AI Infrastructure, Legal Tech Growth, and Becoming Phoenix with Melissa Rogozinski

Jared Correia (00:00:00):
Hello everybody. We’ve got a show that promises to be at least mildly interesting for your listening and watching enjoyment. I’m your host, Jared Correia. I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. For the monologue, I’m talking about building professional development resources inside of law firms. In the interview, it’s Melissa Rogozinski of RPC Strategies, LLC. For the counter program, we’ve got a new segment we’re calling autobiographical. Now, let’s discuss the development of accessible training resources for lawyers in law firms. Yes, it can be a thing. Law firms probably universally, actually, don’t spend enough time focused on professional development for attorneys, which is sort of a problem because that’s like the whole thing. And especially younger lawyers really, really want access to continuing professional development as they should, by the way. That means that if you as a managing attorney want to retain your attorney employees into the future, that you’ve got to spend more time focused on their professional development.

(00:01:18):
And that means building a professional development program. This will also make it more likely that they become or stay good attorneys. Now, while that might sound like a massive project, it doesn’t have to be all that daunting. There are in fact a number of things you can do with minimal effort to build a veritable professional development curriculum into your law firm to show others how to be lawyers or “the right kind of lawyers,” which I hear a lot from law firms. That means that the lawyers in the practice want to show them how this firm practices versus some others attached to those particular values of the firm and case process that they like to deploy. First, you want to create a place where you can store your professional development materials of all stripes, text, audio, video, whatever else you got going on. The good news is that you likely already have a resource space in place.

(00:02:20):
If you use Google Workspace for email, you can just create folders in Google Drive. And if you’re a Microsoft 365 user, OneDrive should fit the bill. There are, of course, alternative document drive tools as well as softwares purpose-built for resource hubs, but as a starting point, this is certainly sufficient and it’s the cheapest and easiest solution because you already probably have it in place already. Just create a separate professional development folder and sub-folders as you go and you’re off to the races. You can always upgrade to something else later. Next, you can start your collection of professional development resources with those you already have in place, which are likely not yet organized. That’s the unfortunate part. Do you have CLE materials from Bar Association events in electronic format? Upload those. How about paper-based CLE materials? Scan them and upload them too. Do you have access points for CLE or professional development subscriptions that you can share with your staff?

(00:03:19):
If so, make those credentials available via the secure resources portal or through a shared password manager. This collection should also include internal firm materials like template documents and video-based explanations, draft workflows, and even more. You probably have more professional development resources than you think, just kicking around. So it’s a matter of sourcing it and organizing it for consumption. The trick is making that collection available in a meaningful way for your team too. After that, once you’ve collated your resources in a consumable way, it’s time to fill in the holes. There may be some things you want to add, and now it’s your job to develop those items. Maybe you need additional explainer videos for substantive questions. Maybe it’s missing administrative processes. Maybe it’s templates that you haven’t built yet. Some of this stuff will be missing for your initial collection. Some of it’ll come up in the course of doing business where you’ll be talking to a mentee or an employee and you’ll see that you need some resources that you don’t have already.

(00:04:25):
Get a list together, the initial list, and as you go, and just pare it down bit by bit. In addition to accessible materials, the lawyers in your firm will also want to have consistent access to mentors as I just alluded to. And those mentors will be able to provide feedback on what they’re trying to do, what you’re trying to do as a team. This can be accomplished through recurring meetings, including one-on-ones or as part of the case management process. This kind of feedback can also be offered in a group setting when case review meetings are accomplished, which should be done on a regular basis. Monthly, at least, probably weekly or biweekly. That’s more advisable. There are likely obvious candidates for mentor roles within your law firm. So this is largely about convincing your mentors of the value of their services and also scheduling that time with their mentees, which bookings should not be overwritten.

(00:05:25):
Of course, there will continue to be tons of external resources available for staff attorneys and not just those you’ve already collected. So it makes sense to ensure that your attorney staff continue to have access to professional development resources. Not only those that are static, but those that you can collect and store at your firm on an ongoing basis. In part, that means ensuring that your staff has access to continuing education and professional development events on a recurring basis so that they can add to the resource pool themselves. Understanding that these events will also include access to valuable networking components. Ensuring that your staff is able to engage ongoing professional development activities is just as important as ensuring that those same staff attorneys will have continuing access to materials generating from those past activities. I mean, I feel better about your in-firm educational component now. How about you?

(00:06:21):
So get to work. Next up, we’ll run through a round of This Is Your Life with Melissa Rogozinski of RPC Strategies, LLC. Melissa has led a really interesting life and has had a really interesting career in and out of the legal tech space and will go through all of it or most of it. That’s next. Just a note for listeners, before we begin our interview segment, this episode contains frank discussion of sexual abuse and trauma, which may be triggering for some. Listener discretion is advised. This podcast is presented for informational purposes only and does not substitute for professional mental healthcare or therapy. If you or someone you know has been or is being affected by sexual abuse, please reach out for support.

(00:07:16):
Well, I’ve effectively run out of things to say now, which is awkward because this is a podcast. So I’m just going to go outside and drink from the hose. That’s right. Don’t judge me. Okay, maybe I’ll do that later. Let’s introduce our guest instead. We’re glad to have her back for her second appearance on Legal Late Night. Only the second person who’s done this twice, hopefully in advance of completing the hat trick coming on a third time. That’s right. Our guest today is Melissa– Rogo, as her friend’s neighbors call her– Rogozinski. She’s the CEO of RPC Strategies, LLC. Rogo, welcome back.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:07:56):
Jared, I’m so happy to be here. I was thinking about that this morning and I was like, I’ve been on Jared’s podcast so many times. I wonder if he’s ranking his guest to who’s been on

Jared Correia (00:08:07):
The

Melissa Rogozinski (00:08:07):
Most. I’m wondering if I’m in the top 10. I might be in the top five.

Jared Correia (00:08:11):
Probably. Probably. No, it’s great. I like to give the people a variety.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:08:15):
I’m happy for you, and I’m really proud of you for this new show that you struck out on your own. I really like

Jared Correia (00:08:19):
Working

Melissa Rogozinski (00:08:19):
With you and Evan. No, I love your show.

Jared Correia (00:08:21):
Thank you. Evan will not come on camera or speak on the episodes really, but he does an excellent job behind the scenes. Makes me look good, which is hard to do.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:08:30):
Especially at 67, huh?

