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158. Capturing Legacies: No Story Lost with Andrew Hall
166 Plays2 years ago
Andrew Hall is the Co-Founder of No Story Lost. He started No Story Lost with his cousin and best pal, Jeremy. No Story Lost was born after Andrew and Jeremy recorded their Grandfather's story; they saw how important the result was for their family, but also how much hard work it was to do without a service to help. When Andrew's not working, he enjoys traveling, playing sports, and spending time with friends and family.
Books Andrew mentions:
CONTACT KENDRA RINALDI to be a guest on the podcast https://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com/
More About This Episode:
- Andrew's journey with co-founding "No Story Lost" inspired by the realization of the importance of capturing family legacies.
- The genesis of the company rooted in recording Andrew's grandfather's stories and the profound impact it had on their family.
- nitiating Legacy Conversations:
- Insight into initiating conversations about capturing legacies with loved ones.
- Andrew's advice on approaching the conversation with sensitivity, emphasizing the shared benefits for both the storyteller and the family.
- Navigating the No Story Lost Process:
- Overview of the process, from the initial conversation to the design and printing of the personalized legacy book.
- Timeframes for completion and potential factors that may influence the timeline.
- Partnerships and Future Collaborations:
- Exploring potential collaborations with funeral homes, pre-planning companies, and estate planners.
- Recognizing the opportunity to work with individuals in the 60 to 90 age range who are contemplating their legacies.
- Reflections on Grief and Regret:
- Andrew's reflections on grief and the role of regret in the mourning process.
- The significance of having no regrets in the passing of his grandparents, allowing for a more positive reflection on their lives.
- Tools for Grieving:
- Andrew shares insights into his grief journey, drawing a comparison between losing his first grandparent in his 20s and subsequent losses.
- The impact of living with grandparents and experiencing the echoes of their presence after their passing.
- Legacy Lessons and Fragility of Life:
- Lessons learned from the fragility of life, emphasizing the importance of cherishing every moment.
- The unexpected nature of loss, even when dealing with elderly family members.
- Documenting Living Grandparents:
- Andrew's experience in recording stories with his living grandmother and the editing process.
- The challenges and joys of documenting stories, especially with family members dealing with dementia.
- Conclusion:
- Encouragement to start documenting legacies at any stage in life, emphasizing the everlasting impact of preserving family stories.
- This episode dives into the heart of family, memories, and the profound impact of storytelling, encouraging listeners to embark on their journey of capturing legacies.
Recommended
Transcript
Cherishing Moments and Managing Regret
00:00:01
Speaker
I think one difficult part of grief is regret. And if you have to face some regret alongside just the sadness of losing somebody, then I think that just makes it that much tougher. So with having Pop's story written down and having seen him so much growing up and having, you know, my mom was also really good about like flying me home for their birthdays and all that sort of thing and getting that family together, luckily,
00:00:29
Speaker
When he passed, it was surprising, it was out of the blue, it was sad for all of us, but it wasn't also coupled with regret. I was able to think, I saw him a ton, and then those moments sitting down to recording, to record his life were that much more powerful.
Introduction to Grief and Gratitude Podcast
00:00:51
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between podcast.
00:00:59
Speaker
This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:01:15
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys. I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
Preserving Family Legacies
00:01:37
Speaker
On today's podcast I have Andrew Hall. Andrew is the co-founder of No Story Lost. He started this company with his cousin and best pal Jeremy and they started this company after they recorded their own grandfather's story and realized how important this was not only for their family but even just
00:02:03
Speaker
for themselves as to having this story of their grandfather and legacy recorded on paper. So it started with a recording, and then you translate into paper. Tell us this journey of this, Andrew. Welcome. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'll tell you the whole story. I'm excited to be here.
00:02:22
Speaker
So the backstory is that my maternal side of my family was really close growing up.
Growing Up with a Storyteller Grandfather
00:02:30
Speaker
So we grew up in Calgary in Canada here and we had this family that we'd see for all of our holidays and every birthday and all that. So this 12 or 14 people always around kind of with my grandpa and my grandma who we called Nan and Pop and then their four kids and some of the grandkids. So we had all these family
00:02:51
Speaker
gatherings together and my my grandpa my pop was kind of a legend so he would sing to us he would tell us stories so like celebrating a Scottish holiday Robbie Burns day he'd be dressed up in uh tartan red and he would
00:03:08
Speaker
do poetry to the haggis and everything. So our family was always saying, someone's got to write down all these stories and songs while we can. He had a heart attack when he was about 55. It's in the 70s. And then he just lived another 40 years after that.
00:03:26
Speaker
So, but everyone thought like, to some extent, he's kind of on borrowed time since the 70s. So we got to write this down while we can. And I heard this when I was eight and I heard it when I was 12 and I heard it when I was 16 and no one had ever done anything about it. And he's still living. Is he still living? Not anymore. We lost him in 2020. So it's been recent. Yeah, we did this project in 2018 or so.
00:03:50
Speaker
So I was home from university one of the times and I'd said to myself, okay, that's enough. I've heard this enough times. I just got to sit down and record
Recording Family Stories
00:03:59
Speaker
this. So I went over to their house and visited and brought my laptop and just had him tell stories. And I just typed live while he spoke because I could type pretty quickly. Not the best way to do this as we learned and we improved the product, but that was the version 0.1 was I just typed like a secretary or something as he spoke.
