Casey Berglund:
I can't stop thinking about the smoothie bowls that you posted on your Instagram. Recently, I was like, what the hell is in that? Can you start there? Tell me what's in your smoothie bowl.
Liana Grieg:
That's how I start my day.
First of all, food should be beautiful. Food should be colorful, but not with food coloring. I'm very passionate about that. I remember in our early days, I think the first year we opened, we had a private event with a client who absolutely insisted on having a purple cocktail, but like a vibrantly purple cocktail, and the girls asked me to purchase some food coloring, to which I obviously replied over my dead body. We're not serving cocktails with food coloring at Juno House that have hormone disruptors in them. But there is this beautiful plant called Butterfly Pea, and have you ever seen it before? I have, yeah. So for the people who don't know...
Casey Berglund:
I actually don't know what the plant looked like, but I've seen it. Well, I've seen it in drinks.
Liana Grieg:
Yeah, it's so beautiful. So it looks like a violet colored flower, and it's gorgeous. And when you brew just the leaves, the petals, you can brew it like a tea. And it is this really bright blue color. And as soon as you add just a drop of citrus to it, boom, it turns purple. Like extremely purple though, to the point where if you just served it to me, I would say like this is impossible, that it's not real. I mean, sorry, that it is real. And so this is kind of how you can wear these colors. But going back to the smoothie bowl, the more and more we hear about health and wellness, the harder it is we realize to get all of our nutrition into things and the amount of protein that you need, right? So I'm a hungry girl. I like to eat a lot. And so this smoothie bowl for me is like a perfect way of getting all the things that you need, all the protein, all of those little magic powders and things, which there's great debate over whether they work or whether they don't work. But I'm here for it. So I always do the base of like the protein powder and the avocado that makes it really smooth and the frozen vegetables and the frozen fruit, just chuck it all in there.
Casey Berglund:
Like what frozen vegetables and what frozen fruit?
Liana Grieg:
If you just chop up zucchini into tiny little pieces and you blend it into a smoothie or anything, you have no idea it's there. You cannot tell. It gives a cool texture. And then you're not dumping in heaps and heaps of frozen strawberries and bananas and stuff, which are delicious, but they also have a bit of sugar in them. So if you could do like half zucchini, half blueberries, then you still get the vibrancy and the flavor, but you don't even notice the zucchini in there. And since it's been summer, so we finally have a little bit more free time. So I was able to go back to my make my own granola moment of life, which is great. You should always do this like right before people come over, because then your house smells like a bakery. It's incredible. It smells like honey and cinnamon and all these things. So I love embracing this sort of homemaker side sometimes where I think, where I sometimes I go to buy something and I think, could I make that? Yeah. And so this is a really cool thing to do to start to explore. And I have some old books that my mother gave me there, very, very old school, very old school. And I kind of feel like culture is taking this big circle back.
Casey Berglund:
No, I totally see it. I think it's important, you know, like tech evolves and we're sort of like, let's get back to the roots and like work with our hands and be around people.
Liana Grieg:
Uh-huh. Yeah, it's so true. And I love there's so much satisfaction to also like arranging the food on the plate. And I worked in hospitality from a really young age and I started working at really nice restaurants. And so I started to see, you know, even just edible flowers and these kinds of things that it just makes your, your plate so much more interesting. And they say digestion starts with your eyes, not you start salivating. And this is actually gives you improved digestion if you start that process slowly. And then on the other extreme, I was listening to a recommendation to appreciate your life more. Give yourself one hour to eat one orange and dedicate to the whole. This is a very difficult exercise in my eyes. I don't know. I'm not there.
Casey Berglund:
Yeah. I mean, that's a mindfulness practice on steroids.
Liana Grieg:
Absolutely. That's too much for me. But I really love this process of designing it. And so I make my smoothie bowl. I and I put whatever I have in there. I try to have enough things that I can mix it up and make it different by chopping up your fruit. I mean, these nectarines that we have here, those paraguayos. Have you tried those yet? No. Though they're like a peach that looks like smushed down like a UFO. I haven't tried them yet. Oh, my goodness. Yes, you do. Buy some today. Yeah. They're divine. They're lovely. They're easier to hold to, you know, just eat it up with a sink. Just go for it. Just run down. That's the best. But, yeah, it's really nice to find all these different ways to pull these fruits and vegetables. If it just makes me feel more in control. I love feeling like I'm feeding myself too. And when we have slower periods in our work, then we can actually get back into this and be motivated. And for me, being in the kitchen and feeding myself and nourishing myself brings so much satisfaction.
Casey Berglund:
Yeah. Liana came in today with some sprouted mung beans. Yes. As a gift, which I'm like so excited for. And you said you're in your country bumpkin era, which is amazing. Totally. I have noticed I'm like, oh, Liana's not around here as much. I'm like, it is the summer. Yeah. And she's cooking and she's posting these beautiful smoothie bowls online. And so I love that. I love that you have that well, health and health and wellness piece of you that that comes into the space. And actually, that might be a nice place to take this is like you. I feel like of the Juno founders, you're the one from my eyes anyway, who brings in this health and wellness flair. Obviously, you teach yoga upstairs. You're posting these photos of smoothie bowls. You're bringing me sprouted as a gift. And so I'm actually curious about that interest. Like where did that start for you? And how does it weave into the Juno role that you have here?
