A conversation with Helen Jonsen, founder of Helen Jonsen Media. Helen believes in the importance of authentic stories that resonate with other people in amplifying an organization's mission.
Helen is the founder and chief storyteller at Helen Jonsen Media, offering media coaching and impact communications. She is on a mission to help the world be a better place. As a professional communicator, she has had a kaleidoscope career in media with decades of experience as a journalist, media coach, speaker, voice-over talent, writer, media relations pro, and strategist. Helen brings this depth of knowledge to leaders and organizations advocating for good.
Helen shared that from a young age she knew she wanted to be a journalist. She was a storyteller, who loved telling as well as listening to stories. She remembers growing up and being surrounded by news, whether it was the radio station her mom listened to, the newspaper her parents read cover-to-cover, or the six o'clock news with Walter Cronkite they watched together before dinner.
Helen witnessed the seismic shifts that took place in the media landscape, from the clacking of typewriters to the click of digital media. She navigated these shifts by persistently learning about the new evolving technologies, and adapting as necessary to the changes. Today, she coaches individuals and organizations to become stronger speakers, presenters, interviewees and advocates, and to to use media to amplify their message.
“I think what I enjoy most is the combination of talking, teaching, putting the words together, but also strengthening the position of other people, amplifying what they do and showing their missions so that we're building something good together. I like to sit in a room and hear about someone's backstory or about a mission and what it drives, and then I want to hear the stories that make that work, because it's the stories, the authentic, real stories, that resonate with other people.” - Helen Jonsen
Some takeaways:
- Always be learning. Helen was a journalist. She and her husband, a television cameraman, ran a video production business for corporations, nonprofits, and international news organizations who needed news coverage in America. As the media business changed with the growth of the internet, Helen knew that she had to keep learning whatever technology was around her. She needed to be aware of how the equipment the business used was changing, and what the changes meant to her and her husband, their business, and their clients.
- When your industry is changing, consider other things you could do professionally with your skills. Helen lived through the big layoffs that took place in digital media, which led her to consider using all her skills toward mission-driven work. As a result, she used her skills of writing, curiosity, willingness to learn and relationship building as well as her strategic and executive skills to work in the public sector providing communication.
- Know that the language you use can empower or disempower you. Helen works with clients and their stakeholders on basic communication skills, from how they answer the phone, to how they represent themselves in networking situations, to how they introduce colleagues and how they introduce themselves. All these interactions have an impact on how others perceive you, as well as on how you perceive yourself and your connection to the organization’s mission.
About the guest:
Helen Jonsen is the founder and chief storyteller at Helen Jonsen Media – offering media coaching and impact communications to organizations, leaders, and advocates on a mission to do good.
Her kaleidoscope career includes being head of public affairs communication for the NYC Economic Development Corp. and the Westchester County District Attorney. As a journalist, she held editorial roles at local, national, and international television networks and major publishers including Forbes and Bonnier. Helen has been published in many outlets and authored or contributed to several books. She is a public speaker on topics revolving around advocacy, communication skills, and life’s challenges.
Helen is a mom of four grown children, an American with an Aussie connection, a New Yorker, and a Hudson Valley resident.
Website: helenjonsen.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenjonsen
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HelenJonsenHJMedia/
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Helen Jonsen
I think what I enjoy most is the combination of talking, teaching, putting the words together, but also strengthening the position of other people, amplifying what they do, and showing their missions so that We're building something good together, right? A position to do good. I think those are the combinations.
I like to sit in a room and hear, hear about someone's backstory, or about a mission and what it drives. And then I want to hear the stories that make that work. Because it's the stories, the authentic, real stories that resonate with other people.
Narrator
Welcome to Making Change With Your Money. A podcast that highlights the stories and strategies of women who experienced a big life transition and overcame challenges as they redefined financial success for themselves.
Now here's your host, Certified Financial Planner, Laura Rotter.
Laura Rotter
So I am so excited to have as my guest today, Helen Jonsen. Helen is the founder and chief storyteller at Helen Johnson Media. Offering media coaching and impact communications to organizations, leaders, and advocates on a mission to do good.
Her kaleidoscope career. I love that word. Includes being head of public affairs communication for the New York city economic development corporation and the Westchester County district attorney as a journalist. She held editorial roles at local, national, and international television networks, and major publishers including Forbes and Bonaire.
She's a public speaker on topics revolving around advocacy, communication skills and life's challenges. So welcome Helen to the making change with your money podcast.
Helen Jonsen
Thank you so much for having me, Laura. This is so great. I look forward to this whole conversation.
Laura Rotter
So I'm going to start with my same question, which is what was money like in your family growing up Helen?
Helen Jonsen
Tight, tight was the start of the word. We weren't poor, but They had to make ends meet, right? We relied on dad's one salary, but my mother was the bookkeeper. She was the one who carefully watched the money, doled out the money. When dad's paycheck would come in, it would be not even a paycheck, probably a pay packet every two weeks.
