This month, Kehs Communications turns 26. In this reflective anniversary episode, Amy shares the story of why she started her business in 2000, what's changing for her right now and the one daring decision she's made about what comes next. She is also sharing the single lesson 26 years has driven home about what actually helps a museum thrive.

Links from the Episode:

• The Museum Professional's Summer Survival Guide (full series, now in one PDF)
• Join Amy's email list for weekly museum communications tips
• Come see Amy speak at the New England Museum Association Conference
• Last year's anniversary episode: Episode 43 From Idea to Impact

More Free Resources for Museums:

• Getting Visitors Through Your Museum’s Doors: Building Connection in a Noisy World ebook
• Museum Planning Calendar
• Museum Metrics Template

About the host:

Amy Kehs is a brand strategist and communications expert for museums. She has owned Kehs Communications since 2000 and has worked for the most renowned and well-loved museums in Washington, D.C. Her goal is to ensure that museums thrive into the next century and she hopes people will come to love museums as much as she does. Her proven process sets up proactive communication habits for museums, cultivating relationships with visitors who will want to return and bring a friend. Want to talk more? Click this link to book a call.

This month my business turns 26 years old, and today I want to tell

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you the story of how it started, what's

changing for me right now, and the

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daring thing I've decided to do next.

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And I want to talk about how

you can be a little daring too.

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Let's get started

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Hello, and welcome to the

Love My Museum podcast.

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I'm your host, Amy Kehs,

and I love museums.

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I'm also a brand strategist and

communications expert for museums and

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the creator of the Love My Museum method.

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So if you work in a museum and you

want to get more visitors through your

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doors, you are in the right place.

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My method will help with that.

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I've spent decades helping museums

just like yours become places their

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communities can't stop talking about.

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So here we are, September.

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This is a big month for me because Kehs

Communications turns 26 this month.

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That's more than a quarter of a century

of doing this work, and I still love

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it as much as I did at the start.

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If you were with me last year,

you heard the full origin story

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of my business, the setbacks in

those first five years, all of it.

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I'm not going to retell the whole thing

today, but if you want to check it out,

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I'll link it in the show notes.

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Today I wanna do something a little

different, and I want to talk about

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where I am right now, 26 years in,

and what all of it has taught me

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about what actually helps a museum.

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Let me start with why I built this

business in the first place, because

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it does matter for the rest of the

story, so we'll do a quick recap.

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I started Kehs Communications in 2000.

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I was newly married, and I wanted

to build something flexible so I

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could be home with our future kids.

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That was the whole idea.

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It wasn't a big vision.

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I didn't have a five-year

plan or a business plan.

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I just knew that I wanted to do work

that I loved on terms that would let

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me be there for my future family.

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And do you know what?

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My business did exactly that

for 26 years, and it grew up

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right alongside my family too.

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Now, starting a business in

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was not like it is today.

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There was no quick Google

search to tell you how to do it.

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There was no social media.

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There were no influencers

or online business coaches.

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I actually drove to the county

small business office where I lived.

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I picked up brochures and flyers, and

I filled in some forms by hand, and I

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think I wrote a check for, like, $25 or

something, and that's how you did it.

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A lot of people thought that I was

crazy to leave a steady job But I

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had had my own sort of Devil Wears

Prada moment, and I felt like I had

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no choice but to do something daring.

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So while they thought I was crazy,

I thought I was being daring.

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Now, if you're on my email list,

you will hear more about that

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Devil Wears Prada story next week.

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Uh, I'll leave the link in the show notes

if you'd like to join that community.

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And here's the honest part.

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No one taught me how to run a business.

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I did PR for other people all day

long, but I never did PR for myself.

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So for that first 19 years, I

just waited for the phone to ring,

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And that sort of worked.

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I had amazing clients.

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I worked really hard.

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I had great relationships.

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And so my business ran on referrals.

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Here is why this year's business

anniversary episode is hitting a

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little differently, even different

from the quarter of a century

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episode that I did last year.

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I'm recording this a few weeks

early because next week we are

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dropping our youngest off at college.

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The business I built to have

the freedom to work from home

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and be with my kids did its job.

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I was able to go to the nursery

school Mother's Day tea while

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still write press releases

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and have press previews

for exhibit openings.

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I was able to be home

with them on sick days

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I was able to read to their kindergarten

class and chaperone the middle school

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field trip and make it to all of

those high school baseball games.

