The Mortuary Show
Cremation Nation 🚩
Time to adapt!! We know that if we’re not growing, were dying (yes, pun is always intended). Lee, President of ICCFA, and Michael give some great thoughts, tips, and recommendations on how all of our firms can take things to the next level. Lee also gives advice to implement corporate level success to the small family firm. You’re getting some KNOWLEDGE today.
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Show Notes:
(07:45) – From small to corporate.
(15:32) – Cremation statistics that’ll surprise you.
(21:06) – Be the leader of your firm.
(38:08) – ICCFA – Get involved!
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Takeaways
- Duration:
- 34m
- Broadcast on:
- 03 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
(upbeat music) - Today we have El Presidente, the ICCFA, President Lee, what's going on today, how are ya? Give us that rundown of where you come from, how did you get to where you are in leadership at ICCFA? Higher up at SCI has a lot of experience from his family's firm growing up and then into the corporate side of things, a lot to learn here from me today. So what's going on? - Well, Michael, first, thanks for having me on the podcast. I do appreciate giving us a little time to talk about the ICCFA. My background, I grew up as an independent son of an independent funeral home owner. So I was digging graves at 10 and helping dad with removals and my dad's funeral home was one of those places where he did 60 calls a year. And when he turned the light on, the whole staff had reported the duty. - Yeah, he stood, every visitation involved everybody, made every removal and still every funeral and for 45 years till he sold it about six years ago, October and my mother had well-deserved. - Yeah, and my mother had the only flower shop in town. So, you know, it was just a family affair there. - Big condo. - In 1986, I graduated from high school and my dad said go work for one of those big outfits up in Dallas, which was about 25 miles from my hometown. And I went there to work for Stewart Enterprises during mortuary school, apprenticeship, getting my licenses and then work there basically until I got out of grad school in 1994 and was gonna go into consulting work and a long time friend of my family, my dad, Douglas Graves and Plano Mutual Cemetery Ted Dickey. Ted Dickey funeral homes had just sold to SCI and asked me to come open a funeral home with him in North Dallas. - And on your head, and I've been with SCI for 30 years. - Wow, incredible. So, you've had quite the, I guess, experience going from, you know, your dad's firm, 60 calls, doing everything himself to SCI, the corporate style, very different. What do you think are the biggest differences between the two as far as day to day life? Is it like, as a funeral director? And then I'd like to talk about more big picture things, things that we could all learn from, so we can get to be one of those bigger call firms. I think it'd be really valuable for our funeral homeowners. Listen, I really think from a funeral director perspective, you know, there's, we're serving families. I mean, we're serving families. And, you know, SCI being an operating company and as a funeral director, you know, I spent some time in bombing, I spent some time working, you know, with families and meeting with families and handling services. You know, and it's really not a lot of difference, you know, in that aspect of the business. I think where SCI and an independent is a little different is the resources we have. The resources we have as a company are incredible. And I think Bob Walter, who I've known for 20-some-odd years before he passed away, was an incredible visionary to our organization and to a lot of independence that needed a succession plan, as well. - Yeah, absolutely. It's key. It gives people that option, you know, if one of the family members doesn't want to take over or you're kind of your backs against the wall. And as we know, funeral directors, we've worked so hard, especially our independent ones that are doing things like your dad, every single aspect of the business, it's hard to find a way out. And then, you know, SCI offers you that route, if that's the scenario you want to go through. When you were going through and in mortuary school and grad school, did your dad ever considered you, you know, after you're done finishing all that stuff? You know, you're going to go this way. - I didn't want to go back. - Myself is a 50-year-old man washing a hearse for an 11-year-old collection. He was not wanting to, and he's still alive today. He still lives in the same town, but he wasn't wanting to give up the controls. There was a time I worked at the funeral home for him. I took vacation, and I went on one family vacation, my entire childhood, and I have younger siblings. And he took the family on vacation, and the former owner's wife died at the funeral home that he bought the funeral home from in 1975. And her son came in to make arrangements. My dad was all over, oh, do this. Do you know where this is? I go, Dad, I got this. I've been here my whole life. I know exactly where everything is. - Very. - He kept calling, he said he was going to get on a flight for Orlando and come home, and her son got on the phone and said, my family never took a vacation. And if you come home, I'm taking my mother to another funeral home. And that put the brakes on that. He just stopped calling me, but he didn't come home. We handled it just fine. - Oh, that's wonderful. I mean, I can relate so much to that situation. I come from a family funeral home myself, and I saw it with my dad as well, just work and grind in every single day. Never break, never a vacation or a day off. You don't