And that's when she sat down and she paid the local shops who would hold credit until the paycheck came in or the pay packet came in, and then she would also sit there and look through whatever it was. Tuitions, other costs, whatever the monthly costs were, and she would balance that checkbook to the penny.
And if it didn't balance, she'd start all over again. And I, she would do everything at the dining room table. We had a very small house with a lot of people. I'm the youngest of six. And at periods of time, either an elderly aunt or a cousin or someone else would also live with us in this little city house.
And so everything was done on the dining room table. After dinner was over, you cleared the table, people did homework, and mom pulled out her books. We have a wonderful photo of her sitting at the dining room table with a pile of things that she was going through to do her books. So that's my memory of all of that.
If you needed money for something extra, you really had to discuss it and see if that was possible. I started working at 14 to earn money to be able to help offset the cost of Anything, whether I wanted to go on a school thing or whether I wanted to buy a pair of shoes or a little outfit. And even when it came down to odds and ends for school, if I wanted a new fancier notebook or something, that would all come out of my money.
Laura Rotter
Oh, thanks for sharing that, Helen. I love that your mother clearly was the one who was in charge of the finances. Certainly nowadays, it's not unique to hear of, you know, the, even if the husband or the man may be a primary breadwinner that, that women do balance checkbooks, but I haven't heard it so much from people when they were growing up, where did you go up? You said it was a city home?
Helen Jonsen
Mount Vernon, New York.
Laura Rotter
Oh man, oh my god.
Helen Jonsen
On the west side of Mount Vernon in a house that my father had grown up in, a house my grandparents built from the legacy of a family who had helped found West Mount Vernon in 1852 as, as German immigrants and German business owners. So we have a long history there.
Laura Rotter
Long history in, uh, Westchester County. And when you said you started working at 14, did you have a newspaper route? Did you babysit?
Helen Jonsen
No, girls couldn't have newspaper routes. My brothers had them and we could help with them, but girls couldn't have newspaper routes. Girls couldn't be You know, couldn't join Little League.
Girls couldn't do lots and lots of things that the boys could do. And my sister, who is 10 years older than me, felt that even more acutely than I did. So she would dress, she dressed up as my brother to deliver his newspapers when he was sick one winter. The neighbors kind of knew, but the people on the routes didn't know.
They just thought it was another little boy who was doing the job. Now, I worked at the Mount Vernon Public Library. I was second year of high school, neighborhood friends worked at the library, and I told anyone I could that I wanted a job at the library if they had one, and you could only work till 6 o'clock at night when you were 14, so the only place I could work was in the children's room, which closed at 6 o'clock at night.
So I did that for two years till I was 16 and then able to drive and do other things.
Laura Rotter
And what was attractive to you about working at the library? Were you always a word person?
Helen Jonsen
Yes, books, books and stories. I always tell this story of the day I got the call. From my mother's friend at the library to say, would you come in for a little interview?
I was actually in my attic sorting paperback novels and putting them on shelves the way I thought they should be sorted. I'm not sure it was alphabetical. It might have been by size, but it was how I thought they should be sorted. I was basically playing library.
Laura Rotter
Oh, it's a little frightening to me listening to that, Helen, because I, growing up, thought I wanted to be a librarian, and I never did it, but I remember wanting to categorize all our books by the Dewey Decimal System.
Helen Jonsen
That's right, and it's funny because I wasn't that aware of the Dewey Decimal system or how precisely it worked and I remember getting the job and Then very quickly going through these rules as if you kind of would know them And then one day the librarian walked over to the shelf very early probably the first week and said who messed up all the books And I said, oh I put them by size They look nice that way and she said But the numbers, I said, no, they're all number 93. And she said, but they're not 93. 1, 93. 2, 93. 3. And that's how I learned that.
Laura Rotter
So Helen, it
seems to me that certainly financially you could not take going to college for granted. So what was that, you know, education journey like for you?
Helen Jonsen
Yeah, my parents wanted me to go to college. My mother thought it would be wonderful.
My first three siblings did not go directly to college. Some did some college later or actually got their degrees later, but they didn't do it right away. My brothers did it through going to the service and taking courses in the service. My sister was not an academic. She actually did go into the service as well, but she did not pursue a degree.
My second brother did a two year tech college, part of the SUNY system at the time. And my next brother did go right from our grade school and into local high school and then to Iona. So that path was already laid. I wanted to be a journalist. I knew that. I knew that I would have to pay for college one way or the other.
So I actually looked at what the cost of the different colleges were. I think Syracuse was a good journalism school at the time. Maybe one in the city, like NYU or Columbia. And Fordham University. Well, Fordham was right in the Bronx. We were five minutes away. We were by train or by bus or by car. We were reasonably close.
So I looked. I saw the, the tuition. I did some calculations. And figured if I worked, I could probably pay most of my tuition. Maybe there would be a little bit of extra money. My father the first year wouldn't fill out the FAFSA. I remember another guest said the same thing to you because he had filled it out My brothers are not close to age in me.
