By Joey Haas
Transcript from our video interview with Brian Waters and Ryan Ballard from “Undertaking: The Podcast”
Heather:
Welcome and thanks for joining us at Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips and Technology. In these videos, we chat with industry leaders to discuss marketing trends, technology tips, and just in general, how people are making their funeral homes serve their families better. I’m Heather, I’m the director of marketing at Funeral Innovations
Joey:
And I’m Joey. I’m the marketing and design coordinator at Funeral Innovations. And today our guests are Brian Waters from Waters and Pittman, Richmond Funeral Home and Ryan Ballard from Ballard and Sons Funeral Home and Cremation Services. Hi guys.
Brian:
Hey, what is up?
Heather:
So to start off with why don’t you each just tell us a little bit about your businesses and also you guys are the hosts of Undertaking the Podcast. Tell us a little bit about what that is too.
Brian:
Okay. Yeah. I’ve been a licensed funeral director since 2005. I graduated from Vincent’s University and then became a licensed funeral director and embalmer here in the state of Indiana. And I worked for my frankly, my mother and father and our two small rural, rural funeral homes. And yeah, so I, I get to wear all the hats. Not only am I a funeral director and embalmer and I do the social media. I do the yard maintenance and technical support. There’s all different kinds of hats in a small town, funeral home. So yeah, that’s my role, Ryan?
Ryan:
I’m Ryan Ballard. I’m just three years in as a funeral director, I came from a previous career as a paramedic, still currently a paramedic, just not really practicing from a clinical standpoint. I also am a, with a family funeral home. I’ve been told many times I’m, I’m the son on the sign and not the Ballard on the sign. My, my father likes to make sure to point that out time and time again when we battled back and forth and it does happen family business, but now it’s been a great time. I’m a little bit, everything is Brian too. We call it kind of the gopher. Today, I was mowing yards. I’m an embalmer, I’m a funeral director. I’m a lawn care guy. You know, I’m also the guy that dusts, I’m also the guy that does a lot of things that my bosses don’t want to do. So it is just smile and we just keep chugging along, you know.
Heather:
And did you say where you’re located, Ryan?
Ryan:
We’ve got two facilities, one in Delaware County in a small town called Daleville and then another rural community in Middletown, Indiana. So both in Indiana.
Heather:
Okay. Kind of outside of Indianapolis or between indie and..
Ryan:
We’re about 50 minutes northeast. Brian, would that be, you’re more of an hour, an hour and 20 minutes. Aren’t ya?
Brian:
Yeah, we’re right in between Fort Wayne and Indianapolis just off of I-69, rural Delaware County.
Ryan:
It takes about 50 minutes for me to get to downtown Indianapolis.
Heather:
Okay, got ya. And tell us what Undertaking the Podcast is.
Ryan:
Go for it, Brian.
Brian:
Well, Undertaking the Podcast was just a hobby that Ryan and I decided to start in 2018. We met each other on a trip to York, Pennsylvania to Matthew’s Aurora Casket Company out there. And Ryan was still in school, has, you know, practicing funeral director embalmer. And we just struck up a friendship and really kinda network back and forth, you know, over the last, you know, several years for the brainchild behind this was really Ryan. He said, hey, let’s start a podcast. And, and without really asking much, I started buying equipment and figuring it out. So we launched Undertaking the Podcast in September, October of 2018. And we wanted to set it up as an opportunity for folks to just expand conversation within funeral service, because we know when we go to convention, some of the best learning that we can do is sit with some of the seasoned funeral directors and just listen to them, tell stories. And the idea was like, well, why don’t we just record those and put them out to everybody. And that’s really where the podcast started and it has morphed and changed and added to since you know, that time in 2018. And it’s, it’s something that was kind of a rocket that we didn’t know where we were really attached to. And we’re just trying to hang on to it as it goes.
