[LEXIE LEE] The Married Entrepreneurs Podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Bomb Mom and Grow A Group Practice, go to www.practiceofthepractice.com/network. [RON LEE] Welcome to the Married Entrepreneurs Podcast. This is Ron Lee [LEXIE] And I am Lexie Lee. [RON] We are professional counselors and serial entrepreneurs who are married [LEXIE] To each other. [RON] Thank you for joining us as we explore the business of life and the life of business. [LEXIE] So today we have Giada and Spud who are talking to us from Ireland to talk about what it’s like to be in business as an entrepreneur and in a relationship as an entrepreneur. Giada and Spud, thank you for coming to our show today. Tell us a little bit about yourselves. [GIADA LABRECQUE] Thank you very much for having us. Do you want to start? [SPUD KENNEDY] Go for it? [GIADA] Okay. So my name is Giada. I’m from Toronto Canada and this is Spud Kennedy, he’s from Texas and also New Mexico. We live in Galway Ireland and I have been here now four years almost. He’s been here about seven. In 2018 is when I came here and pretty much right away started two of my own businesses. I am a holistic massage therapist and having had plenty of experience in Toronto before leaving I knew what I did and did not want and so I created my businesses around those two things. So what I wanted was to work with women. I like taking care of people who take care of other people and so I started She Kneads, which is holistic massage for women of all ages and stages of life. Then I started Office Kneads which is corporate massage. It’s something that I’d done a little bit of in Toronto, and I saw how necessary it was, how helpful it was and so I thought it was a great thing to introduce into Ireland. Ireland is not there yet with corporate wellness or it’s starting to now, and so I wanted to be on that edge. When COVID hit, obviously I couldn’t get within two meters of people and so I had to pivot the business. What I did was I wrote a book called Self-care Solutions at Work which teaches people about how their everyday aches and pains come up, what can be done about them and how to resolve them simply 100% naturally. Now I am also teaching the content of that book to people, to corporate gigs. For instance, this weekend, we were in Dublin and I was speaking to an association of hotel and hospitality management staff, where I was teaching them about the content of my book. That is pretty much most of what I do. I do other things on the side because I am a serial entrepreneur, I get really creative and inspired by ideas and I throw things at the wall and see what sticks so I do a few other things, but that is essentially my business in a nutshell. I’ll pass it too. [SPUD KENNEDY] I feel like mine’s almost a little boring after that, but yes, I was full time, played music full time for almost 10 years and so I was able to travel around. I was full-time music from my transition from New Mexico to Ireland. That went all the way until basically until COVID. Then I went back to my teenage roots and got in the kitchen and started flipping burgers and very quickly remembered how adamantly opposed I am to trading my time for someone else to make money. I like being in charge. I like taking care of myself. I like not having my money and my time be someone else’s property. So while getting back into music and clawing our way back into the industry, and finding my work is music, but my hobby is also like busking and playing music in the street. I love the energy of it. I love that exchange with people. Then, so now my b-line, my second entrepreneurial setup is setting up a fermentation company that does like water keepers and kombuchas and sauerkrauts and chem cheese. I’ll be moving into curing meats and just moving away from all things, like preservatives and chemicals and moving back to a natural state. I think it’s important culturally, that we start moving towards things that take care of our body and that are sustainable. I think that that’s part of it. So the business will be part teaching people about sustainable ways of taking care of food that takes care of them more efficiently, and also about selling products that are tasty and delicious and wonderful. [LEXIE] So that brings up so many questions during your stories. First, you both are very interested in more of a holistic approach to life. Tell me how the two of you met, what’s your story? [GIADA] Spud’s big band, the Galway Street Club, I’m going to plug them there, they were touring in Berlin or sorry in Germany, really and I was traveling through Europe. I’m an Italian citizen. I left Toronto with the intention of finding a new home and I can live anywhere in Europe because I’m an Italian citizen. So I was just floating around going where the wind took me. We met in a hostel called the heart of gold, which is inspired by Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book or watched the film. [RON] Love the book. [GIADA] I was staying, yes, it’s great. It’s a great book. Don’t panic. I was staying in a room of 42 beds. I don’t know if you can imagine sleeping in a room where there’s 42 beds. [LEXIE] Of course, there were 42 beds. [GIADA] Of course, there were, yes. Spud’s band the, Galway Street Club, they were staying in the same host. So did that answer the question? Sorry [SPUD] That’s the story in a nutshell, yes. [GIADA] Yes, in a nutshell [SPUD] Our big band is at the time 12 people, it slightly fluctuates less now than it used to and we run a range of like, we used to be very crusty like we would just travel around. I’ve spent many tours sleeping on the side of rivers and on the side of, I’ve slept in graveyards because it’s