How Amazon Proved the Biggest Risk in Marketing is Not Taking Risks

Eric Eden : 0:59

Welcome to today's episode. Our guest today is Steve Anderson. He is a author, an influencer and a marketer. Welcome to the show, eric. Thank you so much for having me.

Steve Anderson: 1:10

It's fun being on here.

Eric Eden : 1:12

Why don't we start off by you sharing a minute or two of context about who you are and what you do?

Steve Anderson: 1:25

what you do. So I've been in the insurance industry and, more specifically, selling insurance agencies for my entire career. Probably the last 25 or 30 years have been focused on technology consulting and advice for that niche market, and so a lot of marketing, a lot of helping others understand the new technology that's coming and how to effectively use it in our organizations. So that's the short version. A whole lot more there, but I'll keep. I'll stop there.

Eric Eden : 1:53

All right, I was very interested in the book that you wrote and the marketing that you did around that. Why don't you tell us a story about how you decided to write that book and the remarkable marketing that you did around it? Because it's darn impressive.

Steve Anderson: 2:11

Thank you. The germ of the idea of the book actually came out of my technology work, where I think we all know even maybe more so today than ever that technology continues to do it all rapidly and for businesses to be successful, they need to not wait around to see what's going to happen, but they need to be embracing new trends that are coming. And so I started asking the question is the biggest risk businesses face actually not taking enough risk? And coming out of the insurance industry, that's sort of anathema, right, it's counterintuitive. Yet technology is faster today than ever and we can't wait around like businesses used to do 20 years ago, and so that was a germ of the idea. I started researching companies that had been successful at one point and are gone, and I started looking at companies that have been successful and one point and are gone, and I started looking at companies that have been successful and continue to be successful. Try to understand the differences. Why is one type of company gone and the other continues to be successful? Came across Amazon and I'll say, obviously as a very good example of successful and continues to be successful, came across the shareholder letters that Jeff Bezos wrote and became very intrigued with what he wrote in those letters and shareholder letters often are boring and tout just the company. Bezos did that to some degree, but he also talked about how he did it and what he did at Amazon to help them continue to be successful. So that's where the book idea came from and I realized that there were threads through the letters that he wrote 1997 to 2020 as CEO at Amazon and that's where the book idea came out of. The 14 growth principles are what I saw in those letters as those different threads, and then the marketing. It was really interesting.

Steve Anderson: 4:11

I had this idea for the book wrote. The book had some help getting it published and, somewhat strategically, amazon's name's on the cover, bezos' name's on the cover. That, right. There was very strategic in how to design the book to a bald head, right. So it's not Bezos.

Steve Anderson: 4:46

So I get that question a lot. It's an Adobe stock photo, but people resonate with the cover and when you're doing book marketing, that cover is designed to get the book off the shelf for somebody to pick it up and then typically flip to the back. So read the back jacket copy. So that's another marketing piece and then get them to open and flip through maybe the table of contents or flip through the book, all hoping that they'll actually take it to the counter and buy it. And now again physical stores and same idea in the electronic stores. So that's all kind of marketing. And then part of what happened is just because of the subject. The book has actually been translated into 20 languages, and so that was a surprise. I never thought about foreign rights, and now, five years later, we're actually getting renewals of those foreign rights contracts. So that's been really fun.

Eric Eden : 5:50

Amazon is half of the US economy, roughly, so it's not surprising that this topic is intriguing for people, and it's just grown so much, so that's what's interesting about writing about his 14 growth principles is just how much success Amazon has had. They've literally just crushed almost everybody else. It's been very interesting to watch over that time period you mentioned the last 15, 20 years. It's been fascinating to watch them dominate, and I think that's why people resonate with the book right.

Steve Anderson: 6:26

Yeah, I do too. I would say, from again, a marketing perspective, a book is a great tool, but here's the caveat. I would caution people. It's got to be a good book and I've seen actually a lot of people publish books that are just long form sales letters, so that tends to hurt you more than help you.

Steve Anderson: 6:50

A book, a good book, good ideas, and you need to give away all your ideas in the book. People tend to want to hold back and that's a mistake, because people they need to be able to do it themselves. Right, and most people won't want to because there is more that the author can offer. If you want to do consulting or coaching or, you know, product, whatever that might look like, a book is a great tool to help you establish yourself. As you know, I don't really like the phrase but a thought leader or someone who has something to say, and it's got to be good. That's the emphasis. Not just so many people right now talk about a book as a business card. It's got to be a whole lot more than that in order for it to actually help you market whatever it is that you want to do as a person or as a company.

Eric Eden : 7:49

Some of the stats I've seen are actually very interesting. That there's 3 million books that are published nonfiction per year in the US and I would say 95% of them sell less than a thousand copies, is the stat.

