Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:
Friedman. 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. He's a dynamic TEDx speaker and was recently crowned one of SUCCESS Magazine's top 15 emerging entrepreneurs. As the charismatic host of the hit show Let's Do Influencing and the visionary behind Blue Talks, he's a force to be reckoned with. Currie's a best selling author across major platforms, and a co author of the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller, The Power of Persistence in Business and in Life, and his brand new book, The Enlightened Passenger, will be featured from June 11th this year. So excellent.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:34]:
Corrie, it's an honor to welcome you back to the show. We had you on a few months ago, and you were such a hit that we wanted you back again. And thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Corey Poirier [00:01:49]:
Wow. Well, thank you so much for that fantastic intro, humbling intro. And, yeah, I'm super stoked to be joining you and super stoked to be, as I like to say, making some magic happen today.

Susan Friedmann [00:02:01]:
And one of the reasons that we invited you back was you dropped a little nugget in the last interview that we did about crowdfunding. And my ears just like, oh, we have gotta have Corrie back talking about crowdfunding because it's a subject we've covered a couple of times, but really want to get down to the nitty gritty because you've done it. And talking to you about your campaign and how you did it, and what you had to do, I think is going to be so valuable for our listeners. Let's start as off as usual. Give me a definition, a very brief one, of what is crowdfunding so that our listeners know exactly what we're talking about here.

Corey Poirier [00:02:51]:
I'll give you, first of all, Susan, what I consider to be the to me, the like, the general go to definition that I would say, just based on the roots of the word. Because I would say it's getting a crowd to fund something that you're passionate about that hopefully they get excited by as well. So it's really using the power of a crowd to fund and, again, I'll I'll say a project, whether that be a movie, a book. It could be, an invention. It could be a new product in terms of how to release something. Like, it could be a technology that somebody's inventing but needs extra funding for. So, really, again, it's just using the power of a crowd. You may even use the reference in the book world of a street team, but they're actually investing in it to basically bring the funds together to help you do what you're hoping to do.

Susan Friedmann [00:03:40]:
Fabulous. How do you actually get started with this? I mean, because it's a great idea, and we've heard about it so many times, but how do you actually get started doing it?

Corey Poirier [00:03:52]:
I'll tell you where, for me, the root of the idea came for actually crowdfunding a book. Because I will say, when I did my first crowdfunding campaign, I'd have to actually, I can tell you what it was, roughly. It was 2017. And, honestly, it's still not, like, 80% of authors doing it. It's still, like, maybe 8%. Like, so it's still not even hugely common. And and, obviously, that many years ago was less common. Where I got the idea was a person that I think you know John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire.

Corey Poirier [00:04:25]:
John had this book called The Freedom Journal, and it was actually a journal, just like it says, not a traditional book. But John launched it with, Kickstarter, so one of the crowdfunders. I saw what he had done with it, and I was like, wow. That's pretty powerful. Like, how many people actually supported him and grabbed the book? And, again, it was a journal. It wasn't traditional book. And I started posing the question, I wonder if you could do that for a nonfiction book. And then I started saying, why couldn't you do it for a nonfiction book? That's kind of for me was, I'll call it, the catalyst to even go down that path.

Corey Poirier [00:04:59]:
Once I realized that I wanted to give that a go, the next stage, of course, was how do you even start that? Like, what does that even look like? Can I kinda model what especially mostly people were doing it? We're trying to get a film made. Can I model what people are doing to get a film made to get a book made? And quite honestly, the book itself, I was looking at it more as funds are raised could be for the marketing budget and stuff like that because the truth is I had known already. I'd already actually, the book was almost basically done. I'd already invested in and got the editing done. The cover design was basically done, and it wasn't very costly anyway. The formatting, I was already working on. So I was looking at it as these are funds that can help me marketing the book, which is in a lot of ways how I positioned it. But, yeah, that was what the catalyst was.

Corey Poirier [00:05:45]:
I saw John do it and hadn't seen anybody else do it. At the time, I hadn't seen another book launch that way whatsoever, like a traditional book. I just said, I guess like I always do, what's stopping me from seeing if it can work?

Susan Friedmann [00:05:57]:
Which is brilliant because, also, so many authors put all their finances into producing the book, especially, you know, when they're working with a hybrid publisher like Aviva Publishing, or, you know, if they want to self publish it. All their money is going into the book, the book cover, editing, layout, design. And then when it comes to marketing the book, there's nothing left. The idea of crowdfunding for marketing purposes is extraordinary. Let's delve deeper into that because are people wanting to help you market? Are they willing to give funds to help market a book?

Corey Poirier [00:06:43]:
Here's the interesting part about it, and we kinda talked about this off air. There's, I feel, many layers to it because there's the side of some people are buying the book to support you. They weren't even looking to read a book or have a book in their life. They might not even really, honestly, be super interested in the book itself, but they wanna help you. So there's that crew, maybe friends and family, and then some business associates perhaps. There's that group of people. Then there's a group of people that really believe in what you're sharing. Like, they believe in you as a person, so they believe when you say, here's what I wanna do with this book, then they say, you know what? I'm willing to support that.

Corey Poirier [00:07:23]:
It only cost me x amount. And those are the people usually I say only cost me x amount. Those are usually the people that buy, like, the first reward, which would be, like, copy of the book, whether that's a digital or a printed copy or what have you. But then there's the, I'll call it, the next tier, which is the and these aren't in specific order. But the next tier would be the group that wants the bonuses or the rewards you're offering. They call it rewards and crowdfunding, but it's just like a bonus. That wants a bonus that you're offering. And so the book is just a byproduct, meaning they're not really that pulled into the book.

Corey Poirier [00:07:53]:
But let's say that you can offer a training that you have, or you can offer something related to the work that you do, that type of thing, or the audiobook. Maybe they want an audiobook, or they want let's say, what I did with mine is I got other people to submit bonuses. So maybe they want the bonuses that the other people have submitted more than they want yours, or maybe they want the bonuses that I've included. What I'm getting at is that then that tier of people is really about, I want these bonuses, and they're worth the money to me. And, yeah, if you wanna send me a book, I'll take it too. And then, yet again, this isn't all inclusive, but then I would say the 4th tier is the tier that goes, that book sounds great. I'd love to read a book like that. I wish I had a book like that or what have you.

Corey Poirier [00:08:37]:
Any form of that. And so, you know, that's that kinda last tier that they're buying it because they believe in the book or they like the idea of the book or they believe it'll be a great book. It's harder to get those people to buy 5 or 10 books before they've even read the book itself and get that excited about it. But there's definitely a lot of them that get excited about the book because they maybe like your knowledge already. Like me being a speaker helped because they may have already liked that knowledge and have shared it during talks, and they may be the person that put on the evaluation form. Oh, you need to turn this into a book. And from them, they're excited because now it's finally happening. So that would be the kind of the multiple tiers I would say.

Corey Poirier [00:09:13]:
When you asked, will they help you market the book or support the book, my answer is yes, but I think you also have to realize their motivation might not be as cut and dry as I wanna get this book.

Susan Friedmann [00:09:25]:
So really what I'm hearing is that the bonuses or the rewards, as you said, that they're called in the crowdfunding world, that's critical. I mean, it's like selling a course. You do these courses, you attend a master class or a webinar online, they're offering you something, and you've got all these bonuses that are attached to what you're purchasing. And as you say, often the decision to buy that course are the bonuses because they're so attractive. You're like, wow, that's worth the price of the course.

