Eric Turner shares stories from his life that lead him to work at Trustyy. Coming from a family that often lived paycheck to paycheck, he joined the Marines right after high school. He got to visit home after boot camp. September 11th, 2001, he was sitting on a plane ready for takeoff when he heard about the attack on the world trade center. Eric served several tours and learned a lot about leadership being in charge of 25 other marines and 50+ local police. While still in the reserves he has transitioned his career into tech and become a vital member of the Trustyy team.
He has a passion for the mission of Not By Chance and Trustyy, which is to improve intentional family living.
If you want to stay up to date with Trustyy and help with beta testing, sign up here. https://trustyy.com/#
Eric Turner shares stories from his life that lead him to work at Trustyy. Coming from a family that often lived paycheck to paycheck, he joined the Marines right after high school. He got to visit home after boot camp. September 11th, 2001, he was sitting on a plane ready for takeoff when he heard about the attack on the world trade center. Eric served several tours and learned a lot about leadership being in charge of 25 other marines and 50+ local police. While still in the reserves he has transitioned his career into tech and become a vital member of the Trustyy team.
He has a passion for the mission of Not By Chance and Trustyy, which is to improve intentional family living.
If you want to stay up to date with Trustyy and help with beta testing, sign up here. https://trustyy.com/#
There are as many ways to parent as there are parents in this world. But there is one way to parent that wins every time. And that's doing it intentionally. This show is about helping things go right before they can go wrong. Each episode is chosen to help parents like you, who may be overwhelmed or uninspired, find the ideas and motivation to give their best efforts to the people and place that matters the most. I'm Dr. Tim, Thayne, author of the book and host of the podcast, not by chance, I believe that a family's success and happiness is not by chance. So welcome to the podcast built especially for intentional families. Let's jump in. Hi, everyone. It's great to be back again. And I'm especially grateful for Eric Turner, who's going to be our guest on the podcast today. And I'll introduce him in just a second. I want to do a little shout out first to my my daughter in law, Megan, she's pregnant, she's due she's overdue and she's anxious to have this baby, it's going to be a grandson. And we just love her so much. Even though she likes to tease me about my bald head. The other day she came in she goes, I heard a joke, I don't know if I dare tell you. Because I'm sure that, you know, it's probably makes you feel bad. But it was so funny. And she said, I heard somebody refer to a guy that has about your length of hair as five o'clock shadow head. So anyway, I take that with love, and love, love you, Megan, if you're listening to this. So back to this podcast, I'm really excited to have Eric here today, we have a neat story of how we met, he moved into our neighborhood. And he was CEO of a tech startup. And I watched him knowing that I had this tech idea in the back of my mind, something we'd been working on, but we lacked anybody with his skill set. And so I've secretly, you know, watching him and I was curious about how he was doing things in this company he was in. And I would share some things about what we were working on. Which would be an app for parents to help them intentionally, you know, operate inside their family as best they can. And I noticed the light would go off in his eyes. And I could tell there was this real connection to the mission, that we had to strengthen Hill and fortify families. And so secretly in the back of my mind, and I didn't tell Eric this for quite a while. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking how can I get someone like him to come and help us with this app, I thought our chances of success would be dramatically improved if we could get him one thing, I really believe those that he resonated with the mission. And that's always important, you know, when you're going to work with someone on a socially good, you know, technology or, or idea or concept, you want to have that passion for the mission. And definitely, I felt that with Eric. So Eric, I'd love to you've got a really fascinating background. You might not think so because you've lived it. But for us outsiders. You know, I look at your your history, the the varied nature of it all. And I think that's, you know, the sum total of everything that you've experienced, you're kind of bringing to the table on a mission that I'm really passionate about. But I I'd like the audience to kind of hear your background and starting when you're young, and give us the synopsis of of some of those key learning experiences in your life and and then we'll get to the the app and some other things that relate to the parents that will be listening.