know if he's going to be working in the evenings or during the day. And it was just hard to see that. And I think just like you, I have that inner calling. I want to be in this industry. I want to be a funeral director, but I want to do it a little bit differently than my father did. And I think just like your father, I'm sure mine very much respects the decisions to go on a broader scale to do things different. But at the same time, you're still helping people and helping families, which is where that comes from within a little bit more. - Yeah, I didn't always agree with, I learned a lot about over time about how to look at things differently in our profession, how to do things differently in our profession. The one thing that doesn't change is the innate desire to serve people in their most vulnerable time. And watching my dad in this small town, it was a gesture in a vulnerable time. People could call him for anything. And he was service ready, you know, service ready. You know, a man called his horse died and one of his horse buried in his pasture. My dad took the back out there and buried the whole, you know, whatever. And over the years that he served at 2021, he got an elementary school named after him. Literally because of the community and what a great, you know, long time honor to have that. And so it was a quite an honor to stand with him during that. - Wow, good for him. So what is it like for him now, you know, just getting retired after all these years? What does he do to occupy himself? I'm sure he's got to be doing something. And how was that relief for him afterwards? Or did it never set in? - Well, it was funny. He kind of set out for about an hour, about a year. And he went, he probably to him, it felt like an, you know, but he went to work for Laurel and Dallas with SCI as a service director because he just needed something to do, which was funny. That's where I started my career. Was in Laurel and Dallas, and he was closing his career out. He's had some health problems where he's been out of the game for a little bit, but getting back on his feet now. But he's still the guys he sold the funeral home to, they've done a great job with the business, expanded it to another town. But if they have somebody calls him and said, I want you to embalm my husband or my wife, he goes down there and he pulls it together and does it. Still serving the community. - Good for him. That's fantastic. And what a testament to him. You don't have the school named after him and people still wanting him after all this time. It's gotta be just such a good feeling. And that's part of why we do what we do is. Because we know we make that difference and you could tell with things like that. - That's for sure. - So I guess we could talk about the business side of things a little bit more so in comparison to those independent, I know you touched on it. It's the resources. I'd like you to expand a little bit more onto that. And what are some things maybe some smaller firms could use to learn from and say, hey, this is things that we could do on a day-to-day basis that would expand our horizon or our reach in our communities? - Well, Michael, I think, and this has been my testament for a long time. And if you talked to anybody that works for me, they're gonna tell you this. Anybody that I work for, they're gonna tell you this 'cause I'm a clanging symbol a little bit. And it's also my platform in the ICCFA. We have a serious problem going on in our profession and that's the direct information consumer. This consumer is a consumer that I think personally, we blew off in the past. I can remember in the '70s, and I can remember as a young funeral director in the '80s who trained that you're gonna go in and basically take an order and process the person and there wasn't much to it 'cause we were bearing the greatest generation at that point in time, right? We were bearing all these World War II, my grandparents' error. And now we look and cremation rates in my world are 54, 55%. True at need, they're running around 63%. I just heard the Kana Executive Director at the ICCFA University that 2035 or 2040, I forget the time period, they're gonna be upwards close to 90, 95%. - Yeah. - And if we don't figure out a way to have that customer celebrate with us, then we're gonna become a commodity. And a commodity is not good. And I look around our profession, I'm around a lot of young funeral directors, my kids are even in our business. And the thing I want it to be is a great of a profession and a great of a place that I got you got and the people for us got, right? And if we don't figure out a way to how to combat this problem, and it's even a stronger problem on the cemetery side. Because a standalone funeral home will get a direct cremation and the customer doesn't believe they have a need for a cemetery. - Right. - Michael, there should be a place in this world that says I existed, right? And on the funeral home side, you don't lose someone you love and not celebrate their existence. - Right. - They're just not doing it with us for several reasons. One, they don't think we have the capacity. I said in an ICCFA University class, a hospitality school, just this past July, and listening in the instructor said, how many of you think hospitality or catering is critical to our profession? And every one of them raised their hand. And there's probably 25, 30 students in this class. And how many of you are doing it? Like two or three raised their hand, gah. And one of the three said, well, we'll do it when they ask. - Well, of course we will. We're funeral directors. If a family asks for it. - That's part of the part. - To try to do it for them, right? But to do it as a sense of, this is something we're