What does it take to believe in yourself when others don’t? And how do you build a thriving small business rooted in relationships instead of algorithms?

In this episode of The Story Craft Podcast, Dr. Meg Adams sits down with Jenny Young, founder of SHE Did It Videography, to explore the power of self-trust, community-centered entrepreneurship, and storytelling as a force for local impact.

Jenny’s journey from Akron, Ohio to becoming an award-winning videographer serving small businesses and nonprofits across Northeast Ohio is a story of courage, resilience, and returning to your creative roots. A graduate of The University of Akron, Jenny spent years honing her craft—filming up to five videos a week across cities like Wadsworth, Medina, and Cleveland—before launching her own business in 2018.

But her success didn’t come from chasing trends. It came from investing in relationships.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• How to believe in yourself when support feels scarce

• Why community is the strongest marketing strategy for small business owners

• What it means to build a brand people talk about (“SHE did it!”)

• The courage it takes to leave stability and start your own creative business

• How serving small businesses and nonprofits can create ripple effects of kindness

Jenny shares how SHE Did It Videography was born from a desire to serve “small first” — making high-quality, accessible video production available to local entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations. Her work isn’t just about content creation; it’s about strengthening the conversation around storytelling, visibility, and generosity in Northeast Ohio.

At its core, Jenny’s story is a Whole Story Living story.

Whole Story Living is about stepping into authorship — choosing courage over comfort, connection over competition, and contribution over comparison.

Jenny embodies:

Narrative Aliveness – Returning to the creative spark she had as a child with a camera.
Relational Intelligence – Building a business around trust, community boards, and collaboration.
Human-Centered Rhythms – Designing a business that works alongside motherhood and family life.
The Sacred Ordinary – Seeing videography not just as a career, but as a way of giving back.

Her story reminds us that entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be loud to be powerful. It can be local. It can be relational. It can be rooted.

If you’re a creative entrepreneur, small business owner, nonprofit leader, or someone trying to build something meaningful while staying connected to your community — this episode will encourage you to trust your story and take the next brave step.

If this episode resonated with you:

• Subscribe to The Story Craft Podcast

• Share this episode with a small business owner or creative who needs encouragement

• Leave a review to help more community-driven entrepreneurs discover this conversation

And for more reflections on building a life and business rooted in connection, follow along with Whole Story Living on Substack and Instagram @drmegadams.

Because when you believe in your story — even when others don’t — you don’t just build a business.

You build a community!

What happens when you stop letting algorithms shape your life and start becoming the author of your own story?

In this episode of The Story Craft Podcast, Meg introduces Whole Story Living — a human-centered framework for reclaiming your attention, reconnecting with your values, and showing up more fully in your work and relationships.

After growing disillusioned with social media, hustle culture, and performative productivity, Meg shares why she’s treating 2026 as a living research experiment: slowing down, listening more deeply, and rebuilding her rhythms around connection, creativity, and meaning.

You’ll hear:

• Why algorithms quietly shape how we think, create, and relate

• What it means to become the author of your own life instead of a passive consumer

• The origin of Whole Story Living — and how it blends storytelling, leadership, and embodied presence

• Simple practices for reclaiming your mornings, your voice, and your inner narrative

• How small, intentional habit shifts can restore confidence and clarity

This episode is both a personal reflection and an invitation — especially for women leaders, creatives, and thoughtful humans who feel tired of being optimized and ready to feel alive again.

If you’ve been craving slower mornings, deeper connection, and a more honest relationship with your own story, this conversation is for you.

👉 Follow along with the Whole Story Living experiment

Subscribe to Meg’s Substack for monthly field notes, research reflections, and behind-the-scenes insights from this year-long journey — and connect on Instagram @drmegadams for weekly story prompts and practice ideas.

Have you ever noticed how suddenly everyone is talking about the same thing online?

In this episode of The Story Craft Podcast, Kyle Adams explores how social media algorithms quietly shape what we see, what we think about, and even what we believe matters — using the flood of posts surrounding the Super Bowl halftime show as a real-time example of collective attention being redirected.

