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How Alua Arthur Helps Thousands of Students Redefine Death

Mar 28, 2023

Alua Aruthur's unconventional founder journey started when she boarded a bus in Cuba. Soon after she was diagnosed with depression that was clinical and ending her career in law, Alua found herself sitting with a traveler suffering from terminal uterine cancer. She had no idea that the exchange that unfolded between the two of them would change the course of her life forever.

"I have asked her a myriad of questions regarding deaththose kinds of questions you'd never ask a stranger, but she was so forthcoming with me. We talked for hours about what she was afraid of, the things she was afraid to lose, and her wishes for what she might have done differently during her time," Alua recalls.

"Coming off the conversation, I kept wondering why I hadn't engaged in a meaningful conversation about death in my 34 years of living. The more I considered it, the more I thought"I'm going to do something about this.'"

After returning after a trip to after returning to the United States, Alua threw herself into trying to find ways of helping people through the final stages of their lives. As a lawyer and a law degree, she was aware that she wasn't going to be into medicine or social work. Although psychology wasn't exactly what she wanted to do, she decoded the need to go into a psychology course that was focused on spirituality and death. Yet shortly into her degree, her brother in law got terminally ill.

"I could help him through the last two months of his life. I was with him day in the day, and out of it -- sitting on the couch or sleeping on the floor doing errands, taking people up from the hospital taking medications and trying to do research," she says.

"I found myself feeling more and more frustrated because there was nobody I could contact who would have these answers for us, or, at the very least, someone not in our circle of family and friends that could understand and validate how difficult what we were going through could be. In those moment, I realized that, if I didn't have the answer, I would have to make it."

The realization sowed the seeds for the idea of Going With Grace which is a death doula-training and funeral plan organization which aims to redefine and improve the concept of death by using the individual life experiences as the basis.

Alua has admitted over 1,800 people to her 'End of Life Training Program', gained over 15,000 newsletter subscribers, and earned $2.5 million in revenue. Here's how she did it.

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She translated her personal experience into her company's mission

From day one, Alua has been intentional about allowing Going With Grace to originate from a personal place. Alua believes that despite the fact that many people try to separate the personal from the professional but they're one.

"How you appear in your personal life will reflect on your behavior on the job. To me, this has always been a highly personal goal and I was determined to rectify what I had been struggling with through the death process. The idea of Going With Grace was born out from that ."

Alua's personal experience has allowed her to step into her customer's shoes in a unique way -she knew all their requirements before they came across her offering.

"The death of a loved one is isolated. My main hope was to help people not feel isolated while going through their struggles. It's hard enough, even if you have one of the most skilled doctors as well as an excellent support systemIt's a crushing ."

The author continues: "The mission of Going with Grace is to assist individuals answer the question 'What must I do in order to feel at peace with my own self, in order that I can live my life today and pass away gracefully? Whatever someone's answers may be We are there to help themSometimes it's about healing their relationships and sometimes, it's confronting their fears about death, sometimes it's trying to figure out the values that they want to live with. We're focusing on that ."

She remained consistent in her natural, personal messages

When it was time to translate her unique message into a commercial campaign, Alua stuck to her origins. Alua created her website with one purpose in mind that was to give permission for others to talk about death and grief in an authentic way.

"When I realized this type of space was not available and I wanted to facilitate it because I was convinced that someone else was searching for this. Perhaps it was one of a million nevertheless, I'm sure someone else has had a similar experience to me," she says.

"As a consequence of this idea My marketing took place spontaneously, and this is the reason why people reacted to the message so strongly."

However, Alua realized that her organic messages could only go as in the direction of coherence.

"When sparks are ignited inside someone's soul, that's some thing. The size of that fire isn't up to you -- but it's your responsibility to ignite the fire. If you're constantly passionate and authentically talking about the same subject, eventually you'll see them come back around ."

  During her initial rollout, Alua began to realize the importance of having an authentic and authentic persona. In the beginning, she was not aware of her public perception, yet through finding her voice and establishing her voice, she could improve her standing and credibility.

"One of the key elements in marketing and branding is being authentic. My personality isn't gentle, slack-talking human being, and yet many people believe that we have to talk and tinker around with issues of death and dying. Being unapologetic about my own self, I attracted my community ."

In her early days, Alua started posting one-minute videos on social networks that focused on her own experiences as well as her mission statement as well as her online course that she was starting to develop. Before she knew it, Alua had pre-sold 57 subscriptions prior to having begun to build the course. In addition, her 400-strong email list began to grow exponentially.

