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Keith Crawford: Reimagining Traditional Funeral Experiences
23 Plays4 years ago
After years of working with Nike in Portland as Creative Directors, Keith Crawford and David Odusanya co-founded Solace Cremation in 2019. The idea came about after their own personal experiences with the death of a loved one and this inspired them to integrate their design expertise and innovative consumer-driven approach to the funeral industry.
The core concept of the service Solace Cremation provides to families is the acceptance that they cannot make the loss any easier and take away grief, but that Solace Cremation can make this part of the loss a lot easier and less confusing.
Tune in for yet another great interview by Jennifer the Glam Reaper, where she aims to help people to make informed decisions on the methods of disposition available these days.
LITTLE NUGGETS OF GOLD:
- Keith Crawford talks about his story
- How was Solace Cremation founded and what is the concept behind the startup company?
- How is it possible to ‘take out’ funeral homes and bring them online?
- The growth of Solace Cremation
- Keith’s thoughts on the funeral industry shift to new ideas and methods of disposition
- How does Solace Cremation choose their cremation partners and how does Keith feel about big corporations scooping up the business from local businesses?
- The before, during, and after service processes of Solace Cremation.
- Some creative ways families have devised after the passing of their loved ones to honor their legacy
- Keith’s fear that so many startups in the funeral industry will be gone after some years
Connect with Keith Crawford:
Website - https://www.tulipcremation.com/ (Previously: Solace Cremation)
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/tulipcremation
Connect with Jennifer/The Glam Reaper:
Facebook Page - Muldowney Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/MuldowneyMemorials/
Facebook Page - Rainbow Bridge Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/rainbowbridgememorialsdotcom
Instagram - @muldowneymemorials & @jennifermuldowney
Twitter - @TheGlamReaper
Email us here: glamreaperpodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Direct Cremation
00:00:04
Speaker
Super interesting interview with Keith from Solace Cremations.
00:00:08
Speaker
Would you go direct cremation?
00:00:10
Speaker
Would you go for your loved one?
00:00:11
Speaker
Would you tune in online?
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome to the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:27
Speaker
The Glam Reaper podcast is where we talk about life, love and loss.
00:00:31
Speaker
There is, yes, massive input from the funeral industry because that is the world that I live in.
Founding of Solace Cremations
00:00:36
Speaker
And so we do have a guest today, Keith, who is also in that industry.
00:00:42
Speaker
So we will get into that later, but welcome.
00:00:46
Speaker
And yeah, this is the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:49
Speaker
And please tell us, Keith, who are you, where are you from and what you do?
00:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, thanks so much, Jennifer.
00:00:55
Speaker
It's great to meet you finally.
00:00:57
Speaker
Face-to-face almost.
00:00:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:00:58
Speaker
In real.
00:00:59
Speaker
Yeah, my name is Steve Crawford.
00:01:02
Speaker
I live in Portland, Oregon.
00:01:04
Speaker
Sun is out here, which is pretty remarkable, but we have pretty nice summers in Portland.
00:01:08
Speaker
I am a co-founder and CEO of a company called Solace.
00:01:11
Speaker
We are a cremation business, brand new cremation business.
00:01:15
Speaker
We launched about two years ago here in Portland.
00:01:17
Speaker
And I can get into my backstory if that's interesting.
00:01:19
Speaker
But yeah, we are a startup trying to reimagine things
00:01:23
Speaker
based on some personal experience that we went through, losing a parent, the co-founder David and I each lost a parent, went through a fairly traditional formal funeral
00:01:32
Speaker
home experience and felt like there's got to be a better way, a simpler way to handle this for folks.
Growth and Expansion of Solace
00:01:38
Speaker
So that's our goal.
00:01:39
Speaker
With Solace, we launched in Portland, as I said, in 2019, we expanded up to Washington State in Seattle.
00:01:47
Speaker
And then we're now in California as well, in Los Angeles.
00:01:50
Speaker
Amazing.
00:01:51
Speaker
So we are a classic startup, hair on fire, constant roller coaster of emotions.
00:01:57
Speaker
And it's been a lot of work, but it's been really great to see what we thought would help families actually end up happening and helping families, which is great.
00:02:06
Speaker
That was our goal all along.
00:02:07
Speaker
And tell us, Keith, what exactly is Solace Cremation?
00:02:11
Speaker
So what's different from what you experienced or what sort of what I call Joe blogs on the street, what they might be experiencing now?
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah, part of that answer is based in the kind of genesis of Solace, which is
00:02:27
Speaker
David and I both were at Nike, which is here in Portland.
00:02:29
Speaker
We were creative directors and designers there at Nike for a long time and old friends.
00:02:34
Speaker
We left Nike in 2017 to set up our own little creative agency.
00:02:38
Speaker
We had grand ambitions of working very little and making a lot of money and having great clients.
00:02:43
Speaker
We didn't have any clients at the beginning.
00:02:45
Speaker
So we started thinking about business ideas of our own or opportunities for impact in areas of our own that we thought of.
00:02:52
Speaker
And I mentioned to him the experience I had with losing my dad and going through that experience.
00:02:56
Speaker
And I felt like the funeral home itself could use a makeover.
00:03:00
Speaker
I felt like our first idea was to reimagine the funeral home of the future much more
00:03:05
Speaker
Less gloomy, less old fashioned, tech enabled, et cetera.
00:03:09
Speaker
And he had lost his mom, he's from England.
00:03:10
Speaker
David had lost his mom and gone through a similar experience.
00:03:13
Speaker
So we set out to re-imagine the funeral home, was our first inclination.
