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Ep 5: Revolutionizing Amazon Selling: Greg Mercer’s Jungle Scout Story

2024/4/11
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Tim Jordan reflects on the dilemma of choosing between expanding existing ventures or embarking on new service-oriented paths, a common challenge for entrepreneurs.

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After several attempts at business startups and entrepreneurism, I landed in this crazy world of e-commerce that seemed to be going well. And at some point I woke up and realized, hey, there's another opportunity. There's another possible path I can walk down that is servicing or providing a service for these other e-commerce brands.

and I hit an inflection point. What do I do? Do I continue to operate my brands and provide services? Do I launch full steam into the service side? Do I stop looking at these distractions and trying to run off another trail and stick with just what I'm good at and what I'm successful at?

I did not do this process well. I waffled and I wavered between a lot of different opportunities. I jumped around a lot. I lost focus on what I shouldn't have and probably missed some focus that I should have had on some other things which could have been even bigger.

Today, our guest is going to help us walk through his journey that was much more streamlined and maybe more efficient and maybe more logically thought out than my process was. He's an OG in the e-commerce space, but he's dabbled in a lot of things. Very successful guy. Those of you from the e-commerce world are going to know exactly who this is when we get started, and you're going to be shocked.

He's actually doing another podcast. He's been gone for a little while in the Mad Scientist Lab, as I like to say, getting some work done. But he's here to share some incredible value and insights with us today. Hope you love this episode. Here we go.

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Growth Gear Podcast. I'm your host Tim Jordan and today I'm going to start off by making a statement that is a little bit maybe complicated, a little bit controversial and one that I've heard for a few years now. The statement is something like, those that do, do and those that can't, teach.

And the premise of that question or that statement, I should say, is like attorneys that graduate law school and they pass the bar exam and they go immediately to teaching. There's this idea that they are less valuable as a teacher. They're less experienced because they never actually practiced law. Or maybe it just proves that they weren't going to be a good attorney anyways. Like there was something inherently wrong with their quality of work or their ability.

And in this entrepreneurial world that I've been wrapped up in for about the past decade, that statement gets tossed around a little bit, that question gets brought up. And I've had to ask myself that question many times, like, where do I land on this line? Because I've been a doer in the world of digital marketing e-commerce, and I've also been a supporter, a teacher, a supplier, a third-party service provider.

But I brought in someone much wiser and much more experienced than myself to help us kind of answer this question, which I think is important because most people listening to this podcast are probably specialists at something. They're entrepreneurial in nature. They're always looking for a way to improve their quality of life or their business. So those opportunities come up. So the guest today is an OG of Amazon e-commerce, the one, the only, the famous and the infamous Greg Mercer. So welcome to the podcast, Greg.

Tim, thanks so much for having me on. Love what you're doing with the podcast here. I'm excited to chat with you. So when I started my understanding e-commerce journey, sitting around the fire station and looking for that side hustle, there were a few folks in the industry that were putting out really good content and really changed my entire life trajectory by putting this content out to teach me how to do this. And Greg was one of those. And Greg was doing content specifically

specifically attached to this company called Jungle Scout. And for any of you that are in the Amazon world or have seen the Amazon e-commerce world, Jungle Scout is like a tried and true foundational name, foundational brand.

So, Greg, really quickly, just talk about maybe the genesis of Jungle Scout, why Jungle Scout was important to develop or how the idea even came about for Jungle Scout. And then we're going to start tackling these tough questions. I started selling on Amazon in 2010.

