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This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
A low.
Ways, Well, if you were to call up Central Casting and say get me a CEO, I think it's fair to say they would not get you. Our next guest. He's a self described trailer park kid who lived in twenty three states before even getting to high school. He went to college, but he didn't get an MBA from an Ivy League school, like so many of those who
do end up leading companies. He started as a copywriter at a local ad agency just out of college, and from there worked his way up to become an EVP COO, president and ultimately co founder and president and then CEO and chairman of Young Brands. It's the largest fast food operator in the world world based on number of restaurants. It's the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. And he attributes his success to a simple thing, being
an active learner. It's what he writes this new book about. We're talking about David Novak. He chronicles all of this in a new book it's out today. It's called How Leaders learn master the habits of the world's most successful people. David joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive at Brokers Studio.
Welcome Tim. Thanks for that really outstanding introduction. You're welcome the least likely CEO ever. I love it.
Well, you know, that's actually where I want to start, because you've got a really interesting story, especially as a young person. How did you end up living in twenty three places before high school?
Well, my dad was a government surveyor, so he did the longitude and latitude points and mark maintenance surveying in basically small town America. I was born in Beeville, Texas. Lived in small towns, never on the East coast, never on the west coast, Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, Dodge City, Kansas. I'm the only person you know that's lived in Dodge City, Kansas twice. We moved every three months. We hooked up
the government trucks. My dad was with the surveying party, so we had like fifteen families and we all lived in trailers, and we moved from trailer park to trailer park.
And so you're with the same families the whole time.
Yeah, I had in my neighborhood I thought everybody did it.
Everybody says, how could you live in a trailer and move all that time? But it was actually an I think idellic upbringing. You know, I learned when you move into new environments all the time, you have to learn how to scope out situations, new situations, learn you know people. It really helped me with my people instincts. I always learned your like one one friend away from happiness. My mom always checked me in these schools and she said, David, you better make a friend because we're.
Leaving and hello.
I also learned that when you go into a new situation, tim it's really nice when you have somebody come up and make you feel welcome. So, as I moved up the ladder in business, I when I saw new people come in, I always made it a priority to come in and come up and say welcome to the team, Glad you're here. But there are all kinds of learnings I got from that upbringing, one of which is you just can't stereotype people. You know, there's no such thing
as trailer trash. I had fifteen families. All they wanted for their kids to was live the American dream. When I played little League Baseball I had, I had, you know, ten people out there watching me, other people lucky to have.
One of their parents there.
It was very supportive and encouraging, and that environment it was something I really tried to take into the corporate world as well.
So can you walk us through a little bit more of your career path and then we'll get into your book. But I think everyone is so curious, you know, how did you go from this kid in the trailer park to eventually CEO of the multi national.
Well, it has a lot to do with the book. You know how leaders learned because you don't have a very untraditional path. I went to the University of Missouri. I got a bachelor in journalism. My first two years I was a very poor student, but then I found out I loved advertising, and I majored in advertising, and then I became really turned on. I started learning everything that I possibly could about it. I graduated in nineteen seventy four, and that was back when inflation was almost
twenty percent. I know, we talked about it now, and you know how hard it is to get jobs and journalism anyway, But I got the first job I got was a copywriter at a really small advertising agency in Washington, d C. I liked that a lot, and then I moved on into account management in the advertising world, worked on Heinz fifty seven sauce. Then I went to Dallas and ran the Tostitos account and work my way up the Freedom account, which was a part of PepsiCo.
And there I had a lot.
Of success with the senior management there and they recommended me to go to PepsiCo to run marketing for pizzad And I was the first non MBA to ever go to PepsiCo and to run a marketing department.
Was was this before or after you invented cool ranch to ride?
It was after I invented the cool ranch Doritos.
That was part of the success that.
Yeah.
Can you tell us about that?
Yeah? I write about in.
The book because you know, one of the learnings I have is that you can really, uh multiply your creativity and your innovation by being a pattern thinker.
So we had nacho Cheese to.
Ritos, which was really doing well, but it was starting to slow down a little bit. So we were looking for a new product idea for free to lay.
So I said, team, let's go to the.
