593 Cultivating Super Fans with Brittany Hodak

00:08 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast. This is the show for IT professionals, where we try to help you do everything to run your business, support your customers better, smarter and faster. This is one of our weekly audio shows, hosted by SuperOps, the all-in-one future-ready PSA RMM tool for the managed provider community. I am joined by someone we met last year. Brittany Hodak was out on the ASCII trail. Brittany, how are you? 

00:46 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Hey, Uncle Marvin, I'm doing great. It's so nice to see you again. 

00:49 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Oh, it is great. So we met last year at ASCII. We actually met at the Clearwater event and you were one of the mainstays of the ASCII show this past year. How did you enjoy that? 

01:02 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
I loved it. I had such a blast. I got to do 10 shows in 2023 with the ASCII family and just loved it. Had such an incredible time meeting so many incredible MSPs and learning about everything they're doing to improve the customer experience of all of their clients and customers. 

01:22 - Marvin Bee (Host)
So I got a few minutes with you right after your session. It was out in the hallway, everybody was walking by and I said we've got to have a time later on where I can ask you some more in-depth questions, and thank you for making time for me. 

01:37 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yeah, thank you for fitting me in. I'm excited to reconnect. 

01:41 - Marvin Bee (Host)
But one of the questions that I asked you back then was did you get any weird questions from the tech community? Because a lot of your people that you work with are like regular business. They're large corporations. MSPs think of themselves as a different breed, so did you find any questions that were a little bit off or any excuses that we gave us to? Oh, we could never do that. 

02:08 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Nothing too out of left field, I mean, I think my area of expertise is customer experience and it is about as universal as it gets within business. Anyone who has customers or wants them can benefit from being more customer centric. So I would say a couple of people said to me after I spoke I was really skeptical of you, I thought you were going to talk about a lot of stuff that wasn't relevant to me. But Jerry told me to give you a chance, so I came anyway and wow, I actually could do a lot of this stuff. So I had a lot of that, a lot of people who were saying I didn't think customer experience was important to me, or I didn't think thinking more about how to frame an experience was going to matter, as much as I now, in hindsight, understand that it matters. 

02:55 - Marvin Bee (Host)
So just to give everybody a little bit of a background. So you are all about creating super fans, taking that customer experience to the next level, and I read somewhere that you actually studied in customer experience. I don't remember a degree in college on customer experience. 

03:15 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Well, when I went to get my master's degree, I got a master's in marketing with a concentration in what they called the time consumer behavior. 

03:22
So it was about as close as possible as I could get to customer experience. 

03:25
But really understanding the psychology behind why we behave the way we behave, why we buy the things we buy, why we like the things that we like. And sometimes I do get a little bit of skepticism around the title, like when I say I talk about the idea of creating super fans and turning a customer into a super fan and people say why would anyone ever be a super fan of what I do? Like it's not exciting, it's not sexy, I'm just helping people with their IT. But when I describe a super fan as a loyal, engaged customer who's choosing you at the exclusion of anybody else who's advocating on your behalf, if they, you know, change jobs or have to go to bat for you when you're going head to head against another competitor, they say oh yeah, no, we have people like that and we definitely want more people like that. So the idea of using psychology and data to figure out how to create stronger relationships between your customers and your teammates is something that is beneficial to every business because there's a real, tangible ROI. 

04:29 - Marvin Bee (Host)
So when you explain it like that and after people get a chance to hear you, they understand. And I have to imagine that a lot of people think oh yeah, it sounds so simple, but yet so many of us don't do it. So is there psychology behind that? 

04:49 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
There is, and a lot of it is just, you know, not like we don't know what we don't know. If this is something that you've not ever spent a lot of time thinking about, then it can. It can feel like this huge revelation, like, oh my gosh, of course I should be thinking about this, but even if you have spent time thinking about customer experience a lot of times, people can flay customer experience with customer service, when, in fact, customer service is just one really small part of customer experience. The same way, sales and marketing and operations are all part of customer experience, and so one of the things that I talk a lot about is this idea that everything is part of the experience. So the language that you're using on your website the button clicks that you have the language that people get in an email when they file a help ticket, like all of that is part of the experience, and so the greater intentionality you can bring to all of it. 

05:46
How is the website laid out? How many clicks do people have to make? What is the message someone hears when they call us and get our answering machine? What is the language that people get in an automated email response from us? What is our chatbot saying, when somebody first engages, like all of these things are part of the experience, and where people can kind of go wrong is by looking at each of them in a silo as if none of them have anything to do with anything else, when in reality they are all parts of your brand that should be functioning together the same way. 

06:17
The human body is not a bunch of, like, disconnected parts that have nothing to do with each other. Right, it's not like your heart has nothing to do with your lungs, has nothing to do with your liver, has nothing to do with your feet, like all of these are part of a system that needs to be working together and communicating for the best possible outcomes. So that same whole body functional medicine approach is necessary for businesses to think about when they think about the fact that, like, yeah, the left foot really should know what their right foot is doing and they should both be following the same plan as the hands. 

06:50 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Right, so part of what I understood. And, by the way, your book Creating Superfans coming up on, well, no, it's already been a one year anniversary of it, right? 

07:02 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yes, yeah, the book came out in January of 2023. So it just celebrated its first birthday and I was so excited because we passed the 20,000 unit threshold sales threshold right before the book's first birthday. So I was very, very excited that in her first year on Earth, she's managed to sell 20,000 copies across all of the formats digital audiobook and printed hardcover. 

07:26 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Well, first I was going to say congratulations. Is 20,000 a magic number? 

07:31 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Thank you. You know it's so hard to get real competitive analysis data on books because there are so many books released, but something like 5% of traditionally published books so not like self-published books, but people who go through a traditional publisher only something like 5% of them ever sell more than 10,000 copies, like in the lifetime of the book. So to sell 20,000 in the first year I know is great. I just don't know. You know it's like not atomic habits Great. 

08:04
you know that obviously is a book that's selling millions and millions of copies, but I honestly don't know if it's like top 10%, top 5%, but I know I am very proud of it because each of those books represents somebody who is hopefully making some real positive changes in their business. 

