#95: Brit Morin, Founder of Brit + Co. Asks You to Be Messy, Get Creative, & Take the Leap

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I'm ready for my close up.

Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited you're back here with me yet again. So thanks for joining me. Okay, I need to give you some updates, some crazy things. Someone brought this up to me on LinkedIn in a post, randomly asking me what happened with HarperCollins leadership and my book. All right, so let me just. I'm gonna give you the quick overview. I pitched myself to my agent 14 times. She said no. On the 15th time, she said yes to my book proposal. We sent the proposal out, I think to Maybe it was 10 or 15 different publishing houses. The first five came back, no. I was freaking out. And then we got a bunch of yeses. We decided on HarperCollin's leadership, and I'm glad we did. I have a great relationship with my Janet Harper. She's awesome, totally gets me, Gets the book and is pushing me to be better, which I love. Okay. You gotta be around people who are pushing you to do the work and be better, even though it can be frustrating sometimes. So let me explain what I mean by that. So I had, I believe it was a 65,000 word count obligation contract with Harper that I had to deliver a 65,000 word word manuscript on December 1st.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was December 1st. Okay. So I ended up writing 65,000 plus 8,000 words, which I thought was nice of me. I thought that, oh, my gosh, they get this for free. They didn't pay for that, you know, but whatever. Anyways, bottom line is, I had no idea about the publishing business. And what I found out is that going 8,000 words over is a huge financial problem. So while I thought it was so nice of me, they. Not so much. So they said to me, listen, cut 8,000 words and get back to us. Well, that was a nightmare, right? Because you write a book with stories and lessons and learnings, and you structure it in a way that you spent months working on. And then someone tells you, it's like, you know, just drop part of it or I don't even know. So I ended up completely removing the Q and A sections. I ended up cutting one complete chapter out, or maybe even two. I don't know. It was a rough road. But I've submitted it back to them now for this next round of consideration. Waiting to hear back from them, and they told me I should hear in the next two Weeks. Well, to give you even more color on this, when the pandemic was going on and we were still in quarantine, book sales plummeted across the industry, and publishing houses needed to cut costs. So one of the phone calls I got during the pandemic was, hey, Heather. It was me, my agent, and my point person from Harper on the phone. And she says, hey, Heather, wanted to run something by you today. So I was all excited. I'm like, okay, what is it? And she says, well, you know, the book business is really struggling right now, and I'm reaching out, and I'm reaching out to all of our authors. We're gonna go ahead and let you know we're not gonna produce a hardcover on your book. I said, what? And this is super funny. There's some moments dealing in this book world where I know I'm a rookie and I have no idea what I'm doing, aka, you know, going 8,000 words over my word count, which I had agreed to. I just didn't know. And so when they told me that, I understood, holy cow. It's all about printing charges, and this wasn't forecasted. And I can't just do that. Right? That wasn't my idea or option. I didn't have that option. I understood that, however, when she called and said to me, hey, we're going to go ahead and not create a hardcover, I just defaulted to myself, right? I just deferred to my instinct. And I'm on the phone, not in person with my agent, not in person with my Harper Collins point person. And I just said, wait a minute. Pump the brakes. Absolutely not. And I just went with my gut and my instinct that, no, I have already written a book, Confidence Creator, which is an amazing book. If you haven't read it yet, you have to. The reviews on it are sick. People love this book, and I love this book. It's so fricking good. I'm really proud of my first book. However, a lot of people bought the hardcover, and anytime I'm doing a speaking engagement, people want me to sign the hardcover. So, listen, I haven't written 20 books, right? But I've written one, and this is my second one. I know enough that people want that hardcover, especially for gifts, right? When people are giving someone a gift, they don't want to give them a paperback. They want to give them a hardcover. My book comes out in November, right before the holidays. I know it's going to be gifted to people. So I just said, no. I said, absolutely not. Now, of course, Looking back on it, that was kind of risky because I had zero relationship with them. I'm an unknown author in this new. I don't have some big author name like Brene Brown with millions of books sold. You know, I'm this unknown author, and they're taking a risk on me in some ways. I don't really think so, but I'm sure in some ways they think so anyhow. So I just. I leaned into me full force. I was not taking that answer. I was not gonna not have a hardcover. That was crazy to me. So I very forcefully said, no. I said, that's not gonna happen. And I said, listen, here's the thing, and I understand how business works. There are other places you can cut. I said, but we're not gonna cut my hardcover. It's just not gonna happen. And I have too much intel into my audience, especially my business driven LinkedIn audience, knowing those people will pay top price for a hardcover.

So.

