In this electrifying episode, host Lorie Jones sits down with Brittany Hodak, a powerhouse entrepreneur and keynote speaker. Brittany reveals how she shattered gender biases in the business world, launching a multi-million-dollar company with Walmart as her first client and driving innovation in customer experience.
She shares poignant wisdom from motherhood and the impactful advice of her young son, “Be nice and listen.” Brittany also offers actionable strategies for young women entering the workforce, emphasizing patience, self-improvement, and mastery.
Prepare to be inspired and empowered as Brittany challenges the status quo and fuels your ambition to soar. Don’t miss this chance to hear from a true leader who is paving the way for the next generation of fearless females!
Show Highlights:
- Learn this award-winning CX author’s marketing building blocks. [00:04:57]
- The power of a holistic approach to CX in any industry. [00:08:44]
- How to create a super fan out of each client or customer. [00:12:30]
- Discover excellent resources for CX learning and support. [00:14:42]
- Do you rely on advice where self-development mastery is overdue? [00:18:02]
- How wealth-building can uplift others, with a planning caveat. [00:24:01]
- Unlock genius for managing new ideas, plus Jon Acuff’s strategy. [00:27:43]
- Tips to conquer the challenges of female entrepreneurship. [00:30:37]
- What a wise toddler can teach grownups about CX and life. [00:40:08]
- Advice to ignite success for young professional women. [00:42:09]
If you enjoyed this episode, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review!
For more information about Lorie Jones, go to http://fearless-females.com/.
00:01.33
loriejones7
Good morning. Thank you so much for joining Fearless Females today. I am so excited about today's desk guest. We have Brittany Hodak. She is, you know what?
00:13.17
loriejones7
We're going to have to restart.
00:14.10
Brittany Hodak
It's with an unknown collar.
00:16.64
loriejones7
like that who is la I have my daughter, my youngest ah left today.
00:19.10
Brittany Hodak
Perfect timing there. Save that for your blooper reel.
00:26.46
loriejones7
She's, she graduated in May and she's headed to Costa Rica to teach English to kids in Costa Rica for the next four months. And so I have my phone on, which I usually don't because I'm expecting her to tell me she got, you know, to Fort Worth halfway there.
00:41.75
loriejones7
So sorry.
00:42.36
Brittany Hodak
Well, congratulations to her. That's amazing. And congratulations to you.
00:45.83
loriejones7
yeah
00:46.72
Brittany Hodak
You must be so proud.
00:48.10
loriejones7
I am and excited and it's my baby. So I'm a little sad today.
00:54.50
Brittany Hodak
ah Well, obviously, any breaks that you need to take, if she calls instead of texts or has any questions about how to navigate the airport or whatever it is, um I get it.
01:02.92
loriejones7
Yeah.
01:04.69
Brittany Hodak
I've got two little ones, so I fully understand.
01:07.41
loriejones7
Perfect. All right. Good morning. Thank you for joining Fearless Females today. I'm so excited about our guest, Brittany Hodak. She's a keynote speaker and the author of Creating Superfans.
01:19.25
loriejones7
And I told Brittany when um when I started chatting with her this morning, I love her book. You guys really, truly have to go read it. it's And if you listen to the audio version, she narrates it.
01:31.51
loriejones7
And it's just a happy, light, fun read that is so inspiring. So Brittany, thank you so much for joining us today.
01:41.78
Brittany Hodak
Thank you so much for having me and thank you for those very kind words.
01:45.94
loriejones7
So I always ask this question, and I'm so interested in what your answer is. My very first question is, what is your favorite book?
01:56.66
Brittany Hodak
This is such a hard question to answer because there are so many books that I love so much, but I think probably my favorite book of all time is The Catcher in the Rye.
02:11.94
loriejones7
like okay really
02:13.36
Brittany Hodak
I think that was one of the first books. I don't read a lot of fiction books.
02:16.86
loriejones7
okay
02:16.97
Brittany Hodak
And how old are you when you read Catcher in the Rye? Like 13, 14? I don't even know.
02:20.95
loriejones7
yeah
02:21.79
Brittany Hodak
um That is one book that I have gone back to and read so many times and it always holds up. And it's one of those books that I always discover something new or or get a little bit of something different out of it.
02:33.66
Brittany Hodak
And now I rarely read fiction books. Like I will occasionally read a book if I'm at the beach or if one of my girlfriends says like, oh, you've got to read this.
02:36.97
loriejones7
Oh, really?
02:41.49
loriejones7
Okay.
02:42.27
Brittany Hodak
This is, you know, such an incredible book. Or if there's like a movie that comes out and I read the book because I love the movie. But I i just don't read a lot of fiction. So I have probably 75 nonfiction books and business books that I love, love, love.
02:55.26
Brittany Hodak
ah But in terms of the book that I've read more than any other, it's it's got to be Catcher in the Rye.
02:59.81
loriejones7
Yeah, I love it. well i i have ive I go on where I read one genre and then I read another genre. And so um I have those favorite books from all different ages of life.
03:13.69
loriejones7
So I get what you're saying when you say it's a hard question because it is for me too. I'm like, I've got 15 favorite books. What genre do you want?
03:20.16
Brittany Hodak
Yeah.
03:22.84
Brittany Hodak
Yeah, I was thinking about how many children's books I really love. I was recording a video the other day. It was like National Children's Book Day or something like that. And I was thinking about all the books that I loved when I was a child that I read to my kids now.
03:36.57
Brittany Hodak
And I even have a couple of books that were my parents' books when they were kids that I'm now reading to my children. And you know it's kind of like when you watch a kid's movie as an adult and you go back and you're like, whoa, I had no idea any of that stuff was in there when I was seven or eight years old.
03:49.85
Brittany Hodak
And you just have you know a different perspective. And I feel like children's books are very much that way too. And for me, one of the coolest things about being a parent is being able to go back and revisit some of those things with completely new eyes and and understand them and appreciate them in a new light.
04:00.18
loriejones7
Mm hmm.
04:06.75
loriejones7
ah My kids are all older right now but um for Easter last year I gave them each their favorite book from when they were a kid, you know, so they're all um graduated, and, and, you know,
04:22.50
loriejones7
hopefully pretty soon having kids of their own so I can have some grandkids. But but they um but they each got their Pinkalicious and King Bid Goods in the Bathtub and Where the Wild Things Are.
