By Joey Haas
Transcript from our interview with Joe Walsh at 5280 Cremations
Heather:
Welcome and thanks for joining us at Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips and Technology. In these videos, we chat with industry leaders and discuss marketing trends, technology innovation, and just talk general digital marketing. I’m Heather Mierzejewski I am the marketing director here at Funeral Innovations.
Joey:
And I’m Joey, I’m the marketing and design coordinator at Funeral Innovations.
Heather:
And today we’re happy to have on Joe Walsh from 5280 Cremations. Hi Joe.
Joe:
Hi, how are you?
Heather:
Hi, good. Thanks so much for being here today. Why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself and about your business?
Joe:
Well where to begin, I’ve been in the funeral industry since 1992, when I graduated from the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science. I’ve worked in the Denver area since 1994, and we’ve been running a 5280 Cremation Funeral Service since April of 2011. So Jesus, I guess it’s been about 10 years now. Holy Moses. More about me. I don’t know. I’ve just always been into the funeral service. I’m a first generation funeral director. Nobody else my family has ever done anything of in this profession, but you know, I just, I love it. I enjoy it. There’s nothing better than being able to help somebody in their time of need. And I find that very, very rewarding.
Heather:
And I know you’d mentioned previously how you selected to be a funeral director. Can you talk just a little bit about that?
Joe:
Or you really want to go back deep, don’t ya? Years and years and years ago before I was a funeral director, I’m trying to think it’s been so long ago. I used to do upholstery and one day I kind of woke up, but this isn’t for me anymore. I don’t want to do this the rest of my life. And that was back before the internet that shows you how old I am, but we actually had to go to the libraries and I was thought that it’d be cool to be a medical examiner in a coroner kind of person. And so I started doing some research on that decided. That was 13 to 15 years of schooling at the minimum. And I said, that’s not going to work for me. And literally I turned the page and it said, mortuary science. And I said, hey, that looks interesting. And if it’s a lot of the same things, but totally different in the aspect of once the medical examiner is done, that’s when we take over to help the families. The medical examiner helps families and determining what caused the individual to die. And then we help them afterwards and hopefully giving them a very peaceful image and a peaceful reminder of their loved one after, after their death. And that’s, you know, very caring and that’s something that I’ve been, been pretty interested in. And, and I feel after almost 30 years, I’m still learning, but I think I might have it.
Joey:
That’s awesome. So do you think you could talk a little bit about who your ideal clients are and how you try to reach them?
Joe:
Ya know, here are 5280 Cremations using Funeral Innovation and our our Facebook that you guys do for us is absolutely wonderful. It’s one of the greatest things I’ve think I’ve done. As a matter of fact, I’ve pulled back pretty much all other marketing there’s I do some special, special and localized marketing in my area, but I do most all my marketing now digitally. Facebook, or Twitter. I don’t tweet, forgive me. Instagram! That’s the one. That shows you how much I know about the social media. They’re like my vein. Oh my goodness. But that’s just cause I’m old. But I do believe that the partnering after the Funeral Innovations was one of the best things I ever did. With them not only running my digital marketing, but my website, I’ve got many, many compliments on website on my website, as well as I feel that the future is in digital marketing. I don’t know how it’s going to change from, you know, Facebook and Instagram and this, but you know, it will, you know, cause you hear about Alexa and Google, you know, all these different methods that are coming up and I have faith that I’ll be in the loop with with that with you guys with Funeral Innovations.
Heather:
Okay. So since you mentioned your website, Joey, one of the things that you do is you include all your pricing on your website for your different packages. Will you talk a little bit about why you do that and how that’s worked for you?
Joe:
Well, I do that, why I do that is as simple. We’re not afraid of our prices. We’re very proud of our crisis. They’re very affordable. This, this industry in particular can get very expensive if you want it to be. And we’re not here for that. We’re here, we’re here for the affordability to provide what people want at an affordable price, give them good value for their dollar. You know, after this you know, the locked down with the COVID and things like this. I don’t know if you guys have been able to get out or anything, but you notice all the prices have really gone up exponentially. If you, go get a hamburger or, or even at the grocery store, all the prices have just gone up tremendously. We haven’t raised our prices. We’ve adjusted some of the outside prices that we can’t contain, like the post office they’ve raised their prices for mail things. And unfortunately we have to cover our bases on that. But you know, our customer is somebody that sees value and they see caring and they see professional and that’s what we’re after. We want the people that see the value and that, that really care about their loved ones.
Joey:
So you talked a little bit about your services and you offer direct cremation and memorial services. And do you think you could talk about how your services break down between those two?
