Episode Summary
How do I travel 70+ times a year, raise two young kids, and still stay sane?
After more than a year away, I’m excited to kick off Season 4 of Creating Superfans with a behind-the-scenes look at one of the questions I get asked more than almost anything else.
In this solo episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on life as a keynote speaker and sharing the travel hacks, productivity systems, and family routines that help me spend more than 70 trips a year on the road without sacrificing what matters most at home.
From the duplicate-packing strategy that changed everything to the loyalty programs, credit card perks, and hotel hacks that make constant travel easier, I’ll share practical tips you can start using right away. I’ll also talk about the intentional systems my family has created to help my two young sons see my travel as an opportunity rather than a sacrifice.
Whether you’re a frequent traveler, an entrepreneur, or simply trying to balance a busy career with your personal life, I hope this episode gives you ideas to help you travel smarter and live more intentionally.
You’ll learn:
Why I believe work-life balance isn’t about doing everything at once—it’s about being intentional with your time and attention
The packing system that saves me time and eliminates travel stress
How I maximize airline, hotel, and credit card rewards without overcomplicating the process
Simple travel hacks that make frequent trips more comfortable and efficient
The family rituals that help me stay connected while I’m on the road
Listen to the Episode
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Watch on YouTube
Transcription
[00:00:00] I’m Brittany Hodak, and I am thrilled at long last to welcome you to season four of the Creating Superfans podcast. Over the past year and a half while I’ve been out traveling and speaking to audiences around the country, one of the questions that I’ve gotten most often is, “When are you going to bring your podcast back?”
And the answer is I wanted to bring it back before now, but life has just been so crazy and chaotic, uh, that I didn’t have time to record the episodes that I wanted to record and spend time with people that I wanted to interview. So I am thrilled to bring it back, and I couldn’t think of a better way than kicking off the fourth season by covering some of the questions that I get most often about my life on the road.
So as I was thinking about this podcast, I was thinking about something like, you know, how I travel 70 times a year without feeling like I’m missing out on my life, because the reality is I spend a lot of nights away. I’m recording this, uh, in July of [00:01:00] 2026, and I totaled up my numbers for the first half of this year, and I flew 54 times nearly 42,000 miles.
I had 40 events, of which 32 were in person for anywhere from 30 to, like, 4,000 people, and, you know, that’s a lot of nights away. I have two little kids, uh, two boys that are six and almost nine, and one of the questions that people always ask is, like, how do you balance being a mom and life on the road? So I’m gonna get into that a little bit this episode.
Uh, I will talk about the parenting thing, but I’m also gonna talk about just, like, practical tips. So whether you have no kiddos, whether you have a bunch, whether you have grandkids, uh, or whether you don’t travel for work at all and really just travel in your personal life, I promise there are gonna be some really great tips and hacks in here for everyone.
So let’s dive in to season four of the Creating Superfans podcast. Now, one of the [00:02:00] jokes that I tell sometimes on stage is that I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, but not by a doctor, on TikTok, and it feels very legit. Like, I think I definitely have undiagnosed ADHD. And one of the things that I hate doing more than anything in the world is packing and unpacking suitcases, which is a problem for somebody who’s traveling five, six, seven times a month.
Or at least it used to be, until I came up with a hack that is one of my very favorite things. I bought duplicates of everything I pack. Now, I realize that I’m speaking from a place of privilege when I say this. There is a cost associated with many of the things that I’m gonna share in this episode, but I’ve worked up to these things.
I wasn’t necessarily doing all of the things that I’m gonna talk about when I was traveling, like, twice a month or three times a month. But now that I travel all the time, some of these things have become non-negotiable. So everything that I frequently forgot or would, like, [00:03:00] take out of my suitcase to use at home and not put back in, I just bought duplicates of.
So all of my makeup, all of my hair products, uh, the, the blow-dryer that I love that’s a, like, blow-dryer combo brush, the curling iron that I use, my AirPods, every cord, every connector, every power bank, all of the things that I would, like, forget to, to, to pack. Um, my jewelry. I have jewelry that’s just my travel jewelry.
