Morgan Friedman (Host): Hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of Client Horror Stories. I’m excited to have a conversation with Suzy Hardy. I often ask, oh, after I say someone’s name, oh, did I pronounce it correctly?

Because I have to get these weird exacting names.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): But with your name, it makes me wonder how much were you teased about your name in elementary school?

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Well, not at all. You said it perfectly. What’s funny is, it’s my married name.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Ahh.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): So, my maiden name was a lot harder to pronounce. It was Harbalak, which is Slavic and…

Morgan Friedman (Host): Harbalak?

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Harbalak. Yeah. So, I had it mispronounced all the time. In fact, every time, the start of a new year, the teacher is getting to know people and they go down the list and it was always mispronounced.

And then it was even mispronounced at like award dinners. When I was a senior in high school, they were… I was called Carbuckle at one point.

I’m like, that’s not even close. There’s no C. It was mispronounced all the time, and…

But , I was one of those kids that like… I was smart, I was good at sports, I was shy, but I knew how to socialize. So like, I didn’t rise to… I didn’t get picked on too much or anything like that, so they didn’t really make fun of me.

It was only later in high school, but it was kind of like, haha, you know? Your name is weird.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Well, let’s jump right into today’s horror story. I have my water in hand and I’m excited. I’m excited to hear it.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Okay. So my client horror story, dates back to probably…. I want to say like 12, 14 years ago, something like that. I…

Morgan Friedman (Host): I love stories from more than a decade ago because you have enough time to see it from different perspectives and look at it not in the moment.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah. I don’t really see this from a different perspective. This is straight up a horror story, like from my perspective. So, but you tell me.

Morgan Friedman (Host): I’ll tell you at the end.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): No, there’s… this is straight up… this is just bad. So, I was living in Los Angeles as I do now. I left for a spell and we just moved back. So I live in Los Angeles.

I lived in Los Angeles then, I was pursuing Hollywood as an actor and a voiceover artist and my side hustle, my day job, I was a licensed massage therapist.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): I’ve had a great benefit for myself, for my back when I was a teenager through my adult years of massage therapy, energy work, acupuncture, all that stuff.

And so when I moved to LA, from New York, I first thought, well, I’m… you know, I’m cute, I’m young. I have experienced bartending, waiting tables, and it shouldn’t be a problem in New York.

You can make a ton of money doing that as a side job. In LA, not as much. People don’t dine out as much. There’s way more actors and dancers and people like trying to do that.

So the jobs that like pay really well, people don’t leave. So, here I was in LA and I was like, hmm, this isn’t working out as I actually got fired from… I got a bartending job and then I got fired from it, which was not my fault.

It’s not my fault, Morgan, not my fault. They had a Casio register, where I was used to like, touch screens, and POS systems, and Aloha, if anyone works in restaurants, they know Aloha, it’s like a computer, right?

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): This was a Casio register, literally, with like, ding ding ding ding, cha ching, and the drawer would open, I was like, what? Anyway, not my fault. I messed up the books on my second night, it was like, literally my second night working there.

The girl had left, I messed up the books, I got fired. Anyway, but, the reason I think I was there, was that one of my co-workers just started going in massage school and I had always thought about that.

I had gotten great benefit from it. I thought that would be really cool. I like helping people heal. I have to go to school for it, but so that was… that’s how it happened.

I went to her school. I checked it out. I was like, sweet, let’s do this. Long story short, years later, I graduated from school. I developed my own private practice.

I always liked working for myself. So here and there I work for like chiropractors or acupuncturists, but I primarily developed a practice where I’d go to people’s homes and charge them a little bit more because I was bringing my table and all my stuff and I would massage them in their home.

Morgan Friedman (Host): The alarm bells for horror stories are… is already going off in my head.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): They should. They should. Like all of them. Like the clocks at the beginning of the Pink Floyd song, Time. They should. But I was somewhat…

Morgan Friedman (Host): I’m old enough to get that.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Good. I love that song. So this particular story because I have a few in this genre. Huh?

