Why Knowing Yourself Is Your Greatest Asset

0:08Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantz. My guest today is Susie Welch. She is a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and professor at NYU Stern School of Business. With a background in journalism and business strategy, she rose to prominence co-authoring business books with her late husband, Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE. We're going to talk about her new book today, Becoming You, The Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career. So Susie, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. You bet. Now, you, speaking of career, have had a very diverse career.

0:48Well, it's because I'm old. I did a little looking into your background. You hang around a while and it happened. You were actually a reporter on crime in Miami in the 80s. I was. I was. So that means you personally know Don Johnson, right? Yeah, you know, I wish I did, but I do not. But you know, that show Miami Vice was not wrong. I mean, those were the years I was there. And I mean, look, it wasn't as glamorous for us, for us young underpaid reporters, but the level of violence was, that's what we experienced for sure. Well, let's talk a little bit about your book then. You've obviously written or been involved in writing books on a lot of topics.

1:32Becoming You feels very, to me, feels very deeply personal. So is there anything about what's going on now in the world that kind of made you say, this is the time for this book? Yes and yes and yes and yes. I wrote Becoming You because I teach a class by the same name at NYU Stern School of Business. It's an extremely popular class. And it's funny when we first offered it a couple of years ago, the thought was, well, here's an experiment. Let's let's offer a class that I had created that helps people figure out how to live their authentic lives. And it was an experiment. It was like, let's see who signs up.

2:04And then what happened was everybody did. And there was a crazy amount of interest in this class. It just so happened we were coming out of the pandemic and people were asking, what's it all about? Why do I work? Where do I work? How do I work? You know, what is work anyway? and I had a class based on a methodology which I'd spent 15 years developing that helped answer those questions for you. Was it personal? Yes, because one, it's the culmination of my life's work. It had drawn a lot out of my PhD thesis. So it's very personal in that this work is stuff I've been doing research on for a long time.

2:37But it was personal because after my husband passed away, I had to figure out who I was as well. And so I always say that I was becoming a first beta tester. It worked for me. And now it's been tested thousands of times and used by thousands of people. And so it's not just my methodology. It's been shared with the world in ways that are really, really wonderful and humbling. So it's personal, but it's also not just for me at all. So, you know, you talked about coming out of the pandemic, and I think the pandemic really accelerated a lot of things. But, you know, I've been in business 30 years, and I've seen a hunger, a growing hunger.

3:13It used to be tamped down, like, no, we don't talk about our personal lives. We don't talk about what we want. We just go to work, you know, and that's what business is. And I've seen over 30 years a growing hunger for people wanting to have that conversation more in business. And I'm wondering if you think that that has anything to do with the popularity. I mean, the business school doesn't offer a lot of that kind of training. I think that there's two different things going on. I actually come, I've been in business 40 years, and I would say that there was a lot more talking about our personal lives at work in the old days when there were no boundaries.

3:44And now the younger generation is, I don't want to talk about my personal life, but, you know, get out of my business. Okay. So I do think that there's sort of a, there's darker boundaries for Gen Z. I just taught a class. I also teach management at NYU, and we had this exact conversation the other day. I do think that the conversation that's happening much more that did not happen before was about purpose. It was like purpose, you're lucky if you get it. And now people are much more likely to say, after I think the pandemic accelerated a conversation where people said, I don't want to wait till I'm 65 to start living.

4:14I want to live right now. Now, many of your listeners are entrepreneurs and they've already made that decision. And they've said, I want to live right now. I want to design my own life. I want high agency is what we call it in the Becoming You methodology. and I think that all the conversation around purpose is great as long as you don't get frustrated by it because what typically happens in this conversation John is that people say you should find and live your purpose and everybody goes yeah and then there's no how how do you do it and so part of the my part of the reason I love becoming you and I want to be coy about I really love the methodology is because it's the how it says okay you want to live your purpose here's how figure out your values that's really really hard but go ahead and do it here's our seven exercises, figure out your aptitude.

4:55Here are four exercises for that and figure out your economically viable interests. Here are two exercises for that. You cannot just conjure up your purpose. And if you don't, if you don't do work to figure out what your purpose is, you'll spend your whole life looking for it. And then you'll hit it and you'll kind of be in your forties or fifties or sixties. And you'll say, gee, I wish I'd known this 20 years ago. And so I do think, you know, look, search for purpose. It's as old as time. I mean, like the Iliad, which was, you know, 1700 years old, talks about search for purpose. And so people have always been talking about it.

