Meet Amy Guth

We recently connected with Amy Guth and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Amy, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

Building resilience is not a one-and-done activity; it’s an ongoing practice. My life motto is “figure it out” and I believe deeply in the power of starting and doing to continually build self-reliance, self-trust and resilience.

So often, I see creatives waiting to have figured out every step of an idea before they start on something, but the reality is that what’s mentally and creatively accessible to us at the start of a project is often just a fraction of what opens up to us along the way, so not only does waiting unnecessarily stall us, but it also severely limits the potential scope of what we’re working on.

The other misstep I see often is assuming the widely accepted oath is the only way to do something. It’s easy to get wrapped up in shoulds and narratives about the way things “have to” unfold and what the correct way is to do things, but the way I got through the toughest times and most challenging projects was by absolutely doing things my own way, trusting myself and trusting my experience, feelings and boundaries rather than doing things the way we’re told they have to work.

Which is not to say we should go off and wing everything–it’s important to be confident in what we’re doing and know we can trust ourselves–but that very sense of self-trust is what can guide us through the project as long as we can see the overall vision for it, as long as we’re committed to continually building and sharpening our skillset… which, again, can help us remain open to possibilities to grow and shape the project as it unfolds.

When I was a kid, around four, I learned to swim by being thrown into the deep end of a pool. My dad and I were on the side, and he picked me up to allow me a better look at the drain at the bottom of the deep-end. We looked at it for a little while and talked about how deep that might be, and suddenly he threw me in! When I popped up, he said something like: I’m not going to let you drown, but you need to figure out how to swim back here. Unorthodox? Sure. The path I’d take with a small child? No. But, it was a gift in its way because what I remember about that moment is about one second of fear, followed by… swimming. I figured it out because I needed to. And, in that moment, I became wired to trust myself to always figure it out. I’ve leaned on that over and over in my life and it’s helped me avoid getting stuck in fear time and time again.

I unpacked this even more a few years ago when I had the honor of being invited to jump out of a plane with the US Army Golden Knights team. I was so nervous about it but set the intention that I wanted, deeply, for the experience to be affirming and to be an exercise in surrender– that once I was out of the plane, I had very little control over how things played out, and that no matter what I was going to embrace that. And that is not my nature at all, but that idea was clear in my mind so I went with it.

On the day of the jump, we’re in this tiny plane and climbing higher and higher and my nervous system was starting to freak out, which is very human! The purpose of fear, after all, is to keep us safe and alive; that’s fear’s entire job! But, fear can also talk us out of incredible things because it perceives a threat and tends to cloud everything else. I reminded myself I was in good hands, that I was about to jump with some of the most elite skydivers in the world. And, I decided, in the most powerful sense of the word, that I was not going to chicken out and come back down to the ground in the plane. I decided with a force that I remember even at the time thinking was clear and powerful.

And, then this idea took over in my mind that all I had to do was the very next thing: and in that moment, my entire job was just to sit there and breathe. Then my task was to sit there and breathe while the team did double safety checks on everything. Then to walk to the rear of the plane where the door was open for the jump. Then to jump out with my tandem partner. I didn’t have to solve it all and remember everything all at once and risk freezing up; I just needed to do the next best task. I could have decided the next clear task was to freak out, but the next best task was to breathe and be in the moment and I knew it.

That kept me calm and let me stay in the moment for a totally life-changing experience– and that, too, helped me really hone this idea as it relates to creative work: decide powerfully, prepare deeply and cut no corners in preparing, maintain high standards for yourself, and trust yourself completely. It builds a reservoir of resilience.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’m a film producer, screenwriter/writer, and journalist. All of those hats work together really seamlessly and fulfillingly for me. All my work is very tightly focused around powerful stories, regardless of platform.

I have three feature films in various stages of development, which seem like they’ll go fairly back to back, which is exciting. Two are book adaptations, which is very much my jam, and one is an original story. On all of them, I’m producer and co-writer. I also regularly produce commercial work and, with any producing role, I love clearing obstacles and the challenge of making a creative vision come to life.

