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AI is incredible. It can teach you how to fry an egg and even write a poem, pirate style, but it knows nothing about your work. Slackbot is different. It doesn't just know the facts, it knows your schedule. It can turn a brainstorm into a brief. And it doesn't need to be taught. Because Slackbot isn't just another AI, it's AI that knows your work as well as you do. Visit slack.com meetslackbot to learn more.
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I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.
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Botox Onobotulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for Those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk, such as side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, Myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.
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Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-844botox to learn more.
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Well, hello. Hello everybody. It's Susie Welch and this is Becoming youg. I am digging our new theme music. We just started with it a few weeks ago. It is ushering in a new day for us at Becoming youg. I hope that our old listeners like it as much as I do. I mean, I picked it, so I really like it. And if you are new to this podcast, a special special hello and welcome. I'm so glad you're here actually, because today's episode is kind of a Becoming youg 101 An Introduction if you will. But old listeners also please stick around because I promise we're going to have fun. Anyway, for our purposes here today, we're going to introduce you or reintroduce you to becoming you using the tried and true two truths and a Lie construct. But unlike that game, I'm not going to make you guess the lie. I'm not. Because, please, we aren't at a company icebreaker here. The lie about becoming you is at the end, and I cannot wait to dispel it because I hear it all the time and it makes me vaguely insane. But our two truths also get me all up in a frenzy, as you will soon see. So let's get going. All right, here is the first truth. And, you know, by the way, I should state that with these truths, I actually beseeched my producer to let the truths be read in a crisp British accent just for the fun of it. Like, I thought that we should use the voice of Queen Elizabeth. I also suggested that we use a robot's voice. I thought that would be funny. But I guess that's why I'm not the producer of this podcast. And as a result, you're going to hear the truths and the lie straight from me. All right, here we go. Truth number one. I did not invent the becoming you methodology to help other people. I invented it to help your girl right here. Me. Now, look, every single day, I get emails and DMs, and people stop me in the street or they literally come up to me in the subway and they say very nice things like becoming you saved my life. Becoming you transformed my life. I was lost, but now I'm found. And I feel like crying every time I hear something like this because these are very tough and complicated times. I know that you know that there's AI, there's instability. I mean, who knows what the future holds? And it is unbelievable to be part of the solution with becoming you. It's unbelievable to be helping so many people. But that is not how this thing started with me thinking about helping a lot of people. I couldn't imagine that I would, and I did not imagine that I could. It was December 2020 when this thing started. It was the middle of the pandemic. I was sheltering in place with my whole extended family during the pandemic in upstate New York. Everybody in that period was kind of lost and in a spell, but I was kind of in a trance because I had also just lost my husband, Jack, and. And I was not sure what the heck I was going to do with myself when the world came back. I mean, I was lucky. I was lucky. Don't get me wrong, I had options. I had had a long career in business and in broadcast journalism. There was a management consulting firm that wanted me to come aboard. I could have gone back to working on TV at NBC, but I had walked those paths for many years. And while I liked them, I knew that they were not the paths I wanted to keep walking. In many ways, the jobs that I had had up until that point during the pandemic were jobs I had because I was pretty good at them and because they worked for a life with four kids and a husband who was retired and then became very ill. They were the careers that were okay. You know, they were B or B on a good day. And I am not complaining. That is better than many people have. But I was thinking that I wanted at last to find a career that was my true purpose, and I wanted to live my purpose. I was 60, and the clock, I thought, was not ticking backwards. So I am a complete fan girl of Joan of Arc. I mean, if you've listened to this podcast even once before, you know that I love her. Look, she had a very, very bad ending. Nobody wants to die at age 19, okay, end very unpleasantly, as she did. But when Joan of Arc was 13 years old, this was in 1412, and she was in her backyard at a loom, and she was just a peasant girl in rural France. And suddenly the sky opened up and three saints appeared. And they said, hey, Joan, we need you and only you to help drive the English out of France and reclaim France as an independent nation. And that's what she did. I mean, the historical record would show she marched into war as the commander of the French army at age 16, and she succeeded in driving out the English and reinstating the King of France. And somewhere along the way, she had her sword engraved with the words, I am not afraid. I was born to do this. I wanted that. I wanted to find and do the one thing that I was born to do with my life. Now, interestingly and very ironically, I had spent my career thinking and talking about careers. In fact, I was technically a noted career expert. That's what it said in my bio. I