How to Boost Your Author Influence to Sell More Books - BM419

Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:

Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. 

Today, my special guest is Corey Poirier. Corey is a multiple-time TEDx speaker and was recently announced as one of just 15 Success Magazine Emerging Entrepreneurs, which is a first-time award. He's also the host of the top-rated “Let's Do Influencing” radio show, founder of the growing bLU Blue Talks brand, and has been featured in multiple television specials. 

He's a Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Apple Books, and Kobo best selling author, award winning author, and co-author of the Wall Street Journal USA Today bestseller, “The Power of Persistence in Business and Life.” 

Corey, what an absolute pleasure it is to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Corey Poirier [00:01:44]:

Oh, thank you so much. I'm so super happy and stoked to be here.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:48]:

I'm super stoked to have you. I've had a chance to look at some of the incredible people who you've interviewed on your show, some of the greats. Bob Proctor, I was like, oh, you know, I mean, he is no more. But you had an incredible opportunity to speak with him and many other great people. I know that building credibility and influence is something that you're pretty good at. So let's start off there and let's talk about that. And give us your secret number one way of building credibility and influence.

Corey Poirier [00:02:29]:

Honestly, it kinda starts where your question was winding down in terms of the interviews that I've done with thought leaders and high achievers. It was never meant to be a take thing. It was always meant to be giving. But that has probably been one of the biggest, I think, leverage points I've had as an influencer. And the biggest way I was able to be positioned as an influencer is by the, I guess, we'll say the people that I've surrounded myself and the people I've learned from and the minds that I've picked, for lack of a better word. I've been blessed to be able to spend time with so many thought leaders, but also, you know, being able to have those on video interviews and pictures with those thought leaders and conversations with them, honestly, I think that's what really helped position me as if we wanna use the term influencer or position me to help influence more people.

Susan Friedmann [00:03:20]:

Often, I get asked, you know, well, how do you make contact with people? People are often scared to make contact with the high flyers in the world. What's your trick?

Corey Poirier [00:03:32]:

I'll say it this way. There's not one specific trick, I'll call it. But I will say that it's not one specific thing, but it's a lot of little things. And at the same time, it's also stuff that's not really even strategic. And so I'll kinda mix the 2. But as far as strategy, when I first started, how I, I guess, we'll say I started the process, one of my first big ones was Jack Canfield from Chicken Soup. When I reached out to his team, they basically said it was probably gonna be a no because he didn't have anything that he was promoting at the time. He wasn't doing many interviews, and he was turning down 9 out of every 10 interviews.

Corey Poirier [00:04:09]:

You know, it started out as a no. And I thought, well, it's only a no for now. Let's figure out how to make it a yes. The strategy I used is I went to Jack's site, and I looked at who was providing endorsements to him. And I thought, you know, people are endorsing him, then he probably respects them. I found this guy named Dan Sullivan. And Dan Sullivan runs a thing called Strategic Coach. I thought, well, maybe I'll try to see if I can reach Dan.

Corey Poirier [00:04:31]:

To make a long story short, I was able to get an interview with Dan, and we talked about Jack in the interview, which I expect would happen. And then he said the magic words, you know what? Jack would love the show. You should get him on for an interview. And he said, and by the way, tell him I said so. I took that clip. I knew also that Jack and Mark Victor Hansen both had went to Dan's retreats and events and paid him almost as their coach. So I clipped that audio and I sent it to Jack's team. And I said, even Dan, Jack's coach, thinks Jack should be on my show.

Corey Poirier [00:05:01]:

And they reply back, like, really quickly, I I say within an hour, and they said, you've beaten us into submission, Corey. Here's the link to schedule your interview with Jack. That's very much a strategy that I used and it was based on the idea of people like people they know, like, and trust, but they also like people that know people they know. And so it's almost like I was vetted by Dan, so that made Jack's team trust me and willing to schedule an interview. So that's more of a strategic. Another strategic that people can do is the best time to get on a big name influencer is when they have a book coming out. They're most apt to jump on and do an interview. What you can also do is Amazon has this great thing called coming soon for books, and you can go back quite a ways.

Corey Poirier [00:05:41]:

And so what I would say is the bigger the name, the further you wanna go back. But if they've listed that they have a book coming out in a year's time, then, you know, you can start now and build a relationship. And they're gonna be most apt earlier on to accept an interview, even a big name, because they haven't lined up their whole media tour for the book yet. If it's 3 months out and it's Matthew McConaughey, you've already waited too long. But that coming soon allows you to see who has books coming out and who's most likely to do interviews. So that's another strategy. But then if I go to the other side, Susan, in terms of non strategy, and it's just a happy accident that this happened, is I literally went into these relationships trying to figure out how I could keep depositing over and over and over again. Like, how I could deposit as many times as possible without ever withdrawing in the relationship.

Corey Poirier [00:06:27]:

So what I mean by that is I really wanted to give, give, give before I ever asked, which is, Gary v has a book called jab, jab, jab, right hook. And that's the premise is give, give, give before you ever ask. And I didn't read the book and do it because of that, but that's what I essentially did is I kept giving to influencers without ever asking. And then when I finally decided to make my one ask, it was almost like, well, gosh, you've been doing everything you could to support us. Of course, I have to say yes. And so that's not really a strategy or tactic, but that would be the other thing that's really helped. And then influencers typically hang around with influencers. So being able to talk to an influencer and say, hey.

Corey Poirier [00:07:04]:

Who else do you think I could promote on my show and give some exposure to? And usually, they'll be more than happy to connect you with somebody else that's in their circle of influence if you're gonna be giving to them, and they know you gave to the original person without expecting to receive. So those are some strategies, and I'll say soft strategies all combined into 1.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:25]:

Oh, fantastic. Oh my goodness. I mean, just those few minutes, listeners, you gotta relisten to that, just that part, if you just did 1 or 2 of those suggestions. I love the coming soon piece. I think that's so powerful. And then, as you said, the giving first. I mean, that's the whole concept of reciprocity that you give and then somebody feels, oh, well, yes, maybe I should give back. Even if it's subconscious, there's that feeling of, well, you've given so much to me.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:59]:

Let me now give back to you as a way of my saying thank you to you and being on your show. And I've had that with a few influences myself. In fact, funnily enough, I was just speaking to somebody about Mark Schaeffer. I've been reading his books. I love him, and I was like, oh, I'd love to get him on my show. And I just mentioned that to this person, and she said, oh, my goodness. He's a good friend of mine. Let me introduce you.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:25]:

Then I get an email from Mark saying, anybody who's a friend of Mary is a friend of mine. That was just, like, instant. So what you're saying is right on the money and, I don't know, priceless as far as I'm concerned. So thank you for that. You and I were talking a little bit before the show about the idea of book sales, bulk book sales, sustaining book sales. And I know that's something, you know, you're an author and you know how to sell books. So what are some of the ways in which you keep your book up front and center in people's minds?

Corey Poirier [00:09:09]:

I love the last part of that question because how do you keep it front and center is so important because what I find most people do, and this is like you said, after a lot of years in the business of books, I find too many people launch a book and then clap their hands together and say, okay, I'm done. Became a bestseller. If that's what the goal was on Amazon, I'm done. And to me, like, a book can be the gift that keeps on giving, and it should have a life long after that first little one month launch period. And, you know, I think of books that have impacted my life, like, I'm looking at my shelf right now and books like The Celestine Prophecy, which, you know, sold close to 40,000,000 copies. And I mean, I don't know how many it sold this year, but it's still selling probably thousands of copies this year. Like, to me, why wouldn't you want your book to be continually, I'll say, relevant? And so I don't actually get the idea of launching a book and then moving on. My last book, The Book of Why, previously the new one I have coming out, it's 4 years since it was published with a traditional publisher, 2 years before that as a self published book, and it took 4 years to write.

Corey Poirier [00:10:14]:

And so it's 10 years, and I still talk about it on a weekly, at least, basis. And it still sells copies. So, I mean, that's a great question is what I'm getting at. And so for me, how do you kinda stay relevant and still sell books? And I I you know, we go into the bigger picture of how do you sell books in the first place. I think one of the things you can do is keep relaunching your book. So, again, I feel people think the only time to put a book out is whenever it's new to you and then launch it for a month and then move on. Whereas I think there's a reason why the big books, you see, they have, like, a 15 year anniversary, a 20 year anniversary. I mentioned Jack Canfield earlier.

Corey Poirier [00:10:52]:

I know he did a 20 year anniversary of the success principles, and he went on all the shows. And, basically, it was like a whole new launch again, but this is a book that hasn't really changed a whole lot. I would say the first thing to do is always be thinking of how can I continually relaunch? And relaunching could be every quarter. You might not go through the whole same big launch you went through, but it might mean that you have a couple strategies. Like, for example, maybe you tie book sales into an event you do and say, access to the event, you just have to buy 3 books instead of charging for the event. And then that spikes your book a little bit again. There's so many ways that you can, like I say, relaunch or whatever term we wanna put on it, a book over and over again that I think is sad when I see so many people just launch it and forget it. On the bulk side of things, one of the things we did early on with a book series I had called conversations with is we profiled different local business leaders.

Corey Poirier [00:11:46]:

What we did for bulk sales, which worked really well, is either people that were profiled in the book, we approached them, and a lot of them had, like, maybe 4 or 500 employees. So we approached them about purchasing copies for their employees. Also, if they have waiting rooms, purchasing copies for their waiting room, also purchasing copies for gifts, and a really big one was client gifts. So now you're sending your client for whatever cost, $10, let's say, at that time. You're sending your client a gift for $10, a client that could spend 1,000 a year with you, and then they're seeing you positioned as the expert whenever and you, you know, you could even if it's a co author book and you have one section of the book, you could put something at that part to say, hey. There's where my section starts. This is something I know we talked about. I thought you might like to check this out.

Corey Poirier [00:12:28]:

You know, I mentioned it here or what have you. But bulk sales, that's a huge one, and I think it's mostly thinking of how can the person that you're trying to sell the bulk books to use those books in a way that benefits them.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:42]:

Yes. I mean, I sold half a 1000000 copies of my first book, and that was to one company. And what they did was literally give it away to both prospects and clients. Yeah, I mean, they had a use for it. It was serving a purpose, with tips and techniques, and they loved it. The response was amazing, so much so that they reordered. So I know that one. It's a brilliant strategy.

Susan Friedmann [00:13:08]:

I love the idea of relaunching the book. I'd love to go down that avenue a little bit more, Corey, with you. I've had questions that people say to me, well, how long should I keep marketing my book? And my question is, how long do you want to keep selling it? It's like the 2 go hand in glove. But, the relaunching, what do you need to do? Do you have to have a new cover? Do you have to have a new title? Or is it the exact same book that you're finding another angle to put it out there?

Corey Poirier [00:13:43]:

I think it can be both or either or. So as far as the cover side, I think it can be the same cover. One thing you can do, and you gotta remember there's a diminishing return probably on this, is, like, for example, with the copyright date, I mean, you may wanna add a couple of new things and then put a new copyright date on it. Because, ultimately, if you want it to appear like a fresh book, the benefit of that is, typically speaking, I've heard this from a lot of media, They're usually most interested in a book 4 months before it's published, while it's published, and 4 months after. So you have, like, kind of an 8 month window. And so when you're relaunching, if they open the book and it says 1997, then chances are they're not gonna see that as a fresh book. And so I might change the copyright. Again, I I would add something new so it's authentic, but it could be just the smallest thing, like a new forward or something.

Corey Poirier [00:14:33]:

But as far as the cover, it would depend on how well the cover performed. You know, if it's a cover that's not gonna go to the park, I don't think I would mess with that. If I felt sales were soft on the first launch, I might mess with the cover a bit. If I did that, I would probably go out, and this is another way to relaunch. I would go to people that are in my network and say, hey, guys. What do you think of these covers? And present 4 or 5 options and help them take ownership in the book by picking the cover they like the most. You know, I would say, you know, you could have a new cover. You don't have to.

Corey Poirier [00:14:59]:

And you could have a new angle as well. So if you have 12 chapters in a book like, for example, the new book that we have that's literally just it's truly just dropped is called the enlightened passenger. It's a bit different. It's a fictional parable, but it's still like a self help book, and it's very much similar to a nonfiction book in a lot of ways. And so with that book, in terms of how we released it and and what we're doing with that, ultimately, we put the cover out and we got people to give feedback. We sent out the manuscript to people to get them to provide feedback, like beta readers, basically. And so we have a lot of things that we did the first time around that we could redo because what I find is you always are bringing well, you should be always bringing new people into your market. If you have a show like we do, so if I have a podcast and I have 40 guests on that year, that's 40 new people with their whole networks that I can now introduce my book to who didn't know about it when I did the previous launch.

