A Grammar Lesson You Might Just Love

Okay, that's right field. I mean, they are. They no longer exist. They are two good friends. They were a band. They were out of, like, Arkansas. I think they went to the University of Arkansas together. Oh, God, I hope I'm right. If not, it was Kentucky, and they are two fabulous, fabulous friends from high school. They started a band, and I found out about them because I ran a music tech company. That wasn't on your bingo card, was it? And I met them, and they were fabulous kids, and I'm very happy to have that music in the show. Thank you, right field. Anyway, big week. Thank you, all our listeners. We're picking up listeners like crazy, and it's super exciting. And I know that they're not really here for me. They're here for Pierre on a chair who is currently in despair. Look at him. Pierre's, like, having a meltdown. Pierre, what's wrong, sweetheart? Not enough people thinking about you at the moment? Because it's about a legion. All right, we got a lot to cover today. We're putting some new franchises into the Becoming you podcast. Why? Because we can't help ourselves, and we just think it'd be interesting to add some new things. And I'm going to try to decode corporate jargon. I got some songs I want you to listen to, and my new favorite part of this podcast. You haven't even heard it yet, but I love it. And it's called My favorite Mistake, in which I'm going to describe massive mistakes I've made and what I learned from them. Really, my life is just one mistake after another. It really is. And I just want to thank all the people who have forgiven me for all of my mistakes. You are a freaking legion. Okay, Pierre, I've made no mistakes with you. Getting you was the best decision I ever made. Okay, I have to talk. My little opening rant. I'm going to try to keep it short because we've got a lot of really fun things to do, but my opening rant this week is Crazy pants. I always say that I was becoming you's first beta tester. I created becoming you. As I was figuring out who I was going to become, I had a gigantic life change. I had had this long career that kind of made sense. It was at the intersection of journalism and business. I'd been a consultant and also an editor and a writer and wrote some bestselling books in there. And I was mainly in the area of careers, but I also covered change in corporate governance and management. I actually teach management, so thank goodness I've been thinking about it, but I had this big life experience where I lost the center of my role, my husband. And this was in March 1, 2020. And I came to a period in my life where I've talked about it many times where I knew I had to reinvent myself. And very fortuitously in that moment, I received an email from a random friend checking in on me, as many wonderful people did in that period, to see how I was doing after Jack's death. And he mentioned that he was teaching at nyu. And lo and behold, I ended up in the dean's office. And I said, I've got this class. And he said, we don't have that class. That figures. Helps you figure out how to become yourself. And I said, yes, I'm going to go write it. And so I did go back and write it, but in the process, I had to test all the parts of it. Right? It's. This is not a philosophical class. This is a, you know, becoming you is a grunty in the weeds process where you do 13 different exercises and so forth. And I was building it because I wanted it to be real. My number one hate in this world is platitudes. Okay? I hate ideas you could put your hands through. I don't. I don't want to be in that category. So I really wanted becoming you to be meaningful. And I tested everything on myself and I mean, I knew I really had a very good tool or a really good instrument for people to use when it revealed to me something I did not know about myself. And I'm. I'm pretty self actualized. Okay, so. So I remember trying one of the tools which we call value solitaire now. And when I finished it, there's a part at the end where you flip over your cards. And I did that and I just sat there and held my head in my hands and I sobbed for what I saw about myself and what I discovered. Now, all this having been said despite the fact that I was inventing all these processes and inventing all these instruments or adapting them from things that were already in the literature. Did you notice I just used an academic phrase in the literature?

Yeah.