Corey Poirier [00:09:59]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, in some cases, what they're wanting to get, they would have maybe in the past like, we had a master class that we did live, and I think it was $500. And I'd have to go back and look at the numbers, but it was substantial. Like, we had 200 and some people sign up for, it, and we only kind of announced it and launched it and brought it all together in about 5 weeks. Some of those people, they were like, I'm gonna get the same amount of content now for buying a book. Or in some cases, like, that could be the bonus. And they could be like, I remember when people bought it when it was live, and they paid $500.

Corey Poirier [00:10:33]:
And now because it's not live anymore, it's a different product. Like, it's prerecorded and all that kind of stuff, and that pricing was when it first came out. And, you know, now it's a year later, so I understand you're not charging that anymore. But because people offer everything, including their shirt, when they're putting out a book, then now I can get that master class that was $500 just as part of the book. Definitely think about the things that people would pay for anyway whenever you're trying to get the book in their hand. But still, and and I'm sure we'll talk about this, understand that that's not necessarily gonna get them to open the book.

Susan Friedmann [00:11:05]:
Yeah. You've got 2 elements here. You've got 1 helping you either produce the book or market the book, you know, funds for that, but then getting them to read the book because of what they're going to get out of it. There are 2 elements there. So let's talk about the elements for actually building this campaign that you're going to put on the crowdfunding platform. And we'll talk about platforms afterwards, but let's look at the elements that you need to put together.

Corey Poirier [00:11:36]:
Ultimately and I know not everybody knows what it looks like to put together, say, a book proposal. But ultimately, on most of these platforms and again, I won't say they're all inclusive because they operate different ways. But a lot of these platforms, it really is like a book proposal just to for the sake of kinda going through it in real time but also making it more accurate. I'm looking at the, Kickstarter I did for one of the books or for the book, the first time I did a Crowdfunder, just so I have it in front of me as to what was on there. And this is all public, which is great. I mentioned this earlier that you can see other people's proposals, decide are you gonna coordinate yours, learn how to do a book proposal even from watching what other people have done. Essentially, the first component is why you're doing it. Like, what's the campaign? That's obviously gotta be very important because people wanna know, why do you care? Because if you don't care enough, then why would I care? Meaning, like, if you're not passionate about it, I'm not gonna be.

Corey Poirier [00:12:30]:
And so the first part I feel is having a strong why behind it. The other part of it is, in this one here, you can actually put a video on. So I put a video. I'm not sure if this is the one. I'm gonna click it, and I don't know if it's hopefully, the one book it is. I was gonna say, I wasn't sure if the volume was on there. What I did was I actually did a video with me holding my son when he was, like, it looks like maybe 4 months old. Basically, I'm holding him, and we're talking about the book.

Corey Poirier [00:12:58]:
And so it was like, here's why I care about the book and getting it written because this is the message I'd wanna tell my son if I could, and I wanna be in a print form for that reason. Just trying to be a powerful video that explains why it really matters to me. And then, like I said, the next component is from a text point of view, why? Like, why are you doing this? Why does it matter? Then the next piece is about the book, why I wrote the book, why it matters. Also, I'm just looking here. I bet next is my bio, my background. The next part is the fact that you'll get a bunch of bonuses if you decide to help us. The next part I have is my, testimonials or endorsements about the author, so about me. And then finally, the last piece was risks and challenges.

Corey Poirier [00:13:43]:
In the book world, it'd be like, who's your competition and why will that make it hard to sell this book or whatever? So it's they're basically what is it? The threats and opportunities is, like, what are the threats? And I basically said the only risk is whether or not I can get the book out in time, meaning, like, for when I'm hoping to get there. But that really didn't pertain as much to the people buying it because I wasn't selling it in the way of it'll be this date. It's just that was what I said was the risk because I may not be able to get it out when I'd like to get it.

Susan Friedmann [00:14:09]:
All of those are really important. And as you said, it sounds exactly like a book proposal. Talk to us about the element of, let's say, video. How important would that be versus just putting the text, writing the text?

Corey Poirier [00:14:23]:
Well, I know the campaign was successful, so I always like to say, the thing about it is we did a campaign and it worked. I wanna feel that the video helped that. It's like, how do you compare it to if I didn't do the video and never included it? That would be the only way to test it. Like, if I did, you know, as we call it, what, an AB test, where I had one version without the video and one with the video. I know that I had quite a few people say, oh my god. That video was so cute with your son. And I'll put it this way. This is the best way I can say it.

Corey Poirier [00:14:49]:
I think the video is definitely never gonna hurt. And if anything, I think it's probably gonna help quite a bit. As to whether or not it was the only thing, I don't believe it was the only thing. Being realistic, I think the biggest thing once I had it all up, the website all up and everything ready, was actually telling people it existed. You can do a Kickstarter. And, yes, there's some number of audience that are gonna find it because of the different ways Kickstarter might market it. Yes. There's gonna be by the way, as soon as you start doing crowdfunding, as soon as you set up a page, yes, you're gonna hit with marketers who are gonna tell you they can offer you the world to get your book in front of people.

Corey Poirier [00:15:23]:
And I did those things, and all I can tell you is that it it didn't move the needle. It didn't change the game. But I'm sure it all helped. I would say, to me, what I felt was most important in the whole campaign was getting the message out to people that the campaign even existed, and then also getting powerful enough rewards that they get excited. And then the book is what opens it up. It's the very first thing they see or not the book. I mean, the video rather. It's the very first thing they see, so I think it sets the tone.

Corey Poirier [00:15:52]:
So if you have a good video, it's only gonna help you. I just don't think it didn't sell the lion's share books. I don't think it sold a whole lot of books, but I think it kept you there and it got you excited so that you would keep reading and then get excited about why you should join in. The one other thing, at least for the campaign I did, was we only had a certain number of days. They gave us, like I think it was a month back then. I might be wrong in this, but I think it was a month that they recommended or, yeah, you couldn't go past the month. That was how long you could run this crowdfunding campaign. I started it off, but I didn't realize that as soon as you create it, the clock started ticking.

Corey Poirier [00:16:26]:
And I launched it during a a trip. I was actually traveling. During the launch, I traveled through 26 states and 5 provinces in 16 days while I was doing a 4 week launch. And so that was interesting doing it. I always wonder what I could have done if I would have just been in my office focused, but we didn't start it until almost a week in. So, really, everything we did on that campaign happened in 3 weeks. And so that was probably the hard part. I mean, I probably should have queued people up maybe 6 months before.

Corey Poirier [00:16:54]:
There's lots of things I could've done, but it was the first one that I knew anybody had done. And I know a couple of the people who did ones later and had sales in the same range or lower, and people called them super massively successful. It felt like it was a success, but, of course, as you know, Susan, you can always learn what you can do differently and better the next time.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:13]:
Yeah. A couple of questions. One is the platform. You know, kick starter, you mentioned, which is sort of the one that most people think about, but I know that there are umpteen others. Do you have any preference? I always think of Kickstarter more for inventions, you know, products, funky new products, but I've not seen books on there. So is there one that's better, let's say, for books?

Corey Poirier [00:17:41]:
From my end, I think from everything I've experienced over the years, I've done 2 of these, like, 2 crowd funders, but I haven't done one on GoFundMe. But from everything I've seen, GoFundMe should work pretty much the same as Kickstarter. Like, they're close enough. First of all, I'll say most of the platforms seem to operate the same way. Kickstarter, I was able to fit my crowdfunding campaign in just like a book proposal and just like any other product could be sold on Kickstarter. But what I discovered and so this is why I did do a second campaign, and it did actually I'm not gonna say it introduced me to my publisher. I actually got offers from, or at least conversations with, 11 publishers. But the publisher I wanted wasn't necessarily I'm gonna give a a hack here.

