Nancy Leve is the Founder of her innovative and heartwarming service called Video Journals Online, which beautifully captures and preserves the lessons learned and wisdom gained throughout a person’s unique life story, providing an important legacy for both loved ones and their future generations to come. Nancy’s unique and touching Video Journals Online via Zoom both nationally and internationally help people move forward from grief to joy, eliminate many of their regrets after the death of a loved one, and enable them to cherish and encapsulate their thoughts and feelings about the people they love so dearly. Tune in to hear why Nancy says that grieving the loss of a loved one changes over time but never goes away, how Video Journals Online helps people move forward from grief to joy by eliminating the regret families often feel after the death of a loved one, how she composes her Oprah style interviews, her Grandma’s Memory Time Capsule and Grandpa’s Memory Time Capsule, the ways the Video Journal Online can turn out to be the most valuable inheritance money can buy, and more, for what is a moving and informative interview with healing grief news you can use!
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- Why grieving the loss of a loved one changes over time but never goes away
- The regrets families often feel after the death of a loved one
- Why a digital product is more effective than a photo.
- The process of creating a video journal online.
- How Nancy composes her Oprah style interviews.
- Why a Video Journal Online can become the most valuable inheritance money can buy.
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS NANCY:
- What led you to create Video Journals Online?
- How do you compose your Oprah style interviews?
- How does Video Journals Online bring healing to someone who is continuing to grieve?
- What is the Grandma’s Memory Time Capsule and the Grandpa’s Memory Time Capsule?
- Why do you say that a video journal online can become the most valuable inheritance money can buy?
Start capturing those precious memories. Visit Video Journals Online on their website, Facebook, and Instagram!
Connect with Nancy on Facebook and Instagram for updates and inspiration!
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Nancy Leve: Do You Hold the Keys to Your Family Treasure?
Video Journals Online
Would you like to leave healing memories for your family and for generations to come? Meet Nancy Leve whose Oprah-style interviews through her company, Video Journals Online, help people move from grief to joy and eliminate the regret families often feel after the death of a loved one. Would you love to know what Nancy calls the Grandma’s Video Time Capsule and the Grandpa’s Video Time Capsule? Come join us to find out and learn more about Video Journals Online and begin capturing your family’s life story memories. Heartfelt many blessings.
Here are two important questions for you to ponder as you tune in to my interview about the innovative and heartwarming service called Video Journals Online. Do you hold the keys to your family treasure, and would you like to leave your memories for your family and generations to come? I’m speaking to you from my studio in West Orange, New Jersey. I could not be more delighted to have the pleasure of interviewing Nancy Leve who will be speaking to us from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, about her innovative and heartwarming service called Video Journals Online.
Video Journals Online beautifully captures and preserves the lessons learned and wisdom gained throughout a person’s unique life story, which provides an important legacy for both loved ones and their future generations to come. Nancy, who has held key marketing management positions in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors and has successfully launched five small businesses, provides unique and touching video journals online via Zoom both nationally and internationally. It is to help people move forward from grief to joy, eliminate many of their regrets after the death of a loved one, and enable them to cherish and encapsulate their thoughts and feelings about the people they love so dearly. It is an innovative and heartwarming service indeed.
I’m looking forward to asking Nancy why she says that grieving the loss of a loved one changes over time but never goes away, how Video Journals Online helps people move forward from grief to joy by eliminating the regret families often feel after the death of a loved one, how Nancy composes her Oprah-style interviews, her Grandma’s Memory Time Capsule, and Grandpa’s Memory Time Capsule, the ways the Video Journal Online can turn out to be the most valuable inheritance money can buy, and so much more for what will surely be a moving and informative interview with healing grief news you can certainly use.
Nancy, a warm heartfelt welcome to the show.
I am glad to be here with you.
It’s such a pleasure. Your service is so needed, special, and so healing for people. Let’s start from the beginning. You’ve created so many businesses. You’ve done so much. What led you to create Video Journals Online?
This is the second rendition of video journals. I had a small studio here in South Florida. Individuals would come in and I would interview them, sitting side by side with a video camera going and that sort of thing. I had heard incredible stories from World War II Veterans and someone running from the Holocaust. It is mostly seniors, but I also did pregnant women. I am documenting how they perceive their life is going to change.