mean, I had a digital show on CNBC called Susie Welch Fix My Career. And later I had another show called get to Work with Susie Welch, all about careers. I had written a book with my husband called Winning still very popular business book, which had a chapter on building a career. And I had written my own book about decision making called 10-10-10, which had multiple chapters on not just careers, but on purpose driven careers. And so I knew, I felt certain that a person's purpose lay at the intersection of three big superhighways, or actually, let's use the term data sets. I like that better. Three big data sets, our values, which is what we want to do. Our aptitudes, which is what we can do and our economically viable interests what we should be doing. All you had to do really was excavate that data and figure out what career lay there at the overlap. I knew that. And so in my wandering and wondering, I set out in the dark of the pandemic and in the yearning of my heart to do that for myself. So I started by figuring out my values. Now, I was lucky in that I knew my values. Not everyone does. I knew that I wanted to impact the world in some very positive and systemic way. I knew that I loved work like a junkie. And I wanted to do something fun full time, all out. And I knew I wanted to do something with my life that was aligned with my faith and in particular, John 10:10, which exhorts us to live life to the hilt. So I was clear on my values. Then I looked at my aptitudes. I had verbal cortex stuff going on. I can write, I can talk. And I knew I loved business. And I knew I was good at business because I have been on corporate boards. But I didn't stop there. I asked around. I asked everyone who knew me. I said, be very blunt, what am I particularly good at? And I remember asking one of my dear friends, very smart, dear friend, and she'd known me for 30 years. And I said to her, what am I really good at? And she said, you're really good at convening people, Susie. That's your superpower. And I thought, oh, convening people. I think she might be right. I actually, I'm good at bringing people together and getting them to talk to each other, not past each other. That was an interesting observation. Had not realized that aptitudes. Finally, I took a hard look at what really interested me. I had fallen in love with entrepreneurship, running a company before the pandemic. And so I love the idea of building another business. I love the whole field, conceptually of careers and purpose. I. I could talk and think about them endlessly. They interested me. So then I took all that data, my values and my aptitudes and interests, and I thought, oh, I see what lies at the intersection of all of these three data sets. It's teaching and specifically getting very meta about this. It's teaching a class about the methodology of how to figure out what to do with your life. I was totally taken aback. I'm not going to lie. This was a departure. No one was sitting around suggesting that I become a professor, I assure you. But the minute it came to me, I was like, I am not afraid. I was Born to do this. It was crazy. And so I ended up describing this idea to my kids. I talked to them about the methodology and what was part of the methodology. And my kids were listening very, very closely. And it was my son, Roscoe. He was 30 at the time. And he said, I love that methodology. I love that idea of you teaching it, Mom. And I think you should call the class Becoming you. And I was like, sweetheart, I think that is exactly what it should be called. And so I went back to my office. It took a while. I created a curriculum, and it was not at all elaborate. It was not the curriculum that was eventually to become the true, the Becoming U class at nyu, but it was the bones of one. And I went to the dean of the NYU Stern School of Business, where I knew the dean. His name was Raghu Sandaram. And I said, hi, I have an idea for a class, and I wish I had taken it when I was in business school, like 40 years ago, because if I had, I would have avoided a lot of boneheaded detours and a lot of angst and maybe even some grief, because that is what you feel when you're not living your purpose. And I described the methodology and I described the class to him. And Raghu said, let's try it as a little experiment. Well, I mean, in 2021, if you offer a class as people are coming out of the pandemic, and you call it Becoming youg, Crafting the authentic life you want and need, that is the field that if you build it, they will come. And they did. They came. And one thing led to another. And I ended up joining the faculty of NYU and teaching Becoming youg Around the World. And I wrote a book about it. And now we have a whole company based on getting this methodology into other people's hands. And it is really, really, really excited. And the growth has stunned all of us in a way that is very happy making. And look, even part of it is this podcast, which I love to do, and thank you very much for listening to it. But again, the truth is, the first person who needed becoming you was me. I did not make the methodology because I was an expert. I made it because I was a seeker. And it was only after I saw how much it was helping all of my students that I realized, oh, wow, maybe this should not be just for me and the people I can see four feet in front of me. I think it can be for other people. I think it could be for everyone. So, you know, a long time ago, like in the 80s, there was this infomercial, it was on late night TV all the time and it was for actually, it was for toupees. It was called the Hair Club for Men. It's a pop culture classic if you're my age and you know the infomercial, it starred the CEO. He was a very flat fellow, let's just say very non emotive. Although one thing about him was you couldn't miss that he had this huge head of hair himself. And at the end of the infomercial, the CEO, his name was Cy Sperling, would say, by the way, I'm not just the president of the club, but I'm also a client.
