Turning Memory into Impact: How Storytelling Can Shape the Future with Leslie Benitah

0:01John Lee Dumas:Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by HighLevel, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today we'll be breaking down how to turn memory into impact, how storytelling can shape the future. To drop these vibe bombs, we are brought to Leslie Benitah and EO Fire Studios. Leslie is a founder of The Last Ones Foundation, a global storytelling movement preserving Holocaust survivor testimonies through film and digital media to ensure history is felt, understood, and never forgotten. We talk about why, why history feels fragile, going beyond the facts, reaching the next generation, defining success, responsibility, and truth, and oh, so much more.

0:43John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Leslie and our sponsors. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial, plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more. Visit highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, if you have a high-ticket offer and need more quality leads, Nexus Install is designed for you. We'll book you 8 to 20 qualified calls each month, then train you to run the system yourself.

1:21John Lee Dumas:Email my team at john at eofire.com to learn more and see if Nexus is the right fit for you. Leslie, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. It's funny because people often say or believe that success is about taking risks. But honestly, I think success has very little to do with being fearless or perfectly balanced or even particularly strategic all the time. I'd say that most meaningful things I've built happened because I was obsessed. Okay, and I still am, by the way, obsessed enough to keep going while I'm tired, heartbroken, doubtful, or completely overwhelmed.

2:10And also sometimes while being told that it was impossible or unreasonable. And I think that people love the polished version of success. And I believe the real version looks much messier. It's a lot about, you know, sacrifice and stubbornness. And for me, I would say sleepless nights, definitely. And this almost irrational refusal to give up. And I would say, lastly, the most important part, I don't think success comes from protecting yourself too much. I think it comes from caring deeply, sometimes dangerously deeply about something that is bigger than yourself.

2:55John Lee Dumas:I love that phrase, dangerously deeply. I mean, Fire Nation, think about that. Are you living your life, at least on some levels and some scenarios, with that in mind? And we're talking about turning memory into impact, how storytelling can shape the future. And you briefly touched upon one or two things. And of course, I talked about you a lot in the introduction, but I want to go into your origin story. Like what first inspired you, Leslie, to create The Last Ones Foundation? I'm the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors. So in many, many ways, this journey began long even before me. But I grew up surrounded by silence, like fragmented memories, inherited trauma, and things that were felt far more than they were ever explained to me.

3:48And I don't know, my grandparents, like many survivors, did not really speak about what they had lived through. So I only grew up with bits and pieces, you know, a sentence here, a name there, and then silence. And I was not even allowed to ask questions. It felt forbidden. And I guess the pain was too immense for them, too much buried and impossible to put into words. So I think somehow this is why I wanted to know more. And also as survivors began disappearing. So I'm talking like, you know, I realized that obviously now it's going to be eight years. So it's not like I started yesterday, but as survivors began disappearing, I realized we were starting, you know, we were standing at the edge of a historic rupture.

4:40Like the last generation that was able to say, I was there. I saw it. I lived through it. This generation was leaving us. And at first I simply wanted to preserve their voices before it was too late. But very quickly, I understood that it was not only about archives or memory. It was really about transmission, about making young people care again. so what transformed i guess the last one's foundation from a very personal project into a global movement was the realization that authenticity and truth still have the power to cut through all all the noise around us and you know we live in this uh hyper digital world and people are starving, I believe, for something real.

5:37John Lee Dumas:We were standing at the edge of historic rupture. I mean, I just love that phrase, Fire Nation. I mean, to me, that says so much with so few words. And it kind of moves me into what I want to talk about next, Leslie, which is why history feels fragile. I mean, we live in a world where information, I mean, it's just everywhere at all times. I mean, so saturated. yet belief in history seems to be weakening. What does this mean exactly? And why do you think it's happening? I think we confused access to information with understanding. Like we assumed that if facts were available, truth would automatically survive.

6:19But facts alone do not create the emotional memory. And I think we're also living through the collapse of trust, You know, the trust in the institutions and media, experts, even images themselves. Imagine I was trained as a journalist. OK, we were taught ethics, responsibility, verification, accountability. We were taught that words and facts mattered. OK, and today there's so much of so-called journalism that has become a bit unrecognizable. Everything moves at the speed of outrage. So, you know, we don't verify anything anymore and social media amplifies that even more. So there's little accountability, no consequences for misinformation.

