A New Direction

When was the last time you sat down and actually decided what your life should look like, instead of just letting it happen?

This week on A New Direction with Coach Jay, I sat down with Rich Harris, author of Life Plan: Living by Design, Not Default. Rich is a former commercial real estate executive from right here in Chapel Hill, and he has written a 100+ page life plan every single year since 1999. That’s not a theory. That’s a lifetime of testing. Here are four life plan lessons from our conversation that I believe can change the direction of your life.

Most of us aren’t living a bad life. We’re living a default life. We drift into routines shaped by old habits, past experiences, and other people’s expectations. Then one day we realize something feels off, even though everything looks great on paper.

I see this all the time with high achievers. They’re winning, and they still feel lost. A life plan forces you to stop and ask the hard question: is the life I’m living the life I actually want? If you never ask, you’ve already answered.

Here’s where the psychology gets interesting. Rich explains that our brains have competing forces pulling us in different directions. Part of you wants the long-term goal. Part of you wants the comfortable habit. Lasting change isn’t just about motivation or discipline. The science tells a much more complicated story.

So stop beating yourself up for “lacking willpower.” Intentional living starts with understanding why change is hard, and then building a plan that gets those competing voices working together instead of against each other.

This one gives a lot of people permission to breathe. Living by design doesn’t mean torching everything you’ve built or chasing some mystical “life purpose.” It means making small, deliberate adjustments.

I treat life like an experiment. Form a hypothesis, test it, and if you don’t like the result, treat it as information, not failure. You don’t burn down the lab. You change one variable and test again. A good life plan works the same way.

Anybody can write goals in January. The magic of a life plan comes from revisiting it year after year. Rich talks about the compounding returns that come from reviewing your priorities consistently, the same way an investment grows over time. Those yearly plans also carried him through his toughest seasons of change, including walking away from a 30-year career to write this book.

Consistency is where the transformation happens. Excellence through effort, one year at a time.

You don’t need a 100-page document to begin. You need one honest hour and one honest question: where am I living by default? Write down what matters most to you, compare it to how you actually spent last week, and look at the gap. That gap is your starting point.

Pick up Life Plan: Living by Design, Not Default by Rich Harris, and catch the full replay of our conversation on A New Direction with Coach Jay. Your life is too important to leave on autopilot.

Rich Harris’ book, “Life Plan: Live By Design, Not Default” is a book that will make you think deeply about who you are and gives sound well researched insight on how to change yourself so that you can excel.  From the very beginning Rich embarks on the mission that a life plan will help make that change.

Rich starts out the book by giving us a brain anatomy lesson on how are brain is built and why it can be great, but also how it can also be deceptive.  We are susceptible to illusions that that we think are real.  The fact is our wiring seems fine to us, but it can be a problem.

Then Rich helps us understand that we have an operating system problem.  The code has been warped by our upbringing, education, traumatic events, etc.  And begins to weave in how a life plan can help rewrite some of our code.

When we start getting into the nuts and bolts of a life plan.  It all starts with intention.  And when we start becoming more intentional about who we are and why we do what we do we can begin to change the patterns and habits that we have built.

The life plan is more than a simple goal setting activity.  It is an honest look at who we are, what we are, how we need to change and then  building a life plan around the different areas of our life.  Career, finances, relationships, future, are all part of what Rich’s life plan.

I found Life Plan to be such an amazing read that really made me think, and it also made me realize I have more work to do.  I still have habits, and thinking, and negative narratives and self-talk that crop up from time to time that if I would dig into where they came from confront them and recognize I can change them, my life will change in a positive direction.

Further, the research for a Life Plan is so robust that actually writing it down, breaking it down into smaller parts, and publicly sharing it will increase every area of my personal life and business life, from people to profits.

Get your copy of Life Plan by clicking here!

Please reach out to the sponsors of A New Direction.

Thanks to their financial support, we are able to bring you these great experts and their books to help you live the life you always dreamed of.

So, reach out to them and just say, “thank you for sponsoring A New Direction.

Linda Craft Team, Realtors no matter where you live in the world, The Linda Craft team can help you find the best professional in your area to help you sell or buy your next home.

While most real estate professionals belong to a nationally affiliated company where they are obligated to use the people in their company’s network.

The Linda Craft team are privately and independently owned and operated.

That means they can find the absolute best professional from ANY company to ensure you get the best agent objectively for your house buying or selling needs.

Located in the Raleigh Research Triangle Park of North Carolina…they can help you anywhere you live.  Learn more  by going to Linda Craft Team, Realtors  www.LindaCraft.com

The marketing is fine. The team is capable. The market is there. And the business still won’t move.

You’ve read the books. Hired the consultants. Rebuilt the org chart twice. None of it touched the actual problem, because the actual problem was never in the business.

It’s fear. It’s ego. It’s the story you keep telling yourself about what you can and can’t do. It’s the “personal stuff” you’ve been leaving at the door every morning — except it doesn’t stay there. It walks in with you and runs the company.

I’m Jay Izso. I’m an Executive Performance Coach, and I work with CEOs and founders of $5M–$50M companies who’ve hit a wall they can’t explain. I don’t fix algorithms. I fix the behaviors and mindsets that are strangling your growth.

I find the personal behavioral pattern that’s driving the business dysfunction. Then I help you disrupt it so the company can actually grow. That’s the whole method.

No vision boards. No affirmations on the monitor. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

If you want to feel better about your business, hire a hype man. If you want it to change, keep reading — because where I learned to do this isn’t a place most coaches have ever set foot.

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska — population 100. I started working at nine. By fourteen I was castrating boars, and nobody was coming to do it for me if I froze. By the time I left for college I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, that pain is part of the job, and that the work gets done whether you feel like it or not.

That’s not a charming childhood story. It’s why I don’t flinch when a CEO’s real problem turns out to be uglier than the one they hired me to fix. I’ve done harder, dirtier work than a hard conversation.

The forensic unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham — co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis — in a human behavior lab built around real-world problems, not theory. I followed that into a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington: a forensic setting, evaluating people charged with the most serious criminal offenses.

Sixteen months reading human behavior at its most extreme teaches you one thing fast: how to get past what someone’s telling you and see what’s actually driving the decision. That’s not a metaphor I use with executives — it’s the literal skill I use on them. Most consultants react to what a CEO says the problem is. I was trained to find what’s underneath it.

We find the pattern. Not “leadership style” — the specific behavior that shows up under pressure and quietly runs the company into a wall. The decision you keep re-making. The hire you keep avoiding. The conversation you keep having in your head instead of in the room.

We name it, out loud, without the corporate padding.

Then we disrupt it — deliberately, on purpose, on a schedule — until the new behavior is the automatic one. Not a seminar. Not a one-time breakthrough you feel good about for a month. A rebuilt habit, tested against your actual business, week over week.

If you also want to hear how this plays out in other people’s companies before you talk to me, that’s what the show is for. Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance — the decisions that built their companies, the mistakes that nearly ended them, and the breakthrough that changed everything. The podcast is where you can watch the diagnosis happen to someone else first.

This works if you’re the CEO or founder of a $5M–$50M company, you already know — or strongly suspect — that you’re the bottleneck, and you’re willing to look at that directly instead of managing around it.

This doesn’t work if you want a quick fix. I can’t help you if what you’re after is a pep talk before your next board meeting.

I work with people who value authenticity and effort. If you’re ready to dig in, find the root cause, and grow — keep reading.

