I feel like everyone wants me to be someone else, but a dancer.

I've always felt that.

I always felt that even when I was building class paths,

everyone wanted me to do everything else,

but do the thing that I love.

Like, it was this constant dialogue in my head

that made me feel like I couldn't be ambitious

or I couldn't dance or that, like, doing all those things

was the wrong path.

And I think we forget that everything people say to us is food for thought, right? It gets into our minds and it can change our energy, it can change the outcome of our life. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Pile, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me Lisa. I've been dying to have you on since I started this show. And the thing that I find so powerful is the fact that your Indian, you come from first generation, parents, they're immigrated here, and the expectations that people and family and our cultures put on us can sometimes hold us back for more dreams. Yeah. But you didn't let that hold you back, and you went on to build a freaking juggernaut of a company with over a billion dollars class pass. And I have a quote of yours, I'd really love to address. It's about learning when to get off the train and start living your own journey. All right, so talk to me about the train of expectation. And then I want to talk about how the hell you get off that train to live the dream like you did. I mean, you know, I think for so many of us we grow up and society tells us what success is, what accomplishment looks like and you're sort of put into this grind, right? And I think for me, education was important and I'll never, ever, you know, regret that. I think like the foundation that my parents gave me with education was so important. But I found something I really loved that was different. It was like off beat, I think for most people, which was dance. And I think for me, when I found that, I found this place that I felt normal in and I felt accepted in because I did grow up with these different identities growing up and I didn't fit in and I needed a place where I felt like I would belong and dance became that place for me. And so I sort of used this dance place for me to build my confidence and to build this idea that like this is a different universe I can be in. It's not the normal path that my parents were saying to go to like go to go know, get to a good education and then go and get an awesome career. I was doing all that, but I knew if I had dance on the side, I was sort of doing what was still fulfilling to me. But I think what happens to most people is when we graduate from college, we start a job. We start living to like get promoted, get more money, like get married, have kids, and that sort of becomes like the only milestones in our life. But we need to have other milestones. And I think I was really lucky because I had this other thing in my life that gave me other milestones. So I would have a damn show, right? Which was different than maybe getting a promotion network, but I was excited about it, and it would take me six months to prepare for it, and it gave me something to really strive for. So I think for me, having these other things that helped me feel like I was progressing as a human being, because really, that's really what it's all about, is we're all looking for progress. But progress is defined by what society thinks, not by ourselves, and we need to start really thinking about what is progress to me. And I don't think I really started asking myself those questions until after I was in college. I think I was fighting in college to trying to find the answers to that, but I didn't know. It was only after where I feel like I started probably being a little rebellious when it comes to those those decisions.

I love that.

I really want to kind of like piece it apart because and it's funny because I had this

as being Greek orthodox as well and I heard you say you like you leave college and then it's like okay but you've got to get a job and as soon as you get a job you start well hang on what you need to find a husband and you're like well hang on I mean you were just It's like pushing me to get an education and use it that you had to give.

I really want to touch on that as well so that we can then pass through how you started

to then develop your habit, the passion that you had of dancing because I it feels like that was almost like a lifeline for you. So talk to me about the guilt and then how you use that lifeline to get you through that. Well Well, you know, I think I tried to understand

where my parents' expectations were coming from.

I mean, they had sacrificed so much that in their world,

they were just like, I never want you to feel any of the

torture, any of the hardship we felt.

And so I, you know, I talk about this too in the book.

I think part of getting through expectation is

understand where it's coming from.

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