Corey Poirier [00:15:52]:

One of the other things that we did do twice with this book of why before we even brought it to a publisher is we crowdfunded it twice. So we launched it on Kickstarter. We did about 11,000 or 12,000 sales in about 2 and a half, 3 weeks. And then we did a relaunch a year later and did about 10,000. So almost the same a year later, my network was still the same network, but I had added all these new people in that time since, which is why it still did well. It was new buyers, different people a year later. If that happened and that's, you know, it was a very focused launch and we only had a short amount of time. But if I was able to do that in a couple of weeks just with a year apart, it tells you how many people we're potentially adding to our network that don't know about our book.

Corey Poirier [00:16:32]:

Again, you could launch it as if, the people that already know about it, you know, can say, I love it. They might write reviews. You can do that as part of your launch. But the new people, they didn't see that launch, so it's all fresh to them. It's almost like if you went on social media, would you only put one post ever because people might have seen it? You put it out again because new people are discovering it all the time. But then also as part of that, and this could be ongoing, I would have it on my email signature. You know, check out my, book, the book of why or whatever, and click here to grab your copy today because new people are seeing my email signature on my podcast. If I wanted to relaunch, then I would maybe start teasing that earlier on before I do the relaunch.

Corey Poirier [00:17:09]:

I have an email newsletter that has around 30,000 people, and we're adding like, we added 500 people, like, a few days ago. And so that's 500 new people that didn't know about the even this launch that I'm doing with the light passenger because the book is just coming out, and they came on after we've already teased it out. So, you know, I know I'm jumping around a bit there, Susan, but to me, what I'm talking about there is ongoing launch and then also the ability to relaunch, like I said, with what I did with crowdfunder. And to that point, if you didn't like the cover, didn't perform, to circle back, I would say look at a new cover, get feedback. If you like the cover, it performed really well, then just relaunch with the same cover. But I would freshen the copyright up. And to me, to authentically do that, I would put something new. It could be an afterward.

Corey Poirier [00:17:54]:

Maybe you got a an endorsement after the book was out, a really big name endorsement. Maybe add that to the front cover. To me, that's enough to now the book has a new element. Now it's a new copyright. So hopefully, that helps a little bit.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:06]:

Oh, very much so. And are you still keeping the same title of the book? It's just the same title, but just with a new look and feel?

Corey Poirier [00:18:14]:

Yeah. Same title. And, again, I mean, I wanna really clarify. As you know, it's it's hard enough to get a title that works and that resonates with people. So if I strike on a title that people talk about a lot, then I don't wanna change that or mess with it. So, like, the book of why and how, we ran into a snag with that because there was another book of why out. I mean, there was a couple of book there was obviously Simon Sinek's Start With Why, but there was an actual book called the book of why, and ours was called The Book of Why and How. There would be the temptation to change that, but my thinking around that side is ours came out first, and you could always find another book potentially with the same title, and are you gonna change it forever? For me, I made the decision that we would keep the same title and make sure our subtitle was a bit different.

Corey Poirier [00:18:56]:

And the how part, we actually use that to our advantage. We talked about, you know, there's a lot of people that talk about the why, but we're also talking about the how. So we use that as part of our unique proposition, let's say. The enlightened passenger, again, newest book, so many people that we talked to about it, they go, oh, how's the enlightened passenger coming along? So, like, the title, I know it resonated because, first of all, people are pretty honest with me. So I've done stuff where it's a title and they're like, oh, I don't like that title. And this one here, people are and even when we did the feedback of beta readers, they all were like, and one thing I really dig is the title. For me, I don't think I would change the title. And here's the only maybe exception for me to that rule is Michael Gerber wrote the book called The E Myth, and then he wrote The E Myth Revisited.

Corey Poirier [00:19:40]:

And The E Myth Revisited actually, I think is considered the main book now, and I think sold more copies. But the takeaway from there is, like, I could call it the enlightened passenger revisit it. If I edit maybe a chapter or something, I might do that. But if, again, it all goes back to if the title's working, I don't mess with it.

Susan Friedmann [00:19:57]:

Yeah. No, that's so true. I love that. And then I would say that you would put another ISBN number so that people would be able to distinguish which one, especially when you're selling it on Amazon or in bookstores, that you're getting the right, version. Correct?

Corey Poirier [00:20:13]:

Like, if it was an updated revised version, absolutely. Because, again, not everybody will agree with the idea of even changing the copyright. So if they change nothing about the book, maybe they say, you know what? The book's working. I'm not gonna change it at all. Then they would probably wanna leave it the same because then on Amazon, it's just that one place. Like, when you search Amazon, there's not 2 to choose from. But if you have a revised version, like I said, Jack Canfield had the, 20th edition of the success principles. So if you go on and search the success principles, you're probably gonna find one version, which was the original that you can still buy, and then one version, which is the updated edition for the 21st century or whatever it says on it.

Corey Poirier [00:20:46]:

And that's gonna be a different version. And, of course, that one has new elements that you may wanna get those new elements, or you may want the original. So Think and Grow Rich is a great example. But I don't remember where it's at to see what it says in the cover, But I have, I'll call it an updated version of Think and Grow Rich that has stories about, like, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Martha Stewart and stuff like that. Obviously, that wasn't in the 1937 edition. Well, some people would want those new stories because it's modern, and they can see how that could relate to them. And maybe they know Arnold's story better than they know Thomas Edison's or even a person Edward Burns that people don't even know. At the same time, some people might say, I want the original Think and Grow Rich.

Corey Poirier [00:21:23]:

I don't want this new stuff. I want it exactly as the Napoleon Hill wrote it. So I think in that case, you probably want it, like you said, have a new ISBN and everything because you're wanting new people to discover it for the first time.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:34]:

Yeah. Wow. So much stuff here. I'm just itching to ask you about the crowdfunding. But you know what? I'm gonna have you back to talk about that if that's something that you would be willing to do because I feel we could have a whole episode just about you talking about crowdfunding because I've made the suggestion to authors about crowdfunding, but actually, you know, what it takes to do it, And successfully, obviously, is something that I'm sure our listeners would get so much benefit from. So if you're willing to do that, Corey, maybe we can have you back.

Corey Poirier [00:22:11]:

The answer is absolutely. And I know it is one of those areas where not a lot of people, even now, it's still not a common thing. And when I obviously, when I did it on Kickstarter, to be quite honest, Susan, I only knew one person that had done any form of a book crowdfund at that time. Now this is going back 5 years, but it was John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire, and he launched his Freedom Journal using Kickstarter. It wasn't a traditional book. It was like a journal, but it was what triggered the idea for me. Why can't I do a traditional book that way? And I will say when I did it, I ended up doing and I haven't done one in a while, so it'd be cool because it'd be fresh and new. But I remember at the time, Forbes Books reached out to me.

Corey Poirier [00:22:48]:

Chandler Bolt reached out and said, you know, we wanna get you on the show, talk about crowdfunding because not many people are doing this. So, yeah, it's something that still a lot of people I don't feel are doing, and there's a whole a whole world there to explore.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:00]:

Absolutely. And there's money available, you know, when authors are having a hard time Because when you're doing this on your own, you're footing the bell for everything, and it starts adding up very quickly between the editing and book cover and the publishing. And obviously, if you're working with a book coach in the beginning, I mean, all of this. And then there's the marketing. That's often what people forget, as you said. Once they've finished the book, it's like, okay, I've done that. But that's really just the beginning of the journey. So, yes, I think that would be enormously valuable.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:36]:

Curry, this is a great segue into you sharing with our listeners how they can find out more about you and your brilliance and what you do and how potentially you might be able to help them.

Corey Poirier [00:23:49]:

Yeah. I mean, there's probably 2 avenues around that side. So one avenue is we have the new book, as I mentioned, coming out. It's literally the website for the book is being finalized. I know podcasts are evergreen, so I'll just say today. So that means anybody listening to it in 24 hours from now, meaning almost everybody, it'll be live. But, essentially, that's the website where you can go and get it. And we still send you to retailers so you don't have to buy it from us.

Corey Poirier [00:24:14]:

But what we do then is, you come back to put the order number in, and then you can actually get the free bonuses that you won't get if you get it through the retailers on its own. On that side, people wanna check out this new book I mentioned. It's called this is the book .com is the website. So this is the book.com. And again, it's a fictional book, but it's a parable. It's loosely based on my life and the interviews I've done with so many thought leaders. It's so far I mean, I'm I feel blessed. It's it's being released by Morgan James Publishing.

Corey Poirier [00:24:41]:

And, the foreword was written by Richard, Paul Evans, who's, like, a 46 times New York Times bestselling author. And then it's been endorsed by James Redfield from Celestine Prophecy, Mark Victor Hansen from Chicken Soup, Lisa Nichols from The Secret, and many others. But I feel like the book, really, it's ready to meet the world. And so feel free to grab the book. And again, there's lots of free bonuses there. And then, the other option would be if people we didn't talk about it at all today, really, but if people wanna share their expertise, let's say, on a stage on various platforms, we have a brand called Bluetox. Blue stands for business life universe. And basically, it's almost like TEDx meets chicken soup for the soul.

Corey Poirier [00:25:19]:

And we bring our live events to places like Columbia, Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, what have you. And what we ultimately end up doing is showcasing people's expertise on those powerful stages, and then ultimately get, some marketing assets like video and stuff that they can leverage and use for the rest of their life.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:36]:

So is that sort of similar to the TEDx?

Corey Poirier [00:25:40]:

Yeah. It's similar. The difference would be, I think, that our core focus is on the expert first and then the audience, whereas TEDx is on the audience first. Our focus is on helping that expert reach a new audience, reach people, build their, I'll call it, platforms up, build their portfolio up. When you go to their website after they've worked with us, you can watch a video of them speaking at an epic place, as seen on banner of them being featured on Apple and Roku and Amazon and Google Play, you know, flyer that maybe say they coauthored a book with doctor Joe Batali or shared the virtual bill with Les Brown or Lisa Nichols. Those are things that took me 15 years, and we see our clients get those things on their website in 2 or 3 months, and it's all legit. Like, they did the work, we did the work, and it all happened. So it's similar in terms of if you come to the live event and it is a live event, it would feel similar to a TEDx style event.

Corey Poirier [00:26:28]:

The one difference is we do, more live interviews, so almost like podcast interviews in front of an audience. And then the other difference is we're really focused on the back end of helping that expert get their message out to more people.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:39]:

Beautiful. Yes. You and I need to talk more about that because I'm sure that's something that I can make available to our authors. And I believe you have a free gift for our listeners.

Corey Poirier [00:26:52]:

Yeah. Since we've been talking about books today, and I went back and forth on both books, the book of why and how, I'll say, is out of the 2 books, it's my original baby. You know, we call these books our babies sometimes. It's the original baby. And, basically, the concept of the book is to help you discover what your meaning and your why and your purpose. But the book's not only that. It's also what do you do once you find it. And so it's broken down into the 3 sections.

Corey Poirier [00:27:16]:

And, basically, the first one is finding your why. It's all about how to do that. The second one is how to thrive once you do. And the third one is the how to do it in an enlightened way so that you're helping others. And then the back of the book has, like, 1400 quotes by thought leaders. And so the book itself is, again, essentially to help people find meaning in their life, and we also released an audio version of the book. And so what I wanted to give away to your guests is the free audio version of the book. It's easy to get it.

Corey Poirier [00:27:43]:

You literally just have to go to the book, public speaking dot com, so the book of public speaking dot com, or the book of why audio dot com. Either of those will take you there.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:54]:

Perfect. And I'll put the all of those, links in the show notes, Carrie, for everyone. And I know you have shared so much wisdom already. However, you know that we like to end off with, a a guest leaving a golden nugget, the sort of words of wisdom. What are yours?

Corey Poirier [00:28:15]:

I think my parting words would be to find a way every day to live on purpose. And if you haven't found that meaning or purpose now, honestly, sounds bold to say, but whatever it takes to get there, you need to do it because it changes everything in your life. I call it taking vitamin p, and p is for either passion or purpose you pick. And I do think they're different things. Passion is what you do, like, whatever it is, writing a book, comedy, music, photography. Purpose is why you're actually doing it. But I I linked them both together and call them vitamin p. And I say it's the one vitamin you can't buy in the stores and the most important one you ever take, and it's what changed everything in my life.

Corey Poirier [00:28:52]:

If somebody's listening to this and they found their purpose, I would just say, live every day as much as possible in that purpose. If you haven't found it, trust me. It's worth anything it takes to find it. And I guess without even thinking of a cheap plug, I will say I offered the audiobook, and the audiobook that I offered for free will actually tell you the exercises around how to do that.

Susan Friedmann [00:29:11]:

Wonderful. That's even better reason to, listen to it. I can't wait. So thank you. This has been amazing, Corey. And as I said, if you're open to it, love to have you come back, and we'll really dig deep into relaunching the book or even launching the book and crowdfunding, getting some funds for that, whether it's Kickstarter, any of the other sites. And I think there are some that are more book friendly than others these days. So, we'll talk more about that.

Susan Friedmann [00:29:43]:

Again, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And by the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, Let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. Go to brainstorm with susan.com to schedule your free call. In the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book book and author marketing success.Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:

Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. 

