Shoulda Lost My Mind. Didn’t Happen. What the Heck?

Foreign.

Welcome to becoming you. I'm Susie Welch. Here we are. There are three dogs in the studio. And also the Three Stooges, the three sirens. My. My team is with me also. That's right. And we got the PR camp. All right, so I'm. This podcast is actually being brought to you by a complete and total zombie, that being me, because I've not slept for I can't even count how many hours. And that is because I was out in California laying down my LinkedIn learning class on operationalizing strategy. And actually, I want to say that the hardest thing about laying down my new LinkedIn class on operationalizing strategy was saying the word operationalizing over and over again. That was hard. And then my flight was supposed to leave at 4:30. It got pushed back to 8:04. Then we all got on the plane. This is Delta, by the way. And we all got on the plane and they informed us from the cockpit there was a light that was broken on one of the wings and they had to wait for the engineers to come to fix it. That took an hour. And then it broke other mechanics in the plane and they had to get the mechanics. Lights kept on going on and off and the air was coming on and off. And I was like, this looks really, really bad. And then they had to get the mechanics out there again to fix something else. By this time it was like 10:15. And they let everyone off the plane to take a walk. And then the pilot came back on. He said, surprise, it's fixed. Okay, now we just have to get everybody back on the plane. And like everybody had gone off the plane at that point but me. I was just too tired. And then at 11:15 or so, people started wandering back onto the plane. This was the plane that was supposed to take off at 4 o'. Clock. And finally we took off. You know, I maybe slept one or two hours and therefore I am feeling completely ragged, but not ragged enough to talk to you. Not too ragged to. Not too ragged to talk to you. That's how ragged I am. I can't even say that sentence. But here's this like crazy thing. Like the entire time, I'm pretty sure that. Pretty sure that everybody who was hearing me talk about how delayed my flight was, they were all waiting for me just to completely burst a gasket and lose my effing mind. Hallie, you were back home. Did you think I was about to lose it? Like when you were wondering, were you wondering when is Susie going to lose her mind?

You know? Yes, it was the light that I definitely thought was going to get you, and then I knew when, because I think it's important to preface that you were on the west coast, so you're. It was 11pm for you, but your real body clock, it was 2 in the morning.

Right. But didn't you think I was gonna lose it? Didn't you wonder why I wasn't losing it?

I did until. Yeah. And.

Yeah.

And I kind of figured, I think you're just so tired that this is impossible.

Yes, but I actually wasn't tired at all. I wasn't gonna lose it because I was tired. And I became unbelievably Zen. I was like, everybody's okay, nobody's harmed, life is going on, everything is fine. My plane is running really, really late. I. I have, like, food in my stomach and good friends. But I'll tell you why. The bigger reason, the bigger, bigger reason was I kept on thinking, why am I doing this? And the reason I was doing it, the reason why the whole trip occurred, was because I was doing work that I absolutely love. I was doing work that has so much meaning to me. I was doing work that has so much purpose. And I was like, yeah, this is. I paid a price for doing work with purpose, and it was worth every minute of it. And I got to thinking because, like, this is what becoming you is about, right? Becoming you. My class at NYU and my methodology that I'm writing my book about, but not for a long time. So this is not a plug for my book, because if it was a plug for my book, you'd have to sit around and wait a long time for it. It's about figuring out what your purpose is in life. And it's about. My whole methodology is about figuring out the answer to the question, what should I do with my life? It took me my whole life to figure that out, but I'd like to make it shorter for other people. And that's what the class does. But when you're doing work that has meaning and purpose, like when I was taping the. The material for LinkedIn, the director was like, wow, like, I really feel that you're super excited about this material. And I said to him with complete sincerity, I totally love this material. I love these ideas, I love these concepts. I love how this could change the life of managers. And fine, call me weird, but I actually, like, really? That has meaning to me. Okay. It doesn't have meaning to everybody. Wouldn't have meaning to, like, most people, I suppose, or people were not business school professors. And it was Just super exciting to me. And my heart and soul were completely in it. And I thought my work feels very important, and maybe that's like pompous ass hattery. But it felt really real to me, and it made all of the stress and unpleasantness of being in an airport for like 11 hours. Oh.

