Rat Race Armaggeddon: How Self-Coaching Can Transform Your Life And Career

How Self-Coaching Can Transform Your Life And Career written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview David Novak. David is the Founder and CEO of David Novak Leadership, the parent organization to five nonprofits dedicated to developing leaders at every stage of life, from ages 5 to 65. He’s the host of the top-ranked business podcast, How Leaders Lead with David Novak. David is also the Co-author of his newest book – Take Charge of You: How Self Coaching Can Transform Your Life and Career. And lastly, he was a co-founder, chairman, and CEO of one of the world’s largest restaurant companies: Yum! Brands.

Key Takeaway:

Everyone could use a good coach to help them reach their full potential. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough good ones to go around, and oftentimes, the ones that exist are too expensive or sought-after for most of us to even consider hiring them. But that doesn’t mean you should have to go without. In this episode, I talk with CEO and best-selling author, David Novak, about how powerful coaching can start with you. We dive into how self-coaching can help you fast-track success and transform your life.

Questions I ask David Novak:

[1:45] Are you in some ways taking on the existing coaching industry?
[4:27] The best coaches don’t tell you what to do, they ask you questions. Could you talk about how questioning is a big part of this book?
[5:25] Have you thought about this as a leadership book?
[8:42] Could you tell me a little bit about the process of identifying the joy blockers and joy builders?
[11:20] Why did you land on joy as the key metric?
[12:20] Have you seen people get better at self-coaching?
[19:04] Where can people connect with you and find out more about your work?

More About David Novak:

His latest book – Take Charge of You: How Self Coaching Can Transform Your Life and Career
Learn more about David’s leadership programs – DavidNovakLeadership.com

More About The Certified Marketing Manager Program Powered By Duct Tape Marketing:

Learn more here

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Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the Gain Grow, Retain podcast, hosted by Jeff Brunsbach and Jay Nathan brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network gain grow retain is built to inspire SAS and technology leaders who are facing day to day. Challenges of scaling Jeff and Jay share conversations about grow growing and scaling subscription businesses with a customer first approach, check out all the episodes. Recently, they did one on onboarding, such a key thing when you wanna get going, keep and retain those clients. So listen to gain, grow, retain wherever you get your podcast.

John Jantsch (00:48): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is David Novak. He's the founder and CEO of David Novak leadership. The parent organization to five nonprofit. It's dedicated to developing leaders at every stage of life from ages five to 65. Love that David is also the host of the top ranked business podcast. How leaders lead with David Novak. He's also a New York times bestselling author, taking people with you the only way to make big things happen. And we're gonna talk about a, his newest book today. He's the co-author of take charge of you, how self-coaching can transform your life and career. And of course, you know, I'll just throw this in as a throw in. He was a co-founder the retired chairman and CEO of yum brands, one of the world's largest restaurant companies. So David, welcome to the show

David Novak (01:42): And thank you, John. It's a honor to be with you.

John Jantsch (01:45): So are you, in some ways we're gonna talk about self coaching, right? So are you in some ways and probably, maybe not intentionally, but are you in some ways taking on the existing coaching industry?

David Novak (01:56): Well, I never really thought of it that way. I think what I've really tried to do is, you know, when you look at all the research out there, there's a big problem. People aren't getting the coaching that they, they want to get at work. You know, it's well above 50% of people who are totally dissatisfied that they're not getting developed at work. Yeah. Then you compound that with what's happened with the pandemic and all the virtual working. So people are not around their coaches. So even if you're getting, even if you have a good coach, you don't get to see 'em now, you know, as we thought about writing this book, you know, I wanted to come at coaching at a different angle. There are a lot of coaching books out there, but I hadn't seen anything where people were really taught how to coach themselves. Yeah. And you know, because not everybody can afford a business coach like you or me or not. Everyone could afford a sports performance coach. Like you Goldsmith who I co-wrote the book with. But what, what we decided is that we could give people the tools and the processes we use to, to coach others and help them coach themselves to success. And the basic premises is life's too short to delegate your life and your career to someone else. You need a state and step up and take accountability for it.

John Jantsch (03:06): So, so, you know, you mentioned the pandemic and obviously a lot of people are familiar with people talking about the great resignation, but I think the great resignation is more about just kind of, I wanna rethink what I want to do with my life. Maybe. I mean, I'm wanna change careers or I wanna change this thing. So, so obviously I would say that the need for self-reflection, at least if not self-coaching is probably greater than ever.

