How Amazon’s Secret Can Be Yours: Working Backwards

well hey there hero it’s David H
Lawrence the 17th I can’t believe we are
what is it Oh 915 14 videos away from
finishing up Wow
this is crazy maybe 10 is it 10 videos
yeah it’s 10 videos for doing the whole
year challenge thank you so much for
being through this with me we’re gonna
go to once a week at the beginning of
the year once a week on Wednesdays if
you want to sign up for that go ahead
and scroll down to the bottom of the
page on vo heroes com get on the list
and you’ll be notified every week when
these videos come out but for now we’re
gonna finish up the year and one of the
things I wanted to talk to you about one
of my clients when my lovely clients
sent me an article from ink magazine and
asked me a question is this how you
designed vo heroes and when you find out
what the article is all about the answer
will be absolutely that’s the case the
article was about how Amazon works
backwards when they develop products
that they want to sell a lot of people
think Oh Amazon creates anything they
want and they put it up on Amazon it’s
gonna sell well because they’ve got
billions of customers it’s not how it
works
what they do is they do what I did when
I did with what I did with vo to go go
back in the day and with vo heroes now
they start with the audience they start
with a problem that the audience has
that their customers have that they can
identify they can flesh out they can get
an experience about boy they really hate
it when they can’t do this can’t clean
their floor I can’t drill into wood
can’t fix something in their house who
knows what it is that they sell and in
my case the question was what does my
audience want to learn about voiceover
because there’s an awful lot to learn
about voiceover and it turned out that
the art was something that they wanted
to learn but mostly they wanted to learn
about the business and the technology
and then I found out later on by asking
further questions they wanted to learn
how to keep their head around the
problem of being a performer and a
talent and a voice-over talent in
particular so Amazon starts with the
problem and then they work backward
in the process to see what’s the best
way to solve that problem and what can
they create as a product or find as a
product cuz sometimes they’ll outsource
the creation of the product and they
won’t actually build it themselves in
fact that happens more often than not
but internally they have to make a case
for building this particular product and
so excuse me the way they do that is
they get together in small groups
they’re called skunk works they present
to a small group convinced that small
group and then they move to a larger
working group and then they present to
maybe the the Executive Board of the
company if it’s a big enough product
that they want Baker’s support for but
the point here is they don’t sit around
thinking about products to create they
wait or go seeking a problem to be
solved and that’s kind of working
backwards because when you think about
inventors right inventors create
products they don’t know whether it’s
gonna sell well or not they don’t know
they think it’s going to be useful to
people but they don’t know and many many
inventions have failed because there
just simply wasn’t a market for them
wasn’t an audience for them like the
inventor thought there would be
so what Amazon does because they want to
maximize the success of the things that
they put money behind that they create
that they outsource and so on is they
will work backwards from the process
here’s the problem 60 million people
have it whatever that problem is or
maybe 20 million people or maybe 1
million people and they look at how to
solve that problem whether the product
that they can create can be priced at a
point where they can make money and
solve the problem for the audience and
they do all this internal work and they
do testing and they pitch it to other
members of the buying team in the
company and they have to convince them
internally that this would be a good
product for Amazon to have and only then
do they move to the next step which is
test mark
getting they check to see if you
somebody would actually buy maybe they
put up a page and they say would you
like this product right
maybe they create a small batch of these
products and see if they sell so with me
when the when my client asked me this
question like why did you decide to do
IVR as a voice over category because I
don’t really hear about IVR a lot well
that client may not but IVR is one of
those huge kind of hidden voiceover
categories of art that you don’t hear
about a lot in the news you don’t hear a
lot about in in meetings you hear about
commercials and audiobooks and boy do
you hear about animation and video games
right but the truth of the matter is a
lot more money is made by voice-over
talent in the world of IVR then
animation and video games combined now I
don’t know about audio books probably
audio books because there are far more
phones in the world and far more phone
tree systems in the world then there are
books being produced on a daily basis so
it’s one of those things you don’t hear
about a lot but it’s something that my
audience said I’d like to know more
about and I asked I said do you want to
know about this stuff way back when all
I had was a commercials class that was
it somebody asked me how do you make
most of your money and I told him then
like oh yeah I want to know about that
and so I asked a few other people before
I put the time into creating the class
but when I did oh my gosh the reaction
was fantastic and it was because I
started with what the audience wanted
and I want you to do that same thing
when you’re setting up your profiles
remember it’s not about explaining
everything you’ve done in your life it’s
about explaining things so that a
customer can get their problem solved
now they want to have their problem
solved by good talent but they also want
to have their problem solved by talent
that’s been recognized as being good
that’s why you talk about awards and
recommendations and testimonials right
so always start with what the audience
needs as opposed to you know I think I’m
gonna tell them about that time that I
played Michael Wendy’s little brother in
Peter Pan on stage because I think that
really helps me as a talent
maybe it does maybe it doesn’t maybe
they don’t care maybe what they want is
their e-learning platform to be voiced
by somebody who knows what they’re
talking about so when you look at
creating something when you look at
creating a product or creating a profile
or creating a piece of marketing
material always begin with what will my
audience get from this what will this
solve for my audience will they get
information about me will they want to
hire me what will this solve for them
not what will this do for me because
that will follow that will naturally
follow does that make sense to you guys
and I say you guys because everybody has
kind of a different look at this this
can be kind of thought of as very
corporate you know oh that’s how
companies do their research but I’m an
individual I’m an artist
I put stuff up against the wall and see
what sticks yeah okay
so what do you think of this leave me a
comment below I’d love to know as we
wrap these things up toward the end of
the year I’m gonna be giving you some of
my best secrets in terms of how I’ve
built my business and how I serve my
customers if that’s ok with you I
appreciate it I’m David H Lawrence the
17th I thank you so much for watching
and I will talk to you tomorrow.