You Achieve Your #LifeGoals… Then What? A Conversation With Special Guest Kate Bartlett

Hello, everybody. Hello, it's Susie. Hey, you know, I was reading my DMs this morning, and if you've gotten a DM back from me and you've DMed me at 5 in the morning. Yes, it's me at 5 in the morning, and I got a DM this morning that blew my mind. From somebody who's traveling across the country in his van, and he's listening to Becoming youg, binging on it, as he said. And I want to have a special shout out to him. But everybody else who's written me lately, hi. I love you so much. I'm so glad you're here. I'm Susie Welch. I'm a professor at NYU Stern School of Business. That's actually especially relevant today with our incredibly special guest, who's a student at nyu, and you probably know her because she's famous. We'll talk about Kate Bartlett in a second, but I just want to introduce people to Becoming youg, which is a podcast where we help you answer the question, what the ding dang everlasting world should I do with my life? Okay, that's what we're going to get at. That's what we get at in this podcast. We talk about. About that question in the abstract level, but also very much in the trenches. We are a podcast that's for people who are in the process of becoming themselves, but also in the process of figuring out right now where they're going to pivot to, because it's a little bit more urgent than that. The relaunchers, the resetters, and everybody who just wants to ponder what it's all about, we're here for you also. We try to have a very good time, and every week I attempt to be funny. Let me move right on, introduce you to our guest today, and let you know what we're talking about. I've got Kate Bartlett here. Kate is a. I mean, she needs no introduction. She's a content creator who has a massively popular Instagram presence. She's. I know you don't love the word influencer, do you? But you are an influencer in style and beauty. And here's the thing. Like, Kate came into my. Into my sights a few months ago because she ended up as a student at NYU Stern. And like, you know, usually at NYU Stern, we get to students who are pivoting who are like, oh, this wasn't exactly what I wanted, or where I was going, and I need to get to business school to do the pivot. Business school, by the way, is Very good for pivots. I mean, business school is a place where people who have gone along and sort of say, yeah, this is right, but not exactly right, go to kind of learn new skills or to refine. And a lot of people go to school to pivot. I mean, I get a lot of DMs from people saying to me, should I go back to school? And it's sort of a convenient place to go back to school. School. It's very rare, Kate, that we. Our halls are graced by the likes of you, who is a person who has achieved a huge amount. I mean, like, you are. You know, you're sort of hashtag life goals for a lot of people. Okay, so I want to talk to you about that. I want to go over your. Kate took the values bridge with its new value, belovedness. We're so excited to talk to her about her results. So if you're new to becoming you, and we have a lot of new listeners lately, thanks to Caleb Simpson. Thank you, Caleb. Who threw me a solid by by with one of his posts. But I would say that this would be a good podcast for anybody who's new because we're going to go over all the values with Kate and talk about where they landed on her list of values and her authenticity gaps. She's being very nice to us here and just talk about. And I love. I love the story youy values tell. So I'm really excited to do that. But first, let's just stop and talk about you, you, you, you, you, you, you. Why don't you just do this thing, like, tell us the story of your life. Like, just start with where you're from and how you ended up here. Like, just. Just tell us that story.

Okay. The story of my life as quickly as possible. So I was born and raised in Orlando, Florida, which is kind of random. And, you know, I had such a lovely childhood, but I always knew I wanted to leave. And it's not really a place that people leave frequently. I don't really know many people from my hometown, who have left. But when I was young, I knew I wanted to work in fashion, and that was all I wanted to do. It's the only thing that I've ever wanted to do. I've had no doubts in my mind about it my whole life.

How did you know you were, like, looking at Vogue and you just, like, were like, it was the best day of your week.

Or like, I think I watched Devil Wears Prada once. Yeah, that was it. That was all that I needed And I just knew I never had a doubt in my mind, which is such a blessing because it's really like, put me on this path. I think so many people struggle with that. So I'm really, really lucky that I've always just known what I'm so passionate. But, you know, in Orlando, there's not a lot of fashion going on. Nice weather, but not really a lot of opportunity, especially in fashion. And so when I was 15 years old, I decided I'm going to start a fashion blog, which at the time was not a thing.

I mean, your parents were not in fashion?

No, my parents were not in fashion at all.

So what did they make of it?

They were very, very supportive. I mean, my mom took my photos every single day when I would come home from school, and I would post them on my Instagram and on my blog. You know, they didn't really know anything about.

