Corey Poirier is a multiple-time TEDx Speaker. He is also the host of the top rated ‘Let’s Do Influencing’ Radio Show, founder of the growing bLU Talks brand, and has been featured in multiple television specials. He is also a Bestselling Author, incl. Wall Street Journal / USA Today Bestseller, Quitless. and The Book of Public Speaking.
A columnist with Entrepreneur and Forbes magazine, he has been featured in/on various mediums and is one of the few leaders featured twice on the popular Entrepreneur on Fire show.
He has also interviewed over 6,500 of the world’s top leaders and he has spoken on-site at Harvard and more recently to Microsoft team leaders and at Kyle Wilson’s Inner Circle retreat which has featured everyone from Brian Tracy to Mark Victor Hansen to Phil Collen (Def Leppard).
Also appearing on the popular Evan Carmichael YouTube Channel, he is a New Media Summit Icon of Influence, was recently listed as the # 5 Influencer in Entrepreneurship by Thinkers 360, and listed on the 2021 Brainz CREA Global Awards as an honouree, and he is an Entrepreneur of the Year Nominee, Champion Award (Business from The Heart) nominee, and to demonstrate his versatility, a Rock Recording of the Year Nominee who has performed stand-up comedy more than 700 times, including an appearance at the famed Second City.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Corey Poirier about the power of influencer marketing.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How writing a book allows you to stand out in your field of expertise.
– Why writing a book makes you an authority in your marketplace.
– How you can gain people’s trust through a book and get more business.
– How you can leverage your book to facilitate business opportunities.
– Why you need to be prepared for opportunities when they arise.
Connect with Corey:
Links Mentioned:
thebookofwhyaudio.com
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@thatspeakerguy
Instagram
@thatspeakerguy
Facebook
facebook.com/coreypoirierpage
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/speakercoreypoirier
Rob Kosberg:
Hey welcome everybody. Rob here with another Publish Promote Profit podcast episode. I am really excited to bring a great guest to you, a man that completely understands how to build a platform and grow your authority. Corey Poirier is a multiple time TEDx speaker, host of the top-rated Let’s Do Influencing radio show, and founder of BLU Talks brand, which we’re going to talk a good bit about. You’ve been featured in multiple television specials. You’re, of course, a bestselling author, including the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller, Quitless, and the Book of Public Speaking. We’ll talk a little out that. You’ve done tons of things. You are a columnist with Entrepreneur and Forbes, you’ve interviewed 6,500 of the world’s top leaders. You’ve spoken on site at Harvard. Now you’re on the Publish Promote Profit Podcast. What is there left to do? Corey, good to have you on the show.
Corey Poirier:
Thanks so much, Rob. I’m super stoked to be here. I like to think that I’m just getting started. So, thank you.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, you are a prolific individual. I know one of your passions is helping people to create their brand influence, et cetera. Maybe take a couple of minutes, describe what you’re doing, what you’re focused on, what BLU Talks are, and why BLU Talks is kind of important for people.
