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Change is what will separate the firms that capture the opportunities ahead from the ones that simply fade away. Determining how much to reinvest in your business is never an easy task. It’s even more difficult when times are tough. The rising cost of doing business, an incredibly difficult labor market and rapidly changing consumer preferences are making these decisions more challenging. However, I would like to present these challenging times as times of opportunity! What we reinvest in our business is a combination of money and time. Today, both seem in limited supply. How we measure them is the most critical decision we make for our future success. Conventional wisdom would suggest that you reinvest 20%-50% of your profits back into your business. This figure shifts depending on where a business is in its life cycle. Typically, that amount […]

The Foresight Companies and Pellerin Funeral Homes A Special Feature Written by Alice Adams The following is a case study about funeral home owners who partnered with The Foresight Companies’ consultants to optimize their position in the marketplace. Through this relationship, the family-owned funeral home maximized its value, streamlined operations and, ultimately, sold at the right time, to the right buyer for the right price. In the beginning, Ray Pellerin, a second-generation funeral director, stepped into the leadership role of his family’s funeral home – in the heart of Cajun Country – in 1962, not quite 10 years after his father, Harris J. Pellerin, the Pellerin Funeral Home’s founder, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Ray was still in his 20s. Harris, always a progressive visionary in the profession, established Pellerin’s as an undertaking company in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, in 1921. […]

Where do you begin to tell the story about Doug Gober’s lasting impact? A Special Feature Written by Patti Martin Bartsche Do you go all the way to the Batesville Casket years, where, after taking over a larger territory in Arkansas, he turned it into one of the top territories in the country? Or it can be traced to his time with Alton Doody and The Doody Group, where, among his many achievements, he was instrumental in planning and implementing a number of innovative merchandising concepts and products? You could also point to his move to Live Oak Bank, where, as the company’s executive marketing director of death-care management, he was able to help the new funeral business vertical do over $100 million in loans in its second year. Others may insist that it was when he left Live Oak […]

I have attended ICCFA Conventions for decades.  I go back to the ACA and when most people knew about half of the membership without looking at the lapel name cards!  Yet, most cemeterians don’t seem to retire.  Since the ICCFA morphed from the ACA and ICFA, today’s membership is a blend of cemeterians, funeral directors and cremationists.  So the matter of retirement is not just a cemeterian problem, it is an industry wide problem.  It is just the cemeterians have less options to plug the financial asset gap available to funeral home owners and cremation company owners.  Allow me to elaborate. Paraphrasing Old Benjamin Franklin, there are only two things that are certain in life, retirement or death before retirement.  As to the later, people can buy life insurance to provide for those they are responsible to care for.  As […]