You would come home from school and get in outfits and have your mom take pictures of you?

Yes. And I did this for five years with no audience. I mean, I think I had like under a thousand followers for. For the first five years.

What did your friends at school think of this?

Everybody thought it was weird. Yeah, it was not a thing at the time. I mean, people definitely made fun of me a lot. It was not something that was cool, but I found so much joy in it. It was so fun.

I love this story. I want to pause for a second and just say something really that for about this going up to 20,000ft, did you know you're going to be psychoanalyzed today by surprise? You know, look, becoming you is based on the premise that your purpose lies at the intersection of your values. Okay? These deeply held beliefs that you took the test on. And the values bridges the test that helped you find out your values, your aptitudes, which is what you are uniquely good at, what your wiring makes you good at, both intellectually and emotionally. And then the third sphere, which is your interests. And you know, for a lot of people, they struggle with their interests. They're like, okay, I got the values down, I got the aptitudes down, but everything interests me. Or nothing interests me. Or two totally diametrically opposed things interest me. Like, I want to be a country vet and I want to be a tech entrepreneur. Okay? I call that the cowbell syndrome, because you just can't do both at the same time. You're a very interesting case in that you're interest presented very early. I mean, this is a sliver of. And you're right. You're lucky. And you were so interested that you literally came home from school. Where were you getting the fashion to dress up in? Like, were you just, like, getting it locally and then styling it or how'd you.

Most of it was thrifted, actually. I would go to Goodwill or, like, Salvation army with my sister, and we would just go for hours and buy a bunch of stuff for, like, a dollar and style it.

Fabulous. All right, so what happened then? Oh, your mom's taking pictures, you're posting, and people at school are like, she's weird. And you just were like, that's too bad, right?

Yeah. And it's like the best thing I've ever done in my life was keep going after that. It changed my entire life after just facing, like, some criticism early on and keeping and going on with my passion. So I'm really, really happy that I did that. And I applaud.

I think you make. You make it sound very easy. It could not have been easy, but.

It was so fun.

You were like, I just loved. I mean, I don't want to, like, you know, put words in your mouth, but you were a little bit like, screw them, I mean, or forget them. Okay, forget. All right. So then you. No wonder you applied to fit. This is the Fashion Institute of Technology here in New York City. The best fashion, I mean, many think, in the world. So you ended up at fit. What happened?

I ended up at fit.

You were with the people just like you.

Yes, and I loved it. And after my first semester, Covid hit. So I went to one semester in person at FIT in the beginning, and then one semester, my last, like, senior year semester in person, and that was it. I was online the rest of the time, but I stayed in New York.

And.

And this was the year that TikTok came about. And, you know, because I had been posting on Instagram and on this blog for so long, it was very natural to just start posting, you know, the content that I was typing up and putting in a blog post and making a video of that. So I started doing that. Yeah, I was on a very tight budget. I moved to New York with, like, basically no money. So I was on a super tight budget. But I was still just, like, having the time of my life.

Okay?

I had the best time. And so I started making videos on TikTok about how to live in New York for Dirt Cheap.

Okay.

And how to have the best time. Like my budgeting hack. And they just kind of took off.

I mean, was it all at once or was it slowly at first?

It was all at once. I posted a video about what I spend in a day and, like, some budgeting hacks, and I woke up to 100,000 followers overnight.

What is it now on TikTok?

1.5 million.

Yeah. Yeah. All started while you were, like, at Goodwill in a way. So kind of a rip to be in school during COVID wasn't it? But then you were posting and what was like when it started taking off? Can you remember what you thought? Did you think, this is it, this is the best thing? Like, what were your thoughts as it was happening? Like, pinch me or what?

I thought it was very cool, but at the time, it was not what it is today. I mean, now people, it's so easy to recognize that when you gain followers and you have an audience, you can make money from it and you can monetize. But at the time, I mean, people were not monetizing on TikTok like they are today at all, if even at all. I mean, it was probably about a year after I gained a significant, like, couple hundred thousand of followers that I started making money from it. Because at the time, I mean, it just wasn't really a thing. And brands weren't hopping on as easily. It was just kind of like a fun app. People were dancing, lip syncing.

Right. That's how I. I have nothing on TikTok, but when I first started, I danced like, I got, like, during COVID and we danced on TikTok. So question for you. With the monetization.