08:21 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Well, I know that a lot of people that I saw at the conference walked away with the book and, in fact, we're still talking about it. You notice it on my shelf here. We've gone through it and dived, so I just will let everybody know. I will have links to everything we talk about in the show, including a link to the book creating superfans, how to turn your customers into lifelong advocates, and that's something we all talk about doing. You know we talk about getting repeat customers. Where I was going to go is when you talked about you know everything working together. 

08:53
One of the things that I had noted to ask you about was you know this is really transforming the business experience, or the customer experience, into your brand right? What is it? It's one thing to have people enjoy that you've got their problems off. I called them and they took care of me. Everything works. It was a timely fashion, but we want them to have an experience away from that. So what happens two weeks from now, two months from now, when they look back on that experience? We want them to be able to rave about the quality work we do. 

09:31 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I think we are so far removed from a time when it was just about service. A lot of people are still operating in the mindset that we are in a service-driven economy, when in reality it's an experience-driven economy. It's about so much more than just the service, so much more than just the products, because if you're just thinking about the service, you're competing as a commodity provider. And when you're a commodity provider, people are going to make decisions based on commodity factors, things like price, things like speed, things like how close you are or how many people you have within a certain radius of wherever they're located. 

10:08
And we want to be competing not on commodity-driven factors. We want to be seen, in fact, not as a commodity provider at all, but as a category of one. We want to be able to say no one is like us, nobody else is doing things quite like we are. So if your business is looking for the best partner in the world at this particular thing, you would be crazy to go with anyone but us. But if you are not differentiating yourself beyond what each of your competitors is doing, it is nearly impossible to make that argument. And so then what happens is you find yourself competing on those commodity factors, things like price, things like speed, and as we all know, that's a race to the bottom and also it's not particularly fun or inspiring for your employees. 

10:53 - Marvin Bee (Host)
No, that is not fun at all. And when you have to say we're not going to be the cheapest, blah, blah, blah, you've already lost half the battle. In my mind. 

11:03 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yeah, you shouldn't even be talking about cost. You should be talking about the risk that exists if someone isn't working with you, what they stand to lose by not having the best partner in the business, making sure that you're mitigating risks and keeping them ahead of all of the security issues and bad actors who are out there that could cause potential mayhem to their business. 

11:28 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Right. So you just mentioned security, which is one of our areas there, and I like that. You at least know our industry well enough to sneak in some tidbits and stuff. But your start did not come anywhere near the tech sector. In fact, if I remember correctly, in your previous company you were actually dealing with the music industry. 

11:52 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yes. So growing up, I just wanted to work in the entertainment industry. That's all I wanted to do. That's all I thought I would do. I got my first job as a radio station mascot when I was a teenager. I was 16 years old and just had what I thought was the coolest job in the world, continued to work at radio stations and then record labels, music magazines, and all I wanted to do was work in entertainment. 

12:14
And I launched my own entertainment agency when I was 26 in New York City, and that's where I really started to understand customer experience and consumer behavior on a deeper level, because while we were working with superstars I mean, my clients were like oh who's who of A-listers Everybody from Taylor Swift to Dolly Parton but we were also working with huge brands and what I started to see was the exact same things that would cause someone to care about an entertainer, would cause them to care about a brand. 

12:47
So whether that was a retailer that we were working with, like Amazon or Walmart, or whether that was a consumer packaged goods brand, like a Johnson & Johnson company or a Unilever company or a beverage company, the same psychological things were true. It was based on storytelling; it was based on identity and it was based on experience. So I started to try to understand if I could take those elements the storytelling, the identity and the experience and weave those into the corporate world so that, even if you're not a rock star, you can create these fans. You can create people who want to choose you at the exclusion of your competitors, people who see you and think, oh, this is the right company for me, I belong at this company, rather than just saying like, well, I might as well throw a dart because I'm confused and overwhelmed and just see a whole bunch of people that are like a where's Waldo puzzle. And they're all the same. 

13:40 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Right. So I was struggling with the music, because I know that you were doing stuff with sports and some other things, but where I was going to go and another interviewer beat me to it and I'm sure 100 other people have as well in your book you have splattered through all these titles and one-liners from songs. 

14:05 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
I do. 

14:05 - Marvin Bee (Host)
It's like every title is a title of a song and I'm sure that you've made into a title in your book. I was going to ask do you actually have a number as to how many musical nuggets are in your book? 

14:17 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
So I use over a hundred titles. So I created two Spotify playlists which I'll send them to you and you can put them in the show notes. When the book came out, I created one playlist of all the chapters and then another one of just all the song references. I think it's like 120 something. 

14:39
But part of the reason I wanted to do that was to make the point that you can make anything feel the same or you can make it feel different, and I wanted to make my book feel different than other business books. So I made a lot of very intentional decisions. I did things like printing it in color. I changed the trim size of the page. Most business books are six inches by nine inches. My business book is six inches by eight inches. It cost me a lot more to do that Like it costs like 57 extra cents per book to make the trim size different. 

15:10
But I wanted it to look different. I wanted it to feel different. I printed it on bright white paper instead of the like you know, kind of ugly paper that most business books are printed on. That's off white. And instead of just using random titles and names, I used song titles to draw back to my story of coming up in the music industry. So I wanted to, like you know, walk the walk a little bit to show that you can make anything feel different, in the same way that I made all of these decisions to make my book feel different from other business books. MSPs can make their customers' experiences and their customers' journeys feel different by the language that they use in their emails, by the way they name things, by you know the conversations that they have with their customers, whether it's on a service call or during an onboarding, or even during an offboarding. So I wanted to have fun with that. So thank you, Marv, for noticing that and for calling it out. 

16:06 - Marvin Bee (Host)
So here's my question so I get the fact that you were intentional in doing it, but did you let people know ahead of time? But did you want people to figure this out on their own, and how? I did not tell anybody; you did not tell anybody. 

16:19 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yeah, people, once I started sharing like here's the table of contents people started picking up on it. But I didn't share it ahead of time and so I started the book. Instead of calling it like a forward and an afterward, I used the words interlude and exitlude because one of my favorite albums of all time is Sam’s town by the Killers and I think it's like the best Killers album. It's so good and I think I have four Killers titles as like chapter titles in the book. But interlude and exitlude it's funny because even my publisher was like exitlude is not a word and I was like no, that's like the end of this Killers album. They like go back. It's like the refrain that starts and ends the album. 

