My Only Regret: I'd Do It All Faster ft. Danielle Robay

Summary

Becoming You with Suzy Welch: “My Only Regret: I'd Do It All Faster” ft. Danielle Robay

Release Date: May 12, 2026

---

Episode Overview

In this dynamic episode, Suzy Welch, renowned business journalist and NYU Stern Professor, explores the central question: Should we move quickly or slowly when making life decisions? Joined by broadcaster and fellow “queen of questions” Danielle Robay, Suzy opens up about her one big regret—wishing she'd done everything in life faster. The pair candidly dissect the fast vs. slow debate, sharing personal stories of career, love, regret, and growth. Their conversation highlights how self-knowledge and clarity of values influence not just the speed but the quality of our choices. The tone is fast-paced, wise, irreverent, and heartfelt—a true masterclass in both decision-making and becoming yourself.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Fast vs. Slow Decisions: Framing the Debate

• Opening Question (00:57):
  “When you look back on your life, is there anything that you regret? Is there anything you would do differently?...I would have done everything faster. Every single thing faster.” – Suzy Welch
• Suzy introduces the episode's theme—regret over moving too slow versus too fast in decisions about life, work, and love.

---

2. Guest Introduction & Contrasting Perspectives

• Danielle’s Take (02:21): "My personal experience is that I have gone way too fast. And all of the times I have gone way too fast, I felt as if I've done some things I regret... I'm curious to hear your experience." – Danielle Robay
• Suzy and Danielle admit their initial disagreement, setting up a nuanced exploration of both sides.

---

3. Root Causes: Self-Knowledge and Values

• Suzy’s Shift (02:47): “The reasons [my approach] changed is because I know who I am now... When you know what your values are, you can make decisions really, really quickly. I have wasted years of my life trying to please everyone but myself and trying to struggle with values.” – Suzy Welch
• Suzy explains how understanding her values accelerated her decision making over time.
• Danielle expresses curiosity if unpacking these differences will change her mind.

---

4. Regret, Relationships, and the Cost of Waiting

• Suzy’s List of ‘Too Slow’ (04:13):
  • Forgiving faster
  • Ending bad relationships sooner
  • Making friends more quickly
• Regret Analysis (04:13–06:46):
  • Suzy emphasizes most regrets are linked to self-doubt and not betting on herself.
  • After her husband Jack’s death, decision clarity came through teaching and embracing her own values.

---

5. Danielle’s Hustle & Career Story

Danielle shares her unconventional hustle to break into LA media, revealing lessons about speed, persistence, and authenticity.

• Danielle’s Origin Story (05:17–10:58):
  • Moves to LA on a whim with $8,000, knowing no one.
  • Sends gifts to make industry connections (“It’s so hustle.” – Danielle Robay, 06:58)
  • Finally lands her dream job at E! thanks to starting her own podcast after rejection—years later, the network hires her because they “love your podcast.”
  • Notable boyfriend advice: “Go figure out how to make people see you the way you see yourself.” (09:24)
• Memorable Quote (09:58):
  “I want you to host the show…No, no, no. I want you to host the show. I know you can do live TV. And I can’t find someone who can do live TV.” – E! Producer to Danielle

---

6. Love Stories, Momentum, and Staying Too Long

Both hosts disclose personal moments where waiting (especially in relationships) led to drawn-out pain or missed opportunities.

• Suzy’s Marriage Reflection (15:26–19:55):
  • Married young “because of momentum and cuteness”
  • Knew at her wedding “I’m making a terrible mistake” but went ahead, then stayed too long after kids arrived: “It was over long before it was over.”
  • Heart-rending moment witnessing another couple’s true love catalyzed her decision to finally leave.
  • “We just kept on having kids…A baby kind of covers a lot of stuff.”
• Danielle echoes the pattern:
  “All of my boyfriends I should have broken up with a lot sooner, I think.” (15:17)

---

7. How Upbringing Affects Decision Speed

• Nature/Nurture on Self-Discovery (20:09–24:32):
  • Suzy wonders: Does being raised by good parents give a head start on self-knowledge?
  • Her six-word memoir: “Raised myself. Then I met him.” (21:48)
  • Danielle responds: Having loving, involved parents gave her a safety net, but her “values” were really theirs—so adulthood was spent untangling what truly belonged to her.

---

8. Career Detours and Value Dissonance

The consequences of not aligning decisions (or speed) with deeply held values.

• Suzy’s Consulting Detour (25:26–28:52):
  • Stayed 7 years in a job misaligned with her values, “completely at odds with my values and aptitudes…every single day so inauthentic.”
  • Didn’t pivot to her natural fit (broadcast journalism) because of money, inertia—and even a TV exec’s criticism about her nose (28:29).
  • “I took maybe a 15 year detour that I didn’t need to take. I Just I flailed. I flailed.”
• Danielle’s Insight:
  “It sounds like you didn’t have anybody acting as a mirror for you.” (28:52)

---

9. The Power of Mirrors, Mentors, and Support

• Role of Jack Welch (29:04–32:22):
  • Jack provided essential encouragement, support, and forthrightness, making Suzy feel seen and helping her power through difficult work (like writing her bestselling book).
  • Memorable Moment (31:09):
    Jack: “That’s just total and complete bullshit. You are writing that book.”

---

10. Decision-Making Tools: Gut, Systems, and Wisdom

• On Systematic vs. Intuitive Choices (45:44–47:33):
  • Suzy teaches four different decision-making systems—including 10-10-10 and the pre-mortem—advocating for “gut plus verification.”
  • “The impulse, we all just use gut, and gut has bad efficacy. 50% efficacy. Just flip a coin, why don’t you?” – Suzy Welch (46:05)
• On Values as a Decision Accelerator (43:46):
  • “Now I make decisions so fast because I am like, yep, I know what my values are.”
  • If your values conflict, knowing their details and trade-offs helps you choose more quickly and consistently.

---

11. Friendship: Fast, Slow, and Evolution

How to approach friendships (jump in or hold back?), and how definitions of friendship may change over seasons of life.

• Suzy’s Theory (36:13):
  “Friends are like the tiles in the mosaic of your life...I think you should be friends with everybody. Stop holding everybody to such a high standard. They’re not going to come to your wedding, but they’re a friend.”
• Jack Welch’s daily advice: “Love everyone.” (37:41)
• Research Note:
  “The most popular kids in school are the people who like the most amount of kids in school.” – Danielle (37:51)
• Danielle’s Prior Approach:
  Rushing into friendships sometimes led to disappointment but sharpened discernment: “The people that don’t [become less admirable as you know them]…are who you keep as your friends.” (35:35)

---

12. Living — and Deciding — by Your Own Values

• Big Life vs. Right Life (40:39):
  • Danielle shares Gretchen Rubin’s advice: “When you are stuck, choose the decision that will give you the bigger life.”
  • Suzy counters: “If you don’t have the value of scope...that’s not the right answer for you.”
  • The episode stresses—again and again—the utility of identifying your unique set of guiding values as the essential shortcut to wise, speedy, and regret-minimizing choices.