Big idea, bold goal, or a wall you can’t explain — start the conversation. Schedule your audio session and tell me the one thing about your business that doesn’t add up. I’ll tell you, straight, whether it’s a business problem or a personal one wearing a business costume.

Thank you everyone for listening to A New Direction with Coach Jay.

Please tell your friends.

Give us a thumbs up on YouTube.

Wherever you may be listening…please give A New Direction with Coach Jay a 5 star review.

“Is AI going to take my job?” It’s the question I hear most from executives, business owners, and parents. Kari Zeller, author of Re-Placed: Answering the Call of Leadership in the Age of AI, says it’s the wrong question. She asks a harder one: Is work our buffalo? For the Crow Nation, the buffalo was more than food. It was identity, daily rhythm, belonging, and meaning. When it disappeared, a whole way of life disappeared with it.

For many of us, work plays that same role. It’s where we matter. So when people fear AI, they’re really asking, “Who am I going to be?” Kari calls this ontological vulnerability, the moment the ground under your identity and purpose starts to shift. AI isn’t only changing what we do. It’s shaking our sense of place in the world.

Kari’s answer comes down to a hyphen. Being replaced by AI is passive. It happens to you, and it’s about becoming irrelevant. Being re-placed is active. You step into a new place, a new context, a new role where your contributions, your relationships, and your story matter again. In her words, being re-placed “is the antithesis of being replaced.” That difference decides whether you lead through the AI transition or get swept along by it. As a coach, this line gives me hope: “Identity, unlike skill, can be reinvented.”

The idea I found most useful is context. Circumstances are just circumstances. Context is the meaning we give them, and it decides which actions we can even see. Kari argues that many companies that seemed to “fail at strategy” really failed to notice that their context had become obsolete.

Here’s the good news: AI can only operate inside the context we give it. Humans can create new contexts. We decide what matters first, and then we put AI to work inside it. Her challenge is to become a context creator, not a context prisoner. But before we can create a new future, we have to complete the past: honor what worked, own what didn’t, and grieve what’s ending. Otherwise we keep living out a future built for a world that existed before AI.

In the end, Kari says AI can fix breakdowns, solve problems, and spot patterns faster than any of us, but AI cannot care. Care is still ours. The leaders who will thrive aren’t the ones who know the most about AI. They’re the ones who know what people care about underneath the fear: dignity, belonging, contribution, and mattering. Her advice is simple: use AI, don’t be used by AI.

As Kari writes, “The future will not be managed. It must be led.” So here’s my question for you: are you waiting to be replaced, or are you ready to be re-placed? Watch my full conversation with Kari Zeller on A New Direction with Coach Jay, and pick up a copy of Re-Placed. It’s one of the most important leadership books you’ll read this year.

Kari Zeller‘s book, “Re-Placed: Answering the Call of Leadership in the Age of AI” is a book that is going to challenge you.  It is going to make you question what you believe about you in this new age of AI, and what mindset you will need to adopt to make AI work for you.

There is no doubt that AI is a changing the playing field.  And what the future of AI will be will be left to the wildest imagination.  Kari, implores us not to ignore it or avoid it, but asks us to look at it, understand it, and find where we fit in, in this new world of AI. Ultimately we must discover what makes us unique.

The crux of the book is that we often times lose our identity because our work can be our identity.  However, if we lose what we do to AI, we must have a mindset change from being replace, to being able to re-place ourselves, and find deeper meaning in our being not in our doing.

The book is challenging, but don’t the point of the book is not to focus on the doom that AI may present, but to focus on our own self-awareness of how we can become even more valuable because of our humanity.  And as leaders who embrace this change we have to take a human approach with our people to help them change by following Kari’s prescription of the ERA Methodology.

I loved this book.  It is valuable to everyone and how we need to change our context and our mindsets when it comes to the new age of AI.  Especially for those of us in leadership where we have to be more interative mentally, emotionally, and dare I say spiritually.

Great read!  Get your copy of “Re-Placed” by clicking here!

Please reach out to the sponsors of A New Direction.

Thanks to their financial support, we are able to bring you these great experts and their books to help you live the life you always dreamed of.

Linda Craft Team, REALTORS, for more than 40 years the choice of thousands of buyers and sellers when it comes to real estate.

And regardless of where you live, you can meet with them…even virtually!

They have been on the bleeding edge of technology and AI, and yet their focus is taking a human approach to helping people around the world find the very best professionals to help sell or buy a new home.

And if you live in the Greater Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina you can get the one-on-one, face-to-face service that has made Linda Craft Team Legendary!

Their clients call Linda Craft Team customer service “legendary”.  Find out why by going to www.LindaCraft.com

The marketing is fine. The team is capable. The market is there. And the business still won’t move.

You’ve read the books. Hired the consultants. Rebuilt the org chart twice. None of it touched the actual problem, because the actual problem was never in the business.

It’s fear. It’s ego. It’s the story you keep telling yourself about what you can and can’t do. It’s the “personal stuff” you’ve been leaving at the door every morning — except it doesn’t stay there. It walks in with you and runs the company.

I’m Jay Izso. I’m an Executive Performance Coach, and I work with CEOs and founders of $5M–$50M companies who’ve hit a wall they can’t explain. I don’t fix algorithms. I fix the behaviors and mindsets that are strangling your growth.

I find the personal behavioral pattern that’s driving the business dysfunction. Then I help you disrupt it so the company can actually grow. That’s the whole method.

No vision boards. No affirmations on the monitor. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

If you want to feel better about your business, hire a hype man. If you want it to change, keep reading — because where I learned to do this isn’t a place most coaches have ever set foot.

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska — population 100. I started working at nine. By fourteen I was castrating boars, and nobody was coming to do it for me if I froze. By the time I left for college I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, that pain is part of the job, and that the work gets done whether you feel like it or not.

That’s not a charming childhood story. It’s why I don’t flinch when a CEO’s real problem turns out to be uglier than the one they hired me to fix. I’ve done harder, dirtier work than a hard conversation.

The forensic unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham — co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis — in a human behavior lab built around real-world problems, not theory. I followed that into a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington: a forensic setting, evaluating people charged with the most serious criminal offenses.

Sixteen months reading human behavior at its most extreme teaches you one thing fast: how to get past what someone’s telling you and see what’s actually driving the decision. That’s not a metaphor I use with executives — it’s the literal skill I use on them. Most consultants react to what a CEO says the problem is. I was trained to find what’s underneath it.

We find the pattern. Not “leadership style” — the specific behavior that shows up under pressure and quietly runs the company into a wall. The decision you keep re-making. The hire you keep avoiding. The conversation you keep having in your head instead of in the room.

We name it, out loud, without the corporate padding.

Then we disrupt it — deliberately, on purpose, on a schedule — until the new behavior is the automatic one. Not a seminar. Not a one-time breakthrough you feel good about for a month. A rebuilt habit, tested against your actual business, week over week.

If you also want to hear how this plays out in other people’s companies before you talk to me, that’s what the show is for. Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance — the decisions that built their companies, the mistakes that nearly ended them, and the breakthrough that changed everything. The podcast is where you can watch the diagnosis happen to someone else first.

This works if you’re the CEO or founder of a $5M–$50M company, you already know — or strongly suspect — that you’re the bottleneck, and you’re willing to look at that directly instead of managing around it.

This doesn’t work if you want a quick fix. I can’t help you if what you’re after is a pep talk before your next board meeting.

I work with people who value authenticity and effort. If you’re ready to dig in, find the root cause, and grow — keep reading.

