Celebrating Life: Transforming Funerals with Jason Harris

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the work at home rockstar podcast site for today’s episode we’ve got an author and a speaker and his business is mourning into dancing and what he does is he helps his people with pre arranged funeral planning public speaking and he’s a certified funeral celebrant so i’m very excited to be rocking out today with jason harris hey jason you ready to rock

Jason Harris: I’m ready to rock. I’m excited about being here. Thank you for having me, Tim.

Tim Melanson: thanks for being here so we always start off here in a good note so tell me a story of success in your business that we can be inspired by

Jason Harris: Wow. Well, I will tell you the story of success is the difference between, uh, the way I once did funerals, uh, compared to how I do now. After developing a series of questions that I can ask the family, um, what I consistently get from funeral directors all over East Texas and everywhere I’ve done funerals.

Uh, the funeral directors say, Jason, we’ve never heard so much laughter coming out [00:01:00] of our chapel. And I definitely count that as a win. That’s not obviously the goal. I don’t go into a funeral thinking how many laughs can I get, but it certainly is a far cry from. I think what we normally think of Tim, if I were to, you know, we were due to a word association game and I said, I want you to tell me the 1st word that comes to your mind when you hear the word funeral or memorial service or graveside service.

Or anything like that. It’s usually not a very positive word. Uh, we usually think sad, morose, somber, uh, even morbid, who knows, you know, because I think we all have in our minds this, you know, this idea of a traditional funeral. And, uh, when I became a certified celebrant about five years ago, uh, first of all, I’d never heard that term before.

I don’t know if you have, But usually when I tell people that I’m a celebrant, they, they lean in and say, your what hurts, you know, it’s like, what, what is that? Is it? And, [00:02:00] uh, and of course it, it comes from the word celebration and, uh, came out of New Zealand of all things. And it was developed by a group of people that decided, you know what, I don’t want to, uh, traditional, religious, ritualistic kind of funeral ceremony.

I want there to be more of a celebration of life. And so what I’ve got rocking now is, uh, is a, uh, a ceremony that brings a lot of, of, of joy and celebration. Um, the illustration that I often use, Tim, when I’m beginning, uh, a funeral service is, well, first of all, I’d like to remind everyone, we’re not here today because your loved one died.

We’re here because they lived. And when I think of, uh, the, the Olympics, for example. I love watching the Olympics. Most people do because you’re watching an elite [00:03:00] group of athletes on a world stage who all they’ve done all their life is train and you’ve never ever seen an athlete win gold for his country.

Just look over at the judges table and say, you know, what, why don’t you just put that gold medal in a box and mail it to me. Here’s my address. No one ever does that. They, they have a ceremony. In that ceremony, they place that athlete up on the highest platform of the three, and they’ll put that gold medal around his neck, and then they raise the banner of his country while they play the anthem.

And if you look closely on his face, what do you almost always see? There’s there’s tears, but you think about it. He’s not crying because the race is over. He’s not crying because he’s at the end of his competition. Everyone in the stands, including his family and friends are saying, look what you did.

Look what you’ve accomplished and even has the respect of his opponents. And [00:04:00] everyone, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a beautiful, joyous thing. You think about it, you get the end of your life. There should be a reflection back on all the people you’ve influenced, the, the lessons that you’ve taught, and, and what’s your life represented.

And so it should be the same thing. And why is it so sad? I help people pre arrange their funeral all the time. And it’s usually the guy, to be honest with you, Tim, if I’m talking to a couple, you know, it’s the guy that’s like, I don’t care what you do to me, throw me in a box and just told me in the backyard.

I, you know, I’ll be dead. It doesn’t matter. And it’s sad because and I just always push back and it’s like, you know, what. That’s first of all, it’s not legal to do that. We can’t just throw you in the river or something But I encourage you to allow people to celebrate your life It’s exactly why when I when I wrote this book good grief celebrates your life.

