David Iles and the Quiet Work of Courage

In this episode, the host talks with David Iles about courage, calling, and the quiet discipline of doing the right thing even when it is difficult or unpopular. Drawing on his work in funeral service, David reflects on how meaningful service can help families through grief and explains why he sees courage less as one dramatic act and more as a daily commitment to integrity, compassion, and consistency. David Iles is a Des Moines, Iowa native, a third-generation funeral director, and part of a family business that serves families through a network of funeral homes and a pre-need planning agency. He is also a husband, father of two young boys, and a thoughtful leader shaped by faith, family, and a deep sense of purpose in helping others on some of the hardest days of their lives.

Thank you for listening! We hope you feel inspired and encouraged by our conversation today. If you did, be sure to share this episode with others.

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See you in the next episode! Be blessed!

Full Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to Courageous by Crossroads Apologetics, a look into what motivates us to step out and courage, and the everyday bravery of men and women like you. In each episode, we hear a personal story of bravery centered around this question: What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? And now your host, founder of Crossroads Apologetics, Jeff Johnson.

Jeff Johnson: Hey everybody, this is Jeff. Welcome back to another edition of the Courageous Crossroads podcast. My next guest is David Iles, and he is a fascinating young man, a successful businessman, a funeral director here in the local area. And I got to ask him the question, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? And peppered him with a bunch of other questions about courage in and around that, and learned a lot about his background too. So you’re going to absolutely love this interview. Here comes David Iles.

Jeff Johnson: Well, hello everybody. Our guest this week is David Iles. And he’s a gentleman I had the opportunity to hear from a couple of weeks ago and met him. And he—his father and I—just got to meet David. And was very, very, very impressed with just his presentation and the nature of the work that he did, and the way he carried himself. And so I jumped at the chance to ask him to be on the program. And so we’re going to get to know each other a little bit better while we go through this interview. But I’m really excited to learn more about you, David. Thanks for being here.

David Iles: Yes sir. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Jeff Johnson: Okay, so we’re going to be talking about the topic of courage and this little hour—or however long we’re going to be able to spend here—is going to culminate with me asking you the question, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? But before that, I want to kind of get your mind on the topic of courage. And to do that, let’s start with a little background on you, David. Can you tell me where you’re from, what you do, family, business, all that kind of stuff?

David Iles: Yes sir, happy to do it. So again, my name is David Iles. I’m born and raised here in Des Moines, Iowa. I grew up a third-generation funeral home kid. And that’s the business ultimately that I’ve ended up in now. So went to high school here in town, ended up going off to the University of Iowa where I got degrees in finance and management. And then actually found myself over in Chicago for about four years doing corporate real estate in that area.

And our family—while I’m a third-generation funeral home kid—nepotism wasn’t a huge thing that we believed in. And it was one of those things that, in the event that you have an interest in coming back into the business, it’s absolutely something that we can talk about, but you need to go find yourself for a couple of years, work for somebody else, and basically showcase that you have value that you could bring back to the organization.

And so for me, candidly, when I was about 16, I had the feeling that I’d probably end up back in the business, but I definitely wanted to go live in a bigger market and kind of have that experience. And so I ended up in Chicago. My wife—well, the woman who became my wife—was able to get to Chicago as well. And we’ve loved our time there. And frankly, I thought I loved what I was doing. But about three years into that job, I think what I figured out more than anything was that I really, really enjoyed the people that I was working with, but I wasn’t very passionate ultimately about the job itself. It just—it didn’t drive me out and wake up in the morning saying, “Hey, I can’t wait to go do some corporate real estate transactions today.”

And so ended up coming back to Des Moines, and my wife and I did that in mid-2019. And since that time, I’ve been working with my family. We have a funeral practice here in Des Moines where we have seven funeral homes that were able to wait on families here in Des Moines in the surrounding areas. And then we also have—it’s a pre-need marketing agency that would work with funeral homes. And so we help other funeral homes just get more people interested in and aware of the ability to come in and pre-plan their funerals.

Jeff Johnson: That’s a great background. Thank you for that, David. And well, first before I do that, wife and kids?

David Iles: Oh, thank you. Yes. So I have a wife, Alice. She and I got married back in 2019, but she and I are high school sweethearts. So we’ve been together for something like 17 years now and kind of seen each other grow up. And then we have two little boys. We’ve got a two-year-old named Jack and then actually a one-month-old named Bennett.

Jeff Johnson: And then we have a—goodness, brand new.

