Talking About Death With Content Creator Kari the Mortician
Jan 17, 2024
SheSpeaks, Inc.
In this episode, we dive into a topic that many of us know little about, but all of us are affected by: death. Our guest is the fascinating Kari Northey, a funeral director and content creator who uses her popular social media channels to educate people and dispel myths in the often misunderstood funeral services industry. Kari shares her journey into the industry and how she started a viral YouTube presence, providing comfort and clarity on death care to thousands. She's balancing the roles of an educator, professional director, and social media creator and we ask questions about if she receives negative feedback/comments and what it's like to create content around sensitive subject matter.
Episode Highlights:
We discover how Kari Northey went from being uncertain about her career path to becoming a funeral director AND influential content creator, organically growing a following.
Kari's content supports those grappling with loss, as she candidly answers questions that people ask and want to know and understand.
We talk about Kari’s most viewed and impactful content, such as her embalming room tour, and how stories in the news will often bring new questions from people seeking to understand.
We hear how Kari navigates being a social media figure, teaching mortuary classes, and serving families in her role as a funeral director.
Kari discusses the changing face of the funeral industry, the rise of females in her field, and the challenges of that in a traditionally male-dominated field.
In this episode, we dive into a topic that many of us know little about, but all of us are affected by: death. Our guest is the fascinating Kari Northey, a funeral director and content creator who uses her popular social media channels to educate people and dispel myths in the often misunderstood funeral services industry. Kari shares her journey into the industry and how she started a viral YouTube presence, providing comfort and clarity on death care to thousands. She's balancing the roles of an educator, professional director, and social media creator and we ask questions about if she receives negative feedback/comments and what it's like to create content around sensitive subject matter.
Episode Highlights:
We discover how Kari Northey went from being uncertain about her career path to becoming a funeral director AND influential content creator, organically growing a following.
Kari's content supports those grappling with loss, as she candidly answers questions that people ask and want to know and understand.
We talk about Kari’s most viewed and impactful content, such as her embalming room tour, and how stories in the news will often bring new questions from people seeking to understand.
We hear how Kari navigates being a social media figure, teaching mortuary classes, and serving families in her role as a funeral director.
Kari discusses the changing face of the funeral industry, the rise of females in her field, and the challenges of that in a traditionally male-dominated field.
I'm answering the questions that are being posed to me by consumers, and my stance has always been if there's something that you don't Believe should be shared, that you are doing, then you're not doing it on the up and up or you're doing something Because you able to talk about or say anything that we're doing to anybody.
Speaker 2:
Welcome back to the show. We have a very interesting episode for you today. We have interviewed many different kinds of creators and influencers over the years and today's guest is someone who has popular videos started her account first on YouTube and she also now has a tiktok account. Her name is Kerry Northy and her account is called Kerry the Mortician. Kerry has been a funeral director for the last 20 years and has been in the funeral business for the last 27 years. We talk about why Kerry started her account, and it was very much because she would get questions from people, often about what she did, and it's not surprising. Everyone has at some point has to deal with the death of a loved one. So Kerry, in an effort to help people better understand, she started the account. She has, as I said, some extremely popular videos. One of her videos that has been viewed over 3 million times is one called in bombing room tour by a funeral director.
Speaker 2:
I really found this conversation with Kerry very interesting. We talked about people are interested in and why somebody like her, who spends every day and has from very many years dealing in death care, can be a resource for people to better understand what's going to happen when they have to deal with that process. We also talk about the dynamics and challenges in her industry. We talk about how people interact with her online and the questions that she gets, and we talk about how she connects with her viewers and her audience. So with that we're going to jump into the episode. Kerry, welcome to the show, thank you. Thanks for having me. I thought I knew what a mortician was. I learned something because what I read says that the mortician preserves bodies, plans funerals and manages all of the tasks related to upcoming funerals. I did not know that it was also all the tasks. I thought it was mostly the first thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Well and the titles are so overlapping and mortician is a bit antiquated so it's not like really commonly used as much. But Kerry, the funeral director and embalmer, was a little long so she didn't seem to like encompass. And I don't love the word undertaker as much, just because that's antiquated a bit too and really didn't Encompass. The word undertaker was more just someone who placed the body in a casket and buried him back in the day.
Speaker 1:
So it was like a cabinet maker or a furniture maker who also cared for the bodies, but they didn't do any preservation. They didn't do any of that part. So, yeah, so a lot of terms mean a lot of different things within this business, which is hard for people to grasp.
