The Mortuary Show

AI Caskets 🤖

Things always get a little weird when we talk to Professor Ben Schmidt. AI casket displays & designs, Louis Vuitton & Apple designed urns/caskets, & how the Egyptians probably embalmed. Enjoy :)

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Mortuary Marketing

Elevate your funeral home’s online presence.

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Email: conor@mortuary-marketing.com

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Show Notes:

(07:45) – Direct to consumer casket debate.

(15:32) – Forced transparency.

(21:06) – AI casket branding.

(32:08) – The evolution of embalming chemicals.

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Takeaways

Funeral homes need to adapt to new ways of doing things and marketing to stay relevant in the changing face of funeral service.
Providing options for families and focusing on the value of the service provided is crucial for funeral homes.
Transparency is important in the funeral industry to build trust with families.
Direct-to-consumer casket sales, like those offered by Titan Casket, provide families with more options and customization.
Funeral homes can consider offering more vibrant and customizable caskets to meet the changing preferences of families. AI artist Hio John Malour created branded caskets that resemble popular brands like Louis Vuitton and Apple.
Go As You Please in Edinburgh, Scotland, specializes in personalized caskets and offers packages for different funeral services.
Personalization is becoming increasingly important in funeral services.
The future of funeral service is expected to be more consumer-driven.
The history of embalming fluids includes the use of arsenic and alcohol before the adoption of formaldehyde.

Duration:: 46m
Broadcast on:: 23 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[music] Okay, welcome to the funeral cast, everybody. Today I have my buddy Michael Cooney from Mortuary Marketing. Michael, why don't you take a minute to tell us who you are. All right, what's up, Ben? How are you? We go way back. We both went to Worsham. We're both Chicagoland area boys. Brother and I started mortuary marketing about a year ago. If you follow us on shoal shoal, it's social. It is the mortuary store. We do a lot of fun content that applies to funeral directors. I am a funeral director myself and best known for my speed and bombing, just kidding. But yeah, we started marketing, marketing company about a year ago because we saw the need from our own funeral home. And my brother has a background in marketing and advertising. And we just dove in. We knew that there was a need for small funeral homes to get in front of their clients and potential customers in their community. And that's how we started mortuary marketing. And now we're working with funeral homes throughout the US. And it's a very exciting time. And yeah, that's a little bit about me and what we do. Well, you guys both grew up in funeral home families, right? So it's more than you're just a funeral director and then your brother has a background in marketing, right? Like you have an understanding of what it's like to be a funeral director from life experience. Yeah, I'm a fourth generation. So it's been in the family for a long, long time. We grew up a mile away from the funeral home. We were there. It was our second home. So we know the ins and outs of a funeral home. We know the ins and outs of generations getting passed down and they're being resistance, especially when it comes to change and new ways of doing things in marketing. And as both Ben and I know, the ways are changing a funeral service. And we're both big proponents of that because we think we can take it to new levels. And that's part of what we're doing with mortuary marketing is trying to get funeral homes up at the time and really get in front of more people and bring them in the door so they can help their community and help people. Yeah. And I mean, as far as content goes on social media, kind of undersell it a little bit. I mean, you're going to be really pretty clever. I like the ones where you do like, if a mortician was a sports team or a college or something like that. So it's really entertaining content for pretty much anybody who's in the funeral. And the other thing is like, it's generally relatively classy too, right? Yeah. You don't take it too far in the gross or low hanging fruit and kind of type situation, which I do have a discussion about that later on where I'm going to do that. But no, we love doing it. It's more about we like to have fun with it. It really stems from situations that we face being in funeral service. And it's like, hey, this would be a funny video. We all know what applies and like all the little situations that you find yourself in as funeral directors. funeral directors are very specific to what we do. So we like to poke fun a little bit of that and just entertain because obviously we know that it's a tough day in the life. Being a funeral director can be a challenge. And I think part of what we try to do is to entertain and to educate and just bring some energy into the field. And that's what our video is all about. And it's just it's having a good time. And it's getting in front of people and showing, hey, there's different ways of doing things. And that's all that. Well, yeah. And just like, you know, if people think funeral directors can't be like goofy, I mean, you know, one of the reasons why I have you on, anybody who follows me knows that that is for sure a thing. So equally as goofy as I am, making that content. And then a hot plug for your store. Your designs are good, right? And one of my most favorite designs is the dinosaurs in the casket. T-shirts and hoodies