Managing Multi-State Licensing with Michaelene Dowers

Tony Russo sits down with funeral director, entrepreneur, and expat Michaelene Dowers. Moving away from their usual industry-wide discussions, the conversation shifts to Michaelene’s current life in Scotland and her new venture: Combly, an app designed to revolutionize how funeral directors track professional continuing education credits.

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Key Discussion Points:

* Life and Business Abroad: Michaelene shares her journey of relocating to Scotland to pursue a PhD, and how she established a cross-border cremated remains scattering service for families in the US and Canada looking to lay loved ones to rest in the UK.

* The Inspiration Behind Combly: After facing a stressful state audit in Indiana that resulted in a heavy financial penalty simply due to misplaced digital files, Michaelene realized the immense friction professionals face keeping track of multi-state licenses and continuing education.

* What is Combly?

* Combly is a specialized app built for funeral service professionals to manage all of their licensing information and CE certificates in one secure place.

* Users can easily upload certificates as they earn them and generate clean, comprehensive audit reports (including cover sheets) for state boards on demand.

* Covers all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Canadian provinces, with long-term goals of expanding internationally to regions like the UK and Australia as they develop structured licensing frameworks.

* Future Roadmap: Michaelene discusses plans for future updates (targeted for 2027) that will allow CE providers to log credits directly into Combly, further reducing the administrative burden on busy funeral directors.

* Industry Standards & Accountability: A frank discussion on the importance of baseline education, the realities of multi-state licensing, and how digital compliance tools can help safeguard both professionals and grieving families.

Connect & Find Michaelene:

* NFDA Annual Convention: Look out for Michaelene wandering the convention floor catching up on her own CEs. She’ll be easy to spot in her bee-themed clothing! Visit Combly.care here.