They're five and six years older than me He had filled them out for my brother entering a two year college years earlier and was declined Well six years later with a higher tuition with a change in the economics from the 60s to the 70s I qualified, but he didn't believe it, so he wouldn't fill out the paperwork.
So I didn't get TAP, and the first year I basically saved enough to basically pay my tuition. My brother, who was by then also going for a graduate program, Sometimes we would rob Peter to pay Paul. If I didn't have enough for my tuition, he would give it to me until I could make the next payment and then give it back to him so he could make his payment.
So that's how we got through. And then my second year, I did qualify for some tap and I had had a small loan, a very small loan through the Knights of Columbus, which was considered a subsidized loan at the time, but this is the seventies. And even a subsidized loan was at 7.5%. Which now you'd think, Oh my gosh, that's a really high loan, but that's what it was.
But the amount was very low. The amount was all of maybe 1, 500, 200 was not a lot of money for the course of my college. And then I just kept working and I started to work professionally. So I was working 30 hours a week or more. I was working for better pay and. I just kept paying those bills and got a little bit of a scholarship for my last year, but even even then scholarships for 50 and 500 all added up, you know.
Laura Rotter
And tuition was lower than…
Helen Jonsen
I could tell you what it was. Yeah, what was it my freshman year tuition at Fordham University was the same as at pace and only 1000 difference from Harvard University was 2400 for the year. By the time I graduated, I think it was 30, between 500, but that's almost a 50 percent or almost a hundred percent double.
Laura Rotter
When you think about tuition, when we went to school, I did my MBA at NYU and some of it was subsidized by my employer.
And then I left my employer to finish it up full time. And I took student loans to do it, and the student loans were like 3, 200, like my first, well, you know, I just paid it immediately because I don't remember what the tuition was, but it obviously wasn't particularly high relative to nowadays what it costs.
Helen Jonsen
But relative to what people were earning, remember my father never made more than 10,000 a year, and he retired in 1979. So. You know, when you think about that, my first job was paying me much more than that. In fact, he was shocked at what my first full time job was paying, because it was more than he had ever earned.
And he was a senior manager with a company. It wasn't like he was, you know, selling hot dogs on the side, you know. So I think, I think we have to keep all of that in perspective too, that when I worked in the factory to help pay for my college, we were earning two dollars an hour. So with overtime on a Saturday, I was taking home 84 a week.
But I was making the same as many people who had families at that time.
Laura Rotter
It's, it's inflation, and hopefully we, you know, inflation is gonna, is not gonna rear its head like it has. But yes, everything's inflated in our lifetime. Helen, what was it about journalism that you knew that that was? What you wanted to pursue as a career.
Helen Jonsen
I, as we said, we talked about me as a kid, I was a storyteller. I love telling stories, but I also love listening to stories. My father was a great storyteller. You know, that old joke about what did you do in the war, daddy, and some daddies would talk about it and some wouldn't. My father had the most amazing stories of his time in World War II overseas.
And. You know, those stories resonated and you remembered them and the stories of them as kids as boys and and my mother's stories. My mother was one of 10 to a family who lost their father when she was nine and the stories of just trying to grow up and trying to make ends meet and and trying to. You know get through a world and then my parents coming together.
They actually grew up together But dad's family were business owners. My mother's family were just trying to make ends meet But they went to the same grade school and that's how they knew each other. So all of those stories just resonated and there was a there's a newspaper every day that mom and dad read cover to cover There was the Six O'Clock News, the Walter Cronkite Six O'Clock News, you always watch that just before dinner.
We were just surrounded by news and storytelling and this, this interest in the rest of the world. I mean, if you were sitting at the dining table, which we did most nights, and you said, Oh, I don't understand about this. Or there was an argument between two of the siblings over something. Dad would say, we know how to solve this.
Go get the Lincoln Library, which is a two book encyclopedia. And you had to look it up right then and there and get the answer. So I think when you merge stories and facts, it was just part of my DNA. I just knew what I wanted to do and I was always writing and I won writing contests in grade school And finally one day all of 12 years old.
I remember this distinctly Dad must have been after work. Dad was sitting in the chair and I said I know what i'm gonna be when I grow up dad And he said what so i'm gonna be a journalist because they get paid to write every day That's what I followed through on.
Laura Rotter
So, first of all, even as you're sharing your story, Helen, you're doing it as a storyteller.
It's, you know, you build the interest in what you're sharing. With, with me and our listeners, so I can, and of course, your face brightens up when you talk about it. So, you said you were always working, I'm assuming right after you graduated from Fordham, you were already working?
Helen Jonsen
Yes, by the time I graduated from Fordham, I was a byline newspaper reporter for Gannett in Mount Vernon, which was the Daily Argus in those days.
I was a production assistant and elevated to a writer on occasion at WINS Radio, and I was working as a production assistant at WPIX Television at the same time. And I hosted an Irish radio show at Fordham University on Sundays to what is now a 50 year old program called Kale and a Gal.
