She Was an Ivy League Lawyer — Until She Became a Felon: Rashmi Airan

0:00How does a Columbia-educated lawyer, a Wall Street banker, the owner of a thriving law firm, and one of the most celebrated members of her community end up in federal prison? She lost her license, her freedom, and her identity as the perfect daughter who never made a mistake. All of those blind spots and red flags were here, but I was so focused on getting the client and keeping the client, that hunger drove me to not pay attention to the blind spots. As attorneys, we're supposed to do our due diligence. We're supposed to ask for help. We're supposed to do the background research. And I didn't do any of that.

0:38I didn't ask the questions I should have asked. I didn't listen to my gut. One email on Christmas Eve. That's all it took. And then the FBI showed up. I don't even have any memory, really, of what happened four years earlier. So these two agents come in and I didn't know I could tell them to leave. Right. So I let them into my office. I used to have this circular table right by my desk. And they grilled me for four hours. And they showed me documents and pictures and emails. And I'm answering questions, yes, no, yes, no. And what she discovered inside an actual prison is that the wall we build for ourselves inside our own minds can be harder to escape than any walls with bars.

1:23I always tell people, I had to lose my freedom to gain complete freedom. I was living in these invisible prisons my entire life. I just didn't know that's what they were. I believe we're all living in invisible prisons. We just can't see them because they're glass walls. This is the story about owning a mistake completely and what happens when you do. Because the worst thing that you've ever done is not the entirety of who you are. This is the story of Rashmi Aron. Welcome to Big Swings Only. This episode is brought to you by Granola and Quint. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer.

2:00You can try it totally free for three months. Just head to granola.ai slash kwami. That's granola.ai slash kwami to get your time back. Three months free at granola.ai slash kwami. Find your next fall favorites at Quintz. Download the Quintz app for app-exclusive offers or go to quintz.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let him know it was me. That's the best way to support the show. We've all gone through these moments, right, where it's Christmas. So for me, it was Christmas Eve, and I'm sitting between my children.

2:37I'm making them sleep. They're two and three. The house is full. Like, the whole family's in town for Christmas. You can literally smell everything that's holiday, right? You can hear it, smell it, taste it. And I'm in my kid's bedroom on Christmas Eve. It's eight o 'clock. I'm sitting in a glider. Maya's in her crib. Kyler's in his toddler bed. And as I'm singing to my children, which is what I used to do every night, the inevitable happens, right? An email pops in. My phone buzzes and I'm like, ah, can't I just get like some solace with my children? So of course I'm like, okay, I need to get rid of this email.

3:13Like, let me just take care of it really, really quickly. Why? Because I am a female solo entrepreneur. I'm wearing a lot of hats. I feel a lot of pressure. I'm the major breadwinner in my family. My husband at the time was a firefighter and we've got these two little kids. So I felt all this pressure to perform and to provide. And so in the moment when I looked down at this email, I thought, let me just take care of it quickly. I'm sitting here away from the family. I can do two things at once. I can sing to my children and look at an email. So I look at the email and the email had one line and one attachment.

3:47I don't open the attachment. I read the line and the line immediately gives gives me pause like, ah, that doesn't feel right. And the line said, buyer to receive$70 ,000 for rental guarantee. So to give you some context, I was a real estate attorney working with a real estate developer who was doing creative transactions in 2007. He was giving buyers incentives through a rental guarantee. So I knew that there was this thing called a rental guarantee, but I didn't, when I got the email, I thought to myself, well,$70 ,000, like that's way more than I'd expected the number to be. But in that moment, with the house full of relatives making my children sleep on Christmas Eve, I don't even open the attachment.

4:34I forward the email to my closing coordinator, assuming she'll open the attachment. She'll tell me if something doesn't match based on what we knew was supposed to happen. And so I would think to myself, like, why did I forward this email? In a moment, even though my gut was screaming, I have a house full of relatives. It's almost Christmas morning. The kids aren't sleeping yet, and none of my presents are wrapped. So I forward the email. seven years later, I'm standing in a courtroom. You know, there's always this moment in life where time just stops, right? It just holds. And I can, I'm standing there and like there, I can hear a shuffle of a paper here, the clearing of a throat behind me.

5:19And I'm, I've spent my life inside courtrooms, right? I'm an attorney, so I understand the consequences of our decisions and risk and documentation. But in that moment, I have no control. I have no control because as the judge says what he's about to say, a phrase will arguably change the rest of my life. All I'm thinking to myself is this isn't going to echo, it's going to land. And then he sentences me to a year and a day in federal prison. And in that moment, what was going on in my head was how did the you know perfect little Indian girl that had spent her whole life trying to do the right thing get the grades get the job make her parents proud of her and appear I fell on the ground and started shaking crying uncontrollably and in the moment I didn't I wasn't even worried about myself I was worried about what was going to happen to my kids because they were nine and ten and yeah.

6:21I mean, that's sort of like the gist of the real moment that gets me. It's not how I delivered on stage, but very close. You know, what ended up happening was I meet this developer and when the kids were two and three is when I meet them. And I was so, like I was in that stage of being an entrepreneur where you're hustling so hard, you don't even realize you're forgetting to spend time with the people that you love and who you're doing it for. I was rarely present. I was missing dinners. I was going to every possible networking event, selling my services at the gym. I was a real estate attorney, right?

6:57So I was trying to get every possible person to hire me to buy properties, sell properties, anything so I could get a transaction. And in that hustle, I lost sight of being present for my family. And when I got the chance to meet this developer which was in 2007 the under this context of pressure and speed and trying to make ends meet for my family and my business I thought this developer was the answer to my problems like this is the answer to my struggle I just need to land one big client then I can have financial stability then I can spend more time with my kids because by now my kids are asking me mommy when are you coming home I'm having marital problems right so so it was within all of this contextual pressure that I go to meet this developer.

7:47And when I went to go meet him and he just started to describe, hey, I started, I was, I've been working with this really big law firm, but I want to now come and work with you. Which you and I both know should have been a huge red flag. But in my mind, I was super arrogant. And I thought, oh, there's something special about me. I'm aggressive. I'm strategic. I'm bold. Yeah, I can do this. What I should have been asking is, why are you leaving a big law firm? Because transactions are transactions. They all cost the same. I'm not going to charge any more than that firm was charging or any less.

8:22Title is title. So why would you leave a bigger firm with more bandwidth, more experience, more capacity? So all of those blind spots and red flags were here, but I was so focused on getting the client and keeping the client, that hunger drove me to not pay attention to the blind spots, to not ask the questions I should have asked. As attorneys, we're supposed to do our due diligence. We're supposed to ask for help. We're supposed to do the background research. And I didn't do any of that. I just was so convinced I had to land the client that I didn't ask the questions I should have asked. I didn't listen to my gut.

9:03And I'm surrounded by attorneys. My parents are attorneys. My friends are attorneys. I have mentors that are attorneys. I could have gone to any number of people to ask for help. And I realize now I didn't because I didn't want them to tell me no. I wanted that financial stability. You know, Miami is a terrible place for this because there's so much like you try to keep up with appearances. And I definitely was in that stage of trying to do that as the kids were young. And so I own that part of just being trapped in that level of ego and social proof that we find ourselves in. So I did about 200 closings for this client within 15 months or so.

9:47I never got any money outside of the closings, right? It was like legitimate legal fees and title fees for work that I did. And then I stopped working with him. I merged my practice with my father. So it's March 2009. my dad's has been a real estate litigator for decades we start growing our litigation practice and at the time the foreclosure market had started to to to blow up right because the market had started to fail the crisis had happened i grow our practice by 1200 percent wow right from two attorneys at 24 we are sorry two to 12 and then we had paralegals and assistants and all all of the support staff that you need to run a firm.

