Creating Superfans Podcast Episode 307: Brittany Hodak

Brittany Hodak [00:00:01]:
I realized a couple of days ago that this week marks 10 years since I filmed an episode of the TV show Shark Tank, and it seems crazy to say out loud. It definitely does not seem like a decade ago, but it was. The episode ultimately aired during the 6th season of the show in 2015, but I am still asked about it quite a bit. So this episode is to share some of the details, tell some of that story, and because it’s the 10th anniversary and this is a CX podcast, I’m gonna share 10 lessons that you can apply to customer experience in your business regardless of how big or small it is or what you have coming up. Maybe you have a huge presentation in front of a lot of people like I did on Shark Tank, or maybe you’re just running your day to day business. But either way, I’m gonna share 10 lessons that I think will help. But first, a little bit of background. In 2014, I was nearly 4 years into running an entertainment startup that I’d founded, called Zinepak.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:00]:
The company was doing a few $1,000,000 a year of revenue. We were selling these really cool commemorative fan collectibles that were partnerships with music superstars. We worked with all of the biggest entertainers in the world. By that time, we’d already worked multiple times with Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Kiss, Selena Gomez, just about every country artist on the planet, and we’re creating these really cool packages for superfans. Most of the products that we were selling were being sold at Walmart. We had thousands of, products. I actually, hundreds of thousands of units of just about everything that we made because there are thousands of Walmart stores nationwide, but we were also making stuff for lots of direct to fan channels, things like fan clubs, things like concerts. And we were also working with some sports teams and corporate partners for special events, season tickets, like, all kinds of cool stuff like that.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:55]:
So one day, I was sitting at my desk, which was in a WeWork building right across from the Empire State Building. I got to watch people go in and out of the Empire State Building all day long on Fifth Avenue, which was really fun, and I got a call from a casting producer. He told me that he’d read a feature about the business in Forbes, and he asked if I was interested in coming on the show. And I was a fan of Shark Tank. I had never thought about going on the show because I never thought of myself as, like, a garage entrepreneur. At that time on the show, especially a lot of the people on the show had invented something or they had an idea, but they didn’t have the capital to mass produce it or to test it or to take it to the next step. So even though I enjoyed the show, I never thought, oh, I have a start up, and I should go on Shark Tank. It just hadn’t entered my mind.

Brittany Hodak [00:02:45]:
But when the producer called, I said, yeah. That sounds like a lot of fun. And he said, okay. Well, we’re gonna have to move quickly because we are coming toward the end of filming for next season, but I think you would be great. So over the next several weeks, quite an adventure unfolded. I had to feel film several, what do they call them when you do, like, the test shots, like the casting tapes, and do all of this work. I remember it was crazy the amount of signatures and releases that we had to get because on the show, we were showing products from all of these artists. So we had to get permission from all of the record labels, all of the managers, all of the artists themselves, the merch companies who had the name image likeness rights because, obviously, the show airs forever and ever and ever all around the world.

Brittany Hodak [00:03:37]:
Like, in over a 100 countries, it airs. So there was so much logistical work that I didn’t have a ton of time to think about the actual task at hand of, like, going on this show and filming something that was gonna air in front of millions and millions of people. I mean, I did I I did think about that, and I’ll talk about kinda, like, some of the stuff that I did to prepare, but it was a lot. There was in front of it, scenes, behind the scenes, all of these things kinda happening at once. And, again, it’s crazy to think about the fact that it was 10 years ago this week because I can still feel some of those things like they were yesterday. Like, the chaos and the insanity and all of the fun and the excitement does not feel like it was a decade ago. So without further ado, here are 10 lessons that I learned from being on Shark Tank that I think can help you as you think about how to create amazing experiences in your business. Number 1, you wanna be prepared for everything you can.

