Boundaries Fuel Entrepreneurial Success (with Eric McHugh)

[Dana] (00:03)
Welcome to Phoenix in Flame. I’m Dana, and this is my podcast on pushing through and transforming even when you feel like a pile of ash. Today we have a really interesting guest with us, and I’ll explain a little bit later that our guest, named Eric McHugh, is sort of a different type of guest than I normally have, and I’m very excited about that. Now, Eric is a 30-year-old entrepreneur whose philosophy emphasizes the importance of simplicity, adaptability, and a clear mind, which has translated well into the world of Web3 entrepreneurship. Eric, who has an IQ of over 140, specializes in leveraging his strategic thinking and adaptability to create innovative and effective solutions to the challenges facing this particular cutting-edge industry. Eric, welcome to Phoenix in Flame.

[Eric] (01:09)
Hi, Dana, and I’m really grateful to be here. Thank you so much.

[Dana] (01:14)
Thank you for taking your time to be here. Now I want to get back to the comment that I made a few moments ago. What you do in your background is a deviation from the typical guests that I have. A lot of the guests that I have are female, or they are talking more about emotional journeys, traumas, things they’ve overcome. And the thing that struck me about your story was several things. One, you being an entrepreneur, I really am attracted to that, I’ve been an entrepreneur myself, and I’m kind of wondering what your journey has been like along the way. And also, I don’t really have an opportunity much on my podcast to talk about Web3, and I have to admit this, since we both are 100% transparent and supportive of transparency: I had to stop my 22-year-old son earlier this morning. I’m like, “Read this bio, what do you think about this? What is going on here?” And so he had to kind of explain to me some of what it was that you’re doing. So I want to take a moment so that my listeners can really fully comprehend what the arena is that you’re entrepreneuring in. Help us understand that.

[Eric] (02:45)
Yeah, sure. So in terms of Web3, and I have a lot of practice breaking this down simply because what ShopX is, we’re a platform for a Web2 brand to enter the Web3 space in a very simple way. So talking to plenty of Web2 executives, the pitch is pretty much down. So in terms of Web1 versus Web2 versus Web3, I want you to think of Web1 as read-only. So you can go online, you can read stuff online, which is great. In Web2, let’s frame it as social media like Instagram or Facebook or YouTube or even this podcast. So you can read and you can write. On Instagram I can write content by creating a post, you can read that content and interact with that content by just viewing my post, liking, resharing, all that jazz. The only issue with that, or not even an issue, it’s just part of the system, is we don’t own that content, meaning Instagram is the one who owns that content. They can sell your data for good purposes and various purposes and they can cancel you or delete your content whenever they choose because it’s their content. In Web3, I want you to think of read, write, and own. So not only can we read content, write content, but we own the content. And the vehicle for that is an NFT, which is a non-fungible token, which is pretty much just digital scarcity on the internet. So if I were to create an NFT, you could purchase that NFT, and now there’s a direct connection between me and you and whatever value I want to add to that NFT or whatever value you want to claim, that’s totally up to us as the participants in that exchange. And the cool thing is, once you own the NFT data, it’s your NFT. I can’t take it away from you. Instagram can’t come in and take it away from you. The government can’t come in and take it away from you. It’s your NFT to do with what you choose.

[Dana] (04:31)
Hmm. You know, that’s one of the things about technology, it’s constantly changing. I mean, we love it and hate it at the same time. It’s like we almost can’t do without it, but it’s always shifting and changing into something new, which has pros and cons. So let me ask you this, Eric. You being 30, having an IQ over 140, and being an entrepreneur, so I’m imagining that you probably have had kind of an interesting journey. And I’m imagining that there’s a possibility that along the way you’ve had some people that didn’t believe in you, or that were naysayers, or thought you should have been doing something else, had their opinions over your life and this kind of thing. Tell us a little bit about what it’s been like for you, if you look back on this journey to be where you are right now. What has it been like? What have been some of the bumps in the road?

