Dennis Yu flew out to Austin and we sat down for a few hours of recording. Some of that became a Coach Yu Show episode, and the rest is going to feed everything we’re building here at Funeral Home Exit.

A funny thing happens when you talk about selling a funeral home for a few hours straight. You start to notice which parts you’ve said a hundred times, and which parts you’ve never actually said out loud. I want to share the moments from this interview that hit me hardest, because they were the ones I wasn’t expecting.

The question I wish people would ask me

Dennis asked me what question I wish people would ask, because they don’t.

I get asked all the time, “What did you sell for? What was the multiple? What do you do all day now? Must be nice.” Those questions are fine, but they’re not the real one.

The real question is: are you happy?

Nobody asks that. And it’s the only one that matters. Because the whole point of preparing your business for an exit, the whole point of putting in the years of work, the SOPs, the documented processes, the clean financials, the management team that can run without you, is so that on the other side, you actually get to live the life you wanted to live. If you sell for a great number and you’re miserable, you got the math right and the goal wrong.

For the record, I am happy. I’m spending Christmas mornings with my four-year-old without a phone vibrating in my pocket. I sleep through the night. I haven’t had a 2 a.m. funeral call in over a year. That was the goal the whole time.

What “puts food on the table” actually means

When I was 24, I came back to College Station from Los Angeles because my dad had just died from cancer. My granddad came out of retirement to help. He 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.

Talking it through with Dennis, I realized something. My granddad was a caregiver. A truly excellent funeral director. And “puts food on the table” was enough for him, because his identity was wrapped around serving families, not building a business.

That’s the line most independent funeral home owners I know live on. They serve families brilliantly. They put food on the table. And then they age out, or they get tired, or a health event happens, and the business has no value beyond the real estate because nobody ever turned it into a business that could run without them.

I wanted both. I wanted to serve families AND build something that could be sold, on my terms, when I was ready. Those two things aren’t in conflict, but a lot of owners think they are.

The two-week test

Dennis asked me how owners actually move out of being a day-to-day operator. I told him the truth: I did it incrementally, and the test is brutal.

Can you leave for a week and not check your phone? Good start.

Can you leave for two weeks? Now you’re getting somewhere.

Can you leave for a month and your team doesn’t call, doesn’t text, and the business runs the same as if you were there? Now you actually have a business. Before that, you have a job.

Most owners I talk to fail the two-week test, and they’re shocked when I tell them that. They genuinely thought they had built something transferable. They hadn’t. They had built a job they happened to own.

This is the single biggest thing I want every funeral home owner to test for themselves before they ever take a call from a broker or a buyer. If you can’t pass the two-week test today, that’s your project. Not pricing, not the broker hunt, not the LOI. Build the systems that let you disappear for a month.

Why I stopped working funerals before I sold

The last couple of years before the sale, I stopped working funerals.

That was hard. Funeral directing is a calling for most of us. Friends would lose a parent and call me at 2 a.m., and the assumption was that I’d meet with them, handle the arrangement, be there at the service. That’s what 20 years of “I’m always there for you” looks like.

What I learned is that families don’t choose a different funeral home if you greet them at the door, hug them, introduce them to one of your directors, and stay reachable. They still pick you. They still trust you. The handoff has to be earned with a real team that can actually carry the weight, but if you’ve done that work, the families come anyway.

Stopping the funerals was the part of the preparation that hurt the most personally. It was also the part that signaled to buyers that the business could survive me leaving. You can’t fake that. Either the owner is gone for a month and the place keeps running, or they aren’t.

The irony of pre-need

Funeral home owners spend our entire careers telling families to plan ahead. Pre-need, not at-need. Take the burden off your kids. Make the decisions while you have time and a clear head, instead of making them in a fog of grief.

And then most of us never apply that to our own businesses.

Dennis pointed this out and I laughed because it’s so obvious in hindsight. We are professionally trained planners who don’t plan. We coach families through the most important financial conversation of their lives, and then we treat our own succession like it’ll figure itself out.

Selling a funeral home in the middle of a health crisis is the at-need version of selling. Selling a funeral home that you’ve prepared for years is the pre-need version. The difference between the two is two to three times the sale price, and a completely different post-sale life.

If you’re reading this and you’ve been putting off this conversation: you don’t have to be ready to sell tomorrow. You just have to start preparing today, so that whenever the day comes, you exit on your terms.