available. Absolutely. You got to go and get your T-shirts and your hoodies and whatever else. We got to represent our industry. We have a lot of fun things. And we just do that. We don't really make money off of it. It's more for content and just, you know, getting in front of people and entertaining. Because when you have friends that are funeral directors, like we both do, like, especially after being in for a long time, it's great to have like those little puns and jokes with each other. And that's really what we do with the store for and all the apparel. It's just it's just for a good time, really. Yeah, and it's great. And everybody I've shown it to is like, oh, wow, you know, this is it's it is. It's clever. And, you know, who comes up with all your designs? I mean, I know that you source some of your designs from places, but are you the one that made it your brother? Your sister-in-law, who makes these designs? It's a combination. It's whoever thinks of an idea. We we run through a lot of the prep room stuff will be me, because my brother counter is not a prep room guy. He's strictly on the business and advertising. He's that mine, but I have a little bit of both in me. So the prep room stuff I'll do and counters really good with bringing it into pop culture and like applying funeral service to different parts of life. And that's where we come up with a lot of the ideas. Yeah, love it. It's it's good. So if you are someone out there listening and you like funeral director stuff, whether you are one or, you know, you think teachers with caskets on or clever, the mortuary store is the place for you. Right. And it's yeah, every time I show it to some of their like, wow, this is this is really and there's a lot of stuff in there too. I mean, there is a ton of stickers and mugs and shirts and hoodies and all that kind of stuff. Funny stuff, exactly. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. And the customer service is excellent. I should also add that when you're doing it. Come on. You're dealing with us. You know you're going to get the best. That's true, right? I mean, we you know, you are providing customer service to families all the time who need you. Of course, you can dial it back to maybe 10% and still be top notch compared to your regular t-shirt store, so to speak, right? Isn't it the way it goes? I mean, as funeral directors, we're so accustomed to be going above and beyond for all of our families, it's like a different level when you look at different other industries, in my opinion, because we are there for them every single step of the way doing every little detail for them as much as possible. Even when it gets it goes on to the radar, we're still going to do that because I fully, fully believe that morticians, funeral directors are just have the best hearts, because they want to help families. And that's what it's all about. And that's where that customer service comes from. And that's how so many businesses grow as funeral homes is they every family that comes in the door, they're going to treat the best they possibly can. And that's how eventually your business expands, like when you're getting in front of more people, you're providing a great service. It's that snowball effect. And that's where that customer service comes from. And we're really good at that as funeral directors. I think that's one of our best things because we care for our families. Yeah. And I would just like to take note. We're talking about how your online persona is kind of goofy, right? And make all these jokes. But if you are a listener right now, take note of how genuine Michael is being in this moment. Right? So he definitely can switch back and forth from business mode to fun mode pretty easily. It seems like, right? And that's got to. I think I think you drive yourself crazy. If you're always in that stoic mode, you know, when you're closing, you're, you're lowering down a cast and you're saying that last goodbye. That's a whole different person than you are 15 minutes later with your other funeral directors in the lounge picking up scraps of cookies. You know, it's, it's all personality. And you got to have it keep it light because you're dealing with heavy stuff. So on the other end, you got to keep it light. And I think most of us know if you've been at a funeral home for a long time, those dynamics that you have with your coworkers, those are the best and those would help you get through every day. That's true. You got to have good clubhouse culture, you know, like you could be one thing in the dugout and another one on the field, right? It's two different. But you can, you can balance both, right? Yeah. That's very well done. Yeah. All right. So in this introductionary discussion, we were discussing about the changing face of funeral service. So one of the topics that I sent you is kind of a hot button issue in funeral service right now. And that is the existence of a company called Titan Casket. So Michael, first of all, what do you think about direct to consumer casket sales or urn sales or anything like that? What is your, your general opinion on this? You know, there's so many sides that you can take on it. And one thing that I always say is the customer should have options in no matter what the situation is because you don't know what their financial state is necessarily. So if they need that help in some way, all we're trying to do is to be in front of the family and provide the best service we can. So I think from a business model, we should be doing everything we can to, to make our income and make our profits based on the actual service we provide. Because that's where we can set ourselves apart. And that's where people are going to see value. To be honest, a lot