I never wear it when I’m at home. I only wear it, uh, when I’m traveling for work. And all of those things live in my suitcase or my backpack. I even have a specific iPad that I travel with that never comes out of my backpack. It’s only in my backpack. So the only things that I have to pack anytime I’m on a trip are the clothes that I need for that trip, my laptop, and my iPhone.
That’s it. Everything else is taken care of. Now, I’m one of those people who, like, was always r- forgetting where my car keys were. I’m, I love my Tesla now that I drive. One of the reasons I love it so much is because I don’t have a key. [00:04:00] Like, it’s just, it’s all just tied to my phone, and I can use my Apple Watch every time I forget where my iPhone is.
Uh, so that unlocks the car for me. So little hacks and tricks like that have become really helpful. So everything that I have is duplicated, lives in my suitcase. Anytime I’m running low on something, like if a product is, is getting low or I need to replace my toothbrush or something, I always just order it, either on Amazon or walmart.com, depending on what it is, and have it sent to my house, and immediately it goes in the, to the backpack or the suitcase when I get home.
And I don’t use the same backpack when I’m just, like, going to a business meeting in town or something. These are strictly for business travel. I don’t even use the same suitcase when I do, like, family trips. Uh, this is just my business travel stuff. Um- duplicates of, uh, like extras. I have a dress that won’t wrinkle that lives in my suitcase as, like, the backup, because one time I was at an event and I spilled something on myself at breakfast before my [00:05:00] keynote, and I didn’t have a backup dress.
So a couple of times a year I replace it so that it’s, like, seasonally appropriate. Um, and then I’ve got a pair of neutral shoes that’s… I say neutral, they’re, like, rhinestone, but they, they’re gold rhinestone, so they go with a lot of things. Um, that’s the other thing that I’ll replace, like based on what clothes I’m packing for the trip.
So that is a hack that so many of my speaker friends who’ve heard me talk about this and have implemented it have said it has saved them so much, like, sanity. So feel free to incorporate that in, uh, in any way that you can Another hack that, I mean, let’s be honest, like if you travel as much as I travel, you have to look for ways to make it suck less.
Like, you have to… Because the reality is you’re gonna have airport delays, you’re gonna have hotels that, you know, aren’t ready for you to check in yet. Like, all of those types of things that just happen, and it’s no fun when you’re on like your fifth [00:06:00] five-hour flight delay of the month, and that recently happened.
June was a really crazy travel month for me because of like storms all over the country. So, um, one of the other things that has really made things better is I have the Amex Platinum card, and the, it, it has a hefty fee. It’s, I think it’s like $850 a year, maybe even $900 a year for the fee, but I get almost all of that back dollar for dollar just in the things that the card pays for, and then a tremendous multiple on that value in terms of like the points and the other things that it unlocks.
So as part of that card, I get Uber credits, I get Hyatt credits. They pay for my Clear and PreCheck. Um, there are airline credits, there are rental car credits. Um, immediately I get higher level of access with a couple of the hotel chains, uh, which is really nice, right? Um, one of the things about being a keynote [00:07:00] speaker is I don’t usually get credit for the hotel nights, although I’ll share a hack about that, too.
Um, so having a card that elevates you from sort of like everyday traveler status to higher priority loyalty status with these hotel brands makes a big difference, and you get it with, I think it’s Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriott are the three brands that you get it with the American Express Platinum card.
So even just that makes the check-in a little nicer, because like my room is more likely to get updated, and there’s usually like, you know, a gift, which maybe is like, you know, a bag of nuts and a candy bar and a couple bottles of water or something. But when it’s like 11:00 PM and you’ve been flying all day, and you’ve gotta be up at 5:30, 6:00 AM the next morning to get ready for an AV check- That’s, like, a really nice thing to have.
So I highly, highly recommend, uh, the Amex card. I am not great at, like, using the points. I think at this point I have, like, a half a million points that at some point I’ll cash in and [00:08:00] use for things. Um, but okay, here’s the other Havel hack that a check-in agent at a Marriott shared with me about a year and a half ago.
