Eric Turnnessen 5:06
And yeah, like, it’s, it’s a legacy, it’s it’s their story. But I think it’s even more than that. I feel like especially people who went through such an, like, an experience we can’t even imagine. And they share. They share, like, their story is one thing, but it changed them, obviously. And I feel like when we listen to how people were changed by experience, whether they talked to it directly or not, it shifts our lives, it inspires our lives. And I think that’s what stories have always been for humanity. And podcasting is now the modern way of talking about stories, but it’s a collective and communal way to share knowledge and experience to help all of us kind of uplift ourselves and have a tighter connection with each other.
Jeremy Weisz 5:59
You know, I love that. Yeah, totally. And we’re gonna talk. I’m excited to dive into some of your experiences changed you, Eric. And so big thank you big shout out to Joshua Baer, who is an amazing person and product specialist. And it was a Saturday, I had a question. And I’m a MemberMouse, by the way, customer. And I’ve known about MemberMouse, since 2014. And Josh, like, got on the line with me. And we just chatted about some of the use cases. And I’m like, thank you like just going out of his way. He didn’t have to do that. And he just showed me some of the amazing things that I know about MemberMouse. And so Thank you, Josh for taking the time to chat with me. He didn’t know who I was, honestly, Eric, like I didn’t say I was just like, hey, I have a question. And it was like a Saturday and he’s like, oh, let’s hop on the line. I’m like, Okay, that sounds—Thank you. So, big shout out to him. And Eric Turnnessen is the founder of MemberMouse. He’s got an absolute dedication to quality. And this is an insistence, I think, on perfection. And that’s what’s built MemberMouse in the beginning is one of the premier WordPress membership plugins on the market. And he’s architected this is, you know, Eric is interesting early on is, I think, 2014 or 13, when I first heard about MemberMouse, when I heard, okay, the same team, person, companies, architected systems for Fortune 500 businesses like Walmart, Sony Pictures, Barnes and Noble, British Airways, that has also architected MemberMouse. Like, this is not a, this is a legit, you know, solution. Because there’s a lot of solutions out there that it’s just someone, you know, marketing something, they’re not really the craft of the development in, which is really what I always look for in a product is like a really, really good crafted product. And fun fact, he’s also a composer, tea aficionado. If you’re watching the video, he is drinking tea, and you can go to Learn Gong Fu Tea, which he has a course that is also of course hosted on MemberMouse. And so Eric, thanks for joining me.
Eric Turnnessen 8:12
Yeah, it’s my pleasure. So happy to be here.
Jeremy Weisz 8:15
When I was doing research for this interview, there’s a couple things that stuck out. And so I like to go down those paths. We’ll see like with this, I just have, I do a lot of research, and I just go where the conversation takes us. But experiences that have changed you and serendipitous moments, and maybe there’s overlap there because I remember you saying something that said, you know, there’s just been these serendipitous moments in my life, in my business also that have taken me on the path. And you said I think even it could be considered luck, like, and I think with the energy, you’re being cognizant of the people around us, and you know, we can tap in and recognize those moments when they’re more like we may have missed certain serendipitous moments that have come to us. So I want to start on the second of his moments, and we’ll get to experiences that change you because I do want to hear about the silent retreat for 40 days. Because I’m not Yeah, I mean, that seems that people are like Jeremy, can you even be silent for like two hours? But um, what if, when you think back to it could be with MemberMouse? Or in your business? What’s been some serendipitous moments that you have found that have changed the path?
Eric Turnnessen 9:33
Well, I mean, MemberMouse even happening and all was a serendipitous moment, in a way because I was on the track to create a completely different business, a completely different product. In fact, I was literally saying, even though I was a software engineer, I was literally saying out loud to people. I do not want to start a software company. I will never start a software company. I was on—
Jeremy Weisz 9:53
Why? Why would you say that?
Eric Turnnessen 9:56
Well that’s probably a psychological answer that I don’t have the capacity to really know why. But I’ve realized that over the years like I do things like that, like, now when I hear myself very strongly resisting something, I recognize that as something that’s probably I need to do back then. So I don’t know why I resisted it, maybe who knows why. But I was on track to build this ebook, product and company. And it was important for me to do that, because I learned all these things about internet marketing. And, but anyway, people started asking about, and I built a membership product for that company. That was not it was not meant to be sold. It was just custom for that company. But people started asking about it. And so eventually, I got the message. Oh, people are asking about this. They’re not asking about the thing that I think that I’m doing. So that was serendipitous. I, you know, ultimately, I listened to that. And…
Jeremy Weisz 10:57
You were listening to the market, which is smart.
