Shayda Frost and Timothy Amoui sometimes joke that they work in “innovative real estate.” After all, as Frost puts it, a burial ground is essentially “a very, very small piece of land that you own forever.”
Frost, 39, and Amoui, 36, are owners of Lincoln Memorial Group, a cemetery company that operates four cemeteries in Atlanta. The company had revenue of about $6.3 million and net income of about $1.7 million in 2025, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The business brought in an average of nearly $6 million annually from 2021 to 2025.
Although running a cemetery group may seem like an unusual career for a millennial couple, Frost’s family has “very deep ties to the cemetery and death care field,” she says. Her grandmother founded the Lincoln Memorial Group in the 1970s and passed the business on to her father.
“Growing up in the cemetery business, it’s not as weird as you think,” she says. “I remember having Easter egg hunts on the grounds of the cemetery. I remember spending Mother’s Day here and having a candlelight service around Christmas.”
Ms Frost never expected to take over the cemetery group, but following her father’s sudden death in July 2023, the business “fell into our laps overnight”, she says.
The couple left Los Angeles, where Mr. Frost was a film producer and Mr. Amoy worked in financial public relations, and moved to Atlanta to run their business.
Inheritance of “turnaround jobs”
For Frost and Amoui, managing the cemetery group was a daunting task. “Everyone we knew, industry experts, everyone we had connections to said, ‘Sell it to us,'” Frost recalled. “‘It’s too big. You guys don’t know anything about this space.'”
Still, she said, she and Ms. Amoui “came to the conclusion that with guidance and management, we could do more, we could do it bigger and better,” and decided to take on the challenge, which she says was bigger than she expected.
“When I joined, I realized, ‘Oh my God, this is a really tough job,’” she says. “I didn’t really understand what the situation was.”
One of their top priorities was modernizing the business. When he entered the office, Frost said he felt like he was “travelling back to 1974.”
Entering a business with extensive paper-recording systems felt like a “blast from the past,” Frost said.
John Falchetto/CNBC Make It
Instead of emailing each other, employees used intercoms and put paper notes in mailboxes. Frost said the company already had records management software in place, but it didn’t necessarily have all the same details as a robust system of “hundreds of thousands” of paper records. Old records existed only in paper form. “We have a room full of filing cabinets,” she says.
Two and a half years later, digitizing these records is still an ongoing effort. During that time, Frost and Amoui had to source and purchase several more Rolodexes to keep the analog file system running in parallel with the computer system until they could rely solely on the computer system.
“My north star is to get to a point where we only use digital and no longer have paper. The only time we print contracts is when the client’s family wants a copy,” Frost says. “We have to see if the state will allow it,” she said, explaining that they work in a “highly regulated space.” But at least in terms of direction, “that’s the goal,” she says.
accept an obligation that lasts “forever”
Amoui said the Lincoln Memorial Group has four main services: burial plots, burial vaults, specialized services such as opening and closing of cemeteries and mausoleums, and tombstones and markers.
Amoui said they offer both “pre-need” and “at-need” services, with “pre-need” services planned in advance and paid for in advance, while “at-need” services are purchased after death.
“Pre-need is the most important element of our business because it secures future market share,” he says. “Otherwise, we would be relying solely on mortality rates in our local vicinity.”
Mr. Frost and Mr. Amoui say they invest most of their profits back into the business. As cemetery caretakers, they believe it is their duty to “keep the space functional so families can visit their loved ones,” Frost said. And that obligation will last “forever,” Amoui added.
As cemetery business owners, Shayda Frost and Tim Amoui plan decades ahead, not years.
John Falchetto/CNBC Make It
According to state law, a portion of each cemetery property sale is placed into a “perpetual management” trust to pay for future upkeep. These trusts ensure that future owners of cemeteries can “keep the doors open, the grass mowed and the monuments kept clean” even after the cemetery reaches capacity, Amoui said.
“We’re not planning for the next two to three years in this space,” Frost says. “We are planning for the next 20 to 30 years.”
Create space to grieve and remember
Looking to the future, Frost and Amoui have plans to acquire more cemeteries. Another goal, Amoui said, is to build a funeral home on the existing site, which would allow it to provide services it doesn’t currently offer, such as helping families plan funerals and memorial services.
“It may sound very strange to hear this in the cemetery business, but growth is fundamental to our business,” Amoui says. “This will allow us to increase pay for our staff, enable us to hire more people and further strengthen our Permanent Care Fund.”
“Our mission is eternal,” says Tim Amoui.
John Falchetto/CNBC Make It
Mr. Frost and Mr. Amoui say they have been welcomed and supported by their peers. Many of his peers are nearing retirement age and are worried about finding successors for their businesses. “The big problem in this area right now is that the next generation doesn’t want these cemetery companies,” Amoui says. He says he hopes other millennials will follow in their footsteps. He said the industry may not be as “glam or glamorous” as others, but with technological advances, cemeteries are virtually “future-proof.”
From the outside looking in, running a cemetery may seem like a murky business, but Frost admits it can be difficult. “Some days are harder than others,” she says. “Certainly, we need some sort of wall of separation. We have to protect ourselves.”
But there’s more to it than that, said Frost, who has seen families come together and share their fondest memories with their loved ones. “We were invited to a picnic to celebrate my uncle’s birthday, so we brought some of his favorite foods to honor him,” she says. “I feel like I’m communicating more than grieving. I feel like this space is meant for exactly that.”
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