Mindfulness, Leadership, and the Power of Authentic Branding with Rudhir Krishtel

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Description

Making partner and working in-house at a major international corporation might sound like the ultimate career milestone—but it can also come with intense pressure that leaves you feeling more burned out than fulfilled.

Rudhir Krishtel knows this firsthand. After a decade practicing law and making partner, he transitioned to in-house counsel at Apple, Inc., where he discovered the transformative power of mindfulness. Those practices not only helped him manage the stress of a high-pressure career but also redefined how he approached his personal and professional life. Today, as the founder and CEO of Krishtel LLC, Rudhir empowers legal professionals to thrive through well-being, leadership, business development, and DEI strategies.

In this episode of Branding Room Only, Rudhir shares how mindfulness can strengthen your personal brand and why authentic relationship-building is essential for successful business development. We also explore the importance of self-awareness, understanding your unique value, and learning how to promote yourself in even the most competitive environments.

Chapters

1:06 - Why Rudhir sees personal branding like a storefront and how he identifies his mission

5:07 - Rudhir’s favorite quote and the connection between self-expression and authenticity (particularly in relation to executive presence)

7:48 - Rudhir’s hype songs and the impact that practicing gratitude can have on you and your brand

11:53 - Rudhir’s background and how he transitioned from law firm partner to his current role

15:20 - How Rudhir integrated mindfulness practices into his legal career and its impact on how he showed up as a professional

24:17 - Why we lean into business development and the first step toward attaining future success for junior attorneys

33:35 - The importance of investing in relationships in legal practice and building trust in business development

43:20 - The hangup you might have about self-promotion and resources to help you start your mindfulness journey

49:32 - Outer action you can take for business development that’ll make the marketing and branding work easier

50:50 - What Rudhir does for fun, what he’ll never compromise on brand-wise, and what he offers others as a Branding Room Only experience

Connect With Rudhir Krishtel

Rudhir Krishtel is a CEO, Keynote Speaker, Executive Coach, and Consultant at Krishtel LLC. Prior to becoming a speaker and coach, Rudhir practiced law for 15 years as a Federal Clerk, patent litigation partner at an AmLaw100 firm and then as Senior Counsel at Apple.  

His lawyer days led him to train as a teacher for yoga and mindfulness meditation, and as a professional coach and facilitator to help serve as a resource for the legal community.

Rudhir specializes in creating the space for having difficult conversations and growth at the intersection of Leadership, Business Growth, Well-Being and DEI issues. He focuses on providing tools for those affected by the most challenging aspects of the legal workplace. 

Through his work with groups and individuals, Rudhir leads his team to help transform the workplace for high performing teams and professionals.

Rudhir Krishtel | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | Twitter/X

Mentioned In Mindfulness, Leadership, and the Power of Authentic Branding with Rudhir Krishtel

“The New Rules of Executive Presence” by Sylvia Ann Hewlett | Harvard Business Review

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Access Rudhir’s Guided Meditations

Paula’s Annual Intention and Goal Setting Webinar for 2025

Personal Branding Strategy Sessions

Subscribe to The Branding Room Only on YouTube

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by PGE Consulting Group LLC.

PGE Consulting Group LLC is dedicated to providing a practical hybrid of professional development training and diversity solutions. From speaking to consulting to programming and more, all services and resources are carefully tailored for each partner. Paula Edgar’s distinct expertise helps engage attendees and create lasting change for her clients.

To learn more about Paula and her services, go to www.paulaedgar.com or contact her at info@paulaedgar.com, and follow Paula Edgar and the PGE Consulting Group LLC on LinkedIn.

