Career Confidential: A Job Interview Is a Conversation Between Two WHAT??

Foreign. It's not Rihanna. It's me, Susie Welch. Hi. This is Becoming youg. And we have such a special episode. I know I say every episode is special, but this is really special episode because I've got my colleague Dustin Liu here on his first anniversary of us working together. And we're going to do a whole podcast on work, the topic of work. But we have a special way to go about it because Dustin is special, and. And he's done something very crafty. What is it?

So the other day, I was just chatting with Susie, and I shared with her that I have a notes section in my phone where I write down lessons that I've learned from Susie Welch. Because whenever we're traveling together, I just love getting you to spill stories from your life, and I love hearing your business lessons. So I feel like I was made for this episode because I literally have this list. You have a secret, Suzy. Lessons that I'm so excited to get your reaction to.

And they're all about work, work, work, work.

They're all about career. But I'm gonna be honest, a lot of them apply to my life as well. All right, so I'm excited to dive in.

All right. I mean, this is crazy. You've been keeping notes on me. I mean, this is our one year anniversary. We were gonna talk about you and how spectacular you are. There's a spoiler alert. You're perfect. Look, Dustin's special. You know, Dustin came to.

You can say stole.

Yeah, I stole.

You were about to say stole.

I stole Dustin from Stanford, where he was running an institute that's like the center for purpose and flourishing at NYU Stern. And I heard about him. We met each other in seven minutes.

Did it take seven minutes?

Yes. And to come work for me. And then I flew out to California, and we had the longest dinner known in the history of humankind, and I got him to say yes.

So I want to start with something that's so relevant to our anniversary, which is something that you say all the time. A job interview is a conversation between two liars. Yeah, Susie, tell me how this came to you. And then I want to share a little bit about our interaction and our job interview. But first off, a job interview is a conversation between two liars. Tell me more.

All right, well, I want to give credit where credit is due, because I stole that myself. But when I heard it, I was like, truth, Truth. Now, I had put this on social media, and some people agree and some people don't agree. I mean, we got 3 million something hits on that one, because people have strong opinions, but it's the truth. So there is a fantastic executive search consultant named Claudio Fernandez arose. He's actually in Argentina. I met him 20, 30 years ago working at the Harvard Business Review. He wrote a story, an article for the Harvard Business Review where I was the editor, called Hiring Without Firing. And we became close friends. Why, next to you, he is the nicest person in the world. But even though he's nice, he's savvy, okay? That is what I always seek when I'm looking for somebody. Somebody who's, like, really nice, but savvy. Like a savage, okay? So he's that way, just so smart about people. And he comes once a year and he teaches a class on hiring to my students at Stern. And he announced a few years ago, look, a job interview is a conversation between two liars. You could have heard the oxygen went out of the room. So look, here's what that means. What that means is that the person who's doing the interviewing, like me when I was trying to seduce you into coming to nyu, away from the land of milk and honey out there in Palo Alto, was you were describing the job on its very best day. And you're describing the values of the company when they're actually enacted, which is almost never. And you're trying to get somebody into bed, metaphorically. I mean, you're trying to seduce them. And so you're only describing the good stuff you're not saying, like, sometimes it's crazy, sometimes it's out of control. We've got one engineer who's spectacular, but a nutter. I mean, the truth, okay? Meanwhile, the person who's being interviewed is describing themselves on the best day. And they're saying things like, my biggest flaw is I'm a workaholic, and like all other bullshit, okay? And so you've got these two people lying to each other basically, so that they can consummate a relationship, sort of like two people at a bar, okay? And then when they get together, you know, when they get married, basically, and they end up in the office together, the truth comes out. And sometimes you make it and sometimes you don't. And people will say outrageous things to get hired, and they'll say all sorts of things about themselves and their. Their talents and their skills and their wants and their dreams and desires, and the interviewer is desperate to fill a hole. You're not out there hiring because you want to be, because you're out there hiring and you're about to spend money you wish you didn't have to spend. You usually, you know, the person who you're talking to definitely wants more money than you want to pay and all these other things. And frankly, if you're interviewing, you want it over fast. Hiring is the last thing you want to do. It's absolutely boring. It's draining. You got to check references. It's just a dreary, dreary process. And. And usually if you're an experienced hiring manager, like moi, you know that it only works 50% of the time. You know, most hiring managers have a 50% hit rate. Hiring's hard. You get it wrong all the time.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think part of this is that people don't even have the language to describe who they are, and they don't have the data.