Today, my special guest is Corey Poirier. Corey is a multiple time TEDx speaker and was recently announced as one of just 15 Success Magazine Emerging Entrepreneurs, which is a first-time award. He's also the host of the top-rated “Let's Do Influencing” radio show, founder of the growing Blue Talks brand, and has been featured in multiple television specials. 

He's a Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Apple Books, and Kobo best selling author, award winning author, and co-author of the Wall Street Journal USA Today bestseller, “The Power of Persistence in Business and Life.” 

Corey, what an absolute pleasure it is to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Corey Poirier [00:01:44]:

Oh, thank you so much. I'm so super happy and stoked to be here.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:48]:

I'm super stoked to have you. I've had a chance to look at some of the incredible people who you've interviewed on your show, some of the greats. Bob Proctor, I was like, oh, you know, I mean, he is no more. But you had an incredible opportunity to speak with him and many other great people. I know that building credibility and influence is something that you're pretty good at. So let's start off there and let's talk about that. And give us your secret number one way of building credibility and influence.

Corey Poirier [00:02:29]:

Honestly, it kinda starts where your question was winding down in terms of the interviews that I've done with thought leaders and high achievers. It was never meant to be a take thing. It was always meant to be giving. But that has probably been one of the biggest, I think, leverage points I've had as an influencer. And the biggest way I was able to be positioned as an influencer is by the, I guess, we'll say the people that I've surrounded myself and the people I've learned from and the minds that I've picked, for lack of a better word. I've been blessed to be able to spend time with so many thought leaders, but also, you know, being able to have those on video interviews and pictures with those thought leaders and conversations with them, honestly, I think that's what really helped position me as if we wanna use the term influencer or position me to help influence more people.

Susan Friedmann [00:03:20]:

Often, I get asked, you know, well, how do you make contact with people? People are often scared to make contact with the high flyers in the world. What's your trick?

Corey Poirier [00:03:32]:

I'll say it this way. There's not one specific trick, I'll call it. But I will say that it's not one specific thing, but it's a lot of little things. And at the same time, it's also stuff that's not really even strategic. And so I'll kinda mix the 2. But as far as strategy, when I first started, how I, I guess, we'll say I started the process, one of my first big ones was Jack Canfield from Chicken Soup. When I reached out to his team, they basically said it was probably gonna be a no because he didn't have anything that he was promoting at the time. He wasn't doing many interviews, and he was turning down 9 out of every 10 interviews.

Corey Poirier [00:04:09]:

You know, it started out as a no. And I thought, well, it's only a no for now. Let's figure out how to make it a yes. The strategy I used is I went to Jack's site, and I looked at who was providing endorsements to him. And I thought, you know, people are endorsing him, then he probably respects them. I found this guy named Dan Sullivan. And Dan Sullivan runs a thing called Strategic Coach. I thought, well, maybe I'll try to see if I can reach Dan.

Corey Poirier [00:04:31]:

To make a long story short, I was able to get an interview with Dan, and we talked about Jack in the interview, which I expect would happen. And then he said the magic words, you know what? Jack would love the show. You should get him on for an interview. And he said, and by the way, tell him I said so. I took that clip. I knew also that Jack and Mark Victor Hansen both had went to Dan's retreats and events and paid him almost as their coach. So I clipped that audio and I sent it to Jack's team. And I said, even Dan, Jack's coach, thinks Jack should be on my show.

Corey Poirier [00:05:01]:

And they reply back, like, really quickly, I I say within an hour, and they said, you've beaten us into submission, Corey. Here's the link to schedule your interview with Jack. That's very much a strategy that I used and it was based on the idea of people like people they know, like, and trust, but they also like people that know people they know. And so it's almost like I was vetted by Dan, so that made Jack's team trust me and willing to schedule an interview. So that's more of a strategic. Another strategic that people can do is the best time to get on a big name influencer is when they have a book coming out. They're most apt to jump on and do an interview. What you can also do is Amazon has this great thing called coming soon for books, and you can go back quite a ways.

Corey Poirier [00:05:41]:

And so what I would say is the bigger the name, the further you wanna go back. But if they've listed that they have a book coming out in a year's time, then, you know, you can start now and build a relationship. And they're gonna be most apt earlier on to accept an interview, even a big name, because they haven't lined up their whole media tour for the book yet. If it's 3 months out and it's Matthew McConaughey, you've already waited too long. But that coming soon allows you to see who has books coming out and who's most likely to do interviews. So that's another strategy. But then if I go to the other side, Susan, in terms of non strategy, and it's just a happy accident that this happened, is I literally went into these relationships trying to figure out how I could keep depositing over and over and over again. Like, how I could deposit as many times as possible without ever withdrawing in the relationship.

Corey Poirier [00:06:27]:

So what I mean by that is I really wanted to give, give, give before I ever asked, which is, Gary v has a book called jab, jab, jab, right hook. And that's the premise is give, give, give before you ever ask. And I didn't read the book and do it because of that, but that's what I essentially did is I kept giving to influencers without ever asking. And then when I finally decided to make my one ask, it was almost like, well, gosh, you've been doing everything you could to support us. Of course, I have to say yes. And so that's not really a strategy or tactic, but that would be the other thing that's really helped. And then influencers typically hang around with influencers. So being able to talk to an influencer and say, hey.

Corey Poirier [00:07:04]:

Who else do you think I could promote on my show and give some exposure to? And usually, they'll be more than happy to connect you with somebody else that's in their circle of influence if you're gonna be giving to them, and they know you gave to the original person without expecting to receive. So those are some strategies, and I'll say soft strategies all combined into 1.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:25]:

Oh, fantastic. Oh my goodness. I mean, just those few minutes, listeners, you gotta relisten to that, just that part, if you just did 1 or 2 of those suggestions. I love the coming soon piece. I think that's so powerful. And then, as you said, the giving first. I mean, that's the whole concept of reciprocity that you give and then somebody feels, oh, well, yes, maybe I should give back. Even if it's subconscious, there's that feeling of, well, you've given so much to me.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:59]:

Let me now give back to you as a way of my saying thank you to you and being on your show. And I've had that with a few influences myself. In fact, funnily enough, I was just speaking to somebody about Mark Schaeffer. I've been reading his books. I love him, and I was like, oh, I'd love to get him on my show. And I just mentioned that to this person, and she said, oh, my goodness. He's a good friend of mine. Let me introduce you.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:25]:

Then I get an email from Mark saying, anybody who's a friend of Mary is a friend of mine. That was just, like, instant. So what you're saying is right on the money and, I don't know, priceless as far as I'm concerned. So thank you for that. You and I were talking a little bit before the show about the idea of book sales, bulk book sales, sustaining book sales. And I know that's something, you know, you're an author and you know how to sell books. So what are some of the ways in which you keep your book up front and center in people's minds?

Corey Poirier [00:09:09]:

I love the last part of that question because how do you keep it front and center is so important because what I find most people do, and this is like you said, after a lot of years in the business of books, I find too many people launch a book and then clap their hands together and say, okay, I'm done. Became a bestseller. If that's what the goal was on Amazon, I'm done. And to me, like, a book can be the gift that keeps on giving, and it should have a life long after that first little one month launch period. And, you know, I think of books that have impacted my life, like, I'm looking at my shelf right now and books like The Celestine Prophecy, which, you know, sold close to 40,000,000 copies. And I mean, I don't know how many it sold this year, but it's still selling probably thousands of copies this year. Like, to me, why wouldn't you want your book to be continually, I'll say, relevant? And so I don't actually get the idea of launching a book and then moving on. My last book, The Book of Why, previously the new one I have coming out, it's 4 years since it was published with a traditional publisher, 2 years before that as a self published book, and it took 4 years to write.

Corey Poirier [00:10:14]:

And so it's 10 years, and I still talk about it on a weekly, at least, basis. And it still sells copies. So, I mean, that's a great question is what I'm getting at. And so for me, how do you kinda stay relevant and still sell books? And I I you know, we go into the bigger picture of how do you sell books in the first place. I think one of the things you can do is keep relaunching your book. So, again, I feel people think the only time to put a book out is whenever it's new to you and then launch it for a month and then move on. Whereas I think there's a reason why the big books, you see, they have, like, a 15 year anniversary, a 20 year anniversary. I mentioned Jack Canfield earlier.

Corey Poirier [00:10:52]:

I know he did a 20 year anniversary of the success principles, and he went on all the shows. And, basically, it was like a whole new launch again, but this is a book that hasn't really changed a whole lot. I would say the first thing to do is always be thinking of how can I continually relaunch? And relaunching could be every quarter. You might not go through the whole same big launch you went through, but it might mean that you have a couple strategies. Like, for example, maybe you tie book sales into an event you do and say, access to the event, you just have to buy 3 books instead of charging for the event. And then that spikes your book a little bit again. There's so many ways that you can, like I say, relaunch or whatever term we wanna put on it, a book over and over again that I think is sad when I see so many people just launch it and forget it. On the bulk side of things, one of the things we did early on with a book series I had called conversations with is we profiled different local business leaders.

Corey Poirier [00:11:46]:

What we did for bulk sales, which worked really well, is either people that were profiled in the book, we approached them, and a lot of them had, like, maybe 4 or 500 employees. So we approached them about purchasing copies for their employees. Also, if they have waiting rooms, purchasing copies for their waiting room, also purchasing copies for gifts, and a really big one was client gifts. So now you're sending your client for whatever cost, $10, let's say, at that time. You're sending your client a gift for $10, a client that could spend 1,000 a year with you, and then they're seeing you positioned as the expert whenever and you, you know, you could even if it's a co author book and you have one section of the book, you could put something at that part to say, hey. There's where my section starts. This is something I know we talked about. I thought you might like to check this out.

Corey Poirier [00:12:28]:

You know, I mentioned it here or what have you. But bulk sales, that's a huge one, and I think it's mostly thinking of how can the person that you're trying to sell the bulk books to use those books in a way that benefits them.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:42]:

Yes. I mean, I sold half a 1000000 copies of my first book, and that was to one company. And what they did was literally give it away to both prospects and clients. Yeah, I mean, they had a use for it. It was serving a purpose, with tips and techniques, and they loved it. The response was amazing, so much so that they reordered. So I know that one. It's a brilliant strategy.

Susan Friedmann [00:13:08]:

I love the idea of relaunching the book. I'd love to go down that avenue a little bit more, Corey, with you. I've had questions that people say to me, well, how long should I keep marketing my book? And my question is, how long do you want to keep selling it? It's like the 2 go hand in glove. But, the relaunching, what do you need to do? Do you have to have a new cover? Do you have to have a new title? Or is it the exact same book that you're finding another angle to put it out there?

Corey Poirier [00:13:43]:

I think it can be both or either or. So as far as the cover side, I think it can be the same cover. One thing you can do, and you gotta remember there's a diminishing return probably on this, is, like, for example, with the copyright date, I mean, you may wanna add a couple of new things and then put a new copyright date on it. Because, ultimately, if you want it to appear like a fresh book, the benefit of that is, typically speaking, I've heard this from a lot of media, They're usually most interested in a book 4 months before it's published, while it's published, and 4 months after. So you have, like, kind of an 8 month window. And so when you're relaunching, if they open the book and it says 1997, then chances are they're not gonna see that as a fresh book. And so I might change the copyright. Again, I I would add something new so it's authentic, but it could be just the smallest thing, like a new forward or something.

Corey Poirier [00:14:33]:

But as far as the cover, it would depend on how well the cover performed. You know, if it's a cover that's not gonna go to the park, I don't think I would mess with that. If I felt sales were soft on the first launch, I might mess with the cover a bit. If I did that, I would probably go out, and this is another way to relaunch. I would go to people that are in my network and say, hey, guys. What do you think of these covers? And present 4 or 5 options and help them take ownership in the book by picking the cover they like the most. You know, I would say, you know, you could have a new cover. You don't have to.

Corey Poirier [00:14:59]:

And you could have a new angle as well. So if you have 12 chapters in a book like, for example, the new book that we have that's literally just it's truly just dropped is called the enlightened passenger. It's a bit different. It's a fictional parable, but it's still like a self help book, and it's very much similar to a nonfiction book in a lot of ways. And so with that book, in terms of how we released it and and what we're doing with that, ultimately, we put the cover out and we got people to give feedback. We sent out the manuscript to people to get them to provide feedback, like beta readers, basically. And so we have a lot of things that we did the first time around that we could redo because what I find is you always are bringing well, you should be always bringing new people into your market. If you have a show like we do, so if I have a podcast and I have 40 guests on that year, that's 40 new people with their whole networks that I can now introduce my book to who didn't know about it when I did the previous launch.

