"Stories don't need to be true to stay with us."

I didn't have a script for this one. Not really.

That's how the very first episode of The Story Lounge Podcast opens, and if I'm honest, that's how I wanted the whole thing to feel. Real. Raw. A bit unpredictable. Because that's what storytelling actually is, and it's the reason I've spent the last few years of my life obsessed with it.

The Story Lounge Podcast is my new show, and it's finally out in the world. If you've followed MJ Communications for a while, you'll know storytelling isn't just something I talk about, it's the whole foundation of the business. This podcast is where that philosophy gets to breathe outside of client work, caption writing and content calendars. It's just stories. Mine, and eventually plenty of other people's too.

Who's actually talking to you

I'm a trained journalist, and before MJ Communications existed, that was my whole world. I left the newsroom in 2023 after covering some genuinely traumatic events in my area, and stepping away was as much about protecting my own wellbeing as it was about wanting something different. What I didn't expect was that walking away from journalism would lead me straight into starting a business I'd never planned for.

MJ Communications is now an award-winning agency, and three years in, I still find it slightly wild that this is the path life handed me. But the thread connecting the newsroom to the business to this podcast has never changed. It's always been about story, and about understanding why people do what they do.

Growing up, my dad served in the Army, so we moved constantly. New schools, new towns, new people, over and over again. At the time it just felt normal. It wasn't until I met my husband, who grew up in the exact same house his entire childhood, that I realised how unusual that constant movement actually was. But every move brought new people, and every new person brought a new story. Looking back, I think that's where this whole fascination started, long before I ever picked up a microphone.

Why stories stick when almost nothing else does

There's a moment I talk about in the first episode that still gets me. I was listening to an old Spotify playlist of early 2000s Aussie tracks, and a song came on that took me straight back to a TV ad from Neighbours, the one where Bridget was killed in a car accident. That ad aired around 2006. Nearly two decades later, a three-second piece of music dropped me right back into that memory, heart and all.

When I went looking for the ad on YouTube, the comments were full of people saying the same thing, years apart. "It's 2025 and I'm still heartbroken." "It's 2026 and why am I still crying?"

That's the strange power stories hold over us. It doesn't matter if they're true or entirely fictional, a story can lodge itself somewhere in you and stay there for years. It can make you feel less alone. It can help you realise someone else has lived through exactly what you're living through right now. It can hand you language for something you've never been able to explain.

That's the strange power stories hold over us.

I see this play out constantly in business too. So many business owners are sitting on a story that could genuinely change how people see them, and they don't even realise it's there. That gap, between the story someone's living and the story they're actually telling the world, is where most of my work happens. This podcast is a chance to explore that idea properly, without the constraints of a client brief.

What you can expect from The Story Lounge

This isn't a traditional business or marketing podcast, even though my background in storytelling strategy will naturally come through. It's a space for stories about business, identity, hard seasons, unexpected turns and the moments that quietly change the direction of someone's life. Some episodes will be mine. Some will belong to other people entirely. All of them are meant to make you feel something, or at the very least, make you feel a little less alone in whatever you're going through.

If that sounds like your kind of listening, come pull up a chair. The Story Lounge Podcast is live now on YouTube and Spotify, and there's always another story to tell.