17:07
So, no, I did not tell people. And then, once it came out and people started asking about it, we said, hey, look, here's a playlist where it's like everyone used an order. And then people were saying, oh, I didn't realize that this was like one sentence and this one paragraph came from a song or this was a reference to a song. So there's probably closer to 150 throughout, but the actual like song titles that we use or lyrics that we use is like 120 something. 

17:38 - Marvin Bee (Host)
All right, I was going to say you should. You should have a game one day where somebody you have a contest to see who can name the closest, or all of them in there, because there's some that you know I listen. I don't know who the Killers are, but I know Sugar Land, I know Bon Jovi, I know those songs that showed up in there. This is how we do it. I mean, I know I know I'm like OK, something's odd here, but very neat idea. 

18:06 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Well, thank you. I, yeah, I love the idea of the game. One of one of the things that I talk about throughout the book is Making yourself stickier, which sounds really weird. I don't say like it's a PG show. 

18:20
It's a PG show. We don't want people only thinking about us when they think about the like, the need that they have, that we feel. We want people to think about us beyond just what it is that we do. Like. I remember the first time I saw my kindergarten teacher outside of school and it freaked me out because in my mind, like she was just my kindergarten teacher, like why is she at the grocery store? This makes no sense. She's supposed to be in the classroom. And I remember that and I think a lot of people remember that first time we saw our teacher, because it sort of shattered our expectations of like, oh, they are something beyond what they are to us. 

18:54
And a lot of people never become more than that need that they feel to their customers, like your customers never thinking about you until, like somebody on their team forgets their password or there's like a firewall issue or like there's some weird error message that they don't understand. 

19:09
So by giving them anchors, they will think about you more often. So one of the other benefits of using all of these songs is I will have people text message me or like send me DMs on social media or email me and say, oh, I just heard this song the other day and thought about you, right, because I remember you mentioned it in your book. And that's what I want. I want people to be like, going about their life, not thinking about me, and then, all of a sudden, something happens and I pop into their brain. And that's what every single one of you listening to this show should want too. Like you should want to be relevant in a way that your customers think about you even when they're not thinking like oh, I've got an issue with you, know my tech stack and I need to call somebody and think about it. So, using things that like, share your story and connect it to your audience members stories. 

19:54 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Yeah, so I'll tell just a little story. I've shared this in some form or fashion over the years, and my wife hated when I started this, but I wanted to get rid of that stigma of people. When they saw me walk into their office, their first question is oh, what's broke? Because that's what they think of when. When the tech person walks in, I'm like nothing. Why does something have to be broken for me to show up? 

20:19
And so we started doing or I started doing these other things where when I started giving people nicknames at the office and started having little chats with them I used to never mix business and pleasure, but I found that doing that they saw me as a person instead of just the tech guy. 

20:42
And so I got to the point where I was giving nicknames and the managers of the businesses would tell new hires oh, this is Marvin, our IT guy. He's not going to talk to you for 90 days to see if you make it and he's going to give you a nickname. And that's what they would tell new hires. And then I had a client where you know I would walk in with my headphones playing music and I'd always want to know what's you know? What are you listening to? Because they like the diverseness of the music, because I wasn't just that one genre of what they pictured for me and it got so good. A client last year had an opening on their company crews. They called us and said, mar, if we want you and your wife to join us on the cruise, no cost to you, wow. 

21:34 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
So that's amazing. That was incredible and what a testament to not just the fact that you're an amazing partner, but the power of getting to know a customer beyond what they're expecting from you in that role. 

21:47 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Yeah. 

21:49 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
And. 

21:50 - Marvin Bee (Host)
I was nervous at first. I was nervous because I'm like I don't know if I want to go on a cruise. We're kind of here, You're kind of together, People get to know you. They're like no, we want you to come and enjoy and have fun with us. 

22:05 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Very, very cool. Yeah, there's almost no downside to letting people get to know you. I was doing a workshop several months ago and somebody on the call was like I feel like I've been living a double life because, in addition to being a roofer, which he owned, a roofing business, where he was working in the business but also had a team that he was supervising. But he was also like a semi-professional or professional magician and he was like I have to try so hard online to keep these identities separate because I don't want any of the customers to trust us less or not want to work with me because I do magic. And so, as we started to unpack it, I was like wait time out. Has anyone in any context ever said to you I trust you less or think you're less qualified to put shingles on my house because you're a magician? And he's like no, and there were hundreds of people in this workshop that we were doing online and everybody was like that's the most amazing fact ever. Why would you not tell anybody that I would love to have a roofer who was a magician? So, as we talked through it and he was like you're right, Maybe these two things don't have to be at odds with each other and I was like, of course they don't. Like what a fun fact. And he was like I feel like there's this huge weight lifted off my shoulder because now I don't have to continue to hope that nobody is at a show who I'm putting shingles on their house. 

23:32
And he was using a different name as a magician. But as he was starting to get more notoriety, he was like, oh, it'd be great to actually use my real name so people know who I am, because he was starting with magician awards and stuff. So yeah, sometimes we create these artificial rules, Like we think I can't share this part of my personality or I can't talk about the fact that I really love this thing at work. But in reality, we want to get to know our colleagues. We want to get to know our vendor partners. We want to see them as more than just a name on the other end of an email address or a help button. 

24:07 - Marvin Bee (Host)
So I was going to ask you a question about that but it seems as though we've already discussed it because my thought was there's got to be some sort of wall that we put up and you get to engage with clients and help them see their clients, their fans, in different ways. And I was going to ask what some of the biggest challenges are or excuses that businesses give when they're chatting with you about, hey, how can you help us, and then you give them a suggestion and then they kind of push back. 

24:47 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
A lot of times people will say I don't want my customers to get to know my employees, because then what happens when the employees leave? And my feedback to that is always OK, so you would rather an employee stay with you and provide, like vanilla, forgettable, non-exceptional experience to your customers. Then the alternative, which is like you have one really great person that you have a personal connection with and then like a new person, comes in, which to me it's like I would much rather have a. If you have, if this is a problem that's happening more than very occasionally, you have something broken inside, right, like you need to ask yourself if you have more than one person leaving in a short period of time, like why, what is what is happening? 