00:03:17
Speaker
And then we quickly realized that by and large, people are choosing cremation over burial, especially in the West Coast.
00:03:23
Speaker
It's north of 70, 75% of people are choosing cremation.
00:03:27
Speaker
and less people looking for a full all-in kind of funeral home experience, which is casket, cemetery plot, marker, service, et cetera, for a lot of money.
00:03:40
Speaker
So we said, okay, there's still an opportunity here to kind of reimagine the experience for the family.
Service Model and Customer Focus
00:03:46
Speaker
And based on all of our training and experience at Nike, we felt like there's an opportunity here to reorient in our minds, reorient the whole experience towards the family.
00:03:55
Speaker
and just trying to eliminate most of the pain points for them along the way.
00:03:58
Speaker
You know, if you've not been through, if you've not lost anyone, you've not been through this before, it's pretty daunting.
00:04:03
Speaker
We hear this all the time with families we're serving.
00:04:05
Speaker
They don't know what to do.
00:04:06
Speaker
They're sort of thrown a curve ball.
00:04:09
Speaker
Can be very emotional.
00:04:10
Speaker
You know, it's a tough time and tough emotional time for a lot of folks.
00:04:13
Speaker
So we said, okay, we can still, if cremation is the prevailing choice here,
00:04:18
Speaker
And people want a simple, easy way to handle that.
00:04:23
Speaker
Let's just do that.
00:04:24
Speaker
So we basically put together a very simple website, which manages the experience in just a handful of minutes.
00:04:30
Speaker
People can sort of do it all online or call us or do a combination of both online and on the phone and plan and pay for and book a cremation through Solace.
00:04:41
Speaker
So that's sort of the nuts and bolts of the business.
00:04:44
Speaker
It's just a very simple, we have one product, one service, direct cremation only.
00:04:50
Speaker
We are one flat price.
00:04:52
Speaker
Another thing that we felt like was very strange about the industry by and large, and not, of course, not everyone, of course, is in the same boat, but lots of just, you know, sort of crazy pricing and in some cases, predatory upselling of families to things they may not want or need.
00:05:07
Speaker
And so we said, let's eliminate all of that.
00:05:09
Speaker
Again, our goal is just to simplify the process for people.
00:05:13
Speaker
So we just made it super easy.
00:05:15
Speaker
So we offer cremation.
00:05:17
Speaker
The way it works is we have the funeral director and a care team on our staff.
00:05:22
Speaker
So we have an amazing group of people who answer the phones 24-7.
00:05:26
Speaker
And they handle the family to answer all the questions as they come in.
00:05:31
Speaker
We like to think of it as a concierge level service for families to help them through this moment and this time.
00:05:37
Speaker
And then we work with a cremation center partner in each of our markets that does the cremation for us as a white label partnerships on behalf of Solace.
00:05:47
Speaker
So it's a really nice model because we can spend our time and energy and focus on the family and family comfort and ease of the process and educating them on how this works and what they should expect and how long it should take, et cetera.
00:06:00
Speaker
And the rest is just amazing service on the back end.
00:06:04
Speaker
So it's a very simple model.
00:06:06
Speaker
And we feel like it's catching on.
00:06:08
Speaker
People are looking for different alternatives here.
00:06:11
Speaker
Certainly, if you've chosen burial as your choice, we're not a service for you.
00:06:16
Speaker
And if you want a bigger dental service or memorial or something like a traditional funeral home would offer, we're not that either.
00:06:23
Speaker
But we are an alternative for folks who are just looking for a simple solution here.
Modernizing the Funeral Industry
00:06:28
Speaker
And we realized early on, and we continue to remind ourselves this,
00:06:32
Speaker
We cannot make the loss any easier and take away grief.
00:06:35
Speaker
That is not our goal.
00:06:37
Speaker
Our goal is to make this part of the loss a lot easier.
00:06:41
Speaker
It's less confusing.
00:06:42
Speaker
And one of the best compliments we hear from families all the time is you gave me a lot of time back to be with my family, to grieve, to work through my grief, because you made this part of the process super simple.
00:06:53
Speaker
You don't have to go into a funeral home.
00:06:55
Speaker
Paperwork is all digitized, can be done really quickly.
00:06:58
Speaker
And again, great service on the back end.
00:07:00
Speaker
So we have very proud of our all five star reviews on Google and all the markets we're in so far.
00:07:05
Speaker
So yeah, our goal is it was a lofty one and we still are aiming towards it.
00:07:09
Speaker
But it's just trying to help people kind of demystify this world because I think a lot of people go into a funeral experience thinking this is going to be confusing, complicated, expensive.
00:07:20
Speaker
And we're just trying to not have it be that.
00:07:22
Speaker
Right.
00:07:23
Speaker
Does that make sense?
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, no, 100%.
00:07:25
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:07:26
Speaker
I completely understand it.
00:07:27
Speaker
I mean, it's part of how I came into it, although we came into it at slightly different angles, but I do.
00:07:33
Speaker
And actually I did a podcast earlier this year with, I guess, somebody similar to you guys, but in Canada.
00:07:39
Speaker
And I'm sure you probably, Irene was the name.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yes.
00:07:42
Speaker
Very similar to Solace.
00:07:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:44
Speaker
Lovely, lovely one.
00:07:45
Speaker
So,
00:07:46
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely think it's the way of the future.
00:07:49
Speaker
And I mean, the same questions I asked her is essentially what you've done is you've taken it out of the funeral home and put it online.
00:07:56
Speaker
Right.
00:07:57
Speaker
That's right.
00:07:58
Speaker
Do the family ever get to physically meet a person?