I never thought of myself as an inventor. Okay. I had a lot of identity things. I'm a writer, I'm a businesswoman, I'm a leader, I'm a activist in the animal space. I'm all these different things. Inventor was not on that list. I don't know why. Maybe there's a million different reasons. When I was a little girl, that wasn't part of the consciousness. Inventors were different people than me. Well, the reason why I'm mentioning this is that actually, in the past month, I've invented two instruments that are going to change the game for you and me and everybody who cares about becoming you. Because I've come up with ways that people can do the becoming you process at home. One of them is a tool that helps you measure your values, and the other is a tool that helps you, very quick and dirty, get a 360feedback evaluation of yourself. Previously, you had to take becoming you at NYU to have these experiences. And I think I kept on expecting for a year that I was going to be able to find a version of these already created. And my team will tell you team over there. You can confirm. Correct. My team is here with me as I take them everywhere I go. That we looked for a year for these products, for these tools, did we not? Yeah. Yes. Okay, there they are, lamely agreeing. That was inspiring. Thanks. Thanks, guys. We looked everywhere for these tools and talked to a lot of people in this space. And finally, it's like that song, the Sisters are doing it for themselves. I just thought, okay, I'm going to do my best job now. I've got to get to a product development firm, and I got to get them to take these over the finish line. But I think I've cracked the code. And so I want to say I'm 64, and I actually have got another word in the long list of commas that we use in our lives to describe ourselves. I mean, we are just one long list of commas. I am a student. I'm an athlete. I'm a friend. I'm a son. I'm a mother. I'm a this, I'm a that. I'm a I'm a divorcee. I'm a dog lover. I'm a museum goer. I'm a recovering alcoholic. I mean, there are just a million ways our lives are long. We are never just one thing. And I have a lot of commas. And at first it feels like, well, that's very. What's wrong with you? Can't you figure out who you are? Well, no. I am all of these things. And now I have a comma that says inventor. And I literally. Call me crazy. Maybe one of the commas is just crazy, but call me crazy. I could barely sleep about it. I am so excited about how this opens up Becoming youg as a process to those of you at home. Please don't ask me where These tools are. We're making them, and I hope to get them out there as fast as we can. We're meeting with product developers, and I hope by the end of the summer, you'll be able to go to my website and you'll be able to get these tools that will really help you do the becoming you process. I'm done ranting and raving, but I just want to say we. What is it? Here's my question for you. What comma, word are you not thinking about for yourself that you're afraid to let yourself think? Okay. Or I am a something. Are you editing your dream? I mean, are you editing? I mean, I actually. I just didn't even conceive of the fact that I could be somebody who could come up with a tool, a psychometric instrument. And I have to be grateful. I'm really grateful to my PhD advisor because I'm getting my PhD. I'm really grateful to him because he said, stop talking about the tool. You're going to have to codify it for your thesis. And I did it. I mean, my team came in one morning and I said, I did it now. It's come a long way since that moment. I've tested it. I tested it with my students. If any of the students who came and tested it with me are listening. I love you so much and I am so grateful to you, but I'm grateful to all my Becoming youg students because we are in this journey together of creating this thing that we hope will help a lot of other people. And every single Becoming youg Student, every single person who takes Becoming youg Helps people, people who are going to take become you going forward, because the process keeps on getting better and better because of the way people have contributed to it. I'm done ranting now. Okay, team. Hey, Jorge. Jorge is our expert producer here. Do we put in theme music in the middle of the podcast? Are people going to hear Gone Now? They are. Listen to a little bit of Gone by Right Field.

Okay, we're back. We're going to move into this new thing I want to do on each podcast. Frankly, it could be the whole podcast podcast. I want to do this thing called My Favorite Mistake. Is everybody ready for it? Don't get too excited. It's painful. Okay.

You know, I think we're kind of brought up to not talk about our mistakes at all. But how fabulous if we could just get over ourselves and say we made a mistake and then we learned from it. You learned so much more from. I'm telling you something. You know, it's so freaking obvious. You learned so much more from your mistakes than your successes. Who sits around and says, my success taught me, blah, blah, blah, but your mistakes teach me a lot. And I'm so proud. I've made so many of them. Not. I wish I had. Look, believe me, there are mistakes that are not my favorite, that they just. There was no upside whatsoever. I've made terrible mistakes we won't be talking about on the show, but I want to talk about the mistakes that help me learn. Okay, I've got a recent one.

