Andrew Hall is the co-founder of NO STORY LOST, a business born out of a desire to preserve family legacies. He understands that these narratives are not just tales but the essence of our loved ones' lives. Andrew captures these stories because they are important to preserve before they are lost in time.
In this episode, Andrew candidly shares the triumphs and challenges of recording these histories, which future generations will undoubtedly cherish. He offers profound insights that reveal the spirit of those who have come before us. He underscores the bittersweet nature of this work.
Moving on to entrepreneurship, Andrew shares his journey from corporate life to founding a business based on personal values. His insights into the entrepreneurial spirit are as inspiring as the stories he helps preserve. He encourages listeners to contemplate the legacies they wish to craft in their personal lives and careers. Andrew's story is about capturing the past and shaping the future through the stories we leave behind.
Let's enjoy his story!
To connect with Andrew: NO STORY LOST
Thank you for listening - Hasta Pronto!
Andrew Hall is the co-founder of NO STORY LOST, a business born out of a desire to preserve family legacies. He understands that these narratives are not just tales but the essence of our loved ones' lives. Andrew captures these stories because they are important to preserve before they are lost in time.
In this episode, Andrew candidly shares the triumphs and challenges of recording these histories, which future generations will undoubtedly cherish. He offers profound insights that reveal the spirit of those who have come before us. He underscores the bittersweet nature of this work.
Moving on to entrepreneurship, Andrew shares his journey from corporate life to founding a business based on personal values. His insights into the entrepreneurial spirit are as inspiring as the stories he helps preserve. He encourages listeners to contemplate the legacies they wish to craft in their personal lives and careers. Andrew's story is about capturing the past and shaping the future through the stories we leave behind.
Let's enjoy his story!
To connect with Andrew: NO STORY LOST
Thank you for listening - Hasta Pronto!
Hi, I'm Daniela. Welcome to my podcast. Because Everyone has a Story, the place to give ordinary people's stories the chance to be shared and preserved. Our stories become the language of connections. Let's enjoy it, connect and relate, because everyone has a story. Because everyone has a story. Welcome. My guest is Andrew Hall. This was a bit of a different episode. As I was editing, I noticed I was chatting more than usual. Andrew's topic really got me going. It was so fun diving into conversation with him. Andrew is the co-founder of no Story Lost. He shares the triumphs and challenges of preserving family legacy, highlighting the bittersweet nature of his work. He also discusses his journey from corporate life to entrepreneurship, emphasizing the importance of personal value and the legacy we leave behind. So you can see how these topics got me going. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did conversing with Andrew. Welcome, Andrew, to the show.
Andrew Hall :Hey, good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Daniela SM :I am excited that you have such an interesting story to bring and a super business to talk about as well.
Andrew Hall :Yeah, yeah, I'm excited we should have lots to talk about between my stories and other people's stories.
Daniela SM :That's true. And so, Andrew, why do you want to share your story?
Andrew Hall :Yeah, I'm trying to share more about our story, mainly because I totally agree with you, because everyone has a story. It's perfect. We write people's life story into a beautiful coffee table book. It's always so surprising because many people think, ah, who wants to hear my story? There hasn't been anything that crazy that's happened, but that's just never true. Even the people who think they don't have much to talk about have tons to tell us, and we produce big, beautiful books out of their lives. I've got some funny little anecdotes about people who thought they didn't have much to tell us, and we produce big, beautiful books out of their lives. I've got some funny little anecdotes about people who thought they didn't have much to tell. So it's because I agree with you, because every life has little stories and big stories worth telling, and I want to help other people understand that too, same as you.
Daniela SM :That sounds amazing and of course your business is called.
Andrew Hall :No Story Lost.
Daniela SM :No Story Lost. Excellent, it's very relatable with my podcast. You just put it on paper and I just put it in the air. Yes, yes, when does the story start?
Andrew Hall :Yeah, so for me my story starts in Calgary. So I grew up there. My mom's whole side of the family was over there, so we had these family dinners with 15 people all my aunts and uncles, all my cousins and my grandparents. We would always hear my grandpa's funny stories and songs. He would sing and he was always entertaining the family and people kept saying we have to write pop stories down. Someone's got to take the time to write these all down and nobody ever did anything. So that's kind of how this whole story starts.
