A New Direction

Find your leadership blind spot: take the free 3-minute Leadership Blind Spot Scorecard at jayizso.com/scorecard Giving Feedback That Can Change Your People “You’re erratic. You let your ego drive you.” Kerry Siggins, CEO of the employee-owned company StoneAge, Inc., heard that from one of her own executives on his way out the door. She didn’t get defensive. She owned it, and that moment shaped her new book, Talk with Trust: How to Own Feedback, Spark Growth, and Build Stronger Teams. On this episode of A New Direction with Coach Jay, Kerry and I got into why giving feedback is the leadership skill most of us avoid, and what that avoidance is costing our teams. Here’s the hard truth. Holding back when giving feedback because it makes you uncomfortable isn’t kindness. You’re putting your comfort ahead of someone else’s growth. And that compliment sandwich you were taught? Kerry says to throw it out. It confuses people, it waters down the message, and your team already knows you’re sugarcoating it. Feedback is just information. When it’s direct, helpful and kind, giving feedback a gift, not a punishment. Kerry’s answer is the SHARES model, six keys to giving feedback that actually lands: Specify your ideal outcome. Have your facts and feelings ready. Articulate your experience with “I” statements. Reflect with questions and dialogue. Endorse a path forward and ask for a commitment. Stay emotionally grounded. It turns feedback from a lecture into a conversation, and a conversation is where trust gets built. You can’t cheat the harvest, and you can’t grow a team without honest conversations. Watch the full interview below, or subscribe to A New Direction with Coach Jay wherever you get your podcasts. Then pick up Talk with Trust and send this episode to a leader who needs to hear it. Maybe that’s you. Kerry Siggins book, “Talk with Trust: How to Own Feedback, Spark Growth, and Build Stronger Teams” is what I call the quintessential book on how to have an accountability conversation.  Let’s be honest when we say accountability isn’t really just “giving feedback”?  The problem is when giving feedback to hold people accountable typically it is a disaster! Kerry Siggins has written the most insightful, complete, and practical guide to giving feedback for better accountability that I have read in my lifetime.  Here is a truth: we all want our people to improve and be more productive…giving feedback in the right way according to research is a primary catalyst for that. I can’t tell you how many times as a business coach I hear complaints from CEO’s and managers, “Our people need to be held accountable” yet when they do hold them accountable the people get frustrated, they get emotional and sometimes leave.  Is it that they don’t like being held accountable, or the way you are giving feedback is not working? Talk with Trust cuts through all that.  Kerry has research to support her SHARES model, which is a practical model to help give feedback and hold people accountable in a way that they appreciate the help, because they no longer see accountability as a threat or something to be defensive about, but see you as truly trying to help them. Giving feedback is never easy but with Kerry Siggin’s book, “Talk with Trust” you now have a model that can be a game changer for your organization and your people. Get your copy of “Talk with Trust” by clicking here. Our sponsors are so important to A New Direction please do me a favor and just say, “thank you” to them.  I am truly grateful for all you who do reach out! Linda Craft Team, REALTORS for more than 40 years they are known for their “Legendary Customer Service’. It is not a simply a slogan, it is a habit that started from the beginning and that came from her clients.  It starts with doing the right thing by people and then doing what you will say you do, and finding ways to improve.  Because real estate is really about people more than property. They are connected with the best real estate professionals and experts all over the world to help you find the right agent to sell or buy your home. And if you are in the greater Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Research Triangle Park Area you can witness their service first hand.  Just head on over to www.LindaCraft.com Your Business Isn’t Broken. It’s the Person Running It. 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. No Motivational Platitudes 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. Raised on the Farm. Trained in Psychology. 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. How the Work Actually Happens 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. Who This Is For 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. Your Growth Journey Starts Here Big idea, bold goal, or a wall you can’t explain — start the conversation. Book a Breakthrough Call 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.

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. 1. Autopilot Living Is Still a Choice 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. 2. Your Brain Has Competing Voices 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. 3. You Don’t Have to Blow Up Your Life 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. 4. The Real Power Is in Doing It Every Year 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. Start Designing Your Life Today 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 Your Business Isn’t Broken. It’s the Person Running It. 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. No Motivational Platitudes 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. Raised on the Farm. Trained in Psychology. 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. How the Work Actually Happens 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. Who This Is For 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. Your Growth Journey Starts Here Big idea, bold goal, or a wall you can’t explain — start the conversation. Book a Breakthrough Call 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.

