Validating Products for Long Term Success

April 2, 2020

Meet The Speakers

Scott Petersen

Executive Director for The Rollins Center of Entrepreneurship and Technology at Brigham Young University (BYU)

Listen to the podcast

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

How Scott Petersen started the company Best Vinyl and how it grew to $35 million in 5 years
Maximizing component pieces of a company in order to make it grow
How Best Vinyl distinguished itself from its competitors early in the game
The importance of highlighting the unique features of your product on Amazon
Scott talks about how he instituted a process for responding to negative reviews left by their customers
Why you need to have compelling answers to objections you receive from client feedback
The best practices for validating a new business idea or product before ordering in mass quantities and taking it to the market
Why Scott says that ‘success reaches beyond the bottom line’
Where to learn more information about BYU activities

In this episode…

According to Scott Petersen, building a company requires an entrepreneur to look at so many factors in order to get to his desired end result which is to have an established brand in a rapidly growing market. You have to look at sales, marketing, branding, administration, finance, and a whole bunch of other things to make sure that things are going as planned. And the one thing that business owners should never miss doing is to highlight what sets their product apart from others.

Scott Petersen of The Rollins Center of Entrepreneurship and Technology at BYU says that for a business to thrive and survive, it actually needs to get to know its competition, its market, and the things that make customers tick. Because catching customer interest is one thing, keeping them hooked is quite another.

Join Eric Stopper in this episode of the Buy Box Experts Podcast as he talks to Scott about how to run a successful business both on and off of Amazon, the strategy he used to to make his company grow to over $35 million in less than five years, how he manages customer feedback on Amazon, and how he validates whether a new business or idea or product is good enough for launch. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

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The team works with marketplace technicians using a system of processes, proprietary software, and extensive channel experience to ensure your Amazon presence captures the opportunity in the marketplace–not only producing greater revenue and profits but also reducing or eliminating your business’ workload.

Buy Box prides itself on being one of the few agencies with an SMB (small to medium-sized business) division and an Enterprise division. Buy Box does not commingle clients among divisions as each has unique needs and requirements for proper account management.

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Episode Transcript

Intro 0:09
Welcome to the Buy Box Experts podcast we bring to light the unique opportunities brands face in today’s e-commerce world.

Eric Stopper 0:18
Hi and welcome to the Buy Box Experts podcast, this is Eric Stopper. This episode is brought to you by Buy Box Experts, takes ambitious brands and makes them unbeatable. We’ve got a team of consultants, I am one of them. Please call in we would love to talk with you about how your brand is doing. We have virtually every reporting tool and can give you deep insights into low hanging fruit for some of your best selling hastens on Amazon. So if you are an Amazon seller or a vendor and you want to make more revenue, then go to Buy Box Experts.com click on the free analysis button. It’s completely free. No strings attached right now, but we will start charging for it in a couple of weeks. So go and get on that. And come and talk to me or a member of my team. Today, we are joined by Scott Petersen, the Executive Director for the Center of entrepreneurship and technology at Brigham Young University, my alma mater. They’ve been ranked in the top five for entrepreneurship and the Princeton Review for the past 10 years. This past year they were ranked number three, and they have helped students like me and hundreds of other ones, launch products and scale innovative ventures. Now although they have found success with dozens of software companies, huge ones that have sold for billions of dollars. Scott and his team have helped brands like fuse and miles storm and outlet and climate and fiberfix and many many more, some of which are run by good friends of mine he’s he’s helped them to the point where they’re selling thousands of units a week I think some of these guys I mean Allah and fuse I’ve seen their Amazon accounts personally and these guys are doing great and Scott and his team laid the foundation for that. He is a published author, an award-winning mentor and a friend. I brought Scott on the show to get his insights into how to run a successful business, both on and off of Amazon. Scott, welcome to the show.

Scott Petersen 2:14
Thank you. Thanks, Eric.