10:26I'm now going to conferences and growing our practice and, you know, Fannie, Freddie, Nationstar, all these huge entities are now our clients. And four years later, the FBI visited. And though I should have known better, I didn't realize that when the FBI comes to your house, you can actually say, hey, can I take a card and I'll call you back when I have my attorney with me? Now they're operating off that fear and intimidation. And human nature says, I didn't do anything wrong. So I should definitely talk to the FBI because if I don't talk to them, they'll definitely think I did something wrong.

11:08And, you know, at this, this is, this is six years after I met the client, four years after I stopped working with him. And my, by this point, I'm not even doing transactional work. So my files have already passed audit by my, with my underwriter. My files are in the storage, right? They've already been scanned and they're in storage. So I don't, I don't even have any memory really of what happened four years earlier. So these two agents come in and I didn't know I could tell them to leave, right? So I let them into my office. I used to have a circular table, like right by my desk and they grilled me for four hours and they showed me documents and pictures and emails and I'm answering questions.

11:48Yes, no, yes, no. Not really understanding the reach of the government, not recognizing that I was essentially perjuring myself because I didn't really remember. Did I ever see this email? Did I ever open the email? Did I ever meet this person? I didn't really remember. I just was like assuming I remembered, which seems really dumb. But again, in the moment, I didn't think I had done anything wrong and that I had to answer their questions. so they leave and then two more years go by okay so it's like a full i met the developer in 2007 it's not 2013 i'm sorry all right so the fbi came four years after i met the client so the fbi now i get the grand jury subpoena it's 2013 a full uh seven years and six six and a half years since i met the client and uh i'm i'm still operating like i didn't do anything wrong they just want my files.

12:42I'm the records custodian. So through my attorney, I submit all my files. And then like three months later, my attorney calls me and he says, you're a target. I mean, you know what that means because you're a negotiator, but I didn't know what that meant. I'm like, I'm a dirt lawyer. I'm not a criminal lawyer. I don't know what that means. And basically when he explained it, I literally did just like collapse on his couch. and I started to shake. And I said, but how can that be? My files have already passed out. I didn't do anything wrong. I really had convinced myself that I had not done anything wrong.

13:21So how could they be pursuing me? I initially pled not guilty. I printed out 200 ,000 pages of documents and 15 ,000 emails. And I was 100 % convinced that I would find the smoking gun. that I was going to prove my innocence, which, you know, most defendants don't go through their own discovery. But this was my whole life. This was everything I had worked so hard for in my head. All I'm thinking about is I have disgraced my parents and my kids and my community. I sit on a lot of boards here in Miami. I'm very involved in the community. And I just kept thinking, what's going to happen to my reputation?

14:05My life is over. I have to prove my innocence. and so every few weeks i would meet with my attorney and we'd like separate out this is a good piece of evidence this is the not so good pieces of evidence hold on and then like four months later david was my attorney he calls me in and david's been a friend okay so let me help you understand david i've known for 20 years before this we taught at um law school together his wife and i went to carolina together our kids are friends we live a mile from each other, right? I've known him. We go to each other's parties. Like we're friends. So now David is representing me and I would meet with him every few weeks and we would go through the documents, right?

14:49So now when he says, hey, can your parents and you come in for a meeting? I thought, yes, of course, we're going to talk child strategy and exhibits and expert witnesses and my testimony. So we go in and basically he gave an entire presentation, his partner did, and said, if you go to trial, the government's going to get a whole host, you know, the government's going to present a whole case, right? They have to prove this, and then they're going to use this evidence. And then we're going to get up and give our defense, and we're going to prove this evidence, use this evidence. And then they're going to sit up and give their rebuttal.

15:24Any guess on what the evidence was for the rebuttal? Was it that email that you sent? Yes. how could I have known seven years earlier that one email I forwarded on Christmas Eve would be the nail in the coffin for a case that I could never have imagined and the point is every single decision we make matters everyone even when we think it doesn't matter. And I remember him looking at me and he said, Rashmi, I know you, I know you did not walk into this planning a crime, but here's the thing you knew enough. And as an attorney, you had a fiduciary duty to do more. You had an obligation to ask questions that you didn't ask.

16:16And when you did feel something was wrong, you could have walked away or you could have stopped it and you didn't do either. And then he went through two jury instructions. And he said, if you go to trial, the jury will get a bunch of jury instructions. But let's talk about two of them. The first, conspiracy. And as you know, the conspiracy jury instruction says, in my words, not legal words, if the defendant knew one detail out of 500 million, you, the jury, have to convict her. and he goes, Rashmi, your name is on every email, every document, every check, every settlement statement. Do you actually think a jury is going to think you didn't know even one detail?

16:58And oh, by the way, you did know there was this rental guarantee. Now, I will tell you that when I went through discovery, what I discovered is that this client was doing all of these things outside of my closing file. So I had my closing file with these papers that he told me he was doing, but then outside of my closing, he was doing five other things that were not okay. So one example is, you Kwame are buying this unit, and the seller sends to you through a third party your cash to close. So you come into the closing with a cashier's check, and the cash to close has been funded by the developer.

17:37Now, I'm getting a cashier's check that has your name on it. I have no idea where those funds have come from. I don't have a responsibility to go research where your funds came from, I have a cashier's check, right? But so these were the, that's one example of what was happening outside of my file. But again, on a conspiracy account, it doesn't matter that I didn't know that. And it matters that I knew that there was a rental guarantee. And so all the other things that this developer was doing, they were also straw buyers. Kwame would also get a check for$30 ,000 three weeks after closing. Thank you so much for letting us use your name to buy this property.

18:09So there was a lot of things happening here. But none of it mattered. It didn't matter that I didn't have knowledge of those facts. And then the secondary instruction is willful blindness that he shared with me. And willful blindness, of course, is you can't pretend not to know. You can't put your head in the sand because not doing something is still doing something wrong. And he looked at me and he goes, I know you didn't walk into this, but you knew enough. And I remember him saying, like, if you go to trial, you're looking at 20 years. You're going to miss your kids' whole life. You're going to miss high school graduation, college graduation, marriages.

18:54Like, I mean, I just remember I was crying and I was thinking, how will I ever get through this. And so he said, listen, I know that you don't want to accept this, but I think you should plea. And I, you know, like he was crying and I was crying. And I remember him, like, I just at that point made the hardest decision I've ever had to make. And mom and dad were in the, in the conference room with me. And my dad, in our family, my dad's the crier. My mom is heartless nails. And my dad kept walking out like six times to go to the bathroom. And his eyes would come back just a little redder because I had the apple of his eye.

19:32I'm the oldest of his three girls. And you know, it was, it was not, I'm the last person anybody thought would ever go through this. So once I decided to plea, I fully owned it. And I came to this like reckoning and this place of peace of, I should have said something. I should have walked away. And I did know enough. And so it was like this huge enlightenment moment for me. Like I did know. And I just kept denying that I knew. And I kept pretending that it would go away because our gut is always right. Our gut is always screaming. And our moral compass is there. We just get really good at silencing it.

20:17so once I pled I called as I said I've been a leader in my community for over three decades I called 200 people in my community and beyond but mainly for my community so so like elementary school friends high school college law school Morgan Stanley days but even like my kids friends parents and my kids teachers non-profit directors whose words I've sat on the mayor of Miami-Dade county, the politicians that I'm close to. And I told everyone, managing partners of law firms. And I could only do like five calls a day because I was, as you can imagine, really emotional. And it was so important to me that nobody read about it, gossiped about it.

21:04I really wanted to tell people myself. And in that process, I will tell you that before I started making these calls, I was 100 % convinced that every single person will hang up on me. Because my entire life, I had this theory that people want to be my friend, people love me, people respect me because I am the superstar achiever. All of my self-worth, all of my self-love, self-esteem, self-value has always been rooted in the fact that I'm good at what I do, that I'm driven, I can figure things out. My entire identity is built on this. And I think being the daughter of immigrants and being a high achiever just feeds into that.