Speaker 2:
But it is what it is. I guess this is something that obviously everyone deals with at some point in multiple points of their life having to go to a funeral, be involved in in this process. You are on YouTube, you are Kerry the mortician and you have over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Yeah, it's pretty well, I need you to decide to become a mortician.
Speaker 1:
So I was 16 and needed a job and my mom at the time was working at a funeral home. She had been a nurse her whole career. She was a pediatric nurse the last years of her working there as a nurse and got close to some people who had terminal illnesses that were children and got close to the families and then connected in with the funeral home and kind of transitioned over to the funeral home and so she worked with families through all different things you know, helping them learn to be on their own again. If a couple had been together for, you know, 60 years and the woman never wrote a check, she would sit down, help them learn how to write checks. She had, you know, support groups, things like that.
Speaker 1:
So when I needed a job, she's like well, do you want to work at McDonald's, do you want to come work here? I'm like not McDonald's, thank you very much, I'll work at the funeral home. And this was during the time of pagers and really old school cell phones and so in a small town for a funeral director to be able to go to their kids activities or just have a break from being at the funeral home, then somebody needed to be answering the phones and so I would work a shift and then it kind of went from there, so it's forever. I mean, it's my life's work.
Speaker 2:
I guess you could say it's interesting because when I think of that my experiences dealing with a funeral home and the people who work there I know you are an executive director of a funeral home and or a funeral business I think that what we underestimate is that this profession is a difficult one emotionally because you are dealing with people, by and large, in the hardest moments of the hardest moments of their life and it requires an enormous amount of empathy and also understanding of how to fill those needs for that person at that difficult time. If you don't mind, can you talk a little bit about how you think about this time for people and having that empathy that is required to do your job successfully?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you know, at the end of the day of what we do, we have to remove ourselves from a lot of the emotion, because we'd never be able to handle what we handle if we get wrapped up in the emotion of the loss. It's not our loss and we really have to step away and focus on doing what we are doing, so then the family can feel, have their emotions and not be worried in all the minute details, because that's what we're there for. And, you know, connecting with the family in different ways is really important, showing them that we care. It's not just a body, it's a person and we want to know about the life, not just the death story.
Speaker 1:
Too many people get caught up in death stories where you have, however many whether it's one to a hundred years up to that death story. We get to hear it and we get to be part of it. So there's a lot of confidentiality and you know bonding during that that happens on the backside, that a lot of people don't realize. You know a lot of dirty, dirty family secrets and things come out and most of the time people play well until after the burial and stuff, but sometimes there are mixed scenes of the family that are ugly and really combative and things.
Speaker 1:
But I think a lot of the emotion that we deal with too, that a lot of people don't realize is the funeral director takes on the anger and the hurt and everything that the family brings in, and if they have been told to watch out for the funeral director or have seen any news stories that are terrible recently, or have had bad information told to them, they come in doing very defensive and not wanting to trust us, and so we really have to try to gain trust before we even did anything to lose it because of the industry as a whole. We're trying to deal with the heavy emotion and also a business, which means finances, at the same time, and those are two really hard things to mix yes a positive, seamless way and so often it doesn't go well or it's seen as us trying to take advantage of people.
Speaker 1:
You're a business taking care of somebody who has had a loss. It does not mean we are taking advantage. There are people who are sure, but you know so a lot of that thrown at us when it's not warranted. So we do we. We take a good lashing sometimes when there's been no cause for it, and so that part of it is really hard as well when did you start your YouTube channel, the one that we talked about earlier?
Speaker 1:
I'm in my seventh year yeah, in my seventh year right now and I was kind of in a lull between funeral home positions and really trying to decide if I wanted to change my course in my life. I was in my late 30s at the point and thought I just don't know if this is my life's work. I think I was in a rut and didn't realize I was on a rut and then my husband at the time said why don't you try and do some live videos on Facebook, just answering questions about the business in work, a lot of social media stuff with his work and I said all right. And so I asked I had about 15 questions and I did a Facebook live for each one. They were terrifying at first, and now I would rather send a little video message than a text to people.
Speaker 2:
You know like.
Speaker 1:
I'm comfortable with it. Now I don't care but. And so then I got people saying, hey, I want to share this information with my mom, I want to share it with my dad, I want to. And so I was like, well, I don't want to just make things you know Public on my Facebook. And so my husband at the time said why don't you put them on YouTube? I had never been on YouTube in terms of, you know, posting or doing anything at all a Total new thing to me, didn't plan to it to go anywhere.