We are having dog wars right here. It doesn't look that way. It's fine. We don't want anybody to die here. But there are dogs fighting about bones. This is, is. This is. The bones are like the dog pacifiers. The one bad part of the trip, the really downside of it was I missed the dogs pathetically. Is there something wrong with me to miss the dogs that much for one day?

It was one day.

Okay, I know. That's sad.

They are cute dogs.

It's sad.

It's hard not to miss.

It's sad. It's sad. Okay, so that was like the whole thing about that very, very unpleasant trip that maybe years ago would have really set me off. It was that I just saw this higher purpose in my work. Now, very interestingly today, the conference board, which is a very respected organization and does incredibly good research around organizations, largely in the United States, released a survey, released its recent report on job satisfaction. And they are generally looking at white collar workers. So this does not include the entire universe, but professional people. And they found that job satisfaction is pretty high, actually higher than it's been in years. Of course, we're comparing it to the pandemic years, and that job satisfaction overall is at 65%. That 65% of people say they're satisfied at work, but that means that 35%, which is a huge amount, are not satisfied at work. And then when you start digging into the numbers, very unfortunately, there's kind of a dichotomy in the data between men and women. And women are vastly less satisfied at work than men. And I could venture a guess about why this is. It's possible that women who are holding down kind of two jobs, one kind of running the household or children or their elderly parents, have extra stresses that make work more complicated for them in a better vast majority of their lives. It's just the way it goes. And so I think that the numbers, when you start digging into them, are less optimism giving than they are at first. Oh, 65%. Those numbers are pretty good. And then you start digging away and people are more frustrated than the numbers would show you at first glance. Now, purpose at work is something that we think and talk a lot about at the NYU initiative on Purpose and flourishing, which is just getting launched. I'm the director of it. It's an incredible honor. I've got an incredible, incredible faculty advisory board. NYU is filled with brilliant professors and scholars and other people who are doing research that really looks at how people derive meaning at work and derive purpose. And we're going to do a lot more work on that. But I'll tell you, when you're in that zone, we call this and becoming you, your area of transcendence. When you're doing what you want to do, what you can do, and what you should be doing all at the same time, we call that your area of transcendence. When you're doing it, it is enormously life giving. And it makes even an incredible, incredibly unpleasant long ride on an airplane feel like whatever. I. This is all part of the purpose of what a mission of what I'm doing. And I'm at peace with it. So that felt really good. And so therefore I learned a lot. I learned a lot from this trip because I thought I have traveled before and really lost my mind over travel delays. And maybe I'm older and wiser now. Maybe I've just been through so much that I have better perspective. But I also think when you're doing the right work, you'll let go of a lot of stuff that seems petty or wouldn't have seemed petty in the past. So thank you. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. It was supposed to be a rant and a rave, but I'm not ranting and a raving about that travel. It didn't. I mean, I had time to think much more. I've never watched more TikTok in my life. Oh, my God. Because that's what you do when you're sitting at the airport. I did also read a book. I read a book too. So give me props for that crime novel. Anyway. All right, that's my rant and rave today.

All right, welcome back. If you didn't hear an ad, that's cause we don't have any yet. But if you keep listening and tell your friends, maybe someday we will. All right, so welcome back. I hope, I hope you had a good little break. Maybe you let the dog out. That's what we do during our breaks. All right. This is the section of the podcast where I take questions and I get so many questions from my followers on social media and on LinkedIn and Instagram. I am very appreciative. I love answering them. And so I think my team is gonna tell Me one or two of the questions from this week. What's a question I've gotten?

This one is from Instagram.

Yes.

Someone asked, why is it that sometimes we feel the most resistance working towards the job we like and want the most? Because that's what's holding me back and I don't know why.

