Tiger Sisters - Stop Living a B+ Life: How to Find the Life You Actually Want | Suzy Welch

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Thank you to OneSkin for sponsoring this video. Get 15% off OneSkin with the code TIGERSISTERS at https://www.oneskin.co/TIGERSISTERS #oneskinpodCheck out our matcha brand, Sisters Matcha at www.sistersmatcha.com Sign up for our newsletter here: https://cherieluo.substack.com/subscribeWhat if the reason you're stuck in life isn't a lack of talent, ambition, or opportunity, but the fact that you've been living someone else's definition of success?In this Director's Cut episode, we're revisiting one of our more impactful conversations with Dr. Suzy Welch, a bestselling author, NYU professor, and creator of the Values Bridge framework (link below). Tune in for lessons on:✅ How to identify your core values and spot your "authenticity gap"✅ Why so many people end up living someone else's version of success✅ The surprising role values play in relationships, dating, and compatibility✅ How to know if you're settling in your career or personal life✅ The framework Suzy uses to make better financial decisions✅ The power of cutting your losses and avoiding the sunk-cost fallacy✅ Why there is no such thing as a "last best deal"✅ The wisdom Suzy gained from grief, resilience, and starting overWhether you're questioning your career path, rebuilding after a setback, or simply trying to understand yourself better, this episode will leave you with powerful questions and action items to apply right away.Follow Suzy @suzywelch and check out The Values Bridge at https://thevaluesbridge.com/ Timestamps:00:51: Introduction 01:47: How to watch this episode04:50: Introducing Dr. Suzy Welch06:35: 3 main data sets of Suzy’s ‘Becoming You’ class07:20: Calculating your authenticity gap08:12: Suzy analyzes Cherie and Jean’s core values11:50: Breaking down the “eudemonia” value 17:40: Analyzing Jean’s top value (“beholderism”)24:29: Analyzing the “belovedness” value29:34: The 4 things that destroy you living your own life35:20: How to know if you’re living a B+ Life39:20: The meaning of “balance” for each person 43:00: Suzy’s top 2 pieces of money advice 48:30: How Suzy balanced working with her partner 53:36: Suzy’s re-entrance to the dating scene59:00: Reinventing yourself as the world reinvents1:02:51: Jean and Cherie look back on Suzy’s frameworks1:05:30: Cherie’s biggest takeaway (“who’s life did I just live?”)1:09:24: Jean’s biggest takeaway on beholderism 1:16:27: Taking the Values Bridge each year 1:18:40: Fostering an abundance mindset1:21:30: The importance of cutting your losses1:24:14: Cherie’s mantra of DILMO1:25:18: Closing thoughts🐯👯‍♀️ We’re the Tiger Sisters — your Wall Street & Silicon Valley big sisters Decoding Money • Power • Love✨ New episodes every Monday | Shorts all week ✨💌 Want to partner with us? Sponsorships: [e-mail] trust us?▫️ Cherie Brooke Luo — 100M+ views demystifying tech, finance & MBAs▫️ Jean Luo — ex-Goldman Sachs, ex-Snapchat exec, 50+ AI patents, startup investor▫️ Together: 4 Ivy League degrees • built billion-dollar products • two startups — decoded for youWhat you’ll get (and keep):▫️ 🚀 Ivy League cheat sheets — no $250K tuition▫️ Personal finance playbooks (salary, investing, negotiation)▫️ Networking scripts behind $100M+ deals & job offers▫️ Real conversations with CEOs, operators & investors▫️ Mindset resets — clarity without the pricey coach▫️ Systems for career, money, and long-term growth💛 LET’S CONNECT~ CHERIE ~Instagram — /cherie.brookeTikTok — /cherie.brookeSubstack — cherieluo.substack.comLinkedIn — /cherie-luo~ JEAN ~Instagram — /jeanluo_LinkedIn — /jeanluo👉 Hit Subscribe & tap the 🔔, then leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts. It takes 10 seconds and makes a massive difference in helping new people discover Tiger Sisters.🛍️ Items:🍵 Sisters Matcha — www.sistersmatcha.com🌀 Everything else — https://amzn.to/3z0dx5b

confronting yourself sometimes is one of the hardest things you can do. It's one of the most painful things, but also one of the most revealing things and like forces you to grow. I think that the thing you've got to figure out is not how to have balance, but you've got to figure out what is your balance? There is no last best deal. Period. I love that one. I love it because we're moving towards abundance mindset. And when you say to yourself, there is no last best deal in that investment, in that house, in that relationship, in that opportunity. It just opens you up to so many more things that you could never have dreamed of. We are your Wall Street and Silicon Valley Big Sisters.

And we're a top 10 business podcast bringing late night sister talk meets boardroom strategy. Welcome to Tiger Sisters Podcast, Director's Cut Edition. Today we're bringing you one of our favorite interviews that we've had on Tiger Sisters podcast. We talked to Dr. Susie Welch about a year ago and you guys told us when the episode came out, it was one of your favorite conversations. And now we're bringing it back, Directors Cut edition, where Gina and I will play the episode and will give you our biggest takeaways and some of the BTS that we didn't get to share the first time round. So we get to dig in deeper with these directors cut episodes because when we actually do the interviews, you don't always have time

to like reflect on the conversation, right? Because we're in the conversation in the moment. But for these kind of director's cuts episodes, we get to think more about like, oh, this is what it was at the time. This was what I was thinking. And this is also what I'm thinking now. I would recommend watching this entire episode all the way through because it is chronological. We will play the Susie Welch episode. And after you'll have the conversation and BTS discussion between Gene and me. If you recently watched the Susie Welch episode and it's top of the dome for you, you can skip.

You can use your scrubber on Spotify or you. YouTube and skip directly to the BTS conversation. I absolutely loved this interview, this conversation with Susie. You'll see in the first half of this episode, Gene and I very much vulnerably open up about our values bridge. Basically, we took Susie's test that she created with a team of scientists. This is what her PhD was on. And we share basically our top values and why they matter to us. So we completely dissect that in the first half of the episode with Susie. It was basically like office hours with her and you get to see a little bit more about Jean and me what we care about and why we care about things. In the second half of the conversation with Susie, she basically goes in and talks through like the hard things that

she's been through in life and the advice that she wished she had and given to her younger self. So we talk about financial questions, life questions, career questions, even love questions. And so I think this episode and this conversation, this interview with Susie is chock full of takeaways that you can apply immediately to your life right after this. Yeah. And one of the biggest pieces of feedback that we got from this episode is that we had people right into us after this episode. And they're like, I took the values bridge test and it changed my life. Right. Like people were like, I didn't realize this about myself or like I had a sneaking suspicion, but I never really acknowledged this part of myself and like even if you don't take the test, I think listening to the episode and understanding

this sort of framework that she's created really helps you put a name to certain things that maybe you've been feeling about yourself or that you've been approaching life a certain way, but you're like, oh, I didn't know that there was a word for it. I didn't know that there's like this more structured way to think about it. And it just really helps. I think like we kind of put ourselves out there as two examples that are. case studies that are at times similar, but then also at times contrasting in our values. And I think it's really helpful to see us and like compare yourselves and be like, oh, well, I'm more like Gene in this way or I'm more like Sherean this way. Or like actually I'm different from both of them in XYZ way. I will also say that I, it's a great test to take with a partner too because I forced.

the person that I'm dating to take this values bridge test and we could really see where we had a lot of values line up and also where our values differed. Also, my friend Hannah, she took the test and she texted me. She's like, yes, my husband and I took it and it was amazing to like see exactly where the crux of our conversation, you know, can come from. And it gives you a vocabulary to talk about things. And so I think it's really fun to take. And then also, if you do take it with your friends as well, you can kind of compare and contrast. Okay, guys, let's roll the interview. Susie, welcome to Tiger Sisters.

So happy to be here. We're so excited. So Susie Welch has lived a dozen chapters, editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review, best-selling author, professor at NYU Stern, and podcast host. Her hit course and new book, Becoming You, have become a movement, pushing people to face the hardest question there is. Are you really living your own? own life or living through someone else's script. May I say that becoming you, the question it actually answers is, what should I do with my life? Which it leads you to ask, is the life I have right now, the life I want?

So it's all the really easy, fun questions. Yeah. Just a little bit of a conversation. Yeah. There's more. Okay. So Dr. Susie Welch, yes, that's right.

Doctor has spent her entire career cutting through the myths about money, power, and love to help people live their lives with purpose. And also we've been playing it cool since the beginning, but we're truly fans of yours. Oh, really? We love everything you do. Thank you very much. Like, we think you're so fabulous and we want to be you. And I also want to get my PhD. And I'm so, like, there's just a, okay. All right. All right. Well, it's a mutual fan club right here. Right. Yeah. And so in becoming you, you introduce the value bridge. And it's a framework that you've developed that helps you figure out who we are and what we want to do. And so we've shared Our values bridge results with you.

We've taken the test. And please be honest, what is wrong with us? And what is something you understand about us? Right. I know. I can't wait to do this. I mean, it's, you have very exciting results. Very interesting.