Right.

I mean, what I loved. Suzy actually sent me the manuscript for Becoming youg a week before we met. And I went through and did all the tests. And when we had our meeting, I remember three hours in, I said, I think it's time to be real. And I took out my values and I took out my aptitudes, and lo and behold, Susie Welch actually was able to guess all of my values and guess all of my aptitudes before I shared it with her. But that actually gave me more data to describe who I am. Well, it brought more truth to the conversation.

The limits of my language are the limits of my world. As Wittgenstein said, once we have a language to describe ourselves, we can have real conversations. That does not typically happen in an interview, and it doesn't happen so often, but I do. Maybe because I'm old, I just don't do it anymore. I mean, I literally had a conversation this morning with a lawyer and involved in a business matter, blah, blah, blah. And he showed up late. And I was like, this is not okay. This is not professional. I'm just done with it. I mean, I'm never. I don't want to be rude. That's not okay. But truthful, you know, speaking truth from a place of love, Radical candor is like, that should be taught in elementary school. When I was on the board of elementary to private elementary school. Good Lord, this is how we do things in life. I was a suburban, you know, mother once upon a time. And my kids went to a private boys school and I was on the board and I was looking through some historic documents once. It was like a book about the history of the school. Guess what they used to teach at that school in the year 1900.

Tell me.

They taught a class Called how to be a friend. And.

Yeah, where is that now? Yeah, I know, Susie Walsh. Where is that now?

It should be taught. Okay. How to be a friend is like the greatest life skill you could ever have. But you know what else should be taught, right? Like that radical candor. How to tell the truth.

Yeah.

And that doesn't happen in job interviews. But I think our job interview, and it was a harbinger for the great relationship we ended up having, was that we were both super candid. And then, Dustin, I might add, that when we did move further along, I think I offered you a job right then and there. When we hired you, you handed me.

A manual, a user's manual. A user manual about you.

About you.

30 page user manual. I put all of my personality tests together and I asked my former managers how I work. And I think that requires a certain amount of vulnerability and honesty.

Yes, Right.

And I think oftentimes we aren't willing to bring that to the table, but it's speeds up the process so much.

Wouldn't it be wild if we all just walked around giving each other user manuals about ourselves?

Just the awareness is so important.

You could do it after you took becoming you, frankly, 100%. All right, so, like, look, because this is a show that's devoted to giving people career advice. Like, so what did you learn from that? Like, when I said, like, an interview is a conversation between two liars, like, what'd you learn?

What I learned is that interviews require honesty on both ends. And it requires you to get really discerning around a company's culture, a company's values, and what someone is actually saying.

Yeah.

I think it also allowed me to recognize what does it mean for me to be more honest in this process without exposing maybe all of my flaws. I know that I still want to bring my best self forward, but how do I actually name for the hiring manager? These are places that I want to grow.

Yeah. You're not talking to any hiring managers anytime soon. Do you understand me? Okay, so just. So why don't you just banish this thought? What's the second thing? What's the second thing?

So the second thing. And this is going to hit hard. I have to read it twice. Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be. Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be. And I think this actually comes from one of Jack's books.