Laura Rotter
So you were a little bit busy.
Helen Jonsen
I was a little busy. I was also editor of the college newspaper, one of the college newspapers, and it shifted. Senior year, I was editor through December, and then you shifted and sort of backseated the next editor coming in. So my last semester was when work was really heating up, but I was doing three full shifts a week at WINS, I was doing a full shift a week at WPIX, and I was on call to fill in for other shifts.
Laura Rotter
So please share with our listeners… You watched the industry change dramatically.
Helen Jonsen
Absolutely.
Laura Rotter
So what did you watch happen?
Helen Jonsen
Well, what I watched happen, but also what I was in the middle of, I mean, when I started work, shouldn't say this, but I really am dating myself. We were using typewriters. We hadn't gone to anything else.
At the newspaper, I was there when they shifted from typewriter to mainframe. And in fact, because my shifts were in the evening, I had to learn how to reboot the mainframe just in case. So, that was the first, but then when I went over to television and radio, they were still using typewriters. And we had large font typewriters, they were 18 point font was the actual typewriter key, so when you typed it was 18 point font.
And we were using card and paper. NCR, you know, carbon between sheets, and then they had just shifted from film to full video at that point. So I never edited film for news. I only worked in directly in video, but that was a whole mind shift just then. And then what I did, I just knew that I had to keep learning whatever technology was around me.
So. I ran a business with my husband for years, a production business. We had to buy equipment. We had to be aware of the equipment. We had to know what was out there, what was changing. And then the internet was starting to become greater and greater. And so for what we were doing, we needed to understand what that meant to us, to our business, to clients.
And in doing so, I had been buying time on satellites to broadcast pieces that we were working on, we rented satellite trucks, whole trucks that would have to come in and uplink to a satellite, and then that was all shifting into the internet, into the digital world, and I thought, I have to learn this a different way.
So. Our business was being goodnighted for various reasons. I took a job.
Laura Rotter
I'm sorry to interrupt. So it was a video production business. What was…
Helen Jonsen
Yes, we were video production for corporations, nonprofits and international news organizations who needed news coverage in America. My husband was a television cameraman.
I'd met on assignment years earlier, but that's another story. But anyway. For various reasons within our family, that had to change. The way we were working changed. And I looked at the world and thought, I really need to understand internet piece of news and how things were changing. And because of my background hiring freelance crews and knowing how to run a studio and having done production, I was lucky enough to land Forbes as their senior editor, because I also had a financial news background, and head of their video.
Studios and their video network Which was a very new and evolving piece of the business. It was slow going at first because nobody on their desktops or their laptops could just watch video. You had to have a broadband or a T1 line or, or in a company setting, because at home you didn't have that capability.
But even with that, my team crossed the million views a month mark in that period of time. So it was an exciting way to learn and get used to that. And then. I shifted from Forbes as Forbes was shifting, I shifted out to Bonner with a working mother brand, looking at creating working mother television, which didn't happen, but to move into that company, I had to go in as head of their digital media products, but I had to learn how to run a CMS, how to publish behind the scenes.
What's a CMS? I'm sorry. Oh, content management systems, any content management system. And, and that also meant. A whole new thing, which was called social media. I posted Twitter parties and had 300 bloggers writing for my website and going to big conferences with bloggers and talking about how you build a social media presence.
That was all very new and was just starting out. So it was a matter of just keeping up with the changes. And many years later, after not having produced a show in a very long time for a daily news show, I walked into Fios One News in Westchester and landed a job as executive producer. And they said, well, do you know how to run the AP system that does this?
And I said, it's just another content management system. I'll learn. And I did. And. That was, that was a really great experience, too.
Laura Rotter
Yeah, it's so much, if you're someone who enjoys learning and enjoys content, sounds like, you know, that describes your career. Around what period of time, when you talk about, like, Forbes, for
example?
Helen Jonsen
I was at Forbes from 2007 to 2009. And it working mother immediately following and then there were the big layoffs in digital media, which was constantly happening during that time. So I went off to a couple of digital video studios and also had layoffs within a year or so. That was a whole time. I always did sort of consulting and coaching where I had time or where I was between jobs.
I worked with a number of startups to help them get their editorial products off the ground. And then. While I was doing other things, I took the role at FIOS because it was here in Westchester. And I could fill shifts. I knew how to fill shifts. I've been filling shifts since I was 19 years old. And really enjoyed that.
It was really putting me back to hyper local news on a daily basis. And that was really exciting. It was also fun to be there during that wonderful election that Donald Trump won. And I almost drove off the highway at four o'clock in the morning because we had just, we had just said good night, thinking the election, they weren't going to come up with an answer till the next morning.
So I ran full time communications for three years for the district attorney in Westchester, who was Anthony Scarpino at the time. And that was, a great pleasure and also A great honor to be able to serve with people of westchester that way so when his administration ended Very often as these things happen senior people get pushed out the door I was and right after that immediately after I Was hired by the new york city economic development corporation to run their public affairs communications Which was a bigger leap.
