#1 Career Coach: You’re Building A Life You Don’t Actually Want! (Do This Instead)

Suzy Welch is a bestselling author, NYU professor, and one of the most sought after career coaches in the world. She's taught thousands of students how to build lives that actually work, and in this episode, she breaks down why following your passion is terrible advice, how to figure out who you really are, and the exact frameworks that separate people who build the lives they want from people who stay stuck wishing. In this episode, you'll learn: Why following your passion is terrible advice The Gen Z values crisis that is making finding work so hard The 10-10-10 framework Why only 2% of people are living fully authentic lives Why failure is your entrance fee into the “Society of Interesting People” Code for 20% off The Values Bridge: BIGDEAL Link to Suzy's accounts: lnk.to/suzywelch!bigdeal ___________ (00:00:00) Introduction: Follow Your Passion Is Terrible Advice(00:01:08) The Three-Legged Stool: Passion, Aptitude, and Values(00:07:31) Gen Z's Values Crisis: The 2% Problem(00:10:52) The Values Bridge: 200,000 Data Points on What Drives Success(00:12:53) The 10-10-10 Framework: Decision Making That Actually Works(00:21:06) The Six-Word Memoir Exercise: Writing Your Life Forward(00:23:26) The Four Horsemen of Values Destruction(00:26:29) The Authenticity Gap: Why 98% of People Aren't Living Their Values(00:29:27) Stop Looking Backward: Why Therapy Isn't Enough(00:34:47) The 360 Feedback Reality Check: How the World Actually Experiences You(00:39:10) The Career Traits Compass: What Leaders Actually Need Today(00:49:19) The Society of Interesting People: Vernon Jordan's Gift(00:57:05) We Can Do Hard Things: Everything Good Is Hard(01:00:13) Raising Kids Who Aren't A-Holes: The Character-First Approach ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 0:30Codie Sanchez?

  The stupidest thing in the world, fear of failure, right? I hope you fail because then you'll just keep taking big swings. You should follow your passion, but what if you suck at it? It's actually easier in life if you're doing what you're good at. My guest, Suzy Welch. She's a bestselling author, NYU professor. Today, we're diving into life's biggest questions. Who am I? What do I want? And we're going to give you simple, practical frameworks so you can build a life that works for you instead of the other way around. Gen Z says, "We can't understand why we're not getting hired." That's because they're looking for values that you don't have. Do you find the youth is over optimizing happiness? If you don't walk through the valley of despair, you're never going to be on the mountaintop. What is the number one reason why people won't achieve the life that they want? So...

• 1:16Codie Sanchez?

  I love some of your sparring points of view.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:18Codie Sanchez?

  I was really just having fun on the internet, watching people, you know, I love when people get all riled up.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:24Codie Sanchez?

  And you had one I really like.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:26Codie Sanchez?

  That is, you have some intense feelings about the words, "Follow your passion." So I want you to tell us-

• 1:32Speaker 02

  It's triggering me as we come out the gate. Sorry.

• 1:35Codie Sanchez?

  What do you think? Should people follow their passion or not?

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Yes, they're good at it. I mean, because this is the thing, like, of course, you should follow your passion, but what if you suck at it? I mean, like, this is the thing. It's like, I like to sing. I'm really passionate about it, but it is like, I've lost friends over it. I don't do it in front of my family. It's just not my capability. Like, what you should do with your life, what you should follow, I mean, to be kind of a, you know, prig about it, is that, you know, there's sort of three things that have to be there. So your passion, which would be your interests, okay? What you're really, really interested in, what, you know, turns your crank, "Ooh, that calls me." So that's one leg of the stool. Then there's what you're good at, your aptitudes. Oops, let's not forget those, shall we? Because it's actually easier in life if you're doing what you're good at. Now, you can, if you're so passionate, then you don't care if you're good or bad at it.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  It's fine, but you also have to kind of pay the bills. So like, then there's your aptitudes. And then the third leg is very, very important, which is what your values are. And most people don't know what their values are, so they sort of throw those over. "Oh, everybody has the same values, honesty, compassion, goodness and kindness." Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all agree. But actually, what you should be following is not your passion, but it's a synthesis of three data sets. I'm sorry, it's very, you know, "Oh, that's very complicated to figure out." Actually, not so complicated to figure out. It will save you years of boneheaded mistakes. So might as well do the work.

• 2:52Codie Sanchez?

  I love that. Well, I can also tell usually if somebody just wants to make you feel good and not make you money, and then they tell you to follow your passion. You're like, "Of course, I don't make you really popular."

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:02Codie Sanchez?

  But you'll never actually achieve much of anything.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, look, there are some people who followed their passion and they had spectacular lives, but it was because they were also good at it and it aligned with their values.

• 3:13Codie Sanchez?

  What do you think for somebody who says, "I'm not exceptionally good at anything. I have no idea what I'm good at." What do you tell them?

• 3:20Speaker 02

  They have not looked hard enough. I mean, everybody is good at something, but you can't just guess. I mean, there's like, we have tests as part of becoming you, Laz, my whole system that we look at. We have tests. You've got to find out what you're good at. You're good at something. Everybody's got to get, like, but people have these very narrowly defined views of what aptitudes are. But like, you can build a whole career in life over the aptitude, the strength, the gift of making strangers feel welcome. Okay? But nobody ever says, "Well, I make strangers feel welcome." Yeah, but that's like incredibly rare. It's an incredible gift. And you, why have you not identified it? Instead, they're thinking like, "Well, I'm not good at math or I'm not good at English."

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, guess what? Those are subjects that they teach in elementary school. Aptitudes, there's this huge array of them. But you've got to look and look and figure it out. The information, very unfortunately, doesn't drop on your head. You have to actually go looking for it. And so that's the hard part.

• 4:19Codie Sanchez?

  I mean, you teach, how many students a year do you think you teach?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  A thousand.

• 4:24Codie Sanchez?

  Okay, a thousand, for many years now.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:26Codie Sanchez?

  So, and you're dealing with a lot of Gen Z?

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:29Codie Sanchez?

  A lot of yous coming up at NYU?

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:32Codie Sanchez?

  What does Gen Z think about finding their purpose or finding their next thing that they need to do in life? Is Gen Z lost? Are they found? What are their biggest questions?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Well, they're nervous and scared right now is what they are because the conveyor belts they thought they could get on are generally blown up or completely broken. So there was a time where you thought, "Okay, if I do, if I put one foot in front of the other, I do well in high school, then I do moderately well in college, I figure out a major, and then I got on this conveyor belt and I go to consulting or I go into retail or whatever, there's going to be a path for me." But now there's been some disintermediation and that would be AI and that would be certain geopolitical trends and so forth. And so now they're like, "Okay, wait, wait, wait. What is my purpose?" And what's interesting is for Gen Z, they don't want to postpone it. So for previous generations, everybody's always wanted to know their purpose. Who, everybody wants to know their purpose. But for older generations, like including my own, it was like, "Okay,

• 5:24Speaker 02

  I'm just going to do the hard stuff upfront and I'll figure out my purpose and live it later in retirement." But Gen Z, probably because of the pandemic, although there's no data that would confirm that, just is like, "Yeah, I'm not waiting. I want to, I want to live my purpose. I don't want to suffer my whole life long. I don't want to pay it forward forever and ever. I want to live my purpose now." So there's a lot of stuff going on with Gen Z.

• 5:43Codie Sanchez?

  Do you think you should try to live your purpose when you're in your twenties? Or should you search for it longer?

• 5:50Speaker 02

  I think you should live your purpose the minute you can find it. Because it feels good and it's, and, and when you feel good and you're filled with joy, here's this tricky little wild thing about joy. It's contagious. You just give it away. Nobody holds their joy in. Nobody's like, "I'm not telling anybody I'm joyful." Everybody's like, "I'm joyful." And then it's like you, when you're in the room with a person who's an energy amplifier, who's a joyful person, it just starts this beautiful virtuous circle. So like, go find your purpose because it will fill you with joy. It will. And doesn't mean you won't have bad days because bad things happen. You get sick, someone you love gets sick, you know, something happened. This is no guarantee of a, of an uninterrupted path, right? It's going, there's going to be, there's going to be times you fall off the path. But the more joy you have, the more you spread it.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  And I want that world. I don't want people waiting for that.