04:26.29
Brittany Hodak
Perfect.
04:33.51
loriejones7
And I love those. You're right. I love those kids books. They're so much fun. They just are such a fun place to be and a great time to remember. So tell me a little bit about your journey, Brittany. How did you get where you are today? What are you doing? Talk to us about how you got where you are.
04:54.04
Brittany Hodak
So I, like many people, took a ah very winding journey. I never thought I would be a keynote speaker. I don't even think I knew that was a job somebody could have until probably eight or nine years ago. And I never thought I would choose customer experience as this lane that I was passionate about. I always wanted to work in the music industry. That's all I ever wanted to do from the time I was a little girl. I didn't know if I was going to be in a band or manage a band or do publicity for a band, but I knew it was going to be something related to music.
05:25.65
Brittany Hodak
And I got my first job at a radio station when I was 16 years old. I interned at music magazines and record labels and you know anyone that would have me that was sort of music adjacent all through college. And then I moved to New York to to work at a label as soon as I was out of school.
05:43.03
Brittany Hodak
And I just thought that was going to be my path. When I was 27, I launched my first company. It was a music marketing company. And we were incredibly fortunate that the big the first big client that I landed was Walmart. So overnight, I was able to get just about every record label to take my call because I had the backing of of Walmart.
06:05.10
Brittany Hodak
And I started getting really fascinated in shopper marketing, and which is basically like how are we making our products stand out in the stores so that somebody will want to buy ours and not somebody else's.
06:10.75
loriejones7
one
06:18.17
Brittany Hodak
I started to partner with all of these consumer packaged goods companies. and learned that the problems that these consumer packaged goods companies were trying to solve were the exact same problems that I had been trying to help artists solve for several years, which is how do I break, right? Like how do I go from obscurity to everybody knowing who I am? How do I go not just from people knowing who I am, but caring about me and choosing to spend their time and their money and their energy with me rather than you know the other countless options that exist. So I started to really think about
06:52.71
Brittany Hodak
the experience because I think that's what it all boils down to.
06:53.93
loriejones7
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
06:56.32
Brittany Hodak
And I think my love of customer experience is something that I inherited from my dad. My dad was a restaurant manager when I was a kid, then he worked at a car dealership and getting to see the way he created these customer experiences that made people love being a part of his team, love shopping um at the places that he was stewarding, really had a bigger influence on me than i than I realized.
07:22.12
Brittany Hodak
And probably about six or seven years ago, I started to get these requests seemingly out of nowhere and then it just sort of snowballed and snowballed. ah People asking me to come speak about customer experience at their events, come address their boards, come share research that I was doing about the shopper experience or the customer experience. And it sort of morphed into this like full-time career of now I get to speak, I get to travel the world to talk about customer experience to help people think about this idea of turning their customers into super fans, what that means, what that looks like, how you can do it and how as much as we like to think our industries are all so different from every other industry, they are much more alike than they are different because we're all people and we're you know all dealing with the same things that make us human.
08:07.76
loriejones7
Yeah.
08:12.21
loriejones7
Yeah, that's what I was going to say. We're people. In in the end, it doesn't matter what you're selling or or what you're you know you're putting out there, what service you're trying to, we're all people. And so it it probably would have a lot of similarities.
08:28.93
Brittany Hodak
Yep, absolutely.
08:30.88
loriejones7
So you went from, um, ah how did you, how did you get from like a music industry to customer service? Like, like there must've been some steps in there. Did you work for Walmart the whole time? And then all of a sudden people are like, just calling you saying, Hey, come help.
08:48.41
Brittany Hodak
So I started a company and Walmart was our first big client.
08:53.16
loriejones7
Mm-hmm.
08:53.74
Brittany Hodak
And pretty soon we started doing things with other retailers. So um for the entire nine years that I ran the business before I sold it, Walmart was a client. But then we also worked with Amazon.
09:04.78
Brittany Hodak
We worked with Cracker Barrel. We worked with Target. We worked with all of these record labels. And the thing that I think other people realized before I did was I was always very bullish about the experience has to be amazing.
09:19.05
Brittany Hodak
Like I'm not going to sign off on something. I'm not going to put my name on something. I'm not going to put something forward unless I know that it's going to be incredible. I don't want it to just be on par with other things in the marketplace.
09:26.51
loriejones7
Uh
09:29.56
Brittany Hodak
I want it to be several degrees of magnitude better. And so I kind of got this reputation as being a stickler for what the experience was going to be and asking all these experiential questions.
09:33.39
loriejones7
-huh.
09:36.27
loriejones7
Uh-huh.
09:39.81
Brittany Hodak
And to be honest, I had not even heard the term customer experience for like several years, right?
09:43.65
loriejones7
ah
09:45.23
Brittany Hodak
Like it wasn't until um I think even when after I'd gone back to school and got a master's degree in marketing and customer behavior, people still weren't talking about customer experience. And so it wasn't something that was ever part of the plan. And when and people were initially starting like hiring me to speak, I was speaking about marketing or I was speaking about sales.
10:07.25
Brittany Hodak
and then I realized that marketing and sales on their own in silos are not nearly as effective as when you're looking holistically at the entire customer journey, when you're looking holistically about the entire experience that your company provides. And that's when I sort of stumbled into this idea of customer experience. And I started saying, you know it's bigger than sales. It's bigger than marketing. It's bigger than customer service. It's all of these things together.
10:35.83
Brittany Hodak
And if you're not thinking about it holistically, then you're missing out because customers don't see silos. They kill them, but they just look at somebody and say, Oh, you should be able to help me because you're part of this company.
10:46.88
Brittany Hodak
You're, you should be able to solve my problem because you're on this team. So I started to think, how can I. train people to be more customer-centric, not just in the way that they build their teams, but in the way they empower every individual on those teams to say, if a customer has a problem, it is your problem.
11:04.68
Brittany Hodak
like I don't care what the problem is, but like you need to take ownership of it and you need to help get it solved.
11:04.87
loriejones7
Yeah.
11:10.11
Brittany Hodak
and so That's how I sort of accidentally found this field of customer experience.
11:14.31
loriejones7
Oh, I love it. I love it. And I wish that you could go teach some of these financial services companies how to do that too. That would be amazing if you could just help me out with that.