generally a safe place to sleep because nobody messes with you. That was how I toured for some of the time because why not? So when we got to, we finally got to a stage where we had hired a manager, but our manager is a friend of ours that started out running our Facebook page for us because none of us cared to do it. He had studied that social media marketing type stuff in school so we just asked him like, hey, can we give you, I think we were giving him like 20 books a month or some ridiculously low figure just for him to run our Facebook page. Turns out his mom runs the, is the president of the Film Flaw here in Ireland, which is a big film festival and his dad is pretty well connected. So we knew some of the players in the industry. And his uncle runs a studio and a venue and a label in London. So we had a few connections and so he slowly booked us a few gigs and then managed to book us a lot of gigs. Then he took on the responsibility of booking our buses and taking, so he just morphed into being a manager. But taking care of 12, mostly functioning touring, alcoholics as can be of like herding cats. So when she came along and she said, oh, I used to be a band mom. We were like, oh, female caretaker, please provide for us. [GIADA] No, actually, I think it was really when I said that I was a massage therapist that everybody freaked out and was like, you need to stay. You’re not allowed to leave. But yes, definitely, I have experience from the age of 15 to 22 being a band mom where I was looking after the needs of a band and making sure everybody had a place to sleep and driving their equipment to the gigs. So when I met their band manager, Dom and I started asking him questions he goes, have you done this before? I said, yes well, not really, I haven’t been a band manager, but I’ve been a band mom. He asked what’s that. I told him, and he goes, will you be our band mom? I said, okay, let me meet the band first. Then we’ll decide. Yes, that’s how that fell together. [SPUD] Then that was the introduction to the band and then that was, the tour through Germany was with the big band. I also liked to have lots of different projects going on, left to be doing different things. Then our more bluegrassy country band was heading over to Portugal afterwards to just go to Lisbon. A friend of ours is from Lisbon so he told us to come on over. We were planning on going over to Lisbon, doing a bit of bus and just basking in the sun on the beach and recovering from the tour in Germany and we invited her to come along and then once we were in Portugal and then we went to a few different places and finally got our stuff together and stayed in a few hostels, that was where we connected and became close and then started dating. Then I brought it a go away, as most people do, when they come to go away, you just can’t leave. [GIADA] You get stuck, in a great way. But yes, that is the long-winded answer. [LEXIE] It’s such a great story. [SPUD] It’s a fun story. [LEXIE] Yes, and thinking about you all, then suddenly you’re working together, you’ve come on as the band mom yet you all are still in a relationship together. What was that like with your relationship? What ups and downs did you have in that [GIADA] Ups and downs, like once we were officially together living together here in Ireland, or just in general? [LEXIE] In thinking about you taking on the role as band mom and trying to herd cats. So that puts you in an authority role but then when you’re in relationship with someone, those two roles don’t always mix, well, how did you all navigate that? [GIADA] I’m going to be honest, that was more of like a way that we came together to understand we had similar backgrounds and I wasn’t just like a groupie that I just fangirled over musicians. I didn’t hold musicians quite on that pedestal and I was able to speak to them as just regular human beings. I didn’t really keep up the band mom thing once we got to Ireland. I don’t want to attach myself to the band in that way. It’s their thing and I have no interest in being involved. I’m an enthusiast and an advocate and probably their number one fan but I took a step out of that role once I landed here. Plus some of the band was not in Germany and Portugal and so they didn’t understand that dynamic and were quite opposed to having some random chick show up saying that she’s the band mom. So that didn’t really carry on [SPUD] Also when we were in Germany and when she took on a little bit of the responsibility side of things, which was, yes, more the like loving pusher than it was like any type of control, there was two things at play. One in the band I typically am one of the people that leads. I was the one that was taking care of leading and trying to book gigs. I was like the head of the pusher before we got a manager. So I am one of the responsible to hold everybody together, people. So when she came onboard, it was more coming onboard of the team as opposed to her coming into a leadership role and taking all of us. Then the second thing was that I had asthma growing up and I thought that I had grown out of it. Then in the middle of Germany about halfway through, right before we decided to go to Berlin, we went to our fiddle player’s house. I can’t remember where she’s from, that’s where we flew in, doesn’t matter. So wherever we went, we went to her parents’ house, go in the backyard and in five minutes my allergies have hit me. Like I haven’t had allergies in five years, I thought I completely grew out of asthma and my allergies hit me like a brick wall in the face. It was incredible. My eyes swelled up. I couldn’t see. I had to have a friend, a friend of theirs was a nurse. He brought me allergy