Wednesday Wisdom with Joy Huska Kite

Wednesday Wisdom Podcast Spotlight

This week, we are thrilled to welcome the amazing Joy Huska Kite!

Listen in as Joy shares her brilliance on what it means to be part of the solution, keep moving forward even when the road gets difficult, and trust that persistence prevails when all else fails.

There will always be moments when it feels easier to stop, step back, or believe something is not meant for us but those are often the moments when we need to keep going the most.

Joy reminds us that progress belongs to those who refuse to give up, continue searching for solutions, and stay committed to the impact they know they are meant to make.

You will not want to miss this inspiring and powerful conversation! 🎙️

Don’t stop. Keep going. Persistence prevails!

#wednesdaywisdom #podcast #makinglivesbetter


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🎉 **Join us for an enlightening journey** as we explore the minds of those who shape our world. Whether you're a mortgage veteran, a creative thinker, or just someone who loves a good dose of wisdom, this season is for you!

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Transcript

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Intro song 0:00 Laura 0:25

Thank you for joining us today for another episode of Wednesday Wisdom. Today we are joined by the incredible Joy Huska Kite. She is the CEO at MyCredit Info and a 2026 Women with Vision Award winner. Joy, thank you so much for joining us today. And we always kick it off with we go through life, we pick up knowledge and advice and everything from all these different places. But certain things sit with us, certain things attach to us and become part of our life. So, Joy, I would love to hear and please share with the audience what one piece of wisdom really settles with you that you would like to share.

Joy Huska Kite 1:14

So thank you for having me, first of all. Um, and I appreciate you for that. So to answer that question, what sets with me the most is being part of the solution. Be part of the solution, push the boundaries, don't quit. You're gonna fall down. You're gonna climb that ladder. You might only go three steps up, you might fall back one, two. Hell yeah. You might even fall back down three, but you get back up and you keep going. That's one of the biggest lessons that I've learned. Persistency prevails when all else fails.

Laura 1:47

Oh, I love that. Such a valuable, valuable lesson. So I'm gonna go further. Okay. Okay. We climbed up the ladder. We fell back down. Yep. We climbed up the ladder again. Yep. Fell back down even further. Actually, came back again. Joy. What do we do? Like, how do we what's the message to everybody listen out there that says, Joy, I hear you. I hear you. I keep climbing up those runs on that ladder. And every time I go up three, I fall down five. And you know what? I'm I'm a little tired. I'm a little tired of coming back up. I I keep trying, I'm I'm being persistent, but man, I I I need something. Give give me the word, Joy. How do I get back on?

Joy Huska Kite 2:40

Keep going, keep going, don't stop. Keep going because you're exactly where you are supposed to be today. Period.

Laura 2:50

And yes, you are, and I love that. Joy, you know, I'm I'm enjoying that right now. What you just said, I live my life that way, and I really hope everybody just heard that. Joy said, you are exactly where you're supposed to be at this moment. Yeah. And for everyone listening, I think we all agree. When we look backwards, man, it's easy. It's easy to say, oh yeah, that was a difficult time, but heck, I learned this lesson. I got past that. But it's really hard to see it forward. So thank you for that reminder, because it we will get through whatever that is, that all of us have things that are happening, right? But don't stop. That's what Joy's saying. Don't stop in the middle. Keep going and get through it. Keep going. I love that. So, Joy, before we hit record, we're having a lovely conversation, catching up of things that are happening. And you said something that, you know, I want to go a little deeper on. You made a comment about we know when we need to have a difficult conversation, whether it's business, whether it's personal, whatever that may be. And so many times we hesitate, we put it off, we think about it over and over in our brains and try to figure out the right way to go about that, and we catastrophize. Well, if I do this, what will happen? Right. So, Joy, you know, I want to go a little deeper on this. I want your insights and wisdom and guidance. What do we how do we handle those tough conversations? How do we approach those? Because I'm sure everyone listening here has some difficult conversation we need to have.

Joy Huska Kite 4:34

Exactly. That's a really good question. So, one of the things I've learned through falling off the ladder, starting all over, is to write down what your end goal is because none of us like confrontation. None of us, we avoid it. It's just human nature, fight or flight. We all we all deal with fight or flight, fight or flight. And when we're dealing with confrontation, one of the things that my operation manager is teaching me, and bless Robin, is she's teaching me to write down my thoughts. And then words matter. Wow, do words are they are powerful and they matter. So one of the things I've learned about those hard conversations is to pick your words wisely. Choose your questions and lead with questions, but make sure you're authentic. That's another thing, is make sure you're coming from a space of authenticity because we don't know where the other person's coming from. And fear, don't lead out with fear, because fear will guide you in the wrong direction. It just does. You can't make a decision based off fear. You'll make a mistake every time. So make sure that you write your questions down, your end goal, and then start asking questions. That's the biggest lesson that I've learned.