21:43And so I was sure that as I started to make these calls, every person would hang up on me. Nobody would want to be my friend anymore. And I would have lost my reputation. And what I got was that people are very forgiving of our humanity and loving if you give them a chance. And so I actually took out to show you, I got almost 200 letters of support sent to the judge. So it's a binder that's thick, right? And people shared letters. Well, first of all, it's like I got eulogized before I died, right? People shared letters about like when I was 12, what I said to them in a moment when their parents were getting divorced and how that touched and got them through and how they keep remembering that.

22:28And I remember thinking, I don't even remember saying that, right? Because we don't know the impact we're having in people's lives, especially when we're kids, right? And it was like this, such a beautiful display of unconditional love. And it's not because there's anything special about me. I think it's when you take ownership. One of my friends said, you stood naked and exposed for all of us to judge you. And you allowed us to judge you. So we did. And we got to see ourselves in you. Like we love you. And we got to teach our kids about you. And there's so much power in that. It flipped everything I knew about belief and love and worth on its head, because it's not at all what I thought life was about or what my worth was.

23:15So by the time I got to prison, I had such a spiritual awakening. I had this... So the other thing that happened was when we told my Indian community, one of my uncles said, Rashmi... So actually he said, Beiti, which in Hindi means daughter. One day you'll realize that this is not happening to you, it's happening for you. And in the moment, the first thing that I ever got from Quince was this pair of really nice formal pants, but they were stretchy and made for travel. So for me as a lawyer and businessman, as I travel and I do these keynotes all over the world, it's really nice to be able to know that I could wear something that looks good in the airport, that's comfortable on the airplane, and I could wear comfortably if I have to roll into a meeting or an event right after getting off the plane and it was only$60.

24:03And that's what turned me into a repeat customer. Because Quince focuses on wardrobe staples that are made with premium materials. So, for example, 100 % Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and as it's gotten colder, I've been leaning on their down jackets and wool outerwear too. They're solid, warm layers that don't feel like they're cutting corners just because the price is lower. And that's really the whole model. because everything at Quince runs about 50 to 80 % less than similar brands simply because they cut out the middlemen and work directly with ethical factories. But the thing is, it's not only clothing either.

24:38They carry that same quality into bedding, bath, kitchen essentials, and furniture, all designed with the same care. I use Quince, and so should you. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to Quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let him know it was me. That's the best way to support the show. Have you ever walked out of a meeting feeling really good about it, and then 10 minutes later someone's messaging you saying something like, wait, what did we actually decide in that meeting?

25:14That gap between what happened and what anyone remembers is exactly what Granola AI closes. Honestly, the first time I looked back at my notes afterwards, I didn't expect them to be that clean. It was more organized than anything I'd ever written myself, and I hadn't done any extra work to get there. Granola AI is an AI-powered notepad built for how people actually meet. You take the same rough notes that you always would, and in the background, Granola AI is quietly transcribing the conversation. As soon as the meeting wraps, it turns all of that into clear, structured notes automatically. And it also runs through your device's audio, so there's no bots joining your call and nothing extra to configure.

25:53It just fits nicely into the tools you already use. You can stay focused on the conversation and still walk away knowing exactly what decided and who's doing what next. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just head to granola.ai.com. That's granola.ai.com to get your time back. three months free at granola.ai slash kwami. So this happened before I pledged. So I wasn't yet there, but I remember like thinking, how could this be happening for me? But it did become a seed that got planted in the back of my head. And as I began to, you know, slowly own it and slowly come to terms with it and make these calls, by the time I was walking into prison, which was in August of 2015, I truly had this sense of peace.

26:43I mean, I was scared out of my mind. Don't get me wrong. But I had this sense of peace like, okay, God, I don't know what's going to come of this, but I'm going to have the faith and belief to know that through this mountain, I'm going to put a spoon and shovel it out little by little until I see the light because I have the belief that there's light over there. I just don't know what it is yet. And that faith, right? That, as you would say, big swing of just faith and the belief to know that I can make a difference, that I will have something bigger that might, like, I actually spiritually believe I was never meant to be a lawyer, or like I had to go through this to get to where I am now, because I get to change people's lives every single day.

27:26I get to impact them every single day with my work, and with my words, and with my content, and that I would have never gotten here had I not gone through this ridiculous, crazy adventure of life. So I didn't really give you keynote stories, I just kind of told you some of it. No, this is fantastic. I appreciate your vulnerability here too, because I know it's still, it's going to be a tough story to tell because it's real. It happened to you. It happened to everybody that you know. When somebody that you love goes through something that's so life-changing, they don't go through it alone. It impacts and has a reverberating ripple effect throughout the whole community.

28:03And I want to zoom into your mindset here too, because I want to see this transition that happened, because people might not have been able to see it at the time looking at you, but something switched. I want to go deeper into that belief, the faith that you had, where you said it was your uncle who said, hey, this is happening not to you, but for you. Where were you before mentally? And what did you at the time know with 100 % certainty was true? And then how did you start to make that switch? Let's identify that process. this? So where I was before was I was full of anger. I was really upset because I didn't think I should have been indicted.

28:56I was really mad that my client didn't get indicted, nor did the people in that scenario. That like the woman that introduced me to the client, who really devised the entire thing. I just was, there was a lot going on. I was just really, really upset. So I started to develop an ulcer and in the process of deciding to own it and plea uh I really had to forgive myself and in that and by the way this took a long time to forgive myself because again I had self-defined myself as this achiever and so how the heck did I let myself go so off path and end up now where I ended up. And so as I, the process of forgiving myself was like running miles and miles and miles and screaming at God and like throwing up my hands in the air and talking to friends and drinking a lot of wine and like every praying a lot and doing, you know, reading the Bible and reading the Gita and listening to Joel Osteen and listening to Indian prayers.

29:57I mean, I did everything to try to figure it out, right? Like I was so full of fear. I was so full of anxiety and and like uncertainty I mean like literally I was living in uncertainty and by the way I'm a control freak just ask my ex-husband so this was not easy for me because I have always like had total control of my life I'm that girl you know you give me something to do I get it done that's just my identity and so now all of a sudden I'm trying to figure out what to do so the first step for me was self-forgiveness right then the next thing I did was I forgave that client. I've never looked him up.

30:38I've never looked up his name. I have no idea what he's doing right now. I honestly don't care because I, again, spiritually believe that this was happening for me. And, you know, in Hindu culture, we believe in karma. So I'm like, this is my karma. I have to live it. I have to learn whatever I'm supposed to learn from this. He must have a different karma and it's not this. And why would I want somebody else to have to go through this? Like if we're just thinking about humanity, I'm already going through it. I've already been indicted. That's not going away. Why do I want somebody else to get indicted?

31:12You know? And so just from a place of humanity and love, I just let it go. So the mindset went from full of anger and angst and anxiety to self-forgiveness, reflection, and the mindset shift, it took months. Honestly, So it took like April to September. So five months of every single day praying, every single day listening to praise music and talking to friends. And, you know, part of what got me through is I definitely borrowed others' belief in me. You know, there were so many people that gave me unconditional love, that stood by me. And so I do believe that when we can't believe in ourselves or we're having that moment of angst, fear, uncertainty, sadness, we got to lean on our people.