Jared Correia (00:08:32):
Yeah. 67 years young, as they say. That social security check hits like crack. Okay. Let’s talk about, I want people that, if nobody’s seen you on the show, give people a rundown of what you do. What is RPC? Strategies? What do you do over there? And then we’ll dive into your book.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:08:55):
Okay. So I’ve been in law since, what, 1994? So now we’re 32 years. I was a litigation paralegal for 11, and then I went into

Jared Correia (00:09:05):
Sales for legal checOs doing it in 94 as a 67-year-old.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:09:12):
So then I went into legal tech sales and I did that for about seven and a half, eight years. And a group that I started, some education I started when I was in sales, turned into my first business when my mom got sick. And then so for the last 14 years, I have been an entrepreneur in law and legal tech doing continuing education on e-discovery, data privacy, cybersecurity, growth marketing, sales consulting. And now I’m working with an edge data center startup helping to operationalize their vision. Hold on. I’m

Jared Correia (00:09:47):
Going to talk about that in a second. Yeah, let’s talk about that in a second. Okay. Because this was new to me. So to summarize, you could have just set up and living the dream because who doesn’t want to get into legal tech and legal tech related consulting? Everyone.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:10:02):
So no, I met these guys in. Actually at the same time I was starting to write the book. I met them in the fall of 25. And after two or three years of seeing what was going on in the law and legal tech with AI and all of this just insane amount of money that was being invested, I had pitched an idea to Steve Embry that this kind of looked like a house of cards in the middle of Pompeii to me. And I just told him, I was like, “This isn’t even a bubble. It’s going to be a meltdown because the infrastructure and the power isn’t there to support it.” And so Steve and I started working on an article series together called Lawyers in Pompeii. And one idea turned into six articles. And at the

Jared Correia (00:10:48):
Same

Melissa Rogozinski (00:10:48):
Time –

Jared Correia (00:10:49):
Wait, was it actually called Lawyers in Pompei?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:10:51):
Yeah, we called it Lawyers in Pompei, and it was a six-part series. So each one had its own title after that. I

Jared Correia (00:10:59):
Love Pompei. Really interesting

Melissa Rogozinski (00:10:59):
Place to go. Well, a lot of the things that we predicted came true and happened. And at the same time, I went to a local networking event and I met these guys, a couple of co-founders, now it’s just one, we’ve done some restructuring, but they are building edge data centers. And I was like, “Well, what’s that?” And edge data centers are not these hyperscalers that want to take up all these swabs of land. They’re creating all these issues of communities pushing back about the water and the power and all that. Billions of dollars that are being on hold right now. But what they’re doing is acquiring existing facilities that maybe have been abandoned or need to be upgraded. So they’re already existing, the power’s already there, and it needs to be upgraded for AI for 2030 and what have you. So

Jared Correia (00:11:52):
Retrofitting days. Right,

Melissa Rogozinski (00:11:54):
Right. So that’s what they’re doing now. And there’s a couple of other business components to it as well, but I’m basically in a chief of staff role right now helping to pull all the people together and helping to operationalize the vision and raise our first round of seed capital.

Jared Correia (00:12:14):
So how’d you get connected with these data center guys? That’s super interesting.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:12:18):
Yeah. So I was attending a networking event here in Fort Lauderdale and it was completely outside of law and legal tech. And the first day I just kind of listened to a lot of people. And it was a lot of crypto guys and everybody was talking about AI. And there was some marketing and sales guy on stage that was annoying me because he was just one of these hardcore salespeople from the

Jared Correia (00:12:43):
Stage.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:12:45):
But the second day, I wasn’t planning to go back, but the host of the event invited me to the second day. And so it was a little bit more of an intimate group at one of the tiki bars here at the beach. Very nice. I got to have better conversations with some of the people I had seen and heard and just more one-on-one. And just one thing led to another. And I ended up talking to this guy that had a partner and they were talking about building edge data centers. And I was like, “What’s that?” And then he explained the concept to me and I was just like, the lights went off and I was like, “That’s it.” And this is going to sound weird, but only if you haven’t read my book. There was this ethereal moment when I felt like I was in a bubble with this guy and it was so profound.

(00:13:35):
And I was like, “This is where my career is going next.” I felt it, I knew it. And I actually worked with these guys for two months without getting paid just because I want to. I’ve never done that before. And I feel so strongly about what they’re doing. And I know it’s the right path because without the infrastructure, without the power, all of this development that we’re doing in AI, it’s going to melt down. And we’re already starting to see signs of that. We just can’t support it yet. So we have to have this.

Jared Correia (00:14:08):
What I really wanted to have you on today to talk about was you wrote a memoir. It’s called Becoming Phoenix: A Fiery Memoir. I would even say it’s maybe the Fiery Memoir. So just give me the 30,000 foot overview to start with. What’s this about? I know it’s about your life.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:14:29):
Right. So between 2012 and 2017, I went through an epic number of catastrophic crises that Steve Embry would call it. I was calling it tragedies, but I’ll call it crises.

Jared Correia (00:14:47):
Softened it up for you.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:14:48):
Yeah. Just one thing went on top of another. And there was no time to think about what was happening. It was just wake up, put one foot in front of the other and navigate it and just hold on until the storm was over. As I was going through that, and then the years after the fallout and recovery, as people would hear different parts of my story, or if they were there in the midst of it, everybody kept saying, “You have to write a book about this, or this sounds like a Hollywood movie.” And the time came that I finally went to my best friend and then said, “Okay, look, I’ll do this.” First of all, nobody wants to file their life out there for everybody. But

Jared Correia (00:15:34):
A lot of it was – I was going to say, I would never write a memoir. No, thank you. Yeah.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:15:38):
But a lot of it was public already because I already had a brand through the round table. And so a lot of

Jared Correia (00:15:42):
People

Melissa Rogozinski (00:15:42):
Already saw me going through it.

Jared Correia (00:15:44):
We’ll get to that. Put a flag in that everybody for now.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:15:47):
Yeah. But I told her, I said, “I would agree to write it if I could have a writing partner, and I would fictionalize it, and I would a good versus evil spin on it.” And so I met someone that filled that role. We worked on it. And after about two years, it was done. And when I received it and read it, there was no question. There was no way I could put that out there because that was not the story I needed to tell. So it took a couple more years, and then the time was finally right. And I sat down and I read it myself. You

Jared Correia (00:16:24):
Finished a fictionalized version with a writing partner and you scrapped the whole thing. Wow. That’s wild. What was it about the fictionalized version that was just not hitting for you?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:16:42):
The story wasn’t cohesive. There were all these things that we had made up or we’d fictionalized. Really what it came down to was, and I say this in my author’s note, I realized I just wasn’t ready. The truth of what I went through was enough. And I wasn’t ready because I would have to face the pain again to write it. But I also wanted to make sure that – I think that what you really have to do. Yeah. But I wanted to make sure if I’m going to do this, I’m willing to, but I want to be sure that it’s written in a way that yes, it’s my story, but I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. The book is not about me. The book is facing whatever kind of trials or challenges that you have. And not just surviving, but thriving. And I don’t mean to sound cliche, but when you go through some of the things like I went through, sometimes the only control you have is your attitude.

(00:17:38):
And sometimes you have to learn to let go of things you thought you wanted to hold onto or that you needed. And there’s a reason to let go of those things. And I talk about that at the end of the book.