I was a little taken aback by your results. And so we will go deep dive into them. So the class I teach becoming you excavates three data sets, your values, your aptitudes, and your economically viable interest, because you need all. all of that data to synthesize and then come out with your purpose. And in the class, then one semester, the wait list was 800 students. And so it was, and now I teach it in mega sections. Yeah.

Because who is, if you can find for me, the one person who doesn't ask the question, wait, what should I do with my life? Or is this the right thing? I don't know where that person is. So I put together a great team of engineers and psychiatricians and developers. And we created this tool, the values bridge, which rank orders your values from one to 16. and it tells you which values you hold and how much you're living them. Yeah.

So we call that gap, the authenticity gap. And so what I have now in front of me is the list of your values from 1 to 16 and how much you're actually living them. I think that I was a little bit surprised by the difference in your values. So should we do it? Yeah. Let's dive in. And also just I feel like I'm like totally naked in front of you. I feel like.

It's pretty vulnerable. It is. Yeah. I hear you. I hear you. that there is this moment. And so you're wonderful to go ahead and do it here on the podcast. Yeah.

But you know, part of what you're doing yourselves is you're allowing people to be vulnerable and listening to you. And you talk about all the really big stuff. So it's not just young people who are going through it. I mean, there's people 40, 50 years old who are sitting there saying, whose life did I just live? Yeah. Okay. So that's into it. It's, okay, let's do it.

This is office hours, actually. It is. I'm psyched. I love it. All right. All right. We'll start with you. Okay.

Okay. So your number one value is something. that we call radius, and this is a value that reflects how much you want to change the world, how much you want to have systemic change. When I have in class students who present as what we would call social justice warriors, they always are number one on radius. I have a daughter who's an artist and animal rights activist. She's number one on radius. And so, and thank God, the man that she's about to marry is also that, because if you have this value and you are marrying somebody who does not have it, I wish you well, because this is a very strongly presenting value.

So there's something in you that seeks systemic change. You're not satisfied with things staying the way they are. You have a dream of in some way changing the world. Does that feel real to you? It does. I've been called a dreamer. And actually, there was a conflict. My boyfriend when I was in my early 20s.

We both worked at the same company, but we had different views on how to approach our life. I was like, I have such a big dream of things I want to do. And through my career, create impact. And he's like, would you just. be happy, like living in the suburbs with just like a plain house and a dog. And there was so much derision in that comment, but I'm like, what's wrong with what I want to do? And I hope you are not still with this person. I'm not. God is all I can say. I mean, and that's why I said that this

value is so strong in how it drives how we live and work that if you do not share it with a partner. So I should point out that the values bridge, the test itself has a functionality that if another person takes it and you both check a box, your values will come up next to each other and it will give you a conflict or harmony score. So you and this young man would have had like a like 100% conflict on it. And I think when my daughter and her fiancee took it, they're like, mom, you're home. Come. Talk to us about our results. And as I was walking towards them, because the wedding's already planned. I was like, please God, I have prayed to you. And they had thank God. Their top six values were exactly the same. Oh my God. Yes. Wow. Yes. I like almost wept. Now look,

I would have been shocked if they weren't. They're essentially the same human being. So all right. So I do think the her value of radius comes through very clearly actually in Tiger Sisters and is the core mission of Tiger Sisters is a big reason why we're doing what we're doing is very much driven by her number one core value. And I want to say two things. One is I think you're exactly right because you could have done anything. You could have done, you could have been a product manager. There's a million jobs and you took the job which had high risk, right?

You did startup, but had the potential for the most impact. Now, radius is also a high value of yours. It's number five. So that's still a core value of yours. It's still very high. It's not as high as your sisters. But luckily, because you're working together, I'm very happy that you both have radius high up. Okay.

All right. All right. So your second value is achievement, which is the desire to have success that other people can see. Now, really interestingly, this makes you different than many people of your generation because typically for people, how old are you? I'm 30. Okay. Gen Z, for instance, topping off at age 26.

achievement is a value is number 11. And so I have achievement as number two as well. And this is the desire to have accomplishments and success that other people can see. Either that's in you or it's not. And when I talk about achievement a lot of time with my Gen Z students, they're like, who needs that? And I'm like, I don't know, my whole generation did. But I think actually it skews at business schools quite high.

I think business schools select for it. Let's see where achievement is for you. It's number four. Okay. So you are both very high on achievement and thus the name, So I'm very excited about that. So very, now we come to one of the most controversial talked about values. And this is a value that we, that I had to use a Greek name for because it sets people's heads on fire.

So the value, we call it eudamonia. In Greek, it means flourishing. But it captures these things. It captures self-care, recreation, pleasure, and sex. Okay. So pick from any of those. They all track together. And you have it as number three.

for core value for you, there is this desire for, I don't know if it's self-care or if it's fun or recreation or which one of those parts it is. Does that resonate for you? It does. Yeah. And I saw that it's in conflict with my desire to achieve. And to have affluence, which comes next. So let's see where eutamone is for you. Now, actually, I will say that your eutamonia was lower. It was at eight in the middle. And for me, it's number 15. So I have like, And I'll tell you this about the whole, one of the beautiful things, in my opinion, about the values bridge is it allows us to talk about people's values without any judgment. You know, these are values. And you can be higher on them or lower on them and their choices with consequences.

And so when I tell people like, well, eudamonia is number 15 for me. It's like, what's wrong with you? And it's like, well, my joy is in my work and my achievement. And so I don't necessarily like want to, like I don't even know what self-care is. of course, generationally that's, like, maybe my self-care is in my dogs, like, the amount of fun I have with my dogs. I think it is also a generational, like, reflection of us because I think, like, her generation, she's on the cusp of Gen Z.

She's a millennial. Like, they're all about self-care and they're like, work-life balance is really important versus, like, I feel like I went up through the, you know, investment banking, like finance world where it was like, you have to put, like, those things on the wayside in order to actually be successful at achievement or all those other things. They've done this. Same for you. Right, which is, look, my students, and many, many people take the values bridge and they get as top value eutemonia.

And then right after it, they get affluence or achievement. And then they're like, oh, that's the reason for the, uh, oh feeling. Because those are, those are in conflict with each other. Yeah. And so you definitely, look, the test is going to tell you where you've got your conflicts and your harmonies. Utimony for you is three. It's not number one. And for you, it's eight.

Then we have affluence, which is the desire to have wealth. And I think again, there's a little stink off of this in the world, right? But this is a choice. And if you're not hurting anybody, it's your value. I mean, plenty of students who have it is number one. And it's high for me as well. And I think there's no harm. Sometimes people want affluence because they have, it feeds another value.

Yeah. Like beholderism, which we're about to come to because that was your number one value. And we'll talk about it. We both have affluence in the top five. And then we have for you, Shari, voice, which is the desire for authentic self-expression. It's like I want to be me. I want to self-express. I don't want to be in a culture or an environment where I can't let my whole self be present.

And again, this is for Gen Z, the number two value. So for you, voice is, it's down at 10, which suggests to me that you have more comfort around fitting in to organizational cultures and to leaving. some of your authentic self-expression, not aside, but to your private time. Like, you don't feel the need. People who have high voice want to be themselves all the time. People with lower voice are like, look, there's a time where I can be myself and it's when I'm, well, I don't. I feel like I've had to do that my whole life in order to succeed in order to get where I am now versus like Sheree, ever since she was very, very young, she was always like a superstar. She's always been,

Even amongst supported. Yeah, she's like the younger sister. She's the youngest cousin. She's always the superstar. Like, I don't know how else to say it. She has star power. Yeah. It was always, she always expressed her voice.

That's right. It was very much appreciated and loved. And I think, yeah. Well, there's the, you know, there's the interesting comment. Because what I often see, especially with young women, women up until sort of the 40s, yeah, is they can have quite high voice, but their authenticity gap is massive. So they can have voices number one and the authenticity gap is 98%. Meaning they want to do it and they can't.