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And now those kids are grown,

and my husband and I are walking

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back into a quieter house.

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And so I'm sitting here this

year feeling two things at once.

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I'm so proud of what those 26

years gave me, and I'm very

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aware that a chapter is ending.

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And that's the piece I really

want you to hear today.

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I am a different person than the woman who

ran this business for its first 19 years.

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For almost two decades, I had no website,

no marketing, nothing on social media.

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Waiting for the phone to ring was

the whole strategy, and I didn't

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even think of it as a strategy.

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I got work through those

relationships and referrals,

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and it carried me along the way.

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And those same first clients are

still my clients, and I could

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not have done it without them.

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But I look back now, and I can't help

but think about all the museums I could

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have helped in those years, and I didn't,

simply because they couldn't find me

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And then came the last five

years and everything shifted.

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You've probably heard me tell this story

before if you've been listening to the

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podcast, but when 2020 happened and

my museum clients had to close their

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doors for a while, I couldn't sit still.

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so I jumped into the world of online

business to keep things afloat.

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And while I was in there, I was studying.

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I was watching what was working in

communications and marketing and audience

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engagement, the same things global

brands spend real money to figure out.

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I was reading the latest data on internal

and external communications at museums

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and seeing where the real gaps were.

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And I was adding all of that to

what I had seen, of course, hands-on

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with museum clients and also to my

own years working inside museums.

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And in the last five years, I have

really been able to harness all that

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I've learned and create something

that is actually helping museums, not

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just the ones lucky enough to already

know me or have worked with me before.

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And so that's where I am.

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In my personal life, one giant chapter

is closing, the chapter of caring for

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those closest and dearest to my heart

day in and day out, and a new chapter

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is beginning, this empty nest chapter.

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And I'm daringly stepping into it.

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And I'm so excited to

see what it has in store.

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I'm so proud and excited to see

where my kids' lives will go.

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And while this one chapter is closing

at home, it's also creating so many

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more possibilities for the next chapter

in my career and for my business

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I used that word a second ago,

daring, and it wasn't an accident.

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Daring is my word of the year.

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If you've never done a word of the

year project, the idea is simple.

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Instead of a long list of resolutions,

you pick one word to be your guide for

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the year, a word that you want to grow

into or maybe be reminded of or just

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sort of meditate on throughout the year.

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I've done this for a little while now.

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Some of the past years

I've had the word rise.

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I did the word shine, space, joy,

and this year I picked daring

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and I picked it on purpose.

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I knew that 2026, that this huge chapter

would be closing and a new one would

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be opening, and I knew I'd need to do

some daring things to step into it well.

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So now I'm going to say something

daring It has me thinking hard about

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the one lesson that has run through

all 26 years, through the hundreds of

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client projects that I've worked on,

through the research that I did and the

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case studies I read, and here it is.

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Here's the daring thing.

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The museums that are thriving

aren't necessarily the ones

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with the biggest budgets.

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They're the consistent ones.

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I have watched this over and over.

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You do not need to spend a

zillion dollars on fancy marketing

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or big PR firms or ad buys.

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You do not need to hire me to do

public relations or media relations

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for your exhibit once a year.

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What you need to do is your own

PR, your own communications, and

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you need to have a strong, steady,

consistent foundation and process.

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A message that you use again and again,

and your community needs to hear from

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you, from you regularly, not just when

there's a big e-exhibit to promote.

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Being top of mind is

not about spending more.

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It's about showing up steadily in

the right places with a message

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people actually can repeat.

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Journalists do not want to hear from me

as the PR firm, they want to hear from you

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And I want to teach you how to do that.

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They want to talk to you.

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They want you to be

their point of contact.

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Now, will teaching you this

put me out of business?

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Quite possibly.

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But you know what?

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I am here to teach you how to do this now.

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That is my daring move for the next

chapter of my business, because that means

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that more museums will thrive That is a

legacy and honestly, this shift isn't as

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scary as it sounds because the teaching

is already the part that I've been doing

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and one of the things I love the most.

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Let me tell you about one

of my ongoing clients.

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They were actually my very first

client back in two thousand, and I

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am still working with them today.

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The last couple of years, a lot of what

I've done for them is train their interns.

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I've taught them how to

write a press release.

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I've walked them through all kinds

of everyday processes, like how to

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post things on the museum website

or-- Oh, one time we even did sort

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of like a little bonus training, and

we worked on their LinkedIn profiles,

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and we worked on their resumes.