Liana Grieg:
Yeah, I grew up in the US where it's so easy to fall into typical consumerism, lots of packaged everything, super convenient. And I always make this this comparison because I have an older brother, we grew up in the same household, same parents, same rules, all this stuff. And he's kind of gone the other direction. He's like more of your give the kids the goldfish and stuff. And they're great. And he cooks a lot, just credit this man makes bread, right? But that came later. But for me, it kind of went totally the opposite direction. When I was a teenager, I started eating a more vegetarian diet. And then later on in university, I was trying to make healthier choices and stuff because it just didn't feel good in my body. So it came from an intuitive place. But I have to give a lot of credit to my mother and my father to both of them. They cooked for us a lot. We didn't have a house full of junk food, which also made me the typical like kind of obsessed with junk food as a little as younger kids. The rebel. Yeah, I wanted to try it. I wanted it. And I still will like happily eat a bag of chips. I'm not the kind of person who is pure. I know there's a realistic side to life, too. But I love it. I find it super interesting. And when you can absorb this information and apply it to your life, that's amazing. Like as soon as maybe I have something health wise that pops up, my first thing will be to check how can I work on this myself nutritionally? What kind of supplements? What are they going to do? How useful are they? And I find that information super easy to retain and very natural for me to read. I have a lot of books that I like to reference.
And so it just sort of grew and grew. And it's funny because I never really had the opportunity to cook for myself until I came to study abroad here in Barcelona. Wow. And I was living with three Italian girls and they started to teach me a few different things because prior to that, it was like at home, I was really busy. And so my family did most of the cooking and in university, we were actually required to have a meal plan. You had to eat in the cafeteria. And I was completely so busy with sports and with clubs and student government, all these things that I wrapped myself up in. And so it was so cool. And I finally came here, I was living in an apartment and started. And I think that's what piqued my interest. And then you start to go to the grocery store and look and try to bring colors into your life, try to bring a diversity of ingredients into your life and try. Even if you are eating the right things, if you're not rotating them out for different things or seasonal food, you're not necessarily doing yourself the biggest favor. That's like the next step. Right. First, you start cultivating a healthier grocery cart and then you start saying, OK, how can this evolve with the next step? And for me, that's eating more seasonally, too.
Casey Berglund:
Yeah, I love that. You're reminding me a little bit about some shifts that I've gone through with my relationship with food and my health and wellness journey, especially when you said whenever there's something like happening for you, you go to food first and look at what supplements, what foods can support me with this issue. I mean, I was a dietician for a decade and this was my world, you know, and like supporting people with elevating their nutrition. And I remember working in this private clinic with obviously like executives from big companies and business owners, like people who would come in and pay for these annual health assessments. And as the dietician there, I would do these like assessments on their nutrition. And I was amazed at how often people were just like forgetting to eat. Like what? Like just like not remember to eat. And then years go by and I transition in my work and get more into the coaching space and get more into like my purpose driven work. And I find myself in these moments where like time stops and I'm in my work and whatever. And then I'm like, oh, my God, it's 2 p.m. I haven't even done anything today. It happened to me. It happened to me, too. It happened to me. I thought it was impossible. Yes. And then actually here in Spain, like obviously there's a number of different reasons why there have been these like kind of roller coaster moments. Or things have been like challenging or what have you. And some of that missing meals habit had carried over. And more recently, like in the last few months, but like especially especially in the last couple of months, I've been like very diligent about eating, just eating consistently. And then like protein and getting enough protein. And I'm like, wow, I feel so much better. And it just kind of blows my mind how I literally have a degree in nutrition and I forgot. And it's been like kind of years where I haven't been super consistent with my eating or as mindful. And in many ways, I went from, you know, getting interested in nutrition through like an eating disorder. So that side of the spectrum where it was like ultimate control and like hyper focus on health to, you know, like intuitive eating and not, you know, not tracking, loosening my grip. But then in that space, you can slip into the place of like forgetting to eat sometimes if you're so interested, so engaged in something else that you're actually not connected with your body. Yeah. And it's amazing to me how after all these years, like nutrition is coming back with like such a reverence and the focus. And I'm like getting fascinated again at like the current science around food and nutrition and performance. And it's sort of like weaving back into my world in a way that I think is just super interesting.
Liana Grieg:
It's so true. We're living through a fascinating nutrition revolution, I think. I had a big conversation with a friend who lives and grew up in Asia. And she comes from an Indian household but lives in Hong Kong. And so she was raised vegetarian. Yeah. And so she's recently started a plant protein. Sorry, not a plant. She started a protein company for women, directed women. And she didn't do plant based. And I thought, OK, so weird, right? Everybody is doing plant based. Now everybody goes immediately to it. Why? And she said, Liana, milk's gonna have a comeback. Oh, dairy's dairy is coming back. It's coming back. And I thought this is such an interesting conversation because as soon as things become very typical and understood as like, of course, of course, of course, it's kind of when I start to question it again. You're like, even if I was on the vegetarian train and even if I was completely on the plant based train, as soon as everyone is accepting it and then you have to really question your sources on that because they're no longer coming from people who are about the cause. But they're coming more from the commercialized side of things. Yeah. Then I said to go, wait a minute. It's kind of like at some point, vegans started eating margarine. Remember that margarine is the devil? How many articles are published?