Speaker 1:
And then people started asking more questions and Requesting videos and I was like, huh, maybe I can do this for two, three months, you know, just answering these questions. And then it just organically kind of went there's been no snowball, there's been no anything. It's been this just a perfectly organic, slow progression. And I have Hundreds of requested videos on lists and it's like I make a dent and then they just build again and I'll have people like, why don't you do my video yet? I'm like, if you saw my list Listed videos, I will get there eventually, but it's there's so many because you can take one topic and break it into so many variables. You could do a short video, a long video, a visual video. You can break down every single term that I use within the video. I mean, it just goes on and on, and then I think of new video series, and then that creates 10 to 20 more videos and it's just on list. But that's not a bad thing. I mean, content could go on forever. For, yeah, I wanted it to.
Speaker 2:
Well, that's well, that's good, that that you have enough things that you can talk about to share with people. I mean, obviously, of a long career in and seeing many different things that people you know that might interest people. And I guess my question is what do people ask you like? What are they asking?
Speaker 1:
so many things. Some of the biggest questions that people ask are Ones they want answers that comfort them, but unfortunately I can't always provide that comfort. So the main one that people ask is okay, my grandma died 20 years ago. What does she look like?
Speaker 2:
Oh.
Speaker 1:
The most. The people that ask that question the most are asking about a child, whether it's a small child, adult child. They want to know that they're their baby. Rather, regardless of how old that baby wasn't it died, you know, if it was a 45 year old baby they want to envision and believe that their child is resting in this casket below the ground, perfectly looking like they did when they were buried, or no, you know that day that they were as preserved as they could be. And they want these answers and there's no answer to give. There's no way to tell what that person looks like.
Speaker 1:
There's Dozens of variables that go into that question and even if they could answer every single one of those for me, it doesn't tell me I could answer that because there's just too too many variety of what could be happening in that casket under the crown. So that is hard because people really want some peace of mind and they don't always get it or they'll send me like scenarios, like hey, my grandma died, I, 20 years ago, I was at the funeral and I saw this. Why, why, why did this happen? Why did that happen?
Speaker 1:
and they just are curious, and they've never had anyone to ask. They didn't feel comfortable asking the funeral director at the funeral home. And so I Not only I can't always give them an exact answer because I don't know the whole, you know I'm not there, I don't know what they saw, I don't know what the factors were, but I can give some Hypothetical. This might be what was going on but I can't.
Speaker 1:
And so just giving some Options is always good. Some of that is, you know, satiating curiosity and putting in to rest, maybe, questions or concerns people have carried with them. Yeah, it's a, there's some like a lot of it is. I saw this, why, whether it's something they saw a cemetery, something they saw on a body, If you had to think about what are the most viewed videos you've had, what would?
Speaker 2:
what would those be? It's like maybe the one, the, the number one and two.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, the top are my involving room tour, which was one of my first live videos in the funeral home, and it I literally like taped my phone to a tripod, like a A picture tripod, not a phone tripod. I taped it to it Standing in the preparation room and just kind of walked around opening cupboards and like showing people. So it's interesting what people seek and how they come to your videos. All of a sudden certain videos would get peaks and I would wonder why. But it would also have to do with what was on the news. So if there's a crime story to deal with a pregnant woman who was killed, I Get a spike. When then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, this is why and I say it was interesting, because you get more traffic when people are seeking out Words and terms and things that are in the media is YouTube your sort of main social channel?
Speaker 1:
I have YouTube, instagram, started a little on tip-talk and Facebook. I use all of them, I post on all of them, and then I've started doing this. Last month, november, I said I'm gonna do a one-minute short for YouTube and a real and a short on all the others. I'm gonna just cross post and see what happens. It's kind of a social experiment, which I love In see what is generated. So in the last month I gained 40,000 followers on Instagram. Wow, just by post. You cross posted just cuz I posted a short every day, or a reel, I think, because people sit and watch the reels and they go. They can click follow if they see one that interests them. That has generated Far more following than you know before, so that has been interesting.
Speaker 1:
This is kind of a part-time thing. I teach for a mortuary school and then I work at a funeral home, and so it's how much time do I have to put into this? What benefit do I get back from it? Monetization on YouTube is all over the place and there's no way to figure it out. I Did. Doesn't matter how many videos you watch. There is no way to really Make your your amounts go up and down, so I kind of put in as much effort as it's giving back. So sometimes I pull back, sometimes I dive in more. Yeah, that really depends. And also life. You know what's going on in my life. I have kids, I'm single mom, you know part-time, and so I've got to Figure all that out first, before I have enough to pour into Everything. It's because the social media you have to cultivate it to grow which, yeah, Lot of time.
