Love of the Week

I love me a big floppy hat. And not to wear to the Hat Luncheon - enough about that frothy event! No, to wear to graduation! Which is exactly what I did this past week, when nearly 2,000 undergraduates and MBAs got their diplomas at The NYU Stern School of Business, in an event held at Madison Square Garden. How Gotham is that?

Yours truly here gave the commencement address to the 5,000 people assembled in the arena over the course of two ceremonies. Yep, me – IN MY BIG FLOPPY HAT. Everything went well, thank you very much. In fact, unlike some other graduation speakers this year, I did not get booed. Victory!

Now, some of you might be new to this newsletter and so allow me to remind everyone that I have that big floppy hat because last year, at the age of 65, I got my PhD. I needed to get it – needed – because there were certain important things I felt I had to learn to be the professor I wanted to be. Getting my PhD allowed me to invent the Welch-Bristol Values Inventory, so named for the University of Bristol, where I received my degree, and soon thereafter, to invent The Values Bridge, probably the most impactful thing I have done in my entire life, professionally. So the hat – I got it in order to acquire the knowledge inside the brain it adorns.

But let’s be real, I also needed to get the hat so I could be called “Dr. Welch” by my children once a year, on my birthday. And if anyone wants to call me Dr. Welch at other times, please feel free to do so.

Hate of the Week

I got a call the other day from my friends at The Wall Street Journal asking if I would come into their newsroom studio to answer reader questions about the crazy job market for recent college grads.

They mentioned nothing about me wearing my floppy hat while being filmed, but still, I said yes. Of course I did.

In preparation for my close-up, I didn’t need to look at employment stats. I did a whole podcast on them recently. Instead, I decided to look at how college grads are feeling about the situation, and wow, talk about a slew of numbers to hate. More than 60% of graduates are somewhat or very pessimistic about their careers, a number that has risen 11 points in two years. Close to 50% feel as if they can’t apply to most entry level jobs because they require too much experience to begin with, a Catch-22 of diabolical proportions. And finally, fully 20% of graduates feel as if they are overqualified for the jobs they do finally land.

These numbers had human voices when I started taping at the Journal. There’s a lot of pain out there.

My answers – at least many of them – kept coming back to the Becoming You mantra, that the best careers are those aligned with your authentic values, your cognitive and emotional aptitudes, and the full, unedited array of your interests. You have to get existential about who you are and what you should be doing, I said, before getting tactical, hitting every Easy Apply button you see. I know the hard, gritty work of self-understanding sounds like BS when you’re in a rush to get a job. But to do it any other way is a fool’s errand. Yes, even in this job market.

Look, the economy is in flux right now. Almost everything about the future is fuzzy. As an oldster, I am perhaps more used to that than the newbies of the world. But as ever, the only way to navigate uncertainty is by keeping your sights on the one thing in life you can know. Who you are.

Hmm of the Week

On Sunday morning, I was sitting at my computer ready to write for a few hours when I got to thinking about how much I missed my old pastor, Jimmy Scroggins, who leads Family Church in Palm Beach, Florida. I knew I was headed to church myself in New York later in the day. But in all my decades as a faithful person, there has never been a preacher who has educated and entertained me as much as the man my kids call “The Scrawg Dawg.” (Incidentally, he enjoys his nickname, or at least tolerates it in good humor.)

“Well,” I thought to myself, “I guess I can just watch Jimmy’s sermon on YouTube sometime this week.”

At which exact moment, my phone rang, and it was him.

The Scrawg Dawg.

He was just checking in to say hello, as we do a few times a year. But I mean, how about that timing? We all know our phones are spying on us. But who was spying on my brain?

Join me please with a “hmm” on this one, then, unless there is a PhD (or not!) out there who can answer. I’m all ears…under my hat.

Until next time,

P.S. There’s a one-day Values Bridge workshop in NYC, June 26. The existential part of any career process, as per above. See you there?

What's coming?

→ June 2026 One-Day Becoming You Intensive here

→ Becoming You Certification Program here

My Ouchy Advice to Parents of New Graduates. Please Take It.

This week I'm delivering the ouchy advice nobody is giving at the graduation party: you are focused on entirely the wrong problem. The problem is not that your kid is unemployed. The problem is that your kid is unaimed. And those two things require completely different solutions. I'm talking about the brutal math of this job market, the expensive lie hiding inside the grad school "solution," and the hard conversation about values that most parents are afraid to have.

Tune in Here!