Burying the Playbook
How generational business leaders can build something unmistakably their own
I'm a fourth-generation funeral director at the James H. Cole Home for Funerals in Detroit.
Over the past fifteen years, I've hired close to a dozen consultants and spent well over $250,000 on advice.
Almost every one of them had something valuable to teach me.
None of them could hand me my roadmap.
From the introduction
A GPS tells you where to go. A compass tells you which direction you're facing.
This book won't teach you what to think. It will teach you how to recognize when you're borrowing someone else's thinking.
I can't tell you the right way to run your business. All I can do is point you in the right direction.
You're facing
North 0°
Move your pointer around the dial, or use the arrow keys.Swipe the dial to turn it.
Four Generations
The James H. Cole Home for Funerals has served Detroit families for four generations of my family. The business wouldn't have survived long enough for me to take it over if the people before me didn't do something right.
-
First generation
My great-grandfather, James H. Cole Sr., opened the funeral home in Detroit's Black Bottom neighborhood to serve Black families who were often turned away by white funeral directors.
-
Second generation, 1950
My grandfather, James H. Cole, joined after studying mortuary science at Wayne State University. He became president in 1970 and opened a second Detroit location in 1972.
-
Third generation, 1991
My mother, Karla M. Cole, took over. In an industry where leadership was often associated with men, she worked six days a week, ten hours a day, to keep the business running.
-
Fourth generation, 2010
We opened a new 21,000-square-foot building. The chapel alone was larger than many of the churches where we held services. A year later, I hired my first consultant.
Keep or Bury
Four ideas I had to weigh. Decide what you'd do with each one, then see what I did.
Advice 1 of 4
Build your brand around a sensory experience. Music, a scent and fresh flowers throughout the building.
My first consultant, 2011
What I didI kept part of it.We still used a fragrance, and clean glass stuck with me. The flowers went away after about six months, when I had to decide whether they were worth paying for.
Modernize. Replace the paper systems with something entirely digital.
The experts I was listening to
What I didI kept it, and I rushed it.The advice was good. I thought I was making our arranger's job easier. I was making her wonder whether there would be a job for her at all.
Go home to your family.
My mother
What I didI kept it, eventually.The day my son was born, I worked on a family's tribute between my wife's contractions. My mother couldn't set those limits for me. I had to learn to set them for myself.
If I follow the same steps they took, I'll get to the same place.
What I assumed about every expert I hired
What I didI buried it.I assumed that if they had figured out how to succeed, I needed to play the game with the exact gameplan that they used to win. None of them could hand me my roadmap.
What Is Left
I kept three of the four, in part or in time, and buried one.
You'll finish the book and finally see your own path, which was always there but was obscured by all the other maps layered on top of it.
Burying the Playbook is the meat of the matter, the story of what I learned running a fourth-generation, family-owned funeral home.
Inside the Book
An introduction and six chapters on leadership, entrepreneurship and faith.
- 0
Introduction
Why I went looking outside the funeral home for answers, and what fifteen years of advice taught me.
Read a passage
Like so many business owners, I believed that if I invested enough money in the right expert, I'd find the formula, or the secret sauce, for success.
- 1
The Day the Map Stopped Working
My first year as a licensed funeral director, and what it takes to lead people who watched you grow up.
Read a passage
Advice is just a voice with a scent of authority. It can point you toward something, but it can't tell you how to get there.
- 2
Growing Up Around Death
Life in the family business, my grandfather's legacy in Detroit, and learning to fly.
Read a passage
She treated the funeral business like a job, because that's what it was. Everybody's got a job, ours just happened to involve death.
- 3
Buying Someone Else's Success
My first consultant, the fresh flowers, and how to vet an expert before you pay one.
Read a passage
There's a difference between identifying a problem and being sold a solution.
- 4
Good Advice Can Still Be Wrong
Modernizing too fast, the people it unsettled, and what it cost at home.
Read a passage
But I was learning that good advice only works when you understand the people, the timing and the circumstances.
- 5
“It's Always Been Done This Way”
What my mother taught me about running the business before any consultant did.
- 6
Every Business Is Unique
Why advice that works in one business doesn't always carry over to another.
About Me
I especially loved the small planes. You could feel everything: the movement of the aircraft, the air around you, every little adjustment you made.Chapter 2
Demo footage, generated for this page. It is not my own flight.
I'm a fourth-generation funeral director at the James H. Cole Home for Funerals in Detroit, the business my great-grandfather started in Black Bottom. I've spent my career learning how to build on what previous generations got right without simply doing everything the way it's always been done.
I'm a man of faith, a husband and a father. In college I studied aviation at Bowling Green, and I kept flying as a hobby.
- James H. Cole Home for FuneralsDetroit, Michigan
- Licensed morticianState of Michigan
- Fifteen years of consultantsClose to a dozen, and well over $250,000 in advice
Get the First Chapter
Leave your email and I'll send you Chapter 1, The Day the Map Stopped Working, before the book comes out.