Andrew Hall :My cousin, who's also my business partner he and I heard that comment around our family for years. You know, someone's going to write these down, someone's got to do this. This was like my whole childhood. And then I moved away for university and I came back to Calgary and I was still hearing this. We got to write this down and no one had done anything.
Andrew Hall :So finally I decided I got to do something about this. I'm going to sit down and type while he tells his stories. So I sat with my grandpa and just typed and typed and typed while he talked. And then another time I sat down actually with my cousin and we learned that it's actually easier to record the story and transcribe it later. So that time we sat down and asked him questions and recorded him, and that way we also got to have recordings of him talking, which was great. And so we turned that into the first no story lost book, and it's pretty thin. There's not that many stories in it. It's black and white because we were really just learning how to do this. There's like a little bit of color in it.
Andrew Hall :That's kind of how we realized, wow, this is so cool to have an actual book about someone in your family, someone who you really care about. Oh my gosh, it was a lot of work. That's when we kind of clicked like, okay, probably other people want this.
Andrew Hall :Probably other families are saying we should do this, but they never do anything about it. It would probably be very helpful for them if someone had done it before and knew what they were doing. So that's when we decided to build it into something that we could provide for other people. That's kind of how no Torry Lost was born.
Daniela SM :That is such a wonderful story, similar to me but I thought about it too late. I wanted to hear the stories but somehow my aunts also had the story, so I thought, okay, well, that's, it's just still going to be there. I left home. I didn't really have the maturity, I guess, to when I go back, try to record anything. My grandfather passed, which he had a lot of interesting stories, and I always regret because now my aunts and my mom, they have their story, the way they interpret it, every one of them has a different perception of it, because you feel like I don't know who has the truth. Yeah, with my grandmother, she was 94 when she came to visit here in Vancouver. I recorded her. I am planning to do something with that and so that was good. But that's how I wanted the podcast, because I thought let's preserve the stories of people. So what are the challenges that you are seeing to make this happen for more people?
Andrew Hall :Yeah, I mean as a business, it's just about getting the word out and for us to try to bring it to more people. Not every family can afford to do it either, and so sometimes families will come to us and not be able to afford it and we'll just kind of point them in the right direction and say, hey look, this is all you're going to do. You're going to record which everyone can just record on their phone, and then they'll have voice recordings, and then there's transcription tools or you can do the transcription yourself, and then there's lots of processing to do, where you have to work through the manuscript and order and all. But we can kind of help people like take care of it themselves if they want to DIY, and then if families don't have time to do that or can't do that, then that's when we can kind of take over.
Andrew Hall :Some companies or some biographers will ghostwrite, which means they'll absorb everything and then write the story kind of differently, whereas what we do is we try to keep all the wording the same. So sometimes we have to correct little things or fix sentences, but we're trying to leave it in the same words as the person spoke. So hopefully, when you read the words, their voice comes back into your head, which is nice too.
Daniela SM :Yes, we have so much social media and people are forgetting the past and you don't know where you're going if you don't know where you came from.
Andrew Hall :Yeah.
Daniela SM :You were lucky to have such a big family. Is it still as big?
Andrew Hall :Yeah, I mean so. Grandpa passed away in 2020. We called him Pop, and his wife is still alive. She's 92. And I'm going to see her this week back in Calgary again. And then all the aunts and uncles, and there's more cousins now. So, yeah, still a big family. It's so easy as a kid to just kind of hear the stories and not think too much about them. You're thinking all about your life and what you're going through. Then all of a sudden you won't have a chance.
Andrew Hall :So, again, it's so easy now to just record everything that I would encourage everybody to just ask, maybe like that one level deeper of questions, and maybe you throw on your recording. Sometimes we didn't even tell Nan and Pop that we were recording. They started telling a good story. We'd just press record kind of secretly. If you ask a quick story about their childhood at least my grandparents they would start going off on a long tangent and keep telling more and more because they love it too. So it's actually beyond you hearing the stories. It's also like one of the nicest things you can do for them to make them feel important and that their stories are interesting.
Daniela SM :Yes, well, I think that we all like that. I mean, we'll tell you stories too, if you wouldn't have had this family telling you. Somebody has to record this. Do you think that you have done it?
