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"Transforming Memories into Legacy: No Story Lost with Founder Andrew" · The Eye Believe Podcast

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Music.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the I Believe podcast. Thank you.
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Those of you who are joining us live, those of you joining for the recording,
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we're grateful that you are here to listen.
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And today I'm joined by a special guest from No Story Lost.
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It's actually founder or co-founder Andrew, who founded No Story Lost shortly
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after recording their grandfather's story.
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So I'm not actually going to tell the whole part of his intro because I want
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him to be able to share more about how he founded No Story Lost.
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So can you just tell us, Andrew, a little more about who you are and how No
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Story Lost came to be? Yeah, totally.
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Thanks for having me. So I grew up in a big, as a part of a big family in Calgary
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in Canada here, and we had tons of family gatherings.
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So together we were 14 or 15 people, and we had these grandparents who were
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kind of at the center of it all.
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And so the guy that starts the story is this man who is my grandfather, Alan.
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We called him Pop, and he was a legend in the family. So he always had the best stories.
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He'd always keep us entertained with songs and old stories and stuff.
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And that was kind of like a formative thing in my childhood.
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So I'd always remember going to Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas dinners,
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and he would always be there telling some story or singing some song.
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And our family would always say stuff about, we need to write these stories
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down or someone needs to do something with these.
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And so you hear this when you're six or seven years old and you don't think
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too much about it. You think someone's going to take care of it.
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And then I kind of realized I was hearing that same story again,
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like 10, 15 years later, and no one had done anything about it yet.
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So I was home from college on a break and I thought, you know what,
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someone's got to just do this.
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I'm going to sit down and just type while he tells some stories.
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So I sat him down on the couch and with my laptop.
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Live while he was talking. Recorded a bunch of his stories and realized like
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I had quite a bit of the cool stuff written down.
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So then my cousin and I, who he'll come into the story again later,
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but we thought, okay, we should probably like do some more about this and like
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maybe print a book or something.
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So we sat down with him again and recorded this time audio.
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So we'd have some audio clips of him and wrote down those stories and eventually,
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yeah, pulled together this first book.
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So you can see it's pretty narrow. There's not a ton in here,
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but we have it. And we realized like, wow, this was a ton of work,
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but it's so cool to have what we have now.
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And our entrepreneurial brain started turning on it thinking,
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if this was this hard for us, and is this valuable to have?
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Surely there's other families out there who would like to have something like this.
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So that's kind of the roots of how we got started. And from there,
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we did a project or two for friends and other families.
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And that started the ball rolling on the company. That's so amazing.
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And I have loved learning a little more just as I've kind of perused the website
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and just seen more about what you guys have done with people's stories.
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And I actually just finished reading a book series that, I mean,
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fantasy, you know, unrelated, but one of the phrases that I loved from this
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that I actually titled our interview with was just this idea that like your story is worth telling.
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And that was just something that really sunk in, especially as a stage four
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cancer patient myself, when you're really just facing your mortality with a
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cancer diagnosis that can, And I can feel really daunting, I think,
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in some ways, like you mentioned, that it's a lot of work.
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But also, I think there's that level of wondering, you know,
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when I'm gone, whether it's due to cancer or just whatever happens in my life,
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like, is my story worth remembering?
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I think that's a question that we then have to face as cancer patients.
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So I'm curious, you know, what's your opinion on why capturing life stories
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might be important and impactful?
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Specifically for people in a cancer community, like, you know,
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who might be facing the more terminal or risky feeling stage four diagnosis?
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Yeah. So I think it's easy to feel intimidated there that like,
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you know, do I really have a story or a bunch of lessons to leave?
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And I would say from everything we've heard at very minimum to your family and
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friends, absolutely. It's priceless, like no question.
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So even if you feel like, you know, I don't have the odyssey tale of of an amazing
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life arc necessarily that the world needs to hear,
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you still can be confident in the fact that it'll mean so much for your friends
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and family just to even learn silly little things about you the way you were
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when you were younger, before people knew you.
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And we have all these stories of people who said, as they got started,
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kind of like, oh, my life's boring. I don't know why my kids want to do this.
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And then you get stories out of that, things like when they met JFK,
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or like this woman who said they had no stories, And then in the first interview,
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she's talking about how she lived in Manchester in the war and a bomb came through
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their ceiling, through the second story, landed in their living room, didn't explode.
