Transcript
Speaker: Hi, my name is Jennifer Muldowney, aka The Glam Reaper, and this is The Glam Reaper Podcast.
Speaker: We're on YouTube and we're in your ears.
Speaker: This show will focus on stories about love, life and loss, and we'll also have a massive input from the funeral world, since that's the world that I live in.
Speaker: It is my absolute pleasure to welcome this episode's guest because he is one of my favoritest people in the entire funeral industry.
Speaker: And he's just a darling.
Speaker: Please welcome the incredible Larry.
Speaker: You know, I am so excited for today's show.
Speaker: It's one of my absolute favorite people who's been with me since the start, no less.
Speaker: I've evolved from farewell funeral planners to the glam reaper to who knows what in the next 20 years.
Speaker: But I am so, so, so, so excited to welcome the wonderful Larry.
Speaker: You are somebody who a lot of people in the industry turn to for knowledge, for expertise, but equally, you don't shy away from an opinion.
Speaker: And I love that.
Speaker: I always say to people that everyone is entitled to my opinion.
Speaker: And it's true.
Speaker: You know, I may be wrong.
Speaker: I'm open to being proved wrong.
Speaker: But I do have very strong opinions and I do my research.
Speaker: So I love that we met the first time you went to an NFDA.
Speaker: And I don't even remember what city.
Speaker: Was it Charlotte?
Speaker: Charlotte?
Speaker: I've been doing this 10 years, but I don't think, I think it was eight years ago maybe that I came to my first NFDA.
Speaker: And the NFDA, by the way, anybody who doesn't know is the National Funeral Directors Association.
Speaker: It's one of the biggest parties, I'm going to say, on a funeral directors calendar.
Speaker: I'm just going to call it as it is.
Speaker: But it's where people from all over the world in the funeral community get together.
Speaker: And yes, there is alcohol.
Speaker: Yes, there is chat.
Speaker: Yes, there is intellectual chat, but it's a great way to like people swap opinions, swap stories.
Speaker: And it's a great way for innovators and new people, I think, to meet each other.
Speaker: I think it really is.
Speaker: And we met at a party, of course.
Speaker: I think it was the international reception.
Speaker: And they had an open bar and you and me and Chris Farmer just kind of
Speaker: clicked and 10 years later, eight years later, our backgrounds aren't very similar.
Speaker: Obviously, you're not a cremation person per se.
Speaker: I am the cremation guy.
Speaker: I mean, there's probably not many other guys that can say
Speaker: They've been around as long as I have and have such a rounded experience.
Speaker: I grew up, my dad at 14 years old was the director of operations for a manufacturing company of cremation equipment.
Speaker: So I grew up in it basically.
Speaker: And I went off to university, I came back.
Speaker: I had to work in a field of something other than before I was allowed to work with my dad.
Speaker: We started our own company and I sold it basically
Speaker: almost five years ago and I've been consulting ever since.
Speaker: And everyone says, oh, consulting, what does that mean?
Speaker: There was such a vacuum of information for people who wanted to either get cremation equipment as part of their business or effectively use cremation as a marketing tool because it's there, people want it and we weren't doing it right.
Speaker: As a profession.
Speaker: Funeral directors, they're like everyone else in that we don't like to change.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: But you know what?
Speaker: My mom always used to say, you change or you die.
Speaker: And we have to change.
Speaker: And to this day, 2020, there are people that think cremation killed embalming in the U.S. Well, no, it didn't.
Speaker: You know what killed embalming?
Speaker: Bad embalmers.
Speaker: Cremation just happened to come about starting around in the 60s.
Speaker: We all know who Jessica Mitford was.
Speaker: If you don't read her book, I'm not afraid to say she had a lot of good points in that book, but she was misguided and we didn't react to it properly.
Speaker: Yeah, well, it's interesting actually you say that, Larry, because I'm actually rereading her book at the moment.
Speaker: I just finished reading a book that just came out in September by a gentleman.
Speaker: who basically wrote a book rebuttling everything.
Speaker: I don't even know if rebuttling is a word, but it was a rebuttal.