David Iles: Yeah, yeah, we’re not sleeping a whole lot right now, but that’s okay. It’s been fun to have the new addition, so to speak.

Jeff Johnson: Okay. Now it’s time to tell the truth, David. What kind of a husband are you? Are you up in the middle of the night when mom gets up with the baby and doing all that kind of stuff? Or are you the kind of guy that I was, where you knew how to kind of pretend like you were really, really, really fast asleep, but over just right so that she knew not to… You’re a better man than I am, I’m sure.

David Iles: Well, so it’s funny you ask. It’s been a little bit different experience the second time around and I’ll explain. So the first time it was definitely a split effort to where we tried to go every other time. And Jack, our older of the two boys, he did not sleep. For the first 16 months, he was up several times a night pretty much every night and Ali and I just had the system down where it was every other time we’re going to get up to try to—I mean, we were both working at that time and it was kind of the quote-unquote fair and equitable way to do it.

But I got to tell you, the second time has been a little bit different in this regard. So about a month or two before Bennett joined us, we moved Jack into his “big boy bed” and it took Jack all three days to figure out that he can get in and out of this bed. And with that, you know, when Bennett joined us, about every night Jack’s wandering into our room and he’s looking for someone to come back with him to his room to help him fall back to sleep. And with my wife needing to take care of the baby and feed the baby, she pretty much told me, “Hey, can you just handle Jack?”

And so where I’ve gotten kind of fortunate is when I take Jack back to his bed, I end up falling asleep right there next to him. And so I’m sleeping through the night, albeit in a very small twin bed with my son, and my wife is up the majority of the night with the baby. But the good news is this, Jeff, that so far, Bennett, number two, has slept a heck of a lot better than Jack did. So she’s up probably two to three times a night.

Jeff Johnson: Well, that’s good. And for our listeners’ benefit, you can’t see what a tall man David is, but he’s very tall. So I can imagine curled up in that little bed. You’re a good dad. That’s wonderful. That’s fantastic. Well, and God bless your wife too. That’s—having those babies and bringing them home and raising them up—there’s no better work. And that takes a lot. So good for you guys.

David Iles: Thank you.

Jeff Johnson: Okay. So I got a question about the funeral director business. Do you deal with all different kinds of faiths?

David Iles: We do. I would say, you know, primarily it would be based in Christianity, but we do have other faiths that would come through our care. Yes.

Jeff Johnson: So I imagine you have to equip yourself to handle all kinds of different scenarios and the compassion and the empathy with what different faiths require. I don’t even know if I’m asking that correctly. But do you know what I mean?

David Iles: I know exactly what you mean. And it’s funny—like for example, in Des Moines, we have a pretty decent Jewish population that would be here. And we’ve had the privilege of being able to wait on a lot of Jewish families pretty much going back to the ’70s and ’80s. And the biggest—not just for Jewish individuals that come through our care, but frankly, any religious base—what our job is, is to be the experts in the room. So to speak, it shouldn’t be us going to that individual asking them, “Hey, how do we do this the right way?” You know, that’s our job. That’s why they’re coming to us. And so there are certainly religions that we would work with more prevalently. But on occasion, you know, we’ll have folks come that we might only do two or three funeral services like that that year. But it’s our job to make sure that we’re educating ourselves the right way on how to do that.

Jeff Johnson: You’ll know this is the standard orthodox protocol for this type of a scenario, so you’re able to make suggestions. And if they’re wringing their hands because they’re, you know, upset with the passing of a loved one, you can say, “Don’t worry, we got this,” all that sort of thing.

David Iles: Exactly right. What we always like to tell families is, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything.”

Jeff Johnson: Okay, so what does that do? What does that do to your empathy, being able to see people in that end-of-life scenario and that honoring a parent or a child or a loved one? Does it make you more empathetic? I don’t want to ask a silly question like, “Do you become callous to it?” because I don’t think that could ever happen. But you’re on the—you’ve got a front-row seat to see a lot of human emotion as they go through this experience. And that’s got to do something to you.

David Iles: You know, within our profession, they do talk about how people can grow to become what some would refer to as like “death blind.” And, you know, think about when you go into the hospital and someone’s receiving a diagnosis and the doctor does that all day long. And so they don’t deliver with the empathy that you’re referring to. You know, you do see—you can see that within funeral care in general—that can happen from time to time. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t.