00:08:02
Speaker
Well, obviously, when depending on where the person passes away.
00:08:05
Speaker
So if someone passes away at home, right.
00:08:08
Speaker
We have a first call team, which is what that's called when we go to retrieve the loved one and take them into our care is called the first call.
00:08:15
Speaker
So we have a first call team that does that.
00:08:17
Speaker
Of course, there's physical interaction with humans at that point.
00:08:20
Speaker
If your loved one has passed away at a hospital, maybe slightly different or at a hospice, you know, each facility is slightly different.
00:08:26
Speaker
But certainly we have human connection in that way.
00:08:30
Speaker
What we don't have is a traditional brick and mortar funeral home that you would go to to do an arrangement.
00:08:36
Speaker
pick out a gasket and pick out an urn and do the paperwork by hand, that sort of thing.
00:08:40
Speaker
We just felt like, again, back to the beginning, we just felt like that's not necessary.
00:08:44
Speaker
If you've chosen cremation and you don't want all the bells and whistles, you don't need to go to a funeral home.
00:08:50
Speaker
And in our experience, when we did go to the funeral home, we were sitting through a sales pitch of a lot of things we didn't necessarily want or need.
00:08:57
Speaker
And you're kind of in a funky spot anyway, typically.
00:09:02
Speaker
So we just felt like, I mean, not put it harshly, but
Regulatory Challenges in Expansion
00:09:04
Speaker
some of these experiences we hear from folks are more like buying a used car than dealing with a loved one.
00:09:10
Speaker
And we just wanted to eliminate all of that.
00:09:12
Speaker
So we, yeah, there is what I would say though, because we get this question a lot is about, this is not, the goal was never to make a cold digital kind of Amazon of death.
00:09:22
Speaker
This is not a one-click algorithm driven business.
00:09:27
Speaker
We have an amazing team on the backend of
00:09:29
Speaker
funeral directors and care team members that work with the family.
00:09:32
Speaker
It's just not done in person.
00:09:34
Speaker
So we do it on the phone, text, chat, all those things, email, if people prefer that, whatever the family chooses, we go where they want to go.
00:09:44
Speaker
And it's just a much simpler choice.
00:09:46
Speaker
So for example, in my dad's case, he passed away in 2013, trip to the funeral home to sort of set up the arrangements.
00:09:53
Speaker
He'd already prepaid and preplanned everything, but we still had to go through this sort of kind of weird sales pitch and lots of paperwork.
00:10:01
Speaker
And then a second visit to the funeral home to pick up his ashes, his remains.
00:10:06
Speaker
So it was two kind of long, painful trips to the funeral home.
00:10:09
Speaker
In our model, neither of those are necessary.
00:10:12
Speaker
We hand deliver the remains to you in our service area, or we can ship them to you if you're outside of one of our service cities.
00:10:17
Speaker
So yeah, it's just, we just tried to simplify the whole thing, take out all the nonsense.
00:10:23
Speaker
And you're in six states?
00:10:25
Speaker
No, we're in three states now.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a classic startup, as I said.
00:10:29
Speaker
And it's, you know, it's one of the things that we wanted to do this really carefully and we want to grow, but we want to grow at the right pace.
00:10:37
Speaker
And by that, I mean, we want to make sure that every family that comes to us is obsessed and treated as good as possible.
00:10:44
Speaker
And so we are not out to just take over, you know, a land grab of state after state after state and gobble up cities.
00:10:51
Speaker
We want to make sure that each family that comes to Solace is treated really well at a very high level, which means we're growing slower than probably a lot of people would think we might.
00:11:00
Speaker
But that's okay because we know if done right.
00:11:03
Speaker
At the end of the day, our service is our product.
00:11:05
Speaker
So our service levels are very high.
00:11:08
Speaker
We want to maintain those.
00:11:10
Speaker
And we think if done right, this business can grow and be around for a long time if done right.
00:11:14
Speaker
And people start to recognize that.
00:11:16
Speaker
Right.
00:11:16
Speaker
And also what some people, some of our listeners might not realize as well as in America, state by state is very different.
00:11:23
Speaker
So you have to have a legal funeral director in each state and the paperwork might be slightly different as well.
00:11:30
Speaker
And there's, so there's different regulations.
00:11:32
Speaker
So it's not like you can just say, right, we're starting in Oregon and we're taking over the world.
00:11:37
Speaker
Right.
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:38
Speaker
We have to be licensed in each state.
00:11:40
Speaker
We have to have a funeral director license in that state.
00:11:42
Speaker
Obviously paperwork is different by state.
00:11:44
Speaker
So it's, it's, that part is pretty complicated, but we're getting, we're into our third state now.
00:11:49
Speaker
California is the biggest cremation market in the country by far.
00:11:52
Speaker
No surprise there.
00:11:53
Speaker
So we thought, okay, let's, let's start in Portland, which is kind of small and in our backyard.
00:11:58
Speaker
Let's make sure this idea will work, which we think it is.
00:12:02
Speaker
Let's go to Seattle, which is a bigger city and, but very similar to Portland in a lot of ways.
00:12:07
Speaker
And then let's go to California because it's on the same time zone.
00:12:10
Speaker
It's a giant market.
00:12:11
Speaker
We felt like if we can kind of get a foothold down there and get people to understand what we're trying to do, we might have a business there.
00:12:19
Speaker
And that's working really well.
00:12:21
Speaker
But you're right.
00:12:21
Speaker
It is a state by state sort of kind of slow growth, which makes it difficult, but that's okay.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:28
Speaker
As I call it, the non-United States of America.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:12:34
Speaker
What is Unite?