Eric:Yeah, Tim, thanks for having me on the podcast today. And I'm really excited to be with you on the journey with trustee. I'd like to share a couple of experiences that I had when I was a child, some lessons, big life, big important life lessons I learned from my parents. So the first thing I'll share with you is that I grew up in a in a family where between my two parents are often three full time jobs, which meant that either one of my parents was working two full time jobs, or both of my parents were working a full time job and a part time job. And that really taught me the importance of hard work from a very young age, seeing the way that they worked to get everything that we had as a family really instilled a value in me to work hard for everything that I wanted and everything that I needed in my life. I remember one time when I was about 15 years old. I just I knew that I wanted to start playing the guitar, as some friends that play the guitar, they were in bands, I wanted to play the guitar as well. And so I went to my mom and I said, Hey, I'd like to play the guitar. And she said, you know, unfortunately, we don't have the funds to buy a guitar for you. So if you want to guitar, you need to go out and earn the money to buy the on your own. And she then went and helped me to get a job, actually at a local guitar shop. And I made a deal with the owner of the guitar shop, that he would allow me to work the summer I was 15 years old. And in exchange for the work that I would do over the summer, he would actually just give me a guitar and an app in advance, and then I'll work work that off for the summer. And so sure enough, I took this part time job, this will sound crazy, but I made 525 an hour. And that's the rate that he was paying me to pay off the guitar. And I worked the entire summer long a part time job at age of 15, I would get on my bike, I would ride to the guitar guitar shop, I would I would work your part, that part time job. Now I would come home and I would play. And knowing that I was earning that guitar just helped me to really appreciate it. And so I played a lot and you know, I had really great time and, and you and I learned the value of hard working and the importance of or rather the relationship between hard work that we put in, and the rewards that we get out, I learned that at a young age, I learned that from watching my parents.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Oh, I love it, Eric, I know that I'm putting myself in the shoes of parents out there listening. And a couple of the things that really stand out to me about that story is that, that your mom didn't give you everything, loved you and supported you and helped you find this job right in the place of where you'd get be excited. You had this passion to be a part of a band or learn to play play guitar, and she helped you get that job right there in the target zone, that I'm sure that was exciting to be able to walk into a store like that. And, and and know that, that you're learning the guitar. It reminds me of a mother that I worked with a long time ago, who's whose son was really a brilliant sort of not just gamer, he was really good at gaming, but he was also kind of a programmer. And so she helped him kind of build a little business of, of doing some programming while being able to game. So she kind of combined his passion with him learning to work. And, and in a way your mom did the very same thing. What a great, what a great lesson. One thing
Eric:that my wife and I talk about with our children now is how important it is for our children have passions, and how important it is for them to have ambition. And it almost doesn't necessarily matter what those passions. And those those ambitions are about reading comic books, or playing video games, or, you know, kind of all these things that that I looked at, I'm like, this is kind of not really the right thing that I want my kids have passion or ambition about, but it's a passionate ambition. And then from there, we take that passion, we take that ambition, and we harness it. And we channel that towards something productive. And my mom definitely taught me how to harness my ambition, harness my passions and channel that into some that turned out to be a very important productive life skill.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Yeah, you develop the work ethic, which is generalizable to everything you would do in your life. Yeah, awesome stuff.