Big idea, bold goal, or a wall you can’t explain — start the conversation. Schedule your audio session and tell me the one thing about your business that doesn’t add up. I’ll tell you, straight, whether it’s a business problem or a personal one wearing a business costume.

Thank you everyone for listening to A New Direction with Coach Jay.

Please tell your friends.

Give us a thumbs up on YouTube.

Wherever you may be listening…please give A New Direction with Coach Jay a 5 star review.

Here’s the truth nobody selling planners wants you to hear: time management doesn’t work, because you can’t manage time.

Time is outside of you. It doesn’t care whether you run a company, lead a sales team, coach athletes, or are trying to get your kids to practice on time. Everyone gets the same 1,440 minutes a day. Nobody gets more, and nobody owns them.

On this episode of A New Direction with Coach Jay Izso, I sat down with Ron Lieback, author of Time Management Inverted: Live with Intentional Focus, Become the Best You. His core idea changes how you look at your day: you don’t own your time, but you do own your focus. When you start managing focus instead of time, you do better work in less time, with less stress, and you have more of your life left over to enjoy.

Here are five rules from Ron’s framework that apply to anyone: a business, a team, or just you.

Ron writes that time is a perception, and our emotions control it. As a psychologist, I can confirm it. Ten minutes in the dentist’s chair feels like an hour. Three hours doing what you love disappear.

So the real time management question isn’t “How do I get more time?” It’s “Where is my focus going?” For most of us, the answer is somewhere we never chose:

You don’t have a time problem. You have a focus leak.

Most time management systems start with a to-do list. Ron’s TMI (Time Management Inverted) framework starts at the top with your Grand Vision, the big result you’re after. That might be building a business, winning a championship, getting healthy, or running a marathon.

From there the pyramid narrows:

Ron also recommends setting a Grand Vision in each area of your life: health, relationships, business, and finances. His test for whether one is worth chasing: Is it so meaningful I’ll remember it on my deathbed?

The piece I love is realignment. When a plan stops working, most people either quit or push ahead on blind optimism. Ron says “100% optimism isn’t possible. Or wise.” You stop, figure out what went wrong, and adjust. I teach the people I coach to treat life as an experiment. A result you didn’t want isn’t a failure. It’s data. Clean up the variable and run it again.

This is the heart of the framework, the BIG 3-5. At every level (monthly, weekly, daily), you focus on three to five priorities. Never more. Past five, the mind loses concentration and the work gets sloppy. For daily tasks, Ron says three is plenty.

To make it stick:

You can’t cheat the harvest. Three focused tasks done every day will beat twenty half-finished ones, whether you’re in a boardroom or a locker room.

Ron uses a term everyone should borrow: Creative Units (CUs). At 100 CUs your energy is fully charged and your best work comes faster. Near zero, everything takes longer and what you produce is forgettable.

The biggest drain isn’t the clock. It’s overcommitment. Every yes comes with a hidden creative tax. Every “quick call,” every “got a minute?”, and every obligation you didn’t need to take on draws from a limited supply of mental energy.

Warren Buffett said the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

To keep your focus sharp:

This is the rule driven people resist most: the belief that more hours equals more productivity needs to end. Ron points to the burnout, broken relationships, and unhealthy habits that come from being “always on.” I’ve seen it with executives, and I’ve seen it with young athletes who never get to rest.

His answer is a cold turkey digital detox. No social media, no texts, no email, no calls during focused time. Start with a few hours a day, work up to a full evening, then a full day on the weekend. The rule that matters: when you’re off, stay off.

Pair that with enforced downtime: short breaks every day, longer ones every week, and real time alone. Ron also points to what Chris Bailey calls “scatter focus,” letting your mind wander on purpose, which helps you recharge, plan, and come up with fresh ideas.

If you can stay fully focused for even two hours a day, you’ll get better results with less stress, and you’ll actually enjoy your time away.

Real time management isn’t about cramming more into your calendar. It’s about deciding where your focus goes, protecting your energy, and saying no to everything that doesn’t serve your Grand Vision.

Ron closes Time Management Inverted with a line worth taping to your mirror: Don’t settle for average. Ever!

What is Time Management Inverted?

Why doesn’t traditional time management work?

How many things should I focus on each day?

How do I start a digital detox?

🎧 Watch or listen to the full episode of A New Direction with Coach Jay Izso with Ron Lieback on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts, and grab a copy of Time Management Inverted: Live with Intentional Focus, Become the Best You.

Ron Lieback’s book, Time Management Inverted: Live with Intentional Focus, Become the Best You is an absolute eye opening read.  Like many of you are probably thinking, “Oh great it’s another ‘time management’ book…you would be wrong.  This isn’t about time management this is about reaching the goals you set through managing your focus.

I read this book twice.  The concepts are not difficult, but there is an internal resistance to doing them.  Why?  Because we have been taught the wrong thing for years when it comes to achieving our “Grand Vision” that the majority of us never achieve it.  This book changes that.  It challenges you in ways you may not be prepared for but the Time Management Inverted (TMI) framework process works.  Because you focus on the process, not the results.  The results take care of themselves.

This book is practical.  Every chapter ends with a summary and steps that you can take immediately.  And he even provides AI prompts to help you think about what you are doing when it comes to achieving your “Grand Vision” in a slightly different way.

Are you looking for greater success?  Do you want to eliminate your bad habits? Are you ready to be more productive in less time?  Do you want to achieve greater things?  Then Time Management Inverted: Live with Intentional Focus, Become the Best You is for you.

Get your copy of Time Management Inverted: Live with Intentional Focus, Become the Best You by Clicking on the link.

Please reach out and say thank you to the financial partners of A New Direction Show:

Linda Craft Team, Realtors® for more than 40 years they have helped 1000’s of people make a smooth transition when it comes to buying and selling real estate.

A boutique firm with a global reach.  Unaffiliated with any national or international brand, Linda Craft Team, REALTORS® is recognized as one of the leaders when it comes to residential real estate.

Being unaffiliated is an advantage for you!  Because if you need a referral in your area, you can be confident knowing that her recommendations do not come from within some international or national affiliate, but because she has connected with that absolute best agent in your area.

If you are local, you can also be assured that the money stays in the community and is not being paid to a franchise for a franchise fee.  We are big fans of supporting local, we trust you are too.

So before you buy or sell, start with the “Legends” at Linda Craft  Team.  Just click on over to www.LindaCraft.com

The marketing is fine. The team is capable. The market is there. And the business still won’t move.

You’ve read the books. Hired the consultants. Rebuilt the org chart twice. None of it touched the actual problem, because the actual problem was never in the business.

It’s fear. It’s ego. It’s the story you keep telling yourself about what you can and can’t do. It’s the “personal stuff” you’ve been leaving at the door every morning — except it doesn’t stay there. It walks in with you and runs the company.

I’m Jay Izso. I’m an Executive Performance Coach, and I work with CEOs and founders of $5M–$50M companies who’ve hit a wall they can’t explain. I don’t fix algorithms. I fix the behaviors and mindsets that are strangling your growth.

I find the personal behavioral pattern that’s driving the business dysfunction. Then I help you disrupt it so the company can actually grow. That’s the whole method.

No vision boards. No affirmations on the monitor. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

If you want to feel better about your business, hire a hype man. If you want it to change, keep reading — because where I learned to do this isn’t a place most coaches have ever set foot.

