Elizabeth Fischer
ZerModus
Year founded: 2017
Industry: Process Management and Productivity Consulting
“What’s your M.O.?”
We all have one. A well-established modus operandi instills confidence in your daily interactions and is always there to remind you HOW you do what you do. The best part about having an M.O.? You get to choose your own! Elizabeth Fischer has taken this notion and made it tangible. She created a planner which embraces the idea that every day is different, personal and work life often intervene, and designating a space for daily creativity is necessary for growing your vision. Basically… she gets us. Elizabeth is living the life of an Everyday Visionary (which also happens to be the name of her product) and we’re excited to introduce you to her company ZerModus!
Where did the inspiration to start ZerModus come from?
I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was a little girl. That said, I didn’t always know what I wanted my business to look like but I did always know what kinds of values I wanted it to exemplify and how I wanted to work with my customers and employees. Long-winded way of saying I knew what I wanted the brand to be about. I’d always made planners for myself and friends and family since college because I couldn’t find any that were designed for the way life actually happened. We decided to launch the Everyday Visionary planner on Kickstarter.
ZerModus is an interesting name… there must be a story behind that. What does it mean?
Zer is a gender-neutral pronoun. I actually have it tattooed on my left side. My favorite reaction was when I told my Dad. He looked at it, looked at me, and then said “So I guess you’re pretty committed to this company huh?” We went with that part of the name because gender equality is something we are very passionate about. Both Lisa (my co-founder) and myself have experienced blatant gender discrimination in our careers in the past and we really want to do things to help expedite gender equality as our brand and service offerings continue to grow.
And “Modus” is latin for “mode” or “way of doing things.” So put it together and you have gender-neutral way of doing things. We really just want professionals to have the opportunity to be valued based on their actual performance, regardless of gender, race, age, experience level, etc. If you have great ideas that you can put into motion and they produce desirable results, nothing else should matter. The planners are meant to be a tool for professionals to use to have something tangible to hold onto so they can say “look at what I accomplished.” We plan to do much more to help people be set up for success. The planners are just phase one.
What differentiates you from the competition?
We aren’t like any other planner company in the world. We are the result of a former debutante and punk rockstar deciding to start something together and make up own rules along the way. Our brand is entirely focused on humans helping humans so our planner isn’t about the planner, it’s about the person and their vision for how to use it to accomplish whatever they’re setting out to accomplish. All of our competitors have the word “planner” in their product name but ours is called the Everyday Visionary because we want you to feel empowered even just by walking into a meeting with it in your hands.
How has being a part of the WeWork community helped to grow your business?
Our company wouldn’t be where are we are today if we were not offering out of WeWork. First of all, the creative energy you get just walking through the doors of any WeWork location is vital to our business. We get walk-in customers without even having a storefront (we offer a 15% WeWork member discount for all of our products). We’ve gotten speaking engagements as a result of being recommended by WeWork staff. We love going to locations in other cities when we travel for conferences. We’ve gotten press coverage from being at WeWork. Honestly the list goes on and on. We love WeWork. We’ve been at Thanksgiving Tower since the day it opened and we actually signed up as the first female members on International Women’s so that was pretty cool too.
What can we expect to see from ZerModus in the next 2 years?
Over the course of the next two years you will see ZerModus go from being a planner company to brand that finds really compelling ways to enable everyday visionaries. We are launching two new planners in the fall which we are super excited about. We have about 30 different planner concepts in the pipeline. We will be adding new product lines for our B2B customers and doing more consulting work for things like empowering employee productivity consulting, leadership development program training, how to more effectively onboard employees so they are set up for success etc.
What is one piece of advice that you can offer to aspiring entrepreneurs?
Trust your instincts. You know your brand and your business better than anyone else. Dare to be different in memorable ways
Do you want an Everyday Visionary planner for yourself yet? We sure do. Explore more about the brand through the links below.
https://www.instagram.com/zermodus/
https://www.facebook.com/ZerModus/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/zermodus/
Take your business to the next level with the WeWork community! we.co/dfwworkspace
