- Will you consider this, ladies especially, where are you in life?

Career, marriage, kids, pretty much all behind you?

Well, you may need to do some soul searching.

On that front, I've got some news for you.

(uplifting inspiring music) With middle age, yes, it happens.

What do we as women do next?

We might find ourselves in limbo.

Please welcome my guest, Andrea Bjorkman, co-founder of Find Your Fizz.

She has the know how to help.

Welcome, Andrea.

- Thank you.

- Well, first, let's start with a little bit about you.

Tell me about you and where you came from, and what you're all about.

- Well, thank you for asking.

So I've had an interesting journey in the last three years in May of 2018.

I've had a corporate career for 30-plus years.

Around the country, I'm an Air Force brat, and then my ex husband was the Air Force, in the air force also, so we moved quite a bit, but had been in this area for about 20 years now, and started to work for State Farm.

And then in May of 2018, I was given an offer that I could not refuse.

It would have been stupid.

So without my, you know, certainly it was not my plan to retire at 58, but I did.

I took the first six months off just spending time with family and friends and not working 50, 60, whatever hours a week, and really enjoyed that.

Then I started getting really connected in LinkedIn, met people around the world who I consider my friends, business associates.

I've learned so much from them.

Most of them I have not met in person.

I think that's one of the silver linings of COVID, was the ability, people wanted, especially on LinkedIn, they wanted to connect.

They wanted to help people.

They wanted to offer support.

So that's been really good.

And through that, so I went through, I went through the job search again, I'm 59 by this time.

There is ageism.

- And you found that out the hard way.

- I found that out.

And I used to run HR, and I'm just like, how can this be happening?

We didn't do that to our folks, did we?

But so, I had problems from an ageism perspective.

I was picky.

There were things that I just, I didn't want to do and things that I wanted to do.

I wanted to work for the right company with the right culture, where I felt I could add value.

And I also wanted to work in a startup.

I had done a lot of startup type opportunities at State Farm, like brand new departments, new initiatives, and I did them well, and I really enjoyed them, I learned a lot.

But they were within the sheltering arms of a very successful, big organization.

Startups don't consider that startup experience.

And now that I've been in two startups, I get it completely.

So one of my connections through LinkedIn and Toronto was part of a startup that was happening there.

And he connected me with the original founder who was in Mumbai.

- [Interviewer] And that was Naxter?

- Naxter, and it was targeting adults 55-plus, both male, female, looking for their next gig.

And their gig could have been actual paid for work or volunteer, right?

- So whatever they had done for their careers or their interests, they could write plug in and help out somewhere.

- Right, just to do something different.

And have what we call, you know, active income versus passive income pensions and all that kind of stuff are great, but it's nice getting money in the door that you're actually working for.

So we had, the original founder was in Mumbai.

We had a founder in London.

We had a founder, two founders in Stockholm.

We had a founder in Toronto.

- [Interviewer] Wow.

- Never met any of these people in person.

I brought in a colleague and friend of mine, Terry Lucy Thompson from Austin.

She's in Austin, Texas as our chief marketing officer.

She and I decided in March of this year that it was just time for us to move on.

We had other thoughts in mind, we had different values with our partners.

We all left in very good terms and start a brand new company.

- Well, and that's why you're here.

Find Your Fizz.

Now that is, it's catchy, and exactly what is it?

It's aimed at women.

- It is targeting women 45 to 65, or it could be on the other, either end.

It's targeting women who are going through life transitions.

We say we're your GPS for your transitions, right?

And those transitions could be empty nesting, which is a big thing right this moment, right?

I've a lot of friends who have become empty nesters right around this school season.

It's, I remember how tough it was, I'm sure you do too.

And then how freeing it is.

There's that part too.

But empty nesting, retirement, whether it was chosen or forced.

Caring for elderly parents, those kinds of things.

- It could be divorce.

It could be any number of things.

- It is, yeah.