Jared Correia (00:17:51):
All right. Let’s talk about some of the things that you lay out in the book. So when we first started talking, you told me you had written this. We were in the middle of a conversation. You had started reading from the book and I wasn’t aware that that’s what was going on. And then it was like, oh, we’re talking about erections? What happened here? I was so confused, but that’s how the book starts off. So can you talk about this instant you added to the beginning of the book and why you made it the first chapter?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:18:31):
So the prologue that you’re talking about

Jared Correia (00:18:33):
Is – Yes. The prologue. No the first chapter.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:18:36):
The prologue that you’re talking about is a part of the story that is the one part of the story that absolutely no one knew about. There were only three people in my life who knew about that. No one knew. And it’s actually kind of towards, it is one of the tragedies, but it’s a very pivotal moment in that journey where it seems like it is absolutely the worst as if things could not get any worse. And it did.

Jared Correia (00:19:10):
Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:19:11):
But it’s also the moment. Immediate

Jared Correia (00:19:14):
Thres here. Yeah. Homer style. Go

Melissa Rogozinski (00:19:16):
Ahead. Do you want to read it? Read the first line.

Jared Correia (00:19:20):
No, I do not.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:19:21):
Okay. Okay. All right. So it’s –

Jared Correia (00:19:24):
Probably that’s because I don’t have it in front of me. But yeah, you just tell people

Melissa Rogozinski (00:19:28):
About what it is. But it’s not impactful because. But the second reason I chose to start the prologue, start the book with that line is because, I mean, I did the research. If I’m going to write a book, how do I do this to really make an impact? And you hear the first line and the response from everybody is WTF, what did I just hear? And you have to read the second line. You have to read the third line. And it draws you in and you’re like, “This is crazy. This is nuts.” And especially for those people who know me, they’re like, “What?” But

Jared Correia (00:20:08):
That’s – To you, that incident with this guy was like, this was the catalyst for you to be like, “Okay, I’m going to have to do some things, make some changes kind of deal.” Is that the way you look at it? Or was it more like, “This is another thing I have to overcome with a positive, effective attitude?”

Melissa Rogozinski (00:20:28):
It was a mix of emotions that day. It was a mix of, “You got to be effing kidding me. It cannot possibly get any worse, but it just did.” And it was also the moment that I came up with the phrase, “You can’t take anything from somebody who’s already lost everything. I had nothing left to lose. Everything I had to gain was my life back and my survival.” And it was a very pivotal moment in the story where The Phoenix really got her wings and she started fighting for me. I started fighting for myself.

Jared Correia (00:21:12):
When the audiobook comes out, I will volunteer to do some dramatic readings of chapters, if you wish. Prologue,

Melissa Rogozinski (00:21:21):
Et cetera. I will have a very serious conversation with you about that because everybody that’s heard me read pieces of it, that’s the very first thing they all say is like, “You are recording an audible.” Right. Right. Can’t do an audiobook. Look, it’s hard. I’m not as invincible as everybody on the outside thinks I am. I’ve read and reread and edited this memoir who knows how many, tens of times. But there’s certain parts that it’s still hard for me to get through. I cry.

Jared Correia (00:21:57):
Yeah, you were still looking at it and revising it when we were talking today.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:22:01):
I was. I was. And there’s some parts of it that I can’t get through without. I can’t control myself from being there again in a certain moment. So yes, if you want to help me read it, I will have a serious conversation because everybody wants me to do this, but I need help doing it. I need help getting through it for sure. I’m happy to

Jared Correia (00:22:21):
Read.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:22:21):
And I

Jared Correia (00:22:21):
Trust you. I

Melissa Rogozinski (00:22:22):
Trust you.

Jared Correia (00:22:23):
I enjoy reading. Well, thank you. All right. So let’s go back. I think you were an Air Force brat. Is that the fair? Okay. So how did that affect you growing up?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:22:37):
So when I was born, I was born on an Air Force base. My dad had just left Vietnam. He’d served there for, I think, three or four years. And then he came back, he met my mom. She also was from a military family, and that’s how they met. And when I was born, he got out full-time and he went to the reserves. So I did not move around like other military brats did, but I had that not only from his side, but also from my mother’s side. So it was very strict and regimented, and there were very defined expectations. And foundationally, the expectation was you live a life of servitude. You’re the bottom of the hierarchy and you take orders and you do what you’re told. And that –

Jared Correia (00:23:34):
And so as a kid, you’re like, “This is how it is. This is how it goes.”

Melissa Rogozinski (00:23:38):
As a kid, and when my parents were married, I mean, we were having fun. We had a great time. I have great memories. We did really fun things when we lived in Pennsylvania where my dad’s family was found. I had no idea how poor we were. We had food, we had a cat, we had a river, we had swings, we had family, we had cousins. We had blackberries and blackberry juice stains and bumblebee stings and thunderstorms. Everything about living was fun. Everything about living was fun. And then my parents got divorced and that changed. And we got ripped from Pennsylvania and moved to Alabama. And that Southern Bible fell – Small change. I know it now. Seeing my life like this so many years later and writing this book, I see all these things now, but clearly I wasn’t made to conform.

Jared Correia (00:24:38):
Well, yeah. Can we talk about that? So one set of strictures is the military, but then the deep south, not strictures necessarily, but there are certain conventions in place. For sure. So is it like fried green tomatoes or steel magnolias? What was it like for you growing up there?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:24:55):
Well, first of all, I never picked up the accent very thick. And people comment about that all the time. Yeah, you haven’t. But I lived there for three and a half decades. Funny enough, when I was a kid and we moved there, it was the first year after my parents’ divorce, I would hear these words like yonder and reckon. And even as an eight-year-old, I was like, “That sounds awful. What is that?” I’m never going to say those words. And I don’t. There was just something in me that was just defiant even at eight years old. I hated the language. And yeah, I know.

Jared Correia (00:25:27):
Right. Well, there goes our Southern listenership. We had a nice run.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:25:31):
But the funny thing is, and now I know this, and it started happening when I would go to legal tech years ago, and I’d be up in New York and be in a group of people talking, whatever, right? E-discovery whatever. So someone would recognize, I would say a word or something, and it’s just subtle enough that someone would catch it. And usually it was

Jared Correia (00:25:53):
A

Melissa Rogozinski (00:25:53):
Man. And they’d say something, “Oh, where are you from?” And I promise, I have to start giving a disclaimer now. I would tell people, “Be very careful if you say that to me because I have an alter ego. And if she recognizes that you recognize the Southern accent and that you liked it, darling, we’ll talk to you like this long as we need to until I get a signature on that the contract. And then we all be happy. Now won’t we darling? Because everybody likes a little honey on the biscuits, right? Yeah.

Jared Correia (00:26:23):
Yeah, that’s pretty

Melissa Rogozinski (00:26:25):
Good.

