Harnessing Storytelling: How businesses can drive ESG, DEI Goals

Vai Kumar: 0:00

Hey folks, welcome to another episode of Podcast Freshleaf Forever. Today I have here with us the wonderful Joe Casabona. He is a podcast and automation coach who offers a perfect blend of content creation and technology. Hey Joe, welcome to the show. How are you today?

Joe Casabona: 0:19

I am doing great. Thanks for having me on the show.

Vai Kumar: 0:22

Joe's strategies come from many years of experience over 10 years creating podcasts, over the past 15 years teaching and over 20 years as a web developer. So, as a technologist and now a digital content specialist myself, I can appreciate what Joe has put in over the years, and he's also the producer of multiple podcasts, including podcast workflows, where he offers excellent advice on improving podcast production processes. I just felt there's no better person other than Joe Casabona here to talk about promoting companies, esg and DEI with podcasting, especially in a day and age where we are focusing so much on sustainability and I have focused and championed a lot of efforts on sustainability in season three of this show, reaching our global audience in over 90 countries and in over 2000 cities worldwide. So, joe, let's just get rolling here. And how, then, can companies tell great ESG stories? Because environmental, social governance, reporting and all the focus is just taking center stage now for companies. So why don't you highlight the how to, just like you normally would, for all of us in the podcasting world?

Joe Casabona: 1:55

Yeah, absolutely. This is a great question because I don't think a lot of people think to tell stories. When they're producing a, let's say, a nonfiction podcast, right, they're focused more on relaying the information as efficiently as possible, but stories are the things that stick right. When you're watching, like, the commercials around the holidays, especially in the United States, are so impactful because they're trying to sell the idea of togetherness and family and just saying, hey, a Chevy truck is going to bring your family together, that's not going to do it. Right, you need to tell a good story and so, when it comes to whatever it is you're doing, whatever you're doing in business or ESG, you need to think about what's going to have that pull and be the thing that really connects with the person. And really I think with ESG initiatives, because they affect all of us so deeply, you should be able to find some good stories to tell, right?

Vai Kumar: 3:05

Yes, as I hear you, structuring the content becomes very important, right? That's where companies can take the help of great content creators, content strategists, and then structure on how best to just promote their initiatives. Right, Is that kind of the step where one can determine what stories can be effective. So how can companies go about this?

Joe Casabona: 3:35

Yeah, that's exactly right, and so what you're trying to do here is hook your listener and take them on a journey, probably one of transformation, right, a lot of people in these positions? Who? Are telling the stories make the mistake of turning themselves into the hero of the story.

Joe Casabona: 3:58

But that's a crucial mistake, because we want to connect with our listener, with the people we're trying to convince, and so we need to make them the hero. And if they are the hero, then we are the guide, right? If we look at Star Wars, one of the most impactful characters in the original trilogy is Obi-Wan, kenobi or Yoda, but they aren't the main characters. Luke Skywalker is the main character. If we look at Lord of the Rings, gandalf is one of the most impactful characters, but he's not the main character. Frodo is the main character and we, as the guide, take our listener on a transformative journey. If we are trying to tell a story about, let's say, addressing air and water pollution right, that's an environmental initiative. Maybe we can tell a story from Flint, michigan, or from some underserved community where they didn't have clean water. And then they did have clean water. There was an important transformation People were healthier and the community became more vibrant.

Vai Kumar: 5:05

So I guess you're trying to bring the aspect of leadership teams focusing on education initiatives correct. So, in companies, people who are at the helm and who need to promote these should be able to connect. You are saying one with their own employees and two with their customers that they are trying to help transform something. Help them in their transformation journey, however it may be, with their business progress. How, then, can they generate momentum for these ESG initiatives? Is that putting a plan in place, and what would that look like, joe?

