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Part 3 of 3 Written by Chris Cruger with Alice Adams Will you succeed in your profession’s new era? Then consider transitioning to transparency a matter of survival. Remember “The Emperor’s New Clothes”? That folktale may have been your first experience with the word “transparent.” As the story goes, the emperor was duped by a tailor, and the new clothes he had ordered were not as they should be. As he marched through the city, his subjects were afraid to tell the emperor that his clothing was transparent – clear, see-through – and that he was, in fact, totally naked! Transparency in business is similar (without the nudity). Transparent businesses publicly share information about their company – information traditionally kept private or revealed only in-house. Transparency today is essential. It is about being real and often carries different meanings from […]

I am old enough to remember the very first episodes of The Jetsons. This futuristic primetime cartoon showed us the world of tomorrow. While so many of the concepts still have not come to be, many have! But The Jetsons never had a cartoon character die, so we never got to see how George or Jane would have been interred in the future. With all due respect to Hanna-Barbera Productions, here is my best guess at the cemetery of the future. Why is this concept even print worthy for this magazine? Well, you have a major investment in this business for which you have stewardship. Your stewardship will last until you retire and pass that responsibility on (in a nonprofit) or until you sell it (in the case of a management agreement or a for-profit). In most cases, you have […]

Key Indicators to Elevate Your Virtual Presence In my last Memento Mori article, I wrote about the growing and essential importance of having your website truly be your virtual business as well as how online reviews are now more crucial than ever. However, that is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Relating your virtual business website to your physical location—and the general physical concepts regarding “curb appeal” and “location, location, location” being such vital components in real life—there are foundations you should understand to help ensure that you avoid “not standing out” and “being invisible” in a busy marketplace as the Seth Godin quote so eloquently captures. There are approximately 5.18 billion internet users in 2023 (versus a world population of about 8.1 billion)— that is 64% of ALL people on this earth utilizing the internet in some form […]

Every year for almost 40 years, I have worked with funeral home owners and managers, as well as cemeterians, to create their annual business plans. As I prepare to exit my chosen career, I want the next-to-last lesson plan I offer you to be about, er, well… planning. I have learned more than I ever thought possible about planning for my lifetime, so allow me to be your wise “Uncle Murray” this month. The “big picture” is actually not one image but more like a jigsaw puzzle, made up of all sorts of pieces, small and large, that together form your life. While those of you who chose to become business owners have a picture within the big picture called your business, each individual’s pieces should all fit together to form their life plan. It’s only after retiring that you […]

Last month, I provided a postmortem of the most common causes leading to the death of a funeral business. Here, I share a few thoughts on eulogizing those firms. Funeral directors are mission-driven people, not profit-driven people. Just as a church can fail if its revenue does not exceed its expenses, so, too, can a funeral home. Unlike other for-profit businesses, funeral providers cannot generate more revenue by advertising or somehow “stimulating” business. At-need services cannot be driven. The death of many iconic businesses can be tied to technology. Do funeral homes face the same risk? Big-box retailers were hurt by technology, for example, and Amazon is now the independent-business killer that Walmart was accused of being 30 years ago. That said, Amazon can’t even deliver caskets in a timely manner, so I doubt it could handle cremation very well […]