Jared Correia (00:26:25):
That’s how you should do the audiobook. I’m just throwing it out

Melissa Rogozinski (00:26:29):
There. It just shows up.

Jared Correia (00:26:33):
Okay. This is another. So dudes in legal, a lot of shitheads out there. A lot of people who take advantage of others, frankly. That is just the way it is. Let’s do this now. You’ve got a chapter in this book called The Assault. Do you want to talk about that?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:26:57):
It’s public. NPR level public, so let’s go.

Jared Correia (00:27:02):
Let’s

Melissa Rogozinski (00:27:02):
Talk about it.

Jared Correia (00:27:03):
Okay. So what happened? And if there’s anything where you’re like, “Hey, go out and read the book,” just tell me and we’ll move on to something else.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:27:14):
It’s okay. It’s public. So in 2016, by 2016, my mom had already passed away and I was finally finished with my breast cancer journey. I had the round table as a business and I had shut it down. And I had been trying to find a full-time job to go back to work thinking this stuff was done and I just wanted to move on with my life. And finding a full-time job proved impossible because that was the first time I learned that once you’re an entrepreneur, and it doesn’t matter why – Right.

Jared Correia (00:27:51):
You never

Melissa Rogozinski (00:27:51):
Want to entrepreneur why again.

(00:27:54):
Nope. No one wants to. Employers won’t hire entrepreneurs. They think you’re rogue and you have no rules, you have no boundaries. Well, I mean, we could talk about that on another show. But anyway, I couldn’t find a full-time job, so it became pretty obvious. And people from the round table kept staying in touch. And even though I wasn’t doing it, they kept inviting me to speaking engagements or to events or whatever it was. And finally, a friend came to me and he’s like, “Look, I’ve got a little extra money sitting over here that I’m not using. Let’s relaunch it.” And I was like, “Okay.” So we did. And so we’re working

Jared Correia (00:28:29):
Together. So you ran this discovery round table. We can get into that after this. But yeah, go ahead.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:28:35):
Yeah. So we put about 10 months into relaunching this, rebuilding it, because it takes time to build a business before you’re ready to go out there and start trying to make money from it. So we’re right at the tail end and we’re getting ready to relaunch. I’ve got a program planned in, I think, April of 2016, and it’s February of 2016. And it was a Tuesday night in February. And I lived in downtown Birmingham at the time, and I decided to take a break at this local place called Paramount where all the locals, downtowners and business people hung out after hours. And they had these amazing chicken wings. They were dry rubbed with fresh rosemary and lemon rind, and they were baked in their wood oven stove. And it was so good. Sounds likeful. They were amazing. Yeah. So I wanted some chicken wings. I go down to the restaurant bar and it’s packed.

(00:29:25):
And I look on one side of the bar and the front of the bar for an open seat. And I picked the seat at the front of the bar in the middle because it was the most well-lit and it was surrounded by people. And as I was telling this story to the Messing Brothers, they both were like, “It never occurred to me as a man to actually take time to pick the safest place for me to sit.”

Jared Correia (00:29:47):
Right. I was just going to say that. That’s not even a consideration for me.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:29:52):
Ask any woman. Every single one of us do it. It makes sense. Yeah, we’re breathing oxygen. It’s just normal for us. So I picked The seat in front and I sat down, ordered my chicken wings, a vodka cranberry, and this man on the right side of me starts talking to me and I’ve got blinders on like I always do and short answers, whatever, and he keeps on. He won’t leave me alone. And finally he tells me his name and I was like, “Oh, you’re so-and-so from this law firm and it’s a very prominent plaintiff’s firm in downtown Birmingham.” So now you’re thinking got their name on the building.

Jared Correia (00:30:29):
Maybe I could get a gig here.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:30:31):
Not really. It wasn’t even that. It was just one of their associates had been a speaker for the round table. But as soon as someone. When I said my name, he’s like, “Oh, you’re that chick that does the e-discovery CLEs.” So in that moment, for me, I’m a woman. For me, it immediately becomes a business meeting. I can’t be social. So for me, it’s business and I have to put the professional side on because how I carry myself reflects. I’ve got a brand.

Jared Correia (00:30:59):
Right. And I think it’s easier for guys to kind of mix that up a little bit.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:31:04):
And so again, I’m not trying to drag the story out. I’m not responding to him. So he forces me to respond by running his hand very quickly up my leg and grabbing my vagina.

Jared Correia (00:31:21):
And you’ve literally just met this person.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:31:25):
Yeah.

Jared Correia (00:31:25):
That’s crazy.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:31:26):
Yeah. And I ripped his hand off of me with as much drength as I could. I was directing just him. I wasn’t loud, but I was very firm. Don’t do that. You have no right. I don’t like that. And he said, oh, you liked it and you know it. And he did it again. It was so fast, Jared, and I was paralyzed. And the second time around, I go through the same thing and he leans into me. He gets within inches of my nose and he growls at me. I can touch you any way I want to.

Jared Correia (00:32:05):
This is happening in a public place.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:32:08):
And it’s packed. It’s crowded and it’s well lit. And I remember processing the thought. He was much older. He was overweight. I could tell he’d had a few. And it was a concrete floor and we’re sitting at the bar stools. And I processed the thought. I probably have enough strength in me to push him off the chair. And if I do this, he’ll crack his head. It could kill him. And then I thought to myself, oh my God, I have it in me to take the life of another human being. And that is not

Jared Correia (00:32:44):
How I handled it. But still, I mean, this gets dark very quickly, obviously.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:32:51):
And when I’ve told this, most people are supportive, 99% of people. There’s been a couple and they were women and they chastised me and like, well, why didn’t you handle it this way? And why didn’t you do this? And why didn’t you just punch him? Are you kidding

Jared Correia (00:33:06):
Me?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:33:07):
If you’ve ever been through that, it doesn’t matter how strong you think you are or anybody else does. Jared, I was paralyzed. Oh, sure. Yeah. Not even paralyzed in fear, but just paralyzed in shock. You don’t know how to respond. You cannot will your body and your mind to respond to protect yourself in a situation like this.

Jared Correia (00:33:32):
Yeah. I think a lot of this Harvey Weinstein Donald Trump bullshit happens in legal and most of it is like no one talks about it. So I know this is really difficult to talk about, but I appreciate you doing it and writing about it because hopefully it’ll give other people the courage to speak up about it because it happens all the time in the legal industry. All the time. Hopefully less so now, but it’s a regular occurrence.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:34:02):
Thank you for saying that. Thank you for giving me a safe place to talk about it. Thank you to your audience for listening to this story. You do need to read the book, but years later, there was another incident at Legal Week and the Messing, Rocky and

Jared Correia (00:34:18):
Chimney

Melissa Rogozinski (00:34:18):
Messing. They wrote about it. And so you can go look that up.