Corey Poirier [00:18:24]:
Wasn't necessarily I don't know that they noticed my launch on the second crowdfunder, but what I did was somebody else had given me this idea. What I did was I tagged them in, the publisher on Twitter, and I said, I really hope one of my favorite publishers, which they were because they put up books by Brendon Burchard and Jeff Walker. And so I said, I really hope one of my favorite publishers decides to also bid on my book. And then what I did was I retweeted my campaign so that I knew they would see how many books I sold and what I had done. Now I'm gonna tell you what platform I used, but this was the second one. And then basically, they, I guess, retweeted, or they replied to my tweet and said, you have our attention. And obviously, Susan, I think that was because of the number of books I sold. And then I got a private message from the founder the next day in my tweet DMs, and he said, hey.

Corey Poirier [00:19:11]:
We'd love to have you talk to our acquisitions editor to see if there might be a fit here. I leveraged the launch to reach out to that publisher, but I'd already had, like, 11 publishers interested. It's just that this publisher was the one I wanted to work with because they were closer to hybrid. They were an entrepreneurial publisher. They gave me a lot of flexibility that I wouldn't get, let's say, with, maybe one of the big four. I leveraged this platform to get in front of them. But interestingly, like I said, I had 11 other publishers that were interested because of the platform. The platform is called Publishizer with a z, and I just went because I knew they had stopped operating for a while.

Corey Poirier [00:19:45]:
I think they basically got sold and somebody new took over. I'm looking right now at the platform. And, like, for example, I see I guess this says that my campaign was slightly successful because I'm looking at the, ones they're featuring right now. And one is 22 books preorders. Another's 409. Another is 30. Another is 79. Another is 11.

Corey Poirier [00:20:08]:
And I think mine was 520. So I think it was in the, you know, the topper range. All those ones I just mentioned, the highest one is 79.30, which has been that they brought in $7,930, and I think mine was 95100. So it was a pretty successful campaign, I believe. But, basically, Publishizer, the difference with this, Susan, is that when you go on there and you put your book up as a crowdfunded book, the whole campaign and the whole platform is dedicated to helping you find publishers based on how many sales you make and how well your book does.

Susan Friedmann [00:20:40]:
Okay. So it's not necessarily one that you would do for marketing, or it would be one that you would go to use for marketing the book, getting funds for marketing?

Corey Poirier [00:20:50]:
You could. I mean, at the end of the day I mean, I don't know if this is for better or worse, but when you do a crowdfunding campaign, ultimately, you can truly use it for whatever you wanna use it for. I mean, like, it's not like even Kickstarter, it's not that it was for that. I just said that's what I wanna use it for, and then it worked. I'm looking at mine right now because, again, it's all live, that one. And I have a video again. It's a different video. It's me talking about why the why was important.

Corey Poirier [00:21:16]:
And then when I look over the preorders, it was 533. $95100 is what we raised. That was, again, about 3 weeks. I end up doing the same foolish thing again at 3 weeks. I can see that this had, 7,000 views, which is pretty big, meaning, like, the page that it's on. And what's really neat is once the book was funded by them I'm looking now and clicking to make sure. But yeah. So, basically, on this published website, it says that Morgan James ended up being the publisher.

Corey Poirier [00:21:44]:
It was pitched to a 101 publishers, and it has the link to buy the book at Books A 1000000, Barnes and Noble Bookshop, or Amazon. Basically, they're really dedicated to authors is what I would say.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:55]:
So Okay. That's good to know. Yeah.

Corey Poirier [00:21:57]:
And, honestly, again, I would say that if I compare the platforms, it literally you know, they must have mocked it from the other ones, but it literally operates identical to Kickstarter or GoFundMe. It's just that they're focused on publishers. And because of that, I took a lot of the same book proposal, obviously, from the last one and even a lot of the rewards from the last one. So I kinda made it a similar thing. I would argue that this one, I definitely did a better job at making it more of a traditional book proposal because they asked questions around them. Either option works, and you can use it for whichever you wanna use, like marketing, the starting the book from scratch. I think people knew when I was doing the 2nd crowdfunding, I already used a crowdfunder to finish the book and even do some marketing. They knew that I was obviously using it again for marketing the book.

Corey Poirier [00:22:42]:
But then also, I made it clear as well, my goal was to get a publisher so that that's why I picked this platform. I'm hoping that answered the question.

Susan Friedmann [00:22:50]:
Yes. And before I let you go on this is, how do you know how much to ask for?

Corey Poirier [00:22:57]:
Now when you say how much to ask for, do you mean in terms of the rewards, the book itself, or

Susan Friedmann [00:23:02]:
How much you're looking to raise on the funding.

Corey Poirier [00:23:05]:
Okay. I see what you mean. I'm going by memory on this. I have a good memory. Obviously, you can probably tell. But, because these are both done, like, almost 8 years ago, and I remember every aspect of them. But I'm trying to remember I'm looking. I don't think I set a like, I know for sure I'm Publicizer.

Corey Poirier [00:23:24]:
Okay, I'm going by memory, but I don't believe it asked you to set a target. I believe that with the Kickstarter one, it doesn't show me that, which I it's quite surprising. So I was just looking to see if it showed. It doesn't show me. But if I remember correctly, I think the goal was $10,000, and it did $10,500. But I'm pretty sure it was that was the goal I set. But to answer your question about how do you know, I think it's, 2 things. I think it's a judgment call, meaning you know ultimately what you need to raise.

Corey Poirier [00:23:53]:
Like, you could literally base it on what do I need to make this book the best it can be. But I think the other side, which is this all sounds great, but you still have to bring the people who buy the book and know about the book. So I think the other side is what's realistic based on your network? If you're gonna have to do it all, which is, as you know, in the world of I mean, you're in the world of on the hybrid. But as you know, Susan, the author has to do some work. I think some people think if I can get a book deal, I'm never gonna have to market or talk about this thing again. That's not the case with the book world, and that's not the case with crowdfunding. In my experience, if you want to be a successful campaign, you have to find a way to get out there, let people know it exists. I would say if it were me, and I know this isn't a sexy answer because the sexy answer is you heard all about this today from Susan and I.

Corey Poirier [00:24:39]:
You should pop your book up tomorrow and start your crowdfunding campaign. If it were me, I would do some things to get ready for it so that you know you have an active audience, maybe get them warmed up. I would do some other things before I launch. And a big part of that is if it were me again, I would try to find a way and go and dive deep into how to build an email list if you don't have one already. Also, like, if you have 400 people total connections on Facebook, that's the only platform you're on, and you have 0 people on an email list, you're gonna have a hard time having a big campaign and a crowdfund. The only other option to have a big campaign is if you know one person that becomes a champion that knows everybody, or if it gets picked up somehow and goes viral, which that'd be pretty hard to do these days with so many campaigns. Or if you're gonna run ads, that will be another option. Run a lot of ads to it if you wanna put money behind it.

Corey Poirier [00:25:26]:
But if you're starting with no resources financially to do it, no connections on an email list, and social media, you hardly have anybody you're connected to, it's gonna be very, very hard to have a successful campaign on crowdfunding. And, again, I know, Susan, that's not a sexy answer, but I think sometimes we need to know the true answer. That doesn't mean that it can't be successful. That just means it might be time to start doing some of the other lifting first to get ready for that. But I can tell you there's ways. I mean, I just signed up for, Amy Porterfield. AHE was running or might have just been on her Instagram. And I'm about to tackle it soon, but she's saying, let me show you the system I use to get a 1000 people on my email list a week and how you can use it to get a minimum of 10,000 in a year.