Did they come to you or did you go to them? Like, how did it start? Did you think, wait, hello, I can monetize this? Or were you sort of surprised that monetization was available to you? I mean, I'm just thinking about there's a moment in our lives where we get very deliberate about what we want, and I'm wondering, I'm trying to sort of suss out when that deliberate moment happened for you where you went from being content creator to business person in a way. I mean, how did it happen?

I mean, it started, I would say, not even in 2020, but in 2021. And a few brands had approached me, very little amounts of money. And this is when I started to practice, like, negotiating. And I would be like, okay, maybe I can get like a hundred dollars more from them.

Yeah.

And I would start kind of playing this game. And after a bit, I signed to a manager. Yeah, I'm still with them today. They're incredible.

Yeah.

But that is when my business really took off.

Okay.

And I had That I just had.

To ask you who was advising you. It was like, you know, were you going to your folks or. But you got a manager, so that kind of. All right, so let's fast forward to. It was going along wonderfully, but somewhere along the way, what made you think maybe I should go to business school? Like, what, what happened? Like, what was that about?

So I graduated from FIT in 22 and I posted full time content for three years. And they were incredible years. And it was really so amazing. I mean, I got to experience things that I never imagined I would. And I really, like, it changed my financial situation 100%. My life had been completely changed. Like, the life that I live now is so far from what I grew up with and so far from what I ever expected to happen. So I really kind of soaked it all in.

I just want to interrupt here to say, basically, you just started getting incredible brand deals, correct? Yeah, with incredible brands. By the way, like, everything I watch on your Instagram, I immediately want to go get like Louis Vuitton lipstick. I mean, it's amazing, right? And so you got some great deals and you were doing this full time for three years. This is, for many people, the dream. Yeah, but was it not for you?

Oh, I mean, I really still am living my dream. I'm so lucky to live the life that I do. It's so incredible. But I am always just like burdened by, like, what can I do next? I need to do more. And, you know, I found myself sitting in these rooms that I never imagined I would be in, sitting at these shows, you know, getting to meet these incredible people that were so high up at brands. Like, these are amazing opportunities. And I understand that some people work their whole career to get to this point. I to have these opportunities. And I was so lucky. I mean, I was so young. And I just remember thinking, I want to be in this position for as long as possible. And you know, when I'm in these spaces and I have these amazing opportunities, I want to be as educated as possible about what's going on behind these businesses that I get to work with so intimately in a social media capacity. But I don't really know anything about the business behind them or how they work. And my friend, who's very, very smart, one of my best friends, she said to me one day, she's like, why don't you go back to school? And it was like, that's it? Yeah, it's genius.

Yeah.

And I started studying for the GMAT that night.

And you thought, like, I'M in these rooms and I want to know what's in the mind of the people I'm negotiating with. And. All right, so let's. And so business school. Has business school met your needs or expectations? I mean, are you learning that stuff?

Yeah, it's been incredible.

What's your favorite class? I want to say for the record, you've not taken becoming you, but that's okay.

I can't get in.

You can't get. No, I mean, like, look, you're in this special program for luxury and fashion and you're there, you do it in one year. There's no room. I mean, it is a rare day that I get somebody from your program in my class. But anyway, we're doing becoming you together right here. So what's been your favorite class so far?

You know, I think I thought I would love my finance classes more than.

I actually, I'm sorry, but even people in finance don't love finance.

And I got there and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm happy I know this now, but I never want to work with this ever again. But I think I'm more interested in the things like consumer behavior. I find that so fascinating.

It's really interesting.

Starting to take like AI classes, which are scary, but I feel like I need to know this.

I know. All right, well, I wanted what I. So I'm glad that you're getting a lot out of it. I'm sorry I won't have you in class, but let's talk about your values because the values tell a story. And the values bridge as a tool took me four years to develop it. It actually took me a whole lifetime to develop it. But I developed it because when I was teaching becoming you and before we got into the podcast or you, you mentioned to me your friends like the class and I'm really glad they did. But I, like you wanted to keep elevating what I was doing and I thought I'm not getting close enough and precise enough about my students values. And so I ended up creating the values bridge and it's, it's been a wonderful addition to what we do in becoming you. And I'm so glad you took it. So I think I have your values here. So let's talk about it. So look, your top value is a top value we usually don't see as a top value. Okay. It's really high for me and it's interesting. It's. You've, you have a, you have a very big tie across your top five and so your top value is radius, which is this desire to have systemic change, to change the world, to make the world a better place. That's typically how people talk about radius, but it's tied with a desire to help people. Non sibi. And.