---

13. Learning from Wrong Decisions and Self-Forgiveness

• “You will make some wrong decisions. But just what? So then you learn and you get more data for the Wisdom project.” – Suzy Welch (49:10)
• Danielle: “I had to learn what wasn’t right for me so that I could get clearer on what was. I know that sounds corny...” (49:24)
• Suzy: “The most important thing I will say about making a wrong decision, fast or slow, is to own it...The minute you own it and you take full responsibility for it, you can move on.” (49:24)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments with Timestamps

• “I would have done everything faster. Every single thing faster. Right or wrong.”
  – Suzy Welch (00:57)

• “I've wasted years trying to please everyone but myself.”
  – Suzy Welch (02:47)

• On hustling for opportunities:
  “I started sending bamboo plants and cookies.”
  – Danielle Robay (06:54)

• “He said, go figure out how to make people see you the way you see yourself.”
  – Danielle Robay on key boyfriend advice (09:24)

• “The one thing that makes a woman really interesting is when she utters the word 'my ex'.”
  – Suzy Welch, recounting an old New Yorker article (16:36)

• “I took maybe a 15 year detour that I didn’t need to take. I flailed.”
  – Suzy Welch (28:52)

• On Jack’s encouragement:
  “I’m going to take this decision away from you. You’re not in your right mind. You will thank me for this decision later. You’re finishing that fucking book.”
  – Jack Welch (31:09)

• On making quick decisions:
  “Now I make decisions like so fast because I am like, yep, I know what my values are.”
  – Suzy Welch (23:45)

• Friendship philosophy:
  “Friends are like the tiles in the mosaic of your life… Just assume everyone’s a friend—even people who’ve screwed you over.”
  – Suzy Welch (36:13)

• Research on popularity:
  “The most popular kids in school are the people who like the most amount of kids in school.”
  – Danielle Robay (37:51)

• Gretchen Rubin’s decision rule:
  “When you are stuck, choose the decision that will give you the bigger life.”
  – Danielle Robay referencing Gretchen Rubin (40:39)

• “Research is me-search.”
  – Suzy Welch (22:39)

---

Practical Takeaways

• Decisions done faster—with strong self-knowledge and clear values—often lead to less regret.
• Mistakes are inevitable: The faster you own them, the quicker you recover and learn.
• Mentoring, mirrors, and supportive relationships speed up learning and growth.
• Friendships and career moves benefit from both hot pursuit and thoughtful discernment—there’s a place for both, and the right balance is personal.
• Self-forgiveness and quick pivots help turn “wrong choices” into indispensable life data.

---

Final Reflection & Closing Questions (50:56–51:33)

• Danielle’s sign-off question for listeners:
  “What is something every person should try once?”
• Suzy’s quick answer: “Don’t be a dope, get a dog.”
• Danielle: “Mine’s always a love affair. Like a great love affair. Just diving in, even if it’s not right.”
• Invitation to listeners to reflect and comment on their own answers for a future episode.

---

Resources & Where to Find More

• Danielle Robay: All channels at @daniellevrobay (51:00)
• Suzy Welch: Becoming You podcast, NYU Stern, Faculty page

---

For anyone considering whether to act fast or slow in life decisions, this episode serves as a candid, laughter-filled, and touching exploration of how knowing yourself—and forgiving yourself—makes all the difference.

Transcript

[Podcast Advertiser]

This episode is brought to you by Prime Obsession is in session. And this summer, prime originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice off campus. Elle every year after the Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point and more Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on prime, ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit red bull.com brightsummerahead to learn more. See you this summer.

[Susie Welch]

At the end of every semester in my classes at NYU Stern, I have an ama. The students can ask me anything. And usually it's about like, hey, Professor Welch, what's going to be on the exam? But this semester, a student, like, completely stopped me in my tracks and asked, when you look back on your life, is there anything that you regret? Is there anything you would do differently? And I was like, instantly, yes. Yes. I would have done everything faster. Every single thing faster. Right or wrong. We're here today on the Pod Becoming youg to talk about this question, Fast or Slow with the queen of questions, Danielle Roubaix. You know who she is? She's famous. She has two podcasts herself, Reese Witherspoon's Book Club, and also Question Everything, her famous podcast. We're gonna ask this question and hopefully answer it for you. You've wondered it yourself. Have you gone too fast with your decisions or too slow? I have a lot of theories about this. We're gonna get to them. I got some cool stories and I bet you do, too. Hi, Danielle.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Susie, I love being with you so much. Thanks for the invitation. On.

[Susie Welch]

We're all gussied up, you and I, because we were just at the famous Hat luncheon in New York. Your hat was fabulous. My hat's. But we take our hats off, though, after a while. Like just top of the hour here.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah.

[Susie Welch]

Do you regret going too fast or too slow in life?

[Danielle Roubaix]

Well, when you posted about this, I was immediately drawn to the video because I usually agree with you.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah. And you disagreed.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Well, my personal experience is that I have gone way too fast. And all of the times I have gone way too fast, I felt as if I've done some things I regret. Like sometimes I sent emails too quickly.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[Danielle Roubaix]

I'm curious to hear your experience. Curious to see if, once we unpack it, if I feel differently.

[Susie Welch]

Okay. I have changed on this in my life. I used to be very tentative and make decisions very slowly. That has changed and I've. The reasons it's changed is really important. The reasons it's changed is because I know who I am now. And I think that's what changes everything for you, Danielle. I honestly do. It's like when you know who you are, when you know what your values are. Yes, it always comes back to values on the Becoming youg podcast. When you know what your values are, you can make decisions really, really quickly. I have wasted years of my life trying to please everyone but myself and trying to struggle with values. And so I've got, look, here's the things that I've not done fast enough. I've never. Here's the number one. You should forgive faster. Forgive faster. Get out of bad relationships faster. You should make friends more quickly. What are we waiting for? Life is friends, right? I loved fast and I got kind of nailed for it. When I met my husband Jack, I mean, I got pummeled and killed for falling in love and running off with him so fast. And I would do it in a heartbeat again. And when I look back at it, it's like once I got to know myself as I got older and it took a long time for me, longer than most people then, I mean, now I move along quite at a pace. Quite at a pace. And I think it's. I'm not sure it's for everybody. I'm not sure it's for everybody.

[Danielle Roubaix]

If you could start from the beginning of the list. When that student asked you, like, what you regretted, what are the things you think you did too slowly?

[Susie Welch]

Well, everything I did too slowly is because I was doubting myself. So when I look back at my life over the past couple of years, so if you take the moment from when my husband passed away in 2020, I was completely on my own in life. And I think about decisions that I made too slowly. I was always second guessing myself. And then later I would say, well, I knew the answer so much earlier. And I thought, thought, well, why didn't I do it? And I wasn't willing to bet on myself. And then once I came, it's like, look at that time I started teaching becoming you. And really along with my students, kind of figured out what my values and aptitudes and interests were really, really clearly. And I was like, the clock is not ticking backwards. It is not ticking backwards. And here's the other thing that I really learned, which is like, go ahead, take your swing. Make your mistake. What's the worst thing that could happen?

[Danielle Roubaix]

Kind of fail fast.

[Susie Welch]

Yes. Or what? So. So what? There are so many different times in my life when I thought, wait, I know the answer to this question. Why am I doubting? Why am I doubting? Just go. Okay, but I want to hear about you. But first, for the four people in my audience who do not know who you are, tell us the story of your life. I just want to hear it. It's a great story.

[Danielle Roubaix]

You're so sweet.

[Susie Welch]

No, go ahead, let's hear it.

[Danielle Roubaix]

I'm not going to start from the very beginning because I won't bore you. But I am a Chicago girl. I'm very Midwest. I've lived in LA for 13 years, but I am still so, so Midwest in my values, I think.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Or my virtues, maybe.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah, right.