Joe Casabona: 5:47

Yeah, I think what you need to do really is sell the transformation. We recently had our air conditioner and heater replaced and I suspect your listeners will be happy to know that we went with the most environmentally friendly version, which saves us money because we're not using as much electricity, but it also is better for the environment and measuring our own small environmental impact in our house. And so when you are educating people on this, when you are trying to convince people to see your point of view, you need to answer the question what's in it for me? And so you need to sell that transformation, right? If the person who sold me the HVAC just said, hey, this is really good for the environment. This costs $5,000 more, but it's really good for the environment, that would weigh on me, but it wouldn't necessarily convince me, because we have three kids. Money's a little bit tight and I'm trying to figure out is the extra $5,000 worth it? But the fact that it lowers my environmental impact as well as lowers my electrical bill.

Joe Casabona: 7:02

That was the winning combination for convincing me to get the better HVAC. But when you're a leadership team connecting with your employees or trying to get your employees to connect with your mission, you need to do it through emotional impact and talking about what's in it for the people that they're talking to, because that's how the employees are going to be most impactful.

Vai Kumar: 7:28

And I would say, putting a plan in place involves even narrowing down. Okay, what content do I talk about and how do I make this resonate with my audience? And right there you pointed out employees, and we also talked about customers. Narrow down your why you want to do it and then make that more effective. And then comes the essence of it. All right, marketing teams or whomever is responsible or like a podcast host and producer, comes in with. This is how we are going to portray our content and whether we do it on a weekly basis, whether you do it for 10 minutes, whether you do it for 20 minutes, what segments you want to offer? Does that make sense in terms of generating momentum and getting the voice of it out in the open? Is that a good strategy, joe?

Joe Casabona: 8:18

Yeah, and I really want to touch on what you said here about knowing what stories and what points that you want to hit on, because they say in business, the riches are in the niches and that you need to pick someone to talk to. If you're talking to everybody, you're talking to nobody. And as you plan out how you're going to get people on board with these initiatives, the way that you're going to maybe convince the decision makers in the government or the decision makers in the business are going to be different from the way that you're going to address, maybe, the consumer who maybe you want them to lend their voice to help your cause. That's going to be a different story that you tell.

Vai Kumar: 9:00

Yeah, I guess, once you focus on projecting your voice, okay, embed your climate efforts, how your business is getting there to net zero emissions. Also your diversity, equity actions, all of that bring it into your strategy. What you as a company, what you as a team, what you as management, want to talk about to your employees. Use this as an avenue will help leadership. Make it a co-creation effort also not just leadership but every possible person in the company over a period of time. Try to outline the strategy and take your sustainability efforts forward. Then you're nurturing cohesiveness amongst management and employees. If you nurture that cohesive environment, then as a company, you're also starting automatically to talk to the outside world. Right, even if you were to listen to that podcast, if you were to watch that video, you're going to feel inspired to probably want to work for that company. It just targets several different things. Speaking of what would be your two cents worth in terms of audio versus video or both, what do you think is most effective?

Joe Casabona: 10:22

That's a great question. I think it depends. This is a big question in the podcasting space now, as Spotify starts to support video, as YouTube is getting into podcasting. What should we use? I think the answer is what you're most comfortable with, because if you're uncomfortable, people will be able to tell and you won't be able to deliver your message most effectively. If you're not comfortable on video, then don't. Then the second thing you should ask yourself is what most effectively conveys your message. If you're doing this sort of storytelling, if you know that the people who are listening to your podcast are busy and they're commuting and they're probably not going to be able to watch a video, or maybe you know that they're in a place where the service is not very good and you don't want to take up their bandwidth, then audio is going to be best. If you're relying on a lot of visuals, or your target audience is maybe the younger generation, who prefers these short form, vertical videos, then that's the medium that you should be creating. I think it's probably a combination of both, depending on who you're trying to reach and your message, but I would start with whatever you're most comfortable with. Both can be effective.

