About the show
We kept meeting people nobody was talking about.
You Matter Nashville is an independent podcast about the neighbors, founders, and volunteers holding Middle Tennessee together. We started it because the people doing the most good around here are usually the least interested in saying so.
How it started
Two microphones and a long list of names.
We are Jason and Mindy Hoover, a husband and wife in Middle Tennessee. For years we kept running into the same kind of person: somebody who had quietly built something that mattered, and who would never think to bring it up.
The neighbor who shows up for everybody. The founder nobody has heard of. The volunteer who would be embarrassed by the attention. None of them were waiting to be discovered, which is exactly why so few people were hearing about them.
So in the summer of 2024 we bought a couple of microphones and started asking. The first episode went out that July. We have not run out of names since.
Every episode is still just a conversation. We ask what moved somebody to start, we let them tell it, and we keep the light on them rather than on us.
Your hosts
Jason and Mindy Hoover
We are not journalists and we are not fundraisers. We are neighbors with a podcast.
Jason opens every episode and closes it with the line the show is named for. Between those two moments the job is mostly to ask a good question and then get out of the way.
We also run The Hoover Team, our real estate business here in Middle Tennessee. The show is separate from it. Nobody is featured here because of anything to do with that work, and nothing on this site is a pitch for it.
Visit The Hoover Team
Jason Hoover
Co-host
Husband to Mindy, dad, business coach, and a longtime believer that the best communities are built by people who choose to care. I have worked with entrepreneurs, leaders and families across Middle Tennessee for years, and one thing kept standing out: the people making the biggest difference are usually the ones who never ask to be noticed. My goal with this show is simple. Make those stories easy to find, make local nonprofits easier to discover, and leave you both encouraged and equipped to take the next right step.
Mindy Hoover
Co-host
I have always been drawn to people's stories. What they have walked through, what they have come out the other side of, and what they care about now. I also believe in helping people feel confident and looked after, especially in the seasons when they are feeling neither. This show is one of the ways we get to do that, by putting a light on the work happening around us, celebrating the people behind it, and making it easier for somebody else to step in and help.
Why it exists
Why we started it.
There are people doing meaningful work all around us, and most of the time they never get the spotlight. We kept meeting nonprofit leaders, volunteers and business owners who were pouring themselves out for other people, and we could not shake the thought that more people needed to hear about it.
We also saw a gap. Plenty of us want to help but do not know where to start, who to trust, or how to get involved in a way that fits an ordinary week. So we made this a bridge between the people doing the work and the people who want to back them.
Every episode should leave you with two things. Hope, because you have just heard what somebody is actually doing about something hard. And direction, because you have met a person or an organization you could support this week without leaving Middle Tennessee.
And if nothing else, we want every guest and every listener reminded of the one thing we try to live by. You matter.
How we work
What we do before anything goes out.
We are a small independent show, so the standards we hold ourselves to are worth stating plainly.
We stay independent.
We are not affiliated with the organizations we feature and we are not their official source. Every episode links to their own site, and that is where to go for current services, hours, or giving.
We show our sources.
Every episode page lists where the facts came from and when we last checked them. If something has changed since, the organization's own site is the one to trust.
We publish the whole conversation.
Every episode carries a full transcript, so it can be read instead of heard, searched for a name, or quoted accurately.
We end with something you can do.
Each episode closes on one specific step somebody here could take this week. Small and real beats big and vague.
Nominate a guest
Somebody you know should be on this show.
You already thought of them. The neighbor who shows up for everybody, the founder nobody has heard of, the volunteer who would never put their hand up. Tell us about them and we will reach out.