<![CDATA[the ash flash]]>https://www.theashflash.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RI8C!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe4b493ca-87fe-49f5-bda6-8f7b4a64e775_933x879.jpegthe ash flashhttps://www.theashflash.comSubstackSat, 26 Sep 2026 07:54:00 GMT<![CDATA[Ashworth Academy Content Brief — Monday, September 21, 2026 ]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/ashworth-academy-content-brief-mondayhttps://www.theashflash.com/p/ashworth-academy-content-brief-mondayTue, 22 Sep 2026 13:15:19 GMTOwners

Precoa’s producer growth as proof of what infrastructure buys you. Lead generation, engagement follow up, continuous coaching, and an integrated tech stack (Sales Studio, Everplans: PS I have e…

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]]><![CDATA[Lean is a position now, not just a constraint]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/lean-is-a-position-now-not-just-ahttps://www.theashflash.com/p/lean-is-a-position-now-not-just-aSat, 19 Sep 2026 16:48:08 GMTSilicon Valley is bragging about staying small, and somehow that counts as news.

The Wall Street Journal reports that median head count at Series A startups fell from about 57 employees in 2020 to abo…

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]]><![CDATA[You are the variable, NOT the economy]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/you-are-the-variable-not-the-economyhttps://www.theashflash.com/p/you-are-the-variable-not-the-economyFri, 18 Sep 2026 12:11:42 GMTPeople buy anyway.

That is the sentence I want you to sit with before you keep reading. Because the excuses you are collecting right now, the ones about gas prices and grocery bills and uncertainty an…

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]]><![CDATA[Why I built the Ashworth Academy & what I keep seeing inside the funeral profession]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/why-i-built-the-ashworth-academyhttps://www.theashflash.com/p/why-i-built-the-ashworth-academyFri, 18 Sep 2026 00:06:23 GMTSome of you will catch the Jerry Maguire reference immediately. The moment where the guy looks around at everything happening inside his industry, feels something shift in his gut, and decides to do …

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]]><![CDATA[Stop Watching the AI Debate and Start Using the Tool]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/stop-watching-the-ai-debate-and-starthttps://www.theashflash.com/p/stop-watching-the-ai-debate-and-startTue, 15 Sep 2026 23:00:48 GMT

*note: this was a livestream so start the video at about 2 minutes if you don’t want all the fluff at the beginning and I can almost guarantee you you probably don’t want that fluff. the beef of it begins at ~2m. -John

The noise around AI safety this week is loud enough to drown out the part that actually matters to you. So let me cut straight to what I was working on this morning before I headed out the door.

I was in Claude, working through a proposal. Can’t get into the specifics of what it is, but I can get into what came out of the conversation, because one paragraph Claude produced stopped me mid-read and I just had to share it with you.

Here it is, slightly out of context, but you’ll get enough of it:

“The transparency compounds here too, John. Showing your commission structure openly, while also noting that you initiated this idea rather than responding to a demand, tells this person that what you brought to him is your best read of what his platform actually needs, and that you are willing to stand behind it with visible economics. That combination is harder to manufacture than a polished pitch deck.”

What Claude is describing there is the thing that separates salespeople who consistently build real relationships from the ones who are always starting over. You cannot manufacture earned trust. You can only build it, one honest interaction at a time, by showing up with something real before anyone asks you to.

This is the point I keep coming back to, and it connects directly to something I hear from salespeople in this profession constantly. They know they are good. They know they bring value. But they cannot figure out why the people they are trying to reach keep treating them like just another vendor with a pitch deck. And the answer, most of the time, is that they are leading with the pitch. They are waiting until they are in a room with a prospect to show what they know. They are holding their best thinking hostage until the deal is on the table.

That is backwards.

If you are a unique sales talent, someone who has worked across industries, sold in different environments, read people well, built relationships in places where relationships were not supposed to be built, you already have the raw material. The question is whether you are deploying it every single time you interact with someone, or saving it for the moments when you think it counts.