A few years ago, I was building the Becoming youg Universe because I know that I had a book coming on and I had my social media and the classes, and this was before I invented the instruments, but this was. I knew that I needed to find a team of really smart people who really believed in what I was doing, who would help me with the thinking and the building and the everything of it. And so I just. I didn't know exactly. I knew the job. I knew whatever I was hiring for, the job was really going to morph. And if you're a person who hires people, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You hire for something, you hire for some skills, you hire to fill a role. And three months later, because of the nature of technological change and the nature of just the way work is, it just completely, radically changes. And actually, LinkedIn has unbelievable research on this, which shows that job skill Churn, as they call it, is that every year, every 18 months, 40% of your skills will turn over. So whatever you're hiring for or whatever you were hired for is going to change. So I. I knew that going in and I thought, okay, what I really want is somebody who's just very smart, very energized, has our values around here. Urgency, high standards, curiosity, intensity, optimism. I mean, it's pretty. It's not like I'm hiding what I'm about, right? So I ended up, through word of mouth, finding a young woman who had gone to a good enough school and with good enough grades, who had sort of floating between jobs. And I thought, oh, that's kind of great. I've had a lot of luck with women floating between jobs because they come on board and this, Our company is very mission driven. We believe in becoming you. And I thought, oh, great. I mean, if you're floating, I'm kind of a place where you can grow and learn and throw your energy and all you really need is to have our values, which I was really clear about. In the interview process. Urgency, intensity, curiosity, blah, blah, blah. Well, there was one value I forgot to mention because I thought it was so obvious that it went without saying. I guess it just didn't even dawn on me what a dope I was. And it was a big mistake not to be very, very thorough about the values. And the value that I forgot to mention was kindness, was niceness, was not being an a hole, if you pardon my French. Sorry. So this person came on and she had many of the qualities I wanted. Smart. She seemed to believe in the process. Not a lot. But actually, I think it's good to have naysayers because if you're all just a bunch of yes people. Yes. If you're yes ing the boss all the time, the boss is not getting the best out of you. I mean, I'm constantly saying to my team, please disagree with me. And I'm sincere. I want them to disagree with me so that I can grow and learn. I mean, I have. I've got thick skin. And so she wasn't a full believer. So I thought, okay, well, that's actually pretty good. It's okay. I mean, I don't, you know, it makes me a little uncomfortable that she seems so skeptical, but I'm going to go with it. And I told her going in the job was very ambiguous. We were going to every day go in there with our best intentions. We're really going to give it our all. And she was going to be doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and we were going to sort it out. So very rough start. Very rough start. Because she really wanted a lot of clarity around the job and there wasn't a lot of clarity. Was there work to do? So much work to do. But was there clarity? No. Every day we were all doing just a ton of different stuff. And I noticed sort of through the corner of my eye that she was not the most sociable or likable person with the other members of the team. And I should have paid more attention. I didn't. I should have been much more proactive. And I wasn't because this went on for a few weeks. And unbeknownst to me, my bad, unbeknownst to me, she was being A. I hate this word because it's very gendered. Okay. It's B and it ends with I, T, C, H. And that's a very gendered word because where's the male equivalent of it? Okay, so. But she was being that type of person which men can also be to everybody. Else on the team. She was mean, she was rude, she was condescending, and she said really unkind, condescending stuff to other team members. And I. It was all out of my sight. That's what happens when you're the boss. Nobody's being a jerk in front of you. Okay, but one time we were all in a group meeting, and I actually kind of caught her say something particularly caustic and rude to another person on the team who was trying very hard to be spectacular and is actually spectacular and is sitting in this room right now. But I. Oh, no, actually she's not. Okay, so. But I would say that I caught it and I thought, ooh, that's weird. I wonder if she's having a bad day. So I pulled a little bit of an end run and I went to another person on the team and I asked, how is this person behaving when I'm not in the room? And they said, you really want to know? And I said, what does it look like? I don't want to know stuff? And she said, well, she's just a total.

Person who starts with a B and ends with itch and she's mean to everybody. And then.

Something that she said to another person on the team was repeated to me. It was unbelievably unkind. And it was. It was basically somebody tried to say something. Actually somebody disagreed with her in a meeting, and she said to the person who disagreed with her about a work issue, not about like something very personal like politics or a social cause. Okay? Which even this, this would not be allowed under those circumstances. But they were actually talking about a work issue. And this person on the team stated their opinion about a work issue, and the evil other person said, you know what? You're really pissing me off right now.