Corey Poirier:
I’ll say there’s two answers to that in terms of BLU Talks because there’s two different audiences. We have two different audiences from our perspective. From everybody else’s perspective, it’s one audience. So, what I mean by that, BLU Talks, it stands for Business, Life, Universe. How it came about was I had students that were in programs of mine that were saying, “I’d like to have a spiritual type TEDx talk. I wish there was such a thing as a spiritual TEDx talk.” Others were saying, “I wish you had a done for you service where I could show up and speak, but you do the rest.” Ultimately, the light bulb finally went off. It took a little longer than it should have that maybe I have an obligation to create this. We created BLU Talks based on those needs. BLU Talks now is multi-platform. We have multiple ways that we get the BLU Talks message out in multiple parts of the brand, which would include, in this case, live stages, pre-COVID. We have done one during COVID, and we’ll be doing more soon; virtual stages. We have the podcast and the book series. The book series is an anthology or compilation series where we help numerous people write a book together to become bestselling authors. That’s kind of what BLU Talks is. Why it started was because, for me, like what the big why is for me, is it’s what I wish I would’ve had when I started. I started my journey 20 some years ago. Obviously social media wasn’t even a thing yet. To get media, as you probably recall, Rob, there were a lot less media sources out there. It was really competitive because there was still a lot of people competing to get those few spots that existed. To get your first bite of media was really, really, really hard. Then to build it up to the point where, all of a sudden, now you have some credibility from this, like what it looks like on your business bio, took forever. I said, “What if I could create that so that people that we bring into our community can both impact people with their message, but also leverage all the things that we can involve them in to actually add to their business bio?” Now we have students, or people that are in our community, who in the last year have spoken on stage at Harvard. They’ve shared the bill with Les Brown, with Jack Canfield, with JJ Virgin. Obviously, that looks pretty good on your bio, also being a number one bestselling author. Some of these people came to us and had never written in a book before, had only done one podcast interview. That’s a jump of probably five years of credibility that I didn’t have when I started. That’s what we’re trying to do. Why I say that that there are two audiences is because there’s the audience we’re serving on the front end, which is the speakers, the authors, the influencers, and then there’s the audience that shows up to hear those talks and signs on to the podcast to listen to those episodes, which again are two different audiences. The audience that we’re serving would be your solopreneurs, lifestyle entrepreneurs, audiences that would show up to hear the talk would be very similar to those that would show up for a Goldcast, or a TEDx, or Mindvalley talk. That’s kind of in a nutshell what BLU Talks is and who we serve.
Rob Kosberg:
I love that. One of the things I talk to my clients about is what I call the hierarchy of desire. Which is as you go up the hierarchy, become more desirable, you’re undoubtedly income increases all because your authority and how you’re viewed in the eyes of your ideal client is growing. You go from a generalist to a specialist, to an expert, to a thought leader, to a celebrity. It’s not that a celebrity, in whatever space, a medical celebrity like a Dr. Oz, or JJ Virgin in fitness, et cetera, it’s not that that person really knows that much more, but it’s really that they’re that much more known. It sounds like that’s exactly what you’re doing with BLU Talks, which is fantastic. You’re helping people to just compress that timeframe and do what maybe they could never do themselves; get the media, get the attention, get the authority and credibility. I’m a big believer in that. Obviously, that’s a big reason why so many people come to us for books. Talk to me a little bit about that and the psychology of that from your perspective. I’m sure it hasn’t escaped you. There’s a reason that you did it for yourself and there’s a reason that you’re doing it for your clients. What kind of rewards do you see on the other side of that for the people that you serve?
Corey Poirier:
That’s a great question. I’ll go back to the book side and validate what you just said as well. From my perspective, I always look at it like this – If I’m in a town, a small town, and there’s only two dentists in the town, and one wrote a book called the Book of Dentistry, and the other dentist didn’t, whether it’s right or wrong, there’s a good chance the one that wrote the book is going to be busier. Myself, chances are, I would go to that dentist. First of all, if all things were equal, if the price was equal, then I bet that dentist is going to be overflowing and sending people to the other dentist, if the price was equal, but chances are, going to your point, what are the benefits, that dentist that wrote the book can actually be charging more and still probably be the busier of the two practices. That’s a backup for why people go to you probably for a book and why we’d want a book. It’s also what we’re doing as well, which is that we’re helping people become authorities. To me, when you become an authority, and I shy away from the word expert because you said a key thing, it doesn’t mean that that person knows more than the other person. In fact, that dentist we just talked about might have had less schooling, might not have gone to the higher end school, but still, because