‘In Conversation with’ Greg Wright

Funeral Products For The Modern Consumer

January 14, 2021

In this session Greg Wright looks at the constantly changing funeral profession; with that change new products are becoming available to the market and the consumer to change the way that the deceased are memorialized.

Key take aways from Greg’s session were:

  • Memorialization options available to families are constantly changing – staying current on new trends allows you to better serve your families.
  • Greg goes into great detail about some memorialization options including Legacy Touch, Memory Glass, Tukios, DNA Memorial/Lazarus DNA.
  • Sometimes the best method is simply having literature on hand for families to browse at their leisure.
  • It is important to keep an open mind!
Greg Wright

Greg Wright is a Manufacturer’s Representative for a host of companies including Memory Glass, Legacy Touch, Tukios, DNA Memorial and Lazarus DNA.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh, OpusXenta

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
All right, perfect. Well, we are live here with our very first “In Conversation With”. I just want to quickly welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. We’re very excited to have you, and we are very excited to have our special guest today. We have Greg Wright, joining us. Hi, Greg, thank you!

Greg Wright
Hello. How are you guys? Well. Thanks so much for having me.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Yeah, well, Greg, we’re so excited to have you and to kind of dive into our subject today. But first, what I’m going to go ahead and do is just make a couple quick comments. What we’ll go ahead and plan to do, just to make sure we’re doing good on time, is to hold the questions until the end. And then we will go ahead and answer any questions that anyone might have at that point. We’ll be monitoring the chat. So go ahead and drop your questions into the chat and we will be seeing those so we can share them with Greg.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
So, again, thank you, everyone, so much for joining us. This is “In Conversation With Greg Wright: Funeral Products for the Modern Consumer”.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
All right. Well, Greg. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your journey in the profession, what got you started and maybe the most valuable lesson you’ve learned so far?

Greg Wright
Wow. Well, I got started working with my mom and dad in 2010 and it’s amazing how that 10 years has just flown by, and a lot of people say that in the last 10 years, the funeral service world has changed more than it had in the prior hundred years or maybe one hundred fifty, even. So it’s been amazing to just be part of this change and just see the traditions that started.

Greg Wright
My dad started representing Messenger Stationery in the early 90s after adding that to representing Continental Computers and through that time, when I came on, Messenger started adding some keepsakes that were other companies and rather than trying to invent the wheel, they partnered with some of these companies. And those are the companies we’re going to be talking about today.

Greg Wright
And as far as what I’ve learned is: don’t assume anything, just like I’ve learned that some of our clientele that I didn’t think would be interested in something new, I’m really glad that I told them about it because I was blown away, that they embraced it and wanted to learn more about it. And I can take that a little step further and suggest that funeral directors might want to consider that with families as well.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Most definitely. Well, what we’re going to first talk about is actually going to be something that was new to me, even as a funeral director, I had never heard about this. And what that is, is DNA preservation. So maybe, Greg, you can just start by telling us, what is it? I’ve never heard it.

Greg Wright
It’s amazing. I first encountered this company based in Thunder Bay, Ontario, that had… It’s run by scientists and they have mastered how to preserve and store DNA in small vials at room temperature, so it’s really become a huge change in the way DNA used to be preserved.

Greg Wright
We’re just in the infancy of understanding the science around DNA. I’d liken it to how much we knew about blood transfusions in the sixteen hundreds. We don’t know anything about DNA other than just like we kind of figured out a couple of things: ancestry, some of those. So by preserving DNA for future use, you can do tests for medical and genetic issues and can also do the ancestry, you can do reports that are getting a little more deeper dive than you’d get from Ancestry.com.

Greg Wright
It’s amazing stuff to preserve DNA. This is the last opportunity to save Grandma’s DNA, to create a real family profile, to understand all the medical issues that may surround your family.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Yeah, and it looks like we have some profiles here on the screen of a couple different people who have chosen to do that. And go ahead. Sorry, no, nothing. Please, you had a question. No, I was just wondering – what’s the collection process like? Is it invasive, easy to do?

