In this interview, Jeff Dudan and guest Brittany Hodak explore why people become passionate fans of certain brands or personalities while ignoring others. Hodak frames the discussion in psychological terms—humans are tribal and seek belonging, often expressing that identity through symbols like jerseys, tattoos, or home décor. She then introduces a practical five‑part "SUPER" framework (an acronym) that service‑based businesses can use to turn ordinary transactions into memorable experiences that generate super‑fans. Hodak illustrates the model with two vivid anecdotes: a plumber who engages young boys with dinosaur‑targeted toilet‑paper games to teach potty training, and a roofing company that leaves magnetic sweepers for customers to collect stray nails, demonstrating care for safety beyond the core job. Both stories show that delivering the expected level of competence is merely the floor; the ceiling is built by thoughtful, human‑centric actions that make customers feel better, easier to refer, and less likely to be forgotten. The conversation underscores that emotional experience, not just functional performance, drives referrals, and that small, intentional gestures can differentiate a brand in crowded, everyday service markets.
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It's interesting, like, why people choose who they become fans of. And what is it about somebody who's well known to other people that makes you want to be known to them, and then it makes you feel good. I mean, I. I don't really understand the transfer. I've got this thing with my wife, you know, about. I was a football player in college, and, you know, people wear other people's jerseys all the time, right? And I said, well, I just don't. I feel weird about putting another man's name on my back, to be honest with you. It's not, you know, but I mean, people will do the craziest things to be affiliated with somebody that they admire, that they look up to. And, you know, I just. I just find it very, very interesting. So.
Yeah, well. And I think from a psychological standpoint, like you said, we are tribal. We want to belong. We want to feel like we're a part of something, right? And I'm sure, you know, people in your life who are superstitious to the point of not just, like, wanting to wear the jersey, but thinking what they do maybe in a. To totally different state impacts, right? Like, no, I can't move from this spot on the couch because the last time I got up there was a fumble. And, you know, oh, I've got to wear this pair of socks because the team is, you know, nine and one when I'm wearing these socks. And they believe it. Like, they don't just say it because it's fun. They. They believe that they are a part of it to that point. Those stories are so intertwined, their lives and the lives of. Of, you know, the team or whatever it is that they're supporting. And. And it's so fascinating, right? It's so interesting because it speaks not we are as a species in the way that we've evolved, but who we aspire to be and the connections that we have. And that, to me, is the part that's really interesting is, you know, you look at brands where people have tattoos or they've redecorated their, you know, homes or their cards, like, all of these things to say, not just to the world, this is who I am, but to say to ourselves, this is who I am.
Yeah. And you can see it when it's an athlete or who's super talented and they're one of very few in the world, or it's a recording artist or Taylor Swift, and they just do. They're just incredible. And now that they're good at what they do, now they're wealthy and they're. And they're in your face in social media. So it's, it's just, I understand that. How do you translate that to a brand that installs fences or an. In a brand that installs kitchens, an everyday thing, it almost seems impossible to do. But you've got a model for it.
I do, I have.
It's the supermodel.
It's the supermodel. And we'll get into it. I want to give you just a few examples and then we'll, we'll get into. So super is an acronym. It's a five part framework. We'll walk through all of that. But just as kind of a examples from my own life, right? Like, I had no real opinion about plumbers, right. I've got two little boys we were talking about before we were recorded. They're 5 and 8 now. So over the past few years we've been through several rounds of like, something was flushed down the toilet, right? Like, sometimes we know what it is, sometimes we don't know what it is. Was it a Hot Wheels car? Was it a hot dog? Like, nobody really knows. So we've been through a few rounds of that and for a while it was just like, okay, I'm gonna go through the home warranty company call, you know, whoever, like comes up first in the Google search, whatever, right? Like, there was not a this is our plumber. When we got to the point of this is our plumber and his name is Joe. Thankfully he hasn't had to come out in a couple years. My boys are a little bit older now, but the way Joe earned that coveted spot of like putting the MA magnet on the refrigerator so that we had his information when we needed him, he came to our house and he could tell. I think at the time my boys were like four and one and running around. And he said, okay, so are we working on potty training with either of them right now? And I said, yes, we're set with the older one, the younger one, like we've just started. And he said, so do you know about the little targets? And I said, no, what are the little targets? And he pulled out a stack of these, like poker chip sized printed pieces of toilet paper or tissue paper with dinosaurs on them. And he said, it's a targeting game. This is how you teach boys, A, that the toilet is just for going to the bathroom and B, how to aim. You drop one of these in the water and you make it a game. Like you get to, if you like, you know, Pee on the dinosaur, the dinosaur disappears because, you know, the ink, like, dissipates or whatever. And my kids loved that so much. Right? So it wasn't just the fact that he, you know, got. I think that time it was a Thomas the Train toy, whatever. It was like, out of the toilet for us. It was that he went above and beyond. So, absolutely. These quotas, unquote boring services can turn customers into super fans. But the really interesting thing is it's often not about the thing that you're there for, because being great at the job is like, the floor, not the ceiling. That's the point of entry.
