The School of Greatness - 196 Build a Powerful Business and Team with Suzy Welch

Episode Date: July 1, 2015

"You don't really learn about team-building in a classroom." - Suzy Welch If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at lewishowes.com/196.

This is episode number 196 with New York Times best-selling author Susie Welsh. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Very excited about today's guest.

Had a lovely time connecting and interviewing Susie Welsh. And for those that don't know who Susie is, she's a former editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review, is a work-life columnist for O, the Oprah Magazine. She's a co-author with her husband, Jack Welsh, of the New York Times bestselling book called Winning and the Welsh Way, which published in Businessweek Magazine and internationally by the New York Times Syndicate. She is involved in several nonprofit organizations dealing with education,

homelessness, and animal rights. And she is a mother of four children. Very excited about this. I had a lovely time connecting with her, really talking about how to build such a successful company that she's built a massive company herself. Also, her husband has built one of the largest companies ever. largest companies ever, and what it takes if you're an entrepreneur, building a small team, building a large team, what are the principles, the characteristics, the intangibles that you need to bring to build a powerful team, no matter what the size is, how to continue to grow it, the key elements of making sure to keep everyone happy, how to hire the right

A-team players, and much, much more. I'm very excited about this episode. So without further ado, let me dive in and introduce you to the one, the only, Susie Welsh. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about today's guest. Her name is Susie Welsh. How are you doing, Susie? I'm great.

Thank you. Yes. Thanks for coming on. And we know that there are some dogs in the room, so there might be some barking or some howling at some point, but hopefully we'll be able to keep it under control. All right. And what are your dog's names, by the way? Well, there's a Happy is my dog.

And then this summer, I'm taking care of my daughter's dog, Chrissy. So we've got a little dog pack going on. Okay, cool. Dog pack. And I'm excited about this because you've got a new book out, right? And the book is called The Real Life NBA, Your No BS Guide to Winning the Game, Building a Team, and Growing Your Career. And you did this with your husband. And I'm curious, why did you guys decide to write this book and to write it together?

Well, we always write together. And we wrote a book together 10 years ago called Winning. And when we wrote it, we both declared, you know, this is the last book we're going to write together. And we felt like, you know, look, it was a great experience. I mean, you go into the valley of despair when you're writing alone as a writer. So you can imagine what it's like when you're writing a book with another person. And I've been a writer my whole life and writing is hard enough as it is. But we did it because we do everything together. And so we wrote Winning. And we said, okay, that's the last book. But we didn't stop writing together. We wrote columns for we had a column in Businessweek every week for five years. And we did a lot of writing together afterwards. And we had absolutely zero, zero, zero intention of,

can I be more clear of writing another book together because of a million different reasons.'s two people to write it, it would be you guys. And we were like, no, no, no. And then the idea started to grow on me for a bunch of different reasons. One is when we write books, we give the money to charity. And I thought this was a book that could do well and it would feel great to do that. But also because I thought, oh, it'd be really useful. I'd like to give it to my kids, frankly. I mean, I've got four kids in their 20s and I'd sort of like to, none of them are going to go get their MBAs. They've had enough with us of hearing about business for the past jillion years. And so I just sort of just think, okay, maybe we could do it. And then one night we were having a bottle of wine and maybe we broke into a second bottle of wine. And by the end of the evening, we decided we were going to go ahead with it and we decided to write it.

And so we did. Do you do better writing when you have a third bottle of wine or when you have more clarity? There's no – fortunately, when you write a book, all the fun stuff – it's like training for – you know this because you're an athlete. I mean when you're training for something, for a really big event, all the fun stuff stops. I mean we stopped life. We stopped life for a year. We stopped – I mean the only thing that stayed was running. If I couldn't – I'm a runner and if I couldn't run, then I couldn't write.

But that was it. I'd be done with running by 8 in the morning and then we'd start working. But everything else, everything else, done. What type of running? A marathon runner or just – Oh, God, no. Oh, God. Are you kidding?

In fact, I'm actually sort of a terrible runner who just – I'm an athlete and I was a college athlete and I started running, um, about 15 years ago when a trainer, um, uh, who I did a lot of lifting with said to me, um, you're just not fit enough to run. And I really got mad. And so I started to run and now I just, all I do, I'm 55 years old. Okay. I run, um, I run three miles a day as fast as I can. So for me, it's all about speed. Yeah. Oh, I like that. I like that. A little bit defensive. Every single day?

