Living The Red Life - Why ADD Might Be Your Greatest Superpower in Business

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Gene Kopczyk, an innovative entrepreneur, speaker, and bestselling author shares his inspiring journey from working midnight shifts at a donut shop to running a multimillion-dollar business empire. With a background in psychology and a personal history of being labeled as having ADD, Gene opens up about how he transformed what society saw as a limitation into his greatest entrepreneurial superpower. His ventures span across industries, including a pioneering flight school, and he’s renowned for fusing old-school trades with modern marketing strategies.In this powerful conversation, Gene discusses the myth of the "college-to-success" path, how traditional education failed him, and the real-world grit it took to create impact-driven businesses. They explore why ADD, often misunderstood in traditional settings, can lead to enhanced creativity and problem-solving. Gene's story is a masterclass in resilience, innovation, and breaking free from the limitations imposed by conventional thinking.CHAPTERS02:04 – The Trap of the Traditional Success Path04:11 – From Donut Shops to Million-Dollar Ideas06:17 – Scaling Across States: Hiring and Expansion08:12 – Flight School Inspiration & Why It All Started10:01 – The ADD Advantage Explained12:06 – Emotional Intelligence: We're Still 4-Year-Olds14:23 – Why the School System Failed Creative Thinkers16:49 – Changing the Narrative Around “Special Needs”Connect with Gene:[e-mail] with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

You know, let's talk about the ADD side, because I want to talk about that. We've never done this on an episode. I started the flight school duty because I was denied that when I was a kid. We're essentially four year olds still walking around making decisions. Our emotional intelligence pretty much developed then about what we're going to like, what we're not going to like, how we'll react to things. And that always stayed. It never goes away. You're buying three more airplanes right now, expanding the businesses there.

You're a speaker as well. You have all these brands. What advice would you give them? The advice I would give anybody that's out there, that the law of averages works if you work it. You have to make that decision to not give up and keep moving. What's one powerful marketing or business lesson that you wish you knew earlier or that's been

a massive part of your success. The power of the. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast. I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Joining me today is Jeannie Sat here in our office. We're here for a private event and we're gonna dive into his life and his story. He's a speaker, he's an entrepreneur like all of us, has a lot of fun, an author, bestselling author. And we're gonna talk about why YADD is actually a superpower

and how he broke free from this typical sort of nine to five curse, you know, work hard, get a degree, get a job. And now, you know, someone say live in the dream, lots of businesses, some of which are very fun, flying his airplanes around and all that sort of stuff. So welcome to the show. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here today. So there's a lot to unpack there.

But I love the, you know but I love the concept of, which I mean most people listening who are entrepreneurs agree is like, you grow up in a normal family, you get told, hey, if I work hard, get a degree, and just, I can get a good job with a degree and live a nice life. In reality, you find out that's not the truth.

Right, and it's a bad thing that we get trapped in, right? Because it's easy to get caught in. Most people get comfortable. If you grew up like most people like me, I grew up in a middle-class family. So at the end of the day, I had no reason to strive. If I could just model myself after what dad did and just stay comfortable, I didn't really have a reason to strive for anything. And I know part of your story is you have a degree in psychology. Correct. Right?

And I guess that somewhat links to you now you speak and stuff on ADD and why that's so important and you understand the psychology of how that can actually be a superpower and be a great thing for an entrepreneur. Absolutely. But before that, after the psychology degree, you didn't go on and become this top sports psychologist or psychologist. You went and worked in a donut shop. Correct.

After you'd been sold the dream of college, right? So when was the moment you realized, wait, this isn't quite what I signed up for? I'm very thankful to say it was almost immediately after I got my degree. I was working midnights, like I said, at a donut place and I was making about 16 bucks an hour. And everyone said, well, you got your degree, go start applying. And I did. And I wound up with an offer of $10.42 an hour to be a counselor for...

It was like at a halfway house for kids that had been in trouble with the law that were trying to get integrated back into society. Well, and that's a great fulfilling... It's a good job, right? You're doing a good thing, but maybe not for you at $10 an hour. Well, what had happened was when I interviewed the guy, he was ex-military. And so one of the things that happened was he said, I said, what do you really do? He said, well, we create change here.