So I understand your challenges and I empathize with you, but this is one book that will have a hardcover, and I get that some of your other books just won't. And that was essentially what I said to her, and it was cool. She immediately said, I hear your conviction and passion in your voice, and I completely get your concern, Heather. She said, but now I need your help. She said, I have to sell this up the food chain. Then you have to give me some data as to why we need to provide a hardcover on your book and we should be cutting somebody else's. And I said, you know what? That fair enough. Okay, let me go do a little bit of legwork. Let me come up basically what she needed. She needed me to craft a pitch as to why Heather Monahan's book should be able to have a hardcover. And so I did that. I went and pulled the numbers and I, you know, obviously sales is my thing. I've been in sales my entire life, but, you know, specifically 20 plus years in corporate America. So I just said, all right, put myself in her shoes. She needs to sell them. As to why this hardcover will sell and make them money, and not creating it will cost them money. So March 2020 was when my book proposal was submitted to them, and I grabbed that proposal and I updated all of the stats throughout the marketing portion. So there's all these stats in there in regards to downloads of my podcast, followers on LinkedIn, followers on Instagram, profile views on LinkedIn, comments on LinkedIn, whatever, all this stuff. And I updated all the numbers, and thankfully, I had been working really hard on growing my social media, growing my community, you know, and the stats, they don't lie. So when I submitted the book proposal a year ago, I believe it had 8 million views on my LinkedIn. Well, when I updated the numbers and ran the reports and I gave them the screenshots of everything, it wasn't, you know, my word, it was the stats pulled from the platforms. It was at 25 million. So exponential growth, huge growth. And so I basically showcased and I had huge growth on Facebook, Pinterest, a bunch of different places randomly. And so I highlighted all of the growth points and basically made the pitch that while I completely understood book sales were down and that there was a concern around an audience paying, you know, $25 or $30 for a hardcover book. I ran the numbers on my audience. I showed the average income of my audience, which is pretty high, and I show the average income of my podcast listeners. And I, you know, I. I got into the detail, the pitch with the data to support it, and I never, ever heard back on it again, which basically means, you know, it was approved. And so she needed my help to help her save my hardcover. And I was grateful she shared that with me so I could provide the data and the work and the reporting to support her and me and get this done. Okay, so that was one of the bumps along the way. Well, then I got a note a couple of weeks ago saying, hey, Heather, I don't know if we had this conversation, but I'm pretty sure we're just gonna move forward with a plain cover with just the title written on the COVID And I replied back, no, we are not. That is not a conversation that we've had. No. And number one, and number two, no, I have a personal brand, and there is recognition for, you know, my face. And to me, I look at Rachel Hollis's books, and her face is front and center on all of them. I look at Marie Forleo's books, her face is front and center, right? These people who have these personal brands and podcasts and social media presence, they're leveraging their face so people will say, oh, I know who that is. Okay, I'll grab the book. That's familiar, right? It might not be the only selling point, but there is a portion of the audience that's gonna connect with that and say, hey, I know that girl. Yeah, I wanna, you know, I wanna read her book. I said, so, no, I don't want it just to be a white cover with red writing with the title. No, I want my likeness on There. So she replies back to me, this is only a couple weeks ago. Well, if that's the case, Heather, we need the photo now. And I'm like, what are you talking. I have. This is so crazy. Doing something new like this, Doing a book with a publisher is so incredibly different than when you do it on your own. When you do it on your own, you are in charge. It is your timeline. You now everything I do is on their timeline. And I'm in the dark. I have no idea. Now that I've done it once, the next book will be easier. Cause I'll know what to expect. But this time it's been very confusing. So I think to myself, I'll never forget I was driving to my son's school to get him when this was going on on my email. And when I got to the school, I stopped and thought, okay, let's go to my file and send a couple of photos. Cause I. I don't. I didn't have any time to go do new photos when she needed the photo now. And so I just went real quick through my Dropbox and sent a couple of photos over. And she really quickly said no to a few. And then I didn't hear from her again. And I replied back, hey, is there any way I could pull together a photo shoot real quick? Because I have some ideas on what I'd like it to look like. I just need, you know, maybe two weeks to get on my photographer's schedule or whatever. I don't hear back. And so then I just went out and did some photos and I loved how one of them turned out. I sent it to her. The same day I send her this photo, she sends me back all these mockups of a book cover with my face and likeness on it. I don't love the picture, but whatever, right? At least I got on the COVID And she said, you know what? We really like this photo. This one that I don't like, but whatever. And she said, I think we wanna move forward with this. And so I'm just letting you know, this is the crazy highs and lows of working in a new industry with people that you don't have rapport with, different expectations, and it's just. It is a wild ride. But for the win, right? We got the hardcover. Hooray. We had to cut the 8,000 words. But you know what? I'm again deferring to them. They're experts in this. And hopefully it made the book better. And then finally we got the win on. I get my likeness and image of me on the COVID Even though it's not the one I picked, it's not the one that I was, you know, hoping for. That's okay. Again, deferring to them and their expertise and excited that we did get the win. So I will take the win, shock it up and keep it moving. So that is answering someone's question that actually remembered I had posted about not getting to have my face on the COVID and they wanted to know what happened. So yeah, we are getting the face on the COVID although we don't have the final version yet. They are working on it and I'm still super excited and really grateful that my Harper conspoint person is willing to work with me on these things. When I definitely, I don't roll over, you know, immediately when they, when they share with me what they'd like to do for these certain issues and topics, I definitely fight for what I believe in. So hopefully in the end, it makes it all worth it. Okay, so we will be right back. You are going to love my next guest. A different guest each week.

Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet my guest today, Britt Morin. She's the host of Teach Me Something New podcast, the author of the bestselling book A Domestic Handbook for the Digital Generation. As well as running her massive company, Brit & Company, Britt has received accolades such as A.D. age 40 under 40, Adweek's Creative 140, Forbes 30 under 30, Fortune's Most Promising Entrepreneurs, Refinery 29, 30 under 30, one of Parent magazine's Most Influential Millennial Moms, and one of Elle magazine's American Women at 30. Oh, my gosh. These are a lot of accolades. As a CEO of Britco, she's created a destination that inspires and educates women on how to be creative, which we will dive into, as well as her new business, Self Made, which I can't wait to hear about. Brit, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. All those 30 under 30s made me feel young, but unfortunately, I'm not under 30 anymore. So sorry, everyone listening.

That is the word when the cutoff comes. I was speaking for a YPO event the other day and someone said, oh, you know, why aren't you in ypo? And I figured out, oh, I missed the cutoff shoot. If you missed these cutoffs, you're screwed, people.

I know. Where's the like 60 under 60? Because we need to get that group.