And it's expected, right?
It's expected, like, you have to be great. That's literally your job. Like, that is what I am paying for. You have to do it. And it's the things beyond that that actually create that sense of connection. Like, we. Everybody in my neighborhood got new roofs this year because there was a crazy hailstorm. Everybody had tons of damage to the roofs, tons of damage to the vehicles. And, you know, roofing companies were literally knocking on our door. I was getting calls every single day for months of. Of people saying, like, oh, we're in the Arab area doing this, blah, blah, whatever. The roofing company my husband hired, I. I don't know, Like, I guess they did a good job. I don't really know about shingles. Right. I like the roof looks good. It was brown. Now it's gray. They. They asked me to make several decisions that I fe unqualified to make. At one point, they were. I think it's called flashing something. They were like, somebody knocked on the door and said, what color do you want to use? And I said, for a billion dollars, I could not tell you what color it is on my house right now. I probably couldn't point it out. So just, like, make the right decision, please. I trust you. You know what I remember most, Jeff, from that roof getting replaced?
What's that?
The fact that for weeks afterwards, we were finding nails and staples in the yard. And we've got two little boys, so my boys couldn't go outside barefoot, which, you know, it's like, you always tell them to wear shoes. They never want to wear shoes. For weeks, we were pulling up nails and staples. And Trish and Mark, our neighbors two doors down who have little ones just a tiny bit younger than ours, they're like one grade below both of our kiddos. When the company that they hired replaced their roof, they had a magnet thing and they swept the yard for nails. And then they came back three days later after it rained rain, to sweep the yard again, because they said, after it rains, like, a bunch of them are going to come up. And so who do you think I'm going to recommend the next time somebody says to me, who should do our roof? Is it going to be mine or is it going to be Trisha's? Obviously Trish's. Because in my mind, like, yeah, fine. Both our. Our roofs look identical. Like, I could not tell you the difference between our roofs, but I could tell you the company that I feel like cares about, the kids that live on this block and the company that. That feels like they don't.
Right? I. We had those. I was in an industry. We did tons of roofs. We had those all the time that we had those magnets. And I was thinking to myself as, like, didn't they have the magnet? But that's really the intersection of the customer's story with your story as a company. So it's. It's like, anytime. Who would want. And by the way, the worst thing about it for me is we have a neighbor that's building a house, and somehow I have three nails in my tires in the last six months. Okay, so is it like, am I. Am I all of a sudden, you know, randomly getting these out on the roads of North Carolina somewhere? Or are they falling off the truck because their driveway, like, intersects our driveway at the end? Are they just. Am I getting them right there? And maybe, maybe not, but. But no, I mean, safety. You. You think about roofing, you don't care about the color of the flashing. You care about your kids being safe.
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, the. So we. Mark showed my husband, Jeff the thing, and he's like, yeah, you just, like, get one on Amazon. So we ordered it. So we have this magnet thing that was, I don't know, 15 bucks. And it's been months and still will. When we're outside with the boys, we'll just, like, sweep. We. We got some landscaping work done. And I was like, oh, I wonder if there's any that we didn't find in the flower bed now that the. The shrubs are different and found, you know, 10 more or whatever. Um, yeah. So there is a good chance that for those of you listening right now, your customers do not understand the ins and outs of your trade or your specialty. What they do understand is how they feel about all of the interactions they have with you as a human, because that's the part they understand. Did you make my life better or worse? Did you make things easier or harder? Was it a neutral, negative or positive experience? That's the part they understand. And that's what you've got to focus on to become, as I like to say, easier to refer than you are to forget.