I also recently produced a short film, Elvis of the Yukon, which was written by one of the feature co-writers, author Pam Mandel. It’s a charming story, based on her lived experience, in which the protagonist gets everything she wants. Who doesn’t love that? It’s wrapping up its festival run right now and moving into distribution, but it’s another example where I had so much fun clearing obstacles and pulling it all together– the script called for a small regional airport, a small plane, a Husky dog, a vintage Cadillac, a carwash attached to a laundromat, and long stretches of desolate highway. The phone calls I got to make to pull all of that together? A hill of fun.

Another project I’m excited about right now: my time in journalism as a writer, editor and broadcaster and being on both the programming and filmmaker side of film festivals, has also brought me to working with other creatives around cultivating their visibility in ways that feel strategic, meaningful and safe for them. It’s a superpower of mine; I just love to help people reframe what’s in their way and help them move forward creatively. I’ve done that one-on-one for a handful of years, but recently also launched a project to help creatives work with me in a hybrid virtual/live group setting to accomplish that. I call it The Seen AF Method. It’s new but I’ve been having really profound conversations with folks like filmmakers, writers, actors, musicians and visual artists about the real essence of their creative work and how the appear in the world. It’s fun to see them get not just quick wins but really meaningful and aligned ones. (The best way to find out more about that is from my website or by DMing me.)

Lastly, after years in live broadcast (I used to host talk radio for about 13 years), I’ve been podcasting for about the last five years and really enjoy that. Like writing, it’s a highly portable way to capture a moment in time and information or emotion of a moment.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I’d say the value of straightforwardness, the value of self, and learning to feel safe and steady with being seen doing your creative work. I’ll unpack each of those a bit…

Culturally, we live in a space in which the idea of modesty lives at extremes, with one end of the spectrum being wild self-aggrandizement and the other being undermining ourselves and “joking” about our accomplishments, yet so few are willing to stand matter-of-factly in rich and rewarding space of just being straightforward about our accomplishments and credentials.

Indeed, the less represented we may feel in a given space, the more likely we are to undermine our own accomplishments, and that is real and valid to want to pre-empt challenges, but also, what it took me years to understand is that first of all, it’s not cute or helpful to anyone to downplay our credentials or accomplishments at all, and more importantly, if we think about the facts of our lives and accomplishments as simply the facts that they are, and think about them as keys that can open the doors of bigger conversations and unlock other opportunities and help others, the game completely changes.

We’re largely socialized (especially women) to play small, and I’m just not here for that. I cringe when I see anyone, but especially a woman, do something amazing, and then sort of joke that it was all a stroke of luck, when we all know she busted her butt to do that thing. We have to learn to straightforwardly name it and claim it without squirming.

Similarly, another thing I wish I understood earlier is the power of honoring our true selves instead of what and who we think we need to be. The biggest one for me was accepting that I love autonomy and independence in my work, and do my best work when I have it, so instead of grumbling about it, I built my career through that frame and with that priority. Even when I do client work, I tend to work with self-starting go-getters who value that framing, too.

It’s so important to be clear about what you stand for and how you are and are not willing to show up in the world and in your work.

And having clarity around that is part of what can help us, especially in creative fields, to feel safe and trust ourselves with visibility. We’ve all heard the stories of “one hit wonder” types who imploded once they got a taste of big success. But, most of us also know plenty of talented people who self-sabotage in subtle ways like creating chaos, blaming others or the industry, and finding ways to subconsciously create situations to mess things up right before they turn great. It’s all the same stuff: not feeling safe being seen doing creative work. And, look, backlash and trolls and haters are real and we’re human and it is emotional labor to deal with that, so it’s totally fair to flinch! But, learning how to feel safe and centered no matter what, and learning to completely trust myself… that’s all part of teaching yourself to feel safe with visibility and trusting yourself to receive and accept your wins instead of fighting against them so hard.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

I love collaborations, so yes, I’m always open to that and love getting approached about that kind of thing. I especially enjoy working with authors to adapt their work for screen, helping people think bigger about their creative work, and of course, producing film projects with talented filmmakers.

I actually have a lot to say about the philosophy of collaborations, but most of it boils down to this: you have to be super clear about who brings what to the table in a collaboration. If two people have the same expertise, there’s little reason to collaborate. If one person is, say, great at writing dialogue and the other is an excellent structuralist, then, heck yeah, co-write that screenplay or book or whatever. If someone recognizes they need a specific expertise in the room, name that. It is such a positive experience when everyone knows exactly why they’re involved in a project and is seen for what they bring to the table.

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