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I'm not only the Hair Club president, but I'm also a client.
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So I am like that guy. I am the Size Sperling. When it comes to becoming you, I'm not just the president, but a client. Because becoming you, it started originally for me. That is the truth. But now, and from here on out, I hope, I really, really hope that it is for you.
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Okay, our second truth, once again, not delivered in a British accent or delivered by a robot voice. Just me. Is this. The whole point of becoming you is not to finish it? If you have listened to my podcast in the past, you know that I have a best friend named Sue Jacobson. We have known each other since we were camp counselors together in 1979. And over the decades we've been through everything together, including her very near death experience two years ago when she contracted meningitis in her brain and I sat by her bed shouting at her not to leave me or I was going to get up and kill her. Anyway, she got better, thank God. And I think the time I've cried the hardest on this podcast, which I do on occasion, is when she came on and we talked about those weeks on the edge between life and Death. Now, like all friends, sue and I have a lot of similarities, especially about what we find to be funny. And I would say that we are bonded by our bluntness in this world. And we are both entrepreneurs, and we just love each other's kids. And so we have a lot of chemistry and we have 46 years of history. But we have one gigantic difference in that sue loves a hack. She loves shortcuts. She loves to buy a big bestseller, and then she'll read the first and last chapter and call it a day. And if I buy a bestseller, even read the review, she runs a company, and she loves to delegate everything to her people. She will play golf on a Wednesday. It works for her. She's phenomenally successful. And I am literally in every person's job in my company, sitting right next to them, they can feel my breath on their neck. I mean, I am in the trenches. And guess what? It works for me. So I want to stop here. And my impulse is to say, I am not judging, but I am judging because I hate hacks. And sue knows this. I tell her this all the time. And when she was in business school, she asked me if there was a hack for learning statistics. And I got on my high horse and I was screaming at her, you. You have met your match. There is no hack for statistics, bitch. And I. She said, I will find one. And I guess she did, because she passed statistics. But as I like to point out to her as often as possible, she did not get an A like I did, because I did not use a hack. All right, the whole point of this story is to tell you that from its very beginnings and to this very day, becoming you is not a hack. You cannot guess your values, you cannot guess your aptitudes, and you can't guess your economically viable interests. You cannot wing becoming you. You've got to do the work. That's why we have scientifically validated assessments. That's why we have three day intensives and the one day immersives and the online webinars. That's why we have this podcast, because this is serious stuff. Finding your purpose. There's no shortcut to it. How could there be? Like, there's no shortcut to love. There's no shortcut to good parenting. There's no shortcut to success. These are the hard things, and this is where the hard work is done, because it's worth it. The great poet Arisa White, who I've quoted on this podcast before, she says, everything emerges from intimacy with one's own story. And I have the audacity to edit her a little and say everything good emerges from intimacy with one's own story. And I don't think you can hack your way to intimacy with your own story. Getting to know ourselves is the work of our lives. So the final thing I'll say about this non hack aspect of becoming you is that that means it's never really done, you know. True. There are people who use it as a career intervention. I see this all the time. They've lost their job or they feel like they're about to, or they're about to graduate from school and they need a job and they use it. And the methodology tells them what job makes sense for them. It tells them what their purpose is. I love that use of it. I love that use of it. That's fine. You still have to do the work to get there, but it's a one time thing. But