• 6:36Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, it's a good point. You have that characteristic. You have a lot of energy.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  And I, because I'm living my purpose. I didn't always. I mean, like, you don't have four kids, sorry to break this news to you. Okay, you don't, looking at you, you know, you don't have four kids and get to live your purpose every single day unless you're kind of, I mean, I suppose you could do it.

• 6:57Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  But you're living their purpose for a bunch of years there.

• 7:01Codie Sanchez?

  This is so random, but I was reading yesterday, um, a list of the most unhinged way Gen Z has quit jobs. And it was a series of, you know, like, one was on a piece of toilet paper and it said, like, "I wrote this on purpose, you know, um, today's my last day. I wish you unwell," you know, Sandy or whatever. And it was a series of very cute, probably AI assisted, you know, prompts to leave their job. But I was wondering, like, do you find that sometimes the youth is over optimizing on happiness early?

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Okay, so let's talk about it because I actually have incredible data on this from my research. So we have a tool that measures your values. It rank orders them from one to 16. And I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I'll say to you, we have a discount code for your listeners if they want to rank order their values from one to 16. This is a test with 91% accuracy. And it also tells you how much you're living them. So 200,000 people have taken this test in the last year. So we have data that can tell you what the top values are for every single generation. Okay? So the top values for Gen Z, the number one top value for Gen Z, we use a Greek word because we don't like people's heads to explode when we say it, but it's, we call it eudaimonia. That's the Greek word for flourishing. It's work-life balance, okay? It's, it is happiness, okay?

• 8:17Speaker 02

  The number one value is they want to feel good. They want well-being. They want balance. They want harmony. They want to have everything all at once. Okay, that's the number one value for Gen Z. Okay? The number two value is voice. That's authentic self-expression. I am who I am. That's all that I am. Don't make me be somebody I'm not. It's just absolute authenticity. I'm going to let my freak flag fly. That's it. And the number three value for Gen Z is agency, self-determination. Okay, I am going to live my life exactly as I want it. This is generationally different than other generations. When I saw these top three values come up in the data very, very clearly, DeMark, this is what Gen Z's top three values are, I thought to myself, "Hmm,

• 8:58Speaker 02

  I wonder what hiring managers would like from Gen Z. Why don't I go find out?" So I did a study with my lab of 25,000 hiring managers, people who had at least, managing at least five people. So they were serious managers, managing at least five people. Generally, these people were in their 40s. They were in knowledge industries, the kind of things that, you know, they are in consulting and banking and insurance and so forth. And so not in the trades necessarily, not in the trades, period. And we asked them, "What are the top?" We showed them all the values and we said, "What are the top three values, you know, that you are hiring for in Gen Z? When you're looking at Gen Z, what are you looking for?" What'd they say? Achievement, that's the desire to win, win, win, win, win. Okay. Work centrism. Okay. The desire to work, work, work, work, work.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  And then the value of scope, which is the desire to learn, have adventure and travel. Okay, that those. So then, why don't we just cross-reference that data? Okay. And then what, when you cross-reference that data, you find out that actually only 2% of Gen Z has the values that hiring managers are looking for. And then Gen Z says, we can't understand why we're not getting hired. And the reason is, after the interview, they're saying those kids don't have the values that we're looking for. All right. And so this data is, we reported on this data in the Wall Street Journal, and this data made a lot of people's heads explode. On the one hand, Gen Z said, why are you picking on us? And I'm like, I'm just the messenger. These are your values. I have no judgment on your values. Your values are your values to live. And you live the consequences, so I don't care what your values are.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  You're not hurting anybody to have these. But when you say you're not getting jobs, that's because the values of the people trying to hire for higher Gen Z is they're looking for values that you don't have. And so I, I have no skin in this game. I'm, I'm, I'm grown and I'm employed. And so I, I'm not. But and then the older generation was like, yeah, well, thanks for putting data on exactly what we're experiencing. We're, we're trying to find people who want to come to our workplaces, work their tails off, you know, win and learn. And we're finding people who would like to have happiness and authenticity and self-determination. And you kind of, and you know, older generations kind of feel like you earn those things after you've paid your dues. But dues, that's not part of the current zeitgeist.

• 11:13Codie Sanchez?

  It makes so much sense. We have a couple hundred employees across companies.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:18Codie Sanchez?

  And, you know, you feel like the old person. Cause I'm like, back in my day, you know, and I know it's like every generation sort of feels this way to some degree.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:26Codie Sanchez?

  Wondering, do you have data that shows what traits lead to more monetary or career success?

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Yes, we do.

• 11:35Codie Sanchez?

  What, what are they?

• 11:36Speaker 02

  So we have done, we've given the values bridge at top performing companies and to the top teams at these top performing companies. So let's just say, a very big, successful bank would be a bank that everybody would recognize, a household name that has had the best performance in the stock market over the past 10 years. We had the values bridge given to the top 300 executives. So the people who are the most successful people at that company. Their number one value is, oh, shocker, achievement. Okay. And their number two value is, interestingly, very interestingly, their number two value is belonging. That's the desire to collaborate. That's the desire to, and that's a lower value for Gen Z. It's number eight for Gen Z.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  It's the desire to be in community. It's the desire to do things with and through people. That's the number two value. Okay. And then the number three value is work centrism, the desire to organize your life around work. That's number 15 for Gen Z. So, yeah, so we have data that is, and that data, not just at one bank, that's reinforced in all top performing companies.

• 12:37Codie Sanchez?

  That is crazy.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:38Codie Sanchez?

  But also really useful, because I think one of the things I love about your work is you take kind of these fuzzy, complicated ideas, but then you apply rigorous analysis so that you can bucket them and make sense of the work.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was important to us that every piece of data in the test be scientifically validated, because these are hot button issues and people get back on their heels about it. And we were like, let's make sure the test is very good and the data is as solid as it gets, so that we can have a conversation about it. I don't want people judging each other or, or, or feeling acrimony towards each other. I want to have a conversation about how we can build a bridge and work together, because there's some differences.

• 13:16Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. What about, one of the other frameworks that I love that you have, you call it the 10 10 10. What is a 10 10 10 framework?

• 13:23Speaker 02

  So this is a decision-making system that I came up with in 1998 or so. And then I wrote a book about it in 2009. Actually, I'm happy you mentioned it, because I have another book coming out about it in, in March next year. So 10 10 10 is a decision-making system, because we make our decisions largely how? Gut. Okay. We make them on gut. And we say, well, I gotta decide on gut, because what else have we got? Well, there, there happened to be like 65 scientifically validated decision-making systems. But when I was at my lowest point in my life, when my life could only be described with two words, both of them starting with S H. Okay. It was an absolute S H, S H. Okay. And this was in night, I had four children in five years.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  And I was working full-time as a editor at the Harvard Business Review. And from the outside, my life looks so perfect. I lived on a, I lived on a street called Norman Road, and we used to call it Normal Road, because we looked so normal. But like, what was happening at that time? Well, my first marriage was completely falling apart. I was barely holding on by my fingernails as a mother, working mother of four kids in the days where like maternity leave was two weeks. Okay. Times were different in the olden days. I'm about to tell you a story, which I hope you don't kick me off the podcast when I tell you this story, because you're gonna say, what's this stupid woman doing in my studio? But here's the story. I was trying to hold it all together. And in this period, I was getting a new roof put on my house. And I got a call from a speech company that said, would you come and give a speech in Hawaii to 1,000 insurance executives?