Eric:Can I show one more? Sorry, Tim. Yeah, please. So the next dresser I'll share is, you know, again, my my family, we didn't have a lot of extra for things that we wanted. And maybe sometimes even the things that we needed, even though there were three full time jobs. Sometimes we were living paycheck to paycheck, you could imagine kind of how surprised one day I was when I when I came home, and I walked into the house, and I found that all of our kids beds are all gone. All of our kids beds are all gone. Not only were our where our beds gone, but also a lot of our clothes were gone as well. With them all said Mom, where's our clothes on our bed? And she said, Oh, you know, I found another family or I found out about another family in our neighborhood who has several kids and they're all sleeping on the floor in their house. And it's coming up on winter and they don't have coats so I decided to give them our bed and our coats. And I was like this is what about me? What about me? What about my bed now and have sleep on the floor? Well, we had carpet it was okay, you know like they were sleeping on Manolio and now they're asleep and on our on our beds. I remember feeling a little bit upset on my mom that she gave away our bed and our coats and tell so several weeks later this is in December, several weeks later when I came to school, and I saw one of my classmates wearing the coat that my mom had give to that family and I remember looking at that, that that kid and thinking, now I'm really glad that somebody else is getting benefit from the charity. And from the goodness, even though we didn't have a lot to for ourselves, she still found it hard to give, even the things that we have to other people who had a greater need. And so the bigger the second major life lesson I learned from my mom that that situation was, how important is to be caring and giving and thoughtful other people. And no matter how bad our circumstances are, there's usually someone else that is in a worse situation. And we could help out all the time in those situations.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Wow, what a legacy Your mom left and is taught you to give like that, and, and what a gift it was to you to see the kid with the coat, you know, kind of full circle, like little bit of reward. And maybe at that moment, you're like, it was a good thing. Those days, now I get it. Now I get it,
Eric:I still remember the way that I felt it was a maroon coat. And I would have never anticipated that it was that I was that kid. And it just, it just really resonated in my in my heart and in my mind. And it's something I reflect on often throughout my life.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Wow. So if we reflect on the values that we learned from our family, and, you know, one of the keys to this app we're talking we're going to be talking about is that it's to help facilitate intentional parenting. And I, you know, without technology or anything else, your mother did that. She was intentional. She had values that were her behaviors came out of those values. And you got to witness that. And I'm sure you had a special Mother's Day recently, thinking about thinking about what she's given you. What a great thing. And let me just, you know, on that on that topic. On Sunday, which was Mother's Day, I walked into our congregation, and we have a lot of women who are older, in our congregation, they, they've, their, their grandmothers and great grandmother's at this age and stage. And I had the most overwhelming feeling of love for all of these women, because they seemed like these beautiful flowers that had provided beauty to their families throughout their life, through their sacrifice, through their love, through their their giving and their nurturing. And I just want to shout out to all the women out there with those natural instincts and the heart to help the heart to sacrifice for their families. And I know that you who are listening are definitely in this category. So So Eric, you had some amazing experiences. You know, post high school, I'd kind of like you to get into what your next few steps were that that started to shape you in different ways.
Eric:So Tim, right before I graduated high school, I was looking around to the future. And what I saw was not really very promising. I want I knew I wanted to go to college, I knew that I had things that I wanted to accomplish. But the truth is that I didn't have the best grades in school, because I spent my time working so that I could have the things that I wanted. And looking back on that I wish I would have maybe balance my my school and and work a little bit different. But because that I didn't have great grades, I couldn't just go get a full ride scholarship. I didn't have parents who could pay for college for me. I was I was definitely nervous and scared about the thought of taking on student loans. And so and so I thought to myself, how am I going to pay for myself going forward and then one day out of the blue, a Marine Corps recruiter came knocking on the door. And literally back in those days, it would actually just come and knock on doors. So this Marine Corps recruiter or Staff Sergeant Gabrielson was his name, knocked on the door and said, Hey, are you looks like you're about the right age? Are you? Do you have plans for after high school? I said, I said, No, not really. It's like, Well, do you want to join the Marine Corps. And up until that point, I had never put even a single thought into the thought of join the military. But when he knocked on that door, and when I when I saw him, a young guy who seemed very successful, very happy with what he was doing. I thought, you know, I should, I should at least hear him out. So I did, I went and met with him in his office. He told me about the experiences he's had in the Marine Corps and the doors that is open for him. And immediately on that first day that I met with him, I said, Alright, this is this is the path for me. This is what's going to help me to accomplish things that I want to do. So that was about a month before I graduated high school. And then just four days after I graduated, I got on a bus I went to San Diego and sit on those yellow footprints at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. I raised my right arm to the square and I swore to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. And I joined the Marine Corps that was in. That was in June, June of 2001. And I was in boot camp from June 4 2001, all the way until August 31 2001. And then I came home for my boot leave, which is the the amount of leave that you have after boot camp, to come home and spend with with your family before you go back to whatever kind of additional training you have. For me, that'd be the school of infantry. And I was at home from September 1, and slept till September 10. With a plane ride back to to San Diego to go to the school of infantry on September 11 2001. I was sitting on it also not Aeroplan that morning, getting ready to go back to that. And what came after that Tim was 1010 years of time service in the Marine Corps. And actually 12 years so far of service in the Air Force Reserve. A couple of combat deployments went to Iraq, on to Afghanistan, a lot of leadership experiences in through the military, a lot of a lot of travel, a lot of training and education. And sure enough that that decision to join the Marine Corps also opened up the door for college, for MBA, for other a lot of other career experiences that I've had, that have all benefited from that decision to join the Marine Corps.