Joe:
Oh, you bet. A, direct cremation is a lot of people are choosing that now for any various of reasons. One of the reasons that I I’ve come across quite often is people’s churches that they attend, they have a funeral coordinators on staff there, and that’s done a lot to eliminate the need of a funeral director at the church. You know, they do a lot of this stuff. We would do a direct the family where to sit, you know, do all the stuff that we would be doing at their church. And so therefore they don’t need to pay us to be there and do that when the church already has people for that. And a lot of folks don’t do churches or they don’t have their own church. So they still want to have a memorial for the loved ones. So we have our chapel that we can use and we can provide the same services that you know, anybody else can. And the other aspect where the direct cremation and I’ve had a lot of folks that don’t belong to any church or they don’t claim to let’s put it that way. And they just don’t feel the need to spend all the money to memorialize, which I feel they’re missing out on a great deal because we need to memorialize our loved ones, because what happens when you come to their birthday or an anniversary or very important date, and all you can do is think about them. And you’re always thinking about them. It just becomes a lot a lot more important on special days and anniversaries. And if you have a place to go, a lot of people will feel the connection a lot better. If they’re at that special place, now that doesn’t have to be in a cemetery or anything like that, everybody’s so different. But if you don’t have a place to memorialize your loved one, I really feel you’re missing out on something. And that is very, very important because if our society never memorializes anybody else, again, I hesitate to think what we’ll look like.
Heather:
So you encourage people to participate in a memorialization, but recognize that some people have a place to do it already or that sometimes people just can’t do it, but you, you recognize it as and encourage people to do it because it really helps them through that grieving process.
Joe:
Oh yes, ma’am very much so. You know, Elizabeth Kubler Ross, you know, the five steps of grieving and five stages of grieving, you know, it doesn’t specifically state memorialization, but part of it is that you have to remember their loved one and you have to go through all the rest of the anger, denial and acceptance. And part of the acceptance is when you have a place to go, because you’re accepting that they have, they have passed, you know, and it can also just be as simple as an urn at home, you know, because that’s recognizing your spouse or grandma or mom or dad or whoever it is. And that’s, that can be, you know, the memorialization that an individual needs. I’m not here to tell them they’re wrong, but I do definitely try to help them understand the importance of memorialization, but I’m not here to tell them what to do.
Heather:
Yup. That makes sense to me. You’ve also, I know that you’ve done outreach to hospice. Can you talk a little bit about the kind of hospice outreach you’ve done and why?
Joe:
Why? Well, we reach out to hospice in every way that we can. One of the things that Funeral Innovations does is with me, we send out, oh, every quarter different things to hospitals, nurses and things like that, so that we can be in touch with them. And they, if their name is drawn, they went to little prizes, little coffee cup or this or that gift card, you know, Starbucks or something like that. You know, those little things mean a lot to, to the hospice people cause a lot of the hospice personnel, they don’t get to see a lot of good in their life cause they go into to their job every day and it’s dealing with death much like us, but they’re, you know, they, they see people really at a difficult time as well as we do. And unfortunately they don’t, I don’t feel that they have enough simple joys in life. You know, just getting a little Starbucks card and after work or on the Saturday, you can get up and go get a Starbucks and just relax and take a step back. I think that’s important for all of us. How we reach out to them and why we reach out to them, hat’s very important it’s and to do, but it’s also very tough because of the, the very tough lives that hospice nurses have, there’s a very hard turnover rate. We are in contact with hospital chaplains. We find that they stay around longer with the hospice and they help us more as well. If you can talk to hospice chaplains in good, get in with them, you know, and sometimes you gotta take them to lunch, you know, more gift cards or this or that. We found that it can pay off very well. Much like ministers, you know, used to be 30 years or better, you know, their husband or wife died. The first call was to the minister. They say, well, you need to use X, Y, Z, because that’s who, you know, does a funerals in our church. By God, they called XYZ and that was that. That’s no longer the case as you know, social media the regular media, you know, now the minister is one of the, almost one of the last people to be called many times. Or if they are the first, they don’t feel comfortable saying call this person. You know, all the hospices and all the hospitals around here, when the death occurs, they give a list of all the funeral homes and they cannot recommend, they’re not supposed to let me put it that way. They’re not supposed to recommend one funeral home over another funeral, you know? And why is that? Well, you know, bribery is possible and nobody wants that cause that’s not a good business model, however, you know, get on their good sides. So.
Heather:
Hold on one second, Joey, I love what you said. You’re when you contact them, you’re not focusing on promoting yourself. You’re focused on appreciating them and growing really? Yeah.
Joe:
Yes, so I’m not out there. Hey, you know, every call you send me, you get $200 or $600 or %50. No, no, no, no, no. That’s that’s wrong. I mean, morally, ethically, legally, every way you can imagine it. However, if you go out and, and you know, you’re able to give them, you know, five, $10 coffee cards, $20 or something like that, so that they can just relax and step away from their stressful life. You know, I think that’s very beneficial and it’s not, you know, if they use you great, but you know what, you’re there to help them as well as the families we serve. Right. Because everybody needs to kind of step away and just get away if you will, and you can’t always leave town to get away.
Heather:
Especially right now.