And we, so we started the company, in fizz, we think of obviously bubbles and women where we love to hang out together and have bubbly or wine.

And it's celebratory, right?

It's the bubbles are rising to the top that says something about you and what we want to do.

We want to rise to the top of whatever our situation is.

- Well, and so you have a guideline.

So let's say that I am retired and searching for something.

I just don't want to sit home.

You know, I wish I could.

I'm just not one of those.

But, but there are those that they just don't even know how to reach out and how to get moving and find their fizz, get going, get bubbly.

How do they find you?

Or, or how do you, or how will they connect with you?

- They will connect through it.

So we have a beginning of a website, a landing page.

It's not a full blown version at all yet.

Again, we're an early stage startup and this is all about, and we've learned this from the venture studio that we work with in Indianapolis.

It's all about keeping the customer at the forefront, interviewing customers, knowing what it is that they're looking for, making sure we're solving a problem that needs to be solved.

And we feel we have, we've had lots of customer ran interviews.

We've had, we've done some surveys and I can tell you a little bit about those results.

And it's about identifying that there is a problem, that what are the existing alternatives?

What are their competitors, your competitors out there?

And from what we seen, there's no one that is doing what we want to want to do.

And then it's tribe.

So it's tribe guide and subscribe.

So tribe is like-minded women.

And we hear this from everybody that we talk to.

And it's funny when we talk to men, they're like, yeah, I don't know I got into the job.

And it's, so they want to like minded tribe.

Somebody going through a divorce wants to be able to share the feelings and what they're going through with women that are doing the same, for example.

They want to share if, you know, all the wonderful things you've done in your career, if someone was interested in going into journalism, you could reach out to them and say, yes, I'd be more than happy to help you or mentor you, or that kind of thing.

So it's that building that community of like-minded women.

It's also the guide part is we're coaching, we are designing what we're calling life maps that will help them design, we're designing the next decade of their lives.

- So, help life map?

- Yes, life map.

- You take where they've been and what their interests are, and you can give them a tribe, an arrow, some directions.

- Yes, so one of our early adopters, we just talked to her the other day.

She has gone through a divorce.

She is a high powered attorney.

And yet for the first time in many, many years, she is not, she's not used to doing something on her own and making decisions on her own only about her, not about her spouse, right?

So as confident as she is in her career, she's not confident in knowing what the choices she's making and what the next directions are.

And she is so excited to get that, and not just from us, we're not the experts, we bring in, we will bring in coaches.

But just sharing between each other.

Exactly.

So, and then we talk a lot about the imposter syndrome, you know, women who have been very successful in their careers still question, really?

Was I that good?

No, I'm not that good.

I don't have this all together.

And it's an opportunity for people to share and understand that, yeah, a lot of us are going through those same things.

- There's a name for that, imposter syndrome.

And lot of people.

- [Woman] And it's mostly women.

- And why do you think that is it?

'Cause you have some other, I mean, your background is, you're all over the place in your background and everything that you've done.

Yeah but counseling also.

- It's, and it's a newer term.

It's that you just don't feel confident that you've deserved to be where you are.

- [Interviewer] That you're worth it, interesting.

- Now you can be, and I've seen this with women, executive women who are a totally different person at work than they are at home.

- So they're subservient at home?

But they're in charge in the office.

- And it's those different roles we play, right?

- As women.

- Yeah, and then as working women with kids.

- You have a lot of different job titles, a lot of changes.

So how did you meet Terry Lucy Thompson, then?

- I've worked with Terry and marketing at State Farm when I started there.

So she left the company and went into higher ed, first chief first marketing officer at a university, and that was at Notre Dame.

So she was at Notre Dame.

She was at Arizona, and then at University of Texas, she's in Austin now.

So, she and I, you know, we were colleagues, we worked well together.

One of the fun, many fun things about this, this adventure that we're having is we've become really good friends.