That’s exactly what I mean First of all, I think grief doesn’t have to be [00:05:00] bad Uh grief is simply the cost of loving. It’s the price of loving. The more you love, the more deeply you grieve when that person is gone. But it’s also the Charlie Brown kind of vernacular of saying good grief, celebrate your life.

There needs to be a celebration of life, and it should be the celebration of a lifetime. And so I’ve developed a way to do that. That is more than successful. I love it when I hear 70 and 80 year old people come up to me after I’ve spoken at a funeral. And they always call me son, even though I just turned 55 years old myself, but they’ll say, son, I’ve been going to funerals for 60 years now, and I’ve never seen or heard anything like I saw on her today.

Do you have a card, you know, and it’s like, I want you to speak at my funeral. And, uh, and so that’s always, always good to hear. But I, I never get tired of people’s comments when they’re saying, wow, this was truly a [00:06:00] celebration because I’ll use the illustration of the Olympic, you know, metal winner and I’ll remind them, I’ll gesture down toward the casket and say today, this is his platform and you are his banner and you are his anthem.

And so we’re going to celebrate today. I always ask the people who gather to use their imagination and not think of the place where we’re sitting as a great big chapel or a church, but rather let’s think of it as just a giant living room. And we’re here with this family today and we’re going to celebrate Billy or John or Ruth or whoever is, is there.

And, uh, and it is, it’s a celebration.

Tim Melanson: Well, that’s, that’s powerful. Well done. Good job. And, uh, and, uh, yeah, I’m, I’m excited to just hear more about what, what you have to say, and especially in the, um, in the, uh, guest solo, but, uh, before we get to there and, you know, not [00:07:00] everything goes as planned and I want to sort of normalize the mistakes that we make along the way, uh, because we all do them.

So I’m wondering, and I mean, you’re in a delicate area, so I’m wondering, is there anything that, you know, any mistake that you made that didn’t go very, very well and what did you learn from it?

Jason Harris: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m going to generalize the answer a little bit more because, uh, one of the things we were talking about in the green room was, uh, you know, it’s not only my experience, but the more pastors and preachers and priests and clergymen that I’ve talked to men and women, uh, it’s been their experience that in all of their schooling and training.

They didn’t get any training on how to do funerals. There was like a lecture, uh, about the funeral and mine personally was coupled with, uh, it was, it was thrown in with doing baptisms, the Lord’s supper and weddings. In addition to funerals, and so really, when you think about it, I got a 4th, 1, 1, 4th of a [00:08:00] lecture on how to do funerals and it really wasn’t a how to as much as.

just uh, standard protocol. This is where you should stand and you should leave the casket from the hearse to the gravesite. Walk in front of the pallbearers and, and here’s about a half a dozen passages from scripture that are popular to read or speak at funerals. And so that’s why so many funerals just seem rubber stamped.

It’s almost like You know, a preacher has this one sermon, his funeral sermon, and you just fill in a different name every time. And, and it’s also terrible when you, I know that you’re going to, uh, resonate with this. You’ve seen pastors, what I call shift into reverend. They get up, and they change their voice and demeanor, and they, they do something like, we are gathered here today.

And, and it’s like, and they just sound sad and it’s like, why, why are you doing that? And so my, my earliest experience with a funeral, and I was only 10 years [00:09:00] old, my sister’s best friend’s father. Had passed away and he was only 40 years old. He had lung cancer and it kind of freaked me out a little bit.

Honestly, Tim, because I thought that 40 was the age that people died and that just indelibly left this mark in my mind that went in when my parents got to be in their mid to late 30s. I thought my gosh, they’re going to be dead in a couple of years, but that wasn’t just the only the only indelible market left on me.

It was just the whole atmosphere of the place. And so that’s why when you again, you bring up the word funeral and people just kind of shudder. They’re just like, oh, and and people who don’t know that this is what I do. Professionally, uh, I’ll I’ll say to someone. Oh, I have a funeral this Wednesday. They immediately say, oh, I’m so sorry.