• 14:51Speaker 02

  And I said, oh my God, yes, because I needed money. Okay. They offered me $5,000. This was so much money to me in those days. And so I said, yes. And then I thought, oops, what about those four little children? What am I going to do about them as I fly to Hawaii and back? I certainly can't dump the babysitter and my husband with these kids. It was too much. It took a village to take care of all those kids. And so I thought, I've got a great idea. The thing that will make this possible is if I bring two of the children. Okay. They were like, they were like six and seven at the time. And I get there, immediately, one of the kids gets sick. You know it, right? They're out of control. They can't manage the jet lag. And it was just, it was so bad. I was making bad decisions left and right. So it all culminates with me in front of this audience of 1,000 insurance executives. They all wanted to be golfing. This was this massive room.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  And I'm up there giving a speech in my bow shirt. I've not left the bow shirts behind. I'm wearing the bow shirt now that morning to clear the decks. What had I done? I had cleverly warehoused my children in a hula dancing class. I thought this was brilliant. And I, I still to this day get shivers thinking about my son's look as I left him in his hula skirt. I mean, I just, you know, when they, if I, if I'm found dead, it was because of this. So anyway, I leave them and I'm up there giving the speech. And as I'm up there pointing, I was giving a speech about the history of management. I see these two little bodies pressed up against the glass doors at the back of the room. They come bombing down the center aisle screaming, mommy, mommy, mommy. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And this is the days before people thought this was cute. Okay. Thank God there were no cell phones then, no nothing. It would have been, it would have been, I would have been viral for the rest of my life.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  And people were not amused. Okay. They didn't clap. And I did the right thing. I ran towards my kids. They were hugging my legs. And I thought, this is the bottom. It was the bottom. And so that night, because I kept on making wrong decisions, just couldn't stop myself making wrong decisions. I went to the luau that I was supposed to go to, and no one would speak to me. I was like the pariah whose children broke into the speech. And I thought, okay, I've got this idea. I'm going to start to make better decisions. I'm going to take a look at every decision. I'm going to stop time and I'm going to say, okay, what are my options? And what are the consequences of those options in 10 minutes? The immediate future, 10 months, the foreseeable future, and 10 years, the life I want to create.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  And I'm just going to use this as a sorting mechanism. And I don't, it just came to me. Don't ask how. I was desperate. Desperate women do desperate things. I had to get hold of my life again. So I started to use this little device like that next day. Like on the way to the airport, the kids were like, let's go to the toy store, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, hold on a minute. It's a decision. And I like did this 10 10 10 thing. And I was turned around to the kids in the backseat and I said, we're not going. And they were like, wah. And I said, I don't care. We're not going. But I had used this, I had a system. So fast forward about 10 years later, my life is so much better. One of the reasons it's so much better is because I started to make my decisions rationally and transparently and systematically based on my values.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  I'm at that 10, the life you want to create is really a proxy for your values, right? The life you want to create. So my life got better. I remarried. Things were very, going very, very well. And I, at that point, I was writing for, oh, the Oprah magazine. That was my job. I had a column. And one day I was chit-chatting with my boss, Gayle King. And I said to her, you know, one day I should write about this decision-making system I use, 10 10 10. And I described it to her. She said, go home and write about it now. And I did. And everything changed, because I, it appeared, I discovered that other people needed this. So it became a book and the book did extremely well. And it, so to this day, look, now it's taught at Harvard. That's the funny thing. It's taught all around the world. It's taught at colleges and universities. I teach it at NYU.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  I was just giving a speech in, in your neck of the woods in Dallas

• 18:38Speaker 02

  a few days ago, and a woman came up to me afterwards and she said, I raised my kids on 10 10 10. And I said, funny thing, so did I. And the good thing is you can teach it to your kids. You can teach it to your spouse. Like never 10 10 10 alone. Show somebody you're thinking. So it's a, it's, it's, it sounds simple, but it forces you to really sort things out and say, what are my actual options? There's usually more than one, and you haven't thought of them. And then like, what's the upside? What's the downside? Immediately, that's usually where we get hung up. Oh, so and so is going to be mad. Okay. Then in the foreseeable future, when the dust settles. And then in 10 years, and that, for that, you really need to know your values. And one of the reasons I like 10 10 10 is now you can know your values, because why? The values bridge can tell you, if you don't know your values, you can find out with a test.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  So you have to know your values to use this tool. Otherwise you'll change up every single time. But once you know your values, North Star.

• 19:29Codie Sanchez?

  So interesting. I was talking to a few people who run really large AI companies now. And you know, and I was thinking about the future of work and what are going to be important skills to have. And you know, if as you run a podcast like this, often I'm thinking about like, all right, if right now, there's a million people listening to this across platform and across shorts, that's a pretty big weight on our shoulders. So we better hope that we give them something useful for this very limited resources they have. And, and both executives, when I said number one skill, like if you could give it to your kids right now, today, and be sure that they could take this one skill with them. And they both said decision making, which I thought was interesting. Because they were like, it's sure, you could teach them coding, you could teach them how to use AI, but you actually have to decide

• 20:14Codie Sanchez?

  what you want to use all of these tools on.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Right. It's I would take a little tiny tweak on that. Far be it for me to disagree with two people who run AI companies, but I would call it even more so discernment. Because discernment is decision making with your values. And so the thing about the thing that AI cannot do is it cannot make decisions based on your values. It doesn't know them. Only you know your values. Now, you could tell AI your values, and then it maybe make better decisions, but for you. But discernment, anyone can make a decision. Discernment, which is elevated decision making, comes when you have a system, when you have a way of thinking about decisions, and they're not wrong. You know, AI will make the decisions for you, but they not sure they're right.

• 20:54Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, that's a great point. They'll just aggregate based on what the masses do. And that really doesn't lead to very good decision making at all.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Not for you, right? I mean, it's about you.

• 21:03Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. You have another exercise that I don't know. I knew the answer to 101010. This one I only know a little bit about. But you use it in a classroom where, where students tell the story of their lives going forward instead of backwards. What is that exercise? And what is it supposed to do?

• 21:20Speaker 02

  So, look, when I start to talk to my students about figuring out their values, the first thing I have to do is sort of tell them what values are. You know, people mix up values with virtues all the time, you know, but they're not. Virtues are social and moral, they're social and cultural constructs that everybody agrees are good. Okay. What are your values? I'll ask somebody and they'll say, oh, that's so easy. My values are honesty, kindness, compassion. It's like, those are fabulous. They're virtues. We all agree those are good. You know, get in line behind me. We all have those. If you don't have them, you're like a total jerk. Okay. It's like, I was walking down the street the other day, and an old man fell down, his wife fell down with him, right? And what do I do? I help them. That's the virtue of altruism. Okay. If I didn't do that, we wouldn't have a society because everybody would do it. I wasn't like, yo, pat me on the back. Anybody would help

• 22:04Speaker 02

  two old people up. All right. Those are virtues. They're not optional. Values are choices about how we live our life along a continuum. So when I first starting teaching values, choices, I just first start talking to people about what they are. So we play a game called a six word memoir. That's what you're referring to. And what I ask people to do is to imagine their life up to the moment that we're in this classroom. Just close your eyes, imagine your life, think about it. Now pretend you've written the memoir for it. And you've written, okay, here's the story of my life ending today. And then I ask them to take six words and write the title of the memoir. And after they've done that, they're looking at a lot of times, these are not happy titles, because people are not necessarily like, it's not like, oh, it all worked out. It's sort of like, she kept trying to say yes, or, you

• 22:49Speaker 02

  know, never did get a better job, or like, not exactly what I expected, or whatever. I mean, people have different. Then after that part of the exercise is done, I say, okay, let's now do an interesting exercise. Close your eyes, going to give you a few minutes. Visualize what you'd like your life to be in 25 years. All right. Just imagine what you'd like your life to be, as if everything worked out. You got exactly what you wanted. The life that you've always yearned for took place. Write that memoir in your head from today to the life of your dreams, and then write that title. And a lot of times, those two titles are really, really different. And the journey between the previous title,

• 23:30Speaker 02

  okay, the one from their old life, and the title of their imagined life is the beginning of your journey of living your values. Right? Because a lot of things get in the way of us living our values. So many things. Okay. There, I call them the four horsemen of values destruction. Expectations, you know, you know, our family needs a doctor, or, you know, you've got to become a cop, like, you know, your uncle, or whatever. There's expectations. Society has expectations. Our spouses, we have expectations of ourselves. That just gets in the way of us living our dream of a life. And then there's expedience, because sometimes getting to the life we want is incredibly hard. We have to go back to school. We have to get out of loan. We have to move, whatever. Expedience gets in the way. Events get in the way. Having a baby, getting fired, whatever, that gets in the way. And then

• 24:15Speaker 02

  economic security. And but the problem with economic security is everybody needs and wants it. But we are wired. I mean, behavioral economists will tell you that we are wired to make decisions based on economic security, whether we care about it or not. Right? Because we'll go for the hard number with our brains. And so when you, I ask people to imagine their lives, sometimes I literally will see them physically, like they're like twitching in their seats, because it's hard. They edit themselves on so much. But what I'm trying to do is force them to let go of those four horsemen that get in the way, and so that we could start to get a picture of their values.

• 24:51Codie Sanchez?

