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Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Making Big Ideas Happen: How Katrina Spade Transformed the Funeral Industry Forever
00:44:51
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- [00:01]
A
Death and what we do with our bodies after we die is a fascinating design challenge. The problem is overcrowded city cemeteries, lack of land for burial, pollution that comes with burial and cremation. And here's the solution. We compost humans. We turn them into soil. The perfect is the enemy of the good. If you're striving for perfect, you're never putting out what's good. You'll go out and find the investors who want to invest in the way you're running a business. We have not taken any money from venture capital, but we've raised over $20 million through people with wealth who want this to exist.
- [00:52]
B
I have a fascinating story for you right now. It's Katrina Space. She's the founder and CEO of Recompose, which is designing a new death experience. How fascinating is that? Basically by human composing. Katrina. Look, I have to start with a very direct question. Why or how does someone decide to deal every single day with death?
- [01:20]
A
Well, first of all, death, it's coming for all of us. And it's really hard to remember that sometimes. So working in the funeral industry gives you that clarity day in and day out and for better, for worse, it keeps you pretty appreciative of being alive.
- [01:39]
B
That I would say you're probably right. But I think most of us, our instinct is, like you said, to push it aside. I don't want to think about it. When it will come, it will come. But otherwise, I just want to live, and I want to live my life, and I don't want to think about it. Is it scary to live through this? Is it depressing? Like, tell me more.
- [02:00]
A
Well, first of all, as a designer, death and what we do with our bodies after we die, it's a fascinating design challenge if you just think about it like that. And put on top of that the fact that the funeral industry hasn't changed in about 100 years. You know, every other industry you can think of has had innovation. And the funeral industry, by and large, has been stagnant in that way because of the very reason you mentioned. A lot of people don't want to think about it, but that makes it such an amazing design challenge. And I think, in addition to that, ask someone, how was the last funeral they went to? Did it inspire them? Did it feel intentional? Was it amazing? And the chances are really high they're going to say no. And so we're starting with this really low bar, which is, again, such an exciting design moment in time. Effy.
- [02:51]
B
Amazing. Katrina. So let me take you back in time. To Katrina the teen, or before you went, maybe to design school. What was it like? And was death part of your childhood in some way? Or what made you eventually fall in love with this topic?
- [03:11]
A
Well, I wasn't a goth teenager or anything like that. I did grow up with parents who were both in medicine, and they would sometimes at the dinner table, mention a patient who had died without too much fanfare and without too much of a loaded emotional state. They would be explaining it their doctors. That's sometimes what happens. So they would be explaining it with some matter of factness. Honestly, they were also, and still are my parents, gardeners. And so they also were very in love with the process of composting. So much so that I'd be like, oh, compost. It's so boring as a teenager because they're making me go out there and mulch the garden or something. But those two things, they're sort of comfort and matter of factness around mortality. And then this love of the natural world in terms of gardening and seeing compost as just a part of that, I, I'm sure, had to do with how I became who I am today.
- [04:11]
B
Incredible. So you decide to go to design school, which doesn't even sound relevant to what you do, although it's very relevant, and I know, but you decide to go to design school. What do you think made you realize that this is what you want to do? You're disrupting a big thing. You need to push some heavy weight over here and we'll talk about it. But what made you decide suddenly that this is what you want to do?
- [04:37]
A
Katrin, I think part of my personality is if I see something that I don't understand why it is a certain way, then I'm pretty quick to disregard. Well, it just is that way. Well, there's the status quo. I'm pretty quick to be like, well, that's not enough of an answer for me, basically. But to be honest, when I started design school, it was grad school for architecture. I wasn't thinking about building something that would exist in the world or solving a problem, actually. I was literally excited about researching the funeral industry and excited about designing a new way for my body when I died. But for at least the two years of when I was working on it before I graduated, it was a design exercise. It wasn't meant to be real. I didn't have a budget attached to it at all. There was no doubt that I could design it. So I didn't have to ask myself, is this realistic to come into the world because I wasn't trying to do that. So it was actually a very privileged place to create the idea for something because it lacked all the doubt that I could have later, plenty of. But, like, didn't have to really say, like, well, this isn't realistic, because that wasn't the point.