But one of the things—well, I guess let me start here to directly answer your question of how has it changed my empathy. I would say honestly, I don’t really think it has, and that’s not a bad thing. I guess to elaborate on that, you know, my grandfather, he founded our practice and he was the first funeral director within our family. And one of the things that he often talked about was that if you are not called to this, you are never going to last, just based on the demands of the job—both from an emotional standpoint and, frankly, a time standpoint. And so if you’re not driven to really want to help people, it’s just not the right profession for you and you’re going to burn out.

I’m fortunate and blessed to truly feel like I was called to this. And so that helps a lot because don’t get me wrong, there are definitely cases that stick with you a little bit more than others, especially like you mentioned if we happen to be waiting on a family who’s lost a child or unexpected, very sudden deaths. You know, those stick with you a little bit. But what we really just have to remain focused on is how do we take this really, really trying situation for the family and make it be as pleasant—probably isn’t the right word—but meaningful, the most meaningful experience we possibly can. Does that make sense?

Jeff Johnson: Totally makes sense. Yeah, I love that and I hear you loud and clear. And it’s not that corporate real estate isn’t helping somebody—you know, all work is godly work, you know, you commit it to the Lord—but this is a different—this is a different thing. You’re getting very close and you’re holding hands and you’re, you know, you’re meeting people when they’re in a difficult state and being able to care for them through that. I imagine that is a different calling.

David Iles: Well, you know what’s with it… I’ll tell you a quick story and I hope you have time for this. I promise it’s quick. It’s ultimately when I was in Chicago and I was making this decision and I was talking to my wife about, you know, the potential desire to come back home and work with the business. She was asking me, “Well, what is kind of driving that? Walk me through the thought process.”

And, you know, I did walk her through how I just wasn’t getting fulfilled by the work I was doing. And I told her the story of, you know, when I was in college, when I would be back on break, I would work for the funeral home and I would basically perform like an assistant role. The kind of explained role is that I would be there to set up a funeral and then when families started to get there and attendees started to get there, I’m just standing in the wings, helping point people to the bathroom and little things like that.

But one of the last things that we would do is when the funeral is over and everyone has left except the family, you know, we take all of the memorabilia, flowers, things like that back to their house so that they don’t have to worry about it. And one of the very first services that I’ve worked while I was in college, we left the church and it’s me and one other gentleman who brought all of these items back to this woman’s home. And we got there—I hadn’t dealt with this lady at all just because the funeral director had that entire interaction, which was completely fine. And when I got there, you know, I’m unloading flowers, memorabilia, you name it. And at the very end, you know, I just have a little pack that I’m supposed to give to her and let her know that the funeral director will follow up with her in the morning. And so, you know, we’ve unloaded everything and I take that pack and I bring it to her. And this little woman gave me this huge hug, tears streaming down her face. And I didn’t have a name tag on or anything, so she had no idea who I was. And she just said, “Can you please thank everyone who worked on this today because you have no idea how much this helped my family.”

Jeff Johnson: Wow.

David Iles: And that was kind of an “ah-ha” moment for me of like what we are doing is very, very important work. And that’s when I’m in Chicago, you know, thinking about how I’m feeling about that work. That was that—I guess what I’m kind of referring to when I said I wanted more fulfillment. And I knew that I could find that here.

Jeff Johnson: Yeah, you got it right there. Wow. Okay. This is a—this is a great—we’re perfectly set up now for me to jump into this topic of courage. So to do that, the first thing I’d like to know is before I ask you that question, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done: How do you define courage? What’s courage mean to you?

David Iles: You know, I think the biggest thing that came to mind with me, especially in the last couple of weeks kind of preparing for that one question that will come up, is to me, I think courage is doing the right thing all the time, even if it’s not necessarily the popular thing to do, right, or even if you end up cutting against the grain.

Jeff Johnson: Can you give me an example?

David Iles: I can. I did not betray in your story yet how you’re going to answer that question, but yeah, I got to think about that a little bit. It admittedly it’s going to bleed into the answer that I have for your question a bit, but…

Jeff Johnson: Let me ask you this: who in your life represents courage to you? Do you have people that you can look at as an example based on that definition and say that’s a courageous person—either a historical figure or people in your family or friends?

David Iles: And you answered the question for me right there. I was going to say I’ve had so many phenomenal examples from a family standpoint. I mean, both my mom and my dad. I was very blessed to grow up in just the most loving and supportive house I think you could grow up in. And they—you know, it’s funny when you’re young and you’re going through it, you sit there and think your parents are being hard on you and they’re making you do things that no one else has to do. But getting a little bit older and now having kids myself, it’s a lot easier to look at that and say, “Huh, they knew what they were doing,” and I know that myself and my siblings ended up better for it.

