Don’t Ask Me How I Did It, I Just Did It, It Was Hard

Foreign.

That's our new podcast music. Hi, I'm Susie Welch, and this is the Becoming you podcast. I'm super glad you're listening. Hello, everyone. I'm really psyched about that new podcast music. That's by this band that unfortunately is now defunct, but their name is Right Field. And they were two best friends or two really close friends. And they were two schools in the south. And I learned about them when I was running a music tech company. Yes, that's also on my resume along with all the other wackadoodle things I've done, like be a crime reporter in Miami. And I got to know them, they made some great music, and then they went on with their lives in different ways. But before they did, they made that song gone, which I'm really, really happy to let you hear snippet of. Why? Because I want to put you in a really good mood before I go on my rant. Ah, God, I've got to be in my bonnet. I'm here in our studios and we got three sleeping dogs. And my team, we got Jorge, Sophia, Sophia and Aliza. And I do have a bee in my bonnet because of this. Look, I went on the Today show, which I adore and love doing. And I went on because they wanted me to talk about my graduation advice, which I've now talked about on this podcast and in other places on my other platforms. And I had three pieces of advice which were don't network, make friends. Instead, it was look for mentors in everyone have secret mentor crushes like I do. And I'm gonna reveal one of those later in the podcast today. And also smile with your teeth, which I was able to demonstrate on tv. And then I got both Hoda and Jenna smiling back at me with their teeth. And I talked about that. But afterwards, in part of the conversation afterwards, it was a wonderful long segment, Hoda asked me about some of my career advice that I give. And one of them is that when I go into my classes every single semester, I say to my students, which of you have been fired? And because these are bright and shiny MBAs, usually no one has been fired. Maybe one person has been laid off as part of sort of system wide layoffs, but there's been nobody. They're too young, okay, to have gone through that. A very traumatic event. And I said that every semester I say to them, I can't wait until you're fired. I can't wait for that to happen to you because you realize that you live and then that frees you up in your life to take more risk and to be more yourself sooner because it feels like a death. And then you find out it's a rebirth. Okay? It happened to me. I'm not speaking out the side of my mouth. This is not some lofty academic talking about it. I was fired. And when I was fired, it was on the front page page of the Wall Street Journal, okay? It was a very big, embarrassing firing. I got kicked out of HBR because I ran off with my husband, who was, at the time, just had retired as CEO of ge. Just try that one if you want to make a big news story. Okay? So I got fired, and a lot of people made fun of me, and I thought I'd never work again. And it was deeply humiliating and shameful. If this had happened in 2024, it would have been like a blip. It wouldn't even been reported. But in those days, it was a really big news story. Okay? So Hoda asked me about this. I didn't talk about Jack and me, but I just talked about how much it grows you to go through this terrible period of adversity. And I talked about friend who did get fired from a very comfy, very big sales job. She had the true corner office with the windows all wrapped around. I remember visiting her there. And I remember saying when I visited her there, hey, guess what, Sue? You're going to be fired because this is a big office and you're very expensive and you're not making enough rain. She was kind of sitting on her laurels, and she was not bringing in enough clients. I knew her that well that I knew how many clients she was bringing in. She was like, they'll never fire me. They'll never fire me. Well, one day I was on the treadmill and. And the phone kept on ringing and ringing, and nobody disturbed mommy when she was on the treadmill in those days because that was the one little piece of time I had to myself, mothers, do you feel me? But the phone would not stop ringing. And so finally, I got off the treadmill, and she was sobbing hysterically. And she said, I got fired. And I said, this is the best day of your life. And if you asked her today, she would say that was the best day of her life because it was dreadful. She was super embarrassed. She said she told my class once she felt like a fraud. Her whole career was a fraud. She was devastated. There was a lot of crying. I. But she started from scratch. And she created a business which is now a multimillion dollar business. The biggest PR firm In the Mid Atlantic states, she became a gigantic success. She clawed her way back. And she only did it because she was fired. Okay, I tell this story on Hoda. They post a Instagram post about it, and what happens? Well, I got a little bit of hate going on. I mean, it wasn't. I've had worse, believe me, in my career. But there were really negative comments, and they were like, this is privileged. You can only do this if you have a safety net. You can only do this if you have a lot of money. And. And I think that my mistake, because I own some of this, is that I should have. When I was speaking on the Today show, I should have said, granted, this is a wildly traumatic experience. It can feel like a public death. It is devastating. I don't want to minimize that. I mean, I think perhaps I was too Blythe when I was just speaking about it, because I'm far on the other side of it. But I do know