"I genuinely thought that maybe 10 people would be registered. In that moment, I realized I actually had to make a commitment to this ."

She fleshed out the course's structure with a practical approach

Once she had established her target viewers, Alua started to wrap her mind around the daunting procedure of creating her first online course entitled 'The Art Of Dying'. Like many course creators, she created a basic structure that she crafted each module.

"It was really useful to consider the various blocks of information my students would require at various times throughout the course. I'd say that to myself: "Here's the base. The next thing to do is. If we're headed there, what do we need in order to get there What do we need to know?" I would continually be mindful of the overall purpose in your mind. You can then cut the lessons into bite-sized chunks," she explains.

The framework was eventually developed with a concrete approachit was a practical framework - Alua could cut the course into three main parts. The initial segment is the basis of "What do die doulas really accomplish? What's the function of medicine? What are the signs of death? Are there any reasons to be aware of our own death?' The second segment delves into traditional funeral care, funeral home logistics, and the funeral rituals and legacies. The third segment puts all these aspects into practice.

  Alua has since developed numerous courses using this framework and has all of them with completion rates of 76% , and overall scores of 4.9 stars. The instructor believes that nothing would have been possible without .

" was the thing that truly made my dream come to life. At the beginning I searched for a long time in search of an online learning platform, and none of them were easy or accessible enough. It's a shame that I'm an analog person and I'm not even sure how to change my phone's ringtone However, it's not just simple, but highly effective. That's the way we got to where we are today." she says.

She incorporated her authentic voice into her lessons

Alongside the introduction of this innovative learning structure, Alua has been intentional about allowing her personal style to permeate her online course offering.

"I often tell tales about clients I've dealt with, to allow my students to understand the process at a moment's notice. I'm very clear about speaking directly to cameras, as well as avoiding keeping my personality at bay," she says.

"I think my online courses can be a beautiful snapshot into the present of my work as well as what I'm like as a person. I released 'The Art of Dying' in 2018 and four years from now it is possible that I will be a totally different person than the one I was at the time. When I design my programs, I stay away from committing myself to the way I'm feeling in this moment and also allowing myself to hold onto what the future could be ."

Her focus was on community when diversifying her revenue streams

Alua has placed a great emphasis on celebrating community, within and beyond her curriculum. Through leveraging the power in study group, she has found a way to increase her revenue streams.

"One of the best things about our courses is that we have everything online. And in addition, we have weekly group study sessions where participants discuss topics through Zoom in real-time. The students are able to think through the questions they ask in a way that not only keeps them engaged however, it also helps to build a stronger feeling of belonging. They get close to each and form bonds to the point that I've just been creating space for them to do the things that they naturally would do in any other situation. ."

She adds: "I'm simply following the breadcrumbs that already exist. For example one of my students engaged not many years ago and seven participants from their online course were present. To me, that shows the power behind our work. ."

In addition to her online courses, Alua has created various community-driven initiatives to support her business model.

"Another significant aspect of our revenue stream is the Death Doula Den -- it's a member-only community in which members meet to discuss death and dying. We also have separate Zoom call where we discuss about "hot topics" and offer support in that way," she says.

"Ultimately We have communities for those who are seeking services themselves, and communities that seek to understand how to offer services to other people."

She jumped over the primary hurdles that the creators of HTML0 have to face

In analyzing Going With Grace's achievements so far, Alua is very transparent about her struggles to overcome various obstacles in her creator's journey and yet, the struggles she has faced have helped make her more resilient on the professional and personal level.

"The most significant leap I've done was to press the "Publish" button on my first course. I cried hysterically as I clicked it. My thoughts were"Oh my God What have I done? What do I believe I am? How come I could act like this? ?'"

  Now, several years later, Alua has a few tips she'd tell herself in that moment:  

"The best thing you can do is silence the voices that say, "It's impossible. 'You're not good enough. You're not worthy. You don't know what you're doing.' Dismiss those thoughts and continue to push because someone is out there who needs what you have to offer. You should take the plunge It's probably not going to be perfect and it's most likely to end up being really messy and embarrassing to be able to look back at in a few years. But it's much better than nothing . ."

Inspiring by the story of Alua about the development of a profitable online business for online courses? Are you ready to make the jump for yourself? Join and begin now.