Corey Poirier [00:26:11]:
And, I mean, of course, you can kinda buy your way into that too. Like, you can actually go and run ads. But what I'm saying is you could build an email list a lot quicker than you realize. And if you could build add 5,000 people onto an email, and they're most active with you and they're most excited by you in the first few weeks or months that you're they're on your list. So if you could build a list like that and have 5,000 people, then I think you have everything you need to start building up the buzz around a crowdfunding campaign.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:35]:
Brilliant. Wow. So much great information. I knew it would be. And because you've done it, as I say, and you can take us through that, the whole campaign, really get a sense of what it's about. And as you said, it doesn't have to be sexy, but it's the real. It's the truth. I mean, we don't want to make it sound like, you know, this is the panacea.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:56]:
That's all you have to do. It's like people are thinking they can put the book on Amazon and sit back and wait for the sales, but that doesn't happen. And that's the same thing here, if I'm hearing you correctly. Corrie, how can listeners get hold of you, find out more about your new book, which is so exciting? Take it away. Let us know.

Corey Poirier [00:27:19]:
I'll just say one tiny last thing, because we didn't cover it. I wanna make sure people have this, resource as well, is we didn't talk heavily about the rewards. So what I would say is if you wanna know get ideas for rewards you could offer if you do a crowd funder down the road, just go and search my name, Corey Poirier, and search either Kickstarter or Publishizer with a z, and you'll find my campaigns. And by the way, even if you can't find mine, just look at Publishizer, anybody else's, and you'll see the rewards they offer. That will be your sample of what kind of rewards you could offer as well. So I just mentioned that because the rewards are a big part of it. And you can go look at what we offered, the pricing we put it at, and that should give you ideas for how you can do that. Just to put it.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:56]:
Thank you.

Corey Poirier [00:27:57]:
Yeah. No worries. I just feel like it's one of those things where it's a one last thing. If I didn't say it, I'd feel guilty. The other side to things is my new book, which is called The Enlightened Passenger. Now I didn't do crowdfunding. That was very intentional. I guess you could say, you know, I was already working with the publisher that I met through crowdfunding.

Corey Poirier [00:28:14]:
I went to them, and Susan, you could probably attest to this, and they might not even want me sharing this too openly. But with this book, I went to the publisher and said, you know what? I wanna work with you on this for various reasons. One is you know yourself, Susan, because you know about it. It's a fictional parable. So it really probably needs to be in stores, the type of book it is. So I said, I do want to work with a publisher, but here's the timeline I have. And I said to the publisher, you don't even have the book yet. They read it, and they said they want it.

Corey Poirier [00:28:41]:
But they basically they said, what timeline do we need to work under? And I said, 4 months. That's the part you know, with a traditional publisher, usually, that's a no go. It was like a book proposal. Right? I sold them on you got to know who I'm working with on the affiliate side, and and they knew him, and they knew his launches are usually very successful. And so there was enough things on the table that they said, we don't wanna miss out on this. Because if they couldn't do it, I'd have to go, whether self published or somewhere else. We put it together in 4 months. It's with a traditional publisher.

Corey Poirier [00:29:07]:
The book itself is called The Enlightened Passenger. It's a fictional parable, 2 strangers on a plane, basically an older guy, a younger guy. The younger guy is an arrogant type businessperson who thinks he knows it all. The older guy is a wise passenger. And it's called the flight that changes everything because the older guy, through his life journey and lessons, teaches the younger guy what it means to be really rich as a person. It's been compared so far to The Alchemist and Celestine Prophecy and Augmentino's writings just to give people a visual of what type of book it is. The foreword is written by Richard Paul Evans, who wrote The Christmas Box. You know, I'm really proud of that.

Corey Poirier [00:29:41]:
He doesn't write a lot of forewords. I think we talked in the other one about building relationships and making deposits before you ever take withdrawal. So I really feel that I built a relationship with Richard first before I ever asked. He was kind enough to do the foreword, and then we've had endorsements by a lot of big name thought leaders and authors that changed my life, like Neale Donald Walsch of Conversation With God and James Redfield from Celestine. These are authors that their work changed my life. That's a bit about the book. As far as getting a copy of it, I think Susan actually I know know in the show notes usually the links are there, so I think you have a link you can put in the show notes for where people can grab it. If they go grab the book using that link, the benefit of that versus getting it off one of the retailer sites, which that's possible, but the benefit of getting it through us is it still takes you to the retailer site.

Corey Poirier [00:30:24]:
You still buy it at the same place. You still pay the same amount of money. The one difference is by doing it through our site, it tells you where to come back and put your order number. And just by putting the order number from the book you are already gonna buy anyway, you actually get 5 instant bonuses. And then as you heard yesterday, sort of offline, there's a whole bunch of other live events that you can actually attend that we're doing for free once you grab the book as well. And we're gonna be doing a book club after the book launches as well. And, you know, maybe someday down the road, we'll talk about that. I'll tell you how that worked, that in a contest we're doing to get people to actually open the book after they bought it.

Corey Poirier [00:30:59]:
In the interim, you will actually get to be a part of the book club if you so choose. All those live events and 5 instant bonuses, basically, for buying a book that's $16.95 US.

Susan Friedmann [00:31:10]:
Fantastic. You practice what you preach. And, yes, a year from now, let's come back, let's talk about how successful this was because we're hearing the before, and it'll be wonderful to hear the after as well. Curry, we always leave our listeners with a golden nugget. You've shared so much already, but what's that golden nugget you'd like to leave us with?

Corey Poirier [00:31:35]:
This is always a hard one for me because my head goes so many places of stuff I'd wanna share. But I feel like the one thing I'd probably wanna share the most today, and I think this relates to books, but it also relates to just in your personal life, is if you haven't done one yet, I think it'd be worth your while to craft a personal mission statement. All great companies I'll even not just say great companies, but highly successful companies, most of them have a mission statement. Many of the employees know what it is, but that mission statement keeps them focused on what the end goal is. Years ago, I realized that I was sitting in an office, and I saw this mission statement on a wall, and I said, why don't I have one of those? I should be like the CEO of my life. And then I literally, the next day, I took a pen and wrote down a mission statement. I have it in my wallet now, but I had since rewritten it because I, at one point, changed wallets and lost the original one. But basically, it's handwritten, and mine is to be the guy that motivates, donates, educates, entertains, and inspires.

Corey Poirier [00:32:29]:
That's my 5 point test. And so if somebody asks me to take something on, if it's 0 of those, I can say no, and I never have to have a regret over that no. If it's 4 or 5 of those, it's a yes, and I never have to have a regret over that yes. But having that mission statement keeps me really focused on the end game or what the goal is. If I were to leave somebody with something today, and that's something we talk about in the the new book. Obviously, again, it's fictionalized, but the character talks about why he has a personal mission statement. But if I were to leave people with something today, whether they're thinking about what book do I write, how do I approach it, do I bring it to a publisher, all those things, I would say have a personal mission statement that guides your decisions.

Susan Friedmann [00:33:05]:
Beautiful. Wow. Really, that in and of itself was worth the entire podcast interview. So thank you. Thank you so much again for sharing your wisdom. You are so wise and such an incredible person, and you live by your mission statement. And I just truly admire you for that. And listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expect it 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.