that when you're fired, nobody goes, oh, la di da. I was fired. It is deeply. It can be deeply disturbing. When my son was fired from his first job, he was like, hell, yes, I'm free. Okay, so you can also have good experiences. But he had the safety net, all right? And he did have to reinvent, by the way. But here was my reaction. At first, I wrote back to everybody saying, I'm very sorry, it was a very traumatic experience to you. And then I started thinking to myself, why are you not saying the exact truth that you feel? And so I want to kind of say it here, not kind of. I'm going to say it here, which is that trauma is okay sometimes and adversity is actually okay. I think this is a very big generational divide in that there's just this whole kind of consciousness around the fact that you cannot and should not experience adversity, that you should avoid it at all costs. And that's the fault of my generation and one generation after me, raising our children to protect them from ever having hardship and adversity. Just doing everything in the world to protect them from losing or being insulted or getting kicked down. I didn't have the benefit of that. I was teased at school. I got cut from teams. I got very low grades in college. I'll never forget. Like, I got a C minus on a paper in a class I really, really cared about, because in those days, there was no curve. And I took a class I shouldn't have taken as a freshman. And there were really smart seniors in that class, and they compared to their papers. I deserved a C minus. Nobody clawed her way back harder and faster than this little Sicilian girl. And I ended up getting an A in the class, I must tell you. But I got kicked in the teeth. And so I had experienced a lot of that. And I actually. I never even thought about the word trauma. None of us did in our generation. But when I look back at it, I can tell you my entire childhood was trauma. Wasn't everybody's. Isn't everybody's childhood trauma. I actually know that my granddaughter has the happiest, least traumatic childhood that's ever been lived. And I think, okay, maybe that was the. That maybe that's the upside of me having had it and making sure my kids didn't have. I don't know, maybe I'm just speaking in this generational moment that the assumption going in is that you should avoid adversity at all costs. And what I was saying in that Hoda and Jenna interview was sometimes adversity is exactly what we need. Sometimes. It's exactly like Fyodor Dostoevsky said when he wrote, suffering is the origin of consciousness. Now, I know that's an inflammatory quote. I was walking in the woods with one of my children. She's an artist. She's a spectacular artist, a gentle soul. And. And we were walking our dogs in the woods because that's what we do, sort of 40% of our lives. And as we were walking them, I was saying something about, oh, I was talking about doing my PhD thesis. And I said to her, it's going to be brutal. It's going to be so hard. It's going to be terrible. There's going to be a few months where it's really going to be quite dreadful. Da, da, da, da, da. I'm going to be teaching 10 classes at that time. I'm going to have, like, 400 students, but I'm also going to do my thesis. And she said, why do you do this to yourself? And then she said, oh, wait, don't answer that question. That's because you think life is hard and needs to be hard. And then she said, I guess I just don't believe that we were put on this earth to suffer and that life should be hard. I think life should be sweet and gentle. And we just disagree. And I said, oh, darling, I also think life should be sweet and gentle. I want that for you every minute of my life. I want that for everyone I love. And I actually do want it for myself. It's just that I know it can't be if you want something more than stasis. So with this being my bonnet, I did write a post today for LinkedIn about just saying, you know that quote that I've talked about last week, which is if you wanna have a life where you're not looking at price tags, have a job where you don't look at the clock. And I know that this is really kind of flame throwing on my part, but it's me doubling down, isn't it? Which is sometimes you have to really work your arse off and you have to think like an owner and you have to make short term sacrifices for long term gain. I know it's super unpopular and maybe it shouldn't be this way. Maybe my daughter's right. Maybe most of Gen Z is right in saying why must it be this way? And it's a good existential question, why must it be this way? But maybe things are really, really hard because they're worth it. Maybe that's just the way it goes. That's the way I've lived my life and I've not been proven wrong on it yet. So I put that out there. I say this as my eyes fall on Pierre, who is sweet and gentle and reminds me that some things are really easy. Like, for instance, waking up in the morning and staring into his little yellow face and green eyes is very, very easy. And it came to me and it was not hard to rescue Pierre because they carried him out of the shelter and I was like, there's my dog. I knew it from the minute I saw him. But, you know, I just want to put that out there. If you have thoughts about this, tell me. I'd love to hear them. I know people disagree. I'm going to ask my team because they're youngins. Hey, youngins over there, what do you think? Am I right or wrong? All right. Sofia Borzolari, you're a philosophy major who took a class called Nothingness and got an A. Congratulations. What do you. I know. I mean, I'm just picking on you, random picking on you because I love you. What do you think? What do you think about my screaming here?