And over the course of a few years, I was able to build up a pretty successful private label business on Amazon. And back in 2010, a lot of listeners probably aren't familiar with the time, but it was a whole different world on Amazon. The majority of sellers were resellers, competing for the buy box on listings. And the concept of private labeling goods and

The major benefit of it was creating like your own SKU and your own listing. It didn't really exist or it was like very much in its infancy stages before Amazon had private labels and things like that. And

I realized that if I understood how well different products on Amazon were selling, then I could approach the problem much differently than what most of the people were doing. So most of the people at the time, if they weren't competing for the buy box, they had a brick and mortar store that already specialized in something like baby goods and all the stuff that they were selling were baby goods. And I approached it a little bit differently in that I was like, okay, if I understand how well products are selling and then understand how much competition there is,

I can really like get almost anything manufactured in China, create my own SKU and then start selling on Amazon like that. And a missing piece to that puzzle was to understand what was selling on Amazon. So I developed these really simple algorithms that...

inferred how well products were selling based off the bestseller rank. And that was kind of the core of what I was using. And it was in a bunch of spreadsheets and stuff. So long story short, you know, I started sharing this with some of my like fellow seller friends and things like that. And they were like, wow, the ability to understand how well products are selling on Amazon is really valuable. You should put this into like a software tool and start selling it.

So I was like, that sounds like a fun little side project. You know, it's probably not a business for me because I already have like a good successful business on Amazon here. But it sounds like something fun to do and like, you know, practice some of my programming chops a little bit. And that's ultimately kind of how Jungle Scout was born.

All right. So I'm making some notes here because you just said something that was interesting. One of the questions that I wanted to kind of dive into is the decision making matrix for where you spend your time. Because you just said, I was doing good. I was a successful Amazon seller, but I thought it'd be fun to do this other thing. And there was a need for this other thing, right? You were originally creating...

Um, data and creating a resource to increase your own sales and your own sales ability. But then you started having fun and rolling into this. And then at some point this inflection happened, right? Where your full-time, your priority changed from selling products to actually supporting sellers.

Do you remember a specific time when that kind of decision was made or did you just kind of get swept up in this other opportunity and woke up one day and realized, holy crap, I'm on the other side of the riverbank now? If I'm being just honest with myself and the listeners, I think when I got started, it was really all about like making money. So I didn't, you know, my family growing up, we didn't have like too much money. It was always kind of like something that I was concerned about, always concerned about whether or not

I was going to be able to like make enough to live a good life or have to like go back to an old day job that I had. So really when it got started, it was all about like making money and feeling confident that I wasn't going to have to go back to like a day job like I had prior to that. And then I think over time, as my Amazon business became more successful, I was like, okay, this is actually doing pretty well now. And like this scarcity mindset or like this mindset of being able to like

essentially like feed my family starts to like go away. And then all of a sudden I can have a little bit more of an abundance mindset of like, how would I like to be spending my time? What am I most excited to hop out of bed and work on every day and things like that. And I think that was really like the ultimate driver. So it was like,

Once I felt comfortable with the amount of money that I had and the money that I was making, then I could focus less on the money aspect and more about how do I really want to be spending my time and what brings me the most happiness there. So I have this idea that most entrepreneurs agree with you that we're in it to make money.

you know, our passion isn't necessarily selling a specific product or creating a specific service or building a specific business. Like that business may become our passion, but the passion is probably an underlying thing like creating more freedom, creating more flexibility, helping others. Like there's kind of an underlying, a core value that's driving that. So if that is true,

then new opportunities may be better than our existing opportunities. And I see that all the time, especially in the e-commerce space. You see someone that really struggles with brand development and logistics, but they are exceptional at PPC and paid ads. So they run down that trail and, you know, start a big agency, right? So assuming that, you know, that we agree here, that listeners agree that most entrepreneurs are just looking for an opportunity,

And assuming that the statement is accurate when I say we might find other opportunities or maybe specialties or things like that, what would you suggest would be one of the first steps or maybe one of the first, I don't know, kind of thought processes or structures to logic

For people that are trying to decide, hey, which path should I go down? Because you've been there. Like you had to start making that decision at one time. Like what is a solid piece of advice you'd give to people that are currently in that position where they have multiple paths that they could pursue?

If you had enough money today to not like no longer worry about it, like you go out to eat and you don't look at the right hand side of the menu and, um, you know, maybe it's not live your whole life, but like, you're like pretty comfortably set on, um, like with the income streams or the investments that you have or things like that. And you could do anything you wanted with your days. So it's like, if you were start tomorrow and you could just do anything you want, how would you spend your days?

