Omer (00:12.640)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
This Week's episode is a story about a guy who was working as a civil engineer but wanted to become an entrepreneur.
But he didn't have a business idea and no business experience.
One day he heard about people who were selling products on Amazon and he decided that he was going to do the same.
Over the next year or so, he built a decent business as an Amazon seller, but he realized that he was wasting a lot of time doing research on what type of new products to sell on Amazon.
So he hired a developer to build a Chrome extension for him.
He figured that this would save him some time, and if he was lucky, he might be able to sell it to a few other Amazon sellers.
A few weeks later, he built a one page WordPress website with a PayPal button and he had his sale within the first month.
He had a modest goal of making one or two sales a day.
Today, he's running a multimillion dollar SaaS business and it's taken him about three years from the day he first had the idea for the Chrome extension.
He wasn't technical and he didn't have business experience, but he knew the value of starting small and making daily progress.
It's a great story which I hope will inspire you and there are some great lessons that you may be able to apply yourself.
So I hope you enjoy it.
Today's guest is the founder and CEO of Jungle Scout, a product that helps sellers on Amazon to research and find profitable product ideas and market niches.
My guest launched jungle Scout in 2015 as a tool to help him find product ideas to sell on Amazon.
With just $1,000 and no coding skills, he's grown it into a business doing multiple seven figures in annual revenue and a fully remote team of over 35 people.
He and his wife Elizabeth quit their corporate jobs once the business took off and sold their home.
And today they live in different AirBnBs around the world and manage the business from anywhere and everywhere in the world.
So today I'd like to welcome Greg Mercer.
Greg, welcome to the show.
Greg Mercer (02:49.690)
Omer.
Thank you very much for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
I know we're going to talk about a lot of good stuff for the next hour or so, so I was
Omer (02:56.490)
kind of like, you know, thinking you were going to be in some remote, exotic location.
Greg Mercer (03:00.450)
But sorry to let you down.
If it makes you feel better, on Saturday, I'm headed to Mexico for a little warmer weather.
Omer (03:06.650)
All right, sweet.
But, yeah, so I'm in seatt Seattle, and you're in Vancouver, so we're probably about, like two and a half hour drive from each other.
Greg Mercer (03:15.110)
Yeah, exactly.
Omer (03:16.630)
Cool.
Okay, so let's start by kind of just talking about you a little bit and kind of, you know, what gets you out of bed.
So do you have a favorite quote that you can maybe share with us?
Greg Mercer (03:26.710)
Yeah.
A quote I had written on my wall for a long time was, you don't have to be great at something to start, but you do have to start to be great at something.
And I feel like I can relate to this.
And I'm a pretty big fan of this quote because I'm like, a huge fan of just, like, getting started as well as kind of like always stepping outside your comfort zone to, like, try new things.
And, you know, I was always.
I would always be worried.
Like, for example, like, the first time I got on a podcast.
Right.
I was, like, worried about how I would sound and if I would know how to answer these questions on the fly and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But after you do it a certain amount of times, you know, you get much better at it, so.
And that's kind of just true with everything in life.
Omer (04:08.640)
Yeah.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah.
I feel the same way about podcasts as well.
Greg Mercer (04:12.480)
Yeah.
Omer (04:13.200)
It's like when I did my first one, it's like I remember I 1st 10 or God knows how many.
Like, I was spending more time.
I kind of, you know, thinking about what questions I was going to ask next, then really thinking about what people were telling me and.
Greg Mercer (04:30.880)
Right.
Omer (04:31.200)
You know, it's just.
It's just part of the process.
And then, you know, I hope now it sort of got to a point where it feels just much more just like having a conversation and you can kind of let things flow.
But yeah, it's like the quote.
Do you know who.
Who.
Where that quote came from?
Greg Mercer (04:46.790)
It was from, like, his name is Zig Ziglar.
He was like an author, I think mostly of, like, sales books and stuff.
So I'm not necessarily, like, I guess, a huge fan of his books.
I don't think I've even read any.
But, yeah, I had that quote up for a while.
Omer (04:58.870)
Okay, cool.
All right.
So I gave the audience a little overview of Jungle Scout.
But it'd be great if, in your own words, you can tell us a little bit more about it.
Like, who Are your target customers and what does the product do?
What problem is it solving?
Greg Mercer (05:16.290)
Yeah, absolutely.
So Jungle Scout is a product research and market intelligence tool specifically for Amazon sellers.
So if you're an Amazon seller, or maybe you're an aspiring Amazon seller, you probably would like to know what types of products you should sell on Amazon because, you know, like, which ones are in high demand, which ones have low competition, which ones have good margins, what niches it would be easy for me to enter to make money off these.
So that's exactly what Jungle Scout tells you.
So we've collected a whole bunch of data, we have some like in house algorithms as well as just like a number of other things to kind of figure out these different metrics.
So, yeah, the tool makes it very easy for Amazon sellers to locate profitable opportunities for them.
Omer (06:00.880)
And you, I said you started this as a tool to help you find a product to sell on Amazon.
So how did you get into that?
Firstly, like, why did you decide that you wanted to start selling products on Amazon?