Going in my life. Yes, I need one of those. Thank you. All right, so one of the things that sticks out about you, besides all of your success, obviously, is how creative and curious you are. Has this been the way you were even as a kid? Or is this something that happened through business?

No, actually, it was something as a kid that I was just really into creating new things. I wanted to be an inventor at first, first. And so, you know, I was constantly, like, burning stuff, breaking stuff. Like, literally, I burned my hair off. At one point, I was just tinkering around my house. And then, you know, my parents were both working parents. They were usually gone, leaving me to fend for myself. And so I would find scraps of fabric and I saw a sewing machine in the closet. So, like, I'll teach myself how to sew, you know, There wasn't a Google or YouTube around at that point. I just had to, like, trial by error my way through fulfilling this creative passion of mine. And over time, it just turned me into a really creative girl. I loved hosting parties and events. I sewed my own bedspread, I sewed clothes. I was decorating everything and really just learning how to make things for me. And at the end of the day, that's what being an entrepreneur is. So, you know, when I became one at 25, it didn't feel that different from that life I lived as a little girl.

When you were a little girl and you were living that creative life, were you thinking to yourself, wow, I'm going to make this into a business? Or you didn't even contemplate that far ahead?

Oh, I was definitely thinking about businesses. I have a whole list of my inventions that I wanted to create as a little girl, and some of them have come to fruition today through other companies, which I'm still pissed about, but some have not, and I'm still wondering if I should make them. I was also a Girl Scout and I was the cookie seller of the year at age 9, which maybe I should have taken more seriously as a clue that I was supposed to be an entrepreneur. Because at the end of the day, being an entrepreneur is just about selling yourself, your company, your product, to investors and to customers, and that's the key to it all. At the end of the day, I'm.

So happy that you said that, because my whole background in corporate America was in sales. And as a newer entrepreneur, that makes me happy to see that you see so much value in the sales aspect of it. So you didn't just launch into the entrepreneurial world, though. You went the corporate trail for a while.

Yeah, well, I was fascinated by creativity But I was equally fascinated by technology. And so as a teenager, I was really torn. I was taking computer science classes and I had heard about this magical place called Silicon Valley. This is like the late 90s, you know. But I also loved creativity and I thought maybe I should move to LA or New York and be like an artist or a designer or work in media. And I ended up getting a job at Apple when I was 20 because I was graduating college early. But I also had an opportunity to join the Jimmy Kimmel show in LA back when it was just starting. No one knew who this guy was. And I remember that being such a crossroads in my life because I chose Apple and I was really concerned I was making the wrong decision. But choosing Apple meant that I chose tech. I chose Silicon Valley. I got the experience of a lifetime seeing what these big companies like Apple and Google were like in the first few years they were started. And ultimately I built the network that I really needed at the time and that have gone on to propel me into what I'm doing today.

How did you make that choice? When you look back between Kimmel and.

Apple, you know, at the time for Apple, it was still hard to sell ipods to people, to be honest. So it wasn't like the fancy company, you know, biggest company in the world that it is today. But Kimmel was also this unknown entity. And as sexy as I thought it would be to work in television, like I said, I knew the Internet was this magical thing that was going to create so much opportunity and would transform so many industries. And so I chose Apple because I believed in the future that it could provide not just me, but the world. And how being akin to Silicon Valley within Apple would expose me to so many more opportunities for my career.

Prit, that was so powerful what you just shared. And I want to shine a light on this, that making a decision in business based on the future and looking forward to forward is so important and just to give a little color. I was in the radio business for 20 years. I never picked my head up to say I wonder what other industries are in growth phase so that I don't need to be in an industry in decline and be working so hard to achieve numbers and achieve growth. It's so important to pick your head up out of your industry and look at trends and what's happening. And what a great. Thank goodness you did that. Not, not to knock Kimmel, but obviously Apple was the right choice for you.

Yeah, and Kimmel turned out to be okay too. So, you know, he found Himself a team that did just fine.

So from Apple you moved to where else? Google.

Yeah, where else? I know. And I was even afraid of doing that because, I mean, Apple was so cool. It's very trendy, very designy. A lot of my creative fires were being stroked there, but. And Google was kind of dorky and nerdy, but like, so interesting. And what I learned working at Google was like, how to make data driven decisions. Like, we literally tested a shade of blue on 100 times on a specific button on a specific landing page to see which shade of blue got the most click. And like, it's not just two shades. Like, we literally tested all the shades of blue and used that data to update the landing page. Like, the maniacal amount of like, detail orientation that went into my career at Google was like, fascinating. And I, at 25, I was given a $50 million budget to manage to launch Google TV, which is like unheard of. The amount of responsibility that they give you there because they trust that they've hired really smart people is absolutely parallel to none. And I often tell people I got my MBA working at Google, so I was so happy. I did go into the corporate world before entrepreneurship because I learned a ton and made a lot of great friends.

Oh my gosh, you're dropping major knowledge here. The next key is data doesn't lie. Leverage data. And that's again, such a powerful teaching. Quick example, when I wrote my first book, I self published and I didn't see through the lens of, wow, I've got to test everything. And I just said, speed to market, I want a product to sell. And I skipped over all of the data. Clearly could have done that differently. Now I'm launching a book with HarperCollins leadership and every, I mean every detail. Brit. It's painstaking, but I know they're right because it goes back to data doesn't lie. They test everything from the title, the font, the blue, every shade of blue. So I know that I'm in good hands and I challenge everyone listening to use your data, leverage your data, because it will steer you in a better direction for sure.