I have no value judgment around values. But these are beautiful values. I mean, I think all values have their beautiful moments. But tell me, like, you have a. I will add that your authenticity gap on radius is high. And by authenticity gap, what I mean is there's two. There's something you need to know about values. You can have a value, hold it in your heart, want it very, very much, but that doesn't guarantee you're living it. And so the gap between how much you have and how much you're living it, we call an authenticity gap. So I often have students who come to me on, for instance, the value of voice, which is authentic expression, and they say, this is my number one value. And I have a 100% gap, meaning they're not expressing their voice at all. That's very high. With radius, Your gap is 54%, which suggests to me that there's so much more change to the world you want to do than you're currently doing. Does that resonate?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I was interested to see that those were my top two as well.

Yeah.

And I think this is definitely something that's come with gaining an audience, too. I think when I meet, I have, like, an almost 98% female audience. It's a lot of women that are following me. I don't really, like, put out content that I think appeals to men, but so I have a lot of amazing women and young girls that follow me, and I just want to be, like, the best person for them to look at. And it means a lot to me to be a good influence on the women that follow me.

What would you like them to know?

Well, I hope that what I'm doing with, you know, showing my education and going back to school and choosing to invest my money in this and furthering my knowledge. Like, I hope that that is an inspiration.

Yeah. To some woman, it is inspiring because you could have kept doing what you were doing, and instead you said, I'm going to go sort of make my playing field larger. I mean, do you ever think, you know, when I see this, you know, what I think as a person who teaches becoming you, is I think there might be a piece of you, and maybe I'm wrong, but that says that when you're in the room negotiating and talking to people, with big brand deals from big companies that maybe someday you'll, you'll be on the other side of that table.

Yeah, I would love to be.

Okay.

I would love to be.

And I think that that's what's going on there. I think that's it. You have luminance as a, as a value that's high, that's fame. I get it. And you know, in a way it must be one of your values because nobody becomes famous by accident, you know, unless, oops, they really become. And it's not what you want but I mean you have to work hard to gain a kind of renown. And you have worked hard and I'm not surprised work centrism is such a high value for you. It's your fourth value and it's just loving work for work's sake. And so I asked you earlier about, I think before we were even on about your summer vacation and you did go and relax. I mean you went to Switzerland and relaxed and you do have eudaimonia as a value. But compared eudaimonia being self care, recreation and pleasure but for compared to your generation, it's lower than most people. So talk a little bit about your relationship with work.

I love to work. It's my favorite thing like in the world to do. And I think I'm so lucky that I just love what I do and I'm really passionate about it. But I've kind of always been this way even when I was really young.

Think about it, when you come home from school and like put on outfits and have your mom take pictures and then you blogged about it, I mean that's work. Like you put yourself to work really early, right? And so I think that you probably are not in circles like this. But I mean there is work centrism in general for Gen Z is not a high value. It's 11th or 12th and so you have it up there in the top five. But for you it's just this natural right wellspring. You like to work. I always used to say I to this day have very high work centrism. If there was an eighth day, I'd work on it also. I mean it's fun but I have.

To acknowledge that I think I'm just in such a lucky position in that I'm so blessed. I have an incredible way of making money, I guess. And I think if I hated what I was doing, it would be much, much lower. I think that's a testament to, you know, how amazing my job is and the amazing Perks that come along with it.

It's hard to listen to you and not think that you majors. It's not all luck, you know, it's like I. Sometimes I play golf with my women friends. I love golf. And, you know, if you play golf, you're from Florida.

I don't play golf.

I highly recommend anyway. And a woman, a great golfer, who's. Who's worked her ass off practicing for like 20 years, will hit a gorgeous shot and we'll all go, great shot. And you know what they always say, same thing. So just lucky. And I'm like, no, actually not lucky. Why don't you try saying, I worked for that? And thank God, that feels so good. I earned that shot. Right? And so I love. Look, I love that you love what you do, but as an oldster here, I'm thinking you're lucky, but you're good. And so. And you worked hard. And you worked hard. All right, so your top values, just to review here, radius the desire to impact the world in a positive way. And I hear what you're saying is like, look, I've got these young women who follow me, and I. I want to do right by them. Non sippy. This goes hand in hand with this desire to help other people, which is a unique thing, and maybe a unique thing in fashion, luminance, work, centrism. Yeah. And eudaimonia. All right, so then I want to. You've got some moderate values. They're not as interesting to me as talking about your peripheral values. And these are the things that we would say in the big picture just matter less to you than everything else. And it doesn't mean they don't matter to you.