Casey Berglund:
We just like break our rules to satisfy our hedonistic desires.
Liana Grieg:
No, but I just lost track of it one time. I went to I caught myself buying some vegan butter and I was like, wait a minute. This is not what I want. Yeah. I've come at it from a different they've put a disguise on it. They call it vegan, but it's not what I want to put in my body at all. And so I do think we're going to come full circle. I'm still here for like that plant based milk and all this. And as we know, the impact on the planet from using products that come from bovine sources, whether it's eating meat or consuming dairy, are problematic. And we need to look at the climate impact of that. But, you know, it makes sense to question things. It's like when everybody stopped drinking almond milk because of the water that it took to consume that good work society. Yes, we are doing it sometimes.
Casey Berglund:
We are doing it in some ways. Yeah. Yeah. And so then when did yoga come into the mix for you? Yeah.
Liana Grieg:
I've kind of always loosely practiced yoga in high school. I remember taking some classes in college too. But I've been a lifelong athlete. I started running competitively when I was six. I started running. When you were six? Yeah. I started running track and field and running like 5K road races every weekend. Well, that's a thing. Yeah. Yeah, it was so funny. I mean, this was the 90s, right? So you would go and you would run a race and then they would give you a little paper flyer at the end. That was like when the next race is. Wow. And you could send in your registration or you could register on the spot and I would run a lot of them with my dad. So I got really into sports as a young, young kid. And so then much later in life, I ran competitively all the way through college. So it was like up until I was about 22. And at that point, I had some injuries. And around 25, I had some injuries to the point where they were like, you're really going to have to stop running if you want these to heal. But because later now, I know that running was my meditation. Yeah. But I didn't know this at the time. I just thought it was my physical outlet. I didn't realize how much mental impact it was having on me too. Positive impact. And so I was living in New York City and I needed something like at that same level. Because running is also quite intense, right? I like to run fast. That's my thing. And so I started practicing yoga much more in a much more dedicated way. I'd always done it loosely. But at that point, I took up really an intense practice that a lot of people know. Called Bikram Yoga. Yes, that was my start. Yeah. It's such an interesting entry point or dedication point, I guess. It's a 90 minute practice, as you know, in a heated room. It's always the same poses, which is so many things I hate in one shot. Right? Yeah. I love running because you could go for a 20 or 30 or 40 minute run and you're done, right? Shower and you're done. 90 minutes in a heated room and I sweat a lot. This was awful. So I learned so much, so much. And I hate repetition of things. And so there we go. There's packaged up a little thing that I was meant to hate that it turned out to love. It just taught me so much. And that's where I started to have access to the mental benefits and had like a little mini breakdown on the mat one day. And then after that, it was all a lot of wow, a whole different access to my own mind that it started to give me. And then eventually I moved on from Bikram. I was grateful for what it taught me, but I didn't need that practice anymore. And I moved into different types of yoga. And not long after that, I had a beautiful experience while traveling where I just stumbled across an opportunity and signed up to do my teacher training. Not long after that. And I haven't looked back. So I'm teaching yoga now for eight years. I started two days after my training to teach because I knew I wanted to do it straight away. And I absolutely love it. It's so beautiful. It just never stops giving. It's always something that evolves. Your teaching evolves, your practice evolves, the two different things. I really adore it. I know you're a teacher as well. I don't know how you decided. What was it like when you said, I'm going to do the training?
Casey Berglund:
Well, we actually have very similar stories in terms of being athletes and then being maybe drawn into the physical elements of yoga. And I went to a Bikram class and hated it too, probably for the same reasons that you did. And I went a couple more times and hated it as much those two times. And I think it was because a new friend had invited me and she was someone who I was like, wow, she's so cool. Like I want to hang out with her more. And she was like inviting me to these Bikram classes that I kept going back, even though I didn't like it. And then one day she actually invited me to a different studio that wasn't Bikram and it was like a, it was still in kind of intense Vinyasa practice. But the teacher, I'm like, whoa, she's different. Like, like it, I guess now looking back, she like embodied the philosophy of yoga, like you could just feel it. I wouldn't have been able to articulate that at the time. But she just like had this peacefulness about her. That was true. It wasn't performative. And, and she also had the physical elements. Like she was just like so fit, which I was drawn to at that time, like that, that was a big draw to it. But I think because she would drop these little, I didn't know what it was at the time, but now like bits of yoga philosophy. I'm like, what is that about?
Liana Grieg:
So perfectly defined and short, short little bits. No, short little bits. We don't call them proverbs, or we do sometimes. I mean, the, the suit.