And I was like, “Oh my gosh, how have I stayed in hundreds and hundreds of hotel rooms and never knew this?” I mentioned that I usually don’t get credit for spending the night because it’s on, like, the master event, uh, bill. Like, the, the client has, you know, the room block and they’re, they’re paying for a bunch of them together.
So the points or the nights go to that master account. And this check-in agent said, “Oh, what you need to do is charge something to your room.” So, you know, if it’s, like, room service dinner, that obviously qualifies. But if y- you know, a lot of times I’m only at a hotel for, like, 13 hours, and I’m sleeping for a big chunk of that, so I’m not ordering something.
But you can charge, like, a coffee, you can charge a bottle of water at the gift shop, anything you want, and instead of paying with your credit card, charge it to the room. And that room charge at many hotel chains is enough for you to get the [00:09:00] credit for that night stayed, even if somebody else is covering the, you know, $300, $400 hotel tab and you just charge, like, a $6 bottle of water to your room.
So feel free to try that hack too. Okay. Um, earlier this year I spoke at the National Speakers Association event called Thrive, and it was so wonderful, um, to see so many friends and get to present to so many speakers. And I was on a panel with some dear friends of mine, and I got a question at the very end that was about traveling with young kids and asking how I balance that, how I manage it.
And so I wanna address that because I got more emails and DMs and texts from people in that audience than about, like, most other things that I spoke about that day. Uh, which is funny, right? I was like, oh my gosh, people think I’m like a, like a lifestyle speaker now if they don’t know me. Um, when obviously my, my whole world is about customer experience.
Um, but here, here are some of the things that I shared. Number [00:10:00] one, um, things got dramatically better for my kids when I did a massive reframe in what my travel is about. Because for a long time it felt like I was leaving them. Like, I was, like, leaving home life to go do business life. And I remember my oldest son, who’s now almost nine, um, would say, like, “Why do you have to have clients?
Like, can’t you just have kids?” And of course, it would, you know, break my heart. And so one day, when he was probably, I think he was, like, five or six, he said, “You know, I know they pay you, and you tell stories sometimes on stage about me, and so I think I should get money for your keynotes.” And I was like, “Oh, you do, do you?”
And he was like, “Yeah, and so should Jones,” who is his little brother. And I said, “Okay, well, how much money do you think you and Jones should get every time Mom has an event?” And he thought about it for a second and he said, ” $20 [00:11:00] each, even if that’s more than your clients are paying you.” And I said, “Okay, well, I’m very, uh, impressed that you are, like, including your little brother in this negotiation,” ’cause at the time little brother may not have even been three years old yet.
And I said, “Well, you know, Mom has responsibilities when I travel, and you have responsibilities at home. So I will give you $20, but only if you meet the criteria that you need to meet at home for me to be able to travel.” So my husband Jeff and I sat down and we made, like, a very simple list. It’s, it’s literally, like…
And it’s evolved a little bit as they’ve gotten a little earlier, or a little bit older. It used to be, like, brush your teeth, uh, eat your dinner, go to bed on time without complaining. Now we’ve added things like homework and some of the chores around, like, the pets, and just household things. Um, but every time I am on the road, my boys both have the opportunity to earn $20 per keynote that I give.
So sometimes I’m just gone for one night, sometimes I’m gone for, like, three nights, and that’s [00:12:00] up to three keynotes. Um, but they have the, the opportunity to earn $20 per keynote. Now, what that does, other than ch- change it, it flipped it from, like, I’m bummed Mom is out of town, to I’m so excited Mom has such a busy quarter because, like, now I can buy a Nintendo Switch too.
Um, or I can buy a lot of Pokémon cards. And that flip is really powerful. I think, you know, like, psychologically for the kids, like, they understand this is my job. There’s, like, a, like, a transactional, uh, financial reason that I’m leaving. I’m not, like, choosing to be somewhere else instead of home. But what it also does is give them a sense of responsibility, and give Dad some really powerful leverage.