Every interaction counts. That is the whole thing.

My goal as a salesperson, and this is something I have said for years, is to be one of the best interactions someone has on a given day. That has nothing to do with whether they are going to buy from me. It has to do with whether I showed up with something real, listened enough to understand what they are actually dealing with, and contributed something of genuine value to their situation. If I do that consistently, the sales take care of themselves over time. And if I do not, no pitch deck in the world is going to close the gap.

AI helps me think through this more rigorously than I could on my own. Using it as a 24-7 editor and thought partner, a consultant I can go back and forth with at any hour, has sharpened the way I prepare for conversations, structure proposals, and identify what I am actually trying to accomplish in any given interaction. It is embedded in my workflow now in more ways than I am going to get into here. And I deleted Netflix from my phone and I work on this at night instead.

But the thing Claude said that I keep turning over is that combination of transparency and initiation. Bringing the idea before someone asked for it, and then being willing to stand behind it openly, is what signals to the other person that this is your honest read of their situation. That signal is the hardest thing to fake. And because it is hard to fake, it is the most valuable thing you can build a reputation on.

Bring the insight first. Show the economics. Stand behind your read. That is the pitch deck nobody else is walking in with.

608-845-2252. My desk in Madison. If I’m here, I pick up.

]]><![CDATA[Market Brief: Nobody Wins on a postcard alone anymore]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/market-brief-nobody-wins-on-a-postcardhttps://www.theashflash.com/p/market-brief-nobody-wins-on-a-postcardTue, 15 Sep 2026 13:07:44 GMTFive Things Worth Knowing This Week in Pre-need

Whole life and final expense sales are up. Way up.

the ash flash is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider be…

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]]><![CDATA[Ash Flash Market Brief: Nobody's Measuring Good Enough Against What's Actually Possible]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/ash-flash-market-brief-nobodys-measuringhttps://www.theashflash.com/p/ash-flash-market-brief-nobodys-measuringMon, 14 Sep 2026 15:16:43 GMTFuneral Home Owners - The Assumption of Adequacy Is the Problem

Tom Anderson wrote something in Funeral Director Daily this last week worth highlighting. He used Wendy’s as the entry point. Roughly 5 …

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]]><![CDATA[Owning the pipeline before it runs dry]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/owning-the-pipeline-before-it-runshttps://www.theashflash.com/p/owning-the-pipeline-before-it-runsSun, 13 Sep 2026 16:47:32 GMTKathy is not waiting for the city to fix the pipeline.

She lives in a rural area where the municipal water supply is unreliable enough that she started pricing rainwater catchment systems a couple of …

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]]><![CDATA[Carrying the weight that doesn’t go away]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/carrying-the-weight-that-doesnt-gohttps://www.theashflash.com/p/carrying-the-weight-that-doesnt-goFri, 11 Sep 2026 17:56:54 GMTEighty-eight years apart, two sounds. One in a Pennsylvania field, one on a New York City subway car.

At the 50th anniversary of Gettysburg, in July of 1913, 50,000 surviving veterans gathered to-reen…

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]]><![CDATA[The sound that crosses every line we draw in the sand]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/the-sound-that-crosses-every-linehttps://www.theashflash.com/p/the-sound-that-crosses-every-lineSat, 05 Sep 2026 13:44:18 GMT

At a time when we are approaching the midterms in a country so wildly divided, I think it is worth pausing. Just for a moment. To remember something.