Ryan:
Well, and we’ve talked about too, if we knew what we were getting into, I don’t know that it would have necessarily started. The amount of evenings that Brian and I spend, not only on the phone, podcasting talking coming up with different, you know, show topics, things like that. There’s a lot more of that goes into it then I think what we thought. We’ve grown to just love it, to be honest with you because we’re getting better with this. And as Brian said, when it comes to the story, everybody has that story. It’s unique to every different person. We just had one on that was a donation story. The idea of someone actually having a gift of life given to them through donation. and you know, it’s, it’s not necessarily all about funeral service. It’s sometimes about things maybe we’re dealing with within funeral service, but there’s a storyline there. Donations are a big thing within funeral service that we have to deal with. We wanted to highlight it in a good way. So that, that was something that kind of came up. We’ve got stories too, when it comes to people losing children. You know, we’ve talked about people with some mental illness. As Brian says it, it morphs into just a plethora of plethora of different pathways and we just continue to go down each and every path.
Joey:
So then could you kind of talk about your listenership a little bit more. You know, is it mostly made up of funeral directors or non-industry people? And does that affect the way you brainstorm topics for what you guys will talk about at all? Or, you know, like, cause I know you say you’ve got this like wide range of topics, but does your listenership affect that at all?
Brian:
The quick answer is yes. And when we first started, I guess when you start any sort of project, you gotta have a target. And our quick target market was those in funeral service, whether you’re a funeral director and embalmer, or just work in some capacity within funeral service. So that’s who we really wanted to put the podcast out for initially, but we always had in the back of the mind that we wanted other people to listen to conversations of funeral directors and embalmers, because, you know, there’s this stigma that, you know, a funeral director is an old, tall white guy that has no sense of humor. And that’s one of the things that these stories bring forward is that we’re just regular people. And, you know, you got a sense of humor. We’ve got hobbies. I mean, when you just talked to someone the other day that makes me makes maple syrup, taps, the tree and a funeral director, you know, there’s so many of these neat stories that we wanted to learn and put out. So our listenership has actually grown to be more so people with an interest in what we do. And so, although, you know, it is, it is still heavy within the funeral service side that the listenership has grown so much that it just blows us away, that people are listening to us, that English is not even their primary language. You know, when it went worldwide, we’re going, wait a second. Is this for real? So yeah, it’s hard to gauge exactly the numbers we can tell where you’re listening from. But we can kind of gauge from the interaction that we get from our listeners through our social media channels of what kind of the ratios would be. And it’s, it’s around 50/50, and then it could swing it way.
Ryan:
Well, and I think too, to touch on that, you know, we are people just like anybody else, Brian, we’ve talked about that. People you know, always, we want to kind of take the curtain away from funeral service a little bit and bring people into what it is we do, what it is we’re talking about our conversations. But I think the Adams family always comes to mind when it when it comes to a funeral service, you know, Lurch in the in corner, you know, dealing with his sleeves, tall black coat, black tie, very pale. You know, that’s not all us, all of us. I mean, Brian and I have tan hands, beautiful beards. I mean, we’re normal people. And I think that’s something too that sometimes gets, gets a little mixed up in the conversation that you know, you’re, it is a different type of job, no question about it. But there are some normal individuals that do this, I’d say more so than not. If you’re not, you know, hey yeah, all kinds of kinds, right. Or whatever it is.
Heather:
Well, it’s interesting you say that because you know, we run marketing campaigns for a lot of our clients and one of the most popular marketing campaigns we’ve had in the past is a day in the life of a funeral director where we just send an email series that kind of talks about what their day to day life is. And that was a big hit. The funeral directors were like, nobody’s going to want to read this. Everybody wanted to read it. It was very popular because people do want to know, and I think they do have a lot of misconceptions. I love that you guys are getting that message out there. So tell us a little bit about a few of your most memorable interviews or things interviews that you’ve done, that it went in a totally different direction or were really enlightening for you.
Brian:
Ryan, take it away.