And that was not something that we put on our list, right?

That was just an added benefit.

- But you're kind of one of those from just everything that you've told us so far, and I've known you for a couple of years through the children's hospital, you just really can't sit still.

So you have that little bug in your bonnet and you just keep going.

- I, you know, I enjoy, I've always, in my career, and I'm sure it has a lot to do with the fact that I'm a woman and I have four daughters, but I've always done whatever I can to help women.

Mentoring, being, I was the executive sponsor for our women's network, the employee resource group at State Farm.

All the stuff that's going on in the world today about women, but also about kids, and that's our, you know, that's one of the things we have in common.

- Well, okay.

Now you have a book there, and we're going to have to talk about how people would be involved with this.

But what's the book?

- So the book is "Running Lean".

So we are working with a, Terri and I are working with a venture studio in Indianapolis.

I met them through another connection.

- [Interviewer] Through LinkedIn, again?

- All of this is through connections.

And so they're really trying to help people like ourselves with that we think have a good idea and then finding a systematic process to figure that out.

And they use this book, "Running Lean" by Ash Maurya, and it's based on, and I love, I like systems.

So it's based on lean principles that are used in manufacturing or in agile.

We used them at State Farm a lot.

And it's making sure that, you know, as he says, everything has to be about the customer.

You experiment, you iterate.

There are, there have been more opportunities these days for innovation.

But what happens is startups, startup owners fail because they're not willing to follow a process and they're wasting time, money, and energy.

- So process in terms of what the customer needs.

Yes, and then identifying.

So what we did, so there's the product risk that you identify.

So what are you solving?

And then there's the market risk, what's the competition?

And we talked about a little bit about that.

And then who has the pain, what's the customer risk?

and then you continually go back and rethink, and re-ask your customers, okay, so tell me about this.

Does this, do you find value in this?

One of the things that we did?

So we did our original work with NEXT at their discovery week and identified and did interviews with women and knew that we were on the right track.

- [Interviewer] So focus groups.

- Focus, actual interviews.

It is different than focus groups.

And I used to do a lot of those when I was in marketing, right?

Focus groups are a lot of times, people say what they think they would do, but not what they would really.

Yeah, it's quite a, it's quite a skill to be a good focus group facilitator.

- But the interviewees, then, they're very honest?

- Very honest, could not be more honest because they want to talk about this stuff.

But we then did a survey that we wanted to get more into in depth.

So what are the transitions you're going through?

The top three were empty nesting, caring for elderly parents.

You know, that's the whole sandwich generation.

And health and wellness issues.

- [Interviewer] Like menopause.

- Menopause, exactly.

I was just going to go there.

We also asked what are the emotions you're feeling as you're going through these, these transitions and the top three were a need for adventure, fear and feeling irrelevant.

- Boy, those are all so very incongruent.

- So then we also asked among other questions, I'll just share this last one.

So who do you go to for support?

Not probably a surprise to you and I, it was friends over spouse or significant other.

It again shows how women interact with one another.

Yes, the need to get to have those friendships, that guidance, that tribe.

So our plan now, and again, what it's all about, we come up with these hypothesis and then we research, we experiment, if they work, keep going.

And, or make them better.

If they don't, go to something else.

'Cause we're doing sprints three week sprints where you do all of these things and then figure that out and then go to the next step.

- With each person, a three week sprint?

- No, with each of our hypothesis.

Like, what does adventure mean to you?

Is it a trip?

One woman we talked to said, I hate to go to the grocery store.

So if I can make it an adventure, then I enjoy it.

So, or it's, I'm an empty nester and really, I couldn't figure out what to do for myself.

So that's what we're doing at this point, is figuring out more about what adventure and those emotions, adventure, fear, and feeling irrelevant means.

- And you just started this.

- In May, yes.

- And you have a website.

So you kind of launched it on the web.

And so people go to your website and they see what you're about, and you said it doesn't have a whole lot, it's just informative.

