Balancing motherhood and entrepreneurship with Elizabeth Green

hi guys and welcome to another episode of Amazonia YouTube channel for today's episode we have Elizabeth gream from jungler and we're going to talk about balancing motherhood and ENT entrepreneurship sorry so Elizabeth welcome thanks so much for having me this is going to be I love this topic it's definitely what I don't normally talk about aside that of myself I don't really share very often so looking forward to it yeah I I'm really eager to to hear how you balance that and uh to give a more perspective to our listeners and viewers can you share a little bit uh of your background on your um work life and especially on your private side how do you balance all of that and then we just get into it and also we're going to be talking about uh managing the account so not just uh private part of the story but also we're going to add how Elizabeth is managing pretty big cataloges of thousands of products so so stay tuned Elizabeth it's to you now yeah definitely so I'll give the professional side first because that's the thing that most people probably know I'm a co-founder along with my husband which I don't know if a lot of people know I know you work with your life as well so we definitely connected on that and so we are co-founding of an Amazon advertising agency called jungler so we help founder Le Brands who are looking to scale without having to sacrif profits build what we call business Centric ad strategies meaning ad strategies that are going to get them there in the way that they want towards their goals so that's probably something we'll talk about because I think that definitely feeds into life a little bit and then I guess the Hot Topic is why the heck am I qualified to talk about building a entrepreneurship in motherhood I definitely feel like I'm qualified there I have six children so some people know that some people don't every time I post about that I think everyone loses their minds yeah because you're so successful as a business owner and as a as a professional so it's even more your success is even more what's the right word like even bigger because you have so many family obligations so to many little yeah obstacles yeah we talk about it more yeah me and my wife yena we have two boys and we even with two boys we see how difficult it may be so they're jumping in in the middle of the calls is it a sales call or whatever so it's really sometimes stuff with all the the school and the diseases and everything so it can really challenging to say the least so is there anything I know it is but is there anything particular that you can share with with us uh what was some of those funny moments that you witnessed during the for example live podcast of something oh my gosh the most terrifying one of those and the thing that like I I think was the most public it's one of our Lives you can go watch it it's sitting there on a YouTube it's not addited I mean there's plenty of funny stories like when my twins so by way the youngest two are twins and they're boys that's a whole nutshell in of itself they're hysterical everything I wanted in twins but newborn stage was gnarly let's just put it that way and then that was happening right as we were like building the agency so a lot of trying to make sure they're fed when you run and take a sales call all of those fun things um but I think the craziest story and this really goes back to I get that question all the time like how do you deal with it how have you done like what you've done and I'm like it's really just rolling with the punches if I could give one tip of doing anything it's being able to be flexible is invaluable if I was not flexible if I had an idea of what everything must be like and if my what actually ended up being reality did not fit into my version of the way that I expect reality to be and if I got bent out of shape because there was any misalignments there I would go crazy I wouldn't be able to do what I need to do if I had to give anyone what I mean that CES into managing advertising I think that's sort of rolling with the punches figuring out what you can figure out and then figuring out the game plan has served me well like going back to the most crazy story I was doing a live so those are the worst because everything's live right the podcast can be edited if it's a call it's oh my gosh there's an emergency sorry I got to hang up when you're on live and you're sitting there ah so I have an office I do lock the door when I'm trying to record however my door is a sliding glass window which is why the lighting is not so great in here I'm working on fixing that but I'm sitting here doing a live with the door locked and my daughter comes to the door with blood dripping down her face during a live call I how to panic attack if you watch the live you can see my face go like this and I'm like hold on one I wi thankfully it was a very small it head wounds bleed terribly it looks like she was dying she was completely fine she didn't even need stitches but someone had thrown a truck at someone's head and I ended it the live early there's nothing that point again rolling with the punches daughter takes already there so it is what it is but definitely keeps interesting yeah thank you for sharing that it's hilarious because it wasn't nothing big obviously but yeah thank you very much I haven't had any similar things luckily but it most of the time it's just shuffling a minute before the call you're trying to put the the little one to sleep and you just then in a second you are completely dressed and just ready like nothing happened or and in other room you still see crying so it just makes you prepare for so many things and as you said it right