Casey Berglund:
Yeah, and even then, like I practiced with her a number of times and I was like, what is she saying? And I didn't connect that there was this whole like philosophical piece to yoga, because I definitely thought it was a physical practice. I knew it was ancient, but I had no idea. It was like thousands of years old. And I just remember one class with her where I was in downward dog and I was like, holy smokes, that's my pinky toe. Like, hi, it occurred to me that I'd never actually felt my pinky toe. Like I'd never been embodied in my pinky toe, you know, that it's like, I knew it was there because I could see it. But like, wait, I can feel my pinky toe from the inside. That's pretty cool. That's weird. And then it was probably the same class in Savasana that I felt. Well, I felt the bliss. Like I was like, who, that feels good. And I think I started chasing that feeling a bit and started going to her classes a lot. And so what was interesting for me is yoga started to replace like my time in the gym. And I started going like more and more and more like five or six times a week, to the point where I was like, I want to teach this like I want to learn this. And I mean, I was in university as well and had finished my nutrition degree and was doing my internship and I'd found a training I knew I wanted to do a month intensive training. That would happen like after I finished my internship. And before I got into the next phase of my journey, like starting a job or what have you. And I looked online, I was in Edmonton, Alberta at the time, and I found this one training. That I was like, okay, that's interesting. And then I found this other teacher who was like from India that someone had someone had recommended this particular style. And I was like, okay. And then I realized that they were connected that the studio in Edmonton was actually bringing his teachings and it felt like a synchronicity. Even though I did no research on like the lineage or what it was, it didn't really matter. No, you just got to follow. I just followed it. Yeah, yeah. And then I landed in the training. And I was like, Oh, I haven't done anything like this before, because it was very traditional. What was it? And I'd been doing it's called a Kanda yoga, which is like traditional Hatha. Okay. And actually, the so Yogi Vishvketu is the teacher, he lives in India, but he had traveled to Canada and he married a Canadian woman. So he had spent half of his time in Canada. And so there was a connection there. And that's how we got connected to the studio in Edmonton. So fascinating.
Liana Grieg:
The series of events that brought this into your life. Yeah, could be equally serendipitous to the few steps that got you there. Those final steps were just part of one whole journey, right? Totally. But all these little changes that that like end up in a place in Canada, how does it really happen?
Casey Berglund:
And then they're random. Yeah. And I just remember hearing this story about when he first taught this class in in Canada, and he barely spoke English. And he was just teaching yoga. And someone asked like, What, what style of training is this? And he was like, yoga. And no, but like, what's the like, what do you call it? And he's like, it's yoga, you know, and then he realized like, oh, in the West, they need to there. So he named it Akanda, which means whole or whole. And then the followers were happy. Right? They're like, the following is happy. And then we have it like now he's trained so many North Americans like in India, Canada, and all over the world. And I just think that's a funny, it really is.
Liana Grieg:
Right. I think it is so interesting to see the way it has bent into Western life. Yes, too. And I'm always really observant of this too. I think I even I heard an interesting reference about the different ways that we're going to be able to do this. And I think that's a really interesting way to look at the same thing. I mean, I think that there's a lot of different ways that we can look at the same thing, right? So let's say, like within the yoga philosophy, you have an importance that is put on cleanliness as part of it, right? And you can see that in other religions too, and you can understand why. And you've been around for a long time, and you have to find the right doctrine in which to teach people hygiene. There's this debate about what does cleanliness look like in one culture or another. Exactly. And I think that the other part of that is, like, when you're talking about a person who is in between cleanliness and purity. So there's a woman who I like to listen to sometimes who makes reference of how she had spent a month in India studying yoga, and also doing cleansing practices. And so that could mean hours per day doing some things that most people would find really uncomfortable. Whether it's starting from the baby, a small thing would be like a neti pot, which a lot of people know about cleansing your nasal passages with salt water. Or there are a lot of other things that could go on there, right? There are a lot of other cleansing practices, right? there are a lot of other cleansing practices, which could take hours, which could days, which could take months.
Casey Berglund:
I've in India, like drank my fair share of salty lime water and then like thrown it up the other like tree cleanse. And this was like interesting timing. Cause remember I'm like a dietician teaching people about a healthy relationship with food in their bodies. Previous history of an eating disorder, helping people with their relationship with their bodies and food. So it brought up a lot of shit for me where I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to do this. Do I believe in this? But like, and then like culturally, you got to go all in.
Liana Grieg:
Exactly. If you don't go, if you go halfway, it's not even going to have its full impact. Exactly. It's like, if you start a fast, but you finish it early, you shouldn't have done it in the first place. Because now you've really thrown your body out of whack. But anyway, this is the way I see it. I don't know if that's necessarily a thing. But anyway, so basically it was saying, right, you can do all these practices to cleanse, but they're more of a purification process. Whereas let's say you come home from a particularly long trip, maybe in India where you feel like everything in your backpack is like sweaty and dusty, or maybe you've been in South America, or maybe you've been, I don't know, anywhere. And you go home and maybe you do this beautification process. You do your diva shower, you wash everything. You're dead, but in about two hours, maximum, maybe you should have included a bath and everything. And a face mask. Yeah, and like a manicure and a pedicure and a face mask. You're done. Yeah. You're clean, right? But are you? Yeah. Are you? What have you done for the inside? You know, this is, it's super external. The Western view of cleanliness doesn't really involve a lot of purification. Yeah. And I think this is somehow where we can say, okay, I walk into a studio and maybe I'm doing my 90 minutes of yoga, and then I walk out. So you've done a lot of the physical practice and maybe you've even tapped into the mental stuff. You might've done some meditation, might've done some breath work. You might've had a small realization in your mind. But are you carrying your yoga out of the studio also? Yeah. Are you putting in the same amount of time into the way that you think and the way you think about other people? Yes. Like for me, that was one of the things when the philosophy really landed on me was hearing some of the descriptions of the ethical code, right? And sometimes when people ask about it, I say the most famous one that everybody knows is ahimsa, right? Nonviolence, nonviolence. We know it thanks to Gandhi. We know it also as the motivation for vegetarianism. We know it for a lot of different things. But at one point I read or heard that ahimsa also means your violent thoughts. Like how far do we take the-- About yourself and about other people. Don't even think them. And it was like, whoa. This is a new standard to which if we could hold ourselves. And I applied that one to my life and I find it super, super helpful. Yeah. It was a big one for me.