25:42
You have a system problem, not a one thing happened one time, but also it is. It is worth prioritizing the experience that your customers are having with your team, because if you just are interchangeable, if you're like I don't want them showing any personality, I don't want anybody to feel like they know us, then why would they ever choose you instead of a competitor if that competitor was offering them lower rates, like if you have not risen to the category leader or category of one position, a commodity provider. You are making yourself vanilla. You are making yourself the same. You are almost forcing people to make decisions based on cost and other commodity driven factors. 

26:28 - Marvin Bee (Host)
But I do see that in our industry we sometimes have technicians that customers love that one technician that always knows the answer, or that one technician that always listens and understands, and the fear for us in the tech industry is, yeah, we'll lose that person and we'll lose that it factor with that client or those clients. And sometimes you can build systems around it To where you try to make sure the customer gets the same experience regardless of who the tech is. But I'm not going to lie. I see a lot of our colleagues and myself included when I was going through hiring texts and customers like we don't want your tech, we want you. So I can see that as a problem. That's hard Right. 

27:17 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
And that is something that every single entrepreneur faces as you build your business and in there's there are a few different. There are a few different solutions. One is that you, you have to make yourself unavailable or less available to every new customer moving forward. You just have to do it. You have to rip the band aid off and sometimes it's, you know, gradually sunsetting those older clients who are used to it. But in just about every business, the leader if it's an entrepreneur led business, there are. There are those legacy customers whose expectations are different and whose service level, honestly, is sometimes different, because that's just the way it always is and until you're ready to like lose that customer, sometimes you have to continue to keep things that way. 

27:58
But in terms of, when it's not you, when it's a technician, hey, it's about what are you doing to retain that person? Right, like the conversations that you're having to make sure that you don't lose that person. But also sort of CSI and get to say what is it about this person that makes them different? Is it a personality thing? Is it a training thing? Is it an attention to the customer? 

28:20
Training being is an attention to detail thing, and then asking the right questions and interviews to find more people who either already have those abilities or can learn those abilities. So, making sure that you're asking the right questions when you're hiring so that you're not just saying, oh my gosh, we're, we're so short staffed, we need somebody. We'll take, you know, one of the first three candidates. That applies because we're so desperate but actually hiring slower to get the person with those same qualities and traits that you've identified as the superstar qualities of those texts that everybody loves, or of yourself, if you're trying to hire yourself out of a role like what is it that you're doing that matters most to those customers? What can you either teach someone to do or find somebody who already has a track record succeeding doing those things? 

29:07 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Yeah, so I'm sure you get this. All the time there's there never seems to be enough time to ask and answer all the questions that I have and I want to make sure that we promote you as best we can here. So, Brittany Hodak, and I'm going to put in the show notes your website, Brittany Hodak dot com, where people can learn about you, they can see where you're going to be If they can find out more about your book and your podcast. So you've got the podcast Creating super fans. And then you just started A little YouTube project. I did, yes, the super amazing show. 

29:53 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yes, the super amazing show has a very humbling name. This is a really fun project that I'm doing this year. So one of my heroes in the CX space is a gentleman by the name of Shep Hyken and he has been writing about customer experience and customer service for decades and he has written several books founded in the principle of delivering amazing customer experiences and so amazing is like kind of his word, and super is the word that I use and we made a joke that it would be really funny to do something together and call it the super amazing show. And then we were like we should just do it. So for every week in 2024, Shep and I will be releasing a new video giving people a super amazing idea that they can use to create super amazing Customer experiences, and it's totally free. You can watch it on YouTube, you can watch it on our social channels, but it's a lot of fun. But you're right, Uncle Marv, you can find all of that information and so much more at Brittany Hodak com. 

30:50 - Marvin Bee (Host)
All right, we're going to have those there. Brittany, I'm going to have to ask you again if I could, you know, squeeze a few minutes out of you in the future. I know you're probably super busy. Got the one year anniversary of the book. Are you doing another book, by the way? 

31:07 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yeah, in 2027. 

31:10 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Oh that's a little far. 

31:13 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yeah, people are like do you have a new book? And I'm like I do. It's called creating super fans. It came out 12 months ago and if you have not read it, it is new to you. So, like, please pick it up and read it. This, this is my book, this is my baby. I will be, I will be lovingly promoting this as my new book until it is out of diapers and into preschool, so a few years to go. 

31:34 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Okay, well, Britany, glad to have you back again. I should think I should have thanked ASCII for getting you to go on tour with them. I didn't ask you, they're amazing. 

31:44 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
I love the ASCII group team so much. Anybody who's listening right now that's not hooked into ASCII. What are you waiting for? Take it from me, take it from Uncle Marv. You have got to dive into this community. They are the best people, the most knowledgeable people. You will find your tribe, you will find people who are dealing with similar or identical issues to the ones that you're dealing with, and you'll get all of the information that you need to stay ahead of your peers. So if you are not a member of the ASCII group already, this is the sign from the universe that you need to make that happen, like today. 

32:14 - Marvin Bee (Host)
There it is A super amazing endorsement from Brittany Hodak. Sounds great, Brittany, thank you. 

32:25 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Hey, ascii isn't paying me anymore, right Like I went on tour with them last year. But now I'm speaking as a fan, as somebody with no skin in the game, but from hearing, I mean, I heard dozens, if not a hundred, stories of people talking about how their life has changed because they've been a part of the ASCII community. It is such an amazing, wonderful group of people. So if they are not yet your people, make them your people. You will not regret it and your customers and your employees will certainly thank you for it. 

32:51 - Marvin Bee (Host)
All right, I will ring that endorsement as well. Ascii is not paying me, but I've been a member for a while, which is how I get to meet Brittany. So, Brittany, great, thank you very much, and we'll have you back at some point. 

33:04 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Sounds like a plan. I can't wait. 

33:05 - Marvin Bee (Host)
All right, folks, that's going to do it for this episode of the IT Business Podcast. Again, all the information about Brittany will be in the show notes. Of course. Her website, BrittanyHodak.com, is pretty much the starting place for everything. I'll have a link to her book on Amazon that you can purchase. Maybe use my link, give me a few cents and help me get more guests like this. All right, and let's see here if you listen to this in real time. Tuesday, January 23rd, our next live show will be by our newest sponsor, SuperOps, so I'm going to have the super fan and go right into the SuperOps people Wednesday evening at 8 pm. That's it, folks. We'll see you soon. Until next time, Holla! 
00:08 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast. This is the show for IT professionals, where we try to help you do everything to run your business, support your customers better, smarter and faster. This is one of our weekly audio shows, hosted by SuperOps, the all-in-one future-ready PSA RMM tool for the managed provider community. I am joined by someone we met last year. Brittany Hodak was out on the ASCII trail. Brittany, how are you? 