becoming you is always meant to, to be a lifelong tool that you carry with you along the way and you revisit it again and again. I mean, I had a student in my class who was going into consulting, very common with MBAs. But he had enough ambivalence that he threw himself into the methodology and he did the excavation of his values. He took the values bridge and he did all the aptitudes work and he did the four tests we have for that, and he did all the work that we do with economically viable interests. And he studied the 135 industries and looked at all the megatrends. And he came out the other side of it. And he realized that the job he was taking after graduation was just completely and totally misaligned with his purpose and with who he really was. So he had used becoming you to paint a portrait of himself standing still. And he realized that when he stepped out of the frame, he was going in the exact wrong direction for who he really was, which is what the process had revealed to him. So he came to me in this kind of despondent way and he said, professor Welch, what am I going to do? I realized from this whole process that I should be going back to work with my father and our family and business. That's what matches my values and my aptitudes and my interests. But I have this big job in consulting that I've taken the signing bonus for. And I said to him, I think you should give the bonus back and you should go follow your purpose in your family company. And he said, no, no, no, no, no. My wife's pregnant and we're about to have a baby and we need the money, and I'm going to go take the consulting job. And I said, even though your wife's about to have the baby, I think you're making a mistake, but I totally understand, and I wish you the best of luck. Well, a year later, I got an email from him, and the subject line said, can we talk? And we jumped on Zoom. And he said, well, you were right. I think he said, I'm withering here. I'm dying here. I'm giving my notice. And I was happy for him. And then we looked at pictures of his daughter, who was extremely adorable. And off he went to work, back where he should have started. Anyway, another year goes by, and suddenly, out of the blue, I get another email from the same student saying, can we talk? And it turns out that he's happy, but he's very confused because he's trying to figure out if his family company should actually make an acquisition of another company which would double them in size. And then the plan was that he would become the CEO of this new, larger company. And once again, we took the time. Actually, we did become a you. Together we rolled out the analysis of his values and his aptitudes and interests. And it turned out that the big new job was totally aligned with his aptitudes and with his interests, but completely misaligned with his values, because his number one value was family centrism. His family was the organizing principle of his life, and his wife was pregnant again, and it seemed like four was their magic number. And his second top value was belovedness. Okay? That's the value of romantic love. The love he had for his wife was his second value. And if he became the CEO of this company that was twice as big, he was going to have to compromise more than he wanted on his top two defining values, family centrism and belovedness. And he actually used becoming you in that moment to decide not to make the acquisition. And we chatted a bit more and he was very relieved and he went on his way. So, look, I. I love this story. I love this non hack aspect of becoming you, that becoming you is like a lifelong tool. It is a companion. It's a process that you revisit again and again. And in that way, it's actually never done. I mean, that's not Groundhog Day ish. Okay, don't get me wrong. It's very liberating to know you've got this methodology alongside you and that you can come back to it again and again to give you guidance about what you should be doing with your life and career when you need it. And so sue, my dear friend, if you're listening to this, and I think that she does actually listen to my podcast because she's such a good friend. No shade on you and your hacks. I love you and I know you have a long list of all the things that your hacks have gotten you in life, except an A in statistics. But I'm gonna go to the mat on this truth about becoming you. Like our long friendship, it takes forever and that's one of the best things about it.