Grocery store and see what's happening there. So we walked up and down each aisle and we got to the salad dressing aisle and we saw that ranch flavor salad dressings was the most popular new flavor that had been introduced. So I came back and I called Dennis Hurd, the head of R and D for Free to Lay, and I said, you think we could do a ranch flavored Dorito And he said absolutely.
And I'll tell you when.
I when those those cool ranch stritos came off the line and we had them, we knew we had a home run. Tasted great, and then we we learned from from nacho cheese doritos. Nacho cheese is you have a known quan of ea cheese and you want to put a unique image to it, which is not just. So he said, what can we call our ranch flavored to edo? And we call it cool ranch to Rito's and the rest is rest is history.
I mean, now you've got, you know, taco shells made out of Dorito's.
Dorito's and ranch flavored and you know, So that's again pattern thinking where you take two seemingly unrelated things and you bring them together and you come up with big ideas. You know, I always say most innovation is a derivative of something else that's.
Going on somewhere in the world.
And as a learner, you need to be curious enough to see what's going on out there, and then asking yourself a very simple question, you know, how could I apply this to my business? Or if you're learning from an individual, what is that individual doing that I could do to propel my career or make me better, make me stronger at what I do.
So at what point in your career did you come to this idea that you talk about in the book Active Learning? Was there a particular moment that you remember it kind of struck you?
Well, you know what happened to me was when I started loving what I did, I wanted to learn everything I could about it. And then when I was, you know, at Young Brands as a CEO, I was always interviewing people and it really hit me that the avid learner is really what you want because they love what they do and they're trying to get better. And then when I was writing this book, I started out with the thought of being an avid learner, and I said, no,
it's more than that. Because you can be a learner and be BookSmart, but if you don't put it into use, if you don't make it active, you're not really applying it like you should. So I said, what we're really talking about here is teaching people how to be active learners in their life and in their business. So it was sort of a progression, Emily.
Despite the fact that you are no longer CEO and chairman of Young Brands, you've still been actively learning and you have a podcast I should note that has had millions of downloads How Leaders Lead. Some of the folks on the podcast are featured in the book and vice versa. You have some incredible names featured in the Tom Brady,
Eric Church, Jamie Diamond, Andrew Nui. Talk a little bit about who you wanted to feature in the book and really the message and how their message sort of ties together.
Well, I've done about one hundred and eighty podcasts so far, and I just really was looking for stories that would amplify, you know, the points that I wanted to make about, you know, how to be an active learner, like how to prepare you know, Yamini Rangon, she's the CEO of HubSpot. I got to tell you she was so prepared for my podcast that she made me want to do a good job for her, you know. And but that preparation is so important, and all the great leaders really have preparation,
you know. So it's I just kind of picked the leader and the story that would amplify the points that I wanted to make.
Yeah, talk about that from the Tom Brady perspective, because people might look at Tom Brady and say, this guy, you know what, during his career was good enough at football, but he's still his routine. The prep that he did was just remarkable.
Absolutely, you know.
And I think people ask me a lot of times who's the most impressive leader I've ever met. I think it is Tom Brady really, because he knows his trade, he knows how to inspire his teammates, he knows how to raise the bar, he knows how people are different. He treated Gronk different than Walker Welker. You know, he just understood, you know, how to pull all the levers, and he was active is an active learner right now.
I know he's getting ready for the broadcast booth, and I guarantee you he's going to want to be the best color commentator for Fox that he can possibly possibly be because that's who he is. But I know he's spending time with Nance, I know he's learning a lot from other people, and you know that's what he's that's what he's into. And like he went to Tom House right to learn how to throw the football and throw it better. Now, he could have gone to Tom House and learn and
go back and do the same old thing, and he's doing. No. He turned it into action and improved his footwork and he thinks that's how his career was extended.
I want to get right back to David Novak. He's the co founder and former CEO and chairman of Young Brands. He's here with us in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. He's got a brand new book out. It's called How
Leaders Learn Master the Habits of the World's Most Successful People. David, I want to go back to a question that Emily asked a little earlier and sort of ask it in a different way and just kind of like here, No, it was a really good question, but it's just like I want to know when you realize, like when you realized at the when that you were an active learner like, was it when you sat down to write this book, or was it at some point in your career you
realized that the reason I'm moving faster in the corporate world than my peers is because I'm doing this. Did you realize it at the time or did you only know it when you sat down to think about your career.
