This week we are joined by Alexandra Koys, CEO of Lighten Arrangements. Alexandra shares with us how she went from the insurance industry to now a successful entrepreneur. Through dealing with the loss of a loved one her business was born. She shares how she has transformed the traditional somber funeral service into an uplifting celebration of life. She explains there are many personalized ways to celebrate a loved one's life. Find out more from her website: www.lightenarrangements.com.
Alexandra's Website: https://lightenarrangements.com/
Transcription:
00:03
Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.
Ray Loewe00:18
Good morning, everybody. This is Ray Loewe. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world today because we have a wonderful guest. We're going to welcome her in a minute to Changing the Rules. Let me remind everybody that through our lives, we are saddled with rules. They come from everywhere they come from our parents, they come from the schools, they come from the church, they come from jobs. The next thing you know, we have rules and rules tell us, you're allowed to do this, or you're not allowed to do that. So you don't get any freedom out of rules. So the luckiest people in the world are those people who have figured out how to choose from this set of rules that we've been put together and choose which ones work for them, and which ones maybe they want to get around. Every week, we feature one of the luckiest people in the world. We have one today and Alexandra Koys is one of the luckiest people in the world because she has designed her own life, and she's taking control of it. She's living it under her terms. So welcome to Changing the Rules, Alexandra.
Alexandra Koys01:28
Thank you. It's great to be here.
Ray Loewe01:30
You're out there in the sunny city of Chicago. Right?
Alexandra Koys01:34
That's right.
Ray Loewe01:36
So you have an incredibly interesting background. But it was rather mundane, in the early years, you were doing what you were supposed to do, weren't you?
Alexandra Koys01:46
That's right. So it was quite different from the entrepreneurship path that I'm on now. So I started off studying foreign service at Georgetown University in Washington DC, you know, more traditional path that I'm on now. Right out of college, worked for Deloitte Consulting, doing primarily government work for a couple of years. And after that, I kind of followed the path to Blue Cross Blue Shield. At the time, the Affordable Care Act was being implemented and there was a lot of regulatory and operational work to be done in healthcare. I liked the field and liked the work I was doing, so I made the transition from Deloitte to Blue Cross Blue Shield. As you can see, I was kind of someone who took things one step at a time, followed where the path led me, and where the opportunities that were open to me, went. Someone who was very comfortable working in large organizations, having a stable steady job, a predictable role. Someone who is comfortable operating as one piece in a very large puzzle. A couple of years ago, as you mentioned, I took control and sort of dove into the world of starting my own business. So that has been quite a change, but an exciting one.
Ray Loewe03:16
You had salaries before, and now you don't have salaries, right. But that was a clue here. See, when you studied foreign service, we knew maybe you didn't know, but we knew you're going to be a spy. We knew you're going to take off on your own, it was just a question of time. So we had an event that occurred. The interesting thing about the luckiest people in the world is usually they start in a mundane kind of a thing. And it's not that they hate where they are. It's just that there may be a "I'm not excited where they are". And then something happens and that event creates an opportunity. So tell us about that.
Alexandra Koys03:58
Yeah, I would love to. For me, the spark for making the switch was an experience I had that prompted me to start my business. My business is in the funeral services industry. Were in the business of creating celebrations of life and transforming the traditional somber funeral home, or somber funeral service into an uplifting celebration of life. The spark for doing that was my uncle passed away. It was about five years ago. He was the type of guy who was always the life of the party. So the traditional somber funeral environment didn't feel like the right place to gather for him. My family and I gathered in his favorite restaurant and we had more of a celebration of life. But that was a lot of planning to take on, while we were grieving. It occurred to me after that experience, I realized that there really weren't services out there for families who were looking for a non-traditional environment or experience to celebrate their loved one. So I created that service.
Ray Loewe05:14
Most people don't think about this, they don't plan. I've had two interesting events that kind of play on this. I was at a memorial service not too long ago, and it was a pastor of a church. He was a friend. He died over the age of 100. I didn't know this, but he had planned his own memorial service. He had decided which hymns were going to be played, he decided who was going to be the singers in the group, he decided on everything. It made it a whole lot easier for his kids because everything was thought out in advance. The second thing is, I live in a place right now, it's a senior citizen community. A lot of people are here because they wanted to make their health care choices so their kids didn't have to make them. It's a similar kind of thing. All of a sudden, somebody gets sick, and everybody's got to run around and figure out what to do with us? I find what you're doing amazing. I never really thought it through. It just makes sense to do this. Tell us a little bit about how you help people plan. Then tell us about some of the events that you've created and how you do that.