[Eric] (05:33)
Yes, honestly, the journey itself, I think it’s been absolutely perfect. I think whatever happened, whatever needed to happen, whether it be positive, whether it be negative, it happened for a reason. Typically, in the place I’m now, which I’m perfectly content with in terms of journey. I mean, honestly, being an entrepreneur, I’m working with two companies right now, but of course we had failed startups, failed business ideas. And in the startup world, you’re just failing constantly. Like for example, every time you fail, you try like nine things. Those nine things didn’t work. Great. Now I know nine things that don’t work. I’m closer to finding the one thing that would work. You find the one thing that does work, it works for a week, the next week it stops working. You’re just like, oh Jesus, why is this not working? You figure out why, you figure out why it’s not working, and then you have to pivot. So you have to be adaptable, you have to be open to ideas. You have to have a clear mind. You can’t just keep pushing forward, you have to step back. It’s like, okay, maybe this isn’t working for a reason, let’s think about why. And I’ve noticed that having a clear mind and the ability to step back and not blindly push forward has been very helpful, because let’s say, and I’ve seen this in corporate life, before I had started entrepreneurship I was a consultant for bankruptcy, companies undergoing the bankruptcy process. And a lot of times it was common: we’d have a problem, our boss would come in, he’d announce a meeting, “okay, we’re not leaving this meeting, it’s 5pm, I know you guys are supposed to go home, we’re not leaving until we solve this.” And at that point in time, everyone’s like, “oh Jesus, we don’t even want to do this,” you keep pushing, then you eventually come up with a solution. But because of the state of mind, the solution wasn’t optimal. And then you’re dumping time and resources into a non-optimized solution, and you have to retroactively do work. Whereas the correct path, I think, was to go home, actually sit on it. And so if you extrapolate that to the entrepreneurship world, of course, as the firm was doing well, there’s tons of resources, everyone’s getting paid a good salary, so it was like “okay, we’ll get overtime.” But in a startup you have much more limited resources. So if you’re spending time on something that’s not working, that’s not optimal, that’s a very big opportunity cost in finding the right solution.

[Dana] (07:40)
Right, that all makes a lot of sense. And I want to kind of wrap back around to something you said. It kind of reminded me of a quote from Thomas Edison. He said, “I’ve never failed, I’ve simply found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” I noticed you had several quotes on your bio that we’ll get to here in a little while. But I’m wondering, for you, how were you able to, or maybe you could share with some of my listeners, imagining somebody’s listening and

[Dana] (08:10)
they are trying new things and they’re going through that failing phase, and they’re having trouble believing in themselves, they’re having trouble keeping going because maybe they have this wonderful idea and maybe they’re in this trial and error phase, but maybe they have people in their life that are downplaying their ability or that are downplaying them, that don’t believe in them. Maybe they come from a dysfunctional family background, don’t really have a lot of support. Do you have any words of wisdom for those listeners of how they could possibly keep going despite failure after failure after failure?

[Eric] (08:50)
Yeah, so the way I look at it, I think of the universe, whatever you want to call it, I think it just always has my back, so things always tend to work out. And it’s important, obviously it happened to me in the past where it’s like, why would you leave a high-paying consulting job to not get paid working for a random tech startup? In this situation, the people giving the advice have your best interests at heart, but they don’t know what’s best for you. Only you know what’s best for you. Only you understand your potential, you understand your gifts, and you understand the path that you need to take, and it’s really just about keep moving forward. In entrepreneurship, and honestly in life, the name of the game is consistency: you just keep taking small steps forward, and that eventually has a compounding effect, and eventually you’ll just break through. Once you have that breakthrough, stuff just kind of starts flowing for you. So it’s really just about keep going.