Oh, such a great question. Oh, my gosh, that's a fantastic question. The question is, why is it that we feel resistance when we're, like, really loving a job and wanting a job? And it sounds like this person, like, say they want to be like a Hollywood, like producer or director, or they really want to be like a some kind of job that feels very aspirational and they just feel really resistant. Right. Is that the feeling you get about this question, Eliza, that that's what they're asking? Okay, fantastic question. Very, very human to feel this way. And the major reason is what psychologists would call anticipated regret. That's a, that's a concept that's in the popular lexicon of psychology, which is when we anticipate that we're going to regret something, we will do anything to avoid the feeling of regret, of feeling like, like we've made a mistake. And so we actually. And there's an amazing study out of Harvard university done by two PhD students, actually, who are at HBS, who are now teachers at different business schools. And they looked at a survey of nine studies of people who were receiving medical diagnoses. And one set of medical diagnoses would mean you had to make another decision, and another was worse news, but you wouldn't have to make another decision. And let me just summarize it for you, which is that they found unequivocally that people would rather get a bad diagnosis and not have to make another decision than get a good diagnosis that would force them to make a decision. And what this tells us about human nature is we absolutely fear failure in a way that actually makes us avoid very, very good choices. We fear failure. We fear self loathing so much, we don't do hard things. Okay. We fear self recrimination so much, we don't do hard things. And it's called again, anticipated regret. So I'd say you want something so badly that you know if you don't achieve it, my friend, you will feel so badly about it that you rather not try to do it. And that's why when we want a job really badly, or we say, okay, I've got to dump everything, I've always wanted to be a doctor. I wanted it so badly. I look at doctors, I watch those TV shows. I want it. But I'm not ever going to get into medical school. I'm never going to be able to do it. It's going to be so painful when I don't get this thing I really, really want, when it's gonna be so painful I'm not even gonna try. So that's what's going on with you. Anticipated regret. It's very normal. And so this is why I walk into my class every semester and I say to my students, how many people here have been fired? Well, these are fancy, shiny NYU MBAs. So almost no one raises their hand and I say, this bums me out. I can't wait till you're all fired. I want every one of you to be fired. And they're like, what? What? And the reason is, once you're fired and you live, you learn that actually fail. It's the best lesson you'll ever get. That failure doesn't kill you. It makes you. Yes, like the song. Stronger. I won't sing it because my voice would kill you. And it makes you softer. It makes you more empathetic. But the best lesson of that kind of gigantic mondo failure is that actually you do get up and live the next day. You do go on and have a good time. You do get another job, and it didn't kill you. You've had sort of a public death, and guess what? You lived. And then failure doesn't become nearly as. As scary because you think, oh, if it happens again, guess what? I'll live. And this is the sign of every entrepreneur, every successful entrepreneur has failed a thousand times. And they've been like, whatever, big deal. I failed. One time, Jack and I were doing a book signing, and people would come up as a big entrepreneurial conference, and people come up and show their book. And they would say to Jack, fifth company, sixth company, what company they were on, how many times they tried, you know, power to them. So you want something really badly, and you're not going for it because you're scared of not getting it. And lovingly, that is back. Ass. Word. Get over yourself. Do the hard thing. You may fail, okay? But then again, you may succeed. And if you fail, you fail. And actually, when you failed in this world and you failed kind of publicly, I wanted to let you in on a little secret. If you haven't noticed it, people like you better. They just. They like you better because your humanity's showing and people have a heart for you more. I mean, you know, the most boring, annoying, irritating, dreary people in the world are people who've only succeeded. I mean, look at David Beckham. Like, I watched that documentary like all of you did. That's. If you haven't seen the David Beckham documentary, go watch it immediately. It's just a great. It's a great story about a very unusual personality and who's done amazing things. But he failed a lot before he became David Beckham and he was beat up publicly. He would walk into stadiums, people would, like, boo him. He was reviled, and he kept fighting until he got what he wanted, which was to be, like, the world's greatest football. Football player. And soccer players, we say. And he. He wanted it so badly that he wouldn't give up. And that's what you got to do. And I hope that that's a little bit of food for thought for you, whoever wrote that, thank you for sending me that question.

That's also why here on Susie Welch's team, one of our core values is.

Fail forward, fail forward, fail fast. Get over yourself. That's right. That's one of our values. Even on our little team here at becoming, we have. We have values. And I would say right now, one of Audrey's values is to have all three bones. We've got three dogs in this room, and one dog has all three of the bones. It's unconscionable. All right, do we have time for another question? Let's do one more. Let's do one more.

The other question that you got from Instagram was, was your time in consulting worth it for you?

Yeah.

And would you recommend it? They say it's a great trampoline, but, man, is it hard to stay on it.

