the johnny renaissance files

The Four Boxes of Selling I am sitting across from a funeral home owner on an idle Tuesday afternoon. He has invited me in for what he thinks is a short conversation. Business is fine, he says, mostly. He has a marketing partner. That partner placed an agent with him a few years ago and he shows up a few times a week to write business. The agent produces. Numbers move, technically, in the right di...

Nike just went all in on the World Cup. Six minutes of film. More than thirty celebrities. Ronaldo, Mbappé, Haaland, Kim Kardashian, LeBron, Channing Tatum, all sharing the same fake movie set. Trade press mostly loved it. Craft, ambition, easter eggs everywhere. I watched the full film, not just the 30 to 60 second cuts running on TV. Those short clips are where most people are actually meeting t...

I just left a 250-call funeral home in Chicagoland. Fourth generation, family-run, strong community brand. She’s doing a couple hundred thousand dollars in pre-need annually and selling every contract herself. Three people running the whole operation. And her current insurance carrier? Completely ignoring her. Too small to matter to them. Here’s what I told her… Forget the magic systems. Forget th...

Not in it. On it. There’s a difference, and most funeral home owners haven’t stopped long enough to feel it. I had some PTO last week. I spent the afternoon thinking strategically about what’s in front of me. No calls, no interruptions, no reactive noise. Just space to think. And what happened in that afternoon was worth more than most full weeks of grinding. I’m not bragging, either. That’s a war...

I had a conversation recently with one of the leading website providers in death care. He told me they’re doing four months worth of platform development in two weeks. Directly because of AI. Let that sink in. Four months. Two weeks. That’s a signal. And if you’re a funeral home owner and you’re not picking up on it yet, this post is for you. Your website was never just a website. When I first got...

You don’t have a time problem. You have a space problem. And until you understand the difference, no productivity app, no morning routine, no motivational quote pinned above your desk is going to save you. Here’s what I mean. Most people…funeral home owners, preneed agents, directors wearing seventeen hats, spend their days convinced that more time is the answer. If I just had one more hour. One m...

I was driving down to Chicago Saturday. West Loop. Going to see my kids. Seventy degrees, which in Wisconsin in the spring feels like somebody handed you a gift you didn’t ask for and couldn’t be more grateful to receive. And as I’m cruising through Illinois, what am I thinking about? Sales. Obviously. 🤓 Because over the last month I have run into an almost comical parade of bad salespeople. And...

Most funeral homes are trying to fix their marketing at the top of the stack. Campaigns. Postcards. Facebook ads. All surface level stuff. And I get it, because that’s where the visible problems are. Leads aren’t coming in. Pre-need contracts aren’t getting signed. So you go looking for the next campaign, the next vendor promise, the next silver bullet. But the real opportunity isn’t up there. It’...

A Sunday morning riff sparked by a Barron’s piece: AI is not just a “tech story.” It is a civilization-scale infrastructure buildout already underway. Data centers under construction are projected to consume electricity on the scale of an entire country, and the long-term winners may be the quiet regional utilities signing decade-plus contracts with the largest tech companies. Meanwhile, consumers...

No More Excuse I was talking with Welton Hong recently — CEO of Ring Ring Marketing and one of the sharpest digital minds in death care. He said something I want you to sit with. “There’s no more excuse for not knowing how to write great content. You’ve got AI to write it for you.” He’s right. And it stings a little because the excuse was always a good one. Writing is hard. Good copy is harder. An...

"You can still dunk in the dark..." Remember that super bow ad? this is the $10 Million Lesson Funeral Homes Keep Missing...Super Bowl 47. 2013. Third quarter. The lights go out in the Superdome. Total blackout. 34 minutes. Nobody planned for this. Not the NFL. Not the teams. Not the brands who spent millions on commercials. But one brand was ready. Oreo sent out a tweet: "You can still dunk in th...

In 2025, I spent some time with a firm in Northern Illinois that represents the true challenge for your family funeral business. It reminded me of a battle in the civil war and inspired me to create this piece… The Hornet’s Nest That’s what Confederate soldiers called the position at Shiloh. A sunken road where Union troops under General Benjamin Prentiss held their ground for six hours against wa...

Mark Zuckerberg says, “Move fast and break stuff.” Most people hear that and think it’s reckless. But here’s what I’ve learned after years in the funeral profession: It’s often easier to do the BIG things than the little things. To think BIG instead of small. To go for the double instead of the incremental 10% bump. And in 2026? Thinking BIG is my focus. It should be yours too. The Paradox of BIG...