11:25.79
Brittany Hodak
Well, I would love to know anybody, anybody who who wants a little bit help reach out.
11:29.44
loriejones7
but
11:30.07
Brittany Hodak
and And it's funny, it's actually I probably the biggest request that I have gotten over the past two years was people asking me if I would create a training course because they wanted to give it to their employees either as part of onboarding or as part of their annual training, learning and development goals.
11:38.61
loriejones7
you
11:45.79
Brittany Hodak
And so I created this course called Six Weeks to Superfans. That's exactly that. It's a training to help everyone understand that you are the acting chief of experience, no matter what your job title is, no matter what your role is.
11:58.05
Brittany Hodak
At any given moment, you can be called on to be the acting chief of experience for the company and sort of what that means and how to navigate the realities of that because we're all in the experience department together. And you know all it takes is one bad experience that one person has and shares to very severely impact the reputation of a business.
12:18.64
loriejones7
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Well, I'm passionate. I love your passion and I love the idea behind it as well because because we're very people-centric and we're very experience-centric. and And I just really like the idea of of talking to people rather than spreadsheets and numbers and data, right?
12:41.92
Brittany Hodak
Yeah, of every customer, especially in financial services where you know and there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of uncertainty, there's a lot of perhaps um fear around what you don't know that you don't know.
12:49.17
loriejones7
Okay.
12:55.66
Brittany Hodak
like You have all of these big emotions and then you're focused on you know your financial security, your family's financial security, these hugely important things. and I don't think there's ever been a person who woke up and said, if I could just feel like another number to my advisor, or if I could get just someone to like treat me like a cell in a spreadsheet, or just treat me like I don't matter other than when they you know take that commission once a quarter.
13:22.31
Brittany Hodak
and like I don't think anybody has ever said that. And so it really is about showing your clients that
13:24.40
loriejones7
Yeah.
13:30.05
Brittany Hodak
Every single one of them matters to you that every client should feel like your favorite client should be willing to go toe to toe to be like there's no way that lori is taking is gonna carry you as she's taking of me because lori loves me she does everything for me so it's really like a good way to think about customer experience in many industries including financial services is how many of your customers feel like your favorite.
13:32.02
loriejones7
Yeah.
13:39.91
loriejones7
ah
13:50.58
loriejones7
Yeah. um It's really funny you mentioned that my sister-in-law one time sat down my five kids and asked them which one was my favorite. To a person, I actually love this. To a person, each of the kids said they were my favorite. ah Well, one of them said Sammy was my favorite. She's the youngest, but they were the second favorite.
14:11.11
Brittany Hodak
Which is amazing. That means you're doing a great job. When all of your kids feel like your favorite, even if they know maybe on like somewhat of an intellectual level as they get older that everybody is your favorite, they still should feel like they are.
14:24.28
loriejones7
Yeah.
14:26.04
Brittany Hodak
and
14:26.25
loriejones7
There.
14:27.29
Brittany Hodak
you know there's there's There's such a ah sweet parallel there for customer experience because it's the same thing. And honestly, for employee experience, right? You want every employee to feel like that they are appreciated um the most, that they have a great relationship with you.
14:40.19
loriejones7
Yeah. Yeah. Love it. I love it. You're speaking my language. So Brittany, what is the best investment that you've made in yourself? If you can look back over your journey,
14:53.18
loriejones7
Can you say, oh, I am so glad I did this thing because it's made a huge difference in my life.
15:00.42
Brittany Hodak
There have been several times where I invested more money than I thought I had at the time for some sort of personal or professional development and looking back almost all of them were good decisions. There were some where I was like, well, that was kind of a waste of money. But you know it's usually because I hired the wrong person or I hired maybe the right person, but at the wrong time. So I think all of the investments that I've made for me to learn more, to develop who I am have been
15:34.84
Brittany Hodak
particularly valuable. but One of my favorite groups that I've been a part of for more than five years now, maybe maybe coming up on six years, and and it has been just an amazing investment is something called Brand Builders Group. And Brand Builders Group is a community of people that was founded by two people who are now dear friends of mine, Rory and AJ Vaden. ah They say they help mission-driven messengers. and They help people sort of dial into what they were uniquely created to do to help them spread their messages in the world to to benefit others. And that has been just a wonderful community that has helped me on my journey of speaking and writing and and thinking
16:18.24
Brittany Hodak
through what my unique lens is on these things like customer experience that I care so deeply about.
16:24.75
loriejones7
Hmm. I love that idea. It's kind of the idea of one of the women that I interviewed said, find your tribe.
16:30.96
Brittany Hodak
Yeah.
16:30.98
loriejones7
It's like you're finding those resources that speak to you because, because they align with your values and who you are and what you do.
16:40.03
Brittany Hodak
Absolutely.
16:41.58
loriejones7
Is there, is there any specific programs like a public speaking or like, is there anything specific that you invested in that you're like, Oh, I would do that again, a hundred million times.
16:53.60
Brittany Hodak
Yeah, I think with Brand Builders Group, they have several different courses um that are all sort of part of the the membership. um When I joined, it was for public speaking, but I gained so much more knowledge and information from working with them over the several years because they have programs around.
17:05.28
loriejones7
That's
17:12.31
Brittany Hodak
Writing books and creating podcasts and launching courses and you know, all of the other things that are sort of part of that ah Like creator economy and that sort of idea of monetizing your your personal brand and your expertise So and if anybody wants to check it out friend builders group
17:17.72
loriejones7
so cool.
17:29.81
Brittany Hodak
um like but
17:30.23
loriejones7
And staying true, it sounds like they stay true to like who you are. They're not trying to make you into, you know, fit a mold, whatever that mold is, but they're helping you to become more authentic, more truly who you are.
17:44.90
Brittany Hodak
Yeah. And it's really like, I feel like that's every kind of great coach, right? It's not, I'm going to tell you what you need to do to be more like somebody else. It's I'm going to recognize the potential that you have and give you the tools that you need to emphasize those gifts or compensate for those weaknesses to become a better version of who you have the potential to be.
18:11.04
loriejones7
Yeah, I love that. ah I work that hard with my team. You know, we each have strengths. And if you focus on those strengths and the things that you do well and kind of build them up, you turn into an amazing person.
18:26.02
Brittany Hodak
Yeah.
18:26.15
loriejones7
So what is the worst advice you've gotten on your journey? And did you take it or did you not take it? in
18:36.23
Brittany Hodak
Wow, what a great question. um I have taken lots of bad advice over the years. I wish I could say that I hadn't. And you know, I feel like a lot of times the reason I took bad advice is because I allowed myself to believe that someone else's opinion was more entitled to to the decision than my own intuition.
19:04.83
Brittany Hodak
Like I thought, well, they're older than me, or they have more money than I do, or they're smarter than I am, or they've done this before. So I'm going to ignore like all of the red flashing lights inside and what feels so wrong in my gut and go with what they're telling me to do because they know better. And I think for a lot of people, and maybe maybe especially women, obviously I can only speak to my own experience, but I feel like in some ways we're kind of like conditioned for that. right of like
19:33.19
Brittany Hodak
don't trust your gut, trust what these like wiser people are are saying to you. And so I don't know if um there's like one particular instance that I would highlight, but a lot of times I think I knew deep down what was the next best step for me and I ignored it because there was like outside static coming from somebody who I either looked up to or trusted or wanted to be more like. and and And most of it was offered in a very benevolent way, but it was me not being focused on like my path, me being focused on like, well, this worked for them, so I should try to do exactly what they did. Or I'm going to follow what they're saying to do, even if I know that
20:19.33
Brittany Hodak
you know the world in which they did that is not the same world today because they're 25 years older or because they have a whole different set of circumstances. So I think um that was probably most of the bad advice I took was from well-intentioned people who were trying to tell me what worked for them that just didn't quite feel authentic for me or my journey.
20:39.15
loriejones7
And it's really hard when you're younger and just starting out to have that because you do trust these people that you look up to and they are successful in what they're doing. And sometimes it is so hard to have that that trust in yourself when you're just young and you don't know what you're doing half the time. How did you how did you change that? how did you Was it just time you just got got older and started trusting yourself a little bit more or...
21:11.76
Brittany Hodak
I think a lot of it is that, yeah, a lot of it is just the maturity that comes with with getting older and also ah the the the retrospect, right? To be able to say like, well, I did this thing for eight months. I like, you know,
21:27.93
Brittany Hodak
worked so hard. I did all of these things. I tried to make it work and am I better off than than I was before I did this or am I better off than I would have been if I had zigged sort of zigged instead of zag. So I think um One important thing is just not being afraid to like audit the decisions that you make after you make them. And even if you can't change them, can you can you say, like what led me to make this, in hindsight, bad decision that I can like be on the lookout for so I don't make a similar bad decision for the same wrong reason in the future?
22:04.84
loriejones7
I love that idea. And I'm trying to put that into my own life and kind of do a, you know, a quarterly look back. Like, am I still going in the direction I want to go?
22:12.81
Brittany Hodak
um
22:15.25
loriejones7
and And how did I do, you know, looking back?
22:18.85
Brittany Hodak
Yeah.
22:19.22
loriejones7
Is there something I could have done differently or I would have changed um so that I don't keep making the same mistakes over and over again, right?
22:28.00
Brittany Hodak
Yeah, well, and it's funny, I like I I think I fell into this pattern for a while where I was really fortunate that I was good at a lot of things. And so a lot of people were coming to me asking me to do things. And I was like, yeah, that sounds fun. Yeah, that's that's great. Like, oh, that sounds exciting. And so I was, you know, what's the saying, like jack of all trades, master of none.
22:49.63
Brittany Hodak
And it wasn't until I put my head down and said like, I want to be the best in the world at something. I want to pick one thing and go be the absolute best at that. I want to be the person that when I go up on stage and speak about customer experience,
23:03.13
Brittany Hodak
I change the way people think, I change the way they act, and they think that is one of the best keynote speakers I've ever seen. like That is what I want. And for years, so many people were upset when I would say no to other things. People that wanted to hire me to host something for them or hire hire me to be a part of their team or do this or that or that. And they many of them kind of like talked down on this idea of like, oh, I can't believe you're telling me no because you want to be a keynote speaker. Like what?
23:30.50
Brittany Hodak
and it was like I don't care if you respect this dream, this choice, this path. like This is what I'm doing. And I know it sucks for you that you don't get access to me, that that that's what you wanted. But like this isn't about me making your dream better. This is about me making my dream better. And I think some of that is age. Some of that is you know lived experience, but it was like a switch one day that I was like, why am I saying no to what I want to do? Because all of these other people would benefit from me helping them with their thing. like I don't exist on this earth to help other people become the best version of themselves.
24:07.89
loriejones7
Yeah. Yeah. I like that idea. The Essentialism is a book that I'm reading right now. And it just, it talks a lot about kind of deciding what what is essential and what is non-essential in your vision, in your path, in your life. And I think that's what you're talking about is kind of, you know, you can't do everything for everyone. And a lot of times as women, we try. We try.
24:33.57
Brittany Hodak
We do and we feel bad about saying no, right? Like I think as women, we are much more likely to feel guilt for saying no to something or to say yes for something to save us feeling guilty than men.
24:44.70
loriejones7
Hmm. Yeah, I agree. What about looking back? Is there a situation that you would say, Oh my goodness, if I knew then what I know now, that would have gone completely differently. I would have done something completely different and in that situation.
25:04.38
Brittany Hodak
Yeah, i think I think there are. um I won in particular. ah So I'd been running my business for several years and I got a call one day from a casting producer who invited me to be on Shark Tank. And I was like, well, that'll be fun. I love Shark Tank. That sounds like a cool thing to do. And so I went on Shark Tank and everything went went well. I got offers from four of the five sharks, did ah did a deal on the show that didn't end up coming to fruition in real life.
25:33.44
Brittany Hodak
but I had an idea while I was there because every day we were in LA for like four or five days because they don't tell you exactly when you're going to film. They fly a bunch of people out and they kind of you know run the production schedule day by day. And so every day I was getting paid a per diem.
25:51.44
Brittany Hodak
And it was like $75 or $76 a day, way more than I was actually spending on food, especially since I was trying to like look really skinny, because we were going to be filming this thing for sharks in a few days. And I walked out of the hotel one day to the mall across the street, and there was a homeless gentleman, gentleman and I opened my per diem envelope and and gave him $20. And I remember thinking, wow, how many people a day could I feed with this per diem? Like $76 or whatever it was.