Transcript

Paula Edgar: Welcome to The Branding Room Only Podcast where we share career stories, strategies, and lessons learned on how industry leaders and influencers have built their personal brands. Now, let's get started with the show. Hi, everybody. It's Paula Edgar, your host of Branding Room Only, and I'm super excited for my conversation today with my friend, Rudhir Krishtel. Let me tell you about him. He is the founder and CEO of Krishtel LLC, a company specializing in well-being, business development, leadership, and DEI for law firms and legal professionals. With over two decades of experience as a lawyer and former law firm partner, Rudhir now helps law firms, attorneys, and executives transform their practice and life. He is passionate about fostering meaningful connections and empowering professionals to thrive in high-pressure environments. This is not a high-pressure environment. Rudhir, welcome to The Branding Room. Rudhir Krishtel: Paula, thank you. Thank you to everybody that's watching and listening. I really appreciate you having me here. Paula Edgar: Absolutely, so talk to me, what is a personal brand to you? What does it mean to you? Rudhir Krishtel: When I think about a personal brand, I think about it as the storefront. I think about it as the thing that people see when they drive by. Pizza, Pizza Hut, you name it, you drive by, you see it. What do you think about this thing? What does it look like? Is it inviting you in? Is it inviting you for a greater engagement? A lot of people, they're reflecting their personal brand these days on social, they're doing it through the messages that they're sending, or just how they represent themselves, and I think of it in a business context as the storefront. Is it what people see? Is it something they want to engage with more? Is it something that allows them to keep you top of mind? Certainly image, and there's a lot more to that, but I just think of it as the thing that's the front page on what they're looking to get more of. Paula Edgar: I love that. I love that description as a storefront. I often make the comparison to an actual product. When you drink a can of Coca-Cola like I do. Anyway, what do you expect, when you see it, you have an expectation and you also know when you're not getting what you expect. I love that storefront analogy. I think I'm going to take it. I'm going to just use it from now on, it's all good. Rudhir Krishtel: Well, I want to contextualize it for you because the place that I use is with social. A lot of folks that I work with have this hesitation with social media. I appreciate that. I know that it can be scary for a high-performing professional to just put themselves out there in a regular way on LinkedIn, for example. You do a great job of that. I'm sure a lot of folks that you work with, but you and I both know people that hesitate. What I think of is, and I tell them is, “Hey, this is your storefront. If you drive by your favorite store four or five times and then it reminds you to go in or you drive by that sign for that Mexican restaurant or that pizza place, that drive-by opportunity for them, the location where they have it, is what's going to maybe invite you to come in. Maybe they got a sign outside. Maybe they got something that's on sale. Maybe there's a special going on and you see it.” LinkedIn is one of those places that's an opportunity for a storefront because guess what people are not doing, they're not looking at your website. They're not clicking on something to come find you. You got to put your storefront out there. When I think about branding in part, and social is a meaningful part of people's brand these days, I just think about, what is it that they see? What's the storefront? What are they driving by that's helping them realize they need more access, they want to step in, and they want to engage? Paula Edgar: I love the analogy because I'm thinking about driving past a restaurant that I love. You remember the experience, you remember the food, and you know that you want to go back. Even for those of you, those three of you who are on here who I haven't convinced yet to be on LinkedIn, you still are a storefront even just by how you show up. What is the experience they had with you the last time they saw it? I love that analogy. As I mentioned, I'll be stealing it. So, speaking of storefronts and expectations and descriptions, how would you describe yourself in three words or short phrases? Rudhir Krishtel: I want to make the life of high performers better. I'm here to improve people's lives. I remember what it was like to be in a stressful career as a law firm partner and as in-house counsel. I know how hard that is. I just want to make people's lives better. I think about how to make their life better from a business perspective, from a well-being perspective. I want them to be more inclusive. I know they do too. I want them to be successful and lead. Ultimately, I think the word that people may associate most with me is I want them to be more mindful. I want them to have a mindful approach to their engagement. Paula Edgar: Yeah, the first word that came to mind for me was chill. I was like, "You're chill." Rudhir Krishtel: That's another way of putting it. That's another way of putting it. I definitely want this thing to be chill. I got a six year old and I said, "What are you going to do when you get home?" He's "I'm just going to lounge." And I'm like, “The apple does not fall far from the tree,” so that's exactly right. Paula Edgar: He's embraced wellness already, it's all good, I love that. Rudhir Krishtel: Yeah, I'm just going to lounge. Paula Edgar: Do you have a favorite quote? Rudhir Krishtel: I think I probably have many, but one that I heard recently, and I think it's Julia Cameron wrote this book, "The Artist's Way," and I think it's something from that, because I did a presentation recently on executive presence. It's something to the effect of there's no self-expression without the self. Paula Edgar: Oh, I love that. Oh, I love that. Rudhir Krishtel: Sometimes we lose a sense of ourself. Sometimes we're not connected to ourself. Then what are we expressing? What are we sharing out? What are we articulating? Without that connection to the self, there's no self-expression. I've been holding on to that lately. Paula Edgar: I love that. It's interesting that you talk about it in the connection of executive presence, because I immediately thought of it, and I guess they're related in authenticity, that piece of the true you of whatever you're doing. When it comes to branding, when that is not there, it is so clear that I was just talking to somebody else and they were like, “Well, Paula, if you showed up in a room and you were just wearing all black and you weren't smiling, I would know something was wrong.” I was like, “Right, it's that understanding of how you impact others and other's expectations of you.” What is the connection of self when it comes to executive presence? Rudhir Krishtel: Well, I think about executive presence or what you said, authenticity. I think they're very interrelated. There's an article in Harvard Business Review that came out recently that talks about what executive presence meant to us in 2012 and what does it mean to us in 2022? It's very interesting that what we expect of this thing has actually evolved in a short amount of time. Now, your presence on Zoom is a part of your executive presence. That wasn't the case 10, 15 years ago. Being inclusive is a part of executive presence. I don't know that we were watching Wall Street, back in the day we were looking for somebody to be inclusive and yet now having that mindset and having