What Really Scares You? A Halloween Wake-Up Call Every October, the rest of the world borrows a little piece of ours. Caskets appear on front lawns, skeletons dangle from porches, and someone at every party leans in to ask whether your work gives you the creeps. Those of us in
A year ago, I sent Wake-Up Calls out into the world without knowing what would come of it. Writing that book meant putting words to a lifetime of lessons I’d
Every day in our profession, you give. You give families your compassion, your steadiness, and your full attention in the hardest moments of their lives, and you give your team
My dad believed that when you invest in a woman, you invest in the entire profession. We are still proving him right. Last May at the Professional Women’s Conference, something remarkable happened. Twenty female funeral professionals and students walked away with the David C. Baue Scholarship, funded by my family, in honor of my dad. […]
I want to tell you something that took me far too long to understand. Work-life balance is not something that eventually appears on your horizon like a reward for all the sacrifice you have made. It does not arrive on its own. No one hands it to you when you’ve finally proven yourself. You have […]
My grandmother had a nickname. They called her the white glove lady. She would walk through our funeral home and find every speck of dust, every light bulb that was slightly out, every piece of furniture that was just a hair off-center. And growing up watching her, watching my mother, watching the way our family […]
In funeral service, we talk a lot about caring for people. We talk about serving families, supporting communities, and showing up in life’s hardest moments with compassion and professionalism. We should. That is the heart of what we do. But here is the question I keep coming back to: How well are we caring for […]
When my dad died, I was thirty years old. Standing at his visitation, answering a phone call in the flower room while the funeral home filled with people who loved him, I had not one single clue how to run a funeral company. I had zero leadership skills. Zero business knowledge. I had never even […]
Building bench strength is not just smart business strategy. It is a moral obligation to the future of funeral service. I recently had the profound privilege of serving as a reviewer for scholarships through the Funeral Service Foundation. As part of the process, I was able to watch seven two-minute videos submitted by mortuary school […]