It's also one of the first things I tell new entrepreneurs, like so often. They get so afraid to put out their idea into the world. But literally, if you build a landing page that just like has a paragraph about the thing you're building, maybe a picture of it and a sign up now button, like, you can just see in the data how many people are interested and if it catches fire and maybe you should build 10 versions of that to see. Test, test 10 different ideas. You know, a lot of people are stuck in between ideas. What should they choose? So just put it out there, test it. You know, it's like Tim Ferriss, to your point about books, literally bought AdWords on his own dime to test the four hour workweek that was the most clicked on ad for his book. And he tested like a hundred variations of that title. So it's so true. And as much as my like creative, artistic heart hates making data driven decisions sometimes because I just want to go with my gut, the data doesn't really lie. And the best is when you compare those two things together.

Oh, it's so true. That's when it's pure magic. Okay, so how did you get yourself to walk away from such an amazing job with so much responsibility, with amazing people?

Very good question. My parents asked me the same thing.

I bet they were like rated the.

Number one place to work for like three years in a row while I was at Google. And like there was frozen yogurt like 10ft from my desk and like a bouncy house. It was just like the most insane thing ever. And the truth is I knew that at 25 I probably had a narrow window where I didn't have kids at the time. I wasn't married, I had six months of savings under my belt and all these entrepreneurial ideas I'd wanted to try my entire life. And so worst case scenario, if I spent six months figuring out if I should be an entrepreneur and testing out one of the ideas and it failed, I knew I could go get a job either back at Google or somewhere else. I had something on my resume, I was a smart person, I could go back to the corporate world. And if I didn't try at 25, when else would I do it? I knew that I would probably get into getting married, having kids. It's so busy, I'm not sleeping and, and I just wouldn't do it. And then I do think the naivete of being young really helps you sometimes. It's like pretty clear that a lot of young people start companies because they just don't know what they're getting into. And frankly, I'm glad I did that back then. That's not to say though that you can't start a company at any age. I mean, I've worked with 70 year old women who are starting companies and it's just as powerful of an experience for them too.

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So what was the, the final moment that you said, you know, what now is I have to do it now. Was there an actual tipping point that occurred for you?

It was my four year anniversary, to be honest, at Google. It felt like I had literally done my college MBA or something. Like you know, every four years I, at that point I was also just like repeating patterns. I had built three different products within Google. You know, I knew how to launch a product. I knew how to work with engineers and product managers. But most importantly, back to the data. I saw in the data that how to search queries on Google and YouTube were always the top search queries of the year and they skewed female. And yet the search results behind them from like ehow.com and these like really boring websites were not really that interesting to me, who at the time was 25 and I thought to myself, oh, I wish I could help women like me find like the tools and the instructions and how to get smarter and how to do things. And at the time also Pinterest had started and that was amassing a massive following with all women. And I was like, women want to learn shit. Like I can teach them shit. I like creating stuff. Like, I should do this. I think frankly too, as I was preparing for my wedding, which was later that year, I fell back in love with diy. And actually the data does show now that we've done all this research that women on average get married at 26 and that correlates to the same time point where women start to believe in their creative confidence again. There are a bunch of studies on this. And so I really do think that getting married and having babies pulls something out of women that forces them to be creative because they want to choose the flower arrangements and the colors and the event design and, and that sort of like can snowball into creating a more creatively confident woman herself. And that definitely happened for me. And so all of those things just kind of triaged together and I was like, I think I gotta do this. And so I did.

So where did you start? You had this big idea with, and you mentioned this before, a lot of people have a big idea, but they say, you know, I've got it, but now where do I go? Where did you begin?

Well, so originally it was after my wedding and a bunch of my friends who went to the Wedding who were women were like, Brit, I've never seen anything like that. How did you literally make wooden flowers? Like, I wish I could be creative. I wish I could be creative. They kept saying that and I was like, but you can. And so I at first decided I would create this company that would talk a lot about creative ideas and how tos, but then it would really be like a multi pronged app strategy where we'd have like a wedding app, a home app, you know, a food and cooking app. And, you know, you would download each one of our apps to use while you were cooking or decorating your home or whatever. And the content hub was just going to be like the central place where you learned about these apps and ultimately was a marketing vehicle to get you to download them. What ended up happening was like all the women loved the content and it weren't downloading the apps. And this was a really pivotal point in the Briton code journey because we had to at one point make a call to change directions. And we shut down our first app, it was a wedding app. And we decided to become a digital media company, which I had no prior experience doing. I didn't even know the difference between like a managing editor and an editorial director and all these fancy terms. Never knew how to sold sell ads to anybody. But it's what the data suggested the women wanted. And so onwards we went.

And what were some of the big lessons that you had from launching your own business that you want to share with people and that you do share with people in your new teaching programs?

Yes. So. Well, the first thing I would say again is trust the data and trust that you're probably going to be wrong when you first start your business. The hypothesis you have will probably be misproven or taken in a whole different direction based on your customer's feedback. I think a lot of times entrepreneurs fail because they're so wedded to their idea being the only path forward, when in fact it might just be a clue on the trail to what your customers actually want or the problem you actually should be solving. And I think that's happened over and over again. Like, Airbnb is a great example. You know, Brian, the founder, who actually is a friend of mine, was literally looking for a couch to stay on when he was traveling for different conferences. He didn't have that much money. And, you know, first it was couch surfing. That was the whole premise of Airbnb. But when it ended up happening was that the customers were like, it would actually be cool if I could rent an entire room or an entire apartment or house from somebody. And so they of course pivoted into that direction. If Brian would have been hell bent on a couch only rental program, I don't think Airbnb would have been as successful as it is today. And so listen to your users, listen to the data, don't be married to your idea. That's definitely a big step. The second step is to fake it till you make it. And I think this is particularly important for women for some reason, and I'm speaking generally, not for all women, we tend to be a little bit more risk adverse and a little bit more insecure when it comes to flaunting our talents and experiences. And oftentimes women don't take the leap into entrepreneurship because they think they're not smart enough. They've never done this before. You know, it wouldn't be perfect. They don't know the exact right idea. Like there's, there's just so many obstacles stopping them. It all comes back to self doubt. And so if you can quiet the self doubt and think about it as a six month experiment of your life where you're just going to try some stuff and put it out there, even when it's messy to see what sticks, I bet you will be really shocked by the outcome of that. And at the end of the day, not only will you feel more tied to one of your ideas and moving it forward, but so will actual real humans out there who want what you have to offer. And so I think just starting and sort of speaking with confidence about what you're doing, whether that's to your users, your friends, your grandma, or investors, that's a huge step in the process.