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They had to move to the neighbor's for a few weeks. She was like three years old or something.
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So I would say being so close to your own story, you also might think it's less remarkable.
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Pretty much everybody has something interesting that someone maybe doesn't even know about them.
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Then you kind of ask specifically about for cancer patients and the story kind
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of comes back around here with my cousin and I because so he's my best friend,
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he's my business partner, no story lost.
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And right around the time I was starting to work with Pop on his book.
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Jeremy's dad had a nasopharyngeal cancer diagnosis, kind of given like 50-50 odds to live.
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And so Jeremy went on this little mission with him to
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go camping and spend a few concentrated days together
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and he brought a list of like a hundred questions to
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ask your parents and went through all these questions that you
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just don't think to ask each other on any given Tuesday
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but it's sometimes it has to be faced with
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these difficult circumstances to think what should
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I be learning what should I be asking or telling to my
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family from my life that we mostly just hold in our
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heads so I think that that was really formative for Jeremy as well to
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to have that tough experience and then go
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through asking those questions learning so much about
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his dad that was always at his fingertips but he'd never
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accessed before and I think that showed Jeremy especially
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really the power of even just those basic stories so that's kind of the other
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half of our founding story I love that that's so neat and I think it kind of
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brings back this idea that I guess one question that I had is you know Do you
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have people who are participating with No Story Lost who are they mostly focused on, you know,
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oh, they're at the end of their life or they've lived a lot of life and they're
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capturing their stories?
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Or do you have kind of a mix of people who they're just wanting to,
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I mean, write down things from being a first-time parent to graduating high
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school, like that they just have a desire to capture those kind of monumental
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parts of their life? Or like you said, just the simple things.
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I guess I'm just trying to gauge, you know, if someone were to come to No Story
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Lost, Do you have maybe an ideal person who is capturing their story or do you
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genuinely feel like everyone at all phases of their life, whether they're faced
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with mortality or not, really could benefit from doing so?
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Yeah, I'd say on our end, there's not really an ideal.
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So I would say it's more on the person's end who's thinking of doing it is like,
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if they feel like there's people in their life who would value hearing it, that's enough.
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That makes enough sense right there. But yeah, we've had stories from anyone
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who's kind of 40 or 50 years old, not facing mortality yet, to people at that
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age who are facing kind of earlier mortality,
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all the way up to someone who's 100.
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We've had our first like centenarian project and everything
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in between we've told stories about couples and how they came together and
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so lots of kind of both parent stories so yeah
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anytime that someone can tell stories over audio and we can record it we can
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make a book out of it so yeah people have also done like their wedding story
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and kind of extended it beyond what we even initially planned to anytime there's
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stories worth telling that are important to write down I think that's so important.
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So speaking of, you know, you mentioned the audio and writing things down.
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Can you just tell us a little more about the audio or the story capturing process at No Story Lost?
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And how is it that you guys actually, you know, provide this as a service so
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that people can understand what that looks like?
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Yeah, so going from kind of this old process where we cobbled it together,
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we really broke down like what has to happen here and how can we systemize all
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those steps to make it make a lot of sense and have it turn out like our newer books,
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which are a lot more substantial and have color and photos and all that stuff.
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So they kind of look a little bit more like a proper coffee table book when they're done.
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So what we do is the first step is a welcome call where we'll just sit with
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the client and ask, what do you really want to see out of your book?
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What would make it amazing? what are you hoping is definitely in there?
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What are some questions we should ask the storyteller?
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Maybe what are some questions we shouldn't ask if there's anything,
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you know, difficult that we shouldn't bring up? And then we kick off interviews.
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So we'll assign a writer and that person will do all the interviews with the
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person and will also be the person to write the book so there's really good
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continuity and understanding of the context.
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Those phone calls are recorded, then we transcribe them, then the writer will
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write it out into a manuscript, and we gather photos from the family and their
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favorite color palette.
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So whatever kind of color they want to have in their book and put it all together
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into like a designed copy.
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Then the family gets to see it, go through it all, correct the names of people
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and places that we might've not known the spelling for, all those sorts of things,
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make sure it looks perfect.
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So those are the steps that, yeah, might seem simple to pull a book together.
