We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jasmine Hathaway. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jasmine below.

Alright, Jasmine thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

My co-founders, Rachel Donnelly, Esther Pipoly, Mollie Lacher, and I had started our own businesses focused on a space we felt was a wide-open gap in the market: helping people with all of the administrative tasks, logistical work, and decisions that fell to them after the loss of a loved one. There are attorneys, financial professionals, therapists, and other professionals who are focused on one aspect of this work, but there was no one to come alongside the family every step of the way to help them with all of it, including FINDING those other professionals.

We each experienced this issue first-hand when we navigated personal losses in our own lives. In my case, my husband Allan died in 2015. We were married for less than three years, and I was suddenly a widow and a single mom to a toddler while working full-time. I was astounded to learn that I was also responsible for closing all of his accounts, finding passwords, fending off student loan collectors, changing the name on the utilities so the power wouldn’t get cut off, and more…all while grieving profoundly. I wanted to hire someone who could project-manage and help me figure out everything I had to do, but there wasn’t anyone like that.

When Mollie, Rachel, Esther and I connected, we were so excited to find other people who were doing the same thing! We started meeting regularly and got so much value out of this community we had created where we could relate and share best practices. One of the things we had in common was just how often we heard from people who wanted to do what we were doing in their own community, and that’s how PALS was formed: to share our combined knowledge and experience, and really define and establish this space.

Our first task was to decide what to call it! We landed on Professionals of After Loss Services (PALS for short) and we set to work creating the PALS Training Program to lay out exactly what to do if you want to be an after loss professional–whether that’s creating your own company like we did or adding a service line to an existing business.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I discovered the need for after loss professionals when my husband Allan died in 2015. We were married for less than three years, and I was suddenly a widow and a single mom to a toddler while working full-time. I was astounded to learn that I was also responsible for closing all of his accounts, finding passwords, fending off student loan collectors, changing the name on the utilities so the power wouldn’t get cut off, and more…all while grieving profoundly. I wanted to hire someone who could project-manage and help me figure out everything I had to do, but there wasn’t anyone like that.

After loss professionals provide logistical and administrative services for clients who have experienced a death. We come alongside our clients and provide one-on-one, customized support and guidance with everything that falls to them to figure out. We prioritize, streamline, and complete tasks for widows/widowers, surviving children, executors/administrators, and family members. Most people aren’t experts in this work, as well they shouldn’t be! It’s overwhelming to realize the amount of work that you now have to take on, which can end up taking about 450 hours in total.

PALS exists to not only establish best practices and a standard of work, but we also have a code of ethics that every trainee and member abides by. In addition, we background check every member to ensure that when people see the PALS logo, they know it’s someone they can trust.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think our belief of community over competition really helped build our reputation. We are honest about what worked for us and mistakes we made, and we share our stories openly and honestly in the hope that it helps others who want to walk the same path.

Helping people is why we started our individual after loss services businesses, and PALS is a way for us to amplify that impact. We’re equipping other people with the tools they need to hit the ground running and ease the burden in a really difficult time.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We built our audience on social media by following like-minded accounts, posting regularly, and above all, engaging! We realized early on that this isn’t a “if you build it, they will come” situation. We respond to comments and messages, and we leave comments and send messages to people on social media we connect with. I really think those human connections resonate and have allowed us to grow our audience…and turn those social media followers into PALS trainees!

Contact Info:

• Website: afterlosspros.com
• Instagram: @afterlosspros
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/afterlosspros
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/afterlosspros/

Image Credits
Rebecca Laurel Photography