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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.
For more information about Funeral Results Marketing, check out our Funeral Home Website section, Cremation Arrangement section or Digital Marketing Services section on our website or contact Rob at robin@funeralresults.com or at 1-800-810-3595.
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. I’ve always been into it. And so, as it’s advanced and those opportunities just to continue to grow and grow within our space, being behind with a lot of the different things that you see is very common in other markets or other business segments. And so, seeing the consolidation that was starting to occur seemed natural. It seemed like something that you might have seen years before, but albeit it started happening and it really just started supporting my interest that I knew you would be in this space. And you and I have been speaking and keeping in touch so it was natural to reach and just see where can we go with this.
Rob Heppell:
I wasn’t thinking of a full-on merger or acquisition myself, but I thought, “Oh, maybe we could be strategic partners in that.” And from my recollection, Jake is that you said, “Oh, what about selling or becoming partners?” And I thought, “Okay.” And again, let’s consider it. And we had a little bit of back and forth. And what’s funny, Jake, is at one point … I’m not sure if you remember this or not, but you said, “Well, Rob, I do want to get into this space. And if I’m not going to purchase a company I’m probably going to create one.” In the back of my mind, Jake, I’m like, “Oh, I don’t need another competitor and I especially don’t want Jake as a competitor.”
Jake Johnson:
I’m the mad scientist. No, I’ll jump into something and if it doesn’t work then move on. But I’ve always had a passion for it. So I was glad that we were able to put something together where we could work together and do what we’ve done.
Rob Heppell:
You do this a lot with the mergers and acquisitions part of Johnson Consulting, but for myself, this whole thing was quite new to me. I’ve been a faithful reader and listener of a book and a podcast called Built To Sell by John Warrilow, where he goes through just these scenarios. And every one of his podcast episodes he talks to someone who has sold or exited, or merged. And just different things to be aware of and keep in mind. So even though I don’t have any formal training on that it was an interesting proposition.
And then also, too, I’ve got a really good friend who is a prof at the local university here, Dr. Brent Mainprize from the UVic. And we would bounce some of the scenarios from a valuation standpoint of the company. And I know we went back and forth because although you do this hundreds of times with funeral homes, a technology company with recurring revenue, it is valued differently than maybe a one-off sale type business like a funeral home or cemetery. Yes.
Jake Johnson:
Absolutely.
Rob Heppell:
But it was good. I think what I was really looking forward to, and it helped, was I had gone over the course, and I think we’ll get into this at another time. But from 2007, 2008 when starting with building funeral home websites built on WordPress to a point again, yes, around 2008, bringing that to about 2016, ’17, I went away from funeral futures websites or funeral futures marketing.
I’ve got a really good friend here who owns a sign shop. And as a sample we usually use, “Eat at Joe’s” because that, it says what it is, what to do and where to do it. So I’ve always really thought hard of naming of the business. Also I’m a big fan of Claude Hopkins who wrote the book almost a century ago in 1923 called, Scientific Advertising. And it is a must-read for any marketers and a lot of his teachings are still true 100 years later. And even though it says scientific advertising, it’s really more of a marketing book. And in chapter 20 he talks about how to name a business.
So people can get what Funeral Futurist meant, maybe, or with a little bit of explanation. When I saw that Funeral Results Marketing was available and I really liked it because basically, all three words say what it is. We’re in funeral service, it’s a marketing company and we’re results-focused. And that name change came around 2017.
I really like Mike Turkowitz. He was the first to get online obituaries on funeral home websites and also started the online cremation arrangement process. And so I may not be the leader in those but a very fast follower and hopefully improved on both of those. But right at that time, there was a sale going on with Turkowitz. And I actually got a couple of the staff that worked at FuneralNet and worked with me, and really helped me grow in that transition of Funeral Results Marketing. And we would always focus on items that we could live up to their name.
So we stayed focused, we didn’t get busy with some other shiny objects and really just wanted to be this boutique, digital marketing agency with a funeral focus and with results focus. So that’s where the company came from. Personally, though, I had maxed it out. So there were some health issues and I was also at my own capacity. And it was either going to just really take a big jump in and make it a big financial investment to grow the company because I saw what was going on with this consolidation of website companies.
And then Jake Johnson hints that he might be building another company that I’m going to have to compete against. And it was just the right time for me to come up with our partnership and to get some of the resources that I didn’t have access to. And also, too, one thing from growing the company from the ground up, you don’t have all the tools that a well-established company would have. There are different processes.
