Becoming You: The Process Gets Real (Part 3) When All the Pieces Click into Place

Hi, everybody. It's Susie. Hi, Kristen. Hi.

I'm nervous about today because this is when I talk about how I changed my entire life after your class.

That's true. Don't be nervous. It's gonna be okay. Pierre's here. You can put him in your lap.

I know. It's really actually good.

Wait, I haven't said hello to you.

Excuse me.

Max. Hi, Max.

Hi. It's great to be back.

Are you nervous?

Yes. Because I can't rely exclusively on the data for this entire interview. I have to actually get a little bit.

We got two nervous people.

We have an emotional support dachshund in the room.

We've got two nervous people in this room, two producers, a dachshund, and me. And this is becoming you. I'm Susie Welch. This is a podcast where each week we go in search of your purpose. That's what we do on Becoming youg. Becoming youg is a methodology. I teach it at NYU Stern School of Business. I have a book about it. And just very simply, the premise of this methodology is that your purpose lies at the intersection your values, your deeply held beliefs, your aptitudes, what you're uniquely good at, and your economically viable interests. This is part three of a three part series that we're doing on actually how you actually do this process. And we've been so lucky to have Kristen and Max along for the ride. They've both taken Becoming you in different ways and they're recounting their experience. And if you haven't listened to the first two episodes of this series, go back and listen to them. I think they're really good. Thank you both. And stop being nervous. I know, I know. Shake it off. All right. I think they're really good, but if not, you don't want to go back and listen to it. This is the third part and what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the third part of the data collection of the Becoming you experience, which is economically viable interest. We'll talk about what that means, and then we're going to put it all together and we're going to find out where you ended up after going through the Becoming youg process. But let's start by talking about where you started before you landed Becoming youg. I'm gonna challenge you to sum that up in about 30 seconds. Kristin, tell us the 32nd version of your life before becoming you. Go.

I grew up in Arkansas. I came to New York as an actress. I thought it was an adventure. I ended up Meeting my husband, having two kids. I landed in advertising based on a temp job and just kind of stayed in it because I didn't know what else to do until I hit a point where I said something has to change because I'm not happy.

No fair. Damn good. All right. I was gonna do it. I'm glad you did it for me. And I will say this. I teach Becoming youg in the Wild, as we call it. And you came into it, and you heard about it. Maybe on. Maybe the algorithm.

Instagram algorithm introduced me to Susie, and I became obsessed.

Okay. Stopping right now. And I'd say that you showed up. The class is filled with people from around the world and people from New York of all different ages. And there you were. And I'm so happy. Max, 30 seconds. Do it.

I was entrepreneurial my entire childhood and was quite successful as an entrepreneur. I ended up on Shark Tank, where I got a deal with Mark Cuban, was fortunate to sell the company, and figured out that I had no idea what I wanted to do if I was an entrepreneur. Fast forward. Took your class in business school. Had worked a couple jobs. They didn't feel right. Started a company. It didn't feel right. And I realized that I have to figure out what I want to do in order to be successful. That might not look like I thought it would for my whole childhood.