And I said, well, how do you create change? And he said, we cut their hair and give them a uniform. And I said, well, that's, you can force change on somebody, but if somebody doesn't want to change, they'll tell you yes for a while to get away from you. And then they'll go back to doing whatever they want to do. And I think that was pretty much the end of the end. He didn't agree with me. And that's the prison system a lot of times.

Really, that's what I looked at. I'm like, you're kind of imprisoning these kids for whatever, you know, the two years they got to be here or whatever and then they're out. And then the next place I went was actually a counseling center for grief and things like that and they told me I was overqualified. Fast forward to today, you now have, you know, several businesses doing millions of dollars a year, good profit margins, great businesses, you know, one of them is a very unique and innovative flight school.

And what I love is you've kind of brought the marketing to the world of flight schools, right, which are probably more of an old-fashioned, you know, like people are still writing you checks to pay for their aircraft repairs, sort of thing. Absolutely. And we talked about today at a private event about doing this, you know, learn to fly for a dollar, sort of, right? And I love that you're open to that because it's cool to add marketing to these old-fashioned businesses.

But can you just talk about the kind of businesses you've grown and what you're up to these days? Sure. So one of the things I started, luckily for me, my mom was really good at... She had an eye for detail. And so I went into the auto industry. I'm from Michigan and almost everything there is linked to automotive So I went into the auto industry and I began to figure out pretty quickly that I could catch problems before they became larger problems I got involved with a few companies and like I said, I became a yes man for a lot of the engineering staff

I would look out for problems and bring them to their attention when we would find them from that It was whenever a new product came in or there was a new component to be added to a vehicle, every year they add something new, right? When you think what else can they add, they come out with something else. Well, people would, they would go tell the new designers and producers of these parts, go talk to Gene. He's the guy we want in here. And it just became a thing.

I couldn't be everywhere. I couldn't be at Warren Truck Assembly. I couldn't be at Sterling. I couldn't be, and I couldn't be at Warren Truck Assembly. I couldn't be at Sterling. I couldn't be...and I had to start hiring people and training them of what I was doing as I gained trust of these engineers and these people that wanted me in these positions. To today, we now have people working in Illinois, Indiana, and Kansas, in Tennessee, and Ohio, and Michigan, and California, and Texas. And there's no way I could be at all those places.

So, right? So, I had no choice but's no way I could be at all those places. Sure. Right? So I had no choice but to hire and start training people and get people involved. And from there, you get a network of people. And fortunately, you run into people that are like you, that are like-minded, and they want the best product out there for the customer. And so in using that, I've been able to hire people and get people out of state that I would never have been able to reach out to or have anything to do with.

Well, what's cool too about what you've done is like not only have you brought the marketing business mind to the flight school for you to grow it, but you're now kind of like doing it on a level where you're just adding in all these instructors filling their calendars, right? And it's kind of like, you kind of, you know, I came from the personal training world, so it's like you're the gym owner and the great markets are filling the gym, you just keep adding personal trainers to date the clients. And they just love training. They have no clue how to get clients or whatever.

And a lot of them don't want to. You find a lot of them, they don't want the responsibility. And it's not that difficult, but it seems like a big thing, right? If you don't know everything's... Oh, yeah, it's magic. It's magic, right? How you get all these people... My calendar's full, you know?

Well, like when you brought up the idea about the $1 flight, why didn't I think of it? But you can't see the picture when you're in the frame. And in fact, I've already talked to Matt, who we talked about a little bit, and I told him, he's like, oh my gosh, we'll have this plane making money in no time. This is your kind of right-hand guy. And yeah, Matt's my right-hand guy at the other business that I run there at the airport. Immediately, he got on board. He goes, yeah, he goes, we'll lose a few bucks up front.

He's like, but geez, he goes, the overall outcome of that. And the fact is, I started the flight school route because I was denied that when I was a kid. I thought I wanted to go fly planes and it's not something to discuss in high school. It's not something a lot of people don't know. You could leave high school and go get a job as an air traffic controller with no degree. They'll train you on the spot and it's 20 and out. You retire with a full pension, full benefits, full everything.