And my team had created a number of what we call SOPs, so Standard Operating Procedures, for the little tasks that we do of fulfilling the services that we do. But we didn’t really have the framework of the bigger picture for growth because that would just land on me and it was just never a priority. It was always like, “We need more sales,” or “We have to another webinar,” or “We have to do some more advertising.” And it wasn’t the big structure.
But with the structure that you had at Johnson Consulting and then with J3 Technologies, or sorry, J3 Tech Solutions, and with Lori Salberg overseeing that, it was great to have now this greater framework that would help funeral results marketing grow even further.
Jake Johnson:
Yes, no, that’s what I saw. You have years of experience in websites, online presence, SEO in marketing. And for Johnson Consulting we’ve grown that as a premier, I would say, mergers and acquisition firm. And with the accounting financial support we offer to funeral businesses along with coaching and then we’ve ventured into technology with our performance tracker software, we learned a lot. We learned a lot of what to do and what not to do. And so, as you know, as we’ve partnered up with Funeral Results Marketing, together, Rob, now we’ve got our strategic planning sessions. We’ve got a manager in place to free you up in time for more presence in marketing and the solutions and discussions with potential and current clients, and putting those types of systems in so you can scale up.
Rob Heppell:
Oh, for sure. Yes, and we have been doing that. One thing that’s interesting is, so this was mid-October of 2020 that we kind of sealed the deal. And probably I should have asked a few more questions. Not that I needed to, but since we had worked together back in 2008, 2009 and I’d been down to Phoenix a couple of times and saw the operation, Jake, I just assumed that it was very similar. Back then it was yourself and Al Aster was there and Greg Heldendorf, and I believe your sister was working there.
Jake Johnson:
Right.
Rob Heppell:
And then on the first day we have this meeting and there’s like, “Where did all these 50 people come from?
Jake Johnson:
No, it’s you “Watch what you wish for.” We put a lot of things in place and learned how to scale. And it’s been fun. And we challenge ourselves just like we’re doing now with Funeral Results Marketing. And you were doing it before but now with a vision that feels obtainable. And I remember in the early stages of Johnson Consulting, people would say, “Well, can you get to this much?” I think it’s possible for if you make some changes and get to this much in revenue and have this many people helping you. And you can get to a place where you’re doing the right things and so are they, and you’re segmenting out and specializing in the tasks.
And it seemed like a big hill to climb and it wasn’t easy every day, but you put the right things in place and you can get there. And I think we’ve put the right things in place for Funeral Results Marketing to achieve the same results so it’s going to be exciting. Especially with the change that’s going on in this space with consolidation. Just like in the funeral space, with consolidation becomes opportunity. And so I think we’re well-positioned for that and especially with your background Rob. We’ve both done funeral arrangements and run funeral homes and been inside the funeral business. We know what’s going on. Quite frankly, we even know the right times to call in honor, when it’s time to hang up when we hear another phone ringing in the background when we’re talking to some other funeral home. You just empathize because you’ve been there.
And so I think that goes a long way. I’d summarize it this way, when you can put into an ingredient your expertise, what we have also in relationships and abilities to grow, and learning with the financial backing that we have, and mix that in with also being a practical view and understanding of what’s going on in the funeral home, being funeral professionals ourself, I think that creates quite an interesting value statement. And I think it will resonate well with customers in the future or now, I’d say.
Rob Heppell:
Absolutely, and that’s what I really like, Jake is that a lot of our thoughts and our values are aligned. We both believe in transparency. We both believe in transparency. We believe in transparency of the ownership of the company. Our pricing, we have our pricing of all of our services publicly accessible on the website. So we’re not hiding it, we don’t have anything to hide. And through the course of this past year, with the help of the greater team, we’ve conducted a really in-depth, competitive analysis. We were able to then assess our service offerings and expand upon them, and make them competitive and also with that core of having them results-focused.
And I think it’s a really good thing, we talked back and forth almost always. We’re aligned, we’re on the same path. We’re not having to be at lager heads of, “I want to take it this way,” or “I want to take it that way.” We’re aligned and it’s great. And I think the funeral homes and cemeteries, and the funeral supply companies will benefit from that vision as well as the lifetime, career time commitment that both of us have in funeral service.
Jake Johnson:
Yep. No, no doubt. I think the one thing that really sold it to me with what you started and built was your foresight with the platform. There are companies out there both in the funeral space and not that designed their own website platform and it’s going to come to a head at some point, it really is. So it’s no surprise that you see some then wanting to now gravitate towards a platform that you’ve been utilizing since, good God, 2008, ’07, maybe even earlier. It’s always been around but not everybody could see that future like you did. So it’s pretty exciting.