of people nowadays aren't seeing as much value in those caskets. I hear this all the time or see these on comments on our videos. Like, I can't believe you're charging X amount for a casket. Like, it's used for two days and then it's gone. Well, it's like, well, it serves a way bigger purpose than that. But it seems like over years, that purpose and that the value people see have diminished a little bit. So that's why I think as funeral directors, we get to focus on actual service. That's what we have to provide. As far as the caskets, you know, specifically, as a funeral director, they aren't fun because you got to deal with taking them out of the boxes and ripping them apart. And like, that is the part that drives me crazier than anything else is the tediousness of having to break it down and rip it all apart and like, pull it out of the box and my backs breaking. That's the one part that I have an issue with. But I, you know, as far as the family picking it, it is what it is. And we're going to provide the best service possible. Obviously, you know, we're going to pick our caskets and sell them to families as we would and provide that option for them. But for me, I think you got to give them every opportunity to have the service that they want to have because that's what we're there to do is to help people. Yeah. And I mean, there's going to be a lot of things that break your back in funeral service. So what's one more, right? I mean, really. And, you know, so that kind of comes to my final question too. So everybody is making them out to be like disruptive to the funeral industry. Whenever there's a new way for someone to purchase something of a casket, this is what we get. It's going to be a funeral home killer. It's going to be just 10 years ago. Totally. OK, exactly. So I just had a Costco casket today, and it was an awesome casket. I mean, it was this guy was a veteran. He's an army veteran. And the cast was all black and it had the decals on it. He was a sweet casket. I mean, you know, you're going to, you're going to get what you're going to get from some places sometimes. But that was a cool casket. So sorry about keep going. I just want to know that's exactly what I was thinking, right? Is that they're not as disruptive as everybody makes them out to me because we've already had direct to consumer casket sales for close to a decade, right? As long as I've been in funeral service, people have been frightened of it. And it's probably because, as you mentioned, a lot of people get their money from merchandise sales as opposed to the service, right? I mean, as funeral directors, there are things that we can do that no one else can do because of our licensing, right? And sell caskets is not one of those things, right? I mean, sure, that's part of one of the things that we do. But it's not one of the things that is unique to us, right? As I already mentioned, so... You can offer too. We're not a cookie cutter. We're not cookie cutter shops anymore. There are many things that you can do to offer to families that you can increase your revenue, whether it's having lunches at the funeral home or doing different services that you're able to expand upon what you can charge a family in the best sense because we're doing extra services. We don't need to be like, "Oh, my gosh, if we don't sell this casket, we're going to lose all of our profit." It's like, no, we can make our profits up in other ways by doing these different services. And as we all know, the rate of cremation is expanding greatly. Okay, those caskets are going to be gone, potentially. You might have one out of every four down the road here at some point in the next 15 years. That's very much possibility. So to keep our funeral homes open and to go into the next level, it's like, how can we bring in more customers? How can we serve them in the best way? And how can we show our value as funeral homes? That's the way we're going to make our money for down the road for funeral homes that want to stick around. That's my take on it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the thing is, is that the services are the things that we can provide. And the important part is if we're going to charge so much for them, that we better follow through on it also, right? Okay, so have you had a tightened casket at your funeral home yet? You know, honestly, I don't think we have. We talked to Titan a while ago when we were first making content and they were awesome. They were great people just to like, I think it was when they had a Taylor Swift video. Yeah, sure. We talked to them because they were trying to do some more marketing things, but that's neither here or there. They were great, but I don't know if we've ever had one. We might have had one one time, but it hasn't been anything crazy for our specific funeral home, at least. Yeah, I figured, you know, according to the video, which I will link to in the show notes, they sell thousands of caskets online. We live in an area that's still heavily Catholic. So you never know. There's a lot of people being buried in traditional type funerals and you never know it. So have you visited their website though? There is one feature of it that I think is just amazing. They definitely came up with a new feature and I don't know if this was your referencing, but you can go in and select like your different options. Like it changes the color automatically for you. It changes the corners. That's super cool. That's customizable. Like that's awesome. You were referencing the video that you're going to put in the notes. I do, I did have a little bit of an issue with some of the way they were phrasing the things like they were portraying funeral directors as bad people saying, oh, they're these