- [05:53]
B
Was there a certain moment that you decided that, oh, I want to just do that as an exercise?
- [05:59]
A
Yes. I do blame my teenager now, Dean Kale, who was just about a year old or so, and I was drinking a beer out in the yard. I think it was my first year. The grad program. It's a three year program. And Kale was tumbling around like little kids do. He was this fat little baby and he was, like, tumbling. And I thought, ooh, I'm not sure I could do that anymore. Like, he was doing a somersault. I think I could probably do a somersault, but it wouldn't be pretty. And I was struck by the fact that besides being very resilient as a one year old, he also was growing so quickly. I could almost see him getting these new skills every day. And I was like, wow, time goes so fast. I thought, someday he'll be 40. What will he be like when he's 40? It just hit me like a ton of bricks. I would be 70 something then. And it's almost trite to say, like, duh, that's how aging works. But it just hit me that I was going to be old someday. Someday I would then die. And that put me on this path to then say, okay, well, if you follow that string, what will happen to my body? And I don't come from a religious family, so I don't have strong cultural traditions that would drive my family to know what to do. And so that was the beginning of the journey.
- [07:21]
B
Wow. Okay, so you decide to go on this little design challenge. First of all, how did your family friends take it? Was that something like, oh, cool, Katrina is doing her thing, or was there any objection? Like, how did that go?
- [07:41]
A
It was pretty much, oh, Katrina's just doing her thing. I took a while to get back to decide to go to architecture school. I did various jobs before that, and I didn't have what you would call necessarily a career before that. I did good work and dabbled in different things, but didn't have a strong career path. And so then I finally went back to school for architecture, which my mom had been saying for a long time that I should do. But I ignored it for as long as I could. And then I do Remember when I started looking at the funeral industry, I decided to focus on creating a system with which to compost the dead. And I remember coming home for a little vacation to my parents house and saying, I think for my thesis, I'm going to compost humans. And they were both like, oh, yeah, that's cool. They didn't flinch. So that was nice. And then my partner, she, I think was like, oh, great, this is a design project. Go right ahead. It's not meant to be your life's path yet.
- [08:40]
B
Right, yet. So let's talk about the yet. Because suddenly it moved from being this project to becoming kind of your life purpose to some degree. Katrina, am I right? Am I reading that correct?
- [08:56]
A
I think so. Ask me in another 10 years, I guess.
- [08:58]
B
But yeah, okay, so you decide to do this for real. There's enough proof that this is real, Katrina, right now. So talk to me about that transition, because suddenly you're becoming an entrepreneur, if you will, and you need to get this off the ground. And this is becoming very, very real. And this is not about another tiny feature. This is about changing the way we look at death overall. So talk to us a little bit about that, Katrina.