Did you ever have that imposter syndrome when you found yourself growing so quickly and leading such a big company?

For sure. I mean, I had managed to three people before in my career and now I was managing like a hundred. Like, I had an executive coach. I was just like trying to talk to all my mentors, like, what am I doing? At what point should I bring in, you know, my HR person? At what point should I start tiering our manager programs? You know, like, it was a lot of stuff. I didn't know what I was doing. And I think to some extent being vulnerable in those moments is the best thing you can do. Like just not being afraid to ask for help, putting your hand up when you have a question. I think those are so important. And at the end of the day, all you want to do is learn faster and people want to help you and that's what happened to me.

I also love that you invested in yourself and hiring a coach, hiring someone who's been where you want to go, just like you said, it helps you get there so much faster, which is now what you're doing for others, that must be an amazing feeling. And to be able to be that resource for other people for sure.

And in fact, like the genesis of Self Made, which is our entrepreneurship program designed specifically for new female entrepreneurs or sort of young, young female entrepreneurs in the process, is really about like what would I have wanted at 25 when I was just starting to fast track me into success? And yes, of course there's like learning how to do your P and L and how to fundraise and how to do social media and all of those things. But one of the best parts of the Self Made program is the community of women that you have access to. And we're talking like some of the coolest, most badass business ladies in the world. Like, you know, the CMO of Netflix, Bosom of St John, who Gwyneth Paltrow, the CEO of Goop, the founder and CEO of Minted Joy Cho, the founder of oh Joy. Like, we try to find women from totally different industries. Some have bootstrapped, some have raised capital and they are there specifically to be as transparent with you. It's literally behind closed doors, it's not a public thing to tell you their story and like what to watch out for along the way, what they learned, what, what like fast tracked their business. So you can just get all that stuff covered out the gate. You can ask the questions like, when should I hire the HR manager? Or like, you know, what if I have kids and I can't work from 2 to 5pm you know, it's like you can be you and there's a community of women there to help you problem solve along the way. And that's kind of the irony of the term Self Made. Well, we want everyone to take credit for their own business, but there's a girl gang behind you to support you along the way.

That's such a beautiful thing though, because no matter what it looks like on social media, no one is out there succeeding alone. There's no one doing it by themselves. However, like you said, sometimes it appears that way. But it's so important for people to know there's always a team somewhere, whether it be friends or community or advisors or something. How did you come to launch Self Made?

You know, it was something that happened super organically. It was my own Entrepreneurial, like, founding story again. Here I am 10 years later basically founding a new company, even though it's connected to Brit Co. But, you know, it was the height of the pandemic last year in May, when the Black Lives Matters movement was correlating with the massive amount of unemployment happening in this country, which was skewing female disproportionately. The New York Times called it a she session. Actually. I don't know if you heard that before, but it just started to make me angry that I knew how these women could go out and make money, even if they had to be stay at home moms, even if they were out of work. And I couldn't help them do that. And then it dawned on me. I could actually, why don't I just literally teach them and why don't I bring in all of the women who have helped me to coach them along the way? And it's not going to be a video recording that they might do or might not. Like, we're live, we're one on one with you. You are accountable for doing this. It's not going to take you more than like two to three hours a week. So even if you do have a full time job, you can do it. And so I just did it as a one time thing. I made a Squarespace site in two weeks. To my point about being messy, I just threw it up. Like I said, signups are open. If you want to come learn how to make your own money doing the thing you love, come sign up. And we had 175 women sign up. And I thought that was just going to be it. Like, it was like a one time thing.

Cool.

But literally that last week of that first cohort, I was bawling in tears because these women had launched, they had started companies. Many of them were seeing real revenue come in the door. They were feeding their families. They were like doing the thing they loved for, like they've always wanted to do, but they were just so afraid of. And it was the number one most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life. I'm not just saying that, like, and so I was like, we have to do it again. And so we did it again. In the fall. We doubled the number of students, brought in more amazing women. And then that went really well. And so now we're like, I guess.

This is a thing.

And it's like, to my point, about like iterative baby steps as you go. Like, I just started it in two weeks and here we are now. And it's this whole full fledged brand and we're thinking about all the ways we could grow it even beyond the course and building a real platform for female entrepreneurs. And I'm so excited about it. So it's one of those highlights of COVID that I will never forget for sure.

So zoom School Lunch lady isn't your highlight from COVID Well, I'll just zoom.

In general is not my highlight from COVID but it is the way we teach the course. So I guess I have to love it.

It's so clear, your passion around this project. I mean, you can feel it. It's so purpose driven and you can just sense how excited you are. It must be unbelievable to hear some of the stories. Can you share one of the stories with somebody that you've coached on the transformation they've had?