Jared Correia (00:34:22):
And that was a big deal a few years ago, I think, right?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:34:25):
Right. And I always knew that, I mean, of course, this is years after I had recovered from everything, but I always knew that at some point it would come time for me to go public about the assault because I knew it would help other people. And it could be part of a movement that makes. It’s not just about awareness, it’s about making this stop. NPR ended up covering what the Messing Brothers were involved in, what they saw happened. And NPR ended up doing a three article series on it. And they did do a

Jared Correia (00:35:00):
Story

Melissa Rogozinski (00:35:01):
About what I’d been through. Mine was part of that series.

Jared Correia (00:35:04):
Now, I don’t believe you were involved personally with the Legal Week issue. No. Yeah. Just so people know. Yeah. So this happens at conferences. This happens inside of law offices regularly, and it’s horseshit and it needs to stop. Guys can control themselves far better than. There’s no excuse for that kind of behavior.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:35:28):
There’s no excuse. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be gender specific. Yes, statistically it’s more men doing this to women, but it can be

Jared Correia (00:35:39):
Opposite. By a large margin, which is why I’m speaking mostly to men here. But go ahead.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:35:44):
Right. Right. But when all of that was happening with the Messing Brothers and the conversation on LinkedIn started, I kept feeling like I need to say something, but I didn’t want what I had to say to get lost in the mix of LinkedIn messages and comments. So I reached out to them and I reached out to Kat Casey too. I’ll talk to her first because I felt like

Jared Correia (00:36:03):
I – Yeah, she’s coming on the

Melissa Rogozinski (00:36:04):
Show soon. Yeah. I knew it was time for me to do this, but I wanted to make sure I surrounded myself with that small group. But I told them what I’m seeing is a lot of talk about awareness, but I’m not seeing anything about someone who actually held their assailant accountable and what that looked like to go through that and what life looks like on the other side. Because that’s the biggest reason that people don’t go through it. They’re terrified. And I certainly was, but I knew that I was in a position because of my brand. I had to do something.

Jared Correia (00:36:44):
Yeah.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:36:44):
And I was

Jared Correia (00:36:45):
Afraid

Melissa Rogozinski (00:36:45):
It would cost me my career.

Jared Correia (00:36:49):
Yeah. And it’s unfortunate that people in position of power are protected. I am hopeful that younger generations are more respectful of others than that. So good on you for doing that and speaking out about it seriously. You should be proud of yourself. A couple other things I want to ask you about. You also talk in the book about, this is not exactly quite the same thing we were talking about, but when you run into, you’ve had a lot of men in your life tell you you’re intimidating. And I want to talk about that a little bit because I don’t know. I’m not intimidated by people, men or women. It’s just like I can’t remember someone I’ve been intimidated by since I was a child basically. But what is the deal with that? Is that a game? Is that serious? What are these guys trying to achieve?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:37:45):
I think a lot of it can be cultural. I think a lot of it can be age related, generational. I see more of a balance in the generations behind you and me, more of a balance between the sexes. But I think I get a lot of – Wait. I don’t know

Jared Correia (00:38:10):
If we’re in the same generation. I though it was in the silent generation. I’m like 87 years old. All right, go ahead.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:38:21):
That changes the nature of the subject that everybody in politics should retire at 65 and we need to be done with that. We need a new generation in leadership, but in put us another conversation.

Jared Correia (00:38:32):
Get the fuck out. Okay, go ahead. Right.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:38:34):
Be done with it. No, I think a lot of it may have been cultural, but there are. I don’t know. Jared, I don’t have a good reason. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it started when I got a phone call in my 30s from a man in the singles group at church randomly without being prompted. And he called and he’s like, “Do you know why no one wants to date you?” I was like, “Okay.”

Jared Correia (00:39:00):
That’s fucked up. I don’t get that. That is like this whole incel thing, which I don’t understand at all. That’s kind of an incel angle. One of my biggest focus points is trying to not let my son become an incel Nazi. If I achieve that, I will have succeeded in life. Let’s not be Charlie Kirk or some shithead like that.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:39:27):
But Jared, I’m turning 53 on August 19th and the day the book is going out. And I heard this one month ago at my own apartment complex at the pool by the husband of one of the people in my acquaintance group here. And a group of us are talking. There’s a younger man there and just a bunch of us there. And he looks at me and he’s like, “Melissa, you’re just too smart. You need to dial it down.” I’ve been hearing this shit for 30 years. That stuff is garbage and intimidating. Yeah. Whatever it is, I do get excited about it and it hurts. But it’s coming from people who are insecure, unfortunately.

Jared Correia (00:40:14):
Themselves.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:40:15):
Yeah, they’re insecure with something in themselves. And whether it’s me or somebody else, they see something. Anybody who’s attacking another person, they’re projecting a wound that they have that they’re not willing to face or deal with themselves. That’s really where

Jared Correia (00:40:29):
It’s coming from. A lot of that going around right now. Stop nagging people. It’s annoying. It doesn’t work as a guy. Just be

Melissa Rogozinski (00:40:34):
Nice. It’s

Jared Correia (00:40:35):
So

Melissa Rogozinski (00:40:35):
Much easier.

Jared Correia (00:40:37):
Fucking hey. Okay. Let’s do some legal stuff because the podcast is called Legal Late Night, not My Random Thoughts Late Night. Although sometimes this. Let’s talk about this ESI round table that you did, this e-discovery thing. Let’s talk about it. Because you built this kind of viral group, essentially. How did you do that and how did it end?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:40:59):
So back in 2008, I was in legal tech sales in Alabama and I was at a defense lawyer’s conference in Georgia and it was small. It was in the fall. And a question, Alabama had put their rules committee together. They not put the rules together, but they had a committee discussing it. And so I was at this conference and the last session was a panel of judges, state court judges. And I was sitting in a room full of 60 lawyers. I was sitting in the back with a guy named Dudley Motlow. And a question came up about cost-sharing with the plaintiff’s side. And no one knew how to answer. It got crickets. The room was silent. Dudley leans over and he’s like, “Hey, Rogo, you need to say something.” And I was like, “I’m in sales and I’m not a lawyer. And I’m all these excuses.