And I get that I get the, the gist of that, but, you know, again, I view it through the lens of celebration and that it should [00:10:00] be. Uh, you know, a celebration, a party of a lifetime,

Tim Melanson: Right. I agree. And you know, that is kind of too bad. But on the other hand, um, it’s sort of normal that that’s how we would think about it. Right. I mean, it is sort of sad that the person’s gone, but I love that you’re bringing that joy into it because yeah, I mean, when you think back, you know, if, if someone can have like some really happy memories about the funeral, about the send off, then I’m sure that that’s probably going to affect them in the rest of their life.

Right. Where they’re, you know, Thinking back a lot upon their loved one as all the good things that happened rather than the sad day that they, you know, the funeral happened. Right.

Jason Harris: right? And that’s actually a good segue. And so I’ll tell you kind of the secret of, of, I mean, What makes up about 85 percent of my eulogy is the answers that the family gives me to these 5 questions. And the 1st is simply, what did you call this person? [00:11:00] And the reason that I want to know that I’m looking for terms of endearment.

The reason I ask that question 25 years ago, last month, or in April. Is when my grandmother passed away, my, my dad’s mother, and we figured she would have been around at least another 20 years, but she didn’t shoot. It’s kind of an unexpected death, but if someone else would have a stranger would have gotten up at her funeral and talked about Mabel Lee Harris, because that’s what’s on the obituary, which a lot of pastors are just handed an obituary by the funeral director, like, 15 minutes before a funeral.

A service starts and if he would have kept referring to Mabel Lee Harris, I would have thought, who are you even talking about? That’s my mamaw. That’s what we called her. Right? And so, uh, I look for terms of endearment. I look for nicknames, you know, people, you know, my, my full name is Nick Jason Harris. So I go by my middle name, Jason.

So if someone [00:12:00] didn’t know any better and got up and talked about my life. And they said, well, I understand Nick did this and Nick did that. And Nick loved, you know, to play golf and write books and whatever. Everyone else in the audience would be saying, who’s Nick? Who’s he talking about? So it’s important to me to find out what are the terms of endearment?

I may make eye contact with the kids on the front row or in the, in the family section and talk about their Grammy or their Mimi or their mamaw or whatever. Uh, that name is. The second question is. If you could describe this person with only one word, what would it be? My mamaw was blank. And I can ask 10 family members that question, Tim, and actually get 10 different answers almost every time.

So it’s the craziest thing. Even I’ve even had him write it down before. I want you to write down the one word you’re thinking of. And now we’re going to share our answers. And this is just if I’m doing an intake with them at the funeral home and the [00:13:00] arrangement office. But when and every one of the answers are right, of course, it’s just how did that person, how would they describe them?

But after I’ve shared those answers at this funeral service, I can look out at the crowd of people who came and say, by the way, what are we leaving out? Just raise your hand and shout it out. And so it’s interactive and and I’m not asking for a speech. I’m asking for one word. And so the family gets to hear it’s like popcorn all over the chapel.

She was amazing. She was beautiful. She was kind. She was funny. She was generous. And all of these adjectives are just raining down on the family and it’s beautiful. It’s a really, really cool thing. And then also you can kind of feel the room relax because they’re like, wow, this is kind of an interact. I haven’t seen anything like this before.

And we’re participating in this. And so some people even feel the freedom to plant their tongue firmly in their cheek and even say [00:14:00] things like, well, she was kind of sassy or she was ornery or she was stubborn or whatever, something a little more deprecating, but that brain, they know that they’re saying that in fun.

And so people do start to chuckle. Well, then the one that really raises the laughter is when tell me one of your favorite memories of or with this person. And you just mentioned memories a moment ago, Tim. And you know, when you ask somebody, what was one of your favorite memories? And it could be a general memory.