And I think I've really used that as kind of like the guiding principle of what I want to do for work, because it's like that's how I would want to spend my days, even if I wasn't working for money. So for me.

I really love building. That's ultimately like where my core passion is, like getting to like build stuff, making something really great and sharing that with others. So this usually involves like teams, but it usually also involves me being with like the R&D and like, you know, like doing the innovation, being on kind of the cutting edge of like what's cool and tech and things like that.

If I like wasn't to like, I'm using quotes, work another day in my life, those are the types of things that I would want to be doing, like building really awesome stuff. So for me, that's like the framework that I use of how I want to spend my days because I know that's ultimately like what brings me the most happiness. So that's what I'd encourage to others. It's like,

If money wasn't a part of it, how would you want to spend your days? And then try to align that with something that, you know, is also like a fundamental good business for you. I love the idea of doing what you love, following your passion, all that stuff. But at the very end, you said something and you said something like, if that's a good business, if that makes sense. And I've talked to a lot of people about the difference between a job and a business and a hobby.

Right. I have a lot of hobbies that would make terrible businesses. I like I would be completely broke or maybe they wouldn't be hobbies anymore because I'd be completely burned out. And I've heard people say that a job or your business or your income is the means to your hobby. Right. So I agree with those statements. I also agree with what you're saying. And at some point we've got to make that decision. Like, is this functionally going to work for me and my family, you know, income wise?

So a lot of times I see people start out with these side hustles or with these businesses or with these startups as a secondary thing. Maybe they're working a corporate job and they're running a business on the side, right? So going back to the statement you made about it has to fundamentally be a good business. At what point did you decide that, hey, this software thing is a good business and I can pursue my passion, but also create stability for myself, my family, my employees? I went to school to be a civil engineer.

And I think in the early days, I always baselined it off of like, was I making, could I make more money doing the entrepreneurial thing or working as a civil engineer, which was like a fairly low bar. So I think that's like the, that was like the, the milestone that I used for it. But what's pretty interesting if like we go back to the genesis of jungle scout, like for the first three or four years, I was, I'd say like.

You know, like year one of Jungle Scout, I focused like 80% of my time on my Amazon business and 20% of the time on Jungle Scout. And then year two, maybe it was like 70, 30 and then 50, 50. So it actually took me like a few years to kind of go all in on Jungle Scout. And really for the first probably three, four, maybe even five years.

That what I wasn't making more money from Jungle Scout as I was my Amazon business. It was still making me more money than what like this new thing was. But I was working more and more on Jungle Scout because it brought me more happiness there. So I think for everyone, it's a little bit different. But I don't know, I guess the way that I view it is ultimately life's pretty short. And I think it's too short to be spending your days doing something that like you're not excited to get out of bed and work on.

So at what point would you suggest that people...

take seriously this other skill or this other opportunity they have. Because we as entrepreneurs, we tie ourselves into our business. We're emotionally connected, right? We're proving that this is going to work to ourselves, to other people. We're just invested. And sometimes these other opportunities present themselves that might be bigger and better and maybe easier opportunities for us to succeed. But we have to have a balance. We can't just run down every trail that we want to run down immediately. We have to flush things out.

On the other hand, we can't get too distracted by all of these opportunities and try to dabble in too many teapots, so to speak, because then we're not going to be focusing on one. So tell me how you would suggest people look for the next opportunity or maybe identify the next opportunity they should be taking more seriously and maybe make it worth pulling away just a little bit from their primary thing, whether that's their job, whether that's their other business, whatever it is.

It's important, I think, for everyone to understand that all business is hard. They're all going to be challenging. And usually businesses are easiest, are appear easiest before you get deep into them. So it's like your idea of what it's going to be like or the perceived challenges with it, I guarantee you're less than the reality. In reality, it's probably going to be a lot harder than what you're thinking. So I think it's important to just know that and understand that.

And then, so it's like, okay, if all of these opportunities or areas of interest or shiny things are all going to be really difficult, then I think that's when it goes back to like, what do you have the most passion for? And what are you going to be able to like withstand the most pain around and most challenge? Because all of them are going to be difficult. So if it's something that's like, man, I don't really, like, I don't love doing this. I just think that it's like going to make me quite a bit of money.