Oh my gosh, I have so many. And I have to also say, to your point about purpose driven, one of the proudest achievements that I've had with this course is that in each of the last two cohorts, there have been only 38% Caucasian women. 62% have been women of color, you know, immigrants, just like all kinds of incredible backgrounds. And helping change the ratio in that part of the female entrepreneurship world has been really impactful for me. Some of the stories have been fascinating. So we help women that have both already started a business or those that are just starting for the first time. One of the ones that's memorable for me is this woman named Lisa. She was in our fall cohort this past session. She was working at an ad agency. She just had a baby. She was sort of on maternity leave, just coming back, not really feeling fulfilled from her ad agency life. And she realized as a new mom how crappy it is to have to figure out which products to buy for your baby when there's like a thousand different versions of a pacifier and a bottle. And so she started a company called Upbring, which goes out and it's like Birchbox for baby products. Like, they are getting samples from like all of the baby vendors, baby product vendors, to put in these boxes that are tailored towards your baby's age. And so every three months you get this new kit of like three different types of pacifiers and three different types of bottles and three different types of onesies. And like, you can sort of try them all to figure out what suits you best and your baby best and ultimately, you know, become brand loyal to the one that works for you. And as a mom myself, I can totally attest to how Valuable that would have been for me. My kids are now 4 and 6. When I was just trying to figure out like glass or plastic bottle. I don't know, like, what do my girlfriends think? It just becomes a lot of work. And that's been really successful. She's just about to launch, but she already has many hundreds of beta subscribers without even launching yet. So that's been incredible. Another woman has created a magazine called Mighty Kind. It's a new brand highlighting kindness for children. Imagine, like Highlights magazine, but for children. And she, at the beginning of the course, was just like an artist and decided to make this brand. We did a manifesting challenge on the first week and she put on her vision board, like, be featured on Ellen. Thinking like that would happen in like five or ten years. By the end of the course, she had been reached out to by Ellen's team. Like Target wanted to feature her. Like, her magazine is now getting picked up in all of these amazing places. And it's just been incredible how your brain can actually propel you forward if you unlock it to do so. So that's been a fabulous testament as well. I could go on. There's so many that have really taken off. And I would say that, you know, many of the women who've taken the course have also said, this has actually just been helpful for my professional career, even if I don't want to start a company. I have learned how to think entrepreneurially for my day job, you know, and maybe I have my side hustle, but I'm so much better at my day job too, while I'm figuring out if the side hustle is going to really be the main hustle. So I do think that entrepreneurial thinking is something you can't get if you don't do it. You know, you can't just go to business school and learn to be an entrepreneur. You have to actually start something to learn to be an entrepreneur.

It's so crazy. I just started teaching a course at Harvard and it's so interesting to have then your background be real life and now be dealing with people who are only living textbook life. And that gap is massive. And not to take anything away from someone who's smart enough to get into that school. I clearly did not have the grades to get in there. That's why when you can't get in, you go back and teach. However, exactly what you just identified that somebody needs to bridge that gap for you to say, okay, in a real world, that would never actually happen. Here are some ideas how you can Handle it in the real world. Because when you're just reading that stuff in a textbook, it doesn't connect.

Oh, my gosh. No way. You have to know. It's painful. It's not easy. You're making cold calls. You're scrapping together. You don't have a budget to hire a bunch of people. But that scrappiness will take you in so many places in your career to your point, whether or not you choose to build a company out of it or just use it to get your job done much more efficiently. And I didn't have the brains to go to Harvard either. I aspired to, but also didn't have the dollars to go to Harvard, to be honest.

Me too.

I love your idea of giving back later in life to put it on your resume.

We'll nominate you for a class there next. For sure. I love that you brought along not only the business sense and entrepreneurial knowledge that you've learned, but you're coupling it with manifesting, which a lot of people don't do. And I wasn't aware of manifesting. I used to think that was woo woo, you know, maybe people that were hippies or something. So can you talk a little bit about the impact that way, that thought process and that skill set has impacted you in your life?

Yeah, for sure. I thought it was woo woo and hippie too. And then I started doing it and I was like, oh, my goodness, this is good crazy, like, what I think it means. And you can read like, the Law of Attraction. And, you know, there's so many books about this that, like, when your brain is focused on a positive outcome that it believes it can achieve, you can't say, I want to be a billionaire. And like, in your head you're like, but I'm never going to be a billionaire. Like, it has to believe it. So maybe you want to say, I want to make $1 million. Right. Or $100,000. Like, make it a believable number for you and pick like three of these things that you want to accomplish and think about them each day. Like, focus on them. Ground yourself in it. Think about the ways to get there. I kid you not. Like, random doors start opening and it is insane. And I think this was happening to me without knowing it was called manifesting. While I was building Brit Co. Like, I wanted to be on television, but I was literally in Silicon Valley. I'd never been on video before. I was awful on video. And one day the Today show emailed me. And it's just like, these things started happening, but I believe they could happen. I was very in my head sure that it was going to happen and so I would really ask yourself what is in my heart that I just know I feel feel good about that I want to see happen for myself in this world and like how can I just repeat that thought over and over again? Because energetically you will start moving into that direction.

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Kids on manifesting yet?

We actually did a 2021 vision board. Now that you say that, I said, you know, what should we, what should we achieve this year? And of course like my 6 year old's like Legoland. So I don't know, like they're not manifesting for their whole lifetime. They're thinking about short term rewards. But, but we're trying. They're still a little bit young. Have you done it with yours?

Yeah, mine's 13 now. So it's, you know, you're going to that next step where they can think out, you know, a little bit further. And it is funny when I have bad moments during the pandemic or whatever, he'll say, mom, remember what you're putting out to the universe right now? You know, do you want that to happen? I'm like, oh my gosh, you're right.

No.