6 Pillars of Leadership Most Bosses Get Backwards 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. A New Direction is so grateful to our sponsors, please reach out to them and tell them thank you, and please LIKE their social media pages. 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. So if you have a question, want a free market analysis of your home just click on over to www.LindaCraft.com and Check out their Facebook Page ABOUT YOUR HOST Meet Jay Izso 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. Who I Am 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. Where This Comes From 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.

Mastering the $250,000 Interview: 4 Lessons From Our Conversation With Craig A. Fleming 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. 1. The Interview Starts Long Before You Sit Down 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. 2. Every Question Has a Question Underneath It 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. 3. Your Résumé Isn’t Your Life Story — It’s a Sales Document 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. 4. It Doesn’t End When You Leave the Room 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. Listen to the Full Interview 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. Please reach out and like A New Direction sponsors: Linda Craft Team, REALTORS –www.LindaCraft.com Linda Craft Team Facebook Page – Click Here 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! ABOUT YOUR HOST Meet Jay Izso 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. Who I Am 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. Where This Comes From 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. Who Is Josh Block? 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. Why Workplace Culture Starts With “We,” Not “Me” 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. 3 Shifts That Build a Stronger Workplace Culture Josh breaks it down into three practices any leader can start using right away to strengthen their workplace culture: Lead together, not alone. Shared ownership — not hoarded decisions — is the backbone of a healthy workplace culture. Make decisions with intention. Thoughtful choices beat leading on autopilot, and they signal the kind of workplace culture you’re building. Practice transparency. Managing perception wears leaders out; honesty is what makes a workplace culture people actually trust. 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. Listen to the Full Conversation 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!  Please Thank The Sponsors of A New Direction by LIKING and Following their pages: Linda Craft Team, REALTORS no matter where you live in the world, Linda Craft and her 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. 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! ABOUT YOUR HOST Meet Jay Izso 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. Who I Am 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. Where This Comes From 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.

Servant Leadership: Are You Avoiding It? 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! ABOUT YOUR HOST Meet Jay Izso 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. Who I Am 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. Where This Comes From 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.

You May Think You have Authentic Leadership… But Reality is You and I are Hiding Things We Don’t Want to Look At 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. Linda Craft Team, REALTORs for more than 40 years their clients and friends have said when it comes to real estate they have “legendary customer service”. 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 ABOUT YOUR HOST Meet Jay Izso 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. Who I Am 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. Where This Comes From 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.

3 Hard Truths for a Leadership Mindset Shift 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. That’s what AIREpro Certification is: a step‑by‑step course, built by real estate coaches for real estate agents, that teaches you to use AI to grow your business and make more money. Convert and close more of the leads you already have. Improve your marketing while saving marketing dollars. Get the work of a marketing assistant and a personal assistant for about the price of one lunch a month — not a salary. It’s twelve self‑paced modules, zero jargon, and a certificate that shows clients you’re AI‑ready. Best of all, you can try Module One completely free — no signup, no credit card — and decide for yourself. If it’s a fit, the full certification is just $99 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”. Whether you are in the Greater Raleigh Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina or any where in the world they can help you with your home dreams. Contact our friends Linda Craft Team at www.LindaCraft.com ABOUT YOUR HOST Meet Jay Izso 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. Who I Am 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. Where This Comes From 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.  

