Pod Insights Growth Think Tank Leading with Integrity and People First Culture with Brittany Latson at HashtagHealth About this episode In this episode of the Grow Think Tank podcast, I sit down with Brittany Latson, Managing Partner, Account and Operations at HashtagHealth, to talk about what it really means to be Leading with Integrity. HashtagHealth No.3,091 on the 2024 Inc. 5000 list. Brittany shares how integrity guides her leadership style and shapes a people-first culture—one that prioritizes collaboration, supports working parents, and builds strong, ethical client relationships in the pharmaceutical sector. She explains how her unique blend of 'tough love' and genuine guidance empowers her team's growth while keeping values at the forefront. We also discuss HashtagHealth's recent acquisition and how compassionate leadership and a strong culture are helping expand their mission to improve healthcare communication. This conversation is a powerful example of how Leading with Integrity drives both business success and meaningful impact.
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1:11 Speaker 02 The one thing that always personally bothered me and when I went into a leadership role was just being an ID number. So if you call in to do something, you had to put your ID number in. And I always wanted to be more than that. I'm a person. I have value. And when I got into leadership and I was figuring out how to schedule people or help people grow in their role, I needed to understand who they were and what their talents were. And so that was pulled forward into hashtag health when we built people is... And you also hear about burnout, you know, whether it's school burnout, corporate burnout, you know, work-life balance. What does that actually mean in terms of life in general? Where do your hobbies fit in? How do you do a load of laundry in the middle of the workday? What if you have to run an errand? Do you have to cash out PTO for it? So does it cost you to actually do that? And we wanted to take a different look at that too.
1:56 Speaker 02 A, work with people we really enjoy working with that honestly, at the end of the day, you want to go grab a drink with or sit down and grab some coffee and chat with. Do work that you're proud of, but also feel like you're not just tied to a computer enslaving away for what?
2:09 Speaker 03 Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest-growing privately-held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hebbett. I help leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow? About leading with integrity, we're going to also mix in there a people first culture. And we're going to help you think about your people, hopefully different than you've ever thought about them before. I know that's a big promise to you, but if you lean into this, I think you'll get some value out of this in a big way. Our special guest today is Brittany Latson. She's a co-founder of hashtag Health. They are the, was the first and only social media agency in the pharma healthcare world.
2:54 Speaker 03 I don't know if that means there's more that has come after that, but what they, what was really impressive about them is how they do lead with integrity. And how they let that, you know, flow throughout the organization, the people they hire, the clients they take on, the projects that they will say yes to and no to. Integrity is something that you might take for granted and it is table stakes. But when it's ingrained throughout everything, it's got a much different feel and it feels very powerful. Hopefully you will like this episode as much as I like sharing it with you. My name is Jean Hammitt. I'm a CEO coach. We do executive coaching and we do leadership development. We help turn managers into leaders, all in service of dealing with your high growth company, the chaos of that.
3:38 Speaker 03 And if you're curious about how we do this, all you have to do is go to the next training we have. Go to training.corelevations.com. You can sign up for free. It's for CEOs only. So if you're listening to this, we would love for you to be there and really take your leadership to that next level. If you're facing any kind of challenges, whether it be a little bit of a stagnant growth, maybe there's an alignment issue within the executive team or the co-founder structure, you want to make sure you show up to that next training because it allows you to understand this. If you are really curious about what it takes to be a better leader, go to training.corelevations.com. Now here's the interview with Brittany. Hi Brittany, how are you?
4:17 Speaker 02 Good, how are you?
4:18 Speaker 03 Awesome. We're gonna have a great conversation. It's gonna center around integrity, but I really do believe it will be something different. But before we dive into it, I'd love for you to tell about your company, which is #Health.
4:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, excited to. So #Health was the first and only social media agency focused in healthcare and pharmaceuticals, which is a mouthful and kind of like, what does that even mean? So the healthcare space in terms of pharmaceutical marketing and healthcare marketing is incredibly nuanced and niche. There's actually a lot more regulation and compliance than what people realize, not just around brand communications, but unbranded advocacy and awareness. And there is a whole lot of nuance and niches in the terms of social media. Each platform has its own specifications, how you do, whether it's a reel or a post or a video, there's a lot of differences and people use these platforms entirely differently.