(00:41:47):
Oh, and I’m a woman, right?” I’m in sales. I can’t speak. And I’m a woman. I’m not supposed to because I’m intimidating. I’m too smart, right? You’re an intimidating woman, correct? Yeah. So anyway, he encourages me. So I stand up and I raise my hand. I’m all the way in the back. And Judge Scott Vowel, who is presiding judge of Jefferson County calls on me. And I, “Judge Vowel, Your Honor, thank you so much. My name is Melissa Rogozinski and yada yada. I’m not trying to sell anything, but I think I haven’t answered your question.” And he’s like, “Melissa, if you can answer this question, you sell anything you want to and I’ve got your back.” So I answered –

Jared Correia (00:42:21):
But it’s funny that you felt like you had to deliver those qualifiers before you even said anything. That’s unfortunate.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:42:27):
So I answered this question and that was it. And the conference was over. And so I go back to the booth to man the booth, and I get sworn by lawyers and judges. And Judge Fowell, he’s about six foot one, two or something like that. Tall, slender. He has a presence, just a total gentleman. So it’s like the Red Sieges part of, he just glides through this group surrounding me and he extends his hand and he shakes my hand and he said, “I’d love to talk to you more about this.” So I told him, I said, “Here’s what I’m seeing from the seat that I have in the industry. I used to be a paralegal. Now I’m in sales. Here’s the conversations we’re having. Here’s what I’m seeing. This is what the company I work for does. But we need resources in Alabama because no one’s coming to Alabama to help us.

(00:43:13):
They’re in New York, Chicago, wherever. But here’s the challenges I have with a competitor who does court reporting because we do that too.” And he looked at me and he said, “Melissa, you put a group together and let them know I’m involved and I will help you educate Birmingham.” And so a year later, I called him up and I was like, “Hey, do you remember this conversation?” He said, “Yes.” And I said, “All right, well, it’s time.” And he said, “All right, I’m going to call this person, this person.” He lists four people. And I’m like, “Great, I’ll call these four people.” We had breakfast in November of 2009. We’re sitting at this round table.

Jared Correia (00:43:49):
Over here. Setting up the Discovery Adventures.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:43:53):
It was. And we’re sitting at this round table. Everybody has their breakfast, their coffee. We’re in a private dining room. And he looks at me from across the table. He’s like, “Okay, Rogo, tell him your great idea.” And I’m sitting there for a moment. I’m thinking –

Jared Correia (00:44:08):
And you’re like, “What now?”

Melissa Rogozinski (00:44:10):
I’m like, “What the fuck is happening? I’m a secretary. I’m a paralegal. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a judge. I’m not a leader.” And that’s how the round table was born. And as soon as I told him the idea, they all started talking. They were from every single position within the legal industry you could imagine. And they all started talking. They all sort of come up with the problem. They all still come up with solutions. And then an hour and a half later, he looks at me, he’s like, “Okay, what’s next?” And that’s when I realized I’m being asked to lead and I have a decision to make. And if I make the right decision, I get an opportunity to carve out a path that absolutely doesn’t exist, but needs to. And so-

Jared Correia (00:44:55):
So you become the organizing principal behind this group of e-discovery experts basically. And it got pretty big, right?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:45:03):
Yeah. It became a very community collaborative event. And even though I worked for a vendor, I made sure there was never a sales pitch. It was all about the knowledge and the education. But I had been the paralegal first. I wasn’t a salesperson first. I’d been a paralegal first.

Jared Correia (00:45:18):
The reps.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:45:19):
My passion has always been, my commitment has always been to the law firm and what’s in the best interest of the lawyers. And so we did this and we held our first program in February of 2010, and we ended up having 180 people register. It was wild. It was crazy. And it got massive. We had to do a second program of the same thing because we had 50 people we had to tell. We don’t have seats for you. We have to hold another program. The CEO from the company that I worked for came down for it. It was a wild success. And so we did this for a couple years. And then when my mom got sick, each one of them that had helped me start it, they sat me down and they said, “You’ve gotten something here. And if you want to turn this into a business, we’ll help you.” And so that seemed like a good idea, even though I’d never had a business before.

(00:46:06):
I didn’t know a thing about doing that, but my mom was sick.

Jared Correia (00:46:11):
It should not be a blocker that you never had a business before. Everybody ever comes in.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:46:15):
There was no time to think about it, but I had all the support I needed. So did

Jared Correia (00:46:21):
The RPC strategies thing grow from that essentially?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:46:25):
It did many years later. The round table grew. Eventually over time, it grew to nine cities and over 300 programs before I just stopped counting. I just lost count. That’s wild. Yeah. I was nominated – People fucking

Jared Correia (00:46:38):
Love eDiscovery. Yeah.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:46:40):
Hear it all the time. I was nominated for eDiscovery Person of the Year. I received an award from the Alabama. Yeah. I was nominated in 2016 for the ASAIDs eDiscovery Person of the Year. The Alabama State Bar gave me an award as top 30 best practice management tips, and they made the round table part of their roadshow in 2014. And then yes, years later, I started getting phone calls from law firms and legal tech vendors to help me do for my company what you did for the round table. And that was just my DIY marketing. So RPC Strategies became my marketing and sales consulting firm.

Jared Correia (00:47:19):
Look at this. Now we’re full circle to my first question. Thank you for doing this. I know this was very difficult to do at points, so I appreciate it. There’s a bunch of stuff we didn’t cover that’s in the book. I just wanted to shit on some of these in cell fucks for half an hour or so. If people want to read the full publication, where can they get it? How can people find Becoming Phoenix, a fiery memoir? That is before I do the audio version and that becomes available.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:47:54):
So you can download the ebook or the paperback on Amazon. It was published as of August 19th, 2026, which is also my birthday.

Jared Correia (00:48:05):
Excellent. Will you stick around for one last segment, Melissa? Of course.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:48:10):
Always.

Jared Correia (00:48:10):
It promises to be less intense than the prior section.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:48:15):
I’ve

Jared Correia (00:48:15):
Survived.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:48:16):
If I can survive that, I can survive you, Jared. Let’s go. Let’s do it. All

Jared Correia (00:48:19):
Right, we’ll be right back everybody. All

Melissa Rogozinski (00:48:21):
Right.

Jared Correia (00:48:27):
Welcome to The Counter Program. It’s a podcast within a podcast. This is a conversational space where we can address usually unrelated topics that I want to explore at a greater depth with my guests. Expect no rhyme and very little reason. We got Rogo coming back. How you doing?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:48:44):
I am ready for this. I’m ready for this. I prepped, I researched.

Jared Correia (00:48:48):
You tried to cheat. I just want everyone to know.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:48:51):
That’s not a cheat. I was researching. I was trained to research by you lawyers.

Jared Correia (00:48:58):
You asked AI what I was going to talk about. I did. And I have terrible news for you. The AI was very wrong. Although I feel like it’s kind of obvious in retrospect. All right, let me run it down here for you. I want to dive deeper into the world of life stories with a trivia game I’m going to call autobiographical. In which I will ask you questions about historical memoirs while also providing you multiple choice selections of potential answers for each question. Only one of which is correct. You’re already Googling, aren’t you? That’s not correct.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:49:30):
Gemini-ing this shit since Gemini lied and misled me. All

Jared Correia (00:49:37):
Right. I feel like this was an easy one. You wrote a memoir. I’m going to ask you about memoirs. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to select the right answer for each question. I have six questions for you. Are you ready? Rogo.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:49:49):
Do I have a choice? I have a choice over my attitude.

