July 25, 2025
Published by 
Chris Cruger on July 25, 2025
Chris Cruger on July 25, 2025Funeral and cemetery professionals are natural caregivers. They serve grieving families with empathy, walk alongside them during life’s hard moments, and ensure that every detail of every service is handled with care. But in the process of supporting others, those same caregivers can neglect their own needs and those of their firm. There’s a lot of talk about self-care these days – and for good reason. Burnout and compassion fatigue are real risks in funeral service. But self-care isn’t just about bubble baths and meditation. It’s also about financial clarity, operational stability and long-term peace of mind. In short, it’s about taking care of your funeral home, too. One of the most powerful means of professional self-care is something many funeral directors only associate with selling their firm: a business valuation. This article reframes that misconception and demonstrates that a […]
June 23, 2025
Published by 
Nicole Vullo on June 23, 2025
Nicole Vullo on June 23, 2025Written By Jennifer Graziano, Coxe & Graziano Funeral Home There are many seismic shifts that have rattled the foundation of funeral service in recent years. The funeral consumer has changed; it’s all about getting the most while paying the least. Couple this with industry challenges; a dire shortage of labor and a steady decline of qualified candidates seeking entry into the field, and the situation grows grimmer. The challenges we face on both the consumer and labor fronts are not readily solvable but there are steps we can take to mitigate the impact. Among them, employing a cooperative and combined approach amongst funeral homes and working together to rebrand the industry by setting new norms and standards. On the consumer front, we can attribute this latitudinal shift behavior to the post-Covid societal trends of the world we live in. Everything […]
June 23, 2025
Published by 
Axel Jean-Francois on June 23, 2025
Axel Jean-Francois on June 23, 2025Six Proven Plays to Lift Funeral-Home Margins — Without Losing Your Soul “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” — John Wooden Running a funeral home today is like steering a tugboat through fog while speedboats zip past. You can’t keep jacking up prices, and you definitely can’t cut corners on care—families remember both. What you can do is run smarter. The six plays below come from live field data (and a few hard-earned scars). Margins may be math, but leadership is still about people. PLAY 1 — Master the Fundamentals “Excellence is achieved by the mastery of the fundamentals.” — Vince Lombardi Why the Middle Wins Offer three crystal-clear packages—Good, Better, Best. Behavioral economists call it the Goldilocks effect; we call it a license to boost average ticket. 51 % of families in our 2025 study chose the mid-tier […]
June 23, 2025
Published by Chris Cruger on June 23, 2025
Chris Cruger on June 23, 2025Plotting the transfer of ownership of your firm –something you should start right now. Written by Chris Cruger and Jared Tanke In 2023, NFDA conducted a succession-planning study that provided valuable insights into how funeral home owners plan to exit the profession. One of the notable findings was that 55% of respondents said they would prefer to sell or transfer their business to a family member or key employee. This reflects how deeply rooted many funeral homes are in their communities. Unlike many other businesses, funeral homes often are tied to the identity of the owner and their values and service legacy. Maintaining continuity through trusted family or team members is a natural choice, but it’s a complex one, too. Succession planning isn’t just about naming a successor and stepping aside. It’s about ensuring the long-term stability of your business, […]
June 23, 2025
Published by 
Jarod Bernat on June 23, 2025
Jarod Bernat on June 23, 2025Intentional, transparent communication must be integrated into every step of your succession plan. Within the funeral profession – a field built on tradition, legacy and long-standing community ties –succession planning carries a particularly emotional and operational weight. The transition of leadership from one generation to the next is about ownership and financial continuity but also about the preservation of trust, culture and relationships cultivated over decades. At the heart of this delicate process lies a single powerful tool: communication. Communication is not just a helpful part of succession planning; it is the very foundation that determines whether a transition is smooth and successful or fraught with conflict, confusion and frustration. In a profession where trust is paramount, the way leaders communicate with their successors, staff, clients and community can make or break the legacy they worked so hard to build. […]