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska — population 100. I started working at nine. By fourteen I was castrating boars, and nobody was coming to do it for me if I froze. By the time I left for college I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, that pain is part of the job, and that the work gets done whether you feel like it or not.

That’s not a charming childhood story. It’s why I don’t flinch when a CEO’s real problem turns out to be uglier than the one they hired me to fix. I’ve done harder, dirtier work than a hard conversation.

The forensic unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham — co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis — in a human behavior lab built around real-world problems, not theory. I followed that into a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington: a forensic setting, evaluating people charged with the most serious criminal offenses.

Sixteen months reading human behavior at its most extreme teaches you one thing fast: how to get past what someone’s telling you and see what’s actually driving the decision. That’s not a metaphor I use with executives — it’s the literal skill I use on them. Most consultants react to what a CEO says the problem is. I was trained to find what’s underneath it.

We find the pattern. Not “leadership style” — the specific behavior that shows up under pressure and quietly runs the company into a wall. The decision you keep re-making. The hire you keep avoiding. The conversation you keep having in your head instead of in the room.

We name it, out loud, without the corporate padding.

Then we disrupt it — deliberately, on purpose, on a schedule — until the new behavior is the automatic one. Not a seminar. Not a one-time breakthrough you feel good about for a month. A rebuilt habit, tested against your actual business, week over week.

If you also want to hear how this plays out in other people’s companies before you talk to me, that’s what the show is for. Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance — the decisions that built their companies, the mistakes that nearly ended them, and the breakthrough that changed everything. The podcast is where you can watch the diagnosis happen to someone else first.

This works if you’re the CEO or founder of a $5M–$50M company, you already know — or strongly suspect — that you’re the bottleneck, and you’re willing to look at that directly instead of managing around it.

This doesn’t work if you want a quick fix. I can’t help you if what you’re after is a pep talk before your next board meeting.

I work with people who value authenticity and effort. If you’re ready to dig in, find the root cause, and grow — keep reading.

Big idea, bold goal, or a wall you can’t explain — start the conversation. Schedule your audio session and tell me the one thing about your business that doesn’t add up. I’ll tell you, straight, whether it’s a business problem or a personal one wearing a business costume.

Thank you everyone for listening to A New Direction with Coach Jay.

Please tell your friends.

Give us a thumbs up on YouTube.

Wherever you may be listening…please give A New Direction with Coach Jay a 5 star review.

Four hundred conversations in, A New Direction with Coach Jay finally turned the microphone around on its own host. For episode 400, Steve Riddle — founder of CoachStation and author of Falling Into Leadership, and a two-time guest on the show — sat across from me and asked the questions I usually ask everyone else. Not softball ones, either. Steve went after my life, the challenges that shaped it, and the choices that took a farm kid’s kind of grit and built it into the coach, speaker, and podcast host I am today.

From there, the conversation on A New Direction with Coach Jay moved into the work itself — my coaching philosophy, and what actually holds it together. Steve pushed past the surface and asked what writing four books taught me, what my philosophy has meant in practice, and how that philosophy shows up when I’m working with a competitive youth athlete or a business leader trying to find their footing. Coaching isn’t a technique you apply the same way twice. It’s a set of principles you adapt to the person in front of you, and Steve made me articulate that out loud, maybe for the first time this clearly.

The heart of the episode, though, was core values and purpose — the two things every guest on this show eventually circles back to, whether they mean to or not. Steve asked me directly: after 400 conversations, what do I actually believe drives people? I talked about the values that have anchored me through every version of this business, from A New Direction with Coach Jay to Real Estate Right Now to the coaching work with business execs and owners to young athletes, and why purpose has to survive contact with hard seasons or it isn’t real purpose at all.

Then Steve turned to the pattern recognition — what 400 interviews across authors, entrepreneurs, and leaders have taught me about people and business that you wouldn’t expect. A New Direction with Coach Jay has never been a highlight reel, and this episode wasn’t either. It was a direct look at what changes in you when you’ve spent years listening for what makes people tick, and what that means for anyone building a business, a team, or a life on purpose.

Please thank the sponsors of A New Direction Podcast – Jay Izso

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Their thousands of clients call them “The Legends of Customer Service”.  They will also tell you that the relationship is their first priority.

Whether you are in the Greater Raleigh Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina or anywhere in the world, they can help you with your home dreams.  Contact our friends at the Linda Craft Team at www.LindaCraft.com

The marketing is fine. The team is capable. The market is there. And the business still won’t move.

You’ve read the books. Hired the consultants. Rebuilt the org chart twice. None of it touched the actual problem, because the actual problem was never in the business.

It’s fear. It’s ego. It’s the story you keep telling yourself about what you can and can’t do. It’s the “personal stuff” you’ve been leaving at the door every morning — except it doesn’t stay there. It walks in with you and runs the company.

I’m Jay Izso. I’m an Executive Performance Coach, and I work with CEOs and founders of $5M–$50M companies who’ve hit a wall they can’t explain. I don’t fix algorithms. I fix the behaviors and mindsets that are strangling your growth.

I find the personal behavioral pattern that’s driving the business dysfunction. Then I help you disrupt it so the company can actually grow. That’s the whole method.

No vision boards. No affirmations on the monitor. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

If you want to feel better about your business, hire a hype man. If you want it to change, keep reading — because where I learned to do this isn’t a place most coaches have ever set foot.

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska — population 100. I started working at nine. By fourteen I was castrating boars, and nobody was coming to do it for me if I froze. By the time I left for college I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, that pain is part of the job, and that the work gets done whether you feel like it or not.

That’s not a charming childhood story. It’s why I don’t flinch when a CEO’s real problem turns out to be uglier than the one they hired me to fix. I’ve done harder, dirtier work than a hard conversation.

The forensic unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham — co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis — in a human behavior lab built around real-world problems, not theory. I followed that into a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington: a forensic setting, evaluating people charged with the most serious criminal offenses.

Sixteen months reading human behavior at its most extreme teaches you one thing fast: how to get past what someone’s telling you and see what’s actually driving the decision. That’s not a metaphor I use with executives — it’s the literal skill I use on them. Most consultants react to what a CEO says the problem is. I was trained to find what’s underneath it.

We find the pattern. Not “leadership style” — the specific behavior that shows up under pressure and quietly runs the company into a wall. The decision you keep re-making. The hire you keep avoiding. The conversation you keep having in your head instead of in the room.

We name it, out loud, without the corporate padding.

Then we disrupt it — deliberately, on purpose, on a schedule — until the new behavior is the automatic one. Not a seminar. Not a one-time breakthrough you feel good about for a month. A rebuilt habit, tested against your actual business, week over week.

If you also want to hear how this plays out in other people’s companies before you talk to me, that’s what the show is for. Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance — the decisions that built their companies, the mistakes that nearly ended them, and the breakthrough that changed everything. The podcast is where you can watch the diagnosis happen to someone else first.

This works if you’re the CEO or founder of a $5M–$50M company, you already know — or strongly suspect — that you’re the bottleneck, and you’re willing to look at that directly instead of managing around it.

This doesn’t work if you want a quick fix. I can’t help you if what you’re after is a pep talk before your next board meeting.

I work with people who value authenticity and effort. If you’re ready to dig in, find the root cause, and grow — keep reading.

Big idea, bold goal, or a wall you can’t explain — start the conversation. Schedule your audio session and tell me the one thing about your business that doesn’t add up. I’ll tell you, straight, whether it’s a business problem or a personal one wearing a business costume.

Thank you everyone for listening to A New Direction with Coach Jay.