Jared Correia (00:49:54):
You do. Oh, look at that. A way to pull it back to the book. Amazing. Okay. Question one. Okay. Which fourth century North African bishop wrote a foundational spiritual biography that detailed his struggles with lust and famously outlined a motiveless theft appears when he was a teenager? This is the kind of shit that fourth century North African bishops were thinking about. Was it? Rules by St. Benedict. Confessions by St. Augustine. Or meditations by St. Marcus. Rules, Benedict, Confessions Augustine. Meditations, Marcus. What do you think? See if we can get off to a hot start here or a fiery start.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:50:46):
I can’t even type that fast to ask Gemini anymore so I can cheat. Good. Confessions.

Jared Correia (00:50:52):
Correct. You don’t fucking need Gemini. The famous Confessions by St. Augustine. All right. We’re off to a good start. We’re one for one. Okay. Yes, you’ve got purple in your hair today. I do. Which I did not notice because I don’t notice anything. There it is. This is why you got to watch the podcast on video. Confessions by St. Augustine. He was a real perv, frankly. When he was in college, this is probably the best part of the autobiography. He used to pray to God, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” Pretty good prayer. I feel like I should incorporate that, except for the continent part. I would like to remain continent in the current

Melissa Rogozinski (00:51:43):
Part of this. There’s a section in my book in. Yeah, just go read the book because there’s a parallel there. That’s all I’ll say about that.

Jared Correia (00:51:53):
That’s my new prayer. All right.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:51:54):
Okay. Next. Moving on.

Jared Correia (00:51:57):
By the book, question two. Which Civil War General wrote a celebrated two volume personal narrative in 1885 while dying of throat cancer in order to ensure his family’s financial security? This is a memoir that I have read in totality. Is it? Robert Ealy, Ulysses S. Grant, or Stonewall Jackson? Let’s see if Google can provide you an answer for this. I don’t know if I give you credit.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:52:28):
I’ve got the

Jared Correia (00:52:29):
Answer. If you’re using Google. I think we might have to throw these results out. What options again? What’s the answer? What

Melissa Rogozinski (00:52:35):
Are my options again?

Jared Correia (00:52:36):
Robert Ealy. Give me my

Melissa Rogozinski (00:52:37):
Options again. Okay.

Jared Correia (00:52:38):
US Grant or Stonewall Jackson.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:52:43):
Ulysses S. Grant. Is that how you say

Jared Correia (00:52:46):
It? Is that what Google Gemini told you?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:52:49):
Yes.

Jared Correia (00:52:50):
Ulysses S. Grant.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:52:51):
Yes.

Jared Correia (00:52:52):
You’re our first cheater in the game. I suppose this was bound to happen at some point. That’s

Melissa Rogozinski (00:52:56):
Absolutely not true. I guarantee you there’s other people that have cheated. That’s absolutely not true.

Jared Correia (00:53:03):
U.S. Grant, famously corrupt president, embroiled in many, many scandals. He lost his life savings in a Ponzi scheme in 1884. And so he was going to write a book about his life. And he was offered a 10% royalty commission by a publishing house. And friend of the pod, Mark Twain, came in and said, “I’ll give you 70%.” Which set up his family for many, many years because he made $200,000 in royalty checks, which amounts to $7 million today.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:53:44):
Jared, would you

Jared Correia (00:53:45):
Like to

Melissa Rogozinski (00:53:45):
Pay me for my memoir? Let’s find someone.

Jared Correia (00:53:48):
We’ll do that. We’ll do the royalty arrangement that Mark Twain got for Ulysses S. Grand. Super interesting story though. And the memoir is actually not bad. It’s pretty good. All right. Let’s move to question three. Now I got to try to do really complicated questions so that you can’t Google them. Question three. Published anonymously in 1887, this odd memoir tells an erotic, taboo-filled story written from the perspective of an unusual parasitic protagonist. But which one? Was this called The Autobiography of a Mosquito? The Autobiography of Lice? The Autobiography of a Flea. Is this a autobiography written from the perspective of Mosquito, Lice or a Flea from 1887? Melissa staring intently at Google Gemini. The Flea is correct.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:54:44):
No, I didn’t Gemini that.

Jared Correia (00:54:46):
Is the flea is correct? No. Okay. Wow. How

Melissa Rogozinski (00:54:49):
About that?

Jared Correia (00:54:51):
I

Melissa Rogozinski (00:54:52):
Mean, what are the odds that every answer is B?

Jared Correia (00:54:57):
Not good.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:54:58):
No.

Jared Correia (00:54:58):
Anyway, the Flea’s Eye View autobiography was very controversial at the time. Actually written by a lawyer, it turned out, although it was anonymously published. So how about that? And then it was turned into a pornographic film in 1976. And here we are of the same name, if you want to watch that. Question four. This is a little bit. We’re going to go on a little bit of a down note here, but I thought this was interesting. Written entirely via eye blinks following a massive stroke, Jean Dominique Baubi’s 1997 memoir details his life inside a state known as what? Medical condition. Did this person write their autobiography with catatonic displacement? ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease or locked-in syndrome? Now, as you think, perhaps research, this person only had a functioning left eyelid. And so they wrote this book by blinking the left eyelid and someone would hold up alphabet patterns and they went letter by letter to write an entire autobiography.

(00:56:25):
Super interesting story.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:56:27):
What are the options again? That’s fascinating. That’s worthy of –

Jared Correia (00:56:31):
Cataconic displacement, ALS or Lou Gehrig syndrome, or locked-in syndrome.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:56:41):
I’m not going to go with the obvious. I’ll choose something random. How about locked in syndrome?

Jared Correia (00:56:46):
Correct.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:56:48):
Oh, wow. No kidding.

Jared Correia (00:56:49):
Four.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:56:50):
How about

Jared Correia (00:56:51):
That? What do you think the obvious one would’ve been? ALS?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:56:54):
ALS.

Jared Correia (00:56:55):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Locked in syndrome is pretty bad. Basically your body shuts down and your mind is still active. Kind of like an extreme version of ALS with less movement. This guy was only 43 years old. He had a massive stroke. And if people are interested, the name of the book is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, where his body is the diving bell and his paralyzed body. And the butterfly is his mind, which goes on frequent tangents. It was also made into a movie as well.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:57:29):
That is worthy of being looked up and everybody reading something like that. I mean, someone that can do something like that, they should be recognized and honored for something like that.

Jared Correia (00:57:40):
The level of intensity involved in that is impressive. Okay. Number five, you’re four for four. Okay.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:57:46):
Okay.

Jared Correia (00:57:46):
I might have to put an asterisk on this one because you did look up the second one using Google Gemini.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:57:51):
I’m at least passing. I’m not failing. So even if you pull the one from me, I’ve passed.

Jared Correia (00:57:56):
Which is much better than the

Melissa Rogozinski (00:57:57):
Last time I did this.