Joe:
That’s right. That’s right.
Joey:
So obviously you talk about building those connections and, and clearly with the pandemic, building connections with community, your community has changed. Can you talk about what other changes you’ve seen since the pandemic started and what have you done to respond?
Joe:
One of the biggest changes is here in our state, our governor has limited all services to 50 people. No more than 50, and that’s actually gone up, it used to be 10. And we’re hoping for it to go up more, but it hasn’t yet. So one of the things that’s happened with us is we’ve had people that are putting off the service because they want to be there to hold into hug, their loved ones, you know, and the family and their friends, and, you know, we’ve had, there are options. You know, you can Facebook live things, you can stream it over the internet. And I’ve had a number of families say, I don’t want that because it’s not personal. And I think the good and the bad of, you know, a lot of Zoom meetings and things like this, yes, you can get business done, bu it is very impersonal compared to sitting down at a table and talking to everybody, you know, and just chatting, talking, you know, being yourself. Cause when you’re on a Zoom meeting, boy, you know, best behavior set up straight, you know, cause that’s what you are that way at work too. But you know, at the office, but yet you’re comfortable, you know, it’s, it’s a comfort level. So we’ve had to put off services until the the state allows us to open up enough that they, our families feel they they’re ready to have that service. And we keep in contact with them pretty regular. You know, and I, again, I’m not going to tell them, well, you know, you better do it or you may never, cause that’s not, I have no idea. And what have we done to change our methods? We have on our website, we have the direct cremation arranger where the families can go right onto the website and complete everything for the direct information. We send them a sign now document for the authorizations and this and that. And that believe it or not has been one of our best things that we’ve done. I’ve had a lot of people in the heights of the COVID that about, you know, two months ago, two and a half months ago, I’m afraid to go out. I don’t want to go out well, hop on our website and you can do everything, you know, and, and people loved it. So I’d love to tell you that was special for COVID, but it’s not. But it’s one of the best things. And that’s one of the things that attracted me to, if you’re going to Funeral Innovations. That’s awesome.
Heather:
We have one final question that we ask everyone. And that is, what’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned while working in the funeral profession?
Joe:
I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned is how death creates stress and how stress creates anger and how to kind of handle and merge stress, anger, and death together. And to deal with that with, with folks you know, some people handle death better than others. Some people don’t handle death well at all. And we as a funeral director and in the funeral industry, we have to figure this out real quick and, and figure out a way to take care of them, a way to make sure that they’re meet their needs are being met. And even though everybody’s different, we still have the same end goal. And the way that we achieve that is different by everyone. It’s not one simple cookie cutter method. And I think that’s the biggest lesson I learned when I was in college. You know, they talked about all this stuff, but boy, until you’re out in it and you’re, you know, as I say up to your eyeballs, you know, and it takes time, it takes time to learn this. And you know, you start to understand people a little bit better. And that’s something that is a very, very important as I, I feel cause if you can’t, if you can’t help the folks, why are you here? Why are you doing this? And that’s, to me the most important part of the job, anybody can fill out papers, you know, I can, I can hire anybody and have them, you know, write, what’s your name and, you know, fill out all the documents, but that’s, that’s not a funeral director. That’s basically data input or data data, something, you know, you’re getting them to spend it back and that’s, that’s not what we’re about. We’re here to, yes, we have to get this information, but we have to also help the family get through this very, very difficult time. I don’t know if I answered your question.
Heather:
No, I think you did. I think you, you, I mean, what I heard you say is that people are coming to you and one of the most trying times their life and you as a funeral director have learned how to meet them, where they are and respond to them in a way that helps them. No matter what their emotional state. angry, sad, fearful, any of those.
Joe:
I truly hope so. Yes. I truly believe that. I, like I said, I’ve been doing this almost 30 years and you know, I kind of use that as a kind of an opening, you know, quip, I’m still learning. I’ve almost got it. But you know, you learn every day, you know? Yeah. 30 years, how much has changed in the industry? Some work, some people are going to say nothing and other people are gonna say everything. And they’re both true that the the funeral itself, you know, with caring for the deceased and that process, hasn’t changed much over the last hundred, 150 years. Some of the techniques have, but ultimately, you know, cremation hasn’t changed it dramatically. However, the end goal is to help the family and that hasn’t changed since day one.
Joey:
Nice. Yeah. That’s very well said. So that was our last question. Thank you so much, Joe, for your time. We really appreciate it. And thanks so much for joining us this week on Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips, and Technology. We’ll be posting this video on our blog, our YouTube channel and you’ll be able to access it on our Facebook feed and we’ll be back with another show soon. So make sure to check back in next week, if you have any topics you’d like to see discussed or someone you’d like to hear from in an interview, make sure to comment that down below. And be sure to visit our website at funeralinnovations.com.
Joe:
Thank you so much for having me out today.
Heather:
We really appreciate it.
