From the Green Velvet Couch | A Conversation with Amy Hartmann

What does podcasting, legacy, and wellness have in common? More than you might think. How do you build a business that amplifies other people’s voices without losing your own? And what happens when your body finally forces you to confront the stress you thought you were managing just fine?

On her podcast, From the Green Velvet Couch, Shelly sat down with Amy Hartmann, founder of SoTrue Media and the producer behind this very podcast. Amy has been Shelly’s creative partner for the past several episodes, and their working relationship made this conversation feel especially personal. Amy’s story of how she built her podcast production agency, the health scare that reshaped her leadership, and the daily practices she now uses to stay grounded is one every small business owner should hear.

Here are the moments worth holding onto.

A Marketing Agency Started by Accident

Amy has been running businesses since 2014, though she is quick to say the whole thing started almost by accident. She was a classroom teacher at the time, and her husband and his business partner had just launched a real estate brokerage. Amy told them she would spend her summer growing their business. If she could double it, she wanted to leave teaching and come on full time as their marketer.

That summer, she doubled, tripled, and quadrupled the business. A networking group that met in their office saw everything happening and started hiring her too. By the end of the summer, Amy had a full marketing agency on her hands without ever meaning to start one.

For years she ran a full service marketing company, handling email marketing, social media, and everything in between. Over time she began asking herself a different question. What did she actually love doing the most, and what brought the biggest impact for her clients? That question led her to podcasting.

Why Podcasts Became Her Legacy

Amy named her company SoTrue Media because of a phrase she kept hearing. When something really lands for someone, they say “That’s so true.” She wanted to build a company that helped other people’s messages resonate in exactly that way.

Podcasting, she explained, is one of the most powerful mediums for getting a message out into the world. It is long form. It is evergreen. It is a conversation that people can come back to a week, a month, or a year later. For business owners with something important to share, a podcast can build a community in ways that short social media posts simply cannot.

Amy sees her work as her legacy. She is not just producing audio. She is helping people amplify their voices so they can reach more of the audiences who need to hear them. For her, that is the real point of the work.

This kind of mission-driven, whole-person approach to business is something Shelly sees often in her executive advising work with founders and leaders, where clarity about purpose is usually what separates leaders who last from leaders who burn out.

The Magic of Episode 20

Shelly asked Amy what her favorite part of the job is, and her answer was specific. Most podcasts never make it to episode 20 or 21. That is the sweet spot where the platform algorithms really start working, where audiences begin to grow exponentially, and where the podcast starts making the kind of impact its creator dreamed about at the beginning.

Amy loves walking alongside clients as they cross that threshold. She loves watching them land guests they never thought they could reach. She loves helping them turn their audience into an actual community, whether that community gathers on social media, in a Facebook group, on Substack, or in person at real events.

Community was a word that came up again and again in this conversation. Podcasts are the starting point, but the real goal is connection among people who share common values and goals. Shelly added that in her work with successful clients, community has always been one of the strongest indicators of sustainable success. It is also one of the strongest predictors of wellbeing.

Podcasting in the Age of AI

Shelly asked Amy where she thinks podcasting is headed, especially with the rise of AI. Amy’s answer was refreshingly practical. Podcasting is still an audio medium at its core, and people who want to start one should not feel pressured to add video unless it genuinely fits their brand. Video components do help on YouTube and social media, but audio remains the heart of the format.

AI is interesting, Amy said, but it is not going to replace the real magic of podcasting. The moment you try to fake a conversation with AI voices, listeners can tell. And conversations, especially with guests, are one of podcasting’s greatest strengths. A real dialogue between two humans cannot be reproduced by a machine. It is one of the last places in digital media where people still show up as themselves, in their own voices, saying real things to real audiences.

Shelly agreed. As humans, we are designed for connection, and no amount of technology can replace the value of hearing another person think out loud in real time.

The Morning Her Body Said Enough

The most vulnerable moment in the conversation came when Amy shared what happened to her on February 14 of this year. She woke up, something felt off, and she walked to the mirror to discover that half of her face was frozen and drooping. She thought she was having a stroke. She rushed to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy.

The neurologist who treated her was direct. Her stress levels were too high. The condition had been triggered by stress, and she needed to bring those levels down immediately.

Amy was stunned. She had always thought of herself as calm and grounded, the kind of person who approached everything with a “this is figureoutable” mindset. She was managing, or so she believed. Even in the middle of the emergency room, she was asking her daughter to bring her laptop because she had an episode of this very podcast that needed to go out that day. The nurse refused.

Looking back, Amy sees that moment as the turning point. She thought she was handling stress well, but she was not. She was silently harming herself without realizing it.

The Boundaries That Followed

In the months after her diagnosis, Amy made several changes that have quietly transformed her life. She stands up and walks several times a day. She pays attention to hydration. She eats lunch instead of skipping it, which had become a habit she did not even notice anymore. She moves her body, even if just a little.

She also set a firm boundary around work hours. Her day ends at 6 p.m. and she does not touch her laptop again until the next morning. She took her email off her phone entirely. She stopped working on weekends. She brought on an additional assistant to help her delegate more efficiently, which has reduced her mental load significantly.

Amy was quick to note that these boundaries have not caused pushback from her clients. If anything, they have been met with admiration. Many of the people she works with have told her they want to do the same. They appreciate that she is modeling something healthier, and they are inspired to try it themselves.

Shelly observed that this is almost always how healthy boundaries work. The pushback tends to come from people who were benefiting from your lack of limits, not from the people who respect you and want the best for you. This kind of leadership rooted in self-care is at the heart of Shelly’s wellness specialist practice for founders, executives, and high-profile clients, where strong boundaries are treated as a sign of good leadership, not weakness.

The Difference Between Busy and Productive

Toward the end of the conversation, Shelly and Amy circled back to one of the most important truths about remote work. When you are working from home and sitting in the same chair for 14 or 16 hours a day, it is easy to mistake busyness for productivity. The natural rhythms of an office day, walking to a coworker’s desk, grabbing lunch with a colleague, stepping outside for a break, all disappear. What looks like more work time is often just more time sitting still.

Amy agreed and has been working to distinguish deep work from busyness in her own life. She is a fan of the three-three-three method, which structures a day around three hours of deep focused work, three hours of meetings or shallow tasks, and three hours of personal time for movement, family, and rest. The exact structure matters less than the principle. Results come from focused effort, not sheer hours logged.

This is the kind of time and energy management Shelly weaves into her performance mentoring work with leaders and high performers, where the goal is never to work more, but to work with greater intention.

Leading With Humility, Not Ego

The final theme of the episode was one of Amy’s most quotable lines. Trying to know everything and do everything yourself is leading with your ego. Great leaders surround themselves with people who know more than they do in specific areas, and they take pride in delegating well rather than burning themselves out pretending to be experts in every corner of their business.

Amy now approaches her team with this philosophy front and center. She hires people who are strong where she is not, delegates with confidence, and gives team members ownership over their work. The result is a healthier culture, happier employees, and a business that runs well even when Amy steps away to take care of herself.

That is what sustainable leadership looks like. Not working harder. Working wiser, with a team you trust and a life you actually want to live.

🎧 Join the Conversation

If this post sparked something in you, the full episode is waiting with even more warmth and thoughtful insight.

✨ Listen to the full conversation on the From the Green Velvet Couch podcast. Visit the Podcast page to discover more episodes focused on resilience, leadership wellbeing, and holistic wellness.

Let this be your invitation to slow down, breathe deeply, and step into a well-grounded life full of growth and intention.