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Okay, we have now reached the moment of the big stinking lie about becoming you, which I'm so happy to have the opportunity to dispel. And that is that becoming you is for students only. That is, it's for people who are in school or about to graduate or have just graduated. Now I get where this misunderstanding may come from because I'm a teacher and I teach at NYU and I love it. All right? But I teach outside of NYU and in fact, in six years we estimate that about 500,000 people have in some ways gone through the becoming you process. And they've been aged from 16 to 78, as far as we know, 16 to 70. 78. So to be clear, there are three groups of people for whom Becoming youg Works. Three groups. Let's talk about them. The first is Purpose Seekers. Yes, this group does include students, but it also includes people who are Self Explorers. This is people for whom the journey into their own inner life is fascinating. And they find learning about themselves to be a great investigation that makes them better people and more engaged in the world and where they want to be in it. Self Explorers are of every age, of every ilk, every demographic group that you can think of. From start to a stay at home mom in Idaho to a CEO in Brazil to a mechanic in New Jersey. The human impulse is to understand the human impulse and Self Explorers gravitate to becoming you for that. Seekers are also people who are in their 30s and 40s and 50s who have kind of reached a professional plateau or a valley and they turn to becoming you because they're ready for something new. Either they have to be ready for something new because of a career interruptus or they want to jump before they've been pushed or because they're just genuinely eager to get closer to the purpose. With the over 55 year old seekers, we have a group of people I call third halfers who are looking ahead to retirement. And many have been given their whole lives over to living by default or they're ready to start living by design and they want to figure out what that design might look like. I love these people. These people are me when I first created Becoming youg Right. And when they show up at one of our workshops, I can spot them because they are so filled with hope and excitement about finally basking in purposeful lives. And then seekers finally include couples who use the Values Bridge assessment together. That tool, which you can find@thevaluesbridge.com has a functionality that if two people take it and they both check a certain box, it's very clear to see their values will come up next to each other and they will be compared and you will find your conflicts and your harmonies and they will be explained to you in the tool. And a lot of couples, so many couples use the Values Bridge together and that has happened so much that we're actually going to be developing a curriculum for them called Becoming Us. So stand by us on that. The second group of people that use Becoming youg extensively are purpose practitioners. People whose livelihoods are committed to helping other people find their purpose. These are coaches, life coaches, success coaches, career coaches, executive coaches. All of these type of coaches use Becoming you to help their clients. Becoming you is used by more and more therapists and social workers. It's used by addiction recovery counselors. It's used by financial advisors who are trying to learn more about their clients, insurance brokers. Same thing. All people whose work is helping other people find their purpose. And finally, Becoming youg has a whole application in business with people who are in learning and development, people who are in HR, the CEOs of small companies. They've all used it to help people in team building and career development. So essentially, we love becoming U4 students. We love it for people in college and graduate school. But everybody wants to know their purpose, not just students. You do not have to be between the ages of 18 and 25 wanting to know what your purpose is. You could be between the ages of 68 and 75 and be wondering that exact same thing. And many people are, which is wonderful in my opinion. So here is one last thing, and it's who becoming you is not what for. And I cannot be more clear about this. Becoming you is not for people who are seeking happiness. Because becoming you does not guarantee happiness. It tries to give you an authentic, fulfilling, meaningful life. And the byproduct of that may be happiness. I hope it is. I think it is. But happiness in and of itself, that is not the goal of the Becoming youg methodology. A life worth living is second. And finally, becoming you is not for the faint of heart. Because becoming you, it invites you into a big conversation about who you are and who you want to be. And the journey between those two points. That's big stuff. That's deep stuff. That's stuffy stuff. I keep saying stuff, but it's not easy stuff. And I'm not trying to scare you away. I'm not. But this is not true crime. This is true life. Your life. What better story is there? Anyway, welcome, welcome, welcome. People of all ages and types. Welcome everyone. I'm so glad that we've had this opportunity to talk about becoming you and for you to come along. I hope you stay with on this becoming you journey with me. Come back next week and until we meet again, keep becoming you.
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Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho. Look for that rooftop dinner. Those sandals that can keep up with you. And hang some string lights to give
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your patio a glow up.
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Spring's calling, Ross.
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Work your magic.