Sportify Your Business What separates a championship-winning franchise from a team that can’t even make the playoffs? It’s a locker room culture rooted in a higher standard of fair play, integrity, and a relentless drive to win the right way. In this episode of A New Direction with Coach Jay, we are huddling up to completely redraw your corporate playbook. Join me as I sit down with performance strategist and author Jake Shannon to discuss his groundbreaking book, Sportify: Beyond Business Ethics. We are tossing out the dusty, uninspired compliance manuals and mapping out a radical new game plan where high-level moral codes meet elite athletic execution. In this hard-hitting episode, we are diving deep into the powerful, unexpected intersection of elite sportsmanship and bioethical principlism. Shannon argues that traditional business ethics are fundamentally broken, relying on lazy, defensive legal box-checking that inspires absolutely no one. Instead, he borrows the rigorous, high-stakes ethical frameworks typically used in modern medicine—Autonomy, Beneficence, Non-Maleficence, and Justice—and fuses them with the unyielding spirit of athletic fair play. We’ll discuss how this unique ethical ecosystem creates a transparent, high-trust workplace where your team doesn’t just follow rules out of fear, but actively plays hard for the brand because they respect the game. Sportify isn’t just philosophical theory; it’s about the practical ethics of daily leadership. As coaches and managers, we’ve all dealt with the frustrating drain of “Zombie Labor”—that exhausting scenario where a company pays for full-time salaries but only gets a fraction of the actual effort due to poor morale and toxic corporate governance. Shannon’s Sportify framework tackles this head-on, proving that running an ethical organization is actually the ultimate productivity hack. We will break down how transitioning from an obsolete supervisor model to a dynamic “Head Coach” framework changes everything, allowing you to stop running an “adult daycare” and start engineering a self-governing competitive dynasty. Whether you’re an entrepreneur trying to protect your bottom line or a manager ready to revitalize a disengaged locker room, this episode is your ultimate pre-game brief on how doing the right thing drives winning results. It’s time to stop settling for mediocrity and take your leadership in a bold, new direction. Get ready to upgrade your corporate code of conduct for good. See you on the field and Sportify your business! Jake Shannon’s book, “Sportify: Beyond Business Ethics” is a quick read filled with no nonsense guidance to run your business like a sports team.  Let’s be honest, sports require competition and sportsmanship.  Your business should really run on the same principles. In Sportify, Jake Shannon makes a strong case that you can run a successful and profitable business by applying the same sports and ethical principles that we find in sports. In today’s business world it can feel very difficult to have a winning edge and still play ethically, but Jake Shannon uses examples throughout Sportify to demonstrate that when you play the ethical game, you reduce problems, build trust with customers, obtain the best talent and create a legacy that goes beyond you. The problem for most companies is the question of leadership.  If leadership demonstrates ethical behavior and you make it part of your core values and mission your business will be holding up the championship trophy at the end of the day.  Is it a one time fix? No, it will require practice.  Practice in your daily routines.  Practice with each other.  Practice with your clients and customers and practice in the business and outside of it. Sportify while a quick read is the new way to do business, and do it successfully!  Loved this book.  I highly recommend it. You can get your copy of Sportify by clicking here! We are so grateful for the financial support of the sponsors of A New Direction.  They really do help us secure great authors, books, and distribute the show. Please go to their websites and thank them.  Even going to their social media pages and giving them a LIKE would be awesome! Linda Craft Team, Realtors, their clients say that their customer service is “legendary” and the reason for that is because for more than 39 years they build and maintain personal relationships with their clients. Why?  Because buying and selling of a house is a great deal more than a business transaction, it is a life altering experience. That’s because we don’t just live in a home, some of our most significant memories will be made in that home. Linda and her team are dedicated to taking care of your memory maker as if it were their own. Whether you are about to purchase a new home, or sell your current home, start with the relationship legends.  Start with Linda Craft Team, Realtors – www.LindaCraft.com ABOUT YOUR HOST Meet Jay Izso 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. Who I Am 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. Where This Comes From 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.