Please tell your friends.

Give us a thumbs up on YouTube.

Wherever you may be listening…please give A New Direction with Coach Jay a 5 star review.

You can’t cheat the harvest. Not in farming, not in funeral service, and not in leadership. That’s the line I kept coming back to after tonight’s conversation with Jay Jacobson, author of Lead by Legendary Example — a book forged inside a profession with zero room to fake competence: funeral service. Forty years of leading people through the worst day of their lives taught Jacobson something most executive coaches never pick up in a classroom. Leadership isn’t a title, a slide deck, or a TED Talk. It’s what you do when nobody’s applauding.

Jacobson’s framework rests on six leadership pillars — Integrity, Presence, Vision, Servant Leadership, Adaptability, and Mentorship — and the mistake most bosses make is treating them like a checklist instead of a practice. They chase vision before they’ve earned presence. They demand loyalty before they’ve modeled integrity. Tonight, Jacobson walked us through a grandfather-and-grandson story that reframed what dignity in leadership actually looks like, and a piece of his own history — assisting families after the Sioux City air disaster and later testifying before the U.S. Senate — that shows exactly what these leadership pillars look like when the stakes are real and there’s no script to follow.

Here’s the part that stuck with me most: trust isn’t built in the big speech. It’s built in the routine call you actually prepared for. I tell my coaching clients and hockey parents the same thing — character shows up in the boring repetitions, not the highlight reel. If you run a team, a business, or a household, this episode hands you a mirror. Which of these six pillars are you skipping because it’s inconvenient, and which one is quietly costing you the trust you’re trying to build?

You don’t have to take my word for how it unfolds — watch it yourself. The full replay of tonight’s episode of A New Direction with Jay Jacobson is live now on YouTube and available everywhere you get your podcasts. If you lead people — at work, at home, or on a bench — block out 45 minutes and let Jacobson’s version of legendary leadership put yours to the test. Then tell me in the comments: which pillar are you getting backwards?

Jay Jacobson‘s book, “Lead by Legendary Example” is a combination of real stories, and practical psychological and behavioral practices that anyone can employ right now.  You don’t have to wait to make things happen with these 6 pillars of leadership, you can start today, this very moment.

This book is also special because not only is it a book that you will read, but at the end of each chapter he has simple practical exercises that you can do to change you.  And the second half of the book are 10 sessions that you can even train your team on.

The real point of the book however is one that many of us struggle to comprehend.  Change does not come from performing better, real change occurs because we changed our internal selves.  We make a choice through our mind, will and emotions to change the way think so that we can become the leaders and practice the leadership that can be within all of us…if we make that choice.

I loved this book.  It read so fast. The stories are real and the insights that Jay Jacobson pulls out of them are relevant and poignant. This book is for everyone.  Not simply “business leaders” it is for all of us who interact with others, because we are all leaders in one way or another.  This book is for you and me!

Get your copy of Lead by Legendary Example by clicking here.

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Linda Craft Team, Realtors for more than 40 years their customers call their customer service “legendary”.

Linda and her team built their business on building relationships and understanding your home is full of memories that are important to you! It is about the relationship, not the transaction.

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Executive Performance Coach  |  Host of A New Direction

Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance. The conversations go deep. We talk about the decisions that built companies, the mistakes that nearly destroyed them, and the personal breakthroughs that changed everything.

But here’s what most people don’t know about me: the show is an extension of the work I do every day with executives behind closed doors.

I’m an Executive Performance Coach. I work with CEOs and founders of $5M-$50M companies who have hit a wall they can’t explain. The marketing looks fine. The team is capable. The market is there. But the business won’t move.

The problem, almost every time, is the person running it.

I find the personal behavioral patterns that are driving the business dysfunction. Then I help the CEO disrupt those patterns so the company can grow. That’s it. No motivational platitudes. No vision boards. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up as a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska—population 100. I started working at nine years old. By the time I left for college, I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, pain is part of the job, and the work has to get done whether you feel like it or not. I was fourteen the first time I had to castrate boars. Nobody was going to do it for me. That lesson never left: sometimes you have to do things afraid.

The forensic psychology unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham—co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis—in a human behavior lab focused on real-world problems. I then served in a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington, a forensic setting where I conducted psychological evaluations of individuals charged with the most serious criminal offenses. Sixteen months assessing human behavior at its most extreme taught me how to cut through defenses, identify what’s really driving someone’s decisions, and see what they can’t see in themselves.

What actually separates the candidate who walks away with a $250,000 offer from the one who walks away with “we’ll be in touch”?

That’s the question we sat down with on this episode of A New Direction, talking with Craig A. Fleming, author of Mastering the $250,000 Interview. You can catch the full episode now on your favorite podcast platform. But whether you’ve already listened or you’re catching up now, here’s what the book — and the conversation — comes down to: the interview most people prepare for isn’t the interview that’s actually happening.

Here are just four of the ideas and thoughts Craig shared.

The biggest myth about high-stakes interviewing is that it’s a performance you can improvise your way through if you’re smart enough or charming enough.  At the six-figure level, nobody wins an interview by winging it.

Preparation and rehearsal aren’t about memorizing a script — canned answers get spotted from a mile away in an executive-level interview. They’re about doing the unglamorous work beforehand so that, by the time you’re in the room, you already sound like the answer to a question the company hasn’t even asked out loud yet. The candidates who get the offer aren’t the ones improvising the best answers. They’re the ones who rehearsed until the room had nothing left to catch them off guard.

Here’s where a lot of good candidates lose a great interview: they answer the question they were asked instead of the question that was actually meant. Craig give us insights that you must build skills around the idea that reading between the lines is the real skill — figuring out what a company is genuinely looking for, versus what the job posting says on paper.

The book points out as well as Craig does on the show, it is rarely about whether you can technically do the job. It’s about whether you can solve the specific problem that’s keeping someone up at night. That means the strongest interview answers aren’t the most polished ones — they’re the ones that show you actually understood the problem behind the posting.

One of the more useful reframes in the book: stop treating your résumé, and the interview itself, like a formality where you simply report your history. Start treating both like what they actually are — a sales pitch. The résumé’s job is to get you into the room. The interview’s job is to close.

That shift changes everything about how you prepare. You’re not there to be interesting. You’re there to prove, point by point, that you’re the fix for a specific, expensive problem. Every answer in a $250,000 interview should be doing sales work, whether you think of it that way or not.

Maybe the most eye-opening piece of Mastering the $250,000 Interview: the evaluation doesn’t stop at the door. Long before — and long after — you sit across from a hiring committee, there’s a silent search running in the background. Your social media. Your online footprint. Everything a company can find about you without ever asking you a single question in an interview.

The book’s point isn’t to make you paranoid. It’s to make you aware. What shows up in that silent search can either back up everything you said in the interview or quietly undercut it. Either way, it’s part of the interview now, whether it’s on the official agenda or not.

We covered all four of these in depth in this episode of A New Direction with Coach Jay Izso — why interview preparation matters more than raw talent, how to read what a company is really asking, why your résumé and your interview answers should both be doing sales work, and what the silent search means for how you show up online long before you ever get invited to interview.

If you’re heading into an interview where real stakes — and real money — are on the line, this is worth the listen. Find the episode on your favorite podcast platform — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. And if this hit home, share it with someone who has a big interview coming up. They’ll thank you for it.