locally, they put that book out and they maybe had more press, they’re still going to look like the expert more. Dr. Oz and JJ might not be the top expert in the world, but at the same time, they might be viewed as the top expert in their space. It’s a perception thing really. It can’t be phony and fake though. It can’t be to the point where you have created this whole image, but you have nothing to back it up. Can that happen? Yes. But people will get found out and the thing will collapse. The house of cards will collapse. My thoughts on it are is that if you can get some of the base knowledge, and then you know how to do what we just talked about, which is to leverage it, to put yourself out as an expert, to get those things that are going to get you a trust factor that makes you look more like the expert, then chances are you are going to have more business. You’re going to have happier clients. You’re going to have people that send people your way because they’re like, “Oh, you got to deal with him. You know what? I just saw him yesterday. He was on this show.” There’s even an excitement that you’re going to that person. I’ll give you an example. This is a prime example that always stuck out to me. A guy named Fred Connors in the little city where I used to live, he happened to be on two shows. One was, What Not to Wear, he was the stylist. They called him the self-esteem expert, but he was the hair stylist. He was on two shows. That was the only thing that separated him from every other stylist in the little city I was in. Unlike the dentist scenario, there was lots of stylists. I don’t know how many stylists, but probably at least 25 shops. Now the interesting part about that, his salon was super busy because of that. He was working in the salon side by side with other stylists, and none of those other stylists were as busy as him in his own salon, again, where he was being booked that far in advance. The only thing different about him whatsoever was he was on two TV shows and nobody else in the city was. That’s the power of it. I just told you, not only were people willing to wait that long for him, not only did they have that big of a backlog, but he was charging like five and six and seven times what the average cut cost. They would go get their haircut from somebody else four or five times while waiting for that cut because they wanted to say, “Oh, I got to sit with Fred, and we had this great conversation.” To me, when you said what’s the benefit of that, and that’s what we’re trying to do with BLU Talks. If you’re looking at somebody and thinking, “Okay, who should I hire to speak at my event,” and because we’ve helped them do this, they can send a link to a video of them speaking at Harvard University. Obviously, we know the credibility that comes with that. If they can send a flyer that showed they were featured on the same event as Les Brown and Bob Proctor and then they can say, “Oh, and here you can check out my contribution to this number one bestselling book on this exact idea that you’re thinking to hire me about,” then they send those three things that wouldn’t have existed had they had to wait years to gain them, but it wouldn’t have existed so soon. They send those three things that we’ve helped them get. I think you and I both know, Rob, from our experience, that person has a much better chance of getting booked than if they didn’t have those three things. That’s what we’re giving them. We’re just giving them that leg up. Most people that come with us are vetted because they’re a referral from somebody else. Somebody will say, “Oh, you need to learn what Corey’s doing,” or, “Oh, your story would be a great fit for BLU Talks,” and because of that, the stories have content as well. The people can back up what they’re saying. We haven’t really run into a case where somebody’s faking it all the way through, and then leveraging what we’ve done for them to get stuff. It’s really, they have great stories. They have great content. We’re just helping positioning them in a different way. So again, that was a long answer. That’s the power to me, both being in a book, and at the same time, having somebody position you and place you on platforms that you wouldn’t otherwise be on.
Rob Kosberg:
I think some people, there’s a temptation maybe to bristle at this idea of, “I want to go to the best. I don’t want to go to the celebrity.” Truth be told, you don’t know who the best is anyway at the thing. All you know is, number one, do you know who they are? Awareness is absolutely key in all of this. Number two, are they in a situation that clearly makes them an authority in that place? Meaning, are they speaking with other authorities? Are they engaging in an environment of authorities like TV or radio, or some kind of platform like a conference? We make our judgements. Whether someone might listen to this and get annoyed at the idea of, “This is all fake,” or, “It’s created celebrity,” no, look, it is work. This stuff is work to do. I have a lot of clients that are financial advisors, and they always get annoyed when I talk about Suze Orman. They’re like, “Oh, Suze Orman, her advice is terrible,” or, “Dave Ramsey, his advice is terrible. It’s grandma’s old-fashioned advice.” I’m like, “Look, they’re where you want to be from a financial perspective because they did the work to get there. They took the steps. The best-selling books, the TV appearances, the PBS special, the long running radio show. That’s work. It takes an investment.” I wonder, talk to me about what your steps are in your program. You take people through a process, certainly. It may be a different process for different people, depending on where they’re at. Talk through the general steps that you would take somebody through that is good at what they do, but they’re unknown.