5:27I think the change now, the freedom is that we're able to freely say, I want to live a life of purpose. Yeah, there's sections, entire sections of bookstores, entire industry, you know, on that whole idea of find your purpose. And I think you're right. Frustrated is a great word because I see so many people saying, I'm being told to do that, and I don't know how. And I think that that's really, that really is the - It's so annoying. It's my whole book's answer to that because I think it's so woo-woo and annoying. And it's like, please tell the people how to find their purpose. Right. You know, it's, you know, what ends up happening in these books that are about purposes is that they're just long stories about people who found their purpose.

6:08And it's like, no, there's actually a methodology. Let's just put it to work. You know, either you can do it over the course of your life or you can do it faster. I like the faster version. Let me propose this idea. and you can feel free to bat it down completely or amplify it. Does the search sometimes allow it to find you? I have to think about that for a second. Yeah. I mean, it will find you eventually because the arc of life is long and it bends towards authenticity. Eventually, we become authentic because we cannot hold our breath, our entire lives long. So eventually, we become authentic unless the Grim Reaper gets us first.

6:46So we want to be authentic, and we will keep on inching and crawling towards it. Sometimes it comes and finds us and we say the call of this purpose is so loud, I can't ignore it. I think it's sometimes we meet in the middle, John, you know, we, we, we get a sense of what it is and we kind of creep towards it and then it comes galloping at us and we have to make a decision about whether we're gonna have the courage to live it. Yeah. Again, you're writing my questions for me, but no, no, it's, it's, it makes for a beautiful conversation. I was going to bring up fear. And I think that that, you know, a lot of times people find this thing and we're like, oh, but I can't.

7:23So how do you get past that fear? You, okay. So that's the work of our life. I mean, you're welcome to humanity. I call these the four horsemen of values destruction. It's all fear. The first is economic security, or if I do this, I'll never survive. And that's a totally legitimate thing to fear. If you've got kids and a mortgage and a life and you know, everybody who's ever lived their purpose took a big leap and said, if I want it badly enough, the money will come. And so then the second is expectations. That's fear also. I can't do this. My parents would never approve or people like me don't do this.

7:54I had a student one time, we did the Becoming You methodology in the class and she came up to me in the last day and she said, every single thing we've done in this class leads to me being a Roomba teacher. And I said, that's beautiful. And she said, I can't do that. I have an MBA. And I said, oh, I was unaware of the legislature that prohibited MBAs from teaching Roomba, you know. And she said, no, what would my parents say? What would my classmates say? And I I said, who cares what they say? Your life. Anyway, she went on to work in consulting. But so then the other, then there's events. Events often take us away from living our lives.

8:26You know, you just dies or you get a divorce, you get laid off. And then suddenly the life you wanted seems impossible. You can't swim upstream to get it. And then there's just expedience. It's oftentimes it's just simply easier than just stepping into fear. You know, I really want this thing. But it's just easier to keep the life I've got. the B plus life I've got. And so everything gets in the way of us living our purpose. Everything. The world is set up for it. And that's why so few people do it. You know, there's a lot of research that shows some of the people that have ultimately made that giant leap kind of had their back against the wall.

9:02And it was like, I have no choice. Whereas being sort of comfortable makes it harder to make that choice. Would you say there's anything to, I'm not saying you go out and get your back against the wall, but some sort of level of being pushed. I don't want you to do that. No, I don't want you to wait until you get it because it takes a long time for you to have your back up against the wall. I mean, I think that is what you say sounds very true. It often is that in the real world, we wait until we have no more choices. And other, but the alternative is that we just die in the velvet coffin. You know, that's where it's very comfortable and we just sort of lay down.

9:34Next thing you know, the lid closes. I know that image is ugly, but it's real. And, but I think that you can get away from it if you say, it varies with a lot of intentionality, I don't want that to happen to me. Let me not wait till I have my back up against the wall. Because by that time, things are usually pretty much a mess. And so there's a way, there's a different way of thinking. That's why I say to my students and everybody, I mean, I teach Becoming U both at NYU, but I also do an open enrollment course. And people come from around the world to take Becoming U at NYU in our open enrollment.