Laura 5:59

Very, I mean, I couldn't even think of a better answer of how you describe that. Because let's just let's just take our wonderful mortgage industry, right? That we all are in here, right? And I think we all could agree that we've all been through many cycles. Oh, absolutely. And after COVID, it has gotten quite bonkers, right? From the highest volume to the challenges of other things. And what you just said about so many times you do hear and see people leading from fear. Now, valid, valid point of where that fear is coming from. But to your point, our brains do not think properly. We cannot have a calm and collected and professional conversation leading that way. So, that advice of everyone, please take note of what Joyce said. Take that moment before that conversation. What is what is our end goal of what we're trying to accomplish? And what are those questions that we can have in a calm and professional discussion? Because if we lead from emotion or we lead from fear, it is not going to get that desired outcome that you are looking to do. And I think we all agree, anyone that's in leadership, and we're all leaders, we're on, you know, we're entrepreneurs, we're leading what whether you're leading your whole household, you're leading your businesses, like we're all leading, you're leading yourself, right? We're all leaders. Right. At the end of the day, you can't make clear decisions or outcomes if you're living in that fear reality. Because we know fear is a liar. We know that. That's that catastrophizing, right? That, oh my goodness, this terrible thing is going to happen. So we need, we understand we have to have those conversations because the best leaders and the best outcomes come from those discussions. So, Joy, what's your advice to the people listening right now? Because I'm telling you, whether it's having the discussion with your partner, your kids, your boss, your clients, like there's always someone that we should be having those discussions with. So, what's your advice to them?

Joy Huska Kite 8:24

Write it down before before you open your mouth, because I can contest that my mouth has gotten me in trouble more than once for those who that do know me, because I just put it out there, right? But I'm learning, though, as a leader, I'm learning to be more empathy driven, listening, and write it down and not lead by fear. That's a big lesson that I've learned is don't believe the lies because they whisper. Oh my gosh, they whisper. It's that fight or flight, and the whispers. Sit back, write it down, analyze it, don't overthink it. And I'm a pro at that.

Laura 9:09

We all are.

Joy Huska Kite 9:14

I'm an overthink and I'm gonna butcher it, right? But in the end of the day, lead with faith, lead with the right questions, and and have purpose behind your conversation.

Laura 9:26

You know, you you said one of my favorite words, purpose. Um, as you can see behind me, my company is making lives better. Um, I was listening, I listen to podcasts every morning, right? It's part of my like daily get ready, right? So, and I switch around, like I'm I'm all over the place who I listen to. And I heard one, someone said the other day, you can't, if you focus on your result, you will always be chasing. But if you focus on the purpose and the results of other people, you will always be rewarded. That is so true. Right. It's honorable. And I I kind of was like, man, that is so accurate. Because so many times that again, going back to that fear, we tie into the, oh my goodness, I have to hit this number, I have to hit this goal, I have to make this happen. But that's like us tying to that. But if we make it about taking care of the family, taking care of the client, taking care of the experience, you know, looking out for the outcome for someone else, it will absolutely come right back around to us to create the outcome and the goals that we're trying to achieve. Absolutely. I love that. So you're using all my favorite words, Joy. Love it, love it, love it. Okay. So, Joy, as part of Wednesday Wisdom, I also believe, and I know this is right up your alley because we're fully aligned in this messaging. I believe we live in an unlimited world. I don't believe there's anything that is impossible. Everything is possible. We just sometimes don't dream big enough or or stretch ourselves big enough, right? So, what I would like to ask is our final question before we wrap up as to how people can learn more about you. If I took out my magic wand and I was to say to you, Joy, you get one wish. And that wish allows you to have unlimited resources, unlimited knowledge, and you will achieve it. What would that one thing be?