Alexandra Koys06:36
I would love to. I love that example that you gave about your friend who planned his own funeral, memorial celebration. Talk about taking charge of your life. That's really defining your legacy when you pre-plan for yourself and define how you want to be remembered. So I love that. That's exactly what we work with families to do. We help them curate and design their own celebration of life experiences unique to their life, their identity, and their values. So I'd love to give a few examples of things that we plan to help paint the picture of the variety of services that we help bring to life.
Ray Loewe07:21
Before we go there, go back a little bit. When you are doing planning, are you doing planning with the relatives of a deceased person? Are you doing planning with the people that haven't died yet, and are thinking ahead?
Alexandra Koys07:34
It could be either one, some families approach us after a loved one has passed away, and others approach us wanting to pre-plan for themselves.
Ray Loewe07:43
Okay. All right.
Alexandra Koys07:46
To give a little bit of background about what our offerings are I mentioned a little bit earlier. We're in the business of transforming the funeral into an uplifting celebration of life, and we help families gather in non-funeral home environment. We offer an array of packages that help people gather in parks, theaters, museums, and live music venues, and we help them curate a unique celebration and a unique ceremony that celebrates who they are; which is often a unique fusion of their personal identity, cultural identity, and spiritual identity. Some of the ways that we've done that in the past, and one that comes to mind from a recent service. We planned a celebration of life in a local history museum and this was for a woman who loved art, culture, and history. We created a museum exhibit focused on her life. We brought dozens of items from her home into that exhibit. Furniture, she painted journals that she wrote in, clothes she wore, pillows she sewn, photos from her life. Each item had a sign next to it just like you would experience in a museum gallery explaining the significance of that item in her life. Another example is we've held a number of ceremonies in local movie theaters. We like to say that these are for larger-than-life personalities fit for the big screen. The guests are sitting in theater seats instead of sitting in funeral home chairs. The speakers are at the front of the theater giving their remarks while photos and videos are playing on the giant movie screen behind them. We've also done outdoors celebrations of life for people who loved the outdoors or want to be surrounded by the peace or the beauty of nature to honor their life. Those have sometimes involved; balloon releases or waterside ceremonies. We've done some really beautiful things that really helped surface the unique elements of the person who passed; their identity, and how they or their family want to remember them.
Ray Loewe10:08
You have a wide range of things here. Somebody can plan this thing relatively inexpensively, and have a party in their backyard in a sense. Or I hate to even think what it might cost to rent out part of a museum to display all of your work, but I'm sure that I don't have the budget for that one. But some people do. Okay. Yeah. I think it's interesting because it's the final thing you do. Otherwise, you're remembered as a date on a gravestone, right? So here's a chance to go wild. How did this idea develop? Go back to the death of your uncle a little bit. I understand that your mother needed help and taking control? So you got involved much more than you normally would have? How did you envision what you wanted to do? What was kind of the brainstorming that went through?
Alexandra Koys11:13
I was really thinking about what would my uncle have wanted? What is the atmosphere he would have wanted? Who are the people he would have wanted around him? What are the hobbies, passions, interests, beliefs that he had, that he would want to be remembered by; because, the alternative, what a lot of us are used to thinking of a funeral is, dressing in black, standing in a funeral home room, standing in a line and talking in hushed tones, and that didn't feel right. For his memories, we wanted something that he would have enjoyed if he were there, and he would have been glad to be remembered by those things.
Ray Loewe11:57
There's two parts to this, there's the planning piece, where you got to sit down and visualize who this person was, and what's appropriate for them. Then you gotta go out and get the venue, and get the space, and set it up. Right?
Alexandra Koys12:14
That's right. For our particular offerings, we have some preset and pre-ready to go, venues that we work with regularly. If they feel right for a particular family's gathering, or sometimes we develop custom experiences for families that want to create something from the ground up.
