- Will you consider this?

You take early retirement and you're supposed to be taking it easy but your personality says you've still got a lot to offer.

So what ever shall you do with your time?

Wait until you hear this story.

(bright music) Why sit around in your retirement when that inner fizz is bubbling with ideas?

My next guest found her fizz, recently published a chapter in a book, and became a life coach.

And all three endeavors are truly intertwined.

Welcome Andrea Bjorkman.

You've met her before with her latest creation.

It is included in a book entitled "People Fusion."

All right, well that sounds curious.

Tell us, "People Fusion" is a playbook?

- Yes.

- Right.

With a lot of different ideas.

So explain.

- So different ideas primarily targeting HR and talent professionals, just to help small to mid-size companies build a better culture, attract better employees, retain those employees.

All different kinds of ideas and best practices to help.

Coaching, team building, you name it.

We've got 14 different chapters with all kinds of really good information.

- How did you get involved with it?

I mean, just one of those things?

Serendipity?

- It's synchronicity, I'll call it that.

So it's something that I've always wanted to write a book, not having much confidence in my writing.

I decided and I don't know if you're familiar with Julia Cameron's book "Artist's Way."

So I reread that book from 25 years ago, she just had her 25th anniversary.

And about six months ago, I started practicing the daily morning pages.

So I write three pages every single morning.

Now, I have done it at midnight one time and whatever, but primarily- - You get it done everyday.

- Exactly.

And it was really to help me feel more confident in my writing ability.

And so once I did that and felt, and I saw some real change in what I was doing, I did have somehow an email sent to me from a company that was trying to get me to write a book for them.

And I'm like, "Oh, I don't know."

And then I knew the owner of the publishing company that I worked with for this book and lo and behold, I didn't know she was doing that at the time.

She said, "Oh, come on Andrea, you gotta do this."

So I did.

- Hmm.

What is your chapter about?

I mean, this is "People Fusion" and it's a playbook for small to mid-sized companies.

But what is your chapter?

- And the "People Fusion" the name, the title I will say comes from the fact that we talk a lot about work more than we talk about the people doing the work.

So this is trying to fuse more of that thinking so that's the "People Fusion."

Mine is about women, why women, how to make the best workplace and you need diversity and you need specifically women in order to do that.

- Well, the whole pandemic kind of changed the workforce.

And so many women had to stay home and work from home, but also work with their children and all that stuff so, I mean, the timing of this is really wonderful, but how do you retain those women?

How do you get 'em back into the workforce?

- It's really tough and you're right.

You know, when I really started thinking about this topic, and it's something that I've felt I've always had a passion for and a dedication to.

I think part of it is that, well, I'm a female and I also have four daughters, and it's something that I've always been very concerned about, is helping women in the workforce and other areas of their life.

But I thought back on Rosie the Riveter.

Remember her?

So back in World War I, mostly World War II, the men went overseas, fought for our country, still had to keep the country going.

The factories had to have women come in and build the munitions and everything else for the war effort.

And Rosie the Riveter was a propaganda campaign to try to get these women to come, to do something that they've never done before and it was incredibly successful.

And so they were doing these kinds of really tough jobs that most of the vast majority of them did not have- - Any training.

- No, no.

And they were taking care of their families at home.

Then war's over, thank goodness.

The men come back and then the campaign became- - And they got bumped.

- Rosie the housewife.

- Okay.

Well, they needed to do an about face.

- Yes, yes.

And so that's, you know, I can't imagine being one of those women and then losing all of that.

I'm sure they were quite a few that enjoyed being back into their home, but it's something that I look at and I'm just like, "Wow."

And then that parity, lack of parity for both opportunities and pay has never come back, ever.

And the pandemic, as you brought up, has hurt it even more.

Because of the pandemic, because women are still the primary... - Caregiver.

- Caregivers, both.

And then if you're in the sandwich generation, both of their children and their elderly parents.

And so it made it, for a lot of these women, it made more sense for them to leave the workforce because they needed to homeschool, they had to take.

And they usually were the lower paying, if they're in a- - A corporation.

- Couple.

Yeah.

They're usually the lower paying of the mom or the dad, right?

So the lack of parity, there are some research that says it's gonna take 271 years.

- To make that time up?

Oh.

How did they come up with that equation?

271 years.

- 271 years to get back.

Yeah, yeah.

- Whoa.

So, well, you're also a life coach.

- Yes.

- So your life coaching has a lot to do with this as well.