Beyond just my parents though, again, just having the ability—like my grandparents on both sides were very courageous people based on that definition that I gave of really going out of their way to do the right thing all the time. Frankly, even if it meant bad things for them because they cared about their community and they were deeply empathetic. And so just having the ability from a very early age to be surrounded by that… and if that’s all you know and that becomes your normal, I find that to be a very good thing.

Jeff Johnson: Do you feel like we have—are we living in a courageous culture, or do you feel like it’s lacking? You feel like that quality of courage is predominant or is it not?

David Iles: I think it’s hard to answer that question based on how much of our lives we spend looking at screens and the way that we absorb information because I think that if you’re dealing with people face-to-face or looking at the individuals in your community, you’re probably going to have a lot higher likelihood of finding that courage and finding people who are looking out for you. But if you’re living by basically taking all of your information in through social media or watching the news and things like that—no, I definitely think you’d walk away feeling like we’re lacking.

Jeff Johnson: But I like the way that you put that because you’re looking at screens and that’s the things that you’re paying attention to. But if you dig down deep, you know, you might find something different. I’ve had—David, I’ve had a couple of conversations with people this week—I told somebody this this morning that are friends of mine, people that I’ve known, but I just hadn’t taken time to pause, shut that phone off, get a cup of coffee, and press into them and say, “I want to know more about you.” And with both of these gentlemen, I would have said these are quality people, you know, good character, that sort of thing. I had no idea. I had no idea the depth of their character and the kind of pain that they had gone through and the stuff that they had walked through. So to your point, there it is. Once I stopped and took a look, the courage was marrow deep. And I just wouldn’t—I just wouldn’t have picked up on it. So maybe—maybe that’s—maybe that’s the right answer. Maybe there’s a lot of courage going on and we’re just not looking in the right place.

David Iles: Yeah, I think you’re right. And I think a lot of the times the people who yell the loudest without requiring all those questions to get there, you know, they’re the people who can tend to be focused on some of the more negative things that are out there in the world. And to your point, you sit down and you truly get to know someone and be able to ask them their story, and all of a sudden you sit there at the end of the conversation saying, “Holy cow, I had no idea who I was sitting with or all of the experiences that you’ve had.” You know, blew me away. Absolutely blew me away this week.

Jeff Johnson: Where’s courage come from? See, I get to ask all of these tough questions, David. So…

David Iles: Yeah, I was gonna say, at what point do I get to start asking you questions?

Jeff Johnson: Yeah, anytime, anytime, anytime. No, but I mean, does it come from—does it come from nurture? Does it come from the family? Does it come from your own character? Does it come from God? Is it, you know, is faith the thing that drives courage in people? Where does—where does courage come from?

David Iles: I think the bottom line is all of the above. The simplest way to put it, at least the first thought that came to my mind when you asked that question, is that courage comes from within. And I think it can come from nurture from the standpoint of kind of like what I was talking about—grew up in that very loving and supportive household. I definitely got a lot of mine from that. But I know all sorts of people who I would say are highly courageous people that didn’t grow up in the same circumstances. And it could have been from faith and growing up in the church and the passion that they got from that standpoint, or could have just been various life experiences that they had. I think there’s all sorts of areas that ultimately courage can come from, but at the end of the day, you have to cultivate it within yourself and it does come from within.

Jeff Johnson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, I want to—I want to jump in now and ask you that question, David. I want to hear the story. David Iles, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done?

David Iles: So, thank you. You know, I have thought long and hard about this, Jeff, ever since we talked about having this interview. And as much as I would love to come back and give you this one example of “here’s this super courageous thing that’s happened,” I’ve really struggled with your question and here’s how I would answer it.

And again, by defining courage as going out of your way every day to do the right thing, no matter what, I think the most courageous thing I’ve ever done is truly try to live my life that way every single day, no matter what. And here’s the story that I guess I would provide, and it does relate back to the profession that I’m in now. So again, I’m a third-generation funeral home kid. We’ve been in this business now for north of 65 years. And if you look at kind of how funeral service has changed in the last five to 10 years, you know, we’ve seen more change in the last five to 10 years than we probably had in the prior 30.

And where the profession in general is starting to kind of go is trying to offer less services at the most affordable cost possible, which really what that ends up meaning at the end of the day is “we can cremate your loved one and we don’t have to have any services at all.” And please don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for that. But there have been so many studies that we as a profession have seen, and so many families that we’ve interacted with who don’t have services and they come back later and express how much they wish that they had, or they talk about how because they just completely avoided the loss of their loved one, you know, the grief was very broken or it was completely delayed and threw them off a year later.