  That's so fascinating. I remember, I did a workshop one time, and the woman teaching it was a little bit more touchy feely than I am. And it was all women, women in finance. But I was in finance at the time. These were pretty successful executives. You know, I was working at a bank. These people were all pretty high level. And she did, she asked us to close our eyes while we were doing it. Let's say it's like a room of 100 women. Stand up, close our eyes, and make a physical representation with our body of how we feel about money. So just, okay, what are your feelings on money? I want you to make a physical representation on that. And your eyes are closed, so I don't know what anybody else is doing. You know, I kind of throw my arms up like, I want more of it. Like, right here,

• 25:35Codie Sanchez?

  I'm hanging out, ready for you. And then they're like, nobody move, and open your eyes. And it was the weirdest moment for me, because I looked around the room, and I thought, oh, my gosh. I mean, there were like, women in the fetal position. There were like women with like, tiny little hands out. There were, and I would say, like, probably 70 to 80% of women had sort of a cowering, or a closed, or a small. And these are finance women. And I remember thinking at that point, oh, actually, the way that we perceive ourselves, the, you know, manifesto that you're writing, or the story that you're writing about yourself, the memoir is actually incredibly important. Because, you know, you could know all the right answers and have all the tactics. But if you're kind of telling yourself these sort of negative stories, it seems that that holds you back way. And I think every, all

• 26:19Codie Sanchez?

  the other women were sort of surprised, too, to see it. So it's fascinating.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  I think it's always a fascinating and somewhat shocking journey to figure out who you are. I mean, the nickname for my class is the class where everyone cries. And people say, well, why do so many people cry in your class? And I say, because they're finding out who they are for the first time. And I mean, that's what the journey is. And when people get back their, the results of the values bridge, they're like, oh, my God, this is so me. I just didn't have words. And then they start crying, because it can be, it can be very, it can be very validating, or can be kind of, it can hurt, because you can think, I'm not living any of these.

• 26:53Codie Sanchez?

  Wow. How many people in your classes, would you say, feel like they're living their values, and are not?

• 27:00Speaker 02

  All right. So we have a lot of, we have 200,000 data points on this. So not just my students. Okay. So when you take the values bridge, it actually gives you something called the authentic life score, which is the measurement between how much you hold a value and how much you're living it. Okay. So let's just take this value of scope. Scope is the value of how big and exciting a life you want. That's a choice. Do you want to like, you know, be like Bianca Jagger, riding into Studio 54 on the back of a white stallion kind of life? Or do you want to be living in your sort of twee hipster, you know, cottage with your, you know, children in pinafores, and you don't want to go out? And you're like, I mean, look, that's a continuum. How big and, I have very, very high scope. And all, of course, all four of my children have low scope. And when we go on vacations, I always said to them, my high scope is bumping into yours low scope, because they want to go like, rent a cottage in the Cotswolds. And I want to like, you know, do like 12

• 27:45Speaker 02

  cities in 13 days. So anyway, so if you take this value of scope, almost nobody has, you know, some people have it very high, say they have it as their number five value. But we will measure that gap. We call it your authenticity gap. And you get a score of how authentic a life you're living. So I can tell you exactly how many, what the gaps are for most people. So I would tell you that 2% of the population Two percent, and it's actually closer to one, but we sort of round it up because it's so painful, are actually fully living their values. We call them the transcendence. Then there's about 14% who are thresholders, which are sort of getting close, okay, and they're sort of like, they're 12% to 20%. They're getting there, they're not quite

• 28:29Speaker 02

  there, there's like maybe a 20% gap or so of them actually living their values as much as they want to. It's a bell curve, because down at the bottom, there's the incongruent, these are people who have got like, I mean, I've met people who have a 99% authenticity gap, that they're only living a 1% authentic life score. And when they see the results, they say things typically like, "Oh, no wonder I'm in so much pain," or like, "What do I do about this?" Which we then try to help them figure out. But it's, it's, it's not, it's not a lot of people. But you know what? When you see them, you know them. And you think to yourself, "I want what she's eating," you know what I mean? You, when you see somebody who's filled with joy, who's living their values, typically, you just read it right off of them. You can feel it.

• 29:10Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, that's very true. Wow, I cannot believe how low that number is, actually. It's so sad, because if you look at so much of the, you know, statistical data, it's like, you know, "We're living longer,"

• 29:21Speaker 02

  I know.

• 29:22Codie Sanchez?

  You know, "We're not getting violent attacks every seven seconds."

• 29:25Speaker 02

  I know.

• 29:26Codie Sanchez?

  But yet, our brains maybe, you know, cannot recognize that. I guess it kind of goes back to, like, all the greats always say, you know, the Oracle of Delphi, "Know themselves," you know, "Know thyself." You know, Sun Tzu, same thing, Lao Tzu, same thing. But like, I guess, you've said that it's quite hard to figure out who you are, and that, you know, people have a difficult time somehow with that exploration. Instead of, you know, short of going off to a monastery in an orange outfit, what are like?

• 29:54Speaker 02

  I don't like any of those ways. And I don't like, I mean, look, therapy has its role, but therapy looks backwards. And, you know, and maybe it's because I'm a mom. It's like, at this certain point, like, amnesty for your mom, okay, like, she tried as hard as she could, all right? And that, yeah, it's, look, sometimes it's very important to understand where your childhood wounds come from, and where your traumas comes from. But like, becoming you, our whole methodology is about figuring out your future. So, the way we look at you figuring out who you are is a means to an end. Like, you've got to figure out what your values are, so you can plan your future life. You've got to figure out where you are in the continuum from individual contributor to leader, so you can figure out your future life. You've got to know, you know, whether or not, where your, where your strengths are in terms of people, ideas, or execution, so you can go forward. And

• 30:39Speaker 02

  so, yeah, it's hard, but I don't think, I 100% don't think you figure out who you are going to a monastery and just pondering. You've got to do some work.

• 30:47Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, it's, I totally couldn't agree with that more. What do you think about therapy these days?

• 30:53Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's a very, very important thing for people. Many people struggle with anxiety and other challenges with their mental health, and it plays an incredibly important role. But it's, look, it's not what I do. Look, sometimes in class, a student will say, "Professor Welch, um, do you think that my family centrism, family centrism is a value about how much you want to organize your life around your family? Do you think my family centrism is so low because my parents got divorced when I was three?" And I say, "Take that up with your therapist. I am your professor at NYU, at Stern School of Business, and I am talking to you about how you build a career and a life that you want with lower family centrism. You know, I love you, but I don't care where it came from. That's not my job." So, I think therapy is incredibly important for figuring out why

• 31:37Speaker 02

  you are the way you are. But at a certain point, look, my proclivity, my interest, my area that my PhD is in values expression, what I'm interested in is how you live going forward. And, you know, no shade at all on figuring out why you are the way you are. But at a certain point, I don't know, maybe I just don't have the attention span. I, it is what it is. My, you know, when somebody says to me, "I had a hard childhood," I was like, "Get in line behind me." You know, it's like, but I understand. I mean, trauma's real, and I don't want to make light of it. Some people absolutely must have therapy to live. I totally understand that. But I, my focus, the focus of my work is like, "Let's just move on, shall we?"

• 32:10Codie Sanchez?

  I love that. Those are my favorite kind of therapists, actually. I'm like, "Do we have next steps?"

• 32:14Speaker 02

  That's right. I know about the next step.

• 32:16Codie Sanchez?

  "Back to when I'm three again?"

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:18Codie Sanchez?

  So, what are the most, you know, what are some simple, practical ways to figure out who you are? Like, if you were telling somebody who was Gen Z and super awesome, going back historically, what would you tell them to do?

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Look, I think there's three data sets you have to excavate, okay? And the first is your, are your values. And first of all, you have to figure out, and you have to know what values are. Again, they're not virtues, they're choices about how you live. And I believe, if you want to come to an academic conference with me, sometime I'll take you, where this is where academics fight about whether there's 13, 19, or 16 values. I'm in the 16 category. I actually invented a values inventory called the Welch Bristol Values Inventory. That's my claim to fame in academia. And so, I think there's 16 values. You've got to know what yours are, and what rank order they're in, and which ones you're living, and which ones you're not. Don't worry about the ones that are low. Care a lot about the ones that are high. Worry about the gaps. So, I think that's the first thing, to know yourself, know what your values are. Like, put words to them. Because, "Oh, this

• 33:16Speaker 02

  explains my weird feeling about wanting more excitement than my partner." Like, there's a value called belovedness, which is about how much you want to organize your life around your partner, around your spouse, or your boo, whatever. Oops, I said the word boo, everybody's cringing, sorry. So, but belovedness, like, it's, no shade, you can have high belovedness, or lower belovedness. The problem happens when it's a high value for you, but it's a lower value for your partner. It's good to have words around that, because it depersonalizes it. So, I think the first step is find out what your values are in their gritty specificity, don't guess. So, and then the second thing is figure out what your aptitudes are. You asked earlier, you know, "What if you're not good at anything?" Well, you haven't looked hard enough, my friend. You know, you've got to keep finding out. You've got to get very, very specific. "I'm good at this, and I'm not good at..."