upcharges and all these things like we're not. We're in no way, shape or form our funeral directors ever trying to stick it to a family. People don't realize a lot of times the amount of overhead that funeral homes have to incur when they have these large facility with big parking lots and keeping the doors open. We don't have services running constantly every single day. So people don't realize why we need to have the level of charging we do. It's so that we can actually keep the doors open. It's not like, oh, I'm going to buy, you know, a house in Florida because of this. No, that's not the situation. It's we're trying to keep our doors open so we can serve our community. But those are my two things that I was like, I didn't care for the way they were phrasing that. So, you know, that's the thing if if the idea is that we're supposed to work together, the traditional funeral homes and the direct to consumer sales of things like we they can't rely on old funeral director tropes either, right, where they were there. And that video, I totally agree with you, definitely sort of doing it. And I think that might be why some people have their hackles up about it is because like they're right like like you said, and a lot of people are moving to this service based business as opposed to a merchandise based one. So, you know, they need to follow the trends of like our philosophy and how it matters. So, you know, I have to wonder how much of that was like editing due to like to get people like, Oh, like here's like, right? Like they said, like the obscure the secure document called a GP out. Like we're the most transparent end of the day. I think we're one of the most transparent industries around because we have these regulations around us because people think because if they're going through a tough time, they think that they're getting, you know, screwed like, no, so you have that's why we have these laws in place is like, we're as transparent as you want us to be. And that's the way it is. And because it's federal regulations, right, which, you know, Titan Casket does have their on their website, which I'm perfectly fine with. That doesn't bother me in the least, right? But yes, the feature I was talking about on their website is the design your own casket, right? So, it really is, you know, I made a casket with a green top and an orange bottle with silver and black handle and like, I can put all the bells and whistles up charges, 18 gauge, right? And it ended up being $1,700, right? Well, and that's the other thing, you know, one of the things that attracted me to their caskets by looking at them is their colors just seem to be much more vibrant than the ones that you see in the funeral home, right? Those, I guess, your age versus traditional type mix because, you know, traditionally, you wouldn't want to have a vibrant, loud casket. But now people are interested in that who maybe that's the reason I'm. Yeah, I guess that's the thing, you know, and I thought maybe, oh, this is just how the colors look on their website, you know, but I haven't seen one in person, but I've seen people with them in videos and then they had them in this video to it. Wait, they really do look quite like pop. Yes, they do. They definitely have a different sort of color palette than the kind of subdued ones that we see in the funeral home, which I like because I think there's too much stuff in the funeral home that is like grandma's furniture, right? You know, like, you know, somebody posted recently about the new like equipment they got for their showroom and it looks, you know, to me, the beers and all that other stuff, they look like my grandparents' TV set, you know, so, so I appreciate a company that's going to be like, let's make this more jazzy, you know, and that's all they would. Yeah, no, that's a great point. And I think it should just be funny to see one of those caskets in like, you know, the old school funeral home that looks like it's from 1949. And then you got this like vibrant red casket in the front like, that's funny. That's funny to me. That's comical. Yeah, yeah, I love it. Like the, they had a farmer's casket is like John Deere Green, you know, just like this green look to it. I'm like, it's just really appealing to me to have like some color splash to it, right? You know, and, you know, the other thing is you have this funeral aesthetic that's like, oh, it's kind of dark and the room is going to be dark and all this other stuff. And then like, bam, you have this pop of color in it and that's your casket. So yeah, maybe, maybe what people should be thinking about is buying them and selling them in their showroom, right? It's like an attractive piece, you know. I mean, as we know, we do end up burying people who are young and they don't necessarily fit the light blue or light pink or the, you know, that kind of thing. And they deserve something a little bit more electric, so to speak. Yeah, I'm sure they have some sort of program that works with funeral homes somehow. I mean, if that's, if I was doing it, that's what I would do. But I'm sure they have something in place where we can do that and so we can offer it to all the families, I'm sure. That's what interests people. Just treat it like your normal casket distributor, right? Just order some from them, two or three, see how they sell and if they sell good, keep them in stock. That's it. Right. That's easy for me to say, go, I don't own a funeral home, so whatever. Talk to the bottom, we'll see. Well, maybe we'll test the waters and see how it goes. Yeah. Yeah, if you do that, well, and the other thing is, have you seen them interact online at all, like with their customers? Not really, no. So there was a Facebook post that I had seen