Corey Poirier:
I’m happy to. I’ll just tag onto what you said as well there for a second too, Rob. I think of somebody, when you mentioned about it is work, and somebody that popped into my head right away was John Gray, who wrote Men are From Mars, for those that may not be familiar with John, he sold upwards of 100 million copies of that book series. When you said it takes work, I mean not to get into all the interviews that John has done and all that stuff, but something that he brought up to me during an interview that I wouldn’t have thought this myself, but to back up how much work it really takes, what he did for eight years when he was trying to get that book to become the phenomenon it became, for eight years, every single day, he did intentions. He would act like as if his publisher was calling him, and he would act it out. He’s answering the phone and said, “Oh, hi, how are you doing?” Whatever the name was, say Jimmy. “Hi, how are you doing, Jimmy? My what? The book, what? The book finally made the New York Times list? Oh my God.” He acted all that out as if people are telling him it. He also did it as if people were walking up and saying, “John, thanks for saving our marriage.” My point is he did that daily for eight years before the book hit the list. That’s work. Now people could look at him, and say, somebody that’s like, “Why him,” and, “His advice isn’t that much better than mine,” and what have you, but that’s, like you said, he did the work. He didn’t just do a kind of little bit of work and get on it and get lucky. I mean, he did a lot of work and got lucky. Like we always say, being successful basically is where luck meets preparation. Be prepared for the opportunity when it shows up. He was there. He walked through the doors, and he probably fell sometimes when he walked through the doors, but he put in the work. I just wanted to back up what you said, that it does take to work. In terms of the process that we take people through, it depends on what way they’re coming to work with us. So for instance, if they’re coming in because they want to learn how to build a speaking business, that’s a totally different step by step process than if they’re coming in saying, “I just want to land a TEDx Talk and leverage that talk,” versus somebody that comes into our BLU Talks community and says help. Like you said, “I’m starting at square one.” In the speaking program, people that come in and, and it’s a very big mixture, but it’s people from a leader working for a company who’s wanting to transition into being a full time speaker, it could be somebody who’s a speaker, but they’re saying, “How do I get paid though? I’ve been doing this for five years, leveraging it to grow my business, but I don’t get paid. How do I get paid, Corey, to show up?” There are various questions that’ll come in. The program, though, for that one, is a self-study program where we do provide support. It’s a 12-week program. They come in, sign up for the program, and we’ve already prerecorded high level videos, like 35, 40 minutes. People don’t want five hours of training anymore at a time. Every week we release another weekly training. They basically are, the first quarter, I’ll call it a module, is about learning the process of becoming a speaker. Second is how to position and market yourself. So we call it positioning and promotion. Third is profit. How do you actually make money doing this thing? We take them to that program, but then what we also do is we do monthly live Q&A’s. They get that. I want people to have both. I’ve gone into programs that I didn’t use because it wasn’t self-study, and I had to show up live and I couldn’t make it. I went through ones where it was only self-study, and I didn’t push myself to go into it. I tried to mix all of that. We have live Q&As for people. We have a private Facebook group. We do Zoom calls to try to get everybody connected once a month as well. There’s an interactive component. Then there’s also self-study. That, and this TEDx program to make it easy, I call it the Branded Talk Program. Those two are pretty much the same concept. One is designed solely to help you secure, deliver, and leverage your TEDx Talk. The other one is designed to help you get paid speaking engagements, and how to build a speaking business. The reason we call it the Branded Talk one, the TEDx one, is because it’s more than your TEDx Talk, but I reference TEDx because that’s usually what people are asking me about. Those are those programs. The BLU Talks is a bit of a different can of worms as people come to us. Really what they’re saying is, “I have a story.” Some of them have shared their message lots, some haven’t. I have a