And I had a student company and went a lot of times just crying saying, look at this. And she showed me her results and voice was number one, authenticity gap like 98, 99%. And she said, I wish you could teach a class about how we can do this, how we can be ourselves. I don't even know how to do it. My culture has taken this ability away from me. And I said that, I love the idea of a class on that. that's not, I can't teach that. That's not my area of expertise, but I cheer you on. Well, I think so much of it is environmental too. And so when you say culture, like my first

thought was like work culture. Like the work culture that Jean grew up in was basically, as she explained, like it was pretty much to like to stifle yourself for the bottom line. Yes. Whereas we're like, you know, growing up, uh, being raised in like a tech company as my first job. It was very much like be yourself. That's right. And we also had like one day off a month to for eudamonia, to like, you know, explore something about yourself outside of work. People who have very high achievement, very high affluence, go into investment banking, and they have voice very low, and they don't care. If you have very high voice, you know, Goldman Sachs is going to be a different kind of fit for you. True. Yeah. And so this is one,

so there's many, many good reasons to know your values. One is to have this very candid conversation with yourself about whether you're living them. And if not, whose values you are living. And then the second reason is to say, am I working in the right place? Am I going to last here? Because if you don't have, if you have a mismatch on values with your organization, you just go to work every day in a suit that's three sizes too small. And it stinks. You know? Well, let's talk about beauty for a second because it's your top value. It's her top value and she's embarrassed by it. Yes. I always don't. Here's what I say. I just feel like I have to explain it. Now let's talk about it for a second. First of all, a lot of people have this value. It's one of the

oldest identified values by scholars. We call it beholderism. It is the value that reflects how much you care about how things look, including yourself. I always say that when people find out that this is their top value, that they need to go into support group. Okay? And so many, many, I've done this work with many influencers because my life brings me into contact with a lot of influencers for almost every influencer is the top value. And I'm not surprised because there's something very visual about being an influencer, that how

things look and sound. I will say that to go deeper than that, wholderism is often a proxy for desiring harmony. Okay, you want things to look beautiful. And my feeling about that is there's not very much we can control in this world. Not very much we can control, but we can control our environment and we can control ourselves. And I often think that's reflected in high beholderism. Now, I don't know where your beholderism is coming from. I think that's so true.

You look beautiful, so that's part of it. But this desire that things should have a certain harmony, that the world just works better when things are, you know, elevated. I mean, there's. There used to be a store in New York's that sort of just beautiful interior designs. And I used to call it the Palace of Watt because I walked in there. I was like, I want everything. I want my house to look like this. And then when my test scores came back and beholdersism was four for me, I was like, yeah,

I know I'm the daughter of an architect and an artist. My home is my palette. It's like I paint on, you know, my, my, you know, canvas is my home. And so beholders and tends to skew either you have it very high or you have it very low. I think in some ways it's actually very much of a real. relief to be able to like put a word to it and name to it because there's just so many things about me like, you know, growing up in middle school, I would borrow like dozens of books about interior design.

Like when I was like 12 years old and just nonstop read all these books about interior design. And I was like a freak of a 12 year old. Like who does that? I did that. Yeah. I did that. Well, first of all, my dad was an architect who he had tons of books around the house. But when architectural digest would come, I would like go through the pages.

Yeah. Like a zombie like, ah, like obsessed. Yeah. And my homes are really curated, you know, very specifically to me, but I really care. And if I walk into the room and like the flowers are a color that's not viking the rest of the room, I like will carry them into the kitchen saying this is upsetting me. I mean, I'm really, this is your beholderism. It's, it's, and the great thing is like just celebrated.

So many cool people have beholders of very high. So it's not, and again, no value is good or bad. It's just you. Yeah. But it's very good to be able to explain to people. I have super high beholders. Just bear with me while I sort of change this place getting, right? Yeah.

And I think it's kind of, I also, I've always loved art growing up. I love like all different expressions of art. I think it's, yes. I really, really just like deeply appreciate the sublime. Yes. And that's exactly it. I don't know how else to explain it. Like back when, you know, you could see all the runway shows for free on vogue.com.

Like I would every, every fashion season, I would like pour through all of the runway shows. And like, look at them one by one and just form my own opinions. And, like, that was my happy place. Can I just say, I want to give you some gratuitous advice. Yeah. Which is that the next time you get serious with somebody, give him the test. Make sure his beholderism is up there like yours. Because I think it gets really hard in a relationship when one person has high beholderism and the other just doesn't get it.

Yes. Because it bumps into everything. It sort of bumps into where you choose going to a restaurant. It bumps to like what your house looks like. It bumps into like where you vacation. It just bumps into everything. So check out that. Check out belovedness and check out beholderism.

Okay, that is so crazy because even before I took this test, I said something to Shri the other day about this. Where I was like, oh, yeah, like, you know, I've been on a couple days with this guy. I was like, I just don't know if he really, like, appreciate some of the things that I appreciate. Like, if I look nice, like, will he even appreciate that? Like, what's the point if he doesn't appreciate me looking at? I know. I secretly think I developed a dating app by accident.

I mean, I was like, I think, oops. But, I mean, I think that I, like I said to you about my daughter and her soon to be, husband in two weeks, you know, that their top six values were identical. And they are weirdly like happy because they just everything. He was reminiscing about the first time he met her. And he went back to the office after they had lunch for the first time. And he said to the people who's working with, I don't know what just happened. And it's like when you meet somebody who's got your exact values, you have this feeling like what just happened. But you sort of saying, if I even elevated my beholderism and sort of showed my beholderism would even care. Yeah.

is a bit of a red flag. Yeah. He's like, the worst guest we ever had on. The best. The best. Well, let's see. We'll put this to the test. Well, I think it's interesting, Susie, what you said about control.

Yes, yeah. That's true. I mean, of course, you love art and beauty. And you love flipping through those, you know, magazines. But I think there's something to be said about control. Yes. Like having some sort of control over your own life, your environment. when this in this world like what can you really control that's right i think beholderism for people is

absolutely a way to make order of a world that can feel very chaotic yeah yeah and especially but sometimes it's just loving beautiful things i don't want to you know like sometimes you know it's just because you love beauty and it's okay to love beauty i think it's both for you yeah yeah all right so those are your those um are your top values let's just talk briefly about your your bottom two values because sometimes those tell us a lot of things also okay okay So your bottom value is something we call belonging, which is sort of a, it's like kind of community. It's clubs. It's hanging with friends.

It's just wanting to be part of affinity groups. And so oftentimes people with high voice as you have have low belonging. And so does that sound right to you? Yeah. I think so. It's just I don't really believe in like groups or like group dynamics. I'm like much more like deep one-on-one relationships with people. Right.

So this is 100% tracks with what you're saying. Your second to bottom one is place, meaning if it's a low value, it means you could live anywhere, that you're not, okay, I have to live in this one city. Like, for me, place is very high because when I leave New York City, I hyperventilate and feel like I must get right back. And so I love to travel, but I'm like, it's not New York. And that gives me very high place. And so it sounds to me like with this value that you're fine with where you're living, but you're not like, it does not have to be one place.

I think so, especially recently with so much moving, like leaving, Palo Alto coming to L.A. I think I'm in a time in my life where place will not rank high. Yes. I'm looking to right now, I'm looking where your belovedness is. So let's talk about the value of belovedness before we look at your values. So belovedness is a very interesting value because it reflects how much you want to be in an intimate partner relationship. And it's very interesting to hear the cultural narrative about how much you should want marriage in a way. I mean, I think this is about a relationship that is marriage or like marriage. And women like us have gone through professional schools and we've been told it's the career,

it's the career. And many, and that's fine. And it's true for many of us. But oftentimes there are women who do not feel able to say, but I also really want to get married. Yeah. And it shows up in their results. Yeah. It shows up and they come in and they've been like girl bossing it, go bossing it.

And then belovedness pops at number one. And there's a 98% gap. So for you, if you don't mind me saying, your belovedness is at eight, which sort of it puts it in the middle. Like, you might want a partner relationship, but it's not your driving, organizing principle. You're not choosing your job or your location or your weekend activities on finding this partner that you're a partner for your life. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds true. I think that's right. Where I am in this state and life. Shall we see where belovedness is? Yeah. Okay. And the answer is, it's 11. Pretty low. So yeah, let's hear. What are your thoughts on your belovedness?

So my thoughts are that I am surprised because I consider myself to be like a very romantic person. And I like I love the idea of romance. I love being in romance. I love being in partner relationships. I think that it's low now because I recently broke my engagement about a year ago with someone that I was together for eight years. Okay. So I think it's more of like a snapshot in time. This is exactly why.

Yeah. So for me, belovedness was very high. And then my husband died and it went to it went to it's number 16 for me now and I think when you've been through a seismic event involving love belovedness will shift. Yeah and you have deprioritized it because of what was certainly in some level a traumatic event for you. Yeah and so I would not be surprised if we were to revisit with each other in six months or a year that it would move back up. Yeah and I think it's also a response to I feel like in the past over you know the course of that eight year relationship it was very high my values. And I think maybe it was, I was like overweighing it. I think it might have been

overexpressed. Yeah. Right. And it may be one of the reasons I don't want to go, you know, get too personal, but it may have been overexpressing it was part of why the engagement ended up breaking. Yeah. And I mean, if you had to guess while you were in that relationship, belovedness was maybe one or two, probably overexpressed by quite a lot. Do you, can you, in your mind's eye, imagine what your partner's belovedness was definitely not as high yeah because he's a much more like even keel he's just not naturally like a romantic right he's just like very even keeled like not very expressive at all in terms of emotions i think like radius belovedness with your partner should be about the same level so if you both have belovedness in top five fantastic if you have it in the bottom five

also fantastic because you both are going to prioritize the relationships the amount but woe to the couple where the one person has belovedness in the top and the other has it in the bottom. And all you're going to do is fight about how important the relationship is. I actually love this framing. Like we love frameworks just like you. Yes, I do.