You came out of corporate America, and what do you do when you're coaching a person, what are you looking for?

What are they looking for to fuse them into their life, whether it's in their personal lives or whether it's in their professional lives?

- And one of the things that I've made changes to my company, we learned that we did what most startups do, we boiled the ocean.

We were coaching women in all the different life transitions.

No, you've gotta find a niche.

So the niche that I chose and that I've carried on with the company now is helping women find their professional life path in the second chapter of their lives.

- [Christine] Okay.

How do you go about that?

- Well, and that's why my chapter works so well and it's something that from a company perspective, I want to continue to help women and organizations as well.

And so it could be, again, you're 45 plus years old, you know you're not happy in what you're doing.

You don't know how to figure it out, what to do.

It could be you want to stay in corporate, you want to stay in corporate America, maybe you want to change industries or just do something totally different.

It could be you do what I did when I left corporate America, you want to be an entrepreneur and you want to start your own company.

It could be you want to retire and that's fabulous too.

And so it's really, unfortunately, what us humans do most of the time, is we have to feel the pain, - [Christine] Right.

Before you get the kick in the behind.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

Feeling the pain and you could be a woman that you wake up every morning and you're dreading going into your job, or you like your job, but it's killing you from a work life balance.

You want to spend more time with family and friends, but you don't know how to do it.

- So how do you change that?

How do you rewire, rework all that?

- First off, you have to ask for help, as we just said.

And it's just, so I use our life map and it's really trying to understand what do you think about yourself?

How do you take the opinions of others?

What are the words you use?

- [Christine] Is it self-talk as well?

- Oh, yeah, definitely.

And the words you use could be with others, but most of the time, the ones that we use for ourselves- - [Christine] Could be sabotaging ourselves.

- We would never say that to anybody else.

- Interesting.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't do career counseling.

That's really important but at this point, a lot of my clients don't even know what they want to do.

Maybe I've got one client who's staying in corporate, but she started a side hustle and she didn't even think she could do that.

- [Christine] Because of her corporate job?

- Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

- Okay.

- And so when we first started talking, and she was, again, not happy in her corporate job, but it was not the time to make a move like that.

But then I said, "Well, what else?

What are your other passions?"

And then we started talking about it, and I said, "Well, why don't you just start a little side hustle and let's figure out what that could look like."

And it just opened up huge, huge possibilities for her that she never even considered.

- So is she doing that now?

- Yes, yes.

- So she's out of the corporate world?

- No, no.

She's doing the side hustle.

- All right.

- But she has a plan for when she's going to leave corporate.

- All right.

Well, that's a good start anyway.

- [Andrea] Exactly.

- So somebody comes to you, where do they find you?

- They find me through, my website, through social media.

- [Christine] What's that website?

- FindYourFizz.com.

- Oh, that's the find your fizz, because we talked about that before.

You find your fizz and you have a lot of women who have subscribed to that and they get daily boosts.

- Right.

- All right.

So describe that a little bit for people who may not have seen that interview.

- Okay.

So I offer free webinars to try to share my message and then what I wanted also get out of that obviously is some more clients.

I do different offers for coaching packages.

I do a lot of podcasts, I get to do this.

Thank you so much, Christine and WTVP.

It's just awareness, right?

It's about building awareness.

And I just did a interview with Scott Miller at WJBC.

He was interested in life.

He said, "What is life coaching?

I've never understood it."

- Right.

- Right.

And so it's a lot of times you've gotta get the word out.

You've gotta educate people.

And there's so many different ways of doing that these days when you have an online business.

- Well, you know, so life coach, you could think, eh, just getting up out of bed in the morning, you know, is that where you start?

Sometimes it might be.

- Oh yeah, definitely.

And one of the things that I feel very strongly about, I think a lot of folks think of life coaching more it's kind of wishy washy, kind of soft stuff, whatever.

I want to provide results.

So when I do an onboarding with a new client, I ask them, what are the results they wanna get?

And one of them that always comes up is, I want better sleep.

- [Christine] Ah, interesting.

- I want to wake up and feel good the next morning and get excited about what I'm doing next.

- Well then, how do you approach that?

Just curious, asking for a friend.

(both laugh) - Which one?

- Just me.

No, so how do you say, "Okay, well, let's start here"?

What is step number one in that kind of a situation?

- It's usually just talking through, again, going through the life map exercise, which happens over six coaching sessions.

Just getting them to have a better understanding of what is good in their lives, what is not so good.

