Podcasting has taken the world by storm! Public podcasting, that is. Private podcasting is a newer and lesser known format but is equally powerful in its ability to inspire, educate and connect.

In short, podcasts are “shows” that you can subscribe to on a personal device, such as your smart phone or computer. Podcast shows, much like TV shows, have episodes and are themed. Podcast shows can be about anything –– from financial investments to vegan baking, self-development to unsolved murder mysteries. Private podcasts can take on different topics that are of particular interest to a family, organization or business.

This short blog post explains the difference between public and private podcasting, the unique value of private podcasts and describes the kinds of companies, organisations and families that might benefit from creating or use private podcasts.

Difference Between Public and Private Podcasting

Public podcasts are usually free for the listener. You simply click a subscribe button and listen to episodes whenever you like. Similar to commercial and public television, a public podcast show is paid for by the advertisers or show sponsors. In some cases, the creators sell their services either explicitly or implicitly and make back the “investment” of creating their show when listeners buy their product or service that they learn about in they podcast. But, what about private podcasting?

Private podcasting, on the other hand, is designed for internal communications for a specific audience, and only authorized users can listen to the content. The distribution is the main difference. Companies, organisations and even private families can commission the production of a private podcast to communicate with their employees, select community, or family members.

The Unique Value of Private Podcasting

StoryKeep, a niche media company for families and enterprises, produces private podcasts for families. We work with families that want to stay connected across multiple generations. StoryKeep collaborates with families to create shows that highlight a family’s stories, history, and educational topics through the voices of the family members themselves. StoryKeep also works with companies and enterprises to create podcasts as tools for on-board employees, providing tutorials and inspiring their staff with episodes about the company’s vision or future goals. Feel free to be in touch to learn more. Private podcasting can be a powerful communication tool for families and businesses that want to disseminate information, but more importantly, stay connected for a greater purpose.

Podcasting is practical. People can listen in their own time and at their own pace. Unlike video that requires a person to sit and watch or written documents like newsletters that require a person to sit and read, podcasting is a “moveable feast” of stories and ideas. People can listen while they commute, cook or exercise.

Does Your Family / Company Need a Private Podcast?

Family Podcasting

If your family owns or runs a business or enterprise together, your collective identity, values and purpose are tied up together. Being on “the same page” is a vital part of your continued success and growth. Private podcasting is ideal for medium to large, multi-generational families that have a vested interest in keeping connected.

Families with 20 or more adult members, especially those families with branches that live in different places around the country or globe, can find tremendous value in private podcasting. Your family’s podcast “shows” can be on topics that effect or interest nearly everyone or they can be specifically designed for one generation (i.e. “the kids”). Here are some show examples:

— Grandparents or parents telling their life stories, told in episodes

— Grandchildren interviewing older family members about the family history

— Conversations between siblings about the family business history

— Your family’s vision, mission and values told through different family members’ perspectives

— Educational topics like budgeting, philanthropy, choosing a career, etc

Your common history and heritage is one place to start, but perhaps you’ve outlined your family’s values in a charter or constitution. Honouring your stories and important people in the family allows new members to step up and take their place.

If your family has archival audio recordings of people talking, singing, presenting or playing music, these can be incorporated into your family’s private podcast.

In essence, you are creating a dynamic, ever-growing archive that allows everyone to engage, learn and value their shared identity.

Business and Enterprise Podcasting

Companies and businesses can use private podcasting to communicate with their staff and leadership. Your “shows” can be on topics that effect or interest nearly everyone or they can be specifically designed for one group (i.e. “the tech division”). Here are some podcast show examples:

— Your company history told by the founders themselves

— Staff interviewing leadership on topics they find valuable

— Divisions or team reporting on their recent developments for the rest of the company

— Vision, mission and values told through different stories and/or perspectives

— Tutorial topics for on-boarding, advanced education or routine tasks

Feel free to be in touch with StoryKeep to learn more about creating your own private podcast.

Communicating with your family is critical, but it’s not always easy. Getting people’s attention and sharing a message that resonates with them requires some forethought. Here at StoryKeep, we help families share their stories, histories and educational information to strengthen their connections with each other across generations and geography.

StoryKeep produces private podcasts for families, businesses and enterprises. If you would like to gain a solid understanding for how the emerging platform of private podcasting (both audio & video) can help families and enterprises succeed, we invite you to attend one of our upcoming webinars. Links for registration are just below.

