JUPITER, FLORIDA | Minutes after their second round had concluded in the National Senior-Junior Championship at the Dye Preserve, David Novak wrapped his partner, Nathan Smith, in a bear hug and began to wax poetic about their self-described bromance.
“You’re the best partner a guy could ask for,” Novak began. “A four-time U.S. Mid-Am champ. Multiple Masters appearances. What else have you done? Three-time Walker Cupper. And you have to be a Walker Cup captain soon, right? You should be the next guest on the How Leaders Lead podcast.”
Novak, 69, wears distinct wrinkles near his eyes, the kind of markings that come from a lifetime of raising your cheeks to laugh or smile. In a group of fellow competitors gathered for an after-round drink, his storytelling and presence earns full attention. If you didn’t know who he was, you would somehow know he was accomplished just by hearing him talk.
There’s a good reason people stop and listen.
Born in Beeville, Texas – a small town of 13,000 people about an hour’s drive north of Corpus Christi – Novak grew up constantly on the move. His father was a government surveyor recording latitudes and longitudes for mapmakers, a job that necessitated the family moving every few months. He had lived in nearly two dozen states by the time he reached his teenage years, a nomadic childhood of random trailer parks being his state of normal.
From those humble beginnings, Novak constructed one of the great American success stories of the 21st century. He received a journalism and advertising degree from the University of Missouri – he and his wife, Wendy, donated $21.6 million to the journalism school back in 2017 for reasons that will become apparent in a moment – before starting as an advertising copywriter at the marketing consultant firm Ketchum. Novak worked his way up the management team at Pizza Hut, becoming the senior vice president of marketing in 1986. PepsiCo, which owned Pizza Hut, was Novak’s next stop as he became the executive vice president of marketing and national sales before becoming chief operating officer of PepsiCo North America. Novak would then become the chief executive officer and president of KFC USA, another brand under PepsiCo, and eventually CEO and president of both KFC and Pizza Hut.
But then Novak’s career really reached a new level. Novak co-founded and served as the CEO for Yum! Brands, the parent company of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and other fast food chains, from 1999 to 2016. Under his leadership, Yum! doubled the amount of restaurants while market capitalization grew from $4 billion to $32 billion.
When he retired from Yum! in 2016, Novak launched David Novak Leadership, a leadership development method that teaches the fine details of leadership through an online training platform, the aforementioned How Leaders Lead podcast, blogs, videos and more. Novak has also penned multiple best-selling books on the subject of leadership, including The Education of an Accidental CEO (2007), Taking People With You (2012) and O Great One! A Little Story About the Power of Recognition (2016). He has a fourth book coming out this March titled How to Take Charge of You, which is a collaboration with Jason Goldsmith, a mental skills coach who has worked with Justin Rose and Jason Day in addition to other top athletes in sport. The book can be pre-ordered at takechargeofyou.com and can also be found on Amazon.
Novak came to golf later in life, but it’s remained a common thread throughout his career. He is a member of Augusta National and an enthusiastic player. After finishing in a tie for 10th (1-under 215) alongside Smith at the Senior-Junior, Novak sat down with Global Golf Post to talk about the influence golf has had in his life.
I actually didn’t start playing seriously until I was 40 years old. I played tennis and when I got out of college, that was my sport. I got achilles tendonitis and got into golf instead, which was the best thing that ever happened to me. I met all my friends in golf, went to some beautiful places through golf, love the competition … my life wouldn’t be filled up without it.
I picked up a club every once in a while. It was one of those things where I did corporate outings and a few rounds per year, but I didn’t take it seriously. When I turned 40, I decided to get serious about it. I joined Silver Spring Country Club in Richville, Connecticut, and I went to the range my first year there and it took me a full summer to get my driver off the ground. But I picked it up fairly quickly after that.
You really get to know people on the golf course. Most people in business enjoy golf. It immediately creates a bonding that you wouldn’t have otherwise. You have something in common when you tee it up. That gets people to open up, share more, build relationships … and that is an important part of business. It’s the ultimate win-win. People always say you can do business on the golf course and you definitely can. Maybe not specifically on the course but it leads to it off the course.