I probably wouldn't pursue that one. I'd probably go after one that it's like, okay, even if I know that this is going to be really, really hard, is it something that I still want to work on? So that's at least how I kind of think about it and how I'd recommend it. I think it's good advice. And I love what you said that nothing's easy.

You know, I have friends that have, um, quote unquote, normal jobs. I say, oh, it must be great to be a business owner. I'm like, man, you have no idea. Like it's 60, 70 hours a week minimum. You never get a break. You're on vacation and never on vacation. Like it's tough. So I like that advice. Like make sure that the fight is worth fighting because you're going to be in the trenches regardless of what opportunity or what business this is.

And other people's businesses always seem like easier than what they really are. So you'll see like another company and say, oh man, they've been so successful with whatever they're doing. And they always appear easier from like a bystander than what they do if you're actually doing it. So just like, I mean, that's like the...

The thing about capitalism is anything that like the margins are too high or that it is too easy, it's going to attract a lot of competition. It's going to make that more difficult. And it's like, yeah, at the end of the day, all these businesses are going to be hard and they're all going to be a grind. And then you got to be willing to like put that in. Yeah. So going back to my kind of opening statement, that whole thing about being a miner versus selling the shovels.

Do you think that in, let's stay specifically e-commerce or digital marketing, do you think that either being a brand owner or seller or being someone supporting that business, being a service provider, that one or the other is inherently better? Like, do you think that one holds the trophy for being the better business option if we could simply compartmentalize and separate those out?

I don't necessarily think so. And I mean, I think like let's just zoom out and look at the big picture real quick. Let's just think about like, you know, agencies that are there to support e-commerce software tool providers that are there to support e-commerce or like brand owners. I don't think that any of those one groups have had significantly more success than what any of the others have done.

If you use the analogy of supplying the shovels versus digging for the gold, it's like, oh, you want to be a shovel provider. But if we just zoom out and think about it, I've been doing this in Amazon now for almost 15 years. I know just as many brand owners that have had lots of success as I know the software providers, as I know the agencies. So if we just think about it from, at the end of the day, real life,

Has one of those three, I know that's kind of oversimplifying just having those three buckets, but have one of those three been way more successful than the other? Not really. Especially on the agency side or on the software side, there's a lot more failures than are publicly viewable. Failures meaning somebody tried to launch something and it never got off the ground. There's a ton of those as well. So I guess you're answering the question by saying...

that the data point, the metric is like, which one's been more successful. I would almost say that there's been a lot more success stories from the brand development side or the seller side, especially in the Amazon world, especially during the world of aggregators, right? Because we know a handful of people that exited a software company and, you know, or an agency. And yeah, it may have been big money, but we know hundreds or thousands of people that exited brands. Yeah, that's true. There's 2,500 people

apps in the Amazon app store right now. So these are like software tools that help sellers. Yeah. And in the Shopify side, I think there's 10,000.

10,000. Yeah. And there's probably been just as many or more that have like failed and are no longer in there. So, you know, between Amazon, Shopify, let's call it like what, 20, 30,000 or something like that, that have been created. Yeah. And you can probably count on two hands how many of those have turned into like really meaningful companies.

I guess the thing with the software is they usually probably like turn into something pretty meaningful or kind of like fizzle out and like go away and there's not much of the in-between. Whereas the brand owners, I think that's like a great example because there's probably a lot more kind of like levels of the in-between. There's like tons and tons of people that have had a million dollar exit or a five or a $10 million exit or things like that.

So you've made this transition. I believe you're still selling products. You still have brands that you sell, but your primary gig, the primary focus is on your software company, Jungle Scout.