Dr. Tim Thayne:I'm thinking about Eric the we had an evening in the barn a few months ago, with a bunch of young men from our our award our congregation and and you shared some some success principles with them and, and some of your experiences. And it was fun to watch. What I always tend to do, I have one, err listening to what's going on, and my eye is watching the reaction of other people. And what I saw was, every boy was 100% locked on to what you were saying. I was too. In fact, I think one of the first things I did is I I just told Roxanne some of the things you talked about some of your stories. I probably individually shared it with with everybody including Talmadge, our podcast manager. And just I was impressed and moved by an inspired by what what you shared with with those young men. And maybe we had to do a whole nother podcast on that subject. I think that could be great, actually, where we just cover some of those things that you did for them that night. So what then happened, so that that gives you this foundation pretty unique, you know, and that was interspersed with that. There was more education, right? You went to the University of Virginia, I got your MBA I did, you got married, you went to a church mission in there. A lot of really varied experiences. And then I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the progression of your career from large organizations down to what we're doing now.
Eric:Sure. So, so the first time that I deployed was to Fallujah, Iraq. And that was a forced deployment, because I was under contract. And I had been married for just a little bit more than a year at that time. And it was really hard. We were young, I was, I was bleeding a lot. 23 years old, and my wife was 19. So we were a young married couple and, and got the call and said hey, we need you to go to Iraq and and deployed in the infantry capacity. And i The truth is, I didn't really want to do that. I wanted to stay home with my wife and develop my wife there. Nonetheless, I was under obligation. So I I went and did my my duty, and had a lot of fantastic experiences. That was my really first huge major experience as a leader, leading a troop leading a team of 25 Marines, sometimes up to upwards of 50 Iraqi National Police that would be out there on patrols every single day, day in and day out. doing traditional military or traditional infantry missions, like literally kicking in doors and going and finding bad guys. And I made a lot of mistakes there, Tim, I really did.
Dr. Tim Thayne:I remember you telling the boys that night. I've made every mistake you can as a leader, and I think they were like, really you're admitting that. I love that. It's like okay, what did you learn, you know, What mistakes did you make? Right?
Eric:I will say that the number one, the number one lesson I learned there is develop your people and trust them. develop your people and trust them. I remember thinking when I was a young leader, and you got to keep in mind that I was 24 years old in Iraq leading 2525 Marines and 50, Afghan or 2550 Iraqi there we go interact National Police. And I remember at that time thinking that I needed to be the best of them all, at everything. I needed to be the best gunner. I needed to be the best grenadier I needed to be the best tactician I needed the best be the best strategist, I need to be the best of everyone, the best of everything. And then at one point, I was like, thinking to myself, wait a minute, this is backwards, what I really need to do is I really need to make sure that everyone else is better than me at a lot of different things. And from that point forward, we just focusing on on developing the team and developing the capabilities of the team and, and then trusting that they will do their job, to the best of our ability really just helped us to excel and to do the job so much better than having me as a as a junior guy trying to be, you know, the top of of everything, it's not realistic to think that anyways, yeah, it's a very immature, very mature thought. But overcoming that kind of a thought and realizing that the best way to be a leadership, to be a leader is to develop all your people and help them to be their very best. That's how we we ultimately accomplish the goals
Dr. Tim Thayne:we learned only, sometimes from the school of hard knocks. But But it's funny, even just today, I was talking to you about we sat together in our, our conference room, and we were talking about the product and how it's going to unfold and, and I sat and watched the talents of everybody in the in the room and, and I think I was a little bit like you is when I was younger is same way. At this point, I really just cherish other people's talents. And I love to see it, it manifest their talents manifest in sight, a overall process, that's all pointed to the same vision. And so I love seeing that a see that in you, because you'll you'll sit there there and be pretty quiet. But what you're doing is you're kind of churning through some things in your own mind. And, and then you will say very little, but you capture it all. And, and it's clear, it's concise. And we know where we're headed. And so those are really cool moments. And I'm sure that philosophy that you gained, you know, through those experiences in the military, enable you to do exactly that. And instead of maybe trying to play this role in that role in an every role, but really sitting back and kind of synthesizing everything to help us move forward. So appreciation to you for that. And now, I've seen some some of where that came from.