00:12:35
Speaker
It's funny too, because it's a very old fashioned business, and it's not really evolved over the decades.
00:12:42
Speaker
So we're dealing with county clerk offices that are still working on fax machines and telephone and paper billing and paper checks and that sort of thing.
00:12:51
Speaker
So
00:12:52
Speaker
We're navigating a quite old industry that we're trying to modernize in our own little way.
00:12:57
Speaker
It's a quite antiquated industry.
00:12:59
Speaker
And it's interesting that you have come from Nike.
00:13:03
Speaker
But I just want to touch on what you're talking about there, the antiquation of the industry, because it is really old fashioned.
00:13:09
Speaker
And what you're doing is new and obviously bringing the experience from the funeral home online, which is where everybody is these days.
00:13:17
Speaker
And, you know, unfortunately, you can't grow online.
00:13:20
Speaker
exponentially because of this state by state BS nearly, I call it.
00:13:24
Speaker
Like there's lots of things that haven't changed in the industry.
00:13:28
Speaker
Like for example, cremation in and of itself, right?
00:13:31
Speaker
So you've got, you had burial.
00:13:33
Speaker
Burial is kind of on the way out as far as I'm concerned.
00:13:36
Speaker
It's like the typewriter, you know, and cremation.
00:13:40
Speaker
Even, you know, the EPA, like, are saying cremation is one of the top 50 pollutants, you know, in the world.
00:13:48
Speaker
And yet, like, what did we do?
00:13:50
Speaker
We just brought in new abatement.
00:13:51
Speaker
Like, we just changed it slightly.
00:13:53
Speaker
So, like, what's...
00:13:55
Speaker
to me, cremation itself has to change a bit more.
00:13:58
Speaker
I mean, and I know there's all these green burials and the composting and alkaline hydrolysis and stuff like that.
00:14:04
Speaker
But yeah, I don't know.
00:14:07
Speaker
What about that part of it as well?
00:14:08
Speaker
Because isn't that huge?
00:14:10
Speaker
And nobody's made a movement on that yet.
00:14:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question.
00:14:15
Speaker
We talk about this and hear this a lot.
00:14:17
Speaker
So our philosophy from the beginning was we will offer whatever families want from us in terms of disposition choice.
00:14:25
Speaker
So if they said to us all of a sudden they wanted body composition or alkaline hydrolysis, we would add that or shift to that model.
00:14:35
Speaker
Right now, the prevailing choice is natural gas cremation, which is, as you said, not great for the environment.
00:14:41
Speaker
We buy carbon offsets for all of our cremations, which I know doesn't completely counteract the negative impact, but it's something.
00:14:48
Speaker
We're also talking to a couple of our partners about containment or carbon emission containment of cremation, which I think is not even happening yet, but it's done in some manufacturing industrial capacity.
00:15:00
Speaker
So there's an idea there as well, which would be better.
00:15:04
Speaker
But we're in this transition mode.
00:15:06
Speaker
I think in the US, for sure, most people are choosing cremation.
00:15:09
Speaker
That number is going up every year across every single state.
00:15:13
Speaker
But it's still not completely focused on cremation.
00:15:16
Speaker
So I just think it will take a while for people to get comfortable with some of these newer ideas out there.
00:15:22
Speaker
But if people start, like I said, if people said to us, we want to do an alternative to cremation, which is this, and enough people came to us and said that, we would offer that.
00:15:31
Speaker
Because our goal, again, all along is just to help people.
00:15:35
Speaker
And if people want that, we will offer that.
00:15:37
Speaker
So we have no bias towards cremation.
00:15:40
Speaker
It currently is the sort of default choice for folks.
00:15:43
Speaker
And we do what we can to minimize the impact of that.
00:15:46
Speaker
Right.
00:15:46
Speaker
But we're keeping a close eye.
00:15:47
Speaker
Yeah, we've talked to Katrina Spade at Recomposed in Seattle several times.
00:15:52
Speaker
We have alkaline hydrolysis connections.
00:15:55
Speaker
We're talking to those folks.
00:15:56
Speaker
We're keeping a close eye on those things and we'll follow their lead.
00:16:00
Speaker
Right.
00:16:00
Speaker
For sure.
00:16:01
Speaker
So your company, Solace Cremations, doesn't actually own any crematoriums.
00:16:05
Speaker
It's just more of the service.
00:16:07
Speaker
That's right.
00:16:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:08
Speaker
We would probably ultimately love to have our own
00:16:11
Speaker
cremation facility so we could control the entire sort of experience for the family would be far easier than having partners in each place.
00:16:19
Speaker
But we felt like, you know, one of the early meetings we had here in Portland was a gentleman who runs a cremation center here.
00:16:24
Speaker
There's two in Portland.
00:16:26
Speaker
And, you know, he said, I'm an expert at cremation, but what I'm not good at or I don't want to do is handle the family marketing, paperwork, funeral directing, funeral arranging,
00:16:36
Speaker
So we said, okay, there's a possible marriage here where they're experts at that.
00:16:40
Speaker
We can be experts in the family and together these things will work really well.
00:16:44
Speaker
And it's proven to be a really good model.
00:16:48
Speaker
These partners are really highly vetted by our team.
00:16:51
Speaker
They have very high service level agreements with us.
00:16:53
Speaker
So we close eye on what they're doing, obviously, and they're not part of our business necessarily, literally, but they are a white label partner and we see them as that.
00:17:02
Speaker
So
00:17:02
Speaker
When a first call team shows up at a family's house, they say they're representing Solace, which was part of our goal.