32:15And I call it my constellation of stars. I am blessed with amazing humans in my life. I mean, these letters are obviously a testament to that. But just, I learned really early on, I was 16 and my parents sent me to the Dale Carnegie class. And I don't know if you've taken Dale Carnegie, but I took it when I was 16. Are you familiar with Dale Carnegie? So I was 16, the class used to be 14 weeks. So I'm like a sophomore in high school, okay? And I'm going to this class where there's all of these like actual adults. so I'm in this class and my dad my dad had already taken the class and then he was like the whatever you call him like the coach or whatever he was like the advisor then my mom took the class so then my dad was like such a believer he was like rush me he's gonna take the class so I take the class um and I I learned so much so many skills definitely public speaking comes from their sales interpersonal skills but then one of the biggest things I learned is in life find and seek out mentors and mentors and relationships to me and I tell this to my kids now don't always have to be in what you believe is your desired profession right a mentor can be a ballerina who's in the community has who has incredible work ethic and you respect her and you want to you want to learn from her you want to learn what drives her how she stays motivated, you know, what her work ethic looks like, right?

33:50And so in my life, after Dale Carnegie, from even then in high school, high school, college, Morgan Stanley Law School, I amassed in a very authentic, selfless way, people who became my champions, people who knew me at my core, who I was, I've always been just open and authentic and vulnerable. I've never tried to pretend who I'm not. And that ability or whatever characteristic that I have followed me throughout my entire adult life. So when I became a young attorney, I was in San Francisco. Then I became a young attorney in Miami. Then I worked for the government. But along the way, my mentors were like the head real estate guy at some firm.

34:38Why? Because he was a philanthropist in our community, and I had tons of respect for him. Somebody else was, I remember she was the chief administrative officer of a bank. And I knew that she was really involved in the community. And I love that about her. And I sought her out. And these are people who I literally would seek out. And I would ask them to be my mentor. I would say, this is why I've admired you. This is what I know about you. Do you have time to mentor me? Can we, you know, will you meet for lunch? And this is what I believe. the worst thing that can happen is they can say no. The best thing that can happen is you have a mentor, sponsor, champion for life.

35:17And it doesn't always mean that you're talking about work. It's not because you want something, need something. You're not like, oh, I need a job. Let me go get them as a mentor. Or I hope I get a promotion. Or, oh, I want to get this client. If that happens down the road, five years, 10 years, 30 years later, that's what was meant to be. But that's not why we go and try to reach out and establish those connections and relationships. I think there's a lot of people that have what I call transactional relationships, right? And so they're relational transactional versus like truly just being authentic.

35:49And I just want to get to know you. Like you and I Kwame connected way before you were the superstar. I just wanted to know you. I love the fact that you're this brilliant attorney running a negotiations to do. That was interesting to me. We had that crossover. And so I do believe that as I went through this own journey of my life and had all these people essentially in my corner, before I even got indicted, when I was now in the midst of going through this major crisis, all those people showed up for me. And then when I was having doubts about myself, in that mind shift that I had to go through, it was those people that I relied on to buttress me up, to support me, to give me love, to remind me that I'm still unconditionally loved and that I still have value to give to my community and that they still respect me.

36:44So the mindset shift didn't happen overnight. It was definitely a process and it definitely took others along the journey with me. It's powerful. It's powerful because one thing I'm seeing in your story, which is a through line in so many of the other stories of powerful people who have done incredible things is the importance of community and the humility to recognize that a lot of what you think and believe is inaccurate or malleable. And that's so interesting. And there's that borrowed confidence where you say, you know what, I might not be on the firmest foundation when it comes to evaluating myself and the situation.

37:24So what I'm going to do is I am going to lean on the belief and the faith of other people. Because right now, they probably are seeing this better than me. I'm going to borrow their confidence in myself and their perspective. And then that took you to the next level. Because even though it did take time, it was accelerated because of the community and the trust and faith that you had in them. And now, Rashmi, let me ask you a question that will seem like it came out of left field. I want you to think about other lawyers. All of the lawyers that you know, hundreds of thousands of lawyers. How many lawyers have you ever seen dance?

38:05A lot. You've seen a lot? Well, you know, at parties. No, not a lot. A few at parties. See, that's what made you stand out to me. because we were at that keynote conference. And music started - Oh, dude, I am always on the dance floor. Yeah, well, that was the thing. I said, well, hold on. She said she's a lawyer and I see her dancing. Those two things, they don't connect very frequently without alcohol. Yeah, well, it's not even that I was dancing. I was like going at every time that music would come on, I was like front and center. And part of it is also just like not caring. at all what people think about me.

38:48Yes. See, it's a superpower. It is a superpower. Okay, Kwame, do you know that in my keynotes, so there's a story that I didn't share with you, but there's a story. So I ended up spending, I was sentenced to a year and I served time in three different facilities. But so after five months of being in federal, I got asked to testify in another case. And so the deal was, if I testify in this other case, there's a chance that the prosecutor will file a rule 35, which means I could get an early release, skip halfway house, skip the rest of incarceration, come straight home to house, and skip house arrest, come straight home to probation.

39:26So I'm like, I'll take that deal. If I can skip four or five months more of this and come straight home to the kids, I'll try that. In order to do that, though, I had to be transported from federal to county jail. So I was at a place called Coleman an hour north of Orlando and I'm being transported to Tampa where there's no federal prison. So they say you're gonna have to sit in a county jail. So when you're in the federal system, if you get in trouble, like you get into a fight, they find you with contraband or anything, the punishment is you get sent to county. So the girls come back from county after a week or two and they share like how bad the food is and the guards and the facility and the time, like it's just awful.

40:09now I'm voluntarily choosing to go to county in the hopes that I will eventually get home earlier so it's it's sort of a longer story but what part of the story well I'll share with you so as I'm as I'm being transported to county I've now spent five months in federal they handcuff shackle me with a waist chain they pile me onto an armor van and what's going on in my head is I don't belong with those women. Those are the thieves and the prostitutes and the drug dealers and the homeless people. I don't belong with them. I'm an attorney. I'm educated. And then I spent 23 days with these women, cooking, eating, praying, crying, sleeping, getting them to work out with me.

40:57And I realized how dare I have the audacity to pass judgment on these women, right? Because but for the grace of God go I. And that 23 days, though I don't want to ever repeat it, and I don't wish it on anybody, I needed to go through to have this understanding that we are all drops from the same ocean. We are all humans living a flawed existence, trying to figure it out. And you know, I could have been born in their life, they could have been born in my life. You know, we are just lucky to be in the scenarios that we're in. So one day we are, we are sitting in these cold, hard metal blue chairs that are stuck to the ground.

41:39And this is where we would watch TV. So we're sitting there, my bunk mates and I, there was about five of us, sorry, cute mates. And there we're watching the TV that's stuck to the wall, like at the DMV. And as we're watching TV, the movie Burlesque comes on. Do you know this movie Christina Aguilera I'm sure okay yeah so it's like fun there's a lot of singing and there's a lot of dancing and I totally want to look like Christina Aguilera on this movie and so so we're singing and dancing we're up out of our seats like having fun and we go back to our cube after the movie finishes and one of the girls says hey don't do you know how to Bollywood dance and I'm like that's kind of a trick question like all of us Indians think we know how to Bollywood dance.

42:18She goes, can you teach us? And I was like, we don't have any Indian music. She goes, no, no, I'll hum that really popular song that's on the radio right now that with the Knight Ritter theme in the background. She's like, she starts humming it. So I proceed to teach them a Bollywood dance lesson. So when I'm on stages, I mean, it's such a meaningful moment, right? Because it's like this shared humanity moment. And I do believe like, the more we create connection and collaboration and trust within each other and see that shared humanity, it really does help engagement, all the performance, engagement, culture, leadership, all of those things.

42:54So I will always invite everyone in the audience to rise if they're able. And I teach people from stage how to Bollywood dance. It's like a quick lesson. It's like a minute. But I'm like, put your hands up, shake them up and down. And so I get, you know, I had thousands of people in one room, Bollywood dancing. It's awesome. That's amazing. So my dancing continues. I love it. I love it. Yeah, because there is a level of confidence that you have to have in order to be willing to dance in a place where there is not a dance floor. This is one of the many reasons I admire Whitney. The world is her dance floor.