00:46 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Hey, Uncle Marvin, I'm doing great. It's so nice to see you again. 

00:49 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Oh, it is great. So we met last year at ASCII. We actually met at the Clearwater event and you were one of the mainstays of the ASCII show this past year. How did you enjoy that? 

01:02 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
I loved it. I had such a blast. I got to do 10 shows in 2023 with the ASCII family and just loved it. Had such an incredible time meeting so many incredible MSPs and learning about everything they're doing to improve the customer experience of all of their clients and customers. 

01:22 - Marvin Bee (Host)
So I got a few minutes with you right after your session. It was out in the hallway, everybody was walking by and I said we've got to have a time later on where I can ask you some more in-depth questions, and thank you for making time for me. 

01:37 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yeah, thank you for fitting me in. I'm excited to reconnect. 

01:41 - Marvin Bee (Host)
But one of the questions that I asked you back then was did you get any weird questions from the tech community? Because a lot of your people that you work with are like regular business. They're large corporations. MSPs think of themselves as a different breed, so did you find any questions that were a little bit off or any excuses that we gave us to? Oh, we could never do that. 

02:08 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Nothing too out of left field, I mean, I think my area of expertise is customer experience and it is about as universal as it gets within business. Anyone who has customers or wants them can benefit from being more customer centric. So I would say a couple of people said to me after I spoke I was really skeptical of you, I thought you were going to talk about a lot of stuff that wasn't relevant to me. But Jerry told me to give you a chance, so I came anyway and wow, I actually could do a lot of this stuff. So I had a lot of that, a lot of people who were saying I didn't think customer experience was important to me, or I didn't think thinking more about how to frame an experience was going to matter, as much as I now, in hindsight, understand that it matters. 

02:55 - Marvin Bee (Host)
So just to give everybody a little bit of a background. So you are all about creating super fans, taking that customer experience to the next level, and I read somewhere that you actually studied in customer experience. I don't remember a degree in college on customer experience. 

03:15 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Well, when I went to get my master's degree, I got a master's in marketing with a concentration in what they called the time consumer behavior. 

03:22
So it was about as close as possible as I could get to customer experience. 

03:25
But really understanding the psychology behind why we behave the way we behave, why we buy the things we buy, why we like the things that we like. And sometimes I do get a little bit of skepticism around the title, like when I say I talk about the idea of creating super fans and turning a customer into a super fan and people say why would anyone ever be a super fan of what I do? Like it's not exciting, it's not sexy, I'm just helping people with their IT. But when I describe a super fan as a loyal, engaged customer who's choosing you at the exclusion of anybody else who's advocating on your behalf, if they, you know, change jobs or have to go to bat for you when you're going head to head against another competitor, they say oh yeah, no, we have people like that and we definitely want more people like that. So the idea of using psychology and data to figure out how to create stronger relationships between your customers and your teammates is something that is beneficial to every business because there's a real, tangible ROI. 

04:29 - Marvin Bee (Host)
So when you explain it like that and after people get a chance to hear you, they understand. And I have to imagine that a lot of people think oh yeah, it sounds so simple, but yet so many of us don't do it. So is there psychology behind that? 

04:49 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
There is, and a lot of it is just, you know, not like we don't know what we don't know. If this is something that you've not ever spent a lot of time thinking about, then it can. It can feel like this huge revelation, like, oh my gosh, of course I should be thinking about this, but even if you have spent time thinking about customer experience a lot of times, people can flay customer experience with customer service, when, in fact, customer service is just one really small part of customer experience. The same way, sales and marketing and operations are all part of customer experience, and so one of the things that I talk a lot about is this idea that everything is part of the experience. So the language that you're using on your website the button clicks that you have the language that people get in an email when they file a help ticket, like all of that is part of the experience, and so the greater intentionality you can bring to all of it. 

05:46
How is the website laid out? How many clicks do people have to make? What is the message someone hears when they call us and get our answering machine? What is the language that people get in an automated email response from us? What is our chatbot saying, when somebody first engages, like all of these things are part of the experience, and where people can kind of go wrong is by looking at each of them in a silo as if none of them have anything to do with anything else, when in reality they are all parts of your brand that should be functioning together the same way. 

06:17
The human body is not a bunch of, like, disconnected parts that have nothing to do with each other. Right, it's not like your heart has nothing to do with your lungs, has nothing to do with your liver, has nothing to do with your feet, like all of these are part of a system that needs to be working together and communicating for the best possible outcomes. So that same whole body functional medicine approach is necessary for businesses to think about when they think about the fact that, like, yeah, the left foot really should know what their right foot is doing and they should both be following the same plan as the hands. 

06:50 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Right, so part of what I understood. And, by the way, your book Creating Superfans coming up on, well, no, it's already been a one year anniversary of it, right? 

07:02 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yes, yeah, the book came out in January of 2023. So it just celebrated its first birthday and I was so excited because we passed the 20,000 unit threshold sales threshold right before the book's first birthday. So I was very, very excited that in her first year on Earth, she's managed to sell 20,000 copies across all of the formats digital audiobook and printed hardcover. 

07:26 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Well, first I was going to say congratulations. Is 20,000 a magic number? 

07:31 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Thank you. You know it's so hard to get real competitive analysis data on books because there are so many books released, but something like 5% of traditionally published books so not like self-published books, but people who go through a traditional publisher only something like 5% of them ever sell more than 10,000 copies, like in the lifetime of the book. So to sell 20,000 in the first year I know is great. I just don't know. You know it's like not atomic habits Great. 

08:04
you know that obviously is a book that's selling millions and millions of copies, but I honestly don't know if it's like top 10%, top 5%, but I know I am very proud of it because each of those books represents somebody who is hopefully making some real positive changes in their business. 

08:21 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Well, I know that a lot of people that I saw at the conference walked away with the book and, in fact, we're still talking about it. You notice it on my shelf here. We've gone through it and dived, so I just will let everybody know. I will have links to everything we talk about in the show, including a link to the book creating superfans, how to turn your customers into lifelong advocates, and that's something we all talk about doing. You know we talk about getting repeat customers. Where I was going to go is when you talked about you know everything working together. 