That's a quote from Jack. Jack used to say it all the time. Jack, this Is my late husband, Jack Welch. He grew up as the only son of an Irish mother who had him very late in life. She didn't think she was gonna be able to have children. And when he was born, late in her life, she was like 43. Unbelievable. Like, by that time, the, you know, most women in his neighborhood, where he grew up, a working class neighborhood in Salem, Mass. Were grandmothers. And she had Jack, and this was gonna be her. But she feared for her longevity. She thought, I don't have long to live. She had a lot of hard problems, and sadly, she did die 20 years later. But she wanted Jack to grow up very, very quickly. And she was a tough Irish broad. I'd give anything to have met her. I feel like I knew her name was Grace. And she was tough, smart and tough. And when he was really young, she would do things like tell him to go. Like at age 6 to go into Boston on the train by himself and find his way back. I mean, she was just unbeliev. And she said to him, okay, back, like, really young. 1935, at 40. Listen up, Jack, you gotta face the world, face life the way it is, not the way you want it to be or the way it was. And it was like, basically, face reality, kid. And I think it's really hard for us to do this. And I think that on this front, I wanna say as a manager, I'd give myself an A. But as a mom, I'd give myself a C. Because I was faced reality too much with my kids. Like, it was not when I was a mom and my kids were growing up, because this was so much my attitude and so much my personality. Especially after Jack came into my life, I just was. He was such a mentor to me. I would literally say things to my kids like, you're just never going to be good enough at tennis. Let's just put that racket down and move on to another sport. I mean, I was like, just brutally direct. And I thought that they knew I was coming from a place of love. Like, why wouldn't they know that I loved them so much I'd give them both my kidneys, you know what I mean? But kids are kids. And I learned I won't be that way with my grandchildren. By the way, do you know I have the most perfect grandchildren?

I'm very aware, Suzy Walsh.

Okay, so I know. So I won't do it with my grandchildren. But I think as a boss, you tell me as your boss, like, do. Is that reality testing all that time to kind of like, stop the bullshit. This is the truth. I mean, has it been helpful or is it too much for you?

I mean, Susie, I have thought about our most powerful professional development. Moments for me have been moments where someone says something, and I think I always like to hear it with a little bit of glitter on it. Or I like to hear the best case scenario. And we have been on the same call, and I have left feeling, oh, that's a partnership that we want to pursue, or they really want to work with us. And you have been so discerning to say, Dustin, it's really important to hear what they're actually saying. And I have found that to be both a challenging and an incredibly empowering lesson. How do I face reality as it is and not let my filters get in the way? I think it's not throwing hope out the window, but rather being really grounded in reality. And I think as soon as we let our imaginations or we let our own instincts run away, we lose touch of what the work actually is. We lose touch of what we're actually communicating.

Right. But give us an example. So many of them.

So many of them. We are on a call. So we were on a call with a woman that we really wanted to work with, and she was looking at the stuff that we were building. And I had heard, I really am excited to work with you. Let me think about it. And you had heard, this is not a big enough project for me to engage with. And it took me about a week, Susie, to really reflect on that and say, I really need to be more focused on what people are actually saying. Because in those situations, I think I get so taken with people's positive energy, with people's enthusiasm, and someone can say no with a smile. And I think that's something that I really had to learn.

Yeah, I think that there's another case that I could think of where we were in a phone call with somebody that you very much wanted us to become deeply engaged with at the center. And she was in a cultural role at a company. And I went into the call just already kind of negative. And you were so positive.

So positive.

And she was talking about all these programs, and somewhere kind of halfway through the conversation, I said to her, what about profitability?

And her face fell.

Because companies have to make money. And I was representing for the company. And I think that you're. Look, when people have positive energy, it's a beautiful thing. And I always say there's two types of people in the world. There's energy vampires, and there' Energy amplifiers. And you're an energy amplifier. And I tend to be also. But you gotta have just a cool eye on how the world works. You know, why? It's so efficient.

So efficient. And I remember you saying, we don't have time to face reality as we wish it to be.

Yeah, I know. And so we gotta let go of it. And you know what? As a boss, I'll tell you, when you have somebody who has magical thinking, it drives you out of your freaking mind. And I have to say, you have come a long way.

Oh, thanks, Susan.

On the magical thinking? No, because I remember we had a meeting with somebody the other day, and he was describing a program, which I almost immediately knew this program he was describing was utter and complete. Buldora. And I looked over at you and I thought to myself, oh, God, Dustin's gonna fall in love with this idea. But I looked over at you and you had a look of scorn and disgust on your face. And I thought, he's doing it. He's doing it. He's seeing reality as it is.

Seeing reality as it is.

Okay, what's the third one?

Number three. This is a coupled one. Okay, I hear non stop in my head, and this is a really good thing, Susie. I hear Susie Welch's voice saying, dustin, stop it with your nonprofit mindset. I also hear, dustin, burn rate, burn rate, burn rate. Can you tell me when you say those things to me, like, give us a little bit more context.

