How Small Business Storytelling Builds Trust—and Community

Portrait of a small business owner, part of Steven Gray's JPMorgan Chase small business portfolio.

The Context

Small businesses play an outsized role in the economy, yet the realities of entrepreneurship are often oversimplified.

At JPMorgan Chase, we developed a digital communications approach designed to tell more complete stories about how businesses are built, sustained, and ultimately passed on. The work treated narrative as a form of useful communication—reflecting the ambitions, trade-offs, and practical decisions behind entrepreneurship. The ultimate goal: position JPMorgan Chase as a trusted, credible partner to America’s small business owners.

50M+

People reached across JPMorgan Chase and media partner channels.


Our digital communications strategy paired aspirational, profile-driven storytelling with practical, actionable guidance grounded in JPMorgan Chase’s expertise. The work helped audiences understand both the opportunities and operational realities of building and sustaining a business.

Much of the content was developed as episodic series, and occasionally aligned with moments or JPMorgan Chase events for small business communities.

the work

Media Partnerships

We collaborated with digital media companies including Business Insider, Entrepreneur, and Forbes.

Stories developed for JPMorgan Chase platforms were, in some cases, adapted for distribution across these outlets, as well as local and niche business media. The strategy inserted the firm into broader conversations about entrepreneurship, innovation, and small-business growth.


Key Series

We created “The Pursuit” as a series profiling entrepreneurs — all Chase small-business customers — as they built their enterprises. Each piece explored the motivations, risks, and lessons behind scaling a company, pairing inspirational narratives with practical insights other business owners could apply to their own ventures.

In some cases, text-based content that originated on Chase.com was adapted for NowThis Money, a social video-first channel our team created with Group Nine.

The Pursuit

A Harlem chef was featured in JPMorgan Chase's The Pursuit campaign celebrating small business owners.

A series examining business succession at a moment when a significant share of Baby Boomer–owned small businesses were preparing to transfer leadership to a new generation. The stories explored the operational realities of transition as well as the emotional and strategic considerations involved in preserving a company’s legacy.

The Handover

JPMorgan Chase created The Handover campaign to help baby boomer small business owners navigate succession planning.

Dream builders

A series highlighting women entrepreneurs and the realities of building businesses in environments that have not always made space for them. The stories emphasized ambition, resilience, and growth while surfacing the structural challenges and opportunities women founders encounter as they start and scale companies.

A woman with blonde hair and a necklace, smiling, standing in front of a medical vehicle with a red and white exterior at a JPMorgan Chase commercial banking website.

Selected work

JPMorgan Chase: Driving Digital Innovation

Laureate Education: Executive Communications

WSJ: Food Industry Coverage

Meta: Tech Innovation Narratives