I actually think this is really interesting because I think recently I experienced a relationship where the other person, this guy, like belovedness was super high on him. It's like he was just like super expressive with how much he liked me. He was like really open with like PDA. Like he just wore his heart on his sleeve.

and I was very receptive to that. Like I was, it was very positive to experience such a different expression from the other person. Right. And it was like more aligned with, I think, what's right for me. I think your natural belovedness is quite high. I think right now it's down lower because you're working out. And now our values, though, I think are pretty stable from sort of age 25 on because a lot of things go into forming our values. And then they all go into a big stew and mix it up.

So what goes into forming our values? Our parents, our culture, our society, experience trauma. And then by age 25, you kind of are who you are. But then a seismic life event can switch our values around. Someone's having a child going through divorce. I mean, all these different things. But what changes is how much we're living them or not living them. And the goal is to be living them.

Right. But that's kind of the work of our life, is to work out the conflicts and to live our values fully. But becoming you, the methodology itself says, doesn't say, go live your values. It says figure out your values, then figure out your aptitudes because you could want to be Celine Dion or whatever and have a very bad voice. And so you have to also know. You can know your values, but then you have to know what you're good at and not. And by that I mean your cognitive strengths and also your personality strengths because you can be good at a job because of your personality. And you can be so bad at a job because of your personality.

I mean, look, there's four things that destroy you living your own life. I call them the four horsemen of dream destruction. And they all start with E. So the first one is expectations, which is around like what your family's expecting and what you expect. Then the second E is expedience because sometimes it's just easier. They come and they recruit you or the job sitting there. It's your next door neighbor's brother, has a job that you can fill it. It's not really perfect for you, but it's easy.

And you just do things that are easier. And we go against our values all the time because it's just the path of least resistance. And the world is pretty hard anyway. so we do the easier thing. Then there's events, and events are like, you got laid off, so you do something else, and then it's not quite right, but you just stay. And events can push us, you know, getting married, having a baby, there's all sorts of events. And then the final is economic security, and we make all sorts of decisions based on money,

even though sometimes money doesn't actually matter to us all that much. I mean, for Gen Z, affluence is not actually all that high. Stability is much higher, much higher. And we have a value for stability. It's called scope. Let's see where you are with scope. That's about if you have high scope, you want a very big, highly stimulating. You don't really care that much about just stability for stability's sake.

Okay, so, Jean, you are at six, meaning it's actually pretty close to the top that you want stimulation, excitement, you want kind of a big life. Yeah, yeah. That's what this would say. And you on scope, it's pretty low for you. You know, there's something about, it tracks kind of with your eutimone. eutamonia, low scope and eutamonia track together, in that you have a more comfort with having a life where you have some predictability. That's right? Yeah.

I think so. I mean, like, I like the occasional. Occasional, like, oh, this is a new experience. Right. But then I'm like, oh, I can come home and go to my gym classes. Yes, that's right. That's definitely showing up here. Right.

And we all have a different level of want and need and desire for disruption. And people with very high scope are like, I'll take. take the chaos because of the fun of it or the excitement of it or the I have a student who had scope is her number one value and she said I just want to touch everybody's brain. I remember saying that. I was like if I could, you were the poster child for high scope. And she has a life where she's designed everything around that. And luckily her husband has high scope also.

Otherwise, I think he's quite miserable. Yeah. Yeah. How do you feel? Do you feel seen? I feel so understood. I feel like with the top five and also my bottom too. that we went through.

I'm like, I, in taking this test, it was very much like I poured my heart into it, answered everything super honestly. And the results like reflect that. I think it's such good data to have, isn't it? And it allows you to talk to each other. Well, this is my scope value speaking. Well, look, this is, you know, with my high, you know, with my high value of radius, I da-da-da-da-da.

I mean, it's a way to understand yourself and then understand those around you. It's this language, you know. So we actually, we say that all the time. It's like having the vocabulary to actually express. something that's what's really powerful about values bridge is it gives you the vocabulary to put a name to something that you know in your heart yeah but you're like how do I express this and then now that we have the shared vocabulary you we can actually like talk about the word eudamonia I never knew that word before yeah it's very intentional that we named it the bridge right because when you have a

language you can build a bridge to understanding I mean we struggled with the name but the minute the bridge came to me I was like that is the name and when I was guest lecturing at Stanford last year, a student came up to me afterwards and she said, you know, all of your work reminds me of this Wittgenstein quote. You know you're at Stanford when somebody comes up. She said, reminds me of this Wittgenstein quote, the limits of my language are the limits of my world. Yes. And I said, that's exactly right. Is this opens up a world of self-awareness and compassion and conversation, which is the thing I dig about it. So, Hey, guys. If you've listened to this podcast for more than five minutes, you know that

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Please support our show and tell them that the tiger sister sent you. Now back to the show. Susie, thank you so much for going through our values, bridges with us. We want to turn the conversation now to you. And we talk about money, power, and love on the Tiger Sisters podcast. And we want to go through some of those questions. and, you know, go through your brain and learn a little bit more about how you think about these things. I can't wait. Great. So in Becoming You, you talked about how the process usually starts with some sort of crisis. Like we talked about maybe a traumatic event, a quarter life crisis or midlife or some kind of reckoning. Why is it that it often takes a big seismic shift for this to happen?

Because we have become so habitualized to living B plus lives or B, you know, we can bump along in a life that's kind of a B or B plus for a really long time and just keep telling ourselves something's going to change or it has to be that way. And we just let it go. I mean, and sometimes we let it go until we're in our 50s or 60s and then we say, wait a minute, the clock is actually ticking now and I'm going to fix it because B is not good enough. I want to just try it. But other people go all the way to the end that way. And so sometimes we have to be shoved into the kind of self-examination that we need. And so it usually is a crisis where people are fired or go through a divorce or have a breakup of some kind that's

and they'll say, wait, okay, I can't take it anymore. It's no longer B or B plus. It's actually C or C minus or D or it feels like F. And I mean, I kind of troll on Reddit. There's all these feeds where people are like, I hate my life and everything. And I like, you know, just I have to hold myself back from typing in just do becoming you because they would ban me. But there are people who hit a crisis point and that's when they start the work. And, you know, my loving advice is to do it before that happens and save yourself the time and do it before it really becomes an absolute crisis. As a tiger sister, hearing you say a B or B plus life, I'm like, like, I need to clutch my pearl. But you know, people do it. Yeah. And they do it for a really, really long time. And it feels

okay and they make a lot of excuses. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I was living a B plus life for a long time. Yeah. And I didn't realize it because there were so many aspects of it that from the outside looked like an A or an A plus life, like all of the, you know, just like, oh, like you look like you're in a beautiful couple. Right. You have this incredibly high powered job. Like you live in LA. Like there's just so many things that I think I almost let society or societal expectations like dictate and like tell me that I was living in A life or an A plus life. And it wasn't until I'm actually really like grateful now for that sort of like crisis moment because it's like you said, it's not until you like crash that you're like, wait, why was I on this road in the first place? Why was I driving

down this road? Like it would have been it would have kind of been like a really underwhelming life that was like not an expression of my true self. That's right. You would have been around 45 and one day you would have been found yourself in your car crying in controlably. And you would have said, what have I done? And so you do have to kind of crash. Sometimes the outside world is the one confirming to us. Our life is perfect. And we know inside.

And we've got like this kind of, uh, and then we hear all this confirming stuff. Oh, you got it all. And it comes from our friends and our parents. And they are just checking the boxes for us. But we know how much we are actually living the life we want. We know because when we're living it, we feel exquisitely alive. And that is so good. Yeah.

But if you've never experienced it, you don't want to go back and get it because you don't even know what it is to begin with. So a lot of stuff gets in the way of us going big. Yeah, we had an episode recently where Gene and I talked about settling. Like, how do you know for settling? I saw that episode. It was great.

And I thought, wow, this is all about the four horsemen of Love Values Construction. If you want to know which one of the horsemen is taking away your life, we actually have a free quiz you can take. It takes two seconds. And it will tell you, oh, it's expectations, it's expedience, or it's all four. And settling is real. Yeah. So, Susie, on this podcast, we talk a lot about balancing ambition and fulfillment.

So when it comes to money, what do you think people most often get wrong about the connection between wealth and happiness? And like there's so many, you have so many terms within. Yeah, I know. It's a whole industrial complex around this. Okay. So first of all, can I just take issue with the word balance, which I don't actually believe in? because it suggests that you should have the same amount of everything.

You should have, you know, work and your personal life should be balanced. But who's deciding what that balance is? You know, that you should have, everything should be in balance. Like, you know, I want to work all the time. And I want tons of money, okay? And I don't, and I, and who's to tell me I should be having more fun? Go to take a hike. I don't want to.