Craig Fleming’s book, “Mastering the $250,000 Interview: A Step-by-Step System” is simple the best book on interviewing I have ever read.  And I have read dozens of books on the subject and have taught interviewing at the college level.  While the book may be geared toward the executive interview, the lessons and structure can apply to any interview situation.

Every chapter is filled with practical guidance from the psychology of how to read and interpret the job listing, to the psychology of how the interviewers think, to what your online brand and reputation may say about you that is holding you back from getting that next level job or promotion.

Craig touches on topics like spending days preparing for the interview, how to express confidence without being over confident, demonstrating your value so you can demand the best salary and benefits, how to turn your resume from experience to a story that demonstrates results and so much more!

This book was quite convicting for me, because I say in myself that I have developed habitual words and phrases that are not helping me in my communication.  That if I were in the interview situation would probably disqualify me pretty quickly.  If you want the edge in your next interview you must read this book.

Get your copy of Mastering the $250,000 Interview by Clicking Here.

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For 40 years helping people all over the world make a transition in life.  They take the stress out of the home selling and home buying process.

When you are looking for consistent, top of their game, professional real estate service with a track record of successfully helping 1000’s, check out Linda Craft Team, REALTORS.

Hey…do me a favor and please tell your friends to subscribe to A New Direction on their favorite podcast platform and give us a 5 star rating we are so grateful when you do!

Executive Performance Coach  |  Host of A New Direction

Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance. The conversations go deep. We talk about the decisions that built companies, the mistakes that nearly destroyed them, and the personal breakthroughs that changed everything.

But here’s what most people don’t know about me: the show is an extension of the work I do every day with executives behind closed doors.

I’m an Executive Performance Coach. I work with CEOs and founders of $5M-$50M companies who have hit a wall they can’t explain. The marketing looks fine. The team is capable. The market is there. But the business won’t move.

The problem, almost every time, is the person running it.

I find the personal behavioral patterns that are driving the business dysfunction. Then I help the CEO disrupt those patterns so the company can grow. That’s it. No motivational platitudes. No vision boards. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up as a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska—population 100. I started working at nine years old. By the time I left for college, I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, pain is part of the job, and the work has to get done whether you feel like it or not. I was fourteen the first time I had to castrate boars. Nobody was going to do it for me. That lesson never left: sometimes you have to do things afraid.

The forensic psychology unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham—co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis—in a human behavior lab focused on real-world problems. I then served in a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington, a forensic setting where I conducted psychological evaluations of individuals charged with the most serious criminal offenses. Sixteen months assessing human behavior at its most extreme taught me how to cut through defenses, identify what’s really driving someone’s decisions, and see what they can’t see in themselves.

Can a company really put people first and still build a thriving workplace culture? On A New Direction with Coach Jay Izso, my guest Josh Block says yes — and he’s got fifteen years of proof.

Josh Block spent fifteen years leading Block Imaging, growing the team from fifty people to more than four hundred, and revenue from thirty million dollars to two hundred fifteen million. He didn’t get there by squeezing more out of people — he got there by building a workplace culture rooted in trust. He went on to found Cube Mobile Imaging, expanding access to medical imaging for patients across the country, and today serves as Executive Advisor at Block Imaging. He’s also the author of the new book People Matter @Work.

Josh works with executives navigating growth, brand-new managers who got the title without the training, and teams stuck in fear and disengagement — helping them reshape their workplace culture around trust, ownership, and generosity instead of pressure.

At the center of People Matter @Work is a simple but demanding idea: the biggest thing standing between a team and real performance often isn’t strategy, budget, or talent — it’s a leader running everything through “me.” Josh’s framework is built to shift workplace culture from isolation to ownership, and from pressure to possibility. If leadership has ever felt heavier the more responsibility you took on, this is the conversation for you.

Josh breaks it down into three practices any leader can start using right away to strengthen their workplace culture:

Whether you’re an executive navigating change, a manager who wasn’t quite ready for the promotion, or leading a team stuck in disengagement, these three shifts are the blueprint for a workplace culture where people — and performance — actually thrive.

Josh’s book is a playbook for building the kind of workplace culture where trust, accountability, and generosity aren’t posters on a wall — they’re how the place actually runs. Catch the full conversation with Josh Block on A New Direction with Coach Jay Izso, live and on the podcast, and get a new direction on what it actually means to lead.

Josh Block’s book, “People Matter at Work: Fostering a Culture Where Team Members Thrive and Everyone Wins” is an outstanding book.  If you are a fan of “The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team” by Lencioni then you are going to love this book!  It takes a deeper look at how we will can truly build a team that builds trust and makes you organization and business more profitable.

We have all heard the saying, “culture eats strategy for breakfast” well Josh Block has the proof as he takes his company to a higher stratosphere financially through a powerful workplace culture shift.  And how does he do that?  By sharing the principles of People Matter @Work.

Josh literally takes us through his step of becoming a 20 something President of an already successful company and makes it even better.  He recognizes during his own humbling experience there are 3 T’s, Working Together, making Thoughtful Decisions that affect his people, and being Transparent, helps his entire workforce become safe, seen, and successful.  And the result is people take ownership of the company to want to see it succeed and in turn makes it tremendously profitable.

It may sound like a risk to the average CEO, but as Josh points out the real risk was by not doing the work to make his entire team a integral part of the business.  This book is for both the current leader and the aspiring leader.  And he not only has proved, he gives you the tools and the mindset to create it for your business as well.  Really enjoyed every page of the book.  I highly recommend it.

Get your copy of People Matter @Work by clicking here! 

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While most real estate professionals belong to a nationally affiliated company where they are obligated to use the people in their company’s network.

Linda Craft Team are privately owned and operated.  That means they can find the absolute best professional from ANY company to ensure you get the best service.

Located in the Raleigh Research Triangle Park of North Carolina…they are indeed legendary when it comes to service.  Learn more  by going to Linda Craft & Team, REALTORS  www.LindaCraft.com

Hey…do me a favor and please tell your friends to subscribe to A New Direction on their favorite podcast platform and give us a 5 star rating we are so grateful when you do!

Executive Performance Coach  |  Host of A New Direction

Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance. The conversations go deep. We talk about the decisions that built companies, the mistakes that nearly destroyed them, and the personal breakthroughs that changed everything.

But here’s what most people don’t know about me: the show is an extension of the work I do every day with executives behind closed doors.

I’m an Executive Performance Coach. I work with CEOs and founders of $5M-$50M companies who have hit a wall they can’t explain. The marketing looks fine. The team is capable. The market is there. But the business won’t move.

The problem, almost every time, is the person running it.

I find the personal behavioral patterns that are driving the business dysfunction. Then I help the CEO disrupt those patterns so the company can grow. That’s it. No motivational platitudes. No vision boards. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up as a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska—population 100. I started working at nine years old. By the time I left for college, I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, pain is part of the job, and the work has to get done whether you feel like it or not. I was fourteen the first time I had to castrate boars. Nobody was going to do it for me. That lesson never left: sometimes you have to do things afraid.

The forensic psychology unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham—co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis—in a human behavior lab focused on real-world problems. I then served in a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington, a forensic setting where I conducted psychological evaluations of individuals charged with the most serious criminal offenses. Sixteen months assessing human behavior at its most extreme taught me how to cut through defenses, identify what’s really driving someone’s decisions, and see what they can’t see in themselves.