eye cream that I was putting on my eyes every two hours, just to be able to see. At the time I wasn’t wearing glasses so that wasn’t a part of it, but my allergies kicked in, my asthma started back up. It was, I think 150 euros to see a doctor and you can’t get asthma inhalers without a doctor’s prescription. Then the inhalers, another 50 quid on top of that. As I said before my money was paying for food and sleeping on the side of the of the river in that town so this was not an expense. So our guitar player had an asthma inhaler that he would let me use and I would try to just survive. So there was a good leg of that when we were first getting to know each other, that I was just surviving. I wore sunglasses constantly because I looked like I was stoned, even though I was just miserable from allergies. That pulled back my, I had no ego. I had no bravado. I had none of that when we first started talking. So there was no clash of control because when she tried to take control or tried to do something, tried to push something like, yep, please just guide me. Tell me as most of us were. [LEXIE] Well, I feel you with the allergies. I suffer from them. I could see that that would be a reason not to be in Texas because allergies can be so difficult here. But it also brings up another interesting point in that we haven’t really talked about what got you into the holistic realm, what pushed you to be a massage therapist. Can you tell us your background story on that? [GIADA] Yes. I feel like there’s so many places I could start with that. For instance, when I was really young when I was seven, my cousin who was nine, who was one of my closest friends, died of cancer. I watched him go through leukemia and the chemotherapy treatments. That was really horrifying, feeling like I was powerless and I couldn’t do anything about this situation. Over my growing up, I lost a good few family members to cancer and so pretty quickly identifying what I didn’t believe in and what I wanted to see if there was a better way of doing things, especially in the healthcare realm. When I was 20, I met a Reiki practitioner and she took me under her wing and taught me energy healing. At first it was like a party trick to me. It was not something that I took very seriously, but I did some incredible miraculous things with it. So I knew there was something there to pay attention to even though I didn’t make it my number one focus. When I was in university, I was very depressed. Actually, my family was crumbling and I was at the center of that and I was taking antidepressants and felt nothing. So I also wanted to get off of that. I had drug dependencies aside from my chemical drugs that I was dependent on for my mental health. I was chronically stoned, like I was stoned from first thing in the morning until four o’clock in the morning. I wasn’t going to school. I was a very unhealthy person. I was eating either fast food or I was eating freezer meals that you got at the shop, kept in the freezer until whatever you felt like eating. I wasn’t also eating very much. I dropped down to maybe about 90 pounds at that time. So it was very clear that I was at a stage in my life where I was very unhealthy and I knew I wasn’t going to survive and so I had to kick myself in the butt and change things. I was, at the time I switched into studying philosophy and university. That really taught me how to think for myself. I recognized that I didn’t want to be just told how to think. I wanted to pursue the things that inspired me and made me creative and made me feel joy. At the time, the only thing that made me feel happy at all was riding my bicycle. So I followed that. I moved to Toronto and became a bike messenger, delivering things on my bicycle from eight o’clock in the morning, sometimes past midnight. I delivered everything: I delivered food. I delivered pharmaceutical medications to people who are too old and sick to leave their homes. I delivered legal documents, you name it, I’ve probably delivered it. I found that I was, even though I’d been an athlete my entire life, I was still in pain constantly, because, again, I wasn’t taking care of myself properly. So one day I was complaining about my pain and somebody said to me, why don’t you just go get a massage? I was like, yes, okay, I’ll do that. Being a bicycle messenger, especially at that time before the corporate machine took over that industry, it was very much like you were borderline homeless. You could barely, it wasn’t even minimum wage. It was less than that. You did it for the love of the job. So I could only afford to go to the student clinic, which was probably the best thing I could have done because the students are learning the most recent information. They’re the most eager to solve problems. This massage therapist that worked on me, he did one technique that changed my life. It took 50 pounds off of my back, my pain melted away and I thought to myself, not only do I need this, but everybody needs this. So a week later I was signed up for school. I, through the course of learning massage therapy encountered other type of therapies like reflexology. Another important detail of my discovery and my pursuit in health is that in 2014 I was hit by a bus while I was on my bicycle and sustained a number of injuries down my left side. I was in a world of pain, one of the most miserable people you would’ve ever met at that time. So I knew already I did not want to just lay down and die and be on a series of pain medications. I didn’t want to have to wait for the government to support me. I wanted to continue doing what I was doing. So that led into me really looking for natural ways of dealing with pain. I don’t