that way of being matters. I think there's an erasing line between executive presence and authenticity. I think that interconnection is something that you and I are thinking about a lot. Paula Edgar: Yeah, no, I love that. I love that description of it. They're not the same, but they're close cousins. Tell me this, do you have a hype song? This is when they're going to get full Rudhir there coming on the stage, ready to do all this thing, what songs are playing in your head, or, maybe and, if you're having a bad day, what song is going to bring you up? It could be one song or two songs. Rudhir Krishtel: I got a couple, is that okay? I love these questions, so I got a list if it's okay, we could talk about this the rest of the time. It's funny you asked this because I did a talk recently, and actually you were there, and they said that my hype song was Beyonce, Texas Hold 'Em, and right when they said that the crowd was just like, “Oh, all right, let's go.” This is when the song just came out and it was super fired up. So, that song earlier in the spring definitely got me going. But the song is going to get me going right now, I think about the songs that I listened to with my family that get us going, Lil Boo Thang, you know that song? Paula Edgar: Yes. Rudhir Krishtel: It's been around for a while, but I can just, it's just- Paula Edgar: I love it. Rudhir Krishtel: Yeah, I love that, Paul Russell. Then the other one is, what is it? Heaven Is a Place on Earth, or heaven in the clouds? Paula Edgar: Yes. Rudhir Krishtel: Like, “Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth? Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth.” I mean, I look at my son, because I tell my son this all the time, and we can get into spirituality and religion if needed, but he always talks a lot about heaven and what's heaven like and what is that. I actually point out to him how lucky we are and how blessed we are and that heaven is here with us. This is heaven. I said, "What do you want? What would you want in heaven?" And he said, "Well, I'd want to see you guys and I think we'd be in the clouds and I'd love to do this or eat that." I'd say, "Just look around. We're with the clouds, you're with your family, we're here to eat food. We're lucky. I just want you to tap into that." When that song comes on, I think it just affirms a message that I'm talking to him about a lot, which is this is the moment. Let's enjoy this piece right now. There's heaven happening here. I love that song. Paula Edgar: That's a great connection. Someone said to me one time that heaven is gratitude. You experience heaven when you think about it. It really resonated because exactly what you just said, understanding the blessings that are currently here can help you to think about whatever your practice is, what it might be to feel it. It's tapping into that right now. I love that. Love it. Rudhir Krishtel: Yeah, for anyone that does a gratitude exercise, writing down what you're grateful for at the end of the day, noting it for a few times, just what that feels like even when you do it, that's a heavenly moment. It really is. Your body fills up, your heart fills up. You naturally get that inner smile. I think that's something I want to definitely invite for him and even just all of us. Paula Edgar: Absolutely. Before I got married, my husband and I went to marriage counseling to make sure our marriage worked. It worked. The counselor said, "Every morning, be grateful for your spouse." I think that's one of the best pieces of advice, because even when they get on your nerves, you're still grateful for their existence. Every morning, the first thing I do is I'm grateful for my husband, even if you got on my nerves yesterday. Gratitude is just an important practice. I do think that having gratitude is also a brand proposition too, to bring it back to what we're here for. People who have gratitude, they just show up differently. It shows up in their pores if that makes sense that they're grounded in that. So, yeah, I love that. Anywho. Rudhir Krishtel: Gratitude is attractive. It definitely attracts people. It builds a type of nature. What you're trying to do in part with branding is just give something for people to be attracted to. What is it that you value, you think is important? If gratitude is your brand, that's attractive for me so that's great. Paula Edgar: Yeah, I love that. Tell me, where did you grow up and how did that shape you into who you are today? Rudhir Krishtel: I grew up, I was born and raised in Maryland in PG County, and PG County is one of the only places in the country that reps the county, not a city or a town. There are only so many counties, there's PG County, there's Cook County, and there's the OC. Then it just becomes less and less. The PG County is what I feel like the heart of the DMV. DMV is a really special place to be. Especially as you get closer to Washington, DC, what you end up finding and the place that I grew up really shaped me because we're a family of immigrants. It was a very diverse area, predominantly Black. All of that makeup and mixture certainly roots me, grounds me, and helps shape who I am, how I am, how I connect with people. When I'm on a call with someone from the DMV, I can just tell right away. I'm always just halfway through calling, “Where are you from?” They just tell me, I'm like, “I grew up down the street.” There's just a vibe, there's a nature, there's a way of being, and it's definitely rooting and grounding. Paula Edgar: No, that is so true. I remember that probably whatever years ago, I didn't know what DMV was. For anybody listening, it's DC, Maryland, Virginia. I was like, “Why are you saying that? That's where you go get your car.” Rudhir Krishtel: That's right. That's right, you go to the DMV. Paula Edgar: Exactly. I was like, “Hello, why are you saying that?” But there's a special swag that comes from being in that area. You're probably the fourth or fifth person who's been on my podcast who was from that area. Each of you has been like, “I'm repping my place where I'm from.” “All right, I got you. I'm from Brooklyn, so we do the same thing, but it's not county.” It's that county piece is important. I agree with that Cook County connection too. Chicago people don't play. Rudhir Krishtel: Yeah, you're from a county. You're from a county. It means something. Paula Edgar: So true. I knew now where you grew up. Tell me about your career path. Rudhir Krishtel: Undergrad was an engineer, went to law school for a range of reasons and clerked in the federal court, practiced law at a firm for about 10 years, made partner at the firm, which was an incredible transition. Then for a range of reasons, I left the work at the firm and I went in-house to Apple for five years. So 15 years in the legal practice. After 15 years in the practice, a lot of the reasons why I transitioned from the firm in-house and ultimately transitioned out of in-house really fueled what I'm up to today. Today, after having taken time off from the practice, trained as a mindfulness instructor, trained as a yoga instructor, trained in DEI principles, and training as a coach and a speaker, I spend every day working with organizations and individuals full of high performers. Organizations with high performers like law firms, individuals who are at the top of their practice, and I help them become better with themselves and better with each other. That's just really all the work that I do every day now as a result of that early career and the things that I experienced, saw, and felt needed evolving. Paula Edgar: I mean, when I think about law firms, and you and I both do a lot of work with lawyers and in