Latest / On Deathcare / Mike Miller on Equipment, Innovation, and Second Retirements

Transcript

Mike Miller on Equipment, Innovation, and Second Retirements · On Deathcare

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, I am Tony Russo from On Deathcare and this week I am speaking with Mike Miller,
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: now retired chief operating officer from FT.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: I saw the announcement of his retirement and it struck me as odd.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: As I said in one of my recent columns,
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: he's not retirement age unless he's You know,
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: he's a cop or some sort of federal worker, an army officer, perhaps.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: He's not much older than me to be like retiring, retiring.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: And he's not, quote, retiring.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually the second time he's retired recently.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: So retiring is kind of a habit for him anyway.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: But we talked about,
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: how he got to FT and where he's going next and some of the changes at FT,
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: which I think are super cool and I had known about and wouldn't have.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Unless I got a chance to talk to him.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I hope you enjoy this conversation.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Nice and short this week, but a really interesting guy and a fun story.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Before we get to it,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: I do want to thank, as always, my paid subscribers who make all of my work possible.
• 1:06
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• 1:09
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• 1:12
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• 1:16
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• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to have the audience.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's great that you guys pay attention to this kind of stuff.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I love all the feedback, good and bad.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's nice to know that you're listening and that you care about what we're discussing.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, enough of that.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get on to this conversation with Mike Miller.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: So as I told you before we started,
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: I saw that you were retiring and I wrote in my column, I said,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: guys my age tend to retire from the post office,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: maybe from You know the police station.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: But not from executive position.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I was surprised to have seen it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: But before we get to your pending retirement, let's get you to FT in general.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So this is the second time you're retiring.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me about the first time and what brought you out of retirement.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was with Steward Enterprises for 25 years.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And as most people know, we sold student enterprises to SCI in 2013.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was their senior vice president of sales and operations for the Western Division at the time.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, SCI was very good.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I got no complaints about the acquisition.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: They offered a nice job to me to stay.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was just, I was thinking, you know, been around for 25 years.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing is I know that You know,
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: as we acquired the company,
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of times we sit around the table and they say,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: well, whose stupid idea was that?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't want it to be mine, you know?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I just thought it was the right time to kind of move on.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then I, you know, I found, and the other thing was I had InvoCare out of Australia.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So again, Australia was asking me to kind of come help them out with some things there.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I joined their executive group and did that for four or five years.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, until about 2019.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then I retired right after that,
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know, just thought, well, I'll just take some time off and not do anything.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not very good at retiring.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have any hobbies, but I don't play golf.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't kill time, right?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So not much to do.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: when you're 50 years old and you're retired and you want to go out for a beer,
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's working, you know, you're just kind of at an audience.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: You should have become a writer.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: I drink with people at noon all the time.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So Patrick DeMeyer,
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: who was one of the founders of FT,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: great friend of mine, great person, you know, was transitioning his business.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: He was retiring himself and he was transitioning the business to some new investors.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: They needed somebody in America to kind of oversee,
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Patrick had always kind of done it from Europe and they needed somebody
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: that just had management and industry kind of experience to kind of get in here
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: and identify what the business NFT needed in America.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a good fit for me.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they needed brand, right?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: They've been building machines here since...
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: About 2010, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And even though we had found them at Steward Enterprises,
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of people that do a lot of volume had found them.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I still found when I started this job,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: you'd say, well,
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm with faculty technologies or I'm with FT and people would say, what do you do?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah, this has been 12 years and you guys still don't know in a small industry, right?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know what FT is.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we just started, uh,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: building a North American brand,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: like, you know, really, we've spent some money on advertising, marketing.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: We've spent a lot of time in social stuff, right?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: The social media is where it's at.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Especially in the, in the funeral industry, right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: We spend a lot of time on our phones because we're waiting for that family to come.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hurry up and wait, yeah.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: You get your funeral started,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: you're on your phone, you're waiting at the cemetery, you're on your phone.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I just spent a lot of time on social media, you know, A lot of tension there.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we just, you know, we just started building a brand and name recognition was what it needed.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other thing that we identified was,
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: like I said,
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: if you're a volume player,
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: if you're doing a thousand cremations a year,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: you knew FT. You had an FT or you had talked to them at some point.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because that was, that's, the FT3 was built for volume.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a It's a cremation machine.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: It can churn out six, seven cremations in an eight-hour shift.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the more you work it, the more efficient it gets.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's a quality machine.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: The maintenance is low.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's built for safety.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: It has a lot of safety features that a lot of cremators don't.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So our operators are safe.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a great machine.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've owned...