Like I love fishing with my dad or I love. You know, working on the car with them, or, you know, the time that we spent under the hood, but it’ll also it may involve I’ll never forget the time that this happened and I’ll tell you 99 out of 100 times. That’s a funny story. It’s going to be when something just bizarre, crazy happen.

An example that I actually mentioned in my book is this lady whose husband had just passed away. They’ve been together for about 26 years. And when I said, what’s 1 of your favorite memories? [00:15:00] I was anticipating something like a, a big romantic trip or, or something elaborate. And the very first thing that fell out of her mouth.

Was well, we have a really steep driveway. Okay. Uh, where are you going with this? And she said, I once watched my husband ride an office chair. Like, I’m sitting in here on wheels. Out the garage and down the driveway and across the street, just to see if they could do it. And it 7 seconds to say that it wasn’t a big, long story, but most people chuckle and they don’t even know the guy.

But when I said that story in a room full of people. That knew him and knew he was a hold my beer kind of guy. Hey, y’all watch this uproarious laughter and it is holding their sides because they can see him doing it. And so what did you call this person? What’s 1 word that you could describe them with favorite memory?

And then I ask, what is a life lesson [00:16:00] that you gain having had them in your life? Something they always said, or just the way they lived your life, uh, live their life. Inspires you, I probably do this because my grandfather taught me this or whatever. So what is a life lesson usually very profound answers there.

And then finally, the most emotive question that I ask is. If he could speak to you just 1 more time, what would he say to you right now? What would he say to you today? What would she say to you or whoever we’re talking about? And depending on the relationship, of course, that’s always a very profound answer.

Many times it’s just I know that she would say I love you. I’m proud of you take care of my family, uh, or whatever. But even sometimes that answer can be comical, uh, or, you know, somewhat tongue in cheek. You know, someone would say my wife would say, I told you to put the toilet seat down. Or squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom instead of the middle, or put your shoes up for [00:17:00] crying out loud.

But, uh, but it’s usually something quite profound, but the reason I ended up writing the book, Tim is because I discovered that these 5 questions are not just. For writing a eulogy for someone I didn’t know that’s how they began. And, uh, as it turns out, if there is a visitation or awake or whatever, you know, you call it, depending on what region of the world you’re in the night before.

When I have these questions on a little half sheet of paper saying, remembering Billy, remembering. You know, whatever the person’s name with a photograph and I have the 5 questions there. People are always so grateful because it gives them something to do, and then they can fill it out. But it’s also great to be able to give those then to the family members after all of it’s over because I take these and harvest them.

So, I can write the eulogy for the next day for the service itself, but it’s always, [00:18:00] it’s always great to be able to to hand those off. It’s a lot better than just a book full of signatures and book full of names of the people who were there, but then, uh. But then I discovered just, uh, that these are great questions to ask.

someone just when you find out that they’ve lost a loved one. Because the truth is, they need to be the one speaking. They need to be the one talking. The, the worst thing you can do when someone is grieving is to say some common cliché. But just as surely, Tim, as preachers and pastors aren’t taught how to do funerals, people are not taught how to support someone who’s grieving.

There’s no class in high school. There’s no class in college. on this, on grief support. And so we end up just kind of picking up cliches and common phrases along the way. And that’s when we say things to someone who’s grieving. Anything that starts [00:19:00] with at least I promise you is not going to end well.

It’s not going to land well at all. So when someone says, well, at least he’s not suffering anymore, or at least he’s in a better place, or at least God’s not going to give you more than you can handle or anything like that. It’s just not going to land well. And so it’s so much better to keep them talking and let them know that they’re just that they’re not alone.

And so, and that’s, that’s 1 thing I know we’re probably limited on time. But, uh, I’ll tell you this. One of the things that makes my funerals significantly different. Then a traditional funeral is what the takeaway that I leave them with and I have an example here. This is a matchbox 32 matches to a box little kitchen matches.