- [09:33]
A
Well, there were a few moments where I got the indication that this idea could be more than just a thesis project. And the first was when I was presenting my thesis project and it was like 30 people or something, most of them professors or friends, school friends. There was a little laughter because death is funny sometimes, or it feels like you should laugh a little bit. But there was a lot of, oh, yeah, I would have that. I would like that. And so that was interesting to me. And then when I graduated, I made a little website with my thesis on it. Just the images that I'd created and some words around what I was trying to do, but without a firm plan at all. And then I started collecting names for a newsletter list because I was like, I'm trying to do this, I think, and started to talk to a lot of people about it, moved to Seattle from Massachusetts. And then my friend sent me this application for a fellowship called Echoing Green. And they fund big, bold ideas. And she said, oh, you should apply for this. And they have this specific track that was for climate change. And so I was like, well, I mean, why not? So I made this application. I thought, at the very least, I'm trying to write out the problem and the solution. And I would say for anyone out there that's tinkering with something, find an application and try to explain what you're doing. Because it's very valuable to do that because you might think, you know, but when you try to put it into words, it might not be there yet. And as a side note, I really appreciated that this particular application for Echoing Green for this fellowship. They are very strict around word numbers. Every answer has to be so short. And that's even harder, as you know, to write something good that's short. So anyway, I went through the exercise of explaining this problem and what I saw as the solution. And by the way, the problem is overcrowded city cemeteries, lack of land for burial, pollution that comes with burial and cremation, and emissions that come with cremation. So this whole polluted industry, and I was like, here's the solution. We compost humans, we turn them into soil, we make these places in our cities and we do it there because it's actually an urban solution especially. And I got an email that I was in the second round, the finalist round for this fellowship. And so it's so clear, this memory is so clear. I was dressed up, I think I had maybe a three piece suit on. And I was at the 30th floor or something of this building in New York City where this foundation is. And the judges and jury were really lovely people and a lot of them were actually in the financial industry. This wasn't my parents, first of all. And it was. They were thinking about this as a real solution to something. And did it have, frankly, a chance? Not necessarily business wise, because it could be a nonprofit or a business, but did it have a chance as a real thing? And so I'm sitting there proposing that we compost humans after they die. And these folks from Barclays, our investment bank, are nodding and I was like, oh, okay, this is a moment that is here. Now. I probably wasn't here 10 years ago. I still believe that it was just a perfect moment. With climate change, the fear of the end of the planet growing, and then that ties into our own mortality and a lot of interest in carbon beneficial methods of everything. And no one was looking at the funeral industry yet. So long story short, got that fellowship and could quit my day job at an architecture firm and was able to work on it full time from then on.
- [13:15]
B
Wow. Okay. And the year was.
- [13:18]
A
That was 2014.
- [13:20]
B
14. Amazing. So you are now, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but there's planning phase that you're actually trying to figure out what to do and then you're starting to actually eventually sell it and you need to raise some capital in the middle, et cetera. So walk through this because suddenly, I guess in almost a day, you suddenly became this CEO of a company or founder of a company, and you need to basically lift it off the ground. That's a big shift.
- [13:51]
A
Yeah. I was given really good advice once. In fact, I think I used it in that interview process for that foundation, which is they were like, why are you someone who can do this? Which is a very valid question. And I'd been told, and I think it's still true, that the training that architects get, first of all, you have to see the big picture and be able to drill all the way down to the details and go back and forth seamlessly between those things. So architects think about the whole city block and then they think about what is that screw head looking like? And that's a really broad distinction. And then also architects main job, and my main job today still is to go out and find the experts. Architects may have the vision, but they're not doing all the things. They're finding structural engineers and every type of engineer and designer to work with and for them to make something happen. So I was like, you know, this actually isn't so different from architecture training and the mindset of I need to build something, I don't know how to do it myself. I'm not a biologist, I'm not a scientist, I'm not a legal expert, I'm not an engineer. So I need all those things and how to find them. And then it's about being driven to find those resources.
- [15:02]
B
Ooh, I love that, Katrina. And you remind me, when we tell a story, many times we tell our clients, you want to focus on why you, why this, why now, which is exactly how you found yourself. I think, explaining it. I think it's really important to emphasize what you just said. The bounce between the 30,000 foot view, if you will, together with looking in the mirror and the details is really, really important. And that shift and being able to go up and down is critical. But I think what I'm also hearing is that mentality that is so, so, so important of I gonna say yes and then figure out the how, which is incredible.