Both want to figure out what to do with your life. That is what we do in becoming you. That's what the process is all about. And for some people, the process ends up in a little tweak of their life. They make one or two changes. They say, oh, this is what was off. And they're. They're done with it, and it's kind of wonderful. And they say, thanks, and I say, great meeting you, and on they go. But other people take a little bit of TNT to it, and they blow it up. And we're gonna get there with both of you by the end of this episode, so please stay with us. And by the way, if you're a new listener this week, welcome, welcome, welcome. So happy that you're here. Part of the Becoming youg community. And if you're an old listener, welcome back. You know I love you. We're going to start off by talking about the third bunch of data that we gather in Becoming youg. I call it economically Viable interests. Evi's. I have called it a number of things over the years. When I first started out teaching, becoming you, I think I called it opportunities. People didn't understand what it meant. Then I called it interest. People didn't know what that meant. And finally I ended up with this term evi. I'm not thrilled with it. It's a big mouthful. But what it means is work that calls you intellectually and emotionally, but also will pay you what you need to be paid. Now, very luckily, in the first part of becoming you, we look at your values very closely and we figure out how much money matters to you, you know, how much you care about. Affluence is measured. So for people going through the becoming you process, that piece is taken care of. You know, how much affluence. But what work calls you intellectually and emotionally? Well, here's the crazy thing. A lot of people have no idea. A lot of people come into becoming you and they don't know their values. And it's a revelation. I would say you're both in that category somewhat. A lot of people come in and they don't really know their aptitudes or they have a general sense of them, and becoming you really helps them know their aptitudes. And I think you both are kind of in that category sometimes. Aptitudes are gigantic, you know, for people. But with economically viable interests, a lot people do know what they're interested in. They generally have a sense of it. I have a small portion, maybe 15%, who have no idea what their interests are. And what I often say about that is something else is going on, they're experiencing maybe some anxiety, they're experiencing burnout. Something else is going on more often than not is you know, your interests, but you shut your ears and your eyes to them. You've been talked out of them by society or culture or how hard it might be to do them, they know, like, I've always wanted to be in dog rescue, but I simply can't do that. Or expedience really gets in the way. There's just a conveyor belt. Kristen, you got it on a conveyor belt in advertising. You were pretty damn good at it. So you stayed on the conveyor belt even though you didn't grow up saying, oh, my God, I can't wait to make commercials. Yeah. And Max, your interest in entrepreneurism, you were drawn to it, but it wasn't the only thing you were interested in. Maybe you're in the category, like, you're interested in almost everything.

That's exactly right. I was interested in almost everything. And in class, when you said, you know, what are some of the evi's you think you might have? And, like, what are some of the megatrends and some of the things that you might be interested in. I remember saying, well, I'm interested in anything as long as it's interesting, right? Like, as long as there's something to learn about.

All right. So I actually have a name for your syndrome. I used it in class. It's the cowbell syndrome. This is some people who have a lot, a lot, a lot of interest and they can't make up their mind. I spent my whole childhood thinking, like, maybe I'll be a judge or a professional cheerleader. I love those cheerleading movies so much, by the way.

You'd be a great judge. And if you ever want a career change. I actually think that they could do judge Susie and be great.

I'll take it under advisement anyway. I had a student one time who came up to me in the first class about interest and he said to me, professor Welch, I've got a real problem. I grew up on a farm and I really, really love animals. I particularly love cows and sheep. And I want to just hang out with the cows. And I don't know why I'm really at business school. I just want to be with the cows. But, you know, when I close my eyes at night, I think about ringing the bell on nasdaq and I said, well, which is it? Do you want to be a vet with the cows or do you want to ring your bell on NASDAQ when your company, your tech company goes public? And he looked at me with great seriousness and he said, both. And so I named this syndrome after him, the cowbell syndrome. So there's some people who get on a conveyor belt and they go towards the job that they got, like their cousins, uncle, their uncle's sister in law, blah, blah, blah, had a job and they took it. Next, you know, 25 years later, they're still in that industry and it kind of happened by accident. And they never fell madly in love with it, but they could do the work pretty well and it was comfortable and it just bumped along or they zig and they zag and they bounce around because of the cowbell syndrome. And it's almost anything's interesting to them and, you know, cheerleader and, and judge and everything in between. So the process in becoming you is to help you do two things at once that are completely different. One is to have you open up the aperture of what you're aware of. Because what ends up happening is we get kind of blinders on when we're in high school. There's great research that shows that kids who graduate from high school know about five jobs, their parents jobs and three others. And those three others are like police officer, teacher, and one other. Okay. And then when you get to college, you, you'd think it would open up, wouldn't you? But what happens in college is group think. Everybody's going to X, Y and Z job, everybody's going to tech, everybody's going to marketing. And it doesn't really open up all that much. And then if you go to graduate school, it starts to narrow and narrow and narrow and you start thinking about, okay, I live in Las Vegas, I can only work in hospitality, or I live in Detroit, I can only really work in the auto industry in some way. And then people don't generally think about megatrends, which I'm obsessed with. Megatrends being these really big, big economic and demographic and sociological trends that are coming around the corner that could just change the world. Like my favorite is space mining. I'm obsessed, as you know, with space mining. That's what I'm going to do if I'm not a judge or a cheerleader as I'm going to go into space mining. But space mining is a identified mega trend. Every different mineral that we mine on Earth could be mined in space and no harm to earth and animals and people could occur. Of course, it's going to cost 40 trillion billion gazillion dollars to start this, but those who are early into it will be the gajillion.