5:12 Speaker 02 So when you're trying to do peer-to-peer communications or professional communications, each platform offers its own unique values and people use them differently. So putting the right messaging out there really matters in terms of building meaningful connections. So that's what #Health does. We came at this with over 20 years of industry experience across the plethora of, you know, being published in clinical studies to being an ad, you know, a billboard or a commercial and taking a look and how do you specialize that on social media? So that's what #Health does. A small nimble team, always virtual, but truly at the heart of what we do is it's people first. There's a person behind the message that's reaching out to a person on the other side of that message.
5:58 Speaker 03 Well, I know we're gonna talk about integrity, but I'd love for you to just unpack the people first part of that, because I think that would get us started in the right direction.
6:05 Speaker 02 Sure. So we're all humans. We're communal animals. We're herd and pack mentality animals and we're all about connection, right? And communication is connection. And that's the one thing that's great about social media is you can do broad-reaching communications and connections on a personal level. So as part of that, when we want to build those meaningful connections for a rare disease or- Someone who's taking care of someone who's sick or a doctor who wants to reach out to a peer to understand what they're doing and what they can do better. That all comes down to communication and connection. So we think about that. When we started this company, it was two of us sitting in our home offices, coming up with a way of how we could take what we had learned in our industry and do it better
6:48 Speaker 02 to make those meaningful connections and work with people we really like to work with who are proud of what they do. And so we evolved a different sort of company and a different sort of structure and found that our services were really needed because it was us doing the research, connecting with clients to build a connection for someone else to get them back to a valid resource. And so that they could make informed healthcare decisions. So people first is where we've always been. There's always a person at the end of that message where people first in our language. It's not about what your diagnosis is, it's about who you are.
7:19 Speaker 03 And I would imagine this plays not just with your clients and the people of of the client, it's the internal team. How is people first showing up as the internal team is the way you guys, you know, meet the market and get the successes that you've had?
7:35 Speaker 02 So having done the corporate world for many, many years with big name corporations behind me. The one thing that always personally bothered me and when I went into a leadership role was just being an ID number. So if you call in to do something, you had to put your ID number in. And I always wanted to be more than that. I'm a person, I have value. And when I got into leadership and I was figuring out how to schedule people or help people grow in their role. I needed to understand who they were and what their talents were. And so that was pulled forward into hashtag health and we built people is, and you also hear about burnout, you know, whether it's school burnout, corporate burnout, you know, work-life balance. What does that actually mean in terms of life in general? Where do your hobbies fit in? How do you do a load of laundry in the middle of the workday? What if you have to run an errand? Do you have to cash out PTO for it?
8:20 Speaker 02 So does it cost you to actually do that? And we wanted to take a different look at that to, A, work with people we really enjoy working with that. Honestly, at the end of the day, you want to go grab a drink with or sit down and grab some coffee and chat with. Do work that you're proud of, but also feel like you're not just tied to a computer enslaving away for Or what? So again, doing something that's impactful, but also feeling like, especially as a mom, we were two moms setting up this company and we were wearing multiple hats. And we wanted to be present for our kids, but also do work that we are proud of. So we built this whole structure to where a lot of research went into, what are our federal and state regulations and what can we do in terms of policies, in terms of PTO and give back of time? How do we make a virtual environment feel like a community?
9:04 Speaker 02 Our team is all over the country and we even have some folks that decide to go live X U S for a while and still do their job. So they can live their best life during the day and log in and do great work at night and feel proud of what they do. Um, we don't want to just be an ID number. And even with our clients, we don't want to just be another agency. We want to be a valued partner to where if they ask us for our recommendations, they trust us as people. And they know that we have their best interests at heart and we have the person at the end of that message at heart. So when we do these campaigns, they're proud of it and it's impactful. So we've taken that through on a small scale. It was just two of us and we slowly grew that out to where we've got great policies. Our team absolutely loves us.
9:45 Speaker 02 You know, we have people tell us that, you know, in any career prior, there was low key looking to go somewhere else. And now they feel like there's a growth opportunity. They feel valued. They feel supported and they don't feel like they're just tied to a computer slogging away.
9:58 Speaker 03 Uh, I love everything we're going to, but the one thing we haven't touched on, because I said this early, it was integrity. When we were trying to figure out why we invite you to be on the show, we always do research and we get pitched three, four times every hour. It seems like it's about thirty or forty a day that come in. Uh, but we rarely ever take them. So anyone listening in that thinks they want to be on the show, it's probably not going to be good to pitch me. But that being said, Brittany, uh, you've said integrity is a central value in the business. It is how you guys got started. It continues to be a theme or a red line throughout everything you guys do. So beyond just like defining integrity, why is integrity such a driving force for growth in your business?