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But in the end, you realize it's like a whole series of people and things that we bring together.
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So is this a process that you guys have been able to adapt for like people who
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you mentioned, like maybe they only want to tell a segment of part of their
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story. Maybe they don't want to tell their whole life story.
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Like, you know, they just want to focus on one area. Have you guys adapted,
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you know, in those kinds of circumstances?
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Yeah. So adaptations for like we've done memorial projects for people who are
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already gone. We did a project about a two-year-old during COVID who his grandma had never met.
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So it was just kind of the parents telling all about him so that grandma could
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learn more about him. So in terms of like different types of projects, for sure.
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And then other kind of adaptations we've made would be around the process where
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someone might be deaf or someone might be English second language or other ways
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that it would be difficult to do the interviewing.
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So in that case, oftentimes having someone else join, like a child or a friend,
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join the interviews to kind of help move things along has helped.
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Yeah, we try to be try to be adaptable and inclusive where we can just however
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we need to kind of get those stories told.
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Well, and as I think about this and just kind of applications,
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I'm just thinking, OK, like maybe maybe this is just me, but I'm sure there's
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there's a few other people in our cancer community, at least of ocular melanoma
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patients who would just have like this would be such a unique way to tell your diagnosis story.
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And we have, you know, the, we have the occasional person who they've defied all the odds, right?
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They're 19 years out from diagnosis, despite, despite the fact that maybe all
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of the statistics we have today say that shouldn't really be happening.
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And so like they've survived, you know, kind of against all odds and to be able to, you know.
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Capture or have them have the opportunity to capture their story and
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to share you know all of the all of the different things because
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I think that a lot of maybe a lot of the cancer patients really
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just in really any community of of people who deal
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with cancer you develop a level of resilience
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and you develop a level of just kind of
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the getting through it that you start to really hone
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I think as a person like you kind of develop the confidence to cope with your
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own diagnosis and everybody is unique and that's going to look different for
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everyone but there's a there's a phrase that I love that has always kind of
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come up when I see someone get diagnosed with cancer that kind of lands in this
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place of this idea that maybe whatever I'm going through could be someone else's survival guide.
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And I could totally see how like having the chance to, to write down their story.
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Like I know that I have a book that I've started, but I've never actually finished.
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And so like just to have the support to do that, because I mean,
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just to, I'm sure you've seen this in your, in Jeremy's family,
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but like just to deal with a cancer diagnosis in and of itself is a lot.
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And so to think about the idea of, of feeling that desire to,
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you know, have the project of writing a book,
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like even if it's just a, you know, just to publish a book or to capture and
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journal the process of how things are going and all of that,
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to have a way that this could all come together and be something meaningful,
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whether or not, you know, you leave it behind or not, like whether or not it's,
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it's used in that way or not is, is really irrelevant.
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I think that this, this really has some immense value.
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And I really hope that those of us, those of the cancer community for
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ocular melanoma who are listening who are interested will be willing
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to take advantage of just learning more about how this could work and maybe just
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writing out you know diagnosis to now and just
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doing that kind of their story if they choose so if someone is interested in
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in learning more about no story lost where would be some of the best places
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for them to go andrew yeah no story lost.com is our website and then we have
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all the social channels under the same name as well it's just always no story
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lost that was one of the things we really tried for when we were naming the business was I was like,
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can we in 2021 still get all these handles and everything? So yeah, nostoryloss.com.
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Yeah, I love what you said about kind of the process and that being valuable
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in and of itself, right? The journey of actually writing it down. Can that be helpful?
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I think we've found that even helpful with people in kind of the dementia community
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in kind of exercising the memory muscles and asking interesting questions that
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actually use like different senses to help people draw out memories that they otherwise couldn't.
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So, yeah, that being a guidebook, kind of like you said, to the community or
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a gift to the community could also be a really nice purpose for someone who is in your community.
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I've read, I've read three different books about cancer patients and their kind
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of journey and all those were helpful for me, even though I'm a bit removed.
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It was my uncle who had that diagnosis.
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It's, it's so helpful to gain perspective on something that otherwise was kind
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of foreign to me. I found those really valuable kind of as a supporter too.
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I think that's so important. And sometimes it can be hard to put voice to all of the, all of that.
