Rob shares the back story of how he helped Jeff and Steve Murphy start and grow their online cremation business to a very successful exit. Rob explains 3 marketing strategies that were very important in the growth of the Murphys' business. See the complete transcript here: Rob Heppell: Welcome back to the Funeral X Podcast. I am Rob Heppell and I'm joined with my Funeral Results Marketing business partner, Jake Johnson. Hey there, Jake. Jake Johnson: Hey, Rob. Rob Heppell: How's it going? Jake Johnson: Living the dream, as they say, right? Rob Heppell: Yes. Jake Johnson: Every day. Rob Heppell: Good stuff. Jake Johnson: Or fighting the fight. Rob Heppell: Yes. I think you have to do both, to fight the fight, to live the dream, right? Jake Johnson: Well, right, and we all need to know that nightmares are dreams too. You just got to pick your battles. Rob Heppell: Yes, for sure. Hey, today I think what would be neat is to dive into some of the marketing strategies that we've used in Funeral Results Marketing. In particular, how we've used some of those strategies and philosophies in our online cremation offering. I think, to help this example, one of our clients, or actually, unfortunately, former client, but only because he sold his business after it became so successful, is Jeff Murphy from Tennessee. I was speaking with him the other day and I thought, "Hey, you know, do you mind if I share some of the information? We won't go into all the details," but he said, "Oh Yes, Yes. That's fine." I think before we get going though, just so folks listening know some of my approaches to marketing, instead of ... I see this just so often, Jake is, funeral home owner or cremation provider owner will say, "Oh, we should start using Facebook, or we should use this," and they jump to the channel. They don't think of, what's the overall ... If we step back, what's the overall objective? Jake Johnson: I think it's a good point, you know. Yes. I mean, I think about it within our consulting practice. Used to call it the Baskin Robbins concept, where you come back with 31 ideas or flavors of the month. The problem was, it's confusing, it's disruptive and it doesn't accomplish the whole picture. The best thing to do is more strategically plan it out. It falls along the same line with you're talking about. Rob Heppell: Yes. Yes. I like to ask, "Okay, so who do want, to do what? What's it going to benefit you?" It's a little bit of a clunky question, but it has the right part. If someone says, "Well, I want to be on Facebook," I'm like, "Okay. Well, who do you want to interact with and what do you want them to do?" If they say, "Well, how about like our page?" I'm like, "Well, okay. If that's your objective, is to get likes on the page, it may help down the road for a little bit of online reputation and top-of-mind awareness, but there's no value there." On the flip side, I think the ultimate objective for most funeral homes would be to secure another call, to get more first calls. If that's the objective, then okay. So, who are we trying to attract?

Jake and Rob have a fun conversation as they walk back through their introduction and experience with technology. They reminisce about their first computers, first software, initial experience with the Internet, and talk about mobile devices. See the complete transcript here: Rob Heppell: Welcome back to the Funeral X Podcast. I am Rob Heppell, and I'm joined with my Funeral Results Marketing business partner, Jake Johnson. Hey there, Jake. Jake Johnson: Hey, Rob. Rob Heppell: How's it going? Jake Johnson: Living the dream. Rob Heppell: Good. Good stuff. Hey, you know what? I've enjoyed our chats here. I know that we've talked about these types of things in the past about just our technologies and how we use them and things like that. I thought it would be fun to share a little geek-out session of our background with technology, the internet, that type of thing. I think our little generation, I'm I think five years older than you or so, but we learned what it was... We grew up not technology and we're fully embraced in it, right? We're one of the rare generations that will have transpired and worked through it into now. It's maybe even controlling. Our lives are very dependent on it. Hey, just right at the beginning, and what I'll do, I'll ask you some questions, you share your thoughts, I'll share my thoughts, and we'll just kind of go through the last two or three decades of technologies. In school, did you take computer classes or typing? Was your school offering that when you're going to high school? Jake Johnson: Yes. I remember components of it like, well, Macintosh Computers in middle school, and I believe the thing that comes to mind is Oregon Trail. Probably everybody remembers that one. That was like the intro to me and I just thought it was the coolest thing. You had it up on the screen, and it was interactive. Games are really where it started for me, I'd say middle school. But in high school, I don't recall computer classes in high school. It's crazy. Rob Heppell: I'll get to a little funny story towards the end about my dad and when we