What if the biggest leadership breakthrough of your career isn’t a new strategy, a new title, or a new set of KPIs — but a philosophy you’ve been overlooking your whole career? That’s the question at the heart of today’s show. At 5pm Eastern on “A New Direction with Coach Jay,” I’m sitting down live with Mark Miller — co-author, alongside legendary leadership expert Ken Blanchard, of the newly revised and expanded 4th edition of “The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do.” Blanchard and Miller say 82 percent of managers struggle to lead effectively, and their answer to why is deceptively simple: servant leadership. If that number makes you uncomfortable, good — that’s exactly why this conversation matters.

“The Secret” isn’t your typical leadership book stacked with theory and jargon. It’s a business fable — the story of Debbie Brewster, a newly promoted executive who’s drowning in low morale, high turnover, and a team that’s losing faith in her. Her mentor hands her one deceptively simple truth: great leaders serve. That’s servant leadership in action, and it plays out through the five practices of the SERVE model — seeing the future, engaging and developing others, reinventing continuously, valuing both results and relationships, and embodying the values you claim to hold.

What makes this conversation especially powerful is who’s sitting across from me. Mark Miller didn’t study servant leadership from a distance — he lived it. He walked into Chick-fil-A as the company’s 16th employee, starting out in the warehouse and mailroom, and spent the next 45 years working his way up through Corporate Communications, Field Operations, and Training and Development before retiring as Vice President of High-Performance Leadership. That’s a quarter century spent directing research and initiatives worth tens of millions of dollars to figure out, test, and validate what actually works when you’re trying to lead people well.  This is a man who has been in the trenches — which means today’s conversation isn’t theory, it’s tested truth.

So here’s what we’ll be digging into together: why so many capable, hardworking managers still fail to lead effectively — and what the small percentage who practice true servant leadership are doing differently. We’ll talk about what it really means to “see the future” as a leader, why reinventing yourself never stops being optional, and how you rebuild trust and credibility once it’s been damaged.  Whether you’re leading a team of two or two thousand, this episode is going to hand you a servant leadership framework you can start using before the day is over.

If you would like engage Mark’s services you can call him on his cell phone directly: 678-612-8441 or email Mark, [email protected]

Ken Blanchard & Mark Miller‘s book, “The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do, , 4th Edition, Revised and Expanded” is what I would refer to as a timeless guide for those seeking to be great leaders.  Why do I say timeless?  Because the principles in this book would work in the first century and will work any time in the future.

I had never read the previous versions of the book, so I do not know what to compare it to, but I can tell you that was fundamental mind shifts in every single chapter.  The book is counter-intuitive for those leaders that believe they must be in control.  Yes, you need to be valuing results, but if you want your leadership to translate into great results you need to value those relationships both inside and outside of your organization or business.

You have probably heard the term “servant leadership”.  But you may have not really thought how a leader actually serves others.  Well, this is where the book sets itself apart from other books.  It doesn’t just talk about it as a philosophical ideal, but puts into practical terms that translate into greater profits, and truly having a great team.

I truly enjoyed reading every page of this book.  What I pulled from The Secret was more than a great story that surrounded the main principles of SERVE, but also the valuable practical nuggets that made me think, and that I could apply to my own leadership immediately.  Do yourself and your business a huge favor and get it.

You can get your copy of The Secret by clicking here.

Please reach out and thank the sponsors of  A New Direction and bringing you great guests like these:

Linda Craft Team Realtors. So what can you say about a real estate company that has spent more than 40 years at the top of their game?

Well the first thing is you have to admit that their customers and clients continue to drive their business…but why?

That’s because the Linda Craft Team continue to believe that every person and every relationship is important, not just now, but even in the future.

It is why she is devoted to continually adding value to her clients and community by serving them in ways that matter…it is also why their clients say, “The Linda Craft Team have legendary customer service!”

When it comes to real estate start with the legends start with Linda Craft & Team, Realtors – www.LindaCraft.com

Hey…do me a favor and please tell your friends to subscribe to A New Direction on their favorite podcast platform and give us a 5 star rating we are so grateful when you do!

Executive Performance Coach  |  Host of A New Direction

Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance. The conversations go deep. We talk about the decisions that built companies, the mistakes that nearly destroyed them, and the personal breakthroughs that changed everything.

But here’s what most people don’t know about me: the show is an extension of the work I do every day with executives behind closed doors.

I’m an Executive Performance Coach. I work with CEOs and founders of $5M-$50M companies who have hit a wall they can’t explain. The marketing looks fine. The team is capable. The market is there. But the business won’t move.

The problem, almost every time, is the person running it.

I find the personal behavioral patterns that are driving the business dysfunction. Then I help the CEO disrupt those patterns so the company can grow. That’s it. No motivational platitudes. No vision boards. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up as a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska—population 100. I started working at nine years old. By the time I left for college, I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, pain is part of the job, and the work has to get done whether you feel like it or not. I was fourteen the first time I had to castrate boars. Nobody was going to do it for me. That lesson never left: sometimes you have to do things afraid.

The forensic psychology unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham—co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis—in a human behavior lab focused on real-world problems. I then served in a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington, a forensic setting where I conducted psychological evaluations of individuals charged with the most serious criminal offenses. Sixteen months assessing human behavior at its most extreme taught me how to cut through defenses, identify what’s really driving someone’s decisions, and see what they can’t see in themselves.

What are you hiding — and what is it actually costing you? Not just in your business, but in your marriage, your friendships, the relationship with your own kids. That’s the question at the center of my conversation tomorrow at 5pm Eastern, LIVE on A New Direction, with Tyler Dickerhoof, author of the brand-new book The Things We Hide. If you’ve ever wondered why so many high performers still feel alone at the top, this is a conversation about the hidden barriers to authentic leadership — and how to finally tear them down.

Tyler isn’t theorizing about authentic leadership from the sidelines. He built businesses generating over $500 million in combined sales, and sat on John Maxwell’s Network Marketing Advisory Council. But he’ll tell you the whole time he was doing it, he was hiding — behind the results, behind the intensity, behind the belief that his worth was tied to how much he knew and how hard he could push. It took losing his younger brother Joel as a teenager, and decades of pushing people away while pushing through everything alone, before Tyler finally turned around and faced what he’d spent 25 years running from. That turn is exactly what separates performance from authentic leadership.Shorten with AI

That’s the real subject of The Things We Hide: the hidden barriers that keep capable, driven people from ever leading — or living — authentically. Tyler breaks it down into what he calls the Four Walls of Insecurity: Intensity, Inactivity, Insensitivity, and Isolation. These are the defense mechanisms so many high achievers mistake for strengths. We’re going to talk about why “intensity is a bulldozer” that clears a path for success but leaves relationships in the wreckage. We’re going to talk about the lie that leadership has to be lonely. And we’re going to unpack his core message, one every leader chasing authentic leadership needs to hear: what you hide controls you, what you face transforms you.

So clear your schedule, and join us for a real conversation about hidden barriers, vulnerability, and what authentic leadership actually looks like once the performance drops away. Bring your questions, bring your comments, and bring whatever wall you’ve been hiding behind — because Tyler and I are going to talk about how to tear it down without tearing yourself apart in the process. This isn’t just another leadership interview.

Tyler Dickerhoof’s book, “The Things We Hide: A Guide to Identifying Hidden Barriers and Leading with Authenticity” is a deep, insightful view into ourselves that most of us do not want to look at.  And yet, is fundamentally required if we want to achieve both true significance and success.

