Jodie Lichtenstein

Jodie Lichtenstein is the CEO and co-founder of Fastback Refunds. From personal experience Jodie recognized a gap in the antiquated online merchandise refund process when she found herself waiting up to 3 weeks for thousands of dollars in returned wedding guest dresses. She founded the instant refund platform in 2023 and served as the company’s first Chief Operating Officer building everything from process, product, reporting, and marketing. As CEO, Jodie is focused on deal strategy, external partnerships, and investor relations.

Prior to starting Fastback Refunds, Jodie began her career in the financial services industry where she served as an associate at Ernst and Young for hedge fund client D.E. Shaw. In 2019, she transitioned to DailyPay, a now unicorn fintech company enabling hourly workers to access their earned wages.

Having been promoted several times, Jodie served as Head of Deal Strategy at DailyPay where she led and closed some of the largest deals in the company’s history. During her tenure at DailyPay, she helped grow the company’s revenue from $10M in annual recurring revenue to over $220M in ARR. While at the unicorn company, she devised and implemented several initiatives, including the development of value management resources. These resources facilitated the creation of partnerships by evaluating external critical data and creating interactive calculations for prospective Fortune 500 partnerships.

Jodie holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in finance and accounting from the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. She sits on the young professionals board of UJA-Federation of New York, the largest local philanthropy in the world. In her spare time, Jodie co-authors a blog for arts and culture in New York City called InvitedNYC. She lives in New York City with her dog Leo.

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

As the CEO and co-founder of Fastback Refunds, my days vary. A typical day includes meetings with our employees, investors, consultants, vendors and brainstorming new ideas. I try to get a workout in when possible and visit my favorite coffee shop.. Building a company is exciting and tedious; I remind myself regularly to stay grounded and pursue professional goals and hobbies simultaneously.

How do you bring ideas to life?

There is a lot of collaboration that happens in our business. My best ideas come to mind during some sort of exercise like long walks or boxing. We often meet in teams to bounce ideas off each other. As those ideas germinate, we figure out how to breathe life into them. We have an ongoing list of priorities that reflect our product roadmap and many other Fastback ‘to-dos’. We categorize these items into resource needs, time frame and product market fit to determine what’s next. Once we determine what takes precedence, that task gets divided up and sent to the respective team for execution.

What’s one trend that excites you?

The last few years were volatile to say the least.. Had someone described the contours of the global pandemic, none of us would have believed it. A positive byproduct of those uncertain years is that it has unleashed a greater openness from creators and consumers to question and rethink the way we live. More specifically, less acceptance of status quo for example the acceleration away from antiquated monetary systems and greater embrace of digital payments. There are so many opportunities to create efficiencies in the financial market and we are excited to bridge the gap in the consumer space, specifically refunds.

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

Wearing a lot of hats, my job naturally requires a lot of task switching. In order to be productive, I create lists and reprioritize as needed, work in areas that feel open and try to manage finalizing each one in a flow state. Gymnastics for my brain. This allows me to shift contexts and shorten the list as efficiently as possible. I rely heavily on my team to voice their needs and reprioritize the list.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Everyone will try to put limitations on you. Avoid interaction with the people who limit you and identify mentors along the way that believe in you. The only limits that exist are the ones you place on yourself.
I also wish someone told me that failure would be my best friend and greatest lessons. 90% of what I learned along the way was attributed to mistakes and 10% from huge successes.

I think some women may experience limitations and should believe in themselves more consistently.

Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you.

If something is common knowledge or said differently, broadly accepted, there is a greater than zero possibility that it could be wrong. I read an article last year that said certain heart procedures that were used for decades proved to have no effect on patients. The pandemic showed us that some practices were at best useless and at times harmful. Question everything. Be skeptical, not cynical.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

Change the scene and the scenery. Like many of my generation, I am deeply infected with the travel bug. But one need not get on an airplane for just special occasions. Getting out of one’s routine is a great way to be inspired and come up with solutions to problems we work on as a matter of course in our everyday professional lives. By changing scenery, even day-to-day offices, I reconnect with my creativity and have a breath of fresh air.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

My Goldendoodle Leo is my constant companion whether I am working (in which case he lays by my feet) or I am out doing some leisure activity. A simple walk, or his calming presence centers me. The simple interactions we share dozens of times a day helps me feel happy and regain my focus.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

There is a saying that I find myself repeating: “when one holds a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” A singular focus on our customers and visibility of our North Star helps push the business forward. By building an extremely talented and reliable team, Fastback is able to act as a well oiled machine enabling a customer centric focus.

What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

There isn’t one specific failure that I can pinpoint, but there are many minor ones. Much of the time, I followed the wrong paths because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, instead of considering what I was actually good at. The main lesson as a result of many experiences throughout my career is to have strong boundaries, advocate and never stop believing in yourself!

What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?

Fastback’s roadmap is a full shopping experience and an investor’s dream. We work lean and have long term ideas to create the most optimal and functional shopping experience for frequent shoppers/returners like me! One idea that we are launching soon is a community where the consumer will be able to see all their returns in one area + communicate across retailers to refer alternative repurchases.

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

Remaining organized is essential for me. Asana, which has been around since 2008, allows me to keep in one place the many threads that tie my professional life together. My takes, my team’s tasks, prioritization, and feedback all live in this one very useful piece of software.

What is the best $100 you recently spent?

I recently donated to amputees that were injured saving lives at the Nova Music Festival. I saw the direct result of my dollars; providing something as minimal as crutches to provide modest contribution of normalcy to the victims’ lives.

Do you have a favorite book or podcast from which you’ve received much value?

In 2018 an author that no one previously heard of, James Clear, came out with a smash success book called Atomic Habits. Over the next several years multiple people recommended it to me. I finally bought it at a bookstore in New York City. I read it over the course of a weekend and loved it. It’s a short and digestible way to fine tune the way we think, work, and interact. Marginal improvements have a way of paying long term dividends and this book explains how. I go back from time to time to read some of the chapters and draw inspiration from Clear’s suggestions for improvement.

What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?

People typically find it odd, but I don’t watch TV. I don’t like sitting through movies, it makes me feel unproductive. If I had to choose one, I highly recommend seeing One Life with Anthony Hopkins. Story of Sir Nicholas Winton and the tremendous efforts he went through in 1938 and 1939 to save 669 children he didn’t know in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. He both succeeded and failed. He was a fundamentally great human being who lived with the consequences of his actions as a young man. The movie takes place in the late 1980s and is a tear-jerker and a lesson for all of us to stream to do the right thing. Future us will thank us for it.

Key learnings:

• Having a variety of interests is essential to feeling contentment
• Risk is an inherent part of being an entrepreneur
• Growth, be it personal or professional, is rarely linear