Amanda Ruddy knows how to throw a party. But this conversation isn't really about parties.

It's about growing up the oldest of five kids in six years, in a house that was always a gathering place. It's about spending years wondering if your name opened doors that your talent was supposed to. It's about losing your mom three weeks before the biggest event of your career and showing up anyway — because she would've wanted you to, and because what else do you do?

Amanda is the founder of Amanda Julia Events, one of Ottawa's most trusted event planning companies, and she is warm and funny and refreshingly honest about all of it. The loneliness of entrepreneurship. The hard conversations she'd rather not have. The event hangover that hits every time. And the two minutes before the doors open that she lives for, every single time, no matter the event.

We also talk about what actually makes a great event (hint: nobody remembers the linens), what people get wrong about this industry, and how she survived COVID by driving around Ottawa tying ribbon on boxes and refusing to disappear.

This one felt like sitting across from a really good friend. Settle in, folks x

@the_otherside_pod