The Importance of Leaving a Business Legacy
The powerful new way leaders are documenting their company’s story and leaving a legacy
The best leaders use storytelling to articulate a compelling vision for their company’s future. It’s a great way to galvanize teams, communicate the leader’s passion for the organization and its people, and inspire commitment toward common goals. Capturing the story of your business’s growth and history is part of that.
However, many leaders don’t prioritize documenting their business legacy. And when they do, it’s considered a book-writing project: a huge task that can take months, even years, to complete. Those who do undertake such a project will eventually wind up with a beautiful coffee table book… that often never gets read.
But things are changing. Today, people are engaging with digital media much more than they are with books or the written word. They want short video clips they can watch on their phones or audio clips they can listen to on the go. This is how savvy business leaders are now sharing their stories. At CONTEXT Studios, this approach is proving extremely powerful.
Bringing Your Business Story to Life
Following in the footsteps of celebrities who want to document their full story and control their narrative, business owners and leaders have begun capitalizing on the popularity of film and podcast documentaries to tell their stories in an impactful, engaging way.
What’s more, this method takes a fraction of the time it takes to publish a book. With a well-structured intake meeting, a documentary can be recorded in a day. The chapters of a company’s history can be separated into short, engaging segments that are easily used on its website, on social media, in onboarding packages, and at company events.
When creating these documentaries, it’s important to focus on quality, not complexity. One example would be to shoot it like MasterClass, with the subject(s) seated in the middle of the room, with a beautiful depth of field, speaking directly into the camera. Ideally, it is then edited into a full documentary, or broken out into episodes, with each one representing a chapter of the business’s life. It can be both, with versions of varying lengths designed for different purposes, such as social media, the company website, events, or speaking engagements. To drive engagement by making it easy to use, it should be accessible on a custom platform (for film) or published to major listening platforms (if it’s a podcast) so it can be enjoyed by anyone you choose, at any time and on any device.
Building Credibility and Trust by Creating a Strong Connection
Part of the appeal of video and audio is that we relate better to each other when we can see facial expressions and mannerisms or hear their voice. It gives us a deeper connection to their values, the culture they’ve created, the successes they’ve achieved, and the challenges they’ve overcome. Oftentimes, words don’t connect us in the same way. It also enhances their credibility and builds trust by allowing employees, customers, and other stakeholders to feel a personal connection with them, bringing the company’s story to life in a powerful way.
Capturing an Entrepreneur’s Journey
If your company is at an early stage, you don’t need to wait until it reaches a significant milestone to start documenting its journey. Every entrepreneur has a founder story—the motivation for launching their company, the business values they brought to it, the hurdles they overcame to launch, and the stories of their first few years.
Think how powerful it would be if there was a documentary of entrepreneurs like Prem Watsa (CEO, Fairfax Financial Holdings), Michael Lee-Chin (Founder & Chairman, Portland Holdings), Tobi Lütke (CEO, Shopify), or Mike Lazaridis (Co-founder, RIM) at two to five years out, explaining why and how they founded their company and documenting their strategy and early-stage growth.
Entrepreneurs have a lot to gain from creating a documentary:
Educate and engage investors: A documentary can help educate and engage potential investors, bringing the growth story of your business to life and helping to convince them of your potential.
Showcase successes to potential buyers: If your goal is to eventually sell the business, recording a documentary before the sale is a great way to showcase successes and convey your value proposition, while also documenting your team’s accomplishments to ensure they remain part of the company legacy.
Ensure cultural continuity as the business grows: It’s important to intentionally share your beliefs and values, to ensure continuity as the company culture evolves. As new leaders come in, your documentary can help them understand the business culture you set out to create.
Track progress: In five years, your business may have changed dramatically. It can be insightful (and interesting) to document your thoughts and vision today and again at key points along your journey.
Enhance recruitment and onboarding: An engaging documentary can be a strong tool for training employees and preparing successors, and it can help potential candidates assess whether they are a fit.
Capturing the Story of a Family Business and Preparing the Next Generation
A documentary can be especially valuable in a longstanding family business such as Gib-San Pool & Landscape Creations, where legacy is the thread that weaves the family’s values and successes together from generation to generation. Successive generations can draw identity, strength, and inspiration from the business’s origin story, which helps to shape their strategy and long-term vision.
For example, perhaps the first generation (G1) is in their golden years, the second generation (G2) is planning for retirement, and the third generation (G3) is about to take the reins. This would be a perfect time to create a documentary so that G1 can describe how they founded the business, G2 can talk about how they furthered its growth, and G3 can comment on their plans to continue its trajectory. While the story can certainly be told without G1 or G2, what an opportune time to involve all generations, capture the full story, and bring it to life.
A film or podcast documentary can benefit a family business and small business owner in many ways:
Prepare the Next Generation
Reflecting on the past and seeing how previous generations thrived through challenges can provide inspiration and motivation to current and future employees.
Transfer values and knowledge
A documentary can reinforce the family’s core values, helping subsequent leaders connect with the founder’s vision and purpose. Lessons and insights from previous generations can inform future leaders and help them make decisions when they face similar struggles.
Establish Governance
It can also reinforce a commitment to effective communication and decision-making, and ensure all family members share a common belief in their approach to governance.
Honour a Founder
It can be hard for a founder to retire, if they fear they will be forgotten. Capturing their business legacy can give them peace of mind, knowing that their story will remain a valued part of the business for years to come.
Preserve Family Business History
Having grown up having financial security, third or fourth generations may have little understanding or appreciation of the hard work it took to make the business successful. Learning about the business’s history from the founders themselves can provide an important window into the company’s success.
Celebrate a Milestone
A company that’s been in business for twenty, fifty, seventy years? That’s something to celebrate. A documentary can be a great addition to a milestone celebration.
A Unique New Way to Leave a Lasting Business Legacy
Whether you’re leading an entrepreneurial company or running a multi-generational family business, there are many benefits to leaving a strong business legacy by capturing your company’s story on film or in a podcast. It’s not only how today’s audiences are consuming content, it’s also the most impactful and efficient way to bring your business story to life now, and for generations to come.
About the Author
Andrea Lekushoff | Founder & CEO, CONTEXT Studios
Andrea and her team document the lives and legacies of individuals, families, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and family businesses across Canada and around the world in a film or podcast documentary format. She is also a former TEC Canada member.
Andrea also founded Broad Reach, an award-winning PR agency that drives visibility and growth for some of Canada’s leading companies with an expertise in executive profiling. As an affiliate partner of Women Get On Board Inc., Broad Reach recently created the ELEVATE program to help female executives secure board positions. She is often asked to comment in the media and has been profiled in publications including the Globe and Mail, Financial Post, Ivey Business Journal, and Women of Influence magazine.
Andrea holds an MBA from the Ivey Business School, a BA (Honours) from Western University, and has completed two YPO Harvard Business School Executive Education programs. While living in Paris and working at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC, Andrea fell in love with the arts and now sits on the Board Development Committee for Luminato Festival Toronto. Andrea thrives on adventure and has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, and scaled BC’s Mt. Nimbus by via Ferrata. For further information on creating a documentary, contact Andrea at andrea@contextstudios.ca.
