YouSaid · the spoken record

David Novak

lines on the record: 33
first: 2024-09-12
most recent: 2024-09-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And I think it's possible. I really do. And I'm not saying anybody's ever going to win any election by 80-20 or anything like that. But I think it's possible to have somebody. People go, hey, I may not agree with the person, but you know, there's no doubt about it. This person's really smart and inspiring and can take our country to the next level. Okay. Now, I'm not saying I'm that person, but if I had those capabilities, that's the leader I would want to be.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just wish, and it's one of the reasons why my noble cause, my mission is to make the world a better place by developing better leaders. So I'm developing, I've got programs to develop leaders at every level in life, from elementary school, middle school, university, Missouri, to whatever, okay, college. And now for aspiring leaders. And I'm just hoping that someday there's going to be a great president that emerges from somebody that takes one of these programs and buys into the process. And I just think this country is just ripe for having a leader that even though you might not like what they stand for in some way, shape or form, but you look at that person and go, wow, that person is a leader. I get it. I just wish our country had somebody where you just said, I get it.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is an old one, but I think it's one of the best books I've ever read. It's called Walk the Talk. And it's a great book because it doesn't take you long to read it. It's a parable and it's about this guy who becomes president of a company. And he's practiced in his speech. And he hears his key stop in the auditorium. And he looks out there and it's the janitor. The janitor's name's Clarence And he said, so you listen to my speech. And he says, yeah. He says, What'd you think of it? Well, I've heard it before. And it's a great book about how many times leaders will judge themselves by their intentions, but your people will only judge you by your actions. So this guy goes on sort of a, I'd say, an experiential tour. And then he ends up writing a totally different speech in the end.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, I got the greatest, my daughter. I told her she has to go back and be my daughter. She's wanting to be there for me all the time. She's got three kids and she's doing wonderful things with her own life. She's really focused on early childhood education. And, you know, she's an amazing person. If I say, hey, Ashley, you got to go back and be my daughter and let me be the dad. You know, I'm going to get through this I think when I learned about the whole process is you have to give time. Sometimes there's no substitute for time. And you just got to give time tim And I'm going to get through this, but I think there'll always be a hole in my heart. And I think that's the way how it should be. I mean, I'm kind of glad that I'm going to always miss her, but that doesn't make it feel any better.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I cry all the time. You know, I don't cry all the time, but what I found about is your grief comes in waves. You think you're doing fine and then somebody will ask you a question and tears will come to your eyes. Or I think that I'm doing as well as I can. I think what I have is maybe episodic depression. I'm overall, like you say, a joyful person, but underneath it all there are times when I'm a little bit depressed and I'm a little bit sad. And you kind of go through those periods. But it's part of the process. And I'm not the only one to do it. Obviously, everybody has to do it in their life at some point. But it's a challenge.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I saw that your wife passed recently. My wife passed away on February 24th. And so I'm learning a lot about grief. And I'm learning what it's like to be without someone that you were with for 49 years. And I think I'm learning how to make the most of my quiet time. And, you know, I've always been someone who's found a lot of, made sure I had quiet time. I have more of it now than I've ever had. And I'm really taking time to reflect on how I can broaden myself, better myself, become a better person, make a bigger impact. So I think that's one thing.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I also believe it's the CEO's accountability to make sure that their business is vibrant and gross because you don't live in a world where everybody's standing still. You live in a very competitive world. So if you get disadvantaged from a cost structure standpoint, or you're not improving your customer satisfaction in some way, shape or form and somebody has figured out how to do that better and you're standing still, you won't be around to help any of your people. I just would say you can't have a blind eye to what's going around you just because of your altruistics beliefs. And I certainly have those. So I would just make sure that I was able to understand the opportunities as well as any of my competitors. And if that's where the business took us, I'd have to. Take the business there so that we could flourish over the long term”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a really tough question. You won't find too many CEOs who spend more time talking about the power of people, people first, recognizing others, building a culture where people feel valued. And I believe that with every fiber in my body”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, no one wakes up every day, Jeff, wanting to be a part of something mediocre. They want to be a part of something great. So I think every board in the United States of America or every board in the world should hold their CEO accountable for making the world a better place.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think leaders should evaluate themselves, obviously on the financial scorecard. That's what you get paid to do. You get paid to, if you're a CEO, you get paid to grow the share price. I was measured on that every single year. But I didn't hold myself accountable just for that. I held myself accountable for creating something great. I wanted to create the defining global company that feeds the world. That's what I talk to our board about. I didn't want to just be a company. I wanted to Now how would we do that? We wanted to create a work environment where we wanted to be renowned worldwide for recognition. We wanted people to come best practice us for how do you recognize and value others.