But they matter less. And so it's interesting. One of them is agency, which is this desire to control decisions and events and really to drive outcomes. Do you work with a team?

Yeah, I have an amazing team.

That's it. There's your relatively lower agency. I think people who work very comfortably in teams love their teams, want their teams need their teams rely on. Their teams are generally low agency. I'm also low agency.

I also just have so much trust in them. They really understand me and they see my vision and they believe in, like, these decisions that I make for myself. So I have so much trust in them, and that has made the biggest difference.

Yes, well, you can have trust in them because you have lower agency. Because people with very high agency, they gotta, you know, they don't want anybody to be the boss of them. And so, I mean, I have Been my whole life surrounded by people with high agency. And I've always thought, thank goodness I don't have those feelings in me. And look, there's a time and place for it. We are all very complicated people. All right, you have some lower peripheral values, but the one I want to talk to you about the most, that's down in your at number. Down at. I think it's number 13, is our newest value, which is belovedness. Okay, so for those of you who are just learning about belovedness from my newsletter and other different ways we've been communicating about the new value of belovedness. This is romantic love. Now, I had thought for a long time that for the entire development of the values bridge that we had covered romantic love with two other values, family centrism and belonging, which is love for friendship and community. And look, all academic constructs are tweaked with and are adjusted. The other Values Inventory, the sort of standard in the whole academic field. It's called the Schwartz Values Inventory, and it came out in 1990. It's been revised seven times. So here's my first revision, and that is that we needed to account for a different kind of love, and that is the desire to have a romantic partnership be the organizing principle of your life. I'm going to raise my hand and tell everybody it's the dead last value. For me, it's number 16. Now, I had a seismic event that happened, which, I mean, I think belovedness was probably number one or number two for me when my husband was living. And then I don't believe values change all that much. I've said that many times. I'm looking and working very hard on the research that would either confirm or refute that. I do think your values are pretty set by your mid-20s. I do think belovedness was very high for me. And then I think when I lost Jack, belovedness just went down to the bottom. And I don't know if it will always stay there. There would have to be another seismic event. I have high belovedness for Pierre, my dog. Honestly, he's like my little partner, so I know that's sad. There should be a value called dog centrism, and that's the. That's gonna be the 17th value. Okay, so you got it pretty low. And so talk a little bit about that. Like, I think you guessed it was gonna be low, and it was. Yeah.

I mean, I think I'm not in a relationship. I'm single. And so my priorities are just in so many other different places. Obviously, if I was That I think, but I also think, you know, at this age, I'm 24 years old and I have a lot of goals that I want to accomplish before I start a family. I mean, I don't see myself starting a family until at least 10 years. I have so much that I want to do before that. So I think that is something that takes up a lot of energy in your life. And it's hard for me at this point to like give my full focus to all of my other goals.

Right. I mean, look, this is the beauty of ranking your values. People want to say they've got every value equally all at the same time, but at the end of the day we don't and we can't because they there are opposing values that require trade offs. And if you have high goals around achievement and radius, it's really hard to have radius. I mean, in fact, one of the conflicts that's established in the values bridge is when you have high radius and high belovedness at the same time. Because it's really hard to make a relationship, an intimate relationship. The defining organizing principle of your life while also changing the world is the divine organizing. You can't really do it and you know, woe to the people who are trying it. They're gonna have, they're gonna have to work it out every day because you've to explain to your partner like, okay, but I'm gonna be gone for two weeks because I'm going to an important convention in, you know, wherever about poverty or whatever and I'm gonna. So it's a complicated thing. I think it, it feels to me exactly right for where you are in your trajectory. But you brought this up, which is sort of your. I say this all the time, that there's really three ways to live. I call these the three D. The three D's. Tell me what you think about this. The first D is default. And it is how many, many, many people live. And I'm guilty as charged. I lived like this for many years. Which is that we're purely reactive. We've got a general sense a little bit a smidgen of where we're going. We've sort of heard a lot of people telling us where we should go and what we should do. There's a lot of noise around us and all this other stuff and we just react, react, react. Okay, we sort of bounce. We're like a pinball machine. We go from thing and we can have lives that seem pre good, but that's a pretty exhausting way to live. And you probably know people who live by default. A lot of times there's periods in your life where you have no choice but to live by default. Like, young working mothers often just have to be in default because they may have the best laid plans. And then your kid gets croup and you're out for like a month. So after a while, though, we generally as human beings strive to live by the second D, which is deliberation. When we start to try to sprinkle some stuff on this defaulty world where we try to put into it like our. Our values and our goals and our dreams and our aptitudes and our interests, and we try to sprinkle it on and then.