Greg Mercer (06:20.320)
Yeah, so if we rewind to just a few years ago, not that long ago.
Well, we can rewind to like, I went to college to be a civil engineer.
I graduated, you know, like the typical American path that all the kids want, all the parents want for their kids, went to college, got my real job working as a civil engineer.
And I didn't like it at all.
You know, my whole life had like this strong entrepreneurial spirit and I wanted to do my own thing.
So I think like one day I started just by like Googling, like how to make money online.
And I, you know, after a few, I don't know, I probably spent way too much money on like scammy courses or whatever else.
I don't know.
But I found out about selling products on Amazon and within a relatively short amount of time, like a year or so, I was able to sell enough stuff on Amazon and create this Amazon business that replaced my income as a civil engineer.
And that's at what point my wife and I both quit our corporate jobs, this was just three years ago, and decided to start traveling full time.
We really wanted to travel.
I could run this Amazon business remotely.
So, yeah, that's how I kind of like got started and got out of the corporate world.
So I was selling these products through Amazon fba.
So anyone not familiar with that, Amazon stores the products for you.
They pick, pack and ship it.
They handle a lot of the customer support.
So it's really like hands off.
It's not like the old ebay days where you're like packing boxes yourself, right?
So what I realized is like, okay, to scale these businesses up, these FBA businesses.
Since Amazon handles the warehouse and the pick pack and ship and the customer support and they, you know, they already have all the traffic to your site.
All you really have to do is just find, you know, a product that sells well on Amazon, that you can make good money on on Amazon, create a listing, which is very easy to do with, even without much technical experience, and then sell it.
So then it's like, okay, well now my biggest bottleneck in scaling up my business was just finding those oppo, those good opportunities for me to sell.
And yeah, if we fast forward, that's how Jungle Scout was born.
So, like, I had all these ideas, I was doing all this stuff manually.
I had all these spreadsheets and like, VAs helping me and all that kind of jazz.
And I was like, there has to be an easier way.
So then that's when I was like, okay, well, maybe I could hire a developer to kind of automate a lot of this for me.
And at the time it was just, it was very much like a side project for me.
It's like, well, I doubt anybody would even want to buy this thing.
But you know, even if they don't, like, I'm only going to invest like a thousand bucks in it.
And even if, even if no one else wants it, it's still going to be a valuable tool for me to use in my business.
You know, I'll learn something when I, you know, when I do this.
So it's like, what's the worst that would happen?
And then fast forward right now it's like two and a half years after we launched that product.
It's, yeah, successful company, 35 ish people working there.
Now we have over 100,000 customers, which is a pretty incredible milestone to hit.
Yeah.
Omer (09:09.870)
And you haven't taken any external funding, right?
Greg Mercer (09:13.480)
That's correct.
No external funding.
It's totally self funded.
I literally started with that thousand dollars and never had to invest any more money out of my bank account after that.
That was enough to get to build the Chrome extension.
And then after that it was just all reinvesting sales from our products back into the company.
Omer (09:29.080)
All right, so let's talk about that Chrome extension, because that was the first version of the product, right, Of Jungle Scout was you hired a developer to build this extension for you.
Greg Mercer (09:39.690)
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And looking back, like, I wish I could tell you, like, at the time, this was like part of my Master plan.
I was like this super genius.
But that wasn't true at all really.
I just totally lucked out on this.
And looking back though, it was like, it was a major reason of, you know, of where we're at today.
So looking back, I just wanted to build this chrome extension that essentially would automatically fill in these spreadsheets for me.
So I had these spreadsheets with like all these columns and this was like all the information that I needed to know whether to know whether or not this was going to be a good niche for me to enter.
And I had VAs, you know, like filling out these spreadsheets so it would take them like, I would give them like a potential like niche.
So I'd say like, oh, check to see if like stainless steel tumblers are good.
So then they would look at it and they would fill out this spreadsheet with all this information that I needed to know.
So it would take them like an hour to fill out one of these spreadsheets for like one potential niche.
So I was like, okay, like if I can just build like a chrome extension that like automatically, you know, like parses through this Amazon data and fills out this spreadsheet that would like, instead of taking, you know, instead of taking an hour for a VA to do that, I could just do that with like a click of the button.
So what it turns out is that was like a very simple tool to start out with.
That's why I was able to get it built for very inexpensively.
And some other things, like looking back, you know, if I were to take lessons from that.
So a, I started with an extremely simple tool that, you know, was, it provided valuable information for Amazon sellers, but it wasn't complex.
Right.
I sold it with just like a one time fee.
So it was a low barrier of entry.
And I was also able to collect all that cash up front as opposed, you know, like, yes, I do think like recurring revenue is the holy grail.
But when you're first getting started, I think a lot of people should be thinking about like, how can I collect as much cash from the customer upfront right now?
Because I need that right now to reinvest in my business.
Like, I would rather if I was, you know, if it was my first six months in business, I would rather collect, let's say a hundred bucks or 200 bucks from a customer today than be charging them $20 a month.
Because like I need cash today to, you know, invest in this product, this chrome extension.
Omer (11:49.660)
Tell me a little bit about what it was Doing?