I think I've realized it over time. I don't know if there's exact epiphany point. But the one thing that I've always done a lot of.
Is self reflection and self awareness. So I started that very early on in my career and.
Would always like, if I was working in one job, I'd look at my boss and I'd figure out, what does that person have that I don't have? How do I get that skill so I could move up? And I constantly tried to get better and better. And I always told people, I'm not going to tell you I'm the smartest guy in the room, but I don't think there are too many people that are better at learning and collaborating than I am.
That's exactly why I wanted to ask this was because I don't think a lot of people make time for self reflection for their career as much as they should, and I'm wondering how you can work that into your day to day at your job, Like what tips do you have for folks who are listening right now who might say themselves, you know what I do? Go to work every day and I think a lot about my job, but I don't like take a step back and kind of look at the thirty thousand foot view of my career.
Well, I think that's a great point toom because I think if it's important, you got to put pross some discipline around it to really make sure that happens. I think it starts out with an annual assessment that you make of yourself. And I always did what I called the three by five card exercise with the four x six it really doesn't matter, but on one half of the card, I write down this is what I am today, basis everything I know. And then on the other half I write down, this is what I need to be
tomorrow to be even more effective. And that was where I would start on the self reflection. And then what I would do is I would send out my three x five card to the top fifty leaders and they would send me theirs, and then we would talk about how we were doing on that throughout the year in addition to going through our objectives, and then how do you build it into your day to day.
Well, I always started out the night before.
I would always think about what I needed to get done the next day, and then I would think about who I had to influence, what the issues were going to be, and I get myself paired to leverage whatever skills I need to have to make a successful meeting.
Then in the morning, I wake up and I would always work out to get my physical being moving, and then also taking time to have personal reflection and I would write down I write down three gratitudes because I think one of the best things you can do as a leader is go in to work with your mood elevator high. You know that you make your best decisions when you're grateful and you're in that state of gratitude. You make your worst decisions when you're angry, revengeful, down
at the very bottom of the elevator. So I always try to move myself up to at least six or seven in the mood elevator, which is curious and interested because I really believe that you have to bring your positive energy to work. People got to be looking at you and saying, okay, thanks are good. You know, if you're walking around like e or and you're the head of the company, that's a bad thing.
I saw something on Twitter that was about reframing the things that you tell yourself when you're going into work, So saying I get to go to work today instead of saying I.
Have to go.
Just these little simple changes have they've helped me? I mean, I love getting to We.
Write about in the book we talk about just adding one little word yet you know I haven't done it yet exactly, just to add that, just reframe it a little bit, and you know, flip the script. Somebody's you know, telling you you can't do something, you know, asking well, how would.
You do it right?
You know.
One another kind of like cliche that you hear a lot is people say learn from your mistakes, learn from your failures. You had a failure that was made fun of on SNL. Can you tell us about, you know, how how that went down and how you act to actually.
Learned from your failure?
Right?
What you're talking about is crystal pepsi. When I went to pepsi, the category was declining carbonate soft drinks needed a real boost. When I looked around on to find reality, looked at the market, I saw that the clear beverages were really doing well. Clearly Canadian water, anything it had any kind of healthy overtones or perception seemed to be working. So I was sitting in my office one day and I said, what if we came up with a clear cola? And you know, I thought it was a great idea.
I called Roger and Rico. They had a Pepsi and I said, what do you think?
He is great? You know, I think I could be good. You know, check it out with consumers. So I go to consumers. They love it.
Now I think I've really got a great idea. I rush it into test market. He goes into Boulder, comes off the line. You know, Dan Rather, CBS News says, today, you know, Pepsi launched crystal Pepsi.
You know, I think I'm a genius.
Now I go to the Pepsicola bottlers and they say, David, this is a really good idea. There's only one problem with it, and what's that? And they said, doesn't taste enough like pepsi. And I said, well, we don't want it to taste like pepsi because it's a different kind of pepsi. And they said, well, doesn't have enough colon notes.
Oh, yes it does. We don't want to have too.