Greg Wright
It’s super easy to the point where we’ve had some funeral homes that, we’re already doing swabs for every single case that came through. And so it required no additional work for them. They just were offering this service to the families afterwards. So basically, you take, you do two swabs on each side, so you end up sending in four swabs. You don’t need to send them in right away. They will maintain their integrity for at least six weeks. So this way you’ve got it on hand. The family then can decide later on in that time before going to the expense of paying to get that preserved and then possibly getting the some of the different reports tied in with either, it’s like a premium ancestry report or a genetic profile that talks about medical.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Oh, I see. And it looks like they have some DNA keepsakes. Can you maybe talk a little bit about that? I’m familiar with the cremation keepsakes.

Greg Wright
Well, that’s it. They just recognized that for some people, the emotional connection can be just as strong as any of the scientific background of why you might want to save the DNA, but some of these remembrance pieces, the the egg shaped, or the rings or the pendants, they will actually just like what happens with DNA memorial, they mail in, you get a box. Inside it is this vial that shows the name on it, and this can be used in the future for up to two hundred different DNA tests as we start understanding more and more about it.

Greg Wright
So so just like with the DNA that has been saved on a substrate inside this vial, they’ll use some of that material in these remembrance pieces that you see on the screen.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Wow. And so I guess what kind of drew me to this was the name Lazarus DNA, you know, the biblical reference to Lazarus. Are they bringing the dead back eventually?!

Greg Wright
Oh, no, no, no. There’s no, there’s no cloning. Oh, gosh.

Greg Wright
Since they are in Canada, there’s the assurance the privacy laws are much greater in Canada than we have here so that all of that DNA information goes straight back to the family unless you decide that you want to have it stored in their facility there, but it’s not shared with anybody. A lot of the places that you are sending in for your own personal DNA to some of these different outlets that advertise a lot, you’ve given all that information up and you’re sharing it with the world. So there’s something safe about that.

Greg Wright
Lazarus DNA is the consumer facing side of DNA memorial, they titled it that because they’ve done a lot of work with on research for investigations, police investigations with deaths and stuff and can identify bodies off of their DNA and recover them from post-mortem in some cases where you might not be able to. And they can do matches from things like hairbrushes and hats, pipes. It’s really interesting, just the things that stick around, so to speak. So Lazarus DNA is an easy way for a funeral home that doesn’t want to get involved with sending all this in. They’ll do they can get a swabbing fee and they will get a percentage of the price of the same sort of reports that are offered if the funeral home was to do it themselves.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
I see. So even similar to maybe how funeral homes have urns or merchandise on display, they could just have like a couple brochures, right? And then they don’t have to sell it to the family. The family could just select it if it interested them.

Greg Wright
Exactly. And it’s not for everybody, but it’s still one of those things. And you can get around the discomfort of not being completely comfortable with explaining the process of collection or why even. But it’s still, you can have these brochures available so the families know about it. You just want to do it before embalming or cremation, to capture that.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Well, maybe one day they can take it from ashes. You never know what the future holds, right? I don’t know.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Oh, wow. Well I mean, this is just incredible. And these pieces here actually kind of remind me of what we’re going to talk about next, which is memory glass and just the beautiful way to kind of capture something. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to go ahead and share a video of the process of creating the memory glass. And we just kind of see what it looks like. I never knew how they made memory glass, so let’s go ahead and hit play on that.

Video Plays

Greg Wright
So. That quick part at the beginning where you see the three lines of the cremated remains put out there on top of the glass, that went viral because people couldn’t believe what they thought they were seeing with the thin lines, but that, they’re actually using the cremated remains in the glass when they blow that glass and create whether it’s a pendant or an orb. Or just like this right here.