So where we’ve kind of cut against the grain in that regard as well—everyone is focused over here on “how how do we just make this as frankly cheap as we possibly can and try to drive a business or quantity”—we’re looking at it and saying we know that service is impactful. We know that services help people process the loss of their loved ones. And we’re going to try to do that in the most curated and personal way that we possibly can. And so one thing that we tell families a lot is when they come in, they shouldn’t go to their loved one’s funeral and have it feel like a funeral that they went to last week or the funeral that they had for their uncle a few years ago. It should be a completely curated experience for their loved one, and it’s our responsibility to make sure that we’re asking the types of questions to be able to lead the family to that experience.

And I’ll tell you the cool part is this: when we are doing our job well, which is the grand majority of the time, and you’re able to guide a family through that experience and show them that this is what it can be when it’s done the right way… you can see the look on their face at the end of it—it was still a funeral and it was still hard, but this was meaningful and we got value out of that. And you know what, Jeff, where you could look back in three years and ask me the same question and I might come back and say we were crazy for trying to cut against the grain because everyone else went in this direction and we’re trying to pull people the other… but the bottom line is that this is the right thing to do, not only for funeral service but for the families who are coming through our care. I hope that answers okay for you.

Jeff Johnson: It is—it’s a very good answer, David. So you’re talking about the persistence of maintaining that “doing the right thing” and that’s the most courageous thing, is just being consistent with that. So that presupposes there’s a tendency to—to not do that. There’s a tendency to become complacent or maybe like what we were talking about in the beginning, “death blind,” where it just becomes a job, you know, and you’re just checking a box. So when you define courage and you say the most courageous thing you’ve ever done it’s trying to stem that tide and—and—and stay against that.

David Iles: Yes, sir.

Jeff Johnson: I think that’s a—I think that’s a very good answer. So that’s a lifelong pursuit. So in that regard, you’re in the middle of it right now, the most courageous thing you’ve ever done.

David Iles: That’s right.

Jeff Johnson: But it extends home too, right? I mean, you apply that to everything that you do, not just work. I happen to give you a work example, but you try to do the best that you can and the right thing all the time.

David Iles: Yeah.

Jeff Johnson: Do you have—do you have a better perception of mortality than your friends and neighbors because of the nature of the profession that you’re in? You know, the Bible says that we’re supposed to teach us to number our days so that we’ll use our time wisely because we don’t have much time—if you live to be 120, in the grand scheme of things, that’s not much time, you know, it’s short. Do you have a better perception of that than other people because of the profession you’re in?

David Iles: I don’t know if I would say I have a better—I certainly have a different perception. And what I mean by that is this: I certainly, because I’m around it every day, I certainly see a lot more. And it’s—it’s a more ingrained reality to me than I would say it is the majority of my peers who aren’t necessarily involved in this business. But also I’m kind of seeing the very unusual circumstances too, and it’s hard. It’s hard to see that and not apply it back to yourself or the “what ifs” of that, and that’s where I kind of skew myself a little bit.

But I’ll tell you, I guess to the point of the question, the amount of times we see folks who come through our care who someone passes away in their 60s and they’ve run marathons their entire life… it’s certainly a wake-up call and does remind you that, you know, tomorrow is not guaranteed. And so to that point, yes, that certainly impacts my decision-making of how I live.

Jeff Johnson: And the reason why I ask it, because then I think if you’re—if you’re aware of how precious life is at a different level, I think that presses in on your definition of courage. And you’re most courageous thing you’ve ever done—wanting to maintain that day in and day out—because you don’t know when—when you’re going to be done.

David Iles: That’s right. That’s right.

Jeff Johnson: Wow. Is the—is the courage of a funeral director different than the courage of somebody who sells corporate real estate?

David Iles: It’s an interesting question. I would—I don’t know if it’s the courage. Certainly the application of it would be different, I mean just—just based on the job, right? So what—what I respect so truly, so much, from the funeral director standpoint is every single day our directors are walking in and they’re helping people on the worst days of their lives. And that’s what I meant earlier when I said you really have to be called to this because if you’re not, you’re going to burn out. I mean, there’s just no way that you can deal with that day in and day out. But some of the best people I know are the funeral directors that either are on our team or have been on our team or maybe they’re on a different team. But they’re just incredibly compassionate people, and to walk into that every single day and have that be what drives you—is being able to help those people on the worst days of their lives. There is a lot of courage that goes into that, Jeff. Is it—is it more courage than people who do other things? I don’t know if I’d say that, but it’s—it’s a different type of courage, if that makes sense.

