Transcript From Our Video Interview with Jason Everden at Everden Rust Funeral Services and Crematorium and British Columbia Funeral Association.
Heather:
Hi everyone. And thanks for checking in with us at Funeral Innovations, Trends, Tips, and Technology, we talk with industry leaders about marketing trends, business tips, and technology innovation. Plus, we chat about how digital marketing helps you better serve your families. I’m Heather Mierzejewski. I am the Marketing Director here at Funeral Innovations.
Alex:
And I’m Alex McCracken. I’m the VP of sales at Funeral Innovations.
Heather:
And today we’re super happy to have with us, Jason Everden. He is one of the owners at Everden Rust funeral services and the president of the British Columbia Funeral Association. Thanks so much for joining us, Jason.
Jason:
Thank you for the opportunity.
Alex:
Can you just start off by telling us a little bit about your funeral home, what you guys do, the market you serve?
Jason:
Yeah, for sure. So our company like British Columbia itself has a provincially, I think we’re about 82% cremation. So a lot of places, you know, especially when I talk to my American friends is they’re kind of blown away at that number depending on their area. But yeah, about 80 some odd percent cremation. Out of those, we have we’re kind of like a retirement area where we are in the Okanagan, which is Kelowna, Penticton area in British Columbia. And it’s a high cremation rate and a high direct disposition rate as well. So those two factors there you know, we decided to be cremation professionals way ahead of the game, and that was part of my dad. So he started the company, not myself. We kind of entered after the fact. My dad was only 41 years old when he started the company, which kind of blows me away because I’m 48 now.
And I can’t imagine starting a company. And then, you know, this he’s retired now. He doesn’t, he’s ironically he’s working today because we have a service just kind of watching the phones, but most of the time he’s not working. But yeah, just in that short of time we now have went from one location to three locations and we have 12 employees, including of course my two brothers who are partners with me in the company now. So yeah, I mean, my dad’s kind of history is he worked in moved us out from Toronto, Ontario to Penticton and he worked for Independence and the town of Penticton had two funeral homes at the time and he worked for one, and then they kept switching, you know, offering them jobs one job to the other because everywhere he went, the volume of funerals went up because he had a personality, he was always involved in the community.
So that’s kind of, that’s my dad for you is he said, you know, Mr. Small town community. And you know, he was president of the British Columbia special Olympics, active Rotarian Kiwanis club just a number of things and he was always involved. And so that made him very successful as soon as he started this company. And that was back in 1994. So that’s kind of from what he says, the first year of business, he served 120 families and now you know, just last year we served almost 900, so it’s a big growth pattern and success for him and us.
Alex:
Yeah. Boy, it sounds like a long history of success, and community involvement sounds like it was a key underlying of all that. And I’m curious, with 2020, obviously, it impacted a lot of businesses differently. You had a high cremation rate already, but which I know was a trend a lot of people saw, but we also saw that you know, funeral homes weren’t able to work, being able to participate in community activities that sound like a pretty key to your business. So I’m curious if you could talk a little bit about how it really impacted you this last year and some of the successes or failures you may have had in the last year.
Jason:
Yeah. Let’s see, where do I begin? So on a board level, I remember we had a meeting and that’s when the hotel started shutting down and that sort of thing. So the last year has been extremely challenging, no services. So in British Columbia first they put a 50 limit in to services. The biggest challenge when you have a 50 person limit is actually keeping it at 50 because the provincial health order orders us, we can’t have a service with more than 50 people. So that was one thing. But then the Zoom thing took off. So I worked about you know, eight or nine weeks every weekend, cause we always had a service and I was the only one that knew how to do the Zoom feature of services. So I was sitting in a chair and I had a camera and a laptop and doing all that.
So that was fine. We had that technology kind of, and then the DocuSign thing got thrown in the mix too. So everybody had to instantly learn this technology. But then keeping the 50 people, this is before the mask mandate. So, you know, the first wave, you didn’t have to wear a mask. You had to use hand sanitizer and sign in to be at the funeral. We could not go over 50. It was a problem if you did let’s see. And then grieving families trying to control them and saying no hugging, no handshake, you know, that sort of thing. That’s the worst part. That was the, and you’re the bad guy as a funeral director trying to control a grieving family. So it know about four months after that they put in a 10 person limit. So British Columbia now cannot have a service bigger than 10.