This webinar will acquaint you with a new tool for: 

— Documenting and sharing diverse family narratives

— Educating Rising Gen, married-ins and others

— Addressing critical, sometimes awkward conversations

— Connecting family across generations + geography

Topics Covered:

— Top 3 themes that strengthen cohesion and learning

— Security: What makes a podcast truly secure, not just private?

— Case Studies of real-life family-owned podcasts

— Recording technology

Most of us don’t emotionally connect with data. Statistics are interesting, but they don’t spur us into action. When you activate human empathy, which storytelling naturally does, people are neurologically apt to care and to give. In short, every charitable cause needs strong storytelling. Stories touch us. Stories jolt us into action.

This year, StoryKeep is using the power of story in a new way.

In 2020, StoryKeep established a nonprofit media arm, The Totem Project. Alongside our family history work, we are translating charitable goals into powerful, personal stories for the common good. Our cornerstone initiative is a podcast called Totem. Every week, Totem shares one person’s story of meaningful change: the first wheelchair-bound, accredited nurse in New York City tells the story of her physical transformation and its relationship to her work. A formerly incarcerated man talks about how Shakespearean acting slowly sculpted him into a role model for young men and families.

If you support a charity or cause that needs its story told, be in touch. We collaborate with charities and benefactors to find special stories that exhibit their impact. We don’t make gala videos or “about” videos for a website homepage. These are probing stories that stop people in their tracks. These are beautifully-crafted, tightly edited works that move people, dare we say, change people.

If you have a favorite charity or cause with an amazing human story to tell, be in touch.

For years, businesses have used private podcasts as a powerful tool for internal communications. Now, StoryKeep is helping families unlock the power of private podcasting to share their personal stories, knowledge and histories.

Imagine…

– Your grandmother’s life story divided into bite-size podcast episodes that live in your smartphone.
– Your family business uses its private podcast to disseminates on-boarding information for employees and new family members.
– Your family council creates a podcast that includes voices from all four generations. Topics covered? Memorable vacations, philanthropy, living a life of purpose and more.

But, what makes it private? Private podcasts are only accessible by direct invitation. So, only the individuals who receive an invitation can subscribe and listen. Unlike public podcasts, private podcasts are designed for a very select group of listeners.

Podcasting Strengthens Family Councils

In order for a council to effectively lead and govern a family enterprise, members must communicate and understand perspectives, values and ideas brought by other members. Podcasting is an engaging and effective tool for documenting and disseminating stories, history and knowledge across generations, as well as distance. Private podcasts can serve a variety of functions depending on a family’s goals: as an archive, a communication hub, a space for learning, and more.

You can listen to a podcast while you do other activities (i.g. cooking). Podcasts fit into daily life where written and visual formats require singular attention. Unlike in-person and even web-based meetings, podcasts are recorded, easily retrievable and often theme-based. They live securely on a person’s smartphone or desktop. You are “pinged” when new content is available. Imagine receiving notifications like these…

This article was originally published in FOXConnects. You can download a PDF version of this article here: Advice From A Filmmaker.

I spend much of my professional time working out of my right brain – aka the artistic side of our craniums. When I walk into wealth advisory forums, I immediately notice something: I stick out like a sore thumb. Most of the advisors deal in the realm of numbers, investments, strategy, and business. All good stuff and all fairly foreign to me. At first, I wondered if I should I read up on annuities. After dozens of conversations with family members and advisors, I have surmised that it is best that I leave annuities to the experts and instead provide hard-hitting advice garnered from the world of filmmaking.

My profession provides me with the opportunity to creatively collaborate with some of the most thoughtful and financially successful families in the world. As a legacy filmmaker floating in a sea of tax attorneys, wealth consultants, and risk strategists, I’ve learned that the techniques I use in my work can be applied to a whole host of settings.This is my attempt to translate some right-brain know-how on the art of multi-generational connection for application in a left-brain playing field.

Tip #1: Forget the Questions and Listen

When I first begin working with a family on a film project, someone invariably asks me about my interview questions. How do you come up with your questions? Could you send them to me? In your role, whatever it may be, you probably feel it’s pretty smart to arrive at meetings prepared. You likely bring specific questions to guide a conversation. I’m here to urge you to do just the opposite. Come with a blank mind. Lose your list of questions.