I think that obviously when people go through hard things, they can learn a lot through it. And that's kind of the benefit. I think it's really good that there's been a whole new conversation about how trauma affects you as you get older. And I think those are all positive things.

I agree.

I think the goal here would be more to kind of bridge the generational differences because we did grow up differently and that's okay. And then just what we want the outcome to be is for people to understand each other. Not necessarily agree.

I totally, totally agree. And I think it's true about having understanding. It's good because when you have somebody who comes and works for you who doesn't have these attitudes about hard work, adversity and trauma, and as you do, it's really good to be in dialogue with them. That is. I think that's excellent. And so this is in the spirit of dialogue. Very much in the spirit of dialogue. And I want to be proven wrong. I'd kind of love it. I mean, I'd kind of love it to get my PhD and have it be easy and for me to realize, oh, it didn't have to be as hard as it was. And actually, one thing I'm doing with myself with a little self talk now is I'm writing my book, Becoming youg, coming out in May 2025. You can't even pre order now. It's so far away. But I'm working on it and I'm enjoying it. I'm loving the writing. I love this topic. I love the people who have opened their lives to me for me to write about. I believe in this methodology. And I am actually thinking to myself, I'm writing a book and I'm not suffering. That's a new one. And that's partially the influence of my students and the young people I've met who've told me that suffering does not have to always be a part of your life. So I'm learning too. I'm learning too. That concludes my rant and rave for the opening of this podcast. Any thoughts or comments, please let me know. As I said, I am plowing away through becoming you. But in the meantime, please know that I continue to have my free webinars where I just talk about the method and I take questions. And I am doing this for no other reason than I really want to get Becoming youg out to people who are not at nyu. I love my NYU family. I love my NYU community. I love all my students who are taking it. But sometimes I wish that other people in the world could take it. And so I have these webinars and they're open to everyone and as I said, utterly free. I will not try to sell you anything. I got nothing to sell you. I. Although I would like to have swag someday, I have to think about what the swag would say. But there's nothing for sale. So just come and if you're interested in how to do Becoming you. Because the book won't be out for a year. Come and listen to the webinar. You can sign up on my website, Susan Welch dot com.

Let's do questions from the community. I love them. Keep sending them. It's fantastic. I love hearing from you. Go ahead, Aliza. What is the question?

Okay, first question. Hey, Susie, I absolutely love your advice. I have some big things I'm trying to accomplish this year. I'm applying to go back to school and get my doctorate, and I'm anticipating interviews. But I wanted some advice as how to not feel intimidated. Not enough. I believe in myself. I just need to remember I'm worth it and worthy. Anything helps. And I appreciate your time.