Morgan Friedman (Host): Because I’m in a fun mood tonight, I just want to interrupt on that song. I think that song has among the most profound lyrics out there.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): It’s amazing. I love that song so much. That’s one of my favorites. In fact, Pink Floyd, when I was in a senior in high school, was coming to… I was on the East Coast, coming to Giants Stadium and doing their Division Bell tour and I loved them.

And my whole high school was up really into classic rock, but I loved Pink Floyd. And I was like, I was a good kid, never touched weed, I smoked.

I pre-smoked for the Pink Floyd concert so that I could get high at the concert, specifically for that tour. But anyway, that’s another story. But I love them. They’re amazing musicians.

Morgan Friedman (Host): My favorite line from that song is, “No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun.” And I think it’s a great metaphor for life. Like you’re just hanging out, you’re on the beach, you’re doing your thing, and then suddenly you wake up one day and you’re in the middle of this race.

And everyone else is like running for a head, and you’re like, “Oh my goodness, I missed this starting gun to the race.”

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah, so great. They’re great musicians, great writers, just so good.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Actually, it’s better because and then you run and you run to catch up with the song, but it’s syncing, only to come up behind you again.

Which is also great because like you’re in the middle of the race, what do you want to do? But it actually turns out the race is like a loop. Like everyone’s just going in circles and circles and circles. Okay, if we start add continualizing this song, we’ll be here all night long.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Now I have to go back and listen to the song again and listen to the lyrics.

Morgan Friedman (Host): And you can get some weed because it’s legal now.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah, I can. Okay, so where was I? Oh, wait. Wait, I totally sidetracked.

Morgan Friedman (Host): You’re…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Oh, okay. Back to the horror story, right. The horrible experience of my life, one of them. Yeah, so, okay. So, I developed private practice and charged more and I loved it. I, you know, made sense to me. When people are super relaxed, last thing you want to do is get behind a wheel.

So, I was… I consider myself a healer, always have, and felt like I was doing good work in the world. So, cut to… I’m also pursuing, as I said, Hollywood.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): And acting. And I had this new manager and… and I never had great representation. Sorry, my dog’s trying to join the conversation.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Your dog…your

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): This manager, very young, very inexperienced, and she had a backer of like some Russian guy. Some, wealthy, Russian dude that she’s like, “Oh, this is…” We’ll call him Vlad. Cause I don’t even remember his name.

We’ll call him Vlad. “This is Vlad.” He had the thick accent. And he’s like, hello. And she’s like, she’s also a massage therapist. And I’m like, yeah, but that’s not why I’m here.

 I’m an actor. I’m a trained actor. I trained at circle in the square. I performed off Broadway. I do improv, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Doesn’t matter. So he’s like, “Oh, I could really….” I’ll do the accent for you.

“I could really use a massage.” And I was like, “Okay, well, okay, fine. That’s what I do too.” And so I gave him my card and I said, “Sure, call me, and we’ll book an appointment.”

So we booked an appointment, for like, I don’t know, 6:37 PM, which is not unusual. I actually have always been a night owl. I don’t mind working on people… actually would always preferred working later in the evening than in the daytime.

So I was like, that’s fine. So, I show up to his house and it’s a mansion in Beverly Hills. He’s got a lot of money and it felt a little strange. There was something off that was telling me from the get go that’s…

I don’t know, it was it’s your gut. Your gut is always right and we… especially women, but men do it too, I’m sure. We tend to be like, “Oh, no, you’re just… you know, you’re being silly. You’re thinking too far ahead. You’re… this is… it’s fine. It’s fine, right?”

Morgan Friedman (Host): This makes me wonder, it’s common wisdom and advice to follow your gut. Like, everyone always says it, but everyone always says it because it’s so hard to do.

And it makes me wonder why it’s… why humans ignore their gut. Like, on the intellectual level, you know your gut’s probably right, yet you ignore it.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): I think it’s because we’re socialized and we’re told that, it’s a different part. So this is the stuff that I love to study. So, your gut is actually connected, neurologically to your brain in many ways.

So your vagus nerve, which is part of your parasympathetic nervous system, it runs down the side from your brain all the way down to your gut is part of the nervous system that calms us down.