If you have a minister or a celebrant officiating that counts against the 10. So you’re down to nine. So, and everybody has to wear a mask. So again, the rules tighten and we’re the bad guy that says, you know, ‘Hey, put your mask back on’ or this and that. Definitely, that’s the biggest challenge right there. Yeah. It’s where else do you go? So a lot of people here are not having services because it’s so restrictive. You know, you’d like to think that they would have a service down the road, but it seems like most people are saying, ‘you know what, we’re good. We don’t need it. It’s been too long.’ And I’ve seen an effect on people you know, grief wise, they’re not grieving properly without having that service. And so it’s a challenging time for families and funeral providers. That’s for sure.
Heather:
Jason, did your cremation rate increase in the past year or is that 80% pretty much all it’s going to the top level?
Jason:
Yeah, provincially, we’re 80 some odd, you know, 83, 84. But our location actually has more like a 96% cremation. So I think the families that wanted burial, we still had a substantial amount of burials. It was just either a no service burial or graveside service burial. So yeah, it’s a, it didn’t really increase. It’s not like people that we had a lot of pre-arranged funerals. This is another challenge for funeral homes is those that have prepaid their funerals for, you know, a big Catholic mass with a reception that’s not happening now. So they say, Oh you know, we’ll just have the burial with just a few family members at the graveside and then the reception’s gone, the chapel’s gone, all that stuff. So then you’re writing checks to families as opposed to performing that service. So, that’s the other thing, but I think the cremation rates stayed about the same. And I know there was some areas from some stats I’ve seen from CANA where the cremation rate did jump. But in British Columbia, at least, that’s not happening.
Heather:
Yeah. That’s interesting. And I wonder, you know, for your United States colleagues or counterparts, we still hear a lot of people who are wary of that increasing cremation rate, but you’ve already figured out how to make that work. What tips would you give a funeral homes here who are facing that and continue to increase?
Jason:
Yeah. Now this is going back, let’s say 2005. When I took over this Colona location funeral homes were still afraid of cremation up here. So, you know, because the Catholics didn’t like it, or certain groups didn’t like it, so they were afraid of, you know, promoting it. So what we did instead is we decided to become the cremation experts and we weren’t afraid of it. I you know, I might’ve irked some Catholic priests in town inadvertently, but that’s okay. It’s whatever the family wants, if they want cremation, that’s what we do. So I guess becoming you know, there’s a lot of options you can, you can offer families, cremation families. You know, you’ve got keepsake urns and you’ve got pendants and you’ve got different things that you could never do with burial. Parting stones is the new thing that’s been quite successful at our locations here.
Yeah, I mean, I bet you we’ve had about 15 families select parting stones in the last 12 months, which is nice. It’s really different. Yeah, so I guess just you know, making video tributes and things like that, there’s a lot of things cremation, families need, even if they’re not having a service. So I guess being up on all that, and that’s why I’ve always attended different conventions and trade shows in the United States too, because they have all these different ideas and then you can bring them back and stand out, I guess, amongst your competition.
Alex:
Yeah. And you, you mentioned the, the parting stones as well as adopting some Zoom and I guess video testimonials, you feel like there has been some other you know, technology or just innovative stuff that you’ve adopted over the last year or two, even that has been successful?
Jason:
Yeah, of course, webcasting. We started it with Zoom because we weren’t prepared. It takes a while to get your permanent cameras installed. So the Zoom kept us going for about six months. Now we have a built-in webcam, that’s, that’s super easy to use. You don’t even need anyone monitoring it. And so it’s just a click of a button. The technology’s expensive, but we installed that in all of our facilities. So I think that was the most important, I mean, DocuSign came along with it. We weren’t meeting with families in person, so we got the DocuSign or the equivalent, there’s lots of those kinds of things out there. The webcasting that’s number two, I think one or two that might be tied. And yeah, and just instantly having to learn it, which was quite nerve wracking at first.