[Dana] (09:40)
Mm-hmm. I love that and I 100% agree with that, because when I started mine, I have a private practice in psychotherapy, but then I also started my podcast Phoenix in Flame. And then on top of that I’m building boundaries courses and all kinds of things. And I made a promise that I wouldn’t quit, but I have to be perfectly honest with you, Eric, there were times, we might have very different personalities, I don’t know, but there were times, legit, I was screaming. Other times I was crying. One time I was literally in my basement downstairs throwing things against the cinder block wall because I was so angry. I was so mad because of something that was happening, I was confused and I was pissed off and I was angry and I just wanted to leave. I just wanted to bolt. And I just stomped downstairs in our basement, it’s not finished, and there’s these cinder block walls, and I just started picking up these pieces of hardwood that I just found that my husband had kept in a corner of the basement. And I’m just picking them up, I’m just wailing, I mean, I just wanted to find whatever made the loudest noise. And I just threw things, and I found out later that my husband and my son were upstairs, their eyes were as big as sausage. They’re like, “don’t go down to the basement.” Because you know, you can’t do what you’re saying, like take it one step at a time. And like I said, I made that promise, I promise I won’t quit.

[Eric] (10:50)
Yeah, third… yes.

[Dana] (11:08)
along that way sometimes there’s a lot of emotion. Did you experience any of that along your path?

[Eric] (11:14)
Yeah, and I like what you said about not quitting, and I think what you did, and I think what I do, is we just set the strong intention of “this is gonna work,” and I think people respond to it. Like how we figure out the middle, we figure it out, but we know what’s gonna be at the edge, just slowly chugging towards that. I mean, of course, it’s an emotional thing, especially starting your own thing. Oftentimes it can be just like banging your head against the wall. So a practice I did, and I used to be much more like…

[Dana] (11:27)
Yeah.

[Eric] (11:42)
I didn’t use to be this calm. It was more like meditation that really just helped with that. But right now, whenever I experience an emotion, I just kind of transmute it. It’s like, okay, I’m sad, I’m angry, and I try to do something positive with that anger. Like for example, I train more, I started training more for that reason, where it’s like, “I’m kind of pissed off, I need something to do.” So rather than throwing, going down and throwing cinder blocks against the wall, it’s like, alright, I’m gonna punch a bag. And that teaches you to be calm, because next time, let’s say you go in

[Dana] (12:03)
Ha ha ha!

[Eric] (12:10)
like in a street fight, the first person who gets aggressive usually wins. But if two people know how they’re fighting, the first person to get aggressive usually loses. So that kind of forced me to be calm. And it also forced me to be present, because when I’d go into a training session at the gym and start thinking about what’s happening in the workday, I would just get hit. And I’m just like, well, I don’t want that. So eventually you just kind of stop, and you’re like, okay, calm, present, good to go. But yeah, I know the emotional rollercoaster comes with the territory. I mean, you’re gonna be happy, you’re gonna be sad, you’re gonna be pissed off, you’re gonna be scared, you’re gonna be everything, and it’s okay to feel those emotions. I don’t believe in balling up, it’s just like I like to sit back and observe them. It’s like, okay, it is what it is, but you always gotta keep moving forward.

[Dana] (13:02)
Yeah, absolutely. And it reminds me of another quote, I think it’s from Martin Luther King Jr., that said, “if you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. The only important thing is to keep moving forward.”

[Eric] (13:18)
Yeah, and I forget who says this too, but I think it was Hermes Trismegistus: “once the student is ready, the path approaches.” Once you take the first step, steps two, three, four start to reveal themselves. So again, the important thing is just not to remain stagnant, just keep moving forward. And like I said, you try a bunch of things, they fail, but that’ll eventually lead to the right thing that you wouldn’t find if you didn’t fail so much.

[Dana] (13:39)
Mm-hmm, that’s right, I love that so much. And I want to point out something you said a few moments ago, you said only you know what’s best for you. And I had shared with you before we started recording about how I’m known as the Queen of Boundaries, and of course all my listeners are going to know that. But that is a boundary issue too, because we are in charge of our own thoughts, feelings, and actions, and we have a right to those things, even if our neighbor, whoever that figurative neighbor may be, doesn’t agree with us. So did you, were you just always good at standing firm on what was right for you, even though people around you might disagree, or was that a work in progress for you?

