Podcast Blog #6: Kristel Bauer and Amy Jo Martin — The Renegade Mentality (Live Greatly Podcast)
Kristel Bauer and Amy Jo Martin — Live Greatly Podcast
Living the Renegade Mentality to Build Your Authentic Brand
Are you a renegade? Is the you that is on social media the real you? Are you successful in building connections online?
As the world gets even more virtual and the need to make connections through a computer screen is ever more critical during this pandemic, I listened to Amy Jo Martin share her story of the “Renegade Mentality”.
Amy Jo Martin is an author, speaker, founder, CEO, and podcast host. Her philosophy revolves around the “Renegade Mentality” and is the core of her book “Renegades Write the Rules” and her education program, the Renegade Brand Bootcamp.
Read my podcast blog below for detailed takeaways of Amy Jo Martin’s interview on the “Live Greatly” podcast hosted by Kristel Bauer.
Leader? Amy Jo prefers calling herself a renegade (2:34) Amy’s childhood mentality led her to identify more as a renegade than a leader. She describes herself as having a “crush” on innovation, always wanting to try and do what hadn’t been done.
A lot of this was inspired by her family’s lifestyle growing up. They had a trailer that allowed them to constantly be on the move, living in new places ranging from Wyoming to Kansas. In each place, there was a lot of change for Amy to experience, and it taught her how to adapt quickly and explore the unknown. This basis of her childhood led Amy Jo to feel confident guiding others down “those black diamond mountains of life” — the difficult yet rewarding goals we all have.
Connection converts—regardless of medium of communication (3:50) Amy Jo wrote her book to sum up the learnings and case studies she had from her first company working with major brands to improve their social media presence. Her strategy revolves around humanizing brands—that humans connect with humans. And that basis has rung true even as mediums of communication have shifted rapidly.
Adversity is an asset in disguise (6:03) So if humanizing your brand is the answer, how do you do it? By embracing being uncomfortable. Amy Jo believes that when you innovate, adversity will follow. But the ones who succeed all have something in common—they seek out that adversity. When they break past that adversity, it becomes too comfortable and they are driven to push themselves until they get to the next point of being uncomfortable.
People often come to Amy Jo with the perception that their brand should be perfect and polished because that is what they see from the major corporate brands they are familiar with. But people are messy, so their brands should be a more accurate reflection of their true selves.
One of the biggest mistakes Amy Jo sees in those who are trying to build their own personal brands is that in the attempt to come across as perfect, they create a story that “elbows out the real you”, which can be hard to reverse the longer you continue with that misalignment.
Finding internal validation (17:08) For years, Amy Jo pushed herself hard to fulfill her needs of external validation — recognition at work or money. But, she realized she always ended up short. Regardless of how successful she was perceived to be on the outside, she always had an empty feeling inside. She felt exhausted and burnt out — flying 210 days a year and sleeping four hours a night.
On the other end of the spectrum, she left the hectic life and embraced meditation, kombucha, yoga, and journaling. But, she realized she’s the best when she’s not strictly on one side of the spectrum, and also not exactly in the middle. When you’re in the middle, you’re doing each thing in a mediocre way. Instead, she embraces the idea of creating an upward peak where each side of the spectrum elevates the other.
“Bring spreadsheets and spirituality together”, according to Amy Jo.
Renegades don’t give themselves an out (21:45) When thinking about what makes all renegades successful, Amy Jo has a lot of experience to draw upon. From 12 years of entrepreneurship working with clients and four years of a podcast, interviewing big thinkers and doers, she has thought about what makes these folks stand out and find success.
The commonality is that all renegades have built a bridge that successfully gets them from ideas to action. First, they leverage adversity to use as a springboard to hard work. Second, they don’t give themselves an out — they put mechanisms in place to stay on course. This could mean telling someone about your plans who will hold you accountable or intentionally stating your plans somewhere where you can’t reverse them. Then, they find small wins in their journey. Each small win gives momentum to keep pushing to the next win.
Kristel Bauer and Amy Jo Martin — Renegade Mentality
2:34 | Leader? Amy Jo prefers calling herself a renegade
3:50 | Connection converts—regardless of medium of communication
6:03 | Adversity is an asset in disguise
17:08 | Finding internal validation
21:45 | Renegades don’t give themselves an out
32:52 | End
Links & Resources
Kristel Bauer
Live Greatly Podcast by Kristel Bauer
Amy Jo Martin
Renegades Write the Rules Book by Amy Jo Martin
Ronnie Gyani