Speaker 2:
have you encountered other creators who are also in the same type of work, doing the same type of content you are?
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, have multiple like a group text with different people and a lot of good people, a lot of good supportive people, very like-minded people I never would have connected with in the business, not for social media and doing collaborations and reaching out to each other, and that has created such a Sister brother had I guess you could say in a little bit of ways that I can text and so many people in different places of the country that I never would have had Any reason to speak to prior outside of this. I will say, though, the negative side of this is just like any industry, any person can say mortician and Put their you know mortician Bob, you know Bob is not a mortician, but they can put it out there and put out any content. So you know, just like everything, you have to do your due diligence if you're listening to is Saying something.
Speaker 1:
Are they actually licensed? Do they actually know what they're talking about? Do they have any education in this, or are they just Mm-hmm. Throwing out information to try to get views, to try to do whatever you know. Higher views don't do anything For me, you know like. There's no reason for me to be sensationalistic, unless it was monetarily benefiting me, which it's not, so you don't be on YouTube as an example.
Speaker 2:
You're not earning more income from their program based on the number of views you're getting so YouTube the way they're like penny clicks, I call it.
Speaker 1:
So if you click on this, if you click on that, if you watch for a little longer, if you watch for a little longer, it's penny penny, penny, penny penny. I heard that they're moving a lot of their revenue to the shorts because they want to compete with TikTok and so they want to promote that. I haven't seen any increase in revenue by doing more shorts, so I have no idea. There's no human at YouTube to really speak to about it, so it is kind of frustrating. I think sometimes as a content creator, that to put more effort and energy, it is nice to have a financial on the backside. I get a lot of warm and fuzzies. That's wonderful too. But all that time and energy if you're taking time away from your family and away from doing other things and away from this, and that you need to also feel like you're compensated in some way and it goes up down, it's all over the place, so it's really hard to figure some of it out.
Speaker 1:
I think If anybody knows how to do it. Please send me a message, because I don't.
Speaker 2:
Well, I think this is something that a lot of creators and influencers are trying to figure out, and it changes so often. Right, I don't think you figured it out. It changes. Yes, so it sounds like your story. What you're sharing is very similar to what I've heard and talked with other creators. You mentioned earlier that you've been able to build a sisterhood, a brotherhood of other people who are in the same industry, working in the same industry as you are. Yeah, do you think that, as a woman doing creating the content you're creating you have? There's a difference in how women are treated as creators in this space versus men, or is it, in your space, pretty much the same?
Speaker 1:
Oh, great question. So I would have never said yes before, maybe the last two, three years, but I think definitely it is different right now. In our industry specific, there is a huge changing of the guards. Right now Mortuary school is like 70 plus percent women.
Speaker 2:
Wow.
Speaker 1:
That was never how it used to be, I mean this was a very male dominated fields.
Speaker 1:
The older generation is predominantly men and you now have these younger women coming in that are not aggressive but ready to make a difference, ready to get in there, coming in with thunder, and it is not being received well. So we have a lot of headbutting going on right now between the older male generation and the younger female, and it's not that it's across the board like that, but there is some different contention. You have stubbornness on both sides that is just not always melding well. But I will say, thinking of content creators and knowing quite a few in different areas, the women are far more attacked or belittled or be rated or whatever words you want to say, by the older male generation. Wow, I know men in the platforms and they deal with a little bit, but not as much as the women, and I don't know if they're seen as more or maybe if they're bullied more, they're going to go away or what, wow.
Speaker 1:
But in the last few years it has gotten really ugly with some of the people and it's really sad. I think that if someone has something to say about their business and about what they do, then say it. Don't worry about what other people are saying Speak your truth, do your own educating, do what you need to do rather than spend your time trying to put down somebody else and fact check somebody else, because you are never going to change the minds of the people that follow others, because they're already following them for a reason. So all you can do is put information out you believe is more correct or whatever, but that's not the standset a lot are taking, and so the old, traditional in every sense of it is really going to go away, so that you have new, full versions of what the funeral business looks like or death care looks like moving forward.
Speaker 2:
Do you get comment? I mean, I would think that you know the comments though you might be getting are those are. Do you see that difference online, in addition to like in real life, that you're getting these people are kind of making maybe misogynistic or there where they're coming from, is there, but do you get that's? Is it similar online as it as as it is in real life? Oh, it's all keyboard warrior.