That they can have dreams.

What are those dreams?

Discover those.

And it's just working through everything and the survey that I use, we start, let's say sleep is something that you want.

You want better sleep.

And then you say on a scale of one to 10, you're about a four.

Then a month later, we look at that again and hopefully it's gone closer to the 10.

We worry so much, we have so much on our mind.

And then- - Or constantly barraged.

- Yes.

Yeah.

And another real benefit is taking time for yourself.

If you are going through any kind of life coaching, well, that says a lot and that is an opportunity for you to finally do a little self-care.

And that in itself has great benefits.

- Do you find that mostly for women?

- Yes.

- All right.

And that's just resulting from all of the hats that they exchange from day to day.

- Yeah.

And that's one of the things that I talk about in my chapter for organizations, is they need to think about what women bring to the workforce in a different way and what they're dealing with in their professional lives and they can add benefits like childcare, emergency childcare if something comes up, or elder care.

Benefits like allowing males and females to share their time off.

Making sure that, and what's really fun about what the benefits that will attract women and retain women, they're pretty much the same for men.

- Oh, interesting.

That's very interesting.

- So we all win, right?

But it's also about encouraging, I don't care what gender you are, you've gotta take your time off.

Have refresh days where you don't have meetings all day long.

It's simple stuff that's gonna benefit everybody overall, both in the company as well as in their personal lives and then everyone's happy.

- And you can make that determination also because of your corporate job and your family and trying to intermingle both and come out happy.

- Right.

Right.

- Well, so your chapter also is geared toward women mainly and making them happy.

- Yeah.

- That they don't want to be invisible.

- No.

- They want to be heard, but they need to have flex in their lives.

- Yes.

Very much so.

They want the freedom to be able to do what needs to be done on that certain day, whether, again, it's for themselves, for their children, for their parents, whatever the case may be.

And men want that too.

They also probably, according to a lot of research, different than your typical male is they want a calling.

They want their job to be a calling of theirs.

They want to feel that they're adding value, that they're giving back.

- Women and men?

- Mostly women.

- Okay.

- Mostly women.

- And have you found in your research and in working with your clients and things, even when you were in corporate, that they really don't feel appreciated or valued?

- No, not at all.

And it's not just a feeling, it's a fact.

I lived it myself.

It's- - Hi, I'm here.

- Yeah, exactly.

It's the kind of thing where you're in a meeting and you know, primarily I was in meetings where I was one of the few females, sometimes the only female.

You say something, nobody says a word about it.

A guy says the exact same thing, and all of a sudden it's the best idea that anybody ever heard.

It's like, "Oh, excuse me."

I remember a situation where we had some vendors, it was a big conference room, vendors at a table.

They were there, and the women from that company automatically sat in the chairs behind.

And they were young women and they shouldn't be doing that then.

So I got up and I said, "Please, you need to come and sit here."

But that's what they've been conditioned to do.

That's what a lot of women have been conditioned to do.

- And why?

- Because that's what they've been told.

What happens also a lot, especially in leadership opportunities, if we don't have enough female leaders and those women in senior positions are leaving so much more than they ever have before, why are the young women gonna stick around?

Right?

And then you lose all of the value- - The continuity.

- Yeah.

And you lose the value that women bring.

And it's just the way they've always, well, the way most companies have always done things.

And when I wrote my chapter, I thought of who am I targeting?

So who's my avatar?

And what I came up with was he is a 38 to 40, 42 year old C-suite senior executive at a company.

He knows that they need diversity in women and women of color.

He just doesn't know how to build a business case for it.

So the good news is he knows and he cares enough.

He understands the value that women bring both financially as well as for the culture in a company and for the US economy as a whole, but doesn't know enough about building that business case.

- And sustain.

- Yeah.

And he knows enough that he's not gonna get let's say, the rest of the senior management team, the CEO, to even make any changes if he doesn't attack it from a business case perspective and that's why I put so much data into my chapter, is to provide that kind of thing.

- Okay.

How do you rewire that then to make it work successfully?

- You've gotta get the buy-in, and then you have to start seeing results.

- And how do you get the buy-in?

How do you approach that?

How does your chapter approach that with the data?

- There are all kinds of studies that show companies who have women on their boards are financially, the higher percentage of women on their board perform better financially than those that don't.

Gender diverse business units financially perform better than non diverse.

Women from a culture perspective, bring more and are usually better leaders than men are.

There's research that shows that men want what women leaders provide.

