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Every January, I see them. “What I read last year.” “The 12 books that changed my thinking.” “My reading list for the new year.” “What I plan to read this year.” I enjoy those posts. I’ve found some terrific books because someone else took the time to share what influenced them. But I’ve also wondered: Why January? Why do we wait for a new calendar, a new year, or some arbitrary starting line to decide we're going to grow? Want to change your life? Start reading now. Not Janu

There are some questions we ask in funeral service that have easy answers. What time is the visitation? Who will officiate? Has the obituary been approved? When will the cemetery be ready? Then there are the questions that follow us home. After spending a career caring for the dead and walking alongside the grieving, I have come to believe those questions matter just as much. What happens when we die? Is death truly the end? Does the life I am living have meaning beyond the w

I was looking through a series of AI-generated images I had created for funeral service training. Individually, they were beautiful. There was a welcoming funeral home exterior. A comfortable arrangement office. A peaceful visitation room. A large chapel prepared for a service. I liked each of them. But when I looked at my own images as a complete collection, I realized they lacked something fundamental: Continuity. The traditional brick funeral home in one image suddenly had

The Changing Face of Funeral Service A Profession Sustained by Commitment and Strained by Its Systems When I entered mortuary school in the early 1980s, fewer than 10 percent of the students in my class were women. You did not need a statistical report to understand who the profession expected to become a funeral director. You could see it by looking around the classroom. Funeral service was overwhelmingly male and frequently generational. Sons followed fathers into family-ow

It is 7:15 on a Monday morning. The funeral home looks exactly as it should from the street. The lawn is trimmed. The sign is clean. The front entrance is ready. Inside, the arrangement room is quiet, the chapel is orderly, and everything appears prepared for another day of serving families. But walk through the employee entrance and you may find a different story. The director on call has been out twice during the night. He is tired, but there is a 10:00 arrangement waiting.

By Jay Jacobson, LUTCF, CPC, CFSP The family had asked for one thing. It was not expensive. It was not complicated. It did not require special equipment or hours of preparation. They wanted a particular song played as their mother’s casket left the chapel. The funeral director wrote it down. The family talked about why it mattered. Their mother had sung that song while cooking Sunday dinner. She sang it in the car. She hummed it while rocking her grandchildren. To eve

By Jay U. Jacobson The widow sitting across from me knew only one thing with certainty: she wanted her husband cremated. Beyond that, she was lost. His death had been sudden. Church had never been part of their lives, so a traditional funeral service did not feel right. Yet doing nothing did not feel right either. She was caught between convention and uncertainty, trying to make permanent decisions while still struggling to understand what had happened. I could have opened a

Adversity has a way of shrinking the room. When trouble first arrives, the world gets smaller. The calendar disappears. Long-term plans fade into the background. The next phone call, the next medical report, the next bill, the next hard conversation, the next breath, that is all you can see. I have felt that kind of narrowing. Most of us have. A diagnosis. A business setback. A failed plan. A family crisis. A grief that sits in the chair across from you and refuses to leave.

Every funeral home has stories. They live in the preparation room and the arrangement office. They travel in the hearse on the way to the cemetery. They are passed between experienced funeral directors and the young apprentice working their first visitation. They surface around the lunch table after a difficult service and sometimes years later when someone says, “Do you remember that family?” The question is not whether we have stories. The question is whether we recognize t

By Jay U. Jacobson, LUTCF, CPC, CFSP Whenever I tell someone how I interview prospective funeral directors, they usually laugh. "You do what?" I simply smile. When a candidate arrives for an interview, I don't immediately invite them into my office. Instead, I ask if they'd mind driving me to their favorite coffee shop. It sounds odd. I've even had a few applicants give me a puzzled look before saying, "Sure." During the drive we talk. Not about embalming. N

As printed in FuneralVision.com What executive movement across death care should make us ask about leadership, culture, and the relationships we say matter I remember when changing suppliers in funeral service was a big deal. I mean a really big deal. You didn't discover another company was three percent cheaper on Monday and move thirty years of business by Friday. There was history involved. Your casket representative knew you. Your vault company knew your staff. Your prene

What Ted Lasso Can Teach Funeral Service About Unrealistic Hospitality Ted Lasso arrived in England to coach a sport he did not fully understand. He knew American football. He did not know English football. He was unfamiliar with the culture, doubted by the players, mocked by the public, and placed in a position where nearly everyone expected him to fail. Still, Ted walked through the door. He did not pretend to possess knowledge he did not have. He led with curiosity, humili

By Jay Jacobson, LUTCF, CPC, CFSP There is a disturbing story unfolding in Chicago that many people may not have heard about yet. They should. Authorities say 56 deceased people were discovered improperly stored at South Chicago Chapel, some reportedly in advanced stages of decomposition. Illinois regulators described deplorable conditions, including unrefrigerated remains, rodent infestation, decomposition and maggot infestation. A funeral director's license associated with

Could Repeated Exposure to Death Become a Source of Strength? A recent article in Connecting Directors, “The Long-term Effects of Repeated Exposure to Death,” stopped me in my tracks. Not because the subject was new. Anyone who has spent a lifetime in funeral service understands the weight of repeated exposure to death. We do not meet death once in a while. We meet it in hospital rooms, nursing homes, private residences, accident scenes, prep rooms, chapels, churches, cemeter

THE POWER OF THREE Legendary Examples Are Built Together July 2026 We believe that leadership isn't a solo journey. The most profound impacts are felt when stories are shared, echoing through a community that values growth and integrity. Today, we are inviting you to join a small, intentional circle of three. As a reader of 'Lead by Legendary Example', you are part of a narrative that seeks to elevate the standard of professional excellence. We have set a collective goal to r

A fable I remember my grandmother sharing, adapted for this blog on critical communication. There was once an elder who sat with a young boy at the edge of the village as the day was beginning to settle into evening. The fire had burned low. The air was quiet. The kind of quiet that makes a young person ask questions they might not ask in the busyness of the day. The boy had been troubled. Earlier, he had seen two men argue. Their voices had grown sharp. Their faces had harde

Refusing to Let a Grieving Family Feel Like a Transaction The phone does not ring at a funeral home because someone is having an ordinary day. It rings because something has happened. A husband has died in the night. A mother is declining faster than the family expected. A son is calling from three states away, trying to make decisions he never imagined he would have to make. A daughter may be sitting in a hospital parking lot, staring at the steering wheel, trying to find th

The first time a funeral director truly comes face to face with Augmented Intelligence, it probably won’t feel like science fiction. It may happen late in the afternoon, after the family has gone home. The arrangement room is quiet again. The coffee cups are still on the table. A few tissues are crumpled near the chair where the daughter sat, trying to hold herself together long enough to talk about her father’s life. The director has notes scattered across the desk: dates, m

There are some lessons leadership doesn’t teach from a stage. They don’t come from a keynote, a strategy session, or a perfectly polished mission statement. They come from the ordinary moments most people overlook. They come from the phone call answered with patience when the day is already full. They come from the staff member who needs help when there’s no spotlight. They come from the client who asks the same question for the third time because grief, pressure, fear, or un

Every funeral home owner knows the feeling. You make the hire with hope. Maybe the resume looked solid. Maybe the interview felt right. Maybe the candidate had just enough polish, just enough experience, just enough promise to make you believe they could grow into the person your firm needed. So you welcome them in. You introduce them to the staff. You show them the arrangement room, the prep room, the garage, the chapel, the filing system, the phone protocol, the way