David Novak (03:28): Yeah. You know, it's funny we started writing this just before the pandemic, but I don't think there's ever been a book that's better time, right. For what's going on out there because you know, people right now have had more of time in the last two, two or two years or more to really self reflect and to understand, you know, what makes them tick, you know? Yeah. What we give people is a pro for doing that so that you can end up in the right place. And part of that, John is really understanding what your joy blockers are and what your joy builders on how to really get at the single biggest thing that get, have the biggest impact on your life. And, you know, I think giving people tools, what I love about this book, more than anything, John is just the exercises and the processes that you have to go through to, to, to really, you know, be a self coach. You know, it's a book you can read straight through and enjoy it, but the people who are gonna get the most out of it are gonna do the exercise is in the book.

John Jantsch (04:21): Yeah. It's definitely more of a hands on tool, so to speak. But well, one of the things that, that we all know is the best question, the best coaches don't tell you what to do, that they ask you questions that, oh, questioning is a big part of this book, isn't it?

David Novak (04:35): Yeah. Yeah. I think we, we start out by talking about it, the need to have a, a self-coaching conversation, you know, a conversation with yourself, we ask people questions that cause them to reflect on where they're at. And you mentioned it earlier, John, you know, self-awareness is absolutely critical. You know, you, if you're coaching someone else, you gotta help them build self-awareness. And if you're coaching yourself, you better have a process that can get you to understand, you know, what really makes you tick. And I, I couldn't agree with you more. It's like great marketing, you know, anything that you convince yourself of is infinitely superior to, to, to having someone tell you how you're supposed to think or what you're supposed to do. I always say telling isn't selling, you know? Yeah. And so you really want people to come up and Dr with their own.

John Jantsch (05:23): So it's become very fashionable, but I think also useful to talk about coaching in leadership circles, you know, that leaders, best leaders, coach, I'm wondering if, if you've thought about this as a leadership book. So, so the leader, you know, probably needs to do some self coaching right. And then teach people to do self coaching as well.

David Novak (05:41): Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, I think this is a leadership book. It's a way to help you become a better leader. Right. You know, all the, you know, I do my podcast, John, and, you know, and I'm sure a you and I spend some time together, I would quickly realize that you've been a great self coach throughout your career. You know, all the great leader are self coaches and, you know, whether they would necessarily call themselves that or not. Yeah. I think we've kind of got a new moniker that hopefully will, will, will catch on. Yeah. But, you know, I think that, you know, when you think about why people leave companies it's been documented and many times there's two reasons why people leave. Number one, they don't don't feel appreciated for what they do. And number two, they don't get along with their boss. Yep. They're tied to each other, you know? And so, you know, I've, I really am a big proponent of recognizing people for what they do and coaching versus being a boss. I think being a boss is a, is sort of like a 1950s term, you know, and you know, you know, coaching is really what it's all about today, but still, even though people know it's a valuable trait and great behavior for a leader to have very few people are really good coach and it's a big problem out there.

John Jantsch (06:49): Yeah. I think there's a level of vulnerability that you have to have as a good coach as well, or as a good mentor leader. That, and I think just what you said, the boss term sort of conjures up. No, I'm supposed to have the ante, you know, as, and I think that's part of

David Novak (07:04): It's it's humility. You know, the one thing that humility says is it's basically, you know, I need you, you know, it, it says I can't do it all by myself. You know, the best leaders have a, have an uncanny combination of confidence and humility. Nobody's gonna follow someone that isn't confident, right. You know, you know, you're gonna not gonna be inspired by EOR. Okay. You're gonna be inspired by somebody really believes in something that's possible and believes in other people. And they're confident enough to let them know that. And you know, at the same time, they're humble enough to let everybody know that they need 'em. And I think humility is it's that it's, you can't do it loan. You didn't get there by yourself. Right. It's acknowledging the value of other people.

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David Novak (08:54): Yeah. Well, I think, you know, we gotta start out with writing down and thinking and reflecting on what blocks your joy. Yeah. You know, when you know, what is it that when you do this or you spend time on it, what really takes your joy away? And then, then you write down what gives you joy. Okay. What are those things that, you know, as you spend your time, what gives you joy now, then stop and reflect on how you spend your time. Are you on the joy blocker category most of the time, or are you a joy builder? You know, I think here's where, you know, you're gonna find out, maybe you might not be matched up with what really makes you tick. You know, it's amazing, you know, John, everybody says do what you love, but they don't really think about why. Okay. Why is that so important?

David Novak (09:43): Number one, if you love something, you know, you don't work. It's like Warren buffet says, it's like, you tap dance to work, you know, but you really love it when you love something, you can't wait to learn more about it. You know that you better because you get better at what you do. And I don't know about you, but there are very few things that I love that I'm not at least halfway decent at. Okay. And so when you combine all those things, you know, you can actually end up doing something that you're gonna be quite successful at. If you can find what that land is too many times, people, you know, know are doing stuff because they're other people think they should be doing it versus doing it because this is what they truly love.