I could have been retired at 37 years old. I just got paid well to do what I had. At 37, I could have been retired and nobody mentions this. It's go to college, go to college, right? So I wanted to fly planes. I thought you go to the military. And so I go to the military because I have ADD, they go get out of here, kid. You're not what we're going to be able to take. And I didn't take no for an answer. I went to the Navy. I went to the Air Force. I went to everybody that I thought would teach me how to fly a plane until we were at a relative's

function family reunion for my wife And her uncle flew private. And I asked, I said, how did you get this job? Like, I was just still intrigued by it. And he goes, go to your local airport, somebody will take you up. And I'm like, you're kidding, because he flew like, he got paid to sit around. And if they needed somebody to go, he would go get the plane out, fly them wherever and fly them back. But he was constantly, he was on retainer.

Oh, and what, you know, let's talk about the ADD side, because, you know, I want to talk about that. We've never done this on an episode, but I think I have it. I mean, my half sister has it. I'm friends with, you know, Richard Branson, and he's a big advocate. And I think there's... We're very intelligent human beings. Yeah. There's more and more people that it's like coming out kind of the woodwork, right, to say, you know, actually it's great.

And a lot of famous entrepreneurs, you know, are saying how great it is. So let's talk about it. You know, how... If there's someone listening that doesn't understand what it is, can you explain what it is in a kind of 30-second summary and why can it be a superpower? Why should it be seen as not a bad thing? Well, in a 30-second summary, I would tell you, it's your mind tends to skip to what's

important right now or what it'll do. It's an amazing feat that it'll actually keep things functioning in the background. And you may see something that solves a problem of something you thought about two weeks ago because it's skipping around all it but it's never forgetting what you were thinking about right so in the background you're running this program essentially that you don't know is there yeah and people think like well he can't pay attention he's skipping to this or skipping to that and you're really solving problems you know yeah I always explain it like when I talk to

people I'm like I have like two universes happening at once and like I'm listening to you or whatever. But then like there's another universe in my brain that's off somewhere else doing something else. Right. It's solving some problem somewhere else. Yeah, thinking about business or maybe what I'm having for dinner or whatever that might be.

Whatever my next thing I want to release is. Yeah. That might be, you know... Whatever my next thing I want to release is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So why do you think it's got such a bad taboo or seen as a condition in the normal society? It got seen that way, I believe, because in the classroom, they didn't know what to do with these kids, right? There was a cookie cutter type mentality that kids learn a certain way. And I agree with that. Like, we all need to know math.

Why not a read? There are certain things. And I guess if it's just we all need to know math, we all need to know how to read, we all... There are certain things. And I guess if it's just an average teacher with 30 kids in a classroom... They're looking at this kid... Three of them can't pay attention. Yeah. And those three have a problem, right?

And I was considered special needs. Well, I love the word actually, it's funny growing up, you know, I wasn't special needs but, you know, there would be a kid or two in your classroom that was and they needed extra help or whatever and sadly, they were kind of seeing us weird almost. Oh, I mean, at a lack of offending anybody, I was called retarded as a kid. They called it learning disabled. But it's sad because to me, special is such a great word. I want to be like everybody.

I am special. I don't want to be like everybody. So I want to be different. Special is a great word. So it's a shame that it was, as know, as kids, because you're such a, as an adult, when you become a millionaire and an entrepreneur, you can be very confident and stuff. It's a different kind of special, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and you wanna be special, and you wanna be different, but sadly, as a kid, you're kind of ingrained to not wanna be... It's used as a negative. Yeah, you wanna be like everyone else else and if you're called special... If you're pulled out like how I was, it was, you know, go to the resource room because of this or that.

And that's the sort of stuff Richard Branson is so... They're trying to change the narrative because, yeah, I mean, as a kid, you're so impressionable, right? So, and then obviously kids bully and say... You know, when you look at from neuroscience, so I got involved with the Neuroencoding Institute. I'm a dual-le elite neuroencoder now. And from there, what you find out is we're essentially four-year-olds still walking around making decisions.