Okay, look, you come from the nonprofit world, and I want to give gigantic props to everybody who's working in the nonprofit world. You're doing noble work. I'm on the board of large nonprofits like Humane World for Animals, the largest animal protection agency in the world, by the way, protecting animals just everywhere you look. That's the work we do. And so I bow down to people who do that. But the problem is there's a mindset that goes with nonprofit work, which is that all you have to do is have make a prudent surplus. You have to sort of. The book has to. The books have to match up at the end of the year that you spent exactly as much as you brought in. But that's not how business goes. And this is why it's incredibly hard for people from nonprofit world to segue into the for profit world. And in fact, you could ask any regular for profit CEO alone in a room, and you could say, okay, you know, cone of silence. Would you ever hire somebody from a nonprofit? And to a person, they say, never, never, never. Because it's a mindset about how business goes. And you know, like I said to you, when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I look at is burn rate. And I don't know, did you know what burn rate was before you came to work with becoming Universe?

You know, I had a general sense, but I will say nothing really makes sense until you hit the budget sheet.

Yes.

I remember my first job where I had to manage a budget. Everything started to make more sense. And I have talked to a lot of friends in higher ed and a nonprofit since and I always ask the question, have you seen your budget sheet?

Yeah.

Do you know how your budget works?

Yeah.

I mean, Susie and I have have been texting back and forth because it's budget season at NYU and being able to see so clearly where resources are going and feeling that pressure to understand how to maximize resources. One creates a lot of pressure, positive pressure, but two makes it important for us to recognize that even nonprofits are businesses. But we need to bring that mindset to the work that we do.

Yeah. I will say this. If you're just starting out in your job and you're just at a company, you often are so far away from the finances when you start off the first 10 years, you are not looking at burn rate. You know nothing at all about the finances of the company. But guess who's thinking about that non stop? Your boss. And if you want to get ahead at work, you got to enter your boss's brain because they're thinking about money in and money out. And you're not thinking about that. You're thinking about like, well, what if we just, you know, sprinkled more money on X, Y or Z, we should hire somebody else to do this. And you, you know, they're trying to manage a business and they're thinking about money day and night. Why? Because the boss above them is on their case to make sure that they're making money. But the work you're doing is kind of isolated from it. And you're never in those budget meetings and you're never watching them talk about like, oh God, you know, it's the agony of it. And then it's only when you're a founder really in an entrepreneurial startup that you start managing burn rate. And that's really, you know, how much money you're spending every day. Because when you start, when you're beginning with a startup, you're just losing money. Crazy. I remember the first time when I was running Quadio Music Startup a couple of years ago. I Had to tell our bankers what our burn rate was. And I told them. And because I had 16 and very expensive engineers at that moment. And there was, like, this dead silence. And I said, is that bad? And my banker said, I guess we've heard worse. And I actually still remember, like, feeling sick to my stomach. And I thought, I'm a baby. Yeah, I'm an idiot. Like, I. I managed a P and L when I worked at hbr, and so I hired and fired people. I. I managed a budget, but nothing like what goes on. And so if you're working in a startup, it's fun, it's exciting. You're mission driven. You know, it's cool to work in a startup. Guess what? There's somebody. The person running it is not sleeping at night. Okay? That person looks like me. Me. And so, I mean, it's. But it's exciting. There's nothing like it. It's like a drug. But I'm.

And you love it, Susan.

I do love it. Who knew? I mean, I started. I was an entrepreneur for the first time in my life, in my 50s, and I thought, oops, I missed this boat, but I'm getting on and I'm never getting off. It's fun, it's cool, it's exciting. I like to build. But I will say you value an employee so much when they understand your mindset around profit and loss and burn rate. And they get it if they feel for you. If you have an employee who is so empathetic to your pain, you love them. You love them. I have an engineer who works on our team who spends my money like it's her own. And I'm telling you, I could hug her every single day for it. I could. She gets it. I mean, it is a very, very great trait to have. And if you want to rise up in the corporation and you feel the pain of your boss's red and black ink, that's good stuff. All right. I'm glad I taught it to you. You get it now.

Burn rate. I think about it every day, too. I wake up, I think about burn rate. Yay, Number four.

Yep.

Susie. Business is an island. You see everyone again. Oh, I'm just going to say the world is just too small. I felt it so much over the last year. Tell me how you came to this realization.