[Danielle Roubaix]

But I wanted to be the millennial Barbara Walters since I can remember. I would like, sit at the park with my mom when she would be talking to her girlfriends and my mom would say, go play with the kids. And I would sit on her knee and just listen to all the women tell stories. And to this day, I still love hearing people's stories. So when I graduated from the University of Wisconsin Madison, I had lied to get a bunch of internships because I was too young to get them and worked at news stations and graduated and, and thought, I'm going to move to LA and I'm going to work on the Internet. I called my dad, I said, I'm going to book a one way ticket. I had $8,000 saved. And he was like, what do you mean work on the Internet?

[Susie Welch]

What year, what year was this?

[Danielle Roubaix]

This is 2013. Okay, so YouTube was kind of a thing. Instagram wasn't really. Yet we were still posting with all the filters. And my dad was like, Britney Spears fans work on the Internet. Like, what do you mean? Yeah, and, and I said, give me a year. If I can't figure it out, then I'll go get a job at a local news station and I'll, I'll do the more traditional route. So I moved to LA. I lived in a garage. I had that $8,000, no friends. I didn't know one person. And I was so happy to be there. I would go for a walk every day when I woke up and get coffee and just look at the palm trees and think, this is where I'm meant to be.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah.

[Danielle Roubaix]

And So I didn't know how to get a job. I started emailing cold emailing people, and no one would reply to me. So I. I started sending bamboo plants and cookies.

[Susie Welch]

This is so hustley.

[Danielle Roubaix]

It's so hustle.

[Susie Welch]

So much hustle. Okay, go on.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yes. And you know what's. I always thought, oh, maybe it'll get easier. I'm still such a hustler.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah.

[Danielle Roubaix]

But I. I would send them gifts with little notes, and then people would reply. And so they would say, hey, Danielle, I'm sorry I don't have a job, but thanks for the cookies. Nice to meet you. And every few months, I would check in, and one day one of those people said. Called me out of the blue and said, our host is sick. Can you be at the Paley center in Beverly Hills at 7pm and I. Absolutely. And I thought I looked so good. I did my hair and makeup and I got there and I realized I was very Midwest and I did not look so good. And like, Juliana Rancic was at the end of the carpet really looking good, and I was hooked. So I was working for free for red carpets. Eventually got a job at a place

[Susie Welch]

walking up to celebrities and saying, tell me about your outfit.

[Danielle Roubaix]

No, so actually, that's a great question, because I had. I always liked deep conversation.

[Susie Welch]

Right.

[Danielle Roubaix]

And because I was working for free, the guy I was working with let me ask anything I wanted.

[Susie Welch]

Okay.

[Danielle Roubaix]

So I would do deep research, research on these people. And to get their attention, I would say something like, tell me about high school. And so. And so. And they'd be like, what? So they would come over, even though they probably weren't going to talk to me. Right, right. I never asked them what they were wearing. And I would hand out business cards and say, can I do a long form interview with you? It had my cell phone number. Like, it was ridiculous. And some people would do it. Yeah, I. It was kind of wild. They were. They were wanting to help and willing to help.

[Susie Welch]

My theory about this is, is that because I know you, is that you were so sincere and so appealing. Thank you. And so warm and so natural that they were like, I kind of like this person. I want to spend more time with her. I mean, I think that's so. No, I think that's what was going on is like, you know, you just showed up there and you were like, hey, I know this random thing about you. And then they would say, okay, I'll talk to that girl. Because you were like a girl then.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Totally.

[Susie Welch]

Okay, so what was the big Break.

[Danielle Roubaix]

And I was so eager. Yeah, Well, I always wanted to work at E. And I had auditioned a million times for every department, marketing and brand, and, like, wherever they could fit me. And everyone said, no, no, no, no, no.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah.

[Danielle Roubaix]

And eventually, I had a big audition for them. They were moving a show to New York. They flew me there. It was like a crazy 24 hours. I did the audition, and my agent said, you didn't get it. It was like, me and two or three other people. And I thought my life was over because everything I had sacrificed, I was, like, so broke and so tired. And I had just started dating a guy in New York, and it was way too early to have cried in front of him. We were, like, only dating for three weeks, and he came to my hotel room, and he said, you can be tired, you can be sad, and in three days, you better figure out how to hire yourself. And I said, you don't get it. And what I do, you don't hire yourself. Like, I want to be on Good Morning America or the Today Show. People have to get hired. And he was like, those people have a job. They're also hired. Like, go figure out how to make people see you the way you see yourself. And so Covid hit, and I launched my podcast, Question Everything. And to fast forward, that woman who I had auditioned for at E. Years ago called me out of the blue, I think this was probably three or four years later. And said, danielle, do you want to do a show? And I said, you mean like an audition? I don't. I don't really want. I'm kind of done with that. And she goes, no, no, no. I want you to host the show. I know you can do live tv. And I can't find someone who can do live tv. And I went in and I got my dream job of going to E. And I said, tammy, why did you hire me? And she said, oh, that's easy. I love your podcast.

[Susie Welch]

Oh, but wait, I'm sorry. What happened to the guy?

[Danielle Roubaix]

Thank you for asking.

[Susie Welch]

No, that's a good guy. I mean, that guy kind of was.

[Danielle Roubaix]

He's amazing.

[Susie Welch]

What happened?

[Danielle Roubaix]

He was also the person who, when I was on my kitchen floor crying. Cause I was like, I had started a card game business, and, like, I was so broke from starting that. And he said, welcome to the club. Like, welcome to the club with people who are trying and putting themselves out there. He and I are no longer together, but he was probably my favorite boyfriend. Oh, he was the best.

[Susie Welch]

Okay, girl.

[Ross Store Advertiser]

Winter is so last season, and now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders that perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all the day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done. Hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear open that envelope. It's time for a little in person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic.

[Nicole Phelps]

Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, global fashion news and features director at Vogue and co host of the run through podcast. Each week on the show, our listeners get an all access pass into the world of Vogue. On Tuesdays, join me as I interview influential designers like Calvin Klein, Rachel Scott and Simone Belotti. On Thursdays, join Chloe Mel, head of editorial content at Vogue US and Choma Nadi, British Vogue's head of editorial content as they explore fashion through the lens of culture with guests like Doja Cat and Margot Robbie. Listen and watch the run through with Vogue wherever you get your podcasts and Vogue's YouTube channel

[Obsession Movie Advertiser]

focus features in Blumhouse Obsession.

[Nicole Phelps]

When I have a crush on a

[Susie Welch]

guy no one knows.

[Obsession Movie Advertiser]

Be careful. I wish Nikki love me more than anyone in the entire who you wish for obsession is 96 fresh on rotten tomatoes.

[Danielle Roubaix]

I love you so, so, so, so much.

[Obsession Movie Advertiser]

It's blood soaked nightmare fuel.

[Susie Welch]

Brooke, I suppose you put on her.

[Obsession Movie Advertiser]

You have been warned. Obsession. Rated R under 17. Anime without parent. Only in theaters May 15 with special engagements in Dolby.

[Susie Welch]

Then what happened? So then the E Show came.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah, the E Show came. Elon Musk took. It was a two Twitter partnership. Elon Musk took over Twitter and everything disbanded. Okay, so we had great ratings, but we were done. And then I had been. I've been a reader my whole life and loved what Reese Witherspoon and her team at hello Sunshine were building and I thought they should be doing content and so I pitched them a show about books based around the book club and pitched the C Suite. I was so nervous. I'd never pitched a show. Nothing happened. And a year later they called me and they said, we're launching our podcast.