Brittany Hodak [00:04:39]:
Like, if you’re that person who says, what if this, what if that, what if that, what if that, then you are gonna do great in customer experience because part of it is being prepared for anything or at least almost anything that you can think of. Now as somebody who’d watched just about every episode of Shark Tank at that point, I had a pretty good idea of some of the things that I needed to do to prepare. But because it was the summer and I had, I think, 3 interns, maybe 4 interns that summer working at the business, I built out this, like, kind of crazy spreadsheet. Like, if you saw it, you would probably think I was a crazy person, where I had them watch every episode of the show and analyze everything that I could think of. How many people were pitching? What was the deal value they were going for? How much equity did they give away? What was the delta between what they were asking for and what they got? What were the founders wearing? Was it a shirt with their logo on it, or were they dressed in business attire? Did they have anybody come in with them as, like, a special guest? Was there a stunt? Everything, like dozens and dozens of things that I thought, you know, could could make a difference in our strategy for the show. Then I put together a universe of all of the questions that had been asked to those contestants that we thought could reasonably be posed to us. So every question I mean, we probably had close to 200 questions that we knew how we would answer if that question was asked. We felt ready for anything.

Brittany Hodak [00:06:14]:
So your takeaway here is if you deeply understand your product, your customer, your market, your uniqueness, it’s going to create a level of preparedness that builds trust and confidence, not just to your customers, but also with your team. They’re gonna feel like you’re not winging it. And, of course, there are always some times that we have to wing a little bit, which leads me to the second tip I have, number 2. I told you that you should be prepared for everything you can. Part number 2 of that, you should chill out about all of the things that you can’t control. Going into the Shark Tank experience, I knew that there were a lot of things beyond my control. So here’s something about Shark Tank that you may or may not know. The production company flies a ton of people to LA.

Brittany Hodak [00:07:05]:
Not all of them get to film. In fact, you show up on a sound stage knowing that you might have the opportunity to pitch to the sharks that day, but, like, you also might not, and you might just go home. You also fly to LA for about a week, and you don’t know until the night before if you’re gonna get to go to the soundstage that day. So getting to walk into the room in front of the Sharks feels like a huge step, but it’s still only part of the journey because they film way more contestants than they actually air on ABC. They I forget the percentage, but it’s it’s like a not insignificant amount of people who think that they’re gonna be on the show and then aren’t, either because it was boring or, somebody, you know, breaks some sort of rule after production or they just don’t mesh. Like, they’ve got, you know, too many companies doing tech stuff or too many companies that have coffee start ups or whatever it is. So we had to sort of say, alright. We are releasing any worry or concern about all of those things.

Brittany Hodak [00:08:15]:
One of the things that felt really out of our control was whether or not we were gonna get permissions from all of our celebrity clients to talk about them on the show because we only had a few weeks to start reaching out to everybody. And I’ll never forget we were in hair and makeup, like, an hour 45 minutes before we were gonna walk out and be, in the the tank. And we were furiously emailing people, like, frantically, like, on the phone, like, hey. We need one more signature. Like, can you fax this over? Can you guys do this right now, please? Please? Please? And then up until, like, 10 minutes before we were there, the crew was displaying all of the things on the table, and we were like, we got Katy Perry’s signature. We got The Beach Boys. Like, we can do this. Taylor Swift just came in.

Brittany Hodak [00:09:00]:
Like, all all of the ones. Like, it was it was so crazy. And we were excited to have all of the artists that we had that had collected all of the crazy amount of signatures for each ones, but we were also pretty chill about, like, there are gonna be some things beyond our control. Like, there were a couple of big artists that we didn’t get their sign off, 1, because somebody had an appendix that ruptured, and, like, the lawyer was not able to send this stuff. And, you know, that’s life. Sometimes, people get ruptured appendixes. So the takeaway here is that the more you can control or excuse me. The more you prepare for the things that you can control, the more at ease you will feel when things beyond your control come up.

Brittany Hodak [00:09:42]:
As a keynote speaker, I encounter things beyond my control all the time. Right? I show up at a venue no matter how diligent we’ve been about asking all of the questions before an event, we get there, and maybe the tech setup isn’t as we expected or, you know, there’s no screens or there’s no Wi Fi or whatever it is. And when I’m on stage, there are hiccups that happen. Right? Like, the batteries in the mic pack can die or, the slides can stop advancing. I was speaking one time, and it took me a minute to figure out what was going on because I had my phone in do not disturb, but I started hearing, like, all of this crazy sound from the audience. It was an amber alert, so everybody’s phones were going off because an amber alert had sent. Another time, I was on stage, and the fire alarm started going off in the hotel. And I realized everybody was looking at me for guidance, and, you know, I kinda said, maybe we should leave.