If you look back to the time when you were trying to make this decision or you had made the decision, you were kind of transitioning most of your focus into building up a team, building up Jungle Scout. What is one or two or maybe three of the mistakes that you made that you maybe wish you could go back and have done differently during that period of your life? The biggest mistake or if I were to do it all over again, the biggest thing that I would have done differently is

is had more focus on a smaller niche of like what I wanted Jungle Scout to be best in the world at. So we think about Jungle Scouts about 10 years old now.

in the very early days started with like this amazon market intelligence type focus and that picked up quite a bit of traction pretty quickly and i think i felt like oh anything i touch turns to gold now this is all easy so we tried to um start a couple other like little small projects that were like other software tools that didn't do as well we tried to acquire one that one didn't do as well and i think like if i were to do it all over again it would have been not

to try to like expand out to do so much so quickly and instead stayed like more focused on what we were doing best which was like this like Amazon competitive and market intelligence type insight so that's like one piece of advice I would give myself if I were to rewind and do it all over again I think the other one is has to do a lot with like the team building and

Scaling up a company from being a sole entrepreneur to hundreds of employees is really, really hard and really, really challenging. And one of the things that's inherently difficult about it is there's different skill sets of people that are better for different stages of a company. And I think this is something that I didn't really fundamentally recommend or, excuse

There were like some hires that we made that were kind of like too big company of type of people too early that didn't do very well because they weren't as like familiar or good with like a very dynamic environment where they have to wear lots of hats. And then like the vice versa is true as well, that there were some people that we probably hung on to too long that were like really good at being just like very scrappy and like making things happen. But

but then didn't do very well as the company grew. So I think that's another, that's definitely a piece of advice I give myself if I do it all over again, is like understand that different people with different skill sets are great at different stages of the company and make sure that you have the right people on the bus for the stage that your company's at.

So when you say don't hire big company people too soon, are you talking about the bandwidth to support someone that can drive at that speed or maybe the overall cost associated with those people in a scrappy startup? Because on the other side, I think that you need to, or I'm learning slowly that you should hire slow and fire fast, like get the right people in there. And having the right people in a position makes all the difference in the world.

So, you know, why, why do you say don't hire big company people too fast? I was actually thinking about it less around the cost of them, but more around if you hire more like seasoned executives that are used to managing larger teams. So it's like managing managers who all have teams, that kind of thing. They, yeah.

That's naturally what they're going to want to do is hire a bunch of people in order to get work done. And like when you're at those early stages, one, it probably doesn't financially make sense for them to be managing large teams. But two, you really need people that can like roll up their sleeves and get in it and like work on stuff.

are good at solving those problems on their own, as opposed to only really have this mindset if you have to hire people to solve problems. So I think that is like ultimately what it is.

Great advice. And obviously from someone who's been there and done that successfully. So let me, let me migrate the conversation back a little bit towards our topic. I know we're getting off on some trails, which is really, really good here, but back to the decision-making process for, you know, becoming a service provider, jumping into different business opportunity or whatever it is. You made the comment or you explained that it was a little easier for you to follow what

what your passion was, which was building Jungle Scout, because you had alleviated some of that financial stress, right? You'd given yourself a cushion. You had some business or some business success. There are a lot of people that can't say the same. A lot of people that aren't making money or they're super stressed out or they're like, you know, hanging on by a thread financially. And they might be thinking that if they snip that thread, they're toast.

But they also can't afford not to snip that thread because there might be this other thing that's going to be a lot better for them. So what would be your advice? Would your advice change for people that are in that less cushy, less stable position?

And while you're thinking about it, for context, those of you listening, that was my position. I was working as a firefighter, a blue collar firefighter, and I had amazing retirement. I had amazing health insurance for the family. I was making, I don't know, $55,000 a year, which where I live in Alabama, you can live fairly comfortably that way. So it wasn't what I wanted to be making. I wasn't doing awesome. And my side businesses, my Amazon businesses, those things

I knew weren't going to do exceptionally well until I could cut that string, until I could spend all of my time and focus and energy on this e-commerce thing. So I was in a little bit of that position where I was living moderately comfortably, but I knew that to walk down that path of true entrepreneurism and potential success, I had to cut that string, which is a little bit tough. So Greg, hopefully you come up with a good answer. I was talking.

