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Author: Alan Creedy

How I learned How to Understand and Love My Financials

Written by Alan Creedy on . Posted in Money: Getting it and Keeping it. 1 Comment on How I learned How to Understand and Love My Financials

Funeral Home Owners struggle with financial information.  It is very difficult for people who are not financially oriented to understand tabular data.  Thanks to artificial intelligence and new software there is now a way for them to connect the dots at a glance and know what to do.

Join me at the Kates Boylston Webinar Wednesday Feb. 21 at 2:00 PM Eastern Time to learn how you can use this powerful software and simplify your life.

Register here to join us.

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4427576530462311253?source=Alan+Creedy

 

 

 

 

The March Of Dimes & Funeral Service

Written by Alan Creedy on . Posted in The Creedy Commentary. No Comments on The March Of Dimes & Funeral Service

The March of Dimes was founded in 1938 by Franklin D. Roosevelt to eradicate Infantile Paralysis (Polio).

With the advent of Jonas Salk’s vaccine in the early 1950’s the disease was largely eradicated in the Western World.  In 1994 the United States was the first nation to be certified “Polio Free.”

What does this have to do with Funeral Service?

Metaphorically, the history of The March of Dimes is instructive to the history of Funeral Service.

By 1976 Polio was so rare in the U.S. that most people thought the battle was won.  But by then, the March of Dimes had become an institution. It had local chapters, it had employees, it had facilities, it even had a budget.  It had successfully raised millions of dollars.

The stakeholders were faced with a dilemma.  “What do you do when what you do loses its relevance?”

Fortunately, they had some smart people who were able to step outside of themselves and think about what’s next.  In my imagination I can hear them saying:

“Let’s see…we have a dedicated and successful staff, we have a globally recognized brand, we have a system and a network, we have competency in operating a charitable organization, we are well – connected.  and so on.”

History would suggest that they realized that they had more going for them than not.  They just needed to reimagine (not reinvent) their purpose in a way that their strengths would carry them forward.  Today, they are still globally recognized as an important resource in the fight against birth defects.

Funeral Service has reimagined itself more than once in the last 175 years.  I doubt Joseph Gawler in 1850 even imagined the advent of embalming.  Yet a mere 30 years after the founding of Gawlers the first embalming school was established. Likewise, I doubt he could have foreseen the day when manufactured caskets would supplant the home-built coffin.

Funeral Service has progressed and developed continuously here in America.  The skill sets important in Joseph Gawler’s day are largely irrelevant today.

So, what do we have going for us?  Well, people still die and will for the foreseeable future.  Families still have need of someone to help with the process of disposal.  What they seem to be moving away from is the furniture.  At the same time, those who have begun to develop the skill of “Appreciative Inquiry” in the arrangement interview are discovering that they still want to honor the dead and interact in, what used to be, unconventional ways.  The public does, in fact, care.  We just haven’t yet developed the skill of helping them do it the way they feel is appropriate to them.  A few have, but most are still locked into the furniture mindset.  The funeral professionals who have, are experiencing renewed enthusiasm, renewed relevance and increased customer loyalty.  It’s a new skill set.  I think that skill set is well suited to most funeral director’s personality.  It’s just a different approach.

The Takeaway:

Things change.  Your task is to discern which of the old practices are “babies” and which is the “bathwater” and then to adjust accordingly by learning and leaning into the skill sets appropriate to our times.

 

 

 

The Case of The Reluctant Successor

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Case Studies in Succession Planning:

The Case of the Reluctant Successor

It comes as a surprise to most owners to learn that more than 50% of potential successors, whether they be children or key employees, either don’t want the business or can’t swing it financially.  But many owners operate on the assumption that when it comes time to retire it will be an easy and stress free transition.

There are two elements at work in a sale or transition to insiders to be aware of:

  1. Most owners fail to validate their assumption relative to interest or ability.  They may discuss it in abstract terms but never get down to the how.  Given the human penchant for deferring issues until they happen it is not unusual for this door to be closed in the 11th hour
  2. Most owners fail to prepare their successor.  I have had many experiences with 45 year old children who have never seen the company financial statements.

Jesse Milhouse is 65 and has decided it is time to “slow down.” His son, Jason (30), and his daughter, Jackie (28), have worked for him since graduating mortuary school. Both are funeral directors and embalmers.

When Jesse approached them about buying him out he was surprised to learn they weren’t “sure” they wanted to do that.  Both were just starting families and didn’t feel they were ready or able to run the business without dad.  No wonder, dad had done nothing to prepare them either practically or emotionally.  Jason, in particular, wasn’t even sure he wanted to be in the funeral business.

Disappointed, Jesse took a step back.  He and his wife, Ann, asked me to come visit with them.

I spent time interviewing Jesse and Ann and then Jason and Jackie.  I learned that, while Ann and Jesse had always assumed that the kids would succeed them, they had never talked about it as a family.  In recent years Jesse had become increasingly frustrated with the direction funeral service was taking.  That frustration, in turn, had been expressed in the form of discouragement and anger.  Jason and Jackie had internalized their dad’s behavior as indicating there wasn’t really a viable future.  This gave them pause relative to whether they wanted to spend 30 to 40 years in a declining industry.

We concluded that the issue was twofold:

  1. Was Jesse’s current perspective on the future valid or not?
  2. Jason and Jackie needed to be developed into roles that could make them successful in 21st Century Funeral Service.

Since I believe that the future is a lot brighter than most believe, I recommended that they give it two more years and adopt a plan to see if they can have an impact on the business and for Jason and Jackie to determine if it will be a rewarding career.

Our first step was to train Jason and Jackie on the arrangement interview techniques that are part of our Service Charge Merchandising system.  We also guided Jesse, Jason and Jackie as well as the admin team on assimilating the “Radical Hospitality” concept.

So far, they feel like they are making progress.  They are picking up calls they wouldn’t have served before.  Their average sale has increased by more than 10% without raising prices.  Jason and Jackie are feeling much more confident about themselves and the future.  Best of all, they recently reported they all love the feeling of wanting to go to work instead of having to go to work…including Jesse.

At this writing the jury is still out.  But things are going in the right direction.  A happy byproduct is that, if Jason and / or Jackie decide not to buy it, the firm will be significantly more attractive and valuable to a third party buyer.

Key takeaway:

  • Watch your attitude
    • If it’s a bad deal for you why would it be a good deal for them?
  • Talk about it early, often and specifically
  • Prepare them for assuming ownership
  • Get your act together
    • Don’t expect you successor to clean up your mess

 

 

Six Blind Funeral Directors – Fourth Installment

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What, Then, Shall We Become?

So, considering the issue from a theoretical, rational  and contextual perspective, we are left with the question: Now What?!

When this most recent transformation began several decades ago the question was: “how can we adapt?”  I believe that question led us down some unfortunate rabbit trails.  It is less about adaptation than it is about reimagining.  We have reimagined ourselves more than once.  It is time to do it again.

I have come to the following conclusions:

  • The form has changed the substance has not
  • The skill sets required for success are simple but different
  • How value is defined has changed; but there is still value
  • The opportunity for radical transformation provides unprecedented opportunity for personal success

In her book: “The Art of Gathering” (a must read for funeral directors) Priya Parker points out that the venue dictates the experience.  The conventional funeral home venue (formal chapel, somber décor, muted sound) is in conflict with the form of expression preferred by the public today.  Ultimately, these facilities must be phased out. This is not new.  Compare the current facilities built as funeral homes with the converted houses of a previous age.  Yet, it is financially unfeasible for most practitioners to build new and abandon the old.  So, as a stopgap, we must redecorate and, if possible, renovate.  If we are to abandon anything, we must abandon the conventional tomb-like interiors for upbeat, transcendent themes with lots of lighting.

Tracing the evolution of funeral service and its sequential reimagining enables us to realize that the thread of continuity is that we are facilitators.  Initially, we facilitated transportation and merchandise.  Today, we are called on to do that and much more.  We are now facilitators of personal expression.  It is our role to facilitate the expression of why a given life mattered.  Not only for the deceased but for the survivors.  We are to facilitate an experience (not an event) that is transcendent.  An event has a beginning and an end.  While it may be a different experience than people are used to it is not necessarily transcendent. As a litmus test, an experience should always leave people feeling different than when they arrived.  The venue can facilitate or constrain that result.

As facilitators we must become proficient in interviewing, listening, reframing, reflecting and guiding and assisting our clients to achieve more than they expected.  That requires that we master Appreciative Inquiry.  Value will not be defined by us, our facility or the merchandise.  Although those things can help or hurt the perception. It will be defined by how we make people feel.

Given that few can afford to build 21st Century transcendent style facilities, we must also relearn the social graces incorporated in the concept of Radical Hospitality.  Thereby creating an oasis of safety, comfort and optimism.

I truly believe that those who are able to reimagine their business will find their business growing and increasingly prosperous.  Consumer choices will be less and less about money and more about individual significance.  I am excited for the younger members of our profession.  This is one reimagining that is both inexpensive (except for that new facility) and simple.  There is so much you can do now that costs either nothing or very little.  Those that make it will be rewarded exponentially.

For more on this:

Six Blind Funeral Directors Describe Our Future

Six Blind Funeral Directors – 2nd installment

Six Blind Funeral Directors – Third Installment

Six Blind Funeral Directors – Third Installment

Written by Alan Creedy on . Posted in The Creedy Commentary. 1 Comment on Six Blind Funeral Directors – Third Installment

Six Blind Funeral Directors – Third Installment

In our prior two installments we looked at our future from a theoretical perspective and a rational perspective.  This installment we will focus on a contextual perspective.

A Contextual Approach To The Future

 A study of the evolution of contemporary American DeathCare beginning in 1850 suggests that our current transformation is the fifth in a series of iterative transformations.  Each, including this one, is a response to changes in society and culture.

Compare the skill sets necessary for success in 1850 (livery and cabinet making) with the, yet undefined, skill sets necessary for success today and the difference is worlds apart.  This is not our first rodeo.  Imagine you are the 30-year-old son of a coffin maker coming home from the very first NFDA convention in 1880 and telling your coffin – maker dad that you were going to get your embalmer’s certificate and the company needed to switch to premade caskets instead of making coffins. I just can’t see that conversation going well.

Just 30 years ago the primary skill sets for funeral directors were embalming, casket merchandising and never making a mistake.  Today, people skills dominate as well as teaching (better word: coaching), listening and creating.

So, in context, this is the fifth time in our history we have needed to respond to cultural changes by assimilating new and different skill sets.  Those that seek out and embrace those new skill sets will realize the “First Mover” advantage.

Each time we have undergone transformation we have emerged better and stronger and I am hopeful we can do the same now.  What is needed are two insights.  The first has to do with what has not changed. And the second with what we need to become.  In other words: “we need to change the bathwater without discarding the babies.”

What has not changed and is a thread that reaches back over at least 4,000 years of recorded history and beyond is the human response to death.  This includes both the deceased and their survivors.  That core need is the same today that it was from the beginning of time.  The substance has not changed but the form has.  The essence or consistent theme has only changed relative to its expression and platform.  When death occurs, humans need to gather, comfort one another, and affirm the meaning of life (the deceased and our own).  There are probably other ways to describe it but in a succinct way those are the common elements, the three universal drivers that reach across all individual preferences.  You can change the form, the ritual, the process, the venue; but those three elements are constant.

That leaves us with what we need to become.  Clearly, in much the same way coffin makers and livery providers yielded to embalmers and casket sellers, we need to move to the next generation of funeral director: Muse, creator, guide, teacher, trusted advisor.  Each of these involves that we take on new roles.  We have done that before and we can do it now.  What makes this reinvention a challenge is that it requires us to abandon our historical bias toward being unobtrusive.  These are active roles producing intentional outcomes.  “What do you want?,” is no longer a relevant question.

Next week, the fourth and final installment: What, Then, Shall We Become.

Six Blind Funeral Directors – 2nd installment

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Six Blind Funeral Directors – 2nd installment

A Rational Approach To The Future

Last week we explored the theoretical approach to our future using the allegory of the Six Blind Funeral Directors.  This week we explore a Rational Approach.

Our first question is: What do we know?

We know that our market has changed and most of us have not.  We know that the public wants something different, but we aren’t sure what it is.  We know that we are spending more time explaining our value to the public and to ourselves than we used to.  We also know we aren’t completely sure what our value is…at least, in consumer terms.  We know what customers should do and at the same time we know what they don’t want to do.

30 years ago, our product was simple.  Society defined what to do when someone died and thereby defined value.  Consumers only had two choices to make: which funeral home to use and what merchandise to buy.  Today, our product is complex.  Society is no longer dictating what to do but it is inferring what not to do.  So, the definition of value has become ambiguous.  Without the necessary clarity value defaults to price.  For the first time in our country’s history, doing nothing is an option.

Rationally, we must be assertive in defining value and expressing it in a way that connects with the public.  This is both difficult and stressful because funeral service has always been passive, unobtrusive and servile in its relationship with the market. When societal norms were in our favor, that made sense.  But if we want to reverse current trends, we are going to have to take responsibility and become assertive.  Fortunately, there is much to say in our defense…we just have to say it in the right way.

The second question is:  What is the right way?

Consumers are already telling us the answer.  They want a collaborative interactive approach.  They want the funeral director to be more active as a mentor and muse helping them define meaning and a realistic, practical way to express why the life of the deceased mattered.  It really isn’t any harder than that.

The conventional arrangement conference has highly transactional overtones.  When society told us what to do, that made sense. Consumers, today, find that approach objectionable.  So, our first step is to learn how to make funeral arrangements in collaborative ways with mutually beneficial outcomes.  I like to refer to that method as “Appreciative Inquiry.”  I borrowed that term from Organizational Theory.  If you look up the definition in Wikipedia it will give you a good idea of how it is different.

Some of you are aware that Danny Jefferson and I have launched a consulting company called Two Guys and a Question.   We train funeral directors how to Merchandise their Service Charge.  We rely heavily on appreciative inquiry which results in greater bonding with family.  That, in turn, creates a safe environment for people to explore options.  This exploration results in increased average sale as well as increased volume.

Next week: Chapter 3 A Contextual Approach 

Six Blind Funeral Directors Describe Our Future

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Six Blind Funeral Directors Describe Our Future

Chapter 1 The Theory of DeathCare

We are all familiar with the parable of the six blind men describing an elephant.  As we struggle with imagining the future of funeral service a survey of trade journal articles and convention agendas can’t help but bring this parable to mind.  One industry guru believes that price is the only thing people care about. Another believes that the future is in making arrangements online and still another believes ceremony is our salvation. Yet another believes it is all about cremation.  And then there is pet cremation.  And the list goes on, never answering the simple yet direct question posed in Blue Ocean Strategy:

What are the 3 universal value drivers today’s market finds most attractive?

Our focus on the activities of the process has made us blind to the essence of the market. The essence is where the solution lays.

My favorite author, Peter Drucker, once asked the question: “Why do successful industries run by capable people so often decline and just as often disappear?”  His conclusion was interesting.

He believed that the answer did not lie in people doing wrong things or even making wrong decisions.  His thought was that every successful industry is based on a theory.  That theory defines the customer, the product and even the purpose of that product in narrow and manageable ways.  In the beginning, the theory is relevant…it works. As time elapses, the theory becomes a paradigm.  Unfortunately, society never stands still. So, as more time elapses the theory wears thin. But no one notices until the industry is either internally or externally disrupted.  Then, rather than revisit the prevailing theory / paradigm, practitioners resist until resistance fails to work.  Some companies like Procter and Gamble and, in our own profession, The Mount Pleasant Group, have cultures that equip them to adapt.  But most simply get absorbed or fail.  From buggy whips to computers there are endless examples.

I believe the conventional theory on which DeathCare is based (caskets, vehicles and unobtrusive servility) has worn very, very thin.  It is dangerously close to becoming an anachronism. So much so, that in a few markets like Southern Florida it is no longer relevant.  But a new theory has not yet emerged that shows significant promise.

As we wait for that new unifying theory I am also conflicted.  I believe that efforts to resolve our challenges is causing some to throw babies out with the bathwater.  I further believe there are babies in that bathwater and to abandon them without serious consideration makes no sense to me.

Next week Chapter 2: A Rational Approach

Obituaries and Artificial Intelligence

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Artificial Intelligence – Doing more efficiently that which is already done poorly.

It’s all the buzz – Artificial Intelligence. Of course the excitable “hand wringers” among us are already speculating about its disruptive potential. Perhaps this time they are right.  It remains to be seen.

AI’s first toehold is in the writing of obituaries. Feeling, as I do, that obituary writing has become far too mundane and formulaic this makes sense.  But the initial results, in my opinion, are disappointing.  Out of curiosity, I sought out several firms who are experimenting with AI obituaries and my response is underwhelming.  It appears that AI, at best, is simply making more efficient a task that is in dire need of reinvention. As so often happens, funeral directors mistake efficiency for effectiveness.

I was hoping that AI would be able to make the obituary more robust, engaging and personal.  Instead it perpetuates the same old industrial template of the past. In fact, having read multiple obituaries written by the same AI program there was a notable sameness to each.  I doubt most people would read multiple obituaries from the same site so maybe it doesn’t matter. Still, they left me with the same one or two dimensional insight to the deceased that all obituaries have given me.

Well, Alan, how can we do this differently?

To me the obituary and how it is written is one of the more powerful ways we can differentiate ourselves.  Think of it this way: to me, the standard obituary is black and white; a great obituary is color.  Meaning that I get a much richer and more robust sense of who the person was and maybe it even generates a sadness I didn’t know them better.

I am told AI will improve with time.  But for now, I think humans can do better. But only if they will.

I recently encountered a simple yet effective (and efficient too) approach to obituaries that takes the standard black and white obituary and causes it to blossom into full 3D color.  There is no question in my mind that I would jump on this method.  I believe it will do much more than differentiate you from the competition but substantially improve your family loyalty.

You can check it out here:  The Healing Obituary

Disclaimer: I have no business relationship formal or otherwise with The Healing Obituary.  I just believe they can make a positive difference in our profession and for your firm.

 

 

Finish Well

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Posted on 

Forty-three years ago, Alan Creedy took over the financially distressed OGR Service Corp., the for-profit arm of what is now the International Order of the Golden Rule.

With a background in accounting and psychology, he had no idea he was about to start his life’s work, which would coincide with his lifelong faith journey – a topic he weaves into the posts you’ll find on The Creedy Commentary, the blog on his website.

After spending five years turning around OGR, he went on to serve as president of Brown-Wynne’s funeral homes and cemeteries, where he built upon the legacy of the respected firm, ultimately orchestrating its sale.

 

Global Pandemic: How Should We Then Live

Written by Alan Creedy on . Posted in The Creedy Commentary, General Topics. No Comments on Global Pandemic: How Should We Then Live

I know this is a politically charged topic. It is not my intent to influence anyone’s perspective.  These words so precisely express my own viewpoint and are so encouraging to me that I feel compelled to share them.

The words of C.S. Lewis guide us yet today.

It’s now clear that COVID-19 is a deadly serious global pandemic, and all necessary precautions should be taken. Still, C. S. Lewis’s words—written 72 years ago—ring with some relevance for us. Just replace “atomic bomb” with “coronavirus.”

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.” In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still.

It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds. —

“On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays

First posted by Matt Smethurst

End of Watch

Written by Alan Creedy on . Posted in General Topics. 2 Comments on End of Watch

As I write this it is July 27, 2020 and so far this year more than 140 police officers have sacrificed their lives for you and for me. 19 so far in July alone. Yet, the mainstream media excoriates them for doing their job. Demonstrators humiliate and physically assault and even murder them by ambush. Worse, the ordinary citizen does nothing.

If I were a funeral home owner here is what I would do. 

Every time a police officer or firefighter or EMS technician lost their life in the line of duty anywhere in the United States I would post their picture and their obituary on my website obituary page.  For those killed by violence I would print one of those poster sized portraits put it on an easel and invite the public to come and sign the register book.  I might also find a place for people to make memorial contributions. I would probably put up a sign on the street side of my building to advertise it.

Yup, I know.  If this year continues like it has you will be doing this 2,3,4 and 5 times a week. I think if they can give their life I can do the time and spend the money.

We are in the business of celebrating lives, honoring the dead and comforting the grieving. This is a place we can stand up against what looks like a movement to tyranny.  We don’t have to be political but it is our duty to honor the fallen.

Here is a link to a site complete with photos and obituaries.

http://www.odmp.org/search/year

This is a way to show support for first responders in your area.

Don’t Just Stand There… Do Something.

Police Officer Ismael Chavez

McAllen Texas

End Of Watch July 11, 2020

ISMAEL CHAVEZ

Police Officer Ismael Chavez and Police Officer Edelmiro Garza were shot and killed from ambush while responding to a domestic disturbance call at a home in the 3500 block of Queta Street.

They had approached the front door of the home when they were suddenly ambushed and shot before drawing their weapons or making an emergency broadcast. Other officers who were sent to check on them came across the scene and immediately requested backup.

The subject who ambushed them committed suicide as additional units arrived on scene.

Officer Chavez had served with the McAllen Police Department for 2-1/2 years.