[Susie Welch]

A year later. Don't you love it A year later, Right.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah. So then I, I launched their first podcast and then the second podcast is the Reese's Book Club podcast. Bookmarked. And I've never felt more at home. I always, when I took your course, I felt like, oh, I'm so lucky. I get to live my values Within a company. I think that's so rare.

[Susie Welch]

Daniel's talking about the three day intensive which you took, which was wonderful. I remember, like, you were sitting in the front row and I was like, this woman is definitely locked in.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Oh, it was the best three days of my year.

[Susie Welch]

Thank you. So now you are doing kind of. You're living your dream life, but it feels to me that you have gone very fast.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Very fast.

[Susie Welch]

I mean, there's. I mean, do you. Do you. Are there any decisions that went too fast?

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah. You know, when I saw your video, I thought, I'm sort of like Hamilton. I always feel like I'm writing and I'm running out of time. There's an urgency I have within me that since I was a little kid, I. Sometimes when I'm emotional about something, I've definitely fired off emails to like, corporate people that looking back, should have kept that to myself.

[Susie Welch]

I would say that. It's funny that you should say that. Hamilton quote. Because I will honestly say that when I would see Hamilton, I've seen Hamilton more times than I want to even admit.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah.

[Susie Welch]

But I. When I remember the first time I saw it and they had the song. Why are you writing like you're running out of time? I felt so. Me too. I am writing like I'm running out of time. And either that's in you or it's not. And I know, like, look, to say you should do everything faster like I did in that reel that got some attention, is kind of counter to the other narrative, which is like, you know, about wisdom and slowness and reflection, and it's kind of like the exact opposite of some of the narrative out there. So what. What's the truth? Well, the truth must be somewhere in between, right?

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah.

[Susie Welch]

This truth must be like it always is when hear two extreme versions of events. If I think about the story of your life, I mean, you were hustling, hustling, hustling. So occasionally you did things too fast.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah.

[Susie Welch]

Did you ever do anything too slowly?

[Danielle Roubaix]

I think relationships, like, personal relationships, I did too slowly. Like, I mean, all of my boyfriends I should have broken up with a lot sooner, I think.

[Susie Welch]

I know I should have definitely ended my. Look, I. I've said this on the podcast a thousand and one times. My first husband, who I am incredibly close friends with now, I met him when I was 15 years old and we got married. Why? Momentum. I mean, honestly, we got married. He was very cute, by the way. Unbelievable. He's still very cute. Eric, you're very cute.

[Danielle Roubaix]

That Is so nice of you.

[Susie Welch]

No, no. He's incredibly cute. At Siobhan, you're very lucky. He's a cute guy. So I would say that because of his cuteness and the fact that we kind of knew each other so well from when we were really young. We met when we were in high school, and then momentum, and people were like, oh, you and Eric have been together a really long time. Why don't you get married? And I was like, okay, what do you do when you're 21? Okay, you get married. Also, he's very cute. And, you know, there was a little bit of like, who else will marry me? He kind of knew all the ugliness about my weird, crazy, nutty family. He knew all that stuff, and it was kind of cool with him because his own family was weird and crazy and nutty as well. And we were like, okay, true. It's like, no prisoners here. We both come from wacky families, and we kind of got each other. So with momentum and cuteness, we ended up getting married. So I made the decision very quickly. It was just a locomotive. Look, I am so happy we stayed married as long as we did because I got those kids, and I would have never had those kids with another person. Right? That's just DNA. Those kids, who I could not live without, were made by that guy with me. But I stayed in the marriage long after the kids arrived, longer than I should have, because we were not meant to be together. And, you know, I knew it because I knew it. My sisters would tell you that on the way to the church, in the car, I said to them, I know I'm making a terrible mistake. Now, it's interesting, I don't remember saying it, and I wonder, but they all remember me saying, I know I'm making a terrible mistake. And right around that time when I read a story in the New Yorker, this article in the New Yorker said, the one thing that makes a woman really interesting is when she utters the word my ex. So I thought, okay, well, I'll be divorced, but at least I'll be interesting. Wait, you knew? I must have known.

[Danielle Roubaix]

What made you go through with it.

[Susie Welch]

He was cute. It would have been embarrassing to not do it. I honestly thought, look, I want to get away from my family of origin, okay? And I wanted to get away from my unstable, crazy family, which I love very, very much. But my mom and dad were kind of not meant to be together themselves. They stayed together all the way through, but they probably shouldn't have. But they did. Yeah. And I. And it just felt like you get married, you know, there was like a Carly Simon song that was like, you know, about to sort of the sort of sweetness of marriage. And I thought maybe we could fix each other. We could fix each other. We couldn't and we didn't. Look, the funny thing is that we ended up to be grand old friends. But life is long. I mean, it was a long time before that happened, but it was pretty early on that it was clear that all we could do was hurt each other. And we just kept on hurting each other over and over again. But I did the old fashioned thing, and maybe he did it too, which is we just kept on having kids. I mean, from the beginning of time, couples have tried to stay together by. And having another baby. A baby kind of covers a lot of stuff. A baby kind of is like, pay attention to the baby. Oh, there's a baby coming. And you kind of pace things over. But it was over long before it was over. And it was this kind of terrible moment when we were hiking with a bunch of other couples and there was a couple that was really happily married. And I always admired their marriage. I knew that they had like, the marriage I dreamed of having. And her name was Leslie, his name was Ron. And his nickname for her, we all knew, was Lulu. And anyway, the whole group, there were sort of six couples, and we were all hiking and Ron was coming later and he was coming over a mountain pass to meet us. And we were all hiking down this mountain pass, and suddenly he came over the crest of the mountain and he spied us. And he literally started shouting, lulu, Lulu. As he ran towards our group, like he was overjoyed to see his wife. And she was running towards him going, ron, Ron. And he was shouting, lulu, Lulu. And it was like a movie. And I remember thinking, I have to get a divorce. It was like so painful to see what real love looked like. And I think I like, looked at my husband at the time and he would not look back at me. But I remember thinking, I am like 4 years past when this was completely over. Here's the saddest thing. The saddest thing is like 20 years later, they got a divorce. No, I know, I know, I know it was too bad, whatever. But in that moment, they were very happily married. So I took too long. Why did I take too long?