You know, when you’re doing the services by Zoom, the cool part is I had a family that wanted a backyard service. This is probably June last year. And so the family, the son was from the United States and couldn’t get across the border, the border was still closed. So the mom said, ‘I want you to come and do a Zoom service and you’d be the technical guy and work with my son.’ So he was an I think he had a technical background in California. And so he was quite up on it. And I met with them over Zoom and he wanted all this stuff and I was getting quite nervous cause I was like, ‘well, I’m by no means an expert of Zoom. I know funerals, I’m an expert in that, but this is also new. And it worked out so well. He officiated the service from a television set that was in the backyard. They had a canoe, the family canoe there, and they had all the memorabilia. So he was on the television and I had my laptop and I was the host and he was cohost. And then two other people from the UK gave eulogies. I just can’t believe it went off the way it did, because it was quite a, you know, successful. It could have been a disaster, had the wifi cutout or, you know, some sort of issue happened.
Heather:
No, but talk about personalization for the family and how meaningful that could be in a pandemic year.
Jason:
Definitely. Yeah. So that’s that was one, we’ve only had one like that because no one else would really think that was possible. I remember when I did my first funeral webcast, we were the first funeral home in British Columbia and probably Western Canada to do one. And the radio interview, he wanted to interview me about it. And he said, well, what do you see in the future for this type of thing, because back then it was pretty primitive. We were using a program that would crash regularly, but you can still see the service. So it worked, but, and I said, I think there’s going to be some interaction in the future. Like someone will be, and I meant like a text or wording or popping up on a screen. I didn’t think it would be live video. Yeah. So that’s that’s technology, that’s the three things.
Alex:
And have you done anything to adjust your marketing, during this time?
Jason:
You know what, we’ve been so busy. I don’t think I’ve done you know, I’ve done of course Funeral Innovations. We’ve always been really heavy into the social media even before, we’ve been going on 10 years you know, hitting it pretty hard and cutting back on the print advertising, but yeah, for the most part we’ve been so busy just trying to maintain ourselves. We haven’t had time to keep, you know promoting or different things. So now we’re just catching our breath and we’ll move forward.
Heather:
That’s great. Can you talk a little bit about the British Columbia Funeral Association and what’s your mission, who belongs?
Jason:
Yeah, for sure. I’ve been doing this let’s see. I’m about five years, possibly six on the board. And like I say, time flies when you get on the board and get busy. But so my first couple years I was, I was called by someone that was leaving the board and we have a policy where board members that are leaving can phone and recommend a replacement for them. So being an independent, another independent called me up and asked me if I’d like to be on the board. And I, I said, yes, cause I’ve been on those kinds of things before always had an interest in serving the profession that way. So five years, the last two of which I’ve been president the previous years, I spent two years as the chair of the government and legal on the funeral association board.
And that involves, you know, that’s where you’re advocating for your membership. So you’re meeting with all the government officials and saying, you know introducing problems that are happening within the profession in relation to, you know, it might be the, we call it the ministry of income assistance and in poverty prevention, that’s income assistance, basically, right? People that that need assistance in that manner and their funerals, they have a funeral program. So if someone can’t afford their funeral, then they’re the ones that pay it. So there’s like negotiated rates for those funerals. And there’s you know, little issues that come up in the term of those you know, mostly regarding rates service levels and whatnot. So that I was thrown right into that. And then we had a, an issue here in British Columbia where our regulator consumer protection BC, we were seeing a lot of inspectors writing up feeder homes for things that, you know, were being interpreted wrong.
So you have inspector a saying, Oh, this is how I interpret this regulation. And so I’m finding this funeral home and then inspector B has no problem with it. And they interpreted it different ways. So we wanted to come up with an interpretation policy that all inspectors would use, so they didn’t have their own interpretation of it. So we were successful in that. And that was one of our biggest wins. And that was about a year ago now. So yeah, I mean the association what do we do for our membership? As I mentioned, we advocate on their behalf. We negotiate the increases. Sometimes we’re successful and sometimes not. Just before this, I had a call with the public guardian and trustee of British Columbia, and that’s another, it’s kind of an arms-length government group that looks after people that don’t have any family.
