Two Suzy’s walk into a podcast. One of them has had 30 jobs. The other is here to help sort through what job is next. 

This week on Please Advise, your host Suzy Welch talks to a fellow Suzy — Atlanta's own "Suzie Sunshine" — who has found herself stuck with where to turn next. Now in her mid-50s, with her children grown, and with over 30 jobs in her lifetime, Suzie Sunshine is nowhere near ready to slow down, but isn’t sure which is the best path to take. 

Your host Suzy goes straight into diagnostic mode, tracing the story back to a seventh-grade dream of acting, a magazine article that scared her off it, and a quiet, decades-long override by one of the Four Horsemen of Values Destruction. Suzy walks through Suzie Sunshine's top values and lands on an answer that actually has nothing to do with another job title at all.

It's a conversation about entrepreneurship, courage, and betting on yourself when you think the clock is running out — and a reminder that it is never too late to become you.

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How do you make a fun, upbeat podcast about a value that makes literally everyone uncomfortable — the people who have it and the people who don't? That's the challenge Suzy Welch sets for herself this week on Becoming You.

This episode is the next installment of an epic 16-part deep dive, one episode for each of the 16 values in the language Suzy created with The Values Bridge, her scientifically validated assessment tool. We all hold these values, ranked 1 to 16 in a different order for each of us, and understanding the language can change everything. That's because values aren't virtues like happiness or honesty — they're choices about how you live your life, and there's no good or bad, right or wrong, about which ones you hold.

This week's value is Radius: the drive to change the world in big, systemic ways. Suzy explains why so few of us have it (just 10%, ranking 14 out of 16 values) and reveals the single most shocking data point in the Values Bridge dataset about it. Suzy also draws a hard line between Radius and its frequently confused cousin, Non-Sibi — the value of helping people one-on-one — and explains why wanting to change the world doesn't necessarily mean wanting to help people individually.

Then Suzy goes to 20,000 feet with Dr. Jay Van Bavel, professor of psychology and neuroscience at NYU and author of The Power of Us, to debate whether Radius is a value or an identity — and to unpack why movements built around Radius so often turn on themselves. Finally, Suzy sits down with Kitty Block, CEO of Humane World for Animals, whose own Radius story involves twenty veterinarians, a runaway dog, and a face full of bruises.

Take the Values Bridge yourself and find out where Radius falls for you. Link and discount code below.

Find Jay Van Bavel on LinkedIn, X,  and his book, The Power of Us. 

Find Kitty Block at Humane World for Animals. 

As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

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You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

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• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠

• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

"I want the old you back." Sometimes that's how the people closest to you respond when you start actually living your values — and it's exactly what this week’s caller Brie is running into with her own family, on this episode of Please Advise.

Suzy takes two listener calls this week. First, Ana, 44, back on the job hunt after a sabbatical, doing everything by the book: networking, applying, staying intentional. Yet still hitting silence. Suzy walks through Ana's values and aptitudes and lands on the real problem: it's not her, it's her tactics. Suzy shares her advice after years of being on both sides of the desk. 

Then Brie calls in. She's gotten clear on her values and is living more aligned with them than ever, except her family isn't sure what to make of the new her. Suzy names what's actually happening: Brie's family is confusing values with virtues, and reading her growth as a rejection of them. Suzy walks through her own version of this story, including a hard-won truce with her own kids over Workcentrism and Achievement, and makes the case that naming your values out loud, to the people who love you, is what keeps you close instead of growing apart.

As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

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You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠

• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

Suzy continues her deep dive into the 16 values from the Welch-Bristol Values Inventory with Beholderism — our desire for beautiful things: our homes, our clothes, our stuff, ourselves. It's the #4 most prevalent value in the general population, #2 for women overall, and yet it's one of the values people are most likely to feel ashamed of.