law firms, and I think about how you're focusing on mindfulness, there's some things that might come to my mind as to why that's the case, but I want to put a highlight on it. Law practice is very stressful. I know that some of the lore around going in-house is, “Oh, it's less stressful,” but I think it really depends on where you are, who you're working with, et cetera. But we're now just getting into this big wave of people being like, “Mindfulness is an important part of your practice, it has to be.” I'm very glad about that because it helps people like you who can do the work that you do. But I'm glad about it for us as a community because we were suffering. We think about brands. You could be making all the money but you're miserable or you're sick. How do you think paying attention to mindfulness impacts how you show up as a professional? Rudhir Krishtel: For me, it was everything. It's everything. It's all the things. I grew up and was raised in a tradition that valued meditation and certain ways of prayer, let's just say. But I tapped back into it at the busiest time in my legal practice. I was a partner at a firm billing 2400 hours, active in bar associations, doing pro bono, doing all the things, and losing myself in the process. It was a busy litigation month where I was upwards of 240, 250 hours and I just couldn't have a minute and I started, it was YouTube back then, now it's apps, I mean, YouTube obviously still is a resource, but I was looking for something and I found a guided meditation on YouTube. I was doing five, 10 minutes at 5:00 AM. I'd have to wake up in the early, early hour to even get a few minutes to myself. I just remember doing it for a couple of weeks and feeling like something was changing. As a litigator, the cycle of work goes up and down so things got easier and I probably fell out of the meditation cycle. When I went in-house to Apple and I had a little bit more time, I dialed further into this practice. After two months, three months, six months, it changed my entire life, how I present, how I connected up in front of meetings, giving me a little bit more time and space in my head, giving me creativity. I went for meditating for maybe 20 minutes a day, I did a 10-day silent retreat where I was silent for 12, 14 hours a day for 10 straight days. That changed the rest of my life. That changed the rest of my life. Paula Edgar: Wait, you know I'm not going to let you go forward without me hearing. For days? Rudhir Krishtel: 10 straight days, 14 hours a day, and you really get to meet yourself. You get to understand yourself. You really get comfortable. A lot of folks, it's hard for us to sit by ourselves with our own thoughts. It can drive us bananas. Paula Edgar: That's me. Rudhir Krishtel: That transition was deeply transformative. It's why I do what I do. I feel even sharing a few of the principles that I got over those long periods of meditation have a huge value to people that do really challenging work. Paula Edgar: Yeah, lawyers are not known for taking time for themselves. I am physically, visibly shaken. You all can look at me on YouTube and see that I'm shaken by the fact that he said days in silence, just because you all know I like to gab. But it's true, I think that self-focused, that self-awareness, that self-connection that you must have gotten in that time is powerful. It's powerful when you just sit still, even just a little bit. Before I started therapy, my therapist is always like, "No, we have to get centered." I'm like, "I don't want to get centered. I want to tell you about everybody who got on my nerves." She's like, "We have to get centered." And it does, it gets you aligned. But I can't imagine the power that must have come from really focusing, and then probably clearing a lot of junk out from that time. Rudhir Krishtel: It's amazing the junk that shows up when you look at that back corner of the closet. It's amazing what you end up finding. The thing that I appreciate the most, I'll never forget it after that first long retreat was how long of a period afterwards I went where most things just didn't bother me anymore. Things bothered me, but they would just really roll off much more quickly after that experience, after engaging more with meditation, with mindfulness. Obviously, things are hard, life is hard, but in mindfulness circles, they talk about, have you heard about the story with the two arrows? Paula Edgar: No, tell me about this. Rudhir Krishtel: In life with almost any interaction or any difficulty, there are two arrows. The first arrow is the thing. The first arrow is the thing that happens. Somebody says something, somebody does something, you get hurt. The second arrow is the pain that's created, the long tail of pain when we think about it, when we perseverate, when we let it affect us over and over and over again. Through meditation, the pain of the first arrow doesn't get mitigated because you can bruise and scrape your knee. My son is a great example. He bruises and scrapes his knee as a three-year-old and he’s wailing, crying bananas. Rather than going for the bandaid or the ointment, I just hold him, and settle him. Then we go to fix the thing. Just the other day we were playing basketball, he skipped his knee. I'm like, "You good?" And I went to my two, three year old reaction and he's like, "Dad, I'm good. Let's just keep playing." I just noticed that there was this first arrow, but then there's no need to cry anymore. You've evolved, you've shifted. There's no need to have that secondary reaction. It's good for us to think about in life, the things that happen to us, but then that we have that secondary reaction to. Paula Edgar: Oh, so I'm taking that as my own personal counseling and everybody can get to witness me being in it. Rudhir Krishtel: I'll send you the invoice. Paula Edgar: I'm saying go ahead and bill me, it's fine, but what I am known for is holding on to things. I can imagine because the work that I've done in therapy has been about letting some of those things go. But yeah, that arrow analogy is a very clear one for me. I'm sure for many of us, because it's how we hold trauma. We hold pain. Yeah, whoo, anywho. Coming back to where we're going with this, but I'm glad we delved off, because I do think that this is beneficial, because how we respond to anything is a part of our brand. What people can expect from how our response is, is a part of our brand, and particularly when you think about leaders who when people are like, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” around them, what has happened, and they are just chill, you trust them more. You feel confident because they are not reacting, responding in the same way as with the waves as they go. I do love it as a brand point. It's something that you just convinced me that I need to think about. I'm starting with 20 minutes. I can't do any days, but days are a lot for me, but 20 minutes is the doable thing that I'm going to do. Everybody, hold me accountable. I got it. I have an app, anywho. Rudhir Krishtel: We don't have to go from a mile to a marathon. We're happy with the mile, we're happy with the mile. Paula Edgar: Good, because I'm not doing that. Rudhir Krishtel: The truth of the matter is 5, 10, 20 minutes a day is powerful and transformational. The key is the regularity of it. Just like going to the gym or eating a certain way over time or gratitude exercises for your spouse every day in the morning is the ritual that I feel like is worth the greatest investment. If you can ritualize 20 or 10 or in 5 minutes, that's more powerful than any long day. A single day is one thing, and we don't gotta worry about that, but the 10 minutes