Joe Casabona: 11:47

I'm a huge baseball fan and they do a radio only broadcast and they do a television broadcast and those two broadcasts are presented very differently and they are for two different audiences. Right, the radio broadcast is for the people who can't watch. Maybe they're driving, maybe they're out on a run or something like that. And then the TV broadcast is for the people at home and the announcers handle it differently. The TV announcers aren't doing the play by play, because you are seeing it. They're adding context. But the radio announcers, they're telling you everything that happens and how it happens and what the uniforms look like and everything.

Vai Kumar: 12:25

And in other words, you're trying to advise companies to leverage their marketing team's production capabilities or have an exclusive podcast team that's working on these various formats. That way you're talking to several people and you're meeting them in the form that they want to receive it in. I guess that becomes important.

Joe Casabona: 12:48

Yeah, definitely it's. Again, if I were to, let's say, sell apples, I could sell it at a farmer's market in the middle of my town, or I could sell it at the edge of a lake where nobody lives. Both ways I'm selling apples, but one of those ways I'm gonna sell a lot more apples. The moral of that story is be where your audience is.

Vai Kumar: 13:13

Make it accessible, make it engaging and make it impactful. In whatever form you can achieve those three, it's gonna be a win, right?

Joe Casabona: 13:21

That's exactly right. Again, at least in the solarpreneur and the small business owner space, there's the idea that people are telling you here's what you need to do. You need to post five times on LinkedIn. You need to post two TikTok videos a week. You need to do YouTube shorts and Instagram reels, but if you are doing it because you feel like you have to, then your heart's not going to be in it. So do the thing that you feel you can do best. If that's writing a lot of words, then write a lot of words. If that is talking to a microphone without having to worry about your video, do that. But if you prefer video, then great. We'll give you the best competitive edge.

Vai Kumar: 14:07

We have touched upon this storytelling part. Why don't we focus on how companies can promote their ESG strategy and, in fact, diversity, equity and inclusion efforts with podcasting, with DEI initiatives? It's all about that cohesiveness amongst employees and management and just building that healthy work environment. Then, whatever form your company is able to achieve, that, helping project your DEI initiatives, how fair you are, your equity initiatives and your inclusive efforts.

Vai Kumar: 14:44

When I was thinking about offering our tips here via this show, I was thinking companies can do employee resource groups.

Vai Kumar: 14:55

You can make employees feel welcome by providing access to, say, community-based resource groups, a women's resource group to address needs that are very specific to women and neurodiversity. For parents like you and me in the workforce, it may make a lot of sense to just have the parental resource group, a higher education group, cementoring ethnicity, cultural diversity. So much right. I guess there's so much to that storytelling that people can focus on strategize content around and then create the content and produce it, because there's very many challenges that are faced by underrepresented groups and all of that can be addressed through this podcasting effort. Once companies do that, they are not just engaging with their own employees, you're expanding your societal reach and projecting how you as a company are doing in terms of work-life balance initiatives. Or we went out in the community and did a painting project at a school or whatever that may be Showcasing all of that, I think, is a great opportunity. Helps even clients understand the company's initiatives. It starts to resonate more.

Joe Casabona: 16:27

Yeah, I think, a really good way to illustrate this is when I was a less experienced man, I felt a certain way about things, based on my worldview, and one of those things was the maternity leave in the United States, or paternity leave, is not super great. And when I was younger single, not married, no children, spent most of my time working. I said, hey, businesses, people have businesses to run and if they need somebody who has to be there then that's up to the business. I realize how ignorant that sounds now, because as soon as my wife got pregnant with our first and we found out that her paid maternity leave was basically just her vacation time, I was appalled. I'm like you work at a hospital. They know how hard it is to raise a kid and have a kid and they can't give you any more beyond what you already get. Essentially, you just have to take all of your vacation in sick leave.

Vai Kumar: 17:36

Remind, a few years ago, little did you know what was coming down the road right.