Ryan:
Jack Lechner, when he talks about Arlington National Cemetery, as one of, one of my favorite, just because of the history. He actually runs a mortuary school over there in Cincinnati. But also ran Arlington National Cemetery for a few years. I can’t remember. You’ll have to go back and listen to it, but it was a few years. The history that that guy can throw out. It’s just unbelievable. The stories behind, you know, some of the individuals that are buried there. I thought that was absolutely just, it was crazy to me. I loved it. My, my mom and dad, they, of course they said that was the best podcast we’ve had so far. I think our 150th first episode was pretty good. I think Larry Stewart Jr. was exceptional. You’ve got Dominic Astorino, Vernie Fountain is a good one. Brian?
Brian:
You know, our most personal episode is just Ryan and I together talking about is our first episode we did on Thanksgiving. And Ryan had recently lost his grandmother and my wife and I had lost an unborn baby. So we had a miscarriage. So Ryan and I expressed how we were feeling on that podcast. So that was probably the most, you know, heartfelt hit-home type of episode. For me, I was floored when Thomas Lynch responded to an email with a cell phone number because I’ve been a student of Thomas Lynch as a funeral director, read everything that he writes and watch everything that he does.
Heather:
Tell us who Thomas Lynch is.
Brian:
Thomas Lynch is the author of The Undertaking and The Good Funeral. And there’s a frontline documentary through PBS called The Undertaking, which you’ll never make it through without it with a dry eye. And, you know, when I reached out to Thomas Lynch and he said, I’d absolutely love to be on the podcast. There’s been so many constant surprises. We just keep getting surprised along the way. And you know, Ryan had listed off a lot of those really good episodes and those people that have supported us by being willing to share their stories.
Joey:
So it sounds like, you know, and obviously all these interviews have had a huge impact on you guys and as your viewership grows and as you’ve seen that growth, has your podcast impacted funeral homes at all in that way?
Ryan:
I’ll say this Brian will have to probably reel me in here for a minute, but you know, I don’t know that it’s impacted she in her homes from a standpoint of profitability or anything like that. Cause we don’t talk about that. I don’t care if your funeral home is profitable. That’s not my deal with you. We just want to talk about funeral service. I think it’s opened up dialogue with people and I think people now feel that it’s okay to talk about certain things. You know, we always go back to organ donation and how there’s, there’s always a little bit of a battle between you know, funeral directors and most procurement organizations all across the United States, you know, some better than some, some better in some areas and some not, you know, and, and it just depends, but I think it opens up the dialogue. We’ve had the opportunity to talk to people that have been victims, you know, of suicide. And what I mean by that is the family that have been victims of suicide. I think that brings a little bit more of a realization to the funeral director as to how to talk to these families in that situation. You know, we we’ve, we’ve actually talked about the idea of where, where they went and how they went throughout the funeral process how, what they were feeling, what they were doing. So, you know, like I said, this isn’t a podcast to make your funeral home profitable. It honestly has nothing to do with that. You know, that’s on you. This is for, I think the directors and the public to just listen to real stories about real people and what they’ve gone through in a time of tragedy and sometimes not tragedy. You know, we’ve, we’ve interviewed a lot of different people. You guys will have to go back and look, but we’ve, we’ve interviewed a lot of different people and, and you’ll, you’ll feel it in the podcast. You’ll feel those awkward moments, those pauses. Brian and I have them, you know? And, and it’s just real. And I think people like that. So from a standpoint of profitability, actually, what’s this third time I’m saying, yeah, it’s not a we just want to talk and create the dialogue and let people know it’s okay to have dialogue.
Brian:
Yeah. I mean, for me, the quick answers maybe, I mean, there’s like nothing that we’re going to do to change the world here. We’ve had listeners, you know, send us messages about a certain episode, you know, thank you for letting someone know about that company. And, you know, all we did was the company and we wanted to learn about what they did and we put it out to the world. Next thing you know, a company is calling us up on, hey, thanks for doing that podcast. We’ve had five people contact us that, you know, want to use our services, which it was one of those things that still kind of surprised me. And the thing, the thing that really blows my mind is when we were at the National Funeral Directors Association event, the students coming up to us and thanking us for doing this. And they learning a lot from it. And we had one student that said, you know, they’re in mortuary school because of the podcast. It’s still hard for me to believe to this day. So my answers maybe on that one.