43:30She is. My wife is just dancing all the time. I love that. Now I have to meet her. Oh, yeah. She's amazing. And one of the things that you said really stuck with me, Rashmi, because it flies in the face of what you said earlier about the earlier versions of yourself. And I want you to describe that part of your journey and how it's really become a superpower for you. Because you said you don't care what people think about you. And earlier on, you said you were the perfect immigrant girl, the apple of everybody's eye, always achieving at a very high level. Those descriptions don't match. How did you make that shandish?

44:15And what has that given you? Yeah, well, so one of the ways I was able to dismantle that previous mindset was because through this process, I shared it with so many people. So all these people that wrote the letters and then also my entire Indian community, many of which also wrote letters, but even beyond that, right? At people in India. So because I shared it with so many and so many kind of pushed back and said, we love you anyways. Why would we stop loving you? That began to shift this belief that I had, that I had to be perfect to be loved, that I had to achieve to be loved. and and god when I was little first of all I was really overweight as a kid and you know so I just felt I never had like positive body image that's a whole other conversation and I never felt pretty and I was always the nerd and so I like I didn't have any positive self-image about myself except that I knew I was really smart and that I was really good in school like that's that's what gave me that confidence.

45:27Right. And so as I began to dismantle this idea that, oh, I don't have to actually achieve to be loved, it really fed myself value in so many other ways. Yes, I became healthier. Yes, I started working out. But it's interesting because I remember at my, maybe at my 10 year high school, 20 year high school reunion, I remember I won the award, okay for most improved female which is kind of like a slop in the face a little bit like well what do you mean improved like was I not like worthy back in high school and they were referring to like my I don't know that I was healthy and I looked good and I whatever physical physical looks I guess because again I was overweight growing up and I remember some friends saying but you were beautiful then and I just like couldn't put it to I couldn't put two and two together like you're telling me I won most approved female.

46:24So like majority of people were mad that I got that award because they were like, you've always been beautiful, but I never saw myself as that. And so I don't know. I don't even know if I'm answering your question. I just feel like I, the way I've gotten to the shift from before how I used to see myself and define myself by achievement became slowly like got chipped away and dismantled by people telling me otherwise, helping me recognize that this self-belief that I had was totally misplaced and wrong. And the more people showed up for me and wrote letters for me, I was like, oh, okay, well, I guess people do love me for me.

47:06There was a significant shift, I would say, when I came home from prison. And I always tell people, like, I had to lose my freedom to gain complete freedom. You know, I think I was living in these invisible prisons my entire life. I just didn't know that's what they were. It's a lot of what I talk about now from, you know, in my work that I do is I believe we're all living in invisible prisons. We just can't see them because they're glass walls. They're created by different things. I call them the four drifts that create these glass walls of our invisible prison. And having gone to physical prison helped me essentially break down those glass walls and to see them for what they were.

47:51And once you can see them and have awareness of these walls that we put ourselves in, it just allowed me to be totally free. And so I've always worn my heart on my sleeve. That's always been a thing. I, like, have no filter. My sister's like, you have no filter. but it's different now you know I I am very authentic to who I am and so if I want to dance I dance if I look stupid while I'm doing it oh well uh you know I think we're all just laughing at each other laughing at ourselves um if I want to stand up and say something I do you know I I so I I just have this I've decided I'm going to be authentic to who I am and live in that truth and have the freedom to do that.

48:42I mean, you know, with obvious respect for others, you know, I'm not going to be like innately dumb, but I don't know if I'm answering the question, but I just like allow myself that freedom now. Yes. I mean, you're answering the question in the perfect way because a couple of things that I want to pull out here is that it's interesting. A lot of times, especially with high achievers, we motivate each other. We motivate ourselves internally with whips and verbal abuse. And we say, I am going to hate myself until I become somebody that is worthy of love. Right. But what I'm hearing in your story is that the self-love came first.

49:27and then a lot of things had to change changed afterwards as a natural byproduct of that love that was emanating from the inside because we again with high achievers we we fail to distinguish between our achievements and ourselves we are not our achievements achievements are something that we have created and the but they are not us but we and that's one of the things that's really hard to fully appreciate, especially when you're driven and there's something bigger than yourself that you're trying to accomplish, that whether or not you accomplish that thing, you are still a human being worthy of love.

50:05And very few people can do that achieving, that striving while at the same place doing it from a place, at the same time doing it from a place of true deep self-love. And so that's what I love about this story. And like you said, the freedom that you feel now, Now you can actually be who you actually are and who you've always wanted to be. And going back to one of the things that you said, you said that I needed to go through this. I think that's a really interesting thing because so many people live limited lives because they say, I am afraid of going through these horrible situations. What if they laugh at me?

50:48What if the people judge me? And you've gone through all of it and said, actually, that thing that is worse than what I ever could have imagined, worst case scenario being, I needed that to become who I am today. So break that down, because if you can help other people understand how to come out of that mental prison that they might not have even recognized that they're in, that you might have given them exactly what they needed to take that big swing. Yeah. So I think, so, well, let me just say a couple of things about this. One is when, when I began to break down my invisible walls, right? It was a combination of, like you said, self-love and, and really self-awareness, right?

51:31That self-awareness allow, you have to be aware first of, of what's happening. Cause if you're, if you're stuck in the doing, you're, there's no awareness, right? So you have to have the awareness first. And what triggers the awareness is different for all of us. For me, it was like this horrible thing that happened. For other people, it could be a medical, you know, tragedy. It could be, there's so many aspects of what could, you know, trigger awareness. It doesn't always have to be a crisis, but it often is. It could be change. It could be something, you know, that we're observing in life. So once we have awareness, I think the ability to have that self-love takes, takes a deconstruction of your own self.

52:12You know, like I had a lot of time in prison to think about myself. I spent a lot of, so I would, I had a practice in prison, which is I wrote in my gratitude journal every single morning and night. One of my friends sent me within the first week, the five second journal, right? So it was very popular back then. And for me, for me, having, being where I was sitting in a federal prison, to be able to find things to be grateful for, and to make positive affirmations for and to set goals every morning, away from my children, away from my life was a very massive thing for me, because it just allowed me to constantly remind myself that I can find gratitude.

53:00I am a good person. I still have my health. My kids have their health. I still have my education. Like all of those things that you, it's easy enough to harbor on, oh my God, I lost my bar license. I lost all my money. I lost my marriage. I lost my freedom. I lost my right to vote. I could be harboring on those things, but I chose to obsess about all the good things. So that ability to find gratitude was very, very monumental in this process for me. And it would be like the first thing I did in the morning, every morning, and the last thing I did every night before I went to sleep in prison. And I've continued that since I've come home.

53:37It's a huge part of my mental practice. The other thing that I do, you were saying people like have these self-negative thoughts that they say to themselves. I have the opposite. So whether, it happens at different times for me. Sometimes it's right when I wake up. Sometimes it's when I'm trying to go to sleep. Sometimes it's when I'm in the shower. It just varies depending on when I want to and multiple times a day. But I say a couple of affirmations. I say, I am who I am. I am strong. I am opportunity. I am health. I'm a good mom. I am wealth. And wealth to me is in every possible way, right?

54:12Wealth to be able to provide for my family. Wealth to be able to give back to my community. Wealth to be able to be a loving mother. Like all of those things. Wealth. So I always do positive affirmations. I absolutely get this from my father. He will always say, you know, write five affirmations down, put them on your mirror. All of that very much comes from my family. And so all of that has been sort of the journey of how I have been able to shift and I think how others can do it. Remind me again, what was the question? Oh, doesn't matter. You answered it. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think, so one of the things there's, um, there's, there's lots of ways I believe we evolve as humans.