Casey Berglund:
I can't wait to hear more about the life application piece because I think just a couple of really good teachers that I've had have said, this is your yoga practice that you just did, your 90 minutes or whatever. This is your preparation for leaving here. Yes. This isn't the point. You leaving here different is the point. How are you living your yoga? So what we're speaking about are some of these ethical guidelines or the philosophy of yoga, specifically the yamas and the niyamas they're called. You were talking about cleanliness, which is saucha. Yeah. Saucha. Cleanly yamas, yeah. And non-harming is ahimsa. And so I'm curious to hear like how really integrating or starting to embody, I mean, not perfectly, right? Because it's like-- No. I'm like, I'll slap a mosquito when it's on my arm and it's sort of like, I just chose my non-harming myself over not harming the mosquito. But how has integrating the more holistic elements of the practice of yoga impacted how you, and maybe apply it to Juno, like how you show up as a co-founder here.
Liana Grieg:
Yeah, so much, so much. I think now we're also as a sidebar. We're in an interesting moment where you see a lot of people packaging and naming different ways of categorizing people, whether you identify as a certain one of four elements or a color, you know, you have your personality tests, you have all these things, or you have human design. What is your human design? Astrology. I am the weird one. The reflector.
Casey Berglund:
The reflector, I guess. I love it, I'm a mental projector, so we're actually kind of similar, but different. But anyway, yes, categorization.
Liana Grieg:
But it's fascinating because then you have one that clicks and then people use this to help understand others and how to work better. So, love it. As many as there needs to be, let's let them out of the cage, right? Because if people need all these different ways to categorize, okay, that's fantastic. But I think that when you start to use these categories, you're giving people an opportunity to sort of reflect on what they are in the moment. Some of them are determined by your birthday. Some of them are determined by factors that you don't have anything that you can change about them. Others are really analyzing who you are. And so I say this because everything in all of my charts is always the weird thing, the fire thing, like the one that's really intense. No, I'm fire everything, like dragon-- Red hair. Red that. Red hair. Red lipstick. Yeah, it's like high speed, intense sports, like all of it, love the speed, it's all me all the time. And then when you start to come into different working environments, you have to be sometimes the one who looks at the situation, says which aspects of my personality and my diligence are going to be the most useful in this particular situation, right? And in the creation of a business, you have to have yin and yang at all times, right? And sometimes I'm the yin and sometimes I'm the yang. It's been interesting for me to have people sort of see a different side of me on a bigger scale. So now I'm a little bit older, I'm not relying so much on my fire to push me through everything. I use it as a motivator, I use it more as fuel versus how I lead with things. And so that's been a big shift for me and my personality in the way I present myself and for people to understand who I am and to be a little bit more dual faceted, using both. Multi-faceted. Yeah, yes, yes, exactly. So as a business owner, you've got to have a lot of fuel, you have to have endurance. And endurance has also been one of my strengths for most of my life. And so this is super, super important for me. But having trained in different yoga principles and also the athletic side of things has always really helped me to be able to sustain over long periods of time really hard work, which is entrepreneurship. And so that's helped me to show up for my co-founders as well. It's helped me to be the person who keeps things a little bit more calm and down to earth, which is kind of the opposite of all this fiery side. And so I always encourage people to say, okay, yeah, maybe you have your innate characteristics, but who are you right now?
Casey Berglund:
That's actually so true. And just thinking about having witnessed you alongside your co-founders in different capacities, whether you're speaking on a stage at an event with the place full, or obviously seeing you in the yoga studio versus, I just remember, I met you at one of the very first events because you came over and you sat down and you spoke with me and I was like, oh, wow, this is really nice to have that openness. Sometimes I think founders will put themselves on a pedestal and not engage with the community members. So it's been interesting to witness these different facets of you. And I could totally see the fire side of you and how you may have really identified with that in the past, but I also see you really lean back and hold space for the room while say Natalie or something is in her element. I've witnessed what you're talking about here.