where the woman was concerned about the quality of the casket that she had done, that it had come damaged, right? Sure. It posted in a group where Titan casket was a member of that group. And they immediately were like, we're sorry, you know, whatever we can do, you know, we'll send you out a new one, you know, that kind of thing. So they were publicly falling on their sword in a group. This was like a funeral directing group or a funeral director, how? Where this woman had shared her own post where she had tagged them in it and they immediately came to explain like, hey, we are, they didn't get mean, they didn't nothing. Right. They were like, they took the blame, they said, we'll send you a new one there. There you go. Right. So there, well, it should be. Yeah. I know a lot of a lot of people have policy with online casket orders that the family would need to be present when we are taking it out of the packaging, because we don't want to be accused of having anything to do with any damage that comes with it. So that's a tough option. You know, you don't really want to have to do that. But if that if you're someone that is concerned with that, that's I've heard that from several funeral directors that that's their policy with online casket orders. Me too. And at least in this case, if the person was, you know, so you open it up and it is damaged, they're a casket company. You're not dealing with Amazon. You're not dealing with Costco. You're dealing with a casket company that sells to the general public who that's their customers. So they're going to give you, I would think the same customer service that you would get at like a real customer service, not an AI chat bot or, you know, some outsourced telemarketing, you know, whatever. So right. So there is definitely a sort of personal element when they come to their own customer service. At least that's what I've observed in that situation. Right. So yeah, that's good to hear. Yeah. So Titan casket, maybe this plug from Michael and I will get us a free one. Yeah. Give me a free one and I'll, I'll take a, take a nap in it and we'll get some crazy content going. Get a little props going for your TikTok videos and stuff like that. There you go. It's good enough for the T Swift and I guess it's good enough for us, right? No doubt about it. All right. So on that note, we're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor and then we'll come back with our other topics. All right. So this is where I pause for editing, right? That was good. That was a good discussion, I think. Yeah, I enjoyed that. That was really nice. Yeah. You don't get to talk about it too openly with people, I feel like. Oh, no. It's good subject to that. Blistery. Yeah, I know. All right. And we're back. I hope you enjoyed that word from our sponsor. Okay. So the next topic that I sent to Michael is these AI caskets that are branded. All right. So these were created by an AI artist named, I'm sorry, I'm going to butcher his name and heo john malore. He is an AI. Everyone knows him. All right. He's been in the AI world, right? And he created some branded caskets that were a little of a ton, Apple, that kind of thing. And then they also resembled like they could be a product based on that. So like, for example, the Apple casket looked like an EarPods case or AirPods. Sorry. Don't come after me, Apple nerds. All right. You know, the looks like a bag, sort of, right? Like it has that. So I guess, like outright, Michael, if you were going to be in a branded casket, what brand do you think that you like enough that you would want to, to be in that? Oh my gosh. You're on the spot. My brand, Trader Joe's put me in a Trader Joe's bag. I love it. Yes. That's great. It's like a green casket, right? Yeah. It's got a handle that says reuse me. I don't know. I love Trader Joe's. What can I say? I'm a sucker. I'm a sucker for the freezer aisle there. You know, I go in at Trader Joe's. We had the freeze, the frozen fried rice for dinner just last night as a matter of fact. I can't believe the more stores don't sell that, right? We're at Target and Jewell's, right? Yeah. Yeah. But those caskets were really cool. I mean, very unique designs. You know, just just very different. And, you know, who knows if that's the way they could actually go? Like, I know it's AI generated, but I mean, those ideas are legit and they look super, super cool. Like, hi, and nice caskets. I mean, everyone could have their own brand someday. Who knows? Yeah. I mean, what do you think? Like, how do you think that say your family saw this AI art, right? And they said, we'd love to have a little of a ton casket. Like, what would you do to make that happen? I'd call up my friends at Titan and have them. Honestly, yeah, they might have the right shade of brown for you, right? Little exotic on that, right? You can do worlds of wonders with decals and stickers. Right. Exactly. Yeah, you definitely could. You can make your own special Adidas type casket or something like that. I think that's that would be cool. That would be wild. It would be first very special person. That's for sure. Yeah, you know, me personally, the brand I would pick is is Lego, right? I really think that would make a good casket design and, you know, plus that we could stack you with all your family members after the fact when you got that. The other thing is, is that you could buy the kit now and then start putting it together, and then, but you're ready to go towards your own death every day, just as we all are. Yeah, it'd be tough with the little pegs along the bottom of it, though. I don't think that'd be too comfortable to lay on that thing. But just as comfortable as a casket bed, I'm sure, though, I've been in there. I've been