Joe Casabona: 17:42

Yeah, absolutely. For reference, my oldest is six. My two younger ones were born in 2020 and 2021. And my perspective radically changed because now I was experiencing it, I could empathize with it. And when you think about your let's say, your DEI efforts, especially right, you need more voices, more worldviews and more experiences to really be able to empathize, right? Earlier I said you need to answer what's in it for me when you're trying to convince people, and that's true. But if they know somebody or can connect with someone on some level, then the what's in it for me becomes a lot more apparent.

Vai Kumar: 18:32

Then these stories can be great forum for us to put that message out.

Joe Casabona: 18:37

Yeah, that's exactly right. I have nearly nothing in common with a single mom. Right, I am married, I am a man, I am a white man, I'm in a two-income household with a supportive family. But during the pandemic, when my wife was still going to work because she's a nurse and I was at home with the children and my parents and my in-laws couldn't come out because they were immunocompromised I'm not going to say I had a similar experience, but it really got me thinking. If I am struggling and I feel pretty well off, how are the people who are less well off than me surviving? And those kind of experiences can only happen when you have a diverse group of people to interconnect with.

Vai Kumar: 19:28

The employee resource groups helps promote sharing of information. And then, definitely, like you said during the pandemic, what if you felt so overwhelmed taking care of your children because you couldn't get support from either side? Parents no blaming them, you realise why, but then because you were so immersed in what you had to do all day long plus your work. Right there comes work-life balance the need to highlight that. And then mental health. There can be so much around employee wellness initiatives that people are desperate for and companies can engage with their own employees. There's a company near, dei ESG. Storytelling, I think, is becoming more and more paramount, joe.

Joe Casabona: 20:15

Absolutely. Look at all the great press that REI. If you're unfamiliar, REI is, I think, an outdoor store here in the United.

Vai Kumar: 20:23

States.

Joe Casabona: 20:23

And they made a very big deal about not being open on Black Friday. Employees stay home, spend time with your family. I don't know if that's necessarily ESG, but it's certainly a part of the company's fabric that ingratiates the employees, makes them feel a stronger tie to each other because they feel the company cares more about them than making money on Black Friday. It also helps consumers see, hey, not every company is going to email me a hundred times today trying to sell me something at a marginal discount. Right, REI really cares about people.

Vai Kumar: 21:07

Yeah, that's a great example that you brought out there. It's becoming imperative the storytelling aspect for brands to promote their value visibility with employees, with customers, not just that, but with investors as well. So what is it that they stand for? How is their corporate governance looking like? Risk management, compliance with the regulatory stuff, the ethical business practices metrics One of these, I think, is taking more and more center stage now. When we talked about the DEI stuff, highlighting any open door policy that managers and the leadership team may have, human resources may have as a company. It's a great opportunity. I think right now we are just delving deeper and deeper into what that storytelling could look like. Right here we have almost strategized the content. For a lot of companies, the power of storytelling can be amplified and then they can really connect with their audience more and more. How they do it, what they are achieving, what is the need there for their employees and for their customers? I think that's where the customization aspect comes in.

Joe Casabona: 22:27

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. It's the difference between seemingly empty words and connecting those words to action. So I'm ABC company. I'm a huge corporation with lots of people cares about people. It would be stupid not to say that, right? But those can be empty words. But if I say we care about people, let me tell you about our employee, amanda.

Joe Casabona: 22:55

Amanda suffered a loss in her family that really shook them to their core and because she needed to take some extra time to help get her family's financials in order to close this estate, to take some time for herself, we not only gave her the mandated one week bereavement or whatever. We gave her three full months paid to be with her family to help them through this tough time, and we told her when she was ready to come back, her job would be waiting for her. We put her above anything else, because people and family matter most to us. Which of those two things are you going to connect with? We care about people scrawled across some website or now. When I said Amanda, maybe you pictured somebody named Amanda. That's the power of story.

