Articles
December 19, 2022
Published by 
Gabriel Ngo on December 19, 2022
Gabriel Ngo on December 19, 2022Scenario: Laura Laney is a third-generation owner-operator of Laney Funeral Home & Crematory in mid-Eastern Texas. Her family’s business has seen its share of trials and tribulations but has weathered them all and continues to thrive and grow. Laura’s business is just close enough to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex to benefit from the bustling growth yet far enough away to have experienced a comparatively slower rise in cremation rates – which has allowed Laura (and her father, Lynn, before her) to educate the community and families she serves on the value and importance of services and gatherings being no different than burial when families select cremation as an option. Throughout COVID, Laney Funeral Home & Crematory found legal ways around restrictions in order to provide full burial and cremation services to appreciative families as often as they could. Over the […]
December 19, 2022
Published by 
Dan Isard on December 19, 2022
Dan Isard on December 19, 2022As a new business owner, the first decisions you must make involve taxes. In most cases, however, you will feel so elated during your first days of ownership that you’ll just abdicate those decisions to your accountant and/or lawyer. Then, someday in the future, you will read an article, like this one, and wonder to yourself, “Hmm…” You therefore clip the article and send it to your accountant and/or lawyer. They, in turn, give you a long-winded explanation as to why the author of that article is wrong. Or, worse, they will write to the author and tell him why he is wrong. Please, save your breath and your typing fingers. I am not wrong. Here are the taxation basics you need to know. Decision One: Business Entity There are several ways businesses can be classified for tax purposes. The […]
November 21, 2022
Published by 
Chris Cruger on November 21, 2022
Chris Cruger on November 21, 2022It is absolutely essential for those looking to thrive in the profession today. It’s that time of year again – time to close out the old one strong and get the bricks in place for a solid 2023. We’ll talk about the planning process and 10 simple steps to get you on your way, but first, there are some areas requiring a little extra-special attention in 2022, areas of critical importance be-cause the profession is not keeping pace with the world around it. From 2017-21, the average price of a funeral has increased 6.6%, while the CPI (Consumer Price Index) increased more than 16%. This scenario is not sustainable. There are forces in play today that require you to be at the top of your game. Rising costs, the cremation rate and rapidly changing consumer attitudes require a well-thought-out plan. […]
November 21, 2022
Published by Dan Isard on November 21, 2022
Dan Isard on November 21, 2022Recently, a new cemetery client asked me to help repurpose a Master Plan. For those of you who are not regular readers, a Master Plan is the long-term plan for your undeveloped areas and maybe any developed areas that have not been sold or interred into yet. Good consultants usually answer a question with a question. My reply was, “If you had a restaurant, would you only have a few items on the menu, or would you try and provide variety?” Most cemeterians are limited in their mindset. Natural Burial is a viable and profitable option that may work. What Is Natural Burial? Well, it is basically a Kosher burial option, where the body is not embalmed with caustic materials. But that is the very limited interpretation. This can be conjugated to include a container holding the body that must […]
November 21, 2022
Published by Dan Isard on November 21, 2022
Dan Isard on November 21, 2022I entered this business when your grandparents were running it. Back then, it was easy to market a funeral home: go to Rotary meetings (or other social organizations) weekly, attend church services each weekend, park your cars in the parking lot each day after washing them, and wait for the phone to ring. Ah, the good old days. There was really very little to call acrimonious about your marketing efforts then (other than that stupid competitor down the road) because the issues that mattered to families were their religion, where their family was buried and which firm had served them in the past. I remember a study we conducted on funeral market share in the late 1980s. We found that a town’s “churched percentage” was the same as the number of people who knew which funeral home they would use. […]