[Danielle Roubaix]

Can I. I just want to say I think it's really powerful that you share this because I've only known you in the past few years and you have so much self efficacy so. So to know that you were kind of a shell of who you are is why I can't even imagine it.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah, I can't either. But I mean, it's been a journey. Okay, so the journey of my life is. Has been this question of how much of our life do we. How much of our life story do we write and how much is written for us? That has been the intellectual path. And I always think that, look, I have a question that I don't know the answer to, and I think you are the queen of questions. And so I wonder what you think. And so there are sort of two types of people in the world, in my estimation. There's people who have had good parents who really raised them, and there are people who have had bad parents who have to raise themselves. And my question has always been, who gets the head start to create a great. If you have great parents who teach you how to make decisions and teach you who you are and teach you right from wrong, do you have a head start in life? I think you might. I mean, I think you might. Why? Because I was that parent to my child, to all of my four children, and I think it gave them a big head start in life. I came from a family that was dysfunctional. They were brilliant people. My dad was brilliant. My mom was savvy, savagely savvy. And they were complicated, messed up, damaged people who found each other. And there was a lot of Detrius. What they were not, what they were not were parents. And I. You know the six word memoirs. Ernest Hemingway has the six word. Can you write your story of your life in six words? My six word memoir. For many years was raised myself. Then I met him, because I raised myself. I was my own mother and father until I met Jack. Then Jack came in and he was everything. He was my mother, he was my father, and he was my boyfriend. He was my best friend. He was my boss. He was everything, right? And I suddenly had, like, at age 40, this new life, this new life of a person who was like a parent but also a husband. He was everything. But until that point, my siblings and I and especially my sisters and I tried to be parents to each other. And I think it just gave me this gigantic deficit out of the starting line. Now, look, I was super lucky because I was. Must have been smart to go to Exeter and then Harvard. I mean, I can't. That was not an accident that those things happened. I also studied super hard and was good at sports, but I worked. I had a gift from God of a Brain that was good at school. Not good at a lot of things, but good at school. But I did not know who I was. I did not know how to make decisions. I did not know what values were. I didn't know what my values were. I didn't know what I should do. All these things I took years and years and years to teach myself. And then I met Jack and he really accelerated that, to put it very mildly. And he was like, let's just get this straight. Here's who you are. And I had to kind of think, okay, am I that person? But I would say like one of the sort of through lines of the past kind of year since Jack died is that I have totally rewritten the narrative of my life to say, okay, I figured out I didn't know who I was, I didn't know how to make decisions. And now look at this end of the story, which is I am a person who teaches people how to figure out who they are and how to make decisions. I mean, this is what I teach. Decision making and self discovery research is me search. Yeah, right. That's so true. It is. So I feel like I made a lot of decisions too slowly at the beginning because I didn't have the self confidence.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah.

[Susie Welch]

To make them. But then when I started to discover them, I was like, boom, boom, boom. Now I make decisions like so fast because I am like, yep, I know what my values are. I know who I am. I can make this decision very quickly.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Now I'm interested in this because I had two parents who were very imperfect but very loving, very involved.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah.

[Danielle Roubaix]

The opposite experience than you had. I thought I knew who I was. I thought I knew what my values were. But that was all their stuff. It was their values. And so when I moved to LA and had to hit a lot of rock bottoms because I was on my own and things weren't going my way. I was crawling out of this hole for 10, like literally I, I would say until two years ago. But all of my 20s for sure. And trying to find out who I was.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah.

[Danielle Roubaix]

So I don't know if you can escape it.

[Susie Welch]

You had a safe place. I mean, you had a place like you hit rock bottom but you knew you could always go home, right?

[Danielle Roubaix]

Oh yeah. And that's a huge. It's a safety net.

[Susie Welch]

It's like I did not have that. I remember going to my mom really early in my marriage with Eric. A lot of stuff went down that was hurtful to me. I remember saying to her, look, can I take the kids and come live with you. And she said, I'm not going to let you embarrass me that way. And so I didn't ever have a safe place, which was, look, I have done a lot of things. I'm very, very tough on my kids. If you've listened to my podcast on how I raise my kids, you know how tough I am on my kids. But they always knew they could come home. They always knew, like, you know, like, if they were in jail, I would come and that they could always come home. I didn't have that. And I don't like, you know, I actually, though the other day I was taking a walk in the woods with the dogs and I thought, wait, what if I have this exactly backwards? That everything that is sort of successful about me is because I did raise myself? I don't know. Someday I'm gonna write a memoir and try to figure it out. I mean, just the actual writing of the memoir is necessary. And maybe it will never be published because who would, you know, whatever. I don't wanna presume.

[Danielle Roubaix]

No, we need it. We all need it.

[Susie Welch]

I don't wanna presume that anybody wanna read it. But the figuring out of it might be very, very interesting to me. Like, okay, I graduated from business school, like everybody at business school. I went to Harvard Business School. So fancy pants. And after I graduated, everybody went to banking or consulting. Okay, everybody. Like, it was like 94%, despite the fact that I had no kind of natural, no natural aptitudes for consulting and actually found consulting to be dreary and boring. I mean, I'd been a crime reporter. And then I went to consulting. Why? Money. I needed money. And they all. Because I graduated successfully from business school. They relieved my two years of debt, which was huge. But I stayed a lot longer than I needed to. But I remember very early on in consulting, very early on coming home and saying to Eric, you know, consulting's a complete house of cards. It's like we are going in and people are paying us to find out what they actually know. And then we talk back to them and we tell them what they already know by having done interviews. It's a joke. The whole industry is a joke. And him saying, yep, that's true. That's why we don't use consultants. Blah, blah, blah. And later, it was so funny. I remember Jack telling me, when I married Jack, the first thing he did when he became cog was to fire all the consultants. Consulting is just. Okay, I went into consulting. And I remember coming home on the subway Thinking this work is so far away from anything I care about. Yeah, anything that I am. Look, no shade. There's some great consultants in the world. Okay, fine by fine. Please don't me about consultants. I get it, it's an industry. But I stayed in it for seven years. Seven years of my life completely at odds with my values and aptitudes.

[Danielle Roubaix]

That's interesting.

[Susie Welch]

So it did meet one of my values, which was money. I needed money. Eric had been fired in that period. There was the gigantic economic collapse of the 2007, 8, 9, 10, whatever. And I, he got fired. And I was our sole breadwinner. It was every single day so inauthentic.

[Danielle Roubaix]

So do you think if you had made a move more quickly, it would have changed everything?

[Susie Welch]

Because they should have done. Okay, so here, I mean, I belonged in broadcast journalism, which is where I ended up. I eventually ended up doing CNBC and the Today show. And I remember one time a producer at the Today show saying, wow, Susie, you're, you know, like, you're a natural at this, blah, blah, blah, you should have done this. And she said, too bad you didn't start earlier. And I remember thinking, too bad I didn't start earlier. It was my natural aptitude. I mean, look here, you and I, like we're doing broadcast journalism, you and I, right now. I mean, it was your natural aptitude. You went right to it. I delayed it and delayed it and delayed it. And then instead of jumping from consulting to broadcast journalism, and there were people who were coming around saying, won't you come? I mean, this was one of the most amazing moments in my life. I remember ABC or no, it was not abc, but it was one of the big networks came and said, how about coming and doing this? And I was like, I'm very excited. Maybe I'll do this. This is scary. And I went in and I sat with the producer and he said, there's just the matter of your nose. And I said, what about it? And he said, you're going to have to get that nose fixed. And I remember just being so stunned and it kind of sent me reeling. It kind of stopped me in my tracks. And then I was recruited to go to hpr, the Harvard Business Review, where no one was going to ask me to get my nose fixed, that's for sure. And you know, and I went there, but I didn't want to talk to about it. You know, it was. But I, I belonged. I mean, I took maybe a 15 year detour that I didn't need to take. I Just I flailed. I flailed.

[Danielle Roubaix]

No, but I don't know that you flailed. It sounds like you didn't have anybody acting as a mirror for you.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah, no, no, I had nobody.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah. I mean, like, once Jack came into your life, there was a ping pong and a back and forth.

[Susie Welch]

Oh. I mean, it was as soon as he came in, I had somebody to try out all the ideas on. Now he saw you. Yeah, he did.