- [15:45]
A
Oh, yeah. You have to think that's the only way something's gonna get done. And in saying yes, I think also for me it was, I'm gonna start telling the story of what I'm trying to do and see how that resonates with people. And if it sounds right and if they're nodding and if when I say it, I don't go Ooh, that's weird. That's intuition or something where you're like, as I tell the story of what I'm trying to create, does it feel right? And constantly checking in on that and you might be writing the story, you might be saying it out loud at a dinner party, but you'll know when it doesn't sound quite right. There's been so many moments of design. Friction is how I think of it, where you explain how you're going to do something, maybe some design aspect of our vessels. We compost people in vessels inside of buildings and the design of the vessels was really important. And so, you know, as I'm explaining how the body gets loaded in, you might go, ah, that doesn't sound quite right. That's a friction moment. And you should listen for those because usually that's where you want to make some change. But when things sound right, it says important. It's like you're on the right track. Just back to your bouncing thing. Because I think that's interesting. I think the challenge is. One of my challenges for being a CEO is you don't want to micromanage, right? You want to delegate. We have heard that again and again. That's part of being a good leader. And so what is the bouncing look like at the beginning of a project between the detail and the 30,000 foot picture? And then what does it look like as you grow as a leader? Probably different, but you still need to be able to dip down and go, oh, that's not right. It's fascinating.
- [17:24]
B
It is fascinating. And I love that you said basically, you're going to need to, even with your message, even when you talk to people. So first of all, I love that you mentioned talk to people. Talk to people about your idea, talk to people about the steps, because this is where you can actually gauge it versus hide. There's some people that are trying to hide their ideas or hide the message, and that is the wrong things. Because actually by talking to people, you can learn so, so, so much about product, market fit. And if this is going to resonate and am I telling the story correctly? But then there's also the element of adapting and reinventing again, again, again. Which this is why it becomes so much more accurate and resonates. Right, Katrina, Which I think is what beautifully, what you're doing, you know, I.
- [18:12]
A
Think you're getting at a little bit. One of my other favorite sayings, which is the perfect is the enemy of the good. People sometimes say, I have this idea, I'm going to hide like you said, I'm going to hide for six months and get a business plan together. But then you might be like, well, it's not quite perfect, so I'll keep working on it before I let anyone see it. But if you do that, first of all, it takes a lot of time. Second of all, there's no way that what you've created in the first place is going to be perfect. But if you're striving for perfect, you're never putting out what's good and just getting things out the door, getting things in front of others with the caveat that you should not have typos in that thing. There's sort of a level of goodness that I'm still talking about because you don't want to waste people's time either. But it doesn't need to be perfect. And there is no perfect.
- [19:02]
B
There is no perfect. That's it. Yeah. We say done is better than perfect. I totally agree. And you want to take those small, I call it imperfect steps every single day, right? Yes. Not have spell checks, but in general, do the minimum that makes sense for you to get the information that you want. So this is fascinating. So you decided to take this huge task, Katrina, do you need to raise capital for this beyond that fund, or did that take you for a little bit? So talk to us a little bit about that, because I think a lot of founders, this is what holds them back. Like, I don't know how to do this without money.
- [19:38]
A
When I got the foundation funding, I actually created a nonprofit first, because I still hadn't formed the idea well enough or fully. And I also, I'm pretty skeptical about capitalism and the harm that it does. And so I had this idea that if I instead created a nonprofit, I would avoid that harm, which I don't feel that's the case anymore. We're in the system no matter what. We don't get to choose. But when I started the nonprofit, it was mostly to gauge whether there was a community that wanted this idea. So I did a Kickstarter through that nonprofit. So actually, that was some funding I can talk about a little more. I also was doing some of the initial academic research or proof of concept research, but didn't need to be a company to do that. And that was when I started really reaching out to experts, legal experts, death care experts, and biologists. And as the nonprofit, I was really one person. And so the capital