Rob Heppell:
At that time it was just me with my own website that I started using WordPress. And in those days it wasn’t as stable as it is today. And some people at the time like, “Oh, why would you want that where people can leave a comment? Then you have to answer comments.” And I would say maybe some of it was me looking into the future of that. But some was luck and there were at that time, two or three content management systems out there, there’s Joomla and Drupal. But I chose-
Jake Johnson:
You’re right, though, in your comment. Because way back in the day I think it was more associated as a blogging website. If you were a blogger you used a WordPress site. People weren’t seeing it necessarily as a marketing website like you did. And then of course, even WordPress started figuring that out themselves and turned it into what it is today.
Rob Heppell:
Well, I was fortunate, I think. Maybe we’ll go into this deeper at another time when we get into it. But right at that time of 2006 – 2007, going from a blogging platform, they were … And I don’t even think they were using the term, but content management system, which is what the term became. So WordPress uses themes so they have the WordPress framework. And then the themes that makes things look pretty and function lay on top. And there were a lot of free things that you could get from WordPress. But there was a couple of these guys that were creating things that were more website-focused maybe with a small blog.
But a blog wasn’t the main feature. And Cory Miller from iThemes and Brian Gardner eventually became StudioPress. I was in direct communication with both of these guys. And I said, “Hey, oh, how do we fix the menu so the menu gets automatically updated?” So lots of things like that were happening. And it was neat to be talking to these guys who are both leaders in that space even today. But we were just figuring out how this would work. And my brain is always like, “Okay, how does this apply to funeral service?” And no matter what it is that’s my mindset of, instead of trying to rebuild something from the ground up and then always having to update it, let some of the best website engineers work on the WordPress core software. And they’re keeping it up to date all the time. And-
Jake Johnson:
And I think it’s important to note, WordPress is just continually improving, even better. It was good before, it’s even gotten better. And so, it’s an open-source in ways or maybe literally it is. But I think the important thing for me was, “Okay, there’s this platform. It’s readily available, everybody knows it. You can find ton of people that know about it. But you still needed to have Funeral Results Marketing that would have those templates and setups and know how it needs to be set up as a funeral home marketing website. That’s what I learned about it which really showed me a lot of value in what you were bringing.
Rob Heppell:
Yes, we would customize. Instead of a blog post and a comment we would change that to an obituary and a condolence. We just relabeled. They now call them custom quotes types. But yes, so we would always keep that in mind.
Jake Johnson:
Sorry to interrupt, but I think that’s why the SEO that came out of your websites, that comes out of your websites are so powerful. The platform itself was set up in that fashion with the plug-ins, it’s just silly that you wouldn’t use software like WordPress really. That’s my opinion of course.
Rob Heppell:
Well, yes.
Jake Johnson:
But it’s worked out so far.
Rob Heppell:
And next time I’ll share the story of when I realized. At that time you couldn’t search for someone’s obituary and find it in the Google results. You could find it eventually when it was on a newspaper but you could never find it in the search results from a funeral home website.
So I’ll share next time, the case study that I used to then catapult it to at least, again, at that time, to get the funeral home’s attention of like, “Oh. Oh, so people actually Google someone’s obituary?” And they never knew that because the Google analytics would never show it because no one was ever finding it. But then after I showed them it was a good step in. Hey Jake, let’s wrap this up for this episode and-
Jake Johnson:
Sure-
Rob Heppell:
… I think this is good. What I thought would be great is just to let people know, “Hey, we’re working together now. We have common goals in where we want to go and it’s just been a great partnership. It’s, again, given me the resources and the structure to continue to grow Funeral Results Marketing. And I’d love it to be the premier digital marketing agency in funeral service and then it gives you that ability as well, as you said, the mad scientist, and the ability to continue to offer applications inside of that too, that are going to be funeral home or funeral service focused to continue to grow.
Jake Johnson:
I think you hear the notion or explain progress through a flywheel. And it takes a while to get that thing moving. And once it starts moving you really take off. And I think we’re really at that point where that flywheel is really starting to move. And we’re accomplishing great things here.
Rob Heppell:
Perfect. Well let’s wrap it there. But in our next episode, I think we’ll turn the clock back 15 years and talk about the beginning because there are some good stories there and you alluded to them a little bit. But for the people that are listening, I’d like to thank you for spending your time today with us. It’s our goal, Jake and I, for us to just share some of our experiences and our insights. And I hope that it’ll help other funeral professionals serve more families and provide those families more meaningful services. So make sure you check back soon for another episode of The Funeral X Podcast. Until the next episode, this has been Jake Johnson and Rob Heppell.
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