Andrew Hall :I don't think so because we didn't do it on the other side of my family, with my dad's parents.
Daniela SM :Okay.
Andrew Hall :Once we got going with the business, I did a little bit, and it was kind of too late for my grandma. If that wasn't kind of common thing to talk about in our family, I don't think we would have done it. So there's probably lots of families out there who kind of never think to do it. For that reason, To your point, there's so many lessons. You know we ask all of our clients as well, like what do you think the meaning of life is? What would you like to share with the next generation? And lots of pretty important questions like that. And, like you said, if we're not learning from our past, then we're likely to repeat some mistakes, not just with textbooks but also with day-to-day life. It's so important to pass on stories and lessons.
Daniela SM :What did you learn from doing your pop's book and listening to his stories?
Andrew Hall :He was not as big on the like lessons and advice. He was all kind of about education and hard work. So his advice would have been around make sure you go to school, make sure you take, get your degree in university and then work really hard. Those were kind of his lessons. So for me it was more about just learning funny little stories. So little anecdotes about him and his dog growing up. Or you know, he was driving his car in the mountains in BC and the gas tank fell out. So him and his buddy had to hike back up the road and find the gas tank, walk it back to town and everything. All these stories of just how much life has changed over the past 80 years or so.
Daniela SM :I think that you're mentioning something interesting there that is not all about getting insightful information, advice that people do in social media, quotes that you're going to for the rest of your life, these funny stories. I think they should stay with you more, because that's his personality. What do you think what came about for you as your grandfather was? What do you think what came about for you as your grandfather was? As personality-wise, how was he when he was younger?
Andrew Hall :You can see a parallel from how he was. He would be the type to kind of bug you a little bit, put his elbow in your ribs a little bit, to kind of joke with you. But you can see that as a kid he was like, totally adventurous and still like you can see where his sense of humor came from and his sense of adventure. And of course, when you're 75 or 80 years old that's maybe reduced a little bit. But yeah, as a kid he was a bit of a troublemaker and some of his, some of my favorite stories about him are him running around in the forest and shooting slingshots and getting into trouble with the other kids and all that stuff. That's such a big part of a person's personality that I think gets put away a little bit when you're an adult, right? So it's so good to hear.
Daniela SM :Yes, I find that that's true, because you get older, maybe you have obligations, responsibility, raising a family, and so then you have grandchildren and you are a little more relaxed because they're not your kids.
Daniela SM :It tends to be. You know you're a better grandfather than maybe you were as a father, but then your grandchildren only know this old man that doesn't know technology or doesn't have the flexibility to climb a tree. I don't want my grandkids to just think that I was just this old woman that I'm not capable to do things. You know there's 50 years, 60 years, 70 years of life that I was just this old woman, that I'm not capable to do things. You know, because there's 50 years, 60 years, 70 years of life that I was different, and I think that's the essence really of what you do Not so much about. Oh, what kind of advice I can get, because everybody has their own life and situations. It is how was the personality?
Andrew Hall :To your point like maybe the lesson that you take from a book or from speaking with your parent is more valuable if it's the lesson that you pull from it than if it's just something you're told right. So you're talking about how you want to be remembered for being youthful and stuff, and maybe that's one thing you're taking away from hearing all these stories, versus just if you're just being told oh, do this, do that work hard. It won't have as much meaning to you as the lesson that you really draw yourself from hearing somebody's story.
Daniela SM :Yes, exactly A pet peeve of mine. When people tell you in a call to action or I advise you, when you're sharing a story, everybody takes whatever they need to take from that as a inspiration or as an insightful message not to be forced to implement that, otherwise it's not inspiring. Agreed, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So you did the book for your family. What did your family say? Like were they?
Andrew Hall :like amazed, finally somebody made it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really that. It was really like finally right, because everyone had been talking about it and we didn't really tell everybody what we were doing. So it was really fun to surprise them with the books we got. My mom and my cousin's mom so two of the siblings kind of helps pay for all the books as gifts for the rest of the family. We brought them and kind of delivered everybody a copy and then I think we ended up passing away only a year or two after we finished. So it ended up being really good timing and we're like so happy we did it when we had the chance.
