60. The Career Mindset Shift Every High-Achieving Woman Needs with Karishma Wadhwani

Hi, Brandi.

Thank you so much for inviting me and creating this space where we can have a chat.

Yeah, so to start off, I would love to hear more about your journey as you were climbing the corporate ladder and then this huge pivot that you had to now be an entrepreneur.

So actually I've had a couple pivots in my career.

I started my career as an engineer, then I moved into technology consulting at Deloitte.

At 24 I started up my first company.

It was into education and the technical space.

Post that, I found myself getting married and moving to the US, which was a major life pivot, which brought me to this part of the world and having to rethink what do I want to do with my life and career here.

And I sort of found myself getting a lot of advice at the time 'cause I was new here, so everyone I met would always tell me that, "You know what? You're already an engineer.

Why don't you do a master's and you land yourself a six-figure job?" And I'm like, "Okay, thank you.

What is that extra master's gonna give me?" And I'm so glad I stuck to my gut.

I ultimately got a six-figure job with no master's degree, no Ivy Leagues, on my own, and that was such an accomplishment, and I feel so proud of it even now, even though it seems like a decade ago.

But it is important 'cause you have it in you.

That is the yogic philosophy.

So there is a saying in yoga called Aham Brahmasmi, which means the universe resides within you, and I believe in that truly.

We have all it takes to do whatever the hell we want to do with our life.

It's all about tapping it inside, and that's what makes the holistic aspect of whatever I do.

So I also, apart from being an engineer and all the amazing technology transformations that I do for my clients, I also pursued a yoga degree when I was in India.

I've completed 900 hours of advanced teacher training in yoga, and I had honestly done it for myself.

The goal was never to go and teach yoga when I took on this training.

It was more to learn and embrace yoga as a lifestyle and understand what it takes to truly be in the yogic world.

In 2020 when the whole world shut down and we were just working remotely, there was this one individual who lived in Sammamish, and they reached out to me and they said, "I found out about you from one of my colleagues who took the yoga training with me in Mumbai in India." And she was like, "No, I really wanna learn.

Would you please teach me?" I was like, "Okay, fine." I was doing nothing on weekends at the time.

And all of the five people I worked with in those three months, while we were working on bringing yoga in their life, they started seeing their relationships and their careers improve heavily.

People are getting promoted.