Corey Poirier [00:15:52]:

One of the other things that we did do twice with this book of why before we even brought it to a publisher is we crowdfunded it twice. So we launched it on Kickstarter. We did about 11,000 or 12,000 sales in about 2 and a half, 3 weeks. And then we did a relaunch a year later and did about 10,000. So almost the same a year later, my network was still the same network, but I had added all these new people in that time since, which is why it still did well. It was new buyers, different people a year later. If that happened and that's, you know, it was a very focused launch and we only had a short amount of time. But if I was able to do that in a couple of weeks just with a year apart, it tells you how many people we're potentially adding to our network that don't know about our book.

Corey Poirier [00:16:32]:

Again, you could launch it as if, the people that already know about it, you know, can say, I love it. They might write reviews. You can do that as part of your launch. But the new people, they didn't see that launch, so it's all fresh to them. It's almost like if you went on social media, would you only put one post ever because people might have seen it? You put it out again because new people are discovering it all the time. But then also as part of that, and this could be ongoing, I would have it on my email signature. You know, check out my, book, the book of why or whatever, and click here to grab your copy today because new people are seeing my email signature on my podcast. If I wanted to relaunch, then I would maybe start teasing that earlier on before I do the relaunch.

Corey Poirier [00:17:09]:

I have an email newsletter that has around 30,000 people, and we're adding like, we added 500 people, like, a few days ago. And so that's 500 new people that didn't know about the even this launch that I'm doing with the light passenger because the book is just coming out, and they came on after we've already teased it out. So, you know, I know I'm jumping around a bit there, Susan, but to me, what I'm talking about there is ongoing launch and then also the ability to relaunch, like I said, with what I did with crowdfunder. And to that point, if you didn't like the cover, didn't perform, to circle back, I would say look at a new cover, get feedback. If you like the cover, it performed really well, then just relaunch with the same cover. But I would freshen the copyright up. And to me, to authentically do that, I would put something new. It could be an afterward.

Corey Poirier [00:17:54]:

Maybe you got a an endorsement after the book was out, a really big name endorsement. Maybe add that to the front cover. To me, that's enough to now the book has a new element. Now it's a new copyright. So hopefully, that helps a little bit.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:06]:

Oh, very much so. And are you still keeping the same title of the book? It's just the same title, but just with a new look and feel?

Corey Poirier [00:18:14]:

Yeah. Same title. And, again, I mean, I wanna really clarify. As you know, it's it's hard enough to get a title that works and that resonates with people. So if I strike on a title that people talk about a lot, then I don't wanna change that or mess with it. So, like, the book of why and how, we ran into a snag with that because there was another book of why out. I mean, there was a couple of book there was obviously Simon Sinek's Start With Why, but there was an actual book called the book of why, and ours was called The Book of Why and How. There would be the temptation to change that, but my thinking around that side is ours came out first, and you could always find another book potentially with the same title, and are you gonna change it forever? For me, I made the decision that we would keep the same title and make sure our subtitle was a bit different.

Corey Poirier [00:18:56]:

And the how part, we actually use that to our advantage. We talked about, you know, there's a lot of people that talk about the why, but we're also talking about the how. So we use that as part of our unique proposition, let's say. The enlightened passenger, again, newest book, so many people that we talked to about it, they go, oh, how's the enlightened passenger coming along? So, like, the title, I know it resonated because, first of all, people are pretty honest with me. So I've done stuff where it's a title and they're like, oh, I don't like that title. And this one here, people are and even when we did the feedback of beta readers, they all were like, and one thing I really dig is the title. For me, I don't think I would change the title. And here's the only maybe exception for me to that rule is Michael Gerber wrote the book called The E Myth, and then he wrote The E Myth Revisited.

Corey Poirier [00:19:40]:

And The E Myth Revisited actually, I think is considered the main book now, and I think sold more copies. But the takeaway from there is, like, I could call it the enlightened passenger revisit it. If I edit maybe a chapter or something, I might do that. But if, again, it all goes back to if the title's working, I don't mess with it.

Susan Friedmann [00:19:57]:

Yeah. No, that's so true. I love that. And then I would say that you would put another ISBN number so that people would be able to distinguish which one, especially when you're selling it on Amazon or in bookstores, that you're getting the right, version. Correct?

Corey Poirier [00:20:13]:

Like, if it was an updated revised version, absolutely. Because, again, not everybody will agree with the idea of even changing the copyright. So if they change nothing about the book, maybe they say, you know what? The book's working. I'm not gonna change it at all. Then they would probably wanna leave it the same because then on Amazon, it's just that one place. Like, when you search Amazon, there's not 2 to choose from. But if you have a revised version, like I said, Jack Canfield had the, 20th edition of the success principles. So if you go on and search the success principles, you're probably gonna find one version, which was the original that you can still buy, and then one version, which is the updated edition for the 21st century or whatever it says on it.

Corey Poirier [00:20:46]:

And that's gonna be a different version. And, of course, that one has new elements that you may wanna get those new elements, or you may want the original. So Think and Grow Rich is a great example. But I don't remember where it's at to see what it says in the cover, But I have, I'll call it an updated version of Think and Grow Rich that has stories about, like, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Martha Stewart and stuff like that. Obviously, that wasn't in the 1937 edition. Well, some people would want those new stories because it's modern, and they can see how that could relate to them. And maybe they know Arnold's story better than they know Thomas Edison's or even a person Edward Burns that people don't even know. At the same time, some people might say, I want the original Think and Grow Rich.

Corey Poirier [00:21:23]:

I don't want this new stuff. I want it exactly as the Napoleon Hill wrote it. So I think in that case, you probably want it, like you said, have a new ISBN and everything because you're wanting new people to discover it for the first time.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:34]:

Yeah. Wow. So much stuff here. I'm just itching to ask you about the crowdfunding. But you know what? I'm gonna have you back to talk about that if that's something that you would be willing to do because I feel we could have a whole episode just about you talking about crowdfunding because I've made the suggestion to authors about crowdfunding, but actually, you know, what it takes to do it, And successfully, obviously, is something that I'm sure our listeners would get so much benefit from. So if you're willing to do that, Corey, maybe we can have you back.

Corey Poirier [00:22:11]:

The answer is absolutely. And I know it is one of those areas where not a lot of people, even now, it's still not a common thing. And when I obviously, when I did it on Kickstarter, to be quite honest, Susan, I only knew one person that had done any form of a book crowdfund at that time. Now this is going back 5 years, but it was John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire, and he launched his Freedom Journal using Kickstarter. It wasn't a traditional book. It was like a journal, but it was what triggered the idea for me. Why can't I do a traditional book that way? And I will say when I did it, I ended up doing and I haven't done one in a while, so it'd be cool because it'd be fresh and new. But I remember at the time, Forbes Books reached out to me.

Corey Poirier [00:22:48]:

Chandler Bolt reached out and said, you know, we wanna get you on the show, talk about crowdfunding because not many people are doing this. So, yeah, it's something that still a lot of people I don't feel are doing, and there's a whole a whole world there to explore.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:00]:

Absolutely. And there's money available, you know, when authors are having a hard time Because when you're doing this on your own, you're footing the bell for everything, and it starts adding up very quickly between the editing and book cover and the publishing. And obviously, if you're working with a book coach in the beginning, I mean, all of this. And then there's the marketing. That's often what people forget, as you said. Once they've finished the book, it's like, okay, I've done that. But that's really just the beginning of the journey. So, yes, I think that would be enormously valuable.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:36]:

Curry, this is a great segue into you sharing with our listeners how they can find out more about you and your brilliance and what you do and how potentially you might be able to help them.

Corey Poirier [00:23:49]:

Yeah. I mean, there's probably 2 avenues around that side. So one avenue is we have the new book, as I mentioned, coming out. It's literally the website for the book is being finalized. I know podcasts are evergreen, so I'll just say today. So that means anybody listening to it in 24 hours from now, meaning almost everybody, it'll be live. But, essentially, that's the website where you can go and get it. And we still send you to retailers so you don't have to buy it from us.

Corey Poirier [00:24:14]:

But what we do then is, you come back to put the order number in, and then you can actually get the free bonuses that you won't get if you get it through the retailers on its own. On that side, people wanna check out this new book I mentioned. It's called this is the book .com is the website. So this is the book.com. And again, it's a fictional book, but it's a parable. It's loosely based on my life and the interviews I've done with so many thought leaders. It's so far I mean, I'm I feel blessed. It's it's being released by Morgan James Publishing.

Corey Poirier [00:24:41]:

And, the foreword was written by Richard, Paul Evans, who's, like, a 46 times New York Times bestselling author. And then it's been endorsed by James Redfield from Celestine Prophecy, Mark Victor Hansen from Chicken Soup, Lisa Nichols from The Secret, and many others. But I feel like the book, really, it's ready to meet the world. And so feel free to grab the book. And again, there's lots of free bonuses there. And then, the other option would be if people we didn't talk about it at all today, really, but if people wanna share their expertise, let's say, on a stage on various platforms, we have a brand called Bluetox. Blue stands for business life universe. And basically, it's almost like TEDx meets chicken soup for the soul.

Corey Poirier [00:25:19]:

And we bring our live events to places like Columbia, Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, what have you. And what we ultimately end up doing is showcasing people's expertise on those powerful stages, and then ultimately get, some marketing assets like video and stuff that they can leverage and use for the rest of their life.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:36]:

So is that sort of similar to the TEDx?

Corey Poirier [00:25:40]:

Yeah. It's similar. The difference would be, I think, that our core focus is on the expert first and then the audience, whereas TEDx is on the audience first. Our focus is on helping that expert reach a new audience, reach people, build their, I'll call it, platforms up, build their portfolio up. When you go to their website after they've worked with us, you can watch a video of them speaking at an epic place, as seen on banner of them being featured on Apple and Roku and Amazon and Google Play, you know, flyer that maybe say they coauthored a book with doctor Joe Batali or shared the virtual bill with Les Brown or Lisa Nichols. Those are things that took me 15 years, and we see our clients get those things on their website in 2 or 3 months, and it's all legit. Like, they did the work, we did the work, and it all happened. So it's similar in terms of if you come to the live event and it is a live event, it would feel similar to a TEDx style event.

Corey Poirier [00:26:28]:

The one difference is we do, more live interviews, so almost like podcast interviews in front of an audience. And then the other difference is we're really focused on the back end of helping that expert get their message out to more people.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:39]:

Beautiful. Yes. You and I need to talk more about that because I'm sure that's something that I can make available to our authors. And I believe you have a free gift for our listeners.

Corey Poirier [00:26:52]:

Yeah. Since we've been talking about books today, and I went back and forth on both books, the book of why and how, I'll say, is out of the 2 books, it's my original baby. You know, we call these books our babies sometimes. It's the original baby. And, basically, the concept of the book is to help you discover what your meaning and your why and your purpose. But the book's not only that. It's also what do you do once you find it. And so it's broken down into the 3 sections.

Corey Poirier [00:27:16]:

And, basically, the first one is finding your why. It's all about how to do that. The second one is how to thrive once you do. And the third one is the how to do it in an enlightened way so that you're helping others. And then the back of the book has, like, 1400 quotes by thought leaders. And so the book itself is, again, essentially to help people find meaning in their life, and we also released an audio version of the book. And so what I wanted to give away to your guests is the free audio version of the book. It's easy to get it.

Corey Poirier [00:27:43]:

You literally just have to go to the book, public speaking dot com, so the book of public speaking dot com, or the book of why audio dot com. Either of those will take you there.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:54]:

Perfect. And I'll put the all of those, links in the show notes, Carrie, for everyone. And I know you have shared so much wisdom already. However, you know that we like to end off with, a a guest leaving a golden nugget, the sort of words of wisdom. What are yours?

Corey Poirier [00:28:15]:

I think my parting words would be to find a way every day to live on purpose. And if you haven't found that meaning or purpose now, honestly, sounds bold to say, but whatever it takes to get there, you need to do it because it changes everything in your life. I call it taking vitamin p, and p is for either passion or purpose you pick. And I do think they're different things. Passion is what you do, like, whatever it is, writing a book, comedy, music, photography. Purpose is why you're actually doing it. But I I linked them both together and call them vitamin p. And I say it's the one vitamin you can't buy in the stores and the most important one you ever take, and it's what changed everything in my life.

Corey Poirier [00:28:52]:

If somebody's listening to this and they found their purpose, I would just say, live every day as much as possible in that purpose. If you haven't found it, trust me. It's worth anything it takes to find it. And I guess without even thinking of a cheap plug, I will say I offered the audiobook, and the audiobook that I offered for free will actually tell you the exercises around how to do that.

Susan Friedmann [00:29:11]:

Wonderful. That's even better reason to, listen to it. I can't wait. So thank you. This has been amazing, Corey. And as I said, if you're open to it, love to have you come back, and we'll really dig deep into relaunching the book or even launching the book and crowdfunding, getting some funds for that, whether it's Kickstarter, any of the other sites. And I think there are some that are more book friendly than others these days. So, we'll talk more about that.

Susan Friedmann [00:29:43]:

Again, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And by the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, Let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. Go to brainstorm with susan.com to schedule your free call. In the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book book and author marketing success.vSusan Friedmann [00:00:30]:

Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. 