Okay, well, congratulations. I absolutely love the fact that you feel that big things are ahead. That's half the bottle. I. I used to have a trainer long ago who, when I would walk into the gym, he would say, big day. And I would say, really? What's happening? And he said, it's a big day. Cause I'm telling you, it's a big day. And it was actually kind of a wonderful thing. Just his attitude all the time was it was gonna be a fantastic, momentous, exciting day. So big day for you. I think that's fantastic. And you're going back and you're looking forward at the same. You're going back to school, you're looking forward, but you're worried about job interviews, and you're worried that when you get there, you're going to have sort of like that imposter syndrome. That's sort of what it feels like to me. Like, you know, you're going to be there and they're going to be interviewing you, and you're going to have to be in the back of your head saying, I'm worth it. I'm worth it. I can do this job. So here's my advice. Number one, it's actually a very grunty blocking and tackling on any interview which is over. Prepare for your interview, stalk the company, and stalk the people interviewing you like a psycho. Okay? Just find out everything about the company, its history, its people, its. Its controversies, its headlines, its executives, its stock price, everything. No, everything about the company. First of all, that puts you so far ahead of every other candidate that they're interviewing because people come to interviews and they wing it. That is just the most common thing because they're thinking, I'm maybe not going to get this job. Interviews are, you know, never work out or they don't call you back. For six weeks. And it's terrible. And it's. And the whole state of the job interview and the job getting system right now is awful. And I feel so sorry for candidates who just send out 600 applications, get ghosted by everybody. It's just not right. But topic for another day. So first of all, really, really over prepare. Know everything about the company and do the courtesy of finding out who's interviewing you and looking at their LinkedIn and knowing where they came from and coming in with the confidence that you know what you're talking about when it comes to the company and the job. Find out everything you can really put some time and energy into it. This puts you so far ahead. Okay, the next thing I'll say is know your narrative. Know what you're going to say about yourself. In my class becoming youg. My students take this test that you can buy online. There's no money in this for me. I just happen to think it's a great test. It's called youscience youscience.com and it tests your aptitudes. And at the back of the report that you get with this, it actually gives you language to talk about yourself based on your skills. It's like a cheat sheet. Take that test and find out how you can talk about your actual aptitudes and skills. You know, just instead of saying things like, I'm a problem solver, it gives you much grittier, better language. You know, I'm a linear thinking, I'm a diagnostic problem solver. Find a narrative about yourself. So you're going in there with a story about why you're a fit for the job. You're not going in just to answer questions. You're going in to tell a narrative about you. All right? You have to be the only one author of this conversation and drive it forward, obviously delicately. Use your emotional intelligence to understand when to push, when to pull. One time I got really, really canned. I didn't get a job that I really wanted, thank God. When I was interviewing to be a reporter at the Kansas City newspaper. And I say thank God because I ended up going to Miami, which was obviously one of the seminal, wonderful, fantastic experiences of my life. I could have been in Kansas City, no offense. Friendliest place in the world, by the way. So in that interview, I was too forthright, I was too assertive. I was pushing the conversation too, the narrative too much. And they basically said you were too pushy during the interview. And we asked the questions around here and I learned an important lesson. So obviously you're a grown up. I was a youngster at that point. And so use your sensitivity. Be over prepared and come with a narrative. A narrative that tells a story about why you are the right person for that job and just basically why you're a great catch for any company. I know you can do it. Practice, practice, practice. The other part, the imposter syndrome stuff, Let me talk about that for a second. I'm often asked about it and there are academics who. This is really their area of expertise. I believe that Herminia Abara, who I knew when I was at HBS and now is a professor at the London School of Economics, I believe she's a great scholar on imposter syndrome. And you know, there's this sort of way you can sum up all the research on it, which is that you've got to fake it till you make it. And I think there's another way to go about it. I think that's. I guess that's sometimes true. I think the way you overcome imposter syndrome is with that narrative about yourself. The narrative that says, this is what I'm good at. I'm not perfect, but I am good at these things. I've had these demonstrable success successes. And frankly, the other loop that needs to be playing in your mind is that you're human in that no one else is perfect. Okay? And so, yeah, you're not good at everything, but nobody is. And that's why there's so many of us. And so imposter syndrome is, I think, an attitude thing. It's about. First of all, there's the grunty part about really knowing what you're good at. You've got to find out what your aptitudes are. That's a lot of. Look, we spend two weeks in becoming you digging into what our aptitudes actually are. Okay? And really finding out what they are. And one of the reasons I'm writing the book is to help people figure out what their aptitudes are. You can't guess. You've been told from when you were a little kid what you were good at, but you need to own that data yourself. You need to take the tests that are online. You've got to ask your bosses and people who know you well. Can you tell me what I'm actually very good at? Okay. You've got to dig and dig and dig. When were your biggest successes? I actually know somebody. I love this little story. She couldn't find a job and her mom said, I don't know why she can't find a job. She had a very good education. She kept on sort of washing out of jobs she was in. And I said, well, what is Emma actually really good at? And she long paused from the mother and she said, she makes everybody feel welcome. Well, what a gift. What an incredible gift. Imagine if you could find a job where greeting new people, bringing new people in the fold, inculturating new people could be your front office. And that is exactly the fantastic career she's in right now. She's in the travel business. She puts together travel groups as they. As the groups come together to go on these expeditions in Europe. She gets everybody to get to know each other. She's a welcomer. I mean, she's building a gigantic career for herself, a very happy career in this area because we were able to identify what she was uniquely good at. Better than everyone else. What are you uniquely good at? Better than everyone else. Don't compare yourself in how you are in math to somebody who's a fantastic quality quant. What are you uniquely good at? That data you must dig hard, and then you've got to own it and build a narrative around it. And to me, that's the best way to get over the imposter syndrome. All right, do we have another question from the community?

