Business
I’ve been maligned and others in the profession have told me I am wrong when I say the funeral directors and funeral home owners can be “Entrepreneurial”. Several people have dropped me notes or emails that tell me I am “dead wrong” and death care is a business that is not entrepreneurial, but…
I continue to be one of the dwindling daily hard copy newspaper readers left in America. It must be hereditary as my father subscribed to both the Minneapolis Tribune morning newspaper and the Minneapolis Star evening newspaper when I was growing up. I can remember vividly coming home from elementary school and spreading…
By guest writer Joe Weigel. Have you ever looked in your local paper’s obituary section or checked out a competitor’s website and asked, “How did we lose that family? We’ve served them for generations.” The fact is – most funeral homes devote a substantial amount of effort and investment to landing new…
We’ve advised readers of the financial problems that small church and civic cemeteries have in today’s world of less earth burials. Revenue is tougher to come by as cemetery grave lot purchase revenue is not received in a great proportion of today’s deaths. That eventually leads to less money in perpetual care accounts.…
Last week I came across this article from The Hill entitled, “Two million people fled America’s big cities from 2020 to 2022”. If you have read my articles for anytime now you will understand that when I look at an article like that usually the first thing that comes to mind for me…
A lot of professions are struggling with people joining their ranks. And, from my point of view it seems to be that society is lacking staffing in the categories that are highly “hands on” in human care. . . .which would include funeral directors and embalmers. There are probably many reasons…
Over the weekend I started reading death care industry consultant Alan Creedy’s new book entitled, “Finish Well“. I really enjoying the read, but so far have not gotten too far into the subject matter so I will save a review until another time. However, in describing most family funeral homes in…
According to Wikipedia, which may or may not be accurate at this date, Co-op Funeralcare in Great Britain operates over 1,000 funeral homes in Great Britain and Dignity plc operates about 795 facilities across the same landscape. If you assume that those numbers are somewhat accurate you would then surmise that Dignity plc…
I’m no expert on this subject so this column will ask a lot of questions but probably won’t answer many. It’s an exercise that I like to do once in a while because it really causes me to think deeply. I hope it does the same for you. In my days as…