No, I sometimes, I do miss a day. I take Sundays off to go to church. Okay, gotcha. That's good. Well, I'm curious, as an athlete, myself, like you said, you're an athlete, what are some of the lessons you learned about from sports and being an athlete into this real world NBA and into winning and building a team. Do you apply a lot of these principles you learned from sports,

or is this more things you've learned in the business world? Let's be clear about two things. One is I'm not an athlete like you are an athlete. No, okay. You did competitive sports though, right? I did, but not like you. Okay, so let's just get that clear. Look, the book uses a lot of sports metaphors because my husband is truly an athlete and he has often used sports analogies to talk about how you get business right.

said the team with the best players wins and has said things like you want to be in the winning team's locker room and talked about the importance of fun. And also, I mean, it is one long running metaphor, sports with business. So, I mean, I brought some of my own sports stuff to it, but nothing like he did. And frankly, I did not run the largest company in the world for 20 years. And so I am good at doing the writing and the codifying of the ideas. And I ran my own small company. It was only a $100 million company compared to his, you know, $400 billion company. You know, when I first met Jack, I said to him, I was very proud. And I said, you know, my company has revenues of $100 million. And he said to me, he's a thick Boston accent. He said, it's a popcorn stand. And I was

deeply offended, but you know, look, GE was, um, the largest, not anymore, but it was when he ran at the largest corporation in the world and had 400,000 employees. And in fact, a hundred million dollars wasn't even a division, you know? Oh my goodness. How big was it? How much were they doing in revenue? What was it? It's I, you know, I wish I knew this right now, but when he was running it, it was, was it, it was, um, I don't want to give you the wrong number. What was the? I wish I knew this right now, but when he was running it, it was – I don't want to give you the wrong number. What was the rough estimate? $100 billion or something like that. I've got this.

It's crazy. Well, it was a huge company. I mean there's bigger companies today, but not by much. Right, right. That's impressive. So $100 million, he pretty much said that's – I can pull that out of my back pocket. He thought it wasn't even a rounding error. Oh, my goodness. That's impressive. So $100 million, he pretty much said, I can pull that out of my back pocket. He thought it wasn't even a rounding error. Oh, my goodness.

How do you – I mean, it's 60 people. He thought that was adorable also. It was a big plus lady with 60 people. Wow. Now, what was it like connecting with Jack when that – there was such a difference of, I guess, the size. Was the mindset and the principles that you had the exact same thing, but he was just able to scale it differently?

Or what was the difference from $100 million to $100 billion? Well, we met each other. I interviewed him. I was the editor of the Harvard Business Review then, and I interviewed him. Believe me, the last thing on our mind was the difference in the sizes of our business. We had many bigger problems to deal with because I was fired. Our world exploded, and it was a large international news story for much longer than any of us would have wanted or hoped for. And so the interesting thing is when the dust settled and we got married and our lives went on,

in fact, all of the principles of how he ran GE were the exact principles of how you run, not just the $100 million division of the Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation that I was running, but of a business with five people. I mean, along the way, my very best friend, I've had the same best friend since we were girls. And along the way in our lives, she has gone on and started her own business. And she started with just her and a telephone. And she's now grown it to a million dollar business.

But it has the exact same principles, good business principles that GE was being run by when Jack was running it. Sure. Got you. I'm curious, what is the difference between a college MBA and the real life MBA? What are the differences? You know, you're talking about a graduate school MBA, like, you know, and what we write about in the book. Look, we have nothing against real MBAs. I myself am an MBA and I am a proud graduate of Harvard Business School in 1988 and I loved my time there and I learned a ton. But I will say this, not everyone can take two years off, forfeit the money that you're making,

take two years off, forfeit the money that you're making, pay the exorbitant sum to go there to a business school and just stop your life. And frankly, not everybody wants to do that or you don't have the flexibility to do it or you don't get in, okay? I mean there's a million reasons why people would not go get a conventional MBA, okay? So the one difference is we're giving you something that you don't have to go to school for two years for. The other is, you know, the Real Life MBA, our book, we really endeavored to be absolutely about what you really do at work. You hire, you motivate, you get teams to work together, you have to let people go sometimes, you have to make decisions about whether or not you

take on a business or let go of a business. We want it to be as nitty gritty in the trenches. Look, when I went to business school, I learned things like regression analysis and I learned about the five forces. And you know, those things came in handy when I went on after business school. I was a management consultant and being a company for many years, not many, but several years. And those came in very handy as a high falutin consultant. But when you're running a business, you are not thinking about typically about regression analysis or the Porter's Five Forces. You're in there just trying to make

decisions about marketing dollars. And you're trying to figure out whether to buy or not buy a possible acquisition. You're thinking about two different candidates. Both of them have got strong points of who you're going to hire. You're thinking about the person you love who's underperforming and how you're going to let them go. I mean, you're thinking about putting together a whole bunch of people and making them bigger than the sum of their parts. That's called a team. And so we wanted the book to be just relentlessly focused on what really happens at work every day. And how much of business school that you went to focused on what really happens at work every day. And how much of business school that you went to focused on building team and team building skills and leadership development skills with your team and managing energy?