reflected back on computers and high school. I never took it. Some of my buddies took it. They'd all walk around with those little computer cards because they'd have to take that to class, those maybe like seven-inch by three-inch little pieces of cardboard. I never took typing. Those are probably a couple of things that I should have done. One of my buddies at that time, his dad was kind of into electronics, so they had the Apple and with the floppys and we'd go over to his basement and we'd play games. The first computers that I had though, were like an IBM XT or 286 XT or AT. It was big when it was getting into like, okay, there was like a hard drive, but you still had the five and a quarter floppy, and then the three and a half little hard disk still floppy. That was really the first one I started getting into computers was right after grade 12. I think when I was working at McCall's, a great help was Paul Taylor. He was the office manager. He was doing accounting and he brought in a computer. McCall has never had any computers up until 1987, '88. He was instrumental in showing me, like teaching me DOS and things like that, how that all worked. He would help me troubleshoot things or if I messed things up. What about like at home, did you end up getting a computer? Jake Johnson: Yes. My parents had a computer. I always wanted to get one,

Lori Salberg, Director of J3Tech Solutions, joins Jake and Rob for the story behind Performance Tracker. Rob asks Jake about the system's origins and Lori shares where Performance Tracker is now and how it can assist Funeral Homes and Cemeteries track and improve the customer experience for their client families. To book a demonstration with Lori, select a time in her calendar that is convenient for you: https://meetings.hubspot.com/lori123 See the complete transcript here: Rob Heppell: Welcome to the Funeral X Podcast. I am Rob Heppell, and I'm joined with my Funeral Results Marketing business partner, Jake Johnson, and our special guest, Lori Salberg. Hey, Lori. Hey, Jake. Jake Johnson: Hey there, what's up? Lori Salberg: Hey. Rob Heppell: Hey, this is going to be exciting. So, today, we're going to be talking about Performance Tracker and its origin. And I think Jake, I'll just start with you, and tell us the backstory about why Performance Tracker was created. Was it named something else in the beginning? How was it started? Who was involved? And what did you use to get going? Jake Johnson: Absolutely. So, my role before coming on to Johnson Consulting was working at Palm Mortuaries, we were a very busy organization, with thousands of calls basically, and a large market share within Las Vegas, Nevada. And one of the things that you did as an arranger, or at least I did, is I would look at what the arrangement scores were. If we're doing surveying, looking at sales averages, and had an impact on how we're compensated, and it's tied to receivables as well. But I always thought that was very valuable. And so, when I moved to Phoenix to work at Johnson Consoling with my father, it just started off as my father and I, he has had two funeral homes here. And they had done surveying, but he had just acquired those funeral homes back. So, they had stopped it, and I wanted to see if I could implement a survey program within our own funeral homes, and see if I could scale it. So, I did. It was a Word document, mail merge. And quickly from there, with the clients that we were starting to build with Johnson Consulting, they had an interest in it. And the same thing, they were acquiring firms that had been used to doing surveying for accountability of the arrangement they have, and total overall performance of the business, or that location. And so, they were interested in starting it up, where they could outsource that. So, we started doing surveys that way. And it wasn't just surveys, those sales analyses as well. Data aggregation, all that kind of stuff. And so, we're doing that in Excel and Microsoft Word. And then, as the volume got too large, quite honestly, and a good problem to have, we gravitated to an Access database. And then, that was short-lived, because we were growing quickly. So, it was my first venture into software development, and having a data aggregation software that we would build that would then be known to be called the Performance Tracker. And so, the origins of that actually were through a gentleman by the name of Bill Bischoff in the industry. He had been around a long time. We're just talking about what does this thing does. And then, we settled on that name. So, it's evolved into what it is today, which we'll get into, but in very humble beginnings, for sure. Rob Heppell: So, it was more than just a survey tool of what, I think,

