New Life in the Funeral Business

Entrepreneur breathes new life in the funeral business

At 28, St. Clair, Mich., resident and Internet entrepreneur _ known around town as "Joey" _ stands out in the tidy, riverside community where he's founded several dotcoms. They include FuneralOne, which brought in $2.8 million last year selling Disney-esque memorial video software and other services.
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Over the past five years, Joachim, a college dropout, has helped revolutionize the stuffy funeral business with software that helps funeral directors create high-quality videos that celebrate someone's life in grand, heartfelt fashion.

The first version of the software, launched in 2004, was called "Easy Tribute."

Basically, a funeral director uses the software to upload personal photos of a client, select their profession or hobby, add a few additional details, such as the date of birth and death, or the names of children.

Then, the software produces an emotional memorial video. Animated birds peacefully fly by scenic landscapes. The musical scores are symphonic. And, most importantly, the product feels deeply personal.

"We've got themes for virtually anything," Joachim said.

The videos are then shown during visitation.

Every time a funeral uses the software for a new client, Joachim receives $20, and it's safe to say that business has been good.

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Now, Joachim's expecting his FuneralOne business to explode, to an estimated $10 million this year, and he's eagerly seeking talented leaders to help him manage the growth.

In July, FuneralOne launched the next generation of its video software, called "Life Tributes," which represents a sizable strategic move in Joachim's plan to expand his enterprise through www.LifeTributes.com.

The new software, which was featured on the latest cover of the trade magazine "Funeral Business Advisor," offers improvements to the personalized memorial videos, which can now be burned to DVDs for guests, and will help create accompanying printed materials, such as prayer cards.
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But Joachim's vision for LifeTributes.com is actually much larger than the funeral business.

"The mission," he said, "is to be the largest portal in the world for helping people connect and share memories."

Personal and Family History Software

The Personal Historian  - personal and family history writing software.  From their overview

Many people want to write a personal history about themselves or a family member but they just become lost or overwhelmed by the size and complexity of the project.  That's where Personal Historian comes in.

Personal Historian takes the seemingly monumental task of writing a personal history about yourself or another individual and breaks it into small, manageable pieces and then reconstructs it into a complete, publishable document.

Personal Historian comes with an extensive library of LifeCapsules- timelines, historical events, cultural fads, and memory triggers covering a wide-variety of subjects.  LifeCapsules add color and context to your history, giving you insights into what was happening in the world at any point in your history.

Personal Historian builds upon the work that you've already done.  You can easily import word processor documents, photographs, and other data.

Personal Historian can even brings in events, dates, and notes from your genealogy software so that all the important events in your life and the life of your family are automatically there, ready for you to write.

From start to finish, Personal Historian is the quickest, easiest, and most enjoyable way to write your own personal history or that of another individual.  You'll be amazed at how easy and entertaining it can be with Personal Historian!

Revenge of the Right Brain

Revenge of the Right Brain   by Daniel Pink

in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis.
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Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.

Stories to Persuade

From Fast Company, Want to Create Change?  Tell a Story

Since then, I’ve read a lot of great books on storytelling but I’ve yet to read one that so systematically and convincingly explains the steps for creating the drama and landscape for storytelling as the one I’ve just finished. Authors Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman, who are consultants in the entertainment industry (if there ever was an industry based on spinning a tale, that’s it), have written "The Elements of Persuasion:   which came out a few months ago.

They suggest that all successful stories have five basic components: the PASSION with which the story is told, a HERO who leads us through the story and allows us to see it through his or her eyes, an ANTAGONIST or obstacle that the hero must overcome, a moment of AWARENESS that allows the hero to prevail, and the TRANSFORMATION in the hero and in the world that naturally results. Sounds a like a Hollywood hit to me. But, reading this book, I became convinced that great leaders are also able to express their reality and vision using this arc to define their story.

PASSION – HERO – ANTAGONIST – AWARENESS – TRANSFORMATION

My Life Bits

Engineers and scientists at Microsoft are looking for a way to create a backup brain, a surrogate memory, a way to bring total recall in the future.

"MyLifeBits is a lifetime store of everything."

I am a strong and enthusiastic advocate of Personal Legacy Archives, of memorializing, organizing and digitizing IMPORTANT STUFF. 

But everything is WAY TOO MUCH.  Total recall is much too much.  There's some stuff I want to forget and a lot of stuff I want to get rid of.
I don't want to be able to "rehear every conversation" I had when I was 20 because I want to enjoy my life now.   

It seems too much like the overstuffed closets of people who can't give or throw away a single item of clothing yet can't find anything to wear.

Discrimination between the important and the unnecessary is essential.

Brand your life story

Brand your life story with Dandelife from Tech Crunch.

Dandelife is a fascinating new “social biography network” that launched its beta this week. Users tell their life stories with text, photos, videos and time lines. Part of the business model will be to license users’ stories to corporations seeking case studies and brandable narratives. I feel very ambivalent about this.

The company is lead by Kelly Abbot of marketing firm Red Door Interactive and Edward Shenderovich, CEO of content management company Quantum Art. Dandelife’s advisory team is packed with rock starts: Ross Mayfield from SocialText, Bruce Livingstone from iStockPhoto, Jeffrey Zeldman from A List Apart, Reid Carr from Red Door and Mike Jones of Userplane. Dandelife is currently self funded and seeking angels.

