Part 1: Ashley Losch, Know Your Why

[00:00:00] When I teach, I preach that there is always a why and there's an overarching goal. And if you're not

[00:00:07] integrating both your goal and your why into your content, you're just cooking sushi over an open

[00:00:15] flame, which is silly. Welcome back to another episode of Beyond the Post. This week we talk

[00:00:26] with Ashley Losch, founder and owner of Blue Helmet Media, a creative consulting agency with

[00:00:31] a focus on social media, content creation and more. Ashley started her career as a firefighter

[00:00:36] nearly a quarter century ago and as she rose through the ranks landed in the role of public

[00:00:40] information officer where she discovered her love of social media. Ultimately, Ashley left

[00:00:44] the fire services start Blue Helmet Media and in part one of this interview we uncover

[00:00:48] the incredible story arc of a firefighter who couldn't imagine working straight 40 hour

[00:00:52] weeks to someone who now runs a social media agency. Join us as we head behind the post

[00:00:57] with Ashley Losch. I want to just get the story arc of number one, how you became a firefighter

[00:01:15] and then how you became a public information officer for the fire department and how that

[00:01:20] ultimately turned into what you're doing with your social media company with Blue Helmet Media.

[00:01:28] So if you could just like say, you probably get this a lot, but can you kind of just,

[00:01:32] how did you go from fighting fires and helping people in that way to doing social media management

[00:01:38] and helping people in that way? Yeah, I started my firefighting career. I was hired in December of 2000

[00:01:48] and the thought of being on camera or public information was never, never in my mind.

[00:01:59] And I will tell you, I love every second of being on a fire truck. It is the best job in the whole

[00:02:06] world and I'll never forget when my son was little, you know, you'd be driving him to school or

[00:02:12] practice or whatever. And he would always say like, well, what would you do if you weren't a

[00:02:16] firefighter? And I would say, I'm going to be a firefighter. I'm a firefighter. And he was

[00:02:21] like, no, but what else would you do? And I was like, there is no better job. There's

[00:02:25] nothing else that fills me up like firefighting. And now here we are almost 24 years later, but

[00:02:33] the journey moved on because I had a friend that was the PIO for my department and he was like,

[00:02:41] hey, I need some backups. You want to come in and learn? I think you'd be great.

[00:02:46] Really early in my career, I did some little Saturday morning pieces on like local news

[00:02:53] channel three safety message stuff with one of the older firefighters that had a lot of

[00:02:59] tenure. He was like, hey, come with me. We'll do this together. It'll be fun. So I did a couple

[00:03:04] of those and then my buddy's the full-time PIO. He says we need some backups. Come in,

[00:03:10] learn the skill, be a backup. So it was a backup for about three years. And then it was time

[00:03:17] for him to come back to the field and he said, hey, you're next. And I was like, nope.

[00:03:22] I have zero interest in being next. I have the best crew. I love coming to work and

[00:03:31] I'm trying to help a couple guys promote. Like I don't want to go to the office and a 40 hour

[00:03:37] after 17 years of shift work sounded literally like a fate worse than death because when you're

[00:03:45] used to 24 on 48 off forever, that's just the way you do things. So 40 hour always felt like a jail.

[00:03:54] But I went and I fell in love with it. And I will say I didn't know anything about social

[00:04:04] literally nothing. I didn't know how to light anything. I didn't know how to take pictures.

[00:04:11] I didn't know how to do nothing. So the learning curve was steep. I spent a lot of time on YouTube

[00:04:17] University trying to learn. I mean, I'm talking a 15 hour day of how to light something video

[00:04:27] after video after video. What's a key light? How do I do this? What do I do with that?

[00:04:32] Just to get started. And so if you look at the first year of social, it's pretty bad.

[00:04:39] I mean, I was struggling. But when I felt that impact for the first time, when I felt the community

[00:04:48] that we were talking about earlier start to really engage and be moved by the content.

[00:04:55] That's when I knew this was as important as the work I was doing before because this could

[00:05:02] prevent somebody from a tragedy. This could save someone's life or a family's life.

[00:05:11] This could really help in a new way. And it opened my eyes to the power of it all.

[00:05:20] Yeah, I know I want to go back just a little bit because I know what a public information

[00:05:24] officer is because I'm in the biz. But for those who are like, what do you do? It's

[00:05:30] really it's like you are 40 hour death week or 40 hour work week for firefighters is a death

[00:05:36] sentence. If firefighters wanted to work 40 hours a week, they wouldn't be working as firefighters.

