By Joey Haas
Transcript from our video interview with Zane Belyea from Jewish Funerals and Distinctive Life
Heather:
Hi everyone. And thanks for checking in with us at Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips, and Technology. We are here to chat with industry leaders to discuss marketing trends, business tips, and technology innovation, and discuss how digital marketing helps you better serve your families. I’m Heather Mierzejewski, I am the digital marketing director here at Funeral Innovations
Joey:
And I’m Joey. I’m the marketing and design coordinator at Funeral Innovations.
Heather:
And today our guest is Zane Belyea. Zane, is that how you pronounce your last name?
Zane:
It’s close enough. Belyea.
Heather:
Belyea, great.
Zane:
My last name has been butchered so much over the years that as long as you’re close, it’s acceptable.
Heather:
My last name is Mierzejewski. So I totally understand.
Zane:
Yes, I can see here is probably a lot more difficult than mine. I think people make mine a little bit harder to make out than what it needs to be.
Heather:
Yep. So thanks so much for joining us, Zane. You are the owner and principal of Distinctive Life and Jewish Funeral Homes. To get us started, why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your businesses?
Zane:
Well you know, like you said, my name is Zane, and I I’ve been involved for a few years now with with these locations we, we have two separate sets of businesses. We’ve had Distinctive Life, which caters more to the general population. And then we have Dallas and Houston Jewish Funerals that, that a lot more of a niche market that we specifically concentrate on the, on the Jewish community. Both of course, you know, mixed in well together because we’re heavily involved in a lot of other initiatives and community efforts. So you know, just a, there’s a lot, lot, lot involved in it.
Heather:
So since you have, you basically have four funeral homes, then, is that how you would say that?
Zane:
We do so, so we have, so we have Dallas Jewish Funerals. We also have Houston Jewish funerals, and then we have Distinctive Life Cremation and Funeral Services. We have, we have our location in Dallas and our location in Houston.
Heather:
Gotcha. Perfect.
Joey:
So do you think you could talk a little bit more about what it’s like running funeral homes with those two separate customers? I know you kind of talked about the more general population you target versus the niche market. And you talk a little bit more about what it’s like running those kind of two customer bases at the same time?
Zane:
No, absolutely. So we, we approach it as, as two separate entities and two separate strategies. On the Jewish side that when we first started this venture we really, we really started with the focus on the Jewish side because myself, my colleagues, most of our staff happened to be Jewish. And, you know, we’ve all grown up in the communities that we’re involved in, whether it’s Dallas or Houston, and that started as more of a community drive a community effort. And, and that, that approach remains that way, where we focus a lot more on the face-to-face contact, the interaction with the rabbis, the, the relationships with the rabbis, with various staff members at the synagogues at places like the Jewish community center. And the Jewish community is a small, tight knit community. So, so that was a, that was sort of a natural fit for all of us to focus on, but there’s a much broader world out there outside of the Jewish community when it comes to when it comes to this industry as far as who we’re going to serve, because in the grand scheme of things, the Jewish community makes up maybe 2%, 3% of any major demographic population. So there’s definitely a huge need to, to serve outside of that community. We have taken sort of a different approach then I think a lot of the corporate driven funeral homes and a lot of us, because we have to. We’re not a big well-known commodity, and so we focus a lot of our efforts on building personalized relationships with key organizations, key people in the community to build that trust that rapport and that sort of that referral base from you know, more specific places such as hospices and retirement communities. So, that’s been more of that focus. We’re not going to compete with the large corporations by throwing out a lot of TV, advertisements and billboard advertisements. So we have to, we have to sort of get to the grassroots efforts and really concentrate our efforts that way. Did that answer your question?
Heather:
I think that makes a lot of sense. A lot of those personal relationships do you, and I hear you on not being able to go into like the TV market and stuff. Do you find that you try to use that same strategy in person and on a digital platform, the building relationships, or is it all personal?
