About Cody Jones
Fifth-generation funeral director. 20-year owner-operator. Eight-figure exit. Now helping other owners do the same.
My Story
When I was 24, I was living in Los Angeles. Our family business, Callaway-Jones Funeral and Cremation Center, was 1,500 miles away in College Station, Texas. My dad was running it, the way his father had before him.
Then my dad was diagnosed with cancer. He passed away two years later. By the time I came home, we were third out of four funeral homes in our market, with shag carpet, low ceilings, and dim lights.
My granddad came out of retirement to help. He sat me down and told me, “We don’t have much. We have a name. But you can have it, and it will put food on the table and feed your family.” That phrase has stuck with me for 20 years.
What I Built
I’m the fifth generation in my family to operate Callaway-Jones. I’m also the only person in my family who didn’t grow up working in the business. I had no preconceived notions about how things had to be done. That turned out to be the biggest gift my dad ever accidentally gave me.
I took out an SBA loan and built a brand-new funeral center. I toured hotels and resorts and asked myself how I wanted families and their guests to feel when they walked through our doors. I put in floor-to-ceiling windows. I removed every single lamp in the building.
Twenty years later, Callaway-Jones was Funeral Home of the Year. I’d spoken on the NFDA main stage. And I’d built something that could be sold, not just operated.
How I Sold
For the last five years of my ownership, I prepared the business for sale on purpose. I documented the SOPs that lived in my head and my managers’ heads. I built a real management layer. The last two years, I stopped working funerals entirely. Friends who lost a parent would call me at 2 a.m., and instead of meeting them in the arrangement room myself, I’d greet them at the door, hug them, and hand them off to one of our directors.
That was the hardest part. It also signaled to buyers that the business would survive me leaving.
When I went to market, I went with a broker and I ran a real bid process. The result was a sale at a multiple well above the top of the industry’s typical range, on terms that let me walk away on day one. My wife and I have a young son. I sold so that I’d have Christmas mornings and Thanksgiving dinners and weeknight bedtimes for as long as I get to have them.
Why I’m Doing This Now
The moment my sale closed, my phone started ringing. Friends in the profession. Acquaintances I’d met at NFDA. Owners from across the country who’d been told they should talk to me.
What they wanted wasn’t a broker. They didn’t want a consultant who’d never owned a funeral home. They wanted to talk to someone who’d actually done it. So that’s what Funeral Home Exit is. A calculator, a book, a podcast, and a way to start that conversation.