Okay, thank you. Put out to the world and put out to the universe what you want to happen, not what you don't. And I truly believe that when our kids see Us do those things, they just start taking them on such a. And that goes back to your coaching program and self made. When you're around like minded people that just keep repeating and you keep hearing an endorsement for this, yes, this works and this worked for me. It starts to sink into you that this is real and it can work for you too.

That's the beauty of the actual student community. We have a WINS channel and our messaging platform and you know, almost every day someone has a win and it's, it shocks them that it's a win. You know, they were like, I made a thousand dollars overnight. I didn't even know I could make $1,000. Like, I just did one thing on my website and like my conversion like doubled, you know, and as a fellow student, you're like, what? And part of you immediately goes to, well, I'm not good enough. I'm not. I couldn't do that. But to your point, the thing about manifesting is to shut down those beliefs and actually think about, how could I do that? Maybe I could do that, you know, and, and think about it optimistically to flip the switch.

Oh, it's so good. Where do people go to check out Self Made? And is there a way for them to try it without signing up for a year?

Oh, yes. So we have a free boot camp that's actually happening February 16th to 18th and the videos will be on replay too, if you can't make it live. I'm doing that literally as a way to help you get your idea set in stone. Because the number one problem I hear from new entrepreneurs or even existing entrepreneurs that haven't really had a lot of success yet is like, I don't know if my idea is the right idea or I have too many ideas I need help choosing. So this bootcamp I'm doing helps unpack what your passions are and then what makes for a great business idea. How can you evolve that into something that's a six or seven plus figure business idea? And I will walk through so many examples of these and focus on how to add a little twist for a competitive advantage and what you're doing so you can sign up for that through the Self made website. It's tryself made.com. you can also sign up for the course there as well. And we do have a number of scholarships for people who are either financially unable to afford the course or frankly who are just like underrepresented and want to go through the entrepreneurship track for the first time. We, like I said, really want the ratio of underserved women to be more proportionate, especially in this field of work.

That is so amazing. I'm so proud of you doing this work, and the world so needs it. So thank you, Brittany. I will include all those links in the show notes, guys. So just go to the show notes to click on. And you've got to check this out. This bootcamp is worth it, and you are worth it. So, Britt, how do people follow you?

Well, I'm Britt on basically every social network, and then you can also follow the brand BrittandCo on every social network as well. And let's see, if you go to my Instagram account, you can notice in my highlights that I've done a bunch of crazy things in my day, and I've tried things that scared me and that were really uncomfortable, and hopefully it'll make you feel like you can tackle the world too.

And you have the coolest Insta stories. So definitely check out Brit on Insta. She will serve you up some laughs and definite some inspiration. Thank you so much for being here today, and please keep this great work going.

Thanks so much for having me.

Okay, we'll be right back.

I asked you to try to find your passion. Okay, so I've been getting a lot of questions lately about getting fired, and I know that's because so, so many people have been furloughed, laid off, you know, during this pandemic. And it's. It is so hard if you have lost your job or been laid off or furloughed or whatever. I so feel for you. Oh, my gosh. I can remember as if it was yesterday what it felt like that day. And, you know, initially when that happened, it felt so scary. There were so many unknowns, and I certainly wasn't embracing it as, oh, this is. This is exciting new. I was embracing it as, this is a nightmare, and why am I living it? How is this my life? You know, I thought after working for so long and developing so much flipping success in business, how could it be that I was fired? And how could it be that I had to start over? Here I am today, three years later, and I'm super proud of what I built. I'm super proud of the things I've created. But it hasn't been easy, right? So I'm just gonna share with you, for anyone who's lost their job, been furloughed, been laid off, or know someone who has, here's the steps that I implemented. Number one, the first thing that I did, and I was bawling my eyes out for at least 24 hours, at least, but keep it real, really, for a month, you know. But what I did do after 24 hours is I raised my hand and I posted on social media, I have just been fired. And everyone was saying, take that down. That looks so desperate and pathetic. But I didn't want to. I thought, if people don't know I'm fired, how are they going to help me? You know? So people totally came out of the woodwork to help me. And, you know, that post went viral, and ultimately Froggy from the Elvis Duran show tweeted at me, hey, I saw what happened. If I can help, let me know. Which was so nice of him. He's such an amazing guy. And I tweeted back, which, here's a huge lesson. When someone reaches out to help you or extends an olive branch to you, convert that opportunity in the moment. Do not wait, do not delay, because that opportunity will disappear. And so I tweeted back at him, get me on the show. He did. I flew to New York. I had no idea what I was going to talk about on the Elvis Duran show. I just knew if I could reach a larger audience, I could reach more opportunity, just that unknown. And so halfway through the interview, Elvis said to me, well, Heather, obviously, you're writing a book. And I said, well, obviously. But I really wasn't. You know, I. I had always seen myself as the social one, the sales one, the sales leadership one. I never saw myself as an author, you know, the smart one, that could write a book. No, I never saw myself that way. I didn't even know if it was legal. I thought to myself, like, how does someone even write a book? So I googled, how do you write a book? And basically, Elvis had given me that confidence. He transferred it from him to me in that conversation. And I ran with it. I Googled, how do you write a book? And it says that you sit down, you're disciplined, you write every day. And I had just been fired, so I had time. I thought, okay, I'm gonna write every day. I'm gonna bust this out, this thing out. And when I got enough writing down on my computer, I thought, I need someone who is light years ahead of me that can help me, you know, move fast. And so I shouted out on social that I needed an editor. I found my first editor, Ryan, in la, and I hired him. And when you start working with someone who's light years ahead of you, he had written 19 books. I had written none. You know, I sent him all my content within a couple days or a week. He got right back to me, okay, here's the structure. Here's what's missing. Here's what I need from you. We moved so fast once we were working together, it was mind blowing. And he liked the book, and I was so excited because this is someone who had expertise and experience, and it moved fast. So, you know, basically, I knew I needed a product to sell. I knew that I had the ability to solve problems for people. So that's something I would challenge you to do. You know, number one, ask for help. Put it out on social media. And if people tell you they're crazy, that's about them, not about you. I've reframed getting fired. I call it in good company. Oprah's been fired. Mark Cuban's been fired. J.K. rowling's been fired.