Zane:
Well with the current situation that we’re in, we, fortunately we, you know, myself, my colleagues, we have a strong background, that just happens be a lot more focused on the digital world outside of, of the funeral world, where we all came from. And so we were able to transform our processes digitally rather quickly. So now we do our, our meetings with families are done virtually. Our marketing efforts are done virtually. We’re focusing a lot of our efforts on sponsoring different organizations, zoom lessons or zoom classes that they’re providing on a weekly basis to their audiences. We’re doing a lot more sort of Facebook is definitely become a huge asset for us. And, and we’re also finding that a lot of these organizations are still, they still appreciate somewhat of that, that face-to-face. But it’s more of kind of a door knock drop off. And then we follow up with the digital side where it’s, you know, thank you so much Distinctive Life for delivering, you know, the cookies or the cake ice cream, you know, to XYZ hospice today. And so that gets out on Facebook and then we’re able to share it and people are commenting on it. And, and that just builds that whole world digitally, virtually where we’re creating an audience that follows us, and then we get interconnected with other organizations that have also transformed over the last several months where that’s their major concentration. You know, we, we tend to deal with an older population and what’s, what’s been amazing is their transformation on, on, on embracing and being able to sort of stay engaged digitally. I’ll give you an example. The Jewish community center in Dallas is all over Facebook all day long I get notifications of some class, whethe it’s a Pilates class or they’re having some sort of talk about some discussion. They’re constantly on Facebook and it’s a specific group for the seniors program. And I, I keep in close communication with the director and she was saying the same thing, and she was amazed on the senior community, how well they have embraced the technology. It’s been like that even outside of the Jewish community, as we focus on the Distinctive Life side as well we’ve and a lot of churches that are having online sermons and even weekly sort of keeping in touch with, with their members. And so we’re starting to piggyback off of that as well. And I think that that’s going to be extremely beneficial for us. So, so my word of advice is if funeral homes have not embraced technology, if they have not embraced Facebook and social media they definitely should ASAP.
Heather:
Yeah. So you talked a lot there about how the pandemic has impacted your efforts, or is there anything else about pandemic impacts that you’d like to share with other funeral directors, things that you’ve seen change or that are working for you?
Zane:
You know, I think I’ll start that question with kind of, sort of the sad part of this is, is I think there’s definitely an increased amount of stress because our funeral directors don’t want to get sick. And, and unfortunately we are seeing an increase in people that have passed away because of COVID. And we want to make sure that we keep our employees and our staff safe. So I think that that has definitely been an impact. And I encourage everyone who is not on the front line, because I would be lying to say that I’m out there on the frontline all the time. And that that’s sort of on a side note, one of the big differences for me is I used to be involved in every service that we had, whether it was in Dallas or Houston, I would go to funerals. I would help pass out programs and, and shake hands and hand out tissues and then do everything that a funeral director does. And, and I can’t do that anymore because we’re limited. And so it’s now down to our, you know, the licensed funeral directors who are there day to day, taking care of his loved ones, taking care of preparing their loved ones for their final disposition. And, and I know the stress is there and I really encourage owners and, and leaders in this business to give them some downtime. Let them work from home, let them work virtually you don’t need them to work 40 plus hours all the time. You know, give them their time off. I was telling the young lady that runs our funeral homes in Houston, that I really want her taking as much time off during the week as she can give her director’s time off. And so I don’t care if they put in 30 hours a week, if there’s a week, they put in 20 hours. As long as we’re taking care of our families, that we’re answering the phones when they ring you know, cause there’s going to be weeks that they’re working 80 hours a week. So I just don’t want to see that stress kind of beat them down because they’re vital. And I think they do get in the world right now because everyone praises the hospice workers and the nurses and the doctors, you know, but these guys are dealing with people who’ve actually died from this disease. And there’s still so many questions about whether, whether it’s still contagious or not after death. And, and, you know, until we have answers on that, then that’s going to be something we’re always going to face. So that’s sort of, kind of like the, the downside to some of the changes and some of the things that we’re seeing. On a brighter side, I do think that families are actually liking the efficiency of having the arrangements done virtually. We’re able to get through the arrangements, they’re able to make their decisions. We’ve got great technology in place to have visual-aids when they’re selecting caskets. Visual-aids like we’re doing right now because I’ve never met either one of you. And we could sit here for an hour or two, just chatting this way and almost feel like we’re getting to know each other and build some rapport. And it’s like that with the family. If they’re sitting, whether they’re sitting across from the table from you or they’re sitting across the world