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I never talked about being a Republican or a Democrat or vote for this person or that person because I didn't really think that that was called for. You know, I think that when major things happen in the country that really shocked the world, like let's say that George Floyd situation, I think that's a time you would step up and you would speak out. I think if your industry is attacked or vilified, That's a time you speak on behalf of your company and your industry. For example, I always felt and always talked about the fact that I felt that our jobs were much maligned. People always said we're minimum wage workers. Well, if you're a minimum wage worker, you're not a minimum wage worker for very long if you do a good job. And we had a lot of minimum wage workers who quickly became restaurant managers and restaurant managers, believe it or not, make over six.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, very rarely. My belief is that leaders should focus on running their business as best they can and make that their primary accountability. As it relates to politics, I don't think you should put pressure on people on the political front because when you have power, you don't want to give people any sense that you're exerting your power.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think, first of all, the most important thing I did early on was try to learn from winning. And so my team, we went out and visited all the companies that at that point in time that we had consistent results year after year. And so we went and visited with Walmart and Southwest Airlines and Home Depot and a lot of great companies. General Electric was just an incredible company at that point in time. We met with them. Then we came back and we codified what's really driving the success of these companies that allow them to get to great results year after year and made my number one priority to really create a powerful culture where everyone counts. That became job number one for me as a CEO because if I can create that right work environment, People will innovate. And people will go further.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way I always look at that is you want to have a culture which really seeks both. You need incremental improvements. And then most of your growth is going to come from those incremental improvements. At the same time, you do want people feeling free to go for the home run. And then the important thing is to have some sort of process that allows you to determine whether it is a home run or not. And before it really hurts the company. So like let's go back to Crystal Pepsi, for example. We really didn't put that into enough testing. We didn't give it time. We had our blinders on. We were so in love with the idea.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Marky, so we can do it very quickly. We got it in the marketplace. And so we came up with the idea to call them cool ranch Doritos. And the rest is history. It's one of the most profitable, largest snacks in the grocery aisle. But what's really interesting is that we didn't go to the snack chip aisle to find that idea. We went to the salad dressing aisle. And I think when you can look at two seemingly different things than then say, hey, how could it possibly unite in whatever I'm working on? I think that's when you can really come up with big ideas. It's that pattern thinking that I think really allows you to innovate and really successful ways. And you don't have to always start from scratch.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We went right into the grocery store. We started marching up and down the aisle. And we got to the salad dressing aisle. And what we noticed was the most popular new salad dressing on the market was ranch. And they had more facings. And I talked to the store manager. I said, how's this ranch dressings doing? Oh, fantastic. It's really taken off. So I went back with the team and I said this ranch dressing seems to be very powerful. What if we made a Doritos? And we all agreed that could be a good idea. So this time I called up the head of R&D at Frieda Lay. And I said, Dennis, got this great idea. I think we could do a ranch flavored Doritos. Do you think we could do one? It makes sense. It seems to be a very popular flavor. And we go over in the R&D labs and he gets it out and we taste it. It's delicious. I mean, it's delicious. And then we said, how soon can we get them?”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Cool Ranceritos is an example of what I write about, which is learn by pattern thinking. And when I was working with Frida Lay, and this is when I was on the advertising agency side, we really needed to have some product innovation for Doritos. The brand had started to slow down a little bit. And so I said to my team, we've got to come up with a new line extension for Doritos. And the most popular flavor at the time was nacho cheese Doritos. So I said, okay, let's go to the supermarket and let's just walk up and down the aisle and see what we can learn, see what we can observe and see.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wanting to get back, wanting to get back at that investor presentation we were working on. But Rick really told me, laid it out for me, and he was so right. And I told that story to everybody, everybody I could possibly tell it to because he saved me from myself. I know what I should do, but sometimes you don't do it. And you got to really recognize the truth tellers that are in your company. And we always tried to make sure that our leaders would recognize the people who really address their issues head on. We really kind of built it into our recognition process. And we talked about the importance of recognizing people who challenge you and help the organization get to a better idea or a better solution because of it. It built into our culture.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was our roving recognition band? We always had a lot of fun recognizing people and having the fun doing it. And we had literally, I didn't have anything to do with it, but people in the company developed what they call the roving recognition band. And they would go around every month and recognize people inside the company for doing something great to satisfy our customers or whatever that reinforced our cultural values. So I'm hearing this band, and Rick says to me, David, we got to go out there and be a part of this celebration. I said, no, we can't. We got to get this done. He said, no, we got to go out there. And he says, you know, you talk about the importance of recognition all the time. If you stay in here and you don't go out there, that's not what you're all about. That's not what our company's all about. And so we got out and I went out there and we did our clapping. We are here to recognize you. And I put my heart into it as best I could.