Ep. 02 — Introducing the “Love my Museum” Podcast
I'm Amy Kehs, and welcome to the debut episode of the “Love my Museum” podcast, your go-to resource for anyone that works in a museum. In this episode, we'll get to know each other a bit better and I'll share the behind-the-scenes story of how and why this podcast came to be.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00]
Hey, I'm Amy Kehs, and welcome to the debut episode of the “Love my Museum” podcast, your go-to resource for anyone that works in a museum. In this first episode, we'll get to know each other a bit better and I'll share the behind-the-scenes story of how and why this podcast came to be. Let's get started.
Welcome to the first episode of the “Love my Museum” podcast. The idea to start a podcast has been something I've been thinking about for a long time now. And I'm really excited that it's finally happening. I thought today for this first episode that I would tell you a little bit about me and my background, and also give you the behind-the-scenes story of how and why I'm starting a podcast.
[00:01:00]
My name is Amy Kehs, and I've been working in museums for 30 years. I started as a volunteer when I was a junior in college, and my first job out of college was in that same museum.
In 2000, I started my own business—Kehs Communications, a public relations consulting business. And even as that small PR business, most of my work was with museums. In 2020 when the pandemic hit, all of my museum clients had to shut their doors. And so I needed to pivot my business to stay open. And so I pivoted to online business owners. I had amazing, amazing clients from all over the world. And most of the work that I was doing for these online business owners was with brand messaging and finding their brand's voice.
[00:02:00]
Now I've always been fascinated by the psychology behind building a successful brand. And so this was really fun work. Also during this time, I learned a lot about my own business. I took a lot of online courses. I did a lot of reading. I studied different kinds of communication. And while most of my career, my job had been to work on media relations for the museums that I was working with, I was able to return to studying some communications topics that had always fascinated me. Brand messaging, internal communications, work flows, and how all of these things related to productivity. Online businesses are usually small and they need to work smarter and not harder. And so learning some of their tips and tricks and how they do this was really inspirational.
[00:03:00]
Some of those strategies were around internal communications, and I learned how internal communications can really affect your work environment. How you foster those relationships at work really impacts how progress is made on projects. And so I started thinking about how much all of these things would really help museums.
As the museums started opening their doors back up, I started teaching my museum clients some of these things. And as we started implementing these habits and strategies, the difference in how they worked was amazing. Another thing I know about museums was that we tend to work more reactively than proactively, and that causes a lot of stress.
[00:04:00]
As we implemented these habits and processes around communication and productivity, it also really made a difference, not just in the work that they were able to accomplish, but also in how they were living and how they felt about their work. And so the name of this podcast, “Love my Museum,” has two meanings.
One meaning has to do with that external audience and getting visitors through the door. One of my favorite PR quotes is by Walt Disney. He said, “Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” And that's exactly what you want with your museum. How do you not only get people to come in the door, but to come back and bring a friend?
And we'll talk more about this in future episodes, but it's about the importance of creating a relationship with visitors that is going to sustain your visitorship in your museum.
[00:05:00]
And spoiler alert. This is not just the job of the communications office.
On the other side of that is that as we were coming out of the pandemic, I saw that the museum employees that I was working with… I could tell that they weren't really loving their museum much themselves anymore. They didn't have that camaraderie that I had had with my own coworkers when I was a museum employee. They didn't seem to have each other's backs.
They didn't even seem to be on the same page.
Once I added in these internal communication strategies, again, it led to happier employees and I think it made them love their museum again. Now, the next thing that happened was kind of amazing. I really loved working with the online business owners, but I made the really tough decision to niche down in the work that I was doing and only work with museums.
[00:06:00]
As soon as I did that, as soon as I committed to that, I changed my messaging, I changed my services—I was fully booked.
I had more projects and clients than I knew what to do with. Now, yes, that's a great problem to have, but I really wanted to help more people. I wanted to help more museums. I have worked with some of the most well-loved museums on the planet. My goal has always been to ensure that museums thrive into the next century.
And I really want everyone to come to love museums as much as I do. But there's only one of me. And so I was trying to think, how can I help more? How can I help more museums?
That is why I started this podcast. And that's why I started the “Love my Museum” podcast. It really is my love letter to museums and the people that work in them.
[00:07:00]
And so that's it. That's our first episode. On this podcast, we'll talk about making your workplace a lovely place to be while also making your museum a place your community loves. This podcast is for anyone that works in a museum, because we all have that same goal—to help people love your museum.
Show Links
Want to learn more? Check out my website at: www.lovemymuseum.com
You can also join my email list here: https://bit.ly/LMMpodcast_signup