54:56And I, you're right. I do say to people, though, I don't wish this on you. I would never take away the prison experience from my own life journey because I do believe I was meant to go through this. I am a much better human today than I was then in so many different ways. and what I've learned, I could never have learned had I not gone to prison. And they're not like, oh no, otherwise there'll be recidivism. It's not that. I'm never going to commit a crime again. The learnings and the journey that I went on and what I've discovered is not like legal stuff, it's more aspects of our humanity. The ability to be around people that otherwise I would not have been around and to learn from those people who are now my sisters.

55:41That experience has taught me so much about the relatability of all of us to each other. So much of my work now and the way I'm able to relate my experience having gone to prison to why this matters for CEO Hershey's, let's say, is because of the relatability of the invisible prison. So you asked where are the invisible prisons. I remember now. The invisible prisons, I believe, are built up of four walls. The four walls, I call, are the four walls where we can find ourselves drifting. The four walls are uncertainty. So uncertainty is inevitable. It's here to stay. I'm sure you saw that the world's uncertainty index in December of 2025 is the highest it's ever been in the history of the world.

56:26So higher than the pandemic, higher than any war, higher than the Spanish flu, like literally higher than ever. And so if we know that the uncertainty is this, like it is, it is a certain thing that it's going to be uncertain, how we deal with that level of uncertainty becomes a wall. Because if we're going to be constantly be fighting it and we're always, always working under pressure and speed and trying to go faster and trying to deal with the uncertainty and trying to find certainty when it's not there, that becomes a wall, which can give us the ability to drift or allows us the ability to rationalize why we should drift.

57:00The second wall is family and life pressures. So all of us have them. They look differently for all of us, whether it's a relationship that's strained, a child that needs us, a parent that's who's, you know, having some medical issues. There's all sorts of medical and life issues. And the thing about drift is that it doesn't just, it doesn't just deplete you, it distorts you. so you you don't even realize you've become this person that you never intended to be and the gap between your intention and your action just begins to widen so that's the second wall the third wall is especially now ai technology and automation so we are living in a world where everything seemingly has to go faster to be more efficient to be better to get hired to get the job and the faster we go we get rewarded so then we think we just have to go faster and speed is not always the answer.

57:51It doesn't mean you can't go fast. It means you have to at least recognize that AI and technology are creating a wall for us or creating this thing that we're beating up against. And if we don't acknowledge it and recognize it, we could make a bad decision. And then the fourth is silence. So silence is the wall where we allow our limiting beliefs, our assumptions, our failures, our imposter syndrome, and our rationalization and justifications about all the things that we want to do come in. And so we silence ourselves and we don't speak up or we don't do something. In my case, I didn't say anything about this client or we silence others.

58:31So being the loudest in the room often works. I mean, I'm sure this is a negotiation, a big thing, but if you don't allow others to disagree with you and the ability to speak up, that silence becomes a wall. And so what I believe is the invisible prison is built with these four walls and we need to know about these four walls because otherwise we're just going to drift and somehow make a bad decision because of these walls. Wow. Wow. Yeah. So that's the invisible prison. And then my research that I've done, right, to understand what I discovered is the way in which we make decisions because of all of this pressure and speed matters.

59:07And so what I did was I sort of deconstructed it all into four easy questions that we can ask ourselves. It's called the clarity loop. And if we ask ourselves these four questions that takes a couple minutes, right, especially in high stakes moments, right? Like maybe not like, what color pants do I want to wear today? But, you know, should I hire this vendor or not? Should I go work for this client or not? You know, there's real matters at stake. The four questions are, what am I feeling right now? Because otherwise our emotions activate us and then we make decisions out of emotion. and if we don't know that we're making decisions out of emotion then we make the wrong decision in my case I was operating out of fear right oh my gosh if I don't get this client I'm not going to survive I have to get this client because I've got to pay for my kids this and my you know pay payroll and I have so much fear around being able to do that in this uncertain world um Um, but I didn't see it as fear.

1:00:05I saw it as strategic and efficient and success. I didn't even identify it as an emotion. It was just like, go, go, go, do, do, do. So what, what am I feeling right now? The second is what story am I telling myself? So there's a narrative that gets created in our head of, I have to do this, otherwise this. So I have to get the client, otherwise I won't survive. I have to say yes to the sponsor. Otherwise my event won't be able to move forward. And when we create a narrative, it allows us to rationalize, to justify, to make assumptions that actually aren't true because we need that story to be true.

1:00:45The third is what matters most here. So what matters most here is where we go from performance to alignment. So it's not about like the short term, I need to get the client or I need to make this$100 ,000. It's more am I aligned with my core values? Is this really what my eventual goal is for my company, for my family, for my team? So what matters most here? And then finally, the last question, which is arguably the most important, is what choice can I own later? So of course, this is where accountability comes in, but there's a larger, deeper scientific principle, which is called moral humility.

1:01:23So moral humility is this idea that every one of us is capable of drift. every one of us, given the pressure, the speed, the noise, the uncertainty, the competition that we are in, in that moment in life, could potentially make a bad decision in a moment. And if we can acknowledge that about ourselves, then that moral humility allows us to then make a better decision and say, can I see myself in five years? And this decision I just made is on the front page of a newspaper. Am I okay with that? Or my board of directors has gotten wind of this decision I just made, or my team or my family. Am I okay with that?

1:02:03And if we're not okay with it, we need to reassess the decision. So these four questions, man, I wish I had had it before I started working with this client. And really the reason I built it was I wish I had had it. So now I told my clients and my team, you know, audiences like, you now have a process. I call it our guardrails for our thinking. And now that you have the process, you can't unknow it. Like now you know it. Now you're going to be like, what am I feeling right now? What story am I telling myself? So it really is the ability for all of us to apply a process so that we can make better decisions and automatically consider these behavioral science principles without actually having to say, do I have a moral awareness?

1:02:45Am I having moral judgment? Am I having moral humility? It's more like it's embedded into the question. Yes. Oh, this is fantastic. It's such a handy, real, useful tool because, like you said, we all can find ourselves in these types of scenarios. And it is the belief that we couldn't find ourselves in these scenarios that is the first step to leading us to find ourselves in these scenarios. Do you know what I say? Like, I go through this whole thing from stage and then I tell people, some of you might be sitting there saying, that would never happen to me. Like, I would never do that. My parents taught me better.

1:03:20I'm smarter than she is, or I'm just more faithful and educated than she is. It's the most dangerous assumption in this room. And I get it because I used to think the same thing. I would never have imagined that I could have done what I did. And the problem is that when you separate yourself, that's exactly where the drift starts. Because you just think that you're better than something like this ever happening to you. So yeah, you said it without me even having to say it. Wow. It's powerful. And I'm very like, it is like a pushback onto the audience, but that's what we need. I mean, we're not here to just be like, yes, people and empowering people from stage.

1:03:58I want people to think, to really be challenged by what I'm saying and understand that this could happen. Yes. And for me, again, you're speaking lawyer to me, which I love. We have clear frameworks, guidelines, if then types of things. This is great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And let me ask you one more question before I bring in Simone, because he's always listening and has an insightful question or comment to add. Okay. Because when we think about big swings, this was one that was not a pleasant experience. Sometimes when you think about life, there are going to be things that you are going to be in control of, that you do with intentionality, a big swing that you take on purpose.

1:04:36And this was one that happened by accident. And now when you got out and now you were confronted with the reality that you need to find a way to live your life and practicing law isn't in the future. And that's everything that you worked for, an Ivy League law school educated lawyer practicing at a high level. And now that's gone. how did you start to think about what the next chapter would be and then what did you do to give yourself permission to live in this way out loud sharing this story with full ownership at this level because i'm assuming that wouldn't wouldn't be very easy to do because it was such a dark chapter of your life.