Greg Wright
This was on a recent catalog and you can see the scale this way. These are the little touchstones that you see on the right side of the screen. And it’s great for someone, they can carry it around in their pocket. And it doesn’t need to be the cremated remains inside the glass. It could just be that fingerprint etched on to it. Or, boy, there’s endless possibilities. I know that someone in Texas got really interested in the fact that you can use the soil from a grave site to make these keepsakes so it doesn’t have to be used and offered just to cremation families.

Greg Wright
You can use, I know someone in Nebraska, the family got those the touchstones with etchings. There was it was not a cremation, but they got a, an etching onto that along with the fingerprint. And these are just valuable keepsakes for people, they’re tactile. People can hang onto them.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Wow. So, could you put other substances besides soil, like could you do sand from where you scattered someone’s ashes? Could you do hair? Like, what else could you put in there?

Greg Wright
Well, I had to call California to ask them because I remember when we were talking about this originally, you know, I said, “no, it’d burn up”.

Greg Wright
But, as they told me yesterday, and this is a quote, The hair is still, the essence of that hair is encased in glass. Sure there. But still, that person’s essence is held inside the glass.

Greg Wright
So, yes, they have gotten lots of cases where hair has been sent in and they have made these glass keepsakes.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Wow, what a beautiful way to memorialize someone, even if you don’t choose cremation, because I know some people feel like, you know, with traditional burial. Maybe there’s not as many memorialization options, but this is definitely a wonderful one you could use for burial or cremation, it looks like. Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
That’s wonderful, and our next one is too. Yeah, yeah, well, in our next one, it looks like it looks like this also shows some of the other options for memory glass.

Greg Wright
Oh! I got to tell you about a beautiful thing that memory glass offers where they will, and if you do some internet searches, you’ll see some videos that show up about, they can do the same as companion urns, they can use the ashes of a married couple and they’ll tint them different colors. And so I think what you see there, the orb on the right hand side shows both the purple and pink, and those, that’s a couple that have both died, but they’ve been preserved together in that glass orb.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Wow. That’s beautiful, can they do more than two colors, do you know if it’s limited to one or two?

Greg Wright
You know, there’s, one of the things is, is that Nick Savage, who created this company, they were the first people to do memorial glass with human cremains. He’s a real, he’s a glass artist, and that’s how he got started. I’m sure that you could get them to do three. But he is such an artist that he’s really looking at the color combinations and making sure that every piece is individual and also every piece looks beautiful.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Well, it’s very beautiful. I particularly like the heart ones, and I think on some of these I see a stand. Does the stand light them up? Or the stand just to kind of raise them?.

Greg Wright
Yes, they have a couple different options on the stands, and there’s an uplift feature. I mean, on this one, they show. You can see there’s a smaller stand, by lighting it from below, and this one, the stars that are in the top of the the flag symbol here are the actual cremains.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Wow.

Greg Wright
They do, they are really dramatic I mean, I know funeral directors that will make sure they turn on that light in their arrangement room before they bring a family in. And it really draws attention, becomes a focal point.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Most definitely, that’s cool, so that’s something they could do for like maybe a veteran family or whatnot, make that American flag, that’d be great.

Greg Wright
This is one of the designs. So yes, there is a case of three different colors.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Wow. Well, that’s that’s pretty incredible, Greg. And what we’re looking at next would be our legacy touch. And this is also a good option for both burial and cremation families, correct?

Greg Wright
Oh, definitely. So much so that. The theory behind Legacy Touch. They weren’t the original people to do fingerprint jewelry, but what they’ve done is they’ve taken it all to a new level with their e-commerce site. They, they really encourage funeral homes to capture every single fingerprint, every case that comes down, and as far as legalities, they don’t have to worry because if they’re doing it for every single case, you don’t need to ask permission of the family. This way, if two months later, a grandson or a nephew is asking, “Can we do this jewelry?”, you’ve got that fingerprint on file. And then they also started out doing electronic capture rather than ink on paper, and that’s been we’ve gone through several cycles of the different platforms on how to capture them, and it’s gotten easier and easier over the years.