Eric Stopper 2:17
So, there is a lot that I would love to talk to you about. You have lots of different things that you are involved with. But this the specifics of this podcast, virtually everybody listening is an Amazon seller or a vendor. And one of the things that they struggle with is reviews and the strategy around getting reviews. So I’m gonna go deep into the archives with you for a second. All right. All right, um, you started a company called Best vinyl. Right?

Scott Petersen 2:45
Yes. When did you start that? That was actually my third company. And I started the company with a partner and about 2002 ish. And we grew the company from a start-up to about 35 million in about four and a half or five years. And we harvested the company in 2007 to a private equity group out of Newport Beach, California.

Eric Stopper 3:12
Do you feel like the foundation that you said at that company had a strong culture and has been able to maintain to this day

Scott Petersen 3:21
certainly had a strong culture while we were there. And you know, I don’t keep track of, you know, companies in a detailed way after we leave, but this I’ll say one of the interesting things about company building is that is the way you look at how you build your company, brick by brick from the ground up, for example, I would always say that building a company is a lot like maybe being a successful basketball player like for example, to be a great basketball player. You’ve got to have a good shot, good free throw. Good passing good dribbling Balancing defense, good athletic condition. What I’m saying in all of this is that you can break each of these parts and pieces down into bite-size tool pieces that you can then say, I can practice dribbling, for example, using cones and drills. And I can really become isolation, a great dribbler. Or I can just practice shot after shot after shot from the spot after spot after spot or rebounding and all the different things that I need to do. Well, the same is true of business only this time, it’s sales and marketing and branding. And in the case of best vinyl, it was fabrication and installation, customer service, administration, finance, legal, all kinds of different things. And we could look at each one of those independently and say, we’re going to be a juggernaut and every one of those so if you were to evaluate a sales pitch for example, from a Vinyl representative versus its competitors, it would be just greatly different so that customers would not see just modest differences, but great differences. And then it would help them to say, I’m going to choose these professional people because they have really

taught me you know, the value that they provide.

Eric Stopper 5:26
So that’s what I would do. That’s, that’s great that’s a big a great backdrop. So breaking down your business into its little component pieces and, and just hitting them a piece at a time becoming an expert in website design, setting up a good website, setting up a good distribution network. These are things that you would tackle just one piece at a time.

Scott Petersen 5:48
Yeah, one piece at a time. And for example, when you think about Amazon customers, I’m thinking about, well, product development is top of mind because if I have a fantastic product, then people are gonna Talk about my product. If I have fantastic service, then I’ve eliminated you know, any customers being unsatisfied because I couldn’t keep my promises of delivery or product quality or the customer service, you know behind it if there’s a problem with the product, but again, it starts with the product and then you’re right branding and marketing and marketing goes into many different layers, as you know, because it’s not about just having a good website, then it’s about having good you know, PPC, having good SEO and SEM and, and really being able to distinguish yourself from the noise that is out there with all their competitors. They have to separate themselves differentiate themselves, and it can’t be generally a little bit it’s got to be meaningful or material or they won’t be able to charge what they want. Wanna charge they won’t be able to get the perceived value.

Eric Stopper 7:05
So these brands are desperately trying to rise in the ranks on Amazon, and they are just the same exact thing as everybody else, right? They’re just another widget that they sourced from China and they threw a brand on those people. Do you feel like they can still compete by having the other dimensions of the business really nailed down? Even even though it’s so crowded on Amazon,

Scott Petersen 7:31
it’s super hard as we always talk about the difference between the blue ocean and the red ocean. If you’re a red ocean product, meaning you’re a commodity you’re out in the ocean, you got you to know, thousands of sharks and they’re all feeding on the same fish supply versus being out in the blue ocean where you only got you to know, one shark family and they get to take care of the whole ocean and, and, you know, it’s a paradise for them. So whenever you have pigeon-holed yourself, with everybody else it is very hard to compete. So the way that you do that is just like we did say at best vinyl, where we were providing a commodity of vinyl fence, nothing sexy, but at the end of the day because we separated ourselves and how we could distinguish ourselves on sales on marketing, for example, this is sort of pre the iPhone and all the different traditional, you know, methods of marketing that we use today. But, you know, people would have thought that best vinyl was as well branded as ups and then you go into little things like our the way that we installed and fabricated and could distinguish ourselves from our competitors. We try to find niche areas of our product that would allow us to take and capture value and We were able to actually charge 10% more for our products, because of everything else.