How much of that was actually covered? Well, look, you know, I went to business school probably before you were born in 1986 to 88. And so business school was different then. I mean, I think that it was a lot more conceptual. And, you know, but I would say that the Harvard Business School education has always been a great education. You know, I'm sure we had some classes on team building. I mean, I remember the classes, for instance, on industrial marketing more because I learned so much in them. I mean, I went in, I had been a journalist for seven years and to learn what industrial marketing was,

you sort of remember the classes that kick your butt. Like I remember second year finance killing me. And so I remember those classes more. So I learned about team building for sure. But you don't really learn about team building in a classroom. Yeah, you don't. You don't. You learn about team building when you're sitting around a table and you've got two really smart people who you really value who hate each other's guts and you have to get them to work together i mean that's really team building that's really what you do when you're a manager that's really what it's what it's what goes on in a room do you have any experiences that you recall that were uh that were like that where you had to make a decision where you either let someone go who was an 18 player that couldn't learn to work with everyone

or or did you ever feel like you failed by not getting your team to work together? Um, God, so many times. I mean, I mean, I, you know, you really remember the failures, you know, don't you? I mean, I, I mean, I've had so many, um, over the years managing people. I mean, I've had successes too. I am proud of them, but I mean, I, um, when, um, and one of the ones that's very, very painful was that, uh, um that I was working on a project and I was hiring – this is recent actually – hiring a group of writers. And I brought onto the team a writer who I really respected and liked. And I actually knew him very well and I thought he was going to be the killer app. I thought this is the person we need to make the team hum.

And he came on. He just couldn't do the work. I mean he just couldn't work as fast as we needed. He couldn't grasp the concepts as quickly as we needed. He just wasn't buying into it. I don't know exactly what was going on. And I knew really quickly. I knew sort of within two weeks.

And I remember going into the kitchen where I just had a bad session with him. And I thought, oh, man, it's just not going to work. And it's, we're grinding to a halt because of this. So I went, I saw my husband in the kitchen and I said to him, we're having a real problem. And he said, well, Susie, you know, how many times have you written a column about or a chapter about when you know you've made a mistake, you got to let the person go and you got to let them go right away, you know? And, um, and I said, you do it. And and he said get out of here you know you go and you do it and you do it today and i had to go in and sort of just you know live by my own rules and it was terrible because i did respect him and he was talented it was probably a failure on my part not

somehow explaining the job to him um in a way that he could comprehend but the facts were the project was grinding to a halt and i had to move him along and replace him. And I did it, but it was, it was painful. And to tell you the honest truth, we, I probably lost the friendship over it.

That's the very, this happens. But did the business thrive after that? Yes. The, the business of the right person came in and the business took off. We had other bumps on along the way. I then later about six months later,

again, hired and I had, was managing a lot of writers at that point. I hired another writer who was spectacular talent, spectacular talent and a big, big jerk. And he alienated everyone and he – I started to lose good people. And so the first good person went and I sort of, no, no, no, no. She had other problems. She wants to spend more time with her baby, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Then I lost another good person and I had to face into what was really going on. So I called him in and I said, you know, you think you're untouchable and you think we can't fire you because you're so good. And he said, that's right. You can't because you'll die. And in fact, I had to let him go just for that, just for saying that alone. But anyway, we let him go and we were very generous with him out the door. But I mean, once again, I took talent over humanity and you pay the price. When you talk about a wow team, what is a wow team and how do you build one? We've all been parts of WOW teams and it's when all cylinders are – everyone is aligned and everyone is playing with the same goal in mind and when you are greater than some of your parts, right?

When the whole team combines to make something magical and it is crazy great when you're part of one of those teams, isn't it? I mean it's amazing. And I remember when I sent my kids off into the workforce as they were graduating from college, you have a lot of hopes for them. But one of the hopes is that they get a good boss because a good boss can change your life and teach you so much. And the other was that they get part of a wow team.

And so how do you get a wow team? Well, you hire the right people, obviously with the right talents, but really you got to make sure everybody has the same values. obviously, with the right talents. But really, you've got to make sure everybody has the same values. Everybody buys into the same behaviors. I mean, you've got this mission, which is this is what we want to do. We want to build X, okay?

Every company has it. We have a dream. We want to build X. But then the question is, well, how do we get there? What are our values? Those are our values. Are they, you know, we are candid with each other. We share ideas across boundaries.

We know the appropriate time and place for humor. I mean there's a million different ways. We value speed or no, we don't value speed. We value urgency. Actually, we don't. I mean there are all different values. The thing – when a team is really working well is when everyone knows what the values are and buys into them.