Today, my special guest is Corey Poirier. Corey is a multiple time TEDx speaker and was recently announced as one of just 15 Success Magazine Emerging Entrepreneurs, which is a first-time award. He's also the host of the top-rated “Let's Do Influencing” radio show, founder of the growing Blue Talks brand, and has been featured in multiple television specials. 

He's a Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Apple Books, and Kobo best selling author, award winning author, and co-author of the Wall Street Journal USA Today bestseller, “The Power of Persistence in Business and Life.” 

Corey, what an absolute pleasure it is to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Corey Poirier [00:01:44]:

Oh, thank you so much. I'm so super happy and stoked to be here.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:48]:

I'm super stoked to have you. I've had a chance to look at some of the incredible people who you've interviewed on your show, some of the greats. Bob Proctor, I was like, oh, you know, I mean, he is no more. But you had an incredible opportunity to speak with him and many other great people. I know that building credibility and influence is something that you're pretty good at. So let's start off there and let's talk about that. And give us your secret number one way of building credibility and influence.

Corey Poirier [00:02:29]:

Honestly, it kinda starts where your question was winding down in terms of the interviews that I've done with thought leaders and high achievers. It was never meant to be a take thing. It was always meant to be giving. But that has probably been one of the biggest, I think, leverage points I've had as an influencer. And the biggest way I was able to be positioned as an influencer is by the, I guess, we'll say the people that I've surrounded myself and the people I've learned from and the minds that I've picked, for lack of a better word. I've been blessed to be able to spend time with so many thought leaders, but also, you know, being able to have those on video interviews and pictures with those thought leaders and conversations with them, honestly, I think that's what really helped position me as if we wanna use the term influencer or position me to help influence more people.

Susan Friedmann [00:03:20]:

Often, I get asked, you know, well, how do you make contact with people? People are often scared to make contact with the high flyers in the world. What's your trick?

Corey Poirier [00:03:32]:

I'll say it this way. There's not one specific trick, I'll call it. But I will say that it's not one specific thing, but it's a lot of little things. And at the same time, it's also stuff that's not really even strategic. And so I'll kinda mix the 2. But as far as strategy, when I first started, how I, I guess, we'll say I started the process, one of my first big ones was Jack Canfield from Chicken Soup. When I reached out to his team, they basically said it was probably gonna be a no because he didn't have anything that he was promoting at the time. He wasn't doing many interviews, and he was turning down 9 out of every 10 interviews.

Corey Poirier [00:04:09]:

You know, it started out as a no. And I thought, well, it's only a no for now. Let's figure out how to make it a yes. The strategy I used is I went to Jack's site, and I looked at who was providing endorsements to him. And I thought, you know, people are endorsing him, then he probably respects them. I found this guy named Dan Sullivan. And Dan Sullivan runs a thing called Strategic Coach. I thought, well, maybe I'll try to see if I can reach Dan.

Corey Poirier [00:04:31]:

To make a long story short, I was able to get an interview with Dan, and we talked about Jack in the interview, which I expect would happen. And then he said the magic words, you know what? Jack would love the show. You should get him on for an interview. And he said, and by the way, tell him I said so. I took that clip. I knew also that Jack and Mark Victor Hansen both had went to Dan's retreats and events and paid him almost as their coach. So I clipped that audio and I sent it to Jack's team. And I said, even Dan, Jack's coach, thinks Jack should be on my show.

Corey Poirier [00:05:01]:

And they reply back, like, really quickly, I I say within an hour, and they said, you've beaten us into submission, Corey. Here's the link to schedule your interview with Jack. That's very much a strategy that I used and it was based on the idea of people like people they know, like, and trust, but they also like people that know people they know. And so it's almost like I was vetted by Dan, so that made Jack's team trust me and willing to schedule an interview. So that's more of a strategic. Another strategic that people can do is the best time to get on a big name influencer is when they have a book coming out. They're most apt to jump on and do an interview. What you can also do is Amazon has this great thing called coming soon for books, and you can go back quite a ways.

Corey Poirier [00:05:41]:

And so what I would say is the bigger the name, the further you wanna go back. But if they've listed that they have a book coming out in a year's time, then, you know, you can start now and build a relationship. And they're gonna be most apt earlier on to accept an interview, even a big name, because they haven't lined up their whole media tour for the book yet. If it's 3 months out and it's Matthew McConaughey, you've already waited too long. But that coming soon allows you to see who has books coming out and who's most likely to do interviews. So that's another strategy. But then if I go to the other side, Susan, in terms of non strategy, and it's just a happy accident that this happened, is I literally went into these relationships trying to figure out how I could keep depositing over and over and over again. Like, how I could deposit as many times as possible without ever withdrawing in the relationship.

Corey Poirier [00:06:27]:

So what I mean by that is I really wanted to give, give, give before I ever asked, which is, Gary v has a book called jab, jab, jab, right hook. And that's the premise is give, give, give before you ever ask. And I didn't read the book and do it because of that, but that's what I essentially did is I kept giving to influencers without ever asking. And then when I finally decided to make my one ask, it was almost like, well, gosh, you've been doing everything you could to support us. Of course, I have to say yes. And so that's not really a strategy or tactic, but that would be the other thing that's really helped. And then influencers typically hang around with influencers. So being able to talk to an influencer and say, hey.

Corey Poirier [00:07:04]:

Who else do you think I could promote on my show and give some exposure to? And usually, they'll be more than happy to connect you with somebody else that's in their circle of influence if you're gonna be giving to them, and they know you gave to the original person without expecting to receive. So those are some strategies, and I'll say soft strategies all combined into 1.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:25]:

Oh, fantastic. Oh my goodness. I mean, just those few minutes, listeners, you gotta relisten to that, just that part, if you just did 1 or 2 of those suggestions. I love the coming soon piece. I think that's so powerful. And then, as you said, the giving first. I mean, that's the whole concept of reciprocity that you give and then somebody feels, oh, well, yes, maybe I should give back. Even if it's subconscious, there's that feeling of, well, you've given so much to me.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:59]:

Let me now give back to you as a way of my saying thank you to you and being on your show. And I've had that with a few influences myself. In fact, funnily enough, I was just speaking to somebody about Mark Schaeffer. I've been reading his books. I love him, and I was like, oh, I'd love to get him on my show. And I just mentioned that to this person, and she said, oh, my goodness. He's a good friend of mine. Let me introduce you.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:25]:

Then I get an email from Mark saying, anybody who's a friend of Mary is a friend of mine. That was just, like, instant. So what you're saying is right on the money and, I don't know, priceless as far as I'm concerned. So thank you for that. You and I were talking a little bit before the show about the idea of book sales, bulk book sales, sustaining book sales. And I know that's something, you know, you're an author and you know how to sell books. So what are some of the ways in which you keep your book up front and center in people's minds?

Corey Poirier [00:09:09]:

I love the last part of that question because how do you keep it front and center is so important because what I find most people do, and this is like you said, after a lot of years in the business of books, I find too many people launch a book and then clap their hands together and say, okay, I'm done. Became a bestseller. If that's what the goal was on Amazon, I'm done. And to me, like, a book can be the gift that keeps on giving, and it should have a life long after that first little one month launch period. And, you know, I think of books that have impacted my life, like, I'm looking at my shelf right now and books like The Celestine Prophecy, which, you know, sold close to 40,000,000 copies. And I mean, I don't know how many it sold this year, but it's still selling probably thousands of copies this year. Like, to me, why wouldn't you want your book to be continually, I'll say, relevant? And so I don't actually get the idea of launching a book and then moving on. My last book, The Book of Why, previously the new one I have coming out, it's 4 years since it was published with a traditional publisher, 2 years before that as a self published book, and it took 4 years to write.

Corey Poirier [00:10:14]:

And so it's 10 years, and I still talk about it on a weekly, at least, basis. And it still sells copies. So, I mean, that's a great question is what I'm getting at. And so for me, how do you kinda stay relevant and still sell books? And I I you know, we go into the bigger picture of how do you sell books in the first place. I think one of the things you can do is keep relaunching your book. So, again, I feel people think the only time to put a book out is whenever it's new to you and then launch it for a month and then move on. Whereas I think there's a reason why the big books, you see, they have, like, a 15 year anniversary, a 20 year anniversary. I mentioned Jack Canfield earlier.

Corey Poirier [00:10:52]:

I know he did a 20 year anniversary of the success principles, and he went on all the shows. And, basically, it was like a whole new launch again, but this is a book that hasn't really changed a whole lot. I would say the first thing to do is always be thinking of how can I continually relaunch? And relaunching could be every quarter. You might not go through the whole same big launch you went through, but it might mean that you have a couple strategies. Like, for example, maybe you tie book sales into an event you do and say, access to the event, you just have to buy 3 books instead of charging for the event. And then that spikes your book a little bit again. There's so many ways that you can, like I say, relaunch or whatever term we wanna put on it, a book over and over again that I think is sad when I see so many people just launch it and forget it. On the bulk side of things, one of the things we did early on with a book series I had called conversations with is we profiled different local business leaders.

Corey Poirier [00:11:46]:

What we did for bulk sales, which worked really well, is either people that were profiled in the book, we approached them, and a lot of them had, like, maybe 4 or 500 employees. So we approached them about purchasing copies for their employees. Also, if they have waiting rooms, purchasing copies for their waiting room, also purchasing copies for gifts, and a really big one was client gifts. So now you're sending your client for whatever cost, $10, let's say, at that time. You're sending your client a gift for $10, a client that could spend 1,000 a year with you, and then they're seeing you positioned as the expert whenever and you, you know, you could even if it's a co author book and you have one section of the book, you could put something at that part to say, hey. There's where my section starts. This is something I know we talked about. I thought you might like to check this out.

Corey Poirier [00:12:28]:

You know, I mentioned it here or what have you. But bulk sales, that's a huge one, and I think it's mostly thinking of how can the person that you're trying to sell the bulk books to use those books in a way that benefits them.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:42]:

Yes. I mean, I sold half a 1000000 copies of my first book, and that was to one company. And what they did was literally give it away to both prospects and clients. Yeah, I mean, they had a use for it. It was serving a purpose, with tips and techniques, and they loved it. The response was amazing, so much so that they reordered. So I know that one. It's a brilliant strategy.

Susan Friedmann [00:13:08]:

I love the idea of relaunching the book. I'd love to go down that avenue a little bit more, Corey, with you. I've had questions that people say to me, well, how long should I keep marketing my book? And my question is, how long do you want to keep selling it? It's like the 2 go hand in glove. But, the relaunching, what do you need to do? Do you have to have a new cover? Do you have to have a new title? Or is it the exact same book that you're finding another angle to put it out there?

Corey Poirier [00:13:43]:

I think it can be both or either or. So as far as the cover side, I think it can be the same cover. One thing you can do, and you gotta remember there's a diminishing return probably on this, is, like, for example, with the copyright date, I mean, you may wanna add a couple of new things and then put a new copyright date on it. Because, ultimately, if you want it to appear like a fresh book, the benefit of that is, typically speaking, I've heard this from a lot of media, They're usually most interested in a book 4 months before it's published, while it's published, and 4 months after. So you have, like, kind of an 8 month window. And so when you're relaunching, if they open the book and it says 1997, then chances are they're not gonna see that as a fresh book. And so I might change the copyright. Again, I I would add something new so it's authentic, but it could be just the smallest thing, like a new forward or something.

Corey Poirier [00:14:33]:

But as far as the cover, it would depend on how well the cover performed. You know, if it's a cover that's not gonna go to the park, I don't think I would mess with that. If I felt sales were soft on the first launch, I might mess with the cover a bit. If I did that, I would probably go out, and this is another way to relaunch. I would go to people that are in my network and say, hey, guys. What do you think of these covers? And present 4 or 5 options and help them take ownership in the book by picking the cover they like the most. You know, I would say, you know, you could have a new cover. You don't have to.

Corey Poirier [00:14:59]:

And you could have a new angle as well. So if you have 12 chapters in a book like, for example, the new book that we have that's literally just it's truly just dropped is called the enlightened passenger. It's a bit different. It's a fictional parable, but it's still like a self help book, and it's very much similar to a nonfiction book in a lot of ways. And so with that book, in terms of how we released it and and what we're doing with that, ultimately, we put the cover out and we got people to give feedback. We sent out the manuscript to people to get them to provide feedback, like beta readers, basically. And so we have a lot of things that we did the first time around that we could redo because what I find is you always are bringing well, you should be always bringing new people into your market. If you have a show like we do, so if I have a podcast and I have 40 guests on that year, that's 40 new people with their whole networks that I can now introduce my book to who didn't know about it when I did the previous launch.