So if they’re, you know, misbehaving or something, he now has the power to be like, “Well, okay, well, you’re now down to $15 for this keynote, and knock it off right now or it’s gonna be 10,” or whatever it is. Um, so that is one of the hacks that, I don’t know, I, I joke sometimes raising kids is like- Buying stocks but not knowing for a really long time, [00:13:00] like, what’s gonna happen.
Um, so we’ll see, uh, how net, like, positive, uh, or negative this is long run. But, um, for now it’s been really, really effective, and I love that my kids are always thinking about ways to be entrepreneurial. They’re like, “Could I monetize this?” or, “Would somebody pay for this?” or, “Is this a good business idea?”
And I think that comes from me involving them in my business. So another thing that I do is, like, a little bit controversial I think, um, among my friends. Like, I have some friends whose kids have no idea what their keynote fee is. They have no idea how much money they’re making. They have no idea about anything in their business.
I sit my kids down regularly. My older son is more interested in it. He and I do this probably, like, not, not quite once a month, but, like, more than once a quarter, where, like, I show him my books. We go over the numbers, and he’ll be like, “Wow, Mom, you, like, really paid a lot for that advertising rebrand,” or, “Wow, like, the flight costs really went up.”
But he’s so interested in it. He knows exactly what my fee is. He will ask me sometimes, uh, if [00:14:00] I’m speaking somewhere that’s, like, in a foreign country or somewhere that I don’t do a lot of stuff in. He’ll, he’ll, he wants to know, like, what was my fee, and he’ll be like, “Was there one bureau on this or two?”
Like, “What was the commission?” Like, he’s so interested in it, and I think it’s cool to be able to expose your kids to, to that depth of it. Again, we’ll see, like, five, 10 years from now maybe. Maybe that’s the right decision. Maybe it’s the wrong decision. But it feels right for us in the moment. Now, the other thing that I do, um, with my kids, but this is something that I- you can do with anybody in your life, um, anytime you travel, is we have rituals.
So for instance, I… unless I am on stage delivering my keynote, I always speak to my boys on the drive to school. They know when they get in the car, Dad’s gonna call me. Now, what that does is, again, help Dad like get them out the door in the morning because they know when they get in the car, they’re gonna get to talk to Mom.
And then we talk on the way to school, and I get to wish them a great day. The only time that doesn’t happen is if I [00:15:00] am speaking or if I’m in a crazy different time zone. Like I was in Hawaii a couple of weeks ago. They’re not in school right now ’cause it’s summer, but if they were, I would have woken up at, you know, f- 3:45 AM or whatever the, whatever the difference was to be able to do that because I know how much that ritual means to my kids.
Um, my youngest son, Jones, always wants to know what’s outside of the hotel room window. So we will FaceTime as soon as I get in the hotel, and I’ll walk around and show him the hotel room and show him what’s outside. Uh, my oldest son likes to see, um, what seat I’m in in the airplane. So I always send a selfie, uh, when I sit down, and he then knows, like he likes to know like where am I sitting and, and what is my seat.
Um, I’ve gotten away… The, the $20 per keynote thing really helped get away from buying all of the junk. It got to a point where my husband was like, “Stop buying airport stuffed animals. Stop bringing these like weird things home from hotels, uh, or weird, uh, like tchotchkes from the, from the trade shows,” because I’m [00:16:00] usually flying in and out of cities.
Um, that’s another part of like trying to maximize the number of bedtimes that I miss or the number of nights away. Um, and so there’s a few things that I do that my kids enjoy more than souvenirs is when I go somewhere that has something really special or unique about it, I will bring something that like makes sense for, for that.
So I’ve broughten- I’ve brought some like really cool like Native American artifacts when I’ve been in like Arizona or New Mexico. Um, anytime I’m somewhere that there’s sand, if I’m at a beach, one of the things that my kids really loved when they were younger, I feel like they’re about to age out of it, which bums me out a little bit, is doing a treasure hunt.
So I don’t even remember where I did this for the first time, maybe California or Florida, but I, I filled up a bottle. It actually may have been Hawaii a few years ago when I went to Hawaii. But I filled up a bottle, like a water bottle, with sand from the beach, but I put a bunch of really cool shells in it.