from you across the United States from you, it’s just amazing the way the technology works. And, and I think that we’re seeing an increase in families embracing that. And we’re also seeing that on the pre-need side, as well. Cause in the beginning, you know, we took a significant hit on our pre-need sales because everyone was scared. You know, the, the appointments sort of went away. We weren’t meeting face-to-face again because we’ve embraced technology. We’ve embraced the use of Facebook use of GoTo meeting. We’re starting to see that ramp up and we’re seeing a lot more people that are, there are getting more comfortable with the use of technology. So, so early on while I said that the funeral directors are definitely stressed, they’re putting a lot of time. There’s also a piece of this that’s actually become a less of a stress for four of them because of the virtual meetings. And they’re able to get their paperwork done, you know, a much more timely. And ahead of time, before they meet with families get everything signed and taken care of, and then they can focus more of their efforts on making sure that that, that service goes, goes off without a hitch. And that these families are, are well taken care of. You know, we’re also obviously seeing a difference in the actual funeral services themselves because we’re limited on the number of people that can attend services. We’re not seeing that change whether it’s Jewish or Christian across the board, most of the, most of the actual physical entities, like the synagogues and the churches are not, are not allowing services. Everything is moving straight to a grave side type of service or, or if they’re cremating or they’re doing stuff on their own. So that’s certainly been a change as well.
Joey:
And I think the insight about kind of the ups and the downs of how the pandemic has affected you is a pretty interesting perspective. And yeah, I think that, you know, like you said, taking care of your staff as well, as well as they’re taking care of families is, is important. So I wanted to touch on that again cause I thought that was really well said. So do you think you could talk about your Jewish funeral home a little bit more specifically in how that funeral home is different?
Zane:
So, so it’s starting with, let me see how to, how to put this. So, so the, as far as how it’s different, you know, it really goes back to just, just the rituals that are involved in Judaism. For starters, we, we require a more of a brick and mortar location and, and w I’m sure we’ll get into this a little bit later. Cause on the Distinctive Life side, I don’t really require a brick and mortar, you know, based on the approach that we’ve taken, you know, the business approach we’ve taken on that side, but on the Jewish side we do because of the rituals and, and, and in most traditional Jewish burial when someone passes away, someone typically sits with the person, the deceased at the funeral home from the time that are in our care until the burial takes place. And they’re reading songs periodically throughout the night. In addition to that, there’s a ritual called a Tehara that has performed prior to the burial. And that is performed by a group called us Hevrah Kadesha. They come and they, they say prayers, they dress the, the, the deceased in a linen suits. It’s called a shroud. And they place them in the casket with their Hebrew name and have them prepped you know, accordingly for burial. So a lot of that takes you know, takes obviously a physical location also, you know, being at a Jewish funeral home, it’s important to, for us, and I think important to the community that we are 100% Jewish, you know, this to her room is only there for the Jewish community, that funeral home and the rituals that are done there are, are for the Jewish community and for people to utilize that, you know, for the ritual when they do pass away. So that, that in itself is a huge difference versus outside of the Jewish community. You know, the other is really just, just well, let me just I’ll touch on the fact that in Judaism, cremation is frowned upon for the most part. We are seeing more and more Jewish families that are cremating, but the numbers are significantly lower than outside of the Jewish community. So because most of our families that we serve are being buried traditionally, there’s a lot of coordination and a lot of a lot of work that goes in between building that relationship and trust with the, with the synagogues with the clergy with the cemeteries and ensuring that all of that is a smooth transition and the communication is there. So I think that, you know, a we’re the only Jewish funeral home in Dallas and there’s only really one other Jewish funeral home in Houston, it’s important that we set ourselves apart in that regard because that really is our as our focus out of those locations. And we want to make sure that we’re always doing everything perfectly from beginning to end. And because there’s so many originals that are involved we really have to be well versed. So we can take care of all aspects of Judaism. There’s generally three levels of Judaism that we’re dealing with. You’ve got reform, conservative, and Orthodox. And, and what’s funny is there’s a saying that says that if you ask four rabbis a question, you’ll get eight different responses. So, so we really have to be in tune with each specific rabbi and know exactly what they expect at the funeral at the grave site. And so it takes a focus, you know, on that. And I think that definitely what sets us apart versus funeral homes that try and do everything and maybe say that they’ll handle a Jewish service is that’s not their niche. You know, that’s not their forte. And so there’s going to be more chance that they’re going to drop the ball if they’re not used to those rabbis are not used to specifics on exactly what they expect and what the families have come to expect in the Jewish community.