What will they find on that website?

- They will find it a lot of what we just talked about, GPS for women 45-plus, and we want to help you find your fizz.

We just, and this was another thing we're experimenting with.

- [Interviewer] Yes, I wanna be quizzed.

- These are our.

Well they're not quizzes, they're affirmation cards.

So fizz.

- [Interviewer] Well maybe it's a quiz for me.

- Fizz from within.

And so this is just a prototype of these cards, affirmation cards that you look at.

- They're wonderful.

- Or if you go into a yoga studio and you pick one up and that's what you should have in your mind as you're doing that, right?

So we are, this is just a prototype.

We're just starting with it.

Everybody that we've shown it to is very, very excited.

So for instance, adventure, wasn't her middle name, but it should have been.

- Oh, that's nice.

- No one gets out of here alive.

- Savor it all.

- That's right.

Can't never did anything.

And we especially love this one.

This is Terri's mom who's 83, 84.

That was something she always has said.

Can't can never.

So these are just things that just another added value that we can give to our clients.

They will be available on our website.

We're getting them printed now.

We've talked to two stores in Indianapolis about distributing them there.

My Pilates studio is going to have them there.

So you will go and see that and you will see it just for right now, an opportunity to subscribe.

And we're doing a special deal, $99 until the end of this year.

And you will then get your life map, and we start down the path of what we're doing.

- But anybody, even if they kind of have some things figured out, they can still subscribe.

- Exactly, yes.

- Because you never know when that little bee is going to get under your bonnet.

- And they can help you.

They can help others.

You know, again, that's what we see.

- [Interviewer] Networking and connections.

- Right, right.

- What has surprised you the most in, this is an adventure for you.

- Yes, it is very much so, I'm finding my fizz.

It's funny, 'cause Terri and I talked about this a lot.

When we were with Naxter, we were figuring it out.

We thought we had an investor for $50,000, and we had to figure out a marketing budget for 50,000.

And we were saying, having the same conversations and the same difficulty in determining how to do that at 50 versus the 6 million marketing budget we worked on.

- Go figure.

- So, it's not a surprise, obviously those experiences that the skills that we have are working very well for this, but we have to think differently.

It's not, you know, we're very, she and I are very much alike in that, and she's a brand czar and our brand is, and I agree with her completely, brand is very important to us, but it doesn't have to be perfect, right?

Whereas a big company, they're not going to go out and test something like that.

It's going to be done in a very small way.

- [Interviewer] It's their brand.

- So we have to rethink that, okay yeah, we know these aren't the best cards, we'd like them bigger or maybe want to.

That's okay, it's just getting it out there.

And then keep iterating.

- And the places where you'd like to have those cards are mostly women owned businesses.

And then we're supporting them, right?

- Exactly.

- So, let's get back to Terri.

Now she's written a book.

- [Woman] Yes, she has.

- And it is about working moms.

About being a working mom, and she's she did that, boy, time flies.

15, 20 probably years ago.

- Well, and we were all kind of, everybody was trying to figure things out 15 or 20 years ago.

I know I was.

- And I don't know how I did it.

I don't know how anybody does it today, I really don't.

Well, it's so different, especially.

And I thought of that, you know, and unfortunately, it's still happening in some states.

Having to have your kids work to go to school remotely.

I mean, on top of your job, your spouse's job, trying to hold it all together.

It's just, it's crazy.

I think another silver lining of COVID is, and we're seeing it in that people are leaving the job, their jobs, because they can't do it.

- [Interviewer] They can't do it.

- They can't do it and/or, you know what?

That's not, that wasn't worth it.

I didn't, I never enjoyed it.

I'm finding a passion.

I know I just read 30% of the people who have left jobs in the last week are going out to start their own business.

- Oh, that's an interesting people are.

- People are just thinking differently.

- I remember my son learned to juggle one time.

We were with grandma at a doctor appointment and it took forever.