Corey Poirier [00:15:52]:

One of the other things that we did do twice with this book of why before we even brought it to a publisher is we crowdfunded it twice. So we launched it on Kickstarter. We did about 11,000 or 12,000 sales in about 2 and a half, 3 weeks. And then we did a relaunch a year later and did about 10,000. So almost the same a year later, my network was still the same network, but I had added all these new people in that time since, which is why it still did well. It was new buyers, different people a year later. If that happened and that's, you know, it was a very focused launch and we only had a short amount of time. But if I was able to do that in a couple of weeks just with a year apart, it tells you how many people we're potentially adding to our network that don't know about our book.

Corey Poirier [00:16:32]:

Again, you could launch it as if, the people that already know about it, you know, can say, I love it. They might write reviews. You can do that as part of your launch. But the new people, they didn't see that launch, so it's all fresh to them. It's almost like if you went on social media, would you only put one post ever because people might have seen it? You put it out again because new people are discovering it all the time. But then also as part of that, and this could be ongoing, I would have it on my email signature. You know, check out my, book, the book of why or whatever, and click here to grab your copy today because new people are seeing my email signature on my podcast. If I wanted to relaunch, then I would maybe start teasing that earlier on before I do the relaunch.

Corey Poirier [00:17:09]:

I have an email newsletter that has around 30,000 people, and we're adding like, we added 500 people, like, a few days ago. And so that's 500 new people that didn't know about the even this launch that I'm doing with the light passenger because the book is just coming out, and they came on after we've already teased it out. So, you know, I know I'm jumping around a bit there, Susan, but to me, what I'm talking about there is ongoing launch and then also the ability to relaunch, like I said, with what I did with crowdfunder. And to that point, if you didn't like the cover, didn't perform, to circle back, I would say look at a new cover, get feedback. If you like the cover, it performed really well, then just relaunch with the same cover. But I would freshen the copyright up. And to me, to authentically do that, I would put something new. It could be an afterward.

Corey Poirier [00:17:54]:

Maybe you got a an endorsement after the book was out, a really big name endorsement. Maybe add that to the front cover. To me, that's enough to now the book has a new element. Now it's a new copyright. So hopefully, that helps a little bit.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:06]:

Oh, very much so. And are you still keeping the same title of the book? It's just the same title, but just with a new look and feel?

Corey Poirier [00:18:14]:

Yeah. Same title. And, again, I mean, I wanna really clarify. As you know, it's it's hard enough to get a title that works and that resonates with people. So if I strike on a title that people talk about a lot, then I don't wanna change that or mess with it. So, like, the book of why and how, we ran into a snag with that because there was another book of why out. I mean, there was a couple of book there was obviously Simon Sinek's Start With Why, but there was an actual book called the book of why, and ours was called The Book of Why and How. There would be the temptation to change that, but my thinking around that side is ours came out first, and you could always find another book potentially with the same title, and are you gonna change it forever? For me, I made the decision that we would keep the same title and make sure our subtitle was a bit different.

Corey Poirier [00:18:56]:

And the how part, we actually use that to our advantage. We talked about, you know, there's a lot of people that talk about the why, but we're also talking about the how. So we use that as part of our unique proposition, let's say. The enlightened passenger, again, newest book, so many people that we talked to about it, they go, oh, how's the enlightened passenger coming along? So, like, the title, I know it resonated because, first of all, people are pretty honest with me. So I've done stuff where it's a title and they're like, oh, I don't like that title. And this one here, people are and even when we did the feedback of beta readers, they all were like, and one thing I really dig is the title. For me, I don't think I would change the title. And here's the only maybe exception for me to that rule is Michael Gerber wrote the book called The E Myth, and then he wrote The E Myth Revisited.

Corey Poirier [00:19:40]:

And The E Myth Revisited actually, I think is considered the main book now, and I think sold more copies. But the takeaway from there is, like, I could call it the enlightened passenger revisit it. If I edit maybe a chapter or something, I might do that. But if, again, it all goes back to if the title's working, I don't mess with it.

Susan Friedmann [00:19:57]:

Yeah. No, that's so true. I love that. And then I would say that you would put another ISBN number so that people would be able to distinguish which one, especially when you're selling it on Amazon or in bookstores, that you're getting the right, version. Correct?

Corey Poirier [00:20:13]:

Like, if it was an updated revised version, absolutely. Because, again, not everybody will agree with the idea of even changing the copyright. So if they change nothing about the book, maybe they say, you know what? The book's working. I'm not gonna change it at all. Then they would probably wanna leave it the same because then on Amazon, it's just that one place. Like, when you search Amazon, there's not 2 to choose from. But if you have a revised version, like I said, Jack Canfield had the, 20th edition of the success principles. So if you go on and search the success principles, you're probably gonna find one version, which was the original that you can still buy, and then one version, which is the updated edition for the 21st century or whatever it says on it.

Corey Poirier [00:20:46]:

And that's gonna be a different version. And, of course, that one has new elements that you may wanna get those new elements, or you may want the original. So Think and Grow Rich is a great example. But I don't remember where it's at to see what it says in the cover, But I have, I'll call it an updated version of Think and Grow Rich that has stories about, like, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Martha Stewart and stuff like that. Obviously, that wasn't in the 1937 edition. Well, some people would want those new stories because it's modern, and they can see how that could relate to them. And maybe they know Arnold's story better than they know Thomas Edison's or even a person Edward Burns that people don't even know. At the same time, some people might say, I want the original Think and Grow Rich.

Corey Poirier [00:21:23]:

I don't want this new stuff. I want it exactly as the Napoleon Hill wrote it. So I think in that case, you probably want it, like you said, have a new ISBN and everything because you're wanting new people to discover it for the first time.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:34]:

Yeah. Wow. So much stuff here. I'm just itching to ask you about the crowdfunding. But you know what? I'm gonna have you back to talk about that if that's something that you would be willing to do because I feel we could have a whole episode just about you talking about crowdfunding because I've made the suggestion to authors about crowdfunding, but actually, you know, what it takes to do it, And successfully, obviously, is something that I'm sure our listeners would get so much benefit from. So if you're willing to do that, Corey, maybe we can have you back.

Corey Poirier [00:22:11]:

The answer is absolutely. And I know it is one of those areas where not a lot of people, even now, it's still not a common thing. And when I obviously, when I did it on Kickstarter, to be quite honest, Susan, I only knew one person that had done any form of a book crowdfund at that time. Now this is going back 5 years, but it was John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire, and he launched his Freedom Journal using Kickstarter. It wasn't a traditional book. It was like a journal, but it was what triggered the idea for me. Why can't I do a traditional book that way? And I will say when I did it, I ended up doing and I haven't done one in a while, so it'd be cool because it'd be fresh and new. But I remember at the time, Forbes Books reached out to me.

Corey Poirier [00:22:48]:

Chandler Bolt reached out and said, you know, we wanna get you on the show, talk about crowdfunding because not many people are doing this. So, yeah, it's something that still a lot of people I don't feel are doing, and there's a whole a whole world there to explore.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:00]:

Absolutely. And there's money available, you know, when authors are having a hard time Because when you're doing this on your own, you're footing the bell for everything, and it starts adding up very quickly between the editing and book cover and the publishing. And obviously, if you're working with a book coach in the beginning, I mean, all of this. And then there's the marketing. That's often what people forget, as you said. Once they've finished the book, it's like, okay, I've done that. But that's really just the beginning of the journey. So, yes, I think that would be enormously valuable.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:36]:

Curry, this is a great segue into you sharing with our listeners how they can find out more about you and your brilliance and what you do and how potentially you might be able to help them.

Corey Poirier [00:23:49]:

Yeah. I mean, there's probably 2 avenues around that side. So one avenue is we have the new book, as I mentioned, coming out. It's literally the website for the book is being finalized. I know podcasts are evergreen, so I'll just say today. So that means anybody listening to it in 24 hours from now, meaning almost everybody, it'll be live. But, essentially, that's the website where you can go and get it. And we still send you to retailers so you don't have to buy it from us.

Corey Poirier [00:24:14]:

But what we do then is, you come back to put the order number in, and then you can actually get the free bonuses that you won't get if you get it through the retailers on its own. On that side, people wanna check out this new book I mentioned. It's called this is the book .com is the website. So this is the book.com. And again, it's a fictional book, but it's a parable. It's loosely based on my life and the interviews I've done with so many thought leaders. It's so far I mean, I'm I feel blessed. It's it's being released by Morgan James Publishing.

Corey Poirier [00:24:41]:

And, the foreword was written by Richard, Paul Evans, who's, like, a 46 times New York Times bestselling author. And then it's been endorsed by James Redfield from Celestine Prophecy, Mark Victor Hansen from Chicken Soup, Lisa Nichols from The Secret, and many others. But I feel like the book, really, it's ready to meet the world. And so feel free to grab the book. And again, there's lots of free bonuses there. And then, the other option would be if people we didn't talk about it at all today, really, but if people wanna share their expertise, let's say, on a stage on various platforms, we have a brand called Bluetox. Blue stands for business life universe. And basically, it's almost like TEDx meets chicken soup for the soul.

Corey Poirier [00:25:19]:

And we bring our live events to places like Columbia, Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, what have you. And what we ultimately end up doing is showcasing people's expertise on those powerful stages, and then ultimately get, some marketing assets like video and stuff that they can leverage and use for the rest of their life.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:36]:

So is that sort of similar to the TEDx?

Corey Poirier [00:25:40]:

Yeah. It's similar. The difference would be, I think, that our core focus is on the expert first and then the audience, whereas TEDx is on the audience first. Our focus is on helping that expert reach a new audience, reach people, build their, I'll call it, platforms up, build their portfolio up. When you go to their website after they've worked with us, you can watch a video of them speaking at an epic place, as seen on banner of them being featured on Apple and Roku and Amazon and Google Play, you know, flyer that maybe say they coauthored a book with doctor Joe Batali or shared the virtual bill with Les Brown or Lisa Nichols. Those are things that took me 15 years, and we see our clients get those things on their website in 2 or 3 months, and it's all legit. Like, they did the work, we did the work, and it all happened. So it's similar in terms of if you come to the live event and it is a live event, it would feel similar to a TEDx style event.

Corey Poirier [00:26:28]:

The one difference is we do, more live interviews, so almost like podcast interviews in front of an audience. And then the other difference is we're really focused on the back end of helping that expert get their message out to more people.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:39]:

Beautiful. Yes. You and I need to talk more about that because I'm sure that's something that I can make available to our authors. And I believe you have a free gift for our listeners.

Corey Poirier [00:26:52]:

Yeah. Since we've been talking about books today, and I went back and forth on both books, the book of why and how, I'll say, is out of the 2 books, it's my original baby. You know, we call these books our babies sometimes. It's the original baby. And, basically, the concept of the book is to help you discover what your meaning and your why and your purpose. But the book's not only that. It's also what do you do once you find it. And so it's broken down into the 3 sections.

Corey Poirier [00:27:16]:

And, basically, the first one is finding your why. It's all about how to do that. The second one is how to thrive once you do. And the third one is the how to do it in an enlightened way so that you're helping others. And then the back of the book has, like, 1400 quotes by thought leaders. And so the book itself is, again, essentially to help people find meaning in their life, and we also released an audio version of the book. And so what I wanted to give away to your guests is the free audio version of the book. It's easy to get it.

Corey Poirier [00:27:43]:

You literally just have to go to the book, public speaking dot com, so the book of public speaking dot com, or the book of why audio dot com. Either of those will take you there.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:54]:

Perfect. And I'll put the all of those, links in the show notes, Carrie, for everyone. And I know you have shared so much wisdom already. However, you know that we like to end off with, a a guest leaving a golden nugget, the sort of words of wisdom. What are yours?

Corey Poirier [00:28:15]:

I think my parting words would be to find a way every day to live on purpose. And if you haven't found that meaning or purpose now, honestly, sounds bold to say, but whatever it takes to get there, you need to do it because it changes everything in your life. I call it taking vitamin p, and p is for either passion or purpose you pick. And I do think they're different things. Passion is what you do, like, whatever it is, writing a book, comedy, music, photography. Purpose is why you're actually doing it. But I I linked them both together and call them vitamin p. And I say it's the one vitamin you can't buy in the stores and the most important one you ever take, and it's what changed everything in my life.

Corey Poirier [00:28:52]:

If somebody's listening to this and they found their purpose, I would just say, live every day as much as possible in that purpose. If you haven't found it, trust me. It's worth anything it takes to find it. And I guess without even thinking of a cheap plug, I will say I offered the audiobook, and the audiobook that I offered for free will actually tell you the exercises around how to do that.

Susan Friedmann [00:29:11]:

Wonderful. That's even better reason to, listen to it. I can't wait. So thank you. This has been amazing, Corey. And as I said, if you're open to it, love to have you come back, and we'll really dig deep into relaunching the book or even launching the book and crowdfunding, getting some funds for that, whether it's Kickstarter, any of the other sites. And I think there are some that are more book friendly than others these days. So, we'll talk more about that.

Susan Friedmann [00:29:43]:

Again, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And by the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, Let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. Go to brainstorm with susan.com to schedule your free call. In the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book book and author marketing success.

Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:

Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. 