story, Corey, and I need you to help me get it out to the world. How we deliver that is twofold. Well on one hand it’s, okay, here’s when the book’s due, what we need you to do is send us a up to 2,000 word chapter, a 200 word bio and a photo. We basically do the rest. With the podcast, once your book chapter’s out, let’s interview you about the book chapter. What we started to do now is we’ll bring people on the virtual stage for an interview, and then we’ll air the audio of that on the podcast just to allow us to repurpose it a little bit. That’s what it looks like. When it’s the live event, we run the live event, so we handle everything. It’s like any live event you’ve gone to, except for it’s very specific to BLU Talks. We handle everything. You just have to show up and speak. The point of that is, we pretty much handle everything. You just have to show up. Then you learn the whole process so then if you want to write your own book, you’ve now learned the process from us of what being a part of a book looks like. I see a lot of people, and I did that myself, that’ll start with a compilation book because they keep saying they’re going to write their own book and never do. Then they get in a compilation book and say, “Wow, that wasn’t as hard as I thought,” and then they finally start writing their own book. That’s probably why I love that. Also, I get calls from people and email saying, “I did a happy dance. I’m finally in a book that was a best seller.” That’s kind of what it looks like. The one thing I’ll add, though, is it comes with, and a lot of people think we’re foolish because we used to sell this, but it comes with a masterclass, a five-week masterclass that everybody gets that joins it. Our hidden reason for that is because the masterclass is called the AuthorPreneurship SpeakerPreneurship Masterclass. We’re trying to teach you about the book business so that you actually maximize being a part of BLU Talks more. It’s a win-win that way. What we teach you, you can use for your own book. We’re hoping you use that with BLU Talks, and that’ll allow you to figure out how to market a little bit better, how to use a popular hashtag or create a hashtag, and all that kind of stuff. Then finally, we also do leverage training. So we actually, I’ll do once the book is out or close to being out, we’ll do a training saying here’s all the different ways you can leverage this now. I find, and I don’t know if you’ve seen this, Rob, a lot of people will be in a book and not know what to do with that. They’ll be in a book, and it’s not even on their email signature, one of the best property places ever. They don’t actually tell people that they talk to that they wrote a book. They don’t say it on podcasts. We actually take people through, “Here’s many of the ways you can now leverage being a part of this book.” We do that kind of training. Finally, we do group coaching to help people get ready for the live event. Again, speaking is its own beast as well. We do get a lot of people, which is also very rewarding, we get a lot of people that come to us that have only been on stage once. The second stage they’re going to be on is equivalent to a TEDx stage. We have an event coming up in June of next year at Columbia University in New York. Imagine if you’ve never spoken in your life and your first talk is at Columbia University. That’s what we’re doing for people. People say to me, “Well, aren’t you scared taking somebody on that hasn’t spoke before and putting them on that kind of stage.” First of all, we’re recording it. It’s not live. We’re recording it. There is an audience there. Sorry, I’ll correct that. It’s live for the audience, but the video that’s going to go out to the world is not live. So, we do kind of have a do over, even though the audience would have to see it. Secondly, we’re coaching them all the way up through. What I’m looking at is the stuff they’re learning, after me doing this for 20 some years, is the stuff it took me 10 years to learn. If they can learn that stuff, as long as they’re comfortable being on a stage. That’s the key thing. If they can learn all that stuff, I’m teaching them, they’re going to be ahead of where I was when I start.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, you you’ve talked a lot about books. Why don’t we change gears and talk to me about your books. You have, the Book of Speaking. Obviously you’ve done compilation books. You have a Wall Street Journal book that you’re a co-author in. Tell me, for you personally, how have you seen your books help you to make more money, make the kind of impact you want to make? How has it helped you specifically to grow your influence in your space?