[Eric] (14:28)
I mean, I’ve always been good at saying no. If I don’t feel like doing something, I simply just, I’m like, “no, thank you.” And even at work, I’ll say, “I’ll take midday off to go on a phoneless nature walk,” and I’ll let everyone know, “this is part of the day, this is part of the boundary, I can’t take this call, I have to go walking,” and everyone’s okay with it. And I would say it’s not even like a riot. I think we have a responsibility to keep our own boundaries, because I think each of us are blessed with individual gifts that are meant to serve the collective, and if the best way for us to serve the collective is to take advantage of our own skills, like I’m the best Eric, you’re the best you, if I try to be you I can’t beat you at being you, you can’t beat me at being me. So the best way for us to serve the collective is to follow our authenticity, follow our intellectual curiosity, and use those skills to just make the world a better place for everyone. And we can’t effectively do that if we don’t have effective boundaries. Because you can wake up some days and there’s just like 50 emails asking for stuff, and you’re just like, no, I don’t have time to take this call. Or, for me, I’m in the dating process, where someone wants to hang out and it’s like, no, I can’t, I have to train and I have to work, this is part of the schedule. Whereas other people are like, fine, we’ll hang out, but that’s an opportunity cost too. Boundaries are very important.

[Dana] (15:55)
Yeah, well, and I’m hearing them twice in what you just said. I love your explanation, Eric, because on the one hand, I want to point out that we train people what to expect from us. So it sounds like you have trained people at your office to know that whenever you need some time away, when you need to go take a break, when you need to get outside and just breathe some fresh air and take some deep breaths and see the sunshine, that you’re going to walk out the door and you’re going to go.

[Dana] (16:25)
and you’ve trained them to expect that. And also I’m noticing, on your dates, when you’re going out on dates, you’re kind of training them as well, it’s like, okay, I’m gonna say no, I’m gonna set my personal boundaries. I’m interested, what are your thoughts when you’re trying to have dates and form interpersonal connections? Have you noticed that some people respond very readily to your no’s, and other people try to push back and disrespect your boundaries?

[Eric] (16:56)
Yeah, no, disrespect is something I don’t tolerate at all. If someone disrespects me, I think that’s something where I’m just like, I honestly wish you the best, but I’m not going to put myself in a disrespectful relationship. That’s not good for me, it’s not good for you either, and it’s not good for the people around either of us if we’re just tolerating disrespect. So in terms of, yeah, I just set my boundaries, if someone wants to cross it, again, I wish them the best, but I don’t need to be involved in a relationship when someone’s crossing my boundaries.

[Dana] (17:21)
Mm-hmm, and I think you…

[Eric] (17:23)
And sorry, I didn’t mean to not answer your question, but some people, they don’t respond well to the boundaries. But I view that as a self-filtration system, where not everyone’s meant to interact with you closely, but I think everyone’s meant to wish everyone the best, but maybe from a distance. So if you’re responding poorly to the boundaries, it’s unlikely that we’ll have a powerful relationship between the two of us. I believe in power versus force, where a forced relationship is one where one person wins, one party loses, it’s unsustainable. So if someone’s disrespecting your boundaries, that’s what it’s eventually going to be. Whereas a powerful relationship, which is like a podcast, this podcast is a good example of that, both parties are winning, both parties better each other and it’s sustainable because both parties gain. So I don’t see the point of being in a relationship that’s forceful when you can be in an all-positive, powerful one.

[Dana] (18:15)
Absolutely. And I want to point out, Eric, that you are giving a very good example to my listeners of how setting boundaries does not have to be confrontational. I run into people that have this misunderstanding that being in the world, trying to be professional, trying to form interpersonal relationships, whether they be professional, personal or whatever, that if they want to say no, they automatically think that they have to come in hot, that they have to be really obnoxious and confrontational. And listening to you describe how you express your no’s, but you wish them the best, that was a wonderful demonstration of just how calm we can be when we’re stating our no’s and setting our boundaries.

[Eric] (19:06)
And yeah, honestly, and you’re right, it very rarely pays to be confrontational too. If you’re gonna say no, why would you become confrontational? Just say simply, “no, thank you.” And the side bonus of learning to say no is the other person you use ends up trusting you more too, it’s like, “okay, they actually have the guts to stand up for themselves, that means they can stand up for me too, they can stand up for the company.” And going back to the dating example, because that’s just what I’m dealing with right now, if I say no to a girl, if she wants to do something and I don’t want to, and I say no, that shows that I can stand up for myself, which shows I can stand up for her. So if I were just like a yes-man, they’d be like, “who is this weakling, he can’t even stand up for himself, what if someone tries to jump me on the street, is he gonna give the mugger my purse or is he gonna stand up for himself?” So it creates a win-win-win, where we’re both respecting each other’s boundaries. Because if you have your own boundaries and the other person is like, “well, he has his own boundaries, that means I can have my own boundaries,” and if we continue to interact with each other, the relationship is just much more fruitful.

[Dana] (20:18)
That’s fabulous, absolutely spot on. So I’m wondering, as you’re kind of explaining this to my listeners, for you being in the corporate world and being an entrepreneur, have you run into situations where it’s been more difficult, or where you’ve had to be a little more assertive with setting your boundaries so that you can make sure that you have space at work to really excel?

[Eric] (20:42)
Yeah, no, so in the corporate world, yes, definitely. Part of the reason I quit the corporate world is because one of my boundaries was crossed, so I was just like, okay, well, I can’t do this, and then I quit and started doing the entrepreneurship thing. But in the corporate world, especially as a consultant in terms of clients, the way consultancy works is you have a firm, you have a bunch of clients, you deal with like 10 to 13 clients on an individual basis, so they just keep calling, they keep texting, they keep asking for stuff. So you have to set boundaries. It’s like, “no, I can’t do this, this isn’t part of the purview, I have other stuff I need to do.” So you have to learn to say a hard no to your clients, which can be scary, because imagine, you know it’s gonna go to your boss, maybe get you fired. But if it’s really not part of your job description, it’s not something you can do, it doesn’t benefit the firm, the boss will understand. And if the boss doesn’t understand, that’s just another boundary you need to set.

[Dana] (21:31)
Yeah, absolutely, it’s so important to be able to do that, professionally and personally, so that we can really reach the apex of our abilities. I noticed that you went on a Vipassana meditation retreat, a 10-day noble silence Vipassana meditation retreat. That really struck my interest. Why did you do that? And I’m really curious as to what happened mentally and emotionally through your 10 days of silence.

[Eric] (22:14)
Oh yeah, honestly, that’s one of my favorite things to talk about. In terms of different breakthroughs, I’ve had a couple in my life, the first was Bitcoin and entrepreneurship, and then spirituality became one. So I started meditating casually, then the content started finding me, and eventually for the third time I heard about this Vipassana meditation retreat, so I was like, okay, I’ve heard about it enough, I’m just going to sign up and go, which is another boundary, because I had to tell both companies, “okay guys, I’m simply offline for 10 full days, I won’t have my phone, don’t let the place burn down.” But everyone’s like, “okay, that’s a cool thing, it’ll be good for you, just go.” So again, at that point it wasn’t a boundary I was asking permission for, I just told them, “I’m gone for these 10 days,” and this is one of the things I knew was best for me, so I did it. And honestly, everyone was really supportive, they said, “oh nice, have fun, we’ll see you when you get back.” So that worked out well. The benefits I gained from this particular meditation retreat were honestly infinite. A 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat is the method that the Buddha used to reach enlightenment, and it’s 10 full days of noble silence: no talking with anyone, no phone, no writing, no looking at anyone, just no communication. You wake up at four, meditate, breakfast, meditate more, lunch, meditate the rest of the day, discourse at the end of the day. For the first three days you focus your attention on the area around your nostrils, and eventually you get good at that, you start feeling different sensations in that general area. Then from there you scan every inch of your body, back and forth, up and down, over and over again. And what this does is it extracts the traumas that are stored in different parts of your body in the form of different sensations. Think of it like a rocket scientist with a piece of metal that needs to be 100% pure, you run it through magnets and those magnets extract impurities in the metal, and you’re left with a pure piece of metal. So you do that over and over again, and some traumas, I was remembering stuff from when I was like four or five. So you extract from your whole lifetime, and then you start realizing how those traumas, those habits, those powerful moments in your life,