Eric:In the military, we call that the commander's intent, which is to say that the most important thing that I as a troop leader could tell to my troops is this is what we're trying to accomplish, I could try my very best outline all the steps that are required to get there. But the fact of the matter is that the individual steps that we actually take to get there are going to be very different than the ones that outline Mm hmm.
Dr. Tim Thayne:How do you translate this into now that you know, you're kind of getting fully immersed in in the in the family field? With with a leadership structure that the parents are? How do you translate that Commander's Intent into the family system.
Eric:But to me, this is this is also very similar to those values that my mom taught me like the value of charity, or the value of hard work. The most important things that we could be teaching our children oftentimes are the values, we give the children the true values or the correct principles, and then we let them figure out their way around. So one of the things my wife and I do as a family is we will sit down and we'll deliberately think about what are the values we're trying to teach our children, certainly charity, hard work, where the I've been talking to my to my children about, about being proactive, and other value. And so we'll sit down with we'll think about the values that we want to teach our children. And then from there, we'll break those values down. And we'll talk about the expectations or the goals or the tasks or kind of the day to day transactional things. But really, Tim is it's not about the day to day transactional things, it's really about the higher level values that are important here. And the higher level values are our our intent. Our intent is to teach them to be people principle and value. And then to use day to day management to help them get there. And also to let them figure out on their own how to get there by making good choices and bad choices and supporting those good choices and bad choices with rewards consequences so on so forth.
Dr. Tim Thayne:I love it. I love that idea of the commander's in can't. Because it's also trusting that if you share that vision and those values clearly enough, then it's like this clear bell that is ringing. And you can easily follow that you can you can imagine, if you're a child in that situation, how do I stay true to that very clear thing, while I'm navigating my life through this, these complex, you know, situations that I have to go through, you need that clarity. And I think that's what's missing. And for a lot of us, and, you know, for the Thayne household, I have to give my wife a lot of the credit for clarifying some of that, not necessarily hard work, because I think that's probably one I, I've taught as much as anything. And unfortunately, some times the old school, you know, Father will come out in me when we're out working, and my kids are like, Oh, no, no, there's, there's dad, you know, freaking out, because we're not working hard enough. But, but Roxanne really brought a kind of overall unity and a model, you might say, and it has to do with our spiritual values and kind of what we want to ultimately accomplish together as a family. And, and it has been this clear call to who we are as things and what we stand for, what our beliefs are. And that has been really powerful in our family. So Eric, can you share with everybody just a little more of your career journey? Because I think that forms the foundation, you know, with, with your growing up years, the military, and then sort of your experience in these organizations, and ultimately, what led to trustee?