I mean, this wasn't a.
You weren't trying to hook up to Amazon's APIs or anything like that.
Right.
Was this just basically going to Amazon and like scraping data off the site?
Greg Mercer (12:07.550)
Yeah, more or less.
So if I'm gonna try to describe this only though we can make sense of it just through audio.
So if you could imagine you'll be on an Amazon search page, we'll say, I searched marshmallow sticks.
There's like whatever, 20 products on that search page.
Then if you click the button for the Chrome extension, you then see a pop up on that page and on that pop up those 20 marshmallow stick listings will be listed.
It will tell me like the number of reviews the best sellers rank.
A really important piece of data that we determined in house, and this was like a large part of our success was the number of monthly sales for that product.
So we could estimate how many units all those listings were selling every month.
And then just some other pieces of information, like how good are the listings, number of reviews, whatever else.
So these are like a few pieces of information in it still.
Still today.
It looks kind of like a spreadsheet, right?
Like there's rows and columns and all this pieces of all these pieces of data in there.
Omer (13:09.530)
Okay, so, so my point was it was like, it was, it was a fairly, a very simple tool.
You weren't trying to do anything overly complicated and trying to access a whole bunch of data through Amazon's back end or something like that.
It was as simple as being able to search for a specific product or product type and get back a search results page and then scrape the data from there and put it in some kind of spreadsheet.
Greg Mercer (13:39.480)
Yeah, that's it.
Omer (13:40.680)
And so how much did you charge for that?
Greg Mercer (13:42.680)
I think starting out I charged like 70 bucks.
And then, you know, over the years, as we continue to improve it now, there's like two tiers.
One's a hundred bucks and one's 200 bucks.
So we still sell the Chrome extension and yeah, all our customers still love the Chrome Extension.
It doesn't today resemble anything of what it.
Or it slightly resembles it, but it's much different.
You know, a lot more features, all that kind of stuff, but it's the same, it's still a Chrome extension.
Omer (14:05.350)
And how are you selling it?
In the early days, like what did you, you know, did you, did you put it up in a store somewhere or just add a PayPal button or what was the mechanism for selling it?
Greg Mercer (14:19.200)
Yeah, so keep in mind I had Pretty like, I think I had built like, one WordPress site in my life because I was like, at one point I wanted to have, like, a niche site about whatever and put up some content.
I don't know.
So, like, I had pretty much, like, no technical experience here.
So all I did was I built like a WordPress site.
It was literally one page and it had like a little screen share.
That was terrible.
You can pull this up on Internet archives if you want, but it's pretty embarrassing.
It just, I think maybe had like a screen share video.
It had like, some of the features and there was just like one PayPal link at the button at the bottom.
And just like when you paid that 60 or 70 bucks or whatever it was, I think it was $67.
Then, you know, you went through the PayPal checkout and, like, on the confirmation page, there was just a link to download it.
And, like, that's all there was at day one.
Omer (15:05.050)
Oh, wow.
Greg Mercer (15:05.930)
So we're talking, like, very simple, because keep in mind, like, this wasn't like, at the time, like a real business to me.
This was like, kind of like a side project.
I was pretty sure no one was going to buy this thing.
So, like, what.
What's the point of trying to build some complex membership system or whatever else, right?
Omer (15:19.380)
Yeah, yeah.
And so you talked earlier about this concept of, like, you know, starting small and, you know, getting started and that whole idea.
How long did it take from the point where you decided you wanted to have this Chrome extension built to the point where that page was up and running and somebody could click that PayPal link or button and buy this product?
Greg Mercer (15:47.750)
Yeah, it was very quick.
This was probably within, like, three or four weeks from me like, coming up with, like, the spec sheet of what all it should do, like hiring a developer while he was building it.
I was building this WordPress site and setting up my PayPal account and all that stuff.
And, like, three or four weeks was from, like, the conception of the idea to, like, the first sale.
Omer (16:08.560)
And how did you get your first customer?
Greg Mercer (16:12.320)
All right, so I was already an Amazon seller and I was, like, pretty active in a number of Facebook groups for Amazon sellers.
So I was always there providing content.
A lot of people kind of probably recognize my name or face or whatever else, being just a helpful guy.
And once I had the first beta version from my developer, I record just like a two minute, just like, screen grab of me using this thing and showing everyone that it can estimate monthly sales for any product on Amazon.
That was really the key feature of It.
I put it up in this Facebook group and I was just like, hey, what do you guys think about this?
Would anyone be interested in this if I was to sell it?
And let's see.
At that point, I think I read the comments.
I was getting pretty good feedback in the comments.
That's when I was like, crap, I need to start collecting emails for this.
So at first I think I was just like, like, I think like pinging everyone who left a comment who, like, said something nice, being like, hey, what's your email?
Let you know when it's being released.
And then like later that day, I think builds like a one.
A really simple landing page that was just like, enter your email here if you want to be notified when I release this.
And just from like those, I think I was like one Facebook post in either two or three different groups.
I collected like 100 emails from it.
And then the day that I was ready to launch this thing, I emailed those hundred people and I got like 10 or 12 sales out of that.
