Beyond Success

About

Beyond Success is the podcast for founders and high achievers asking the bigger questions behind what they're building. You've built a career, maybe a company, perhaps a solid portfolio, and by most measures that's gone well. What brought you here is probably something more specific: a decision you can't make, relationships that keep ending the same way, or a business you're still building at full speed without being sure what it's for. Maybe you exited, and everyone assumes you'll start another one. Maybe you want a marriage and children but keep postponing both. Maybe you have more freedom than you've ever had before but no idea what you should do with it. The usual advice is to get clear on what you want and go after it. But that treats the getting as the hard part. Actually, the hard part comes earlier. A strategy can be excellent and still rest on assumptions you've never examined: needing to stay relevant, needing to prove something, worrying about who you'd be if you stopped. Left alone, they'll keep you working for another decade toward a life you never truly wanted. Then there's a question most advice skips: whether the thing you want is worth wanting, what your way of getting it costs the people dearest to you, and who you're turning into while you go after it. You can succeed at everything you set out to do only to find you've become someone you wouldn't have chosen. Most advice takes the goal as settled and helps you get there faster. This show takes up the goals themselves. I'm David Tian, private adviser to founders, leaders, and high achievers on the bigger questions behind what they're building. My background is in philosophy, psychology, and deep therapeutic work. I was a tenure-track philosophy professor at the National University of Singapore, with a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and fellowships at Harvard and Princeton. I'm also a Certified IFS Therapy Practitioner (Level 3) and a Brown University Certified Leadership Coach. I draw