10:39 Speaker 02 It's obviously at the heart of what we do. It's why we started what we are doing is we wanted to do good business and do good work. And as somebody who's a scientist that worked in, you know, customer, customer care and customer services, making someone's day, making someone feel better, has always been incredibly important to me. And same thing with my business partner. And in healthcare, it's, it's convoluted. There's, there's doctors and nurses and insurance. And then you've got medications and prescriptions and treatments and advocacy and awareness and changes in lifestyle. It is incredibly overwhelming and there's a lot of misinformation and sometimes you don't even know where to start. So if you take somebody and you want to make a meaningful connection and you talk to somebody who looks like you and has gone through it, that's important.
11:24 Speaker 02 But getting somebody valid information to where they can make an educated decision for themselves or somebody they care for, or they feel that they can empathize and help, is really important. And so that's what we do. It's about what we do and we want to feel proud of the work we do. We want to get the right information out there. You're not going to change the world on a mass scale. But if you can go in and maintain consistency and try to do the right thing, every little step of it, one step at a time. It's kind of like a marathon, you know? And when you start at that start line, it's, it seems like a daunting task, but you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and do it the right way and do those right steps. At the end, you're going to get to the finish line and you're going to make a big difference. And that's the way we value it.
12:05 Speaker 02 We want to lead by example. We want to lead with kindness and we want to lead with integrity to where we're helping people. And, you know, we don't always need the big notoriety, but doing the right thing along the way. And if you can help one person who has a rare disease, who's never met anyone like them in forty years, and because of one Facebook post, they no longer feel alone, we've done our job well.
12:27 Speaker 03 Now, Brittany said something that I wanted to highlight, making someone's day. What if the lens you went into every day as a leader of your company is to make the day for one person? Maybe you recognize them in a way that makes them feel good about the work that they're doing. Maybe you recognize the hard work or the sacrifice you're making. Maybe you recognize them for, I don't know, something silly. The the new shoes they're wearing and whatnot. People feel it, they hear it. And I want to express that a lot of CEOs don't think that their people needs it. But if you looked at making someone's day, and that was just something that you did every day, it would set up goodwill, it would set up so many positive things that when things get hard,
13:10 Speaker 03 they won't see you as just the hard ass. They will see you as someone who really cares. But you do have to do the work in advance to make someone's day. Back to Brittany. I um, I really get a sense of of who you are just from what you were just talking about with integrity in your culture. And and you've made the hints to it. So I want to just dive into this. It seems like you have a really great place to work. Not that you have to have won the awards and whatnot, because maybe you don't want to do the work that it takes to apply. But was that a very intentional thing to create a great place to work as you keep hiring people so that they could serve your clients?
13:44 Speaker 02 Yes and no. We want to do great work because we're proud of it. So we're a for-profit business, but money is not our bottom line. We wanted to work to where, so this company was started by two moms who wanted to do good work, that was passionate about what they're doing, that making a difference, myself and my business partner. And we wanted to bring in people that we enjoyed working with, that had the experience, that had the same kind of mindset. And so we, as we built our our team, we also wanted people that wanted to do work like balance and kind of grow their own careers and, you know, that just do good work. So we started from there. And then so as we we kept getting more and more and more, and we wanted to work with clients that we enjoy. And honestly, we don't pitch and present ideas that we don't believe in, that don't ladder up to a strategy that's not going to be meaningful.
14:29 Speaker 02 We'll say no, or we'll spec, we will respectfully decline a proposal if we don't think it's the right thing, or if honestly, we're not a good fit. We will say no. If it's going to be something that's going to be a slog and make our lives miserable, we will respectfully decline and say we don't think we're the right fit. Um, we understand, again, we're for profit, but at the end of the day, it's doing good work that we're proud of, being good partners, being good leaders, you know, helping make a difference in the right way. And it's honestly served us. Very well. We're very profitable and we feel that we've done it in the right way. We've done it with integrity and we're proud of what we've done and we've had
15:07 Speaker 02 amazing people come through our doors. We have a very low turnover rate. We're incredibly grateful for our team. You know, it's been 10 years of success. And and we did this just with a with a good idea and putting our best intentions forward.