It was a new learning. I had covered the city. I had covered city hall over the years But it had been some times And I didn't really know all the workings of government from the inside out, so I had to learn those, but that was okay. That was another opportunity. However, it was the end of the de Blasio administration and the start of the Adams administration, and that meant there were changes again.
And that was the end of that position.
Laura Rotter
Wait, so Helen, let me stop you there for a moment. Because you talked about. Looking at your skills as you left the traditional media to be more mission driven, could you share with us what some of those skills are?
Helen Jonsen
Absolutely. You know, the biggest skill of all starts with writing, writing, writing and curiosity, right?
Writing and being, being willing to learn. But there's also the strategy part of it. The strategy of What is going on in this mission? How is it being presented? How does the public perceive it? Comes down to writing, it's video, it's production, it's social media, it's all of those components, but at the core is what is the mission and how is it perceived?
Now with the district attorney's office, a lot of it's Press releases is what the public's seeing, so you have to be adept at writing, at working with other people. I couldn't write press release alone, right? I mean, it was a prosecutor that had control of their work or the district attorney's positioning.
But as a strategist, you work together with those people to bring that all together. So in my three years there, I think I wrote Oh, I don't know, 300 to 500 press releases a year, you know, I mean, there was a lot, there's a lot going on, but also writing keynote speeches for the district attorney, writing his remarks for the press, pulling together press conferences, keeping my, my press contacts alive and well to create that, it's called media relations.
And that's just what it is. People trusted me as a known journalist. They knew that what I was telling them was what either what I could tell them or was the truth. Sometimes you had to hold back because a case was in litigation or whatever. But they understood that I wasn't doing it to be spiteful.
That I was doing because I needed to do it and that I understood their position. I knew their deadlines. I knew their work. So I had a nice trust with the media and the same when I shifted into the city. Because I still have my contacts, a lot of them in the city, in national news organizations, as well as, you know, television and in print.
And those that didn't, sort of, could see my background, was enough for them to start to rely on me. So, all those skills transition, right? Coaching the leadership to speak better, to put them in front of conferences, to see where their position should be, where their Expertise should be who could rely on them for expertise, how to position them that way.
All of those things play into a mission. All of those skills that I have make it better for that mission to be to talk in one voice and to be amplified. That's what I bring to the table and on top of it. You have executive skills, right? Cause I've run organizations or I've run departments or I've run managed people.
So that's another piece that sometimes when you hire a big company, you get a more junior person and they don't really understand what the pressures are in different. Places on them, right? I know those pressures. I understand the, the issues among, you know, whether it's staffing or public positioning or the politics of something or the background on something.
So you bring a lot more to the table in a senior position than you do in some other role.
Laura Rotter
There are many skills that you've mentioned there, Helen. I, and I particularly note the interpersonal skills, both again, as you and I have this conversation, but as you're talking about working with other people, working not only for the organization you work for, but again, when you were working for the city, knowing what other, what, Motivated others to work well with you and how you kept the relationships and built the relationships and built trust seems to be something that comes naturally to you, perhaps after all these years of working.
So I know you to be on now to a different role in your career, which I'd love you to talk about, but in the con and in the context of what do you enjoy doing most that you're now. Bringing into this next part of your life.
Helen Jonsen
Yeah, thank you for asking that. I think what I enjoy most is the combination of talking, teaching, putting the words together, but also strengthening the position of other people, amplifying what they do and showing their missions so that we're building something good together.
Right. A position to do good. I think those are the combinations. I like to sit in a room and hear, hear about someone's backstory, or about a mission and what it drives. And then I want to hear the stories that make that work. Because it's the stories, the authentic, real stories that resonate with other people.
So it's not just saying, Oh, catchphrase or this, and that's going to, that's going to sell their mission. That's going to, you know, bring everybody under the umbrella. No, it's those personal stories that's going to do that. Why are you passionate about what you do? Here's the mission statement from the company.
It's three lines long. But how do you express that? That's the real key to the whole thing.
Laura Rotter
Yes. So it sounds like you're always listening stories when you meet people. It's interesting. I was in a meeting today where we were discussing. Exactly that that you just mentioned the idea that motivation comes from our stories and comes from our wise by the same token for better for worse lack of motivation often comes from stories that may or may not be true, right?
We create our reality and. So what we see, what we imagine, the story we tell to ourselves and to others affects how we approach the world and how we accomplish or don't accomplish what we set out to do.
You had mentioned to me that you're, one of the things you're enjoying doing is, is Leading people through workshops. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Helen Jonsen
I'm building that back up, but I have done it over the years and I do. I really enjoy it, particularly a workshop I call empowering and engaging with one voice. And it goes back to that idea that in an organization, it could be company corporate social responsibility, or it could be a mission driven company, an organization, nonprofit, a charity, if you will, who The CEO knows his story.