Joy Huska Kite 11:33

Great question. So I would want everybody, all our consumers, even starting in a high school age, back down to high school, I would want everybody to understand that the credit score is your reputation score. And therefore, it is your responsibility to learn how to play the game. And it's important because it makes it it determines, it can determine your insurance rates, your job, the interest rate you pay on a car, on your home. And financial literacy is very important to me because your reputation score is the difference between homeownership, the American dream, even having a reliable car to get you to and from, is so important to me because growing up, how we grew up, Laura, in I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and given my age away, it was our relationship was go to the local bank. Hey, my name is Joy, and my family banks here. I would like to buy a car. It was based off of our reputation. We didn't use scores in the 80s. It wasn't until you know 95. And look, now 30 years moving forward, we're changing how we do business today. And so that brings me into who we are. As my credit info, we are a credit reseller. We provide lenders and institutions credit reports and ancillary products, but we offer it different. What sets us apart from my competition lore is we have a concierge desk. We're open from eight to eight. We're open on Saturdays because it's different today. We are different because forward-thinking how we used to do business 30 years ago is not how we do it today. And I want everybody to know the inside and outside of credit and how it works, what works with the Fair Debt Collection Practice Act, Civil Servicemen Relief Act. There's so many pieces of it that don't make sense. And in women and men, life events happen, and it's really, really inspiring to see women and men go through trials and tribulations and get their credit that they so hard worked for. And student loans is another one. I could go, I could talk about credit. I could talk about this, I could talk about this daily, about what we see daily, how we can make a difference in Americans' um credit history, credit reputation, lifestyle.

Laura 14:13

Love this discussion. Such an important thing that we have to speak about more. And I'll even share, I'll even share a personal story of when my kids were growing up, right? And and when my kids were growing up and they were in high school, I was always, I was always that house where all the kids always came to my house, right? All the after school, they always hung out at my house. And I can remember my youngest son that now is my vice president of technology at our company. Um he would have all of his friends say, Mom, can you tell the kids, can you tell my friends about credit? Now, those kids are now getting married. They now have 401ks, they're now having babies. And I remember like those kids now that are grown men literally say, Mrs. Brando, if you didn't teach us about getting credit and the importance of paying things on time and what we needed to do, they now have owned, now they've own homes. Now they have mortgages, they have cars. But Joy, thank God they had someone that was educated to be able to guide them. The lack of financial literacy and the fact that it's almost a, ooh, we don't speak about credit. We don't have conversations about any of that until there's a problem, until they can't get a mortgage, until you can't get the car, you're paying 22% interest rates or whatever, right? So join, shout into the world, right? Let's get that out. Let's make that wish come true. Let's join forces and every person that's listening to this right now how do we get this out? Because this is the legacy that we all about, you know, at our stage in our careers and in our lives, it's about behind us, right? And to the side of us that we're pulling forward, right? We're leaving a legacy of always making sure things are better than we found it, right? When we jumped in. So, Joy, I'm gonna I'm gonna challenge you with this of, okay, what do you need us to do? What's the first step? Yes, we know what you're doing. What can we do as mortgage professionals to continue to help this mission that yes, we want to support getting that education out? What do we do?

Joy Huska Kite 16:34

So the first thing is when we're saying, okay, you don't qualify now, okay, right now you can't buy today, but let's set you up for success. My goal is to create a path without I I'm not a I'm not a huge fan. I don't want to say the word credit repair because that's a taboo. But what I would like to see, and what I would like to do, is I've written a book called The Credit Web. It's not been released, it's being edited. I need to make sure that I'm not, you know, giving bad information because it's changing. Of course. But my goal is to have that information out there and have it readily available. That's another thing. This information should be free, easy access. We already have a confusion about, I mean, the confusion regarding the war and the scores, Fantage versus FIFO, and how do you navigate? So this information starts with us as moms, dads, friends at the dinner table, right? Who sits at the dinner table anymore, right? But it starts with us as being industry leaders. We teach our kids, we teach our friends, we teach our communities, and it starts with communities, churches, groups, soccer team, no pun intended World Cup, right? The volleyball team, the cheer club, the dance club, and we start teaching our circles of people, and we teach them, and it just grows and grows and grows. And my aspiration is to create the create the the workbook or uh an electronic how-to. And that's what um we at My Credit Information, MyCredit Information or My Credit Info, our aspirations is to teach the world. I love it.

Laura 18:21

And it sounds like you are moving in that forward motion, and we're here to support you as you continue to do that. Well, Joy, thank you for sharing. Thank you for the wonderful wisdom. Thank you for a really great conversation. We could go on for days and days in this conversation. Absolutely. So thank you. And we'd like to wrap up with how do people learn more about you and the great work that you're doing at MyCredit Info?

Joy Huska Kite 18:46

So we have a website, it's www.mycredinfo.com, and they can always reach out to us. It's easy. It's it's support or joy at mycreditinfo.com. It's really simple. And remember, we're open. We're literally open 12 hours a day and on weekends from nine to three. We're just a phone call away. Thank you.

Laura 19:07

Keep shining bright, my friend, and keep informing the world.

Joy Huska Kite 19:11

Thank you, Laura.