Liana Grieg:
Yeah, it was a challenge that I realized pretty early on was going to be part of my challenges in Juno House and founding this space. And I think it's also because we've created a space where so many powerful personalities are attracted to Juno House. A lot of women like yourself who have a lot of presence and who can talk to anybody and who have a lot of projects going on and they're all going, they aren't just ideas. You have a lot of ideas. People too, we knew that this was going to be a culmination point of a lot of those personalities, but it needed to not be the only type of person who was attracted to coming here. And so we needed to be able to hold space and listen to and have conversations with and create an appealing workspace, social space for different types of personalities too. And so I like being able to listen to others and give them an opportunity to blossom a little bit and open up and feel like this is a safe space for them. I think that that's a word that is also under scrutiny right now. What does that actually mean? But from our side of things, we can't always be the protagonist. It doesn't make any sense. And what we really wanna do is create a space where the members themselves are comfortable taking protagonist and walking into this and feeling like, okay, I can be here and I can be me and this is exactly what I need to be. So that's been a part of it is really this holding space, which is something that comes with time. People can give you tips on that, but you have to do it a lot of times to understand how to offer it for others. And I'm absolutely still learning in this area too.
Casey Berglund:
Yeah, you said something there that is sort of bringing me to a connected thought that might also feel like a bit of a divergence. Just when you were talking about knowing that you needed to create a space that isn't just for people who have a lot of fire, let's say, or the powerhouse type of women, you wanted this space to be one that involves and includes a range of different types of women. So it's just making me think about how I've been integrating just how important environment is for everything. Like it's the backdrop of everything. So environment being, yeah, the physical space that you're in but also the people that are surrounding you and the people that are intermingling their energy. And so I am curious like what some of the initial conversations were about the environment of Juneau House. Because what I will say is when I was six months without a consistent home, in a new country, I came here every day and it was the place where I felt I had consistency and safety and I could count on to feel safe. And there's something safe that I didn't even know I needed about an all women's space. Like I love men, I love male energy, I love being around men, I work with men, I work with women. That's always been something that I've gravitated toward is like not just being in female only spaces and the level of safety that I feel on a body and nervous system level with just women in the space is something that has shown me how important it is. Like when I think about merging genders and groups online I think that there's a space for that and that's important but it didn't even occur to me how braced I am in mixed spaces until I felt the level of safety and relaxation coming into a women's only space and spending so much time here and letting this be my home when I didn't really have a home, that was so important to me. And part of it is the beauty and the, but the people are everything. So how the fuck did you create that?
Liana Grieg:
This is a really cool aspect of creating the business. It was really fun. First you start with the space, right? And so I was pounding the pavement in the city looking for things and man, there were so many horrible places.
Casey Berglund:
That's that like finance girly from New York. Yeah. She probably like came in handy and just have to say that pounding the pavement looking for space.
Liana Grieg:
Totally, totally. I mean, there were some, and also real estate here does not work the way that we're accustomed to especially in New York where in New York imagine a realtor gets your phone number and you casually mention you're looking for something. They're hounding you. Right, there's nobody hounding you. Oh my God, you're like, I'm changing my phone number. I can't, like I was looking for an apartment six months ago and they're still calling me. It's like, I'm good. I said, I'm like, no, here, no, totally opposite. You have to hound them and it's not guaranteed. Even when I was looking for a massive space, I mean, June was 1400 square meters and that's a big space in Barcelona. So long story short is that when this space arrived, it was the third of ones that we had fallen in love with. Right, there were two before this, which had almost happened and then did not. Of course we were crushed when those didn't come through, but then when this one became the one, it was so evident that the others were not even close to as good because this has so many different areas to it, right? We have two buildings, one of them quite large that we knew would be the lounge area, open social with some smaller rooms like the one we're sitting in right now, the recording studio. And it was the first space I had seen that was going to give us all of these options, right? The library, the shop. The shop was kind of like the teeter point where we thought, what are we gonna do with all this space? And then the realization was that we could even have the shop because before there was the dream list of everything that we wanted in Juno House. And all the other spaces, you had to do some round peg square hole kind of changes. But in this space, we could have it all. And that felt like what the women that we wanted to build this space for deserved. Everything, all of it, all of it. We are women who want it all. We want it all.
Casey Berglund:
We are like, it's like, oh my God. Like I just, like when I walked in here, I was like, I get to be as smart as I am and as well traveled as I am and as spiritual as I am and as beautiful as I am. Like all of it, you know?
Liana Grieg:
Yeah, which is so satisfying, right? And so all of this is the reason that this space came to us. This is the reason I believe a lot in the fact that things present themselves when they're needed, right? And so this became available at the time that we were looking. It could have happened six months later and it wouldn't be ours. And we'd be sitting somewhere else. This was actually how we got the space. And then the concept, the design concept, I always tell people when you're opening a space, don't make the mistake we did, which is we did too many call for proposals. We received nine from different designers and it was heartbreaking to say no to these women because Juno is a very passionate project. And even just receiving the design brief, all of these designers were female and they all very much wanted to work with us. Understandably, it's kind of a dream, right? Hi, we're designing the Dream House for women. Can you show us a proposal? Yeah, exactly. Yes, I can. Yeah, and it's a big vision. It's a big one, right? And so many different spaces, which means you have opportunities to do a different little spin on each one of them, the smaller ones. And so that was really hard the day I had to call eight of them and say, no, thank you. But that was also a good practice for me because it's kind of dealing with the hard stuff too from early on in the stages. And then we began the design process with our architect, Mircea Kanka, who's amazing, and with Maryche Ribe, who leads the room studio. And so these are the two powerful minds that created the space that we enjoy today. But yeah, we knew that we wanted to make sure that the vision of Juno, which is the hustle of New York brought into the balanced lifestyle of Barcelona. And so that was the initial point of departure for the design brief, which means you needed functional and beautiful spaces. And we wanted to use as many local materials as possible. This was pretty much still during COVID, just right after quarantine. And for the purposes of building it in time to open the doors when we wanted to for International Women's Day in 2022. Wow. And we're in space.