Brittany Hodak [00:10:36]:
Like, I didn’t know what was going on, but because I was on stage, everybody was kinda, like, waiting to take my cue, which funny story. We all did have to evacuate. There was a fire in the kitchen, and after 20 minutes, everybody came back in and I, you know, kinda made a joke about everything that had happened, and and we picked right back up where we left off. So the more that you can prepare for the things that you know you should be prepared for, the more confident you will be when unpredictable things that maybe once in a lifetime things come up. Alright. The number 3 lesson from going on Shark Tank that you can apply to your business, get super clear on your message. What makes you the absolute best choice in the world for whoever you’re talking to? In this case, I was pitching to those 5 sharks, but I was also pitching to everybody in America. So I had my story about why they should take a chance on me because I know that investors are ultimately looking at the entrepreneur.

Brittany Hodak [00:11:41]:
Yes. They’re looking at the business, but they’re also looking in that person they are going to invest in. Number 4, you’ve gotta understand your audience, and, you know, it’s usually not just one audience. That was certainly true for appearing on Shark Tank. There were so many people that I had to get to buy in on my business before I even got in that room. It wasn’t just about the casting producer. It was then there were the executive producers and all of the other producers, and, you know, then I had to pitch the Sharks and then the network executives at ABC who were all kind of watching from this loft that we couldn’t see while we were filming. But even though all of those audiences were incredibly important, there was one audience I cared about even more, and that was the audience of prospective customers that I knew would be watching on TV because when an episode airs, you have literally millions of viewers.

Brittany Hodak [00:12:41]:
So as focused as I was on the moment, I was also being very careful that everything I said represented how I would want my story to be shared to either somebody who was gonna walk into a Walmart store and buy the new Miranda Lambert zine pack or somebody who was watching thinking, oh, that company could help me with my marketing. I wanna do great things to activate my fans too. So make sure you truly understand your audience. In my supermodel that I talk about, I talk about understanding your customer story, and there’s an episode that I did earlier this season with a 5 part framework. STORY is the acronym. Go back and check it out, and you’ll get all of the tips that you need on truly understanding your customers at a level that most of your competitors probably aren’t taking the time to do. Alright. Thing number 5, personalize, personalize, personalize.

Brittany Hodak [00:13:38]:
This is also part of my supermodel, p. It’s funny looking at these lessons and thinking about how my evolution as an entrepreneur and a writer and a speaker has happened over the past decade because all of the things that I talk about on stage were things that I actually lived, not just as a business owner sort of big picture, but as I drill into a lot of the big either successful or notable things that I’ve done, like the Shark Tank episode, I can draw a direct correlation to the supermodel and all of the things that I did. So number 5, personalize, personalize, personalize. Before we filmed the show, I said, you know, we make these super fan packages. Wouldn’t it be cool if we made them for all of the sharks on the panel? Now and also at the time, we had to there there were 6 we had to prepare for because we didn’t know at the time, it was the 4 guy sharks that were constant, and then Barbara and Lori would swap out. So we actually had to end up making these collectible fan packages for 6 different shirts, and so much work went into it. I mean, these were these were projects that when we would do for celebrities, we were charging 5 figures because of the amount of time for the writing and the design and the research and the editing and photos and all of the things, but we wanted to truly represent to them what it felt like to have your own zine pack. So we had every shark do an interview with us.

Brittany Hodak [00:15:12]:
We but they had no idea why. They didn’t even know who the survey was coming from. We put all of these magazines together. We made trading cards for every shark, so everybody got a pack of trading cards. We worked with all of our vendors, so everybody had their trading card on top. So everybody, you know, got everybody else’s, but theirs was was on top. There were so many fun little things that we put in there, and it took, again, like, an enormous amount of time. But we knew it would be worth it because of the wow factor, and we knew we would have those 5 sharks on the panel not just thinking, like, oh, cool.

Brittany Hodak [00:15:45]:
They’ve done this for a bunch of celebrities, but, oh, wow. Like, look how cool I look in this magazine. And so that was really, really fun. And personalization, you can never go wrong. I I had the opportunity to do an event a couple of weeks ago with one of my speaking bureau partners, and they are incredible partners. And I was just thrilled that they invited me to come do an event. And sometimes in my keynote, I tell this story about LEGOLAND. And when my book launched, I made these little LEGO figures of me, and it’s, like, real talk.