Steve Anderson: 8:06

More like 98%. Whatever it's still most don't sell very much. And again, it's easier to publish a book today than ever. And the problem is do you really want to learn how to be a publisher? And maybe because I've got a book that's been successful. When I see a self-published book I can tell Cover's not great, interior design's not great, they haven't thought out Even things in the book like we did. We put lakes in the book to different resources that so we're always pointing people back to the website for additional resources so then we can engage more with them and other kinds of things that I want to provide. So again, as a marketing tool, a book is great. You just got to have, you really have to do it right.

Eric Eden : 8:57

Yeah, I think that the ironic thing about your book, the Baseless Letters, is that so many people are publishing books on Amazon these days. Like you said, it's really pretty easy to go and upload your book and Amazon just takes 30% and they list it on their site. But there's a lot that you have to do to make it actually successful. It doesn't just happen because you upload it right.

Steve Anderson: 9:28

Yeah, that really is right.

Steve Anderson: 9:29

And starting from the beginning, thinking about the marketing aspect of the book was something we did and fortunately my wife, who's the co-author of the book, has been in the book publishing business for a while and she does do a lot of work with entrepreneurs or people who have a message that they want to get out.

Steve Anderson: 9:47

So we built in the marketing process into the manuscript of the book. Now, again, the book's got to be good and have good information and you can make sure that if people want more, they have an easy way to get more. You send them to a website and we actually did short URLs, tiny URLs with a service that if the link changed, book links still worked, so we could change the link on the back end to something else and we didn't have to worry about the book being outdated or the links in the book being long. So those are all the little kinds of considerations that if you're thinking about writing a book or want to have a book, those are the marketing pieces that should be baked into the book as you're working on it and developing it.

Eric Eden : 10:47

Very interesting. Yeah, you've become an influencer. I was fascinated by this. Talk a little bit about how you've gotten hundreds of thousands of followers on LinkedIn. Linkedin.

Steve Anderson: 11:02

Basically, the email said we're starting this new program called Influencers. We've come across your information, we think you'd be a good addition to our list, and I actually deleted the email at first, thought it was spam, kept thinking about it, went back, researched and found the editor on LinkedIn, looked legitimate, set up a phone call, had a quick conversation. I still to this day don't know why or how they found me, but for me it's an example of if you put content out there, if you write articles, if you are consistent, people will notice, and so I was one of the original 750 influencers in that particular program. Linkedin has now changed that program or changed the name to Top Voice, so I still have that tag and they still promote me to people on LinkedIn as somebody. That got me connected to that. But it certainly. 300,000 plus followers certainly is a lot, I would say.

Eric Eden : 12:20

What has been the impact of that? I'm curious, having that many followers.

Steve Anderson: 12:26

It is indirect, I would say. I don't know that I can point directly to any particular thing, but honestly, eric, like you just said, that's pretty impressive. Those when people research me, it's generally what do I say easier, or it connects me more with people, or they want to talk to me. Like you said, what happened, how did that happen, et cetera. And the idea is certainly for my book and some other things that I do in the technology arena.

Steve Anderson: 12:59

It's given idea that businesses and people are enamored today with innovation, and I think that's backwards. I think invention is more important than innovation. I think if we look at a BlackBerry or Blockbuster or Sears or you know, what caused them to go out of business was they innovated themselves to irrelevance versus looking at what's next. So they started protecting what got them there, which is natural, but not looking forward to what do we have to invent next. And I think that's one of the key things with Amazon and the reason they continue to literally build entirely new businesses because they keep thinking about what's next. How do we obsess over customers? How do we invent on customers'?

Eric Eden : 14:07

behalf. The focus on risk is, I think, pretty interesting because a lot of businesses don't succeed Like the majority of businesses over a period of five years are not successful. So I think the focus on risk is pretty interesting. It's interesting because the whole Amazon Web Services AWS when he first pushed that and came out with it, people thought he was nuts. They thought he was crazy for that and that is a good example of the risk and ultimately it became one of the most profitable and successful parts of Amazon versus like the early days of selling books. But he was totally right about that. But people were very skeptical at the start of it. There was articles like in I think it was Forbes that just said you're crazy.

Steve Anderson: 15:04

And AWS certainly is an example. Prime membership is another example. Free two-day shipping is crazy. Amazon Marketplace allowing third-party sellers onto their website. Nobody else has done that for years, Walmart trying and Target trying but they did that in the early 2000s. Crazy ideas, risky ideas that actually have really borne the test of time, I guess I would say, and that really have helped Amazon continue to grow and be successful.

Eric Eden : 15:38

It's very interesting because I think it's something like 70% of people in the United States are Prime members today. When you think about that stat and the impact of it was a risky idea and now 70 of the people in the country there's. I don't know if there's anything else that even rivals that sort of adoption two comments on that.