What’s next for Funeral Home Exit

This interview, and the rest of the footage Dennis and I recorded that day, is the source material for almost everything we’re building here. A calculator, a book, articles like this one, and eventually conversations with other owners who have walked this path.

I’m building Funeral Home Exit because after my sale closed, friends and acquaintances kept calling me with questions. They didn’t want a broker. They didn’t want a consultant who’d never run a funeral home. They wanted to talk to someone who’d done it. So that’s what this is.

Dennis is going to publish his own version of our conversation over on the Coach Yu Show side of things, and the BlitzMetrics team is breaking down the valuation and exit-planning playbook that we walked through together. There’s also a piece on Local Service Spotlight pulling out the lessons that apply to any local service business owner thinking about a future exit, because honestly, most of what we covered isn’t unique to funeral homes.

If you’re a funeral home owner and any of this resonated, the best next step is the calculator on this site. Answer a few questions, get a range, and if you want to keep the conversation going, schedule a call. No pressure, no broker on the other side. Just two operators talking.

This guide breaks down how funeral home valuations work in plain language so you can understand what drives your number, what might be dragging it down, and how to start thinking about your exit with confidence.

What Is EBITDA and Why Does It Matter?

EBITDA stands for Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. It represents the operating profit of your business before accounting tricks and financing decisions cloud the picture. For funeral home buyers, EBITDA is the starting point for every valuation conversation.

Think of it this way: EBITDA answers the question, “How much cash does this business actually generate from operations?” Buyers care about this because it tells them what they can expect to earn after they acquire the business and plug it into their own capital structure.

To calculate your EBITDA, start with your net income from your tax return or P&L statement. Then add back interest payments, income taxes, depreciation on buildings and equipment, and amortization of intangible assets. The resulting number is your baseline EBITDA.

Adjustments That Make or Break Your Number

Raw EBITDA rarely tells the full story. Most funeral home owners run personal expenses through the business: the truck lease, the family cell phone plan, insurance for a spouse who does not work there, or a salary that is higher or lower than what a replacement manager would cost.

Buyers will “normalize” your EBITDA by adding back personal expenses and adjusting owner compensation to market rates. This is called Seller’s Discretionary Earnings (SDE) or adjusted EBITDA, and it often tells a very different story than what appears on your tax return. Owners who keep clean books and can clearly document which expenses are personal versus operational tend to get stronger offers because they reduce uncertainty in the buyer’s mind.

How Multiples Work

Once the buyer has a reliable EBITDA figure, they apply a multiple to arrive at the enterprise value. If your adjusted EBITDA is $500,000 and the buyer applies a 5x multiple, the implied value is $2.5 million.

But what determines the multiple? Funeral home multiples typically range from 3x to 8x or higher depending on several factors. Larger operations with higher call volumes tend to command higher multiples because they represent more stable, scalable revenue. Geographic market matters too. A funeral home in a growing metro area with limited competition will be valued differently than one in a rural market with a shrinking population.

Other factors that push the multiple higher include strong preneed contract portfolios, low owner dependency (meaning the business runs well without you), long-tenured staff, modern facilities, and a diversified revenue mix that does not rely too heavily on any single revenue stream.

What Buyers Actually Look For

Private equity firms and strategic acquirers are not just buying your call volume. They are buying the predictability and transferability of your cash flow. Here is what they evaluate closely:

Revenue consistency. Buyers want to see stable or growing revenue over the past three to five years. A sudden spike or drop raises questions and can reduce confidence in future performance.

Cremation mix. A higher cremation rate typically means lower revenue per call. Buyers will model this into their projections and may adjust the multiple accordingly. If your cremation rate is climbing but you have not adapted your service offerings to capture value from cremation families, that is a gap buyers will notice.

Owner dependency. If the business cannot operate without you personally answering phones, meeting families, and managing staff, the buyer faces significant transition risk. Owners who have built management teams and documented standard operating procedures make their businesses far more attractive.

Real estate. Whether the real estate is included in the deal or leased separately changes the valuation structure. Buyers may prefer to lease the property, which means the real estate value gets treated separately from the business value.

Cash advances and third-party costs. If your reported revenue includes cash advances passed through to families, your actual revenue is overstated. Buyers will strip these out, which is why it matters whether cash advances are included in your average revenue per call when you are evaluating your numbers.