Vai Kumar: 24:03

Oh, absolutely. And then intentional actions right there to make people feel what they were in that situation, make people seen, make people heard. Right there, it can even be in Amanda's own voice for a few minutes.

Joe Casabona: 24:22

Right.

Vai Kumar: 24:23

And that can just add more power to the story. It's showcasing how you as a company are functioning, how you are standing up for your values. Just like you said, it cannot be empty words, it cannot be put in print media alone. And the power of video podcasts, joe, we are all seeing more and more. Because how is it for me picking up the phone and talking to Joe and doing the scene of your versus, seeing you, joe, on the camera? It's just magical.

Joe Casabona: 24:58

Yeah, there's something to eye contact, right. Whenever I scold my children, they want to look away, right, but I always tell them to look at me because I want them to really understand what I'm telling them and I want them to know that I'm not just scolding them for fun. You have kids, you said right.

Vai Kumar: 25:20

Oh yeah, A college going daughter.

Joe Casabona: 25:22

Wow, we don't like scolding our kids, but we do it because we want them to be better people, and so I want my kids to look me in the eye so they know what they did affected me and how it affected them, and I want them to see not the anger or the disappointment I want them to see hey, your actions affected me in a way that made me worried for you and your safety. Right, I have small children, and small children just have no self-preservation skills. That's the power of eye contact and the power of video, even if there's a screen between us, is so important. I always make a point to look at the camera and not at my screen.

Vai Kumar: 26:08

Yeah, and it can just be a few minutes, where you intersperse some video to an audio that you have just put on a static screen and created it as a video file. Because when people can connect name and face together, it makes a world of difference in everything that we all do. Like we said, structural level, the hierarchical level, individual level, whatever it may be, companies are able to put out all these stories with podcasting, and more and more companies, I think, should resort to this kind of drive to improve their marketing efforts, internal communication efforts, what people see at the top and what they envision for the organization. It could be seeing your people first approach, whatever that may be.

Joe Casabona: 26:57

If you don't tell your story, somebody else will tell it for you. How many times have we been in conflict with a friend or a loved one Because we didn't have the conversation with them? I was mad at my friend because he did this thing and because I didn't know his story, I made one up and it was the worst possible story I could think of. We live in a very show and tell world now. I'm an elder millennial and I grew up saying Pixar didn't happen. Now we need to show, we can't just tell. I think that's really the biggest takeaway here. If you are running an organization or you have a group of people under you, you need to show.

Vai Kumar: 27:40

Bring in your authentic self right.

Joe Casabona: 27:42

I really want to share this. My high school I think this is so important to me because I went to a Catholic high school John Esper Catholic High School, goshen, new York. Shout out to them. Our school motto was non-Vox said Vodem, which translates from Latin to English as not words but deeds, and this is something that's been so ingrained in me from the time I was 12 or 13 years old. When you say something, fine, but you really need to follow through on that something, so you need to show me with your deeds, tell your story, tell me the things that you've done. Don't just say yeah, we do this and then treat it as a throwaway statement make it count, make it authentic.

Vai Kumar: 28:27

We have touched upon empathy, we have touched upon balance. We have touched upon demonstrating connection between values and actions and attracting sustainable investment by focusing on environmental practices. So by promoting your initiatives, you're building trust with not just your employees but your clients as well, and you're making clients want to do business with you. So I guess there's so much in there for companies to leverage in terms of hey, how do I build my social media strategy? What kind of content channel do I focus on?

Vai Kumar: 29:06

You don't have to do everything, but start somewhere, but try to also meet your audience where they are, in the medium that they are comfortable receiving the message in. So some employees may like an email blast communication. Some may want to listen to it in the car when they are driving to work or going back home. Every small bit helps you on an older millennial but for any of the Gen Z. So anyone listening that want to, even internet companies, people nowadays want to know what it's going to be like. As much as there is some suspense involved in what you're going to get yourself into when you are going to have a on the job feel, you still want to know.