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Three or four of them in my lifetime, right?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm at Stewart.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Then I had a crematory in Los Angeles that, you know, we had a couple of FTs.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Highly recommend the product.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I love the product.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're a funeral home, right,
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: the market right now is,
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: guys that are doing 300,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: have a funeral home,
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: there are 300, 400 cremations, you know, even 200 cremations, right, a year.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: The FT3 is really more horsepower than they need.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Buying a Lamborghini and going to the grocery store.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's too much machine.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we were able to kind of re-engineer a new machine that still has
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: the functionality,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: the quality and the safety and the efficiencies of the FT3,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: but it's not going to cremate as fast.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to give you the speed that the FT3 has for the volume.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we call it the FTXL primarily because we had The USA machine,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: but it could only do up to 500 pounds.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: everybody that was looking at that machine said, man,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: I do more than five,
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know, these days, I do more than 500 pounds on a weekly basis.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I need that difference.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we engineered this to do up to a thousand pounds.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Our plant GM and technician,
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Derek Wiltz,
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: primarily just took it on and We chopped up an FT3 and we built an XL
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: and we redesigned it.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: They worked through the whole process of what was needed and what was not.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a brand new machine.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm going to interrupt you here just real quick because I don't want to let this get away.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: If the...
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: If the biggest selling point was that it gets more efficient as you use it,
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: that was what you had to take out of the next one.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: You had to keep as much efficiency as possible without relying
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: on being constantly hot for all of the time.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you need six cremations in an eight-hour shift or seven, the FT3 is great.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you're only doing a couple a day, you don't need quite that.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need to build up that momentum.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all the stuff that makes that happen on the FT3.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we just kind of engineered some of it back.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: we just took an FT3 shell and chopped it up and just designed it right there on
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: the shop floor.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we delivered our first one a few weeks ago in Arkansas.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that was our first machine in Arkansas.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm writing a story about a guy who's going bankrupt in Arkansas.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: If it's not out now, it's probably out by the time this is out.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not a long story.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like an observational thing.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not kicking a man when he's down.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: He's going through a divorce, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: But the cremation rate in Arkansas, he said, is...
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: It went from 45% to 54%.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, well, with cremation, I can't stay open.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I swear to God, this isn't a commercial not being paid to sit.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no,
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: if you don't own a cremator when cremation's still only at 54%,
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: you're going to
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: go out of bed.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's, you know, we just did kind
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: of a...
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess you just sold his competitor, I guess.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, these huge opportunities for this.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's the market, right?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: These guys are doing, let's say, 400 funeral, 450 funerals a year.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: 54% of those now, like you say, are cremation.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's the perfect time to say, man, I need to put a cremator into my business.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, I've got to take, you know, my revenue is going down.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to take 30% of what I'm getting and give it to somebody else to make
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: that cremation happen.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: No way they're going to bring all that together unless they can.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: With your own machine, you get so many benefits.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, like I said, you're not giving away 30% of your revenue.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: The second is you have total control for your families.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you've got an oversized case that's totally in your Your company's realm to deal with.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: How do you, when, how fast can you turn that around?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: When can you deal with it?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: What are you going to do with it?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: If a family wants to witness, you've got to control that, right?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime that body leaves your control,
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: your reputation and everything else goes with it out the door.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So now is the time, right?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got a business and you're doing 300,
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: 400 formations,
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: if you're doing 100 predictions, now is the time to think about adding equipment.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And, uh,
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: whether that be up to you or some of the brand, you know, scale down a little bit.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: What's that?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then that's, that's also what's creating demand for this, for this new machine.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we,
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: that's where we found lots of inquiries,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: but people just look at, you know, uh, and the FT3 is not cheap.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: But good quality, nothing good quality is cheap, right?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: You get what you pay for in this world.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the FTXL, it's more affordable, right?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: It comes down into a more competitive price range with what's on the market
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: for people doing a couple hundred accreditations a year.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so when,
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: as I said,
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: I made the joke that,
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know, nobody retires at my age unless they're military type people.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why I wanted to reach out to you because it looked weird,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: but your retirement was part of the plan.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Your plan was to come in, do this, and then move along.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Can you talk to me a little bit about that?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was always,
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: even with Patrick,
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I said, yeah, I'll help you out until, you know, as long as I'm having fun.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Until we get to a point where it kind of exceeds my knowledge, right?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a manufacturer guy.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, the team at FT is solid in manufacturing.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that helped me while I'm figuring out branding and the new machine
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: and what we needed to do with that.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they were manufacturing, keeping up with the flow of the plant.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: But now, I mean, now we've got this pipeline growing.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's time that They're going to have to think about what they do with their plant, right?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do they expand it?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do they move it?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the kind of things that I couldn't do from San Diego.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so it made more sense to hire somebody,
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: particularly with strong manufacturing background like Bespin,
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: that can help with efficiencies at the plant.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, can we think about how things should lay out in the plant.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: All that needs to be done right there in Ohio and You know,
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't planning to move from San Diego to Madonna,
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ohio, even though I did love my trips there.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Nice place to visit.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not San Diego.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: The hardest city in the country to get people to move out from.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, I think my first boss runs one of your local papers now.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: He moved out to San Diego.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't heard from him since.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: He spends all his day at the beach taking photographs for some reason.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it is a great city.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we think sometimes we're originally from Texas and we think,
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: well, maybe we'll wind up back there.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: But then you think about why would we wind up back there?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if things stood here, you know, why would we think about moving or leaving?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so...