Today, my special guest is Corey Poirier. Corey is a multiple time TEDx speaker and was recently announced as one of just 15 Success Magazine Emerging Entrepreneurs, which is a first-time award. He's also the host of the top-rated “Let's Do Influencing” radio show, founder of the growing Blue Talks brand, and has been featured in multiple television specials. 

He's a Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Apple Books, and Kobo best selling author, award winning author, and co-author of the Wall Street Journal USA Today bestseller, “The Power of Persistence in Business and Life.” 

Corey, what an absolute pleasure it is to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Corey Poirier [00:01:44]:

Oh, thank you so much. I'm so super happy and stoked to be here.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:48]:

I'm super stoked to have you. I've had a chance to look at some of the incredible people who you've interviewed on your show, some of the greats. Bob Proctor, I was like, oh, you know, I mean, he is no more. But you had an incredible opportunity to speak with him and many other great people. I know that building credibility and influence is something that you're pretty good at. So let's start off there and let's talk about that. And give us your secret number one way of building credibility and influence.

Corey Poirier [00:02:29]:

Honestly, it kinda starts where your question was winding down in terms of the interviews that I've done with thought leaders and high achievers. It was never meant to be a take thing. It was always meant to be giving. But that has probably been one of the biggest, I think, leverage points I've had as an influencer. And the biggest way I was able to be positioned as an influencer is by the, I guess, we'll say the people that I've surrounded myself and the people I've learned from and the minds that I've picked, for lack of a better word. I've been blessed to be able to spend time with so many thought leaders, but also, you know, being able to have those on video interviews and pictures with those thought leaders and conversations with them, honestly, I think that's what really helped position me as if we wanna use the term influencer or position me to help influence more people.

Susan Friedmann [00:03:20]:

Often, I get asked, you know, well, how do you make contact with people? People are often scared to make contact with the high flyers in the world. What's your trick?

Corey Poirier [00:03:32]:

I'll say it this way. There's not one specific trick, I'll call it. But I will say that it's not one specific thing, but it's a lot of little things. And at the same time, it's also stuff that's not really even strategic. And so I'll kinda mix the 2. But as far as strategy, when I first started, how I, I guess, we'll say I started the process, one of my first big ones was Jack Canfield from Chicken Soup. When I reached out to his team, they basically said it was probably gonna be a no because he didn't have anything that he was promoting at the time. He wasn't doing many interviews, and he was turning down 9 out of every 10 interviews.

Corey Poirier [00:04:09]:

You know, it started out as a no. And I thought, well, it's only a no for now. Let's figure out how to make it a yes. The strategy I used is I went to Jack's site, and I looked at who was providing endorsements to him. And I thought, you know, people are endorsing him, then he probably respects them. I found this guy named Dan Sullivan. And Dan Sullivan runs a thing called Strategic Coach. I thought, well, maybe I'll try to see if I can reach Dan.

Corey Poirier [00:04:31]:

To make a long story short, I was able to get an interview with Dan, and we talked about Jack in the interview, which I expect would happen. And then he said the magic words, you know what? Jack would love the show. You should get him on for an interview. And he said, and by the way, tell him I said so. I took that clip. I knew also that Jack and Mark Victor Hansen both had went to Dan's retreats and events and paid him almost as their coach. So I clipped that audio and I sent it to Jack's team. And I said, even Dan, Jack's coach, thinks Jack should be on my show.

Corey Poirier [00:05:01]:

And they reply back, like, really quickly, I I say within an hour, and they said, you've beaten us into submission, Corey. Here's the link to schedule your interview with Jack. That's very much a strategy that I used and it was based on the idea of people like people they know, like, and trust, but they also like people that know people they know. And so it's almost like I was vetted by Dan, so that made Jack's team trust me and willing to schedule an interview. So that's more of a strategic. Another strategic that people can do is the best time to get on a big name influencer is when they have a book coming out. They're most apt to jump on and do an interview. What you can also do is Amazon has this great thing called coming soon for books, and you can go back quite a ways.

Corey Poirier [00:05:41]:

And so what I would say is the bigger the name, the further you wanna go back. But if they've listed that they have a book coming out in a year's time, then, you know, you can start now and build a relationship. And they're gonna be most apt earlier on to accept an interview, even a big name, because they haven't lined up their whole media tour for the book yet. If it's 3 months out and it's Matthew McConaughey, you've already waited too long. But that coming soon allows you to see who has books coming out and who's most likely to do interviews. So that's another strategy. But then if I go to the other side, Susan, in terms of non strategy, and it's just a happy accident that this happened, is I literally went into these relationships trying to figure out how I could keep depositing over and over and over again. Like, how I could deposit as many times as possible without ever withdrawing in the relationship.

Corey Poirier [00:06:27]:

So what I mean by that is I really wanted to give, give, give before I ever asked, which is, Gary v has a book called jab, jab, jab, right hook. And that's the premise is give, give, give before you ever ask. And I didn't read the book and do it because of that, but that's what I essentially did is I kept giving to influencers without ever asking. And then when I finally decided to make my one ask, it was almost like, well, gosh, you've been doing everything you could to support us. Of course, I have to say yes. And so that's not really a strategy or tactic, but that would be the other thing that's really helped. And then influencers typically hang around with influencers. So being able to talk to an influencer and say, hey.

Corey Poirier [00:07:04]:

Who else do you think I could promote on my show and give some exposure to? And usually, they'll be more than happy to connect you with somebody else that's in their circle of influence if you're gonna be giving to them, and they know you gave to the original person without expecting to receive. So those are some strategies, and I'll say soft strategies all combined into 1.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:25]:

Oh, fantastic. Oh my goodness. I mean, just those few minutes, listeners, you gotta relisten to that, just that part, if you just did 1 or 2 of those suggestions. I love the coming soon piece. I think that's so powerful. And then, as you said, the giving first. I mean, that's the whole concept of reciprocity that you give and then somebody feels, oh, well, yes, maybe I should give back. Even if it's subconscious, there's that feeling of, well, you've given so much to me.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:59]:

Let me now give back to you as a way of my saying thank you to you and being on your show. And I've had that with a few influences myself. In fact, funnily enough, I was just speaking to somebody about Mark Schaeffer. I've been reading his books. I love him, and I was like, oh, I'd love to get him on my show. And I just mentioned that to this person, and she said, oh, my goodness. He's a good friend of mine. Let me introduce you.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:25]:

Then I get an email from Mark saying, anybody who's a friend of Mary is a friend of mine. That was just, like, instant. So what you're saying is right on the money and, I don't know, priceless as far as I'm concerned. So thank you for that. You and I were talking a little bit before the show about the idea of book sales, bulk book sales, sustaining book sales. And I know that's something, you know, you're an author and you know how to sell books. So what are some of the ways in which you keep your book up front and center in people's minds?

Corey Poirier [00:09:09]:

I love the last part of that question because how do you keep it front and center is so important because what I find most people do, and this is like you said, after a lot of years in the business of books, I find too many people launch a book and then clap their hands together and say, okay, I'm done. Became a bestseller. If that's what the goal was on Amazon, I'm done. And to me, like, a book can be the gift that keeps on giving, and it should have a life long after that first little one month launch period. And, you know, I think of books that have impacted my life, like, I'm looking at my shelf right now and books like The Celestine Prophecy, which, you know, sold close to 40,000,000 copies. And I mean, I don't know how many it sold this year, but it's still selling probably thousands of copies this year. Like, to me, why wouldn't you want your book to be continually, I'll say, relevant? And so I don't actually get the idea of launching a book and then moving on. My last book, The Book of Why, previously the new one I have coming out, it's 4 years since it was published with a traditional publisher, 2 years before that as a self published book, and it took 4 years to write.

Corey Poirier [00:10:14]:

And so it's 10 years, and I still talk about it on a weekly, at least, basis. And it still sells copies. So, I mean, that's a great question is what I'm getting at. And so for me, how do you kinda stay relevant and still sell books? And I I you know, we go into the bigger picture of how do you sell books in the first place. I think one of the things you can do is keep relaunching your book. So, again, I feel people think the only time to put a book out is whenever it's new to you and then launch it for a month and then move on. Whereas I think there's a reason why the big books, you see, they have, like, a 15 year anniversary, a 20 year anniversary. I mentioned Jack Canfield earlier.

Corey Poirier [00:10:52]:

I know he did a 20 year anniversary of the success principles, and he went on all the shows. And, basically, it was like a whole new launch again, but this is a book that hasn't really changed a whole lot. I would say the first thing to do is always be thinking of how can I continually relaunch? And relaunching could be every quarter. You might not go through the whole same big launch you went through, but it might mean that you have a couple strategies. Like, for example, maybe you tie book sales into an event you do and say, access to the event, you just have to buy 3 books instead of charging for the event. And then that spikes your book a little bit again. There's so many ways that you can, like I say, relaunch or whatever term we wanna put on it, a book over and over again that I think is sad when I see so many people just launch it and forget it. On the bulk side of things, one of the things we did early on with a book series I had called conversations with is we profiled different local business leaders.

Corey Poirier [00:11:46]:

What we did for bulk sales, which worked really well, is either people that were profiled in the book, we approached them, and a lot of them had, like, maybe 4 or 500 employees. So we approached them about purchasing copies for their employees. Also, if they have waiting rooms, purchasing copies for their waiting room, also purchasing copies for gifts, and a really big one was client gifts. So now you're sending your client for whatever cost, $10, let's say, at that time. You're sending your client a gift for $10, a client that could spend 1,000 a year with you, and then they're seeing you positioned as the expert whenever and you, you know, you could even if it's a co author book and you have one section of the book, you could put something at that part to say, hey. There's where my section starts. This is something I know we talked about. I thought you might like to check this out.

Corey Poirier [00:12:28]:

You know, I mentioned it here or what have you. But bulk sales, that's a huge one, and I think it's mostly thinking of how can the person that you're trying to sell the bulk books to use those books in a way that benefits them.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:42]:

Yes. I mean, I sold half a 1000000 copies of my first book, and that was to one company. And what they did was literally give it away to both prospects and clients. Yeah, I mean, they had a use for it. It was serving a purpose, with tips and techniques, and they loved it. The response was amazing, so much so that they reordered. So I know that one. It's a brilliant strategy.

Susan Friedmann [00:13:08]:

I love the idea of relaunching the book. I'd love to go down that avenue a little bit more, Corey, with you. I've had questions that people say to me, well, how long should I keep marketing my book? And my question is, how long do you want to keep selling it? It's like the 2 go hand in glove. But, the relaunching, what do you need to do? Do you have to have a new cover? Do you have to have a new title? Or is it the exact same book that you're finding another angle to put it out there?

Corey Poirier [00:13:43]:

I think it can be both or either or. So as far as the cover side, I think it can be the same cover. One thing you can do, and you gotta remember there's a diminishing return probably on this, is, like, for example, with the copyright date, I mean, you may wanna add a couple of new things and then put a new copyright date on it. Because, ultimately, if you want it to appear like a fresh book, the benefit of that is, typically speaking, I've heard this from a lot of media, They're usually most interested in a book 4 months before it's published, while it's published, and 4 months after. So you have, like, kind of an 8 month window. And so when you're relaunching, if they open the book and it says 1997, then chances are they're not gonna see that as a fresh book. And so I might change the copyright. Again, I I would add something new so it's authentic, but it could be just the smallest thing, like a new forward or something.

Corey Poirier [00:14:33]:

But as far as the cover, it would depend on how well the cover performed. You know, if it's a cover that's not gonna go to the park, I don't think I would mess with that. If I felt sales were soft on the first launch, I might mess with the cover a bit. If I did that, I would probably go out, and this is another way to relaunch. I would go to people that are in my network and say, hey, guys. What do you think of these covers? And present 4 or 5 options and help them take ownership in the book by picking the cover they like the most. You know, I would say, you know, you could have a new cover. You don't have to.

Corey Poirier [00:14:59]:

And you could have a new angle as well. So if you have 12 chapters in a book like, for example, the new book that we have that's literally just it's truly just dropped is called the enlightened passenger. It's a bit different. It's a fictional parable, but it's still like a self help book, and it's very much similar to a nonfiction book in a lot of ways. And so with that book, in terms of how we released it and and what we're doing with that, ultimately, we put the cover out and we got people to give feedback. We sent out the manuscript to people to get them to provide feedback, like beta readers, basically. And so we have a lot of things that we did the first time around that we could redo because what I find is you always are bringing well, you should be always bringing new people into your market. If you have a show like we do, so if I have a podcast and I have 40 guests on that year, that's 40 new people with their whole networks that I can now introduce my book to who didn't know about it when I did the previous launch.

Corey Poirier [00:15:52]:

One of the other things that we did do twice with this book of why before we even brought it to a publisher is we crowdfunded it twice. So we launched it on Kickstarter. We did about 11,000 or 12,000 sales in about 2 and a half, 3 weeks. And then we did a relaunch a year later and did about 10,000. So almost the same a year later, my network was still the same network, but I had added all these new people in that time since, which is why it still did well. It was new buyers, different people a year later. If that happened and that's, you know, it was a very focused launch and we only had a short amount of time. But if I was able to do that in a couple of weeks just with a year apart, it tells you how many people we're potentially adding to our network that don't know about our book.

Corey Poirier [00:16:32]:

Again, you could launch it as if, the people that already know about it, you know, can say, I love it. They might write reviews. You can do that as part of your launch. But the new people, they didn't see that launch, so it's all fresh to them. It's almost like if you went on social media, would you only put one post ever because people might have seen it? You put it out again because new people are discovering it all the time. But then also as part of that, and this could be ongoing, I would have it on my email signature. You know, check out my, book, the book of why or whatever, and click here to grab your copy today because new people are seeing my email signature on my podcast. If I wanted to relaunch, then I would maybe start teasing that earlier on before I do the relaunch.

Corey Poirier [00:17:09]:

I have an email newsletter that has around 30,000 people, and we're adding like, we added 500 people, like, a few days ago. And so that's 500 new people that didn't know about the even this launch that I'm doing with the light passenger because the book is just coming out, and they came on after we've already teased it out. So, you know, I know I'm jumping around a bit there, Susan, but to me, what I'm talking about there is ongoing launch and then also the ability to relaunch, like I said, with what I did with crowdfunder. And to that point, if you didn't like the cover, didn't perform, to circle back, I would say look at a new cover, get feedback. If you like the cover, it performed really well, then just relaunch with the same cover. But I would freshen the copyright up. And to me, to authentically do that, I would put something new. It could be an afterward.

Corey Poirier [00:17:54]:

Maybe you got a an endorsement after the book was out, a really big name endorsement. Maybe add that to the front cover. To me, that's enough to now the book has a new element. Now it's a new copyright. So hopefully, that helps a little bit.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:06]:

Oh, very much so. And are you still keeping the same title of the book? It's just the same title, but just with a new look and feel?

Corey Poirier [00:18:14]:

Yeah. Same title. And, again, I mean, I wanna really clarify. As you know, it's it's hard enough to get a title that works and that resonates with people. So if I strike on a title that people talk about a lot, then I don't wanna change that or mess with it. So, like, the book of why and how, we ran into a snag with that because there was another book of why out. I mean, there was a couple of book there was obviously Simon Sinek's Start With Why, but there was an actual book called the book of why, and ours was called The Book of Why and How. There would be the temptation to change that, but my thinking around that side is ours came out first, and you could always find another book potentially with the same title, and are you gonna change it forever? For me, I made the decision that we would keep the same title and make sure our subtitle was a bit different.

Corey Poirier [00:18:56]:

And the how part, we actually use that to our advantage. We talked about, you know, there's a lot of people that talk about the why, but we're also talking about the how. So we use that as part of our unique proposition, let's say. The enlightened passenger, again, newest book, so many people that we talked to about it, they go, oh, how's the enlightened passenger coming along? So, like, the title, I know it resonated because, first of all, people are pretty honest with me. So I've done stuff where it's a title and they're like, oh, I don't like that title. And this one here, people are and even when we did the feedback of beta readers, they all were like, and one thing I really dig is the title. For me, I don't think I would change the title. And here's the only maybe exception for me to that rule is Michael Gerber wrote the book called The E Myth, and then he wrote The E Myth Revisited.

Corey Poirier [00:19:40]:

And The E Myth Revisited actually, I think is considered the main book now, and I think sold more copies. But the takeaway from there is, like, I could call it the enlightened passenger revisit it. If I edit maybe a chapter or something, I might do that. But if, again, it all goes back to if the title's working, I don't mess with it.

Susan Friedmann [00:19:57]:

Yeah. No, that's so true. I love that. And then I would say that you would put another ISBN number so that people would be able to distinguish which one, especially when you're selling it on Amazon or in bookstores, that you're getting the right, version. Correct?

Corey Poirier [00:20:13]:

Like, if it was an updated revised version, absolutely. Because, again, not everybody will agree with the idea of even changing the copyright. So if they change nothing about the book, maybe they say, you know what? The book's working. I'm not gonna change it at all. Then they would probably wanna leave it the same because then on Amazon, it's just that one place. Like, when you search Amazon, there's not 2 to choose from. But if you have a revised version, like I said, Jack Canfield had the, 20th edition of the success principles. So if you go on and search the success principles, you're probably gonna find one version, which was the original that you can still buy, and then one version, which is the updated edition for the 21st century or whatever it says on it.

Corey Poirier [00:20:46]:

And that's gonna be a different version. And, of course, that one has new elements that you may wanna get those new elements, or you may want the original. So Think and Grow Rich is a great example. But I don't remember where it's at to see what it says in the cover, But I have, I'll call it an updated version of Think and Grow Rich that has stories about, like, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Martha Stewart and stuff like that. Obviously, that wasn't in the 1937 edition. Well, some people would want those new stories because it's modern, and they can see how that could relate to them. And maybe they know Arnold's story better than they know Thomas Edison's or even a person Edward Burns that people don't even know. At the same time, some people might say, I want the original Think and Grow Rich.

Corey Poirier [00:21:23]:

I don't want this new stuff. I want it exactly as the Napoleon Hill wrote it. So I think in that case, you probably want it, like you said, have a new ISBN and everything because you're wanting new people to discover it for the first time.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:34]:

Yeah. Wow. So much stuff here. I'm just itching to ask you about the crowdfunding. But you know what? I'm gonna have you back to talk about that if that's something that you would be willing to do because I feel we could have a whole episode just about you talking about crowdfunding because I've made the suggestion to authors about crowdfunding, but actually, you know, what it takes to do it, And successfully, obviously, is something that I'm sure our listeners would get so much benefit from. So if you're willing to do that, Corey, maybe we can have you back.

Corey Poirier [00:22:11]:

The answer is absolutely. And I know it is one of those areas where not a lot of people, even now, it's still not a common thing. And when I obviously, when I did it on Kickstarter, to be quite honest, Susan, I only knew one person that had done any form of a book crowdfund at that time. Now this is going back 5 years, but it was John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire, and he launched his Freedom Journal using Kickstarter. It wasn't a traditional book. It was like a journal, but it was what triggered the idea for me. Why can't I do a traditional book that way? And I will say when I did it, I ended up doing and I haven't done one in a while, so it'd be cool because it'd be fresh and new. But I remember at the time, Forbes Books reached out to me.

Corey Poirier [00:22:48]:

Chandler Bolt reached out and said, you know, we wanna get you on the show, talk about crowdfunding because not many people are doing this. So, yeah, it's something that still a lot of people I don't feel are doing, and there's a whole world there to explore.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:00]:

Absolutely. And there's money available, you know when authors are having a hard time Because when you're doing this on your own, you're footing the bell for everything, and it starts adding up very quickly between the editing and book cover and the publishing. And obviously, if you're working with a book coach in the beginning, I mean, all of this. And then there's the marketing. That's often what people forget, as you said. Once they've finished the book, it's like, okay, I've done that. But that's really just the beginning of the journey. So, yes, I think that would be enormously valuable.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:36]:

Curry, this is a great segue into you sharing with our listeners how they can find out more about you and your brilliance and what you do and how potentially you might be able to help them.

Corey Poirier [00:23:49]:

Yeah. I mean, there's probably 2 avenues around that side. So one avenue is we have the new book, as I mentioned, coming out. It's literally the website for the book is being finalized. I know podcasts are evergreen, so I'll just say today. So that means anybody listening to it in 24 hours from now, meaning almost everybody, it'll be live. But, essentially, that's the website where you can go and get it. And we still send you to retailers so you don't have to buy it from us.

Corey Poirier [00:24:14]:

But what we do then is, you come back to put the order number in, and then you can actually get the free bonuses that you won't get if you get it through the retailers on its own. On that side, people wanna check out this new book I mentioned. It's called this is the book .com is the website. So this is the book.com. And again, it's a fictional book, but it's a parable. It's loosely based on my life and the interviews I've done with so many thought leaders. It's so far I mean, I'm I feel blessed. It's it's being released by Morgan James Publishing.

Corey Poirier [00:24:41]:

And, the foreword was written by Richard, Paul Evans, who's, like, a 46 times New York Times bestselling author. And then it's been endorsed by James Redfield from Celestine Prophecy, Mark Victor Hansen from Chicken Soup, Lisa Nichols from The Secret, and many others. But I feel like the book, really, it's ready to meet the world. And so feel free to grab the book. And again, there's lots of free bonuses there. And then, the other option would be if people we didn't talk about it at all today, really, but if people wanna share their expertise, let's say, on a stage on various platforms, we have a brand called Bluetox. Blue stands for business life universe. And basically, it's almost like TEDx meets chicken soup for the soul.

Corey Poirier [00:25:19]:

And we bring our live events to places like Columbia, Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, what have you. And what we ultimately end up doing is showcasing people's expertise on those powerful stages, and then ultimately get, some marketing assets like video and stuff that they can leverage and use for the rest of their life.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:36]:

So is that sort of similar to the TEDx?

Corey Poirier [00:25:40]:

Yeah. It's similar. The difference would be, I think, that our core focus is on the expert first and then the audience, whereas TEDx is on the audience first. Our focus is on helping that expert reach a new audience, reach people, build their, I'll call it, platforms up, build their portfolio up. When you go to their website after they've worked with us, you can watch a video of them speaking at an epic place, as seen on banner of them being featured on Apple and Roku and Amazon and Google Play, you know, flyer that maybe say they coauthored a book with doctor Joe Batali or shared the virtual bill with Les Brown or Lisa Nichols. Those are things that took me 15 years, and we see our clients get those things on their website in 2 or 3 months, and it's all legit. Like, they did the work, we did the work, and it all happened. So it's similar in terms of if you come to the live event and it is a live event, it would feel similar to a TEDx style event.

Corey Poirier [00:26:28]:

The one difference is we do, more live interviews, so almost like podcast interviews in front of an audience. And then the other difference is we're really focused on the back end of helping that expert get their message out to more people.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:39]:

Beautiful. Yes. You and I need to talk more about that because I'm sure that's something that I can make available to our authors. And I believe you have a free gift for our listeners.

Corey Poirier [00:26:52]:

Yeah. Since we've been talking about books today, and I went back and forth on both books, "The Book of Why and How," I'll say, is out of the 2 books, it's my original baby. You know, we call these books our babies sometimes. It's the original baby. And, basically, the concept of the book is to help you discover what your meaning and your why and your purpose. But the book's not only that. It's also what do you do once you find it. And so it's broken down into the 3 sections.

Corey Poirier [00:27:16]:

And, basically, the first one is finding your why. It's all about how to do that. The second one is how to thrive once you do. And the third one is the how to do it in an enlightened way so that you're helping others. And then the back of the book has, like, 1400 quotes by thought leaders. And so the book itself is, again, essentially to help people find meaning in their life, and we also released an audio version of the book. And so what I wanted to give away to your guests is the free audio version of the book. It's easy to get it.

Corey Poirier [00:27:43]:

You literally just have to go to thebookofpublicspeaking.com, or thebookofwhyaudio.com. Either of those will take you there.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:54]:

Perfect. And I'll put the all of those, links in the show notes, Corey, for everyone. And I know you have shared so much wisdom already. However, you know that we like to end off with, a a guest leaving a golden nugget, the sort of words of wisdom. What are yours?

Corey Poirier [00:28:15]:

I think my parting words would be to find a way every day to live on purpose. And if you haven't found that meaning or purpose now, honestly, sounds bold to say, but whatever it takes to get there, you need to do it because it changes everything in your life. I call it taking vitamin p, and p is for either passion or purpose you pick. And I do think they're different things. Passion is what you do, like, whatever it is, writing a book, comedy, music, photography. Purpose is why you're actually doing it. But I I linked them both together and call them vitamin p. And I say it's the one vitamin you can't buy in the stores and the most important one you ever take, and it's what changed everything in my life.

Corey Poirier [00:28:52]:

If somebody's listening to this and they found their purpose, I would just say, live every day as much as possible in that purpose. If you haven't found it, trust me. It's worth anything it takes to find it. And I guess without even thinking of a cheap plug, I will say I offered the audiobook, and the audiobook that I offered for free will actually tell you the exercises around how to do that.

Susan Friedmann [00:29:11]:

Wonderful. That's even better reason to, listen to it. I can't wait. So thank you. This has been amazing, Corey. And as I said, if you're open to it, love to have you come back, and we'll really dig deep into relaunching the book or even launching the book and crowdfunding, getting some funds for that, whether it's Kickstarter, any of the other sites. And I think there are some that are more book friendly than others these days. So, we'll talk more about that.

Susan Friedmann [00:29:43]:

Again, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And by the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, Let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for.
Go to BookMarketingBrainstorm.com to schedule your free call. In the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.

Here's how to claim your free copy of Corey's book "The Book of Public Speaking"