08:53
One of the things that I had noted to ask you about was you know this is really transforming the business experience, or the customer experience, into your brand right? What is it? It's one thing to have people enjoy that you've got their problems off. I called them and they took care of me. Everything works. It was a timely fashion, but we want them to have an experience away from that. So what happens two weeks from now, two months from now, when they look back on that experience? We want them to be able to rave about the quality work we do. 

09:31 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I think we are so far removed from a time when it was just about service. A lot of people are still operating in the mindset that we are in a service-driven economy, when in reality it's an experience-driven economy. It's about so much more than just the service, so much more than just the products, because if you're just thinking about the service, you're competing as a commodity provider. And when you're a commodity provider, people are going to make decisions based on commodity factors, things like price, things like speed, things like how close you are or how many people you have within a certain radius of wherever they're located. 

10:08
And we want to be competing not on commodity-driven factors. We want to be seen, in fact, not as a commodity provider at all, but as a category of one. We want to be able to say no one is like us, nobody else is doing things quite like we are. So if your business is looking for the best partner in the world at this particular thing, you would be crazy to go with anyone but us. But if you are not differentiating yourself beyond what each of your competitors is doing, it is nearly impossible to make that argument. And so then what happens is you find yourself competing on those commodity factors, things like price, things like speed, and as we all know, that's a race to the bottom and also it's not particularly fun or inspiring for your employees. 

10:53 - Marvin Bee (Host)
No, that is not fun at all. And when you have to say we're not going to be the cheapest, blah, blah, blah, you've already lost half the battle. In my mind. 

11:03 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yeah, you shouldn't even be talking about cost. You should be talking about the risk that exists if someone isn't working with you, what they stand to lose by not having the best partner in the business, making sure that you're mitigating risks and keeping them ahead of all of the security issues and bad actors who are out there that could cause potential mayhem to their business. 

11:28 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Right. So you just mentioned security, which is one of our areas there, and I like that. You at least know our industry well enough to sneak in some tidbits and stuff. But your start did not come anywhere near the tech sector. In fact, if I remember correctly, in your previous company you were actually dealing with the music industry. 

11:52 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yes. So growing up, I just wanted to work in the entertainment industry. That's all I wanted to do. That's all I thought I would do. I got my first job as a radio station mascot when I was a teenager. I was 16 years old and just had what I thought was the coolest job in the world, continued to work at radio stations and then record labels, music magazines, and all I wanted to do was work in entertainment. 

12:14
And I launched my own entertainment agency when I was 26 in New York City, and that's where I really started to understand customer experience and consumer behavior on a deeper level, because while we were working with superstars I mean, my clients were like oh who's who of A-listers Everybody from Taylor Swift to Dolly Parton but we were also working with huge brands and what I started to see was the exact same things that would cause someone to care about an entertainer, would cause them to care about a brand. 

12:47
So whether that was a retailer that we were working with, like Amazon or Walmart, or whether that was a consumer packaged goods brand, like a Johnson & Johnson company or a Unilever company or a beverage company, the same psychological things were true. It was based on storytelling; it was based on identity and it was based on experience. So I started to try to understand if I could take those elements the storytelling, the identity and the experience and weave those into the corporate world so that, even if you're not a rock star, you can create these fans. You can create people who want to choose you at the exclusion of your competitors, people who see you and think, oh, this is the right company for me, I belong at this company, rather than just saying like, well, I might as well throw a dart because I'm confused and overwhelmed and just see a whole bunch of people that are like a where's Waldo puzzle. And they're all the same. 

13:40 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Right. So I was struggling with the music, because I know that you were doing stuff with sports and some other things, but where I was going to go and another interviewer beat me to it and I'm sure 100 other people have as well in your book you have splattered through all these titles and one-liners from songs. 

14:05 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
I do. 

14:05 - Marvin Bee (Host)
It's like every title is a title of a song and I'm sure that you've made into a title in your book. I was going to ask do you actually have a number as to how many musical nuggets are in your book? 

14:17 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
So I use over a hundred titles. So I created two Spotify playlists which I'll send them to you and you can put them in the show notes. When the book came out, I created one playlist of all the chapters and then another one of just all the song references. I think it's like 120 something. 

14:39
But part of the reason I wanted to do that was to make the point that you can make anything feel the same or you can make it feel different, and I wanted to make my book feel different than other business books. So I made a lot of very intentional decisions. I did things like printing it in color. I changed the trim size of the page. Most business books are six inches by nine inches. My business book is six inches by eight inches. It cost me a lot more to do that Like it costs like 57 extra cents per book to make the trim size different. 

15:10
But I wanted it to look different. I wanted it to feel different. I printed it on bright white paper instead of the like you know, kind of ugly paper that most business books are printed on. That's off white. And instead of just using random titles and names, I used song titles to draw back to my story of coming up in the music industry. So I wanted to, like you know, walk the walk a little bit to show that you can make anything feel different, in the same way that I made all of these decisions to make my book feel different from other business books. MSPs can make their customers' experiences and their customers' journeys feel different by the language that they use in their emails, by the way they name things, by you know the conversations that they have with their customers, whether it's on a service call or during an onboarding, or even during an offboarding. So I wanted to have fun with that. So thank you, Marv, for noticing that and for calling it out. 

16:06 - Marvin Bee (Host)
So here's my question so I get the fact that you were intentional in doing it, but did you let people know ahead of time? But did you want people to figure this out on their own, and how? I did not tell anybody; you did not tell anybody. 

16:19 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yeah, people, once I started sharing like here's the table of contents people started picking up on it. But I didn't share it ahead of time and so I started the book. Instead of calling it like a forward and an afterward, I used the words interlude and exitlude because one of my favorite albums of all time is Sam’s town by the Killers and I think it's like the best Killers album. It's so good and I think I have four Killers titles as like chapter titles in the book. But interlude and exitlude it's funny because even my publisher was like exitlude is not a word and I was like no, that's like the end of this Killers album. They like go back. It's like the refrain that starts and ends the album. 