Right, right. Man, it's just so much to learn about building a team over the years. And I mean, I'm building a team right now and I've been on multiple championship sports teams and I never had a job per se. It was always like little part-time gigs until I started my own thing. I've made so many mistakes over the years with hiring, with firing, with managing, with all that. It just seems like how do you get to – how do you understand these principles fast enough? Or do you have to make a lot of these mistakes along the way and then you could continue to make mistakes until the day you die?

Well, a bit of both. I mean, you know, you can, I mean, one of the reasons we wrote the book is so that you don't have to make all the mistakes. I mean, and so, you know, learn from our experience. I mean, we have combined something like 80 something years of experience. You can learn from, you know, Jack's phenomenal experience and building the most successful company in the world. And you can learn from my experience of being an editor of a magazine that wrote about all the successful companies. But you will make mistakes. I mean, you know, we still make hiring mistakes.

And the thing to understand about hiring is it's sort of a, you know, if you're batting, you know, 50% getting the right people on the first try, that's pretty damn good. Hiring is really hard because everybody presents well in the interview. I mean, I actually, I started this new thing recently hiring where I actually, I give people tests before they come on board. Now for me, I'm hiring writers and editors, but I actually give them writing tests, editing tests, social media tests. I say, here's the social media, here's the event. How would you, how would you play this on social media? I mean, I've, I've actually started to get much more – maybe I should put it this way.

I've started to get much less touchy-feely about hiring. And the one thing I would say about hiring that none of us do enough is call the references and really check the references. And you know what happens when you call the references? I never do that. Right, right, right. You want to get – and if you do it, it's so awkward. You want to get off the phone as fast as possible because you want to hear what you want to hear. And you've already made up your mind about the person.

You're excited. You just want to hire it. You need someone now. Yep. That's right. But you know what? You can save yourself a whole world of hurt by calling references and calling and calling. I mean I've had people call me about people who were not good and I've heard

them try to get off the phone with me as I've said, you know, you're not doing it in a malicious way, but you're saying, you know, you may want to ask this question or you may want to ask that question. Um, and, uh, but that, that little part of it of calling the references and really digging in, it's an awful chore, but you could save yourself a lot. When you end up letting someone go after you've hired them, do you look back at it and say, I saw the signs before I hired this person that it wasn't going to work out? Or is there ever a time where you're like, this person was going to be a great fit? I did the research, I dug into the referrals, and I don't know why it's not working out. I have a bit of both. I mean I've hired so many people over the years.

I've had – one of the best people I ever hired, somebody who ended up working out amazingly well and actually was so talented that we moved her then into our company. So she left working for me and moved into our larger company and she has gone on to an amazing career. It doesn't work for me anymore because she was just too good and outgrew the job. I actually almost fired her in the second week because I thought it wasn't working out. And my husband had the foresight to say, just hold on another two weeks. Just give her another chance. I almost actually let her go.

Can you – I mean, what – I know. I know. So you live and learn and people are inexact creatures. And so you have to live and learn. That's it. And now I think I read somewhere that you and Jack have been in business for a combined 81 years. Is that correct? I guess so. Okay. Long time. Yeah. Yeah.

What's the biggest difference today in business from when you first started your career or from when Jack first started? What's the differences you see? What's available? What's different? What's possible? I mean, it's insanely different. I mean, look, one of the reasons we wrote The Real Life MBA after writing Winning, Winning was 10 years ago and it's changed so much in 10 years. So to talk about what it was like when I started up or when Jack started up, we're talking about you were still writing on a typewriter. So let's not go there.

We can talk about in the past 10 years, work has become phenomenally just completely digital and technology is the driver. Technology used to be sort of like IT was like the guy that nobody really liked who had sort of an office in the basement and you called him and you held your nose and you hated IT. I mean, now nobody would even say the words IT. You know what I mean? It's like – so the world is vastly more digital and it's so much more global. So, I mean, you just – it's faster. There's more partnerships. There's more – I mean, every single thing, if you just think about the past 10 years.

And you know what? I'll say this. I am – I think probably like you, an incredibly optimistic person. Like I'm a very upbeat person. The class is always half full. I will tell you that work is much harder than it used to be. I'm not one of these whining, moaning, complaining. Work is harder because there's so many more players. And let's just take the music industry, okay?

And I pick it because one of my kids is in the music business, and so I think and talk with him about it a lot. I mean, if you just think, the playing field changes every day. People who were competitors yesterday are partners today. People who were competitors yesterday are partners today. And how people discover music used to be very, very simple. You were sort of marketed to by a machine that existed within the label. And then you went to a record store.