Yeah. Okay, so I think I actually got two questions about consulting. I was a consultant for seven years at Bain & Co. After I graduated from business school. The question. Both questions are basically the same, which is, is consulting worth it? So I have. I don't want to, like, be Mamby Pamby about this. I think the short answer is yes. You learn a lot. You learn a lot about consulting. You may not learn a lot about business, which is what consultants tell you. That's the consulting narrative. Come work here. You're going to learn about business, and you learn a lot about consulting. You don't actually learn a whole heck of a lot about business. If you want to know about business, just raw business, guess what? Go work in industry and learn about business. Okay. But if you want to know about consulting, which is an important thing, to know about, then go into consulting. Because no matter where you work, one day they're going to hire consultants and you're going to have to know how to manage them and you're going to have to know how to. How much they're BSing you, which is what they're doing a lot of the time. And you're going to have to understand that they're brought in when layoffs or when the big bosses don't want to do the layoffs themselves. And then they call in the consultants and they say, oh, the consultants told us. And that's, you know, they're hatchet men and women. And you learn how to make some good PowerPoint slides. Sometimes you learn how to do public speaking and you learn how to do research. Is any of this really applicable to industry? Yes, sometimes. I mean, it's really conceptual. It's really conceptual. I think with consulting it's a placeholder. You work in consulting until you figure out what you want to do. I mean, becoming you. My class at NYU is filled with students who've said, okay, I tried consulting. That's not it. What is it then? And then they come and they do the becoming you process and they say, oh, I always wanted to open a flower store, or I've always wanted to be, you know, the list is long of what they decide. But it's not consulting. Consulting is for certain types of people. I mean, if you're very analytical, if you like an arm's length relationship with business, then consulting's good for you. Because real business working in industry is gritty and grimy and sweaty and bumpy and human and messy. Like this morning, my team. Yay, right? You saw me like, work a deal and the deal was a big fat mess. I was like relying deeply on relationships I've had for many years. I was moving concepts around and ideas around and like having difficult conversations. And it was. That's business. Sweaty and Messy. It's not PowerPoint slides. So consulting, look, another thing consulting is good for. I don't want to like, not state the obvious here. Consulting is very good. If you need money. Okay, I need the reason why I went to consulting. I needed money. I had just paid for my business school and they were going to pay off my loans. And, and you'll make a lot of money. But. But one of the problems about making all that money is that then it's very hard to go take a job that you like because it's going to be less, because consulting just outpays them all. And so There's a price to pay. You make a deal with the devil when you go into consulting because you're going to step backwards when you go get a job you really like most of the time, all right? But sometimes you just need the dough. Now, the last thing that consulting is really good for is if you need a credential. You have been working as sort of jobs that don't have a lot of humph or gravitas, and you need your, you need your resume stamped by some really good brand. And you get a job at a good brand consulting firm. Like, I will often want to interview people from Bain because I know what it was like to be trained by Bain. And they really, really train you and McKinsey the same. They train you. And so there's upsides to it. You know, there's the credential, there's the money, there's the learning about what consultants do. And it's a good holding pattern until you figure out what you really want to do with your life long term. Very few people are career consultants. I, you know, that's a certain personality type. Some of them are very good rainmakers, but you've got to have that. That personality type is pretty rare. And I want to say one last thing about consulting. Then I'll stop talking about consulting. Consulting is an interesting dynamic because you make a lot of money out of the gate. Okay, you can graduate from business school and make $220,000 a year in consulting. But in the long run, the people who go into industry or become owners of their own companies actually make more money in the long run. I mean, it's like an inverse relationship. Like, you start off with all the big dough, but then the kids who started their own companies and then like, you know, work them up and then sell them or go public, they become the multimillionaires and billionaires and they leave the consultants in their dust. So it's about timing with money. And therein ends my sermon on consulting. All right, I guess we'll take a break for our pretend ads. Hey, sponsors, we're waiting for you.