doing every day to make it convenient because the days of the little ladies from the church coming and setting up in fellowship hall, those ladies are all working. You know, the women today are not at home where they can provide, you know, potato salad and ham casserole. They're working in the workforce and raising children. And so it's just, it's not there. So it's a great opportunity for us. And the other thing I think is, our independence and corporate alike, it really doesn't matter because it's the same issue. You know, obviously there's people that say, you know, independence this or corporates that or whatever. We have common issues that are crushing this profession that we can all come together and work together on to really make this profession a strong Bible entity for the next generation and for the opportunity to serve the community to weigh our predecessors. - Absolutely. - And one of the things, you know, something we did in our group in 2010, we got rid of all the rows of chairs and pews. And we put in roundtapes and we invested a little money in our facilities, so it was more bright and vibrant and not dark and sad and depressing. And we did this and, you know, we didn't really have heart, we had some families go, we prefer the rows of chairs and that kind of thing and we've flipped the room, but we made the runs flexible. You know, all the way up to where in four years ago, I put a 1920 speak easy in my funeral home in Tampa, put a wide room in your home in DC and in Naples and making it an atmosphere that's very celebratory, very upbeat, instead of, you know, you'll remember this Michael growing up in the business that, you know, people walk in and hear Murrow Womack, you know, speaking in quartet and be sad and depressing and heavy and I tell our folks all the time, people walk in with the weight of the world on their shoulders and we can't make them sadder, but man, we sure tried, right? Because, and what our job should be is to lift these people up, tell us why you're gonna miss this person you loved at loss and they will spew so much information about that individual where you can create a unique celebration instead of doing the mundane every day, three points, two songs or depending on the religion, you now have a blank canvas to help tell their story one final time in this incredible event and if we can get to that point and show people what's possible, then I do believe with everything in me, we can change to where we become the experts of celebrating an individual's life and not the restaurant, the hotel, the country club down the street. - Yeah, that's all that is so well said and right on point, couldn't agree with you more on all of it. We need to be the focal point, the experts in what these individuals are trying to do because it's not gonna, the days of us holding on, which happened to probably the best of us, hold on that I said, oh, it's just a trend or a fear that's way, way behind us and now it's far more about how do we adapt and adjust and make ourselves valuable to the families, how can we bring them something that can't be done elsewhere or do something for them that is gonna stand apart and say, I'm using that funeral home or I'm using that service for no matter what family member I have or someone attending a service, same thing and it's just about giving those families opportunities and options to do as they please because every service can be different. Like you said, a blank canvas is such a great way to put it and families, they wanna talk about their loved one, they want you to understand more of them. And if we just listen a little and then say, hey, I can do one, the tiniest little thing, you can take five minutes out of your day to go above and beyond maybe order something special for the family or put something in the chapel or wherever you're having your service for the family that is about their loved one and they know it's from you, you don't even need to do it for the credit but they're gonna see it and that's the thing they're gonna remember more than anything is that you went above and beyond and then beyond that, you have people coming in from the outside saying, oh, I got so much value from this place, they're doing things for me that I wanna do, they're memorializing my person, my loved one in the way that I want it to be done, that's where the value is coming from and we need to get back to providing that value and not just plugging along and hoping for the best and hoping for changes, what do you talk about with the students saying everyone raised their hands, it's just like, come on, why are we doing these things then? You know, what do you think it is? Like, well, what is it that is gonna finally, hey, let's go, we gotta make these changes, we gotta improve. - It takes, Michael, it takes relentless leadership. - Yeah. - The owner level or the manager level because if I could give you a dollar for every time I heard a funeral director say, well, I know my families and my families don't want them. Right. - Yeah. - You would be a gazillionaire. - Yeah. - And the hardest, getting a funeral director to move away from tradition is kind of like pushing a rope uphill. - Yeah. - It takes relentless leadership and not only, you know, I'm not talking about beating them over the head, I'm talking to say, you know, as a young manager, when I wanted to do something different, I said, you know, I'll take the next family. - Yeah. - You know, let me show you. And we've got people now that are doing it every single day and they can't even fathom going back to three points and two songs, they can. And the other thing I think a manager or, you know, how we got to round tables and how we did this and how we convinced the funeral director