Casey Berglund:
It was in space. It brings pain and things move a little slower here.
Liana Grieg:
So wow, that is amazing. Important also to shout out to our project manager, Ricard is someone who, he was the director of the orchestra, right? Because you have so many different providers working. And if it weren't for him, there's absolutely no chance we would have opened the doors on time. And so having the right team in place was huge, huge. So that we could enjoy more of the design process, which was so much fun, picking out materials, picking out colors. Thankfully, there was quite a lot of synchronicity in the team at that point. And we had a shared vision of what we wanted it to look and feel like. But yeah, I only wish we had documented it more during that process. It goes fast and it feels like some things are more important than others, but yeah, the building blocks of any business are important to remember.
Casey Berglund:
Wow, and then the people part, who were you calling in?
Liana Grieg:
Everybody, everybody. I remember having Zoom calls with a former finance professor from college because I studied international business for undergrad. And I've maintained good contact with a few of the most impactful professors. And I remember having a Zoom call during quarantine with this man to fix an Excel file that was our original business plan. Everybody came in, my dad's a carpenter. I was calling him about materials. What else? We called everyone that we could lean on.
Casey Berglund:
I meant, I love that you answered it that way. I meant like the women, like the archetype of the woman. Who's the Juno woman?
Liana Grieg:
This is where we started with a sort of Noah's Ark perspective, where we wanted to make sure that we had a collection of all different career paths and backgrounds. Some people represent themselves more through their career, others more through their personal experiences. And so before we opened the doors, we were doing hard hat tours with women from all different walks of life and opening up memberships before that. So that was really important for us because there are other spaces in the city, which typically are meant for creatives or which are typically meant for very tech oriented people or for something more to do with science and technology itself. So what we wanted to do is make sure we had a little bit of everything. And so from the early stages, from our team and from our own personal contacts, and from what we put out as our initial point of entry, which would have been like our first webpage, after our big newspaper article, we received quite a lot of interest. And from there, we were able to make sure that so many different types of women were represented. So we had a goal to open our doors with 300 women signed up already and we went way beyond. Really? Yeah. Holy crap. Yeah, that was really exciting. That was it. That was a really, really exciting moment for us. We were pushing so hard to do. I remember we wanted to hit 100 before the new year because we started accepting applications in December. And so, yeah, but this was post COVID. This was what the city needed. Juno really answered the call of community seeking women. Yeah, wow. So the archetypes were quite varied. You had a lot from women in a more of a mentor position who were interested in giving back. These are the women who usually started their first comments after hearing about what Juno was going to be and is. Wow, I really wish I had had this, right? And so those are the women who entered the house more of I'm going to give what I always wished I'd had or what I can offer now thanks to the experience that I built. Then you had the archetype of the woman who is in a change of life, who's reinventing herself. This is an important one. I see that archetype huge. So important. This is a woman who has a lot of support and guidance to offer and to receive. And I think that that's a really beautiful position to be in too. And I love that we can offer something for somebody going through that in their life because it's really exciting and difficult period. Then you have the others who are pretty well established in their own businesses or who are more of a corporate profile. And then you have younger women who are entering and launching their businesses. There's so many women here who are going straight into entrepreneurship. Whereas I come from more of a background and a generation of people who first start in a company, learn a bit of corporate structure, learn some management skills and then go maybe go off and do their own thing. So you have a lot of that. You have international, you have local. We also sort of let the community take shape on its own without trying to force too much. That was a super important choice that we consciously made too.
Casey Berglund:
It's interesting. I know that when I led a workshop upstairs in the studio, I was telling my partner, Eric, about it, just like the quick organization of it and how it was sold out and we got people in there and whatever. And he's like, it's really cool that there's not like a founder in the room or there's no like micromanagement of these events that community members can lead something in the space without it feeling like there's a bunch of hoops to jump through. And it occurred to me that that's like so true. I think that takes a skill and intention to like loosen your grip and let women do their thing. Because we're naturals in many ways at connection. When you're calling in the right type of woman, like I don't see the Juno woman being like a catty bitchy, like we're here for collaboration, we're here for lifting each other up, we're here for positive expansion.
Liana Grieg:
It's true. And that's kind of the underlying desire of the members here, I think. But all of that came with experience too. Initially you have to think that it was so, there was such a learning curve. Year one was so wild.
Casey Berglund:
I can imagine.
Liana Grieg:
It was so wild. And we've learned so much from the members and giving them that space. And the community events are what I say is super laissez-faire. We have to let them live and mistakes will be made. But also beautiful things will happen because we didn't meddle with it. We create the conditions in which it can thrive and exist. And that's really our job when it comes to that stuff.