Ray Loewe12:36
So if I were going to plan my own memorial service, what are the things that you would coach me to think about?
Alexandra Koys12:46
First, whether we're working directly with an individual, or whether we're working with their family. We always start off with an open-ended question, tell me about yourself, or tell me about your loved one. What comes to mind for different families is a little bit different. For some people, it's the love for their career. For some people, it's the love of their family. For some people, it's aspects of their personality that they want to bring into play, or it might be a hobby. Different families have different experiences or different elements of their loved one's identity that they want to surface. So we always start off by getting to know the person whose celebration it is so that we can then take those and curate experiences or create events that celebrate those unique aspects of their personality.
Ray Loewe13:43
Then once you get this planning done, and you figure out what this concept is going to be, then you got to start to put together the pieces. If you pre-plan this, how does one do this? They sit down with somebody like you, get the plan set now, who knows when we're gonna die? Hopefully, it's a long way away. What do you do to pre-fund these events? Do you not worry about the actual event, you just kind of leave the instructions and then dump all this on your kids? Or what do you do?
Alexandra Koys14:18
That can actually be done either way, when it comes to pre-planning, there are some people who choose to just complete the planning portion now and leave the actual implementation of the plans, and the payments of the plan, for when they do actually pass. As you mentioned that could be one year, five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road, none of us really knows. Or there are some people who do choose to pre-fund the plan so that they have that money set aside already. As you mentioned it doesn't have to be something that is a stress to the family members when someone does pass away,
Ray Loewe15:04
So you have a website, and people can go to this website, and you have all these examples of things that you've done. So what is the website for everybody?
Alexandra Koys15:13
It is lightenarrangements.com. At our site, as you mentioned, there are examples of both our in-person celebrations of life. And we also have examples of our virtual gatherings. So another interesting thing that we do is we also help families gather virtually, this was something that started during the COVID era. But we're still seeing even as things open up, a lot of families choosing to gather online for that ceremony and for that celebration, because so many people, so many families are spread out across the country, or even around the world. So virtual tends to be a way that those types of families can come together in community for healing and for celebrating their loved one's life. We also hear that virtual can sometimes be a more manageable planning and gathering experience for people who are juggling multiple things. I had one woman, one client say to me, I am trying to work a full-time job, be a mom to my kids, bereave my dad, and I need help with this. The idea of doing this virtually is something that feels more manageable to me than in person. So that's another example that you'll see on our site of services that we can offer.
Ray Loewe16:44
Now you've built this business already, you have eight people that work for you now. So you're doing this for lots of people. That's where we are now. I think it's a great thing for people to think about. What about the future? Where are you? Where are you going with all this? What's the dream, what's the plan, what's going to happen?
Alexandra Koys17:05
The dream is to create the next generation of the funeral industry and to make Lighten the gold standard for what it means to plan and hold a celebration of life for a loved one. There are two ways that we're doing that. One is awareness. Two is modernizing the planning experience on the awareness side; it's about educating families and raising awareness that the funeral home isn't the only option. If that doesn't feel right for you, and you're looking for something more uplifting, there are options for you. On the second side of things, we're modernizing the planning experience. We do that with a blend of personalized care and innovative technology. So we currently have an online planning portal that allows families to make arrangements from the comfort of their own homes at any time that's convenient for them. We also offer video conference consultations and planning sessions. So that families don't have to come to an in-person environment as the traditional industry is run, they can plan at the place, in the time that's convenient for them and still have the guidance that a professional planner can offer.
Ray Loewe18:18
Well, it's a very interesting way of looking at a phase of our life that we're all going to enter at some point in time. You're a perfect example of one of the luckiest people in the world. I think you've showed the enthusiasm of doing something you love to do, something you're excited about doing. Thanks for being with us. Unfortunately, we're at the end of our time here. We're going to have to have Luke sign us off. But thanks again for being with us. And again, the name of your website is
Alexandra Koys18:51
lightenarrangements.com
Ray Loewe18:53
People can get in touch with you through there, right?
Alexandra Koys18:55
That's correct. Our phone number for those who are phone friendly is 312-373-0847.
Ray Loewe19:01
Okay, thank you so much for being with us.
Alexandra Koys19:04
It was great to be here. Thank you.
19:09
Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.