needs were pretty low. And so I had the foundation funding. Then I ran a Kickstarter campaign, and I had some Individual donors who would contribute as well. No foundation funding beyond that initial one, but it was enough to get me out of my day job and working full time. So once I'd had enough of a sense that there was a market for this and I had gotten a jump on what it was, I was trying to create, like, a system in which to do this, like a technology, then I decided to create a company. And I was really lucky to connect with some advisors who helped me frame the company, both from a legal aspect and from how I'm raising money aspects in a way that felt like it really was setting up with the values I cared about, if that makes sense. So, specifically, we created a public benefit corporation. And so that's a special designation of C Corp. Where environmental and social good is expected and required. It also protects founders and boards of directors down the road from investors who might say, we only want you to do what brings in the most profit. Well, we get to balance profit with environmental good and social good. That was one really tangible way to say, okay, this is the kind of company we're creating. So I founded Recompose in 2017 as a public benefit corporation and then started raising money and was again, very lucky to meet some great advisors who said to me, look, you can raise capital from investment on your terms. You're the one raising money. You'll go out and find the investors who want to invest in the way you're running a business. And so from the beginning, we said, this is going to be patient capital. We are not an app that's going to make a hockey stick that turns around your dollars into 10x overnight. I highly recommend no one promise that, because if you say from the start this isn't the kind of company we are, then you're bringing in investors who are like, I understand that that's not what Katrina is doing. So they're not going to be knocking on my door next year saying, where is my 10x? And it's scary. Also, we've had no venture capital funding, which you can hear what I was just describing. That 10x, that quick turnaround, that's a venture capital expectation. And so we have not taken any money from venture capital, but we've raised over $20 million through investors who are people with wealth who are like, I want this to exist. It's a very special group of people. The challenge when I talk to other founders is that it takes time to build those networks. It's not like there's a list of those people out in the world. And also, I Think I had the privilege of recompose being a really exciting story because death really, you say that compost people and people are like, what, you know, that had the benefit of starting in that place. Whereas a person might have a perfectly wonderful idea that isn't quite as sexy as composting humans. That's just. It's a little harder to get the excitement going. That doesn't mean you can't do it. It just means. I recognize we got a lot of press early on, for example. It was really easy to get press. So it's kind of a cheat in a way.
- [24:02]
B
Well, but you also, I think, deliberately built your reputation in a really intentional, strategic way. Katrina, I think you created your own luck there. I watched your TEDx talk. I watched many, many of the other interviews with you. You created your own luck in a very deliberate, beautiful way. And that created because again, the investors also want to trust. They want to know that this is not just a dream, but this is somebody. Like you said, why you. Right, that Katrina will actually execute on this thing. You're creating a system to transform bodies into soil. That is a big task. What would you say are some of the biggest challenges now that you got the capital? But then what are some of the challenges? Maybe talk to us a little bit about the Kickstarter. I think that's also interesting.
- [24:56]
A
You know what? It's actually similar to when you do an application for something, when you're forced to create a story in any of those fundraising platforms and maybe make a video, you can do it with your iPhone. It could cost you very, very little money. But you still have to really plan it out. And it takes, by the way, a lot of time. These things take a lot of time. Carve out six months or something to do it right. But when you're again, you're telling the story, and then if nobody cares, that says something too. You have to listen to that. The Kickstarter, those kind of platforms, I think they can be really great to raise some money. I would say actually a small learning I had off of those is you don't need to promise a very specific set of outcomes with those. You say, I'm going to work on this really hard project and people will fund that work, which is what I did with the Kickstarter, rather than saying, I'm definitely going to get to hear X, Y and Z, because as we know, best late plans, you might not get there in the same way you thought.
- [25:57]
B
So, okay, so you're doing the Kickstarter.