I don't want to go water skiing this weekend. This is my fun. This is, and also that's like balanced. So I worry. about people believing that there's some kind of perfect for everybody kind of balance. Like you should be doing more of this or doing more of that. It's actually super personal. And Jensen Prying of Navidio was asked recently, how's your work life balance? And he said, I love my work life balance. I work all the time. And I mean, I was like, preach. Now, I get it that that's not for everybody. And I don't

want people to judge me about my work life balance, just like I don't want to judge anybody. And like, I have four adult children. Their view about that. work and balance is different than mine. And I say, that's perfectly fine. It's groovy. Live your values, live your life, but understand there are consequences. If one of your top values is affluence, it's, you know, and you want to also have a lot of eutamonia, you're going to have to figure that out because they don't typically track together unless you have inherited wealth. I think that the thing you've got to figure out is not how to have balance, but you've got to figure out what is your balance. Yeah. You know, how much do you want of each one of these? This is why I like the rank

ordering because sometimes people say, yep, that's it. I can't lie anymore. I want I want luminance. I want fame. I want money. I want achievement. And look all the way down here is eudamonia. I've been lying about this to everybody. And I want the permission to say to people, I'm not playing with you this weekend. I'm going into work because I like it. Yeah. And we got to give ourselves permission to have the balance we want to have, our definition of it. I just had a light bulb moment. right now. Good. Let me see if I can process this live. But I think it has to do with my belonging being literally my last value. Like when I'm like scrolling on Instagram and I see people's stories of like, oh my God, they had this bachelorette with like 20 women there. I'm like, oh, that's nice. Like,

wonder what that must be like to be like surrounded and have that community and it's gorgeous and there's these photos. And then like for a second I feel like bad because I'm comparing myself to that person. But if we go back to my values bridge, I'm like, I don't really care for that. That's not how I want to live my life. Before social media, you wouldn't even seen those pictures, so you wouldn't have cared.

I mean, I think it's social media puts it in your face, but belonging is not a high value as yours. It doesn't mean that you don't want some of it, but you want it a lot less than some other things. Like radius is your top value. You would trade off clearly having high impact work with hanging out with a bunch of bridesmaids. Okay, so my daughter is number one radius.

She's a total person who wants to change the world In a lot of different ways She's about to get married No bridesmaids, okay? Let alone no bridesmaids parties, no bridesmaids. Yeah. Okay? I mean, it's just, that's not who they are

And her husband, her soon-to-be husband Also has a high radius. It's the most, you know, this is a wedding That's actually about their value of radius. I mean, it's about, and everybody there is going to be like them. It's going to be quite the event. There's not, there's no partying beforehand.

There's no, like, you know, bachelor party, Are you kidding me? They find that very, you know, that's just not who they are. Yeah. Right? So it's not who I am actually. And I don't know why. I mean, like, yeah. Because there's societal culture to say it is. But now you can just hold up your values results and say any other low belonging people here like me. Yeah. You know, so. Okay. So our next question on money is if you could sit down with your younger self, what's one piece

of money advice you wish you had known earlier? There's two great pieces of money advice that I would love to share. The first is there's no last best deal. This has saved me from so many stupid purchases so many stupid decisions is the whole idea of the person who's trying to get you to buy something is to get you into a frenzy where you think it's the last best deal. I mean, that's what advertising does. That's what realtors do. That's what all sorts of people do. And you have to sort of say, nope, there actually is no last best deal. There's always going to be another deal. And if you're a person who's interested in investing, the whole idea that people trying to sell you the stock or whatever it is that you're investing in is to make you feel like it's the last best deal. And so this for Frayne,

there's no last best deal has saved me so many wrong turns, especially around real estate, right? There's never going to be a better house than this. It's never going to be at this. And you know what? There's going to be another house and there's going to be another good deal. So that's very, very centering. The second one piece of advice, I think I learned it from watching people around me and people now tell me it's one of the most distinctive characteristics about how I think about money is just to fight back against a sunk-fallelacy and just did the cut your losses. I made a mistake. I made a financial mistake. Get out. Get out now. And so this has happened with real estate. I one time bought a house. I thought it was the right house. And I was there for two years. I thought this is in the

wrong place. And it's the house doesn't feel right to me for a bunch of different reasons. I had fixed it up and poured some real money into it. And I like remember calling my friend saying, I'm selling this house. They'd all visited it. And they were like, how can you do that? And I said, because I made a mistake. I'm out. And I may take a hit, but there's no point pouring more money into this pit. And so I think sunk cost goes across so many different financial decisions. And it goes into sort of job decisions as well. And so cutting your losses and the ability to openly say, I made a mistake. I own it. Hello, world. I made a mistake. I own it. And then move on. I think with my children, I taught them that. And when I see them make wise decisions, financial decisions, I think, okay, that's one thing I taught them.

That second one is so powerful. And I think it's a lot harder than what you give yourself credit for because we are wired. Yes. I mean, this is what the work of decision scientists would show you. We are wired to have some cost and love for just boring more money on our problems thinking we're saving face. We can fix it. It is so common that to fight it is a discipline. But it's true about relationships too.

Uh-huh. Yeah. And it feels like in a way like you're going. against yourself because you had made this decision. You had done so many things following that decision to reinforce that that was the right decision. So then like changing and doing the opposite of that or reversing it, you're like, who am I? It's like almost like you have to. But it's a lot of bad ass thing to do. Yeah. I mean, it really is. It's like to really own your mistake and publicly say to everybody, look, I made this mistake. I took the wrong job. I moved to the wrong city. I,

I mean, you know, I invested in this wrong thing. I'm getting out. I'm getting out now. And I'm going to take my hit and I'm going to move right on with the lesson learned is so empowering. And the earlier you learn to do that, the better. Yeah. Really powerful.

Yeah. And at the end of the day, I think when people see that, they respect you more for it, not less. And you actually sort of get this incredible kind of rush off of it yourself. I'm saying, like, I did that because you realize how hard it is. Look, it's all part of the wisdom project. That's what I say about what I just. I like that. I like that.

Wait, I'm going to. I'm going to adopt that. It's great. All part of the wisdom project. Right. No, covers up all your mistakes. I mean, and they are. That is how I've got my wisdom.

Not from what I did right, you know, what I did wrong, of which there's a long list. And then, okay, last note about this, I feel like that there's no last best deal. I feel like that actually can also be applied to love and romance. Absolutely. I mean, absolutely, you, because when you think this might be the last guy or girl, you settle. Okay. And then you say, look, nobody else is coming along. I was, I was friends with a woman.

She was in a relationship for a really long time. She was 55. And he was terrible to her. He was terrible to her. And I said, why are you staying? And she said, who else is there going to be? And she said, I just got to, he's going to be the best guy I can get. And it was, it was disaster to see the relationship.

Well, I would go home to my husband and say, one day he's going to leave her for a younger woman. And, you know, she should have cut her losses and so forth. And that is exactly what happened. And she actually now is happily found somebody else. And so it all worked out. It took a while. But we do this in relationships all the time.

We say, look, I'm just not meeting that many other people. This is the last best deal. If you're settling, as you have said before in the podcast, that never leads anywhere. It never leads anywhere good. It just does not. There's no last best deal. There's no last best deal. I'm going to be repeating this.

It's great. It should be our mantra in the morning. We like wake up and look in the mirror. Yeah. No last best deal. to ourselves. I love that. I love it. Do we jump into love? Yeah, let's jump into love. You can ask me about love. Okay, I know that it's a sensitive but I, you know, I, yeah, you can go ahead and ask me about it. Don't be afraid. If you talk about

money, power, and love, don't be afraid to ask me about it. It's okay. So, Susie, you and your late husband, Jack, both had such storied careers in the professional realm. I'm sure you get this, you know, this question a lot. And this was long before you got married. So how did you balance being partners in life while also collaborating on work on such a high level? Yeah, it was intense. Yeah. I mean, it was really intense because we lived together, loved together, raised the children together and worked together. Yeah. And the way we did it was we had very similar values. We talked constantly. You've never about two chat, more chatty people than us. I mean, it was, we, we were both very verbal. And so we could be talking about things all the time. We also knew our lanes. And this was huge. Like,

I was never CEO of GE. I never managed 400,000 people. And he had never written a, you know, book after book after book. He had never edited. He had never done a lot of the stuff that I knew how to do. And we agreed that we deeply respected each other's areas of expertise and we let each other be good at what they were good at. And we believe that we would really learn from each other. And he had like the, I think what really helped was he had the deepest respect for me. He used to say to me all the time, you're the smartest person I've ever met. And I'd be like, that cannot possibly be true, Jack. And so he respected me and I really respected him.

And that helped a lot. But, you know, I think that at the same. the end of the day, he had very high agency as a value. He was used to being a CEO. He drove every bus. He was in charge. And I have very low agency. I'm super collaborative. I am always kind of like, I think every idea should be heard. I love consensus. This is all kind of part of my personality. And I think it was very fortunate that he had high agency and I had low. I think in our marriage, had both of us been very high agency, there would have been a slightly different story. And I just, I had this technique when we disagreed, which is often shocking to other women when I mention it.