00:04:19
Speaker
So I got down a bunch of his stories and then I was like, this is pretty cool. We're starting to capture them and kind of started to build his life timeline out. And then my cousin and I, so same side of the family, Jeremy, he's my co-founder, like you said, my best buddy and my business partner from our previous venture and from this one. The next time he joined me and we sat down, this time we had
00:04:41
Speaker
the forethought to record the audio and deal with the writing later. So we just sat with them and asked them questions and poked and brought it and heard hilarious old stories. Then we transcribed the audio later and typed it out and that was a lot better. So we were seeing like starting to learn as we went. And eventually after a couple more of those, we had a really good body of work of a lot of his stories.
00:05:05
Speaker
We couldn't get it all, but we got a lot. And so I'll show you on the video call here, this is our initial version. He is a photocopy, you are a photocopy. Oh my goodness, yes. Isn't that funny? It is, wow, you guys look so much alike.
00:05:21
Speaker
60 years ago or more, but yeah, yeah, especially with the haircut and the beard, we look very similar. So our first version, super small, kind of black and white photos, reads more like a bit of a novel and yeah, kind of the shape and size of a novel. And then over time, we've kind of evolved the product, but that was the origin story. And that's kind of how it started. And that's the very first no story lost book.
00:05:45
Speaker
With the interview then, you had already done it before and then you did it then with Jeremy when you guys were recording. How long was this conversation in order for you guys to be able to gather all these details to then print? Yeah, roughly an hour each.
00:06:00
Speaker
you know the first time it was until my fingers were tired from typing and then yeah the second time was until pop was tired and didn't want to tell stories anymore but an hour tends to be pretty good so this little book is maybe you know two or three hours worth i'll send you lots of pictures you've probably seen our books now are thick like coffee table style book full of color and lots of extra pages and stuff
00:06:22
Speaker
and pictures and everything, or the pictures. Okay, so let's actually, let me backtrack. Let's go back into, so you did this, you guys see then the result then of the reaction that your family had when they saw this, the reaction of your own grandfather, because you did it prior to his passing, so he got to see then this product.
Emotional Value of Preserved Stories
00:06:45
Speaker
And then what was it that you guys were like,
00:06:48
Speaker
Uh-huh. This looks like, oh, let's show you something to this. There is two main things. So first of all, yeah, it was that reaction. It was like the family feeling like, wow, OK, these are actually safe. It's done. We've done it. Like to open it, to hear his voice on the recordings was really cool. And the second thing was like,
00:07:11
Speaker
holy crap that was a lot of work like it it's so important yet it took us a ton of time and effort especially before we perfected the process that that's when it sort of clicked it was like the value side of it and how great it is to have coupled with the first time you pick this up to do it yourself is a big labor of love so we thought
00:07:31
Speaker
If we can bring this to more families but bring it to them in a way that it's pretty easy on the family, that's maybe where we really have something. We can have the great interviewers who have done this before. We can get it transcribed quickly so that the family member is not typing it out. And then we know how to lay it out for print and we have our printing partner and all the pieces kind of pulled together.
00:07:53
Speaker
to turn it into a little business was really chunking it up into four or five parts of what has to happen and then bringing that into one package for families. So I think it was really cool that we did it ourselves first so we knew exactly like what it felt like on the family side and what labor we were avoiding them having to do and stuff.
00:08:13
Speaker
That is so smart. Yeah, you guys were your own guinea pigs to start with. Well, you saw a lot of things come from that, right? And initial need, inventions come from that, an initial need, and then you end up putting it out there. So you guys are a testament to that.
Business Transition During COVID
00:08:30
Speaker
While doing this, then how long was this process then of turning it into a business? And then on the customer side, we'll talk about how people do that part. Yeah.
00:08:42
Speaker
So like I said, I think it was 2017 or 2018 with this one. And Jeremy and I were busy running a whole other business that we had started. What was it? What was it by the way? What was this other venture? It was called Mealshare. And so what we did was we partnered with restaurants. It was a nonprofit. So we partnered with restaurants.
00:08:59
Speaker
and put our logo next to a few menu items. And if you buy a meal shirt item, you provide one meal to a youth in need. So it was a buy one, give one product for restaurants. We had been inspired by Tom's shoes and some of those buy one, give one models, but thought what's even more important than shoes food? How can we feed people with this? So yeah, we had this crazy idea. We started with four partners in our hometown in Canada.
00:09:23
Speaker
and grew it to 500 restaurant partners across the country. We even dabbled in working in the US a little bit. So we were in Austin and San Antonio a little bit too. So I got to get down there and it was great. It was really, really solid. We ran it for about eight years, made a ton of impact, gave away 6 million meals to youth. And then COVID happened and we only partnered with restaurants and restaurants all closed, especially in Canada for a long time. And even when they were open, they were struggling again.
00:09:53
Speaker
new bills to pay and to make up for close time and stuff. So that really, really was hard on meal share. So kind of as that was sun setting, that was when we were bringing No Story Lost into the world. After doing my my pops book, we had told a few friends and we did a couple of friends and family projects. So pretty basic, like looking back at our old materials, it's like any good startup. If you're not embarrassed by your first product, then you started too late. And we're definitely, you know, it's funny looking back on our early ones. But that's when we started to realize, hey, we've got
00:10:22
Speaker
photos and this text and actually a friend of mine was working with us for a little while and she really saw the opportunity to turn this into a coffee table book something that you might actually leave out on the table and show friends rather than stash away on a bookshelf. So she kind of had cookbooks laying out for inspiration because those are so visually heavy and then other bigger books with color magazines. So she helped us bring it from a novel to a beautiful coffee table book and
00:10:52
Speaker
It kind of just naturally snowballed from there. We, you know, it was a couple of friends
Creating Personalized Family Storybooks
00:10:55
Speaker
and family. And then our first stranger found us on the internet and bought a project and then off we go. But it did take us a while to wrap up meal shares. We were running that through 2020 and 2021. And we're really just full time on No Story Lost this year.
00:11:11
Speaker
walk us through then the process of somebody then reaching out. So they find you or they hear this podcast. How do they then tell their loved one, by the way, we want to know, let's just, let's actually display, let's do an example, my dad, right? So I'm going to do this for my dad. Dad, as you're listening to this, I have not actually booked it yet. So just, I'm just, let's say I'm doing it with my dad. And so I contact you guys. How does that process go from there?
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, there's kind of two ways. Sometimes somebody will buy it for their parent or loved one, spouse, anything like that, and then surprise them and say like, happy birthday, this is what I've got you. But that can catch the shyer people a little bit off guard. So other people like to have a conversation first. And that usually goes like, hey, I saw this thing, I thought it was really cool, because I'd love to learn more about you. You know, I've known you my whole life, but there's probably so much of your life that I've never heard about.
00:12:10
Speaker
Because there just doesn't necessarily happen to be that occasion where you're going to ask, what was your favorite song growing up? Who were your friends in elementary school? We just don't ask those questions. We tend to ask more general things. So bringing that conversation to them and saying, I'd love to learn more about you. Would you be up for this? Sometimes there's hesitation. Sometimes they're excited. It depends on the personality.
00:12:31
Speaker
And usually the ones who are hesitant, what gets them across the line is to say, you know, this is not just for you. It's for me. It's for my kids. It's for maybe my grandkids to really know where they came from and who you were. And that usually makes people realize, Hey, this is something that my family will be able to cherish for a long time.
Capturing Personal Life Highlights
00:12:52
Speaker
So that's kind of how the conversation gets started. And then from there, you'd buy the project online and then you'd have a welcome call with the amazing Heather from our team, our project coordinator, and she would learn all about what you want to see in your book. So she'd ask you, Kendra, like, what do you know? What do you not know? What should we definitely ask your dad? What should we maybe not ask your dad if there's anything sensitive or anything he doesn't want to go over?
00:13:16
Speaker
What would you like to learn more about? And we can kind of take it anywhere from we know all the questions that are great and we can ask, or sometimes families want to build their own questions list. So we kind of take it however is fit. And then we would schedule that first interview and off the interviewer goes.
00:13:33
Speaker
And then, so what is the timeline from start to finish for someone? Let's say someone's planning to give this as a gift for all of, let's say a sibling, you want to surprise all your siblings or something like that with this. You then book, talk to you guys, set it up, start to finish, what's the timeline?
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, we can work as quickly as about eight to 10 weeks, but then the family often holds things up a little bit because we send our design version and people open it up and say, holy smokes, I've got this like 100 or 200 page book. And some families are like, yeah, looks amazing, print it. And others really want to get their hands.
00:14:16
Speaker
into it and get involved so that editing process for some families takes a long time because they want it to be perfect and they want every word just so but if there's ever a rush for a gift or a holiday yeah we can turn them around pretty quickly so eight to ten weeks yeah yeah for sure and then the other thing is collecting photos so you know if the photos are
00:14:36
Speaker
back home across the country in a basement covered in dust. It takes families a little while to pull them out and choose them. If they're already digitized, then families can get them to us really quickly. That's the other thing that can sometimes sometimes hold things up. OK, so now we know if you're planning to do something like this for like a holiday gift plan at least two months prior to start this process and start looking for photos now. Yeah, yes.
00:15:04
Speaker
So I'm sure some people are really organized and already have a lot of things like that already organized. Some of us are not as organized and may not be, you know, on top of things. Now you mentioned then a team. So how did it go then from Jeremy and you to now then a team and how did you realize you needed these different pieces? And this this goes to
00:15:30
Speaker
even just for myself as someone that has like a podcast, like at what point in time when we're starting something, do we realize we need that help? And when do we ask for help in things that we not always are an expert on? So how was that process for you and Jeremy? Yeah.
00:15:48
Speaker
We learned a little bit through growing meal share about delegation and when to do that. Somebody wise once told me that if you want to grow a little bit, you'll have to pass off the things you're not very good at. But if you really want to scale, you have to be okay with passing off the things you are good at, which can be really hard. It's going to be hard to pass off things that you think you could do better or that are kind of core to your skill set. But for us in this case, our interviewers and writers are really good at what they do.
00:16:18
Speaker
And they're educated in that realm in an area that we're not. So that was easy for us to know. Like right off the bat, we should be hiring journalism and creative writing and English majors. Um, most of them have master's degrees in writing as well. So we have never written a book other than our own grandpas. We've always had people on the team who can do kind of a great job of that. Um, and then designer, same thing. Like I could, I could hack it in Photoshop, but it wouldn't be as good as our designers are. So.
00:16:47
Speaker
In this case, it was pretty clear pretty early to find a part-timer who could be our interviewer and writer and find a designer. And then that's just kind of scaled with how many projects we have per month. So now we're up to three writers and interviewers, a separate designer, a separate transcriptionist, and our project coordinator, who I mentioned, and then Tanya, who worked with us at Mealshare and has come over to be like our admin genius again, who she keeps us organized, which is great.
00:17:18
Speaker
So because you guys had meal share, then you had already that expertise then of knowing what to delegate or what to completely set aside. And you had somewhat of an idea of that.
Legacy Planning with Funeral Homes
00:17:29
Speaker
Now, with meal share, it was a partnership and collaboration with restaurants.
00:17:34
Speaker
Have you guys already looked towards the future of what type of collaborations you'd be doing with No Story Lost as well with other partnerships maybe in the future? No, great question. Yeah, I think there's a huge opportunity there. So so far, I guess early on, we mostly just had a website up and people would find us individually. But a few kind of partnerships we're working on now and just getting started with.
00:18:01
Speaker
Um, so firstly, I mean, I didn't even know this, but funeral homes, a lot of their business is selling what's called pre-need or pre-planning. So it's people who are still with us, who are thinking ahead to there someday, how they'd like to be remembered and, and taken care of after they pass away. And so that's a time I think that people are thinking about legacy. They're thinking about what they'd want to spend some of their, their money on and.
00:18:27
Speaker
I think this is a great opportunity to have something that you can enjoy while you're still around and see your kids enjoy and that sort of thing. Enjoy right away as opposed to the rest of free planning is usually like, I'm paying now for something that'll come in the future, but this is something you could enjoy today. So we're looking at finding partnerships with
00:18:46
Speaker
funeral homes or pre-planning companies, estate planners, lots of things like that. So who's in touch with the people who are in that sweet spot of, you know, 60 to 90 years old, they're telling stories, they've got lots of life behind them they want to share. Who's talking to them when they're in a place that they're thinking about life and legacy and all that sort of thing. So I think tons of room to grow into some great partnerships.
00:19:12
Speaker
That's so true. I think a lot of what you said that a lot of people end up planning or setting already up even what cemetery they're going to be buried. They do their pre-planning even before that in order to not leave a burden on their families. Exactly. A lot of times this would be something
00:19:33
Speaker
that could be in addition to something like that, that you're like, you know what? This is something else I want to leave. And the part of legacy that is something I think we all think of, like what is the legacy we're going to leave? It's not usually the things that you have that are the legacy. It's the impact you had on people's lives. And your story is that part of that. So making sure that it's still
00:20:00
Speaker
is maintained in some shape or form is great. Now what can someone do?
00:20:05
Speaker
to prepare, let's say, oh, I'm ready. I want to start. And maybe I'm here. I'm in my almost 50, have two teenagers. I'm like, you know what? I'll start doing this. Maybe even if it's the story of their dad and I or things like that, would that be a way to have you done it with couples? What different kind of nuances of stories have you guys done?
Adaptability of No Story Lost Services
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah. I say, I always like, do you remember seeing, I think Lego maybe had this as a, as a slogan. It was like age five to 99, like their appropriate toy for five to 99. We're kind of the same because we've done a project for like a two or three year old through his parents.
00:20:50
Speaker
because this was during COVID and his grandma had never met him because no one could travel for a couple of years. So they wrote the story of wrath and sent it to grandma. So that's our youngest client ever. And we've had some late nineties clients. Uh, we may have a, our first centenarian starting who's a hundred soon too. So yeah, kind of that full range of life.
00:21:10
Speaker
People have used it in order to tell their kind of wedding story. So I think a lot of people have done photo books for their weddings, but they had us print all the speeches and all this kind of stories from the wedding too, which is obviously a lot more involved than just a photo book. So people have seen what we offer and then they've gotten creative on how they can use it to create a story of what they want.
00:21:32
Speaker
vacation book, business, like story of your business after people retire from being entrepreneurs, couples like you said a lot of a lot of couples do their book together so we'll interview them individually about their life before they met and then do interviews together and watch them interact which is kind of fun and we print the text in different colors corresponding to each person so that's been fun too.
00:21:57
Speaker
I love all these ideas because when you guys reached out, I'm thinking, oh, this is more like I've been memoriam. Like when that's kind of when I first read it. But then as I'm reading, you know, I'm talking more with you and you're sharing, I'm like, no, this is like something for.
00:22:12
Speaker
Everybody. So it is something you can use in different stages of your life. A lot of people do those Shutterfly. I'm not trying to advertise any of those kind of books that they do on their own. I've never done one. My sister is a pro at it. I've never done one for my kids because part of it is
00:22:33
Speaker
What do you say? It's the organizing, the thinking. Oh, what order do you do things? Even if it's just photos, sometimes you still feel overwhelmed of even choosing which ones. But these photos accompanied with a story within it, even more valuable too, because then you kind of know what happened.
00:22:54
Speaker
If it's a vacation book, then anecdotes that happen during that vacation. Oh, and the boat got, you know, ran out of gas, which happened to one in one of ours, you know, and then you're stuck in the middle of the ocean with no gas. Where was that? Cartagena, Colombia, 20 people in this little boat. And the driver never once like even turned around and said, sorry, people. I don't know if it's called driver. I don't know what you call a boat.
00:23:21
Speaker
Captain, I guess, a little. And we're just there and waiting until some other boat would give us some gas, you know, and we're just in the middle of the ocean waiting for gas. Yeah, exactly. That's the color commentary that goes with the photo that otherwise would just be a photo of the boat. And it's easy to forget. And those are the things that our kids remember of that trip. They're like, oh, when we ran out of gas in the middle of the ocean? So yeah, these are the things you can document.
00:23:49
Speaker
So let's then take a little bit of a turn into your own life. What are some of these highlights? You've highlighted then your grandfather's life, highlights of your own life that you would put into a book yourself. You're from Canada. Right now you're in Arizona. Are you in Arizona for work or did you move to Arizona?
00:24:10
Speaker
No, I'm just here visiting. My parents have a little condo in Phoenix and we're like the many Canadians who like to escape the winter and it's not winter yet, but I'm early. I'm a little early this year. Yeah. It's actually still pretty nice back home, but I like the heat. So I decided to come and get some, uh, October heat and it's, yeah, it's really hot here right now. Um, so yeah, I've spent almost all my time in Vancouver. My wife and I travel quite a bit. Uh, I can obviously work remote with this job. So to come down and.
00:24:39
Speaker
set up my southern office, I guess, too. I love the question, though, because when we put our vacation responders on, if we're ever on vacation from No Story Lost, we say, I'm out making memories that I hope to put in my book one day, catch you when I'm back, kind of thing. So what are some of the stories? A few highlights. I did my university degree in a city called Victoria.
00:25:02
Speaker
So there'd be lots of university stories, but then I got to do an exchange. I lived in Sweden for four months and traveled all over Europe with my three buddies. And we had dozens of friends on exchange at the same time, so we'd
00:25:17
Speaker
bounce over to Paris for a weekend and see buddies from school. And then we'd go to Denmark and then Spain. And that was wicked. So it was a huge highlight. Like you said, I think. Wicked. Wait a minute. Do Canadians say wicked? That sounds like what Bostonians say, was wicked. I didn't know. Oh, I thought you were going to say West Coast. Weird. Yeah, it's so funny. Yeah, but I think wicked is I did not know. Now I have to think.
00:25:43
Speaker
We get, I'm almost sure that in the Northeast they'd say. It could be. I was like, oh, okay. I'm picking up some stuff here. Okay. Yeah, we pick up all these different mannerisms from different parts of the state. We're a universal beings. Yeah, we have our A that we say that's kind of Canadian. Yes.
00:26:02
Speaker
But yeah, I was just playing golf with this guy from Minnesota that I've met here, and he's got his Minnesota accent. But the Minnesota, their O's sometimes can sound like the Canadian O's too, a little bit, right? Totally. The way they say boat, right? You got it. I listen to accents because I have one. So when I pick up accents, it's not like I'm trying to point out, I'm like, I have one. It's not like I'm trying to be like, hey, you've got an accent.
00:26:28
Speaker
So those are the little nuances I pick up. Okay. So then you were, sorry to interrupt. No, that's good. It's all good. You had all these wicked fun, wicked fun. Wicked good times. Yeah. That would be a highlight all that travel around Europe. And then I think what you were saying too is like, this could be a good thing to just do after a big vacation. So I think my vacation stories would be a big, big highlight as well.
00:26:54
Speaker
And then more locally, just adventures. So I did a bike packing trip with somebody. So like strapping your tent to a bike and doing four or five nights. We traveled all across the province. That's our word for states. We call them provinces. So all the way across PC. Yeah. And then just this summer I did what's called the North Coast Trail. So Vancouver Island in DC has this beautiful like six day hike where you pack everything on your back and
00:27:22
Speaker
hike and tent every night on the beach. And we saw whales and bears and all the good West Coast nature. So I think those would be some of the things that I put in my book for sure. Adventures with people I love kind of thing. Is your wife into these type of adventures as well? Yeah, she's pretty adventurous. That one was especially a big one. She doesn't get out on like multi-day overnighters. She's actually hooked on golf now. She's more into it even than I am. So she's going to be dragging me out on the course a bunch here.
00:27:52
Speaker
We definitely, yeah, we definitely bonded over sports. We met on a sports team and we play a lot of soccer together, squash and golf and whatever. So she is adventurous, just she didn't do the seven day backcountry one.
00:28:08
Speaker
So tell us about then how you guys, how long have you been married? How is this story? You know what? Here I am. I'll document. I'll make sure to pass this on to whoever's going to do it. Yeah, you're the interviewer. You're no story. You're recording my life story. You're getting some of it done for me.
00:28:23
Speaker
There you go. So we, this is actually a funny story. So when I was in, in my BCom degree, so doing a commerce degree, I did this thing that's called JDC West. So it's a business conference, but all the students are competing in a given type of discipline. So I was on the nonprofit team, which was foreshadowing for my career later. And then I was on a couple other teams. There's also a finance team and a marketing team.
00:28:48
Speaker
And then there's a captain who takes care of the whole team. So my buddy and I were captaining in our last year, and we had to find 50 business students to bring along with us and drop into each of these teams to compete against other schools. So we're gonna travel across Western Canada to compete. And so we hold these tryouts, and there's this girl named Shelby trying out for the sports team. There's a sports team as well. So we're judging all the players. How good are they at throwing? Because it was flag football that year. Are they fast? Blah, blah, blah. And Shelby was right up there, but we cut her.
00:29:17
Speaker
And that was like my one interaction with her at university. Then I ended up meeting her again like two or three years later. So our origin story is me cutting her. But in the end, a strong approval for who she is. Strong enough, probably the strongest kind of approval, right?
00:29:34
Speaker
that I'm on one knee like eight years later. It's pretty funny. So started in the competition and now it's a partnership of marriage. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So we, we, then we met playing on multi-sport. So you play a different sport every week. And like I said, she's a good athlete all around. So we met there.
00:29:50
Speaker
And then I proposed on her water ski boat. She's a big water skier, so out in the middle of the lake with a drone video that I took. So that was kind of fun. And then we got married last year. Oh, you recently married. So now you can do this. Your life story of your getting to know each other, that could be then in your story book as well. That could be another one.