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Know what you're not good at. I mean, I often say to my students, "Now that you know your aptitudes, what jobs should you absolutely not take?" Because, you know, and look, when I'm talking about aptitudes, I want to, I'm going to be very blunt here. There's two different types of aptitudes. Number one is your cognitive aptitudes. That's how your brain's wired. It's set by age 15. This is how you process information. This is how you make decisions. This is how you speak. Those cognitive aptitudes, you're born with them. They're going to make some things easier, and some things harder. But there's a second part of your aptitudes, and it's your personality. It's how the world experiences you. And most people would like to tell you that their personality is this list of adjectives about themselves. "What's your personality?" "Oh, I'm kind. I'm, I'm a good listener. I'm

• 34:43Speaker 02

  so compassionate." And I'll just like, and I, and when they say that, I say, "Maybe you are, maybe you're not. Let's find out how the world experiences you." Because the world may experience you as blunt, rude, and, you know, whatever. Let's find out. So, like, everybody who goes through my methodology has to have a 360 feedback. Gloves off, baby. Let's find out how the world experiences you. So, you've got to know those two things. How's your brain wired? And for that, there's tests, okay? And very, very easy, some free tests, and so forth. But then for your personality, you must actually confront. Because, look, the truth is that everyone writes the script of their life with themselves at the center as the hero. So, when we tell the story of our life, we write that script, and we describe

• 35:28Speaker 02

  ourselves as the hero. But the world may not be experiencing us as the hero, okay? And this is ouchy for most people. And so, like, self-awareness, first of all, self-awareness is very, very hard to test. But everyone, like, 90% of people say they have high self-awareness. Well, that's technically not possible, okay? And so, we have less self-awareness than we know. And so, it's very important for us to get that. And so, the third thing I would say, after values, and after aptitudes, is what you're interested in. And, and, and that, for some people, they're interested in everything, and some people kind of don't know what they're interested in. But I think it's very important to identify what you're interested in.

• 36:04Codie Sanchez?

  So good. Now, what about, I want to get back to the working conversation a little bit. You know, we're seeing this, I see it across our companies. We have thousands of people that apply to very few jobs, often. You know, we're seeing the jobless numbers among this segment of the population continue to have issues. And I think a lot of people feel a little lost.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:26Codie Sanchez?

  What, now, obviously, we know, maybe don't say your core Gen Z values in an interview, if you want to get one from a manager now, because we've taken your, your test. But, like, what would you actually tell people to do in a job interview to, to absolutely crush it?

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Okay, this is a great question. And I would say this, I don't think you should ever change, try to change or hide your values, because that's like holding your breath. And so, if you have high eutomonia, and you have high voice and high agency, try to go find a company that will accommodate it. Because to go into a company, if you have those high values, you go work at Goldman Sachs, or JP Morgan, you're going to feel like you're suffocating every minute, and eventually, you're going to blow up. And so, I, I don't know, this, a lot of times, this is not what people want to hear, because they want the money that those companies give you. But if you've got the values, so you can artificially elevate your values. You can, you know, I know somebody with rather low achievement, who needed some money because of something happened in his life, and he decided, he said to me, "I'm going to go in, and I'm going to artificially elevate this."

• 37:28Speaker 02

  And I said, "Well, we'll see how long it lasts." It's very hard to fake your values. You feel, again, like, you feel like you're in a suit that doesn't fit. You feel like you're holding your breath. So, I, I can't say, go in and say, "Oh, I, I believe in achievement. I believe in winning." I, I think the better bet, the more sustainable bet, although you may not like it because of its financial consequences, is find a company that is not competitive, and find a place where you're going to have a more sustainable future.

• 37:53Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, it's, you know what, I remember early on in my career, I worked at a company called Vanguard, and then I worked at Goldman Sachs.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:00Codie Sanchez?

  And Vanguard was not a fit for me, because it was actually a place where not a lot of competition, slow progression in your career.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Very traditional company.

• 38:09Codie Sanchez?

  Very traditional, high degree of collaboration, but not a lot of degree of rewards of exceptionalism. I hated it. I hated that company.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, you needed to be in a, you need to be in a classic, high achievement company.

• 38:20Codie Sanchez?

  Exactly. And, and yet, I have some dear, dear friends who have been at Vanguard for 15 years.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 38:25Codie Sanchez?

  Best thing ever. Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Better fit.

• 38:27Codie Sanchez?

  And, and so, I do, it's, it's a really good point, because increasingly, there's so much optionality. If you can find, you know, your group of people that are into just about everything on the internet these days, there is probably a company for you.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Yes, I think that sometimes, though, those companies, they do have a financial consequence. So, I mean, a lot of times, people say to me, or a student will say to me, "Professor Welch, I have eutomonia as my number one value, and affluence is my second value. Is that a problem?" And I'll like- Do you promise not to kill me? You know, it's like, yeah, it is a problem. I mean, if you want work-life balance and harmony, no shade, it's it's fine. It's good for somebody, it's not my value, but it's like for some people, it's a top value. Whatever, it's fine. But if you also want a lot of money, those, I don't know, that those two things don't usually go together. And maybe in a perfect world, they will. I mean, my students always say like, why does it have to be that way? And I said to them, I don't know why it has to be that way, but I played by those rules. So it's very hard for me to say, look, I hate the rules.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  It worked for me, but I I get that they would like to be able to make a ton of money with a lot of work-life balance. I I didn't write those rules, but those are, those tend to be how it goes.

• 39:29Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's them chips. What about, let's talk about leadership a little bit because you interestingly teach people how to become themselves and also teach people how to manage or lead. And so I think a lot of people think they're leaders, want to be leaders.

• 39:48Codie Sanchez?

  But really maybe aren't even managers. So like, what do you think real leadership looks like? What does a good leader look like versus a bad leader in your mind?

• 39:57Speaker 02

  So I have many thoughts on this, because I teach this. But I would say that actually the data, we just, there's a very fascinating study that came out from Deloitte just last week. That said that only 6% of Gen Z would like to be a leader. No.

• 40:12Codie Sanchez?

  What was it before?

• 40:13Speaker 02

  I don't know. That's a fantastic question.

• 40:15Codie Sanchez?

  It had to be higher.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  It had to be higher. I mean, I think about, look, when I was at Harvard Business School, it wasn't 6%. Okay, I mean, of course, that's a self-select, that's a self-selecting crowd.

• 40:22Codie Sanchez?

  No, even when I was at Vanguard, they had individual contributors and they had.

• 40:28Codie Sanchez?

  I don't think they called it leader, but something damn near close to that. And you were like, kind of felt shame to be wanted to be an individual contributor.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Look, the cultural narrative is leadership is good, individual contributor, you know, even manager, bad. I I actually blend the words and called them landagers, because if you're a leader who doesn't manage, sometimes everyone hates you. And if you're a manager who never leads, everyone hates you. So I like to put it together and the word meter was too ugly. So I just use landager and my students get used to it because there's a, they're blended. And trying to, oh, leaders do this, managers do that. Only in academic articles, in real life, they do a lot of everything. I mean, if a leader who's never thinking about how stuff actually gets done is absolute, you know, pompous, you know, blowhard. And a manager who's a grunty little bureaucrat, never leads and never inspires, is a grunty little bureaucrat who never leads and inspires. So so you got to be both, I I think.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  And so, but I actually have done some research around in today's environment with AI, with the pace of change, with what's going on. What actually the traits that you actually need to be a leader? And we actually have a construct, it's called Career Traits Compass, and it goes, it's a compass. So the, so it goes north, south, northeast, southwest, right? It goes around the compass. So the first up at the top, north, stands for nerve. I think nerve is absolutely essential for leaders today. And what is nerve? Nerve is composed of your stamina, mental and physical stamina, which not everybody has. Edge, the ability to make decisions with no, with incomplete information. Who can make it? First of all, you have to know how to make decisions and then you have to make them with no information whatsoever. And then candor, radical candor. So that's nerve.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Nerve is stamina, candor and edge. And you know, it's in short supply. I mean, stamina. That's a rare trait. It's pretty physiological also. I mean, like I have a great deal of stamina, but sometimes I think, oh, good for me, I've got stamina. And then I call my 98 year old mother and I'll say, Mom, what are you doing? And she'll say, I'm mopping, I noticed some dust. And I was like, I inherited that. I mean, that kind of like always go, go, go.

