Andrea Sodergren: Engineer Pivots to Stand-Up Comedian and Creator Moms Unhinged

Andrea Sodergren (0:04)

Pickleball Media presents the I Used to Be Somebody Show, produced live at the Landout Tiki Bar in Sacramento.

Gary Sirak (0:11)

Here's our host, Karl Landout.

Carl Landau (0:17)

Welcome to Landout Tiki Bar and the I Used to Be Somebody Show. Who starts out their career as a system engineer, and ends up as a very successful stand-up comedian, and now produces their own show. Just one person I know, today's guest, I'll explain in a minute. First, I want to thank this month's sponsors. Please check out Gary Serac's very cool new How to Retire and Not Die video series. And a big thank you to our loyal sponsor, Capital Advantage Wealth Management. Following today's interview, we've got two fun segments. First, we talk to the Unretirement with the Wisdom guys. Today, we talk about the cool side hustles you can create in unretirement life and lots of fun ideas there.

That is followed by Pickball Chronicles with Traver. Today is a very special segment. We talk about Pickball love stories and a very personal one for Traver.

Traver just got married this weekend to a wonderful woman, Sophia. They met, yes, on the Pickball court. You've got to hear it all. I love the story and feel a very small part of the story because at our 100th episode celebration at the Landau Tiki Bar, Traver asked me right there if he could make a surprise announcement. And yes, he surprised Sophia and popped the question in front of about 80 of our guests. Of course, this is going to be part of our, I Used to be Somebody documentary I'm working on right now. Just happened to have a camera with me.

I want to thank one of our past guests, Patty Forehand, who introduced me to today's guest, Andrean. Andrean Sodergren also goes by her stage name as Andre Vall. So a lot of her fans that go to her show know her by that last name. And she goes over all of her names. But I love Andreas story.

She's my first former engineer I've ever interviewed. Don't worry, we don't talk about engineering much, because I really don't know what an engineer does. Does anyone out there? That usually ends the conversation if you meet someone at a cocktail party. But anyway, she was also a pioneer in the social media marketing world. And as a fellow dummies writer, she wrote one of the first social media books way back in the day. She was actually a Facebook expert. And she pivoted to a really successful career in professional comedy.

Now she produces the amazing Moms Unhinged Comedy Tour. You will love her story and I promise you a lot of laughs today. Sit back and listen to my interview with Andrea Sodergren.

Andrea Sodergren (3:27)

Safety is overrated.

Get a little dangerous. Feel that fear. It's exciting. It's a rush and it's what makes us feel alive. So do something a little scary. That's a big thing.

Carl Landau (3:44)

Hi, Andrea. Welcome to the I Used to be Somebody show.

Andrea Sodergren (3:48)

Thank you so much, Carl. Thanks for having me on the show.

Carl Landau (3:51)

Yeah. So are you in Colorado now?

Andrea Sodergren (3:54)

I am. Yeah.

Carl Landau (3:55)

You go by a bunch of names.

So someone listening may know you by various names or last names or whatever. So I'm guessing some of the stage names. So let's get all the names out now. I promise no one from law enforcement is listening. I'm sure there's a reason you go by all these aliases.

Andrea Sodergren (4:18)

You are totally blowing my cover.

So my married name is Andrea Vahl, and that's the name a lot of people know me as in my marketing world when I wrote the book and then did that job for a while. Then my name I use now is Andrea Sodergren, and then my stage name I go by as Andrea Marie. I had all these different names and Sodergren is hard to pronounce. So I was like, I'll just use my middle name. So let's use all the names, get the money's worth.

Carl Landau (4:48)

Exactly. Okay. Andrea, I want to introduce you to the audience. Andrea Sodergren has a really interesting path to under retirement. She was an engineer for 10 years with early Facebook and social media experts and wrote, marketing all in one for dummies back in the day, and she's a professional stand up comedian and started Moms Unhinged in 2017

We're going to talk about all that and more, but first on the I Used to be Somebody show, we'd like to play a little icebreaker game. So are you willing to play the game?