10:04And what I say is, look, you can use this tool to just decide to use it right now. And in a couple of days, you'll know what your purpose is. because the process takes, you know, takes a couple hours. Or you can have this tool in your back pocket. And when things start getting a little bit hairy, pull it out and start doing it then. But don't wait until disaster strikes and you've got to jump. It won't be as good. So you break, and I might be missing some here, but you break the book, a great deal of time is spent on values, aptitudes, interests. Where do people usually get that wrong? Is there kind of a universal, like people always miss this part?

10:39They miss them all. and thank God that they do because that's why I'm employed. I think that, look, people often know their values, but they don't have words for them. That's why I invented the language of values and test for it in the values bridge, which is the tool that I created to help people figure out what their values are, ranked one to 15. But values are people often, they don't have language to describe their values and they often live by their parents' values or their partner's values. So that's one thing. Aptitudes is another big problem though. It's not just values because We grow up with people telling us what we're good at or what we should be good at.

11:13And we don't ever, it takes a long time to find out what we're actually good at because the world eventually tells us. But we can be tested as early as 15 years old to find out what our cognitive aptitudes are. Are we generalists or are we specialists? Are we idea generators or idea processors? I mean, there's eight big cognitive aptitudes. They're steady from age 15. You can be tested for them for$40. I mean, I think it's pretty good money to spend. I know it's not free. And there's a lot of different ways to know. I mean, I have a test that shows whether or not you should be a leader. That is just those are aptitudes.

11:44I have four different aptitudes. So there's ways to test. But then the one that people generally know a little bit better is their interests. I call them economically viable interests because it's not just interests. It's interests that can pay you, interests that are part of the economy that are growing. I think the problem there is that people's aperture is sort of closed. They sort of know of three industries and they sort of, you know, but there's 135 industries and there's thousands of different types of jobs. And so sometimes our aperture of how many different kinds of jobs and lives exist gets shut down before it should.

12:16So frankly, everybody needs a little bit of help in every area. And some people come in fully loaded knowing their aptitudes, but they don't know their values. And so look, it depends on the person. Everybody can do tweaking in all the areas. Well, and I think society rewards aptitudes probably more than they do values, right? So I mean, we're - Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. I mean, you certainly, you know, values can certainly take you down probably faster than aptitudes or lack of values. You know, this is a great point. You are, that's a very, very apt point is you're paid for your aptitudes generally.

12:48Okay. So, and that's why I, the reason why I like becoming you is because it's saying like your purpose lies at the intersection of your values, your aptitudes and your interest. All three matter, not one more than the other. and so you've got to figure them all out and see what's at the center of those three spheres before you really know what your purpose is. But a lot of times people just end up doing what they're good at, that aptitude's part of it. Why? Because they just are paid for it and they're like, I kind of hate it, but whatever, it's a job. Right, right, right. Well, you talked about the Roomba teacher.

13:22Maybe they're well-paid, I don't know. But does there need to be a balance between financial reality and joy? I mean, does your interest have to be economically viable? It depends on how much you value money. Everybody has a different value on money and how much they want. There's no one answer to that. There's as many answers to that as there are human beings on the face of the earth. Because when you say, you know, economic security, financial security, for some people, that means they have the money for the rent that month. And I've met those people. They want just enough so that they don't even want stuff left over at the end of the year.

13:59They've gotten by. and that's how much money matters to them. I mean, I know a fisherman who has the most marvelous life. He would want his life. He's so happy. And he rides a bike, he raises bees, and he fishes and he feeds himself from the land. And money is sort of, well, it means nothing to him, right? And then I've had students who wanted one helicopter per child and that would be economic. And so you can't, this is such a customized process because everybody values money a different amount. But you've got to know the answer. I mean, that's one of the hardest conversations we ever have with ourself because there's a little stink off of wanting a lot of money.

14:33You don't want to admit it out loud, but you better admit to yourself and the people who go very close to you, the people with whom you're in a relationship, how much it is for you. You got to own it. Otherwise, you're just going to be lying your way to just unhappiness. I'm curious, because you do the open enrollment and you probably even do some, maybe you do some personal coaching, but at the school, you probably work with a lot of folks that are looking for their first career, their first job. Do you find differences, significant differences in somebody's journey at 20 as opposed to at 40?