A lot of our neurotransmitters are actually created in the gut. And in, embryologically, when we’re forming in the womb, nerves when they start to… they start out at the same… as the same kind of cells and then cells start to differentiate.

The cells that become the brain and the spinal cord, are the same cells that remain and stay in the gut.

So they are very… they’re very connected and they actually call… scientists will call our gut, our first brain, our primordial brain. So… but we have a brain up here too. And so we… and this is the socialized brain. This is the one that’s thinking.

It’s like the CEO. So this one down here in our belly, that one’s like the, it’s like the old part of us. Like that old… like old caveman and like, no, this is going to be protection.

And the one up here, is like the one in the suit and tie. It’s like, you know, it’s fine. It’s… everything’s okay. We’re just going to think it through. But your gut always knows, it knows when you like round a corner and it’s dark, and you’re like, “Oh, I shouldn’t be here.” It’s amazing how it always knows.

And yes, we tend to ignore it. And I can’t say that at this point, I would have turned around because I was also an actor in this guy’s new managing company… management company in Hollywood. So I was kind of like, do I have a choice here?

You always have a choice, but I went for it anyway. So, I set up my table and we’re doing the massage and there are certain signs that I came to learn as a professional massage therapist.

When a man, expected or wanted more, wanted the happy ending or beyond.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yeah.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): I don’t even know what beyond. But, and it… again, my, my… your gut always kind of knows. It was like, this wasn’t the first time… I’ve kind of given away the ending, but this wasn’t the first time that I was going to be put in an uncomfortable position with one of my clients and it wasn’t the last, unfortunately.

But so at this point, I kind of knew the signs. And again, my brain was like, yeah, but he’s a man and he’s part of the owning… owning the management company.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Please share some of the signs with… by the way, as a parenthetical, it’s really… one of the things very interesting about this is, I’ve done 67 day client horror story episodes before, and you’re the first massage therapist.

And it’s interesting that, often we talk about what are the signs, but it’s often the signs, like things I’ll say in conversation, like in a very formal professional suit and tie. A conversation, but now it’s just such a different context. I’m very curious to learn what the signs are.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Well, one sign… and this isn’t… this is a case by case basis sign. Because some people relax in massage when and they go totally quiet. And some people need if their… if their brain is still to a little… if they’re still to a little wired from their day or they’re lonely or they just some people like to connect by chatting.

Some people relax that way. But, the guys that would “proposition” me, would ask things about me personally.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Oh, that’s interesting.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah. So it’s like, they were trying to get to know me. The people that I noticed that would be chatty, would talk about like the news or the weather, or it’s something about themselves.

They would actually unload sometimes like emotionally, almost like I was a therapist. They wouldn’t necessarily be like, “So, what do you do for fun?” You know what I mean? Like, so, it was these kinds of questions where guys would start asking me about me, and I’m like…

Morgan Friedman (Host): That’s what I like about that one, is it’s not obvious. I would have never thought about it.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): It’s not an obvious sign.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Once you explain it, it makes sense.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah. The most obvious sign, was… I’ll show it to you, it’s a visual, it was this.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Oh my god.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Oh.

Morgan Friedman (Host): That made my day. That made my day.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): It is? Okay. So, when I do… when I did body work, I did shoulders joints all over. I would be moving the client. Sometimes I would prop them up on pillows. I was… I did a lot of training. I was very good at what I did. And the fact that they did that, it just very subtly, but maybe not so subtly, it was just like… I don’t know.

I… like… I don’t even know how to describe it. I’m not usually at a loss for words, but that right there, I was like, “Oh no.” So that… sometimes guys would leave it at that, and I wouldn’t say anything, and then they wouldn’t say anything.

And then sometimes it went beyond that. And unfortunately with this guy, it went beyond that. So, he did do that. I was like, maybe like working on his feet. Another… oh, before I get finished off, finish off the horror story.