00:30:14
Speaker
Okay, since this podcast is about grief, and this could be a tool for people that are also grieving, and it turned out to be something you guys did prior to your grandfather passing, would you care to share a little bit of your own journey after your grandfather
Impact of Losing Grandparents
00:30:32
Speaker
passed? Has he been the only person in your family that's died, or have you had any other people that are close that have died?
00:30:40
Speaker
Yeah. So I was really lucky to get to know all four of my grandparents growing up, knew them until I was an adult. So paternal grandfather passed away in 2009 and then pop, uh, 2020. And then this year, uh, lost my paternal grandmother. So I've got one grandparent left, but I'm 34. So I'm doing pretty well.
00:31:01
Speaker
One of them passed away at 98, which is amazing. So that piece of it is like, when we've lost them, for the most part, it's been like, wow, we were so lucky to have them as long as we did. And I think one difficult part of grief is regret. And if you have to face some regret alongside just the sadness of losing somebody, then I think that just makes it that much tougher.
00:31:28
Speaker
So with having Pop's story written down and having seen him so much growing up and having, you know, my mom was also really good about like flying me home for their birthdays and all that sort of thing and getting that family together, luckily,
00:31:44
Speaker
when he passed it was it was surprising it was out of the blue it was sad for all of us but it wasn't also coupled with regret i was able to think i saw him a ton and then those moments sitting down to recording to record his life were that much more powerful those were some of the times like obviously when you lose someone you reflect back on the last time you saw them and some of the meaningful times together and those were up there with some of the most
00:32:11
Speaker
valuable time spent together because I was just all attention on him and listening to his stories and laughing and seeing him laugh at being a joker growing up and all this. So that was a big reflection I had. Obviously, I thought about this coming onto the podcast, too, like what does grief mean to me and what are the other associated feelings? So that's that's a bit of reflection on on pop. And, you know, that gave me perspective on
00:32:40
Speaker
what's important with my other grandparents as well while they're around.
00:32:46
Speaker
I like that you mentioned that word regret because it is so true sometimes all these other emotions that come up in grief are sometimes even stronger than the grief itself or like they kind of haunt you per se and regret is one of these that kind of haunts can haunt us so not in your case with your grandparents not having any of these regrets it's like
00:33:14
Speaker
Because then it takes away from that remembering of the moment when you're holding on to these regrets. So thank you. That's a word I don't think I've heard as much in the interviews I've had. And so I wrote it. Yeah, I like your reflections there. That was really well said.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah, so nobody came up from from your convert from you sharing that with you having done then this for your pop Have you done then is a story then with your were you able to do with your living grandmother as well? Yeah a little bit. So my grandpa who passed away in 2009 this idea Yes, that was also
00:33:56
Speaker
more surprising like kind of came out of nowhere but then my living grandma we've recorded all of hers and she's in the process of editing she's really spunky and funny and so she's she's like i'll get around to it sometime but she has it all redlined and correcting and changing a bunch of things so she's kind of funny about it and she had a disaster where she had printed it out to manually correct it and she knocked the pages on the ground and scattered her stories everywhere so we're working through that way and then my other grandma
00:34:27
Speaker
At the time that we were kind of getting going with it, I sat down with her and tried to prompt her on some of her old stories that she told me just a couple years before, but she was dealing with a little bit of dementia and couldn't quite, it didn't have the richness and fullness that some of the other stories did. So I have some voice recordings of her and they're good and we've got some of the memories, but it's not quite
00:34:49
Speaker
book-sized because we couldn't quite get enough. Well, the idea had not been birthed yet either early on for you to get those stories. So that is sad, but at the same time, you still have the memories that you hold on.
00:35:06
Speaker
Now, what were some of the tools you used in your grief journey when your pop passed? Because he's the one that, well, 2009, you were, were you in college at that point when your first grandfather died? Okay. How was that? And then in relation to then now you as an adult, do you remember the differences in how you grieved as a 20 something year old, you know, young kid to then now?
00:35:33
Speaker
Yeah, I had lived with that grandpa and grandma too. So that one was a little bit tougher because it was a little more visceral being, you know, walking back around that house, having just lived there really around them a whole lot, you know, then you kind of hear the echoes a little bit more and it's yeah, more right in your face. Again, I've been so lucky to have not lost like a parent or someone really close. But people say that like losing your first parent is really like a jarring experience. And so I think that
00:36:00
Speaker
on a lower level, like losing my first grandparent is a lot different than 10 or 15 years later losing your second grandparent. So I think that one, that was like one of my first lessons in, you know, the fragility of life and how fast things can change and that sort of thing. When your grandparents are in their nineties, there's not a bad chance you'll kind of
00:36:22
Speaker
they're sick and then you see it coming a little bit. This grandpa at the time, I had like gone to see them before Christmas, kind of waved goodbye, seeing them smiling at the top of the stairs, like see you after Christmas. They gave me my envelope. And then it just changed so quickly that I just really didn't expect it at all. And luckily I have that good memory of kind of like saying goodbye to him that way. But I'd say that first lesson was a different kind of lesson, a different part of grief in
00:36:50
Speaker
just thinking about the fragility and making sure every moment counts and that sort of thing. And then later on, yeah, maybe feeling a little bit more prepared and a little bit less surprised.
00:37:05
Speaker
It's still hard in its own way. It still catches up. That's a thing, even though it's the one thing we know is guaranteed. Yeah. Yet it still catches us by surprise by surprise. It was 98. Like it's not surprising in that sense of the term, but we still didn't. It still wasn't expected. And it still catches you with that pit in your stomach and sinking hard and that kind of feeling.