The CEO knows how to talk about the mission, maybe. The development people hopefully know how to talk about the mission. Hopefully, yeah. In a company setting it might be the sales people that know how to talk about the mission. Siloed, but at least have some version of it, right? But the rest of the folks, the trickle down, may not even know what the real mission is.
They know how to come to work every day. They know how to do their job. But if they met somebody on the bus and somebody on the bus said, well, who do you work for? They could give you the name and they could tell you, well, I'm just a secretary or I'm a manager of this piece of the pie, but they don't talk about the mission in their own personal terms, right?
That story that makes it relevant. Why are they a part of this? What ignites their interest in what they're doing? And hopefully, when you share the mission, Individually with everybody in the organization, they feel empowered to be more a part of the organization and then you help give them the language and the tools to personalize it without deviating from the actual mission, like not going off on a tangent of their own, but a way to personalize it to make it more real for other people.
And I think then you build a coterie of ambassadors. Of true advocates for what you do, looking at what they already have for their mission. Are they all in agreement? Is it still relevant? Is it still those words that they created some time ago that a branding person told them they had to put on the website?
Is it still relevant? Is it time to relook at that? Either way, you now have a base for language to work together. Then, you take it down. Where do we begin? I like to begin with basic communications training with people. How do they answer the phone? How do they represent themselves in a, in a networking situation?
How do they introduce their colleague? How do they introduce themselves? I'd like to start with that, because I think that gets people thinking about communicating, right? That one on one. And then once you get past that, then you get into the more, what I would call a customized piece for that organization, how do people relate to the community or whatever their focus group is, right?
Is it in person? Is it over the phone? Is it in You know, bigger events say, you know, maybe you're the events team and you think you're always behind the scenes, but actually you're meeting people. You're meeting people at the door. You're giving them badges. You're, you know, you're the one seating them or whatever it is, right?
All of those people need to be, to feel empowered to, to broadcast something about their organization. So you, you customize it for the organization, and then you bring it down to each level where it needs to be, where they are. You meet people where they are. You make it fun, you do role play, you talk about networking events, you talk about one on one, you talk about the UPS driver.
Those are all the pieces that, you know. That give them a chance. And I think in a three hour workshop, sometimes two days, depending on what the customization is. Two days meaning two separate sessions. I think people get it and I think they understand and then you need to revisit it every six months or every year or with every class of new employees.
And that's what that's what gets forgotten about. People do it once and think we've all done it. It's kind of like the parent with a big family. I'm not only the youngest of a big family. I have four children. So this happens all the time. I'll say to the youngest, Oh, yes, we did that. And she's saying, no, we didn't.
And I'd say, Oh, yes, we did. We did this two or three times. And she said, yeah, by the time you got to number four, we didn't do that anymore. And I think that's what happens in a business very often. They think we did that. We built the website. We wrote the mission statement and they walk away. You don't want them to walk away.
You want them to revisit it and, and re engage with it and enliven with it.
Laura Rotter
To say again, you come alive and you describe what you do in these workshops, which I'm, I'm so enjoying. So can you share with us other things you're doing? I know you are a relatively new entrepreneur and.
Helen Jonsen
Re, re, re entrepreneuring, yes. I am. I'm a, I'm a solo entrepreneur or solopreneur as some people say it's an eponymous. Organization. I'm Helen Johnson media. It doesn't get easier than remembering Helen johnson dot com. I would hope and the the whole premise is mission and impact communications through the lens of Media coaching, wordsmithing, storytelling, building narrative, and working with an organization, it could be a la carte, it could all be in one, you know, grouping of things, to finesse and refine their own communication, build a thought leader platform, because organizations are experts in something.
But you as an entrepreneur, you are an expert. There are media organizations who should know that if they want to talk about personal finance, women's finance, women's issues, Laura Roeder should be on the tip of their, their tongue or at the beginning of their contact list. And that's what organizations sometimes forget, that they are the experts, right?
If you run a children's after school program, you're an expert in kids, you're an expert in school programs, you're an expert in maybe funding. People need to know that so that trickles down through creating a thought leadership level. Usually you do that with senior leadership because it becomes very personal becomes their voice rather than a brand voice in a sense.
And then if it's done well, you not only use it as a tool for, say, your website or your LinkedIn page, you then have a media relations component, right? And that's where I come in. I'm not a publicist. I'm not a PR lady. That's what I say. But I do have those relationships that if I feel impassioned about, which I do for my clients, if I feel passionate about what you are doing, I'm going to share that with the right people.
And we're going to put two and two together. So that's sort of the The three tiers of what I would say I do, but it could be a la carte. It could be any of those things. I have another A few other workshops, one is from girl talk to woman talk, which is basically for women. We have a habit of learning bad habits as young women of being a little shy or taking a back seat to the other people in the room, how to get past that, how to use language well to get past that and, and be your own ambassador.