I'm sure you don't even know what those are. And you buy a record. OK, now actually vinyl is coming back. Vinyl is sort of cool now. OK, now I know. I actually gave my kid some vinyl the other day. It's like, oh, God almighty. I wish I hadn't thrown it all out. So anyway, so now, you know, you described the music industry to me. I mean, it is crazy, you know, how Sony relates to Spotify, relates to Snapchat, relates to, you know, how people discover music. You know, I just saw a chart

the other day and it showed how consumers discover music and it compared it sort of year over year for the past five years and there's no trend line. I mean it's crazy how much it changes. And so when I say business is harder, it's because of technology. Every industry is in a state of flux like you cannot believe. Constantly evolving. Constantly innovating. And not even just evolving. every industry is in a state of flux like you cannot believe. Constantly evolving. Constantly innovating. And not even just evolving, sometimes constantly disrupting.

Yeah. You know, like what would happen, you know, if what Uber says comes true? Like Uber's mission is that in 10 years, no one owns a car. That's crazy. Okay. I mean, imagine the industries that would disrupt. And the, you know, which is, you know, I think it's very funny when I hear people talking and fixating on what kind of job they want. And I think, why would you think about your job?

Your job's not even going to exist in five years. Think about what, you know, what life you want or what industry or what product fascinates you or what, you know, what problem intrigues you go there because to think about a job, I mean, the only jobs is sort of, you know, like a typical job, like a nurse. Okay. Even that is changing wildly as robots are coming in and doing a lot of things that nurses used to do. So you gotta, you gotta change your mindset and it's hard. So that's when I say it's hard. That's what I mean. It's like, I just want something to not be changing. Well, the only constant is change, right? Well, there are some things that don't change. It's true. You talk about it being hard, and I definitely agree with that. But at the same time,

it's also easier than ever for entrepreneurs to be successful because there are so many other opportunities to get into business. There are so many more ways to be discovered. There are so many more ways to find and build an audience of potential customers because of the digital marketplace and social media. You could be a musician that doesn't have a chance and then you get on the new Snapchat, you build a huge following and now you have a multi-platinum record or something in two years. Right. The opportunities are amazing. You're right. But that having been said, and I think one thing I love is these sort of self-made digital entrepreneurs like yourself who have just created industries around themselves out of, you know, out of just their own talent and their ability to connect with other people.

I think that's fantastic. But here's the thing about that is that at the end of the day, to do that and get that right and to succeed at it, you have to have a unique talent. You have to have a unique perspective. And if you're an entrepreneur, you have to have an idea. I mean, one of the things that blows our minds when we were going around, we did a 21 city book tour and we went to a lot of schools and afterwards, you know, you're signing books and students will come up to you and we'll say, Hey, so what are you doing? As you're signing the book, you're making conversation. And, and they'll say, I'm not sure yet, but I want to be an entrepreneur. And we always say, fabulous. What's your idea? And sometimes you get an idea

right back at you, but you know what? Not always. And they'll say, well, maybe something in technology. And it's wonderful to want to be an entrepreneur. And there are all these opportunities for entrepreneurs, but at the end of the day, you've got to have an idea. And then beyond that idea, you've got to be able to execute it better than everyone else, right? Yes. There's a little margin for error in execution if you've got a really spectacular idea. Yeah. But you've got to be able to – yes, you've got to be able to execute it. And it comes all back to being able to execute it with a wow, powerful team.

You can't execute it on your own. I mean it's really hard to achieve greatness on your own in my opinion. Nothing good happens alone. Right? Nothing. So once you have the idea, you've still got to come back to what you guys talk about, which is building that winning team to execute and grow it and scale it to the next level. Yeah. Which it all comes back to that.

That's crazy. What do you think is – what if someone doesn't have an idea? And what if they're struggling because they're just out of college and maybe they've been working a couple of jobs for a few years or maybe they're ready to do something different. They feel stuck. They feel frustrated. They don't feel fully fulfilled and expressive of who they are and their talents. How would someone like that figure out a good idea to either start their own entrepreneurial journey or raise money for or any of those factors?

Yeah. I mean, I see this so often what you're talking about. I see it. Maybe it's because my kids are often what you're talking about. I see it. Maybe it's because my kids are right in this age area, but I think it's also because of the book and us traveling around and you meet wonderful people who are very focused and very directed, but you meet a preponderance of people who just don't know what they should do. It's almost like there's just too many choices. I mean, when I graduated from college in 1981, you either were a doctor or a lawyer. And then some fancy people went to go work in finance.