So I was like, on that day, I was like, floating on cloud now.
Like, holy crap, people actually want to buy this thing.
I've almost made my money back from what I spent to build it.
Omer (17:45.450)
Wow, that's awesome.
Okay, you've got your first 10 to 12 sales.
And there's this obviously kind of has proven that there's some market demand and people want something like this.
What did you decide to do next?
Did you still keep thinking of it as sort of a side project or at what point did it become a real business opportunity for you?
Greg Mercer (18:14.990)
Good question.
I can't remember a certain day that I was like, holy crap, this is now a real business.
It was just kind of more of a slower evolution.
Keep in mind, at this point, I still had my Amazon FBA business.
I still have it today.
But, like, that was making good money for me, right?
So at the same time I was trying to think, like, okay, like, I need not to get too distracted about this because it's.
Yes, it's shown a little bit of potential, but I also have another business that it's a proven business plan.
I've gotten pretty good at selling stuff on Amazon, all this kind of stuff.
So, like, you know, I was like.
I think I was a little bit torn of, like, kind of what to spend my time on.
So my goal for the Chrome Extension was just to sell like one or two a day.
So I think probably like after like a month, I.
Well, first of all, like, the Chrome Extension was very buggy, so like the first 10 or 12 people, like, you know, a few of them couldn't even download it or something.
They were having these problems.
So I pretty much ended up like spending all the money from those first 10 or 12 sales, like paying the developer hourly to fix all this stuff that we figured out was wrong.
At that point I, I'm trying to think how like I got from there to kind of like a hundred customers.
I think maybe I post like a little bit more in the Facebook groups.
I like emailed that list of the hundred people a little bit more.
There was a few, a couple sales coming in that I just didn't know where from.
I guess like word of mouth.
And then my first kind of like bigger break was a kind of like an influencer in the space.
He got it and downloaded it and he was pretty impressed.
So he asked me to do like a little video for him to share with his audience.
At that point I got quite a few sales from that.
Like we're probably talking like maybe $5,000 worth of sales, which for me at the time was tremendous.
And that's when I was like, okay, like now I guess this is like a legitimate enough of an idea that maybe I should be spending like half my time on this or you know, more time than, you know, more than an hour a day that I had been.
Omer (20:10.920)
I know at some point you were doing a lot of marketing or kind of focusing on trying to cover a lot of marketing channels, whether it was, you know, having a blog or Facebook or whatever.
Can you tell me about that?
Because it, because from what I recall from the conversation that we had, that that didn't turn out to be a particularly successful strategy for you.
Greg Mercer (20:40.170)
Yeah, so remember, so I'm still like, at this point, I'm still a one man show.
You know, I've decided that this is like a good enough idea that maybe I spend half my time on Jungle Scout and half my time on the Amazon business.
So I had the developer helping me as far as like the, the marketing, the customer support, everything else that was like, it was just me, a one man show.
And at this point I was like, okay, like I'm willing to spend more time in this business.
How do I get more customers though?
I already blasted this Facebook group five times with this video.
This channel's dried up.
So at that point, again, I didn't have any experience with this.
I didn't know what I was doing.
So what do you do?
You turn to Google, how to get more customers for my product.
And if you were to do that.
There's tons and tons and tons of information and resources about it, right?
So one person saying, oh, you need to be doing Twitter ads.
Other person saying, no, Google AdWords, and no, you need to be creating blog posts and driving backlinks to them, or, no, you have to have a YouTube channel.
So I was like, I think this was when.
I think I was just, like, extremely overwhelmed of all these different channels.
And, like, I put up one blog post, but then, like, I didn't get any sales from that blog post.
I was like, oh, crap, maybe like, no, I should make, like, a few videos for my YouTube channel.
So then I made, like, two janky YouTube videos that didn't get any views.
And during that time, I was really, you know, so then, like, I tried some Facebook ads, but, like, I wasn't.
I didn't, like, devote the time to them that, like, they would really need or deserve in order to be successful.
So that was, like, looking back, a big mistake I made.
And, you know, one of the areas that went wrong, what was working for me at that time is like, that webinar, you know, that I did in front of that guy's audience.
So, you know, instead of trying all this other stuff, looking back, I should have just been contacting more influencers in the space or more people with a.
An, you know, an E Commerce or an Amazon audience and, you know, been saying, like, hey, like, let me provide some value to your group or let's work out an affiliate deal or something else, because that.
That's what was working with me.
So I guess, like, anyone listening to this, especially in the early days, it's like double, triple down on what's working.
Don't try to, you know, just do a poor job with all this other stuff.
Omer (22:57.690)
It can be an easy trap to fall into where you see all of these different marketing channels and you're like, okay, well, you know, Twitter sounds like a good place.
Let me do something here.
And YouTube sounds like it's working for a lot of people.
So let me put a video up there.
What I'm kind of interested in is for somebody who has that kind of mindset, which I think is great in terms of just get started or how have you learned to become more disciplined about when not to get started or when to stop quickly?
Greg Mercer (23:28.200)
Yeah, this is a difficult thing.
It's still something we probably struggle with, like at Jungle Scout today, even, like, with a bigger team and more resources and stuff.