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My CFO was Rick Carucci, and we were getting ready for a analyst meeting in New York, and we're working on the analyst presentation. I'm deep into this. I do not want to be interrupted. And all of a sudden, I hear this band marching outside.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think, first of all, whoever's leading the company has to cash the right shadow. I think leaders cast a shadow. You got to recognize that people do what the leader does. And so what I did was I always like to really recognize very publicly the people that saved me from myself, people who told me what I should be doing and really helped me take the company or myself into a better position. And so I would always talk about those people in my speeches or, you know, whenever I did my communications to the entire organization, I would talk about how someone really helped me do the right thing or do something better for you. Let me give you a good example of this story on this is that...”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think, first of all, when people are working on things that are really important to the company and they're taking that risk and it doesn't work out, you scream from the rooftops that that's the kind of breakthrough thinking that we need. So it's okay around here to swing and miss. Just don't swing and miss every single time. But we want people really going for it. And a lot of times big things are not going to happen unless you take some sort of risk.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And once you miss on execution on a new product, it's really hard to get it back because those first three months are everything.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The problem is, David, they're not going to come back. And guess what? didn't come back. And guess what? The reason was, Jeff didn't taste enough like Pepsi.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So then I had this meeting with the Pepsi Cola bottlers. Pepsi Cola bottlers said, David, this is really a good idea. There's only one problem with it. And I said, what's that? And they go, it doesn't taste enough like Pepsi. And I said, well, we're calling it crystal Pepsi. We're giving it cola flavored notes. And they said, yeah, David, but you're calling it Pepsi. You got to make it taste more like Pepsi. And I said, no, we're trying to get incremental users. And they said, yeah, but it doesn't taste like Pepsi. And I said, yeah, I didn't care what they said. I was going to get this into the market. And this is just the way I was going to be. Well, let me tell you something, Jeff. It was the only product in the history of Pepsi Cola Company at that point in time that was a carbonated soft drink that was launched at a premium price. Now, the reason for that is the bottlers set the pricing. They said, don't worry about the trial. Everybody's going to try Crystal Pepsi.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, at that point, when that happened that day, I thought I was a genius. I mean, I thought this was the biggest idea ever, you know.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I went to Pepsi, it was a very challenging environment. The carbonated soft drink business was really starting to slow down. And we were in big need of a big catalyst that could really grow the business. And the first thing I did is I looked at what was going on in the marketplace. And I saw all the things that were growing were basically clear. Water was taking off. Clearly Canadian was a hot new beverage. And so I would just sit in my office one day and I said, oh. What if we came up with a clear Pepsi? And I thought, wow, that would be such a big idea. I mean, that would just break through the clutter. So, you know, I went and talked to customers and we did focus groups and everybody thought it was really a great idea. So then I went into what I called the heat-seeking missile mode. We developed.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then the third thing that I broke it down to was a framework in the framework was learn by Dewey and learn by doing all the things that will make the biggest possible difference in your life or your business.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, when I was thinking about The leaders that I know who are the most successful in the world, they are active in their learning process. They are constantly trying to get an edge by learning from others. And it's something they've just made a part of their life. When I broke it down, I thought that the learnings kind of broke down into three different areas. One is to learn from anybody and any experience that you have. That would be like learn from your upbringing, learn from winning, you know, learn from failing. But, you know, learn from the experiences that happen. Then I said the other thing that you can learn from is you need to learn to maintain a curious, open mind. And, you know, I think that really is when you learn how to be a really great listener, that's really powerful. When you learn how to check your own judgment. So I really broke down the things that you have to learn to do to really become effective leader.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm especially excited to get to see you today. That's fantastic. I love stories like that. And I do remember that. And I thought MySpace, man, that'll be, I'd like to learn about that company. I was in the restaurant business at the time. And, you know, I always like to learn from other companies. And I knew I'd learn from you as well.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, you know, what really made me sad about this was that the idea was huge because everybody did want to try it and it wouldn't have been so different. I think that product would have been a huge hit and it would still be on the marketplace. But it didn't last very long. I learned from that lesson the importance of really listening.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Saturday night live did a spoof on Crystal Pepsi and basically made it crystal gravy. So it was like they showed that we had Van Halen was our music and we show the Pepsi being forward or they showed the Pepsi being poured and out comes gravy on these smashed potatoes. It was pretty embarrassing.”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We rushed it into the marketplace, and in a few markets we had problems with the product quality. It was sort of cloudy and hazy”
2024-09-12 · Masters of Scale · From Crystal Pepsi to Cool Ranch Doritos: Lessons from David Novak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT