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Cake: A Symbol of Celebrating Life's Moments with Suelin Chen
32 Plays3 years ago
Have you thought of planning your funeral? Funeral preplanning is important because it guarantees that when your time comes, your family can have a fitting and personal farewell. This means giving yourself and your loved ones the best chance of moving forward in a healthy way from the loss of a loved one.
In this episode of the Glam Reaper Podcast, Jennifer is joined by special guest, Suelin Chen, CEO of Cake, where she tells us all about her company, a digital self-serve suite of tools spanning from planning to bereavement support.
Tune in to learn how you can make your final journey extra meaningful. Enjoy!
LITTLE NUGGETS OF GOLD:
- How to create a plan for a meaningful ending so they can live their best life through Cake
- CAKE: A symbol of celebrating life moments
- Why end-of-life planning is actually all about honoring life.
- The importance of funeral planning, and how it feels to set up your own
- Why should people know how funeral services work?
Connect with Cake
Website - https://www.joincake.com/welcome/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/JoinCakeApp
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/joincakeapp
Twitter - https://twitter.com/JoinCakeApp
LinkedIn - https://twitter.com/JoinCakeApp
Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/joinCAKEapp
Connect with Suelin Chen
Twitter - https://twitter.com/suelinchenfeld
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/suelinchen
Connect with Jennifer/The Glam Reaper:
Facebook Page - Muldowney Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/MuldowneyMemorials/
Facebook Page - Rainbow Bridge Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/rainbowbridgememorialsdotcom
Instagram - @muldowneymemorials & @jennifermuldowney
Twitter - @TheGlamReaper
Email us here: glamreaperpodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Glam Reaper Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:04
Speaker
I'm your host Jennifer Muldani aka the Glam Reaper herself.
00:00:08
Speaker
On this week's episode I am talking to a fabulous CEO from a interestingly called website called Cake and it's actually joincake.com so let's take it away.
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:33
Speaker
I'm your host, Jennifer Muldowney, aka the Glam Reaper.
00:00:37
Speaker
And on today's podcast, we are talking cake.
00:00:40
Speaker
One of my favorite things.
00:00:42
Speaker
It's not the cake that you and I maybe know, but Sue Lynn is joining us and she is going to fill us in all about joincake.com.
00:00:51
Speaker
This is going to be a good episode.
00:00:53
Speaker
Sue Lynn, welcome.
00:00:55
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:00:58
Speaker
great to have you I apologize for I was calling Sue Lynn Sue Ellen which kind of makes me laugh isn't that from like Little House on the Prairie I think I used to watch that when I grew up or something it's from one of those wild American shows anyway um I'm sure you probably get that well maybe I am the only person who's ever said that to you am I oh no it's pretty common
00:01:18
Speaker
Okay, that's okay.
00:01:19
Speaker
That's okay.
00:01:19
Speaker
On one of my episodes, there was a girl called Emma Payne and she deals with grief a lot.
00:01:27
Speaker
And I said, that's interesting.
00:01:28
Speaker
Yeah, I know her.
00:01:29
Speaker
Oh, there you go.
00:01:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:31
Speaker
So apparently I was the first person who associated her name with what she does.
00:01:35
Speaker
And she was like, what?
00:01:36
Speaker
And I was like, how am I the only person who said that to you?
00:01:38
Speaker
So anyway.
00:01:41
Speaker
Anyway, moving swiftly along, tell me, join Cake.
00:01:44
Speaker
Tell me.
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:45
Speaker
It sounds so lovely.
00:01:47
Speaker
It sounds like something I want, but it is funeral focused, so.
00:01:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:01:52
Speaker
So the, where should I start just from the very beginning?
00:01:56
Speaker
So Cake, so I'm Sule and I'm the CEO of Cake.
00:01:59
Speaker
We are an online platform that helps people navigate end of life planning as well as bereavement support.
00:02:06
Speaker
So we do both sides of it.
00:02:07
Speaker
What happens after loss and helping people figure out what they need to do, as well as what kind of planning can you do in advance to kind of unburden your loved ones?
00:02:17
Speaker
And so we're, I think, the largest site in the world for this.
00:02:20
Speaker
We have about 40 million people a year on the platform.
00:02:25
Speaker
So but it's a digital platform.
00:02:27
Speaker
So it's mostly digital self-serve content and a suite of tools spanning from planning to bereavement support.
00:02:36
Speaker
Wow.
00:02:36
Speaker
And so, so tell me a little bit about that for anybody who doesn't know.
00:02:42
Speaker
I've obviously checked out the website and great, lots of great articles.
00:02:46
Speaker
Can somebody plan their entire funeral from start to finish?
00:02:51
Speaker
You know, what about the legal implications, different countries, different states?
00:02:54
Speaker
How do you work
Understanding Joincake.com and Its Services
00:02:56
Speaker
with all that?
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question.
00:02:57
Speaker
So we, from a content and tools perspective, we are US focused, although we do have people from all over the world on the site.
00:03:06
Speaker
Some things are very general, so they don't need to be country specific.
00:03:11
Speaker
You know, if you want to figure out what music you want at your funeral or something like that, it doesn't have to be country specific.
00:03:17
Speaker
But that being said, of course, the legal documents are quite country and even state specific.
00:03:23
Speaker
So that's kind of how I might think about it.
00:03:25
Speaker
Our site has a lot of utility regardless of where you are.
00:03:28
Speaker
But if you're trying to make a will, that's mostly just for the U.S. Okay.
00:03:34
Speaker
Okay.
00:03:35
Speaker
If somebody can, so if I wanted to do a will today, I can go onto the website.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:03:41
Speaker
Is it a link to somebody externally or is it all within your website or how does that work?
00:03:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's a combination of things.
00:03:47
Speaker
A will we can do, but we also, you know, our goal is to connect people to whatever solutions they need.
00:03:53
Speaker
So it's a combination of things that we're offering in-house, but we certainly also work.
00:03:58
Speaker
partner with many other companies in the general end of life category to help people find solutions.
00:04:05
Speaker
We work with a lot of companies like Eternova.
00:04:08
Speaker
I don't know if you know them.
00:04:09
Speaker
They turn ashes into diamonds.
00:04:11
Speaker
So companies like that, you know, we will, we do not have that technology ourselves.
00:04:14
Speaker
We're mostly a technology, like a digital tech company.
00:04:17
Speaker
But of course we have folks on our platform who are interested in what they do.
00:04:22
Speaker
And we are more than happy to connect them to companies like that.
00:04:25
Speaker
Okay.
Comprehensive End-of-Life Planning Tools
00:04:26
Speaker
So if I have lost somebody and I go on to joincake.com, is there like sections that I can go into?
00:04:36
Speaker
And, you know, if I'm looking for jewelry, say, and so I go into.
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:40
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:41
Speaker
And you can also search on the site.
00:04:43
Speaker
So we have maybe 5,000 original articles that cover, that span all sorts of different topics.
00:04:52
Speaker
And then planning tools as well.
00:04:54
Speaker
Right.
00:04:54
Speaker
OK.
00:04:55
Speaker
And so if I went into the jewelry section, is there sort of loads of different types of jewelry or do you just partner with one or two?
00:05:03
Speaker
And how does that?
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we kind of aim to be more like have a lot of different things, but also curate.
00:05:11
Speaker
So we, if we have an official partnership, we always talk to the founders, we talk to the team, we try to understand what the user experience is going to be like, because we really want to make sure that anyone who we're sending our folks over to is going to have a good experience.
00:05:25
Speaker
So we definitely do vetting and kind of our own diligence on these companies.
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:32
Speaker
And so what we are trying to balance is to really give people a sense of what options they have.
00:05:38
Speaker
Because as you know, a lot of people don't even know what options they have.
00:05:42
Speaker
They don't know what they don't know.
00:05:44
Speaker
This might not be a topic they've thought a lot about.
00:05:46
Speaker
And so we want to present them with the kind of huge spectrum of options that are now available.
00:05:52
Speaker
There's so many new companies in this space.
00:05:54
Speaker
There's so many things that people can do.
00:05:56
Speaker
At the same time, we don't want to overwhelm people with choice.
00:06:00
Speaker
So we want to make sure that they that we also curate.
00:06:03
Speaker
And then we have a lot of data in the background on, you know, someone like this clicked here and bought this.
00:06:11
Speaker
And so as we grow and as we get more sophisticated with our algorithms, our matching algorithms and our recommendations, we can become even more good at kind of making good recommendations to people.
00:06:24
Speaker
So it is more curated based on what we already know about you in terms of your user behavior on the site.
00:06:30
Speaker
Right.
00:06:30
Speaker
OK.
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:32
Speaker
So I'll just make a quick analogy.
00:06:33
Speaker
So it's just like when you go on any kind of e-commerce site or shopping experience, I mean, in 2022, you know, they will recommend things.
00:06:40
Speaker
And sometimes it's quite useful, right, because they kind of know a little bit about you and what you've already browsed at.
00:06:46
Speaker
And so they can kind of help guide you to things that are relevant to you.
00:06:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:52
Speaker
And one of the questions I've had since I fell upon your website is where did the name come
Symbolism and Mission Behind 'Cake'
00:07:00
Speaker
from?
00:07:00
Speaker
Yes.
00:07:01
Speaker
It's a great question.
00:07:02
Speaker
So we really wanted to highlight the fact that all of this planning activity and all of this, if you're coming to our site, it's because you want to honor life.
00:07:13
Speaker
That is actually the motivation.
00:07:14
Speaker
So anything that's related to thinking about death, trying to plan for it,
00:07:20
Speaker
Really, it's a gift to your loved ones.
00:07:22
Speaker
It's also about a gift to yourself and kind of honoring who you are.
00:07:26
Speaker
So we saw cake as a symbol of celebrating life moments.
00:07:29
Speaker
And that's really where we want to center our brand and our experience.
00:07:33
Speaker
It's really about that.
00:07:35
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:07:35
Speaker
Very good.
00:07:37
Speaker
And do you, by taking sort of bereavement, grief, funeral planning, death care, by taking sort of all of those topics, do you think you're taking on too much maybe?
00:07:50
Speaker
Do you think you're, you know, are you trying to sort of
00:07:54
Speaker
I don't want to say, but be all things to everyone, you know, too fast.
00:07:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:58
Speaker
Or, you know, yeah, we're not.
00:08:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:00
Speaker
I think that's a really good question.
00:08:01
Speaker
So we're not trying to be all things to everyone, but we are, what we are trying to be is the trusted partner that people would go to when they're trying to navigate any of this.
00:08:09
Speaker
And then, like I said, it's not as if we are fulfilling all the solutions.
00:08:13
Speaker
Right.
00:08:14
Speaker
But we are in a way like quarterbacking for people and helping them navigate it because the space is very fragmented.
00:08:22
Speaker
Right.
00:08:22
Speaker
So,
00:08:23
Speaker
Our goal is to lift up the whole ecosystem.
00:08:25
Speaker
It's not necessarily about one point solution.
00:08:28
Speaker
So we see a lot of amazing solutions out there.
00:08:32
Speaker
They're having trouble finding audience sometimes, right?
00:08:35
Speaker
They're having trouble acquiring people.
00:08:37
Speaker
Well, we have 120,000 people a day on the site.
00:08:39
Speaker
So our goal is, can we connect these people to things that they need?
00:08:43
Speaker
And I think the challenge in this category is it
00:08:46
Speaker
It's quite variable how people interact with this space and also most people on our site actually have multiple needs in the space.
00:08:54
Speaker
So let's say you come in and use our online memorial tool.
00:08:59
Speaker
Chances are you also have planning needs that are unmet.
00:09:03
Speaker
And so it makes sense.
00:09:05
Speaker
You're already here.
00:09:06
Speaker
You might be already in that headspace for us to help you with that.
00:09:09
Speaker
We want to guide people and have an end to end solution that they can know that they can come to us, whether or not we are fulfilling all of the actual solutions.
00:09:18
Speaker
Does that make sense?
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:21
Speaker
Um,
00:09:21
Speaker
And yeah.
00:09:23
Speaker
And so I guess for me, it comes down to your, I guess, because you do some stuff in-house and then you have external people, we'll call them on, on the, you know, sell the service.
00:09:34
Speaker
So you're, you're, you do, you're good at certain things that you do and you're doing them in-house and then other things you're sort of like, okay, here's people, we agree with these, we like these, these are our friends, you can go to them and you'll be treated as such.
00:09:50
Speaker
Yeah, to be treated.
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:52
Speaker
I mean, you can think of us like maybe the in real life analogy, right, is like people might have a folder or a binder, right, of things they want to pass on.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:03
Speaker
So obviously that should live securely in the cloud.
00:10:05
Speaker
And also we can help you structure that information and give you prompts and help you understand what are the things that others will want to know.
00:10:14
Speaker
when you're gone or if you're incapacitated.
00:10:16
Speaker
Right.
00:10:16
Speaker
So those are the things that we would own.
00:10:18
Speaker
So we have secure vault storage.
00:10:21
Speaker
We have all of that.
00:10:23
Speaker
But then we also are somewhat agnostic.
00:10:25
Speaker
Like we have a will tool.
00:10:26
Speaker
But if you already have a will within a state attorney, we're not, you know, we're not like you have to use our will tool.
00:10:32
Speaker
We just have it because we know a lot of people on our site want it.
00:10:35
Speaker
And it's helpful for it to be available.
00:10:38
Speaker
But like I said, we are agnostic to how you do your planning.
00:10:42
Speaker
And then, but we want to be that nexus for everyone to kind of all get on the same page.
00:10:46
Speaker
Gotcha.
00:10:47
Speaker
Gotcha.
00:10:48
Speaker
Now, something I'm sort of obsessed with a little bit on the Glamour Reaper podcast is how, you know, your journey came to
Sue Lynn's Career Transition to Cake
00:10:57
Speaker
this.
00:10:57
Speaker
Like, I mean, how many people are you employing at Join Cake right now?
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:01
Speaker
I mean, we have dozens of employees.
00:11:03
Speaker
It kind of depends on how you think about it, whether it's full-time or part-time.
00:11:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:08
Speaker
But yeah, so we have a lot of people on the team, probably around 40.
00:11:14
Speaker
But some of them are part time.
00:11:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:16
Speaker
And how did your journey come from?
00:11:18
Speaker
Like, what's your background?
00:11:19
Speaker
How did you come into this space to being now in this space with employing 40 people?
00:11:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's on funerals.
00:11:27
Speaker
It's kind of funny.
00:11:28
Speaker
I am.
00:11:29
Speaker
I definitely did not start off knowing I would do this.
00:11:32
Speaker
And I think probably most people in this industry don't, you know, you're not like a three or four year old saying, I want to, you know, be in this category.
00:11:40
Speaker
It's like, I have a three and five year old and they, you know, they want to be, I don't even know, mermaids or something.
00:11:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:49
Speaker
So yeah, no.
00:11:50
Speaker
So anyway, I was very interested in making an impact somehow, which I think a lot of folks in this space probably do.
00:11:57
Speaker
Like you're very driven, I'm sure, by wanting to help people.
00:12:01
Speaker
And so I always thought that I would do that through the medical field.
00:12:06
Speaker
I did my undergrad and PhD at MIT.
00:12:08
Speaker
I was working in medical technology.
00:12:10
Speaker
That was actually the first time I was exposed to the idea that, at least in the US,
00:12:17
Speaker
there's this sort of bias towards treatment, more aggressive treatment, which is the right choice for a lot of people, but it's not the right choice for some people.
00:12:26
Speaker
And so my PhD was focused on helping doctors make those types of treatment decisions based on prognosis.
00:12:32
Speaker
So I was working in various different cancers, trying to find better prognostic information to decide whether to treat, because there's sometimes trade-offs to treatment.
00:12:41
Speaker
There can be a reduction in quality of life,
00:12:43
Speaker
And so I was very early on, I think, exposed to this idea that more quantity of life is not always the goal for people.
00:12:52
Speaker
Sometimes it is, but these conversations aren't happening.
00:12:56
Speaker
And I kind of realized that part of the reason these conversations aren't happening is it can be an uncomfortable conversation.
00:13:00
Speaker
No one's kind of owning it.
00:13:02
Speaker
And there aren't a lot of tools available, especially back then in our society to help guide people on this.
00:13:08
Speaker
I think now there are many more resources, but at the time there was really nothing.
00:13:13
Speaker
And then I went on more on the business side.
00:13:15
Speaker
So I worked in transaction advising and healthcare.
00:13:19
Speaker
So my clients were generally therapeutics companies.
00:13:22
Speaker
I was working on the sales side.
00:13:23
Speaker
And again, a lot of my work was how do you extend life by a couple more months?
00:13:28
Speaker
And what does that actually mean?
00:13:30
Speaker
And then I was also realizing that our healthcare system, there are exceptions of course, but as a whole, I didn't feel like they were supporting families.
00:13:40
Speaker
when somebody dies, which is where everybody ends up no matter how long you extend life.
00:13:44
Speaker
Right.
00:13:46
Speaker
And, um, I just got really interested in it.
00:13:48
Speaker
Of course, I also had personal experiences, um, and my family members passing away and there being a lot of conflict, um, as a result.
00:13:56
Speaker
And I felt like it was avoidable had there been more conversations.
00:14:01
Speaker
And I think that's a very common story actually in many families across the world.
00:14:05
Speaker
So,
00:14:06
Speaker
Anyway, I just became very obsessed with the idea that this is an area that needs more support.
00:14:14
Speaker
And I looked around, I didn't see any companies that were doing it at the time.
00:14:17
Speaker
So I thought, oh, I can just start one, which was very naive.
00:14:23
Speaker
But here we are.
00:14:25
Speaker
And then, yeah.
00:14:28
Speaker
And then actually one other thing that I did, which was, this was like, while I was still transaction advising for healthcare companies,
00:14:36
Speaker
My friend, a very dear friend of mine, who's not working in this space, but has a very strong, I guess, like meditation mindfulness practice.
00:14:46
Speaker
She invited my husband and I to write our own obituaries.
00:14:50
Speaker
I don't know.
00:14:50
Speaker
Have you ever done that?
00:14:51
Speaker
No, I haven't.
00:14:52
Speaker
I've done a funeral plan and everything else, but now it never gets me through.
00:14:57
Speaker
If that's something that you're interested in, you have?
00:15:01
Speaker
No, I have partly done it.
00:15:03
Speaker
Yes, I forgot.
00:15:03
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, I forgot I did that.
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
00:15:06
Speaker
How was that experience for you?
00:15:08
Speaker
It was weird.
00:15:09
Speaker
I mean, I cried an awful lot.
00:15:11
Speaker
I cried too.
00:15:14
Speaker
It was kind of one of those things like, that's so amazing.
00:15:16
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:15:17
Speaker
It was a little bit of a...
00:15:19
Speaker
Oh no, I'll be so sad when I'm not here anymore.
00:15:22
Speaker
It was interesting.
00:15:23
Speaker
I actually cried for a different reason.
00:15:26
Speaker
Oh, I cried because I felt so it was like an aspirational obituary.
00:15:30
Speaker
And I felt like, even though I love my job, I was very intellectually stimulated.
00:15:35
Speaker
I love my coworkers.
00:15:36
Speaker
I felt like I was doing good, but I realized it wasn't the path that I felt like I wanted to be on.
00:15:42
Speaker
Wow.
00:15:43
Speaker
And that's sort of like, and I, you know, so they do this exercise in a lot of business schools.
00:15:47
Speaker
Um,
00:15:49
Speaker
as sort of a career visioning exercise.
00:15:53
Speaker
That wasn't necessarily the purpose of, you know, basically my friend invited us over.
00:15:57
Speaker
It was like a dinner party, like a double date where we all like wrote our own obituaries and read them aloud to each other.
00:16:02
Speaker
It was actually really cool.
00:16:04
Speaker
I definitely recommend it.
00:16:05
Speaker
I think we have directions on our website if you want to search on the site.
00:16:08
Speaker
But anyway.
00:16:09
Speaker
So yeah, so I think that was also very clarifying, you know.
00:16:11
Speaker
So anyway, so that's kind of how I came to this space.
00:16:15
Speaker
And then the more I learned about it, the more I realized how underserved it is.
00:16:20
Speaker
It's literally impacts everybody.
00:16:23
Speaker
It's a part of the human experience.
00:16:26
Speaker
And yet there's so much kind of taboo or stigma around it in our society, although it's changing, luckily, and thanks to people like you.
00:16:36
Speaker
And yeah,
00:16:38
Speaker
But certainly at the time, and I think for still a lot of this world, I think there's a lot of fear to talk about it and to address it head on, which I think not only can create avoidable pain for people who are left behind when someone passes away, but also I think prevents us
00:17:00
Speaker
From fully embracing what we want to be doing in life right now.
00:17:05
Speaker
Because if we just pretend like we're going to live forever, then it's really hard to stay motivated and focused around how you want to spend your time and what's important to you and stuff like that.
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree with that.
00:17:18
Speaker
And it's funny doing things like writing your funeral plan and writing your obituary.
00:17:22
Speaker
And it really and I know for me and in what I do on a daily basis, it's that reminder of death.
00:17:29
Speaker
Unfortunately,
00:17:31
Speaker
reminds you of your own and so you know you know life is short and it could happen at any day you and I it could be today it could be the day like we don't get a notification it doesn't come in on your Facebook like today's the day um and so I I think that it's healthy to do things like every five to ten years doing some sort of thing that it does stop you and go is this life is this what you wanted is this what how you would have expected and and
00:17:58
Speaker
I think that the interesting thing about your obituary exercise versus mine was mine was very much I was writing it as if I was gone now and you know what I would want people to know that I feel about them or about the universe or you know so but it's so interesting I'm actually think I'm going to try your version as well I mean I think I probably do that in my own little business ways of like my little vision boards and all the different stuff and you know the things I aspire to in this
00:18:28
Speaker
sector and stuff.
00:18:30
Speaker
But yeah, it's fascinating.
00:18:31
Speaker
And I think it's something that Joe blogs and I think people should do more often.
00:18:36
Speaker
And even funeral directors themselves, I feel like because they work in, it's like a doctor because they work in the
00:18:43
Speaker
industry so much and it's a day-to-day job and I was only talking about this with somebody yesterday that it can become a bit monotonous and a bit sort of you just show up and you do it and you don't um it can like I think anything can and then there'll be that pace that will like hit you to your core and shake you up and and all that sort of stuff so
00:19:02
Speaker
And so that's one of the questions I would have is for you and the website and everything.
Cake's Digital Support and Partnerships
00:19:08
Speaker
And there's two prongs to this question is one, how do you work with the funeral directors, funeral homes or industry people?
00:19:18
Speaker
And two, how has that been for you in terms of female, you know, in terms of like,
00:19:26
Speaker
diversity um you know it is a very male white male dominated yes industry space in the us especially in ireland where i'm from um and so i found it quite interesting that journey um as one lady uh i'm speaking with yesterday referenced me to um that i've i've taken my hatchet and gone through the forest and i've
00:19:47
Speaker
I've cleared away some of the brambles and some of the thorns, but there's still an awful lot left behind.
00:19:52
Speaker
You know, you can't.
00:19:54
Speaker
So, yeah, it's an interesting journey.
00:19:55
Speaker
So, yeah, I want to know how you work with people in the industry and how that journey has been for you.
00:20:01
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's such a great question.
00:20:03
Speaker
I mean, we mostly had focused on the planning side, so we hadn't really proactively made, you know, formal relationships with people in the like funeral home industry, I would say.
00:20:15
Speaker
Now.
00:20:18
Speaker
given our scale and the fact that we do cover support people after loss as well now, but on the digital side of things.
00:20:24
Speaker
So we're not, you know, carrying out death care, I would say, but we are kind of guiding people on the digital side of things.
00:20:33
Speaker
And also giving more transparency, like our goal is to empower the consumer to understand, you know, I think it's hard to find good information online about these things.
00:20:44
Speaker
And of course, there's a huge range of folks who work in this industry, but there is a history of predatory practices.
00:20:52
Speaker
And so we wanted to make sure that we are providing people good information.
00:20:55
Speaker
So that's more where we've played.
00:20:57
Speaker
That said, a lot of these funeral conglomerates and funeral homes have reached out to us.
00:21:04
Speaker
We are in active conversations with many of them now, actually both in the U.S. and in the U.K., because with our expertise around kind of digital experiences,
00:21:14
Speaker
and they're more brick and mortar businesses.
00:21:17
Speaker
There's an kind of obvious potential there.
00:21:20
Speaker
But yeah, so we've mostly focused on what is the best user experience for a person, but not necessarily veering into the actual in real life type of parts, more so giving people information.
00:21:35
Speaker
So when they do,
00:21:37
Speaker
walk into if you're home they have information and can feel like there's like can feel confident that they understand their you know anything from pricing to you know what their options might be right um and are you like do you work with any of the associations and stuff over here or have you yeah just starting to i mean like i said we started off more on the planning side so
00:22:05
Speaker
For that reason, it's a little less, you know, makes a little less sense to start with partnerships there.