The Preparation Window Matters

The best time to start thinking about your valuation is not when someone hands you a letter of intent. It is 18 to 36 months before you plan to sell. That window gives you time to clean up your financials, reduce owner dependency, lock in key staff, address deferred maintenance, and build the kind of operational profile that commands a premium multiple.

Owners who invest in this preparation phase routinely see six- and seven-figure improvements in their final sale price. It is the difference between accepting whatever is offered and negotiating from a position of strength.

Get a Baseline Number

If you want to start understanding where your funeral home might land, try our free online valuation calculator. It walks you through the key financial and operational factors that drive your number and gives you a personalized estimate in minutes.

And if you want to have a confidential conversation about your specific situation, reach out to Cody Jones directly. As a former funeral home owner who sold for eight figures, he has been on both sides of the table and can help you think through your options without pressure or obligation.

Cody Jones is the founder of Funeral Home Exit. After 20 years owning and operating Callaway-Jones Funeral Home in Bryan-College Station, TX, he sold the business for eight figures and now helps other funeral home owners navigate the exit process. He is an NFDA Main Stage Speaker and was recognized as Funeral Home of the Year.

As someone who built, operated, and sold a multi-location funeral home at an eight-figure exit, I’ve seen both sides of this transaction. Here are five things I wish every funeral home owner understood before starting the process.

1. Your EBITDA Is the Number That Matters Most

When a buyer evaluates your funeral home, the first number they look at is your EBITDA — Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. This metric represents the true operating profitability of your business, stripped of financing decisions and accounting methods.

Buyers take your EBITDA and multiply it by a market-appropriate multiple to arrive at your business value. The cleaner and more consistent your EBITDA, the higher the multiple you can command. This means personal expenses run through the business, inconsistent accounting practices, and undocumented revenue all directly reduce what a buyer is willing to pay.

If you haven’t had your financials independently reviewed, our free calculator can give you a baseline estimate of where you might land.

2. Owner Dependency Kills Your Multiple

If your funeral home cannot operate without you — if you are personally managing every arrangement, fielding every after-hours call, and making every business decision — buyers see a major risk. They are not buying a business; they are buying a job. And jobs don’t command premium multiples.

The most valuable funeral homes are the ones where the owner has built a management team, documented standard operating procedures, and created systems that allow the business to run independently. This doesn’t happen overnight, which is why the preparation window is 18 to 36 months.

3. Preneed Contracts Are a Hidden Asset

Preneed contracts represent guaranteed future revenue. When a buyer looks at your business, they want to see predictable income beyond the current year. A strong preneed backlog — contracts that are funded, documented, and properly administered — can significantly increase your valuation because it reduces the buyer’s risk.

If you don’t have a preneed program, or if your preneed records are disorganized, this is something worth addressing well before you go to market. Even a modest, well-documented preneed program signals operational maturity to potential acquirers.

4. Due Diligence Will Find Everything

Buyers will examine every aspect of your operation during due diligence. They will look at your financials line by line, your fleet condition, your facility maintenance records, your staffing structure, your preneed administration, and your regulatory compliance. Every problem they find becomes either a reduction in price or a reason to walk away.

The owners who get the best outcomes are the ones who conduct their own “pre-due diligence” — identifying and fixing issues before a buyer ever sees them. This includes cleaning up personal expenses, documenting processes, addressing deferred maintenance, and ensuring your books are audit-ready.

5. The Right Time to Prepare Is Now

The biggest mistake funeral home owners make is waiting until they receive an offer to start thinking about their exit. By then, it’s too late to fix the things that would have increased your value. The preparation window is not about rushing to sell — it’s about positioning your business so that when the time comes, you’re negotiating from strength.

Whether you’re five years out or just starting to think about what comes next, taking the time to understand your valuation, clean up your operations, and build a team that can operate without you will pay dividends when it matters most.

About the Author: Cody Jones built and operated Callaway-Jones Funeral Home for more than 20 years, earning Funeral Home of the Year recognition and speaking on the NFDA main stage. He sold his multi-location operation at an eight-figure exit — at a multiple more than twice the industry average. Now he helps other independent funeral home owners prepare for and navigate their own exits through Funeral Home Exit.