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And two of those interns went

on to land jobs at the museum

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that-- where they were working.

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I was so excited for them.

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I'm so, so proud of them, and that has

been one of my very favorite things

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to do these last couple of years

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I started as an intern at a museum,

and I know how important it is

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for museums to inspire the next

generation of museum professionals

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And I've talked to so many museums about

not wanting to take on interns because

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they don't have the bandwidth or they've--

are worried that it will be too much work.

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And

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that makes me sad.

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and so it's something that I've

started doing, and I really like it.

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Here's another one.

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Any time I go into a museum to

help with an exhibit opening,

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we always do media training.

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I love doing the media training.

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I love standing in a room helping a

team get ready to talk to the press and

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watching those messages click for them,

especially after spending months or years

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working on an exhibit to see everything

sort of come together into those

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talking points and those key messages.

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At the end of a really long, tiring

process, I love seeing their eyes

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light up and think about, "Yes,

this, this is what I created."

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I love that.

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I also love speaking at conferences.

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In fact, I just found out I'll be speaking

at the New England Museum Association

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Conference again this November.

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If you are thinking about

attending, let me know.

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I would love to say hi in person.

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I'll leave the link to the conference

in the show notes You've probably

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heard that old saying, "If you give

a man a fish, he eats for a day.

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If you teach a man a fish,

he eats for a lifetime."

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And that is exactly what I want to do now.

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For 26 years, I have been happy

to be the person you call to catch

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the fish, and I will still do that.

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I am still taking on

implementation clients.

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I am still catching the fish.

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I'm still doing the press previews.

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I'm writing the press releases

and helping with the interns.

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But more than anything now, I

want to teach you how to fish.

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Something else has slowly shifted

over the last five years too.

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More and more clients have started

asking me about internal communications.

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And internal communications

is one of those things that

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nobody really owns at a museum.

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It doesn't get a lot of attention,

and it tends to fall through the

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cracks, which was the whole idea

this year behind the summer series,

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the Museum Summer Survival Guide

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Speaking of the Summer Survival

Guide, I've now put the whole

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series together into one PDF.

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So if you're new here, or if you lost

track of some of the emails, or if

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you just want it all in one place,

I've got it linked in the show notes.

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It's a practical way to start getting some

of the weight off of your shoulders so the

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important things don't fall through the

cracks when you're busy or short-staffed,

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or you just wanna go on vacation.

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So go grab it, and I'll also

remind you again at the end.

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Now, back to consistency,

because this is really important.

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The museums that are loved by their

community are the consistent ones.

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They may not be the ones outspending

everyone else, but they are

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showing up in the same place with

a clear message week after week.

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When someone in their community

is deciding where to spend a

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Saturday, that museum is already

right there, top of mind.

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That kind of steady presence

is something that you build.

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It's not something that you buy.

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Because they are consistent and top

of mind, people come to visit them.

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And when those people walk through the

door, they are consistently greeted with

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warmth and an amazing visitor experience,

so that when they leave, they can't

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wait to come back and bring a friend

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That relationship building is

going to help you with visitorship,

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but it will also help you with

memberships and fundraising.

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Consistency is something that you

can build no matter your size.

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It doesn't take money you don't have.

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It just takes a system and the

decision that it's a priority and

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you're going to keep showing up.

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So here's your action for this week,

and it's really just some thinking.

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No big project, no to-do list.

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I just want you to sit and

think about two questions.

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First, what is your strategy for

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what is one daring thing that

your museum could do between

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now and the end of the year?

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Second, what is your strategy for

being consistent so that the visitor

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who walks through your door falls in

love with your museum and they can't

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wait to come back and bring a friend?

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You don't have to solve

either one this week.

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I just want you to think about them.

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That thinking is where

the next chapter begins.

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Before I go, don't forget to grab the

Summer Survival Guide if you haven't yet.

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It's the easiest first step towards that

kind of steady, consistent communications

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that we've been talking about today, and

the link is right there in the show notes.

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Thank you so much for being part of

this Love My Museum podcast community.

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Truly, thank you.

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26 years in, and I still get to

spend my days helping people who

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love museums as much as I do.

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You are also a part of this

anniversary celebration, and

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I couldn't do it without you.

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That's all for today.

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Keep loving your museum,

and I'll see you next time