And if you’re gonna do this, you have to use, uh, actually like the, uh, Gold Peak iced tea bottles [00:17:00] work really well because they’ve got like a nice big rim on top. So you can put in like shells and rocks and sea glass and other fun things, and it became like a treasure hunt when I got home. And my kids, who love kinetic sand and like all the things, um, they use their little sand tools to search through the sand and then discover all of these seashells.
And of course, they thought those were the seashell- seashells that just, like, happened to be in it, but I had spent some considerable time finding, like, cool things that I knew that they would enjoy. And I think one year I brought them sand back from maybe five states. Um, yeah, I think it was California, Florida, Texas Alabama and maybe Hawaii was the other one.
Um, but they, that, they thought it was so cool. They were, like, looking at the sand, looking at the stuff. I’ve brought them really cool rocks from lots of places, and that’s so much better than, like, a stuffed animal. If I go somewhere cool that I can get them, you know, like a meteorite or an arrowhead or something else that they have their little, [00:18:00] like, collections, uh, they’re really into that.
So, um, TLDR, find something cool that’s meaningful to the people in your life that’s not just, like, a dumb thing that you’re doing to, you know, feel less guilty at the airport and bring home to them. Okay. Um, some of the other things that I have learned is that you have to make things non-negotiable in your calendar.
For many people who are entrepreneurs or work demanding jobs, like, your calendar will fill up if you let it. There are always going to be more things to do. There are always going to be more things that you could fill your time with. One of the things that I’ve really struggled with over the years is saying no to people.
Um, when you’re just getting started out as an entrepreneur or if you’re in sales just getting, starting out and you don’t have a lot of leverage yet with the success that you’ve found, like, your time is your leverage. Saying yes is your leverage, getting to know people, going on a million, like, coffee dates and lunch dates.
And one of the things that I’ve really had to shift [00:19:00] is not doing that so much. As I’ve gotten more successful, as I’ve had my kids and spent, you know, more time away from them because I’m speaking more and more, is I’ve had to get really diligent about saying no to things that sound fun so that I can say yes to spending more time with my husband and our kids.
So, uh, any of my friends, um, or, like, acquaintances can tell you I very rarely say yes to an invite when somebody is in Nashville. If it’s during the day and my kids are in school and I happen to be in town, yeah, I would love to have lunch with you. But I’m not gonna go have breakfast with somebody ’cause I don’t wanna miss my kids in the morning.
I’m not gonna have dinner because I don’t wanna, you know, miss putting my kids to bed. And so being very intentional about these are the days that are off limits, and these are the times that are off limits for when I’m home. Um, one of the other things that I’m incredibly privileged to have is a, a husband who stays at home.
That was a decision that he and I [00:20:00] made together three years ago when my career really took off as a speaker. Um, in 2022, I think I had 20 speaking events, something like that. My book came out in January of 2023. It’s hard to believe it’s been three and a half years, but it… Actually, I’m recording this on July 10th, so it’s my book’s half birthday.
It’s three and a half years old today. Um, and We made the decision that at the end of 2023, he would quit his job and stay home with the kids, because I went from traveling 20 times a year to almost 60 times a year. And I’ve traveled at least 60 times a year every year since then, speaking. Um, so that is another decision that we made to, like, find more of that balance.
Um, I talked a little bit before about bringing my sons into my business world. Um, another thing that I’m really intentional about doing is traveling for fun. So in addition to all of the travel that I do for work, we do [00:21:00] a lot of personal travel. Uh, we just got back from a week in Oklahoma to see family.
We’re leaving in a few hours to go to Michigan for a week to see family. But when it’s the kids’ birthdays, we travel, which, here’s, like, a good parent hack too. Sometimes taking your kids on a weekend trip to a theme park is easier than planning a birthday party for all the friends and classmates. So that’s, like, a hack that we found accidentally.
So now every year on their birthdays, our kids get the choice, do they wanna do a trip or do they wanna do a party? And most of the time they choose a trip, which is really cool. Um, and then, you know, like spring break trips, fall break trips, all of those things, again, blocking out the time on the calendar so that they aren’t overrun by a, by a request to speak on that date.
