Business
We are in the period of public companies reporting their 3rd Quarter results to the world and it is only a couple of weeks before Hillenbrand, parent company of Batesville Casket Company, and Matthews International, parent company of Aurora Casket Company will give us those results. As most of you know, those businesses have generally…
So, I warned you earlier in the week that I would be doing a column on what was happening with Starbucks and why I thought there was enough general information in what I had heard that it would be useful to people who operate businesses in the death care realm. To refresh you, I had…
This isn’t what I was planning to write about an hour ago. It’s Friday as I write this and earlier this morning I was on the treadmill watching CNBC with Jim Cramer as he was interviewing Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson. I thought the interview was very informative on how Starbucks was using the pandemic, that…
We are in the season of elections and when I was younger there was an old adage of Presidential elections that went like this, “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.” I recently read this article in the Los Angeles Business Journal entitled, “Business Slows for LA Funeral Homes”, and wondered if as the funeral…
My first real recollection of a funeral was when my father’s mother, my grandmother, died when I was five years old. And, interestingly enough, even with my family in the funeral profession, what I remember about the “funeral” was not being allowed to go. I can actually remember being held at home with a babysitter,…
One of the great things about not working every day anymore is that I now have the time to be “intentional” about myself. Back in the day of every day work my routine was get up, shower, a quick cup of coffee with a glance at the daily newspaper, and then off to work by…
We’ve now moved into the 4th quarter of 2020 and with that timing we have had 6 full months of the COVID world results in death care. We know from listening to the news, looking at public death care company reports, and anecdotal reports from our colleagues that while funeral homes have been learning to…
I left full-time employment in the funeral profession at the end of the 2013 calendar year. At that time I was aware of a young, emerging company called Passare, whose web-site you can see here. What I remember of Passare is that, I believe, it was a product of Funeral Directors Life Insurance Company (FDLIC)…
The other day I wrote an article that was titled “Selling Preneed. . . .positively” which you can read here. The bottom line of that article was to illustrate when advising on preneed, to promote preneed in a positive fashion. I went on to say how, when I did seminars on funeral pre-arrangements, I tried…