Another odd request that they would give, as a sign would be, they either wanted their abdomen or their…

Morgan Friedman (Host): Ahh.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Upper thighs, worked on. Which I did both of, because it’s actually legitimate to do both of in a therapeutic massage. Sometimes, the inner thighs are actually very important. They’re actually usually weak. And so the whole body, you know?

The whole body… all of… you know, most of the body, not the private parts, but like very important in getting released and getting massaged and getting the fluid movement, moving the lymph, moving the blood, moving… ,

It’s very important. But specifically to narrow it… the window down, to those areas, was also a sign.

So this guy didn’t do that though. Vlad did not do that, but he did do this. That was telltale sign number one.

Morgan Friedman (Host): It’s an interesting observation. I hadn’t thought about it until this list, that with yellow flags, one isn’t alone. If you ask for a massage there or whatever, it could be legitimate. But it’s that and that and that.

It’s like all these little signs add…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Up together to a big sign. And this is one of the reasons why our mind ignores it. Because your mind thinks…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Oh, it looks at it. Oh no, that one little thing could be legitimate, like each little thing on its own, could be defensible.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yes.

Morgan Friedman (Host): And it’s more subtle when they’re all taken together.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yes. So, he did that. I moved to his head. So, I usually would finish off with the neck and the head and it’s like a scalp massage and there was a move where you just on the collarbone you kind of go around the collarbone and rubbing the shoulders and it’s a very fluid movement feels really good and you come up the neck.

And I had done that, my hands were kind of over his collarbone and he grabbed both my wrists.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Ooh.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): He pulled me toward him. Yeah. And I was like, oh, hell no, hell no. So, I was getting ready to like literally fight him off. And I pulled away, I said “No, no, no.” I don’t like what he was like trying to pull me to… I was… his head was here, so his forehead was here and I was above him.

He’s trying to get me to kiss him. But he was reverse and he’s holding me and it was horrible, and I was looking at the door and I was like, it’s time to run. And I pulled away and I said, “No, I’m not interested.”

And I was getting ready to run. And he’s like, okay, okay, okay. And he backed off, but I had never had to get to that point of aggression to defend myself, before.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Right. Physical contact, even if it’s just like a grab takes it to another level.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah. Yeah. I had been… there had been times before where I was telling myself I can just run. I used to run track and I used to play soccer, I was fast. And I hadn’t had that thought before, nothing. And thank God, nothing ever came to that point, but it came close.

And this guy, this guy I had met before. This guy I had… I knew through my “manager”. And I… this was where the sliminess of Hollywood was juxtaposed with what I was doing as my side job and crossing into the kind of “Me Too” attitude that Hollywood had at that time and thinking this was a long time ago.

And thinking back to it, it was like, it was really scary, because there was no one else there. This guy lived alone. He wasn’t too big, but still as a woman, you just don’t want to have to go through that, especially since my intentions were good.

There are women and people around the world that do provide that, I didn’t. That wasn’t my jam. That wasn’t what I was doing.

And it was scary. Talk about a horror story. Like it was scary, I was getting ready to fight and run and have to defend myself over giving a massage. And I would never show up, like I have my hair and makeup done right now.

I would always show up in comfortable clothing and hair pulled back and professional. And, it was not giving off any of those kinds of signals. So…

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yeah, usually when in these horror stories, it’s like, it’s resulted in million dollar lawsuits, bankruptcy, it’s usually that sort of horror, but this is a very different type of horror where it’s like… you like… you might need to literally fight for your life.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah, and it was. Like I said, it wasn’t the first time. There was another one that’s coming to mind where this guy, I was going to… there’s a strip in Hollywood or sorry, in between Santa Monica and Hollywood.

The Wilshire on Wilshire Boulevard, the Wilshire corridor, very expensive high rises. And I was going to a client there, had my table and the guy saw me, he lived in one of these buildings like, “Oh, do you have a card?”

And this guy I didn’t know, and I gave him my card, and that was another time where I got this, and I got ready. I was like, there’s a door, I can just run, I can leave all this stuff here, this is all replaceable, I don’t care. Scary.

Morgan Friedman (Host): What’s,… what also makes this situation challenging, and this is something I’ve seen in other episodes and other contexts is, he was the backer of your manager, and you have this human gut instinct that, oh, there’s this social relationship.