Daniela SM :And what did he say about it? What did your grandfather say?
Andrew Hall :He loved flipping through it. Obviously he was really big on keeping so many things. He had all these files and records. He was a big collector. He has books from England from the 16th and 1700s like 300 year old books put away and stuff. So probably really cool for him to see you know that he would. His life would be remembered kind of similarly too.
Daniela SM :That's true. Wow, that's incredible. What a good deed that you did.
Andrew Hall :Yeah, it worked out. Yeah, it worked out really well.
Daniela SM :And so what happened to your grandmother? She's not telling a story.
Andrew Hall :She's the one who's saying I don't have anything to say. You know what happened. We recorded all of her stories and then she didn't want to edit on the computer, so we printed her out a bunch of paper to edit it and she dropped the papers on the ground and got them all scattered, and so she's currently in the process of, like trying to take her edits which she wanted to do by hand but sort out what order all the papers were in. I always say this too this is the most. The most important thing is, we've done the interviews, we have the audio, so we have the stories. So now, even if we don't get to it in time like of course, it would be amazing for her to see her printed book, that would be really nice.
Andrew Hall :But we've had a few families that we've worked with where they call us when the person's already in hospice, they're very close to the end of their life, and we have to do some pretty difficult phone calls, maybe when they're in the hospital, and so those are really tough and sometimes we don't have the book printed by the time they're gone. But we got the audio right. That's the most important thing and that's kind of where we're at with my grandma's project right now. She and that's kind of where we're at with my grandma's project right now she's also a storyteller. She's just kind of a little bit more reserved than Pop was.
Daniela SM :Yeah, that's awesome and you're right. So many people think me included say I don't really think I have anything to say, I don't think I have a story right. But it is true that when I hear other people's stories, I'm always so impressed, and not that they have done better things than me, it's just that it's different and we are all really unique and everybody is a different world, so people see things differently, yeah, and also like we're not trying to turn people's books into a biography to sell chapters.
Andrew Hall :We're trying to make a book for your family to read. So even if your life's been a little bit quieter than someone who has a biography on a shelf, your children, your nieces and nephews, your siblings, that's who's going to really care about reading your book, and everybody's is worth that.
Daniela SM :Yes.
Andrew Hall :Everyone would have their family be interested to hear more details about their life Because of course you know your siblings know where you went to school and what you did for a job. But we try to go like a layer deeper than that and try to like really hear some funny stories, some interesting stories and how people felt in different situations. And that one of the best parts is when people open the book and they hear stories they haven't heard before about someone they really love. So we try to get to that level too.
Daniela SM :Yes, that's the thing with the podcast, right Like it's out there and so people are like, oh no, I don't want everybody to hear my story, so that yours is more private. Yeah, I mean it's different. Yes, what make you like doing this business, apart from your stories from your grandfather and your grandmother? Are you a writer? What about you?
Andrew Hall :Well, yeah, like before I came on the call today, I was thinking what is the arc of my story Like beyond just the business? And you know, I'd like to think I'm in the middle or an early part of my story. So my life arc, my, my whole story. One of my favorite books I've read is called a thousand miles in a million years or something. It's by Donald Miller, no-transcript of.
Andrew Hall :Followed the normal path, played some sports, did school, did pretty well in school, didn't really know what I wanted to do, didn't know what I wanted to do in life. I moved out to the West Coast kind of on a whim for university so I went to live with my other grandparents who lived in Victoria and did university at UVic, started taking a bunch of classes, just not knowing what I wanted to do, and I found I really liked my business courses. So I ended up transferring into the business program and doing a couple of years of that to graduate with a business degree and I started really getting involved with student stuff and I ended up leading this team of business students to a business competition and just started finding like putting myself in situations where I could get lucky or cool things could happen kind of started happening around that age, so age 20 or 21,. I started reading personal development books coming out of university and so that really helped me start to think. Like my whole life so far I just been kind of like, okay, you go to school, okay you take these classes, okay you go to university and starting to try to finally live on purpose, try to do things you know, really think about what I wanted out of life and then go try to get it. So that's when I started doing goal setting and trying to figure out what I wanted out of life and then go try to get it. So that's when I started doing goal setting and trying to figure out what I wanted out of life.