Well, there is just no circumstance in a work setting where that kind of rudeness and impertinence is okay. No one should say it. I'd never say it to somebody. And it was so bad. And so the next day, she very conveniently missed an assignment that was supposed to be handed in at 9 o'. Clock. And at 11, she hadn't handed it in yet. And then I finally tracked her down and I said, this was supposed to be done at 9. It's now 11. You're not here. What's going on? And she said, it's only two hours. And I said, why don't you stay home? And I fired her. And I. I just said, we have a total values disconnect, and I'm Sure. She's moved on to other things. She didn't belong here. And so I learned so much about this. I hope she learned something too. But you know what? She was not a very nice person. So I'm not really sure if I care that much about what she learned. Oh, there I'm now being a bitch, but I would say she was such a not a nice person. I learned this. I learned as a boss. I can take nothing for granted about somebody being part of my culture. I should have been checking more. I didn't want to be, like, a narc. How's she doing? How's she fitting in? And actually, it was very interesting that my other employees kind of covered for her, because I think they were trying to protect me from being upset. And so I learned about my role. When somebody's coming into a culture about making sure that they fit in on every single dimension, you know, it's okay. She was urgent. She was intense. She did all these other things. She was smart. But was she nice? The great Stanford Business School professor, the icon Bob Sutton, has a book called the no A Hole Rule about how companies are destroyed by holes. I mean, he said it, not me. We didn't print that word in the Harvard Business Review when we first started writing about this. He's a spectacular. One of the great thinkers of America right now in management, but in business in general. And he said companies fail for a lot of different reasons. But when you peel it back, 90% of the time, companies fail because somebody in a position of power and authority was a complete and total jerk to other people. And you have to be very, very, very. You have to be Steve Jobs, like, smart to be a jerk all the time, okay? And even then, you shouldn't be. I mean, the only people who get away with that forever are owners who are smarter than everybody else by an order of magnitude. Still, no excuse. I've seen plenty of people who are owners who are really, really smart not be that way. It's like Wozniak said to Steve Jobs, you don't have to be this way. He asked him that. So, you know, I'm kind of the big queen of corporate culture, organizational culture. I teach a class on it, okay? And I talk about culture. And this makes me think, I gotta tell this story in that class. That's how important culture is. And it was on me, the leader. It was on me. It's not on my people to come reporting that to me. And so I learned a lot from that mistake. And I'm not gonna make it again and I share it with you in hopes that you never make it because there was collateral damage. I mean, I had a person on my team who had a bunch of really bad weeks because behind the scenes there was another employee who was dissing her, slagging her all the time. Totally not. Okay. I could have lost her over it. And that would have been a terrible loss for me and my organization. That is the end of that mistake. Don't make it. Okay. Now probably more music from right field. Da da da da da. Here comes.

Friends and listeners. Look. Welcome back from our big break. That's not filled with an ad because we don't have any advertisers yet. But I would say you won't believe this, but my little becoming you universe. We're really lucky because we got interns. Yeah, we do. We have interns this summer and we're really proud that they're with us and they're helping so much. And the interns are going to read the questions this week. Okay, Charlie, hit it. What's the first question? What suggestions do you have when someone's values contradict one another? Yeah. Oh. What? You didn't ask this question, Charlie, but you probably should have. It's so smart, right, Jen? And it's just. So this is a fantastic question to actually deal with this head on and becoming you. So let me just rephrase. This question is I'm a person. I've discovered my values and I have two that are at odds with each other. Welcome to humanity. Welcome to real life. Okay, so the example of this would be I've got a value of just spontaneity and adventure and living life to the fullest and just being a absolute party animal. And I want to be a present parent. Okay. I actually know a person. I wrote about her in my book 1010 10. I call her Ajita. In the book, it's a pseudonym for her because she wanted privacy on this issue who had this exact issue. She was a party girl she loved, but she's an unbelievably successful engineer. She's actually now a CEO of company. She wasn't when I heard the story for the first time. And she was a total party girl. She liked to go out three nights a week and party your brains out. She was highly social, but she really believed in marriage also. And she had an arranged marriage. She was of Indian descent. Her family arranged a marriage and the guy was wonderful and she loved him. And he was not a party guy. And she valued the marriage. And then they had their first baby. They've since had two more babies, but they had their first baby. And she was like, I hate this. I hate having to have. I want to be a present mother. I want to be a good mother. I want to be as good a mother. I remember her saying this. I want to be as good a mother as my own mother. Well, her mother was like a stay at home mother. And Ajita, if we can call her that, was already working full time. So her partying was on top of those hours that she was working full time anyway. And these were two pieces of her identity, Two values that were in direct conflict with each other. This is incredibly common. And another thing that happens in the same category is that we sometimes have a value that's in direct conflict with our identity. Okay, so for instance, I have a friend who's got a gigantic value of stability and calm and absolute self control in her life and visibility. And her identity is that she wants to be like a family famous person in Hollywood. Those don't go together. Okay? That's a conflict between values and identity. And this is, you know, look, this is why we do becoming you, because this is what it is to be a human being. It can wreck your life, though. So I love this question because it brings up an incredibly important issue. And here's my advice, which is to acknowledge this gigantic elephant in the room. And then you really have to do the hard work of making sure you've identified all your values. And we talk on the show all the time about the different processes where you can come up with what your values are and really identify them. And then you have to sit down and you have to look at the ones that have tensions and those, those that are in conflict and I have to say something to you, they're not going to go away by accident. You have to make some hard decisions. You have to decide which trade offs you're going to make. It's at your great peril to live or to try to live, I should say, with two values that are directly in conflict or values that are in conflict with your identity. So make those hard choices, know that you're making them and make your peace with them. That may be the entire work of your life, by the way, but if you don't do it, it usually ends up in things like nervous breakdowns, divorces and stuff like that to keep this one under the lid. Okay, so go for it. Thanks for that question. I predict you've helped a lot of people by asking that question. Thanks. All right, one more Question. And this time, we're hearing from our intern, Katie.