I love how much you talk about space mining.

It is fascinating you talk about it so much.

I was very affected by megatrends because when I was in Harvard business school in 1988, this was before there were computers generally. I wrote my, all my exams by hand. When you graduated, they published your starting salary and what company you were going to imagine if they did that. Today your GPA was published along with your starting salary where you're going. There were six guys and they were spectacularly successful BMOCs and so forth. And out came the publication. And what was not published was their, their GPAs were published, but there was no starting salary and no company. These six guys. And I remember saying to people, where are they going? These, these, the Magnificent Six, where are they going? And they said, everybody said, it's really weird. It's really weird. They're, they're going to Silicon Valley. And I was like, why are they going to, where's Silicon Valley? This is 88. They were like, it's in California. It's near Stanford. I was like, why why are they going there? And honest to God, the answer was. One person answered me. I think they really like golf. It's like, oh, is there good golf there? We had no idea. They saw the megatrend of tech coming, and they. I think they all became billionaires. One of them very sadly passed away from cancer, but they were. The rest went on to have these spectacular. They caught the wave before. It was a wave. That's megatrends and that's space mining. When I'm old and gone and everybody's gonna say, you know, Susie Welch was talking about space mining in 2025. Okay. And. But I didn't do anything about it. But we need to open our aperture to see what's going on with Megatrends and all these industries. There are 135 industries. People kind of can identify five. So we play in class. Do you guys remember the game we play in class that has to do with it? What do we do? Industry bingo. Yeah, we play bingo. And I put all the industries on bingo cards, and I make people go through this. And it's sort of goofy, but it introduces you to the different industries that are out there. And if you can't play industry bingo in class with me, because you're listening to this in your home in Kerr, Idaho, or wherever you might be, you can literally go online and go to the government websites that list all the industries you have to force open your aperture. And then I'll say this. There's just different types of jobs. People think, well, there's marketing, there's hr, there's administration. There are so many types of jobs. And again, it's a discipline to find out what they all are. And we have exercises for that in class. But because you're not taking class, I mean, you can read the book. I've got a lot of resources and also on my website, a lot of resources that help you open your aperture and understand what's out there besides what you've been told and what you fell into.

You played this great video in class, too, about plastics.

Yeah.

And it's so funny. It's like, what are you gonna do? And you, like, go, whatever you do, go into plastics. And funny enough, my dad, my entire life has worked in the plastics industry. Everyone made fun of him for it because we would be kids at a restaurant, he'd pick up a ketchup bottle on the table and say, oh, this ketchup bottle is made by this manufacturer and there's ketchup.

Let me tell you this story. Let me just Play out this story for you young people. There was a famous movie once called the Graduate. It starred the young Dustin Hoffman, and it has a classic line in it. Well, it's classic to old.

In this amazing movie, which won every single award. It was brilliant. And actually, maybe you've heard the song Goo goo coo chew, Mrs. Robinson. All right. You know that song, Kristin? Oh, yeah, of course she does. We're not going to sing in this episode. We sang last time. Maybe we should sing also.

I talk about hashtags.