So no one’s looking after them. So they step in and look after them. So there are different issues that come up over the terms of those agreements. Let’s see don’t even get me started with COVID because as I mentioned, we were at a meeting in Richmond, British Columbia, which is near Vancouver probably one year ago to this day. And all of a sudden the hotel we normally meet at for our board meetings was shut down and they phoned us all and said, ‘we’ve closed’ and it’s a massive hotel and casino. So we had to form a COVID like a pandemic committee to figure out what we were dealing with. And then I don’t think we’ve stopped moving since you know, daily calls the new, the health Florida in British Columbia gets changed regularly. So we have to read the new changes, interpret it, and then communicate out to our membership as far as, you know, what do we do? Like how many people can we have at a service or, you know, where do we go from here? So that’s been I had a full-time job before this. I had my day job here and then I had the president’s position, which is like another part-time job. And then that happened, and then we had the COVID meeting. So there were days where we had Zoom after Zoom, after Zoom of course to try and figure out what we’re going to do and how to help our membership.
Alex:
And do you feel like any common themes popped up from your membership or, I mean, specifically feedback that you’ve heard common things happening in Canada, and I’m also curious if you’ve compared any of those to themes that maybe have happened in the US and any differences there?
Jason:
I think the fear was because we saw at the time a year ago, wasn’t it, Spain? Spain and Italy were getting hit super hard. And so then I think New York was, was one of the next big cities to have issues. And, you know, some of those issues hit the media, unfortunately mainly storage of decedents and, you know, issues that happened there. So we immediately had a meeting with her with our government connections and said, you know, we don’t want this to happen here. So I think it was a big fear factor at first, we were kind of like, what if but as far as common issues, it was always you know, we have to track people that come into a service, so no one’s allowed in your funeral home unless they’ve signed in, left their phone number, contact tracing.
Where do we get PPE? Because we couldn’t get any all you can get was, you know, the real one-ply mass, you couldn’t get the N95’s. And at this, at that time, they didn’t know much about COVID. So they were like, well, I don’t know if these masks are going to protect you, so you need the N95’s. So we couldn’t get gloves for awhile. If you didn’t have a common source, you couldn’t get the proper PPE. That was the main thing is if we get hit like New York or, you know, any other city to use for an example, how are we going to store the decedents in a dignified manner? How are we going to protect ourselves? And, you know, I remember them saying that you know, COVID, they said it’s airborne and it can, it can attach to a plastic.
So then the hospital was double bagging decedents that kind of thing. And there was this fear of, okay, well, we have to gown up. So we were gowns and boot covers and all this stuff at first. And then now it’s a different story. Now. They’re like, you know, it’s not quite as bad as what they thought. Well, remember, around the time you couldn’t get any toilet paper anywhere, did you experience that in the States? Because up here you couldn’t get toilet paper. Everybody was freaking out.
Alex:
The same thing here, you know?
Jason:
Yeah. So at the same time, you couldn’t get Lysol and that’s like a disinfectant for this. We can’t get Lysol and everybody, you went any store and they didn’t have Lysol, Lysol wipes, any of that stuff. And all of our suppliers ran out of, you know, everybody ordered quickly. And it was about a month before you could start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
Alex:
The Lysol thing happened for a long time here. I think that was like six months maybe after that people were still looking for it.
Jason:
That’s right. So what we did as an association, we were kind of thinking, well, what do we, you know, where are we going to get this? So I thought I’m sitting here at my desk and I thought, well, what about dentists? They have suppliers. So dentists were all shut down at the time. So I Googled dental supplier wholesale type thing. Well, I found a dental site that sold PPE and disinfectants and anything you want. So I shared it with the association. So many people ordered, set up accounts as funeral homes that the next about a month after that, they had a big red thing on their homepage that said ‘we only sell the dentists.’
