When I served my community as a funeral director I had a couple of expressions that I absolutely lived by:

 

1. “Underpromise and overdeliver”
2. “Have a low ego and high output”

 

I worked very hard to deliver on everything I promised and to do so in a personal way where nothing was more important than the families I was serving.  I found out that once you live with that thought it simply becomes a mindset and way of life.

 

It’s why I get disappointed at times with my service at Funeral Director Daily.  My aim is not to deluge you with thousands of emails in your inbox but to simply put one article out every weekday morning and hope that you anticipate getting it and get some practical knowledge that you can put to use from the short daily article.

 

Like needing a police escort to a cemetery or trusting a far away funeral firm or trade service to bring a client’s deceased relative to your funeral home I have to rely on some things that are out of my control to accomplish this task.

 

And, like the police that get called away to a crime or accident scene, or the trade service that cannot get death certificates signed in time, or an airline flight cancellation, sometimes the situation is out of your control – and you feel absolutely helpless.

 

With Funeral Director Daily it is technology.  I count on the website in which I write my articles to have them designed and ready for dissemination to my readers at a certain time. . . . .I also count on a company to then pick up those articles and distribute via email  at a certain time every day.

 

I’m certainly not perfect and have had my share of mistakes — such as putting P.M. instead of A.M. on a publish time at times or putting the wrong publish day down.  I do, however, work hard to keep that to a minimum. . . .and double, triple, and quadruple check most of my articles.

 

However, there are times when I think that I’ve got everything right and I get up at 6 am and check the 4 am distribution email — I get the FDD article email in three different accounts just to be sure it is not the account that is down — and the article is not in my inbox.

 

That happened last week . . . . for a couple of days.

 

When that happens I have a back-up plan.  A 12:00 noon Eastern Time distribution available.  When the distribution e-mail does not go out at 4 am I notice that at 6 am when I am up and simply re-calibrate the e-mail to be sent at Noon.  That’s my back-up that I have to use once in a while. . . . However, last week the back-up e-mail also did not go out — for the first time in the history of my blog, the backup did not work.

 

That’s when a call to the distribution technology company comes in and we get them working on the issue.

 

One consolation of this happening is that I hear from faithful readers who are Johnny-on-the-spot to let me know that they didn’t get their Funeral Director Daily article that day.  While it is no fun to know that the article did not go out as planned there is also some solace in knowing how much many of you appreciate my daily articles. . . . So thank you.

 

If there is anything to learn from this situation it may be a comparative with the local clientele you serve.  Maybe it is the police escort that doesn’t show up right at the proper time or some other situation that you cannot control.  My guess is, however, if you have served your community or clientele with diligence and competence for some time, it may be at that time that your clientele realizes how often you do things correct and without a hitch and how being a responsible funeral director is big a part of a community’s well being.

 

Sorry about last week. . . . .

 

Here are the Funeral Director Daily articles you may have missed last week:

• “Location, economics of clientele can lead to cemetery success/failure”
• “Milestone Partners hires M&A expert”
• “New Advisory Group formed at Foundation Partners Group”
• “The Economy and possible effects on Death Care”

 

Update — We are back on track and hope we are good to go for a period of time.  To make a long story short, it takes a collaborative effort to get Funeral Director Daily in your e-mail box each day.  WordPress is our writing platform, GoDaddy supplies necessary web-hosting and security, Mailchimp delivers the e-mail, I contract with a personal technology vendor to quarterback these efforts, and I write the article.  When something goes wrong with one of us, the system breaks down and you don’t receive FDD in your inbox.

 

Ultimately, after a very thorough search into a lot of items including the actual WordPress “coding” of our blog,  an investigation into why our e-mails did not go out resulted in the find that a new security feature of one of our vendors did not recognize what I now know is our “RSS feed” and my writing was “blocked” from getting to Mailchimp for distribution.  We think we have the collaborative effort back in place at this time so you can continue to receive daily emails.

 

The blog was published and went out via our other distribution methods such as Facebook, however, over 50% of our daily readers receive the blog via e-mail so our readership numbers were down for a couple of days.  Hopefully, everything is back on track. . . until my next stress-filled dilemma occurs!!!

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• Jackie O.’s funeral home just got a whole lot livelier.  Elle Decor
• History of the Canadian Funeral Director Magazine.  Canadian Funeral Director Magazine  (Canada)
• Owner of several Bay Area cemeteries loses ruling over $52 million in “endowment care” funds.  SiliconValley.com Business  (CA)

 

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“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”