26:18.97
Brittany Hodak
would feed so many more people than one.
26:22.27
loriejones7
Yeah.
26:22.63
Brittany Hodak
And then I started thinking about all of the people who got per diems as part of their lives.
26:26.91
loriejones7
Mm hmm.
26:28.22
Brittany Hodak
Business people, professional athletes, you know so many people from so many different walks of life. And I thought, what if there was a way for people to pledge their per diems to help people that were struggling with hunger?
26:36.89
loriejones7
Mm hmm.
26:41.40
Brittany Hodak
um My cousin and I actually incorporated a charity, started this 501c3 called Perdiums Against Poverty with the ambitious goal of reallocating perdiums from professionals and professional athletes into the markets where they lived, where people were struggling with hunger. And you know,
27:03.81
Brittany Hodak
I did not realize how much I did not know about the multiple layers of the the issues of food insecurity and and what it looks like and what it means. And we launched this charity. We partnered with Feeding America. We had several professional athletes and several corporate partners who all signed on. And initially, you know it was like, oh, this is really great. And then after a couple of years, it became clear. like you don't just sort of run a charity on the side. but You don't just sort of say like, oh, we can probably figure this out. um And so I think in in in hindsight, rather than saying, I'm going to tackle this problem by starting a charity and spending, you know, tens of thousands of dollars of my own money to get it off the ground and then donating thousands of hours of labor to try to make it work, it probably ah would have been better for me to advocate for
27:51.81
Brittany Hodak
you know, food insecurity relief in other ways. So i I don't regret doing it.
27:54.89
loriejones7
and here
27:56.28
Brittany Hodak
I learned a lot, but definitely in hindsight, I'm like, what was I thinking? Especially because I was like already running a business full-time, already, you know, doing the nine different things that I was sort of doing on the side.
28:07.80
Brittany Hodak
But, you know, we didn't know any of that from our twenties, right?
28:09.51
loriejones7
Yeah, it's the idea.
28:11.52
Brittany Hodak
Where we're like young and dumb and we're like, I can do this.
28:13.20
loriejones7
Yeah, I can do everything really, if you think about it, right? Superwoman.
28:17.34
Brittany Hodak
Yeah, like how how much harder could it be to run two companies than one company? It's going to be that hard.
28:22.37
loriejones7
Yeah.
28:23.30
Brittany Hodak
Elon Musk does it, right? It's not working.
28:25.28
loriejones7
yeah I think um I think that's really wise. And looking back at our ah our discussion about like, finding what you're best at and kind of um focusing and putting your time and energy and being able to say no to things that that don't meet that goal.
28:37.80
Brittany Hodak
Exactly.
28:42.59
loriejones7
um I think that's probably a hard way to learn that lesson, but probably the lesson that was learned, right?
28:49.29
Brittany Hodak
yeah exactly
28:52.12
loriejones7
um Give me just one second. I need to turn off these notifications.
28:58.39
Brittany Hodak
Yeah, take your time.
28:59.73
loriejones7
they are ah my team um let's see twenty um My team is great and does all of these, m you know, like helps and jumps in and all of that stuff.
29:20.35
loriejones7
and They right now are sending 20 different notifications. I'm like, ah oh, goodness.
29:35.35
loriejones7
Let me just.
29:53.98
loriejones7
There we go. Oh, I did it. This, usually I have to call one of my key members in to help me do it.
30:00.83
Brittany Hodak
wow more
30:02.16
loriejones7
Sorry. sorry
30:03.88
Brittany Hodak
forgeted out
30:05.23
loriejones7
Um, Brittany, what is the one thing that you would tell yourself? If you could go back and talk to yourself at the beginning of your journey at about 20 years old, what is, what is the one thing you would tell her, tell that young, ambitious, spread eyed, eager young woman?
30:25.33
Brittany Hodak
Can I cheat and say two things?
30:27.23
loriejones7
Sure.
30:28.22
Brittany Hodak
One, I would say always trust your instincts. Number two, I would say, but that does not mean chase every idea. And when you have a new idea to pursue, give it like a day before you decide that you're going to go after it a thousand miles an hour. Trust yourself that there's validity there, but remember that you can do anything you want, but you can't do everything you want.
30:53.95
loriejones7
Hmm, I love that idea. Like I've had like 20 million different ideas. And if I had given it 24 hours, I may not have jumped again on some of those, some of those stick around. And if it's a good idea, it does stick around, right?
31:09.38
Brittany Hodak
Yeah, well, it's so funny. I heard so there's, um, do you know John Acuff? He's a speaker author. Okay. You would probably really like his stuff. He's written a lot of books that I really like, including one called soundtracks. And he has a podcast called all it takes is a goal. And it's a great podcast for anybody who, um, is like performance minded, performance, uh, focused. And I was listening, I love to listen to it. Like when I walk around my neighborhood and I was listening to an episode recently and he said that he,
31:37.08
Brittany Hodak
has his assistant, like there's a rule now where when he tells his assistant an idea she doesn't start working on it for a week and a week later at their next meeting he she'll say like, okay, John, do you still want me to do this thing?
31:51.64
Brittany Hodak
And that like half the time he's like, what are you talking about? But he doesn't even remember telling her about that thing. Because it was something that was like this brilliant, like flash of an idea that he got that he then like completely forgot about.
32:01.90
loriejones7
Well.
32:03.76
Brittany Hodak
And I was laughing because I was like, Oh my gosh, that is my life. That is exactly how I am. But it's me chasing those things. And then a week later being like, I spent a week of my life on what?
32:14.21
Brittany Hodak
Like, what why did I think this was a good idea? So yeah, I think if I could go back and tell 20 year old me to like, put them in a lockbox for a period of time, like set the timer and not like I'm letting this idea incubate, but like, I'm legit for forgetting about this.
32:28.20
Brittany Hodak
And I'm going to revisit it and see if it seems brilliant or so stupid with the benefit of like a full night's sleep, because it's a real fine line, right between those two brilliance and stupidity.
32:34.39
loriejones7
Yeah.