But this conversation goes deeper than trending topics.

Kyle unpacks how algorithmic feeds can:

• Hijack our attention and emotional energy

• Create manufactured consensus

• Pull us away from our own values and lived experiences

• Replace meaningful connection with performative engagement

More importantly, he offers grounded, practical ways to resist the pull.

This episode is an invitation to reclaim your agency — to slow down, stay rooted in your values, and choose face-to-face human connection over algorithmic validation.

You’ll walk away with simple practices for:

• Becoming more aware of how algorithms influence your thinking

• Re-centering on what actually matters to you

• Prioritizing real relationships over digital noise

• Living and leading with intention in an attention economy

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by social media, exhausted by online discourse, or disconnected from your deeper sense of purpose, this episode will help you reconnect with your humanity — and remember that you still get to author your own story.

We are living in a moment where stories shape everything—what we believe, who we trust, how power moves, and whose voices are heard.

In this solo episode of The Story Craft Podcast, Dr. Meg Adams explores the urgency of telling your story and what it means to live—and lead—a Whole Story in a time when narratives are constantly being written for us.

Drawing from her Whole Story Living framework, Meg unpacks the idea that storytellers are not just content creators or communicators—we are meaning makers. The stories we tell (and the ones we silence) shape culture, build communities, and influence how power is understood and distributed.

This episode is a call to presence and authorship. To stop outsourcing your story. To show up with confidence. And to recognize that your lived experience carries weight—whether you claim it or not.

• Why storytelling is not optional in today’s cultural moment

• What it means to live a Whole Story—not a curated or fragmented one

• Why confidence comes from ownership, not performance

• How storytelling builds community and shifts narratives

• The responsibility storytellers carry as cultural meaning makers

This episode is especially for leaders, creatives, educators, and anyone who has ever felt hesitant to take up space with their story—but knows, deep down, that it matters.

If you’ve been waiting for permission to own your voice, consider this your invitation.

What if growing your business didn’t require louder marketing, trend-chasing, or burning yourself out—but instead, clarity, alignment, and better listening?

In this episode of The Story Craft Podcast, Dr. Meg Adams sits down with Amy Traugh—bestselling author, business strategist, and founder of The Metrics Maven—to explore how data, storytelling, and authenticity work together to create sustainable business growth.

Amy has built and scaled three businesses in under five years without a business degree or burnout by doing what most online “gurus” overlook: paying attention to metrics that actually matter. In this conversation, she challenges outdated growth tactics and invites solopreneurs to stop guessing—and start leading with clarity, confidence, and ease.

Through a Whole Story Living lens, this episode explores what it means to portray yourself honestly, curate a brand that feels aligned with who you are, and use metrics not as pressure—but as feedback. Amy reframes data as a form of listening: to your audience, your energy, and the story your business is telling over time.

• Why buyer behavior has changed—and why old growth strategies no longer work

• What it means to curate a brand that feels authentic and honest to you

• How solopreneurs can align numbers, narrative, and values

This episode is especially for solopreneurs, creatives, and service-based business owners who want to grow without losing themselves—and who believe that success should feel aligned, not exhausting.

If you’ve ever felt tension between “being yourself” and “doing what works,” this conversation brings those two worlds back together.

Some of the strongest leaders don’t command the room.
They hold it.

In this episode of The Story Craft Podcast, Kyle Adams talks about confident, quiet leadership, and why listening may be the most underrated leadership skill we have.

Kyle draws from his decade-long career as a television journalist and meteorologist, where listening carefully—to people, to context, to what’s unsaid—was essential. From live broadcasts to documentary storytelling, Kyle learned that trust isn’t built through volume or performance, but through presence and discernment.

Through the Whole Story Living framework, this episode centers on relational intelligence: the ability to lead with empathy, attunement, and intention in a world that often confuses speed with wisdom.