7:12And we have AI. So you have AI, misinformation, algorithm, polarization. Everything now competes for attention and credibility simultaneously. So I think that it's incredibly dangerous, obviously, for our society, because once truth becomes secondary to attention, ideology and clicks or, you know, everything that is viral, then trust completely erodes. And the more content people consume, I almost feel that the more emotionally disconnected they become. So when history becomes just another piece of content between entertainment and advertising, it loses the weight. And that's why I believe that testimony matters so much because, you know, a testimony, let's say from a survivor is not simply giving information.

8:12They are transferring lived experiences. They're transferring to you their feelings, whatever they went through. And these lived experiences, they're much harder to deny, I would say.

8:27John Lee Dumas:And I love looking at the word history and saying, it's not history. It's his story. It's her story. I mean, it's the stories that we tell each other that make this massive impact. So I want to talk, Leslie, about going beyond the facts. Because you said that facts alone, they aren't enough. People need to feel history. They need to feel his story, her story. They need to feel that. How do you create that emotional connection? I love your his story. So by bringing history back to the human scale, you know, the fact that we don't begin with statistics and facts and figure, we start with a face, with a voice, with a child who once, you know, had friends and dreams and fears and maybe a favorite song and favorite sports, a mother waiting for him or her at home.

9:26So the moment young people realize that the survivors were once teenagers, exactly like them, history stops feeling distant. It becomes, uh, like relational. Okay. And we also intentionally film survivors in, you know, in their homes, in the, in intimate human ways. Um, you know, they're surrounded by ordinary objects and, and we stop, we take pauses. We, there's a lot of emotion, a lot of emotion also through silences. So I think that we, I'm telling you this, we purposefully do not overproduce anything. We do not overproduce suffering. We really let humanity speak for itself. Emotion is not the opposite of education.

10:23I think emotion is what allows knowledge to stay. And if those young people remember, probably I believe that they will remember what they felt.

10:36John Lee Dumas:Well, I love that you love the his story, her story. Leslie, please take that, use it, make it your own. I would love to see that out in the world. And Fire Nation, we'll be talking about reaching the next generation, defining success, responsibility, and truth, and more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors. Every business wants a website that looks custom built, but very few have the time or resources to make it happen. That's where Framer comes in. It combines a visual design canvas, responsive layouts, and integrated CMS and hosting into one single platform, making it easy to launch polished production-ready pages from day one.

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13:44John Lee Dumas:Stop piecing tools together. Start building momentum. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Leslie, we're back, and I want to talk about reaching the next generation. I mean, you've brought Holocaust education onto platforms like TikTok, and you've built immersive tools like your geo-based app. What have you learned about connecting with the younger generations? It was a challenge because a lot of time people were telling me like, you know, Holocaust doesn't belong on TikTok. And I believe that if the young people, if this young generation is, I don't think they're disconnected from history because they don't care.

14:26I think they're disconnected because we often speak to them in formats that no longer feel alive or are no longer the ones that they use. So if we really want to reach young generations, we cannot ask them to abandon their world completely. We have to meet them where they actually are. So on social media, on their phones, through immersive experiences, while still, and this is the challenge, still maintaining depth and dignity and historical rigor, I will say. So what I've learned is that young audiences respond extraordinarily well to authenticity. Okay. They can sense immediately when something feels performative or institutional, but when they encounter something that is raw, unfiltered, and deeply, deeply human, they do engage.

15:21And technology itself, I don't see it as the enemy. Technology is not the enemy. The question is whether technology amplifies humanity or replaces it.

15:35John Lee Dumas:Let's talk about defining success because we're moving toward this future where original voices are no longer here to tell the stories in a firsthand environment. So in your mind, Leslie, what does success look like for The Last One's Foundation? I'd say that success is not simply preserving testimonies in an archive. Success is really creating future generations who still feel morally connected to these stories after the survivors are gone. Like if a teenager watches a testimony and becomes more resistant to hatred, more sensitive to dehumanization, more aware of where indifference can lead, then that is success.