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah, I know. And it's one that we all experience in some shape or form differently. Of course, everybody grieves differently based on who they are and the relationship they had, but we all still grieve in something, right?
Gratitude for Capturing Family Stories
00:37:45
Speaker
How, how do you then see and how, have you had any feedback of anybody that's done the process of these books with you guys on how it's helped them in their journey? Have you had any feedback from your customers and can you share that with us? Yeah. Yeah. So a couple, a few friends of mine have done projects with us and two really come to mind where
00:38:13
Speaker
people my age, so friends my age, but their parent happened to be older when they had their kids. So they kind of had the older dad who was in his eighties already, whereas our dads are kind of like mid to late sixties and both were like, yeah, I don't know. He's not doing the best, but you know, didn't seem like this was a last minute thing. Um, and I kind of encouraged them like, yeah, let's just like do the interviews and get it done. And that's just, you know, it's just good to have done. And then these two happened to lose their dads kind of within a year of during the project.
00:38:42
Speaker
And so for them, they're, again, just so relieved to have done it when they did. They're so, so happy with their books. And even, yeah, I'd say the meaning really increases to them. So Steph, who is a friend of ours, she was the first one to coin the term when she opened her book. She said she cried happy tears, which we love. We like to make that our goal now is to make families cry happy tears. But then her mom,
00:39:08
Speaker
didn't love the book. It wasn't anything too fancy. But then once she lost her husband, she's now like the book's everything to her and she printed more copies and gave them to all of her cousins and siblings and all that. So yeah, those are some powerful stories. And then kind of on a similar note, someone came to me in March. He's about my age and his dad had cancer. And he said, I don't know if it's going to work.
00:39:32
Speaker
uh he's not doing very well right now but let me see if we can try like i'll get back to you in a few weeks when he's feeling better and i said you know what i've seen how this goes like let's do the welcome call now let's get you all ready let's know exactly what you want so that if there's even a day when your dad's feeling well again we interview that day and luckily in this case it happened like two weeks later he felt better we interviewed him
00:39:56
Speaker
back-to-back days, one hour each, printed the book, his dad saw the book, they got to review it together and then he lost him in I think June. But that timing is just so important and like you just have to do it while you can because I've seen the other side with clients who just didn't quite start in time and then they don't get to do it and it's so tough to see.
00:40:17
Speaker
And then that's when you feel regret.
Creating Storybooks for Grieving Process
00:40:19
Speaker
That's when you're like, man, I should have, would have, could have. And a lot of times we do live our lives in regret. In many aspects, I'm like, man, I should have studied this. I should have gone to this. I should have, you know, we live in that world and there are situations in which we don't have to necessarily live in that space all the time, right? And that really comes to being present with the ones that we
00:40:47
Speaker
love as much as we can be and this is one of the ways that you can and this is yeah and this is one of the ways that you can and carry that that legacy and and there yeah it may not be that you get to do the interview and if that happens by the way that actually here's an i don't know if you've done this too have you done a no story lost post more like post somebody done memorial projects yes
00:41:11
Speaker
And often right away is too soon. So we've kind of tried to work on it a month or so after. And then the person says, you know what, I can't do this yet. But then kind of the six months later or the year later, we've done memorial projects. And that's either the spouse or even the whole family getting involved where they'll all come together. It can be a chance to kind of
00:41:32
Speaker
work through the grief together, to bond, to put together a project together, and they produce really great books still. So it's going to be obviously slightly different because it's not coming from the person's own stories, but it's a good chance for everyone to share all their favorite stories about the person. And stories are so important, yeah.
00:41:50
Speaker
Yeah, we have more doing from from Oregon right now where somebody tragically died pretty young and left kids and there are 14 people contributing to his book and I think it'll just be amazing and one thing I kind of Didn't see coming is this is actually hard on our writing team as well when you're telling these heart-wrenching stories like they can only take one of these at a time where it's a memorial project and they're they're almost being therapists a bit and hearing people out and
00:42:20
Speaker
One of my writers says, yeah, I did my interview and my ugly cry, and then I got to writing later. It's kind of a tough time for them, too. It's tough for everybody involved, but the memorial projects are valuable, too.
00:42:34
Speaker
I mean, I know this because I interview people all the time, so I have to sometimes be your dirt ugly cry. That's part of the reason I don't do the video version of my podcast because I'm like, I don't think I want to be in the frame all the time.
00:42:53
Speaker
And not only for myself, but also sometimes the interviewee, right? It can make you feel a little more guarded when you know you're being on camera. So we're like, okay. So I can understand where your interviewers, how they feel after that. But it's also just so beautiful for yourself when you're listening to stories because it's a reflection
00:43:17
Speaker
on them too, as they're interviewing, I'm sure it's a big reflection on them, you know, for their own lives. And you grow when you learn from these stories that you're hearing as well. So that is still really enriching. Now, how can people get a hold of you guys? I will for sure put the website at the bottom, but tell us more of that. And again, like, is there a wait list to even start the project or is it pretty quick?
00:43:46
Speaker
It's pretty quick so it's nostorylost.com and then luckily all our handles are just no story lost so whether that's on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter it's no story lost. That's easy and the starting process again is that welcome call but if families aren't sure if they're ready we do a discovery call instead which is free it's 15 minutes and you can just learn a little bit more and often it's people asking like
00:44:11
Speaker
Would it work if we did this? Or could we do it this way? And usually it's yes. If it's something we can record of audio and turn into writing, it's probably a yes. But yeah, on our website, there's a bunch of buttons for discovery calls. So that's a good way to just feel it out and see if it's the right thing for you as well.