Our emotional intelligence pretty much developed then about what we're gonna like, what we're not gonna like, how we'll react to things. And that always stays, it never goes away. Yeah. Well, I actually say in my documentary, I'm like, I'm just a big kid at heart who likes to have fun and, you know, it's made my businesses around fun and you have a flight, you fly planes. Right.

It was funny, I was talking to one of your people and they asked me and I said, no, my father always said, great, he said never grow up. And he said, you know, you get older, your toys just get bigger. I said, I don't think he knew that I was going to have four airplanes and have this and that, you know, but it's true. They're just bigger toys. I just never stopped chasing those fun type things. And talking of four airplanes, leaving this event,

you're actually buying three more. Right, we've talked about, yeah, and we're looking at it. I've already kind of put the word out to my right hand man, hey, don't stop looking for airplanes. We're gonna keep expanding. So how's it feel to go, you know, you're buying three more airplanes right now, expanding the businesses there, you're a speaker as well, you have all these brands.

How does it feel going from donut, you know, serving donuts post-degree for $15 an hour? You know what's funny is there's still a sense of pride about that for me, right? As bad as it may be, people relied on me for their breakfast some way. Okay. Right? So if I didn't go to work and make the donuts per se. But I also had that, I don't even know where I got it. I think I got it from my dad. As a kid, when I lived in Hawaii for a while, I used to build stairs for apartment complexes.

And I've actually talked to my wife, I said, you know, it's weird to think that all these years later, now you can look at Google Earth. These buildings that I worked in are still standing and somebody relies on those stairs to go up and go to bed at night or to go tuck their kid kid in or to do and it's like and I was part of that now I'm not looking for like no one's gonna throw a banquet in my behalf All right, but it's neat to know that I played some role in making somebody's life easier Let's call you have that mindset like even these somewhat mundane tasks or jobs, right? I mean, yeah, they'll see them as there good. There's value in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? There's value in it. And it's just how you look at it.

Yep. Yep. So if someone's listening right now, say they have kids that, you know, maybe are going through the school system, right? And maybe, you know, are getting labeled. What advice would you give them? I would give them the ideas that they need to let those kids be kids. Let them be kids and nurture whatever ideas they're after, right? My father used to let me nurture. Anything that I wanted to go try, his mantra with me, and I think it's what served me well all these years was, you can do it.

Even if it's never been done, you can do it. And it's true. And you look at like today, stuff we never would have imagined. I mean, just from when I grew up through the 70s and the 80s and stuff I look at today and I think, wow, this is some of the stuff we have. Who would have ever thought we would have had these things? And it'll be the same in another 30 years. And in 30 more years, right.

What it like, we've talked about a little bit about how AI will be taking over, you know, doing C&C work and flying planes and doing all these different things. Yeah, yeah. You know, so what will humans be doing? What will we be doing? Well, I think the entrepreneurial humans will be doing... Like I see AI is... The entrepreneurial humans will be doing even greater things, right?

Because it's just like... To me, AI is just like building employees below you that allows you to do your greater purpose, right, which...or your greater superpower. And I really see AI as the same for a small percent of the population. I think it's more concerning for the rest of the population that don't function that way, that we'll be losing some jobs. But I agree with you and I think that the neat thing about AI used properly is the fact that it'll allow us to start using our imaginations again, right?

There's a large scale of our society out there that stopped using it and they kind of think like, well, everything already exists. Everything doesn't exist already. There are things that we don't know that we need yet or there are most inventions, as you know, are just improvements on something that existed already. There are things that we don't know that we need yet or there are most inventions as you know are just improvements on something that existed already. Yeah, interesting. So last couple of questions for you. I always like to ask this. If you could go, talking about technology, if you could go in a time machine and go back to your younger self, right? Starting out as an entrepreneur, what tips would you give

yourself? That's a great question. So I was asked this question, what would I go back and change or what would I tell my younger self? The hard answer is I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't tell my younger self anything because it would change everything that I've become. Okay, so let's ask tips to an entrepreneur, a young entrepreneur. And so the tip to the young entrepreneur is chase everything and anything you can and chase it to the full extent. Throw your heart over the fence and your body will follow. Go after it with everything. For crying out loud, I mean I probably

I'm not going to be able to name the company but when I was a kid there was a certain automotive company I wanted to work for. They went defunct in 1983. Guess what I do today? I build parts for that company. They do still exist on some level and they've actually got me building components for their vehicles. So I just kept chasing whatever it was I wanted until I had it. And a lot of people get to a point where they stop and they think maybe this is just not going to happen. But there's...