• 42:21Codie Sanchez?

  Is that true? Stamina is often inherited.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  I think it's physiological. Now, you can lose your stamina if you hate your job and then suddenly get your stamina back. But you know, there's high energy people and there's lower energy people.

• 42:32Codie Sanchez?

  You're absolutely right. Both my grandmas are 90, well, one's 103 and one's 97 and they're animals.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  So some good genes for you, baby.

• 42:40Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, I'll take it. That's why, I didn't know that. That's fascinating.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  And so then the next trait is elasticity. This is your ability to absorb change, embrace change, anticipate change. Plus, the other part of elasticity is your ability to have relationships, true relationships with people who are different than you. Okay, that's, we call those irregular relationships. Down at the bottom in the S for, you know, going around the the compass is soundness, emotional soundness. And it matters more today than ever before because

• 43:12Speaker 02

  for all sorts of very important reasons, and I would applaud them all. Managers and leaders are more responsible for their employees' well-being than ever before. Like when I was coming up and along, you didn't go talk to your manager about your anxiety. Okay, but now people do and managers have to be able to deal with it. And so if you're going to help people with their well-being, you have to have some emotional well-being. Okay, you have to be the same person every day. You have to have some kind of emotional regulation. So sadness is really self-awareness, it's positive energy, it's resilience, it's accountability. All of those things go into soundness and they matter more today than ever before because of the importance of managers being able to care for their people's well-being. These are, these are scary times with young people and and harming themselves.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  So the final one is wonderment, the W is wonderment. And that's, that's not just curiosity, curiosity is a gene. So you inherit it or you don't, you can have hacks for how, you know, you can act more curious. But wonderment more is about curiosity, about technology that's coming. Because if you're not curious about new technologies, you're too late. You've got to be seeing around the corners or you've got to be curious to see around them. So I think those are the traits going around the compass there. There's a lot of them and I think a lot of them you can get better at. I think you can get get better at edge, you can learn how to make decisions. I think you can get better at building relationships with people who are different than you or you've got to practice. So I think there's good news on that front if you want to be a leader.

• 44:37Codie Sanchez?

  Fascinating, I've never heard it described so succinctly. What about, this is kind of out there. What do you think about leaders who cry at work?

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it depends on the context. I mean, I think you don't want to be crying all the time. I mean, people need to have somebody who's emotionally sound. But look, there's a time and place, I mean, for showing your humanity. Again, I don't think that this is something you do on a regular basis, but if if the context is appropriate. I don't think we should hide our humanity. I mean, I think your humanity is what makes people want to follow you.

• 45:15Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, I'm so back and forth on this one. I have a good friend, Jefferson Fisher, and he says, you know, if you want to cry at work, you should let it out. And this is, you know, this is your feelings and he is, he's very eloquent, so he has a beautiful way to say it. And I was like, Jefferson, this is terrible fucking advice. Stop telling people that. I mean, if somebody dies or if you're, if there's something gut-wrenching or really hard, yes, of course, cry, do whatever you need to. But do we really want to give people advice that a leader is one who can't emotionally regulate enough?

• 45:48Speaker 02

  I I would, I'm with you on this one. I do remember I had an employee once and his wife was pregnant with twins and she lost one of the twins in childbirth. And I put my head on my desk and cried in front of everybody. I was heartbroken for them and I didn't, we all were heartbroken. And then I sent everyone home. I think that's okay. I look back at it, I have no regrets about it. I still feel sad about it to this day. But I would say that letting it all hang out, this is not, I'm with you on it.

• 46:15Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, yeah, sometimes I think, I mean, that's why I like your work. You have to, of course, there's always the exception, but sometimes you have to say the hard thing if you actually want people to get ahead.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:25Codie Sanchez?

  So I love that. What about the, like, the flip side of it? Like, what do you think people get wrong about Gen Z, since you're in front of them all day?

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:35Codie Sanchez?

  Because it's also very popular to sort of give them a hard time.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  I I don't hate on them and I, how could I be with them all day, every day and hate on them? I mean, I think that I have a warmth for them, I'm with them.

• 46:46Codie Sanchez?

  You use the word shade, so that's a Gen Z-ism.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  Yes, I'm, because I'm around them, but I do make them cringe all the time. I warn them right at the beginning of the semester. My job is to make you cringe constantly and I do not, I do not fail them on that front. I practice on my own children. But I'd say that what do people get wrong about them? That that I don't think they understand their lack of ambition. Okay, so they they do have lower achievement than previous generations. And I think that they, they think, well, they don't want to work and they don't want to, you know, they don't want to put in the effort. But what, I think that there's another side to understanding and that is that they looked at their parents, put in the work. And they looked at their parents kill themselves for their whole careers and then get laid off at 52 and have nothing to show for it. And they're like, yeah, I could put in all that work, but the whole contract is broken.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Why are you telling me to do something that's gonna, you know, that won't work for me? So look, I I can't make, you know, it's hard to speak about them as a unilaterally because there's so much variation in them. But I think that we have to have a heart for what their experience has been, which is that they saw their parents take this traditional route with sort of high achievement, high work centrism. And for some of them, it did not work out.

• 47:52Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. So can you change your values? If you're like, listen, I know my number one value is happiness, but your fancy term.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Eutomonia.

• 48:02Codie Sanchez?

  Eutomonia. But I really want my number one value to be achievement because I want affluence. Can you change your value?

• 48:11Speaker 02

  If that was the case and somebody was to take the test, right, what we would probably see would be eudaimonia, achievement, affluence, they'd be right next to each other. I think it's typically, look, this, how are our values formed? Let's just talk about that for a second. Our values are formed in this gigantic cauldron. And the cauldron starts bubbling when you're born. And what goes into it is like your parents, your culture, your demographic, your, your class, your, you know, my father saw the Hindenburg explode. That was one of the things, you know, life experiences, childhood trauma, everything goes in. And then by age 25, your values are pretty set and they get changed by a seismic experience. And so it's very hard to manually change your values because you came by your values honestly. You came by them by like life experience, genetics and so forth.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  And so you can artificially amplify a value and you could say, okay, fine, fine. I've got eudaimonia at number one, but look, I have got affluence and achievements at two and three, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna lean into those. You can do that for sure. But let me add, if you've got eudaimonia at number one and you've got affluence and achievement down at 15 and 16, no can do.

• 49:16Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  No can do. That's just too much bacon.

• 49:19Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. And what about, I guess if there's somebody listening right now that doesn't have the life that they want.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:26Codie Sanchez?

  And they're, they're going through a few of your exercises, which is, you know, maybe doing this memoir thought, understanding their values. What is the number one reason why people won't achieve the life that they want? Even if they know themselves or theoretically know themselves?