Susan Friedmann [00:33:42]:
So go to bookmarketingbrainstorm.com to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:
Friedman. 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. He's a dynamic TEDx speaker and was recently crowned one of SUCCESS Magazine's top 15 emerging entrepreneurs. As the charismatic host of the hit show Let's Do Influencing and the visionary behind Blue Talks, he's a force to be reckoned with. Currie's a best selling author across major platforms, and a co author of the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller, The Power of Persistence in Business and in Life, and his brand new book, The Enlightened Passenger, will be featured from June 11th this year. So excellent.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:34]:
Corrie, it's an honor to welcome you back to the show. We had you on a few months ago, and you were such a hit that we wanted you back again. And thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Corey Poirier [00:01:49]:
Wow. Well, thank you so much for that fantastic intro, humbling intro. And, yeah, I'm super stoked to be joining you and super stoked to be, as I like to say, making some magic happen today.

Susan Friedmann [00:02:01]:
And one of the reasons that we invited you back was you dropped a little nugget in the last interview that we did about crowdfunding. And my ears just like, oh, we have gotta have Corrie back talking about crowdfunding because it's a subject we've covered a couple of times, but really want to get down to the nitty gritty because you've done it. And talking to you about your campaign and how you did it, and what you had to do, I think is going to be so valuable for our listeners. Let's start as off as usual. Give me a definition, a very brief one, of what is crowdfunding so that our listeners know exactly what we're talking about here.

Corey Poirier [00:02:51]:
I'll give you, first of all, Susan, what I consider to be the to me, the like, the general go to definition that I would say, just based on the roots of the word. Because I would say it's getting a crowd to fund something that you're passionate about that hopefully they get excited by as well. So it's really using the power of a crowd to fund and, again, I'll I'll say a project, whether that be a movie, a book. It could be, an invention. It could be a new product in terms of how to release something. Like, it could be a technology that somebody's inventing but needs extra funding for. So, really, again, it's just using the power of a crowd. You may even use the reference in the book world of a street team, but they're actually investing in it to basically bring the funds together to help you do what you're hoping to do.

Susan Friedmann [00:03:40]:
Fabulous. How do you actually get started with this? I mean, because it's a great idea, and we've heard about it so many times, but how do you actually get started doing it?

Corey Poirier [00:03:52]:
I'll tell you where, for me, the root of the idea came for actually crowdfunding a book. Because I will say, when I did my first crowdfunding campaign, I'd have to actually, I can tell you what it was, roughly. It was 2017. And, honestly, it's still not, like, 80% of authors doing it. It's still, like, maybe 8%. Like, so it's still not even hugely common. And and, obviously, that many years ago was less common. Where I got the idea was a person that I think you know John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire.

Corey Poirier [00:04:25]:
John had this book called The Freedom Journal, and it was actually a journal, just like it says, not a traditional book. But John launched it with, Kickstarter, so one of the crowdfunders. I saw what he had done with it, and I was like, wow. That's pretty powerful. Like, how many people actually supported him and grabbed the book? And, again, it was a journal. It wasn't traditional book. And I started posing the question, I wonder if you could do that for a nonfiction book. And then I started saying, why couldn't you do it for a nonfiction book? That's kind of for me was, I'll call it, the catalyst to even go down that path.

Corey Poirier [00:04:59]:
Once I realized that I wanted to give that a go, the next stage, of course, was how do you even start that? Like, what does that even look like? Can I kinda model what especially mostly people were doing it? We're trying to get a film made. Can I model what people are doing to get a film made to get a book made? And quite honestly, the book itself, I was looking at it more as funds are raised could be for the marketing budget and stuff like that because the truth is I had known already. I'd already actually, the book was almost basically done. I'd already invested in and got the editing done. The cover design was basically done, and it wasn't very costly anyway. The formatting, I was already working on. So I was looking at it as these are funds that can help me marketing the book, which is in a lot of ways how I positioned it. But, yeah, that was what the catalyst was.

Corey Poirier [00:05:45]:
I saw John do it and hadn't seen anybody else do it. At the time, I hadn't seen another book launch that way whatsoever, like a traditional book. I just said, I guess like I always do, what's stopping me from seeing if it can work?

Susan Friedmann [00:05:57]:
Which is brilliant because, also, so many authors put all their finances into producing the book, especially, you know, when they're working with a hybrid publisher like Aviva Publishing, or, you know, if they want to self publish it. All their money is going into the book, the book cover, editing, layout, design. And then when it comes to marketing the book, there's nothing left. The idea of crowdfunding for marketing purposes is extraordinary. Let's delve deeper into that because are people wanting to help you market? Are they willing to give funds to help market a book?

Corey Poirier [00:06:43]:
Here's the interesting part about it, and we kinda talked about this off air. There's, I feel, many layers to it because there's the side of some people are buying the book to support you. They weren't even looking to read a book or have a book in their life. They might not even really, honestly, be super interested in the book itself, but they wanna help you. So there's that crew, maybe friends and family, and then some business associates perhaps. There's that group of people. Then there's a group of people that really believe in what you're sharing. Like, they believe in you as a person, so they believe when you say, here's what I wanna do with this book, then they say, you know what? I'm willing to support that.

Corey Poirier [00:07:23]:
It only cost me x amount. And those are the people usually I say only cost me x amount. Those are usually the people that buy, like, the first reward, which would be, like, copy of the book, whether that's a digital or a printed copy or what have you. But then there's the, I'll call it, the next tier, which is the and these aren't in specific order. But the next tier would be the group that wants the bonuses or the rewards you're offering. They call it rewards and crowdfunding, but it's just like a bonus. That wants a bonus that you're offering. And so the book is just a byproduct, meaning they're not really that pulled into the book.

Corey Poirier [00:07:53]:
But let's say that you can offer a training that you have, or you can offer something related to the work that you do, that type of thing, or the audiobook. Maybe they want an audiobook, or they want let's say, what I did with mine is I got other people to submit bonuses. So maybe they want the bonuses that the other people have submitted more than they want yours, or maybe they want the bonuses that I've included. What I'm getting at is that then that tier of people is really about, I want these bonuses, and they're worth the money to me. And, yeah, if you wanna send me a book, I'll take it too. And then, yet again, this isn't all inclusive, but then I would say the 4th tier is the tier that goes, that book sounds great. I'd love to read a book like that. I wish I had a book like that or what have you.

Corey Poirier [00:08:37]:
Any form of that. And so, you know, that's that kinda last tier that they're buying it because they believe in the book or they like the idea of the book or they believe it'll be a great book. It's harder to get those people to buy 5 or 10 books before they've even read the book itself and get that excited about it. But there's definitely a lot of them that get excited about the book because they maybe like your knowledge already. Like me being a speaker helped because they may have already liked that knowledge and have shared it during talks, and they may be the person that put on the evaluation form. Oh, you need to turn this into a book. And from them, they're excited because now it's finally happening. So that would be the kind of the multiple tiers I would say.

Corey Poirier [00:09:13]:
When you asked, will they help you market the book or support the book, my answer is yes, but I think you also have to realize their motivation might not be as cut and dry as I wanna get this book.

Susan Friedmann [00:09:25]:
So really what I'm hearing is that the bonuses or the rewards, as you said, that they're called in the crowdfunding world, that's critical. I mean, it's like selling a course. You do these courses, you attend a master class or a webinar online, they're offering you something, and you've got all these bonuses that are attached to what you're purchasing. And as you say, often the decision to buy that course are the bonuses because they're so attractive. You're like, wow, that's worth the price of the course.

