Becoming You with Suzy Welch

What if the thing everyone compliments you on is your greatest professional gift, and you’ve spent your whole career trying to outgrow it?

This week on season 1 of Please Advise on the Becoming You podcast, Suzy’s guest is a friend who casually asked a question over dinner: what if my greatest aptitude is my personality? Allison Avery is a longtime HR professional and trained Jungian psychoanalyst figuring out what comes next. Now they’re taking it live, with a conversation about why we trust the skills we’ve had to earn, more than the ones that come naturally, and what changes when you stop treating your biggest gift as a consolation prize.

Have a question for Please Advise? Submit it 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

Love hurts. Love heals. Love is blind. Love conquers all. So which is it? And should you give your whole life over to finding that one special person, or treat romance as just one part of a full life?

This week on Becoming You, Suzy takes on the value of romantic love, or Belovedness: how much you want to organize your life around one special person. This is part of our 16-episode series on the values that drive how we live, and the data on it might change how you think about love.

Suzy shares how Americans actually rank romance right now, and why the answer looks very different depending on whether you’re married, divorced, or single. Then she goes back in time, with a surprising history of marriage and the idea that the version of romance we’re all raised on is a very recent invention.

Then dating and relationship coach Sabrina Zohar, host of The Sabrina Zohar Show, and NYT bestselling author of "Why Am I Like This?" joins Suzy to talk about the state of dating in 2026, why so many people have lost hope, and what happened when she stopped waiting to be chosen and started choosing.

And Suzy closes with a personal story about love, loss, and the value she almost left out entirely.

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

Find Sabrina Zohar’s new book, NYT bestseller “Why Am I Like This? Break Your Relationship Patterns and Create The Life You Want” here, find her on Instagram, and listen to her podcast The Sabrina Zohar Show.

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

Dominique is heading to business school this fall to pivot from PR and communications into venture capital, and she wants to know: How do I turn my non-traditional background into a differentiator instead of something I have to explain away?

This week on Please Advise, the call-in show of Becoming You, Suzy knows exactly how Dominique feels. When she arrived at Harvard Business School in 1986 as a Miami crime reporter, nobody wanted her in their study group. Suzy’s non-traditional background made her an outsider, until it didn’t. Suzy shares how she turned that outsider status around, then looks at Dominique’s Values Bridge results and finds something that changes the way she answers the question.

Then Suzy gets to the question Dominique actually asked, with advice for anyone making a career pivot: Stop leading with your resume, and tell your own story, values, aptitudes, and interests included.

Have a question for Please Advise? Submit it 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

Is this the best town in the world, or do you need to get out of here? For some people, there’s only one answer, and it’s never negotiable.

This week on Becoming You, Suzy skips the scholar and brings in someone who lives the value of Place, which is the value of location, out loud: Fabrizio Brienza, the “Door God” who decides who gets into Paul’s Casablanca, one of the hottest clubs in New York. Born in Campobasso, Italy, and shaped by Miami and Los Angeles, Fabrizio is clear that after New York, everywhere else feels like going from a Rolls-Royce to a Toyota Corolla. Yes, with the rats and all. 

In this latest installment of a 16-part series on the values that drive how we live, Suzy tells the story of how Place became a gatekeeping value in her scientifically-validated assessment, The Values Bridge: Where you live is one of the first things to figure out before you plan anything else.

Where does Place fall for you as a value? Found out with a special discount code below. 

Find Fabrizio Brienza on Instagram and TikTok.  

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

How long can you hold your breath? That's what it feels like when you're not living one of your top values: like being underwater, searching for a surface you can't see.

This week on Please Advise, Suzy talks to Michelle, an architect and firm partner in her early 40s with three kids in first, second, and third grade. Michelle took the Values Bridge last year and found the results transformational, but one thing surprised her. Her top values are a tie between Eudemonia (wellbeing, self-care, balance) and Beholderism (a love of beautiful things), yet work has always felt central to her life. Her question: can work or family be how you live your values, even if they aren't values themselves?

Then Michelle shares a number that stops the conversation: a 72% Authenticity Gap on Eudemonia, which is the distance between how much she wants to live that value and how much she actually does. Suzy's rule of thumb is that anything over 50% means the house is on fire.

Why is the gap so big, and what closes it? Suzy's diagnosis comes from a value Michelle barely mentioned, and the prescription is surprisingly doable.

Have a question for Please Advise? Submit it 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

Suzy is obsessed with her grandchildren. Completely, unapologetically obsessed. But for most of her life, she didn't organize her decisions around family, and for a long time that came with a question a lot of people are afraid to ask: Does putting myself before my family make me a bad person?