We do.

I love these.

Next question. It's hard to leave the velvet coffin. Can you talk more about how to force yourself to make the leap?

Okay, so the velvet coffin is a concept that Jack and I first started writing about. I think I might have been the one who coined the term, but, you know, he coined a lot of them himself. And the velvet coffin is when you start making accommodations in your life to not live by your values, your wants, your dreams, your desires, and you get a really comfy, cushy situation going. I want to quote Taylor Newman, who wrote me, I hope that's okay. Taylor, who wrote me on Instagram and talked about being in the velvet coffin and called it my B plus life. And that's what it is. Okay? You have a dream of an A plus life. That life you really want this delicious life of your life. You know, the life if you could be the author of your life. And yet it's hard because to avoid conflict, you end up living a certain place. To avoid friction with someone, you end up taking a certain job. It takes a lot of energy to overcome the inertia of our lives. We're only human. We're busy, we're distracted. I'll do it next year. I'm waiting to Find out this. The lid of that velvet coffin sort of slowly closes on us now. The first time this term came to me, I had been promoted in Miami to go be the police reporter in the Fort Lauderdale bureau. And there was a spectacular reporter there named Geraldine Baum. She was an incredible reporter. She was better than anyone. And she was a huge mentor to me, by the way. She didn't know it, but from afar, I was watching her every move. And she got a big job, lured her way up north. And I went and I said to her, how could you do this? You're on a rocket ship to the stars here at the Herald. You're going to run the city desk. You're this, you're that. And she said, yeah, but I don't want to be here. I want to be back with my family. I could just stay here forever. But you got to get yourself out of the coffin. It gets very comfortable in there. And I remember thinking, the velvet coffin. And she said, you know, the lid's closing on me. If I don't get out now, I'll never have the life I really want. She went up to US Newsday, big, big newspaper in those days in Long Island, I don't think. I think it might actually even be defunct now. But she went on and built a spectacular career in journalism because she pushed open that lid. Okay, so that's the velvet coffin. It happens to people. It's pretty comfy in there. And a lot of times people kind of wake up in their 50s and 60s and they say, wait, I just never did what I wanted to do. Now, in class, I used to illustrate this by playing a talking head song that has the chorus where a person says, what is this beautiful house? Who is that beautiful wife? My God, what have I done? And for my generation, this song is incredibly famous. And I found out when I got the blank stairs that it was generationally not famous. But it. It is sort of this moment of extreme existential terror and angst when you think, wow, I had a pretty comfy life. The only problem was, it wasn't anything I ever wanted. And in fact, I saw an incredible quote about this today. It says, there's someone out there who's way less qualified than you are living the life you want simply because they took action. And that is from Tenney Haynesworth, who's somebody on Instagram, who I follow. And I just think, you know, it's really hard. Maybe you sort of convince yourself it's comfortable in the velvet coffin. You convince yourself of that because it's so comfortable. And you think, and I may try, and it may not even happen for me, okay? And then you have that thing anticipated regret that I've spoken about before, and so you stay there. But you didn't even try. You didn't even try. The question becomes, how do you get out of it? Well, number one, you say, I think I'm in a velvet coffin. You actually confront that truth. That's very painful. I mean, when that person said, I have a b life, that probably was not an easy conversation to have with oneself or with one's loved ones. Like, I'm not quite happy. I mean, this is why a lot of divorces happen or breakups happen. When one person realizes it and they can't put their finger on it, they just feel like, is that all there was? I want something more. So the number one step is to say, okay, my life is not what I want, and I got to have action. And this is. Actually, I'm developing a tool about this to sort of show the variance between what your life is and what you want that's coming to you in the next six months or so on my website, and it'll be available to people. But if there's a variance between the life you're dreaming of, because we really just have one wild and precious life, right? The life you're dreaming of and the life you're living, you have to first acknowledge it that there's the elephant in the room. And the next thing you do is you jot down what it might take to get there. And. And you do it piece by piece. Or as the great Annie Lamott would say, bird by bird. In the amazing book Bird by Bird about how to write, it's really kind of sentence by sentence, you know, word by word, you build. You cannot do it all, all at the same time. But, you know, maybe you do one thing first. You change jobs, you get some. You go back to school, you start talking to people about what you're experiencing. But the first and hardest step is admitting it to yourself. Try that. And then move forward from there. Thank you for asking that question. If you're in the velvet coffin, I'm sorry about that term. I know it doesn't sound so great, but it's meant to shock you a little bit. It's meant to, because I think you need to be kind of shocked into action.