Mrs. Robinson. Jesus loves you more than you would know oh, oh, oh. Okay, that's enough for today. All right, so anyway, that was a famous song from that movie. The protagonist comes home from college. We're led to believe it's Williams. He has no idea what. What he wants to do with his life. His parents throw a big party at their fancy home in Pasadena, California for him, and this obnoxious corporate asshat approaches him and says, benjamin, what are you going to do with your life? And he goes, I don't know. He takes him outside and he goes, I have one word of advice for you. One word of advice. And this, like, total corporate tool says. He says, what is it? And he says, plastics. And he goes, what do you mean, plastics? And he says, plastics. Enough said. And he looks befuddled now, like your father. My entire life has been made possible by plastics because my late husband, Jack Welch, and he started plastics at GE and grew it into a multi billion dollar industry and business. And I asked him one time, what do you think about that Graduate movie that made fun of plastics? That way is what corporate tools would do. And Jack was a very cheerful person who never got mad about anything. The most optimistic person in the world. It was maybe the first time, and one of the very few times I ever saw him get completely livid. And he said, you know, we were brave. We were. We were brave. Plastics didn't exist. We created 30,000 jobs in one city alone. We built lives. People got equity. We built something. And people made fun of plastics. But, you know, what we did was tough. That was a Megatrend that nobody saw coming. So I guess that I'm obsessed with megatrends because I've seen megatrends change people's lives. But look, you have to have the stomach for them. That's scary. So the Becoming youg Process asks you to wrench open what you see as possible in. In terms of industries and jobs and megatrends, and to say, am I just settling in this industry or this job? Because it's what I know now with you. Why don't you talk about each of you in turn, just where you were with what was calling you and versus what you were doing. Kristen, start with you.

Well, I had felt for a little while that I wasn't where I was supposed to be. But the pandemic happened. My husband is a Broadway producer. He had started his own company in October of 2019. We were homeschooling our kids. That's about the time that we figured out that they both have learning disabilities and we needed to get them diagnosed. And it was on me to earn that money. And so there wasn't space to think about what do I want to do. But there was one day where I was vacuuming, listening to a podcast about the art of happiness and about work and meaning in work. And, you know, I think I felt called in a moment. I had a voice that wasn't my voice that said, we're not gonna have diversity in the arts until we bring transparency to the business of art, and that's what you're gonna do. And I remember being, like, floored, and I turned the vacuum off, and I went down to my husband and I said, I just had this experience. I just had this moment. And John Blossom was like, yeah, that makes sense.

But there.

And I thought about it.

You're so called emotionally to this imperative. Why don't you explain a little bit why. Why this was so relevant to you.

Well, I grew up in Arkansas. And when you are. When you are in the arts and you're not tangential to it, like in New York City, my kids are going to. On field trips, they're going to Broadway shows. They are exposed to culture at a level I couldn't even wrap my head around that. So you think, I'm going to be an actress, I'm going to be a painter, I'm going to be a director. But you don't see it around you as to how that can actually come into view. And then you go to college and you study it and you focus on craft, but nothing is taught to you about how to actually have that career. And so I ended up in a tour of Greece where I played Jan, and I thought, oh, I know how to be an actress. I'm going to be successful. And I moved to New York, and I felt like such a hick. I felt like a hillbilly.

You were. I was.

I 100% sorry, but you were. Yes. And meeting John was when I realized, oh, I. I have no idea what I'm Doing and watching all these other people be so savvy at the business part. And then I started representing directors for commercials who were also like Oscar award winning filmmakers. And what I realized is the most successful artists are really business savvy. Yes.

The eureka was there's this gigantic deficit in certain places in this country where people don't become artists because they don't understand the business of art.

Yes. And can you imagine how many voices we are never going to hear? And so I thought about this. I probably thought about it every day for five years. I have to do something with this. What am I going to do with this? But I, I just shoved it in the back of my brain because it, I.

It wasn't expedient.

It wasn't.

I mean, it's just put it mildly, it was like a gigantic pivot art. But that you knew what was calling you and it was increasing diversity in the arts by opening the world of the business of art to people who did not have it. Okay, Max, you were just told from the beginning the space you were going to occupy was entrepreneurship, which is such.

A ridiculously vague thing because entrepreneurship is everywhere and in everything and you can use it in any type of job you have. But everyone said, you're gonna be an entrepreneur. I was like, I don't have to be an entrepreneur forever. What if I wanna work for somebody and learn from somebody? Being an entrepreneur in the sense of running and building your own company takes away so much opportunity to learn from people who are true experts and true specialists and people that really are some of the most talented people in their fields.

Yeah, look, there were just values. People were saying to you, oh, you've been an entrepreneur, you're gonna stay an entrepreneur. But there were real values clashes for you about what you wanted from life that were not gonna be fulfilled by entrepreneurship. And you knew it 100%. So that landed you at a place with your EVs, where you were like, wait, what if it's not entrepreneurship?