Corey Poirier [00:09:59]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, in some cases, what they're wanting to get, they would have maybe in the past like, we had a master class that we did live, and I think it was $500. And I'd have to go back and look at the numbers, but it was substantial. Like, we had 200 and some people sign up for, it, and we only kind of announced it and launched it and brought it all together in about 5 weeks. Some of those people, they were like, I'm gonna get the same amount of content now for buying a book. Or in some cases, like, that could be the bonus. And they could be like, I remember when people bought it when it was live, and they paid $500.

Corey Poirier [00:10:33]:
And now because it's not live anymore, it's a different product. Like, it's prerecorded and all that kind of stuff, and that pricing was when it first came out. And, you know, now it's a year later, so I understand you're not charging that anymore. But because people offer everything, including their shirt, when they're putting out a book, then now I can get that master class that was $500 just as part of the book. Definitely think about the things that people would pay for anyway whenever you're trying to get the book in their hand. But still, and and I'm sure we'll talk about this, understand that that's not necessarily gonna get them to open the book.

Susan Friedmann [00:11:05]:
Yeah. You've got 2 elements here. You've got 1 helping you either produce the book or market the book, you know, funds for that, but then getting them to read the book because of what they're going to get out of it. There are 2 elements there. So let's talk about the elements for actually building this campaign that you're going to put on the crowdfunding platform. And we'll talk about platforms afterwards, but let's look at the elements that you need to put together.

Corey Poirier [00:11:36]:
Ultimately and I know not everybody knows what it looks like to put together, say, a book proposal. But ultimately, on most of these platforms and again, I won't say they're all inclusive because they operate different ways. But a lot of these platforms, it really is like a book proposal just to for the sake of kinda going through it in real time but also making it more accurate. I'm looking at the, Kickstarter I did for one of the books or for the book, the first time I did a Crowdfunder, just so I have it in front of me as to what was on there. And this is all public, which is great. I mentioned this earlier that you can see other people's proposals, decide are you gonna coordinate yours, learn how to do a book proposal even from watching what other people have done. Essentially, the first component is why you're doing it. Like, what's the campaign? That's obviously gotta be very important because people wanna know, why do you care? Because if you don't care enough, then why would I care? Meaning, like, if you're not passionate about it, I'm not gonna be.

Corey Poirier [00:12:30]:
And so the first part I feel is having a strong why behind it. The other part of it is, in this one here, you can actually put a video on. So I put a video. I'm not sure if this is the one. I'm gonna click it, and I don't know if it's hopefully, the one book it is. I was gonna say, I wasn't sure if the volume was on there. What I did was I actually did a video with me holding my son when he was, like, it looks like maybe 4 months old. Basically, I'm holding him, and we're talking about the book.

Corey Poirier [00:12:58]:
And so it was like, here's why I care about the book and getting it written because this is the message I'd wanna tell my son if I could, and I wanna be in a print form for that reason. Just trying to be a powerful video that explains why it really matters to me. And then, like I said, the next component is from a text point of view, why? Like, why are you doing this? Why does it matter? Then the next piece is about the book, why I wrote the book, why it matters. Also, I'm just looking here. I bet next is my bio, my background. The next part is the fact that you'll get a bunch of bonuses if you decide to help us. The next part I have is my, testimonials or endorsements about the author, so about me. And then finally, the last piece was risks and challenges.

Corey Poirier [00:13:43]:
In the book world, it'd be like, who's your competition and why will that make it hard to sell this book or whatever? So it's they're basically what is it? The threats and opportunities is, like, what are the threats? And I basically said the only risk is whether or not I can get the book out in time, meaning, like, for when I'm hoping to get there. But that really didn't pertain as much to the people buying it because I wasn't selling it in the way of it'll be this date. It's just that was what I said was the risk because I may not be able to get it out when I'd like to get it.

Susan Friedmann [00:14:09]:
All of those are really important. And as you said, it sounds exactly like a book proposal. Talk to us about the element of, let's say, video. How important would that be versus just putting the text, writing the text?

Corey Poirier [00:14:23]:
Well, I know the campaign was successful, so I always like to say, the thing about it is we did a campaign and it worked. I wanna feel that the video helped that. It's like, how do you compare it to if I didn't do the video and never included it? That would be the only way to test it. Like, if I did, you know, as we call it, what, an AB test, where I had one version without the video and one with the video. I know that I had quite a few people say, oh my god. That video was so cute with your son. And I'll put it this way. This is the best way I can say it.

Corey Poirier [00:14:49]:
I think the video is definitely never gonna hurt. And if anything, I think it's probably gonna help quite a bit. As to whether or not it was the only thing, I don't believe it was the only thing. Being realistic, I think the biggest thing once I had it all up, the website all up and everything ready, was actually telling people it existed. You can do a Kickstarter. And, yes, there's some number of audience that are gonna find it because of the different ways Kickstarter might market it. Yes. There's gonna be by the way, as soon as you start doing crowdfunding, as soon as you set up a page, yes, you're gonna hit with marketers who are gonna tell you they can offer you the world to get your book in front of people.

Corey Poirier [00:15:23]:
And I did those things, and all I can tell you is that it it didn't move the needle. It didn't change the game. But I'm sure it all helped. I would say, to me, what I felt was most important in the whole campaign was getting the message out to people that the campaign even existed, and then also getting powerful enough rewards that they get excited. And then the book is what opens it up. It's the very first thing they see or not the book. I mean, the video rather. It's the very first thing they see, so I think it sets the tone.

Corey Poirier [00:15:52]:
So if you have a good video, it's only gonna help you. I just don't think it didn't sell the lion's share books. I don't think it sold a whole lot of books, but I think it kept you there and it got you excited so that you would keep reading and then get excited about why you should join in. The one other thing, at least for the campaign I did, was we only had a certain number of days. They gave us, like I think it was a month back then. I might be wrong in this, but I think it was a month that they recommended or, yeah, you couldn't go past the month. That was how long you could run this crowdfunding campaign. I started it off, but I didn't realize that as soon as you create it, the clock started ticking.

Corey Poirier [00:16:26]:
And I launched it during a a trip. I was actually traveling. During the launch, I traveled through 26 states and 5 provinces in 16 days while I was doing a 4 week launch. And so that was interesting doing it. I always wonder what I could have done if I would have just been in my office focused, but we didn't start it until almost a week in. So, really, everything we did on that campaign happened in 3 weeks. And so that was probably the hard part. I mean, I probably should have queued people up maybe 6 months before.

Corey Poirier [00:16:54]:
There's lots of things I could've done, but it was the first one that I knew anybody had done. And I know a couple of the people who did ones later and had sales in the same range or lower, and people called them super massively successful. It felt like it was a success, but, of course, as you know, Susan, you can always learn what you can do differently and better the next time.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:13]:
Yeah. A couple of questions. One is the platform. You know, kick starter, you mentioned, which is sort of the one that most people think about, but I know that there are umpteen others. Do you have any preference? I always think of Kickstarter more for inventions, you know, products, funky new products, but I've not seen books on there. So is there one that's better, let's say, for books?

Corey Poirier [00:17:41]:
From my end, I think from everything I've experienced over the years, I've done 2 of these, like, 2 crowd funders, but I haven't done one on GoFundMe. But from everything I've seen, GoFundMe should work pretty much the same as Kickstarter. Like, they're close enough. First of all, I'll say most of the platforms seem to operate the same way. Kickstarter, I was able to fit my crowdfunding campaign in just like a book proposal and just like any other product could be sold on Kickstarter. But what I discovered and so this is why I did do a second campaign, and it did actually I'm not gonna say it introduced me to my publisher. I actually got offers from, or at least conversations with, 11 publishers. But the publisher I wanted wasn't necessarily I'm gonna give a a hack here.