So this was shared right across Canada and our national group that we met with once a week to compare things. And everybody used the same links. There was a time when everyone was importing their own PPE from China, not knowing if it would arrive, they just were desperate. So, yeah, that’s the main issue. And then once the PPE got replenished, then it was a matter of, you know, what’s the new rule mean? Does the 10, at a service include the celebrant or officiant, and do they include the funeral directors? You know, that kind of thing. Cause it’s never as clear as you know, they can never spell it out perfectly. So everyone understands what the rules mean. So you need that interpretation. You’ve got to go back to the government and try and get that. So that was the main membership, just everything changing daily, having to get the new word of the day out.
Heather:
Yeah. That sounds similar to what people faced here. Although I would say we’re more a state by state. It would be so different from one state to the other here. So some places would have zero problems in some places had huge restrictions. So that was really interesting. Would you say that, I know you still have a limit of 10 people you said to a service, but do you see things getting back to normal with yourself and your membership or expect that to get back to normal? Or was there still a lot of disruption?
Jason:
We’re hoping on my last government we were lucky enough to get a seat our association on a mortuary planning committee. So it’s kind of an emergency group that formed in British Columbia. So basically, they have the coroner’s office and they have all the health authorities. So the hospitals are all on these calls and we talk about issues. So we were lucky to get a seat and be able to take part. So I asked her a couple of weeks ago, what do you see in two months in your crystal ball? I mean, if you had one and she said, ‘Nope, it’s all based on cases every day and how many people have it.’ So she wouldn’t go that way. The latest if you’ve heard of Bonnie Henry, she’s our chief, you know, the physician that gives the reports daily she said ‘by Easter, there might be some, you know, easing up on that, cause the numbers are getting better and the weather’s getting warmer and so hopefully, you know, I really hope that we can get back to having funerals for at least 50 coming up because it’s so important.
Heather:
Sure, yeah. And are you guys getting vaccinated funeral directors there?
Jason:
We asked for it and what the BC government came up with was an age-based vaccination program to avoid all the groups asking for priority. So we still feel that we should have it. Canada has some pretty big vaccine shortages due to some issues at a federal level. So the vaccine amounts that we were supposed to get didn’t come through. So right now we’re just vaccinating nine-year-olds, and then it goes down the list. So I suspect, you know, people of the age of 70, 65 will be able to be vaccinated by summer. But no, we, we didn’t get our priority and we just have to wait in line, like everyone else.
Heather:
Interesting.
Jason:
Yeah.
Alex:
Well you know, I’m curious if you can provide some final thoughts here on some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned from serving in this industry. And certainly doesn’t have to be over the last year, but just in general, if you could provide some insight in there.
Jason:
Yeah. What have I learned all these years? It’s so hard to pinpoint one thing. I know what I’ve learned in funeral service and through the funeral association is you can try and please everyone, but you can’t do it. It’s not possible to please everyone. You can, you can do your best. You can do it, you can come close. But as far as a funeral director yeah, I mean, where do I, where do I begin? I guess life’s short. And if you can accomplish something, you know, like my dad started a company from scratch and made it to what it is now he’s doing pretty good. I wish I could be that productive. We’ve taken the company a long way, but you know, there’s, I guess you always feel like you can always do more. You could have done things differently, but you just do the best you can and keep your head up. And at the end of the day, that’s all you can do.
Alex:
Well, I certainly think doing 900 cases as a testament to not only the foundation your dad built, but you know the stories you’ve been building upon that.
Jason:
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Alex:
I see a lot of accomplishment there. Well, we want to thank you for coming on to our TTT interview, Jason, and we really appreciate you taking the time and everything to share your thoughts on what’s going on up in BC.
Jason:
You bet. Well, thanks for the opportunity. It’s always nice to have a conversation like this and share it.
Alex:
Yeah, absolutely. Well for all you viewers out there, if you’d like some more interviews, feel free to go to youtube.com/funeralinnovations, where we have all of our TTT interviews, we come out with them periodically. So make sure you subscribe to our channel and you can see some more videos there. Feel free to check out our website for other scenarios and the interviews and use cases and anything you might need there. Until next time. We appreciate everyone joining. And again, thank you to our guest, Jason Everden, and we’ll see you next time.
Heather:
Thanks so much, Jason.
Jason:
Thanks. Take care.
