Episodes

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 con...

“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...

Time Management Is a Myth: 5 Rules to Own Your Focus 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, ...

Inside Episode 400: What A New Direction with Coach Jay Uncovered About My Life, Values, and Purpose 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...

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. L...

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, h...

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 ...

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 L...

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 perfor...

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 g...

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 Ethi...

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 co...

A 4-Step Process to Stop Stressing and Your Team Start Leading What if the exact habits that built your success are now the very thing quietly holding your business back? You hustled, you solved every problem, you held the standard — and it worked, so it became automatic. But somewhere along the way the company stopped being able to run without you, your talented team stopped stepping up, and you started wondering why working harder only makes the wheel spin faster. If any of that lands a litt...

You Don’t Need a Business Transformation…you need a YOU Transformation Ever feel like you’re doing all the “right” things—reading the self-help books, checking off your goals, grinding every day—but inside, you’re still wrestling with the exact same anxieties? You aren’t broken; you’ve just hit the ceiling of what your current self can handle. Real, lasting change requires more than just adding new habits to your daily routine; it demands a total identity transformation. If you are ready to sto...

Forget McDonald’s and Chick-Fi-A Non-Food Franchising May be a Better Bet When most people think of starting a business, their minds immediately go to fast food. We’ve been conditioned to associate “franchising” with burgers, fries, and massive overhead. But in his game-changing book, “Non-food franchising: The Better Path to Business Ownership,” Jon Ostenson explains why you might want to leave the grease traps behind. This isn’t just about picking a different industry; it’s about a fundamenta...

Innovation Comes from “Inside” the box, NOT “outside” of the box This week on A New Direction with Coach Jay, we are stepping into a conversation that may challenge almost everything we have been told about innovation. We have heard the phrase “think outside the box” so many times it has almost become business wallpaper. But Sheri Jacobs, author of The Unexpected Power of Boundaries: Rethinking the Rules, Risks, and Real Drivers of Innovation, asks a much deeper question: what if the real secre...

Want to Get Promoted? You Probably Don’t Know What You Don’t Know… We just wrapped up an incredible episode of A New Direction with Craig A. Fleming, author of The Unwritten Rules of Leadership, and the insights were a major wake-up call for anyone looking to get promoted. If you missed the live conversation, we dived deep into the “hidden curriculum” of the corporate world—those unspoken do’s and don’ts that determine who stays in middle management and who gets promoted to the C-suite. The co...

Nobody Taught You to Lead — Steve Riddle Knows Why That Matters What happens when a high-performing employee gets promoted into leadership with no playbook, no mentor, and no preparation? According to leadership coach Steve Riddle, this is not the exception — it is the rule. On this week’s episode of A New Direction Live, I sat down with Steve to discuss his book Falling Into Leadership: How Leaders Emerge, Grow and Lead With Purpose, a coaching-driven narrative that pulls back the curtain on t...

If You’re Alive You Still Have a Mission Many people reach a point in life where they feel they have hit a ceiling. You’ve worked hard, checked the boxes, and achieved your goals, yet there is a nagging sense that the excitement has faded. David McNally, in his profound book If You’re Alive Your Mission on Earth Isn’t Finished, argues that this isn’t the end of the road, but a call to a higher purpose. If you are still here, it is because there is a unique contribution only you can make, regard...

Are You Truly Aware of the Comfort Zones that are Killing Your Success? Are you living under the illusion that you know what you want, when you’re actually just chasing what you’re supposed to want? Research shows that a staggering 85% of people don’t believe their current goals will lead to any significant accomplishments. In this episode on A New Direction, Art Turock, author of Demolish Your Comfort Zones, returns to help you break that cycle. We’re exposing the “ready-made” goals that keep ...

AI is not the Enemy…It is Your Ally This week on A New Direction, I’ll be talking with Tim Burrell, author of The AI Negotiator, and this is a conversation that hits right at the heart of where sales is headed. Because let’s be honest—sales has never just been about techniques, scripts, or slick presentations. It has always been about people. It has always been about trust, timing, understanding emotion, and knowing how to connect in a way that makes someone feel seen, heard, and confident enou...

Stop Networking More — Start Networking Smarter What if the secret to growing your business wasn’t more connections — but *fewer*? This week on *A New Direction with Coach Jay Izso*, I sit down with David Ackert, Co-Founder and CEO of PipelinePlus and one of the most respected business development minds in the professional services world. Over the past two decades, Ackert has pioneered revenue acceleration programs for hundreds of professional services firms worldwide, and he’s bringing all of...

Faith as the Foundation for Leadership, Purpose, and Success For Jim Allen, faith isn’t a compartmentalized part of life; it is the bedrock upon which his entire leadership philosophy is built. In a high-stakes industry like real estate, where the pressure to perform can often lead to a “me-first” mentality, Jim’s faith provides a different North Star. It instills a sense of stewardship, reminding him that his platform and success are not just personal achievements, but tools meant to be used f...

Discovering Your Life and Career Map. Join us on A New Direction for an exploration of the mental frameworks that define a successful life and career map. We are sitting down with Ed Hajim, author of The Island of the Four Ps, to dissect the structural philosophy behind his modern-day fable that is your life and work map. This session isn’t about the past; it’s about the mechanics of the future. We will focus entirely on the inner workings of the “Four Ps”—Passions, Principles, Partners, and Pl...