Earlier when we were speaking, I was talking about making kind of like the transition from being a brand owner to running the software company. But actually, if we rewind prior to that, I was in a similar situation as you. I went to school to be a civil engineer. I got a job doing that. I worked for doing that for a few years. And while I was doing that, that's when I started my Amazon business.

And when I quit my job as a civil engineer, I think my Amazon business was making like a little bit less than what I was getting paid as a civil engineer, but it was still like enough money to live on. So I think for me that that was how like that transition happened was it's like, okay, this is my side hustle. My Amazon business is now making enough money for me to live off of, even though it was only like $30,000 a year or something like that. Yeah.

For me, that was enough to live off of. And then that's what gave me the comfort of like quitting my day job so I could focus on it full time. So it's a little bit of the same story as you, Tim. I think that would be my advice to most people is like grind it out as a side hustle until, you know, it's producing enough income that you can focus on it full time. If I think that

I was working like really, really hard because I had this day job of like roughly nine to five, but then pretty much from like 5.30, this is pre-kids thankfully, from like 5.30 at night to like two or 3 a.m. I'd do this every single night after work and then all weekend long, I was working on my Amazon business. And like, that's what it took for me to get it to the point where

it was generating enough money to live off of, which then let me focus on it full time. But like that same hard work ethic lasts for like a really, really long time of like pretty crazy hours. So I think my advice is like, is to try to go some route like that and understand that it is a big grind and you're going to have to work really hard at it. But I think

You'll look back on it. It'll all be worth it. So I'd like to get your opinion from a different perspective. Let's say that somebody's listening to this podcast and they want to start a business or want to expand a business or something. And that business does facilitate somebody else, right? So they're thinking, hey, I should run a logistics company for other businesses. I should...

Have a digital marketing agency to run Facebook advertising for e-commerce brands. That whole comment about, you know, those that do do those that can't teach is is leading me to this idea, if that were true, which I'm not saying it is leading this idea that there is a ton of value in people that have actually done the thing that they want to support.

So if any of our listeners are thinking about a business that requires supporting a different industry or a different subset of people, would you suggest that it is very important that they at least dabble in the thing that they're going to support to be a good supporter? Or do you think that it doesn't matter so much? And as long as they hyper focus on creating that solution and creating that service that they don't necessarily have to do the thing that they're supporting.

It is absolutely recommended to do the thing before you try to support the thing. I strongly recommend that. And I think if we think about

my experience, but also just a lot of other people kind of like in the industry, whether they're providing, you know, consulting services or tools or things like that, really all of the most successful ones have been created by people that were first doing that thing, got really good at what they were doing, like doing it for themselves and then started to help other people to do it. So yeah, if you're listening to this and it's like,

Hmm. Should I become like a creative agency that helps brand owners? Even though I haven't done it before, I would recommend learning by doing it for yourself first. And of course that applies mostly to these small entrepreneurial businesses. You know, if you're a engineer at Caterpillar making bulldozers, it doesn't mean that you need to go build roads for five years before you continue engineering for bulldozers. Not saying that by any means, but for these smaller businesses and

Kind of like the startup entrepreneurial culture, I think there's definitely value. And there are other ways to finagle that. I'll use Carbon City as an example. We have leadership and executives that don't come from the e-commerce world, but we augmented by having a lot of e-commerce experts in leadership roles in the company. But...

those other leaders that may not have come from the e-commerce world did come from the SaaS world. So like at Carbon 6, we're a software company as well. So we've got a mixture of people with experience that is super valuable because they have done it, right? So I think that maybe those of you that are listening that are thinking, man, I don't know that I can run a brand, but I am really good at operations and I'm really good at building a team and I know I can build a better mousetrap of a digital marketing agency. Maybe the answer is you partner with somebody.

You partner with someone who was a brand owner or is a successful brand owner that you can pair with. That way, even if it's not you specifically, at least the leadership skill set includes actually doing the thing that you want to support. So just pulling that out of my butt here, but maybe that's a good suggestion too. Something we do at Jungle Scout that's been really successful is...