Eric Turnnessen 10:59
Yeah. But at that time, it wasn’t even a market. It was just like a person here or there. I mean, yeah, they could be called the market. But that’s, that’s, that’s interesting to me. That’s an interesting distinction to make. Because in this world of huge numbers, and we’re always thinking of comparing ourselves to people already successful. Sometimes we don’t, we don’t think that the guidance will come to us in a small voice, like just one of our friends saying, Oh, hey, that’s really exciting, or whatever. To me, those, like being able to get closer and closer to hearing the smaller voices of when it’s time to do to make a change is what my journey is a lot about.
Jeremy Weisz 11:48
So that was one, what’s another? I mean, I don’t know. Like, I think one of my favorite books is Wooden by John Wooden. I love biographies. And you know, if someone doesn’t know him, you know, he was one of the probably, I think he’s won more NCAA championships than any other coach out there at UCLA. But I don’t know if it was attributed to him, but like hard work and opportunity equals me, you know, you get luck when you have hard work and opportunity. So they’re these.
Eric Turnnessen 12:19
Yeah, I don’t agree with that.
Jeremy Weisz 12:19
I know you. And that’s why I said it. Yeah. And so yeah, I knew you would not agree with that. But I think that’s interesting. Because you, there is luck, right? There’s just like serendipitous luck, you did put yourself in a position for that luck. Because if you didn’t have the skills to code a membership site, which I don’t, I wouldn’t have been.
Eric Turnnessen 12:43
Here’s why I don’t agree with that.
Jeremy Weisz 12:44
Yeah, go ahead.
Eric Turnnessen 12:46
I agree with it. Like, we could look at a lot of people’s stories, and you will see that pattern play out in their stories as a looking back and seeing how it played out. So obviously, it happens, obviously, it appears that the cause of the effect of somebody being successful is caused by their hard work, and it appears that way. But to me, I’m interested in the more fundamental things that guided you to the point where you knew that you needed to do hard work, and you had the energy and the enthusiasm to do hard work. Because somebody who’s just somebody told them that hard work is the thing that they should be doing. But their heart’s not in it. And they’re killing themselves by doing this hard work. That’s not the right answer for that person. And it’s a lot of us do that, where we’re just blindly following somebody’s guidance, external guidance, rather than learning to listen to ourselves. And there are two other serendipitous things that happened in my journey that come to mind. And one is probably about five years into MemberMouse. Like, at this point, I was on the hard work track, I’d been working really hard, like 80 hour weeks, I was working two jobs to fund paying my team to build MemberMouse. MemberMouse was not financially supporting itself. And I was totally burnt out. And I needed to take a break, and I planned this trip to Mexico. And about a week before I left for Mexico, this thought came into my mind, seemingly from nowhere. And the thought was you’re not going to take your laptop with you. And the reaction to that thought was the most interesting thing to me. And the reaction was fear. And oh, well, I’m not, you know, and I looked into it, why am I afraid not to take my laptop? And the answer, you know, came through through some introspection is that well, I’m afraid of who I am when I’m not identified with being a CEO of a company and an entrepreneur and a hard working person. That became my identity. So I didn’t know who I was outside of that. And the idea of going into the unknown, going away from who I think I am, and surrendering to that was very scary to me. Ultimately, I did it though. And it taught me
Jeremy Weisz 15:01
You left it, you did not bring it.
Eric Turnnessen 15:03
I didn’t bring it.
Jeremy Weisz 15:04
Got it.
Eric Turnnessen 15:05
And I disconnected. And my fear was, and this is my rationalization for supporting the identity that I created for myself, Well, I need to do it because if I leave my company, the company is going to blow up, it can’t exist without me all this stuff. But ultimately, I went away, everything ran smoothly, everybody was fine. And I was like, wow, like, I was totally wrong about that. And this is a lot better, I’m a lot more relaxed. And my team’s a lot more relaxed. And so that that turning point began a whole nother, you know, journey of learning. And, leaning into this. Okay, when should I be engaged? When should I allow my team to do the work? When can I step away? When is it appropriate and having more of a balance, as opposed to just like, constantly being on all the time?