Jared Correia (00:58:00):
And we’ve never had a perfect score ever. Cheating or not. So this could be a very fiery episode of the show with maybe the first

Melissa Rogozinski (00:58:08):
Perfect

Jared Correia (00:58:08):
Score. Wow,

Melissa Rogozinski (00:58:09):
Jared. That was awesome. Thanks for the plug.

Jared Correia (00:58:11):
Thank you. Question five. Which 1971 foul diary claimed to be a real life account of teenage descent into drug addiction, but was actually authored by Beatrice Sparks as a fictional account? Was it The Basketball Diaries? Go ask Alice or Smack? The Basketball Diaries, Go Ask Alice or Smack, the 1971 fictional memoir about teenage drug use?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:58:47):
Go Ask Alice.

Jared Correia (00:58:50):
Correct. We’re five for five.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:58:52):
Really? Wow, that’s awesome. I think you should give me the five for five, just so you finally have someone that got 100%.

Jared Correia (00:58:59):
I know. I feel like I should. We need to kill the drama behind that, right?

Melissa Rogozinski (00:59:03):
Yeah.

Jared Correia (00:59:04):
Okay. So what made you think of that as the answer? I’m just interested to know.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:59:10):
I think I went with answers that weren’t the obvious because smack, that sounds like something related to drugs.

Jared Correia (00:59:18):
Yes. Yes.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:59:19):
But again, go back and read my memoir because I very specifically say not that I’ve ever done drugs because I haven’t. Ever? No.

Jared Correia (00:59:26):
Yeah, me neither. Oh,

Melissa Rogozinski (00:59:28):
That’s a lie.

Jared Correia (00:59:29):
Moving on. Yeah, so Alex is a protagonist of the book and she gets into some bad shit. But what’s interesting is, so people didn’t know this was fake for years, and it was used aggressively during Reagan’s war on drugs to convince people off of using drugs. And then people found out the story was totally invented by this therapist. All right. I have to correct something. We’re learning a lot today, everyone.

Melissa Rogozinski (00:59:56):
Because I hijacked your podcast when I said, oh, I have I’ve done drugs. And so I need to clarify this because you skimmed right over it and I need to put my disclaimer out there.

Jared Correia (01:00:06):
Do you want to know if I’ve. Yes, I have dabbled.

Melissa Rogozinski (01:00:10):
Okay.

Jared Correia (01:00:10):
Go on.

Melissa Rogozinski (01:00:10):
All right. Okay. So a friend of mine would melt his butter for his cookies down with marijuana, and he would tell me by the business. Oh, it’s not even that bad. No, but oh my God, those were the best cookies in the whole world, Jared. They were chocolate. I’m sure they were delicious. I remember, and he would come down, I would be building business or working on a Sunday at eight o’clock and he’d come down to the conference room at the apartment where we were and he would bring me a cookie and he went, “Look, you’re a lightweight, so you’re only allowed to have one fourth of this. Okay? One fourth at a time.” And so I finally. And they actually would just sit in my refrigerator because it’s just really not my thing. But every now and then I would. Anyway, I had this whole routine.

(01:00:57):
I would sleep in the living room, which was next to the kitchen, and I would set up my snacks, my peanut butter, my apple, my cheese, my water, because I knew this was coming, right? And I would watch the clock and about two hours into this, I would start laughing hysterically at absolutely nothing and get up and eat all my snacks. And I woke up one morning and an entire jar of brand new peanut butter had been demolished. It was all gone. I got a snack. That the best it gets for me.

Jared Correia (01:01:27):
Should maybe drink a half bottle of cough medicine or take some nutmeg. Not that I recommend any of those things. Question six.

Melissa Rogozinski (01:01:38):
Moving on.

Jared Correia (01:01:39):
When Renaissance. This is the hardest question of all. So I wish you luck. This is it for the perfect score, first ever perfect score. Drum roll, please. Which Renaissance Goldsmith’s 16th century autobiography scandalized readers with raw brash accounts of his real life as an artist, lover, and yes, murderer? Yes, this is all true. Was it Ben Venuto Salini? Georgio Vasari? Or Filippo Brunolesky? Salini? Vasari or Brunolesky? Salini. And let you know Renaissance Goldsmiths? Correct. We did it. Evan, we did it. We had a perfect score.

Melissa Rogozinski (01:02:29):
That’s amazing. And

Jared Correia (01:02:30):
You were nervous.

Melissa Rogozinski (01:02:31):
Whoa.

Jared Correia (01:02:32):
All right. Give me the logic behind that.

Melissa Rogozinski (01:02:36):
Because none of the answers have – It was a really hard question. Choice A. Most of the answers were choice B, and then I chose a choice C, and then – Look at this. But none of them were A, so I went with A. That’s it.

Jared Correia (01:02:48):
Wow. Wow. This was an autobiography that was written by an actual goldsmith of some note in Italy when he was in his 50s. And it was never meant to be published. It was a lost manuscript, but it was found by a publisher in 1728 who released it. And it is batshit crazy. This guy was an actual murderer who would premeditate murders. He believed he conjured up devils in the Roman Coliseum. Just wild, wild shit. And probably this is maybe one of the best reviews of an autobiography ever written. Perhaps you can only hope to get one this good. Other goldsmiths have done finer work, but Salini is the author of the most delightful autobiography ever written, ever. Not bad. He was only an okay goldsmith though. Thank you for your participation. How do we do? The first perfect score ever. I’m fucking done. We’re done.

(01:04:00):
No more podcast. It’s the last episode.

Melissa Rogozinski (01:04:05):
It’s worth all the late nights, right?

Jared Correia (01:04:08):
All the legal late nights, correct. All of them. Well, thank you for coming on. We had a blast. Thanks for our guest, Melissa Rogozinski, who is the CEO of RPC Strategies, LLC. To learn more about Melissa and her work, visit rpcgrowthstrategies.com. That’s RPCgrowthstrategies.com. Check it out. Melissa’s book, Becoming Phoenix: A Fiery Memoir is also available for purchase now. Pick up your copy today. Now, because I’ll always be a ’90s kid who always rewound his videotape before returning into Blockbuster, but whose true passion is burning CDs for anyone who would listen. I’m now just doing the modern version of that, which is creating Spotify playlists for every podcast episode that I record where the songs are tangentially related to an episode topic. For this week’s playlist, we’ve put together our own musical memoirs of sorts. It’s biographical songs. Although every songwriter includes autobiographical bits into their compositions, we’ve narrowed it down a bit in order to examine tracks that are retrospectives of real or imagined person’s lives.

(01:05:22):
And it’s brought to us by the game of life and Hasbro. Thank you, Hasbro. For nothing, Hasbro hasn’t really sponsored anything. I suppose that’s the real game of life, folks. Join us next time as I continue to build corporate value.