Heather:
So I think that was a super solid explanation of how kind of immersed you are, what that niche aspect of your community needs. How do you broaden that out to reach your Distinctive Life families? What’s different sort of running those two different tracks at the same time.
Zane:
So, so on the Distinctive Life side, we really have, I think I said earlier, how we’re never going to compete with the large corporate funeral homes. We don’t have the, the marketing budget. We don’t have the, the man or woman power to, to drive you know, as much of a broader sort of stroke across the metroplex that they do. So we’ve really, we’ve really sort of taken a lot of what we’ve learned from the Jewish side and incorporated that on the Distinctive Life, in terms of stay in more niche. And, and even though the community is broad, the generalization, as far as what happens when someone passes till the time they’re buried is, is essentially pretty, pretty similar. Of course, there’s different, different religions have different different ways that they have services. You know, Catholics have have certain rituals you know, Buddhists in Hindu, they have different approaches to how they handle death, but a lot of it sort of overlaps with each other. So there’s a least a solid foundation, a common foundation, but we also try not to necessarily say that we’re going to serve every single religion out there. We kind of focus more on on just, I’m just providing a service for families. And, and, and because we do have experience with a number of religions we have the tools and resources available to make sure we’re able to take care of them. The other sort of approach that we’ve taken with Distinctive Life is we’ve set it up a little bit different than a traditional funeral home. We, we really don’t have a lot of overhead. We we’ve partnered with other other agencies, other organizations to sort of work together in collaborative efforts. Because we concentrate a lot on families that are going to have maybe just a graveside service. They don’t need a funeral home, a traditional funeral home with a chapel. And what happens, especially when we’re more competing with the large corporations, they sort of, well, one, they pay a lot more money to go to a lot of these larger corporate owned funeral homes. But also you have situations like families have applauded XYZ cemetery. Well, of course that’s a corporate own cemetery and they have their own funeral home there. And so there’s that built in assumption that, hey, I’ve got to use that funeral home. And so we’ve sort of focused again, kind of in a niche area on educating people that they don’t have to use that funeral home, you can use any funeral home and, and you can pay significant amount of money. On average, we charge half of what any of these other funeral homes charge in Dallas and Houston that there are combo locations, you know, combo meeting that they have a funeral home at the cemetery. And so I think that getting in and getting the right audiences to be able to educate them has been, has been important. And we’ve done that successfully by building relationships directly with hospice organizations. A lot of the nurses and the social workers are really kind of the go-to and for families when they have their intake. And most of these hospices that’s part of their questioning is what you know, what funeral plans do you have in place? And it’s surprising how high, the number of families that still don’t have plans in place, and they’re putting their loved one in hospice. You know, another, another thing is, again, getting something we’ve adopted from the Jewish side is getting a lot more involved and, and connected with priests, you know, various clergy members and their congregations in setting up educational seminars sponsoring different events. And a lot of, a lot of these are becoming a lot more virtual. Because what we do is, is, is we’ll take maybe, maybe it’s a physical event, like a, like a fair or a, or a some sort of like a symposium type of event. What most people are doing now is they are there, they’re linking that on their website and they’re linking that on their Facebook page. Well, then we’re able to link that as well, and then get more people, more people like that page. And then we’re able to sort of have that broader stroke of the brush, but at the end of the day, we also have to be careful cause cause we are a small funeral home and you know, we’re not going to be able to tell everybody, yeah, we can handle everybody in the entire metroplex. This is not the truth. You know, at the end of the day, we want to make sure we’re providing a quality service. And just being able to educate families that there are a lot of options out there. You know, you don’t need to go to those big brick and mortar locations because you’re going to pay a lot more money. And at the end of the day, you’re probably going to get better service you know, from, from the smaller mom and pop funeral homes.
Heather:
I think those are really important insights and yeah, and how you can take your niche strategy and sort of apply it to a different market, but still be sure, you know who you’re shooting for that. You’re not shooting for everybody. I think really helps people when they’re marketing their services. That’s true.