Eric Stopper 9:06
So in these processes, and so those who are selling in Amazon are listening to this, right, like you’re selling a commodity and you’re trying to stand out, you’re trying to make sure that you get the sale. As soon as somebody lands on your listing, you’ve only got your title, your bullet points, you’ve got seven to nine pictures and you’ve got your video. If, you know you’ve got all these things that are different about the way that you manage things about your packaging, you know, there’s a lot that you can throw in there. Do you think that it’s important to walk the customer through what those value points are? And to really just say, look, this is why this is great. This is why this is great, and almost like list them out and as pretty a format as possible. Or can you trust customers to really derive that value out of just, you know, the pictures of the product and people using it?

Scott Petersen 9:56
Actually, I think you cannot expect them to as I call it, connect the dots, I think that you have to term I called taking credit. If you take credit for what you’ve done, meaning you point out these unique features, advantages, and benefits, then you know, they, they can clearly see I’m not expecting them to do the hard work. I’m expecting my team to do the hard work. So I like to say it like this if, if you’re building a company, and then you look at what’s available today, and we’ll just take these products that we’re talking about. And so you list each of the products and what they’re doing so your team is really understanding the strengths, the features, the benefits, the weaknesses of every one of their competitors. And then as a team, we develop what I call again, the holes or gaps in service. features that we have that others don’t serve us things that we have that they don’t warranties that we have that they don’t product quality that we have that they don’t certain features about our product that they don’t. So what I’m trying to do is capture value that distinguishes ourselves from competitors, when even though if you were just to look at the products side by side wouldn’t look like there’s too much of a difference, but to a discerning eye. And with education, you can point out that indeed there are differences. And I think you have to learn how to not only take advantage of the one or two or three distinguishing characteristics that make your product unique, but also what I call in the selling process, learning how to make mountains out of molehills. In other words, you know, it’s not that big of a difference, but it’s a difference, but the way that you pitch it with using sharp angles, you’re able to make it look even more valuable than perhaps it really is. But you still have to rest on actual reality that your product is got to one or two or three things that really do make it stand out.

Eric Stopper 12:09
Yeah, I’m reminded of you know, the original snake the snake oil salesmen of you know, the past couple of centuries. It’s all fluff, right? They’re selling something that is not good, but they’re really good at it. If you have

Scott Petersen 12:22
nothing I call that the Emperor with no clothes.

Eric Stopper 12:27
If If you are if you’re selling in a crowded if you’re selling in a red ocean, and you’re not using all the tools possible to help guide your customers through this through their buying process, then Then what are you doing? Right like you didn’t learn from Sylvester McConkey? McBean right in the sneetches book, and you’re just in the ether, right and nobody’s gonna pay attention to you.

Scott Petersen 12:54
Yeah, I always call it the law of the jungle, the law of the harvest the survival of the fittest the law of natural selection. So if you are not distinguishing yourself in the way that I’ve been talking about, then you set yourself up for failure because it’s competitive out there. And people are getting up every morning, you know, wanting to eat your lunch. And so there’s the example of the, I believe it’s the cheetah and the gazelle. And you know, every morning they both get up and one knows that he has to run the cheetah knows that he has to run faster than the slowest Gazelle and excel knows he has to run faster than the slowest lion or Cheetah and, and so no matter who you are, you know wants to get up in the morning. You better be running.