to open their mind to that as a way to open community and within the business is I always relate it back that I'm not reinventing the wheel. We're not suggesting reinventing the wheel. What we're saying is, what did our predecessors do to get us to where we are, right? And what they did is they followed the church. Now, I've got some funny theories about how we got there. But at the end of the day, we followed the church. And in a lot of places, we've got pews and pulpits and organs, we've got everything, but the choir loft and bad history, right? We've got church within our facilities. And my thing is today is let's do the same thing. Let's look at the church. The church that we modeled after is dying. It is dying at a rapid pace. However, you can go, you're in Chicago, right? - Yes, sir. - Okay, so Willa Creek, church in Chicago. You're familiar with Willa Creek? - I don't think so, it sounds familiar, but I'm not sure. - You can temporary church. I've been up there so time. It's actually kind of one of the founders of the contemporary movement of the Presbyterian church that became very modern contemporary. Nonetheless, if you read studies on these churches, that yes, they had corporate worship, but they also had an intentional way of bringing people into small groups or sitting in circles, against the round tables. So let's take our small, let's put people in small groups, even if I don't know you and I'm sitting at a table and we're here to celebrate Mr. Jones, we have a connection to Mr. Jones. And instead of listening to sad music playing and reading the prayer card, we're actually talking about Mr. Jones and how you impacted our life and how you knew him. And so the room is filled with robust dialogue, honoring and celebrating Mr. Jones. The other thing is too, is they're a lot more comfortable, right? The contemporary church is more comfortable. It's more of a come as you are kind of thing. - Right. - Many families that walk in our door to make arrangements. They walk in in shorts and flip-flops or jeans and boots or depending on your region, but they come casual. And we historically meet them with a black suit and a red tie and a wide shirt. You know, we're very transactional in our parents. And they already coming in with some misconceptions about our great profession. And but we kind of contribute to that because of the way we look. And we made a change, again, it was around 2010, where we let some folks dial back their attire. You know, I can remember it, you probably can too. If you walked into the lobby without your jacket on, you could get written up on your first business. We had a mirror. - Yeah, I would not have liked that. Actually, my uncle's, my dad was a little bit more relaxed with that, but my uncle's would get you. - Right. - I came in there without a tie-on or my jacket. - Right. But when we dialed the jacket, it was actually on the coast of Florida. They wanted to go to Tommy Bahamas and slacks. And I said, you know, let's try. That's what they do in Hawaii and they're on the coast and people walk in and shorts and flip-flops, right? Do you know we not had a single complaint? And in the process of making a customer comfortable, our average went up without even a price increase. And the theory behind that is the fact that when you're underdressed in a formal environment, all you want to do is get out of there. You've been probably been in a situation where they didn't tell you the dress code and you walk into something, you thought it was jeans and now it's black tie or suit and tie and you feel awkward, right? - I just went through a wedding two weeks ago and I didn't realize it was formal. So I came in, I was wearing a suit but no tie. And I was like, I got it, I can't wait for the dance for it for people to start taking their ties. I was like, you fit back in. (laughs) - But that's the environment. And once I brought it down and made it comfortable, then we met the customer where they are. And that's exactly what our profession needs to do is meet the customer where they are. You know, again, we play at the contemporary church. We don't play, you know, hymns out of the hymn book, right? We play, you know, we got bands and playing upbeat music. Well, you know what? We brightened up our music. We started depending regionally. We said, you know, here would be a great place for the Eagles in South Florida. You know, Jimmy Buffett is potentially a good music to play when they walk in. Make the atmosphere uplifting upbeat. And it's okay to smile when they walk in and greet them, you know, with energy and passion and dispel what they've seen because the customer knows what they don't want and they've only known what they've seen us do. And until our facilities are set up and shaped in a way that dispels that belief of what they've seen and they seem that we have evolved into something way different, then once we've accomplished that, then we can make the change for sure. - That's cool. I love that. I think it's huge and it's addressing the customers, wants the desires and bringing it all together and making it more of a conducive atmosphere to help out. It's really great and I think a lot of us can take bits and pieces that use it in your hometown, your area, whatever your shtick is or your niches and use that to your advantage for sure. How do you like it and what is it like to manage so many funeral homes? Give us your rundown of your day-to-day life, you know, with SCI now and what is it that you're doing to try to implement some of these things? - Well, let's start with the last first. Implemented is a constant thing. I mean, we started catering in 2005 in Orlando, Florida for SCI. We've been doing it close to 20 years now and we sell a lot of