Eric:Yeah, let me let me talk a little bit more about my career progression and how I went from being 18 standing on the footsteps at Marine Corps Recruit Depot to, to a career in technology. So, you know, again, my first deployment to Iraq, it was forced, I had to do that. And then later on, actually, a year after I got home from Iraq, I got a voluntary request to go to Afghanistan. And I was really torn about what what I should do, but I had a team of Marines who were relying on me. So I ultimately said, you know, I'm going to go, and I'm going to do that deployment, went to Afghanistan, and all day, every single day, aside from when I was doing my missions, which took quite a bit of time. But in all my downtime that I had, I would just take my GMAT, the Graduate Management, assessment tests, I can't remember the name of the acronym, but the test you take to get into MBA school, I will take that GMAT book out with me. And I would open up that book and I'll start studying for the GMAT. And that's how I spent all my free time in Afghanistan. And so that I came home from Afghanistan, I went to the GMAT, I was fortunate to get a great score that could get me into a lot of different schools. I applied to several different schools and ultimately, ended up falling in love with the University of Virginia, where I went to the Darden Graduate School of Business, and studied general management with focus on marketing. And when I got to University of Virginia, I thought to myself, my career objectives are to get into a large international company with globally recognized brands and products that people love. And I remember thinking when I got there, that that probably means CPG consumer product goods. So think about General Mills, or the like Nabisco. So I thought that that's the path that I would want to go down. But then one day, the recruiter for Ford Motor Company came around to to school. And I thought to myself similar to when the wind that recruiter for the Marine Corps came and knocked on my door. Aha. This is the path for me. What better than having a career in automotive talking about being a major international company with globally recognized brands and products that people love? Check, check check for more company meets all those all those requirements. And so I applied and landed a job at Ford Motor Company in their marketing Leadership Development Program. It's a five year rotation program where you go through a bunch of different rotations that build up your general management capacity, and ultimately prepares candidates for roles in executive management's roles in executive management. And even one of the former CEOs of Ford Motor Company was a graduate of the the marketing leadership program. So it was a really cool experience. During those five years, I was with Ford. I literally lead projects that were billion dollar investment projects. I was response for billions of dollars of revenue as a marketing manager, overseeing several different vehicle lines in the Lincoln I'm in the Lincoln lineup. And it was a lot of fun. I had a really great time, when you're a marketer, and your market research consists of going out to the racetrack and driving cars, it doesn't really get any better than that. Yeah. But inside of my heart of hearts, I knew that there was something missing. I love managing billion dollar project project. But I was still mid manager, and there was a lot of bureaucracy. And that wore me down. And so after staying at Ford for five years, I thought to myself, you know, I'd really like to go out and get in the world of technology and small business, somewhere where we have to move really fast. And where if you make a good choice, you know, about right away. And if you make a bad choice, you know about that right away as well. And so a feedback, quick feedback, yes, quick feedback, a lot different than working on a car that's going to come out for five years from now. Yeah. So. So Tim, I went and got my first job in technology at this company called lat links. I helped that company grow from about 30 million to about 50 million, and had a lot of successes in that company. But then when COVID hit, so that was best Chicago, when COVID hit the automotive industry, he just wasn't looking very, very good. And I found myself in another challenging situation, and needed to look for a new role. So I went and found my second role in technology. At this company called education events. Another great CEO, Stan was Eli. And I learned a lot from Eli about managing technology companies. at that company, I was the Chief Marketing Officer, education advanced, when I got there was about $5 million of revenue, my saved with him through a series a helped them raise a good amount, we won't say how much that is on this podcast. And help them grow a good amount, again, won't say exactly what that is. But let's just say that it was phenomenal growth over the course of the time that I was there had a lot of really great experiences building a marketing team from the ground up. The third job I had in technology was actually as a chief executive officer at a small eCommerce technology company. And when I got there, the company was actually pre revenue, which means that they had a product. But they didn't have any customers that were actually paying for the product quite yet. Now, this is a very common challenge that technology companies have as they spent a lot of time developing a product. And even in this case, the name was return rabbit return route had a fantastic product that really actually delivered a ton of value to ecommerce merchants. But it wasn't actually market proven because there was not enough people using it. And so my goal I return Rabbit was to bring on the first cohort of customers to really refine that product, to to refine our our marketing message. And then to help that company hit our first growth stage. And that's exactly what I did at that company I came in, saw a couple of product deficiencies address was pride deficiencies. When and hired a marketing and sales team brought them in grew our company to the first couple 100 customers had a tremendous amount of success. We were in, in a very competitive environment, there were three or four major competitors that had a ton of market share in that space that were doing really, really well. We had we conquest a lot of customers from those from those major competitors. And all the customers we conquest didn't love the product, loved loved the certain the quality of the service that they got, and really got a ton of value that we quantified for them. And they understood exactly what they're getting from us. And so you help a company grow through the first stage in technology called zero to one, help them go from zero to one. And and then and then that's around the time that you and I met and and you started talking about this little idea which didn't have a name at that time, but has now come to be to be known as trustee. And as soon as I saw what you're doing over here, I just thought to myself, this, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to do with my life energy with my career energy as I want to put my career energy into something that is meaningful. That has a huge impact. And that really provides good value and helps families, including my own to move forward in this challenging world.
Dr. Tim Thayne:You know, Eric, one of the things that stands out to me about you is that whatever you do, you really put everything into it, you you put your full heart and an energy into it. And so you do that in your family, and your career has as well but now it's kind of converging. It's like that kind of effort in your family. It's almost like it's too late for the same family in a sense that you know, our kids are out of the home, but it's not too late for the Turner family and out All the other families out there that children are still home, it's actually not too late for us either. But you know, the, the real prime, you know, use would be why you're raising children and adolescents. And so it's coming together, you know, which is synergistic in the sense that you're put someone's putting, you know, serious effort and everything you do. Now, it's almost like one in the same. I assume that feels pretty good come to work with, you know, knowing that you're building something that's going to help you out in your other more even more important role as a father,
Eric:there's this, there's a saying, which is no other success can compensate for failure in the home. And I believe that, I really think that working with you, Tim, and with the rest of the team at trustee, is very serendipitous. My family consists of my wife, we've been married for 17 years. Hope I got that right on this podcast. And, and then we have four kids ages 11, nine, six and four, that's two boys and two girls, who I love and adore every single one of them in their own unique ways. And they're all very high energy children who love to push the bounds on everything, on everything all day, every single day. So, so, around the time that I was exiting return, Robert, I thought in my mind, maybe this is a good time to take a little bit of sabbatical, and actually just invest my time and my effort into my family and into my children and having these great, great relationships, these great experiences, which I tend to do quite a bit of anyways. But I thought this is, you know, this may be an occasion for me to be a stay at home dad. And that was really intriguing to me. But even more intriguing to me than that is to do that and to have to build up some technology that will actually help him to do that. Interesting enough. Over the years, Tim I've I've, I've had a lot of ideas about technology, processes, I you know, tools, techniques, that could help my family. And we've even gone out and put some of them to use, we at one point had a had a bar code, list of chores, or we rather we had chores that have barcodes associated with them. And then we got a barcode scanner. And when the kids would do a chore, they would scan the barcode. And that's how they will self certify that they will do the chore, for example. So we've had a lot of, we've tried a lot of different things to help our kids to develop those values to be accountable to their behaviors, or to their expectations to give rewards and, and consequences. But none of those things really stuck. And so when when I started talking to you, I started hearing about your ideas and your background and your history with doing exactly what I was looking to do my family. Again, I really just thought that was extremely serendipitous, because it enables me to do to be a better dad. And to also find at the same time a tremendous amount of enjoyment in my professional career, some that I've never experienced quite the level that I'm experiencing now, with, with having an opportunity to work on a piece of technology that's going to directly benefit me. And at the same time benefit millions of other families around the world. It's energizing to come to work every day, and know that the thing that we're doing is going to benefit families, children, husbands, wives, grandparents, communities, all around the world for years to come.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Oh, it is so exciting. You know, it kind of out of the out of the realm where adolescents and children are really struggling with mental health issues, anxiety, depression, school refusal, conflict with parents, you know, their world is getting smaller and smaller and shrinking as they spend more and more time on their, their devices and less time in real life interaction with other people. And so, that's the world I've come from. And so what I love about this vision that we have, is that it you know, strengthening a family in the right way addresses mental health issues, in big ways for the entire family, not just the children themselves, but the parents as well. And, and and so there, I'm giddy, I tell you this all the time. I am so happy right now in in just like you are in terms of the career and what we're doing. Because we do have a shared vision. Somehow we have been really blessed to come together, you know, as as a team, you know, it's it's one of those things I really should be documenting every day because it feels like we're we're creating something of growth. Right meaning to ourselves and to many people in the future, that the history will be important. And we're sitting around this small table, we all fit there. And and it's just coming to life. And so we can't wait to get it out. Can we? Eric? I mean, I think it's gonna, it's gonna be a big it's gonna be a big help to a lot of people. But we got to create it, and we're well into it. But it's the the launch date we're looking at probably July at this point or August. But I can't wait. I'm sure you feel the same way?
Eric:Absolutely. It's really fantastic. To have a meaningful shared vision, and a very powerful team to go and ask you that vision. In all these years and working in technology. I've never felt like I might be the weakest link inside the entire team.
Dr. Tim Thayne:And you say that? No, we don't think that. But
Eric:it's just to say that when we're when we're at trust that we have deep subject matter expertise in so many different areas, strong technology capabilities, huge vision, and all the skills and capabilities and perspective that we need to go out there and really make a huge impact on the world. That makes me really excited.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Oh, it does. And that's why I'm giddy. I'm just smiling most of the time because of that. And you know that Homeward Bound, we have the opportunity to really work deeply with a very, very few families. So rewarding. In those cases, I even got a text from one of the families I worked with last at homeward bound. But what was always missing for me is how do we how do we help a bigger number of families, there's so much pain and need in the world. And there's so much opt opportunities when you know, these true principles that you've been talking about today, when they're facilitated, and, and we're a little behind in the mental health space. As far as technology and how we use it. I've always seen technology is like this, this thing that in most of the instances of people I've worked with have been has been very damaging to them. It's not been a help. And what I've always wanted to do is make this powerful, you know, thing out there, this technology that would counteract some of the effects, negative effects of other technology. So it's this interesting, interesting two sides to the coin that we have going. So Eric, as we end our podcast today, there's so many different things I think parents can take from this podcast. But I'd like you to think about what tools we're going to be bringing. And maybe think of just one thing you're excited to bring to families through trusty.
Eric:One thing that I'm really excited to bring to every family that comes out of trustee is a sustainable way for parents to set expectations, and to have bidirectional accountability between them and the children. In our family. So many times we've set expectations for our children, whether those expertise are very high level, or sometimes even all the way down at the individual task level, like doing your chores, for example. And they've fallen apart. And sometimes I shouldn't say sometimes oftentimes, the reason that they fall apart is because of that bidirectional system of accountability that exists between parents and children, where the children have met their requirements or their expectations. But the parent has forgotten. Once a parent, I'm talking about me, I forgotten about the rewards and consequences that I told him that they would, that they would benefit from, or I forgotten to follow up with him on the things that I've asked him to do. And so I'm personally really excited about having a app in my pocket that has reminders and accountability, and documentation that helps us to be accountable inside the home. That's helping me to be accountable as a parent, but also helping my children to be accountable to the expectation that we set out for them. And you know what, Tim? When I go out and I think about all my friends, all my family, and all the strangers that I want that I come across a baseball games, Monday through Thursday, where I go with my kids, I really think that every family needs us. Every single family needs us. Every family that I know these have this, this this tool in their pocket, to help them to be better parents, and to help their children to grow and become more responsible, more well rounded, more accountable, young adults and ultimately productive members of society. That makes me really excited to energize for the future of trustee.
Dr. Tim Thayne:You So Eric, you are a very intentional person, you set goals, you break it down, you want to reach those goals. You're doing that in, in all aspects of your life. And to have someone like you say, it always falls apart. You know, it's it falls apart for lots of reasons, right? It's either I'm too tired as a parent or I'm forgetful or I get triggered emotionally. And, and, you know, heap up consequences that shouldn't have been there, or, you know, take things away I shouldn't have or whatever it is, there's so many ways that we, the system's break down, that coming from you, someone really, really intentional, tells me you're right, every family will benefit from the things that we're we're building right now. So it's very exciting. Well, parents, I just want to again, thank you again, for your time to be here on this podcast, I hope you will go to truste.com. That's TR U S tyy.com. And if you have an interest in being part of our beta tester group, and having early access to the app, go down there and take a quiz or give us your email and we'll send you this Google document quiz that will help us to gather the information, we need to make this as good as we can, you know, this next phase of people using it will, you know, I guess there's going to be our friends and family and people who care about us and care about the mission. And, and you're going to help us make it into this phenomenal tool that will bless the lives of many, many families after you. So if you have that in your heart, you want to do that. If you also just are really curious about it, want to be a part of it. Go to the website and sign up there. And we'll be in touch with you. Thanks again for your time today. And we wish you all the best this week as you are intentionally applying true principles values, you know, example inside your family. Parents, your time is valuable, and I'm grateful you spent some of it with us. What you're intentionally doing in your home life is inspiring and unmatched in its importance and long term effects. Ask yourself, What am I going to do because of what I've learned today?