John Jantsch (10:22): You know, it's interesting, or sort of ironic about that statement though, is that, you know, a lot of times when we're just getting started with a new skill or a new task, we don't love it because it's hard, it's uncomfortable. We get good at, as you just said, by sticking with it. And then it brings us joy. And I think sometimes there's a little trap on that. Isn't there.

David Novak (10:43): Yeah. There could be, you know, that's the harder path. Yeah. I think it's a harder path when you gotta start out doing something that you really don't enjoy. You know, for example, you know, I came up in advertising, marketing. I love that at, I mean, you know, that's what, you know, that was something I always loved. So I would read everything I could about it, learn everything I could about it. But if you asked me to do, you know, a financial analysis, you don't, that would've been pretty tough sledding. Now I learned how to do financial analysis and I could do it, but it wasn't something that I necessarily loved. But if I'd had gone into finance, I don't think I, how to end up being a CEO.

John Jantsch (11:18): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm curious, why did you land on joy as the key metric?

David Novak (11:26): Yeah. Well, I think it's funny. Joy's a real buzzword now. Have you noticed that? I don't know. I mean, we just kind of hit on it. Yeah. You know, joy, you know, it's, it leads to elation. Okay. It's it like, it gives you it's more than satisfaction. Okay. It's CLE in, in what you do, you know, it's that tap dance to, to work kind of notion you, you never have to work a day in your life. If you do something that you love, you know, know it's, you know, I think that's why we really landed on that. And it's funny now everybody saying joy. So I feel like, you know, I guess we're gonna look like a copycat, but it certainly wasn't there when we started writing a book. Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:05): Yeah. You could see some people because this is different for them to think, oh, wait a minute. I'm supposed to coach myself. Do you find that it takes pride to get better at this? So, I mean, you start asking questions and you're like, I don't know. I'll just write something down here. But I mean, have you seen people get better at self coaching?

David Novak (12:22): Yeah. Well, you know, this is something that we basically have created John. Yeah. This is a whole idea of self coaching. Right. I've seen people get good at better at coaching. Yeah. But I don't think, have really thought about self-coaching them, you know, self-coaching itself. So what we hope is that this book helps people really go through that process. And then we're not saying that if you self coach that you don't nude coaches, in fact, we talk about the importance of having assistant coaches in your life, but it's focused, you know, once you go through the self reflection of understanding what you need and what your areas of opportunity are, then you can target where you need to get people to help you and find those assistant coaches that can get you to where you wanna go. You know, for example, I did mention Warren buffet a little bit earlier when I became CEO at young brands, I was a marketing and advertising per operations had never really worked with wall street.

David Novak (13:17): So I said, you know, I looked at myself, I said, man, I better get up to speed of this or hurry. And I said, who could I learn from? And I said, well, you know, be pretty nice to go get some advice from Warren buffet. And I was able to use some contacts and get in and go see him. And I think it was 1998 and I saw him of 2016 once a year in Omaha. But, you know, he gave me great advice about how to talk to the wall street, how to be a communicator as a CEO and you know, but I did that by realizing that I needed to get that skill. And, and I not only needed to get that skill, I needed to get that skill in a hurry.

John Jantsch (13:52): Yeah. So one of the things, I think, challenges a lot of people and why a good coach is, you know, a good coach holds a mirror up and just like, here's, you know, here's your truth. Right. But I think a lot of us struggle with, I, I would see a lot of people struggling with asking themselves or self coaching a little bit because they're so mired in their own beliefs already that at what's true for them maybe is hard for them to see.

David Novak (14:19): Yeah. I think that's true. One of the things we talking about the book is to get different data point. So you can really have an accurate assessment of what you are. It's really interesting when you think about coaching self-coaching whatever. Yeah. You know, one of the keys to any businesses you well know is the first respons of leadership is to define reality.

John Jantsch (14:38): Yep.

David Novak (14:39): Okay. And then you gotta create hope. Okay. You know, and inspiration in terms of what you can be. And I think self-coaching forces you to really get a true sense of who you are a real sense of who you are. And you know, if you're really focused on that and you wanna be a good, you wanna do the self-coaching, you're gonna be open, you've gotta have a growth mindset. You gotta be open enough to really, really seek the truth. And it isn't that true. No pun intended. Isn't that true for any great leader is they're looking for truth. Yeah. Not only in their business, but it in themselves. And then they go forward. You know, one of the things I talk about in the book is the exercise I do every year, which is my three by five card exercise where I write down on one column, you know, what am I today?

