Richard Paskin, CPA, Co-Founder and Managing Partner

"The Accidental Funeralwise Guy"

I’m the co-founder and Managing Partner of Funeralwise.

I have been an executive with 2 large funeral service organizations. I was the CFO/COO of a company with 18 funeral homes, and the CFO of a company with 28 cemeteries. 

That did not come about as part of a grand career plan on my part, I consider it mostly accidental. I do not have a family or personal connection to funeral services and never envisioned being involved in it in any way. It just never was on my radar. So how did I get here?

Flash back to the 1990’s, Chicago Illinois. Having put in many years of long hours and extensive travel as a Certified Public Account and Management Consultant, I needed a change. Badly. Video was a big deal back then, so, on kind of a whim, I partnered up with a guy who was formerly in marketing with HBO, and we started up a video production company.

At the same time my good friend, Larry Anspach, had recently sold his cemetery/funeral home operation and was developing his consulting firm, American Cemetery and Mortuary Consultants. Larry needed office space and we had extra room in our loft office, so he moved his business in with us. My connection to the funeral industry had begun.

On the video production front, my partner and I stumbled upon a flamboyant Chicago Police Detective who was giving a dynamic personal safety talk and thus began our venture into crime prevention programming. Over the next few years, we produced a series of programs featuring the detective, including PBS Television Specials and a nationally syndicated TV show called Tough Target.

We now had a truly unusual shared office space, with the producers of crime prevention TV programs and consultants to the funeral industry. Yep, on one side of the office we were dealing with violent crime and on the other side cemeteries. Lots of dark humor there, the jokes pretty much wrote themselves.

Larry needed help with his growing business and just across the office there I was with my background as a management consultant and CPA. It may have taken some arm-twisting on his part, but I began working with him part time. Soon I developed an expertise in the funeral industry, all quite by accident as far as I’m concerned.

When our television programs had run their course, we decided to close up shop and it was time for me to move on to other things. Coincidentally, Larry came across an opportunity to acquire a spin-off of 18 funeral homes from a large funeral service corporation. He put together the acquisition and I came on board to help run the business. Another case of availability and happenstance. We later sold the funeral homes and it was once again time for me to look for something new. Enter the dot com era.

As a management consultant I had been involved in many systems development projects and enjoyed working with technology. The internet was fascinating to me, so why not jump in? I scratched out an initial site design on paper and Larry and I founded Funeralwise. Those were the early days of the web – AOL and dial-up connections were the state-of-the-art back then. We developed the first version of Funeralwise, but it was way ahead of its time and after a few struggling years we decided to put the site on hold.

I worked a variety of consulting projects the next several years, most of them for cemetery businesses. During that time the internet was maturing rapidly. Funeralwise was dead but not forgotten. The timing seemed right so we decided to resurrect it. Since web technology had evolved we had to rebuild the site. It took lots of hard work and we brought Funeralwise back from the grave. (I know, stupid puns. What did you expect?)

That’s the short version of how I got here. To me it was a series of “accidents” of timing and availability. I’m proud that we have built something truly beneficial at Funeralwise — a free resource that helps people navigate some of life’s most difficult circumstances. But I believe that we have just scratched the surface of what’s possible. No longer accidental, we have a clear plan to continue developing best-in-class information and tools to help people Prepare, Celebrate and Remember.