know if you know the archetype or the story of Chiron. It’s like a Greek mythology character, the wounded healer. I really identify with that now because there are aches and pains that I have to deal with on a daily basis. Potentially likely not that I want to call that in, but I do recognize I will have to deal with some things for the rest of my life because of the accident. So it’s really about being proactive and yes, taking care of myself consciously with awareness instead of just taking pain pills and that leaving it at that. So all those things together led to where I am now. [RON] That’s great. I mean, on some levels you’ve made your mess your message. Do you understand the concept? [GIADA] Yes. Literally I have a tattoo that says mess life is the best life. So yes, my mess is my message. [RON] How do you teach that? How do you take that to the next level and help other people? Because it’s a skill that some people don’t have, to understand that their mess could actually become their message and it’s something that becomes passionate with them. [GIADA] That’s what I’m working on now. Writing the book, Self-Care Solutions at Work was a big part of that. Because I’m really a holistic therapist at the end of the day and not a sales and marketing person I don’t know how to get myself out there. It was talking to somebody on a Zoom call, like a get to know yet that he told me about the matchmaker FM. So that is why I’m sitting in front of you here today, is because I thought here’s a way that I can get my message out that I’m not being pushy because I don’t like the idea of being pushy. Instead, I like the idea of being invited to share my message. That is, it’s just getting started, really me being vocal and expressing and sharing these ideas. [RON] So with that in mind, where can our people find your book? [GIADA] On Amazon or askjada.com/book. You can also go to askjada.com/learnmore and you’d find all kinds of things. You’ll find the connection to my social media, which has a lot of free content. There’s access to a booking page for consultation with me. There’s a few things there. So that is how, thanks Ron. [RON] And Spud, how can people get hold of you? [SPUD] Spud Kennedy, anywhere you like to search things; Instagram, Facebook. [RON] You never know, they may want to book a gig or something. You never know [SPUD] Yes. I think you asked the question, how do you get that message out, like your mess can be your turning point, or it can be your path. I think that’s a big, massive question that anybody that has figured it out is trying to help share. Like it’s ancient philosophy, like The Obstacle is the Way, is a book by Ryan Holiday, which I’ll plug that because I loved it. I think he’s a great resource for anybody that’s learning to think for themselves, because he’s a preacher of stoic philosophy, but this is what the stoic philosophers were talking about ages ago is how you take these problems and these things that come in your life that seem like boundaries and how not only are they things that make you start focusing on things, that make you solve problems, but they can be your springboard because they give you a focus and then understanding of things that you would not have. Some things you have to just learn for yourself. You can’t learn from somebody else. So how do we share that message with other people? How do you help people figure out that where they struggle is how they learn and that’s how they can go forward it? We live it and we do the best we can because that’s one of these messages that’s everywhere. It’s all around us, but lead a horse to water, but you can’t make a drink. You just have to be the living embodiment of turning these things. [GIADA] Yes. [LEXIE] You just touched on one of my favorite quotes that there’s another piece to that most people don’t know, you can lead a horse to water, which can’t make him drink, but you can put salt in the oats. You can set up an environment that makes him thirsty. I think that that’s what you’re doing with writing the book and sharing your stories, is that you’re putting salt in the oats so that people will be thirsty to make a change. [GIADA] Yes. One of the things that Spud doesn’t talk about very much, and I hope it’s okay that I bring it up is that he’s quite intentional behind writing music and that he, because there’s a lot of music out there that doesn’t have a message or a healthy message whereas I think Spud does a lot to write in his music messages that get people to think about what they’re doing with their lives and who they’re being and the consequences of their choices and their actions. So that’s another way I think that he is doing that. At least I’m not a songwriter, but he’s definitely doing that. [SPUD] My intention when I was starting music was, before, because I grew up in the countryside, I was anti-Facebook or social media and anti-pop culture. So I didn’t understand all the things happening there, but my message was to wake people up. I just thought that the problem was that so many people are just going through life asleep. They haven’t switched on, they haven’t, and then going forward, you switch on, then you learn to think for yourself, then you learn to turn your obstacles like this. If that’s the progression and turning your obstacles into your springboard, is something that can happen until you’re aware enough to actually identify your obstacles and see them. So my message was to wake people up before I had ever heard the term woke and now I don’t preach that message in those words, because I don’t like using that clingy language that follows under the same category as these identify with whoever the crap. But so yes, that our