Eric Stopper 13:50
Right? Yeah. Now I originally had prompted this whole discussion based on reviews. I went to the best final website And you’ve not involved the business, let’s be really clear about that. But I want to talk about a theory of review response and customer service with you, from the perspective of how best mind model is managing their customer interaction. So, to put this in context, there was a, there was a customer that came in, and they wrote this super long, horrible review, one star, and just dogging on the cut. Like they called out the person by first and last name that dealt with them. They were just saying all this horrible, all these horrible things that happen. So, and for Amazon sellers, you’re probably aware of the fact that when somebody leaves a negative review, and you respond to it, the odds of them actually reading your response are essentially zero. They don’t care. They left you with that review, and it’s a tag that you’re going to wear for the rest of your time selling on Amazon. And typically, I’ll see like, Oh, you were sorry that you had a bad experience. You know, Like, please reach out to us at this email and then ever reach out, right? So that was totally, that was a waste. You use that review and you wasted it. Here’s what best vinyl did okay, and Scott, this is totally This is totally raw. So you’ve never heard this before but the best vinyl fence and Dec responded to this review and said, just a couple of additional facts to help all who read this review understand the rest of the story. Ben not Brad spoke with the homeowner and never said we couldn’t do the job. Instead, a refund was requested and we processed it the same day. It then goes on and it says on four nine The agreement was signed on for 28. There’s a caveat added to the agreement for 20 for this and it goes on and on and on through and addresses every concern in the review. And as I was reading that I realized this person on the customer service team, my best vinyl, they took a really really negative experience and they spun it and I am now looking more at this route this response than I am at the original review because they were very meticulous about it. Scott, the question for you is, first of all, that, you know, is, is this a company culture thing? Did you Institute this kind of thing? And the and the second is, is this how review response should be done? Should it be more of a conversation with the customer who’s going to read the bad review?

Scott Petersen 16:26
Yes. And there’s a couple of caveats on to that, too. It’s true. And we all know this, I always say that the customer isn’t always right. But the customer is always still the customer. And so even though it’s possible to have the same fence experience, and in the case of Amazon sellers, you know, you’ll have one reviewer that gives you five and one reviewers that gives you a one, and essentially you did exactly the same thing. Well, one of the things that I instituted from the beginning of the company We started with a list that was probably about maybe a half of a page of different things that we would run through with our customers to make sure that we didn’t have misunderstandings. And over the years, every time we had a misunderstanding, we would write down and develop processes that were designed to overcome those challenges before they ever started. So by the time that we sold the business, we had, like three pages of small fine print that we walked all of our customers through, to make sure that they understood exactly you know, what they were agreeing to and what we’re agreeing to. And, and then we set up a whole review system. We, every time, we had a project that we didn’t get, you know, a five on we would go out to find out What we missed in their minds, because in our minds, our processes were so tight, that it was really, really hard for someone to honestly say that we didn’t do this because we have all of it documented. But I like the fact that even now, you know, more than 10 years later, 13 years after the sale, you know, we have them following these processes that we instituted from the beginning of the company, and perfected by the, you know, or certainly got to a very refined place. By the time we had sold the business. And they followed exactly what our playbook called for, to document every step of the way phone calls, recorded phone calls, actual, you know, verifiable practices and events as they actually took what you know, took place because working with kids tumors can be tricky, and emotional, emotional, and people they see the world sometimes through rose-colored glasses. As businesses, we have to make sure that we really do have repeatable best practices that ensure that we are creating raving fans, people that will talk about us in a positive light. And to your point, whenever they look online and see a review like that, they’re actually going to penalize the customer and praise the company because they can see that the company really did look after the best interest,

Eric Stopper 19:46
right? They have their processes, in order. So in in actual practice, right. What you’re kind of talking about, it almost sounds like expectation setting is is like running defense. for selling to the wrong customers, and I think that lots of people have that problem where they may be advertising for a keyword and someone will click on that keyword that should not buy their product. one specific example that comes to mind is there’s a brand called I walk free and they sell like you kneel on it’s almost like a pegleg brace and you kneel on it, and it kind of like walk around on this on this pirate looking leg and your leg is backward. There’s a lot of ways for the wrong customer to buy that product. So they’re listing you can go check it out. It’s just filled with like, Don’t buy this if you do this, don’t buy this if you do this, like if you’re over this certain way, if you’re this tall, like don’t do it, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Scott, do you feel like that’s almost too much and that’s a necessary part of it because it almost seems like they’re trying not to get sales. You know what I mean?