you need to be constantly uh evolving and changing adapting to what's happening somewhat similar to what's happening in business so especially uh like something comes like from Amazon directly taking down a listing and you need to help and you to need to adapt complet strategy because the bestseller is down it just you need to be easily adopt to shuffling and priorities and everything so definitely you have actually an advantage over there because you're so practic maybe I very often admire you with my wife because you and your husband because we've been through some tough times also we have two boys but at at one point we were living in a Countryside we were having a garden because we had absolutely love having a garden gardening in general but we did that until we actually realized that's too much because it was a Countryside with all its ups and downs for example I had calls and my and my literally my rooster was on my window just we decided yeah oh gosh and I remember one time I forgot about the I think it was a sales call so I was in the middle of my garden my hands were literally Brown completely Brown and I was like minute before the call I got a popup notification and I ran through the through the home to be on the call I was really I was there in time but I couldn't lift my hands at all during the call because it were completely in dirt so I was just keeping my hands down behind the table and just talking that is funny actually speaking of a small we've been there a lot not a lot in terms of I wouldn't necessarily say hardships there's definitely been things you had to deal with but a lot in terms of like where we are just dealing with very similar scenarios the way you're talking about we actually lived in an RV with all eight of us for two years wow um that was interesting now my office was not in the RV actually if you look at my old videos If you see that nice wood background my we were on my in-law's property and they had a really nice out building that they let me like take over from my office it was huge though I had like a random desk over in the corner it was super echoey it was like background looked wonderful everyone always commented on it and I agree it was beautiful but yeah similar thing that wasn't so bad because they had a lot of property and it was beautiful and the kids can run and there was a pool and all kinds of stuff but it definitely sucked when it rained because everybody had to be inside so there's that those aspects of it but yeah a lot of I said just rolling with the punches I mean we didn't intend to live in an RV for two years we were looking for a property which thankfully we're on now and it's everything we hoped it was but it was you know this is temporary two years later we finally figure out something so life throws curveballs at you yeah yeah we all seen that it's funny that we have a pry similar story like we were we had a lot of issues in our previous house with running water and whatnot so we had had to move and we were not living in in RV but we were moving like during the search for a house living in in a house that wasn't our so it was also challenge also big room with Echo so it was it was really tough time and our our younger son was like I don't know five months old so all those things so since you have so broad experience what is what are some of the advices that you can give to anybody who's in the similar or same situation what did help you and your husband overcome some of the obstacles or any because you're so full of experience or whatever you can share with us would be much helpful I'll share with you the one thing that I'm it feels like I'm continuously trying to relearn and some of it I think just comes with age now that I'm in my mid-30s there's a lot of things that we've worked through together so I think the one thing the advice I can give is and this is hard to do easier said than done but if at all possible figure out what you want out of life completely divorced from any and all expectations as you start digging into this you will realize that there are so many burdens we place on ourselves as far as like how we should live or what life should look like to be honest yes there's like the whole morality aspect to it be a good person but aside from that like there's so much opportunity and so many different ways that you can choose to craft your craft your life and some things take longer like we were in an RV two years before we found like the place we wanted to settle down which is again so much of what we dreamed it would be but it took us a while to get there and it took us a while to find that and now where we're living and how we're living there's a couple people who have made like oh aren't you guys going to do this or don't you guys want to do that and we're like no actually even though we completely have the resources to do that if we decided that's what we wanted to devote our resources to but that's not actually what we want out of life so I would myig BG piece of advice just long term and again sometimes we we put these burden on ourselves like I especially when you're younger and you're in like early 20s late teens everybody's like what do you want to do with the rest of your life that is the dumbest question I'm sorry I hope I never asked my children that like at 18 what do you want to decide the rest of your life is going to be like what like how I had no idea when I was 18 it's I would never ever have thought I'm where I am today I was raised in a very traditional Christian household where the the Dynamics of husband and wife were very defined and to be honest I still I like living in that but yet I've now mored into a role where I'm the one who's primarily just doing the day-to-day in the business and yes my husband helps out but the roles are like very different even though the dynamic might be very similar I didn't know I wanted this at 18 I didn't know I wanted this at 20 so I would say one give yourself Grace to figure out cuz sometimes you just got to figure it out and you end up stumbling upon something but then I would say again just as much as you can recognize when that sort of internal when you want to do something but you almost feel like that internal I can't try and determine if that's because that doesn't align with who you want to be as a person because it's very different right again we want to be good people we want to be jerks you shouldn't be running around being a meanie but if that reservation you feel in yourself is because you feel like oh I can't because such and such or someone will think this or whatever I think that's a lifelong Battle of trying to like definitely shed yourself of those expectations but when you do you end up being able to craft a life that you want that makes you excited and ultimately I think there's a lot of freedom that comes with that for sure thank you very much and I agree that if you one really needs to be true to themselves so if you have an honest conversation with yourself then a lot of things start to open up that's what I witnessed in my life because I was in love with our house that we had in a Countryside and I wasn't aware of that that to the point that I had to have really deep conversation with myself it wasn't easy it wasn't good at all when I where I actually realized that is it me and am I fulfilling my dream or am I making something good for my family and for my business and then after that long conversation we actually ended up having a a good conversation really fruitful with with family and with close relatives and friends who were involved in our life at that point uh so yeah I completely agree and thank you for sharing that the one thing that we've seen is that at least for me personally I in when I'm in peace knowing that everything is fine on my private life like kids are okay and I devoted enough time with them not just time but just quality time just being there how how do you call it like a present parent but there are so so funny memes with with that like present parent and the other one who's shuffling everything but yeah I I've seen that if that's all right then I can dedicate myself to handling a brand that has a big catalog and I'm sure that you can add a lot to that which actually leads us to to to another Point how all of that goes with managing big Brands and a lot of cataloges and just can you give us some examples on that because I know you have a lot of those too yeah and I guess one of the things that I've realized over the years one is you can accomplish more than you think you can sometimes when you look at something you're like oh my gosh how am I ever going to figure this out he trust me I've been there I'm still there oh my gosh so trying to think how to craft this in a way that's going to be helpful but one it's figuring out where your true priorities lie and I I love the story you just shared you're like hey I really like this one thing but I realize that this other thing is more important right so we shifted because this is the important thing and really when it comes to managing larger cataloges or figuring out those things um it is that now there's always going to be like best you you have like your best practices the things that you know work that sort of like move in the background and help move the brand in general towards the greater goal but in terms of where the actual work and the effort and the strategy comes in it's really identifying what are those big growth levs what is the largest impact thing again that moves me toward set goal because you might have a large impact item but doesn't necessarily serve the greater good and the greater goal where you want to get and so that's one thing that we constantly push Our Brands to hey what is the goal if we want to increase sales be defined by how much over what length of time okay when we're looking back at this are we analyzing year over year are we analyzing month over month are we looking at maybe week over week like what is our like how are we measuring success and then what are those important things to focus on because we're guilty of this in our personal lives as well as With Our Brands we're like I want everything trust me I do too I want to be able to do this and I want to be able to do this then I want to have I want to have be in Peak physical condition I want to make sure that I'm eating really well and and I want to make sure that my business is thriving my my family is thriving and all of these things and I think on some capacity you do that is possible but it's not always going to be possible to do everything today and so you really have to figure out okay so what is at top of the list item that's going to if I don't move this lever today tomorrow that's going to be a problem tomorrow that's going to have a bigger Road black to my goal because what happens all the time because it's easy right our brains are programmed to be freaking lazy we want the easiest thing we want to make ourselves feel like we're making progress when in fact we're ignoring that dumpster fire over in the corner and we're just like sitting over here playing with this little thing so we want to say oh I I I did this thing today I checked the box I feel like I'm doing good because I know how to do this it makes me feel good when I do this I feel like I'm being accomplished but either because we're ignoring that thing because it's hard which could be you ignoring figuring out your inventory management and you know that those inventory fees are coming but you don't want to have to because that's hard right you know that your profits have been suffering you don't want to go through and have that conversation with your manufacturer because you feel like you really haven't gone through negotiations before that's going to be super hard uh you really don't want to have to figure out you know that your ads are a mess and that you can't pains are a mess but like it's it's just something I'm going to put off for tomorrow but that's like the biggest growth L the thing that needs to be fixed ASAP so I I'm speaking to the choir here my default mode is Sprint always has been I think always will be and I'm all like I want to go I want to do the and and I for the longest time I'm saying this to myself now because it is something I'm currently working to get better at still is to sit down and do the planning often times we feel like the planning is like it's a waste of time like I should just be doing I should just be doing all the time and if I could just do all the time and just knock it out I'm gonna get it done but the thing that we're missing is that like that pre-step that and it oftentimes this planning does not have to take as long as we think we always think it's going to take a million years doesn't have to it's boring it's tedious and you have to look at your faults you have to look at while you're falling short all the things right you're looking at that you're like a if I would have only gone through and optimized Those ads six months ago ah I'm an idiot and why did I not do this sooner this feels like you have to confront all of that in yourself and it's hard but what we've seen is that if you can stop do a little bit of planning figure out priorities execute on priorities that's how you can take care of this huge but and what's going to happen and you're going to panic because you have this hu and like complex cataloges we're managing Add accounts for SKS like upwards in the tens of thousands right it's insane ton to take care of right a ton you feel like there's this whole ball of stuff you're like if I only focus on here I'm gonna miss all of this stuff and this stuff is everything's gonna fall apart and like I can't but when ends up happening when you don't sit down you don't do the planning is you jump over here to this thing and you don't quite fix it and you jump over here to that thing and you're like oh my gosh I totally you're all over the place and what happens is you because you haven't sat down sat back done the strategic planning of it all you're missing sort of these wide gaps and so that's what we look at with Brands when we take on a brand we're like okay what are we trying to do how do we need to get there what are our biggest gaps and then we just execute on right and I completely agree with you because it feels we as advertisers one could easily guess okay we're going to help you with ads and that's it but lately I've seen that we as an agency owners and AD specialist you or however you want to call it we actually need to help brand owners have that conversation know like with themselves okay these are the pain points points that we are seeing this is these are the inventory issues these are the the listing issues and yes it's going to cost you a lot of money because your catalog is so huge you have these 10,000 sqs and these 500 need an an immediate upgrade yeah it hurts but that's the thing that you need to do in order to move forward in a way that you want to go so yeah I feel like that's uh something that our roles have shifted from just being like advertising PPC to uh being a holistic method and helping just brand owners uh think more and speak to them to if you're not a sales guy if you're sales guy then it's completely is good yeah we can do everything yeah no I I completely agree with you I think it's the one piece and the thing that I think and again we're in the PPC management specifically area so that is the lever in which we help Brands pull to be able to grow but that being said building ad strategy has to start with brand goals and whenever I've seen like a a very large disconnect between a brand and what their ad manager is currently doing be in house maybe they're doing it themselves or maybe they have another agency or something it's looking at the ads in isolation and sometimes like it it's not really any fault in the ad manager like I consulted with a brand and it's wild to me how because sometimes it's almost like feels like you have to pull the thread on the brands to get them to figure out okay so what do we want they're like I don't know what I want okay do you want this or this like it's which of these is most and you're just almost like you work through it with them but there was one brand I was Consulting on and they he kept saying oh we want sales growth I want sales growth I want sales growth and I'm like Okay cool so what sales growth okay the best question to ask and you have to ask it at the right time but the best question I ask is why and so it was like okay I want to try and Forex this Q4 okay why oh because I've not made a profit in two years and I have to continuously put in into this business and I feel like growing sales is going to help me correct that yeah and I stopped and I was like hold up wait a minute because I know that pushing for that Forex growth while probably achievable isn't very difficult and next to impossible to be profitable right you're probably just going to lose more money by trying to do that and so my question was those your ad managers know this and he's I don't think I've no they I'm like there's your problem so there's these this and it's not because again it's not that the ad managers are