00:17:08
Speaker
So it's not our direct team, but sort of an extended part of our team.
00:17:12
Speaker
Right.
00:17:13
Speaker
And obviously, this is quite topical amongst industry.
00:17:17
Speaker
But are those partners, and you don't have to divulge who anybody is or anything unless you want to, but are those partners mom and pops?
00:17:24
Speaker
Are they the SCIs of the world?
00:17:27
Speaker
Or would that be the level you'd be seeking to get to?
00:17:30
Speaker
Because obviously, they're in every state.
00:17:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:34
Speaker
Another good question.
00:17:34
Speaker
They're all mom and pops, independent businesses.
00:17:37
Speaker
That's not to say we wouldn't, you know, partner with someone bigger than that.
00:17:41
Speaker
I think it's interesting.
00:17:42
Speaker
We talk about this all the time because one of the things that we hear from families is that the local funeral home that I used to know and trust and go to and my grandparents went there or whatever is now part of a big corporate enterprise.
00:17:54
Speaker
It was bought up years ago or recently, and it's not the same.
00:17:58
Speaker
It's different ownership, different management, different pricing, et cetera.
00:18:02
Speaker
And so we're obviously, you know, we're aware of that shift, you know, as independent funeral homes become acquired and aggregated into bigger enterprises and owned by other people.
00:18:13
Speaker
But we ourselves want to grow and become a bigger business.
00:18:17
Speaker
companies.
00:18:17
Speaker
So we have to make sure that we are, like I said earlier, we want to make sure that the service we provide is at the highest level possible, even though we can potentially be in 15, 20, 30, 40, all 50 states at some point.
00:18:31
Speaker
So we don't want to feel like a big corporate soulless brand or company that's come into your neighborhood to scoop up business from the local businesses there.
00:18:40
Speaker
So it's an interesting dynamic.
00:18:42
Speaker
We're
00:18:43
Speaker
So far we're doing okay because we're pretty small and we're just growing really carefully and strategically, but we do think about that quite a lot.
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's a journey.
Impact of COVID-19 on Services
00:18:52
Speaker
Doing a startup is a journey.
00:18:53
Speaker
Things change, things come your way.
00:18:55
Speaker
We did not expect at all when we built, as an example, we didn't expect COVID or a pandemic to be happening.
00:19:02
Speaker
But when the model shifted from people not wanting to go anywhere in person to a funeral home, that's for sure.
00:19:07
Speaker
And sadly, quite a few more people died, especially in places like Los Angeles.
00:19:12
Speaker
We felt very happy and proud and, you know, there was pride on the team to be able to serve families and help them in a tough time with a solution like Solace that we kept going, even though the situation down there was pretty dire in LA earlier this year.
00:19:25
Speaker
So it's a, partnerships is a big deal for us.
00:19:28
Speaker
Growth is a big deal for us, but we just want to make sure we do it really carefully.
00:19:32
Speaker
We've got a great team, leadership team that's handling all of that.
00:19:35
Speaker
So we feel really good about where we're headed.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:38
Speaker
Well, the, I mean, unless you've got spare pocket change of, I don't even know how much a cremation machine is going for these days.
00:19:46
Speaker
I'd say it's not short of a million dollars.
00:19:48
Speaker
So, you know, as a star, I'm sure you don't have that cash just lying around, but it probably would be either a next best step for you or, you know,
00:19:58
Speaker
partnering with somebody that's in every other state I guess but just in terms of what you guys provide so and just to kind of talk everybody through it so when you arrive at say a home we'll just say for example the person passed away at home your team arrives does the body get put into a casket at all
00:20:18
Speaker
any sort of a container?
00:20:20
Speaker
If you can take us through the exact steps and do you offer, which I don't think you do, but just do you offer any form of service option at all?
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, there's a few questions in there.
00:20:32
Speaker
So the process is really very simple and it's kind of standard across the board, which is depending on where the person passes away, if it's at home,
00:20:41
Speaker
There's two people that come from the team to handle the removal, the first, we call it the first call, dealing with the family and making sure that the loved one is taken care of carefully as possible, and then transported immediately to the facility, the holding facility.
00:20:58
Speaker
We don't offer currently what's called a watched placement, which is people viewed cremation or a viewing ahead of cremation, which is a more complicated option.
00:21:08
Speaker
Some people ask us for that.
00:21:09
Speaker
We probably have, you know, five or 10% of the people who call us are looking for that.
00:21:13
Speaker
So it's not a huge number, but really our, you know, and your, your comment about services is something we think about and talk about all the time.
00:21:21
Speaker
And I think we'll ultimately get to a place where we either partner with someone who does great memorials and services and bespoke events for people as part of what we offer to families.
00:21:31
Speaker
But we're not doing that now.
00:21:32
Speaker
We wanted to focus on the core business.
00:21:35
Speaker
Our goal was to
00:21:36
Speaker
If you think about the sort of moment of someone passing, there's the before, which is preparation, having a tough conversation, making some decisions, getting your ducks in a row, planning, et cetera, paperwork.
00:21:48
Speaker
The cremation itself, which we call the during, which we're handling now.
00:21:52
Speaker
And then the after, which is obviously after.
00:21:54
Speaker
And we are launching a line of urns that we've designed ourselves in a couple of weeks.
00:22:01
Speaker
They're going to be up on the website.
00:22:02
Speaker
And so we're starting to think about
00:22:04
Speaker
both before and after the passing, what we can offer to families.
00:22:08
Speaker
What we don't want to do is kind of replicate the funeral home model, which is out there, which is quite a lot of stuff to navigate through.