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: What are your plans now going forward now?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you're going to transition over the next couple months?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, my last day is next week, Wednesday.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you're already gone, probably.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we brought Dustin on the 1st of August.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I just got back from Ohio, spent some time.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's going to do a great job.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: He gets in with the team and things are going well.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: like I said,
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: with his background in manufacturing and manufacturing,
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: His knowledge base there and being local,
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: being able to be on site more, huge advantages for FT for that.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, we've been transitioning over to him.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: We've been introducing key accounts and things like that.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of made some introductions there.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so my plan is to spend most of October in Europe for fun for once.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I mean, it's always been for work, which has been fun.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, now we just get to relax.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to go through Italy and Croatia and Greece and just take most
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: of October and do that.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then holidays, of course, come after that, right?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll spend time just seeing family and friends through November and December.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then we'll see what comes up in January.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, take a look at what I need to do to make myself interested in,
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know, what's going on
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: out there.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so, what do you see,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: as an outsider now,
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: or as a relative outsider, what do you see for FT in the next year or so?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: How's this rollout you see working?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think it's going to be good.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we see a lot of interest, right?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of interest in this new machine.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And particularly, you know, it's just a matter of letting people know that it's out there.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there is this option.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And And convincing them, like you said, like, now is your time.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you have a funeral, then this is it.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: you particularly thinking,
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: now I've been hearing, I've been in the business for almost four years.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been hearing about this wave of baby boomers.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's about to come.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we've been hearing about that for 20 years now.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's got to be any day now.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I think, you know, we're about to hit it.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see in the Cana data, like, Cremation rate's going to get up to 70%.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now's the time to be thinking about where you want to put your cremator
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: and how you're going to be in charge of your business and how you're going to keep
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: that revenue and make revenue for yourself.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you do it right,
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: there's all kinds of additional opportunities there for witnessing cremations
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: and services and things that can be built around having your own cremator and having
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: that ability to not load it up in a van and send it off somewhere.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Get committed remains back to your families quickly, right?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is in your control.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: So one of my pet peeves, one of the things that I hit a lot is getting approval from towns.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times, you know, people come out with the pitchforks.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've been there, done that.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I can imagine.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: My days in Stewart, yeah, we had a horrible one in Oakland.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was bad.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: But FT's thing is they've got the, they meet the European
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: standards.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something...
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I don't want to make this into a commercial.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't mean to, but is that something a new machine does?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, definitely our emissions are really,
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, air quality districts like our emissions, right?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: When they look at it compared to some other machines, like they say, I like this machine.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is not generally with air quality management districts.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's with towns, like you say, it's with communities.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I've noticed over the last three years, right?
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Put the machine in their funeral home.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or they want to add on and do something and that.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Most of these funeral homes are in neighborhoods.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: they were part of a community and they're downtown or they're,
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: you know, there's someplace that permitting is going to be very difficult.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So just think about that.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: The machine does not necessarily need to be in your funeral home, right?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: You go to your You know,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: look up the district thing,
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: find out where crematories are allowed,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: find a separate, you know, nice industrial type facility and build it there.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And your permitting is going to go so much faster than bogging yourself down in cost
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: of attorneys and people that go down to the city and speak on your behalf and all
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: that kind of stuff.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you can just start with your zoning map in your local community,
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: where are crematories allowed?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And families will understand that, right?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: I need to not go to the funeral home.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: I need to go over to their cremation center, which is over here.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: They'll understand that.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you will be a much happier person at the end of the day than trying to get
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: that machine into your existing funeral home somewhere where you have a vision,
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: which is great.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it, right?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: To have this cremation center in your funeral home, then great.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: But you'd be much better off to just start with your zoning maps.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And go from there.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's pretty much all I have for you unless you have something else for me.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Is there something I should have asked and didn't or something you thought you'd get
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: the chance to say and you didn't get a chance to say it?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, you know, I appreciate you reaching out.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been, like I said earlier, it's been nice to digitally meet you.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've been reading your stuff here for a couple of months and really enjoy it.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: So.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you so much for your time.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you bet.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Tony.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: See, I told you this great, fun conversation.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Great guy knows a ton about the industry.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And like after the after the interview was officially over,
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: we talked and he'll reach back out to me with his new project or whatever happens
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: to him after the holidays.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And and we'll go from there.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks so much for listening.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your attention.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: That there's lots of stuff to watch out there, lots of stuff to listen to out there.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that you spend this time with me makes me work hard to respect your time.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for that.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we will see you next time.