And I was so grateful in this process that I was really had my eyes open to anything. And I was like, oh, space mining. Space, space. You know what? If I didn't have to start the company, I would get a job in space mining. And if I wasn't very happy with the job I'm currently at, I would get a job at space mining.

I'm telling you, one day I'm gonna have a student go into space mining. This is my cause. Okay.

I think the hardest part of this was that I wanted to join every Single megatrend. And I felt the sheer amount of panic that I had to pick one.

All right, And I'm sitting in your.

Class and I was like, oh my gosh, if I pick AI, that means I can't go into agriculture. And if I don't get into agriculture, that means I can't go into this. And if I can't go.

All right, so you came to becoming you and your aperture was wide open. You were a little bit vague on it. When almost anything is interesting, what that allows you to do is really focus on your values and aptitudes, because you can find those in any industry. And with you, Kristen, you had your eyes open to a true calling, a true intellectual and emotional calling. All right, we'll have more with our wonderful guests, Max and Kristen in just a moment. This is becoming you.

Hello again, this is Susie Welch. And this is Becoming youg. This week we're learning about the journey of two Becoming youg alumni, Kristen and Max. In our first part of this three part series, we excavated their values. Then we moved on and we took a close look at their aptitudes. We just talked about their EVI's. But in becoming you, mining the data, gathering the data is, look, it's useful and it gives you a lot of self awareness. And if you stop right there, okay, you've got some data about yourself, carry on. But the purpose of the process, if you want to go with it, is to find your purpose and to put it all together and to look at the overlap of those three areas and to formulate, what is it, the overlap of those three big data sets of your values and your aptitudes and your interests. And so this is the big reveal, okay, where we're going to talk about where you landed after going through the whole process. And now look, here's the thing, very important, you, you figure out your purpose in becoming you. But it's not like the next day you get up and get out of bed and then go do your purpose. You know, that's not how it goes. Sometimes you have to undo some stuff. I mean, I've had people figure out their purpose and then have to stay in a job for two years to pay back their signing bonus. Sometimes you have to wait till your kids age up a little bit so you can do something. Sometimes you have to go back and get a little education. Sometimes you're doing a little tweaking and you can move right into your purpose. I mean, I've definitely had students go through the process and there's one Small thing to change. And it's actually a mindset change. Okay? It's to prioritize a value, and they can do that instantly. But for most people, it's a process then to move towards your purpose, but you know it, which is kind of cool. So let's hear from both of you. Max, we'll start with you.

So I knew by the end of becoming you, I wanted to work really hard. Like, I really wanted to work, which.

Was high work centrism.

Like, high work centrism, high achievement. I wanted to make impact. I wanted to do something that tangible that I could see result from. And I wanted to do a lot of different things, interacting with a lot of different people. I wanted to talk to people all day long, and I wanted my hand in every bucket. I wanted to do everything. And so I quickly identified that what this looked like was the role of someone on an operations team at a very early stage startup in any industry. And I just picked the megatrend of AI and I said, okay, it'll be in the AI industry. I said, I just want to do a little bit of everything.

For the founding team of a company and not have to be a part of the founding team of the company, because I don't want that level of commitment. I don't want to marry the job that aggressively.

Because you actually had a value of family centrism that you were thinking, I want to build something with a family too. So that was going on 100%.

And I also knew this look. This was no surprise to me that I have very high family centrism. It's very important for me to be around my family. And unfortunately, all my family lives in Michigan, which makes it tough. So I'm in New York. Anyone listening? I'm in New York for the foreseeable future. I wanted to have a job that allowed me to have and build and grow a family that wasn't completely disruptive to that. And so.

So, bye bye entrepreneurism.

Bye bye entrepreneurism. And the other part of this was like, look, I had a value of affluence. I wanted a job that could allow me to kind of achieve the level of financial success that I wanted without building my own company.

What I love about this is that the portrait that you're painting and the one that you ended up talking to the class about was this person who had been sort of pigeonholed as an entrepreneur and been told he was an entrepreneur and thought he was gonna go, you know, okay, what kind of. What's your next entrepreneurial Venture kind of was attracted to not a traditional but a pretty straightforward corporate life.

Pretty traditional. I mean, look, the big takeaway from this three part series is that my big reveal is that I want a long life in corporate America, which is, ta da. The magic of Susie Weltson becoming you.