or the 20 minutes or the 5 minutes a day is really valuable. You have an app, and even on my website, there's a resources page that has six meditations that I've recorded that if you ever felt like tapping into 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 11 minutes each, and all of these are just a great place to start. Paula Edgar: Oh, nice. We're definitely going to link that in the show notes so that folks can go and connect with that. We're talking about a lot of the places where you have expertise and experience. When I was thinking about what we were going to talk about, I was really excited to talk about business development because it's a passion that both of us have. I always tell people that your brand is directly related to your business development. They're hand in hand. Can you talk to me about some of the foundational strategies that you think lawyers should develop early in their careers that will help them to be successful when it comes to business development? Rudhir Krishtel: Yeah, and just to tap a little bit into the why, again, why you do it, why I do it, to me, business development is an investment for autonomy. It's the investment for freedom. It's the investment for some greater level of control. Then it's also the equity piece. Everybody wants a piece of the equity, and I feel like so many of us have access to it, even the people like myself that don't, some of us don't reflect the model of what we have seen as the person that led on business development in the past, well, that's because the system was created for that model to perpetuate. But we're changing the model, we're changing the frame, we're changing what this looks like and it can be more authentic, it can be more personal, it can be about personal freedom, it can be about a lot of things. I do this work, I think about business development because it allows people for that greater autonomy, for that greater freedom, for that greater control, for that executive mindset. I just feel like it's so accessible for so many people and working on this part has been so meaningful. Certainly, I have ideas and plans for folks, but I just wanted to connect up a bit on the why. Paula Edgar: No, I'm glad you talk about the why because I don't think a lot of people put the dots together. They just think business is just for money. But that freedom piece for me, it's why I have my own business, is why I want to be able to drive what my day is going to look like and my life is going to look like. I know that the effort that I put in, the relationships that I build, those all are in, to the extent that we have control over anything, my control versus being held over me. I know we all live in structures and systems, but it is powerful to be able to say the amount of effort you put out can be reflected in what you get back. You can decide I'm going to chill for a little bit or I'm going to go a little hard. You can see the benefits of either one of those actions and it's your own. Yeah, I love that. I'm glad you made that connection. I do think it's important. Yes. Rudhir Krishtel: Yeah, you're a business owner. I'm a business owner and both of us are choosing our time to spend with each other. We choose to be with each other. We choose to find each other when we're at the same conference or the same place. Where's Paula? Yes. What's going on? We choose that and I think what people get is the choice to work with who they want to work with. They get the choice to work with the clients that they want to work with, the team that they want to work with. They get the choice, or at least they get a hand in it. They might not get the entire choice, but they have a hand in that. That's what I love about the teams, and the individuals that I work with to create amazing teams is that when we grow businesses, we literally grow a business, we grow a team, we grow colleagues, we grow clients, and then we get to choose who we spend our time with. That's where I feel like, “Ooh. Heaven is a place on Earth.” This place where you feel like, “Wow, there's a lot of gratitude here.” Certainly, we want to talk about the steps and the plan and what people focus on, but it's really that feeling that I feel like people deserve and I feel like you and I are a conduit to that feeling. Paula Edgar: 100%. Let's talk about it. As I said the questions to you about this, I want to see what you're going to say because this is where I love this part of the podcast where’s like, “Oh, this and this and this.” Somebody starting out, somebody's junior, what are some of the things they should be doing that's going to lead to their success later on? Rudhir Krishtel: Yeah. The first is a mindset piece. Let's dream about where you want to be 10 years from now. Start with the dream. There's a lot of simple steps, but forget the tips and tricks. Let's actually just go with the big picture. What is it that you want for your life in 10 years? What's the size of your business? What's the income that you want? Who do you want to be working with? What types of clients do you want to be doing amazing work with? What does your team look like? I like the dreaming version to start with that. When you come up with a plan, a plan for what, a plan towards what, you'd be surprised how many people I ask “Where do you want to be in 10 years?” and they're tongue-tied. Paula Edgar: Oh, I would not be surprised because I'm always shocked because I do think that folks who do what we do, we're constantly visioning, but most people that I have interacted with, they have to be led to the visioning and it's challenging, but it's also so freeing and wonderful when you see them actually tap into it. Rudhir Krishtel: Everybody's in the weeds. Everybody's in the details. Everybody's submitting a brief that's due tomorrow until you're locked into the details because that's what's being demanded of you. The first step is to step out of that. Go to a hotel lobby, get a coffee, get a pad and a pen, and just for one afternoon of your life just think, “Hey, where am I going to be in 10 years?” Then I want you to dream it. I want you to vision it and then the steps will unfold. But I talk about business size or revenue size not just because it's money or it relates to profit or the money in your pocket and if you want those things, there's nothing wrong with that, by the way, I think that's also deeply valuable because that's part of where we get our autonomy and our freedom is through just financial security. Also, what it means is when you think about the revenue of your business or the revenue of your book of business, it's going to reflect the types of clients you got to draw in, the types of clients you want to build relationships with. Maybe you want a team. Maybe you want a team of six people. “I want to work on a team.” Okay. Well, you got to pay six people. What's the revenue you need to pay those six people? Revenue, people just assume it's all about money and it's all about money in the pocket, but money is energy that ends up fueling the thing that you want to do and the people you want to serve. If people know you are a business of this size, some businesses are going to want to work with you because of that. I like first thinking about the basic goals. What is the revenue? What is the size of the team? What are the clients that you see yourself with? What's the dream? What's ideal? Without any hesitations or restrictions on any stories that you're telling yourself about yourself, let's move that out of the way, and then let's just dream big. That's step number one. Paula Edgar: Yeah. Do you think that new attorneys even know what that dream could look like? Rudhir Krishtel: I think