Meet Brittany Canaski

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brittany Canaski. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brittany below.

Brittany, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.

I didn’t know it at the time, but starting your own business requires a lot of confidence. Looking back, I’ve realized there were several factors that helped me gain the confidence to bet on myself by quitting my day job to pursue my business full time.

First, was simply getting to know myself better. When you know your deepest wants, needs, and values, it makes it so much easier to confidently make decisions. You are essentially using that knowledge to make the best decisions for yourself. For me, this happened when I worked with my first life coach back in 2019. I learned so much about myself, my habits, my strengths, and how I was holding myself back. It started my personal development journey that really sky rocketed my confidence.

Another factor in building my confidence was finding my people who also knew the real me, appreciated and believed in me, and supported me along the way. This isn’t easy when you’re on a personal and professional development journey because you start to become a newer, deeper version of yourself that some people in your life may no longer understand. I was thankful to have a supportive partner and family as a solid foundation for me. Then I continued to meet and develop deep connections with other people who were on similar growth journeys who made it easy to open up and share our learnings and support each other along the way.

Confidence is a topic that comes up a lot with my coaching clients, especially women who are in leadership positions. We always start with helping them get to know themselves on a deeper level, too. It’s so powerful to see their transformation over time and I’m glad to have my own journey to confidence to have learned from as well.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’m a Leadership Coach and Trainer at my own company, Hello Velocity. My mission is to help leaders gain the skills and confidence they need to be their best without sacrificing their personal priorities.

This looks like helping leaders prioritize their endless tasks more effectively, practice leadership soft skills like communication, and holding them accountable to continually move forward on their goals.

What’s most exciting about my work is seeing the impact my coaching or training can have not just on the individual client, but also their team, organization, and even families.

Something new coming this year that I’m so excited about is that I’m launching my own podcast in early March 2025 called the Hello Velocity podcast. I’ll be sharing more leadership insights and tips specifically for women in leadership positions, based on my most common topics with my coaching clients.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The first skill that’s been most impactful in my journey is strategic thinking. This is something that I realize I’ve been learning and practicing since college so it comes more naturally to me now, but it makes a huge difference in my planning and prioritizing. It’s also a skill that a lot of people don’t focus on, but when you take the time to use it, it can be a game-changer for you. To improve your strategic thinking skill, you could simply start by blocking an hour on your calendar each week (or even 30 min) to look at your schedule, tasks, and projects from a holistic lens (AKA strategically) to prioritize and plan your time. You will find yourself becoming more proactive in your meetings, priorities, and projects when you do this regularly.

Another skill that’s been extremely helpful is public speaking. This is something I used to hate in school and would get so nervous I’d be shaking and hard to hear. Now, I speak in front of groups several times a month and it feels more natural. This skill came with both practice and taking classes and trainings about public speaking. There are lots of public speaking coaches and classes to help you get both practice and training in this area.

Lastly, discipline is another skill that’s helped me on my journey as a business owner. Obviously, you have to have a lot of discipline in order to self-motivate when you work for yourself. But also there’s a lot of work behind the scenes as a business owner that requires discipline from your finances, to your sales process, to your marketing. Each area of your business requires you to show up consistently – no matter if you’re having a bad day or got told ‘no’ for the 5th time that day. Something that’s helped here that I recommend is the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. His actionable tips help you build up habits which in turn improve your discipline which produce results over time.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I always start by closing my eyes and taking three deep breaths. This helps calm myself down in the moment and stops my brain from spiraling into worst case scenarios or overactive thoughts.

Typically when I’m overwhelmed it’s related to work so I’m at my computer and likely have been there for a few hours already that day. So the key for me (and I recommend this to my clients too) is to get away from your desk for a few minutes. You can even simply set a timer to take 5 minutes somewhere else.

Some things that help me during this time away is to meditate, go for a quick walk outside, or spend a few minutes doing something with my hands like washing dishes or making tea.

Any of these activities help clear my mind so that when I come back to refocus on the tasks that have me overwhelmed, I can more clearly prioritize and focus on what’s most important.

Creating a list of real deadlines and breaking down the projects into smaller tasks helps me not feel so overwhelmed because more often than not, it seems worse in my head. Then once I get it on paper I can see how it can come together and start working towards it.

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