This is a true Suzyism, I suppose. I mean, I. I realized it because, mistakenly, early in my career, I burned bridges. I'm Sicilian. I have strong. I have strong emotions. Sicilians operate with grudges and vendettas. And martyrdom. And, I mean, one of the first quotes I ever heard was from my Sicilian uncle, who said, remember, Susie, martyrs rule from the grave. And I remember thinking, everybody I'm related to is a martyr. So I grew up with a very. In a very emotionally unregulated environment, okay. Surrounded by Sicilian screaming people who just constantly were fighting. I mean, if had there been the Real Housewives, you know, it would have been. It would have been Rochester, New York. It would have been my family with all the fighting going on, and I had to grow up and become the emotionally regulated person I am. I mean, I would show up as the same person. I grew up a lot. But early in my career, I was too emotional. And in those days, I made enemies, and I said things that I couldn't take back. And then pretty quickly, I continued along in my career, and I'd bump into those people again. And I was like, oopsies. I wish I hadn't done that. So, for instance, here's a story. When I was a young girl reporter, I had an internship at a very important newspaper. And while we were there, a girlfriend of mine, who was another reporter, fell in love with a guy who was another reporter. We were all young reporters fell in love. They had a very, very, very ugly ending to their relationship. And I kind of swore, you know, an in. I swore sort of like, you know, evil eye on the boyfriend. Okay. And we kind of really fell out. And I kind of. We were on a bus ride somewhere, and I said, you know, what you did to her was wrong. And I kind of did. Like, I stood up for my girlfriend, and I really kind of destroyed our relationship. Well, he went on to be a gigantically important person in the editorial world. And our paths have crossed a thousand times since then. And I wish. Wish that I could go back in time and thought to myself, look, I'll tell you something. My girlfriend who broke up with him had a better ending with him than I did.

Yeah.

Okay. She was just more emotionally regulated.

Yeah.

And I. So I learned very early on that this was a mistake, because almost like five years later, he was ascending into editorial. The editorial heights. And I thought, whoa. I just. I wish I could go back and sort of say to him, I was wrong. I was immature. I never did it. I should. But later on in my life, I was struggling with Roscoe, my son, who I talk a lot about and who was very dear to me. I was on the phone with him today, but we went through a rough period. And I remember moaning and groaning about this to my pastor, the great Jimmy Scroggins. And he said, stay in relationship. And I'd go by this motto all the time, that it's better to stay in relationship than be estranged. And business is hard. There will be people who you hate, just like in life, you know, there'll be people who you, who you think have really hurt you or have hurt.

People that you really betrayed you, misunderstood you.

That's right. But you're human too and you make mistakes and you screw up and we've got to give each other some grace and we've got to build, we've got to leave a shred of the bridge with everybody. And business is a perfect example of, of just you're going to bump into everybody again. And so first of all, it's the right thing to do to stay in relationship, but also it's the savvy thing to do. And I have made a point of even when I've just not really liked someone or thought they were the greatest, to just make sure that there's always a bridge there. And business is such that you can leave a company, you think you're leaving it scorched earth, right? A few years later you're working in another company and oops, there's your old boss, you know is suddenly your new boss or a client you're trying to woo. And it's dumb. It's dumb to not leave some ground to retill to rebuild. And until we're all perfect, that's the way it's gotta go.

Susie, I will say last week there was a situation where I was wrapping up a project from a previous job and I just kept giving it late. And I remember my former colleague really blowing up at me. And I remember thinking this because it would have been so easy to say, oh, she's so mean to me, I'm never going to talk to her again. But I took the time to actually call her and say, I'm really sorry I didn't show up and I'm wondering if there's any way that I can make it right. And I will say, keeping the idea in mind that business is a small island, you'll see everyone again was affirming to me because it gave me the courage and it also gave me the opportunity to reach out and have a healing conversation. Because Susie, mistakes happen, right? We are complex human beings, we are friction filled and things will happen and it really requires us to have a certain level of emotional maturity in order to have that conversation and extend our hand and say, Hey, I want to make it right.