- [26:00]
A
And then, and then I think from that, it must have gone on the Internet. Someone shared it with this legal expert, Tanya Marsh. She's a professor of funeral and cemetery law. She's written, literally, the book on funeral and cemetery law, the only one in the US So she's the expert. And she wrote me an email, and she was like, hi, Katrina, I love what you're trying to do. I want you to know it's completely illegal. And I was like, oh, okay, that's a wrinkle. But, you know, I'd love to help. So we got her students involved, her law students involved in figuring out what would it take to change the law in the U.S. do we have to actually write new statute? Are we talking about that? Well, yes, we were. It turned out. And also, all funeral law is state by state, so we couldn't just do one federal law. Not that I wish that we had had to, because that sounds like a big lift, too. But we started in Washington state, and I was like, okay, what do we need to do to change the law to allow, alongside cremation and burial, composting of humans? And so that crystallized a new effort. Back then, it was probably 2015. When it crystallized as an effort, then it was, okay, what does the legislature need to see to feel like this is a good thing to pass a law around? So from that, we said, we being, by the way, me and people that I trusted and Tanya Marsh, we realized that the next best step was probably to do a pilot study, if we could, because a similar composting process is used with livestock all over the U.S. and so actually, composting of farm animals is well researched, but we thought, if we bring just that to the legislature, is that enough? Well, we compost cows, so we'd like to legalize composting humans. And we thought, probably not. That's not enough. What we should actually do is a pilot. So a big, big challenge and success story, I guess, is that I hooked up with a professor at Washington State University, which is out here in Eastern Washington, and she's the expert in livestock mortality composting in the US And I remember calling her, and I was like, hello, Dr. Carpenter Boggs. I've read all your papers, and I've done a thesis project, and I'm trying to make something like this work for human beings. And she said, oh, yeah, you know, I have lots of farmer friends who would love that option. I was like, oh, okay, so you've thought about it before. It's not brand new to you. And so she and I Partnered together. She's now a dear friend as well as an advisor, but partnered together to set up a pilot study at Washington State University where we would ended up composting six human bodies of people who donated their bodies to the pilot study. That was maybe our biggest sub project to date.
- [28:56]
B
That's huge. Katrina. How do you sell people where their bodies will go to? You know, now you have a beautiful place in Seattle. We'll talk about it, right? But in the beginning of this, how do you actually persuade people to say, hey, I want your body?
- [29:15]
A
First of all, I was googling like, so Washington State University didn't have a cadaver study program. Some universities, like a med school, might have that already, but this particular campus didn't have that. And so we realized that actually it would be recomposed. The company would be having the bodies, people's bodies, donated to us technically. And then we would be doing this study in partnership with Washington State University. So, like, interesting just to have to explore the mechanisms of how to do this. And then I had created relationships early on in Seattle and in the state with different groups. For example, End of Life Washington is a group where volunteers go and help folks use the death dignity medications at the end of their life. And so I had been talking to a lot of folks about what I was trying to do. That again, there's. That's important to do. And I had a newsletter list of folks that were interested in this journey. And so when we were ready, I just started to put the word out to these groups. And several of the people who donated their body heard about us from the volunteers at the end of life groups that they were working with because they knew they were approaching the end of their own lives because they had a diagnosis. And so a volunteer would get in touch with me and say, I think this person would really like to participate. And in terms of selling the idea, well, number one, they didn't have to pay anything. So this was a free pilot study. They were being part of the research. And I think my understanding is for several of them, that was a pretty cool thing to be able to do, as their last gesture was actually be part of helping us get this started. And we then brought the results of the study, which by the way, said, yes, this is a safe and effective and sustainable way to care for a human body. And then we brought those results to the Washington state legislature. And so the law that passed in 2019 was direct result of these peoples donating their own bodies, which is so.
- [31:21]
B
Incredible because suddenly they're creating Something huge and leaving a big legacy. Just a tiny question about that before we move to how you legalize a bunch of other states. But is this an awkward conversation, Katrina? Or you see so much power in them going back to where we came from, back to earth, and you feel like it just becomes more of a natural? Or is there awkwardness around planning your death?
- [31:52]
A
Well, today Recomposed works with clients who are thinking about their death long in the distance. So we have a program called Pre Compose where you can pre plan at any age. And we have 20 somethings who are in perfect health who don't plan on coming to recompose for decades. For that group of people, a lot of times, Pre Planning with Pre Compose is a joyous, cool, fun, inspiring occasion. But we also work with people who are imminent, meaning they know they're dying soon, don't maybe know when, but it's coming soon. Or we also work with people who call us because their loved one has just died. So you can see that's a really big spectrum of experiences and emotions and all of it. And I would say one of the challenges at Recompose is making sure that our team and our client experience is set up to serve all of those people and where they are, where they're at emotionally, where they're at in their life trajectory. Is it awkward? I mean, pretty much anything can be awkward. I would say, actually probably a conversation about death is often less awkward than a conversation about something else because you're getting just right to the root of humanity. And all of us have. Most people anyway, have really strong and deep feelings about the fact that we will die. When you get right to that with someone, a lot of the awkwardness falls away and you're like, well, suddenly we're talking about something really real.