Steve Anderson: 16:04

one is I think it's irresponsible not to be a prime member but and I think, second, research shows that prime members spend on average double what non-prime members spend on Amazon. And that's what Bezos said early on that two-day shipping free. Two-day shipping removes a barrier, Because before, when people got to the end of the cart and they saw the shipping cost, they were like, oh, I'll just go to the store. They abandoned the cart. Now it's easier to buy it on Amazon because you'll get it. If you go to the store, you don't know if they have it or not, and we well, we do that a lot. Let's just buy it on Amazon. We know we can get it.

Eric Eden : 16:49

I think it's fascinating that Amazon shipped more packages last year than UPS something like 5.8 billion packages. I was wrapping my head around that side as well. It's just ponderous.

Steve Anderson: 17:06

Yeah, and they're shipping them faster than ever. I'm in the Nashville area and there are certain things that I order that I could have that day or early the next morning, and again it's just that session on customers obsession on speed, lower prices, wide selection those are the pillars that Amazon continues to push and work on.

Eric Eden : 17:31

Fascinating to push and work on Fascinating. The other thing that I think you've been experimenting with is an interesting way to get better results from email. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Steve Anderson: 17:44

Gosh, we all complain about email, we all complain about how much email we get and we all scan our inbox and just go delete, delete and and so I've been working on is how I'll say it is replacing many of those emails I won't say everyone, but many of those emails with a video mail. So lots of different platforms allow you to do that, from inexpensive, like loom, to subscription service, like bomb or some others that allow you to record yourself embedded in a video with a gift. And I, literally I I have this little whiteboard you can see here, so I'll write on this whiteboard something like thank you or welcome or just, and that is embedded in the email and I defy you not to click on it if you receive it. And, again, a minute, maybe a minute and a half short, but it's a person to a person and and it's engaging, it's different, it gets people to click to listen and they can even respond if they want text, audio or video to your email. And I'm finding the comments I get back love your video, love this way. I can't remember the last time I received one. And so you're standing out differently from everybody else and especially for more cold outreach, because, again, the purpose, only purpose, of that video is to get them to take the next step Might be click a button, let's set up a phone call, let's do something, and I think it's harder for somebody not to take action with a video, certainly, than email.

Steve Anderson: 19:42

Email is just I don't know this person, I'm going to delete it, but that to me is a gauge. So the problem yeah, I say I keep working on it is is there is this natural resistance and I've been on these kinds of things a lot but there's just this natural resistance to recording yourself. You stumble, flub words, you might not look right, at least according to you, and I think some of the video quote influencers. That's not how they are in real life. What I'm trying to do is this is who I am. I'm a real person. I'm talking to you. I don't rerecord hardly ever. If I flub, I just say that's not what I want to do. I just go on because that's what we do in a conversation. So breaking the barrier of doing it is the hardest part of getting started.

Eric Eden : 20:35

The Anderson letters are certainly a very next generation way of sending a letter with video. But I've been a fan of Loom for a long time than ever, because I think Google says with Gmail they block 99% of spam emails. So I think winning with email is harder than ever and there are tools that allow you to do this a lot easier than it was even a couple of years ago Yep For sure. Easier than it was even a couple of years ago Yep For sure. And I think that it's a very creative way. I don't like when salespeople use it in a very cheesy way and they record one video and then they just insert your name into it. I don't think that meets the bar that you're talking about, but those are the only videos that I've gotten. That is not really personal like you're saying. So I think when people actually truly do it authentically, like you're saying, I think that it can have really interesting results. I've had great results with Loom because a lot of people just they don't want to read long emails.

Eric Eden : 21:50

I worked for one CEO. I've told the story. I've worked for one CEO. I've told the story. I've worked for one CEO and in my interview he said my biggest feedback is you just need to write shorter emails. Your emails are just like way too long and I'm like I was so just annoyed by that feedback because, like, I'm trying to be articulate, I'm trying to be thoughtful and share all these great ideas and they're like, can you make it shorter? And I also worked with one VP who this is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen he sorted his inbox priority by how long the emails were that he received. I'm like I've never seen it. I'm like I've never seen it, but I think it's interesting because what Apple announced just this week with Apple intelligence is they're going to start doing a better job with helping people manage their inbox and what emails you should really focus on. I think, potentially, if there's a video in the email, it could rise to the top of that versus just all the other junk sort of emails that people get, right.

Eric Eden : 22:59

Yeah absolutely Awesome. Any final thoughts? Anything you'd like to share that that we didn't cover?

Steve Anderson: 23:08

I think just experiment, I mean that, for me that's a big word.

Eric Eden : 23:12

try things out, figure out what works and what doesn't get rid of of what doesn't and go all in on what does. All right. Thank you very much for being with us today. Thanks for sharing your stories and these insights. Appreciate it, Pleasure, Eric. Thanks so much for having me.