32:38.02
loriejones7
Yeah. And some of the ideas that I've come up with, I'm like, oh, this is the best idea ever. And I am going to follow this until I get this right. And other ideas I'm like, what was I thinking?
32:46.87
Brittany Hodak
Yeah.
32:50.08
Brittany Hodak
Exactly. Exactly.
32:52.50
loriejones7
Yeah, I love that. I love that idea of kind of maybe put a list together of the different ideas that you have and then let them set on ice for just 24 hours. Just let them set and think about it. I love that. That's good advice for me and I'm not 20.
33:08.35
Brittany Hodak
You know, it's good advice for me to fall. I'm trying to get better at it, but it's funny. and Alex, who works with me on my team, will sometimes be like, and are we going to still do that thing? And I'm like, yeah, no, we're not going to do that thing anymore. Like, that sounded really good for like a hot second back around April, but no, we're not we're not doing that.
33:25.48
loriejones7
Yeah. What scared you the most when you started out? Was there something and does it still scare you or are you, did you find a way to work through it?
33:35.28
Brittany Hodak
So I never thought about being an entrepreneur. It wasn't until in a conversation with a friend who worked at Walmart who I had been trying to pitch this idea to said, why don't you just start your own company and I'll give you a vendor number. And I Googled how to start a business. And, you know, I didn't have any idea what I didn't know. And I think at the time, 26, 27 years old, the thing that scared me the most was how hard it would be to get another job if I failed. and But then I sort of looked at it and was like, well, I don't have a mortgage. like I was living in New York City, so I just had an apartment. I was like, I don't have any kids. I don't really have any real responsibilities. So if ever I'm going to take a chance and try this, it's now. And if I fail, then
34:23.44
Brittany Hodak
You know, I'll, I'll start interviewing for jobs and I'll put CEO on my resume and how, you know, how bad is that going to look? You know, lots of startups fail, right? And so I had all these ideas of like, what would I do if it didn't work? But I never took the time to think like, what if it works? And.
34:40.35
Brittany Hodak
It worked really well. um within Within a year, I had earned over a million dollars. I had sold almost $10 million dollars of product in Walmart stores worldwide, and I didn't know what an outlier I was at the time. I didn't realize that fewer than 2% of women-owned businesses ever break the million-dollar revenue mark in a year, and and most of those do not do it in their first year.
35:04.21
Brittany Hodak
um so I don't really think I had a lot of fear, but I think part of that is because I was blissfully ignorant in a lot of ways. like i was very I think one fear here that I still have is like people are going to say mean things. you know like People aren't going to like me. People are going to whatever. and like By the way, that is a fear that you have. like Do not go on a reality TV show. ah The internet will take all of your worst fears and prove them to be very valid. and i still like I mean, there are people who will
35:34.63
Brittany Hodak
write mean things about my books, say mean things after I speak and I've sort of realized that those are people dealing with them problems, like that's not a me problem, that's a them problem and I just happen to like be in their orbit.
35:44.38
loriejones7
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
35:48.40
Brittany Hodak
um So I don't know, I would say I didn't initially have a lot of fear other than what felt like a very reasonable fear of like if I fail I'll just like go back to doing what I was doing before and I try now not to fall victim to the fear of like, are people gonna see, say mean things or think mean things are not like me because I think that's probably something that a lot of people struggle with thinking.
36:13.59
loriejones7
yeah do just Do you read the, i because I know social media sometimes is not kind, um do you read the mean things that they say and you've just learned to like kind of block it out? That's not me.
36:27.92
Brittany Hodak
Well, and it's it's it's funny, like I something that happened early on in my speaking journey, I spoke at this ce event and I was definitely the lowest paid speaker there was somebody who was like, you know, I don't have a lot of money left, but I'm going to give you a chance.
36:43.17
Brittany Hodak
And so there were people there that were making at least 10 times what I made. And after the event, the event organizer shared with me that I had the highest reviews of any speaker. and he they He was like not even like pretending that he was not surprised by it. right He was like, I cannot believe this. by And he shared the feedback with me. And there had been hundreds of people at this event. And my overall score was like 4.98 out of 5.
37:05.26
Brittany Hodak
and probably 200 or 300 people had left a comment. A lot of people just did reviews, but like a couple hundred people had comments. And most of them were very like, oh, this was really entertaining, or I really enjoyed it, or I learned a lot, or whatever. But there were two that were so mean. There was one person that was like, you're so annoying, and I hate your voice, and I never want to see you speak again, and had given me a one star. And I was like, well, that's a really mean person. And then somebody else, and this was one that like I still laugh about, gave me one star, or maybe it was two stars. It was one or two stars.
37:35.06
Brittany Hodak
And he said, I don't like female speakers. And I just thought the absurdity of it. I was like, it is at the time it was like 2018 or 2019. I was like, you wrote on a form with your name on it in the year 2018 or 2019 that you don't like female speakers.
37:51.20
Brittany Hodak
Like, wow.
37:53.93
loriejones7
Yeah.
37:54.11
Brittany Hodak
And then that sort of put the other one. Of course it did. I was like, you know, I wish that guy didn't think I was annoying and had a voice that he hated. But like, this is not a me thing this is a those two miss I was like I bet those two people like work at the same company and sat at the same table and they're like miserable together um so yeah I I read a lot of the the mean things but they don't they don't get under my skin as much I think also now because and you know as a mom it's like when you have
38:02.74
loriejones7
Yeah.
38:20.69
Brittany Hodak
I don't want to say real responsibilities because obviously people have real responsibilities who do not have children. But like when you have children and and especially young children, it's just like a different level of something that needs your attention, not just immediately, but like incessantly. And I feel like there's just not as like much space in my brain for those things that used to bug me before I had kids because now it's like, well,
38:44.61
Brittany Hodak
You know, I got to worry about like, what, what is all over my kid's hand right now that's going to, you know, instantly makes you forget everything else when you're like, Oh my gosh, what, what is the situation that needs my immediate attention?
38:44.81
loriejones7
Yeah.
38:52.78
loriejones7
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, when you have when you have when you're responsible for keeping another person alive to get to adulthood, it does put other things in perspective.
39:02.08
Brittany Hodak
Yeah.
39:03.93
loriejones7
And you're like, well, I guess they were mean. Oh, well, we'll go on.