in. Yeah, well, you know, I've done that too. I haven't laid in it because I was afraid that I was going to knock over a casket, right? I mean, that was always my like, did you really find it to be that comfortable? You know, I know most of them have those, you know, how you raise and lower the casket, they have like those metal springs that run up and down either side, especially on the ones that adjust. It's it's a miserable experience in there. Yeah, right. You know, the ones that I like recall that would be maybe the most comfortable are those trappas monk caskets, those wood ones that don't adjust up and down where it is, just kind of like a flat. And those they have the comfiest pillows. I'll tell you that much. If you're ever if you ever got one delivered and you need a little nap in the middle of the day, you got to get one of those monk caskets on deck for yourself. Well, like, so like with these branded caskets, right, if you're trying to do like a joke, like what what is a good joke that you might think? Like, for example, like what about like a burner king casket for cremation, right? Remember these have that flame broiler whopper? That's a good one. I'm thinking right now that I would make a casket with my whole body on it on the outside. So it looks like it just me the whole time. Even when you close the casket, there's me dead on top of the casket. Now that's funny. Well, that leads us to our next topic. All right. There is a company called Go As You Please and Edinburgh, Scotland. Yeah, they specialize in personalized caskets. And one of the examples that they have on their website is a picture of the person. I didn't even see that one. I looked through a bunch of the other ones and I was like, whoa, these are cool. I didn't know that's epic. Yes. Right. And well, and the thing is, it was like a young guy too, right? Like, well, not like a kid, but like somebody in their 40s or 30s. So he'd be like, oh, I'll just do it. And that's exactly what it is. It's the guy laying in the casket. So like the top view is him with his arms crossing your classic, like fake casket post, but then they even did like the side is his side. So I'm like, this will go. And then I want the bottom to be, you know, cheekless, you know, I want to have a cheekless bottom. Ridiculous, like surprise, like nobody's ever going to see them. Yeah, there you go. Maybe going into the hearse, maybe. Yeah, maybe they were like, what's on the bottom of Michael's casket? Right. So yeah, this place is called go as you please. So they were, they're in Edinburgh, Scotland, and this is actually a funeral home as near as I can tell, right? Okay, it looks a little bit different when I was researching, you know, we're used to seeing the American funeral homes in a certain way. But this one, it was what happened was is the founder of the funeral home, his mom died 20 years ago. And he didn't like what his options were as far as the funeral goes. And so he started this go as you please funeral home. Now they use the word bespoke a lot on their website. Are you familiar with this word bespoke? It feel it's like kind of a Scottish term to me. So I see it a lot as a marketing thing. So I actually had to look it up because they used it multiple times. And I saw it right in the beginning, I was like, that's an interesting way to start a page because no, what does it even mean? What does it even mean? So I looked it up and it means personalized for a specific purpose. That's what bespoke is or something like that. Like, you know, we there's like a one of those subscription boxes thing is called bespoke box and what it advertises itself as is as a, you know, pick what you want to get mailed to you. Right. So we are all very bespoke. This is a thing that we as a community in general do this all the time. And now we have a word for it, Michael. So we can certainly be more bespoke about bespoke podcast here. Yeah, that's right. Right. Just like for the people, whatever you want to hear, we'll tell you. Well, it seems like this group too is like, you know, today, my wife's birthday is coming up and I like to design a cake for her every year. We I've been doing it since we've been dating. I come up with what I think is something clever to make her laugh. And whenever I do this, they always say like I go to Jewel for those of you in the audience and don't know, Jules is the local grocery store chain here in Chicagoland. And they always say, is this a copyrighted image? And so I have to explain like, well, at the very least is fair use, you know, like something like that, because like a feature pop culture characters or something that my wife likes. But in this case, they really don't seem to care because as you probably noticed, we had the Mandalorian casket, we have Avatar, we had the Walking Dead. They go full ago, they didn't hold back on anything. They're going to get a lawsuit on their hands after this. Right. Well, indeed, just the amount of alcoholic beverages that they had, any beer or liquor apparently in Scotland is available for you to be able to get on your casket. Now, we had the same ethics teacher at Worsham and he always like brought up the idea of like, if somebody dies into drunk driving accident or somebody dies of alcoholism or a result of alcoholism, like maybe it's not in the best interest to feature beer or alcohol at the funeral. So, I suppose that you have to consider that, right? So one of the things that the Go as you please group wants to do is keep to be able to do all this stuff for a pretty low cost. All right. So I looked at some of their packages because you can actually do that. So here in the United States, for those of you who are listening, we talked about the FTC rule earlier when we were discussing