Ryan:
Don’t think we don’t get heat either. I mean, we do, we’ll get some pushback too, because I mean, everybody has an opinion as we do, as anybody else does. So you know, we do get some hate pushback on us and that’s fine. That’s you know, it is what it is there.
Heather:
And do you feel like the podcast has impacted your own personal businesses at all? Because we hear that from funeral directors all the time. I don’t want to be on video. I don’t want to say anything. I don’t want to get heat. I don’t want to get upset, but usually the good outweighs the bad is, has that been what you’ve found?
Ryan:
I think if I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say it’s done anything bad. Has changed the volume? Has it changed any time, you know, calls or anything like that? Not necessarily. I think it’s helped me do things differently within my facility, because now I know there’s different options out there. You know, this is a, it’s a podcast, it’s global. So I would say, you know, if funeral homes are wanting to start their own podcast, you know, we’ve got friends locally that have done that and started their own. And it’s just for that small community. You know, are people doing Facebook live videos you know, every week, things like that, you know, I think that is beneficial. I think that helps. And I think it also brings, it brings that funeral director in more of, I would say more of a personal light to the public because they get to see your manners, how you feel, how you act. So, yeah, I that’s where I would go with that
Brian:
For me. I mean, not really because we’ve, we’ve been very careful to keep the podcast separate from our funeral homes. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s Ryan and I as hobby and it’s not a venture in the funeral home. So because of the heat that we thought we might get, we really wanted to keep that away from our, our parents and our owners, because, you know, our hobbies shouldn’t bring them, you know, any heat. By talking to different companies though. I mean, you know, our horizons have expanded. And so we definitely brought, been able to bring the knowledge that we’ve gained on the podcast to, you know, our operations. And it’s always funny when we get a delivery person and we start talking to them, they can start to give us a look like, “I know your voice, I was just listening to you!” And of course we laugh.
Heather:
That’s awesome.
Joey:
So do you guys think you could talk cause obviously with the pandemic and everything, a lot of things have changed business-wise. And do you guys think you could talk about how the pandemic has impacted your businesses and how that’s evolved over the course of the pandemic?
Brian:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think for Ryan and I, we’ve been very lucky in our area of Indiana. I mean, I know we were just talking before we started recording here. Our infection rate is about three thousands of 1%. It’s very, very low. And you know, we’re very thankful we did the lockdown. The community was very good staying home, but what it has done and what I think it’s a fair assumption to make nationwide. It has thrust funeral homes into the 21st century. I mean, you, if you haven’t offered video, you have you got now. If you can’t do arrangements via webcast or you know, using technology to do that when you’re not face to face, you gotta figure it out now. So I know there’s a lot of funeral directors panicking at that time and a lot of companies have stepped up to help us do that. So there’s been a big change. I think it’s going to be here for good that this, this technology is there. We just, as funeral directors, we need to make sure that we’re comfortable with it and we can still provide value in what we do just by using technology to enhance our own personal brand as well as the funeral home.
Ryan:
I’m not going to add anything to Brian, cause he pretty much took a little, but I think, you know, from a standpoint of, you know, if you’re looking for types of technology that can help you through these times and whatnot, or any type of mobile technology, check out a few of the episodes of “Undertaking: the Podcast” cause we’ve got one or two that you know, or with some of these companies that are, or, you know, it’s just, just helpful.
Joey:
So could you guys talk a bit about anything you’ve done that has been really helpful for your firms in specific since, you know, since things have changed.
Brian:
Well, I mean, for me video production was always a part of my mind, but in my area of the world, it wasn’t requested. And once this started hitting, I started getting prepared. I’m like, okay, I need to, I need to prepare myself to be able to do broadcasts. You know, for me personally, I chose to do a delay broadcast and that was just our taste here at the funeral home. So that was something that we had to get comfortable with real quick and, and frankly, it wasn’t very hard at all. But that, that was the main change for us. We were already starting to move with the technology before the pandemic hit of being able to make arrangements mobily and you know, at a distance. So that technology was already in place when the pandemic yet. So I was, I was in a comfortable spot. I wasn’t put behind the eight ball there. But that, that that’s my experience.
Heather:
So then did Brian, did you bring in, you started doing video. Are you shooting the video, editing the video, all that on your own?
Brian:
Yeah. Yeah. I’m recording the video myself and I’m normally recording with two different devices from different angles. I’m also recording mobily and then I don’t know if I’m typing or what, but then when I get it all done, I, I just kinda like the podcast. I try to overproduce it, I guess I want it to look good. I want it to look nice. I don’t want it to be fuzzy and I want some transition. So yeah, I do. I do on my end, I get in there and I kinda overproduce it a little bit.
Heather:
And do you, what editing software do you use for that?
Brian:
I use what was on my computer. The Microsoft Video app is great, real simple for someone of my technical expertise, which is not a lot, although we can put a podcast out, it’s just something that you, you, you got to work through, you get, you gotta learn it. And it was a real simple learning curve.
Joey:
And Ryan, do you have anything you want to add about that?
Ryan:
Well, I mean, I think we’re still, we’re still on videos and what not, that that’s the biggest thing we’ve been doing a lot of arrangements through iPhones, FaceTimes, things like that. So I can be in my arrangements room doing and arrangements and, and show people caskets if they want. But we’ve also got the ability also through different merchandisers where you can send people a link and they can also what I’m showing them in the arrangements room from their computer. Now, the challenge with that is, is not everybody that we serve has that technology at all. You still got the flip phone era, you’ve still got a lot of different things there that you’re dealing with. You know, sometimes it does depend on the other person and how closely they’ve moved with technology or moved up in technology, but yeah, we, we do the videotapes. We hire that out. We went to actually do that in a videotapes. Did I just say videotapes? Can you believe that? We record funerals and whatnot upon request. That’s that’s not a problem. So yeah, honestly we were doing that stuff before because people were requesting it. So it’s not, you know, in a rural community, it’s, it’s becoming more and more I would say more grown within the IT and the technical field. They’re, they’re very much wanting those options and, and even in rural, rural America, you know, I mean, we’re not Brian and I are not from, we’re not from the city, you know what I mean? And they understand the capabilities and whatnot now, especially with things that have gone on, I mean, you know, it’s, it’s crazy how we’re doing this right now. You know what I mean? I wouldn’t have ever thought about doing something like this you know on the computer with people until COVID hit, you know, and, you know, you’re actually having conferences, you know, you’ve got, you know, the political entities within our area that do their council meetings or commissioner meetings, everything is on Zoom. You know, I think it helps with maybe transparency and whatever else, but yeah, I mean, I, I think people are very much realizing quickly that they have to step up into this technology.
Heather:
Yup, yup. Yeah. I think funeral directors and the public at large, both everybody. So I, I think you guys are in a really unique, unique position as both funeral directors and podcasters to kind of see trends that might be coming in the industry, or maybe have some insight into things that you think are you expect to see, is there anything you want to say, like, you think this is going to be a new trend, or you’ve seen something that surprised you that’s coming down the pike?
Brian:
You know, it’s really hard. The country is so big. And, you know, I think things are regional really. I mean, as we’ve traveled around, we find that funeral service can be completely different the way the public interacts with a funeral home and a funeral director and even their own community. I mean, we’re in a community where if there’s a visitation, people are gonna come, they’re gonna come. They want to hug. They’re going to bring a pie. And, you know, we went out West and it was like, you have a visitation and especially if there’s a body in the building, good luck.
Ryan:
So that was a very interesting dynamic. Brian, I outlasted it’s very much different.
Brian:
I really think the trends are technology. It’s going to be, how can we use technology to make the experience a little, as far as the business end, you know,, let’s keep the grief or the grief it needs to be, and not on the tasks of planning this and getting this together. And, and maybe just being bogged down by, you know, just the tasks of putting a service together. So I really think technology is going to be here to stay. And it’s going to be interesting to see regionally how that’s used.
Ryan:
I think it’s, it’s different everywhere. Bryan commented on our travels. I mean, we’ve had the opportunity to go to a lot of different places. And it’s just different. The Midwest is different than the West coast. We went to the Washington completely different type of funeral service completely different type of ritual tradition, whatever you want to call it. East coast, you know, it’s completely different than what we do. So I, you know, people say that the Midwest or, or the, the inner part of the United States is always the last to kind of you know, move with change, but it’s been pretty consistent here when it comes to the traditional ritual of a funeral service you know, some, some areas of the country like Brian they’re not comfortable necessarily having the decedent there you know, and, and they just want the service and then they go from there where we’re at. I, it, it, people ask why, you know what I mean? That’s a question if, if, you know, if it’s a direct cremation or something like that, and it’s just a Memorial service, people will ask why, you know, and it’s just preference of the family, but here in the Midwest, it’s, it’s, it’s still fairly traditional, I would say.
Heather:
That is interesting. And I, so I grew up, I told Brian this the other day on the phone, but I grew up in Oxford where Miami is Miami of Ohio. So when I moved out here to Colorado, it was a big adjustment for me in terms of that lack of personal connection or, you know, in the Midwest, everybody knows everything about everybody. And that is not the way here, and you’re not supposed to be that way. So I’ve seen that difference both in our social interactions, but also in the way that I’ve seen people celebrate a life between those two places.
Ryan:
So I love Colorado.
Heather:
I love Colorado, but I miss things about the Midwest too. There is the Midwest has wonderful things.
Joey:
It’s just different.
Heather:
It is different. It is. Joey, do you want to ask that last question?
Joey:
Yeah. So we, this is a question we like to ask everybody. So what is, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned serving in the funeral industry?
Brian:
I think it reinforced it for me. I think w death really reinforces that life matters, all life matters and that we need to love and care for each other. And I think we need to be mindful of how we interact even behind a keyboard because, you know, words, words have consequences. And I think you know, they can, they can absolutely words can absolutely uplift a family, or it can absolutely destroy someone. So I think I think death has just reinforced the importance of people and the importance of having people around you when you’re grieving. And that’s, that’s a message that I try to put out in the community that, you know, when you see an obituary that is a personal invitation for you to come and support a family, and I encourage you to do that.
Ryan:
I would say, just being more open minded you know, funeral service and with all the changes that we’ve had here within the past three months because of the pandemic, you know, I think that we’ve had to maybe get out of our comfort zone, some of us, you know, some of us have already moved past that, but some of us had to get out of our comfort zone to, to just move with the times. I think also dialogue for me has been big you know, narrative actually having those conversations, those tough conversations. You know, I, I truly believe if we’re not talking, we’re not getting better at anything. And, you know, I, I’m not a big fan of shutting people down necessarily at all. I mean, I like to have the back and forth and the podcast for us really, really helps with that. But I think it also helps me too, when I sit with a family and try to put a service together for them to be able to ask the right questions, you know I can always go back to something that we’ve talked about and, and use it within that arrangements conference.
Joey:
That’s awesome. Yeah. And I think your podcast does a really good job of reinforcing those ideas probably for your listeners as well. You know, so that’s great. So thank you so much, Brian and Ryan, we really appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us this week on Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips, and Technology. We’ll be posting this video on our blog, our YouTube channels, our Facebook. So you’ll be able to access it all there and feel free to check back next week with another show. If you have any topics you’d like to see discussed or someone 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. Have a great day. Thanks.
Heather:
Thanks so much you guys, I really appreciate it.
Brian:
Yeah, no worries. Thanks for having us.