I did it for a really long time. And then one time I mentioned it in passing and it freaked out the group of women I was with. So juicy. So when he started saying something that I really disagreed with, inside my head, my mantra was maybe he's right. And I didn't get my dukes up. And I didn't like start to disagree. I just thought maybe he's right. I'm just going to hear him out with the assumption he might.

be right. And so sometimes he'd come at me with like, really, like, we're not going to X, Y, and Z vacation. I've changed my mind. We're taking the kids to blank. And my immediate visceral reaction would be something like, that's the worst idea I ever heard. It's wrong on so many levels. And then I would immediately transfer into maybe he's right. And I would say, why do you say that? And I would have this very open mind about it. And then he would pour it all out and I would hear him. And sometimes he was right. But other times, because I had a really good attitude, non-defensive attitude about it, I would say, okay, well, here's where we differ. And I would go through the ways that we differed. And a lot of times, he would say, oh, God, I never thought of that,

Susie. All right. But it was my lack of defensiveness that allowed those conversations to happen. And I think it feels like, you know, okay, you know, to use a word that sets people's heads on fire, it sounds kind of surrendered, right? Like the surrendered wives are always like, whatever you say, dear is right. But I just went in with the supposition that he loved me. I trusted him. He wanted what was right for us in the marriage and he'd never hurt me and that maybe he was right. And it's also, it's not like we didn't disagree, but when he came at me, I always started from a stance that I wanted to hear what he was saying. Wow. When I hear that, two things come to mind. One is like the immense amount of self-regulation. Because like the way that you described it, it's just like, of course,

Like everyone's first instinct is to be like, what are you talking about? Well, also coming from a person where like, I feel like the three of us are often right. We don't like, you know, posit our opinions that are not well researched. Right. Right. We're not impulsive people. Right. So, yeah, the self-regulation.

To like have that immediate thought and then to stop yourself. Yeah. And then, yeah, to bring like a new perspective. And then I think the second thing is assuming. good intent. Yes. I think that's so deep and it's huge. It's actually just as a life lesson changes everything. And I think I learned that a lot from Jack. He was really that way. Jack just he had, you know, that cliche, you know, a stranger as a friend you just haven't met. He totally thought the whole world was just waiting to be his friend. He like went out into the world every day like, where are all the

friends I can meet? I remember going to a party one time where we didn't know anyone and he said, could anything be more exciting? And this was so his personality. And I agree. I like meeting people to. But assuming good intentions can change the trajectory of your life in your career. It can. And you know, sometimes you get burned. Sometimes people don't have good intentions. But many, many more times you end up having relationships and conversations that you wouldn't have had if you went in with your dukes up. So, okay, Susie, you recently said on your podcast that you are ready to go on and write the next part of your story. Yeah. Do you remember saying that? Yeah. We're going to die for it. Okay, go for it. Do you remember the next thing you said?

I said, I might go on a date. Yeah. I did it. Oh my God. You went on a date? Can we talk about it? Yeah. Yeah.

I think, you know, here's the terrible truth, right? The date reminded me about how much I love my husband. So it was like terrible? Yeah. Okay. It's terrible. Okay. Like nothing to recommend widowhood, okay?

But I would say that it, I had a couple of days afterwards where I was sad because he was a perfectly good guy. I'm a very nice guy. And actually, we had some things in common. Really, something's really in common. Like we both like every single day. like get the same feed from this like devotional and we both read that one. And so we had some serious things in common. And it was a perfectly lovely conversation. But sort of two hours into it,

he said to me, I do not think you're ready. And I said, yeah. And he said, I just don't think you're in a place in your life where you're ready for this. Are you ready? He said, are you ready to be loved by a man besides Jack? And I thought, how astute. I thought like, you know, he's really smart and I said, I actually don't know the answer to that question. He said, well, why don't you give it some thought? But are you already friends? No, we had, but we knew people in common. But he knew enough in those two hours because I actually realized that I referenced Jack like 30 times on the date. And so it's kind of different when you've not been divorced, right? Because sometimes when you've been divorced, you're ready to start again and you're like turning the page.

But for me, like, I lost the person I loved. So I did it. I did go on a date and I mean, I'm not adverse to another one, you know, not. with that person because he's right. But I have this kind of this desire at my daughter's wedding to dance with somebody. Yeah. Besides like my son, which is really, like I was at a wedding with him and Eva the other day. And like I know they don't want me dancing with them. They want to dance with each other. Like who wants mom in the group, right? And then I was at another wedding and I was there with my daughter and her husband. And they said, let's dance. And I said, I don't want to do that to you. So I would kind of like to dance at the, so that's, it's not like I want to get married again,

but it would be fun to have somebody to dance. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I love dancing. Yeah, and I like, so do I. Yeah. It's fun. I miss that a lot.

I know, I know, Jack and I used to dance all the time. Yeah. I know. You want the, like, whimsicaly feeling. Yeah. It was really fun. Yeah. That I missed.

Well, I mean, you did the brave thing. It felt brave. In fact, the morning up, I tried to cancel. Yeah. But I called the friend. who did the picks up and I said, I think I got and she said, nope, you can't do that. Not going to do that for you. And so I did it. As I was walking toward it and I saw him on the sidewalk, I was literally the inside my head out, I was saying like, turn around, leave, leave, leave,

leave, leave, run, run, run. I mean, it felt really brave. I kind of hated it. But then the minute we said hello, I was like, I can have a conversation with anybody. Yes. I'm just going to do it. You sure can. Right. I didn't give him the values bridge. I did not. But I, but I was doing it in my head. And but I, so I'm not adverse to it. It's not like I feel like, okay, never again. I'm never going to do that again because hope springs eternal. But I, you know, it's hard, right? Because I had a great, great, great marriage. I had a great, great marriage. And so it's like a very hard act to follow. Well, I hope you're proud of yourself. Thank you. Truly. It's kind of like you were saying before. It's gathering wisdom. Yes. Right. Yeah. Okay. I'll take that. Maybe I'll say

a little proud of myself. I mean, people have been, it's been six years. It's been. It's been six years. Right. So people have been pushing me towards this. I mean, I have a girlfriend. It was widowed recently. And like six months later, she went on her first date. And I was like, how you doing that? And she said, you got to get out there, Susie. And I was like, you do? I mean, you're kind of building an empire now, too. So you have all these different, you know what I mean? No. I mean, I'm building a business. Okay. And I love building a business. I've always loved business so much and becoming you was kind of taken off in a way that is like, you know, started with me teaching this class. And next thing I know, there's like, you know, people doing it. all around the world. And since the Values Bridge came out, May 6th, was released to 5, 65, 6,000 people have taken it. That's the beginning of a business, wouldn't you say, right? And so, and we've got other great products that are coming down the pike. And so I'm building something. Building is fun. Yeah. And talk about radius. Yeah. Right. Oh, absolutely. So many people. You know, you can get emails and DMs every single day from people who say, it changed my life this way, it fixed my life this way, did this for my son or whatever. And I'm like, oh, my God. Yes. I'm addicted.

I was just going to say that. We get those two and it's an addicting feeling. It is. Like it puts you in a flow It's like a drug. I can't stop doing this. Like look, all these people are, I don't know, like relying on me sort of. And like there's all these other people in the world that haven't been exposed to what we do and we can help them. It's unreal. Yeah. It's the feeling of it. And when my kids say to me, you've got to take a day off, you've got to take a break. I say I'm building something. Yeah. And they and it's important. And you get that or you don't. I mean, it's important. It matters. It matters. Yes. I think it does. Yeah. But I mean, this is like one of the. many reasons why I really admire you. And I almost feel like, I don't know, I feel like we're kindred spirits in some ways because there's just so many ways that you've reinvented yourself and you've done so many new things like throughout your whole life, like getting your PhD. Yes. Yeah. In your 60s. That's incredible. Yeah. I think it's crazy. I don't, I don't understand it. Well, first of all, reinvention comes sort of comes with the territory because the economy changes and the world changes and you change. And so, I mean, when I

started working as a journalist. We were typing on like standard, you know, manual typewriters. And you have to keep on reinventing yourself or you're just going to be passed by. And because one of my, because I have the values of achievement and scope, I didn't want that to happen to me. So I kept on, and also I just have a natural kind of personality. I'm an early adopter of technology. Like I was like one of the first people bought a Blackberry back when there were Blackberries. I was like, this is so cool. Like, you know, and I, so I have that part of me. And I think there's weirdly a kind of fearlessness about how I approached the world. But I think that has actually increased a lot since Jack died

because when the worst thing in the world has happened to you, like what can scare you anymore? And one thing that really helped me is when I was fired in my 40s from the Harvard Business Review. And it was like a little bit of a, it felt like a public death. I'd never been fired from anything in my life. Then I was fired and it was reported in the Wall Street Journal. And then I didn't die.

And people kind of came around and said, yeah, everybody gets fired. And you'll get over it. And then the two weeks later, Oprah's organization called me. He said, how'd you like to come work here? And I was like, oh, wait a minute. I kind of dig that a lot. And you realize that you could just die a thousand times in your career. And it's on you.

You could just be reborn. And just to sort of say, yeah. But you've got to have the ability to say, yeah, I got fired. I'm not going to try to. I didn't get laid off. I didn't. And in fact, when I got fired, they said they were going to put out a press release that said that I resign.