Episode Overview In this episode, John challenges one of the funeral profession’s most damaging beliefs: that being “too professional” for proactive marketing is noble. Recorded on a cold January morning in Wisconsin while working on his upcoming book, John connects the dots between time integrity, space creation, and systematic service delivery—revealing why waiting for families to be in crisis m...

Show notes below created by Riverside.fm AI Keywords AI, technology, cybersecurity, job security, personal branding, training, safety, advertising, innovation, 2026 Summary In this episode of the Johnny Renaissance Podcast, John and Carl Ashworth discuss the evolving landscape of AI, its implications for businesses, and the importance of personal expertise in navigating this new terrain. They expl...

Does the math inside your pre-need program actually work? Not “could it work if...” Not “it’ll work when...” Does it work RIGHT NOW, today, as currently structured? I just wrapped a year where we grew a single-owner funeral home’s pre-need program by 41%. Over $300,000 in production. Just him. No massive team. No magic bullet. Just fixing the math first, then building everything else on top of tha...

This is a marketing and business story from the road. If you live in Wisconsin, you know Kwik Trip. It’s a gas station and convenience store. Nothing revolutionary about that. But here’s what sets them apart: I’ll go out of my way to stop at Kwik Trip. Why? Because they hit all the touchpoints. And they seem little, but in aggregate, they’re gigantic. Massive. Like a called strike three in the bot...

We’re living through a moment that’s rewriting how people find you, judge you, trust you, and eventually choose you. And most funeral homes are still acting like it’s 2012. Or 1998. Or pick your favorite era before the world got swallowed by AI-driven everything. If you’re a funeral home owner reading this, here’s the uncomfortable truth: the future isn’t waiting for you to “get around to it.”The...

Curious about what that photo and caption truly mean? I’m sure you’ve already conjured a few ideas of your own...while most people wake-up on a Sunday morning and read their feeds or their newspapers and drink coffee while thinking about anything other than work, I dive into the quiet time and build s**t...like this campaign idea for your next funeral planning workshop. ...and yes, I’ll explain th...

Shout-out to Sepio Guard . And a lesson in how to think different on LinkedIn. First off—thank you Kevin Butler for the new SepioGuard hat. I’ve been working for months in their comments about how sharp these flat-bill lids look, and sure enough Kevin hit me up for my address so one could land on my doorstep. That’s not just a cool gesture. It’s a lesson in marketing. Here’s what’s happening under...

The Most Overlooked Weapon in Pre-Need Marketing When I first came into Frazer Consultants, now part of Tribute Technology, my job was to transition FuneralNet customers onto the Frazer website platform. Here’s what I discovered… There was one tool that every FuneralNet customer loved. In fact, many resisted switching platforms because Frazer didn’t have this same piece of technology. It was a rar...

Why Bother Posting? Back from Europe, still fighting off the jet lag, but right back into the groove—and I want to share something important. Funeral home owners and pre-need agents ask me all the time: 👉 Why post on LinkedIn? 👉 Why create video? 👉 Why write a blog? It feels like a lot of effort. And often, you’re not reaching as many people as you’d like. So why bother? Here’s the truth: * It...

Marketing is not a perfect science. It never has been. But here’s the danger: most funeral homes use that excuse to sit still. They wait until they “feel ready,” until they “know for sure.” Meanwhile, the corporate giants aren’t waiting. The aggressive local competitor isn’t waiting. Someone else is stepping into the vacuum you’ve left wide open. That’s how you lose ground. Quietly. Month after mo...

There’s a funeral director I’ve been talking about a lot lately. Three locations. 250 calls a year. A strong pre-need program that’s scaled to the next level. And here’s the kicker: he didn’t get there by luck, or by chasing unicorn agents, or by waiting for the “perfect” moment. He got there because his tech stack is dialed in . Paperless workflows. Case management online. Families starting their...

Most funeral homes, consultants, and even tech companies are still stuck explaining themselves the hard way—through brochures, long phone calls, or clunky websites that nobody reads. That’s outdated. The truth? The fastest way to generate leads, close sales, and simplify your message is with a powerful Explainer Video . I’ve seen this work firsthand. From the funeral profession to the tech world,...