Suzy walks through the data on who has it and who doesn't, shares the story of the time her Beholderism led her to knock on a Finnish mayor's door, and sits down with legendary interior designer Elizabeth Lawrence of Williams Lawrence. Then Dr. Evelyn Welch — historian, MBE, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol, and Suzy's friend of 52 years — joins to explain why beauty and consumerism have been linked since long before the Renaissance.

If you've ever felt silly for caring how things look, this episode is your permission slip.

Find Elizabeth Lawrence on Instagram @elizabeth_m_lawrence and @williams_lawrence_interiors.

Elizabeth Lawrence and Bunny Williams: Decoration available here.

As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠

• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

This week on Becoming You’s Please Advise series, your host Suzy Welch takes two more listener calls. Erin is a 55-year-old single mom of three, working a job in HR that's quietly hollowing her out, and she wants to know: does she stick it out until she knows exactly what to do next, or does she leave now? Suzy walks through Erin's top values and lands on a piece of advice that has nothing to do with a resume: Stop building the website, and start building the business.

Then Suzy talks to Parnian, an executive and entrepreneur navigating the "messy middle" of career, marriage, and family planning all at once, who asks how women can better lean on each other to get ahead. Suzy's answer takes an unexpected turn into a new definition of resilience, and a hard line she draws for her students: Don't network, make friends. It's Suzy at her most personal, weaving in stories from her own divorce, her PhD, and a friendship that changed the entire trajectory of her career.

Real questions, real answers, no scripts — Please Advise Season 1 continues.

As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠

• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch hits pause on the values deep-dive series for something urgent: the state of work today. After Suzy casually dropped the phrase "job hugging" on a recent appearance at the Today Show — which is the trend of people gripping their jobs because they're terrified of what's coming — the reaction was, in Suzy's words, an internet meltdown. So she brought in Chief Labor Economist Sania Khan, formerly of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and then an AI company, to separate the panic from the data.

They get into it: whether AI is coming for every job or about to create a wave of new ones, why "low hire, low fire" is quietly locking younger workers out of the labor market, and why a second-year analyst should be more nervous right now than almost anyone else in the building. Sania lays out the proactive work exercise she'd give any 22-year-old, or any 40-year-old, staring down a job that suddenly needs a rewrite.

If you've got a job, want a job, or are quietly panicking about either, this one's for you.

As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠

• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch introduces Season 1 of an exciting new series: Please Advise. Real listeners. Real questions. Real solutions. Each episode, Suzy takes calls live, with no topic off limits: career pivots, family friction, the values conflicts that keep you up at night. Fast, direct, and grounded in the frameworks of Becoming You, Suzy helps you get closer to living by design in under 45 minutes. If you've ever wanted to ask Suzy something and get an honest answer on the spot, your new favorite podcast has arrived.

In this premiere episode, Suzy talks to four listeners with four very different problems. "What do you do when you hate what you're good at?" asks Lynn, while Beth wonders, "As your kids become teenagers, who should be in charge of making the decisions — you, or them?" Rebecca calls in for advice about The Values Bridge value of Belovedness, the value of romantic love: "When you lose the person you love, what does it mean to let that value go?" And last but definitely not least, Suzy gets the most serious question of all from her best friend and returning podcast guest, Sue: "What should you do when your best friend makes you snort from laughter?"

Direct, funny, and genuinely helpful — don't miss the premiere of Please Advise, Season 1.

As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠

• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch continues the series' deep dive into the 16 human values with one of the most misunderstood: Workcentrism, the value of organizing your life around work. It ranks 15 out of 16 for the general population, and it's the only value in the entire Values Bridge inventory with a negative authenticity gap — meaning most people want even less of it, not more. 

Suzy unpacks why Workcentrism is unique among all the values: it's the one you may not hold, but are still forced to express. She's joined by Tina Doran, SVP of Retail and Commerce at Mastercard, who has Workcentrism as her number-one value, for a conversation about what it actually feels like to build a life around work without apology. 