Andrew Hall :And so my job out of university was consulting, which is a very common business degree job.
Andrew Hall :I did that for about a year, but right around that time was when I was starting to think like, no, I want to start to live more on purpose. And so my co-founder my cousin that I mentioned he and I quit our big company jobs and started a non-profit. So we ran a non-profit for like nine years together. We started a business when we were 23 and grew it to be a 20 person company, provided 5 million meals to youth in need, had a bunch of great adventures along the way, won a bunch of awards and built a great team of employees. So that really started my entrepreneurial journey and in that time I kind of also committed to like I want to run businesses and I want to hopefully make the world better. First our first business was for providing meals to kids, and now this business is about having families capture their stories and hopefully that's really meaningful for people too. My arc kind of takes me from not really knowing what I wanted to do to living really intentionally and trying to run businesses that make the world better.
Daniela SM :I do a bit of coaching now as well, you're a very smart person, because how many people don't know what they want to do and so you, only at 21, discover the health self books and start to actually take advantage of the possibilities. That's amazing, yeah, yeah.
Andrew Hall :It was so helpful. Yeah, it's really eyeopening to when you start to discover that and start to discover like, like Steve jobs had a really great quote. He said like once you learn that you can poke the world and like something will come out the other side, something will happen. Your life will never be the same. Like we don't just have to exist in the world and let it happen to us. We can actually go out and create things and make things of our own and put them into the world and see what the world, how the world reacts to them. Like that's so amazing when you when you learn that.
Andrew Hall :So, yeah, definitely, like until that time didn't feel that way and it's been really amazing having an opportunity to do that a couple of times, getting to create something, put up a website for, for no story loss, and just see, oh, people value this, people will just buy a project with us without ever talking to us. They just trust, trust the website and trust what we're up to. It's really cool putting things out in the world and making them exist.
Daniela SM :And what is the charity that you founded?
Andrew Hall :Yeah, that was called meal share. And what is the charity that you founded? Yeah, that was called Mealshare, and so we would partner with restaurants and we put our little Mealshare logo next to some of the menu items. And if you bought a Mealshare item, you'd provide one meal to a child in need. So the restaurant would pay us and then we'd purchase meals through charities for kids all over the world.
Daniela SM :And it's still going on.
Andrew Hall :No. In 2020, with COVID, all the restaurants closed for six months, went into debt, struggled so much. We went from about 500 clients to 80 clients in the course of a month and our revenue dropped by even more than that, so we had to shut it down. It stayed alive through COVID for a little bit and then it just kind of fizzled out. After that. We weren't able to recover it, unfortunately.
Daniela SM :Oh wow, that's sad to hear. So how do you came up with this idea?
Andrew Hall :My co-founder and I were really inspired by Tom's shoes. He came before us and if you buy a pair of shoes, they'd give a pair of shoes to somebody you know. We realized, for better or for worse, we live in a world where companies are so powerful and control so much, so a lot of change can happen through companies, either for good or for bad. There's also like most companies have a lot of margin built into their products and a small piece of that margin can cause a big impact, a big positive impact for any kind of a social cause. So we realized hey, they're probably selling their shoes for $80. They're probably making their shoes for like three to $5 a pair. So it makes sense why they're able to give a pair away from every pair that they sell.
Andrew Hall :How else could that concept be used? Could that be used for food or for something else? And so we wondered. We had a couple different ideas, but we wondered you know how could we? Every time someone buys a bottle of water, we could give away water. Oh, does that work as like one for one? No, but maybe with meals we can do it. So we kind of wondered how we could take a concept like that to food and that's how we we dreamed up meal share and then the concept really came to life, kind of exactly how we thought it would. Sometimes you hear about how businesses pivot and change a lot as they discover the model. So you know we changed our pricing and stuff, but it basically stayed the same as we dreamt it up back in 2013.
Daniela SM :And how was that transition for you from being from corporate to working in nonprofit and be your own entrepreneur?