Jeremy Weisz 15:53
Yeah, what you said there was another one, what was the next
Eric Turnnessen 15:57
The other one was, so in 2015, this is where tea comes into my life, you know, up until, you know, I was on clean, I’m kind of clean shaven now. But basically, I was clean shaven, I was wearing like custom clothes. I was living in New York City, I was, you know, going out to cocktail bars at night, I was, you know, dating a girl who wore pearls. And you know, Martha Stewart was her idol. Like I was a certain person, you know, and I moved out to Portland. And somehow I ended up at a tea table with this guy, who ended up being my teacher. And it was such a profound experience. And I can’t even put into words, but ultimately, I ended up drinking tea with him two times a week for like, I don’t six months just drinking tea with this guy. Ultimately, it led to me brewing tea for myself, which ultimately led to me serving tea to other people. At the same time, it also started my journey of deeply becoming more sensitive to energy, it changed my eating habits, it changed, I started meditating. Shortly after that, I met my guru and I started meditating. Now, all of these things, as an experience, were not choices I was making, it kind of felt like I was going down a slide and the next progression thing, right, I was experiencing all these things happen. And I wasn’t resisting them, I was ready for them. And to me, that’s why, you know, nowadays when I have a certain amount of experience, and so I think it’s natural for people are just starting on a journey. They want to look to people who have experienced to ask them, What should I do? I hold that position, with a lot of reverence and care. And I’m very cautious not to bring my ego into the picture. So much so where I think that my story and how I got to where I am, it means that that’s a path for somebody else. And the biggest lesson that I’ve learned is the listening is the critical component. And also, I also believe there’s absolutely no way you can miss synchronicity. If, if you’re if something is meant to happen to you, it will happen, you may not be aware of it. And a lot of the cases and a lot of the things that I’m talking about I wasn’t aware of in the moment. I can see them in retrospect, but this fear of like, missing an opportunity, or it moves us to take other actions that actually may, it can delay things. You know, but it won’t. If you’re meant to go in a direction you will go there. It’s just that it may end up being more painful than it needs to be. That’s been my experience.
Jeremy Weisz 18:50
I loved it. You mentioned New York, and Portland. Can you take me? Just in the places you’ve lived? Or traveled places you live like start? I mean, you don’t have to go deep and I’m just curious. You grew up here and we’re—
Eric Turnnessen 19:06
I grew up in New Jersey
Jeremy Weisz 19:07
Okay
Eric Turnnessen 19:08
I went to college in Boston. After college. I lived in New York. After New York, I lived in Portland. Oh, sorry. No, I missed LA. Okay. So, from New York, from Boston, I went to Las Vegas for three months. Which is an interesting story. Actually. That’s another major turning point. From Vegas, when that didn’t work out, I went to LA. From LA I went to New York. from New York. I went to Portland. from Portland, I went to Santa Fe from Santa Fe, I went to Washington state from Washington, I went back to Santa Fe. But after three months, India trips were happening around this time here and there. went to India three times. And now I’m in Florida.
Jeremy Weisz 20:00
Why Florida?
Eric Turnnessen 20:01
My parents live here, you know, actually, that’s, that’s another major turning point. You know, but Joshua Tree happened for a few months. So but what’s happening from my perspective, the more that I surrender and and don’t think that I have a plan of my own path, the more that I learn to follow excitement rather than logic or intellectual choice, the more that I end up moving around, and it’s it’s a result because I’m kind of like just getting into this, I’m recognizing that this is part of who I am, I have significantly dwindled down the amount of weight that I carry with me physically, like I don’t, I don’t own a lot of things. I can, at any moment in time, I have enough experience to just like tomorrow, I could be in my car, and I could go somewhere, I have so much experience without at this point that I’m literally not tethered to any one location. So to me, there’s a there’s a curiosity at this time about, you know, more like, like, when I think about talking to you, in the past, like two or three years ago, I may have said, Oh, okay, I’m going to get on here, I know the role that I’m going to be in this interview, I’m going to be the CEO of this company, I’m going to talk about these things, etc, that I would have planned out, basically, in my mind, whether consciously or not, but now I’m just like, Oh, I’m curious to know, who I’m going to show up to be in this conversation. Because in conversation, you are who you are, you’re going to ask questions, and your energy is a certain way, and that’s going to invoke certain things out of me. And so it’s always interesting, you know, how things will play out so that, I think that that curiosity is a gift. And it’s not on 100% all the time for me like it is, you know, I can have my moments of depression, and I can have challenges with patience sometimes. You know, and so it’s, but even like, having brought the curiosity to the, to the moments where I think that I’m in an uncomfortable situation, I think that’s that’s really the, one of the big lessons.