We like that and it's a little bit more rewarding. It's a little less exhausting. And so we want to get towards this third D, which is living by design, where we are living according to our values and our aptitudes and our interests. And generally that happens kind of later in life because we usually have to go through default and deliberation until we get to design. You're a fascinating person because you're kind of in design right now. I mean, I think there's places you're going to tweak. But I'd like to talk to you more about the third D for you, which is if you. If it all, where do you want to go? Because even if you got it together as and things are really sizzling and feel good and you feel great about where you are, there's something out when you look ahead. It's not the same thing, I don't think. I mean, and your RADIUS score.

And its authenticity would suggest to me that there's something down the road. You even sort of hinted at it when you said, you know, I'd be interested in being on the other side of the table. So what do you think if you. About the next five or 10 or 20 years? Oh my gosh.

This is always such a hard question to answer because my life changes so drastically every year and it's never what I expect. Yeah, yeah. But you know, I love posting on social media. I think it's incredible. This is not something I will do forever. And I've been doing it for 10 years. It's amazing.

You're like. You're an OG, right?

Yeah, but. But it's not something that I think is sustainable for me at least to do forever, especially as I get older. I mean, I think at least in the way that I'm doing it now.

Okay.

So I Have a lot of boundaries in place about things that I share on social media versus things that I just keep private just for my own, I guess, mental health and sanity.

So.

And I think it's a really healthy way to do things. I think I've talked about this before online, but I think, like, social media right now really rewards oversharing for a lot of creators. And that's just not something that I really want to do. And so I have, like, things like, I don't talk about my personal life really in depth. I don't talk about relationships. I don't share these things online just so I can have them. Kind of sacred to me. But I think for a lot of creators to do this for a long time, especially with the content that I'm posting, which is like very much about my life, you kind of have to start opening up about these areas in order to, you know, stay relevant.

Right.

But my interest has always been to work in fashion. And, you know, I have this amazing thing going on with social media that I'll continue to do for as long as possible and hopefully merge into something with business. Yeah, I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I think, you know, when you don't know these things, educating yourself as much as possible.

Do you have any dream of, like, designing fashion?

No.

Okay.

I don't.

But the business of fashion is interesting.

To you, and I think a lot of people will sometimes put pressure on creators and say, oh, why don't you start a brand? You should start a brand. Just because you have a following doesn't mean you know how to run a business or you know anything about design. And so, yeah, I think I don't. That's not necessarily something that is a goal of mine right now.

Hmm. But some things, I mean, I feel like you're. You are absolutely in a period of discovery. Is business school helping?

For sure. And it's been so incredible. I mean, my cohort is amazing and it's so diverse, people from all over, and it's just fascinating to talk to all of them and, like, things that I thought I wanted to do, maybe I talk to them about what they do day to day, and I'm like, okay, I actually never want to do that.

Was anything that really surprised you about your values?

Hmm. I mean, I was pretty happy with my top five. Yeah, I think they're pretty reflective. I mean, even having something like luminance. Luminance. Is that what it is?

That is.

That is, you know, which is fame as your value. I mean, I think that one is definitely a reflection of how I've monetized so far. Because, you know, the bigger the audience, the more money you're making. Essentially.

It's like affluence. And affluence are the same as people like, oh, I don't want to admit that out loud, but like, you know.

I have no shame about that. That's one of my values.

And you shouldn't, because your values are your values. Yours to live and express. And also in your case, to inspire us all with. Let's play. Let's play a little game that helps us think about the future. Okay. It's a game I play with my students here. You get to get to. So it's three questions. We call this exercise Alpha Omega. And I asked three questions and they're very. They can be very. They seem very simple. Okay. But they're kind of of self regulatory. People are always taken aback by them. So the first question is, don't overbrain this. Okay.

Okay.

Just your immediate answer is going to be the best answer and then I will give you my thoughts on it. Okay. So the first question with Alpha Omega is, what do you want people to say about you when you're not in the room?