And so he got this little book for juggling.

He said, mom, do you want to learn?

I went, no, I'm already juggling life.

And that's kind of what women really have to do.

- Yeah, and unfortunately, not a silver lining of COVID is we as women have lost, I bred different things, but mostly, almost all the ground that we've gained over the decades.

Because who is one having to quit their job because they have to take care of the kids at home?

It's primarily women.

- And get them, make sure that their schoolwork is done and everything.

- [Woman] And that's really sad.

- But, Find Your Fizz can help with that because who knows what they're going to be developing?

- Right.

- Where do you hope Find Your Fizz will be in a year?

Where do you foresee it?

- Well we, so this is another thing that we Terry and I have talked about with NEXT, our venture studio is, do we, are we in this, is it a lifestyle business?

Which means five years or more we want to stay in that business, or do we want to get it up and going, and then sell it next year?

We have said right now, and I'm 61.

Terri will be 65.

Well I'll be 62 in just a couple of weeks after she's 65.

So, do we want to, you know, I don't know that I want to work this hard for five more years.

So right now, you know, we want this up and running and doing well and adding value to women's lives.

And knowing that, that we are helping them and we want to make money.

- And where will, who will take over then if you too?

- Well, the beauty would be, the ideal would be somebody comes to acquire us.

- And because they've benefited from it and they can see that it does have some value.

- Right, or an organization like AARP, they want that as part of their offerings.

- It's interesting that you start technically at age 45 to 65.

'Cause I was thinking in my own mind, 55 and up, but I guess people are in the sandwich generation, really in their mid forties.

- Yeah, so that's, that's a very, another very good point.

So we thought 50 and above, and then our survey told us no, it's 45 for that sandwich generation primarily, but also empty nesting divorce.

- So I have an idea for you.

Bath bombs, 'cause they fizz, and then you put one of your little thoughts in the middle of it and then, you know, how about?

- That's a great idea.

That's a great idea.

- Are you surprised that that this has come together relatively easily?

- Yes, yes.

However, we learned a lot, struggled a lot with our first startup.

- But because of that, then you could take that and move on from here.

- The other thing that I will add also is so adventure for example.

If we find out that adventure means to majority of our clients, they want to do curated travel trips together.

We will then partner.

And we have a friend in Indianapolis who has a travel company that does this kind of thing.

We would partner with her and she would put together a trip just for our folks, right?

It could be those kinds of things.

So we wouldn't have third-party partnerships.

- Right, so any surprises though?

I mean, with adventure, that's one different thing because it's got so many different interpretations.

- The the feeling irrelevant, the fear and the other emotions, some of them, I felt, have felt, do feel, some do not.

It's just, it's it's when you think about it, they're not really surprises, 'cause it's like, everybody's different.

- They truly are.

They truly are.

And you're finding that out more and more.

So if they subscribe, so they go to find your findyourfizz.com and they subscribe, and then is there a constant communication?

- Yes.

So we would then reach out to them and set up an onboarding call.

And then, then like what we just did a couple of days ago, then we would set, we would start monthly calls if monthly is what we're setting it at.

But if you want two weeks, we will do what we can there do there and then start building that life map with them, and then providing them coaching, hooking them up with their tribe.

We're working on different social media platforms to figure out what you know is our audience Facebook?

We have younger women who say, well, I wouldn't go on Facebook.

Well, we're older women and we do go on Facebook.

- Now, because that's what we do.

But they don't anymore.

- Exactly, and so it's always, so we're figuring all those things out those.

- Well, thank you so much for sharing this and I wish you all the best of luck, and what an exciting adventure for you.

- It is, yes, I'm finding my fizz.

- Yay, and all of us are too.

So thanks, Andrea Bjorkman.

Find Your Fizz and thanks for joining us.

Have a wonderful evening or day or whatever, stay safe and healthy.

(uplifting inspiring music)