Jeremy Weisz 22:23
Yeah, there was a point in my life, I had to move three times in, like, a couple months. And it was such a pain, but I had to get rid of so much stuff. It was amazing. You know, I was like, okay, like, this 50% of stuff is gone. And then again, this 50% is gone, and then you just start to dwindle it down, you’re like, Okay, I really don’t need all this stuff. And I could and so much I’ve kind of like freed the load of physical stuff.
Eric Turnnessen 22:49
And as a result of that, you’re more discerning when you’re about to make a choice to acquire something new.
Jeremy Weisz 22:54
Right? Exactly, exactly. Las Vegas, you said there was always something interesting that goes back to the last few years.
Eric Turnnessen 23:03
So basically, I was working in Boston as a corporate performance management consultant. This is the time when I was traveling every two weeks, going to client sites working for British Airways, working for Walmart. And, you know, I basically looked around, I saw that the trajectory of that, okay, let’s play this out. Look at the guys around me who have, who are the pinnacle of where this path leads 20 years from now. And I was like that, no, that’s not where I want to be. So I started basically attending these learning annex seminars, a kind of just casting a broad net to attending things or real estate, investing in attending things on whatever. There was this guy who was a stage hypnotist in Las Vegas, who is speaking at these things, Marshall Silver, and I became very enamored of him and his stage persona. And I basically had this huge creative insight about how I could help his business, make more money. And I made this, I was inspired to make this presentation over a course of a week and I sent it to him, we got on the phone, and he’s like, Oh, well come out to Vegas. So I was like, Okay, I quit my job. And went out to Vegas. No plan. I didn’t have any idea what’s gonna happen. Ended up there. And, you know, so some things happened, that were definitely not expected. I was in my mind, I was like, Oh, this is my break. This is you know, I’m going to be a partner in this guy’s company. We’re going to work on things together. I’m going to make millions of dollars and all this stuff. And it turns out that this is not anything what was going to happen and I’m not going to say I don’t feel comfortable saying anything about particularly what unfolded because it would seem like I would have to take certain perspectives about him. Which were accurate in my mind at the time, but probably have no bearing in reality at this point in time. But ultimately I learned that it wasn’t for me. And then it was. But what that situation did create is it untethered me from the path of being a part of Java gave me significant force and motivation to leave the job. And now I was basically untethered, I was like, Okay, well, what do I do next? And that’s when I at the end of that Las Vegas trip, I met the two guys that I started the ebook business with. And we started working on that, which then led to MemberMouse being built for that. So you know, there’s a through line there.
Jeremy Weisz 25:41
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. If you hadn’t done that, you may have continued on that path for another year or two years. And you mentioned untethered, it’s like a book that’s on my list to The Untethered Soul. Everyone recommends that book, it’s, it’s a list that it’s a book on my list to check out. So it just, as you said, synchronicity, like you’ll always keep coming back to you until it slaps you in the face. And you do it sometimes,
Eric Turnnessen 26:06
Maybe this year at fear and resistance are basically the only things that clog up the drain of synchronicity. Because, you know, had I been a slightly different person, or had I had slightly different influences in my life at the time of making that decision. Like, say that I had parents that weren’t supportive of me, right. And I was like, Oh, I’m feeling very strongly that I need to leave this job and go to this place, and I ran by them. And they’re like, No, you need to do this, you need to do that. And I was the type of person that would listen to that. Things would have a different track. Now, of course, that track would also be legitimate, because I would need to learn how to work with that dynamic. But in my case, luckily, my parents were supportive even though a lot most people in my life didn’t understand you have a well paying job, you’re on this great career track. Why are you gonna leave it? You know? But, you know, luckily, they were all supportive.
Jeremy Weisz 27:02
Um, the, I want to hear about some experiences that changed your life. And I know, um the India, I love for you to share India. I mean, it sounds like you’ve gone many times, but specifically the one where you mentioned the silent retreat. That’s fascinating. How long was it? Why did you decide to do it in the first place?
