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