Jeff Johnson: Totally does, yeah. Do you—do you identify as a courageous person? Do you feel that yourself?

David Iles: You know, I wouldn’t say on most days I would describe it as courageous, or I don’t wake up and say, “Man, I’m feeling brave today” or “I’m feeling courageous today.” But I really do try to live my life that way based on that definition I gave you. So sorry to give you a little bit of a contradiction there.

Jeff Johnson: No, no, no, because what that’s—what that’s expressing is humility, David. And I think that that’s a—I think that’s a wonderful quality, to be self-facing about that and say even the definition of the most—the way you answered it—the most courageous thing you’ve ever done is this striving for it to maintain it. I think that’s a powerful—very powerful—answer. Do you think courage can be taught? I mean, back… I do… and that sort of thing. So I’m wondering, is there something that you’re able to pass on to your kids?

David Iles: Yeah, I think it can be taught primarily through example and in through consistency, right? I mean, I think that’s how I learned. But to the point that I was driving earlier in terms of, you know, courage comes from within—not everyone’s going to pick up on that the same way. And there’s a lot of people I know who came from broken homes or not necessarily the best backgrounds who I would describe as very courageous people. And they—it didn’t come to them naturally because they didn’t have the opportunity to observe that type of behavior at home. But somehow, some way, they put themselves in a situation where they were able to witness that and able to then showcase it themselves.

Jeff Johnson: Now, you know, I’ve interviewed over a hundred people now on this podcast. I think it’s a—yeah, I think it’s just about—well over a hundred people on this podcast. And it’s so fascinating to me because everybody has a little nuance with the answer. You know, it’s the same topic, it’s the same question. But everybody’s got a different way to answer it, and it doesn’t really seem to be a common answer with one vocation. You know, all bankers answer the “what’s the most courageous thing you’ve done” question the same way, all missionaries answer it the same way, all people that are homeschooling their kids answer it the same way… it’s unique and it’s special to everybody, but it’s very identifiable as courage. You know, it’s kind of like what I heard about ferns one time—that specific kind of a plant is very identifiable as a fern, yet there’s like something like 25,000 unique variations of a fern, but they’re still all a fern. And I think courage is like that too, which is what I think makes the world so fascinating—makes it fascinating talking to you today about this too. You’re the first funeral director that I’ve ever interviewed on the program, so you get a “first” there. But let me ask you one last question here, David, and then I’ll let you go. I’m so grateful for your time. What kind of encouragement would you give to somebody who’s maybe feeling like they’re not at their best right now? They’re not courageous, they’re confronted with a thing that they’re wrestling with, you know, doing the right thing and they’re not sure, but it’s not going to be the popular thing… what would you—what would you say to them?

David Iles: I think the biggest thing that I would say is that it’s never—it’s never too late to make the right decision, right? It’s never too late to get started. And I’ll tell you what, to the question you asked me earlier, I don’t wake up and feel courageous, and some days I don’t wake up and feel very good period. But for lack of better words, you got to kind of shake it off and soldier on and sit there and try to do the right thing and try to get yourself going the right way. And I’ll tell you, when you do good things, good things happen back to you.

David Iles: And you know there are moments where I slip and I sit back and I look and I say, “Man, if I could do that one over, I wish I would have done it a different way.” And I’ll tell you this—every time that I don’t have that experience, or a lot of the times when I don’t have that experience and I look back, you just feel good about yourself, about how you treated somebody else, about how you went about your day that day. And so all that to say, if you’re not living your life that way right now, it doesn’t mean you can’t live your life that way tomorrow. And I have a feeling that if you choose to live it that way, you’re going to feel a lot better about yourself and you’re going to feel just a lot happier and feel more fulfillment. It’s never too late to get started.

Jeff Johnson: David Iles, wonderful funeral director. Man, a great courage. Third-generation business—that takes a lot of courage in and of itself right there. There’s a lot of wonderful qualities about you, but I think the part of this interview I love the most is when you talked about that lady giving you a hug of gratitude and just telling you thanks. I think that tells me and everybody that’s listening exactly what kind of courage and what kind of character you walk with. Thank you so much for being with us today, David.

David Iles: Well, thank you sir. It’s been an honor and privilege.

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