catering, a lot of catering. We'll do about $15 million of food and beverage a year just in my group. That's just my group. - I mean, think about that, everyone. My gosh, opportunities, we gotta use them. - And I'm a fraction of SCI, right? My world is about 300 locations, cemetery if you're in a lot of 2000. So, you know, so that gives you, the opportunity is there to do that. And we just kept evolving and it was an idea as it would come from, you know, sitting in a meeting, like a tire when came from a general manager in South, in East Florida that said, why do we wear suit and ties when everybody's coming in dressed like this? There's only more suits to funerals. Such a good question, let's try it. We tried a lot of stuff and something stuck and some things didn't, but today it stuck, you know? We work diligently to change our nomenclature. We don't use the terms chapel anymore, memorial service. We don't use any of those things. Everything's focused around a celebration of life and if someone wants somebody to something traditional, well, Lord knows we're good at that, right? And we're outstanding at going back. - Yeah, we can figure that out, no problem for you. - But the thing we found with the nomenclature is when you start talking about venue and catering and floral and linen colors and all these kinds of things, well, there's typically a female sitting in that arrangement office who's planned their daughters, you know, bridal shower and wedding and their own wedding and anniversary parties and birthday parties, now they understand that lingo, right? And when you start talking that lingo, they begin to prop up because, you know, in the greatest phrase a family can tell us is, I didn't know you could do that. I didn't know you could do that. So here's, there are funeral directors and funeral homeowners that are sitting on this podcast or we'll be listening to this podcast that are saying, oh, my family's don't want that. You know, he probably lost his mind. If that was you bought that. But I just recently went and looked at a building in Florida to convert to a funeral for a celebration of life center as we tend to call them. And it's a restaurant. It's restaurants have been in business for 35 some odd years. And it's still a running restaurant. And while we were in there, the general manager looked at me and said, what do you do? I said, we're in the funeral cemetery business. He goes, oh, really? He said, I do celebrations here all the time. I go, really? I go, how many do you do? He said 10 to 20 a month, 10 to 20. So you cat that out. It's 240 call of your funeral home right there. And I said, so what are you getting on those out of curiosity? He says, I'm getting $9,500 pop on that. - How is it getting those coming in? - Well, some of us nostalgia. Some of it is the funeral provider doesn't have the ability to do things different within the marketplace. Some use a direct disposer, which they don't have the ability to offer anything. And so they, as I said at the beginning of our podcast, you don't lose someone you love and not celebrate their existence. And so these people look for a place to celebrate. And so I'm sitting here thinking, you know, that's our business, that's what we do. And we have abdicated it for the customer. And here's my belief, Michael. Is in the '70s and '80s, when we kind of just let the cremation customer be in order and we just took the order and we processed it, you know, we were dealing with people making decisions for their parents who are baby boomers today, the families we're gonna be serving. And one thing that's true about the baby boomers is that if they couldn't find what they wanted, they answered them questions for themselves, right? And that's in all aspects of the cremation process. If you look at, we didn't offer them a celebration. We were like, oh, you're gonna cremate. So this is what you're gonna do, right? And we let it go and we processed the order. And we sure didn't talk about a place that I existed a piece of cemetery property or anything like that. So what did they do? They did one or two things. They bought an urn and put it on their mantle, or they took them and they scattered them somewhere of importance to the family. And the scatterings I would remember for one generation and the whole urn on the mantle thing, I think is a beautiful thing and a testament to the relationship of the person you loved and lost that you wanna remember each day and walk by them each day. But at the end of the day, they're not generational gifts and they will end up in the most unintended places, as you well know, if we don't let them know what the consequences are. And that's where I think we have let families down historically is not telling them everything that can happen. And maybe in the 70s, we didn't know, but we sure know now that that could end up in a box of goodwill, could end up in the attic of the house to the next owner to find there are so many things. And to boot, life goes on. Maybe mom remarries. Maybe she gets a boyfriend and moves that urn somewhere else and then it ends up getting forgotten. - Yeah. - And that's not what she intended when she took it home. - Right, right. So we have to educate and give them opportunities to express, to memorialize, to do all that, to celebrate more so as you were saying. Give me a rundown of what's going on now with ICCFA. I know you're heavily involved, you're a president over there. What are some of the great things that you're doing and events and such that are coming up that some funeral directors might wanna get involved in it? - Well, I tell you, ICCFA has struggled in a little bit, like all associations, especially post-COVID, attendance like you down and things. And it's