Andrew Hall :Yeah, it was totally, totally different. Yeah, yeah, I mean I went from like having kind of the dream business job so getting out of school into a really, really solid position lots of career growth, lots of amazing people to work with and learn from. You know, getting up, putting my suit on in the morning, getting on the bus, heading downtown to the office, and pretty demanding. Like some of my, a lot of my colleagues worked really long hours, which I didn't actually have to too often. The clients I were on were a little bit quieter. Some of my colleagues were flying from Vancouver to Winnipeg every week for an entire year, like you kind of have to just go to whatever clients you get assigned to. So it was really regimented, really demanding, really high expectations, lots of growth, lots of learning.
Andrew Hall :And I'm really glad for the year or two of learning that I had in the company. And then after leaving, it was like cool, I work from home with my best buddies, like in my sweatpants if I want. Maybe we're going out to restaurants or going out to speak or going out to set up a booth to tell people what we're up to. So a really big change, like completely other end of the spectrum, in terms of what my days looked like. Honestly, I really loved the freedom of it. I loved working with my friends, loved building something of our own. It changed so much during the time we were there. We went from working with two of us to three of us, to four of us for a while and then by the end it was like a team of 18 people, but still that's way smaller than the company I worked for before, but it was great.
Daniela SM :What about the lack of security or the consistency?
Andrew Hall :Obviously you trade off the security and you kind of sometimes you're wondering where your paycheck is going to come from. But for me this is not for everybody, but for me the freedom that came with that was worth that trade-off. So I decided like I'd rather make less money and, you know, have some of that at risk sometimes for the absolute freedom of like. I run the company how I want to, I work when I want to, I work where I want to, I work with whoever I want to.
Andrew Hall :I was never like rebellious growing up. I didn't get in a lot of trouble, but especially like once I became an adult I found it so valuable to me to not be told what to do by other people or where to be or when to be, so that is priceless to me. At the end of the day I felt like it was completely worth me putting the risk out there to be able to run a business exactly how I want to. The famous quote for entrepreneurship is like entrepreneurship is working 60 hours a week for yourself, so you don't have to work 40 hours a week for somebody else.
Daniela SM :That's an interesting one. No, but then your parents were also very supportive to you in growing up, so that you actually discover quickly your wishes and values, you think.
Andrew Hall :Yeah, I would say they were really good in terms of being like demanding high standards, like holding me to high standards, but without it being too intense and very open to me doing kind of whatever I wanted within reason, so open to me following all my interests and being supportive with all that. They were very supportive during university as well. They were my biggest fans. My mom was one of our biggest supporters, always going out to all of our events and stuff and helping support the company.
Daniela SM :Do you think that this is what's happening now? People are really realizing. Nobody likes to be told what to do.
Andrew Hall :Maybe. I think for a lot of people, if you work a good job during the day, you come home at five o'clock, work's off, you're not at the office anymore Hopefully you're not stressing about it and you're guaranteed your paycheck and, in some cases, your pension or your benefits, that's a pretty nice life too. You know, one of my best buddies is a firefighter. So he works 24 hours, takes two days off 24 hours, takes four days off. When he's off he doesn't think about work. He he has no laptop, he doesn't have an email address like when he's off. He's off. It's a great life too, completely different from mine, whereas if I get an email about work Sunday at 6 PM, I don't mind, but some people would hate that. So I don't think it's necessarily that everyone's in the same boat as me.
Andrew Hall :I found a good fit for what I want.
Daniela SM :Well, I'm glad that you're ahead of me. I mean, I'm older than you, but I just I realized too for me, since I was 16, I remember I had three words that I always value, but I forgot until you know, maybe 10 years ago which was happiness, freedom and efficacy.
Andrew Hall :That's so amazing that you've had the same, those same three important words since you were 16 now, so you obviously figured out something about yourself at a really young age.
Daniela SM :Yes, it's just, I forgot about it.
Andrew Hall :Yeah, Let me read you a quote that my friend just sent me last week. He said the purpose of life is to find your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give it away.
Daniela SM :Yes, that's beautiful. In how many help self book have you?
Andrew Hall :read? Good question. I keep a reading list of all the books I've ever read and like one short lesson I've learned from it. Probably like if you count biographies too, which I think you're studying the lives of other people I don't read very much fiction, so it's probably over a hundred books. I was realizing a couple of years ago that I had read all these books and taken lessons and then I was starting to forget them all. So had read all these books and taken lessons and then I was starting to forget them all. So I took all my book notes from the hundred books and from all my lessons from my first 10 years running businesses and I wrote my own book. Oh, I don't have like published, but I have it printed.