Okay. Well, speaking of mentors, so that woman, Geraldine Baum, I'm 100% sure she never knew that she was a mentor. I was watching her across the newsroom because I mentioned her in a. In an article or somewhere. When I wrote about the velvet coffin, I actually mentioned her. I connected with her on LinkedIn, and she was like, hi, Susie, it's been 40 years or whatever, but she was a mentor. So I want to talk about secret mentors today. And you know who I was thinking as a secret mentor? I think he's everybody's secret mentor. But I'm just going to confess it right here. It's Scott Galloway, who's a professor at nyu, who I do not know at all. This is not like I'm talking about a friend of mine. I only know him from afar like everyone else. And I know he's a mentor of mine because the other day I was doing my most favorite thing. What? Walking my dogs in the woods. I mean, like, it just seems to happen a lot, right? And I turned on his podcast and I just, like, was listening to him as I was walking in the woods. I almost never do that. I usually when I'm walking in the woods, to be honest, I pray I take that time to do that and to center myself and to express my gratitude and all these other things that people do in their own ways, and that's the way I do it. But I thought, wow, I just really kind of want to hear where his brain's at. And luckily, he is out there for everybody to hear and to listen to. And, you know, here's the thing. He doesn't know me. I don't know him, and yet he is a mentor. And that's sort of my whole point, isn't it? Is this is how I'd like us to think about mentors. That they can be anywhere. We don't have to know them, and we just study them. And I think his brain's. And I don't agree with everything he says. Who does? But I agree with a lot of it. And I learn from him. And I think, hmm, well, his podcast is perfect and probably the biggest one in the entire world. What could I be doing differently on my podcast? Well, would never even be able to touch the hem of his skirt on podcasts, but I learn and I listen to what he does. And it was. Actually, I'm going to say that one of the reasons why we changed our podcast music was I thought, he has better podcast music. Maybe I can upgrade my podcast music. And I did to that very. I'm sorry. To my grandson Joe, who supplies. He doesn't listen to this, but I'm pretty sure. God, I hope he doesn't. But I love that song, Joe. But I thought that the song by Redfield might be better for our purposes, and that's really only it for our purposes. So that's my secret mentor this week, and he will never know it. I mean, I told Hoda and Jenna the other day on air. They were my mentors. Hoda, in particular, has been a mentor of mine since the first day I met her, which was probably 15 years ago when we were sitting next to each other in the makeup room at NBC Studios and I was coming on for a guest hit on the Today show, and they rushed her in to get touched up between segments. I was not going on for another 15, 20 minutes. And she sat down next to me and she looked over and she goes, oh, I know who you are. And then she told me an amazing story about Jack, who had been her boss when he was running ge, which owned NBC. And she told me a story about Jack, and I thought, she's famous, important person. And I was nobody to her. And she came in and she was joyous, and she made me feel seen and heard, and she was filled with warmth. And I thought to myself, I want to be exactly like her. I want to be exactly like her. Now, I will never be like Hoda because she's one in a trillion person. But again, she's been mentoring me for years, and I think about her and I try to emulate her. And I'm not trying to emulate Scott Galloway, because I can't. But I also. But I do listen to what he has to say, and I do. He does shape my thoughts, and therefore he is my secret mentor this week. Okay, that's the mentor segment.

All right, we're coming into the segment of our podcast where we do rapid fire questions. I feel excitement in the other section of the room where I've got. My team is ready to try to stump stump the boss. Okay, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready.

If you could erase one color from existence, which one would it be?

