Earlier this week funeral home and cemetery consolidator Carriage Services, based in Houston, Texas, produced their 3rd Quarter 2020 report and in it they recognized the quarter as record breaking for revenue and EBITDA. According to Chairman and CEO Mel Payne the company blew through milestones which they did not expect to reach until sometime in 2022. Here’s some of what CEO Payne had to say, “The last six months have been a remarkably historic performance period for Carriage, as […]
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 business in California is going. . . . will that be the pattern for the nation moving forward? The old Maine adage made note that […]
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, while my older brother who was nine years old got all dressed up and left the house with my parents. I can remember thinking, “What […]
A little over a year ago Funeral Director Daily brought you this article introducing Better Place Forests to our readers. At that time we said of the idea, “Think of it. . . increased cremation and now a place – like cemeteries of old – where today’s consumer will feel comfortable placing the remains of loved ones in an environmentally friendly way and place. An interesting venture. . . and one whose time may have come.” At that time the […]
Yesterday Funeral Director Daily published an article about cemeteries and in that article we made the assertion that the COVID experience of 2020 will probably have some type of long-term effect on funerals going forward. That statement was made mostly in reference to what has happened with funeral attendance due to the social distancing practices that have been imposed from place to place. It’s been my experience that when an individual is forced to change a habit, sometimes that forced […]
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 do business in the COVID world, the financial results still probably lag where we want them to be. We know that there has been a […]
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) and was a technology that was meant to improve funeral directors performance during arrangement conferences. If you go to their web-site you will see that […]
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 to put a positive spin that it (preneed financial planning) was just the next step in a life full of prudent financial decisions the consumer […]
For almost 35 years I went about doing my job as an owner/operator of a mortuary. I answered calls, I did some embalmings, I met with families, and I conducted thousands of funerals. I know that by my nature that I am a “people pleaser” and I always strived to please everyone whom I was working for. If that meant staying late for a visitation. . fine. . . if it meant missing watching a Vikings game on a Sunday […]
I believe that I’m now in my 8th month of living in the COVID world. And, in that world a lot has changed about how I do things. Even with the change, however, things seem to be slowly returning to normal in my state of Minnesota. Our students are in school, our high school football team started play last Friday night, and I noticed business, almost as usual, when I was on the campus of the University of Minnesota for […]