The point of a conversation is to share ideas. Through sharing ideas, we open the door to connection. Connection builds trust and can be revealing – offering the opportunity for progress of thought. If you come to a conversation  with strong opinions and a rigid list of questions,  you’ve cut things off at the pass. Instead: listen. As much as you can bear it, come to family meetings, especially ones that include multiple generations of your family, with a beginner’s mind. Bring your full, undivided attention to the doorstep of others in the room. This is a new approach that will, no doubt, catch everyone off guard. At least two things will happen when you do this:

1. Critical information may come to the fore that your questions would never have elicited.

2. The person you are listening to will feel respected. 

If you are the “wealth builder,” you might be looking down the barrel of succession planning. You need at least one or two of your rising gen to step up to the plate.  If you are an advisor facilitating a meeting around a succession plan, you need a clear and powerful consensus to build that strategy. All of this requires trust and connection. There will be plenty of time for your lists of ideas. Your invaluable experience will be sought out. But first, you must be present and be quiet. See what reveals itself. Nothing could be more important than hearing the deepest underpinnings of familial concerns before making a business move.

I won’t lie to you, the whole “waiting quietly” business can be awkward at times. And furthermore, it can feel like you aren’t doing much. That’s hard for a Type A person. But take a deep breath and give it a go. In my work of documenting family stories,  I frequently depend on this technique to extract the best material from whomever I am recording.

If you have established trust with your kids, take out your “be quiet / open mind” tool. And, if you don’t have much trust established with your kids, I would urge you to sharpen that tool like your legacy depends on it.

Tip #2: Have Fun

Mitzi Perdue approached me during a conference focused on family enterprise and we eventually built a substantial connection around one important question: “What makes a family stick together?” Mitzi is the widow of the late Frank Perdue (the poultry magnate) and the daughter of Ernest Henderson, co-founder of the Sheraton Hotel Chain. Mitzi has a deep understanding of how to create and sustain a successful family business. How I interpret it, Mitzi recognizes the power of facilitating parallel play.

“Family vacations are time apart from day-to-day business and normal family affairs. It’s a special time,” Mitzi said during a session I attended where she spoke on the topic of How To Make Your Family Business Last. When we are enmeshed with our loved ones in financial affairs and spend substantial time in serious discussions that make us want to tear our hair out, we need opportunities to connect over fun experiences. The younger people in your family need to be integrated and appreciated for their tremendous potential. For some reason, it can be difficult to see that in a boardroom.

When I first meet with a family, they ask me, How long do book projects usually take? and What’s a reasonable timeline to expect for this film? Great questions. I have answers to these questions. The more important issue, however, is one that many people miss.  The time spent collaborating on a family project is parallel play, the same vacation concept Mitzi campaigns for in her books. If family members enjoy being around one another, if they can bear to be in the same room with each other, they are better set up to attack the nitty-gritty details of shared assets, governance, and tax options. So, maybe a film about the family’s history or a multi-generational family vacation to the Dolomites seems like a luxury, but if it gets your Paul talking to your Paulette, we’ve solved a big problem, haven’t we?

This concept of parallel play – where people vacation/creatively collaborate adjacent to one  another – is a human skill mastered as early as our first birthday. We humans inherently know how to do parallel play. What’s missing is the invite. I’ve seen 30-year-olds to 90-year-olds work on family legacy projects with me and find new interest in one another and their shared identities.

If you want your kids to care about financial education or what it means to take over the reigns, try my advice: intentionally start with fun experiences that connect you.

Tip #3: Have a Great Opening Sequence

In creating a book or a film about a person’s life story or a broad family history, it is critical to invest considerable thought into the book’s cover or a film’s opening sequence. The first pages of a book or first 15 seconds of a film should communicate to the audience this is going to be interesting. The opening sequence should intrigue the audience. It should create a question that must be answered.

Engaging children is not so different. You likely imbue fun into your day-to-day interactions with your family, but many of us drop the ball when we move into the affairs of a family office. It becomes all business. “We must accomplish x, y, z.” Approaching the younger generation with this sober tone might suit the central work at hand, but it is a terrible opening sequence.

When working with families, I am charged with creating a compelling narrative that delivers a meaty message. The creative problem is how to draw the audience to that message. Mystery, color, emotion, humor. These are openers than get  my viewers to the first act. Invest considerable time reflecting on an opening sequence that makes your loved ones wonder: what’s the bigger story here? There are consultants aplenty who can teach your kids about investments. Your job is to set things up like the master film director that you are.

The importance of connecting with your children, whether they are ten years old or sixty years old, never diminishes. The investment you make in them comes back ten fold in the family office setting and in innumerable, intangible ways  in your life with them. Start with a beginner’s mind. Leave your old opinions at the door. Create opportunities for connection. Send out the invites. Concern yourself with how to craft a great opener to the story of their success.

This article was originally published in FOXConnects. You can download the article here: Advice From A Filmmaker.