Andrew Hall :So I printed copies for my friends, 10 of these copies kicking around to give to my coaching clients. I think I gave out like 40 or 50 copies of it. So that's just like all my lessons I've learned over the years.
Daniela SM :Wow, that is a pretty thick book.
Andrew Hall :Yeah, it's a couple hundred pages. There's lots of good stuff in there.
Daniela SM :You're very young. So imagine when you get to be 50 or 60, your book is gonna get thicker.
Andrew Hall :I'll do a volume two, a separate book, I think.
Daniela SM :Yes, yes, that's awesome, that's awesome. I guess you surround yourself with people like-minded.
Andrew Hall :Yeah, my business school friends. I still keep in touch with so many of them and I feel like I found a really good group there and I have the same values and find the same things important in life as me. Then I'm also in a business group. That's six people who meet every month. We talk about how we're feeling that month and we kind of go through the different areas of life and where we're struggling and where we're doing well, and then each month somebody coaches somebody else in the group on something that they're going through. So that's really helpful as well.
Daniela SM :Pretty good, yes, awesome, yeah. Well, you're a very talented and wonderful guy and authentic, of course. Thank you so much For the future. What are you thinking that? You're a very talented and wonderful guy and authentic, of course. Thank you so much For the future. What are you thinking that you're going to continue any other business? Are you going to work on this one only? What are the goals?
Andrew Hall :Yeah, so for this year, definitely growing this business to hopefully have more writers. And then the other thing is I took a coaching course last year to build a bit of a program for how I can do life coaching, life and business coaching. So I've kind of always naturally done coaching type stuff with friends and colleagues and so I wanted to pursue the idea of being a coach. But I felt unequipped to do that without taking some kind of course first. So I did a coaching certificate and coach my first few people. So I would love to always have one or two clients at a time that I'm coaching, either through their business or life. So I've been doing a little bit of that and I really, really like it. So I really like running a business. But I think my yeah, where I'm the most engaged and interested in work ever is when I'm helping somebody solve the problem or coaching really. So I don't think I want to do that full, full time, but I'd love to always have someone that I'm coaching as well.
Andrew Hall :That's the other goal right now, kind of career wise, so growing those two things.
Daniela SM :Yeah, so never stop studying learning.
Andrew Hall :Yeah, at times I look back and I'm like, oh, I haven't really learned anything the last year or two. I haven't intentionally like taken courses and stuff. So it was exciting to get back into being a student again and learning from a course.
Daniela SM :Right. Isn't that fascinating? I love that too, and it's always interesting when people don't want to do that as much it's like what?
Andrew Hall :Yeah, I think if you follow your natural curiosity, then there'll always be something you want to learn like. I don't necessarily want to go back to doing high school english class again. There's things you don't want to do. But if you're following what you're genuinely curious about, then I think most people have things they'd like.
Daniela SM :They'd enjoy continuing to learn yes, I think they should take English classes away and put communication so that we can all learn how to communicate with each other. Learn communication in school or something.
Andrew Hall :Yeah, that's great.
Daniela SM :Good, we can talk for hours, obviously. Thank you so much for your story and we'll put everything in the show notes for people to reach out and have the opportunity to see the book as well of your grandpa, which is beautiful actually.
Andrew Hall :Yeah, thanks. Yeah, we have these like much bigger ones now, like this is what a finished book looks like now.
Daniela SM :Oh, wow.
Andrew Hall :Yeah, it's always fun to see the first version in comparison.
Daniela SM :Yes, of course, and I can't wait to hear more ideas and innovations that you're bringing to your life.
Andrew Hall :Yeah, that was great. Thanks for chatting today.
Daniela SM :Thank you. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I am Daniela and you were listening to, because Everyone has a Story. Please take five seconds right now and think of somebody in your life that may enjoy what you just heard, or someone that has a story to be shared and preserved. When you think of that person, shoot them a text with the link of this podcast. This will allow the ordinary magic to go further. Join me next time for another story conversation. Thank you for listening. Hasta pronto.