00:22:11
Speaker
So our early partnerships are more with health systems, banks, insurance companies are more of the partners we've been working with and then now starting to expand into
00:22:24
Speaker
the funeral industry.
00:22:25
Speaker
It was more before and if you were pre-planning really.
00:22:29
Speaker
Exactly.
00:22:30
Speaker
If you were setting yourself up as opposed to meet.
00:22:32
Speaker
Okay, gotcha, gotcha.
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah, so the vast majority of our current partners as well as the folks who've been reaching out are a lot in the financial services industry because we're in the largest period of wealth transfer in human history.
00:22:46
Speaker
They understand that they want to help their customers with end-of-life planning
00:22:50
Speaker
but they're not really sure how to approach the topic.
00:22:51
Speaker
They don't really know what to do.
00:22:53
Speaker
So they are asking us, how do we do this?
00:22:56
Speaker
Can we work with you to help our customers do this?
00:22:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:00
Speaker
Very good.
00:23:01
Speaker
I mean, it sounds like it's only a budding business that's going to go from strength to strength, which is very exciting.
Founding Cake and its Global Vision
00:23:06
Speaker
So do you have partners as in terms of, is it just you or is this your baby?
00:23:14
Speaker
Like mine's my baby.
00:23:15
Speaker
I know you've got babies, but I joke that mine's my actual baby.
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a baby in a certain sense.
00:23:23
Speaker
I co-founded the company with a palliative care doctor.
00:23:25
Speaker
And then I now work very closely with our chief marketing officer who has a consumer technology and digital marketing background.
00:23:34
Speaker
So and, you know, he is brilliant and has had personal experience of personal experiences of loss, but also thinks on a very large scale and understands how big of an impact we could have just given the
00:23:49
Speaker
how many people in the world need a product like this and also how to scale a large technology business to reach a lot of people.
00:23:58
Speaker
So that's kind of how we think about things, you know, that we know that this can be gigantic.
00:24:05
Speaker
And we also think that there's so much to be learned about people's behavior and desires and needs in this space that we think thus far has been somewhat hidden.
00:24:18
Speaker
So we want to,
00:24:19
Speaker
use that data to kind of help people understand what others are even doing to kind of give a little bit more of this kind of peer validation and transparency of like, what are, you know, because I think what we see a lot of the times is people don't understand, like people don't know if they're weird to be thinking about this a lot.
00:24:37
Speaker
But what they don't realize is so many other people are thinking about this.
00:24:41
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:24:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:44
Speaker
Like this might sound weird.
00:24:45
Speaker
I'm like, it is not weird.
00:24:46
Speaker
I can tell you.
00:24:46
Speaker
I don't know what to say, but I know it's not weird.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:24:50
Speaker
And I think that if people only knew how common this is and how many other human beings are thinking about the exact same things.
00:24:58
Speaker
And I think they can also be inspired by each other.
00:25:00
Speaker
Right.
00:25:00
Speaker
This is what we see a lot is there's a discovery.
00:25:03
Speaker
We call it kind of discovery aspect of this category where people,
00:25:06
Speaker
People don't know what they don't know.
00:25:08
Speaker
Right.
00:25:08
Speaker
And so once they're once they see that, oh, like this person wanted to get buried with a six pack of Bud Light and this person wanted to have a funeral in a movie theater.
00:25:18
Speaker
And then they think, wow.
00:25:20
Speaker
And they may not want the Bud Light, but they might that might expand their notion of what's possible and realize that they can personalize things more than they ever envisioned before.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:32
Speaker
Well, that is, I think, a wonderful note for us to end on because, you know, as everybody knows, who's listened to me long enough harping on about the personalization of everything.
00:25:43
Speaker
I think that's a great note to to finish off and say goodbye and farewell for now.
00:25:49
Speaker
I'm very excited to watch this space and with joincake.com and we'll leave all the links and everything in the boxes below.
00:25:58
Speaker
And yeah, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story.
00:26:01
Speaker
yeah thank you so much it was a real pleasure to talk to you so that was our chat please feel free to send us any comments or email us any questions that you might have on end of life planning um it's glamoury for podcast at gmail.com and we look forward to talking to you again soon ciao for now