Business
Every once in a while I come across an article which reminds me how much the actual inner workings of a funeral business has changed. And sometimes paradoxically, the same article or articles can point out that what I’m looking at is not so much a change as it is an evolution. Today I will…
Read MoreI read this interesting short article (and video news story) authored by Myles Udland at Yahoo Finance the other day. In the article, he surmises about “the role that demand is playing in the economic recovery.” According to Udland, you can “throw a dart at just about anywhere in the economy and you’ll find unmet demand…
Read MoreIt’s hard for me to believe that I now call Direct Mail, Radio, and Newspaper advertising “non-conventional”. When I started in the business that was about as “conventional” as it got. However, when I am looking online for products to buy I’ve become accustomed to looking at the “Reviews” or the “Star Ratings” now. I…
Read MoreIt was probably ten years ago when I, as a funeral director, received a phone call from a member of a family whose father was on hospice care. The family member told me that his father “wanted his body donated to science” and had made arrangements for a private company to help them do that. …
Read MoreI’ve been on this bandwagon a long time and I can see it coming down the road. The bandwagon I’m talking about is “hospice providers becoming part of the death care profession”. In this article from Hospice News you can read about hospice provider Compassus beginning a pilot progam to, among other things, “assist with…
Read MoreFuneral Director Daily published this article last week that we titled “We saw a lot of deaths in 2020”. The article tried to put a number to the number of death care cases across the United States in our Covid-19 pandemic year. We came up with the number of 3,427,321 which was a 20% increase…
Read MoreIt’s not all that common but it does happen in the death care profession from time to time. The “it” I’m talking about is regulatory infractions that can cause a funeral home or other other death care business, such as a crematory, to be shut down for some period of time. When it does happen…
Read MoreAn article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune which you can access here was headlined, “U.S. overdose deaths hit a record 93,000 in pandemic last year”. The article went on to say that the calendar year 2020 saw a record number of deaths due to drug overdoses in the year. . . an increase of 29%…
Read MoreIn a decision that came down in early July 2021 a Canadian arbitrator has ruled against a funeral home and for its two employees in a case involving employees rights to a pierced nose and un-covered tattoos. You can read the article from Canada’s National Post on the decision here. In essence, the decision by…
Read MoreReally good funeral directors are great to have working on your team. If you have a really good funeral director in your employ, how do you know it? Are there metrics that can be quantified to tell if you do have a really good funeral director on your team? If so, how do you get…
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