[00:05:40] So nobody wants to go to that 40 hour work week. As a matter of fact, I have a friend

[00:05:46] coming off one and he's ecstatic. But public information officers are typically who you see

[00:05:52] on the news when something horrible happens. Or you see them like it's Christmas,

[00:05:59] don't burn down your house because you have a dried out tree or it's Thanksgiving,

[00:06:03] don't throw a frozen turkey in the oil that kind of thing. So it's traditionally like inside just

[00:06:09] like you said inside the inside the trucks inside the doors of the trucks. Nobody wants that job.

[00:06:14] But it's also a really important job. And one of the reasons why I started falling

[00:06:18] you which was actually quite a few years ago was because you do an amazing job at

[00:06:24] encapsulating what it's like to be a firefighter. It's not just like here's some safety information.

[00:06:32] You go into the stations, you interact with the crews, you have a lot of funny content,

[00:06:38] you have a lot of serious content. It's really like what you do was different than any other

[00:06:45] public information officer that I had seen. Did the person who preceded you did they

[00:06:52] start up any sort of social media accounts or was that all you had that work?

[00:06:56] Yeah. First of all, thank you. That means a lot. The person that I came on after had started,

[00:07:04] we had a Twitter, Twitter X whatever was Twitter back then really primarily we used that for media

[00:07:11] and to contact them to give timely information. We had an Instagram that had somewhere around

[00:07:18] 2,000 followers and we had a Facebook. I can't remember what the following was when I started

[00:07:24] maybe 4,000. Facebook was much more prevalent in 2017 when I started working full time for him

[00:07:34] or as the PIO and TikTok wasn't even in our purview yet. I did start the TikTok in 20,

[00:07:44] I want to say 2019, maybe 2020 right around the pandemic. That was a fresh launch and then threads.

[00:07:54] We started as well. This is a loaded question. When you would go into the stations to film

[00:08:00] content what was your action? Because I know because you have a video that Parity used it,

[00:08:05] but what was your action? That was literally the reaction in the beginning and if you

[00:08:10] haven't seen the video, I pull up, I'm waving at the guys in the kitchen and they're like,

[00:08:16] oh no, the PIO is here. I'm walking in with all my gear and they're like, yeah, we're leaving.

[00:08:22] What do you mean you're leaving? They're taking off. Not well received in the beginning.

[00:08:28] People were not interested in engaging. I got a lot of hate internally from the membership

[00:08:36] and I'm talking people that were my people, like my tribe, my people that I love dearly and would

[00:08:43] lay my life down for were like, yeah, I don't want to engage in any of the stuff that you're doing.

[00:08:50] And I got a lot of complaints and to the credit of the fire chief, he eventually just said,

[00:08:55] I don't want to hear it. She's doing what she's doing and I told her what to do.

[00:09:00] She has my permission. Stop complaining. And then the success started and people were starting to see,

[00:09:10] oh wow, we're getting some recognition and oh wow, we're on the news once a week and people really

[00:09:15] know who we are and people are excited about the content and people are excited to see things and

[00:09:21] oh, she recognized my crew for some excellent work and it started to build this momentum

[00:09:29] and I'm not going to say people were overjoyed ever really to engage in the content. However,

[00:09:36] there were people that were like, hey, if you need help, I'll help. If you want to spitball ideas,

[00:09:46] I'll do it. So it slowly but surely became something that more people were interested

[00:09:52] in helping with and they saw how much fun we had when we did it. So then they started

[00:09:58] to want to be a part of it and even better, people would start creating content and sharing

[00:10:03] things with me. And that really, that was the pinnacle of it all. It felt really good. So

[00:10:11] long story short to answer your question, towards the end of being there, I would call

[00:10:16] the captain and say, hey, I want to do XYZ. Would you guys be willing to help?

[00:10:22] Will your crew help? I never ambushed anybody. Everybody knew I was coming. They knew what

[00:10:28] the thought process was, what we were going to do. I really was thoughtful about not interrupting

[00:10:33] people's days if they had training, if they were busy, I would just leave them alone.

[00:10:39] It was only people that agreed to help that were asked to help.

[00:10:45] So story arc, 17 years on the truck fighting fires, doing what firefighters do,

[00:10:50] not thinking about any of this, you're really into that. I'm on 24 hours, I'm off 48.

[00:10:55] Then this opportunity comes up and you start doing it. And you kind of sighed when you first

[00:11:00] started, but then you're like, oh, okay, wait a minute, there's some good dipping you've done here.