Scott Petersen 20:59
Yeah, that’s caveat, that company flex leg was born out of our center. It’s no longer called flex leg, but it actually was born out of our center. Oh, yeah. I think that you have to basically look at it this way. I, you know, before I started my own companies back in 1988. So it’s been a number of years, obviously. I ran sales teams, you know, for about seven years prior to starting my first business. One of the things that I learned was, there’s only so many objections and, and people will say, well, there’s really an unlimited number of objections. And I, I come back to you and say, No, there’s really not. There’s really a handful 567 maybe 10 objections. And so you just simply have to learn the answers to all of those objections and be able to present those answers. In such a way that it’s very, very compelling. So and when I’m marketing products, I remember that I’m custom, like with customers, it’s like sort of herding cattle. So the whole idea is that I am going to lead the cattle along and close the gates that I don’t want them to walk through, meaning I don’t want them to bring up this objection. So I’m actually going to answer it about the time that they’re expecting to hear it. And, and then finally, when I get to the close, it’s sort of like coming to my parlor, whether that be the slaughterhouse or, or the branding or whatever else. And, and so I think you can overdo it. But I think that you have to make sure that you are able to answer any questions that objections or challenges or problems in advance so that they don’t come up in the buyers. The journey of someone and their product selection.

Eric Stopper 23:04
I yeah, I think that’s great. So, you know, if you’re going to design your listing on Amazon or on any website or any sales interaction, you’ve got to be prepared. You need to know your product for those VPS of marketing out there who haven’t interviewed their CEOs and their top salespeople as to what they talk about with customers face to face. What are you doing? Right like that’s, that’s your whole marketing strategy is learning the objections that they deal with and then being able to design an excellent listing around those points. Scott, a good part of the listeners who are, who are on this podcast, they’re looking to get into the Amazon Marketplace, but they need an idea. They need a product. Now, for those of you who don’t know and you can look this up me and Scott were actually on a magazine together at one point. It was really fun. Fine, we started this nanotechnology business. We did a ton of validation for this business. But I was hoping that you can help the listeners understand kind of the best practices when validating a new product before ordering in mass quantities just kind of a quick run-through of Lean Startup methodology.

Scott Petersen 24:18
Yeah. So in a quick run-through number one, I always want to know who my competitors are, there’s the old saying that you’re going to stay close to your friends and closer to your enemies. So you truly want to understand the competition, their feature, advantages, benefits, you don’t want to take them for granted. You don’t want to under you know, appreciate them. You don’t want to over appreciate them. But you want to make sure that you have a balanced view of your competitors. And then developing when I think about product ideas, I always think about, you know, the profit process of sort of like ideation. And so I start with Well, what is a big problem? And then I say, All right. Let’s get my team because usually products are born in teams. And we go into our war room and we have our whiteboards and we are listing and brainstorming and throwing up every single product idea that we’ve got or every feature, every advantage, every benefit. And then we’re thinking about innovation because we’re thinking about bringing into existence, something that hasn’t yet existed before. And then the sort of the third step is that ideation, how we’re going to bring some form to this, these scattered ideas and build it into a product. And then we’re going to iterate that’s step four on that product. So you can see it going from a wide funnel to a narrow, you know, finished product that’s gone through numerous iterations. And then I build-out. I call them virtual prototypes, but in this case, you know, you’re going to do 3d printed models. You’re going to take them out to customers, you’re going to point out the features, the advantages and benefits. In fact, I always walk them through these holes or gaps. And I’ll say, you know, Mr. Customer, today, you’re able to do this. And this is the value that you’re getting today. But tomorrow, you’re going to be able to do this. And the advantage of doing this and proof process over this that you’re currently doing is this. And the economic benefit is this. So I’m connecting the dots. And by the time I’ve done this with anywhere from three to five or six new features on a product, then I really have something that I think that will catch the attention of a lot of consumers, a lot of customers, and I’m always thinking about, you know, what is the job to be done? The old Clayton Christensen model of the innovators’ dilemma, and basically what that says I will, you know, I’m 61 years old, so I always ask people, they never know what age I’m at. But I asked them how they think I consumed music when I was a junior high schooler and they’ll say, oh, probably Apple iPod or, or