I just love to know what mushrooms you were eating when you came up with this question. I mean, how did you come up with this question? Okay, as you say it, like a thought is coming into my mind, and it's making me feel tragic. Here, here's the story. So my children were raised with me, and I am obsessed with homes. I moved around a lot when I was growing up. This is me psychoanalyzing myself. I grew up, my family moved and moved and moved and moved and moved, and we were never settled. I Never had a home. And then when the moment came at age 60, when I can actually build and design my own home, because I. Up until that point, I shared homes with my husband, and he had strong opinions about what our homes would look like. But then here I was in this moment, and I really put a lot of care and thought into creating what I thought were really beautiful environments. And I poured my heart and soul into it. And right in that period of time, my oldest son and his wife bought their first home up in Maine, and they moved in. And the first thing they did was they painted every room a different, extremely dark jewel tone. So, like, for instance, their living room is, like, dark purple, and their bedroom is forest green. And, like, their guest room where I no longer stay was tangerine orange. And. And I would banish all of the colors of their house from the face of the earth. Okay. I love them dearly. It's very hard to get a picture of my granddaughter in there without me having a heart attack look like I'm in a comic strip. And so I have said to them very boldly, you're entitled to do anything you want with your home, but before you sell that house, you're going to have to paint it white. Yes, yes, we'll do it. Then we. And then last night, they iterated to me again how much they love the colors of their house. So all of those colors right off the face of the earth. And everybody has a right to paint their house whatever colors they want, except for that one, if they would like everybody to visit them. Okay. And, I mean, I would say I don't know if it was a reaction to me, but I think it might have been. Okay. But seriously, that's the best answer I could give you. And I want to make it bigger than just about their house, which is about the relationship between parents and children. So I was at the hairdresser today. I asked how his kid was, and he said, getting very, very naughty. And I said, oh, he's not terrified enough of you. And he said, what? What are you talking about? Very modern parent. I said, my kids grew up in absolute terror and thrall. They were just terrified that I was going to Jorge's about to have a baby. How do you like this for some parenting advice? My kids lived in fear of me if they were naughty. I mean, when Roscoe pitched a fit on the floor of the supermarket, another parent would, like, taken the cookies off the shelf and said, here, eat a cookie. And I looked at him and said, pitch it, baby, pitch it. And I walked away. That's how I did it. It worked. It worked. And we did sort of cast fear into the hearts of all of my children's friends. Everybody in high school had all these wild curfews. They could stay out 12 or 1. And Jack and I were like, nothing good happens after nine. Everybody in at nine. And they're like, you're ruining our lives. We're social pariahs. And we were like, yeah, too bad. And they all lived. And they probably missed a lot. I'm sure they did some naughty things, but they missed a lot of naughty things. Because it's very hard to do naughty things at home at 9pm with your parents. Yep, we were those parents. So that was a diatribe that you didn't really need to know. But I was a super strict mother. And a lot of times people would think crazily, people would think Jack was the strict one because, you know, he was Mr. CEO and I was a squishy grape. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He was a squishy grape. But I was. I was Attila the Hun. It worked. Whatever. It's over. Thank God they're all grown up. I won't be at the hu.

With my granddaughter, Brian Matilda the Hun, with the dogs. You guys have seen me with the dogs. I'm strict, aren't I? Super strict. Yeah. Okay, next question. Try to stump me.

What's the most creative insult you can think of?

Oh, creative insults. The truth is, listeners, that my team keeps a running list of my creative insults because they find them so amusing. I find my insults to be just normal insults. I mean, and I don't like to insult people, which is why I get so creative, right? Because I'm always like, what is it? A full blown ditz. You thought that one was great. A big fat nothing burger, you know?

Yeah.

But I also insult myself, okay? And generally, I love all people. I do think it's important if you're going to criticize somebody that you be creative about it. And in general, I just think around talking to people and giving feedback. It's important to try to be constructive. Not my area of expertise. Not my area expertise. But I would say, I mean, I try, I try, but I also think it's really funny to find something that's creative to say about people. But whatever. Love all people. Go ahead, try one more.

May be a little controversial. Oh, what's a celebrity who wasn't who.

You thought they were when I met them? Yeah, oh, Bette Midler.

Okay, so I'm at Bette Midler as a starry eyed young girl reporter at the Harvard Crimson and she came to sign her autobiography at the Harvard bookstore. And I mean, I'm gonna tell you, maybe she's changed and maybe she was exhausted, but she was a full on.

Use one of the insults.