I didn't even know what finance was. But so there were doctors, lawyers, and people who went to go work on Wall Street and then they were going to have a Mercedes soon. And I was a real outlier because I became a journalist. And I remember my mother clutching her chest. I come from a family of Italians. My mother clutching her chest and saying, go to law school. You'll always be able to. And I was like, but I'm not interested in the law, mom. And so the answer that we give to this question is, it revolves around this concept called area of destiny. And we urge people to do the really

hard work, the really hard analysis of figuring out what their area of destiny is, and then going there. Just not think about jobs and to not think about industries really as much as to think about area of destiny. So just to explain that concept, the idea of area of destiny, we first came to it five or six years ago. We were a church and a pastor named Terry Smith was visiting our church. He actually runs a church called Life Christian Church in West Orange, New Jersey, Terry Smith. And he was preaching about living the abundant life. And he mentioned this term, area of destiny, which we immediately started to, in our minds, start to think about the business applications of it. And he talked

about the abundant life existing at the intersection of what you're uniquely good at and what you love doing. And so let's just step back from that for a minute and just talk about it. So everybody is uniquely good at something, okay, even though it may not feel like that on some days. But you're uniquely good at something. A person can be uniquely good at making strangers feel welcome or solving very complex math problems with two variables if there's such a thing. Or say in my case, I've always been sort of good at taking complex sort of academic concepts and boiling them down into very regular vernacular. So I mean, everybody's sort of uniquely good. And by uniquely good, I mean you're not the best person in the world, but you're better than the vast majority of people at something. And then if you think about that sort of superhighway, what you're uniquely good at, and then take

the other superhighway, which is what you love doing. Is it being with other people? Is it talking? Is it watching TV? Is it walking alone on a beach? Is it reading? Is it traveling, okay? If you think about your calendar over the past month, what were the things that you

were doing that just turned your crank, right? And you intersect that, what you're uniquely good at and what you love doing. It creates this beautiful, rich, emotional and intellectual real estate that is this area of destiny, okay? And if you can get there, and everyone can. I mean I've talked about area of destiny in front of, at this point, tens of thousands of people. And I mean, I love to look at the faces in the audience as people suddenly realize, oh yeah, well, I'm nowhere near my area of destiny, but I sure as heck know where it is. And so when you, if you're just coming out of college or if you're floating around and if you feel like you're in a suit that's too small or you just can't

breathe or you just hate the day, okay? You got to just sit down and think about what your destiny is. And sometimes, you know, when I say it's hard work, you know, you need to ask people, what am I uniquely good at? Or if you think you know what you're uniquely good at, you need to go ask people, am I uniquely good at this? And you need to just determine that. Then you start thinking about jobs and industries. Um, that's, that's the beginning.

That's the beginning. I like it. How important is it to have a coach? And do you believe in having coaches still today? I think, um, you know, there's coaches that you hire who sort of are alongside you, but actually what I believe in is that you gotta have, you gotta have a mindset that every single person, every single person in your life, and even people who are not in your immediate life, but people who you can read or see,

knows something you don't know. And you have to go in with this mindset that you can learn from everybody. Learn younger, older, wildly different people you even disagree with, you can learn from them. And so I sort of see every single person in your life as a mentor. I mean, people that you read, like I, I've like followed some journalists over my life. I consider them mentors. I, there's poets that I love. There's, I mean, there's all sorts of stuff that you just, everyone is a mentor. And so coach, a coach is a good thing, but that's only one person. And I think you need, you need a lot of coaches. Right. Me too. I believe in that. I mean, I believe that I have so many coaches

online. I don't even know they're coaching me, you know, just by learning from them and growing. Yeah. Now what about rituals and habits? How important are they in your life and in the life of entrepreneurs or people running businesses or people looking to get to the next level on anything for morning rituals, habits throughout the day, nighttime rituals? What do you do? Well, I would say that that's a really, really interesting question. I mean, I don't know anybody who has been very successful who isn't really disciplined. And so when you talk about rituals and habits, I think about discipline and

self-discipline and because that's what that is, that's doing the same thing. So for me, I mean, I am very, you know, I always run and I, and I, I have a whole slew of them. I mean, I, you know, I'm, I'm actually really, you know, I often joke with my kids, I'm your mother's such a bore because they can sort of look at their clock and they know exactly what I'm doing. And I mean, look, you got to shake it up. You got to be spontaneous. Jack and I have been to – we lost count. It was like we've been to 67 countries in the past 12 or 15 years and now we only go

and we've never been to that country before because we're trying to like see everything. And so you got to be spontaneous. You got to do stuff. You've got to say yes. I mean, you've got to have that mindset of yes. But there's something to be said for having this kind of order in your life because otherwise nothing gets done. And I mean, I have a very orderly way of writing.

