Keep Building!

One of my earliest mentors in the death-care industry, Evelyn Cooper, has passed away. She was one of the initial pioneers of the M. J. Edwards Funeral Home brand. At the start of this enterprise, she taught school around her work at the funeral home. She shared with me an awful experience that she experienced in the early days of the business. The funeral home was launched doing $299 funerals in 1980. Mrs. Cooper worked at the funeral home around her school hours. She remembered an experience where she entered the teachers' lounge at school and another teacher make a mockery of M. J. Edwards doing $299 funerals. She told me that the entire teachers' lounge laughed at her, and she left and cried.

It wasn't long after that the teacher that made mockery of the $299 funerals experienced a death herself, and didn't have any life insurance that she could assess for a relative. Guess who she called on? Then she experienced another death in short order. Guess who she called on again? This was the start of the building blocks of this death-care powerhouse which now averages more than 100 services on a monthly basis. These services are handled by 3 different locations. The moral of this story is that while they laugh, you just keep building. When they snicker, you keep building. Keep building amongst the snickers and wisecracks, because one day you'll have the last laugh if you work hard and don't give up. Thanks Ms. Cooper for teaching me the value of building while they laugh!