Right.

All these amazing people have been fired. So I rock that, you know, I put it to work for me, reframe that. It's a negative. I see it as a positive, and I am excited about it now, and you can be, too. So I decided, what problem can I solve for other people that I can be paid for a product or a service? That's where Confidence Creator came from. Solving the problem of anyone that struggles with confidence or wants to go bigger and doesn't know how. Confidence Creator is a compilation of my lowest moments in my life and how I leverage them to create real, sustainable confidence and how the reader can, too. So I created a product I could sell, and then I got to selling. You know, I moved fast, and I Googled how do you sell books? And it said speak. And so I started cold calling every company in the world. And I am not fooling you when I say hundreds of companies. I called because sales is a numbers game, and I didn't even know people paid speakers, FYI, which is super funny, because I had been in one industry for so long, and they didn't pay speakers in that industry, and I hadn't picked my head up. So pick your head up out of whatever industry that you just left or that your friend just left and challenge yourself or your friend to say, where else could your unique skills and talents be applied to be successful? Blow up the lanes of just working in radio like I used to do, right? Take your talents wherever you want to go, and you will be successful. The same reason why I was successful in radio is the same reason why I'm creating success now. And it'll be the same for you, too. You just have to put the work in. And yes, it feels so scary at first, and it feels really scary for a while. But here's the thing. When you feel scared, you're actually growing. And I remind myself of that all the time. Every time I step into new opportunity now or a new situation, it's a growth moment. And when I got on my first TEDx stage and I was about to walk out from behind the stage and I was so flipping nervous, I remember saying, if you don't walk out there, you'll never forgive yourself. But if you walk out there and blow it, I'm gonna be so proud of you. And that's the reframe is that it's not about that end result. It's about the fact that I took the step because in every moment, you are either creating confidence or chipping away at it. And I know which one I'm going for, and I hope you're going for it, too. So take the step into fear and take the step into the new industry. Take the step into creating something new. But move fast and break things and start focusing on what problem can you solve? Where can your talents be applied that you haven't thought about before? And as you take those steps, it'll be scary. You won't see the steps in front of you, but you'll just keep going and it will eventually come together just like it is for me. Okay, so another question that I got, I wanted to jump on was someone asked me on LinkedIn, Hey, Heather, how do you create a speaking business? I am a really good speaker, but I don't know how to, you know, create the business. I get asked this a lot, and I'm just gonna shoot you straight.

It's not easy. This is not easy, people.

So I mentioned I didn't know people got paid for speaking, so I spoke for free for at least a year, if not a year and a half when I first got fired and didn't even realize you could get paid for it. And then once I realized that, here's what I figured out. You need to have four different keynotes that you kind of have ready to go because you're going to start pitching yourself to get hired as a speaker, right? So you want to have these customized keynotes ready to email out to people. I ended up branding it and putting it in a PDF so that I could send it out easily to potential prospects or somebody who had reached out inquiring to me. You want to promote yourself on social media as a keynote speaker? Hashtag keynote speaker, hashtag virtual speaker. You're going to need to create a reel because people want to see what you look like speaking. And I didn't have a TED talk at first, right? That that happened in November 2019. So, you know, I had to create a reel. And back then that was pre pandemic. That was 2018. Going into 2019, I hadn't been having footage of me because I never knew to do it. So now I was suddenly trying to take any piece of footage I could get from anywhere and showcase me speaking. You can do it now with virtual. Stand in front of Zoom and record yourself on your computer. Hello, that's a virtual real and that's what people want to see now is what are you like as a virtual speaker. So get that footage. Start promoting yourself on social so that you can start creating opportunities to get booked and listen. The marketplace will determine what you charge. You know, you may have to speak for free at first. I certainly had to speak for free for a while. And then you start amassing testimonials and reviews of your work and the results people get from your speaking engagements. And you want to leverage and showcase that like crazy. It's so powerful to have testimonials and reviews of what others say about your speaking. Then I would apply to all the speaker bureaus. You want to land some agents and develop a rapport with them. And for your SEO, you want to show up on speaker websites so people see you as a speaker. You want to tailor your website to showcasing you as a speaker and you want to promote yourself as a speaker and ask people to hire you as a speaker. Those are some sure fast tips that I can give you on, you know, highlighting yourself, presenting yourself, and moving yourself forward into the speaking business. Then you can start landing some paid speaking engagements and start investing in and growing your business from there. I hope that was helpful. As always. It means the world to me when you're here. Oh, if you haven't joined Clubhouse yet, jump on Clubhouse and you will catch me there. I'm always there at 5 o' clock and at 8 o' clock with Alex's room. So definitely catch me on Clubhouse. These live Q and A sessions that we've been doing are so impactful, so fun, such high energy, and I'd love to see you there. So definitely catch up with me on Clubhouse and thank you for hanging here with me. Check out my website, heathermonahan.com I have tons of free resources there. My free ebook, my free Stop saying Sorry PDF. There's a lot of information there that will help you along your journey. And thank you for joining me on mine. If you can, please post on social about the show, subscribe, rate and review. It all helps so much. And when you tag me, I always repost. It means the world. Until next week. I hope you are creating your confidence. You know I'll be. Until then, I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen.

No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

Come on this journey with me.