Yeah, you know, I. I think that's so true, and I think it's a great story. And I think going back to somebody saying, like, it was sort of ugly the way we left it. Can we find a way to make it less ugly? Is so scary. You know, in becoming, you students do 360 feedback, and you ask all these people to give you feedback. And one kid said, I can't do it. Professor Welch, because I'm at business school, because I burned every bridge I had. And he said, I just can't do it. And I said, hey, come to my office.

This.

Let's write an email to all the people you've burnt bridges with that basically says, hey, I bet you never thought you'd hear from me again. We left on terrible terms. I burnt the bridge, but I'm trying to be better, and I'm trying to develop. And as part of that, I'm getting 360 feedback. I know you're going to kill me in it, but I need to hear it, because I want to be better. Will you please help me rebuild this bridge? And we sent it out to, like, 15 people. I'm not kidding. Like, 14 people answered him and gave him the feedback. And I was just watching him in something in a Stern alumni magazine. He is really killing it out there in the world now. He's gotten a great job, and I think he. You know, sometimes we have to do this very kind of humbling, vulnerable thing to rebuild. And I think the business is an island. Everything's an island. Family's an island. You know, every industry is an island. We need to stay in relationship with each other. We're in agreement on that one.

Okay, last one is number five.

Work, work, work, work, work. Talking about work, work, work, work, work. And we're not getting sued because we're not using really Rihanna. Okay, go ahead.

Cut your losses early.

Yeah.

Susie, can you describe what this looks like in business? Because I feel like I've started to apply this in my personal life, too.

You have to. This is the defining characteristic of success of people who are successful. And I. I can say I've seen it with my own eyes. This I stole from Dr. Charlie Marmor, who's the head of psychiatry at NYU Langone. And he has spent his whole life rubbing elbows with moguls and really successful people. And one time we were in conversation. He's fascinated in the data that we have at Becoming youg About Values. Because as a psychiatrist, personality and values are related fields and I forget how it came up in conversation. He said, the number one defining trait of very, very successful people, we're talking billionaires, is cutting your losses early, knowing you've failed, knowing you've screwed up. Get your thumb out of your mouth and just say, I made a mistake, and move on. As soon as he said it, I thought, this is a thousand percent true. Now, I've had a wackadoodle life because starting after Mary, Jack, I actually had immediate access to some of the most successful people in the world. It was crazy. One day I was normal, and the next day I was not. And I. So I could look through the catalog of these people in my mind and think, is this true? And I would think about this person. Yep. That person. Yep. This person. Yep. And I. And that was about 25, 30 years ago. I have since then used it to say, you know, this person, I find that she is so successful, and then I watch to see, does she cut her losses early? And the answer is so yes. And you know what this takes? It takes actually very, very contained ego, because you have to be able to say, you effed up. That's the first step. Okay, I made a mistake. Everybody saw me go big. I made a mistake. I'm out. I'm cutting my losses. And let me give you an example. I. Right after Jack died, I did not know what to do with my life. I was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. And the pandemic struck. I mean, I was delulu. I was grief stricken. And I bought a house in upstate New York, in Rhinebeck. I thought it was a big house, and I thought, this is where I'm gonna live the rest of my life. Walking out in the woods in this house I'd even had named Steamvillasia. And I got this house. It was a big investment. And everybody's like, ooh, ah, ooh, ah. Look at Susie's house. And then I fixed it up, and everybody was very excited, and it was kind of a spectacle. After two years, I thought, this house is terrible. I don't want to live here at all. It's too far from everything. I want to go back to work. Nobody comes up here, and I want to live in New York. And I had made a spectacle of fixing this house up and having people there. And I thought this house was a mistake. And I'm getting out. I'm selling it. I'm probably going to take a bath. I'm cutting my losses. I'm out. It doesn't work for me, and I have to move on. And Then I had to call people and I had to say, hey, remember that house that I made all this big spectacle about? I was gonna live there forever. And I remember calling a good friend and she said, you're doing what? Oh, my God. And I just want one call like that after another. Taking my, you know, taking everybody being shocked. I'm sure they all gossiped about it and talked about it and people said, oh, look, when she bought that house and then she sold that house, she must be crazy. And, you know, I thought to myself, cut your losses. Cut my losses, move on. And it was the greatest decision I ever made. I got rid of it and I cut my loss. And I can't. I do it all the time. And here's a terrible, terrible aspect of it, in a way, but a good aspect is when you make an incorrect hire. To go back to where we started.

