Brandi Herdzina is a writer, speaker, and workshop facilitator by day, and a wife, dog parent, and lover of binge worthy TV shows by night.
What were your initial years of growing up like? Tell us about your life before starting your corporate journey/venture/initiative.
Raised by my mom, dad and grandparents, I grew up in a small town in central Texas. After graduating high school I went to college for one year before leaving to pursue modeling and acting. During that time I held a number of different roles while trying to pay the rent until I fell into commercial real estate in 2003. Over the following twenty years I worked my way up from the role as a receptionist into Director roles for two different companies and even acted as the 2018 President for the IREM Austin chapter (Institute of Real Estate Management). In 2022, I made the choice to step away from my successful career in property management to begin this new adventure in motivational speaking and workshop facilitation.
Every industry that is now a large-scale, top-notch business once started as a small idea in the minds of entrepreneurs. What was that idea or motivation that made you start your business /initiative? What motivated you within to say YES, go for it!”
It was during a soul-searching trip to Sedona, AZ that I discovered what I wanted to do upon leaving my career in commercial property management. Up until that point I knew I wanted to do something different and to help people in a truly authentic way, but I didn’t know how or what I was supposed to do next. I felt lost…stuck. Then, after several days working with the practitioners in Sedona, I gained some clarity. I felt confident that I was being called to try and help bring balance back into the world; I just didn’t know how to do it. Then upon taking a very long hike up a mountain with a woman gifted in guiding lost souls, I found myself meditating at the edge of a cliff and I asked, “how am I supposed to help… what do I do?” Then as clearly as I might hear my husband say “hand me the TV remote” while sitting in our living room, I heard a voice say, “write the class”. And that’s where it started. I wrote the first “It’s Just Balance” class and began with teaching it to the IREM Austin Future Leaders group from Austin, Texas. I knew in my bones walking down off of that mountain what I was supposed to do next and felt comfort in the fact that I didn’t need to know all of the steps or the full picture. I trusted that as long as I made an effort, took the initiative to do what was in front of me with all of my heart, then the pieces would come together as they were meant to be. And I still trust that to be true.
Tell us something about your initiative or current role. What is it about, and what impact are you trying to make?
My mission is to help people discover their balance in life so that when they come face to face with others, they can do so from a more regulated space giving them the capacity to tap into kindness, empathy, and acceptance. I hope that by helping people seek balance, it creates a collective consciousness that, regardless of differences, we are all made up of the same energy. And that energy can be used to rebalance the world. Essentially, my hope is that when I’m given the opportunity to speak with people or share words through any medium, that I leave them inspired and ready to feel compassion for one another.
Your journey and your vision are very inspiring, but are there any achievements or accomplishments you would like to mention?
I made it through the first year of owning my own business without ending up in the fetal position! And although I can’t really count it as an accomplishment yet, I am writing my first book with plans to publish in 2024.
Would you like to share with our young budding women entrepreneurs the change you would like to see in the world if given an opportunity?
I would like to see women rediscover their power globally without holding onto the anger that has helped forge the way for how far we’ve come. Anger has a time and place, and we certainly need it occasionally, but it also produces fear which perpetuates itself. In turn, anger and fear will only exacerbate the power struggle we’ve seen to date. There was a time when women ruled and were revered. Notice that’s past tense. Now it’s time to also speak of the male dominated world we know in the past tense. It’s time all genders band together to create a more balanced, respectful, peaceful, kind, and earth-friendly world.
Women are a growing force in the workplaces worldwide, standing shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts. There are cracks in glass ceilings everywhere, with many women breaking through to carve out a space right at the top of the pyramid. What are your thoughts about women leadership today?
I admire the women who have charged the way for the rest of us; who have sacrificed and sometimes clawed their way to the top. My hope is that once women continue to make their way to the top, they lower a hand to help lift other women up, they release any anger it took to create the space they hold, and they celebrate their feminine energy as much as they do their masculine energy.
What would you want to say to our young women leaders/audience reading this?
Three things really… 1. Own and accept who you are. That’s the core of coming into your power. Claim your shadows and your light…if you own up to your dark parts, the stuff society says you should be ashamed of, then there’s nothing to be afraid of because no one can ever call you out. You’ll find along the way that your dark parts likely aren’t all that dark after all and that you’re never actually alone. 2. I had a mentor once say to me… life’s a marathon, not a sprint. The message was to be patient, slow down, and try to give as much attention to the joy of living the journey as I was giving to the ambition for where I wanted to go. What I’ve learned since he said that to me is the power of pause… at any given moment take a breath, look around, and appreciate where you are. It’s truly helped me to be present which in turn, I’ve learned, helps with patience and surrender. 3. There is a community larger than any of us can see… a web of energy and light that connects us all. What’s interesting about that, is that when one person shines, does well, succeeds, breathes…the energy we share expands. So as a collective, it serves us all to lift each other up. Helping each other rise to be our best selves while forgiving each other when we don’t always get life right will in the end create the world we all hope to live in and leave behind for future generations.