39:07.13
Brittany Hodak
Yeah. And that person that's constantly trying to sabotage it, you feel like you are not on the same team with me of trying to keep you alive.
39:08.08
loriejones7
yeah
39:13.35
Brittany Hodak
You're trying to be seven creative new ways to accidentally kill yourself today before you go to bed. Like this is we need to be a team, let's say focused on like you not breaking your neck, killing yourself, jumping in front of traffic.
39:25.59
Brittany Hodak
Like, yeah.
39:27.42
loriejones7
Oh, I love that. Brittany, that's gonna make me laugh for a long, long time. I love that. That is, i I never even thought of it that way, but they are actively fighting against you trying to keep them alive.
39:38.01
Brittany Hodak
100%. Actively, it's so funny. I'm like getting over being a little bit sick right now. And I was telling somebody earlier today, you know as like my voice sounds a little nasally, and I'm still like really stuffed up and congested. And I keep trying to explain to my children that there's a direct correlation between like why we are all sick all the time and the fact that they pick their noses.
39:57.59
Brittany Hodak
And I'm like, I will pay you so much money. Like, if you just stop eating your boogers with your, like, disgusting, grubby, germ-filled hands, you, like, lick your fingers, then go touch the grossest things, and then you stick those fingers up your nose, like, it's no wonder we're all sick all the time.
40:14.89
Brittany Hodak
So, yeah, kids are just, like, designed to, like, press your immune system, your patients, all the things.
40:18.54
loriejones7
Oh, I love it. There is hope on the other side, though. They turn into wonderful adults some days. Mine are still baby adult stage. but But one of these days, they're going to be fully grown and have kids of their own. And then you can wish all that nose picking on your grandkids.
40:39.28
Brittany Hodak
I was gonna say, so the time will come when my children will stop thinking that boogers are a meal like that is hope.
40:43.82
loriejones7
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
40:47.12
loriejones7
What about unique challenges because because you were a woman? Did you face any of those?
40:53.56
Brittany Hodak
Oh, my gosh, yes. I mean, I think very early very early on, I realized that there were always going to be people who would discount me and underestimate me because I was a woman and that rather than let that bother me, I was going to use it as a strength.
41:12.33
Brittany Hodak
And I'll never forget, forget i was I was in a meeting with Walmart and there was a huge brand. I won't say who the brand was, but one of their senior executives said, I'm sorry, I just, I have a question. I don't think we've covered yet. Like who is your dad? And I was like, huh, what? Why are you asking about my dad?
41:31.67
Brittany Hodak
And he was like, I just want to know who your father is. And I was like, oh, thank you. like yeah i Because you think he did a good job raising me? Like his name is Jody and he lives in Arkansas. And he was like, no, I want to know who your father is that helped you start this company.
41:43.04
Brittany Hodak
Because everything that you're saying is unbelievable. There's no way you would have had this amount of success without somebody. And I was so offended.
41:50.53
loriejones7
Yeah.
41:50.60
Brittany Hodak
um And I probably didn't handle it. as maturely as I should have in that moment, in that meeting, although thankfully I had a couple other females in there who like had my back and they were like, yeah, he's he's an asshole. don't like Don't worry about him. I hope I can say that on your on your on your podcast. and But i that in several other instances, I was like, you know what?
42:13.35
Brittany Hodak
If they're going to underestimate me, that's on them, not me. But if they're going to underestimate me anyway, I better make it hit 10 times harder when they finally realize like how wrong they are.
42:25.16
loriejones7
with
42:25.25
Brittany Hodak
And so that always fueled me to be not just like a little bit better than the people discounting me, but 10 times better than the people. I was like, how can I make this hurt so bad that they don't forget about it for a while and hopefully never underestimate another female again because she's female?
42:43.52
loriejones7
Yeah, I love that. So it just added fuel to your fire so that you were able to, to become more
42:51.25
Brittany Hodak
100%. And also, again, having that presence of mind of like, it's not up to me to change their mind. Like, I'm not ever going to make them stop being, you know, ages stop being misogynistic, like I can I can make it hurt when they realize how wrong they were, but I'm not trying to do it to make them a better person. like Because it is up to them to make themselves a better person. And clearly, if they're 65 years old and haven't yet, they're probably like not worried about it. So I'm not going to worry about it either.
43:21.60
loriejones7
Yeah, yeah, I like that the idea of kind of, you know, this is this is their problem, their road, their thing to deal with and and my focus is on who I want to become and who I want to be like that.
43:36.45
Brittany Hodak
Exactly. Yeah, like that guy who said he doesn't like female speakers. Fine. That doesn't impact me. You know what I mean? It's not my, it's not my life's mission to like change his mind so that he doesn't miss out on amazing female speakers in the future.
43:50.92
Brittany Hodak
Like that guy can keep doing that guy.
43:53.22
loriejones7
Yeah, you can do him. I'm gonna be an amazing female speaker.
43:55.00
Brittany Hodak
Yeah, exactly.
43:56.97
loriejones7
He's gonna miss out. Yeah, I like that What is the thing Brittany that you are most proud of?
44:06.35
Brittany Hodak
I mean, I hope it's not like too early to say this, because if I'm being the on honest, like the jury could still be out a little bit. But I'm going to say at this point in time, my two kiddos, I feel like my boys are pretty fantastic, even though they eat their own boogers, even though they actively try to find new ways to kill themselves. um They're pretty awesome little kids. And you know, as a parent, when you like hear the way they talk to each other and they want to like share with each other. They want to help each other. They're doing the things when they don't know you're watching and you're like, okay, I'm doing i'm doing a good job. They're absorbing the things that matter. and Actually, in the the back of my book, it's one of the one of the last pages, I tell a story of when my older son, Kato, who is now almost seven, was about to turn three, I was working on my book one day and I was like, buddy, remember, like you're supposed to be upstairs with daddy because mommy's working on her book. he asked me what my book was about. And it was the first time he had ever asked or shown any interest. And you know I said, well, and I'm trying to figure out how do I explain customer experience in a way that a two and a half year old is going to understand. And so I started kind of telling him and I could tell his eyes were you know sort of glazing over after 20 seconds or so. And I said, well, what do you think, buddy? And I totally expected he was going to say like,
45:23.98
Brittany Hodak
but that sounds dumb, you should write a book about monster trucks or, you know, something like that. But he looked at me and he said, I think you should tell all the people to be nice and listen. And then he just ran out of the room.