Speaker: It's new.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It works.
Speaker: But it's interesting you say that because as somebody slightly innovative or at least with fresh ideas coming into the- Slightly.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: With no background in funerals.
Speaker: I completely agree.
Speaker: She had some absolutely great points, but it was done in a very, I mean, the funeral guys, quote unquote.
Speaker: And again, I'm giving a little bit of story to this because I want to actually do a whole podcast on it because I do things that I love doing for what I call them, Joe public, basically the guy on the street who doesn't want to really know a whole lot about the funeral business is the funeral industry are seen as cowboys and robbers that way by the media.
Speaker: And that is not fair.
Speaker: You're not a cowboy or a robber.
Speaker: Neither am I. I know hundreds if not thousands of people who are absolutely the polar opposite.
Speaker: And I think it's unfair to stereotype.
Speaker: Like, all Irish people are drunks.
Speaker: We're not all drunks.
Speaker: Most of us.
Speaker: All the ones I've met are, but...
Speaker: Well, stereotypes are good for a reason and they're not good for others.
Speaker: And I just feel like the funeral industry has gotten this, you know, painted on them.
Speaker: And yeah, so we will definitely get into it whether we do it today.
Speaker: Larry, I feel like this could be a Larry series.
Speaker: It'll be the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: Then there'll be a sub-series of the Glam Reaper and Larry.
Speaker: Well, I'm happy.
Speaker: I love to engage with people.
Speaker: who think beyond.
Speaker: I hate the phrase, think outside of the box, but I know, right?
Speaker: There's no other way to say it.
Speaker: You can't limit your thoughts.
Speaker: If you want to be a success, you've got to think beyond the normal.
Speaker: And God knows I'm not normal.
Speaker: So I'm right in there.
Speaker: Not normal club.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I don't want to be normal.
Speaker: I don't want to live my life based on what the media says and based on what I think
Speaker: Jessica had points, but she didn't know what the funeral service profession was doing at the time.
Speaker: The whole thing with caskets, we used to back well before we were born, used to price the funerals based on the casket.
Speaker: So if you pick this casket, it's $6,000.
Speaker: If you pick this one, it's $7,000.
Speaker: If you pick this one, it's $8,000.
Speaker: All of the services and all of the stuff that is involved in a traditional casket,
Speaker: funeral was all lumped in there.
Speaker: What did that do to us as professionals?
Speaker: It completely devalued professional services.
Speaker: All the public saw and all that Jessica Midford talked about was that we mark up that casket 200 times, 300 times, 400 times, and we're robbing.
Speaker: Well, we're not robbing.
Speaker: We just had a different model.
Speaker: And was it the best model?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: We can blame back then the casket manufacturers, the Batesville's, the Hildebrand.
Speaker: They came up with this model and combined that with the rise of cremation.
Speaker: And we tended to basically assume that cremation families don't want to spend any money.
Speaker: Dumbest thing we ever did.
Speaker: Dumbest thing.
Speaker: Cause I'll tell you, cremation families will spend money and
Speaker: There are people out there that don't want to spend money, but guess what?
Speaker: Every single consumer transaction price is going to play a part in.
Speaker: It doesn't matter if it's funeral or whether it's, I mean, do you own a Louis Vuitton pocketbook purse?
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: Of course you do.
Speaker: Would you, would you say how much it cost?
Speaker: I can't actually remember.
Speaker: It's so old.
Speaker: I actually can't remember.
Speaker: But you're, you're, we're talking thousands, not hundreds.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think I know where you're going with this because, and I'm just going to, for the people back home, I read this in a branding book one time that right now consumers like me will go out and we will buy a Ryanair flight.
Speaker: Now for anybody who doesn't know a Ryanair flight, a Ryanair flight can cost $2.00.
Speaker: I can go from Dublin to London for $2 plus taxes, right?
Speaker: But the same person, aka me, will walk into Brown Thomas and purchase a Louis Vuitton bag and I will go to a five-star restaurant, stay in the Shelburne Hotel back home in Dublin, equivalent to over here of staying in the plaza,
Speaker: going into, you know, Bergdorf's, but at the same time, when I'm searching for flights, I want the buttest, cheapest, where can I go, what can I do?
Speaker: Or like my clothing could be like a $5 shirt, but it's where you can't box us in as much as you used to.
Speaker: And marketers used to have little tidy little boxes for us all.
Speaker: There was the luxury brand.
Speaker: There was the cheap asses.
Speaker: There was all these different.
Speaker: And now it's so true.
Speaker: Now you've got people who can't afford to put food on their plates.
Speaker: They're going to put all their money into a Louis Vuitton bag.
Speaker: It's crazy.
Speaker: I thought you were going with it.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: And it just, it goes towards my point of perceived value.
Speaker: Where do we see value?
Speaker: Do we see value in a crotchety old funeral director that's going to take our money when we can do something on our own?
Speaker: Or do we see the value of an embalmed body saying goodbye to our mother, our grandmother, looking good, not full of makeup, not gray, not hard as a rock?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Then you have everyone who went to that visitation saying to their husband or wife or whomever, don't do that to me when I die.
Speaker: Please don't do that to me.
Speaker: I couldn't agree more.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And it's such a simple thing.
Speaker: Funeral directors listening, please open your eyes.
Speaker: Open those eyes.
Speaker: Call me.
Speaker: I'll give you a free consultation.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: We'll add that in for sure.
Speaker: But it's so true, Larry.
Speaker: And it's like one of the things how I came to be, as you know, was 10 years ago, unfortunately, a couple of friends of mine passed a way, way too young.
Speaker: I literally got the greatest slap life can give you on the face where I went, whoa, I could...
Speaker: Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker: I could die any minute now.
Speaker: What has got, what, what?
Speaker: Excuse me?
Speaker: I have things to do, places to go, people to be, people to do, things to do, all these things, right?
Speaker: No, like I can't go anywhere.
Speaker: But the realization that holy shit,
Speaker: I don't get a choice in this, really.
Speaker: And then it was, well, I might be Catholic, which I am, but I don't want the church dictating how my final funeral goes.
Speaker: I just don't want it.
Speaker: Because I don't believe in the mass ritual.
Speaker: I just don't.
Speaker: I don't believe in having somebody up there preaching at me when they don't know how to live life the way I know how to live it.
Speaker: And that's a whole other podcast episode.
Speaker: If we're going to talk religion, we might as well block off the rest of the day.
Speaker: Exactly, exactly.
Speaker: You and I have so many similar thoughts.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker: And so I just, for me, like I could not agree more with what you're saying because especially during COVID, right now my job has gone from throwing beautiful life celebrations for 500 people to sadly streaming it to that same amount of people.
Speaker: I have noticed that even though most people are choosing direct cremation because they're terrified,
Speaker: of COVID, they're kind of gathering together.
Speaker: Every single one of them have said, we want to do a memorial.
Speaker: So you're exactly right.
Speaker: It is not, oh, they're gone for direct cremation, they're cheapskates, or they're this or they're that.
Speaker: In fact, to be honest, that shouldn't even enter into somebody's brain.
Speaker: When you're sitting across a green family, you shouldn't be like, well, these people are cheap if they're going down this route.
Speaker: It shouldn't be about that.
Speaker: It should be about serving them.
Speaker: End of story.
Speaker: What is it that they want?
Speaker: But there's actually a quote from that book
Speaker: I think his name is Eric, the rebuttal of Jessica Mitchell's book, where he actually says funeral directors are not the weird people that the public is if they don't want to have a funeral.
Speaker: I completely disagree with that.
Speaker: Completely disagree.
Speaker: Because what's for me, Larry, is not for what's for you.
Speaker: What's for you isn't for me.
Speaker: Now, for you and I, we probably are actually very in line.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: Yeah, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker: There is one person out there.
Speaker: I don't care if there's one person or 100 people in the entire world.
Speaker: And if they don't want to have a funeral, don't want to see their mom, if that's their way of doing it, that's their way of doing it.
Speaker: Stop judging them.
Speaker: Stop telling them they're weird.
Speaker: Stop judging them.
Speaker: I say probably in every presentation I give, whether it's Zoom, which has been lately, or keynoting the Kena convention, the days of funeral directors knowing what's best for the family are over.
Speaker: They've been over.
Speaker: And we need to get on the train of how can I help you and use these?
Speaker: The internet changed everything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Everything.
Speaker: And we just don't realize it.
Speaker: Have you watched that show on Netflix, the social experiment?
Speaker: I refuse to watch it.
Speaker: And now I don't know.
Speaker: Is it the right one that I'm thinking of?
Speaker: It's about how your life is not private anymore.
Speaker: Oh no.
Speaker: Everything about you is on the internet now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, I know.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: But,
Speaker: I even had a funeral director and this was a couple of years ago and I won't say who it is obviously, but she said to me, she was, she was not agreeing with me and she was one of those, you know, dig your heels in.
Speaker: And if I want to embalm with milk, I'm going to embalm with milk.
Speaker: And she said, I've been an advocate for funeral directors for 25 years.
Speaker: And right away I said, so-and-so wouldn't it be better if you were an advocate for your families and
Speaker: And then you wouldn't have to be an advocate for funerals, funeral service, funeral directors, funeral anything.
Speaker: It's such an easy fix.
Speaker: And it does, there's no set answer.
Speaker: Every community is different.
Speaker: Every person who walks in your door could be different.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I feel like I'm preaching and I am an evangelist when it comes to that.
Speaker: Yeah, but honestly, Larry, like this is part of what I want to bring.
Speaker: Like I've been doing, I'm 38 and I've been doing this for 10 years.
Speaker: And I know what I'm saying.
Speaker: What I wanted to do with the podcast, because I did, I sat down and I thought about like, what are the various different elements I could do?
Speaker: And I could do one just for funeral directors.
Speaker: I could do one for just...
Speaker: Joe Public.
Speaker: But honestly, I feel like there needed to be something that, for want of a better phrase, straddled both.
Speaker: Because I feel like Joe Public has so many questions and I already have so many questions that I'm going to have to do like a Q&A or maybe introduce some.
Speaker: But they do.
Speaker: They have so many questions.
Speaker: And funeral directors, or the funeral community, should I say, sometimes are terrified to answer in case it's taken and blown out of proportion.
Speaker: And I don't blame them for that.
Speaker: I really don't.
Speaker: I don't either.
Speaker: Yeah, because it is.
Speaker: It's not fair.
Speaker: Some of the rack that they've gotten is not fair.
Speaker: But equally, if we're not willing to open the conversation, then how can we ever come to any sort of resolution?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I always say this too, and it's not to get business because being a consultant, but if you're not a people person or if you're uncomfortable speaking, say, to the media, get someone who is.
Speaker: Hire a PR firm.
Speaker: Or hire someone that can talk the truth about what's going on and not worry about saying the wrong thing.
Speaker: Because you know what?
Speaker: We all say the wrong thing sometimes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When I do, I get over it and I move on.
Speaker: No one's perfect besides Jennifer Moldovey.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, thank you.
Speaker: Good sir.
Speaker: Payment coming in due course.
Speaker: I'll bill you in Europe.
Speaker: But I'll tell you, we just need to get over that secretive mystery of funeral service that, you know, it permeates everything.
Speaker: And, you know, I can remember when a family would ask to go into the crematorium and now it's commonplace.
Speaker: I think you should let people go into your prep rooms after they've been cleaned and are empty.
Speaker: No people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What's wrong with that?
Speaker: Be transparent.
Speaker: And the minute you say, no, I can't do that.
Speaker: They want to know why.
Speaker: And what are you doing that I shouldn't know about?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, it's interesting that you say that as well, because I've been in funeral homes where, say, the family, something is needed to be signed and the family, they're not thinking or they're it's not even not thinking, but they're just, oh, sure, I'll come in the back and I'll sign it.
Speaker: And they kind of go to follow somebody in the back.
Speaker: And no, you can't go in the back.
Speaker: You can't go in the back.
Speaker: It's just offices.
Speaker: But here's the thing.
Speaker: I do understand from the funeral side that because the offices are not attractive or in disarray or just don't look like you want them, you know, professional and polished or whatever it might be, they don't want the family in.
Speaker: And that applies across the yard to any industry, to be honest.
Speaker: But really and truly, when you think about it, that, to be honest, is...
Speaker: is a flaw in itself because your back office should represent your team that work for you should feel comfortable, safe.
Speaker: It should be as comfortable and fabulous a room as the rooms that you're having your families in.
Speaker: And that's, again, another gravy podcast, but it's how funeral homes are managed today.
Speaker: And like that secrecy, that transparency,
Speaker: It just needs to happen.
Speaker: It really does.
Speaker: And actually, I just read an interesting article this morning that I did want to talk to you about anyway, which is price transparency, because that's a huge thing in the business.
Speaker: The media attack the funeral community at, oh my God, every other day there's an article.
Speaker: What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker: Should pricing be completely transparent?
Speaker: Do you think there's any pros or cons?
Speaker: Or, you know, what's Larry's thought on that?
Speaker: Larry's thought, and I have a few, shocking.
Speaker: Shocking.
Speaker: I am 1000% in favor of price transparency because again, back with, well, if you won't give me your prices, I'm going to call someone who will.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The funeral rules are pain in the butt.
Speaker: I get it, but it's pretty easy to comply with.
Speaker: And it's coming down the pike where you're going to have to publish on the internet, your prices.
Speaker: If you have a website,
Speaker: That's another podcast about websites because your websites are, they're not about selling flowers and getting a 10% kickback.
Speaker: They're actually your first employee that most people see.
Speaker: It's about getting people in the door, not about the jewelry you can sell.
Speaker: Again, another podcast.
Speaker: Whenever I'm engaged to,
Speaker: for pricing strategy or any kind of thing like that.
Speaker: I always, almost always suggest taking all of your retail product, including caskets, containers, marking them up enough to cover the leg bill and increase your service fees, non-declinable professional service fees.
Speaker: That's where the value is.
Speaker: And if we don't value ourselves,
Speaker: We can't perpetuate that to the families and then we're not going to be valuable to them.
Speaker: And then we're going to be in the same situation we were 10 years ago when people were actually not thinking we were worth it.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And again, I couldn't agree more with you because it's like going to a doctor's office and you paying, you know, maybe ten dollars for the doctor.
Speaker: But then all of a sudden your prescriptions are thousands of dollars and you're there going, whoa, what's happening?
Speaker: And it becomes a minefield.
Speaker: And as a result, you don't value that doctor's service.
Speaker: Because I know you're a consultant, I'm a consultant, what we do is we don't have product, we don't have something tangible.
Speaker: So what you're borrowing is our expertise, our knowledge, our innovation, our brains, our everything, right?
Speaker: And so I know I do under, I completely get it as a startup.
Speaker: You know, it was so hard for me to figure out pricing.
Speaker: how, you know, when you don't have something tangible, but if the funeral business don't start doing that, they are going to become their biggest nightmare and become a disposal service.
Speaker: And I know that, and my heart breaks for them, but if they don't put themselves in that consultant, professional, I'm here to hold your hand the entire way through, I got you, I got your back,
Speaker: then where are we at?
Speaker: As you said, it just becomes a trinket store.
Speaker: Like, I mean, as somebody who has a jewelry line, I don't sell in many funeral homes because I don't want it to be just something they add on here and there.
Speaker: I want it to be something, it's something special.
Speaker: There's a part of a service to it.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening to the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: It has been something I've been working on and muddling with for over two years now.
Speaker: So I appreciate your time to listen in.
Speaker: Every episode will have a new guest we hope you will find interesting as they tell their own story.
Speaker: So stay tuned for the next episode or have a look through the Glam Reaper episode collection.
Speaker: Find your nugget of gold as we talk all things life, love and loss with a dash from the funeral world.
Speaker: Until next time.