I really do think there is. The best leaders have a lot of belief in themselves and then they work as hard as they can to push themselves to the limit so they can achieve the maximum. Golf is a lot like that. You can’t roll out of bed and say you are going to be a good golfer. If you have the physical capabilities, you have to get the mindset to be right. In business, you can have the products and the services, but if you don’t have the right mindset in terms of bringing it to your customers and the belief you can achieve certain things, it’s not going to happen. Golf is the same way.
The last two days here, I was puring every shot and hitting great golf shots and you think you have it all wired. Today I came out here in alternate shot and I choked like a dog. But my partner, Nathan Smith, I’ve never seen anyone on a golf course with a better demeanor. It doesn’t matter where the ball goes, he is focused on the next shot. He never talks about his past. If you get him to talk about his past accomplishments, he can’t even tell you his Walker Cup record. I admire that. He’s got the mindset of a real champion. I’m a lot better with that in business than in golf. In golf, I know what to do, but I don’t do it.
We started playing in this four years ago. I actually played with his father and then his dad wasn’t going to play the next year, so I bumped his dad out and we’ve been partners ever since. We’re going to come back and win it one of these days.
I’m anywhere from a 2- to 5-handicap. It’s like anything else. I’m trying to become more consistent. To me I like golf because I like the pursuit of mastery. I like to get better. I don’t need to have a lot of people around me. I like to go out and hit balls. I enjoy the solitude of golf and the camaraderie of golf.
I never looked at it as therapy. I always looked at it as enjoyment. There’s nothing like hitting a good golf shot.
I play a lot of club tournaments. I tried last year to qualify for the U.S. Senior Amateur but I didn’t do it. But I have big ambitions in golf. I want to keep trying to qualify for a USGA event or maybe a Coleman at Seminole. Maybe I can win a club championship. I’m trying to get competitive. I have big dreams, but I haven’t achieved them yet.
Our China team (with Yum! Brands) loved golf. I played a lot in Shanghai and Beijing. Played in Thailand. Got my first hole-in-one in Australia at Sydney Golf Club. 7-iron, 162 yards. But I love traveling and playing.
I had some health problems and had to sort through those, but now I play maybe two or three times per week now, try to hit balls as much as I can. I focus on my leadership development. I just wrote a new book with Jason Goldsmith, who helped Jason Day and Justin Rose get to No. 1 in the world. We’re good friends, so we teamed up to write a book on coaching. I coach from a business perspective, he coaches from a sports perspective. We felt like we came at it in very similar ways with the process of coaching.
Well in golf you can have someone coaching you, but when you get out there on the course, there is nobody there. You have to coach yourself. You have to take charge of your own performance. The point of the book is that your life is way too important to delegate it to someone else. We found that you have to start by asking yourself a lot of questions to understand who you are. Self-awareness is absolutely key. You have to keep digging for what gives you joy. What is the single biggest thing you want to accomplish in your life? You need clarity around what that is. And what transformational insights are out there to help you get after it to get you where you want to go?
I just did a podcast with (Golden State Warriors coach) Steve Kerr, and he talked about the importance of bringing joy to your work. I couldn’t agree more with that. I did one with Jack Nicklaus and he talked about the importance of preparation. In business, you have to prepare. I did one with Rory McIlroy, and he talked about the resiliency of coming back from the 2011 Masters to win the U.S. Open. But I learn from every podcast I do. I enjoy doing it because I get to share with aspiring leaders. Because of golf, I have an arsenal of contacts. All I have to do is go to the course and say, ‘Hey, do you want to do a podcast?’ and that’s all you need to do. I met (NHL Hall of Famer) Mark Messier at Shinnecock. I met (Whoop CEO) Will Ahmed and Tom Brady through golf. I want to do one with Phil Mickelson one day but he has to get back to me (laughs).
But I’ve been blessed with a wonderful career and I’ve done things some people never have the opportunity to do, so I want to share my network and my learnings. If you are a CEO and you have success, to not share it, I think that’s a little selfish. It’s not easy to write books and I don’t need to write books, but I’m trying to give back.
Top: David Novak with J.B. Holmes during the 2010 AT&T National Pro-Am
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