So once per quarter, we get together a cohort of five to eight employees. They go to, these are employees that don't have experience selling on Amazon. So a lot of times like our engineers or people like that, you know, they have, um,

technical backgrounds, not involved with Amazon. So the group of people will actually like find a product, launch a product on Amazon and then sell it for usually like at least the rest of the year. But some of them have been successful and sell it like forever. So that's a way that we've

Kind of similar to your example, but a way that we've helped like our team members who have skills that are really important to us, but don't necessarily have these like industry expertise to like help them get to know it and understand it. And like the employees love it. And I think it's also like a really great thing for the company. And it also is, I think the saying is like eat your own dog food is really beneficial for like everyone at the company to be using Jungle Scout. Yeah.

That's a, you know, that eat your own dog food line. I heard that for the first time yesterday.

I've never heard that. And it was in the context of some sales and element training that we're doing at Carbon 6, which involves all of our new staff getting involved in Amazon stores. So weird that you said that the day before we recorded this. I've heard it for the first time. All right. So you've given us kind of a lot to chew on, and I appreciate that. Like I said before, you've gone through this path. You've walked down or you've gone through this journey, walked down this path. You've kind of been there, done that.

It sounds like on a few transitions, you know, leaving engineering, jumping into e-commerce, kind of migrating from e-commerce and to adopting this like service provider role. So thank you so much for sharing that with us. Do you have any last words of wisdom before we kind of start wrapping this up specifically for the people that, you know,

probably have multiple good options, you know, kind of like you, or you had a good option. You could have kept going down the, the e-comm brand development route. You've got this great option to get into service provider space. And I know that your answer can be like, follow the one you love, but beyond that, are there any tactical pieces of advice you could give specifically related to leaving something good, right? Because you didn't know if you could pull off the software thing, but you kind of had this cushy gig where you're making money selling e-comm, uh,

Um, what would be one or two pieces of advice for people that are stuck in that kind of position where everything looks pretty rosy and even sitting where they're at feels kind of cushy, but they're going to have to like crap or get off the pot. Besides the following, the one you're passionate about, I would probably take a hard look in the mirror and ask yourself, like, can, am I confident I could be the best provider in the world at this?

Because pretty much no matter what you do, if you're the best at the world at doing that, chances are you're going to be pretty successful with it. Even if you don't have all the business model worked out upfront and things like that. But it's like, if you are passionate about it and you're confident that you could be the best in the world at it, chances are you're going to be very successful and be happy with what you're doing.

Makes sense. Well, thank you for being on the podcast. I know that you're still putting out a lot of content about entrepreneurs and e-commerce. I think that you said the best place to do that is go check out the blog on junglescout.com and maybe your LinkedIn profile. Tell me if I'm wrong there. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think those are right. Our YouTube channel is also good for Jungle Scout.

I'm personally still involved with creating the content. Some of the things that I'm personally really passionate about right now is we do a lot of like very heavy data driven type like case studies and white papers. At Jungle Scout, we have like tons and tons of visibility into what's happening on Amazon, like one out of 10 Amazon transactions flow through our system. So it gives us tons of visibility into what's happening.

And I'm a very like data driven type of person. So I take a lot of pride in like our like really deep technical, like data driven type case studies about what's working and what's not and what the trends are and stuff like that. So there's always new ones being published on our website, but you can always find those if you go to Jungle Scout and check out our blog. Awesome. Well, thanks for being on. I know that you've been kind of in the mad scientist lab for a couple years, not doing a ton of content, not making a lot of appearances. So I

I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience and wisdom on this platform. For those of you that are listening, please make sure to leave us a review on our podcast platform you're listening to. Make sure to share this with whatever mastermind or communities or Facebook groups you're part of if you found value in it.

and make sure that not only you subscribe to the primary podcast platforms, I think we're on like all of them, but also the YouTube channel. If you subscribe on YouTube, then you'll get access to the YouTube shorts and the short clips that we do, which might be easier to ingest as you're going throughout your busy day. Again, thank you all for being on. Appreciate you being here, especially to the end. And we'll see all of you on the next episode.