We know people in common, which makes you feel, psychologically, it makes you feel more safer. Oh, no, no, no. He’ll like… he has to, like… he can do this because of all the people in common, but it actually turns out, you can and you do.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): It’s true. It’s…

Morgan Friedman (Host): So…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): You know, you overlook it, you overlook it too, in order to… to make your money. And that’s… that was what I was doing at the time. And I thought, okay, but yeah, it was pretty prevalent. I’d had that the very first manager I met actually was a male in Hollywood and he took me out to lunch.

I knew… I met him through a photographer I knew and he said, “Yeah, I’ll represent you, but you have to…” He said date. But he didn’t mean date, but he said, “But you have to date me.”

And I said, “No. I’m not dating you.” It was all over back then and, you know, came to a head, right? With the “Me Too” movement.

And shocking to know that it happened even to women at the highest level, but of Hollywood. With men of the highest level… with one of the men of the highest level, yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): It’s unclear to me if it changed. So…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): I think it has. I’m sure it still exists on certain levels. But people, women have been braver to come forward and actually know that they can. And there are way more women now.

I even see it just in… in credits and people that I still know that are in the industry, but friends of mine that are producers that are way more women, directors, writers, things like that nature.

Yeah, I’m sure it always exists on some level, but it was way worse. It was just accepted back then. It was just the way it is, you know?

Morgan Friedman (Host): But… by the way, I grew up in New York. My mom is a theater producer on Broadway, so…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Oh, amazing.

Morgan Friedman (Host): I just grew up in this house and all my mom’s friends are these like gay men, actors, and producers. She’s like a straight woman with all young men. And so, you know, like my… like uncles.

Like these sort of people I just grew up around in the house and I remember a comment, that my mom would often make is that talking about the New York theater industry because that’s what she knows. So, no comment on Hollywood, although you’ll see in a second.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s somewhere, but she would say… because she was friends with basically all the only men, all the gay men… she would say, hey, in order to reach the highest levels of success in the New York Broadway scene, the men who are straight need to be gay and become gay to service the right people just to do that.

And this actually presented big emotional talent and physical challenges for men who wanted to be actors on Broadway who were actually straight. So…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): I believe it. So, it’s the same thing in reverse, right? In… and I… sorry, my doggies are making noise now. They were licking so quietly.

I believe it. I… I started out… I’m also from New York. I grew up on Long Island, and I started…

Morgan Friedman (Host): I grew up on Long island, too.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): You did? Where?

Morgan Friedman (Host): Great Neck.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Shut up. I’m from Northport.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): A little bit further out.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): One of the… another neck over, Eaton’s neck. Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): I’ve also been to concerts at Giants Stadium and Nassau Coliseum, but…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Enjoying some treats, I’m sure.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yeah, but never Pink Floyd there.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): That’s so funny, it’s a small world. Yeah, so I started in theater, loved theater, but I was never… I couldn’t sing. I can dance and can act, but I couldn’t really sing. So, I never did musical theater. I wanted to like… I love straight drama or straight theater, not musical theater.

But yeah, I can imagine. God, there was a movie and now I can’t remember what movie it was where I had… there was a scene… oh, I’m trying to think of it.

And it was an actor that was going up for a meeting with a gay producer. And he basically was saying like…

Morgan Friedman (Host): Ahh.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Oh, it doesn’t matter, come here. And he’s like, no, I’m good. Yeah, it’s everywhere, right? Yeah, and I used to think about it. It’s like, well, there’s just too many people that want it.

There’s too much of a supply and not enough opportunity. There’s too many actors, too many available actors that, if people are in power and they’ll want to abuse it, they can get what they want. Hopefully, that’s changing for the musical theater scene. I don’t know.

Morgan Friedman (Host): I can ask my mom and report back.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): So, question to wrap back to the story before we extract out some final lessons. So, ultimately you were able to leave, not running away, you took your equipment, he like, there’s that hard moment, and then he calmed down.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): He backed off. I was still very heightened and scared and, you know. And it… I’m trying to remember, like, they say your memory can change things, how they actually happened.