I’ve engaged couples so that they could talk about what they fell in love with and what was so important to them to marry this person. I always tell them, “20 years from now, this video is going to mean so much more than a bunch of drunk people dancing at your wedding. It will bring you back to a place where you were still new to each other and you didn’t have the burdens of marriage, children, and all of that sort of thing.”
We all carry video cameras in our pockets, but we don’t capture stories or conversations. We capture actions. You see people blowing out birthday candles year after year. When I first started this many years ago, I had a young child. I was trying to journal every night and I was thinking, “There’s got to be an easier way.” I thought, “Why not have people talk about their memories and I would act as the railroad track?”
Why do you say you would act as the railroad track? What do you mean?
If you sat in front of a video camera and said, “This is my life story,” you’d find that at points, you go down rabbit holes and you can’t get back out and carry on. I’m keeping them moving forward starting with, “What do you know about your ancestors? Tell me about your childhood, your parents, what role religion played in your life, what morals you believe in, and then eventually, how you’d like to be remembered.”
I found it so rewarding many years ago. At that point, I got a divorce and I had a young child. I needed health insurance and a paycheck every week, so I put it aside and went on to do other things. After the pandemic, I was tired of doing digital marketing. I have a digital marketing agency. I said to myself, “What do you want to do next? You don’t want to retire?” I then thought, “Zoom in the pandemic. People know how to use Zoom. I could offer it internationally.” Initially, the idea came in terms of me trying to document my own memories and writing a journal to be challenging whereas we meet new people all the time and tell them about our life. It’s like doing the same thing, sitting down with coffee and talking to a new friend about your life experiences.
Why do you also say that grieving the loss of a loved one, although it changes over time, never goes away? How does Video Journals Online bring healing to someone who is continuing to grieve?
Often, when we lose somebody, we regret, “Why didn’t I ask these questions? Why didn’t I write down the answers? Why didn’t I capture their voice and something other than the last voicemail that I have from them?” I have both of my parents’ video journals. I can watch them on a weekend and wake up on Monday feeling like they were here for a visit.
Often, when we lose someone, we regret not having asked questions, written down their answers, or captured their voice. Share on X
Not only that, what a fascinating thing for your child.
Once you’re a grandparent, you know the family’s going on. You want your grandchild who you love and adore to be able to introduce you to their grandchild someday. Video Journals Online is a way to do that.
That’s wonderful. It reminded me that when my husband passed, a good friend of his had my husband’s voice on a voicemail. He kept playing it over and over again until finally, he had to let the voicemail go. Video journals are a way to not let it go. It’s recorded forever. It’s a great idea.
After it’s edited, it’s put in the Cloud and you get a link. Anyone you share that link with can download the video to their computer so they have it.
That would be why it’s more effective than a photo, because you’ve downloaded it and you’ve got it forever.
Also, you have the sound of their voice, their laughter, and their facial expressions. You have them at a time where they’re mature enough, in many cases, to understand the importance of leaving a legacy but they’re not yet on their deathbed.
I love that you’re leaving them the sound of laughter. That’s so important. A lot of times, people focus on the negative stuff that’s happening, but how about the beautiful, joyous things that you can pass along? That’s beautiful. How do you compose your Oprah-style in interviews? I’m very impressed that they’re Oprah-style interviews. Do you decide on the topics before the recorded interview?
Yeah. What I do is I have a list of questions and I email it to the person ahead of time. I say, “Look through these. I’m not going to ask you any question you don’t know the answer to because it’s your life, but if there’s anything you don’t want to discuss, then tell me in advance. Also, talk to your family and see if there are specific stories that they want to make sure that you cover. You tell me so that I make sure we cover them.”
Inspiring Stories of Healing
That’s fantastic. You got a couple of really great stories I want you to share with everyone. You’ve got an inspiring and touching story of how Video Journals Online helped a woman give an unbelievably meaningful eulogy at her grandmother’s celebration of life event. You’ve got another one about this amazing story of a woman who escaped Poland at the start of World War II. Those are memories that have been preserved. Could you tell us about that?
Sure. I got a call one day. The woman said, “Nancy, you don’t know me, but you did my grandmother’s video journal. I came from her celebration of life ceremony. I stood and told everyone in attendance all the details of my grandmother’s life. Every single one of them came up to me afterward and said, “How did you know so much about your grandmother’s life? It was because of you. That’s why I had to call you.” It is very rewarding to know when I finish an interview, there are going to be hundreds of people in that family that are going to benefit from it never knowing me at all.
That’s marvelous. You’ve got another amazing story about this woman who escaped Poland.