I can get a 10 pack of these at Walmart for 97 cents. And so, but there is, you see, there’s a picture on here. And you just a label and that I, I print from my computer and on the back, there’s, uh. The name [00:20:00] and some of the terms of endearment. Uh, and some things. But the reason I make these, Tim, is I’ll get up at the end of a service, and your listeners will relate to this.

If you think of the last time you had a loved one pass away and you were at the funeral, we’ve kind of got the whole grief support system flipped on its head. Everybody shows up at the funeral and that’s where the family is still numb. Nothing’s getting in. They’re sitting there in disbelief saying, I can’t believe that that’s actually my mother up there in that casket and that we’re really here at this funeral home and that this is happening right now.

When am I going to wake up from this bad dream? It’s usually a couple of weeks after the funeral that the grief really hits. And that’s when everyone has gone back to work. No one is around anymore, giving you hugs and saying, I’m sorry for your loss. So I get up at the end of a service and I’ll hold up these matchboxes and I’ll say on behalf of this family.

I want to thank all of you for coming today. I know some of you took [00:21:00] off work so you could be here, but I’m going to tell you something that you may or may not realize. The family doesn’t really know that you’re here today. And I’ll say it right in front of the family. I’ll say, even though they’ve said.

a dozen times today. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your support. If I ask anybody on these first three or four rows next week, name me five people that were at your mother’s funeral. I’ll get deer in the headlights, and it’s not because they don’t appreciate you being here.

They’re just in a fog right now. They’re in the surreal. You know, fog of I can’t believe this is happening. So I want you to take one of these matchboxes home. Put it in your kitchen junk drawer because I know you’ve got one. And some of you have two or three and that’s okay. Put it in your favorite one because throughout the year, when you go to light birthday candles, dinner candles, fire in the fireplace, a barbecue grill, or anything like that, Or if you’re just going for a pair of scissors or a roll of tape and you roll that out and you [00:22:00] see this person looking up at you, you don’t need these to remember her.

Everybody’s going to remember her, but reach out to her daughter, reach out to her brother, reach out to a family member and say, do you remember those matchboxes the weird bald guy gave us at mom’s funeral? Or at your mother’s funeral, or whatever, we thought he’d never shut up, but, uh, can’t remember his name, but I just want you to know, we use those matches today, and I, I really miss her, and I’m praying for you, I’m thinking about you, or whatever.

And I tell them, right then and there, if you’re planning on saying something stupid, don’t take a matchbox. You know, but just relay a memory, just relay the fact that you missed them or whatever. And I tell you, I don’t get tired of the stories, Tim. I have people contact me 34 months after I do a funeral and they’ll send, they’ll text me a picture of the matchbox and say, somebody just sent this to me today and it meant so much.

Thank you so much. And the whole point of that is [00:23:00] it’s so important to stay on the journey with a family and don’t just leave them to grieve by themselves. And so, but the other passion and what I focus on in my business is not just the funeral itself. It’s helping people to pre arrange their funeral.

And I’ll just tell you that just quickly, the, the advantages to that, and the reason you do that. I give somebody a planning guide that gives them a place to write down. Things like people that need to be contacted something were to happen to you. What are the vital statistics that would go on your death certificate that your spouse would have to come up with on the worst day of their life?

If you were killed in a car accident or something like that, Tim, you’d be surprised how many people I talked to on the regular, uh, on a weekly basis. that I’ll be talking to a couple and say, just the most basic question. [00:24:00] When something happens to you, do you plan to be buried or cremated? And they will look at each other and then look back at me during the headlights.

It’s clear that neither one have ever even talked about it or thought about it. You know, a vast majority of the funerals that I speak at the death was unexpected. And so I talk, I bang this drum all the time. It’s so important to plan ahead. Three advantages, personal, emotional and financial. If you, if you plan ahead, you get to make your own choices.

You get to choose. So am I going to be buried or cremated? Do I want to be in a coat and tie or a Dallas Cowboys jersey? You know, you can make choices like that. What songs do you want sung? Whatever. So personal, emotional, it takes that burden completely off of your family. If you’ve ever had to make funeral arrangements, you know how stressful it is.

And you’re having to come up with answers of things that you may have no idea. I mean, let [00:25:00] alone things like social security number and all the logistics and, you know, business aspect of it. You’re getting asked, these are irreversible decisions. And so it just, if it’s all planned ahead, then the family has time to comfort each other, for crying out loud, instead of running around trying to get all this information.

And then financially, this is a financial planning tool that 75 percent of people don’t even know about. If you pay for your funeral ahead of time, for one thing, you can stretch out the payments 5 or 10 years. And instead of we need all this money right now, funeral home doesn’t have a repo guy, right? He doesn’t say, I’m sorry, you’ve missed 3 payments.

We’re going to dig them up now and put them in your garage until you can catch up. They’ve got to be paid up front. And so usually people are paying with a credit card and has this ridiculous interest now. And they’re paying on it for years. If you pay for it ahead of time, it freezes the [00:26:00] cost. So that your funeral prices can’t go up.

And so it’s a, it’s a really, really smart thing to do. So, in just a, about a month, I’m going to be taking over a regional management position with the company I’m working for. And so not only am I going to be teaching people how to do funerals the way that I do, but also teaching them how they can follow up with the families. of the loved ones who, who they say all the time. Tim, I hear it in the arrangement offices all the time. When all this is over, I want to take care of my arrangements because I don’t want my kids to go through what I just went through because it’s about a three hour process at least. And it’s so stressful when you’re trying to make irreversible decisions on one of the worst days of your life.

So I advise anyone out there, you know, not only to make your own arrangements ahead of time, plan your own celebration. But, [00:27:00] you know, I’m always looking for opportunities to speak and encourage people on how to do better grief support. But I’m also hiring agents to sell pre arranged funerals. The way that I do, and so it’s a, it’s a great career path.

If you’re looking for anything like this, because you have flexible hours and, uh, and you make great commissions and it’s, uh, it’s fantastic. You can work from home. So, I’m happy to, to help anybody with this venture. Uh

Tim Melanson: Wow, that’s great. That’s amazing. So many, so many things in what you just said are like super applicable to any business really. Like, I mean, your questions that you’re asking, that’s a great onboarding process. So anybody with a business, if you can have some, you know, prearranged questions that you can ask to get someone talking and you get to really learn about who they are and why they need your service.

Right. I mean, you’re talking about tools, you’ve got book, and you’ve got matchboxes, you know, lots of [00:28:00] things, you know, that are, are, are tools that provoke a response from somebody. And, uh, you know, I just, I just loved, you know, just the, the, The energy of, you know, getting people to really open up and really talk about who they are and how they, uh, relate to whatever it is that you do, you know, because right now, you know, for you, you, I mean, obviously you’re master at what you’re doing because not everything that you’re doing is such a great flow, but you manage that right from the start to the end.

You’ve got, uh, you know, a script, I guess, that, that you can follow. And, you know, any business can do that really. You can have a script to follow from the start to the end. So, you know, I’m hoping that people that are listening, you know, they want to go into your business and the fantastic, but if they’ve got a business on their own right now, you know, if you can sort of learn from what Jason has done with his business, you know, and had that, that, you know, whole journey planned for their customer, then that’s going to be huge, right.

For any business.

Jason Harris: Right, and speaking of script, I would, [00:29:00] I’ll share these 2 questions with you and I can, I can ask these 2 questions if I’m in line at a grocery store and we’re stuck in line. And so there’s nothing to do, but talk. I can ask you 2 questions. The 1st, 1 is, have you ever had to make arrangements for a loved 1.

For a funeral, have you ever had to plan somebody’s funeral and they can only answer that 1 of 2 ways they say yes or no. And if they say, yes, I have. Then I may ask a little bit further. I may go a little deeper. Oh, really? Who whose funeral did you have to plan? They might say, well, my mother about 3 years ago or whatever.