All right. Welcome back, welcome back from our so far non existent ads. Let's do an exercise together. I, I do so many exercises in becoming you. Most of them are designed to help people figure out their values. And you can't do anything, you cannot figure out anything you're supposed to do with your life if you don't know what your values are. Okay, values are our deeply held beliefs and desires about how we want to live. Okay? People Say they know what they are. And people. But generally, people have a very vague and general sense of my values. Oh, what matters to you? Family, financial security, success. But, you know, the range of what family means is everything from like, seeing my family on, you know, the major holidays all the way to sort of like living next door to my brother. Okay, There's a big range in what family means. I mean, family can mean being. Being a good uncle to your nephew, and family can mean having seven children and just all sorts of variation. And success. Again, very, very personal what that means. And yet people consider that a value. Financial security, that's another one. Just sort of having enough money to have two cars all the way towards having, like, a helipad for each one of your children. Okay, what accounts for financial achievement is a very wide range of definitions. All right, so to get to your values in becoming you, we do seven or eight exercises. We don't do the one I'm about to share with you. But I really like it because it's a fast way to start thinking about what actually are my value. So let's just. Just hear me out. You may want to grab a piece of paper and a pencil for this one, or you can just do it in your head. Just let yourself be free for a moment and think about this. I don't know what happiness means, but I know I'm never sad when I'm blank. I don't know what happiness means, but I know I'm never sad when I'm blank. And it could be something like, I know I'm never sad when I'm in the boat with my dog, or I know I'm never sad when I'm writing a project with my friend Sally. I know I'm never sad when I'm driving to the country. I know I'm never sad when I've just closed a deal. Okay, your immediate one, first or second answer to that are the beginning. They're the. They're the. The threshold to you understanding your values. Okay, so just take a second. I don't know what happiness is. I don't know. You don't have to include that line, because I do. I do. Because I don't know what happiness is. And I know. I do know one thing about happiness. It's an outcome, not a goal. But that's for another podcast. Let's just say this. I don't know what happiness is. I just know I'm never sad when I'm. Okay, send me your answers or leave your answers in the comments. If you're watching this on YouTube. So for me, I have two answers right away. I don't know what happiness is, but I know I'm never sad in the pottery studio. Okay? So, like, I'm not a potter. My daughter actually is a professional potter, so is my mom. And I have childlike, very poor pottery. Give it as gifts. My poor friends, they all have, like, little pots for me, but I've never sat in the pottery studio. And you know what this talks to. This actually has a very interesting implications for my value. So when I'm in the pottery studio, I'm almost never alone. I'm usually there with my children. You would think right off the bat it's about artistic expression, but I don't think artistic expression is necessarily my value. I think it's about the activity of pottery, which is a shared family activity. I always say things like, you know, some families golf and some families play tennis, and my family does pottery together. I'm almost always in a loving family situation. So I actually think when I. My value right there is about my family's intimacy. And another one of mine, I. You know, I don't know what happiness is. But I'm never sad when I'm writing. Okay? And this is very straightforward. I am a writer. It's very important for me to express myself with words. I. I feel like the analogy I often use is that when I'm writing, I feel like I'm skating. And let me say, I feel like I'm skating like an Olympic skater. I feel really good. I feel very free. I. I have a certain kind of joy that writers can feel. That was like my second answer for it. And these are right at the heart of my values. I mean, I could talk about my values for a long time because this is what I study. This is what I write about. But those are my two. Aliza, what did we get from readers when this was a.

Reel? Okay, these ones are from.

Instagram.

Yeah. I'm never sad when I'm arranging.

Flowers. Oh, isn't that beautiful? So, I mean, I'd have to know this person better, but, I mean, their immediate answer is arranging flowers. And that might have something to do with the value around harmony or about sort of things that are aesthetically pleasing. But flowers and arranging flowers is about self expression, but also creating beauty for others. And that would be a value right there. Creating beauty for other people. That is a value for sure. What's another.

One? I'm never sad when I'm in.

Italy. Oh, okay. Well, again, you know, Italy I mean, there's not a lot of people who would disagree with that. Is Italy just the greatest place on earth? Yes, it is. But I mean, this is about. Maybe I'd love to know more about what, what's happening in Italy. I mean, are they in Italy looking at art? Are they in Italy, you know, sitting and having like bread and wine? What else is there to do in Italy but have bread and wine? Oh, my God. What is actually happening? But I would dig deeper to find out what was going on in that Italy answer. But that's a. You know, know that immediately. Going to Italy tells you a.

Lot. I'm never sad when I'm having coffee or find myself in a small family owned character filled espresso.