So a great example is we just shot a number of videos to try, like, Snapchat ads, right?
It's like, we've never tried this before.
It's like, why did we decide to.
Why are we going to test out Snapchat ads when we have a bunch of channels that work really well?
And it's like, I guess the reason we're trying is, like, with the hope that, like, it works really well for really cheap.
But I guess there's nothing wrong, you know, with like, trying these other.
I don't know.
This is a really difficult question, actually, and this is probably something that I'm still not very good at, so I don't have all the answers to.
Omer (24:11.380)
Yeah, yeah, no, I totally get you because I think in the example you gave in terms of, you know, how to get more customers, and it's like, it's literally like facing like, okay, here are 100 different rabbit holes, and welcome to each one.
And, and, you know, get ready to consume your entire life trying to follow all of these different paths.
And it's a really kind of tough place to be.
And, But I think there's, there's kind of a certain level of testing you need to go through to figure out which channels are working.
And, and even though some of that, you know, having you, having tried some of those things may have slowed you down from being able to spend more time with what was working, which was the webinars, I think you probably had to go through that process to at least test those areas and see if there was some, some opportunity to get results.
And potentially, you know, maybe some of them may have worked if you had sort of, you know, spent more, more time on them.
But I think the, the, the kind of, the key takeaway for me was that, you know, you can test these different channels, but as soon as you find one where there are some signs of life, then that's the one that you probably need to kind of focus all your efforts on and sort of realize the full opportunities that exist there before you start looking at other areas.
You know, it's ultimately where you got to anyway.
Greg Mercer (25:43.710)
Right, Exactly.
So, yeah, I guess for anyone listening to this, you know, like, if you have discovered a channel or two that is working for you, if you are getting customers on that, you know, I think the advice would be like to double down on that for a while before you start trying to branch out to other channels.
Omer (25:58.830)
Now, the other question I had was, for somebody who didn't have any coding skills, did you have any challenges or problems with hiring a developer, finding the right developer, you know, kind of communicating exactly what you needed.
Did you have any of these issues sort of come up?
Greg Mercer (26:22.140)
Yeah, absolutely.
So before this project, before Jungle Scout, I did try one other, like, little software tool that I was just going to use myself.
And I'd say I learned a lot of good lessons from that that I was to kind of like, parlay that education into the creation of Jungle Scout.
But so let me tell you about the first one I did.
I made every mistake in the book.
So, all right, so as a developer, just trying to think like you're.
You're trying to turn someone's idea into lines of code that then can, you know, like, do what they're.
They're trying to get through with this idea.
So the more specifics and guidelines and specs and everything else that you can give them, you'll be better off.
So, like, in my first one, I literally just sent an email.
I thought it was like a thorough email because it was like, I don't know, pretty long of what I wanted this product to do.
And that was all the guidelines that I gave them.
And that was like a terrible first way to start.
So at least with this second one, with building the Jungle Scout Chrome extension, I at least, like, created this PDF.
I kind of drew out wireframe of what I wanted to look like with notes of where to get this information from and kind of how I wanted it to work overall.
And until you try to do your first software project, you don't realize how many specs and all the different things that you can really do with software.
Now that I'm in it, I realize, okay, what, what error messages do we give when they try to do that and you can't.
What does this tooltip say?
What's this behavior like on hover?
Like, all these types of things that, you know, the developers are thinking about.
So just like, the more specifics and guidance you can give them, the better, I'd say.
I think, like, thorough wireframes is like the bare minimum.
And just like every last little spec that you can think of is, you know best.
Omer (28:29.110)
Where did you find the developer that you hired for this Chrome extension?
Greg Mercer (28:35.030)
Yes, I found.
Actually found them on Elance, which is upwork now and again, my failed attempts.
Before that, I was trying to hire these people who were charging like $3 an hour, $5 an hour, $7 an hour, something like very inexpensive.
And from my experience, I'm sure there's outliers here.
But in general, all good developers charge a significant amount of money, even if they're living in one of the low cost regions of the world because it's a very high demand job right now.
It's very easy for them to get jobs.
So yeah, that's another kind of little piece of advice I would give.
Omer (29:13.340)
The Chrome Extension is taking off.
You go back to the webinars and finding influencers as a way to, to reach new customers and that's helping to drive sales.
At what point did Jungle Scout evolve from just a Chrome extension to also a web or SaaS application?
Greg Mercer (29:38.020)
Yeah, so I think after I've been selling the extension for about six months at this point it was making a little money.
So, you know, Jungle Scout had a little money in the bank account and I was trying to like think about the future, like how am I going to continue to scale this?
And one, I would like recurring revenue.
Everyone always talks about how great that is and it sounded pretty nice to me as well.
So I really wanted something with recurring revenue.
And there were things that could really benefit Amazon sellers that from a technical standpoint we weren't able to do inside the extension.
So at this point I had a few choices, right?
I could either maybe not build those features that due to technical limitations couldn't be done the extension, or I could scrap the extension, just move everything to a SaaS app or a combination.
That's what I ultimately chose.
Like, I'm going to keep the Chrome extension.
People really like it.