But that's because I'm a professional writer. If I didn't have an orderly way of writing, like I'm always sort of mystified when people say they have writer's block. I was like, wow, I wish I could have writer's block, but I'm paid to be a writer. Right. You're very structured and organized. Yeah. Gotcha. How important is it to, you know, and one of the principles of my book, which is coming out later this year, is to live a life of service, to live in service and always be coming from a place of giving back. And it doesn't mean you have to give away all your money or all your time, but doing something on a consistent basis that is giving and serving others. How important do you think that is in your life and in a business that you run?

Well, I happen to be a Christian and so it is only giving. I mean, I do think you actually have to give away all your time and money. I don't think that you draw a line and you say, this is the time for me and this is the money for me. I think you give it all away. And that's how Jack and I live and it's what we really believe in. And so it is just service. We're called, I mean, not, I don't want to freak out your listeners or anything. I mean, but we're called by God to be constantly serving others. And I'm always weirded out when people talk about me time or, and it's like, who wants me time? What good is it? I mean, joy comes from giving. The more you give, the happier you are. I mean, I don't know, maybe because I'm an old broad, it's so obvious to me. But I mean, I don't, you know, why would you ever not give, give, give, give, give? I mean, all it does is make you feel good. And so you get something and they get something.

It's selfish is what you're saying. to do. And so I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, for me, there's a lot of organizations, not a lot, actually less than there used to be because I wanted to give deeper and to few organizations. So I'm on several boards and Jack is deeply involved in several charitable organizations. And it's not enough to give money. You've got to give your time. If you're not giving your time, it doesn't hurt enough. You also got to give your time. If you're not giving your time, it doesn't hurt enough. You know, you also got to give of yourself. And so for us, it's really important for me. My particular passion is animal welfare and animal rights. And so I'm deeply involved with that and really believe deeply that that's part of my calling.

Sure, yeah. How important do you think it is or how directly related is business success and personal health success? What do you mean? How important is it to master your body, your physical health, your physical health, your emotional health, your mental health? And does that affect the way you, your business

is successful or can you, can you be out of, can you be, you know, lazy and sloppy and, uh, you know, no, I'm just emotionally unfit and still have a thriving business. Here's the problem. Every now and again, right? The obvious answer is you have to be healthy. I mean, you have to be emotionally healthy. You have to be spiritually healthy. You have to be physically healthy to have anything go right in your life. Okay. So that everyone knows that, right? Here's the problem. Every now and again, we all see an incredible example of a person who is wildly unhealthy in every possible way who's wildly successful. And it tends to be people in the media. So like you had John Belucci and Blushi and you have all these stars who eventually they flame out and die or whatever or they crash and

burn and they go into rehab 20 times. But there is this brief and shining moment where they're unhealthy in every way with multiple marriages and with multiple marriages and multiple, you know, addictions and so forth. And they are doing spectacular work. Okay. And then people say, well, what's so good about being, you know, flossing my teeth when the people who are really successful or just live these extreme lives. And the thing is, they are the aberration, they are the exception. And it's usually, it usually doesn't end well. But there's just so much to be said for being healthy. And one of my favorite interviews I ever did when I was running HBO, Harvard Business Review, one of the fun parts of the job was interviewing CEOs.

And I interviewed Michael Eisner from Disney not long before he retired. And we had a long, great talk and we covered a lot of territory. We mainly talked about creativity, but at the end I said to him, you know, do you,

is there anything that, you know, any advice you would give me as I build my own organization? And I just sort of threw it out. There was just sort of this offhanded question. And he said, he sighed and he looked very weary. And he said,

yes, Susie, hire emotionally healthy people. And I have to say, I didn't get it at the time. I was young. I was in my 30s. I didn't understand. I mean, I was managing writers. And so basically I was surrounded completely by emotionally unhealthy people because most writers are nuts and the better writers are nutsier.

And so I didn't even know what he meant because I was just, I had no choice. I was hiring, you know, most writers have got, you know, emotional issues and I don't want to generalize too much, but writers will know what I'm talking about. So, and it took years for me to understand where he's coming from and that a person who is very, very talented, but emotionally healthy can destroy an organization. And, um, a boss who was emotionally unhealthy can destroy people.

Um, and so, uh, he was so right. And I've come to see the wisdom of those words so many times and that, um, it's incumbent upon us as leaders to be emotionally healthy and physically healthy and to,

and to help those around us become that way too. Yeah, that's great. I've got a couple of questions left for you, Susie. And one of them is what's the biggest lesson that, um, Jack would say,

your husband would say that you've taught him over the years. Hmm. Uh, one, one about business and one about life. Uh, I think about business and one about life. I think about business. One of the things about Jack was that when he was running GE, he worked with a lot of engineers and business people. And I think one of the things about business that I've taught him is about the management of artists and creativity because that's the background I had come out of.

artists and creativity because that's the background I had come out of. And so he has been always very receptive to what I've said to him about managing the creative process. But it's very hard to teach Jack anything about business because he's so unbelievably knowledgeable and wise. And then about life, one of the great things about any good relationship is how much you teach each other I mean he Jack is you know we just taught each other so much just about about I mean I think that

perhaps if he was to answer that question he would say that I taught him a lot about parenting and he has learned a lot by watching me raise the kids and he's been a great stepdad to them as well.