[00:11:04] And then you actually take the fire departments that you're working with through that to where,

[00:11:09] oh, I'm not here to put you on blast. I'm here to help you do the things that you do

[00:11:14] and get recognition for it. So that is a heck of a story arc. But at some point,

[00:11:19] you decided that, you know what, this is what I now do for a living. I'm going to do this

[00:11:24] thing to the point where you've actually left the fire department and started your own agency.

[00:11:29] So can you kind of just walk us through how you got there?

[00:11:32] I was asked to present a fire chief's conference. And this was the first time I really had stepped

[00:11:39] into the space that wasn't my department or wasn't within the departments in our area or

[00:11:47] within the academy. And, you know, I was being looked at as this outlier,

[00:11:54] similar to what you were saying, Bodhi, it was like people weren't doing what I was doing.

[00:11:58] And so there was a lot of skepticism and lack of understanding, why are you doing this?

[00:12:05] I'm not going to say there's secrecy surrounding the fire service, but there certainly is the

[00:12:10] truck of trust as you referenced before when those doors closed, that's our safe space.

[00:12:16] And I was never going to violate that, that wasn't the intention. The intention was to help

[00:12:22] and to spread the word and for people to see who we are because

[00:12:27] the department's a really special place and it's filled with really incredible people.

[00:12:32] And if no one tells that story, right? No one gets to know that. So I get invited to go to

[00:12:39] this fire chief's conference to present basically like why should you have social media and why

[00:12:44] is this important and why is public information even a part of this world that we work in?

[00:12:51] And as I was presenting, I realized how few people were actually engaging in this and

[00:12:58] how much they wanted to know and how many questions they had and how can we implement

[00:13:04] this and what could we do. And immediately I was like there is a gap here in the fire service

[00:13:12] and people need training, they need someone to ask, they need somewhere to go when they want

[00:13:18] to implement these things. So maybe that should be me. I don't know. And I had worked with a captain

[00:13:26] in a neighboring fire department that was doing some testing and I realized their stuff's all online

[00:13:32] and if their business is based on how many people apply and that's how they get paid.

[00:13:39] If the fire departments have a larger following, then those people are going to have more testing

[00:13:48] candidates. So there was a direct correlation between followers and money for this company.

[00:13:54] And so I went to the captain and said can I take you to lunch and pick your brain and what do

[00:14:00] you think of this? And I'd like to work for you and do this for the fire departments. And he

[00:14:04] said I'd be doing you a disservice if I let you come work for us. You need to start your own company.

[00:14:11] And literally that was a Thursday and on Saturday Blue Helmet was born.

[00:14:18] What is the what is the reference to the blue helmet? Blue helmet is PIOs wear blue helmets.

[00:14:25] That's the color. So right fire department has 50 different color helmets. There's yellow or

[00:14:30] black typically for firefighter red for a captain white for a chief. For us the baby blue helmet was

[00:14:39] PIO and the dreaded green helmet dreaded green helmet safety.

[00:14:48] Go ahead Rob. I was just going to say so you know three days later you start Blue Helmet media

[00:14:56] was your goal to only work with fire departments or were you looking to say well hey if I can do

[00:15:02] this for a fire department I can potentially do it for someone else. You know was that was

[00:15:06] that always the thought when you decided to start or did you have to get to that point eventually?

[00:15:11] Yeah when I started it was I really have no idea what I'm doing except that I'm super

[00:15:16] passionate about this and I see a gap and maybe I can help and I had no inclination as to what

[00:15:22] it really would end up being. My goal was start an Instagram and a TikTok see if I can get to 10,000

[00:15:30] followers in a year. Meanwhile how do I present at some fire chiefs conferences? How do I get in

[00:15:35] front of the decision makers to help impress upon them the necessity of social media for their

[00:15:40] departments? And how do I help them get started? That really was the beginning.

[00:15:47] About a month and a half later a friend that ran a nonprofit was like hey could you

[00:15:52] help me with my social and I was like oh this is my business now so pretty quickly I was already

[00:15:58] outside of the fire service space. It was adjacent but a nonprofit and a world that I

[00:16:05] didn't know anything about so it expanded quickly to answer your question and now

[00:16:11] I feel like the strength, the power, the influence of social branches into anything and everything.