45:35.03
Brittany Hodak
And I was like, what a mic drop from a two year old. So that's actually the last page of my book. It's got like that story. And it's got the the the quote from Cato Hodak that says be nice and listen.
45:41.79
loriejones7
Yeah.
45:46.04
loriejones7
Yeah.
45:46.24
Brittany Hodak
And um it's great advice. It's solid advice, whether you're in in preschool or or or beyond. It's pretty good advice.
45:53.08
loriejones7
I agree 100% top to bottom age, one to age 100. Be nice and listen, right? Any advice Brittany for a young lady who's just starting down the path that you are so successful at anything that you would tell her?
46:12.57
Brittany Hodak
Something that was so hard for me, and I say this understanding that it's like almost hypocritical for me to say it because I so did not embody this, but going back to the like advice, try to be patient. As hard as it is, like be patient because you know like I have people all the time that are like, I want to do what you do. I want to be on stages and get people to listen. And they're like 23.
46:33.53
Brittany Hodak
And I'm like, the reason people are listening to me now at 40 years old is because I lived this for 15 years. I did this. I proved myself. I gained the reputation of somebody who wasn't just talking about how to do it, but told how I did it. And as much as you maybe know that this is part of your but journey, like I didn't know. I didn't know you could be a speaker. um But just go focus on being the absolute best in the world at something.
46:58.47
Brittany Hodak
because once you're the absolute best in the world at something, then you earn the right to get to talk to other people about that thing. So as hard as it is to be patient because you see somebody who's 35 or 45 or 55 or 65 and you want to be where they're at, just try to be the best that you can be at every single age and do the things to where
47:10.88
loriejones7
Mm hmm.
47:18.00
Brittany Hodak
It might take you 10 years to get where you want to go, but like you're doing the right things to get there in 10 years, not feeling jealous or resentful or bitter that like you don't have it right now and trying to figure out what's like the quick fix to get that thing.
47:31.54
Brittany Hodak
Because as I know, you know, Laurie, it's not like one day you wake up and you're like, Oh, I've arrived. Like there's always something like as much as you think, like when I get to that point, I'm not going to want anything else.
47:43.18
Brittany Hodak
Like, yes, you will. You absolutely will.
47:44.68
loriejones7
Yeah, yeah
47:45.81
Brittany Hodak
So just keep trying to like do the work, put your head down, put one foot after the other, do the right thing, and like you will get to all of those places. Maybe not tomorrow, but like you will.
47:55.99
loriejones7
yeah keep trying, keep, keep going, keep walking, keep working. Yeah, I love that idea. Um, and, and yeah, you're right. it It never feels, it doesn't matter how old you are.
48:06.19
loriejones7
I hope that I never feel like I have arrived. I hope that I always am working towards some new crazy idea that I've put in my 24 hour vault and pulled it out.
48:18.03
Brittany Hodak
yeah
48:20.31
Brittany Hodak
um never yeah i like i so i I launched my company and it was ah really successful, but I just didn't love it. like I was sort of not as inspired as I had been when I started it. and I was having lunch with ah with a dear friend of mine who's 15 years older than me, and she said,
48:37.96
Brittany Hodak
you know why why is it so hard for you to leave this?" And I was like, this is all i' i mean like I've spent so many years of my life building this. like this is you know I had my identity wrapped up in this company, all of my accolades and success.
48:45.61
loriejones7
Thank you.
48:49.12
Brittany Hodak
And she said, do you really think that when you are in your 70s, you're going to look back and say, wow, all of my best professional moments happened before I turned to 35. And I was like, I mean, I hope not.
49:00.96
Brittany Hodak
And she said, well, then stop holding on so hard to this thing because you're like, everything I've built has led to this. like You're 33 or 34, whatever it was at the time.
49:11.51
Brittany Hodak
She was like, you have your entire career. But it doesn't feel like that when you're in the moment. right In the moment, you'd be like, this is everything I've ever done.
49:16.35
loriejones7
Yeah.
49:18.93
loriejones7
Yeah.
49:19.15
Brittany Hodak
And so having the gift of her perspective to say like, do you really think you're going to look back and say like it was all downhill after my 35th birthday was helpful for me in that moment. And I've tried to like keep that perspective as I've let go of things since to like get me to where, I mean, there's my friend AJ Vaden had this like beautiful quote the other day.
49:39.39
Brittany Hodak
She said, your your new life is always going to cost you your old life.
49:43.63
loriejones7
Oh yeah.
49:43.90
Brittany Hodak
That next thing that you do is always going to cost you the comfort of the thing you've been doing.
49:49.16
loriejones7
Mm hmm. But just a little bit fearless and you can you can try it and I've never had and and this is a theme that's come up over and over again as I've done these interviews. I've never had someone say I regret doing something they always tell me, oh, I regret not doing something so
50:10.11
Brittany Hodak
Yeah.
50:11.48
loriejones7
Brittany, thank you so much for spending this time with us. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for doing it and for for helping my listeners. I appreciate it.
50:20.19
Brittany Hodak
Thank you so much, Laurie, for having me. And thank you for giving your listeners a path we were talking about before we started recording how we both wish we had something like this when we were younger um or at Crossroads where you know we we couldn't just listen to a podcast or or turn on YouTube when we were younger.
50:37.20
Brittany Hodak
So thank you for doing this for all of the fearless females out there who hopefully will glean something from our conversation.
50:41.04
loriejones7
ah
50:44.83
loriejones7
Yeah, ah hopefully. And I think that I think they could take a lot of nuggets out of this when I learn something from every conversation. So um if I have a listener that wants to get in touch with you and ask questions, where do they go?
50:58.34
Brittany Hodak
You can go to Britneyhodac.com. That's the home of all my things on the internet. And from there, you'll find tons of freebies. You'll find my email. You'll find all of my socials. Everything you could want to know and more, including links to get creating super fans are at Britneyhodac.com.
51:14.71
loriejones7
Well, I suggest they do. I loved the book and um I would do the audio book because I loved it. I thought it was really great. So thank you, Brittany. I appreciate it.
51:23.35
Brittany Hodak
Thank you for saying that and thanks again for having me.