17:07
So, no, I did not tell people. And then, once it came out and people started asking about it, we said, hey, look, here's a playlist where it's like everyone used an order. And then people were saying, oh, I didn't realize that this was like one sentence and this one paragraph came from a song or this was a reference to a song. So there's probably closer to 150 throughout, but the actual like song titles that we use or lyrics that we use is like 120 something. 

17:38 - Marvin Bee (Host)
All right, I was going to say you should. You should have a game one day where somebody you have a contest to see who can name the closest, or all of them in there, because there's some that you know I listen. I don't know who the Killers are, but I know Sugar Land, I know Bon Jovi, I know those songs that showed up in there. This is how we do it. I mean, I know I know I'm like OK, something's odd here, but very neat idea. 

18:06 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Well, thank you. I, yeah, I love the idea of the game. One of one of the things that I talk about throughout the book is Making yourself stickier, which sounds really weird. I don't say like it's a PG show. 

18:20
It's a PG show. We don't want people only thinking about us when they think about the like, the need that they have, that we feel. We want people to think about us beyond just what it is that we do. Like. I remember the first time I saw my kindergarten teacher outside of school and it freaked me out because in my mind, like she was just my kindergarten teacher, like why is she at the grocery store? This makes no sense. She's supposed to be in the classroom. And I remember that and I think a lot of people remember that first time we saw our teacher, because it sort of shattered our expectations of like, oh, they are something beyond what they are to us. 

18:54
And a lot of people never become more than that need that they feel to their customers, like your customers never thinking about you until, like somebody on their team forgets their password or there's like a firewall issue or like there's some weird error message that they don't understand. 

19:09
So by giving them anchors, they will think about you more often. So one of the other benefits of using all of these songs is I will have people text message me or like send me DMs on social media or email me and say, oh, I just heard this song the other day and thought about you, right, because I remember you mentioned it in your book. And that's what I want. I want people to be like, going about their life, not thinking about me, and then, all of a sudden, something happens and I pop into their brain. And that's what every single one of you listening to this show should want too. Like you should want to be relevant in a way that your customers think about you even when they're not thinking like oh, I've got an issue with you, know my tech stack and I need to call somebody and think about it. So, using things that like, share your story and connect it to your audience members stories. 

19:54 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Yeah, so I'll tell just a little story. I've shared this in some form or fashion over the years, and my wife hated when I started this, but I wanted to get rid of that stigma of people. When they saw me walk into their office, their first question is oh, what's broke? Because that's what they think of when. When the tech person walks in, I'm like nothing. Why does something have to be broken for me to show up? 

20:19
And so we started doing or I started doing these other things where when I started giving people nicknames at the office and started having little chats with them I used to never mix business and pleasure, but I found that doing that they saw me as a person instead of just the tech guy. 

20:42
And so I got to the point where I was giving nicknames and the managers of the businesses would tell new hires oh, this is Marvin, our IT guy. He's not going to talk to you for 90 days to see if you make it and he's going to give you a nickname. And that's what they would tell new hires. And then I had a client where you know I would walk in with my headphones playing music and I'd always want to know what's you know? What are you listening to? Because they like the diverseness of the music, because I wasn't just that one genre of what they pictured for me and it got so good. A client last year had an opening on their company crews. They called us and said, mar, if we want you and your wife to join us on the cruise, no cost to you, wow. 

21:34 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
So that's amazing. That was incredible and what a testament to not just the fact that you're an amazing partner, but the power of getting to know a customer beyond what they're expecting from you in that role. 

21:47 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Yeah. 

21:49 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
And. 

21:50 - Marvin Bee (Host)
I was nervous at first. I was nervous because I'm like I don't know if I want to go on a cruise. We're kind of here, You're kind of together, People get to know you. They're like no, we want you to come and enjoy and have fun with us. 

22:05 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Very, very cool. Yeah, there's almost no downside to letting people get to know you. I was doing a workshop several months ago and somebody on the call was like I feel like I've been living a double life because, in addition to being a roofer, which he owned, a roofing business, where he was working in the business but also had a team that he was supervising. But he was also like a semi-professional or professional magician and he was like I have to try so hard online to keep these identities separate because I don't want any of the customers to trust us less or not want to work with me because I do magic. And so, as we started to unpack it, I was like wait time out. Has anyone in any context ever said to you I trust you less or think you're less qualified to put shingles on my house because you're a magician? And he's like no, and there were hundreds of people in this workshop that we were doing online and everybody was like that's the most amazing fact ever. Why would you not tell anybody that I would love to have a roofer who was a magician? So, as we talked through it and he was like you're right, Maybe these two things don't have to be at odds with each other and I was like, of course they don't. Like what a fun fact. And he was like I feel like there's this huge weight lifted off my shoulder because now I don't have to continue to hope that nobody is at a show who I'm putting shingles on their house. 

23:32
And he was using a different name as a magician. But as he was starting to get more notoriety, he was like, oh, it'd be great to actually use my real name so people know who I am, because he was starting with magician awards and stuff. So yeah, sometimes we create these artificial rules, Like we think I can't share this part of my personality or I can't talk about the fact that I really love this thing at work. But in reality, we want to get to know our colleagues. We want to get to know our vendor partners. We want to see them as more than just a name on the other end of an email address or a help button. 

24:07 - Marvin Bee (Host)
So I was going to ask you a question about that but it seems as though we've already discussed it because my thought was there's got to be some sort of wall that we put up and you get to engage with clients and help them see their clients, their fans, in different ways. And I was going to ask what some of the biggest challenges are or excuses that businesses give when they're chatting with you about, hey, how can you help us, and then you give them a suggestion and then they kind of push back. 

24:47 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
A lot of times people will say I don't want my customers to get to know my employees, because then what happens when the employees leave? And my feedback to that is always OK, so you would rather an employee stay with you and provide, like vanilla, forgettable, non-exceptional experience to your customers. Then the alternative, which is like you have one really great person that you have a personal connection with and then like a new person, comes in, which to me it's like I would much rather have a. If you have, if this is a problem that's happening more than very occasionally, you have something broken inside, right, like you need to ask yourself if you have more than one person leaving in a short period of time, like why, what is what is happening? 