[Danielle Roubaix]

He knew who you were.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah. And wanted to know more and wanted to help me figure out and live more fully into who I was. Jack And I wrote two books together. Winning and then the Real Life MBA. And then I had a vote for Oprah about 10-10-10. This decision making system that I had created when I was a mother who was in complete scapegoat.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Remember that?

[Susie Welch]

So that was around 2000. I wrote that for Oprah's magazine. And then I got a book deal and I started to write the book. It was a big book deal and I started to write the book. And in the middle of it, we had four teenagers at the time, and they were all kind of being teenagery and they really needed me. And Jack also really needed me for his work and his life and his happiness and so forth. And I was busy trying to write, very busy trying to write this book. Book. Continued writing for Oprah at the time. Like, writing a book is not a small thing. And I would try to sneak it into the edges and the corners of my life. But this is not how you write a book. And so one day I actually did the. I did the decision making system 10, 10, 10 on whether or not I should continue writing the book. The decision came out that I should not continue writing the book, that I should just stop it. It was too much. I was not sleeping. I was not eating. I was not a good enough mother. I was not a good enough wife. And I was not writing the book well enough. I was not. Everything was falling apart. I would consider it one of the hardest, darkest periods of my life. Although from the outside, it looked absolutely perfect. From the outside, it looked like Susie and Jack's marriage was gorgeous. I was, I think, already on the Today show at that point. The kids looked fantastic. Roscoe had just gotten into Stanford. Pat on the back look, she did that, you know, with that perfect kid. Blah, blah, blah, Everybody's looking fantastic. One night after all the kids went to bed, I said to Jack, I've made an important decision. I need to inform you. Of course I've decided to stop writing:October 10, 10, I'm not going to write the book. And I gave him all the reasons. And he looked at me, he goes, that's just a total and complete bullshit. You are writing that book.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Wow.

[Susie Welch]

And I said to him, this is about you. You want a wife who has written a book. And he said, I don't need a wife who's done anything. You know, basically, I'm Jack Welch. I don't need my wife to self actualize through. Okay? He said, you've written two books for me. People need to know how smart you are. This is your idea. And I said, but it's very hard, Jack. Like the other night this couple came over and I was writing the book, and you stuck your head in and said, come in and out and make dinner and let's have a party. And I had to stop writing the book and make dinner for everybody. And we had a party. And then I had to. After everybody left, I cleaned up and then I continued writing the book. I can't keep doing it. And he said, okay, I hear you, but I'm going to take this decision away from you. You're not in your right mind. You will thank me for this decision later. You're finishing that fucking book. Okay? And I remember crying and saying to me, you cannot live my life for me. And he said, in this particular case, I can. And he did lower the temperature on me. And then I think later, he actually, quite shortly after that, he pulled the kids aside and said, my family calls me the Kins. We have to give the Kins a break. Everybody lay off the Kins. She's gonna finish this book. And I think he did kind of clear the decks to. For me. I think at that point there was a transition period where literally he knew me better than I knew myself.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah.

[Susie Welch]

And he took the decision away. And it was like him being a parent in a way to me. And I did finish the book, and it was all for the good. I mean, that book changed, completely changed my life. It was. I stopped being just Jack Welch's wife, and I became a bestselling author and a commentator and a journalist in my own right. And he knew. He knew I needed it. Now I know what my values are. Now we have the values bridge, which you've taken. Right. Which helps. I know my values in their detail. And I actually sometimes stop and say, oh, I was going to make this decision, but I'm going to make that decision because of my values. And so I make things much faster. But like, look, I even had a period in my life where all my decisions were being abdicated to somebody because I was not yet in a place where I could make fast decisions. And when I was making decisions, I was. And here's the irony. I was writing a book about decision making. I was writing a book doing it under.

[Danielle Roubaix]

I understand why, though.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Were you the type of person that would ask people for their opinions on things all the time so that you could sort of collect and make a decision?

[Susie Welch]

No, I should have been. I think I was pretty invested in the artifice of looking like I had it together. I mean, there's that. Do you do enneagram? Are you interested in Enneagram? Okay, so I'm an enneagram achiever. This is a personality type indicator which I am teach to my students. I'm actually certified in teaching it. And I think it's a very good. It's scientifically validated at this point. I'm the type achiever. What type are you? I'm the same achiever. Yeah. So achievers like the collapse. We like the collapse. I think that I was very invested in that time and sort of looking like I had it all together. I got so much better at decision making when I openly started struggling. What I would say, like this decision is really.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Wait, can we go through some of those? Because that's interesting.

[Dr. Pam King]

Everyone wants to thrive, but what is thriving and how do you go about doing it? We explore these questions on the new season of Within Four, the psychology and spirituality podcast. Hosted by me, Dr. Pam King, Developmental psychologist, ordained minister and executive director of the Thrive Center. Each episode within four bridges psychology and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance towards spiritual health, wholeness and a life of thriving. Featuring guests like How God Works, host David Desteno and author activist Parker Palmer. Need somewhere to start? Check out the season debut episode with research pioneer Dr. Kristin F. On how self compassion is a spiritual practice and a powerful gateway to thriving. It's truly an inspiring conversation. Don't miss out. Follow within four, hosted by Dr. Pam King on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever

[Susie Welch]

you get your podcasts.

[Danielle Roubaix]

I was interested at the beginning when you said friendships.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah.

[Danielle Roubaix]

My biggest friend mistakes was when I rushed into friendships.

[Susie Welch]

Say more.

[Danielle Roubaix]

I think that I have. Sometimes I meet somebody and I'm excitable. I. I want to love everybody.

[Susie Welch]

I'm eager. Right.

[Danielle Roubaix]

And because I'm curious, I'm like, oh, that's interesting.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah.

[Danielle Roubaix]

And then usually people become less admirable as you know them. The people that don't, I think are who you keep as Your friends. Right, right. You love them through all of it. You still admire them with all the flaws and because of the imperfections. But sometimes I've jumped into friendships a little too hot and heavy. And then I realized after three weeks or four weeks, I'm like, maybe you're not for me.

[Susie Welch]

Yes. Let's talk about it. So here's my theory on it. I think you should jump into friendships very fast and very hot, but with the understanding that friends are like the tiles in the mosaic of your life.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Okay?

[Susie Welch]

And no tile is like, there's nothing. You know, they're not. All friendships have to be the big, deep ones. It's like, I think you should be friends with everybody. Like, this was, like, a great lesson from Jack. I kind of had, like, up until I met Jack, I was just in permanent resting face. I was like, just, basically, you have to kind of prove yourself to be my friend. It's like, you know, everybody was not smart enough. Everybody was not funny enough. And I was, like, really selective about my friends. Then I met Jack, and Jack was, like, friends with everybody. Like, with the person who worked the elevator, with the person who, like, brought the bread with the. Jack had just every. Like, with the caddy master. Jack was, like, friends with everybody. And his approach to life was like, everybody's a friend. They don't have to be your bestie. And they're not perfect, but neither are you. And they are just like, stop holding everybody to such a high standard. It's not like they're going to come to your wedding, but they're like, a friend of yours. And, like, just assume everyone's a friend, Even people. Even people who we've been seeing, people who had screwed him over in his life, people who'd, like, written terrible things about him. People who would, like, tried to bring him down. And he would, like, see them, and he'd be like, hey, we should get dinners. Promise. Like, what are you talking about? That person tried to destroy you. And it goes, yeah, yeah, but that's in the past. So this was a great illumination for me. And I actually, funny, raised my kids with this attitude, which is when we sent the kids to school in the morning, we'd see them out the door, and the last words Jack would say as the kids went out the door to school every day was, love everyone, not do well at school. Not, like, do your homework. Not, like, do well in sports. He would literally. My kids would vouch for this. As they went out the door, he would say, love everyone.