Bar. Oh, okay. That person should go open their own espresso bar. I mean, I think right away this tells me a lot about this person's values. I mean, this is much what you don't say is what you do say. Okay, so what they're not saying is in Italy, and they're not saying in a pottery studio, they're saying. And there's some interesting words in there. I'm in a small family owned espresso bar. There's something about having a kind of control over your life. A kind of peacefulness, a kind of centering that. That, that's what I'm visualizing that. And that tells me exactly what that person needs in their life, what a real value would be. I mean, I. I have a friend who one time quit her job and I said, why'd you do that? She said, I need to have my coffee in the morning. And it wasn't about the coffee. It was about self control. Oh. She had no control in her life and she needed to get some control over her life. But this, that answer right there paints for me a picture of, of a kind of lifestyle that this person values. It's very, very important to know what kind of lifestyle you value. Let's do.

Another. I'm never sad when I'm talking to.

People. Yeah, okay. I'm never sad when I'm talking to people. I mean, here's a person who value. Who gets their energy off of talking to other people. You know, this is obviously an extrovert. Jack and I, the two biggest extroverts who ever lived. Thank God we found each other. Like, if we went into a party that was filled with strangers, like, we were so turned on. This was like the most exciting night. And we had for our children four introverts. And they were like going To a party where they didn't know everyone was agony. This is just part of who you are, this person. Imagine that being your first answer talking to people. This tells you so much about how you need to live and what kind of job you should have and what kind of neighborhood you should live in and how you should lead your life. I love this exercise. Let's just do one last.

One. I'm never sad when I'm buying new clothes for me and my kids. I'm being.

Honest. That's beautiful. I love that. Just being honest when I'm buying new clothes for me and my kids. And to me, I mean, I would love to know more about what this person's childhood was like, but this is a kind of financial security that allows you to get new things for yourself and your children. If she was just buying new clothes or he was just buying new clothes for himself or herself, this would be a totally different answer. But the answer to be doing it for themselves and their kids is about a self determination and agency and a kind of freedom. Freedom that maybe they did not experience earlier in their life. That's my guess. So try this exercise. It just starts to unfold the beautiful opening peony that your values are, if you can visualize that. I don't know what happiness is, but I know I'm never sad when I'm instant answer and second answer. Send me your answers if you want and I'll do my best to interpret them. I love the ones that you read and go forth and do that. This is just one of the many exercises that it takes to sort of figure out who you are standing still, which is what becoming you is all about.

All right, welcome back. Time very briefly for my secret mentor crush this week. The last podcast I did, Betsy Smith, who is a very well known individual in New York City, she runs a Central park conservancy. She's just a profoundly impactful person who I really admire. Look her up this week. I, I want to say, I want to make a point with who I I'm choosing and actually I want to say that I am so mentored by my students. And I think, you know, when I was talking about this with my team earlier, the reaction was, but they're younger than you. And that's the whole point. You can be mentored by anyone. I say this to my students all the time. I learn so much from you. I know they don't believe me. They think it's just lip service because why would this old broad be learning so much from them? But you can learn from everybody, and you should. Okay? Not to be, like, all Pollyannish about it, but why wouldn't I learn from my students? They know a lot of stuff. I don't know. I'm always asking them to explain themselves to me. And this is the beautiful thing about having secret mentor crushes all over the place, is that you can and should learn from everybody. And I have learned from my students. Like, my students have taught me a lot about balance and about, like, not working all the time and the importance of just sort of having other values besides work that I don't know if I'm ever going to get there. But sometimes I think to myself, maybe they're right. Why wouldn't they be right? I thought I was right all the time when I was young, and hopefully I was right about some things. And so I. I don't want to be that person who just puts my finger in my ears to the. To the younger generation. They've had different life experiences, and so I love it when they say stuff to me that disrupts my way of thinking. I. Of course it's uncomfortable, and I. Sometimes I get mad when they say things like, oh, I'm going to do a little fun employment. Like, unemployment's fun for me. In my generation, unemployment was the kiss of death. You were sick to your stomach. There was nothing fun about unemployment. Unemployment was what you tried to get away from as fast as possible. And then they had this idea that, like, you could actually take time between jobs and have fun. What a novel concept that is. And I have to think to myself, well, okay, maybe I agree with it, maybe I don't, but I certainly need to listen to it, and I need to understand it. And therefore, I nominate this week my students as my mentor crushes. I love them, and I love what they teach me, and I learn from them every single day. No lie.