They really like the UX that, you know, you can just be on any Amazon page and click this little button and see a whole bunch of good information about those Amazon products.
So yeah, I guess it was, you know, I wanted the recurring revenue.
I was, to be honest, probably partially just interested in like a new challenge, a new, you know, to do something different.
And at that point, like I felt like I had the money and the resources to be able to hire a little bit more like experienced developers who had experience building, you know, production level SaaS apps.
Omer (31:08.290)
And how much did you have to spend to build that SaaS application?
Greg Mercer (31:13.570)
Just like to get it off the ground.
I think I was probably in like maybe 30 or $40,000.
And then so that was like for the bare minimum product.
And yeah, I mean, and we've been working on it ever since.
So a lot more money since then, obviously.
Omer (31:32.830)
How did you get that explosive growth?
Because to go from two and a half years to let me, let me have a Chrome extension that I can use as a tool for myself and you know, if I'm lucky, somebody else might want to buy it too, to suddenly here's a business with 35 plus people, multiple seven figures in annual revenue.
How did that growth happen?
Greg Mercer (32:04.640)
Good question.
It's always like getting on these podcasts and talking to people like you, Omer and others.
It's always a good time to kind of reflect on these things, right?
Because when you're just in the day to day grind, it's like, no, we need more customers, we need more customers.
But looking back, it's like, I guess what we have achieved is pretty, you know, pretty special and pretty crazy.
So I guess just, you know, to kind of answer that question, maybe I'll touch on some like the growth channels and marketing channels that we use that were successful is our content marketing is what really works well for us today.
So a lot of people hear that like, what the heck's content marketing?
How do I do that?
The we put out, I guess like the Jungle Scout website is of course I'm biased, but everyone tells us this too is like the best place for educational resources for Amazon sellers, even if you never purchase any of our products.
So like we have like really in depth case studies.
We have like free tools that you can just kind of like use, you know, like on the website to help you with things.
Our YouTube channel, you know, like when you're posting one or two or three videos a week of like explaining people how to do all these different things with their Amazon account.
So it's like it's the go to place for everyone to, you know, if you have any questions about Amazon, either how to start selling or more complex problems or really how to optimize your listings.
So like we've built this resource and all the content we build is totally for free.
And then of course that's the marketing channel we use to funnel them into our software.
But if I were to just say one, I'm trying to think what takeaways can the listeners have right now that they can use in their business.
My advice for you if you want to get more into the content marketing is don't do the whole 500 word blog post.
Three things entrepreneurs wish they knew, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Instead I would recommend building either like one case study or one piece of content that's like super high quality.
So something that we're working on right now and like our customers just seem to love is called the million dollar case study.
So we're totally publicly and transparently starting and scaling an Amazon physical products business to a million dollars in revenue.
So like our first product was these bamboo marshmallow sticks.
Then we launched Hooded Baby Towels and you know, like we do weekly webinars and it's like what we've been working on this week for that Amazon business and like our journey to a million dollars in sales and we're at like, I think we're almost at like $400,000 in sales now.
So it's pretty substantial and it's just like very educational.
People really like to follow along with it.
We're also donating all the money from this Amazon business to Pencils of Promise to build schools and you know, like developing countries around the world.
So it's like, it's just like a fun thing for everyone to, to be a part of and it's like very high end content, like the best that you'll find on the Internet.
Omer (35:02.390)
One question that I had about the SaaS business and recurring revenue is that the kind of problem that you're solving primarily for people is kind of like a one off kind of problem that needs to get solved in order for them to go out and start building a business.
So let's say, you know, I decide I want to build an Amazon business and I use Jungle Scout and I use it to do research to figure out what product it is that I should be selling on Amazon and then I can go out and start focusing on building that Amazon business.
But is there still a need for me to keep paying for Jungle Scout on a, on a recurring basis?
Greg Mercer (35:50.980)
Really good question.
And I think you hit the nail on the head there.
So like, our churn is definitely higher than like industry standard by all accounts.
And I think that's the major reason for it.
Right?
It doesn't really have like that sticky factor.
And like, so what we found with a lot of people is like they'll use it for a month or two.
You know, they find some really good products, they launch those on Amazon, then they wait a few months to make some sales and then they're ready to launch some more.
So they kind of sign up again.
And it doesn't really have like that sticky factor that you need to be using it like every day more.
So like you go in little spurts and then you kind of wait and then you go into more spurts and use it.
So yeah, that's, that's definitely a challenge that we're currently experiencing.
I don't have a great answer for it.
You know, I guess like some things we can be thinking about are features to add to make it a stickier product, something that you do kind of want to use every day.
Maybe we put like educational Content behind kind of the paywall that might help people stick around, I guess.
You know what some companies do that I've seen is just adjust the pricing so you have to like prepay for a year and that's the only option.
There's no monthly option.
So yeah, that's definitely a challenge for us right now that I don't have a great answer for.
Omer (37:11.940)
So, so that's, that's something you guys are still testing and trying to, to figure out.
And I'm not knocking it in terms of.
Yeah, I mean, you might have a, a churn issue, which is, which is higher than other SaaS businesses, but you're still doing, you know, multi million dollars in, in revenue each year and it's, it's still, you're still on a growth trajectory, right?
Greg Mercer (37:38.530)
Yeah, absolutely.
So it hasn't affected our.
Well, of course it's affected our growth.
It hasn't stunted our growth yet.
But like, I guess when I project into the future, you know, I'm thinking like, wow, we really have to be pumping a lot of customers, new customers in every single day if we like maintain the same churn rate.
So yeah, you know, like so far the business is like, it's still healthy and it's still growing and everything, but it is something that we're thinking more and more about.
Yeah.
Do you have any tips for me, Omer?
Omer (38:08.870)
I'm not an expert on this.
Greg Mercer (38:10.070)
What would you do?
Omer (38:11.670)
But the one thing that sort of struck me as being kind of the most sticky thing for Amazon sellers is kind of getting a grasp on their inventory.
Okay, I've kind of got the business up and running, but what am I selling, how am I selling?
And then also all the kind of the crap and that comes with that in terms of reporting tax information and all of that stuff.
I don't know that, that seems to me from, from what I've seen, you know, if that was something that was kind of part of Jungle Scout, I don't know, I, I can't see anybody wanting to cancel even for a month because it would just, it would just cause too much of a problem in terms of managing the day to day and kind of, you know, monthly, quarterly, annual kind of reporting of their business.
Greg Mercer (38:59.580)
Yeah, exactly.
So this is some things we've thought about.
You know, it's like, do we want to make this like a kind of like a Swiss army knife type tool for Amazon sellers?
Like it does a little bit of everything like that, the tax stuff and the inventory management and the profit analytics and whatever Else.
So yeah, that's something we thought about.
Like I guess some of the other considerations that came to mind when we were thinking about that is like, well, if we're like the Swiss army knife, then are we perceived as like decent at everything but not great at anything anymore?
We're not like the bomb at product research anymore.
So I mean, I don't know.
I don't have the answer to that.
So yeah, that's kind of, you know.
Cause it's like, I think of like HubSpot comes to mind.
Like we did like a HubSpot demo and to me they're very much like a Swiss army knife.
They do like tons and tons and tons of different stuff, but like they didn't seem to really do anything like that.
Well, like right now we're piecing together like five pieces of software to like make HubSpot.
But it's like all the tools we're using are much more powerful and robust than kind of like what theirs is.
So yeah, it's definitely something to think about.
Omer (40:04.920)
Yeah.
Well, that's a quality problem to have though, right?
Greg Mercer (40:10.440)
Yeah.
Omer (40:11.800)
Okay, so how do you spend your time these days?
So you've got a team in place and I presume you're not studying wireframes unless you've now learned to enjoy doing that sort of stuff.
Greg Mercer (40:24.270)
Yeah, so like you said, the team is like 35ish people.
And how I spend my days, I still do a one of the thing that I do enjoy, I do enjoy creating video content and like content like we're doing right now like over the podcast.
So I still probably record maybe four or five hours of content, maybe even more, maybe even 10 some weeks of video and audio.
I don't really enjoy writing that much.
I don't write much, but I do do the video and the audio stuff.
I also, I've decided like as we grow and you know, like I looked on our growth trajectory and it's like in two or three years, like this is.
Or like probably two years is probably gonna be 100 person company.
So like now I'm thinking a lot more about okay, like what do we, you know, like what do I need to be doing and like putting in place and stuff to make this company still function well as a hundred person company.
So I'm doing more that I still do a lot of recruiting and hiring because I think that's like a really high value task and really important.
And then there's still, I think like any time that you turn in from like a one man show to a 35 person company in a relatively short amount of time.
There's still like, I still find myself doing a number of things I need to give away to other people.
I'm just like, I don't know, I've been like doing them since day one, like, haven't really trained anyone else to do it yet.
So just kind of like other, you know, things like that, that just kind of suck up some of my time.
So.
Omer (41:51.130)
Yeah, and how, how do you, how do you manage a team that's completely remote and at the same time, while you're also remote and kind of traveling around the world and you're still having to hire people, manage people and grow the company, you know, is what have you put specific kind of systems in place to do that?
Have you, you know, what are you doing to kind of just manage, manage the team?
Greg Mercer (42:29.630)
Yeah.
So it's not as hard I think is what I thought it would be or what most people think it is.
And I think part of that is because since day one we've been a remote company.
Like, like you talked about earlier, my wife and I, we're homeless.
We, we travel around 12 months a year.
We don't have any home anywhere.
So I was like, well, like we don't want to stop doing the Nomad thing.
So like, you know, we're not going to start an office somewhere because we enjoy traveling around, living in different areas.
So.
So since day one it's been built as a fully remote company and I think that plays an important role in it because like since day one we're communicating on Slack, we're posting projects and doing our project management and Trello, we're using the whole Google suite for the docs and spreadsheets and everything else.
So it's easy to collaborate in the cloud.
This has also even gone on to the people that we're hiring and the types of people that we're hiring.
No one works certain hours of the day.
They don't have to punch in, they don't have to punch out.
Like everyone's graded strictly on the, the work that you do and like your performance as far as like what you can show for it.