We all have walls.  We all have fears and insecurities.  For most of us we will never admit them throughout our lifetime.  Instead, when our insecurities are triggered, we become intense, maybe we become inactive hoping this will just go away, perhaps it we resort to becoming insensitive because the more calluses that we have we don’t have to feel others’ pain, or maybe we just isolate and disappear.  Maybe it is some combination of all of these. The point is…our insecurities will show up.

So what do we do about it?  Well this is where this book separates itself from so many others.  Tyler includes exercises and free assessments in the book that if you choose to take on the mission can start moving you onto the path of true significance, success, and real authentic leadership.

This book is not going to be easy.  It is going to challenge you. It is going to make you uncomfortable, but growth comes from being comfortable getting uncomfortable. This book will make you think and help you grow if you choose to follow his guidelines.  I loved every page!

Get your copy of The Things We Hide by clicking here!

Please reach out to our sponsors and LIKE their social media pages as their financial contributions help keep A New Direction on the air and bring us great guests.

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Locally owned, and independent of any national brand, they have literally helped people all over the world by finding the best real estate professional in your area.  And because they are independent they are unbiased who they choose because they have relationships with the best agents regardless of company.

So, if you live somewhere else, or you live in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Research Triangle Park, before you sell or buy your home, start with the “legends” that know the local market, and stay on the bleeding edge of technology at Linda Craft Team, REALTORS…you can learn more by going to www.LindaCraft.com

Executive Performance Coach  |  Host of A New Direction

Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance. The conversations go deep. We talk about the decisions that built companies, the mistakes that nearly destroyed them, and the personal breakthroughs that changed everything.

But here’s what most people don’t know about me: the show is an extension of the work I do every day with executives behind closed doors.

I’m an Executive Performance Coach. I work with CEOs and founders of $5M-$50M companies who have hit a wall they can’t explain. The marketing looks fine. The team is capable. The market is there. But the business won’t move.

The problem, almost every time, is the person running it.

I find the personal behavioral patterns that are driving the business dysfunction. Then I help the CEO disrupt those patterns so the company can grow. That’s it. No motivational platitudes. No vision boards. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up as a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska—population 100. I started working at nine years old. By the time I left for college, I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, pain is part of the job, and the work has to get done whether you feel like it or not. I was fourteen the first time I had to castrate boars. Nobody was going to do it for me. That lesson never left: sometimes you have to do things afraid.

The forensic psychology unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham—co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis—in a human behavior lab focused on real-world problems. I then served in a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington, a forensic setting where I conducted psychological evaluations of individuals charged with the most serious criminal offenses. Sixteen months assessing human behavior at its most extreme taught me how to cut through defenses, identify what’s really driving someone’s decisions, and see what they can’t see in themselves.

Are you struggling to transition from a high-performing technical expert to an effective people manager? On the next live episode of A New Direction, best-selling author Steven Riddle joins us for Part 2 of our deep dive into his book, Falling into Leadership. Join us as we tackle the critical leadership mindset shift required when stepping into executive roles. Many new managers fall into the trap of leading through the exact technical skills that got them promoted, failing to realize that team management and executive growth require an entirely different playbook.

One of the biggest hurdles in leadership development is mastering difficult conversations in leadership. Why do founders and executives endlessly rehearse tough performance reviews or confrontational talks in their head, only to avoid having them altogether? Steven exposes how surface-level communication erodes trust and why moving toward active listening and practical empathy is essential for creating psychological safety. By understanding the nuance between empathy, sympathy, and apathy, leaders can stop micromanaging and start asking powerful questions that build real engagement and clarity.

As you climb the organizational ladder, executive loneliness becomes an unmistakable reality. The higher you advance, the more isolated decision-making feels, making emotional intelligence and self-awareness non-negotiable tools for survival. We discuss how resilient leadership helps senior executives navigate uncertainty, adapt to constant workplace change, and lead with steady character rather than relying on sheer force of personality. True adaptability isn’t about avoiding stress; it’s about maintaining presence under pressure so you can guide your team through disruption without getting knocked off center.

Ultimately, the leadership mindset shift is from task-based management to sustainable leadership requires mastering effective delegation and structuring high-impact 1-on-1 meetings that foster team accountability. Strong organizational culture isn’t built top-down through rigid policy; it is forged daily through authentic connection, shared values, and mutual respect. Tune in to New Direction, to learn how to focus on the human inputs that drive high performance and leave behind a lasting leadership legacy.

Steve Riddle’s book, “Falling Into Leadership: How Leaders Emerge, Grow and Lead With Purpose” is a play by play guide into coaching a new leader. In Steve Riddle’s approach we are introduced to a new emerging leader in Sally who is open and willing to change as a leader, but is uncertain of the steps. In 8 sessions Steve Riddle walks us through his process of coaching that helps you have a Leadership Mindset Shift to help you go from promoted to great.

Steve Riddle has a very organized approach that starts with focusing on the leader’s own self-awareness. His big push is if that self-awareness is only the beginning, but without it, you will never get to the next steps of growth. His methodology of using questions to push the client are both refreshing and eye opening for all of us.  And that leadership mindset shift is fundamentally necessary for growth.

Behind the curtain he takes through the importance of emotional intelligence, communication, adaptability, resilience, and what true accountability looks like. He emphasizes the importance of the leaders role of empowering, inspiring, and influencing those the leader leads, and helps us recognize that as a leader our responsibility is to leave a legacy of leaders in our employees.

Packed with tons of insights and thought provoking questions, and leadership mindset shifts, the book, in my opinion is using the case of Sally to take a closer look at ourself. Some of our dysfunctional mindsets, becoming more self-aware and becoming the leader we had always hoped we would become.

Please reach out and thank the awesome sponsors of A New Direction:

Every real estate agent is asking the same question right now: is AI going to help me, or leave me behind? Here’s the honest answer — the agents who’ve learned to use it are already pulling ahead. They’re writing listings in minutes, answering every lead the second it comes in, and following up until customers become clients, all without adding hours to their week. And if you’re not using AI yet — because you’re not sure how, or it honestly feels a little intimidating — you’re not behind. You’re exactly who this was built for. You don’t need to be technical or “good with computers.” You just need a clear, plain‑English path to putting these tools to work in your business.

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Linda Craft Team, Realtors when you are looking to sell your home or buy a new home start with what their clients refer to as “the legends of customer service”.

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Executive Performance Coach  |  Host of A New Direction

Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance. The conversations go deep. We talk about the decisions that built companies, the mistakes that nearly destroyed them, and the personal breakthroughs that changed everything.

But here’s what most people don’t know about me: the show is an extension of the work I do every day with executives behind closed doors.

I’m an Executive Performance Coach. I work with CEOs and founders of $5M-$50M companies who have hit a wall they can’t explain. The marketing looks fine. The team is capable. The market is there. But the business won’t move.

The problem, almost every time, is the person running it.

I find the personal behavioral patterns that are driving the business dysfunction. Then I help the CEO disrupt those patterns so the company can grow. That’s it. No motivational platitudes. No vision boards. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up as a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska—population 100. I started working at nine years old. By the time I left for college, I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, pain is part of the job, and the work has to get done whether you feel like it or not. I was fourteen the first time I had to castrate boars. Nobody was going to do it for me. That lesson never left: sometimes you have to do things afraid.

The forensic psychology unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham—co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis—in a human behavior lab focused on real-world problems. I then served in a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington, a forensic setting where I conducted psychological evaluations of individuals charged with the most serious criminal offenses. Sixteen months assessing human behavior at its most extreme taught me how to cut through defenses, identify what’s really driving someone’s decisions, and see what they can’t see in themselves.