Being Alone Isn’t Helping Your Business or You We live in the most connected era in human history, and somehow, we have never been more alone. That paradox is the beating heart of Unknown: Finding Connection in a Disconnected World, the USA Today bestseller from leadership coach and New Hope Church founder Keith Spurgin. After years of advising leaders across North America, Europe, and Africa, Spurgin kept hearing the same quiet confession over and over: “I’m surrounded by people, but I feel completely alone.” Today on A New Direction, he joins us live to talk about why that ache of aloneness shows up everywhere — in marriages, in friendships, and especially in the lives of the leaders we assume have it all figured out.  We can have great success and still be totally alone.  And What makes this conversation different is that Spurgin isn’t speaking from a podium. He’s speaking from the night his wife told him it felt like he had “a mistress” — not another person, but his work, his calling, and his reputation, all of which had quietly crowded her out. It rocked his world, and it took years to rebuild. Thirty-eight years of marriage later, he’s living proof that disconnection doesn’t have to be the end of the story. That honesty is exactly why readers keep saying this book “reflects my own life” and “is going to change my life” — and it’s why this episode is going to hit closer to home than you expect. For leaders, the stakes are even higher. You can build a brilliant strategy, hit every number, and still be running a team of people who don’t actually know each other — or you. You feel everything falls on you…and you are alone at the top. Spurgin argues that healthy culture isn’t built on performance; it’s built on genuine connection, and most of us were never taught how to create it. In this conversation he lays out the practical road map at the core of Unknown: how to move relationships from lifeless and transactional to vibrant and real, and how the leaders who master this end up building teams people never want to leave. If you’ve ever wondered why your organization feels busy but hollow, this is the missing piece. Keith Spurgin‘s book, “Unknown: Finding Connection in a Disconnected World” is an honest, insightful look into the epidemic that is growing around the world.  Being alone and being “unknown”.  The fact of the matter is that being alone and loneliness is growing and no one is talking about it.  Yes are we more technologically connected…sure.  But what we are truly build and designed for is 3-dimensional human connection, and without it according to research comes a number of physical problems with a shorter life span. Keith Spurgin, doesn’t pull any punches in Unknown.  He is vulnerable with his own shortcomings.  He is honest with where he has missed the mark and how in some cases he recovered and others, he did not.  He helps us to understand that having these truly connected deep relationships enhances our lives as not only leaders, but as people.  The problem that most of us face is that we are all broken people and relationships are not easy. Many people believe that they don’t need people.  They have convinced themselves of the lie that they are independent, and life is safer without the complications.  However, what we learn is that even the most independent of us still will try to have relationships, but we bounce from one to another, so we don’t get hurt.  We ultimately fall into the relationship pain cycle. For leaders it is more difficult.  Many have made the choice that being alone is the price to pay for being on top.  Spurgin explains that it’s not the best we to lead.  We are only mediocre at best when we go it alone.  And you can’t go from good to great when you are satisfied with mediocrity. The book takes through some practical steps we all need to consider, because it is not just having great relationships we must choose wisely.  Because you should know that the deeper relationships you have, have your back.  They are the ones who can listen without judgement and yet can call you out when you have gone off the rails.  Does it take time?  Of course it does.  You may say you don’t have the time.  But who’s choice is that? At the end of the day, we come to learn a couple of important factors from Unknown: First, we need relationships to make us better.  Second, love (not in the movie version) of your closest friends changes the landscape of being alone.  And three, we are all broken people, and so relationships require work, vulnerability, forgiveness, and reconciliation.  It’s not easy, but as with anything else, it is the hard things that are worth it.  I highly recommend “Unknown“ Get your copy of Unknown by clicking here.  Make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast so this one lands in your feed. Whether you lead a company, a team, an organization, a church, or a household, you’ll walk away with language for something you’ve felt for years but couldn’t name, and a real path toward changing it. Some episodes inform you. This one might just reconnect you. Don’t watch it alone — share it with the person who needs to hear it most. We really would like to ask you to thank our sponsors.  Their financial support of A New Direction is so critical to helping us provide quality guests, books, and great sounding show. “You tune in to A New Direction to grow your business and your mindset. But you can’t move forward if you’re worried about what’s lurking in your inbox. That’s where Data443 Cyren comes in. It’s the industry standard for real-time email security and URL filtering. They stop phishing and malware before they strike, so you can focus on your success, not your safety. Don’t let a cyberattack derail your journey. Go to Data443.com today and secure your future.“ Linda Craft Team, Realtors they literally are a locally owned independent real estate company,  that serves the world. How can a small company serve the world? They have created relationships with the best real estate experts in the world to help you regardless of where you live get the best person possible. And because they are independent of any national brand, they have relationships with other professionals from all the companies, not just the ones that are part of a national branded network. For more than 39 years they continue to build relationships because that is how Linda started the business and continues to do so today.  Head on over to 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! ABOUT YOUR HOST Meet Jay Izso 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. Who I Am 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. Where This Comes From 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.