Many colonotes because we'll cannibalize based pepsi. So I totally dismissed what they had to say, and so I was a heat seeking missile got it on the Super Bowl. It was the only product in the history of Pepsicola Company that was premium priced as an introduction because the Pepsicola bottler said that it wasn't going to be around that long, you know, because they knew they could sell a lot of it, but then it.
Wouldn't be a repeat and so we launched it. Guess what happens.
You know, everybody buys it, but the repeats very low because it didn't taste enough like pepsi.
They were right.
And the learning that I had is that, you know, one thought I always had was some people say it can't be done every step of the way, and that means you, as the leader, you.
Got to just step up.
You got to get it done no matter what, because they don't get what you get. Well, the first thing you got to ask yourself is are they right or not, And I was such a heat seeking missile to get this into the marketplace. I didn't really I knew I was right and I didn't care what anybody else had to say.
We have thirty seconds left. But talk about how you recovered from that and kept moving forward.
Well, what I learned was You've always got to overcome the barriers and obstacles, and you know you need to get the input, and you need to be a much better listener.
And I've never forgotten that lesson.
David, thanks for joining us. Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
David Novak is the co founder and former CEO and chairman of Young Brands. His new book it's out now. It's called How Leaders Learn Master The Habits of the World's Most Successful People. Got some great interviews in the book, including Condolly's of Rice, Tom Brady, Eric Church, Jamie Diamond, among many many others. He's also got a podcast out with a lot of the folks who I just mentioned and more executives who see's interviewed. It's called How Leaders Lead,
and he also includes stories from his own life too. Again, the new book, How Leaders Learned Master the Habits of the World's most successful people, Well Emily. Twenty five years ago, the singer, songwriter, dancer, superstar Usher Raymond Fourth, known to all of us simply as Usher, Usher start an organization two in its own words, transform the lives of under resourced youth through a comprehensive program which develops passion driven
global leaders. Since then, the now nonprofit has worked with more than fifty thousand young people Here in the US, We've got with us Kresha Moore, President and CEO of Usher's New Look, also known as the unl Foundation. Krisha joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. Welcome, Thank you, Tim and Emily.
Nice to see you and be able to share a little bit more about you and l.
Well, and welcome to New York because I believe based in Atlanta.
I'm based in Atlanta.
What brings you to New York?
Today? We are hosting our Women of Influence Spring tea that we host here annually to celebrate women in business, in philanthropy and in the community for the great things that they're doing that relate to the mission of the organization. And so we have this tea will be on ing some women from IBM Chase as well as SAX. But there'll be women from various industries as well as youth in our program to be inspired but also to inspire.
So tell us more about NL. How did it come to be and what was Usher's involvement In the beginning.
In nineteen ninety nine, Usher was thinking, how can I help young people get a new look on life? He and his mom they actually sat in the courtroom of Judge Glinda Hatchett and observed a court proceeding, a juvenile proceeding, and they said, these young people their leaders. They just
need mentors, they need some support, they need exposure. And so he created Usher's New Look to be able to provide that and give youth a new look on life through workforce development, but also exploring their spark, their passion. He found his passion early on and knew that that changed his life, and so to be able to provide that to young people twenty five years later is exactly what we're doing.
I want to share with people information about the program because I think it's unique in several ways. One is that it's a decade long program, but also that it starts essentially when these kids are teenagers. So it starts relatively late. Take us through what exactly happens to these teenagers over that ten year period.
So from fourteen to twenty four, our young people can participate in Usher's new look, and we have standard, bear and comprehensive programming that starts with one day training that we host in schools, and the unique thing about that is that it's peer to peers, So our post secondary students are standing in front of their peers fourteen year old and teaching them about leadership, about business, about financial literacy,
and their spark. We also have an after school program for high school students in Atlanta as well as in New York, where they do a deep dive into our four pillars talent education, career in service. We believe those
four pillars help to develop global, passion driven leaders. And then once those students graduate high school, which we have one hundred percent high school graduation rate for students who participate, they go on to post secondary and we support them with transition into adulthood by teaching them executs and functioning skills, but also connecting them with companies, internships, and learning about life skills that they need to be amazing citizens that they are.
It's interesting that you start in middle school. Can you talk a little bit about, at least for the youngest kids in the program, what are the top resources that they need right now?