15:21 Speaker 03 You know that not every business runs like this, right? You know, you're a little bit of an exception.
15:26 Speaker 02 We wanted to be different. We took we took everything that we learned and we wanted to do something different and it was like a gamble and we gave ourselves a timeline of like, let's see if this works and it really worked. And like I said, we're incredibly grateful for our team and our partnerships and our clients and for every single patient out there that's seen one of our messages. The millions of impressions that we've been a part of, we're really, we're honored that you saw our content. We hope that you made a meaningful connection behind it. And hopefully, like, we can learn and show people, it doesn't always have to be about, you know, the billable hours or the bottom line or the dollar, that you can do quality, good work and you can grow in a meaningful way without burning out your team.
15:59 Speaker 03 A lot of founders with the size of company you have, you have two co-founders that are probably very experienced, very talented, end up being the MVPs of the company and they they hold on to that. There's there's a there's a proudness of the control, they're adding value. But when we, before we cut the recording on, you said, we have a team where there's no one single person that is the company. It is a real team effect. Everyone works together, collaborates together, trust each other through all this stuff. You you said you phrased it differently. I don't know if this is decentralized decision making and and strategy planning and whatnot. How do you frame in kind of your words about what I was just describing your company?
16:39 Speaker 02 So for a long time, my partner and I, we were, we were the brains and the muscle behind everything. But we kind of view this like parents where hashtag health has been our baby and we're really proud of our team and our goal is, you know, especially recently being acquired, that is if we can empower and help grow, you know, our team behind us and broaden it out and download our knowledge, actually learn from them as well. If we can leave this better than when we started it, we did a good job. If we can take our knowledge and do it on a Broad scale and have it be part of a larger platform and a bigger team. And it means more people get the help that they need. Uh, more people are able to grow in their career and experience something different in terms of
17:22 Speaker 02 looking at marketing in a different lens in a specialized way. We've done a good job. And so I honestly, it's hard, you know, you build something up for a decade and now it's time to grow it out. And this, again, like I said, we were at a huge point where we needed, we were at a crossroads of how best do we grow? So we continue doing good work, but we can staff and support and scale. Uh, and it made sense to be acquired so that we had on me channel services and work with all of these brilliant creatives and talents and a broad scape to where social is at the forefront and strategically implemented. And it gives our team career growth. So that's what made sense. And so we keep doing that. We keep doing that to where, you know, it's done thoughtfully and meaningfully and, and yeah.
18:03 Speaker 03 Now, just to cut in here one more time, Brittany just said something. As her and her co-founder were starting this business, they were the brains and muscle. Now, I don't know where you are with your business journey and you probably started out just like that. We are the brains and muscle, the, the brain being the strategic insight and the wisdom of, of what are we doing next? The muscle being the hard work that you put in. And if you continue to be the brains and muscle, it will work to a point where it's gets to the point where it doesn't work anymore. And you will start to feel it. You will start to say, I'm doing the things I used to do and it doesn't work. You're putting in more time. You, you work yourself toward burnout. All of this you think is in service of growing your business and building that culture that we've been talking about today.
18:47 Speaker 03 Leading with integrity? Yeah, I get it. But when you make the shift to no longer try to be the brains and muscle, you develop others to develop their brain, their confidence to share their ideas, their confidence to, to work through problems, to be resilient, to be confident in their decision-making, confident in developing systems and frameworks that grow the business without you. You will be really surprised about what your company can do. You will be surprised about how far it can go, how fun it is to work there. And I say this from experience because if you're the brains and muscle, eventually you will burn out. If you have questions about what we can do to help you, the first place to go, I think, is go to training.coalabation.com to get the next level of training. Otherwise, keep tuning in.
19:32 Speaker 03 And here is the rest of the message and interview with Brittany.
19:36 Speaker 02 Hope that answers it.
19:37 Speaker 03 It does answer it. And I think that hopefully a lot of people listening in here is like, I'd love to have a company that runs like that. A company where I'm not just the brains and muscle anymore. Like, we get it. That's where it starts, right? You have the force and the ideas and you have to find that product market fit and all those things. But when you really have a company, the way you've structured it, the way you use values, the way you are doing this, it's impressive and that's the reason why you're here. I would love for you to go just maybe a little bit deeper into your leadership style. We've talked about the values of the company and we've talked about the integrity. But when you, when you describe your leadership style, what would be the words that come to mind?