Joining corporate America. Look, I love all outcomes, but I love how it fit you. Like a glo.

Oh my God, it was perfect. And I was thinking about it, I was like, oh, this just makes sense. I can go to somebody else's office and not have to build my own and own it. And like I have the flexibility to leave or move at any time. Not that I'm planning on leaving or moving, but like something about what's the job you got? Great question. I am.

I appreciate that you interrupt me.

Okay. And I do. Go ahead.

So I gave a presentation in the class saying I want to get a job as an operations team for an AI startup. And I am so grateful that I'm now working as a senior operations associate at a defense tech AI startup based in New York City five days a week in person with a 20 person team.

Love.

I like literally was sitting in a meeting today at work. It was probably 4:30 on a Tuesday. And I was sitting in the meeting just like a boring meeting, just grinning like, oh, I'm so happy. This is such a great day. I'm doing so much and like going back to my hand in every bucket. This means that there are three founders that founded the company. There are 20 people and anything that they can't do because they're in meetings all day or they're traveling falls to me. So yesterday and today I want to just paint a picture. I started my day at 7:45 in the office. We are having an omelet bar next week. So I started making omelets to make sure that all the equipment worked. So I fed omelets to the cto, which is not in my job description. I then installed a window tint on one of our engineer's windows because he was complaining the window is too dark and we didn't want to install all new window treatments. Then I talked to a general contractor who's demolishing a wall before you levitate.

Then we order something else. I'm gonna stop you. I love it. I love it. And what I want to capture here more than anything is your excitement and energy about a job that matches your values and your aptitudes and your interests. It may not be your forever job, but it is your job right now, leading you towards a vision of your future that is authentic.

Yes. And look, I do real work, too, beyond making omelets for the cto.

That sounds pretty good, though. So.

By the way, I don't know how many OPS associates know how to make.

An omelette, but if you're looking for one, Max knows. All right. Happy ending. That is beautiful. Kristen, what happened?

Well, what's the big reveal?

I would say on our third day, when we're talking about our area of transcendence, it was like despair and joy.

You mean our third day when we were doing this live?

Yeah, when we were in class together, and at the end of the day, we were sharing our area of transcendence. And the joy was that this calling that I had is exactly what I meant to be doing. It aligned my radius and future thinking and sequential thinking.

All of your values and aptitudes were so on display, so.

And I was jumping up and down.

And you literally did so in class. We. When we're all together, we present our area of transcendence, what we've discovered, our purposes, and Audrey's very excited to hear yours. If you're watching this on YouTube, you see that the dogs are very excited to hear Kristen. Look, my memory of you is when you got up to present, your face was so bright. You were radiating, and you did actually jump up and down from joy, and the class was, like, crying from happiness for you. So tell us what it was you had discovered and what you were telling us.

I had had this in the back of my mind as something of this shouldn't be me. Why should I be this person? And at the end, it was, why not me? And it was so thrilling. And the painful part was realizing that when it comes to scope, I knew I had to leave.

Yeah. So, Kristen, just to remind people has unbelievably high scope. It's your number one value. The great quote which I use all the time is, I want to touch everyone's brains. This is the desire of a big, exciting life filled with new people and new experiences all the time. This was not being fulfilled in your current job. So what did you identify as your purpose?

So I knew that, without a doubt, I had to figure out a way that I was going to approach bringing transparency to the business of art and entertainment. I love artists so much. I love young artists so much, But I didn't know how I was going to do it. And I also realized that in order to make that happen, realizing that scope was my number one value, my job didn't have that And I think as I saw my values, what was clear was I wasn't living them at all. And once you have that realization, the way that I felt was I am betraying myself by pretending this is okay. And I was a partner at a commercial production company. Every day I kept telling myself, you should be thankful. It was a boutique company and we work with film unions, so there's not a lot to move around. But I love all artists and I wanted the freedom to explore. So I quit.

I know.

I broke up with my partner, which.

Your business partner?

My business partner. And what I didn't anticipate was the what that fallout would be. Oh, and it affected a lot of people's lives.

Yeah.

And.

But it's why you probably hadn't done it.