Brittany Hodak [00:16:19]:
I thought, at the time, I was like, oh, this is awesome. Like, I have these little LEGO figures of me. I put them in these deluxe boxes that I sent out to a few people to get, like, reviews and and press before the book came out. But then I had bought, like, a 100 more of them, and I thought it was gonna be so cool to hand them out to people. But then I realized after kinda, like, the, like, haze of the book launch passed how, like, douchey it is to be like, do you want a LEGO of me? Like, it’s such an awkward thing to ask somebody if they want your LEGO because it’s it’s kinda like douchey. Right? So anyway, I had these LEGOs. I still have probably, like, 50 of them at my house because I never know, like, what to do with them or who to offer them to, But I thought it might be fun with this bureau partner. So I was thinking about how to make it not, like, a weird, like, hey.

Brittany Hodak [00:17:07]:
Do you want a LEGO version of me on your desk? And I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if everybody got to make their own LEGO? So my 6 year old helped me order I think it was, like, 600 individual LEGO pieces, and we looked at everybody’s picture on the website. So we got hair and clothes that we thought would be representative of the 25 or so people who were gonna be at this event, And then everybody goes make their own LEGO, and it was so fun. And I had the same little cases that my LEGO is in and the same little stand with everybody’s name on it, and it was a really cool activity. And I cannot wait to do that again. I was like, I didn’t know how it was gonna go. It was funny. I I kept it a secret from from everybody, even the the client. And I had said, I’ve got this activity I wanna do.

Brittany Hodak [00:17:53]:
It might take 5 minutes. It might take half an hour. I have no idea because I’ve never done this before, but it was a huge hit. And anytime you can in you can introduce a level of personalization to where people feel like they’re getting something special or unique or different, it’s gonna make a difference. Like, they’re gonna remember. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. It doesn’t have to be extravagant. A story that I tell sometimes that, I don’t think this is in my book.

Brittany Hodak [00:18:21]:
I think this happened after my book was already out. But my son, the same son who helped him to pick out all the Legos, Kato, who is about to turn 7, he was maybe 5 at the time, and he was making a big deal about how he wanted to try croutons. We were at the Olive Garden, because we’re fancy, and he was making a big deal about wanting to try a crouton. And he finally ate 1, and he’s just you know, with all the exuberance of a 5 year old who has a new favorite thing, he’s like, these are amazing. Why did you never give me croutons before? These are delicious. I’m never gonna eat anything again. Just, like, going crazy. And our waitress must have walked by and heard this even though she didn’t stop at our table because she came back a couple minutes later with a bowl full of croutons, like, a 100 croutons in this bowl, and my son was so excited.

Brittany Hodak [00:19:08]:
And then, you know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes later, whatever it was, when we were leaving, when she brought the check, she didn’t just bring those amazing little Andes mints that you always get at Olive Garden. She brought, like, 20 to go bags of croutons. They have these little bags that they put on salads when you order a to go salad, and she said, you know, I just thought anybody who loves croutons as much as you do and only wants to eat croutons, like, forever and ever and ever should have a good supply to to take home with you. So and, of course, she got a huge tip. Of course, we’re still talking about it. We go back to Olive Garden all the time. We always ask to sit at Melanie’s table when she’s there. So personalize the things that you can for your customers, but just as importantly, for your employees because showing somebody that you appreciate who they are, you notice the things they care about, and you’re going out of the way to do something unique and different for them goes a long way.

Brittany Hodak [00:20:02]:
Alright. Number 6, ask for lots of feedback, and when necessary, ask for help. When I was getting ready to film Shark Tank, I talked to everybody that I knew that had been on the show before. Luckily, my buddy, Patrick, who is founder of a company called Brand Yourself, had been on this season before. He had tons of tips, but I talked to probably a dozen other contestants because I wanted to get all of the tips and advice and the feedback that I could. So in your business, know that you aren’t just competing with your direct competitors. We’re living in an experience economy, and your customers are comparing the experiences they have with you with the experiences they have everywhere else with completely different industries from completely different parts of their lives. So you want to ask your customers for feedback on how you can get better, but you also wanna ask people about amazing experiences they’ve had other places to see if you can incorporate anything that they’ve enjoyed or that they’ve learned into your own processes.