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear, fear of the stupidest thing in the world, fear of failure. How dumb it is to fear, I feared failure and then I failed. I had the most massive failure in the world. I got fired. I was Suzie little goody two shoes. I was just like, everything I, oh, I'm gonna get into Harvard and then I got into Harvard Business School. And I was like, you know, and everybody clapped. Okay, so then I, I got my divorce and then right on the heels of my divorce, I met my husband, Jack Welch, and I got fired. Okay, I got fired on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. That was the story, okay? And it was just explosive and I thought, oh my God, I'm an utter failure. And I remember saying to Jack, I'll never, I was sobbing, I'll never work again. He was like, get over yourself, you're gonna work again. And he said, Suzie, you know, life is long, prince to pig, prince to pig.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  And I was like, no, no one will ever hire me again. And I was scared and I thought, how could I fail? I'm such a good little girl. I'm such an achiever. Why does nobody understand this is true love? And it was just terrible. I mean, there were terrible stories written about me. Thank God there was no social media in those days, but it was bad even without social media. And then I was at a party with Jack, it was at Vernon Jordan's house and he was a huge civil rights activist and also an investment banker, only person in the world who was both of those things at the same time, but he was. And we were at this party and I was cowering in the corner next to Jack and I couldn't lift my eyes because I thought everyone looks at me and they think there's the failure in the room. We're all winners and she's a loser. So I was cowering in the corner and Jack kept on trying to shove me into conversations, like pushing me towards like Madeleine Albright.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  And I was like, no, she doesn't want to speak to the loser. And right at that moment, Vernon Jordan came over to us and he was six foot five and he was towering over us. And he said, Jack, I understand that your new wife likes art. I want to show her a beautiful painting in the next room. And so he led me to the next room and we're standing in front of this absolutely disgusting painting. And I think, okay, now great, now I have to, now I have to lie on top of me being a loser, I'm now going to be a lying loser because I'm gonna have to tell Vernon Jordan that this is a really good painting. And then we're looking at the painting and I'm like, ah. And he says, this is a terrible painting, isn't it? And I was like, oh my God. He said, yes, this is just a ploy. This is my wife's cousin painted it and we had to hang it up. And this is just a ploy to get you into this room. And I said, okay.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  And he stood over me and he said, I'm so sad looking at you. You're completely pathetic. You're scared of your own shadow. You, you're just, you've fallen down, Suzie. You've fallen down, just like everyone in that room, but you have to get back up. And then if you get back up, you get something. And I was like, what? And he said, you get to be a member of the society of interesting people. And I thought, the society of interesting people? I want to be, that's the club I want to be a member of. I don't care about anything, but I would like to be interesting. He nailed it, right? And I thought, he totally reframed failure to me as this entrance into this paradise where you get to be interesting.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  And I really wanted to be interesting. In fact, I had thought being a success was gonna make me interesting. That's what I thought I was gonna do, but actually failing makes you interesting. Getting up and saying, guess what, world? You're not done with me yet, okay? And so I walked out of the room and I, back into the main room and I was like, you know, I'm back, Suzie's back. And Jack was like, what happened in there? And I said, look, we looked at a painting. And later in the car, I said to him, like, I want to be in the society of interesting people. And he said, baby, you're already in it. And I said, well, I'm gonna get back up and prove to the world I belong in it. And it was like, I, after that, my whole life changed because I thought I could fail again and again and again. And indeed, it just makes you more interesting. People don't live the lives they want, to answer your question. They don't live the lives because they're scared of that thing.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  They're scared of falling down because they think it takes them out of the club, but it puts them into a much, much better club. I mean, when I'm with fancy, successful people, as you are with day in and day out, they don't talk to you about their successes, they talk to you about their failures.

• 53:37Codie Sanchez?

  That's true.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  That's what they compare. I mean, I've been with the like, you know, greatest CEOs in the world, they sit around the table, just comparing notes on A, how poor they used to be and B, how much they've screwed up.

• 53:47Codie Sanchez?

  That's true.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  They're fighting for the bottom, like, no, no, no. I mean, I, I was in debt for $300 million and I, but because they talk about the comeback.

• 53:55Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  The comeback is what makes us interesting.

• 53:57Codie Sanchez?

  You know, it's so funny. I never used to understand the man in the arena quote.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:02Codie Sanchez?

  Fully, until I think I understood that line where they say, you know, the one who has experienced neither failure nor defeat.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 54:11Codie Sanchez?

  Victory nor defeat.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:13Codie Sanchez?

  And I remember at first listening to that line and thinking, well, I don't need to, I'm cool. You could just skip the defeat part, go straight to the victory.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:20Codie Sanchez?

  And you're like, no, no, actually, if you haven't felt that, it really does make you less of a human.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  It does. Like I, after I failed, I just became such a nicer person, more heart, more compassion. I mean, I kind of came to hate my former self. I was like, ugh, that striving little goody two shoes, she was missing the love she should have been giving people. And, and so I, I, like, I'm all about it. So, but I see people every day saying, well, if I did that, I might fail. And I'm like, I hope you fail. I hope you fail early and often, get it over with, because then you'll just keep, like, you know, you just keep taking big swings. We only have one wild and precious life.

• 54:59Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, it's such a good point. Yeah, we also, you know, I was thinking about this the other day, we help people try to grow businesses and buy businesses. And, you know, one of the scary things for me, I think when we teach somebody to buy a business, I'm always like, congratulations and I'm sorry.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:14Codie Sanchez?

  Because, because it's gonna suck at some point. You're gonna curse my name, you know, and you're gonna wish you had never gotten into the game, but you sort of have to get into the game at some point.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  And you gotta go through and everybody tells you it's over. I mean, that's the thing that makes successful from, you know, people who stay, who just stay through. I mean, it's when you fold and if you don't fold, you know, you will eventually play your cards. But that's, I mean, you're right. But if you don't, if you don't walk through the valley of despair, you're never gonna be on the mountaintop.

• 55:42Codie Sanchez?

  It's interesting too, because you're a little bit older than I am and.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  Just a little bit.

• 55:47Codie Sanchez?

  You look amazing. And, but, you know, I was thinking lately, I'm on X, you know, Twitter.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:54Codie Sanchez?

  And I was thinking, you know, sometimes I have those moments where everybody's piling on about something that I did. Sometimes it's warranted, sometimes I don't think it is. And, and I thought, well, gosh, there haven't actually been that many generations of women that have been, you know, this might be the first one in which being a CEO as a woman is relatively normalized, even though it's only what, 14, 15% of the Fortune 500 are women. But, you know, your generation, let's say right between, right before ours, see, women's CEOs weren't really normal at all. And then the generation before yours, women working wasn't normal. And the generation before that, we couldn't even get credit, you know, or get a job.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  Couldn't buy a house with that husband, yeah.

• 56:32Codie Sanchez?

  Right. And so it's kind of fascinating because at least for women, it's like, we're three generations into this experiment, actually.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:40Codie Sanchez?

  And we've never really competed with men for the same economic resources, at least in like modern history. And so I could only imagine what it must have been like to have that over the Wall Street Journal everywhere, even though it's not like social, but it does feel like this, this echo chamber.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  I thought there was no coming back from it. I mean, I was very, very lucky because like, you know, a couple of weeks later, Oprah's organization called and said, how'd you like to come write for us? And, and Jack was sitting there in the corner, kind of saying, told you so, told you so. And I was like, okay, okay. And then it was, and then it was, and then it was off to the races.

• 57:12Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  And I thought, oh, and then I actually learned to take risks and I learned to say things like, I might fail when I do this, but I'm gonna try because I will, I will learn and I'll grow and so what? I'll dust myself off. And it, it changes, it changes you. It changes you, you just live so much more life.

• 57:29Codie Sanchez?

  Do you have something that you say in your head when you're scared about something? You think you might fail, but you need to do it anyways?

• 57:35Speaker 02

  Yes, I say, we can do hard things. We could, like, I tell myself all the time, we can do, like, saying, we, like you and me, Suzie, we can do hard things. And I also say, and I've said it to my kids all the time, is everything good is hard. Every, I mean, if it's easy, I mean, it's, you know, everything, starting a company is hard, but it's so good. You start creating people's lives for them. I mean, everything, everything good is hard and, and then, and then the rejoinder, I mean, like, we can do hard things. And I have another one, suggest. I mean, it's like, you can do, you can get anywhere in first gear. So sometimes things are really hard and you have to take your bike down to first gear, you'll get back up again. I mean, you know, it's all part of a piece, really, when I think about those three things. It's like, yeah, it's hard, just persevere.

• 58:15Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. What about, you've been, how long have you been married now to Jack?

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Well, Jack passed away in 2020.

• 58:20Codie Sanchez?

  Oh.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  So he passed away. So we were married from the early 2000s to 2020 when he died.

• 58:28Codie Sanchez?

  Wow, I am so sorry.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  I'm sorry too, but it's been.

• 58:31Codie Sanchez?

  Beautiful 20 years.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, about, yeah, about. Yes, about. So it was a wonderful, beautiful marriage, but he got sick and he fought so hard and we fought together. And he, we tried everything, but at a certain point, you just can't defeat. Illness and sickness, we tried and he was able to die at home, which was great with the kids and me there. And so it was what you would, you know, you don't want it, but we were able to do it in a way that was tender.

• 59:06Codie Sanchez?

  Oh my gosh. And your kids are how old now?

• 59:10Speaker 02

  Thirty, my kids are from my first marriage. My kids are thirty, I have a thirty-eight-year-old, thirty-six-year-old, thirty-five-year-old, and thirty-two-year-old.

• 59:18Codie Sanchez?

  Do you ever want to get married again?

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Uh, no, that is not in the cards. I mean, I had a great marriage. I had a wonderful, my first marriage, I'm actually really close friends with my first husband. He's a wonderful guy, terrific guy, so, um, but, uh, and then with Jack, my second husband. I, uh, that is not in the plans.