00:44:27
Speaker
And the pricing wise, does it, you don't have to say the pricing. People can say that, find that out on the website, but is it based on the length of the project, the length, the many pages, pictures, that kind of thing? What? Yes. And is, yes, there's different tiers of, yeah, based on the number of interviews. So some people might only need a couple hours. So our basic project is two hours.
00:44:49
Speaker
Uh, that's for when you have the really shy, reserved person who answers in shorter sentences, but we still capture, you know, seven to 10,000 words usually with that. And then we've got a six interview package, which is for the talkers who you just can't seem to move them along fast enough. And they love to tell detailed stories and paragraph after paragraph. And those get really long and those are our thick kind of biography books.
00:45:13
Speaker
And then like I said, there's the odd time when someone comes along and says, I want to interview 14 people. Can you guys do that? And we basically have to check with our printer and see how thick of a book we can print volumes. You might have to need volumes of coffee books. Yes. Yeah. So we, you can add on one interview to any of the packages too. And it doesn't cost like more or less, it's not more or less efficient to what you do. So you can start with a couple and add on interviews easily later.
00:45:42
Speaker
Thank you so much, Andrew, for sharing that. Now, before we wrap up, I always want to make sure I've asked most of the things or at least that either you had in mind or that I had in mind. Is there anything that I did not ask and that you still want to share with the listeners? I mean, I think that's really good. Do you have like resources or
00:46:04
Speaker
tools that you recommend for grief or for people just to do in advance. I read a book called On Grief and Grieving and the author has one called On Death and Dying as well and I think that's a little bit of a toolkit.
00:46:18
Speaker
to prepare for the types of things you can't prepare for. I've never been asked that, but that's great that you are sharing some options here. Yeah, what have you learned through all your research? No, for me, I think it's that part of being present in general with those that you are either about to lose, if by chance you're
00:46:39
Speaker
At the bedside of someone like my mom died of pancreatic cancer so I can understand the front the person that reached out with that person right you be present and The other part too is being present with you if it's already you're already grieving being present with your own emotions Acknowledging your emotions not judging your emotions as they come and just witnessing them as they come
00:47:05
Speaker
without suppressing them. And each one will be different for everybody, it will look different. But that's, that's at least a tip for myself. And what I've seen is not judging your own grief and not judging others. Yeah, I like that.
00:47:22
Speaker
I would say the biggest surprise for me in any grief I've felt from before I had would be like the non-linearity. All the emotions could come at different times and there's no plan and there's no set way you go through it. And then the amplitude as well is like
00:47:40
Speaker
Oh, I kind of thought I would just get a bit better over time. And it's like, no, you're gonna have a great day, then you're gonna have a terrible day, and you're gonna have a good day, then you're gonna have a kind of a low day, and it's, yeah. No, and within the day, within the same day itself, you can have all of those in just one day.
00:47:55
Speaker
It's like you're saying you're a sports person, so it's like an ocean. It is unpredictable. You do not know when there's going to be a huge wave that will just like, oh, then the undertow, is that what it's called? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Suck me back out. Yeah, you never know. So just ride with it. And tools like this, like a podcast, tools like
00:48:19
Speaker
people that already, let's say journal, people that already talk openly about emotions maybe to others, these things that people already do in general because it's part of who they are when it comes to the part of grief, or people that already, let's say, use counseling, have already used therapists or things, or then they add it to their repertoire.
00:48:40
Speaker
these tools just help you have kind of that, like the things you would need on a beach, by chance, these kind of things would come with a wave, right? You have this life jacket, you have those, that's what these tools would be. Yes, exactly, these are the tools.
00:49:02
Speaker
The way you put it is kind of like if you have some kind of practice and there's many different ways of doing that, those are things that can be there to kind of grab on to when something unexpected happens, right? Right. But again, it could totally throw you off completely off your game and be like, wait, but I thought I knew. I thought I was. No, I knew. No, sometimes you're not.
00:49:22
Speaker
Yeah another big one for me is like stoic philosophy if you've ever read any of that. It's like they reflect the stoics reflected really deeply on death and that's why people have tattoos that say memento mori. It's like remembering to think about your death is coming but also I think that's
00:49:41
Speaker
useful, and it sounds morbid when you first think about it, to think about like, you're going to lose your loved one someday, but to kind of meditate on that in advance, I think can be helpful too. So I read a book called A Guide to the Good Life, and it's really helpful in providing mental tools and philosophical tools for preparing you for, like you said earlier in the podcast, this is something that the only thing we can all not avoid, right? It's coming at some point for everybody, and that's been a good toolkit as well.
00:50:11
Speaker
Well, you've been giving me, you're giving me a lot of tools here. So thank you, Andrew. This is, it's the first time I have it turned around. Well, at first, maybe only other couple of times that someone turns it around at me. So thank you. I appreciate it. Cause you can't ask all the questions. Yeah. Oh man.
00:50:30
Speaker
Man, that's why I'm on this side. Thank you so much, Andrew. And so again, to reach you again, No Story Lost on your website, Instagram, Facebook. Yeah, nostorylost.com. And just reach out to share your own story or see if you can convince one of your family members to tell theirs. Thank you once again, Andrew. And this is a beautiful tool, not only
00:50:54
Speaker
for a memorial of someone, but just even just to celebrate the life that we have and those that are still around with us. So thank you. For sure. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
00:51:12
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
00:51:41
Speaker
Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.