1:05:26Yeah. So how is when I first came home, I debriefed with my family, my kids, my friends. It was really others that started pushing me to share my story. It was others that said that had watched the journey of like being really angry to that shift as you acknowledged in the mindset that I had. And so it was others saying, God, rush me the way you've handled this and how you've gone through this from a sense of peace is so incredible. well, you should really share your story. I was like, why would anybody care about my story? And so when I first started sharing, I remember the first place I spoke was at Columbia Law School.

1:06:04And really it was like, I just want to go and talk to some third-year law students and hope that I can help at least one law student never go through what I went through. And that was the goal and intention. So I did that. And that, you know, sort of word began, that professor who was running that program, told somebody else at NYU, who told somebody else at Fordham, who told the New York City Bar Association. And like word just began to spread. Funny enough, like within New York at the beginning. And so I started to do more and more talks. But to be honest, I still didn't know what I was doing.

1:06:33I mean, I wasn't a speaker. I was just sharing my story just to help others. And then people started to want to hire me and pay me. And the judge in my case wouldn't let let me get paid. He said, while you're on probation, I'm not going to let you earn a fee sharing your story. You can get your cost paid. I find it very admirable, but I'm not going to let you earn a fee. Okay. So then I had to make a choice. Do I keep sharing the story because people are inviting me because there was momentum and just keep waiving my fee? I mean, my fee was like five at the time, three, five, whatever people wanted to pay me.

1:07:12Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, go back, say that again. We need the appropriate flex. People don't understand because people outside of the speaking world, when I've got those numbers, they're like, what? Five what? Sorry. Okay. So my fee at the time, what people were offering me was like$3 ,000, $2 ,000,$5 ,000. And so I called all the people that I had contracts with once the judge ruled, I couldn't get paid and I waived it all. And I said, I'm going to waive my speaker fee and I I just need you to cover my costs for travel and hotel and all those things. So I was on probation for three years.

1:07:48And in those three years, I did almost 300 speeches. I traveled a lot. People just kept calling me and, you know, and they were all for free, obviously. And we're, you know, at one point, my mom said, why are you, why are you continuing to do this? You know, you're taxing your body, you're away from your family. And I said, you know, I do believe this is my redemption. This is my pay it forward. I'm helping people. And again, like I said, if I can help one person every time I speak, then that's everything to me. So then in March of 2019, I went off probation.

1:08:28And I started getting, you know, I was able to start getting paid. And I had a couple contracts lined up. And two months later, my sister passed away from mental health issues. so she was a year younger than me and she had been suffering for decades it's a whole other part of the story uh so i really did just sort of want to go off the grid again for like five months and it was really hard on the family on my parents and you know i became the daughter helping her parents and i found other speakers for those events and uh then but i still did not know what it meant to be a speaker again i was just like fulfilling what people needed me to do and tell a story.

1:09:04It wasn't until then right after that COVID hit. So it honestly really wasn't until 2022 when I began to really get serious about what I wanted to do and what gave me the courage to be able to share in the way that I share it, which is what you asked, was I had long conversations with my kids. At the time, by then I was already divorced, but I spoke to my parents and my sister, my younger sister who's still alive and I you know I I basically said I really believe this is my purpose in life I really believe that the reason God the universe had me go through this experience was because I'm meant to share it and I somehow have this courage to share it and I believe I'm meant to share it to continue to touch and inspire people's lives and so that's why I do what I do.

1:09:59I've gotten called by recruiters for jobs that would pay me seven figures or more. And I turned them down because I obviously have a lot of credentials, but I turned them down because I don't want to stop doing this. So the community that you and I were part of really helped me really fine tune why my story matters to audiences so that it becomes relatable and actually actionable. So I've done a lot of work around, you know, the words that I use and what's the outcomes, like all the things that a professional speaker has to do. And that's taken like, you know, a good two years. And I'm not, I feel like I'm now at that cusp of, I know I'm doing what I'm doing.

1:10:41I know what makes me unique. And, you know, when you book me, what you're getting, like all of those things I know now. That's so cool. Out of curiosity, just giving you an opportunity to do just a very quick flex again. Simone, I see you. We're bringing you in. Can you name off some of the big companies that you've been able to work with since? Yeah. Comcast, Microsoft, Deloitte, Lenar, Merck, Medtronic, Hershey's, Coca-Cola, GE Healthcare. Should I keep going? This is great. This is great because there's a point that I want to make here because imagine if we can take just a few little snippets of information here and go back to rush me 20 25 30 years ago and say you know what in 2026 your roster of clients would be microsoft ge all of these hershey's all of these big companies and your hourly rate would be tens of thousands of dollars per hour yeah and you'd be flown all across the country to do this you And if you need to practice law, you just go up there and vibe for an hour.

1:11:55What? Cool. I'll take that. Well, I will say your fee is higher than mine, I think, right now. But that's okay. I'm getting there. Listen, the audience needs to know that Rushney's fee is$8 million per Kenyac. That's the word on the street. That's what I heard. Yeah, all right. You know that? But it's funny to see where, okay, those are the credentials. That's the objective reality. You're getting paid a lot of money from big companies all across the country. and but you never would have known what it would take to get to that point and that you know what i say to people kwame is that i am happier today than i ever thought i could be now the one level of happiness that i'm still seeking is finding a partner and companion and so that'll come like i have such faith in the universe that that person that human that man is looking for me he just hasn't found me yet.

1:12:43And in the meantime, I'm just enjoying life, you know? Well, listen, Big Swings audience, Prince Charming, I know he is out there listening to this podcast. Maybe you're listening. I need one of my listeners to take a big swing. Watch us go back to this moment. Listen, the funny thing is, is I'm actually on all the apps. I just don't go look at them because I don't have time right now to spend them. Well, I've been so much in book launch mode that I have not, had time to want to like go like oh i should go on a first date because like that's a lot of work you know i need like i think by by this fall i'll have like the energy and the time to go back and like okay i'm ready to invest that time so what i'm hearing is that rashmi is busy so make it easy big slang person in the audience okay yeah see simone all you man when you went out of prison then this is something that might be taboo for many people.

1:13:41They don't want to talk about that. It's like, okay, it's past and I don't want to say anything about my stage in prison. So how did you decide to make that weakness a strength for your future and to monetize with that? Yeah. The first book I read when I was in prison was Brene Brown's Gifts of Imperfection. I read a lot in prison. And in reading that book, I found the courage to recognize that my imperfections is where my strength was and my gifts. And then when I came out, I watched all of her TED Talks and I was really, really committed. We're going to manifest and I'm going to be on her podcast one day.

1:14:29And so that concept of being vulnerable, which my entire life I thought was a weakness. And so I was always the know-it-all. Like I said, I was the achiever. I never asked any questions. I never asked for help. It was just not who I was. I definitely thought doing any of that was like failure and a weakness. And now I see it completely opposite. Now, having gone through the experience, having read a lot of Brene Brown and done a lot of self-reflection, what I believe is that the more vulnerable, the more real, the more true we are to what we don't know and our humanity, the stronger we are. The more people respect us because they can see ourselves in us.

1:15:16They can actually understand that, oh, she doesn't know anything and she's asking for help. That's okay. uh so and i i do think our society has had this like shift in acknowledgement of these concepts and so the idea of being vulnerable has become a lot more um acknowledged and welcomed it wasn't you know in sort of like that white shoe society that we used to live in where you know there was like black and white right or wrong it was just very like dogmatic and i i think we have evolved from there, thankfully. We have so much work to do still. And I related to the stigma that my used to, when my sister first started having mental health issues, which was 1980, 1990, nobody was talking about mental health.