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Like as a, as a patient, you're navigating your diagnosis, you're navigating
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the medical side of things,
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all of the appointments and then to also then have the weight
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of trying to explain how you're feeling or trying to explain
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what you've been going through for years to anyone and
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everyone who is interested and to then you know have a resource that
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you could use to share that with people or to share some of the things you've
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gone through to maybe like update people like okay this is where i'm at this
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is what i've dealt with yeah like that that could totally be helpful but no
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i love i love what you said about just i mean there were so many things that
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you said but i just i I really like what you said about that opportunity to
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use it to support someone,
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like for you as a support person to learn more about their journey and to then
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better support them. I think that definitely could be an application.
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You mentioned that you guys have done some kind of adaptations.
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You mentioned like memorials, things like that. So could someone else share stories,
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you know, like if you have a caregiver or maybe the son or daughter of a patient,
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whether or not they've passed or not, but like people who want to kind of contribute
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their perspective of this person, this person's life. Have you done stories
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where you've gathered that?
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Yeah, so we've done that, both with the subject of the book still with us and
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also just as memorial ones.
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So whether that's like, we have one where there's, I think, 15 friends and family
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all contributing to a memorial book, or we just have ones where you've got a
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family member who's told a couple hours of stories and then they also get some
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siblings or friends to contribute as well.
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So yeah, the collaborative ones are really fun too and nice for us to do something
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a little bit different and bring together a rich story with lots of different perspectives.
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Totally an option and by the way if your story if
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your writing is stuck and you want our help with getting your
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book finished let us know if we can help you with that well i yeah
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i definitely need to i need to put it on my radar i'm like okay let's consider
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like on a personal level because i have so many instagram posts and so many
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things that i have put out there like that my my grandmother told me years ago
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she's like you could really just write a book like just copy and paste all of
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your instagram posts and put them in there but the time it takes to do that
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is its own thing Totally.
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So anyway, well, I'm going to go ahead and screen share the discount code that
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we have for the Acure Insight community.
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Let me just find the share button. So if anyone is interested in learning more
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about No Story Lost or potentially doing their own storybook project,
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you actually have an opportunity to not only publish a book,
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but get two extra copies printed with the discount code that is on the screen here.
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And this code is I believe underscore two free books.
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And it's a, I think it's estimated at about a $200 value, which is fantastic
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and so generous of you guys.
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So thank you so much for sharing that. But I'll make sure to include that in the show notes as well.
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But yeah, I guess if anyone has specific questions, is there an email that they
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could contact you guys at?
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Yeah, email us at hello at nostoryloss.com. And then yeah, happy to answer any questions.
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On our website, we have like a chat function as well. You can chat directly
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with us, not with a robot.
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So happy to answer any questions people have if they're curious.
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Wonderful. And just as far as some of the questions that your interviewers answered,
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do you guys have samples of those online?
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Like just kind of a running list of these are possible avenues we could take for an interview?
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Yeah, I don't think we have them posted publicly, but we have a list that we
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share with people who are curious. So when you have a guest call. Yeah. Excellent.
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Awesome. Well, Andrew, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
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Thank you for joining us and for taking the time to just help explain this
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and putting this out there to our community specifically and just
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seeing the value of really capturing people's stories in
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in a tangible way i think that that's something that
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an art form you know that historically humankind has
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had for so long and it's it's really neat to see it
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come full circle with the advances of technology and you
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know the the passion and the dedication of a team like no story lost to bring
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people's stories and keep them somewhere treasured and tangible so thank you
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so much thanks for the kind words and thanks for having me yeah of course just
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by way of announcements for anyone who's kind of as we're wrapping up if you
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guys are listening please make sure to check out lookingforacure.org.
18:05
You can check out the races and events that we have coming up.
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We do have our Tampa race coming up on March 24th, I believe.
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So that's our next one. And then we've got a few coming in the early summer.
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If you're interested in donating to the podcast, please do so.
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You can head to acureinsight.org.org slash donate.
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And if you're interested in interviewing like Andrew here on the podcast,
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whether you're an ocular melanoma patient, or you have just a different story
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to tell or a different resource or something that would be helpful to our cancer
18:30
or community of ocular melanoma patients, then don't hesitate to reach out at
18:34
contact at AcureInsight.org.
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We will see you guys next time. And Andrew, thanks again for being here. Thank you.