She was trying to escape during World War II. She was in a truck, so they had to go through different checkpoints. She had her infant child in her arms. I did not know at that point in time that the way often the trucks were heated was from a wood fire in the truck. The child became asphyxiated and died in her arms. She had to carry that dead baby all the way through on her journey to get out. She made it out and a year later went back in to bring out her mother-in-law. She is the bravest woman I’ve ever met in my life.
What a story that she left to those who followed her. I’m so sorry about her child.
Life can be so hard.
The message with that is with everything she went through, she went on. She continued to live her life. It’s amazing. From that story, her family knows about how resilient she was and how brave she was. They’ve got some of those traits, right?
Exactly.
Memory Time Capsules
On that note, you’ve got a Grandma’s Memory Time Capsule and a Grandpa’s Memory Time Capsule. PDF. Tell us about that. Everyone’s going to want to find out how you do that for their grandparents.
It’s a great gift. Ideally, Video Journals Online is the way I like to conduct interviews and the way I like to pass down information but we know there are some people who will never be on video. They don’t even want their picture taken. For those people, I didn’t want their memories not to be captured so I created a downloadable PDF that has over 500 questions in it. They type in their answers, and then they can email that to all of their loved ones so they have it in print.
If they need to do a eulogy, at least they have what Grandpa put in there as far as his life information. That’s great.
I got it from my mother. My son was the first grandchild of my mother. She wrote something in a little pamphlet but it’s all in cursive. The future is digital. They won’t even be able to read cursive. However your loved one wants to give their memories, it’s important to give them the vehicle so that they can do so.
However your loved one chooses to share their memories, it’s important to provide them with the means to do so. Share on X
The Most Valuable Inheritance
You find each life story to be very unique. I’m sure you must have heard a million life stories. Why do you say that a video journal online can become the most valuable inheritance money can buy?
When someone dies, you can’t go back and ask them questions. It’s not possible. By taking responsibility for your life story and sharing it, that’s going to go on for generations. Unless you’re super wealthy, no matter what inheritance you pass along financially, that’s not going to go on for generations. Your life story is important. It’s unique. I interviewed somebody. She said, “My life is pretty average,” and then she talked about how after she got done in high school, she was a stenographer. How many stenographers do we know?
Kids would go, “What’s a stenographer? What do they do?”
Exactly. She had to explain the whole aspect of how at that point in time, all the bosses were male. They sat behind a desk and then this female would come in and sit across from them with their notepad. He would dictate and then she would go to a manual typewriter and type it up. If it needed copies, they didn’t have copy machines. They had carbon paper. We’ve lived through so much, 9/11, a pandemic, all of it.
They’ve lived through World Wars. My mother was a stenographer. She was amazing with shorthand, the manual typewriter, the carbon paper, the whole thing. I know that you provide amazing services, so let’s tell everyone what you do. I know there are video services, life legacy memories, customized interviews, love story videos, and childhood story videos. That’s interesting too. Is there anything else you’d like to share? Tell everyone about all the things that they can do through Video Journals Online.
What I would recommend that everyone do is when you have the family over for Thanksgiving, have one of the young relatives take out their cell phone, go into another room with the oldest person there, interview them, and capture it on their cell phone. We need to do more of that. It’s the same thing with children. It’s very interesting when you ask a child, “How old do you think you’ll be when you get married? What would you like to be when you grow up? What is your favorite game to play now and why?” Use the video camera to have a conversation and to capture it and preserve it.
If they’re taking it with their video camera, do you do something else with that later?
Yeah. I can edit it. I can add photos to it if they want that to happen. What it would be is more of a compilation. If you had one person doing a part that talked about grandma’s childhood, another person who talked about grandma’s jobs, and another one who talked about grandma’s children, I take all from grandma and then I can put it all together.
That’s beautiful. It’s like a whole family presentation. We’ve talked about legacy memories, customized interviews, love story videos, and childhood story videos. Is there anything else or any other service you’d like to share?
A lot of times, it has to do with the individual. I had a client say this to me, and we’re going to do it for him. I’ve already done his life story. He said he would like to do a five-minute video for each of his loved ones, his wife, his brother, each of his children, and each of his grandchildren. It would be specifically about how much each of those people meant to him. It’s like, “You meant this to me. This is what my hopes are for you for the future.” We don’t all get to have a deathbed conversation.
That’s wonderful.