25:42
You have a system problem, not a one thing happened one time, but also it is. It is worth prioritizing the experience that your customers are having with your team, because if you just are interchangeable, if you're like I don't want them showing any personality, I don't want anybody to feel like they know us, then why would they ever choose you instead of a competitor if that competitor was offering them lower rates, like if you have not risen to the category leader or category of one position, a commodity provider. You are making yourself vanilla. You are making yourself the same. You are almost forcing people to make decisions based on cost and other commodity driven factors. 

26:28 - Marvin Bee (Host)
But I do see that in our industry we sometimes have technicians that customers love that one technician that always knows the answer, or that one technician that always listens and understands, and the fear for us in the tech industry is, yeah, we'll lose that person and we'll lose that it factor with that client or those clients. And sometimes you can build systems around it To where you try to make sure the customer gets the same experience regardless of who the tech is. But I'm not going to lie. I see a lot of our colleagues and myself included when I was going through hiring texts and customers like we don't want your tech, we want you. So I can see that as a problem. That's hard Right. 

27:17 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
And that is something that every single entrepreneur faces as you build your business and in there's there are a few different. There are a few different solutions. One is that you, you have to make yourself unavailable or less available to every new customer moving forward. You just have to do it. You have to rip the band aid off and sometimes it's, you know, gradually sunsetting those older clients who are used to it. But in just about every business, the leader if it's an entrepreneur led business, there are. There are those legacy customers whose expectations are different and whose service level, honestly, is sometimes different, because that's just the way it always is and until you're ready to like lose that customer, sometimes you have to continue to keep things that way. 

27:58
But in terms of, when it's not you, when it's a technician, hey, it's about what are you doing to retain that person? Right, like the conversations that you're having to make sure that you don't lose that person. But also sort of CSI and get to say what is it about this person that makes them different? Is it a personality thing? Is it a training thing? Is it an attention to the customer? 

28:20
Training being is an attention to detail thing, and then asking the right questions and interviews to find more people who either already have those abilities or can learn those abilities. So, making sure that you're asking the right questions when you're hiring so that you're not just saying, oh my gosh, we're, we're so short staffed, we need somebody. We'll take, you know, one of the first three candidates. That applies because we're so desperate but actually hiring slower to get the person with those same qualities and traits that you've identified as the superstar qualities of those texts that everybody loves, or of yourself, if you're trying to hire yourself out of a role like what is it that you're doing that matters most to those customers? What can you either teach someone to do or find somebody who already has a track record succeeding doing those things? 

29:07 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Yeah, so I'm sure you get this. All the time there's there never seems to be enough time to ask and answer all the questions that I have and I want to make sure that we promote you as best we can here. So, Brittany Hodak, and I'm going to put in the show notes your website, Brittany Hodak dot com, where people can learn about you, they can see where you're going to be If they can find out more about your book and your podcast. So you've got the podcast Creating super fans. And then you just started A little YouTube project. I did, yes, the super amazing show. 

29:53 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yes, the super amazing show has a very humbling name. This is a really fun project that I'm doing this year. So one of my heroes in the CX space is a gentleman by the name of Shep Hyken and he has been writing about customer experience and customer service for decades and he has written several books founded in the principle of delivering amazing customer experiences and so amazing is like kind of his word, and super is the word that I use and we made a joke that it would be really funny to do something together and call it the super amazing show. And then we were like we should just do it. So for every week in 2024, Shep and I will be releasing a new video giving people a super amazing idea that they can use to create super amazing Customer experiences, and it's totally free. You can watch it on YouTube, you can watch it on our social channels, but it's a lot of fun. But you're right, Uncle Marv, you can find all of that information and so much more at Brittany Hodak com. 

30:50 - Marvin Bee (Host)
All right, we're going to have those there. Brittany, I'm going to have to ask you again if I could, you know, squeeze a few minutes out of you in the future. I know you're probably super busy. Got the one year anniversary of the book. Are you doing another book, by the way? 

31:07 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yeah, in 2027. 

31:10 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Oh that's a little far. 

31:13 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Yeah, people are like do you have a new book? And I'm like I do. It's called creating super fans. It came out 12 months ago and if you have not read it, it is new to you. So, like, please pick it up and read it. This, this is my book, this is my baby. I will be, I will be lovingly promoting this as my new book until it is out of diapers and into preschool, so a few years to go. 

31:34 - Marvin Bee (Host)
Okay, well, Britany, glad to have you back again. I should think I should have thanked ASCII for getting you to go on tour with them. I didn't ask you, they're amazing. 

31:44 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
I love the ASCII group team so much. Anybody who's listening right now that's not hooked into ASCII. What are you waiting for? Take it from me, take it from Uncle Marv. You have got to dive into this community. They are the best people, the most knowledgeable people. You will find your tribe, you will find people who are dealing with similar or identical issues to the ones that you're dealing with, and you'll get all of the information that you need to stay ahead of your peers. So if you are not a member of the ASCII group already, this is the sign from the universe that you need to make that happen, like today. 

32:14 - Marvin Bee (Host)
There it is A super amazing endorsement from Brittany Hodak. Sounds great, Brittany, thank you. 

32:25 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Hey, ascii isn't paying me anymore, right Like I went on tour with them last year. But now I'm speaking as a fan, as somebody with no skin in the game, but from hearing, I mean, I heard dozens, if not a hundred, stories of people talking about how their life has changed because they've been a part of the ASCII community. It is such an amazing, wonderful group of people. So if they are not yet your people, make them your people. You will not regret it and your customers and your employees will certainly thank you for it. 

32:51 - Marvin Bee (Host)
All right, I will ring that endorsement as well. Ascii is not paying me, but I've been a member for a while, which is how I get to meet Brittany. So, Brittany, great, thank you very much, and we'll have you back at some point. 

33:04 - Brittany Hodak (Host)
Sounds like a plan. I can't wait. 

33:05 - Marvin Bee (Host)
All right, folks, that's going to do it for this episode of the IT Business Podcast. Again, all the information about Brittany will be in the show notes. Of course. Her website, BrittanyHodak.com, is pretty much the starting place for everything. I'll have a link to her book on Amazon that you can purchase. Maybe use my link, give me a few cents and help me get more guests like this. All right, and let's see here if you listen to this in real time. Tuesday, January 23rd, our next live show will be by our newest sponsor, SuperOps, so I'm going to have the super fan and go right into the SuperOps people Wednesday evening at 8 pm. That's it, folks. We'll see you soon. Until next time, Holla!