Corey Poirier [00:18:24]:
Wasn't necessarily I don't know that they noticed my launch on the second crowdfunder, but what I did was somebody else had given me this idea. What I did was I tagged them in, the publisher on Twitter, and I said, I really hope one of my favorite publishers, which they were because they put up books by Brendon Burchard and Jeff Walker. And so I said, I really hope one of my favorite publishers decides to also bid on my book. And then what I did was I retweeted my campaign so that I knew they would see how many books I sold and what I had done. Now I'm gonna tell you what platform I used, but this was the second one. And then basically, they, I guess, retweeted, or they replied to my tweet and said, you have our attention. And obviously, Susan, I think that was because of the number of books I sold. And then I got a private message from the founder the next day in my tweet DMs, and he said, hey.

Corey Poirier [00:19:11]:
We'd love to have you talk to our acquisitions editor to see if there might be a fit here. I leveraged the launch to reach out to that publisher, but I'd already had, like, 11 publishers interested. It's just that this publisher was the one I wanted to work with because they were closer to hybrid. They were an entrepreneurial publisher. They gave me a lot of flexibility that I wouldn't get, let's say, with, maybe one of the big four. I leveraged this platform to get in front of them. But interestingly, like I said, I had 11 other publishers that were interested because of the platform. The platform is called Publishizer with a z, and I just went because I knew they had stopped operating for a while.

Corey Poirier [00:19:45]:
I think they basically got sold and somebody new took over. I'm looking right now at the platform. And, like, for example, I see I guess this says that my campaign was slightly successful because I'm looking at the, ones they're featuring right now. And one is 22 books preorders. Another's 409. Another is 30. Another is 79. Another is 11.

Corey Poirier [00:20:08]:
And I think mine was 520. So I think it was in the, you know, the topper range. All those ones I just mentioned, the highest one is 79.30, which has been that they brought in $7,930, and I think mine was 95100. So it was a pretty successful campaign, I believe. But, basically, Publishizer, the difference with this, Susan, is that when you go on there and you put your book up as a crowdfunded book, the whole campaign and the whole platform is dedicated to helping you find publishers based on how many sales you make and how well your book does.

Susan Friedmann [00:20:40]:
Okay. So it's not necessarily one that you would do for marketing, or it would be one that you would go to use for marketing the book, getting funds for marketing?

Corey Poirier [00:20:50]:
You could. I mean, at the end of the day I mean, I don't know if this is for better or worse, but when you do a crowdfunding campaign, ultimately, you can truly use it for whatever you wanna use it for. I mean, like, it's not like even Kickstarter, it's not that it was for that. I just said that's what I wanna use it for, and then it worked. I'm looking at mine right now because, again, it's all live, that one. And I have a video again. It's a different video. It's me talking about why the why was important.

Corey Poirier [00:21:16]:
And then when I look over the preorders, it was 533. $95100 is what we raised. That was, again, about 3 weeks. I end up doing the same foolish thing again at 3 weeks. I can see that this had, 7,000 views, which is pretty big, meaning, like, the page that it's on. And what's really neat is once the book was funded by them I'm looking now and clicking to make sure. But yeah. So, basically, on this published website, it says that Morgan James ended up being the publisher.

Corey Poirier [00:21:44]:
It was pitched to a 101 publishers, and it has the link to buy the book at Books A 1000000, Barnes and Noble Bookshop, or Amazon. Basically, they're really dedicated to authors is what I would say.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:55]:
So Okay. That's good to know. Yeah.

Corey Poirier [00:21:57]:
And, honestly, again, I would say that if I compare the platforms, it literally you know, they must have mocked it from the other ones, but it literally operates identical to Kickstarter or GoFundMe. It's just that they're focused on publishers. And because of that, I took a lot of the same book proposal, obviously, from the last one and even a lot of the rewards from the last one. So I kinda made it a similar thing. I would argue that this one, I definitely did a better job at making it more of a traditional book proposal because they asked questions around them. Either option works, and you can use it for whichever you wanna use, like marketing, the starting the book from scratch. I think people knew when I was doing the 2nd crowdfunding, I already used a crowdfunder to finish the book and even do some marketing. They knew that I was obviously using it again for marketing the book.

Corey Poirier [00:22:42]:
But then also, I made it clear as well, my goal was to get a publisher so that that's why I picked this platform. I'm hoping that answered the question.

Susan Friedmann [00:22:50]:
Yes. And before I let you go on this is, how do you know how much to ask for?

Corey Poirier [00:22:57]:
Now when you say how much to ask for, do you mean in terms of the rewards, the book itself, or

Susan Friedmann [00:23:02]:
How much you're looking to raise on the funding.

Corey Poirier [00:23:05]:
Okay. I see what you mean. I'm going by memory on this. I have a good memory. Obviously, you can probably tell. But, because these are both done, like, almost 8 years ago, and I remember every aspect of them. But I'm trying to remember I'm looking. I don't think I set a like, I know for sure I'm Publicizer.

Corey Poirier [00:23:24]:
Okay, I'm going by memory, but I don't believe it asked you to set a target. I believe that with the Kickstarter one, it doesn't show me that, which I it's quite surprising. So I was just looking to see if it showed. It doesn't show me. But if I remember correctly, I think the goal was $10,000, and it did $10,500. But I'm pretty sure it was that was the goal I set. But to answer your question about how do you know, I think it's, 2 things. I think it's a judgment call, meaning you know ultimately what you need to raise.

Corey Poirier [00:23:53]:
Like, you could literally base it on what do I need to make this book the best it can be. But I think the other side, which is this all sounds great, but you still have to bring the people who buy the book and know about the book. So I think the other side is what's realistic based on your network? If you're gonna have to do it all, which is, as you know, in the world of I mean, you're in the world of on the hybrid. But as you know, Susan, the author has to do some work. I think some people think if I can get a book deal, I'm never gonna have to market or talk about this thing again. That's not the case with the book world, and that's not the case with crowdfunding. In my experience, if you want to be a successful campaign, you have to find a way to get out there, let people know it exists. I would say if it were me, and I know this isn't a sexy answer because the sexy answer is you heard all about this today from Susan and I.

Corey Poirier [00:24:39]:
You should pop your book up tomorrow and start your crowdfunding campaign. If it were me, I would do some things to get ready for it so that you know you have an active audience, maybe get them warmed up. I would do some other things before I launch. And a big part of that is if it were me again, I would try to find a way and go and dive deep into how to build an email list if you don't have one already. Also, like, if you have 400 people total connections on Facebook, that's the only platform you're on, and you have 0 people on an email list, you're gonna have a hard time having a big campaign and a crowdfund. The only other option to have a big campaign is if you know one person that becomes a champion that knows everybody, or if it gets picked up somehow and goes viral, which that'd be pretty hard to do these days with so many campaigns. Or if you're gonna run ads, that will be another option. Run a lot of ads to it if you wanna put money behind it.

Corey Poirier [00:25:26]:
But if you're starting with no resources financially to do it, no connections on an email list, and social media, you hardly have anybody you're connected to, it's gonna be very, very hard to have a successful campaign on crowdfunding. And, again, I know, Susan, that's not a sexy answer, but I think sometimes we need to know the true answer. That doesn't mean that it can't be successful. That just means it might be time to start doing some of the other lifting first to get ready for that. But I can tell you there's ways. I mean, I just signed up for, Amy Porterfield. AHE was running or might have just been on her Instagram. And I'm about to tackle it soon, but she's saying, let me show you the system I use to get a 1000 people on my email list a week and how you can use it to get a minimum of 10,000 in a year.