- Because they don't seem bossy?

They seem nurturing or what?

- Yes, yeah.

It's more nurturing.

It's just the skills that women bring just normally- - As in multitasking?

- Yes.

- Well, there's that.

- Yeah.

But women leaders have been proven, it's been proven that they develop their employees more, that they're there for them in a different way.

And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that, hey, we've been there and nobody was doing it for us.

We needed to do it.

We need to do it for our employees.

I don't care what your gender is.

It's just you've been through some difficult times, you want to try to make it better for others.

And that's what has driven me in all that I've ever done, especially from a woman's point of view.

- Well, this is 2023, so things definitely need to change.

And the book itself is not only geared toward women, it's geared toward everyone?

- Yes.

Very much so.

And my chapter is the one that really talks about women- - Female focused.

- Right.

Right.

But I wrote my chapter for helping women improve their standing in the workforce.

- [Christine] If that's where they wanna be.

- Yes.

Helping decision makers, like I talked about my avatar, know how to build a business case or whatever it is, how to make changes in their company and then HR professionals, because they're the ones that are doing a lot of this work, whether it's attracting from a recruiting standpoint, or helping train leaders or train employees or to be able to retain.

And that's another thing that research has shown.

Women are supposedly given leadership opportunities, but they don't have the same amount of training, support, recognition.

- So they're just kinda hung out there?

- And then guess what?

They may fail.

See, women can't do this.

Wait a minute.

It's all about parity.

- Yeah.

Okay.

Well then, how do their superiors work with them to make sure that they succeed?

And again, that's some of the nurturing you're talking about.

- Right, right.

But it's also making sure that the same programs that you offer to men, you offer to women.

Now, you may have to change it up a bit.

Here's another example from a recruitment standpoint.

There's so much unintended bias that happens in so many different ways.

One of them being in a job description.

And there are a couple of companies out there who help organizations figure out how to get that bias, unintended bias out of a job description.

- Example.

- Well, okay.

Whether it's the tone, the words that are used, and an example of that, which is just so true.

So let's say it's for a position and it says, "You are driven by" blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, that's going to appeal much more often to a man than to a woman.

Switch out driven to inspired.

- And it's all the difference.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- It's softer.

- Right.

And that's what as I said, most women want a calling.

They want to be inspired, they want to inspire others.

They want to make change so say that, use that word.

- But men just historically just don't.

- [Andrea] Right.

Exactly.

- Because they get in, they get the job done.

- Right.

And that's what they know too.

I don't think that the vast majority of the time that situations get out of hand, whether it's when you're trying to attract, retain, promote, you've gotta be promoting women at the same levels and the same frequency as you do men, but I think they just don't know any better.

That's all they've ever done.

- And how do you train them then?

- Well, that's where you've gotta- - Gotta work with coaches.

- Yes.

- Gotta read this book.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Okay.

So find your fizz, life coaching, an author.

What's next?

- [Andrea] Well, it's already happening.

- All right.

I have started an another startup with a ex-colleague of mine, along with my husband and her husband.

It's called Beyond Social.

We just started in October.

We're really in the testing phase, and I am using all of the lessons I learned from Find Your Fizz, meaning find a niche, focus, don't spend a lot of money, test, test, test.

So it's participatory primarily right now, cooking classes.

We originally looked at a site of our own, a space of our own.

And then I just kept saying no, no, no, no, no, no.

We don't even know if this concept's gonna work.

Why would we get ourselves in that situation?

So we've been, and it's been great, partnering with different primarily bars and restaurants in the Bloomington Normal area.

My husband, who is a fabulous chef, did two classes for us.

We called them Beers and Boards at Keg Grove Brewery, who is, they're fantastic to work with, they are so much about the community and so- - And then grow it from there.

- Yes.

You make as a student, as a participant- - We only have 30 seconds to wrap it up.

- Okay.

(laughs) - Go on.

- Anyway, we partner with other bars and restaurants to figure out these different types of classes.

- [Christine] We're gonna have to come over and test it out.

- Yes, you will.

We've got a wine and whiskey thing coming up.

- Okay.

Thank you so much.

Sorry we had to rush you at the end, but you know, got a little slot to fill.

Thanks.

Inspiring once again, everything about it.

I hope you're inspired as well.

Thanks for being here, Andrea.

Thank you for joining us.

Stay safe and healthy and hold happiness.

If you got any ideas, get ahold of me.

All right.

Have a good evening.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music slows)