All right, we've come to the portion of the POD where my team tries to ask me questions I can't answer. And I have to say, even though we've only just done two of these, this is my favorite part of the show. So what have you guys cooked up for me this week? What are the.

Questions? One week, I want to try these where I answer them for you before you.

Answer. Oh, that'd be so fun. Okay, we gotta do that one. Okay, here's some.

Hysterical. Okay, who is your celebrity crush that you don't want to admit.

To? Oh, my God. Do I have a celebrity.

Crush? Are you kidding.

Me? No, I think it's so.

Pathetic. I mean, you admit to it. The one that I'm about to.

Say. Wait, wait, let me think about it. Who is.

It?

Yeah. Pitbull. Oh, I do love Pitbull. I do love Pitbull. But it's so pathetic. I couldn't even. I couldn't even access him. I mean, I know I love Pitbull. I love him. I do. I. It's sad. I love Pitbull.

I do. And you know, here's the thing about him. You know why I like him? Oh, so bad? I like him because he's optimistic. I mean, like, it's not even like he's cute or anything like that. I mean, he's like young, but he's so optimistic and he's like. You know. And I think. Actually another thing I adore about him, I went to his concert and danced the whole night away along with all the older geezers like myself. I mean, that guy looks out at the audience and like Most people are 60 years old. I mean, it was all me and all the moms and dads of Miami suburbia. There's not a young person in that audience. And he's up there rocking like there's young people in the audience. But I love that he's so optimistic. It's. His life has not been easy. He's had a lot of heart. Heartache in his life as well. And I also love that he's super sincere. Either that or he's the best faker who ever lived. But I do think he's quite sincere. And he's just Mr. 305 all the way. And I know, I mean, I have been mocked for loving Pitbull my entire life. I started loving Pitbull when he was like, before anyone knew who he was because I was so connected to Miami. And yeah, three or five or die. I love Pitbull. Thank you for reminding me. You did stump me because I couldn't remember my own celebrity.

Crush. Okay, if your life had a theme song, what would it.

Be? What is the theme song of my.

Life? Mary J.

Blige. Yeah. I love Mary J. Blige. No more drama. Okay, so no more drama is one I used to run on the treadmill when my life was filled with drama. Before Eric and I split up. Who is my first husband who's actually a wonderful person. Hi, Eric, I hope you're listening. Hi. Hi, Shev. Hope you're listening. And I would say that, look, two listeners, Eric and Shev from Toronto. But I would say that back in the day when My life was really the epic, best show of young working mother with four kids in a marriage that was on the rocks. This is long before I met Jack and we lived happily ever after. I would go to the attic of our house after the kids finally went to bed, and I would run on the treadmill, and I would play Mary J. Blige at blast in my ears, and I would just listen to the song, especially no More Drama. If you've never heard no More Drama by Mary J. Blige, just stop listening to this podcast instantly. Turn it off, I beg you, and go listen to no More Drama. And actually, what did I tell my students they had to listen to? Oh, I, I, I. Another thing of my poor students. Someone please call 91 1. That's another Mary J. Blige song that she sings with Wyclef John and.

Also could be used to teach crisis.

Management. I tell. Yes, that's right. It was for crisis management. Someone please call 91 1. Okay, I'm not even kidding. You know, you've got to hear hear that song in real life so that you can take that voice that you just heard out of your ears forever. But that is a damn great song. Okay, so, okay, those are some of my theme songs, all Mary J. Blige, but so many, you know, actually. Oh, you got me going. This is the last one. I'll say Courtney Love from whole one of the great artists of all time. My dream podcast guest of all time would be Courtney Love. I so love her. And actually, my poor children, when I used to drive carpool once a week, they had to listen to hole the whole time. Other mothers were playing Rafi and singing Baby Beluga, but I was playing Courtney Love, and she has a song called Doll Parts. The opening line of the frame is, I want to be the girl with the most cake. And if we could get rights to that, that would be the theme song of this. But since we can't pay that much for that song, we get for free practically my grandson's song. Get the level, okay? Please, everybody, get the level. Okay, next.

Question. If you could swap lives with someone for a day, who would it.

Be? Courtney Love. No. Okay. No, no, no, no. That would not be good. Not good at all. But interesting, that's for sure. Okay, if I could swap lives with anybody for a day.