Hi, Susie. I came across your profile and was wondering if you offered resume help. I've been in real estate sales for 11 years, and I'm trying to get into a new position, not in real estate sales. I've attempted all sorts of revamping of my resume for years, even paying a resume writer thousands of dollars to help me rewrite my resume, but I still can't get any callbacks. I don't even know what kinds of jobs I can slash should apply for. Wondering if you can help.

Oh, I love you. This person. Thank you for writing. And I get so many dms like this people asking for resume help. I don't do resume help. And frankly, the reason why you have resume problems is because you have not done the hard work of bec you. I not to hawk it that much because you can't buy it anywhere. So it's not like I'm trying to sell you anything. The problem with trying to tweak your resume is you have to know your destination. If you don't know your destination, any old world will do. So you'll keep on changing your resume. But what you've got to do, dear writer, here, is to figure out what your values are. Figure out what your aptitudes are, what you're uniquely good at. I mean, it's not enough to say I don't want to be in real estate sales anymore. What should you be in? Okay. Not just the job. It looks cool because you like the company. I mean, you got to figure out what you're actually very, very good at. There's a good aptitude test by YouScience. YouScience.com I make no money off of this. I just. It's the one I use with my students. It's a little bit pricey. Okay. It's $40. I know that's a lot. I think it's a little bit less than that. It's worth it to find out what you're good at. Okay. Or if you don't want to spend that money, and I totally understand that, go and ask 10 people you trust tell me what I am uniquely good at. And it doesn't have to be like an answer like math or writing. The answer has to be things like you're really good at, convening people. You make everyone feel welcome. You're wildly adaptable. You take change very, very well. Find out what you're uniquely good at. Okay? And then you put that together with your values. I value flexibility I value downtime. Or alternatively, I value massive achievement. And I value money. Okay, Whatever your real values are, figure out your aptitudes. I mean, this is becoming you in five seconds here. And then figure out what your interests are. Is your interest working for a company with a cool name, or is your interest aviation? Okay? And somewhere at the intersection of your values, your aptitudes, and your interests lies your area of transcendence. Then it's only after you've done that hard work that you should start thinking about your resume. And now, look, you're going to figure out an area of transcendence. It's going to seem impossible. You can't achieve it. It's too far off. But at least you know the where the road is, and you take the first small step on the way there, you know where you're going, the journey's gonna be better. Stop spending money on resume help before you know what your area of transcendence is. Okay? Otherwise, it's just smoke and mirrors. I wish you the best of luck. Please keep me updated. The person who sent this. I really want to hear the next step in your story. Pretty soon, there's going to be tools for you to figure these things out. Yay. Because I invented them. I'm so happy, and I can't wait to get them into everybody's hands. Thank you, interns, for your excellent readings of that. We're repping there, Bucknell and Williams. And so yay to those schools which have produced these fantastic interns.