The top resources that they need. And we just did a study actually last year with young people, what do you feel is the most prevalent issues facing you and your peers? And those top things that came out right now are mental health supports and strategies to help them cope with those things. As we know, we have come out of a global pandemic and so that has changed a bit. But also learning about financial literacy and exposure
to various careers. You know, if you can't see it, you can't be it, is what we say, and so being able to show them various careers where they can use their skills and talents is important as well.
Why is fourteen to twenty four the right age to focus on I was talking with Elizabeth Cedrin, our producer, about this earlier and the idea there are a lot of nonprofits that focus on essentially college to cradle, right the idea are cradle to college excuse me, the idea of starting very young and going to college age. Why focus on fourteen to twenty four.
That's the age where they're starting to increase their future orientation. They're understanding their you know, their agency and developing the life that they want at that time. And so we're able to share and embark upon the impart upon them the skills and strategies that they need to be successful.
Do you ever get any pushback from folks who say that's too late, we need programs earlier.
You know what, No, there are forty two million young people here in the United States, and so there are organizations that focus on younger and we happen to focus on that fourteen to twenty four. It's not a silver bullet, it's not just one year, but we stay with them for the entire time. As you notice, fourteen to twenty four.
It's intern season. Tim, I'm wonderful.
I saw I came in yesterday morning. It said welcome interns.
There's a lot of interns. There's a lot of kind of early career career energy in the building right now. Yes, you know, how, how what kind of resources are you giving to those older I guess students in early career people in the program?
What exactly are they looking for? Right So? We partner with various private and public sector entities to help do resume reviews for the students. They do mock interviews, they learn about different careers that are out there. They also
learn about the internship process. You know, we don't want to assume that they know exactly how that works, and so we start teaching them from the time that they are in high school, eleventh grade through college what they need to do to be ready, but also providing them with the skills that they need, especially when you're talking about work of now in the work of the future.
So we have a partnership right now with IBM where our students are having access to IBM skills built so that they can learn more about artificial intelligence, but also career ready skills so that they're ready to not just do the careers of the future, but also lead.
We're Bloomberg.
We love numbers. Yes, you mentioned one percent graduation rate, which is just incredible for any program. I don't care what program we're talking about here, but one hundred percent anything is amazing. What are some other metrics that you use as kids get closer to aging out of the program. I can't call them kids actually, as their young adults. Young adults get closer to aging out of the program. That is a metric for success, like how do you know this is working?
Right? So we work very closely with evaluators. We have a logic model that focuses on our objectives and what we're looking for is change in behaviors and attitudes. So we're looking to the fact do they have a physical resume, are they ready to go to work? But also do they have a change thought about their impact and what they can do in their community, how they can lead in their community, as well as the skills that they have gained. Do they have a bank account? Do they
understand what savings and personal budgeting means for them? And so those are some of the objectives that we have as well.
We talk about this all the time, these personal finance skills. This is not taught in school. You only know about this stuff if you learn from family friends. Meant that's right, So you leave college or leave high school not knowing simple things that look simple to a lot of people but are actually kind of tough to do on your own.
Exactly, And we find ourselves busting a lot of myths that they may have around credit, around saving around, just earning potential and those sorts of things. And what we find is that again through our evaluations, that financial literacy scores the highest on all of our training. It's what our young people say, I didn't know much about that at all, and now I know a lot, and I'm able to share that with my peers as well as my family. So you're right. I mean, we don't talk
about it a lot. It's pretty taboo, but they're learning and they're able to go and share and be ambassadors with their community. It's really empowering.
And that's a I'm wondering if you have any other examples of kind of a statistic like that, so we can end on a high note.
Absolutely. So when you talk about first generation college students about fifty one percent in the United States, and we are now at about eighty percent of our students and getting them on to go on to career, we end up with about ninety percent of our students going on to college. And so when you have eighty one percent first gin and ninety percent of them are going to college and graduating within five years, that is something that we are very very proud of.
It is a really cool program. Thank you so much for joining us during your visit to New York. That's Karsha More, President and CEO of Usher's new Look. It is the now nonprofit that twenty five years ago, the singer, songwriter, dancer, superstar Usher Raymond the Fourth started with his own mom