message, that is one of the things that has brought us together and while we are very different in our pursuits of this, that core message of doing these things and helping people do these things has been a mission for both of us. [LEXIE] I love that so much. I have one final question and that is in thinking about making your mess your message and making your relationship together work, what is something that you’ve had to learn about yourself in order to help move your relationship forward as well? [SPUD] You have an answer ready? [GIADA] One of the things that come to the forefront of my mind is one of the more recent discoveries in the last few months, which is about attachment style. I have learned through this that Spud is a very secure attachment style whereas based on my upbringing, I had quite an insecure attachment style and I would fluctuate between anxious and avoidant depending on what he triggered me with. So that has been one of the best things for me to understand what it means to have a healthy relationship, to have healthy communication or effective communication, nonviolent communication, recognizing that my approach to things and especially because I have an insecure pattern that the way I communicate might not be effective or conducive to a healthy relationship; and recognizing that Spud does in fact have ways of communicating effectively. Whereas before I would just roll my eyes that like, oh, you think that you communicate better than I do or whatever it is. But I do recognize now in learning that he has a secure style and the way he communicates actually can be more effective. So that has been one of my most recent learning curves in the relationship, is changing the way we communicate and how I listen and yes, interact, I guess. What about you? [SPUD] To think of a specific one of like, I can be very impatient and very quick to get frustrated with the situation. So I know I have to try and nip that in the butt very quickly, but I think that overarching, the most significant thing that I’ve been able to pay attention to is that I just need to be constantly self-aware and constantly learning about these things. So I constantly research stuff about fermentation because I do fermentation. I constantly research stuff about music because I do music. I need to constantly be doing research and development on my spiritual and emotional levels in order to be identifying the things that come up because they constantly change. You learn one thing, you work on that thing, you get better about that thing and now there’s another thing. There is no hiatus and I find in our relationship, we move very quickly and we’re also at that stage in our life where everything’s happening very, very quickly. We’re setting up, we’re laying the foundations, there’s a lot of movement. So there is no plateau, there’s no resting point, there’s no like, oh, we figured it out. Never everything’s just hunky dory. It’s got to be constant. I know that when I don’t take the time to spend in at least an hour a week doing some deep work with myself, if I don’t take the time to spend at least 15 minutes every day doing something for that realm, I know that we start declining and I know, and both of us have to do it. But that’s been the overarching lesson is that there’s not one thing. It just has to be constant development. [RON] That’s great. [GIADA] What do you guys do? [LEXIE] I think that you’re the right path there as well. It is a constant learning and being able to check in we’re big on definitions, what does that mean for you? Because you often can be on a different path and not even know it because you are making an assumption about a definition. So yes, being able to talk about it and say, okay, this is what my experience is for me. Then I love also that you talked about attachment because so many people aren’t even aware of what attachment style they have or that it is a thing that they’re bringing to the relationship. So I can see that your relationship’s going to be so much richer because you even recognize that that’s the thing when you couple that with, you’re willing to point the finger at yourself and say, okay, how can I be better and what am I bringing to the table? I think you all are just going to continue to do some amazing things. I appreciate you all so much, taking the time today to talk to us and we will include how to find you in the show notes. Again, it has just been such an interesting conversation and I think I could talk for hours following up on some of the questions, but we have a little bit of a time constraint. But thank you so much for being on the show today. [GIADA] Yes, of course. Thank you for having us. Yes, if you ever want to have more of a drawn-out conversation back and forth, because I recognize a lot of today was just introducing who we are and what we do on the very surface, like a lot of what we talked about is just scratching the surface. So yes, if you were ever open to that, I think I can speak for both of us when I’d say we’d love to have that conversation and be able to have a back and forth instead of just answering questions and then that’s it? [LEXIE] Yes, yes. I agree. [GIADA] Awesome. [LEXIE] Again, thank you for being here today. [RON] Thank you. [GIADA] Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Lexie. [LEXIE] Thank you for listening. Time is our most valuable resource and we appreciate that you shared your time listening to us. If you enjoyed our show, please rate us or give us a review. You can share this episode with someone that you think may benefit. You can find more from us at marriedentrepreneurspodcast.com. [RON] This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.