Eric Turnnessen 27:26
Well, decision is an interesting thing, you know, and I think I would say I was more along for the ride than then on deciding to do it. In fact, just like with MemberMouse, where I resisted committing to building a software company, up until the final moment, it was the same with India, I was like, I’m not going to, I’m not going to India, like, and then somehow something shifted, in my mind, where one day I was like, Okay, this time to buy a ticket, and it was like one month, before, before, the opportunity was available to go there. And so, I went to an ashram. And the idea was, I was going to, it was my goal, I was going to do a certain practice for 40 days, which involves chanting a particular mantra for four hours a day, for 40 days, in complete silence, without interacting with anything. So how it happened, could probably, you know, somebody knows, I don’t know, but my experience, going through it were many things, many profound things, but I think it would be super hard to really share. But I think this whole passion for listening, for surrendering to coming to a place where I’m willing to let go and trust that there’s something guiding me that isn’t my limited intellect. And being like, I’m ready to let that be in the driver’s seat and not me. That definitely transpired. Because it’s like, one metaphor is or simile is like if you think about the stars, and looking at the sky, when the sun is out, you don’t see the stars, the stars are there, but you can’t see them because of the intensity of the sun’s light. When the sun goes down, you see the stars. Another one is, in a lake. If the water is disturbed, the water is cloudy. As the lake comes, it becomes clear. So same with the mind if you don’t engage in the activity of speaking and thinking and in communicating. These mechanisms slow down to a point where there’s the stars. The quote unquote stars within you become more visible because there are aspects, more subtle aspects of ourselves that are there that because of the intense amount of activity we engage in, we just aren’t aware that they’re there. So giving myself that basically, pretty much probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to quiet myself in an environment where I have no distractions for 40 days. I think that’s anybody who does that, anybody who gets that opportunity is going to come out with a different perspective on life, I don’t think it can be avoided. And that’s part that’s the benefit of it.
Jeremy Weisz 30:34
You know, that’s a great analogy. I love that. So, out of that experience, Eric, you know, obviously, you decided to listen more. Did anything specifically become clear to you in your life, after you experienced that?
Eric Turnnessen 30:55
Things became less clear.
Jeremy Weisz 30:57
Less clear?
Eric Turnnessen 30:58
I was very confused for a period of time. Because, you know, I had an idea of who I was. And now with this new experience that which can’t be ignored and a new, getting in touch with different aspects of myself. It’s like, it put into question who I thought I was. And so it’s like, Okay, how integration become like any profound experience has to be integrated. And it takes time. It’s like when you eat food, it takes you, you know, five minutes to eat your lunch, but it takes four hours to digest. It’s the same with profound experiences in life, they take time to digest. And so I asked, I, you know, I vacillated between a lot of things, you know, coming back is like, Who, what, basically, the question is, who am I? Right? And, I would my, my personality type something. That’s why patience is such an important thing to me. Sometimes I can be very eager to get to the next thing. So be like, oh, okay, so I’m not, I’m not this. Let me throw it out the window, right. So in some case, I was like, Okay, well, should I be even a part of MemberMouse anymore? Like, how does this? How did these things fit together? Me being this way, and me being and I couldn’t initially see how they go together. And it was basically a baby and bathwater situation. And it was for me, it was either one or the other. But you know, I’m, as I kind of go further along this journey with myself, it’s, I really, I recognize that I am not a fixed thing. And when I try to fix myself into something, I get attached to who I think I am. And that’s when I’m listening less to things where I should be doing something different. So the balance, the dance for me is like, Okay, how do I stay open and listen, while at the same time stay grounded enough to engage myself in what I need to be doing at any given time? That has to do with whether it’s writing music, whether it’s coding, whether it’s making business plans, whether it’s having conversations, and conversations to me are like, very, they’re a lot more dynamic to me than just like us, passing words back and forth between each other. They, they’re like transformational opportunities in and of themselves. And as long as we show up in an open way, like, but if we could, if we come to it in like, Oh, I’m always the same regardless, then we’re at, you know, there’s no opening for learning something. But um, every single conversation, every single meeting point is a synchronicity as far as I’m concerned.
Jeremy Weisz 33:58
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned that earlier, which is some they can show up in small ways, with people. Right, you know, and someone could just say, you know, one of your friends or family or someone could just make a comment, just a small comment that could have a huge impact, right? So it just kind of shows, it changes the trajectory of things like just a sentence or two sentences in change.
Eric Turnnessen 34:26
Yeah, because it’s not about the words. It’s like, the energy is the thing that ultimately is flowing through us. We, the words are the delivery mechanism, but ultimately, like, as I think you probably experienced, like chiropractic, for example, is like you’re working with a physical body, but there’s also a lot of energy stuff going on there. And so, and I think that’s, to me, that’s a really intriguing part of being of the human experiences like everything seemingly is happening on the physical level. But with enough practice and awareness, you recognize that there’s a lot going on underneath the surface like icebergs. And, and in my experience, the physical is informed by the non physical. And so for example, behaviors come from unconscious programming and things like that. That’s one example. I wouldn’t stop there, though. It’s deeper than that. But to me, that’s what I’m passionate about, you know, and to me, like, what happens on the surface, whether I end up being engaged in a company or music or whatever, is kind of secondhand information. That’s, that’s just the byproduct. It’s like in a way.
Jeremy Weisz 35:52
Yeah. I mean, there’s a book I read, called Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert. And like, she talks about how the, I mean, we know that like thoughts, if you are scared of a thought of scare, your heart can beat faster. So it can actually have physical manifestations. And she talks about how our thoughts have those physical manifestations, like you mentioned, if someone’s in pain, well, they could be holding stress in certain areas of their body, they could be shrugging their shoulders, and they have neck pain, or headaches. And it could be manifested partially from positional, but there are thoughts and feelings that go into that manifestation as well. You know, yeah. So, um, you know, we talked before we hit record, and there’s something you said, that struck me, which is, you know, with the business, I mean, with life and the business, you know, making sure the operations are supported, there are systems in place in the practice of listed listening, you said, getting engaged, when you need to get engaged, right. I’m curious, when you’ve listened, and maybe staff or company or whatever is calling you. The message is calling you but but you are listening in, it wasn’t a point, it wasn’t, you didn’t find it appropriate to actually get engaged. So is sending the opposite signal of what, you know, because I think in business, you know, some there’s just like, sometimes fires to be put out, right. And I’m wondering, when there was a place you decided, yeah, I mean, hear you but this is, you got this, or I’m not stepping in here.
Eric Turnnessen 37:31
But that’s still a response.
Jeremy Weisz 37:33
Totally. Right.
Eric Turnnessen 37:34
Like it is engaging from a kind of experiential standpoint. Engaging, like attending to the needs of someone who’s asking for help, often doesn’t look like how they should think it should look. They may say, Oh, I need you to do this, I need you to do that. But the first step is like to really listen and understand what is really guiding us because you know, especially if there’s an emotional component to it, where it’s, it’s literally a fire situation. Now, the fire could have tangible things like, oh, our website’s down here like that. But that’s more straightforward. It’s like, Okay, we got to, we got to do this, like that, you don’t even need to think about that. You just respond, you take care of it nuts and bolts. But if somebody is coming in, and, and sharing emotions about a situation, the first thing is to really understand where those are coming from. And a lot of times, a lot of times, and I haven’t learned this so much, from being successful at doing this with other people. I’ve learned it more from attempting to do it with myself, which is, a lot of times the emotions just need to be heard. That’s it. And resisting them and thinking that, like thinking that it’s not an appropriate time for them and pushing them aside, leads to bigger problems down the road, basically. And, and if enough, because I was doing that with myself, I ended up doing that with other people. So people come to me in an emotional state about something, I would automatically start trying to solve solutions at the tangible level. Okay, what do we need to do? You know, which really would be the wrong direction, because ultimately, it probably if I was willing to listen, I could hear them out. It would have been resolved within that 20 minute period, and then everything would be back to normal.
Jeremy Weisz 39:44
Eric, I don’t know if you’ve seen the video on YouTube with the nail on the head video. Have you ever seen that? I’m gonna send it to you. It’s, oh my It’s amazing. You’re looking like Jeremy, why are you smiling right now as I’m saying, you know, I’m picturing this video. I want to send it to you, and maybe we’ll link it up if we could find it. But it’s exactly what you’re talking about. I won’t even spoil it. It’s just, it’s hilarious. It’s about listening to someone’s emotions, don’t try and fix the problem. And because I fall into that same trap, and then the other person just gets madder with me when I don’t want you to solve the problem. So I’ll send it to you. But first of all, Eric, thank you. I have one last question. And thank you for sharing your experience, your time, your energy with everyone. And I want to encourage people to check out membermouse.com and check out what they have going on there. And check out other episodes of the podcast Inspired Insider. So my last question, Eric are the use cases of MemberMouse. And, you know, we think we think of, you know, when you need a solution for content management for membership, if you’re trying to sell a course, or you just want to release it as an information course, or other things, you know, there’s a lot of different use cases for MemberMouse. And, one of them, I’d love to hear from your perspective, because you use it as a SaaS company. Right? So I am, I’d love for you to share that. And there’s one crazy one that I like you just briefly share before that, which is you were mentioning someone electronically unlocks doors using MemberMouse.
Eric Turnnessen 41:29
Yeah, basically, their businesses, they are a fabrication studio. So they basically provide access to all this types of equipment for 3D printing and other things like that. So they have a physical building, and that building is controlled by an electronic lock. And because these guys are basically what they do, they’re they’re called makers, they figured out a way to utilize MemberMouse such that when somebody signs up and pays for membership to access the space, they use our push notification technology, which allows you to inform a third party system, when events happen in MemberMouse. They use that to interface with their doorlock such that it gives creates an access code for all the new members, which was, you know, very neat use case for a MemberMouse. And you know, other things are like yes, you know, people who sell, who just need to sell because, you know, when membership sites, I think we often like you said, we immediately get to the idea of protecting content. But if we just take a step back above that, there’s a lot of other things like any online business where you have a service that you’re selling, as soon as you talk about, I’m going to accept payment from somebody and give them something as a result of it immediately. As soon as you do, you’ve done that you’re talking about we need to get them to be able to log in somewhere, we need them to be able to manage their subscription, we need to be able to win their subscription becomes overdue or fails for some reason have automated processes in place to allow the customer to log in somewhere update their credit card information, we need to have security, we need to have the ability for them to access onboarding materials, we need them to be able to purchase additional things from us in an easy way, we need to be able to have an area where we can show them dynamically display things to the customer based on knowledge about who they are. We’re not even to the point about offering courses or offering content for sale stuff like that. So MemberMouse facilitates all these things. And it does so in a in a way that in an environment, which is completely 100% controlled by you, right because there are many there are many different solutions available nowadays that are WordPress based and non WordPress base that you can go with, and which technology somebody should choose is a completely different three hour conversation. But, you know, to me, it’s never a straightforward answer. And to me, actually, the guidance that I would give people now is like who do you vibe with as a company, like when you’re a beginner, you can’t make decisions based on the trade offs of some features versus another because where are you getting the information that you need a bit particular feature? You’re getting it probably from somebody who you aspire to be like told you that you need it or demonstrated that you need it. And you have this big castle in the sky that you’re building your mind about what you’re going to do. And usually the mistake that beginners make is they they try they get too far mentally before they actually take one say a perfect example probably people have better experience with is in a relationship like you’re man or you’re woman who you see across the room or you come in contact with somebody at the coffee shop or something on a daily basis or whatever that you have an interest in. And rather than just go up to that person and say, say, Hi, my name is Eric. And then just see what happens. Imagine you go home and imagine all these things, you know, we’re getting married, we’re gonna have kids like whatever you do create this huge world of experience that in psychological time that is completely not playing out in reality. And ultimately, that creation of this bigger and bigger expectation will make it harder and harder to make that simple first step of literally just saying hi to this person. And it’s the same thing. I think with choosing technologies, we were really comfortable making things a lot more complicated because it’s a delaying tactic. It means that, Oh, I’m actually doing something but you really you’re not doing anything, you. So for me, the best advice that I could give is somebody choosing something: Who do you vibe with? Like, if you literally are listening to me and you like me, as a person, use MemberMouse like that is that is a good enough indicator for you to do something. If you don’t like me, then don’t use MemberMouse. If you go on to teachable.com, and you’re like, you’re really inspired by one of the icons that they use on their site, use Teachable, like, these are the, to me, this is the language of synchronicity like what lights you up, and trust that that is pointing you in a direction that you would take you much longer to get to if you actually had to analyze it in terms of an Excel spreadsheet?
Jeremy Weisz 46:26
Yeah, I want to hear how you use it as a SaaS company. But, you know, I remember early on when I was making the decision to get MemberMouse. And someone’s like, you know, Jeremy, you can get a free plugin does this and I said, first of all, I don’t want a free plugin, I want to pay, I go, I said to them, I don’t know if this sounds strange, but I want to pay a company ongoing forever. Because I know that they’re going to stay in business, they’re going to support the technology, I don’t want a free plugin, I don’t even want a one time fee plugin, I want a plugin company that’s actually going to continue to improve it and support it. And so, you know, is a little different way of looking at it than they are looking at.