But I remember, it wasn’t like I was very close to the front door. I remember like go… it was a big house and I remember having to go through. I don’t remember if it was like another level.

It wasn’t like… it wouldn’t have been like an easy… it wasn’t an apartment. It wouldn’t have been like an easy run out the front door.

I remember like once I started to push him, put up my boundary, he’s like, okay, okay. I did eventually get… you know, we finished. I got my stuff, he paid me, and I left. But then thereafter, I think I did see him at the manager’s office again, and he acted like nothing happened, and it was just… and I didn’t last… that whole management company was just a whole bunch of BS, there’s a lot of them out here.

Morgan Friedman (Host): So it’s, the management company being BS is related to the fact that the background was sketchy. Like in my experience, companies are often not what they seem, like the… as a very New York or New York City example of that, the entire restaurant industry is basically a front for money laundering in New York.

Because in some restaurants is all cash. So if you have like…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Dirty, dirty money. You just need to own a cash business, so you can make the dirty money clean, who cares if it goes, if it loses money. That a lot of so… a lot of… are not what they seem. So, maybe this sketchy management company was really just a front for sexy.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): That would make sense.That would make sense because this young woman, knew, seemed to know nothing, and she wasn’t very good, and it doesn’t take a lot to start a management company.

Like, why would you need a backer? You don’t… you need time, you need a desk, you need a computer, you need a phone, and connections, right? And hustle and drive.

Wait, how much do you need? You don’t need a license. You don’t… I mean, I guess you get a business license, whatever, but you don’t need… yeah, that actually… now that you say that she had a whole office. She didn’t need an office.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yeah.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): It worked out of her bedroom.

Morgan Friedman (Host): What was really happening there?

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Maybe that whole company wasn’t when it seemed at all…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): And him not being able to control something that was part of the sketchiness coming out.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Ugh, yeah. Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): I have… before we go to the lessons and then wrap up. I have a… another observation. It’s more like a two minute tangent that might be interesting on the thought of being in a house and being like, “Okay, I could run out the door and just escape if something bad happens.”

Interesting factoid, I lived for a long time in Argentina, and in Argentina, because of how keys and locks work. That’s actually impossible… to like you can’t run out of an apartment house or building there, because the way…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): They’re old?

Morgan Friedman (Host): As it has a different type of key and it has this type of key where when you’re inside the house, you lock it from the inside and you take the key with you. So, unless you have a key, unless you have the key to the house, you just cannot open… you cannot open the door.

So like the, “Oh, I’m just going to run out.” Can’t like, cannot exist in Argentina. It’s a funny story, once I asked a locksmith, I’m like, why did… why do they have this key system? And it’s weird.

It makes no sense and he explains it to me that they used to have a problem in Argentina long ago of criminals climbing. Like getting into buildings and just like taking the TV and walking at the front door, so they changed the whole key system in the country.

So if someone comes in, climbs up to the third floor of the building, get your TV, they literally can’t go out. You have to go… you have to go out the window again, and you can’t take a TV down the window.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Wow. It’s interesting that, that’s the reason they changed, instead of like maybe putting a deterrent on the outside. Interesting. I mean, I was envisioning like these old heavy metal keys that a lot of like other countries have in, like, say Europe and things like that.

Morgan Friedman (Host): I can show it on. This is a type of it.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Ahh. Yes, yes.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yeah. But that… that… this…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): This is what I’m enivsioning.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yeah, but this type of key like it’s this European French style key. When you go inside a door, it doesn’t lock it from the outside. American, the American doors, you close the door and you can’t… you can open it from the inside, but not the outside.

But this style of door, you close it, you can open it from the inside or the outside. The only way to stop strangers from walking into the house is to use the key on the inside and then take it with you.

So, but as a consequence of this, like you, massage therapists can’t run. You have a one night stand. You cannot silently leave in the morning because you need the owner.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Of the key.

Morgan Friedman (Host): You need the owner to… exactly.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Well, the moral of that lesson is don’t have a one night stand or be a massage therapist in Argentina. Watch me buy horror stories.