Vai Kumar: 29:48

I think a lot of the young people now want to have a feel for everything before they go in there. From that standpoint granted, you're trying to attract people with a minute long video on social media it makes more sense to also promote what you stand for, what you do, how you are transforming technologically or strategically, how you are providing solutions to your clients. Make it like an all encompassing effort, starting from bring your authentic self, showcase your vision, your values. Make it count for your employees, make it count for the outside world, interns and other people that are applying for jobs in that company, and make it count for, most importantly, your customers that fetch you your bottom line yeah, absolutely.

Joe Casabona: 30:43

I think we have our point across stories are the thing that connects people. They have been, since human beings could communicate pictures, drawings on cave walls, and then spoken language and written word, podcasting, short form video. Those are the new ways that we tell stories and those are the mediums that we definitely have to leverage.

Vai Kumar: 31:04

You can just know, to abilities in whichever way you can. The audio video messaging, everything is just a learning space as well. That's why a lot of podcasts are education oriented. It's information. It's accessible information that you produce in an engaging format. You make impact with it, but at the end of the day, what are you conveying so the message sticks with someone? You're trying to capture someone's attention, trying to make someone more aware and convey what you stand for, what you do. As a closing thought, it's definitely becoming more and more imperative for companies to promote Brand value via podcasting and anything else you want to add. Joe, the forum is yours.

Joe Casabona: 31:51

All right, I love to tell this story about me in the middle of the pandemic. It was the first time I ever had a panic attack. I was at home with two of my kids my oldest was three years old at the time and I was just really stressed about taking care of my kids and not working. I'm self employed and so every minute I wasn't working, I was losing money and I wanted to support my family until I had a panic attack and my daughter came up to me with a bottle of water and a towel. Those are the things that she could find and she said it's okay, daddy, it's going to be okay. I realized at that moment that two things needed to happen. I needed to talk to somebody.

Joe Casabona: 32:38

I also needed to make sure that I didn't find myself in that position again. That's when I started to really focus in on how I could become a better podcaster, because I saw podcasting as the way to grow my business. And I tell you that story for two reasons. Hopefully you connected with that. Maybe you're feeling overwhelmed at the idea of starting a podcast, and well, now I have three kids and three podcasts and I'm not having panic attacks anymore. But the other reason I'm telling you that is because that story, even though I've told that story a hundred times, it always gets me a little bit choked up and you don't know me as well as I know me.

Joe Casabona: 33:23

But maybe you connect with that on some level and that demonstrates the power of storytelling.

Vai Kumar: 33:30

Absolutely. If individuals are challenged and they have to figure out their ways to even get started with putting out their brand, putting out their value, I think companies definitely need to take advantage of teams be able to put out their voice in a more meaningful and more impactful way, and definitely when you are ruminating over what could be my brand promoting strategy NFL season, super Bowl, when we all are looking for those new commercials and we are blue. Likewise, every business that just steps into this world of digital content and uses podcasting as an avenue is certainly going to benefit, because that authenticity in connecting is priceless, absolutely Well, thank you for taking the time today, joe, joining me here and co-creating this episode. Would you like to put out your contact information, add anything else social media handle? Please feel free to do so. Thank you so much. This was such a great conversation.

Joe Casabona: 34:36

I love talking about storytelling and I love helping people tell stories on their podcast, so if you do want to learn more about me, say hi, give me some feedback. You can find me at Casabona dot org. I am also J Casabona, that's J C A, s, a B O N A On just about every social network, so you can find me wherever you like to hang out most.

Vai Kumar: 34:58

Wonderful and listeners, as always. Follow the podcast. rate the podcast. Leave a review from your podcast app of choice. Follow me on Instagram @vaipkumar, and my social handle is , across all the chan. So, find me wherever you would like to connect with me, and until next time with yet another interesting guest and yet another interesting topic, it's me Vai, along with Joe, saying so long.

Joe Casabona: 35:28

Hi, thanks everybody.