Then Suzy sits down with Jennifer Tosti-Kharas of Babson College and Christopher Wong Michaelson of NYU and the University of St. Thomas, co-authors of “Is Your Work Worth It?”, to explore why society equates high Workcentrism with workaholism, why hiring managers reward it even when performance data doesn't back it up, and why the pandemic, quiet quitting, and the shifting economy have all reshaped how we relate to work. As always, Suzy reminds us: values aren't virtues, they're choices — and no one should be judged for the ones they hold.

As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠

• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

Suzy Welch was standing in her kitchen when the phone rang. Her best friend's voice was different before she even said a word. "I can't be friends with you anymore," she said — and hung up. It was the last time they spoke for fifteen years.

There's no word for that kind of loss. No apparatus, no ceremony, no bereavement leave, no language for losing a friend the way there is for a marriage or a family. This week on Becoming You, Suzy digs into why.

She starts with the data on The Values Bridge value of Belonging — a value that lands dead center for most people, #8 out of 16, and is the value of friendship, community, and being part of the group. Only 1% of people have it as their #1 value. Suzy talks with one such person, Rachel Gillman Rischall of The Connection Code, about what it's like to live Belonging as a top value, runs down the three biggest eurekas she had preparing for this episode, and sits down with NYU Stern's friendship expert Julianna Pillemer to discuss the surprising science of friendship at work.

Finally, Suzy reunites with Sue Jacobson, the friend from that phone call, to talk about what really happened, why it took fifteen years to find out, and what brought them back.

Come along, my friends.

As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

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You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

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• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠

• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch takes on fame, or what the Becoming You methodology calls Luminance, one of the 16 values measured by The Values Bridge, Suzy's psychometric tool for figuring out what actually matters to you. And of all 16, this is the one people are least willing to own. Only 3% rank it in their top 5. Most people bury it near the very bottom. Suzy thinks that's not because so few of us feel it, it's because it's the one value you're not supposed to say out loud.

Suzy opens with a story she's never quite gotten over: a college friend whose hunger for fame she once dismissed, judged, and didn't understand, and the friendship it cost her, for good, decades later. She goes back 3,000 years to Achilles, who's given a choice between a long forgotten life and a short one with undying glory, and picks glory, and nobody in the Iliad thinks he's a narcissist for it. Then she gets into the actual research on why people want to be known: for status, for a platform to do good, as the byproduct of doing great work, or simply so they're not forgotten.

Plus: actress Paloma Garcia-Lee talks with real candor about what it's like to hold this value and live it out loud, and casting director Sophia Welch (and frequent guest, and Suzy’s daughter), who's spent 14 years in rooms full of people chasing the spotlight, rejoins to talk about what fame really rewards, and what it really costs.

If you've ever wanted to be known, or caught yourself judging someone else for wanting it, this episode is for you.

Follow Paloma Garcia-Lee here. 

As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

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• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠

• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

Agency is the number two value in the Becoming You data set—the drive to be the author of your own life, no exceptions, no apologies. But according to Suzy, it's the Jekyll and Hyde of values: sometimes it's your best friend, helping you build the life you actually want. Other times it's the thing quietly running through the history of wars, divorces, and career fails, because your Agency is always bumping up against someone else's.

In this deep dive episode, Suzy takes you 3,000 years back to the earliest recorded signs of Agency. She sits down with NYU Stern self-determination scholar Steve Blader to unpack why some people need to run their own show and others don't. And she talks to Pastor Jimmy Scroggins about the 18% of people for whom Agency is a low value—including what it actually means to hand your Agency over to a higher power, and why that's not the same thing as having none.

Plus: entrepreneur and content creator Drew Henry joins to talk about how Agency shaped his career pivot from corporate marketing to working for himself—and the time it got him called into an HR meeting over an out-of-office request. (You'll want to hear the email he sent.)

If you've ever felt like you had to be the one calling the shots, or wondered why you can't seem to let go of control, this episode is for you.

As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠

• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch