What No One Will Tell You About Starting A Membership From Scratch with Griff Williams

Eric: Hey, Griff, welcome to the show.

Griff: Hey, Eric. Thanks for having me.

Eric: It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. So, to get started, let’s just start with a little bit about your background and 30,000-foot view of what you do.

Griff: Okay. So, I live in London, England. I grew up here. I’ve always lived here. I started my working career, I guess, I joined the London Fire Brigade when I was 18 and did that for about 10 years. I took a career break from that, me and my girlfriend traveled around India. And in a very cliché way, that’s where I discovered meditation. Came back, and didn’t get started on MindEasy, my meditation project, straight away, but a few years later than that. I was thinking about it, I did a 10-day Vipassana meditation course. So, I don’t know if you know about those. So, I did one of those in India. By then we were traveling around so I didn’t keep up the practice. When I got back to the UK, I was like, do you know what, I want to have another go at that. And then after doing that for the second time, kind of the idea for MindEasy came up. And then I started working on that at the same time. And then about a year later thought, I’m going to have another proper crack at it. And now I’m doing it full time.

Eric: Well, it’s the difference between the firefighting and the meditation and India in that journey. There’s a very stark difference there, right? It like seems firefighting, there’s probably a lot of activity, a lot of noise, a lot of high tempo things. And then you switch over, switch gears and go to India and meditation. So, can you talk a little bit about that transition and how it came about for you?

Griff: The two different jobs, A, doing meditation business and just running an online business, couldn’t be further away from being in the Fire Brigades. You go from Fire Brigades, very reactionary. You’re in a uniform service and it’s ranked. So, you’ve got someone above you, telling you what to do, reacting to something. Whereas now, it’s just me working by myself having to make the decisions of what I’m going to do and self-motivating as well. And I guess the whole kind of idea of the trip to India, because I’ve been doing since like 18, which was quite young, I think I was kind of overwhelmed with that idea of doing one job from 18 to retirement age. So, I went away really just to take a step back and think, is this what I want to do? And as well as discovering meditation, I just quite liked the idea of seeing all these people in cafes around the world, working on their stuff on a laptop, living this tech nomad life. And thought, that looks like quite a good lifestyle to get in on. That kind of inspired me to move on to this.

Eric: Something I’m sure a lot of our listeners can relate to, is that starting a website and a business from scratch is not easy. And it sounds like this was your first foray into, not only having your own business, but on online business. So, I’d be interested to hear kind of what those early days were like for you. When you first got that idea. And you’re like, okay, I’m going to do this, what are kind of some of the first challenges you faced when you try to start making that a reality?

Griff: Well, I guess it’s just getting started it. I think when you have zero experience, A, with creating a website, creating a project, you just don’t even know the right questions to ask. The first step was, okay, I want this to be an online thing. Let’s make a website. So, I found a online platform. I did the first thing on Ontraport. My first web pages were just very nineties looking, big title heading, a wall of text in front of a background that made it unreadable. So, then it’s just looking at your first massive failure and being like, all right, how do I improve this? What’s the next step. And then everything has just been like that really. Just trying something with absolutely no experience of it, just to figure out what the first steps are going to be after that.

Eric: Yeah. And that’s, I think a critical similarity, I think between a lot of successful entrepreneurs is that. This idea of stepping stones, you got to do something because if you don’t know, like you said, if you don’t know the right questions to ask you don’t know where to start. You have to take a step in one direction. And pretty much a hundred percent, it’s going to be quote unquote, the wrong step. You’re going to make adjustments after. But the thing is, if you hadn’t taken that step… Because a lot of people don’t.

They’ll go through the process of, oh, I don’t know the right questions to ask. I don’t know what to do. And then they’ll just get paralyzed and they won’t do anything. So, even though when you take that first step and you look back on it, there are things that are learned and therefore, you know how to go forward in a different direction. In one perspective, it is a failure because it’s not the end game. But in another perspective, it’s an extreme success. Especially when getting started. If people, they need that permission, I think to make that mistake and make many mistakes in order to evolve into something.

Griff: Yeah, for sure. I still think that’s still been my process. Even now I’m still making these mistakes. But I think the first bit is really discouraging. But then I think once you come comfortable with that process, it becomes quite freeing. You just realize that’s what you have to do. You realize, okay, I’m going to do it. It’s not going to be good, but at least I can look at what I’ve done. Compare it now to something else, what I want it to look like. And at least say, how can I go about moving in that direction? What questions can I ask? What can I Google just to say, how do I do this thing?

Eric: Right. It’s an essential ingredient to success in my opinion. And I wonder, again, going back to your experience in firefighting, I would imagine that there are some lessons that you took away from that experience that helped you in terms of being in the position that you’re in.

Griff: I mean, maybe one of the best things that gave me, it was just when I got into it, I was quite young. And I think I even went into that thinking… I kind of fell into it by mistake, to be honest, I just turned up at open day once with a friend, got signed up to a Fire Brigade open day and then just ended up taking the steps. They called me up. I went. And even now I was like, oh man, I’m really out of my depth with this. But I guess just knowing that you do just turn up, try and you’d get there eventually, don’t you? People are going to be there and help you on the way. So, I mean, that kind of gave me the confidence to be like, ah you’ll get through it. You’ll figure it out.

Eric: That’s funny. I mean, speaking of meditation, that story about showing up somewhere, not knowing and having any expectations, is pretty much how I got into meditation. There was some event that I didn’t know what it was about. And I went there, it was a weekend thing. And I was like, oh, it’s just a weekend thing. And it actually ended up being an initiation where you get initiated into these practices, you do the rest of your life. And so, I was like, oh. There was a split second when that happened, when I realized that was going on, where it’s like, oh wait, this isn’t what I thought it was going to be. And then immediately after that, I was like, oh, well this is fine. I’m cool with this. I really have learned to trust those kinds of things in life where I didn’t plan them, but they just so seamlessly enter in.

Griff: Yeah, definitely. Sometimes it feels like you’re just being guided in a beautiful way and you just have to be open to it. This thing’s opened up, this paths opened up and you’re either going to jump into it or not. And it’s, I don’t think you ever really regret it, do you, when you do. Meditation is a funny one as well, because when I got into it, it’s just you with your eyes closed. And these expectations of what’s supposed to be happening. That’s just really up to you to just focus and figure out… No one’s going to be like, oh yeah, good work with that. You’ve got that right. You just got to do it yourself until you’re like, oh actually, yeah, I’ve achieved something by just focusing on my breath or this practice.

Eric: Yeah. And just like entrepreneurship, I think the fruit of it is the result of consistency and cumulative effort as opposed to the things that’s very easy for people to be okay with is something that’s immediately gratifying. Going to a restaurant, ordering food and eating it. Everybody can do that. And not many people fail at that process. But things like meditation, starting a business, learning any type of art. These are things where they’re personal evolutionary processes, where you by the nature of entering into them are asked mainly to look at yourself. It’s all just a reflection on you. You don’t have some person higher up in the order telling you what to do. You have to make your own decisions. You have to be honest with yourself and you have to feel the responsibility and weight of a failure at the same time as you look at that with a certain perspective and say, what can I learn? How do I move forward? I feel it’s both of the things, entrepreneurship and meditation are great self-evolutionary processes.

Griff: Yeah. I think once you’ve done this once. Any, I don’t know, even a sport. Learning to play table tennis, say for example. You realize being bad sucks at something, but getting better once you’ve sucked at one thing and then got better at it, that experience, I think it just spills over to everything. Doesn’t it?

Eric: Yes. You don’t get good at something without sucking it at some point.

Griff: Yeah. And you kind of just have to enjoy that sucking at it I think. That initial bit just see it as this is the process of getting good at something.

Eric: Now I think one of the things that you do on your site is you work with other meditation and mindfulness teachers. Was that something that from the beginning you knew you wanted to do or is that something that came through your process of growing things?

Griff: Well, because I was just so new at meditation at the time, I was just kind of about a year in. And I didn’t feel confident being the person teaching the meditation. I kind of had this idea for it. Because the initial idea for the website, well, for the business, was when I was learning meditation, learning doing this Vipassana course, the language being used. Some of it just didn’t resonate with me. And the first time I did it, I was kind of quite turned off to… It’s very traditionally Buddhist. And I was very turned off to that. And then when I did the second one and I kind of thought about what they’re talking about a bit more, and I just kind of… You’ve just got translate what they’re saying to make it a bit more relevant to yourself.

That was the kind of initial concept, just to ask people, how would you want to hear about meditation? Are you into it because you want to focus better at work? Are you interested in it for your mental health or are you interested in the spiritual side? And then just present the same thing in those different ways. But I didn’t feel confident enough doing that in myself. So, I did reach out to teachers and try to explain that ideas to them. I don’t think it was successful. So, that’s another thing where MindEasy has definitely pivoted from that initial idea. And essentially what I just have now is lots of separate courses in those three different fields.

Eric: And are you doing the content now or are you still working with third parties to produce it?

Griff: Yeah, I’m doing the content myself. So, I think over the last year, I’ve kind of, well, last two years, I’ve definitely concentrated on my meditation practice a lot more. And I just became a qualified meditation teacher with the British School of Meditation. So, being one thing I noticed during the pandemic and through the second year of this business is I just became so caught up in digital marketing, learning about online businesses, making websites. But the whole meditation side of it actually just completely fell by the wayside. I kind of stopped being focused on that at all. And then I was just like, why are you doing this? If that’s not still the thing you’re passionate about? So, to keep going I kind of just refocused on the meditation. It’s going to become more of a vehicle for me to teach meditation than just the hiring other people and doing it their way.

Eric: That’s great. Another highlight of a critical transformative journey you went through in the process of the business. You mentioned also that when you first started, you built it on a technology called Ontraport and now you’re using MemberMouse. What was the reason why you made the transition and what was that process like for you?

Griff: So, I think Ontraport, I just picked a whim really just Googling web builders. And then it was quite limiting to begin with, but maybe what was really limited was my understanding of how to use it. So, the first iteration of MindEasy, we were just emailing people courses. So, I’d have this funnel, where I’d asked them, what kind of meditation journey do you want to go on? And then I’d select either a Vipassana course or a mantra course written in a way you want to present it and then I’d emailed them the lessons. And that’s what Ontraport allowed really. It was a web builder, incorporated with a CRM.

And then what I realized was I wouldn’t want to use it this way. I wouldn’t want to open an email every day and pick a meditation. So, I thought, okay, it’s time to make a membership site. Ontraport didn’t allow that. So, I moved on to WordPress, found a membership plugin. The first one I started using was AccessAlly. And then again just started from WordPress, had no idea what to do on it. Eventually figured out. And then after using AccessAlly for a bit, I found it quite limiting. There are just some things you can do on it. Some customizable features for… I couldn’t change the sign in forms or the checkout form. And then I found you guys and I moved over to that.

Eric: You’re using Elementor with their Hello theme, which I’m particularly noting this because it seems like a really straightforward way to get started. You don’t have to focus a lot on maybe hiring somebody to build a custom theme for you. It empowers you to do what you need to do. And at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding and your site looks great. Super functional, very easy to navigate. Was that something that you used from the beginning when you switched to WordPress?

Griff: No. Again, when I first got into WordPress, you needed a WordPress theme. To be honest, I didn’t even know what a theme did or why I needed it. Kind of went on theme forest or whatever. I found this one called Vayvo theme. It was like a Netflix style theme. And again, building the website then started realizing, okay, this is what the theme does. This is limiting everything now has to have this, whatever. And then swapped over to Hello theme. I would never use anything else really, because it just gives you a blank canvas to figure everything else on. But again, I think I’m still… With this site, I’m still dealing with so many mistakes from building initially, making it plug in heavy, and now having to realize why that was a mistake. What I can sacrifice and not sacrifice. So, next time I have another project I would definitely be doing it differently.

Eric: It’s a common thing. I did the same thing when I first started using WordPress. Another common thing that I’ve heard and experienced myself from buying themes on Theme Forest, is the demos always look great. Then you buy the theme and you install it. And it’s impossible, for me anyway, to get it to actually look like the demo. But a lot of our customers use Elementor. So, it seems to be really user-friendly and flexible for people.

Griff: It definitely is. I mean, one problem is with using these kinds of page builders, they’re quite heavy. And then with page speed scores came a big thing didn’t it, this last year with the Google updates. And you just can’t get it in that green, I think, with using these page builders.

Eric: Yeah. That’s a good point. And dovetailing off of that. So, speaking of strategies that you’ve used to grow MindEasy, what things have you favored and found successful. Like SEO, organic content search, et cetera.

Griff: So, I guess the first way I was trying to get it out is I would kind of make the site or make my first plan and then run a PPC campaign on Google, get a load of traffic in, get nowhere with it and then try and figure out why using analytics and all these kind of tools like that. Go back to the drawing board. And then after about a year of doing that running kind of periodic campaigns that just wasn’t sustainable. So, the whole last year I focused mainly on SEO because the best traffic’s free traffic, isn’t it? I mean, that kind of just played in again into my losing sight of there being about meditation. And then content creation for blogging and that kind of stuff. Just let me focus in on again on what I was interested in and got me interested in the subject as well as the kind of tech side of it.

Plus, I quite enjoy SEO. So, my main approach now is to try and climb the SERPs. Other than that, I found promoting it. I’m really terrible at social media. So, Instagram and Facebook have been quite massive flops, but the ones I use like YouTube, that’s been quite a good tool. Especially because I get great… You can kind of just you get instant feedback from people in your YouTube comments. And you can say, Hey, how’d you want me to change it? I want this meditation to be 20 minutes longer. So, you’re like, okay, great.

Eric: You brought up something interesting, which is the idea of having to switch between tasks. If you’re running a business by yourself or even with a small group of people, you end up playing a lot of roles, right? So, you have to focus on the content and therefore you have to focus on practicing what you’re teaching, ie, meditation. But you also need to focus on if there’s ever any technological things you need to do. If there’s any marketing things you need to do, if there’s any content creation. You can’t just not do those things. So, a lot of it comes down to balance and prioritization.

Griff: Yeah. That is super tough because I mean, there has been loads of times where you’re on a roll with your content creation and then say, when I decided to change over from AccessAlly to MemberMouse, you’re like, okay, well, that’s going to take up all my time for now. And then for me, because I am just doing it 90% just by myself. It’s just a matter of just dropping something and then focusing on rebuilding a site, doing that kind of thing. And then hoping that you can get back into your roll with what you’re doing before.

But yeah, prioritizing time. I mean, that’s probably something I still need to work on massively. My ritual every day is kind of have a diary and I just state out three things I’d like to achieve that day with the website, big or small. And sometimes it’s only one of those things. Sometimes it’s two of those things, but at least you’re kind of always keeping a note of what you should be doing and you can look back and be like, ah, I wrote down, I wanted to do this and I never got around to it. It’s time to move that forward.

Eric: Yeah, that was definitely a major challenge for me in the first year as a MemberMouse. The fact of the matter is things do fall by the wayside. I went with my strengths, I’m a developer. So, I focus a lot on building the product, but I was not paying any attention to actually selling it and getting the word out there. So, ultimately my solution to that was, I found somebody who could come in and work with me on it. And because it was at a stage in the company where it wasn’t really successful yet there was a partnership arrangement to form the compensation for this person. But I find that it is a major transition point for the business. When you can get to a point where you have the resources to start outsourcing work and finding people to join the team. Ultimately the way that I look at my role in the business now, many kind of transition stages happen.

I’ve been doing this for 12 years, but now to me, it’s about building a team, running the company’s about building a team. Because ultimately everybody has their specialized thing that they can do and bring to the table. But of course, in order even gotten to the point where I could hire anybody, it took five years or so before the company was able to pay for people. My approach in the beginning was I was working other jobs and paying developers with the money I was making from other jobs and then doing my job at MemberMouse in addition to my other jobs. The beginning was a lot about just finding the way, but also just knowing that it’s kind of the scales are tipped against you in a way. So, you just do your best basically.

Griff: I guess what’s good is if you have kind of at least dipped your toes a little bit in all those different roles, when it comes to hiring people, you’ve just got that much more understanding of what they’re going to be doing and guiding with what you want and being able to communicate with them about that stuff. I think a big learning curve, with me with lot of stuff is when I have hired people to do stuff because I just, again, just didn’t know how to do it myself. Sometimes I just don’t even know how to ask people to do it. And you kind of ask someone to do something and you’re just not giving them the right information for them to do the thing you want them to do. Until after they’ve done it. And you’re like, ah, should have done it like this. And then next time you get around to it, you’ve got that knowledge.

Eric: A funny story relating to that, when I was first starting MemberMouse was I had no idea what WordPress was before I decided to do this plugin, or I should say this company. And my first approach was to outsource the work to this team. And I found some guys in Russia and I told them what I wanted, as best as I could. And I’m a software engineer. It’s not that I had a problem communicating the requirements, but I wasn’t familiar with WordPress. I didn’t know specifically how to ask them to build it for WordPress. So, what they came back and delivered was they actually had modified WordPress itself and I kind of looked at it. I was like, oh, doesn’t WordPress have something called plugins. Because it seems like if you modify WordPress, anytime WordPress comes out with an update, does that mean we need to rewrite our code?

And they’re like, yeah, you just rebuild WordPress. I’m like, that seems a little stupid. What about these plugins? So, but it took me paying them to build all that before I learned that lesson. So, that was just all thrown in the trash obviously. But it’s like you said at the very beginning, a lot of this is about learning what the right questions are to ask. And you know when you talk to people, if they’re asking certain questions where they are. Like in meditation, right? Somebody you’re teaching or working with, you know where they’re at in their process of meditation, a lot of ways based on how they’re asking questions and what they’re asking about.

Griff: Definitely that’s a good point.

Eric: And it’s the same in anything. What do things look like for you now? What are your next steps? Things that you’re shooting for with the project?

Griff: Well I guess, developing myself as a meditation teacher. So, actually getting out and taking it into the real world more just to get that experience. So, I’ve had everything behind a paywall so far, with free trials and whatnot. I’ve decided A, for SEO and B, just because I want to be the person making it. Everything I’ve made so far, I’ve just put at the front of the site is completely free for people to use. I’m going to go develop my meditation teaching, really think about making it as authentic to me as possible. I just think I can make the best products when it would be me doing it and me coming from personal experience with it. So, that really, and just try and just to continue making good content and building my kind of presence in that space.

Eric: Now you mentioned this conundrum about content behind the paywall, not being able to access for SEO purposes. There actually is in MemberMouse a way to have your cake and eat it too, in that scenario. I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, we call it self-promoting content. But it’s basically there are these smart tags that you can use. Let me just take a step back. So, one of the ways MemberMouse protects content, it’s just you just protect the whole page. So, if anybody tries to go to a page, it just boots them out. That basic scenario is the issue with having any of that content behind the paywall ranking for SEO. So, what you want to do is have more tailored content protection, where you can say, okay, the general public can access this page, but everything between this and that is protected.

Only people who pay can see that. And everything between this, and that, is public. The benefit of this is that you can have a page where you can share on social media and people go to see it. It can have a teaser video or a teaser audio of what the content is like, say 30 seconds a minute. Say, Hey, hope you enjoyed this click here to get full access. And then when they access on the same page, once they’ve signed up, they’ll see the full content.

Griff: Okay, nice.

Eric: So, definitely if that’s something you’re interested in, take advantage of that and we can give you the support article and everything.

Griff: I think I just got sent it.

Eric: Okay, great. Yeah. So, for everybody listening, if you are interested, there is a blog article on our website called How to Create Content That Markets Itself. If you Google that, MemberMouse, How to Create Content That Markets Itself, that whole article describes how to do this with MemberMouse. But this functionality was designed specifically for that use case.

Griff: Okay, nice. It’s always so much to learn isn’t it? But I will check that out. It could be the perfect next step.

Eric: Yeah. It’s definitely useful. I’m sure that there are a lot of people in the audience today who are at the early stages of starting a membership site. Maybe they haven’t even taken one of those first steps yet. They have the idea. Maybe they’re struggling with the technical aspects. Maybe they’re at some point of trying to manifest it in reality. What advice would you give to these people at this stage?

Griff: I mean, I guess first thing is just like what we said. You’ve got to just start having a go and failing just to figure out what the next steps are going to be. I think on a more practical level, one thing I look out for whenever I kind of A, why I pick MemberMouse or why I pick anything, any kind of tech now is how good are their customer services? For example, I think my first hosting I was on GoDaddy. And then I said last plugin, I was with AccessAlly. They were both like, if you have a problem, you send them an email. Maybe a week later, you’re going to get an email back. And sometimes you just need someone to help you on your way. So, A, when I moved to the hosting WP engine, their customer service was just amazing. You have any issues, they’ve got a chat there and you just started talking to them and they just talk to you through everything and really help you.

Griff: And then that’s kind of one of the main reasons I moved over to MemberMouse, I kind of looked into it, even just showing an interest. And then I ended up on a call with you pretty quickly. And then you do this thing on Friday where people can come and chat to you. I’ve had it before. I think initially setting up the MemberMouse, I was a bit befuzzled with it. And you had that service where I could have someone come and do a screen-share with me. Just, I think if you’re ever picking what platforms and what to use, if you’re paying a bit extra for a really good customer service, it just makes the world of difference.

Eric: Yeah. I think that’s a really excellent point because in those beginning days, the difference between somebody getting back to you in a day or a week could mean that it killed your entire project, because you need to build that momentum for yourself.

Griff: Yeah. It’s really disheartening when you just don’t know what to do. And you just end up on an email thread where you’re just getting nowhere.

Eric: I’ve had this happened too. Especially when the email you get back a week later, is them sending you some form email asking for some basic information. It’s like, oh, can you provide us with this or that so that we can actually get into the process. And then of course you provide it and then it takes another four days. Anyway, it definitely is a showstopper in a lot of cases.

Griff: Yeah. That definitely makes a big difference.

Eric: So, you said that one of the critical parts about your process, about developing your content is that you listen a lot to what people are asking you, which I think is a great strategy to use. Always checking with your customers, serving them in different ways, either through comments or emails on YouTube or whatever. What are you hearing that people are interested in? What are you learning yourself about what the larger market of people are interested in gaining from the technology of meditation?

Griff: I think definitely the biggest one, people I know has come to in order content, which is the most popular is the sleep one. I mean, people have a lot of trouble sleeping and look at it for that way. And then I think looking to get better sleep is a gateway drug into all the other benefits they’re going to find for it. And it is really good at getting you to sleep and just managing your mind.

And I guess the thing I’m interested in with meditation is it’s such a broad word meditation. It means so many different things. For me, it’s about introducing all these different techniques. People can just try and, know where they’re going to have a few different experiences so that they can kind of know where to start their journey. Body scanning, I really hate. But focusing on my breathing, that kind of worked. So, what would a few next steps from there?

Well, I think ultimately meditation is great for stress. It’s great at giving you this little bit of space between something happening and you reacting to it. Being able to have that bit of space to identify, oh, this is a stressful thing that was happening and I can just observe it rather than indulging it. And maybe when you’re in bed at night is when you’re very susceptible to that. It’s when your mind starts racing.

Eric: It’s actually an enforced meditation. You’re kind of confronted with just by the nature of going to sleep, with the process of meditation, where you’re confronted with your own mind and what techniques and tools do you have for surfing that wave? Approaching anything, like building a business, a meditation practice, to me is all about patience with ourselves and the process and consistency.

Griff: Those small stepping stones.

Eric: Yeah. And the results will come. Don’t have these unrealistic expectations. You have to put in something to get something. And that’s another thing about entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is very honest. You get out of it, what you put into it. Because I think a lot of people come to it thinking, and I think we all come to it in a sense, obviously with something we want to get out of it, a goal. Otherwise, if we don’t have a vision, then there’s no way we can adjust ourselves and target where we’re going. But I think the difference is that there’s a realism that, okay, here’s where I’m headed. That’s not coming tomorrow. How do I take a step each day to move towards that objective? And that’s the discipline of entrepreneurship. If you don’t have it, don’t do it.

Griff: For sure. Yeah. It’d be great if it was all just quick wins, but unfortunately never is, is it.

Eric: We think so. We want to think so. I do a lot of puzzles, jigsaw puzzles. That’s one of my little hobbies. It’s funny to me. People come and do puzzles with me sometimes. And this is often repeated statement. People put a piece in that doesn’t fit and they’re like, oh, it almost fits. And they’ll keep trying to put it in. Even though they know it doesn’t fit, but it’s almost fitting. And like, no, it either fits or it doesn’t fit. If it doesn’t fit, it’s done. I learned so many lessons from doing puzzles. It’s like, there’s so many metaphors in it. But yeah, it’s like that. You got to be realistic about what’s going on and just do it one piece at a time. The other metaphor about the puzzle is the picture develops itself. You build the border and then you start filling in the pieces, but you can’t see it all until you’re close to the end.

Griff: Do you think you’ll ever get to that full picture though with your entrepreneurship?

Eric: Actually, I think the really interesting thing that’s happened in how meditation has influenced my way that I approach business. Is, it’s less about any picture at all. It’s just about the moment, the process. What’s happening right now, this is what it is. Because I think I really stressed myself out over the years when I would focus too much in the future. You have to keep some focus on the future too, you’re orienting yourself. But if it’s always about that, it’s like, oh, I’m doing this now so I can get there. Then that’s stressful.

But if I’m doing this now because I want to get somewhere. Yes. But also, what I’m doing now is I’m engaged in it. I’m focused, I’m enjoying this. I feel purposeful in performing this activity, then there’s satisfaction in the process. And I think that’s the biggest difference between how I approach things now and how I used to. And the result is I do a lot less. Because back when I was getting started, I felt when I was doing things that I needed to do them. And therefore, I was telling myself I needed to be busy. But in retrospect, I could have done 50% of the things that I actually did. The results still would have been the same, except I would have been a lot less stressed out.

Griff: Yeah, definitely. That sounds very familiar.

Eric: But again, I mean, that’s why we go through these processes, so we can learn these things.

Griff: And you never know what thing you’re doing is going to be a waste of time, right. When you’re doing it.

Eric: Yeah. And ultimately, I think the thing is nothing is a waste of time. It’s all about perspective. It’s a waste of time if we think it’s a waste of time. But then that’s basically working on a puzzle and putting the wrong piece in and saying, it’s almost a fit. It’s like, why are you torturing yourself? It doesn’t fit. So, do the things that fit and don’t do the things that don’t fit. And therein lies the secret to life.

Where can our listeners learn more about you?

Griff: If they want to head over to MindEasy.com, we have a huge variety of meditation courses, that they can check out. You can watch them online. Can download. Yeah. Just keep your eye on there. And there’ll be a lot more decent content, hopefully heading there soon. Head over to our YouTube channel as well, if that’s your preferred method of practicing these kinds of things.

Eric: Perfect. And we’ll put the links to both your YouTube channel and your website in the show notes, but MindEasy.com is pretty easy to remember. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.

Griff: Thanks for having me, Eric.