Laura Rotter
Oh, I love that workshop, because women, as you just said, Helen, do have difficulty, what did they say, tooting their own horns? Being upfront about
Helen Jonsen
And being memorable, being memorable, and especially when you start with young women, and I'm talking about high school students, and taking them all the way through, because that's where that's missing, that, that feeling of Oh, I should be putting myself in front.
I should be putting myself out there. And I think that's, it's really fun to see the aha light go on, especially, especially in a young person, but sometimes it's a mid level professional who just doesn't realize they've fallen into bad habits. So it's, it's a good, it's a good talk and a good workshop. It could be a short talk, but it's really fun to be a workshop with.
Women of all levels who you really think, Oh, I haven't thought about that, whether it's their personal passion statement, which is what I call an elevator pitch, or whether it's just how they introduce themselves in a, in a group setting.
Helen Jonsen
And Helen, are there particular organizations that you feel passionate about working with?
You said something about mission driven. Do you prefer to work with nonprofits? I'm curious what you were drawn to.
Helen Jonsen
I love working with nonprofits and foundations, and I don't have a long list of clients yet. I've worked with quite a number of pro bono over the years that I've given my time and energy to.
Any organization that is large enough to care about its community, It's staff, it's board, it's advocates, it's membership, it's volunteers, it's, it's all the way through. I give you an example, when I first created this program, it was as a pro bono for Girl Scouts Heart of the Hudson. There was no one there in management anymore that would remember this because it's that long ago, but they were reformulating councils.
And all of a sudden, the council that had been just Westchester Putnam, or the Council for Duchess, or the Council for Sullivan County, were now all one, and were part of the Hudson. And people across those different places had their own cultures, and their own ideas, and, and they needed to be brought under the umbrella.
They needed to be empowered with the one voice and part of the Hudson, as opposed to, I'm going to make these numbers up now, but say, Sullivan County had 5, 000 Girl Scouts, or 3, 000 Girl Scouts. But now they were part of Girl Scouts Heart of the Hudson, which represented 44, 000 Girl Scouts. That was a real story starter, right?
If you're looking for funding, if you're looking for any kind of donor intervention, advocates, people who would help you out, even other mothers who wanted to be part of a larger community, this was a new conversation. So we developed a staff workshop. Take them through communications and then this new language around all this and how to get used to it interact.
And then I also did it for the community directors, which is the large core volunteers that ran, you know, troop leaders. That was like, you have troop leaders, then you had community directors. I did it with them during like a, I don't know, they had like an impact day and I, I did the evening, you know, the, The dinner talk and interaction and a whole series of different things, but it was for the same reason.
It was to empower people to be confident in talking about this mission at a greater scale. And that was, that's where when that was the aha for me saying, I really want to do this and I'd like to continue to do this in some way beyond that. I really enjoy the one on one coaching with leadership. I've had opportunities to do that.
And whether that's a nonprofit leader or Or any other leader who has a real mission and a real power, could be an author who really has a mission and a knowledge, right, really like to work with them through their, their speech writing, their narrative, their, their presentation skills, sometimes those need a branch, some people are natural at it, but some people aren't so much, and you want them to be able to engage an audience, right, and their audience could be an audience of 10 in a pitch, right.
Or it could be an audience of 100, 000 over Zoom or it could be an audience of, you know, 5, 000 at an industry conference, right? They need that same confidence and that same level of, I guess, I guess it all starts with confidence and, and that feeling that people are trusting them to be there for them.
Laura Rotter
And it comes back to what I'm hearing you saying, Helen, is again, you're, you thrive on interpersonal relationships and, and getting to know people, getting to know their stories, and helping them just as much get to know their stories.
Helen Jonsen
And getting to know people like you, who are helping other people. Doesn't that fuel you? Like, it's just such a great.
Laura Rotter
I mean, it is what fuels me and to the conversation I had earlier in the day, back to start with your why I think speaking for myself, but I had heard from others, what got me going when I was in my twenties and thirties and forties in my profession, the shoulds, if you will, are not what motivate me now.
What motivates me now is mission and building relationships with with other people. So as we get towards the end of our conversation, Helen, I'm wondering how your definition of success has shifted over these years.
Helen Jonsen
Oh boy, that's a tough one. I mean, I guess when you start out in the early days with television, you think you're going to keep going and, you know, be the network leader, the anchor person.
It didn't end up there. Part of it was the work and part of it was family life over the years, we haven't talked much about that, but part of what plays into my whole Kaleidoscope career is the needs and demands of a big family, and I don't just mean that the external family, I mean my own family with four children with the demands of Health crises and some other things that came into play that you decide, well, this is how it was better for me to work now, or this is how it's better for me to work now where we had a shift in our own family life where I became the breadwinner because of external factors, little things like healthcare, health insurance, you know, drove, drove changes and that affects your finances and affects a lot of things.