15:05I have taught becoming to people from age 16 to 78. You know, I teach undergraduates, MBAs, executive MBAs. And then in the open enrollment, I teach mothers returning from the workforce, people who have retired, who are starting their next chapter. I mean, I've talked to people at every different stage of life. And I think that the unifying thing is that almost no one knows their values no matter where they are. and that people are, you know, there are people in their 60s who say, oh, wait a minute. Yeah, that's what I'm good at. Always had a sense that I was good at that. And so I think that the universal condition that sort of draws everyone together is people are all seeking purpose and have woefully limited data on themselves and are always overjoyed to get that data.

15:49And so, I mean, obviously, kids who are coming out of the MBA program have got a very high value on affluence because they've got debt to pay. they've got you know but but look here's the thing they have different attitudes about how long they want they're willing to take to pay it off and if you have a low value of affluence which is what we call the money value you know you'll say look if i pay it off in 30 years i'm happy and then there's other people who say i gotta pay it off tomorrow i can't take it i don't like that feeling okay and so everything you know those are both variables so can you become you at midlife you can become you at 99 years old.

16:25I mean, I became me at age 60. Okay. So, you know, I had a lot of shareholders in Susie Incorporated until that point. And then I, a lot of things changed in my life and I finally could say, okay, what is it girl? And so you can become you. I, I have had so many people go through becoming you at this point. I have seen hundreds of people go become themselves thousands at this point, become themselves at every different age. And so there's, You know, it's not over till it's really over. And and that's a beautiful thing. So I think this is a record for this year. We are 17 minutes and 46 seconds in the show.

17:01I'm going to mention AI for the first time. What impact are you seeing or do you feel will come from the fact that so many careers, so many I mean, jobs have changed right over the years, but they're changing so rapidly. I think right now that people are having trouble adjusting to who they want to be, what they want to do. What impact do you think that's going to have? Okay, so I love AI, by the way. I use it every single day. I have seen it change what I have to do in the classroom. And, you know, I stopped asking my students not to use it on questions. I just designed the questions so that AI can't answer them as easily as they could.

17:36It's changing all jobs. So here, I think that AI's impact is that it's going to keep changing things. There's going to be this absolute kind of 20-year period where everything gets turned upside down by AI and nobody knows how that's going to look. So actually, in that situation, you've got to know the only thing you can know, who you are. So if the world keeps on changing, you can't keep changing yourself for the world. You've got to know what your values are, your aptitudes are, and your interests are. And then as the world changes, you fit yourself into that place where you belong. It's ever more imperative to know who you are standing still because the world is changing very quickly.

18:13Well, I think, and again, maybe this is only a five-year think for the moment, but I really think that those human values are going to be more important as a lot of the aptitudes are actually replaced. Yeah. I mean, it's very possible that what happens is that technical aptitudes will all be replaced by AI. And so really everything, like I was at a conference the other day and a very, very prestigious CEO said, we are running as fast as we can towards experiences because AI will never be able to replace an experience. And so people who are very good at, I say that sort of three things account for long-term success in life.

18:51And I call it PI, P-I-E, the quality of your relationships with people, the quality of your ideas, and the quality of your execution. And I think at the end of the day, AI is just never going to be able to replace the quality of relationships with people. And it will have ideas. But I just actually had an encounter right before our conversation where I asked AI to do something to give me a flat out stupid answer. And so, I mean, it's not there yet with the ideas, but it will get there. And, you know, it's never going to be able to bring a cast role to somebody who's lost a partner. So I think that, you know, just its ability to get things done in the real world is just it's going to be left to human beings.

19:28So there's room for us and we're not going to go extinct. But nobody knows which way it's going to go. And in that case, it's ever more important for you to know what you value. Yeah, I'm voting for EQ over IQ. How's that? Okay, I'll vote with you. Susie, again, I appreciate you taking a moment. Is there anywhere you would invite somebody to connect, find out more about your work, certainly about your book? Yeah, by all means, go to my website, SusieWelch.com. You can pre-order my book there. You can follow my newsletter, which is free. You can find out about all the digital tools I have. And you can listen to my podcast, Becoming You.

20:02If you're a podcast listener, I'd love to have you come and hear me talk about values, aptitudes, and interests over there. So thank you for giving me the chance to say that. You betcha. Awesome. Again, I appreciate you taking a moment and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road. That'd be great. Thank you so much for having me, John.