The company’s leading competitor may be OurStory.com, a similar site that received $6 million in VC funding in January. OurStory founder and CEO Andy Halliday told me that his service may allow users to opt-in to anonymous aggregate studies in the future but that user generated content in their system will not be made available to marketers.

UPDATE:  from Springwise

Building on the notion that stories are best shared, Dandelife offers everyone the opportunity to write and share their personal memoirs online, one story at a time. A user's 'vanity page' shows a horizontal timeline, with events neatly placed in history, as well as photos, videos, tags and favourite stories.

Tagging is an important part of storytelling on Dandelife, allowing users to create common threads within their own stories, and connect with those of other members. Besides regular tags (relevant keywords for a camping trip could be 'camping', 'hike', and 'grizzly bear'), a user can also tag stories with the names of people involved in the story.

Being thoroughly Web 2.0, Dandelife works seamlessly with Flickr and YouTube, letting users import photos and videos to illustrate their narrative. San Diego-based Dandelife, launched two months ago, is currently in beta and free to use.

Other recent ventures in the same arena include OurStory, WikiBios, and Eternity4All (featured in Springwise in April 2006). It's all about what trendwatching.com calls life caching: collecting, storing and displaying one's entire life, for friends, family, or the entire world to peruse.

Marketing LIfe

I am not the only person who's noticed that most people make their major financial decisions around major life events. The average adult experiences 10-15 critical life events during their lifetime. That includes marriage, new child, divorce, loss of a spouse, loss of a parent, job loss, career change, empty nest, moving, retirement and serious illness.

Every major life change ripples through a life, requiring organization, financial decisions, legal changes and medical choices.

Now Yahoo Search will begin focusing on life events according to Blogspotting.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Life Series is an ongoing research series that will explore the significance of search as people experience major life events. It will examine the short-term opportunities and long-term implications for marketers and advertisers, and offer a new way to think about search marketing

Holistic wealth management for boomers.

Via Financial Advisor News,  a report from Tiburon Strategic Advisors., strategic consultants to financial institutions on estate planning and charitable giving through life insurance and trust accounts.    I can only report their highlights because their full report costs a lot of money.

• For the next two decades, attracting Boomers as clients will be the key to success for financial service companies. 

• Their $17 trillion in investable assets will grow to over $30 trillion by 2010, almost doubling in 5 years. 

• The highest growth and highest margin business is the wealth management business.  The key to winning in the wealth management arena is estate planning.  So say  executives in the financial services industry.

• Over half of high net worth investors in one survey would like holistic wealth management services beyond traditional investment advice.

• Less than half of all US consumers have created a will and only one-quarter have created powers of attorney for healthcare.

• Since 1997 the number of personal trusts has more than doubled, reaching almost 4 million today, holding almost $3.3 trillion in assets.  Since 1998 the number of non-bank trust companies has increased five-fold.  I would venture most of them in the twenty-three states that have abolished the rules against perpetual assets, meaning trusts in those states can pass to multiple generations without federal taxation.

• Over $250 billion is donated to charity each year with people, not corporations or foundations, making almost three-quarters of all donations. 

• The life insurance industry is consolidating, though it's still fragmented, with 1100 companies today, about half the number of 2000 in 1994.  The number of life insurance policies has remained flat, about 167 million individual policies in force.

My bet.  Look for a lot more advisors selling  life insurance and trusts TO FUND YOUR LEGACY, the charities you select to carry on the work you want to see done in the next decade.

Holistic Money & Life Advice Franchise

You've probably never heard of SEI Investments even though it administers $291 billion in assets with offices in 12 countries and more than 2000 employees.

CEO Alfred West Jr wants SEI to become as much of a household name as American Express and he plans to do it with storefront franchises offering financial advice to the 50+ market.

West said the program was launched because he believes that baby boomers are not having their accumulated wealth managed well enough by the myriad stock brokers, insurance agents and estate planners that sell specialty services but do not consider an individual's total needs or goals.

"The baby boomer does have different needs than the previous generation, and the financial service industry is not set up well to cater to this individual," West said.

Under what SEI calls a "holistic" approach, the SEI Wealth Network franchises provide not only financial, estate and risk management but also advice with aging family care, life and career redirection, business transition and philanthropy. Instead of being charged a fee based on a percentage of assets, clients are charged an annual fee based on the complexity of their financial and "life" situation.
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SEI has already opened two franchises and an additional four or five have signed on to become franchises. Locations include Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, San Diego and Little Rock, Ark. SEI also runs company-owned wealth management offices in Boston and Philadelphia. SEI uses the offices to help develop services for the franchises.
.....SEI would like to have 200 franchises within four or five years.

Well, they've got the market pegged right.  Most of the money is with the boomers.  Holistic approach works too.  I'm going to watch this one.

Holism

From dictionary.com- an essential information site

ho·lism (hlzm)  n.
1.  The theory that living matter or reality is made up of organic or unified wholes that are greater than the simple sum of their parts.
2.  A holistic investigation or system of treatment.

holistic (hO-'lis-tik) adjective
1: of or relating to holism 
2: relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts

holistic medicine attempts to treat both the mind and the body—ho·lis·ti·cal·ly adverb