[Danielle Roubaix]

You know, what's Cool about this. All of the research about popularity says that the most popular kids in school are the people who like the most amount of kids in school.

[Susie Welch]

That's right. I saw that research was just fantastic. Basically, the nicest kids end up being the most popular. The ones who are the nicest to everybody. And like, kids, like, they just generally want to find their tribe. They want to find the people just like them, and they want to kind of like, narrow their friends down. And Jack was like, be friends with everybody. And I adopted it because it worked so well for him. He made a great argument for it. Like, if we went to a restaurant, I could be absolutely sure that before we left, Jack was going to be best friends with the waitress. The maitre d, like, you know, like, it didn't make any difference. And he would say, like, we'd be seated and he would like, say to the waitress, where are you from? I'd be like, wait, Jack, can she just take our order? And like, let's get. And she would say, like, really scrin. Is that like, you know. You know, like what goes on in scran on the weekends? And he would, like, have a big conversation with her. All right. So he was just super friendly. And so I feel like, interesting. Make friends with everybody with the understanding that maybe 5% are going to be close friends.

[Danielle Roubaix]

So you can't. So be nice to everyone, but don't over invest. Right. Okay. And don't let them in so closely. I think I'm, like, stuck on this word friend, because I. I mean, my job is connection. I'm in the business of people, and so I have a lot of acquaintances. But a friend, like that word holds so much weight to me.

[Susie Welch]

Yes.

[Danielle Roubaix]

I need to be thinking about it differently.

[Susie Welch]

Maybe friends have seasons. Okay. So, like, I'm old enough to know that there are friends who are incredibly dear to me early in my life, and we've changed a lot. And you hold a lot of love for the thing that you had in the past, but you're not close anymore.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Right.

[Susie Welch]

And then sometimes, you know, you sort of crazily later in life find friends. Like, I think when I met you, I thought, oh, there's a new friend, but she's gonna be a real friend. Like, you kind of know and you get better discernment on it.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah.

[Susie Welch]

When I met Gretchen Rubin, the great and famous Gretchen Rubin, who's of great, excellent expert on happiness. I met her at a party and I was like, sort of 10 minutes into talking to her, and I thought, oh, I actually am going to be friends with her. I kind of knew it. And then she came over to my house. We intentionally became friends. She came over to my house and she said, I'm so happy to have you as a new friend. And then we became. And we are good friends.

[Danielle Roubaix]

But it's so funny because I sat next to Gretchen Rubin at a party and I thought, Gretchen and Susie should be friends.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah, we are.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Like, you guys were meant to be friends.

[Susie Welch]

We are friends. And actually we're kind of neighbors as well. And it's a wonderful thing. She actually, she's a great human being. We could sit here. We could have the Gretchen Rubin podcast. Everybody listen to Gretchen Rubin's podcast if you don't already. She's so smart, but she's also a divine human being.

[Danielle Roubaix]

So she has a thought on decision making that I'd love your opinion on.

[Susie Welch]

Yes.

[Danielle Roubaix]

When? So she came on my podcast and she said, when you are stuck, choose the decision that will give you the bigger life.

[Susie Welch]

Okay? So I have a theory about this. I saw Gretchen write about that.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Okay?

[Susie Welch]

So, Danielle, what do you think my theory is on that?

[Danielle Roubaix]

I. I think I know, okay? Because big life means scope.

[Susie Welch]

Okay?

[Danielle Roubaix]

So if you don't have the value of scope.

[Susie Welch]

That is correct. Okay, so look what a good friend you are and student. Okay? There's a value called scope. And if you've been hanging around this podcast, any period of time, you've heard me talk about the values, but there's 16 values, and one of those values is this value of scope, which exists on a continuum. And people with high, higher scope want big, exciting, chaotic lives. They'll take all the trade offs. They'll take the nervousness, the anxiety, the lack of predictability, and that's high scope. I have extremely high scope. High scope people are jacket. High scope. High scope people are like Bianca Jagger on the back of the Stallion walking into Studio 54. I had a student who, in one of the three days, who had scope as her number one value. And she said, I want to touch everyone's brain, okay? This is like hunger. They're excitement junkies, okay? And they're just action junkies. Lower scope is no better or worse. It is high psychological safety, sometimes high physical safety, predictability. You know what you're doing. You know what you're doing in a year. You know when your next vacation is. You know, I. When people call me and say, hey, you want to have lunch on Thursday? I was like, I don't know what I'm doing Wednesday. Call me Thursday morning, okay? And there's no better or worse. Although high school people get very frustrated with low scope people. And vice versa. And deadly. Deadly. If a high school person is in a marriage with a low scope person, you got to be with your scopey person. But I would say that when Gretchen says, if you got a choice for a decision, take the one that will give you the bigger life. Well, no, if you have low scope. If you have. Now she has high scope. If you have high scope, by all means, go have a big life. But if you have lower scope, this is what I. This actually makes my point in a way. Thank you, Gretchen, for this. Exactly. Which is that when you know your values, you can make your decisions so quickly. So my number one value is cosmos, my faith. I'm a very faithful person, and I've been trying to decide what I do with my weekends. Do I do this, do I do that, do this. And finally I thought, susie, what is your number one value? Your number one value is your faith. Your weekend has to be organized around when and where you go to church. And I changed everything about my weekends according to my value. But I did it pretty fast because I knew my values. Right, and so you knew you would

[Danielle Roubaix]

get satisfaction if you were living closer to your value.

[Susie Welch]

And I would have that oh feeling if I didn't. And I was so clear on it. So the funny thing is, what I discovered was I had been organizing my weekends. This is so, so pathetic. I had been organizing my weekends around my dog's happiness, okay? So I'd been like, choosing to go early to the countryside because I need to get my dogs out. And I thought, like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I love the dogs. You want to die and come back as one of my dogs? I mean, my dog's like, sleep well, eat well, surrounded by. Okay, my dogs have the most perfect life. But I was sacrificing my personal values for my dogs.

[Danielle Roubaix]

It wasn't even your own eudaimon.

[Susie Welch]

It was your dog's eudaimonia. I was living for my dog's eudaimonia. Okay? And I'll tell you something. My dogs are perfectly eudaimonic as long as they're with me.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah.

[Susie Welch]

And I don't like. But I knew myself well enough that I could make that decision very quickly. And I was like, okay, that's. I'm ripping. This is it. Every. And the people who were affected by. Were like, whoa, that was fast. And I was like, that's right. Because I remembered what my values were. And I. And I had to shake it off.

[Danielle Roubaix]

So say somebody is thinking about switching careers.

[Susie Welch]

Yes.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Or taking a new job. Or maybe they've been offered a job and they're not sure they want to take it.

[Susie Welch]

Yes.

[Danielle Roubaix]

What could they look at in their value system?