So people talk about Murphy's Law. One of the things I give in some of my speeches is Murphy's Law is what? It's, you know, anything bad can happen at will in the most inopportune time. But there's the law of averages too. And the law of averages is if I keep going and I keep doing the right things and I change approaches that don't...and I keep going, I succeed. I have to. There's no other way around it.

The law of averages works both ways. It's not a one-way street, right? And that's the advice I would give anybody that's out there, that the law of averages works both ways. It's not a one-way street, right? And that's the advice I would give anybody that's out there, that the law of averages works if you work it. You have to make that decision to not give up and keep moving. Love that. Okay, next question I always like to ask. So we talked about all the different businesses, right? What's one powerful marketing or business lesson that you wish you knew earlier or that's been a massive part of your success? The power of the internet. I often feared away from it, I shied away because I didn't

understand it. It was something that I didn't, I don't know that I couldn't learn it. I don't know that I wanted to take the time to try to learn it. I always kind of felt like I could probably hire somebody else to do this. But the fact is you can reach so many people so much faster, especially social media, I admit. I was asked today in your course today, how often are you posting? And I just had to chuckle and I said, when necessary. And I do.

Paying your taxes. Right, when necessary You know like when we moved I did a bunch of posts about us moving I did when we you know have offered some stuff at the flight school I'll post about that But I don't do it regularly and now with algorithms and all these things if you don't do that Yeah, you're not being engaged for anything Yeah, good So and I think that's so important obviously to a lot of listeners that have online businesses the internet's obvious

but you're coming from a flight school, right? More of a local, maybe sort of old-fashioned sort of business where they're still writing checks, you know? Right. So I think it's so good for a lot of local businesses. They've got where they've got to from 10, 20 years of community grind, like being known in the community, building relationships, activations, but really they could grow 10 times faster if they'd learn the internet.

It's hands down because we discussed a little bit earlier, you know, I have obviously Matt that works for me and he is by himself never really posted online, barely has a Facebook page and he's a bit of a celebrity if you go out there looking for him, and we have guys that'll come to us from Mississippi and Tennessee and India. We don't know how these guys even found... Well, they heard about Matt on the internet. They saw some post, somebody else said about him to go talk to this guy. And so if you harness that power, it would be... I can't even imagine where that business would be now.

I mean, I've had the company for seven years, but had I started harnessing that sooner, you know, that is one probably regret I have. Okay, good. And last question then. So if someone wants to, you know, you're an author with Les Brown and you have these amazing speeches you give, right, and people can book you to speak to,

and then these businesses, if someone wants to go learn about all those things, where do they find you? You can find me at therealjean.com. My email address is therealjean01 at gmail.com. But if you Google my name in Amazon and you'll find my books there, you'll find my Les Brown book that, you know,

him and I co-authored that book. You'll find a lot, if you just Google my name, I think you made the challenge one day about it. Have you ever Googled yourself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did one day and I'm like, oh my gosh. And it's nice because I think, and it's me, there's all this stuff out there about who would have ever thought there was all this stuff. The kid that allegedly, my junior high school counselor told my parents, don't expect much out of this kid. But allegedly, my junior high school counselor told my parents, don't expect much out of this kid. And I think, man, I hope that he's listening or out there.

He's thinking, what were we thinking when we said this? But yeah, that would be the thing I would probably go to. Good. All right, guys. Well, that's a wrap. Hopefully that was helpful, especially if you either have a child or yourself have ADD and maybe not seen it as a superpower which you know we both think it is and many successful entrepreneurs do and if you know have a local business that's maybe

a bit more old school like go check out what he's doing with the flight stuff because it's really you know it's great to bring this cool sexy marketing stuff we do into an old school business. And he's getting the results. He's literally buying three more airplanes now because he's so full from all the marketing he's doing. So that's a wrap. Check him out and I'll see you guys soon.

As always, keep living the red light. Take care. Bye!