Yeah, I wanna use one of my insults. I mean, she was so mean to me and it was a great lesson in that way, perhaps she was a mentor. Because I thought I will never ever, ever talk to somebody. She belittled me, she made me feel stupid. She actually, at one point I asked her a question and she said, what a stupid question. Yeah. And I said to her, do you have any regrets? I was trying to get a great interview with the big star. And she said, she goes, yeah, I didn't watch Shogun. I mean, she was like really?

Still remember it. Okay, that was like 50 years ago. So. Yeah, she was not what I expected. How do you like that? It was mean. She was just really mean. I mean, look, she's. It's not like she's a person who's known for a gentle tenderness, okay? And without a doubt, she's an amazing star. What a beautiful voice. So forth and so on, but she's a. I mean, she sliced dice and mutilated me. Why would you do that to an 18 year old kid? Why would you do that? Just because you could. I was traumatized.

Okay, what's the wildest online purchase you've ever made?

Well, I'm not a big shopper. I'm not. I mean, I'm really not. I'm not a big shopper. I mean, I. Because you know, really when the only thing you like to wear clogs you don't really have. There's not many clothings that go with that. But I would say big online purchases. I buy art online. I mean, I buy art unseen on auctions. And so that is, that is like my dirty little secret. I go into auctions, I buy crazy things I've never seen. And sometimes they show up and they're like, what? I got this amazing painting for $120. And then sometimes it comes and we literally like put it right into the trash. So I've done that, I've opened a package and put it right into the trash. So that's my. That, that's it. That's. That is my online bad behavior. I know people do crazy things, but I'm too risk averse. All right, I think we got let's move on to our quote. Right? That is our last bit. I've got a quote today. Okay. I love this. And it's really, really, really apropos of what we've been talking about today. Isn't it all tied together? That's the beautiful thing about the Becoming youg podcast. It looks like we've actually planned it and here it is. It's from Angelia Lawton and I found it on the Join Power Poker Instagram feed. I love Power Poker. That is a charity, an organization, it's a philanthropy started by the great Jenny just who is a one of America's few self made female billionaires. She started a financial firm in Chicago. She's a brilliant woman and I'm proud to call her a friend. She, during the pandemic, she realized that her daughters, among them young women and her daughter's friends were not had a very low comfort around money and around bluffing with money or holding their ground with money. And she thought these are all things you learn playing poker. You learn how to calculate odds and you can get so much confidence around spending money and when to not spend money through poker. So she started organization called Power Poker and her goal is to teach 1 million young women in high school how to play poker and to develop the skills of poker. I was, I threw a party for her here to raise awareness of Power Poker and I sat at the same table with America Ferreira and Greta Gerwig. Did not exchange a word with them, but I was in thrall of them and they came in, they really supported Jenny. So anyway, it's from her Instagram feed and you should look her up and you should look up Power Poker and gals. Who is Angelia Lawton?

She's the CEO and founder of SportsDigida.

Okay, cool. So she's a CEO and she said, listen to this one. I love this. If you don't take risks, you will always work for someone who does. And this about getting out of the velvet coffin. This is about believing in yourself. This is really on point for everything we talked about today. And I had a friend who one time said to me, there's two types of people in the working world. There's owners and there's employees. And you want to be an owner. And this is, that's a very bold statement because some people don't want to be owners. But I will also say this is very, very true. Quote. If you don't take risks, you will always work for someone who does. I mean, ponder that. I think taking risks just to go back to where we started about being fired. I mean, one thing that getting fired and then living teaches you is that you can put yourself out there and you may lose your head, but you will get it back again. And that you take more risks, you try more things because you realize, like, failure is not fatal. This is a true desire for some people and not for others. But if you want a bigger life, if you want more financial security, you're going to, at some point in your life, need to take risks. Otherwise you're going to be working for people who do take them. And this is these are all personal decisions and I'm agnostic on what your personal decision is on this. But you can't expect one and not do the other. If you want a bigger life and some of the stuff that goes with it, at a certain point, you're going to need to take some risks. And you maybe want to ask yourself why you're not doing that. Is it the velvet coffin? Is it imposter syndrome? What is it? We'll talk more about that for sure in coming weeks. On Becoming youg, I'm Susie Welch. I'm really, really happy that you came and listened this week. Let's all continue to stay in touch and tune in next week. Now listen to our new spiffy podcast theme music.