All right, we're gonna do a little fun new franchise here on the Becoming youg podcast. I'm just trying to keep it fresh and interesting for you every now and again. I'm gonna play a piece of music that I think you should hear, and I'll tell you why I think you should hear it. Okay, Jorge later is going to play a little snippet of a song. It's by a very young new artist. Her name is Jillian Rossi. Hey, Jillian. Remember me? I hope you're listening to this. Gillian is a young artist who I met when I was working at Quadia. Remember, I had my little stint as a CEO of a music tech startup, and I interviewed her for a piece of collateral that we had focusing on young artists. At this point, she had never probably made a song, and she sat across from me. She wanted to be a professional singer. She wanted to be a pop singer. She wanted to be Taylor Swift. Okay? She's a fantastic human being, a beautiful person inside and out, and she wanted to be a pop star. And she sat across from me, and she expressed with her words and her emotions, a hunger for this kind of life and this kind of success that was undeniable. And I remember later we hired a head of a to make records for us. We started a label, and he said, if I had to bet on anyone's success, it would be Jillian Rossi, because she's just not gonna give up. And I have watched her for the past four or five years doing that because she's on social media a lot, and she's had some songs that are spectacular earworms and some songs that are like, okay, you know, good, Jillian Ye. But others that are fantastic. And this new song, I think it could be the song of summer. It should be. But what I want to hold her up as is a person who did the amazing thing of not giving up. When you have a really big dream, you know what's going to kill you? Not anything but exhaustion. I mean, because chasing a really, really big dream takes a really, really long time and a lot of energy. And a lot of companies close just because the founders fall out of love with the idea or they lose their momentum. And I want to hold Gillian up as an example of a person who did not fall out of love with her dream and who I'm sure not every day has been easy for her. I'm sure there have been setbacks because that's the way it goes in the music business. But she has fought hard, and I love this new song. Listen to it and download and do all those things that will help Jillian Rossi. Gillian, you are a hero to me. You're one of my mentors, by the way, and I wish you all the luck with this song. I think it's fantastic. So kiss me if you want to love me if you hate me you.

Know I to baby in the middle of a story Leaving off the ending.

Magic.

All right, we have another new segment on this. I'm just blowing you away with new segments on this show. We're going to. Now do we have a new segment where I am going to decode jargon, Corporate jargon, for those of you new to the corporate world or those of you who are just amused by the corporate world. And the interns are going to read this corporate jargon, and I'm going to tell them what it means. Okay, go ahead, Charlie. I'll circle back. Okay. I'll circle back. You've heard that your dad's in business, right? Have you heard him say, I'll circle back on that? I think so. Oh, He's. The answer is no, and he's just being polite. Okay, so this is an incredibly common. Your boss will say to you. You come to your boss with an idea or a question or something comes up in a meeting, and you look at your boss's face and a kind of vague blankness comes over it. And they say to you, well, I'll circle back to you on that. What that means is they hate the idea and they never want to talk to you about it again. They're going to try to go away for long enough that you never remember that you brought it up in the first place. And it basically, I'll circle back. That is code for go away and shut up. Okay, I just want to make that clear. All right, let's hear from you, Katie. What's the jargon?

Deliverables.

Oh, deliverables. Yeah. What are those? I mean, until you get into the work world, the deliverable is sort of a baby, right? There's the baby. You delivered it. Okay. I mean, or it's like what you order food. Deliverables. That's a great piece of jargon. It basically means what you're supposed to do and show for it. Okay, Your deliverables on this project are four KPIs, okay? And you're sitting there thinking, what is a KPI? And so forth. But I mean, a deliverable is what the boss expects for a project to be done. Well, they may tell you, like, are you clear on the deliverables for this project? And you're going to say, yeah, but actually, you don't have any idea what it means. A deliverable is what does success look like? And that's actually one good thing about business. They'll tell you what success looks like if you ask. And so deliverables are often things like, okay, we have this new marketing program. And you'd say, well, what's the deliverable? And they'll say, 4% new customers. Okay? A deliverable is a concrete piece of evidence that the work was done right. And, well. Okay, so your deliverable right now is to tell all of your friends to listen to my freaking podcast. Okay, thank you very much. Okay. All right. My deliverable later today is actually. I'm going on a podcast, a massive podcast, actually, that is put out by Chatham Financial, has hundreds of thousands of listeners. And I usually. They talk to the incredible gurus of finance. And I met the CEO of the company, and he thought for some reason I might have some value to add to his audience. So my deliverable this afternoon is to say something that finance bros and. And gals find to be interesting. That's going to be. I got all my work cut out for me.