16:22Like it's not simply that, let's say, a 15 year old learns about the Holocaust or remembers a historical date. I really don't don't care about this. I want them to walk away with more empathy, more awareness of where hatred and indifference can lead and a deeper understanding of our shared humanity and responsibility. So again, and I want them to see the survivors also not as distant historical figures, but really as human beings. People who, as I said before, were once their age and had dreams and people who build a life even after everything that they had gone through. So if a teenager finishes one of our videos feeling something real, then we've already achieved, I would say, something important because the emotional connection is not secondary for us.

17:22It is exactly the point. So if they live, you know, with a little bit more, you know, as I said, more sensitive to the world that surrounds them, more sensitive to and more aware of the consequences of silence and indifference, then I believe that we've truly succeeded. So this is what success looks like.

17:45John Lee Dumas:I personally am a big believer that history doesn't always repeat, but it certainly does rhyme. So if people think that something like the Holocaust couldn't happen again, you just are not understanding history. I mean, there are people that have read incredible books that span the 10 ,000 years of known history, and those books are incredible, but they just bring up the reality that, man, these type of things are happening over and over again. And something's honestly right under our nose right now on smaller scales. So let's talk about responsibility and truth. So for entrepreneurs and leaders who are listening right now, Leslie, what responsibility do we all have when it comes to preserving truth and shaping future generations?

18:28This is tricky, but I believe neutrality has become one of the great illusions of our time. Every platform, every company, every leader is already shaping culture, whether intentionally or not. So the question is no longer do we influence future generations. The question is now, what are we teaching them through our algorithm, our silence, our priorities, our courage or even our lack of courage? so um you know preserving truth is no longer only the responsibility this is what i strongly believe it's not it's no longer only the responsibility of historians or educators i think it is a societal responsibility the responsibility of each and every one of us And I think one of the greatest dangers today is not only hatred itself, but really its emotional numbness, the normalization of indifference.

19:35So for me, leadership means refusing that numbness. We cannot accept the emotional numbness. It means protecting human dignity, even when it is inconvenient, because very often it feels inconvenient. It also means understanding that memory is not about the past alone. It is about the kind of future that we're building together for our young generation, for our kids and our grandkids.

20:06John Lee Dumas:What's one lesson from history that you believe Fire Nation must never forget? One of the most dangerous lessons history keeps teaching us is that hatred rarely, rarely arrives all at once. It begins very quietly with words, a joke, with indifference, with people turning a blind eye, and then with normalization of intolerance and the slow dehumanization of others. And this is really what the Holocaust was about. The Holocaust did not start with camps. It started the moment human beings like stopped seeing other human beings as fully human. And it was gradual. And history has shown us again and again how dangerous silence can become when good people convince themselves that something is not their problem.

21:07It's not my problem. Let me turn a blind eye. And that is why Never Again can not only belong to the Jewish people or to one chapter specifically of history. It has to be a universal responsibility, a commitment to protect human dignity everywhere and to stand up against hatred in all its forms and to refuse indifference no matter who the target is. Because the moment we as a group collectively, the moment we accept the suffering or dehumanization of others, history begins repeating itself.

21:48John Lee Dumas:Leslie, if Fire Nation's really resonating with the words that you're saying and they want to connect with you, learn more about what you have going on, what is your call to action? What is your directive? Where do you want our listeners to go? I would love for you to go check our educational platform. it's uh www.thelastones.education you will find so much content whether you know like content of it's all short really made for the young generation and and just watch one episode one episode because it's enough i i believe to make anybody want to learn more and and and know more. And then follow us on social media too.

22:34And comment on our social media and share some videos with other people. You know, if you share these videos with other people, you are doing your part also.

22:45John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with LB and JLD today. So let's keep up that heat. And for links to everything that we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Leslie in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up put links to everything. Leslie, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Leslie for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world?

23:19John Lee Dumas:If yes, we are now accepting applications for EO Fire. So to learn more about becoming a guest, visit EOfire.com slash guest. And I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more. Visit highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, if you have a high ticket offer and need more quality leads, Nexus Install is designed for you.

23:57John Lee Dumas:We'll book you eight to 20 qualified calls each month, then train you to run the system yourself. Email my team at john at eofire.com to learn more and see if Nexus is the right fit for you.