And I said, don't do that. You're firing me. I want the truth. I'm going to tell the truth and so should you. And I mean, I hope if there's anything, you know, that I've given other people the courage to say, look, it didn't work out. And I got fired. And then I moved on. I love it when people are candid that way. So, you know, some of my reinvention was quite forced because I had no other choice. But I could have just opted out. And I just opted in. Oh, my God. You're so wise. I'm so. I'm just. I'm just absorbing everything. You were so, like, filling my cup. I'm so glad. I love being with you. Yeah.

I'm so excited for your futures and you were just, the fact that you're doing this is beautiful. It's fantastic. Thanks so much, Susie. And so for our audience listening, what is the best way they can connect or find your content, your book? Oh, honey. All right. So, I mean, there's Susie Welch altogether is my Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn.

You can, and my podcast is called Becoming You. You can find it on all the platforms. And the book is everywhere books are sold. And the values bridge is at the valuesbridge. It's at the valuesbridge. com. Incredible. It's Susie with a Z.

Yeah. S-U-Z-Y. Amazing. Thank you so much. I love being here. Thank you. Thank you. You ever come to New York?

You've got to come be on my podcast. Yeah. Oh, we'd have so much fun. Absolutely. Okay. I'm game. Yay. Yay.

Hey, guys. So it's come to my attention that many of you don't know, Jean and I have a matcha brand called Sister's Machia. that we created and founded ourselves. What? No way. A matcha brand? Yeah. We started it in October 2024. Gene and I have worked and lived on this matcha farm in Japan. It's sourced from Wazuka, Japan, which is an hour and a half outside of Kyoto, and the brand means the world to us.

It is a small family-owned farm, and we actually travel back to the farm and handpick the matcha ourselves. So you can find out more about Sister's Macha to try it, check it out, buy it. Buy it. Definitely buy it. At sisters macha.com. That's sisters macha.com. And already, back to the show.

Okay, that was our interview with Susie Welch. Okay, so Gene, what did you think? What was your biggest takeaway? I think one thing that I loved was just the idea that there is this kind of framework that she's created out of tons of research and tons of analysis to kind of even like understand yourself. Right? Like she came up with these 16 categories. of like what are the 16 things that are most important and show up the most in a person's life and how do they rank for you?

So I think like as to people who love frameworks obviously and are like very into learning and understanding, like I love the idea that there's a way that you can you can actually study and learn and understand yourself better. Right. And it's actually based on science and research and all this. analysis that she's done for many, many years. I love that she studied this as her PhD. And she worked on the test. She talked about some of the behind the scenes of how she even created the test with a team of scientists. I think it's like super impressive because I think there's a lot of different tests out there that you can take. That like I've all, I've taken all of them like Myers-Briggs and then anyograms.

Obviously I'm a Leo. But like I think those are kind of like the. the old age ones. And I'm really appreciative of this new research that has come out through her her team and her. I also like that the way that she designed the entire values bridge program is not just that you, it's not just that the goal is to like understand yourself better. The idea is that there's also this concept of the authenticity gap. It's like who do you want to be and who are you in your ideal world versus what are you today? And then like I think that it's so hard sometimes and so painful, but it's kind of this very objective tool to like confront yourself, right? Like we've

said that before, like confronting yourself sometimes is one of the hardest things you can do. But it's one of the most painful things, but also one of the most revealing things and like forces you to grow when you're like, okay, I actually want to be this. I like see myself in my mind's eye, in my heart as like this type of person. But if I'm going to be honest with myself, like, this is the type of person that I am today. So she gives a name to it and she calls it the authenticity gap. Right. So she's like for each of your values, how much are you actually living it today versus how much do you ideally want to live in that value? Yeah. I think some of the things that she said that really shook me to my core is like whose life did I just live?

You know, she said that. I wrote it down because it's actually such a scary question and the idea of, you know, growing older and being like 40, 50, 60 years old and like being confronted with that question, I think is really scary and looking back on my life. And I think that fear of that question forces me right now to, you know, do the values bridge and look at my authenticity score with like very open eyes and open heart to be like, is this really where I am today? And something that I really appreciated with Susie was that the values bridge is just a very objective tool. It's not something that should be judged. So like some of the values that I have are achievement, affluence, voice, eudamonia. Like these are just values values or values and whether you have affluence as number one on your values bridge or affluence as number 16 like it it's just a data point for you to better understand yourself and there doesn't have to be like a stink or a judgment based off of your own value it is what it is and I think with gene with beholderism

being so high up as one of your values you were kind of you know embarrassed or I poked fun of you with beholderism But Susie really was just like, no, your value is your value. And she also was just like, I'm here for you because it's also one of her top values as well. Yeah, I think she said it was also her number one value or like number two, which actually made me feel a lot better because I was like, oh, you are someone that I really look up to. And like, I would love to be similar to you in like a lot of ways. And so that made me feel better about myself because in my mind, I was like, oh, beholderism can be viewed as kind of like a superficial value. but I think it's it's not the case it's like very much like this desire for beauty for harmony for the sublime for like an appreciation of art and it's just a part of you and so you're right

it's like every single one of these values is it just is it's just a part of you and maybe maybe that's part of it it's like understanding yourself and then also accepting yourself and not being embarrassed of every part of it and then And it's like the more you can accept yourself and acknowledge this is who I am, the more you can just like be comfortable and just be who you are and live your life. And I think that everyone would just be much more successful that way. Everyone would just be happier that way. I think for me, something that really surprised me in a very good way was that my authenticity score for my top five values were pretty. I guess the gap was low. So I'm basically, this is how I feel and I try my best right now to live it out. And I am living it out. So I felt very like affirmed by that because I'm like I'm doing exactly what I feel that I want to be doing. Because I think, you know, like Susie said like when you do have a large authenticity gap and she said it really well in the interview where she's just like you're basically going to work in a suit jack.

that's like three sizes too small. I really love that analogy because like that's kind of what it feels like when you're being stifled and you're not being able to live out the value that you want to live. And she also gave an example in the interview as well of like one of her students came to her crying being like, I really want this thing, but I don't feel like I'm living it. And I just feel such a internal conflict. So speaking of beholderism, one kind of like funny BTS moment is that one of the things that I had mentioned, is that we were talking about like this guy was dating at the time and how oh you mean be and how like I really did feel that gap in between us in terms of like where beholderism fell in terms of our values and beholderism is generally like like a love of beautiful things and art

and like well susie said in the episode she's like beholderism if like it affects your every day like affects the restaurants you go to the vacations you go on how your house looks like all the aesthetics of everything. Yes, exactly. And so, like, when she had said it at the time, I was like, oh, my God, I didn't realize, I think this is, I couldn't, I didn't have a word for it at the time, but I was like, this is a huge gap between me and the guy that I was dating at the time. And so, um, so the funny thing is, like, after we like ended things, after I ended things

with him, he actually sent me this article that came out at the time, um, by the Wall Street. journal that was called like the swag gap is real and it was basically about beholderism and how like if a couple have very different levels in beholderism like they just can't you know it's difficult for them to to what coexist yeah i mean i've seen a couple of like tic talk episodes about the swag gap or like ticot like videos about a swag gap and basically it's just like a couple it's just like there is no swag gap here and they're able to like dance in the video together and all this stuff. So I think it's very, very real that what you picked up on. But it's just funny because like he is the one that sent me the article.

Like I'd never seen the article. You're like, I know this about you. And now you know this about you. And thankfully I didn't have to tell you. Yeah, but he like recognized it basically and was like, oh, this is why we're very different. And like we kind of want different things and like enjoy spending our time in different ways. Yeah. Even though like on paper,

we were perfect together. I feel like there should be a better way for beholderism to come out on paper. You know what I mean? Like I obviously like maybe it's with this values bridge test. But like I wish there are a way to like quantify it more. Do you know what I mean? Like oh, we can see on paper that like where you went to school and your credentials and you know, maybe you rode crew and you're like athletic and sporty.

But I'm like where does the beholderism come out? Yeah. Does your love for like art and beauty and aesthetics? And like the way and how does it come out in the way that you live your life? I guess you can kind of tell like when you go on a date with someone and you see what they're wearing like at first glance. I'm sorry not to judge a book by its cover. But then you're like we go on a date.

That's kind of what it is though, right? Like it's just like people say don't judge a book by its cover, but everyone is judging a book by its cover by like how you show up. Yeah. When you show up to work. when you show up to a conference, when you show up to a formal event versus something casual. Like people are judging you based off of how you decide to show up. Yeah.