So and I think this is like an important thing because you know, it's like people realize like, okay, like I can work what hours of the day or whatever that like I'm most effective but like I need to be producing constantly, like work that I can, you know, that I can show to people.
Right.
So that's important.
One thing, now that we are getting Bigger.
One thing that I think is difficult now is the time zones.
So we, so we literally all around the world, I'd say like more than half the team lives in the Americas, but you know, there's also a handful of people in Europe and a couple guys in Australia and like three people living in Southeast Asia right now.
And it does slow down communication having people in those different time zones.
It's like, you know, I might like overlap for like one hour with someone and you know, they sent me something and I was really busy this morning so I didn't get a chance to look at it until after that.
And then I just needed like two quick changes, but they were already asleep and it's like crap.
Now I have to wait till the next day for that.
So there are downsides, without a doubt.
I think that's the biggest one.
Especially if you're in your different time zones.
It can slow down some projects, but I think just overall the benefits do outweigh the negatives.
Omer (44:58.010)
Yeah.
And I think it opens you up to a whole pool of talent out there rather than being constrained to people in a 20 mile radius who can commute to whichever physical building you've created for your business.
Greg Mercer (45:13.450)
That's without a doubt the single biggest benefit of doing the remote team thing.
I think that alone just outweighs all the other kind of downsides to it.
Omer (45:24.230)
All right, let's get on to the lightning round.
I'm going to ask you seven questions and just try to answer them as
Greg Mercer (45:30.190)
quickly as you can, all right?
Omer (45:31.790)
All right, let's do it.
What's the best piece of business advice that you've ever received?
Greg Mercer (45:37.430)
It's to stop thinking about and contemplating over and just do it and get started.
Omer (45:42.790)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Greg Mercer (45:47.180)
My favorite book is Rework by Jason Freed.
He's the founder of basecamp and 37signals.
I love it.
It's like a fresh look on how to run modern day businesses and it talks about the remote teams.
Kind of like how we should be working in this new digital age.
And yeah, it's good.
Read it.
Omer (46:05.260)
Yep, I like that book too.
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Greg Mercer (46:12.790)
Like resilience or like mental resilience.
Especially in the early days, you feel like every little thing is going to like crush you or that, you know, the new competitor, this or that or the other thing or whatever.
And just to have like the resilience to just like keep pushing forward, not get bogged down by that.
I think is the most important characteristic.
Omer (46:32.550)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Greg Mercer (46:37.760)
I just downloaded a new tool to manage my inboxes with the addition of a personal assistant, but it's called Front App.
It syncs up like all my different email inboxes and then my assistant can go through them and tag me the important ones and she can like draft up emails and already put an attachment so I can just like look at it real quick, make a few edits and send.
And that has been a life changer for me.
Omer (47:02.480)
What new or crazy business idea would you love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Greg Mercer (47:07.140)
Right now I'm fascinated by the blockchain and crypto and token scene.
If I had more time, I'd definitely be looking into that stuff more.
Omer (47:17.060)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Greg Mercer (47:21.940)
I was going to say the Nomad one, but we already talked about that a couple times over this show, I guess.
Fun fact.
Let's see.
In the past couple years I've been to 35 or so countries in all
Omer (47:36.560)
seven continents and finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Greg Mercer (47:42.720)
I really I spend most of my time working.
That is like my favorite thing.
Without a doubt.
That's a lame response.
Experiencing new cultures is really fun to me.
Living in an area for a month or two and kind of feel like you're part of the culture as opposed to just a tourist, that's one of my passions.
And I'm going this afternoon to play beach volleyball.
That's one of my other passions.
Omer (48:04.100)
Awesome.
Great conversation, Greg.
Thanks for making the time to do this.
I really enjoyed chatting with you and kind of learning more about Jungle Scout and the amazing progress.
Progress is such an underwhelming word.
Just how you've kicked ass for the last two and a half years.
To just go from a small idea for a Chrome plugin for yourself to where you are today.
It's incredible and I truly wish you all the best in continuing to grow this business and get it to where you want it to be.
Now if folks want to go and check out Jungle Scout, you can go to junglescout.com and even if you're not thinking about selling on Amazon, I'd say go and check out the the Jungle Scout blog and you know, take a look at what Greg and his team are doing there in terms of content marketing and maybe what ideas that you can get for your own business too.
And if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that.
Greg Mercer (49:18.790)
Fairly active on Twitter, at least.
I'm really good at responding to people, so that's that at Mercer.
Underscore Greg.
That's a good place to get in contact with me.
Also, I've just started it's not live yet.
By the time this record, this podcast goes live will be@greg mercer.com I'm starting to post some more of kind of like my personal thoughts and just things about like, general entrepreneurship that I think, or SaaS apps.
I think a lot of this audience would vibe with.
Well, so you can just find that stuff@greg mercer.com awesome.
Omer (49:48.970)
Thanks, Gay man.
Enjoy Vancouver.
And then, you know, whatever lies ahead beyond that.
Greg Mercer (49:56.700)
All right, Omer, thank you very much for having me on.
I've enjoyed it.
Omer (49:59.180)
I appreciate it.
Cheers.
Take care.