Greg Wright
I think Legacy Touch is about seven years old. And it’s just been remarkable how easy it is because of the e-commerce site for the families to order it themselves at 1:00 in the morning rather than going back to a funeral home and saying, “Oh, can you get that jewelry for me?” Because a funeral home can email the exclusive pin that has the loved ones fingerprints on file, and then anybody in the family can go and order this jewellery.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Wow, that’s wonderful. What about for families who’ve, you know, funeral directors, the hardest day, but when they’ve experienced an infant loss. What could they do? That’s a little different for an infant loss.

Greg Wright
What you can do is you actually take a picture of the entire hand or a footprint as a remembrance piece, and just because it’s just too tiny, the fingerprints haven’t developed yet on a baby. So, yeah, and I know, I know funeral directors that have used this for people that are alive still and they’ve created charm bracelets for all their kids and they’re wearing a charm bracelet with each fingerprints of each of their kids on the pendants on the little charms.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
That’s a wonderful idea. How neat. Well, so it sounds like, with this option, you can do it for someone who’s passed away, obviously, but you could also use it for someone who’s still living. And I think that’s going to be kind of similar to our next option, in a way. So maybe what we’ll do is, let’s start by watching this video about Tukios, and then maybe you can share a little bit about how a funeral director could use it, but also how a family could use it in a different way. So let’s go ahead and perfect, we’ll go ahead and get that on the screen here.

Greg Wright
All right, this is a funny video.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Looking forward to it.

Tukios Representative Emily
“We’re going to make a video really fast. Hi, I’m Emily with Tukios, and today I’m going to show you how to make a tribute video in under one minute. So let’s get started. First, click on Create New Video, and you can type in the name and the dates for the subject of your video. Click Save, and you’ll be taken to the theme selection step, and here you can browse through one of our hundreds of themes to choose the one that’s just right. Select your theme and you’ll be taken to the upload link step. If you’re going to be the only one editing the video, just go right to the slide step and click upload photos and videos. How fast your photos upload will depend on your Internet connection speed. Next, you can click, add stock clips and auto select theme clips to add a curated set of clips that matches the theme. Then you can add a text slide by clicking to add text button, then selecting use stock text tab, choose a quote or a scripture and add it into the video. Then you can click shuffle slides to quickly reorder them. Then all you have to do is go to the music, step and select a song or two that’s close to the length of your video. After that, you can preview the video and then you’re done. For a full walkthrough of the Tukios features, just click on the link below this video. If you have any questions at all, feel free to contact our support team. Thanks for watching.”

Greg Wright
Now, the folks at Tukios have just done an amazing job in making it easy for people to make videos. It’s an alternative and it’s very inexpensive. If you go through the messenger site, it’s eighteen dollars to produce these videos. I don’t think I told you that before.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
No! I’m shocked!

Greg Wright
Yes, exactly. And a lot of, a lot of people charge a lot more. What’s also cool about Tukios, you notice that she says “if you’re the only one involved with uploading the photos”. You can send out a link to the family that they can share. And so family members all over the country can be uploading their favorite photos. The big trick is if you want to make sure that you do put a limit on it, because otherwise you might end up with a 20, 30 minute video.

Greg Wright
But the good thing is, is that Tukios will allow you to make two versions. For that same price without charging, so typically you would have you’d want to have a shorter video if you’re going to use it in a funeral service.

Greg Wright
If you’re going to want to have a long keepsake video that people want to buy CDs or get a jump drive of the 45 minute video, you can still do that for that 18 dollars. So you can revise the videos after the fact. And you can also send out a preview of the video before you finalize it that first time, so there’s no charge to send it out so that the family can review the video first.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Wow.