Unknown Speaker 27:16
some other mp3 player. It was the first

Scott Petersen 27:21
Apple iPod the Sony Walkman. And I say no, no, actually it was recorded and you must be ancient.

That’s it and then said no, I’ll challenge you to a push-up contest.

Eric Stopper 27:36
By the way, for those listeners that that aren’t looking at Scott, he just had he had brain surgery. How long ago Scott, two months, two months ago, his hairs barely growing back and I saw you doing push-ups with someone with like your shaved head. I believe crazy.

Scott Petersen 27:52
Actually, that was just probably about a week before sorry. And it was a student who thought he might be able to beat me but it didn’t turn out well. But at the End of the day, what I’m saying is that you know, when I was in high school, it was eight-track tapes and right I was in the early 80s. It was cassettes. And then by the time, it was the 90s, it was CDs. And then it was your Sony Walkmans and your Apple iPods, but today, we consume music through Spotify, and other streaming, you know, methods. So the point is, you know, the job to be done. Now, we know what that means. And we know that that job to be done doesn’t generally change in many cases. But how we do that job has changed over time. And so when we think about developing products, we always have to think about how are we doing it now versus how has it been done in the past? And what real, you know, improvements because you can see the evolution of how much easier it is to consume music today than it was when I was a teenager. Right? And, and that’s what they have to think about when they’re developing new products. So once they’ve developed, you know, the 3d models and they’ve taken them out to the marketplace to take a look at, you know, then I’m going to come up sort of with my finished version. And by that time then I think I’m ready for a Kickstarter, you know, then I’m ready for other versions of Kickstarter. And I can then take it to the Amazon store and then I could take it into bookstores and you know onto you know, bigger box or other retailers

Eric Stopper 29:24
And if the product validation is good enough for me, you can try to approach someone to actually invest I know you’ve directed me to family, friends, and fools when I was first getting my business started and that’s where most of our funding came from. And then we actually did the competition circuit at BYU and got hundreds, hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund our venture.

Scott Petersen 29:47
Yeah, there’s definitely

when you have done the work right, number one year mitigating your risk because the whole idea is to build a company that won’t fail. So if you do your, your testing correctly, so that it actually reproduces itself, when you go to sell, you can quit before you start. In other words, if if you can’t get real validation, you just move on to the next business idea, the next product. Otherwise, if you do get all of that real validation, you can take that validation to your friends and family instead of them being fools. You can demonstrate to them.

You know, because you’ve gone through the process.

Here’s all the competitors, here’s what they’re doing, look at what I’ve done. I need just a little bit of support to bring this to reality. And, and people will back you because of the thoughtful approach that you’ve taken and the fact that you’ve mitigated the risks.

Eric Stopper 30:57
Yeah, I think just apply most of the principles. That we’ve talked about in this episode as far as like closing the gates before they even get to them and leading them down the path to the only choice for them is to do it right, it makes the most sense.

Scott Petersen 31:13
Yep, write the check, you know, click the button, get the credit card information taken, and go on and deliver fantastic service and value and get repeat customers and build a big brand and, and then sell it, sell it. achieve your dreams.

Eric Stopper 31:33
Scott, I’ve got one more question for you. And when you’re mentoring me, you said and you actually prompted me on this before we set up this episode, but that success reaches beyond the bottom line. Could you could you talk to me a little bit about that?