Becoming You is about figuring out what actually matters to you so you can make better choices about your work, your relationships, and your life. One way to get there is the Values Bridge, Suzy’s scientifically validated assessment that identifies the values that really drive you, not the ones you think you're supposed to have. In this 16-part series, Suzy is exploring those values one at a time. This week: Familycentrism, one of the most emotionally loaded values of all. 

Family therapist Vienna Pharaon joins Suzy to unpack why family comes with so many expectations and why the "black sheep" is often just the person with lower Familycentrism. Then Becoming You certified coach Lola Persons gets personal about loving her family fiercely without building her life around them, and why she calls it "not the Brady Bunch, but it's okay."

Because maybe the question was never how much you love your family. Maybe it's how much of your life you want to organize around them, and whether we can stop judging the people who answer differently. Where does Familycentrism fall for you? Take the Values Bridge to find out, with a discount code in the show notes.

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

Find Vienna Pharaon on Instagram, Substack, and find her book "The Origins of You" here, along with her quiz here.

Find Lola Persons on LinkedIn here.

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

Jes is 27, works in the nonprofit sector, and has a not-so-secret dream: she wants to be a writer. The problem, as she sees it, is a values conflict — she wants her work to be seen, but she doesn't want to be famous, and she wants to make money, but writing doesn't pay unless you're willing to put your whole life on display.

This week on Please Advise, Suzy starts down that path with Jes, but the conversation doesn't stay there. Underneath the values question is a harder one nobody had asked yet: does Jes actually have the aptitude to be a writer, or does she just love the idea of it? Suzy calls in some radical candor to find out.

What emerges isn't "don't chase the dream." There’s a sharper, more useful answer, and Suzy helps Jes map out a path that actually aligns. It's a conversation about ambition, honesty, and the difference between an interest and an aptitude. As Suzy puts it, an interest without the aptitude to back it up has another name: a hobby.

Have a question for Please Advise? Submit it 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

There may be no value more contentious than this one — so contentious that Suzy Welch almost didn't include it in her own methodology at all.

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. This week's value is Cosmos — faith, in any tradition, not one in particular — and it's the most polarized value on the entire Values Bridge at that. 

Suzy sits down with Ryan Burge, professor at Washington University in St. Louis, author of “The Vanishing Church,” and the researcher behind the Substack “Graphs About Religion,” to unpack the state of faith in America today. Suzy also gets personal, telling the story of her own faith journey since age 14, and confessing something she's never said on the podcast before. Tune in for more.

If you liked this episode, please leave a review! Take the Values Bridge yourself and find out where Cosmos falls for you, with the link and discount code below.

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

Find Ryan Burge's Substack "Graphs About Religion" here, his book "The Vanishing Church" here, and X, LinkedIn, Instagram.

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

Lily is 68, newly retired, and bored out of her mind. What she really wants now is to do something so scary it keeps her up at night.

This week as season 1 of Please Advise continues, Suzy talks to Lily, who's had more lives than most: news anchor, reporter, road manager for a band touring Quebec, medical claims specialist, full-time felting artist (yes, a piece of hers once went to Stevie Nicks), and, most recently, a coordinator at the VA. She's got the courage, the resume, and even a vision board, but one thing keeps holding her back: a very low tolerance for financial risk.

Suzy digs into Lily's values, aptitudes, and interests, and lands on the breakthrough — which isn't even the idea itself. It's Suzy's reframe of how to get there. Stop imagining the five-day version and start with the five-hour one. Small experiments, low risk, real data, one step before the next.

It's a conversation about courage at any age, the difference between dreaming big and starting small, and why it's never too late to place the chips on yourself.

Have a question for Please Advise? Submit it 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

Christina hates office politics. Who doesn't? But after 20-plus years in corporate marketing, she's started asking herself a much harder question: What if the problem isn't the politics — what if it's her?

This week on Becoming You, Suzy talks to Christina, a brand management veteran who recently quit her job, unsure whether she's actually cut out for corporate life at all, or just tired of playing a game she never wanted to play. Suzy shares her own bruising run-in with office politics from her early career days, before turning diagnostic on Christina's story.

And it points toward one particular next move: Stop trying to survive inside a culture that will always clash with who you are, and go build the one that won't. It's a conversation about self-awareness, entrepreneurship, and the difference between throwing in the towel and finally stepping into your authentic self.

If you liked this episode, please leave a review!

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