once you start to vision, it starts to evolve the dream. Then you start noticing what does that attorney look like. What's their office look like? Who are the clients they work with, et cetera, et cetera? But until we ask ourselves this question, we're trapped. For me, just even having people invoke that question, if they start putting pen to pad now, three months from now, six months from now, a year from now that it might evolve, I know in your business, whatever you thought about many years ago has evolved. If you vision, you get addicted to visioning. I'll tell you right now, having been at a company like Apple, guess who's thinking about what's happening 10 years from now? Big companies, real businesses, and so what you want is to just align yourself up with what's happening in the world is that businesses think ahead, and I want you to start thinking about what's ahead, what the dream would be like. I get very interesting answers when I ask people that question, and then that leads to the next parts of the plan, but to start, where are you trying to go? Paula Edgar: I think that it's a perfect exercise. I don't know if you know but every year in January, I do an intention and goal-setting session and I do it for anybody for free on the internet because I just know the power of being like, “Ooh, what if?” Then my favorite thing is throughout the year, people being like, “I said this,” and then this thing happened. It's almost like the universe is like, “Oh, I heard you girl, now let's go get it.” Grabbing on to that thing, and even the process of reaching towards those goals is movement. I love that. I think it's such a powerful, powerful thing. I'm in the process of thinking about that and driving that process for the year. It just makes me feel happy because I remember just how much, and I do it myself for my business and I do it for folks, for students, for anybody, just really thinking about what's possible so that you can then make it concrete. I love that. Rudhir Krishtel: Yeah. To me, it's Apple Maps or Google Maps business development. Pick the destination first and then we'll think of the path on how to get there. There could be many paths, it could be a direct line, it could be highways, you could pay tolls and take the scenic route, it doesn't matter. But let's pick the destination first. Paula Edgar: Yeah, all right. First of all, I love the inclusion of having both Apple Maps and Google Maps. As an Android user, I appreciate you. Thank you for seeing me. Rudhir Krishtel: Just because I worked at Apple doesn't mean I can't be down. Paula Edgar: I appreciate it because my house is an Apple home, but anyway. One of the biggest things that is a driver for business development is really relationships. I'm asking the question from the perspective of a junior because I feel like people at all sorts of levels of their careers don't necessarily go back to basics sometimes. I want folks to think about the basics. If you were advising somebody who's a junior about why it's important to start investing in relationships, what are you saying to them? Rudhir Krishtel: What I tell them is that 50% of the practice is the work product and the other 50% is the people. We get so focused on work products because often that's where the carrot is of hours of bonus and what people are asking of you, but you're in a service profession, and without people to serve, this practice is meaningless. Half of the practice is the people you serve. The other half of the practice is how you service them. That recontextualizes it. It helps relocate and recenter the importance of people and ultimately, the relationships because you're servicing some and you're doing something incredible for the world, by the way. You're helping people stay compliant. You're helping them address disputes. You're helping them evolve in the place they grow. You're helping entities that have employees and customers and that just have a meaningful place in the world. Your service to them, I think, is a critical piece. Yes, there's a work product, but when I got so focused on the work product, it also actually started making me feel a little bit dead inside. One thing to remember and realize is that I'm actually doing this for people. It is a relationship business when you connect with others and service them. It actually makes the entire thing feel and look different. Paula Edgar: It's so true that quote that people use your network as your net worth and think about how if you really truly work it, and I mean it not in a transactional way, but in a very thoughtful and strategic way, there's always a relationship right between whatever it is you want. Multiple relationships right between whatever it is you want. I don't think we look at it strategically enough and thoughtfully enough, or, and I find a lot of times with juniors, sometimes they're thinking, “I met you, now I want.” Like it's an ATM. I'm like, “You know what? When you go to an ATM, you have to have the deposit money and first take something out.” You can't get something back right away. That's not how this works. It's similar. Rudhir Krishtel: The relationship investment, there are people that know you. They know you, they recognize you from a can of paint. They just know you. There are people that like you. They would be happy to get coffee with you. They'd be happy to get dinner. They'll respond to a message and they’ll return your call. Then there's trust. We know what trust feels like. People who trust us personally, people who trust us with business. There's this long tail of developing relationships from know to like to trust. It doesn't have to go in that trajectory. There are people that we trust that we don't even like. It's really getting to trust. I think the neat thing about the playbook is that everybody has a playbook for building trust. You have trusted people in your life. You have trusted family members. You have trusted friends. You have trusted people that you know from college or grad school or people that you work with. It really is a matter of first investigating how is trust formed. How do people build trust in the first place? What are the building blocks and the way that Paula builds trust and Rudhir builds trust and others build trust, they're all different. We want people to first just investigate that for themselves. Then when they figure that out, it'll help them understand over time, how is it that I start to do this for potential clients and for the broader business community. Paula Edgar: You reminded me of when I saw you present on trust and I thought to myself, “I've never thought about it that way, but it is so true.” I say like, [inaudible] the magic of some people's brands is that there's an immediate trust even without all of the other things. I's a kind of executive presence. It's all of those things going into it where it's like, “Oh, there's something about you that makes me attracted to you and want to connect with you more.” That's why all of these things are important and intertwined. When you broke it down and talked about trust, I was like, “Yeah, my goodness. You're absolutely right.” But it's a practice and it can also be a happenstance. I can build trust with you and I can also just have it. I think that that is powerful in terms of how we people with each other. Rudhir Krishtel: There's not one way to do it. You can think about grizzled friends of yours and they have people that they trust. You got the real-time, sweet, loving folks and they got people they trust. It doesn't mean you have to be a certain way, but it does mean understanding how you engender trust with people and then potentially expanding on that or thinking