Eric Turnnessen 47:10
You know what’s really interesting is when I started MemberMouse, I didn’t know a lot like when I actually made the decision to start a company that was a membership plugin. I didn’t know a lot of things. But the one thing I was certain was, this is going to be a monthly subscription. And that was total, like that was not a thing for WordPress plugins. And by the way, it still isn’t a thing. WordPress plugin companies don’t do that. But for me, I was approaching it as it’s a software, this is an enterprise software company. And it happens to be packaged in a WordPress plugin. So I didn’t restrict the company in a way. And I knew just logically, in order for it to be supported, in order for the focus to continually be on the product and not be on constantly getting new customers in the door. It has to be a monthly fee. So that’s where I started to.
Jeremy Weisz 48:01
Yeah, I love that. And some people turn off by that, but that’s not the customer you want anyway, exactly. So how do you use it as a SaaS company?
Eric Turnnessen 48:10
So we know, when you go to membermouse.com and you click on you know, you click around the the sale site, you know, all the different pages tell you things about the plugin that has nothing to do with MemberMouse. That’s just WordPress. But when you go to the pricing page, and you see okay, here are my options. You select which one you want, you click to buy, you go to the checkout page, you’re now working with MemberMouse, then MemberMouse serves up that checkout page collects your credit card information to make sure everything’s PCI compliant. Make sure everything is secure, make sure when you click the submit button, that your information is encrypted on the client side to give you the highest level of PCI compliance. As soon as the payment is approved and received, you’re created as a member in our system. But in addition to that, we utilize the push notification system again to do our own internal proprietary things, which has to do with creating a license for you. So we then create a license for you in our database such that when you now are in your my account, your dashboard error within membermouse.com. Now you can specify the URL of the site where you’re gonna use MemberMouse. So MemberMouse takes care of all of the things regarding the fact that your user what level of access you have, how much you’re paying, whether or not you’re in overdue status or active status, whatever. So as a company, we don’t need to worry about any of that. The only thing we need to worry about is what’s the proprietary thing that we’re offering. And in our case, it’s a license to use MemberMouse itself. We were company returned dog food, right? But you know, there are a lot of other SaaS companies who use our product. So what they might do is when somebody signs up, they may do something to give somebody access to an iPhone application or an Android application or um, you know any number of things because MemberMouse also integrates with Zapier and if people aren’t familiar with Zapier, Zapier is basically this technology that is the glue between 10s of 1000s of different online applications, which literally means that by using MemberMouse, you can you can perform any automated actions within those 10,000 different applications, Salesforce, you know, Gmail, Slack, etc. to automate and trigger any of your proprietary processes internally. So, you know, this is a very powerful tool, right?
Jeremy Weisz 50:37
Yeah. And check out I did an interview with Wade from the founder of Zapier, don’t, you know, awesome interview and really, really powerful. But, Eric, I want to just thank you. Thank you for sharing everyone. Check out membermouse.com and check out more episodes. And Eric, thanks so much,
Eric Turnnessen 50:57
And—
Jeremy Weisz 50:57
Yeah, go ahead.
Eric Turnnessen 50:57
If you are looking for anything to help you reduce stress or anything like that, check out my tea stuff. Very cool.
Jeremy Weisz 51:05
Yes. You can go to learngongfutea.com. learngongfutea.com and check it out. And if you’re I don’t know, do you still offer those experiences?
Eric Turnnessen 51:17
Well, you know, since COVID, COVID is basically the thing that shut it down. Okay, so Airbnb is kind of easing Airbnb experiences. But I will, I will definitely be offering them again. But right now. No.
Jeremy Weisz 51:30
So if you’re in if we’ll say we’re listening to this, and COVID is curtailed in somehow fashion. And you are in near where Eric is right now in Florida. Whenever you’re listening to a different city. Check out his Tea Airbnb experience.
Eric Turnnessen 51:51
Go to ericashish.com and you can see what you can access my music there. You can access different things that I’m doing. But yeah, it would be amazing to meet people who, like I look forward to the day where I sit down with somebody it like, Oh, I first heard about you on the Jeremy Weisz.
Jeremy Weisz 52:11
Exactly.
Eric Turnnessen 52:11
It’ll happen
Jeremy Weisz 52:13
It will happen. So yeah. Thank you so much, everyone. Thanks, Eric.
Eric Turnnessen 52:17
Thank you.