Corey Poirier [00:26:11]:
And, I mean, of course, you can kinda buy your way into that too. Like, you can actually go and run ads. But what I'm saying is you could build an email list a lot quicker than you realize. And if you could build add 5,000 people onto an email, and they're most active with you and they're most excited by you in the first few weeks or months that you're they're on your list. So if you could build a list like that and have 5,000 people, then I think you have everything you need to start building up the buzz around a crowdfunding campaign.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:35]:
Brilliant. Wow. So much great information. I knew it would be. And because you've done it, as I say, and you can take us through that, the whole campaign, really get a sense of what it's about. And as you said, it doesn't have to be sexy, but it's the real. It's the truth. I mean, we don't want to make it sound like, you know, this is the panacea.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:56]:
That's all you have to do. It's like people are thinking they can put the book on Amazon and sit back and wait for the sales, but that doesn't happen. And that's the same thing here, if I'm hearing you correctly. Corrie, how can listeners get hold of you, find out more about your new book, which is so exciting? Take it away. Let us know.

Corey Poirier [00:27:19]:
I'll just say one tiny last thing, because we didn't cover it. I wanna make sure people have this, resource as well, is we didn't talk heavily about the rewards. So what I would say is if you wanna know get ideas for rewards you could offer if you do a crowd funder down the road, just go and search my name, Corey Poirier, and search either Kickstarter or Publishizer with a z, and you'll find my campaigns. And by the way, even if you can't find mine, just look at Publishizer, anybody else's, and you'll see the rewards they offer. That will be your sample of what kind of rewards you could offer as well. So I just mentioned that because the rewards are a big part of it. And you can go look at what we offered, the pricing we put it at, and that should give you ideas for how you can do that. Just to put it.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:56]:
Thank you.

Corey Poirier [00:27:57]:
Yeah. No worries. I just feel like it's one of those things where it's a one last thing. If I didn't say it, I'd feel guilty. The other side to things is my new book, which is called The Enlightened Passenger. Now I didn't do crowdfunding. That was very intentional. I guess you could say, you know, I was already working with the publisher that I met through crowdfunding.

Corey Poirier [00:28:14]:
I went to them, and Susan, you could probably attest to this, and they might not even want me sharing this too openly. But with this book, I went to the publisher and said, you know what? I wanna work with you on this for various reasons. One is you know yourself, Susan, because you know about it. It's a fictional parable. So it really probably needs to be in stores, the type of book it is. So I said, I do want to work with a publisher, but here's the timeline I have. And I said to the publisher, you don't even have the book yet. They read it, and they said they want it.

Corey Poirier [00:28:41]:
But they basically they said, what timeline do we need to work under? And I said, 4 months. That's the part you know, with a traditional publisher, usually, that's a no go. It was like a book proposal. Right? I sold them on you got to know who I'm working with on the affiliate side, and and they knew him, and they knew his launches are usually very successful. And so there was enough things on the table that they said, we don't wanna miss out on this. Because if they couldn't do it, I'd have to go, whether self published or somewhere else. We put it together in 4 months. It's with a traditional publisher.

Corey Poirier [00:29:07]:
The book itself is called The Enlightened Passenger. It's a fictional parable, 2 strangers on a plane, basically an older guy, a younger guy. The younger guy is an arrogant type businessperson who thinks he knows it all. The older guy is a wise passenger. And it's called the flight that changes everything because the older guy, through his life journey and lessons, teaches the younger guy what it means to be really rich as a person. It's been compared so far to The Alchemist and Celestine Prophecy and Og Mandino's writings just to give people a visual of what type of book it is. The foreword is written by Richard Paul Evans, who wrote The Christmas Box. You know, I'm really proud of that.

Corey Poirier [00:29:41]:
He doesn't write a lot of forewords. I think we talked in the other one about building relationships and making deposits before you ever take withdrawal. So I really feel that I built a relationship with Richard first before I ever asked. He was kind enough to do the foreword, and then we've had endorsements by a lot of big name thought leaders and authors that changed my life, like Neale Donald Walsch of Conversation With God and James Redfield from Celestine. These are authors that their work changed my life. That's a bit about the book. As far as getting a copy of it, I think Susan actually I know know in the show notes usually the links are there, so I think you have a link you can put in the show notes for where people can grab it. If they go grab the book using that link, the benefit of that versus getting it off one of the retailer sites, which that's possible, but the benefit of getting it through us is it still takes you to the retailer site.

Corey Poirier [00:30:24]:
You still buy it at the same place. You still pay the same amount of money. The one difference is by doing it through our site, it tells you where to come back and put your order number. And just by putting the order number from the book you are already gonna buy anyway, you actually get 5 instant bonuses. And then as you heard yesterday, sort of offline, there's a whole bunch of other live events that you can actually attend that we're doing for free once you grab the book as well. And we're gonna be doing a book club after the book launches as well. And, you know, maybe someday down the road, we'll talk about that. I'll tell you how that worked, that in a contest we're doing to get people to actually open the book after they bought it.

Corey Poirier [00:30:59]:
In the interim, you will actually get to be a part of the book club if you so choose. All those live events and 5 instant bonuses, basically, for buying a book that's $16.95 US.

Susan Friedmann [00:31:10]:
Fantastic. You practice what you preach. And, yes, a year from now, let's come back, let's talk about how successful this was because we're hearing the before, and it'll be wonderful to hear the after as well. Curry, we always leave our listeners with a golden nugget. You've shared so much already, but what's that golden nugget you'd like to leave us with?

Corey Poirier [00:31:35]:
This is always a hard one for me because my head goes so many places of stuff I'd wanna share. But I feel like the one thing I'd probably wanna share the most today, and I think this relates to books, but it also relates to just in your personal life, is if you haven't done one yet, I think it'd be worth your while to craft a personal mission statement. All great companies I'll even not just say great companies, but highly successful companies, most of them have a mission statement. Many of the employees know what it is, but that mission statement keeps them focused on what the end goal is. Years ago, I realized that I was sitting in an office, and I saw this mission statement on a wall, and I said, why don't I have one of those? I should be like the CEO of my life. And then I literally, the next day, I took a pen and wrote down a mission statement. I have it in my wallet now, but I had since rewritten it because I, at one point, changed wallets and lost the original one. But basically, it's handwritten, and mine is to be the guy that motivates, donates, educates, entertains, and inspires.

Corey Poirier [00:32:29]:
That's my 5 point test. And so if somebody asks me to take something on, if it's 0 of those, I can say no, and I never have to have a regret over that no. If it's 4 or 5 of those, it's a yes, and I never have to have a regret over that yes. But having that mission statement keeps me really focused on the end game or what the goal is. If I were to leave somebody with something today, and that's something we talk about in the new book. Obviously, again, it's fictionalized, but the character talks about why he has a personal mission statement. But if I were to leave people with something today, whether they're thinking about what book do I write, how do I approach it, do I bring it to a publisher, all those things, I would say have a personal mission statement that guides your decisions.

Susan Friedmann [00:33:05]:
Beautiful. Wow. Really, that in and of itself was worth the entire podcast interview. So thank you. Thank you so much again for sharing your wisdom. You are so wise and such an incredible person, and you live by your mission statement. And I just truly admire you for that. And listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expect it 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.

Susan Friedmann [00:33:42]:
So go to BookMarketingBrainstorm.com to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.

Grab your copy of Corey's lastest book "The Enlighened Passenger" and unlock your complementary Masterclass Today!