[Susie Welch]

Well, first they need to know their values. I mean, so like, I'm like a broken record on it. I mean, it's like, you look, you're going to have conflicting. I gave a speech at J.P. morgan. Oh, God, it was last night. J.P. morgan, which is a fantastic organization, happens to have a lot of conflicting people who work there who went to NYU Stern. And so they have a whole organization within JP Morgan of people who are Stern alumni. So I went to go speak to them. A couple hundred people. It was so much fun. A couple of my students were. Former students, were in the audience. It was great. And I'm like, I said to them, I know this is the 10,000 time you've heard me say it, but you have to know what your values are. And then a student stood up and she said, but, Professor Welch, some of my values are in conflict. And I said, well, welcome to humanity. It's true. Knowing your values isn't enough. You have to understand, like, family centrism can be in conflict with achievement, and you have to navigate that. But even just knowing what's in conflict with each other helps you make your decisions faster. So I would say in general, yeah, make your decisions fast. That was the sort of advice I gave in that reel that caused a little stir. Is that make them fast? But there's a caveat, which is that know your value. So you're not ping ponging around, you're making them consistently.

[Danielle Roubaix]

There's a woman at Harvard, she was the first woman in the psychology department to be tenured. Ellen Langer. And she's famous for saying, like, don't. Don't worry about making the right decision. Make the decision right. Yeah, and I understand her point, but I've not lived my life that way.

[Susie Welch]

No, but you won't for a long time. I mean, look, I came up with 10, 10, 10, the decision making system at the lowest moment of my life. I mean, the impulse, we all just use gut, and gut has got bad efficacy. 50% efficacy. Just flip a coin, why don't you? We just do it because it's easy and it's fast. It's later in life after we've made every bad decision we can make, that we develop a decision making system. So I'm all for that. But I think, look, when I teach Decision making, which I do as part of my management class. I myself teach four decision making systems. 10, 10, 10 is only one of them. There's so many others. There's gradients of agreement, there's the, the pre. Mortem. I mean, I love teaching decision making. But then the students break into groups of six and they. I assign a decision making system and they teach each other decision making systems. As they go out the door, I think to myself, God, I hope one of them uses a decision making system. I mean, that's not how life typically goes. But making a really good decision, I mean, that's wisdom. And if I could kind of gather with every smart person I knew and I would sort of say, like, how do you make decisions? I think that they use gut and then they verify it's gut plus verification. Because what's gut? It's pattern recognition. And so that's fine. When you have a lot of. When you've lived for a while and you have a lot of pattern, you have a lot of data points like, okay, I've seen that kind of person before. They're not going to be a friend, that kind of person. When they present that way, they're kind of a phony. But when you're young, what gut do you have?

[Danielle Roubaix]

I didn't. I thank God that I had smart people I could call. There's one that comes to mind. I was living in LA and out of a job. I had quit a job that I thought was going to be a dream job. And it was so not a right fit for me. And I was so broke and I had gotten a job offer in Chicago to do a morning show and I was dating someone in la. It was like my first big love. And I felt finally settled. I had friends I did not want to leave. And I called this one woman who I really respected and she said, if he's the right guy, he'll be the right guy in two years. You have to take this job. And because of that phone call, I took that job and he was not the right guy. And it was the greatest job that I needed to take. But I think when you're young, you don't have.

[Susie Welch]

I know, but your point? You were smart to call somebody who was wise.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Well, I needed somebody who could zoom out on my life. I know, I know, because I was too in the weeds.

[Susie Welch]

I know. And when we get into the weeds, we can't make really good decisions. It's good. That's a great phrase. Zoom out. All right, let's zoom out here. The territory we've traveled is about how and why we make decisions incorrectly and how and how. Look, there's no rule on fast or slow decision making, except for. Let me propose one, which is the better you know yourself in the details, the better you know who you are, what you want, your values, what you're good at, your dream of a life. The more capable you are of making fast decisions. But I will add a second rule. You will make some wrong decisions. But just what? So then you learn and you get. You get more data for the Wisdom project. I mean, does that sound right to you?

[Danielle Roubaix]

Oh, absolutely. I was going to say I've made all the wrong quote. I don't even consider them wrong. I think they just caused pivots. Yes. And I had to learn what wasn't right for me so that I could get clearer on what was. I know that sounds corny, but we

[Susie Welch]

will both, you and I, probably in the next 24 to 48 hours, make wrong decisions. The most important thing I will say about making a wrong decision, fast or slow, is to own it. Just so own it. Like, I screwed up. I made this bad decision. The minute you own it and you take full responsibility for it, you can move on. I mean, that. That took me a long time in life to not to just fully sort of step into it and say, I blew it. And, like, even when I'm really mad at people, say, in my own company, and I get really mad at them and they make a mistake, at the end of the day, I'm the boss and I have to say, look, whatever mistake somebody made, it's on me.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Yeah.

[Susie Welch]

I feel like that's probably the most mature thing that I've done in the past couple of years, so.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Well, quick to forgiveness. And forgive thyself, too.

[Susie Welch]

I know. Yeah, it's true. You have to. You have to do that as well. Well, I am going to basically congratulate myself for thinking that you were the absolute person, perfect person to have this conversation with. So thank you so much, Danielle. I think you and I knew when we met each other we were going to end up having more and more conversations like this. And I. We quickly decided to be friends. And I think, look, if it doesn't work out with a friend, you tried. But friends and love, you feel like you're just reeling into it and it feels too fast. Yeah, sure, pull back. But in general, these are the things that make life sweet. So. I'm so happy that you're here. Thank you so much, so much. And come on again. Will you?

[Danielle Roubaix]

Thank you so much for your open heartedness. Because had you not had that idea about friendship that you learned through Jack, I don't know if I'd be sitting here. So I'm grateful and I'm actually, I think that's the big thing I'm going to take with me today after the podcast.

[Susie Welch]

I know after this conversation, people are going to want to hear more from you. Where can they find you?

[Danielle Roubaix]

Everything is at Daniellero Bay. R, O B A Y. And should I leave everybody with a question?

[Susie Welch]

Yes.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Okay. I love some of the questions that you ask for the values bridge, but I'm gonna say what is something that every person should try once?

[Susie Welch]

All right. What is something everybody should try once? I am gonna wrap my head around that. Put your answers in the show notes and I would love to do a whole podcast about that. Would you come back?

[Danielle Roubaix]

Oh, yeah. And I wanna see everyone's answers. Cause I think it'll inspire us to try some new things.

[Susie Welch]

Well, what's your answer?

[Danielle Roubaix]

Oh, mine's always a love affair. Like a great love affair.

[Susie Welch]

Oh, for sure.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Just diving in. Even if it's not right.

[Susie Welch]

Yeah. Okay. My answer on the spot would be don't be a dope, get a dog. A dog? What's wrong with people who don't get dogs?

[Danielle Roubaix]

I don't have a dog. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm a dope. No, I get it.

[Susie Welch]

No, I get it too much. But I think they're like when people are like on the fence. My best friend, friend in life, Sue Jacobson, who's been on the show many times is, has never gotten a dog and she's like toyed with the idea. But I, there's, I think that you, there's a new dimension to your life when you love an animal.

[Danielle Roubaix]

I think there a value there.

[Susie Welch]

Eudaimonia probably. I mean loving an animal teaches you so much about humanity, right? That would be my takeaway. I'm sorry I accidentally called you a dope.

[Danielle Roubaix]

Oh, that's hilarious. No, I love it. My grandfather called me that. My whole life I feel very at home.

[Susie Welch]

Such a joke. All right, thanks for being here. Thanks for contribute with becoming you. I'm Susie Welch.

[Bloomberg Advertiser]

Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe [e-mail].