[00:16:22] Any industry, any company, anything, anyone so the possibilities are endless and I'm excited

[00:16:32] at the prospect of dipping my toe and my fingers into a more creative process with greater

[00:16:44] less parameters and more reach. I do want to point out like the difficulty that it is to reach

[00:16:50] like administrators for the fire service because they're not always old white guys but

[00:16:56] there's a lot of them and they didn't grow up with social media. They grew up in the fire

[00:17:01] service that didn't talk about their feelings. We don't share this outside of us so to try and

[00:17:07] pitch them and be successful at it says a lot to your personality and how you are able to craft

[00:17:13] a message. So I think that kind of leads us to crafting a message like how do you decide

[00:17:20] what to post, when to post. Some of your stuff is very silly, some of your stuff is about

[00:17:23] mental health, some of your stuff is just kind of like it feels random. How do you feel

[00:17:30] like one more day? Like I love your stuff. I am a fan like you, firefighter, fighter,

[00:17:35] fighter, fintan, I don't know what's wrong with my voice today but and firefighter,

[00:17:41] chronicles, my three favorite accounts in the fire service. How do you decide what you're

[00:17:46] going to post on that day? Do you have a content calendar? Do you just kind of go

[00:17:50] with what you feel like? That is a major company to put me in so wow thank you, thank you.

[00:18:01] When I teach I preach that there is always a why and there's an overarching goal and if you're not

[00:18:09] integrating both your goal and your why into your content you're just cooking sushi over an

[00:18:17] open flame which is silly, right? So there's a plan and there's a why. I have done content

[00:18:27] calendars in the past but to be honest it's generally, I might have perseverated over some

[00:18:34] ideas and some content, create it and put it in drafts and then use it when it feels appropriate.

[00:18:45] Generally the content is how I feel that day. It's very much about me but it still has that

[00:18:54] goal and that why integrated into it. It just does this feel like the right day to do this.

[00:19:00] Now Sunday's first NFL Sunday, right? And I have content prepared for that

[00:19:06] because I love football and I'm excited about that so that's planned out but not everything's

[00:19:13] planned. I will say a lot of it is planned, a lot of it is thought out and I try to get the temperature

[00:19:21] of what's going on in the world because I feel like when you schedule things inevitably you're

[00:19:27] going to have some silly content ready to go and someone dies that day and then you feel

[00:19:31] really off brand and it's tone deaf to what's happening in the world. So I try not to do that as much.

[00:19:43] So it sounds like there's two phases to what you do at Blue Helmet, that there's the actual

[00:19:50] day-to-day you're creating content to go on the socials but also sounds like you spend a fair

[00:19:56] amount of time actually coaching people up or instructing folks on the benefits of what

[00:20:02] social media can do for them and do for their business. Can you talk about that a bit?

[00:20:08] Yeah, so it's more than two. I do logos. I'm really loving graphic design. Again,

[00:20:16] a skill I didn't know that I had or enjoyed but the privilege of helping people with a logo

[00:20:21] that is going to represent their business and their brand is something I do not take lightly

[00:20:27] and I just really, really love. So logo creation is one thing that I do. Classes is another

[00:20:34] where I'm actually going out and teaching people how to create content, introducing the goals and

[00:20:40] the why and the value and how to do this and when to do this and where to do this,

[00:20:46] what platforms you're going to have the most success with video versus photo and how do

[00:20:50] you write a caption that's going to be engaging? What's a CTA? These sorts of things. So I love the

[00:20:58] classes. Influencing the decision makers to engage is another piece like you referenced but also I

[00:21:07] have this communications part so I'm about to complete the master public information officer

[00:21:14] program through FEMA next week we graduate and that's really about communications and crisis

[00:21:23] communications. So learning how to integrate an internal communications plan and an external

[00:21:30] communications plan for your organization and how vital those things are. People don't realize

[00:21:36] that they don't have anything ready and they don't know what they're supposed to do until

[00:21:42] something terrible is going on and then they go oh we literally have a plan for everything else but

[00:21:48] not for this. So I offer those services as well developing a crisis communication plan which

[00:21:56] some companies are charging you hundreds of thousands of dollars to do. I don't charge quite that

[00:22:02] much but knowing that there is going to be a crisis that you're going to deal with especially

[00:22:09] in a public safety agency but certainly any agency and having a plan is so important. So I do that as

[00:22:16] well. It's really anything and everything that has to do with social and communications and

[00:22:22] design and creative and all of the fun. What would you say like the biggest misconception

[00:22:29] is about the PIO position or what you do at Blue Helmet Media because I'm sure people come to

[00:22:35] you and they're like I want you to do this, this, and this and you're like that's not really

[00:22:38] the right way to do that or that's not what we do here. I don't know that people have a