00:22:15
Speaker
There's jewelry, there's urns, there's thumbprints, there's all kinds of things that you're kind of shown as things that are options.
00:22:24
Speaker
And we just want to make sure that if the families are asking for that, we'll curate a small list of partners that we think might be worth working with.
00:22:32
Speaker
For the most part, we just want to focus on the main part of the cremation and then we'll go both before and after.
00:22:38
Speaker
So we're talking to partners in the world of preparation and prearrangement and even pre-funding.
00:22:43
Speaker
Not a pre-need contract per se, but a different version of that.
00:22:46
Speaker
And then after in terms of earns, we think there's an opportunity for earns.
00:22:51
Speaker
memorials in some way, shape, or fashion, which is virtual or in person or some incredible bespoke events that people think about and want to do for their loved one, and obituaries.
00:23:03
Speaker
And there's a lot of room for us to grow.
00:23:06
Speaker
We just want to stay focused on the core business and the families and then build from there, if that makes sense.
00:23:13
Speaker
So we're not quite there yet, but I can imagine a solace in a year from now where we have things ahead of
00:23:18
Speaker
More robust planning tools and preparation tools available.
00:23:22
Speaker
Great cremation service that we're offering now.
00:23:25
Speaker
And then a few things after the passing that we can offer people.
00:23:28
Speaker
For sure.
00:23:29
Speaker
And I know you're in that business.
00:23:30
Speaker
You're in the after business.
00:23:32
Speaker
So we should talk.
00:23:34
Speaker
I am definitely the after.
00:23:36
Speaker
That was actually one of my questions was, do you know of the clientele you've had so far?
00:23:44
Speaker
Do you know
00:23:45
Speaker
have they gone off to do something themselves, whether it was in a church or in a venue or something, or do they, and I know we're obviously coming out of probably the worst year to be asking a question like this, and you are a staff member, but so, you know, maybe a year from now, we'll have a more solid answer, but, you know, I even know myself that I'm getting a lot of
00:24:06
Speaker
families coming back and on the anniversary they want to do something because they couldn't do it so I'm just you know curious do you experience people sort of saying on the phone thank you so much for this this is brilliant you know now I'm going to do something else or maybe they don't even tell you I don't know like I just just wondering
00:24:24
Speaker
Yeah, we do hear from some people.
00:24:26
Speaker
I think COVID, as you said, kind of derailed the norm.
00:24:29
Speaker
So I think once hopefully this passes and people get back to being able to do things in person, it will change again, probably back to some sort of new normal, right?
00:24:40
Speaker
But
Trends and Future Partnerships
00:24:41
Speaker
I think what we do hear from people is that they really want to do something different, not traditional.
00:24:46
Speaker
We've heard things happening like a pub crawl for one of the families, one of the guys that passed away, his mates got together and did a pub crawl.
00:24:54
Speaker
We've heard of hikes with families and picnics.
00:24:56
Speaker
And so there's a lot of really interesting things happening that people are just doing on their own that may or may not be COVID related.
00:25:03
Speaker
I sort of feel like that that's probably the new normal, which is, and we talk about it at Solace all the time.
00:25:08
Speaker
Do we need to think about helping families after the passing more like an event planner or a wedding planner and help them put together an amazing bespoke luncheon, dinner, trip, hike, whatever it is, and help them plan that because they feel at a loss.
00:25:24
Speaker
We're not doing that now.
00:25:25
Speaker
The other thing that people ask us about, which we don't offer, but we're working on a solution is just a simple obituary because people don't really know what to do with that.
00:25:34
Speaker
And the idea of getting a newspaper, an obit in a newspaper is a little old fashioned.
00:25:39
Speaker
So we think, okay, there's some people out there doing online obituaries that are pretty good that we're speaking to about potentially partnering and offering that for folks.
00:25:47
Speaker
So
00:25:47
Speaker
You know, we're going where people are asking us to go and we're helping them.
00:25:51
Speaker
We're helping them solve those needs as we go.
00:25:54
Speaker
And I think we'll get there.
00:25:55
Speaker
But I'm really inspired and encouraged by the creativity that people are showing in non-traditional memorials and celebrations of life.
00:26:05
Speaker
I have another friend who is he's young.
00:26:07
Speaker
He's in his 40s and he he's already set aside a separate bank account for his kids.
00:26:12
Speaker
He's got three kids.
00:26:14
Speaker
And he wants them to travel.
00:26:16
Speaker
When he passes away, he wants them to take this money and travel to some of his favorite places in the world as a celebration of him and his life.
00:26:23
Speaker
And I thought, well, that's such a great idea and very nontraditional and unique.
00:26:29
Speaker
And is there more out there that we're not even aware of that we think we can help people either find or point someone to or partner with someone to help us deliver
Innovation vs Tradition in Funeral Services
00:26:39
Speaker
that?
00:26:39
Speaker
So yeah, I think it's wide open.
00:26:41
Speaker
And I think COVID kind of blew the doors off any kind of norm
00:26:44
Speaker
We don't hear many people asking us, hey, I'd love to go to a funeral home and have a service.
00:26:49
Speaker
I think that feels, not to knock those, of course, I have to be careful about it.
00:26:54
Speaker
I won't do that.
00:26:55
Speaker
But I just think fewer people looking for that, and I think COVID probably didn't help.
00:27:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:01
Speaker
It's funny that you say that because there's Getty Images photographer who did exactly that.
00:27:07
Speaker
He got cremated and he asked his friends and family to travel to certain places and to deposit some of his ashes in those places so he would stay all over the world.
00:27:18
Speaker
And like there is there's so many innovative ways.
00:27:20
Speaker
I mean, I know when I sit down with the family and I mean, I started this, it's over 10 years ago now.
00:27:26
Speaker
this concept of it doesn't have to be this way.
00:27:30
Speaker
It's more about holding somebody's hand to help them through what's right for them.
00:27:35
Speaker
So like a lot of the time I'll sit there in front of a family and they'll be like, well, what should I do?
00:27:40
Speaker
What's the average?
00:27:42
Speaker
What does the service look like?
00:27:43
Speaker
What does, you know, they have a hundred questions, but essentially when you ask the right questions, you'll find that the family can answer what it is that they want themselves for themselves, whether it's
00:27:55
Speaker
traveling all over the world which you know for my if you like bread and butter job especially here in New York that would do me out of the job but I'd be happier to see them put that together and decide that's what they want to do than you know to have them because then if I'm just going to advertise that oh now you have to do a memorial in a venue and we're going to do this and this and this then I'm almost just replacing the funeral home and while like you touched on there it's not that what you and I and
00:28:23
Speaker
all these other innovative death care people are trying to do, I don't think anyway, is to replace the funeral home.
00:28:30
Speaker
It's that that's not for everybody anymore.
00:28:33
Speaker
We've evolved as human beings, you know, and we've evolved from the horse and cars to Tesla cars.
00:28:40
Speaker
And
00:28:41
Speaker
you know, every other industry is getting affected by tech and by innovation.
00:28:45
Speaker
And so it was only a matter of time by the funeral industry went online, became more tech focused, got more options.
00:28:52
Speaker
The only fear I have, Keith, is that, as I said, I've been doing this for 10 years.
00:28:58
Speaker
And it started off sort of with me becoming a wedding planner for funerals, and then writing my book and
00:29:04
Speaker
spoken on various different radio and TV shows, but I have a certain wealth of knowledge that Joe Public on the street doesn't have, right?
00:29:12
Speaker
And so do you.
00:29:13
Speaker
That's what we've become experts in what we do.
00:29:16
Speaker
But I've also been approached by so many different companies to either be a brand ambassador or a part of their company, et cetera, et cetera.
00:29:24
Speaker
And I see them come and I see them go.
00:29:27
Speaker
That is one of the things I have a fear of is that like even you just kind of mentioned it there, the obituary website.
00:29:33
Speaker
I know so many of those and it just so many new startups.
00:29:38
Speaker
And it's like it's not to deter a startup, but it's like.
00:29:42
Speaker
It just breaks my heart that, especially with the industry in for that, you know, any startup.
00:29:47
Speaker
And I'm not saying this is yours because it sounds like it's doing credible.
00:29:49
Speaker
But for the online, those websites, it's that like, say, for example, my dad, my poor parents have been killed over a hundred times with the way I talk about them.
00:29:58
Speaker
But say my dad died and I wanted to do an obituary or for him online.
00:30:03
Speaker
And I do that.
00:30:04
Speaker
And in 10 years time, that company that was a startup is now gone.
00:30:08
Speaker
Like, what happens to that?
00:30:10
Speaker
Like, we are a lot more transient as a society.
00:30:13
Speaker
And there's so many new apps and there's something new every day.
00:30:17
Speaker
And as I said, like, I've been approached about so many of them myself.
00:30:21
Speaker
And so I do worry that because we're moving away from that brick and mortar funeral home, that we are almost dispersing
00:30:29
Speaker
too much that it's a fear I have that things will get lost and we won't have those you know like we'd always have a box of old photos up in the attic and that was physically where they were only ever going to be now you know if I die when I die you know you've Instagram your Facebook I'm all over the place and so how does my family ever collect all of that and
00:30:52
Speaker
It's constantly evolving.
00:30:53
Speaker
I mean, I've done talks and blog pieces and spoken to people about our digital legacy.
00:30:59
Speaker
And, you know, I know I'm talking about a million different things right now.
00:31:03
Speaker
It's so wide.
00:31:04
Speaker
When we die, it's so wide.
00:31:07
Speaker
We've got physical, we've got digital.
00:31:09
Speaker
It's just.
00:31:10
Speaker
Spiritual, it's just, there's so much that, yeah, it's just one of my fears for the industry.
00:31:15
Speaker
And I just hope it finds its way back again, in a sense, you know, and whether that is through a service like yours and a service like mine and a service like pre-planning online, and it becomes more concrete, this is where we go to.
00:31:31
Speaker
No, you bring up a great point.
00:31:32
Speaker
We talk about that a lot.
00:31:34
Speaker
And in fact, one of the reasons we've not done any kind of formal partnerships with anyone really is we have the same concern you do.
00:31:40
Speaker
That is, they're small, they're a startup, great idea, but this could not be around in a year.
00:31:46
Speaker
And we'd hate to have our families be stuck with either a dead end of something or something that's gone away.
00:31:52
Speaker
So we share your concern.
00:31:54
Speaker
I'm not sure the solution there.
00:31:56
Speaker
I do think the survival of the fittest and best and brightest ideas will rise to the top and succeed here, but it's going to take a while for that to kind of work its way through.
00:32:06
Speaker
One of the things that we, when we started Solace was this idea of, and we're a long ways from this, by the way, but we felt like there's not a brand in end of life that people can relate to.
00:32:17
Speaker
Of course, SEI is out there and FPG and some of these big guys, but even those aren't really consumer brands.
00:32:23
Speaker
And so the idea of creating a brand, whether it's Solace or somebody else,
00:32:28
Speaker
that becomes a resource for all these things that people feel like they can rely on and they can trust.
00:32:33
Speaker
And it's a great educational tool for them and a great service potentially if that's what they're looking for.
00:32:39
Speaker
So we would love to be that solution for people in a few years that people know about who we are and what we offer.
00:32:45
Speaker
And we can do everything from before, during, and after.
00:32:48
Speaker
At least curate a list of partners that are vetted and substantial and know what they're doing and will be around for the long haul.
00:32:56
Speaker
So we think that way too.
00:32:58
Speaker
We're also a little skittish and hesitant to do that, but we need to keep pushing.
Building a Recognizable Brand
00:33:05
Speaker
Like we both said, this is such an old fashioned industry that every corner we come around, we encounter some kind of archaic rule or law or regulatory issue that we need to get past and push on because the families are asking for different things and they're looking for different things.
00:33:20
Speaker
So
00:33:21
Speaker
I think it's exciting.
00:33:22
Speaker
It's it doesn't make it easy, but it's an exciting time to be working in this space because there is so much interest.
00:33:27
Speaker
There's a large group of people trying to attack different parts of end of life and innovate on behalf of families.
00:33:34
Speaker
So that's really encouraging.
00:33:36
Speaker
But yeah, it's going to take some work to get all these all these things connected.
00:33:40
Speaker
And in our mind, the perfect solution would be the family doesn't have to do a lot.
00:33:45
Speaker
They don't have to jump from business A to business B to business C to take care of something like we're talking about.
00:33:52
Speaker
So there's probably an idea out there where it's more connected for families and it becomes an ecosystem that's basically one stop and they can kind of do a lot in one place.
00:34:03
Speaker
Yeah, we need the McDonald's or the Starbucks or the Nike of the funerals.
00:34:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's true because, you know, as you said, the big players we know are really behind the scenes.
00:34:17
Speaker
And so there's no iconic brand as of yet in the funeral business.
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:23
Speaker
We're working to become that brand, but it's going to take some more time.
00:34:25
Speaker
It's going to take some time.
00:34:26
Speaker
Well, it is interesting actually because I don't know if you're going to the NFDA this year in Nashville in October, but another gentleman that I interviewed on my podcast, Justin...
00:34:40
Speaker
Oh yeah, I know Justin from Santa Fe.
00:34:41
Speaker
Yeah, so he's a parting stone.
00:34:45
Speaker
And I think I'm after making up his last name.
00:34:46
Speaker
But anyway, Justin, who's lovely, and we actually met.
00:34:50
Speaker
And, you know, we kind of, he's one of probably 50 that I could definitely say that are at that stage where we're kind of the new generation in the funeral industry.
00:35:02
Speaker
And we're wanting to make changes.
00:35:04
Speaker
And in some ways, I feel like
00:35:07
Speaker
no one of us can do this alone.
00:35:10
Speaker
And I do sometimes kind of think that it'd be if all of us came together, that's how we might actually be able to make a change and stand up to the bigger players and actually be able to create that brand.
00:35:22
Speaker
Because I think solo as a startup, it's just, you know, it's just so hard.
00:35:28
Speaker
And so, yeah, it's definitely interesting.
00:35:29
Speaker
And I guess we watch this space.
00:35:32
Speaker
But listen, I better wrap it up.
00:35:33
Speaker
Watch this space.
00:35:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:35
Speaker
I mean, like I said, it's
00:35:36
Speaker
It's super exciting that there's so much new thinking in this space.
00:35:40
Speaker
And we are proud to be part of that as well as you and some others out there who are doing some really interesting, innovative things.
00:35:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:48
Speaker
And it's great.
00:35:48
Speaker
And we connect and talk to a lot of those people regularly to see what they're up to and see if there's ways for us to work together.
00:35:54
Speaker
Good.
00:35:54
Speaker
So that's exciting.
00:35:55
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:35:57
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for chatting with me, Keith.
00:36:00
Speaker
And we will watch this space.
00:36:02
Speaker
So Solace Cremations, we're going to leave all the links in our podcast.
00:36:06
Speaker
So people will be able to check it out.
00:36:08
Speaker
You're not at the pre-planning stage yet, but if they still want to check it out and just see ahead of time, or if they're in the industry and they might want to check you out and in one of those states,
00:36:18
Speaker
So you're in California, Portland.
00:36:21
Speaker
Yep.
00:36:21
Speaker
Southern California, Oregon and Washington.
00:36:23
Speaker
Oregon and Washington.
00:36:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:24
Speaker
We're going to launch San Diego County next week.
00:36:27
Speaker
End of next week we'll be in San Diego.
00:36:28
Speaker
So it's exciting, exciting times.
00:36:31
Speaker
Well, the best of luck with everything and I'll keep me posted.
00:36:35
Speaker
Yeah, you too.
00:36:43
Speaker
Well, that was a super interesting interview with Keith from Solace Cremations.
00:36:47
Speaker
Would you go direct cremation?
00:36:49
Speaker
Would you go for your loved one?
00:36:51
Speaker
Would you tune in online and fill out all your paperwork as opposed to a funeral home?
00:36:55
Speaker
We'd love to hear from you.
00:36:56
Speaker
So just let us know, glamreaperpodcast at gmail.com.
00:37:00
Speaker
If you've got a story yourself of how direct cremation either worked or did not work for you, we'd love to hear from you.
00:37:06
Speaker
So please get in touch and otherwise stay tuned because next week we will have another exciting guest.
00:37:12
Speaker
So we look forward to talking to you again soon.
00:37:14
Speaker
Ciao for now.