David Novak (15:21): And the other column is, what do I need to be tomorrow? And I do that every January, I write it down and I put it up on the refrigerator. I look at it every day and you know, I had all of my people that I let at young brands do the same thing. And I, every quarter, when I was coaching them, I'd go back to this, this self assessment that they had of themselves in terms of where they wanted to go. But that, that, you know, ha taking the time to do that reflection is important. So many people get caught up in the windmill of work and the RATATA just on to work and doing their thing and coming home and, you know, getting up and doing the next thing, they don't take the time to reflect. And I think that's what we're seeing right now, John, with this whole great resignation is people now have had the time to reflect and that reflection is causing them to say, Hey, look, I think there could be something more in my life.

John Jantsch (16:08): Yeah. And I think

David Novak (16:08): Is what do you run to?

John Jantsch (16:11): Yeah. And I think when you talk about that idea of looking at your joy blockers, joy builders, I imagine there's a whole lot of people that have not sat down and said, I, I even looked at what, what am I doing? You know, day to day in my work or in my job that is causing me stress. And I didn't even realize it, you know, or causing me joy. I didn't even realize it.

David Novak (16:28): You know, I, when I, I never really felt like I retired because I went to something else. Okay. But when I was talking to myself and self-coaching myself on what's next for me, you know, what I realized that, that gave me joy was, was basically three things. The thing that gave me the most joy at work was teaching leadership. I taught a program called taking people with you. I did it to over 4,000 people. It was the hard, hardest thing I did, but the thing that gave me the most joy and within that framework, I helped people figure out how to take what they thought was the single biggest thing that they were working on and make it a reality in young brands. The second thing that I really realized gives me big joy is my family. And the third thing is golf. You know, I would like to really become a really good senior amateur golfer, those. So I said, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life on those three things and anything that gets in the way of those things, I'm gonna basically say no. And people have always ask me, geez. You know, do you Ms. Young brands? And I say, I didn't know, I could love something so much and miss it so little. And the reasons that I filled my life up with what really gets me joy.

John Jantsch (17:33): Yeah. You know, it's funny, I talk to a lot of business owners that are selling their businesses or retiring or needing to step into a different role because the business has grown kind of beyond their capabilities. And I think what you just described there is they get so much personally from the business that it's kinda like they feel lost. And I think a lot of people retire because they're so attached to the thing, as opposed to what you just described, the, what you got from the thing, as opposed to what it meant to you.

David Novak (17:59): Yeah. And so many people, you know, when they do retire, it leads to depression. It leads to illness. It leads to, you know, they F because they don't have anything that, that, that gets 'em inspired every day. So I think it's a constant pro of understanding where you're at and figuring out where you want to go. I remember another story I talk about in the book is when I was, I came up in marketing and, you know, I realized when I was at Pepsi, I met with the chairman of PepsiCo at the time Wayne Calloway. I, he, one time he asked me what I wanted to do. And I said, look, I'd like to be a division president of one of the Pepsi divisions. And he said, you're a really good marketing guy, David. And I said, well, I'd like to be a division president. He said, you're a really good marketing guy, David. And I knew when I walked out of there that he thought I was a really good marketing guy, but if I was gonna be a division president, I'd better get some operations experience. And so I went out and got the operations experience and then that helped me become president of KFC. And the rest is history, but it's like, you, that's getting a real understand of, you know, how other people see you, not just how you see yourself. Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:02): That's awesome. Well, David, thank you so much for stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast. You wanted to share where people, obviously the book will be available wherever you buy books, you wanna, where people might connect with you and your work.

David Novak (19:12): Yeah. I think you can go to take charge of you.com for, and order the book. If you go to David Novac, leadership.com, you can learn about the leadership programs we have, it's nonprofit, but we're focused on, as you mentioned earlier at developing leaders at, at, at every edge age group and, you know, we're make making huge progress and you can follow me on Twitter and David Nova OGO. I try to provide a leadership inspiration every day and the share of my podcast that I do. Awesome.

John Jantsch (19:38): Well again, thanks for stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast. And hopefully we will run into you one of these days out there on the road,

David Novak (19:42): David. Okay. Thank you very much, John. I appreciate it.

John Jantsch (19:45): All right. That wraps up another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I wanna thank you so much for tuning in. Feel free to share this show. Feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also, did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you've got employees, if you've got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it out. It's called the certified marketing man to your program from duct tape marketing. You can find it at duct tape, marketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.

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