are trying to they don't have the context so when a brand comes to me like if the only context I had was the brand saying I absolutely need to forx sales this Q4 heck yeah okay let's build that ad strategy I'm not technically trying to do a disservice to the brand to be able to build to build out what he's requesting of me that's what the Brand's requesting what I find is when you don't have the context when you don't ask that why question there it's a communication breakdown so they feel like you I do this all the time with my team with my husband with my kids I feel like everybody has the contacts that I have in my brain and that's not true so I'll tell them one little piece of information they're like okay this and I'm like wait that because all of this other context when in reality so when you can sit down and you can have a very open discussion conversation around the why and the whats and what it is that you need like the needs that is where the most creative and the most fun ad strategies get built because then we can take all that context and go back to the ads so instead of saying I need a Forex growth that's a very specific what I find is when Brands tell us I need to rank on this keyword I need to 2x sales on this product I need to do this often times the ad strategies I can build to make that happen is very narrow I get stuck in this box and what happens is because I don't have the context I'm building a strategy that has negative repercussions on what it is you're actually trying to do but when we can have the conversation around this is what I'm actually trying to do this is why I need it this is what I need from you I'm like oh well then you don't need this you need this and this and in fact I have this really cool out of the- boox strategy that actually does this and then I get opened up as an ad manager my job becomes really fun I can think out of the box I can get creative and actually give you what you really are wanting instead of just hey here's one kpi we got to optimize for sure and then nobody's happy yeah thanks very much and I think the takeaway from what you just said is that there really that's one of the big benefits when you actually for Brands to actually speak with agencies who've been there for so long and have a history of sorry working with a B with with Brands because their in-house ad manager or a freelancer can never have so such a wide experience in order to help them drive that conclusions and ask the right questions as you just said because because that's crucial in in determining what's the driver is it as you said no profit for two years that scary but maybe just deciding that they need to very often brand owners are are in love with their product and just cannot let go and I understand that because of all the hours and weeks and nights that they spend building and uh growing it but eventually somebody has to help you just make the right decision as you said there are uh best practices but there are priorities so it's both in in family and and in business thank you very much and we don't want to get this too long so something what just wrap us some some takeaways both for the private part and for work from your experience yeah again I would just say rolling with the punches and not being afraid to look at the reality or voice the reality of the situation I think so many times we feel as if we speak it out loud that makes it true it's not NE like truth is truth and reality is the reality regardless if you want to look at it or not and I would say the sooner you're ready to look at the reality it may not be as bad as you think maybe there's a way out of of it right but as soon as you're ready to look at it have somebody else different perspectives are critical I can't tell you that's why I love the dynamic I have with my husband like it took me a while to be able to like grin and bear I as much as I hate to admit it he's always right and oftentimes he sees the reality for what it is way long before I want to accept it and then later on like oh you know what that person itive was super helpful and yeah so if you can I would just say if you're struggling to figure out something on your advertising if you haven't been able to get something to work it never hurts to reach out and get a conversation and have someone give you that different perspective and probably open up a different point of view that you've never thought of before and then that often can lead to the breakthroughs for you to be able to fix it and get on the path that you need to and again the one that works for you because not every brand is looking to have I don't need like a 5x every year and like this billion dollar exit right I just I need to be able to have an additional Revenue stream where I can provide better for my family or maybe you want that twoe sellout there's so many paths to what a successful business looks like and I think the sooner you can figure out what that actually looks like for you then the path or the Avenue news to build that become way clearer thank you very much I just wish that as many brand owners can hear this episode because it's I think it's going to be mind-blowing and moving at the same time because just to actually ask themselves the the right questions Elizabeth thank you and just give us what's the best way to contact you if somebody wants that yeah so if you want to have that conversation I'm more than happy to do so the best way to reach out is going to be our website which is jungler doccom jr.com of course feel free to reach out to me on any social media I'm really active on LinkedIn so that's probably a good place awesome thank you very much for being our guest today awesome thank you so much I appreciate you having me