I was gonna say, yeah, that's where.

We started talking about hiring. Because it's a conversation between two liars. Sometimes the person shows up or you wake up the morning after and you look at each other and you go, oh, okay. And the person does not work out and you need to say, we tried. It was a mistake. And treat the person generously and say your goodbyes. Because the whole idea of having what's in business often called a dead man walking, which is somebody who knows they're going to be fired, who should be fired, who everyone knows is going to be fired, walking around ruins everybody's energy. It drains people. It's ugly. It's not fair. It's actually unkind. And yet companies do it. Sometimes they'll let somebody walk around as a dead man walking for a year as the boss tries to not cut their losses because they don't want to look like they made a mistake.

Yeah. And that hits your burn rate.

Great. Yes.

Doesn't it?

You're such a good.

Thank you so much. I'm such a good student. I'm learning.

All right, so did you do this before? Did you cut your losses early? You didn't. Because you know why? You're so nice.

I have found ways that it shows up in my day to day work. I feel like cutting losses early means being really direct with people.

Yeah.

I also think that this has to do with your definition of resilience, which you define as grit plus forgiveness.

Yes.

And for me, cutting your losses early is also from a relational point.

Right.

Staying in relationship with people, but also setting boundaries.

Yeah. Yeah.

It also means saying no. It also means being okay with investing time into A relationship that doesn't end up going somewhere. I mean, I feel like we're always thinking about opportunity costs. And I think, particularly in magical thinking land, opportunity cost doesn't even come up as a concept.

Right. It of course does not, because you're having magical thinking. Thinking.

Magical thinking. So I think cut your losses early has just been such an important theme both in my professional and personal life.

I'm glad to hear it. I think if you're in, if you're hearing this and you're having a big, oh, feeling in your stomach, I mean, if you're hearing this and you're like, you suddenly want to leave the room or turn off this podcast, I'm going to guess that you are invested in a relationship or you are holding on to maybe somebody at work or something that you know is just not going to end well.

It's not going to work out.

And you're just protecting. You think you're protecting yourself or you think you're protecting the person? I don't know. You get magical thinking and you hold on, you hold on. Guess what? Just do it now. Do it now. And when you say, talk about resilience being grit plus forgiveness, sometimes you have to forgive yourself for making a mistake and say, I made a mistake, it's on me. I made the mistake. And let's part as friends. It's all sort of part of a piece, isn't it? Totally.

I mean, a five minute conversation that's challenging is better than five years of torment.

Yes. It's like that story I tell about getting on the wrong train going out to Brooklyn because I thought I knew the subway system of New York so well that I didn't even have to look at the trains. And I just got on a train and then like about five minutes in, I was like, oh, this is not going to the Ethiopian restaurant I wanted to go to. This is taking me to a part of Brooklyn I've never been. And I got off the train and I got back on, went the right way. And I thought to myself, I made a mistake. Why would I stay on the train? That was the mistake. And that's the truth with how we live our lives. And I want to say I, I love talking about work, work, work, work with you. Will you come back? Can we do it again, Susie?

Any day I'm going to continue writing down all your lessons in my notes.

All right, all right. Well, I mean, and if you just have questions, and if you have questions about work, work, work, work, work, work. If you have questions about them. Send them to hello, Susie Welch dot com. I mean, just send them. And I'll answer them on Career Confidential here with Dustin. And we'll just talk about work. You know, in Becoming youg, we talk about finding your purpose. Purpose. And finding your purpose is very important. But guess what? Even while we're finding our purpose, most of us have to wake up every single morning, get dressed, and go to work. And when we're there, we want to thrive and we want to do well. We want to flourish, we want to grow. We want to get promoted. We want more money. All those things. It's fine. And there's ways to do that. And we're talking about them here, anyway. Dustin, I'm so glad you're here.

I'm so happy. You're a friend, a boss, a colleague, a mentor.

And we stole you at that. At that restaurant. I know the restaurant. I bet those waiters still are. Not over our dinner.

Six hours, Susie. I can't get over it.

Here we are. All right. Happy anniversary.

Happy anniversary.