20:15 Speaker 02 Tough love. That's kind of like off the cuff, tough love. So I'm one of those people that I will, I will do whatever it takes and I'm incredibly patient. But if you come at me with a problem, have, attempt to find a proposed solution. And I will give you whatever information I can, I will show you once, but then the next time I'm going to let you take the reins and you're going to show me and I'll walk you through it, learn by doing. And that's the one thing I always tell people, you know, come at me with questions and I, give me an option, give me a solution. Don't just ask me to problem solve for you because I feel like you learn better by doing versus just being told or just being shown. Get your hands dirty, get in there and figure it out. So that's more of my leadership style is to try to guide without over coddling and over micromanaging. I don't think anybody benefits from that.
20:59 Speaker 02 And my goal is whenever I work with somebody is always to answer the so what? So it's not just, it's just not the who, what, where, when and why. It's actually beyond the why, it's the so what is the impact? So what is the value? So there's more of a comprehensive understanding.
21:15 Speaker 03 Great way to put it. And of course, this comes from a guy who wrote a book with, with his wife, my co-founder, How to Have Tough Conversations. So tough love is definitely a big part of leadership. I, I know we could probably go in many different directions. We've been talking about using your values to really create the kind of culture and performance you want. Integrity is one of the main ones. I know you have others. What have we left out of this that would really give us a full picture of how your company has created? Three years on the Inc. list and created the kind of relationships you have with your clients, but what's missing?
21:47 Speaker 02 Gosh, that's such a loaded question as to what's missing. There's always, you know, growth and trajectory. We'd like to dive more into telling more of like passion projects and doing more of that. We're so ingrained in doing for others that we have passion projects we've wanted to lean into. We now have the opportunity, actually a big wish list up until last year was to be able to provide more access into additional resources and training. And so now with the platform, we're part of like, there's access to master class and, you know, advanced education and being able to support our team in that for personal and professional growth development. As a really small shop, we did the best we could with offering like health and wellness benefits, but now we're able to expand more.
22:27 Speaker 02 So that was a miss. That was kind of hard to navigate, but now that we have that, and for us, giving our team as many resources and legs up for personal and professional growth to where that they, if you look good, you feel good. And if you, if you have somebody behind you supporting that, it makes you feel better, right? And so now we're able to do more, which, you know, for any founder out there, it is expensive. It's time consuming. It's difficult to run a company where multiple hats, you're thinking of bottom lines, but the biggest resource, the most valuable resource you have are your people. And if they believe in you and if they want to work for you and they feel valued, and you can
23:07 Speaker 02 create loyalty and investment from them because they care, you're doing a good job. It is far more costly to have to have high churn and turnover and training than it is to build up and build a good relationship with the team that you have. And I'm saying team intentionally. There's companies that work off of employees and structure and there is value to that, but, you know, creating too much of a tiered approach or ego is going to hurt you. So we come out this new ego. Honestly, if we're short staffed, I'm a co-founder of the company. I'll go run as a P A and I'm taking Starbucks orders and running to C V S to pick things up. You know what I mean? And if I'm not the creative director on site, if I'm not running executive producer, but we need, we need somebody there, put me in
23:52 Speaker 02 coach, I'll help out. You tell me what you need. You know, on a different day, I might be giving somebody a performance evaluation, but it's understanding that step up to the plate, do the work, be willing to get into the weeds. And if you understand the nuances, you're going to do better.
24:06 Speaker 03 Fantastic conversation, Brittany. I really appreciate your wisdom and being here on the podcast.
24:11 Speaker 02 Thank you for having me.
24:12 Speaker 03 Wow, what a great episode. I love having the conversation. She's so passionate about integrity and about her people. And it shines through, and hopefully you picked up on that. That's what it takes to be a people-centered or people-first culture is really caring about the people, not just the work that they create, not the money that comes on the back end and all those things. It's about the people. And if you can't create a culture that is strong, a culture that is resilient, and a culture that is willing to navigate through the ups and downs, what are you doing anyway? I know that's a big, bold statement, but if I can help you in any way through leadership and culture alignment, make sure you keep watching for our stuff, keep listening to the episodes, or you reach out. My email is [email protected] .
24:57 Speaker 03 When you think of growth, when you think of leadership, think of Growth Think Tank. As always, with the courage, we'll see you next time.
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