kind of the same thing as a profession, right? When you look at the associations, I've traveled to a lot of them so far this year, that they're less people and it's the same show. And so what the ICCFA is doing for the next annual that we put on, and of course, historically, it's been called the ICCFA convention in Expo. We're gonna be at the Mandalay Bay, April 30th through May 3rd in Las Vegas. But we're literally changing the whole thing up. It's gonna be called the ICCFA experience. - I saw that. - It is going to be incredible. We're gonna have speakers that are giving information and a lot of round table discussions or panel discussions where people can ask questions. Our goal is this ICCFA experience in Vegas is for people to get information that they can take back. And if they have the courage to go implement it, it can impact positively their business, those cemetery and funeral. Not feel good. You know, a lot of these functions, you got three topics these days. You got to talk on leadership, you got to talk on managing the millennial, and you got to talk on AI. That's all fun to do. If you're just doing direct cremations, none of that really matters. If we look fast forward into the future. So we really want people to walk away with stuff that, you know what, I can try that. That wouldn't take a lot to implement. I can go do this and give it a go. But it goes back to every talk's gonna have, why? Why do we need to do this? The why behind everything? 'Cause you can't accomplish the end goal if you don't know why you're trying to run down the field, right? So it's gonna start with the why. And hopefully people will ask good questions. We're gonna have some of the foremost in our profession, be a part of that, and be a part of those panels, and speaking, and then taking questions. It's gonna be a real festival kind of atmosphere. All the stages are gonna be inside the hall. So we'll have a major keynote stage. We're gonna have smaller stages throughout, where they'll be a little 20, 30 minute, 40 minute discussions. So I think it's gonna be a really, really different and exciting type of experience to kind of disrupt what we've always done. - That's great, and I think you're hitting it on the head is to revamp those things and do it in a new, bigger, better way that we can use moving forward as opposed to holding on to what we did in the past or talking things that aren't going to apply to the vast majority of people, especially in the next five or 10 years. So we wanna just thank you so much for taking the time. Honestly, I learned a lot from you today, and I think a lot of our listeners can too. And I think if you wanna be on the forefront of things, digest what we talked about today and expand your horizons, go check out these events like ICCFA in Vegas here and do those things that you can improve your funeral home and just really take what Lee said here today and chew on it for a second and see what you can come up with yourself to apply to your funeral home. I think you'll get a lot out of it. - And Michael, can I say just a few short things, directly? - Of course. - And that is the ICCFA has smaller events as well. We have the Fall Leadership Conference which is coming up in San Antonio in October. We have the ICCFA University, which I attended the entire week this year. And it is by far one of the most educational, progressive, professional, educational things that students can get. We have our Dead Talks in Vegas in February, where it's more sales oriented, so you can bring your salespeople. But we'd love to have more involvement. We've got our journey to serve, partnered with the NFDA Foundation and the ICCFA Foundation that pulls together to try to place veterans after their services, so we live with our country. So any of, check out ICCFA, the main thing, one of the biggest things ICCFA does is legislative and legal stuff. And we've got the FTC, funeral rule changes. We've got the non-compete rule, which was just knocked down, but doesn't mean it's gone. We've got the jumpy rule, which is our big things. So these are some things that the ICCFA is very involved in and focused on, and frankly, in some of them leading the charge for our profession. - That's great. So if someone wants to get more involved, what do you recommend them do it, or typically start not with to get involved with ICCFA and dip their toe in? - Well, go explore, first of all, ICCFA.com. You can go there and see all the different events. You can see pictures of past events. You see the upcoming events, but the fall leaderships in San Antonio, and it's gonna be a great conference. We have an annual golf tournament every year, plus good networking, good educational program. We've got the Ritz Carlton that's doing a session for us there. So service matters even today with this customer. And as we used in the past, and no one does it better than the Ritz. And so there's a lot of opportunity. Dead talk is phenomenal. I think people with sales or with a sales organization or even a few salespeople to have them engaged. And of course, the conference, the experience is gonna be incredible in Vegas. And so anybody can reach out to me via email through the ICCFA office or lead.lons, you know, at dignitymemorial.com. And I'll be glad to guide them where they need to go. - Well, we appreciate you for sharing that information with us and for sharing your contact in case someone wants to learn more, get involved with you. I think there's a lot of people that could stand to learn a lot from you and your experience in the same thing with your organization. - Michael, I sure appreciate your time, enjoyed it. - Absolutely, thanks for joining us. - Yes, sir. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)