about how you can evolve that. The thing that you mentioned, what I really love is that sometimes people approach you and they just trust you. We know who we are, the people that have that. But the other thing is, you can intentionally support someone in building trust with you. There's another thing I was thinking about that I lost track of in this, but you really want to think about how it is that people in gender trust, who they trust, how they build it, and then how can they build with you? Making a bit of a study of that is going to allow you to evolve the way in which you connect and build relationships with people. Oh, the thing that I realized also is that we talked a little about social media. When you put yourself out there with some moderate regularity or there's some consistent message, you'd be surprised that people actually will treat you as if they already know you. Paula Edgar: All the time. Rudhir Krishtel: I must have done that with you because I've met you I think first on social and then in person and I like, “This is an amazing human. I'm just going to go up to them and [inaudible] amazing human.” It's really powerful. You send an email or you connect up on LinkedIn or you share something on LinkedIn or on social, when you do it with someone, if you're helpful, if you're helpful consistently, when people see you the next time, people come up to me all the time and they feel like they've been on a journey with me. They know what I'm up to. They see that I'm doing X, Y, and Z and they feel like we're already connected in a meaningful way. I think that’s the power of leveraging communicating through email or even text or even social is that people can stay in contact with you and evolve trust with or without that coffee. I mean, Paula, we can count less than a hand the number of times you and I have a coffee together. Paula Edgar: Yes, true. Rudhir Krishtel: Or broke bread. Paula Edgar: That's true. Rudhir Krishtel: We have meaningful trust for one another. Paula Edgar: Absolutely. Rudhir Krishtel: It's just really interesting to just contemplate that. Paula Edgar: It's true in so many ways. One way that I want to call out is that you can build trust easily by someone who you trust, saying they trust you. There are people who I have good friends with who will be like “Oh, that's your person?” and I don't need to know anything else. I think that that is the strongest trust. It's one I wanted to call out because folks who are more senior and experienced sometimes I don't think really understand that value when it comes to business development. I would say there's somebody who is the next big bump in your book of business because they have worked with you already or they know somebody and they are willing to put their name alongside yours for your success. Sometimes all it needs is a reminder and an ask. Sometimes they're doing it and you don't even know. I love that about relationships. Rudhir Krishtel: Think about the basic service professionals in your life. Let it be a tax professional, let it be a handyman, the plumber, somebody refers you, it’s a ball game. It's like, “Oh, who do you work with? Who do you use? I use this.” If you talk to 50 general counsel, how do they find outside counsel for the first time? They just text each other. Who do you use? The litigation? Who do you like? Who do you love? If they already know the name brands, that's one thing. But otherwise, they're just sharing information. Once you get connected with somebody who trusts someone you know, it's just a huge connecting opportunity. Paula Edgar: Yeah, it is powerful. I think that connection to trust makes me feel happy thinking about it. Because I remember and think about what you're saying, even our connection, without even knowing each other, found each other, connected, it's just an important thing and it can be so really powerful and beneficial. I know that there are times when you're saying, I was just saying your name the other day, to someone else about--then that is really how we start to build our empires. Rudhir Krishtel: When I met you, I saw you with a group of people. I'm like, “Oh, they're cool with Paula, they must be cool.” You notice and you see who hangs out, who's together, who knows each other, and that has a lot of those elaborate trust. People that you're working with are ready to vouch for you. You'd be surprised. They're ready to represent you. They're ready to share about your good works and that's going to go a really long way for people. Paula Edgar: Speaking of sharing about good works, one of the things that is beneficial in business development is being able to strategically self-promote. There are lots of folks who are challenged with it. What are some of the things that you would say to somebody who maybe is a little uncomfortable with being confident in promoting themselves and their business? Rudhir Krishtel: There are a couple of layers to this; people's ability to self-promote. I think the first, again, is the word self-promote. I think there's this understanding of the self. That's a huge part of it. Then I think there's the promote piece, which is where and how. Let's not get to the where and the how first. Let's actually first just talk about the self and what the hangup of that might be or what the issue with that might be. I feel like there's this exercise in understanding your strengths, understanding your values, and understanding your value to others. I think a lot of people's hangup is really at that initial part. People feel commoditized. They don't feel their practice has value. People feel like, “Why me? Why would someone pick me as a litigator? Why would someone pick me as a legal practitioner when there are 500 other people out there who would do the same thing?” It really first becomes a self-investigative process. How am I valuable? Not how am I valuable to everybody and why would they pick me over everyone else, but just as a baseline, what's your value? I learned this when I was negotiating a deal at Apple and I'll never forget it. There were eight people on our side and eight people on their side. This was early in my time when I was at the company. It's seven business people and one lawyer. On the other side, seven business people and one lawyer. Two companies negotiating out some work together. The business people are all talking and talking and talking. At some point, they just look over, “Oh, that's a legal question. Rudhir, what do you think?” Until that moment at a law firm, I would always do some research and get back to you. Ask an associate to figure it out and now we'll tell you. But I'm live in the moment and I realized, “Oh, I actually know some of this stuff.” Everything doesn't always have to be perfect. I have real-time value. I think I didn't realize that I had real-time advisement value because I was always hanging up on the crutch of research preparedness and perfect outline in advance of a call. I guess my point is, everybody that's listening has inherent value. People like spending time with you for a reason. You have something to share that's important and knowing why people would value that is a great first exercise. Then we can get to the actual promotion part. How do I say it? What do I do? Where do I share it? But first, you have to know that you have value. Paula Edgar: Yeah. I mean, so much we're coming back to over and over again is this concept of looking on the inside to flourish more on the outside. Well, I know it inherently, but I'm always grateful for the reminder because even in the work that I do talking about this, it's like, “Oh, yeah, that's absolutely right. When you're not feeling great or when things