[Eric] (24:43)
they help craft your habits. So it’s a great way to break negative habits. And you end the meditation with, because I’m a big believer in the outer world reflecting your inner world, I think what you send out you get back. So I also look at the world in terms of energy and frequency of vibration. That’s why we’re connecting, because we’re both entrepreneurs, we’re all entrepreneurs of frequency, that’s why you run into so many people, whereas if you’re a sad person, sad people attract sad people, happy people attract happy people, angry people attract angry people. So the way you close the meditation is you store all your energy in the top of your head, and then you wish everyone love in the world. And that’s how I start my morning: I wake up at 4:20, I find it funny, and I meditate until I feel unlimited, and then I tackle my day. The scientific reason behind doing it, because it always goes back to science, is you have more melatonin in your system right when you wake up, so it’s the best time to do it. So I meditate, go to the gym, and I’ve noticed a tangible effect, walking around the gym genuinely wishing everyone the best, “good lift, good job everyone, we’re crushing it.” And since I came back from that, I’ve noticed more people approach me, get fist bumps, people start randomly talking to me, because in my subconscious I’m actually wishing the best for those people, and people can pick up on that. Like if someone’s hating on you, you can pick up on that, or if someone wishes the best for you, you’re like, “oh, I like this guy, I don’t know why, but I like this guy.” So what I gained was an overall positive mindset, just really calm. It was a challenging experience, and now I just wish everyone the best. And if you translate that to business, now everyone wishes me the best too, so it makes networking, closing brands, just super easy. It’s a win-win.

[Dana] (26:10)
That’s awesome. I want to give you super kudos for being the age that you are and for committing to something like that. That’s pretty significant, that’s a significant pursuit, a significant amount of time, and you had to allocate 10 days toward that, and not give up, not leave early, not say “well, this is uncomfortable, I’m leaving,” or “I don’t really know what’s gonna happen, I’m a little uncomfortable, I’m anxious.” You kept going. I think that’s amazing.

[Eric] (27:08)
Yeah, and honestly it was challenging, it wasn’t comfortable the whole time. But if you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not growing. The real magic happens in the unknown, because everyone knows what happens in the known, that’s why it’s a known, that’s why people like to look at the past, “okay, I did this before, I’ve been trained to this, if I do this action, people respond this way.” Whereas if you look towards the future, it’s like, “huh, if I do this, it’s gonna work well.” And that’s a key thing in entrepreneurship, you really do need a positive attitude, because most of the stuff you try is simply not gonna work.

[Dana] (27:37)
I’m going to go to bed.

[Eric] (27:37)
We were just like, okay, we still got this, we’ll try a bunch of stuff, and then from there you just kind of optimize.

[Dana] (27:43)
That is awesome. Eric, I feel like we could talk quite a bit longer, but I think our time is getting close. I wanted to ask you, did you have any last thoughts or points that you thought my listeners might benefit from? And then we’ll move to how they can get funneled more to find out more about Eric.

[Eric] (28:08)
Yeah, so some of the best advice I ever received was first, just reading. Your diet consists of whatever food you eat, there’s a tangible connection, like I eat food, I feel good the next day, but most people don’t think about their thought diet. Part of your diet is the thoughts you consume. So next time you’re on social media, just think, “how much of this is adding value to my life, how much of it isn’t.” Try to surround yourself with positive content, like this podcast, and it’ll help your life exponentially. And the last thing I’ll leave with is, I think everyone in the world is a conscious creator, whether they know it or not. So I have two rules I like to follow: when I’m building something, just don’t harm anyone and don’t take anything away from anyone, and you’re usually good. So just be authentic, and remember, you totally got this. Just keep moving forward one step at a time, you’ll eventually crush it, not that you already aren’t.

[Dana] (29:02)
I love it, Eric, I appreciate that so much. Being a psychotherapist, I really resonate with what you’re saying about the thought diet, that what thoughts you consume is going to really dictate how your life is. I wanted to take just a moment and kind of reiterate about gratitude. I’ve had other podcast guests talking about frequency and the law of attraction and

[Eric] (29:11)
Yeah.

[Dana] (29:31)
I actually had one producer on here one time and he was talking about music and the frequency of music, and how he could basically change the behavior of the audience by changing the frequency of the music. And the higher our frequency is, the more positive we are, the more grateful we are, the more content we are, we’re functioning on a higher frequency. And like you were saying earlier, we attract people that are also functioning on our same frequency. And I think that’s amazing.

[Eric] (30:01)
If I might add to that just really quick, yes, the frequency thing, you hit the nail on the head. In terms of gratitude, I really see gratitude as an attitude. You can’t be sad, you can’t be angry when you’re in gratitude. So a nice hack I do is I have a gratitude journal. I wake up every morning and I write five things I’m thankful for. Before this podcast, I wrote, “I’m thankful for going on this podcast,” so now I’m actually grateful for going on this podcast, and it turned out to be a great podcast.

[Dana] (30:02)
Absolutely, please do.

[Eric] (30:28)
And to the point of different frequencies, I use something called binaural beats, two different frequencies in each headphone, which automatically set your mind at a certain frequency, those have been helpful for me. If you look at the world in terms of frequency, it’s like a radio thing, like attracts like. It’s actually a scale you can quantify from one to a thousand, where the lowest frequency you can feel is shame, that’s at 50. Anger, hate, fear, they resonate around 200, and that’s when people are most impressionable and most likely to react, so if you look at social media through that lens, that’s why those frequencies are pushed so much, because they want to control people. And the higher frequencies, like love and joy, resonate at 500. I think my frequency is around 500, so I attract loving and joyful people, whereas if you’re at 200 you attract those. And to close out the scale, it’s zero to a thousand. Jesus, Krishna, and the Buddha were the three humans who I believe reached a thousand, Gandhi and Mother Teresa were around 700. Great works of art have different frequencies too, that’s why when you look at something like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, it’s a high-frequency building versus a depressing block building. Literature, art, everything has a different frequency, that’s why a real piece of art is going to feel different than a copy, you can innately pick up on that. So I think everyone has two purposes: my inner purpose is to raise my own level of frequency, and by raising my own I raise those around me, creating a positive effect. And the outer purpose is the business side, how you get to that, that’s where ShopX and Dataing come in. But yeah, frequency is the name of the game. If you think about it in terms of frequency and energy, I think you’d be much better off.

[Dana] (32:47)
I love this, Eric, I feel like we could just talk on and on about this, but you mentioned ShopX, so I want to make sure all my listeners know how to get back to you. If they’re thinking, “oh my gosh, Eric is so interesting, I really want to know what he has to offer,” is shopx.co where they go?

[Eric] (32:50)
Yeah, so it depends what you’re interested in. If you’re interested in Web3, it’s ShopX, S-H-O-P-X.co. My other company is Dataing, that’s the first ever AI-powered matchmaker, so that’s D-A-T-A-I-N-G.io. But honestly, my goal and my intentions would be to be as helpful as possible, so if you can find me on Instagram and you just want to chat about anything, I love meeting people, hit me up in the DMs there. It may not be an immediate response, but I do try to get back to everyone if they’re not being dumb, because you now can be either.

[Dana] (33:44)
Yeah, I know. All right, Eric, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you taking your time and being willing to sit here with me and give your energy to myself and to my listeners as we created this amazing podcast together today. Thank you so much.

[Eric] (34:03)
Thank you so much. We crushed it.

[Dana] (34:06)
Listeners, I know you heard something today that you’re thinking, “oh my gosh, I have a friend, I have a relative, I have a coworker that really needs to hear what Eric McHugh has to say.” Take this podcast episode and put it on your favorite social media platforms. Copy and paste the link in text, copy and paste the link in email. Get it out however you want, where we can spread the family, Phoenix in Flame, and get our word out there. I hope you’ve had a wonderful day, and I hope the rest of your day goes fantastically. I’m Dana on Phoenix and Flame.