Very sorry to hear that. Um, where were those plans already made ahead of time? I could ask further questions like that.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Jason Harris: But if they say, no, I’ve never had to do that, I’ll say, well, my gosh, then you have no idea what it’s like, because they don’t. And if you’ve never had to do that and you’re listening to this right now, it is a very, very stressful.

Uh, since you’re getting your rapid fire questions, uh, and the [00:30:00] director is always, you know, patient with you and everything, but they have to get it planned. They have, you know, the average couple, it takes anywhere from 6 to 18 months to plan for a wedding and a wedding has three parts to it. It has the rehearsal dinner the night before.

And then the actual event. And then there’s a reception. Well, a funeral has three parts. There is usually a funeral visitation the night before. And then there’s the actual event. And then there’s a graveside service or sometimes a celebration at someone’s house or a reception rather. But you don’t get 6 to 18 months to plan a funeral.

You usually get just a 2 or 3 days. And usually about 3 hours at one time in the funeral director’s office. And you’re answering these irreversible decisions. Uh, in questions and just a very short period of time. And so, but the 2nd question, besides, have you ever had to do that is. If your death [00:31:00] occurred yesterday, which obviously it didn’t, because here we are, and you’re listening to this right now, but if it did, someone would be at the funeral home right now, today, making your arrangements.

And I ask you, who would that be? Who would be there? Because obviously you can’t do it after the fact. You can’t arrange your own funeral after you’ve died. So if you died yesterday, someone would be making those arrangements today and it would probably be someone that you love very much and someone that loves you very much and is very close to you.

And do you really want to put that burden on them? You really want them to be responsible for that. You really owe it to them. You really owe it to your family to prearrange. And it’s one thing, I have both life insurance and a pre need policy. Life insurance is designed for the living, okay? It’s designed to make up income for that you can’t make anymore.

It’s not designed to put you in the ground. It’s not designed to pay for your cremation or whatever the [00:32:00] case is. And so, but if you make the financial decision of paying for your funeral years before you need it, God willing it’s years before you need it, Then you are giving a gift of love to your family.

Unlike anything else, it’s one thing to have a lump sum that is going to be paid upon your death. But it’s something entirely different to very specifically plan out. This is how much my funeral is going to be. I’m going to pay for it. And once it’s paid for, it’s done. Forever. And so very, very wise thing to do.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay, so how do we find out more about you then?

Jason Harris: Yeah. My, uh, my company is called Morning Into Dancing and morning is M O U R N I N G, not like morning versus evening, but morningintodancing. org, dot O R G. But I would even, uh, rather you go to speaker jason dot [00:33:00] com. That’s simply www dot speaker jason dot com. Uh, because I am a public speaker and I do love to speak in churches or any platform.

Uh, because I love educating people on how you can better support someone who’s grieving. I have the five questions. That I talk about in a, in a talk called 5 questions that will change your life and, uh, you’ll get the other applications to these questions. There’s a lot more to these 5 questions than just planning a eulogy.

And so it’s a very powerful talk. I get a lot of compliments from it and comments. And so, uh, but, yeah, if you go to speaker Jason dot com, there’s my contact information. And there’s also a link to, uh, the book and how you can order good grief celebrate your life, which is also available on audible as read by the author friend of mine helped me record this.

And so, uh, if you’d like to get a [00:34:00] copy of the book, you can do that there. It’s also available on Amazon and, uh, uh, Barnes and noble and some other platforms. But if you go to speaker Jason dot com. You can find all that information.

Tim Melanson: Wow, love it. This was a very powerful episode. Thank you so much, Jason, for rocking out with me today.

Jason Harris: Thank you for having me. And, and I was grateful to be here.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. And to the listeners, make sure you subscribe, rate, and comment. And we’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast.