really get ahead is to earn what you are worth, get paid for your ideas and results not just your time.

MO: You hold a workshop by the name of,” Relationship Secrets Revealed – Creating Successful Partnerships at Home and Work.” Can you share on relationship tip or secret that our readers could implement right away?

David: Yes I am happy to do that, but I want your readers to realize that we spend 2 ½ hours during one of our workshops teaching these skills and practicing them so that they can become second nature. I am going to share a segment of one of our classes; it is titled “Listening to Learn”.

Just think about the last time you had a discussion with one of your co-workers, maybe someone that you don’t always agree with. Close your eyes and think back to one of those exchanges. For most of us the normal way that we think is to agree or to disagree. You get your chance to say what you think and while your co-worker is responding you are not really listening. Your mind is very busy making mental notes, no sir, that’s not right, boy I don’t agree with that and your mind is then busy preparing your response. You can barely what for them to finish so that you can jump in. Maybe you just cut them off before they finish to prove your point. Have you ever experienced this before? Sure you have, we all have, listening to agree or disagree; it is the natural way that we respond, instinct.

We teach people to try it from a different standpoint, Listening to Learn. This is a matter of choice, making a decision to work in partnership. So the next time that you find yourself in that type of situation, make a choice to do it differently. Quite your mind and listen, listen to what they are saying, listen to what is important to them, listen to what drives them. Then and only then will you really understand that person, what they think what they believe and what is important to them. With that kind of information just think how much easier it will be to work with that person. Also taking this new approach will cause them to look at you in a different way, now that they see that you do care and you do listen. Try it you will be amazed how such just one simple step can make such a difference in your life at home and work.

MO: What inspired you to write a book and what do you hope that the average reader walks away with?

David: For most of my life people have said, “David you have so many stories you should write a book”, yea right. Then the cancer entered my life, and I just felt I had to share what I had learned on this crazy journey. When you start down this road with cancer you meet lots of other people walking that same road. During that journey I saw very clearly that the people who had nothing to live for did not survive. A positive attitude makes such a major difference, having something to live for; your kids, your spouse even a goal, to graduate from college or learning to play the guitar. If you want to live you need something to live for, it makes such a major difference. In the battle for your life don’t you want every advantage?

From my book and my keynote speeches what I want most for people to take away is that they can choose to live the life that they desire now. Most people who go through a major life trauma of one sort or another make a paradigm shift in their life from then on. My message is why wait; use my battle instead of waiting for your own. Choose to live the life that you truly desire now, make changes today, take steps today to create the perfect life for you.

Someday you are going to do this or someday you are going to do that… well wake up and decide that today is someday and do it now! What are you waiting for? Do you know when your time is up? No you don’t! Decide then Do… Now!

MO: Can you talk about how you’re making your classes and workshops available to much greater audience?

David: That is a very exciting next step for Carrie and I. We love working together with all of the people who join in our Relationship workshops. Our success has gotten us lots of press across the country, people who want to join in and make those dramatic changes, to start getting what they want and need in their lives at home and work. They are contacting us and asking us to conduct our classes in their area. We would love to by my health just won’t allow that kind of a commitment. So we have arranged for our videographer crew to film our next series of classes and we will be offering a set of DVD’s for all of those people who are out of our area. What we teach is so powerful and so well received by the men and women who have attended our workshops we can’t wait to get those tools out to the masses. We hope to have the DVD set ready in time for the holidays, what better gift you can give someone that you care about than the gift of communication and true understanding, the instruction manual for the people in your life.