[00:22:43] misconception other than I don't think they know I'm a business. I think they, similar to

[00:22:49] Firefighter Fenton, I think they think I just create content and that's what I do. I don't

[00:22:54] know that they recognize that it's an actual business where there are services and that's

[00:22:58] because I don't push that really out on the social so much. It's more if you meet me

[00:23:04] at a conference or outside of the social space. Some people have DM'd me and said hey do you do

[00:23:10] other things or they've checked out the website and they're like oh you do that. I also opened a

[00:23:16] podcast studio this year. I was helping produce some podcasts and so created a studio and I have

[00:23:23] that opportunity as well. I haven't pushed that either. It's just sort of more word of

[00:23:29] mouth so I think the misconception to answer your question is that I just do social but I do a whole

[00:23:35] lot more obviously. Bodhi and I are podcasters so you may have saw my eyes just right now oh you

[00:23:42] opened up a podcast studio can you can you expound upon that when you say you open the podcast

[00:23:46] studio what does that mean because that means a lot of different things to a lot of different

[00:23:49] people. Sure so long story short it had a fun beginning and sort of a sad

[00:23:57] middle or ending. Some friends came to me and said I know some people that want to start a podcast

[00:24:04] you've been doing this podcast with the department could you give them some tips and tricks sit

[00:24:09] down with them absolutely so plan for an hour sit down and three hours later of questions

[00:24:15] and conversation they're like hey would you produce our podcast and I said

[00:24:21] uh let me think let me think about that because where are we going to do that how does that work

[00:24:28] and I had been contemplating integrating a podcast into Blue Helmet as well because

[00:24:33] podcasting is my love language. I love this so I'm envious of what you guys are doing but

[00:24:40] after some thought I went back to the guys and said what do you think if I build a studio

[00:24:45] you you pay to use the studio and for the production and I'll help with the edit and

[00:24:50] all of that good stuff but instead of two people spending the money to purchase all of the items

[00:24:57] necessary I'll buy it and then I can use the studio rent it out for other people what have you

[00:25:04] and they were like heck yeah we're in so helped them kind of get going we storyboarded they

[00:25:10] came in we filmed the first episode and you guys it was like magic in a bottle you know when

[00:25:18] you're just going wow that went perfectly it was fun it was engaging and to be fair I was not sure

[00:25:27] about their plan of how what they wanted to do but I was wrong they were fantastic and I was on fire

[00:25:34] to do the next one like so excited um and then they kept delaying the next one and then

[00:25:43] we couldn't make time work and I went out of town and they went out of town and I reached out

[00:25:47] and I'm like hey what's up are we going what are we doing and they're like oh we filmed two episodes

[00:25:55] and I'm like well what do you mean they're like oh yeah you want to see him I'm like

[00:26:00] what do you what do you mean where how what um and I had given one of the guys wives

[00:26:08] list of all the items that I purchased because she was like I want to start a podcast too

[00:26:13] well it turns out they wanted to do it themselves which is great but like just tell me

[00:26:19] that would have been fine so like I said sort of a sad ending but now I have the studio

[00:26:25] I've used it for a couple other I've you know rented it out for a couple other people helped

[00:26:30] them with some production um and I don't know if I'll keep it or what I'll do or if it's gonna

[00:26:36] extend into using it or not I'm not even there today but um yeah I don't know we'll see

[00:26:45] interesting story I can see how that happens um you being a podcast I've been podcasting for over

[00:26:52] 18 years now and um there are folks who they want to do everything themselves there are folks who

[00:27:00] don't want to do anything other than turn the light on turn the camera on and go and then

[00:27:04] hand files with someone so and then everything in between all right everybody that is where

[00:27:10] we're going to end part one with our interview with Ashley Losh if you want to learn more about

[00:27:16] Ashley I encourage you to go to blue helmet dot com that's B L U no e helmet dot com

[00:27:24] I'll also make sure to put Ashley's Instagram and TikTok information in the show notes

[00:27:30] as well as the website just in case you forget and then if you're like you know what I'd really

[00:27:36] like there to be a part two of this interview you are in luck there is a part two and in part

[00:27:41] two we're going to cover a couple of different subjects but one of the the coolest things that

[00:27:46] we're going to talk about is community and how important it is to be a good steward of your

[00:27:51] community part two of our interview with Ashley will actually be released on September 18th 2024

[00:27:59] Robin I would like to thank Ashley for being so gracious with her time and we will see you

[00:28:05] on the next episode