This conversation is an invitation to rethink leadership, not as something we project, but something we practice in relationship with others.

If you’ve ever felt pressure to be louder, faster, or more visible to be taken seriously, this episode offers a different—and deeply human—path forward.

What if 2026 isn’t about more content—but about more connection?

In this episode of The Story Craft Podcast, Dr. Meg Adams is joined by Amber Zaricor, one of Tennessee’s Top 10 Designers and the founder of Copperheart Creative.

Amber is also the creator of the Fill Your Cup Conference, an in-person experience designed to help career women slow down, reconnect, and rediscover what lights them up. As host of the Small Business Big Heart, Amber has spent years listening to the stories of entrepreneurs who lead with empathy and heart.

Together, Meg and Amber explore why thoughtfully designed in-person events are essential for real connection, creativity, and sustainable leadership, especially as our lives become more shaped by screens and algorithms.

Through a Whole Story Living lens, this conversation invites leaders, creatives, and entrepreneurs to rethink what it means to gather and how shared stories can help us feel more human again.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why in-person gatherings are critical for connection in 2026

• What makes an event feel meaningful, not transactional

• How storytelling creates trust and belonging in shared spaces

• Why slowing down is a leadership skill—not a luxury

• How to design experiences that people remember long after they leave

If you’re craving deeper connection and more intentional community, this episode is for you.

In this compelling conversation, Kyle Adams, co-founder of Homeplace Creative and award-winning filmmaker gets real about what it takes to lead like a human in a world obsessed with efficiency. Drawing from his work as a coach and entrepreneur, Kyle explores practical, everyday actions that help teams slow down, connect deeply, and build cultures of belonging.You’ll learn how to:

• Recognize when “efficiency” is eroding empathy
• Lead relationally, listening, noticing, and responding instead of optimizing
• Create human-centered rhythms that foster trust and creativity
• Reimagine leadership as the art of attention, not control
  

This episode challenges the machine-like models of leadership that burn people out, and offers a grounded, hopeful alternative: leadership that feels alive.

Bring Whole Story Living to your organization. Hire Meg and Kyle Adams for keynotes, leadership workshops, or storytelling consulting at Homeplace Creative

In this solo episode, Dr. Meg Adams, TEDx speaker, professor, and founder of Homeplace Creative, shares how we can stay fully human in an age shaped by algorithms. Drawing from her Whole Story Living framework, Meg explores how storytelling, reflection, and relational intelligence help leaders and creators thrive, not just survive, in a world where AI often moves faster than our hearts can follow. You’ll learn:

• Why slowing down is the most radical act of leadership in a speed-driven culture
• How to use AI thoughtfully—as a creative companion, not a replacement for human connection
• Simple Whole Story Living practices to help you reconnect to meaning, authenticity, and presence
  

This episode invites you to step off autopilot and back into authorship, to live a story that feels like yours. Bring Whole Story Living to your team or event. Book Dr. Meg Adams and Kyle Adams for keynotes, leadership workshops, or storytelling consulting at Homeplace Creative

In this insightful episode, Dr. Meg and Kyle Adams talk with Jeneanne Ballos, Chief Operating Officer at Digital River Media and Founder of Garden Variety Consulting, about how to live with AI in ways that make us more human.

With decades of experience leading large, cross-functional teams and driving multimillion-dollar efficiencies across industries, Jeneanne brings a rare blend of operational precision and human-centered wisdom. She shares how organizations can:

• Form an AI Council to guide ethical and strategic AI use
• Balance innovation with trust when it comes to data collection and information sharing
• Encourage teams to “play” with AI—to experiment, learn, and stay curious—without losing their humanity in the process
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Connect with Jeneanne on Linked In.

Together, they explore what it means to build systems that serve people, not the other way around.

Listen to learn how AI can enhance empathy, conversation, and creativity, when used with intention.

Bring Whole Story Living to your organization. Hire Meg and Kyle Adams for keynotes, leadership workshops, or brand storytelling consulting at Homeplace Creative