Brittany Hodak [00:21:09]:
Alright. Number 7, be willing to take risks. Now a silly risk that my cofounder and I took, when we were recording Shark Tank is one that turned out to work in our advantage. So I told you I had the interns make the crazy spreadsheet. One of the things that I’d had them look at was, were they reusing close ups? Because I felt like there was a lot of manufactured drama, and sometimes you’d see a close-up of somebody’s face. And I was like, I’m pretty sure I saw that same, like, stressed out look 45 seconds ago. So I had them actually look, and they’re they would use the same reaction shot sometimes 3, 4 times in an 8 minute clip. And so we were talking about how to get as favorable an edit as possible because when you go to record an episode of Shark Tank, you are in the Shark Tank.

Brittany Hodak [00:22:01]:
It sounds, like, so funny to call it that, but, like, you know, you’re on the stage presenting to the potential investors for about an hour, and I guess sometimes it’s up to a couple of hours. For us, it was right around the hour mark. And then they condensed that down to 7 or 8 minutes for TV. So, obviously, there’s a lot of narrative storytelling that’s happening. There’s a lot of editing that’s happening, and I wanted to make sure we got as favorable an edit as possible. So I had this crazy idea that maybe if we never stopped smiling, they wouldn’t be able to get any of those shots of our faces looking, like, scared or unclear or deer in headlights or whatever. So we practiced this in meetings for, I don’t know, a couple of weeks, and we couldn’t tell anybody that we were doing other than that we were gonna be on Shark Tank. Like, the only people that knew were all of our partners that were helping us get the signatures and clearances and make the, you know, special Zine packs that we made, all of those things, like everybody we had NDAs with.

Brittany Hodak [00:23:03]:
So we probably looked like psychos, to to all of the people that we just happened to randomly meeting be meeting with those couple of weeks because it’s hard to do, like, to talk with a smile on your face and especially when you’re in an environment where the words that you’re saying don’t match a smile. So in the tank, we were, you know, pushing back on one of the sharks who, you know, didn’t believe that we were as successful as we were, which, spoiler alert, he was wrong. And so I’m sure we looked crazy with these big giant smiles on our face, but you know what? It worked, and we got a really favorable edit. And it was definitely a risk because they could have, you know, figured out what we were doing and said, you know, we don’t wanna use this, or they could have said there’s not enough drama here to make this seem, you know, like like they have a chance of not getting a deal, but it worked. So when you find yourself in a situation either designing the experiences that your business is going to deliver or anything else, ask yourself, what are the calculated risks that you can take to increase the odds of things ending the way you want them to end? Even if it’s a little bit unorthodox, even if it’s a little bit left of center, what can you do to increase the odds? Because those calculated risks will lead to the breakthrough moments that make a huge difference or set you apart from your competitors. Alright. The number 8 lesson, you’ve got to be adaptable. So sharks, like literal sharks, are very adaptable.

Brittany Hodak [00:24:43]:
I’ve got 2 boys who know so much about sharks, and so I’ve absorbed a lot of shark knowledge through books and TV shows over the past several years. There are about 500 different species of sharks right now, and here is something insane. There is a shark called the epaulette shark that can actually walk on land, and it is as terrifying as it sounds. It has figured out how to have its fins work like rudimentary legs, and it just, like, walks around when the tide is low around the coral reefs, like, getting food. It’s bananas. But sharks are very adaptable, and the best businesses are adaptable too. Now I was able to be adaptable while I was filming the show, and then after the show is all of the, like, craziness unfolded. But in the CX world, every business have to be has to be adaptable too because what was good enough last year is probably not good enough this year.

Brittany Hodak [00:25:46]:
What’s good enough this year is probably not gonna be good enough next year or the year after that because the competition is getting better all the time. You have to adapt. Just like sharks, they’ve thrived for literally 100 of 1000000 of years or, for anybody who went to school with me in Oklahoma, 6000 years, because that is how old I was taught that the earth was when I was going to school in Oklahoma. So whatever. Let’s just say a bunch of years, sharks have been around, and they adapt constantly to changing conditions. And if you do the same, if you always keep your customers at the center of the decisions that you make and adapt to the market as necessary to continue to super serve them, you will thrive too just like sharks. And you might even come up with some crazy adaptable features, like that bizarre epaulette shark that can walk. When people do talk to me about Shark Tank, one of the questions they always ask is, what was it like after you filmed? And, you know, there’s a a lot of after.