1:16:04Nobody understood mental health. God forbid you even admitted that somebody in your family had it because of the stigma. Nobody, there were no proper medications, right? Like there was just nothing in the vernacular, in society about mental health. So as my sister began to suffer, our family had zero language to talk about it. We had no understanding. We had nobody to go to. There was no resources. And think about where we are today in, you know, 2026, that though I believe there's still so much work to do. I always think about like insurance coverage for mental health patients. There's still so much work to do in that space.

1:16:47My parents co-founded a nonprofit in South Florida in honor of my sister to help mentally ill members of our community. But that's a perfect example of like, there's always a stigma associated with something. So I think that the stigma associated with being vulnerable has changed a lot. Has it gotten to where we want to go? Not yet. But I think that you look around to somebody like Satya Nadella, he has known for his leadership style of starting a conversation with his team and listening and asking and welcoming disagreement. I think those are the things that we need to see in other leaders to empower that connection and trust within each other is when we listen and admit that we don't know everything.

1:17:36We're not meant to know everything. We're human beings. Yeah. Yes. Wow. This is great. And Rashmi, before you go, I've got two more questions before we land the plane. Okay. So when you were younger, you said that you weren't very healthy. You didn't feel like you were beautiful. And now that has changed. So question number one is, how does it feel going from where you were as a young girl and a young woman to now being the keynote speaker on stage in front of thousands of people asking her photographer to make sure you get the bicep when I am on stage. How does that transition feel? And then also how has health and fitness played a role in who you are today?

1:18:26I mean, both related questions. As I was sharing earlier with you, I think pre-interview, I never used to exercise as a kid, I was the ultimate nerd, right? So like on weekends, I was in debate competitions and math competitions and spelling and doing homework and going to Indian parties. But I just didn't even know what exercise was. Really, I didn't even understand what exercise was or how to do it or that I was capable of it. When I got to college, because I had grown up overweight. Now, look, I was a cheerleader in high school, but I don't call that exercise. I mean, I was doing things and it was very hard, but I really wasn't exercising like I do now.

1:19:06I got to college and I, because I was so determined not to gain the freshman 15, I kind of went the alternate, the opposite direction. And so then I became anorexic in college. And that was an entire journey I went on to, because I never, okay, so I grew up in a home where I didn't understand exercise. And look, it's not like my parents intentionally didn't teach me. They also didn't understand, right? They were never taught as kids. It wasn't part of like, they didn't, they weren't like, you know, I grew, I was a soccer mom, volleyball mom. My daughter's a college athlete now, but that's my existence.

1:19:39That was not my parents' existence. And so I grew up in a home where we were eating Indian food every day. And then when I could finally drive or we would go out to eat, I would eat like McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's. And I just had no concept of what's healthy to eat, what's not healthy to eat, what does a carb, a fat, and a protein mean. I did not understand any of it. Nobody taught me. My parents didn't understand it. So when I got to college and I sort of went completely opposite, I still had no understanding of nutrition. It's not like I went and sought it out. I just started limiting everything that I ate and I started exercising obsessively.

1:20:20And then fortunately, my junior year, two friends did an intervention and helped took me to the hospital and, and like got me care. And then I was like, oh, I better start paying attention and understanding what I'm doing. So that was when I began the journey of understanding health, fitness, nutrition. Cause at the time I wasn't lifting any weights all through college. I was just walking a lot. So walking and doing the elliptical, I remember. And so then I got to law school or I got to New York and I still didn't understand. I started training for a marathon. I still just kept doing things, not understanding.

1:20:57It really wasn't until I graduated law school, moved to Miami, was training for a marathon, and I was just tired all the time, fatigued all the time. I finally went to a nutritionist. It was probably 19... No, it was... Yeah, it was 1999. So I go to... So I'm 28 years old at this point. I go to a nutritionist and she said, can you write down for three days, every single thing that you put in your mouth? I was like, okay. So I write down every single thing, any, any beverage, candy, it didn't matter. So I come back and I give it to her and she goes, okay, your problem is you're eating 90 % carbs, 5 % fat, 5 % protein.

1:21:39You have, you are eating so little, but yet you're getting no nutrients. And then anyway, so she like completely revamped my diet, helped me understand what is the difference between a carb, a fat, and a protein, how many calories they each have, you know, like all of these things that I did not understand. And I started adding weights into my regimen. And it's really been a journey since then. So it's however many years that is, 27 years since then. I'll be 55 this year, and I'm the healthiest I've ever been in my life. I'm in the best shape of my life. I'm not allowed to run anymore. I have a really bad scoliosis in my back.

1:22:17So decades and decades of marathon running has now made me not able to run. But because of that, I do a lot more weights and other things at the gym. And my daily lifestyle, because you asked, is it doesn't matter how much sleep I've gotten. It doesn't matter what city I'm in. I work out every single day. I say movement is medicine. So I move my body in some way every single day. Sometimes it's more intense. Sometimes it's not as intense. I won't get on stage without exercising. I'm like, I have to flush out my face. Like, otherwise I have puffy eyes. And what I, you know, I do think there's this idea of look good, feel good, feel good, look good.

1:22:56And, you know, whether we want to admit it or not, we're walking onto stage and there are thousands of eyes on us. And if I feel when I feel confident in what I look like and in the clothes I'm wearing, I'm going to feel better, think better of myself, and I'm going to perform better. I'm going to be able to communicate better. so it's it's all intertwined um is there a level of vanity in it probably i'm trying to always like beat down my ego and like don't have ego don't have ego i do interestingly you know like i said that i never felt pretty when i was growing up um it's weird because now i know that i'm beautiful and i never would have said that before and i don't say it from a place of like ego i just believe i'm beautiful but i believe it because i'm beautiful from the inside like i've just come such a place of understanding of others and humans.

1:23:44And I feel like I'm a very kind giving person and I really want what's best for others. Like I live from a place of giving and humility. And so that I think is what makes me beautiful. And I guess it just radiates. So again, you know, the guy's out there. He just hasn't found me yet. I know. This is, yes, this is a podcast, people, you will be inspired, but also. It's a dating, it's a dating podcast. I'm calling it Disney. It'll be the first matchmaking episode. Big swings only. Rush me. I'm going to come back on when I find the match. Exactly. Bring him to. Bring him to. This is great. Rush me.

1:24:20This has been fantastic. I really appreciate you coming on. Before you go, please let listeners know about your book, your keynotes, how they can get in touch and connect. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I'm very easy to find. So I don't know why I'm blurry right now. I'm very easy to find. my email is my name. So it's rushme at rushmearron.com. It's R-A-S-H-M-I at R-A-S-H-M-I-A-I-R-A-N.com. It's also my website, rushmearron.com. Pretty much on every social channel, it's my name. So you can find me. I'm very approachable. You can email me. My book is titled All Rise. So it's like a play, double entendre play on, of course, what I heard when the judge walked in, but my framework, my brand, my battle cries, rise through it.

1:25:10Then no matter what we go through, we can all rise through it. Not above it, not around it. We got to go through it to rise. So the book is really a leadership prescriptive memoir. So it is my story, but told every chapter has leadership lessons and reflective questions. So it's really meant to be a working book. It's also available on Audible and I narrate it. It's like five hours and change. It's very emotional. I just listened to myself on Saturday because people kept calling me and saying, God, your audible voice is amazing. You should do more audible stuff. And I'm like, okay, yeah, if the speaking thing doesn't work out, I'll start becoming an audible narrator.

1:25:51But it was actually really interesting to hear myself speak, to hear myself narrate the book. There's moments where you can tell I'm getting emotional because it's an emotional story, obviously. And yeah, available to do keynotes. Actually, my fall is getting booked, but I'm sure like yours. So I just feel honored and blessed to be able to do what I do. And I don't have a manager, so you can come directly to me. And yeah. Amazing. Rashmi, thank you so much for coming on and thank you for sharing your story. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was so fun.