So I think success became trying to raise a healthy family for one. And then on top of that, it was, How do I feel like I'm positioned in the world? Am I doing good stuff to help others? Now, there have been times when I was in toxic businesses that I didn't know what I was contributing to, whether it was just coming at me or whether I was contributing to it.
Sometimes you manage somebody that it just doesn't work, and you think, how could I have done that better? So I think there are those kinds of things that weave themselves in. And now I'm at a point where I want to step back, do that better. But I also want to use my skills in a way that really just advance good stuff.
You know, I just, to me, the cause driven life is so important. You know, we didn't talk about that, but I grew up in a family of volunteers, you know, you just rolled up your sleeve, you know, mom and dad were out at meetings at the local parish or the VFW or some veterans organization or, or, or whatever, or the neighbor who needed looking after an old person, you know, looking after, or, you know, a babysitter, or the door, my mother threw the doors open to people who didn't have a place to go, I mean, not like they were strangers, but they just needed a place to be because they were older or alone, whatever.
Right. That was our mission in life. That was just part of what we did. You just, you just bring that into your own life. I mean, I've tried to do it with my own children. We were very active through Girl Scouts because I have three daughters. My son was in Boy Scouts for a time. And whether that becomes an absolute part of their life or not, I don't think they'll ever forget those experiences and forget what it means to them.
Laura Rotter
Thank you for sharing that particular drive you had mentioned when you spoke about growing up in a small house with so many children and that your mother always had the door open.
Helen Jonsen
Always had the door open. Always. We tell very funny stories of coming home from school and finding the dining table with just old people sitting around and with, with accents from everywhere and trying to talk to each other and not understanding each other, but they still all shared a.
Piece of cake or a cookie and a ginger ale or a cup of tea, and it was just expected that you would be a part of it. That you would accept it, that you would interact with them in a, in a, in a polite and and engaging way. And that's the way it was. And if they needed to be walked home, or if they needed you to run to the store, you did all those things too, because you did.
And I, I think the biggest saying in life, you know, people say, yeah, four kids, you worked, you did this, you did this, or the kids were sick, or whatever the phrases. One my mother always said, you just do. How do you do it? You just do. And you just keep going. I think when I did leadership Westchester, they asked me what my word was. And my word was resilience.
Laura Rotter
Thank you, and thank you for sharing about your parents. They were clearly left lasting, not only memories, but, but they charged you with a role to take in the world that you and I guess your siblings just accepted and embraced. And certainly in your own life, Helen, it's so clear what an impact they've had on you.
Is there anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners? I will certainly have your website in the show notes, but anything else to make sure that you mentioned?
Helen Jonsen
Well, just a little plug if anyone is looking for that kind of communication support. On a singular level, not from a big organization, but on a singular level, there are lots of ways to exploit.
I'm happy to explore that in a lot of different ways, even though you kind of try to list out products, if you will, or particular themes, I think there's much more to it when you start dealing with strategy and, and what works for people. So I'm happy to explore that in a lot, a lot of different ways.
Yeah. And if there's an organization with. You know, a really great mission that wants to amplify that mission. I'm very happy to be a part of that.
Laura Rotter
Thank you so much for taking the time to get together, Helen. I really enjoyed our conversation.
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Helen Johnson, founder of Helen Johnson Media. And now I'll share some of my takeaways. Number one, always be learning. Helen was a journalist. She and her husband, a television cameraman, ran a video production business for corporations, non profits, and international news organizations who needed news coverage in America.
As the media business changed with the growth of the Internet, Helen knew that she had to keep learning whatever technology was around her. She needed to be aware of how the equipment the business used was changing, and what the changes meant to her and her husband, their business, and their clients. My second takeaway is that when your industry is changing, consider other things you could do professionally with your skills.
Helen lived through the big layoffs that took place. Place in digital media, which led her to consider using all her skills towards mission driven work. As a result, she used her skills of writing curiosity, willingness to learn and relationship building as well as her strategic and executive skills to work in the public sector, providing communication.
And finally. Know that the language you use can empower or disempower you. Helen works with clients and their stakeholders on basic communication skills. From how they answer the phone, to how they represent themselves in networking situations, to how they introduce colleagues, and how they introduce themselves.
All these interactions have an impact on how others perceive you. As well as how you perceive yourself and your connection to the organization's mission. If this conversation with a woman in a life and career transition has struck a chord with you, and you'd like to discuss making the same transition in your own life, and how you can make it work financially, please don't hesitate to reach out and email me to schedule a call.
Laura at trueabundanceadvisors.com. Are you enjoying this podcast? Don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss next week's episode. And if you're enjoying the show, a rating and a review would be greatly appreciated and would help others like you to find it. Thank you so much.
Narrator
Thanks for listening to Making Change With Your Money. Certified financial planner, Laura Rotter, specializes in helping people just like you, organized, clarify, and invest their money in order to support a life of purpose and meaning. Go to www. trueabundanceadvisors.com/workbook for a free resource to help you on your journey.
Disclaimer, please remember that the information shared by this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. It's for information purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.