- [33:27]
B
I guess it's inevitable. We just don't want to think about it, but it's inevitable, I guess. Okay, so you legalized a few states. Tell us more about what's legal. And then what does it look like now when somebody comes in? I guess there's a beautiful ceremony. So I do want to touch that a little bit.
- [33:47]
A
When it all started to become something that could be real, I was constantly touching back to my design education and this belief that I still hold that if you're going to bring something that has the potential to make people feel squeamish, like composting humans, not only are you talking about death, but you're talking about soil and decomposition. I mean, you may want to bring that with a whole lot of Design, intention and beauty. Because I think at base, the idea is a beautiful idea. So the design of our website, for example, if you go to the website at Recompose Life, you'll see soil. But we've hopefully presented it to you in a really beautiful way that it's comforting and maybe inspirational even. And so from the beginning, I was like, I know that I'm not just trying to create a cremation machine or a type of casket. I want to create a whole experience for people that includes this new form of what we do with our bodies. But that isn't just a technical process. So that's been really such a joy for me, always going between, well, what do we have to do technically, legally, biologically, and then how are we bringing that client experience out authentically and making it hopefully meaningful and beautiful.
- [35:10]
B
Was there a very hard moment, if you're willing to share throughout this journey?
- [35:16]
A
Well, one of them back to the study at Washington State University was the university had put us through all of these hoops and red tapest. Probably they should. You know, we were the first cadaver donation study that they'd done. So they had an ethics committee that they created for us to go through and this paperwork and the other. And it just went on for months and months. And I kept thinking, I've realized what the hardest thing for me in this work is, being an entrepreneur is having to wait for someone else.
- [35:47]
B
Patience.
- [35:48]
A
It's like, patience. And so there was this moment where I. And my dad jokes about it because I forget a lot of what has been hard. And he's like, do you remember how you felt when you were waiting for that study to be approved? And I'm like, I think I've blocked it out. I've stuffed it somewhere. But that was really hard because without that, we thought, there's no way. That's some of the hardest, I think.
- [36:11]
B
I think patience is really hard for a lot of people that want to move fast, like, to move fast. But then circumstances always take longer in general. So what motivated you then? Or in some of the other hard moments? How do you motivate yourself? Eventually you have a team. How do you keep motivating a team when things get hard? How do you push yourself, first of all?
- [36:40]
A
Well, my girlfriend is always saying, when I get stressed out about work, she'll be like, would you rather be doing anything else? And the answer is always no. So, sure, it's a hard day or a hard month, but, like, would you rather be doing anything else? No. Okay, then keep going. That's an easy one. I like to ask that the good thing about being an entrepreneur, and especially in the early days, is you probably have 12 things on your plate that you have to work on that are exciting things to move forward here. It's kind of like a chess game or something where you know you're moving things forward, then you're moving this other thing forward. And so I don't remember exactly what I worked on in those months when I was waiting for the study to be approved, but I'm certainly wasn't just sitting there because there were 600 other things to work on. So that can be nice. You're almost using the other projects as a distraction. Well, this is going to help me be patient. And look at this. I just uncovered this time now that I have to work on other stuff.
- [37:37]
B
So now tell us a little bit where it stands right now. I saw a little bit of video. We'll probably have some links with the podcast, but share a little bit. Where is it now in the process and maybe a beautiful story. You shared one beautiful story. So I think some beautiful story that you have from this.