Corey Poirier:
Well, you’ve probably heard some form of this phrase that the book is the probably the best business card you’ll ever have in terms of cost versus return. Robert Kiyosaki, I heard him one time say, he said, “I’m a bestselling author, but I’m not a bestselling writer.” He said, “If you seen my first draft, you wouldn’t come back,” but he sold 26 million books. To me, he’s an author as well. His argument is it’s the best business card he’s ever had because it’s opened more doors than anything else he’s ever done. First of all, before I go anywhere, I’ll say it’s important to know what your goal is with your book. I have different goals for different books. To say how I’ve used them, which I will tell you, results-wise, how I’ve used them and seen direct return, but I’ve also went into books with different goals. For example, I’ve put out books where the whole goal was to build my email list. I leveraged two books I put out only digital. I hadn’t released them as print yet. We added about 5,000 people to my email list in about three months. That was something I couldn’t do any other way. I tried other ways at the time. Couldn’t do it. So that’s one thing. I had another book, and this ties to what you’re talking about, called Standing Ovations From Every Customer. This was really related to me doing talks around customer service. I’ve never sold that book ever. You’ve never been able to buy the book. The whole purpose of the book, it’s a pocket book, it’s over in the wall over there in front of me, it’s a pocket book. What we did is we found the top list of CEOs and top lists of companies, and we sent it directly to the CEO, basically with the idea of, “Hey, if you can take this book and learn what you can from it and share it with your staff, great. “ But we know a small percentage is going to say, “No, I need to bring Corey in to share this.” I can track back, and say it’s been double digits for sure. I want to say upwards of a hundred, but let’s just say somewhere between 50 and 100 paid bookings from simply sending that book in the mail for free. It was a pocket book. It was designed, tiny book, so it doesn’t cost as much. Again, the goal was solely, “Let’s get some paid bookings out of this.” The other one you mentioned was Let’s Build an Email List. We’ve had another one. So I wrote a book called the Book of Why (and How). And that book is right now currently with Morgan James Publishing, so a New York publisher. That book, totally different approach than any of the other books. It was more meant to be like the Alchemist, or the Four Agreements, or Celestine Prophecy, where I didn’t mean to build a backend business and never intended to. It was more a book that I felt could impact and change lives, period, and nothing beyond that. That book ironically has had kind of the biggest buzz. Like James Redfield, who wrote Celestine, wrote the forward for the book, John Gray, who I mentioned, JJ Virgin, who I mentioned, TR Becker, they wrote endorsements for the book. The book, like I say, is with Morgan James Publishing. It’s been on every list except Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times. It’s been on Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, like all the other lists. That book was designed to be my version of a book that can sort of impact people anywhere they get it. Almost anybody could benefit from it. I’ve had the most amount of comments of people that I didn’t know read the book with that book saying, “I read this book and it helped me find my purpose. And so it’s changed my whole life.” I get a lot of feedback from that book. That book, I know going in is probably not going to help build my backend business, but I’m okay with that. Now what I do, and this is a tip for people in case this hasn’t been shared in the show, I do this with every book now, but I started with that book, where on the second or third page, it says, “Thank you so much for grabbing the Book of Why. As a thank you, I want to give you the free audio book.” And so obviously you can probably tell what the reason of that is, it’s to add to my email list and obviously give value but add to my email list at the end of the day. I have to tell you, because that books with a publisher where I don’t see who’s buying it, I’m shocked at the fact that randomly weekly, and the only way they can find that sign up is through that book, or me saying it on a podcast, and so I’m amazed sometimes how I’ll have 15, 20 signups from a book that was originally released almost five years ago. Still now weekly having those signups, but that book again was designed a very specific way. The Book of Public Speaking, you mentioned, was designed to build my backend business. So, for people that are thinking, :”Should I sign up for Corey’s program,” well, now you get a chance to read the book. Maybe Corey’s program’s not open right now. We only open certain times of the year. Well you read the book, you go, “I’m going to be ready as soon as it opens.” I also have a podcast called Get Paid to Speak. It’s the exact same idea as that book is that it’s designed to build the backend business. So again, Rob, I answered your question with a whole bunch of different scenarios. I can give them their answer with one sentence as long as I know what is your goal. What I find is most people want to say, “What’s your goal with the book,” and I give them examples. They’re like, “I never thought of that.” Until you know what the goal is, how can I tell you the best approach to take with your book? The biggest question you probably get, and I get, I know I get for sure is, “Should I self-publish or go with a publisher?” Well, again, my question right away to you is, “What’s your goal?” “Oh, well my goal is I need to get it to everybody in the world.” Then you got to be with a publisher. I shouldn’t say you have to, but that’s the route you probably should go. When I say that, I don’t want people to think I’m promoting traditional over self. That’s, not the only, but that’s the biggest reason I would say with a publisher. If you answer the question, “I want to make more money on my book. I want to retain control. I want to be able to not change the edits just because they want me to. I want the book out soon. I don’t want to wait two years,” and on and on and on, then I’m going to say go self-published
Rob Kosberg:
Well also, don’t forget, most people want traditional publishing because they think they’re going to get a big check for it. The likelihood of that is next to zero, right? That’s what I see. I see tons of people coming to me like, “Hey, I got this idea. It’s a great idea.” I’m like, “Look, you could have the cure for cancer, but if you don’t have a big platform, traditional publisher’s not interested, unfortunately.” I’m sure you see that too.
Corey Poirier:
I’ll give you a story, I mean a super quick story to back that up, is a buddy of mine wrote a book. I don’t mind sharing the story because he shared it publicly on our show. His name’s Dave Carroll. He wrote the song United Breaks Guitars about United Airlines breaking his guitar. Video, if you go look on YouTube, 20 some million views. Story’s been heard by over 100 million people. Dave wrote a song after that about Wayne Dyer, like wrote a song about one of his books. Wayne wasn’t as interested in that at the time. He since, if I remember correctly, Dave said the song ultimately ended up on Wayne’s documentary that they put together for him, but at first, his bigger thing was like, “What? He’s the guy who wrote United Breaks Guitars. Oh my God. I love that. I love that song.” He said, “Oh my God, I need to connect him with Louise Hay.” This is before Wayne’s passing. So, he reached out to Louise Hay and said, “We need to sign this guy, get his story out to the world.” So, Dave signed that deal because of Wayne. Then Dave went to a Hay House conference, and this is why I brought up the whole story. He went to a Hay House conference. Said Corey, “One of the first things they said was our main concern here today, more than the amazingness of your book,” and they listed all these things, “is how big your platform is,” because they said, they have their own hybrid publisher, Balboa Press, “If you want to go to Balboa Press, we’re happy to go through the whole process with you. If you want to come to Hay House, you need to have a platform.” What they were trying to tell these people that either, A, were authors or people who paid to go to an author training was if you don’t have a platform, a publisher’s not going to look at you. So just again, a story to back up what you said, traditional publishers in this day and age, the first thing they want to know is what’s your platform? A good buddy of mine, John Lee Dumas, with the popular Entrepreneurs on Fire Show, signed, and he shared, again, with us the deal. I forget what it was, 300 and some thousand was his advance. He’s said, “Corey, this is very abnormal.” To get to that point, he had to build up a show with a million unique listeners a month and a very, very, very, I’m going to call it very red hot, email list, and separate communities around podcasting. He’s speaking on podcasting conferences and various conferences 100 times a year. Well he got that advance because of all of that and he wouldn’t have gotten it.
Rob Kosberg:
Think about how massive that platform is. That’s a tiny advance for how massive that platform is.
Corey Poirier:
Absolutely. It’s rare to even get that much anymore. So to your point, I mean, I signed with a New York publisher, and my advance was basically almost negligible. They gave an advance because they were a want to be traditional publisher. They want to make sure they maintain that. I didn’t have to sell many books to recover that advance.
Rob Kosberg:
Corey, great stuff. Thank you for sharing. Where can people learn a little bit more about you? Where can they find more about your program? Let’s give them some links. We’ve given them a lot of great content today.
Corey Poirier:
Well, I’ll give people two directions. I want to give people a free gift and if you go this route, that’s all you have to do. So, the free gift is, the Book of Public Speaking, the audio version. It’s at thebookofwhyaudio.com. So, that’s one place I would send people. But if either, A, you’re not an audio book person, or B, you just want to reach out directly, I don’t usually do this, but I’ll just give my email address. So email address is pretty easy as well. It’s thatspeakerguy@gmail.com. Reach out there if you want to connect with me directly or grab yourself a free copy of the audio book. If you do that, then you’re going to be in our network anyway, and we’ll make sure you get all the contact info.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Corey, lot of great content, man. Thanks so much for sharing. Great to have you on the show, my friend.
Corey Poirier:
Thanks, Rob. It’s been an absolute pleasure, and thanks everybody for tuning in.