are happening in the background, it will show up if you are not having the practice to work through the things that you need to work through or you're not able to identify, “Look, I'm experiencing this at this time. Let me chill for a little bit.” I’m a big fan of if I have a cloud over me, I'm not bringing my cloud into another space with me. I'm like, “Let me spare you this thing” because I do know that sometimes that space can feel contagious. Even before COVID, it could be contagious. I love thinking about this because it does impact how you show up, which is all I always think about is our brands and what people expect from you. If I'm in a bad mood, or if I am angry, which rarely happens, but it can, people will call me out. I remember I had a mentor who was a general counsel. We were in a meeting and I was in a terrible, terrible mood. She was like, “I need to see you outside.” I was like, “Uh-oh,” and she's like, “Clearly, you are not feeling all good today. Why don't you go home?” I was like, “You’re sending me home?” And she's like, “No, but you're not showing up the way that you would show up normally, so everybody feels it and it's not fair to us to not get the you that we deserve.” I was like, “Oh, well, you put it like that.” But I think we all push through sometimes. Sometimes we don't need to push through because that can hurt and ding your brand. Being able to be self-aware that you may be not showing up the way you need to is a good thing. It can impact. Rudhir Krishtel: There's inner work and there's outer work. The outer work is again, the promote piece. But we start with the inner. I'm almost done writing my first book. At the beginning of it, I think it'll be published next year. That's what we're looking for. But the whole first part is about inner work and the whole latter part is about outer work. Here's what we're talking about first is just understanding yourself, understanding what's happening, understanding, like you said, what's going on inside of you has a direct reflection of how you connect with the people around you. First, let's actually understand that you have value, let’s understand that you have something to offer, and let’s understand why people like to get advice from you. Then you can start to market it and sell it. The marketing piece, I think, is equally important. We can talk about the promote piece, but I think the process starts inside. Paula Edgar: Oh, I hear that loud and clear. I wonder because, of course, I knew this conversation was going too fast and in all kinds of ways that I didn't expect, which I'm very happy about. You have to come back, especially when the book is coming out. You got to come back. Rudhir Krishtel: I’ll be back. We have a lot more to talk about. I think we got halfway through and yet here we are at time. I'd love to come back and I'd love to talk more. When the book comes out next year, I'd love to share more with you about that. Paula Edgar: Absolutely. Before I let you go, I got to ask you one thing, and then three things I ask everybody. I'm going to hold you a little bit longer than I normally would. One is if you could give one piece of advice on the outer piece, what would you give to somebody when it comes to business development? Just done the inner work, what's an impactful outer experience that they should be looking at? Rudhir Krishtel: Start with what you love. You love one of the things, writing or speaking. If you don't like speaking, then don't do it. Then you might like writing, try that. If you don't like conferences, do dinner. If you don't like dinner, do coffee. If you don't like coffee, do phone calls or Zoom calls. Start with the thing that you love. Start with something that you actually enjoy because peeling away from the real work, the day-to-day, to shift to the marketing work or the branding work is not easy. We want it to be something that actually gives you some energy. When it comes to personal relationships, relate in a way that you like, dinner or coffee, conferences, or large groups. Then when it comes to getting exposure to larger groups of people, speaking or writing, pick one. Don't do both. Paula Edgar: I love that. That's one snippet right there that I'm just going to grab that. Production people, grab that. Okay. What do you do for fun? Rudhir Krishtel: I spend time with my family. We're that family that when the pandemic happened, some people realized that this is the family that caused me a lot of trouble. My family and I spend all of our time together and I just love spending time with them. Being outside with my son, playing basketball with him, getting active, having coffee on the weekends, really simple things, time with friends. Paula Edgar: Yeah, it's nice. Rudhir Krishtel: It sounds cliché after this conversation, but when I get free time, I meditate. I take time for myself. I take time to collect and gather. That's what gives me energy for the rest of the stuff. Being with the amazing team that I have, spending time with people like you, and then just connecting with clients is an amazing way for me to spend my day and then spending time with my family in the evenings and the weekends, just doing all kinds of fun things is how we get our life across. Paula Edgar: I love that. It reminds me of how I was so grateful that when it was time of the pandemic we each had a floor to go to in my house because I was like, “I don't know that I like y'all that much. Go to your floor.” All right. What is the authentic aspect of your personal brand that you will never compromise on? Rudhir Krishtel: Really always making sure that the work that we're doing is helping ease somebody's pain, collective or individual, in a meaningful way. We're not checking boxes. We're not just working with anyone. We're working with high-performing individuals who care about their work, and then ultimately want to do better by their teams and themselves. I think that's where I draw the line. We don't do remedial work. We don't help the people that don't have a space in this place. There are enough people who really want to work hard and want to provide an incredible service to the world. We work with those people to make their lives better and to make the lives of their teams better. Paula Edgar: Oh, that's a perfect pitch right there. I love that. Snapshot, throw that into the website. The final question is, Branding Room Only is a play on the term standing room only, and so I ask everyone, what is something that there will be a room full of people with nowhere to sit, only standing room to experience about you? What is that thing? Rudhir Krishtel: Connection, honest reflection of yourself and the people around you. Although you've experienced this yourself, you've seen me deliver a conversation full of a room full of hundreds of people. What we got was an honest connection, dialogue, and meaningful growth. If you're full of me, you're not listening to each other, not listening to me the whole time. You're listening to everybody. With that is collective understanding, collective connection, and collective growth. Paula Edgar: I love that. My friend, tell everybody how they can stay in touch with you and know more about your work. Rudhir Krishtel: Our website, krishtel.com, LinkedIn, Rudhir Krishtel. It's easy to reach out and connect and we'd love to connect with you more so please stay in touch. Paula Edgar: Awesome. Everybody, go and tell that friend you know the one who needs to slow down or the one that needs to do more but do it differently. Download, share, like, all the good stuff, and as always, make sure you stand by your brand. I will see you all very soon. Bye. Rudhir Krishtel: Bye. Thanks, Paula.