Business

Thinking of an ownership transition? Here’s some straight-forward advice on getting started

By Funeral Director Daily / May 15, 2023 /

      Depending on who you listen to you will get some opinions that over the next decade more than 50% of today’s family-owned funeral establishments will change hands.  Now, I don’t know if that is true, but there is a shifting demographic, not only in age, but in preferred geographic living locations, that…

Burnout: Try to avoid it through a proper work-life balance

By Funeral Director Daily / May 11, 2023 /

    I find it very interesting in that once I pick out an article for the day that other resources about the subject just seem to pop out to me and make me notice them when I have not noticed them in the past.  I don’t know why it happens, but it does seem…

Burnout and the funeral director

By Funeral Director Daily / May 11, 2023 /

    I’ve always loved the Spring of the year.  For us in the northern climates days are getting longer, the sun feels warmer, we can be outside without multiple layers of clothes on and the golf course opens.  Ever since I was small I’ve looked forward to this time of the year and was…

Selling Death Care in a “Limitless” world

By Funeral Director Daily / May 8, 2023 /

    Last week I spoke in front of a small audience of funeral directors and commented on what I see happening in the Death Care world.  One of the things that I have noticed that is very similar to the funeral home world that I worked in is that death care clientele have three…

Has the emergence of the woman funeral director made death care a “softer, gentler” process

By Funeral Director Daily / May 4, 2023 /

    It’s been no secret that for the past 30 years more and more women have been becoming active in the death care profession.  I saw the trend start with pre-need counselors but now according to this article from Spectrum 1, 65% of all graduates of funeral director programs in the United States are…

Green Burials are here

By Funeral Director Daily / May 2, 2023 /

    For the past 4 years of so since I’ve been putting pen to paper writing Funeral Director Daily as I do my research I invariably come across articles on Green Burials.  Green Burials by my definition are “ecology based earth burials with as simple a disposition process that can be done”.   They would…

Grief without the grave

By Funeral Director Daily / April 28, 2023 /

    There are approximately 3 million deaths in the United States each year.  As of 2023, about 40% of those deaths are interred as “Traditional Earth Burials”.  That leaves about 1.8 million deaths that are cremations, alkaline hydrolysis, green burials, or natural organic reduction forms of disposition.   In almost all of the three…

Titan Casket appears on CBS Sunday Morning

By Funeral Director Daily / April 27, 2023 /

    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…

What’s new with obituaries

By Funeral Director Daily / April 25, 2023 /

    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…

Keeping your Firm’s Families

By Funeral Director Daily / April 24, 2023 /

    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…