All right, this is actually, frankly, my friends, this is. Is my favorite part of the podcast is when my staff tries to stump me. They've stumped me because they asked me what my favorite vegan protein was. I mean, for God's sake. Okay. All right, Eliza, what's the first question? Go ahead. The first question is, who's a stranger that you'll never forget? Now, you could. This is evidence that they. I do not know these questions beforehand. It's not like you're all sitting there like, they fed Susie these questions beforehand, But I really don't know who's a stranger I'll never forget. All right, I'm glad that Jorgen cut out the dead space while I think of the answer. Hold on a second. Let me think of an answer. Okay, I do have an answer. It's kind of a sad answer, Eliza, but I think it's a true answer. I was visiting my daughter at the University of Miami, where she went 11 years ago, or, yeah, 10 or 11 years ago. It was a different school back then, and there she was the only person in the history of humankind to major in poetry at the University of Miami. But somebody had to do it, and she did, because why? Because she wanted to go to Hollywood, and there was no major in, like, going to Hollywood. And actually, just recently, somebody asked me, should have Sophia gone to college at all? And the answer is, she was so destined for Hollywood and so destined for a career in casting, where she is such a superstar that she probably shouldn't have even gone to college. She should have gone right out to Hollywood and start learning how to cast. A lot of people who are in Hollywood don't go to college. You get skills there that you can only get in practice. But in any case, I was visiting her at, um, and it was a bright, sunny day, as it often is in Florida, and we were sitting outside at a little cafe table, and a student went by, and he was in a wheelchair. And not only was he in a wheelchair, but he clearly had some kind of debilitating, wasting disease. And he was pushing himself along with his books on the back of his wheelchair, and he just went by. He had such dignity to him. And I saw that this was a person who was pretty certainly dying and pretty certainly had had unbelievable challenges in his. His life. And he was going to college, and he was, you know, just to put your books in your Book bag and get across campus for my daughter and for me when I was in school was just an unbelievable easy thing to do. You don't even think about it. You think I'm stopping, get Starbucks on the way or whatever. And you just. And this was a person for him. Just getting across campus with his books was an act of will and probably was physically incredibly hard. And he was doing it with a great deal of, you know, his countenance and his face was just filled with happy determination and he was really living. And you know, I literally was playing with the dogs the other day and I lost a fingernail. And I've probably been complaining about it every single. I'm literally complaining about losing a fingernail. And this guy was such a profile encourage to me. And I think I still think about him. I still asked Sophia, do you know who he is? And she said no. But I see him all the time. You know, he's a student here. And so I think about him. I know this is corny. I pray for him all the time and I think about him and I think about what he taught me. So there's a stranger that I remember. I hope he's still among us. God willing he is. And if he is God, I hope his life is really beautiful. I bet it's filled with people who love him as it should be because he was a beautiful, courageous person. You could just feel coming off of him.

Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but man, I'll never forget him. What about yourself hasn't changed in the last 10 years? What about myself has not changed in the past 10 years? I mean, so much has changed, right? Because we're all changing all the time. But I would say for, for sure, one of my fundamental, foundational, profound, never changing values is my love for animals and the desire that animals stop being hurt as part of our day to day lives. And in fact, I was just thinking the other day, I'm on the board of the Humane Society. I'm very active with other organizations like Mercy for Animals. I was born with a preternatural love of animals. I think I've studied other people like me who are a kind of have an unusual amount of desire to protect animals. I think that the one through line for all of us is that maybe we didn't feel heard as children and so we empathize with animals. Unbelievable inability to be able to advocate for themselves. And sometimes I'll ask another advocate, like, did you have a childhood where you felt heard? And there was like, no, because my Blah, blah, blah. And I think, yep, that's right. There we are. But so that's not changed at all. It's actually very much grown in intensity. And. And so that has not changed at all. That's so. And that's actually when you know it's a value, you know you've got a true. Like, some of our values change. We have a kid, our value. Jorge, your values are about to change. Okay? Like, everything you thought you're gonna change, they're gonna change somewhat. Cause a baby comes in and some things really change. But, you know, it's a value when it can't be taken out of you. There is nothing that could take this out of me. I actually have a friend who's very much in the animal space. And a friend, a third friend who's also in the animal space, commented to me, I'm not like, Paul, I wouldn't die for a chicken. And I remember thinking to myself, would I die for a chicken? Those of us in the animal space think and have questions and ask and have conversations like that. Okay, all right, go ahead, stump me. Last question. Katie the intern is going to ask the last stump me question. You still. I'm still unstumped. My record is unbroken. Go ahead, Katie.