Joey:
So do you, is there anything else that you want to add that you think might be useful for funeral home owners or funeral directors about operating multiple funeral homes?
Zane:
You know, I, well, one, you gotta make sure you’re very well organized. You know, I, I am, I tend to be a little more type A, so I’ve got everything laid out, so I don’t get confused. But I think more importantly you do have to, you have to treat it as separate entities because it’s not a one size fits all type of approach. And so, you know, do some research build up relationships and, and, and make sure technology becomes your friend. Because at the end of the day, that’s really, and, and going to be the future of how you present yourself and how you get your message out there. The days of, you know, printed brochures and flyers and mailers are gone. You know, you really got to send your message in this sort of manner like we’re doing right now. And, and getting the word out there. That’s definitely been a more successful approach, and it’s more cost effective than trying to do billboards and TV and radio.
Heather:
Yes. Digital debt is adjusted. Definitely something else that digital has going for it is that it’s still more cost effective than there’s some of those other channels right now. So Zane, we have one last question. This is something we ask everybody that we have on, what is the biggest lesson you’ve learned while serving in this profession?
Zane:
So, I went to college, I’m going to give you a long, you know, maybe it’s a longer than you expected that I told you earlier that I tend to ramble sometimes, but yeah, I went to college for social work. So it’s sort of funny. I feel like getting back and getting it to the funeral world and sort of, kind of closing that circle in a lot of ways , cause I started my, my whole world in college thinking, okay, I want to be a counselor. I want to help people. I went to school for psychology and social work. My first job out of college, I was a counselor for kids. And then I got into the corporate world and that sort of, you know, locked me in, I got into more leadership type of roles, higher level management you know, in the world that I came from and then the opportunity to get into the funeral business, you know sort of fell in my lap. And my initial instinct, you know, it was like, uh, you know, why do I want to do that? I don’t want to work in a funeral business. I had no idea about that world. And so, you know, I won’t bore you with the details, but obviously this is the world that I ended up in you know, several years ago. I worked for the big corporate giants and you know, so I came into it again with the corporate mindset because I was, again, I was in, you know, executive higher level leadership world that I came from. And it was about the dollars, right? It was about driving revenue you know, publicly traded companies. You want your stock to continue to rise. And again, obviously the big corporate funeral homes, they have the same mantra you know, at the end of the day, because they are publicly traded. And that is really, you know, what their ultimate goal is. But in the beginning, as I was learning the business and learning from the ground level working in various locations one of, one of the employees that was there told me something I’ll never forget. And she said, in this business, you have to lead with your heart and not your wallet. And I’ll never forget that. I mean, she told me that, gosh, it’s been, what have I been doing this now 10 years? I think something like that close to that. And I’ll never forget that because, you know, you’re dealing with delicate situations, right? These families don’t want to know, you know, how much, you know, your stock went up. They don’t want to know all of that because at the end of the day, you’re really a social worker. And I really think that that’s the biggest lesson that I’ve learned, you know, not just the leading with your heart and not your wallet, but to know that this is not a business, this is a life decision that you’re making to take care of families when they need you most. And if your heart really isn’t in the right, I don’t think you’ll last, you know, very long doing this, and it’s not going to be as rewarding because I tell you what’s more rewarding to me than you know, getting a report on the dollars that we’re bringing in. You know, are those reviews that I get the Google reviews, the Facebook reviews, the phone calls I get, the text messages I get from the rabbis telling me how wonderful my staff is from, from pastors, from priests, from, you know, various clergy members from hospice nurses. That’s what gets me going every day and makes, you know, makes it worth it the end of the day.
Joey:
I think that was very well said. So that’s, that is all we have. Thank you so much, Zane. We really appreciate your time. And thanks for joining us this week on Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips, and Technology. So we’ll be posting this video on our blog, on our YouTube channel, and you’ll be able to access it on our Facebook feed as well. And don’t forget to check back in next week because we’ll be back with another show topics you’d like to see discussed or something you’d like to hear from in an interview. Add it in the comments down below, and be sure to visit our website at funeralinnovations.com. Thanks so much. Have a great day.
Zane:
Thanks. That was great.