Greg Wright
It’s pretty amazing. Yeah, it’s, a lot of people really enjoy making the videos. Some folks like to spend several hours doing it and they like to do that. So they’re not necessarily candidates for Tukios. But if you’re in a busy funeral home, this can let every single funeral director look like a pro without having the one person at the funeral home who does all the videos do it.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Well, that’s wonderful. And I know there’s instances where families make their own video. They bring it in, freakout mode, it doesn’t play on the AV system. So having this option that’s affordable is a great way to entice families, correct, to make a video we know is going to work.

Greg Wright
Exactly. And you can turn over all those features to a family member if it’s appropriate. If you feel comfortable with it, you can let the grandson that was going to do the video that might not work when it comes to time for the service. Let them play with the system and go through and build the video. The family feels a sense of ownership. The guests sit through a nice professional video that is easy to watch, so it’s a win for everyone

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
It really is, and with all those backgrounds to choose from, you could use this for what, like a graduation? I mean, what else could you use it for?

Greg Wright
People have used it for weddings, you know, for wedding videos after the fact. They’ve used it for graduations. I know some of the, I know people that have used it for their kids Little League teams.

Greg Wright
So you can you can and you can make them as short as you want. You might only need you could do a ten, if you only had ten – fifteen photos, you could still do a nice video to present at the service because you can incorporate those little video snippets that are available as well, that tie in with the themes. You can have horses running across a meadow, all kinds of different aspects that are going to be suitable for everybody, and really capture the loved ones passions.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Wow, well that’s, that’s pretty incredible. I wish I would have had a chance to use it when I was still working as a funeral director. That almost looks too easy. I can’t believe it. One minute?

Greg Wright
No, no. It takes, she showed how to do it in a minute. It’ll still take you at least 10, 15 minutes to do it.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
But that’s that’s pretty cool. Well, what an incredible, incredible option to offer families and to use in many ways, it sounds like.

Greg Wright
Yeah.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
So Greg, tell us, what kind of trends do you foresee for 2021 and beyond?

Greg Wright
Oh, gosh. The trends in keepsakes, and just memorialization, I mean, I look at how Messenger got started in 1913 by Frank Messenger because he wanted to do religious calendars and make them available to the public. And so from that, he recognized that funeral homes could use these calendars for advertising. And that has become a long time traditional deal that is still very popular.

Greg Wright
We still print thousands of calendars for funeral homes to put their imprint on one side and the individual churches and they give them to the church and it’s a form of advertising. So from that, Messenger got involved in all the different stationary aspects and things like register books and the folders. Service folders are some of the original forms of keepsakes that people would use. They’ve evolved to where you started adding fancier prayer cards, things like that. Some of the different keepsakes we’ve talked about already.

Greg Wright
So I have a, I’m very reluctant to talk about what some of these trends might be because it’s changed so much and it keeps changing. Just look what’s happened in the last year on how people are doing funerals.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Yeah, I don’t think anyone foresaw live streaming as the primary way of doing funerals, or even as an option. I mean, the change has been so incredible.

Greg Wright
And it happened quickly.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
It did.

Greg Wright
Because it just had to, yeah.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Wow. Well, I mean, it’s pretty cool to see how Messenger has changed. I always appreciated using the folders when I was a funeral director. They have such beautiful designs. They’re easy to use, perfect size. Always love them. That’s pretty cool. And, Greg, what would be the one thing you want your audience to take away today?

Greg Wright
Boy, like I said earlier. Don’t assume anything when you’re talking to anybody, you might think, you know what somebody likes, what somebody would like, and I think it really helps to just approach everybody you talk to. And it doesn’t have to be in an arrangement either, just all the time. You need to just assume that, assume nothing. And let people know you’re there to help, and let people know about all the options they might have.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Definitely. And it looks like I have a couple audience questions coming in. Greg, let’s go ahead, and maybe I guess at this point we’ll just start answering these questions. This is a pretty fun one. I like this one.