It's. It's why. But then going back to the. To our first episode we did together, my biggest fear was being a martyr to everyone else.

Unintentionally with best intentions. And so there was never going to be a good time. But it impacted people's lives in a big way. And I took six months to.

Figure.

Out what it is that I wanted to do and start a YouTube channel.

Right.

And I wanted to.

But let me clarify here. You knew what you wanted to do was answer that voice that you heard while you were vacuuming. You knew that you wanted to bring transparency to the business of arts. You didn't know the actual logistics of how you were going to do it, but you knew you wanted. That's what you were going to do. It matched your values and your aptitudes, but you had to stop doing the work you were doing to free yourself.

To find that way, to free myself to find it. I had to quit my job so that I could have the brain space of how that was going to happen. Because I wanted to prioritize bringing that into the world before I found a job that would satisfy Scope. Because what I realized is I'm going to stay in advertising. This is what I need to do. My job doesn't have to have both scope and radius. My job can have scope. And my vision of helping people is my radius. And it took all the pressure off of having that be successful. And ultimately I found a company called Maida, which is a creative studio that's tech forward and really it has zero boundaries. It's like imagination meets innovation. And I get to touch all the brains and it's experiential and AI and also traditional filmmaking and visual effects. And it's actually being announced this week that I am, you know, an executive producer and director of strategic growth. And I am so happy every day.

It's like such a joy because this is a job that has it placed all your aptitudes, but it meets your values as well.

Exactly.

And the piece of it that is. Okay. I want to increase transparency in the arts. This is something you're doing now as a side hustle with your YouTube channel, correct?

Yes, exactly. And I'm giving myself so much space and permission to.

Just do it.

Sometimes we figure out our purpose and we realize we can't do it all in one job. Okay. We can't meet it all. And so what you did is you said, I'm going to go and find what's really missing in my current job scope, and I'm going to go do it in an aligned kind of industry. A better job at a better company that more matches your values. And then this piece of you that was so called, instead of suppressing it and quieting it and saying it can't happen, you're doing it, but you're doing it in the same space that's left over because you're not completely absorbed by the job. That was inauthentic. And it's a perfect solution. And it sounds like. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like it's working for you.

Oh, my gosh. It's working amazingly for me, this.

Look, I am in my area of transcendence. My purpose is helping people find their purpose. And if you wonder why, it's because how I feel right now, which is the joy of hearing you talk about how this process, which has got some alchemy, some calculus, that it all comes together and it creates these kinds of resolutions and it's not really. It's not the end, it's the beginning. And you got there by pulling back the layers and painting the self portrait of who you were standing still so that you could figure out where to go when you start running into the future. And that's what I feel like you're both doing, running into the future with confidence of knowing who you are. We've gone on this long journey in this studio together. I'm so grateful to you and I know that the listeners are too. And I'm appreciative that we've walked through this process. I will let out a little inside baseball here, listeners, which is that when we first came up with the idea for this podcast, we thought we could do the entire series in one podcast. And these dear people, Kristen and Max, sat here with me. And we laid down values, aptitudes, and economically viable interests in one pod. I don't think I've ever spoken that quickly in my life. I was a tornado and a tsunami wrapped in one. You just went along with me. You were wonderful. And then my very dear producers, they went home and they edited it up. It was like what we laid down was like two hours. They edited it to a normal sized podcast and then they sent it to me. And I laid in bed with the headphones in listening. And I thought, this is possibly the worst podcast I've ever heard in my life. I mean, it was because it was like we were all. We all had the inside language and we all kind of simultaneously realized, look, becoming you take some time. It's not a hack. You can't sum it up in a minute. And so I want to especially thank you for going on this long ride with the listeners. What they don't know is that you actually even did more than what everybody heard because we had to throw out the first version. Version of this. But I. I've learned a lot and been so touched by you being here. And I want to. I want to thank you. I love you. This is becoming you. I'm so glad you're with us. Thank you for staying with us. I'm Susie Welch. I'll see you next week.

Becoming youg is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom of Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Muska Nagpal and Kristen Muller, with help from Eliza Zinn, Hallie Reiner, Maddie Paul and Tanya Joji. I'm your host, Susie Welch, and this is becoming you.