We have been here before. Not just as a country, b…

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]]><![CDATA[Two stories from the wire, when combined, will tell you more about the next five years of death care than any keynote is willing to reveal]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/two-stories-from-the-wire-when-combinedhttps://www.theashflash.com/p/two-stories-from-the-wire-when-combinedThu, 03 Sep 2026 14:05:10 GMT

Two stories landed on the wire here at the ash flash within twenty-four hours of each other. Read separately, they’re routine industry news. Read together, they’re a picture of the next five years th…

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]]><![CDATA[Legacy reputation isn’t enough anymore: What independent Funeral Homes are losing before the first call]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/legacy-reputation-isnt-enough-anymorehttps://www.theashflash.com/p/legacy-reputation-isnt-enough-anymoreWed, 02 Sep 2026 15:46:31 GMTThe families shopping for funeral services right now are different from the families you were serving ten years ago. Not dramatically different in age, necessarily, but different in behavior. They re…

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]]><![CDATA[Funeral Industry Market Brief for August 31st]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/funeral-industry-market-brief-forhttps://www.theashflash.com/p/funeral-industry-market-brief-forMon, 31 Aug 2026 19:17:34 GMTFour stories crossed my desk this week that look completely unrelated until you put them side by side. And when you do, they stop being four stories. They become one.

Start in Illinois, which is, as o…

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]]><![CDATA[AI won’t take the arrangement room, it will decide who gets to stay in it]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/ai-wont-take-the-arrangement-roomhttps://www.theashflash.com/p/ai-wont-take-the-arrangement-roomWed, 26 Aug 2026 20:07:11 GMTSomething is shifting underneath the funeral profession right now, and I think most independent owners can feel it even if they haven’t named it yet.

AI is part of it. Consolidation is part of it. Con…

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]]><![CDATA[The Twenty-Six-Year-Old Who Called First]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/the-twenty-six-year-old-who-calledhttps://www.theashflash.com/p/the-twenty-six-year-old-who-calledThu, 20 Aug 2026 16:49:52 GMTThere is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a family when nobody knows what she would have wanted.

It isn’t grief. Grief comes later, and grief you can survive. This is something else. It’s …

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]]><![CDATA[Preneed is the one growth channel still adding real volume while at-need call volume shrinks]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/preneed-is-the-one-growth-channelhttps://www.theashflash.com/p/preneed-is-the-one-growth-channelTue, 11 Aug 2026 15:21:41 GMTIndependent Preneed Growth Brief for Tuesday, August 11th, 2026

Preneed is the one growth channel still adding real volume while at-need call volume shrinks, and that distinction matters more than the…

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]]><![CDATA[A profession that got talked into sounding like nobody]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/a-profession-that-got-talked-intohttps://www.theashflash.com/p/a-profession-that-got-talked-intoSun, 09 Aug 2026 13:00:46 GMTThe email arrived from a funeral home in the Midwest, forwarded to me by the owner with no note attached, just the subject line: "thoughts?" It was a quarterly newsletter, the kind that goes out to e…

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]]><![CDATA[The Brief]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/the-briefhttps://www.theashflash.com/p/the-briefWed, 05 Aug 2026 12:03:13 GMT# The Brief

**For Independent Funeral Home Owners | Today's Intelligence**

---

## LEAD STORY

### Pinnacle Buys Gent. Your Market Is Next.

Pinnacle Funeral Service just acquired Gent Funeral Home & Cremati…

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]]><![CDATA[There's always still time until there isn't]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/theres-always-still-time-until-therehttps://www.theashflash.com/p/theres-always-still-time-until-thereThu, 30 Jul 2026 16:44:12 GMTIf you’ve been putting off a conversation with your parents about what they want, you’re not alone. Most families do. It’s not because they don’t love each other. It’s because the subject feels heavy…

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]]><![CDATA[AIFlash market Brief for July 29th, 2026]]>https://www.theashflash.com/p/aiflash-market-brief-for-july-29thhttps://www.theashflash.com/p/aiflash-market-brief-for-july-29thWed, 29 Jul 2026 23:09:18 GMTSubscribe now

AIflash market brief: July 29th, 2026

Gent Funeral Home in Alton, Illinois was founded almost 90 years ago.

Last week Pinnacle Funeral Service bought it. The name will probably stay on the building, b…

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