You've just left the room? What do you want them to say about you?

That I'm kind and hard working.

Okay. They probably do. All right. All right. So that's interesting. I think you're really living that right now. Kind and hardworking. Okay. The second question is, think about your childhood. What did you love about it and what did you hate about it?

I think I had a very amazing and supportive family who've supported me and my sister. I have a sister who is completely opposite to me. She is an artist, she lives on a sailboat. And my parents were just in full support of us going and doing whatever we wanted.

Way to go, mom and dad. Okay. And so what didn't you love?

I think I did not love the town that I grew up in. But we were talking about this earlier, before we started the podcast. I think there's something so beautiful about coming to New York from a city that you know is different. You didn't grow up here because you just love the city so much and you see the magic in it, and I really feel that way. Okay, so maybe that was a good thing.

Yeah, it was. I mean, there's a silver lining to it, but it was or it was not to no shade towards Orlando because it's a great town. It was just too small. For you. All right, here's the third one. Fast forward to your 75th birthday. You're old like me, and you're at this birthday. Imagine the birthday. And as you visualize it, what would make you cry from regret? What unfulfilled dream, what unfinished business would make you cry from regret?

I think not following truly what my heart wants.

And. Okay.

In all decisions.

Okay.

Business decisions, in relationship decisions.

So letting somebody else decide your future instead of you.

So there is a little agency going on there.

When you think about people whose lives you really admire, who would be on that list.

You don't have to take everything that's part of their lives. Just. Just anything. Like, you know, we do this also in class. Like, we call this game Whose Life do youo Want Anyway? And people have to come up with four or five or six people whose lives, if they had to trade, they would trade with. Mm.

I think right now, because so much of my life revolves around business, you know, our priorities in life change based on our surroundings and where we are. You know, I really admire women who are successful in business. Yeah. Because it's such a goal of mine right now. And it's just like spinning around my head all day long.

And when you see one, you think, oh, yeah, that looks fantastic. Right? I know that. I remember when I was starting out in business, and I would see these women who really knew what they were doing, and they were running large organizations, and they commanded the respect of the people and the businesses they ran. I remember thinking, I'm not. I'm so far from that. But that is like, they would be on my list, and my list has changed a lot. But, like, for instance, I really. To this day, I think Martha Stewart would have always been on my list, and she's still on my list because she has just lived her life and she's. I think she's unbelievable. Martha, you listening? Come on. Begging you. All right. Anyway, I think that you're amazing, and I'm so excited to see where your story goes next. I mean, I think it could go a lot of different directions. I will see you at graduation, right? Do you graduate with the rest of the business school class or you walk across the stage? I. I'm. What. How do you feel about wearing the gown? It sort of covers up everything. Good.

Oh, my gosh. I'm so excited to wear the purple gown. But it covers your.

Covers your. It covers your gray. You gotta go big on the shoes.

Yes, of course.

All right, so I. I did that when I gave the graduation speech. A few years ago, and I thought I.

Well, one thing I was like, really bent out of shape about was that all of my colleagues had the big floppy velvet hats because they were all PhDs and I did not yet have my PhD. And then I was getting my PhD at the time. And I can't wait till next year where I can be like them and wear the big floppy hat. But I also thought I really need to up my shoe game. And you'll be happy to know that I really did so. And they were purple. Find purple shoes. Find not tacky purple shoes.

I love it. I'm coming to you before graduation.

All right? Okay. It's been fantastic to have you on. I think you're a total inspiration. Thank you for sharing your values with us. And I'm so grateful you came on to becoming you. I'll see you in the halls. I mean, I mean, in our vertical campus of nyu, you know, we're in a. We're in New York City and our campus is not leafy and green. It's is concrete and brick. And I will see you around campus. Kate, thanks for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me. It was just so fun.

This show is produced by the amazing and fabulous Mikey Robley, Aliza Zinn, Issa Lamson, and Hal Reiner. And if you liked what you heard, and I'm on my knees praying that you did, follow me at Suzy Welch across all my platforms. Platforms everywhere. Instagram and LinkedIn and even Tik Tok. Although somehow Tik Tok doesn't seem to work for me. And don't forget to leave a rating and a review below because a lot of people have. And I love you people who have. It's not all my children, because there's just too many of them. I will see you next time. And until then, keep becoming you.

Sa.