- [37:55]
A
So today we are a full service funeral home located in Seattle. We have one location that's in Seattle. We specialize in human composting. So we only do that one service for folks. Well in terms of how we care for the body, we have composted over 400 people to date and have almost 2,000 on our pre composed membership. So these are future clients of ours and part of our community. And interestingly, just the more numbers. One thing I think is fascinating is about a third of our clients have come to us from out of state. What's happened is we've legalized in Washington state and then 11 others since 2019, but we only have one facility now. We're working on expansion plans, of course, so folks who care deeply about this option actually come to us after they die. You can transport a body in an airplane. It happens with some frequency actually. And about a third of our clients are coming from out of state. So we have folks who've come from all over the US So if you're out there listening, this is important to you and you have a death occurring, don't let distance stop you.
- [39:04]
B
So maybe share. In a word, why do you think this is important and you alluded to it, but maybe give a little more details. Why should somebody choose this over regular burial?
- [39:17]
A
So cremation and burial, what I realized years ago is that they both have a carbon footprint. So with cremation you're burning fossil gas and putting carbon into the atmosphere and particulates and mercury. And then with conventional burial, you have all of the manufacturing of headstones and concrete, graveliners and the casket. And then you're embalming the body, which is a really unfortunate practice in my opinion because, well, a, it's a toxic chemical formaldehyde base that you're placing in the body. But also it really kind of robs us of this opportunity to see someone actually who we love, that's died, who looks dead versus embalmed. And then you have the upkeep of cemeteries. So you've seen really cemeteries all over the world. They get mown, they get watered, and all that upkeep adds to the carbon footprint, I will say so. First of all, human composting avoids those emissions and sequesters carbon. So you have a. About a metric ton of carbon saved per person, which if you start to add up over time and over populations, that's a great tool for helping with the climate crisis. I'll say that. I think what motivates me even more than that carbon number is this idea that we can truly return to the earth. We're turning bodies into soil, we're not burying them and then they turn into soil, actually actively transforming those bodies into soil that then families use to grow their rose garden, to plant a grove of trees. We have a conservation program where you can donate the soil, if you don't want all of it, to this conservation work. And so this idea that you can really become part of the ecosystem so literally is what motivates me the most.
- [41:07]
B
And that's actually so fascinating. So Katrina, based on all your experience to date, and you've been at it for a while now, and you're changing something huge that we're so used to for so many decades. What would be something that you would say to your younger self? You know, just seeing your journey.
- [41:30]
A
I mean, it would be so nice to erase some of the doubt and some of the concern about what others think. I mean, I think we all want to do that with our younger selves. Probably. I'm not even sure it is a work related question, but I'm in my mid-40s. I like being in my mid-40s. It feels like, okay, like, yeah, not quite as much concern every day about what others think. Yeah, I think that's probably the main one I wish I'd paid more attention to. This is very specific, specific advice for your founders out there. Pay more attention to your customer relations management tool, your CRM from this jump. It's not a side project. That's very specific advice.
- [42:14]
B
I wish I told my younger self, but that's good. I love it. Katrina, would you share anything else with our audience? Again, they're driven. They're trying to find their purpose. They might go to corporation, they might start their own thing, but they're trying to find this thing that will catch them and get them motivated again. Or maybe they're just afraid to get started. What would you say?
- [42:41]
A
Well, life is short. I can tell you that for sure. Go out and talk to people, and you may be surprised where inspiration comes from. And read things that you wouldn't normally read and follow those little inspirations. Yeah, those are the ones I would say. Read the book Big Magic, that's one of my favorite inspiration books by Elizabeth Gilbert. She wrote Eat, Pray, Love also. But Big Magic, all about how ideas, if you let them, they'll land on you. And if you decide that you want to work together, it's actually really a partnership rather than you having an idea. That's how I feel about the whole of human composting, so.
- [43:18]
B
Oh, that's incredible. I just absolutely love that. Katrina, you're doing something phenomenal. I love how passionate you are, but also how you're just not afraid of pushing big things and making them into a reality. That's incredible. Katrina, thank you so much for being on the show.
- [43:38]
A
Thank you for having me. It's been a joy.