I mean, the way you portray yourself is reflective of your values. I actually thought that we should do an episode about that. How? Like, I don't know, without it being like a superficial episode. It's not superficial. Like we're crossing that word out for beholderism. I know, but like it could be perceived as superficial. But it's more so about like an episode of.

about how you present yourselves and how that's something that, you know, we have had like a different relationship with, like in different times in our life. And how now that we're on camera all the time, it's more important than any other time in the past. And how I guess like, candidly, I'm like, oh, I wish I had invested more in this in the past. I think it sounds superficial because people want to make it superficial or like people want to gloss over the fact that it matters. I think showing up how you show up, how you look,

how you sound and just being like well-kempt, whatever that means for you is important because people judge based off of that and I refuse to be written off by something that I can control in that way. Yeah. As much as I can control it. Maybe now it's more of an acknowledged

concept because we're in like the age of ozambic oh yeah right like it's just something that is much more talked about i mean in our episode our interview with cody sanchise like something that she said is that women it's not even necessarily about being pretty or not pretty it's just women who wear makeup make 30% more money than those who do not especially if you work in the service industry And that's a pretty like damning, damning percentage, a damning fact. And I, you know, her famous take is like, paint me up like a clown and I'll. And yeah, I'll make more money. And she's willing to do it. So I think it'd be interesting to talk about it. And maybe it's controversial. Maybe you guys won't agree with it. But this is kind of how we've approached how we show up. And I think it is part

beholderism. I think it is. If we didn't care, and honestly, if society didn't care about how we looked on camera, I'd show up differently. And it's different for men and women too. So I think there's a lot of hard truths to recognize. I don't know why I'm going on a rant now about this, but there's a lot of hard truths to recognize. But we'll say them, we'll acknowledge them. And then, you know, we can hopefully change them too. Yeah. I do think it's worth doing an episode on. It'll be kind of it'll be a hard episode for me to do because I feel like I've never like talked about the topic and I'm still a little bit Botox I'm still a little bit like shy shy about it I'm just on like TikTok all the time and I really respect the people who are sharing about their journey and how they end up looking good I'm like yeah hell yeah you look great

and doing it in like healthy ways too okay you guys have told us that you love our stats so we have a new one for you. Did you know that over 75% of you guys who are watching are not subscribed to Tiger Sisters? That's crazy. What's up with that? You're just watching our content and not subscribing. So you love our content, but you don't want to get notified when more comes. Okay, let's change that stat. We are going to report on that quarterly until we get it down to below 50%. So your job right now, literally this second, is to subscribe and follow Tiger Sisters podcast wherever you're listening to this episode. So that could be on YouTube, Spotify, or and Apple podcasts. It only takes two seconds to do and it helps other people discover us so that we can

continue to produce Tiger Sisters. Thank you guys so much and we'll get back to the show. Okay, so the last thing I was going to say about this test is that I think it would be really valuable to take it year after year to kind of like track yourself and like see if you're getting closer to your ideal state, like your own ideal state for yourself, right? Like are you closing the authenticity gap? Are you opening the authenticity gap? And also, like year to year you're in a different part of your life right especially if people like if you get married or you have if you have kids like your values can shift um so i do i do want to take the test again i mean that's probably music to susy's ears where you are a willing participant year over a year

where she can collect data um for her study that's like fabulous i'm sure she would love to see that And also to your point, I remember like the value for love was like 11, 11 for you or it's pretty low, even though you admitted you are a lover girl because you had gone through a very traumatic event of a breakup. And so you're over here. I wonder how your values are shifting and especially this value. Yeah. Yeah. Stay tuned.

Do you think it's higher or lower or same since you last took the test was months and months ago? Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets? Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in. Loyal, invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. They feel seen by it like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So, are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify advertising. You're among fans. I don't know. Like, we'll let the data review. Yeah.

I guess we'll find out. We need an objective test. Yeah. To know how you really feel on the inside. Yeah, yeah. We'll see. You don't have a guess. Yeah, I don't know if my belovedness value would be higher or lower right now.

All right. Well, stay tuned, guys. Gene will take the test again, and we will figure it out. she has no idea but the results will know the results will cut through all the unknown and get straight to the heart of belovedness i love it um the last takeaway that i have was our question to susy on um some of the financial advice that she wish she had gotten earlier on and it really sticks with me and it's something that jean and i actually quote um the first thing is there is no last best deal period i love it I love it because

Gene and I are coming, we're moving from a place of you know desperation, close mind and it's to abundance mindset. I would say we're moving towards abundance mindset and when you say to yourself there is no last best deal there is no last best deal in that investment, in that house, in that relationship, in that opportunity.

It just opens you up to so many more things that you can never have dreamed of. You don't have to be latched on onto the last best deal and don't let anyone tell you that. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't personally characterize us as having been in a place of desperation and close-mindedness. What's the opposite of abundance mindset?

Scarcity. Scarcity mindset. Scarcity. Yeah. Yeah. So like, but I do think that there are elements of scarcity mindset that I have held on to for way too long. And having that phrase, there is no last best deal is really helpful because it helps you

it helps you just like open up to the possibilities of the universe like I don't know what the right way to say it but I do have this belief that I do think the universe wants the best for you and if you are holding on too tightly to like what you think is like the only chance that you have that's called desperation which I've definitely been in that mindset of like this is the job or this is the internship. Or like there's like this is the best it's going to be or even this relationship. Yeah. I do think desperation is like a really harsh word for it or maybe it's maybe this is me like

needing to confront myself again. I think yeah. Like desperation is like when I think desperation I'm like Fantine in LeMiz. She was desperate. I mean there's different there's different like modes of desperation. Yeah. Like, for example, like, I was desperate for a job when I graduated college because I needed to pay off student loans because I needed a high paying job. And that put a lot of pressure on myself.

But I didn't actually, I didn't have the privilege of abundance mindset at that point. I needed to be desperate, you know? Yeah. Because I think when you feel like when you're in a good place, more good things happen to you too with abundance mindset. So now that we're in a good place, like we can choose the partners we take on. And we can choose all the brands we want to work with. So more abundance mindset comes from having abundance. Okay, so the last concept I want to touch upon is the sunk cost fallacy that she talks about.

Where basically she's like one thing that Susie has done and learned in life is cut your losses. And I think that's something that is not talked about enough. It's so hard. It's actually a very valuable skill. Yeah. to be able to just cut your losses. And I think so much of it is also emotional regulation is such a big part of it. Because there are times when, like, I have made, you know, like huge financial mistakes, had huge financial losses.

And, like, it is really hard to mentally cut your losses. And, like, the more time you put into, like, grieving that loss or, like, being like, oh, well, I wish. that it was different or like, I shouldn't have done this. It's just, it's all wasted time. And it just is bringing you down. And it's like, once you learned your lesson, move on. Yeah. Right?

Like, I wish I could have done that earlier. Yeah. And so that's why I think this is like such a valuable mantra. Yes. And like such a valuable thing to recognize in life, right? Like the sun-cost fallacy, it is a fallacy. It's in the name of it. That affects everyone.

Yes, it affects everyone. It affects everyone. Because like psychologically we are wired to not lose things that we have invested in. And that can mean the relationship too. I think it's so I mean obviously it's such an emotional decision. There's so many different factors that go into it. But like when you've invested in a job, a career, a person, getting out when you realize. A stock.

A stock. Oh yeah, a stock. I thought you said a sock. And I was like, what? Like it's just it's hard to get out It's hard to get out even when it's even harder when you know you need to get out That's the problem right? It's just like that feeling Yeah, I could work on that I think that's one of my takeaways of

Rewatching the Susie episode is like I need to remind myself some cost fallacy Just get out yeah yeah and I think it's like cutting your losses and then not feeling bad about it. Moving on. I guess that's part of cutting your losses. It's just be like, that happened. I learned from it.

You can grieve, but then grieve for X amount of time. Move on. Learn to move on. Sorry, I didn't mean to look at you directly. No, I knew. I thought this is your time to say your,

the phrase that you, I thought you were offended that I looked it directly in your eye. I was like, move on, bitch. All right, Shuri, what's that famous? phrase that you invented in 2016 or 17. In like 2018 or something, Dilmo, D-I-L-M-O, do it, learn, move on. This is like a mantra that Sheree invented by herself when she was like 22. Yeah, it's powerful, guys. It encapsulates so much of what we talk about on Tiger Sisters. Yeah. About experimenting and trying a bunch of things, do it. Not everything will work out. A lot of things fail. In fact, most things fail,

But that's what we learn from. That's where we grow from. So do it. You got to learn. We're not making the same mistakes twice or thrice. And then you got to move on. I think that part is probably the hardest. Yeah.

And I'm going to look you in the eye and say, move on. I'm just kidding. I don't know what I'm telling you to move on from. So like, yeah, however you want to phrase it, either some cost fallacy, cut your losses, Cherie's favorite, Dilmo. Dillmo. Do it, learn, move on. Yeah.

It's a very valuable concept that I think is, helpful to be reminded of. Yeah. And I'm glad we revisit it in this episode. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to this behind the scenes director's cut of our interview with Susie Welch.

We have a couple of directors cut episodes coming out. Please let us know what you like, what could be better. We read every single comment. And if you've listened all the way to this point, you should take two seconds to subscribe to our newsletter. We have a substack. Link is in the

description or go to tigarsisterspodcast.com and subscribe from there. Thank you guys so much and we'll see you next time. Bye.