What was your best celebrity encounter experience?

Best celebrity encounter experience. Oh, I have a fantastic one. Fantastic one. I do. I mean, you asked this question, so if this sounds like name dropping, I cannot be blamed. I cannot be blamed. Okay? And it evolves. The great, the one, the only, the iconic, historic Warren Buffett. Okay? And so here's a weird, quirky thing you probably didn't know. When you're married to Jack Welch at all sorts of fancy dinner parties, you get seated next to Warren Buffett. It's just a kind of weird thing. I don't know why it is. I probably sat next to him 30 times over the course of our 25 year marriage, or 20 year marriage, where we would just be at events with Warren Buffett. Why? Because these guys generally all hang together. And so then we go to dinner party. It's just the way it goes. It's. Sorry. And I ended up sitting next to Warren and got to know him over the years. I mean, I'm not gonna say I'm a friend of his, but I wish I was. And so anyway, here is my incredible celebrity encounter with Warren Buffett and an incredible learning moment. I'm so glad we'll end on it. Went to a dinner party, A lunch party at Vernon Jordan's house. It was before the alfalfa dinner. I'm thinking it's 2008 or something like that. And we all sit down for lunch. There's like five or six big tables of 10 or 12. And I'm looking, going towards my table, and I think, oh, goody gumdrops. I am gonna sit next to Warren Buffett again because he is a delightful human being. I sit down next to him. He smiles, he says, hello, Susie. He reaches into his pocket and he takes out an egg timer, okay? And he sets it at eight minutes. And he puts it in front of us. And he said, get a load of this. Okay? Here's my egg timer. You have to talk to me for eight minutes before you get to turn to the other side and talk to Donnie Graham. Okay? I felt like the most important person in the world. It was such an adorable thing to do. He didn't have to do it. And you know what? I'm telling you something. He didn't know who he was sitting next to. I didn't go to that party. No. It's not like he was saying, oh, God, I got to talk to Susie Welch. Yay, yay, yay. For eight minutes, he was just saying, whoever I sit next to, I'm gonna have this egg timer. And that's how it goes at these parties. You talk to the person on the right for eight minutes, generally, and then you talk to the person on the left. That's when you're being polite. And he was just sort of slagging on this protocol that we all do that at these parties. You talk left, reasonable period of time. Talk right reasonable period of time. But he put the ache timer on. It was so endearing, and I felt so important. And I probably couldn't admire him more, but I admired him more in that moment. And it was a. You know, people say Warren Buffett is, you know, so down to earth, and that is very down to earth, but he's also just uniquely special in everything he does. And I did talk to him for eight minutes, and I had the great pleasure of speaking to the person on the other side of me, Don Graham, for another eight minutes. And he's a delightful, wonderful human being as well. And then I went back and talked to Warren, and he set the egg timer again, and that's how the lunch went. And I think that that's a pretty kick ass celebrity encounter, wouldn't you say? Okay, team, don't get too excited about it, but there you go. All right? And I have other. I mean, I have other wonderful memories of him. I mean, Jack and I got married. He sent us this huge banner that he wanted us to put across the front of our house that said just married, which was kind of would have been weird, but it was a lovely idea. And like the rest of the world, I've learned so much from him. And if you don't know a lot about Warren Buffett, immediately educate yourself because he is a great thinker and a very, very wise person, and he has shared his great wisdom with the world for a long time. So. All right, that is it for this podcast, this episode of Becoming you. Please stick with us. Please come back next week. I love that you're listening to this. I love you very much even though I don't know you. Please keep writing to me and communicating with me on my social media, and we'll be back together next week by.