Morgan Friedman (Host): There are a lot of surprising lessons we can extract tonight. So, now to wrap it up, I’m wondering if there… if this experience changed you or changed your perception or changed how you act? Maybe it’s like, taught you other flags to identify, maybe give you more confidence to leave.

Maybe it’s… we started treating people differently or are there any other broader lessons you learned from this to wrap up with? Or did we hit all of them?

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): One of the realizations that I had was that I had a fierce self defense mechanism in place…

Morgan Friedman (Host): Interesting.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Which I was proud of, as a female living on my own, running my own business…

Morgan Friedman (Host): Approximately, how old are you?

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): You know, 29, 30.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Late 20s.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah, yeah. I think at the time, it was quite traumatic and so I didn’t like… a week and a half later be like, okay, what are the lessons learned? Like you kind of… there was probably part of me that was like, you know… well, this happens, right? With people that are victimized where you kind of blame yourself.

Well, I should have known better, or I should have listened to my gut, or instead of going no, this is what I do professionally, I’m licensed to do it, and he’s just a creep. I got away. I’m okay.

The amount of times that it had happened, I want to say, it’s probably only like three times and then once when I was in… working in like a… cause sometimes I’d supplement and work for other people where, there’s this chain out here called the Massage Place and I would work for them.

And there was a guy in there that was known to be creepy. No, he… ever like went pushed past any boundaries, but he would always ask for the abdominal and upper thigh massage and people knew that he was creepy.

 So really, you know, knock on wood, nothing ever happened to me, but it was scary and… so the one thing is I learned like, okay, well, I have a good self defense mechanism in place.

It wasn’t caught, you know, it wasn’t conscious. It happened like that. Like he grabbed me and I was, you know, immediately responsive to protect myself because some… sometimes people, when they have a traumatic event, they… their fight, flight, freeze, or fall in response kicks in, they freeze.

It’s one of our defense mechanisms that does serve us in certain circumstances. But when someone’s physically attacking you, it’s better sometimes to run away or fight back.

So, I was prepared to do both. I think… if anything, I would have wished I… to listen to my gut more often, just in life in general. That’s just a small example where the conscious part of my brain did went out, but the gut was…

Morgan Friedman (Host): Was totally right.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Spot on. And it always is. And even if it’s not, or you realize that like later, like, oh, I could have powered through that or I was wrong. It doesn’t matter. Like, listen to your gut. It’s there to protect you from many things.

And it knows more than your conscious brain does. It knows it sooner, than your conscious brain does. Than the CEO living in the head with the suit and tie and trying to be all polite and successful and… yeah, it knows what to do. It knows how to protect you. So that’s the… I think that’s the biggest lesson.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yeah, I think it’s a powerful lesson. I think that applies to every profession and to all professionals. In fact, in your non-professional life as well

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): You’re… you want to date this girl or not? What does my gut say about her? Like that’s… it’s probably pretty…

On a counter approach about listening to your gut is, by the way, what you said before about the gut being connected to the brain, I thought was amazing and so much more than I know.

So you’re far more of an expert on these subjects than I am. So, my very non-expert instinct, gut instinct, on this question of listening to your gut instinct is I also feel like your gut instinct, your gut, needs to be trained.

Like my gut now has very, very different reactions to the naive little boy in Great Neck, Long Island, that when I… my gut when I was 15 was like, no, everyone’s really nice.

No one really hurts anyone else and I’ve had to go through a lifetime of experiences in order to realize I like it… in order for my gut instincts to change. So part of my interpretation of your story is like you…

Is your gut instinct being trained through experiences like this in order to be firm and strong and yet in to recognize and notice that you have now, 12 years later.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Well, I actually think it’s a… like when we’re kids, we’re socialized, we’re taught from the time that our ego really develops, like the terrible twos… because when we’re infants, we’re just these little bundles of love and all, that’s why it’s amazing looking at a baby’s eyes.

Because they don’t know the difference. They’re just like, you, me, me, you, we’re one, all one love. And then we start to get socialized in our terrible twos and me, mine, you know, my toys, my stuff, mine, mine, mine.