Maybe Hoda could be from the Today Show. Love, admire and revere her. She's so real. She's so smart, beautiful inside and out. Fantastic. Best job in media. Beloved for every good reason. I wonder what it feel like to be that nice, though. Like, she probably. She just never has a negative thought, a mean thought, a bad thought, an ugly thought. She's just completely good human being. She's so nice. I'm gonna tell a Hoda story. One time, I gave a speech at a big resort in Palm beach. And I guess a few days later, or maybe Hodu was just staying there, and. And she was by the pool. And one day, I'm like. The day after the speech, I was, like, in my kitchen, and my phone lights up, and it's Hoda calling me. And she said, what did you do in your speech? Everyone loves you. They keep on walking up to me and they say, hi. Cause she's at the pool, and she's very famous at the time. I had a gig on the Today show. And they would say. They said to her, like, you know, do you know Susie? And she said, you just hit the ball out of the park with your speech. They all love you. Did she have to do that? No, it was the nicest thing. And she is one of my mentor crushes, by the way, because that act of completely unnecessary spontaneous kindness and generosity, I mean, I feasted on it for about, I don't know, 15 years. I mean, it was, like, really, really powerful to me. And so I would switch. I would switch life with Hoda because. But then I'd have to unswitch lives with Hoda because I. I don't know if I could be that nice for that long because I have too many dark and evil thoughts. She's just the most beautiful person. So does that answer your.

Question? It.

Does. All right. Do we have one more? And then we'll be.

Done. What's your favorite word that's fun to say out.

Loud? Where'd you come up with these questions? Did you use AI to come up with these questions? You came up with them. I want to know why Hallie's asking all of them. Okay. It's fine. We didn't hear from Sophia today, or. No, we did. We heard one question from you. Okay. All right. What's my favorite word to say out loud? Yeah. Operationalize. Okay. Because I finally learned how to say it. Operationalize. Operationalize. Operationalized strategy. Okay. All right. I say it. That's. I want to say it every day in my life. You know, it was very hard. I kept on stumbling on it. Finally, we changed it to implementing because I was having so much trouble with operationalizing. By the way, if you don't know how to operationalize strategy, wait for my LinkedIn learning class on it in September. It's coming. Okay, it's time for quote of the week. All right. Oh, my God. It's my girl, Anna Wintour. Because, you know, she and I are besties. I don't like. I. She's an amazing. I actually, I think she's an amazing icon who could say anything wrong about. And I want to know how come she doesn't age? That's a weird thing. I actually just recently saw like a TikTok that showed her over the past 25 years and her face has not changed. Okay. At all. Riddle me that. Okay, so here she said the other day, there's nothing worse than indecision. Even if sometimes you're not completely sure, it's better to fake it and pretend that you are. Teams work better with clarity. Okay, I love this for there's nothing worse than indecision. Look, there's this concept in business called edge. And you will get promoted if you've got edge and you will not get promoted if you don't have edge. Edge is the ability to make a yes or no decision. You will never, ever, ever have complete information. Who has ever made a decision with complete information? If you wait around for complete information, you're going to be dead. Okay? You have to make a lot of decisions without complete information. And the better you get at that, the more fortitude you have to face into the fact you might be wrong, the better you'll be. Now, you don't want to make a decision too early. While this is from a person who wrote a whole book about decision making, but there's a moment where you have to decide and teams do need clarity. What you need is a decision making methodology and an ability to explain how and why you made your decision. Then for God's sake, make the decision. Okay? Make your decision. And that's edge. And that's my quote from I know there's nothing worse than indecision. Even sometimes if you're not completely sure, it's better to fake it and pretend that you are not so sure about the faking it. I think it's perfectly fine. Sorry, Anna, please don't not invite me to the Met Ball like you didn't invite me this year. But I would say that you could just say to your team, I'm not completely sure about this decision. I have this information. I made the decision this way to the best of my ability. And now we're going to make a decision and we're going to act, okay? Because indecision, it drives people crazy and the world would just stop in its place if we didn't make decisions. All right, that is it for the quote of the week. And please come back and join us next week. More ranting and raving, quote quotes, exercises and other stuff we do on this podcast. I love you all. Please visit again. See you next time.