Greg Wright
There are people sending these in by chat? I didn’t hear any anybody.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Yeah, they were. They were pinging them in so.

Greg Wright
Okay, cool.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
And I know some are coming through to Marlena, too. So I’ll start with the couple that have come through to me. What are some unusual requests you have heard of for memorialization?

Greg Wright
I mean, oh, gosh. When we first started helping and working with Legacy Touch, people got concerned about, why are some of our families asking for us to print out these PDFs, and sometimes make them a little larger, or just why are they, why did they want them? Are they taking them to another company? We’re out of the picture now? And what it turned out to be was – in certain areas, it’s become very popular to get tattoos of a loved one’s fingerprint on your skin.

Greg Wright
And so that was a, that was a big surprise for me. So, yeah, I never thought of it. But think about it. It’s like they’ve left their fingerprints on you. You know, it’s like a hug.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
I was going to say you could use it to unlock an iPhone, but, you know, I like a hug better.

Greg Wright
Hold up their iPhone there. Yes, it would have to be the right scale. I think it’s heat related, though, isn’t it? Doesn’t it have something to do with heat?

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Wow. That’s pretty cool request. I know sometimes people take some of the ashes and they actually mix them in with tattooing and do tattoos. I’ve heard of that.

Greg Wright
Oh, wow. OK, yeah. Well, that’s how Memory Glass got started, Nick Savage ended up with someone’s, I don’t know what family member it was, but he was already a glass artist and that’s how he came up with the whole idea of doing memory glass. So who knows? Just like I said, I’m not going to try to predict anything.

Greg Wright
There’s, gosh, you go to a convention these days and you can see some pretty off the wall ideas that are getting floated by folks that are bringing outside ideas to the funeral service world. I mean, as people that are in the death care spectrum, I think the people just need to be open to anything because the families might be wanting something that you might not feel comfortable with, but ultimately we’re taking care of families.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Absolutely, and I’ve also seen one more question coming through. It looks like two. One of them is, “do you think families are delaying memorialization due to covid?”

Greg Wright
They’re definitely delaying services in some cases where they. I know that early on in the spring, people were even writing up all the arrangement plans with a to-be-determined date, and they were putting off the services and, and a lot of those services happened during the summer and early fall.

Greg Wright
But for instance, at Legacy Touch, May was one of their biggest months ever. And so that’s, let me just, I got this just from Jamie McDermott, who’s a lot of folks in the death care world know of him, and he works with Legacy Touch. And he basically just said from May through year-end, Legacy Touch had solid sales. And the great thing is, is that they kept up with their delivery through all this because people were. You can’t postpone grief. I mean. Memorialization is a way to help people work through their grief. I mean. Grief stirs sadness, but remembering drives happiness. And so this is a way for people to start moving through and using these remembrances. I think that. The families have figured it out, they’re going ahead and doing these kind of remembrances, even if they are postponing some sort of celebration of life, or a traditional funeral service.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Definitely. Well, and Greg, I know you’re hesitant, you don’t want to make any predictions, but do you have anything that you think might be happening? 2021 and beyond, anything that kind of comes to mind when it comes to memorialization.

Greg Wright
Well, along the tattoos, I met a funeral director years ago who, he said I’d get in trouble if I mentioned it to anybody. I’m going to go ahead anyway. But he had the idea of preserving, preserving tattoos. The flesh that a tattoo is on, like a tannery. A little bit weird. I don’t know that it’s for everyone. And I don’t think that’ll happen this year.

Greg Wright
But I do think, though, that people are looking at ways to memorialize their loved ones. I mean, Messenger has got this whole system now where they are able to print and print the same day on extra heavy cardstock, it’s laminated and get it out to the family in time for a traditional funeral service that same week. So, anyway, there’s lots of stuff out there between the glass remembrance pieces, Christmas ornaments.