Rob shares the back story of why he chose WordPress to be the CMS (Content Management System) for all of the funeral home marketing websites and cremation arrangement websites that he and his team have created. He also gives a brief history of WordPress and how its features can help funeral homes create a powerful online marketing tool for their firms. Fact Check: Rob referred to the creator of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg as a billionaire but at the time of the recording, his net worth is estimated at $450 Million and he is from Houston, Texas, not Austin, Texas. See the complete transcript here: Rob Heppell: Welcome back to the Funeral X Podcast. I'm Robin Heppell and I'm joined with my Funeral Results Marketing business partner, Jake Johnson. Hey there, Jake. Jake Johnson: Hey Rob. Rob Heppell: Hey, that was a fun little walk down memory lane there about the beginnings of Funeral Results Marketing and where it kind of all started. A number of times we kept talking about WordPress and I think it's a good topic to just dive into a little bit more for folks who haven't heard of WordPress or what it is and how it can be used for funeral homes and cemeteries and cremation providers. Jake Johnson: Yep, I agree. I learned a lot, just things that I... There are things that we discussed that I had known in connection with our relationship and the things that you do, and then I learned a lot about the other things that filled in to make Funeral Results Marketing what it is. Yes, you're right. We talked about WordPress and I've got a little experience in WordPress but I'm pretty sure you've got a lot more. So I'd love to hear you dive into that more. I think it's a valuable topic for people here. Rob Heppell: Sure. Well, yes. Looking back at the last time we chatted, I had got into the funeral home websites early, like in '96 with McCalls. And then in the early 2000s, met up with Todd Abrams from Aldor Solutions in Texas. So I started to really get into how websites were getting developed and that tenure lasted to 2006. And then I took a bit of a break from website development and I reached out to a local marketer guy, his name's Tris Hussey. He was the one that introduced me to WordPress. I said that we had the three options, Joomla, Drupal and WordPress, and he nudged me towards WordPress, and thankfully he did. But it was more of the marketing platform compared to the other two content management systems. Rob Heppell: At that time, I realized that, hey, this is really search engine friendly and Google friendly right out of the box. I thought that it would be a great platform for funeral homes. But at that time, it was still just a blogging platform. It didn't look like a website. And right at that time, there was this little bit of movement of going from a blogging platform to a CMS, a content management system. And really there wasn't anything inside the software of WordPress. It was just how it was applied basically through the themes. I was working with a developer and he introduced me to a couple of theme developers, one guy named Cory Miller from iThemes and Brian Gardner from StudioPress and Genesis. Rob Heppell: These guys are quite well known in the theme development space. I was having conversations, direct conversations with them because I'd be kind of pushing the limits on them like, hey, can't we make it look like a website, can't we create a navigation bar, and working through these little things. So it was kind of neat to be working with these guys.

Rob recalls his first involvement with a funeral home website in 1996, discovering how obituaries could be found by Google and the path he took to create the digital marketing agency, Funeral Results Marketing (and why he chose that name). Then Rob and Jake talk through the suite of services that help funeral professionals be more successful online. See the complete transcript here: Rob Heppell: Welcome back to the Funeral X podcast. I am Rob Heppell and I'm joined with my Funeral Results business partner, Jake Johnson. Hey Jake, how's it going today? Jake Johnson: Hey, Rob. Very good. Rob Heppell: Great. Well, enjoyed the story of Johnson Consulting and after that, we were talking. He said, "Okay. Well, you need to do... You need to give the story behind Funeral Results Marketing," so I think we'll tackle that today. Jake Johnson: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it goes without saying. How did you start to offer websites and other marketing services? Give me a little more background on that. Rob Heppell: Yes, for sure. So I'll give you a little bit of the early part and then will get into Funeral Results. So I started with McCalls in Victoria in '86 right out of high school as a funeral director, and then lots of things go in 10-year chunks. So in 1996, I helped McCalls with their first website, and then for myself, I thought, "Oh, you know what? I should get heppell.com," and I got it and get this, Jake, this is from Network Solutions and it was $20, and I guess that was too much money. They felt that they were charging too much, so they actually sent me a t-shirt, and I'll take a picture of it and I'll put it in the show notes because it's quite funny. It's not looking too great, but it was good quality. It's nice and thick. Rob Heppell: So as things progressed, in 2002 I met Todd Abrams and the unique thing about Todd is his family's funeral home is the one directly north of my uncle and grandfather's funeral home in Ontario. So there's Bolton, which was Egan's, and then if you drive north, the next one was Abram's Funeral Home in Tottenham, and I ran into Todd at a trade show. It was an FSAC in Whistler, and we got talking and I'm like, "Hey, I think your name sounds familiar," and here he is, he's this tech guy from Texas. Yes, he didn't stay with the funeral, got into technology, started websites, and so I started working for him, representing his company through Canada and they became Aldor Solutions and FDMS, and FDMS is a very familiar company to both you and me, and continue to work with them. Rob Heppell: So it's just funny how these things start and how they continue to circle back and continue to be part of the story. I went back to school, to university, got my business degree in entrepreneur management, took marketing courses, and this would've been early 2000s, and 2006 I created a website for myself off of WordPress, and I noticed that it was quite easy to use compared to... I played around with HTML and it was starting to get over my head, and WordPress made it a lot easier, and at this time, I'd left Aldor Solutions. I was doing more SEO and offering those services plus different training. Being in Victoria, our cremation rate when I started in '86 was 67%, and I believe in the mid-2000s, it was around 88%, and now it's 93%. So we were kind of always on the verge of something new, everyone else had... And Victoria to this day still probably has one of the highest cremation rates in all of North America to 93%, but it's been steady at that rate for about fi...

Jake recounts when his dad, Tom started Johnson Consulting Group, Jake's introduction into the company and what he and the team at JCG have grown it into. Jake also shares the background and significance of the firm's logo. See the complete transcript here: Rob Heppell: Welcome back to the Funeral X Podcast. I'm Robin Heppell and I'm joined with my Funeral Results business partner, Jake Johnson. Hey Jake, are you there? Jake Johnson: Hey Rob. Thank you. Yes. Rob Heppell: We had a couple of great conversations about working together this past year with Funeral Results Marketing, and then, even our business working relationship, going back over a decade. But today, I think Funeral Results Marketing is just one of the enterprises for the Johnson Group of Businesses that you have. So, but let's talk about kind of the main one, the one that got you where you are now. And that's Johnson Consulting. Maybe just share how it started or even what your dad was doing before he started Johnson Consulting and then you joining it and then where you're today? Jake Johnson: It was a fun journey because it was for me as a child because we would move and dad had a new greater opportunity as he elevated his career. We are from Batesville, Indiana. So I think if you come out of Batesville, Indiana, you either make hospital beds. You make caskets and sell them or you work at funeral homes. And so dad actually started with Batesville Caskets, started the national accounts program and then gravitated into the funeral operations side of things. And that eventually led him to being the president of The Pierce Brothers Mortuaries and Cemeteries out in California, which was one of the largest private funeral organizations back in the day in California. And then from there gained the experience on acquisitions and started his own acquisition company in the early '90s and then was sold in the mid '90s and he retired. And with all that, he gained a lot of experience and my father, always just had a large network of people he knows through choosing the right thing, and the right way to handle things above everything else and reputation, and that went a long way for him. And so when it became known that he was retired and playing golf, he started getting calls and people asking him based on his experience of buying and selling or running funeral businesses know any guidance he could give. And as those calls started to grow, he decided maybe one way to slow it down. So get back to golf was start... legitimize it through charging because he wasn't charging at the time. And that only propagated further phone calls because they saw now that he was in business. And so he incorporated in 2000 Johnson Consulting as a Florida Corporation, which it still is. And then as it continued to grow in 2004, he reached out to me when I was at Palm Mortuaries and Cemeteries, I was running a large funeral home there and then ran all their cemeteries, operations side and was on their executive team. And so I was getting a lot of boots on the ground experience. Although my prior experience was in mergers and acquisitions and funeral service at Keystone Group Holdings down in Tampa, Florida. So it was a great way to culminate my experiences and come on board, if you will, at definitely the ground level. It was just dad and I working and working out of our homes and I was in Las Vegas and he was in Florida at the time. And dad got the opportunity to buy three funeral homes, one in Gainesville, Indiana, where he is from and still lives and two here in Phoenix, Arizona. And so he made the decision to move out to Arizona.

Jake shares his valuable insights into funeral home mergers and acquisitions - and the higher-than-normal multiples that are being offered for the right funeral homes. See the complete transcript here: Rob Heppell: Welcome back to the Funeral X podcast. I am Rob Heppell, and I'm joined by my Funeral Results business partner, Jake Johnson. Hey, Jake, how are you today? Jake Johnson: Hey, Rob. Good. Rob Heppell: Hey, Jake, it's been good kind of going back. We've been telling the folks some of the background of our businesses and how we've come together to work together, but I'd like to kind of interject a topic that is quite timely right now with mergers and acquisitions. I know there are lots of things going on and who better to talk to than you about that. So maybe give just a very brief background of the experience between your dad and then yourself, and then maybe talk about today's climate. Jake Johnson: Yes, absolutely. It started with M&A experience within my family started with my father back in at Pierce Brothers when they expanded Pierce Brothers, and then on to when my dad started his own acquisition company and spun that up and then sold and retired, but he gained a lot of experience in multistate funeral business ownership and acquisition analysis and multiples and things like that. And then for me, I followed in those footsteps and started in Tampa, Florida at Keystone Group and then got some boots on the ground experience but always with the finance and accounting background and interest. So then that's what we brought to Johnson Consulting, and why we're very popular as an M&A broker company in the funeral space. Rob Heppell: Great. Now let's maybe talk about what's happening right now because there has been some activity, quite a bit of activity lately. And then maybe then go through a little bit of what would you recommend for people who are thinking about maybe putting their funeral property on the market even though it may not be immediate. What are the things to kind of get ready for to make it as successful as possible? Jake Johnson: Absolutely. And the first thing is that most feel like it's on the market if you will quote that it's all for all to see, but in this space, it's confidentiality. And privacy is very important because it can be very disruptive. And in this industry, profession has small ears or big ears and everybody hears about things. So the things to prepare for though, I'll start off with just what we're seeing. It's definitely since... Let's see. They had done it since the '80s and then me since the mid-'90s. These multiples are as high as I've seen since maybe the late '90s in funeral service. So I think what's driving that is you got high call volume. It's a transition time for small businesses with the next generation, the baby boomers looking to retirement. And then also the baby boomers, ironically, being also being part of that cycle of people passing that's possibly a good cause of what the added case volume is, along with COVID, of course. Rob Heppell: So, Jake, you're telling me that... Because I know that we've been hearing this for 10, 15 years about like the big death boom. The stories that were told to me were that some people predicted it way too early. But you're saying now that we are finally here. We're starting to see a little bit of that swell. Jake Johnson: Yes. We know it was coming, and I think we're seeing a beginning of that swell.

Jake and Rob reflect on how they were first made aware of each other in the mid 2000s - Tom Johnson and Google. See the complete transcript here: Rob Heppell: Welcome back to the Funeral X Podcast. I am Rob Heppell and I'm joined with my Funeral Results Marketing business partner, Jake Johnson. Hey there, Jake, how are you today? Jake Johnson: Hey there. Good. Rob Heppell: Good stuff. Hey, that was a great first episode, just reliving the last 18 months of our journey working quite closely to get other more so. But I think I thought in this one and we did talk about it a little bit, but I think there's some great stories about how we first got to know each other, and also too, from our different perspectives too. And basically, what's happened in the last, I guess, 15 years or so of getting to know each other and kind of bringing us up to the point of working with each other a year ago, starting a year ago. Jake Johnson: Right. Rob Heppell: So now to jump right in, I think this... I knew of you and your dad back there in say the mid 2000s. And I was in San Francisco, so this is 2006 and I had been writing some articles for... At that time I was just trying to get exposure. So I was writing some articles for RON HAST. And so Ron used to have the mortuary management magazine and he was hosting a little conference and this still happens today, but there was the CANA event going on in San Francisco so that it's in the summer. And so he decided and since he's from San Francisco to have his own two-day event ahead of that to kind of capitalize on all the funeral folks coming into town. And he had Tom Johnson speaking at this event. Rob Heppell: So I wasn't speaking, I was just attending. But I did have a couple of other goals by attending this event. And then I was actually speaking at CANA a few days later. But what I remember is your dad's at the front of the little conference room that we were at, we're at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, I believe in San Francisco. And so Yes, your dad is presenting and he's having technical issues and everyone, he's looking at Ron and Ron was older than your dad. And so he didn't have the answer so I kind of volunteered. And this has happened. It doesn't happen as much anymore. I think it's because technology's a bit more reliable than it was. So I came up and got him figured out and got on his way. Rob Heppell: And I still... And I remember part of his presentation and I've spoken with you since about this, but where he was talking, and Jake's, were with our business evaluation and he's it's not just simple math and so many calls these times. So many dollars is what we're going to pay you for your business. And he was talking about your little upticks here and there. And since that time, you've shown me to the degree of these things that are just minor, but they can sway evaluation up or down. But it's just kind of neat and I've always remembered that part. And with that, the neat thing about that event was Ron, he had a social time up top of the Drake and he... And I met some folks there. Rob Heppell: I met Mark Matthews and Sean Douglass. And then also then when that wrapped up, right before I left, I interviewed Ron because I was doing my little Funeral Gurus video. And so I interviewed him about Jessica Mitford because Jessica Mitford wrote The American Way of Death, kind of a negative take on funeral service. And so I just wanted to get his take on it because I knew that,

Jake and Rob look back at the events over the past two years that brought them to become partners in Funeral Results Marketing and where they are today. See the complete transcript here: Rob Heppell: Welcome to the Funeral X Podcast. I am Robin Heppell and I'm joined with my Funeral Results Marketing partner, Jake Johnson. Hey, Jake, are you there? Jake Johnson: Hey, Rob, nice to be here. Rob Heppell: Yes, excellent. Now, for everyone listening, for a little bit of a background, Jake and I have been partners for just over a year with Funeral Results Marketing where we meet on a regular basis. And we have some great discussions about funeral service and what led us to this point. And we thought that others may want to listen, too, on some of our discussions and so we're going to provide this on somewhat of a regular basis. And hopefully, if you're listening that you get some insight out of it and where we are, and where we're going.                 So Jake, I think a great first topic, let's talk about you and I and how we got here today. Not since the beginning, not over a decade ago, but maybe in the last year and a half how we got the conversation started to working together, what are your thoughts? Jake Johnson: Well, you and I, Rob, have been known each other and talked for quite some time. I think dad initially ran into you when he was having audio/visual issues at a presentation back in the day. And he said, "You got to meet this guy," and you and I spoke. And you then helped us with our website and online presence. That was the big reveal for me, like, "Who is this guy?" We claimed to be the premier consulting firm back then as we were growing and you were ranking higher than us. I'm like, "Well this guy has got it figured out."                 So, I've always seen you, Rob, as that, I always say OG, but the guy that really saw what the future would look like with websites and online marketing. And that's proven true with the platform that you build on. It's still here and others have, quite frankly, attempted to switch to because of how long and how robust the system is. So yes, that was the beginning of it as I can recall. Rob Heppell: Yes, that's great. And I think maybe in a future episode we'll dive in deeper to that part because there's some good parts in there. But I think what I remember, and this would have been, ironically, at the time of the beginning of the pandemic. So the spring of 2020 and nothing to do with the pandemic itself but just, I think, that the timing's align. I was approached, there was some consolidation going on in the funeral service technology website space. And I had received some phone calls and interest in that and if I wanted to participate in it. And some of it sounded interesting, some of it, I didn't really latch on to what they were trying to offer or where they might be going.                 And what I like to do, I always like to listen. I learned that from one of our clients, was always listen, always hear someone out. But then also, too, maybe talk it over with someone else just to make sure I'm not missing anything. So I remember I picked up the phone and called you Jake and let you know what was going on. And what were your thoughts at that time of what you had heard about what was happening, and where was your mindset going regarding websites and marketing from that point? Jake Johnson: Yes, for me, I've been interested in technology in this space as far as back in 1996 when I started.