Speaker 1:
It's all you know. I don't know if the people that I've never had anyone approach me in person and say anything negative.
Speaker 1:
I know that people have the the gumption to do that. Yeah, everything is super easy to do when you're sitting on a keyboard, oh yeah, and you can sit behind anonymity, like on YouTube. You could be anybody saying things or or whatever. But, like, I got a message the other day. It was, it was from a woman, so it wasn't a male to woman, and she was like, well, I don't think that I or she's just like, I don't understand how, as a professional, you would talk about these things. And it's baloney if you want to say that this is educating. You know what? If somebody who had lost someone saw your stuff and everything, and I'm like, well, it's funny, because I get hundreds of emails from people wanting to know this information, who have losses. So I'm answering the questions that are being posed to me by consumers, and my stance has always been if there's something that you don't believe should be shared, that you are doing, then you're not doing it on the up and up or you're doing something wrong.
Speaker 1:
Because, we're able to talk about or say anything that we're doing to anybody, because there shouldn't be any secrets behind what we're doing and this is why there's so much distrust with our business is forever. The funeral doctor would take kick everybody out of the room. Yeah the doors.
Speaker 1:
They would close the casket in private, in secret which is why I said, oh they're stealing the jewelry, and oh they're doing this and oh they're doing that. And yes, maybe that happened in very rare situations, but because we did not allow the public to be part of what we were doing with tucking mom and dad in and watching the grave, you know, them be placed in the ground or watch the lid go on the vault, because we were kicking people out during that. This created this distrust where now let people know what we're doing?
Speaker 2:
let them understand let them.
Speaker 1:
I think people fear death, but they also fear those disposition options.
Speaker 1:
Yeah they understand, the more maybe they can embrace what's coming or what they're going to need to do to plan for for their parents or their children or whoever their family, their spouse. And I get so many emails that are like thank you for your videos, thank you for your information. Right, my dad's dying, or my I just got one yesterday. My husband's parent is dying and my husband is so at peace because he feels like he knows exactly what he needs to do, because we have been watching some of your videos and I'm like, wow.
Speaker 1:
four is people to feel educated and empowered, so that walk in, they know that they can trust somebody right to watch out for if they need to not trust them, yeah, of walking and watching, for what not to trust? They can walk in with some trust because they know the questions, they know how to advocate for themselves, they know what the laws are, they know and.
Speaker 1:
I think, as a consumer, any consumer I would love if I knew how to walk into by car, you know, with all of the right tools in my pocket questions to ask and what to watch out for that might be suspicious, because that again is another area where you feel really uncomfortable going in and sometimes it's easier to take a man or whatever the scenario. But you know, you just don't know if you're going to be treated fairly or the same.
Speaker 2:
Well, Carrie, I'm so grateful. Thank you so much for spending this time. What is the best way for people to follow you if they want to follow you?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, they can go to YouTube. Carry the mortician. Follow me there. It's kari, I hear the mortician tick tock and Facebook and Instagram and I post at least once a day, usually my videos. I do a two minute videos on every Tuesday to learn a new term or something in the business in a quick way. It's good for my students if they need to go find you know how to learn about whatever I do some interview videos with people. Now that YouTube has you can bring in two content creators into a live, which is amazing now. So people have questions in the live chat with two creators that are doing it alive. So I've been doing those. There's just, yeah, it's a lot of different areas. I'm doing a rewatch your series of six feet under right now that we're calling exhumed and so we're rehashing every episode of the TV show.
Speaker 2:
Oh my god, that's such a great idea.
Speaker 1:
It's been so fun. We are in the foot is next week's episode, so we just started. I think next week is week four, so we have a long way to go. I think it'll be about 80 episodes once it's done.
Speaker 2:
I was going to say that series ran for for more than one season, for sure it was five seasons.
Speaker 1:
If I'm not wrong, like 70 some episodes, and we did one just on the intro because the intro holds so many visual. Yeah, it's, it's been so fun. Me and another funeral director are doing it and it's been great so far.
Speaker 2:
So Well, thank you, I appreciate this insight and I'm definitely going to have to check that you should make it into a podcast to watch the rewatching of six feet under, because those of us who remember it when it came out yes, fans, oh, great show. Yes, for sure. Well, thank you so much, kerry. I really appreciate spending the time with us today. Yeah, thanks.