Titan caskets. And we have to have everything itemized out, right? You can think of the FTC rule as all a cart for funeral consumers, right? You can pick each individual items, but we are allowed to do packages. In Europe, they're not beholden to that same standard. So we were, I was looking at the packages, they only do the packages. So their personalized package, Michael, did you look this up? No. Okay, this is not much. Okay, so we'll just make a guess on how much you think this is. Okay, so this is wording from their website. This is their personalized package. You get the collection of the deceased, care in preparation of the deceased, including dressing them according to your wishes, personalized traditional or wicker coffin with nameplate using our bespoke design service, visiting the chapel of rest at any of our branches, doctors fees for completion of necessary paperwork, cremation fees, transportation of the deceased to the funeral by a black hearse, transportation of the family to the funeral by a black limousine, pallbearers, and a go as you please nominate administer or celebrate. All right, so those are all the things for this personalized package. How much do you think that this costs? We're looking at about 9,400 euro. Okay, so they have it listed for 3,750 pounds or approximately $4,800 US. Yeah, right, some people's basic service package is 3,000, right? So you can get this casket that's amazing. And then all of this other stuff. Now, this care in preparation of the deceased doesn't specify embalming or not, right? But true, it could include that, right? One of the other things that they have here is they do also specialize in green burials at a place called seven penny meadow, which sounds beautiful, and the pictures look really neat. And so they have their echo packages that include all of this stuff, starting at 1,700 pounds or $2,100 American. Wow. Right. I guess I'm going to Scotland to die. I don't know. No kidding. But I got one to call these kids are gonna hook me up when that happens one day. I don't know. Who knows? Totally. Absolutely. They're traditional funeral, 3,350 or 4,200 American 4300 American. And if you just do a chapel service there, it's 2,500 a pounds, right? So $3,100, right? So these people really are creating an interesting model when it comes to personalized low cost funerals. Seems like it. I wonder what the facility is like and, you know, just how expensive it is. And it's Edinburgh. Is that where you said it is, right? It is. Yeah. And I'll put the link to their website in the page. You know, so recently, I was in Belgium as we were discussing earlier off, Mike, and I had the chance to visit Belgian funeral homes and German funeral home. And I have to say that this funeral home looked very similar to the layout of those two funeral homes. So it doesn't look like it's anything less than a regular funeral home facility as I recognized it in Europe. So very, very interesting ideas here, right? Yeah. So I mean, that's, that's a way the packages are always like a nice thing. I enjoy when you have them just kind of spelled out in normal terms for a family. I suppose, you know, as opposed to making it difficult with them having to pick through, you know, your, your price sheet. I've always been a big fan of just saying like, Hey, this is what you have these are your few different options. And it just makes it a little bit easier on a family in my opinion. Yeah, and we're used to buying so like frequently bought together items, right? You know, I mean, so doing that, especially when you are in a situation where you are confused and don't really know, the other thing is, is that I've, you know, I've been an analyst of the FTC rule for nearly a decade now as a teacher. And quite frankly, I don't care for a lot of the languages used for the FTC funeral rule. It's legal language. It's not language things appropriate for communicating with the family, right? Like recently, we saw an article in the Jersey magazine that was talking about the term direct cremation as opposed to, you know, using some other more palatable language, right? So having packages kind of softens it, in my opinion, right? You can clarify things. And then, you know, you can have things that are particular to people like, Hey, your funeral home, do you have a veterans package, for example? Not specifically, but I mean, we would, we would know like, Oh, are they a veteran? And then we would kind of go through and say, Hey, we have, you know, your flag service, we have these options for caskets, we have a military veteran honors and all of those things. So we definitely, you know, when we're going through and getting the paperwork through, when you asked them if they were ever in armed forces, we definitely go down that route. But I wouldn't say we have it broken down into a specific one. Yeah, I've seen funeral homes where they have their veterans package and then they discounted a little bit more because the person was a veteran and then, you know, it's, but on the other hand, packages like that make it tough, because then, like, for example, I was in the military. Do I want my free flag? Yeah. But do I want to have a military funeral? The answer to that question is no, because that really didn't define my life and it isn't necessarily it's like more of a story generator for me than it is like a lifestyle. If that makes any sense, you know, right. And then there could be you, you could go down the rabbit hole if you could have a million different packages and then maybe that gets just as confusing if you had it not broken down. So it's it's a fine line. Sometimes you have to go down. But that's obviously a very different one. But I think that's a good idea to have it. A lot of places could use it. I think we could too. Like I said, we had one we had a veteran this morning. So it happens frequently. Yeah. Okay, Michael. So to kind of camp off our topics today, what are you going to steal from Titan Casket? Go as you please or the the AI Casket designs. I enjoy the the personalization of it all just in general speaking. We touched on it previously where I think I talked about a lot about how service is everything when you're when you get families in the door. And the way to do that is personalization. So if you can incorporate that in any way, whether it's your caskets or the actual service that you're providing, I think that would be a cool thing to do. That's something I would take away. Yeah, for sure. You know, I always say the future of funeral service is going to be more consumer driven than it is coming from the funeral homes, right? Because to this point, the the casket companies come up with stuff. They say, this is what we have available. And then the funeral home says, these are the ones that we have available, right? But now more people from the outside are starting to get involved. And they're making a vocal about what it is that they want, right? And it kind of starts with the disposition. We want to be cremated. We want to do something green. We want alkaline hydrolysis. We want something else, right? But there are definitely going to be people are like, we still want a casket. Okay, well, let's let's listen to what they have to say on that issue. Yes, I want an electric orange casket. I want a casket with my face on the outside of it. Like, you know, so as you were talking about services that we provide, being a resource and flexible, I think is part of our services that we need to have. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you 100%. You got to be. Yeah, for sure. Okay, Michael, before we go, did you bring your stump to chunk question with you? Oh, I just thought of one on the spot. So yes, I did. All right. So my question for you is, when you had your first embalming is when we're talking actual injection into the arteries. Okay. Yep. What were the first fluids? What were those concoctions made of? What were they made of? Oh, like, oh, the answer. So, okay. So like when we're talking about, all right, well, this is actually this is right in my wheelhouse. So the injection so you're talking about embalming arterial injection, or not my gravity, gravity injection, like, oh, gee, like old school embalming. Yes. So this is so where this began actually was preservation of people for anatomical study. And one of the most common, one of the most common chemicals in this was arsenic. All right. And there's kind of like a story, right? I'll say it's an urban legend. So there was a man. His name is John Ganal. He wrote a book called the history of embalming in French, like way back in the like 1700s or whatever. And he, no, it must have been later than that, like 1800s or whatever. So the story goes that John Ganal was sitting at a cafe in France. He was a French guy eating his croissant, presumably reading paper. And he saw in the newspaper that there was a woman on trial for killing her boyfriend and her boyfriend was like an aristocrat. And some of the evidence of the murder was that they had found arsenic in his blood. Well, in the article, he read that the person had been embalmed. So he burst into the courtroom and says, soft red blue, arsenic is used in embalming. So therefore this woman is innocent or whatever. And it subsequently got arsenic made illegal in France. We used it here in the United States for a little bit longer than that, because I guess we just wanted to be stubborn or whatever. Because it wasn't until later in the late 1800s or whatever when formaldehyde was identified and then it didn't gain in popularity for an embalming chemical until like the 1920s, it's issues. Right. So yeah, so mercury arsenic, you know, I have to imagine well, and a lot of alcohol too, right? I always made this that the embalmers drinking their embalming flow a little bit through the body a little bit for me, you know, take the edge off, you know? Yeah, for sure. And there was a guy August Renn Ward who documented it in a book about embalming that he definitely said this because they were drinking their own embalming flow. I'm like, I always like thought that was true. And then I read that and I was like, Oh, okay, good. Yeah. So alcohol, arsenic, mercury, these were some of the main things before formaldehyde was adapted. Very cool. And now we know. Absolutely. Yeah. In fact, like Abraham Lincoln and his son were not involved with formaldehyde, they would have been involved with alcohol and stuff like that and stuff. Not sure. Okay. So it wasn't too long ago, then. All right. No, no, it wasn't. It wasn't at all. All right. Well, that's a good question. It facilitated a little bit of a history lesson there for the listeners is probably their board already. All right, which is fine. They made it this far if they're still listening. That's right. All right. So Michael, anything that you want to plug before we go? No, just we talked about earlier, follow us on all our socials. If you don't want to need some marketing help, we're always here for you. No pressure. Be on the lookout for us. And we're doing some great things. And we're just trying to make a difference out there and entertaining. Have some fun with our funeral homes. Yeah. Listen to Michael's podcast. If you can check out my podcast, you can hear me blather a lot more the mortuary show. It's a good old time. Ben's been on it. I've been on it. Happy back again. Yes. Fun. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Very good. And we will see you next time on the funeral cast.