This would be for after he’s gone. It would be on a jump drive so his family members would be able to watch it.
Do you know what I love the most about that idea? I think about my own family. I have three grandchildren. He sees each one uniquely. There’s no competition. He speaks to each one about what he sees in each of them to give them positive feedback, hope for their futures, and all that. That’s fabulous. That’s wonderful.
When we’re doing Video Journals Online, as I’m the railroad track, I will keep track of it. I will say, “You spent 5 minutes talking about your wonderful daughter and spent 3 minutes talking about your wonderful son. They will know that by stopwatch because sibling rivalry never does.” I don’t want people coming back and saying, “I always knew she was your favorite,” because you said more about one than the other. Being an outsider, you can keep track of those things.
That’s fantastic. Do you have an offer for our audience or anyone who’s reading this?
I do. They can go online or they can call me. Say the promo code GRIEF and it’ll be a 15% discount.
Healing and Finding Joy in Life
That’s wonderful. I encourage everybody to check it out. It’s a wonderful service you’re providing. Do you have a special message about the importance of healing?
These are some of the wonderful things I’ve heard when I ask, “How would you like to be remembered?” One woman said she had six daughters. She said, “To my daughters, I want them every time they feel a breeze on their face to think of it as a kiss from me.”
Talk about healing. That’s fabulous. What is Nancy’s tip for finding joy in life?
Your ancestors who have predeceased you, all they want is for your happiness. They don’t care about how much money you make or the size of their house. They care about you being happy. For them, you need to prioritize healing and being happy.
Can you think of a better legacy to leave besides a video journal online that says, “I healed my life and I did all these things to make your life better down the road.” That’s beautiful.
I interviewed a man. We were going to do it for two hours. I did one hour, and then he went into hospice. He wasn’t able to do the second hour. His three children said, “It was so important to our dad that his life story gets told. We want you to interview us and we will tell you all the memories that we have that he shared with us throughout his lifetime.” They had that before his celebration of life ceremony.
That’s beautiful. He had an actual celebration of life ceremony that happened before he passed or after he passed?
This was after he passed.
I hear more people who are wanting to do that. What a beautiful thing to present to people at that celebration of life ceremony. That’s fabulous. I work with a lot of people who are trying to heal. Many of them have regrets about the loss of their loved ones. I love how through Video Journals Online, you enable those grieving to move forward from grief to joy by helping them immortalize those cherished people who are so important to them and also, importantly, showing their kids and their grandkids those beloved people whose histories can teach them so much. Thank you for helping our deceased loved ones to live on through your video journals. I thank you from my heart for this moving, helpful, healing, and informative interview on the show.
It has been my pleasure.
Thank you. As I like to say, to be continued. Thank you so much. Many blessings.
Same to you.
Guest’s Links:
- Nancy Leve’s Website
- Connect with Nancy Leve on Facebook
- Connect with Nancy Leve on Instagram
- Visit Video Journals Online on Facebook
- Visit Video Journals Online on Instagram
About Nancy Leve
Nancy’s journey began in the suburbs of Philadelphia, but it was the vibrant energy and culture of big cities that truly captured her heart. After grad school, she left the mountains of West Virginia and found herself in The Big Apple, a place she instantly fell in love with. The hustle and bustle, the unique walking and subway culture, and of course, Broadway, all became a part of her life.
A good job offer influenced her move to Atlanta. Her son was born there, but the family relocated to South Florida when he was eight months old. She expected to live in Miami for two or three years. Thirty-seven years later, she still loves the South Florida winters and beautiful beaches. She hopes this will be her permanent base because of her extended support system (although Barcelona wouldn’t be a bad second option.)
Nancy Leve, a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience, has held key marketing and marketing research management positions in both corporate (The Miami Herald) and non-profit (Women In Distress) sectors. Her entrepreneurial spirit is evident in her successful launch of five small businesses.
Her current business, Video Journals Online, captures and preserves life story memories via a one- ($600) or two-hour ($850) Zoom interview. The recorded video is edited. This edited video is stored in the cloud, and the family is provided with a link to download it to their computer. A person’s unique life story, including lessons learned and wisdom gained, is an important legacy for loved ones and future generations. This service is available internationally.
Nancy also loves teaching and coaching current and future small business owners and entrepreneurs on being more successful when starting businesses or expanding for growth. She has worked in that capacity for the Florida Women’s Business Center, The Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship, Broward SCORE, and other organizations.