• 59:34Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, I was married once before too, and now remarried, but I think I'd be the same with you after I have kiddos.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:41Codie Sanchez?

  Like, I love him and we work together and it's amazing, but I couldn't really imagine doing it again.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, it's been six years, almost seven years now, and so it's, you know, it's like, I don't, it's not a, like, I used to have a high value of belovedness, that value I mentioned to you of like, romantic love, it was a high value while Jack was living, and I recently took the Values Bridge again, and it's number sixteen for me. So when I say it's not in the plans, I know it's not a value for me. And I, look, it's not like I don't like or love men, I do. I do, and my kids have happy marriages, and I have great friends with close marriages, I have no problem with it as a construct, but I've got a great life.

• 1:00:19Codie Sanchez?

  What do you, like, I imagine your students also want to hear about that aspect.

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Codie Sanchez?

  You know, raising a family, being married. So I'm curious, from your perspective, like, what were your lessons, the things that you two did together? Because he's a legend too.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:37Codie Sanchez?

  And did you guys apply systems and frameworks to your marriage?

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  We did. I mean, we, we were great co-parents together, I must say, and I think the kids would all agree. I one time did a podcast, my own podcast, about the way as I raised my kids, and I, at the beginning of the podcast, you know, what worked for me, I called all four of my children, I like bombed them, like total surprise on the phone, and I said, was I a good mother or not? And they were all very, very agreeable that I was, so the jury is in and the jury agrees. Look, it was, it was hard, okay? Um, I care, so the, Jack and I really only cared about one thing with the kids, okay? The majority of the kids upbringing was with me and Jack, and we, we married when they were very, very young. And we cared, I know this is gonna sound like virtue signaling, so bear with me, okay? It's gonna sound really like, oh, what a virtue signaler, um, but we really just cared about the kids' character.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  All right, so we like, we didn't obsess on where they got into schools, we didn't obsess, like, I remember like praying to God in the closet that my son would not make varsity in one semester, because I didn't want to travel around with his team, like, we didn't like obsess on that kind of thing, it was like, please God, but unfortunately he did. Um, and so, but we really wanted them to be, um, not, um, a-holes, okay? And so they had some, you know, these were kids who were coming from a privileged background with a famous stepfather, and they could have become really jerks. They could have been really yucky people because they had so much privilege. We were in New York City, people knew who they were, and we were just like, they've got to be really good. So over like one summer, I mean, here's an example, one summer our son came home from high school,

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  they were in boarding school because we traveled so much, and he said, hey, my friends are going to Europe this summer, after, like, after school ends, and like, I'd like to go to Europe with them. And we were like, oh, really? You think you're gonna go to Europe? On what money? And he was like, we have the money. I said, you're gonna regret for the, all the rest of your days that you said that to me. And so, he was like, and Jack was like in the background shaking his head, like, Marcus, you just said the wrongest thing you could possibly say. We have the money, yeah, you make it, did you make it? So he did not go to Europe with his friends, and he stayed home and he had like the worst job in the world. He worked as a camp counselor that summer, getting up every single morning at seven AM and, and being a camp counselor to a bunch of little brats. And he worked and worked, he'd come home covered with sweat and dirt, and it was a really, really tough job.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  It was a bicycling camp, um, but we, I, I think that he now, twenty years later, forgives me, but he had to learn that, you know, you know, I think I called him Little Lord Fauntleroy, you know, you do not go to Europe with your pals when you're sixteen years old. That's something you have to earn in your life. So we focused on that kind of stuff, and it, we didn't make us the most popular parents in the world, I'll tell you that. I mean, they were not like, I love my mom and dad, they, we were, had the reputation of being incredibly strict. And we were, but now, like, kids are my best friends, and, uh, and now I have grandchildren, and I get to say yes constantly. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I show up with like sparkly go-go boots, and she says, can I wear them to bed? And I say, yes. And then I said, do you want them in other colors?

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  And she says, yes. And I say, yes. And I say, do they still fit? Yes, I'll send them. I'm, I'm like absolutely yes-ing. And, and Roscoe says to me, you know, you're gonna spoil her, and I'll say, that's right. I did not get to do that before, but now I get to do it with you.

• 1:03:41Codie Sanchez?

  Oh, I love it. You know, it's funny, my, my mom, we're incredibly close too, but same. And we used to call her the narc, because she would just, she was on me like white on right. She knew what I was thinking about doing wrong before I knew that I was gonna do it. Famously used like a water glass to listen to my daughter to see, I mean, she had every trick in the world.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  Once Christmas, my kids gave me a baseball cap and it said FBI on it. I mean, I, I knew everything about everything. I mean, they were like, what is my mother doing here? And I'd be like, hello. I was just everywhere they wanted to be.

• 1:04:09Codie Sanchez?

  I aspire to that. I hope I can be the exact same way. But I, you know, I think, I think I have to owe a lot of, you know, whatever I'm good at today to, to her and my dad, because they were, they were tough, you know?

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Codie Sanchez?

  Well, and I think it's cool to share, because these days, there's so much about gentle parenting and all these other stuff, and it seems overwhelming, you know, while you're trying to figure out what to do with this little mini man.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  I know, but you gotta meet that mini person. So that person's gonna come out with his or her, do you know what it is?

• 1:04:34Codie Sanchez?

  No, we're getting surprised.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  I was surprised each time. Uh, that person is gonna come out with his or her own personality, and they're gonna tell you some stuff about them, and you're gonna have to understand, you know, the biggest change for me, the most important thing I learned as a mom, if I could just share this with you, was that, uh, the, the day I kind of got better as a mom was when I realized that my kid, each one of them, each of the four of them was not an imperfect version of me, but a perfect version of themselves. And I had to stop imposing me on them, saying, you should like this, you should do that, you should, I mean, like, look, there are rules, and they all have to be polite and so forth, but like, their interests were their interests, their values were their values, and I had to just learn who they were and love that person,

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  and not, not just keep on, just grimacing that they were not the, they were not me. Your kid is not gonna be you. And that is like, that's a gigantic, that was a revelation for me. Maybe other parents knew, but I was like, wait, why aren't they more like me?

• 1:05:30Codie Sanchez?

  I think I would be like that too. This poor little thing, it's got a he, she, we don't know. But my husband is a former Navy SEAL, and then I am whatever I am, so we joke about it'll be like a benevolent dictatorship, but it'll still be a dictatorship, so we're gonna have to learn to chill out on this poor thing.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  We'll see.

• 1:05:45Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, I know. I think there's so many interesting things we talked about. One of the things that I want to send people to is Value Bridge.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Thevaluesbridge.com.

• 1:05:53Codie Sanchez?

  Incredible thing. I'm actually gonna make my husband take it, I think, with me when I go back.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  And if you click a little, if you both click a button that says it's okay, it will compare your values with your partner, and you will get a report saying, oh, here's where your values are the same, and here's where they're different.

• 1:06:08Codie Sanchez?

  I know what we're doing at dinner tonight. He's gonna have a glass of wine, but I'm gonna make him take this. So valuesbridge.com, and then where else do you, I mean, you've written a few books by now. Do you like to talk about becoming you?

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love talking about becoming you, and ten, ten, ten is coming. Then go to susiewelch.com and find out about all my books and, uh,

• 1:06:26Codie Sanchez?

  And you're on all the socials as Susie Welch.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  I am Susie Welch on Instagram mainly, yeah.

• 1:06:29Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, but I like becoming you.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Codie Sanchez?

  And I really like, like you talked about, um, I think it sounds touchy-feely until you actually do it, and then you realize it runs your life.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  I am the least woo-woo person you've ever met. I'm not, oh my God, I can't stand the woo-woo stuff. When I hear woo-woo platitudes and bromides, I just lose my, lose my mind. Um, I, look, I like data. I mean, I would love to spend all my time with data, because we can learn from the data, and I think that, look, I, uh, people are always telling you to go live your purpose, but they don't tell you how. And I, that drives me out, what, what, is it gonna just drop on your head? It doesn't work that way. You've got to go do the work to figure it out. And then when you do, and you're living your purpose, it gets better. It gets better for you, and it gets better for everybody you touch. So I think it's, it starts off this very virtue circle. I, I want to be in that business.

• 1:07:17Codie Sanchez?

  Susie Welch, this was amazing. Thank you for being here.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

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