Casey Berglund:
So we started by talking about like food and wellness and yoga and the summertime being a little bit more spacious for your country bumpkin size. And I have this curiosity if you feel that your spaciousness has shifted since bringing on a new CEO. Like how has that impacted you? How are you navigating that? What are the challenges? Like tell me how that feels as a founder getting to a place where growth looks like hiring a CEO.
Liana Grieg:
Yeah, initially there's a huge amount of vulnerability there, right? It's kind of like opening up your closets and saying like, here is the way that I've been living my life. Here's the way we've been running this business. I'm sure you have some advice because we hired you to have some advice, right? And so that's bringing in somebody to also do some of the things that when you are the founder, are harder to do on an operational side of things, right? And so this has been a really exciting moment for the company. It also means that as founders, both Eva, Natalie and myself are able to step away from the operations in a really big way and back into strategy and back into driving vision of where is this big, beautiful project going, right? We're in year three. That's huge because like I said, year one was but hectic as it needed to be. You have to let that fire burn and then your two you put things in place and then year three, you're kind of getting a little bit more of your bearings and everything. So that means that it's an opportunity to grow as well. But yeah, it's super difficult to go through this shift where something you've created now is under the tutelage of another person. Scary. It requires a lot of trust. Definitely. And it would not be possible if it weren't for having a strong team in place because going back to sports reference, you could have a star player on the football match or on a basketball team. But if the team isn't ready and can't work with them, it's just not gonna work. There's no chance. There's no chance. And so I firmly believe that if it weren't for our incredible team, which has evolved over time, we have the great fortune of many of the leaders in the team having come up through the whole company, which is really incredible because it means that there's so much more aware of what the rest of the team has to do to get their work done, that they're able to lead more cohesively and they understand the needs of both the community and the team in a way that you could never just achieve from the moment you walk in regardless of having experience in another company or another industry because this is not a very typical industry either. You really gotta learn it on the fly. So going back to this shift, yes, it has loosened up my life. The timing was such that it's also summer where things get a little bit more quiet here. Barcelona is a really events-driven city, but you'll also find that the locals, they move so much with the scholastic schedule. Whether they have children or not, people sort of adopt this, which I think is really cool. It means that August is super quiet, but September is a wild situation. Everyone comes back ready to grow. And I love that, it's like New Year's all over. Just right when you need it. One to nine. And so that's super exciting. I'm really looking forward to Juneau House taking some steps forward and growing. And we'll be sharing more about what that means a little bit later on. And I'm also looking forward to growing myself and having time to grow my skill sets and also to embrace things that I used to do that require more time. We talked about some of these small projects and making your own projects, making your own products or making things that I used to do a lot, because I'm from the countryside and it's a bit more typical there. You have people who are more accustomed to making something versus buying it. And now that I live in a city, I absolutely love living in a city. I've always been 50-50 country city girl, I love it. But I noticed myself going to the store for something I could have done and I'm starting to think like, okay, first you notice and later you fix it. But now I'm in the later you fix it moment.
Casey Berglund:
Yeah, yeah, I love that. So it's interesting to me to tie it together. I'm just curious when you think about yoga and wellness, and I asked about how philosophy has impacted Juneau, but then there's Juneau on its own and its community, its space and everything that it has become and the value systems here. I can't help but think about what would happen if the foundations of yoga philosophy and also the best parts of what have been created here around community and connection and expansion and helping each other grow. Like what would the world look like or what would society look like if we expanded that beyond? You know, and I'm curious, but like- Yes.
Liana Grieg:
Now you've tapped into what if my pipe dreams? Okay, tell me about it. That's like hit it off with this. I've always had a deep fascination and love for politics, for political science. It was like my first academic love. I was sure that I was going to work in the legal field where I thought that I would be able to put politics at the forefront of my life. And when I started to feel this tug towards Eastern philosophy, as for me, there's a humongous difference. And when I studied, I did a master's degree in political philosophy. I had to do so much self-study and really do a lot of my own work to bring in the element of Eastern thought. Cause it's very, very, very poorly represented in higher education and with the whole canon of philosophy in general. So one of the angles that I found so interesting after doing some travels in Asia was how much more integrated reflective thought is in the political sphere. Wow. And in the social sphere as well. And so I would absolutely love to see that approach with a greater representation within spaces that are used for groups of people and for the way that we train people to handle life. And so that's been a really big passion of mine. If I could just do a massive scientific study of my own, it would absolutely be about the changes on decision-making based on people who engage in regular spiritual practice, including in this different physical practices and groups, which for me would be regular yoga classes. You could even look at the kind of community culture built in these boutique fitness studios as well. So I'm not only talking about spiritual practice from meditation or prayer or whatever somebody might call it, but also this sense of belonging that comes from your physical practices that you do in a group setting. How does this affect your decision-making? How does this affect the way that you look at the community around you, the way you interact with it? So this is like one of my, again, one of my pipe dreams that I would love to create this study.
Casey Berglund:
I wanna be part of it. Yeah, yeah, let's do it. That sounds so fascinating.
Liana Grieg:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey Berglund:
Thank you for sharing yourself and your wisdom and your learnings, all of it. And I just appreciate you being here today, thank you.
Liana Grieg:
My pleasure, it's been really fun, thank you.