And then we’re taught, well, no, you have to share. Well, no, you have to be polite. Well, no, you have to say, please and thank you. And so it’s this constant war of the socialized brain, be polite, be nice versus the gut primordial of like survival and all…

Morgan Friedman (Host): Right.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): For me and they’re at war. And it sounds like little Morgan was trying, was being raised to be a polite boy, but his gut was saying other things and it happens all the time, right? Cause the adults were raised with, aren’t perfect either. They had their traumas. So, that’s what it sounds like to me, but I could be wrong.

Morgan Friedman (Host): We started psychoanalyzing me.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): We did. We did. I should have a pipe. Tell me about your mother, you already told me about your mother. No, I shouldn’t. No, I guess it depends on the circumstance, right?

Like, I can try to think of one for myself where depends on what you’re talking about your gut. Because sometimes as we’re growing up, we have these life lessons that we’re meant to have so that we can become… we go from child to adolescent to teenager to young adult and sometimes we react certain ways.

It’s not necessarily our gut, it’s like our fear talking, or ego talking, or, you know… I’m sorry when I talk about the gut, I mean, like rounding a dark corner and being like, oh, I shouldn’t be here.

Or meeting… I’m trying to think of an example from my own life. You know, meeting a business person and you’re just like, oh, I don’t like them…

Morgan Friedman (Host): Yeah.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): But you’re supposed to deal with them. Like, oh, something’s wrong.

Morgan Friedman (Host): All the time. All the time you meet people, you’re like, they’re skeezy.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Yeah.

Morgan Friedman (Host): I don’t know the… I think I might not have heard the word skeezy since I was 15 years old.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): I definitely haven’t. I definitely haven’t. So, thank you.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Okay, so this was…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Bringing that one back.

Morgan Friedman (Host): This was an interesting episode and I love the unexpected deep dive into gut instincts and following your gut and it turns out, you’re a scientific expert on that, right.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Not an expert. This is a… I’ve always been passionate about it and it’s what I do now. I’ve always been kind of the seeker and…

Morgan Friedman (Host): Well, expert. I’m not… I’m personally not a believer that credentials mean you’re an expert. You don’t need to have a PhD after your name to be an expert. It just needs to be something you’re passionate about and…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Thank you.

Morgan Friedman (Host): That you’ve obsessed about. In fact, I love the origin of the word amateur. It comes from the Latin amare, to love. As opposed to the word professional that comes from the Latin profess, which means to believe you profess a religion.

So, if you’re an amateur versus professional in a way, it’s kind of, do you do it out of love? Or do you do it because this is your religious belief?

And then when you get the credential, you’re… from professors who profess their belief to be a professional. It’s here, it’s a religion. Here’s our way of thinking.

As opposed to the same subject as an amateur. It’s amare, it’s like, literally, you’re just like, love this subject so much you’re into it and guess what?

I like… I kind of think that the amateur, the lover of the subject is like much more likely to come to important and insightful and not obvious conclusions.

Because when you’re raised in a religious belief system, then… like even if this academic religious belief system, you really can’t question it or go outside. But the amateur will go wherever his love takes him.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): I love that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Entomologies, I could also go on forever, as well. I will contrast this also with the word passion because the amateur loves it, follows their passion, comes from the Latin pare for pain.

So, the downside of being the lover that follows your passion is linguistically by the word itself will lead you to these dark places of pain, but perhaps the positive interpretation of that is, this is where your soul needs to be trained, your gut needs to be trained.

For like these learning machines and they’re even… and maybe even our soul was put in our body to learn and to be trained and this pain is a fundamental part of the passion of being human.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): Hmm.

Morgan Friedman (Host): That’s my…

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): I love it.

Morgan Friedman (Host): And entomology note, ends this episode on…. This was the shit.

Suzy Hardy (Interviewee): I love it.

Morgan Friedman (Host): Thank you, Suzy and everyone who’s made it to the end, I hope you’ve had as much fun as we had talking about these subjects. Have a great night.