Awesome. I like that. If you had one piece of paper and three things you got to write down, the three truths that you've learned about life over the years and everything else you've ever written, all your books and everything, no one had access to, but they had access to this one piece of paper with the three truths that you've learned about life. What would you write down as those three things? I would write down – the first thing I would write down is character matters. Character matters.

It's just we think about our performance. We think about our results. We think about so many things. But at the end of the day, it's the measure of our characters, how we touch the world and who we've affected and how we've affected them. So I'd say the first thing would be about mind your character. And it's hard because there's a lot of challenges to our character. And there's a lot of temptations to it. And believe me, not that I've been perfected it by any long stretch of the imagination, but I've gotten better at it over the years.

I mean, I have. I mean, by learning the hard way, you know how important it is. I have. I mean, by learning the hard way, you know how important it is. And I think the second thing I would say is, would be about kindness to each other in social media and um you want to come back mean and and it's a little microcosm of the world because if you come back with kindness and say i'm sorry you feel that way god bless you or whatever it freaks people out so much and it changes the tone of the conversation and i think that's how we should all live our lives with this sort of assumption of other people's best intentions and this know, being the person who smiles first and just trying kindness first. So that would be one.

And then, you know, I guess the third thing would just be love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love. I like that last one. You know what I mean. I think it's also, you know, if I can add to that, it's loving others and loving every experience. But also a lot of people, I feel like, don't love themselves. And they don't acknowledge themselves or they don't receive well the love. So I think that's something that I would add to your three things. I really appreciate you sharing those.

If you had three books that you could leave behind that weren't yours to the world that would share the message you want them to understand, what would those three books be? Well, the Bible would be the first one. It's all in there for me. So I think that's an incredibly important book. There's a book of poetry by Adrian rich that I would probably leave behind. Um, uh, it has a poem in it. Um, that's about the, um, uh, Russian ski team that perished during the Olympics in the eighties. And it's a, it's a, it's a incredible poem about how, um, important relationships are because the team chose to, I'm sorry to be morbid on you, but the team chose to die together rather than to send some off to save lives and so, and try to save lives and they chose to die together. And there's just something to me, that poem is one of the amazing sort of experiences of my life is my sister-in-law

is a professor of poetry at Wellesley. One time I mentioned this poem to her. It's a very complicated, rich, complex poem. And I mentioned to her in passing when we were watching our kids at the beach one summer weekend. And she stood there and she, with a baby on her hip, recited the entire poem for me from beginning to end. I almost fell to my knees in shock and awe. And a third book, I wish I had some time to think about this. There's so many books, um, uh, um, I guess peace like a river, um, the novel, uh, peace like a river, which is, uh, well, you know, not like this is a big original thought.

It won the national book award a few years ago, and it's a beautiful book about believing in the impossible. I love it. Thank you for those. Before I ask the final question, Susie, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge you. One, thank you for coming on here, and I want to acknowledge you for all the gifts that you give to the world.

I love hearing how you constantly give and give and give of your time, of your wealth, hearing how you constantly give and give and give of your time, of your wealth, your information, your love, and your knowledge, continuing to write and educate others how to get to the next level in their life, how to win the game, how to build teams, how to get the job, all these different things. I really acknowledge you constantly doing the work and serving others even when you don't have to. So thank you for all you do. And it means a lot to me. You're really nice to say that. Final question is what's your, or actually before I ask the final question, I just want to make sure everyone goes to get a copy of this book, The Real Life MBA by Jack and Susie Welsh. I'll

have it all linked up here on the show notes where you guys can go get it, but it's available in any bookstore and online. And I'll give you guys that link here in just a second. But before that, I want to ask you the final question, and it's what's your definition of greatness? Definition of greatness would be generosity. I mean, when you have this incredible generosity to make other people around you grow and succeed and your life is focused on other people finding their best lives, that is greatness. The giving of yourself to make other people great, that's greatness. Susie Welsh, thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate you. Oh, well, thank you so much. This was really fun.

There you have it, guys. Thanks again for checking out this episode. Make sure to head back to the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 196. Share this episode with your friends. If you know a couple of friends who would be inspired by Susie's message and by this interview and by the book, then make sure to check it out. We'll have all of her social media and website links up on the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 196. Very excited. Thank you guys so much for being part of this community.

Keep spreading the word of greatness. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Outro Music Thank you.