Joel Madden Felt He ‘Had Missed Too Much of His Kids’ Lives’ Prior to Career Shift, Brother Benji Says in New Series

Joel and Benji Madden are lifting the curtain on why they decided to step away from the tour life a decade ago.

In the first episode of their new Veeps series Side Hustles, which premiered on Friday, Nov. 8, the 45-year-old Good Charlotte twins and bandmates say they were inspired to create their artist management firm MDDN in 2014 after “a really interesting time” of touring and recording “non-stop” with their band.

“We were fighting and kicking and clawing and scratching our way,” Benji says in the episode. “We made this record The Madden Brothers that we were really proud of, but going out to promote it left something to be desired for us. Joel was feeling like he had missed too much of his kids’ lives. I was getting married. We needed to do something differently.”

At the time, Joel was raising his daughter Harlow, now 16, and son Sparrow, now 15, with his wife Nicole Richie, 43. Benji, meanwhile, got married to wife Cameron Diaz, 52, in 2015 (they later welcomed daughter Raddix in 2019 and son Cardinal in March).

“We knew we wanted to be in the music business, and we wanted to work with artists,” Joel says. “I, personally, wanted to have the experience we had when we were starting the band, like we were starting over from nothing.”

Ultimately, Benji says, “we wanted to be proud of ourselves.”

“What’s our goal in life?” he recalls they asked themselves. “It didn’t really relate to money, it didn’t relate to anything like that. It was more about mentorship. We were like, ‘I bet there’s a bunch of people out there that agree with that.’ ”

In addition to their artist management work, Joel and Benji publish a quarterly magazine, produce their “Artist Friendly” podcast and run a recording studio under MDDN.

“Side hustles are so important,” Benji says. “You learn so much about yourself that you take back to your art and into what you create. You learn so much about who you are because every business is going to be a challenge.”

Along with highlighting Benji and Joel’s work with MDDN, the episode also takes a look into how Diaz created her wine brand Avaline with her co-founder Katherine Power.

When they founded Avaline in 2018, “I wasn’t really looking to do anything,” Diaz says. “I was not looking for a side hustle. Honestly, I was perfectly fine doing nothing at the time, but Katherine and I just had so much fun with it.”

Diaz says they were inspired to start their own wine brand after asking themselves, “What is in the bottle?”

“We turned [our wine bottle] around like any other product we were consuming and saw that there was absolutely no labeling, no ingredient list,” she says. “That is really what started our desire to make Avaline in the first place.”

Also featured in the four episode-series is Brie and Nikki Garcia’s wine brand Bonita Bonita, Gottmik’s GOTT Beauty and Tamera Mowry-Housley and husband Adam Housley’s business venture Housley Napa Valley and Barnhouse Napa.

All four episodes of Side Hustles are out now.