But highlighting the opportunities that exist because of the work that I do. So if we check into a hotel and we get a really nice room upgrade, or if we’re flying and we get upgraded to first class, I’m always very intentional to say, “You know, I know it’s no fun when [00:22:00] mom’s gone for, for a few nights a month, but the fact that I’m gone for a few nights a month is why we’re on this trip right now, and also why our flight got upgraded, or why our rooms got upgraded.”
So always showing them the positive that comes with what I do, and not just the negative. Now, something that I will say about airlines. So last year, I think I flew 103 times last year, and about 65 of those were on Southwest Airlines. I live in Nashville, so the two airlines that it typically makes the most sense for me to fly are Southwest and American.
I love Delta flights. I know so many people who are, like, super Delta loyal, but we’re so close to Atlanta that there aren’t that many direct cities. I feel like I only fly Delta to, like, Minneapolis or, um, like the West Coast occasionally. Um, and same with United. I fly United to, like, Chicago or the Northeast, but it just doesn’t always make a lot of sense for other routes.
So I’m very intentional about making sure I always fly Southwest enough to get my companion pass, and I fly enough [00:23:00] on American Airlines to keep my executive platinum status. In years where I have been afraid one of those was gonna, like, dip down, I, like, got the credit card and then put some money on the credit card to ensure that I would stay at executive platinum or stay at, um, A-list preferred with companion pass on Southwest.
So even though I mentioned before most things go on the American Express pl- Express Platinum card, I’m always thinking about how to, like, maximize the benefits from those other travel cards, too. When I am flying on United or Delta, I will pay to make the boarding experience or the flight experience a little better.
So whether that means buying first class seats, whether that means paying for expedited boarding or a better seat on the plane, because I don’t have those benefits when I fly on those airlines, ’cause I just, like, don’t fly on them enough Okay, I think I’ve hit on most of the things that have made things easier for me, simpler for me.
Um, one [00:24:00] myth that I want to kinda dispel, and again, this is, this is kind of, uh, usually when people pose the question to me, they’re posing the question to me as a mom of young kids, but I feel like it’s applicable for everyone, is people say like, “How do you balance it?” Or, “How do you, you know, how do you do it?”
And like, the truth is, I don’t, and I don’t think anyone can because it’s not about trying to like do it all at the same time. It’s trying to be like in- super intentional and present when you’re traveling, and try to have to do as little of the work stuff as you can when you’re with, you know, maybe for you it’s your friends, your spouse, or in my instance, like, you know, friends and spouse, but, but also kids.
So, um, I hope that you have found some fun tips from this episode. If there’s one thing that I want you to start doing right now, it’s think about what can you buy duplicates of, because I promise you that will make traveling so much easier and better. If you’re not being mindful about the ways that you’re using your credit cards, definitely start to think about that because there are [00:25:00] so many things that, you know, like I said, with the, the benefits that I get from having, uh, the travel cards that just really make travel and life easier.
And if you do have little ones, I want you to think about what is their experience of you being gone. And if you travel as much as I do, or even half as much as I do, are there simple reframes that you can do to take it from, “I am bummed my parent is gone,” to, “It’s really cool that I get to do X, Y, Z because my parent has this, you know, non-traditional job, or this job that takes them away”? Well, now that we’re back, I am so, so thrilled to tease some of the things that are gonna happen this season on the Creating Superfans podcast.
I’ve recorded a ton of episodes already. There are more tips episodes like this to come, but even more exciting are the episodes that I have with leaders, marketers, entrepreneurs, and fascinating people that you are gonna learn so, so much from. So if you’re watching this video on YouTube, be sure to subscribe.
[00:26:00] Be sure to follow if you’re listening to it on your favorite podcast platform so that you get the new episodes as they come up. We’ll be on a weekly cadence this season for 20 or so episodes, and like I said, this is for sure the best season yet. We’ve had some incredible guests in the past, but I’m really, really excited about the conversations and the depth of things that we’re getting into in season four, so it won’t disappoint.
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