Scott Petersen 31:52
I can. In fact, you know, I remember one of my old mentors. I had sold my first business so it wasn’t like I was As a novice, I’d already made a significant amount of created a significant amount of wealth. And I actually started to contribute to an organization that provided microloans and business mentoring and training to two small micro-businesses in third world countries.

Eric Stopper 32:24
Mentors International. Right? Correct.

Scott Petersen 32:27
And my the founder of the company, Menlo Smith, who today is in his 90s, and still vigorous and healthy. He said, Scott, we’re not trying to make knaves richer knaves, meaning that we’re not trying to take, you know, people without character and make them wealthy. He said we want to take people who have character and make them wealthy because they’ll know what to do with it. And so well by itself is really quite empty and meaningless. When I think back about the things that I’m most proud of it really is the fact that I have an incredible family, a wife of 40 years and five children that, you know, have had their own children who all five of them have successful careers, and successful families. And they all value character, they all value integrity, they all value hard work. They all value their faith. And, and then moving past that, you know, it’s not just about you know, what we can consume, you know? Yep, I do. I live in a big house and I drive nice cars. But I like to limit the amount of consumption actually. And I’ve invested and I put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, by the past 20 years. Giving hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to these micro-companies, and then helping the rising generation. So I, as you might imagine, I don’t make very much money and I didn’t come here for money to Brigham Young University. I came here to give back to the rising generation. I want to make them successful, but I want to make them successful in the right way. So that when they do become successful, that they haven’t sacrificed their family and they haven’t sacrificed their faith, they haven’t sacrificed, you know, giving back to society. And by doing that, I think we build something that’s sustainable. And I think that’s something that a lot of non-entrepreneurs don’t realize is that you know, most of the people that I know that are successful, desperately want to help others who aren’t And to figure out ways to do it that are correct. just handing people money never works out very well. Because believe me, I’ve tried it. And it doesn’t usually provide very much long term benefit. But what does create long term benefit is teaching individuals how they can be successful on their own. And when you do that, long enough, and with enough people, you’re not just not building individuals, you’re building communities and states and nations and making it sustainable. So that’s my end goal. That’s the end to which we started the, you know, the global business model competition. It’s the end to which you know, I’m working with hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs, young aspiring entrepreneurs here at Brigham Young and elsewhere in the community, and giving back really in every way that I’m capable of to Help others achieve their own dreams because it’s hollow when you’re winning alone. So my advice is don’t get caught up in the dollar. And don’t get caught up in thinking that when you do become successful that you’re better than anyone else, because, frankly, you’re not. If you are born, you know, I’ve just used the term mentally handicapped. Is it your fault? And I obviously say, of course, it isn’t. And then if you’re born Einstein, is it your fault? I say no, I don’t think so. So, the giver of the gifts, you know, is

God Himself. And so it’s pretty

arrogant to draw too much attention to ourselves. Instead, just do everything we can with the gifts that we were given, and help everybody else along the way. And we can Have a much better society than the one that I see in front of me.

Eric Stopper 37:04
Thank you for that, Scott.

Eric Stopper 37:07
A lot of you listening are going to make a lot of money. It’s going to happen. You’re you live in a world of opportunity and especially on Amazon, there’s there is no. So far I haven’t been able to find a ceiling for most of the brands that we work with and they’re already making a whole bunch of money and their investors are happy and their CEO is getting, you know, paid a lot of money. Stay true, right and make sure that you know you are why. If you want to check out what BYU is doing, go to miller.byu.edu to check out some of their Competition Series. You can also look at the Marriott school few if you Google that they come up with the rolling center of entrepreneurship and technologies. Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Scott Petersen 37:54
My pleasure. Thanks very much, my friend or have a great one.

Eric Stopper 37:59
Thanks for listening. To the Buy Box Experts podcast, be sure to click subscribe, check us out on the web and we’ll see you next time.