Brittany Hodak [00:26:50]:
Right? The immediate after was really crazy. I don’t I don’t know if I’m supposed to say this or not, but it’s been 10 years, so hopefully I won’t get in trouble. Immediately after you film, you have to meet with a psychologist for it felt like forever, because I guess it’s an insurance thing. When they’re reality TV shows, they don’t wanna have people that are gonna be adversely affected by what happened. So I remember I was so excited. All I wanted to do was call my husband, Jeff, and say, you know, one amazing, things are so great, but I couldn’t because I was trapped for an hour and it felt like an eternity, and he kept saying, you know, how do you feel? And I was like, awesome, because on the show, we had offers from 4 of the Sharks and we ended up doing a deal with 2 of them. So that was kind of the immediate aftermath and then just wondering if the episode was gonna air. I remember getting back to New York and wondering how long it was gonna take for our sharks to reach out to us.

Brittany Hodak [00:27:46]:
I just kept emailing producers and saying, like, do we have 2 business partners now? Like, what’s going on? Why isn’t anybody reaching out? And they kept saying, oh, they’ll they’ll get to you, like, when they get to you. And because we had filmed at the end of the season, I guess there were a lot of other contestants ahead of us. So it took weeks before we heard from the Sharks, not even like a, hey. We’re gonna get to you. We’re so excited about the potential of being business partners with you. So I’m gonna be honest, by the time we finally reconnected, I was a little bummed, that they went, you know, like, weeks weeks weeks weeks weeks without reaching out to us. And then in the ensuing months as we were talking through all the due diligence and, you know, going into all the deal points that you don’t cover on the show because it’s it’s literally like agreeing to marry somebody on a first date and then being like, okay. Peace out.

Brittany Hodak [00:28:38]:
Because after you say yes, you like, what you see on TV where you hug the sharks and then you leave, that’s it. And then we didn’t hear anything, like I said, for it was like a month and a half. So then at that point, when we started talking through all of the finer points of the deal, we were pretty sure it wasn’t gonna be a great fit after all, and we couldn’t decide that we didn’t wanna do the deal until after we knew we are gonna air because you have to, like, if you go on the show and then they you get offered a deal and you don’t do the deal, they’ve almost always don’t show your episode, which makes sense because the sharks that are investing in these companies, they want to, promote the companies that they are investing in. Right? So that was an interesting period of time of we filmed in September, and our episode didn’t air until April. So we found out we were gonna air 3 weeks before we did, then we weren’t sure if we were gonna air or not because ABC mysteriously bumped from the schedule the week that it was gonna air because Diane Sawyer was doing a special interview, and they were promoting it like crazy, and nobody knew if they were gonna air the episode or not. And they had told us if your episode doesn’t air, it probably just, like, goes away. It’s not like they bump it to the next week. It just doesn’t see the light of day.

Brittany Hodak [00:29:57]:
So we were so scared that our episode wasn’t gonna air. We found out about a week ahead of time that it was gonna air. It was gonna just air an hour later, so we had an hour or we had a we had a week to throw together, like, a really fun viewing party for that hour to have all of our friends and clients and everybody that had supported us come to a really fun shark themed watch party, which was great. But all of this to say, my number 9 tip for you is to think about what happens after the experience, or in other words, what is the experience after the experience? Now looking back a decade in the past, I can tell you about so many things. Like, I have the landing pages for so, like, that business doesn’t even exist anymore that I was running for several years. I sold out my equity, gosh, it’s probably been, like, 5 or 6 years ago now, and then very quickly, the company, like, went away. So I own all of the old URLs. I have a ton of landing pages, so when anybody watches it and searches, like, shark tank update, I’ve got landing pages on my website where people can kinda see what I’ve been up to since and what my journey was like from the tank to now being a keynote speaker and an author.

Brittany Hodak [00:31:11]:
But my tip, the number 9 tip, is think about the experience after the experience because too oftentimes, or too often, you can be tempted to look at what your customers’ experiences while they’re with you or in front of you and then not think about it after the fact. The same way the producers and the sharks and everybody was, like, holding our hands, telling us what to do until we filmed. Like, alright. See you see you later. Talk to you when we talk to you. And it was very much like a don’t call us, we’ll call you, which was honestly not great. Like, it kinda, you know, put a sour taste in my mouth. So think about the experiences that your customers have with your products or your services after they leave you, after it’s been delivered, after they picked it up, after they left your office, whatever it is.