Greg Wright
I just look at, like, Legacy Touch. They added several new designs this last fall. Well, right in November. And they become, they became almost instant bestsellers. Legacy Touch added a stainless steel keychain and the retail price point was only eighty five dollars. And they sold a lot in just the month of December. And so something like that, it’s affordable for almost any family, and that might be more important to them than anything else that comes out of the funeral service.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Agreed, that’s what they hold on to long after the service is done. Yeah, that’s great.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Marlena, did I take all the questions or do you have any other ones that I have missed?

Marlena Weitzner
Looks like we’ve got one more. Somebody asked, “what is your dad’s favorite memorialization product?”

Greg Wright
Oh, well, shoot. I know that he’s on this call, and my mom is too, you’ll see her name. That’s their direct house line that rings to her cell phone. But he’s got it so he’s using Bluetooth with his hearing aids on his cell phone. And that’s why we get out his cell phone separately. Oh, boy. I wish he could tell me right off the top. I know that his favorite Messenger design is something that uses a painting of the Maroon Bells, which is pretty much a custom product, a custom design that he did with Messenger. And it’s now available to the whole country. But it’s a painting of the Maroon Bells, which is sort of a signature location outside of Aspen, Colorado. And we’ve got a lot of our clientele in our region aren’t necessarily in Colorado, but they still just call it Autumn because it’s like an autumn painting with the alpenglow shining on some mountains. And I know that’s his big thing. And we’ve got a client that was asking about getting prayer cards in that design and he still needs to call Messenger and ask them what the minimum order is to get prayer cards for the Maroon Bells.

Greg Wright
He gets so excited that it’s infectious, it’s infectious with the funeral directors that know him and it’s infectious with me. Just the things that, when we learn about something new, it’s exciting to go out and share it with folks and let them know about it. So I hope I was right there, Dad. I think he’s on this webinar.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Oh, I bet you’re right. Well, it looks like we have an easy way to contact you, Greg, as well as Jerry and Jeannie. So if anyone ever has any questions, even if they’re not in your region, of course they can reach out to you. Is that correct, Greg?

Greg Wright
I will definitely put them in the right direction to contact anybody. Messenger’s made these partnerships with some of these companies, with the exception of the guys in Thunder Bay, the DNA Memorial, Lazarus DNA. I can help them directly, but we can get them set up to take a look at any of these memorialization products.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Wow. Well, that’s, that’s awesome. Greg, I know I have learned a lot today, and I sure appreciate your time in just joining us.

Greg Wright
This is a lot of fun.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Well, yeah, it’s been great. And I sure hope we can have you as a guest again. I’m sure you have a lot more that we just haven’t covered today.

Greg Wright
This week, yeah, I had all kinds of extra things I was going to share in case you didn’t have any questions, so.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Well round two is going to be coming up. But, you know, if anyone has any guest suggestions, reach out. Greg, if you have some guest suggestions, we’d love to hear them, too. So my name is Michelle Imam Bakhsh. I’m with OpusXenta. We have my email, my phone number on here. So feel free to reach out to me with any questions. And please reach out to Greg to learn a little more about what he’s talked about today. It’s been some pretty revolutionary items, especially the DNA memorial. To me that just still blows my mind.

Greg Wright
It’s hard for a lot of people to take it in. Yeah.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
It’s a lot.

Greg Wright
Thank you so much for. Yeah. Thank you very much, Michelle, it’s been great being with you, and thanks to everybody who attended this webinar.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Absolutely. Thank you, everyone. We’re going to go ahead and sign off. Please do join us next month. We have another special guest. Her name is Nancy Wiel, and we would love to see you there. So please do sign up for that. And again, Greg Marlena, everyone who joined us. Thank you so much for being here.

Greg Wright
Thank you so much. All right. Bye now.

Michelle Imam Bakhsh
Bye.

Stay connected

Subscribe to receive new blogs from OpusXenta in your inbox.

Like this conversation? You might enjoy these: