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The Challenge Selling a business is a major financial and emotional milestone, often complicated by family dynamics and long-term planning. While advisors are essential, success depends on their alignment, clear communication, and guidance throughout the process. When a family-owned funeral home faced delays and confusion from fragmented advice, Foresight was brought in to coordinate the team and ensure a successful sale. The Solution Milestone #1: Choosing a Successor The owners hoped their grandchildren would take over, but their inexperience and limited financing made this unfeasible. The bank’s initial advice was vague and overly optimistic. In reality, the deal required a significant discount and risky seller financing, exposing the owners if the grandchildren defaulted on payments. Once this was clear, the family opted for a third-party sale, allowing the grandchildren to grow in the business without heavy debt. Milestone #2: Choosing […]

By Welton Hong, founder and CEO of Ring Ring Marketing When a family is grieving, patience is thin, and needs are urgent. If your website hesitates, they won’t: They’ll leave your website and choose the next funeral home in the search results. Multiple studies show the cost of a slow site. For instance: 53% of the time, someone will abandon pages that take longer than three seconds to load, according to Google. The chance a visitor bounces jumps 32% as load time grows from 1 to 3 seconds, and 123% from 1 to 10 seconds on mobile, according to Google. Conversion-focused research conducted by HubSpot finds the best conversion rates happen between 0 to two seconds, with sharp declines as seconds pile on. If your pages routinely exceed a few seconds to load, the implications are clear: People feel that […]

And no, you don’t need to panic. But you do need a plan. Let’s set the scene. A future family is sitting on their couch—probably in sweats, possibly with a pet in their lap—Googling funeral homes. Not driving around town. Not flipping through the Yellow Pages (RIP). Just tapping, scrolling, and reading reviews. And in those few moments, they’ve already decided whether you feel approachable, trustworthy, and worth calling—or if they’re moving on to the next name in the search results. According to our 2025 Consumer Behavior Study, 78% of future families plan to do online research before choosing a provider. That’s up from 71% last year. The shift we’ve been warning about? It’s no longer “on the horizon”—it’s already at your front door. And if your website is still rocking a PDF price list and a grainy photo from […]

How one legacy funeral home chose change over a quick sale—and made payroll boring again. Names, locations, and certain details have been changed to protect client confidentiality. “No stories,” the banker said. “Show me what changed.” Jordan slid a single page across the table—discounts frozen, comp corrected, Tuesday cash huddle, and a date circled in ink: the day the 36% note would die. Payroll hit in six days. Miss it, and a generations-old reputation cracks in one afternoon. Six weeks earlier, the partners at Harborstone Memorial—an East Coast firm serving a tightly knit, heritage-rich community—had considered selling to close out their mortgage. Instead, they tried something harder: change the way they ran the place—fast, in order, and with receipts. This is the ninety-day play that made that choice real. The slide (and the line they wouldn’t cross) It never starts […]

Why lenders only pay for profits they can trust—and how every funeral-home leader, from CEO to apprentice, can keep theirs real A COVID-Era Deal That Didn’t Survive Diligence In 2021, “Cascade Memorial” (Pacific Northwest) signed an LOI a bit over $4M. Lenders’ Quality-of-Earnings (QoE) review knocked nearly 20% for overstated preneed revenue and one-off COVID relief credits. The sellers walked; two years later the home sold closer to $3M. That gap wasn’t a market glitch—it was profits a lender didn’t trust. Why this matters (to everyone) • Public-company CFOs: figures must stand up to board and banker scrutiny. • Independent owners: no surprise haircuts at closing. • New apprentices: numbers tell your story—learn the clean version first. With near-9% rates and shifting service mix, lenders ask not just “How much did you make?” but “How confident are we you’ll make […]