Brittany Hodak [00:31:57]:
One of the things that I talk about a lot and try to hammer home is the importance of packaging. If somebody is going to hold your product in their hand in their house or their car or out with friends, what is the story that you’re telling with the packaging? How are you enhancing that experience To have something that you’ve created be in someone’s home or, you know, somewhere that people congregate is a huge honor, and if you take advantage of it, it’s also a huge marketing opportunity. So always think about the experience after the experience. How can you elongate that interaction? How can you make your customer want to come back and give you more money for either more of that same thing that they bought or to try something else? Don’t just think about the experience. Think about the experience after the experience. Alright. The 10th and final CX trick that I have is kinda similar to one of the ones that we talked about before when we were talking about, the need to be adaptable, being willing to take risks, but a little different, and that’s you have to be fearless. When it comes to customer experience, you are gonna have to take risks that you might not be able to justify with a we did this before and it worked.

Brittany Hodak [00:33:16]:
You can feel it to be true in your gut that something that you’re doing makes sense for your customer, that it’s gonna lower your customer acquisition cost, that it’s gonna increase the lifetime value, that customer is gonna come back more frequently, or they’re gonna spend more money, or they’re gonna tell more people. You’ve got to be fearless. You can’t be afraid to try new things, to experiment with new tools. If you’re not using AI right now for your customer experience, you’ve gotta be figuring out ways that you can do that. You can go back and listen to some of the tips that I’ve shared this season. My 2 favorite tips, number 1 is to ask yourself, does this make things better for my customers? Is there something that you can use AI for that you’re automating, or that you’re systemizing that’s going to make things better, faster, quicker, easier right now for your customers? If so, that’s probably worth looking at doing. If the answer to that question is no, then ask yourself the second question, which is, does this free up enough time for my employees to where they’re gonna be able to do something for customers they couldn’t otherwise do to have a net positive impact on your customers? Because oftentimes, it’s not like the introduction of the AI is what’s necessarily improving things for customers. It’s the overall, increase in productivity that your employees have, and now they’re able to do things that they couldn’t before because they’ve freed up a lot of their time.

Brittany Hodak [00:34:39]:
So ask yourself those questions. Be fearless about experimenting, trying new things because, ultimately, the experiences that we remember are the ones that we’re most likely to come back and experience again. So there you go. Those are 10 lessons that have served me well over the past decade. It’s it’s so insane, like I said, that that it’s been so long that it airs. What’s crate since it first aired and since we first recorded it, what’s interesting is because it airs all over the planet, I have people constantly reaching out from countries that I’ve never been to. Honestly, sometimes countries that I, like, bust open Google Maps. I’m like, wait.

Brittany Hodak [00:35:23]:
Where is that again? You know, connecting with me because they thought something resonated. They, you know, heard something in my story that inspired them, or they have questions, or they want tips or advice, and it’s really, really cool to be a part of something that has lasted so long. I mean, Shark Tank is about to start its 15th season, which is nuts, and also also something that is, you know, so well known across the planet. It’s one of those things, like I said, I don’t ever really talk about it. I don’t talk about being on Shark Tank when I’m on stage. It’s not in most of my official bios. I didn’t really write about it in the book. I I had a story that that was about something that sort of was spurred from appearing on on Shark Tank, but it didn’t you know, I didn’t really talk about the experience.

Brittany Hodak [00:36:14]:
But it’s one of the things that I’m asked about more than anything else. So I hope you’ve enjoyed this special episode to commemorate, that crazy experience that I had a decade ago that set me on this journey to not just be fortunate enough to speak on stages, but to be a real leader in the conversation about why super fandom matters, the impact that it has on the economy, the impact that it has on pop culture, on the way things are done, and to try to get other people as obsessed as I am with the idea of using customer experience as a differentiator to create super fans in your business for whatever you do. Because I promise you, no matter what industry you’re in, no matter what you do, you can turn your customers into super fans. You can turn them into loyal, enthusiastic advocates who are so thrilled that they’ve found you, that they wanna pay it back to you and pay it forward to the people they know by making sure as many of the people in their orbit as possible also do business with you. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. I will be back next week, same bat time, same bat channel, with another interview episode of the creating super fans podcast.